Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast - Prison Life for VitalyzTv | Extorted, Desperate, & Locked Up Abroad

Episode Date: April 19, 2025

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Vitali just got arrested in the Philippines. We're going to be talking about that. We're also going to put several locked up abroad clips at the end of this video. You want to start and kind of talk about who he is? So this dude Vitaly is one of the OG pranksters on the internet. So he was one of the first dudes who blew up and actually made a career and eventually millions of dollars from pranking people on the internet, making videos about it and in fact like how long ago was this a decade ago 15 to years to a decade ago

and then um to the point where all his um pranks are classics in like so many people so many YouTubers and streamers do they just copy it so there's like thousands of copies from his original ideas so he's like super OG when it comes to pranks you know on the internet and apparently he's been getting a lot of trouble so last year he was on trial um for beating someone up a woman in Miami so eventually he gets out and uh this year so he's just trying to revive his career pretty much so it's going to going on and there's been a trend lately of these, they call them nuisance streamers now, where the most famous guy right now is called Johnny Somali, right? And he's, he's an American, and he goes to Asian countries and

acts like a complete idiot, try to pick fights just to get attention and clicks, and eventually gets monetized, and he makes money off of it. And this is, he's been going around all these Asian countries. And right now, he's finally been arrested in Korea. And he's facing serious charges out there. I'm talking about Johnny Somali. And then, um, so he's getting a lot of attention doing that. So I guess this guy of a tally, he just gets out of, uh, of trial or whatever. And he needs to survive his career. So why not just, just make the biggest flash possible, right? Um, but what I think he made his biggest mistake is he did not know the Philippines and he decided to do it there.

Because pretty much the, I don't know what your experience with Filipinos is Matt, but the way Filipinos are is just, they're just jovial, they're just really nice people. So I think he thought that he would be able to get away with a lot of stuff because of the way Filipinos are. But the thing about Filipinos is that it's not really known is that they're nice but if you cross a certain line, they gang up on you because I don't know if you know the history of the Philippines it's been colonized by Spain, USA and Japan. So there's a lot of

like pent up like I don't say willingness to defend you know pride and what what's happening with Vitale so he did try to try to copy these nuisance streamers and like I said he did it in the wrong country where it's just it's just going to make any other prison any other and not just the prison the actual sentences like they don't mess around there it's just not known so he just didn't know this I guess going into it but it's it's brutal he's he's in for what i would consider hell on earth so president of the hellopines did you see this video it's like 10 it was like six hours ago where he said he's doing five or 10 years uh he did say it's time but he's definitely he because right now

it's uh election season in the philippines so what's going to happen is all these politicians that are running are going to use this guy for their campaigns so he's going to get it's not looking good for him at all because like I said the elections and these politicians these are some of the worst politicians you'll ever like dirty dirty politicians so they're willing to do anything and if they're going to if they have to drag the students name through the mud so be it and that's what's going to happen um and since the president's already made a comment about it. They're for sure, for sure, going to drop the hammer than this guy.

I have a friend that is currently in the Thailand, is in Thailand. And he talks about how, you know, he's walking the streets and he's like, there's no, there's no garbage on the street. There's no trash on the street. And he says, like, everybody's super, super nice. And he was talking about how they're extremely respectful. and they have that a big thing for them is respect and like their word is like really like if they say they're going to do something they do you know what I'm saying he was he was basically saying like that respect um is a big big thing there they don't you know it's kind of like you go to japan and you get on the subway and there's there's a police there's like a monitor there that like you don't don't get your cell phone don't you're not loud you're quiet there's no trash on the street everybody polite it's it's so you know that's that's just normal for asian countries i would

say because um that comes from confusionism if you know like they say confucius say and so it's in chinese he's a chinese philosopher whatever from thousands of years ago but the influence spread definitely all throughout asia and basically what confusionism is is like the complete opposite of American culture in a sense like it's not like your individuality doesn't mean a thing you know what I mean it's all about the group it's all about the family it's all about the community um what your needs the needs of the community far outweigh the needs of the individual when it comes to yeah because of confusionism so most Asian countries have some sort of influence of confusionism I would say so um this kind of behavior just like it's like an alien it's for an Asian to see

this kind of behavior it's like what is this is this an alien so it's just an agent we didn't even think of acting that way yeah so they don't know how to even react right yeah because what was the name of the guy that there was a guy that was like this and it was in the u.s and he was same thing he was a we'd go around annoying people and he there was a was it a door dash guy that had picked up a piece or something he was getting in his face annoying him and the guy pulled a gun out and shot him and then went to trial and they dropped the they dropped the charges because it made sense to me it's like what are you doing get out of my face wow i mean that's that's what i want to bring up too it's like what how do you feel

Matt, like about the USA right now, where in, did you hear about this dude Carmelo Anthony? That's not familiar. What's? So there's this kid, right? He's a high school kid. And there's footage of him killing,

stabbing the other high school kid, right? Yeah. And there's footage of it. And just as of yesterday, the judge let him off. on bail and somebody and they started like a go fund me for them that's already raised four and fifty thousand dollars so like what's like the contrast for me is just so huge like here we are like i would say like the most civil would you consider us the most civilized

nation but yet we just let murderers go just like that and then out there somebody just disrespects people and then he's in for like almost a decade who knows you know so how do you feel about that like that contrast right there um i don't know he's a kid i could see letting him out on on it's just it's bail you know what i'm saying um so in a way i don't know that he is a danger right now i think he he probably thought he was a tough guy and you know the one kid told him, hey, you're sitting under the wrong tent. Maybe they got lippy. He pulled a knife out.

He stabbed them. I think that's probably a manslaughter. That's probably 15 to 20 year, a 15 to 20 year sentence. He's also, I think he's a kid, right? I think he's like a teenager. He's not, he shouldn't have. I'm not quite sure. Yeah, he shouldn't have brought a knife.

He shouldn't have brought a knife, but it's not premeditated to the point where he knew, hey, I'm going to kill this guy. I think he had a knife because kids are stupid. You know what I'm saying? Kids will bring like a gun or a knife to school because they think, I need protection. The truth is you don't need protection and you're going to get in more trouble with that weapon. I think it's a stupid thing that he did. And I think he's probably guilty of manslaughter, which is not premeditated murder.

I think I think probably he maybe he should have got bond only because I don't think he's a danger right now. I think right now he's crying his eyes out. he's terrified. What bothers me is that his family is acting like, because I know the case, I remember the case you're talking about. The one kid, it was a black kid and the white kid told him to kind of get up and you're in the wrong thing. We don't know how that, I don't know how that conversation went. I know that his brother was there to witness the, we witness it. I don't know if he was overly aggressive. I'm not sure how it went. Like, I'm a big believer in a jury's going to know. You and I aren't going to know. We know what the means.

media told us. You know, how many times is the media told us aversion? And then a year later, two years later, you find out what really happened. And then people scream about how, why did the jury let that person go? Well, the jury let that person go because they spent four days reviewing the evidence that you didn't see. You know, do I think O.J. Simpson, I think O.J. Simpson is guilty. And he should have gone to prison for slaughtering these two people. But the jury saw all the evidence. and the jury said this most of the evidence came from or was tainted by a detective that is a known racist that then got on the stand and lied so do we if we throw out that evidence because we can't trust that evidence now do we have enough to convict him i do i think in my heart

he's guilty yes but did i see enough evidence to put this man away for the rest of his life no so i'm a big believer and let that process kind of you know it'd be different look if he was an illegal alien that had stabbed somebody or rob someone. My fear is he we're never going to catch this guy. He's going to be out and about for the next 10 years robbing and pillaging and plundering or go back to his country. Don't let that guy out. Or if it's someone who's been arrested multiple times for this type of behavior, okay, he doesn't get out. You see what I'm saying like this is just a kid. He may be an asshole and what he did was absolutely fucked up. But he's probably on an ankle monitor sitting in his parents living room right now crying his fucking eyes out and realizing

just how much trouble he's in his best chances to try and take some kind of a plea that's going to get him out of prison in the next 10 years and try and salvage the rest of his life because he took someone's life and you know it's manslaughter and you could have walked away so but also keep in mind i'm i also live in florida where you don't have to walk away you know what i'm saying Like if you and I are out in public and we walk by and I bump you and I go, yo, my bad. And you go, fuck you, I said, I'm sorry. Fuck you. And the next thing you know, we're fighting each other.

That's actually, that's okay. When the cops show up, they'd go, what happened? Bump me. I said, fuck you. He said, fuck you. We went back and forth. We got into a fist fight. He broke my nose.

You know, and the cops would be like, all right, well, y'all go home. You'd be like, what are he talking about? If you're in New York or you're in L.A., they'd be like, what are you talking about? You broke his nose. Yeah, I know, but they're, they don't have to walk away. They can, you know, it's like Mortal Kombat. Like, you're allowed to have this whole fist fight. Right.

Isn't that the name of the law? What? No, it's, Dan, you're, oh, yeah, you're talking about, um, oh, there are guys that are shooting at each other. We'll shoot at each other. And the cops will be like, yeah, we're not going to look into it. Why? It just sounds to me like it's, it's just, there's some thought of a lot of a lot. law. It's like combat. I don't think, I don't know if that's in Florida. But yeah, it's insane.

Yeah, I've heard of that. Yeah, where these guys will get into shootouts in the street. Nobody got, they shot at each other, nobody got hurt. It's fine. They don't even charge them. Like, but I know who shot who and who, but yeah, I know, but these guys were just, they were both had guns. They were shooting. Nobody got hurt. They shrug it all. Well, that's, that's the value in your point of view, because you, you know, the other side of the story, you know, from, from, from, the behind the bars you know what I mean so right you know the other coin that everybody else doesn't see but I also see that I watched the video of the guy Vitaly yeah he's a douche so but anyway go ahead and I like listen he definitely

I don't think that anything we just talked about I don't see that anything we just talked about um applies to him because this is a guy who's going around terrorizing people and laughing about it right so nothing we just said to me is applicable to what he was doing he's just an asshole and you know i agree i agree um i just because there a lot of folks in my on the comments of the video that i made are just like trying to point a contrast between If there, a lot of them were saying, like, if this happened in the USA, somebody would even start a go fund me to bail him out. You know what I mean? I don't know if that would really happen, but.

Well, there's always going to be somebody like that. There's always going to be those people. But I'm not contributing. Definitely not. Me neither. Yeah. I mean, initially when he started out, Vitaly, a lot of people liked them because, like I said, thought of those original

pranks. The one that really got him famous was he was just like talking to a girl and then she'd blow him off and then he'd pull up in the Lamborghini. Remember that one? And then she completely changed. So that's his claim to fame.

And he just started off from that. And then I guess he also did a series before he got locked up last year where he was it wasn't really douchebag content at all

he was he was catching child predators so he'd set up things where yeah he'd set up these crazy predators to show up and he'd expose them

so in my in my book that was pretty cool I like the Lambo thing too yeah I mean so he didn't start out like that And I really, really think he was just desperate to start his, restart his career. And he really thought the biggest plash he could make was doing this kind of content because it was, it's already trending, you know what I mean?

So any kind of, any kind of new, new streamer is going to go get a lot of attention. He just didn't, he just didn't know the culture that he was going to do that in, which I was really sad. So he's been doing this in the Philippines? Yeah, so this is where he did it in the Philippines. How and, um, so I mean, what, what happened? What went, what went wrong that he ended up in, in jail? Well, he was just streaming all these stunts that, well, just annoying things. But the big ones were, um, the

The biggest charges are threatening the robin, old lady, grabbing, I think he tried, I'm not sure if he was successful, but he tried to grab a gun from a security guard. And that is definitely serious. I saw the one we grabbed the hat off of the cop and he takes off running. Like more than they wouldn't. Yeah, there's not clear footage that I've found. of him trying to get the gun but it's definitely a charge

so I don't know if that's really true but it's one of the charges and then trying to steal a patrol bike I'm all that yeah

and then what's funny is the the cop was just looking at like what's going on here it's like you shouldn't even process what was going on it's hilarious And then, um, just, uh, the, one of the things is unjust vexation. That's a thing, I guess. I don't know. You vexed me. You vexed me. So you're going to jail. I guess I don't know.

Yeah, it's, I don't know if that's, I don't think that's, that's certainly not a thing here, but. Yeah. I mean, if it was a thing here, a lot of people would definitely be going to jail. You know what I mean? Because like out here, like, some people like vex people for a freaking hobby. but yeah well first of all the the problem was the videos that i watched of him doing all the annoying stuff annoying people vexing people is that by the time they got to the the thing with the cop where he kind of took the bike from the cop and kind of he stopped he actually gets going and the cops just in there he stops and he looks at the copp he goes like yo bro i want you to chase him like the cop's just completely confused but by the time i got to that video

I was so annoyed Like if it had just been that video I would have been like oh that's kind of funny But the fact is I'd watch like four or five other videos prior to that By that point I was like God this guy's a prick Yeah And he So what was I was going to say

I do find the annoying videos I've seen some of them that are comical But the ones that I think are funny Are the ones where some guy walks You know be some young white kid will run up to like a black guy and try and like grab his wallet or walk up and try and hold his hand or something and what and he just a tag you did they pacing him the guy's like it's a prank bro it's a prank it's a prank it's a break it's the guy stop in him they have to show the video and he's like and

these guys are ready to kill you yeah yeah but he doesn't get that reaction nobody's coming after him in these videos they're just no like completely like you said you Because it's like alien behavior. It's so unfamiliar. It's so not, they can't process it, basically. Because like I said, the whole Confucian thing, Asians, we keep our heads down. We don't like to rock the boat. We respect our elders.

That's like the thing right there. So anybody that acts in different ways, we don't know what to do. So to the point, like in this other dude, Johnny Somali, that's been doing this for the last two years, they just deport him. You know, like he goes to one Asian country. No, actually, some of them, they even just make him say a video apologizing and stuff like that.

But then to the point that they just rack up so many charges, they have to prosecute him. But when he gets this dude, Vitaly, in the Philippines, man just one just one incident no not one incident but you know just one trip and I don't know if you saw my video but like I say more living hell living hell so Matt what what's your reaction seeing the footage of Filipino prisons like how do you how would you compare American prisons is it I man that how you know how you feel Yeah, it's insane. They're just piled. It makes me think of that prison that, is it El Salvador where they've built that? Right, right, the mega prison. Yeah, the mega prison, like 100, they holds like 80 or 100,000 people or something ridiculous. They're just piled them in. Like, you don't get a mattress. You don't get, you don't get, you don't get nothing. It's you in your underwear. And, you know, you got a pair of boxers and a tank top, maybe. You're in there with, there's 100 guys in this cell, 100 guys in that cell. They,

they mix up the gang members they they're not playing it's it's absolutely their rules uh it made me think of that only less clean because at least that one that the el salvador clean because it's brand new yeah it looked like spot ones yeah yeah uh and i've met these guys that that had been in those types of prisons and like there's like a hole where you shit in a hole in the side you go up there and there's feces smeared all right like these guys get dysentery they start they have a um diarrhea they they throw up they get dehydrated they die like they they don't they just don't they don't care at all about these these guys they don't care you know they give you a five year sentence and maybe you survive the five years now

i don't know that it's like that there it might be perfectly maybe they they are taking care of them and feeding them and that's not the case maybe there's decent um uh facilities for the bathroom or whatever that's the other thing is money talks in the philippines so um it does note to those countries like that by the way like like mexico though the cartel if you're cartel and you have money they get like a whole wing of the prison they get they're catered to same thing same thing so same thing what i was trying to say it's like the tally has a choice he could be in with the rest of them or he could pay millions and And if you got it, if I was into his shoes, if I got it, I'm giving it.

Yeah. Even if they're bleeding me dry, I'm going to do it. Like, what is you? Like, yeah, I, I've talked to, which would be, this would be great if, if, uh, my editor actually went and cut out some of the explanations from some of these guys we've interviewed that have gone to, I want to say we had a guy that was in a, um, Venezuelan prison? I know I got it wrong, by the way.

So I'm sure. But he did like one guy did like a year and let's say Venezuelan for it. No, no, wait. Where do he go? Was it? Oh, shoot. I don't know.

Anyway, like, you know, South America. Yeah, well, we've got, yeah, I think we have three different people that did time in South American prisons. One guy did like seven or eight years. And I mean it, it, it, but keep in mind, he had his family. who are sending him money and it wasn't I hate to say that it's not expensive but but it's not thousands of dollars a month for for three hundred dollars a month he had a sell he had his own sell or sell with another guy and an extra couple hundred here

a couple hundred there so by the time he's at five six hundred dollars less than a thousand dollars he's living like a king there now okay so now I don't know if it's like that a good deal. Now, in, I was locked up in Coleman, a prison in, in Florida. And there was a guy there. I mean, there were several guys there, but there was one guy that my buddy Pete was friends with. And he was a cartel member. And he had done like five years in a prison in Mexico. And then he did, I want to say he did, he probably did 10 years in the U.S. And he was at a low. And listen, him in Mexico, the way he talked about Mexico, and he had, by the way, he had a binder of photos that he showed us. It's not like him talking. He's got photos of the prison and his cell. They're drinking corona. Yeah, they got three or four cell phones. He's still running drugs from inside the prison. And they did a, I forget what he paid. My buddy Pete would remember i think it was a few thousand dollars it was it was like maybe maybe it was four or five

thousand a month the cartel had a complete a whole wing where they they were allowed to have women come in for exactly that's why i was going to say no more than 10 days wow like you're allowed to have and he's like yeah yeah then you had you had to have like a two day break then it started over again like they had a whole thing and though he would talk about and then i forget there was a maximum per month which was like it was whatever it was it was like 20 days or only 20 days a month or something he's like you could break it up two days for one girl or because he would have he would have he always called them strippers but they were hookers obviously he would have like women come in stay with him for a week then they'd have to leave and then two days later his wife would come in spend four or five days and then have to leave for a couple of days. Then the girls would come back. Listen, it was insane. And the photographs were insane.

Yeah. Yeah. Same thing with the Philippines. It was thousands of dollars. I don't know what kind of money vitally's got. Yeah. That's the thing. It's like when you're in a developing country and then they know, oh, he's from America.

He's white. He's a streamer. He's famous. They're going to rack up. They're going to raise the prices. You know what I mean? The main reason, Matt, that I know a lot of this shenanigans out there is because I spent high school there.

And I was a really bad... No, in the Philippines. Yeah. And I was a really bad boy out there to the point that I got in circles with some of the really, really bad people that I could have ended up in jail in one of those prisons in the Philippines or dead. So that's why I'm here.

But I still have ties out there. I still have property out there and I go there at least once a year. So I'm really familiar with the culture. And like I said, out there, it's not in the thousands of dollars. It's a lot. We're talking hundreds of thousands

of dollars for like, especially if they know you got money. We're talking maybe it gets up there. It really does. Hundreds of thousands, I would say, in the Philippines. Because of, I know, personally, people that have gone through the system

and have had to pay. They're not even foreigners. These are Filipinos, but they're high profile people. So just because they know they have money, they charge a lot more. So it's probably going to be the same thing for this guy. You ever read a headline and think, wait, that's not what I read earlier, or hear a story that was covered two totally different ways

and think, I wonder which one's telling the truth. We all know the news can be biased. Algorithms push stories that they think you want to see. And some outlets spin stories to fit a certain agenda. It's exhausting trying to figure out what's real, what's exaggerated, and what's just straight up misinformation. That's why I use ground news. It's a news platform that doesn't just show you the headlines. It shows you the whole story. It gathers articles from across the political spectrum, tells you the bias of each source, and even lets you compare how different outlets are framing the same event. For example, the recent federal health agency layoffs. Left-leaning news described the layoffs as a major crisis, calling them a bloodbath

that could harm important public health work like tracking diseases. On the other hand, right-leaning news saw the layoffs as positive change. They called it a win-win for taxpayers, which could save $1.8 billion a year. Both sides agree the layoffs and changes were happening, but they strongly disagree on what it meant. Ground news lets you compare these side by side so you can actually see the bias and decide for yourself what to believe. You can also see things like how news sources are covering a particular story, political leaning of news outlets, and the blind spot feed where you can see stories that are disproportionately covered by one side of the political spectrum. In a world of clickbait and echo chambers, having access to all perspectives is more important

than ever. That's why I love ground news. It helps me cut through the noise and stay truly informed. And right now you can get 40% off the vantage plan for unlimited access. Just hit the link in my description, ground. dot news backslash inside and start seeing the news differently today. When you say hundreds of thousands, you mean like having your own room is 10,000 a month kind of thing? Or maybe it's going to be like maybe I would say it's going to be like a year thing where it's going to be like give us 10 million pesos, which is like. $200,000, that's the kind of stuff they want. Because those, those, and it's not, it's going to be like, for this amount of time,

then you have to pay again. And it's probably not going to be a monthly thing, but it's going to be probably like a yearly thing or every time, they're going to keep asking. It's going to be not on a scheduled time, but when they want to, they're going to keep asking. So it's probably going to be like 10 million each thing each time they ask because they're going to want like 10 million pesos like I said 200 grand something like that just from just from what I know from like my neighbor one of my neighbors that gone through the whole system and that's what that's what you had to do pretty much does does it matter that he's high profile? file like they won't give him the opportunity or that he'll be under more scrutiny as a result of that and it's possible to find out of him find a way no way yeah i mean especially when talking millions out there yeah they're always fine the way and it's not like he can go to trial and try

and beat this well one he's guilty it's on film but but two if he went to trial he'd be in an even more trouble is that right he's he's it's so obvious that he's guilty because it's it's it's It's all live streamed. You know, everything was live streamed. So all the evidence is on the Internet, which is horrible for him. The only question is, does he deserve it? Does do those pranks? Yeah, he vexed some people.

Yeah, he did this and that. But does he deserve that for that amount of time? Based on what I saw, and I'm not sure how you justify, I'm not sure how you justify what I saw like I would if you said oh no no those people were in on it I'll tell you right the old lady that he was kind of hounding and given a hard time to and he was saying if you don't take this money money I'm going to rob you I'm going to you know he was giving her a hard time I you know I I mean does he deserve it I don't know if he deserves five years but he deserves he deserves he deserves to spend some time in prison I don't know if that's a year

or five years. I don't think it's more than five years. I think you're in, first of all, it bothers me that it bothers me that you would go to another country and not be extremely polite, right? Like, I'm polite. That's just normal. That's just normal. The U.S. I'm polite. So if I'm in your country, I'm going to be extremely polite. So it doesn't make, normal for it. Yeah, I'm going to go to your country just so I can give people show. shit because if I did in the U.S. is a chance I might get shot or get the shit kicked out of me. So I'm going to go somewhere where people aren't used to this and they're more docile and they're not going to react in a violent manner. Because I don't have the balls to put up with an American's reaction, which is going to be horrific. Yeah. Yeah. I think you just summed it up right there. Why do that out there? Like I said, to me, it's probably a year, his behavior is probably a year in prison and another year for being an asshole. It's probably two years,

you know, because he's an asshole. I agree. Anything more than that, I think, would be a little bit too much. But what's really sad is, like I said, it's going to be the elections and they're just They're going to make him a poster boy to get reelected. And the thing about Filipinos is they're really, really sensitive about how they're, what's it called? How they're perceived by others. Because, like I said earlier, colonized by Spain, America, Japan. So we have this kind of like inferior. already complex. So if somebody just disrespect us, you're going to, we gang up on you. Like,

it's kind of, it's kind of crazy, but it's sad, but it's true. And it's just the way it is. And from the comment section in my video, they want blood. Yeah, it's, it's, it's, they're pretty pissed off and they want to give him as much as what they possibly can. My buddy, I have a buddy, like I said, that lives in, uh, well, he did live in, uh, well, he did live in Bangkok and then they just had that earthquake. Oh, wow, that was crazy. Oh, no. He was, he was in bed.

Like, he was in his apartment in bed, in his underwear. He ran down, and those high-rise? Yes, 30th floor. Oh, my gosh. He said he scaled down the elevator. He broke his foot. I don't know if he ever went to the hospital, but he said it's broken. He's like,

I'm telling it's broken. He said, he said towards the end, he was leaping down the stairs. He said, I've never been, he did a video about it. He starts crying in the video. He's like, I've never been so fucking scared of my whole life. But, so he goes all the way down the stairs. He did a whole video. He's already moved to, um, Cambodia. So he went to Cambodia. I don't know if he's staying there or not, but they wouldn't, they wouldn't let them back in the building. Like, they let him go back in for 10th of and leave. And he's like, so I'm kind of homeless. So he went to

Cambodia because you have to leave every 30 days or 60 days to renew your visa. I don't know what he's doing exactly, but he had told me because he was making videos about being in Thailand. And one of the things he said was, well, you know, I said, what you ought to do is talk about what's good and what's bad,

like a difference between the U.S. and this because he would talk to me about it. And he would go, he goes, I don't want to do that. He said, the problem is he said, I don't want to say anything bad about Thailand at all.

And I was like, why? He said, they'll throw you out, bro. He said, they'll throw you out. I've already seen videos where guys get thrown out for, really not for saying he was much at all he said but they they don't he said they don't want to be

have anything negative said and he said they'll just come and grab you and put you in a holding tank and put you on a plane and throw you out he said it's over he's a no yeah well Thailand yeah Thailand they got a king so you know full on monarchy like whatever he says goes um yeah you're not even allowed like if you're in the same room your head in Thailand your head is never supposed to be above the kings. So you always had to be like lower somehow. I'm like five foot six. If I was a king, I've been very,

I like that though. Yeah. But yeah, Philippines is different though. It was a colony. It was the only colony of the USA. So what's interesting about the Philippines is they have the same exact, almost the same exact constitution as America, which

is really cool. Yeah, which is I don't know if it's related, but that's, what's cool about the Philippines is like, same like, First Amendment, Second Amendment, everything. So, yeah. So it's one of the freest places

rights-wise in the world next to America because we share the same constitution. But they still have their own um kind of what uh code as far as like don't don't be laws and stuff yeah don't be disrespectful don't yeah yeah but yeah i mean just also with the with the whole attitude when they try to prosecute someone they just they you know they don't have any mercy right i don't know yeah

like here i feel like america is just really the best place to be criminal in the whole world and you know what I mean if you're going to be a criminal you're lucky if you got caught in the states because everywhere else you know they just well I was going to say I actually there's some places like Canada yeah you you have to I've interviewed some Canadian guys I don't know what they're doing there like I don't know how that whole place is it just criminals like it they they just don't lock anybody up not for any length of time like if you get 15 years here We're getting five years there. You're doing one year, and then they're putting an ankle monitor on you and telling you to go home and get a job and just live your life.

And it's like, sounds like kind of a little foreign year. Yeah, I did a year on five years in the States. I'd get 15. And one of the big things that they do there, if you've committed crimes in the U.S. is they'll threaten to send you the U.S. And everybody's terrified to go to the U.S. and go to them because they're like, I'm going to 20 years. They did cool in those 20 years. So, yeah, there was a famous case where there was a guy who was counterfeiting American money and spending it in, you know, he was somehow or another he was spending it in Canada or he was also selling it in Canada and having people go to the U.S. and spend it.

Somehow or another, I forget exactly what he was doing. But when he got caught, he was fighting the case. And that's when they finally brought in the Secret Service and they said, If you don't plead guilty in Canada and take this plea, and it was like five. It was nothing. It was five years. They were like, then we're going to bring you to the U.S. and prosecute you there. And he immediately pled guilty.

He said, okay. Didn't realize he. My mistake, I guess, I guess Canada is the best place for a criminal, not the U.S.A. If you hear these guys' stories, you know, and the prisons are better and just across the board, they just don't give as much time. but other than that you're right probably at least you get some due process here you some of these places got listen you if i'll probably if anybody's watch anybody does watch this this far we're gonna we'll put up some of the videos from some of the guys that have been locked up in south american countries and it's i just did a video on a guy who had been locked up in turkey and what happened listen to this listen to this this is a yeah Muslim country he got this guy got four I think he got four I could be wrong I was four or five years he got like four years

though I think so he got four years just as he and no I think he got five years and he was going to do four with good time of something they have gave you some he smuggled like some marijuana a couple of keys of marijuana or something

so they give him five years but they luckily they didn't charge him with smuggling because they charged him with um it was like possession So he got five years So he had almost finished

He was 50 days away from finishing his sentence The government appealed the decision They bring him back to court They give him life He then appeals that And they lower it to 30 years So you got 30 years for two keys of marijuana So he's out now

He did get out of he escaped He escaped Wow How did he escape from a Turkish prison. Like, this happened like 30, 40 years ago. So it, it, you ever see here, did you ever see the movie Midnight Express? Uh-uh.

It's a movie was made back in like the 70s or something. Seven, 70s, late 70s, I want to say. And they made a movie called the Midnight Express and that's when it happened. But he's like, the loss haven't gotten any better. It's more brutal now than ever. And once again, like, there's nothing you can do. They, there's nothing you can, that most of these countries, you go. go into and your best bet is just to plead guilty because if you try and mount any type of

defense, they have like 100% conviction rating. So you're going to lose. They're going to give you 50 years. The one that I said, I think I, did I say it was Venezuela? I forget the anyway, I don't, I forget the, um, I forget the, um, I forget how country. Somewhere South America. the prisoners have guns they have guns oh yeah in the in the prison they have got they the amount of weapons that they have and this guy paid for his own cell i think he did like i said seven or eight years it was it was outrageous his his um his video is is insane i think it was i think we had to edit it so badly and we we had butchered this this video because it was just the whole thing was so violent the violence guy and it was something where like he he had smuggled something one

time out of one country and then he was going to smuggle another time and they were like yeah yeah but this time we're going to go here and he got caught like the first time he did it and got 15 years or 10 years or something and did seven or whatever it was and he's American yeah as American young kid he was like 19 years old he was just a kid they don't care they don't And the American embassy is not going to help you. Yeah. That's what I was going to say. What do you think Trump's going to do?

Do you think Trump's going to do anything about this, dude? No. I mean, he was being an ass. He was being ass. Could you imagine showing Trump those videos? He'd be like, guys, a jackass. Why do you another? Jackass?

That's what I would say if I was Trump. I think he'll go there. I think his family will flood the prison with money. And I think he'll have the best possible time he can. can have and let's say he does get the five years that's what the the the other second video i watched they were they made it sound like the president said he would get five or ten years but you're right i never heard the president say that i think they were alluding that it was it was the prosecutor saying per charge it's five five years but the actual um the actual hearings he said would be

two to three years because everything's backed up. So mandatory looks like going to be two to three years just to go through the trial. So, wait a mean, so two to three years before he is tried? Just to get a verdict. Does that come on? He gets five years. If he waits two years and he gets five, the two year come off the five, probably, right? He didn't say that.

The prosecutor didn't say that, but he said two to three years. And then per charge is five years, he said. So insane. His best bet is to try and get just plead guilty, apologize his ass off, say, I'm a jackass. But, you know, like you said, he already went to trial this other thing that didn't teach him a lesson. No, yeah. Like, right? You just said he had just faced charges before.

Yeah, right? in the States, but he was acquitted for some reason. Really? And yeah, it was pretty brutal. The photo of the woman he beat up as a woman. Yeah, I was going to say he's, yeah, I don't think he's got, nobody's going to have any sympathy for this guy. So what do you feel, Matt? Do you think the U.S. is too lax?

Do you think we should at least nudge a little bit toward that way? Or do you think we're just fine? I think that our sentences, now, I only know the federal system. I think the federal system sentences are brutal. I think that we should focus more on violent criminals. I'm always amazed that somebody will get, you'll give a white collar criminal 20 years and then somebody will kill someone and get 12.

It's like, right. What? Like, so I think that these sentencing guidelines need to be adjusted. And I think that people should probably be placed on probation. Like, you maybe go to jail for two years or three years, and then you get another three years on probation. because I think that helps people, you have to get a job, right? Do you see what I'm saying?

Like, they have so much control over you. You go to prison for 10 years and get out. You've learned nothing, nothing. If you go for three years and you put this guy on probation and an ankle monitor for seven years and say, you have to get a job or we're going to throw you back in jail and you have to pay for the monitoring, it's $100 a month, they'll do that instead of going back to jail. I'd rather let you know I'd live in a rooming house on an ankle monitor and go work at McDonald's because I can I can watch YouTube and I can play video games and I can do whatever the whatever people want to do it's it's a better life out here than it is in there and after six or seven years and maybe you even tell them hey you can earn your way off of this if you behave maybe maybe in it's not seven years maybe it's three and a half years as long as you behave and don't get yourself jammed up and thrown back in jail. And what happens is for the first time, you've got a drug dealer who's never done anything but sell drugs.

And now he's been working for Target for three years. And if you take that ankle monitor off of him, now he's like, I can live like this. Like, this is not a bad life. So you teach him something. And I think you do, and you can get a lot more inexpensively keeping him in prison. Exactly. That's what I was going to say. How much money is that going to save taxpayers?

Tons. A ton. Because prisons, so the, I think in the federal system, I think it's 35,000 a year, 35,000 a year in the federal system. And I want to say it's like 24, 25,000 in the states, because they're cheaper. But either way, if this guy's out on monitor and he's paying $100 in, he's also paying into taxes. So it, but here's the problem is that most of our departments or bureaus, in the United States are just not designed to try and save money. There's no incentive to try and save money.

So they... Right. It's a real of it's to spend the money. Yeah, and get more inmates. So if you're the Bureau of Prisons and the Department of Justice, and for every person you prosecute, you get so much money, for every person incarcerated, you get so much money, there's no incentive to try and get you out of the prison.

They want more prisoners. So there needs to be kind of a rethinking. The problem is, too, is that there's no good solution. There will never be a good solution. There will never be a perfect system. There will never be a system where you say, our justice system is, oh, no, it's perfect. It's as good as it can get. Our justice system is extremely flawed.

But with the exception of those minor tweaks that I just mentioned, it's pretty good. It's not great. There's no great system. But it's not bad. No, not at all. Compared to the rest of the world, yeah, definitely. Especially in comparison, yes. In comparison to a lot of other countries, it's superior.

But then there's other countries that are probably even more. You know, you have, it's such a balance, bro. It's such a delicate, you know. But I do like those ideas because one thing is like, especially if you're in a more higher security prison, just the culture of violence that's, there, you know what I mean? The culture of the gangster culture and everything is you're just immersed in it 24-7 right when you get out, you know what I mean? You're just in your head, in your soul, you're still in that culture right when you get out. So I think what you were

describing if they could get out a little bit earlier, just be monitored. That way they can kind of shed that culture slower. You know what I mean? They don't have to right away just completely, like a fish out of water, have to be able to participate in society right away, you know what I mean? You know, the old, I'm sorry, I was just like the other thing about reducing the prison population is that for every like four or five inmates, there's one guard, you know, and I don't mean guards in the unit or in the prisons, but there's guards that are working, you know, they're doing clerical things or there's employees. I shouldn't say guards. There's employees. So there's, for every, four or five inmates there's an employee in the Bureau of Prisons. So you think, okay, but do you know that right now for every probation officer, every probation officer right now is monitoring about 60 parolees. So think about that. For every, so how many more people can we monitor with less employees if they're on ankle monitors? And the bulk of prisoners aren't, the bulk of prisoners aren't violent. you know so that's what were you in a higher security facility I was in a medium security prison for three years

and then for like nine years I was in a low security I never made it to a camp you know a camp would be like a facility where there's no fences so when I say medium a medium prison is exactly what you think it is like there's guys getting stabbed on the rec yard there's there's gangs there's that that two-tier system where you walk in you got the stairs and you can there's a second tier and you know it's very much it's it's very much what you say it's not a pen okay okay guys penitentiaries guys in the pens it's extremely violent i mean you know very very

violent and those guys when they get out have a really they get they get less instructions less help, less halfway house, and they are more prone to recidivit to come back. So that guy gets out. Because it's their culture. That's just the way of life in the prison. You just let them out. I mean, they got to adapt.

They have to adapt somehow. Would you recommend, would you consider for those, the stuff you're proposing would you consider doing for those kinds of guys or yeah expect well i mean if they were nonviolent i i think i think you need more monetization monetization you need to be monitored more you need more monitoring the higher you are maybe those guys have to stay in a halfway house longer they need to be monitored more the real problem is I'll give you one example and I'm not a violent person and I don't you know I'm not someone who's typically subject to rash decisions you net what here's what happens is and even in the medium even in the lows in prisons in general if I call you a bitch that's absolutely fighting immediately but when I got out of prison I went to work

for a guy who says it all the time he's like oh bitch you're crazy and I mean the first time he said it the heat shot up from my stomach into my chest and I'm telling you my face turned red and for a split second I I was just like and I'm not that guy

yeah I'm not that guy bro like I'm not violent I'm not but I said culture right it's been 13 years and I and the only time I ever heard someone say that immediately both dudes are it's it's it's it's

it's kick off and so when I heard that I was physical reaction to it physical reaction and I'm not even that person I'm not in a gang I'm not getting fights I'm not so what's it going to be like if a guy from the pen went and worked for that guy yeah he'd probably kill him right and and and he you know what in his mind he wouldn't have thought anything of it he would have thought he disrespected me and in a way in the pen I have to do something because if I don't then everybody thinks they could do That you can come in my cell. They'll take things from me.

They'll, they'll, they'll, they'll, they'll, so I have to survive. So for them, it's more than just, hey, bro, don't, like, don't, don't, don't, that's, don't do that. It's survival for them. It wasn't even, it's instinct by that point. It's instinct by that point. You don't even think by that point. It's just like breathing, you know what I mean? Like, it's survival.

It's survival, yeah. So I don't, the guys from, end up in pens, I don't know. I don't know what they do. I don't know. You'd have to keep them in a halfway house for a couple of years. They'd have to. You know, their programs right now in prison, there's a program called the ARDAP program.

It's the residential drug, I want to say drug abuse program or drug something. Anyway, and it's, you actually take these guys and put them in a special unit where they take classes during the day. And it kind of, it's really a behavior modification. program. It really has nothing to do with drugs. And I've always said, but what it really

teaches you is it's, it's called, it's rational thinking. So it's, it's cause and effect, right? Like, if I do this, this is what's going to happen. And so it, it has you think through the things that you do right now, naturally, instinctively, you do this already. These guys don't do that. If something happens for you, let's say you're in a store and for even a split second, you, you're, you're you thought, nobody's watching, I can grab this item, stick it in my satchel or whatever, and walk right out and nobody would know. For you, one, you probably, that probably doesn't even cross your mind. But if it did, for these guys, it's like, damn, opportunity.

They don't think, wait a minute, what's going to happen? If I do get caught, which I might, there is a possibility. I get caught. I get arrested. I have to go to, go to jail. I have to try and get out. If I don't get out, I can't go to work tomorrow. If I don't go to work, I'll lose my apartment.

If I lose my apartment, like, I can't see my kids. I can't get it. You, most people are to spell it out. And they don't. They don't. They think, oh, opportunity. Yeah. Yeah.

I know that mentality. I learned this in the Philippines. There's a lot of poor people out there. And to them, like, the kids, it's sad. With a lot of inner city kids out here, too. It's like, to them, it's like grace from God. You know what I mean? There's something there.

If you didn't get it, it's like, what are you doing? You're saying no to grace. That's, it's there. God put it there for you to steal. So that's kind of the mentality too, which is, which is, when I first heard that, definitely shocking to me, but, and also what you just explain, how, you know, You just see one thing. You don't even think the next steps behind that.

But I guess, you know, other people, you just, they don't even do that. Yeah. That explains why someone would end up like that. So the problem, like I said, that those are the guys that need the most help and get the least help. You know, and this is a thing. They're going to release them anyway. does that make sense if you're saying oh well that guy shot somebody fuck him he deserves what he I understand he deserves what he got and I understand he got 25 years but they're going to release

him like he save some money release him earlier but monitor him because the probation officer can monitor that guy better make sure he can integrate in societies exactly so he doesn't have to come in another crime because what's really happening is people are going to prison there doing all their time, they're getting no, they're not getting any training and they're being released and they commit more crimes and they go right back to jail and people say, see they're horrible people. And you're right, they are horrible people. You just let out a horrible person that you never tried to fix his behavior. You also explained why the prisons don't want to do that is because their business model is going to be affected. Yeah. So if just for a taxpayer, I would definitely

want the money going to rehabilitating their actual mental state. But it doesn't because, like you said, they're going to be let out. Yeah. What you're a politician, though, that doesn't, you don't get elected by saying, hey, let's put some money into rehabilitating these guys or, hey, let's let's let's let these guys out an extra 20%. Let's not 20% off their time so we can train them while they're out. that that's not a good sell

that's not going to get you elected what gets you elected is give them more time lock them up longer keep civilians safe and then what really happens is this you let out 100,000 guys and 99,900 of them

and 99 reaclimate and one guy gets out early and he murders the one guy and that's it that's all they'll focus on they take away all the program. And I used to say this all the time when we were in prisons, in prison.

Because every once in a while, the administration would try and do something. Like, they would, they do something like they had a room they designated for, you could watch DVDs. So they, they went out, they got all these DVDs. They got all these little flat screens. You could watch them. You could sign up for, to go watch

the new, you know, the new King Kong movie or the new whatever, the new, some romantic comedy and you you sign up for it and you go to your time and you put it in there and and very quickly the inmates that are working there start selling the slots you had to pay and then somebody gets angry and they break a screen or somebody steals a screen he tries it and the next thing you know and i used to always say like the end anymore well the inmates ruin it the inmates ruin every time they try and do something for you they ruin it and the only response for staff is take it all away.

It's never measured. It's like I didn't do it. I've been renting and I'm good and I sign up and it's Jimmy. Jimmy's the asshole. Like punish Jimmy. It doesn't work. It doesn't work. It's like I said, it's anything,

anytime you throw human beings into a system, they ruin it. They just screw it up. So there's no notion. It's really interesting how everything can just just edit you can just make money out of everything in prison it's so interesting how i think being in prison teaches you how to be an entrepreneur because everything yeah did you have the same experience as what um learning out to be an entrepreneur in prison um yeah i mean

kind of what i did was i basically i wrote a memoir and then after i wrote my memoir i I started writing other guys memoirs. And I wasn't charging them, but what I was doing was I would get them to attach their life rights to what I'd written. So when I got out, I knew when I got out, I could option their life rights. You know, if I could sell that product, I would be able to go and say, hey, I've got this amazing story, a true story. And if you were a producer and you wrote it and you said, I'd love to take this, I had the ability to say, and by the way, I have a signed agreement where the person has. their life rights. So I'm not just selling my article.

I'm selling the life rights, which is something that it's very, it's valuable. And so the, the, the, suddenly the producer who's like, wow, like, that just kept me from, that keeps me from being sued. So this person's obviously going to participate. And two, they're not going to go behind my back and try and talk to somebody else because I already have an agreement with them. And three, they're not going to sue me later for, for stealing. their life story, you've already

attached your life rights to it. So I knew that was worth something. And so that's kind of what I did. And that's how you started the podcast. Right. It morphed into it. Like I didn't know about the podcast. I'd never been on YouTube. When I got locked up, YouTube

had just come out. Their podcasts weren't even a thing until 2009. And I'd already been locked up three years. So it was Did it feel like a time machine getting out after like 13 years? never seen cell phone. I mean, I'd never, I'd never seen an iPhone. This is, this is like magic. These things are magic, bro. Texting. Texting had just come out. Facebook had just

come out. So when you got in, it was like Nokia phones, right? Or something like that. Yeah. I had the razor. There you go. And then you get an iPhone. You're like, what the heck? Insane. Yeah. Yeah. So yeah. So I and then I started doing podcast because it, you know, but I didn't really know what I was going to do when I got I kind of was like yeah I'm going to do try and do one of these true crime podcasts but even that was not what this ended up being you know I thought I was going to interview people and then there would be the music and that you know it was going to be a super um produced very produced and it wasn't going to be this kind of a thing but this is what it turned out being because you know you have to hire a

whole production company to do that. And in the end, I don't know that you get that much more out of heavily produced content. No, I mean, it's just really about what you guys talk about, you know? If you're talking about crap, if it looks amazing, you're still talking about crap. What's funny is I'm going to say this because then Kobe will hear this. Colby will be like, what? It's funny because the other day, so a couple months ago, I have a buddy named, I have two buddies who have YouTube channels.

Well, I have multiple buddies, but these two guys have very successful. ones. One is Julian Dory and one is a Danny Jones and they were sending me like we're on a text thread all of us or they were so they were sending out that basically like

I forget what Danny was but they were comparing like where they fell on on on a Spotify where their things fell right there were they doing and I I contact

did my producer Colby and I was like bro why where are we ranked and he came he said oh I think you have to sign up but I don't know I'm not sure I don't know how let me look into it I never heard anything else about it last night he sent me one and out of 2300 true crime podcasts that are on Spotify were 45 wow so I was looking right like that's that's pretty cool yeah because you know the stories are compelling You can't deny them. They're real, real A-F. Let me ask you this, Matt. In the U.S., is there any kind of bribes that you can pay to get special treatment, or is that not a thing at all? In prison? Yeah.

Yeah. I mean, in the federal system, I mean, there might be, it's more like guys trying, you could probably bribe a correctional officer to bring in not probably I know you can but it depends on you could also get in trouble trying to bribe them but guys will bribe them to bring in drugs or a cell phone or so it's more like bringing in stuff it's not so much getting a special cell and not having it like I have my own cell that's probably not going to happen not for too long yeah um but you could probably bribe them to bring in stuff and that happens not probably it happens all the time but it's not nearly to the degree that hatchets these other

countries like it's these other countries it's insane it's insane it's just blatant it's blatant yeah prison guards with BMWs and yeah that's what we're talking about yeah the guards they they get paid so little in these countries. Yeah. They're getting paid. Right. They're getting paid nothing. So what else do they have?

Same thing. Yeah. Just from all the way from prison guards, all the way to the customs officials, you know, they're all driving nice cars because that's just what they do. We take beds. Are you good? Do you feel good? Yeah.

I mean, I feel like we've covered everything. I feel great for an hour. I didn't think we were going to get even an hour. You started asking me questions, bro. You don't get me talking. I'm a talker. I mean, I'm just curious, you know, like, want to see the point of view if someone is actually, you know, and the other side, because everybody wants to see him burn, you know.

He's such a dick, though, man. He's just, like, all those videos, like, I, I kind of try to look at it, like, well, what could justify what he's doing and I'm like there's nothing to justify it you're just these poor people are just trying to live their life like I'm trying to walk home from work bro what are you doing and you're giving these guys a hard time or and I can imagine treating treating a cough could you imagine treating a U.S. cough that he would have been shot immediately yeah he'd have been at least got in his ass beat he'd have been in he'd have gotten his ass beat been in coffee pepper sprayed in the least in the least yeah

right and it just goes up from there but you know if i was a cop i would have shot him yeah i mean especially if you're trying to grab a gun i mean that's crazy yeah the gun thing i didn't even notice to know about the gun thing that's so over that that that'll get you shot every time i think the pepper spray or tased is more you know but the moment he went for you know if he if he did go for a gun yeah it's it's over you know i had no bed, just a concrete slab to sleep on. There was no bed, no mattress, no sheets, no pillow, nothing. I believe I ate bread for the next two days, like loaves of bread with nothing else.

And after that, they came in and just told me, listen, kid, you're going, you know, get ready, turn around, boom, handcuffed me. They take me outside, and they put me in the back of a pickup, like some 1989 Nissan piece of garbage, with nothing and just like a welded metal bar and they handcuffed me to this welded bar in the back of the pickup. Mind you now, I have to take a trip from Quito all the way to Tulcan, which is where the case started. This is where they get the guy

that was bringing me the drugs. So he goes to go through the border of Colombia and Ecuador. So he's passing through Ipiales, Colombia, going into Tulcan, Ecuador over a bridge. Now this bridge has customs. so they stop him he gets nervous and they catch him he talks to them they tell him you know give up the guy that you're bringing it to they set up an operation and i didn't know but they

were already watching me the whole day at quito that that was the whole delay this whole delay was yes the whole delay was because of that they were already they were watching me already at the hotel seeing if i had any other connects or i had other contacts that i was seeing in quito they were watching me the whole time which i found out later on in the trial. Oh my God, you're going to try. Yeah. So after that, you know, I get on this ride.

We're going through the mountains all the way to Tulcan. Crazies ride of my life, just bumpy. It's horrible. I don't know if you know about the roads in Ecuador, but they're horrible. It's all mountainous. There's paved roads. There's rocky roads. We finally get the Tulkan.

They take me to this place that's called the Quartel. So it's basically like the police academy. So they have trainees. they have you know normal police people this is where they put their cars away and and all their guns and everything and right next door is this small jail for the city of tulkan so they put me in this police academy i guess that's where they hold the prisoners before they take them to the small jail and i walk into this little holding cell and there's three guys there local guys like all like scarface tatted up they look like you know out of a movie scary guys they see me and they're like

Oh, Gringo, and I talked to him in Spanish immediately. And I'm like, hey, what pass? I thought you know. And they're like, oh, you speak Spanish? I'm like, yes. Oh, you're good. Don't worry about it. You'll be fine.

This jail is run by the Colombians. You're going to be good here. He was like, you ever been in jail here? I was like, no, never. Oh, okay. You're going to see. It's a party over there. So I'm there.

I believe for the next two days. In December 24th, they walk me out of that holding cell, and now they start walking me down the block. I'm in the streets, a company by, like five police officers walking down the street going to the jail right next door now as I'm walking I hear a bunch of loud music salsa music December 24th you know it's Christmas Eve yeah it's a party get to the front door the music's even louder bunch of guards there addressing you know fatigues we open up the doors everybody's you know gringo gringo and I'm like hey yeah

the gringo speak Spanish so they're like oh you're you're gonna be fine don't worry about it man Where are you from? You know, everybody's asking this young lady guard. She's like, don't worry. You're going to be fine here. It's a party inside. Man, I'm like, what? Where am I?

So I signed a bunch of paperwork. They take some photos of me, you know, put me up against the wall, left, right, bam, bam. And then they go through all the stuff I had, the stuff that they didn't steal, you know, at the hotel. And now they're walking me down this tunnel. I'm walking down the tunnel. And I see at the end of a tunnel,

sunlight beaming through the bars and a bunch of faces like you know people trying to look down the tunnel there's like four or five people behind you know it's just light beaming through so I'm walking I'm walking and then you see the people turn around like hey it's a new guy it's a new guy hey so once I get to the gate they open up and everybody's like yeah fresh meat me fresh me and I'm like oh my god when they open up that door and I see all these people I'm like what it's like a small village you see like three huts over there which I found out we're stores, see some pool tables on the yard, like pool tables. See women dancing with men. They're dancing salsa. They got three, four foot speakers out in the yard. This is the

prison. This is the prison. And they have, you know, they got bottles of liquor, got tables set up, people dance. It's a party. This is Christmas Eve and it's a party. So while I'm watching all this, you know, I'm like in shock. I'm in shock. And all of a sudden I hear, hey, white boy. And I turn to my right, and there's this white guy, blonde hair, green eyes. And I'm like, what's up? And he's like, you're American. Come on.

Come on. Come with me, bro. Takes me. He's like, we're going upstairs. So I'm walking up the steps. I'm walking with this guy. Everybody's cheering. Like, yeah, yeah, I got my little suitcase. Some guys are coming trying to, like, grab my suitcase, but just messing around.

Right. You know, not real. You know, they're just like, hey, like trying to scare you. I was just like, what the hell's going on? Walk up the steps, and he opens up this door. and this is the cell where the guy that runs the jail lives. So they call him Caporad. His name was Orlando.

So I walk in, Orlando's there, his wife, and his two kids. They got a TV on watching, you know. And this is an inmate. The cartoon channel, yeah, inside the jail on the second floor and cell one. That was his cell. And I walk in, you know, she's cooking. I don't know what she was making. I forgot.

The kids that are watching the cartoon network. work and he's chilling on the bed with a cell phone he's got like three cell phones on the bed as well so i'm like hey what's going on man they're like all right tell me your story so explain to him what happened you're like all right so obviously you know the kid gave you up right i'm like yep we know so like where is this kid i'm like i don't know they didn't bring him with me but you know i'm just here by myself right now they're like all right don't worry eventually they'll probably bring your friend here and then you could you could see him again it sounds good So that's day one.

And now he introduces me to his family. You know, Alex is there. And he's like, white boy, I hope you're ready. Today's December 24th. It's a party. The girls next door are here. I'm like, what girls? He's like, the women inmates.

You can see all the women outside? They're all prisoners. But today, they're on this side and we're partying, bro. He's like, come on. Orlando's like, bro, have a good time. Don't worry about it. You'll be fine. Go with Alex.

I go with Alex. Alex starts introducing me to all the guys. And I'm walking through. I'm seeing women. I'm like, wow, look at that. She's beautiful. Look at this. Kids running around playing soccer. Takes me to the cell. We open up the cell door. There's a party going on. They got plates that they're smoking. They're watching the music channel. They got videos on. I'm like, what the hell is this? So that was the first day, you know, entering the jail in Tulkang, which had me in complete And not only that, but that party didn't end there.

It went to 1 o'clock in the morning because it was Christmas Eve. Right. And, you know, Latinos, they celebrate the 24th and they wait and open up the presents. Like kids will open up presents the 24th at midnight, not like in the States where they do it December 25th in the morning when they wake up. Yeah. So over there, it's different. And 1 o'clock in the morning, they took all the women to their side and they locked us on ourselves. And that's it.

The party was over. Next day opens up 6 a.m. back out. You know, I received the call for my mother that day. You know, and obviously she had spoken to the embassy. You know, she was going through it, man. She was in shock as well. How old are you at this point? At this point, I was 20. Okay. Yeah, I was fresh, fresh 20 years old. Yeah. But, I mean, this isn't the place you end up. Like, how long, like, do you get a lawyer there? So this is a small jail in the country. Now, they take me there because that's where my case starts, right? As soon as I get in there, I'm asking, you know, what are the...

How does this work? Yeah, what is my case going to be like, you know, what is the court system like? And everybody's just, you know, I'm just like, they're like, oh, bro, here is just so much corruption. You know, this kid got locked up for a joint and he got eight years, a joint with a gram, you know, grandma, And it joined, he got eight years. Yeah, but he got eight years and he got lucky. He got the two for one. Like, what's the two for one?

Well, yeah, if they give you eight years, you only do four. So every year counts for two. Right. And I was like, and we don't have that anymore? No, we lost that last month. I said, what? He's like, yeah, November 21st, they took that law away. And I got arrested December 18th.

I was like, oh, my God, just my luck. So finally get, you know, I know people there. I'm like, who's your lawyer? This is my lawyer. All right, let me call them up. Call a bunch of different lawyers. They're giving me American prices, you know, 7,000, 10,000, 15,000. So luckily, we had some money saved up and also had a lawsuit that was pending before I flew down there

and was able to get some money and get a lawyer. Paid the lawyer. Now, what he was telling me is they're trying to make it out is, like, I'm the owner of this drugs. Like, I'm the top guy. Right. So. You're just a courier.

I'm just a courier. Right. So the other guy was just a courier as well, but from Columbia to Ecuador. Now, he's bringing it to me, so it's like I'm the owner, and I don't want to give anybody up, so it's mine. Now, the courier from Colombia to Ecuador is supposed to get 8 to 12, and the owner is supposed to get 12 to 16 on drugs. And when I'm hearing this, you know, it's like depression. Like, I just want to, like, you know, I'm inside, you know, you're crying. You want to go crazy. You know, you can't show too much emotion.

You're in jail. Yeah. But it's like I was dying inside. You know, at 20 years old, you're going to throw away the key 12 to 16 years. For me, it was a lifetime. Oh, yeah, exactly. You know, it was a lifetime. And I hadn't even lived my life yet.

You know, 20 years old, it was very young. Okay. The, the Colombians that are in the U.S. that were a part of this whole thing, did, do we ever hear from them again? Yeah, yeah. I heard from them again. They helped me out in the beginning. Okay.

You know, they sell me, like, 20 cell phones. He sent me, like, luggage bags full of clothes. You know, they took to my mother and stuff like that. But that's it. Just a one-time thing. And then I never heard from anybody again, you know, pretty much I'm dead to them. You know, once you're going out of sight, out of mind. Yeah.

Right. Not what they should have done, but probably more than most people would do. Most people just walk away and just... Yes. Most people just walk away because also they're scared. You know, most people might just, you know, never answer the phone again because they think you might give them up. Right. You know, that wasn't the case with me, but at the end of the day, they all forgot about me, right?

And that's a big point that, you know, I want to make, you know, here on my podcast and every podcast that I do is, you know, don't believe the lies that they tell you because it's never going to happen the way they say it will. We're going to take care of you. Yeah. We're going to get your lawyer. That's all BS. At the end of the day, it's going to be you on your own in jail or prison, and it's going to be your family suffering and your family paying the bills. That's it. That's what's going to happen.

So you eventually, you do get a lawyer. You had some money. Got the lawyer, paid the lawyer off, and he's fighting for me, right? So he's, I'm fighting with him telling him, you got to try to get me at least eight to 12. Right. You know, not the 12 to 16. You're 20 years old. 20 years old.

Arguing for eight. Arguing for eight to 12. You know, and I'm in shock at this moment because I'm around people, you know, this guy's got a joint eight years. Another prisoner that was there did him. somebody got 16 years and was paying eight and he had already had six years in so he had two more years and he was going to be out and he somebody you know so that just goes to show you how well weird the laws are in ecuador it's just you know there's no justice yeah right um we get the lawyer he's fighting right um eventually we go to trial they find me guilty and i get the eight flat okay This is after a year and some change. Right. All right.

Let me just rewind. Before I get sentenced, I'm in the jail, in the small jail in Tulkan, and I get this little money from the lawsuit or whatever, and I start buying things like pool table, you know, the store. And, you know. Full table. Yeah, they had two pool tables there. I bought one. And then they had three stores. We purchased one of those.

So it's an income, right? and then bought some coke started bagging it up selling it in the jail so first run goes great you know obviously there's someone in the jail i'm like bro let's start moving some stuff here he's like oh i got somebody they could bring it in all right let's do it we get this girl she brings it in we bag it up great 50 grams goes real quick i'd say i don't know two weeks we go to get the second bomb in she brings it in we bag it up we're taking her down downstairs to the exit for the visits, and we're waiting at the door, and all of a sudden, you know, we just hear all these police walk in, and they're like, everybody to the ground, everybody to the ground. We turn around.

They're, like, invading the patio, and they're taking all the visits out, rushing them out. And everybody's on the floor. They put his face down on the ground. They make sure all the visits are gone, and then they lift us all up. They're like, all right, everybody get up. Everybody goes and stand us in front of their cells now. Everybody's running. Boom, boom, boom, we're running to those cells.

Get to the cell. They're like, all right, we need one person in the cell to stand in the door. Stand in the doorway and the cops start going crazy inside, ripping out the mattresses, the clothes, everything. They're going through everything. Now, they go through everything. They didn't find nothing. They just made a mess. They leave.

They go on to the next cell. I'm thinking, I'm going to my head. Thank God. We're good. Now, some young kid walks up. He had to be, I don't know, probably 18, 19 years old. And he asked me, he's like, did they check the cell already? was like, yeah, they checked. He already moved to the next one. He's like, okay, I'm going to check it again.

And he walks in. And as soon as he walks in, he just focuses his attention on the kitchen. So he's looking at the kitchen. We have everything like a normal kitchen. We got cupboards. You know, we got the stove. It's an electric stove, not gas. We got the mini sink, you know, everything there. He's looking. He's looking. So he starts grabbing the cover. He starts, like, trying to shake it, like moving the wooden cupboards on the wall, seeing if they're loose. when he did that my heart just dropped I was like oh no and then we had this little small wooden placard

where we could hang the big like spoons and the big thing to take the fries out of the fryer and he just moves it a little bit he noticed it was like loose and then he struggled to get this nail out he popped it out the thing just fell right behind that there was a small hole like this

where you could stick your hand in and go and that was a stash and as soon as it dropped he just you know You started calling for the other officers. They came over, you know, cameras out. And then they film it before they even put their hands in their film. And they're like, all right, boom, they go in and they take out the bomb. They see this huge bag filled with bags of, you know.

So obviously they're like, all right, whose isn't? Nobody fesses up. And they, they, I was going to say, are you guys telling me there's been in the cell the whole time? That's crazy. Yeah. So they take us out. You know, they lock up the cell, and they have a construction crew coming the next day to fill in the hole, and then they break down the rest of the stuff, make sure there's no holes behind it, and they put everything back up.

All right. So now, I'm like, what am I going to do? I'm talking. I'm trying to find out what's going to go on here, because no one told me anything. They just took the drugs. They took us out of the cell, and they just left. Now, I'm thinking, like, oh, my God, what is going to happen now? I think it was like two or three days later, the director of the.

The jail calls us up, you know, everybody from the cell. So we get there and they're like, all right, who's going to take charge of this? Because, you know, it's either one of you or it's all of you. So, again, I have to fess up, you know, it's mine. I'm not going to let everybody go down for everything. So told him it's mine. It said, all right, everybody else could leave. And I sat there with him.

He was like, man, he's like, you're screwed. And I was like, why? He's like, do you not understand what's going on now? I was like, not really. So he says, you're going to get hit with him. internal drug trafficking, and that's 12 years. And I said, what do you mean 12 years? He's like, yeah, and that's on top of whatever sentence you get. They're going to stack it on. So if you get eight and you're lucky, this is going to be 12. So you'll be doing 20 years. And I was 20 years

at the time. So in my head, you know, my head's just spinning, thinking, I'm going to get out of here if I'm lucky when I'm 40. So that right there, you know, that day just turned into a night you know i got you know went into like depression didn't want to talk to anybody it was just really bad horrible times for me but again something i brought upon myself you know just stupid trying to sell some inside the jail right and you just got caught just unlucky you didn't get 12 years right did you get an extra 12 so i have to get a lawyer for this new charge but you haven't even been charged for the first eight yet you're still hoping to get eight exactly okay so this is you know a long story. So now I call it my lawyer that I contracted for my original case and I explained to him

what's going on. And he's like, man, are you crazy? Do you know what you got yourself into? And I was like, yeah, now I know they already explained it to me. What can we do about this? He's like, there's not much we can do. I mean, 12 is the minimum. And he's like, and I'm pretty sure that's what you're going to get. So in my head, I'm like, I just got to escape. I got to get out of here. I can't do 20 years in Ecuador, you know? So pretty much, I'm like, all right, thanks a lot, you know. In my head, I'm like, we just got to go. I got to get out of here. So I start planning, start talking to my roommates and a couple of them are down, right? So we got five guys in the cell. This is nuts, bro. Five guys are in the cell. And one of them is a guy from Spain from

Barcelona, but he weighed like 450 pounds. Big guy. So obviously he can't go with us if we're going to make some little hole in the wall. So the solution for that was this kid from Columbia that was in our cell, he somehow managed to get some drops that would put you to sleep. I don't know what they were, but it would make you go to sleep immediately. Like maybe 10 minutes after we would put it in his coffee, he was out like a light. So we made it a normal routine to every day after we got locked in our cell at 7 p.m., you know, we would, you know, make a sandwich, coffee, hot chocolate, you know, we'd have like a little snack. And there was always one guy that he always prepared everything. He would do the hot chocolate, coffee, whatever. And he knew

to put the drops in this guy's coffee. So that's what we did. And we would do that. Not every single day, but probably three or four times a week. We would do that. He would knock out and we would get to work. We were able to bring down this wooden cupboard and we would start cutting it because we got a saw in that we paid for and we would start cutting the walls. So the wall there, it was like, that jail was probably like 130, 140 years old. So this is like plaster. And if you get hot water, you know, you get in a little bucket and you start splashing it

and you start hitting it with this, you know, little saw or like we had like a Phillips head screwdriver as well, these little chunks would just start coming off. and it would just start disintegrating. And we could actually wash this in the sink and it would just go. It would turn, basically it turned into like sand. So we cut the hole, you know, it took us, I don't know, I would say maybe two, three months to do it every day. We also had to put it back, secure it. And throughout these three or four months, we're also going through other searches, you know, several searches because don't forget, we have the academy next door where they're training these police officers.

And now they're bringing them into the jail I'm in so that they can go through and train and learn how to search and find things like drugs, you know, tunnels, holes, people trying to escape, guns, knives, whatever the case may be. So how thick are these walls? Is this wall? This is an exterior wall. So this, the wall I'm going through is like the roof. So I'm on the second floor of this jail, right? And the roof has, I would say, maybe five or six inches like this, right? And once we cut through that and we broke through, we were able to stick a mirror up.

There was like a small hole like you could put your hand in, right? And we were able to see up top there was all like rebar, right? It was just a whole net of steel. So now we need another type of cutting device that cut steel because what we had was not going to work. so we had to secure that back and we had to figure out a plan right now days are going by we get another search i think this was like the third or fourth search that we had while we were working and they come in and start ripping everything out and they find the hole as soon as they rip that down and find the hole we turn around and look at us and they just started beating us they ran at us starting pulling out batons oh you think you were going to leave here all right beating us without stopping. I mean, it was like a good five, ten minutes, right? After that, they closed the cell, and then they all separate us, put us all in a bunch of

different cells everywhere throughout the jail. That cell was closed for reparations or whatever. And basically they told me, you know, get ready because they're going to be shipping you out to the prison soon. Luckily, when I got there, there was people that had been. in there controlling the jails, like I told you, Alex White Boy, Orlando, and they got transferred to the prison in Quito before I did. So while I'm in Tulkan going through all these, you know, drug trafficking charges internally and trying to escape, these guys were already in the prison

in Quito. And I'm still in communication with them. We talked through cell phone, messages, and everything. So when they transfer me over there to the big prison, luckily I arrived there and I have people that know me and people that are going to vouch for me or take care of me and once I get to the big prison they take you to the hole so that was one of the scariest things in my life

walking into the big prison let me just rewind because it's not a party no this is not a party so this is the real deal like all there were parties inside but this was on a different level so you know

they find the hole eventually they say you know we're going to transfer you to the bigger prison and they take me. I go throughout the night. I believe I left two, three in the morning. I get there early the next day, sunrise 8, 8.30. And we're walking into the prison.

Now, the head guard is there and all his guards. They introduced me. Everybody's here to look at me. They want to see me. You know, they're taking pictures of me. They fingerprint me, all that good stuff. And they're like, all right, this guy tried to escape. Take him up to the hole.

And when I'm going up to the hole, everybody's just kicking you, beating you with batons, you're falling, you're tripping, and I have to go up four flights, all through steps. So I get finally to this huge tunnel, which has a gate in front of it. It's like the movies. At the end of the tunnel, there's this light, like, swinging back and forth. It's like flickering on and off, and it's just, it's cold, right? That's what I could remember. It was cold and smelled horrible.

They open up this gate, and they tell them. me and keep walking keep walking they're like pushing me down i get to the end there's a door on the left and a door on the right and they open up the door on the left they open up that door and i hear um turn on the lights turn on the lights somebody that's inside and i remember the the spark that it made because there's no switch they had to connect like some wires it was like zoom i was like what and i turned and there was it's packed there's like people sleeping on the floors there's like 10 or 12 people on the floors. There's like six beds, concrete beds. Those are all packed with people. And to my right, there's the bathroom area with a hole in the floor to go to the bathroom.

There's no toilet. And then inside there, it was like a sweatshop. The walls are sweating. It's so hot and humid in there. There's no ventilation. There's no window. There's nothing. The only window we had was the window from the door, which was about this big. And we could like communicate to the outside world. and put a mirror out and see who's coming from down the hall but besides that there was nothing so you're in there everybody's in there in their boxers shirts off everybody's dripping sweat the walls like it's running it's horrible so once i i realize where i'm at and i'm looking around again what do i hear white boy and i turn and look i'm like what and there's this other american there and he's like you're american i'm like yeah bro i'm american what's up he's like come here bro

He makes a spot on his bed for me. I sit down next to him. He's like, you're all right? Where are you coming from? So I give him my story. Coming from Tulkan, I tried to escape. And he's like, really? Oh, man.

He's like, what do you think I'm here for? He was all black and blue. Two black eyes. Arms had welts on him, you know, like from bats or whatever, his legs. They were all black and blue. He was beating. I mean, just, he looked horrible. He was like, listen, I tried to escape too.

He's like, you know, I had a relationship with the psychiatrist here. You know, it was going on for about a year. Nobody knew about it and I finally convinced her to bring me in a police uniform So I got the pass to go see the psychiatrist, you know, we go in, I'm in the office Whitter, it's always private doors closed I change into the police uniform She goes outside and she watches for when the the shift is changing because there's like 20, 30 officers that are going to be coming in and 20 or 30 officers that are going out at the same time So once that was happening, she opens up the door and tells me go He's like, I walk out, bam, I just walk in, put the hat down like this, and I'm just walking next to everybody.

He's like, I'm a cop just like them. And he walks through two of the main gates. He was already in the street. Now, in the street, there's one last gate you have to go through. And when he goes out that gate, you're going down a hill, and there's other police officers or guards coming up a hill. So as these guards are coming up the hill, they see his face, and they grab them and throw him on the ground and they catch them. Because these were guards inside the prison. So they catch them, and then they beat the living hell out of them for days.

And I walk into this whole calaboso, what they call it, and I meet him for the first time. Crazy story. He eventually comes my friend. His name was Alex. He's here from Queens, New York. And a little less than a year later, he actually manages to leave. He escaped with 18 other prisoners through a third. tunnel in B block in the prison we were at would do they catch him or he no

never called him so that night told so so if you were to escape and get back to the United States would they extradite you back I'm not sure how that would work right I don't think so I mean not in those times maybe now I'm not sure but yeah okay those times I don't think so he was he was American he was born in in in Queens New York right but he had family in Columbia so I'm pretty sure he left there and went to Columbia and after that I never heard from him again okay but do you know like so 18 people escape this seems like a big thing like do you know weeks coming up like these guys are planning to escape so I'm about to drop a crazy story for you about that right now so the night

prior to the escape you know since me and Alex are boys you know he lives in B block I live in D block so we can see each other from the gates from all blocks. After 5 p.m., everything's closed, so you have to stay inside your block. But you can still go to the front gate and, like, talk to somebody in B block or C block because you can see each other. So I'm in my cell that night, just chilling, you know, watching TV. And then someone comes to like, hey, Alex wants you downstairs. So I was like, all right, I run downstairs. Oh, hey, what's up? He's like, yo, you want to come over and drink? He's like, we're having a party. I was like, yeah. He's like, all right, start hitting the gate. So I start banging the gate. Bam, bam,

until a guard comes. Guard comes up to the gate. He's like, what do you want? I'm like, Alex, I want to go over for a little bit. Just, you know, maybe a couple hours or something. He's like, no, no, no, we can't do it. And Alex calls him. He's, hey, hey, come here, come here.

Like, bro, come on. You know, he's offering five bucks, 10 bucks, 20 bucks. I don't know. You know, and this guy just didn't want to budge. You don't want to let me through. So at the end of the day, Alex was like, bro, sorry, man. I tried. Yo, see you later.

I'm like, all right, bro, later. See you tomorrow. And I leave. and I go back up to my cell. And the next day, when I wake up, everybody escaped. Right. It was insane. They went through a tunnel.

So pretty much it's like this. If you had gone over there and been in the cell, would you have not, they wouldn't have switched you back? You would have stayed there that night. No, I would have stayed there that night. Oh, man. That's how corrupt it was. You know, we used to do that all the time. Oh, man.

We would have left. You know, it would have been another movie. Crazy. But, yeah, he left and all the other people. There's left. A bunch got captured and brought back to the prison. He never made it back. Hopefully he's okay. Maybe he's watching this. Alex, I love you, bro. And reach out to me. Yeah, reach out. We got those crazy stories to put on the pods. That was my first experience with an escape in the big prison when they all left. This is all stuff you can look up on, you know, on Google. It's there. I have clips. I could send you as well. I tried to escape in 2005. I have the clips for that. I could send to you. how so but you're you're just being held in the prison you still haven't been sentenced on the other have you been sentenced for the eight years yet i haven't been sentenced not even for neither case yet so i i arrived to this prison right my god bro i can only imagine i'm a sitting duck just waiting for

both both trials i can only imagine anxiety so yeah anxiety was big right and um what didn't help was i spoke to my lawyer about the internal drug drug trafficking case and he told me you know what your best bet, I'm going to tell you right now, is that you become a drug addict. And we could pull this off as consumption. You know, you're a drug addict. That's why you had all those bags. You buy it in bulk because you don't want to keep buying and buying. So you buy one big shot.

And that's for you, for you to consume. And he's like, but the way you look now, the judge is not going to buy it. So become a drug addict, you know, get skinny. Do what you got to do. Unfortunately, that's probably, that's a pretty good lawyer, right? It was a great lawyer. It was the best advice that he could have gave me. I took it.

I ran with it. And at the end of the day, we got the 12 years knocked off. Oh, okay. Because I was. Completely. Because I was sentenced to the 12 years of internal drug trafficking. So it's stacked. Right.

So eventually I got the eight years. They had to come get me. They took me back to Tulkan for the sentencing of the original eight-year case, right? For the international drug trafficking. So I did, I believe, two trips back to Tulkan. And then I had one more trip for the internal drug trafficking case, and they sentenced me to the 12 flat. So I had a 20-year sentence for about seven months. It was the worst time of my life.

It was the worst time I had in prison. I dedicated myself to, you know, consuming drugs. I really just, you know, I guess I wanted to die, but I just didn't have the problem. balls to, you know, throw myself from the third floor, I guess. I don't know. You know, I sat up there and thought about it many times because, you know, that young and, you know, having to spend that much time in prison for me was just like insane, right? And I miss my family. I miss the states, you know, it was just such a big change for me. It's just super depressing. Because, I mean, I can imagine if I was depressed.

Yeah. You know, I could, oh, my God, bro. How often could your family come see you? I mean, you did have a cell phone, though. Yeah, so I had a cell phone, you know, and it was normal for us, you know. Anyone could call me at any time on my phone. It wasn't an issue. In that prison, everybody had cell phones.

Are they even trying to get rid of them? Some people, some guards are douchebags, and they want to come in, and they want to grab your phone because they want to ask you for a ransom. right so um i live through that a couple times being the new guy you know but then you don't you're not the new guy anymore and you're not messing around you're not paying anybody for no ransom right right um the police is a different case when they come in at night you know 10 11 12 o'clock a night and they do a search they're taking your stuff they might steal it or they might take it and just you know send you to the hole you know you can't have cell phones guns knives machetes none of that stuff

everybody has them in jail you know um just depends if the guards you know why to be an asshole or not what would they tell you like 20 bucks 100 bucks yeah 20 30 bucks and the time I was there would be like 20 30 bucks you know we'll give you back your phone we'll catch you on the next shift you know something like that can you have actual cash of course all you have is cash over there there's no commissary so basically um the only means of getting money inside the jail is western union into someone and then your visit brings it in so when I didn't have a visit like the first days I was locked up I would western get the money Western Union to a friend of mine, and then his visit would bring it in and just give it to me.

You know, obviously, I'll be like, oh, here's for the taxi, here's for the favor, thank you very much. And then you got cash to buy whatever you want. But if there's no commissary, like, you mean no commissary accounts. There's no accounts. There's no, but there's no store, no commissary store. Oh, there's stores, yeah. But the guys run them. Anybody can have a store.

Yeah. So if you want, you can go into the prison, the big prison where I was at, and you, you have to buy your cell, right? So off the bat, you're walking in. Depending where they send you, they send me to D block, right? So I get to D block. They'll be like, all right, listen, we got a couple cells for like 400 or 500. They're gutted. So you have to do all the, you have to remodel it. Or we have like $2,000, $3,000 cells that have everything. You know, it's got a carpet. It has modified queen-sized beds. It's got a 30-inch TV. It's got a DVD player. It's got a hot shower. You know, it's got a separation between the bathroom and the room side where you sleep.

And it's got everything. You know, it's hooked up to the max. And then we have C block where the big drug traffickers like Colombians and, you know, a lot of foreigners that had money would buy their cells, five, $6,000 sales, air conditioning, it's got ceiling fans, carpeted, marble floors. I mean, it was just insane, things that you couldn't even, couldn't even imagine. See the fucking real estate market. Now, that was in my prison. If you go, like, to the prison in Guayaquil, and you're a mobster, they're buying two or three cells connected, and they're knocking down the walls between them, and they're making an apartment, right? Or they're making a nightclub.

So when the prostitutes come in, they got the polls there, and they're dancing. Like, it's a go-go. It's a go-go bar. That's the way they do it, man. Yeah, it's crazy. So much corruption, you could do anything inside these prisons with money, at least back in the day. I mean, the problem is it's such an, it's such an exchange. Like you've got that, but then again, you just showed us videos of guys running around with machetes with this big gunfights, grenades, you know, like it's, so it's one extreme to the other.

Yeah, it's definitely extreme all around, right? I mean, it's just a different world. It's something that when I got out and I would tell people that I got close to, you know, say coworkers or even other family members, they'd be like, what do you mean there was guns? I'm like, yeah, there was guns. you know, I've been shot at, you know, I've been stabbed, you know, I've seen people get shot in front of me, like things were just crazy in there. There's no law, right? And there's so much corruption. And then there's people that have sentences that they're not going home and they have no one that comes visits them. So if you got an enemy and there's somebody that wants to do harm

to you and you don't want to pay another 25 years and you don't want to do that you can hire someone and you pay them and they'll do the dirty work for you you know they'll go you can give them the knife or the gun depending on how they're going to do it they'll take care of your um your enemy and then they'll walk up to the front gate and say listen i just this guy here's the gun or the knife and they're ready to go to the hole with cash in their pocket because it's 30 to 45 days and if you don't get transferred to a different prison you'll just be back down on the same block that's it will the guards shake you down for cash like will they steal your cash very very rare because the guards have to walk inside with us right so you know it's um it's very

rare that that would happen they might do it to like um some new guy or maybe a foreigner you know but for the most part the guard that for most part there's some things are that are off limits yes yes yeah that that I've never heard of like them trying to rob a mobster or something you know it's not happening and there's people with cells in there you you walk by their cell they got stacks of cash on the table I mean right it's crazy they got people that have a cell that's just selling drugs 24-7. It's the trap house. And everybody knows it. The whole jail knows, you know, and everybody goes there to buy drugs and they're making a line. It's like a house. There's 10, 15 people in line just waiting to buy their drugs. You know, it's, it's insane.

Okay, so once, so for seven months you had, back to the timeline. So for seven months, you have, you had this sentence of a full 20. Then you get it, the 12 drop because your lawyer convinces the court look the case is a drug addict what do it so they drop it yeah so what happens i became a drug addict you know i lost all this weight and then we we went to trial and we make it to um the superior supreme court right so luckily the girl that i showed you in the picture her uncle was a judge in the supreme court okay now we talked to my lawyer he gets in contact with him you know a fee is for us to have my case moved into his um and his areas he's going to handle my case basically he's only right he's paying somebody off to get the case in his hands and then he's

going to take care of me from there now luckily and you know that's just luck that i have we were able to do that and i also didn't look good right i was you know it was a drug got i lost like a hundred pounds i probably weighed like a buck 60 you know real skinny and and And I was able to pull it off. Right. So we get that sentence dropped. But at this point, how much time have you got? I mean, how much, how long have you been in?

Yeah. I would say going close to two years. Are, is there a good time there? Like, do you get time? Not really. No. And those times, I think it was like three days for every 11 months or something. I don't know.

Once they took that two for one law away, there was no, there was no good time. And that's when they started doing riots. get back the good time. Yeah, I was going to say, like, what are you thinking? This is not an expensive, this is not a wealthy country that can afford. It sounds good, but you can't afford to keep these people in here. You just doubled the length of the amount of time that all these guys said. Like, if it's bad before, now you just made it extremely overcrowded.

And if they were violent before, well, you just, this bad. Extra violent now, correct. Yeah, you're 100% correct. So, like, I'm going to give you an example. When I got there, there was two people per cell, and there were some cells with mobsters that only had one person living in them. You could pay the director, you want to live by yourself, you bring in the construction crew, you take away that second bed, and you hook up your cell like an apartment, right? Now, two, three years in, there was already three, four people per cell. There were some cells where there was poverty, like B Block, they'd have 70 people in the cell, you know, because these are like the drug addicts, the hitmen, the Sicarios, you know, people that don't want them in D block.

They don't want them in C block, so they send all the trash over to B block. Okay, so what took, I mean, are you, after you get the eight years, are you appealing the eight years? Or it's just like, that's it. You're done. You're just hanging out. Yeah, there's no appealing. Once I got the eight, that's it. I got the A and I'm running with it, right?

So now just basically thinking how I'm going to live throughout this time. Six years. Yeah, it was rough, man. You just have to learn to live with all these animals in there, you know, not accustomed to it. You know, you might think you're about that life, but once you get with the big boys and inside of an Ecuadorian prison, you realize that that life you thought you were about is much more bigger and broader, and it's much more dangerous. And, you know, life doesn't cost a cent in there, you know. So how long did you stay in that prison the entire time? Yes.

So pretty much from December 2000. And two, I stayed till September 26, 2008 in that prison, just moved around to different blocks because, like, I tried to escape with the tunnel that they caught me with. So they sent me to F Block, which was the maximum security, 22-hour lockdown. And the first time I was there for six months in 2005. And then eventually I was sent back there for, like, selling drugs. And they said I was extortioning people and things of that nature. You know, I was just trying to survive like everyone else.

Are your parents sending you money every month? Yeah, I would say probably every month. Yeah, they were helping me out throughout the whole jail, the whole sentence. So you said at some point you got, or you got stabbed several times, but like, how did that happen? What was the story behind that? So the story behind that is around 2004, we purchased a cell on the first floor of D Block. And again, my plan is to try to escape. I mean, I don't want to stay there and not even the eight years.

Right. Right. And especially I've seen, you know, other people escape while I'm there. And I know it's doable. I know we can make it happen. So that's what we start doing. Comes up that there's going to be a strike, a riot, right? They're going to do the riot with the visits.

So it'll be a visit day, Saturday. 8 a.m., the visits start walking in the prison. and all the top guys let everyone that's somebody in the prison know right so they can alert their visits if they want to come in or not because things get crazy so you know everybody knows what's going to happen and it's usually around one or two o'clock in the afternoon that once there's a lot of people inside they'll send like the chosen ones that have like life sentences i don't want to say life sentence because they don't hand out life sentences but anyone that's like with a 25 or above They're going to send them with a gun.

And then once the guards are opening up the main gate to let the visits in, this guy's going to pull out his gun and take over. It's like he's robbing a bank. He's grabbing the guard, putting him to the side. Another guy's coming behind him with another gun grabbing him. They're dragging him inside the prison, taking the keys, locking the door. And then they're bringing these steel barrels that we use as trash cans. And they're putting them up against these steel doors and lighten them on fire. We're all the trash and stuff inside.

so the heat's welding these doors shut and then nobody's coming in the prison Colby It's well thought out I'm telling you yeah It's for real So they're just They're welding the door shut

Coming back in They're not trying to escape Or is it just too hard to get out We're not escaping Nobody's trying to escape Because there's just too much police presence Especially on a visit day There's hundreds of police officers around

What they want to do is just take over the prison And they want to have the visits inside So this way they're not coming and shoot at us, you know, going crazy with the, you know, the gas and all that stuff. So they take over, right? They bring the guards inside. Guards are held hostage inside the prison. You know, we're strapping them to like the weight benches.

We're strapping a gas tank to them. You know, there's people with gas tanks on their backs with the hose and they light the flame up. And it's just, you know, we got helicopters over the prison. There's CNN up on the mound filming us. My mother saw it live on CNN. Just, you know, movie stuff. It was crazy.

Do the guards in the prison have guns? No. Okay. No guns. No. The guards walk in with nothing. The inmates have guns. Yeah, the inmates have guns.

Guns, machetes, knives, grenades, you know, anything you could think of. You'll be... It's crazy. Yeah, I mean, I, you know, like, I've heard stories just from guys that had been locked up, like, in South America or, or, or, basically in the, you know, like, some of these countries. like these old Eastern Bloc countries in Europe where they had, you know, they have similar, nothing like, nothing this bad, not this bad. Their conditions are just bad. Yeah.

Not, yeah. There's not guns and not, well, there's knives. There's always knives. Yeah, it's not guns. You could manufacture a knife or anything. Right. But, um, and, and I've heard stories from guys that were locked up in South America. But you also, if you go on YouTube, there's videos that just are insane.

I mean, like every, it's everything he's saying. And you're just like, this is... Yeah, like I said, when I came back and I would, you know, tell these stories to people, people wouldn't believe me. Some people would be like, bro, what movie did you watch, you know? I just laugh it off, you know. It is what it is. You don't have to believe me.

I just, I'm speaking the truth. These are facts. This is stuff that I've lived. You know, I have proof of these things. And, you know, if you believe me or not, it doesn't really matter. I'm just telling my life story, what I live through. So no one else would have to live through it. You know, you don't want to be stuck in a prison going through what I did.

Yeah, well, I mean, let's face it. like 98% of Americans have never even left the United States. And then there's another like something like, like, God, I forget what the percentage is of people who've never even left their state. Yeah. Like there's actually a percentage of people that have never left their state. Like it's not huge, but it's bigger than it should be. Yeah.

So, yeah. And the people that even, you know, so people who have never left the United States, they just kind of assume it's like similar to this everywhere. Yeah. You're crazy. It's nowhere near like this. Yeah. I mean, in Ecuador, the prison.

The prisoners ran the prison and the jails. I mean, the guards are just there to take count and make sure you don't leave. I mean, the big thing is there, they don't want you to escape. You know, right. So, like, I tried to escape twice and got the living hell beat out of me both times, you know, got sent to F Block, you know, and just it was, it was horrible. But, you know, what happened? So what happened with the, so they riot, they've got the doors welded together. So they got the doors welded, right?

We take over the prison. Now everybody's masked up. You know, you can't tell who. anybody is everyone's got their shirts wrapped around their face holes just with the eyes and there's people walking around with guns in hand there's people walking around with machetes in hand people walking around with bulletproof vests on i mean it's just something out of the movies and you're walking around there's cells lit on fire you know it's it's it's smoke everywhere you know it's it's it's crazy and what are you doing so we're making the tunnel i'm busy working you know while

While all this chaos is going on outside, you know, their shootings, there's, because it's hunting season. You know, when the ride goes off, this is where, you know, it's payback time. So even though there's visits inside the prison, the visits are locked in their cells. You know, so like if I have, I have my cell, my visits inside with me, I leave to go out. I'm putting my padlock on my cell. Every single prisoner has their own lock and key on him. So I lock my visit in the cell and I go out. We're going to another cell.

Who is visiting? Who's your visit? I had several girlfriends throughout the time. Okay. Yeah. And my mother, I would never let her stay during a riot. But, yeah, I had several visits with me. Okay.

Yeah. That's nuts. Okay. So you're digging the tunnel? We're digging the tunnel. You know, and like I said, this prison's even older because this used to be like, I think it was built like an 1890 or something like that. So it was like a quartel for like the army.

So basically like an army base. And it was like on a mound. So they had the full. view of the city and they can see if any enemies are coming so it's so old again hot water in the sink these rocks are just they're turning into sand and it's all going through the drain all right now the bigger pieces that we couldn't get rid of because there were some chunks that you're taking out from the dirt once you get down and you're digging this tunnel you're coming upon like blocks and rocks and things you can't break through and things you got to you got to shovel through

another way because there's this huge rock that you can't break through it those pieces we would take out and at night we would go dump it in this huge like um there was like this hole i would say it was like um like the gutters the drains here for like the rain but it was just a huge hole in the patio that you could just go and dump it and people would throw garbage in it anything and just disappear so we're doing this tunnel we're doing it we're doing it we went through the side wall so i had a refrigerator in my cell right that i would put up against the side wall Now, when the guards would come in to do a search, they would come in with huge metal bars and they would start banging on the floor to make sure that nothing on the floor was hollow, right? So I got that and that's why we made the hole through the side wall.

The side wall between cells is probably like three feet wide, right? So we started digging into the wall and then we drop down. Once we drop down about four feet, again, this prison's so old, underneath it. it was like Swiss cheese. So we're digging and we fell into a tunnel. So as we're digging, we fall into something that's already made, had semi-constructed like wood, like holding up the walls like Chapo style, right? No train, but the wood was there.

So we take this tunnel and run with it. It was already dug out about nine feet from myself and then we keep going. Now, you know, walk in the yard every day and you're here. that's where you live. You know how far it is from your cell to the main exterior wall because there was two walls. So there's the one wall from the patio

and then there was like three feet and then there was another wall. I don't know why they did it like that, but that's the way it was. So we kept digging and digging and then we get word that the ride's going to end. All right? There's no more negotiations.

You know, they want to come in. They're going to come in blasting gas. They don't care of the, you know, visitors are there or anything how long had this gone on i think i think it was about 25 days when we got word that they were going to end yeah so 25 days of you know only the food that was there i think after like 15 days they shut off the electricity right so there was no electricity um the running water they cut off on us and we only had water three times a day 8 a m to 9 a m um 12 noon to 1 p.m and 4 to 5 p.m and we would have to gather water.

Like, I would have the two-liter bottles empty, and I would have, like, 15 or 20 of them to fill up water. So it's a way you can, you know, wash the dishes, take a shower, go to the bathroom, all that stuff. And visitors are agreeing to come in during the riot. Knowing that this is, knowing this is about to happen. Visitors want to come in because they want to protect their family that's in there doing time because they know when the visitors are not inside the prison,

the police comes in with everything. They're shooting grenade bombs at us. You know, it's just insane. Yeah. I mean, the whole time I'm thinking like, oh, is it 12 hours? Like, are they holding up for 12 hours? No, no, no, it's weeks. Weeks at a time.

Yeah. And that was just, that was the second riot. Yeah, I lived through three of them. It was insane. So the first one was more like a hunting season riot where it was just like 17. It was like, I think it was like four or five days. The second one was the longest one that I believe was like 25. the 30 days and then the third one was a short one and the police came inside with everything

because someone threw a rock and hit a police officer up on the roof and it hit him in the head and he fell down into the patio and died and as soon as that happened the police came in with everything I mean they came in shooting rubber bullets at people and the gas was just everywhere I mean you can't breathe with that you get neutralized immediately so you're digging we're digging under the are you under any of the walls the exterior walls, yeah? I'm calculating we're already at the wall. I'm thinking maybe two or three hours or we're popping up, like, you know,

Bugs Bunny out of the dirt, boom, and we're gone. But we have to seal this back up. We have to clean up the cell. The cell is a mess. There's dirt everywhere, right? Because after the riot, all the police and guards come in and start searching everything. And if they come up in the cell, they see dirt everywhere, we're screwed. So now it's cleanup time.

We start cleaning everything. Start cleaning, you know, scrubbing, mopping. You know, we have to get paper to put on the wall to make it, you know, make the hole disappear and then I got to put the fridge back and then wait for these cops to come in so cops come in they do the search same thing bam bam bam they bang on everything all good now I lived in the cell with two people one guy was from Poland and the other guy was from Columbia now the Colombian had prior knowledge of making tunnels so that's one of the main reasons why we did what we did and the other kid was just there and he was a helper basically with the rocks

and cleaning and all that stuff. He lived with us. He was a good kid, but he had a drug problem. Now, after the tunnel, after the riots done, we go back to our normal lives. You know, we're just day by day in the prison, and that hole's there in the wall. You're not digging in the, you're trying to do it. No, we're not doing nothing. I can't do nothing during the day because, you know, or at night because you never

know when someone could come in, someone could hear something. You know, sometimes the guards are walking in the patio, maybe just like sneaking in through the side window, seeing if you're doing something. So there's nothing going on, no digging. Now, this kid has a drug problem, and he goes to B-block, and he's speaking to someone that owes him money. I mean, he owes them money. Now, I guess they took him and tortured him,

because he's not paying up, and he gives up my tunnel. He's like, listen, I know where there's a tunnel. You know, maybe you could escape. Just don't me, you know, in my cell. We dug one during the ride. blah, blah, blah. The next day, I have like, I don't know, probably like four cicarios and this guy at my door. So this guy bangs on the door.

I look through the little hole in the door. He's like, hey, I got to talk to you. It's funny because I never interacted with this guy. I knew who he was, but he's in a different block. And I see he's got all these cicarios when I'm so. I'm like, what's up? What do you want? He's like, no, I open.

up we got to talk and my my guts like twisting i'm like what the hell's going on i'm about to get over here so i open up the door and they walk in they've got knives in their hands bam sit down you know like listen you know we know what you got here we want to sell so i'm like okay i was like listen man you know i've already got you know about four years in i know a lot of people you know i just want to leave i don't want any problem but maybe we could work something out where you can come with us. Right? And he's like, no, I just want the cell. You got to go. The guy wants to take me out of the cell. So listen, it's not going to happen, man. He's like, all right, it's not going to happen. You know you're going to die. So I was like, listen, man, I don't want any problems.

We could all just leave. I mean, I don't see what the issue is. We can set up a day where we all go, you know. I was thinking about, you know, calling them with the guards, bring them over. It's a party, whatever. It happens all the time. So this guy wasn't having it. We end up getting into an argument and some people overhear the screaming in my cell and they come to the door and these are these are upper uh like mobsters in my block and they talk to the guy they get out and they leave but now we're sworn enemies so this is like do or die you know i'm nervous i don't want to kill anybody you know i don't i don't want anything to happen to me but you know i'm in myself i'm not bothering anybody i just want to do my time and go this guy

Tells one of the hitmen to take me out So it's a visit day I'm with my visit It's so bad bro This is so bad I'm with my visit And lock her in the cell Because I got to go to the bathroom

And I'm not going to take a dump in my cell So lock her in I'll be right back and I leave And I go to some other cell Where it's a cell of people that smoke It's cell So this cell has nothing I mean barely has

like a cushion on the bed and just the bathroom so I'm going in there just to use the bathroom and go back to my visit does she kind of realize that there's an issue uh with you yeah of course i tell her already off the bat like listen i don't know if you want to come and having issues you know getting impressed by some people and she's like no don't worry it's okay so she came um i go to the cell right i'm going to go to the bathroom now visit day is crazy there's so much noise there's everybody's listening to different types of music we got rap Salsa, Marenga, you know, we got all these like mothers, fathers, daughters, kids. There's everybody.

So imagine two to three thousand prisoners plus all their visits. So right now the jail is bumping. There's music. There's everybody's there. There's a lot of noise. So when you open up the door and you close it in the cell, you can hear all that noise from outside. So when I'm in the back going to the bathroom, you know, I'm sitting there. And all of a sudden, I hear the door open.

all that noise comes into the cell and I go to look and it's the hitman coming in already with the knife I'm sitting on the toilet immediately grab my pants throw him up jump up you know scared shitless jump at the guy stabs me once we're struggling and I don't want to get back into the bathroom because where the bathroom was you know the tiles on the floor it was wet because it's visit day they took a shower they didn't dry it and I know if I get if he gets me back into the bathroom area, I'm going to slip, I'm going to fall, and he's just going to finish me off right there on the floor. So I keep pushing, you know, we're struggling, and I manage to push him through the door. Boom. And when I push him through the door, you know, there's a bunch of

visit, and there's a woman right to my right side, like two feet away. And I'm with a white t-shirt. I'm all bloodied already, you know, and I'm screaming because I'm trying to get him out of here. And as I push him out, he starts running, everybody starts screaming. You know, there's women. There's kids. They're grabbing their children. They're running. This guy's running with a knife in his hand. And that's it. I look down and I don't know how many times I'm hit. I just feel it. And then I go like this and I see little balls of grease. I always had a gut. And when I look, the balls of grease are coming out of my gut. I got them in my hand. Right there, I think I fainted. I just dropped. Like all the strength just came out of me. Two of my boys picked me up. They're like, come on,

bro. Come on. You're going to be good. They dragged me out to the main gate and then the guards take me over and the guards are dragging me down and they're like tell us who did this to you before you die just tell me who did it before you die and I didn't say anything I don't know I just I guess I was in shock but I didn't want to say who it was either I don't know I guess I just wanted to die live by the law I die by the law I guess I don't know so I get outside and they they put me in the um the guards office it's like their main office where they got all the bulletproof vests, stuff like that, where the police officer sit.

And they're like, quick, man, just tell us before you die. You're bleeding out. I was bleeding so much. It was insane. And I kept on, like, grabbing my belly and looking at it. And the grease balls were just coming out. What is it?

It's the grease from your gut. When I got stabbed, I don't know if you know. I don't know. When you have a gut, the gut is filled with grease. And grease are little balls. They're like white little balls. Now, I got stabbed in the gut. And I have this huge opening.

and the blood's gushing out and these little grease balls are just coming out. And I'm like, what the? And I just, like, fainted again. When I wake up, I'm into ambulance. It's going like 90 miles an hour, right? And the girl I left locked in my cell

is now in the ambulance with me. And I'm like, what the hell are you doing here? And I'm just, the ambulance is going all over the place. And she's like, oh, my God, you're alive. And I'm like, what the hell's going on? And they're like, no, no, put the gas. And then they put something on my face. And I knocked out again.

I get to the hospital. They're doing surgery, I guess, right? Whatever they were doing. And I guess they didn't sleep me with enough. And I wake up. So I'm on the beds, the surgery room. And when I look up, I see them working with my intestine. I guess they're touching it to see if it's punctured.

And when the nurse sees me, she's like, oh, my God, he's still awake. And they put more, you know, they give me that gas again. and I knock out. When I wake up, I'm all stitched up, hurting. I'm so sore. It's insane. And so I asked them for something for pain. They gave me some pills.

And then like five minutes later, my visit comes in. She's like, oh, my God, what happened? So explain everything to her. And I was like, see, I told you not to come. You know, shit's crazy right now. And she's like, what are we going to do? Where are they going to send you now? I have no idea.

So that's it. They sold me up. I was in the hospital maybe for like two or three hours. I'm like, all, kid. back to the prison you go. Same prison? Same prison. They walk me to the prison, and I get there, but they take me to the, it's called

Polyclinic. So it's like the clinic area where people who have been stabbed and shot are there in recuperation, right? We're all there recuperating. I get to the gate, they're like, oh, white boy, what happened? Tell them the story, they're like, oh, bro, that's crazy. There's another kid's been shot in the leg, one in the arm, one's been stabbed.

So I'm there for about 15 days, recuperation. they take me back down, right? Take me back down. I go straight to myself. As soon as they open up the main gate, I walk in to my right is B block, where the enemies are, straight ahead C,

and to the left is D, which is my block. I go straight to C, straight to D, which is my block. Immediately going straight to myself, you know, go in the stash, and are myself. Because I'm like, now they know because the people that were in B block

are watching and they know I'm back. So I know they're going to immediately go tell whoever tried to do this to me so I'm in the cell waiting nothing happens a lot of people were coming to the cell you know white boy you're all right you're right and everybody's coming in you know what are you going to do what are we going to do you know people want to do things you know so I'm like listen you know just let me think let me recuperate I'm not even 100% yet just you know make sure these guys don't come in the block please you know just hold it down so that night I hear the keys jingling after the locked in right after we get

then at nine o'clock i hear the key jingling like maybe 10 30 11 so i get up i stick the mirror out the window and i see that here come the ninja turtles you know with the the helmets the will-proof vest is the special group that's going to do searches and i was like please don't come here the first sell they go to his mind i immediately knew what was going on somebody told of course so the guy that put the hit on me since he didn't get the cell and i didn't die he snitched it out so they came when straight there, you know, as soon as they opened the door, they were like, you Gringo stand at the door, and the guy came and took my fridge and just threw it. Once he threw the fridge, I knew it. They kicked the wall and it was just like, it's paper. Yeah. So his foot

went right through. He's like, oh, you thought you were going to escape? Gringo, and they just started beating me. And I'm all bandaged up. Still hurting, still got stitches in me. Bam, all the way up to the hole. Forty-five days. And they found the tunnel. They took my cell. You know, They locked it up, and I lost that cell. I was going to say, and you stayed in the same prison. They didn't move you to another prison. Now, check this out. I do 45 days in the hole upstairs on the fourth floor.

After the 45 days are up, well, during the 45 days, I'm able to get a cell phone in the hole. And I talked to my parents, and they said that they were going to fly down, right? They were like, we're going to fly down, see what's going on. all right so when i'm in the hole i think it was like around like the 30 30th day or maybe the 35th day something like that i get a pass i'm thinking it's got to be my parents boom i get out they take me out of the out of the hole and i go like to the administrative area where all the offices are and i see my parents in an office my holy shit go and hug them you know we start crying crazy so right there they're like listen they're going to transfer you to why you

And I was like, oh my God, Guayaquilla's like, where I was, it was probably kindergarten compared to Waya Kid. And I'm in hell. But Wayaquil is 100 times worse. There's shootouts, you know, 8, 10-hour shootouts every day. It's just insane. So they were like, listen, we're going to try to see if we can pay something to not get you transferred. We're talking to the director. So just, you know, stay calm, stay good, you know, try to stay alive.

And that's what I did. Probably two weeks later, they confirmed, and I was going to get sent. Aesthetic being sent to the maximum security over there, they sent me to the F block in the same prison. Now, the two guys I was with in my cell, the Colombian and the Polish kid, they sent him the Wyatt kid. Yeah, they got sent over there. I was lucky enough to have my parents. Thank you, Lord, for the parents that I had. I love you, Mom.

So how long are you in at this point? years roughly four and a half years something like that yeah uh so how many times did you get stabbed just stabbed three times like colby's face he's just this is insane um this may very well be the worst story like you know what so okay so what happened i mean tell me you kicked back you started a store and you rode out the rest less three and a half years and it no no so i get to f block right f block is the maximum security 22 hour lockdown right two hours in the yard and then the two hours that you're in the yard it's mostly mostly so if you try to escape you try to extort someone you somebody or you're a big profile case coming in from the streets and you're a dangerous person

they're sending you to this wing now i get sent there so we go to santa domingo and i get put in this like holding i guess facility of the dncd which is the drug enforcement agency so again i don't speak the language so i'm trying to figure out what exactly is going on with this whole thing so we go to the next morning my wife at the time my wife at the time has family friends that are Dominican and they are related to this lawyer in Dominican Republic so it kind of automatically becomes he's my lawyer right so the district attorney

who the prosecutor who arrested me tells them to meet them to meet him at his office in Santo Domingo so they put me in a car and we all go to the district attorney's office in Santa Domingo Mingo. So I'm sitting there with my wife at the time and my travel agent and my lawyer, I never met before, but he's sitting in the next desk with the prosecutor. Is he like a criminal lawyer or is he like a real estate lawyer?

They told me he was a criminal lawyer, all right? So I don't know. I don't know at this point. He doesn't speak English either. That's good. That's a good situation. Right, exactly. So we're sitting there.

We don't know what the hell is going on. But after the meeting, we get like two minutes to kind of talk to him. We have a translator. We're trying to figure out what's going on. And they say that he asked, the prosecutor asked my attorney for $140,000. And this all goes away. I didn't have $140,000 at the time, or at least liquid. I didn't have it.

And my lawyer basically tells him, go fuck off. And we're going, I'll see you in court. Right. So in the Dominican Republic, I don't know if you know. know this but you're supposed to see a judge two days after your arrest within two days after your arrest so they bring me to this I guess Rikers Island you know what Rikers Island is yeah so they bring me to this like Rikers Island which is like a temporary facility until you see a judge or until something happens so I'm sitting there and I'm like I'm hysterical I don't

know what's going on I've number one I've never been in jail number two I've never been arrested so I don't know what's going on. I still don't know what I'm being charged with. So I go I go to this thing and I'm thinking I'm going to be there for a day top because I'm going to see a judge. I got arrested yesterday. I have to go see a judge by tomorrow, maybe the next day max. So I'm going to get out. You know, I'm going to get bail or he's going to dismiss it and I'm going to get out and that's what it is. So we end up going, I'm in this jail, this temporary jail, and I'm really uncomfortable. I don't have clothes.

I don't have anything. And I can't communicate with anybody because nobody speaks to language. So now I go to court two days later, and the court system or my lawyer or somebody screwed up and don't have a translator for me. So they postpone it for another week. So now I'm going to be there for nine days. And I thought that was the end of the world.

I mean, that was the end of the world. You know, like I want to go home. I want to see my kids. You know, this is not where I'm supposed to be. So I saw freaking out. And they let my lawyer come see me and they let my wife at the time come see me. And we go through that whole thing.

So nine days rolls around, and my ex-wife at the time, I ended up going back to New York. So it's just me and my lawyer now. And there was this guard that he was really nice, and he was being paid by my lawyer to be nice to me or to watch me or whatever it may be. And I haven't heard from the embassy yet.

My ex-wife called him, but I haven't heard from the embassy yet, so I don't know what's going on with that. So we finally get a, my lawyer gets a translator, and we have a lawyer, and now we have the court date, right? So we're going to court.

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

I'm in a third world country. I don't know. Again, I don't, I find out at this time that I'm. being charged with international narcotics trafficking. That's my charge. And like international, and I'm thinking in the back of my head internationally, that's big, you know,

that's like... That sounds serious. Right, right. That sounds like a problem. But my lawyer is telling me two months ago, don't worry about it. We'll figure it out we're good. You can't even arrange for a translator to be here. Right, right. Like I'm not feeling

real good about anything you say at this point. Right. But now when I get to court when they sentence me to the two months, I see all these cameras there, and I don't know if they're for me or for another defendant or whatever it may be, but later on that day, I'm sitting in the jail, and I see my attorney on the television in jail talking that blaming the prosecutor for planting XC in the palate. I'm like, holy shit. I mean, first of all, nobody has like half my vendors are you know are they're like ex-con like they all went sober you know they all went straight that's how the cannabis and vape industry kind i was going to say

the cannabis embassy like we've had several guys on that were selling and smuggling and now they have legitimate businesses like they all went legit since they were already in the industry when it was illegal once it became legal right it was easy for them to so that's what happened so i was like none of them do x you know that's not what it is so he's goes on the news and says the prosecutor planted x in the boxes and this that and the other now that can't be good for me you know you know that he's accusing a prosecutor of planting drugs in my shipment you know that can't be good for me on any front so now I'm looking at two months you know so my my lawyer's telling me because it's

Santa Domingo is close of him to come visit me and he's going to try to keep me in Santa Domingo and not bring me to a long-term facility for as long as presumably possible. Well, wouldn't you know two weeks later, I know

I'm crying every day, you know, I'm upset. You're clearly not. You're not cut out for this. Right, right. I'm more for a, I'm more of her it's called and I have a guy, you know? And so two weeks later, my name gets called to be transferred to like a real jail like a real prison and I'm freaking the fuck out I'm like what's going to happen

they're like don't worry your case doesn't get postponed or anything it's just part of the process right so I get so we take this ride on this bus to like a real prison it was called in the high oh 20 and again I don't know what's going on so I get off the bus and they bring me they start like an intake kind of yeah so they start an intake and this guy so in in there in dominican republic they're ranked by like stripes on the on the collar so a regular guard is like you're just starting a rookie is one stripe a regular guard is two stripes a supervisor's three stripes subdirector of the prison is four stripes and a director is five stripes so So they tell me that this four-stripe guy, the sub-director, is going to come handle me.

Now, I was different than anybody, so I got a little more attention than most people would. So this guy comes in... You're a high-price, you're a high-profile American who's been on the news multiple times. I'm the only one. I'm the only American. How many people are in this prison or this facility? 800 there's 800 prisoners it's on the smaller side

of what's there so there's 800 prisoners in this one and this guy's coming to come see me and kind of show me what's going on or the best to his knowledge so not only does this guy Montaro come see me but he brings one of the prisoners who speak English

he got deported from the US but he spent he did 14 years in the US but he speaks English so at least we'll get somewhere at this point right so he tells me that before I go into this guy's cell I have to go into observation for two weeks and that's just how the system works

I have to go into observation with like 30 20 25 people in one room and they see how I am and then I go into I could go into general population but the observation room was kind of like in the same general areas like the whole, you know, would be considered. So that was a little rough. So he put me in this maximum security room. And there was one guy who spoke English there too. But he was a real scumbag.

We'll learn to learn. Right. And he was doing a bunch of years also. So I go there and now keep in mind, it's three hours away from Santa Domingo when my lawyer is. And they don't have apps where you could transfer money to my copy. commissary, so somebody has to come to the jail to put money in my commissary so I could buy anything. Now, I'm not eating because, number one, I don't eat the food, and I'm too upset to eat.

So I'm already starting to lose weight. I was, when I got arrested, I was 323 pounds. I don't know if you saw the thing, yeah. I don't know, you saw the CBS thing last night. My mugged, I was significantly bigger than I am now. I was 323 pounds. Now I'm 219. I realized you were that big. Yeah. I was ginormous. So I'm starting not to eat And because of nerves, because of anxiety, because of everything, I'm starting to lose a little weight, but that's okay. I could afford to lose weight at this point, you know?

So I go into this thing and we gather that the only way to get me money is by somebody sending Western Union to somebody in the jail and then somebody in the jail, my friend, somebody in the jail's family would have to come bring it to the jail to go in my commissary. Because again, there's no apps around. It's third world. So I do this, and my mother or my wife at the time send money,

but, you know, I'm basically sending money blind somebody I met a few times, so I don't know if I'm getting it. An inmate? Some inmate says, yeah, yeah, send it to my wife and she'll take care of it. Right. That's basically how well. So that became a whole thing, I learned that they have

Oreos and they have chips and they have like cup noodles so at least I get something because I'm not eating anything that they're bringing me in their food and I also learned that they have like a premium meal service that you could buy at the

commissary every day they have lunch so let me try that because I'm not eating the food that they're giving me. What is the food that they provide there just garbage? Not only is it garbage but it's made it filth. So like there's cockroaches and roach and rats and everything like that. So it's like

so I've never been in American prison. You have, I'm assuming you have. So I would have to say jail food's bad, but it's associated with your country. But this is jail food for me when I've never been in prison

but it's not associated with my country. So even if it was a shitty burger, at least there was a burger. You know what I'm saying? This is rice and beans when I don't eat rice and beans on the outside to begin with, but this was the shitty version of rice to me, you know, you know. So I'm not eating anything there, and now I'm living off of cookies and ramen

and whatever there was at the commissary. So that, at least I have something. And the guy ends up taking the majority of the money, I send him and just stealing it, right? Is he telling you he's going to take the money? No, he's not telling me. He's just saying, this is, you know. They sent $200.

right your family's saying we sent 400 right right and not only that's a conversion rate you got to pay somebody to go get the money and bring the money to the other prison and this that the other so that's where we are so I go to montero and I tell him put me in general population I need to at least get outside and have you know some sort of like I need air because I was walking as much as they would let me walk in the first prison I would walk because it was kind of clearing my head. I was my only time to kind of think to myself. Right. And I knew that in the main area in general population, people were getting phones. There were legal phones, but there were phones being snuck in by guards or whatever it may be. So I knew that at bare minimum, I would be able to

buy a phone in general population. So that he said, all right. He said, go into general population. And he puts me with this guy, Roy, who he's going to. to basically carry us out through the end of the story because he was my only, even though he was a career criminal, he was my only kind of salvational way I would be able to communicate with everybody. He would kind of show me the ropes. Right. You know, he was told by Montero, and he worked in the prison, so he was like, he did food service and he shined people's shoes, and, you know, like the guard's shoes. So he kind of knew the ins and out. He was there for four years at the time or three years at the time so he would show me the ropes so I moved to

Roy's room now there are four buildings in general population and building three was where Roy was but I learned later that building three was the worst building because like it was like the building for bad kids you know but they had to put me there because Roy was there and Roy didn't want to move so I had to go there so I go there so I go to they offered to put me in maximum security which wasn't one of the buildings but in maximum security you can't really go outside

but I would be safe and protected but I didn't want to do that because I wanted to go outside and I wanted a phone so I said no put me in Roy's room and I wanted somebody that spoke English so I get to Roycell and the buildings are very third world

you know like very third world there's cockroaches everywhere and it's just concrete but it's dirty and old well the story behind it is the u.s gave the d r several hundred million dollars to reform and update this prison so the guy who appropriated these funds stole these one right and actually was in this prison also for a short amount of time so it was very third world they didn't have any water they didn't have running water for 10 minutes a day. They only have running water. They've turned it on. And if you didn't shower with the Dominicans, the 40 Dominicans, on your floor, you had to preserve water for later

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That's S-H-O-M-A-N-D-O-com. Please support our show and tell them we sent you. Once again, that's shopmando.com and use the promo code, Cox. So I chose to find gallons of water, empty gallons, and I would shower later. That's the picture with all the empty gallons of, or like milk jugs. Well, you have milk jugs. Yeah, they were like gallons or half gallons or buckets. But I couldn't, but not only you couldn't shower, you had to preserve water to flush down the toilet because the toilets weren't flushing.

They had no running water. I mean, they put on the water for five or seven minutes at 6.30 in the morning. And then at 5.36 o'clock night, that's what you would get. So, and water wasn't every day. There was, every two weeks, the, the, the water system would go out. So we didn't have water for days sometimes. So I knew that now I had a water, I had a shower in by myself. So I, so we would gather water and we would do this.

that whole thing. So I figured that out. My friend Roy got me a phone. Figured that out. Roy was nice to me, so he said, he was round number two of send my sister money. I'll get it to whoever we need to get it to. Right.

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

And there was the legal economy with the commissary, and if I didn't get money deposited in the jail, I need to find out how to get tickets because they didn't have cash at tickets. So every Tuesday, whoever family member would go to the prison on Sunday, visit you, put money in your commissary, and on Tuesday they would hand out the tickets.

So I had to find out how to get tickets. So subsequently, you would, the people who sold drugs and the people who sold phones and cigarettes, they had tickets because that, because they were vendors, right? So I would, so the smart thing was to find one drug dealer, one vendor, having a relationship with him, get him the money. And on Tuesday, whatever money I didn't spend on cigarettes and my phone or buying drugs for doing favors for me, I would have left. over so I could buy food at the commissary. Makes every sense. Everything seems simple, right? Yeah.

Okay. So when I first got to general population, I don't know if you saw the picture, they had everybody carried around these big machetes. Do you saw those? I'll show you a picture. And there were these machetes that they would break up the beds, the bunk beds, and they would file them down and make machetes, and that's what they would walk around with. And everybody's doing drugs and this, that, and the other.

and buying them from they would have two ways of they would have two ways of smuggling these drugs in it was one crooked guards and two they would throw these like wrapped bowls over a fence like really really like down and dirty type of day

and they would fish them with like fishing you know like like little little string and they would fish them and bring them in the building so at least I had cigarettes on a phone I could call my kids I could call my wife at the time and I called my mother and a few friends.

So I got that, you know, and now everybody was kind of fascinated with me because I was the American, but everybody also thought I was rich. Now, I was not, I always had a decent living and a decent, a good business. I supported my household, but by no means was I wealthy, you know, but to Dominicans, I was the gringo, the wealthy gringo, that's what it was. So not only was everything more expensive to me, but everybody was going to try to take advantage. You know, they picked up,

they picked up something from me off the floor. I had to buy them, you know, I had to buy them drugs. I had to give them something. You know, nothing was free, you know? And now I'm scared half to death because I don't speak the language. And the only person that I could really communicate is Roy. And Roy works most of the day.

So I have to figure out how I'm to communicate with these people. So I have my phone now. So I have Google Translate. But the problem with Google Translate is 60% of the inmates don't read or write. So now I'm really screwed. Right. They're probably not speaking proper Spanish anyway. No, it's very slang.

It's very slang Spanish. I'm trying to pick up some sort of Spanish, you know, very basics. So as I'm learning, I'm really keeping to myself, and I have my phone, so I'm talking, I'm on my phone a lot. I'm just playing on my phone a lot, you know, but there were illegal phones. So now, every time a cop would come in the building, one guard was assigned to each building every day. But every time a guard would come in the building, the building had, like they had calls. You know, they would scream out Leo, if they came in the building to put everything away, to hide the drugs or, you know, put the phones away,

whatever it may be. So I would have to find somebody that would take my phone because if they caught you with a phone or drugs, you were going to the hole. Right. And I didn't want that to happen because this was already bad. So I would imagine, I don't even know what the hole was all about.

Right. And the hole is not like anything you did wrong, you went to the hole. But the guy who has a, a phone should be treated differently than the guy just stab somebody, but that wasn't the case. Right. You know, so they were all in one spot. Just like when I was in the room, when I was in the cell, I was sharing a cell with two guys

convicted of murder doing 30 years. So there was no separation. Right. But what you also have to understand is that 60% of the inmates are preventative. They're a pretrial. So 60% of these people. haven't been convicted of anything haven't been convicted of anything but they're all criminals you know so now i'm sitting waiting for my two months you know my two months to come up i have like a month left

i'm trying to learn what was going on i'm losing way like crazy because i'm not eating i'm living off a cookies and data chips and my lawyer comes visits me once and at this time my marriage is going through some trouble. Right? You think? Right. My marriage is going through some trouble, and it seems like

my wife at a time is looking for a way to get out. Right. You know? So she even starts limiting how much we're talking. And her father, her stepfather, she was foreign, so she had an adopted family. It's a whole not a story. adopted family in the United States.

And my father-in-law starts talking to me and basically tells me that my wife at the time really didn't want to talk to me much. And she's like starting to gather my assets. She's starting to take money out of my bank, my business account. She knew all my pin numbers and stuff like that. So she's starting to hoard my money.

starting to sell my, you know, stuff in my office. And she's starting to sell furniture. And she's starting to kind of like transition to move out of the situation. So I got a call from my father-in-law one day. And in my ex-wife's family, it's like a hierarchy. So they say jump, you say how high. No matter, I'm 40 years old. I'm 40-somewhat years old, 42 years old at the time.

And, you know, that's just how it worked. They had four or five kids. And, you know, you didn't breathe if you didn't ask that. You know, that's just how it was. It was very strange, you know. So now my, now what you have to remember is my lawyer is their family friend. So whether or not me and my wife stay together, I have to deal with them because they're my link to my attorney.

right you know and my and my and so now my my my my my my father-in-law is telling me that my lawyer is only going to speak to me through them and my what yeah yeah this is my lawyer right but I don't have any I don't have any out on this because I don't have a lawyer my mother just got diagnosed with cancer the day I got arrested the day after I got arrested and I'm trying to keep, you know, like not involve her as much. Even though she's calling them, I'm speaking to her every day. I'm crying to her, and she's calling them, but that's kind of how it was. So I sold my mother on the idea, all right, just let them handle it type of thing, you know?

What are we going to do if they don't, you know? So my father-in-law calls me up one day, and he starts yelling and screaming at me. So supposedly my ex-wife hacks into my social media and sees things that she should have, right? Okay. And now we're getting divorced. Right. Okay.

And we're not speaking anymore. Me and my wife are not speaking anymore. My father-in-law tells me this. We're not speaking anymore. And so now I'm talking to my father-in-law. who hates me right that's my that's the only way I could talk to my lawyer right so my father-in-law hates me I don't know the language he's my only link to this but he made a promise to my mother that he will stay he will stay involved he was doing me a favor and

staying involved to make sure I get home so things start getting really tense really quick right my phone gets stolen or uh stolen and held for ransom and every day it's just another thing with the inmates with the with my father-in-law and i am just hyper hyper anxious at all times at this point you know i don't know what to do my lawyer comes visits me and now i have roy so now i have roy who speaks english and spanish so at least i have somebody kind of on my side that could kind of translate. So I go up to my lawyer when he comes to visit me, finally, and I say, my father-in-law is telling me I can't speak to you

and I can't have any direct communication with you. And that makes me feel really uncomfortable because me and my soon-to-be-X are going through a divorce. You know, so could we please figure that out? Don't worry about it. Message me directly. good. Okay. So I message him directly and who do I get messages from? But my father-in-law well, you know, Johnny called his cousin, his niece and they were on the phone and he said that

you're messaging him directly and you can't do that. So I got to the end of my rope. You know, I'm at the end of my rope now and I don't know what to do. So we have to figure this all out. So I start calling out of the lawyers. And the guard, remember the guard I told you about that was really nice to me in the first jail? He told me about this one lawyer, Santana, that fixes these problems, you know? So I call, I message Santana on WhatsApp through translating, you know, through translation. And Santana says that, now I sent the first lawyer already at this point. I sent him $30,000.

My mother borrowed money. I had a little bit of money that my wife allowed me to take, you know, and sends them $30,000. Now, I don't know, to this day, I don't know if my father-in-law got a piece of that. I don't know how much got to the lawyer. I don't know anything. But that lawyer also was very politically motivated. I come to find out. And that's why he went on the news and that whole thing.

So I'm talking to this guy, Santana, over the next week, and he's doing his due diligence. and he said, Mike, 50 grand, I'll get you out. I'll get you out on your next court appearance. What the fuck am I getting 50 grand? You know, I'm not, I have no, I have no money. My ex-father, my ex-wife isn't going to give me anything. My mother doesn't have any money. She's dealing with cancer.

What am I going to do? So I have my phone. So I start calling people to see if I could raise money. I would think the vendors that had stuff in the past. palette they would they should they should contribute right right you would think they would feel bad like hey i i think we obviously got this guy into a jam right but they're not picking up my calls right they're not answering and these are people that i did business with for 10 years because they're thinking they're going to get in trouble not only are they thinking that they're going to get in

trouble but they're like i have my own life this guy's in jail would you know fuck him right you know but some of these people are at my wedding you know like this wasn't i traveled a world with these people for 10 years, you know, this was my family, you know, my extended family, you know, that we went to each other's houses and we hung out. We did the whole thing together. So I would think that, you know, each one at bare minimum would say, here's five grand, you know, get the fuck out, you know, but they weren't picking out my calls. So my mother had to kind of beg and borrow from people that she knew. And, one day my father-in-law calls me up and starts a big argument with me and at this point

i'm i have santana on deck he's ready to go and something just snaps in my head and i start fighting back with my father-in-law because at this point i'm just getting i'm a punching back for him because i'm scared but now i have a backup so let me fight back a little bit right So I fight back, and I basically said, look, I don't want to have anything to do with you. Leave me alone. I'll leave you alone. Let's, whatever, it's fine. You don't want to talk to me?

I don't want to talk to you. I'm good, you know? So I said, I'm getting rid of Johnny because this is not working. Johnny's first lawyer. Yeah. So for some miracle of God, we get the 50 grand to send Santana. My mother borrows, she asks friends, and she asks all these different people. And we've raised the 50 grand for Santana.

Now, getting Santana money is also a problem because I don't know if you have a wire to DR. But when you wire to DR, it's not instant like now. It's not overnight. It's two weeks. So we're sending Western unions to this guy, Santana. But you can't send $50,000 in a Western Union, so you have to have 30 people send $1,000 knowledge each you know so my mother's trying to find different people to send wires and we're going it's it's insane what's happening so we finally get santana's money now my mother

also made a trip to d r and the you know the whole thing so my court date's coming up and and i'm like this is awesome i'm about to go home you know it's been three months two three two two months and change, I'm going home, you know? So I get to court, and now when you go to court from Ohio, you get a bus, right? But in America, that bus that transports you is told that they have to be on, it's taken extra measures, I'm assuming, again,

I've never been in jail in America, it's taken extra measures until you're on time and you're ready for court. Well, it's not like that. DR. You know, it's whenever the butts gets there, it gets there. And if you're late for court, you have to postpone. You know, and that's just what is this.

Oh, my God. Yeah. Okay. So is just a regular bus? This isn't like a transport owned by a DR? No, it's a transport. But again, the San Francisco is two hours away by bus. There's a lot of traffic and sometimes it

runs late. You know, that's what it is. You know? So in the meantime, the embassy comes to see me While I'm waiting for this first court date The embassy comes to see me And I'm, I see the embassy And I'm so relieved to see the embassy Because they speak English

And I see some, I see an American You know, say the being an American Who works for the embassy And they kind of bring this intermediary And my intermediary was this guy named Jose And he spoke English, but he was Dominican I think he was dual citizen And they basically

I'm crying to this guy, and I'm telling him, please help me. This is the story. It's very apparent. I wasn't trafficking drugs. I was holding an event. I've done these before. Please help me. We can't do anything.

Yeah, I was going to say. We can't do a thing. They bring me this little, like, hotel soaps, and they bring me the owner, and I said, take your soap and shove it up your ass, man. I can buy my own soap. Right. You know, I need your help, you know? So I find out that the embassy can't do anything

And now I'm waiting for this guy Santana to pay somebody to get me out Right So we get to the court Santana's already gone My bus is two hours late to court And my Next court date was postponed for I want to say

I want to say right in mid-November. So now it's two months, so it's September, right, from when I got arrested. And now I'm here another three months, and I am beside myself. Like, I'm beside myself. I'm hysterical. I don't know what to do.

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

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

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

interim, my mother contacts my father, who I haven't spoken to in years and years and years. and he tells him the situation. So now we're just waiting. I'm starting to talk to my father again after years, and we're waiting. Two days before, so Santana tells me, we have the deal. Everything's said.

Next court date, you're going home. I paid the money. Everybody has their money. The district attorney has his money. The judge has her money. And you're going home. Very simple. Okay.

Right? The case is going to be dismissed. Two days before I go to prison, I get a call the Santana dies. I fucking knew what I was going to say was this guy died. Does he get sick? Yeah. It drops dead.

So I don't know what the fuck I'm going to. Now, do I still have the deal? Right. Do I still have the deal? And I just got to go through the motions. of going to court with somebody, or do I not have the deal? Is my 50 grand gone?

I had a begging bar to get the 50 grand. What am I going to do? So we get the, we go to court, and now we have to postpone it. But you would think that you postpone it for two weeks, tops, I get another lawyer, we could go, go through the motion, and then I can go home, right?

So they don't postpone it for two weeks. They postpone it for three months. Now I'm in jail for Christmas. Right. You know, and, you know, I am, I'm literally screaming at the judge at this point. In jail, I'm screaming at the judge in court saying, I don't want to be here for Christmas.

I did nothing wrong. You know, I signed for a package that wasn't even mine, and I want to go home. Could we please move it close? closer. Those are the dates. So now I have to go to court January 15th. So again, we don't have any idea who's going to be my next lawyer or where the money's going to come from. But my mother starts talking to my father and he runs a successful business and he says, I'll free up 50 grand for you to get a lawyer. We start interviewing lawyers. Now, during this time, my mother got

special permission from the jail to come to the jail and visit me every day. She comes, she books a trip for six weeks to spend Christmas and New Year's Thanksgiving with me, you know, just so I have something. And now we have to find another lawyer. So it's good that she's there. So she hires, so her friends married to a Dominican who has a cousin in Dior, in Santo Domingo, who's driving her around. She hires a translator. So she's, paying money all this money to people that she can't afford number one but she has to do it because she has to get me a lawyer and she has to come she's not going to drive in d r you know so she has a driver and she's getting me a lawyer and we're interviewing lawyers and we're doing the whole thing and

while this is happening it was like the fourth or fifth day that she was there i go upstairs and visit her and i see these guards and they're all dressed in black and you can see their maximum security guards and I've seen them before they did maximum security they were the people in charge of maximum security and I didn't pay any mind to it because they were always there anyway and I say hello to him and they say who what's your name I said my name and he goes come with us and they cuff me what the fuck what did I do I said I'm going to see my mother so they cuff me and while this is all happening my mother and i are writing letters to everybody we're trying to contact congressmen and people in politics and whoever we could contact the news

whoever we could contact to shed some light on this to help me get out we're trying to contact so they bring me to my cell And there are six of them with me. And they're fully blacked out. And they're, they mean business. These guys mean business. These aren't like a regular guard. You know, these guys are mean business.

So they're tearing apart myself. They're tearing apart my cell. And they're at, where's the phone? Where's the phone? Where's the phone? So I knew that I always had to bring my phone. I had to hide my phone when I wasn't in my cell because, you know, just in case they said, Leo, my phone had to be away, and I had to leave it with somebody I trust.

So I established a really good relationship to one of the drug dealers on the next floor up from me, so I brought it to him. Right. So my phone was in my room, so it was safe. Right. So they're tearing apart my room, and they're asking me for the phone, but they can't find the phone. I said, I don't have a phone.

There's no phone here. So they don't know what to do, and they bring me to the whole. but they don't put me in the hole. They put me in observation. The room that you're supposed to go to when you first get to the jail. Right. Because it's a little more mellow than the hole. So I find out that I'm there because one of the letters, you know, Chuck Schumer?

Yeah. I hear that one of the letters I wrote, I wrote to Chuck Schumer or his office. And you would think that an American writing a letter from... a prison that doesn't have a record or anything, you would think they would kind of keep that confidential, but supposedly that information got out to the prison and the prison knew I had a phone because the email was sent to Chuck Schumer's office

from my phone. Oh, okay. So they knew there was a phone, but they didn't know where it was because it wasn't in my room. So now I'm in observation. And I don't have a lawyer, and now they have one phone flirting around there

but it's like an old Nokia you know that that was the prison phone that we could kind of share right so I could make two phone calls a day you know that's what I got or three phone calls a day and weren't long phone calls

wasn't my phone so I'm calling my kids once and I'm calling my mother and father twice because we have to figure out what's going on my lawyer so we get a couple lawyers to come to the jail

and there were these two lawyers that I was boiling it down to one was this like Fifth Avenue type of lawyer who had an in-house one of the partners spoke English one of their clients were Pfizer you know they were

they were a Fifth Avenue lawyer very expensive but it seemed like they knew what they were doing right and then there was this other lawyer who was younger and he brought his friend who spoke English who was an English teacher

but he was younger but he understood my case right he understood that it wasn't even real weed number one you know it was like hemp it was legal in my country went through customs it you know it was nothing you know that was it was it was nothing it was insignificant right so we understood that so i liked him but i knew he had the experience you know so my mother and father take it upon themselves to hire the Fifth Avenue lawyer because that's where they think I'm going to get the better defense.

But I wasn't crazy about the Fifth Avenue lawyer because every time I would every time I would message him it kind of felt like I was bothering them, you know? And he was like, and I was nervous so I wanted to communicate with my lawyer, you know? So meanwhile, the other lawyer, the younger guy, he would talk to me all day.

are you okay could I bring you anything you know like that type of thing but the other lawyer was like very reasonable in price so I was like let me continue to talk to him if he wants a little money I'll even get it for him no so now I'm going through the motions with this fifth avenue lawyer but I get introduced to this lady so now I'm three lawyers in four lawyers if you count the guy the younger guy I get introduced to this lady through an inmate that says she has the right connections you know

and she tells me that for 10 or 12 grand I can get out you know I can get out on my next appearance but she doesn't want to be she doesn't want to argue my case she wants to be in court so the judge sees her but she doesn't want to argue my case

so I'm thinking about this too right now during this time one of the letters that we wrote that my father wrote I actually wrote and I find an email address for the president of Dominican Republic and I write an email and I tell my father send this email so it doesn't come from it

right so he sends it and I'm out of my lawyer pull strings and gets me out of punishment area. It gets me out of the observation. I was deaf of six days. And I wake up one Sunday morning and somebody, they tell me that I have a visitor. My mother already went back.

They tell me I have a visitor. I said, who the hell is visiting me on a Sunday? You know, it's not the embassy. They don't come on Sunday. All right. So I go upstairs, and I see these two guys. They introduced to me, they introduced themselves to me as colonels. They're colonels that are right under the president of Dominican Republic.

They have my entire file. Right. But they don't speak English. But they have a phone, so I'm using Google Translate. So they tell me, I tell them the rest of the story. And they say, we're going to see if we could help you. thank God you know thank God

you know maybe you could help me you know you understand what I'm going through and they say for $50,000 no they just say they're gonna try to see what they can do and they leave I am never to hear from these people again

never okay now I hear a couple different whispers about why that happened also but I'm I never hear from these people again he's up for re-election so I don't know know if he's doing anything or not doing anything, but I'm getting nervous because I haven't heard from him. And I had my mother write an email to him, and there was no correspondence. So now

this lady tells my mother for $12,000 or whatever it is, she's getting me out of prison. So I said, we have $20,000 left in the fund because we gave the Fifth Avenue lawyer 30, and we had 50, and now we have an extra some money. So let's send this lady $10,000 so she could get me out. right right so we send this lady $10,000 and she tells me that she meets with the people she has to meet with and it's not $10,000 it's another 30 and my father's frustrated unflustrated and my mother's frustrated we don't have it on 30 right that's not happening yeah And it's a scam anyway. And it's a fucking scam anyway.

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

come back once a month or once every two months to sign kind of like a probation yeah type of thing so I said if that's the way it has to be that's the way it has to be I mean you know that's where we are so meanwhile the Fifth Avenue lawyer is representing me and I have the other lawyer kind of on deck I'm talking to him with friends at this point I think I send them like a grand you know just so you could kind of counsel me almost through this whole thing. So we get to

court and the Fifth Avenue lawyer is putting together this whole fucking dog and pony show strategy and tells me that he wants to postpone in another month so he could build his case more. So I'm close to a year

now. I mean, like, I'm getting up there, you know? And I don't like him to begin with. Right. So I'd like to help to go fuck himself. And I hire the lawyer. The kid.

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

And we go to the court, and it's February. And I figure I'm getting out. I'm approaching, I'm approaching worst-case scenarios. I got a year. So I'm going to get out very soon, and we'll see what happens. So we get to court, and the kids representing me, and he argues. but I think I have the deal on the bag because I got the lady standing right behind me

and we're good and the judge says we're going to trial but doesn't set a date for trial because that's not how it works in DR you have to wait for a day for trial we're going to try and look at the lady what the fuck happened they didn't want to do anything because you didn't give

them extra money this any other I'm right so now the whole scam's for I tell her to go fuck herself and now I got the kid but do I want the kid representing me at trial because now it's getting really really apparent to me

that I'm facing 20 years in prison that's what I'm facing I'm charged with narcotics trafficking for a few vape pens but it's not classified it's not classified as that I'm in the same category with people who are shipping

cocaine powder from Columbia to to DR that's how I'm classified and So now I got to figure out what the hell is going on. But we find this translator who translated for me at this date. And we became friendly with him. He was a really nice guy.

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

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

And like you, this, if you would have Google, this guy's name, this guy's on TV, he's representing very high profile, he got, he does murder cases, he does, this is his wheelhouse, right, you know, this is, this, what, he's the Johnny Cochran of, of, you know, that, you see this guy on TV. So I'm like, all right, cool, this guy's

nice, he's going to help me get through it, he's going to even work with the young kid, and we're going to be, we're going to be good. So, he, we start talking all this nonsense, and meanwhile this guy

forget how it happened but this guy comes into the picture his name was Jose and he's a real used car salesman like real used car salesman scumbag type of guy and he starts pitching me another

back doorway to get out of this whole thing but his pitch was it's 30 grand you will get out you will leave the country immediately you will have to come back every two months sign for four years

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

so he said now that we got the famous lawyer yeah but that's not that's not from it because he's he's he's straight he's a straight arrow he's going to represent me in court the johnny cochran way but this guy is giving me an out let's come up with the 30 grand yeah so at this point while this is all happening that there's a lot of violence in the in the jail my my phone's getting sold i'm getting extorted for money on a daily basis but the one thing that the embassy did, right, was be the embassy.

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

that's kind of how the whole thing was. I could be extorted. Right. Stolen. Right, right. But don't touch the American, right. So,

now there's all sorts of violent. People are getting murdered on a daily, on a weekly basis here. I'll give you a story. There was one guy, and he was in for,

he was doing 20. So he was, he was doing 20, and he had, we had these fans because the windows were open 100 fucking degrees there, you know? And the only thing you had was really a fan. And only some rooms had the fan.

So he had a fan and he had to get money from his cellmates, whatever it may be, to pay for the fan. So, and we're not talking about a million dollars. We're talking about 2,000 pesos, which is 30 bucks, you know. So they didn't pay him or whatever it may be. And they were jerking them around. And he formulates this plan. where he's going to kill him.

He's going to kill one of these guys. So he takes his machete, and one night after they closed the gates at 10.30, everybody's in lockdown. They're in like another building, you know, where they sleep, the guards. And he popes one of his cellmates to death. And then because...

Perfectly reasonable. Well, I mean, I would. And then the other guy... The other cellmate tries to stop it, and he's poke him too. You know, they took 25 minutes to get to the cell to get this guy out of the cell with two bodies on his, on his floor. I mean, that's kind of how it works. That's a reaction time. That's a reaction time.

But if they hear that there's a phone in the room, they're running there 30 seconds, you know? So that's kind of what was going on on a semi-weekly basis. And I'm scared shit. Like, I knew that I was kind of safe, but at the same time, I mean, these people, I'm sharing rooms with these people. I was going to say, these are not exactly rule followers. Right, exactly. They've been warned, but yeah.

Right, it didn't matter, right. Right. So now I have, so now I have, you know, in the legal point of now, I have my straight-laced Johnny Cochran attorney, right, who's helping me. I have the kid who's kind of consoling me. And I have. I have this guy Jose who just came in the picture he was telling me for 30 grand he got the deal

and he's showing me proof that he has proof that he has a deal so I contact a few of my friends and I contact this guy and he was a buyer of mine so he didn't have anything in the palate but he was a buyer of mine he owns a distro

and he was a really really great Indian guy and really great person, you know? And I get on the phone with him and I cry to him and I told him what was the deal. And he, my mother talks to him and she cried my mother's in Italian, she cries about everything. And she's crying to him and he was like, I'll help you. So he gives me the $30,000. I'm getting out of jail. We just need to, yeah, I know. So I'm approaching $200,000 with this. That's just illegal. That's not the $200 that I'm going through every week. And I'm

commissary and with buying people drugs and doing the whole thing um so i'm over 200 into this plus my mother's expenses of coming and doing the whole thing so i get the 30 they tell me that they finally get me a court date for july first so now i'm over a year i'm right june 22nd i get arrested July 1st of the next year is my court date so it's my trial I'm going to trial this is going to end now I'm scared because I'm facing 20 years and I don't know if this guy's full of shit but there is a sense of relief I guess you called because during this whole time I'm living in limbo I don't know what's going on I'm facing 20 years you know I don't know what's going on right you know So, my court date's finally approaching, and we get to trial.

Now, in the Dominican Republic, there's no jury. There's three judges, so there's one guy and two women, right? And I'm thinking that I got the two women because I'm emotional. my mother's there, she has cancer. I got the emotional aspect of this, you know? And the guy, even if it's two against one with the women, I'm good. I'm okay. I'm going to get at least something decent, right?

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

he didn't know what was going on. Right. He was completely caught off guard. He was hysterical when we arrested him. even the dog handler said at the airport that intercepted the palate basically said we found the drugs we found the cannabis but it was labeled in boxes like it was being sold at a store they wasn't hiding it you know this was not in Ziploc bags you know this was you know this was you know obviously being used for a meeting or or something like that so everybody

testified to me and even the prosecutor testify basically makes his closing statements and says look please the court show mercy on him give him whatever minimum it is because he's not a drug trafficker you know like he gets it you know now did that come from the crooked lawyer Jose did that come from um the president did that where did that come from you know nobody know or was it just genuine that they had compassion for the situation. So I didn't know, you know. So they, you know, we all argue and everything's okay.

And it was spread over two days because trials there, they're not like trials here where, you know, it's actually organized. Trials there are 20 minutes. The whole thing, front to back, that's what it is, you know. so um so we we return after then we were wrapping things up and they go into chambers and they're talking i'm sitting there with my mother and i'm sitting there with my lawyer and i'm sitting there with um the translator and the translator kind of knows the situation because he's represented me a couple times and i'm looking at him like what do you think you know he was like i'm pretty sure it's good

but I don't know. Now, I had to pled guilty because I thought I was getting a deal, right? So I pled guilty, right? I pled guilty. I said, yes, I did this, but unintentionally type of thing. Right.

So I don't know if they're going to give me the probation deal. I don't know if they're going to give me 20 years. I don't know. It was the longest 15 minutes of my life that they're in chambers. So they come out and the guy starts talking.

And he says, I wanted to let you go today, but they don't. The two women? The two wibbit. Right. They don't want to let you go. So I was like, oh, fuck. You know, what, not now.

So he makes this spiel. And they all basically say the same thing that we understand that you're a businessman, this is your business, and you didn't mean to do it, but you still did something really wrong. That's what they say, right? I was like, and I, I even, even got up and said, I understand I did something wrong, but look at it even logically. I say to them, I'm in jail and I see all this. And I say, if I was in jail, I could buy an ounce of grass for 2,000 pesos, which is about

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

So what we're going to do is we're going to give you 18 months and then you could leave the country. So now I'm already a year in. So I have... Do you get good time? Is there a good time situation? I thought there was. that story's coming along.

So I'm looking at it as my lawyer sitting there and telling me we'll get you out earlier, but, you know, worst case scenario was 18 months. I've got five months, five and a half months left. I'm, you know, I'm not doing 20 years. You know, I'm okay. Yeah, you can survive. Survived a year. I can survive six more months, maybe.

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

So when this whole thing happened, he was so anxious, they took him out of school and started doing online school because he didn't know what was going on either. And I'm feeding him, telling him, and I'm very honest with my kids, and I'm telling him, all I got this lawyer, and this guy's putting together deals. And he's at this point, but he's a very intelligent kid. And he's like, he's like, number one, Santana's not dead. He's full of shit. He's all your buddy.

And I don't know who to believe at this point. So, like, he kind of gathered to himself that he doesn't know when I'm, dad's coming home, you know? And my 12-year-old thinks I have a problem with my passport, you know, so I'm stuck in Dominican Republic waiting in a resort. You know, as a matter of fact, one of the things that I would always tell my kids, I need to speak to you twice, twice a day. I'd speak to in the morning when you wake up or around when you wake up, and before you go to sleep. If you sleep hot at night, you know how disruptive that can be. Whether you're having trouble falling asleep, you're waking up sweating in the middle of the night or all of the above. That's where ghost bed can help.

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You'll answer a few questions and get a personalized recommendation. Even better, our listeners can get 50% off sitewide for a limited time. Just visit ghostbed.com slash Cox and use the code Cox at checkout. Again, that's ghostbed.com slash Cox with the code Cox at the checkout to save a whopping 50% off site wide. So one day, I'll make you laugh, my son calls me very late in the day. I can't get through it. me calls me very late my 12 year old calls me very late in the day and i said what what's going on with you why didn't you call me was that i was a little busy and this time you know i said i said scotty i get

really anxious he doesn't know him jail but he knows i'm anxious because i want to speak to them he said uh he said dad i don't know why you're anxious i'm safe i'm with mom why don't you go in the hot tub why don't you go in the pool you know that'd be well you know i'm sitting here so um long story short um where i get 18 months and my friend and my lawyer and my lawyer is telling me we'll get you out soon and we'll get sort of time we'll get you know we'll you know we'll get even if you have to stay in the country at least you won't be in that hellhole so I'm thinking my max downside is I have to stay in the country for to finish out the 18 months and then I could go home that's max downside but upside is I get to go home right away

and even if worst worst possible case scenario is I get I have to fill the 18 months I'm two third's there you know I'm there you know I'm right I'm right there so I go back and I'm kind of a better mood and I told my kids that I would be home in a couple months and I told my my ex-wife and I'm kind of in a better mood because after a year I know how to live here or at least to survive but I also know there is a date I'm going home you know So as time goes on, I'm bugging my, my lawyer, and it gets back to me that I became friends with this guy in the office who handles all the releases and everything like that. And he's actually going to school to be a lawyer, and he always helped me.

And he tells me, Mike, you're not getting out early. By the time you get a court date for early release, you're going to be gone because that's the way the system works. It's fucked up. So now I'm facing the reality that I'm going to be there for the next five months. Hey, you guys, I appreciate you watching. We're going to put Chris's link in the description box. His channel is called 910th, and we're going to put the link in.

You can hit the link, go to his channel, subscribe. Once again, I really appreciate you guys watching the video. Please hit the subscribe button, hit the bell so you get notified of videos like this. Share the video. And please consider joining our Patreon. It's $10 a month, and it really does help Colby and I make these videos. Thank you very much. See you.