Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast - The Downfall of a Multi-Million Dollar Weed Empire

Episode Date: August 1, 2023

The Downfall of a Multi-Million Dollar Weed Empire

She got the load. I smet her in a parking lot and then I had her followed him actually one of my personal residence, which I rarely did. I usually would bring him somewhere else with a piece property or a stash house or something. I opened up the trailer and I just kind of scanned the situation and I noticed a little wire hanging in the ceiling and I went up and looked over and it was a battery pack connected some device with a red dot, red blinking light and I knew it was a tracking device and I just put my fingers up to my mouth. I go, don't say a word. I saw a crop about 300, 200 yards out of Chevy and Paula sitting off in the distance, and I knew that that trailer was being tracked and followed by the feds. I had a good run. At this point in the game, I had done well over 300 million in sales. Hey, this is Matt Cox, and I am here with Eric Canori. And Eric has an interesting story.

He was, um, it was, it was the, it was the, it was the, Like, you were the largest? I was one of the largest high-end cannabis dealers on the East Coast of the United States before it was legal in any state. Late 90s going into the early 2000s. I actually got popped in 2009. That was before it was legal in Colorado. Okay.

So we're going to be doing, we're going to be doing an interview. And so check it out. So, let's start at the beginning. Like, where were you born? I was born in Rochester, New York, 1979 January 8th all right that's it man

shouldn't put all that out there right now so you can probably steal my identity right I don't know I don't know what you have your idea I was going to say shoot on Wikipedia probably Wikipedia they've got my

date of birth and everything is yeah it's true yeah you can't do much with that but it's New York or Rochester's the only well no actually I've been in New York City just recently but I actually went there and went to Niagara Falls. So I've been to Rochester.

Yeah, yeah. I was only there until age six and then I moved out, but that was... Oh, okay. Yeah. Where'd you move? I moved to upstate New York, Lake George, New York,

a little town called Queensberry, near Lake George. I lived there from age six right up until college. Okay. With their both your parents? Parents were divorced when I was two. There was a lot of partying going on

back then when my mom's side. So I kind of had the rock style lifestyle around me in my crib. Right. So I grew up in that environment and parents divorced when I was two. My mom remarried when she was four and then we moved to upstate New York, Lake George, New York. And that's where I started my life, you know, kindergarten and went up from there. Right.

But you guys didn't, I mean, from what I understand, you didn't have a lot of money. Like, you know, you weren't like you started selling. Yeah, if you looked at me as an outsider, I was well kept. I had a tucked in shirt. My laundry was done. My sneakers looked okay. I had a backpack for school, packed lunch. But we live frugally, right?

We cut coupons on Sundays. We rarely went to the drive-thrus unless we had a coupon. You don't wear holes out in your clothes because then you'd have to buy new ones. So you just have to be careful on how we spent our money. Right. When did you, so I mean, at what point did you decide like you were going to start, you know, selling pot or...

When all the kids, yeah. Because I understand it started slow. Yeah, yeah. It's not like you woke up one day and said, I'm going to go open up a distance. Well, as a kid, I always watched the movies, and I like the fast cars. I like the pretty women, and I couldn't have any of that. Women didn't notice me in school. I didn't have new sneakers.

I didn't have the coolest name brand clothes. I wasn't a professional athlete. I was a very quiet kid that kind of just hung out in the background, and I just watched everybody, and I always wanted something more than I already had. So in middle school, I started selling candy to the kids. I would buy it with my lunch money 80 cents. Maybe I'd buy eight packs of peas for 10 cents a piece, flip them, make a buck 60. And I'd have profit to, you know, 80 cents profit. And I could still eat lunch that day.

And I started selling candy for a couple of years until I got shut down by one of the teachers. And then I started smoking weed. I started smoking weed probably in 9th, 10th grade. But for me, weed was just, weed was a thing that I could do to help me socialize. because if I was fucked up, I didn't have to really talk about the truth of my life. I came from a troubled childhood. It was very abusive, like not much money. And drugs were away for me to hide the reality of my life.

So I started smoking weed at a very young age, but I couldn't afford weed. It was expensive. Like I could mow a few lawns and shovel some driveways, make a little money, but I still couldn't afford to really also get Taco Bell or pizza. Right. So eventually kids started asking me for wheat and I started selling wheat in high school. Right. Yeah. I think, you know, you were, you mentioned this earlier. It's like most people, well, you didn't mention it. I actually watched, I think you mentioned it on another video I saw where you were talking about how like most people, most, most guys that are selling drugs are come from, you know, a fucked up background. You know, it's, you know, out of desperation. Like nobody, very few people, I think, are raised saying, hey, I want to grow up and be a drug dealer. You know, so it's usually out of necessity, right? But I think, in, you know, in my, my own case, it's like what I initially, when I started doing crime, it was out of necessity.

But then you start making the money and it's like, okay, well, now you've got the money. You're doing okay. Then it becomes, I think, kind of an ego thing. I mean, it was for me. You know, it was like once I was doing well, it was like, well, I could have cut back. But instead, this was something I was good at. I hope you're enjoying the video. I have a quick word from our sponsor, Stan Edge watches.

We're doing a promotion with Stanage right now where they're offering a watch. that they sell for typically $300. They're selling that watch through the channel for $200. The first 10 people that send me an email saying that they want a watch, I will arrange payment with them and shoot you a watch out as quickly as possible. They're great watches. They come in a bunch of different colors and I really like them. I appreciate you guys watching. Go in the description box where my email is and you can send me an email. see you yeah so is that the same kind of thing i think it was partly not ego but it's also fear too right i never wanted to go back to a place subconsciously of not knowing where i'm going to get my next meal right if you're like don't know where you're going to sleep or eat that

night that's a place where you're like fuck and that's that was i've been there as a child so i wasn't really that flashy i actually i was flashy listen we all want to be seen and recognized at least most of the men I know and we just have different ways of doing it whether it's a trophy the newest sneakers that coolest car best looking girlfriend like whatever we want to be recognized at least I did so it feels good when somebody comes up to you and says hey I like your new car your new bike or this or that but I'm still kind of a low key guy but uh it costs me a lot to live mostly I spent most of my money on women in hotels that's where a lot of my money would go and I didn't have a lot of things because I didn't want to get on the Fed's radar.

But I mean, this was in high school, right? You're talking about it. Oh, in high school? In high school, I wasn't making a lot of money, man. I make a hundred bucks a week. Well, actually, that's pretty good money back. I was going to say for a 17-year-old kid. Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's good money.

What am I talking about? Maybe that maybe, yeah. And then I buy everybody weed and beer that. I shouldn't say exactly how much it was made. I was making enough to eat Taco Bell, beer, and free weed. Right. Well, so, I mean, at what point did you, when you graduated high school, did you go to college? Yeah, I went to Plattsburgh State University.

It's about a half hour from the Canadian border in upstate New York. Okay. And when I went there, I only had about 500 bucks in my bank account. And I remember when I got to college, the brochure said that kids should have at least $1,500 per semester for extracurricular activities, which I didn't have. But you had $500. I had $500, which was enough to buy two hours. ounces and flip and turn into 750 bucks and then I just started multiplying that and I became the

cannabis kid on campus. There are a lot of people that sold cannabis and in in Plathbury. We're going back 1997, 98, 99, but eventually I created somewhat of a monopoly and I got the other dealers to buy for me and I shrunk my margins down a little bit but I pretty much had a good control of the market. I buy your three, four of me being there. Well, where are you getting it from? I mean if you're starting to move you know what I'm saying you're starting to move product I mean usually the guy the one guy you you're basically wiping him out pretty quick if you're got buying more and more and more yeah I was uh last year college I was probably doing about 50 to 50 to 100 thousand a month in sales and I was getting I had about four to five suppliers I had my townie a couple townie guys

and I had multiple different suppliers so they wouldn't jack the price too much of me because if they knew they had me if they knew I was the only place I was getting it you know they would charge me whatever but I created bidding wars is this like the cartel like cartel guys that they're getting it from the cartel I wasn't dealing with cartel guys this is this is smaller time townies in plattsburgh state also there's an Indian reservation about an hour and a half away from there that's right on the Canadian border on the St. Regis River right where they basically can smuggle anything you want cigarettes coke guns immigrants and they can do that at night with night vision they have boats that can do 80 miles an hour and six inches of water right because if they get

go i don't know the exact terminology but if they get going fast enough the hall's only going to sit so much in the water that they can go in really they have special boats that they can invade law enforcement if they were to be chased and then they get the product to shore unload it boom so it's coming in from Canada Canada was one of where my main supplier i started focusing and working with them because it was a higher end product it was indoor the stuff that i was getting domestically it was all outdoor weed at that time back in 98-99. But when I had the Canadian weed, that kind of set me apart from a lot of the competition.

It was a higher-end product. That's a ton of money to be making as a college student. That wasn't my profit. Let's say 100,000 is revenue that month. I'd probably make $20,30 grand. I'd say if it's $20,000 for a fucking car. I wish I was making $20,000. I'm a grown man.

$20,000 a month is a lot of money. Yeah. It was a lot. It was a lot. And I even had a little heat on me in Plattsburgh in 2001. Right when I was getting ready to graduate, there was a Coke bus that went down. And my people that were buying weed off me were taking, using my money to go down to the city, Manhattan, to buy blow and then bring it back to Plattsburgh. And I kind of knew, but I didn't really pay attention.

I didn't get too close to it. But after they took that little ring down, they had a couple of those guys try to wear wires on me. One of them actually got close to me. And I let them come wear the wire on me. me and I kind of just gave them some false information so the case would diffuse itself and they only watched me for a couple months because I was a smaller player I mean doing a hundred thousand a month or they didn't even know I was doing that much I thought it was about 50000 they thought my net worth 60 grand the DEA is not going to spend money chasing somebody it's only worth 60 grand

they might watch you for a week or two seeing if they can get something they have bigger fish to fry so okay well so why weren't you a part of the the coke thing you just did why you you just didn't move coke you just weren't interested in no i just i remember watching the tv show miami vice as a kid and i would always i love the fast cars and the women but i also always would see all the heat that came with that yeah and i knew weed was more acceptable like i could stand in front of a judge and be like yeah i sold weed right but if i stood in front of a judge said i sold coke they might be like kid you fucked up yeah but weed it's like chances are the judge probably smoked weed at some point right i was going to say i have um so i wrote a story called

American narco. And it was this guy, Carrie and his buddy, they were selling weed for the cartel in Fort Myers. And he was offered, like, multiple times they tried to get him to start moving Coke. And he just, he absolutely wouldn't do it. Like, he was, and it was the same kind of thing. He was like, I just felt like, he said, I felt like weed was acceptable. And he said, I just felt like Coke was like a hard drug.

a dangerous drug and it would it would be dangerous to move it and he said so he just completely stayed away from me even though he knew he'd make a lot more money he's like i just felt like it's just weed yeah yeah weed's not a big coke's a lot easier to move as far it's smuggling because it's it's smaller you can build a compartment like we used to build hydraulic compartments as i got a little bigger in the game like false beds you put they would you could have a compartment where you would literally take your credit card and just stick it up and in the corner where the windshield meets the visor and then press one button on the radio station and then hold the cruise control down or something like that and the whole back bed would raise

eight inches and the bumper would pop out hydraulically and you could throw in like a hundred pounds in there or there were other things like you know the duly pickup trucks that have the big wheel wells over the top you could stuff like a million in each side of those on a truck yeah carry said one time they showed up in an RV and they went to the radio and did something on the radio and pulled something and he said this little tiny hatch raised up at the bottom of the RV. He said tiny, they reached down and they started pulling pounds of weed. It was all

attached. Yeah. Like on a string. Yep, yep. One pound and here's another pound. And then he said he said they kept going and going and going and he said it got to the point where he said I was terrified. So when it got to like two or three hundred pounds of it, he said I was like, this is too much.

But yeah, it's amazing what they can come up with. They even busted a guy like five or ten years ago for making the compartments you know he he was making these super amazing you know stealth compartments in vehicles every any vehicle like you could just you know you touch this and touch this and pop up and you could put a couple pounds and he was trying to say that you know he went to i think he went to trial saying how am i supposed to know what these guys they're bringing in cars like he probably got out of it yeah i think he got a couple years actually oh really yeah he had he had

some knowledge none of what was going on yeah well yeah i guess may you know Well, I know, the feds. He could have claimed plausible deniability, so where he said he had no clue, but they had a wire or something, obviously. Yeah, in the feds, you just need one or two guys to get in the stand and say, ah, he no. That sucks. And, you know, the jury's like, he'll probably won't get any time at all. Then they find him guilty.

And he goes away for five years. They're like, oh, my God, I thought he'd get probation. You know, as high up as I was in the business, I never really completely understood that all you need is two people to say he did that. that's the only evidence you knew and I never I always was like they really need a wire like a buy or something like the drugs yeah that that's what's scary yeah that's why it's it's it's terrifying like I have guys that reach out to me and ask me you know they'll hit me up and be like talk about you know hey bro like contact me you're like I'll pay you if you'll just talk to me like basically talk to them about a scam help them run a scam help them hungry now Now? What about now? Whenever it hits you, wherever you are,

grab an O'Henry bar to satisfy your hunger. With its delicious combination of big, crunchy, salty peanuts covered in creamy caramel and chewy fudge with a chocolatey coating. Swing by a gas station and get an O'Henry today. Oh hungry, oh Henry. And I'm like, well, you don't understand. And, like, I can't be involved in something like that. And then they'll go, no, bro, I would never say anything.

First of all, I don't believe that. But let's say you didn't say anything. It doesn't matter. I'm on your phone. You can see transactions. There will be times when our phones are near each other. There will be times when you flew down here. There will be time, like, don't you understand that I'm a convicted felon of fraud?

They'll just add my name to the indictment. I can't even get on the stand and say, this is what happened. Because as soon as I get on the stand, they'll say, Mr. Cox, how many frauds have you been convicted of? And the jury's going to be like, oh, come on. This guy's been convicted of 30 different frauds. He's been doing this on and off his whole life. Oh, he's involved.

Like, you're just done. Yeah, you're done. The feds are, it's horrible in the feds. Like, you just can't beat them. I always say that, look, if you're guilty, that's it, you're done. And if you're not guilty, you got about an 80% chance of being found guilty. There you go. So, but anyway, I was going to say you're, so you get out of college.

So you get out of college. So you get out. of college you you you dropped selling weed you went and got a job as a as an accountant and you just became an accountant and and now you're here right so no that's not not that easy you never got a job I got out of college I tried to make a resume in the in the campus library I put the floppy disk in the computer I couldn't figure out how to get the resume to save on the floppy disc I couldn't even get to figure out how to get the printer to work remember those printers that had like the holes on the side of the paper you'd like oh yeah I don't even remember what

those were called from IBM yeah but I couldn't figure that matrix that matrix there you go so i couldn't even figure out how to get all that work i was like you know what and that was right around the time the movie office space came out remember where the tPS reports i love i love them off the space so dude i'm watching all this stuff and everything was just telling me i'm not going to be working for anybody right but myself so i got out of college i still had i was a little scared with that DEA heat it was like that was a wake-up call right like don't be stupid so i told myself i'm going to graduate with a clean record i'm going to move an hour and a half south of the border where there's less heat and nobody knows me and i moved into a small little town called saratoga springs new

york and i set up a legitimate business there building natural swimming pools waterfalls ponds and that was my front and i told myself i'm going to come to this town i'm not going to talk to anybody about anything illicit and i'm not going to distribute any drugs in this town whatsoever all my business will be out of state or at least three hours away the closest place i'll be working as New York City. Did you have any experience at all in putting in, well, I'm pretty handy. They're not pools, right? Well, there were some few, like, swimming ponds that I had done, too, 30 foot deep.

And then I did a larger one. There was a few acres. So there were all different sizes, but most of them were backyard coy ponds, like anywhere from 10 feet up to 30 feet wide. Okay. So I took some seminars and training on that, but I'm pretty handy as a kid. I used to do a lot of little construction. stuff but so that was a good front for me and it made decent money right i probably made close to six

figures in a summer being 21 22 which was that's good money back then yeah so i did that but at night when i was done with that is when i would take care of my cannabis business and that's where i would accept deliveries from the canadian border that would come down to one of my stash houses and then i would from there package it up into different size loads and deliver it south did you were you like running your profit through that company or no it's one thing i never does i never co-mingled funds right so you know i didn't have i wasn't making my books were only showing what i made whether it was 80 grand 90 whatever it was on the the waterfall business did you have people working for you or it was uh it was seasonal i would like sub people out that would come in an excavator i'd have three or four guys

moving dirt and rocks but i didn't have full-time crew staff okay um So what, so how it, you're saying it gradually just got larger and larger. I mean, both businesses got, the pond business got a little larger and the cannabis became significantly larger. I was good at what I did. I followed through. I was always delivered on time. Right.

If I got a shitty load, I wouldn't then sell it. I would remediate it, whether it meant unpackaging it all and drying it out or making it weighed properly or removing any of the sticks or stems or seeds anything i just made sure my customers were always happy and my suppliers were happy by me paying on time and i always kind of put myself last i was a simple dude in the beginning bro i had a mattress and a car like it was very simple eat sleep work so all right so i mean but at this point this isn't like you're you're you're bumping in somebody in the hallway and giving them a dime bag like at this point you got you're showing up someplace with you know multiple you know whatever five 10 pounds of weed you know you know you

know in your trunk and handing it off i mean this was like yeah i was doing at this point i by age 21 i became a millionaire between age 21 and 22 is when i made my first million and i said i think that's when i bought a new car i was like i had a pond customer or something that had a dealership and i bought it all legitimately but i had the money to do it and i felt confident where like okay i can kind of show off a little bit it was nothing it was a gmcierra it was nothing fancy but to me it was it was nice because i was driving a 15 year old pontiac bonneville with a quarter million in the trunk, you know? So I wrote a story for this guy named Devoroli,

and Devoroli hat was, a matter of fact, did you see the movie War Dogs? Yeah, a long time ago. But I don't even remember where the, I don't remember. War Dogs was, it was these two kids from Miami who started selling weapons to the U.S. government for the Afghan security forces. Oh, okay, I didn't see that.

Yeah, so Jonah Hill plays Devoroli. I was locked up with Devoroli. I was locked up with Devoroli. I wrote his memoir. But it was so funny, about him is literally he had four or five million dollars in the bank he was living in this shitty apartment driving a 50 or 15 year old Mercedes and it was like and I'm sitting there going when did you buy another car he's like you know he said I honestly didn't spend any money until

after he got indicted like I mean if you watch the movie it's it's they changed a bunch of stuff but I mean he just you know to him the thrill and what he enjoyed was making money and and he wasn't He didn't live lavishly and he didn't, you know, and when I compare myself to someone like, you know, like that, like I don't think I lived lavishly too, but I had a brand new car. Yeah. You know what I mean? But some guys are just like, I don't know. I don't know if it's that, I want to say that my mom used to call it depression mentality

where you always kind of feel like you're broke. Like you don't spend money. You save money. That's what you do. like you don't want to spend any money i spent money on on experiences just not things i didn't want any attention on me i don't want any bit to be talking about me like he has a nice car he's doing this so for me it was always about like i said hotel girls good restaurants and that was kind of my life was based on really experiences experiences and working hard and uh so what were you doing

fuck dude i worked that's it i worked i was a slave like if i had to get a delivery at 2 a m coming out of the border i would wait if they said it's going to be there at nine o'clock and they're like oh it's late i would stay up till two a m two 30 i'd sit in a freaking parking lot in my bonneville and just wait until the truck comes and then i'd make eye contact with the truck and then if i didn't think the truck was being followed then i'd have it followed me to an undisclosed location because i would always anytime trucks come from the border i wouldn't tell them exactly where to go because i wouldn't want them to bring any heat there i'd have them come then i'd feel it out if i like the situation then i'd bring them to a place

to unload the merchandise and this is and this is all these are all hidden compartments on what type of trucks I mean depends on what type of in what year we're talking about I ran everything from 18 wheelers to pick up trucks to trailers to that's about it but the guys that were bringing it to me bring it all different ways whether it's speedboats trains right 18 wheelers a few times a helicopter drop that was over in Washington um there's all there's so many different ways to get stuff over the border and so also you can just know somebody what if you know what if you know uh the board patrol guy it's like yeah now's a good time to come through nice um i was gonna um i i read an article one time where they were they had Mexican the Mexicans

had a manufacturing plant that were building telephone poles you know those big like they're like like 10 15 feet round right they're concrete but they're hollow and in the center and they packed it full of like coke or meth or whatever it was and they put them on these these 18 wheelers and had the highway patrol actually they came from mexico the highway patrol like would block of the u.s blocks off the road and would and you know had them escorted them all the way into where they were to the construction company that was supposed to use them and then they drop them off and then that night and it's just like it's like two or three poles at a time and anyway they ended up getting busted but yeah it was it was it's uh it's

amazing how ingenuity they that smugglers can get with moving that stuff yeah it's an art form i mean if there's money to be made they're going to figure out a way right always there's always there's sometimes when loads would come down and they'll send a smaller load to have it get busted to have all the attention on that load while they bring the main load in right And they could even, let's say they have one of their guys that gets busted. They'll be like, hey, yeah, work for them. Give them some information. Right.

You give them information about the smaller load. Yeah, yeah. Take that one down. Boom. It's just a distraction. Well, it's like the cartel where they shoot people through the ports of entry. You know, they send five of them in there, and then they tip off. There's something in this car.

They grab that car and the other people just go right through. There you go. You know, it's just distraction or whatever you want to call it. um slight of hand uh i was gonna say it's always exciting though when the package arrives safely right you know that's kind of the rush that's what you go back for too it's not only the money it's that feeling it's like you can't really get that at a desk job yeah you can't i guess depends what you're looking for but that you know i it's it's fulfilling it's it's because it's something that only you know it's like it's your secret nobody else knows that you just did like

you just did a million dollar deal and you're here now you did a million dollar deal you know an hour ago and now you're here eating oysters with them listen i feel like i would be terrified and and and and what's so funny is like what i did people are like are you insane like you walked in the bank gave them fake documents signed the stuff got a check and you weren't worried at all but i wasn't worried because i knew what the bank was doing you know i knew i knew how it worked I knew what the underwriting was. I knew what all the security, all the security measures. So I felt confident.

So to me, like meeting some guy in the parking lot, you know, and unloading, you know, 200 pounds of drugs, to me, I would be, I'd be waiting for the cop. I'd be waiting for the helicopters to land. I would be, you know, because there's so many people. One, there's so much law enforcement that is, that is focused on stopping it. And there's so many people involved in all of the. transaction anybody down the line could could have been arrested flipped you know and then they just followed all the way back to the back to you yeah you got to have good gut instincts to really play that game there's so many times where I've had close calls when I was back in the day where

certain people would want to meet me and I just the last minute I would just be like no I can't right you know it was the right decision there's not so many times I should say there were a couple times you know where I just knew I shouldn't meet that person I know they have heat you can tell by their demeanor and how they're acting on the phone not always but if you're if you're partying hard if you're doing drugs and getting hammered all the time you're not going to be as perceptive to potential threats right so most of my party and happened in college and high school college and a little bit after that and then I kind of cut back on all that stuff it was only rare occasions I was really focused on my business and basically just being aware of

everybody around me and who could be a snitch and who's fucked up and I was pretty good at it until until the end no I was going to say um yeah intuition like I I'm a huge believer in intuition like sometimes I'll talk to somebody I can just feel something you know I mean like yeah the person's nice and everything and you're like something's not right or you're like yeah the guy's nice and everything but the truth is this guy can't stand me you just know it and everybody's like well what do you mean I'm like I could feel it what do you mean you could feel it he was cool he was nice we were joking you were saying was good that guy despises me I promise you and later on of course it comes out like yeah that guy is talking

shit he can't stand you or or even if it's like you know you're dating a chick and she comes home and everything's fine and just like normal but something's wrong and you find out two weeks later she's you know banging her her ex-boyfriend and you're like fuck I knew it I felt it couldn't you know every time listen every time I've ever been caught had every time I've ever had a girlfriend start accusing me of cheating I was you know and I used to always oh you're crazy you're crazy the truth this intuition's a motherfucker like You just know. And I didn't do anything different.

Nothing changed. There's like this signal I was, it goes from gut to heart to brain. Right. A lot of people who thinks it goes the other way around like brain, heart, gut. And you just feel it. Everything starts in the gut. That's where all your sensations start and then it moves up from there. And that's, you have to be, you have to always follow your gut.

Right. What were you, were you dating anybody at this point? Like, were you? It depends on which years. always had from age 25 up till 30 i had a few steady girlfriends one a couple that lived with me two years had a two year relationship and another two year relationship but they didn't really understand they didn't know what i did they knew i had money but they didn't know the volume of money i had because i never kept it all in one place it was all over like the there was a time where i had

one girlfriend where she was going we just had a rough time it was just she was on a lot of meds i I didn't know this at the time, but she was taking, I don't know, Adderall, Trasadone, Xanax, all these different things, uppers, downers, lefters, writers, whatever. And I'm like, I'm in Manhattan. She's like, we need to get home now. We need to get home now. It's like midnight. I was doing a deal in Brooklyn, and she's in Manhattan waiting for me to pick her up,

and the deal was taking longer than I thought, and I was waiting on money. I had like over $2 million in cash on me, and over $2 million in cash weighs a couple hundred pounds. You know, a bill's a bill, a bill is like 0.999 grand. So, granted, it wasn't all 20s, but I have a couple hundred pounds of cash on me. And she's like, we need to get home. And I don't usually like to drive really late night on the road with cash. It's usually like my cutoff time used to be like, if I'm with an out-of-state license play, I'm not on the road after 9 p.m.

But if it was in state, it would be like 10, 11. I don't want to be on the road. And she's like, we need to go home. And I didn't want to go. So I got us a hotel room with the Mandarin Oriental and Columbus Circle. And the Belming comes up. He knew me pretty well there. He's like, can I help you with their luggage?

I'm like, okay, I hand him. I go, here's my film equipment or something. I put it on the bell car. It's 200 pounds of cash plus. We get up to the hotel room. She's like, you're crazy. You're a drug dealer. She was going through something.

I'm embarrassed to say, you know, I'm not a bad guy, but she was having abortion. It wasn't like far into it, but whatever. She told me she was on the birth control and stuff. So that's a whole other story. I don't want to get into that. But yeah, she was threatening me. Like, I thought she was going to call the cops or the neighbors would have called security the way she was screaming and behaving.

And I didn't know what to do because if the cops showed up, what am I going to do with all this cash? And I couldn't just carry it out. It was too heavy. And I didn't have a bell cart. And there's no window I could throw the money out. Like this is all the shit that's going through my head in milliseconds. So where am I going with this?

Did you ask me a question? I'm trying to figure out what I was going to do with this. I was saying just, are you dating different women? Oh, wow. I was dating that girl. Yeah. That's for sure, man. And that was, that was a mess.

I was dating her and that was my only girlfriend. I never juggled women. I always had one girlfriend at a time. And if I didn't have a girlfriend, I had a run with escorts because I was too busy. When I moved, I worked so many hours that I couldn't hold down a girlfriend. And if I'm in a random city, it's like I'd be working until whatever we are of the morning. And at the last minute, I would get to my hotel room. Like, I need some company.

Right. Yeah. Yeah, I was going to say when I was on the run, I dated this chick that was bipolar. And I mean, she would just lose it. It's 2 o'clock in the morning. She's screaming, and I'm like, we're both wanted. Like, what are you doing? I mean, and I, and I'm in the, like, literally grabbed stuff through it in a bag,

ran down the hallway. She would go in the hallway and be like, run, that's all you're good for. Run. And I was just like, Jesus, go run, jump in my car, leave. And then, of course, she comes down, starts calling. I'm sorry. I love you. Please don't leave.

I'm sorry. And I, one time she called, and I heard the, and she's like, oh, well, hold on who could somebody says the door i'm like yeah the cops are at the door there's no doubt like she opened sure enough there's two cops there saying listen we got some phone calls what's going like that so i know exactly what you're saying how you describe it is exactly the feeling and had i been there and the cops showed up at that time in i don't know what it is now but in that time in um in charlotte north carolina if they showed up and there was domestic violence somebody has to go to jail so i would have had to go on you know

one of us has to go to jail like we can't be fingerprinted wrong yeah this is a bad situation then she's insane and who knows what she'll say like i can't tell you how many times she was like you know i make one phone call it's like i'd hope terrified i know dude that's that's that's not healthy no and that's that's that's a bad position bro that's why for me to get out of that relationship that was an art form in itself right because you i had it took me six months to get I had to slowly play that I was broke. I had to like so much shit I had to do. I had to play weak and like a loser.

Like you've got like you're better than me. You know, like you can do. You don't need this. It was very delicate what I had to do. I ended up getting this chick an apartment of her own. Like so she has her own apartment. I'm still getting phone calls at two in the morning. You got to come pick me up.

You go, well, if you want me to drive, I can drive. No, no. No, no. You're not driving. I'll come get you. I mean, she's a loose cannon. That game, bro, if you're breaking the law, number one, you can't, in my opinion, I would never want to have children if I was breaking the law.

That's why I didn't have kids at a young age just because I was breaking the law. I wouldn't want to have them be around me. And number two, you've got to have a solid girl or none at all. Yeah. That's going to wear you down. And that's dangerous. The kind of chicks that date guys that they know are drug dealers. aren't solid like that like it's almost impossible to find that chick because most women the moment

they kind of realize like oh wow like I think this guy's a drug deal or whatever it is I think he's committing fraud I think this guy's a fucking fraud art like most chicks are like look I don't know what's going on I'm out of here like they have to have a certain mindset to be okay with it and if they are okay with it there's something not quite right yeah like something you know there's going to things are going to go wrong like you can't expect this is this is kind of chick that's going to call, they're going to scream it to in the morning periodically. Periodically, she's, maybe she's got a drug problem. Like, that's not normal behavior to say, eh, my, you know, I'm a solid, upstanding

citizen, uh, and I do everything right. And oh, my, my boyfriend or my husband happens to be shipping in, you know, 500 kilos of cocaine every month, but you know, he's a nice guy. I mean, we have two kids. It's fine. You know, no, no, something's up with that chick. Yeah. She's some, something's bad.

it was a good lesson though all my all my fuck-ups have been the greatest lessons i haven't had to yell since that relationship believe me that was i haven't yelled in 15 years probably so i'm thankful for that now i i don't put myself in those situations well she'll probably contact you after this show no she doesn't even i don't even know if she's alive bro like her her her facebook profile hasn't changed since 08 her picture nothing like i took the picture of her in I haven't said I've never heard from her it's been over a decade who knows where she is I have no clue but that's hopefully she's well she was actually a good person the thing is you start getting doing pharmaceuticals and all these things they can turn you in a different person yeah

like you don't need that stuff what you need is to go out into nature and just like reset like you you whatever that's let's not go there um so so how old are you at this point when you you you extract yourself from that relationship 28 28 you own a house no I never I never owned any houses I owned a lot of different parcels of raw land because it was low maintenance I had a really low maintenance life it was just focused on you know in that movie heat where they say never yeah yeah get involved in anything you can't walk away in 60 seconds right and I always remembered that because I remember watching that movie and I don't know that's one of my favorite movies oh that's one of the best movies bro so I that's my life like I could walk

away from anything when i almost when i did get popped well that's a whole other story i i fled from the feds at a hundred miles an hour i could have totally been gone but i came back just because i didn't like i was already prepared i could i could got passports everything i needed but i'm jumping the gun here with that so what was your question i was just saying like when you when you um you know got yourself out of the situation with that chick like i mean how old were you at that point I was 2728. 2728 and I didn't have another girlfriend after that.

I had I had I had a few different places. I had an apartment in Soho. I had a house in California. I had a house in upstate New York. And I had a nice girlfriend, ish, down in the city that didn't bother me. She was just a good girl, right?

Like she was just a nice Vietnamese girl that was well educated, worked hard, started with nothing, made her own money and never asked me any questions like literally i'd never got a this was before smartphone so we didn't there was no texting it was just like call me when you're in the city or something like that and it was just i'd hang out there was it was it was therapeutic because i would just hang out we'd get a bite to eat and we go home to our thing and it was just healthy and relaxing and i enjoyed that but it wasn't a real girlfriend so i didn't have it because she probably had her own thing too who knows we didn't really talk about it but she was a so why why you you let me if

you're doing most of this on the east coast why the house in california well so i was pulling out of canada for about a decade that's where i obtained most of my product right but then starting around 2007 2008 california cannabis started really making its way in volume to the east coast it always made its way to the east coast in the early 2000s like 100 pounds at a time 200 somebody bring a thousand whatever but never where it's just saturated the marketplace where it was really competing with my Canadian products and my customers are complaining that my prices were too high so I had to go out to California in 08 and really scope out the scene and see what this is all about because I wasn't too familiar with California cannabis and I went out there and I rented a house as

just a headquarters stash house to really just sleep store some money and meet with various people that I had known for my past and really just see what type of inventory and product was out there with the quality and I spent several weeks out there scoping it out and that's when I really started actually my business was starting to break down a little bit because of the California competition okay that was breaking down in 2008 you know my margins were small dude I do a million dollar deal I only might make 60-80 grand after all expenses which is not a ton for the risk I was going to say that's not

yeah not for having to go to jail for a 10 year mandatory minimum and I was doing it sometimes I would do deals where I'd make even less just to keep the customers happy until I figured out a solution to my problem and the solution was the market's becoming saturated and people are demanding lower prices

my customers that have been with me for over a decade right so I had to figure things out and that's why I had a place in California okay and so you go down there you get some connects and you start moving it across all you're moving it across the country back yeah i still have my canadian operation running mind you i have 14 cell phones at the time two of them are pgp encrypted blackberries where we have our own server when i got busted they brought our blackberry down to washington dc tried to crack it they

couldn't even get into it right hold on you know what a blackberry is okay good yeah he half the things that yeah you know so i was still i was in california still running my east coast and Canadian operation, which was deteriorating in a way. But while I was in California, the goal was to find a thousand pounds at a good price. But that was really hard, depending on what time of year you were in California. I was out there in 2008, 2009 in the early spring and things were drying up. They didn't have the surplus of cannabis that they have now, 15 years ago. So it was hard for me. I'd have to go to multiple growers. I'd get 15. pounds here, 30 here, 100 here, just to put together an order of 500 pounds. And it was very

time-consuming. And I had an associate that would help me do that. And I still really wasn't making that much money. I didn't know the biggest player out there. I didn't know the top dog grower that was growing, you know, growing thousands and thousands of pounds. So I was just trying to figure it. And most importantly, I didn't have good transportation. I wasn't familiar with transporting product from the west coast of the east coast my specialty was transporting along the east coast i had a count in every single state between new orleans and boston new orleans florida Atlanta uh south carolina north carolina uh virginia nothing in delaware don't even know that uh would have pennsylvania new york and boston so i had accounts and i had drivers i had five drivers at

all times that I could pull from only like two to three that I used regularly and I had tight transportation really good drivers on the East Coast but as far as West Coast that's a huge run that's like a 40 hour drive or something what is I don't even know it's a couple days it's a few days to get from but from New York to Florida you can make it in a day 20 hours straight if you you have to stop so how did so how did you get it from there to just I hired I hired I had one of my customers, Missy Giovi. She was a female mountain biker. She won several World Cups.

She was one of the fastest at one time in the late 90s. And she was a customer of mine that brought product down to New Orleans for a couple years. I would confront her like maybe a half million a month. And she's like, baby, anytime you need work, let me know I'll do extra. So I used her as a driver. I figured I'd have her come up to the northern mountains of California and load her trailer because I figured if she got pulled over, the cops wouldn't give her a big deal because Because downhill mountain biking originated in northern California.

Okay. It was really where it was founded and started. So I had her as a driver initially until I solidified a more professional way. And a more professional way was to have a jet fly the cash to California and then a fruit truck to bring the product back. So you get an 18 wheeler. It's full of fruit. And then you put all the cannabis in the middle of the crates. Right.

And that was what I had in the works. but before that was all solidified, I was just kind of cowboy in it, taking shortcuts, working with this mountain bike. I paid her $60,000 to do the drive. And she did it a few times. Then she ended up subbing the drive out to her massage therapist,

which I didn't know about. Only paid her $3,000 to drive the trailer. She's probably thrilled to get the $3,000. Maybe she didn't even know what was in there. Who knows? I need to drive my trailer. She got pulled over for speeding. And she definitely didn't know what was in there.

They put the GPS device right in that trailer. And let her go? Let her go. And they delivered it right to my hometown, Saratoga Springs, New York. And so what happened is Missy Giovi, the biker, she would fly in to New York and jump in the driver's seat of that truck and take over from her massage therapist. So I wouldn't know that there was a massage therapist driving across country. Right. I would look like Missy drove the load.

And Missy brought me the load one day. And I suspected something was fishy. First off, the truck wasn't even loaded right. It was a Ford F-150 rental truck that there was way too much tongue weight on the back. So the trailer had the headlights of the truck sitting way up, pointing up because it wasn't weighted properly. So right there, I was like, there's no way this thing made it 3,000 miles without being pulled over. And I was so tired, though, because I was at a concert. I was down at Bonner Music Festival, tripping out, just partying too hard.

And I just wasn't alert. And I was tired of weed anyways. I was like half out of the game. I was like, I just went out of this business. I was going to sell it off to somebody. And I didn't like the weed business. So I was taking shortcuts by even dealing with her. But she got the load.

I met her in a parking lot. And then I had her followed, actually one of my personal residence, which I rarely did. I usually would bring him somewhere else with a piece property or a stash house or something. But I was just tired and didn't want to deal with anything. So brought her to my house. I opened up the trailer and I just kind of scanned the situation. And I noticed a little wire hanging in the ceiling.

And I went up and looked over. was a battery pack connected some device with a red dot red blinking light and i knew it was a tracking device and i just put my fingers up to my mouth i go don't say a word because i didn't know if she had a wire on i had no clue what the fuck was going right so i i brought her brought her out of the trailer into my house and i just like told her to leave her phone in my kitchen i brought her up to one of the bedrooms and i said had her open up her shirt show me she wasn't wearing a wire it's like what are you doing like and crazy and i looked out my my front window out of the curtains and i saw a crowd about 300 200 yards out of Chevy and paula sitting off in the

distance and i knew that that trailer was being tracked and followed by the feds was she wired though no no she didn't have she had no clue either the massage therapist dropped the trailer off to her down the road missy had no clue either so you know what's funny is that so you know I've written a bunch of stories, right? Like true crime stories. And one, what you just, the, the black box, the wires, the whole thing. You can literally go to that story, American Narco about those guys. They were shipping in from California, I mean, from Mexico, like concrete tiles.

And in the tiles was this metal box with a red light. I was like, oh, red light, why would they leave the red, even have the red light on there? He was like, they pulled it out and they like stomped on it and took off running and, you know, just, you know, they just panicked and the, the feds were, you know, had pictures of them and everything. And they, a couple days later, they came and arrested both of them. But it's, it's, it's, it's funny, the, you know, the, the, the, the shipping it across the country. Like, I, I wrote a story about a guy who they would, and I guess this is pretty common where they, they would buy a car at like the car at like the the um auction and they just stuff the car and then they pay a legitimate trucker to load the car on the thing and take the car and drop it off

somewhere like this legit like he so if he gets pulled over he's like and the cops search it and they find something he's like I don't know it was on there I was just they we charged $350 to move cars like I got eight cars on this thing. You know, so that happens sometimes, and sometimes they'll do it and they'll, you know, they'll put a device in and let it keep going just to figure out, that's, that's, like, that's common, but, man, bro. Stupid mistake, bro, and I had a good run. At this point in the game, I had done well over 300 million in sales easily.

So, well, I, by the time this, this truck pulled up with Missy. Right. I was very good at what I did. I was a ghost. Nobody knew I existed. Like, there's a lot of big players. out there but usually they have heat on them within two to three years if you're operating at my scale right like there's a lot of guys that'll have windows well they'll run two three four months

of the year and they'll do some thousand pound loads and then they'll take off to leave the country for six months and have a nice vacation come back but consistently working week after week for a decade plus at my scale doesn't really happen unless especially without a gun and especially without the feds knowing right because the feds know of all the big stuff going on it's just certain things they let go and certain things they don't because they like to follow things to just kind of see how everything works well i mean i've i've ordered stuff before where they came in investigated actually there's stuff going on yeah like they actually have a case like they probably had a case and then they just kind of said eh and they just kind of go away for a year or so and and kind of just watch

and then come back and even though they it's like why didn't they bust them back then we had other stuff to do or like you said it was you know there was no reason it it wasn't enough to do anything about it right this second we didn't have everything we really needed for a solid enough case and then they just walk away and let them go for a little bit and they come back and and and bust them for you know they build a case build up the case and now you've got five years or two years or three years and now you're really got some problems because they in the federal system is you know ghost dope you know they don't even have to catch you with the drugs Um, so I'm, here's what I'm wondering is how much, how much weight was in the, um, in the trailer that they got you with. How long had they, because that sounds like, that's just a flu. Yeah, this was just a small load. There was only like 300 pounds in that trailer. It was, it was the end of the season.

Small. Well, back. Okay. So yeah. Well, I was doing. Right. I needed a thousand pounds in that load. And there was only 300 that came. So that's, yeah. It was hard to get product that time. year back then so so when there's three yeah so I closed a trailer back up and I told when I knew she didn't have a wire on I knew it got pulled over somewhere across country there's just I just knew I just didn't know all the details so I had her follow me out of there and I basically picked up my phone once I saw I got a mile from my house I saw agents and packed in cars lined up there were about 20 of them in six different cars and I saw them as I was driving out of the neighborhood and did they not know you were leaving or they didn't know they didn't even know my name they're just doing

an investigation oh okay they're they're literally trying to figure out who's who and where's this load going that we found in the middle of the country driving down the highway so they're doing their homework and uh i pick up my burner phone i call her i go yep we're not filming today it's really cloudy out because she's like a pro mountain biker and i was a little bit in the film industry right so and then i made it out of my neighborhood and i just saw a fly block of them back about a half mile just following and then and a little bit later I saw there was a plane that was circling above that was a part of their crew too right um and when I got a couple stop signs up I split took a left and uh I just I redlined it bro I freaking hammered on it

and I had several cell phones in my cup holders I started breaking them apart ripping the batteries out was throwing one piece at a time every quarter mile out the window redlining it the whole way nervous as fuck not thinking clearly like what's to play what am i going to do i still got a million and a half cash sitting back at the house i got that load on the road i got three other loads that are coming to me being delivered within the next three hours because i was out of town for a week so missy was the first load and i had two others from canada and then another domestic one coming that day and i have cell phones beeping everywhere it's half still are at the house somewhere with me so i'm like this is like right in the middle of a busy day for me to happen right and i'm

like fuck well you know the first thing i do is what do i do i call my stepfather which he knows nothing about my illicit business but he's always the guy that was there for me as a kid when i had to go to the hospital right just get stitches or whatever right so instinctually i call him i go i need to see you right now so i he goes where are you goes i'm work what's the problem i go don't worry about i'll see i'll be down there so i drove a half hour to his work and got to a red light about a mile later and i saw a couple d a guys a couple cars back and they were on to me i was like fuck so up this point they obviously ran my license plate they're running gps on my personal phone which i haven't gotten rid of i kept my personal

and i also have uh what was it called on star oh yeah they used to have the on star i had the on star the car so they could have been tracking that by now too who knows i don't know how fast they were moving but once i got on the highway though i created kind of a cluster fuck of traffic there was a three lane highway and i had two 18 wheelers uh one in the far left lane one in the middle lane they were side by side and i went to the far right the far left lane and i was running in tandem with them down the highway and this kind of backed up traffic behind us so nobody could pass for maybe a couple minutes. Right.

Once I had a cluster of traffic and I saw the DA was about six, seven, eight cars back, I then creeped up a little bit, got in front of the 18 wheelers, and then I punched it, doing 100,

lost them because they're probably not going to be able to get through that traffic for a good two minutes. And then got off the highway, hadn't seen him for about 20, 30 minutes. Had a conversation with my stepfather, go, here's a deal, I'm going to get arrested.

There's a few hundred grand in a picnic basket in your basement. Can you do me a favor? Grab that, save it for me, attorney he's like what what are you talking about like he has no clue like he thinks i'm just like you put him you put him pools what are you doing what are you talking about no clue and you know and i'm like but he kept cool he didn't even like flinch she was just like you know he's he's seen probably a lot of shit he's watched a lot of movies as a kid right so he's just like okay so that's it i went and then

i'm leave him i go what do i do now for 60 grand i can get a passport get out of the country I got enough money stashed in other places where I can live comfortably forever. Right. And or, but I'm on the run then. That's no more life, the life I know is done. Not that I really had one. I didn't have kids, which is good, right? So that was kind of a viable option in a way.

But then I'd have to always be, I'm such a, I would always be watching. I wouldn't want to deal with that shit. So then I kind of just said, you know, it's time to go back. I'm going to drive home. So I drove home. And for some reason, I decided to. stop at the gases you're just going to fill up with a tank of gas because i just felt like before i go to meet the enemy i wanted to have a full tank of gas i have no just another too many movies right

right so and as i'm pumping the gas they rush up to me down on the ground down on the fucking ground my jesus christ i almost peed my pants i didn't see him coming i thought i was going to meet him in my house right so but actually some troopers saw me there must they must have they must had a they probably had it on the radio everywhere look for this truck right so some trooper found me. I found it a later date. My buddy actually knew the trooper, but brought me back to the house, cuffed me up, had me sit outside my house for about 20 plus agents swarmed my house, asked him to get inside, what's in there, anybody in there, any guns. I just said, sorry, what's going on. I wish I could help you, but I can't

help you if I don't know what's going on. All right. And that's all I said. I need to speak to a lawyer. Yeah. And that shuts them up pretty quick. Yeah. And then they were talking to the other driver, Missy, which was running her mouth like crazy. I found it. a later date like fuck dude i was like she was just blame it like not a good situation not a good situation i've heard a lot of stories about which she she put us in a sticky situation to be honest and what's tough about it she's getting a lot of fame for like because i don't know if she's told the whole truth because she was somewhat of a celebrity back in the day but for being the fastest in the country as a female mountain bike she got into the hall of fame but she's really so instead

of saying like i don't know what's going on she's saying i've been doing this for six months i don't know exactly what she told them at that moment i just know she talked right and then i also know she sat down a few months later and told on a lot of people right and she didn't get any time and but i thought she owed me 300 grand and she uh i'm sure it's fine it's fine she did at the thing have you asked her about i never saw her i don't even want to go near her because then it could be like she could she could put in a situation where I'm trying to kill her yeah you know what I'm saying like I'm all I don't even want to be I've she's had some other legal cases with people that are like in relationships with her going on where she's said stuff domestic putes that I heard

aren't true I have no clue it's none of my business but I stay away right better that way way she costs me a lot of money bro but do you know the way I look at it if I didn't go down that way it would have been something else I had to learn the lesson one way or another you learn you learn a lot when you hit the bottom you know I You didn't figure out who your friends are. You figure out like I was thinking you're thinking you got get a passport. Yeah, you could get a passport, but you could have then lived for the next 15 years and then been picked up by just some coincidence. Some guy that knew you is in South America and recognizes you and calls the police and you've built a whole new life.

And you're like, damn. Like I like then you get yanked up and you go to jail for 10 years or 15. Like, you know, the idea that you're going to just disappear. Nowadays, man, that's tough. That's tough. Especially with all these facial recognition cameras. Even if you have all the right documents, you know, it's just, it just, you know, like. Plastic surgery.

I've had plastic surgery. Multiple when I was on the run, multiple plastic surgeries. Even when they grabbed me, the feds had pictures of me, the old pictures. And they were like, and one guy is behind the lead agent going, I don't think it's him, bro. And, you know, he's like, I don't think it's him. He's like, no, it's him. Look at his eyes. It's him.

I had lost weight, I had a nose job, I had a facelift, I had two hair transplants, had my teeth done, bro, I was, I went all out. I'm telling you. And the same thing, it's just, you know, the problem is it's always the fly in the alignment. You could do everything right and somebody else makes a mistake or bumps into you and you're like, damn, I did, I had it all lined up. You can't account for everything.

you know i mean which is exactly what you know what you're saying is like you know something would happen like you know what if they cost you with what if they've been watching you for for 18 months and then said okay and then you and the load they cut you with it's a thousand pounds and then the guy they grab say man i've been dropping off i don't know how much is in the truck but i think it's around probably whatever this is a thousand pounds i've been dropping that off twice uh you know every two weeks for the last 18 months and they add that up and your mandatory minimums 20 years you know like you it could be so much worse law enforcement often questions him not because he suspected of a crime but because they find him fascinating 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 you know i pay them 10 million in gold bars right No, this is what I'm waiting for, because I saw that on the other thing where you got locked up and then you were locked up almost, what, year and a half, two years, and then your lawyer comes to you, and you're like, didn't believe and believe that that was even going to be possible. Yeah, for a while, it was, you know how it works. They just want you to work for them. Yeah. So they wanted me to work for them, and I just couldn't do it. I was like, I'd rather die.

It was like, I told myself that coming in. I'll die before I do that. It's just like, I've faced, I faced death as, I had a trouble childhood. so where I almost jumped so I was never afraid to die it was like it was when I was a teenager it was a time when I stood at the edge and I was like I don't want to live this anymore this life and that's actually when I decided to sell selling weed I was like fuck it I'm just gonna make my own money right that's that's in the book by the way I you know my book right you know about the book right yeah yeah pressure pressure okay yeah anyway no and I will I mean we're gonna

I'll put the links and the whole thing so yeah they wanted me to work for them and I went through it and they they they I got bailed out and you know why I was bailed out because they wanted to follow me around right see who I know because they knew nothing about me they didn't even know my name when I got arrested and that's now I knew they didn't have a case they what's your name what are you doing here right there I knew they didn't have a case right so um they wanted to follow me around and they did follow me around for a bit specifically they had there was a 60 day slot where they had like a tight crew on me day and night bro I know what you eat for breakfast just trying to get a good case I mean because they

didn't have a good case I mean they searched my house illegally that day they came back and they didn't because I didn't unload anything from the trailer when I saw that GPS unit I didn't unload anything I told her to get out of here right so there's no probable cause of going my house but they went in anyway and found 1.5 mil and some few other pounds of weed um so I went for them they bailed I was bailed out watched me for a year and a half my lawyer kept pumping me for money bro I was into, between him, the investigator, I was into for close to 700 grand for legal fees, bro. And they just went, and I hadn't even got a trial yet. Right.

This is like pre-trial, quarter million. Oh, Eric, I'm in another 100 grand. It's taken longer than we thought. I'm another 200. And he knew he could do it. Michael Kennedy, he was, he's passed away now, but he knew what he was doing. He knew my life was in his hands and I'm just a young kid, bro. I'm 30.

He's a 70-year-old. He's done with, dealt with. the mobsters, the pizza connection. He's done tons of shit. He knew what he was doing. So, anyway, he wouldn't take cash. So I had to get him a check. The only way I could get him a check is I had to launder the money.

Right. Got re-arrested a second time. They put me for laundering money to pay my legal fees. I wasn't breaking the law anything else. I wasn't dealing anymore. I was done. I was like, I got arrested number one. I'm going to beat this case and I'm done.

I'm going to stay clean. But you're laundering drug money to pay you? I had to pay my lawyer. as supposedly, I was never convicted of that, but they said I was laundered money to pay my lawyer. So they re-arrested me. All right. This time, no bail.

I'm sitting in there for like, county jail sucks, dude. It's not like federal time where you know, it's like county jail is like you sit in a room all day, no sunlight, just eat shitty food. And I'm in there for four plus months. And every week my lawyer is like, Eric, it's time to just cooperate.

Because my lawyer was against cooperating from day one, Italian. and, you know, like, they don't deal with any clients to cooperate. Yeah, they all say that. So he came to me after four months. He's like, he's like, listen, just, he's like, just the goal is to get you out of here right now. He's like, you don't really need to work for him.

Just tell him something so you get out. And I'm just like, no, I'm not doing that. Okay. And then eventually comes to me a few weeks later, a month later, or two months later. And he's like, hey, Eric, they know you're a good kid. You can get out with your life. Just give them the rest of your money to let you go. And I'm like, I don't even know how to a truck.

Can we get it in writing? No, you can't buy your way out of jail. You can't get it in writing. You get, what you get is the, we'll consider it substantial assistance. We'll consider it. Cooperating. Yeah, yeah. We'll consider, like, it's totally up to them, totally up to them.

So I went out in shackles. I made a deal with them after a while. I was like, listen, yeah, I'll make a deal. I'll give you five million. They wanted like 10 or something, eight, nine. And I said, I'll give you five. And we agreed on like 5.25 million. They didn't like that number.

They were just fucking one investigator was, he was very good at what he did. He didn't like that number, but we agreed on it. So I went out in shackles, the escorted by a dozen DEA, ATF, where they are 15s into the woods of upstate New York. They had no clue where I was taking them.

They didn't know if it was going to be an ambush or was. Yeah, that's what they're thinking. They had to be prepared. And I went and I dug up, actually the first dig, I only dug up $2 million in gold bars in my mom's backyard, and I gave that to them. That $2 million plus the already $2.5 million they had in cash seats from my houses

equaled to $5 million that I agreed to pay. So I was there. But then after that, I paid up. They put me back in jail. I'm told my lawyer, I'm like, listen, I paid. What am I doing? And then we sit down, we have a conversation. I have to, basically, my lawyer is like, you have to sit down and tell them what you did,

but you don't have to tell them everything. Just can't lie. Right. So I sit down, tell them what I did, blah, blah, blah, blah. I did this for 10 years. they already knew it all anyways by now and then uh the end of the conversation like so how much gold did you buy how much do you have and right now i'm thinking fuck i told them a lot and then the whole room got tense because they want more they want more gold now i only gave them five mil i mean that's they

want they want the big thing and the conversation to stop they put me back in jail which i should have been let out in my opinion i made the deal we did the deal so my lawyer kept calling me for the next three weeks eric do you want to give them anything else is there anything else you can do for them and finally i was just like fuck it and i went out and uh another day's pouring rain they took me out of prison went another another spot in the woods in upstate new york i dug up another six million in gold bars about three feet down with shackles on there's pictures of it if you go online and google it but me in handcuffs my hands are so pale and white from in a cell with no sunlight like it's well so had you hadn't been sentenced yet though so you were still

in the u.s. marshals uh holdover there you go okay but you're still got they're gonna charge you they're just going to consider it uh for a reduction and and not give you what you should have gotten right like so you that's my cooperation right so you would have gotten the mandatory minimum which would have been what 10 years right well would have been no it would have been five but they probably would have hit me with 10 to 15 based on, they probably would put some other charges on me. I only had a one count indictment at that moment. Okay, yeah, okay.

So they got like 200, 300, what, 200 pounds? 300 pounds, 300 pounds. So they got 300 pounds. I don't know. I thought that was the 10 years. Everybody, I wasn't meat. 10 years is 1,000 kilos. Oh, you're right.

Because, okay, Carrie got caught with like 1,100, well, he got caught with 1100 pounds, I think, or 2,200 pounds. I forget. Anyway, it was a lot. Yeah. So, okay, that's why he got 10. His and this other guy, that was 10. So, but you still got sentenced.

Eventually, yeah. After my lawyer's like, all right, they're going to get, after I paid, now they have close to $12 million between cash and gold. Then they finally let me out. My lawyers, like, just sit tight. We'll push off the sending as long as possible until people, so it doesn't look like you bought your way out of jail. I just sit.

I sit tight. And I ended up getting sentenced down like a year later plus. And I ended up doing two years, 30 months, but I got the good time and stuff. Some other things I put in the book, how I got out. I only ended up doing like 22 something months, 20 months. And basically I paid all that money so I wouldn't have to work for them. And someday, I'm going to be honest with you. you there's days and i think about did i do the right would they have all done it for me i no i paid motherfucking close to 12 million so i wouldn't tell them people i'll never see again that really have nothing going on in their lives yeah that probably if i told them they probably wouldn't even hurt them i'm so like i wrestled that sometime to be honest with you i really do because because that was expensive for me and uh and those people are going to get busted anyway but listen everybody you were dealing with has probably been busted and gone to prison You know what?

That's what fucking happened. Yeah. I remember looking in the newspapers, the years passed and I would see, oh, this guy, holy shit, indicted, this guy indicted. That wasn't, I'm sorry. I was going to say, I wrote a story about a guy that got, he got arrested, didn't tell on the other two guys for, because they got him for one crime. They, the cop, the FBI knew these two guys had helped him with this, another robbery. So he didn't say anything. He said, I, man.

I know, I know not to say anything. So I just took the, whatever it was, 11 or 12 years and just took it. I was like, you're a fucking idiot. He said, yeah, well, you know what happened. They end up busting these guys for that crime without his help. These guys immediately turn on him. They re-indict the guy in prison who didn't talk. They re-indicted him.

He got something like 13 more years and he's now doing like 24 years in federal prison for not cooperating against the two guys that immediately cooperated against him. and that just happens like people they think that that code you know you don't do it and you don't you know God I've seen to go bad as home many times The main guy I didn't

want to tell him is the guy that I had the gold man That was a freaking really hard pill to swallow bro I'm not gonna even get into names I don't want to do any of that but like it was just Right so you didn't tell them about They already did they just knew about the gold Somebody else had told them about it

Oh okay Okay I thought I thought you just just said went and decided here i'll go do it but they knew they they knew i had gold they didn't know exactly how much but they they figured it all out eventually because i bro just i i i was very good at not talking when i was in the game for years but all it takes is one time yeah just one guy just told yeah i got these gold bars check them out you know like it just it's like i fuck myself honestly i was a young kid i was a young kid with too much money so how old were you when you got out like 35 3034 maybe 34 35 and how long ago was that

2014 so did you write your book while you were locked up no no I was working on this other application I was like a piece of software that helps you surround yourself with like-minded people I was doing the wireframe for that and the design and uh kept me occupied and then when I got out of prison. I had five years supervised release and during that time I started writing the book and just finished the book. It just came out a year ago. It's gone pretty good. I got distracted though. Like I had an opportunity to be interviewed by Rolling Stone and I didn't even take the interview because I was in this field. I invested in a cannabis. I was involved in a cannabis farm in in New York State. There's no cell service there during the day. And I didn't get back home until the

day later. It's like when you don't jump on something like that, it's like you lose it. And I lost the momentum with the book release in a little in some manners. but whatever. I'm happy. I got a good book. It worked hard, but I could have pushed it a little hard. I didn't take every interview that came my way. And I don't know if that's a good thing or a bad thing. Like, for example, I don't know, a month or two ago, somebody from VH1 reached out to publicist that I was working with and said, hey, we want to get them on our VH1 crime series show. Yeah. I didn't. My true crime story. Oh, it's my true. Okay. Yeah. And I didn't follow through with that because I didn't know if it would be a good fit for me. Like, because I'm thinking

if I do that, might it prevent me from getting a better deal, maybe a deal with like a Netflix or something down the road i don't know it's torn because if once the story's already working on it getting something or you just waiting for it to fall out of the sky fuck man because i waited a couple years for it to fall out of the sky and just it just doesn't happen no it's not that it doesn't happen it's that you you you do you get contact you've already i know you've already had you've already had producers contact you right want to talk to you and you take the meeting and they're going to talk to jim and they're going to get their team together you know how many times i've heard i'm going to bring this back to my team i swear a guy i want to jump through the fucking screen every time i

hear it. They're like, okay, well, I'm glad we had a good talk, and I've read your synopsis and I read this. And so I'm going to bring this to my team. Okay, well, that's the kiss of death. So what's your advice? Should I take the VH1 thing? Just do it? Why not do it? Like, to me, listen, I did it. Okay. Listen, here's my only, my only problem with the VH1 thing that I did. Obviously, listen, they can't tell. First of all, you're talking about an hour program. You're looking at them doing maybe 41 minutes. on your on you my problem was you know it's it's it's uh what was what's the chick's name Mickey or Nikki somebody Nikki somebody who does the narration for it it's all hype

it's all flash it's about redemption it's all so it's a cutesy little program it's not a big deal but you don't know who's going to see that like your story could be done by a polished director and production company and it could be phenomenal it could be be amazing. This is a silly little rendition that's 40 minutes long. You're maybe 15 or 20 minutes of it. Most of its narration with some reenactments. It's silly. My only real problem with it was they put so much makeup on me. I was, I was infuriated. You couldn't tell them to not put it on you. I should because they kept saying, no, it's going to look good. I know it looks like a lot now, but on camera, it looks perfect. And you know, I'm sitting there thinking, they're

professionals it doesn't look good on camera it looks horrible so you know but listen they they fly you out they'll give you you know whatever a few thousand dollars um or whatever you negotiate you know i'll tell you know what i got you know which probably wasn't much but you know but they also you know they also interviewed my girlfriend and another friend and you know we got to go to new york and hang out for a few days and it was cool um but somebody could see that. Somebody at Netflix or one of these production companies sees that and goes, listen, you know, I saw that. And they'll know, look, it's hokey. Like, they're going to be like, look, you've got a story here. They can't do your story justice in 40 minutes. You know it and I

know it. They'll cut it down to just a couple little hype events. But if somebody comes in and says, hey, your stories, a three-part series of an hour, this is a three-hour or four-part series on Netflix. Then they come in and they do a real, a real documentary on it. Maybe that documentary ends up doing well. And the next thing you know, you've got Warner Brothers coming in saying, we want to do a movie or we want to do a series. We think you've got a whole series. You're in your early 20s doing all this with DEA watching you and guys getting busted around you. Like, this could be not breaking bad, but something along those lines, you know. Yeah. So, you know, to me, it's like, you know, oh, I don't want to get over exposed. Like what? Like,

Nike? Like, I mean, what do you mean? Somebody told me that. That was the publicist that was working. She mentioned that. So I kind of took it to heart, but whatever. Maybe I'll follow through it. When I get out, when I get out of this interview, I'll give a little jingling and call them up, see if they. Yeah, I was going to say, definitely. I was going to say, yeah,

another thing, and, you know, he'll keep all that. Like, this is another thing that you might want to think about, just you know, is that, like, you have a book. Do you have a synopsis of the book? The website really has it all. What? A synopsis?

Yeah, it's on the website. How many words is it? Do you know? Under a thousand. Under a thousand words? Okay, so it's like a summary. I was going to say because a lot of times you can pitch if you have like a synopsis is better to put like let's say 800 word or sorry, 8,000 to 10,000 words synopsis of your story.

is probably better than handing someone the book. You see what I'm saying? Because people are like, they're like, man, you know how many books I get handed? Like, I can't be reading, you know, this is 10 or 12 hours. I'm burnt out, though. I can't write anything.

Maybe we'll talk about that off camera. I'm burnt out. I can't even read my book for an audio book. The words will make me nauseous. I just spent too much time on it. I'm all done like I'm not. Maybe I'll revisit doing an audio book in a year or something. The book launch I could have done a little better with,

but good news is the story. story's done so now I'm on the new stuff you know it's like that phase of my life that whole 20 year stretch of selling grass and going to prison and supervised release and writing the book it's like done so where where first my question is what what security level did you go to well I was moved around I was I tested out everything I was in MDC Brooklyn for like a month few jails but I ended up in a low right MC Devons, right? Because nonviolent offenders, they're not going to do anything to me.

So I was like in a camp, basically. MC Devons, you know that I have that satellite camp there. So it's basically just a big room, big warehouse with a bunch of bunk beds. Right. That's it. So you got out, did you have any go any halfway house? No. That's nice.

Straight out, it's a five years supervised release. They didn't cut me loose, though. Did you go into a halfway house? Yeah, I wish I had. I mean, honestly, like if I had money set aside where I was getting out, to something, I would have just stayed in prison. I would have stayed in the low because the halfway house was worth than being in the low.

But I needed to go because I needed to save up money. I didn't have any money, so I needed that seven months. You know, like it's not like anybody packed up my clothes and stuck them in boxes waiting for me. Like, you know, my stuff was gone. I started with nothing. So what are you doing now? Right now I've, well, I partnered up on a cannabis farm in New York State, but the

market's just so flooded so I want to get out of that immediately that's my top priorities to try to get out of that business and then I want to get into building really high-end retreats infrared suns infrared saunas cold plunges outdoor gyms fire-to-table food you know copper grounding beds really natural surroundings and environments so I want to build a place where people can go and reset and recharge my premise is basically that we plug our phones into charge at the end of the day we plug our cars into charge but the human body isn't being plugged into dwellings that charge us. So I want to build these spaces where you can go and recharge for adults only. So that's really my passion, what I'm working on.

I have to get out of the cannabis first, and then I'm going to move into that. Okay. What happened to your, to the fountains? Oh, I haven't done that in years. I'll build that at the retreat. I haven't. That was a little kid project. I built some nice ponds at my property, though.

I have some one, like 20 foot spring fed, 20 feet deep spring fed quipons that swim in and stuff with the fish. They're huge. They're like this. They're big. And they, they'll outlive me. Some of those quai can live up to 100 years old. Where are you living? I have a place in upstate New York.

You didn't drive here from New York. No, but I spend part of the winter down here because I have a small little network down here where I'm helping with like, that's basically going to help me with the retreats okay yeah all right um is there anything we didn't get to like well the title of books pressure a memoir by eric canori if anybody buys and likes it please DM me if there's anything that they like about it um leave a leave a review oh i love reviews if i can get those too if anybody knows anybody in the film industry that's really passionate good at what they do i'll give a finder's fee to somebody that puts me in the hands with somebody that's that's good at that um and uh you know crime doesn't pay i guess

fuck that's what are the what are the what are the other shows the other podcast that you've done like is that is that their angle of i get a lot of guys that that i mean bear with me one more minute i get a lot of guys that like come on and they they don't want to tell they don't want to talk about what got them to prison they just want to say you know so i messed up and i I was selling Coke and I was selling this and I, you know, made a mistake and I got busted. And, you know, I got 10 years. I went to prison. But, you know, I changed my life and I did this.

And I did that. And it's like, whoa, whoa, whoa, wait, let's like, how did you get to prison? Yeah, you know, it was just a bad situation. But, you know, then I went to prison. It's like they want to talk about, they want their whole story to be about redemption. And there's a lot of podcasts out there. And a lot of guys, like, just focus on, I'm a changed person. I've done, I'm doing my, it was a bad time.

You know, they do this whole thing. And it's like, so I, I've talked to people who are like, they do that. And then sometimes I'm like, yeah, yeah, let's go back. And they almost like they don't want to talk about, like, what got them to prison. And I was wondering, like, what's it like to be on one of those shows? I haven't been on one of those shows. And plus, I don't, I don't really wouldn't talk about what I'm like now. I mean, prison, you know how prison is it.

It helps you grow, right? It's a great time to pause. Somebody should build prison retreats. People would probably pay to go to those. Like a weekend in prison, like you go, no cell phone, no outside visitors. You're just sitting in a concrete room for, you know, a weekend, and you can't talk to anybody. You have to figure your life out.

So many people complaining out here that have a tough life. I mean, you don't have a tough life. You're out eating Cheetos, drinking wine every Friday. Listen, he's heard of you say the exact same thing. Like, you know how good it is out here? Like, you've got cell phones, you've got YouTube. you've got like Netflix like you can eat whatever you want like you have no until you've been stripped of everything and the guards are talking to you like you're just a dog and you know

honestly you don't know how good it is like I can never get upset we should be blessed in a way that we had that opportunity to stop us oh I think it it all it completely it fundamentally altered like the person I am like I'm absolutely not even close to well I'm still an arrogant prick to but the difference is now I kind of know the difference is now I feel bad for the people that have to deal with me where before it was just like you're lucky to be around me and now when I'm talking to somebody I realize how you're kind of being a douchebag I'm kind of like I step back and and then I'm like oh man like I try and kind of re you know I start to realize okay you're being a douche like you need to calm down like you just stop and then I kind of like you said I kind of reset and

say hey what's going on sorry about that I this I that and I where I never did that before prison. I would have never done that. And then in writing too. I think writing so helps you lay out a plan. Yeah, writing my book was the bare minimum. It helped me with my childhood. It was the trauma from there and just process who I am.

Because every person that you look at, when you're having a conversation, you have to see the seven-year-old child in them. Because 90% of who we are is programmed between age one. seven okay that's so writing that book really helped me understand why I am who I am and where I came from in those years and what the environment I was exposed to really created this you know you can't when everybody else was playing t-ball and basketball I'm sitting here watching Miami Vice at age 12 right you know trying to figure out how to not get busted by the feds with this 100 kilos of coke right like how's you're going to do it and don't be

stupid and start talking, going out to the club with five girls. And this is, I'm like learning all these moves while the other kids are learning how to get to third base. They're playing Atari and you're trying to, yeah, yeah, yeah. That was just the environment I grew up in. And I don't know if I have regrets, but I don't know. My life, I'm thankful for what I have, you know, because it is, if you're stripped naked of everything you have and you feel at least healthy and decent, you're in a good place.

Right. Right. You have to, like, especially now I'm getting ready to start another company. like it's not about what I have it's about who I am like I can move and I'm strong and healthy where I can handle the pressure that's going to come with running a company because I know what it's like you need to be able to handle fucking bullshit every day and night and I've kind of groomed myself to get ready for that again so yeah I definitely the the the childhood thing like until I went to prison if somebody asked me like oh why'd you

do all that I would just say I needed the money man I just needed the money but then you go to I went to prison and I started writing I started reading books about how to write a memoir, you know, and how to write nonfiction. And then you kind of start having to look back at your life and say, what influenced me to do these things? Because what shocked me was that, is that, is that Connor, if Connor needed money, you know what he's not going to do? He's not going to go commit fraud.

He's not going to go sell drugs. He's not going to, he's going to get an extra job. He's going to get an, like most people, it, they just, they don't do it. I always say most people will commit a crime in the right circumstances, but most people will take all of the extra steps before they get there. My first thought is fraud. What? I'm broke. I need some money. There's fraud. Like that's the first thing I think of. How do I get away with committing some fraud so I can get some money? And so I kind of, when I was writing my book, I started looking back and saying, well, what is it in your childhood that made you think

that was even an option, a first option? And it's the same thing. Like you said, like obviously something in your childhood, you know, was shaped you to say, hey, what are the things that I can do to make money? And morality didn't really enter into it. Like, that's not really a part of it. It's what do I need to do to make money. It doesn't matter if it's illegal. Most people, most people commit crimes. They're just to what degree? It's like, yeah, well, those people, there's so many people in your neighborhood that don't have a trash service and they'll just take their trash to another public dumpster behind a grocery store and dump their trash. That's illegal. They'll buy an appliance from the store and then use it for a party and then return it 30 days

later or something. That's illegal, right? Everybody's breaking crimes. They're committing crimes all the time. I like to think of my crime is the most honest crime you could commit. I like to smoke weed. There's no other place to get it. Well, there's a lot of places to get it, but I like to smoke weed and I sold it. Just people helping people? Yeah. I was just trying to help people. I was not trying to hurt anybody. And here it is. It's legal now. I was going to say my mom used to break all every single day she broke the law because she had all of her medications and she had one of those week-long planners for pills and she popped it open and she would take it out of one container and drop it into Monday and put three or four pills in a container and close it, you just committed a federal

crime. By removing those out of a marked, they have to stay in the prescription bottle until you ingest them. If you take them and place them into another bottle, especially if you commingle them, you've committed a federal crime. So every day, she's weak, she's putting them all in there and taking those pills. And that's a crime. Like most people, there was that book that was written, a felony a day. But they talk about all the felonies that people commit on a daily basis and don't even think about it.

So, yeah. So, I mean, everybody's committing, you know, doing something wrong at some point or cheating on their taxes. Yeah, that's a big one. People are okay with that. Like, everybody, almost everybody's okay with cheating in some way on their taxes. Just a little bit. Well, even the, you know, the people that busted me cheated, the bottom line, they wouldn't have had me if they followed the law. Right.

In that particular case, in the case that I always popped in, if the law was followed there, I wouldn't have been pinched in that particular moment. Like, they jumped the gun, whatever, they're going to do it. I have no hard feelings. It is what it is. It's better that I got popped sooner than later because now I'm young still. I can rock and roll in the legit world, right? So there's a lot of, you know, those guys in the prison, they're in the 60s and 70s.

It's like when they get out. What are they going to do? Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Bummer. What a bummer to leave it on. all right let's no we don't want to leave it like that fuck i shit if i was 70 getting out of prison fuck i'd go to the mahi ma i'd go to where'd i go bora bora i don't know yeah just kidding

all you guys get now in your 70s you guys are going to get out and go walk right into a bank and rob a bank so they can go right back to prison because they're 70 years old and you know me guys i knew what like they're going to get out at 60 70 nothing have they have nothing yeah that's got to be tough imagine you don't even know if you have you don't even have like social security like you never paid in i wish the judges that's what's why we're one thing I feel like the judges to in order to become a judge you should have to do like a prison time for a month and then supervised release because what what was yeah I got a two year sentence or whatever but that was eight years of my life that I with with a pretrial five years of

supervised release peeing in a cup like all that just prevent and then on top of it I'm a felon so there's certain things I can't do now for the rest of my life like it's so could you imagine if every federal judge before they took the bench had to do 60 days as a normal inmate you can't say you're a federal judge you what go in boom that's it listen do you know how different the sentencing sentences would be and the prison system would be because they would have so much more empathy for inmates and i'm not saying it should be nice yeah it shouldn't be nice but they could have i learned my lesson if i did a year and then a year of supervised release like i wasn't going to go back to breaking the law me personally i don't know if that's with everybody else but for me personally

i learned my last year you could have given me a couple years i'm good i got i got it i i got you no i'm good thank you 13 years i didn't do 13 years fuck yeah i didn't know you did 13 yeah oh okay so i was i was supposed to do i got over 26 the 26 years and four months but unlike you i don't have any scruples about ratting out every single person. I was ready to cut every single person's throat I could to get out of that fucking prison.

Everybody. But I was on the run for three years. So by the time they caught me, everybody had already cooperated. So when I was ready to fucking tell on everybody, that didn't help me. I ended up having to file a 2255 because they asked me to be interviewed by Dateline NBC News

and American Greed. And then, after I've been locked up a couple years, the government asked me to write an ethics and fraud course to help teach mortgage brokers. So I did that. And you know what they said? When I said, okay, I did it. They said, I said, you said you'd consider it substantial assistance. And they said, we did consider it.

And it's not. And so I had to hire a guy. Well, not hire. I had to get a lawyer in prison who was in prison with me to file a 2255 to get the government to reduce my sentence by seven years. so then I came back to prison and a guy that I knew that was running a Ponzi scheme or had run a Ponzi scheme

who was in the middle of cooperating against other people had buried a bunch of gold and money how much it turns out it was one he dug up like six million I think and given it to them but he'd given his

soon-to-be ex-wife money gold well it was gold and silver bars and some cash. But he said it was like $100,000, $150,000. And he'd given his brother, he said, he's got maybe $10,000 or $20,000. And I was like, oh, okay. And so a couple weeks later, maybe a month later, I was talking to my lawyer. I had asked her to send me some transcripts, which she never sent. So I called her to say, hey, you're going to send those? And we were talking and she asked me anything going on in there. I was like, no, not really. because I didn't think they would give me anything for saying anything.

I was like, no, not really. And she goes, do you sure? Nothing you want to talk about? And like, my lawyer never wanted to talk to me. Like I was, it was almost weird. I was like, no, nothing. I went, well, I said, you know what's weird? I said, listen to this.

And I told her what happened. And she just let me look into it. She didn't want to look into anything before. Like, she wouldn't even my lawyer anymore. And we were done. I'd already been sentenced, resentenced. So a week later, I get called by SIS. You know, the CEO came up to me, he goes,

Cox, you got to go to SIS. I'm like, what, okay. So I go to SIS. What's up? They're like, come here, sit down. Like, yeah, what's up? Hold on. Talk to this guy.

Pick up the phone. Guy says, hey, my name is agent so-and-so with the Secret Service. And I'm like, the fuck. I'm like, what's up? And he goes, I understand that you know where money has been hidden by Ron Wilson. And I went, oh, no, wait a minute. I said, I do, but it's not a lot of money. It's not millions of dollars.

It's a little bit of money. And I want something in writing. So I'm not telling you anything. He's like, well, who's got it? I'm like, I'm not telling you anything. Like, get me something. Talk to my lawyer. So they ended up writing a letter saying,

you give us something if somebody's indicted or we recover money. And I told him I wanted recovered money, any money that I'm not one of my sentence reduced. Because I didn't think they'd indict this guy. You know, like he's got 19 and a half years. I've never heard of anybody else bearing gold. That's interesting. Yeah.

Well, yeah, he dug it up, though. And gave it to the feds? Gave it to him. Because, you know, he was trying to mitigate his role, which didn't help. It didn't help him. And he did that all prior. So what ended up happening was he, what happened was they ended up coming back and they gave me something in writing, which was bullshit. It was a, we'll considerate substantial assistance, which means nothing.

But I had something in writing. So I said, okay, I said, look, this is all he told me. He told me his brother has maybe 20, 30 grand in cash. He told me his, you know, his ex-wife has like 150,000 in cash. But he's afraid she's going to give it to you guys because she found out he was having an affair when they were married. They were in the middle of a divorce. And I said, that's it, you know. And he was in the middle of cooperating against his other co-definance.

So they were like, okay, so they called in his wife. If his wife walks in with $350,000 in cash and gold and everything, like, he didn't tell me what she had. He told me kind of, but he lied. And then his brother comes in with $150,000. So it's half a million dollars. They re-indicted him. And he comes to me and says, oh, my, you're not going to believe this. I've been re-indicted.

I'm like, no, that's crazy. So he says, I said, what happened? He's like, yeah, they got half a million. I'm like, half a million. Like, I thought she said. It was like 30 grand or 20 grand. He's like, no, I didn't think I could trust you. So I didn't tell you the right amount.

I'm like, oh, okay, yeah, that makes sense. Anyway, a couple days later, he's on a bus. He gets shipped back to South Carolina. He gets six more months. His ex-wife gets like six months probation. She didn't even have a felony. Neither does his brother because they gave the money, you know, up. So he got six more months.

And we went to the government and said, hey, you got to reduce my sentence. And they said, ah, it's just not enough. So we had to file another 2255 and got five more years off. And by the time the five more years hit, I basically walked out within a year. I walked right out of prison. So I was my outdate, my original outdate was 2030. I'm supposed to be in prison right now. And so I, but in the, you know, while I was locked up, I started writing guys true crime stories.

And so I'm in prison as a snake. inch. You can imagine how well that went. I didn't have a lot of friends. In a low. But yeah, I went to the halfway house and got out. And that's why when you were like, I wouldn't do it, I'd rather die. I was like, well, I have a vastly different, I have a vastly different feel it. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, you were in the drug game. No, I was. The drug game's a lot different. You know what I'm saying? It's like, all these guys are rolling over on each other. I've learned that after I gave up them, paid all the money. I didn't, I didn't realize, I I didn't know, like I went into the game with a certain rule, like that I just, that's, I just,

and then after I went through all this and I've gotten to this age where I'm at, now I see. And my lawyer read said, he goes, don't ever get back into the game. Everybody's a double agent. Yeah, absolutely. And I said, there you go. I said, fine. This is like 85% or 87% or 80, that people cooperate. That's drugs.

Like, it's even high, white collar crimes. It's even higher. Like, you know, one of the lowest. cooperation rates is sex offenders but they don't have anybody to cooperate like this is some guy on a computer at home he doesn't even have an option and even

if he did they're not going to give him anything you know they're going to screw them over so but yeah it's yeah bro it's it's a rough situation going into prison but I definitely let's leave it on a good note because I remember I'm

I love for the old guys so let's see you on a good note It's good to be free. It's good to be free and make it legally. Yeah. It's so easy to make it legally, though. If I had just got right out of high school and started building houses like I wanted you with a freaking hammer nail and start at the bottom, I'd have made millions. I would have made more. I would have made way more.

That's why I'm going back into construction, build these retreats and stuff. So that's my play. Yeah. Well, that's what, yeah, that's what I say the amount of money I spent on the run and in prison if I'd actually focus. focused on something legitimate I'm a hard worker I work 60, 70 hours a week like I'm always hustling

so I'm going to make something work thank you for coming on the program I appreciate it thank you for having me all right and I'm going to leave a link to is it on Amazon your book? My book sign Amazon okay we'll leave the Amazon link

to Eric's book I appreciate him coming by I appreciate you guys watching. Do me a favor. Leave me a comment in the comment section. Subscribe, share the video, do all the stuff. And check out the books that I wrote and the trailers. See you.

Using forgeries and bogus identities, Matthew B. Cox, one of the most ingenious comment 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 Greene. 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 proclaimed 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. This 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. The 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. Then, 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 nomination. Available now on Amazon and Audible. 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 Hill's 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 informants. Suddenly, two of Racini's associates, confidential informants working with federal law enforcement, were murdered. Everyone pointed to Rossini.

As his co-defendants prepared for trial, U.S. Attorney Robert Mueller sat down to debrief Rossini at Leavenworth Penitentiary, and another story emerged. A tale of FBI corruption and complicity in murder. You see, Pierre Racini knew something that no one else knew. The truth. And Robert Mueller and the federal government have been covering it up to this very day. The 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 conman 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, 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, Khan's Shrinker into revealing his deceptions, his 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 survival-like atmosphere inside of the government-sponsored rehabilitation unit. While navigating the treachery of his backstabbing peers, Cox, simultaneously. 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.