Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast - Surviving a 45 Year Prison Sentence | Michael G. Santos

Episode Date: March 10, 2024

Surviving a 45 Year Prison Sentence | Michael G. Santos

So I made, you know, just a series of really bad decisions as a kid. And when I, by the time all things were said and done, the judge sentenced to me to 45 years in federal prison. And then instead of accepting responsibility and expressing remorse, I made, you know, the bad decision of hiring an attorney that I thought could, could really help me, lie and cheat my way out of it. So, you know, it was the right amount of money you could win is basically what my attorney told me. And I said, well, let's go. You know, later I went to prison and I began, became a reader and read about people like that went through the Holocaust or people like Nelson Mandela or Victor Frankl and, you know, Malcolm X and all these people that transformed their life while they were in prison really gave me a pathway to make it. And I had a path. And so I found ways to create a pathway to liberty, even while living in a high security penitenti.

which was exciting for me. Hey, this is Matt Cox, and I appreciate you guys. Check it out the channel. I am going to be doing an interview with Michael Santos, and he is the YouTube Prison Professor, and he does videos in, sorry, videos. He has podcasts that are connected to various prisons, and he's got a really interesting story,

and I'm check out the video so what so listen so you did like a ridiculous amount of time in prison and so yeah so what so the you know what ended up getting you to this

what was your sentence so I made you know just a series of really bad decisions as a kid and when I by the time all things were said and done the judge sentenced to me to 45 years in federal prison damn but that was under the old law where you were able to get parole right actually i yes i was under the old law but the juror i went to trial jury convicted me of committing an 848 a title i think

it's title 21 section 848 which is the kingpin statute i was trafficking in cocaine long story behind that but because i had the 848 that was one of the few sentences under the old law that was not um eligible for parole so i i i had to be 848 that was one of the eight 48 that was one of the few sentences under the old law that was not eligible for parole. So I had a 45-year sentence. I served every day of that sentence. And, you know, it's all good. So you got, okay, so what, so with good time, how much time did you do in prison?

9,500 days. So 26 years. So yeah, under the old law, that's a good point. Most of the people that are listening to this are not going to be familiar with the whole evolution of prison reform movements and so on and so forth. When I was in prison, it was Ronald Reagan was in the White House. It was a fundamentally different era. And they were transitioning from what's called the determinate sentencing system or an indeterminate sentencing system to determinate sentencing, which is new law and guidelines and things of that sort. Under the old law, a person could

max out a 45-year sentence in 26 years as long as the person didn't lose any good. good time. You call it good time, but that's really a poor choice of words because it's really the avoidance of bad time. You don't have to do anything to get the good time. Just don't get in trouble. Right. All right. So it has a ridiculous amount of time. You always was so funny when I was locked up and people would tell me like what their prison sentences were. They'd say, yeah, I got 15 years. I'd be like, wow, 15 years. And then I'd always forget like I was serving 26 years. I would always feel bad for people. I thought, wait a second.

I'll tell you the real irony is when you go to prison and I was, when I went to prison, I was the youngest guy in the whole prison. But when I left prison, I was the oldest guy in the whole prison. So you know you spent too much time at that point. So where were you born? I was born in Anaheim, California. But as a child, my family moved to Seattle and I grew up on the north end of Lake Washington in a small community called Lake Forest Park.

which is just a suburb of Seattle right um were your parents married yeah yeah my father escaped from Cuba married my mom American and was kind of grew up in you know normal community my father was a contractor I have two sisters um had every opportunity to lead a great life um came from a pretty good community that was always drew on to the fast life and and that uh you know led me to choosing the wrong friends and not listening to the role models I should have been listening to and kind of put me on this path for always something fast. And yeah, with it, so I was around 1985. I was 20 years old, 84, I guess. I was 20 years old and heard the advertisement for Scarface and that guy sounded a little bit like a Cuban. And I thought, let me go see that movie. And instead of

seeing it as a flick for entertainment, I flicked it as a roadmap to, pick up hot chicks and drive fast cars and fast boats that was the path how so how how how old were you I was 20 when I got involved in cocaine I was under this delusion that if I didn't get caught with it I wouldn't really be breaking the law so I created this kind of scheme where I'd hire other kids from school from that I went to high school with and give them a job we were living in Seattle I'd send them down to Miami and they would bring it back to see battle and other some people would drive it some people would transport it and that's what really led me into bigger problems because if you're pursuing that path you have you're exposed as a leader

and a fundamentally different charge and that's why i got the 848 right and then i made bad decisions after i was after i was arrested i was arrested on august the 11th 1987 and then i was 23, I was living in Key Biscayne, South Florida, and they took me into custody. And then instead of accepting responsibility and expressing remorse, I made the bad decision of hiring an attorney that I thought could really help me, lie and cheat my way out of it. So, you know, it was the right amount of money you could win is basically what my attorney told me. And I said, well, let's go. And then I proceeded to make every bad decision a guy could make. I went to trial. I took the witness stand. I perjured myself on the stand. And that's really what resulted in the very long sentence that I got.

Well, how did the whole thing, like you, so you're saying, you did this for a few years, right? It was what, three years? No, not even that. About 18 months I was involved. An 18 month run got you 45 years. Yeah, this is the start of the war on drugs. So, you know, it was a, it was very different time in America than we have today where we're kind of in a reform movement. At that time, we're at the dawn of mass incarceration. And I mean, I'm guilty. I was guilty of everything they charged you. There were no weapons and no allegations of violence. But it was large amounts of cocaine that started when I was 20 and lasted until I was 23. I really lasted until I was 22. By the time I was 22 I was kind of done and I'd moved to Marbeia in the south of Spain and was trying to

you know recalibrate my life but it was um yeah you can't really run away from you make the kind of bad decisions that I made when I was 20 well okay so if you're kind of done like you're saying you'd kind of moved on from that from dealing drugs or for drug trafficking and you'd moved on then how did they end up indicting you well remember I didn't really move the drugs. I hired people that did that for me and those people would get caught. And the way that they would mitigate their time is by cooperating with the government. And so they testified against me. The U.S. government held a series of investigation, which led to grand juries. And the grand jury issued a secret indictment against me. So even though I was no longer in the space, so to speak,

there didn't mean that prosecutors weren't working behind the scenes to bring me to justice, which they very effectively did. So what happened when you were in Spain? Like you had moved there? Yeah, I moved to Marbeia. Bought some property, was building my life in Marbea and was kind of thinking that's what I would do with my life. But, you know, you miss America. You know, when you're young and you really are arrogant as I was at that age,

I really missed the U.S. and thought, I didn't really do anything wrong. You know, I didn't understand the law. They didn't understand the implications that as somebody who organized the scheme, I was responsible for everything. So, and I had a lawyer that was telling me what I wanted to hear rather than what I needed to hear. So I came back, just trying to figure out what I'm going to do. I had a little cash. So, you know, I could do what I,

kind of wanted, but it didn't last very long before authorities came and pointing their guns at me and said, you know, time's up. That was it. That was August the 11th, 1987. Well, I hadn't even graduated high school. Well, I didn't have much more education at the time that I came into the system. So you, so you went to trial. How long was the trial? Several weeks because they had a lot of witnesses against me. You know, as I said, there wasn't violence, but because I kept hiring people thinking that if I wasn't caught with cocaine, I couldn't ever be brought to justice. So I hired people to drive it, to store it, to distribute it locally.

And that was really a bad decision on my part because it made me much more, it exposed me to much lengthier sentence. And so the trial lasted several weeks, maybe three weeks or so. And then there was another trial because even though when I was caught, when I was caught, you know, the organization was still going. I was just not involved in it day to day. You know, I'd kind of removed myself from it. But because I didn't cooperate with the government and it was ongoing,

they indicted me a second time during the trial. so go to trial while I'm in trial there's another series of arrests and your name comes up again it was the same cocaine the same people they could have superseded the indictment but they really wanted me and they got me and so so these are the reasons that my my sanction I think was much more severe than than it could have been had I known more about the system then had they offered you, did they ever come to you and say, hey, you could get 10 years. If you just plead guilty, we can do 15, 10, 15. Well, so I was really not of the mindset of even knowing what to do. I met and I had a defense attorney. I was tried in Seattle. I was indicted in Seattle, Washington.

Even though I was living in Key Biscayne at the time, I grew up in Seattle and it was kind of where we started. So that's where I got indicted. And I brought a lawyer from Miami to represent me in Seattle, which was another really bad move. And the lawyer was telling me that I was going to win, and I wanted to believe him. So I wasn't on that path of looking, what are my options? I really believed that I was going to win just because, I mean, I was guilty. Don't get me wrong of everything. It was just that I wasn't ready to accept responsibility.

I didn't want to admit to my parents what I had done. You know, I didn't want to admit to anybody that I was a drug dealer. And so I just took it to the end, and that really hurt me because I didn't express remorse, and it led me to the really long sentence. So, okay, so the question was, did they ever come to you and offer you? I didn't. I didn't look, so I never heard of the deal. No, I was very clear with them that I was going hard. And so they didn't bring it to me.

Right. Yeah. Okay. Bad decisions. Bad decisions in a true crime story. If you know you're guilty, accept responsibility and try to move on. But I was just had a different mindset when I was 23. So let's, so you, you're found guilty.

There's your, you're, um, you're found guilty. And you're sent, did you, have a second trial so they charged you again? Did you go to? Yeah. For a limited time at McDonald's, enjoy the tasty breakfast trio. Your choice of chicken or sausage McMuffin or McGrittles with a hash brown and a small iced coffee for five bucks plus tax. Available until 11 a.m. at participating McDonald's restaurants. Price excludes flavored iced coffee and delivery. They charged me a second time, but the second time I pleaded guilty and they ran it wild. So I got 35 years on the first trial and then I pleaded guilty and they gave me eight years for that because I was in prison.

I wasn't even doing anything other than I'd put it together. So I got eight years for being the leader of that. And then remember I told you I took the stand during my trial and perjured myself? They gave me two years for that. And they ran all of that what's called consecutive to the initial 35, which is why I had a 45 year sentence without parole eligibility. So that's how I started. And I served that whole time and pre-trial in the hole. So I was in solitary confinement for my first year.

And that was probably a flaw for me. I mean, that was a weakness for me because I didn't really understand the system. I'd never been in custody before. And I'm living in the hole. And I'm believing all of these delusions that I'm telling myself that I didn't really do anything wrong. You know, there were consenting adults. There was no violence, no weapons. And I really didn't have the intelligence, I would say, to really unwrap what I had done.

It wasn't important what I had done. It was important with how did the system see me? And the system saw me as a serious drug offender. And that's what I got sanctioned for. So you, I mean, you get the sent. Did you fight? Did you appeal it? Did you?

Well, an interesting thing happened when I was in, after I had was convicted so when I was convicted up until the time I was convicted I only wanted one thing which I think is probably consistent with anybody that gets arrested and that was I just wanted to get out of jail I didn't care I just wanted out and I didn't know how it would happen I just trusted that my defense attorney would would work some magic during the trial but I was wrong and when I was convicted, I knew I was facing, by that time, I'd realized I made a really bad decision and my grandparents were not speaking with me. You know, I'd humiliated my family. I was in the newspapers a lot, drug kingpin. And I hated where I was and what I had done and I wanted to change. And so that

was really an epiphany for me that I said, I have to draw a line in the sand. And some officer in the jail gave me a book. It was a book about Socrates. I don't know. Are you familiar with the story of Socrates in the jail cell? No. So it really changed my life because I'm reading this book about Socrates who is facing a death sentence, not because, you know, he's full cocaine. This is a philosophy book. I don't know how to spell philosophy at that time of my life. And I'm flipping through the pages. And the only reason I'm really reading it is because this guy's in jail and he's facing death and i'm facing life in prison without the possibility of parole so when when you're when you're contemplating life in prison that's effectively dying in prison so it's like a

death sentence and and that's why that story spoke to me but what socrates had this opportunity to escape and leave and when the opportunity was presented to him that he could leave socrates said no i'm going to stay and the guy who kind of coordinated it all his name was credo said why will you stay if you stay you're going to die. Socrates said, yeah, I'm going to die. And he said, but why would you do that? And he said, because I live in a democracy. And in a democracy, I got to take the good with the bad. He said, this is a bad law that I was convicted in, but I have the right to change laws I don't believe in. I don't have the right to break laws. And I remember being in solitary and putting that book on my chest and kind of leaning back in myself and saying, I really messed up my life. And I got to do better. I got to find a way to connect

with society because I hate being a criminal. And I hate that my grandparents won't speak to me. And I hate that I've lost everything. And I've lived this life of lives for 18 months or 20 months or now it's been two years. And I really just want to be a citizen again. I don't know how. So that is a turning point for me. And it happens before I'm sentenced. So I'm waiting for the sentence to come down. And I just say, okay, this is it. This is where I'm going to draw a line in the sand. and I write a letter to the newspaper that had been covering my trial, and I said, I'm going to change my life while I'm in here, and I'm going to find a way, I'm going to figure things out.

I'm going to learn to live a life of meaning and relevance and dignity even while I'm in prison. And, of course, when somebody says that and they're in prison, everybody's going to have to be cynical about it. But that led to the journalist coming out and interviewing me in a front page story, and the judge reads the story at sentence. And I remember the prosecutor what he said. I said, well, Michael Sanchez says he's going to change his life. But if he spends every day of his life in an all-consuming effort to repay society,

and if he lives to be 300 years old, our society will still be at a significant net loss. And I'll always remember that sentence because it really brings clarity to where you're going. You're going into an environment that obliterates hope and extinguishes the possibility for something better. but I had hope because Socrates gave me hope and he helped me believe that some kind of way I could reconcile and make amends and my judge sentenced me to 45 years and next thing I know I'm going to a high security penitentiary and that's where I that's how I started my life but I had a path and that path was going to say this is what's this is I'm going to create my own liberty while I'm in here. And that path for me was a three-pronged approach. One, I was going to focus on

educating myself because I believe that if I was going to get anybody to believe in me while I'm in prison, I need to get an education. And two, I needed to find a way to contribute to society in meaningful, measurable ways. And three, I need to find a way to build a strong support system. And if I could do that while I was going through prison, I believed I could find my way. And that's really what empowered me through the journey. Okay. Yeah, I remember the story of Socrates. He ends up being sentenced.

He doesn't die. He gets sentenced to like a home, they kind of sent him to like a home confinement type thing, right? They end up not killing him? No, he drinks the hemlock and he dies. Are you serious? Okay, I definitely don't know this story. And so, Socrates was a philosopher from 2,500 years ago in Greece. And at that time, there was a class-based society, and he was from the upper class,

and it was against the law for people from his class to educate people from the lower classes because they wanted to enslave them. And they didn't want people to learn. But Socrates believed that every human being had the power within to give meaning to life and to contribute. And so he would teach people. But that was against the law. So they arrested him. They went to trial.

There's the trial of Socrates. He was convicted. And he was sentenced to death. And death by drinking hemlock. So he had to drink his own poison and kill himself. And that was the sanction. And of course, that's what was carried out. So he was dead.

I did not know that. Okay. It's a great story. And it really transformed my life. But it was the first of many. You know, later I went to prison and I began, became a reader and read. and read about people that went through the Holocaust or people like Nelson Mandela or Victor Frankl and, you know, Malcolm X and all these people that transformed their life while they were

in prison really gave me a pathway to make it. And I had a path. And so I found ways to create a pathway to liberty even while living in a high security penitentiary, which is exciting for me. He's been known to cure insecurity just with his laugh. His organ donation card lists his charisma. His smile is so contagious. Vaccines have been created for it. He is the most interesting man in the world. I don't typically commit crime, but when I do, it's bank fraud.

Stay greedy, my friends. Support the channel. Join Matthew Cox's Patreon. So how long were you in the penitentiary? Did you ever, you ever dropped custody? Yeah. So I was in the pen for seven or eight years, the first seven or eight years. And it was a very violent prison. But I found my way. And I never had a single problem while I was there, primarily because I had that path that I learned from Socrates, is don't think about what's going on with you, but think about what you want to become. And so I found a way to get into school. And I got an undergraduate degree. eventually from Mercer University in Georgia. And then I wanted to go to continue school and got into Hofstra University in New York and got a master's degree from Hofstra.

And I was doing all that from the Penn, but simultaneously working to try and change the system and bring about reforms to the system. So my master's, my undergrad was in management. my master's was in across an interdisciplinary degree with a focus on cultural anthropology and sociology. And so the focus was on really understanding the prison system. And I wanted to have a role in changing it. That's what led. You started off by saying it was the founder of prison professors. That really was that strategy. I began, after I got my university degrees, I became an author. And I began writing for publication from in prison and building a strong support system.

So all of that is giving me life while I'm in the pen. And eventually I develop a support system with a lot of the leading penologists in the United States. And they invite me to publish in their books and eventually come to visit me in the prison and really help me develop as a writer and as a communicator and as a scholar. And that led me to eventually getting lower security levels. So I went to a medium first in McKean. Pennsylvania, then in Fairton, New Jersey, then to a low security prison in Fort Dix, New Jersey. Then I'm there for like eight years. I get married in prison. Then when I get to within 10 years of my release date, I go to minimum security camps. And I did my last decade in minimum security camps in

Florence, Colorado, Lompoc, California, Atwater, California. then Taft, California, and then I go to halfway house, and then I go to home confinement. And so my whole, I've gone for the entire journey from detention centers to USPs to FCIs to, to halfway houses, and then home. So I'm going to go back to your wife. She had known you, so you'd been contacted by her. You knew her prior to prison, though. So, yeah, we grew up together.

You know, I grew up in North Seattle. she was, you know, kind of a good girl and I was not what somebody would call a good boy, I'd say as a child. I was very wild and fast. And so we weren't friends. But we graduated together. So I knew her. Her background is, you know, her brother's a judge. Her dad's a dentist. Her mom's a nurse. So really a straight family. And we graduated high school in 1982. So in 2002, so in 2002, I'm in prison for like already 15 or 16 years, I think. And I had already become a published author and had built a support system in prison. And this is the dawn of the internet, kind of the year, late 90s, early 2000s.

They're Googling me, you know, who's Michael Santos? And they find this high school. And some kid writes a letter there. Is this the same high school that Michael Santos went to school? And she would happen to have been coordinating a high school reunion. for us at that time so that's how she learns i'm in prison and she writes me a letter and that letter turns into a correspondence and a friendship and we fall in love through the mail she starts visiting me in prison and we got married inside of the fort dix federal prison when i had about 10 years

to go and then she moved around with me from prison to prison to prison wherever i was and it was always this plan that we're going to use i mean when she came into my life right that that it was different. I was a different person at that time. I was like 35 at that time. And I was an author and had a huge support system. And so she believed in me. And there was always this dream that said, I'm going to build a journey and a career around everything I learned in prison. And so she became a big help to me, not only in terms of making me feel whole. Why just survive back to school when you can thrive by creating a space that does it all for you, no matter the size. Whether you're taking over your parents' basement or moving to campus, IKEA has hundreds

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Only date is July 18th. Give me the opportunity to experience love and have a relationship from prison. But I supported her when I was in prison. I mean, I earned money when I was in prison and could support her completely. And that was able for her to go to nursing school. She became a certified nurse's aide, a licensed vocational nurse, then a registered nurse, and she got her master's in nursing. And it was always with this plan that she would, she would do that until I could build a business that would be big enough where we could work together.

And that's what we do now. I've been home now for almost 10 years. So we've got a business that we work that, that we work together. So I'm really the luckiest guy in the world. So the business that you're running now, you were, you were planning. Like, first of all, that's amazing that you, you know, that one, that you got, you know, you got married in prison. but two, that you're still married because a lot of those marriages, you know, they fall apart when the people... We even married for 20 years.

Yeah. I love her more still every day than I did when I started. So when you got out, you had kind of had kind of a plan on what you were going to do, right? Like, did you go... I had a plan when I went in. From that moment that I read Socrates, I had a plan. And that plan was I'm going to work to change this system. and I am going to work to be successful.

And my whole story in prison has led to that. And so that plan started before I even got to prison. And it led to me earning a lot of money while I was in prison. It allowed me to come back to society with financial resources and with income opportunities that maybe many people think I shouldn't have had. but it was all work and it's what I still do today but it led to me building a career in real estate a career in advocacy a career in consulting in a lot of different venues but all of it really started by reading about Socrates and helping me believe that I could become something

more than the bad decisions that I made when I was 20. Okay. Okay. All right. So I do, one of my questions is that did your plan for getting out of prison and saying, hey, this is my plan. This is what I'm going to do. Did it go exactly according to the plan? Or were there, really? I walked out of prison. I had 100 grand in the bank. So it was different for me than most people. I didn't have a financial struggle. And I had massive income opportunities awaiting me. I mean, I got out of prison. on August the 13th, 2012, to do my last year and a halfway house. And I was driving across the bridge in San Francisco. And I told my wife, I said, I'll have my first million within five years. And she'd said, how are you going to do that? And I'd say, doing the same plan I got through prison.

And she said, well, you know, so before I got out of prison, I used the same strategy that I used while I was in prison to develop a support system, develop a strong network and I'd start writing to people from prison that were successful. And I'd say, what do you, look, let's, I wanted to get into real estate. This was like 2012, the begin, the really at the end of the recession. And I wanted to get involved in real estate. So I start writing to real estate developers in like 2010. And I'd offer, you know, to work with them for free if they'd just let me learn the craft.

And, you know, you send enough of those letters out, you find, mentors. And I found some mentors that were really successful. I only wrote to really successful developers. You tell a story. They start believing in you. They'd come to visit me in prison. And so I had opportunities to succeed when I got out. And I went to see the guy when I got out. His name was Lee. And I told them, you know, he said, he, I wrote him from prison and said, I need a job because I'm going to, probation is going to require that I have a job. And so he's sponsored. He said, you're going to have a job. So I came back. and I'm visiting with him.

I got out on a Monday. I didn't get to leave the half house until a Wednesday to go get my driver's license and things. And I got my clothing stuff to go buy some clothes. And on Friday, I got to go visit him. And I'm sitting across sale from us. I said, Lee, I'm super excited to do this. And he's saying, okay, he's trying to laying out my job to work with him,

to be like the executive assistant of a CEO of a billion dollar company. And I said, Lee, I really appreciate it. That's not really what I want to do. And he said, what do you mean? I said, I told you, I really want to build a career around my journey. And I want you to help me. And he says, I tried to help you. I'm giving you a job. Yeah, but I told you, I only want the job to satisfy probation. I want to be free to do what I want. And I want you to help me. And he said, well, what do you want me to do? How do you want me to help you? And I said, I want you to sell me a house. And he laughed. And he said, well, do you have any money? And I said, I do. I got

some cash, but I don't want to use my cash because I've been in jail 26 years. I need to rebuild my life. And I don't want to use it. I said, I want you to finance me. I said, well, do you have any credit? And I said, as a matter of fact, I do because my wife gave me one of these awesome little tools here, right? This thing called an iPhone. I remember when she gave it to me, I put it next to my ear. I told her it was broken because it has no dial tone. When I went to prison, there was no internet. There was no email. There was nothing. And so, but I learned how to use it. But I learned how to use it. And, you know, you go around here, you find this thing called credit karma. And I found credit karma. And I said, I do have credit. And I go to credit karma. And I said, look, I have a

zero zero zero credit score. And he looked at it and he said, what? I've never seen a zero zero zero credit score. I said, well, I didn't exist before the internet. I said, but no credit is better than bad credit. And he laughed. And I said, look, Lee, you're a businessman. You invest in people every day. And you invest in things that you won't see success for many years to come. I said, I may I've just got out of prison on Monday, and I might be sleeping in a halfway house tonight. But I want you to see me for who I'm going to be in five years, not who I am today. And I said, if you can see that, I want you to sell me a house. And as soon as I get credit, I'll pay you.

And he said, okay. He said, here's what I'm going to do. I'll sell you a house. I'll build you a house and I'll sell it to you. And I'll finance you. And I'm not going to have to pay a real estate agent, a commission. So I'm going to apply that to your down payment. and he said, and he said, and if you could say this motivated while going through 25 years, because it was 25 at that time, I had to get another year to do in the half house, if you can say this motivated by going through 25 years in prison, I want you to go speak to everybody on my team, on every store that I have. And I'm going to pay you five grand for every one of those presentations. I'm going to apply that to your down payment too. So that when you get a mortgage, you've already got a down payment and you're secure because I can't sell it to you cheap. It'll ruin the comps in the neighborhood.

And so he built these big developments. And so that's how I got started. He's still my business partner today, but I've been millions of dollars of deals with him. And all of that started from a prison story. And all of my work is from a prison story. My clients right now are prison administrators. They pay me licensing fees to bring courses into prison.

And all of it is really because of what started after. reading these inspiring people like Socrates or Mandela or Victor Frankl or Malcolm X. And if I were in prison and I read your story, that would have inspired me. And so I just try to take that inside and help people see what their life can be, regardless of what bad decisions they've made in the past. And that's led to a number of businesses that have sustained me and allowed me to do what I really love doing, which is helping people in prison reach a higher potential. I really believe mass incarceration is one of the great social injustices of our time, and more Americans need to know about it.

And that's why I'm grateful to have an opportunity to speak on your true crime podcast, yeah. Yeah, you listen, you like, you know, I mean, you know this being inside light. There are so many people that they build, you know, there's nothing wrong with building a life in prison. You know what I'm saying? Like they do, they build a life because you have to survive there for 10 or 10. 20 years, whatever it is. But part of that life, you know, has to be about getting out. You know, like the whole time I was there, I was thinking, I was planning on what I'm going to do when I got out. Like, it didn't go the way I planned, but, you know, you, you miss 100% of the

targets that, you know, you don't aim at. So, I mean, so I'm, I, I didn't hit the exact target, but, you know, without a plan at all, you're just not, you're going to fail. I mean, And Scott, I mean, I'm shocked that, like that, like your business partner, like, wow, that's, that is, that is amazing. Like that, you know, I want to say like, I want to say you got lucky, but boy, you wrote, I'm sure you wrote a lot of letters. You know what I'm saying? Like, it's like. So that's an interesting concept, right? Luck, right?

And people are going to prison. And my audience is different from your audience. Your audience is probably never going to prison, right? They're interested in true crime. my ideas are people that are in the worst the worst period of their life and my job is to show them how to build a pathway forward and you know this concept of luck is there's all there's an antidote to that is that the harder I work the luckier I become right and and and the difference between me and many other people is that I was really fortunate to read Socrates at the very

earliest stages of the journey I'm going to ask you a question if you ever heard this because you did time in prison did you ever hear this story that the best way to serve time is to forget about the world outside and focus on your life in here yeah yeah it's a common theme in every jail every prison regardless of security level and my i consider a life missing to obliterate that mantra and just show how ridiculous it is because the sooner somebody starts thinking about building a life of relevance and meaning and dignity and success the sooner that person starts to grow if a person is stuck in that mindset of prison they're stuck into a poverty mindset and the more you learn to live in prison the more you learn to fail out here so so it's like if

I were to tell I will tell you this story I mean I don't know how much time we have but if I told you the story so here's a great story so behind me there's a lot of books okay one of them These are books that prisons buy from me. My audience is prisons and institutions. And that book on the top, it's called Earning Freedom, Conquering a 45-year sentence. And it starts because I'm inside of a prison at Lompoc. Well, I'd written a lot of books in prison that were mainstream, brought by mainstream publishers, the first three before I started my own publishing company.

And I'd go to the hole for that. You know, I know the rules of prison that you can write, manuscripts without staff approval. But I didn't stop me from going to the hole and getting transferred numerous times. So I'm at Lompoc and the captain, I get locked in the hole for publishing what becomes that book. And this is like 2005 or so. And the captain's name, I'm just going to call him Andy. That's his first name. So Andy comes to me and he says, you know, you can't write books from my prison. Well, I'd been in prison for 20 years already. There's nothing. about prison I don't know. I said, of course I can't. He said, well, you know what you got to do.

And it's fine. So I got to do administrative remedy. And I do administrative remedy and I win. And he comes to see him. And he said, yeah, you won, but I still don't want you in my institution. And so I said, all right, that's fine. Send me wherever. You know, it's not going to stop what I do. And I used to be somewhat challenging, you know, to the staff sometimes in there because I know what I can do. right and uh meaning not not that i'm a tough guy i mean i know what the rules allow me do i know what the law allows me to do yeah and and they'd call me to call you the lieutenant's office and you know i don't know if you ever been to the lieutenant's office when they call you they always ask you the same thing you know do you know why you're here and my response can always be uh yeah

of course yeah yeah and they say um oh why you're here i said well about 20 years ago i sold cocaine and ever since then i've been going through this stupid shit and they'd say, you know, they'd like to laugh because they'd know who I was, you know, and they'd lock me up. And I'd always say, you know, I'm proud of what I do. Are you proud of what you do? You're locking me in the hole for writing books when you've got corruption in here and you've got gang members in here and you've got all kind of,

and you're going to put me in the hole. I said, I don't care about going to the hole. You know, I can do this. This is where I've been for 20 years. So that happens with Andy. that's in like 2005 well 2012 13 I'd wrote a lot of books and they're used in universities around around the country so I have all these opportunities when I come home and one of them is San Francisco State so I go to San Francisco State and I think they're in this is the I'd never

step foot on a university campus in my life all my school is in prison and they offer me a job they said you want a job here and I'm thinking they're trying to help me out because I'm the halfway house, you know? And I said, well, you want me to do landscaping or something like that? And they said, no, we want you to be a professor here. I said, is that all it takes? You get out of prison? You offer me a job? Be a professor? And they said, no, when I was in grad school, we read your book. And so I known who you were for 10 years. And when you got out, and there was publicity when I got out, they said, I read about you, and that's why you're here. And we'd like you to be a professor here. And I said, great. So what do you want me to teach? Teach anything you

want. Just teach from your book. Teach about prison. So I designed this course called the architecture of incarceration. And it would tell the story about how Western civilization has responded to people that broke the law over historically, over the last, since the medieval times and leading up to today. And then I was simultaneously building these digital courses and trying to change the law. My whole message, as it says in that book, is about earning freedom. We should incentivize people in prison to work toward earning higher levels of liberty at a sooner time. And the system should pass laws and policies that would incentivize people to be like you, okay, a guy who's a really successful media personality at this stage in your life. I want

more people to come out like you, but they don't know how. And the system doesn't incentivize it instead of punishes that. And so I said, I want to change that. So that's what these books and stuff that I would write. And I'm doing a lot of speaking. But my audience is legislators and judicial audience and prison administrators and teaching. So I'm a keynote speaker. I publish a law review article in the UC Hastings Law Journal called incentivizing excellence and talking about this concept. And that leads to me becoming a panelist at the law school at Minnesota, University of Minnesota, Rabina Institute, where we're talking about these incentives in prison. This is like 2013-14.

Then I get invited to be a keynote speaker at a Ninth Circuit Judicial Conference. And there's like a thousand people in the audience. They're federal judges, leaders of prison systems, prosecutors, this whole reentry concept. And in this keynote, I am talking about the need for incentives. And after I give the presentation to all these judges and and so on, one guy comes up and he shakes my hand. He said, do you remember me? And it's Andy.

And I said, do you remember, you locked me in the hole for doing the same thing I'm doing right here? Right. And you said, well, I'm really glad to see how you're doing. Congratulations. And he said, well, I'm a ward now. And I'd love it if you'd come out to the prison and give a presentation. I'm at Atwater, a penitentiary.

And I said, you know, Warden, I can come out there and give a two-hour speech and it might be motivating and all. but that isn't going to move the needle. I said, you know, I'd really like to make a lasting impact. Why don't you allow me to build a course? And I'll show people how to change their life in this kind of modular way. It's a 10-part course, and I'll design it for you. And he says, great, let's do it.

And it becomes very successful in this penitentiary. And then he gets promoted and he becomes the warden in Florence, which is the highest security prison in the nation. It's the federal supermax, and there's ADX and USPs and things of that sort. And I'd been in Florence, but I was in the camp. And so he invites me and said, come out. So he's the warden there. So I come out and I get to present in the ADX and the USP,

and we bring the program there and it becomes successful there. When we say success, what we mean is that people are leaving gangs and going to school. People are doing these things. and there's lower violence. And so he's very supportive of it. Well, then he gets promoted again. And he becomes a director of what's called the Correctional Program Division of BOP in D.C.

So he invites me to come to D.C. And said, I want you to make a presentation to all of the wardens in the Bureau of Prisons. And I was going to go, and then COVID comes, so I can't go. But then, after COVID, he gets promoted again. And now he's a regional director in one of the regions of the Bureau of Prisons.

So he's over like 30 federal prisons. And I now go into all of these prisons. So the moral of this story is that this didn't happen in one place, right? Wherever I was, I was fortunate to have these opportunities open. And I got to meet leaders, whether it was in a USP or I was in a medium. and I had professors from Princeton coming in and bringing field trips of their students. And I got to teach a group of Princeton students in the warden's conference room in the Keene or getting publishing deals from prison with St. Martin's Press and other academic publishers

that led to new opportunities and developed the support system that I had, which led to me getting married, which led to me building business relationships with other people that are still my business partners today. So the whole story for me is about regardless of what bad decision a person has made, a person can always reinvent himself and overcome and become successful. And I know a lot of people that are interested in your genre of true crime want to focus on the punishment. But I would ask them, why don't you look at Matthew and say, wouldn't you want to have more people coming out of prison like Matthew, who is a taxpayer, who is a taxpayer, who is,

is a job creator who is stable, who reinvented himself. And he didn't need anybody to do it for him. He learned how to do it for himself. And if we could provide that to more people, that pathway to more people, we can, we could really be the change we want to see in the world. And I've had the great gift of being able to see some of the most amazing stories of people who've gone to prison. Do you know Halene Flowers? No. So he's a, I love to tell the story to your audience. And this is a group of people that your audience would probably want to never see get out of prison. This is a guy who grew up in D.C. His dad was a crack addict, you know, by the time he was 13, he was stepping over puddles of blood on the way to school. And by the time he was 14, he picked

up a gun. By the time he was 16, he was convicted of murder. And he got two life sentences at 16. And they sent him to the United States penitentiaries. And for those of you who don't know what a United his penitentiary is, it's the most violent of the federal prisons. This kid's 16. And while he's in there, he makes this choice to want to try to change his life and educate himself. And he goes through these courses. And he gets to one of the prisons where my course is taught. And that warden, Andy, looked at Halim and said, you should go through this class. And he does. And then the law changes. The First Step Act changes. The First Step Act gives judges an opportunity to re-look at people.

And that's just one of the many laws that gave power to judges to look back at somebody like Halim, who by then had been in prison for 22 years. So it went in at 16. He's been in 22 years. The law changes. But because he transformed his life while he was in prison, learning to become a writer, becoming educated, becoming a painter. which I think you did as well, right?

Did you become a painter in prison or out of prison? I was already, I had a degree in fine arts. So I already knew how to paint. But yeah, he learned in prison. And he got out and I would like you to, I would encourage you to Google Helene Flowers because he'd be a great guest for your show. Your listeners would love to listen to him.

And if you Google him, you'll see his life story. And his life story is he got out of prison and he said he was going to follow my path when he got out of prison. So he starts looking for financial resources when he gets out, writing to people and applying for grants, not knowing he's even going to get out, but he does get out. And he gets out and he goes against one of these grants and he gets a $50,000 grant. And that's enough to start his life. And he starts his life just the hard way.

And you know this hard way. I mean, he wrote books in prison and he's hawking his books at bookstores, right? And eventually he gets this big break going to the Apple store in Union Square. San Francisco from D.C. goes out. He's presenting his book. And some guy in the audience says, I really like what you're doing. He said, are you doing anything else? And he says, as a matter fact, I am. He said, I learned how to paint while I was in prison. And I'm painting these pictures that kind of depict the story from the projects to the penitentiary. And I want to use it to try and bring awareness to what's going on and what's wrong with mass incarceration. And the guy says,

I really like that. He said, are they for sale? He said, yeah. He says, I have 11 of them. And the guy says, well, I'm going to take them all. And Alim says, well, they're $2,500 a piece. And I said, that's okay. I'll take them all. And the guy says, you're in San Francisco? He said, do you like basketball? And Halim says, yeah, I do. He said, how'd you like to go to the game with me? The Warriors game tonight? And Alim said, no, I don't want to go to the Warriors game. And the guy says, why not? He says, I don't like the Warriors. He said, well, who do you like? He says, well, Lakers are come in town in a couple weeks. He said, how about I fly you out? You stay at my house. We'll go to the Lakers game to get. I'm saying, sure, I can do that. The guy says, great.

He says, by the way, I own the Golden State Warriors. The guy then, Halim comes out to his house. They go to the game. The guy says, you know, I want you to know where we're sitting here, right? This is billionaire's row right here. Everybody here is at the top of their game. So those athletes out there, they're the best in the world at what they do. He said, now I wanted you to come here because I don't ever want you to be intimidated when you're around these kind of people. He said, these are your people.

You went through prison and you became a good citizen. And you've learned how to contribute. They said, I want you to know, I'm a businessman. I'm not a charity case. I didn't buy those paintings from you out of charity. I bought them because I think you're going to be more valuable in the future than you are today. And in his first year, Halim sold. more than a million dollars worth of paintings.

The Queen of England bought one of his paintings. And he's before she died. And he's even got a whole NFT line. And if you Google Halim Flowers, you will see what the best possible outcome for people who come out of prison. And that's really my job is to try and help people see there's a better way than putting just people in prison and only focusing on the crime. A guy like Matthew Cox, I want to take his story and take it into prisons.

to inspire people that says, I want to be like Matthew Cox, and I want to be like Halene Flowers. I want to be like Jaron Jordan, a former gang member who's now running one of the biggest nonprofits in New York. I'm going to be like, you know, I don't want to be like, I forgot that guy's name from the belly of the beast. Do you know that guy? Belly of the Beast, no.

Oh, you don't know that story? Okay. Well, there's a guy in prison. There was a guy in prison. His name is Jack Henry Abbott. See, your journey in prison really is much later than mine. Jack Henry Abbott was kind of the, he was the Matthew Cox of his day. He was a prisoner.

You've heard of Norman Mailer, a famous American author who wrote a number of very important books, including the executioner song. And Jack Henry Abbott was a murderer, and he was in prison. And he wrote to Norman Maylor when he read that he was writing, doing the book or the movie or something like that. He said, hey, I know you're reading this, you're writing this story. If you really want inside information on prison, I'm your guy. And that led to a relationship between Norman Mailer and Jack Henry Abbott. And it led to a really powerful book called In the Belly of the Beast. Okay.

And it's the story of federal prison. And Norman Maylor, being a celebrity that he was, was able to use a lot of his influence to get Jack Henry Abbott parole and get him out of prison after like 20 years. But Jack Henry Abbott, by 20 years, had learned how to live in prison. And when he's out, he has all these opportunities, but he's still a prisoner. He's still a convict, full of hate. And they're in a restaurant. And a waiter doesn't bring his water fast enough for something.

And Jack Henry Abbott feels that as a sign of disrespect. And he picks up a steak knife and kills him in the restaurant. And that is the tragic story that makes life difficult for people like you and me. Because that's the story that gets attention. and I try to bring attention to the stories of Halim or Matthew Cox to say there's a better way. And for everyone that's bad, there is many more like you, but you just don't, we just don't. You get attention because you're a superstar on YouTube, but other people don't. So I'm really privileged to be available, that you, that you have allowed me to share the prison professor's story with your audience.

And yeah, yeah, so this is just part of my ministry and passion and I'm grateful to have been able to connect with you. yeah definitely um i mean definitely um i don't know there were multiple times i was going to interrupt you but you can interrupt me you can say out on love again what i was just started again we were just taught we know your editor all i kept thinking was that you know that those that the guys that got out and you know were in those in the right spot that had they created their own luck because Because they were prepared for it when it came. Exactly. Most guys are, most guys in prison are prepared to play pool, learn to play the guitar,

play handball, softball. You know, they're not really, really necessarily preparing themselves to get out. They don't have a plan. Or there's tons of guys I know that got out. They were going to do this. They were going to do this. They were going to do this. And they just went right back to doing what they were doing before.

You know, they get frustrated. And they go back to what they know, which is crime. You know, because the whole time they were incarcerated, they just thought about crime and talked about crime. And they didn't prepare themselves for anything other than going back to crime. And then the other thing is they get out and they want to impress everybody. They want to get everything back that they had as quickly as possible. You know, and the truth is, you know, they're not humble. They're not appreciative of being out.

They're not. So they don't prepare themselves. You know, they want to get away from prison. They want to get everything they lost back. They want to get even with society. they want to, you know, and it's just a major problem, but the guys that you're talking about, they were realistic and they were appreciative of being out and they had prepared themselves to get out. And I'm sure they were willing to live in somebody's spare room and work in McDonald's.

You know, do anything it takes to be successful because they know how to define success. And I just think it's our job to become a voice for some of the people that are inside of institutions and help them see how the decisions they are making today are going to influence prospect for something better in the future. Yeah. Yeah, I like that. So I know you're kind of on a on a on a schedule. You have to pick somebody up from me. No, I got I've got 30 minutes, but I don't know your show platform, but I've got 30 minutes, but I'm good with you. I'm, I'm open to responding to any questions or to closing out. I just appreciate what you've done. I really applaud you for the level of success that you've had. I think that's going to be very inspiring to the prison

professor's audience. Our audience are people that are getting shows. They don't have access to the internet, but they have access to tablets that where the prison professor's platform is. Or I bring them in, like on um i'll show you like you know they get courses like you know DVDs like 80s technology so i'll be able to take yours as part of a program that'll show up on a DVD and it'll be like part of a workbook while they get so the guys are inside they can try and say well i mean the the salient takeaway from your success in my view is that you worked really hard to become and you were skilled likely before you went to prison, but you really honed your interviewing skills. You honed your communication skills. And that just accelerated your pathway to become the success that you've become

after only a couple of years after your release from prison. Well, I appreciate that. Even though it's so funny because I get that all the time, this, you know, wow, you're inspirational, you're this or that. And yet I never try and be inspirational. I'm not, like, I don't think I say anything inspirational. I don't think I don't make an effort to be, But yet people continue to say it all the time. And I'm like, you know, even my, even my wife is like, she's like, you know, you're, you're inspirational to these guys. You always have positive of the things.

I'm like, things to say. And I'm like, I'm not trying to do, I'm not trying to do any of that. It's just happen. It's just for some reason people see my story and they, you know, and, and it's just happening naturally. Well, it's a story of redemption, right? I mean, you're not supposed to be where you are right now, right? Society sees you as somebody who got a 26-year sentence, and they want to see many people think it's in society's interest to see somebody like that.

First of all, struggle in prison, then come home and be homeless or unemployed or underemployed, and there will be a lot of envy. Oh, look at that. A convict got out and he's more successful than I am. That's not fair. Our job is to say, hey, this is the, anybody could pursue your path. Anybody. All they have to do is work as hard as you work. And, right, you know, dozens of man.

scripts and without getting paid and being grateful to do it on, you know, the promise that maybe somebody will buy it someday, learning new skills, right, starting a, you know, being an entrepreneur or being willing to take the risk of investing your money and your time so that you could build something that doesn't exist. Anybody can do that. And so I think when somebody sees a person that came from a difficult experience of imprisonment and did something, that's That's inspiring. It's inspiring to me. Hey, if you like the video, do me a favor, hit the subscribe button, share the video, hit

the bell, like the video, leave me a comment, do all the stuff that, you know, you typically should do to try and help me out with the algorithm. I have a Patreon, I have books, so check out my books. Using forgeries and bogus identities, Matthew B. Cox, one of the most ingenious conmen in history, built America's biggest banks out of millions. Despite numerous encounters with bank security, state, and federal authorities, Cox narrowly, and quite luckily, avoided capture for years. Eventually, he topped the U.S. Secret Service's Most Wanted list, and led the U.S. Marshals,

FBI and Secret Service on a three-year chase, while jet-setting around the world with his attractive female accomplices. Cox has been declared one of the most prolific mortgage fraud con artists of all time by CNBC's American Greed. Bloomberg Business Week called him the mortgage industry's worst nightmare, while Dateline NBC described Cox as a gifted forger and silver-tonged liar. Playboy magazine, claimed his scam was real estate fraud, and he was the best. Shark in the housing pool is Cox's exhilarating first-person account of his stranger-than-fiction story. Available now on Amazon and Audible.

Bent is the story of John J. Boziak's phenomenal life of crime. Inked from head to toe, with an addiction to strippers and fast Cadillacs, Boziac was not your typical computer geek. He was, however, one of the most cunning scammers, counterfeiters, identity thieves, and escape artists alive, and a major thorn in the side of the U.S. Secret Service as they fought a war on cybercrime. With a savant-like ability to circumvent banking security and stay one step ahead of law enforcement, Boziak made millions of dollars in the international cyber underworld, with the help of the

Chinese and the Russians. leaving nothing but a John Doe warrant and a cleaned-out bank account in his wake, he vanished. Boziak's stranger-than-fiction tale of ingenious scams and impossible escapes, of brazen run-ins with the law and secret desires to straighten out and settle down, makes his story a true crime con game that will keep you guessing. Bent. How a Homeless Team became one of the cybercrime industry's most prolific counterfeiters.

Available now on Amazon and Audible. Buried by the U.S. government. and ignored by the national media, this is the story they don't want you to know. When Frank Amadeo met with President George W. Bush at the White House to discuss NATO operations in Afghanistan, no one knew that he'd already embezzled nearly $200 million from the federal government, money he intended to use to bankroll his plan to take over the world. From Amadeo's global headquarters in the shadow of Florida's Disney World, With a nearly inexhaustible supply of the Internal Revenue Services funds, Amadeo acquired multiple businesses, amassing a mega conglomerate.

Driven by his delusions of world conquest, he negotiated the purchase of a squadron of American fighter jets and the controlling interest in a former Soviet ICBM factory. He began working to build the largest private militia on the planet, over one million Africans strong. Simultaneously, Amadeo hired an international black-ops force to orchestrate a coup in the Congo while plotting to take over several small eastern European countries. The most disturbing part of it all is, had the U.S. government not thwarted his plans, he might have just pulled it off. It's insanity. The bizarre, true story of a bipolar megalomaniac's insane plan for total world domination.

Available now on Amazon and Audubour. Pierre Rossini, in the 1990s, was a 20-something-year-old Los Angeles-based drug trafficker of ecstasy and ice. He and his associates drove luxury European supercars, lived in Beverly Hills penthouses, and dated Playboy models while dodging federal indictments. Then, two FBI officers with the organized crime drug enforcement task force entered the picture. Dirty agents willing to fix cases and identify. identify informants. Suddenly, two of Rossini's associates, confidential informants working with federal law enforcement, or murdered. Everyone pointed to Rossini. As his co-defendants prepared

for trial, U.S. Attorney Robert Mueller sat down to debrief Racine at Leavenworth Penitentiary, and another story emerged. A tale of FBI corruption and complicity in murder. You see, Pierre Rossini knew something that no one else knew. the truth. And Robert Miller and the federal government have been covering it up to this very day. Devil Exposed. A twisted tale of drug trafficking, corruption, and murder in the city of angels. Available on Amazon and Audible. Bailout is a psychological true crime thriller that pits a narcissistic con man against an egotistical, pathological liar. Marcus Schrenker, the money manager who attempted to fake his own death

during the 2008 financial crisis is about to be released from prison, and he's ready to talk. He's ready to tell you the story no one's heard. Shrinker sits down with true crime writer, Matthew B. Cox, a fellow inmate serving time for bank fraud. Shrinker lays out the details, the disgruntled clients who persecuted him for unanticipated market losses, the affair that ruined his marriage, and the treachery of his scorned wife, the woman who framed him for securities fraud, leave you. leaving him no choice but to make a bogus distress call and plunge from his multi-million dollar private aircraft in the dead of night.

The $11.1 million in life insurance, the missing $1.5 million in gold. The fact is, Shrinker wants you to think he's innocent. The problem is, Cox knows Shrinker's a pathological liar and his stories of fabrication. As Cox subtly coaxes, cajoles, and yes, Kahn's Shrinker into revealing his deceptions, stranger than fiction life of lies slowly unravels. This is the story Shrinker didn't want you to know. Bailout. The Life and Lies of Marcus Shrinker. Available now on Barnes & Noble, Etsy, and Audible. Matthew B. Cox is a conman, incarcerated in the Federal Bureau of Prisons for a variety of bank fraud-related scams. Despite not having a drug problem, Cox inexplicably ends up in the prison's residential

drug abuse program known as Ardap. A drug program in name only. Ardap is an invasive behavior modification therapy, specifically designed to correct the cognitive thinking errors associated with criminal behavior. The program is a non-fiction dark comedy which chronicles Cox's side-splitting journey. This first-person account is a fascinating glimpse at the survivor-like atmosphere inside of the government-sponsored rehabilitation unit. While navigating the treachery of his backstabbing peers, Cox simultaneously manipulates prison policies and the bumbling staff every step of the way. The program.

How a conman survived the Federal Bureau of Prisons cult of Ardap. Available now on Amazon and Audible. If you saw anything you like, links to all the books are in the description box.