Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast - Most Wanted Counterfeiter Reveals His Secrets! | The Art of Making Money

Episode Date: January 18, 2026

Arthur Williams Jr., a former most-wanted counterfeiter, reveals how a chaotic upbringing, criminal mentorship, and years of trial and error led him to master the intricate art of printing fake money.⁣ ⁣ Arthur's links⁣ https://www.instagram.com/arthurjwilliamsjr/?hl=en⁣ https://www.facebook.com/arthurj.williamsjr/⁣ https://artistreplete.com/collections/arthur-j-williams-jr⁣ ⁣ Do you want to be a guest? Fill out the form https://www.insidetruecrimepodcast.com/apply-to-be-a-guest⁣ ⁣ ⁣ Send me an email here: [e-mail]⁣ ⁣ Do you extra clips and behind the scenes content?⁣ Subscribe to my Patreon: https://patreon.com/InsideTrueCrime ⁣ ⁣ Check out my Dark Docs YouTube channel here -⁣ https://www.youtube.com/@DarkDocsMatthewCox⁣ ⁣ Follow me on all socials!⁣ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/insidetruecrime/⁣ TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@matthewcoxtruecrime⁣ ⁣ ⁣ Do you want a custom painting done by me? Check out my Etsy Store: https://www.etsy.com/shop/coxpopart⁣ ⁣ Listen to my True Crime Podcasts anywhere: https://anchor.fm/mattcox ⁣ ⁣ Check out my true crime books! ⁣ Shark in the Housing Pool: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0851KBYCF⁣ Bent: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0BV4GC7TM⁣ It's Insanity: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B08KFYXKK8⁣ Devil Exposed: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B08TH1WT5G⁣ Devil Exposed (The Abridgment): https://www.amazon.com/dp/1070682438⁣ The Program: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0858W4G3K⁣ Bailout: https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/bailout-matthew-cox/1142275402⁣ Dude, Where's My Hand-Grenade?: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0BXNFHBDF/ref=tmm_pap_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=1678623676&sr=1-1⁣ ⁣ Checkout my disturbingly twisted satiric novel!⁣ Stranger Danger: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0BSWQP3WX⁣ ⁣ If you would like to support me directly, I accept donations here:⁣ Paypal: https://www.paypal.me/MattCox69⁣ Cashapp: $coxcon69 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

You didn't start a business just to keep the lights on. You're here to sell more today than yesterday. You're here to win. Lucky for you, Shopify built the best converting checkout on the planet. Like the just one tapping, ridiculously fast acting, sky high sales stacking, championed at checkouts. That's the good stuff right there. So if your business is in it to win it, win with Shopify. Start your free trial today at Shopify.com slash win.

Looking to grow your investing skills and make smarter decisions with your money in 2026, join Her Money's Investing Fix, the twice-monthly Women's Only Investment Club, where expert stock pickers pitch ideas and you help build the portfolio. Since launching four years ago, our member-driven picks have outperformed the S&P thanks to smart, collaborative choices. We've got a strong track record and a community that's learning and winning. together. So go to investingfix.com. That's Fix with two X's and join us. How do the most successful women do it? We ask them on how she does it with Karen Feinerman. You'll get insights from leaders like today's Jenna Bush-Hager. There's a lot I say no to, and I think it's a really important word for women to use. Rachel Weber of Paris Hilton's 1111 media. I'm going to be a much better leader. I'm going to bring more creativity. If I have

other things filling my life and more. That's how she does it with me, Karen Feinerman, wherever you get your podcasts. The most I ever made it one time was 500,000. It was hard for me to tell which was real and fit. I don't know if I should talk about this part, but I was born in Naperville, Illinois, which is the suburb of Chicago.

My dad was a grifter. Yeah, yeah, he was. That's the, I'm a con man. Yeah, he was a grifter, man. He liked the, well, he was a paper hanger. So he used to, Back in the 70s and 80s, you could open up a bank account. They'd give you, you know, checks.

Yeah. And he'd go travel around writing checks and then taking the stuff back. And he would open the account in a fake name with a fake license. And my youth was a lot of traveling. He would take us on the road with them. And then when I was about, I don't know. And you know this? Oh, yeah.

I mean, you know this as a kid? You know this is. Well, I didn't know. Not really? The kid I didn't know until he went to Stateville prison and we had to go visit him with a couple of guys, right? You know, and then I realized that, okay, this isn't legal, right? And then he got out of prison and was with us for about a year and then took off. He left.

How old were you? I was about nine, ten. Okay. Yeah. There was some things that went on. He kidnapped us for, you know, he took off for a minute, then came back, kidnapped us, took us to Oregon, crossed the whole country. and then brought us back. He literally dropped us off.

My mom was homeless. She was staying at the Salvation Army on Sheridan. And he literally dropped us off at the homeless shelter where my mom was, like two days before Christmas. Yeah, it was a real nice Christmas. This is a Dickens story. It was some pretty shitty stuff, man. Yeah. But my mom was great.

My mom, even though she dealt with the mental illness, real religious, you know, so we always went to church, always had to pray every morning, all that stuff. And a lot of her mental illness revolved around religion, too. She'd see demons and angels and all kinds of stuff and lepracons. You keep saying we. Oh, me and my brother's sister, yeah. So one brother, one sister? Yeah.

So with my mom, I had one brother, one sister, both younger. Yeah, so we were in the project. for a little while. We stayed in the shelter for like 90 days. They got us into public housing, which was projects on the south side of Chicago. So I went from... Yeah.

That sounds rough. Yeah. It was intense, right? Like, it was 84 because it was a year that Bears won the Super Bowl. I'll never forget it. It was cold, February. And I remember the Catholic charities

picked us up. a van and took us to the projects. It was on 31st and Holliston Bridgeport. It was like a little borough in Chicago. And I remember getting out of the van and it's cold and snowing and we walk into this cold little project apartment. Didn't even have a bed, didn't have nothing, no furniture in there. Slept on crates probably for like the first like three months, you know, crates with a bed on it. And the early part of that was really hard. Because for one, I didn't know shit about the city, right? Because we grew up in the suburbs, right?

And then we were traveling with my dad. So, you know, we'd come into the city a little bit, but not like live in the inner city, you know, especially in poverty, right? And the projects, you know, it had its thing. It had gangs, drugs, right? Like all that stuff. And for me, I was always pretty sharp, right?

Like, I could pick up on shit pretty quick. First thing I picked up was, don't walk alone, right? You know, dangerous shit because of the gangs. Right. You know, I'd go to school in the morning, and we'd have to walk through another gang neighborhood, the Latin Kings, and where we lived in the projects, it was disciples.

And so automatically, they just assumed you, were a disciple because you lived over there. And so I got jumped on a couple times, you know, beat up a few times. And then I finally realized, okay, I better start walking with them, right? Right. Because they're not getting jumped on. They're fighting, but they're not getting jumped on. So I went through some years of, you know, gang stuff. I got shot in my side. I had about six friends killed by the time I was stuck to. What do you mean? So you've been shot. You joined a gang? Yeah. Well, you really have no choice. I mean, because you're living in this area, right?

And, you know, people from outside that area, they see you living over here, and so they automatically assume that you're a gang member. And then for me, you know, strengths in numbers. So when I'd be walking alone to get my ass kicked, right? Yeah, I understand. I just didn't know if you joined the gang. I thought you just said you were walking with them.

Oh, I eventually joined, yeah. It became a part of it. up really doing some heavy shit with it. And by the time I was 18, I had been shot. Well, how'd you get shot? You keep saying that like it's nothing. Well, I mean, at that time, it was, you know, I had six friends murdered. Okay.

Right. People talk about war and Iraq and all that shit. Man, go to the south side of Chicago, man. You know, people are dying. It's just part of life there, right? And this is just for nothing, just for living in the wrong area? Living in a wrong neighborhood. But you guys are saying, so these neighborhoods have been there for, you know, as long as you could, you know, go back.

And it's, it gets real tribal, right? And then so, and what happens is it's built off that. So if you have this gang here and this gang here, and this one goes and shoots this guy, you know, someone over here, now they want to come shoot you and then guess what happens? Yeah, it just escalates. It just goes back and forth and it never ends and it gets worse. sometimes it gets light, you know. The summer's raw was really rough. There would be days you'd go out and wonder if you're going to live that day, right?

Because it was gunshots every single day. And, yeah, so, you know, it was my one friend, Sean, who got killed, that was probably the one the hardest for me, because our friend, Brian, who was my brother's best friend, he had he had just got shot in the face and they killed him all right and so Sean was actually getting he was he was pulling away from the gang he had a kid now and he was you know he was doing pretty good had a job and he was getting away from it and he spoke at brian's funeral like you know got up there and spoke about brian and everything

had his kid with him and his girl left the funeral home went to the Dunkin' Donuts, goes in there to get coffee and whatever, gets into an argument with someone in there, whatever. As he's leaving, they shoot him in the back, kill him. He's still in his suit from the funeral. And he was a good friend, like, close.

And that was the moment, I think, not just that moment, there was a few other moments that I had decided that it was time for me to be done. I didn't ever feel like that was my place, right? Like, I still go back to the old neighborhood. My gallery was there. I built it. You know, I built my gallery in the same neighborhood that the Latin Kings were in.

I had a couple guns pointed at me, you know, here. Now I'm older, you know, an artist, and I'm still dealing with it, right? I ain't got nothing to do with it, but I went right into the smack dab of it, you know. But he was getting out, and it just was terrible timing, right? He's leaving Dunker Don't, so he gets shot in the back. And that with some other things I had got shot, and I was at the point where I was like, man, I can't do this, no man. I'm done with this.

And, you know, and during that time, though, I was also in the crime, right? I started older, let's see, DaVinci took me in when I was about 15. So I started learning how to make money. Who's DaVindjit? He was like my mentor. Okay. And how did you mean him? Through my mom.

So my mom was, she was a waitress at the snack shop on the corner. A little diner, like in Chicago, you got diners everywhere. And so I would go in there and my mom give me a shake or a burger. And there was an old Italian that would always be in there. And it just took to me, you know. Not not, I wouldn't say necessarily like a dad because I was, kind of like after what happened with my dad, I didn't, I wasn't really into that, you know. And, but, uh, he, me and him became close and I ended up stealing a car.

We were stealing, you know, jacking cars and just dumb shit. And I got arrested for it. My mom was at work. So he, she, he offered to come get me out of, out of the jail. Because they could sign you out, right, when you were a juvenile. And, uh, and I walked back, you know, he just started telling me, he's like, man, what are you doing? You know, you're smart and I said, what else you're going to do in this neighborhood? There ain't nothing here, you know. And he ended up taking me in. He was a counterfeiter.

You know, he was print money. But the old way, he had the presses and the inks and the plates and everything. And I did that with him for, I was like his little assistant, you know, for about nine months to about a year. He never, he didn't ever let me like make it, make it. But I would carry the paper and I would, you know, help with the inks and help with different things. that he had going on. And he's got an actual, like a studio, a print shop. Yeah, he had a print shop.

He has a real print shop? It was a counterfeit print shop. It's in the back of a, it's some warehouse somewhere. It was a warehouse, had an old, you know, shaft elevator that went down. It was crazy his place. Right, right. So like nobody knows where it is. No, no, no, no.

And I did that for a little while with him. He ended up disappearing. After about a year, something happened. So my neighborhood, Bridgeport, if you ever look it up, it's a little borough on the south side. And so you had Chinatown like on 22nd. Then Bridgeport started on like 26th and went to like 39th. And within Bridgeport you had Italians. Mayor Daly lived in my neighborhood 33rd.

So on this side of Host, it was kind of like M&M's 8 Mile, right? On this side of the tracks, it was all poor. on this side of host it was like the Italians and the Irish and you had the fireman and you know it was all city workers and stuff and then when you went over here it was just the grunge right it was like it was

everything mixed Irish Italians Mexicans whatever and that was the poverty stricken area and that's where we lived but he was an Italian from the other side right and so he would he pulled me into his world for a little while and I was fascinated

with you know because up until this point, we have been stealing cars, breaking into garages, you know, breaking into cars for stereos and speakers and stuff, just, you know, just petty crime. He brought me into a world where it's like, man, literally printing fucking money, you know, like, and it was the old hundreds. Remember the little face hundreds? Yeah. Right? So the new hundreds were in. This was, you know, early. But I loved it, right? I loved the smell of ink, right? Even now. right when I pop a can I I pop cans of ink now but not to print money right right I pop them for art artistic purposes only right you know but I love the smell of it

and there's the the print old printer's ink it has like the smell and yeah I fell in love with it and it broke when he when when when he disappeared you know another moment in life where I lost somebody right and that's why it had always been real hard for me to get close with people over the years because so many friends had either died, disappeared, or, you know, just prison, right? Did you ever find out what happened? He just one day you showed up for work and nobody's answer to the door? He never showed up to the, well, first he didn't show up to the diner.

He stopped coming to the diner, which was a real indicator something wasn't right. Because he always went to the diner, always see my mom, you know, now he's gone. My mom didn't know what happened. But, you know, people disappeared in my neighborhood. It was a mob and, you know, it was, you know, there's a lot of, a lot of mafia, a lot of, a lot of, stuff like that going on, you know, so, so my neighborhood, it was, um. Is that what you think it was related to? Oh, it had to be.

Yeah, because, you know, because like, to me, he could have gotten arrested. No, yeah, it was. He could have found out he was going to get arrested, take it off. Yeah, if he, if he, if he would have got arrested, people in the neighborhood would know about it, right? Okay. So the fact that there was no talk of that was the indication that, you know, something went wrong, right?

Did he live really under the radar? I mean, because he's staying in this, this is not a, this is not like an ultra wealthy area. He's, he printing and just staying under the radar? Under the radar, yeah. Okay. And selling the money to, you know, the, the gangsters, right? And that's, because I ended up doing the same thing,

but just, you know, years later. And so who knows, right? Like, I mean, I don't know what occurred, what he had going on because I was so, in just like this little compartmentalized area. Yeah, 15 years old. Yeah, I decided to know. So when he was gone, I went back to petty crime again,

started doing bullshit, you know, and when I got shot, that's when, that's when I decided that there had, you know, I had to figure something out, right? Why did you get shot? You don't, you don't have to go. Well, it was, it was neighborhood stuff, right? Just somebody just. Well, they walked up on me.

I was actually walking through the projects, going through the basketball court. And I had just left a party. And I could hear somebody walking up behind me. So I looked, turn around, and they got bandanas on. And I thought it was a couple of my guys from the party, like playing a joke on me. You know, and I'm like, hey, man, pull those down.

I can't see your face. They were like, pull them down, and they pulled out the guns, pointed them. I turned around, put my head between my knees, and just started running. I can hear the bullets. flying, see, see, see, you know, I mean, it's like a zipper sound. And then I got, I got hit, I fell to the ground, and I was going to stay on the ground figure, and they killed me,

and they take off. And when I hit the ground, you know, I'm like this, I can see them running up on me, still shooting, and the bullets are hitting the side, sparks. I got up, ran for like five blocks, couldn't even believe I was able to run. And I get to the bus stop. I sit down, and I'm feeling myself, right? Because you're like, man, and then when I put my hand in my pocket, I could feel the blood. And that's when I told the,

there was a Chicago Tribune little stand out there. I said, man, I've been shot. You know, call the ambulance came. And then that's when I was like,

okay, you know, I got to make a change. Something has to give here. And got into a little bit of more trouble. Went, went to jail for like, I think it was like 90 days, you know, for like a burglary or something stupid. And when I was in jail, I, uh, I quit the gang in jail, which was like unheard of, right?

I might have been in jail a little longer. Maybe I was in there for like six months on that. Yeah, it was because the first three months I was all involved in it. So when I went to jail, when you go to jail in Chicago, you got to, there's like, there's like, you know, neutrons and then there's folks and there's people right it's gang oriented in county jail so as as soon as you walk through the door they're like what should be about right and you're like what you'd be about yeah yeah and you're either folks people or neutrons the neutrons get treated badly right you're sleeping on the floor you eat last you know you just completely treated but i was a part of the disciples so right away they grab your bunk they take you to a cell

they bring you a little care package, they take care of you. And I had a little juice on the street, you know, from the gang part of it. And so right away, they made me one of the shot callers for the dorm we were in, right? And what that entailed is I had to take reports of how many people we had, how much we had in our commissary box for, you know. So I had to do these reports, and it was in code, right? So there was the main leader who was over the whole jail, right? And Cook County is a big jail, right?

I think it's like, man, how many divisions? It's like 12. It's a massive place. It holds like 30,000 people. It's like a little city, right? So you have the main leader, and then you have leaders for each division, right? And so I was one of them. And so I, and then they would give you the code.

sheet right and so I would have to write my report based off this crazy encrypted code sheet you know some real wild shit right how you know we got you know we got three two sixes from you know this part of Chicago we got some maniac Latin disciples from the Twilight Zone we got so you'd have to you'd have to put down all these different you know how many people you have what's how much money you have in the box all this stuff who's going to court when right that another thing. And the reports were a real pain in the ass, right? But you'd have to do it. And then they would have you go every Sunday. Everyone would go to church, right? Because that's the only

time where the county jail inmates could meet, right? So everyone from all the different divisions would go to church on Sunday. And it was the craziest shit I ever seen, actually. you'd walk into the service, right, and you'd have about 20 guys on this side, all the people, like Latin kings, vice lords, that type of shit, right? All the leaders, all the hephes, whatever you want to call them, right? And then you'd have all the leaders for the folks, disciples, Simon City Royals, you know, all those types of guys, the leaders.

And they would literally be in the back of the fucking church having their gang meeting while the preacher was up there or a priest giving his sermon to the rest of people that were sitting you know like really came there right yeah yeah it's the craziest shit

I don't even know how the guards let it happen but you know the guards were paid all whatever man but it was the craziest shit I ever seen right and the first time I went I turned to my report you know I got introduced to everyone and I did it like two more times and I started

feeling real shitty about it. Because I did. I went to church. I mean, I still were, I mean, I went to church every son. Even though I was a criminal or whatever, street dog, man, I still prayed. It was kind of weird, man. You know, I still had this belief in a creator.

And so I was feeling terrible about this shit, man. I was like, man, this is bad doing this shit in church, you know? You know, talking about, you know, hitting this dude. you know, this guy's got a three-minute match violation, right? Match violation is like the worst you can get because remember the old wooden matches. So the violation, if you did something, like say you stole or you were doing some dumb shit, the gang would give you a violation, right? And so they would give it off based off matches.

So they three enforcers, they take you in the cell, three guys are going there with you and they'd beat the shit out of you. And there would be one guy who, would light a match and let it burn, right? They let the wood burn. And that's how long they would beat the shit out of you, right? So one match, two matches, three matches. So here I am, you know, partaking in this shit.

And I'm just, my insides are just like, this is fucking wrong. Right. I can't do this, man. After like the third time, I decided I wasn't going to go there no more, right? So the guy that was underneath me, I did the report. I would go do all the, do all the fuck. crazy cryptic fucking shit.

And then I give him the report to take to church. Right? And I did that for like, I did that for like two weeks. First week and then second week he comes back. He was a Simon City Royal actually.

Really good dude, man. And he's like, hey, Art, they're saying that you got to come. That I can't come no more, right? I'm like, why, man? I'm doing the president. They say, ah, man, they're just saying that you need to be at the next one, right?

I'm like, all right, man. So next week comes, same thing. I do the report, and I was like, man, I'm not going. You know, you're going to, man, bro, they're going to get crazy if you don't go. Right. He comes back that week, and he tells me, he says, hey, they're demanding that you be there next week, bro. Like, there's no missing. They told me he don't even come, you know.

And I was like, man, dude, okay, right? Sunday comes, I don't go. I did the report. I don't go. He ended up going because he was arguing with me. Bro, you gotta go. You can't send me. They'll beat the shit out of me. I'm like, dude, you're just gonna have to, I'm not doing it, right? He comes back to the dorm with the grimest fucking look

on his face, right? Now, just two days before that, the GDs did a violation on one of their brothers, and they killed him. He died, right? they beat the shit out of him to death, man, right? So he comes back with this grim look on his face, and he's like,

I can't believe this, I can't believe this. And I was like, what's going on? He's like, man, I got to go talk to Diak. And Diak was a maniac Latin disciple. Real cool, brother. And he goes, and then I'll come and talk to you, but it's not good for you. And I'm like, oh, okay.

Let me fucking sit in suspense here for a little while, right? And so he goes, and there was 14 of us. So the dorm, I think, had like, I don't know, maybe like 100 people in the dorm. And there was about, I think, no, there was probably about 20 of us. And then, you know, maybe about 20, you know, people, you know, vice lords and night king. So anyway, they come and they said, Deiak tells me, he's like, hey, we got, we got a, we got a, a smash-on side order for you from the top. I was like, what?

He's like, yeah. He's like, for you, you know, you're not going to the meetings and this and that. And I'm like, I was like, well, what, what, what's this going to entail? And he's like, well, we're going to all have a little meeting. We're all going to go and we're going to discuss what we're going to do. And you just need to go to your cell and sit there until we come, come get you. And I'm like, what? Pass.

Yeah. I'm like, what the fuck, man, right? So I go to my cell. The Simon City Royal, he's walking with me to the cell. He's like, art, they told us to give you six matches. I was like, six matches. That's a fucking death sentence. Right.

Like one match. You ever see how long a fucking match burns real fucking slow, dog, you know what I'm saying? I said six. He's like, yeah, man, I don't even, you know, fucking three is rough, right? But six, it's like, yeah. Tell COVID, like, I, there was a fight in prison that lasted like a minute one time. That's an eternity.

Oh, it's an eternity. And that's two guys fight. That's fighting back. Yeah. That's one-on-one. Yeah, no, six matches. That's like fucking ten minutes just getting beat down, right? I see, you'd be dead.

So I go in my cell and, uh, and I literally, man, I got on my knees and I prayed. I said, Lord, I said, if this is the way you want me to go, just take just do it quick you know just let this end fast you know and uh and they came they got me i walked down to the to the corner cell man it was it was so hot in there man there fucking guys standing up on the side of the walls and me it was just some real eerie looking shit and um i walk in there thinking that i'm not walking out right like this is it man i'm fucking dead and uh and diac the maniac he says listen man we

We all talked about it, bro. And we all love you, man. I was a good brother to him, though, right? Even, you know, a short time I was there. And I was always handling my business, made sure everyone was taking care of, always on my function, you know. And he said, and we just don't feel right about this.

Like, we just can't do this to you, man. He said, but we have to do something. He said, so we've decided that we're going to give you one match and you get to pick the guys that are going to do it, right? Because there were some big horses in there, man. Like, there's some, you know how it is in prison. So the enforcers are enforcers.

Some kids are massive, right? So I picked the smallest guys, man. I was like, I'm going to get you, I'm going to get you, you know? And they gave me the one match. And then they put everyone to secrecy. Like, nobody in this room could ever talk about what happened. And you can never leave the dorm. Like, I couldn't go to the church ever.

I could because I needed to look fucked up. Right? So I was kind of like. It's like when a guy gets the shit kicked out of him, like he'll stay in a cell and the other guy will bring him his food. That's kind of how I had to live for a little while. Yeah. I wasn't, you know, they said you can't go anywhere because.

It's going to be obvious we didn't follow through. We didn't follow through. Yeah. Right. And so everyone was sworn to secrecy, man. They burned the match, you know, beat on me a little bit. And I was out of the game. That was it.

I was done, you know. and it was a cool feeling. I remember walking out. It was like one of the real first times I really started to believe in God, like really believe in God. Like up until that point I prayed, went to church, whatever. But I felt like there was something real special that happened there with me, you know. And I've always been, in a sense, even though I was in the underworld and that whole world,

I always had a real strong morality about things, right? Like, I don't like lying, right? I hate stealing, right? I won't even steal a paper off somebody's porch, man, you know? But I'll print some money, though. I'll print some money quick, man. But there was, so there's all, I stand on certain things, you know. Like even in this art world, the same shit, man.

I've walked away from a lot of stuff because it just wasn't right, you know. But, yes, so that was, that was, you know, that was my jail time. And when I got out of that, things weren't working out with my first, my baby's mama. I'll call my baby's mama, right, yeah. She ended up becoming Chicago police officer, so, you know, that wasn't going to work out too well, right? But she's super cool.

Me and her are super cool now, too. But she ended up, you know, she started dating a cop. Me and him kind of got into some beef, you know. And so I took off to Texas because my mom was from Texas. My dad was from Chicago. So we went to Texas quite a bit. Gainesville, Texas, little town north of Dallas. And so my mom's family was down there.

So my mom was like, you know, I had been shot, went to jail, you know, ship, you know, my girl left me for, you know, a police officer, right? And so my mom was like, man, you need to get out of here, man, you know. So I went down to Texas and, and that's when a whole other part started with the, that's how the counterfeiter came. Because I had been out of the, you know, since the old man disappeared, I hadn't even thought about printing money, you know. But you know it's out there. Like, most people never think about.

Like, out of all the crimes you can think about is, are possible. Most people don't think counterfeiting. Like, that's not in their, you know, that's not in their wheelhouse. But you, you've been through, you've seen that it's possible. Yeah, it was. Like, it's not like, hey, this is, this is something that's magical that I don't even know how the process starts. You kind of know how the process starts. You've at that point.

seen it. Yeah, I had a, I had some good experience with it. Yeah, you know. You hadn't done it, but you'd seen it. Yeah. Yeah. And so when we, when I went down to Texas, I got into a little trouble, right? And when I got out, I was dating this little country girl, right? And, and so I studied, I like martial arts. I'm into martial arts, Bruce Lee. And so I studied a little jikundo. And so I had books on it when I was, you know, in jail down in Texas. And I gave my Bruce Lee book to my Selly. And so when I got out, I wanted to get another one. And so we went to Barnes & Noble and she bought the book for me and she paid with a hundred.

But the hunter was the 1996, right? The big face. And I hadn't even seen it yet. And they marked it with a pen. And I never forget, she handed them. they didn't even look at the bill. Yeah, they just, they just marked it, marked yellow, and they threw it in the drawer, gave it a change.

Now, I had only been out of jail, like three days. Like, there, because I was in a state situation, there was no halfway house. It just, you know, did a little time and got out. And so right away, my mind is going crazy. Like, I asked her, I said, man, is it how they do it all? I did, what do you know? everyone had the marker.

Everyone had the marker. So now I started thinking back like, oh shit, I know how to do this. Right. Like, this is something, man, if I could figure out how to make the paper mark,

man, I could have a run with it. And at that time, when they came out with that new bill, it completely decimated the counterfeiters. Yeah, because it's, yeah. So they've got a little bit of time. Yeah, but the whole watermark thing, like putting the watermark in the paper and the strip.

But the pen was the tricky thing. So you're saying the new bills is the pen? Weren't they using a pin before? No. No, that's when they started using the pen. Oh, I didn't know that. Okay. Oh, yes.

Okay. Yeah, because it tests the pH in the paper, right? That's what it is, right? There's a certain pH level and money, right? And so that pen reacts to the pH and the paper. I didn't know it then, but I learned quite a bit since then. And so anyway, yeah, so we went on a, we started going on a little bit of a hunt, right? Like to try to figure this out.

You're in the country girl. Yeah, me and the country girl, man. She was awesome. Yeah, I love that. And at first, we started off with just, like printing bullshit. Like I got, so Natalie was really good

with computers. This is when the internet was still just in colleges and like schools. Like nobody had internet in their house, right? And, but she was a techie. She was, she worked for a tech, you know, where she would take calls for people that needed their computers fixed or whatever, right? She was really good

with computers, whereas I didn't really know shit about them, you know? And so right away, though, there was Photoshop. I think it was like Photoshop 3.0 or something, like the early, earliest version, you know. And so I'm starting to put this piece of this thing together. Like, okay, wait a minute, you know how to do a little bit of Photoshop. They had just came out with, like, ink jets and laser jets and things are crazy big, you know. And she knew how to, she knew how to operate them.

And I still knew the old way with the printing press and the plates and the ink. So at first we started just doing like small bills, right? And just the money was shit. It wasn't very good. It looked good, but it felt a little off, you know. Yeah, it's really that feeling. Well, the feels of the most important part because it's the first sense that's activated, right? So people touch it, they see it, right?

You know, as soon as someone that's been handling money all day. Yeah, they have a real feel. They got a feel for it, right? Whereas if someone, you know, you might be able to pass it off on someone on the street who's not literally counting money every day. So what did I do? So we needed to get equipment. We were going through this whole process of trying to figure out the money.

It was taking time. Needed money to live. So one of my friends was a cabby up in Chicago, a little tying guy, and got Anton. And so I told him, I said, hey, man, you know, and he was a hustler. He was a hustler. This is when cabs, you know, still had cats. You didn't got cabs no more. Damn, I feel so old talking about this shit, internet and cabs.

What the fuck? You know what I'm saying? And I said, man, Anton and I said, I made some fives. I'll never forget. I made some fives. And they were pretty good, right? I said, do you think you could push these fives? Oh, yeah.

From my car. I was like, yeah, you know, somebody gives you a 20 in the cab. You give them a five back, you know? Anyway, we probably, I don't know how. how many fucking fives we pushed through that city bill. We had, we were, we were, I was printing fives for it. But while we were doing the fives, he would buy them off me. I would take the money to try to get different stuff, different paper, different.

So this went off for a little while and we were running into a problem with the paper. I couldn't, couldn't get, couldn't get the paper to mark, right? And I tried some really fucking crazy shit, dude. I mean, to the point where I even tried to put hydroclos. acid on paper, man, right? And I almost burned the house down. Because like a dumb ass, I poured the hydrochloric acid in an aluminum, like, you know, like where you cook a turkey here?

Yeah. Right? Yeah, yeah, the pan. But don't put hydrochloric acid on aluminum, right? Because it's, yeah, anyway, it was bad. I tried some real crazy shit and a lot of it didn't work. Matter of fact, none of it worked. I wasn't too brilliant here.

you know, because what happened is we, you know, back then you had the yellow pages, right? Yeah. So I'm having narrowly caught every fucking paper company there is, right? And we're getting papers sent from everywhere, man, like everywhere. And she would mark it, market, market, market, it would all black, black, black, black, black, right? I'm getting pissed. We started arguing and fighting. She grabs the phone book.

She's shaking at me. you, fucker, we've contacted every paper company there is, and we're not going to fire you need to stop, you need to let it go. And she slammed the yellow pages on the table and marked it. Nothing works. And she marked it. Fuck it marked yellow. Like perfect, light yellow.

All right. And we did it again. And again, we're like, whoa. Oh, this. We found the paper. So anyway, what do we do? We went to the, um, he started. trying to look for the director paper. What wasn't that easy right away? We ended up going to

like where they print the Tribune and she went up there and said, hey, I'm a teacher. Can I get like a butt roll? We're going to, you know, draw the kids are going to draw stuff on, you know, on one of the butt rolls. And so the first time we made it was with newsprint, right? And it was too thin. It was too thick. Too thick. Too thick newsprint when you would put the two pieces together. So what I, What I figured out was to do the watermark in the strip, I had to bind two pieces of paper together. Right. Like I had tried to print it on the back, right? Yeah, yeah.

Look like shit, right? You know, it's just... Then what, you see through it or kind of? Or just... Well, when you have two, right? When you have two, then you could place something in between it. Yeah, but I mean, when you print it on the front and the back, it just looked horrible. It looked horrible.

Yeah, you could see through it. And it feels... It was just terrible. You'd turn it over and you'd see it on there. Like, you try to go. post print, right? Which means like you just do like the outline, you do it real light, hoping that, you know, they won't turn it over and they'll just mark it. Now it marked, but the print looked like, you know, just it wasn't there. So I started to experiment with, you know, binding the two pieces together. And it worked. We would, we would print the watermark, you know, the, when you hold it up, you see Ben's face in there. Yeah. In the strip, we would print it on a lot. And the strip, we would print it on. like a, not a tissue paper, but like almost like a sketch paper. You know how sketch paper is real thin?

We would print it on the inkjet with that, and then we would cut them out, and we would lay them in between, and then we would press the paper together. The problem with that is when we would take the, when we would, you know, take it off the press, the paper for one would feel real thick, and it would feel real smooth, right? Like it didn't have that texture,

money texture feeling, right? And it, and it was like, just had like almost a cardboardy feeling, you know, because the glue, when it would dry, it would change the way the paper felt. Yeah. So now I'm trying to figure this part out. And that's when we ended up finding some directory paper. They had it up in Canada. We actually went to R.R. Donnelly when we started getting the director paper.

Well, director paper is 18 pound. what was really fascinating about this is that so so newsprint is like 22 so papers are are they they the thickness is in pounds right like card stocks like 80 pounds so like if you go to office depot and you see you know 80 pound 20 pound right directory paper is one of the thinnest papers you can get it's 18 pound and uh the problem with that is though was really thin, but it worked perfect when you bound them together, right? So what is money? Money is like a cotton linen, right?

But they have a special machine. So to make a watermark in paper, when the paper's still wet, they drop. So the watermark is made with like a little metal, like almost outlined image of Ben. Right. And it literally presses into the paper. And then when it pulls it out, it leaves like air in it. So when the paper dries, the watermark is actually within the paper, even when they lay the thread. Right.

So money is not two pieces of paper. It's one. Right. But they put that stuff in it while it's being made, right? Whereas I had to do it, it's some old ghetto-ass shit, right? Right. But that ghetto shit works, you know. And over this time, and I'm kind of.

of going through this project because this was a lot of failing. I failed a lot during this process. But at the end, when it was done, we would put three, so we'd have three bills on a sheet, and we would print the backs, right, just the back, right? And then we would have just the fronts. And then we would take those and we would put the watermark and the strip, and then we would lay the back over it. And then we would take that and we would put it in between regular printing paper, like white blank stock paper. So we would have our money. Then we would put a white piece of paper.

Then we'd have our money and then a white piece of paper. Then we'd have our money and we'd have a stack of it. And then I had these metal plates that we would put the, you know, we'd have a stack of it like that. We'd put it in the plates. And then we would have these big C clamps that I would tighten down. And so, and I'd love it. let it sit for like two or three days.

And then when I would take it all this, they would be dry and you'd take the white paper off and then you would peel the money off. Really awesome. But when you did that, get you excited just thinking about it. Oh, it was intense, man, you know? And so you'd peel it off and then you'd cut it out.

A lot of hands-on shit, right? This wasn't, because people ask, well, how much you print? I don't know, I print a lot. And people think, like, you know, that guy up in Canada, that they said printed a hundred million in 20s

and I thought was complete bullshit because how would you even print a hundred million in 20s? You would need like two warehouses, man. Do you know how much a million is in 20s? It's a lot. Right, right. It's a lot.

They said he printed 100 million in 20s. Like, he's got, he, I think he had the, and he didn't even go to jail? Printed, well, it was Canada. Print the printing presses? No, I mean, I had printing presses. Right. Just the, you're also in the, in the,

States. Yeah, but I'm just saying 20s. You would literally have a whole building this big filled with 20s. That's how many 20s you wouldn't need, you know. Do you say he actually printed that much or did he have the paper to, oh, he said, okay, yeah, I don't know about that. Yeah, he said. But I do know that they found the, they actually got, they actually found the presses, they found the paper, they found, and that he was caught with paper, but even, you know, I don't know what he's going. And it's also Canada. I mean, Canada's so, so fucking light on. And he wasn't printing Canadian money. He was printing U.S. money from in Canada. Like they, they slapped his hand, but they did. Yeah, they slapped his hand. But it just, it just to me,

like my money, I couldn't print that much because it took too long. Yeah. Because I'm putting it together and I'm cutting it out. I'm making everything. There's like 12 different steps, you know, I do this. And, uh, but when it was all done, it looked amazing. So once I would pull it out of that, I would cut the bills out and from this point the money would still feel like really smooth. So like when I did the book

to order making money there were like five or six steps that I left out. Like when I was doing interviews to talk about the money. Right. I didn't want to say everything because somebody was going to copy it.

Yeah. I kind of figured that that might happen so I didn't want to give up everything. And so So, but when that money, when I'd have it, that out of the press, we would hang it like on some, I made this, I made like this horseshoe out of wood. Big though, right? And I had these clothes lines that would go through it. And I would hang the bills on it. Really cool, right?

It was really cool. You have all these bills just rolls a hundred, you know? You get excited like when I talk about fraud. Yeah. You can tell, you can feel it. And you're like, whew, it's this tingling. It was just cool looking, you know? It was fun, really, you know?

And then I had a special chemical that I would spray with an airbrush, so I'd have all this money hung up, and then I'd come with my airbrush, and I'd spray it down. It was like, I'm not going to say what it was, but it was for fabric, right? And what would happen is it would cause the fibers and the cotton to tighten. And when I would take those bills off after, I'd spray it, let it dry, the money would start moving. I used to call it like the crackle, right?

Because it made this little crackle noise, you know, every time they'd move. But when that dried and you took it off, man, it was, that hot, it snapped. Now it had to have that, that gave it the, it had the feel, gave a little texture, it was crispy. What was really, what was really neat, though, is that if you took it and you weighed it, like, you know how, you know, on a drug scale? Yeah. A bill would weigh a gram.

Okay. Right. Yeah. And so, like, for me, it was a big deal that it weighed exactly a gram. I didn't plan that out. I didn't. There was nothing brilliant about it. It just ended up that way where if you put the hundred on a scale, it would weigh exactly a gram.

Well, where that came in handy is because I started pushing money to the drug boys, right? And a lot of times they're not trying to count the money if they're, you know, if they're doing $100,000, $200,000, they'll throw it on a scale and weigh it. I've seen them do it, you know, real money I'm seeing when they do deals. Right. Like if I'm doing a deal, if they're doing a deal for, you know, five keys for, you know, back then maybe it was like $20,000, $200,000, you're not going to sit there and count out $100,000, man, right?

Some might. Yeah. But if you're doing stuff like that, there's got to be a little bit of trust involved. Yeah. Right? You know, and I'd see them just throw it on the thing.

Oh, wait, is this many grams? That's how many bills were in there, right? Or they'd have their counter machine, right? I ended up defeating that, the counter machine. After I got this whole process down, then I went to,

um, I went and I learned how to, uh, to really print the money through the, uh, treasury department. their website. So at that time, the internet,

no one had it in the home. But you go to the libraries, right? And so I'd go to the library, and I got on the, it really freaked me out. I got on the Treasury Department's site, the government, USGov, whatever, and went to the money. And they literally showed you

exactly how they made the money. Yeah. Right. They show you all the security measures. They got to fill this, you got to look for this, look for this, look for this. You're like,

yeah, why are you telling me this? You just like showing me this stuff. So I'm looking at this. So at first when we were making the fives in the early days, I wouldn't even bother with the whole printing press and ink. We would just run it, right? The fives straight up. And they wouldn't, they were, they were good enough for my cabby guy to push, right?

But you could see the flaws in them from the color variations, right? And I would tell people this, the guys that tried to print the bill all at one time, and I mean like, say they'd scan a bill, like Jeff Turner, I've seen how he did it. He would print it pretty much straight off, right? It's impossible to get the colors exact because there's so many different variations going on in there, right? And so when we started, and especially when you would print hundreds, people are real, they look at them. right and so yeah

they'd use the pen but people get a little sketchy when they got to give change for a hundred because some of these people would be responsible sometimes they make it responsible if they busted a fake hundred and you know

they take it out of their check or something which sucked you know and so for me it was like okay how can I get the colors the closest possible way and that's when I decided to go back to what I learned when I was young right the printing press

the plates, mix my own colors. So we ended up, I ended up getting a press out of the McCormer Place. My boy was a teamster. And so every year in Chicago, they have trade shows, right? You know, like you got the house and home trade show, you got the boat show. You know, you got trade shows like in Vegas. In Chicago, you got the McCormer Place. You got trade shows all the time.

Well, they got the printers trade show because Chicago has printers road. Chicago was known for its advertising, right? So there's printers everywhere. So we literally, my first press, we heisted right off the floor, right? When they were done with the show, that printer, that press didn't make it back to the company. You know, it came my way, you know?

And that's when I started to combine the two where Natalie, she had a real good understanding with Photoshop and, you know, the ink jets and the lasers. And then I had a good understanding, I didn't really know, no, no, but I had enough to where I watched to where I could figure it out to where I understood the old way. So my bill was considered like a hybrid because I combined the old technology and the new technology. So I would use the printing press to tint the color of the paper because that color was always, that was the shit that always stumped me

with like an E-jet. It would either be too green. or two beige or to this or too dark or too light you can't order the paper that color you can't no not not really you know I mean I said I had seen what the dude and candidates said that some company in England or Europe made the paper for them yeah not really understanding that they were they were duplicating yeah the US paper yeah just but I mean most like if you were to call up and give them the exact most companies paper company if you called them up and gave the exact the exact formula or requirements for U.S. money, they would immediately say, I'm sorry, we can't print that.

Or they'll call the Secret Service. Yeah. Yeah, we'll do it for you. Yeah. What's your address? Yeah. Yeah. It's secret service.

So, yeah, no, you'd have to tint the paper. You know, and then the directory paper, it had like a little bit of tint already to it, which was kind of cool. And so I would use the printing press to tint the paper. So when I say it was a long process, it was a long process. I would have my registration on my offset where I would put the plate on there, make the ink, and I would run all my paper, and it would just print the color of it, color money, which was like a light lime beige.

It was a real hard color to make with ink because you'd have to use clear, and then you'd weigh just like a couple drops. of the green. It was a forest green I used. Printer's ink, though, right? I'm not going to say the full formula, but there were three different, and it was just like a couple drops

in a lot, the clear, right, to get that color. It almost like you couldn't even see the color, right? It looked almost like a beige white, but there was a green, and anyway. So that would be the first thing. I would run the paper, and I would just print, just color the money,

right? Color the paper, color money. Then once that was done, I would burn my plates, my printer plates, just with the outline of the bill in the face. Just that. So we have multiple plates. Oh, yeah. This whole process is multiple plates because it's multiple colors. Yeah, yeah.

And I would use, so this is how I learned how to do this, was from the Treasury Department because up until that point, we would, like with the fives and stuff, we would try to print the whole thing all at one time. And I would be able to see the difference in, from a real one and a fake one, right? And I'd be like, man, and everything I would try, there would always be a little bit something off, right? Either this would be off.

So for me, when I went to the Treasury Department's website, I seen how they would print this, and they would print the numbers, and then they would print the little, huh? You know, they printed everything separately. I'm like, oh, let me try that. Let me see if that'll work. Guess what?

It worked really well, right? Did you? Really well. Yeah. Do you ever think to yourself that you were being, I know you want it to be perfect, but people just aren't looking at the money. And I always say this with fraud. They're like, you know, well, is it people are not looking for fraud.

Like when I would go up and I'd hand you documents, people just, okay. Okay, so you can sit over there. Like I would go get like the DMV would issue, I would get the DMV to issue me driver's licenses. And I'd walk in, and I'm giving you a fake birth certificate that I made at my house. You know, so I give them, you know, and that's got the seal and everything. I'd give them the birth certificate. I give them my social security card. I'd give, all fake.

And then they would grab it and go, and they would do this. They'd just rub the, the embossed seal. Yeah. Because it's a certified. They grab it and they, okay, you can go ahead and have a seat over there. And, I mean, I almost got to a point where I was like, hey, hey, hey, hey, you look at that. Like, that took me fucking hours. You know, you want to look at it.

I baked it. Like, I want you to really scrutinized. Like, it was almost insulting. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But I was thinking with the money, too, you must be printing the money. And they're just like, okay, you know, they pop, especially the fives, they're not looking at. Yeah. You're trying to get it so perfect when I could do a hundred.

Right. And I was getting, I would get, you know, up until that moment, like my heart's beat. Like, I'm kind of terrified. Like, I'm like, man, and you shit that's fake. Yeah. And they're just giving it a cursory glance. And then, and I kind of started realizing that. That happened multiple times.

Or even when they, I gave somebody something that they didn't accept, they weren't thinking fraud. Like they were thinking, yeah. Oh, no, no, no, I need one. Like I give you a fake shot record, let's say. Yeah. And it didn't have the child, like the date of birth on it. And they, oh, yeah, I can't use this. And they go, yeah, it has to have the child's date of birth.

I go, well, this is what the pediatrician gave me. And they go, yeah. Yeah, but it's got to have, you got to go back to him because this is not, I can't use this. And they'd hand it back. To me, I would think they would go, well, this is got to be fraud. Like, this got to be fake. They never give it to you without the data. Like, what the fuck is it?

But they didn't. They would just hand it back. And that happened several times. And I started dawning on me like, you're not even looking for fraud. Now, this isn't money. Yeah. And you're handing somebody 100. They know they're responsible or they may be responsible.

And they know they have to go through that they might, at the very least, they might lose their job. because you didn't even hit it with the marker. Yeah. Like the marker's right there. Like, well, you, so I, I,

I, I, I, I would get a little ballsy sometimes, right? And because of that, right there, one time, and I don't know how this happened, but when I was putting the money together,

one of the stacks, because I'd go fast, right? I got to where I can lay that paper down quick, right? I'd have a, I'd have a, a light table, right?

So I'd have a, Plexiglass 4x8 sheet of Plexiglass on two horses. And then I would have two lights on the ground facing up. Yeah. Coming through the glass. And then I would throw like a drop cloth plastic. You know, when you're painting houses and stuff. I would throw it over the Plexiglass.

And then I would lay three, three, three, three, right? I'd have the whole table filled with just the backs. Yeah, because you're trying to line it up. Yeah. You're trying to line up the square to make sure it's perfect. it's perfect, right? Somehow, some way, because you're grabbing, you're just going, some of the pages were upside down.

Okay. So I had a bunch of hundreds that had been this way, but the back was upside down, right? And I'm like, what am I going to do? It looked good, though, right? But just the back was upside down, right? And I spent them all. I was going to say, I wonder if someone would even notice that.

They didn't. I spent them all. I couldn't believe it, right? and it was almost kind of like, like fun, like, hey, let me see if, you know, can I do this? Yeah, so you get caught. Yeah, no.

You're running out of the fucking store. I would love to get one in back one day, you know, the upside down a hundred, man. But yeah, no, people don't, people don't, they're not looking, people generally are going through life thinking that, you know, people are good maybe or just they're not looking for, you know.

They don't think they're looking at. They're not, people are not criminal-minded. Yeah. Boziac one time said he printed. he had a, you know, he got a batch of, let's say, visas. And he said, bro, he said, I was, he said, I was, this is a, he was a, he was a credit card counterfeiter.

Yeah. And he was like, I was, he said, I got so fucking sloppy. He said, I actually printed the visa, the number, the visa number for visa. Yeah. On a, on a, on a master card. He said, I mean, the name links up. Everything's fine. He said, didn't even know what I, didn't even realize it.

He said, and walked into the store and bought something, and the girl took it and swiped it. That's when they used to swipe it. Yeah, yeah. And it would come up. And she swiped it. She never even paid attention. No, she did. She looked.

She's 17. Yeah. You're at a fucking Kmart or something when they had kids. Whatever. And she swiped it and it comes up and it said Visa. You know, so it comes, it said Visa with the numbers. You know, boom. And she went and she goes, what?

She goes, huh, that's weird. And, you know, obviously when you knew something fraudulent, that's the last thing you want to hear from anybody. That's weird. Oh, yeah. And she goes, what's that? And he said his brother was with him. He's standing behind him.

And he goes, what? And she goes, that says Visa, but it's a master card. And he goes, oh, yeah, yes, how they're doing it now. They're Visa MasterCards. And she goes, oh, okay. Well, here. Complete Jedi mind tricked on her up. Gave him the card, gave him the duck stuff, turned around.

He said, as we're walking out, he said, his brother goes, you're getting fucking sloppy, bro. You're getting sloppy. He's like, shut the fuck. He's like, shut. He's like, I know. I know. You do. You get cocky. Get cocky, man. You know. And so a funny story with my money is, one of my guys is going down to Jamaica, right?

And so I gave him a stack. I think I gave him like 10 grand to go down there with. And when he came back, he had the craziest story that I had ever heard. He's like, he's like, Artie, we had the greatest time with your money until it started falling apart. Right? I said, what do you mean falling apart? He said, well, I don't know if it was humidity or what. He said, well, here we are. We're going to the strip clubs.

And then we even ended up getting a bus with all the women on there. We were having the best time. We were handing out hundreds for the first night they were there, the first couple nights, I guess. He goes, and then on the third night, he said, one of the girls from the club came up to me and said, hey, you know, you know that money, the 100 day he gave me? He's like, oh, yeah, yeah. He fell apart, right? He goes, he goes, what do you mean?

He goes, oh, man, I don't know why that would happen like that. And she goes, well, I think everyone's hundreds are falling apart, right? Fucking U.S. press. Yeah, he's like, he said he literally, they left that day. He said, of course. Yeah, he said, we, they were buying, you know, all kinds of stuff from, make it with it, you know? He's like, bro, you got to fix that, man, you know? And so, uh, I actually did. I ended up changing the glue to a super 77, right? And that stuff worked pretty good.

And what? The one was, uh, it was, it was, it was, it was what, water based? Yeah. The first glue. Yeah. It just, the, the, the second, the glue that I ended up coming to, you could wash it in the, in the, in the, in the washer, and it wouldn't fall apart, you know, but yeah, no, did, you get cocky, you know, at times, or, or you get better, one or two, right? Like, I got a little better on it but no I mean so the you know the process was like I said it was it took a while so it wasn't like just you know I became one of the best in you know six months it took years yeah you got to fuck up a few times you that to me every time I made a mistake I learned very quickly you always learn you know you know like even with the you know with the shifting ink you know I literally I was walking

through a parking lot and I seen one of the cars the the paint was changing and I was like, man, I need that, right? I looked into the paint. It blew my mind. The House of Color was the company that carried that shifting paint for cars. And it was the same company that gave it to the treasury, just a different formula. Right. Right.

This was for cars and this was for printing. So I just took that and I manipulated it to where I could, you know, my little hundred would change colors, you know. So I was able to find, I was able to find things that no one would even ever think of in order to make this money perfect, you know? I mean, by the time my career ended, because, and I actually liked when the money changed, right? Like, anytime I would find something new that I could do to make it better, to me, it was like, it changed the recipe, so to speak, right? So like the Secret Service, they have methods of tracking the money, right? Serial numbers, right? The not, I guess, me, footprint or like the, you know, the, the,

the, the, the, the schematics of whatever you're doing. Yeah. Well, each bill is unique to the person who's to, very, to the counterfeiter. Every counterfeiter has to, you know, like there's not one book that they're all following. They're all kind of feeling their way through it. And so, with me during the time because it was the new bill that came out so i'm doing the 9600 it hadn't been out very long you know the the the process it evolved quite a bit you know by the time my career was done like it was hard for me to tell which was real and fake i mean it really became difficult where i changed the clock tower on the back of the hundred time is different right right it is right you know the You know, the little clock on the bag of the owner?

Yeah. On my money, it's the time's different, right? There's a few things that I would do. But like even the red and blue threads that's in the paper, right? I didn't use those right away until I got busted in the House of Blues because they weren't in the paper. What are you doing? Are you putting together like $10,000 and selling it to somebody for $2,000? Or like, what's the process of how are you turning this, this? this funny money into real money that you can keep because you can't spend it.

No, no. You can't, yeah, you can't spend the money on anything that could trace back to you. Right. So you can't do, like, even I've heard of people doing like, you know, gift cards and stuff like that, I wouldn't go near none of that stuff. Yeah. And it was just no car payments, no rent, no gift cards. In the early days, when we first figured it out how to make it mark, we were, we would

just travel the country. Me and Natalie, we would travel the country. We'd hit the mall. So back then you had the Rand McNally maps, right? These days you got GPS, right? But back then you had the map, right? So we'd have the map, okay, we're going to hit this town, this town, this town. And every town has a mall.

Every town has a mall. Used to. Not anymore, but they used to. And so we would pull up and we would just go from stores. I would say, I would stay outside. You know how like the hallways of the mall, and they got the stores on both sides? I'd be like a bored husband. sitting down, but I'm watching everything.

I'm a really good people watching, man. I would sit in the middle, be like a bored husband, and she would just go from one store to the next, and she'd get the cheapest things she could get, $10, $20, whatever, go to Clare's and get some airings, go here, you know. And we would literally do sometimes, I think the most we ever did were like three malls in a day. but we could pull

I mean gosh man let's see we would pull sometimes 15, 20 grand in a day if we had a good run like where she was just hitting man you know and and that's that those were the things that was the part I loved the most

right was spending it like that with her right I love she was beautiful man she was quish she was a woman women know how to shop you know right no fear at first she was a little skeptical, but after a while, boy, that girl would go in, man. I still would be kind of a little hesitant to spend them, you know, but not her.

And so we did that for a while, like for a good couple years, man, we would just hit the road, hit the road, hit the road. It's when I went back to Chicago that actually the changing of how I got rid of the money is actually the downfall of height of me too, right? Because when it was just me and her and we would go out. to, you know, and just spend them. It was more, it was more just pure, organic, right? We even got to a point to where, you know,

because at first we would buy stuff for us, right? Before long, you have so many jeans and shirts and this and that. You just, it's boring. You almost even feel selfish a little bit. Like, and I got way too much stuff, you know? So then we started buying stuff for, like, our friends and for our family members. and but that became a problem because then everybody just expected us to give them stuff right right there was no appreciation you know and and and I learned through that that giving things to people

for free a lot of times there's they lose there's no value in it for them the appreciation is lost right right because it's not earned right unless it's something really beautiful but but when we would give like that to our family they would just expect it all the time. So I got burnt out on that. I'm like, man, I don't want to feel like when I come home that, hey, what do you got for me? You know, like, it

just got old. So then we started just buying things for kids. Like, that was my favorite thing. I'd say, listen, when we hit these places just by diapers, buy baby clothes, by bottles, by this, all kids stuff.

And what that did was it did two things. For one, when you're traveling on the road and you got a trunk load full of merch and then you got a glove compartment filled with 20s, 10s, 5s and ones,

it could look a little suspicious if you get pulled over. Right. Right. Hey, what's going on here, you know? But if you gave everything away, then your car is empty. You got nothing. You hide the money. So for me, it was like because I grew up poor, because I was in the Salvation Army shelter as a kid,

every town has a Salvation Army box, a drop box. You'll see them, like, in the corner of a parking lot, the donation boxes. So we would hit a town, and then we'd go straight to the charity box, and we would just drop everything in it, and then leave. And that was, like, that was my favorite. That was, that was, I probably could have done that the rest of my life. And probably could have if, if, if I didn't do it the second way, right? What was the second way?

Well, the second way was I would sell it in bulk, right? I would get 30 cents on the dollar. When I went back to Chicago after all that happened, you know, going down to Texas, meeting alley, breaking the bill and all that shit. When I went back home and showed some of my boy boys, right, like, hey, look what I got. Right. They were like, whoa, right. And it got crazy.

Like, I was selling a large amount, $100,000 for 30. I usually didn't ever go over a certain amount because it's dangerous. When you're dealing with large amounts of cash, even fake money, that looks real, it's a lot easier to get robbed, killed, whatever, you know. Yeah, some people will kill you for $5,000. Oh, hell yeah. For $30,000. Yeah, for sure, man. So I was real, like, I was real cautious with how I sold.

bulk. But I had a couple guys. One guy, he was actually got us in a little trouble. He was a bookie on Taylor Street and he was paying out with the money. It didn't work out too well. Right? Like we got stopped on that one,

right? The guy, hey, what are you doing? You know? But we didn't get in trouble for it, but it got checked, you know? The biggest thing was selling it to drug dealers. but the big boys

the ones that were sending a million cash to to Mexico right you know they do that right they ship insane amounts of money down there right I didn't know

back then I know now I mean it's it's smuggling cash they smuggled cash over the border is crazy back into Mexico to pay for the drugs that have come over get sold they got to get it back and it's not it's not that easy it's not as easy as people may think you know they got

secret apartments for that. So I had different outlets where I could sell chunks of it. Probably the most interesting one that I had is I was dealing with some Jordanians that

owned a casino out in Vegas and they were running the early, early days when the money was like when nobody was, so here's the thing, when I figured out how to break that hundred, there was nobody doing it.

Right? I mean, it was, I was one of very few that was doing that. So the money was still like, it could still it would go through the machines, right? It would go through the casino machines, the hundreds

because I had the, I had the UV and the magnetic and all that stuff in it. So, I mean, eventually they caught it and they stopped that, they fixed it. But in the early days, I could get that money to go through the machines. I ended up meeting one of my friends. He was a good, he was real close with his Jordanian family.

They had an exotic car company. And we were selling it to them unbeknownst to us. They had a casino out in Vegas. And so they were buying the money from us. And then they were sending out to Vegas. And then they were pushing it through the casino. It was a great thing for a minute, right? Dude, he's dead now.

He killed himself. right after I got it. I don't know if I don't think he had anything to do it. But this, but he, he was doing some mega stuff. But he, he, he calls me one day. He's been buying like a hundred. He would buy like a hundred grand, 200 grand, right? He calls me one day.

He's like, hey, my cousin wants to meet him. He wants to get like $5 million. He said, five million. I said, man, come. I thought it was absolute bullshit. And I thought he was on something. Like he wanted to try to rob, rob me or something, right? So I tell my guy, say, hey, George, you got to tell him, man, that, you know,

the only way I would even consider doing something like that is if I knew for a fact that he had the money to pay for it, I won't even, I don't even want to talk about it. He goes, okay, I'll tell him. Shit. A couple days later, his cousin, who was the big boy, he was Jordanian, his Jordanian money, that oil money, right? pulls up in his Rose Royce, pops open his trunk. This is on the streets of Chicago on the south side, man. And he's got a suitcase, a big suitcase, not a little suitcase,

but a big suitcase, unzips it. And it's, I don't know how much it was, but quite a bit, right? At least a couple million. And he smiled, he goes, we got the money. We could buy it, right? I never did the deal. I ended up getting into some shit. But there's things like that that have occurred where, you know,

But the most, man, the most would be like a couple hundred thousand at one time. I didn't like to go too much. Now, I would make a lot. I would make, you know, half a million or a million. There would always be leftover, right? There would always be trash, I guess. You know, like if I made, if I made, just say if I made $100,000, maybe 10 to 15 would get ruined.

And I'd get like 85. So I had about an 85% return on what I made. Right. But the most I ever made at one time was $500,000, right? I usually like to keep it in that because in that I could use that. I would bury it. I'd stuff it. Like I said, hide, I hid shit.

I probably still got money hitting that Forest Preserve out there, man. There's still probably shit buried out there. So what would you say you were bringing in a month, though? I mean, I know it varies. Yeah, it was more like, I mean, so, so the beginning of the year I would do a run, right? So I would print, say, half a million, and then I would sell it throughout that time, you know. So if it took me three months or two months or whatever, you know, however long it would take me to get rid of that, I wasn't very, I wasn't in a rush. Yeah.

Right. It wasn't like I was trying, you know, trying to solicit the money, right? I would wait until my contacts would reach out to me. But altogether, I mean, I might have made like $10 million altogether. I didn't do no $100 million. I ain't going to lie and say I did $100 million or even $50. $10, $10, $15. I probably burned a couple million.

Right. Like, yeah, probably burn. I probably burned as much money as I've made, right? because if it would come out, right, one time the shit came out purple on me. The ink did the straight up purple bills, man. I've even made purple hundreds because of it, you know? And, you know, just, yeah, but usually it was always get 30 cents on the dollar. I never break on it because it was good money.

Yeah. The average counterfeit we used to get about 10 cents on the dollar, right? But because mine had all the security features and it would mark with the pen and all that. and yeah yeah it was a pretty cool man so i got busted in the house of blues with like 80 grand i was going to do a deal and uh the the bartender downstairs he uh he overheard me and this russian guy talking about going and partying and stuff so i guess he was a snitch for the cops and so he told he called he called the cops saying that we were partying with him up in the in the room and that he overheard that out we were going to do a deal

Right? So he tells the cops. I guess he had his little cop. He was informed of some copy. There's a guy here. They're partying and they're about to do a deal up in the hotel. Is that true? No. Or is he just made up?

He just coming up. Now we were at the bar talking about doing a deal, but with the money. Right. Oh, he misunderstood. He misunderstood it, right? And the only reason the deal got, so we were supposed to do it that night. But my Russian friend, his family came in from Russia, actually. for some wedding or some shit, I don't know.

So he couldn't do it that night. He said, listen, why don't you come and party with us? Got my family in town, and then we'll do the deal tomorrow. Well, this asshole, the bartender, he's dropping, you know, ear, you know. He thinks that we're doing, partying upstairs, and going to do a big deal. Right. Not even close to the situation.

And so what happens, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, those, those detectives, just came in that night and I actually had my wife's sister with me. It was all very, you know, innocent. She just wanted to see the city, so I brought her up with me, figured I was gonna do the deal and then go home, right? And so she was staying, I had a big suite in the house of blues and so she was staying in the other part of the suite and I was in the main bedroom.

And I heard, so the phone rang, I picked up the phone, it's like two in the morning, and then they hung up. I'm like, man, that's odd. Right? Make it trigger on the right. I'm like, yeah, that's going on. And not even like, I don't know, a few minutes later,

I hear a knock on the door. And before I kick it up and tell her, don't answer the door, because she was in a room that was closest to the door. She had already opened up. She was only 17. She didn't know, man. And they come barging in with their pistols out.

I mean, it was insane. my wife's poor sister man that girl was traumatized man because she had never been you know from texas and they're like where's the drugs where's the drugs where's the drugs where's the drugs they got their guns pointed i mean it was insane i'm like drugs what you're talking about in the handcuff and they took me into the main area of the of the suite and uh and they're like where's the drugs at we know you got you know we know you're doing a deal and i'm like what you're talking I still don't understand what's going on. And I had the money.

I had put it, you know, like when you go to a hotel and they got towels stacked up, like in like a little closet, you know. So I had put the money in between the towels and like just hope, you know, I didn't, I didn't know they were going to come, but I always stashed my shit, you know. And son of a bitch, they found it, man. I couldn't believe they found that shit, you know. And they brought it in. They put it on.

put it on the table and there was some weed on the table. This is how I beat the case, actually, because I don't drink, but I like to smoke, right? I don't drink at all, but. And so I had a little butt on the table, and they were like, we found the money. They got the money. They put it on the table. They said, we know you're doing a deal. You're going to go through with it.

I said, go through it. What? We know you're doing a co-cone deal. That's why you got this money. I said, what are you talking? I said, I'm not doing no co-cone deal. I'm like, why they just fucking threaten me?

We're going to lock your, because now they know that this is my wife's sister, right? We're going to lock her up. We're going to make her life. You're going to wish you fucking cooperated. I'm like, man, dude, you're way off, man. I don't even have anybody. I don't even know anybody with cocaine.

They even come up with a deal. This is crazy, right? So I'm like, man, you guys, you guys are way off, right? So then the one cop, he's looking at the money and he starts, like, you know, counting through it. and then he stops

and then he grabs one and he starts looking at it what's the chances that this fucking cop was a banker before he was a cop he worked at a bank he literally legitimately

worked at a bank and he's telling his partner he's like hey man I don't see any red and blue fibers in his money and he said what and they went look and they started looking

he said well got the watermark and got the street he's like yeah I mean, we might have to call this in, man. Let's see if we get a professional come in and look at this money. He didn't know. And what do you know? Secret Service come and start jamming me hard, right?

Now, this is kind of where Brad comes in. Okay. A little bit interesting. Brad, the Secret Service agent that we met. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Is this the first time you get busted? Yeah. Okay.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So this is where Brut. He don't really know this whole thing that I'm about to say right now. I haven't really ever talked about it too much. But he's a great guy, and I don't want to, like, blasphemy anything. But anyway, he, so it was a woman's secret service that came. Now, I got my wife's sister here, right, and we had a house in Marshall, Illinois. So Chicago's here, Marshall's, like, on highway.

It's all the way, like, in the middle of Illinois, right? I was in the middle of nowhere. right and so my wife was there with her mom and so her mom and her sister had came up from Texas to visit her because we just had a baby and then I was going to go to Chicago and drop this money and then come back home and then the sister said I want to go I want to go I want to go I would go to the museum like you know how little girls are right and uh and Natalie was like are you going to be doing anything like really crazy and I'm like no I'm just going in dropping it while she was well, take her, take her to museums, you know.

I said, all right, come on, right? So she rode with me. So now I get, she's my responsibility, right? So I know that she's jammed. She's sitting in a jail cell right now, this poor little girl. So I'm really freaked out, man. So the woman's secret service agent comes in, and she's like being real, like, tough on me.

We're going to make this terrible for you. We're going to just, you need to let us know where, your houses what's going on you know because back then this is still when it was like flip phones prime co remember primecoe and that shit yeah they're not able to really track down they can't track now they don't need your help at all now they don't need my help at all but back then they couldn't find nothing right so uh they said we're not going to let her we're not going to we're going to really make it hard on on her until you figure this out with us so I'm like man what the fuck am I going to I know that I got to get this young girl out of this shit, right?

But at the same time, I can't have the Secret Service showing up in Marshall, Illinois, where I have everything. That's where your, your shop is. I had some stuff there. I'm like, not trying to, you know, like, hey, go here, you know. Because there's a difference in the sentencing guidelines, right? If you just get caught with the pay, with money, it's a completely different situation than if you get caught with the press and you get caught with plates especially plates are really so the difference between getting caught with ice yeah and getting caught manufacturing yeah same thing yeah money same thing right

so there's like no way i want to give them my address so they can go and i can't call right there's no way i could let nalie know but but but me and alie already had kind of like a thing that if if there was if If I wasn't there or she didn't hear from me, you know, like, we were supposed to come back the next day. And so my thing is, is I stalled them as long as I could, right? And it worked. The Secret Service Agent, the woman's Secret Service Agent was getting super frustrated with me, you know? Like, I would like, I would like, yeah, well, you know, I got to think about this, you know, give me some time, right? And then they put me in the cell, and then I'd come out.

I was fucking with him a little bit, right? And then they flew him in from D.C. or something or shit. I don't really know how he ended up showing up, but he ended up showing up. And he came in. Did you watch his interview with me? I did it. No, okay. I didn't want to watch it until after I...

Okay. Because I watched his other ones, but I didn't... I didn't want to disrupt my thinking with whatever, you know, if we did something. But he, I'm going to watch it after. Even one of my friends said, bro, you got to watch it. It was great. It was pretty good. Yeah, they said it was really good.

And he has nothing but the utmost respect for you, by the way. Oh, no, he was super respectful, you know. No, he's awesome. I mean, he's awesome. Like, I've had some really interesting stories with Secret Service a couple times, you know. So anyway, he shows up and he's like, look at, you know, but, you know, he throws this thing, man, you're too smart for this, this, that, right? You know, see, that whole thing.

And he said, man, I want to have. help you, right? We're on the same side. Yeah, I want to out of you. We're going to get Farrell out. We're going to get your, your wife's sister, we're going to take her, we're going to take her back, we're going to get her there. But you've got to give me something. You've got to help. Right.

But now I'm at the point where I know, I know without a doubt that Natalie knows that something's fucking wrong. Right. And she knows that if there's something wrong, she knows what to do, right? And she did. I'm so proud of it. of that girl because she I'm proud of recovery God

she followed the plan she um so anyway they let Pharaoh call the mom right finally well I was like listen okay man this is me this is what I did

I made the money or I don't know right and it was a nice you know we talked for a while man you know it was great right and um and then they let Pharaoh call and then the mom was like okay well what and so anyway I think the mom had to come up and get her

yeah the mom came up and gave up to pick her but the secret service they they ended up going to the house yeah they're already on their way right they were on their way and but when they got there there was nothing there not in there so they just had caught me with the money so um they didn't arrest nalie right because there was nothing there right she didn't do anything she said year old kid. So they, well, they let the daughter go. They didn't arrest Natalie. Oh, wait.

Natalie's your wife. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. Yeah, so, yeah. They didn't, yeah. Yeah. Not 17. No, okay.

Don't get me in trouble, dog. But, yeah, so they didn't arrest her. They let the, let the sister go with the mama. And then I ended up going to MCC. And I'm in, I'm in MCC for like three weeks. And I ended up getting a, a public defender. You know, the feds, they give you a public defender right away

when you go to the hearing and all that. Somebody has to represent you. Yeah, someone has to represent you. So he came to visit me like two weeks after I've been, you know, locked up. And he's like, well, listen, you know, this is, you know, you got caught red-handed. This is your, this is your guideline. He's not even talking about, are you innocent or you want to go to training? This is what it is, buddy.

Let's get this done quick, you know. You're going to do 33 months. I got 25 more cases. Yeah, almost see. I don't want to get this over with. And so he starts reading me, the police report, though, right? And he's reading it to me, and it says there was noise coming from the room. The security of the hotel called us.

We came. Security knocked on the door. We escorted the security up to the room. And then a young lady answered the room. and we've seen marijuana on the coffee table. And that gave us the reason to come into the room. And you know that's bullshit. It was absolute bullshit because the way that the suite was,

here's like, say, the hallway in the doors right here. There was a long, once you came into the room, there was a long hallway that went like here. And then the suite went off this way. And so there was a living room here where there was a coffee table. Then there was a, you know, the windows with the, you know, like the balcony. And then there was a master bedroom.

And then there was like a little couch bed over here. This is where she was at, right? And I was in the mass bedroom. Okay, I don't understand. Are you suggesting that the police lied? They didn't. No, I'm not going to sit here and listen to you. And then the police would lie.

Yeah. That's untrue. Yeah. That's never happened. But this is great, though. You're going to love this, though. So I'm like, wait a minute, man, that's impossible. There's no way they, unless they're like fucking Superman and they got x-ray vision, there ain't no way they've seen weed on it.

There's a coffee table's around the corner. Right. He said, are you sure about that? I'm like, man, dude, I know what the hell the room looked like, man. Right. There's no way they've seen marijuana. Well, they're trying to protect their snitch. Yeah.

Because he's the one who said, this is what's going on. Yeah. And then they formulated that after they got into the room. And they needed the problem. to enter the room so they used to be there while. They formulated the proper. The whole thing, right? So I said, well, man, you need to send someone over there and take pictures of that room

and show that that's a fucking lie, right? And he said, oh, you know what? Okay, I'll do that, man. Because if that's, if they couldn't see it, then there's no probable cause for them to go in the room and they throw that money out and you walk out of here. I said, really? He's like, yeah, well, we'll try it. Right. Let's give it a shot.

So he sent the, he had someone go over there. So all he'd do is take a photo from the front door, open the front door. They took a photo from the front door. They took a photo from the inside of the suite facing that way where the coffee table was at. And then they did something, he did something really sharp. He brought in the security guard and then give him a sworn deposition. And he told the security guard, if you lie, that's perjury and it's five years in prison.

scared the shit out of the security guard security guard came clean with everything not not the snitch but he said oh we didn't see nothing you know there was just there was noise and there was the detectives felt like there was something going on in there so so security guard kind of gave up the cops a little bit that they lied about the weed

right but we had the pictures too so this is great dude so I go to my first like what was it called the hearing your first appearance or your first like where they start showing like what your charge is and they, oh yeah,

I think, what the hell. First appearance. It's a hearing. It's a certain kind of evidentiary hearing, I think. Evidentiary hearing. So we're going there, but my,

my, my attorney had filed for a motion to dismiss on grounds of illegal search and seizure, right? Which no one ever, it's rare you get this shit, you know?

And, but he didn't tell the prosecutor what he was up to. Right. He wants to present in front of the judge. Well, he called the cop to the stand. So nobody has any warning of what's about to happen. What's about to happen?

I'm sitting there like, I don't even know what's about to happen, right? They called the cop to the stand, and they're asking questions, and then my attorney, you know, submits the photos to the court, and so, Your Honor, it's impossible for them to be able to see this, what they're saying in the police report. man everyone got really tense man cops got tense even the judge was like the prosecutor came up and they're talking

and dismissed not even an argument not even argument oh okay oh yeah the prosecutor was like because they got the cop lying on stand yeah yeah they don't and it's so funny because like the judges don't want they're all in it together yeah the judges don't want to tarnish this guy or get him charged with perjury they know the drill let's just drop it off and if you per if you

lied oh five years of course yeah yeah can't even like yeah lie to the fbi you're you're done right they're all they're not they're not upset that the cops are lying they're upset that they were sloppy sloppy about yeah so we know you're lying so there's anything he just threw it out yeah i couldn't believe it i walked out of mcc like it just happened man you know and but now I was super paranoid. When you walked out, was the, did you hear like the, could you hear like, um, ACDC singing like, you know, back in black? And like, yeah, yeah, I was, oh, it was, that's been a good day.

No, I was like super paranoid needing some like, uh, lithium or something, man, because I was super skitsed out. I was looking around every corner. I was thinking the feds were in the air. I mean, I was ridiculous. I got really ridiculous with it. I, I wouldn't. I thought I was being watched.

Because at that time, in my mind, like Secret Service and FBI, they were like these super agents, man, you know, playing a bug in your brain type shit. You know, I'm like, I didn't know. And so I was just, yeah, I walked out. I was happy, though. I was like, and then I called Nallie. I walk out and I called her from payphone.

And she's like, how are you calling me? I'm like, free, girl. But she was in Texas, right? You didn't say, you didn't think you all was going to let him hold me. I probably did say. shit like that, you know, you don't know who you're fucking with.

You know, I told her, I said, I'm out, man, she's like, you're out. I was like, yeah, so she ended up

coming in, she drove up because I didn't want to take a bus. I didn't want to take any, I didn't want them to know how I was moving around. You didn't want anything that drones could follow up. Yeah,

yeah, yeah, the drones, yeah. There were no drones. You know, talking about this stuff is making me feel real. We're talking about Kmart, in the internet,

shit, man, flip phones. What the hell, dog? It's even worse when everyone I'll say something. I'll be like, I know Colby doesn't know what that is.

Like a movie reference or something, I'll ask Colby and he'll be like, I have no idea what that is. I'm sure he knows what the yellow pages are. I almost did it where I almost said, do you know what the yellow pages are? I'm sure he's never seen one. Yeah, no way, yeah.

My son's seen a VHS tape for the first time. And he was, he had no clue what he was. That's fucking horrible. VHS stuff. Yeah. But anyway, so yeah, no, she came and got me. Then I went back to Texas.

and like for the for that month man I was just a mess right guy I knew I I couldn't print money right but you're definitely on their radar now where you may have not have been before I wasn't okay as they even said we all we've been looking for you yeah when they when they finally you know yeah yeah when the money's coming in they're collecting it they've got files what this is this is this is we don't know who this guy is but he's they're collecting they're collecting it because and so they knew and so he said oh we found we've been looking for you for a minute And so now I'm like, I feel like trapped, right? Yeah, because now if you print again, they now have a, they know who.

They got the fingerprint. Yeah. You know, they got what the, what the money's, how the money's made. They have your, your particular formula for cracking notes. The notes. So, so here I am. I'm, I'm sitting down in Texas. I'm depressed.

I'm like, don't want to do nothing. And I watch over the top with Sylvester Stallone, right? arm wrestling. He don't know it? None. Another one of those things you don't know? He's a truck driver. Yeah.

And he trains in his truck, right? Yeah, great. Well, man. You know they can make a movie about anything when they make one about arm wrestling, right? Yeah, listen. And the guy that he beats at the end. Yeah, it's like 500 pounds.

Stop it. Yeah. He beats him. Yeah, that's great. Love the movies. Yeah, but the thing is, is, I hadn't seen my dad for 20-something years. years, right? So I'm sitting here watching this movie and I'm getting, I'm already in a depressed state, you know, and I, and so I just like I'm missing my, I'm like, damn, where is my dad? I'm starting to think as I'm watching this movie. And so I go ahead and I start looking for him. I'm like, man, I'm going to see if I could find it, you know? And I actually went back to the library and I started Googling or like looking up names.

you know, through the post office box. I think it was the post office I went to. We saw, you couldn't find people that easily back then on the internet, but you can go through like the government things and you could, anyway, I found them in Alaska. He had a PO box in Chick-a-Loon, Alaska.

Wow. Yeah. You just didn't look and I found them. I just found the post office box. So I wrote a letter. I wrote a letter saying, Hey, this is your son? You know, you haven't seen me in,

20-something years. You know, I'd really like to get to know you and talk to you. You know, here's, here's a number you can reach. And I left my wife's mom's number. And like two weeks go by and he called. Yeah, he called. And me and him talked and talked and talked. And man, and I didn't let him know what shit I was in.

Yeah. You know. But I told him, I said, man, I love to come up there and see you and all this. And so we ended up buying a ticket through, like, her brother went and got the ticket. And then I used that ticket to get to Alaska. I wanted to, because at that time, you didn't have to show your ID to get through all that craziness, right? You just had to have a ticket. I think you had to show the idea at the, maybe at the front.

So I forgot how it was, but I was able to sneak in underneath. my wife's brother's name, right? Why didn't you want to use your name? Because I didn't want to seek a service to know I was going to Alaska. Okay. You feel like they're tracking? Oh, I was still on super paranoid mode, man. I thought they were in the cars

and the light posts, you know, like, you know how they did the bugs with John Gotti in the meters, man? Like, I just, I really, I thought they were everywhere. I was a mess. And so we ended up, I ended up flying. We flew to Seattle.

And then from Seattle, we went to Alaska. My dad picked us up. He was still with the same woman, a niece, that he left my mom for. And she was the reason that, because she hated his kid. She hated me, my brother and sister. She had two kids. And so she wanted my dad to be their dad, right? Right.

And we weren't, you know, that's how we ended up getting dropped off and never seen him again. So, you know, seeing her. there was kind of like this feeling of, you know, like, this one here, you know. But it was cool. I stayed cool. And so we, we drove out to his house. He had, he had 40 acres in Chick-Loon, off to Chick-Loon River. It was beautiful. And so he had a house, and he had, like, a little, like, game room cabin. Then he had a trailer over here. Natalie was pregnant. she was uh she what was this she might have been maybe five months pregnant at the time

and um and so you know we me and him spent like the first day that we got out there we pretty much stayed up for like two days just talking and catching up and you know just you know try I wanted to forgive him right for leaving because the shit that we went through, you know. But it was hard, right? And it's still even hard when I think about it

because, you know, my sister, you know, she ended up trying to kill herself, right? Jumped out of window because of our life, you know? And my brother, he's gone because of things, you know. And I think a lot of it had to do with our childhood. We had a real rough childhood. So I blamed him for that. But we talked for a couple days and just had small,

smoking, right? Because, you know, he liked to smoke and I smoked. And then I finally told him, I said, hey, you know, the reason I, you know, was looking for you is because I'm in a little bit of trouble. And he's like, trouble. What kind of trouble? I said, well, I print money. I've been printing money for a while. And he's like, print money for like, right away, everyone's like, for the treasury? Right. Nah, not for the treasury. For me, right? I print my own money.

And right away, you know, I used to call it the gold fever effect, right? Like, anytime I would, and I didn't divulge it too much, my secret, but the people that I would talk about it too, you would just see their eyes light up, like, oh, wow, you print money, right? It's like money free, you know? Like, they don't realize all the shit that goes behind it. And he got the same way, man. He was like, wow, you really, and I had some, and I showed it to him.

And he's looking at it. oh my gosh, this is amazing, right? And so then he ended up showing me his little secret. He took me way out into the bush, which the bush is like the forest of Alaska. It's real thick, you know? And he had an underground growing facility going. Okay.

So he had... I thought you were just going to say like a little farm, but it's got to be underground. But it's got to be... Because it's so cold. Well, no, he's growing marijuana. Right, but I'm saying it has to be on the ground because it's so cold. That two plus it's illegal. Well, okay.

It was legal back then. It's not legal. It's legal now. But back then it was still illegal. It was like Alaska, Northern Lights and all that type of shit. He grew it, you know. And so it was a cool facility. He had two semi-truck trailers buried underground.

Oh, it was like some James Bond shit, man. You know, like it was so cool. We went down this little gravel road. and then we got out and then there was like a fake bush that he picked up and it was a door and we walked down these stairs

and I'm like what the fuck this is my dad right? I thought it was super cool right because I was a criminal too right you know and so we were doing show and tell right I showed him he showed me you know and and

and we both had green thumbs just different different stuff I didn't can't weed you know but he uh so he's walking you know he's showing him and it smelled so good and he had this crazy, like, heat protector to where they couldn't. Because I guess in Alaska at that time, he said they would fly over

and they would look for grow farms that were underground because of the heat signature or something. And so he had some stuff that protected them from that. Like, my dad was an interesting character. You know, I didn't get to really spend too much time with them. But the time I did get to spend with them, it was interesting. You know, I understood a lot more about myself. myself, right?

Than I did, you know, by seeing him like, you know, he was, he had a certain sarcasm that I can have at times. And, and he was brilliant. I mean, he could, he could, he could tear an engine down and rebuild it. He had a bunch of old cars. I remember he had, he had, Eleanor. Remember Eleanor, the Mustang from gone, from the Gone of 60 seconds? Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.

The Mustang, Eleanor at the end of it. Yeah. He's trying. So he had one of them. He had some Camaro, some transams, and he had some engines on the blocks in his garage. You know, it was just cool, you know. You meet my dad for the first time, you know,

since I was like 9, 10, and I got to see this really cool world, you know, Alaska and, you know, he's growing weeds, you know, and then he's working on car. All the shit I like, because I love cars. I still love cars, you know. And then so after that, he asked me, he was like, you have any, you know, how much of that you have, you know? And so I probably had like maybe like 10 grand, 15 grand.

I didn't have much of the money on me because I was scared, right, for one. And, uh, but I had a little bit and I gave it to him. It was the worst mistake that I could have done when I gave it to him. And because I told him, I said, listen, there's some rules to this shit, right? I said, you don't ever spend it in your area. Right. Right, you need to go, right? You need to get away, you know.

I said, the other problem is the reason, oh, that's the reason. I didn't want to get rid of the money because it was the same money I got busted with in the House of Blues. Right. A part of that batch, you know. So if this money pops, they're going to know. They're going to know, I'm in fucking Alaska, you know. But I did give it to him because I didn't really want to hold on to it.

And he asked for it. So I gave it to him unbeknownst to me, his wife and niece. the lady that hated me. Right. She and her two friends, Jim and Vicky, were just out in Anchorage and everywhere, just spending that shit like it was real, right?

Right. And I didn't know this, though, but, you know, so me and him are, you know, we're bonding and... This is happening while you're there? Yeah. Oh, shit.

Oh, yeah. They didn't even wait for your leave. Yeah. It got real, real gnarly after a minute, right? So, but I didn't know that. I thought he said he was just to put the money up. And I didn't think he would spend it because he, it seemed like he had money. He had the weed grown. He had the house. You know, it didn't seem like he was really for needing anything, right? I think with my dad, I think there was a little bit of, uh, I think he

wanted to show his wife, you know, and, and, and she was the one who I think had the evil intentions, you know? And so anyway, me and him, we're getting. and close and you know we're going out hiking and um you know he he had a bunch of dogs sleigh dogs so my dad was into the iditarod right so he had like fucking 40 dogs you know and this was when we had me and him got into our first like scuffle right i had probably been there like a month maybe three weeks not three weeks a month at that time he wanted me to drive into anchorage with him, which was about a 40-minute drive from where he lived. He lived east of Anchorage on Seward Highway.

And he's like, yeah, I got to go in and get dog food. I'm like, all right, cool, I'll ride with you, you know. We ride in, we're talking. I helped load up the dog food, right? And he spent like $800, almost $1,000 on dog food. And so, I mean, big 50-pound bags, right? We're loaded up. I mean, it's got a whole fucking sleigh dogs.

You know, you got the sleigh dogs, a whole team of them. And so while we're driving back, it's just, it's killing me inside, right? I'm thinking about like, man, he just spent $1,000 on fucking dogs, man. Right. And me and my brother and sister, man, we didn't, we ate beans and peanut butter for years, you know what I'm saying? Like, this fucking, it really was bothering me, you know? And I remember I started getting real emotional and I started like tearing up, you know, and so I asked him to pull over because he's asking, you all right. And I'm like, man, can you pull over, can you pull over?

He pulled over by the Chick-a-Loon River. And I jumped out and he got out and I grabbed him. I started strangling him. Yeah, I wanted to kill him. you know, and I started screaming at him, like, you know, my sister's fucked up, my brother's fucked up. I mean, you know, like, we've been through some shit. And, uh, anyway, it was, uh, it was just one of the moments, you know, it was a fucked up

moment. And, uh, you know, he, um, I finally let him go, you know, and he was apologizing. And he was like, you know, I'm sorry. I want to make it up to you. That's, you know, you're here now. Let's let it go. And so I did. I let it go for a minute.

And, you know, then things calmed down a little bit. I didn't know that this fucking bitch was out there with this money, right? With her two friends. And then, you know, my dad asked me, he's like, finally got to the point. He's like, you know, can you make more? And I told him, listen, I got jammed up. He said, well, do you think you can make more?

I said, I could, but if I use the same method, they're going to know it's me. You know, I just, you see, so, can you change it? I said, man, I mean, I probably could, but I would need equipment. I would need different papers. I would try, I'd have to do a bunch of different things to try to change it up. I said, the only place I could get the things I need are in Chicago. Right. Right.

And you've gotten rid of the old stuff, right? You're Natalie disposed of everything when you were up. Everything's gone. So we, you know, like I got to go back to Chicago. I got to try to get everything, right? And so he's like, he's like, well, let's go down here. Let's take it, you know, me and you, man. We'll fly into Seattle.

We'll drive across the country, right? And, you know, we'll just, we'll have a good time. We'll bond, you know. And then you get to Chicago, you get the things. We can send them back up here and then come back up here and do our thing. You know, as a kid, you know, I look back at it, I wish I would have told them no, you know, because, you know, I was actually, the reason I was going up there is because I was trying to get away from this shit.

That's the weird thing about the whole, my whole criminal run. There was so many times where I really tried to quit. When I said throw my shit in the river, I really did throw my shit in the river. Probably like twice, right? I'm done. I'm not doing this no more. I'm over it. You know, I got a little bit of money saved, right?

and then as soon as that and I'd get rid of everything thinking that would do it and then I'd run out of money and I'd have to go print again and start the whole process over and probably did that twice and so I'm like

okay let's do it you know and so we did we flew to Seattle which is craziest fucking flight ever man right into a lightning storm man it was nuts laying in Seattle we ran into car we drove across the country

it was awesome man jamming the audio sleigh and just, you know, just dad and son, man, you know. And we get to Chicago, I get some paper, I start getting this stuff. We ran into my sister, right? And so me, him, and my sister are just kind of hanging out and having a good time. And the woman he left my mom for, her daughter was getting married, right? And so he had to get back to Alaska for the wedding.

And so he talked my sister into going back with him. and I was going to go, but I wasn't feeling right. Something was off. And now here I left Natalie pregnant up in Alaska. Okay. Yeah, she's still there, right? She's thinking I'm coming back with my dad. We were just going on a road trip, get some materials, ship them back,

and then I was going to fly back. So you're thinking set up a press, I'm sorry, a shop up there. Up there. Because he's got a whole underground fucking thing. He can. Yeah. And I'll try to change the recipe a little bit to make it look a little bit less like mine, that whole night. Right.

So for some reason, I don't really know exactly why. I can't really remember. But for some reason, I decided not to fly back with him and my sister. There was something that was feeling off to me. Oh, and I had to go to Texas to get the paper for the watermarks in the. strips. So I didn't really like to order shit. I like to go there and buy it so that it left no paper trail or anything. Right. Right. They don't have to mail it to mail it to an address and all that. I would like to go and get you know, just get it and go, right? So I get down to,

uh, I get down, I get to Texas. I get the stuff and I fly back to to Alaska. Natalie was super pissed when I wasn't on the plane with my dad. She was like, you need to get back here. I'm about to have this fucking baby. What are you doing? And so I get back to Alaska and I start staying with, because, oh yeah, as soon as I got back right after that, Natalie had the baby. And we decided to stay in Anchorage with a niece's daughter who had got married because she had a real nice house in Anchorage. Natalie didn't want to be in the middle of fucking the boonies with a newborn baby, right? like way outside in Alaska Bush. And so she had a big house.

She said, why don't you stay with us until the baby gets big until you guys figure out and get your own place or go back out there or whatever. And so we stayed there for a minute, a couple weeks. And my dad slipped. Well, he did a couple things. We're trying to get stuff ready, right? We got the stuff.

And I'm slow dragging. though. For some reason, I was slow, something was feeling off to me, you know? I guess, or maybe it was just nerves, right? Because I was like, man, if I'd go back into this, they're going to know it's me. And I was trying to change things, and I didn't know what to change. And so I was just kind of going through one of those mental fucks at this time, right? And then my dad did something real stupid. He tells me, he's like, hey, I want to take you somewhere and I want to, I want to introduce you to somebody who we can move a lot of that. money off, right? I said, you, you found someone? He goes, well, just take a ride with me.

I'm like, I'm like, all right. So I meet him out there. And then we go way deep into the Alaska bush. And we're driving down, we pull off the sewer and we're driving down this gravel road and we come out over the hill and there's this massive bonfire, man, like fucking huge. And there's motorcycles everywhere, and there's cats over there shooting machine guns that tore up cars. And it was the hell's angels. It was the hell's angels gathering, the Alaska chapter, right? My dad was real close with the president, the hell's angels. And I'm tripping, man.

I'm like, what the fuck is this, man, you know? So we go down there and it was just, it was exactly how you would imagine it to be. It was fucking crazy, man, you know. and we go into, they were, they were having some gathering, Hell's Angels gathering up there. And so we go into the president's tent and a dude was fucking massive.

He was like six, seven, just big burly, but nice guy, you know? And we go into, he had like this, you know, like you see at like concerts, like tents. You know, he had one of those, you know, not like a camping tent, but it was actually like where you would have like a dinner, like a convention.

It was a big tent, right? Yeah. And we go in there and my dad's like, yeah, this is my son, this is who it is. And he starts talking about the money. And I completely fucking freaked out and shut down. I stopped my pops. I was like, hey, man, I need to talk to you real quick. Just let me talk to you outside real fast.

And he's like, you know, we go outside. I'm like, what the fuck are you doing, man? Telling him what I do. Even if this is the dude that you're planning on pushing the money, you shouldn't let him know that it's me that's fucking making. it. Right. It's just, you should just say, this is what I have. This is the product. But I don't want to be known by these, by these cats that I'm the one that's making this money. Right. Like I just explained to you, I'm coming up with a different, a different group of money, different batch of

money so that it doesn't take back to me. Yeah. I said, what the, what this is insane? I said, I want to go right now. Man, you need to calm down you. I said, no, fuck that. I want to go. Don't feel comfortable. I don't want to be here. I want to leave. As the last time I see my dad. okay he took me back i went to anchorage i told nalda lee pack up everything we're leaving right now she said we're getting tickets we're getting the fuck out of here as soon as we have a flight that can go i want to get out of here she was what happened i was like man i told her what had you know took me into this crazy fucking shindig you know and and she's like let's go and so i basically left everything that we had shipped up there except my files because those were hard to make you know

you know the numbers and the serial numbers and I had event I had through time I had created a number generator right I was the first counterfeiter to change every single serial number every number was changed on it right it was never done before nice because the old printers you would have to change the plate every time yeah but I went and got me an old bingo, so that, you know, the computers were coming along. And so they had the bingo generator, you know, we could do bingo cards and it generates new numbers. So I just took it and altered it to make money numbers, you know. I could do 50 at a time.

It was great. I loved it. And that was the only thing. I had my computer with some heavy files in there, right? My, my faces, my backs, my, you know, because all that shit has to be. recreate it just it's it that's the stuff that I carried them that I would keep close to me the presses I could recreate we're getting yeah I can still get those the paper I knew where I could get it right but the files those were difficult right those were difficult because you had to have perfect

scans you had to recreate this you had to get rid of them or raise you had to do all kinds of shit to make them good and so that's what I had with me so I call my dude down in texas um he had just got out of prison right And a good friend of mine, and I call him like, hey, listen, I'm going to fly into Houston. No, I was flying into Dallas. I was like, I'm going to fly into Dallas. Can you pick me up? And then I'm going to go stay with you because he lived in Longview.

And he's like, yeah, yeah, I'll pick you up for sure. He was going to pick me at the airport or whatever. I literally, I changed the flight that morning to Houston. I don't know why. I just didn't feel comfortable flying into Dallas. And thank God I didn't, because Secret Service were waiting for me in Dallas. Why? Because that money that she was spending, unbeknownst to me, and this is crazy, man.

The very day that I left, Alaska, was the very day that the Secret Service blasted through their door that morning. Okay. My dad's door, right? I didn't know. Yeah. Right? I'm trying to get the fuck out just because I don't want to deal with my dad's shit. Yeah.

He's sloppy. He's sloppy. He's trying to introduce me to people. I don't want no part of this shit. I want to get out of here. So literally that morning, Secret Service, you know, pulled a whole swat while I'm getting on a plane. Fuck out of there. But I ended up changing my flight from Dallas to Houston and thank God I did because

they were waiting for me in Dallas. And so we landed in Houston. He picked me up. We went to her mom's, and they did get me. They got me in, they got me in, at Natalie's mom's house.

What's crazy, dude, is when we went to her mom's house, I had my computer bag on me, right? And we went into the house, and I set it, right? I set my computer right by the cloud.

There was a closet. it right at the front door where you like put jackets and shoes and shit so I just kind of like slid it in there and then you know went to the room we're talking and then all of some secret service come in boom boom right and they're asking me where is this what's that I'm like I don't know what you're talking about man you know I don't know what's it the whole time the computer was right there at the front door like if they would have just you know just looked a little bit but they did it they arrested me um and they they they they i stayed in i stayed in texas waiting to get extradited back to laska oh it was brutal it was brutal it was fucking the worst and on top of it i got stranded

in oklahoma city during nine 11 oh okay that's where nine 11 happened i was in oklahoma city when the when the plane poof you know and so they shut down everything you're in the federal the detention center the detention center yeah yeah Oklahoma City where they transfer everyone their report transfer center so now I'm stuck there which is like the worst fucking place to be stuck right and then I finally get to C-Tac and then from C-Tac they put me on a two-prop propeller plane shackled Conair on a little plane granted right and fly um dude it was like you know going through through from from seattle to anchorage we had to stop once to fill up for gas i mean it was just it was the worst flight ever you would think i

would have quit flying then right but i did it but yeah so we get to alaska um i go through the whole court thing uh the the niece real real real unfortunate what happened so so they didn't They didn't charge my dad with any of the money part, but they charged him with guns because he was a felon. Right. So he had guns at the house, hunting rifles and shit, you know. And they charged him with that. And they did charge a niece because her two friends.

So because Alaska's small. They're spending this shit like it was, you know. And so it came back to her two friends, right? And then they told on her, oh, we got it from her, right? And then she gave up me. Right. That's how the domino hit, right? Yeah.

And so they charged her, right? And the woman was just completely fucking spazzed out, right? So I'm going through the whole court's shit, man, you know? And they sentenced me to, they sentenced me to, what was it, 36 months, I think it was? My dad actually got more time to me. He got five years. Oh, yeah, for the guns? Yeah, he got five years.

Was it guns and drugs or just guns? Just guns. Just guns. Being a felon in possession of fire alarm, a firearm in the federal system is three years. But if you have multiple convictions for anything else, it can be higher. Or if they catch you with the gun and they catch you with drugs, it's five. Because five automatically. Maybe he did.

It was a five-year sentence, so I don't really know. Do they catch his grow shot? No, they didn't get that. Okay, so they got the, they got the weapon. He got the weapons. It either was his criminal history that got him the five, or there had to be some kind of drugs. Maybe marijuana or something.

Yeah, they could just say, you have, he has the weapons to protect his drugs. And then it becomes five, mandatory men are in him five years. Yeah, that might have been. But he ended up getting five. And I tried to see him when, because we were both,

after we were sentenced, I was sent to CTA. waiting to go to the prison I was going to go to, which was Wasika, Minnesota. And he ended up getting... So he was out on the bond the whole time where I wasn't. They kept me locked up. And, man, that Alaska jail was shit, man.

Seward County. Oh, my God, man. What a hell hole. So anyway, yeah, so I get to CTAC. He gets a sentence for the guns. He gets sent to CTAC. I request to see him. Right.

But his chick, the woman he took off on my mom with, she decides. She got separaties. Listen to this crazy this. This is crazy. They offer her probation, a year probation for giving me up. She says no, she didn't do anything wrong, and she takes it to trial. You're spending counterfeit money. You know it's counterfeit money.

She knows. She was wacky. She gets. She ends up getting six years in federal prison. This is where the story gets really twisted, though. So first I get arrested, right? Or my dad gets arrested for the gun. They hit his house, but I'm flying out of it, right?

Then I get popped in Dallas or in Texas, and I get extradited back to Alaska, go through the whole fighting. Jim and Vicky, who were the first instigators in all of it, who were out there doing their thing and then gave up a niece, and then niece gave up me, they ended up getting killed. How?

I don't know, they found Jim's head cut off. So he ended up getting killed. Matter of fact, everyone died. So they find out they get killed. Kind of gruesome, right? Okay. Jim did, right? Now, I don't think it had anything to do with my stuff, right?

I can't imagine. I mean, I was in jail. I didn't have nothing to do with it. You didn't call a guy? No, no, no, no. Not for that. They wouldn't go to Alaska anywhere. It's too cold up there.

They've been telling me, fuck you are. I ain't going to Alaska. But they had something, they ended up, you know, not doing too well, right? He guys had caught off. They found a skull. And then I ended up going to Waseca. My dad went to Sheridan, I think, Sheridan, Oregon. Federal Prison is Sheridan?

There's so many federal prisons. Yeah, so many. But it was in Oregon somewhere. And they started letting me and my dad start writing each other. So we were able to write. You had to fill out all these forms so we could write. So we started writing. And we started, you know, talking about, you know,

let's try to, you know, build our father-son relationship when we get out. this and that. And I'm going back to Chicago. And I get released. And on the day I got released that morning, you know how it is when you're getting to go home. You know, you're all excited. You're packing up and everything. And my dad died that morning.

Heart attack. In prison. In prison. Ooh. Yeah. It was a fucked up day for me. You know, from going from one high of being free and being released and then getting that call, you know. I called my sister and she's crying her eyes out.

And I'm like, hey, man, don't, why are you so sad? I'm free. Don't be crying. I mean, you know, she's like, no, no, you don't understand. You don't understand. I'm like, what do you mean? I don't understand. I'm free.

She says, no, I just got a call from the prison. Dad's dead. He died this morning of a heart attack. I was like, huh? on the day I got out. Like, how the fuck's that happen? So I was a mess, man. I was a real mess because I didn't feel like me and him got closure, right?

You know, like the last time I seen him, I was motherfucking him because he introduced me to the hell's angels guy. Right. And then everything happened. And so, yeah, he died that day. And then, and then Denise, she did her whole six years her whole six years

right and then died right oh my god heart attack or cancer or what it was just I don't know I didn't even when I found out I just

was like fitting huh right it caused my family so much shit through the years you know and this is how it ended up for you you know did the whole six years old

all right like what kind of fucking karma is that, right? Like, at least let me die like four years in or something, but you make me do the whole six and then fucking take me out right at the end, you know? So, yeah, she died. And so, you know, here I am. I get out of prison. Dad dies.

And I got a 15-year-old, right? No, he was 13 at the time. Mom's a cop, right? And, you know, he was a real shithead. You know, like 13. year old just dad been in prison and hadn't been right you know just just real angry you know

and uh so I'm in halfway house in Chicago and you know she's bringing them up to see me it was really odd she'd be still in her fucking police uniform you know but my son visiting me at the strange right

and um and then what what happens I'm like two months in the halfway house because I think I did three months it. Two months in, and she just goes ballistic to mama. She calls me. She's like,

you need to take your son. I can't have him at the house no more. This is done. He's too much. I said, well, here, calm down. What's going on? What's going on? He's printing $20 bills off my printer at home. I'm a cop art. I can't have them printing money out of my house. I said, oh, shit, man. I said, oh, my gosh. So I ended up getting out of the halfway house, got me a little apartment, took my boy, right?

So now it's me and this 13-year-old kid. And I'm working out at my, he's like family, Dennis Egan. He owned Egan Marina. It was a marina out in Lamont. We call them River Rats. It's all the barges that go up and down the canals. with the oil and the gas and shit and my and he owned it and him you know

he's like family and uh and I started I was working out there some real gangster shit man it was like old wrecking yard with these tugboats and just dogs barking it's like some real crazy when you say you're working out there you mean you're working yeah okay it was my first it was a job that I was working for him you know not really working I just show up and hang out and you know it wasn't really a job it was just place to go, you know, and he gave me a check every week. It wasn't a lot, but it was something.

But me, just being me, come to find out, you know, because he had probably, like, there was probably about 200 people that worked for him. And so now I got my son, you know, Natalie came back up, right? So we're trying to be normal at some point. I'm working out to see the marina. And I got back into crime, you know. just the money he was paying me wasn't doing it and uh and so everyone out there did blow like everyone did blow out there right all those workers you know and they were paying like 150 and a ball out there 2008 ball and you know in chicago i was connected to everybody man i get that shit for 50 dollars you know pure so i had i had a brief i hate i hate drugs

Right. That's why I did counterfeit him, because I was never into any other, I hated stealing. I didn't like draw. I hated to see what it did to people. But I did get caught up into it for a minute because, you know, everyone here was doing it. I had a great contact where I could get it. And I was like, man, I was selling to everybody out there, right? It was the first time I ever, like, sold drugs.

It was really weird. And then my dentist, I call him my uncle. maybe three months go by, and I hear my name called on the intercom. Mark, to the office, right? I don't know, what's this? You know, maybe he had me go pick someone up because, and I'll look back up a little bit, so Dennis knew everybody, right? And so one of my job, the job I did have is I would pick up people, guys that were flying

to Chicago, and I would bring them out there for a meeting, and then I would take them back to Chicago. Okay. Right. And so I'd pick up all kinds of people, right? I ended up picking up Paul Pompeon, who was a movie producer, right? And I don't know why he was coming out there to meet Dennis, but he was. He was a Chicago guy who had been out in L.A. for a long time.

So I picked him up in Chicago, drove him out to Lamont, which is like a 45-minute drive. And the whole time that I'm driving, he's on the phone talking about Chris Rock, talking about some other actor. He's like, yeah, we're going to get this movie made. We got Chris Rock attached to it, blah, la, la. So I'm listening to the conversation because pretty much was on the phone the whole time that I was driving. We get out, we get to Dennett, the marina.

He goes in, has this thing. They call me. I take Paul back to the city. But this time, I tell him, I'm like, boy, you make movies? He's like, yeah, I'm an executive producer. I made some movies and stuff. I said, man, I got a pretty good story.

And he's like, oh, yeah, kid, I hear that all the time. Yeah, I was going to say, yeah, how many times do you hear that? He's probably probably, finally like that. That's what he said, too. He goes, oh, kid, I hear that all the time. I'm like, man, in my mind, I'm like, man, you're in my car. You're going to listen to me, you know? And I said, well, have you ever met a counterfeiter who's ex-wife's a cop?

And he was like, huh? I was like, yeah, I used to print my. I just got out of prison, you know? And so he's like, no, I haven't, actually, you know. So he goes, I want to hear more. So when we get to the city, he calls Dennis and says, hey, I'm going to keep art for a little while. You don't mind, right?

Yeah, keep me. Yeah, like, I'm, like, anyway. So we go to Pompey Bakery on Taylor Street, man. And I just, I tell him everything that happened, man, from the House of Blues, this. And he's like, holy shit, this got to be a movie. I'm like, all right, man, let's, I'm in, you know? and so they fly me out till it so I got my son I'm doing this I'm whatever man I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm looking like I'm making it right

but I'm a fucking mess though man right my son's driving me crazy you know I'm dealing blow which I hated right and uh and then you know like about two months go by I get called into the office that's when I hear my name on. I'm thinking I'm going to go pick someone up or bring them back. And I go in there and Dennis looked like, just like a Marlon Brando, old gangster type

man. His office was actually on a barge. He turned this big barge into an office, man, right? And he's sitting there with his cigar and he's looking at me and he's like, you know, he goes, I've noticed lately, man,

that everybody around here is working like crazy. I said, oh, yeah, that's a good thing. He's like, yeah, man, everybody got so much fucking energy. I can't send him home. I'm like, well, well, you know, that's a good thing. He's like, yeah, but they're sniffling all the time

and their eyes are off. And he leans in. Their eyes are all fucked up. He said, you wouldn't know anything about that, would you? Right? There's flu season. Yeah, I said, I said, I said, I said, I said, I knew what he was, you know, referring to him. He's no gangster.

He ain't stupid, right? I said, well, he said, before you even start, he goes, I don't want you to lie to me, and I don't want you to tell me the truth, right? Just stop. Just stop. I said, okay. Yeah, I'm done, right? And so I ended up actually quitting, right?

I ended up, you know, working there. and then Paul is flying me out to L.A. to meet with, like, writers and an agent. I met this agent, Mickey Freerberg. He worked with Clint Eastwood on flags of our fathers and stuff. He was like a literary agent that turned books into movies. Cool, dude, man. Remind me and my dad actually a lot. And so here we are.

I'm going out to L.A. and, you know, meeting all kinds of people out there and end up meeting Jason Kirsten from the Rolling Stone magazine. Right. And so Jason comes to Chicago, and, you know, he interviews me, and the Rolling Stone magazine comes out. Me and my son are still kind of beefing, but come to find out, he's a musical genius.

Right? He's got a little, I don't know what they call it. A little mixer type thing and he could record. He's doing a little, he got a little beat thing. He's young and he was really good. So I'm like, man, maybe I, because I knew a lot of people in the music industry. So I'm like, man, maybe this is how I could bond with them. But now I'm not working and I'm not really even doing this anymore. So my money is starting to get a little bit tight.

Right. And I'm thinking that, you know, this movie thing is going to take off, right? Because they're, you know, they optioned it. And it looks like, you know, I'm meeting with people. They're flying me around. The Rolling Stone article comes out. And I start getting my son into the music. I knew this, I knew a guy named Johnny Kay.

He was, you ever heard of the band Disturbed? Fallout Boys. Okay, my dude is, he produced them. His name's Johnny Kay. He owned a studio in Chicago called Groove Sounds. And so I asked, I asked John, I say, man, can I bring my son in and see if he could, if he's got what it takes? John, he's like, yeah, hell yeah, bring him in, man.

And what you know, my son was really like, we made four songs, but even though he was my friend, it wasn't free. He was charging me. And back then, it was super expensive to record. It wasn't cheap to the engineer, to this. It was a lot of money. that's what got me back into printing, right? Running low, I'm not doing this.

I got Natalie and the baby. I'm sitting here trying to hold off because Paul keeps telling me, like, we're going to get a deal for the movie. We're going to get a deal for the movie. I'm going to get this through, which I found out of such bullshit. They all say that. Well, I didn't know then.

I didn't know how it was. You also think they're flying you out. They're putting a bunch of effort into it. You're putting a bunch of effort. Spending money. Then the Rolling Stone article comes out, right? And now, and this is before social media and everything. So now, like, I'm like the dude, right?

Yeah. And then I even, like, I went to the neighborhood and I asked the guys, I'm like, hey, can I do this? It gave me their blessing as long as I didn't say anyone's name or anything like that and or going to any specifics, right? So I was good there. And then my son's doing the music, but it's starting to cost me money. and so I had some money buried. So even before, so I'm kind of like a pack rat a little bit.

I like to hide shit all the time. And so I used to seal money in PVC pipes. I'd take the money. I'd roll it, and then I'd seal it, and then I'd stuff it in the pipes, and then I'd go bare. And the reason I would use PVC because metal detectors couldn't find it.

Right. So it'd be the plastic, right? And so I went and pulled some up. I went out there and dug it up and I could have sell it. I was going to use it. I was going to use it to get me through till the movie deal came through and then used it to pay for my son's music. Well, that all fucking house of cards came tumbling down.

When I went to go sell the money to, I wanted to sell the money to someone that would take it out of the country. So I had a Russian guy that would move my money overseas. Right. Because they still used a lot of cash over there. And so I thought, okay, I'd be safe. If it didn't pop up here and it popped up over there, then I'd be all right.

At least for a little while. And then I could just say, hey, it's fucking old shit, you know? But they wouldn't take it because they were using euros. Like everyone was using euros at that time, right? So he said, if you can make me euros, I'll take them all. Right. And so I got super excited

because I'm like, that's completely different than fucking American currency. Right. You know? And talk about, you want to change up your... Yeah, I've never made a euro.

Yeah, never made one. It was perfect. Man, I thought it was the perfect crime for me, right? So I went in. I started like... But where I fucked up is they wouldn't take the old hundreds. Right.

So... I'm like, man, I got to, you know, you got a fucking $100,000 that you know you could get rid of. Right. It's hard to just not do nothing with it, you know? And so I didn't do, I did something with it, right? I would drive real far and spend just a couple, you know, make a couple thousand, come back, do my thing. And it seemed like it was working for a minute. But unbeknownst to me, my son was like by his mom's house.

making money with his friends at our house. So here I am. Wait, your son, what? My son, my, my, my, my, my, my, my son. Yeah, my son was making $20 bills. Oh, okay, okay, okay, I didn't understand. Again, oh, okay. Again, he's back at it.

Right. A little fucker, right? You know, we're doing music. We're doing, like, what are you, you know? Well, it's like the, the, the guys who, the guys who were, the rappers who were about to, make millions or make millions and they're still gang banging. Still gang banging. And still slinging a little dope on the side.

What are you doing? Yeah. You just made $2 million. Or you're about to hit it big. Everything's going great. Why are you still doing this? Oh, and I'm the same. I'm the rapper.

Just call me a rapper, man, because I was the same shit, dog. Here I am. I even, listen, I even had a job offer so document security systems out of Rochester, New York, crazy shit. So here I am. I got this, the old money that was put away, right? that I'm just nickel and diamond, right? Because I'm scared of it.

I'm trying to make the euro, right? I'm studying the shit out of the euro. I almost broke it. The only thing that I was missing was the last little metallic thing that I was going to, you know, bind in between the paper. And I was going to, and I figured out how to do it. I was going to, you know, like the tops cards. Remember the top cards back in the day?

They changed colors where they got that little metal stuff on it. The tops, like baseball cards? Yeah. That machine basically was the same, you know, I'm using shit that nobody would think of to make money. So I found that. So I damn near had it broke. I was just a few minor things, man.

Right. So I'm getting excited. And then I come in from out of town. Oh, they get me a gig to go speak at this document security systems. So here I am. I'm dealing with Hollywood, right? Trying to, you know, Rolling Stone, book, right? I'm trying to break the Euro

I'm taking care of a kid who I'm trying to get into music and now I get an offer to go out to New York and speak at a conference and they were going to pay me I thought oh man this is great get paid to speak so they fly me out to

they fly me out to Rochester and I get to the conference center and the woman meets me and she's all excited oh I'm so glad to meet you she goes, I used to be Frank Abingale's assistant. I said, Frank Abigail, yeah, she said, catch me if you can, you know. She goes, you're kind of like him. Everyone always compares me to him.

I'm like, nah, he did checks. I did money and I'm from the south side, completely different, you know. We're nothing alike, but whatever. And she's like, oh, I can't wait. I'm going to show you. I'm going to walk you through. I'm going to be your sister. So they had me lined up to do these speaking engagements.

So we go into the hotel bar, the kind of, you know, and I'm thinking I'm going to speak about check, check fraud, check security, right? Checks for all. Checks, right? So document security systems made a special check that was supposed to be, you couldn't counterfeit it, right? And it was more for like corporate checks, right? Like big checks, right?

That's moving around. And they wanted me to come in and just tell them how great this check was and how it couldn't be counterfeited and all this shit, right? And I'm like, yeah, whatever. I'll say whatever. You're going to pay me. And so I get there. So I'm thinking I'm going to be speaking to a bunch of like bankers or corporate people.

It was the feds. Right. Yeah. No, it's fucking insane. I get there and we go into the bar and I'm just feeling like everyone in here is a cop, an agent, right? And I look at it. I'm like, man, is there another conference going on here? And she's like, oh, no, no, this

I said, well, everyone in here feels a little like, are they, are they, they're cops or something? She goes, oh, yeah, this is a Homeland Security some, some bullshit document thing. I'm like, what do you mean? She goes, yeah, this is a Homeland Security conference. These are all

FBI, Secret Service. I'm like, why didn't anyone fucking tell me? You guys didn't tell me I'm going to be speaking to the feds? I literally got a print shop back in Chicago where I'm trying to break the fucking Euro. And now you got me in New York speaking to a bunch of feds, man. You guys out of your mind? Like, I'm super freaked out. And dog, I don't even drink. And I just started pounding

fucking whiskey, man. Like, I was a mess. I was a mess. I was a mess. And then I started getting paranoid thinking it was all set up and they knew where my shop was in the city. Like I was just, you know how it goes. Your mind could get whacked out. Right. So I pretty much drank till I couldn't go back up to the room. It seemed like the second pass because when I woke up she was sitting right at the door knocking. My boy was like six in the morning. You ready? I spoke at eight in the morning. That was when I went on. So the lineup was me starting it. And then the guy that caught son of Sam.

He was speaking that day. A bunch of high profile coppers were speaking. I was the only criminal on the panel. right so so you should be honored yeah i was honored yeah super honored yeah so anyway i she she wakes me you ready or you do i'm like yeah right you know i'm all over man i i get ready i go down there and i'm telling myself i'm like art you're the first guy speaking ain't nobody gonna show up to see you right no way they're they'll still trickle in during during the during the day you know so we go down to to eat. She's telling me what to eat, what not to eat, so don't upset my stomach. That whole shit, she'd be, you know, and we walk into the conference room, and it's big, but there's only

like 15, 20 people in there, right? I'm thinking, oh, I could do this. I say bad. And I see their badges. They like to put their badges right here, right? You know what I don't know what that's all about, you know? But I'm cool, man. I'm swat. Man, I'm like, okay, I'm cool. They don't know. They don't know what I'm doing right now. And I go up in front and I meet the head organizer, you know, he's like, oh, I'm glad you're here. This is going to be great. This is going to be different for them to hear from you, you know. And I'm like, oh, yeah, it's great. And so they start micing me up. They start micing me up. They put the little mic on, put it on. They test it. and like within the matter of like it was it was like 757 right still like 255 people in there

and I don't know how the fuck they filled it up in three minutes but in three minutes there was 2,000 fucking federal agents in front of you man and I I shut down I started getting weasy and dizzy and I told her I said I got to go to the bathroom real quick You know? Thoughts going to throw up. I never done no shit like this before, right? So I leave the auditorium, and I go into the bathroom,

and I'm motherfucking myself, right? I'm like, what the fuck are you doing? I'm like literally talking to myself. Fucking idiot. What is the wrong with you? I step outside, and I puke a little bit, you know, just not mud, but a little bit,

and I'm still fucking, what am I doing, right? all of a sudden she comes running out she says hey hey hey hey turn the fucking mic off I said what she said the mic's on you can hear everything inside she was we're going to cancel we're not going to do this I said no you're not

I said I'm going to go through with this man I got to I didn't come here to not do this yeah I'll do it right I walked back I walked back into that auditorium. It's fucking, just everyone is staring at me. It's quiet as can be, man. Like, you know, you hear a hairdrop, man.

That's how quiet it was, right? And they're all looking and I'm just like, what the fuck? You should have let her cancel. I'm just talking about you should have letter canceled. I'm just talking. I go up front and it's still quiet. And then the organizer picks up, you know,

he starts talking, hey, we got a great line up for you. And I'm thinking they just listen to me, motherfucker myself, and why the fuck am I here? I mean, they heard, yeah, it was bad, man. And so, it was bad. So anyways, she's right here. She's like, you all right? She's right.

You know, are you all right? I'm like, I was fucking sweating. I mean, I'm a mess, dude. And then finally he calls my name and I get all. He says, yeah, former counterfeiter, from Chicago. And I get up and just say, everybody. his bean mugging, just like, you know, just looking at me all crazy.

And I freeze. Can't talk. My mouth dried up. My tongue was in my ass, man. I mean, literally, I couldn't feel my, it was so dry, right? Like a raisin, man. And you couldn't even drink water. I grabbed water wouldn't work.

The water wouldn't, you know? That's when you know you're really, like, something wrong, right? And so I'm just froze, and she's sitting there. you know like come out of it you know and then this older agent this woman she was like in the middle she had this long silver hair really beautiful and she just lip like lip me it's all right baby she said it's all right baby she kept saying it like but she wasn't talking i could just see her lips to read her lips that she was telling me it was all right and um and i said uh i said uh i said excuse me, this first time I've ever done this.

And usually when I'm around federal agents, I'm going to prison. Right. So they all started laughing. And I said, but, you know, I want to do this. You know, so just bear with me. And they were like, you know, they all start loosening up. And, you know. And, man, I ended up speaking for like an hour and a half.

Took questions for like 45 minutes. Nice. They literally sat me at the table next to the, secretary of Homeland Security. We were joking because he said he used to make fake IDs when he was in high school or some shit. It was insane. Like I'm sitting here at this table with like big time people

and I'm sitting here thinking to myself like, man, you're literally going to go back to Chicago and you're going to go to your print shop and you're going to try to fucking break the euro while. And I started feeling that guilt a little bit, right? Like, dude, you got like so much opportunity. Right. You know, what the fuck are you doing?

And I did, man. Like, I went back to Chicago, and I went right back into my, my mold, you know. And the article had came out. They were talking about doing the book. And then... You're fucking in a print shop trying to make a hero. Try to make the hero. And it just, you know, you look back at it, you're like, wow, you really just a dumbass.

You know what I'm saying? Like, you need it. But you go through it, right? So... Have you done more speaking? engagement oh yeah now I've spoke at banks I just spoke at BMO not too long ago and yeah I speak at schools now I spoke at some charter schools high school yeah now I'm now I'm good at it I mean I go I find it's funny because I actually had someone who

told me they were like because I remember being the first time I did I was like I'm super gonna be super nervous I'm gonna be nervous and I talked to someone and she was like listen you said you got to watch Jordan Peterson yeah he's great he said he actually talks about how you don't try so don't try and talk to the whole crowd oh you got to just look at one one person for a minute or two and find someone he's like because then you're just talking to one person yeah and you get five minutes here two minutes here five minutes here and it gives your head a little movement yeah then you're talking if they think you're talking the whole crowd but you're not you're not and because you forget that they're all there and but I always feel sick to my

stomach when I first get up you can tell I'm nervous yeah because my wife's gone to see me uh do it a couple times yeah and she's like I could tell you we're nervous the first minute or two she's like once you got going you know yeah it's it doesn't that doesn't that hasn't stopped for me the first minute or two I'm comfortable same way I still get my secret weapon is the listerine spray right because that's the list you ever have listerine spray spray so it's a little spray thing like bonaca okay right was it moist in your mouth or something water's your mouth your tongue So I had to figure that out, because even when I wouldn't get nervous, for some reason, I get it from my mouth would just dry up.

And so I got this little, a listery, you know, like Listery mouthwash, where they got it in a spray. So I'll just spray like three or four times and they just blast my mouth. You know, I've even snorted that shit. I'm killing it. Not for any other reason just to kill the bacteria. Well, that's a funny story. So in prison, I would snort the mouthwash, the black guys in there used to think I was whacked out, right? But everyone would be sick, you know?

And I would take a little bit of that mouthwash and just, and it would just like blast your brain out, you know? But it would kill all the bacteria, man. I would never get sick even during COVID, man. I even posted it. And then I've seen a University of Pennsylvania was doing a study of this mouthwash kill the bacteria in your nose, man. Anyway, crazy shit, dog. But no, the delisterine works, man. It's like my secret weapon now.

But yeah, so now here I am. So I get back to Chicago, and I was out of town for something. I come back, and there's my son printing money in the house, 20s. He don't even know that I'm, I got a real major situation going on. Right. You know, that I'm trying to do. This could really throw it. Now I'm freaked out of because I don't know if they're.

You've been watching him. How long has he been doing it? Has he been spending them? Yeah, he doesn't. He's a kid. He doesn't realize how easy it's going to come right back to him. They're going to be here any day. Quick.

And they, and it did, right? So what happened is, so I had, I had a print shop on 33rd in, uh, in Shields, uh, right across from Armour Park.

It was an old warehouse. And, uh, again, I got, I have this strange, um, I had this strange luck, man. Can't really explain it, right? but like really good things could happen or really shitty things can happen.

It's usually never in the middle. When the good things happen, it's good. So what happens? So my print shop, right before this happened with my son, I had to move everything. So where it was, the landlord Bertucci or Rickabini, he owns Ricka Benny. It's a, Ricka Benny, it was like a steak sandwich shop in Chicago, a time guy. He owned the building. He called and said that we had, I had to get out of there because they sold the building.

and they were going to turn into condos. And he needed everything out of there immediately. So I moved everything out, restructured it. But somehow, some way, the Secret Service had my print shop on its radar, right? I think he even had a photo from the sky. Like, that shit's real. I didn't really think that shit was real that they could take a photo from the sky.

Yeah, they can't. Because I got one, right? That's a perfect shot at the top of my head, man, right? But anyway, so they had known of a spot that I had, but they hadn't moved on it for some reason. I don't know why, but they hadn't. So when I came home and me and my son started fighting, we run out, he runs outside, I go after him.

He throws this money at me, the cops are passing by a regular CPD and gets out and I'm picking up the money. It's the 20s. And I'm like, hey, man, this is just my son. I'll take care of this. He's just being a kid. And the cops like, well, you know, he's being a cop, right?

And he's like, well, what's your name? And I said, Arthur Williams, and boom, as soon as I said my name, he said, oh, okay, we're put the handcuffs on me. Secret Service come. And they're like, we're going to we know this ain't your money we we know that you know that this is going to be all right we'll figure all this out and they take me down to this to the secret service station they put me in a room and I'm sitting there I'm like well damn I've been here for a long time if

everything it's just the 20s right and uh it wasn't they they my my son had so in that wilder 20s he had so I carry money with me all the time right even Now I got money in my old money, right? Like, cash. Yeah, well, I carry, but it's usually like old stuff. Like, this is a coin I carry. Like, I got, I got, I got an old hundred in here somewhere. So I got, I'm like kind of superstitious a little bit.

Like, this is a half a hundred that I've been carrying for almost like seven years. Okay. Yes, yeah, right? So I gave it, I gave the other half to a friend of mine and I signed it and I told him one day I'd give them. Anyway, I do weird shit, man, okay? Okay. So anytime I would make a batch of money, there would always be for some reason a few of them that were perfect, that were like undetectable. Like even the eye couldn't.

They were just everything from it. I don't know why. It's kind of like, I guess, weed. When they grow weed, there's one that grows different color, right? Well, we're making the money for some reason, man, there would always be, when I'd be going through it, there'd always be one. I'd be like, wow, this thing is amazing. And I'd keep it. Right?

my son went into my wallet and he took it and it was in his little stack of 20s so when they found the 20s um but knows to me they had one of those hundreds that I had unburied they had one right and remember I was going out a little bit spending a couple hoping I could get away with it so they had been knowing what was been going on for a second right

and I didn't know I didn't know that that happened so when they took me down to the station, they finally pulled me out and they said, you know, we know that the 20s aren't yours are. We know that. And you know, and it's unfortunate that your son's

got into this and, you know, but there was a hundred in that stack that was yours. I'm like, oh, shit. And they said, and we know where your print shops had. And we're getting ready to rate it right now. Is this the old location or the new

location? It's the old one. Oh, okay. Yeah, but I didn't know that. Yeah. I didn't know. I'm thinking they knew where the new one was or whatever, right? So we're getting ready to go in there, man. You know, is there anything you want to tell us? I was like, man, whatever, man, you know?

And then it got a little funny because when I was going to court the next day for Bond, I figured they kicked in the door and they found everything and I was completely screwed, you know? Definitely not getting bond. Definitely not getting bond. So that's not even on your mind. Yeah, I'm like, I'm done, right?

And so what happens when they come get me, I don't know if it was Brad or it might have been. I think it was someone else, though. And when they grab me, they're holding me real hard on my arm, right, in the elevator. And they, oh, you think you're a funny guy, huh? I'm like, what are you talking about? Because when they said that they knew where my shop was, that's what it was.

That night when they said they knew where my shop was, I said, what are you talking about? I ain't got a shop, you know where your place is at. I was like, look at me, you guys are making a real bad mistake. There ain't nothing in nowhere. I don't know what you're talking about. Then next morning when they were taking me to the court for Bond, he's holding me. He's like, oh, you think you're a funny guy, huh? I said, what do you mean?

he said there was nothing in there I said well I told you that I didn't have anything I still did not know what the fuck was going on right later found out that there was SWAT team fucking helicopters and they they went in there and it was completely empty they got nothing right nothing like all they got now is a

just this is my indictment you go read it I probably had the shortest indictment in federal history. Seriously, I probably do because usually you're like 30 pages long. My federal indictments, one paragraph, one paragraph, 18, whatever, possession of $1,200. So many 20s and 100.

That's what my indictment read. No one else on my indictment, no one is. That's it. That's what I got 105 months for. They really gave it to me. Did you plead to the, you did me? No, it was, they wouldn't even give me a plea. I did an open plea.

I wasn't going to take it to trial. Yeah, you can't. You're done. It was done. It gave me 20 years, so I did an open plea. They didn't give me no, they didn't give me anything. Matter of fact, they were trying to give me 15 years. The judge, well, I don't know if I should talk about this part, but maybe I will fuck you. It's been how long now? It's been 20 years, right?

Yeah, who cares? What's the statute of limitations? So anyway, they, I ended up, I ended up, so I go to court, right? and the thing about no bond, well, they had nothing. Judge let me go on a property bond. It's weird how it happened. One of my guys put up his building on Lake Street, right?

Which was kind of mob-affiliated, you know? So I got a little nervous. Like, why is they putting that building up to get me out of jail? Right. I didn't really, they didn't want to get out, right? I didn't want to get out of jail. I wanted to stay in, do my time. So when the attorney showed up, which wasn't a public defender,

it was Rick Halpern. If you look up, Rick Halper, and he was Joey the Clown, Lombardo's attorney, right? Famous Mob attorney. Okay. And they're putting up a building to get me out of jail. What would be on your mind? They want you out of jail that kill you? Yeah, I don't know.

I mean, I knew a lot of shit, man. So, like, I didn't know, right? I was like, what the fuck, man, is going on here? anyway they got me out I think Paul had something to do with the producer because you remember I'm still dealing with Paramount and Hollywood and all this shit right so the producer showed up to course

so I think it maybe he never said but I think it came from his direction somehow and so they let me out I couldn't believe it man so here I am out on bond on property bond and I I guess maybe six months I was out And during that time,

man, all kinds of shit happened. The Rolling Stone magazine came out. And then Penguin, they had a book deal for me with Hugh Mifflin. And it was the book rights sold for a million four. Right. And this is what's sad about this. Because here it is,

If I would have just been able to keep my nose clean just for a little longer, like everything that was good that was happening happened after I went to prison. It was wild. It was wild. Like literally, I'm going to court, right? Still dealing with Hollywood. And they're like, you're just going to get 30 months. And then we'll do the movie when you get out and all this, right?

you know and um yeah it didn't happen that way it it it it just they they they finally got the book uh treatment done or what a synopsis i think is what it is and they submitted it the agent did and i'm sitting i'm sitting in the basement of my apartment in chicago on the phone and they're doing a lot they're doing an auction with the book rights it was hewip miflin penguin, Shimon, Shimon, and it was like five or six different book, book publishers.

And it went from like $100,000 to $200,000 to $300,000 to $350. It ended at $1.4 million. I couldn't believe it. But of course it had to be split with the, you know, with the author and me and the, whatever. Yeah. Still, $1.4 million

to even hear that number, man. Yeah, that's outrageous. Ridiculous, right? but here I was about to get sentenced, right? Like I'm literally getting ready to go get sentenced, you know, after this. And so the Hute Mifflin lady, she called me after they won the auction. She called me a couple days later. She said, we're so excited that we're going to do your rights.

You're going to go on all the talk shows. She said, we're going to have you on tour. You're going to go, you're going to be doing book tours. It's going to be amazing. I can't wait. We're so excited to work with you. And I'm listening to her and I'm like, oh, yeah, this sounds great. You know, I'm like, as soon as I got off the phone with her, I called the agent.

I said, hey, did you tell them I'm going to prison? They were like, nah, we were going to wait until the deal was done and we got the money. I said, guys, it's fucked up. You got to let them know. They were like, no way. No way. Just let this ride. And I said, I told him, I said, I said, man, I'm not going to lie to them.

I'm not going to lie to them. I'm sorry, guys. You either got to tell them or I'm telling them. I'm not going to take $1.4 million from somebody knowing they don't know the truth. Expecting that I'm going to promote the book. Yeah. I'm just not going to do it, man, you know?

And the deal collapsed. It fell through. So they told her, and Duke Mifflin pulled out of it. and then I got sentenced to 105 months. And about two months into my, two months into, you know, being in jail, I get a letter from the author. He says, hey, Penguin wants to pick it up for 300. I'm like, let's go.

And so that's kind of how that happened, man. And then the book came out while I was in prison. and then about, you know, I mean, I was, because my son was 50, yeah, so he was 15, so three years goes by. I went to Manchester, Kentucky. I started painting in prison, you know, or draw. First I used to just draw old money.

I love old money. I collect old money. I got a beautiful money collection from World War II money to Roman coins to, like, I got a lot of, I got a really badass money collection that I've been working with. And so I started painting or drawing old money in jail. And I started writing a book called Canes Dagger.

So I really loved to write. That's what I wanted to do. I wrote a book. Because, you know, in prison, it's really all you can do. You either write or draw. Yeah. Really ain't much more to do. You know?

And so I would write and then I would draw money. Right? I mean, I was still addicted to drawing money. And then I went to Manchester, Kentucky for a couple years. And then they shot me to Big Spring, Texas. and then when I was at Big Spring, Texas, when I called home, that's when they let me know that my son got arrested.

Secret Service grabbed him. He was 18 years old. So he had been still printing from the whole time I was gone, but the Secret Service just left him alone. As soon as he turned 18, they grabbed him. As soon as he turned 18, they grabbed him. And so I'm like, shit, this is crazy, you know?

And I was devastated, though. My boys go, my little baby boy, my boys go into prison, you know. And they gave them, it's weird, because this is where I think, you know, like, because even prior to me getting locked up and everything, my son got jammed up a couple times, right, with doing that shit.

Once with his mom, then me. And even after that happened, he got in trouble in Woodfield. I had to go out there to pick him up. Here I am fighting a case for counterfeit. My son is 15 sitting in Woodfield trying to spend... I mean, he just wouldn't stop no matter what. And I had to go pick him up, and then, you know, I'm waiting to sign him out, and I step outside,

and the Secret Service agent comes out, and me and him are sitting on the bench talking, like, the scene from heat. You know? Like, it was crazy. Right. Like, you know, you know, you... You got to do you and I got to do me, you know. Like it was, he's like, man, you know, now your son.

Look at what's happening. The agent tells me, look what's happening. Now your son's into this. How you feel? And I'll tell you, man, the one thing I, you know, even with the courts, because when I was getting sentenced, I had a trust. I had a trust at that time. It had like a couple hundred thousand in it, you know.

And they were trying to take it. The feds were trying to take it from me. And I spoke at my sentencing, and I told the judge, I said, you know, I grew up about 15 blocks from hearing the projects with single mom, grew up on wealth, you know, with nothing. I said, if you guys take this money, my kids are going to be, and Natalie was in the group, just had a baby, right? I felt like a worst person ever, man. And I said, you know, what's going to happen? They're going to be without two, you know? Yeah.

And so the judge didn't take the money. money he did issue an order that uh she would receive 2,500 a month until it's gone until it's gone which pretty much was my whole sentence right like I the money ran out like a little bit before I got out you know yeah and um but the kids were taking care of so I was you know I was I was I was grateful for that um but the judge told me he's like you know he's like you know I haven't everyone's saying you the best you're the best I haven't seen you this money yet and I want to see it. And so the prosecutor brought one of the hundreds up to the judge and he's looking at it and he's telling, like, man, this would have, this would have fooled

me, you know, this is good. He goes, how long did it take you to make this? To get this good. And I said, man, you know, it took about 15 years, I guess. And he said, he said, what do you think you could have done in 15 years? You would have used it for the right time, right thing. He goes, I promise you you could have been the best at that, too. I know, I always, you know, I always, think back to that moment when he said that to me, you know. And then even when I got sentenced, so he didn't take the money, but he gave me, you know, 105 months, which I felt was for like nothing, you know. And, um, that's a stiff sentence for, I, I haven't met a lot of calendar, but I've met a couple. I've probably met three or four, but only really one,

maybe two that really were good. Yeah. The other guys were like, you know, casual, They have bullshit counterfeiters. And I even, I know we talked earlier, but it was like this one guy, he had been in prison like three times. And when I asked him, what are you going to do when you get out? He said, I'm going to go back to counterfeit. Yeah, because he wasn't getting big sentences either. But, I mean, that 100, that's a lot. Yeah.

Well, and the thing is, is, and I was told a few things. One, the money was really good. Which bothersome. Was bothersome, right? They didn't like that. Yeah, it's too good, right? And, you know, and, you know, and they, they sent me to a medium high, dude. I was at Manchester, man.

So I met this guy at a medium. Yeah, it was crazy, man. He'd only been in prison for counterfeiting. Social worker, you know how he got to meet the social worker? They were like, why are you here? You shouldn't be here. I mean, 80% of the guys on the farm had like 20 up, you know. And, but yeah, so, you know, when the judge said,

and even then, even on the day that I was getting shipped to prison, was odd. You know how you got to go into the hole in cell, and you got to wait to catch the bus out, you know. I was in the cell, and it just happened that the agent was bringing an arrestee into MCC, Secret Service agent. Brad?

Or another one? It was a different one. Yeah. I don't think it was Brad. It was a different one. Because I had two that were like my double, two that followed me around for my whole life, right? Brad was one. I think they still follow me. I don't know. They're probably outside right now.

Yeah, but anyway, I've had two that have followed me around for like my whole life, man, you know. And Brad was always cool, right? I could say he's always been cool and respectful. The other one was, yeah, just the same way, man, very professional. But he, on the day that I was, he was the one that we were on the bench together, you know. Like we had, yeah, it was kind of like one and them. But on the day that I got, when I was getting shipped, to the federal prison, he was dropping off an arrestee,

and he came to the cell, and me and him talked. You know, he's talking to me through the thing. He's like, look, dude, you're too smart for this, man. You know, you're going to spend your whole life in here like this? You know, because think about something to do, man, you know? And so it's funny because the judge had something positive to say to me. And even the agent, even the agents had something positive to say to me, you know. And those things stuck with me.

They really did. Because when I got down, you know, you could always say, oh, I'm never coming back, right? Everyone says it. I'm never coming back. This is it. I'm done. Right? It's a lot harder.

It's a lot harder than said, you know, it's not that easy to do that. But I knew there was something different about this one, you know. I knew that this was, you know, that I had to do something different than what I was doing. And what's cemented it is when my son got arrested and was coming to the feds. And it broke my heart. And it was funny because I was down in Big Spring

and he was going to Forest City, Arkansas. And I was trying to get a transfer, just like how I was trying to see. see my dad when my dad was in CTAC, right? They wouldn't let us see each other. So I kind of figured that it was a dead issue that they weren't going to put me and my son together. Right.

But I asked, I say, look at, man, my son's, he's only 18. He's going to federal prison, man. You know, he needs some adult supervision besides the fucking guards, you know? Ah, well, you know how they are. So, but they did. man like about six weeks later you know i got called for the chain they they they shipped me to um i went to forest city arches so i knew he was there and so i'm i'm sitting in the holding cell just like

man i want to get out to the yard man i got to see my boy i hadn't seen him for years and i didn't get to the dorm till like eight o'clock at night you know how it's a long fucking day in that day in their process and everyone you're sitting in the way to wait yeah just waiting wait. And so I get into the dorm, you know how the guys come up. Hey, what's your name? Where are you from? And so I tell him and they take him to me. I said, hey, listen, I tell the one cat, I said, I said, man, I need, I need to, I need to fire my son right away. He was your son, right? And he goes, well, we know who you are already. And I said, oh, really? He's like, yeah, yeah, no, he's here in the dorm. He's here. He's in the building? No, in the dorm. No, in the dorm. He's in his

dorm. I said, well, where is he at? He's in the TV room. Bro, I'm going to tell you something. You know, prison is a hard place, right? Yeah. I'll get goosebumps thinking about this, man, but as soon as I heard he was in the TV room, you already know, man, I'd beeline for it right away. And when I opened that door and I walked in, man, he was a little baby face, a little 18-year-old, you know. Right. Just sitting there with little headphones, right? And when he looked at me, man, that boy, and he got up and he ran to me so, so fast, bro, and just held me.

And the whole TV room was fucking silent. And they started crying. Like hardened criminals, just tears, man. Like, I had the whole place crying. You know what the fuck? And what we just held? each other, man. You know, we became best friends. I learned how to become a dad in there, you know. I would, I'd go pain every day. I'd wake up early and write. I'd work out. You know, I started

paying for him for classes to learn how to play the piano. You know, I had him busy, because I stayed busy. Think about prison, you got to stay busy. Can't lay on your bed, be depressed, and watch TV all fucking, man. I woke up at five in the morning. I wrote for two hours and I'd go to I go work out in the afternoon, then I paint at night. I did this every single day, man. And so I taught him that, right? And I'll tell you, man, I got pictures, and I'm going to send him to you because you're going to have to see this, dude.

It was the coolest one. You know how prison is real racial, right? So American Greed did a thing on us, right? So now my book came out. The hard-to-making money's out. You know, American Greed did an episode on me. Right. And it was weird because the American Greed episode came out like a couple months after I got to that prison where my son was at.

So me and my son are sitting in the in the TV room fucking watching us. It's crazy, man. You know, it's like, what the hell? And, but they played some of his songs, his music on the American Greed. Nice. Yeah, it was awesome. We got to hear it, right? The songs that we made in the studio, you know.

And then so he, a couple of the brothers came to him out on the yard and said, hey, man, we saw the American Green, man, you rap, right? And my son was like, yeah, you know, I used to do it. They were like, do you want to do the show with us? Because you know how they do the shows on the holidays and shit, right? Yeah. They got the rap. They got the rock.

They got the, you know, the Hispanics got their music. So my son comes to me And you know and in the dorm now Now we're cellies, right? Right. You know, son and dad sitting in the cell together. And he comes and he's like,

Hey, dad, he goes, man, they want me to perform with them at the July 4th thing. And I said, who wants you to perform? He said, the brothers, man, they came to me. They've seen us on TV and they heard that song and they were like, man, would you rock with us?

and I said, well, what are you want to do? He's like, well, some of the white dudes, man, were already kind of giving me a hard time about it. Fucking dicks. Yeah. I said, man. Jealous. I said, dude, you do whatever the fuck you want, man.

And if they got a problem, they could come talk to me. And, of course, they didn't have a problem. Right. But, bro, it was the coolest moment, man. So he would go out to the rec yard every day, and there was two other cats, one from Nashville and one from Kentucky somewhere. You know, just young brothers, man, you know.

And so it was them three, and they practice every day, every day, every day. And then it came time, and he was nervous, right? He's like, man, you think they're going to boo me? He was all crazy. I said, listen, man. I said, just go out there and have fun, do your thing. and man he went out there and he rocked that fucking prison man

everyone was out there to see him you know because we were on TV yeah you're a celebrity now became a prison celebrity you know what I got a little prison fame going on and so the whole yard was out there to see him and I was just sitting in the back and bro he when I say he ripped it he had everyone screaming just like

probably one of my proudest moments as a dad watching your son perform in prison. It was nuts, man. I was, though, because he did it, you know? And that's what I was proud of him. I said, you know what? I'm more proud that you got up there and you faced all these.

This isn't like no audience in the world. Yeah, I'm going to say, you could perform in prison. You could perform anyway. You're going to be all right. And then that was like kind of our thing, man. You know, his thing was he was going to do music when he got out. and then I was going to do writing. Painting wasn't even like that was the furthest thing from my mind.

You know, I had no intention of, you know, like painting was just kind of like a side. It was just past the time. I loved the write. I wrote three screenplays. I wrote a book. You know, so that was my thing. And so, yeah, man, for the next two years, man, we were together and we just, you know, I learned how to be a dad, you know.

And I learned the biggest thing for young men. or for just your children or for just, you know, mentorship or whatever it is, is the best way to teach them is to be it yourself. If you're going to tell them not to lie, don't lie. If you're going to tell them to work hard, then work hard. You can't tell them to be work hard, and you're laying your ass down not doing nothing. So I learned that the example was mean. Like whatever I showed him, if I worked out every, because I would work out every,

because I would work out every day. Well, guess what? He worked out every day. All right. He's seen me getting up every morning in writing. Well, guess what he would do? He'd get up and he'd write songs. He'd see me go out at night and paint.

He would go out and practice his music, play the piano. I learned that even now, my children, right? Because I ended up having three more since I got out. Now I got seven. I got two away from a team. But I love them all. And they're great. Every one of them are unbelievable children, you know.

But these ones are like, because my first four, I didn't really get to be a dad, you know? Like I'm just now barely getting over the children I had with, and now I'm just getting over the heartache that they had. Like, Alexis still won't talk to me. Angelina and Ashton, they love me to death, and I'm there for them. I just had Ashton with me. He built the gallery with me. It was a great experience. And now I got three little ones, a nine-year-old.

six-year-old and three-year-old, Da Vinci Love and Lightning. That's their names. But they look at you. They're looking at you. Who are you? What are you? What are you? And so yeah, man, I learned how to be a dad in prison, man. And, you know, I ended up getting out first. He got out like a month later. And for me, you know, I started working right away. I was, you know, like I said, I was delivering, I was cleaning toilet bowls, delivering transporting cars, delivering liquor. I had a little painting studio at this place called Lacuna Lofs. The Cachetori family owned it.

They own a lakeside bank in Chicago, real powerful people, great people, too. They had an artist loft where artists were in there, you know, like studio, and so they wanted me to be in there. they gave me one. And so I would work, and then I'd go paint, and I'd write. And my son ended up going to truck in school, became, you know, he drives a trash truck now. He's doing really well, just bought his first house. I'm so proud of him.

But for me, I found myself back in that same situation, right? Because I'm doing these shit jobs, can't get ahead, right? and I was getting real, real close to giving up. Like, I was real close to saying, like, this shit ain't working, man. And so I'm out about two years, and I'm just tired, right? I've been delivering liquor, getting up at 3 in the morning, delivering 500 cases, man. My body just aches every day. And so I was getting ready to go back, right?

But this time I was going to crack the new note, the visual physics. The purple line in it, they actually did that because of me. That purple line was made because of me, right? Because the paper that I created caused them a problem, right? Okay. So that visual physics is, yeah. It's called visual physics. It was, you know, it's shards of glass.

I learned everything about it, right? Right. And the funny thing is, is that, so here I am. I'm two years out. My son's doing good. right? I'm delivering liquor, but I'm hating life. And I'm just getting to the point where, like, you know, I try to have an art show, right? Because I had some paintings from prison. So I was like, ah, let me see if this works. It bombed, right?

Couldn't get nothing off the ground. People came, drink, eat cheese, went home, you know what I was saying? There was no buying nothing, you know? And so I was just getting to that point where I was like, man, this is, here we go again. I started, I decided I was going to go for one big bang. Fuck it. I'm going to do it, I'm going to do it big. That's how in my mind, right? Right. And I'm going to do the new hunter.

I'm going to break this bitch, right? And here I go on this journey, man, right? But here's the thing. You can't get the equipment no more, right? Computers ain't, back in the day, you put the Photoshop CD in and you can work offline. now everything's online you've got to work off everything online Photoshop your computer it's all apps app shit right they probably did that because of us guys like us right we're using the computer the

wrong way they're like okay we got to watch these assholes right well I mean you even try and print it you can't even print you can't print one down on the thing and hit print well there'll be a thing that'll pop up so you know it's crazy right so here I'm like I can't even print money all right now I feel like a real a loser, right? So what do I do? I start looking like on eBay and shit, right? And now, Grant, I'm only two years out of prison, right? I started looking on eBay and all that shit looking for stuff. And you can't really find an AB Dick 360 offset press. They scrapped it all for the metal, right? Because they're heavy. They're like 800, right? They just all of it got

scrapped, right? The big plate makers and all that shit. So I would find, I would find one in say Cincinnati for like three grand and then, but it wouldn't work. Right. So it would be broke on it, right? If you have to rebuild it. You have to. I went through a crazy process to it. So I ended up, I borrowed some money because I needed money, right, to do the, do this, right? And so I went and I borrowed some money off some pretty dangerous cats, some gangsters. you know, about 100 grand. And I went on a mission, man. I started finding equipment in Ohio,

Minnesota, right? I'd go there, I'd pick it up. I'd run a big truck, pick it up, pay cash, bring it back, tear it down, take the parts I need, get the paper. I was slowly, slowly figuring out how to do the visual physics. Like I was, again, like the euro. Here I am again, about to do the big thing.

But I'm not doing the euro. the New Hundred, right? And I had a secret hiding place in Indiana right on the beach. I had the dopeest criminal, you know, secret hiding pad me. It was awesome, man, right? And so this whole, everything, and so I'm getting ready to do this. I got everything ready to go. And I feel something. I feel like I'm being watched or something's not right. No, you don't feel. You got that six cents, right? So I haven't done nothing yet. Got the machines, I got the paper, I got the ink, I got everything.

I got the process, I got the files, I got everything. I was only missing one thing, and it was the fluorescent ink for the strip. So my strips, even my strips, when you put them under like the UV light, because it'll go red, green, or blue, right, or yellow. So red is 100. So if you go to a strip club, you probably, you're probably married, probably don't go. But if you ever been to strip club, you give them 100, that line glow. for 100.

For 100. Glows red. Right. That strip. What the 50 glow is a different color? Green, I think. And then the 20 is yellow, right? So each one of them glows are different, right?

But the red fluorescent is hard as hell to get. It's an ink. Okay. It's a real thin, like acetone-based, right? Really difficult to get. So that was my last thing I needed, right? It was that, that, and it comes in a little bottle. And so anyway, I was waiting to get that.

And so when I felt like some heat, like, so something was wrong, I just backed off, right? Just stop and would go to my studio and just work at the studio, my art studio. And then a couple weeks go by, things, I'm starting to feel good, right? I'm like, okay, it's time to go. It's time to move. I go to my house, right? And I got the little box of the ink, right? I got two vials of it.

It's going to be enough to do what I need. And I had to stop at the house real quick before I went out to my pad out in Indiana. Because once I go out, so how I was, whenever I would go somewhere to do it, I wouldn't leave until I'm done. I wouldn't leave it alone. Right?

When I go in, I'm there until it's done. It takes a week or two weeks or whatever. I got food stocked up, water, and I'm just working and pounding away and getting the shit done, right? I don't want to leave the place with all this shit fucking everywhere, you know. So anyway, I go to, I'm getting ready to go out, so I had to stop at my house. I stop at the house and I put the box on the counter, and I go into my room.

And when I come out, there's my son standing. He had the day off. See my car out, because we lived in the same area. He saw my car, so he came in. My door was unlocked, and he's staring at the box. He's looking at the shit. And he starts my, man, you fucking asshole. All this shit we went through, this time we were in prison together,

and here you are, faking it like you're doing good, and here you are printing money? So I ain't printing money, it's for art. I told him right away it's for art, man. He said, no, then you're a liar, man. He just went crazy on me. He ran out the house, jumped in his car. I ran out after him.

I literally followed him. You know where he took me to? He fucking took me to the very place that he threw the money at me six, seven years before. He literally drove right to the spot where he threw the money and I got arrested.

Right. Got it out of the car. You remember that? Remember that curb right there? You were fucking sitting there arrested, crying? Like really making me feel small, man. Real little, right? And he's like, I can't believe.

So he's going nuts. I think he's going to tell his mom. Right. She's a cop, right? He's going to tell her right away. So I'm like super freaked out. I had been dating Sarah, my wife now, for like two months. She was at work.

She's a school teacher, right? At a Christian school out of all places, right? So she comes over by my house later that night. I go back to the house I'm just waiting to hear his mom call me you know you're going to jail you fuck her she never does but I'm thinking in my mind I can't do this

I hadn't pulled the trigger yet right everything was ready you know and Sarah comes home and she's got the craziest look on her face and I'm thinking damn does she know what does everyone fucking know like what is this man you know

and she goes, I need to tell you something. And I'm like, what? She goes, I'm pregnant. I'm like, you're what? Because I'm pregnant. Pregnant? Right. I'm like, oh, shit, man.

You know, that's not good, right? You know, like here I am about to print money. It just felt like deja vu again, man. Right. Because the last time with Natalie, I had a baby, right? When I got arrested, you know? Now here I am with this woman that, So I just was like, man, what did I get myself into?

So I come clean to Sarah. I tell her, you know, and she loses it. She's like, I want no part of this. I don't know. She's like, no, no, no, no. And so I tell her, I'm like, I'm not going to do it. I'm going to get rid of everything. I didn't do it yet, so I'm not going to do it, you know.

And I, in my heart, I was. like not going to do it. But I still owed a lot of money. Yeah, I was just a you a hundred thousand dollars. Yeah, a lot of money and I had about I probably had like 30 something left of it. So I spent a good amount of it, you know. And and I, I didn't, I didn't, I was just in a real, yeah, real, real tight place, right? And so I tell her, I'm like, and I told her, I said, look, I owe, I got to go take this money back. And, and then I got to tell them that I, I'm not doing this. And I don't really know how they're going to, how they're going to take it.

And it was in another city. Cincinnati. I had to go down. Anyway, I had some people down there, you know. And so I had to go to Cincinnati, drive to Cincinnati. So the day that I'm going, now this is where it gets weird. So as I'm trying to figure out, what am I going to do, right? It comes on the news that an Asian couple gets bus.

with counterfeit money to Cincinnati airport coming from Chicago. And a whole counterfeit ring got busted in Chinatown. I mean, you talk about, again, remember I tell you, sometimes I could be real lucky? Right. This is fucking one of them, right? So I'm looking at this. I'm like, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. I said, wait a minute.

So that's why I felt like the feds were watching me because Chinatown's like right next to my neighborhood. So if there was a counterfeit ring running out of that, they might have like kind of is art involved in it right he's not right they may have been watching you they may have good possibility they were that I really was feeling something because they busted it

they went in it was all over the news but they went to the couple that was like the main got busted and they were on a plane with the money going to the town that I literally needed to go to so I called my guy that had connected me with them I said hey man I got some real bad news man he said what? I said, man, I can't do this. I said, I'm going to come out there and I'm going to

explain to you why, but just watch the news. He goes, oh, I seen that. I said, you know what I'm talking about, right? He goes, yeah, yeah, I seen that. I said, okay, well, I'll be there and we need to talk about that because it's got a real problem. Now, it had nothing to do with me, but I was going to use it. Yeah, yeah, of course. I was going to use it. I said, why, this is a gift from God, man, you know? So the only thing I had, the only thing I had, the only thing. The only thing I had that I felt was any value to me was my art. I had like, I had like six pieces. I had this really cool silver.

I could show you a picture of it. It was a silver, $100 bill that I did in silver, handpaint. It was really badass. I had some really cool stuff. And I told Sarah, I said, listen, man, I'm gonna go, I gotta go out here, I'm gonna bring the money, and I'm gonna bring my art. She goes, well, what are you gonna do what you are?

And I said, well, I'm gonna give it. It's the only thing I have, man, that is, worth anything. And she goes, you think they're going to take your fucking heart? She tells me, right? Are you crazy? I was like, I don't know what else to do. I mean, it's all I have.

Man, bro, that was the longest drive of my fucking life. You talk about, like, it was like the cell thing, walking into the cell with the gangbangers thinking you're not going to come out, you know? And so I drove out there and I met him at a little diner. And I told my dude everything, and my dude, me and him were real close, you know. It was his boss that I didn't really, I wasn't like that with, you know. And I told him, this is how much I got left, you know. I said, you could have everything.

You can come out. I'll even bring a truck out there and you can pull everything I bought. I said, but man, I can't do shit. It's done. It's over. They're all over me, you see. So he was like, no, I don't. I said, and if we do this, we're all going to go to jail, everyone, if we do this.

I can promise you. So he was like, oh, I believe you, man. He goes, but we got to go talk to the dudes. You got to explain that to him, figure it out. And so we went, man, and it was crazy, dude. I'll never forget, man. It was an old warehouse, you know, no windows. Plastic on the floor.

Just like, just, I really thought it was, I was done. It was fucking over, right? It was the scene from Goodfellas playing in your mind where he walked into that room and the plazs. It's plastic, you're done, right? And dude was sitting like, you know, he just stared at me. He didn't say shit.

Let me talk, explain myself. And then just stayed quiet for a little while. And he did the thing that I hoped he was going to do, which I didn't think he was going to do, but he did. And that's what he said, what do you have besides the money? Mm-hmm.

You have anything. And I said, well, man, I got all my art. It's the only thing that's valuable to me. He goes, you got art? He started laughing. Fucking art, huh? Right, art? I said, yeah, I got art.

That's all I have. I said, because I could tell you this. This is why I told him. I said, if you let me walk out of here, I'm going to go be an artist, and I'm going to make it. And that art's going to be worth every bit of it. may not now maybe not today

but it will be you know and I even think one of his partners said oh well we can make it or something you kill you kill an arras right like he was playing around but it seemed a little funny you know and so he took it

he took the art he said well let me see it bringing in it was three it was three little bills one big one it was beautiful it was really beautiful shit man but it wasn't worth no money at that time and he's like, you know what, man?

He goes, you know, boy here says that you'll do this. He goes, I'm going to let you go. We're clear. It's over. I said, really? I said, yeah, it's done. You go. If I was ever going to be nervous, I'd have been nervous right then.

Well, I even get goosebumps right now because when I walked out of there, man. I didn't know what was going to happen, man. I drove back to Chicago, man, just like, wow, what in the fuck is going on, you know? And Sarah was so happy to see me, man, because she was crying when I was leaving. I couldn't imagine the stress I put on her, you know, being pregnant and all.

I get back to Chicago, and I go to my studio, Lacuna Lofts, man, and I just, I'm sitting there, ain't got a job, got no money. I ain't got no art. gave all the pieces I had, you know, and just there was nothing, you know, I had nothing. And I was sitting in the lobby of the building and Joe Catch the Tori Sr., the old man was walking by and he'd seen me. He's like, hey, man, what's, what's wrong with you? You know, maybe I had my head down. I don't know what it was, you know.

And I said, man, Joe, I just can't get it together. So I've been out a couple years now. I can't even print money. I just, I don't know what I can do. And he just kind of stared at me for a minute, man. And he said, you know what? He goes, why don't you come work for me? He goes, I got a job for you.

Does it $5,000 a month good enough for you? It's $5,000 a month. I was like, well, what do I got to do? He says, we're doing a bunch of work around the building. We're bringing artists in from all over the world. And I need a resident artist to get them supplies and move the lift and do all this. And I was looking for someone to do it,

but I want you to be the one. And man, dude, Joe Cajitori Sr., I will love him forever for what he did for me, you know? Because not only did he give me a job, but, like, he would bring me into meetings. I became the first mate on his boat. He had a 120-foot yacht.

I was the first mate every Saturday and Sunday. Like, I worked my ass off. for him. He'd fly me to San Francisco with him if he had to do a business meeting or something. I got to meet the mayor, the secretary of state, Jesse White, and he taught me, he taught me that he said, and you hear this, and it's so cliche, but you know, you could count who the five closest people to you is going to let you see what kind of success you're going to have. right because up until that point man I still had been hanging around all the guys in the neighborhood

you know even though I wasn't doing it this is what I was doing going out now I was with Joe every day and I was with Joe's friends right John he built the he built the Chase building right the Chase building downtown he was the one who built it right I was being I was around men who were extremely successful

beyond success right and you learn how to be successful And then it makes you want to be because you're around these men, you know, who are just like they're, you know, Joe owns Lakeside Bank. It's like 32 banks, man. Realist, and then just everyone I was around with him was doing big things. And then I would sell art to them. Start selling art to them.

Started to become friends with them. And I never looked back, man. I worked with Joe for a year. and then the job came up, it was done. And, you know, me and my son reconciled. He was happy. He's seen that I was done. And then I started painting houses when, but Joe told me, he pulled me to the side.

He said, listen, I still want you to come with me, you know, when I'm downtown, come, I want you to hang out, I'll call you. We're still your friends. You know, you had this year to grow to get, you feel good? I was like, yeah, man, I could do this, you know. I started painting houses union painting. I was making pretty good money, actually. And then I did that for like, I don't know, nine months, 10 months. I was still painting, but I was painting for me in the, you know, in the basement of my house.

You know, I would go down there and paint. And then the shit hit the fan, you know. Come to find out, my boss was a gambler. gambling away the payroll, right? It was right around Christmas, you know. Maybe a little, maybe, it was right there. So he laid me and two other guys off. Then my car got, I let someone use my car and fucked it all up,

blew the engine. And then my house burned up. All right. All right. You talk about like, you're finally coming out of it. You're finally getting it together and then this shit happens, you know? And you're like, what the fuck, man? And, uh, but again, I have.

I had good people. Who did I go to? I went to Joe. I went to the, I went to that instead of going to the people who would be like, well, fuck it out. You got to go do it. You know, I went to the people who were like, hey, you're going to get through this. Come on. You got this. You know, I went, I went to the right people. And I ended up, you know, the guys helped me get a little place. So, so I got a little place for me and Sarah and the baby. and then I was in I was one of my friends who was an artist knew someone down in in Miami who was doing art basil that had a couple spots on the wall and said I could pay $500 to hang my art for art basil right it was four spots actually so it was going to be two grand for me to hang so I had to pay to hang my art up at someone's spaced down there right so I borrowed the money two grand again yeah I'll take chances so tight job right I borrowed the money and uh I I loaded up the car load up my truck I had it now I ended up getting a little you know truck and um and I and I drove down here you know I drove down here and and didn't really know anyone matter of

if I didn't know anyone you know my dude owns hotels so he gave he got me a hotel right which was kind of cool. He did get me a hotel at the Turnberry golf resort. So like, you know, I'm pulling up into the Turnberry with like Beverly Hillbelly type shit, you know what I'm saying? Like, you know, it's nuts. And the first

two days, man, just, you know, I'd go out and I'd try to meet people and it was just like, it was like fucking hitting a brick wall, you know? Nothing. Couldn't get nothing going, right? Even the place where I had the art hanging, it was like a party.

night. It was even like, I was like, man, this is, I got ripped off, man, you know. It was nice. I'm not going to say that. It was all right. Because if they do listen to it, I do, I am appreciative of them. Let me hang the shit there. But they made me pay, you know, but it wasn't like a gallery setting, you know. Right. And come to find out, you know, Arbazzo was a big, you know, it's a corporate scam, man, the whole thing. Now I understand it completely. Back then, I didn't. So here it is. I'm sitting on, uh, I'm, um, I'm, um, I'm, um, I'm, I'm, I'm, in South Beach. A couple of my friends flew down.

We were having something to eat. And one of our guys in Chicago says, hey, you know, one of our boys is down here. He works at the doors at clubs and stuff. Maybe he could get you into something. So we ended up meeting Joe Benson's his name. Love Joe. And he was from Chicago Heights.

And I showed him the book, The Art of Making Money. Showed him some pictures of the art. He said, man, it's going to be. really hard to get people over by where you're at because you're like in the design district and everything's happening in South Beach and Windwood. So where you're at is not really the best spot

for me to try to get people over there. And I'm like, oh shit and I really did waste my money. He goes, but let me try to get you into some places where I could, you know, you could show your work and show the book and maybe you could get, you know, something happened. So the first night he invites

me to this gallery, this guy, Marcel, was a pretty big time art broker, but his main artist was Mr. E, who was a money artist. I almost even felt like the dude copied me. Right. Right. But he was in Miami, so he was blowing up

where I was in Chicago couldn't get shit going. And so that was kind of like a ding. Because I go to this thing and I see in money art, I'm like, ah, man, this is the dude that knocked me off, man, right? You don't know, it sounds like what, though? What's his? The next night, he invites me to found a fountain, blue because Mark Anthony is having an event. So me and my guys get there. We're all excited. We're

going to go to a Mark Anthony event. They wouldn't let us in. He comes down. Joe comes down. He's like, guys, I'm sorry, but Mark said no more. Done. I can't even get you in. There's nothing I can do. So now I'm like, damn, man, this sucks, man. You know, two days I struck out. So then that night, around two in the morning, Joe calls me. He said, hey, dude, man, I feel really bad for what happened. He said, man, how about we throw you your own event at the airport hangar? So we mean airport hangar. He goes, well, I work for jet smarter, private jet company. He goes, and there's a hangar out in Okalaka or whatever, however they say it. He said, and we'll do an event for you at the airport hanger from three to five. He said, it's not in the

morning, so it won't mess with nobody's morning, and it's not at night. We'll get them right in that little, where it's a little times fan. He goes, can you bring NART there? I'm like, well, I got to go ask them people if I could tear it off the wall. It was on a Saturday, right? Yanking that shit off the wall. Oh, I did too. That's what I did. I was right away, man.

I went to the place. I said, I'll be there, man. So that morning I shot. I went and rented me some easels, got me four easels, grabbed the art off the walls, shot out to the airport hangers, set up. Joe, he had a little DJ, he had some liquor. It was real nice, man. And like the first like 30, 40 minutes, nobody showed up.

So I was again like, oh, man, one thing about an artist, you learn how to be disappointed. You know, you learn how to deal with it, just deal with it. Yeah. It's going to happen. So the first 30, 40 minutes, none happens. And then I stepped outside for a second. Or I stepped out. I wanted to see the jet.

There was a bad ass black and silver jet out in the hangar. So I went to go look at it, you know. And when I came back in, there was probably like, I'd stay after like 10 minutes. There were like 20 people there. I was like, oh, okay, we're getting some people. By the time it was done, the whole place was smack 100. I walked outside.

There were Ferraris pulling up. There was limos pulling up. There was all kinds of Johnny Frank from everything. I mean, it was insane. It turned out to be an insane showing, right? And that's where I met Arnold Schwarzenegger's VP, Natalia, Sol. She was awesome. And I sold all four paintings to a pharmaceutical duty.

He had 120-foot yacht, another big yacht, right? He loved the art, loved the book, loved everything. He said, hey, he said, bring all the art to my boat tonight. Can you do that? I said, absolutely, right? What are you going to say? I got a video, I'll show you. Got me carrying the art first time on this big-ass yacht, right?

And it was just great. It was such a way to end. It sold all four pieces, not for a lot. It was like $4,000, $6,000. man for a guy, you know. That's going to hold you over. Hold me over. But gave me confidence, though, too.

What it really did more than anything gave me confidence that I could do this. Right. Right. There's something here. I just got to figure out how to tap into it, you know. And how I tapped into it was Natalia, who worked for Arnold, she says, hey, listen, man, I love your energy.

I love the crowd that came together. I love your story. She said, would you be willing to do an event with us with Arnold in February at the Nobu? I said, well, hell yeah, man. She goes, okay, so you're in. Here's my number. Let's coordinate, and this is when it's going to be. Man, on my drive back to Chicago, dude, I was so excited, man, and I went to work, man.

Man, you talk about it. I got down. I worked Christmas. I worked Christmas Eve, New Year's Eve, New Year's Day. I did not take one day off all the way up until I had to come back. I went back down there with, like, I went down there with like 10 pieces. the nobu was amazing got to meet alonzo mori

and got to just meet all kinds of cool people sold all four pieces for $67,000 gave Arnold his chunk right so I still walked away with a chunk of money right right and it was just amazing

it was just the most amazing thing and then I shot across the country to Vegas and did something with the Ali family Ashida Ali is my friend right. Nico Ali, the boxer, he did an exhibition for me, and we had Muhammad Ali paintings in the ring. It was freaking awesome. So I had this great time at the Nobu, sold all my art,

shot to Vegas, did an unbelievable thing with the Ali family, shot home, and then I got the call that I was invited to Arnold Schwarzenegger's house, to his house in L.A. They said, hey, we got great news for you, man. What you did at Nobu was unbelievable. So he only invites three people to his house once a year, and you're one of them. I said, no way. I'm going to be able to meet the Terminator.

I'm going to be a determinate her, man. And so, yeah, she's like, it's going to be in June. So, bam, I went back to work. You know, I got money now a little bit. You know, we're doing all right. And I went to work, man, and I got down. And I drove all the way to L.A. I rented an SUV

loaded up I was only allowed to show three pieces at Arnold's but I had the thought like okay I'm going to meet some great people there I'm going to bring everything I can bring and I'll take them to the hotel and I'll sell out of the hotel

you know right whatever man I'm a hustler man I'm going to sell right so I get we get to L.A. staying at the hotel I do something really cool man because I'm like I'm telling my guys so Frank one of my guys Frank Frankie G he's been with me since the very beginning right

he's with me everywhere I go man he's my dog man you know so I'm telling Frank I'm like Frank I got to figure out how to stand out in this crowd because we're going to be at Arnold's house and there was Sylvester Stallone there Jason stay all you know all of them right I said man I got to do something and it was a cowboy themed event so you had to dress like a cowboy cowboy hat shit right And so I tell Frank, I was like, Frank, we got to get some $196

00 bills. And I'm going to cut them up like a puzzle and I'm going to put them around my cowboy hat. He said, what are you going to do? I was like, yeah, man, it would be super cool. And everyone's going to see those hundreds on that black cowboy hat. They're going to be going to be going crazy. They're going to want to know what's going on. He goes, well, where the hell are we going to get some old hundreds?

I said, well, we'll just have to do it like the old days, man. We'll just have to keep hitting the banks and say, hey, my daughter. was born in 1996. Can I get a $196,600? And that's what you did. We went to like six different banks. I didn't go in. I had Frank Gold because I didn't want to be the one doing it.

And I stayed up all night cutting these little puzzle pieces out of the hundreds. And then I glued them to the hat, right? The hat was badass. We get to the, we get to Arnold's house. I called myself Artie Cash, right? Artie Cash, because Johnny Cash, I was wearing all black, whatever, you know. And it was great. And so, you know, here I am with all these people.

And Tom Arnold, he's the auctioneer, right? So I showed in the video. I'll say some crazy shit, bro. We get the chance you'll love it, man. So Tom Arnold, he's like talking, right? And they got my piece up there. And it auctioned for $75,000. Whoa.

Wow. And they made me talk to everybody. So Tom Arnold, they had me staying in the front. And so all night, though, all night, everybody kept coming up to me. Hey, what's the deal with that hat? Right. Did it did exactly what I wanted it to do, right? Is that hundreds on there?

Oh, yeah, I'm the artist. I said, whoever wins the auction tonight I'm giving the hat to, everybody wanted the hat, bro. Right? That's why that piece went for $75,000 because it was the Rizuto family. They own Conair and Queens and art and all that. Beautiful people, Susie Rizuto. And she, well, they're the ones who spent the money.

So they do the auction. They auctioned it for 75. You'll see me on the video. I give the hat to Sergio Rezudo, who's her son. Right. Because he wanted it. I said, here, man, you won. Here's the hat.

And then Susie tells me, she says, Hey, we're staying at the Waldorf from Beverly Hills. Do you have any more art? Well, I just happened to have a few. pieces. Yeah. Right? I said, I got a few. She goes, well, I want you to bring them all to the Waldorf tomorrow. I said, all of? She goes, well, how many you have? I said, oh, I got quite a few, man. I loaded up on this one. Bring them all. I want to see everything. So I'm telling Frank, we're jumping over down. Like, Frank, what the hell? You're crazy? Dude, it was like some movie shit, man. We pulled,

we had a little, like, we, you know, I had the SUV suburban. It was loaded with the paintings. we pulled up to the Waldorf. She had the whole restaurant closed for her. She's billionaire. She hers, right? And it was me, Frank, Tommy, Mia. Because a couple of cats from Chicago came to hang out with me. And we're just loading up art in the Waldorf.

It's like some pretty woman shit, you know what I'm saying? Like it was like one of them scenes. And we got the art all in the Waldorf. It's all spread over. And her and husband are just looking at everything. and she says, yeah, I love it all. I'm taking it all. I said, what?

And even Frank was like, well, this, it's not, she said, Frank, you help art? And he's like, yeah, well, you and Morris, my husband, go figure out what, this, we're going to take it all. And, yeah, $467,000 later. Fuck. I gave Arnold a. chunk of it.

And then I went back to Chicago and opened my gallery. I built a gallery in my own neighborhood right on Morgan Street, 33rd of Morgan. And dealt with a lot of shit there, gang shit. Had gone as pointed at me a couple of times, broke into my gallery.

But it changed the neighborhood. The gallery changed the neighborhood. I watched the neighborhood. More galleries start, you know, like gentrification. Well, it happened. I went right on that corner. man, and everyone was telling me, art, are you crazy? You're going to get killed.

What are you doing, man? You need to go downtown, right? I'm like, you know what, man? I'm not going to go downtown and spend $20,000 a month just because I have it. Right. My boy owns the building, and he's giving it to me for nothing. People come. If they want to see the art, if they want to meet me, they'll come here.

And I did. It worked perfect. People from New York, everywhere would fly all over to meet me, you know? They'd have security guards. Sometimes, you know, but, you know, and sometimes I would even have security if somebody big was coming through, you know, just because I wanted to make sure that that nothing happened. And, man, I just rocked it ever since then, man. I applied to a couple galleries and they snubbed me. So I was like, you know, I'm just going to stay independent.

And then, man, since then, I've opened a gallery in Beverly Hills. I've opened a gallery in West Melrose. I've opened a gallery in Boca Raton. I now have one in Lincoln Park and so I've kind of created my own my own system you know

and what I've learned about art is that the most important thing with people with art anyway is to connect to connect with it right if the two things that I tell artists is that

so if you see my art you'll see my art event you come to Chicago whatever you know there's little things in it that are different like i use interference paints i use metallic paints i use watermarks i use all kinds of security features from the money in my art there's hidden things all in it so you could have a piece of i've literally had clients say dude they call me out of the blue dude i've had this painting for a year and i just seen something in it why didn't you tell me it was there i said because it wasn't meant for me to tell you it's meant for you to find it right all my art's like

that. Everything in it, but they love that, right? The collectors and clients, they love it when they're looking at something and then they say, damn, did that just change colors on me? And it did, right? And then the other thing is to connect, right? You want people to be able to connect with it. So, you know, there's stuff I do commercially, but then there's stuff that I do that is heartfelt and thoughtful that someone could look at, you know. Like, I have a painting. I know I can show you right now and you're going to relate to it 100%. It's a man sitting behind a bar is looking at painting.

Right? You painted in prison, right? Yeah. So you would understand that piece if you've seen it. Not everyone would. You would, though. It's at the gallery now. It's beautiful. It's a silhouette of a man standing behind prison bars looking at... So that's what you do. But that's,

you know, the art has been, you know, the art has saved my life. You know, it's... It's... my life when I went to Cincinnati. I saved my life after my house burned down. Save my life even now, you know, even now, still, right? But yeah, that's pretty much, man, what's happened. Pretty crazy, huh?

Yeah. Yeah. Are you good? Do these guys in Cincinnati, do they still have those paintings? They do. So you want to hear the rest of that part of the story? Yeah. So when I go out to L.A., so the pandemic hits, 2019, I think it's going to be my year, right?

I think it's going to be my year. Everything's rocking. I got the gallery. I got New Line Cinnamon, cinema coming out. They want to do a show in Chicago at my gallery. The executive producers are flying out, like literally from New Line. They sent the whole team out. They're following me around with cameras and everything.

I just did Rose Royce. I took over Rose Royce, and they gave, Rose Royce gave me a car, right? And I painted on it, and it fucking sold for 800,000. I'll show it to you. I'll send you the article. Like, I'm rocking 19, right? Okay, I mean, I'm just, after that Arnold thing,

I'm just smoking it, right? And so here it is. And so in 20, so 2020, I had the Fisher Foundation I was going to do in February. I was doing Arnold's again in June. I was doing Rose Royce, New York, time because I did Rose Royce Chicago. I was going to do Rose Royce, New York in September, and then Art Basel December. And they were going to follow me around with cameras the whole year,

right? All year they were going to follow me around when I did this. I'm thinking I'm on top of the world, man, right? I'm literally driving a Rose Royce around, right? Right. Fuck it, you know, like whatever, man. And, um... The far cry from the kid in the projects. Far cry, man, you know? And so here it is. You know, I'm getting ready. I'm all excited. I didn't, and I'm watching, though, because I'm really into, like, I read a lot, and I watch a lot of, like, documentaries, podcasts. I've watched probably 20 or years, you know, watched a lot of years. Patrick Ben Davis, I've watched quite a few.

That's why I was a trip when Brad called me and said, hey, Matt wants to meet you. I'm like, what? Oh, fuck right on, man. I love his shit, man, you know, because you just got that, that, you know, that look, the voice. It's just great, man, you know? Anyway, lost or shy. I'm a fan. Ha, ha, ha, just messing with your dog.

I'm just, it's good. For me, it was more than anything that you were in prison. I knew you were in prison. I'm like, yeah, that's fucking one of us, man, you know. So what happens is, I got all this shit lined up. The fucking TV people are coming out. You know, I'm on top of the world. But I'm watching the COVID, like, just ravished China.

No one's even paying attention over here, right? But I'm paying attention to it. I read seven papers. I read Jerusalem Post. I read Al Jazeera. I read a bunch of shit from all over the world. Every morning I read same fucking papers, right? China, a global China, right? I'm always, I know what's going on in the world, right? So I see this fucking virus just ripping through China and I'm like, man, that shit looks pretty nasty, man. I hope it don't come over here, right? And it did, right? So in January, they canceled my Fisher Foundation thing. That was the first thing to go. And then, uh, like mid-February,

they canceled my TV show. Right? That really fucking hit me. Like, I was just devastated, man, you know? And then they canceled Arnold's. And that was, that was when I knew, oh, this is done, you know?

And I, I had traded some paintings for an RV, so I borrowed her all the time. I've traded paintings for a Porsche. Payments for RV. It was a 2018 Thor Ace, 30-footer. It was awesome. Had a Kingside bat. I loved it.

But I was going to give it away to charity. I was going to paint on it and then give it away. I wasn't going to use it. And so I told Sarah, I was like, hey, Sarah, we got to get the fuck out of Chicago. I was in prison when they had quarantined the prison because of that SARS. Big Springs, they shut down for six months. months because it was that bird flu one or whatever the fuck was they didn't really make a big deal about it but it fucked a lot of people up in my prison I was watching people walk around

throwing up blood and shit bad so I already knew what was going to happen they were going to give you a fucking bag lunches and tell you to stay on your cell right that's what they were going to do and that's what they did right stay your ass in the house and you know anyway so I said we got get out of here and so my dude he had a hundred acre ranch down in Texas and so I had the whole RV completely, you know, tuned up. I closed my gallery down and shot to Texas on the day on March 13th. It was Friday 13th. We left out of Chicago. I'll never forget it. Pulling, so I had my RV pulling a Porsche, just rolling right out of Chicago. I watched. It was like two in the morning. The National Guard Humvees rolling down Halston Street, right? And thank God I

did leave because the police station on the corner that I lived by completely got they ride it and destroyed the whole city Chicago got completely destroyed and uh I was sitting on a 16 acre of lake in an intertube you know that's what I did for pandemic and then once it was over that's when I shot to L.A. So the TV people they after um after things kind of calmed down and everything you know I think it was like around August. Yeah, because it was August, because I did that historical bank. I did a historical bank.

I did the whole, it was like a Sistine Chapel type thing. And they hired me to repair it and paid me really well. And so then I was, the TV people said, well, listen, why don't you come out to L.A.? And we'll try to make the show out here. And I was like, all right, fuck it, you know.

I mean, there ain't shit going on here. And, you know, Chicago, Texas. there's nothing for me here. And so we went back to Chicago, visited Sarah's family. They thought I was crazy. There was literally a pandemic, wildfires and riots.

And I want to take my family across the country to L.A., into the heart of it, right? But I did. I went out there. I took a shot. I rented a house up in the hills for a lot of money, and I turned it into a gallery because you couldn't have anything on the street.

You know? and I ended up meeting this super over big time realtor out there that owned a bunch of shit in Beverly Hills and he came up to the house gallery and he loved it so much he said hey I got a spot in Beverly Hills that they put out all the windows

and the business moved out and I had all new windows put on and I don't want the place empty would you do what you did in this house? there I said well I'm not really trying to spend any money out here you know I mean too much uncertainty he said no I'm gonna give it to you I said what do you mean I give it to me he said well it's supposed to be rented out to a restaurant but that's gonna be for like a year so you could have it I said really so now I'm thinking it's like some hole in the wall joint in

Beverly Hills right like the very corner tip of Beverly Hills no it was on Santa Monica and Cannon across the street from the Beverly Hill sign the one block over from Rodeo with 12-foot windows of 4,000 square foot space. I killed it. I killed it. The place is amazing. It was amazing.

Like, when I say, when luck hits me, it hits, you know? And that was one of their moments, you know? And then I ended up shooting over to West Hollywood on Melrose and La Ciena. And then I went back to Chicago. What happened with the guys? So this is what happened with the guys. So when I went out to L.A.

And I opened up the Beverly Hills Gallery. My dude that was friends with him came out to L.A. when it opened up. He was out there. I think his daughter was going to school out there or something. So he stopped by my gallery. And I hadn't seen him in shit, damn there, since that happened. You know, I might have seen him once, right? And he came and he's like, bro, this is amazing, man.

You've got a gallery in Beverly Hills. I'm like, yeah, man. I was like, it's been a lot, long road since I've seen you. He goes, well, guess who else lives out here? I said, who? He said, nut. I said, who? He said, no.

I said, he's here? He lives here? He's like, yeah, he lives up in Brentwood. I said, he goes, actually he's having a gathering this weekend. You should come. He'd be excited to see you. I said, this is the guy that you owed the money to. Yeah.

that you gave him the paintings. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It was wild. Yeah. I couldn't believe it.

I said, so he's here. He's like, yeah. So I said, well, yeah, man. I says, every, he goes, yeah, no, it's good. You were done that day, man. But I think he'd really love to see you, man. He don't know you're out, you know. Yeah.

So I went, I went up to that weekend. I went up to Brentwood and there he was like a king fan, man. It was crazy. He was sitting by his pool, chilling. And he just, my, when I walked through, He just smiled. He said, yeah. He goes,

our boy told me you had a gallery in Beverly Hills. He goes, I'm going to come down to see it, man. He goes, I just want to let you know, man. I'm real proud of you, man. You did it. You told me that night

that you were going to go be an artist. And fuck if you did it, man. You did it. And he did. He came to my gallery and he bought a painting. He bought a fucking painting, man. He was so proud of me.

I met a couple people through him, too, actually. That was the full circle moment, man. That was the full circle moment with him. When he walked into my gallery and just, what, 10 years ago, I was in his city begging for my life, damn there, you know? And now here he is in Beverly, you know, in my gallery. Like, it was just, but I've had a lot of cool moments like that, man. But that was maybe the coolest one, man. When he walked in, man, just the look on his face of just like, I could see he felt proud.

Yeah. He felt proud that, you know, not only. did he let me go. Right. But then I went and did what I said, I'm going to do. I'm kind of glad I didn't kill you now. Yeah, I'm glad you to kill you. Or I might have had to kill you so the money.

It would have been worse something. You know, I had to put you under it. But no, man, it's been great, man. Dude, life has been, it's been interesting for sure, man. You know, it's still going. You know, it's still going. So, hey, you guys, I appreciate you watching. Do me favor.

If you like the video, please hit the subscribe button, hit the bell so you get notified a video like this. Share the video. Also, if you want to follow Art on his Instagram channel, we are going to leave the link in the description. You can go there. You can follow him. You can check out his art. It's amazing.

Also, you can buy the book, the art of making money. It's on Amazon. We will also leave the link there. I really do appreciate you guys watching. Thank you very much. Also, if you want to be a guest, we're also going to leave the link to our website. So you can go there. You can fill out an application.

it's like five questions. And then you leave a short video of you just briefly telling me something about your story. And we will get back with you. Thank you very much. See you.