Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast - The Untold Story Behind War Dogs & Efraim Diveroli | David Packouz

Episode Date: March 29, 2024

The Untold Story Behind War Dogs & Efraim Diveroli | David Packouz

When people ask me, what's real and what was fake in the movie? And what did they change? The first thing they ask is the triangle of them. And the crazy thing about that story is that it's actually true. But what did you do with all that cash at the end of the movie? Man, I wish. I wish that was true. Do you really like the Jonah Hill character?

And I was like, no. No, he's way worse. I was like, Jonah Hill made him seem soft and coming. So I talked to you on the phone while I was in prison. Listen, I got a question for you. You go, did Ephraim ever tell you why he screwed me over? Right. And I went, yeah.

I was like, absolutely, because I asked him. Hey, this is Matt Cox. I'm going to be interviewing David Packow. David is the real guy who is played by Miles Teller in the movie, War Dogs. And I happen to have written a memoir for Ephraim. Devereoli, which was played by Jonah Hill in the movie, War Dogs. And so, David was gracious enough to drive up here from Miami and let me interview him. And I think it's going to be a super dynamic interview.

So check it out. Lived in Israel and Jerusalem until I was eight years old. And then we moved to Miami for my dad's work. He went to massage school because I realized massage therapist makes $75 an hour. And my friends were making $5 an hour. Right. minimum wage jobs and you know the ladies like a guy who's good with his hands so that helps as an extra bonus what were you think I mean were you thinking like when you were in high school

what were you thinking you were going to do you know right you know I mentioned the massage thing but were you thinking oh this is it for me I'm going to be a massage therapist no no no no so I was in college I was I went to massage school in order to support myself while I was in university right I was studying chemistry in university and I also had a few other side business businesses that I was doing. Right. So I first got into. Yeah, one was, or you were already bidding on government contracts or contracts in general to import

stuff? Yeah, I was importing stuff. It wasn't government contracts. It was, so I started, the way it started was, it started when I first, I got my first digital camera, and I realized SD cards were super expensive, and so I kept on looking for a cheaper SD card, and then I realized I needed to buy them in bulk in order to get it real cheap, and And I realized I could sell the rest of them on eBay and make some money. And so I started doing that, importing SD cards from China, doing larger and larger volume,

selling them on eBay, doing pretty well. And then a friend of mine tells me, oh, you know, you seems like you know how to source things internationally and import them. So I have a bedsheet business that I sell bedsheets and towels and other items like patient gowns and things like that to nursing homes. So if you could get me a better price than my distributor, I'll buy from you. So I started looking for manufacturers for that and found better prices than he was getting a lot better prices and started importing that. So I had a few of these businesses. I was doing pretty well. By the time I met up

with Ephraim, I was around halfway done, my chemistry degree doing pretty well with, I wasn't like in the movie struggling to make ends meet. They just needed a better arc. So they, they They wanted it to look like I was much harder down on my luck. I never took delivery of all these bedsheets I got stuck with. It was just brokering. I would just make a deal with the buyer, make a deal with the supplier, get a transferable letter of credit. And that was it. I didn't even have to finance the deal.

It was great. I would just collect a commission. And I was doing this with containers of towels and bed sheets. Yeah, I was telling Colby had mentioned something about the movie. I was like, no, that's not true. Something else. I was like, no, that's not true. You have to understand that you've got what's probably 10 to 20 hours worth of screen time that you have to consolidate into an hour and a half.

Yeah. And like, so you have to make massive cuts. Absolutely. You have to blend certain scenes together. Like there's all kinds of storylines that. Yeah. They have to have a classic arc also. Yeah.

You have to have a sympathetic character. So the poor struggling college student is better than the, hey, I'm actually doing all right. Yeah. Exactly. Yeah. Yeah, it's a better, it's a better arc. It's a better dramatic arc. So yeah, I was doing okay. I mean, I wasn't, I think at that point I had about $100,000 to my name, which is not bad for a college student. For a kid? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Like you're in your 20, early 20s. I was 22. Yeah, I was 22. So I was doing okay. Legally? Yeah, yeah. Yeah, it was completely. I know. That's what I'm saying legally? That's pretty good. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I don't think I could do that. Yeah, 100% legal. That's when I bumped into Ephraim, and it was at a... Wrong place at the wrong time.

Well, you know, life is what it is. I'm pretty happy where I am now, so who knows what it would have been different, how it would have been, if it had gone in a different way. Yeah, so we bumped into each other at a mutual friend's house, a guy that was friends with both of us, that we had grown up together. I first knew Ephraim when we were teenagers. We both went to the same synagogue, and we would both sneak out during prayers. He's four years younger than me, so he was friends with guys who were two years younger than me that I was friends with. And that's how that's how he got into my friend group. But then he got sent away to work for his uncle, BK. Yeah, yeah. I think when he was about 16 or so. And I lost contact with him. Then when he was 18, 19, is when he came back from LA after learning the government contracting business from his uncle. Which was brilliant. Yeah. Like whenever I, whenever I, whenever I,

bash him. I mean, I always point out that there are some amazing things about. Oh, absolutely. I'll be the first person to say it. Wrapped up and a horrible individual. Yes. I don't know if this is the right term, but I've always thought of him as an idiot savant. Right.

Because he's so good at certain things and he's so bad at certain things. And the things he's bad at tends to ruin the things he's good at long term. Like, he can't think long-term. Everything's just about very, everything's transactional. It's always about what's this deal going to do. He never thinks about the long-term relationship. Just burns everybody. Yeah.

So, yeah, I think that's his Achilles heel, so to speak. But, but yeah, I mean, he's an amazing guy. I'll be the first, as much as I dislike him, right? And as much as he screwed me and stole from me. But he's an amazing person. and not many people can make millions of dollars by the time they're 18 years old on their own. And yeah, and so he told me about the business he was doing, and he's like, oh, you're doing like a lot of the things I'm doing, searching for sources overseas,

arranging logistics, doing the financing with the bank, etc. I could use a guy like you. You should come work with me. I could use a guy I could trust. I really want to expand my business. And I asked him, well, how much money have you made? And he goes to me, he's like, I'm going to show you, but only to an end. inspire you, not because I'm bragging, okay? And he, uh, shows me his bank account and he had 1.8

million in cash in the bank. Yeah. And that like, he was 18 years old. And I was like, holy crap. I mean, I was, I thought I was hot shit with my 100K. And, uh, this guy had made in the space of one year, almost two million dollars. And he was 18 years old. I was like, this guy knows something I don't. And, um, definitely want to learn what he knows. Yeah. So that's how I got involved with the infamous Ephraim de Viroli. Yeah. Guys start bidding on stuff right away. Like, did you drop what you were currently doing or you're just kind of doing it like on

the side? Did you go in full time? Like, I'm all in. Right. So the way it happened was at first, the way we got involved, I told them, well, you know, I don't know about, about, you know, your business or something, but, you know, I know you've got a lot of money. And, you know, because he showed me.

And I had been offered. this was right after the first Xbox had been released. And through my contacts for the SD cards, I had been offered a bunch of Xboxes at wholesale prices. And all the stores were out of Xboxes. So I thought, well, that's amazing. I didn't have the money I needed to buy these Xboxes. I said, hey, you want to come in and invest in this?

And we could buy a bunch of Xboxes and flip them. And then he went to work on this deal. And it was amazing to watch him work because he broke. through like five levels of, of intermediaries. He kept on going up the chain of command, like just convincing them. And, you know, a middleman, the only thing he's got is being a middleman. Having a middleman give up his suppliers to you, he just got cut out. It's amazing he was able to do that.

And not just once, but like five times in a row until we got to a, he was just so convincing over the phone. It was really amazing. and we got to the final person who was a it was from an email address of like a major electronics distributor and every time we bumped up through the different intermediaries the amount we had to buy got bigger and bigger and bigger and by the time we got to the like fifth level we had to buy I think it was $20 million worth of Xboxes it was like I think it was $100,000 or $10,000. My math is terrible in my head.

So he only had $2 million. So we needed another $18 million. So we started looking for investors and we got like a hedge fund on the line. And he was like, gentlemen, we can do this deal. And I need $20 million. And I'm 18 short. You guys in? And so they were very interested in because the thing was is it was going to be

a letter of credit, so the bank was going to hold the money in escrow until we inspected all the merchandise. So it was not like fake, at least not that we could figure out. Right. But the hedge fund backed out and decided that it just didn't pass the smell test, they called it. Right. And I guess what they were figuring probably was why there's such a large amount of Xboxes not through the official channels.

wouldn't it just go through Microsoft to Best Buy? Because we had already lined up Best Buy in Walmart. They were willing to buy the Xboxes at retail price, at like the full retail price. They were going to use it as a loss leader to get people into the door. So we were going to double our money on this $20 million deal. And so the hedge fund decided didn't pass the smell test and pulled out. And I think what they thought, and it was probably true, especially at that time, which is like late 2005. The Chinese factories were very infamous.

They still do it to this day, I'm sure, but especially back then. They're infamous for doing production overruns. So if a customer comes to them and says, make me, you know, 5 million Xboxes, they'll make 5.1 million Xboxes. And then they'll sell the extra 100,000 on the gray market or really black market. I mean, they're not allowed to do that. So that's probably where they came. And so if Microsoft found out about it, they could have frozen it in custom.

and there would have gone their $18 million. So that's probably why they turned it down. So that whole thing collapsed. And then after that whole thing collapsed, he says to me, he's like, you know, we almost got really rich right there. Because almost made $20 million right off the bat. But why don't we do the business, my bread and butter? You know, I know government contracting. I can teach you how to do it.

Let's just win bids with the government and we'll make money that way. I'll teach you how the system works. And so he taught me how the system worked. And he was like, you know, I'm already doing arms. So why don't you concentrate on something else to expand the business? So I concentrated on fuel. Won my first contract within like a month and a half of starting to work. Made eight grand.

You know, not bad for a month and a half of work. And then I was working on bigger fuel contracts because you have to, with government contracting, you have to win the smaller contracts in order to win the bigger contracts when you're getting into a new field. So you can't just automatically go for the milk. multimillion dollar ones. So if there's something under $100,000, you don't need the past performance, as they call it, or the proof that you've done this business before. So I was building up AEY's, which was his company's name, AEY's reputation and past performance in the

fuel industry. He was like, oh, I need your help to work on this gun parts contract because he won this, this like specialty gun parts for the special forces, these like rare gun parts. You need to source like 130 different items because the special forces train on these old historical weapons because you don't know where you're going to be in the field and you may need to use the weapons that are available there and sometimes those are old outdated weapons. So the special forces has a collection of these old historical weapons that are hard to source. So he bit it at like a very high margin because he knew the gun industry really well. He's a gun nut. And so he knew that this was going to be a pain in the ass contract to. supply. So he just put a real high number out there, ended up winning, didn't want to spend the

time sourcing on it. So he gave it to me. So I worked that for a while, made some money on that. And then we saw, I worked on a few things that I failed at, a few vehicle contracts, some food contracts, some clothing contracts. In government contracting, you tend to lose like 10 contracts that you bid on before you win one. Right. Unless you specialize in a specific field and you know that field really, really well, and then you could win a higher proportion of contracts because you know what the competitive landscape is. So I was kind of shooting in the dark saying what we could win. Was one of those contracts, the like the SUV thing with like Heinrich or what was it was? Oh, Henry. Henry? Henry was his real name. Yeah, we called him Henry. He called

himself Henry. That's he introduced himself. But yeah. So no, we didn't use him. So he was the the guy played by Bradley Cooper in the movie. He was, he specialized in military gear. So we were just using him whenever there was like, particularly Warsaw Pact military gear. He had really good connections all over Eastern Europe. Right. So.

Well, I'm just, I remember there was one time there was the Indians or something had wanted, or Pakistanis had wanted, or somebody had wanted some special Jeep. Oh, no, I think the Indians could build it for, this much and Devere always said you guys had won the bid but then and Henry had said he could get them for this much and he said and then it fell apart because he couldn't get him for that much right and he was like the whole thing fell apart yes yes I remember that now yeah now that was the audio one you were you know now that you know now that you remember that yes that's right

so yeah that was a big one I put a lot of work into I guess I uh I repressed all that those painful memories well I mean I think yeah you listen like I I whenever I have lost money. Yeah. Like I learn a lot. I learn a lot more when I, when something falls through. Yeah, that's for sure. Yeah.

Then it's like, I'll never do that. If everything goes right, then I don't really learn much. Right. So, but yeah, because I remember sitting with that rule and he just, you know, he told me just, yeah, he was one after another after there were so many contracts that, yeah, that you, both of you were bidding on. Yeah. And he had won the one that was like 50 million to.

To Iraq. Iraq and then they came back and they were like no you had to complete this many tasks you know each individual section right then you have to compete a mini compete right he was like I don't I won the whole thing yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah but uh yeah that's so um so I'm sorry you were but you were you were you were saying I think I kind of interrupted you yeah so yeah I mean and then in the summer of 2006 is when we saw the the solicitation for the Afghan contract. Right.

And we saw that it was like 30 different items, each enormous amounts. Like the thing was at least 20 to 30 times bigger than anything we'd ever seen. And he says to me, he's like, hey, listen, you know, I know that you're working on the fuel stuff and this other stuff, but I really need your help on this. I've got my sort, these five sources. and so don't talk to them I'll get prices from them but I need you to go and scour the internet

and get as many new sources as you can and so we have the best possible price for this contract and we thought it was a really long shot because this was just a huge contract it was massive I mean but we figured we had delivered these items before

so we had the past performance so we technically qualified for this contract so we had to bid on it and so I spent like a good like two months or so. But you're not getting paid. No, I was getting, I was working completely on commission. I was living off my savings.

Yeah, that's. So my hundred K was dwindling. Right. And, um, but you're seeing him during this time, you're seeing task orders getting fulfilled. Yeah. And huge checks are coming in. Yes. Like you're seeing him.

Yeah. Yeah, he's doing well. It's not like it's the pipe dream. Like, no, this is happening. Yeah, yeah. Exactly. I just hadn't won anything big myself. Right.

So he had most of the contracts that he had was delivering on at the time. He had already won before I started working with him. So he was like working on fulfillment and he was using me to get new business. Right. Right. Because he was busy managing all the dumpster fires. He started with the other contracts. So. And that's why he didn't want to work on the Afghan contract on getting new sources. And he says to me, well, you know, because we made a deal. that we split the profits 50-50 for everything I worked on because I would pretty much do all the work until we won the contract. And then he would do like the final negotiations of really hammering people down in price and help and check over my work and submitting it to the government and make sure I wasn't messing up. And he would do the financing and then we would split a 50-50. That was kind of the deal that we had.

And he says to me, well, you know, for this Afghan contract, this is like my bread and butter, you know. So it's not like you're completely bringing in new business because I've got my five guys. So we can't do 50-50, but I'll tell you what, we'll do 2575. And I was like, okay, that's fine. You know, that's fair, you know. I was like, $300 million contract. Yeah, I was like, I'll take 25%.

That's fine. If you end up with a 10%, if you even just made 10% profit, that's a massive amount of money. Exactly, exactly. So, yeah. So I said, fine, no problem. And so I worked my ass off, got all, contacted everyone and their mother and built a huge spreadsheet of all the prices and all the locations and the estimated shipping costs. It really massive spreadsheet of all the different aspects, the packing configuration. So we would be able to calculate logistics and all that stuff.

And we submitted the bid. then we didn't hear from them for like four months like three four months i worked on other contracts um lost most of them and then in january they told us that we actually won the contract uh they first they actually first did a an audit uh where they i think we had three or four audits i forgot yeah yeah whereas this woman came in yes exactly there's a whole yeah comical kind of thing of how he's just like yeah he's like i just never thought we were going to pass this fucking thing it's like i had this yeah he had a he's like my accountant had been had gone to federal prison or something before and right he yeah he loved that he he just loved

that um that's true his accountant yeah i want to jump in i want to say something real quick that that that i don't think anybody not everybody that is going to watch this yeah knows that I actually wrote, I was actually in prison with Devoroli. Right. And I wrote his memoir. Right. You know. So it was once a gun runner.

Right. That's why I like a lot of the stuff like what we're, what you and I are talking about is really, really the story. Right. Right. You know what I'm saying? Right. Right. I don't remember that.

Yeah. That's what they're probably thinking of the truth. But I mean, I sat with DeVroly for, you know, 40 to 80, probably 80 hours or, you know, you know, which he was never once on time, by the way. Oh, yeah. He's never been on time in his life. I remember going one time he was supposed to meet me, waited there for 30 minutes, and I was like, okay, because he always promised he'd be there. Went, found him in the unit, in his housing unit, and he was in the middle of arguing with a Muslim guy who stole apples out of the prison cafeteria. And the Muslim guy, Deverely, he wanted two stamps for two apples, and Devoroli wanted to get. give him two stamps for three apples.

And I walked up and I could hear them arguing, walking in the unit, walk over to his cell and sat there for five minutes going like, like this. And then after about five minutes, like, what the fuck are we doing, bro? And he's like, oh, yeah, I'm sorry, I'm sorry. Yeah, forget it, I don't want him. Yeah, yeah, you're right. And I'm like, you were supposed to meet me 45 minutes again. He's like, oh, I'm sorry, I'm sorry.

And he got up and it was like, yeah. Like, what are you doing? Yeah, yeah. You don't care that you stood me up again. Right, right, right. And you're arguing over a stamp. Yeah. With a guy, by the way, they got like 30 years for hijacking a plane.

Oh, wow. You know what I'm saying? It was just ridiculous. Yeah. Yeah, he loves to win. He loves it. It's all about that. It's all.

My favorite story, very similar to yours, was early on when I first started working with him, I heard him get on the phone with AT&T and argue with them like about like a $5 overage for like 45 minutes. For 45 minutes. And he already had millions of dollars in the bank. And I told him, like, you know, he's like yelling and screaming and demanding to speak to the manager and all this stuff. And I was like, dude, why are you, why do you, it's five bucks. Right. Why do you care? Exactly.

Couldn't you make $1,000 or $2,000 in that time? Yeah, that's what I told him. And he says, it's the principle of the matter. Stop. Nobody fucks me. Yeah. Nobody fucks me. He really only seemed, he really only seemed happy with a deal if he felt he had gotten over on the other person.

It wasn't even about like a win-win situation. We both got something out of it, what we wanted. It was no, I need to get over on you. Yeah. If you walk away happy, I fucked up. Exactly. That was how he worked. I mean, yeah.

I mean, I saw him destroy people. I saw him, like, trick people into things. Yeah. And because he always managed to, like, maneuver it in, like, sneaky ways. Like, he would promise things over the phone and then go back on his word about, like, you know, the amount he was going to buy or the timeline. whatever, you know, like he managed, always managed to maneuver something. And I remember once, him once talking to a guy and the guy was like literally crying on the phone to him. And he was like, dude, if you do this, I don't remember the exact details. But like, he's like, if you do this,

he'd love to talk with his speaker phone on. So like you could hear both ends of the conversation. And he's, I, you know, the guy was like, if you do this, you're going to ruin me. My bank, my business is going to go bankrupt. And, you know, like my kids in the hospital and all the stuff. Like the guy was really sobbing right on the phone and Ephraim's like I wish I could help you man but that's just how it is you know it's not personal his business and he just like hangs up and he's like well I got another 3% on the deal nice just like that yeah yeah for 3% he was willing to just bulldo someone yeah yeah it yeah it was I couldn't believe it yeah so you win the contract yeah flashbacks

so yeah we win the contract and um at first he's like he says to me he's like he's like david you know amazing job doing all this sourcing you know we wouldn't have won it without you you you pulled in you really pulled in those grenades it was actually one of the major moneymakers and the contract was one of my sources from bulgaria company that made grenades and um and we're you know we're going to make so much money off this contract i want you to like I want you to run the entire contract. I want you to manage the whole thing. That's what he tells me.

And I said to him, I'm like, I mean, you're not going to help me manage it. I mean, you're the expert here, right? And he's like, no, no, no, I'm going after other business because, you know, we're really rocking and rolling now. You know, this is just the beginning. And I said, maybe we should concentrate on the $300 million deal we just want. Right, right. And, yeah. I was going to say, and just for the sake of clarity,

that deal, it's not like, hey, we have to get the entire $300 million before we get paid. They send task orders where they say, right now we need, you know, whatever, 500,000 AK-47 rounds and, you know, 1,500, whatever, M4 grenades and this. So we have a task order, and that task order is worth $6 million. And then you fulfill that. And as soon as that's done, they pay it. And then the next one is this one's for $15.2 million. So, and sometimes it's two and three task orders. So it's not like you're waiting three years to fulfill it to get the money.

No, no. Millions of dollars is coming in. Yeah, exactly. So, yeah. So it's not like, hey, you take this and if he ends up pulling it off, great. If not, that's on him. No, no. These are deals that are coming in.

This isn't going to bank the company. I've got three years worth of fucking deals here. Yeah, exactly. And it was 20 times bigger than anything he'd ever won in his entire business history. So I said, you know, we should concentrate on this enormous cash cow we just won. And he said, well, I'm just, I'm going after more business. You handle this yourself. And I said, okay, I mean, look, if you insist, I think it's the wrong move, but if you insist, I'll do it.

And so, you could, he could lose, if you didn't fulfill those orders. Right. And you fell short, then he could lose his standing and not be able to bid on anything anymore. Yeah, yeah. Or get suspended. or, you know, whatever. Yeah. And, I mean, and he's financing it, so his money's on the line.

Right. Not just his money on the line, but also his investor's money on the line. Ralph Merrill's one. Poor Ralph, bro. Yeah, poor Ralph. Listen, I, when he's, he tried so hard to explain to me how he didn't fuck Ralph. Yeah. He tried desperately.

I'm sure he did. It just, you know, and it was just like, like, no matter how many times, you know. And I always loved the, when I would be like, yeah, bro, it's, you owe the guy this much money. Yeah. You know, he was like, you don't understand. I'm thinking, no, I think the problem is I do understand. Right. So.

Yeah. Poor Ralph. I felt so bad for Ralph. I really did. I love the, by the way, I love the, I love the scene in the movie. It's funny that in the movie, like, you guys go to like the Pentagon, like, you know. Right. No, no.

It was Rock Island, yeah. Did you go with him? I didn't go. He went with Ralph, actually. Oh, that's right. Yeah, because he wanted someone older there. Older, right. Yeah.

Yeah. He didn't, because he looked so young so he didn't want another young guy with him. Yeah. Yeah, so he had, but I can see that. That makes sense. Yeah, so he went with Ralph. He convinced them to give them the contract. They sent their auditors down to the office after a big scramble to create a whole bunch of fake accounting, you know, we passed the audit.

Gave them, one of the things they had to have a certain amount of money, they gave, they gave the auditors an appraisal. Yeah. That had an appraised value of like, whatever, like $20 million. dollar to Ralph had bought it for like 1.5 million and it would be worth 20 if you could get the zoning right it didn't have the zoning but the auditor just saw the property's worth like didn't really I guess go through it well enough to realize like hey this is kind of an a subject to rezoning which Ralph had been turned down twice for so it wasn't getting the zoning yeah but it said it was worth 20 million yeah so they took

that they or whatever i don't know if it's 20 it might have been five no it was about those about that it was about i think 1820 million dollars yeah i think so yeah i mean it's just amazing what they got by the government auditors yeah another amazing thing in in the in the during the financial audit where they wanted to see that or during the past performance audit one of the documents that fm submitted was a um a permit to import i think it was 20 million AK 47 rounds into the Right. He got that import license approved, but then the deal fell through. So it never actually happened, but he still had that copy of the document of that import permit approved.

So he used that as proof to show that he had imported 20 million rounds into the United States. But it never happened. Yeah. So, yeah. I'm not going to sit here and listen to you say that he did something underhanded. Like absolutely. Oh, well, you've experienced it yourself, so... Yeah, everybody's like, guys were like, you know,

it was he really like the Jonah Hill character? And I was like, no. No, he's way worse. I was like, Jonah Hill made him seem soft and common. Yes, absolutely. You're like, no, I'm like, yes. Yeah, yeah. Ten times worse.

Yeah, much worse, yeah. But he, you know, to his... There were times, but honestly, I just fucking laughed out. Yeah, he's very charming. He could be funny and say stuff that was just... He's very charming and funny. He is very funny. money. Yeah. That's one of his talents. He can, you know, right up to the plate where he

knifes you right in the back. He's slapping you on the back until he knifes you in the back. And that's how, that's how he is. He's very good at it. He's very good at it. So you get the contract. You're starting to put in the, the, or the task orders are coming in. Yeah. So the task orders, so we first get a $600,000 task order. Right. And we weren't, we still couldn't believe that, that they had awarded us this contract. We thought that they were giving this this like $600,000 task order as a test, but the task order wasn't big enough for us to fill an entire aircraft load. So we couldn't really deliver on that profitably. We would lose money if we tried to deliver on that. So we were freaking out. We were trying

to arrange all this other alternate transportation. Then like a week and a half later we got a $50 million task order and we're like, okay, they are actually serious about this. They're giving, they're actually going to award this huge contract to us. And so we're scrambling. Ephraim's, of course, renegotiating with everybody, as he does. And one of his classic strategies was to take competitors' quotes and change the prices on them and then send it to other people and say, look, I got a better price from this guy, so you've got to beat him. And he would do that with everyone and see how low he could, like, knock him down.

and I was going to say there was another one he had told me about it was some he had I forget what it was he got like he bid on like 2,000 helmets or something yeah and he got the price based on 10,000 helmets and then he that's classic yeah

so he's got the manufacturer thinking I'm going to order 10,000 and they're like okay okay fine this is the best we can do and he was amazing price and then he comes back and he says okay The first order they're asking for is $2,000. They're going to be asking for $2,000 every month or every two weeks. So give me the first $2,000. He gets the first $2,000, pays them.

And then when they call them up and say, hey, we're ready to shift the next $2,000, he's like, man, they canceled the contract. They were unhappy with your product or they were unhappy with, like, he blames them or he says, you know, it's the government. I don't know what happened. And they're like, we gave you a price based on $10,000. He's like, what do you want me to do? I didn't cancel it. And what do you really do? Yeah.

You still got the product. Yeah. So that was a standard procedure for him. He would inflate the prices to inflate the quantities to get lower prices, and then he would structure the deal in a way that he was able to weasel away his way out of further orders that he promised them. Or was the other one was this was really underhanded. God, what he used to do? It was equivalent product.

Yes. Like he did know the contract. Like, if you could provide an equivalent product, so he's bidding on, you know, Knight's sniper rifles, which are $4,500 a piece. He then says, I can get them for you for $3,500 a piece. And then they're like, oh, like, that's cheaper than Knight can get them. Like, we don't even know how you're doing this, but we'll take it. He wins the bid. So now he's going to give you 10,000 of them.

You know, the government gets 10,000. But then he comes back and he says, listen, Knight can't fulfill the order by the time you want, either you're going. you guys need to give us more time, or we can give you, the contract says we can give you an equivalent product. We've got like South Korean Panther rifles that are $1,500 and nowhere near as good of a rifle, but they meet all the same specs. And then he argues with Panther to get them down to like $1,100. And then he provides all those and he makes a massive amount of money. But it's like at some point, you know, And I remember when I said, yeah, but bro, like they wanted this, they expect the night.

And he started laughing. And he goes, oh, I have no doubt that they would have been more happy with the knights. He started laughing. And he started laughing just as that guttural. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It was like, and he's like, bro, I fucking made, you know, I made $400,000 on that deal. Yeah. And it was at some point somebody is going to, you're going to hit somebody twice.

Right. And then his whole thing was like, the government's so mad. We're providing so many different places. Like, it's not going to happen. Yeah. And it's like, yeah. So go ahead. His reputation would eventually get around, right?

Yeah, yeah. Yeah, that was, he would brag about that. He did that exact substitution, I remember, with the M249 machine guns. He substituted for the K3 Korean machine guns. Oh, okay. Yeah, to the State Department. I think it was in Columbia. He made like a million dollars or something on that deal.

something insane. Yeah. It was... For a million dollars, I probably... Yeah. You know. Yeah.

One time. Well, the thing is, is that he... He... As far as I can tell what he did was legal. Yeah, no. He was insisting.

I was like, that's not... I said, that feels like a bait... It's sneaky. Well, it's a bait and switch. It is a bait and switch. It feels like a bait and switch. He's like, no, no. And he would get, like, a child, you know?

Right, right, right. I mean, in reality, it's a bait and... date and switch, but legally, unless they can prove, unless they can prove that prior intent. And he was pretty sloppy. I wouldn't be surprised if he left a trail of prior intent. So, yeah. Yeah, one thing he would do, they actually showed this thing in the movie.

This really goes all the way, I believe, to the dark side. Maybe. he would pretend to be a contracting officer and he would call up his competitors and say oh you know there's a glitch in our system I need to enter the numbers by hand can you just give me that price that you bid on this contract

and he would get his competitors to give him the price that they bid over the phone and so he could undercut them and the thing that really blew my mind is that he used his cell phone to make these calls and he wouldn't like you know, Star 67 or whatever it was. He's not using a socket server to say it's from the U.S. military or anything.

Exactly. You can easily see what number called from, and it's like associated with him online. Yeah. He just didn't cover his tracks at all. So it always shocked me that he got away with it. But yeah, there's so many things, so many things that they could have gotten him on, that it actually surprised me at how few charges they ended up bringing against him once they went through all his emails.

and everything. Yeah. Yeah. So at what point, like once you've, once you guys have won, you know, the contract. Yeah. And you know, I mean, I know the movie focuses on the AK-47s. Yeah. Rounds, the 7.62 rounds.

That there was an issue getting the rounds, right? Like, it was, you know, cheap enough. I know that he explained to me that fuel had gone up. Yes, that's right. He didn't have a huge margin. Right. And so you guys were sourcing them all over the place. Right.

And I'm unclear. I mean, I'd have to break out the book or not. But did you go to Albania? Did you go? No. So I didn't go to Albania. We sent, we sent Alex. Yeah, we sent Alex Padritsky to Albania.

So what happened was we found, so we were sourcing things from all over Eastern Europe. The AK-47 rounds were coming out of Albania. They were from a deal that Henry. had set up for us. Right. And we realized at the time, this was in early 2007, there was a huge spike in oil prices. And because we were air shipping everything to Afghanistan, we, the air freight had gone up so much that we were underwater on that aspect of the contract. We were going to lose money on this, on these shipments. And so I, I had the idea, I'm told that from them, you know, these shit, these, these, these, these, these, these, these, these, these, they're packed in like

heavy wooden crates. the ammo. And they're inside these sardine cans, which are metal sealed canisters, and those are inside these thick wooden crates. And I told him, you know, if we remove the wooden crates, we can probably save a bunch of weight, and we'll save a bunch of money on air freight. And he was like, oh, that's a great idea. We have to find out how much those crates weigh. And he's like, but we can't really trust the Albanians to give us numbers. We need a guy on the ground. And he says to me, he's like, I need you here in Miami. You're taking care of the government stuff. You know, I need you in the office managing the contract because I'm still going to go after these other contracts.

And so we need to get someone to go over there. At the time, Alex is one of my best friends, and we had grown up together. It was actually at his house that Ephraim and I bumped into each other, which started the whole thing. And so Alex had done a stint in the French military. He has French citizenship. And he was looking for a job, and he was looking for experience. And so I suggested, why don't we send Alex? He has some military experience.

He speaks three languages, not Albanian, but he knows his way around. So we sent Alex to Albania, and like the day after he gets to Albania, he calls me up, and he's like, bro, you know that all the ammo here is Chinese, right? And I said, what are you talking about here in Albania? And he's like, no, no, there's Chinese markings on all the crates. And he sends me pictures by email, right? Admissible evidence. And I tell Ephraim and Ephraim's like, holy shit, this is terrible because our contract

specifically said no Chinese ammunition could be delivered either directly or indirectly. That was the phrase in our contract. Right. And that was put in there, we assume, in reference to the. embargo, which was placed on China in 1989 due the Tiananmen Square. But the ammo had been given to Albania by the Chinese in the 70s. So we figured, well, it probably doesn't violate the terms of the embargo because you can buy Chinese AK-47s in the United States legally as long as it was imported before 1989, because it was imported while it was legal, so it remains legal.

Hadn't he, or hadn't you guys already shipped some of it? So the, so I think the first aircraft load we shipped was actually Albanian. It was Albanian ammo, and then, but there wasn't apparently, according to the Albanians, not that much of it. Right. Most of their ammo was Chinese. Right. So the next thing that they were going to ship, they wanted to ship the Chinese ammo.

and Ephraim was like, oh, you know, maybe I can get a waiver from the State Department, and he emails the State Department, and they say, no, you can't do anything, you can't ship this stuff. Oh, I think that what he actually asked was, is there a, like a waiver in the law? I forgot his exact terminology he used, is where if the ammo has been in a third country for more than five years, that would be allowable under the embargo. And they said there's no such provision in the law, right? He didn't want to ask something too specific because he didn't want to tip them off.

Alex told me later that he had met with a State Department official in Albania, and the U.S. State Department official told him, oh, yeah, that ammo is all originally from China. It's a good thing that you guys are finding a good use for it. Right, right. He was totally on board. He was totally, he didn't bat an eyelash.

Yeah, I wrote that scene in the book. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Because, you know, I, like, listen, I read pretty much every single piece of discovery. Yeah. He had, like, 12 boxes underneath his bed and multiple. Yeah. So I read all of the, you know, all of the interviews, and they interviewed that guy. Yeah.

So they knew. Kind of, you know what I'm saying? It was very spook. He was very, he was like, he seemed like he was, see, I know state department, but it's, it tells CIA kind of. Right, right, right. Yeah. I ran contra style.

Yeah, yeah. He never should ask. Like, if he just not asked him, kept shipping it. Yeah. And then they said, hey, he said, oh, no, no, it's okay this. Well, that doesn't work. Oh, my bad. Right.

Like, he could have, you know, then they'd be a stop doing it. Right. But, yeah. Right. But instead, he decided that what we're going to do is we're going to repackage the ammo. Right. And hide the fact that it's Chinese. Right.

And so he had Alex find. a box manufacturer, a cardboard box manufacturer in Toronto, in Albania, and asked him to Trubishka, I think is, Costa Trubishka, I think is the Albanian pronunciation. Yeah, I was educated in this here. Yeah. I didn't go to a press store. I mean, it's, I only know because I heard it from people who, you know, from Alex, so who actually talked to him. But, so, yeah, so Costa owned a box factory, a cardboard box factory.

And because we were going to need a whole bunch of cardboard boxes in order to do this repackaging. And so he asked him for a quote on the labor. And Costa said, I could do the whole thing for about $100,000. And we were going to save about $3 million worth of transportation costs on this by doing this repackaging. So we were obviously in. It's a no-brainer. Just from the weight alone, we were going to repackage it regardless. But because of the Chinese issue, we had to make sure to remove the metal tins and the documentation that was inside the tins.

Yeah, yeah, exactly. And there was an email that went that the government, of course, used later, where it said, make sure that all the Chinese documentation is removed. Not that we're doing anything wrong. Exactly. Yeah. And so Costa starts to repackage the ammo, and we start shipping into Kabul, and everything's going great. Oh, and before we shipped it, Ephraim had me, right, the receiving officer in Kabul, asking him if it was okay if we were delivered in this new configuration.

Right. And the reason we gave was, well, we want to make sure to inspect the ammo, to make sure it's all high quality. and therefore we have to take it out of the tins in order to inspect it and is it okay with these are really strong double-walled corrugated cardboard and you know et cetera so it'll be fine and and also wrapped in plastic to prevent against corrosion and the receiving officer said yeah sure no problem great idea you know that that configuration is fine so we got permission from the government in order to deliver in this in the in the new cardboard box configuration we started shipping

into Kabul, started shipping like three aircraft loads a week, plus the grenade shipments, which started to go once a week. And so everything's starting to go smooth. The money is rolling. And everything's starting to go well. And then I stopped coming into the office as much because I don't have to work 18-hour days anymore. And I'm just like managing the contract, as I should be doing and then one day effron comes into my office after everyone else had left they're around like 15 employees at this point and uh he goes to me he's like you know some guys around the office have been saying that you're not really pulling your weight around here and i said what do you mean what are you talking about now the contracts going well and he's like yeah but you know you're not

helping on the on the iraq contracts and i said but i'm not part of the iraq contracts so why should help on that. Right. And he's like, well, you know, if those contracts fail, the company can go down and that takes your Afghan contract with it. So you have to help make sure the company survives. And I said, so you want to give me a piece of the company? Because I'm only getting a piece on what I work on. Right. And he's like, oh, don't be ridiculous. But he's like, well, you know, I'll tell you what. I'll tell you what. I'm only going to make you this offer because you're my best friend, bro. I would never even consider making this to anyone except for you, but I'll tell you what. I'll give you a 100k salary as a vice president of AIY and you get 1% of the company. And I said to him, well, you know,

the Afghan contract is going to make us at least 90% of the money for the next two years. Right. And I'm supposed to get 25% of that. So I think I'll stick with our original agreement instead of going from 25% to 1%. And he's like, well, you know, take it or leave it. And I said, go fuck yourself. I'll see you in court. And I left and that was the last day I worked at AEY. Well, he basically was saying you take it or get out.

Yeah, yeah. That's what he was saying, is take it or leave it. Okay. He wasn't, he was like, take 1% or kick rocks. Or you get zero. That's what he said. So I said, well, I'll see you in court. And so I quit.

And that was a really, really hard. Because I'd been living on my savings. Yeah. And my savings were dwindling very rapidly. And all the money that I had made with contracts prior to this, he insisted on rolling into the next contract because the way what he said, he's like, hey, listen, you know, it's not fair. I'm financing our contracts.

If you make money, you should at least finance what you're able to finance, right? because, you know, I'm getting 25%. That's where your 75% is because you're financing the contract. Right. So I, you know, but he's so, he's like, he can't stand it. He doesn't want to give anybody a dollar, bro. Not anything. Even it doesn't matter if you've earned $5, you don't want to give you one.

Yeah, exactly. Yeah, he doesn't want to give you anything. So, so, and he, of course, he kept on insisting, kept on insisting, I'm like, you know what, fine, fine, fine. And he just wore me down. And I'm like, fine, I'll take it. I'll still make millions of dollars, so I thought. And until eventually, so he kept enrolling all the money that I had won previously into the new contract.

So I was still living off my original savings, which were greatly decreased because I've been working for a year and a half on this primarily. And so after I quit, I was like, I went from like, oh, I think I'm going to be making millions in the next few years to holy sure. shit, I'm about to go bankrupt, I'm about to go broke. At this time, I had, my daughter was six months at this point. And so it wasn't just me. I had to like support a kid. Right. And I went from like going, I'm about to be a multi-millionaire to I'm about to go broke. Right. And I just, it was a really, really hard time in my life. I was like, that's gut wrenchy. It was, it was really, I was like super depressed for like a good two weeks. I just couldn't get out of it. My friends told me that they'd never seen me in a worse condition than that.

Kept on negotiating with DeVaroli. He, of course, kept on hammering me down. And eventually we agreed to a few hundred K, which was a fraction of what he owed me, like 10% at most of what he owed me. But I just wanted enough money to survive so I could get into something else. And I was like, you know what, I'll put all, yes, I'm not going to make millions. At least I'll be able to go from here. I won't go bankrupt. I'll still be able to support my kid.

I'll be able to use a few hundred K to do well and go into something else. And I figured, I know government contracting. Why don't I start my own company? I have all these contacts. I know how the whole system works. Isn't the problem you did this was because you guys were buddies, it was just an agreement. You didn't have it like in the movie. Yeah.

Tears up the contract. So there actually was. That's actually more true than you would think. okay um because we we at first everything was verbal but he kept on trying to renegotiate the contract so when there was finally i was like you know what okay fine we'll accept you know this new rene is like the third time he tried to renegotiate it right i was like i'll accept this renegotiation but we're putting this in writing and it's not changing right and no more net renegotiations so we had a handwritten contract right that we both signed very specific about what he owed me and uh and

I tried to scan it in my scanner at home. My scanner was broken. I put it on my table. And I meant to, I was planning on getting my scanner fixed so I could like email it to myself to be able to keep a copy. And then like two days later, it disappeared shortly before he walked into my office to tell me that he was screwing me. So, yeah.

And he was the only guy who was coming over my apartment. I mean, there was like nobody else who could have taken it. So we lived in the same building. So, yeah, I mean, I can't imagine anything else having happened to it. So I think he did actually take the contract. So I think he knew. He knew that I didn't have a written contract. But verbal contract is still enforceable under law if you could prove it.

And I was obviously working on this contract and not getting paid a salary. So I wasn't working for zero. Right. So you have an argument. I have an argument. He owed me something. The question was what? and so we kind of went back and forth

and eventually he knocked me all the way down to a few hundred K I was like you know what fuck it I want this guy out of my life I'm moving on we were about to sign the agreement and then I get a call the day we were going to sign the agreement I get a call from a secretary at the office who says hey I just want you to know but the feds just raided the office

and I was like what the feds oh my god we're so fucked and I'm like which feds and she's like I don't know they just told us to step to step away from our computers

and they're boxing up all the files and they told us all to leave and so I call up Alex who's my best friend and I'm like hey you know you thought you should know this is what's happened

this is like a month and a half after I quit and I tell Alex in Albania because he kept on working for Ephraima on a salary he wasn't getting like a cut or anything he was just getting a salary I told Alex, I'm like, hey, the Fed's just raided the office, and he's like, okay, let me call the office and see what's going on.

So he calls up the office, and he, Danny Doudnick answers the phone who, he's the guy that Ephraim replaced me with after I quit. Right. And Danny answers the phone and Alex says, hey, you know, I've got this aircraft coming in later today. I need these documents to be able to get the export permit. And he knew that, because I told him, like, they told everyone to leave the office. Yeah. So he wanted to see what would happen. So he hears Danny cover, like, cover the mouthpiece of the phone, and he goes, he hears

Danny whisper, hey, Ephraim, it's Alex. He needs these documents. What should I tell him? And he hears Ephraim whisper, oh, tell him, tell him there was a bomb threat. Yeah, yeah, there's a bomb threat. So we all had to leave, and we can't get the documents now, but we'll get back, get it to him later, okay? And so Danny gets back there.

There was a bomb threat, and we have to. get these documents to you later and Alex is thinking why is he lying to me yeah right why is he trying to throw me under the bus is he going to blame me for everything like oh I had no idea Alex was the guy on the ground and he was doing everything so but this point at this point do you think it's as a result of the Chinese ammunition that's what I thought okay that's what I thought but it was actually a competitor had put in a complaint yeah yeah we found out later yeah yeah way later yeah that Ephraim was selling I think it was Chinese AK-47 Chinese K-47 that had been made in China, but stamped in Hungary and then re-packaged and sold

which is a complete bullshit. Yeah. But, I mean, it's a cutthroat business. It is. Yeah. You know, I'm sure in Eastern Europe, they're blowing each other up. Oh, yeah. Over there, it's a real cutthroat business.

But, yeah, one of his competitors bad-mouthed him to the feds and they started an investigation. And I think that he had let one of his licenses lap. with the, I think it was the State Department because he didn't think he needed it and they used that as well as some sort of a cause to raid his office. Right.

So I think they had like a more than one reason to raid his office. Right. But I don't think it was the Chinese ammo, not at first. And so they raid his office and I figure out we're fucked because I call up a defense attorney and I tell him the whole thing. And I say, what's the situation here?

And he's like, first thing you got to do is go through your emails and your text messages and do search for key terms like Chinese ammunition and repack and stuff like this. Whatever you think you did wrong, look to see what evidence there is.

And so I looked, and there was a lot. Right. I mean, unfortunately. At first, we were pretty good at keeping it nothing written. And Ephraim said, he's like, guys, we got to only talk about this over the phone. But then he started writing in emails because we were all on different time zones

and there were like harsh deadlines and we were working 18 hour days and people were losing sleep. And then he started writing about it. And so we started writing about it. And eventually it was just like, fuck it. It's all the cat's already out of the bag. So there was all these, there was a lot of written evidence in the emails about what the entire thing. I mean, yeah, the repackaging. The whole repackaging operation. And so. So my lawyer told me is like, hey, you know, you either can, you could fight them or you could cooperate. Those are your two options, right? If you fight them, you need a lot of money, and you better be innocent.

Yeah, yeah. So if you think you're guilty. Yeah, yeah. Your best bet is to go in for you. You really don't have a choice here because they already, they probably only rated the office because they already have access to all the emails. They already have all the seven. So it's not like you're going to be able to, you know, hide this. They're going to figure it out.

They're not. And he's like, and don't delete anything. Right. Don't delete anything. Because if you delete it, they're going to find that you deleted it. And then they're going to get you on additional charges on that. And your stuff's already on their stuff. Exactly.

Exactly. It's too late. Yeah. So Alex and I, of course, agree to cooperate. And we get interviewed by the agents. And of course, they don't tell you anything at first. But at the end of the interview, and they're like, you know, you tell us everything. if we think that you're withholding even one tiny bit of information, you get zero, right?

You get zero for cooperating. So you better tell us everything. You better tell us everything. And they give this whole, like, psychological game on you. And so I told him everything I knew, of course. I had no loyalty to Ephraim who had just screwed me out of all the money I'd been working for for the last two years. And he wasn't going to pay my legal bills. And honestly, probably just got you added to an indictment.

Yeah, exactly. I'm saying? Yeah. It's like every, the only person getting rich in this situation. Yeah. Is Ephraim. Yeah. And he's having me participate or you guys participate in a fraud. Yeah. You know, a conspiracy to commit fraud against the United States. Right. And now I'm added to an indictment. So I don't even have the benefit of saying, listen, at least I was balling. At least I made three million dollars. Right. You know what I'm saying? No, no, I did make a couple million, but Ephraim kept that, kept rolling it into the next thing. Exactly. Like he's, it's, yeah, it's a constant scam. Yeah. Yeah, you had no benefit out of that. Yeah, I got no benefit. And I couldn't,

I didn't even have enough money to hire a lawyer. So it wasn't like, I couldn't, I couldn't, I couldn't even afford to defend myself. Yeah. Even if I wanted to, even if I thought I had a good chance, which I didn't, considering all the emails. And, um, so after the interest, review the agent goes to me. He's like, you know, um, we actually knew about the Chinese ammo because one of the things we found on his desk when we raided the office was a handwritten to-do list and one of the items was repackaged Chinese ammo. Right. Yeah. So he's like, so yeah, you know, we knew about, he's like, we didn't know everything, but we would have found it. Yeah, yeah, they would have found it. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

But it's funny because what they originally raided the office for, that wasn't even true. Like the repackaging, the AK-47s, that's not even true. So that falls apart, but they're still going to go through that, you know, just from seeing that note, they're going to then go, you know what, let's go ahead and do some keyword searches here. Keyword searches, and then they find all those emails with all the pictures and everything. So, yeah. So they told us, they told Alex and I, you know, you guys. you guys didn't benefit financially at all, right?

I mean, Alex got a salary, but that was it. But I didn't get a penny. It wasn't even. I think he was there for like four months, something like that. So I didn't get a penny out of it. And it's like we're really, Ephraim is the real target of the investigation. So we're not even, we're not planning to charge you guys at all.

That's what they told us. We're not going to charge you because you guys cooperated. We're not going to charge you. And so we're like, great. It goes, we can't afford to defend ourselves, so please don't charge us. And then we hear nothing for six months. Six months later, we get, the New York Times publishes a front page article about us, and my mugshot and Ephraim's mugshot are on the front page of the New York Times.

Did they, New York Times ever try and call you, contact you? So they did. So I knew that they were investigating because of, few weeks before the art uh like maybe a week and a half before the article came out i got a call from uh the reporter c j shivers and he was like uh we've been getting reports that uh some of the ammunition that a y is delivering is chinese manufactured you have a comment on this and i just hung up on him and i call my lawyer and i'm like i just got this call from the new york times and he's like don't talk to anybody don't talk to any journalist right now just ignore their phone calls

uh because if you anything you say the government will be pissed right right you don't want to, you know, and the New York Times is going to twist it. Exactly. You saw how they twisted the article anyway. Yeah. So, I noticed. Yeah. So they, so I'll give you a little story about how they got our mug shots. So the mug shots they got on the front page of the New York Times, we look terrible. It was from Ephraim's 21st birthday, where we got arrested on his 21st birthday by the Miami Beach Police Department. And what happened was we, Ephraim had this like running feud with the valet guy in his building.

I don't know why, right? They just hated each other. And some, like this little Cuban guy. And we were getting ready to go out for his birthday show like a club. And he goes to the valet guy. He's like, he sees the guy's not there. And so he's like, oh, great. this asshole isn't here.

I'm just going to grab the keys from the valet stand and get my own car. Because he would live in one of these fancy buildings. This is before we moved into the same building. He lived in a fancy building where they require you to valet your car. It's like your own car. You live there, you know, but you need to, you can't park your own car. It's like a stupid rule.

So he goes into the valet cabinet with the keys. And right then the valet guy comes around the corner and sees him rummaging with the valet keys. And the guy starts yelling at him, you can't go in there. And so Ephraim's like, yeah, I just want my key. I just want my car. Why you got to be such an asshole? And the guy just clocks him right in the face. And so Ephraim starts punching back and they're like beating each other.

The security guard comes running over, pulls the Cuban guy away from Ephraim. I pull Ephraim away. Right. We separated them. And Ephraim's like shirt is all like ripped and he's like yelling. He's like, you motherfucker. I'm going to get you deported, you piece of shit, you know. And I'm calling.

the cops and he's like come on i got to change my shirt you know and we go up to his apartment building and he's like oh and he calls up he actually calls up the cops and he's like he's like i just got assaulted by the valet guy in my building i want to file a complaint against this guy i think he also might be legal and um and so as we're going we uh he changes his shirt as we're about to go down the elevator we see down and like we could see there's like it's one of these like all glass buildings so you could see the driveway from like his floor and we see like three cop cars pull into the into the driveway and he goes to me he's like hey uh as we're going down the elevator's like you know i got this bag of on me if they're going to arrest anybody it's going to be

me right so why don't you just like hold this bag for me while i talk to the cops he's such a good guy and i'm like uh why don't we just drop it on the elevator floor yeah that would have been a better idea. But we thought, I mean, we figured we were, we didn't do it. The guy literally punched him first. So we, we thought, well, this guy's going to get arrested, if anything. Yeah. Why would they arrest us? And so I take the plastic bag of, I put it inside my sock, just in case. And so we go into the, into the driveway, and the cops separate us, and they talk to us separately. And I tell the story of what happened, and I see him talking to the other cop. And then they go and talk to the valetop. And then they go and talk to the

valet guy into the security guard. They come back and they're like, well, security guard said that you were holding the valet guy down and your friend was beating him. And I said, that's, that's not what happened. There's, there are video cameras here. Why don't you go check the video feed? You'll see, that's not true. He, the valet guy hit him first. And I just separated them along with the security guard. I don't know why he's saying that. And they're like, well, we don't need to check the video feed because we got witness testimony. So you're under arrest. And I'm like, just, Why are you arresting me? Just go check the video feed.

It's right there. You see that video camera right there. And they're like, we don't need to. They put me, they put handcuffs on me. They put me in the car. We both get dropped off at the police station. I have the in my sock, and I'm like freaking out. I can't believe the police didn't do their due diligence.

I've never heard that before. Right. Yeah, shocker. And so I have the co-in-my sock, and I'm like freaking out. I'm like, what should I do? You know, should I take? the car out and just like put it in the back like drop it on the floor of the car are they going to search the car you know i don't know what the procedure is what's the safest thing to do uh and so

i decided you know what i'm going to keep it in my sock because just in case the the cop will search the back when she takes me out it was a female cop and so get to the station she takes me out of the out of the car she takes her flashlight she searches underneath the seat and you know She does a complete search of the back of the car. So I'm like, okay, that was a good decision. Didn't put the joke in there. And then she gives me a very thorough search before taking me into the station. But she didn't check my sock.

Right. Go into the, they put me, they take me into the holding area. And the cops like, okay, take your socks and shoes off and put them on the table. And I'm thinking, should I take, should I take? Should I keep the under my foot? Should I put it in my sock? Right. Like, what should I do with it?

I decide to leave it in the sock, but my feet were sweating because I was super nervous. I had to use my finger to unstick it from my foot. So it stays in the sock. I put my socks are crumpled in my shoes. I put it on the countertop. And the cop does another complete body search. And then he looks at the shoes. And he's like, okay, take the socks out of the shoes.

I take the socks out of the shoes. The cocks in the sock. And I have flat feet. So I have orthotic devices, which are these inserts inside the shoe. And he, like, takes the orthodox. He's like, what's this? He, like, holds up the orthotic device. I'm like, that's an orthotic device.

It's for flat feet. He's like, it's not a weapon. And I'm like, no. He's like, are you sure about that? He's, like, knocking it on the table, trying to, like, open it up. Maybe it's got a hidden compartment. He looks at the other one. It's just a piece of plastic, you know?

And I'm like, no, it's just an orthotic device. It's for flat feet. And he's like, okay. And he puts it, he's like, okay, put your socks and shoes back on. Nice. And he doesn't even check the sock. I guess he was too distracted by the orthotic device. So he got put in the holding cell,

managed to flush the coke down the toilet immediately. So managed to avoid that. But because of that, and then, of course, they kept us in this, like, van for, like, three hours. locked with a bunch of drunks and homeless people. I almost died from the fumes. And then they transfer you to another place. So by the time they took that mugshot, it was like four in the morning. We were both completely miserable, sleep deprived, very upset. And so we look terrible in the mugshot. And this is, of course, with the New York Times publishes on the front page of the

newspaper, right next to a picture of rusty ammunition. And they say, oh, the ammunition they're delivering is defective, and it's all junk, and they're putting our allies in danger. And the ammunition they put on the cover of the New York Times wasn't even the Chinese ammo. It was Bulgarian ammo that Ephraim, I think, bought 30,000 rounds as a tiny amount. He bought it sight unseen because it was super, super cheap, and we had some extra space on, it was coming out of Bulgaria, and we had some extra space on the plane that was transporting the grenades. So he figured, well, if they accept it, we make a huge margin. If they reject it,

I'm paying so little for it. It doesn't really matter. So he didn't even inspect it. So he sent it over there. They inspected it. They're like, this is junk. We're not paying for this. And so, of course, they have no ammunition recycling facilities in Afghanistan. So they didn't know what to do with it. So they just put it to the side of the runway and just left it there. And so when the New York Times reporter came to Afghanistan to report on the story and asked to see some of the ammo that AEY delivered. That was some of the stuff he was pointed at. The rest of the stuff was already shipped out into the field. So he took pictures of that. And the New York Times very strongly implied that everything we were delivering was that low-quality, defective, rusty junk,

which wasn't the case. Of course, this article created a huge political scandal. There was a congressional hearing. There was a congressional hearing. Our pictures were put on the floor of Congress as the poster boys of government mismanagement. Oh, yeah. They got congressmen saying, like, how did a 19-year-old get a $300 million contract? That's a pretty good congressman's voice you got there. I remember watching, I was like, oh, my God, this is so mad.

Yeah, they wanted us to testify. they were going to subpoena us to testify in front of Congress. And, of course, we were already under investigation. So our lawyers said, well, you guys could subpoena them, but they're just going to plead the fifth the whole time. And so they decided not to go through that circus. So we didn't end up, I think it would have been kind of cool to plead the fifth like a mobster in front of Congress.

I would just say, I would want to go in and say, I can't even plead this to the fifth. Yeah, yeah. The advice of counsel. Yeah, yeah. But, yeah, they saved us the whole circus. So we didn't end up testifying in front of Congress. But a week after that article gets published, suddenly the Army says, oh, we had no idea that any of this was happening.

We can't believe that they've been violating their contract with us. So we're canceling the contract. And then the Justice Department decides to charge us, and not just Ephraim, but also Alex, me, and Ralph, as co-conspirators in a plan. Even though they said you weren't going. Even though they said that we were not. I don't think Ralph was cooperating, but they said that Alex and I would not be charged because we were cooperating.

And so... They have emails from Ralph where he's showing how to how to shimmy off the Chinese writing on the wood. So it was on the wood. He was like, look, you can always take a chisel and chisel off. And he actually has a little how-to video getting rid of. So that didn't help him. him. No, it didn't, but he decided to fight them all the way.

Oh, God. But no, didn't he win? He didn't win? He lost. He went to four years in prison. No, but I mean, he didn't win at all? Didn't he have a hung jury once? Oh, yes, yes. He did. The first trial was a hung jury. And then they retried him. And then they retried him, and he lost the second time. And that's why it took three years for our legal issues to get resolved because they had to wait until both his trials went through. And keep in mind, Ralph was Ephraim's original. original investor. Yeah.

Like he gave him, first he gave him like, whatever, 80 grand or something, 50 grand something. Then he ended up giving him a million dollars or... 1.5.

1.5. This is Ralph's, like, net bag. Yeah. Effort took it all. Yeah. Never got it back. Never got a penny back.

He ruined him. Yeah. Yeah. Poor guy. So I was going to say, so after all this, sorry. Like when I was writing Ephraim's book,

At some point, we were going back and forth between myself, Gie Lawson, and you. Right. And Gleason sent me an email and said, David wants you to call him. And I was like, absolutely. Because by this point, I realized, you know, Ephraim's going to fuck me. Yeah. He's going to, you know, he's not answering phone calls. He's not answering any, the emails, let nothing.

So I talked to you on the phone while I was in prison. Yeah, I remember that. Yeah. And he was like, I have a quick question. So you answered some questions. And you said, would you mind talking to my attorney if he needs to, you to testify? Because I was getting ready to sue him. Right.

And I was like, absolutely. Yeah. And then you said, I have a question. Do you remember you asking me? I don't remember the question. You said, you go, listen, I got a question for you. I said, what? You go, did Ephraim ever tell you why he screwed me over?

Right. And I went, yeah. I was like, absolutely, because I asked him. Yeah. At one point when he explained the whole argument, which was very different than your argument. Right, right, of course. And I was like, I was like, yeah, but you had an agreement with him. Right.

Like by this point, I've signed a contract with Ephraim. I realize I'm screwed because what I signed was one thing. What he told me was something else. So I need you to sign this because, Matt, you owe $6 million to the government. My fear is, and my lawyer said they may come after. any proceeds from the book because you're insisting that your name be on the book. And I'm saying, I'm not insisting my name be on the book. You can take my name off the book, but you have to pay me more.

Right. And he's like, well, so, uh, so we're to sign this. That way we can use this, but you're going to get this much. And I'm good for it, bro. Yeah, of course. But at that point, I'd only kind of written, I was in the middle of the outline. So when I started writing the book and started expanding it, I started realizing But I don't think you've known anybody you haven't fucked over

Like anybody that makes a mistake of doing business with you You look for a chance Even even his version is I'm looking for a chance Like he's not even lying about it He's being pretty open He also, it's very easy to be open with me Because I'm very non-judgmental

And I laugh at about Things that are inappropriate That most people would be like, wow, that's fucked up I'm like, oh my God, wow, that's a good lick And you know I can on So he felt very comfortable with me And he was telling me things that I know, you know, and then he would, don't put that in the book. I'm not going to put it.

It's in my best interest to make you look at it. But when you and I got on the phone. You have to tell us a few of those. So when you and I got on the phone, you said, why? Did he ever tell you why? And he did. His thing was once, and I had said this, once he hired Alex Padritsky. Yeah.

And he paid him like, 100 grand. Yeah. And he's like, this is a guy. On an annual basis, he didn't pay him 100 grand. Well, yeah, yeah, yeah. That was his salary. He was like, this is a guy that speaks three fucking languages Has like, I don't know, like a master's or whatever.

He's got a college degree, three languages. He's like, he's got military experience. I can get him for 100,000. And he goes, Pacoz was going to make millions. Yeah. And he was like, so, you know, initially I thought give people a percentage because then I don't really owe him anything. He's like, but then when the money came in,

I realized like I'm so much better off just paying somebody 100 grand because he was instead of having to give them a couple million, And he's like, but at that point, I had an agreement. So I started kind of looking for a way to get out of the agreement. Of course he did. And one of the things he had said was, and about the time he realized that, he was about the time when he said, you, so Alex had gone, he had hired Alex. And you had started not coming in as much.

He's like, you were always there. He was like, but once things started going smoothly. Yeah, once it went smoothly, there was there was. There was no reason to be there. Right. And he's like, and I know he, I knew he was. managing things through his cell phone. Right.

He's like, but it gave me an opportunity to start saying, where you been, bro? He's like, every time something went wrong, I'd call him like, where the fuck are you? Where the fuck are you, man? This is happening. And so he said, I was able to start like, you know, picking at him so that when it came, he would think he had fucked up. Right. Yeah.

Well, I mean, it was his, you know, like it wasn't. That was his plan. You might actually blame yourself. Right, right, right. So I remember when I told him that, I was like, yeah, he said that he could have just hired something for $100,000 that pay me with this if he had. thought about it. And he was trying to get out of the contract. You went, I fucking knew it, bro.

You were like, I fucking, I always knew that was the reason. Of course it was. Right. Yeah. But you said, you said, but I'd never heard it. Right. I knew. Right. Because he would never admit it. Right. Right. Right. But, you know, he told one time. I love that he told you that. It's amazing that I get the truth. Well, yeah. Well, I'll give you. Here's one of the little things you told me.

And then we'll jump right back into it. Sure. Just kind of a, just while it's on my mind. Sure. Because you'll, you'll appreciate this, is that one time he had done a deal where, I want to say, I'm going to say it's AK-47s, but it may have been something vastly different, right? And by the way, you know, I love the getting the numbers, hearing the numbers. Like, they're buying AK-47s for like $49. Right. Like, it's $49 to buy it. It's $50 to ship it. Like for $99, and they're selling them for, well, you still weren't selling them for that much of a markup. Right. It was like $2,300, but, like, that AK-47s go for $1,500. Like, they're getting a, for fucking 40, 50 bucks. Yeah. You know, so, but something had happened. I don't know what the weapons were or, but Ephraim had bought something from some broker. And he ended up getting around him, went to the source, cut the broker out.

Right. But the broker comes to him and he's like, look, we've got a, we've got a contract. Like, I'm going to sue you. And so he's like, yeah, so he starts threatening me. So he's like, I got processed servers trying to fucking serve you. He's whatever it was, he's like, but he doesn't know what my address, like he's got a whole scheme going on. Yeah, he has a whole system. Yeah, to avoid getting sued. Right. And I'm like, okay, okay. And I went, you, I mean, I get it. I understand. He's like, you know, fuck that. It was always fuck that guy. Right. And, you know, he always tried to have some reason. Right. You know, he'd call him a name or he was a whatever. He was, you know, some little racist rant that he'd go on or something. You fuck, he was an anti-fucking semi or whatever. It's like, okay. And I noticed whenever you owe them money, they become anti-Semites.

I wonder why they become anti-Semites when you refuse to pay them, you know? So he goes. Kind of feeds into the caricature there a little bit. And I went, but, you know, I said, you did owe him $100,000. Like, you would have never got, you do understand you would have never got to the other guy. Yeah. If he hadn't, he's like, yeah, but I was dealing directly with him. I understand that, but you'd agree to pay him the $100,000.

Right. And he was like, you don't understand. And I said, well, because you just say that all the time. You don't understand. Let's just keep going. You get frustrated like you're a dick. Like, I'm not a dick. I'm just trying to understand.

And so this is one of the times I was like, no, no, I said, well, then explain it to me. Because I'm, because this is happening all the time now. Right. And you're noticing a pattern. Right, right. And usually I was like, no, I get it. I get it. I keep going.

Because, look, I don't want to alienate myself from this guy because I think I'm going to writing a book that's going to be huge. Right. I'm thrilled. Sure. You know, and I'm thinking these guys are going to be able to get a series made or something made on his story. It's a phenomenal story. It is, yeah.

And so I say, so I was like, well, explain it to me. And he goes, and I'm thinking, I'm thinking, because you can't. I know you can't. Right, right. But he did. Yeah. What do you say? He said, so, no, I'm sorry.

And I'm wrong about that. I remember he owed the guy like 300 grand. Okay. So he owed him 300 grand. And he goes, you don't, he goes, let's say the guy sues me. And I go, okay, he said, and it cost me a hundred grand to fight him in court. He was, but I'll win. He was because, and he had some reason why he was going to win.

Like either he did or didn't have it in writing or he, whatever the reason was, he had a way to get out of it. Sure. He's like, you know, that contract was originally for this, but we ended up going here. So that does it, it validates the contract. He goes, so he's got to fight and pay this. And so let's say I pay $100,000 to my lawyer. He is, and in court, I win.

He said, I owed him $300,000. He was, I get to keep $200 grand. So it's worth $100,000 to fuck him out of that money because I make $200,000. Right. He goes, that's why. He goes, if I lose, he was, I don't really lose much more anyway, but I'm not going to lose because I already, in the contract said, and he's got blah, blah, blah. And I was just like, and in his mind, that was completely justified.

And that made 100%, 100%, you know, logical, was logical. Right. And made sense. And I just remember, bro, I was just like, I'm so fucked. I'm so screwed. You knew right there. Oh, yeah. But I wanted to finish it.

Right. And I wanted to finish the book. And I wanted my name on it. Right. And I kept thinking of myself. He didn't put your name on it. He did put my name. Oh, I didn't see it on the cover.

Oh, no. It's on the cover. Oh, it's on the cover. Oh, it's on the cover. There were other things like my bio. My picture in my bio was supposed to be in the back. It wasn't. But there are little things.

Not a big deal. But no, my name's on the whole thing. Okay. I'm surprised he actually did that. Well, initially, he files the copyright and doesn't put himself as the writer. He doesn't put me. Right. But at that point, Reback, the literary agent was there, and he came in and said,

listen, you have to put his name on. Like, he's like, oh, my lawyer made a mistake, but it's not a big deal. We'll put his name on the jacket. He goes, no, no. He's in the contract or whatever it was. He's supposed to be on the copyright. You have to put it on them, him as the writer. You have to.

He's like, and on the book. Uh-huh. He said, because Ross was like, because he wasn't going to put you on the book. Why did he go to bat for you? Because I think, never really got this for sure, but I think Ross, it would have been so egregious. Like, you, it would, in my opinion, probably, it would invalidate the entire contract. Like, you did nothing. I see.

You didn't pay me. You didn't put me on the book. You did, like, nothing is correct. Like, at the very least, you have to abide by some part of the contract. Uh-huh. even though there's those stipulations that say if any one part of the contract isn't followed through it doesn't invalidate the entire contract yeah but at that point it would have been every single thing on the contract you didn't do you didn't pay me you didn't

put my bio in the back you didn't put my name on it you didn't put me on the copyright like nothing is crap is there so I think that that would have been so egregious and I think Ross said hey you would very least have to put his name on it well you know we have to put him on the back cover like his spot no we don't have to put his picture we don't have to but um yeah but i didn't even know like literally they broke contact with me i didn't even know they had published the book oh well until i was sitting at this area yeah where we called stonehenge um we're sitting there and i had a guy walk by and say yo cox i'm what's up and i said what's up he was you making any money on that endeavor oldie's book on that the what's a gunrunner book and i went no i said they haven't

published it yet he goes yeah he goes yeah they have and i went no. He goes, no, wait a minute, hold on. And he leaves. I'm like, whatever, because the guy's kind of a cuck. And then he can't, four minutes later, he comes back and goes, boom, he goes, that's him right there. Picture of him in the, um, the book fair? Miami, yeah, the Miami book fair, but it was the Miami book fair, but it was on like, Oceans Drive magazine, you know, it's a big glossy, it's his picture, and I'm like, yeah, like, I couldn't believe it. Yeah. But, um, didn't even tell you about it, that your book was being published. no yeah um that was a very painful read yeah yeah yeah it was a very painful read well you know

it was i understand it was it was in it was written in in ephraim's best interest oh i'm well aware of that yeah yeah a lot of the stories are that comes across they're skewed you know they're all slightly skewed but even then even then it was almost impossible to make him likable right like you just there's only so much you can do. Yeah. But, so I have a question for you. So, so, because this doesn't make the movie either. I mentioned this to, I mentioned this to Colby.

Because he was like, oh, yeah, yeah. So they mentioned how you guys got arrested. But in truth, you came in, you pled guilty. Yeah. I mean, Ralph didn't, but you and Alex did. Devereoli played guilty. Eventually, yes. And you were getting, you got house arrest.

You hit a guys that agreed on house arrest. Right. And Deverelli's supposed to get house arrest. Yeah, he was supposed to. Right. Right. But so, I mean, do you want to say how that play that? Yeah, that is.

Because I honestly, look, as much as Devoroli's probably got whatever comes his way coming, like, that was super underhanded. Sure. I read the transcripts. I read all of the emails going back and forth between him and the, was it ATF agent? It was an ATF agent. Yeah, I read all the emails. They entrapped them, yeah. Yeah, it was such entrapment.

Yeah, they entrapped them. Well, I mean, so they told them not to be in that business. Just like they told me, they told me you can't stay in, while you're awaiting sentencing, you cannot continue to do business in this industry. They were very specific about that. And so I actually was about, so right before the, They only said that after the New York Times article came out. Right.

And before the New York Times article, it's just one thing after another. Every time it's like the date of that some major turning points is going to happen, something completely derails it. I was about to win my first independent contract that was going to make me like a million dollars, a million and a half dollars. It was for this anti-aircraft demo. I started a new company. It was under my name.

I had an amazing contact that DeVaroli didn't have. because I had met this contact in one of the trade shows that I had attended. And I was going to make like a million and a half dollars on this thing. And the government informed me that they were preparing to do the audit process, which means I was in the final running. They just needed to do the audits, just like we... Yeah, yeah. They're not going to get to that point unless they're about to give you the contract.

Exactly. So they give me all the things I need to provide for the audit. and then the next day the New York Times article gets published and the so one of the audit I had to pass a financial audit and the only way I was going to pass the financial audit

was with a factoring deal with Wells Fargo with the bank and a factoring deal is where you because the government usually pays you 30 days later so when you have a factoring deal with the bank you could submit the invoice to the bank that after you deliver the stuff to the government and get paid immediately by the bank, and then the bank waits 30 days to get

paid by the government. So that way you could roll the money and do continuous deliveries, so you don't have to have 30 days between each delivery, which is the only way. So your capital is always accessible. Exactly. So that was the only way I was going to be able to finance this particular deal. And as soon as the New York Times article comes out, the bank calls me up, he's like, I just saw this article about you. Unfortunately, due to the, the, the, intense scrutiny, we're going to have to withdraw our offer or factoring offer. And so that completely tanked my deal. And so they told me, as soon as this came out, the government was like, listen, we're so sorry, but we have to charge you. We weren't planning on it, but we have to.

We can't go after him. You were too involved. Even we know we told you we weren't going to charge you, but you were just too heavily involved, so we can't charge DiViroli without charging you. And because we're going to charge you, you have to stop doing this business. You have to to leave the industry until this whole thing shakes out. And so they told him the same thing. And but of course, he doesn't listen to anybody and he keeps undoing the business. From my understanding, he was doing it through like one of his new minions who had set up a like a company under his name. Right. Not, not Deverelli's name, under his minions name. And, but DeVorelli is such a control freak that whenever the deal got to the point of negotiation, he couldn't

let his minion do the negotiations. Yeah, he's got to yank the phone away. He's got to get on the phone and start blathering. And so he does this with this gun dealer in, in central Florida. I think he wanted to sell them like Korean magazines or something. Yeah, yeah, it was beta, it was, where they were beta mags. They were the ones. It pumps the, you take a regular 9mm. Right. And it's a magazine that actually pumps the bullets in, super. were fast, so you pull the trigger. And every once in a while, you'll see one of these in a movie, right? It's like, it's like a machine gun.

It becomes a machine gun. Right. It's a, and Beta had just lost their, their copyright on it. So he was legally able to, and by the way, someone brought him that deal. Right. And he took the information and then told that guy to fuck off. Right. And then ran with the, uh, yeah, right.

I didn't even know that, but yeah, that sounds about right. It would have been super lucrative, by the way. He just wanted someone to stop. stamp it because people don't like made in, you know, made in South Korea. Like they don't want to see that. He was saying they'll accept it. Like if it's made in South Korea, but it's also stamped Smith and Wesson, then you think, oh, it's a quality product. Right. So that's why he went to Knight. So go ahead. I see. So yeah. So he tells him about this. I assume this guy eventually he discovers who DiViroli is, Googles him, realizes he's already pled guilty to the

to the gun charge at this point. reads the article. Yeah, reads the article, right, the New York Times. And probably figures that DeVroly is trying to entrap him and to try to get a reduction on his own sentence and calls up the ATF. And the ATF says, oh, that's very interesting. Why don't you introduce one of our undercover agents

to DeVaroli as your business partner? Yeah. And so he introduces him to DeVaroli to the undercover agent. Undercover Agent insists DeVaroli come to Central Florida to look him in the eye and shake his hand in order to complete this deal. At the time, DeVaroli is out on Bond and he's not allowed to leave the Southern District. He wants him to be at the meeting with Knight Industries. That's how he gets in there. So the owner of Knight Industries, which makes the Knight Sniper Rifle,

and they make those things on the, that go on the end of the machine guns and stuff. You know, the little handles or the little devices that will, like, hold your map or it'll hold a flashlight, like the little arms that are maneuverable. Right. They make that. And sell it, by the way. It's a hunk of plastic that they sell for like $250 to the, to the army when it's probably six bucks. At most. But they make all that.

And so this, the ATF guy was, had told Devereoli, that night was going to, he, that night was going to. Knight was willing to stamp the magazines. That's how he got him there. That's how, yeah. So now it's a night product at a night box with night stamped. Even though it still says maiden, you know, all legal. Right. But Devereoli's not allowed to leave the district.

Exactly. So I'm sorry. So yeah. So he convinces him to come up to Orlando. I think it was Orlando, right? Or somewhere in central Florida. Yeah, yeah. It was, no, it wasn't even that far.

It wasn't even that far. It was just out, it was maybe 20 miles over the line. Of course. They just had to get him over that line. And he meets with the undercover agent. And the undercover agent, he, was it an HK handgun that he had? Yeah, yeah. Here's what's funny about that, too, real quick.

Because, listen, in Deverelli's defense, like, I mean, I don't care who you are. You don't have to sort of be set up. Yeah, I agree. And I mean, literally there were, I read the transcripts of the phone calls. And by the way, Devereoli was like super on drugs. He was all fucked up. Like, even listening, you could hardly read what he was saying. Wow.

You know how it's so, he's so choppy. Right. But the guy was telling him, they want to sign. They just want to come and meet you, sign the contract. Then we're all going to go to the gun range. Bring some weapons. And DeBeroli very clearly said, bro, I told you. Yeah.

I'm on supervised. No, I'm on pretrial or whatever. Right. You know, I cannot have a weapon. I cannot even be around weapons. Right. And the guy, the guy's like, okay, well, bro, whatever. And at one point, DeVroly says, he's like, come on, man, what is it?

What are you doing? You're going to blow the deal. You're going to blow the, we can't tell this guy that. And so DeVroly goes, okay, it's cool, bro. I'll bring something. But when he shows up to the meeting, he doesn't bring anything. But the guy brings the guy. The guy brings, like an H.K. handgun.

And he's like, hey, check this out. You know, this is the latest model. And DeVarly is a gun nut. So he's like, yeah, let me see that thing. He's like, yeah, we should go to the range. We should pop off a few rounds. And he's like, what can I say? What's a gun runner?

Always a gun runner. Am I right? He's a big spag. The agent slaps a cuff on him. And he's like, you're a felon in possession of a firearm. Right. Outside the jurisdiction. Yeah.

And so they didn't give him a bond because he already violated his first bond. So he had to stay, was in like, county jail or something for like a year. which is a terrible situation. I'll tell you something really funny. And I don't know if you know this. Well, I think you do know this. Okay, tell me. I think you mentioned this.

I think you mentioned this. So Devereoli, when he's giving me all the stuff, right, at one point, he's locked up. So they've dropped his deal. His deal's gone. You just got arrested with a gun outside the jurisdiction. Right. So his plea deal. is finished you.

Your plea deal is done. Right. And they're like, you know, you can take whatever, five or six years or you can go to trial. He can't go to trial. So what they say it, so he's the whole time he's locked up. And this comes out of his sentencing. And when he gives me his sentencing paperwork, he gave me the first one. And I got it.

Okay. I was like, where's the second one? And he's like, he's, listen, man, I'm going to give this to you. And I'll never, this is so funny. He goes, and I remember I went to grab it, and he had it. He tugged it. And we tugged it. I went, what's your fucking meal?

And he goes, I'm going to, there's stuff in here, bro, that I'm not proud of. Okay. And I looked at him and I went, I promise you nothing I'm going to read is going to lower my opinion of you. And he goes, you're a fucking asshole. And he started laughing. That's hilarious. And he goes here. And he said, bro, don't you show that to nobody.

I said, no, I'm not going to shit. You know, he gets to do it. You know, and I was like, I'm not going to show it to anybody. I'm sorry. So I go and I read it. Yeah. Oh, my God. So while he's locked up.

Okay. At some point, there was a, I'm going to say Korean. I want to say he was a Korean guy. So Devereoli. I remember that was this the phone call with his dad? Yes. Oh, that got out there. I heard that.

Yeah, yeah. I heard that phone call. Oh, God, it was so bad. I heard it. It was horrible. Listen. Yeah. I was, I was going to tell him.

Yeah, tell a story. These guys and Colby. Yeah. This is so Devereux. Yeah. So, let me tell you the backstory. Back story is that Devoroli had actually, yeah, there was a Korean, I'm going to say Korean, there was a Korean guy he was dealing with.

He was Korean. Oh, an arms dealer. Yeah. Name like, like Kim, whatever. Mr. Kim. Yeah, Mr. Kim. Yeah, I remember him. So Mr. Kim had come to Devoroli and said, look, you can get AK 47 for like, you know, $99.

And he's like, right. He's like, I can sell. them for $1.99. And he goes, Deverello is like, okay, he's like, how many do you need? He's like, yeah, he's like, can you do it? He's like, absolutely. How many do you need? He's like, oh, I need 10,000 of them.

He's like, DeVrole, like, nice. Like, I got that nice markup, right? So Mr. Kim, so they're going back and forth. And then Mr. Kim tells him, because I guess you have to get, what is it, the import, export, the license. Yeah, the import and the export license. Right. So he's, Deverely is trying to get the, getting.

the information and he says well and Mr. Kim just for why he said this he said well we've got a general that will accept it in like Columbia in Columbia general that will accept it on the import and he goes he'll get you that and he said but it's not really going to the Colombians it's actually going to FARC and Devereoli he's Devereoli said I was just like fuck FARC is, it's a guerrilla organization in Colombia that is listed as a terrorist organization. Right. I think now they already, they made peace with the Colombian government in the years since. Yeah, but at that time.

At that time, yeah. Let me put it this way. Victor Bot, the merchant of death, who actually got 25 years that they traded Brittany Griner for, he was caught. The reason he got in trouble was he was selling anti-aircraft. craft missiles and they were going to end up going to FARC and they told him this is going to go to FARC. They're going to be shooting. You understand that these weapons are going to be used to shoot down American helicopters and stuff. He goes, I don't care. Sounds like we've got the same enemy. Like that was his response. So you're selling stuff that you know is going to end up in the

hands of a terrorist organization. And so Devoroli and Bot had already been arrested. So he goes, as soon as I heard that, I only know the story because he told me. And he's like, as soon as I heard that, I thought, this is the exact conversation. Yeah. That just got Bot 20 five years. Right. And he said, and I had it, I'm on the phone. And I'm like, I can't, can't send him to you. He's like, what do you mean? He said, no, it's a terrorist organization. And he said, and I was like, were you concerned? He's like, I wasn't concerned. But he said, I was concerned that I'm having this conversation on the phone. And I don't know who's looking into him. Right. And so what became a reasonable transaction just became extremely illegal. He said, well, then, you know, so he's upset.

He's, you know, clearly disappointed. We get off the phone. He comes back. He said, like, a week later, he comes back, $2.50. It's like, I'm sorry, I can't do it or $2.49, you know. It's always $49. Right, right. So he's like, no, I can't do it.

He said, he goes, at some point, it got up to, like, like $2.99 or $3.99. Like, it was outrageous. He's like, I'm telling you right now, he said, I would have made, I forget how many millions of dollars on that transaction. And the guy's telling him, like, he's, he is, the problem was, the more he was. the more he was willing to do it, the more it felt like I was being set up. Right. Like, he's now being unreasonable. Right.

And he's then saying, can you give me your contact then? And I'll just cut your check because I can't give you my contact. Like, I'm still in the middle. No, no, no, no, you don't understand. I'll do this. I'll do that. No. I know they're going to go here.

I'm done. I can't be involved. I can't help you in any way. So Devereoli did the right thing. Maybe not for the right reasons, but whatever. Right. So Devoroli is now locked up in prison waiting, the waiting sentencing. he's fucked he's not getting out

two things happen one he's talking to a a black guy a gang member right and by the way I want to say what was the name tribiska by this point tribishka the guy who was making the cardboard

who was giving who was willing to testify who was had started this huge investigation which was also had poured over into and of government investigation into the Albanians right has ended up Because Deverely cut him out of the deal.

Yeah, Deverely had cut him out of the deal. So he's pissed. He's gone when it started the whole New York Times. The New York Times investigation, yeah. But at this point, he's now gotten people within the government being investigated. Right. And as a result of that, he ends up dead. Now, whether he ended up dead because of that, maybe, maybe not.

But the fact is, is he's found dead with his pants down. he's been run over by his own car on a completely flat, straight road in the middle of nowhere where nobody is. There's no other cars. There's no other cars. So somehow or another,

and they deemed it a car accident. So somehow or another, he's driving his car, fell out in front of the car, got himself run over by the car, and the car pulled off to the side of the road by itself. Yeah.

It's just, like, none of it makes sense. Car accident. Right. So, but that shows up in the New York Times article. So as a result, Devoroli is now telling people, he's talking to this, this gang member, this black guy, he's like a gang member. And he's telling him basically like, look, when people testify against me, they end up dead. Wow.

Take a look at this article. It shows him. They're like, wow. And it does make it sound kind of suspicious, right? They could have been, who knows? So, so the, he's, and he, Devoroli tells the guy, this is the guy. this was the guy's version because Devoroli says

that's not what happened that the guy had come Devoroli says the guy came to him and said look if you have somebody that you want eliminated I got people on the outside that can do it

and then quoted him a price now Devaroli says that's what happened Devaroli then went immediately and contacted the ATF agent or FBI agent

one of the agents maybe the guy Was it the guy investigating him Mentavis? I don't know if he contacted, he contacted someone, whatever, one of the investigators. So he contacts his lawyer, gets the phone number, calls them. The problem was that gang member immediately called his FBI handler and said, this guy, Devoroli just offered me money to kill somebody.

So he's saying Devoroli came to me, showed me this article and said people end up dead. And if I know you got people on the street that can kill somebody, I'll give you money to kill somebody, which would have been you. Right. And Alex. Right. And so that's what he says happened. When the agent gets on the stand and explains the whole thing, they're like, do you think it was credible?

He's like, no, I think that both of them called and that maybe Devoroli mentioned it. Maybe I don't know who mentioned it. I think that maybe one guy was just trying to set up the other guy. They both called. He was, I don't think it was credible. So they quash it. That's not the funny one. Right.

The funny one is Mr. Kim. So Mr. Kim. So while this is going on, Deverelli calls his dad. So when that falls apart, Devoroli, because they end up transferring the guy, the black guy, they move him. So he knows it's over. They're like, that's not what's happening. We've got to call for this. It's not happening.

Okay. They move the black guy. So then Devoroli's, he ends up calling his dad. He said, Dad, I need you to call Mr. Kim and tell Mr. Kim, I can get him the 10,000, AK-47s. I'll do it for $199,000. 10,000, and his dad is like, well, why would you do that? Like, I don't understand. You're not supposed to be doing this.

Right. He said, I know, but here's the thing. This guy, you know, if he's going to send it to FARC. So if you call him and he agrees, then I'm going to have you either I'll get the agents to get me out of jail and I'll be able to call him. Right. And work with them to get him on tape, you know, on. a recording of him agreeing to send this to FARC. I'm going to help get it.

We're going to help you get it imported. We know it's going to FARC. He's, I just got to get him to say that. He's like, then I don't have to go to prison. Right. And his father, Ephraim's father is, you know, not cut from the same cloth as Ephraim. Very straight-laced guy. Yeah.

And he's like, oh, Ephraim, I don't know. I don't know. This man, he doesn't, he hasn't. done anything you're setting him up you're you're you're he he you know he's like no but he would have done it right and he's trying to explain to it that you know he would have done it and he was going to do it and he's a bad guy and I'm going to help the government and he's like oh but this man that's a huge that's a big big deal he's like this guy could end up getting a lot of time you could get 20 30 years that's a huge crime and effram says if mr. Kim has to spend the rest of his

fucking life in prison for me to get one month off of my sentence, then that's what's got to happen. Do you fucking understand me? Now make the fucking call. My favorite line, he's like, he's like, if for one chicken to get out, another's got to go in if you know what I mean. His poor dad. His dad.

His dad is super nice, actually. That's what I'm saying. He told me one time. He told me one time his dad was, I was like, man, your dad, like your dad opened the company. He lets you have this shelf company, A-E-Y, he let you have this company and open it. And he knew, and he knew you were younger. He's like, yeah, he knew. He's like, he didn't want to do it.

You know, he put up a fight. He's like, you know, my dad's the kind of guy you got to bully, you know. So, you know, I kind of bullied him into it. Yeah. And I thought. He bully his dad constantly. It was very embarrassing for everybody else. Yeah.

Because he would always make fun of his dad, like in front of his friends. He'd be like, oh, dad, what kind of shit are you? you're driving. What'd you make last year? I bet it didn't even break 100K, you loser. You know, like he would like in front of all his friends. And we're like, why he was being such a dick to your own dad? You know, like why? There's no reason to do that. And, you know, yeah, he's just, he's a really nasty, really nasty to his dad. Yeah. Well, when I, when I, by the way, the next day when I came back after reading those, I walked up, did you? Did you, did you read those? I said, what? I said to you or something else,

bro. And he was like, come on, man. You know how it is? I was in a fucked up. spot. And I was like, I said, but they even talk because they played the tapes. Right. Yeah. Yeah, there's, there's, that recording, I think, is on YouTube, or at least it was on YouTube. I know someone uploaded it. You might be able to still find it. It's brutal. And they even mentioned, like, like the, like the U.S. attorney is like, this is a guy who speaks to his father like Yeah. Like they had multiple, you know, tapes where he's just belittling his dad. Yeah. They're like, this is somebody who talks to his father, like not just some random douchebag

that maybe some guy that's, you know, you don't like or something, but this is your father. And his father's so nice on the phone. Like it really, it sounds horrible. Yeah. But it was,

it was really heart-wrenching just to hear that. But I mean, I get the heart-wrenching part, but it just kills me. Yeah, I mean, it's hilarious too, but yeah, yeah. Oh, my God. I mean, I know his family since I was like a kid, It's like, you know, I met his mom. Oh, yeah.

I met his mom, his sister. Oh, in visitation, right? Yeah, I met his mom, his sister, his brother. They're all like nice people. Yeah, his sister I met a few times. Yeah. But, yeah, she did a ton of research for me. Like, I was emailing her all the time.

Hey, when did this contract come up? Boom, she's, bam, here's when it was. It was 2006 or whatever. Yeah, yeah. It's strange. Like, the rest of his family is not like him at all. Yeah. It's very, very strange.

Like, all his siblings. are very, like, they seem to, they surround, they try and stay in his orbit. I think that they feel like, you know, he's going to be successful. I mean, I'm sure he is still very rich. I have no doubt. I have no doubt that he has a lot of money, most of it stolen from somebody. Yeah, I'm sure. I could only imagine getting into some kind of deal with him. Yeah, yeah. I heard that his main business is financing lawsuits these days. Yeah, yeah, because he's been sued so many times. Well, he's an expert at it. He's got a full-time. He's got a full-time lawyer.

When he got out of prison, he had a full-time lawyer. Yeah. Like he hired this guy, the guy that... You know, my brother gets his beard. He has a beard. And he goes to the barber to get his beard trimmed. He was, I swear this is a true story. This is like a few years ago, like maybe four or five years ago.

It was a little bit of time ago. He's getting his beard trimmed. And he's listening to the guy next to him, talk to the barber. And the guy, the barber's like, hey, man, how's it been, you know? And the guy's like, oh, man, I'm just dealing with this client. He's just such a pain in the ass. He's such an asshole. And he's like, yeah, I know what you mean.

You know, sometimes you get those clients, you know what I mean? And the lawyer's like, oh, man, but this guy's something else. He's like, have you ever heard of the movie War Dogs? And the guy's like, yeah, yeah, I saw them. He's like, you know the Jonah Hill guy? That's my client. He is the biggest piece of shit. I can't fucking stand him.

I swear to God I'm going to quit. I can't take this guy. And he's just, like, taught my brother's sitting right next to this guy in the barbershop. Yeah, he's just like trying not to react. I was like, yeah, Ephraim's still being Ephraim, still, he hasn't changed a bit. Oh, my God. He just goes through lawyers. He just, like, chews him up.

Well, he's got the one lawyer. It's like he hired a full-time, straight out of college, he hired him. Yeah, yeah. So he's got a full-time lawyer, and then he's got another lawyer on the side. And, you know, he's brilliant. He's brilliant. Yeah. I mean, he'll cut you throat in a heartbeat, but he's brilliant.

Yeah. He's brilliant at cutting throats. Yeah. Which is, I just don't, you know, I'm not sure that's the way you want to end up. I mean. Live in your entire life. Yeah, I know I don't. Right.

You would think you, you know, like some people go to prison. Yeah. You know, they have this, this, you know, this thing that happens and you have an opportunity to look at it as I put myself here. I cannot, you know, my buddy Pete has said this. And I'm sure he, I think he got it from Einstein, actually. But he's obviously tweaked it a little bit. And what he said was, you know, you cannot go to prison and continue to behave in the same manner that led you to prison. And then get out of prison and not expect to come back.

Right. And that's the problem is that I got to prison. And I was like, if I can get out. You know, because I was supposed to be 60. Right. If I can get out, I can't come back. So I can't keep behaving this way. Right.

And I don't want to. And I'd rather live in someone's spare room than be back in this place. Absolutely. It's heaven compared to prison. Listen, and when I got out, it was even better. Like, I'd never been on YouTube. Like, I didn't realize how much free shit there was out here. Yeah, yeah.

So, you know, I got out and I was like, oh, it's even better. Yeah. The spare room was. What was your first reaction when you saw a smartphone? Are you serious, bro? It was fucking magic. Yeah. I was, the first point.

What year did you get out? 2019. Wow. Wow. So you, and when did you go in? It was 13 years, right? Yeah, yeah. I went in in 2000 and late 2006. So it was right before the iPhone. Yeah, yeah, about two years before. So everyone was going from flip phones, Motorola Razor. I had the rate. No, I had the Razor. I had the Razor. I had the Razor too, yeah.

So cool. Yeah, it was cool. Yeah, it was a cool thing. That was a cool phone. My favorite example of this is that I had started working while I was in the halfway house. Yeah. And my probation officer had sent me my financial report. Did you ever, you didn't get restitution? No, I did. Well, they did an analysis to see if I could afford it.

Oh, okay. Yeah, the restitution, so when you commit fraud, usually the restitution is based on the loss of the victim. Yes. But in our case, they didn't really lose anything. No. They, in fact, would have saved like $50 million if they had just kept the contract going. So the only loss that they could claim was the cost of taking the contract away and putting it out for bid again, which they estimated to be, I think it was like 350 grand or something they estimated. That's what it cost them. And so that was the restitution that needed to be paid. But that was on the entire group of defendants, which there was four of us, me, Ephraim, Ralph, and Alex. And the way they worked it is whoever could afford to pay it was the one responsible to pay it. And I was practically broke. So I couldn't afford to pay it. So Ephraim,

ended up paying it. Nice. Yeah. So at least I didn't have to do that. So he's good for that. Yeah. But yeah, but 350,000, and he got to keep the rest of the money. Yeah.

So, you know. Well, so, so like I have restitution, so I have to fill out an annual report. Okay. And every month I fill out a report. Right. Not just the standard report, but a much more thorough report on my finances. And then every month they base my restitution payment on that. What can you afford this month?

Sometimes it's $300, sometimes it's $900, you know, whatever it is. So the first time they sent me that, I was still in the halfway out. So they sent me this report. You got to fill this out. I was like, okay, so I go to my boss. I said, hey, man, I said, they sent me this thing, my probation officer. I have to print this thing. It's like 12 pages.

How do I print it? It's on my email. And he goes, okay, he said, just here, forward it to me. And I'm okay. So I forwarded the email. He goes, okay. He goes, I got it. I got it.

he said it's on the printer and I went no row I said I need to print that I have to print that yeah it's on the printer now I look over the printer is 60 feet away in the office way is a big gym right way over there I said no man I said I need to print it I need a physical copy so I can fill it out yeah so I don't know what Wi-Fi is so I don't understand that that that is connected to the Wi-Fi. Right. I'm like, you have to, he's like, it's printed on the printer. I go, bro, I said, how?

Yeah. I said, you just checked it on your email. Right. I was like, you've got to go to the computer. It's got to be connected to the, where's the wire? I said you have to have the, like, it's got to be connected. And I'm looking at him like, what are you fucking with me? And he looks at me, he's like, oh, wow, bro.

No, he's, it's on the Wi-Fi. Because my phone is connected to a Wi-Fi. It's like wires. Because it's connected to the system, which is a router, which is also connected. I go, so that's connected with some wires. He goes, but there's no wires, bro. It's the Wi-Fi. Right.

And I'm like, he goes, just go over there. I walk over. There's my financial report. I'm telling you, bro. I felt like a caveman. I'm like, you know, I was like the guy with the monolith that 2001 Space Odyssey throw in the I couldn't believe it

Yeah But that's how bad it was And everything You know everything was amazing It's just You know And everything was free This is free

That guys are complaining You know About all kinds of stuff And I'm like How can anybody complain out here? Like this is amazing Yeah Do you understand

That like Listen It took me six months To a year Before I started feeling Because you have Stand up count At 4 o'clock

They count you Before I started feeling Okay I would feel uncomfortable about 30 minutes before stand-up count because I felt like I have to be in myself. I have to be waiting to count. Uh-huh. You know?

Like, it's programmed in. Yeah, taking a shower without shower shoes. Like, just across the board, it was just, you know, it took a long time. But, you know, and I kind of had a plan, a semi-plan when I got out on what I wanted to do. You know, but I had no, just like the difference between, you know, Ephraim and, you know, and what we were talking about, like I had a long-term goal and I was going to slowly work towards it and I didn't really care if I made a bunch of money.

If I can pay my bills, I'll stay in the spare room and I can watch YouTube and I can work on my stuff and I can be happy and that's, you know, wasn't really expecting to get a girlfriend or a wife or wasn't really expecting to ever have a decent car. Was it expected ever like, I'm okay here. This is good life. This is better than prison.

And so I had this long-term plan and I think having changed that mindset that everything came fairly easy. Even the times that we talked before the podcast that I feel like I really screwed up. There are things I made your mistakes I've made many, many times. Everything's still working, you know?

Because I think I have a good work ethic and I have a good outlook. I mean, it's the same thing with you. Like you said, you started like, you got nothing. Right. House arrest. Right. But you could sit there and you could do what Ephraim did,

go to prison for four years. Right. And bitch and moan the entire time, like it was at you're bitching to me i had 26 a 26 year sentence and he's bitching to me like fucking places a hell hole they're keeping me here i can't believe i'm here and i'm oh who stop do you know how fast you were going i'm gonna have to write you a ticket to my new movie the naked gun leom neeson buy your tickets now and get a free chili dog chilly dog not included the naked god tickets on sale now august first

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Oh, hungry, oh Henry. I can't believe I'm spending this much time here. I've already done two years. And he's looking at me, and I've already done, you know, like nine like seven or eight years and he's looking at me he goes oh fuck and then you kind of realize it's like what am i talking about and so but you know it's like like you you know you could do house arrest and bitch and moan the whole time or you figure when am i going to have this much time right like this i can how can i look at this as a gift exactly i got time i've got you know i i

don't have to sit home and make a bunch of money and do this and do this and you know i can this is an opportunity where I'm not going to go out with my friends. I'm not going to do. I'm forced to to do this and I can utilize this. I can watch a bunch of series on Netflix or I can use this time to come up with do the things that I typically am never going to get to. Exactly. And that's what prison was for me. I'll just start, I'm going to try and come up with a plan and do something I like and make money doing what I like. And if it makes me a bunch of money, that's great. And if it doesn't, well, that's fine too. Because anything's better than making money the way I was making it before. Yeah. And just lad you back in prison. Right. So Guy Lawson,

contacted you, right? Guy Lawson's guy that wrote the article, Arms and the Dudes. Yes, in Rolling Stone. Rolling Stone. So what, one day you got a phone call from him? Did you hang up on him like all the other reporters? So actually, what happened was this was right after the New York Times article came out. Right. And my phone was ringing off the hook because it wasn't just the New York Times that published this article. It was, the New York Times published it, but then it got into the Associated Press Network and it got republished in like 300, 400, hundred newspapers all over the world.

I had my name on a Google Alert, and I started getting flooded with Google alerts from like every major city around the world that their newspaper reprinted this article. So it was worldwide news, and I started getting my phone ringing off the hook, and like all these reporters wanted to talk to me. I had lawyers who wanted to represent me. I had, you know, everyone was just like nonstop ringing off the hook. So then I get this call, and my caller ID says Rolling Stone. And I'm a musician, right?

So I'm like, oh, Rolling Stone. Let me answer the phone. Right. I'll answer Rolling Stone. So I answer the phone, and it's Geyloss. And he's like, hey, I'm a writer, a staff writer at Rolling Stone. My editors think your story is amazing and perfectly on brand for Rolling Stone, which our brand is young people doing fucked up things.

And you fit the bill. So I think this is an amazing story We'd love to write this article about you And if this goes really well Maybe we could even option it into a book and a movie Because I've had some of my other articles optioned And so I said, well, I mean, I'm a musician It's been my lifelong dream to be written about in Rolling Stone

Just not for this And he says, well, you know, it's Rolling Stone, who knows me? I promise you I'll mention your music in the article So I said, okay, But my lawyer says I can't talk to anybody. And so Ghee says, you know, I used to be a lawyer too before I became a journalist. So let me talk to your lawyer. Maybe we can work something out.

So I put him through to my lawyer. And Gie tells my lawyer that he guarantees that he won't publish anything until all my legal jeopardy has passed. So any, and my lawyer says, you know, he's a journalist for a reputable major news source. they take their journalistic guarantees seriously, supposedly. So I think it's safe for you to talk to him. And so I agree to talk to Guy's credit and Rolling Stone's credit,

they didn't publish anything until I got out of probation. It was actually, no, no, it wasn't, not out of probation, they published it until after I was sentenced. I was under probation when they published that article and I walk into my probation officer's office and he has the Rolling Stone cover and he's like, he's like, Pat Giles,

you're going to be talking to, I see you're famous here and I'm like, oh yeah, that article came out and he's like, you're not going to be talking to Rolling Stone about like how we do things here at the probation office, are you? And I said, no, you're not that interesting. You actually signed a paper

saying you won't, divulge. Oh, really? I didn't, I wasn't even aware of that. All the papers that you sign. One of, there's like a little thing that says you will not. Yeah. Not that I see that how they could stop you, but.

Right, right. I didn't, I wasn't even aware of that, but I signed lots of papers during that time. So, um, so anyway, uh, the article came, comes out. And I think it's like, he had to wait three years to publish that article. Are you serious? Yeah. Yeah. Because it, because Ralph Merrill went to trial and he had his first trial was a hung jury and they

couldn't sentence us until his trial was over because they wanted to use the sentencing as as a, you know, a leverage on us to get to testify at his trial and called upon. So they refused to sentence us until his trial was over. So he had to go through through two trials and all the preparation that that entails. So it was three years until we finally got sentenced. So Rolling Stone held back. But during that entire time, Guy was kept on investigating. He interviewed people who worked in the government side. He interviewed lots of different people. It dug through a lot of the court records of a lot of the discovery that was coming out from Ralph's trial. And when it finally came out, it was one of the longest articles, Rolling Stone

had ever published at that time. And Guy's agents started shopping it around. And Todd Phillips, the director of the Hangover movies, thought it was. was an amazing story and said, man, I could make an amazing movie out of this and decided to option the rights to the article. And he also optioned my life rights. Right. So he didn't have to. And people don't know this. But when your name appears in public media in the United States anyway, you're now a public figure. And people can write anything they want about you and say anything and make a complete work of fiction with your name in it and say you did anything. And you have zero right to sue them because it's freedom of speech.

Right. So he didn't, Warner Brothers and Todd Phillips didn't have to option my life rights, but they wanted my involvement to make it a bit more realistic, you know, to get the inside scoop and all the details. When they're spending $50 million on a movie, you know, it's not that much extra to. It also keeps you, it limits your ability to sue them. Well, it eliminates your ability to sue them. Like if you were like, hey, that's not right. Like, you could kind of sue them, but. You lose most of that, but yeah.

Though I don't think that that's why they did it. I don't think they were thinking I was going to sue. Because they didn't option DeVaroli's life rights. They didn't even offer it to him. He was in prison at the time. And they also told me that they had no interest in working with him because he was a known pathological liar and they didn't think they were going to get anything close to the real story from him.

And they just didn't want to work with him. And so they figured that from Ghee's reporting and from my inside story, that's all they needed. So at the time, they optioned the story. This was, the Rolling Stone article came out in 2011. Todd was in the middle of filming Hangover 2. And then he was going to do War Dogs right after Hangover 2, but then decided that he wanted to do Hangover 3 first

because that was a sure bet. And, you know, that he's going to make a lot of money, which he did. He made a lot of money from Hangover 3. And once he finished Hangover 3, that's when they started working on War Dog. They sent the screenwriter, Stephen Chin, the original screenwriter, flew to Miami to meet me, stayed in Miami for about 10 days.

Every day we met, and like I told him, all the stories. I remember he recorded it, and then he would work and take that material into the screenplay. So he based the screenplay mostly on his interviews with me. And then Todd and another writer, Jason Smilovic, rewrote the screenplay, like 10 times over the course of a year. I saw a bunch of different drafts of it as it was being written. And so it's interesting to see

what gets left on the cutting room floor and what parts they add in. So, yeah, I've seen it evolve from the original screenplay all the way until the final movie. So it's an interesting thing to see the evolution of that and the reason that they change certain things

because they have a formula. When they're spending $50 million on a movie, they need it to appeal to the general market. And the general market, it's the high point in the bell curve, right? So you need to appeal to most people, which means you need to be somewhat formulaic. That's what formula is, right? We know this works. Exactly.

We know most people will like something in this structure, and that's what they need to fit. So which means it needed to be about an hour and a half long. It needed to have a certain amount of action, a certain amount of comedy and a certain amount of drama, relationship drama. They had to throw it in there, right? because this was going to be mostly a guy-centered movie because it's about, like, weapons and stuff. Right. But some guys will drag their girlfriends along to the theater

and they've got to give the ladies the relationship drama because, you know, their focus testing shows that they need that. So, for example, in the movie, there's this whole, like, relationship drama between me and my girlfriend, not Anna Darmus, right? Yeah. Who's played by Anadamus. And that never happened. I mean, like, my girlfriend knew the entire time that I was dealing in weapons and ammunition,

and she had zero problem with it. As long as I was bringing in the money, that's all she cared about. But in the movie, they make this whole thing that I was hiding it from her and lying to her, and it becomes this big relationship focal point because they needed relationship drama for the women. They needed to add that in there. They needed some action because if without action, it can get a little too boring, They had to add in a few scenes of action, like, for example, a famous scene. The triangle of death.

The triangle of death is the most famous part of that. So that story actually, so people always, when they are saying, when people ask me, what's real and what was fake in the movie? And what did they change? The first thing they ask is the triangle of death, right? Because it's just so ridiculous. And the crazy thing about that story is that it's actually true, but it did not happen to us. Right. So it actually happened to Stephen Chin, the screenwriter.

That actually happened to him. Because the reason he got the job to write War Dogs was because he had written another screenplay called Iraq Iraq. And Iraq Iraq was a very well-regarded screenplay, but it never got made into a movie. As most screenplays never get turned into finished films. That screenplay was based on these other two contractors

who were actually in Baghdad during like 2003-2004 time. and Stephen had read some article about them and wanted to write a screenplay about them and so he decided to go and meet them in Iraq but he couldn't find a commercial flight flying into Baghdad so he flew into Jordan and hired a Jordanian driver to drive him to Baghdad he didn't know what he was getting into and this Jordanian driver actually stopped in Fallujah

because no one was manning the gas station so you can get free gas and then he got chased by these insurgents shooting him I mean, got saved by the U.S. Army, just like in the movie. So that actual scene is actually quite accurate, but it just happened to Stephen Chin and not to us. So, yeah, and there was also the scene where Jonah Hill fires the machine gun in the air. When he's doing the drug deal, the weed deal, that never happened. I mean, you don't fire an automatic weapon in the city limits and not get arrested immediately.

Well, I was one of my favorites is the very beginning when they put the gun to, They kidnap you, but the gun do. Right, right. So, yeah. A mild tail head. Right. And I love that he's sitting there like, you know, that's a, yeah, that's an HR5 such. You start, that's a great scene.

It's a very reliable weapon. Yeah. That's a great scene. Yeah, it's a great scene. I'm watching the movie going, that didn't happen. Yeah, that didn't happen. Yeah. That didn't happen.

Yeah. And I always realized, too, that, you know, I mean, I asked, like I asked you earlier, because I was like, I know this, like, I know you did not go to Albania. You know what I'm saying? And I know they blend it. And I remember watching the movie, I was like, I think that I feel like they blended his character together with Alex's. With Alex.

Yeah, exactly. They did because they wanted to simplify the story. Right. So they didn't want to add a new character to the story. So instead of introducing a brand new character, Alex, they just had me go to Albania instead. Like we talked about, like if you told the real story, like, it's like 20 hours of film time. Like you can't, they have to condense it, condense.

characters, condense scenes, condensed, you know. It's a simplifying. Right, right. In order to. And they left out a lot of stuff that, I mean, I went to many other places that they didn't put in the movie. I went to India and South Africa. You guys went, I listened to the scene I was loved was you guys go into the gun show,

right? The international. So that part, we actually did, so the Vegas X in the movie. So vague, so that scene is based on another gun show, another exhibition, I should say, not a gun show. They actually based that on Eurository, which is based in Paris. Right.

Now, they wanted it to be a little sleazier, so they changed the location to Vegas, because Vegas is more sleazy than Paris. Yeah. And they call it Vegas X. There is a gun show in Vegas, but that's a commercial gun show. It's called The Shot Show.

Okay. And it's more of the shooting sports show. We still, we went to that show quite a few times. In fact, we did meet Henry at that show, just like, I mean, not in the same way they show in the movie. We had already been doing business with Henry for a while. We were actually introduced to Henry by Ralph, who had been doing business with Henry since the 90s. Getting like parts, right, for guns or something, right?

The what? He was getting parts for, he got. Yes, from South Africa. That was their first deal. He got, he managed to circumvent some, like, I think the, either the South Africans or the U.S. is, like, rules against, like, the weapons transfers by cutting up the guns and shipping all the parts except for the receivers, which was the legal part, the part that was legally. a gun. Right. And so, and he, uh, Ralph had a machine gun factory. He didn't, he didn't have a laundromat service that, right. Yeah, Ralph was also Mormon, not Jewish. Right. Uh, but they kept

his name, Ralph. So that, but I think that's as far as his character is accurate, as far as the movie goes. Um, but yeah, Ralph, uh, got started with Henry, uh, by importing these gun parts from, for South Africa and putting them back together in his machine gun factory in Utah. And that's how he knew Henry and he introduced Henry to Ephraim. when they started doing business together. So are you telling me that you and Afrim didn't have matching Porsches? So we did have Audi's. Did you?

Yeah, he had an A6. I didn't know that. Yeah, he had an A6 and I had an A4. So it wasn't matching. I had the lower model. He had the higher model. That's funny. And we did live in the same building.

It wasn't as nice as in the movie, but it was actually the Flamingo complex in South Beach, the people who live in Miami Beach, know where that is. Back in the day, it was a major party scene. Nowadays, I hear all those party people have grown up and started family, so it's more of a tame scene now. But, yeah, we did live in the same building that's actually true, too. Yeah, I was going to say, yeah, they cut, obviously they cut out the, how Ephraim gets arrested and that whole thing. Yeah, that whole thing, yeah.

But it was a much simpler. Yeah, though, it was such a great story, though. I was pretty disappointed that didn't make it into the film, that the way he got arrested. It was just so funny. the line. Yeah, yeah. What can I say, boys, once a gun runner. Oh, he's a gun runner.

Am I right? It's just so perfect. Oh, my God. Just walk right into it. Oh, man. Yeah. Well, there's only so much time. So much screen time.

Yeah, exactly. They have, they got to make it. Yeah, and I never punched him in the face. As much as I loved, I would have. I came so close to punching him in the face, like for real. But I knew in the back of my head that if, I did that he would just use that against me and that he would like sue me for assault and that would be, I'm like, you know what? I'm not, I'm going to. Oh, listen, he'd stay the night

that. He'd be begging to stay the night in the hospital. He played up so much. He played up so much. Yeah. He said he has permanent pain and his neck and he's going to sue me for, you know, for permanent pain. Yeah, I mean, like, chronic pain is going to, he's going to claim and all that stuff. Yeah, I didn't want to give him any, any ammunition against me. So I restrained myself and just walked out. So how close, so to me, because I've never, like, I think I saw one picture of Henry. Oh, yeah. Like how close was the character of, that Bradley Cooper plays to the real?

So Bradley, I mean, he's a great actor. Right. I thought he did a good job on the character, right? But very different from the real guy. Oh, okay. Uh, so, uh, the real guy is a Swiss guy, right? So in Bradley has an American accent in the movie is not, um, uh, and in Bradley has these like thick glasses and like a very unshaven face and he looks like kind of like a tough guy gangster. Right. The real guy looked more like a Swiss banker. Okay. He's very clean cut, very calm. You would pass him by the street just looks like a regular old businessman wearing a nice suit. He never raised his voice. Never raised his voice. Never. got mad. It was always very, very calm. It was like he was selling, you know, like groceries. Right. And he was just talking to, yeah, it was the most boring thing, like, you know, trying to get

you into a home mortgage or something. Like, it was just like. He's trying to get you to buy 10,000 AK-47s. Yeah, he was just doing his job, just doing a job, no big deal. But we did hear lots of rumors about him. Obviously, he, he avoids the limelight, like the plague. I mean, He tries to avoid getting pictures taken of him. There is a video of him on YouTube, actually, where he gives a little speech that I've seen. I think it's still up there. But so, yeah, so there is something out there.

He's not completely anonymous. This is pretty old, though. I mean, this is from, like, back then. But I haven't seen anything more recent than that. Yeah, Deverely was like, he was like a real, like, you know, merchant of death. Like, he's like, he really is. He really is, yeah. And everywhere, everywhere.

Yeah, he really did. Yeah. And we always heard, like, I think he got put on a watch list by Amnesty International because he was suspected of doing things, but they could never prove it. Right. So, yeah, I mean. So what did you do with all that cash at the end of the movie when he did you see? Man, I wish.

I wish that was true, if only, if only that was, if only Henry had a heart of gold. It's great. It's a great scene, though. It's a great scene. So many great scenes that I wish were true. No, I had never got a suitcase full of cash by Henry. So disappointing. Yeah, it really was for me.

It really was. I sure wish that was true. But, yeah, no. He never stuck his neck out for me to give me cash. It just didn't happen, unfortunately. When you walk around, do you, like, people recognize you? Almost never, which I, I like it that way.

Okay. It happens very rarely, very rarely. And almost always it's a positive thing. Someone's a big fan of the movie. And, you know, I've never, like, had any problems with it. Everybody loves the movie. Yeah, everyone loves the movie. The only thing that has ever negatively affected me was that I was going to do a deal with

a artist that really loved my products from Singular Sound, the music. company. And he really, really loved the products, thought they were brilliant. He was a pretty big artist. Not big in the general market sense, but big in the musician community. He's like a musician's musician. Every musician knows who he is, but almost nobody who's not a musician knows who he is. But that's exactly who we want because we're selling to musicians. And he was totally ready to get on board and do a promotion for us. And then I guess he had never heard of ward dogs like he discovered it at the last second and he's like oh dude you know uh he's like i understand i totally respect that you've built a new life for yourself and all that and that's

very admirable but you know my my fan base they're like real hippie types so they wouldn't want it they wouldn't be comfortable with me associating my brand with someone who has this in their past and so that destroyed the deal and so yeah yeah what can you do shit yeah i was going to say And you're, your, you know, your character in the movie comes off great. Yeah, I thought they did. I thought they did a pretty good job on me. You know, and look, if you had to pick somebody to play, yeah. Yeah.

Like, yeah, I mean, great hair. I mean, what else can I ask for you? I mean, yeah. Listen, I always say, like, if they ever make a movie about me, like, you, I will not accept an actor that's taller than five foot six. Absolutely not. There you go. You got to represent a short game. If only they gave me those types of calls.

Yeah, they give you nothing. No, no. They give you zero creative control. Actually, I came in from the left, listen, sit down. Yeah. You interrupt us again. Yeah. You're leaving.

That's exactly. I mean, just like with my cameo, they were like, they're like, you good. They want pictures of you with, they've got pictures of you with all the guys as the real guy and he was here. He was helping advise us. He was, stop, bro. Yeah, yeah. You know, like really, I was here sitting down, being quiet waiting. Yeah, yeah.

You know, it's like, they want to tell the story. they want to tell. Yeah. And that's, they're going to tell it. And I am actually, to be completely honest, I'm very happy

with how the movie came out. Yeah. I thought it came out really great. I thought it was going to be way worse, to be completely honest. When I first heard that, just like your reaction with Ephraim,

I thought he was going to make another version of the hangover. Yeah, it was going to mock you. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. I thought they were just going to make us a bunch of clowns. And luckily, this,

Todd Phillips, the director, he, I think he saw War Dogs as his transition movie. He was coming from the comedy world, making the hangover movies. The movie he made after War Dogs was Joker. Oh, okay. Which he won a whole bunch of Academy Awards. He made a billion dollars. I wish that was War Dogs, but no, but it's Joker.

And Joker is obviously a very dramatic, sad movie. Not a shred of comedy in there, ironically. Um, war dogs was what they call a dromedy, right? So it had equal parts drama, comedy. So it was his way from moving from hangover to Joker was war dogs. It was his transition movie. So I think he wanted it to be taken a little bit more seriously. So that's why he didn't turn it into a clown show and make us, you know, objects of mockery.

I was very relieved when, when I saw the movie. I thought it was, it came out really, really good. And, and, uh, I thought that, uh, my character in the movie was portrayed sympathetically. Yeah. I thought they made me look a bit more like a loser in the movie than I really was in real life, but that's okay. But it made it a better dramatic arc.

Exactly. I understand why they did it. Yeah. They want you. Yeah. They want an anti-hero that you can root for. Exactly. You can root for him.

He's trying to do the right thing. I want him to succeed. Right. So they root for you. Right. Even though they may not be happy with how you're doing it. Right. Exactly.

You need to have sympathetic characters Which is also why they changed Devoroli Dvoroli dramatically from his real life Persona. Yeah, people are always ask me You know, just like they ask you Was Diveroli, was he as crazy as Jonah Hill? Was he as crazy in the movie? I'm like, dude, he was way more psycho than that.

Way more. I mean, he didn't do that some of the stupid things. He didn't pull the gun, but he didn't pull the gun but he'd done a lot of nasty shit that would make him a lot less endearing than the movie character. Like, I'll tell you, I'll tell you a scene that I felt watching the movie I was like oh no that's spot on being going up to the chick in the bar

and being like how much I've seen him do way worse than that yeah yeah that's what I'm saying like perfectly accurate like you think yeah everybody's thinking nobody would ever do that oh no absolutely he would just say let's negotiate right now how much honor box I've seen him do worse I so I was there when he was and he would do this this wasn't a one-time occurrence he did this on a somewhat regular basis he would go up to a couple right like on man and woman holding hands, go up to the chick and take her other hand in his hand

and say to her, come on, baby, hang out with me. You're too good enough for this loser. And the guy's like, what the fuck? You're talking to my girlfriend. You know? And I had to like pull him out of so many fights. So many fights I had to pull him.

It got so annoying going out with him because he'd always get wasted and then start fights over stupid things. It was just, yeah. I like him. Yeah. Keeps people around. him that will enable him and we'll get him out of those spots like if you weren't there to save him

he'd probably be much way he knows this guy will step in and be like hey okay well you know if you're not there he's probably much more tame yeah yeah I would say so the first thing he said to the the girl that he calls Jenna in in in his memoir yeah his his longtime girlfriend that he was dating at this time yeah um he I was there when they met yeah she was sitting it was in a in a in a a club called Purdy Lounge in Miami Beach. She's sitting by herself because I think her friend went to the bathroom or something. He sits down next to her and he goes to her, hey, you like doing Coke? And she's like, I haven't done it in a really long time.

He's like, you want to do some Coke? And she's like, okay. And they go to the bathroom. And that was the beginning of like a, I think it's two or three year relationship that was the most dysfunctional thing I'd ever seen in my life. I mean, it was like literally, and this would be in public, they'd be screaming at it, like we're at a restaurant and a bunch of people, and they'd get in some fight

and they'd start screaming at each other at the top of their lungs. Everyone in the restaurant is looking going, what the fuck is going on there? She would go running off to the bathroom crying. He would go chasing after, baby, baby, you know I didn't mean to say that. Baby, come out, come on, come on, come on, I love you, I love you. I'll buy you diamonds. We're going to go on a cruise next week.

I'm going to take you to that restaurant you want to go. I swear, baby, I'll never say that again. You know, and just like, just like, like, like never ending, just like that. And then finally he would convince her to come out of the bathroom and they would have like, you know, like, they'd make out in public, you know, like to make up for it. And then like 15 minutes later, they're screaming at each other again. And it was just like so exhausting to be around them. It was just so horrible and dysfunctional, very unpleasant. That's how he explained it, by the way.

Oh, yeah? Yeah, yeah. Well, it's accurate. I can, I can confirm. I remember the blow. thing, he said, he said he asked her, hey, you want to do a bump? And she goes, she's like, yeah, okay. And he goes, so we go in the bathroom and we, you know, he said, so we, we do a couple lines. He said, now I ended up taking her, like, home that night. And I went, no, no, no, that's a

lie. Well, whatever I put in the book is what he told me. I don't know if that's what he told me. I'll tell you afterwards, but yeah, go on. But what happened? Oh, no, you're right. It was a few days later. He called her and then they, she was dating somebody. He called, she gave him her number because I assume she was coked up. And I think it was the next day or a couple days later. He called her and she didn't pick up his call. So he called her again something like 34 times in a row until she finally answered the phone to scream at him. Stop fucking calling me, you fucking psycho. And he's like, baby, baby, baby, just listen to me. Just give me to hear me out. Hear me out. Okay, okay, I understand.

I understand it may be excessive, but it's only because I felt such a connection for you, you know, I felt we were really viving. I think we got something special. Let me just take you out. Any restaurant, Utah, just take any restaurant, just pick it. We're just going to go. I owe you nothing.

You could lose my number afterwards, but just let me take you out to dinner once, you know, and just he wouldn't leave her alone until she was like, okay, fine, one dinner, and then you have to leave me alone. And that was like the beginning of it. And then, like, he just like he just would never let up. I remember with the coat.

He said, I was like, why? And he goes, he said, you give him Coke. He's, you got a 50% chance that the chick wants to do it. Okay. He said, you get him in the bathroom, you do a couple lines. He goes, at that point, you got a 50% chance they'll go home with you. He said, he asked four chicks. He was, you ask four different women at a bar.

You're going home with one of them. I didn't know you did the match. Yeah, I was like, unfortunately, that sounds very reasonable. That's a very reasonable approach to how you date women. I guess it worked for him. For him. He's like, I only got to go approach four of them. Somebody's coming home.

Right, right. but yeah he said uh yeah i remember yeah she had a boyfriend and then they started seeing each other and then he was like you can see this guy's got to go and then she broke up with him or something yeah wasn't the first night but yeah that was what he had said was yeah 20 50 50 it was it was the uh yeah the worst relationship i'd ever seen in my life he said he would write up thousands of dollars and bills because back then the cell phone you know if it was long distance he'd be like my fucking cell phone's $1,500 because and she liked that she if if i had to blow money on her she she she knew how much much it bothered me, he goes, so she would be like, she would gritty, oh, you like that,

don't you, you like that, don't you? And she'd be like, I do like that. They had their own dynamic going. It wasn't pleasant for anyone around them, or I think for them. But I guess it did something for them that it lasted like, I think two or three years. It lasted like after I like left the company, they were still going at it and still hating each other. They were living together, but, like, hating each other. It was just like, it was a really, really, uh, terrible, terrible, uh, situation. Yeah. And that's, and you, you, you, you, you started, you started what, did you start, because we

talked about this before. Yes. So only, but by the way, only, it's not that this is like a pitch. Uh-huh. It's only because I'm interested in, in, I'm interested in, and, like, I, you know, I write stories and I tell stories and that comes very naturally to me. but I'm interested in entrepreneurs that like you come up with like a device or you come up with like um because that's what Danny had told me right I thought you when you went on Danny's I thought it was because of the uh um the oscillating or the the pedal right for the guitar pedal right that was my first creation was it the beat buddy the beat buddy that's what I thought it was for but you you had that out you said yeah so my first so just to give people context um While I was under house arrest, house arrest compared to prison, obviously, is heaven.

And, you know, people say this all the time. Like, it wouldn't matter if it was the Ritz. Right. I can't leave. I can't see my friends. I can't. Like, it's not nearly as a restrictive as prison is. Right.

But it still sucks. It still sucks. You have a government-appointed babysitter who tends to be an asshole. Right. It just kind of comes with the job. And if you're outside, yeah, you have the ankle tracking device that you can't remove. If you, I remember the first time it got triggered, I was taking the trash out in my apartment building. I just went to the trash shoot, right?

Right. Right. It was inside the building. But it was able to sense that I had left the boundaries of my apartment. Right. And I get a phone call from my probation. Where are you with a phone? fuck are you you you're outside of like your scheduled blah blah blah and I'm like oh I'm just

taking the trash out well you don't have fucking permission to take the garbage out and I was like okay now I know so so yeah I mean it sucks but obviously I was very very thankful that I avoided prison right I mean I was looking at they I mean of course they scare you to in order to get you to plead guilty but at first they were they were They said, oh, you delivered 71 aircraft loads, each with this Chinese ammo on it. We can charge you for every bullet. For every one. They say each aircraft load is a separate crime because you provided a document, the certificate of conformance, for each aircraft load.

And on the certificate of conformance, it said that the place of origin of the ammo was Albania, and you knew it was Chinese, and you had a whole operation to hide that it was Chinese. So each one is an individual crime, and we can give you up to five years in prison for each one. And there's 71 aircraft loads. So we can get up the 355 years if you go to trial. Or you could plead guilty and we'll combine it into one. So max you get is five years. And because you plead guilty and, you know, we're going to tell the judge to give you on the low end of the guidelines.

So who knows? Maybe you'll get nothing. Maybe you'll just get probation. Right. And so that was the choice. It was like the rest of your life in prison or maybe nothing. Right. And so, of course, I pled guilty.

And my lawyer said, oh, you know, we could just ask. for probation, but maybe that's asking for too much. So maybe we should just suggest, because they, you know, asked for our opening offer. Right. So my lawyer said, well, maybe we should just ask for like seven months of house arrest. So he said, and they're like, yeah, sure, no problem. We probably could have just gotten probation without any house arrest.

But that was the offer he gave, so that was what they took. And so I was under house arrest. And the thing, I was playing a lot, I've been a musician ever since I was like 15. I've been playing guitar. I'm a singer. You're playing in the movie. I do, that's right. I have my cameo.

I'm playing guitar and singing in the movie. I'm singing, don't fear the Reaper to a room full of 90-year-olds. That was the joke. I wanted to play one of my original songs, which I thought was, I was thinking, man, this is my big moment. I'm going to get my original music in a major Hollywood film. That's about me. You know, there's going to be the launch of a music career.

They told me, you're going to sing this song. or we're going to get someone else to do the scene. Because they wanted the joke. They wanted Don't Fear the Reaper. So, yeah, so I'm playing a lot of guitar while I am under house arrest, and I really missed playing with a drummer in particular. Because it wasn't like a COVID-style lockdown.

You could have people visit you. Right, right? You just can't go anywhere. So I had my musician friends come over and we jam, but none of my drummer friends were going to bring their whole drum set because it's a pain in the ass to move, and I lived in a small apartment. It would wake up the neighborhood.

And so I bought a drum machine, which is an electronic device that you could make beats on. And so I'd make beats on it, and so I could play along with the beats. But every time I wanted to change the beat, like to go from verse to chorus, I'd have to stop playing my guitar and press a button on the machine to change the beat. And it interrupted the flow of the music. So I thought, I need a drum machine in the form of a pedal that I could just operate with my foot while I play guitar. So I went online to look for it. Couldn't find anything like it.

I asked my musician friends if they'd seen anything like it, and they were like, I haven't seen anything like that, but if you find it, let me know because that sounds super cool. I would get one too. So I thought if nobody's making it, everybody wants it. This is a huge opportunity. So I started researching it. It took me about three years, but eventually came out with it.

It's called The Beat Buddy, like your buddy that plays the beat. It became a huge hit. I crowdfunded it because I didn't have any money. so but people bought it paid in advance to get it that's I raised $350,000 like that in a month in one month which paid for the manufacturing and the engineering and that was able to launch my company singular sound and since our we delivered the first beat buddy units actually 10 years ago a little less than 10 years ago in September of 2014 we won a whole bunch of awards for it in the music industry. And since then have come out with several other musician-focused products, like for the

musicians in the audience, they'll know, like, the world's most advanced looping pedal, the world's most versatile MIDI controller and cable management system. Anyway, singular sound.com. You could check out all those products. But there was always an issue. So I built the business, Singular Sound, and it's doing very well. I'm very happy with it. But there was always a limitation with this business because it's in the music industry. That is the musician-focused industry, not the music industry in the general sense. And musicians only comprise of like maybe 10% of the population,

people who actually buy this kind of gear. So it's a very niche kind of product, even though I'm not complaining. I've done very well with it. But I've always been thinking of ideas after I think it was like our sixth or seventh music product, I was thinking, man, I got to come up with something that's for the general market.

And one night I was hanging out with my brother, and we were smoking weed, right? And so we got the munchies, and we ate some mango, because mango's super sweet and juicy and delicious, but mango gets, like, stuck in your teeth. Right. So my brother asked me for some dental floss. Go to my bathroom. We're floss on our teeth, and I'm complaining. I'm like, this is such a pain in the ass.

I wish I had a machine that could do this for me. And he looks at me, he's like, oh, if we come up with a machine that can do that, that, then everyone's going to buy that because everyone hates to floss. And everyone needs to floss. That's as general market as it gets. Right. And so we're like, okay, we have to design something. And so we start coming up with all these different hairbrained ideas like artificial intelligence, vision systems, and robotic hands holding dental floss and things that would have never worked. And eventually, we realized that we could just make an improvement on the water pick. The water pick is a, a water flosser, it shoots a single jet of water, that you have to aim like a toothpick at your gum line. And to use it properly, you have to aim it at 90 degrees to the gum line. Because if you

aim it up into the gum light, it irritates the gums. And if you aim downward away from the gum line, then it doesn't get the full clean. Right. It's not as effective. So you have to hold it at a 90 degree angle, trace your gum line, both top, bottom teeth, and even more difficult on the inside facing outwards in order to get proper. And it blows water all over your mirror as you're doing it. Exactly. If you don't use it properly, it makes a very big mess. You can hurt yourself.

And there's a significant learning curve to this. Most people buy them because they hate flossing and then they realize that their initial experience is very unpleasant and they just quit and put it under the sink. And then they never floss again. So we realized we could improve on the water pick by instead of using a single jet of water, water, we could create an 8-shaped manifold, right, using 12 jets so that the angle is always

at 90 degrees and you just bite into it and this thing rotates. Right. So you could just bite into it like this. And you're done. Right. And so the angle is always held at the right place. Each side has three jets, so it has full coverage of the entire gum line. and that allows you to have a full effective floss in just 10 seconds.

Right. Which it would usually take you like two minutes if you're doing it manually. Right. I was going to say, too, by the way, that I made him go out to his car and get this. So it's not like he brought this. Hey, I want to pitch this product. I was like, bro, you got to go get this. So he had to go get it and bring it in. Because I'm interested because I'm also interested in like, do you sit down and draw this up?

Or do you like a sketch and then go to somebody? and say, hey. So my process is the way, I actually start, of all things. I'm actually not an artist at all. Like, I'm very bad at drawing. So I start with Microsoft Paint and just use straight lines and circles and stuff and get as the basic line sketch of what I'm thinking about. Right.

And then I have like little arrows pointing at various features and a text description. And then what I'll usually do is if it's a physical hardware product like this, I'll go to a industrial designer who will make a 3D model and then it's just the looks of it it's not nothing functional and just so I have like a computer rendering of what I want the final product to look like

and then I take that rendering to engineers depending on the type of product is different types of engineers I learned this all the hard way through a lot of trial and error but for a product like this is really just mechanical mostly so you need a mechanical engineer.

But there are some electronic elements. You do need a PCB designer and an electrical engineer to do the circuitry. And so you need to find the right engineers to do this. Ideally, engineering teams who specialize in the similar kinds of things. So I found a company, an engineering company that specializes in dental devices. They designed a bunch of toothbrushes in the past, electric toothbrushes. So I figured they are already in the oral device industry. they would know how to do this.

So that's, you know, kind of how I pick my engineering teams. Once you have the engineering done, then you could take that design from the engineers and you can get a prototype made and test it in the real world, make sure it's functioning correctly. And usually you go through several revisions of prototypes until it actually works. That took us three years to go through the prototyping stage. And then once you have that done, you go to manufacturing. And then usually the...

There's a whole other series, isn't it, of engineers to figure out what machines are going to make this piece in this piece in office together. Usually you have to redesign the whole thing because your prototyping engineers didn't take all the manufacturing issues in mind. Right. Because when you're doing mass manufacturing, you need to do things like injection molding where the parts need to be specific shape so that they could be stamped out by these big plates that do the injection molding. And if they aren't, they can't be, then you have to redesign the part and, you know, split some parts into multiple parts. And so that entire process took us another two years. So that's why we've been working on InstaFloss for about five years. And we just delivered the first few thousand units to people who pre-ordered it.

So we're very excited about that. How did you fund this? So we started out with the initial prototyping stage, was funded by just friends and friends. family and from some money from my music business and the the the then once we had the functional prototypes so we knew it would work we did a Kickstarter campaign and we raised a million dollars yeah the fuck am I doing yeah you didn't go on shark tank you didn't send the so we applied for shark tank and we got into the final round okay and then they turned us down they're like try again next year we think you have a great product but it's

but like 30,000 people. You mean you didn't get on TV? No, we didn't get on TV. We applied to Shark Tank, and you go through several rounds to get onto the show, and they told us that we got into the final round. So we were very close to getting onto Shark Tank, but then they turned us down, I don't know, I guess we, you know, for whatever reason. I personally, I watched that season of Shark Tank,

and I thought we were much more interesting than a lot of the products that were on there. But I think what they try to do is they try to have a certain mix of different types of businesses. Right. Like, they'll have some businesses that they know the sharks are going to hate for the drama, you know? So we've done a lot of research on Shark Tank

because we've been trying to get on the show. And what you see in 10 minutes on the show is an edited version of about one and a half to two hours. Of them really grilling you. Of them grilling you relentlessly. Yeah, it always seems funny. Like, you're going to talk to me. I come out and I pitch my product.

I'm on here for four minutes. And you guys are saying, I'll give you 500,000. thousand dollars i'll get come on man that's not they cut out like 95 percent they have to be asking you know what was you know what's your what's this value what's that how are you this how many employees what's your overhead or you have a you know they got to be asking a lot more questions yeah yeah they and they do i mean each pitch is like an hour and a half two hours in which they edit it down to 10 minutes so uh but yeah we did not unfortunately not yet knock on wood right we didn't

get get on chart tank yet still hoping you want to go on shark tank what on shark tank yeah I mean, you're not really thinking, no, I want to go on because I want them to give. Oh, to raise the money? Yeah. I mean, look, I would never turn down. At this point, you're doing it by yourself. Yeah, that's true. We are completely self-funded.

We still could make use of additional funding. We would expand faster if we got additional funding. So I'm not saying that we're completely against the idea. If the offer that we got on Shark Tank was actually good, I would take it. It would still be cool just to go on. Yeah, but I would be thrilled just to go on, sure, absolutely. You always say, as seen on a shark tank. Exactly, they love that.

Though Mark Cuban, I think he's not. I think this is going to be his last season or something. So, yeah. That's too bad. Yeah. Well, so what are you working on now? Something else? Yeah, so Instafloss.

I just completed five years to get it to market, so that's been a long road. Much longer than I thought it would be, of course. but I'm really excited about a brand new venture that I'm working on called War Dogs Academy. Okay. And the way this happened was, ever since the movie, I've had literally hundreds of people,

maybe even more than a thousand people, contact me on social media various ways, begging me to, like, become my apprentice. Right. And usually the way it goes is, oh, please teach me everything. I'll work for free. I'll give you 90% of the money.

just I'm, you know, desperate in a bad situation. You know, I know you could teach, I'll do whatever you want. I'll work 20 hours a day, et cetera, right? And, I mean, I'm running these other businesses. It's not, even if you work for free, I mean, that's time out of my day. I'm not, and I don't know these people and their level of commitment and whether they're willing to stick it out to the end and all that stuff. Anybody says, I'm going to work for free?

It's almost always not a, it's not the case. Three weeks later, they're like, bro, I got to get a job. Yeah. But you didn't think that's through? Right. Right. So a little while ago, I got a very different message than the usual. And this was from a guy named Logan. And he told me, he's like, you know, I'm just reaching out to let you know that around six years ago, my partner and I watched War Dogs. We were 21 years old at the time. And we thought, man, these guys are our age. And if they could do it, why can't we do it? It's set up. We learned everything, learned how to do the government contracting, registered our business. We've been on a whole bunch of contracts. We lost them a lot. We were

going crazy. But finally, we struck it big. And today, we have a multimillion dollar government contracting business. And I just wanted to say thank you for the inspiration. Nice. And I was like, that's a great, that's a great fucking call. Amazing. Exactly. And I said, that's amazing. I mean, the fact that I was, was any, that my story was any inspiration and went, you know, took these guys, turned their lives around and set them up for life, was just a huge inspiration for me. And so I had the thought, I'm like, you know, I have so many people who want to learn how to do this. And these guys taught themselves how to do it. And they went through and made a million mistakes, as everyone

does when you're first learning something new and complex, like government contracting. Right. But they learned their lessons, and now they're running a multimillion dollar successful business. And so I said, you know, I have all these people wanting to learn this. Why don't we start something to teach people how to do government contracting? You guys build a legitimate legal, successful multi-million dollar business. And the vast majority of government contracting is completely legitimate and above board and legal. You don't have to do all these sneaky crazy things that Ephraim was doing and still become very successful at it.

So it's also not just arms. Like you could, they bid on everything. The government spends, I think it was, I don't remember the exact numbers, but I think it's something like $6.7 trillion every year. The defense budget alone is around $800 billion, which is greater than the national GDP, the vast majority of the world's countries. Right. So they buy everything.

I mean, they buy, the federal government is the biggest single buyer of anything, of, the single, the single biggest buyer on the planet. period. Well, they're the largest employer in the world. Exactly. They spend the most money more than anyone. So if you learn how to sell to the government, you are in a, you're entering a gigantic market. And because they buy everything, you can sell anything. So they, I bid on contract, my first contract, as I mentioned, was for fuel. I worked on contracts for clothing and for food and for vehicles and as well as arms. These guys who, who I started War Dogs Academy me with, they found their niche in laundry services, of all things. They have multi-million

dollar laundry service contracts. They're actually currently in Germany right now on Army base in Germany overseeing their laundry contracts. So you can go into any field, right? If you already have a specialty in a field, like let's say you know a particular industry, you have a huge leg up, right? You already know all the players, you know the details of the industry. You can learn how to get registered with the government, learn how the system works, which we are going to teach on Wardogs Academy. It's set to launch in about a few weeks. We're probably going to launch shortly after this podcast airs, but before we launch, we have a pre-sale deal, so people can save a little bit of money if they're really set on this. So are these are, this is

a video course? So yeah, it's a video course, but we're going to, we have written, we have all the notes in written format as well and all the links to all the websites and all the documents and example documents of things that you need to fill out. So we pretty much are making this as easy turnkey as possible so that people don't make all the mistakes that cost, that, you know, will cost you in the beginning when you're first learning. What about what if they want, what if they do that and then they want like, you know, you know, hands on or the ability to actually talk to somebody? Right. So we're going to have additional. options for that. So we're going to have, we have the basic course and we have additional

opportunities to have one-on-one coaching. We have offers for us to review their first contracts, to make sure they're submitting it to the government. We also have a B-to-B option because not everyone is someone who's starting from scratch. Some people want, are more than happy to pay a little bit extra to get the individualized attention and to make sure that they're not messing up. For larger business, it's worth it because the little bit of extra they're going to have for our experts to come in and look at what they're doing and make sure they're not messing up. It's going to save them time on. It's going to save them a lot of time and money if they were going to make the mistakes otherwise. Yeah. Okay. So wardogsacademy.com. Check it out.

Wardogsacademy.com. Yes. That was available. That's pretty good. I know, right? Right. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. I'll bet you. I'll bet you there's a ton of stuff that war dogs is, it isn't available. Academy, I guess. Right, yeah. Yeah. You would have probably changed the course, Wardong's course. Right, right. There's school or whatever.

Yeah, we went through a bunch of different names. You could have come over. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, Academy works up. Yeah, we landed on Academy. We thought it was the best. We were thinking at first doing university, but there's been so many scandals with online universities being like scams.

Like, you know. What is Andrew Tate's thing called? I didn't want to mention his name, Hustle University. Exactly. That was exactly why we. didn't go with War Dog University because of Andrew Tate. Maybe I made a bunch of enemies with the Tate fans out there right now, but we didn't want to be associated with someone who has a questionable reputation.

We want this course to be a legitimate, useful value that people will get. They'll be able to launch a new career based on this, and we're going to make it as easy as possible for them to do that. Okay. So, yeah, so the last thing we want is to be associated with a scammy kind of a thing. I was going to say, it's pretty easy, but I mean, we'll put the, we'll put the beat buddy and, or the name of, it's just, it's the website for, because you have a multitude of different devices. Yeah, my musical business is, is singular sound. Yeah, singular sound.com.

Yeah, the insta floss is instafloss.com, like Instagram and flossing, insta floss, or instant flossing, and wardogs academy.com. Yeah, we'll put all those. in the description. Perfect. Got to get my pitch in sometime. Yeah, I was going to say, bro, like you're, like you're, you're kicking ass, right? Thank you, man.

You know? I appreciate that. You, uh, I mean, you definitely, you know, turn, I'm amazed by the crowdfunding thing. Yeah, you definitely turn. I have a lot of experience on crowdfunding. If you ever are thinking about doing that, I've got lots of tips for that. Yeah, I've got, well, I'm still, you know, I'm still on probation. Like, I'm limited completely.

And I've had guys come to me and say, hey, hey, if you want to flip properties, we can do it in your name. Hey, if it's like, I'm on, they don't seem to understand. I'm on probation. Yeah, but we can do it in my name. I'm like, yeah, no, no, I know there's lots of loopholes. Right, right, right. I could get around it without your help. Right.

I'm thinking maybe just do what I'm supposed to be doing. Right, right, right. Don't end up back in prison. I can wait six months, you know. I can wait, you know, and I'm doing, you know, doing great. That's great. When's your probation over? I got like five months, about five months.

Oh, wow, congrats. So early congrats. Yeah, yeah. What do I have? Yeah, I got five months. I got five months. Amazing. So it's right around the corner.

My, you know, my probation officer comes here and she like walks in and she's like, who, she's like, you know, who have you interviewed lately? You know, she like asked me questions and stuff. And I'm like, and, you know, she's like, so what are you up to? I'm like, oh, I went to crime con. She's like, I was going to go to crime con. Oh, really? Are you serious?

She's like, yeah, I didn't know what, you know, what was it exactly? Like, I thought it would be interesting. And I was like, like, how, she's vastly different than my first probation. Who I don't think meant me any harm, but she made it as hard as possible. I see. You know what I'm saying? Yeah. And then, but this one's way more.

Yeah, they vary. Send me that. You know, like, because, you know, when I first got out, I was a really strict probation. Because the first time I was on probation, I had stole 11.5 million. Right. So they were holding resentment. Yeah. Yeah, that's a good reason.

And so she was like, this is not going to happen this time, is it? I was like, well. So she was, they were much more strict. But then, you know, as you get further away, because most people recidivate in like the first two years. After two years, they're like, okay, drop him down. Then I got another probation officer. And then after like a year or so of that one, they're like, drop him down. And I got this one, which is she's just like, you know, send it to me when you get it, when you get a chance.

She's way cool. Oh, that's nice. That's nice. Yeah, which is nice. Yeah. yeah um not that i do anything anyway but doesn't matter you are scared all the time yeah yeah for the first year or so getting out i'm scared i'm waiting for them to come show i'm waiting for them to knock on the door and say they made a mistake you got to come right right turn around you

you know you did something you broke you violated or we let you out by accident i mean literally that's how i felt like they're going to realize they fucked up oh wow um but uh yeah five months that's that's suit yeah it's cool it's cool i'm excited yeah um what are you going to do once you get out what can't you do now that you're you want you you're waiting to get you know what i can't do is i really can't like travel not that i want to travel right you know but it's like you know it's the thing when people someone tells you know moment someone says no as soon as you sound right i like i got married like i'd like to go on on vacation she's like okay um because i told her you know oh i got married and she was like oh that's great

she's she's like um are you going to go on a honeymoon i was like you know which i thought was like a nice thing for her to say and i was like yeah we're we're playing on going on a honeymoon She's like, okay, well, I need to know where and, like, it can't be too extravagant. You're not going to be able to, don't plan anything outside the U.S. You know, and it can't be too crazy. And it's like suddenly I'm realizing, like, I really can't go on. Like, not that I'm going to do anything crazy, but I actually was thinking about going, like, to the Virgin Islands, which is in the U.S. It's still part of the U.S., but she may have a problem.

Right. And then it's like, okay, well, like, there's all these issues, you know what I'm saying? There's issues with this. There's issues with that. And it's like, what am I going to do? You know, it's like, okay, you know what? So I, you know, talk to my wife and she's like, look, I don't really care anyway. Like, we'll go whenever we go.

You know, but let's face it, if I say, hey, I want to put $3,000 on a credit card, I can't put $3,000 on a credit card. They see my credit cards. They're going to say, the hell do you have $3,000 on a credit card for? Oh, I went on this vacation and then I got to say where I'm going. So I have to, if I say, oh, I'm going to stay here at this hotel, they're going to be like, you're staying there for a week. That's got to be expensive. What does that cost? Because keep mind, all of that goes into, what do you pay?

So you're going on a really nice little vacation for a week. Well, you owe this money. It's like, fuck. But I mean, does that end with your probation? It ends with my probation as far as them having so much say-so. Gotcha. You know, I still owe the money, but that goes to like a collection company. I see.

And they'll call you and say, look, and you can negotiate with them. And the fact is, if I tell them, look, go fuck yourself. I'm not paying you, you know, which I'm not going to do. Right. But I'm in a better position. to say, look, I'm not, I can't do this. Here are what my understanding is. They basically say, look, pay $300 a month.

You know, they're not, they don't want to, they don't want to sit there and go, okay, this is what you got to pay every month. Or this is what, you know, okay, well, well, wait, send us your doctor. They're going to do that every month. They're going to say, can you pay this every month and you can at least negotiate your probation officer. There's no negotiation. Right.

It's like, you're like, well, I'm not paying that much. Well, then I'm going to have the marshals come and arrest you. Right. You'll sit in the county for, for, you're going to say. sit in the county jail for six months and then we'll bring you in front of the judge and we'll talk about it. You're like, yeah, I can't go to the, I can't sit in the county for six months. So yeah, yeah, you're in a better position, which, you know, and I'd like to be able to do, you know, every time I go somewhere to travel to do something, you know, I have to go to,

like this guy, I don't know if you, do you know who Michael Franzis is? Sounds familiar about that. He's got a huge podcast, right? Okay. And so, Same thing with Ian Bick. I just went to go see Ian Bick. He's got a big podcast too. He's doing great. He started like a year ago and he's already got like 250,000 subscribers. So he's got more subscribers than I did.

I started three years ago. So I'm a little jealous about that, but I'm not going to, it's fine. Good for him. Right, right. So, but for me to go up there, I have to submit it. I have to explain why. I have to explain this is for business. I'm not going for pleasure.

I'm not going to party. I'm going. And she's like, okay, well, when is it this day, this day? And they're like, okay, so you're flying in this day. you're going there you're going make sure that you know you're not dicking around for three days on a little vacation no so that's the whole thing like if i want to go to michael franzis i have to go say look there's this guy i have to plead my case right right now she's super cool because she knows i'm not doing anything crazy so and it's like you flew in on i flew in on monday i flew out on tuesday and you know right

you can check the podcast in a week i'll show it right right um and and of course you get a letter from them they then they can call if they want to um but you can't go international right So I had, I did once. Oh, you did that. I went to, um, uh, Amsterdam. Oh, okay. Two of my charges are passport fraud. Oh. So, you know, when I told them that, they were, she was like, well, you can't go.

She's like, you can't even get a passport. I'm like, why? And this one, not this probation officer, or my other one, she goes, she goes, aren't you some of your charges passport fraud? And I was like, yeah, but I mean, this is going to be in my name. Right. And she's like, and she's like, well, I can't okay that. I can't okay you, one, to leave the,

United States. And two, I can't let you have a passport. You're on probation. And I was like, well, can I go to the judge? She says, yeah, you can, you can ask the judge. She said, I don't have a problem. I just can't okay it. And so I had to go in front of the judge and he had to issue two orders. One, yes, he's allowed to get his passport. And two, he's allowed to travel for business for this during this period of time. And so then I went for like seven days, no, six, I think it was like six days. I went to Amsterdam. There was a TV show called Inside the Mind of of a con artist. They did like an hour episode on me.

Not super flattering. But it was funny because when I came back in, you know, when you go through, when you go through passport control, like I'm staying in line with like six people in front of me, the person comes through and the guy goes, okay, welcome back to the United States. Okay.

Welcome back. Bo-do. Mine, he goes, bo-roo. takes the passport, puts it way over here. Like I'm going to lunge for him. Put it way over here. And he's sitting there and he goes, starts,

he's like going through and going through. And I'm waiting and I'm waiting and I'm waiting. And at some point I go, how bad is it? He goes, well, you're definitely going to have to talk to somebody. And I thought, Jesus, I thought it was a split second where I thought, are they going to let me in? And I was like, no, of course, they're going to let you in. Of course. And then I thought, I got a connecting flight.

Like, I'm in Atlanta. I got, I got to get on a plane. Yeah. Like, um, but anyway, then he took it and he put it in a pad or put in a clear plastic thing and put it down. And he kept going and I didn't realize it, but I'm still waiting for him. I'm like, well, what are we going to do? And he's like, oh, he's just giving me it.

He's still looking. And there's a door way. I mean, we're talking about 200 feet away. Uh-huh. Some guy walked out of a door. Uh-huh. So I see him coming. coming, but I don't realize it's for me, comes walking right up, grabs the plastic thing,

goes, Mr. Cox, follow me, and I'm like, oh, wear your bags. And I'm like, my, like, I start at this point, I'm thinking, I've done something wrong. Right. I may be going to jail. Anyway, I end up getting back to his desk and he sits down and he's looking over the whole thing. And he goes, what did you do? Is this like a Ponzi scheme? I go, no, it's bank fraud. He sold a few million dollars. It's not a big deal. And he's like, well, you know, there's a, he goes, there's a, a whole notice, or basically it said like a red notice or something. I mean to say that, but he calls it something else. And he's like, there's such and such notice on you. He said, and I go, well, there shouldn't be at all. I said, I've been to prison. I got out on my probation. I said, I have permission.

And he goes, well, I mean, it's expired. I go, it's expired. And he goes, still. And I went, I said, well, what's happening? He goes, and he said, do you have anything to give me? And I thought, oh, I have, luckily in my bag, I had the order from the judge. And I pulled it. I I said, oh, I got a thing from the judge. He's like, well, you should have started with this. I got a travel permit, too. Pulled out the, even though my probation officer, when she gave me, she says, I'm going to give you this. You're not going to need it.

I'm going to give it to you just so you have it. Thank God she gave it to me. Right. So he did let me go. But, yeah, man, I got problems. Yeah, yeah, I got problems. You think that's going to happen every time you go internationally? I don't know.

I wonder, because, like, there's a guy named Sean Outwood that I'd love to go on his, you know, like, it's kind of like Shark Tank. Mm-hmm. You know, it's like, I don't think it's going to, if I go on Sean Atwood, it's not going to do anything for me. My, it's not going to get a million views. My subscribers aren't going to spike. But it's Sean Atwood. Like he, like in this little genre, like he's a staple. You have to go on Sean Atwood.

It's like getting invited on, you know, Lex Friedman, right? But it's in the genre. Right. Like, oh, he only does criminals. I see. So I'd love to go. My fear is it's in, it's in the, you. UK. The UK doesn't allow criminals to come in, but Michael Franzis just went. So now I feel better.

And Sean said, I've had many people come from the United States. He said, the only time I've ever had anybody stopped was when they notified them ahead of time. I have a felony. I would like to come. And they said no. Oh, I see. And it was like, he's like, so don't say anything. I'm like, yeah, but if they stop me, they'll put you on the next plane going back. That's it. You're it. Right. So I would like to go. They didn't stop me going into Amsterdam. Do they have a policy not to allow felons? UK has a policy. They don't want felons. Like any felon?

Yeah, supposedly. I'm a felon, so. I was going to say, but, you know, I think, but like I said, he said it's never once. Right. So maybe it's more rich. And even Sean said, they don't, they're not, so they say they don't allow felons into the country. I see. He's like, but I've never had anybody stopped.

The only time I've ever had a person. I don't know how they would know. Right. Yeah. Like is the FBI providing them with felons from the United States? Like, that seems odd. I think maybe anyway. I mean, they could Google people who are Google.

Yeah, that's what I'm saying, maybe. But Michael Franzis just can't just win. Right, right. So, they're not Googling. Right. But the same thing going on Michael Franzis. Like, I want to be able to go. You know, I don't think it's going to blow my channel up.

Right. But it's like Michael Franzis. He's like this huge mobster. He's the, he is the number one biggest earner in the mob. He ran a gas tax scam that netted like $100 million or something outrageous, you know. So, yeah, I think that's cool. I want to go. He's got like a million subscribers.

He just started it, his channel, like a couple years ago. Like he's blowing up. It's cool. Well, in five months, yeah. Five months? Yeah, I can go. I mean, actually, I can go now, but I'm saying I have to ask. Right, right.

It's just a pain in the butt. So it's like going on Shark Tank. It's like, you're going and you're probably, you go and you think, I don't really, you know, I don't really think that it's going to work out. Right. But I want to go. How cool is that? I do think that if I went on Shark Tank, it would definitely help the product.

Yeah. Yeah. Because that's like 7 million viewers who find out about Instafloss. That's huge. That's big. Because each of those viewers, everybody needs to floss. So everyone is a potential customer. And it's that kind of product that would really benefit from that kind of exposure.

So I do think that Shark Tank would move the needle for us quite a bit. it, which is why we're not going to give up on it. But it's also pretty cool, though. But it is also very cool. I'm not going to deny that that's part of it. Yeah, absolutely. It would be very cool to be on Shark Day. So I have like one, I have one more question.

Yes. Like, so you're on house arrest. And then I'll let you go. So I'm on house, you're on house arrest. Like, why didn't you think to yourself, just go get a job? Like when this is over, just go get a job and just that's it. I mean, I did have a job. Yeah, but I mean, you clearly didn't stick with it.

Right, right, right, right. I mean, I've always been very entrepreneurial, and I like working for myself. Right. I like building new things. Actually, the first thing, the first career I ever wanted to have as a kid was an inventor. Okay. Yeah, which later, when I got a little older, I changed it to astronaut. But my original one was inventor.

And I remember thinking this, I think I was eight years old at the time. I was looking through one of these kids' books that explain how electricity is generated. And they explained that, you know, it's these big turbines that turn the magnets and that rotate and create an electrical field in the wires, which generates the current. And I thought, man, all I have to do is take the output of an electric generator, connect it to an electric generator, connect it to an electric. motor and have the motor power the generator and it'll just go forever. You know, infinite energy. I just solved the world's energy problems. I'm a genius. I'm a genius. I can't believe nobody has ever thought of this before. And so like right then I was like, I want to invent something. And so my dad was very encouraging. And he gave me like

this little notebook that he wrote on it, David's invention book. I still have it. And I put like my eight-year-old sketches. I had other ideas like a flying shoe because you put little fans in the shoes and it lets you fly like Superman. Iron man. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. So I had all these eight-year-old kind of inventions. So that was always, that was a big goal of mine early, early on. So when I had the idea for the beat buddy while I was under house arrest, I was like, oh my God, I actually think that this is going to, this product, I knew it was going to be successful. I knew the second I thought of it, I remember going to the internet to search if someone else made it first and my hands were shaking because I was like, if nobody's made this, I'm going to make

millions. And I was right. Because I knew immediately that I wanted, that I wanted this product. It was a simple product that could be built, right? It was not, I didn't need to invent a new technology. It was just a reapplication of another technology in a new way. So it wasn't like an unknown thing, whether it will work or not. could be built, and I knew that people wanted it. The only question was whether someone else made it and whether it could be built at a price that people could afford to buy and would be willing to buy. That was the major questions I had. And when I realized that nobody else was making it, and then I got a bunch of quotes from various engineering companies that it could be built at a price range that would be reasonable for someone to buy, I knew that this was going to be a

successful product. And this could be a launching pad to achieve my childhood ambition of being a successful inventor. So, shoes. Yeah, the flying shoes. That's my next one. I can't divulge any, you know, any of our trade secrets just yet, but flying shoes. It's going to watch out for it. So, yeah, it was, I could never get a nine to five job after that. I just had to go for this, for this dream. And, and I'm really glad. I did because it's it's been an amazing, amazing journey. I'm extremely grateful for where I am today, and I can make a really decent living without having to worry, look over my shoulder, wonder whether the feds are going to come busting in, you know, whether I'm going

to get caught or something. I can sleep easy at night knowing I have no enemies out there that wish me ill. I didn't fuck over anybody. I'm not in a fight with anybody. It's just like, It's amazing. It's really, I'm extremely, extremely grateful for where I am today. And yeah, and I hope that, and I'm really excited about Wardogs Academy because I feel like in a way, I mean, don't get me wrong, I want this to be successful for my own selfish reasons, but in a way that it's a way to give back to other people as well. Because I really do feel really bad for all the people who message me. And I hear some real sob stories, to be honest. People really give me some real sob stories. And I feel really. bet. I'm like, this guy's having a real hard time. But like, I literally have hundreds and hundreds of people who are saying the same thing. I can't. I don't have enough time in the day. So it's, it's really rewarding in that sense to be able to, to set people up to build their own businesses and give them a platform to be successful on their own. Yeah, it's kind of full circle too. Exactly. Like how you started out and you had to rely on Ephraim. Exactly.

And so, yeah. Yeah. And it's, I learned so many things of like, so many things of what to do with Ephraim and how to run a business and how, and work ethic. And I learned so many more things about what not to do. Right. About how to treat people and how to build for the long term instead of just the short term. And so I think that both of those positive and negative lessons, I will always give Ephraim credit. he's a he's a brilliant guy yeah brilliant guy very special in all ways you take that word to be um

I wouldn't want to be him I wouldn't want anyone else to be I wish he would change I wouldn't I want him to be like him I think that that if he managed to focus his efforts into a more constructive way he could achieve just as much if not more success than through all his underhanded tactics because he would be building something for the long term and I I think he's very unhappy and he doesn't even know it. Yeah, well, I'm not a psychologist. That wouldn't surprise me in the least. But I'm not going to speculate on his personal internal.

Well, I think he would be happier if he wasn't, you know, didn't behave the way he behaved. I'd like to think so. I mean, you know, where does happiness come from, right? You could argue that he's only happy when he's screwing someone over. It feels like that. He sure acts that way. So maybe he would be miserable if he wasn't screwing people over. Maybe that's what he needs to be happy, and that's why he does what he does.

I wish that wasn't the case. I think the people around him would be a lot better off. I think society as a whole would be a lot better off if he wasn't screwing people left and right, creating a huge backlog in the justice system and in the court systems and suing people and getting sued, and it's just a massive waste of time and money that could be put to more productive uses elsewhere. I'm sure he's very rich. I'm sure he's got lots of money squirled away in various overseas bank accounts away from the IRS. That's what he was doing back when we were working together. He mentioned the Seychelles Islands. I'm sure it's not there

anymore because that was 15 years ago, but he had bank accounts in the Seychell Islands. He's hiding money all over the place. He was always terrified of the IRS doing an accounting examination of him. I didn't even know why, but I just knew that he was. So, like, when we were negotiating, he was like, you know, I said, oh, if you don't, if you fuck me over, you don't want the IRS looking. And he was like, oh, don't mention three-letter words, like the IRS. So I didn't even know what he was doing wrong, but I knew he was nervous about it.

Right. So, yeah, I mean, if he managed to reform himself and to channel. his energies and talents into a legitimate business that actually added value to the world rather than take value from everyone he comes into contact with. I think he and society would be immeasurably better off. I wish that was the case. I hope it becomes the case in the future. I never lose hope. If I get a phone call from Ephraim and he says, David, you know, I've been doing a lot of thinking, I'm getting older. I think he got married and has a kid now or something. I've heard that. I wish them the best. He's like, if he says to me, oh, you know, I've been really

thinking about my life and, and, you know, I'm going to be a different person from now on, and I want to apply, I, you know, admit that what I did to you was wrong. And here's a check for $5 million. And, you know, I hope that we can put all this behind us. I will give him a big fucking bear hug and I'll be like, Ephraim, you proved me wrong. Yeah. I never thought you would do this. I thought it would be not in a million years. But, you know, know what? You give me hope for humanity that people can really change and we can be friends again and we can like, you know, hang out and I'll go and publicly sing your praises that you're a formed human being. But I put that chance at very close to zero. So, which is a shame. It's a shame for

everybody. It's a shame for him. It's a shame for everybody he comes into contact with. It's a shame for his family, you know. It's a shame for everybody. Shame for me too. I'd love to have my five million. But, yeah. Yeah, I mean, I never lose hope. Right. But it's a pretty small hope. Yeah, yeah. Hey, I really appreciate you guys watching.

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