Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast - The Making of a Criminal: Inside Organized Crime in the 90s

Episode Date: February 18, 2026

Jeff Crow, a Fresno man who dealt with organized crime in the 90's.⁣ ⁣ Get 50% sitewide for a limited time. Just visit https://GhostBed.com/cox and use code COX at checkout.⁣ Do you want to be a guest? Fill out the form https://forms.gle/5H7FnhvMHKtUnq7k7⁣ ⁣ Send me an email here: [e-mail]⁣ ⁣ Do you extra clips and behind the scenes content?⁣ Subscribe to my Patreon: https://patreon.com/InsideTrueCrime ⁣ ⁣ 📧Sign up to my newsletter to learn about Real Estate, Credit, and Growing a Youtube Channel: https://mattcoxcourses.com/news⁣ ⁣ 🏦Raising & Building Credit Course: https://mattcoxcourses.com/credit ⁣ 📸Growing a YouTube Channel Course: https://mattcoxcourses.com/yt⁣ 🏠Make money with Real Estate Course: https://mattcoxcourses.com/re⁣ ⁣ Follow me on all socials!⁣ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/insidetruecrime/⁣ TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@matthewcoxtruecrime⁣ ⁣ ⁣ Do you want a custom painting done by me? Check out my Etsy Store: https://www.etsy.com/shop/coxpopart⁣ ⁣ Listen to my True Crime Podcasts anywhere: https://anchor.fm/mattcox ⁣ ⁣ Check out my true crime books! ⁣ Shark in the Housing Pool: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0851KBYCF⁣ Bent: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0BV4GC7TM⁣ It's Insanity: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B08KFYXKK8⁣ Devil Exposed: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B08TH1WT5G⁣ Devil Exposed (The Abridgment): https://www.amazon.com/dp/1070682438⁣ The Program: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0858W4G3K⁣ Bailout: https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/bailout-matthew-cox/1142275402⁣ Dude, Where's My Hand-Grenade?: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0BXNFHBDF/ref=tmm_pap_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=1678623676&sr=1-1⁣ ⁣ Checkout my disturbingly twisted satiric novel!⁣ Stranger Danger: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0BSWQP3WX⁣ ⁣ If you would like to support me directly, I accept donations here:⁣ Paypal: https://www.paypal.me/MattCox69⁣ Cashapp: $coxcon69 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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And they just covered it up. They didn't call the police. They didn't help prosecute them and all that. He attempted to do something to my sister, and my sister was able to not quite have it done to her, if you will. But I talked to other kids, boys, Mexican and white kids at our church, and I discovered their sisters had similar issues. And that made us all really angry. And so the first crimes I started committing, bro, were vandalism against church leaders,

cars and houses and stuff. It was our way, our twisted way of getting back at our religious establishment, if you will, for not following so-called Christian principles. We would, we knew where they lived. We'd go late at night. We'd throw a spark, broken up spark plugs, the ceramic part and break the windows of their cars. We would, we, we started vandalizing, spray painting on their fences and all that. And we had all been skated borders and all that anyway.

So we are already used to thrash and stuff anyway. So that's that in a really good nutshell. You didn't make a career out of that. Not, you know, out of windows. It was like, how did, I mean, what happened? Did you, how did that progress? I mean, once you start vandalizing and doing stuff to, as revenge, from there, you've now opened up the door to do the next step of crime, which would be vandalizing people's stuff in general. You start breaking the windows and then you steal stuff out of the car.

You go from there to stealing cars itself. There was, I got in trouble at school. I started smoking pot roughly around. 16 and I got I started selling it pretty quickly because I discovered that a lot of my friends enjoyed it and I was I became pretty well connected by 17 there was a cartel guy in our area we got involved with crank because that was the early days when Mexicans were starting to take it over from the bikers and really turning it into the huge industry it would become my my county was ground zero so I became greedy too I just I started making money selling

pot, other stuff. And so it caused me to lose interest in school and sports. I was like, who cares about school? I can make, in five years, I'll be rich enough if I play my cards right to where I can just invest the money in a way that doesn't attract FBI or DEA attention. And then by the time I'm 25 to 30 years old, I'll have millions of dollars. I don't have to go to high school, college, or none of that garbage. I was like, F that. I'm going to freaking be rich quick. And so greed kind of took over. Plus, I was angry at the time. And so greed kind of took over. Plus, I was angry at the world. And my friends were already starting to steal cars and stuff.

And originally they would just race them around. I live pretty close to where the city becomes countryside. So they would take the cars and go out onto rural roads and race each other. It's not their vehicles. So who cares if you burn out the transmission or whatever, wreck the car or whatever. And then I slowly started getting involved with that. I thought it was fun to race stolen cars around and stuff. and I started getting arrested though.

I got arrested just before turning 17. And the very first, the system made a huge, huge mistake with me. The very first time that I was arrested, he was late at night. We were out in the process of stealing a car. We were casing a car that we were going to target. And some Mexican dude in his mid-20, who looked like he was like a military guy, came out with a shotgun,

and made it clear we're not going anywhere, and he called the police on us, and they rolled up quick, too. And so they arrested us, and they booked us into the local juvenile hall. And the local juvenile hall in my region was the second worst one in the state of California next to Los Angeles,

certain parts of LA's juvenile hall system. And we're talking of who's who of future California criminals, many of whom are still in California state prisons or federal prisons today or they're dead. And I was put into the worst unit and it was justified on the grounds that when you're arrested for car thief, car thief in California, they know that a lot of car thieves burn the cars when they're done with them because it gets rid of fingerprints. You can burn evidence of other crimes you might have done with those stolen cars. there's a lot of it's a real simple way and I have to admit I've committed arson myself with stolen cars out in the country we we would make Molotov cocktails and light those things up

so if you were arrested for GTA back then and the cops knew you were kind of one of those dudes that had been doing them before but they had never really got you then they had the justification to put you in the worst places because arson is considered a violent crime And so they put me into a unit along with the two other boys I was arrested with like the 50 worst offenders in my whole county. My county is a big, well over a million plus people. The city itself has 600,000 people. It's like the fifth largest city in the whole state of California. So it's not some small spot.

And I was sold up. I was booked into the cell that I ended up, bro, at like 3 a.m. 4 a.m. or so. my cellmates were both sleeping and this was actually a shoe unit which means secure housing unit. It was not supposed to be used for regular offenders. This was supposed to be for punishment only, but because of overcrowding in California system in the 80s and 90s, they were putting people anywhere they could put them. So we were literally in this place that's just the size of maybe two closets, if you will. there was a pair of bunks and then there was a roll-up mat how those county jail mats are matt they're they're like a glorified yoga mat they're not really a mattress right and so i get in there

my two cellies are sleeping and an hour or two later i got a little bit of rest we woke up 630 something like that and it was a white dude and a mexican dude the mexican dude was a serrano which is Mexican mafia, kind of affiliate gang, and they're not really big in my part of California, because I'm in the central part of the state where northerners and Bulldogs, which is a group that broke away from the Northerners, had the majority of the Mexican gangs. And so they're outnumbered in my region. Now, in L.A., they outnumber every other Mexican gang, every black gang. They run the show in L.A., the Mexican Mafia and the Serenios do.

But up where I met, they call them upstate Serreños. They're outnumbered. They're with whites. We all work together as far as the California system is concerned. We're called woods in the system. That's the euphemism for white criminals that are in good standing. And so I was there with a Mexican dude and a white dude. When they woke up, they were cool guys. I got along with them. The first thing I did was say, wow, I got a joke for you. And I told them a really sick joke that really troubled teenage boys would laugh their asses out. about and they thought it was great. They were like, man, we needed that, bro. We've been in this weird to play Blasblaw. One dude told me he's on his way to Preston. Preston is a youth authority. They got shut down.

Preston at that time was a youth authority worst in most California state adult facilities because it's all youngsters, Crips, bloods from L.A., serenials, Northerners, Nathanials, the Asian gangs, woods that are like old stoner, white dudes, all trying to prove themselves. So there's way more fighting, not as much control amongst the inmates the way a state prison or a federal prison is where you got leaders that sort of keep some of that in line to some degree.

And they're, that kind of thing. We were sold up across from three black dudes that had committed a murder, a homicide during Christmas. They shot a Christmas shopper at one of the local malls in the suburbs right in front of his baby sister. and I had read about the case in the newspaper before that. They were being held awaiting hearings to be determined whether they would be tried as adults or not. And out of the three, two of them got tried as adults. Ultimately, one did not. But during that time, they were still in that juvenile unit right across from us.

And one of the first things that my grow said to me in the cell, my zellies or whatever you want to call them, after we did some small talk was, hey, we got a problem with those, and they used, they didn't use the N-word. There's a different word that whites and Mexicans use for blacks in the system in California. They refer to them as toads. They said, we had an issue with these three toads are down the cross. I know what that, man.

And they said, you down? Because once they unlocked these cells, it's cracking. And back then, this was one of those old-time juvenile halls, Matt, that was built in the 50s. didn't even have electronic locks like yet. They had to manually open it up. It was freaking super unsafe. Lots of blind spots. They were right across from us.

And as soon as the staff walked away, it was on. We went out, they were only five feet across from us their cell. And it wasn't some knocked down, drag out fight thing, bro. It was only 10 seconds rough. It was really short.

The staff wasn't stupid. They're all big like football player looking guys. They know how these kids are, and they knew there was a problem. So they ran right back over there and tossed us back in our cell, tossed them in theirs. And then they opened up one of ourselves first to go eat breakfast. And when we were done, then they let the next, that kind of thing. But again, it wasn't like a, oh, I get in there. One of those stories.

It just was back and forth just squabbling, right? And it, but it did help me out, though, because a month or so later, when I was of that unit and out on the street, there was a group of, there was a lot of Mexican and Asian gangbangers in that unit. And they watched as this went down. And later on, I had a Mexican dude that recognized me. It was like, hey, bro, weren't you, uh, weren't you one of those dudes that was in a unit? That was a particular unit. This juvenile hall was declared unconstitutional years ago, like in the 2000s. So it was tore down. So it's not there anymore. The new one looks like a high school campus or a college campus.

These, the kids, they have no clue how good they have it. But the unit, the juvenile hall units that were around when I was younger in the 80s and 90s, bro, those were built in like the 50s. They looked like San Quentin or Alcatraz. And so they were dingy, cockroaches on the floor, bro. One of the filthiest places I've ever been when it comes to like basic taking care of stuff. And anyhow, the dude that recognized me was like, hey man, I saw. that.

Salute to you, bro, for standing up for yourself or whatever. I mean, again, Matt, I'm not, this wasn't one of those. Yeah, I freaking gladiator is. So I'm not fronting like that. But in California, bro, if you at least show that you're going to defend yourself and that you're not, you're not just going to, please, let's talk this out. If you're throwing punches back and forth, even if you lose, you'll get respect. So that ended up evolving to where, um, I,

It helped my drug, my marijuana business. I started getting hookups to some of the gangbangers. And a lot of those gangbangers, Mexican gangbangers, they all have older uncles and dads that are connected with guys down south of the border. And once you start getting connected with those guys, your prices go down, your ability to get more product that once goes up, and hence your profit margin goes up.

And so I was a business-oriented kind of kid as it was. and I just I started selling pot bro and it evolved from there to to bigger amounts just aides and quarters to ounces to quarter pounds and that kind of stuff of Mexican brick how old were you how old were you I started I started a little bit after my 16th birthday so my first arrest was in early 1992 because that Christmas shooting was in December I want to say December 3rd or 4th of 91 and they were those black dudes were still being held. So I want to say I remember it was raining that night. I want to say February to March of 1992 was my first time being booked into there.

And then I caught another case a few months later for burglary. I got snitched on by an Asian gangbanger. I was trading marijuana for stolen stuff, which is a really stupid idea. And when he got caught, he ratted me and some others out. And rather than talking to the police, I just, just said whatever you guys got to do you got to do and i just cut a plea deal to where i took the rap for two burglary kennels even though i hadn't actually stolen anything i did the trading of it but i didn't believe in talking to the police at all and just said hey charge me with whatever you got

charge me with and when i got to court the dea dropped three of the charges in exchange for not fighting them at trial and i got put on juvenile probation and that kind of stuff So I was on probation for a good portion of my 17th year. And I ended up just taking a test to get out of high school early. I was selling weed and I viewed school as getting in the way of my drug business. And so, yeah, since I was smart, bro, I went into like one of those studies programs that's intended for like good kids that can barely read at a fifth grade level. So that piece of cake for me. I'm freaking like I did like my whole senior year in like two months or something.

And then boom, I got it. Half of my senior year, Matt, was me sleeping in till like 10 or 11 a.m. And about noon, my friends from high school tried to my house, drop me off some Taco Bell, and buy some weed from me. And then I just smoked pot all afternoon. If you sleep hot at night, you know how disruptive that can be. Whether you're having trouble falling asleep, you're waking up sweating in the middle of the night. or all of the above. That's where Ghostbed can help. As the makers of the coolest beds in the world, Ghostbed is your go-to for cooling mattresses, cooling pillows, and cooling bedding. From their

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our listeners can get 50% off site-wide for a limited time. Just visit ghostbed.com slash Cox and use the code Cox at checkout. Again, that's ghostbed.com slash Cox with the code Cox at the checkout to save a whopping 50% off sitewide. I did try going to City College the first semester after high school, which would have been 1993 fall. But I didn't, bro, I didn't do squat. All I did in college my first year was Mac on Chicks, sell weed to high college kids, all that were from suburban areas because all of a sudden, I mean, I'm not, I went to a high school that was more in the inner city. All of a sudden, I got all the rich kids going to the city college with me. And I was well connected and I looked like them, so to speak. They'd rather deal with me than

have to go into the ghetto, so to speak. And I just sold pot, macdon chicks. I got, I used to drink. And I dropped out. The one thing I did do, though, that enriched my career, I was, I'd be became connected with a local cartel guy by then named Marcello. He's passed away now. He was an old Mexican guy at that point anyways. And I got connected with him through one of the Mexican gangbangers that I had known from my area. And so you got a dirt cheap prices. During this era, this is before the cartels really had communities all over America they could hide within.

Most drug and organized criminals, whether they're attacking. Russian, Armenians, Albanians, Mexicans, whatever. They try to blend in with the local community that looks like them. And at this time, there was mainly Mexicans in Texas, California, in Arizona, states like that, border states. Nowadays, it's a different story. So they needed us. They needed whites, blacks, as well as Mexican-American kids that were Americanized

to help them out to sell stuff. Now they don't need us. They could sell street levels. stuff and traffic it and make the biggest money possible. So I would sell, I did this and that, and the, during that, the one thing I did do that Marcello told me to do was read the police manuals that are at your college because there's a police academy there. And at that time, keep in mind, folks, this is 1993.

There wasn't even really dial-up internet, let alone high-speed internet and Google and all that. In order to really get good information on how the cops operated, if you had access to a college where there was a police academy, inside the library, I couldn't check out the books, but I could go in the library and read them. So the one thing I did study, Matt, was these how-to manuals that the police had for their trainees and all that on how they set up drug operations,

how they set up a drug sting, where they choose to put surveillance vehicles. You name the type of crime, scams, robberies, whatever. They had a manual and a book for it. And it was meant, though, for future police officers to learn how to catch crooks. Well, I read all the drug-running ones and the drug-dealing ones at Marcello's encouragement. And it turned out to be one of the best moves I ever did because I learned the ways that the police do things. like if they pull you over and you have a passenger, they separate you both,

and then they start asking you questions looking for inconsistencies in your stories. And if there's an inconsistency, they'll say, all right, we need to bring a dog out to start sniffing this car because you're saying one thing as far as where you're traveling. He's saying another. There's something wrong here. So I learned a lot. And I just dropped out of school. I got, if I was to show you my college transcript,

I have two BA degrees now, and I have associate's degree now. But if you look at my college transcripts, you'll see my first semester. It's like F, F, withdrawal, withdrawal, F. Because I just wasn't going to school, where I just was showing up there to freaking talk to girls, Drake, smoke pot, and study what the cops are doing. I mean, how long, I don't, so how long does this, how long does this go on? and before

takes off with the mob stuff yeah yeah that's what I yes let's do that all right so and I was also thinking

it's funny I have a I have a buddy who who talks who says a lot some of the stuff that you've said where he was talking about

like as a as an American with a passport he was like like as a guy who looked like an American with they had a passport

he's like you were worth a lot of money to the cartel but that was 20 some odd you know 30 years years ago. Yeah, this is the 90s. Yeah, absolutely. And that was another thing for interstate drug trafficking, bro. Yeah, you'd rather be white, quite frankly, than most other racial groups. Asian too.

Asian kids can fool cops in other states and just pretend to be like, oh, yes, I play chess. And I'm a, I'm a straight A. You want me to talk to you about math? I can tell you all about calculus officer and Asian kid you get away with it. And then Mexican kids, look clean cut can play the role too of just some hardworking kid moving back east i'm trying to start a job or so you have to have good cover story so the way that i got connected with the mob map was so one of my friends here had lived in michigan off and on and keep in mind about california in those days it's not it wasn't like it is now where a lot of our cities are messed up but uh they were messed up in a different way, but we had a lot of out-of-staters who moved into neighborhoods because

California in the 60s, 70s, 80s was growing at that time. So we'd have people who moved in from a cold weather state, much like people moved to Florida, right? And they set up guys, people leave New York to move to Florida for lots of reasons now, taxes and all kinds of stuff. But in California at the time, it was like Ronald Reagan territory still. And so it was a place where people moved to. So I had friends that had lived in Texas and other states one of them was Michigan and one of the kids that I was involved with sales with and he knew more sollo as well um was from Michigan and he moved back to Michigan he was two years younger than me and so this was a little bit after I turned 18 he moved back there he was approximately 16 maybe almost 17 something like that and a few months

after he moved back, he called me up saying that his aunt is looking up with, basically he was like the side girlfriend or girlfriend of a mobster back there. His aunt was like a really hot-looking middle-aged chick, like 40-year-old chick back then. There's a certain term for them now that we hadn't heard of back in those days. That rhymes with milk. Yeah, it rhymes with milk. I'll be all right. Daniel, if you're just... you're watching this, let's just be honest, your hand was pretty hot, bro. And so, uh, the, uh, she was hooking up with them with a mobster, that a mob associate, right? And when he got back there, he ended up meeting the guy, right? And he told him, oh,

man, our guys in California can get Mexican brickweed for super cheap. And the mob was already scoring pot in Texas. They had a crew in El Paso that they would get weed from. And then they would take it up north into the Great Lakes region. And they saw that as an opportunity to either get better prices and or make it less risky because now it is you've been in the system. If you keep doing the same pattern over and over and over again, eventually the FBI, the DEA or local law enforcement, one of them is going to figure out. And then if you're doing the same thing all the time, once they put you under surveillance back then,

they just have to fill you enough times and catch you doing the same thing enough times and they got a court case. So he reached out to me about scoring pot out here and he had told me, look, man, these guys are going to swarm big amounts though. We're talking, we'll start off at maybe 10 or 20 pounds of Rick Budd from Mexico as a starter to kind of develop the relationship and get to trust each other. But ultimately, we want to be moving hundreds of them a month. month, $250, $500,000 a month if possible.

Now, I never got past $250 for the record. I was never able to get, that's the most I've ever moved interstate, to be honest with everybody. But they certainly wanted me to try to get as much as possible. And initially, I brought it to Marcello and Marcelo told me no way. And he said the mafia is under mass surveillance by the FBI. that keep in my this is 1983 and in 94 John Gotti had been arrested in 92

the FBI was all over Italian dudes back then they were being literally you could almost say systematically targeted based on ethnicity and they were hot as a potato so you didn't really want to be dealing with them

and he told me he's an older Mexican guy he was smart he had been he's connected south of the border and Tijuana and all that and he was like not vetoed it right and so I told Daniel

the dude that moved back there I said look um sell don't want me to do it and um I'm in fact I'm doing just fine with the local sales so um I don't think so anyhow a few months or something later they get a call from him

and um he says bro I need your help I sent them out there for to connect with somebody else and that fell through. So I got a mobster sitting in a hotel room near the airport, and he's been there for like two days, and he's pissed off.

And I know what that means. It's like, oh, you wasted the mob's money. And that becomes a conspiracy charge. Even if you don't score pot or drugs in another state, if the DEA or the FBI sees you hop on a plane, that's enough for a conspiracy charge because you attempted to do it. And that means Daniel could have been handled like that by them. So I said, yeah, I'll help you out.

And I did meet up with the guy. He was cool. I got along with him pretty well. And at least it developed a relationship. I started looking into it more. There had been guys near Sello who had kind of hinted to me that if Sello won't do it, maybe, you know, how much do your Italian friends want? and we didn't get that time what they wanted,

but I was able to take care of them enough with what we did to satisfy that, you're the real deal, Jeff. We like you. You're cool, bro. If you want to do this, let's do this. And I saw the money. They showed me the cash.

He showed me the cash. He brought out here. I saw $800 bills, and it got me started. looking elsewhere besides cello. Yeah. So yeah. So basically that's how that the relationship started from there.

I liked them. They were, a lot of the mob dudes are cool. They got, now the family, just to clarify that I was doing this for is out of Detroit. They deal with Chaldeans though, too. And a lot of the times, Caldeans. Those are Middle Easterners that were Catholics and some

were Muslims but most were Catholics and they fled like Saddam Hussein's Iraq. They fled Syria, Bashir Assad's father's old Syria. So they weren't soft core guys by any means bro. You gotta be pretty freaking smart like CIA level smart to maneuver in Saddam Hussein's old

police state. It's not like you can go into Saddam Hussein's court and please say, hey, I have a Fourth Amendment right against search and seizure. Hell, your lawyer probably could get executed for even arguing something like that, right? But the Italian dudes there also have a requirement. You have, in order to become a made member of their family, it's the only family in America where you have to have a college degree and be Italian and or Sicilian.

So you have to have a four-year college degree to join the Detroit mob. And I'm of Irish descent, so there'd be no way I would have ever joined. what I have wanted to. I was quite happy. I love being Irish and Scottish and I certainly have never dreamed of being Italian. Nothing. I love my Italian bros, but I like, I love myself too. But I enjoyed working with them. They're cool guys and we were all, I liked it too that they were smart. And they had a lot of good ways of doing things, very effective stuff, how to be, you have to be very subterfuge and you have to have good cover stories when you're trafficking marijuana or other drugs. Today's world, it's obviously legal, so pot's kind of out of the question for the most part.

But back then, if you're traveling with it and the police pull you over, you have to have a good reason. Let's say, why are you heading to Michigan? And we'd have like fake made resumes. The mob would tell me the names of actual businesses in Dearborn, Livonia, Gross Point. the suburbs around Detroit. And we would make fake resumes like we're applying for those jobs. And I'd be like, hey, if I, I have never been pulled over in a vehicle with marijuana,

but I had numerous times on Greyhound buses and on Amtraks. Because it's where state troopers and local cops board the buses, demanding to see everybody's tickets. And they can make you open up your carry-on luggage, believe it or not. This is in the 90s. This is before the Patriot Act and all that. They, it's a really, the first time that you see cops boarding a bus that you're on where you're carrying a felony, like a 20 year level amount of pot, it gets your heart racing and it really separates the men from the boys, so to speak, if you can keep your cool under pressure with them. So they ask why they see my ticket.

Let's say you're going to Michigan. What are you going to Michigan for? I'm applying for some jobs and stuff and I've talked to a few companies oh really like where oh here I'd have this stuff in a bigger package let's say under the seat

or we would load it in the cargo area yeah I'd open up my basic carry on that had my shaving stuff or toothbrush here's some of my resumes for this business in Michigan that one and they'd oh okay all right but if you say yeah, I'm applying for jobs there

and then they say, oh, really where and you're like, uh, uh, uh, my mom, uh, the Lake Michigan boat house, uh, the club Detroit.

You're just naming stupid stuff that they know is BS. Like, no, no, no, no. You're going to come with us and we're going to, we're going to have a discussion with you and everybody else gets to leave. Same thing with Amtrak. They're allowed to board buses. I've been, I've had the copy.

in Denver. I've had to deal with them coming at me and others. I've had to deal with the Vegas metros before. I've had police in Des Moines, Iowa. I've had cops in states that I could have got 25 years for trafficking in come up to me and others and ask for our tickets and asking it's and after the first time or so I started to I it the first one really freaking like once it was over and they went to the next person on the bus, the sense of relief that I had. So, bro, I went from like as a 16 and 17 year old running from the cops on the street, so to speak, from theft stuff or being a dumb juvenile to having to be more of a chess player, having a mental chess match with the cops and the feds. And there was a real big turning point

on February 16th of 1994. I was arrested as an 18-year-old, so I was an adult now for grand theft and stuff, commercial burglary stuff. I've never broken into homes. I wasn't into that. I felt like, well, what I do is some criminal broken in my house.

I freaking, so I just never went there. I just felt like it was a violation of people's space, too, but I didn't have a problem. ripping off warehouses or commercial stuff or committing fraud type stuff if need be i i who cares i'm robbing the corporation kind of attitude right um and i got arrested though and i get booked into the county jail and then the unit i was in there was actually pretty simple it was level two and level three which is medium and high medium in california level fours are the maximum security guys and all that.

So I was in there with some dudes for robberies and drug trafficking, drug dealing, and selling crank. There was a lot of crank dealers at that time in there. And they were cool, though. They actually were like, look, what do you do? I explained to them. And they're like, look, bro, you should just bail out.

And I'm like, how come? They're all, well, you can obviously afford it with what you do for a living. And if you don't, you're going to be sitting in here for two months while it winds through the, courts, your arraignment, then your pre-trial hearings and blah, blah, blah, and they're going to let you out with time served anyways, because it's your first defense as an adult. And they were right. I called Marcello, he's my cartel guy from the, I had no choice,

but to call him from jail. And normally that would be a stupid move because how jails are. They, that's a public phone. That's a government-owned phone. They monitor those calls, they listen in, and they know a number you dialed. But I had a meeting. But I had a meeting. meet up with Marcello the next day that I was supposed to be at in order to pick up local local pot. I hadn't told Sello I was starting up with the mob already by then. I was scoring my bigger amounts from guys who knew him, but didn't tell him. A lot of guys love to break the rules.

The mob has lots of rule breakers. Oh, we're not supposed to sell drugs because the Italian mob would never sell drugs. No, that's what half of you guys do, actually. maybe 75% of you guys break those rules. But I wasn't supposed to go around cello. So I bought my local 5 pounds, 10 pounds of weed to sell local quarter pounds and pounds and ounces to local kids and all that from him. But the bigger amounts, 10, 20, 30, whatever, I was getting through other guys or other

routes, other Mexican dudes in particular. But I had no choice but to call Marcello because I would have been in jail. still that morning and if I would have missed the meetup, that would have been very suspicious. Aside from that, we had already talked about it before, like what to do. And so I called him and, of course, it's a collect call. This is an inmate with the Fresno County Jail. And the first thing he said to me was, what do you call me for, MF her, and hung up? That was a signal that we had that things are cool.

I know where you are, whatever. You at least let them know that I wasn't going to be meeting up with them. I got out like two days later or someone. I called my parents up and said, hey, just do the bail for me. I'll pay you guys the money. I got the cash. I'll pay you guys for when you come pick me up, the 10% bail bondsman fee. Anyhow, the mob wasn't too happy with that.

And I told him, said, look, bro, I got arrested for them. They're like, you effing dumb ass and Sello wasn't happy either. You effing dumbass. you and the other, the guy I got arrested with was also connected with Sello. And when he got out later on, he got lectured as well. We got called a couple of dumbasses quite a few times. And they were like, you need to stop the street crime bullshit. My mob bro was like, what are you doing this for?

You're freaking, you're going to go steal some crap from warehouse or from a store or some commercial thing when we're making this kind of money from running weed, use your flipping head. And I'm an 18 year old at the time. And so that's after that date, I stopped any and all theft related stuff. I stopped trading marijuana or crank or other drugs for that. And so it was good for me because. And then they also told me once they offer you a plea deal,

whether you got to go back to county jail for a few months because it's a first offense or whatever probation, you take it. You don't just get the case over with by signing an agreement. I didn't have to snitch on anybody. All I'd do is plead guilty. And they, as you get charged with three counts or two counts. And if you agree to plead guilty to one, they'll let you drop the other two and then whatever. So one of my conditions of probation though, Matt, was I was required to either get a job, meaning 40 hours a week of work, which was, after that, that's going to get in the way of my drug business. And it's going to, and I, we're going to work at frickin McDonald's.

I felt above that already because the level of money I'm making, yeah, I'm going to make, back then, bro, minimum wage was $4.25 in California. Yeah, I'm going to work 40 hours a week so I can make $160. And then some of that gets taxed even by the government. I'm not making crap. I can make that much money in an hour with what I do. The other option was go to school. And so I agreed to go back to school. And then the judge laid a condition on it, though. He told me I had to get a B average or better. And my grades could be audited at any time. And he said, if you're a little B average, I'm shipping you to state prison.

and we're not doing the county jail thing with you. Obviously, the DAs, they know my juvenile arrest record. They have access to all that stuff. They knew that it wasn't exactly new to the courts. I was just new to the adult courts. And so I signed the deal. So I got like three years probation, whatever it was. I was required to go to school and everything.

It turned out to be a good thing. The mob actually thought it was a great idea. And so did Sellow. So did others. They thought it was a good idea to put me back in schools. I only had to take four classes because 12 units is full time. They said I did do full time or more. And 12 units is full time.

And so I did actually take it serious after that. I didn't want to go to state prison in my region of California with where I live, bro. State prison means Corcoran. Corcoran is two hours south of me. It's right halfway between my city and Los Angeles. So bro, Corcoran has all the L.A. gangs and all the Central California, Northern California gangs. The Mexicans hate each other, the northerners and southerners. The white dudes, we're aligned with the Serenios, so, I mean, I'd at least have an army of Mexicans to help me out,

along with a bunch of white dudes. But the black guys hate us in there. The Asians are not with this either in there. And there's, in my area, there was Lao, Laotian gangs and Vietnamese. These kids were from the Vietnam War era. So for them, bro, they were used to be 52 bombers flying over their freaking cities in the late 60s and early 70s. So they ain't even going to wake up unless they hear a tech nine firing. Those kids were hardcore.

Some of those old school like Vietnamese Asian kids, bro, they went, they would do a war-torn thing. They're not our friends either in there. And so it's not a fun place, bro. And Quarkin had like Sirhan, Sirhan, and Manson was in there. I'm not really interested in getting Charles Manson's autograph that bad. So I went to school and I did what I had to do. And on top of that, it benefited my pot business because by being in school and not actually dropping out, all the suburban kids that were at the school, they became pot.

customers. I kept my weed at my next door neighbor's house in case I got searched because how probation is, you surrender your Fourth Amendment rights. You surrender your Second Amendment rights permanently. I lost my gun rights forever after that. And then your Fourth Amendment, they can come into your house and say, we're going to search your area. So my neighbor next door was a video game repairman. He was also like a hoarder. He had a ton of old video game game. cabinets in his garage and area. And he was an alcoholic that would just drink to like stupor level. And so I could just go over there.

I stashed pot at his house that he wasn't even aware of. And then I'd get a call. I'd go across the alley real quick because there's an alley in between mine and his house and still be able to sell pot and all that. And I did study though. And it got me back, bro into the mode that I had been in when I was like 14 and 15 where I was sort of a schoolboy, athlete kind of kid. And it started the process of sort of civilizing me again.

It started the process of taking me away from being some dude going in the direction of vandalism and then to theft, and then to GTA, and then to commercial. And it reversed that process, and I stuck to just business-oriented stuff. I stuck to drug marijuana, really. I even stopped dealing crank and stuff. I got tired of tweakers.

One thing I discovered about selling prank was that tweakers will call you at all hours of the night. You cannot get a good night asleep if you sell meth, bro. Fricking, they'll call you at 3. I'm out of that R. Can I come out of real quick and knock on your window? You can make good money selling prank back then, but F that, man. I like sleeping and eating too much and not having my sleep, disturbed by freaking zombie-looking meth heads.

So I just stuck with the pot stuff after that and did my interstate stuff. And I got that refined. I got really good at that. I learned how to package the stuff up. I learned how to keep my cool around the cops. The other thing you did too was it slowed down with me and my other bros that got involved with this is slowed down the descent towards violence. Because what happens, bro, with vandalism.

then theft and car to. It moves to like carjacking eventually. I saw a lot of kids that did just basic GTAs. We would use screwdrivers, right? And we would bust the steering columns of like a cutlass or 80s era cars and then start them up. But I was watching as some of my friends involved were just going into freaking get out your car. And that became a federal offense under the Bush senior administration. Carjacking did. And so I saw how it evolves and they start robbing places.

And so it kept me from getting to that level. I never did any violence like that. But by going back to school and having these guys, mobsters and others that I respected, telling me, keep your cool, don't start fights at bars and stuff. If some dudes steps on your feet at a bar, you say, excuse me, We don't need you risking what it is that we do for some stupid stuff or some ego stuff. You get into a fight and you get arrested. You're going to mess up everything.

If you got to go sit in jail for six months because you smack the guy at a bar, that destroys what we're doing for six months. If you get involved with violence or anything dumb like that or if you're out stealing shit, you're going to wreck what we're doing. So it actually started to civilize me going to school. And having the support, ironically enough of older organized criminals telling me this is what you should be doing. And it started, kind of became a college kid, bro, that was selling weed and all that. I transferred to Fresno State in 1996.

That's where Jerry Tarkhanian, Chris Herron, lots of, he was infamous there at the time. Chris Aaron was our star basketball player. I mean, I hate to save it. We got the same fraternity houses. He and I, he got into huge addiction issues. Thank God he's cleaned up now. He does great motivational speaking. I saw him like two months ago when he came back into our area.

I went and visited him at one of his speeches. So I became more partyish, but I wasn't violent at least. When did you graduate college? I graduated. Yeah, all four years. I went without incident. I went from 1995. Okay, I started back up in March of, sorry, not March.

I was arrested in February of 1994. And by the way, on March 7th of 1984, an even bigger thing happened. The California three strikes law was passed. Pete Wilson did an emergency session, our governor back then. So all of a sudden, my PO called me and my bro in and said, the moment you slip on a banana peel, we're using this strike law on you. I went to high school with Kimber Reynolds, who was the girl who was taken out by two criminals that were out on parole, whose father, Mike Reynolds, started that law, who made that law, wrote it.

She was killed just two streetlights or so from my house. And I had known her. We both played tennis in high school. She was on the girls' team, on the boys' team. I sort of knew her a little bit. So three weeks, I missed the three strikes cutoff date by like three weeks. If I had done what I did three weeks later, I would have gone to. prison. And I would have gone for like five to ten years because it would have been counted as two

or three felonies. Two felonies, and then one, they weren't violent, but they could have still enhanced them under the seriousness clause. They had violent and or serious felonies. And they would have said, well, it's not violent what he did, but it's serious and boom. So if I had done what I did, I would have gone to prison actually three weeks later. But I go back to school in the fail of 1994. All right. That's when the first semester I go back. And I went continuously until spring of 2002. And I have two bachelor's degrees and one associate's degree. So I went to City College initially. And then I transferred to Fresno State in like 1996, 97, when I was 21 or so. And I got my first degree like 97 or so. 98 was my first four year degree. and I kept going to get a degree in journalism after that. Unfortunately, bro, I could have been like a lawyer or something bigger, but with my felony record, I wasn't going to risk going to law school

and then passing the LSAT and all that and passing the bar exam and then finding out, oh, we're not going to let you into the California State Bar because of your past. So when I thought about things, I got into politics ultimately, and I got into, I used my journalism skills to do political campaigns. So I did one political internship in 1998 for a U.S. senator for one semester. We had two Democrat senators then, so one of them was, it was a Democrat. And then in 2001, I did a second internship at a political. office for a Republican member of Congress from my region. And it was the same semester as 9-11, actually.

And so one of the first, I literally, my first week was, we got to do a bunch of press conferences related to the 9-11 attacks. And I was in the media area of that. I worked underneath the congressman's media assistant. Every member of Congress has an office in the best. Beltway in Washington, D.C., and then they have one in their home district. I worked at the home district one, because obviously in school. And we had a main media person in D.C. Then we had an assistant for that person in California, and I worked for that assistant.

And so we had a, it was during the whole 9-11 thing and all that. I also, prior to that, one other racket that I did get into with the mob was illegal gambling. I said, up illegal dice games. And that did pretty well for me, actually. I, craps is still illegal in California, even at the Indian casinos. You can play blackjack and slots and all that kind of stuff, but craps. And at that time, roulette was also illegal. So I would set up a few craps games. I'd invite business people over, like straight and narrow business guys that like to gamble for one night. And then another night, I'd have like, criminals, Coke dealers from my school,

Armenian bookmakers, come, you know, other marijuana dealers I knew of, and yeah, yeah, come take your drug profits and put them on my gambling table. And I discovered that I could take their drug profits pretty easy with the way the numbers and the math works and craps. Although there was a few nights that I got my ass kicked. If they get a lucky streak and they're betting big, bro,

you could have nights where you do illegal gambling where you're paying out more than you're collecting. That happened to me once or twice. But I graduated in 2002 and I started working for a politician. And ironically enough, bro, while working for him, he got elected to the State Assembly of California on a family values,

a family values kind of platform, right? and he ended up getting arrested at the same prostitution strip that I grew up there. It was so freaking hilarious because I'm working with these family values Republicans, right? And I like tax cuts and that kind of stuff. I don't like, I hate taxes, bro. If I could pay zero tax, I sure in the hells would. But so I kind of like fiscal conservative. right but i didn't give two craps about freaking who sleeps with who or i broke the loss i was a pot

dealer but i have all these family values republicans and they're like oh my god i can't believe he would do that he got arrested or cited at the at a prostitution strip and i'm just to me it was funny as hell i was 23 no let's see 2000 he was arrested in 2003 or four or four or four or four I want to say. So I would have been like 28 years old, I think, right around at the time. I thought it was hilarious that he got arrested at the same prostitution strip that I used to live by and that I knew that the mob had shook down for years. And I had been mob connected just before that, right?

And I had gotten out of the business by then, by the way, too. What I did was I passed my connections over to other people. and I was slowing down my local sales. And I also had been involved with high-grade pot by then, too, because that's in the mid-90s going on. That's when the high-grade marijuana from Mendocino, Humboldt, as well as BC Bud, started to come our direction. And a lot of pot smokers in California would buy, like, Mexican weed

to have a good amount for low price, and then they'd buy a little bit of the high-grade to have some, high quality stuff. Help them with budgeting their money kind of thing, right? I have a question. At this point, you've graduated, right? So you've graduated, you got a couple degrees, you're working. Like, were you not thinking to get out of this?

No, I was. I was in the process of during that whole time, as I was around the year 2000, roughly, I really could start to see, man, I could have a real future now. One of the reasons in the past why I had just did things illegal was part of it was, what kind of a future can I have where I keep on. I'm like, now I can get a decent job and make real money, then invest that money, right? And I was saving a ton of the cash that I made illegally.

I used to stash it up in the Sierra Nevada's. and that way I wouldn't get robbed. I would tell the gangbangers in my community that, oh, yeah, yeah, I stashed the money up in the area where all the rattlesnakes are and California mountain lions and California bears. And this way, if they ever thought about robbing me, yeah, yeah, yeah, come on,

I'll take you to where the money's at, but if you get bit by a rattler, that's not my problem. It was kind of a deterrent effect, a real easy way, by the way, to, yeah, money's up in the mountains. Come on, you want to jack it. me, come on, let's go for a drive. I'll show you where it's at. But if you get good, hey, you're the one that's going to put your hand down in that hole that I have the, that I have everything

wrapped up in or whatever, right? Anyhow, yes, I was in the process of giving away my stuff. I started handing customers over to other dudes I knew that was sell. I had friends at the college that I knew were also involved in the business. There was like four to five of us roughly that I knew that were pretty good-sized pot dealers. And so, like, hey, bro, I'm going to send you over to sew and so, just start getting it from him. I was basically handing over customers kind of one at a time. I was grinding it down slowly. And the last time that I ever talked to anybody mob-affiliated,

that's whether the Caldean guys from back there or the Italian dudes from back there, whatever, was right about the 9-11 era. In fact, it turned out to be convenient because after 9-11, nobody was able to get pot from across the border. I say it myself, the border for the next six weeks after 9-11 was so secure that there was a drought in my region.

And people had to switch to locally grown indoor pot in order to smoke. Getting Mexican brickweed, even for me who was connected at the time, my brother's Mexican Finns were like, we can't get nothing. Nobody wants to do any. Everybody's worried.

They think that Bush is going to fucking secure the border, blah, blah, but they were wrong there. But initially, ICE or whatever, it may have been the INS still back then, the Border Patrol, DEA, all those guys along the U.S. Mexican border and seeing you see,

Didro and the other ports of entry. People weren't doing anything. So there was like six weeks that you couldn't even get anything. And so it just happened to be a good time to move out anyways. And just around that time was the last time that I dealt with any of those guys. Now, I did have my local pot dealing still. And that's what I started to phase out, if you will. I had good connections in the triangle.

That's our phrase for Humboldt, Mendocino, Trinity, and Del Norte County, right at the corner of California, the northwest corner where Oregon and California meet. Very good pot growing region, probably the best in the world. However, even in my area, the eastern part of my county is the Sierra Nevada's. Similar elevation. it's it's also a great growing area too plus there's lots of federal land so a lot of these guys were growing pot on federal land after all what happens if you get busted they can't see what they do sees their own property if it's grown on your property they're taking it they'll take your

house they'll take your land they grow on federal they grow on federal national park property those of these parks are huge and these rangers don't have the ability to control that stuff for that well and they'd have to fly helicopters over it. And then we learned with growing in the mountains that all you have to do is hide it amongst manzanita plants because manzanita gives off the same heat signature that marijuana does. So if they're flying over with choppers or spotter planes and they're using fleer systems forward looking infrared, if they're looking down for pot plants in an area with lots of manzanita bushes and manzanita plants, and manzanita plants, it's going to blend in.

It's going to be the same heat signature. So it's not going to be some dead giveaway, like if you grow it in an area where there aren't any that stuff. So there was some tricks of the trade. And also if you grow in the mountains, you can see if a convoy of DEA's, California law enforcement, FBI,

if they got to come arrest you, you're going to see them coming. There's only so many routes up a mountain. A lot of them are dirt roads. You've got to look out. You see it. you've got time to run down another hill. One of my good friends that I've done shows with in the past,

he was actually arrested in Humboldt or Mendocino by the DEA Blackhawk helicopter. He's the only guy I know that can say that he literally had a U.S. military chopper chasing him down the hill and he got the DEA, I guess they catapulted out of it with their freeze their stuff. But that's how they have to do arrest in those areas. bro. They got to fly choppers and hope you can hide behind rocks because again, infrared systems aren't going to see through stone like that. But I was getting out of the high grade business as well during that time. I was slowly but surely moving it away.

And the culmination of that was this operation called Operation Green Speaker. It's well documented. in 2005, the FBI, the DEA and California law enforcement, initiated a major operation against a bunch of my bros. And I mean, they took out everybody. And the way the case started, bro, was the Atlanta DEA office arrested a football player from Georgia Tech named Ruben Houston. He was a cornerback. He was well on his way to the NFL.

and much like a guy like me who has the talent to go into the corporate world, he was greedy rather than he was caught with 110 pounds, I believe, of marijuana that came from our region, one of my old friends' friends supplier, and he snitched everybody out. This guy, Ruben Houston, he ratted out. He told the DEA in Atlanta, look, the biggest players are in the central part of California.

They have access to all the northern California marijuana going south to L.A. And then back east. And they have access to Mexican wheat coming north. Interstate 80 is north of us. And most drug traffic from California goes on Interstate 80 east. Interstate 80 goes all the way into New York City. So lots of drug running of all types goes there. And they got to pass through my region.

And so that also makes for good corrupt cops too That like to pull those guys over and steal their stuff But the Rubin Houston Toiled on A major distributor in my region And from there it just The Dominoes started to fall My bros from Mendocino and all that

And we're being got arrested a bunch of my friends from my high school And college got arrested and I was an unindicted co-conspirator in that federal case. And the only reason why I was lucky was because I had unfortunately developed an oxy-contin addiction about a year and a half before that I was taking pain meds. And a childhood friend of mine that also became a snitch. And another guy I knew who became a snitch who I was close with that told the DEA that Jeff Crow, Yeah, he used to be a guy.

He used to be well-connected, but he ain't done but a dope addict. He's basically, he went from being a kingpin to the proverbial guy that's rolling on the floor, puking his guts off from opiate addiction. So the DEA and the FBI just assumed that I had fallen off. And I sort of had. I fell into the, I talk about this full and open that I did become an addict of opiates, oxycontin, 80s. and so for people out there that do reach out to me, I typically, I talk more about addiction issues

than I do mob or drug trafficking stuff because that's a huge problem now, fentanyl and all that, but I know what it's like. I had just a few years where I was hooked before I quit. And during Operation Green Speaker, I was just, it's ironic that drug addiction during that or during the DEA,

It was like a 19 month Long investigation, I want to say. Multi-state With the focus being in California That may have saved me Being looked Because all their rats told them Jeff is a

Yeah, Jeff was a big fraud Where? He's a freaking, bro, he's a nobody now, man. He freaking, he became looked on that shit And if they tap my phone, they would have heard me calling people look, you got any OCs? You got the OCs?

They would have hurt me saying stuff like that. So I got off the stuff, though, in 2005-ish and all that. And I've been away from it since. But that case went down during that time period. And quite a few of my bros, I talked to one of them the other day, who had to serve federal time in this prison called Atwater, which is in California. not a good place.

Another friend of mine got sent to Longpock. Federal, did federal time there. I had a few friends shipped back east to do prison time and federal prisons that were back east. Some of them got hit by the state. The FBI had some of them indicted by California. Back then, California was still very, very much enforcing the law. Today's California, you can go rob, you could go break the rack at the Nordstrom's

and run out with a bunch of stuff, and Gavin Newsom will slap you on the wrist. And don't do that again for your fifth time. But back then, we had Arnold Schwarzenegger as governor, and he enforced the rules still. So, but I was out of the drug business completely after that. In fact, if I would have tried to get back into it, Matt, it would have been impossible because I didn't even have any connections left.

When the FBI and the DEA getting really do things bro They are thorough And they are complete They will take out There was like three or four phases To Operation Green Speaker The first one being Rubin Houston

And the Atlanta stuff Then they started investigating This really big cartel-connected Mexican guy He's a Mexican-American but he was connected down south and he was getting thousands of pounds at once of and then they go to the next phase they they look at everybody's call logs back then and and they hit everybody bro they knocked out everyone so i mean so what did you do when you you're saying you got out like what did you start doing and and you know like what happened i did the old-fashioned

go get a freaking job. I got into, I got into like, so solar was really new in 2006, 2007 in California. And there was just a lot of money to be made in that. And I got a job as like a marketing director for a place. After I was cleaned up,

of course, for a while. I did, I had a few months where I didn't work. I got into radio, I worked for Clear Channel, which is now I-Hard, I believe, but back then it was Clear Channel. They owned like nine radio stations in my region. I got into sales jobs and stuff, but I got, I was a marketing director at a solar place for

quite a while, and then I got other jobs in solar. And I did jobs like that, but nowadays I have my own business. I do home improvement stuff. I have a list of contractors that I'm cool with, that I'm well, that are local, that are legit. This isn't one of those mafia contractors. We're not going to run up the tab on your house or nothing and give you shoddy products and none of that. None of that kind of stuff. And I do well, Merrill.

Now I get to make my own hours and people. I use AI, real estate AI now to figure out who has good credit, who has equity, who just bought a home in the last. 30 days, 60 days. You understand, because you were in the mortgage stuff, whatever you were doing before you got your issues. So you understand how real estate AI apps, I'll tell you, it's almost scary the stuff they tell you about people now. I'm saying?

Oh, real estate apps. I can, I could, before I even send out a mailer or send out an email to a prospective client, I know more about them than their husband or wife does. What I'm saying? So that's what I do now. I do quite well with it. And I'm very happy.

My daughter was young when all this stuff was happening. And it was a very big disappointing thing that I prioritized drugs, sales, as well as usage and addiction, unfortunately, in her early years. But my wife and I at the time, we divorced around that time, too. well about five years later but she was getting tired of the she knew that she had known she didn't know all the mom's stuff 100% but obviously she knew I was a lot pot dealer I mean I met her from her friends coming over and buying weed off me my future wife was hung out at my house and decided to burn a few with me and decided to lay in the bed with me after that for a while so

So I have a nice house now and it's a nice real estate trust. And so I'm doing pretty well. What about a, aren't you running a podcast? Yeah, well, I've been doing some side stuff with that. I'm in the process of writing a book about all this. Back in 2021, I met Dennis Griffin. He passed away, unfortunately. but he was an

investigator in New York. He was a sheriff back there and he wrote a number of mafia books about Frank Calada, the guy that was played by Frank Vincent in the Mibbe Casino. The mafia versus the law of the Battle for Vegas, I think,

is one of his books. Anyhow, I did sort of what you call a debriefing session with him. If he had been a cop, it would have been debriefing, but this was for the literary world. And so I told him, here's all my stuff. Here's how we did things. I showed them proof of indictments. I had him speak to some of my bros who were hit in Operation Green Speaker. And they're saying, oh yeah, he's not lying. He's telling you. And they were going to,

he was going to help me. He was going to have me do a book with him. But he passed away later in 2021. And so what I'm going to, what I'm doing right now, I have mob truecrime.com where my information is, but I'm going to be authoring a book. And I've been doing some YouTube stuff kind of on the side. And even without trying, bro, I got two monetized YouTube channels. I mean, one has like 3,000 subs and one with 1,500. But I only drop a video once a month, if that. I am going to make it more of a steady thing, though.

But I don't want to tell too much of my story on that stuff. I'll save it for interviews like yours, other big channels like yours and soft white underbelly. I went on there, that kind of stuff. But I'm going to, I've interviewed guys from my region as well as others who were involved in the Coke business and other stuff. Freeway Rick Ross is one of my bros. One of his right-hand guys named CEO Rod Johnson is from this area. He was a major Coke trafficker. he got indicted by the FBI in like 1990.

He did 10 years federal time for it. He does shows with me. We'll interview guys, stuff like that. But I am going to make it more of a regular thing. But even without even trying, bro, just a lot of my subs are just from people who've seen my interviews elsewhere. Then they find my YouTube channel and they sub do it. But I definitely should do.

I want to stick to interviews, though, primarily for the time being. is what good is a book on the sales end if you tell your whole damn story for free on YouTube. Again, I tell my story. I tell my story all the time and I sell books. Right. You've got a good point. Maybe I need to. You're never going to be able to tell that story as good as you can once you've written it down.

You know what I'm saying? And some people want to read a book and they want to hear the audio version and, you know, I mean, or they get interested. Did they hear my story over the course of a couple of hours? And then they think, I'm going to read the book. And they read the book. And they're always, you know, it, I mean, you're still going to sell books. You know, you're holding it off.

But at the very least, start doing the interviews once a week or twice a week. You know, that if you've got monetized channel, then it might, you never know what's going to take off. A good point. And like with you, I've seen some, sometimes you've had guests on that. Like, I know Mike Dow and a few others, Wade, Hollywood Way. he's a cool dude and some others and yeah you're right and uh because when i watch some of your stuff your abilities by the way if you had been around back in my day in my region i would have recruited a guy like you in five minutes bro your ability to change your look and your ability to

bullshit let's just be honest back then because you had to do what you did you did some pretty decent level freaking your mortgage or whatever you you're able to not handle paperwork as well Well, a guy like you in front of the cops, you could have, you could have had them saying, hey, can I get your business card? They go up to you to search you, right? And by the time you're done talking, they're like, Matt, can I get your business card? I might need to refinance my house. You would be able to turn the situation around to where they want to go back to their captain.

No way this Matt Cox guy is involved with the weed business. In fact, you go should have them do your loan paperwork. When you're in Europe, I saw some of the pictures of where you had your IDs, you have this longer. That master of disguise thing, bro, you wouldn't have done really freaking well. It caught up with me eventually. Yeah, it always does. I thought I was invincible. I thought I was.

I have a high IQ and I thought that I was smarter than the cops and the feds and they'll catch all these other guys. Yeah, but I'm going to slip through their fingers. Yeah, maybe you. And no matter what, even though they didn't get me on any big like this, say, marijuana cases, look, I still ended up in the courts for theft stuff. You don't, you know, you don't do any kind of dirt. This is our lesson for the kids for today or any people watching. you don't do dirt without ultimately having some consequence. It may not be the biggest thing you do you get caught for,

but they will catch on to something, and most of the time, especially with today's technology, but being doing stuff in the 90s, where the cops had to actually surveil you from a distance or the FBI would have to set up cameras and buildings far away with high-powered lenses and all that. in today's world, you got the ultimate snitch. It's in your pocket.

They don't have to, they could tap. They can turn your own phone into a wire tap like that. Kids with today's AI, today's technology, believe me, no matter what your IQ is, you will not outsmart Google. I can outsmart the AI that federal and state investigators have access to. Let's put it this way. Some of you are watching Matt Cox's video right now because YouTube's algorithm

determined that you're likely to like this issue. And chances are you're watching it because you're like, wow, YouTube was right. I do like this video. Well, guess what? Investigators have similar AI that predicts what you're going to do next.

If they know you're a crook or you have a specialty of some type, it puts you into their app okay he did this this day did this this day that day what does the what does the AI say he's likely to do next okay we'll make sure we're there

and sure enough their AI will probably predict with pretty damn good accuracy what's going through your head and what you're likely to do and on top of that they use these things in court

and if you don't let's say you think you're real smart. I'll just not take my phone with me when they go do this stuff. Well, then the FBI is going to say there's a red flag. Every time he goes somewhere else, non-criminal related,

he's got the phone in his pocket. But every time we've noticed him doing criminal shit, the phone is in the same spot at his house for that two hours. So guess what? You still stand down. They'll go into court.

Yeah. We know he doesn't take his phone. with us. Every time he leaves his phone on his nightstand and leaves without it, that's your pattern. Albarism. What about that. That kid that killed those college students, he put his phone on, he had driven by the house over and over and over again. And then the night he goes to kill him, he puts his phone on, on airplane mode and leaves the house. It was like, okay, this, you driven by,

first we got you driving by back, forth, back forth, back forth. The day you commit the crime, you shut off the phone because you don't want anybody to know you were even near the house. And that right there is conscious of guilt. Boom. Yeah. And that's circumstantial evidence. And that's just going to make them look into you more and more and more. And if about the only thing, yeah, the only thing I could think of that would remotely work and even this wouldn't is leave your phone at home.

And then, but you got like attach it to your dog's caller. So when your dog's running around the house, right? Google's going to assume that you've been going around your house with your phone. But then the FBI is going to say, wait a minute, he's got a dog. And then they're going to say, hold up. You mean to tell me that he was running up and down his stairs 20 times and into the area where his dog houses at with his phone for this one hour? You would have to have, you'll have to have somebody else holding your phone and moving around with it. But again, there's cameras that ring cameras on every door.

Then there's also surveillance cameras. So they'll be like, okay, let's look to see where his phone was taken. And then they find one camera that happens to catch an image. That's not him with his phone. That's his girlfriend walking with his phone. And then they turn her into a snitch. Hey, you guys, if you like the interview, do me a favor. Hit the subscribe button.

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