Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast - The Untold Story of a Multi-Million Dollar Weed Empire’s Demise

Episode Date: December 5, 2024

Eric Canori tells his story how he built a multi million dollar empire in college and how it all came crashing down. Erics Website https://www.ericcanori.com Erics Book https://www.amazon.com/Pressure-Memoir-Eric-Canori/dp/B09TF6S7N6 Follow me on all socials! Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/insidetruecrime/ TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@mattcoxtruecrime Do you want to be a guest? Send me an email here: [e-mail] Do you want a custom "con man" painting to shown up at your doorstep every month? Subscribe to my Patreon: https: //www.patreon.com/insidetruecrime Do you want a custom painting done by me? Check out my Etsy Store: https://www.etsy.com/shop/coxpopart Listen to my True Crime Podcasts anywhere: https://anchor.fm/mattcox Check out my true crime books! Shark in the Housing Pool: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0851KBYCF Bent: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0BV4GC7TM It's Insanity: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B08KFYXKK8 Devil Exposed: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B08TH1WT5G Devil Exposed (The Abridgment): https://www.amazon.com/dp/1070682438 The Program: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0858W4G3K Bailout: https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/bailout-matthew-cox/1142275402 Dude, Where's My Hand-Grenade?: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0BXNFHBDF/ref=tmm_pap_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=1678623676&sr=1-1 Checkout my disturbingly twisted satiric novel! Stranger Danger: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0BSWQP3WX If you would like to support me directly, I accept donations here: Paypal: https://www.paypal.me/MattCox69 Cashapp: $coxcon69

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

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

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

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

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

and went to Niagara Falls. So I've been to Rochester. Yeah, yeah. I was only there until age six and then I moved out, but that was... Oh, okay. Yeah. Where'd you move?

I moved to upstate New York, Lake George, New York, a little town called Queensberry, near Lake George. I lived there from age six right up until college. Okay. With their both your parents?

Parents were divorced when I was two. There was a lot of partying going on back then on my mom's side. So I kind of had the rock style lifestyle around me in my crib. Right. So I grew up in that environment and parents divorced when I was two. My mom remarried when she was four and then we moved to upstate New York, Lake George, New York.

And that's where I started my life, you know, kindergarten and went up from there. Right. But you guys didn't, I mean, from what I understand, you didn't have a lot of money. Like, you know, you weren't like you started selling. Yeah, if you looked at me as an outsider, I was well kept. I had a tucked in shirt. My laundry was done. My sneakers looked okay.

I had a backpack for school. we'll pack lunch but we live frugally right we cut coupons on sundays we rarely went to the drive-thrus unless we had a coupon um it was you don't wear holes out in your clothes because then you'd have to buy new ones so you just have to be careful on how we spent our money right when did you so I mean at what point did you decide like you were going to start you know selling pot or when all the kids yeah because I understand it started slow yeah yeah like you're like you woke up one day and said, I'm going to go open up a distance. Well, as a kid, I always watched the movies, and I like the fast cars.

I like the pretty women, and I couldn't have any of that. Women didn't notice me in school. I didn't have new sneakers. I didn't have the coolest name brand clothes. I wasn't a professional athlete. I was a very quiet kid that kind of just hung out in the background, and I just watch everybody, and I always wanted something more than I already had. So in middle school, I started selling candy to the kids.

I would buy it with my lunch money, 80 cents. I'd buy eight packs of peas for 10 cents a piece, flip them, make a buck 60, and I'd have profit to, you know, 80 cents profit and I could still eat lunch that day. And I started selling candy for a couple of years until I got shut down by one of the teachers. And then I started smoking weed. I started smoking weed probably in ninth, 10th grade. But for me, weed was just, weed was a thing that I could do to help me socialize. Because if I was fucked up, I didn't have to really talk about the truth of my life. I came from a troubled childhood. It was very abusive. not much money and drugs were away for me to hide the reality of my life so i started smoking

weed at a very young age but i couldn't afford weed it was expensive like i could mow a few lawns and shovel some driveways make a little money but i still couldn't afford to really also get taco bell or pizza right so eventually kids started asking me for wheat and i started selling wheat in high school right yeah um i think you know you were you mentioned this earlier as like most people well I you didn't mention it I actually watched I think you mentioned it on another video I saw where you were talking about how like most people most most guys that are selling drugs are come from you know a fucked up background you know it's you know out of desperation like nobody very few people I think are raised saying hey I want to grow up and be a drug dealer you know so it's usually out of necessity right but I think in you know in my own case it's like what I initially when I started doing crime it was out of necessity but then you start making the money and it's like okay well now you've got the money you're doing okay then it becomes I think kind of an ego thing I mean it was for me you know it was like once I was doing well it was like well I could have cut back but instead now this is something I was good at I hope you're enjoying the video I have a quick word from our sponsor Stanedge watches we're doing a promotion with Stanage right now where they're offering a watch that they sell for typically $300 they're selling that watch through the channel for $200. The first 10 people that send me an email saying

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So is that the same kind of thing? I think it was part, Not ego, but there's also fear, too, right? I never wanted to go back to a place subconsciously of not knowing where I'm going to get my next meal. Right. If you, like, don't know where you're going to sleep or eat that night, that's a place where you're like, fuck. And that's, that was, I've been there as a child. So I wasn't really that flashy.

Actually, I was flashy. Listen, we all want to be seen and recognized. At least most of the men I know. And we just have different ways of doing it, whether it's a trophy, the newest sneakers, the coolest car. best looking girlfriend like whatever we want to be recognized at least i did so it feels good when somebody comes up to you and says hey i like your new car your new bike or this or that but i'm still kind of a low-key guy but uh it costs me a lot to live mostly i spent most of my money on women and hotels that's where a lot of my money would go and uh i didn't have a lot of things because

i didn't want to get on the fed's radar but i mean this this was in high school right you're talking oh in high school in high school i wasn't making a lot of money man i make a hundred bucks a week. Well, actually, that's pretty good money back then. I was going to say for a 17-year-old kid. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's good money. What am I talking about? Maybe that maybe a yeah. And then I buy everybody weed and beer that. I shouldn't say exactly how much it was made. I was making enough to eat Taco Bell beer and free weed. Right. Well, so, I mean, at what point did you, when you graduated high school, did you go to college? Yeah, I went to Plattsburgh State University. It's about a half hour from the Canadian border in upstate New York.

Okay. And when I went there, I only had about 500 bucks in my bank account. And I remember when I got to college, the brochure said that kids should have at least $1,500 per semester for extracurricular activities, which I didn't have. But you had $500. I had $500, which was enough to buy two ounces and flip and turn into $750. And then I just started multiplying that. And I became the cannabis kid on campus.

There are a lot of people that sold cannabis in Plathbury. We're going back 1997, 98. 99 but eventually I created somewhat of a monopoly and I got the other dealers to buy for me and I shrunk my margins down a little bit but I pretty much had a good control of the market I buy your three four of me being there where are you getting it from I mean if you're starting to move you know I'm saying you're starting to move product I mean usually the guy the one guy you you're basically wiping him out pretty quick if you got buying more and more and more Yeah, I was, last year of college, I was probably doing about 50 to, 50 to 100,000 a month in sales.

And I was getting, I had about four to five suppliers. I had my townie, a couple townie guys. And I had multiple different suppliers, so they wouldn't jack the price too much of me. Because if they knew they had me, if they knew I was the only place I was getting it, you know, they would charge me, whatever. But I created bidding wars. Is this like the cartel, like cartel guys that they're getting it from the cartel? I wasn't dealing with cartel guys. This is smaller-time townies in Plattsburgh State.

Also, there's an Indian reservation about an hour and a half away from there that's right down the Canadian border on the St. Regis River where they basically can smuggle anything you want, cigarettes, coke, guns, immigrants, and they can do that at night with night vision. They have boats that can do 80 miles an hour and six inches of water, right? Because if they get go, I don't know the exact terminology, but if they get going fast enough, If the hall's only going to sit so much in the water that they have special boats that they can invade law enforcement if they were to be chased. And then they get the product to shore, unload it, boom.

So it's coming in from Canada. Canada was one of where my main supplier, I started focusing and working with them because it was a higher end product. It was indoor. The stuff that I was getting domestically was all outdoor weed at that time back in 98, 99. But when I've had the Canadian weed, that kind of set me apart from a lot of the competition. It was a higher-end product. That's a ton of money to be making as a college student. That wasn't my profit.

Let's say $100,000 is revenue that month. I'd probably make $20,30 grand. I was going to say, if it's $20,000 for a fucking car. I wish I was making $20,000. I'm a grown man. $20,000 a month is a lot of money. Yeah. It was a lot.

And I even had a little heat on me in Plattsburgh in 01. When I was, right when I was getting ready to graduate, there was a Coke bus that went down. And my people that were buying, weed off me were taking using my money to go down to the city manhattan to buy blow and then bring it back to plattsburgh and i kind of knew but i didn't really pay attention i didn't get too close to it but after they took that little ring down they had a couple of those guys try to wear wires on me one of them actually got close to me and i let them come wear the wire on me and i kind of just

gave them some false information so the case would diffuse itself and they only watched me for a couple months because I was a smaller player I mean doing a hundred thousand a month or they didn't even know I was doing that much I thought I was about 50000 they thought my net worth was about 60 grand the DEA is not going to spend money chasing somebody it's only worth 60 grand they might watch you for a week or two seeing if they can get something they have bigger fish to fry so okay well so why weren't you a part of the the coke thing you just did why you just didn't move coke you just weren't interested in no I just I remember watching the TV show Miami Vice as a kid and I I would always, I love the fast cars and the women,

but I also always would see all the heat that came with that. And I knew weed was more acceptable. Like I could stand in front of a judge and be like, yeah, I sold weed. Right. But if I stood in front of a judge and said I sold coke, they might be like, kid, you fucked up. Yeah. But weed, it's like, chances are the judge probably smoked weed at some point.

Right. I was going to say, I have, so I wrote a story called American Narco. and it was this guy Kerry and his buddy they were selling weed for the cartel in Fort Myers

and he was offered like multiple times they tried to get him to start moving Coke and he just he absolutely wouldn't do it like he was

and it was the same kind of thing he was like I just felt like he said I felt like weed was acceptable and he said I just felt like

Coke was like a hard drug and a dangerous drug and it would be dangerous to move it and he said so he just completely stayed away from me even though he knew he'd make a lot more money he's like i just felt like it's just weed yeah yeah weed's not a big go coke's a lot easier to move as far it's smuggling because it's it's smaller you can build a compartment like we used to build hydraulic

compartments as i got a little bigger in the game like false beds yeah you put they would you could have a compartment where you would literally take your credit card and just stick it up in the corner where the windshield meets the visor and then press you know one button on the radio station and then hold the cruise control down or something like that and the whole back bed would raise eight inches and the bumper would pop out hydraulically and you could throw in like a hundred pounds in there or there were other things like you know the duly pickup trucks that have the big wheel wells over the top you could stuff like a million in each side of those on a truck yeah carry said one time they showed up in an RV and they went to the radio and did something on the radio and pulled

something and he said this little tiny hatch raised up at the bottom of the RV. He said tiny, they reached down and they started pulling pounds of weed. It was all attached. Yeah. Like on a string. Yep, yep. One pound and here's another pound. And then he said he said they kept going and going

and going and he said it got to the point where he said I was terrified. So when it got to like two or three hundred pounds of it, he said I was like, this is too much. But yeah, it's amazing what they can come up with. They even busted a guy like five or ten years ago for making the compartments you know he he was making these super amazing you know

stealth compartments in vehicles every any vehicle like you could just you know you touch this and touch this and pop up and you could put a couple pounds and he was trying to say that you know he went to i think he went to trial saying how am i supposed to know what these guys they're bringing in cars like he probably got out of it yeah i think he got a couple years actually oh really yeah he had he had some knowledge none of what was going on yeah well yeah i guess may you know Well, I know, the feds. He could have claimed plausible deniability, so where he said he had no clue, but they had a wire or something, obviously.

Yeah, in the feds, you just need one or two guys to get in the stand and say, ah, he no. That sucks. And, you know, the jury's like, he'll probably won't get any time at all. Then they find him guilty. And he goes away for five years. They're like, oh, my God, I thought he'd get probation. You know, as high up as I was in the business, I never really completely understood that all you need is two people to say he did that.

that's the only evidence you knew and I never I always was like they really need a wire like a buy or something like the drugs yeah that that's what's scary yeah that's why it's it's it's terrifying like I have guys that reach out to me and ask me you know they'll hit me up and be like talk about you know hey bro like contact me you're like I'll pay you if you'll just talk to me like basically talk to them about a scam help them run a scam help them and I'm like why you you don't understand that like I can't be involved and something like that. And then they'll go, no, bro, I would never say anything. First of all, I don't believe that. But let's say you didn't say anything. It doesn't matter. I'm on your

phone. You can see transactions. There will be times when our phones are near each other. There will be times when you flew down here. There will be time, like, don't you understand that I'm a convicted felon of fraud? They'll just add my name to the indictment. I can't even get on the stand and say, this is what happened. Because as soon as I get on the stand, they'll say, Mr. Cox, how many frauds have you been convicted of? And the jury's going to be like, oh, come on, this guy's been convicted of 30 different frauds. He's been doing this on and off his whole life. Oh, he's involved. Like, you're just done. Yeah, you're done. The feds are, it's horrible in the feds. Like, you just can't beat them. I always say that, look, if you're guilty, that's it, you're done.

And if you're not guilty, you got about an 80% chance of being found guilty. There you go. So, um, but anyway, I was going to say you're, so you get out of college. So you get out of college. So you get out of college you you dropped selling weed you went and got a job as a as an accountant and you just became an accountant and and now you're here right so no that's not not that easy you never got a job i got out of college i tried to make a resume in the in the campus library i put the floppy disk in the computer i couldn't figure out how to get the resume to save on the floppy disk i couldn't even get to figure out how to get the printer to work remember those printers that had like the holes on the side of the paper you'd like i don't even remember what those were called from ibn yeah but i couldn't

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

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

There was a few acres. So there were all different sizes. But most of them were backyard coy ponds, like anywhere from 10 feet up to 30 feet wide. Okay. So I took some seminars and training on that. But I'm pretty handy as a kid. I used to do a lot of little construction stuff. But so that was a good front for me.

And it made decent money, right? I probably made close to six figures in a summer being 21, 22, which was, that's good money back then. Yeah. So I did that, but at night when I was done with that is when I would take care of my cannabis business. And that's where I would accept deliveries from the Canadian border that would come down to one of my stash houses. And then I would from there package it up into different size loads and deliver it south. Did you, were you like running your profit through that company or? No, it's one thing I never did is.

I never co-mingled funds. Right. So, you know, I didn't have, I wasn't making a, my books were only showing what I made, whether it was 80 grand, 90, whatever it was on the waterfall business. Did you have people working for you or was it? It was seasonal. I was like sub people out that would come in an excavator. I'd have three or four guys moving dirt and rocks, but I didn't have full-time crew, staff.

Okay. So what, so how it, you're saying it gradually just got larger? And larger. I mean, both businesses got, the pond business got a little larger and the cannabis became significantly larger. I was good at what I did. I followed through. I was always delivered on time.

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

dime bag like at this point you got you're showing up someplace with you know multiple you know whatever five 10 pounds of weed you know in your trunk and handing it off I mean this was like yeah I was doing at this point I by age 21 I became a millionaire between age 21 and 20 It was when I made my first million, and I said, I think that's when I bought a new car. I was like, I had a pond customer or something that had a dealership and I bought it all legitimately, but I had the money to do it. And I felt confident where like, okay, I can kind of show off a little bit. It was nothing.

It was a GMC, Sierra. It was nothing fancy. But to me, it was nice because I was driving a 15-year-old Pontiac Bonneville with quarter million in the trunk, you know? So I wrote a story for this guy named Devoroli. and Devoroli hat was a matter of fact did you see the movie war dogs yeah a long time ago but I don't even remember what the I don't remember war dogs was it was these two kids from Miami who started selling weapons to the U.S. government for the Afghan security forces

oh okay they were that yeah so and Jonah Hill plays Devoroli I was locked up with Devoroli I wrote his memoir but was so funny about him is literally he had four or five million dollars in the bank he was living in this shitty apartment driving a 10 or 15 year old Mercedes and it was like and I'm sitting there going when did you buy another car he's like he said I honestly didn't spend any money until after he got indicted like I mean if you watch the movie it's they changed a bunch of stuff but I mean he just you know to him the thrill and what he enjoyed was making money and he wasn't he didn't live lavishly and he didn't you know and and and it was When I compare myself to someone like, you know, like that, like, I don't think I live lavishly, too, but I had a brand new car. Yeah. You know what I mean? But some guys are just like, I don't know. I don't know if it's that, I want to say that my mom used to call it depression mentality where you always kind of feel like you're broke.

Like you don't spend money. You save money. That's what you do. Like you don't want to spend any money. I spent money on experience. It's just not. things i didn't want any attention on me i didn't want anybody to be talking about me like he has a nice car he's doing this so for me it was always about like i said hotel girls good restaurants

and that was kind of my life was based on really experiences experiences and working hard and uh so what were you doing fuck dude i worked that's it i worked i worked i was a slave like if i had to get a delivery at two a m coming out of the border i would wait if they say it's going to be there at nine o'clock and they're like oh it's late i would stay up till two a m two 30, I would sit in a freaking parking lot in my Bonneville and just wait until the truck comes. And then I'd make eye contact with the truck. And then if I didn't think the truck was being followed, then I'd have it followed me to an undisclosed location. Because I would always, anytime trucks come from the border, I wouldn't tell them exactly where to go because I wouldn't want them to bring any heat there.

I'd have them come. Then I'd feel it out. If I like the situation, then I'd bring them to a place to unload the merchandise. And this is all, these are all hidden compartments. It depends on what type of trucks. I mean, it depends on what type of, in what year we're talking about. I ran everything from 18 wheelers to pick up trucks to trailers to, yeah, that's about it. But the guys that were bringing it to me, bring it all different ways, whether it's speedboats, trains, 18 wheelers, a few times a helicopter drop.

That was over in Washington. There's so many different ways to get stuff over the border. And so also you can just know somebody. What if you know, what if you know the Border Patrol guy? It's like, yeah, now's a good time to come through. Nice. I was going to, I read an article one time where they were, they'd Mexican, the Mexicans had a manufacturing plant that were building telephone poles.

You know those big, like they're like 10, 15 feet round, right? They're concrete, but they're hollow in the center and they packed it full of like Coke or meth or whatever it was and they put them on these 18 wheelers and had the highway patrol actually they came from Mexico the highway patrol like would block of the U.S. blocks off the road

and would and you know had them escorted them all the way into where they were to the construction company that was supposed to use them and then they drop them off and then that night and it's just like it's like two or three poles at a time and anyway they end up getting busted But, yeah, it was, it was, it's amazing how ingenuative they, that smugglers can get with moving that stuff. Yeah, it's an art form.

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

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

You know, it's just distraction or whatever you want to call it. Slight of hand. I was going to say it's always exciting though when the package arrives safely right you know that's kind of the rush that's what you go back for too it's not only the money it's that feeling it's like

you can't really get that at a desk job you can't I guess depends what you're looking for but that you know I it's fulfilling it's because it's something that only you know it's your secret nobody else knows that you just did like you just did a million dollar deal

and you're here now, you did a million dollar deal, you know, an hour ago, and now you're here eating oysters with them. Listen, I feel like I would be terrified. And what's so funny is like what I did, people are like, are you insane? Like you walked in the bank, gave them fake documents, signed the stuff, got a check, and you weren't worried at all. But I wasn't worried because I knew what the bank was doing. You know, I knew how it worked.

I knew what the underwriting was. I knew what all the security, all the security measures. So I felt confident. So to me, like meeting some guy in the parking lot, you know, and unloading, you know, 200 pounds of drugs, to me, I would be, I'd be waiting for the cop. I'd be waiting for the helicopters to land. I would be, you know, because there's so many people. One, there's so much law enforcement that is, that is focused on stopping it.

And there's so many people involved in all of the transaction. anybody down the line could have been arrested, flipped, you know, and then they just followed all the way back to the, back to you. Yeah, you got to have good gut instincts to really play that game. There's so many times where I've had close calls when I was back in the day where certain people would want to meet me and I just, at the last minute, I would just be like, no, I can't. You know, it was the right decision.

Not so many times. I should say there were a couple times, you know, where I just knew I shouldn't meet that person. I know they have heat. You can tell by their demeanor and how they're at. acting on the phone. Not always, but if you're, if you're partying hard, if you're doing drugs and getting hammered all the time, you're not going to be as perceptive to potential threats. Right. So most of my party and happened in college and high school, college, and a little bit

after that. And then I kind of cut back on all that stuff. It was only rare occasions. I was really focused on my business and basically just being aware of everybody around me and who could be a snitch and who's fucked up. And I was pretty good at it until. Until the end, no, I was going to say, um yeah intuition like i i'm a huge believer in intuition like sometimes i'll talk to someone i can just feel something you know what i mean like you know the person's nice and everything and you're like something's not right or you're like yeah the guy's nice and everything but the truth is this guy can't stand me you just know it and everybody's like well what do you mean i'm like i could feel it what you mean you could feel it he was cool he was nice we were joking you were saying was good

that guy despises me i promise you and later on of course it comes out like yeah that guy is talking shit he can't stand you or or even if it's like you know you're dating a chick and she comes home and everything's fine and just like normal but something's wrong and you find out two weeks later she's you know banging her her ex-boyfriend and you're like fuck i knew it i felt it couldn't you know every time listen every time i've ever been caught had every time i've ever had a girlfriend start accusing me of cheating i was you know and i used always oh you're crazy you're crazy the truth this intuition's a motherfucker like You just know

And I didn't do anything different Nothing changed There's like this signal I was It goes from gut to heart to brain Right A lot of people who thinks It goes the other way around

Like brain heart, gut But you just feel it Everything starts in the gut That's where all your sensations Start and then it moves up from there And that's you have to be

You have to always follow your gut Right What were you Were you dating anybody at this point Like were you Depends on which years I always had, from age 25 up till 30, I had a few steady girlfriends. A couple that lived with me, two years, had a two-year relationship and another two-year

relationship, but they didn't really understand. They didn't know what I did. They knew I had money, but they didn't know the volume of money I had because I never kept it all in one place. It was all over. Like there was a time where I had one girlfriend where she was going, we just had a rough time. It was just, she was on a lot of meds. I didn't know this at the time, but she was taking, I don't know, Adderall.

Trasadone, Xanax, all these different things, uppers, downers, lefters, writers, whatever. And I'm like, I'm in Manhattan. She's like, we need to get home now. We need to get home now. It's like midnight. I was doing a deal in Brooklyn. And she's in Manhattan waiting for me to pick her up. And the deal was taking longer than I thought.

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

I'm not on the road after 9 p.m. But if it was in state, it would be like 10, 11. I don't want to be on the road. And she's like, we need to go home. And I didn't want to go. So I got us a hotel room with the Mandarin Oriental and Columbus Circle. And the Belming comes up. He knew me pretty well there.

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

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

called security the way she was screaming and behaving. Right. And I didn't know what to do because if the cops showed up, what am I going to do with all this cash? And I couldn't just carry it out. It was too heavy and I didn't have a bell cart. And there's no window I could throw the money out. Like this is all the shit that's going through my head in milliseconds. So where am I going with this? Did you ask me a question? I'm trying to figure out what I was saying just, are you dating different women? Oh, wow. I was dating that girl. Yeah. That's for sure, man. And that was that was a mess. I was dating her. And that was my only girlfriend.

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

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

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

And I, one time she called, and I heard the, and she's like, hold on, hold on, who could somebody says at the door I'm like yeah the cops are at the door there's no doubt like she opened it sure enough there's two cops there saying listen we got some phone calls what's going like that so I know exactly what you're saying how you describe it is exactly the feeling and had I been there and the cop showed up at that time in I don't know what it is now but in that time in Charlotte North Carolina if they showed up and there was domestic violence somebody has to go to jail so I would have had to go you know one of us has to go jail like we can't be fingerprinted bro yeah this a bad situation then she's insane and who knows what

she'll say like i can't tell you how many times she was like you know i make one phone call it's like i'd hope terrified i know dude that's that's that's not healthy no and that's that's that's a bad position bro that's why for me to get out of that relationship that was an art form in itself right because you i had it took me six months to get out of it i had to slowly play that i was broke right i had to like like so much shit i had to do i had to play weak and like a loser like you got like you're better than me you know like you can do you don't need this it was it was it was very delicate what i had to do and it was i ended up getting this chick an apartment of her own like so she has her own apartment i'm still getting phone calls it two in the

morning you gotta come pick me up you go well if you want me to drive i can no no no no you're not driving i'll come get you i mean you know that game bro if you're breaking the law number one you can't in my opinion i would never want to have children if i was breaking the line that's why i didn't have kids that's why i didn't have kids at a young age just because i was breaking the law i wouldn't want to have them be around me and uh number two you got to have a solid girl or none at all yeah you're that's that's going to wear you down and that's dangerous the kind of chicks that date guys that they know our drug dealers aren't solid like that like it's almost impossible to find that chick because most women the moment they kind of realize like oh wow like I think this guy's a drug

or whatever it is I think he's committing fraud I think this guy's a fucking fraud art like most chicks are like look I don't know what's going on I'm out of here like they have to have a certain mindset to be okay with it and if they are okay with it there's something not quite right like something you know there's going to things are going to go wrong like you can't expect this is this is a kind of chick that's going to call it going to scream it to in the morning periodically periodically she's maybe she's got a drug problem like that's not normal behavior to say am i you know i'm a solid upstanding citizen uh and i do everything right and oh my my boyfriend or my husband happens to be shipping in you know 500 kilos of cocaine every

month but you know he's a nice guy i mean we have two kids it's fine you know no no something's up with that chick she's something's bad it was a good lesson though all my all my fuckups have been the greatest lessons i haven't had to yell since that relationship believe me that was i haven't yelled in 15 years probably so i'm thankful for that now i don't put myself in those situations well she'll probably contact you after this show no she doesn't even i don't even know if she's alive bro like her her her facebook profile hasn't changed since oh eight her picture nothing like I took the picture of her in 07, I think. I've never heard from her.

It's been over a decade. Who knows where she is. I have no clue, but hopefully she's well. She was actually a good person. The thing is, you start doing pharmaceuticals and all these things. They can turn you in a different person. Yeah. Like, you don't need that stuff.

What you need is to go out into nature and just like reset. Like, you, whatever. That's, let's not go there. So, so how old are you at this point when, you you extract yourself from that relationship 28 28 you own a house no I never I never owned any houses I owned a lot of different parcels of raw land because it was low maintenance I had a really low maintenance life it was just focused on you know in that movie heat where they say never yeah yeah get involved in anything you can't walk away in 60 seconds right and I always remembered that

because I remember watching that movie and I don't know that's one of my favorite movies oh that's one the best movies bro so i that's my life like i could walk away from anything when i almost when i did get popped well that's a whole other story i i fled from the feds at a hundred miles an hour i could have totally been gone but i came back just because i didn't like i was already prepared i could i could got passports everything i needed but i'm jumping the gun here with that so what was your question i was just saying like when you when you um you know you know got yourself out of the situation with that chick like him and how old were you at that point like i was 27 28 27 27 28 and i didn't have another girlfriend after that i had i had i had a i had a

few different places i had a i had an apartment in soho i had a house in california i had a house in upstate new york and i had a nice girlfriend ish ish down in the city that didn't bother me She was just a good girl, right? Like, she was just a nice Vietnamese girl that was well-educated, worked hard, started with nothing, made her own money, and never asked me any questions. Like, literally, I'd never got a, this was before smartphone, so we didn't, there was no texting. It was just like, call me when you're in the city or something like that. And it was just, I'd hang out.

It was therapeutic because I would just hang out. We'd get a bite to eat, and we go home, do our thing, and it was just healthy and relaxing. And I enjoyed that, but it wasn't a real girlfriend. So I didn't have it because she probably had her. her own thing too who knows we didn't really talk about it but she was a so what why why you you let me if you're doing most of this in in on the on the east coast why the house in california well so i was pulling out of canada for about a decade that's where i tained most of my product right but then starting around 2007 2008 california cannabis started really making

its way and volume to the East Coast. It always made its way to the East Coast in the early 2000s, like 100 pounds at a time, 200, somebody bring a thousand, whatever. But never where it's just saturated the marketplace, where it was really competing with my Canadian products. And my customers are complaining that my prices were too high. So I had to go out to California in 08 and really scope out the scene and see what this is all about because I wasn't too familiar with California cannabis. And I went out there and I rented a house as just a headquarters stash house to really just sleep, store some money and meet with various people that I had known for my past and really just see what type of inventory and product was out there

with the quality. And I spent several weeks out there scoping it out. And that's when I really started. Actually, my business was starting to break down a little bit because of the California competition. Okay. That was breaking down in 2008. You know, my margins were small, dude. I'd do a million-dollar deal. I only might make 60-80 grand after all expenses. Yeah, right. Which is not a ton for the risk.

I was going to say that's not, yeah, not for having to go to jail for a 10-year mandatory minimum. And I was doing it. Sometimes I would do deals where I'd make even less just to keep the customers happy until I figured out a solution to my problem. And the solution was the market's becoming saturated and people are demanding lower prices. My customers had to have been with me for over a decade. Right. So I had to figure things out.

and that's why I had a place in California. Okay. And so you go down there, you get some connects, and you start moving it across. You're moving it all across the country back. Yeah, I still have my Canadian operation running. Mind you, I have 14 cell phones at the time. Two of them are PGP encrypted BlackBerrys,

where we have our own server. When I got busted, they brought our BlackBerry down to Washington, D.C., tried to crack it. They couldn't even get into it. Right. Hold on. Do you know what a BlackBerry is? Yes.

Okay, good. Yes. Half the things that, you know. So I was still, I was in California still running my East Coast and Canadian operation, which was deteriorating in a way. But while I was in California, the goal was to find 1,000 pounds at a good price. But that was really hard, depending on what time of year you were in California. I was out there in like 2008, 2009 in the early spring and things were drying up. They didn't have the surplus of cannabis that they have now.

15 years ago so it was hard for me I'd have to go to multiple growers I'd get 50 pounds here 30 here a hundred here just to put together an order of 500 pounds and it was very time consuming and I had an associate that would help me do that and I still really wasn't making that much money I didn't I didn't know the biggest player out there I didn't know the top dog grower that was growing you know growing thousands and thousands of pounds so I was just trying to figure And most importantly, I didn't have good transportation. I wasn't familiar with transporting product from the west coast of the east coast. My specialty was transporting along the east coast.

I had a count in every single state between New Orleans and Boston, New Orleans, Florida, Atlanta, South Carolina, North Carolina, Virginia, Virginia, Virginia, New York, and Boston. So I had accounts and I had drivers. I had five drivers at all times that I could pull from. Only like two to three that I used regularly. And I had tight transportation, really good drivers on the East Coast. But as far as West Coast, that's a huge run. That's like a 40-hour drive or something. What is?

I don't even know. It's a couple days. It's a few days to get from, but from New York to Florida, you can make it in a day, 20 hours straight if you have to stop. So how did you get it from there to just? I hired, I hired, I had one of my customers, Missy Giovi. She was a female mountain biker. She won several World Cups.

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

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

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

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

And she definitely didn't know what was in there. They put the GPS device right in that trailer. And let her go? Let her go. And they delivered it right to my hometown, Saratoga Springs, New York. And so what happened is Missy Giovi, the biker, she would fly into New York. Stop. Do you know how fast you were going?

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and jump in the driver's seat of that truck and take over from her massage therapist so I wouldn't know that there was a massage therapist driving across country. I would look like Missy drove the load. And Missy brought me the load one day and I suspected something was fishy. First off, the truck wasn't even loaded right.

It was a Ford F-150 rental truck that there was way too much tongue weight on the back so the trailer had the headlights of the truck sitting way up pointing up because it wasn't weighted properly. So right there I was like, There's no way this thing made it 3,000 miles without being pulled over. And I was so tired, though, because I was at a concert.

I was down at Bonner Music Festival, tripping out, just partying too hard. And I just wasn't alert. And I was tired of weed anyways. I was like half out of the game. I was like, I just went out of this business. I was going to sell it off to somebody. And I didn't like the weed business. So I was taking shortcuts by even dealing with her.

But she got the load. I met her in a parking lot. And then I had her followed, actually one of my personal residence, which I rarely did. I usually would bring him somewhere else with a piece property or a stash house or something. But I was just tired and didn't want to deal with anything. So brought my house, I opened up the trailer and I just kind of scanned the situation. And I noticed a little wire hanging in the ceiling. And I went up and looked over and it was a battery pack connected some device with a red dot, red blinking light.

And I knew it was a tracking device. And I just put my fingers up to my mouth. I go, don't say a word. Because I didn't know if she had a wire on. I had no clue what the fuck was going. Right. So I brought her out of the trailer into my house. house and I just like told her to leave her phone in my kitchen and I brought her up to one of

the bedrooms and I said had her open up her shirt show me she wasn't wearing a wire. It's like what are you doing? Like and crazy. And I looked out my my front window out of the curtains and I saw across about 300, 200 yards out Chevy and Paula sitting off in the distance and I knew that that trailer was being tracked and followed by the feds. Was she wired though? No. No she didn't have any idea. She had no clue either. The massage therapist dropped the trailer after her down the road missy had no clue either so you know what's funny is that

so you know I've written a bunch of stories right like true crime stories um and one what you just the the black box the wires the whole thing you can literally go to that story American narco about those guys

they were shipping in from California I mean from Mexico like concrete tiles and in the tiles was this metal box with a red light I was like a red like why would they leave the red even have the red light on there he's like they pulled it out and they like stomped on it and took off running and you know just they just panicked and the feds were you know had pictures of them and everything and they a couple days later they came and arrested both of them um but it's uh it's it's funny the uh you know the the the shipping it across

the country. Like I wrote a story about a guy who they would and I guess this is pretty common where they they would buy a car at like the car at like the the

auction and they just stuff the car and then they pay a legitimate trucker to load the car on the thing and take the car and drop it off somewhere

like this legit like so if he gets pulled over he's like and the cops search it and they find something he's like I don't know I didn't know it was on there i was just they we charged three hundred fifty dollars to move cars like i got

eight cars on this thing yeah you know so that happens sometimes and sometimes they'll do it and they'll you know they'll put a device in and let it keep going just to figure out that's that's that's like that's common um but man bro stupid mistake bro and i had a good run at this point in the game i had done well over 300 million in sales easily so well i by the time this This truck pulled up with Missy. Right. I was very good at what I did. I was a ghost.

Nobody knew I existed. Like there's a lot of big players out there, but usually they have heat on them within two to three years. If you're operating at my scale. Right. Like there's a lot of guys that'll have windows where they'll run two, three, four months of the year and they'll do some thousand pound loads. And then they'll take off to leave the country for six months and have a nice vacation and come back. But consistently working week after week for a decade plus at my scale doesn't really happen. unless especially without a gun and especially without the feds knowing right because the feds know of

all the big stuff going on it's just certain things they let go and certain things they don't because they like to follow things to just kind of see how everything works well i mean i've i've ordered stuff before where they came in investigated actually there's stuff going on yeah like they actually have a case like they probably had a case and then they just kind of said eh and they just kind of go away for a year or so and and kind of just watch and then come come back. And even though they, it's like, why didn't they bust them back then? We had other stuff to do. Or like you said, it was, you know, there was no reason it. It wasn't enough to do anything about it right this second. We didn't have everything we really needed for a solid enough

case. And then they just walk away and let them go for a little bit. And they come back and, and bust them for, you know, they build a case, build up the case. And now you've got five years or two years or three years. And now you're really got some problems because they, and the federal system is you know ghost dope you know they didn't even have to catch you with the drugs um so i'm here's what i'm wondering is how much how much weight was in the um in the trailer that they got you with how long had they because that sounds like that's just a flu yeah this was just a small load there was only like 300 pounds in that trailer it was it was the end of the season small well back okay so yeah well i was doing right i needed a thousand pounds in that load and there was only 300

came so that's yeah it was hard to get product that time a year back then so so when there's three yeah so I closed a trailer back up and I told when I knew she didn't have a wire on I knew it got pulled over somewhere across country there's just I just knew I just didn't know all the details so I had her follow me out of there and I basically picked up my phone once I saw I got a mile from my house I saw agents and packed in cars lined up there were about 20 of them in six different cars and I saw them as I was driving out of the neighborhood and uh did they not know you were leaving or they didn't know they didn't even know my name they're just doing an investigation oh they're they're literally trying to figure out who's who and where's this load going

that we found in the middle of the country driving down the highway so they're doing their homework and uh i pick up my burner phone i call her i go yep we're not filming today it's really cloudy out because she's like a pro mountain biker and I was a little bit in the film industry right so and then I made it out of my neighborhood and I just saw a flock of them back about a half mile just following and then and a little bit later I saw there was a plane that was circling above that was a part of their crew too right um and when I got a couple stop signs up I split took a left and uh I just I redlined it bro I freaking hammered on it and I had several cell phones in my cup holders I started breaking them apart ripping the batteries out, throwing one piece at a time, every quarter mile out the window,

redlining it the whole way, nervous as fuck, not thinking clearly like what's to play, what am I going to do? I still got a million and a half cash sitting back at the house. I got that load on the road. I got three other loads that are coming to me being delivered within the next three hours because I was out of town for a week. So Missy was the first load and I had two others from Canada and then another domestic one coming that day. And I have sales. phone's beeping everywhere. It's half still are at the house somewhere with me. So I'm like, this is like right in the middle of a busy day for me to happen.

Right. And I'm like, fuck. And the first thing I do is, what do I do? I call my stepfather, which he knows nothing about my illicit business, but he's always the guy that was there for me as a kid when I had to go to the hospital, right? Just get stitches or whatever. Right. So instinctually, I call him. I go, I need to see you right now.

so he goes where are he goes i'm at work what's the problem i go don't worry about i'll see i'll be down there so i drove a half hour to his work and got to a red light about a mile later and i saw a couple d a guy's couple cars back and they were on to me i was like fuck so up this point they obviously ran my license plate they're running gps on my personal phone which i haven't gotten rid of i kept my personal and i also have uh what was it called on star oh yeah they used to have the on star i had the on star on the car so they could have been tracking that by now too knows. I don't know how fast they were moving but once I got on the highway though I created kind of a cluster fuck of traffic there was a three lane highway and I had two 18 wheelers uh one in the far

left lane one in the middle lane they were side by side and I went to the far right the far left lane and I was running in tandem with them down the highway and this kind of backed up traffic behind us so nobody could pass for maybe a couple minutes right once I had a cluster fuck of traffic and I saw the DA was about six, seven, eight cars back. I then creeped up a little bit, got in front of the 18 wheelers, and then I punched it, doing 100, lost them because they're probably not going to be able to get through that traffic for a good two minutes.

And then got off the highway, hadn't seen him for about 20, 30 minutes. I had a conversation with my stepfather, go, here's the deal, I'm going to get arrested. There's a few hundred grand in a picnic basket in your basement. Can you do me a favor? Grab that, save it for me and get me an attorney. He's like, what are you talking about? like he has no clue like he thinks i'm just like you put him you put him pools what are you doing

what are you talking about no clue and you know and i'm like but he kept cool he didn't even like flinch she was just like you know he's he's seen probably a lot of shit he's watched a lot of movies as a kid right so he's just like okay so that's it i went and then i'm leave him i go what do i do now for 60 grand i can get a passport get out of the country i got enough money stash other places where I can live comfortably forever. Right. And or, but I'm on the run then. That's no more life, the life I know is done.

Not that I really had one. I didn't have kids, which is good, right? So that was kind of a viable option in a way. But then I'd have to always be, I'm such a, I would always be watching. I wouldn't want to deal with that shit. So then I kind of just said, you know, it's time to go back.

I'm going to drive home. So I drove home. And for some reason, I decided to stop at the gas station and fill up with a tank of gas because I just felt like before I go to meet the enemy I wanted to have a full tank of gas I have no just another too many movies right all right so and as I'm pumping the gas they rush up to me down on the ground down on the fucking ground my Jesus Christ I almost piqued my pants I didn't see him coming I thought I was going to meet him in my house right so but actually some troopers saw me there must have had they must have had a they probably had it on the radio

everywhere look for this truck right so some trooper found me I found at a later date my buddy actually knew the trooper but uh brought me back to the house cuffed me up had me sit outside my house for about 20 plus agents swarmed my house asking to get inside what's in there anybody in there any guns i just said sorry what's going on i wish i could help you but i can't help you if i don't know what's going on all right and that's all i said i need to speak to a lawyer yeah and that shuts them up pretty clear yeah and then they were talking to the other driver missy which was running her mouth like crazy. I found it a later date.

Like, fuck, dude. I was like, she was just blaming it. Like, not a good situation. Not a good situation. I've heard a lot of stories about what she put us in a sticky situation, to be honest. And what's tough about it is she's getting a lot of fame for, like, because I don't know if she's told the whole truth. Because she was somewhat of a celebrity back in the day,

but for being the fastest in the country as a female mountain bike. She got into the Hall of Fame, but she's really. So instead of saying, like, I don't know what's going on, she's saying, I've been doing this for six months. I don't know exactly what she told them at that moment. I just know she talked. And then I also know she sat down a few months later and told on a lot of people.

Right. And she didn't get any time. And she showed me $300,000. And she, uh, I'm sure she's fine. It's fine. She did what she did at the, yeah. Have you asked her about it? I'm never sorry.

I don't even want to go near her because then it could be, Like, she could, she could put in a situation where I'm trying to kill her. Yeah. You know what I'm saying? Like, I don't, I'm all, I don't even want to be. She's had some other legal cases with people that are like in relationships with her going on where she's said stuff, domestic beets that I heard aren't true. I have no clue.

It's none of my business, but I stay away. Right. Better that way. She costs me a lot of money, bro. But do you know the way I look at it? If I didn't go down that way, it would have been something else. I had to learn the lesson one way or another. You learn a lot when you hit the bottom, you know?

Oh yeah, you need to figure out who your friends are. You figure out like I was thinking you're thinking you get a passport. Yeah, you could get a passport, but you could have then lived for the next 15 years and then been picked up by just some coincidence. Some guy that knew you is in South America and recognizes you and calls the police and you've built a whole new life. And you're like, damn, like, then you get yanked up and you go to jail for 10 years or 15. Like, you know, the idea that you're going to just disappear nowadays, man, that's tough. That's tough. Especially with all these facial recognition cameras.

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

It's him. I lost weight. I had a nose job. I had a facelift. I had two hair transplants, had my teeth done. Bro, I went all out. I'm telling you. Like, and the same thing.

It's just, you know, the problem is it's always the fly in the alignment. You could do everything right and somebody else makes a mistake or bumps into you. And you're like, damn, I did. had it all lined up, you can't account for everything, you know, I mean, which is exactly what, you know, what you're saying is like, you know, something would have happened, like, you know, what if they caught you with, what if they've been watching you for, for 18 months and then said, okay, and then you, and the load they cut you with is a thousand pounds.

And then the guy they grab, say, man, I've been dropping off. I don't know how much is in the truck, but I think it's around probably whatever this is, a thousand pounds. I've been dropping that off twice, you know, every two weeks. for the last 18 months and they add that up and your mandatory minimums 20 years. You know, like it could be so much worse. Law enforcement often questions him, not because he's suspected of a crime, but because they find him fascinating.

He is the most interesting man in the world. I don't typically commit crime, but when I do, it's bank fraud. Stay greedy, my friends. Support the channel. Join Matthew Cox's Patreon. You know I paid them 10 million in gold bars, right? No, this is what I'm waiting for, because I saw that on the other thing where you got locked up and then you were locked up almost, what, year and a half, two years, and then your lawyer comes to you, and you're like, didn't believe and believe that that was even going to be possible. Yeah, for a while, it was, you know how it works.

They just want you to work for them. Yeah. So they wanted me to work for them, and I just couldn't do it. I was like, I'd rather die. It was like, I told myself that coming in. I'll die before I do that. It's just like, because I've faced. take on that.

I faced death as, I had a troubled childhood, so where I almost jumped. So I was never afraid to die. It was like, when I was a teenager, it was a time when I stood at the edge. And I was like, I don't want to live this anymore, this life. And that's actually when I decided to sell, selling weed. I was like, fuck it, I'm just going to make my own money. Right. That's in the book.

By the way, you know, my book, right? You know about the book, right? Yeah, yeah. Pressure, okay. Yeah. Anyway. No, and I will put, I mean, we're going to, I'll put the links in the whole thing. Cool, cool, cool, cool.

So, yeah, they wanted me to work for them, and I wouldn't do it. And they, they, they, I got bailed out. And you know why I was bailed out? Because they wanted to follow me around. Right. See who I know, because they knew nothing about me. They didn't even know my name when I got arrested. And that's now I knew they didn't have a case.

What's your name? What are you doing here? Right there. I knew they didn't have a case. Right. So, um, they wanted to follow me around. And they did follow me around for a bit. Specifically, they had, there was a 16.

day slot where they had like a tight crew on me day and night bro like know what you eat for breakfast just trying to get a good case i mean because they didn't have a good case i mean they searched my house illegally that day they came back and they didn't because i didn't unload anything from the trailer when i saw that gps unit i didn't unload anything i told her to get out of here right so there's no probable cause of going my house but they went in anyway and found 1.5 mil and some few other pounds of weed um so i went for them they bailed i was bailed out watched me for a year and a half my lawyer kept pumping me for money bro i was into between him the investigator i was into for close to 700 grand for legal fees bro and they just went and i hadn't even got a trial yet right this is like pre pre trial

quarter million all eric i'm in another 100 grand it's taken longer than we thought i'm another 200 and he knew he could do it michael kennedy he was he's he's passed away now but he he knew what he was doing uh he knew my life was in his hands and i'm just a young kid bro i'm 30. He's a 70-year-old. He's dealt with the movsters, the pizza connection. He's done tons of shit. He knew what he was doing. So, anyway, he wouldn't take cash, so I had to get him a check. The only way I could get him a check is I had to launder the money. Right. So, I re-arrested a second time. They put me for laundering money to pay my legal fees. I wasn't breaking the law anything else. I wasn't

dealing anymore. I was done. I was done. I was done. I was done. I was done. I was clean but you're laundering drug money to pay i had to pay my lawyer as supposedly i was never convicted of that but they said i was laundering money to pay my lawyer so they rearrested me all right this time no bail i'm sitting in there for like county jail sucks dude it's not like federal time where you it's like county jail is like you sit in a room all day no sunlight just eat shitty food and i'm in there for four four plus months and they every day every week my lawyer's like they're just it's time to just cooperate because my lawyer was against cooperating from day one italian you know like they don't deal with any clients to cooperate yeah they all say that

so uh he came to me after four months he's like he's like listen just he's like just the goal is to get you out of here right now he's like you don't really need to work for him just tell him something so you get out and i'm just like no i'm not doing that okay and then eventually comes me a few weeks later a month later or two months later and he's like Hey, Eric, they know you're a good kid. You can get down with your life. Just give them the rest of your money to let you go. And I'm like, I don't even know how to a truck.

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

So I went out in shackles. I made a deal with them after a while. It's like, listen, yeah, I'll make a deal. I'll give you $5 million. They wanted like 10 or something, 8, 9. And I said, I'll give you five. And we agreed on like 5.25 million. They didn't like that number.

They were just fucking one investigator was, he was very good at what he did. He didn't like that number, but we agreed on it. So I went out in shackles, the escorted by a dozen DEA ATF, where they are 15s into the woods of upstate New York. They had no clue where I was taking them. They didn't know if it was going to be an ambush or what. Yeah, that's what they're thinking. They had to be prepared. and I went and I dug up actually the first dig I only dug up two million in gold bars in my mom's backyard and I gave that to them that two million plus the already two and a half million they had in cash seats from my houses equaled to five million that I agreed to pay so I was there but then after that I paid up they put me back in jail I'm told my lawyer I'm like listen I paid what am I doing and then we sit down we have a conversation I have to basically my lawyer is like you used to sit down and tell them like

you did but you don't have to tell them everything just can't lie right so i sit down tell them what i did blah blah blah i did this for 10 years they already knew it all anyways by now and then uh at the end of the conversation like so how much gold did you buy how much do you have and right now i'm thinking fuck i told them a lot and then the old room got tense because they want more they want more gold now i only gave them five mil i mean that's they want they want the big thing and the conversation just stopped they put me back in jail which I should have been let out in my opinion I made the deal we did the deal

so my lawyer kept calling me for the next three weeks Eric do you want to give them anything else is there anything else you can do for them and finally I was just like fuck it and I went out and another day's pouring rain they took me out of prison went another spot up in the woods in upstate New York and I dug up another six million in gold bars

about three feet down with shackles on there's pictures of it if you go online and Google it but me in handcuffs. My hands are so pale and white from sitting in a cell with no sunlight. Like it's... So you hadn't been sentenced yet, though. So you were still in the U.S. Marshall's holdover.

There you go. Okay. But they're still going to charge you. They're just going to consider it for a reduction and not give you what you should have gotten, right? That's my cooperation. Right. So you would have gotten the mandatory minimum, which would have been, what, 10 years right well would it have been no it'd been five but they probably would have hit me with 10

to 15 based on so they probably would put some other charges on me i only had a one count indictment at that moment okay yeah okay so they got like two to 300 pounds 300 pounds three 300 pounds yeah so they got 300 pounds i i don't know i thought that was the 10 years everybody i wasn't me 10 years is a thousand kilos oh you're right because okay carry got caught with like 1100 um well he got call it with 1100 pounds i think or 2 200 pounds i forget anyway it was a lot yeah so okay that's why he got 10 his was his and this other guy they were that was 10 um so so so you but you still got sentenced eventually yeah after my lawyer's like all right they're gonna get after i paid now they have close to 12 million in my between cash and gold then they finally let me out

my lawyers like just sit tight will push off the sending as long as possible till people so it doesn't look like you bought your way out of jail and you sit my way out of jail. I just sit tight and I ended up getting sentenced down like a year later plus and I end up doing two years, 30

months but I got the good time and stuff and some other things I put in the book how I got out I only ended up doing like 22 something months 20 months and basically I pay all that money so I wouldn't have to work for them and someday I'm gonna be

honest with you there's days and I think about did I do the right would they have all done it for me I know I paid motherfucking close to 12 million so I wouldn't tell on people I'll never see again that really have nothing going on in their lives yeah that probably if I told them they probably wouldn't even hurt them I'm so like I wrestled that sometime to be honest with you I really do because because that was expensive for me and and those people are gonna get busted in anyway but listen everybody you were dealing with has probably been busted and gone to prison any you know what that's what fucking happened yeah i remember looking in the newspapers the years

past and i'd see oh this guy holy shit indicted this guy indicted that wasn't i'm sorry i was going to say i i wrote a story for about a guy that got he got arrested didn't tell on the other two guys for because they got him for one crime they the cop the FBI knew these two guys had helped him with this another robbery so he didn't say anything he said i i know i know not to say anything so i just took the whatever it was 11 or 12 years and just took it i was like you're a fucking idiot he said yeah well you know what happened they end up busting these guys for for that crime without his help these guys immediately turn on him they re-indict the guy in prison who didn't talk they re-indicted him he got something like 13 more years and he's now doing like 24 years in

in federal prison for not cooperating against the two guys that immediately cooperated against him. And that just happens when people, they think that code, you know, you don't do it and you don't, you know. God, man, I've seen to go bad as home many times. The main guy I didn't want to tell him was the guy that I actually told that I had the gold, man. That was a freaking really hard pill to swallow, bro.

I'm not going to even get into names. I don't want to do any of that, but like it was just. Right, but so you didn't tell them about, they already did. just knew about the gold somebody else had told them about it oh okay okay i thought i thought you just said went and decided here i'll go do it but they knew they they knew i had gold they didn't know exactly how much but they they figured it all out eventually because i bro just i i was very good at not talking when i was in the game for years but all it takes is one time yeah just one guy just told yeah i got

these gold bars check them out you know like it just it's like i fuck myself honestly I was a young kid. I was a young kid with too much money. So how old were you when you got out? Like 35, 34 maybe, 34, 35. And how long ago was that? 2014. So did you write your book while you were locked up?

No, no, I was working on this other application. I was like a piece of software that helps you surround yourself with like-minded people. I was doing the wireframe for that and the design and kept me occupied. And then when I got out of prison, you know, I had five years supervised release. And during that time, I started writing the book and just finished the book. It just came out a year ago. It's gone pretty good. I got distracted, though.

Like, I had an opportunity to be interviewed by Rolling Stone. And I didn't even take the interview because I was in this field. I invested in a cannabis. I was involved in a cannabis farm in New York State. There's no cell service there during the day. And I didn't get back home until the day later. It's like, when you don't jump on something like that, it's like you lose it. And I lost the momentum with the book release in a lot.

in some manners, but whatever. I'm happy. I got a good book. It worked hard, but I could have pushed it a little hard. I didn't take every interview that came my way. And I don't know if that's a good thing or a bad thing. Like, for example, I don't know, a month or two ago, somebody from VH1 reached out to a publicist that I was working with

and said, hey, we want to get them on our VH1 crime series show. Yeah. I didn't. My true crime story. Oh, it's my true. Okay. Yeah. And I didn't follow through with that because I didn't know if it would be a good fit for me.

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

the fucking screen. Every time I hear it, they're like, okay, well, I'm glad we had a good talk, and I've read your synopsis, and I read this. And so I'm going to bring this to my team. Okay, well, that's the kiss of death. So what's your advice? Should I take the VH1 thing? Just do it?

Why not do it? Like, to me, listen, I did it. Okay. Listen, here's my only problem with the VH1 thing that I did. Obviously, listen, they can't tell. First of all, you're talking about an hour program. You're looking at them doing maybe four. My problem was, you know, it's, it's, it's, what was, what's the chick's name, Mickey or Nikki, somebody, Nikki somebody who does the narration for it.

It's all hype. It's all flash. It's about redemption. It's all. So it's a cutesy little program. It's not a big deal, but you don't know who's going to see that. Like, your story could be done by a polished director and production company, and it could be phenomenal. It could be amazing. This is a silly little rendition that's 40 minutes long. You're maybe 15 or 20 minutes of it. Most of its narration with some reenactments. It's silly. My only real problem with it was they put so much makeup on me. I was infuriated.

You couldn't tell them to not put it on your own? I should because they kept saying, no, it's going to look good. I know it looks like a lot now, but on camera, it looks perfect. And, you know, I'm sitting there thinking, they're professionals. It doesn't. look good on camera. It looks horrible. So for a limited time at McDonald's, enjoy the tasty breakfast trio. Your choice of chicken or sausage McMuffin or McGrittles with a hash brown and a small iced coffee for five bucks plus tax.

Available until 11 a.m. at participating McDonald's restaurants. Price excludes flavored iced coffee and delivery. Book club on Monday. Gym on Tuesday. Date night on Wednesday. Out on the town on Thursday. Quiet night in on Friday. It's good to have a routine, and it's good for your eyes too, because with regular

comprehensive eye exams at Specsavers, you'll know just how healthy they are. Visit Spexavers.cavers.cai to book your next eye exam, eye exams provided by independent optometrists. You know, but listen, they fly you out, they'll give you, you know, whatever, a few thousand dollars or whatever you negotiate, you know, I'll tell you, you know, what I got, you know, which probably wasn't much. But, you know, but they also, you know, they also interviewed my girlfriend and another friend. And, you know, we got to go to New York and hang out for a few days.

And it was cool. But somebody could see that. Somebody at Netflix or one of these production companies sees that and goes, listen, you know, I saw that. And they'll know, look, it's hokey. Like, they're going to be like, look, you've got a story here. They can't do your story justice in 40 minutes. You know it and I know it. They'll cut it down to just a couple little hype events.

But if somebody comes in and says, hey, your stories, a three-part series of an hour. This is a three-hour or four-part series on Netflix. Then they come in and they do a real documentary on it. Maybe that documentary ends up doing well. And the next thing you know, you've got Warner Brothers coming in saying,

we want to do a movie or we want to do a series. We think you've got a whole series. You're in your early 20. doing all this with DEA watching you and guys getting busted around you like this could be not breaking bad

but something along those lines you know yeah so you know to me it's like you know oh I don't want to get overexposed like what like Nike like I mean what do you mean

over exposed like somebody told me that that was the publicist that was working she mentioned that so I kind of took it to heart but whatever maybe I'll follow through it when I get out when I get out of this interview I'll give a little jingling and call them up

see if they um yeah I was going to say definitely um i was gonna say yeah i um another thing and and you know he'll keep all it like this is another thing that you you might want to think about just you know uh is that like you have a book do you have a synopsis of the book like a very website really has it all what a synopsis yeah it's on the website how many words is it do you know like under a thousand under a thousand words okay so it's like a summary um i was going to say because a lot of times you can pitch um if you have like a synopsis is better to pick like like let's say 800 word or sorry

8000 to 10 000 word synopsis of your story is probably better than because than handing someone the book yeah you see what i'm saying because they hand it because people are like they're like man you know how many books i get handed like i can't be reading you know that's this is 10 or 12 hours I'm burnt out though I can't write anything maybe we'll talk about that off camera I'm burnt out I'm not I can't even I can't even read my book for an audio books I don't want the words will make me nauseous I just spent too much time on it I'm all done like I'm not maybe I'll revisit doing an audio book in a year or something right book I could have done a little better with but good news is the story's done so no I'm on the new stuff you know it's like that phase of my life that whole 20 year stretch of selling grass and going to prison and supervised release and writing the book it's like done stories done so where where first my question is what what security level did you go to well i was moved around i was i tested out everything i was in mdc brooklyn for like a month uh few jails but i ended up in a low right mc devons right because nonviolent offenders just yeah yeah they're not going to do anything to me so i was like in a camp basically with mc devins you know that i have

that satellite camp there so it's basically just a big room big warehouse with a bunch of bunk beds right that's it um so you got out did you have any go in any halfway house no that's nice straight out five years supervised release they didn't cut me loose though did you go into a halfway house yeah i wish i i mean honestly like if i had money set aside where i was getting out to something i would have just stayed in prison i would have stayed in the low because the halfway house was worse than being in the low but i needed to go because i needed to save up money I didn't have any money so I needed that seven months you know like it's not like anybody packed up my clothes and stuck them in boxes waiting for me like you know my stuff is gone I started

with nothing uh so what well what are you doing now um right now I've well I partnered up on a cannabis farm in New York State but the market's just so flooded so I want to get out of that immediately that's my top priorities to try to get out of that business and then I want to get into building really high-end retreats, infrared saunas, infrared saunas, cold plunges, outdoor gyms, fire-to-table food, you know, copper grounding beds, really natural surroundings and environments. I want to build a place where people can go and reset and recharge. My premise is basically that we plug our phones into charge. At the end of the day, we plug our cars into charge, but the human body isn't being plugged into dwellings that charge us. So I want to build these

spaces where you can go and recharge for adults only. So that's really my passion what I'm working on so I have to get out of the canvas first and then I'm gonna move into that okay what happened to your to the the fountains and oh I haven't done that in years I'll build that at the retreat I haven't that was a little kid project I built some nice ponds at my property though I have some one like 20 foot spring fed 20 feet deep spring fed coy ponds I swim in and stuff with the fish are huge they're like this or they're they're they're big and they they bowed they'll outlive me some of those quite can live up to 100 years old

where are you living uh i have a place in upstate new york you didn't drive here from new york no but i spend part of the winter down here because i'm i have a small little network down here where i'm helping with like that's basically going to help me with the retreats okay all right um is there anything we didn't get to like Well, the title of the book's pressure, a memoir by Eric Canori. If anybody buys it and likes it, please DM me. If there's anything that they like about it. Leave a review.

Oh, I love reviews if I can get those too. If anybody knows anybody in the film industry that's really passionate, good at what they do, I'll give a finder's feed to somebody that puts me in the right hands with somebody that's good at that. And, you know, crime doesn't pay, I guess. what are the what are the other shows the other podcast that you've done like is that is that their angle of I get a lot of guys that that I mean bear with me one more minute I get a lot of guys that like come on and they they don't want to tell they don't want to talk about what got them to prison they just want to say you know so I messed up and I was I was selling coke and I was

selling this and I I you know made a mistake and I got busted and you know I got 10 years I went to prison. But then I changed my life and I did this and I did that. And it's like, whoa, whoa, whoa, wait. Let's like, how did you get to prison? Yeah, you know, it was just a bad situation. But, you know, then I went to prison. It's like they want to talk about, they want their whole story to be about redemption. And there's a lot of podcasts out there and a lot of guys like just focus on, I'm a changed person. I've done, I'm doing it was a bad time. You know, they do this whole thing. And it's like, so I, I've talked. to people who are like they do that and then sometimes I'm like yeah let's go back

and they almost like they don't want to talk about like what got them to prison and I was wondering like what's it like to be on one of those shows I I haven't been on one of those shows and plus I don't I don't really wouldn't talk about what I'm like now I mean prison you know how prison is it helps you grow right it's it's a great time to pause somebody should build prison retreats people would probably pay to go to those I go weekend in prison like you go no cell phone, no outside visitors. You're just sitting in a concrete room for, you know, a weekend, and you can't talk to anybody.

You have to figure your life out. So many people complaining out here that have a tough life. I mean, you don't have a tough life. You're out eating Cheetos, drinking wine every Friday. Listen, he's heard me say the exact same thing. Like, you know how good it is out here? Like, you've got cell phones. You've got YouTube.

You've got, like, Netflix. Like, you can eat whatever you want. Like, you have no, until you've been stripped of everything and the guards are talking to you like you're just a dog and, you know, honestly, you don't know how good it is. Like, I can never get upset. We should be blessed in a way that we had that opportunity to stop us. Oh, I think it ultimately altered like the person I am. Like, I'm absolutely not even close to, well, I'm still an arrogant prick.

But the difference is now I kind of know. The difference is now I feel bad for the people that have to deal with me. Where before, it was just like you're lucky to be around me. And I'm talking to somebody, I realize, you're kind of being a douchebag. I'm kind of like, I step back and then I'm like, oh, man, like I try and kind of re, you know, I start to realize, okay, you're being a douche. Like, you need to calm down. Like you just stop. And then I kind of, like you said, I kind of reset and say, hey, what's going on?

Sorry about that. I this, I that. And I never did that before prison. I would have never done that. Yeah. And then in writing, too. Like, I think writing like so helps you lay out a plan. yeah writing my book was the bare minimum it helped me with my childhood

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

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

naked of everything you have and you feel at least healthy and decent, you're in a good place. Right. Right. You have to, like, especially now I'm getting ready to start another company. Like, it's not about what I have. It's about who I am. Like, I can move and, like, I'm strong and healthy where I can handle the pressure that's

going to come with running a company because I know what it's like. you need to be able to handle fucking bullshit every day and night. And I've kind of groomed myself to get ready for that again. Yeah, I definitely, the childhood thing. Like until I went to prison, if somebody asked me, like, oh, well, why'd you do all that? I would just say, ah, you know, I needed the money, man. I just needed the money. But then you go to, I went to prison and I started writing and I started reading books about

how to write a memoir, you know, and how to write nonfiction. And then you kind of start having to look back at your life and say, what influenced me to do these things because what's what shocked me was that is that is that is that Connor if Connor needed money you know what he's not going to do he's not going to go commit fraud he's not going to go sell drugs he's not going to he's going to get an extra job he's going to get a like most people it they just they don't do it I always say most people will commit a crime in the right circumstances but most people will take all of the extra steps before they get there. My first thought is fraud. What? I'm broke. I need some money. There's fraud.

Like that's the first thing I think of. How do I get away with committing some fraud so I can get some money? And so I kind of when I was writing my book, I started looking back and saying, well, what is it in your childhood that made you think that was even an option, a first option? And it's the same thing. Like you said, like obviously something in your childhood, you know, was shaped you to say, hey, what are the things that I can do to make money? And, and, and, and, you know, morality didn't really enter into it like that's not really a part of it it's what do i need to do to make money it doesn't matter if it's illegal most people most people commit crimes they're just to what degree it's like yeah well most people there's so many people in your neighborhood that don't have

a trash service and they'll just take their trash to another public dumpster behind a grocery store and dump their trash yeah that's illegal they'll buy an appliance from the store and then use it for a party and then return it 30 days later or something. Say it's the fact that's illegal, right? Everybody's breaking crimes. They're committing crimes all the time. I like to think of my crime is the most honest crime you could commit. I like to smoke weed.

There's no other place to get it. Well, there's a lot of places to get it, but I like to smoke weed and I sold it. Just people helping people? Yeah. I was just trying to help people. I was not trying to hurt anybody. All right. And here it is.

It's legal now. I was going to say my mom used to break a. Every single day she broke the law because she had all of her medications and she had one of those week-long planners for pills and she popped it open and she would take it out of one container and drop it into Monday and put three or four pills in a container and close it. You just committed a federal crime. By removing those out of a marked, they have to stay in the prescription bottle until you ingest them. If you take them and place them into another bottle, especially if you commingle them, You've committed a federal crime. So every day, she's weak, she's putting them all in there and taking those pills.

And that's a crime. Like most people, there was that book that was written, a felony a day. They talk about all the felonies that people commit on a daily basis and don't even think about it. So, yeah. So, I mean, everybody's committing, you know, doing something wrong at some point or cheating on their taxes. Yeah, that's a big one. People are okay with that. Like, almost everybody's okay with cheating in some way on their taxes.

Just a little bit. Well, even the, you know. the people that busted me cheated the bottom line they wouldn't have had me if they followed the law right that in that particular case in the case that i was popped in if the law was followed there i wouldn't have been pinched in that particular moment like they jumped the gum whatever they're going to do it i have no hard feelings it is what it is it's better that i got popped sooner than later because now i'm young still i can rock and roll in the legit world right so there's a lot of you know those guys in the prison they're in the 60s and 70s it's like when they get out what are they going to do

exactly yeah bummer what a bummer to leave it on no we don't want to leave it like that fuck shit if I was 70 getting out of prison fuck I'd go to the mahima you gotta go to where'd I go borah borah I don't know yeah just kidding all do you guys get now in your 70s

you guys have a good time guys are gonna get out and go walk right into a bank and rob a bank so they can go right back to prison because they're 70 years old and you know what me guys I knew what like they're gonna get out at 60 70 nothing have they have nothing. Yeah, that's got to be tough. Imagine you don't even know if you have, you don't even have like social security. Like you never paid in. I wish the judges, that's one thing. I feel like the judges, in order to become a judge, you should have to do like a prison time for

a month and then supervised release. Because what was, yeah, I got a two year sentence or whatever, but that was eight years of my life that I, with, with a pretrial, five years of supervised release, peeing in a cup, like all that, it just prevent. And then on top of it, I'm a felon, so there's certain things I can't do now for the rest of my life. Like it's... So could you imagine if every federal judge before they took the bench had to do 60 days, as a normal inmate, you can't say you're a federal judge, you would go in, boom, that's it. Listen, do you know how different the sentences would be and the prison system would be?

Because they would have so much more empathy for inmates. And I'm not saying it should be nice. Yeah, it shouldn't be nice. but they could have I learned my lesson if I did a year and then a year of supervised release like I wasn't going to go back to breaking the law me personally I don't know if that's with everybody else but for me personally I learned my lesson years you could have given me a couple years I'm good I got it I got you I'm good thank you 13 years I didn't do 13 years fuck yeah I didn't know you did 13 yeah oh okay so I was I was supposed to do I got over 26 they're 26 years and four months but unlike you I don't have any scruples about ratting out every single person

I was ready to cut every single person's throat I could to get out of that fucking prison everybody but I was on the run for three years so by the time they caught me everybody had already cooperated so when I was ready to fucking tell on everybody that didn't help me I ended up having to file a 2255

because they asked me to be interviewed by Dateline NBC News and American greed and then after I've been locked up a couple years the government asked me to write an ethics and fraud course to help teach mortgage brokers so I did that and you know what they said when I said okay I did it

they said I said you said you'd consider it substantial assistance and they said we did consider it and it's not and so I had to hire a guy well not hire I had to get a lawyer in prison who was in prison with me to file a 2255 to get the government

to reduce my sentence by seven years. So then I came back to prison and a guy that I knew that was running a Ponzi scheme or had run a Ponzi scheme who was in the middle of cooperating against other people had buried a bunch of gold and money. How much? It turns out it was, well, one, he dug up like six million, I think,

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

Because I didn't think they would give me anything for saying anything. I was like, no, not really. And she goes, do you sure? Nothing you want to talk about? And like, my lawyer never wanted to talk to me. Like, it was almost weird. I was like, no, nothing. I went, well, I said, you know what's weird?

I said, listen to this. And I told her what happened. And she said, let me look into it. She didn't want to look into anything before. Like, she wouldn't even be my lawyer anymore. We were done. I'd already been sentenced, resentenced. So a week later,

I get called by S-I-S. You know, the CEO came up to me and goes, Cox, you got to go to S-I-S. I'm like, what? Okay. So I go to S-I-S. What's up? They're like, come here, sit down.

Like, yeah, what's up? Hold on. Talk to this guy. Pick up the phone. Guy says, hey, my name is agent so-and-so with the Secret Service. And I'm like, the fuck. I'm like, what's up? And he goes, I understand that you know where money has been hidden by Ron Wilson.

And I went, oh, no, wait a minute. I said, I do, but it's not a lot. of money. It's not millions of dollars. It's a little bit of money. And I want something in writing. So I'm not telling you anything. He's like, well, who's got it? I'm like, I'm not telling you anything. Like, get me something. Talk to my lawyer. So they ended up writing a letter saying, you give us something if somebody's indicted or we recover money. And I told him I wanted recovered money, any money that I'm not one of my sentence reduced. Because I didn't think they'd indict this guy. You know, like he's got 19 and a half years. I've never heard of

anybody else bearing gold. That's interesting. Yeah, well, yeah, he dug it up, though. So, um, gave it to the feds. Gave it to him because, you know, he was trying to mitigate his role, which didn't help. It didn't help him. And he did that all prior. So what ended up happening was he, um, what happened was they ended up coming back and they gave me something in writing, which was bullshit. It was a, we'll considerate substantial assistance, which means nothing.

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

So they were like, okay, so they called in his wife. his wife walks in with $350,000 in cash and gold and everything completely, like he didn't tell me what she had. He told me kind of, but he lied. And then his brother comes in with $150,000. So it's half a million dollars. They re-indicted him. And he comes to me and says, oh, my, you're not going to believe this. I've been re-indicted. I'm like, no, that's crazy. So he says, I said, what happened? He's like, yeah, they got half a million. I'm like, half a million. I thought she said it was like 30 grand or 20 grand he's like nah i didn't i didn't think i could trust you so i didn't tell you the right amount i'm like oh okay yeah that makes sense um anyway a couple

days later he's on a bus he gets shipped back to south carolina he gets six more months uh his ex-wife gets like six months probation she didn't even have a felony neither does his brother because they gave the money you know up so um so he got six more months and we went to the government and said, hey, you got to reduce my sentence. And they said, ah, it's just not enough. So we had to file another 2255 and got five more years off. And by the time the five more years hit, I basically walked out within a year. I walked right out of prison.

So I was, my outdate, my original outdate was 2030. I'm supposed to be in prison right now. And so I, but in the, you know, while I was locked up, I started writing guys true crime stories. And so I'm in prison as a snitch. So you can imagine how well that went. Wow. I didn't have a lot of friends. In a low.

But yeah, I went to the halfway house and got out. That's why when you were like, I wouldn't do it, I'd rather die. I was like, well, I have a vastly different, I have a vastly different feel it. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, you were in the drug game. No, I was. The drug game's a lot different. You know what I'm saying?

All these guys are rolling over on each other. I've learned that after I gave up them, paid all the money. I didn't realize, I didn't know, like, I didn't, went into the game with a certain rule like that I just that's I just and then after I went through all this and I've gotten to this age where I'm at now I see and my lawyer even said he goes don't ever get back into the game everybody's a double agent yeah absolutely and I said there you go I said fine so this is like 85% or 87% or 80 that people cooperate that that's drugs like it's even high white collar crimes it's even higher like you know one of the lowest cooperation rates

is um sex offenders but they don't have anybody to cooperate like this is just some guy on a computer at home he doesn't even have an option and even if he did they're not going to give him anything you know they're going to screw them over so um but yeah it's uh uh yeah bro it's it's it's a rough situation going into prison but i definitely let's leave it on a good note because i am i um i left it i left it the old guys so let's see on a good note it's good to be free It's good to be free to make it legally. Yeah. It's so easy to make it legally, though.

If I had just got right out of high school and started building houses like I wanted to do with a freaking hammer nail and start at the bottom, I'd have made millions. I would have made more. I would have made way more. That's why I'm going back into construction, build these retreats and stuff. So that's my play. Yeah. Well, that's what, yeah, that's what I say the amount of money I spent on the run and in prison if I'd actually focused on something legitimate. You know, I'm a hard worker.

I work 60, 70 hours a week. Like, I'm always hustling. So I'm going to make something work. Thank you for coming on the program. I appreciate it. Well, thank you for having me. All right. And I'm going to leave, we're going to leave a link to, is it on Amazon?

Your book? My book sign Amazon. Okay. We'll leave the Amazon link to Eric's book. I appreciate him coming by. I appreciate you guys watching. Do me a favor. leave me a comment in the comment section subscribe share the video do all the stuff and check

out my check out the books that i wrote and the trailers see you using forgeries and bogus identities matthew b cox one of the most ingenious comment in history built america's biggest banks out of millions despite numerous encounters with bank security state and federal authorities Cox narrowly, and quite luckily, avoided capture for years. Eventually, he topped the U.S. Secret Service's Most Wanted list and led the U.S. Marshals, FBI, and Secret Service on a three-year chase, while jet-setting around the world with his attractive female accomplices. Cox has been declared one of the most prolific mortgage fraud con artists of all time

by CNBC's American Greed. Bloomberg Business Week called him the mortgage industry's worst nightmare, while Dateline NBC described Cox as a gifted forger and silver-tonged liar. Playboy magazine proclaimed his scam was real estate fraud,

and he was the best. Shark in the housing pool is Cox's exhilarating first-person account of his stranger-than-fiction story. Available now on Amazon and Audible. Bent is the story of John J. Boziak's phenomenal life of crime. Inked from head to toe, with an addiction to strippers and fast Cadillacs, Bozziak was not your typical computer geek.

He was, however, one of the most cunning scammers, counterfeiters, identity thieves, and escape artists alive, and a major thorn in the side of the U.S. Secret Service as they fought a war on cybercrime. With a savant-like ability to circumvent banking security and stay one step ahead of law enforcement, Boziak made millions of dollars in the international cyber underworld, with the help of the Chinese and the Russians. Then, leaving nothing but a John Doe warrant and a cleaned-out bank account in his wake, he vanished. Boziak's stranger-than-fiction tale of ingenious scams and impossible escapes, of brazen run-ins with the law and secret desires to straighten out and settle down,

makes his story a true crime con game that will keep you guessing. Bent. How a homeless teen became one of the cybercrime industry's most prolific counterfeiters. Available now on Amazon and Audible. Buried by the U.S. government and ignored by the national media, this is the story they don't want you to know. When Frank Amadeo met with President George W. Bush at the White House to discuss NATO operations in Afghanistan,

No one knew that he'd already embezzled nearly $200 million from the federal government. Money he intended to use to bankroll his plan to take over the world. From Amadeo's global headquarters in the shadow of Florida's Disney World, with a nearly inexhaustible supply of the Internal Revenue Services funds, Amadeo acquired multiple businesses, amassing a mega conglomerate. Driven by his delusions of world conquest, he negotiated the purchase of a squadron of American fighter jets and the controlling interest in a former Soviet ICBM factory.

He began working to build the largest private militia on the planet, over one million Africans strong. Simultaneously, Amadeo hired an international black ops force to orchestrate a coup in the Congo while plotting to take over several small Eastern European countries. The most disturbing part of it all is, had the U.S. government not thwarted, his plans, he might have just pulled it off. It's insanity, the bizarre, true story of a bipolar

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

As his co-defendants prepared for trial, U.S. Attorney Robert Mueller sat down to debrief Racine at Leavenworth Penitentiary, and another story emerged. A tale of FBI corruption and complicity in murder. You see, Pierre Racini knew something that no one else knew. The truth. And Robert Mueller and the federal government have been covering it up to this very day.

Devil Exposed. A twisted tale of drug trafficking. corruption, and murder in the City of Angels. Available on Amazon and Audible. Bailout is a psychological true crime thriller that pits a narcissistic conman against an egotistical, pathological liar. Marcus Schrenker, the money manager

who attempted to fake his own death during the 2008 financial crisis, is about to be released from prison, and he's ready to talk. He's ready to tell you the story no one's heard. Shrinker sits down with true crime writer, Matthew B. Cox, a fellow inmate serving time for bank fraud. Shrinker lays out the details, the disgruntled clients who persecuted him for unanticipated market losses, the affair that ruined his marriage, and the treachery of his scorned wife,

the woman who framed him for securities fraud, leaving him no choice but to make a bogus distress call and plunge from his multi-million dollar private aircraft in the dead of night. the $11.1 million in life insurance, the missing $1.5 million in gold. The fact is, Shrinker wants you to think he's innocent. The problem is, Cox knows Shrinker's a pathological liar and his stories of fabrication. As Cox subtly coaxes, cajoles, and yes, Khan's Shrinker into revealing his deceptions, his stranger-than-fiction life of lies slowly unravels. This is the story Shrinker didn't want you to know.

bailout, the life and lies of Marcus Shrinker, available now on Barnes & Noble, Etsy, and Audible. Matthew B. Cox is a conman, incarcerated in the Federal Bureau of Prisons for a variety of bank fraud-related scams. Despite not having a drug problem, Cox inexplicably ends up in the prison's residential drug abuse program, known as Ardap.

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

Available now on Amazon and Audible. If you saw anything you like, links to all the books are in the description box.