Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast - The Real Story Of America's First Drug Cartel

Episode Date: October 17, 2023

The Real Story Of America's First Drug Cartel

Like, I know that the mob became successful and really blew up during Prohibition. What I didn't realize was the mob really pushed the, hey, we don't deal with drugs. We don't deal with anybody that does deal with drugs. We're against drugs. And then you started showing that that's just Hollywood. El Chapo, you know, it was Pablo Escobar, you know, El Chapo. But they don't see, like, a guy like Lucky Luciano as the predecessor to all this. And really, he was.

you know he was like the first you know big harrowing kingpin and and nobody kind of used it as this in history because of all the Hollywood looted stuff so you know like people think this is recent you know all this you know racism and the drug war and stuff like this it's not you know and it's even came out you know like they say Nixon was going after the blacks and the hippies I mean this doesn't it doesn't start in 1970s it goes all the way back to the 20s so why do we have some of these substances like you know alcohol nicotine, caffeine, even sugar. I mean, they're all basically, you know, like substances that, you know, can alter you in some way, you know.

And it's just like, oh, well, these ones are okay and we're going to regulate them and make money on them. But, you know, these ones are not okay, you know, because, you know, the Italians, the blacks, the Mexicans. You know, so the whole system is so racist, you know, on its face, you know, like, oh, white people control these, though, it's all good. You could make the analogy that the drug war and law enforcement, you know, propped up, you know, these rich people so they can make money and kill all of us and pollute the world. So it's just, it's like, it's like the dark side of capitalism. Hey, this is Matt Cox, and I'm here with Seth Ferranti. He is the writer, director of the new documentary that just came out called Dope Man. And we're going to be doing an interview and talking about the doc.

Check it out. You know, I almost, I was going to throw in there the white boy Rick. You know, but I didn't know if you wanted, you know, I mean. Yeah, I don't care. I mean, that's my biggest credit, the white boy doc. I mean, it's still on Netflix right now. Right. yeah I saw I saw it I don't know I probably saw it like a month or so ago I was flipping through you know I'll flip through docs when I'm doing stuff I watch you know watch documentaries and stuff I flipped it through I saw it and I was like hey so but I also saw that you came out so you came out with this with a dope man and what's the other doc doesn't you have another one that just came out because you had another one let it be or something right yeah we've been screening that so that's not going to be

You can probably be out until September, but we've been doing screening at events. Like we did Bicycle Day, we screened it at the big MAPS Psychedelic Conference in Denver, and I just screened it in Grass Valley. That's weekend that a big psychedelic art gallery called the Chambers Project. Okay. Because I remember you sent me, I think you sent me the link to the trailer, maybe. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, so really I got a bunch of things.

You know, the dopamine is not actually out yet. It's in the aggregator's hand. So, you know, nowadays, it's even hard to get a release state, you know, because the aggregator then they just kind of put it in the line at Amazon and iTunes, you know, and then it will go on, like, what they call EVO versus transactional video on demand. You know, where you, like, rent it or buy it from Amazon and iTunes, and then that's about a 60-day window, and then 60 days after it comes out on that, then it will be what they call the A-Vod, you know, the advertising video on demand, like, you know, 2B, Roku, and stuff

like that you know and the whole time you know we don't have a streaming deal yet but you know a lot of times that as an independent you know if you're not like in-house Netflix production or whatever you actually you know you have to put it out and they want to see how it goes and then if it goes good then the streamers will come in and license it okay i was going to say it um well it's over an hour right and it wasn't is it yeah about 75 minutes 75 minutes yeah because i just you know it starts off, like it starts off at the very, like I told you beforehand that we, my, my wife and I watched it the other night. You sent, you know, you sent me the link, so I was able to watch it. But I noticed that, you know, initially I was watching it and I was like, well, I kind of know

this. I kind of know this. But then I realized that as it, that it really just follows the, from the very, you know, the beginnings of drugs all the way through. Because when, I was, initially when I was watching it, I was thinking, I wonder why he did this, because I feel like, I was, I was thinking, like, I feel like I know some of this information, but I never really saw, I never really fall, you know, you followed the evolution of, from every single point throughout whatever, what, hundreds of, a couple hundred years. Yeah, like, no, it's, it's basically like a hundred years. So, you know, when, when prohibition was still going on in this country, in the 20s, you know, the mobsters, that's basically how the mobsters came up, you know, because before prohibition, the mobsters were just like street corner thugs, you know, extorting businesses in their neighborhoods and taking hits, beating people up, whatever. So it seems to prohibition payment and they started smuggling alcohol. That's when they started making real money, like money they had never seen before.

That's when, you know, these big criminal organizations, you know, kind of came online. Because once you have the money, you know, then you could get the politician, you know, then you can get, you know, the more businesses. And it just really expanded, you know, what they were doing it and made, you know, almost into like these big corporation-type structures. So, you know, a lot of these guys were smart. And it's funny, too, because I think a lot of people know there were Jewish gangsters, there were Irish gangsters, there were Italian gangsters.

But, you know, at first, they all kind of worked together. You know, and then it became, you know, as stuff went on, And like when Lucky Luciano took over the Italian mafia, you know, and formed the commission and all this, you know, famous historical stuff that we know, you know, he made it all the Italian. And the Jewish guys kind of went into finance. And the Irish guys, you know, started going into government and police. So, you know, I mean, I'm not privy to the conversation.

It's like these guys like Arnold Roth being Jake Jackalake Simon, you know, Lucky Luciano had. But, you know, to me it seems, you know, that like they kind of planned all this. You know, they said, okay, Irish, you guys take the police politics, Jewish, you guys do the finance banks, we're going to keep the organized crime. And, you know, they kind of, they form these foundations and set in motion like all this stuff that made the mob, you know, a powerhouse, you know, probably up until like the 80s, you know, the mob was like super powerful. So I'm just kind of trying to set the foundation and kind of show, you know, how everything got to where it was. You know, and at the same time, they were smart enough to know that prohibition wasn't going to last. So they started looking, you know, what can we replace, you know, and that's how they kind of formed, you know, the first drug cartel.

Well, you know, that was like when it got to that point in the documentary, you know, it's like what happens is as I was watching, I was like, oh, I didn't know that. Oh, I didn't know that. Oh, I didn't realize that. all these little things and you kind of start it starts tying in together and when you were talking about the mob like obviously like i know that the mob became successful and really blew up during prohibition like i think most people know that but then what i didn't realize was the the drug angle because you even mention it in the documentary you talk about how like they really the mob really push the hey we don't deal with drugs we don't deal with anybody does deal with drugs we're

against drugs and then you started showing that that's that's just Hollywood like listen this guy you know lucky Luciano the this guy you know all these different mobsters all had drug arrests for drugs like if you don't deal with drugs and you and you are you know pushing any type of drug activity out of the mob and you won't deal with it then how come every single mobster had a drug drug arrest and then you started explaining and explaining it and so that was a part that I was like oh wow Like, I really had bought into the, they don't want to deal with anybody that has to do with drugs. And they certainly wouldn't deal with that. Like, I really had bought into that until I watched the documentary.

I was like, wow. And, you know, of course, you show the arrest. Like, hey, here's the arrest. Here's the arrest. Here's the, here's the, here's the, you know. So I was like, oh, wow, he, he looked into this. Like, this is, this looks really. Yeah, I see it like, like, they, you know, it was almost like a deflection for them because, you know, the guys at the top.

It's not like they were handling fitness and stuff. that. They were just in envelopes of money. But, you know, they knew where the money were common. They were passing the orders, you know, down the line. But it was, it was really this kind of thing where, you know, like the head people, like the spokesman or whatever, you know, to the public, they would be like, we don't do this because they were trying to protect their money, you know, because obviously if you're making money and something illegal, I mean, our government does it all the time. You know, our government talks about, oh, we don't do this, we don't do this. You know, that's like the front. But they're doing it all, you know, because

You want to hide it. If you got something lucrative and that society frowns on, you know, so that's how this whole like man of honor, you know, with the godfather, you know, kind of showed, you know, and that's what I'm trying to show. I'm like, it's a myth. These guys, you know, were in dope from day one. They were the first drug cartel. And if you look at history, you know, people know that you can say, okay, like El Chapo,

you know, it was Pablo Escobar, you know, El Chapo. but they don't see like a guy like lucky luciano as the predecessor to all this and really he was you know he was like the first you know big harrowing kingpin and and nobody kind of views it as this in history because of all the Hollywood looted stuff so you know i just wanted to kind of you know that's what i do i like to expose stuff you know like with white boy we wanted to expose all the police corruption you know and help get white boy out you know so i'm just trying to expose stuff and kind of try to set the record straight I noticed, I didn't really notice this until the very end when I think you have it on the

screen, where it says, it said like episode one. Is this a series? Because, I mean, I, yeah, so, I'm gonna do, well, I'm gonna go more in, because this, this kind of, for the mafia, this kind of covers, like, the 20s to the 40s. You know, a lot of the stuff at the end, I'm just like foreshadowing. You know, like, like, what's the, to come. You know, I'm connecting it. But at the same time, you know, this is open-ended. You know, I can go, you know, because in, in like the 40s to kind of like the 60s, mid-60s, you know, they had like the fridge connection, you know, which everybody has probably heard of the church connection, right? The big mafia heroin connection, right? And then, you know, from the 70s,

that's when the pizza connection started. You know, like another, you know, that a lot of people heard that they've made movies. So, you know, I can kind of show the mafia story. You and dope. I'm going to show it in three episodes. This, you know, then the part two, which will kind of go the 40s, you know, the 60s, and then, you know, the pizza connection, like the 70s, you know, to the 80s. And there's just like, I mean, there's just like all these mobsters, you know, even somebody like jar Gotti, you know, they were, you know, they were getting money from it, you know, and everybody denies it. I'm going to kind of show that line. But also at the same time, I'm

going to leave it open. So, you know, then episode four, then I can look at the Colombian cocaine cartels. You know, I can look, you know, at the African-American drug king pins. I can look at the Mexican king pens. Because it's just, this thing is like all-going. It's been all-going

for a hundred years. It's just, you know, the names have changed, the locations have changed, you know, the personalities or the ethnic groups have changed. But, I mean, it's the same thing. And my biggest point in this whole thing, is, you know, people talk about, like, the drug war, you know, like, you know, Nixon started the drug war in 71 and then, you know, Reagan, you know,

and Bush amped it up in the late 80s. But, you know, this goes back, man, this guy, Harry Anslinger, you know, who he was a failed prohibition agent, he formed the Bureau of Narcotics and he started chasing all these people. You know, they just had a big movie about Harry Anslinger, you know, chasing Billy Holiday, you know, the famous jazz singer, you know, the drug addict. Like, this dude, Harry Anslinger, He was, like, super racist against Italians, super racist against African Americans.

And I'm just trying to show, you know, like, people think this is recent, you know, all this, you know, racism and the drug war and stuff like this. It's not, you know, and it's even came out, you know, like they say Nixon was going after the blacks and the hippies. I mean, this doesn't, it doesn't start in 1970s. It goes all the way back to the 20s. So I'm trying to show, you know, this parallel, you know, you got 100 years of the good guys in a. hundred years of the bad guy and it's just it's still going on today so it's like when when is it going to stop you know this is a war that you know nobody's going to win so you know i did 21 years in federal prison for the drug war so you know i kind of see what it is you know i didn't

have i wasn't i've done 21 years in federal prison for the uh crimes that i committed as a first time nonviolent offender so like cannabis and lSD so you know i'm just trying to show you know let's let's get the right history out there let's show the real reasons the Because everything that this dude Harry Anslinger, you know, this dude like came up in, in Pennsylvania with like kind of Quaker values. You know, he worked at the big railroad, you know, in, you know, the early 20th century, you know, when they were the big corporation. So he got these corporate values. He got these, you know, kind of religious Quaker values. And all the, and he got like these, you know, racist, you know, racist values and stuff like this.

So all this stuff that happened, you know, it was kind of like this dude. mindset and and we're still we haven't evolved in all law enforcement hasn't involved the government hasn't involved everybody is still like what this dude kind of said in motion and this dude was was you know he was ahead of the bureau no college the predecessor to the giea for like like 50 years you know like this dude was still around like until like almost like the 60 you know i'm not sure the exact date when he died but this dude was around forever and you know people don't don't you know put this on him you know they put on nix and they put on a race and and they put it on bush. But this is the dude that formed the whole template for the war on

drugs. And it's been like this hundred-year thing, you know, where, you know, law enforcement is going after, you know, the so-called bad guys. And, you know, obviously, some of our bad guys. But, you know, when you bring racism and stuff into that, you know, they're just targeting groups of people because of the color of their skin or, you know, where they're from. I was just thinking I interviewed a sheriff the other day and he said that 80 to 85% of the people that are in his jail are there for drugs and he was like he's like in almost all of them

almost like 95% of them are users so it's basically 80% you locked up 80% of users or small time drug dealers and some of those are selling drugs a lot of those guys are selling drugs but they're really just selling drugs to support their habit like if the drug was available the drugs were available you know and

inexpensive then you know what I mean you wouldn't there's no there would be no reason there would be no reason for those those jails to be filled up or if you just had you had free

you took Jesus if you took a percentage of that money and you turned it into you know like free rehabs because it's a hell of a lot cheaper to run a rehab than it is a jail Yeah, but that's just, you know, back, you know, back in the 20s, this guy, Harry Aslinger, you know, they kind of criminalized addiction, you know, but the thing, the problem I got it with it, too, is because they picked and choose, you know, like, so why do we have some of these substances like, you know, alcohol, nicotine, caffeine, even sugar? I mean, they're, they're all basically, you know, like substances that, you know, can alter you in some way. you know and it's it's just like oh well these ones are okay and we're going to regulate them

and make money on them but you know these ones are not okay you know because you know the Italians the blacks the Mexicans you know so it's the whole system is so racist you know on its face you know like white people control these one though it's all good you know and and like I say I look at some I look at some I mean like obviously you know heroin cocaine methamphetamine amphetamine, you know, drugs like that, those are bad drugs. You know, I totally agree with that. And people, when they're addicted, they do all types of crazy stuff, you know, to get those drugs, you know, commit crimes. But you look at some stuff like cannabis, you know, like THC, to me, alcohol is way worth, you know, and you could even argue that like a caffeine or nicotine, you know,

is on the same level, even sugar. I mean, because if you think about it, you got somebody smokes weed, yeah, they're just chilling out or whatever. You know, you got somebody just smoked a pack a cigarette or just drink a bunch of coffee. You know, they're like all jittery, you know, drive around jittery and stuff like that. So it's kind of like, I've always questioned that, you know.

And, you know, it has a lot to do. You know, I'm biased, you know, because of my case and stuff. And I was punished a lot of time, you know, for marijuana and LSD. But I'm like, you know, why were the legal, these substances legal and these made legal? And when it comes down to it, it's all about money. The same thing.

Like, like you said, like, law enforcement. Why are we locking up drug addict? Why have we criminalized addiction? Why are we not helping these people? And why have we been doing it 100 years? We've been doing it 100 years because it's been profitable. You know, it's allowed, you know, people of law enforcement, you know, to target different, you know, colors and communities. And just, just on its face, you know, I think it's morally wrong. So I'm trying to kind of show, you know, by telling the story of like these infamous and notorious gangsters, you know, I'm showing, I want to show all these underlying issues of, you know, why are we here where we are today? You know, why do we start

this, you know, drug war again in the late 80s and lock up all people like me and just take decades of their lives, you know, for nonviolent offenses? You know, because we, we can all agree. Violent people should be in prison. You know, you know, people, you know, pedophiles, child molesters, you know, stuff like that, they should be in prison, you know, but just because you want to smoke a joint or, you know, or even if you want to shoot heroin, if that's what you want to do, I mean, you know, that's your choice, you know, so, you know, I'm not saying I would do it or I would condone it, but, you know, I just look at it, man, you know, from my own sentence, I had a lot of question. And so this is kind of looking at the history, you know, but I'm just

showing it from the frame of mind, like through these infamous and notorious gaitsters, because I know that's what people like. They want to, you know, see what these guys are about and what they did. I've just taken a story a little deeper because I think a lot of the stuff that's been done has been glamorized or romanticized and just kind of showed the surface, you know. And even like the government, I mean, why aren't these dudes? Like, why is not Lucky Nisiano considered like a Herald kingpin? It's just, you know, it's crazy to me, you know, so I look at it.

So, you know, I've just tried to expose it. Yeah, I'm trying to expose the truth. the real truths so people can see and it's just layers you know what's saying you got what's all the shortness but it's just layers and layers and layers and layers stuff and then when you tie it all together you can be like okay i can see it now so that's what you know that's what i'm trying to do but you know at the same time you know the viewer has to make their own decision i'm just putting the information out there you know they can form their own opinion they don't have to have my opinion so

okay so you don't know when this will be really available it'll be six months or no no it's going to be in the next month oh in the next so when I give it to the aggregator it's going to be like on like on Amazon and iTunes

oh okay yeah so so I get to the aggregator so they tell me like one to four weeks you know because everything's like digital now so you know you know I'm not like my studio and my name is not big enough, where Amazon's going to give me, like, a set release thing. They just, like, put me in the line with all the other stuff that has been submitted.

Right. You know, through aggregators, which an aggregator is basically, like, a digital distributor, you know, because everything is digital out, everything is streaming. You know, the old model for films, you know, where you make a film, you get an advance for North American rights, you need to go to theaters, and then, you know, they sell the rights. I mean, that, that model is pretty much dead, you know, and now everything, it's all kind of, you know, online, stream with, you know, on demand. You know, most people are watching stuff now, like, all their laptop.

So, you know, so, and like I said, you know, I've, you know, I've only been out of prison eight years. So, you know, and I've been doing this film stuff, you know, or try to get into it. So I'm learning as I go, you know, like my previous experience to this, you know, was White Boy, which I did with Sean Wreck in Transition Studios. And, um, I learned a lot on that. But, you know, it's still, it's, it's, It's like just this whole film industry is like, like, it's like ever evolving. Like, you know, how do you, how do you get this to the people? You know, how are the people going to access this?

How are they going to know about it? You know, so it's like something you know, you kind of got alert as you go because it's changing so much. You know, like in the film industry they used to have, they would have, you know, like distributors, sales agents, you know, studios. But now they got these, you know, businesses that now, they're like they're like studios sales agents and distributors you know so it's weird how stuff stuff is going in as a you know and like i say i'm not Netflix i'm just an independent you know

outlaw films that's my studio so we're we're kind of doing this you know by uh you know grassroots we're you know word of mouth you know to kind of get this out here and um let people see but you know the one thing i can say you know i learned how to make a documentary from Sean Wreck on White Boy. Sean Wreck, before he did that, he had done 200 crime stopper shows for all the networks, and he had won nine Emmys, nine regional Emmys

in Ohio, and he kind of mentored me all this. So, you know, he stressed, like, the high production value. Because I think you can see, you know, something on Netflix, you can really differentiate in the production value between something on Netflix and something

on YouTube. You know, so what I'm trying to do with Doorman and everything else, I'm doing. I'm trying to keep my production value, you know, is as high as possible. You know, obviously within the budget that I have, but I want my stuff to look, you know, like Netflix, you know, as opposed to YouTube. And I'm not lucky with YouTube. I know people to make a lot of money off YouTube. You know, I just want my stuff. I just want my stuff to look, you know, a lot nicer, you know, so I shoot with better cameras. You know, we shoot different angles. We light, you know, all the things, you know, that they do in Hollywood.

Right. What, so you're basically, you're hoping, you're hoping that, you know, they do well. They get picked up by a larger streaming network. And then you end up producing more and more of this series, right? A limited series. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You know, and like I'm saying, this is just one of my things because, you know, I got the dope man, but I also got a night license about to come out, which is a nice little film, real beautiful film. all about the problems in North St. Louis, you know, with like drug addiction and violence. It's about a group of violence interruptors called Nightlife that walk around at night. And then I got my LSD series, which I got the first episode done, which we've been screening around. I also got a cannabis series, you know, about the Emerald Train Rule called Tangled Roots. So I got a bunch of stuff, you know, I'm kind of trying to brand outlaw films. It's kind of, you know, it's like true crime.

but it's more like, you know, counterculture drugs, like that part of what they would call true crime as opposed to just like, you know, murder mysteries and, and whatnot. Right. How do you, I don't know if you want to get into this, but I mean, how do you, like, you didn't walk out of prison with, you know, several million dollars and a budget to do all this? Like, how are you raising the money to go about producing these, you know, the various documentaries? Yeah. So when I first started, you know, I first started, you know, I first. started working on white boy probably like two years after I was prison so we're talking like moving like 2017 and um you know I saw how Sean Wreck was kind of doing stuff you know but he he had a big name he won I mean so it kind of easier you know people wanted to give him money you know because he had a reputation so me I had a reputation as a writer you know but I didn't have a reputation as a filmmaker so at first I was struggling like nobody wouldn't

give me any money I had all these ideas you know nobody would invest anything you know in this was probably like, you know, from 2017 until, you know, the end of the pandemic. So, you know, we're talking like, you know, three, four years. Like, I'm basically, like, struggling, you know, funding little projects cheap by myself with money I got for my books and journalism. But then, you know, something extremely fortunate happened. You know, for my career, white boy, it blew up on Netflix at the end of the pandemic. it was like top 10 not top 10 documentary top 10 on the whole Netflix for like two weeks

you know it had like uh I don't know the exact number because Netflix doesn't give out numbers but I heard people say you know like 20 million views in like the first couple months you know it was it was on Netflix and once and I wrote and produced that so you know it wasn't my studio I didn't direct it but I learned I was mentored by the guy who studio was and the guy who directed and he kind of took me under his wings and i worked with him hand on hand and it was based that whole thing was based on my writing it was based on my work all the stuff i wrote about white boy rich previously for like vice news and all these other places about the injustice of his case so um that kind of put a spotlight on me you know and that kind of brought some attention

and even some of the people that i had talked to about money before you know they kind of came back to me you know because for me white white boy was awesome because uh you know I mean it's nice like when you can go like I can go like and sometimes I'll be in a restaurant or store or something and and you know I can mention white boy or I can hear other people talking about it and you know people know that film they might not necessarily know Seth Barate as a writer-director but they know that film so then I can volunteer that information oh well I wrote and directed that or I wrote and produced that you know and then uh you know what I'm saying so then it's it's it's cool man when you especially as a creator, a contact creator, when people like recognize your stuff and you have something that a lot of people have seen. So, you know, once I got to that level, you know, then it was kind of easier. People would actually listen to me. They would actually check out. I kind of equate that to, like, you know, when the New England Patriots win the Super Bowl, everybody knows Tom Brady's a man. But all those people on the team, you know, like in free agency and stuff,

they'd get the big contracts because they were part of that winning culture. Right. So people, once you prove that you're part of something, you know, because our country, I mean, our country is obsessed with winning. Everybody loves a winner in this country. You know, everybody loves something that's popular. You know, you know, there could be something that's just as good somewhere, but, you know, nobody knows about it.

So, you know, once I was a part of that winning production, it just gave me, you know, a lot more value and a lot more credit to people that want to invest in this type of stuff. And yeah, that's how I did it. You know, I went back, you know, some of the guys came back to me. You know, they had friends and, but I'll say true. Most of my investors are, they come from the cannabis world, you know. And I don't know the cannabis industry.

I don't know how odd it is right now because it seems like everybody's trying to do it. But, you know, like three, four years ago, it seemed like the candidates people, you know, had more money. You know, and luckily, they threw some of it my way. Okay. And, I mean, once you get, so once you get, you know, somebody that, you know, puts up the money, and then they, of course, you know, they get their money back in a percentage or whatever it is. Do they typically come back again and say, hey, what else are we, what else do you want to do? Yeah, I've got, I've got several of my investors.

They already told me, you know, when I pay them back, you know, that they want to invest more stuff. You know, they're just winning. But, but see, I'm kind of at the, uh, basically like when white boy came out, I got about three years of funding for my studio. You know, this is a third year. So I'm like at the end. And it's took larvae to get some of this stuff out. You know, it's been a struggle.

You know, I've learned as I, I've kind of learned as I went along. You know, I sometimes, you know, in life as a employer, you make, you know, bad decisions on who you hire. So, you know, I've, I've kind of gone through that. You know, but I got a good crew right now. You know, I don't have a lot of life. I got five guides, you know, like editors and shooters that work for me. So, like I say, between now and Christmas, I got five projects dropping.

You know, first is dope men in the nightlife. And then which dope men is like kind of open-ended limited series. You know, nightlife is a standalone doc. You know, the LSD is a series, a limited series. The Tangled Roots is a limited series. And I got this other stand-alone doc called Tortured Mind, which is about, you know, how prison, how people leave prison, like with PTSD. And now they're actually calling it post-incarceration syndrome.

You know, they're calling it PICS, you know, a form of PTSD. So I got this other film called Tortured Mind. They kind of looks at that. And it looks like, like, why aren't these people, you know, being health? Like, you know, why, you know, you go into prison with an addiction. or maybe some type of mental issues and then, you know, they're throwing through the meat grinder, you know, witness violence or, you know,

whatever victims of violence. And then these people come out and then they're stuck, man. Their mental illness is exacerbated. Their addictions are like running rampant. And, you know, the prison system just throws them back out on the street. I mean, you know, like, where do you call out? They give you like a bus ticket to $200. You know, like, it's crazy.

You know, so, like, people are coming out. And, yeah, maybe they had some addiction with some mental issue before. But, you know, going through the prison, the PTSD, the post-incarceration syndrome, it just, you know, it amplifies it. And so in a tortured mind, I studied the case of this one guy who was a friend of mine named Ryan Leone. And, I mean, he's dead now, bro. He's dead because he witnessed a lot of violence. You know, he couldn't control his addiction. you know his mental illness got worse and no one helped him do they just threw him back out to the

world and you know he he was a federal prison he was in state prison you know and and and and then he eventually he he he overdosed man he died so it kind of follows you know his story as the prime example of uh you know we need to change man we need to do something different so i think that's what a lot of my work you know i'm trying to entertain people and show people cool stuff and cool stories that i can get access to that a lot of other people can't but at the same time you know i want to show like you know you know everything i've done so far even even like like my writing rick slows and stuff like saying you know how can we make it better what can we do you know you know like the white boy like you know why why did white boy rick have to do

32 years in prison for eight kilos of cocaine you know what i'm saying so i i just like to look at these different things because if not you know the mainstream media is just going to bury all this stuff under the rug because you know nobody cares unless you can present it to them you know in an entertaining way and then you know you think like when we deal with the white boy story we eventually get them out because there was so much public outrage after watching a doc that you know people were basically demanding like why is this guy still in prison you know so i'm trying to do that with all my films you know and especially don't then like you know why have we been fighting this hundred year war why has law enforcement you know basically you know been

seizing stuff you know because law enforcement is crazy because you know I'm based I'm based in Missouri in St. Charles County and the police have this big monster truck bro that they like drive around when they do like rallies or parades or whatever why do the police have a monster truck that's they seized it from a drug dealer from or the money from forfeiture they're using money so you know it just doesn't make sense to me that law enforcement you know they haven't Instead of to bust drug dealers, it's called forfeiture. You know, like you just said. So it's just like, why are we incentivizing law enforcement to go after drugged?

It just doesn't make sense. And it's been going on so long. Because I'm just like, sorry, I wrote a book called Generation Oxy. And in the end, at the end of the book, when the kid gets arrested, his name's Doug Dodd. He got arrested. He was sitting in the back of, he said, like, I forget it was some kind of SUV. he goes it was really a nice SUV he is and he said it's a nice SUV and he goes yeah yeah I pulled it off a drug dealer uh you know last month he says I'll be driving your car next week and he was just like you know he said I was you know like yeah when you even yeah when you even look at like the DEA and stuff there's been so many stories of like rogue DEA so many stories of like women DEA going in you know, dating these drug dealers, you know, having sex with them,

even getting pregnant, to bust them. I mean, this is crazy, bro. This is like, this was like, high crap. I think this is worse than some dude selling crack on the street. But why is that okay? Why is that okay? And, but selling crack on the street is not. Well, I, you know, I was going to say,

I have another buddy that got busted in, in Hawaii. He got busted. Of course, you know, they take all your stuff and he went to jail. So he went to jail and he had like a like a $30,000 Rolex. And he said, you know, they took my stuff. He said, well, they already had, I think, an attorney on retainer. So he and his brother get arrested. They go to jail.

He said, like that day or the next day he got bonded out. He said, and the bond was outrageous. You know, it's like a million dollars. He said, well, we had it. You know, so he said, like his parents or somebody actually was already ready to put up the bond. So he got bonded out. He said, when I went to go get my all my stuff, he said, my Rolex

wasn't there. So he's like, no, where's my Rolex? He said, I had the receipt, showed the Rolex. So I start saying, hey, you guys owe me $30,000. So he starts arguing and bitching. They, I want to say it was that what I want to say it was DEA, they had to call three or four different people. And eventually, he said like two hours later,

the DEA agent, that one of the one of the agents that and walked in the front door and threw the Rolex on on the counter and said here bro I wasn't stealing your Rolex we were just using it you know for some bling for for another bust he's like you just pulled it out of my property thinking I wasn't going to get bond he's because they were all telling him you're never getting out you're doing 20 years and that's what they believed and they believed you're getting 20 years we'll be selling this stuff so he just removed it and went drove home they had to call the guy at home he wasn't on a bus he was at a home he had to get in his car and drive down there and give him his watch back. So that's, you know, like there are so many stories like that. And what happens to that cop? Nothing. Nothing. Nothing. No, it's like the same thing.

So, you know, I, like I'm a cannabis psychedelic dude. So, you know, I believe, you know, like when I was 13, you know, like I believed in cannabis. And I thought cannabis was, you know, medical, spiritual, therapeutical. And the same with like psychedelics. You know, I thought, you know, that it was very spiritual. It was like mind expanding, major C. stuff the different way. You know, so, but you know, with the drug war in my 25-year sentence, you know, oh, I'm wrong. I'm a drug addict. I'm a criminal. You know, I never consider

myself a criminal, though. You know, I consider myself an outlaw because I broke laws that I thought were wrong. And now, lo and behold, 30-something years later, cannabis is legal, you know, is on its way to, you know, federal legality, you know, eventually, but it is legal in a bunch of state. And now psychedelics are being looked at, again, for their therapeutic value. Because if you look at it, the same thing with this kind of hundred-year thing with law enforcement, you know, and drug dealers. So there's another thing, too, which I touch on an endowment a little bit. All right. The pharmaceutical companies, they came online in the 20s, bro.

You know, all the pharmaceuticals, there was no pharmaceutical stuff. Before, you know, people smoked weed or weed treated like 60 different symptoms for thousands a year. You know, and, you know, like the herbalist or whatever, you know, the, the, you know, the, you know, doctor or healer, whatever, that's what they would prescribe or even other psychedelics, you know, like, like peyote, mescal and stuff like that, right? So when these big, these big pharmaceutical companies came out of line as a direct result of like the industrials, you know, because a lot of people made a lot of money, like all the big names, the Rockefellers, all those names, you know, they, like the industrial age, the robber bears, they made all this money. But then in the early 1900s, they got shot down because they were exploiting people. You know, people were getting their arms chopped off and they weren't getting any type of compensation, you know, child labor, long hours, and they were just using these people as human chattel. And when that got exposed, you know, they already had all this money, but they had to look for something different to continue making their money because they couldn't make it. So they went in to pharmaceuticals and they went into plastics, right?

So the way I see it, and I kind of made this illusion in Doatman, you know, law enforcement basically was going after the competitors to these new pharmaceutical and plastic investments. their street. And now look, a hundred years later, we got Sentinel everywhere, people dying from Sentinel every day, right? Our oceans are full of plastic. So, you know, you could make the analogy that the drug war and law enforcement, you know, propped up, you know, these rich people so they can make money and kill all of us and pollute the world. So it's just, it's like, it's like

the dark side of capitalism, you know? And like I say, I'm a American, I like capitalism. This is probably one of the only countries where you can have nothing and you can come up and make a lot of money. There's not any other countries like that besides there here. That's why everybody comes here. Right. But at the same time, the last 100 years, we've had this dark side of capitalism that has just kind of been, you know, running everything, running law enforcement, running politics. You know, and I'm trying to show. I'm trying to show this whole story. Like, how did we get there? Because a lot of people think, oh, the government said it or they're right. But you know, look, look. Like we even look today, you know, I'm not a Biden fan. I'm not a Biden fan at all. He was the orchestrator, one of the orchestrators of the War of Drugs. She's one of the reasons I did 21 years for the first time about a vital offense. And now all this stuff is coming out about Biden, how he is allegedly made, I don't know, I heard 30 million, 50 million through pedaling influences. But, oh, it's okay because he's a politician.

But, you know, if I want to make money selling, you know, substances that I think are, spiritual and therapeutic, I got to go to prison for 25 years. So, you know, it's just, it's just all this different stuff where if you look at these stories from different perspective through different lenses and different people, you know, like the mafia and stuff like that, you know, that's, that's a picture I'm trying to paint, you know, because the good guys, most of the time, the good guys are the good guys. And I'm not saying lucky Louisiana was a good guy, you know, by any, you know, he was a mobster, he was a gangster, but, you know, it's like you said about those DEA agents, right?

like they got they could do whatever they want and get away with it but me or you or the regular citizen we're going to be punished for uh if they bust us with a five dollar crack rock they're we're getting punished or going to jail or a bag of marijuana or a joint they find a joint they're going to seize our car you know but but Biden and all these other government people long for people they can just they can do whatever they want because oh they are on the side of right it's just you know it's ludicrism. It's ridiculous. I kind of been fighting this battle my whole life, you know, since I was 13 and I first got into the counterculture. So, you know, it's the same thing. Like the hippies, like the counterculture. What did they do? The hippies came out. You know, they didn't

want war. You know, they wanted to change stuff in the 60s. And what happened? They got crushed by the government. Right. So, you know, I don't know, maybe we're in a different climate. Now, you know, you know, like I don't think I'm not sure like the government is going to come after me. I mean, I make sense. I don't do anything. You know, I like to smoke and join every now and take a hit of acid, but, you know, it's not like I'm a distributor or whatever. So, you know, I think, you know, things in that regard have kind of loosened up a bit. But still, man, it's just, it's a vicious cut through world and it's all about money. So there's been like this hundred year war on substances that they determine are not. good for us because we have all these other substances that are good for us and and people have just been persecuted they've had their lives taken you know they have their lively you know like look at the cannabis farmers you know these cannabis farmers sacrifice all they for 50 years sacrifice you know their their life their livelihood went to prison you know had a military

you know helicopters flying over their landville stuff and none of this made them stop growing weed because you know that's what they believe in because they were outlawed, you know. But now it went legal and now all these farmers are, you know, they can't compete. You know, because you can't, you know, if you're a little guy, if you're a mom and pop, you can't compete with a Walmart. It's impossible. So I just try to show, you know, a lot of, you know, like I say, I love this country, but and I love capitalism, but I don't love, right now, I feel like we're, the last hundred years we've been in this age of dark capitalism. And hopefully, you know, in the future, you know, the next 50 or 100 years, that's how this last 100 years

will be remembered. You know, and I hope we're about to break out of it. You know, I mean, you never know, but, you know, but they're trying, you know, to keep a hold and it seems like keep a lid on it and stuff like that. But, you know, and like I say, you know, like when we were growing up, like a lot of this stuff, we knew about this stuff, but it was like conspiracy theory, conspiracy theory, conspiracy theory. Because anything that's true that the government doesn't light or the media because they control the media they control everything bro you know all the all the conspiracy theories that were out there when i was a kid are are now coming true like now like that wasn't a conspiracy theory that was it was true that's true they're doing they're doing you know

hearings in congress on aliens or on ufos like come all like what do you like the listen in the 80s when i was growing up, the idea that Congress would even consider having a hearing is ludicrous. They would never have done that. And now they're having these open hearings and showing films and you're going, what is going on? They've got a whole department now focusing on this. Like, this is insane. Yeah, because our government and, you know, the people that fund them, the elite corporations you know that fund them you know that they wanted to keep a lid on everything so they can control everything you know control information so you know and like I say we talk we always talk about like the Nazis or like thalid and all these other you know

like you know dictators or bad people in history and like what they did we've been doing the same thing here the whole time you know it's just been disguised and swept under the run and, you know, people make movies, you know, about this. We don't have a better marketing campaign. We have a better marketing campaign. The home of the, you know, home of the free, you know, land of the brave. You know, we got a way better marketing campaign than the Soviets did. And that's, you know, a lot of that, not all of it, but a lot of that, it boils down to, you know, really pushed the correct, you know, the U.S.

pushed the correct agenda that. that really does play to the masses, you know. So the idea, it's great to say, hey, if you come join our crowd, we'll feed you, we'll give you bread and water and free medical, but in the end, you can't. And when you can't provide that, and you've got the, the Americans are saying,

look, our system, the idea of capitalism is a little bit more brutal. It doesn't sound as good as communism. Like the concept of communism is wonderful. We're all gonna work together. we're all going to live off of the fruits of everyone's labor and it's all going to be fair that's great it doesn't work capitalism says you know really almost the opposite if you work hard bust your ass you can make money and if you don't you'll fail and that's a brutal concept

but the truth is that's what works and so when you say hey the the peace and love and we're all going to work together when you start seeing that fail and you realize that the harsher version is what works and you've got a great marketing campaign winning winning winning it's all about winning money making tons of money working hard and winning and you see that over and over again you start to say hey this is the way to go and people flock to the United States and they work hard and they try and you know like you said but behind the scenes most of these or our governments are doing a lot of the same stuff yeah no totally and it's it's the same thing because remember the 80s when we're going up. They used to say 10% of the population had all the money. You know, so what do they say now?

1%. Yeah. So I'm saying, yeah, it's like, you know, you got these people at the top. Like they got so much more ridiculous. And you got the people at the bottom that have to live like two, three families in a house, you know, can barely afford one car working minimum wage job, you know, just to make it. So, you know, the middle class in this country has shrunk by half in the last 30 years. It's a dramatic shrinking. And that was what made America great. We had this, we had this massive middle class. We just don't, it just doesn't really exist. Now you have the haves and the haves not.

Yeah. I just think the whole, that whole kind of, you know, 50s mentality, you know, like the, the white picket fence, you know, go work for somebody else for, for 20 years, you know, get married and have kids. Like that's what was push, you know, like, like through religion and government and stuff like that. I just, I just think a lot of people now are. kind of seen it, you know, because ever since the 80s, you know, there's been more, you know,

kids born out of weblock, you know, there's been more divorce, you know, that kind of old model has kind of, you know, gone away. But still, you know, that if I saw another statistic the other day that I thought was kind of crazy, like it was talking about the age of politicians, you know, and they say right now, this is, we, 25% of our politicians are age 70 or older. Like, That is crazy, bro. Like, what are the, you know, like, you look at something, like, you know, like, Biden and some of these other people, like, what are you still doing? Why are you able to make the decisions? You know, it's, you're out of touch.

Even if you said, hey, mentally, even if you said mentally they were able to, you know, they were mentally stable. You're still out of touch. Like, that's the big thing about, about, you know, the Constitution is that it grew, as the culture, as our culture. or civilization and country changes, the Constitution can change. And that's why it's one of the oldest, I think it is the oldest document government that's running. Even though we're a new country,

it's the oldest government that's still in existence from the original constitution, because it evolves and it grows. But the problem is the people that are putting these policies into effect and are, you know, well, I guess, you know, passing new laws and and looking at the new laws, you know, they're out of a lot of them, like you said, at least 25% of them are out of touch. Like a 75 year old guy cannot relate with a 25 year old. You know, he's not, you're telling me, you know, just like you said,

with the cannabis probably, well, one, it probably never should have been illegal, but two, 25 years ago. And here's the big thing is, listen, as of 50 years ago, you, knew that the war on drugs wasn't working. You knew this is a failed policy. It's been failing for 50 years and all you've done is bloat the police and the prison system and the court system and you spent trillions, not even billions, probably trillions of dollars, put locking people up and throwing away the key when you could have been taking that same money and you could have been educating those people and treating addiction. You could have spent a a third of the money they've spent and given free education and free addiction counseling

to get rid to to limit those you know but like you say it's about control I think it's about control and I think it's about getting votes it sounds great to say I'm tough on crime that's a great concept and it is great it's just not working and all these politicians are basically funded by you know people you know corporations or people or organizations with, you know, they have a gender. Right. You know, and they lobby, you know, that's, you know, apologize. And I'm not going to blame anybody. People,

you know, you know, this is in country, people don't go where the money's at. But, you know, I mean, it's just been going on so long, you know, like my whole lifetime, I'm 602. I'm just like, you know, you know, what can I do? You know, I already went to prison, I, you know, behind the lines. And I think in prison, too, really makes you see anything because you know

what they do in prison. They divide and conquer. They pit the races against each other. You know, because there's like a thousand dudes in a prison and there's only, like, 20 guard. So how else are you going to make control? You've got to keep the, a scarcity of resources, you know, so the people in prisons are fighting over the resources. That's how you make control. And before I was a prison, I didn't see it like that in the world. But once you go to prison, you see how they do to there. You come back out here and you can be like, they do the same thing. It's just like on a much larger scale. They use the media, propaganda, and

everything. So, you know, like, you know, back to dope, man. That's why, you know, I'm trying to show, like, you know, paint these like broad strokes, you know, with stuff that people like, you know, because people love mob stuff, right? So I'm kind of, you know, like I say, I'm telling the surface story, but I got these broad strokes underneath that I'm trying to get people so people can realize, you know, just like we did with White Boy. You know, White Boy, we never said, you know, and White Boy, that these people were prepped or this one. We just showed what they did. You know, know, and showed what happened, you know,

as juxtaposed, you know, what happened to Rick, you know, so we kind of try to show, you know, like, why does this stuff happen and then people can make their own decision? Right. I was going to say, through entertainment, I think you learn a lot. I, there was a movie called Enemy at the Gate, and it was about the invasion of Stalingrad, and it was shown through the eyes of a famous sniper

that was in the Battle of Stalingrad. And, you know, listen, it takes, it, it shows you the whole, that whole invasion, the whole battle, the whole, you know, siege of Stalingrad in World War II. Listen, I, like, I walked away from that. It's, it's like watching Private Ryan or something. You learn so much about history by watching those movies. You don't even realize what you're learning. You don't even realize, like, wow, like, you know, I actually, you know, they subtly get

yourself a nice little history lesson while being entertained because let's face it everybody wants to be entertained yeah so you know that's what i'm just doing you know i i pick stuff that i like you know i like i like i like mafia stuff you know i like canada stuff i like psychedelic stuff you know that's what i i i just want i want to paint these pictures man i want to show people you know and and really i mean i'm not saying i'm i'm buying and you can say you know i got a slanted perception because of everything I went through. But, you know, that is my reality. You know, so I'm showing these stories through my lens and, you know, hopefully people, you know, can realize and it can open up, you know, some eyes. And, you know, but at the end of the day, I want

to entertain people. I will, people think what I'm doing is cool. But, you know, I do have these underlying issues and pretty much from my writing, pretty much everything I've done. I got these underlying issues. So what about, I was noticing you have a lot of B-roll. are you are you able to use b-roll from come from uh movies like um what was the uh the untouchables like yeah so it's like uh so it's kind of like um you know like when rapper sampled stuff right you can use like so much so you know in in documentary and in journalism and in the news it's called fair use so if you notice like when it when a news when a news uh agency is is is taking foot footage like on the street or something.

They don't have to get all those people to sign off because it's, it's journalism. You know, but if you did a movie, that's why in a movie, they blocked everything off. Right. You know,

you know what I'm saying? Because, you know, you can't, nobody's signing releases. So, you know, it's the same with fair use.

As long as you use a certain amount, like, you know, white boy, you use like the Beverly Hill cops, you know, a lot of times it's like under six seconds, you know,

or something like that. But, yeah, so you can use it. as long as you're using it, you know, for a journalistic reason. And there's, there's some like other things, you know, like, like when you use something like it can't be your main point, it can only be like supporting, you know, so I might have, you know, somebody say like,

oh, you know, the, the myth of the mafia man of honor, or the mafia man of honor is a myth. And then I can show a little clip of the Godfather. Right. You know, yeah, so, yeah, that's how you do it. It's all fair use, man. and really that's kind of like

more the old school thing but I mean you see now with like YouTube I mean they just rip everything dude they just rip everything people rip whatever they want and put it wherever they want and you know

maybe if they make a lot of money there might be a lawsuit but you know I mean it's just it's just information and I don't know I think I think that's cool man because what I try to do when I make a film I try to get

all these different forms of media and kind of mash them together like you know that's that's what we did at white boy where you know you get the archival footage you know you get the newspaper articles you know you get the talking head interviews you know you get the animation and you just kind of you know put it all together and mesh it all together so you know when you're watching it i think that's like really visually stimulating you know because you just see all these different types of of media you know, in forms of media and it's all put together in one place. And even like the dopeman, you know, some of that stuff, you know, people have seen in

different stuff, you know, because some of that footage that we found it's been around forever. Right. You know, but I'm just putting it in this new construction where I'm telling this story and kind of layering it, you know, all the way through, you know, so, you know, not only is a story good, you know, and the narrative is good, but I want it to be visually appealing to. Right. I was going to say, because I noticed, like, there was just, there was, like, tons of B-roll. And the B-roll alone kind of tells the story.

So I was wondering. And I thought I'd seen some clips from movies that I'd recognize. And I thought, I wonder if that has to, if he has to pay somebody to use that. But it was a little bit of new clip. Yeah, if you only use it real, I couldn't afford it. I mean, you can afford. You know, even for White Boy, we got the Beverly Hill cop stuff in there. You know, we couldn't afford that, man.

They tried to charge you an arm in a lay. you know even even like it's weird because if you just go find something yourself and put it in you know a lot of times you you can get away with it for fair use but if you actually like go to the people and say like oh i want to use this or then they're going to try to charge you a licensing fee right it's just it's just crazy you know but now on the internet i mean you could pretty much find anything um i was going to say i i had talked to a a guy who's a he's actually a director and and the producer but he was saying that for example if you said yeah I remember when I was I was leaving Tampa you know we were headed whatever we were headed for we were headed to you know

Atlanta or something that song whatever came on you know and he said and because in the interview the guy mentions the song we are he said we were able to play the song so we can play he said where as opposed to a few seconds of it, he's like, we were able to use that song for the next, whatever it was, 30 seconds or so of the interview and with B-roll. And he said, he had another interview where the guy was like, I forget what he said exactly, but let's say, you know, it was like the scene in the godfather when, you know, when Michael says to, you know, whatever, you know, this. And then they show the scene.

And it was more than the two or three. It was like the whole scene. He said, but I can do that because in the course of the interview, the guy specifically mentioned the scene. He's like, so I'm just using it to support, you know, that interview. And he said as a result of that, he said we were able to play, you know, a 12 or 15 second scene. So, yeah, so I. Yeah, definitely.

Yeah, fair use. So that's the difference between docs and like a scripted film. You know, a scripted film has to be like totally original. You need all releases, you know, forms and stuff like that. Or you've got to license music or whatever. Where docs, it's more, it's journalism. It's just visual German. So, you know, because you can see like on a news report, they could be interviewing somebody and, you know, a car drives by, you know, with fuck the police by NWA or whatever, you know, and they're not going to take it out, you know, so they're not going to get, they're not going to get sued. There's no liability because it's journalism.

Okay. Well, cool. So you're saying it's going to be up in about a month or so, roughly? Yeah, maybe sooner. I would say definitely within within the next month, I'd say definitely by the end of August, you know, So that's going to be up. Dopement will be up. Nightlife will be up. And then sometime at September, my first episode of the psychedelic revolution, Secret History, the LSD trade will be up. And then after that, probably in October sometime, a tortured mind.

You know, the reality of post-incarceration syndrome will be up. And I'd say then sometime in December before Christmas, the first episode of Tangled Roots will be up. I just want to, hey, I just want to be on the other side of it, man. You know what I'm saying? You know, it's been a struggle, you know, but this is kind of like, you know, three years of work, you know, that's kind of coming together. And it just so happens, you know, because I've been working on them all steadily. So it's all coming out at the same time.

So I just want to be, you know, because that's like five hours of content for Outlaw films. So that's going to be big. And I got a lot more stuff shot. So, you know, I got, I got the makings of like 13 hours of content. You know, I just got to get it edited. You know, so next year I'll be coming out with more stuff. And then as soon as I get some of these projects off my plate, you know, and get some more funding or the money starts coming back from the films, I'm going to be looking for more projects. Because that's my goal, man.

I kind of want to be the, I want to be like the Quentin Tarantino of kind of this true crime, counterculture, documentary stuff. You know, and in the next three years, I'm planning on, you know, developing and putting out on the market, you know, you know, about 30 hours of content all kind of in this, you know, same vein, you know, which it'll follow on a true crime. But, you know, like I say, my stuff is kind of more counterculture. I get better access, you know, because I was in prison for 21 years. I get better access than a lot of these mainstream filmmakers. And also, I think, too, my work, I keep it more. real. You know, because I'm just not a filmmaker coming into these cultures and examining them and making films about them. I'm from this culture, these cultures, these cultures I'm

talking about. You know, not like I'm a mafia guy, but I was with a ton of mafia dudes in federal prison, you know, for years, 21 years. I know these guys. I've talked to them. I've written about them. I've interviewed them, you know, in prison. So, you know, I don't know how many other journalists or filmmakers can say that all right well so what um well they'll do you want to put a link you know we can put some links in the description or yeah yeah i mean definitely when i have links i mean we could just use my my website or the youtube links because the youtube you know my my youtube channel uh set ferrante's true crime it has like all the the documentary link and then on my website too garela convict dot com i have all the teasers and then as

the film become available you know i'll be putting you know those those amazon and i tune links up and stuff like that but yeah it's not going to be long man it's like you know probably within i'd say the next 60 to 90 days i mean like dotment and light like we're going to be everywhere you know all right it's gonna yeah it'll be available to be rocou you know all all the advertising video on demand and all the transactional video on demand platforms okay you think is there anything else we haven't talked about. No, man, I think, yeah, we covered a lot of stuff, man. I hope people don't think we're conspiracy theorists.

We might get, we might get Brandon now. Listen, I, the government's going to come after us. Listen, I've had some conspiracy theory guys on here. So trust me, this is nothing compared to that. This is very tame. Yeah. And honestly, let's face it, you know, I, I would say a 95% chance at all of it's absolutely legit, you know, even though.

And I'd like to say, too, like you know how like law enforcement and the government people, they say, like, oh, well, if you're selling drugs, we're coming after you. Yeah, well, I'm a filmmaker. I tell stories. So if you're in law enforcement and government and you're doing corrupt stuff and you're violating citizens and American people's rights, I'm going to come after you and I'm going to expose you and I'm going to put you on TV. same thing they hate that they hate that and the only way you could stop me is you can kill me because you already put me in prison for 21 years and I'm still doing it listen I just had a guy who was a sheriff's deputy who was a whistleblower at Broward County and you know he was he was complaining that the guys he was working with were ripping off the drug dealers

like they're stealing the money they're taking these guys money we're supposed to put the money in the bag and they're stealing these guys money and they're taking the drugs and reselling the drugs and keeping that money and so he was like you know you guys should be in jail so they ended up setting him up got him indicted he he actually went to trial and won at trial i interview that guy three months ago his video blew up it got like i think it's all at almost 700 000 views now so yeah you wouldn't like you hear his story you wouldn't believe it this is just because he was a whistleblower in the department. No, I do believe it.

I do believe it. I've heard plenty of stories like that, you know. I mean, when you're in prison for 21 years, you hear all, you hear everything. Yeah. Oh, that's what I'm saying. They'll turn on their own. Yeah. Oh, yeah, in a second.

It's all about self-preservation. Yeah. Yeah, those people, most of the people, you know, I'm not saying everybody in law enforcement is bad. There's some good people in law enforcement. There's some good people in government. There's some good people and politicians. But, you know, if they're protecting the bad people,

then they're just as completely. Listen. Hey, if you like the video, do me a favor. Hit the subscribe button. Share the video. Hit the bell so you get notified. Leave me a comment. We're going to leave all of Seth's links in the description box. So check them out. And I really appreciate you guys watching the video. See you. Hey, this is Matt Cox. And I'm here with Seth Ferranti. And we're going to do a podcast on Seth Story. Seth was a, you know, I saw on concrete. It was like the, what was it? He said. you were like the LSD Kingpin or something or yeah so basically uh Seth was arrested and did 20 you got 25 years yeah did 20 21 years in federal prison for selling LSD yeah LSD in cannabis okay so all right check it out so um somebody asked me earlier too and like the first question somebody asked me and I didn't even know like where were you born Yeah, I was born in Lamar.

Lamar is actually out in the desert. They call it the Central Coast. It's between L.A. and San Diego. Okay. And you, I mean, I kind of know the story. So you grew up there and you said you started basically were just what? You start off just. Yeah, no, I was a military brass.

So I was actually born on like a Navy base. You know, it's out in the desert. That's where like they, like they train fighter pilots. Right. You know, so my dad was basically a fighter pilot. and um but he was the navy he used to fly off aircraft carriers so we're in san diego we're in virginia beach we were in germany we were in london but we always ended back up in california usually until he retired and that's kind of where my problem started because i was like this california

kid and i ended up in northern virginia like in this really kind of a lily white upper class area like right out of washington dc when i was when i was basically you know like a sophomore junior in high school and being from california you know and at that age like you know everybody were going out partying and just the weed that they got they just got like garbage weed it was like all brick weed like brown shit and then uh like if they could get lSD or something like that it was just like super expensive like $20 a hit so um i mean i knew a lot of people you know i had a lot of friends that were getting into that stuff you know back in california so i started getting weed sent you know from northern california you know like like emerald triangle humble county bud

and from from like san francisco i started getting lSD scent okay but you were how how i mean how old were you at that time when you were man i was i was i was i was like 16 yeah so i was like 16 and at first i mean it was just for personal right you know what i'm saying so i would just get personal like you know five or six of us we would kind of put our money together and you know i'd get it send and I'd send the money and um but then eventually like you know if if if if you do drugs and a lot of a lot of young kids you know kind of figure this out or at least a smarter young kids figure this out so when you're young and you're doing drugs you know and then finally you're like well fuck it if I can get it why should I pay for it right so that's like the first thing you're like

do it for a while you're like well fuck it I don't want to pay for it and I want to make money right so you know this was it wasn't something that just happened overnight so this was a gradual thing like you know over my first probably nine to 12 months in northern virginia you know where i've like hey man i can make money off this shit you know and then um and then other stuff happened like i started going on tour like at 17 i started going on grateful dead tour and uh anybody that knows anything about the grateful dead tour like in the uh late 80s you know like we're talking like 1988 right you know like what they call shakedown street or the lot i mean it was basically like an open air drug market right so and and and like i say when i say open air drug market i don't

mean like cocaine heroin there was that stuff around but it's mostly like like i call you know like i'm a weed in psychedelics dude you know i was never into cocaine i was never into heroin speed you know i hate amphetamies i don't even like mdMA you know i've never been like a you know amphetamine type of guy so I was always into like the the psychedelics you know in cannabis you know hash mushrooms you know even stuff like peyote mescaline you know so that was kind of like where I leaned you know kind of on that side so I would go to these dead shows and the big thing about the dead shows like I mean it's just this big lot and everybody's selling drugs so I had two reasons I went to the dead shows one reason is because I established a connect down in

Kentucky that grew weed and they grew pretty good weed, you know, compared to the brick weed from Texas that was coming around. So I would take that weed. I would grab that weed for whatever 16, 1,800 a pound. And I would take that on dead tour and I would sell it for $200 ounce. And if it was good weed, like what they call kind bud. And when they say kind bud, they were referring to like the bud from Humboldt County, you know, the Emerald Triangle, which I could usually only get in the fall, you know, in harvest time. But that's what they wanted. They wanted that good sungrown organic. Because the brickweed was basically crap. The brickweed, yeah, the brickweed was crap.

So, you know, that's what the deadheads wanted, you know, to go with that whole hippie vibe. So I started going and I started selling Bud on tour. You know, and I was making a, you know, considerable amount of money. Not doubling my money, but, you know, I was usually making like, you know, a thousand, 1,200 pound. And it was easier to get, I got better LSD contacts on tour. Because, you know, I had some friends and they could get like some sheets here and there, but they couldn't really, you know, they couldn't really like hit me off. And I had to pay like, you know, I wasn't paying wholesale prices.

Like they were getting at basically like retail prices, you know, but still, you know, not like they were selling hits. You know, I was getting buying whole sheets from them, you know, so I was probably getting like paying like a dollar or $2 hit and selling it for $5 hit. But then I knew if I went on tour and I hooked up with the right people, I could basically get it for like 30, 40 cents a hit. You're not making it though. You're just, you just have a contact.

Yeah. No, I never made it. So, you know, but... Because when I was locked up, I met one guy. Like, the whole time I was locked out, one guy that actually made LSD. I mean, because, you know, it's not like it's easy. It's not like growing weed. It's like this guy.

No, you've got to be a chemist. Yeah. You got to be a chemist. So, you know, so... Yeah, so what I know about the whole LSD trade is a lot of times at the shows, they would fly in. They would fly in the liquid. So, you know, they would fly in, they'd fly in like,

25 grams you know at a time but you know each each one of those grams makes 10,000 hits yeah you know to give you the number so pretty much every dead show and you the dead used to crisscross the nation you know they used to play everywhere and they would play multiple nights so every show every town like let's say they played three nights in a philly you know from san francisco all that stuff is still basically made in that area you know all the chemists you know and a lot of times it's it's the same guys from the 60s you know maybe they have like uh you know they mentored other guys, younger guys, and brought other guys into the trade. But you know, it's like, it's not, it's not like a big group of people. I mean, they keep it pretty, you know, secret

because it's a lot to even, like now, to even get the precursors and all the other stuff. I mean, they've outlawed a lot of that stuff. So it's really hard to get the stuff to make it, you know, but I mean, like I say, one, one gram is 10,000 hits. So you don't need a lot. Yeah, he was, the guy was telling me, like, they would get the sheets of paper and the, you know, perforated sheets of paper and he was like it was you you're literally just putting it like a droplet on each yeah the blotter paper well what also they do is um they actually they actually dip it the all the whole sheet yeah they so they dip it so like what you got like one sheet of a hundred hits is about this big so that's like a sheet and then they would have what you

call like a page so a page would be like a hundred of those all right okay or no 10 of those so that would be like you know a thousand hits okay and then they had what you call a book would be 10 pages and then you know that would be like 10,000 hits that's like a gram of LSD you know but it's all it's all the blotter paper you know it absorbs it and that's pretty much you know I mean it's not a perfect science because some places might absorb more than others right you know I've talked to a lot of chemists so you know that's basically they've kind of explained a lot of stuff to me but yeah I've never done it but I know they would fly it in and um you know then like when they get it there then they would go through the process of laying it on the

sheets you know where there were they kind of dip it in it or whatever right you know and uh they all would also do a lot of liquid i remember going to the shows and this is kind of funny because whenever there were shows they would have a lot of the deadheads or the hippie kids would go to the local grocery stores and they would buy all the boxes of the food coloring you know like the food coloring it comes in these like little little boxes and there's like 10 or something or sometimes five right and those were like what they would use for the vials so they would get that food coloring and they would pour it all out, you know, and clean it out. And then they would fill that up because that one vial in that food coloring, that was like 100, that was like 100 hits. You know,

so they would sell vials too, because some people would do like straight liquid. I even did, I did some liquid one time. So one time I was at some shows in Pittsburgh, like in 89. And, you know, I'd always been a big fan of Jimmy Hendricks. And I used to read how Jimmy Hendricks, he used to take his bandana and he would just pour like a whole vial of acid. on his bandana and then he would wrap it around his head you know so it's not like he was taking a hundred hits but i mean he was absorbing yeah yeah he's still absorbing a lot of that so so one time at this show in pittsburgh was actually right after uh brett midland the keyboardist real popular keyboardist died he like oded on a speedball and um i was like man i was on this jimmy hendricks

trip you know maybe i'd seen some documentary or something i don't know or read about it in rolling stone or something so i actually took and i pulled three quarters of a bottle basically like 75 hits on a bandana and then i then i wrapped it around my head and this is like this is like before the show starts you know because back then it was way different back then like you have like free rain in the whole stadium and it wasn't like all the security like they cordon off this area and you can go here with your tickets like back then dude like you gave your ticket you went in the stadium you go from the lot yeah you can even go back out to the lot you know because a lot's like you know shake down street so it's like a party and stuff like

that so I this one time I did it and I took all this fucking 75 hits right and we're waiting for the show to start and everybody used to go up to the top so this is three river stadium in Pittsburgh everybody would go up to the top and smoke weed you know because you don't want to smoke weed you don't want to front out the security or whatever so if you went up top they didn't give a fuck so we walked up me and my buddy he he'd only take maybe like 25 hits he took the rest of the bottle but he drank it you know so you know he took like really adjusted 25 hits You know, I don't know how, mine was 75 hits, but it was in a bandana, so it's not like I took 75 hits. Right.

But it was, you know, going into my skin. So we walked up to go to the smoking section, you know, everybody's smoking weed. And so we're up there, you know, everybody got their, you know, big ounces or quarter pounds. We're rolling up fatties and we're smoking them. And then, like, the show starts, you know, so like everybody goes back down to the field because then it would just be the whole field would just be like wide open and everybody be dancing. So me and my buddy, though, like the trip starts. you know, kicking in, right? So we're like, we're like looking at the steps.

You know, you know, like in a lot of the stadiums, I mean, it's kind of steep. Right. You know, so we're like, you start tripping balls, right? So we don't go back down. We're like, oh, no, we're just going to stay over here. We're going to smoke some more weed. So it ended up, we stayed up there.

And this is like, I mean, they used to play, they play two sets, man. So they play like, you know, like an hour and a half. And then they come back, play another hour and a half. So this is like three hours, dude. Like, we're up there. Like, our friends keep coming up. trying to hey man come down and we're like we're like look and we're like fuck no like a couple

times we would try to walk down it's too steep right because you're tripping fucking balls right so we couldn't walk down so eventually um like the show's over and like we stayed up there the whole time and eventually everybody leaves right and uh like the people are going around cleaning you know they're like looking at us like what the fuck are these dudes doing you know we're just up there like smoking weed tripping and uh so i don't even know it seemed like forever but eventually like a dude one of the custodian guys comes to us you know and he was like yo man he's like they're about to lock the doors of the stadium like you need to go now you need to get the fuck out of here there's like nobody there's just like trash everywhere people picking up shit

so finally uh we actually like we crawled down you know like backwards you know on the steps you know like crawled down backwards until we got to like the uh you know like one of the main floors, you know, then we could walk out. But yeah, that was crazy. That's the most acid I ever took at one time. And, like, I can only say, I remember it, but I mean, it was, I mean, I think I had a good time, even though, like, I missed a show and I was, like, scared to walk out. Because it was, like, a ledge, man. It was, like, crazy. I still, to this day, I have, like, vivid memories of trying, like, I'm telling you, probably in that however many hours, three to five hours, I probably attempted to walk down those steps, like 20 or 25 times, me and my buddy.

And I just, I couldn't do it. It was not happening until finally like, and, you know, acid lost a long time too. So, you know, I was still tripping. It was just like they were going to lock the door and I didn't want to get fucking, you know, locked in the fucking stadium. So, so I mean, how, so at some point, though, like you started, I mean, you know, you kind of started selling more and more. You're making money at it. You're, you know. Yeah.

Really, I kind of, my business. kind of exploded when everybody started going to college. Right. So, you know, first I'm like a sophomore and then I'm getting more into it when I'm a junior. And, you know, like I say, I'm selling to the sophomores and I'm selling to the seniors. You know, and I was kind of like that guy. I was kind of like that dude in high school. Like if you wanted weed, if you wanted LSD, I was like the dude.

And I don't care. I would sell like 10 sheets. I would sell multiple sheets. I would sell like five or 10 hits. You know, because I was like, whatever. It was all money to me. Plus, I always felt, you know, I always felt like. I was filling the need, you know, because I felt like people wanted good, clean drugs, you know,

and I always felt like, you know, weed and LSD, you know, and mushrooms and stuff like that. I always felt they were good drugs. I didn't feel like they were bad drugs, you know, I didn't carry a gun. I didn't have a criminal organization, you know what I'm saying? I go around, beat people up. You know, a lot of times people paid cash. A lot of people, people fronted stuff to people. A lot of times people that I fronted stuff to were my friends and they,

fucked up the money and I still didn't do I was like well whatever I can make more money right that was always kind of like my attitude so um you were saying you didn't you don't really feel like it should be illegal anyway I mean it's yeah that was yeah I always tell I tell people to this day this is my big thing right I was never a criminal right I broke laws that I thought were wrong right you know I was an outlaw you know what I'm saying so you know like I say I to me there's a difference you know I mean in prison you got criminals and you got outlaws you know and maybe to the government and law enforcement it's all the same because you know we're breaking the laws of society but i mean there's a difference anybody i mean you know you've been

in prison man there's a difference you know a lot of times a criminal is going to do whatever he can you know criminal like fuck you over for a dollar right you know where like an outlaw has like morals you know some kind of code that he's trying to live by yeah so you know there's a big difference but um yeah so i probably really exploded like probably like around 89 You know, when I was a senior, so a lot of my friends had went off to colleges, you know, and were, like, freshmen. And so I went to Robinson, and Robinson was a big school in Fairfax County. So Robinson was probably like 4,000 people.

And then we had a sister school that was like not even five miles away called Lake Braddock. And Lake Braddock would have like 4,000 kids. And so, you know, for two years, you know, going on three years, I had been selling, you know, drugs, you know, LSD and weed to all these people in these schools, you know, going all the park. And, you know, like I say, everybody smoked weed back then. It didn't matter, you know, if you were a jock, you know, if you were a stoner, you know, if you, like we call them truckers, like the dudes with the big four by fours. You know, if you, you know, some Virginia, you got like the more country dudes.

You know, so didn't, you know, the cheerleaders, you know, the popular kids. Everybody smoked weed. Everybody did LSD. Everybody did mushrooms. You know, some of them did Coke, but, you know, I didn't really fuck with those people. That wasn't really my scene. So when these people started going colleges, like, and these are all good kids from good families, you know, not necessarily like super rich, you know, some more rich than others, but all upper middle class. You know, like all these kids, like they got a Mustang or like a hand-me-down Beamer or Mercedes when they were 16.

Right. You know, and, you know, so when they all went off, they went to all these colleges, you know, like Penn State, you know, University of Maryland. you know um you know kentucky university uk you know west virginia university you know all the way like virginia tech right you know radford uh you know vc u you know all the virginia schools so i just have like all these friends that went to all these different colleges and all within you know pretty much neighboring states to virginia so they still they still need drugs yeah so they're going And I mean, you want to go because like when you're a senior, you want to go to the colleges anyhow because you want to party, you know, check out the girls and see what college is like. Because I mean, that's what it's about in the suburbs, you know? You go to school and then you know you go to college and it's like a party. So like they're calling me up there, you know, and I'm going and they want me to bring drugs. They're like, hey, dude, what can you bring? Whatever? They're like, I need this for me. And like, my whole frat, everybody needs shit. So I started going and it just like turned in. It was like just this little kind of local thing. you know where i was kind of like you know a retail dude but not really a big wholesale i did maybe

a little wholesale but that was like real small part of my market it was mostly retail right you know hand-to-hand stuff and it just turned into where you know i remember the first time i went to radford right i went to radford in uh the beginning of the semester so late august 1990 and uh radford is like kind of like the uh sister school to virginia tech radford used to be like an all-girls school but then you know then they changed it so guys could come and um and virginia tech is like right there too so it's these two you know virginia tech is a really huge school but radford's a pretty big school so like august 1990 i go to i go to radford and i had just picked up some bud that they just harvested in kentucky and back then like sometimes like in the summer like it would get dry man

like you couldn't find any weed and if you did find weed it would be like brown you know garbage brick weed with seeds so i was always known for getting the good bud from like Kentucky or northern California so this time I brought I brought like a ton of not a ton but probably like 20 pounds you know just harvested fresh you know good green bud and um I actually go I go to my dude's house right and my dude has a house and it's it's kind of like a little you know duplex apartment thing so like he has a house right here and then his buddy has a house right here and so I bring bud and he's like man he's like man nobody has bud he's like everybody and he wants bud i'm like well fucking call him dude i'm like we're here so we break out the fucking

triple beam right and first i'm like in his room and like people are coming but you know it was like so many fucking people like it was like crazy so what we ended up doing is we ended up going to his friend's apartment which was like kind of connecting you cross away and we had that door and we put like a table in front of the door like we're a fucking vendor and me and this other dude you know my road partner we're basically weighing stuff out and there was like a lot so there was like a line all through this walkway and all through my friend's house because they would come in my friend's house the front door and then you know come out in this side door and we'd go and it was like a line dude and we like literally quartered outst up weed for probably like three hours straight you know and i would like literally like sitting at the table throwing fucking money in the back like i don't even know how much money i don't even know how much weed i'm selling but you know at the end i mean we still had some left i probably had about five or six pounds left but i i I literally probably sold 14, 15 pounds in three hours all for like quarters and ounces. And I just have like this big duffel bag of money, you know, and that that was just like,

that's like what it was back then. And I did that. And once I did that, first I was like, man, I was like, I can make a lot of money doing this. You know, that was my first thought. But second, I was like, man, I got to find a better fucking process because this is like some bullshit. Because it's, you know, I mean, back then it was marijuana, you know, the war on drugs and all that shit. I was like, man, this is like, this is like too open. You know, so what I did among the people I knew at the different colleges, you know,

because I had some situations at other colleges like that. You know, that was the most extreme situation. Right. That's why I'm telling the story. But, you know, I had different situations like that. It paints a good scene, though. Yeah. So I just started finding dudes like some of my friends, you know, like the smartest, most trustworthy

or on point friends. And I would just go to them and I say, look, dude, check this out. I'm going to come in. I'm going to drop you like 20 sheets of acid. I'm going to drop you like five pounds of bud. And then, you know, you can do all the hand-to-hand sales. And, you know, this is how much you owe me. And then I'll come back and get it.

Right. So I did that at all these different colleges. So I started doing this loop, you know, where I would go down, I would go down 81 in Virginia and hit all the Virginia colleges. Then I would come back through Kentucky. I would go to eastern, eastern Kentucky. And then I would go up to U.K., then I would come back. back to West Virginia, West Virginia University, which West Virginia University in Morgantown was

like my hugest market, man. That place, at that time in the late 80s, like West Virginia, like in Playboy magazine, like West Virginia University was always like in the top five party colleges. You know, like it was just fucking crazy. It was just known. You know what I'm saying? They always had like a big football program. You know, they were always kind of big in football. But they were just known. It was known as like a super. party college so um and i had i had my buddies were in the delta tal delta fraternity and they had this big fucking huge old dilapidated mansion like on frat row and they just used to have these big ass fucking parties so they used to have these uh they used to have this party it was called

the uh and it was called like the it was called like the the backyard not the backyard brawl but it was called like the backyard something i can't think of the the second name but so it was called like the backyard brawl or backyard or something, whatever. That's it. Backyard bash. You got the word. So it was called the backyard bash.

So they would have this party and there would be like literally 5,000 kids and they would always have it right in the beginning of the semester. There would literally be 5,000 kids like going through this old dilapidated mansion and then they have like this big, you know, backyard and parking spot. And they would get like reggae bands and stuff like that. And so I would go to there. And, you know, at first, like it would be like I would be selling hand to hand.

Eventually I got one of my dues to does to do. do everything but uh like their parties were so big that eventually uh west virginia university like told them they couldn't have the backyard bash anymore they were like you guys that party's outlawed you can't have it so like you know what these dudes did right because these are like some little you know little smart you know also entitled rich kids they were like okay so they called it the acyard ash you bring the bees okay so they just changed the name like that and still had the same fucking party you know they were basically like fuck the university but um that's what i did i cultivated these relationships i kind of made from friends of mine there were drug users you know

partiers into drug dealers and um so you know now you're just the distributor yeah so this started like 89 so then by the time like 91 when i'm really rolling uh i'm basically supplying like 15 colleges and five states with uh weed and lSD Okay. That's a full-time job. No, definitely. Like I see it this time, too, like I didn't work a job because that was my job. But I actually went to college a couple times, just like, you know, the local community college.

But it was always like, I even, I came down to Florida, dude. I came down to Florida in 89 in the fall of 89. And I was enrolled at, what's it called the USF? Okay. I was enrolled Yeah, I was enrolled in USF, right? In the fall of 89 But I mean, it didn't last

Because I was like, I was just drawn You know, I was drawn to like the dead shows I was drawn to the dead scene You know, I was drawn to the You know, just like to me Because to me being that drug dealer It was like being a rock star Yeah

You know what I'm saying And it wasn't even the money It was a lifestyle And I'd say, I mean You're the guy calling it shots everybody's like hey they need something for from you and you're they're they're they're they treat you with respect and you know yeah I mean I I know and then and then too it's like just the the chicks do because like like I would have like I had like multiple girlfriends just like at colleges I would

have like different chicks like I would like if they were in the dorms I would move them out get in an apartment just so I have like a safe place to lay my head and I would pay like their apartments so like I said I was making a lot of money for a teenager right I mean I always tell people like I was making like 20 20 30 thousand a month right like not generating like I was making profit I mean generating I was probably you know generating like you know a couple hundred thousand a month you know but I was literally making you know 25 30 grand a month I mean 20 grand 30 grand a month is a lot of money for a grown adult raising a family that's a ton of money for a kid and this was like this was like you know 899 but really I always tell people too

because, you know, I sold drugs, so probably from like, whatever, 16 to I got busted at 20, so four years. But it was really only like nine months where I was at that height. So it was that last nine months, like 90, you know, into when I caught my case, you know, the fall of 91. So, you know, because before like everything I'll explain this is when I'm like putting everything together, you know, I'm getting all my sources and my contact straight. You know, I got it eventually, like I didn't even have to go on tour to get the acid because I developed where they would just, they would send me, they would send me like 100 sheets, 10,000 hits. And I was basically getting like 100,000 hits a month, you know, sent to me. And then for the weed, you know, I would get in the fall to about January. I would get weed sent from, you know, San Francisco from like Northern California, you know, Emerald Triangle Bud. And I would drive down to Kentucky myself and get their bud.

you know, which was that they grew domestically, which was pretty good. It wasn't as good as a humble bud, but, you know, it was close. And then the rest of the year from January until like August, I would basically get the brick pot, the Mexican brick pot. And I even, dude, I used to get a lot of weed out of Fort Myers. I would drive down to Fort Myers, Florida. You know, I used to, I used to go to Dallas, Texas. I'd fly to Dallas, Texas, but I would drive down to Fort Myers, Florida,

and I would get weed from actually, it was like Kentucky dudes that were getting the weed down here. So they'd grow the weed, you know, all year in the fall. And then in the winter, you know, sometimes they would come down here, you know, to kind of keep the business going. So I'd go down to Fort Myers. And I wasn't picking up a lot, man. And, you know, I pick up like whatever, 50 pounds, 100 pounds, a brick pot.

Which, when it's all compressed like that, you know, it's not that much. And also what I was doing was, I was flying down to Dallas and I would bring money. And I would get like 50 pounds or something, 40, 50 pounds. And I would actually pack it. in a suitcase and I would check it and I would and I would fly back with it you know like I was I was doing that like when I was 17 so that was crazy because back then you know back then you didn't you could go right to the airport right and you could say like you could buy a ticket you could say like my name is Joe Smith right and you could pay him cash for a one-way ticket you know

no red no no red flags no nothing and I go down with it like I had this green big green 1970s samson night uh you know suitcase you know huge huge probably like you know this big and I fly down I check it it was empty you know what I'm saying and I go down and I literally sit at my buddies down there because I had some buddies that went to university of Texas of Arlington so I'd and they had developed some Mexican contacts down there so I would literally go down there sit and wait on the Mexican dudes you know until until they have their shit ready I dealt with this one dude named Mexican Eddie and um I would literally get the weed, buy it, pack it back in the suitcase. You know, I'd wrap it and stuff like that. And then

I would check it in my luggage. I'd go back buy a one-way ticket, cash. This time I might be Chris Smith. Right. And go to, you know, Dallas or, you know, D.C. National Airport and go pick it up off the carousel. So, you know, I didn't do that a lot, but I probably did that. Probably like, I don't know, 15 times over the years. You know, but mostly I was, I was a smuggler, you know, I was driver i was a driver that's what i would did i because i knew i figured out at a very early age if you buy a product or you know drug like weed or or lsd in one point you know and brought it to another point i you know that's how you made money yeah yeah yeah you could leave that on the table you're not to it's not a big deal um this is pretty casual i'm just like uh you know i'm a

director so I'm like I'm like anal with get everything out of the fucking shot I was thinking of the Fort Myers thing I wrote a story about these two guys that ran basically like it was one of the largest um largest bust in that area

um from the DEA I think they got called with like 1,200 pounds or something and it was just like you know and to just get to get seized to get caught with 1200 pounds god only knows what you know if that's just the one thing they caught you with yeah that's just a one shipment that yeah but that was Fort Myers Fort Myers is a big, you know, it's big for marijuana for bringing in marijuana.

Plus, what was the other guy's name that we did? The, the, the, the, the, saltwater cowboy, yeah, he, but he was, Tim McBride. Yeah, yeah, Tim McBride, he's off. Yeah, he was in the keys. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Oh, that dude was a huge fucking marijuana smuggler. Yeah, he's, he's, he's, boy, he's an interesting character too. See, that's, that's why I always look, like, I'm not saying for a teenager, I was a big drug dealer for a teenager, but like, when I really,

look at it like after after doing all that time in the feds and stuff like that like i look at it i mean i was a small i was a small timer you know what i'm saying i mean you know for for a kid yeah i mean and who knows if i didn't get busting maybe i would have got bigger you know you never know but you know once i got in the feds and even like dude like like tim like i mean those dudes were just right i mean they're bringing in fucking tons so yeah i mean we got an organization or a crew that's bringing in tons i mean really what i was doing i mean i'm like a minnow you know i'm saying Yeah, but it's hard to, you know, it's, you know, you get in front of the judge, you could, you know, they make. Oh, they don't get a fuck.

They act like I was fucking John Goddier or Pablo Escobar or the fucking suburbs of the fucking feds. Every, every fucking new case is public enemy number one. Absolutely. I always love that, that these guys are getting in front of the judge and they make them sound like just the most dangerous criminal in the world. And then they send them to a low. Yeah. Or they send them to a camp. Yeah.

If I'm so dangerous, how did you, how did I go directly to? to a camp. No, it's fucking, it's fucking crazy, man. That's, that's our, our criminal justice system, man. It's, it's, it's, they got all their priorities wrong. But, um, so yeah, what, what, yeah, definitely, um, like I said, I, I, I, I had like nine months where, where, where, where, like, like, like, I was, like, I was probably the man, but, you know, like, I was really feeling myself, like, I thought I was a man, you know, where it was where, like, I had built everything up over a couple years. And, you know, even too, like, like, like, as a kid, you know i mean teenagers i mean you second guess yourself you know you're insecure you know so i was

doing this for several years and you know maybe i still didn't feel how i wanted to feel and then like dude i had like that nine that last nine months before i got busted like i was on top of the world like i could literally i felt like do anything i wanted i had enough money you know one time right before i got busted dude like i went to who i just went to huai for two fucking months dude i was like man fuck it you know i was like i'm gonna get you know i was like i'm gonna the fuck out of here so i i put a couple dudes you know that actually they ended up on my case and they they ended up telling on me but i put them i said okay you're in charge of we you're in charge of the lsd i'm just gonna go to fucking you know just fucking stack my money i'm gonna go to

fucking hawaii for fucking two months and just chill out you know but uh yeah and then like i say i you know i had a bunch of different girlfriends but i was always the type of dude too usually like i would have like runs with girls you know i would have like six to like i I would always have a main girl while I had like a six to nine month run with her and she'd be like my girl even though I might have had you know other girls that I just saw every now and then right you know but that was kind of like you know there's some 80 stuff I don't know maybe people would look down on that today I don't it's a more it's a more sensitive world today so so what was the like what was the the catalyst that brought it all down that yeah so basically um I mean looking back I mean at the time I thought it was like a real bright idea but looking back it was probably pretty stupid so uh you know the summer 91 usually like in the summer would get dry there's no weed right so before I took that trip to Hawaii you know in this in the spring of 91 you know I set shit up because I was always gearing up for the fall because with the fall was where I could really make money so I needed to like get my money up for the fall so when they harvested in northern California and Kentucky so I could buy up a lot of bud because you want to buy up in the harvest you want to buy up in the harvest you want to buy all of a but early like you want to buy when the farmers are hurt like late august september you know because you can get shit for cheaper right you know what i'm saying then by like october november by january so it's like the weed you can get for 1600 in september by january that we might be like

three thousand right you know so that was always my my thing because you know i was trying to maximize my profits so i had this bright idea in the spring of 91 when all my friends were going to be home from school you know because school was over i was like you know what i was like i'm going to fucking sell as much acid as i can this summer so i can get my money at for the fall you know and plus like i say that nine months i was making money but i was probably spending money recklessly because when you got money coming in that young you know like water i mean it was just going out the door like water i didn't give a fuck i was just like fucking spend money on anything i didn't give a fuck i was i was really i was dumb i was a type of kid and i'm sure you know you might have

known kids like this but I was a kid that I would buy like some expensive polo t-shirts or whatever and I would wear that shit one time right and I would give it away because I was like I only wear new shirts that was like my thing like I only wear new shirts I don't wear fucking old shirts I don't wash my shit you know like I'm saying so you know I mean I had some shit that I probably wash you know keep it real whatever but you know that was that was like my thing you know I'm not gonna front like every fucking shirt I had was like brand new but I that was like that was like one of my things and also another one of my things was a sneakers man I was a fucking sneaker head you know so the Air Jordan's has started coming out like probably like 85 86 so you know by like you're

talking like 90-91 there's like a fucking shitload of Air Jordans at a shit load you know everybody else jumped on the sneakers so like I literally have like hundreds and hundreds of pairs of fucking high tops yeah that sounds like Bozzi act he he had if he had he He had like a storage unit filled with two, three hundred pairs of sneakers. It was just like he had a wall like in his room that was just sneakers. I was like, are you wearing all the sneakers? He was like, no, I'd never wear them. I just had them.

I just like to go buy them. Yeah, he said, he said, I just like to spend the money, dude. To me, it was like just go and spend it. And I always, I always had this thing like just spending cash, dude. I just love to spend cash, you know, because everybody else is like credit cards. I just used to like, dude, like literally. And not like I'm spending over $10,000 or because he's still. that $10,000 thing back then.

But, you know, I just used to love to go to, like, stores or go to the mall and just fucking drop, like, five or six grand. You know what I would buy mostly myself, but sometimes it might be girls. I might bring some guys in my crew. I'd buy them shit, too. And I would just go on these fucking whatever, whatever I had, a five, six, seven, eight. And I would just fucking drop that shit in the fucking mall in a day. But so I'm, I'm fucking, you know, doing all, went off on a tangent again.

But, you know. Yeah. so uh you know i'm trying to get my money up because i was fucking spinning reckless like how i just described and so i just had this fucking awesome idea i'm like fuck because i knew it's going to be dry i knew there's going to be no weed i'm like you know what i'm like i'm just going to fucking pump out as much fucking acid as i can in the summer 91 and i'm going to make as much money as i can so i got my money stacked for the fall so i can fucking make a killing because i know the falls is when i'm really going to make the killing every fall that's when i made a lot of

money. So all my friends are back from the colleges. So they don't have the whole college to sell to. It's just all my fucking high school friends from these two high schools, Robinson Lake Braddock. And so dude, so literally acid is going for like five, six dollars a hit. I flooded the areas with so much fucking acid. Like usually I would do like, you know, 10,000 hits a month, but that's like all the colleges. So now I'm fucking, I'm like fucking. I'm I'm going to get like 150 sheets. I'm going to get like 15,000, 20,000 hits. And I'm going to flood it all.

All my people are in Fairfax County. You know, there's no colleges. So I actually, the price of acid that summer went from like $5, $6 a hit down to like $1 to $2 a hit because I flooded it so much, you know, like, you know. I mean, looking back, I was a fucking dumbass, you know, cut my own throat, but whatever. You know, at the time I thought I was fucking brilliant. And I was like, yeah. So not only did I flood the area, but it was just, I mean, there's fucking acid.

There's just everybody's just tripping all fucking summer. And eventually, what happened is there was this kid. I mean, I never met the kid, but he was like a little 15-year-old kid. He was at this big field party in Clifton. You know, Clifton was like the kind of rich, real ritzie area in Fairfax County where they have like the million dollar houses and they would have like these big, you know, five, six acre lots. So the kids that live there when their parents, you know, just like when any parents would,

you know, go on vacation, you know, they would throw parties except they would throw like these big field parties, you know, and people, people would be like stages for bands or they might bring like fucking skateboard ramps and all types of shit. So it'd be like this fucking crazy fucking scene. And so there was this big party, but eventually like all parties out in the suburbs, you know eventually the cops are called. So this one kid was tripping balls on acid and the cops. cops came and somehow he was running through the woods naked and um like a cop was chasing him

you know and the cop like tackled him and for some reason this kid grabbed the cops you know service revolver and uh you know luckily only shot him in the arm right you know so i mean whatever flesh wound but you know i'm sure it was painful whatever i don't know if it hit the bone i don't know all the exact details but i know he shot him in the arm and um Um, so once this happened, you know, and then that kid, like, you know, whatever, he said, yeah, he was blamed it on the acid. Of course. Told him where he got the acid from. And, um.

But she could have been drunk and the same fucking thing would have happened. And who knows. Yeah. I mean, I always say, look, if it's in you, it's in you. Yeah. The drug is not going to bring it out. Right. Just, just like in prison, like, you know, when they talk about, do, do homosexual shit.

If it's in you, it was in you before, you know, in multiple ways it was in you. Oh, yeah. it's just when I'm in prison, bro. So. But, uh, so, so this, this happens. And actually the dude that sold him the acid was actually, I knew him personally because at one time I had sold, he went to Lake Braddock. I had sold to him, you know, for probably like, you know, my first two years. But by this time, like, there's like seven people between me and him because, you know, he was a cool dude, but he was like this metal dude.

He actually ended up on my cakes. but uh you know he was he was this metal dude and i just thought like the way he sold drugs he would just sell to anybody you know so i didn't you know so there was like seven people separated you know between me and him but it was still all my shit so um this kid said he got it from this guy his name was dave the metal guy and um yeah and they started an investigation man and um really it was like you know this this is how law enforcement in this country reacts too like if you do something to law enforcement, like if you shoot a cop or something, like they go hard, man, they don't fuck around.

Like, you know, they're like, man, you know, like you touched one of ours, you know, I mean, they're like a gang, like any fucking gang or the mafia, you know, you know, just like the criminals, you touch one of theirs, they're going to go hard. The fucking cops go harder than everybody. So they basically had like a witch hunt that summer, man. It was like an LSD witch hunt because...

So the domino's start just pop, pop, pop, pop, pop. Yeah, they were trying to find, yeah, like, where the fuck is this shit coming from? and also like everybody knew my name everybody knew Seth right because you know now Seth is more common because you got like Seth Rogen or you know Seth MacFarlane so there's like some famous people named Seth but back then like dude like 91 like nobody was fucking named Seth right you know what saying so like my name stuck out so everybody you know everybody's Seth so they keep hearing Seth Seth Seth they don't know my last name or anything but everybody's hearing Seth so because

I was kind of like this, uh, whatever, this infamous, you know, uh, you know, myth. You know, I don't know if you want to say legend or whatever, you know, I was just a dude that supplied all the fucking drugs to all these colleges. So, you know, a lot of people knew who I was. I'm sure Colby will use, uh, uh, legend in the, in the, clickbait title he'll come out with. Yeah. It'll be legend. Yeah. I mean, you know, a lot of, a lot of people. The infamous legend. Yeah. Yeah. You know, but it's underground. You know, underground. You know, underground legends. Yeah, yeah.

I'm not, like, I'm not mainstream celebrity or nothing. You know, I was all, I've always been more notorious and infamous. So, um, they start hearing my name and then they got this guy,

Dave Crago, you know, so like during their investigation, so he ends up actually setting up another friend of mine, this guy named Chris that was actually getting shit right from me. You know, he set him up in a, you know,

a deal with like a DEA, like a NAR, and, then it was like that was like the state case and then they pulled me into the state case right like they tried to set up a deal like the cop got a certain amount like 10 sheets but he wanted 20 more and he wouldn't give the money you know until he got these other sheets and and like the dude Dave I mean whatever I mean he was an informant but I mean he was basically a pussy dude and then the other dude Chris I mean he was like you know a lot of the dudes I mean they're just like like Like, I was always a dude, like, if there was a problem, like, I was a dude that they would call. Right. You know what I'm saying? Because whatever, I'm not to say, I'm not a tough guy, but, you know, I mean, I'll fight.

I don't know, whatever, you know. But these are all middle class, soft white kids. Yeah. Yeah. So, uh, so basically, like, it's not even my deal, but they call me to come handle it because the dude's Chris. He's like, man, I got this problem, whatever. So I fucking roll down there with, like, a couple other dudes. And I don't even know.

it's a fucking sting. It's like a sting that they set for Chris Miller. They didn't even set the sting for me. But fucking Chris fucking calls me and I get drawn into the fucking sting. So boom. And then they're like, oh, we got fucking Seth. Right. You know, like who.

Yeah, they were trying to get to you. But they had no idea. It was like a flupe thing. You know, and like I say, still, I didn't give anybody any drugs and I didn't take any money. That doesn't matter. You know, yeah. Because that's at the time, though, I thought I was, I was like, you know so look so it's state so i get arrested on state and so they they take me back to the

station and fucking like the DE agents there and they're like blah blah I'm like man I don't got nothing to say to you man I'm like now fuck you talk to my lawyer and they're like your lawyer's gonna want to suck our dick you don't know how much trouble you're in blah blah blah you know we know everything's coming from you blah blah blah and then then another fucked up thing happened because uh I had this one kid was holding like 120 sheets for me and so that they found about out about him through Chris and um so then they go right and they get that right and then i'm like oh fuck so then they got all my fucking product too so now because before they had like they have like 10 sheets right you know it would have been a state then they go and

sees you these guys give them the information they go and get another 120 sheets now so now they got like 130 fucking she so now they're fucking it was like the biggest LSD bus in fairfax county ever right you know so uh you Yeah, and so then it's state, you know, whatever, I get my parents bail me out. And the feds come in at that time? Yeah, the feds. So this is like, this is like early July and, you know, I hire. People don't realize that.

You know, like the state will grab you for something. And then sometimes they don't have enough to prosecute you. So they'll give it to the feds because the feds have even a lower bar as far as the conspiracy law. Right. And then even then you can sit there and think, oh, they don't have anything. They never, they don't have me on tape. They don't have me on this.

don't have me on that. They don't have any product that I got. So they got nothing except because that's what I was thinking. Right. But what ends up happening in the feds is, it doesn't matter. It's just what people say. Right. They'll put four people on the stand that say they bought from you and you're done. It's over. You're like they got no money. They got no tapes. They got nothing on me. They happen to have four guys that say I did it. Boom. You're looking at 30 years. Yeah. So I was thinking at that time because I was even like, I was like, boom, I didn't I didn't sell any cop anything. Right. I didn't take any money from any cop. you know i got i got hooked into the sting or whatever and i got arrested but i didn't sell anybody

anything and then the even the other 120 sheets it was i mean it was mine but it was at somebody else's house right you were watching too much law and order you know what i'm saying so i was like man i'm like i'm like i'm good so uh you know i hire a state lawyer you know whatever paid him with like i paying him like 10 grand cash drug money and he even the stupid lawyer even asked me you know his name was uh michael rieger and uh he was like i hope this is not drug money I was like, what the fuck? I was like, dude, I'm fucking like, I'm like, fucking 20. I just gave you 10 grand cash, dude.

And you're like, I hope this is a drug. And I was arrested for the biggest LSD bust in fucking Fairfax County. And that's my part time. I've been saving that on my part time job just to give to you. Yeah. And I just came out. I'm like, boom, here, 10 grand, dude. Like I walked right into his office.

It was in an envelope and he was like, I mean, it was just like so comical these dudes like to save their ass like the shit. They'll say, I'm like, yeah, dude, where do you think it's from, man? man you know like I didn't even lie to the dude I didn't even try to lie I'm just looked at I'm like come on dude are you serious so so I got the state case but like they're investigating the whole time so like as soon as I get the state case dude it's like it's like nobody wants to talk to me because the fucking DEA is going around talking to everybody so it's like so I got until I got you know the federal case it's it's about maybe like a month

and a half dude and it was like crazy because like I don't know who I can talk to me and like also I have like a load of weed at this time I'm trying to fucking move I'm trying to get more money right I had I didn't have that much but I probably about 40 pounds you know what I'm saying so I'm like fuck dude because like it's like every other day it's like because I could tell like I'm calling people what is some dudes owe me money and like dudes are just like dodging me like they don't want to talk to me and because you know back then I I knew anyhow like when somebody gets busted it's like they're hot. Yeah, yeah.

So nobody wants to fuck with them. But see, so it was that. But at the same time, it was the investigation behind the scenes in the DEA. So I don't know who's giving information. Who's not giving information? You know, they're like going to the chicks. They're going on like people's girlfriends. They're going to like my girlfriends.

They're going to fucking everybody. The feds don't fuck around. And they're going to all these little fucking rich kids. And they're threatening, like give information on Seth or you're going to jail for 10 to life. So, you know, like I say, for a long time, I had a big thing when I was first locked up where I was like oh fuck snitches all this but you know whatever I mean what did I expect them to do it was my fault for putting those people in that position you know that's how I look at it now right but uh that's actually how I look at it actually when I hit the halfway house I actually

called like five my co-defendants that all cooperated against me and apologize for putting him in a position where they had to I said because the truth is I was smarter than that and I knew better than to put you in that position and you know the idea that they were going to hold up was insane that's comical it's I mean they got the fuck fucking the fucking mafioso killers they don't even fucking hold it that the whole thing like i'm i'm not saying i know some super thorough dudes that i was in prison with and i know some super thorough dudes that like we know we're in pelican bay and walk like level four yards and like still to this day they're like fucking yeah snitches and fuck them guys and they would never

but i always tell them i'm like dude if you're in the life if you're in the life or you're in prison and you want to hold those values and that attitude cool But, dude, if you're like, you're trying to live a normal life, you know, and like, and there's still some of my buddies that are like, I can, I can walk in the U.S. I'm like, okay, dude, whatever. Is that going to help you out here? I was going to say, don't commit crimes. And, you know, yeah, then you get to do 30 years.

Fuck that. No, I see, I see, like, my whole mindset, you know, life is about change. Life is about evolving. So I see, you know, I put people in bad positions and whatever they did what they were going to do anyhow. So, you know, but, yeah, so I'm having like this month and a half thing. where like in my lawyer he's like oh it's going federal so we got to hire a federal lawyer so then i had to give like five more grand i paid this federal lawyer five only five grand that first at first at first okay so just that was like just the retainer so uh paid him cash

he didn't even ask me if it was drug money he just took it you know he just took it he was like just happy i guess to get it so um yeah so then this fucking shit goes federal right and i'm just man so then i got to go through the whole fucking arrest process get bailed out all that fucking shit again and um and still at this time i'm not really sure

like what i'm really looking at because i'm not really i'm not like up on the mandatory minimums you know what i'm saying i'm not up on the federal sentencing guidelines you don't have any idea like are you thinking three years five years are you what do you hear i mean you're hearing yeah i'm thinking maybe like i'm thinking like maybe three to five years even the fucking federal lawyer i i i hired right he's telling me he's like oh you're a good kid from a good family he's like still you know

he has that 80s mentality right you know like he's thinking like before they changed the laws and like 88 or whenever they went in effect 88 or 89 so he's like oh maybe you might get like eight to 10 years at the most and so but even I was like man fuck that I was like I'm not doing eight to 10 years and um you know so like I said I basically uh I had I had I had had some product. I had money that I was trying to collect. You know, I, I had the weed that I was selling, you know, while all this shit is going on, you know, even though I'm have to be careful who I'm selling it with, you know, I'm trying to fuck with people that, you know, the DEA doesn't know about or that they haven't talked to or whatever. Because, you know, I did fuck

with a lot of different people. So, um, I'm getting my money up. And so then, uh, basically, I come up with this plan, you know, like my escape plan. Because I'm like, I'm like, because basically like my lawyers tell me they're like they're like you you know eventually you know once they started talking to prosecutors you know they're like you're looking at 20 to life i'm like 20 to life i'm like what the fuck like are you serious 20 to life i was i was like flabbergasted and then they're like well you know you might get like uh you could probably get like whatever like four to six years you know if if you uh you know bus bring some of your contacts here you know like they wanted me to, they wanted me to bring some people from San Francisco, like some of my deadhead

friends, you know, they want me to bring it. Yeah, they want you to cooperate. Yeah. Yeah, so they wanted me to set them up. And I was like, man, I don't know about that. So, um, that was like, how they presented my choices. They were like, oh, you can do 20 to life. Yeah. Or you can fucking can bust these motherfuckers cooperate. Yeah. And I was like. Or you can go to trial, lose, and definitely get life. Yeah. But, but, but I was even like, I, I, I was even fucked up, like you want me to cooperate and I'm still going to get time yeah I was like what are you fucking like I mean I thought when people cooperate like they get off like they don't even go to prison so they're like no it's not like that whatever so um I formed this other plan right

I was like man you know because I was on bail I was like man I'm gonna take the fuck off you know what I'm saying I'm like I'm gonna fucking get the fuck out of here fuck these motherfuckers right and like I say I had some money so um you know know I was always a big sports fan right and you know back then it was all newspapers so like we get the Washington Post every day so when you get the Washington Post you know and you go like I would go right to the sports section but the section right before the sports section is the metro section and so I remember like you know over the last couple years of my teenage years I would see like headlines like in the metro section like you know so-and-so this person like commit

suicide at you know great falls you know jumping into the Potomac River so that kind of always stuck in my mind for some reason. So I was thinking, I was like, man, I was like, how can I just like disappear, make Seth Ferranti disappear? So there's like no Seth Fronte. There's like no case. So I came up with this, I devised this plan. I'm like, I'm going to fake my suicide on the banks of the Potomac at Great Falls National Park. I'm going to make it seem like I jump in the river and the area where I was going to jump in where everybody committed suicide. It's known as like class five rapids, you know, because the water is like crazy and there's rocks. So, you know, know they got like professional kayakers go there but you know only like the the super most

craziest professional ones so I was like man I'm gonna stage my suicide you know in this area I'm gonna jump everybody's go-to move yeah I'm like I'm gonna jump in the fucking water so I came up with all this fucking big plan and then too because I had another problem you know because you know what my parents had put their house up for bail right so so then I talked to the lawyers, right? So I told the lawyers, you know, because I was like, I didn't bring it up, but I was like, you know, I started pursuing the cooperation thing. I was like, well, what happens if I say I'm going to cooperate? They're like, well, you plead guilty? And then they're going to release you on a personal reconnaissance bond. They released the lien against the, your parents' house, and it's no

longer the collateral. And I was like, once they said that, I already had this suicide plan, but, you know, I didn't want to, I didn't have enough money to cover, you know, because I don't, it was like, I think they put up 75 grand or something. So I didn't have enough money to cover that for my parents. So I didn't even want to fuck my parents, right? So then the lawyers, you know, when I asked them about the cooperation and they told me about this, I was like, they said PR. I was like, PR bond.

I was like, what the fuck does that mean? Right. And they're like, well, you know, they're going to release you on your own recognizance. I'm like, all I got to do is like, tell them I'm going to plead guilty and I'm going to cooperate. All right. And they were like, yeah. So I was like, okay.

I was like, set it up. Right? So I fucking sign the paperwork. they fucking went to the courthouse played guilty they fucking cut me loose and then they told me like I'm gonna have to do these

fucking debriefings right right but I was already planning I already had everything planned like I was fucking gone yeah you know what I'm saying so I went

and then like all this fucking transpired like from the time I signed the paperwork till when I fled I mean it was only fucking like a couple days right and so I took the fuck off right I fake my suicide

I took off you know I got rid of the rest of the weed I had and I took it off to California and um like for real dude like I thought I mean because I just went I was like on a nine month high like where I was on top of the world and then like everything fucking crashed so then I was like fucked up and then like I came up with this plan and I executed it and then I was I was like on top of the world I was like man I was like I'm that fucking dude like fuck these motherfuckers right like you know I felt like I got my fucking swagger back or whatever because

Like when they, when I got busted and all that shit, dude, my fucking moxie, my swag was just like gone. I was like at the lowest point. But you, you'd also thought that you pulled off the faking the suicide, right? Because didn't you, wasn't there something in the newspaper or something about you committing suicide and, like, so you thought you, you thought it was a lock. Yeah. So, so I go to L.A., a flight of L.A., and I'm actually, I'm staying on Point Magoo military base.

So I know this girl, her dad's like the XO, this girl. named Nancy. So she was like an old girlfriend. So I went out there and I'm staying on the base and, you know, Point Magoo's a little bit up from L.A. But I was having her drive me down to L.A. every day because, you know, back then they had like the big newsstands, you know, like on every corner with like all the newspapers from different places and all the magazines. You know, you don't see that as much today. Sometimes in the big cities, but not really with all the newspapers from the different cities. So I was going to get the Washington Post. Like every couple days i'd go to the washington post so the first time i went and i saw it said uh you know

fair fight fairfax lsd kingpin commit suicide and i fucking saw i was like fuck yeah i got these motherfuckers because i was thinking like boom now seven years like set note set ferrante my parents can have me declared legally dead in seven years right you know what i'm saying and no body's found or whatever they don't know what the fuck is up and my body you know i figure my body was going to float out to the fucking atlantic ocean you know so I keep going back and I'm fucking like I'm on top of the world again

I'm like yeah I'm the fucking smartest motherfucking outlaw I can outsmart the fucking feds these motherfuckers can't fuck with me and I'm like 22 so I'm like fucking you know you know when you're 20

it's all like that false bravado you think you're living in a movie or something yeah dude like I was I was like I was like I was like it you know catch me if you can wasn't even out out then but you know I thought I was catch me if you can you know

but uh you know I just didn't know the name of the title of the movie but I thought I was that dude so I keep going down and I'm reading the papers because I'm like a couple of my code offense are going to trial you know everybody else pleads guilty you know out of everybody like two dudes ended up going to trial everybody else like six other dudes ended up pleading guilty

so I'm reading all this in the papers and then it was like probably like two weeks after I go back down and um like I'm still on my fucking high dude and I get the fucking paper and I open up to the metro section dude and I was just fucking crushed because it said it was like fucking

prosecutors declare Fairfax County LSD Kings pen suicide of hoax and I saw the headline I was like what like all my planning everything dude I was like what the fuck I'm not dead

so I start reading the article right and it's like they said the U.S. Park Rangers you know drag the river for two weeks and they didn't find a body and I was like reading it more and then like it went on to say

like, you know, where, you know, I allegedly went in, you know, there's like a dam, like after that. So, I mean, I was like, fuck, dude. It wouldn't have been washed out to see. It would have been stuck in this one area and they would have found the body. Dude, I like seriously fucked up, man. I fucking staged. I staged my suicide. It was a good two weeks. Yeah. So I staged the suicide on the wrong side of the dam. So that's, I mean. So, look, I thought it was smart as fuck and I mean really in a way you think I mean I did I was real innovative and I came up with this fucking crazy idea and I almost pulled it off just that one little fucking detail man next time next time you know so that's how yeah so that's how that whole shit transpired so

then then they made me for some ungodly reason these fucking and I know why now I learned later at the time I had no fucking clue so I learned later because when I was in prison I did all these Freedom Information Act, you know, on all my case and everything, you know, because I was a, you know, I was a megalomaniac researcher like that. So you might know about stuff like that. Me too. So, uh, so what I pieced together after the fact. So what happened was there was this dude name, uh, Henry Hudson. He was like the assistant prosecutor, like the, you know, the assistant pro. Yeah, he was assistant U.S. attorney. Yeah. Name Henry Hudson. like on my case at the time in the Eastern District of Virginia.

So all of a sudden, right after my case, this dude transfers to the Eastern District U.S. Marshal's Office, and he's the head of the U.S. Marshal's Office. And so I guess, like, you know, he felt like I put a black mark on his record or, you know, like I made them look bad or I outsmarted them. Was he, he was your AUSA? He was your. He wasn't the prosecutor on my case.

case. My prosecuting my case was this chick named Christine. Right. He was like the, he was like the assistant U.S. attorney. So he was like the second highest dude in the office. Yeah. So she was underneath him and your case was underneath his caseload. Yeah. So this dude, he goes from second in charge of the U.S. attorney's office to number one guy in the U.S. Marshals in the Eastern District of Virginia. And this dude makes me top 15 U.S. Marshalsless, I guess out of revenge factor, or he, pissed off or I'm the black mark on his record and he has higher aspirations right you know so um yeah so I mean I had no clue so so for two years like I'm prancing around the fucking US like

eventually I started selling weed and not LSD but I started running weed from Dallas Texas up to St. Louis and I'm just like carrying on you know war on drugs I'm still a drug dealer like you know really in retrospect when I look at it I was really really really stupid I mean I'm trying to fucking be the biggest drug dealer I can as a fugitive at the height of the war on drugs. So, you know, but I mean, retrospect age, you get some clarity. So, you know, at the time, you know, I got blinders on whatever. I thought I was a cool guy. So this dude, so I'm actually U.S.

Marshall's fucking top 15 most wanted for fucking the whole two years, I'm a fugitive. I have no fucking clue because even when I was a fugitive, like I would watch all the shows. I watched like America's Most Wanted. You're like, I'm doing research, dude. I'm like a researcher. That's what I do. You know, like, when I do something, like, I research it, right? So I'm watching America's Most Wanted.

I'm watching fucking, like, unsolved mysteries. I'm watching all that shit because I'm figuring out, like, how do they catch these motherfuckers? And so a lot of times, like, I'm seeing shit like the nightstocker Richard Ramirez. It's taking like three months to match up his prints. Yeah. So, you know, I'm like, fuck, dude. Like, I'm low profile.

I don't have any murders. I'm never even beat nobody up. You know what I'm saying? I'm like, these guys. going to take them forever to match up my prints because I'm you know I feel like I'm not a high priority but you know lo and behold I had no fucking idea that I'm fucking a federal US marshal's top 15 most one of fucking fugitive so uh and and like I say this dude Henry Hudson he he did the paperwork you know because later on when I got caught you know one of the US marshals told me like

he's looking at my jacket you know and he's and he's looking at me and I look like when I got caught I looked like a little college kid, and he's like, he's like, who did you piss off? Right. You know what I'm saying? Because there's like anybody else on the top 15 most wanted list is like violent, has guns, murders, whatever. Yeah, they're dangerous fugitives and you're selling a product you can't even OD on. I'm selling fucking hippie drugs. Right.

So whatever. So, you know, but I came to find out this all later. So, you know, by that whole time, really, when I'm a fugitive, I was selling weed. I was running weed Eventually like in L.A. My money ran out And that girl got sick of me Living in her parents' house

So you know I had to fucking roll out So you know She didn't want to She didn't know I was a fugitive But she knew So after about six months

She was kind of like Dude you got to like The novelties worn off She was like Yeah it was cool seeing you again And having some sex and shit But now you got to bounce motherfucker because there's no

This relationship's not lasting There's no future You're a fucking fugitive fucking drug dealer you know what I'm saying at the height of the war on drugs she's like she saw no future but she's gonna have my kids when I go to prison I don't

know but uh so uh yeah I kind of she told me kick rocks I go to Dallas Texas I hook up with Mexican Eddie you know my fucking brick pot dealer you got fake IDs I got tons of fake ideas I mean that's a whole another story I'll take another half hour to tell about

the fake IDs but I got a whole fucking bunch of fake IDs that I got through researching through books I learned how to do it and um I meet some guys and they're from st. Louis you know and I'm selling drugs you know weed in in Texas at Harrigan's restaurants these other restaurants and one of the guys one time he goes to st. Louis so I'm like can you sell some weed and so I go up I take 20 pounds and like over that next year to 18 months I make like I have like my my second little fucking marijuana empire and um then eventually I get arrested for like a quarter pound of weed with the same guy who took

me up there but it was in his truck so he claims it he actually was selling weed for me but it was my weed you guys got pulled over or something what no we were in the back of a burger king parking lot oh that's right yeah the burger king parking lot it just got robbed like two weeks before I just dropped off like three pounds we were just waiting for the money and smoking a joint cops fall up dumb luck and uh I didn't even know he had the quarter pound on the truck but you know he did the right thing he claimed it he said it was his but They still arrested me and took me and it matched my prints, you know, released me. Then I came back and bailed him out, got his car out of the impound.

You know, I got my money for the three pounds. And, yeah, but then in three days, they match up my fucking prints. So the fucking, the fucking Midwest fucking fugitive task forces looking for me. They go to his house first because they got his real name. He starts driving him around St. Louis to all the people I fucking sell weed to. And then eventually they found some dude that I just fucking loaded up, threatened to give him 10 years to life. him right to my hotel. Boom.

Extradited back to Virginia. Sentenced to 25 years, 304 months. Did you, you didn't, I mean, you just pled guilty to 25 years? I'd already pled.

I had already pled. I pled before I left. Oh, that's right. Yeah, I pled because I pled to the 20 to life and told them I would cooperate. Because you were never going to be there for the sentencing. Because I was going to be dead.

Right, right. But I wasn't dead. My whole plan backfired. So, then when i came they held me to that plea and they fucking and obviously they didn't give me any credit for any cooperation and they enhanced me five years for uh 60 months for um taking off of you know obstetricious of justice and failure to appear right so 25 years yeah did you do a 2255 did you do anything i did everything oh okay you went through the whole process of trying to lost everything yeah

You know, dude, back the end of the 90s, you couldn't get, you couldn't get any play for anything. Only if you went to trial, you could have went to a play. So I would say that

to any of your listeners. Really? I mean, you got two choices when you get busted, man. Either fucking cooperate, fucking fully and fucking

get as little time as you can. If you're not going to do that, go to trial, man. That's, that's only way you're going to retain your rights. So, you know,

like I'm saying, you know, don't try to do anything halfway. Don't try to outsmart the mother, fuckers like I did you're just going to get fucked yeah um 25 years bro what the fuck and then i i heard on the uh on the other podcast where you're talking about the you were talking about um you know being uh the different prisons and uh you know the whole thing and uh you mentioned coleman and and

uh whitey bulger yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah like i was in the medium there yeah at uh colman i used to write whitey bolter yeah yeah you told me you told me that um dude he has the most awful handwriting yeah fucking you can barely read his writing dude it's like he was also like a hundred he was that was like seven you're like a fucking magnifying glass dude i'd send him the rolling stone article about my case that came out in 97 when i was in when i was in fcii beckley and he wrote me a whole fucking letter on the rolling stone my rolling stone article like i still got that i don't know i think i might put it up on ebay one day i was going to say any any letters from from him would be worth something.

Let's see if somebody give me like, I'll start the bidding at 10,000. All right. So we're going to do another podcast about just about what you're doing now because when you went to prison, you start writing and that's, you know, and although I mean, although the true crime story is cool, you know, to me, I mean, that's like, like you're at a spot now in your career where I'd love to be in a few years from now, you know. The whole prison, I mean, it was a lot of time I had to do, but whatever, I got three college degrees I got a master's degree I started writing books and every day in prison my thing was

what can I do today for when I get out so I mean everything I've done it's it was all planned dude I mean I'm very methodical yeah you know how I do stuff I do everything one step at a time you know I research I'm not trying to jump from one to 10 you know I don't mind taking the steps I'm very methodical so prison even though I had to do 21 years I was very methodical in that 21 years and I did everything that I needed to do to put me in the position where I am now. You know, I started writing true crime stories when I was in prison.

I didn't write any fiction stories. Like, I've heard how you started writing it's like some of the gangster guys' stories and some were, what, fiction? Kind of fiction? Started that way? No, everything was pretty much non-fiction. My first book, prison stories, was true, but I wrote it as fiction

because, you know, I didn't want to be like a snitch in prison. Right, and they're always so worried. go, oh, what if I tell you something that I could get, well, then let's not talk about that. It will change the names. But so, yeah, I started doing that. I was the same thing. Like, I've heard your interview before. So it's basically like, look, I'm in prison.

And when I was in prison, I saw all the other guys, they're learning to play an instrument. They're taking horticulture classes or they're playing softball. And it's like you're spending 10 years of your life or 15 years and you're in a amazing handball player, but when you, but you came in with no education. You've only sold drugs. You know, you're an amazing handball player when you get out, but you're, you're in your 50s now. The fuck are you going to do when you get out of prison? None of, and the guys that were taking horticulture are only concerned about taking it because they plan on buying, burning a bunch of houses and growing marijuana. And the guys that are taking the stuff as far

as like, I forget what they called that class where it was basically about how to run a restaurant. So highest failure rate out there, get a restaurant. So what you want to do is you want to put a guy who has no money in a situation where he can open a restaurant and fail. Or real estate. Or real estate or something. It's like you don't have any speed of no way to do this. So my point is, to me, I thought, what can I do in here? And the one, you can't really work, but the one thing they will let you do is they will let you write.

They will let you publish books. They will let you write stories. You can write for magazines. And you can make money that way. You can't run a business, but they can't stop. you from doing that's the one thing they will let you do and there were so many amazing stories i would hear guys tell stories i heard for years i'd listen to stories and i think how is that not a movie how is no one written your story and they can't write their own stories because you don't see

yourself the way you really are no so that's when i came in i wrote my own story and then i started writing other guys stories and you know i hope i figured someday i'll get out of prison i'll have all these stories and I'll try and get them turned into documentaries or movies. IP. I started collecting IP. And so, but you, you know, but you're way ahead of where I am. I just like to be where you're at at some point in the future. That's my, like my goal.

That's like, that's my dream. That's what I laid in bed at night in my bunk and thought, well, if I get out, I could do this, and I get to this and I do it. And I had a whole building block in my head, you know, plan. You got to, well, that's how you do it. You got to manifest it. You got to talk about it. You've got to put it out there.

You've got to make it reality. I'm a firm believer in, you know, like moving forward, positivity and just saying what I'm going to do and then doing it. Right. You know, I'm a firm believer in that. Like, I don't, like even in prison, prison is a very negative place, right? And when I first started running, you know, even the guards, the other prisoners, they'd be like, you know, you can't do that. They'd always told me, like, I can't do this. And like, I would read the policy and I'd be like, man, I can do this.

Yeah. You know, so, and so even out here, I'm like, I wouldn't. not i cannot stand negativity anybody that is like negative or like second guesses me what i'm trying to do like i say sometimes like you know i'm doing these documentaries now you know i got white boy on netflix and you know some people that might be like the pinnacle but to me it's just it's just like another ladder on the rung you know i tell i want to be the quentin the next quentin tarentino i want to do you know scripted you know fiction fictional like drug you know crime movies you know sometimes maybe based on a real event but you know like dude like I want to do like

hundred million dollar budget movies right you know like I'm not fucking around like I'm already looking right now from do this documentary stuff I'm looking to jump to like the three to five million dollar indie flick and then you know then I'm looking to jump to like a 20 million you know 50 60 and then you know I want to do like a fucking Marvel movie right I want to do the purple man I don't know if you know who the purple man is he's a he's this criminal character He's like in a lot of Spider-Man comic books, but he's like, he wears like a gangster suit and he's all purple and he has like these, uh, I don't even know how to say it. It's like, is it called fur, furnomes or something? So it's like he can emit from his body. Ferramones. Ferramones. He can ferment those from his body and make you do what he says. So that's like his superpower. But he's like a villain. I had an ex-girlfriend like that. Yeah. A lot, I think a lot of women are like. that especially on men but uh so but he's like a super villain so i want to do like the purple man movie you know i also want to do uh i want to remake the princess bride right oh nice nice i love the

you guys don't even know the princess bride i want to remake the princess bride with like with with good cg i nice you know like a tokenistic version of the princess bride but keep the humor and the sweetness and then uh another movie i want to remake i want to remake uh you know harder they come you know the the classic or harder they fall the classic jamaican movie okay yeah so it's like from 1971 you know it's about uh you know jimmy cliffs in it so he's about like a up-and-coming reggae you know dance hall guy but like he's involved in crime so i want to remake that just like think how they remade scarface right so i want to remake uh you know that old jamaican movie except you know set it in like you know the hip-hop era you know and have a guy who's like he's like he's

trying to be a rapper, but he's involved in crime and he ends up, you know, going to jail for being a crime. Like a lot of the stories we, you know, heard about in federal prison. But, yeah, my whole thing, man, where I started writing, because I kind of looked at it, I started taking college classes and I was like. When you were in prison. Yeah, yeah, when I was in prison. Which is difficult, by the way. Like, everybody thinks that, oh, yeah, they offer this. Listen, man, you basically, you're doing everything yourself. They might have some person who's supposed to help you, but they're half-assed about it. So it's basically all. on you. And plus, when I first went in, they had the Pell Grants, right? But about 96, they

abolished a Pell Grant. So they didn't even fund the college courses. So my parents paid for all my college courses. I did all my shit correspondence. So I got the A.A. degree from Penn State. I got the BA from Bachelor, or from University of Iowa. And actually, that was one of my best moves when I got on that program because University of Iowa is like famous for this writing program. You know, you got to the writing program, you got to go there. You know, it's like on campus, but a lot of the instructors that I was doing correspondence courses through were the instructors from that famous writing course, you know, doing like extra work for extra money.

Right. And so I had the benefit of these instructors. And I was taking all writing heavy because in there you can go like a business administrative route or you can go like a humanities route. You know, and if you go like a humanities liberal arts, it's like a lot of writing, creative writing, journalism, you know, reading a lot of books and writing papers. And eventually I got my master's degree. I got my master's degree from University of California.

So, but during that whole time, that's how I learned to write, you know, so it's not like I just started putting pin to paper or whatever. I, like, took college courses, you know, and I learned to write. I already was creative, you know, I was kind of creative, you know, my whole life. You know, I used to write poetry, playing bands, all that shit like that. You know, I was like, dungeon master. You know what I'm saying, creating all these worlds and shit. Like, they don't know.

They don't know what that means. But a dungeon master is? Dungeons and Dragons. That was like the, oh, wow. Listen, there's so many things, there's so many things that I'll say to somebody in my age, and I'll always look over at Colby, and Colby's just like he has no clue what I'm talking about. That's the 80s shit. The 80s was a wonderful time.

But pre-internet was, I think it was a better world, really. But, you know, so the whole time I'm getting these degrees, I'm writing. So first I started writing, my first big success was actually writing prison basketball. So, you know, because like in there, dude, there's like these dudes. They're like phenomenal basketball players, dude. And like how you're talking about. Like, they spend all this time. They spend like 10, 15 years just playing basketball.

But, you know, I mean, they can never be professional because when they get out, they're going to be too old. But like in there, dude, like these dudes are phenomenal basketball players. So I started writing about this one guy named Ron Jordan. He was from Harlem. He had like that Rucker Park game, dude. And this dude was built like a linebacker, right? he was maybe like six one like two 40 right but this dude could like slam dunk he had like all the

handles he like embarrassed dudes they they call him ron jordan the abuser because he used to like abuse people he would like do all the stuff like fake somebody out act like he's going to the basket and with the easy lay up but he would pull it back to let the dude guard him again you know because it was just like the the man-on-man like macho shit dude this dude and he could dunk and he could shoot threes this dude was scoring like 60 points a game And everybody used to come out to the gym to see him. So that was like my first big success. I started writing about this dude and the other prison basketball players.

And, yeah, I was writing for this website called Hoopsight, you know, which now they're like on, I don't know, they're like, I think USA Today or something bottom. So they're like this big. But that time, they were just like this little kind of hip hop, you know, hip hop basketball website. And then I started writing for Slam, which is kind of like a hip hop basketball magazine. And then from there, I started doing the more gangster stories. I started writing for Don Deva and Feds, which are like they call like, you know, the street,

the street Bibles. Yeah, they wouldn't even let those in. Like those are like the most popular magazines in prison, man. Guys would get them sent in. They'd have the, they'd have the, alternate covers.

Yeah, new covers. Yeah. Fake covers. Like you get one of those magazines in prison. Like, like dude, the line is like 200 long.

Everybody wants to read it. You know, so I started writing for them. Don Diva, feds. And really, I formed a journalism career in prison. Because that was like the only thing I could do. I was like, what the fuck can I do?

I was like, I can write. You know? So, and then really my biggest break came. This was probably like early 2000s. I just started writing really like around 99. So, you know, at first I was just writing like in the prison. Like I was doing prison sports newsletters. Like that they post on the boards and stuff.

Yeah, yeah. I was doing that. I did that for six years while I was taking the college classes. So then I started doing the Don Deva stuff in the prison basketball. And then there was this editor of Vice named Jesse Pearson. So this was like when Vice was just basically a magazine. They had a website, but they weren't huge like they are today. So this is like early 2000s.

You know, so they're like this kind of low rent GQ. You know, they have this big thing. It's like dues and don'ts where they do like the fashion like dress like this and they make fun of people. They take pictures. So he was a big fan of my work from Don Deva. so he reached out to me you know and um i started writing dude dude they were paying me like dude they were paying me like five hundred dollars a month right to write a column i wrote a column like 1200 words called i'm busted and it was in every magazine for like fucking two or three

years 500 like i was living like a king on 500 a month 500 bucks in prisons a lot of fucking dude i was like everybody thought i was like a millionaire yeah you know what i'm saying and so that was like my first big break because i started writing for that and then uh i kept for i kept writing for vices they kept growing and i was like their prison guy you know i'll do like their prison and then i got more into true crime then i started doing stuff for penthouse i started doing stuff for the fix war on drug stuff and um how the whole white boy thing came about is uh you know i started writing him around 2005 because i started doing my street legend stuff like i had all this material from don divan don diva can only it's a magazine so they could only fit like so much

and i had all this extra material and i like all the dudes they kept coming back to me they're like dude what about this picture or what about this you want to use some of the stuff so eventually you know like they were upset with me because everything was not in the magazine that they gave me you know so eventually i came up with my street legend series i've published uh prison stories 2005 street legends 2008 so at the same time um i reach out to white boy rick because i'm in fci i gilmer and beckley beckley fcii gilmer in west virginia and there's all these Detroit dude, so I'm hearing about this dude, white boy Rick. Hold on. You know who white boy Rick is?

Okay. You guys saw the movie. Yeah, yeah. I haven't seen a bunch of the trailer and stuff. Yeah. All right. So I start writing him because I want to put him in like my street legends book. Yeah. Right. And basically my street legends books are just like all these African American drug lures that are part of, you know, the lyrical lore of hip hop. Right. You know, and gangster rap. I kind of, I just kind of romanticize and glorify it. And I make them into these Billy the kid, you know, Jesse Jim's type figures. because you know I was writing I was writing for my peers in prison and also I was a white guy writing about African-American dudes like in prison like you know that doesn't happen I mean you've been in prison that's not like that's not like something normal you know and and the only reason I even have the juice to do that is because you know I had the long sentence I've been in a little bit and you know the longer year and the more stripes you get yeah you know so by the time I do this you know I'm like in 10 years so you know I got I got a lot of stripes and I played sports I was I was I was a

a sports fanatic. I'm like really athletic. I would be like the only white dude like out there playing ball with all the black dudes. Like like I was like the dude like you know you go to the yard, like you go to the yard at lunch on playing ball. You go to the yard and recall I'm playing ball. You know, I play like three hours straight. I didn't give a fuck. That was like how I did my time. Yeah, I actually sat at a table in the library with five guys that were writing or five black guys that were all writing urban novels. I was only one writing true crime. And I was the white guy at the room or at the table because I was the guy that you know as racist as this is going to sound it was it was basically you don't have Google what you've got as a white guy so they'd say you know I don't understand

how do you say that hey Cox it was always hey Cox hey Cox hey Cox and I'd be like no it's this it's that are you sure yeah I'm sure okay this yeah so I mean I was you know to sit at that table everybody thought I was like a you know like you must be a cool guy to be sitting at the table with all those guys because the white guys and black guys very seldomly mix in You were just Google. Yeah, I was Google. Yeah, I had a purpose. You were like that smart guy from the 80s that Google fucking made obsolete.

Yeah, exactly. In prison, only in prison. Yeah, but in prison, you still need that guy, that guy who knows everything. Out here, I'm semi-smart, but in prison, fucking super genius in prison because the IQ is so low. But anyway. No, that's what I tell people too, right? Because look, like, since I've been out, like, dude, I've been to Cairns, man. I go to Sundance.

And I'm around like, dude, these people. but they went to Harvard and Columbia and do they just speak and I'm like I just want to be around them so I can learn to speak better because they're like so eloquent and they use all these fucking big words and like like I feel like a brute around them right but like in prison I'm like like you said I'm like the super genius in fucking prison and then I get out around all these fucking talented writers and filmmakers and people that went to all these Ivy League schools and come from all this money and I just I feel like a fucking brute dude yeah I'm telling you it's fucking crazy. This is like my, my biggest fucking delimit today, you know, because a lot of people

that are like, oh, no, you're eloquent. You can talk. And I'm like, no, I don't talk like that. I'm a fucking, I talk like a brute. Right. I talk like an educated brute. Yeah. That's how I kind of talk about. Among my friends on the outside, I'm like a, I'm practically a thug around these guys. And to me, it's like, as far as like masculinity. Like I always like, I'm like a four or five on the masculinity. One to one. Oh, yeah. There's some tough dudes in prison. They got tough motherfuckers. Oh, in prison, I'm like a one. Maybe a zero. I might well be wearing a dress when I'm in prison out here I'm a five prison I'm a zero I'm this far from being a fucking punk in prison I mean that's how they look at you

you're a soft white guy you're you're harmless yeah but yeah it's funny how just everything changes out here yeah so so you know so white boy Rick I started writing him right and like I want to tell his story right but I want to like romance romanticize and I want to make it gangster you know I want to glorify because that's what I'm doing in my street light right and that's I'm hearing these all this stuff about him like who is this kid that was running all these, you know, black organized crime in Detroit when he was like 16 or 17. And I kind of identify him with him too, you know, because we were both young white dudes. We both got a lot of time. You know, we were both involved in stuff as a teenager. So, you know,

there's a lot of similarities, you know, so I'm writing him and we start writing. And he starts telling me like this totally opposite story. You know how like he was in a foreman and, you know, the police prostituted him and buried him. And, and I didn't really get it at first because I'm I'm like, man, I don't, I don't, I'm not writing about informants. Like, my, my base is like the other prisoners, you know, now I'm in, like, medium security prisons. I'm like, these dudes ain't got to fucking, if I write some shit, they're going to be like, you're writing about a snitch, you know, or whatever.

So it took me a couple years to kind of get my head around his story and how to write it. And like I say, it took me to get older and it took my writing to evolve. And it probably took me going to a low. Yeah. Where, you know, they don't carry it like the same, you know, because I did 12 years. in the mediums and then i did nine years in the low so it was like this kind of evolution in my writing where you know i went from writing this hardcore death before dishonorship to uh you know more about the injustices of the drug war because i started seeing the bigger picture more

you know as i got older and i started writing more and like i say also going to the low gave me more room to explore this stuff with not being considered this or be considered that so um yeah 2012 i wrote this story about his case for the fix dude and like the shit fucking went viral dude like it was my first experience of having the prison basketball shit was pretty popular but like this shit like fucking went super fucking viral on the fix this is like drug war fucking site right and um just brought a ton attention to me you know and um the whole time i was already thinking you know because i was writing books uh you know from 2005 till i got in 2015 i wrote eight books and um then when i got out

I took two of those books and I divided it up the chapters, you know, and put 12 out, like digital books, you know, to make it like 20, even though it's like from the same material. And then I had a couple more. So I think I got like 24 books out right now. But once I started doing the books, you know, and I was kind of doing the journalism. And I was like, man, really, I want to do movies. I want to do visual stuff, you know, but it was just kind of, you know, learning it. And like when I took my master's degree, I took like a lot of film type courses, you know, really, least reading the books as much as I could in there. And I did have a couple like they would let me send in some DVDs, you know, so I could watch different shit. But really like everything I was

doing, man, was basically for gearing up, you know. So, you know, I even like, dude, I read a whole bunch of books like, like books on like shots, like explains all the different shots like in narratives and stuff like that. And, you know, I just went crazy. So I was like, you know, reading. Because in there, that's all you got time to do is read. You know what I'm saying? So it's like you might as well educate yourself i don't think i don't think i read five books since i've been out in six years but you know um yeah so i kind of hit the ground run and and um you know i did more pieces on white boy rick story for like vice news and vice and some other places so um but still when i first got out though i was just a journalist i was working as a journalist and then i met

the dude sean wreck the director of white boy and he had transition studios he just done this movie a murder in the park and was on showtime and I actually interviewed him for that for that for vice right and he found out about my backstory and we started talking and at first we were going to do like this uh prison expozy like on on how all these sub industries are built around the prisons right you know like like keefy coffee and all the hotels and how it's all kind of interconnected you know with the the dude like the senator brings the prisons there and it's all his friends the businessmen who form all the businesses around the prison so we were looking at something like that and then we were talking and uh I showed them some it was like right when they announced like the white

boy Rick movie with Matthew McConaughey and I had shown him some of my articles I go did you hear about this and he's like yeah I heard they're going to do that movie and I'm like you know I know this dude I'm like check out here's these articles you know I wrote like four or five articles but and he's like what he's like he's from cleveland so he's like yeah I heard about this dude you know he's like our age so he's like I heard about this dude man and uh then he was like man he was like you got access to him and I was like yeah he's like I'm looking to do my next doc man let's do this you know so it was just like lucky I made the right relationship at the right time when he was looking for something you know and there was a hype because of the white boy Rick movie so

it made him interested and um for that he actually he had actually you know told me like he came with a couple different proposals like you know let's do it like this let's do it like this you know trying to lessen you know maybe kind of my role or just kind of you know buy the idea or whatever and I told them you know I knew how to tell a story but I didn't really know how to make a film so I told him I said look man I said

you know I want I want to be by your side you know I want you know whatever if you can give me something at the end whatever but you don't got to pay me nothing now I say I want to you know keep by I want you to mentor me also I asked him that because this dude had cut his teeth

doing like crime stoppers he did like 200 crime stopper shows you for all the networks and he had won like nine regional Emmys in Ohio all his work on these 200 shows so i knew dude was something special i knew he knew what he was doing because when i walked in his office he had nine fucking emmys yeah so uh yeah man so i made the deal with him i said look dude i'm i'm gonna get you everything you need for this film i'm gonna get you all the access i'm gonna get you all the the people you need to make this film and i go i just want you

to uh you know involve me in the process man and and he was very fucking cool about it so like a lot of times we would do the interviews and i would be there sometimes i might watch camera sometimes not but always at the end of the interview when he was done he would give me five minutes in the director's chair so you know actually white boy so i i got a write a writer credit and a producer credit on that and sean rec a emmy winning director trained me how to be a director you know mentored me over that like you know nine to 12 months that we did the shooting you know and then i worked with his editor you know and him as we edited it you know over over like the next nine to 12 months so that was like uh you know so really i mean sean rec i mean he he taught me

a lot and then also like like rick man rick's rick's still my real good friend to this day you know rick there was a lot of interest in rick he had the hollywood movie man rick didn't have to you know give us our blessing or participate in that in that white boy documentary he did that because of our relationship because i told him because i said look dude i said i want to make films i said this dude got the money to make this film and i go first off you know our first goal was to get him out yeah you know and he had got this other guy out from a murder in the park right so that was kind of like his track record but that was like the first thing but i said i told rick i said the second thing is i want to make films motherfucker i said do this

for me because you know he was kind of first he was like oh who's this guy and his his representation where oh we don't know about this guy he only made this one of film who the fuck is he but i told i said look i believe in this dude i've seen his you know team he can do it you know and i go this is my entrance into the film world and what I want to do. And so, like, I will always be indebted, you know, to Rick, especially, you know, for giving me that opportunity by giving his blessing to that. But also, you know, to Sean Rick for teaching me everything that he taught me.

And it's on Netflix right now. Is it playing on Netflix? Yeah, it's on Netflix. So it was on, what was it on before Discovery and then Netflix? No, it was on stars. It was on stars for 18 months. And now Netflix. Yeah, they went on Netflix.

And it was crazy because when it first came out, it first came out probably like, you know, almost three years ago. And when it first came out, I knew it was a good film, right? But this is like pre-pandemic. This is like pre-Black Lives Matters exploding all over the world internationally. You know, this is pre a lot of things. And I think when at first, I thought like everything that's happening now was going to happen when it first came out, man. Because I was like, man, this film is awesome, man.

Sean Rick and his team, you know, I contributed to it. But, you know, I'll give credit where credit is due. I mean, that was Sean Reck and his editor, you know. I was probably like the third most important person on that or maybe the fourth. forth. But, you know, I knew it was a good film. I knew it was powerful. And it did. It helped to get Rick out. You know, not that it got Rick out by itself, but it helped. But I thought everything that's happening now was going to happen then. But I think because the world, the way the world was, you know, people, you know, they didn't believe it or, you know, there was too many rabbit holes or they didn't believe in the level of corruption that we were showing and exposing, you know. And plus, I think everybody was still kind of in the rat race of America, you know, capitalism, trying to make money so um you know so it had like a you know 18 month run on stars and you know it didn't really get a lot of recognition or turn a lot of heads and then you know then like we signed the Netflix deal and um it went on Netflix like right at the end of pandemic you know like last

April and I think it might have something to do with like the Tiger King effect maybe but it man it went on Netflix dude and it just fucking exploded it was like it was brand fucking new man so the first two weeks it was on Netflix. It's like top 10 on Netflix, not top 10 documentaries, like top 10 movies, series, everything for two weeks straight, right? New York Times did like a little fucking write-up on it. And then, you know, like I say, then like they said like in April May, like it had 20 million fucking views. Right. So it's crazy because that just, for me, it put a lot of wind in my sales because I had a bunch of different stuff I wanted to do that I'm working on now, but I didn't really have the money.

Right. But it just kind of blew me up. And I always look at it, like, I look at it like sports. Like, all right, New England Patriots won the Super Bowl. Everybody knows Tom Brady's a man. But all those other free agents on that team are getting big contracts. Yeah. So, like, I was part of something that has been extremely successful, you know, on Netflix and that a ton.

And it's, it's like recognition, the recognition value, dude. Like, you could talk to anybody. You know, most people, they know fucking white boy Rick and they know fucking white boy on Netflix. Right. You know, it gives that recognition, like that name, value where I do like I could just meet somebody on the plane and be like oh yeah I did white boy on Netflix and they'll be like you know they know it yeah yeah so uh yeah so now dude I got a ton of shit man I'm doing a I'm doing a cannabis documentary the cannabis docu series on

Humboldt County called Tangle Roots that I just I just premiered the teaser at the Emerald Cup which is like the World Series of Cannabis just last weekend you know I got on stage and got to talk about I had all the farmers with me um I'm doing an LSD documents docus series that i'm going to premiere the first episode of it in san francisco on bicycle day you know that's like when albert hoffman that's like when albert hoffman first synthesized lSD and took it and discovered lsd they call it bicycle day on april 19th all right so i'm doing it at this uh this thing in san francisco and then um i also got this other docu series i'm working on uh about the mafia and heroin called dopeman and so i'm i'm making arrangements you know i've kind of come up with

this plan because all this stuff i do it's it's it's kind of niche it's kind of true crime um it's it's really hard to get in the film festivals you know i've been going to all the big film festival i've been to kans i've been to sundance you know i've been talking to all these people and um i'm kind of seeing like these target uh market audiences like the emerald cup or like an lsd specific event or like a mafia specific event right is these are almost like like i i think i can use these like my sundance you know because i mean you know maybe i could get a sundance maybe not, but you know, Sundance is only once a year and all my stuff's gonna be finished up

you know, like in the next six to eight months. So I'm looking for ways like, how can I create the hype, you know, in the press and make enough noise, you know, to make the streamers notice. Yeah, I got white boy on Netflix, but it's not like I got a direct cook up to Netflix, you know? So you still got to, you got to make the noise. That's why they have the film festivals

because, you know, they write about these things and that brings the attention of the Amazon's, the Hulus, the Netflix. And really in today's game, It's not about going to the theater. It's not about going to DVD. It's about getting on these streamers, man. That's how you're going to make your money back.

And that's how you're going to keep working. And really, like anything in life with film, it's, you know, it's about you got to keep working, man. Yeah. You know what I'm saying? So you got to give this stuff because, I mean, that shit's expensive. We spend, like, white boy, it costs like $250,000 to make, you know, and like some of these docu-series that I'm doing now, you know, that are like 180, 225 minutes. I mean, these are like, I mean, we're spending like, you know, $500,000, $750,000 to complete these projects.