Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast - When the FBI Raids Trusted Cops

Episode Date: July 5, 2026

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So how did I go for me to cop to a convicted felon? Right. Clearly it has to do with . So now it's this really big case that's like hitting Fox News, it's hitting CNN, so it's all over the place. And I'm like, well, I'm going to give my kids a hug, so I know I'm going to jail today. The first like 10 years of my life was just abuse, homelessness, my dad in and out of prison. You know, my mom addicted to probably every drug that you can imagine and disappearing for weeks at a time. My grandmother, actually, my dad's side, so I call her the good grandma. She finally learned what was going on, the amount of abuse that I was suffering and decided,

hey, I'm going to take these kids in at 66 years old when she took us. And I was able to live what I considered somewhat of a normal life. Of course, my normal life at that age consisted of going to meet my mom in a visitation center one Saturday, you know, for supervised visitation, which she didn't show up 90% of the time. And then the other one going to San Quentin and visiting my dad for that Saturday. So I didn't have. Yeah, just a normal. Normal middle class.

Right? Exactly. Wow. So that was kind of my first, you know, from 10 to 14. That was pretty much what I did off and on. And, you know, my dad, believe it or not, someone who served, I think in total roughly 14 years in prison off and on. And for more low level crimes, things that nowadays would be a citation and moved out, meth-infetomy use, petty theft. But he was on parole, right? So every time it's a violation, two years, San Quentin, here he goes. And, but he was actually the one that had told me, you know, a police officer, which was so strange, right? I have this this guy who's in prison, you know, over and over and over his whole life. But he would say, he's like when I would sit in in San Quentin, I'd look at all these guards and they're playing on their expensive, fancy phones, and here we are with nothing, you know, and he said, don't, don't live my life, you know, go live that life. So it was, you know, kind of his advice that took me to, you know, I don't ever, I'm never going to use drugs. I'm going to stay out of trouble and, and, uh, focus on, you know, my scholastics and school. And, and so it was, it was weird. I kind of, I kind of, you know,

You know, as much as, you know, I hate what my dad did, you know, because it forfeited the ability for us to have a relationship. But it also showed me, for one, the kind of dad I want to be and also the life that I want to live, which was going to be the exact opposite of his. Of course, I ended up with some similarities regardless. Maybe we are a product of our environment. Things don't always go according to plan. Yeah. And I ended up joining the Army. I did eight years in the military.

So I was doing very well, decided, you know, maybe I need to go the Green Bray route and go special. forces. So I started training with those guys, and that was the ultimate goal. You know, I was like, I'm going to swap over, I'll go SF, I'll become a Green Beret, I'll do this for maybe the next five years, get out, and then, you know, whether I go into law enforcement or, you know, work with the feds, which would have been interesting. You know, whatever the case may be, I knew that that was my path. Of course, I was married, you know, got married at 23, and kind of got a surprise and my ex-wife now, but got pregnant. So that changed things a little bit. How'd that happen? Yeah, I know, right? Yeah. Yeah, just one time. But yeah, I know that changed things a little bit. So then the whole special forces route that I wanted to go,

that kind of got put on the back burner with a new baby on the way. You know, arguably with my childhood, I knew I wanted to be a present father. So I was like, well, this is going to be one of those sacrifices. I'm going to probably sacrifice this dream that I have. And that's okay because I'm going to be a present And so I ended up not re-upping in the military and started applying to police agencies all over. How old were you at that point? So I got hired technically. I started applying when I was like 25, 26, and I got hired at 27. So anything interesting happened there?

Oh, yeah. I'll give you, you know, one of the stories that kind of always hits home to me or resonates with me was, you know, I loved vehicle pursuits. I mean, that's one of the reasons you get into law enforcement is drive. fast, right? Chase the bad guys, right? That's what you want to do. And so one night I'm working patrol and I see a vehicle starting to pass me and it immediately stands out to me and I see the driver. I recognize him. And when I pull behind him, he knows that I'm going to end up pulling him over and takes off on me. So we're in downtown Antioch, which the city of Antioch is kind of like a grid. So it's really easy to follow. It's basically, you know, streets labeled, you know, first through 10th or

all the way up the 20th and ABCD, right? So it's really easy to track people and get into pursuits in there because it's directional. So we take off in this pursuit and immediately we're hitting 60, 70, 80 miles an hour through city streets, running red lights. You know, he gets onto the highway. He's trying to lose me and I start seeing guns get thrown out of the car. So I'm literally trying to come over the radio and talk about, hey, man, they just threw a gun out over here. they just threw a gun out over here. I'm seeing these objects come out of vehicles.

Mild marker 132. Mile marker 137. Exactly. You're throwing out landmarks, right? Literally. Yeah, literally. And of course, in a pursuit, you know, not of people, if you haven't listened to a pursuit, there's a lot that goes into it.

You know, for a police officer, you have to put out the direction that you're traveling. You've got to put out the speed that you're traveling. You've got to put out if there's pedestrian traffic, if there's vehicle traffic. Because your supervisors are listening to this determining, hey, do we let this pursuit go on? Right. Or do we terminate? right and so these guys are going to drive as crazy as humanly possible because they know that exactly yeah and a lot of the times what they'll do is they'll go wrong way on the freeway because they want to

try to get away from you and they know in california most of the time they'll terminate their pursuit because it's just too dangerous head-on collisions are going to kill people which they call in like a helicopter or there's just not enough helicopters yeah we call them in you know but the problem is is they're just they're too late to the game a lot of times by that time these guys are gone but if they're in the air already. Helicopters are a phenomenal asset. But these guys are, I mean, they're literally hitting every street impossible and I chased them through two different cities. So by this time, I mean, we're into like a pretty good probably 30 minute, you know, um, pursuit, which is extremely long, right? Like that typically doesn't happen. But again, it's middle of the night. We're hearing

that guns are getting thrown out of the car. Officers who I'm calling out where these are, are recovering these firearms, right? So now they know, hey, this is a pretty substantial thing. This isn't just a normal vehicle pursuit. This is, you know, these guys are up to something. We don't know what these guns are tied to. We don't know anything about the case. So they're letting, they're letting it go. And by letting it go, I mean, they're letting me continue to pursue them. Right. Well, eventually, the vehicle crashes, and they foot bail, and two guys hop out. And of course, I get to the first guy, kind of the rule of thumb when you're a police officer is you stay with the car, right? So if the passenger goes, you're going to let that guy go. You're

you're really staying with the vehicle and whoever's left in there. So I do a high risk on him, which just means I got my gun out. I'm pointing it at him. I'm giving him commands. And I'm alone at this time, right? All my partners start getting there on scene. And I'm putting out radio traffic, talking about the guy, what he's wearing, where he's going, last he's seen running. And he goes running off into basically like a high school.

And so we get the other guy, the driver, we get him in custody, and he doesn't make it out. And so we have him contained. and now we have just a huge perimeter set up. What do you mean? He didn't make it, he didn't get away. He didn't get away. Oh, I thought maybe he would make it out of the car. No, he died.

Did he die? No, no, he survived. He survived. And so he ends up, yeah, we take him into custody, no injuries, no, nothing like that. It wasn't some severe accident. It was just more, I think, they crashed in in an effort to just ditch the car and get out of there. But he just wasn't fast enough like the passenger was. So we have a big perimeter set up.

And the way it works is really whenever you have somebody flee, you're going to set up as big a perimeter as possible. And then you're going to slowly move it in. You know, you're trying to just kind of tighten that up until you can't clear everything out with canines, helicopter, or whatever you have available to you. Well, we have all these cops working this perimeter. And one of the guys, I won't say his name to save him the embarrassment, a friend of mine. But he's sitting there on a perimeter. He's watching, you know, looking for somebody. Well, this guy comes out of the bushes. And he sees him. and they look at each other. And he goes, hey, man, you know, you got to get out of here. We're, oh, my God.

You know, we're looking for somebody. And the guy's like, oh, thank you. And starts walking off. And then he sits there for a second, the officer and realizes, oh, shit, I think that's the guy. I think I just let him go. So this guy's just be bopping down the road thinking, like, I'm good. Well, obviously, we ended up taking him into custody. But those two guys, you know, I can't remember what they ended up pleading.

I know they pled guilty. Those guns were tied to some homicides. And so I think one of them took a deal for like 30 or 35 years. One took a deal for like 20-something years. Why would you keep the gun? Right. Yeah. I don't get that.

Yeah, it makes no sense. I'm going to resell it. Why resell it? Somebody who gets caught with it later will just say, I bought it from Jimmy. Yeah. Again, this is why job security for you. Because they know about ballistics. They know that we're going to be able to determine

if this is going to be related to a crime. And they keep them anyways. And they'll just reuse them. We had a guy that was on here. It's funny, he and I had, we had actually talked prior to. And he, his big thing was worry about the misdemeanors and the felonies will take care of themselves. He's like, I didn't ever look over and think that car's got, you know, two keys in it. He said, I looked over and I thought, the guy's tail lights out.

You know, he said, because I pull it, pull it over, you know, you pull it over for the tail light. He said, as you're approaching, he said, these guys will drive around with a broken tail light, two keys in the fucking trunk. He's smoking marijuana and I'll walk up and go, I spell marijuana. I'm going to have to search your car now. And then they get, he said, where if they weren't smoking the marijuana, I'd pull them over and say, hey, man, I got a right you to take it for the tail light. Okay, no big deal. He's like, like, I don't, this guy looks like a normal guy. The problem is, and I realize this, obviously, is that that most of the types of people that will commit felony,

they also they have tons of little tiny misdemea. They do the little things like the kind of guy that thinks it's okay to deal in drugs will also throw something out of his car window where, and I always say that with the fraud guys

for fraud guys, I don't think it's like that as much but what they do is like they won't do maintenance. Yeah. Like they get the money and they walk away. It's like, wait a minute, if you make three payments on on this loan, it puts it off for six months or three months and another three months.

But if you don't make the first payment, they immediately say, oh, first payment default, it's fraud. And so within a week, they're already looking at this for fraud and you don't end up going a month. And now they know it was fraud. Well, you could have held it off for six months. And after six months, there's all of these things that, you know, there's no more footage and the camera footage is over.

And there's all these things that disappear and it's too late. Or they don't even know if they were fraud at all. They just think the guy took out a loan. Didn't make the payments and he wanted to default. Yeah. If that happens. Yeah. But it's these little tiny stupid things that get people caught.

Oh, yeah. And I'm one of them. Right. Oh, my God, I can't wait to hear that. Yeah, we'll get to that. And my buddy, Zach, like he literally, he's running a, he's making hundreds of thousand dollars every month. And then he went and he and his wife rented a hotel using stolen credit card.

Oh, my gosh. But you have 300,000 in the bank. Yeah. I know, but why would I pay? Because you have 300,000. You can pay. Why take the risk? He's like, well, I just didn't think it was going to be a big deal.

But it was a big deal. Exactly. Like, that's just the dumbest. That's what got you got. Right. And that was minor compared to what you were doing. So why would you risk, make, take that risk at all, pay for it? Yeah.

It's almost like considered a tax write off if you got to pay the cash, you know? You know? You know? Like, save you. So the guy, he, so you don't know what happened, but 30 years that guy. So, yeah. I mean, what else? Anything else going on?

I mean, last I kind of heard with them actually, California. is a crazy state. They have decided, I believe, to lower the severity of homicide, murder, right? So if you kill somebody and maybe you don't, I don't know, watch them die, I don't know the details of it, but it sounds like both these guys are putting in to get out. So who knows? With California, you never know. They may just let them back out even with homicide charges.

I think the average that I would see, if you killed somebody in California, most of the people there would, they wouldn't do more than 10 years. And they're back out on the street. Yeah, I have a buddy whose son did something like five or ten years, got out, killed somebody with another gang member, DNA on the cigarette, DNA on the, the other guy's saying he's the one that did it, DNA on the gun. I mean, hands down, he executed another gang member. Yep. And he ended up doing, he ended up getting like 10 years and did like seven or something. And it was like, are you serious?

Like, yeah, he pled to 10. pled to 10. He picked up the guy, took him out like on a beach somewhere where it was like an area you weren't allowed to go, like behind some fences, went out there, put the guy on his knees and then executed him. Yep. And you just, you got 10 years? Like, that's, that's where we're saying. It's insane. But if you are somebody who's a contributing member of society your whole life and you have a white collar crime, they're going to, you're going to look at 15 years at least, you know, no, you may not even really have like victims on there. But yeah, it's a, it's a crazy one. You know, and I had a buddy when I first had started at Antioch PD. I had a good friend that I knew from the military,

probably one of the smartest guys I know, still one of my closest friends today. And went to Stanford, literally just genius, naturally. Didn't come from anything, but just, you know, I think he minored in Mandarin, like literally just decided, I'm going to learn another language, combat veteran, brilliant guy, but he got into some fraud stuff. as a police officer and was doing like tax returns for deceased people and collecting a lot of money. Didn't, I don't think even like actually spent any of it. But it was almost to me it seems it was more like a middle finger to the government because he had come back from Afghanistan, severe PTSD.

I mean, crazy deployments and got like 30% on his disability. And he's like, all my buddies are dying around me. There's my buddy's brains are on me and this is what I get, you know? So he, uh, he did that. He ended up getting, getting caught for it. And, uh, they were, I mean, they were looking at like 80 years for him for the amount of money. And it's like, here's a guy who served his country, served as a police officer.

Uh, he was obviously a good resource for me when I went through this because he understood the federal process, um, but did all these, you know, heroic things, phenomenal police officer, but obviously, you know, made some mistakes. And granted, there were technically victims, but they were deceased. if you want to call them that. Yeah. The tax fraud typically has one victim. That one victim is the U.S. government, which is an enhancement in the federal system, by the way.

Exactly. If you steal from the government, you get an enhancement. Isn't that crazy? Yeah. Yeah. I can't believe that that guy sold $200,000. Exactly. No, that's so ridiculous.

I can't buy. You know, nobody lost any sleep. But the person, if you stole $200,000 from a regular individual, you might have just wiped out everything that they have or ever will have. You may have really fucked them up. Exactly. And there's no enhancement for that. No. No.

Yeah. Yeah. Well, I mean, I think the government obviously builds the system to obviously be beneficial to the government. Protect them. Yeah. You know, which I learned more about that. I didn't know anything about the federal side until. My case, obviously.

But yeah, this guy that I'm good buddies with, it was sad to see him go through it because he lost everything that he'd worked for his whole life. Of course, he's come back and, you know, he's a brilliant guy. Guys like that, guys like yourself, right, you can throw them away. They're going to come out and they're going to do something again that's going to be, they're just going to now operate in the capacity of the law because they're like, okay, I get it. You know, I did this before. My bad. Yeah. Now let me do it the right way and show you that I can still make money and still be profitable and successful.

in my life. So he's done that, created a, you know, a junk hauling business that he hires vets and he's expanding and just a brilliant guy. Huge asset to me, good mentor for me. And, you know, and somebody, you know, when I worked for the, for the police department, he was going through this. I was pretty new there. And he had asked me if I could write a character letter for him, right, for the judge. Crazy story is him and me ended up having the same judge. And he wrote a character letter for me later. But who would have thought, right? Small world. But, yeah, he asked me to write a character letter. And of course, everybody in the PD, police officers are divas.

You know, I learned in law enforcement I really don't like most cops. I don't get along with the vast majority of them. Maybe it was my upbringing, whatever the case may be. I just, they're not my type of people for the most part. And so when he asked me to do it, I was like, of course, you know, I knew this guy through the military. I knew him as a friend. And so I got in trouble for writing him a character letter. I spoke nothing about him as a police officer in that capacity,

but the PD didn't want anything to do with him, just threw him in the garbage. This was a guy who served. I think he was at that PD for 10 years, you know, dedicated his life to it and made a mistake in his personal life. I get it. He knew what he was doing, but it didn't take away from the good that he did, right? And everybody turned their back on him, which.

I was like, like, you'll go to whatever, and I'm sure it's the same way in the police department or any organization, where you always have the managers or the where they'll say, you're like, you know, we're a family here. Yeah. Like, we're a family. Oh, yeah. Like, I do one thing and you're cutting me off and giving me a bad, you know what I'm saying,

a bad recommendation and just cut me off at the knees. Like, you wouldn't do that to your family. You know what I'm saying? Of course. One thing and you talk shit. Like, it's like, it's so funny because I've had so many jobs where they, where they were like, you know, we're family here. Oh, yeah.

Well, you know, big family cut the shit, probably. It is. It's bullshit. You know, in law enforcement, they call it the thin blue line. You've heard that, right? Yeah, yeah. Yeah, I refer to it as the transparent blue line because it doesn't exist. I mean, and that, and I learned that, you know, just going off on medical injury, right?

Like, you know, I think at one time, I think back in the 60s and 70s in New York or something, it did because a lot of these cops were horrific. And the whole police station, well, shoot, it was probably in the 40s, 50s, 60s. It wasn't probably until the 80s and 90s. it started, it started becoming like, no, no, no, we need to protect ourselves at the cost of, and then as it goes on and now, yeah, I think. Yeah, Rodney King kind of changed everything for when it came to, you know, police agencies protecting the officers. Yeah.

And then obviously when, you know, George Floyd, things like that, just doesn't help it, right? Right. So, but yeah, it's, that thin blue line thing is, is as fake as it comes, you know, and I have no problem saying it because you get off, like I said, I went off on injury for a back injury and it was like I didn't exist anymore. Nobody calls a check on you. Nobody's checking in to see how you're doing. Nobody cares. You know, this isn't a family. But when you're around, you know, and you're hosting barbecues every weekend and stuff, then it's a family all of a sudden, as long as you're being beneficial to one another. Yeah. But, uh, if you, if you know that going in, you're,

you're much better off than buying into the bullshit. Yeah. We had a guy that, uh, had been hired by this police department and he explained I'm a I'm in the National Guard yeah so you have to understand that I and they you know how that works and they absolutely no problem we're huge supporters of the military huge support and the problem is every time he would go to do something they're like oh no no you're you got to work that weekend and be like no no I explained and I'm and I'm telling you well in advance exactly the answer when this is they're like well you got to find somebody what don't have to find somebody like you have to find somebody like what do you it was a he said every fucking time it was a huge argument

And so they got, and he's like, and this is not outrageous, by the way. These are, I know when this is happening. Yeah, of course. So eventually what happened was somebody, I don't know whether it was, whoever it was in the police department. They basically started to try and get rid of them, like really make it a priority to let's try and get rid of this guy. But they wanted to hire me. They came to me. They were hiring.

He's like, I don't know if they were filled and now let's start getting rid of anybody that we have an issue with. Anyway, he eventually sued them. I don't know what happened to the lawsuit, but remember he had the little dog? He brought with him a little dog. Interesting. Like a PTSD dog. Yes. A little tiny dog that was, and the whole time, he's petting.

I know. And I noticed the little dog that he was petting the little dog. And I did notice it, but you know what was hilarious to me was in the comment section. Remember the guy said, what's up with this guy? with Dr. Evil. And his little, I was like, oh, my, wish I had thought about that. Because even though I thought it was strange, I thought, well, don't say anything. But I did want to know.

Like, I never asked, like, what's with the little dog? Yeah. Like, but. And we need to track this guy down. I need to know about this dog. I do want to know what happened to the lawsuit. Like, I do think they were offering him money or something. Oh, yeah.

What the guy's name was. He was, but it was the same thing. It was just this horrible way that the police department was treating. him when you asked me to come here. He's like, I have no write-ups, know this, know that. And ultimately, they ended up firing him. And then he was in the middle of the lawsuit. And they were trying to settle the lawsuit. And he was just like, no, and I'm settling for nothing. You guys, targeted me. Exactly. Yeah. And I mean, and, you know, law enforcement, in and in and in itself, they're so disgruntled, right? And it's like, they hate their life. So it's like,

why are you doing this job? I came there, 2015, got on the gang. And, and, you know, unit quick was doing all kinds of assignments and investigations and having a blast with everything I was doing. 2017, I'm working. And there's a home invasion. And they're putting, I'm literally like driving back to get off. It's raining outside. And there's a home invasion.

These guys are, you know, running out of the house. And some officer is either on viewing it or had just come in, but he sees the people. So he's putting out the direction that they're running. And so I kind of, I'm like, okay, there's only one place they can be going. So I drive over to this area. and I'm looking around, and I see a guy sprinting behind these houses. So I'm like, all right, well, clearly this is one of our guys. Hey, buddy, you better get out of here.

We're looking for somebody. Hey, yeah, they're looking for some. What are you doing here? So, you know, I had my cop hat on at that time, and I knew he was probably the one we were looking for. So I hop out of my car. I run around the corner, and him and me literally collide with each other. It's just full speed, hit each other, kind of unexpected, but then it turns into a little bit of a ground fight, and I end up getting him in handcuffs

after, you know, pretty minimal amount of struggle, but get them into handcuffs and I go to stand up and I, like, I feel something go in my back. And I'm like, oh, my God, like I can barely, I can't get up. I'm stuck on my knee. And I'm literally sitting there and I'm like, I don't know what's wrong, but I'm having these shooting pains down my legs. And it felt like I was paralyzed momentarily. And then it kind of started to work back in where I felt okay. So I get them up and I go get them to the patrol car. And again, this is the end of my shift.

And I get into the patrol car, sit down, and I just get this, like, rush of feeling that it's just abnormal in my lower extremities. Where I'm like, okay, there's something wrong with my spine. It's not normal. But I'd had some spine, you know, stuff before from the military and stuff. Nothing severe, but, you know, back pain. Yeah, you know, normal back pain where, hey, you got to lay on the couch for a couple days. This was different. Like, I could feel that something was not, not right.

But, you know, in law enforcement, you never want to say that you're hurt. because if you say that you're hurt, you're going to get off on workers' comp. You're going to be off for God knows how long. They may, you know, you're going to lose opportunity. Yeah, but if you don't say it, then you don't get covered. Exactly. Then what they say is, oh, that happened when you were off duty. So, no, no, no.

Let's say while I was still on duty, it. Yep, exactly. So I get back to the station. I booked this guy in, and there's two other cops in there, and they're getting this other, another guy who was part of it, into the patrol car, huge man, like massive as well. And so they asked me, hey, can you come grab his feet? We're going to carry him in the wrap.

Kind of the same device we were talking about. We're going to carry him in the wrap. If you can go through the patrol car and grab his feet, pull him into the car and help us out. And I'm thinking, you know, shit, my back is like something's wrong with it. But I'm like, well, I want to play it off. So I go over there, I grab him. Well, they get crammed in the door. They drop him.

And I'm holding this guy by his feet as he goes to fall out the back of the patrol car. And it's all lower back. Yeah. And so I all of a sudden I'm seized up again. And I'm like, okay, this is now getting really bad. We get them in. I get home. And, you know, no real significance of that story other than the back injury.

But I get home and I'm like, okay, I'm just going to rest for a couple days. Things will be all right. And I go to walk up my stair steps and I get to the top. I collapse and I literally piss my pants. Just full, like, released all my bladder. And I'm like, okay, that's not good. So call my PD. I tell them, hey, I was trying to hopefully take care of this.

I thought I just threw my back out, nothing big. but it turns out it's worse than that. So that entered me into the world of workers' comp. And so I did, you know, three months of, you know, going to the doctor and talking to them and, you know, fighting for an MRI and they don't help you. They don't do anything for you. I was complaining that, you know,

I also had some issues with my neck. I didn't know what was going on with it. So they finally did some MRIs and said, yeah, you herniated a disc in your lower back. you know basically you can medically retire or you know maybe get surgery who knows you know but they gave me no options right and workers comp but if you ask any police officers it's a nightmare so finally I'm like well I just want to get back to work so I kind of did what I shouldn't have and just told him hey I'm fine my

back feels good even though I was in significant pain I was like just get me back to work I knew swap tryouts at that time were coming up and so I wanted to be there for that so I get cleared I go back to work and I had this severe back injury that was just lingering. And this is 2017, right? So over the next couple of years, it just got worse and worse and worse. You know, and I came back. I didn't get on our SWAT team.

And, you know, they were concerned about my back and gave me all these excuses and whatever. So I said, you know, no big deal. I'll try it again next time. And this was before all this social media stuff. and so I still was in good standing with the agency. I didn't have this injury, you know, and I didn't have social media. I was in a male model. So, you know, I'm just doing the job.

And, you know, and that was when I really started to become, you know, a good cop, I guess you could say. You know, you were talking earlier about a guy who said that, you know, he looked for the misdemeanors to find the felonies. Right. Right. And I always had kind of this, this different method. It was really weird. but when I worked in these really, you know, poverty-driven areas, these ghetto areas, I would see all these little crappy cars, you know, with the busted taillight and stuff like that.

But for where we were, those were going to primarily be your abusers, your, you know, they were going to have some misdemeanor warrant or something like that. And that's not why I got the job, right? Like there's two, there's two aspects of law enforcement. There's the letter of the law and the spirit of law. Have you ever heard this? Yeah. Okay, yeah.

So most people, some people aren't familiar with it. but I operated heavily in the spirit of the law, right? If you did something and you're only affecting yourself, I really don't give a shit. Like, I'm not here to ruin your life because you want to use meth. You're doing that on your own, right? But if you're committing other crimes

and now you have victims, that's what I'm after, right? But really, I got into law enforcement because I was going back to those childhood memories of, you know, I want to protect people. So I was looking for real criminals. You know, I wanted, you know, defenders. I wanted, you know, people that are committing homicide,

you know, big gang things, big drug operations, not the kid selling, you know, that's, I didn't really care about this. That's just, that was my, my personal opinion of it. And so when I was driving through the ghetto areas, I rarely looked at those cars or ran them out. So I always looked for the European cars. If I'm, if I'm driving through a, you know, a high crime area with a low amount of money and there's, you know, a brand new Audi that comes driving by me with no plates on it, I'm like, what's this expensive car doing in the ghetto at one o'clock in the morning? Right. And I'd go to stop that car, you know, because they didn't have a plate or whatever the case, you know, some sort of vehicle code violation, which there's eight million of them, right?

So you can stop somebody almost any time you want because nobody follows all the rules of the road. And those were always the ones that would turn into, you know, gang members in there, guns, drugs, big things because they're trying to live this lifestyle, but they still live in Section 8 housing. Yeah, that always kills me. Yeah, it's like you have a, you know, Aston Mark. and parked out here, but you're living in, you know, Section 8 housing that's... In Toronto, every arrival is a statement, and nothing says it better than this. Cadillac Optic was the number one selling luxury EV in Canada for 2025. Find your rhythm across a seamless 33-inch display and an immersive 19 speaker AKG surround audio system.

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And so it was just, it always intrigued me because those would just catch my eye. But so many people, you know, I guess so many officers, I should say, when they see those cars, they don't pull them over. And kind of working in gangs, I learned like all the big gang members are driving those cars. They're not driving the Honda Civic with the busted taillight. drop the low light with the neon green wheel wells. Exactly. Yeah.

So, you know, so I, you know, I started really looking at those. And, you know, there was, there was a specific one. I remember I'm driving past this house. You know, when you work anywhere in law enforcement, obviously you're going to learn the trap houses. You're going to learn the high crime houses where people are coming and going. So I would do my rounds all the time, right? I would go through the neighborhoods, very ADHD.

I would just drive in circles. and go from one house to the next to the next where all these houses were that I knew were going to be committing a lot of crime. And I remember, I'll never forget. I see this white Volvo pulled up there and he's got black bumpers on it. And I just thought it was like,

just looked out of place because it was a newer Volvo. It was nice. And right when I see him, he takes off. It doesn't even give me a chance to even see what he looks like or anything. He takes off. I go to try to catch up to him and he's gone.

I'm like, okay, whatever. You know, I'll see him again. It was a pretty identifiable car. So then the next, literally the next day, I'm driving through one of the neighborhoods and we literally come face to face with each other. And I see him and I look at him and he looks at me and there's no front license plate, which he needs. So I obviously activate a traffic stop on him. So I kind of flash my lights to him and I say, hey, pull over. And he looks at me.

I'll never forget this because I've never had anybody do this. He looks at me. He goes, fuck no. And I'm like, what? And I was so surprised. He puts it in reverse. and takes off backwards. So I'm literally bumper to bumper with him,

and he's going in reverse. And I'm like, I'm chasing this guy in reverse. So I put this out over the radio, and I tell him, hey, I got this guy. He's going in reverse in this direction. And he ends up jumping through someone's yard. And in reverse. In reverse.

Goes through someone's yard, spins around, like pulls this, like, move that you would see in like, you know, bad boys or something. Like literally like whips his car around, goes back this way. So I have to go through the yard to go back to catch him. So now I'm chasing this guy. And I'm like, who the hell is this guy?

Like first off, he was like a professional drifter or something. I don't know where he came from or where he had his experience, but he could drive. So I'm chasing him back through this neighborhood. And it's funny because the people sitting outside are watching us kind of go by back and forth. And he knows right away he gets up to the highway, wrong way, on the freeway. And I have to terminate the pursuit, right? So, you know, now I've gone after this guy twice. And I'm like, God damn it, man.

This guy just keeps getting away from me. So, you know, sure shit. You know, my next shift, I'm driving down the road. And I see it. He's going the other direction. I see him. And he sees me. And we lock eyes again.

I'm like, there he is. And so I whip around. And before I can even, you know, flip around, he's back on the highway, wrong way. Right. So third time in a row, I didn't even get to put that one out. He was already gone. I ended up putting it out for like a safety thing. But I never pursued him or anything.

And I'm like, God, this guy has done this to me. you know, three times now. He keeps getting away, which is starting to hurt my ego a little bit, right? Does he have a, do you ever get his tag number? Like, can you track the tag? No plate on the car. So, which tells me it's, it's, you're desperate. I mean, you're, you're destined to get pulled over every time a cop sees you.

Yeah. What are you doing? Yep. And we know when we see those no plates on them that they're going to be a stolen vehicle. Right. Right. Right. Nine times out of ten, especially if they're running like that. So finally, I'm like, all right, you know, I'll get them eventually. And so going to work,

I'm working and this call comes out in these kind of crummy apartments where there's always issues. This guy puts out this like crazy call says he just got attempted carjacking on him. And this, you know, there was a, the guy fired two rounds at me, tried to kill me. And there was red laser coming out of the gun. And we're kind of like, this just doesn't sound real. So I was like, I was interested. So I pull in. And I, you know, I wasn't, I wasn't the primary on the call, but I just kind of pulled in and start talking to the guy.

And he's saying, yeah, this, this guy. came up to me and he pulled a gun on me and he goes he literally laser was right on my chest and he says he's going to shoot me if I don't give him the car so I went to grab his gun or something like that and he goes and he fired two rounds at me and I dove out of the way he hopped in a white Volvo with black bumpers and took off and I'm like oh my god here he is again so I'm like all right I have to find this guy you know so I'm telling everybody I'm like hey you got like I've chased this guy like three times now now he's shooting at somebody so I was like this dude he's wanted for something crazy obviously right and uh

So we know he's violent because he just tried to literally kill somebody. Right. So later that evening, I'm driving down again doing my rounds, and I see him pull into this apartment complex, or I'm sorry, to this little like motel. And I know that there's no way out of that motel. But he didn't see you. He didn't see me yet.

So I'm like, oh, there he is. So I yank in. I pull in and right as I pull up, I go to hop out, and he's already trying to turn his car around and just rams right into me. And right then I see, I see, a gun come up and and I'm like oh here it goes so I you know start sending rounds into his car and I fire four rounds right through the windshield right around him and then I see him drop and I think oh no you know I just I hit him you fire through your windshield through his I was getting

out of my car oh okay yeah so I went to hop out of my car and he just T-bones right into me yeah and it kind of slams me back into the car before I can get out and my concern is he's going to hit the door my legs out and then I see move in the car, which looks like a gun comes up. And so, you know, I obviously, at that point, I'm like, I'm not messing around with this. Like, this dude's going to kill me, just try to kill somebody else. So, you know, I send rounds into the car.

And somehow he ends up surviving with superficial injuries. And round hits into the headrest, literally center punches here. And he just had dropped at the right time and, you know, had some, had like a graze round that went through him. and nothing severe. But he looked like he had gotten shot because he dropped down. So, you know, I had some pretty good discipline on me and only fired four rounds.

I stopped because the threat had kind of ended, right? Right. And then when I put out over the radio, I'd been into a shooting, he opens the door, and I'm like, oh, he's going to run again, or he's going to try and shoot me. So I kind of go down and start giving commands, and then he complies, right?

So now I know he's obviously alive, but I don't know how injured he is. so everybody gets uh you know other officers are are responding obviously anytime there's an officer involved shooting it's kind of a a big deal and uh so everybody's responding they get over there and unfortunately i had i had put the information out and then i hit my own like knob on my radio and turned off my radio so i go code black on there basically like oh i think you've been shot yeah i think i'm putting i say shots fired i'm over here and then i'm i think i'm putting out information over the radio, but I'm not. So, you know, poor dispatch, they're sitting there thinking, oh, my God, this guy's hit. My buddies are thinking I'm hit, and I get there, and they get there,

and obviously, I'm fine. You know, so we take him into custody, and then I had to get sequestered, and, you know, that basically, anytime there's a, you know, a critical incident or an officer involved shooting, the officer gets sequestered. They have to do a full interview on you, especially if somebody dies. I had another one. I had to do that with an in-custody death. And so it was, you know, the, the protocol that you have to go through and everything was obviously cleared. Luckily for me, there was surveillance on the, on the apartment or on the motel, so it captured everything. Right. So that was great. You know, I was glad that that was there. But so we take him into custody

and he was, obviously the vehicle was stolen. The firearm actually ended up being on, like, right on the dash. And so he had pulled it out, probably was going to try and shoot me. It did have the red laser. So that guy wasn't. Yeah. So he wasn't lying. Yeah, I was like, man, I got to go back to tell this guy. I'm sorry for not believing him initially. But, you know, so we take him into custody. We take his buddy into custody and gets charged on whatever, you know, obviously he's at 245, which is like a felony assault. He's trying to injure a police officer. So he gets hit with that for using his car to try and injure me, you know, and gets put into custody. He's supposed to have a 10-day hold because he's on either probation or parole. I can't remember.

remember now. And our agency doesn't, for whatever reason, they forget to file the hold or the sheriff's office forgets. Somebody drops the ball and this guy gets 72. So he does, and 72 means he's after 72 hours, if there's no charges that are filed and there's no hold, then you get released, right? So he gets released. But there are charges, right? There were charges, but they were actually filed them with the DA. Oh, but they never put the, and they never put the hold. Exactly. And they forgot to put the hold. So he just gets sent out the door. He must have been like, they call his name.

He must have been like, yes. Exactly. That is me. Yep. Yeah. So he gets released. What took you so long? I know.

Yeah. All the guys are probably looking back. All the guys are like. Yeah. Like, didn't you, you're the guy that had the. Yeah. Were you just on TV with the shooting? The cop tried to shoot you for a reason, right?

It's like, no. No. That was someone else. Yeah. Not me, guys. I was just, you know, walking down the road. And he gets, he gets released. And he, you know, he does what anyone would do in that situation.

Went he got a job. Yeah, he went. He went to community college. Went to church. He came a, got his degree in accounting. Yeah. And that's where he was en route to, but he decided he couldn't get there fast enough. So he carjacked somebody else.

You got to start somewhere. Exactly. I need a car. Yeah. You got to have a car. They're not going to pick me up at junior college. No. Yeah, you got to have a means of transportation. And he didn't have the money, you know, so he just decided to take one.

And so he ends up getting into another pursuit the day he gets released. And so now he's getting pursued wrong way on the freeway again, crashes into somebody, footbails makes it in helicopters up at this time. This is not our agency, so I just get told what happened. Footbails gets into a like a storage shed. and he's hiding out in there because, you know, remember we talked to these helicopters, they can't see you with the flirt

in the storage shit. So he's hiding out in there. And so officer with a canine releases the canine, the dog goes in there. You hear all this barking and craziness, but you don't hear the guy screaming, which is pretty odd because when those dogs bites you,

they're little land sharks. Yeah, they do some damage. And so the agency who's going to get him, they run in there after thinking the dog's on them. And the dog gets wrapped up on a bunch of, like, yard equipment apparently. And so he doesn't get bit. So survives, bullets, you know, literally grazing this guy, dogs inches from him, trying to bite him, doesn't get him. And then

they take him into custody, he gets, goes back, right? So he wasn't out very long, but ends up back there with new charges now. And I think last I'd heard, he'd taken a deal for like three or four years. And so, you know, he probably did eight months, you know, California. All that. Yep. Yep. And he was probably back. out doing the same thing, you know, uh, unfortunately. That's just the way that it works. But, but, but yeah, he was, uh, he, he was, he was, he was interesting because he just kept, I'll just never forget that day when he looked at me and just said, fuck no. And I'm like, this dude just like, who does that? And, you know, and put it in reverse. And I'll,

that, that was like a highlight. But, you know, I, I bring up that story because we're talking about me. I have no experience as a cop. I'm just a male model, right? Um, according to some of my co-workers at the time. And, and, you know, and of course, those were those were the things I got into the job for, though, right? Like, that's what I wanted to do. I wanted to chase those guys. I wanted to take those guys into custody, the ones that were doing the home invasions and shooting at people and stuff, because that's, to me, those are the real criminals out there. They're an actual danger to society, right? When, when that was all done, we had to do this, you know, kind of roundtable thing. There was a shooting. People were stressed out about it. So dispatches in there,

and, you know, we all had to go in and talk to the psych and stuff like that, right? So the psych's talking to me and she's like, you know, how do you feel about the shooting? And I'm like, I don't feel, I feel fine. I mean, first off, he's fine. Yeah. Like the guy survived. So I don't have any, you know, guilt there. I knew I didn't do anything wrong.

I was able to actually use discipline and not keep firing because, you know, most police officers in general will unload their full magazine. Yeah, you get your adrenaline gets. Yeah, exactly. You know, and I luckily had a high level enough of training that I did myself for a lot of shooting. And I don't want to get shot for lack of firing back. Exactly. Yeah. Yeah.

So I'm like, you know, I just think it's kind of crazy that we're even sitting here having this conversation. And the psych, you know, she asked me, she's like, well, what do you mean by that? Why is this stupid for us to have this conversation? I'm like, because that's my job, right? Like I knew I was getting into this job. I think anybody who becomes a police officer knows that they may get. do a shooting. Somebody may try to hurt them. You are going to be trying to engage these people and chase them. And it's going to be violent. That's what law enforcement is. And I'm like, but how come

just several weeks before this, you know, I had a little girl who drowned in a pool and died, which haunts me. There was, why aren't we talking about that? Right. Like, why aren't we, mental health-wise, like, why aren't we bringing officers in here after an event like that? Because those are the ones that that haunts you forever. Not not the bad guy that's trying to kill you or you have to shoot him like that's you expect that going into the job. But nobody tells you like, oh, hey, you're also going to probably do CPR on a kid while they die in your hands, you know. And those are the ones that actually, you know, end up having the lasting effect on you. I mean, I can't tell you the guy's name that I chased, you know, and I, but I'll always remember the girl's name. And I won't

say it on here, obviously. But, you know, that's etched into my memory for, ever. And in fact, when I was off on my injury, I had taken some, you know, some, you know, pain pills, because that's, of course, the answer, right? Oh, you have a herniated disc in your back, norco. Like, that'll, that'll solve the problem. So I'm taking all these norcos and I'm, I'm sleeping and I'm having a nightmare apparently. And my, you know, former wife tells me that she woke up in and I'm literally in tears and I'm crying and I'm like yelling and I'm trying to do CPR on a pillow and I'm trying to get this pillow back to life, right, which was obviously this little girl that I had, you know, tried to save and it failed, right? And what a lot of people don't

recognize with law enforcement when they talk about, you know, call you pigs and that's what I get all the time and, you know, you're a dirty cop and you're a tyrant and all this stuff is like, they don't realize that, you know, we're also out there. I say we. former me, is out there trying to also just help people and save lives, right? Medically, not anything to do with trying to take a bad guy to jail. You know, that call specifically, I'll just, I'll never forget it, because we got a call that there was a neighbor called in, said he saw that the neighbor girl was floating in the pool.

And he was actually a firefighter, which was great, you know. He runs down and he's actually running through the gate as I'm pulling up. I was right in the area. So I hop out of the car. and he, as I'm getting in the backyard, he had just grabbed her out of the pool, and he's yelling at me to help him do CPR, and we're doing it on basically an outdoor barbecue, like a countertop next to the barbecue. And it was so challenging for me because my daughter was two at the time,

and this girl was two, and this girl was a little light-haired girl looked like she could be my daughter. And so it was the first time I had that, like, connection with somebody right, in front of me that like made me think of my own life right like usually i was pretty good about compartmentalizing what i'm doing and this is work and this is home they're different and uh and it was just such a crazy moment because i start doing CPR on her with with the neighbor and uh i can tell you know she's she's already expired i knew that she wasn't going to be coming back right she was blue and um but i feel something tug on my leg and i look down and And it's her.

And I'm on scene and I'm thinking, I literally thought I just lost it. You know, diaper, shirtless, same girl. And I'm like, and I just freak out. And the firefighter neighbor guy tells her sister, like twins or whatever. Right. And for a momentary for a second, I literally thought I had had a mental breakdown. Like I thought I was seeing like a ghost next to me. And I'm like, what just happened?

And, you know, and that was honestly one of the hardest calls. that I had because right after that, you know, I'm still, I'm covered in her in water from her, you know, lifeless body and stuff and we're trying to get her saved. And finally the ambulance gets there and they, uh, they take her out of there. And, you know, then I'm standing inside and, you know, mom comes in and, and everybody's just disheveled, right? I mean, how do you handle that? And it was dad was home with four kids. Mom was at work and, uh, she comes home. And grandpa was there and apparently had unlatched the back door to smoke. And they had a lock up there for the kids

so they didn't go out to the pool. Dad's putting the youngest away, and little girl goes out, right next to the pool, falls in, and, you know, that's what happened. And so now we have this family there. Well, one of the other officers, it was his beat. You know, he patrolled that area. He comes on, and so he's going to take the case,

and they say, hey, man, you're good, you can clear. So I walk out to my patrol car, and I get inside the patrol car, and I'm thinking, you know, how do I, like, I needed a second just to breathe. Well, you know, a priority call comes out and they say, hey, come over the radio, can you clear? Can you go to this thing? And I'm like, oh, yeah, I guess, sure. So, you know, I just try to save this girl's life.

I know that she's probably not going to make it, but she's being transported. So I have some hope. And so I go driving down the street and I'm going to this next call. And it's a 5150 call. So it's somebody who's either a danger to themselves or someone else. and it's, you know, 17-year-old kid telling his parents that he's going to kill himself. It's like, oh, my God, here we go. You know, so I get there.

And I'm thinking, man, here's another kid who's going to be going through something psychological. You know, hopefully there's somebody that can help. No. It was just some turd kid telling his dad that he wanted to go spend the night of his girlfriend's house at 17. His dad says, no, you're not doing that. And he is throwing a tantrum at 17 years old and tells his dad he's going to kill himself. So now all of a sudden I have to change. from being this guy who just did CPR and somebody who I don't think is going to make it.

And I got to listen to this kid cry and talk about how he wants to spend on his girlfriend's house. And I'm trying not to just lose it. You know, I just feel I'm so angered at this point in time. So I'm like, why are you, why am I even here at this point? You know, in my mind, that's what I'm thinking. And I hear over the radio, they come over and they say that she died in the hospital. And I just remember, you know, just like being filled with like rage, you know, because I'm like, there was nothing I could do to save her.

And then I'm expected to just jump over to this call and just be this completely different person, right? And just clear calls for the rest of the night. And, you know, and it was just such a tough moment for me that really that was the first time ever I questioned, like, do I even want to do this career? Right. You know, like, do I, is this really what I want to do? I love going after the bad guys, but, you know, hey, no one told me about this. And that's something that not enough people know about that cops go through on a regular basis. So even though, you know, I, you know, don't have the best reputation with them anymore, that's something I still always respect because that's, it's a tough job.

You know, and that's the tough part of the job. The rest of it's fun, you know, but that part of it, it's terrible, you know, when you have victims like that. So I had started a social media page back in like 2018, and it was a fitness page, right? Of course, I was enhanced using Anabolic Sterewoods at the time. And so I was trying to compete in bodybuilding. You know, that's where I'd kind of spawned into. And the amount of shit that I got from the PD was ridiculous. And trust me, I'm one of those guys.

Like, I love good banter. Like, let's make fun of each other. But they were trying to get me in trouble. Right. If I posted something that was inappropriate to their standards, they would print it on the lieutenant's printer. So that way it would be in their office. So that way they could go walk in and see it.

And it's like, so they started, you know, writing me up for, you know, my social media account. even though I was following policy, but I started getting some, kind of some traction with it. I was training with some big names and bodybuilding, like Jay Cutler, really famous guy. You know, I'm getting sent to the Arnold Classic

and I'm at all these fitness expos. And so I was actually starting to take off at Ellen DeGeneres' show reach out to me about like an interview, which was so random. Right. Like out of everybody, that was who reaches out. But so I had all these like random, you know, opportunities starting to arise from social media

and they hated it. Yeah. Like they wanted to shut it down because they saw me doing well. And so they just started writing me up for everything. I'm just trying to promote, you know, the message of be fit. You're a fucking police officer.

You're going to have to save people's lives. If you don't go do this, if you don't take care of yourself, how can you take care of anybody else, right? Right. And that's part of the job, right? And it's crazy to me because in, you know, the academy, they have a standard

and you have to adhere to that standard to graduate. And then after that, you can go be as fat as you want, you know, out of shape. And that's why we're out of shape. And that's why we're not. see so many disgusting cops out there. So I'm promoting that. And of course, all the, upper echelon and the agency that are targeting me are, you can imagine what they look like, right, hanging over their duty belt. And so they're trying to get me to shut down my page,

which eventually I do, because this is my leading source of income. I keep getting written up for things. So I'm finally like, all right, I've had enough of this. I'm going to leave the PD, like I'm going to go transfer somewhere else. So I apply with Anaheim PD down in Southern California. and great PD to work for. They looked at my Instagram and loved it. They were like, do, we love this. We have a full, like, we have social media guys for our marketing team, you know, with our agency.

And they're like, you'd be a great fit for it. That's so. So it's crazy. One agency wants to destroy me for it. One agency is like, hell yeah, promote it. So I end up taking a conditional offer with them. And my agency, Antioch, throws me into a last minute internal affairs investigation. Right.

and you can't lateral when you're in IA. And so I remember calling him out and I'm like, so you guys, you write me up for everything. You don't want me here. Really, like you clearly don't like me to leave. You just want to destroy me. Yeah, yeah, you just want to, like, what is the point of this? Why not just let me go?

I'm trying to leave this agency. Well, you know, long story short, they tell Anaheim, hey, we'll get him through this IA really quick. It's a stupid complaint. It's nothing. And then he can lateral down. So they gave me like a three-month win. to make it. Aniak left me in the IA for almost a year. Never let me go. So I had to just continue

working. And then I became disgruntled. So one of the things that bothered me was one of the cops had made, he was actually a sergeant and he had made a comment that, you know, based on my social media page, he was like, oh, I thought we were hiring cops, not male models. Right. And just jealous. And I'm like, dude, you know, mind you, I have, you know, been involved in an officer involved shooting. I was very proactive as police officer. There were many months I had the leading, you know, number of felony arrests. And, and I had seen plenty of bad things through my career where it was like, hey, I'm trying to do something good from this career, not, you know, not all bad. And, but, you know, a lot of officers, they just want to live in that misery, right? So they target

anybody who's doing something else that's productive. And I noticed that. It was, it was very common. Anytime somebody was doing a side hustle of some sort, it was frowned upon. They wanted you to give everything to the agency. So unfortunately, that's kind of what I did. So I just slumped back into it. But then I stopped applying for things. I wasn't applying for SWAT team. I wasn't doing anything. Because I really had given this agency, you know, everything I could. Can I ask you a question? What was the, the, the, the IA investigation? What was the complaint? So there was a, a gentleman who was taken into custody, and he had to be placed into a rap, like a, it's basically a restraint device. Right, right? And a huge man, like 285 pounds, massive. So the officer who arrest him, he's taking him to jail and he's in this rap because he's being combative. And he actually is strong enough. He kicks the door literally through to where the door opens up on the highway. And he starts trying to scoot out of the back of the patrol car. So this, you know, the officer is transported him, puts out over the radio, hey, this guy's basically getting out of the wrap, I need assistance. So,

All of us show up. So I show up. California Highway Patrol shows up. The sheriff's office shows up, you know, because, you know, he's not in our city anymore, but I was the closest car. So we get out there. All these cops have body cams. Everybody's standing there.

Because he's a big guy, I offer to go help get him back up and carry him into the patrol car. I carry him into the patrol car and I get back in mine. I had a ride along with me. And we take off. We leave. That was it. Well, apparently, you know, he ends up, he was. initially being placed on a 50-150 hold.

He comes back and makes- Which is what, like mental? Yeah, either a danger to sell for others, right? So you want to either kill yourself or you're going to hurt other people. So usually it's a medical hold. But because he started fighting with medical personnel, he ends up getting arrested. So he goes in, makes a complaint, and says that I threatened to kill him,

or whatever it was. I made some just irrational statement that couldn't even happen because there's all these body cameras. Right. You know, I had a two-second interaction vicarian, I think, his feet. And so that IA didn't even exist before I was applying down to Anaheim because I had checked. I called up to the chief's assistant and said, hey, do I have any active IAs? I'm just curious, you know, right now.

And she was like, nope, nothing's pending. You're good. So I was like, all right. So that's when I knew I was okay to lateral out of there. And all of a sudden, you know, I told my agency at 10 p.m. I was working graveyard. I got called in around 4.45 in the morning. I remember by the IA sergeant, who didn't like me, by the way.

And he tells me, oh, you know, we just, we had this complaint. You know, it's nothing big, but we didn't know. So we just kind of left it. It's not a big deal. But yeah, you have an IA. So I'm like, oh, that's convenient. Right when I tell you guys that I'm leaving, now I have this IA pop up, right? And so I was pretty upset about it.

And, you know, he was also the same. one that wrote me up for having, you know, my badge inside the pictures, which I had blurred out. And he said, oh, you can't do that. And I'm like, I have zero representation. Right. But then I went on his page where he was posting pictures with himself and his uniform being promoted. Right. And that was okay, apparently. But because mine is more viral or known, apparently, so it's, I guess it depends on who you are, right? Yeah. So it was, it was clearly they were just targeting me on every aspect that they could, writing me up for the dumbest things after that.

Having the wrong numbered shotgun in my car, yet people would forget a shotgun and they don't get written up. I'm like, is this even a policy? Like, we need a shotgun on the car. I didn't know we have to match the little tag to it. I don't think that should. Right. You know, some sergeant got happy with a glue gun and put those on

and suddenly now I'm, you know, so all these little ride-ups were coming up. And it was really they were just trying to, you know, get me in trouble in any way that they could. But it was such petty stuff. And eventually they kind of eased off because I just accepted that I'm going to get rid of my page. I'm just going to go back to working patrol, but I'm not going to be the same cop. And I'm just going to.

Yeah, I'll do the minimum. Yeah, I'll do the minimum. I'll sit in a corner. If that's what you guys want for me, then that's what you'll get. And then suddenly I'm left alone. It was funny how that happened. And at that time, I was really, really interested in bodybuilding. So I started taking it very serious with like the ultimate goals, right?

Like, I'm one of those guys. if I go into something I try and do it all. So I was like, I'm going to stand on the Olympia stage. I'm going to be a professional bodybuilder. You know, I'll probably make millions of dollars doing it, you know, which is not what happened, right? But that was the goal. And so I took it really, really serious.

I was, you know, eating all my meals in my car. I was prepping everything. I'm doing it the right way. And I get massive. I'm getting so big. And I'm walking around at like 250, 250 pounds. Mind you right now, I'm probably 210 to 15 pounds. Right.

So I'm like 250, you know, no body fat on me. I'm trying to wear like big clothes to kind of hide out. But everybody in the PD knew that I was on steroids. In fact, everybody would ask me for advice on the steroids they would take. Right. Right. So anabolic steroids are just, they're not uncommon in service-related fields, whether that's military, law enforcement, fire. They're everywhere, right.

You know, there was always jokes about them with me. And so, you know, I'm going through that process. and I have a coach, I'm paying good money to do this. And the only one who really appreciated it at the time was my chief, to be honest with you. He loved the look. And of course, when it benefited other sergeants and stuff, if somebody was combative, they'd say, hey, send Harris. Right.

Right. And I would show up and people, I mean, people would just sit down. I mean, it was the best deterrent ever. I never used force when I was huge on anabolic steroids. Never. I would walk up and people would be like, I know why you're here. I'm going to sit down. Yep.

It got me. And it happened every single time. So it was a tool that was an asset and it was used frequently. You know, and my chief approached me. It was like, hey, you know, we have this. Every five years, roughly, they allow an RTO to go to the academy, which is like where I met my RTO, right? Now, some time had passed.

It was a little bit over that. But this kind of full circle thing was coming back where I had this opportunity to go be an RTO at the academy, which essentially the way it is is the sheriff's office runs the police academy, and then they hire in, or they bring in, I'm sorry, neighboring police agencies to have a guest RTO for a class, right? So it was our turn with the county, and so my chief said, hey, I think you'd be a great representation with us, with your military background, your look, obviously, like, you look good to send to the academy. So they send me over there, and I love it. I love it. Honestly, one of the most fun positions I've ever had in my life.

I mean, you're never angry because you just get to yell at people all day for fun and make fun of them. And they can't even say anything back. You know, I get to be the keyboard warrior on Instagram. And so I loved it. It was the most rewarding position I've ever had because you're taking these recruits and you're watching them grow. And then I started doing a bunch of stuff with them there. I was doing academy instruction. I was teaching, you know, active shooter.

I was teaching defensive tactics, all kinds of stuff. And so loved my time at the academy. but I still had always been hindering that back injury that I received in 2017. And it just never went away. You know, fast forward now where it's 2019, two years later, I'm at the academy. And, you know, it's giving me a little bit of issues, but nothing crazy. And in June 2020, I'm kind of finishing up my time at the academy, talking to my chief, you know, about coming back. And he's asking me about if I would, if I'm going to be applying for promotion.

So I see like things happening in the future of my career. And I'm pretty excited about it, obviously. And so I'm at the academy. I'm cleaning up the storage shed. And I grab this dumbest way to go out on injury. But I grab this 170 pound dummy that looks like a human that they use for the dummy drag and the test. And I pick it up and I twist to go drop it over and get that same feeling, drop on my bed, like drop to my knee, my back goes out. And I can instantly tell, okay, this one's like really.

this one's really bad. But I just talked to my chief about maybe promotion and things like that. So I'm like, this is the worst timing ever. I don't, you know, I don't want to miss this opportunity. So I go into the office and, you know, I was working with a partner in there and she's like, are you all right? And I'm like, no, something's up with my back that, that dummy got me. As embarrassing as that is, you know, worst way to go out, right? And so I go back and I'm literally laying on the floor in the office. And I'm in excruciating pain. I can barely walk. We wait for all the the recruits to leave so they can't see me. And then two of the deputies help literally carry me to my truck and I drive straight to the ER. I get out of my truck, yet again, pee my pants with no

alcohol in my system, which should be the only time that happens. And I'm laying on the concrete in the parking lot at the hospital. And I'm just like looking up, just like wondering what I've done wrong in life, right? And a nurse sees me, gets a wheelchair, wheels me in, we end up getting an MRI, and I have like a 13 millimeter herniation in my lumbar spine. So they're like, hey, this is horrible. Right. So I'm like, okay, well, I have vacation. I've dealt with this in the past. I've gotten over it. I'm just going to relax for a week or so, and I'll be back. You know, I'm not even working patrol right now. When I go back, maybe I can promote and life will get a little easier. Who knows? So I try to like hide it for about a week. And finally I say, you know, I call my

PD. It's not getting better. And I'm like, hey, this back injury got me again. This is what happened. So we submit the claim and they deny it. All right. So I'm like, okay, well, this is not, not good. Deny it in what way? They say that, uh, we don't think that the, the injury is work related. Even though I had a 2017 injury that was still open on the exact same spot. Right. So, it should have never been denied, but they say, ah, you know what, we don't think so, so we're going to deny the claim. You're going to have to do a QME, which is a qualified medical exam, right? Which means you go see a doctor, and then they make the determination on whether or not it's, you know, valid or not. Of course, that takes months and months and months. So I end up

going to absent without pay. I've burned through all my sick time. I've burned through everything. I have, you know, a wife at the time who didn't work, and we have two kids. kids, we were actually separated at the time. So I'm living in a separate house and paying two mortgages, right? And just burning through my savings. Luckily, I was always good with money and had done some stuff in real estate. So I had, you know, a couple hundred thousand dollars saved at the time. So I was able to survive for a while. But as we all know, that goes relatively quick, especially in California with two mortgages and two lives. So I'm watching my savings just dwindle away and I get down to almost next to zero. And I had a pending application.

for my military disability that I had never fully submitted. So I finally just said, okay, I'm going to submit that, see what happens. I submit it and I come back at 90% disabled. They bump it to 100%. So I get all this back pay and it kind of saves me, right? And so financially, I'm barely hanging on. You know, this is COVID time. So, you know, my kids aren't in school.

You know, life is just crazy around the world, especially in California. And so, you know, I have to get an attorney. finally to get my claim approved and I end up getting it approved and the doctor looks at me and she's like, what is wrong with your neck? I'm like, I don't know. I've had issues with it since this thing, but they said I'm fine. She's like, no, you're definitely not fine. There's something wrong with your neck. I want you to get an MRI. Okay. So I go get an MRI, CT, whatever it was. And they look and they say, you know, holy shit, dude, your neck is destroyed. So I go meet with a surgeon. They're like, you're literally like, you fall off the curb. You're going to be paralyzed from the neck down.

And so I've been walking around with this, but I was getting all these weird head pains and stuff like that. And my hand would stop working on my right side and just random things. So I just figured, maybe I pulled something, you know, one of those drinks of water and you'll be fine. And they're like, no, this is not fine. They're like, you need surgery like pretty much now. And by this time, I'd already been off work for, I went off in 2020, June of 2020. I didn't have my surgery until August of 2021. So I've been off over a year, went probably six, seven,

seven months absent without pay, finally got the claim approved. So mind you, I'm walking around with this while they deny my claim seconds away from probably being paralyzed from the neck down. I end up going in, I get a cervical spine fusion. So I have a plate and six screws in my neck here. So they had to pull out two of my discs in there and then bone graph and kind of rebuild me. What do they do? They go through here?

Yeah, right through here. So you can see the scar here that cuts across. Barely. Yeah, he did a great job. And they put it in the fold. He says he's like, you know, the older you get, the wrinkles will fill in. Yeah. They're coming quicker than I'd like.

But, but yeah, so he did a great job. Phenomenal surgery. The problem was the level above it is already impacted and it's already compromised. So I'm going to have to go in for another one here relatively soon. But what had happened was is because of that, I went off on my lower back, right? So now I'm getting no treatment on my lower back. So now years goes by. And I'm like, hey, guys, I still have this lower back thing where I'm,

in severe pain, and we haven't done anything with it. I'm battling this claim. I'm trying to figure out what the hell is going on. Like, are we going to settle me? Am I going to go back to work? Am I not going back to work? So I sit down with the doctor, and he tells me, you know, hey, man, I don't know how to tell you this, but you're never going to be a police officer again.

And I had just kind of accepted the facts. I just got my 100% in the military. I told you I always want to be a green beret. Yeah. Well, when my ex-wife, me, when we had separated at that time, I, uh, I had this weird, like, moment in my life from like, you know what? I'm going to go back and I'm going to rejoin. I'm going to go get that, you know, long tab, the special forces tab, and I'm going to fulfill that goal.

And then I get 100%, which means I'm never going back. So it was like really a tough pill to swallow. I needed the disability because it saved me financially. And, you know, but it also took away like my dream I've had since I was literally a little kid. And so that sucked. And then I go in, I'm like, well, at least I still have law enforcement. I get told, no, you're done. You know, you're out.

You're never going to be a cop again. So I obviously before this, I'd been using a lot of anabolic steroids in for bodybuilding. And I just got depressed. I cut off all steroids, which is the worst thing that you can possibly do, crash my hormones. And I'm laying in bed after my surgery. I'm wearing a vice on my neck for three months. and I'm watching Vikings and I start crying because somebody dies. I'm thinking like, holy shit, dude, something's not right with my hormones.

Like, why am I? Vikings, I'm crying. This is weird. Olaf died. Yeah, exactly. I'm freaking out. And so I was like, all right, I need to go get my levels checked and my testosterone levels. Right.

So I call my doctor. I get set up with an endocrinologist. I get some blood work done. And I go in and my total testosterone, and I'm like a huge nerd when it comes to like anabolic and stuff like that. So excuse me if I kind of get off on that. But I go in and my testosterone levels are 56. Oh, they should be between what, five and...

They say 250 and 1,200. Right. Which is ridiculous. The huge gap, right? And what they're saying essentially is it's like, if yours is 251 and mine's 1150, we're both normal. But I get to live a 10 times more quality life than you do. Yeah.

That's bullshit, you know. So I go into this doctor, I'm like, hey, I'm 56. This is like, I'm like a 13-year-old girl right now. Literally, that's why I'm crying with Vikings. So let's get me squared away. Let's get me some TRT, testosterone placement therapy, right? And she goes, oh, no, no, no, no. Now you're fine.

This is just a result from the surgery that you had three months ago. Your testosterone's just low. It'll bounce back. And I'm like, yeah, I need another doctor. Yeah, so I'm like, look, you clearly don't understand how this works, even though you're an endocrinologist. So I'm going to tell you how it will. works. I told her I used and abused antibolic steroids, which I don't produce testosterone anymore.

Right. So I ended up having to pay for it and I got it through a prescription. And they bounced me back and I'm feeling good again. So, you know, I've now lost the military dream. I've lost the law enforcement dream. My purpose is literally into the trash. Before that back injury, I had trained three years for one show that I was going to do, which COVID pushed it out. Then I got injured, never got to do the bodybuilding show. So I'm like literally everything that I was trying to do in my life is just been taken from me. And, you know, of course I'm a dad.

They're my priority. But as a man, I feel like we still need like our own sense of purpose. We need something that we can do for ourselves, right? And so I just, you know, I get super depressed. And I'm like, well, you know what? I'll just bodybuild anyways. So I jump right back on a bunch of anabolic steroids. And I make arguably one of the craziest like three months transformation.

after a neck surgery. And I blow up, you know, jacked, shredded, look great, feel great, because anabolic steroids do work. That's why athletes use them. They will repair you and they'll build you back up. You know, I'm taking, you know, human growth hormone to try and speed up recovery, investing a lot of money into this stuff. And, you know, so I make this decision, all right, well, I can't, I can't be a cop anymore,

so I'm going to have to move. And, you know, all the military stuff's gone. So where can I live with 100% disability? So I started looking who didn't, what states didn't have property taxes for that. Right. And it was down to, you know, Hawaii, which just wasn't going to happen. Florida, which was a high contender. And then Texas.

And the real reason I went with Texas was just because of the schools for my kids. So I'm like, all right, going to move to Texas, going to start a new life there. I'm going to have these two retirements. Like my retirement for the, you know, for the militaries, you know, with schools, like $5,000, or whatever a month. Pretty decent. Yeah. You know, enough to pay some bills.

And then I was going to be getting a medical retirement through law enforcement, which was also tax-free, which was going to be upwards of between $6,000 and $7,000 a month. And it was a two and a half percent increase every year for the rest of my life, right? Right. And then, you know, you get the COLA increase on the VA too. So I'm like, you know, realistically, I probably never have to work again. I had a couple houses in California at the time. So maybe $300,000 in equity between the two.

I'm looking at buying a house in Texas, which is obviously a lot cheaper than California. So I'm like, this is perfect. I can move. I can live. I can coach my kid. I don't have to work again. I can actually be a present father for all these years that I haven't been from, you know, working in law enforcement.

And so I finally wrap my head around and I accept it. So I fly out to Texas. I end up finding a property. I put an offering on it, you know, and I'm told, hey, you just got to get your medical retirement done or whatever. And, you know, everything will be. great. So March 1st, 2022, I am labeled as permanent and stationary through law enforcement, which means I can never work again. Right. So, okay, I get my packet together. I'm submitting

for that retirement that's going to pay me. I got my house finally closed in Texas. I pack up all my stuff. I drive out to Texas first week of March right around that time. And, and I'm And I'm ecstatic. You know, I finally have accepted, okay, this will be my new life, and I'm good with it, you know. I finally was getting some purpose back in me. You know, I saw life working out. And 22 days later, I get raided by the FBI. And my whole world obviously just gets completely flipped upside down.

So I'm in Texas, and my ex-wife and kids are in California, and I have a house in both. right. And my my goal was, was I was going to go to Texas. I was going to renovate the property that I was buying because it needed a full renovation, which is I had experience doing from, you know, my personal endeavors. And then I would get that done. You know, family could move to Texas. And then I could go back to California, renovate that property. And then because it was like a rental, basically, and then sell it. And then I would have the equity from that too. So I'm like, okay, everything's great. This will work out. So I get to Texas. I'm working on the property and it's completely gutted.

I have like an upstairs room, which was just a big room, like no bathroom, no nothing, just an upstairs room. And I'm living up there. I have like a hot plate plugged in. I'm like cooking eggs on it because I have no kitchen. I have no bathrooms in the house. I'm driving to planet fitness to literally to use the bathroom and to take my showers at nighttime. And just getting this renovation done, I hire in a contractor to come in, help with demo, and stuff like that. So I have a team out there. Well, I'm standing upstairs March 22nd, you know,

or I think that was the day, 2022. And they're downstairs working doing demolition. And I hear these two like loud bangs. And I think, oh shit, they just hit some sort of electrical something in the house. So I go running downstairs, expecting to see these guys in here working and they hit something in a wall or something. And the house is empty. And mind you, my house is like empty. I mean, we're concrete floors. There's wires hang in. There's walls are ripped down. Like, nothing there. And there's plastic all over the windows. So I can't even see outside. And but my front door is wide open. And I kind of peek around the corner and I see my contractor,

who is prone down laying on the ground right out in front of the house. And I'm like, fuck are you doing? And that's when I start to all of a sudden take everything in. And I hear the intercom, Daniel Harris, this is the FBI, come out with your hands up. And I'm like, wait, what? So I look, I'm like, what did you guys do? I thought that one of the guys working there must have, you know, been in trouble or had a warrant. And he's like, no, they're here for you, man. And he's looking back, yelling at me, telling me this. And I'm like, it can't be for me. Like, I'm one of them. Like, they're not here for me. I didn't do anything wrong. So I go walking outside and fucking my mind was blown.

Like I couldn't believe what I was met with. First off, the bangs I heard were them launching mortars of flashbangs from the street. I have a big front yard, Texas, right? And launching them towards my house to try and, you know, disrupt, get my attention, I guess. And I look out there is up armored vehicle, SWAT sniper.

There's two full SWAT teams. The road is lined with FBI, you know, sheriff's city, everybody's there. And I'm just like, I'm almost just like in disbelief. Like this can't be real. Like this has to be a joke. It can't. Right. No, for one, why are they here? So I think there's got to be something else. So they call me out high risk. And, and, you know, obviously not a position I'm used to being in. But I hands up. I comply with everything they do. They throw me up against the car, throw me in handcuffs. And I'm just being like manhandled. I look over and all the guys working on the house or on the ground, one of the guys is bleeding.

It turns out he's outside when he sees all these up armored vehicles coming down. So he does what any guy who's working in construction probably does. He tries to run. So he takes off. They tackle him. And so that's what happened to him. But I'm sitting there and I'm like, man, there's got to be something. So I'm sitting in the back of this patrol car.

And now I'm watching FBI SWAT dismantle from these up armored vehicles and force entry into my house and go clear the house. And I'm like, what? You know, something's got to be off. And I'm looking out and they're, I can hear them over the intercom and they're calling a name out in the house that I don't recognize. And I'm like, okay, so this isn't for me. They're looking for somebody who's in my, I'm like, shit, is someone living in my attic or something that I don't know about? And I literally, I'm confused as can be. And they come up and I'll never forget this little FBI agent, short little guy, and just pompous as can be, right? And he looks at me and he's like, you know why we're here? And I'm like, I have no fucking idea why you're here, but it clearly

has to do with somebody that's in the house or my truck. And he goes, no, that's the name from the truck. And I go, okay. So now I'm thinking maybe, did I hit somebody? That's the what name? That's the name from the truck, because I just bought that truck before I moved there. So when they ran the plate, there was a name still registered the truck so I go oh maybe that guy's wanted right you know so now I'm like okay this is falling this is all all the pieces are coming together and I'm like this makes sense

that guy yeah you guys are looking for him that's not me that's that's the truck I bought this from a guy in Roseville in California you know and they're like no no no no no and he's kind of like shaking his head and he literally laughs at me and I'm like fuck is so funny and he goes

you don't know why we're here and I'm like no He's like, do steroids ring a bell? Word for word. And I'm like, are you fucking kidding me? I was like, steroids? That's, you're here for steroids. Right. And I just start, I start laughing.

Like, probably the worst thing that I could do, right? Right. But I'm like, give me a break, bro. Well, I don't understand what you were, why. Yeah. I'm like, stare, like, okay. So they finish doing what they're doing. He doesn't ask me any more questions.

Just shuts the door back on me. Okay. So then he gets me out of the car. And I'm still in handcuffs and walks me into the house. And we're sitting in the house. And of course, there's 20 swap members in there. There's, you know, M4 rifles everywhere. Everybody, I'm like, okay, this is insane.

It must be a slow week. Slow week, yeah, yeah. And of course, like, welcome to the neighborhood, right? Like, I'd been there for two weeks and all my neighbors. This is, it's like a retirement neighborhood. I'm the youngest guy in the neighborhood. So I'm like, well, this is going to go great for me. And I'm already like, fuck, I got a move already.

I just got here. And so I'm still convinced there has to be a mistake. There's something that can't be right here. But I'm under arrest, in my opinion, right? I mean, I think anybody would believe they're under arrest. Like, I'm wearing handcuffs. You guys just blew my house up. You got swap vehicles everywhere.

There's drones flying in the air. I mean, they're in the backside of my property. They're everywhere. And now you're questioning me. So detention and interrogation. You know, I had a little experience in there. That's called an arrest. Yeah.

So they asked me all these questions for like 25, 30 minutes. And they're asking all kinds of stuff. You know, do you know about cops robbing drug dealers? Do you know about this cop, like naming cops I've never heard of from other agencies? And I'm like, no, I don't, I don't, what the hell are you talking about? So then they finally get to me where they're like, well, what about you with steroids? And I'm like, yeah, I've used steroids. Right.

I don't, who cares? Right. Like, it's steroids. In my opinion, that's what I'm thinking. Like, again, like I said earlier, I operated heavily on spirit of the law, not letter of the law. So in my mind, there's no victim with this. There's, what are steroids? Who cares?

Are they even illegal? I'm thinking, like, truthfully. But, you know, they're scheduled three. But so he's like, no, no, this is, you know, you were, you were going to sell steroids to this guy. And he pulls out all these text messages. And he shows me this document. And it's literally like screenshots of text messages.

And I'm like, how the hell did they get this? Like, this is weird to me. What's the FBI? Yeah, it's the FBI. They can get whatever they want. But I'm thinking on my head like, man, you guys didn't download my phone or anything like that. But, you know, obviously ICloud downloads, right?

Right. So they had downloaded a bunch of stuff through their warrant. And they're like, oh, nope, you know, steroid sales and this and that. And then they go, oh, and, you know, you committed bank fraud, you know, buying this house. And I'm like, what are you talking about? They're like, you altered a document and you lied about a rental agreement. And I'm like, okay, but I altered the document. And I'm still answering questions because I know I'm not under Miranda.

And I'm like, so anything you guys are getting out of me right now is bullshit. You guys have arrested me. You're asking these questions. You haven't read me any rights. So I'm going to answer everything you want because it's all going to be thrown out in court anyways. So I just keep answering all their questions. And they're saying, you know, bank fraud. They're like saying all this stuff.

And I'm just, I'm literally confused. They're just throwing all this shit at me. Like I'm Pablo Escobar. And, you know, they're searching through my house. And finally, I just, I had enough. And I'm like, hey, man, are you guys going to Mirandize me or what? And they're like, oh, no, no, you're not under arrest. I'm like, what do you mean?

I'm not in a metal folding chair surrounded by armed police officers. And I'm like, I'm a handcuffed. Yeah, I feel like I'm fucking under arrest right now, guys. And they go, no, no, no, you're free to go. I'm free to go right now. Like, yep. So I go to stand up. Everybody kind of crowds in. I was like, doesn't, I don't really feel like I'm free to go right now. And they're like, well, you know, we just, we're just here for your phone and to search the house. And I'm like, you could have knocked on the door. I would have gave you the phone, you know, whatever. So they're like, well, we need to open your phone. You know, this says that we can just give us your pass code. I'm like, I have to give you my pass code. That's not really opening my phone. Yeah. I'm like, no, I don't, I don't want to give you the pass code for my phone. And they go, well, why not? not. Don't you want to cooperate with us? And I'm like, at this point, yeah, I'm like, you probably would have got cooperation if you'd knocked on the door. 100%. If they were just

knocked on the door, I've been like, here, open it up, give them anything they want. Because I would have never thought that steroids would have done anything impeccable, you know? And so I'm like, nah, I don't think I'm comfortable with giving you my phone. They're like, well, you know, the snooty guy, same thing. He goes, oh, well, it doesn't matter because we can have your biometrics. I'm like, okay. He's like, it says it in the warrant. So he's like, look at it. And he's like, look at it. goes to swipe it up and he points it at my face, right? And little does he know I don't have my face. I mean, like, so I'm like sitting there doing this. And he's like, you need to stop moving so we can get this to work. And we do it for like three minutes. He's just looking like a clown at this

point, honestly. And I'm like, look, man, I don't have that set up. And he's finally, he's like, so he's pissed off. Now, I say this with respect. Everybody else was respectful. Right. And I respect law enforcement. So I was respectful to everybody else. But this guy was just such, an asshole, for lack of better words. He was just rude and not nice. And it's like, you don't need to be this way. You know, it's like almost, I think he was related to the FBI agent that arrested me.

Probably. Candice Calderon, by the way. I don't know what it is about them, but they're, they're arrogant. And that's how they. Very, you know, very. And he was just, you know, and he tells me, you know, during, during his, I guess, consensual interview with me, he tells me, he's like, what? I mean, you're going to deny that you take steroids.

I'm like, no, I'll tell you straight up I take steroids. And he's like, well, because you can't deny it. And I'm like, yeah, I just said. I know, I take steroids. And he's like, well, I mean, I wish I looked like you. And I'm like, you could look like me. And there was a FBI SWAT dude over there, clearly on steroids. I can spot him my way.

And I'm like, just get him to give you a cycle. He'll tell it. I mean, he can hook you up. And he's like, oh, shit. Yeah. He kind of steps off to the side. And so I'm just laughing. When the FBI agent was asking me how to get like big and stuff like that,

or I wish I looked like you, right? The other guy, I noticed he laid down his card at the end. And he was a city cop, but he was on a task force with the FBI helping serve this warrant. And I looked down and I noticed that the card that he leaves me is Arlington Police Department. And I'll tell you why that makes me laugh is because are you familiar with Ronnie Coleman? The bodybuilder. The bodybuilder. Okay.

Yeah, he's a massive bodybuilder, okay? And he got his fame. He was a police officer for Arlington PD. Okay. And he's like, donates money to the police department I've heard. I've heard there's photos of them in there. Like other cops have told me this. He's like famous for being this 300-pound mass monster as a police officer who was clearly taking an astronomical amount of steroids while working as a police officer,

competing in the biggest bodybuilding shows in the entire world. So I just like I looked at the guy and I remember I'm holding this card just right before they walked out and I'm like Arlington PD, huh? And he looks at me and he kind of shakes his head and he's like, yeah, I was curious if you were going to catch that. I was like, oh, yeah, I couldn't miss it. I was like Ronnie Coleman, huh? And he's like, yeah, yeah. And what was cool was when kind of all the dust settled, he was the last one left. And he came up and he was like, hey, man, this is ridiculous.

gave me a fist bump and was like, good luck, bro, and took off. But I wanted to get that in there because that's, it's just a funny thing that Ronnie Coleman's agency was raiding me for anabolic steroids. Like, I'm like, this is ridiculous. But I mean, like, really, because I really thought, like, this can't be anything serious. Like, this is going to end up just going, nobody cares about this. And so, you know, I tell them that. And, you know, at that point, I'm almost trying to make the best out of the situation that I'm in because I'm like, well, you guys have already, you know, ruined my fucking day. So, you know, I'm going to make yours hard now, too.

So I tell them, yeah, if you want my pass code, like, what are you offering me? Just what do you got for me? Because clearly I'm in trouble for something. You're saying I'm not under arrest, but you won't tell me what I'm in trouble for other than I've taken steroids. I'm like, that's a misdemeanor. So what are we really talking about? And so. So what about the sale where he's trying to say they've got you on a sale?

Was that somebody you were going to sell some steroids to or you were just passing them on? Yeah. So we had text messages in there and it said, so I had, who ended up kind of being like my co-defendant, who I ended up testifying against, he basically was getting an anabolic steroid from me, testosterone for his buddy. Now, we have millions of messages, literally, not millions, but we have a lot of messages between the two of us and his buddy where I'm saying, bro, you probably don't need this, especially what you're doing. His friend was trying to go through the special forces cue course to be a green beret, which he ended up successfully doing. And he wanted testosterone. And I said, dude, you're 40. Just go get a prescription.

Yeah. You don't need it from me. Yeah. And plus, you're going to be able to take your prescription with you through the Q-course. I was going to be in the field. There's no point for you to take testosterone illegally because you're going to try and hide it. Just go get the prescription. Like, I had a prescription, too.

I was like, just go get that. And he just didn't want to do it. I guess for whatever reason you didn't want it messing with his medical. I don't know. But so finally, I'm like, yeah, whatever, dude. I'll give you a bottle of testosterone. If that's what you really want, no big deal. well, I never even give him the bottle of testosterone.

We just talked about it. Right. So there was no sale. The sale didn't even actually happen for that. Now, the other guy, I had given him something in the past. I gave him some testosterone in the past, but that was already long gone and, you know, whatever. No proof of sale even there. So I'm like, okay.

So I'm looking at this FBI agent. I'm like, yeah, okay, so, yeah, I was going to give somebody a bottle of testosterone. I didn't. So what's the problem here? I'm really confused with where you guys are going. They searched my house. They find I had two bottles of prescription testosterone and $300 cash. So, you know, I was.

Yeah. Pablo Escobar, like I said. Yeah, your sale, your steroid sales is lacking. I'm not doing well. And then my house in California, where my ex-wife and my kids are, they raid that house at the same time, right? And yeah, yeah. So, but they did it nicer because they knew that I was here.

Yeah. But there was a whole bunch of us. There was, I don't know how many cops initially got rated, but it was like a lot, a lot of police officers. It was a lot like five or a lot like 30? Like 30. Okay. Yeah, like a bunch of people. And not everybody ended up being indicted and stuff, but it was a huge operation, right, for a plethora of things, which I'll explain what happened. But so I'm like, okay, you know, I don't know any connection to this. Finally, when I'm like, I want an attorney president. and if you guys are going to keep question me at this point. And they're like, all right, well, then we're going to leave. You know, we're taking your phone, and we're going to take, back in California, we're going to take your laptop and all your stuff. They took my laptop that I was going to school with at the time, getting my bachelor's degree. And I'm like, okay.

They take all my electronics. They search the house. They find nothing. And literally just drive off. They just leave. And I'm like, this was the craziest thing. Like I had up armored vehicles in my yard. And now you guys are gone.

And so I go out after knocking all my neighbors' doors and tell them, hey, I'm Dan, by the way, nice to meet you. And by the way, that, you know. That's crazy, right? I don't even know. Wrong house. It was, you know. They apologized. Yeah, yeah. I was like, so I'm sorry about that. And luckily, all my neighbors are great. Like, we're, I'm great friends with all my neighbors now. And we all joke about this story, right, at this time, but not for a while. And so I just had to go explain to everybody. Hey, like, I don't know what's going on with this, but I don't think it's anything. crazy because if it was, I wouldn't be here. I'd be gone. And they were even threatening like,

hey, you know, we can arrest you because you have an illegal exhaust system on your truck. We could take your truck. I go, an illegal exhaust? Yeah, because I have a diesel truck and it's deleted. So they go, oh, it's a mass polluter. It's like, they don't even do smog here in Texas. Right. Like nobody cares about it. And who checked for that? Well, how fucking petty are you, motherfuckers? Yeah. Did someone climb under my truck? No, they had a- guys are fucking boy you must have no crime yeah they had they had they had screenshots of me texting the guy who deleted the truck which by the way i literally just go like hey do you do exhaust or whatever he's a shop right yeah bring it in i bring it in i bring it in i pay him 2500 bucks whatever it was

i got my truck i i thought that i didn't even know it was illegal but apparently it is so it's a mass polluter and i'm like okay give me the fix it ticket and they're like no it's a felony are you kidding me Like for pollute, like, okay. I can't, I can't go to prison for, for fucking, for pollution. It's embarrassed. It's like being arrested by the fucking, by the post office police. Like, that's, I can't do that. Give me something else.

Well, the post office police did testify. Right. So, so, so now I know nothing about this case. I'm left in the dark. I have to go down to Best Buy to get a go phone. And now I really do feel like a drug dealer, right? Because I'm getting a go phone. You know, I'm using cash for things because if I lost my phone, I wouldn't know anybody's phone number.

Yeah. It's over. No. I would never talk to Colby again. Yeah. He'd have to come find me. Exactly. He'd be like, two weeks in one day.

He'd show up at my house like, what's going to be like? Oh, thank God. You can't. Exactly. I've been sitting in the house for weeks. That's how I felt, you know, and the only, you know, I knew a couple numbers by heart. So I called them. And I was like, hey, this is what just happened, you know?

And then I booked a flight. And I was like, I got to get back to California tonight. But what was really cool was my contractor, the guy who was proneed out. Yeah. We became great friends. And he's a convicted felon, so that worked out. And but for him, it's nice that it's for somebody else for a change. He says, he's like, I've been through some shit in my life, but I've never seen a raid like that before in my life.

Half his workers didn't come back. Oh, no. Mr. Dan, he's no good. No, I finished that whole remodel on my own because nobody would come work for me. He has the police showing up. Yeah, exactly. It's no good. It was real bad.

And so I drive, I don't have a phone, obviously. So I drive back to my house and I'm like, I don't even know what the hell I'm going to do. And there's a note taped to my garage door and it says, figure you needed this with an arrow. And down underneath some stuff, he had left a six pack of beer for me. And he left his phone number. And I was like, dude, that's the coolest thing I've had happened to me in a while, especially after what just happened. So I gave him a call. I literally this guy is like his third day working with me.

And I'm like, hey, man, I don't know anybody here, but can I leave my truck with you for however long I need to? and just can you drive me to the airport? Because I live like an hour and a half from the airport. I'll leave it at your house because he was close. He's like, yeah. And I was like, I got to get on a flight tonight. I don't know what's happening to me. I got to get this shit figured out.

He's like, yeah, no problem. So I leave my truck with this stranger. You know, this guy just meet and he drops me off at the airport and I'm back in California. And, you know, I immediately I call my buddy, who, the one I was telling you about who went through a similar thing with the, you know, tax stuff for dead people. And I'm like, hey, man, this happened to me. do I do? Like, I need your help. You know, you've been through the federal system. This was the FBI, obviously, so I need to figure this out. So I'm like, look, man, I need, I need an attorney or I need

some form of help, like, because I don't know how to navigate this situation. I've never been in trouble in my life. Right. And so he's like, all right, dude, I got you set up. He drives out to the house. We start calling attorneys. And I get a hold of one who ends up becoming like one of my greatest friends now. And he's, he's a great catch because he's a former AUSA. He's a former DA before that, DDA before that. And so he kind of has that in. And he did a lot of, he worked a long time there. So he had friends in the AUSA office. So he's like, let me see what I can find out. So he goes and does some back door stuff and tries to see what he can find out, calls me back. He's like, yeah, honestly, I don't know if they even know why they're coming after you. And I'm like, okay, that's,

that doesn't change the situation. That's interesting. And he's like, well, there's no arrest, right? And I'm like, nope. And he's like, but I want to get ahead of this. Yeah. Let's figure out what's going on. So I retain him.

So it's my birthday. And I go down and I hand him a check for 25 grand for a retainer fee. And I'm like, well, this is going to be a good investment, probably. I need it. And then the case just goes silent. Nothing. Like literally nothing. He's reaching out.

He's trying to get a hold of people. We're trying to figure out. what's going on and it's like the FBI just ghosts no response to any emails really a couple talks he finally gets a hold of somebody who's working on it and he tells him hey you know just a heads up if you guys ever decide to indict or arrest you know just let us know Dan's obviously very compliant he'll turn himself in you know drive down to the marshal's office whatever you guys need they're like yeah no problem we can do that yeah yeah famous last words and um so you know I guess get back to Texas and I'm like, well, these guys aren't doing anything. I stayed in California

for about a week. I was like, I guess I just go back to living my life, you know? So I get back to Texas and I haven't been arrested. I've had nothing. They have my phone. So I just start completing my remodel. I get my remodel all done. My kids and stuff, everybody moves out. And I'm just kind of like waiting to figure out what's going to happen, right? I sell my house in California after going back there and remodeling it, you know. And it's weird. You're like living this normal life, but it's not normal, right? I mean, I just was rated by the FBI. My life was flipped upside down. And then I'm just told nothing for mass amounts of time passing. So I end up finishing my bachelor's degree during that time. And I'm waiting around and I'm like, well,

you know, I've been placed now into administrative leave during this time. I was on workers' comp for my injuries, getting medically retired. And they said, nope, you're off a worker. We don't care about your injuries anymore. Now you're on administrative leave because you're investigated by the FBI. So I'm still getting paid at this time, of course, on administrative leave. So I can pay my bills and finish my degree. And then I get a call from Antioch, police department. And they're like, hey, man, we need you to come in, you know, today at 10 a.m. And I'm like, dude, I'm in Texas. What do you mean today at 10 a.m.? So like, oh, well, then you need to be here tomorrow. So I'm like, what? Like, what's going on?

they're like, oh, it's for your IA, you know, internal affairs investigation. And I'm like, okay, like you paying for the flight? Because otherwise I'll be there in two weeks. Exactly. And I'm like, okay, sure, when do I need to get there? Now, this is December of 2022. So this is, you know, months and months and months after the initial raid in March. And I'm like, all right, so I fly out that night. You know, I try to do what I'm supposed to do. I go in for this meeting and they're like, oh, yeah, you know, you're, we're going to have you come in for an IA and I'm like, but I haven't even been arrested. There's been nothing. Like, is everybody coming in for this? Oh, everybody's on, you know, administrative leave. And I go, yeah, but is everybody

getting called in for an IA? Because I'm the only one that's on medical leave that you guys took off of. So I'm really curious where this is going. Oh, no, this is just protocol. We need to have you come in for an IA. So I'm like, okay. Sure. When do you need me? And they're like, well, we'll set it up. We'll let you know, but you can't, you can't be in Texas during the week anymore. And I'm like, I live in Texas. I can't. What do you expect me to do? And he's like, well, you're going to have to live in California within a two-hour response time from the PD. I'm like, I can't do that.

Like my kids are in Texas. I don't have a house here anymore. That's impossible for me. And he's like, well, I don't know what to tell you. You have to. That's part of our policy. Fuck your policy. Your policy doesn't mean shit.

Your policy isn't a law. Yep. And then they pretty much tell me if I go, well, you could be breaking the law then because you're collecting income in violation of policy. You're getting administratively. Policy doesn't mean anything.

Yeah, so I'm, you know, me being flustered and trying to figure this out, I'm like, I don't know what to do. So I get an IA attorney, which was interesting because the attorney I got, she had represented Barry Bonds in the Balco case, right, for all the steroid stuff. Right. So what a small world that here I am for steroids. And she's representing me, not criminally, but in-house. And so she goes, okay, she's like, what are they telling you? And I'm like, well, they're setting this IA for this date. And she's like, okay, well, and she really didn't care about, you know, I don't think the moving stuff either. goes, but the IA, she's like, we have to go to that. I'm like, okay, well, what do we do with it? She's like, you're not going to be able to give a statement in your IA because you haven't been arrested. If you give a statement, that's just an admission of guilt of maybe something that you did.

You're just telling them, like, they're almost like working for the feds right now. Let's just call them in for an IA, have them admit everything that's wrong, and then they can use that against me. And I'm like, okay, well, what do I do? You know, I don't know how to operate through this. So she tells me, she's like, I mean, you kind of have one of two options. You go in and you tell them, I refuse, you know, plead the fifth essentially in this and say, I'm not going to speak about this because it's an ongoing investigation. And then they're going to terminate you because that opens the door for them to terminate you. Or you just quit. She's like, either way, you're losing your job right now. And I'm like, well, I guess it seems better for me to quit than to get fired. So I submit a letter and

I resign. Right. And kind of, you know, forceful term. obviously. That wasn't my intention or what I wanted to do. But they backed me into a corner where I didn't have a choice. So now I just lost my primary source of income. And I'm like, all right, well, I guess I got to figure out life. So I'd finish my bachelor's degree and I decide I wait a little bit of time. It goes nowhere still. There's nothing from the FBI, no response, no response from the AUSA. So I decide I'm going to go be a pilot. So of course. Of course, right? I'm like, what else can I do with my life? So I go to ATP, which is flight school, and I sign up for flight school. I take out all these student loans because I'm thinking very clear at this time.

And I rack up $40,000, $50,000 of student loans. And I'm going through flight school and everything's going great. Student of the month, I'm killing it. I talk to an aviation attorney who says, hey, bro, even if you are arrested, you can be a felon as a pilot. We can get you hired. It's not a big deal. It just depends on what it's for.

And I tell them it's for steroids. And he's like, are you kidding me? Like, they probably won't even arrest. And so now everybody's kind of saying, yeah, they're probably not going to arrest. You know what I mean? They're probably not going to come back here and do anything because they would have by now.

It's been over a year. You know, and so I'm going through flight school. Things are going good. And I finally am kind of finding some purpose again, you know. I'm like, all right. You know, I'm going to get into a new career. This whole thing is going to be behind me. And I got my check ride, which, so check rise in flight.

is essentially like your test, right, to get your certifications. And so I got a check ride scheduled for the first week of September. And I'm like, all right, I'm really buckling down. I'm getting ready for this check ride. Well, August, whatever, 17th, whatever, 2023, so a year and a half. So later, a little over later, I'm making my kids breakfast and getting them ready for school. And I hear two loud bangs again. I'm like, oh, you got to be fucking kidding me.

This can't be happening right now. And I look over and I have, you know, shutters in my house. They're all closed, but the top ones are open. And I can see the red and blues coming through. And I'm in a pair of pajama shorts. So I'm like, I'm not fucking walking outside like this. Now I'm pissed, right?

Because we had this kind of agreement that if anything were to happen, you know, we're just going to. Yeah, you'll surrender yourself in. Yeah, I'll just surrender. It's easy. So I go in. I change my shorts real quick. and I throw a t-shirt over my shoulder.

I don't think I had it on. And I grab a pair of shoes. And I start walking out and I can hear this like crazy noise in my garage. I open the door to my garage. And I see a grinder cutting through my garage door, which I'm like, like sparks are flying through. And I'm like, first off, what kind of tactic is that? Like, if I am armed and dangerous, you're just going to start shooting through the garage door. You're showing me right where you are.

Right. You know, and it's like, why would. It was almost just to like, fuck my garage up. Right. Like, it was like, they made like this weird cut on it for no reason. And so I'm like, okay, whatever. So I shut the door. And I'm like, well, I'm going to go give my kids a hug because obviously this is a different one. I can hear I'm saying this is an arrest warrant.

So I know I'm going to jail today. Give my kids a hug. And I open the door. And as I open the door, SWAT is already moving in. They literally have like a bear cat in my, in my yard, which is stuck, by the way, in mud, in my front lawn. And now they're advancing to the door to come force entry.

Of course, they meet me at the same time as I come out. My dog goes run out there. Talking about shooting my dog. So I'm pissed. You know, I'm not being as compliant as I probably should this time. And so what's the first time?

And they're telling me to drop what's in my hand, which is a pair of white vans. You know, clearly not a weapon or anything like that, but I needed shoes because I knew I was leaving. And so I ended up, you know, dropping everything I have. They throw me on my dog. belly in the yard, throw me in handcuffs, get me back up, walk me to the car. You know, and they're treating me like, you know, absolute dog shit. And then they changed me, which was

incredible to me, but they changed me into waistband shackles. You know, they put my hands shackle me to my waist. They put actual shackles on my ankles. And I'm like, I've arrested a lot of people in my life. And I've never, for a transport, done this from an arrest site. And we're right in front of my house. All my neighbors are out now. You guys have flashbang my house. Mind you, this is arguably bigger than the first one. Up armored vehicles everywhere. Snipers again, you know, 20 yards from my front door. Drones flying all over. I mean, just absolute madhouse, right? And I'm, you know, and I'm in disbelief that I'm like, I can't believe this is actually happening again, right? And so, you know, they shackle me up. They take photos of me in front of the

house, like almost like I was like a, like on on display, you know, and my kids are obviously trying to look through the shutters and, you know, just, you know, arguably the lowest point in my life, right? Because I've just, my kids have just watched this happen to their dad, who's their hero, right? I'm this guy who's their protector, their provider. My, my relationship with my kids is incredible. Like we have arguably the closest relationship I've seen with most dads with their kids. And so for them this was, you know, probably horrible, not to mention two teachers at their school live on our street, right? So I'm like, you know, worst moment of my life, you know, like the first one was bad, but no one really knew me. It kind of went away. This one, horrible. So they load me up in the car,

and the first thing they do is apologize to me. And I'm like, dude, you guys can't, like, figure this out. Like, you guys either hate me or I'm cooperative, what is it, you know? And they go, oh man we're sorry that we had to hit you like this um fuck off yeah and i'm like yeah and i you know i'm thinking like there's no way and they go no really like we we had said we were here on the first raid we said hey this guy was cooperated the first time but california said you know they're at the fbi office said no this has to be a swat operation and and and they were like why we could literally knock and knock and talk with this guy and he'll come with us and they said nope it's got to be a swat operation this is them telling me this in the car and i'm like you know honestly i wouldn't

put it past him at this point. Okay, it is what it is. And I told him, hey, it's okay, you guys just doing your job. I get it. You know, I had no hard feelings for me. But of course, I'm looking at his dash and he's got a sticker that says, I shoot motherfuckers in the face. And I'm like, okay. Yeah. It's like, but, uh, okay. Um, so, you know, that's what I, I'm looking at. And I'm just like, all right, you know, these guys are being cool. They take me to McDonald's, you know, get me breakfast. And then they, they drive me out to the U.S. Marshals office. And they say, hey man, you know, you're just going to be down there. You're just going to have to see the judge and they're going to release you.

Okay, cool. And they're like, no one's ever down here anyway. So it's just going to be you probably sitting in a cell. All right, whatever. I was going to say, this is clearly that these people have nothing to do. Yeah, literally. And so they get me down and I go into the U.S. Marshals office.

And of course, a bus rolls up and it's a bunch of like dudes with like MS-13 tattooed on. And there's all, and there's like a whole bus of them that come out. And I'm like, great, man. This is awesome. So they just throw us all. The U.S. Marshals have no idea that I'm former law enforcement. And so they put us all in the same area. And I'm like, whatever.

Like, I'm just going to keep to myself here. And they leave me in shackles, which was weird. Like, you know, I worked into jail for a while and I was like, you just not alive to do. Yeah, we would be able to protect yourself. Yeah, you would release people. And so they leave all of us in shackles. Oh, okay. And I'm like, okay, this is interesting.

And I go, hey, man, I just need to get, I need to call my attorney. When do I get my call? He's like, oh, no, there's no calls here. I'm like, what do you mean there's no calls? I'm like, one of my rights. Here I am thinking I know my rights, right? Apparently not. And they're like, no, no, we can transfer you to county, though.

If you want to get transferred to county, then you can make the phone call to your attorney. And I'm like, dude, I've just been arrested. I need to make a, I need to call my attorney. Like, come on, this is crazy. Nope, never got to call my attorney. Never got taken out of shackles. So I sit there for like probably good 10, 10 hours, maybe a little longer in shackles. and I have this spark-up conversation with people, obviously.

I'm a talker in there, and this kid starts talking to me, and he's like, oh, man, why are you here? And I was like, ah, steroids. And they kind of look at me. I was in decent shape, so he's like, okay, I get it. I go, what about you, man, just out of curiosity? He's like, he was in there for a big drug case. And so he's talking about his case to me.

He's telling me everything, right, how his dad was a cop. And the DEA had this two-year operation against him. And I'm like, oh, man, so you got rated this morning too, huh? And he's like, oh, no, no, no. They called me last week and said, hey, you got 72 hours to turn yourself in. He's, you know, mind you, the, you know, substance that he was selling was, is arguably responsible for killing millions of Americans. Right. And, and he just gets a courtesy call. But the steroid one, you know, we got to, we got to really make sure we get that down. So at this time, I still don't know what my charges are. I go meet with a public defender because I can't. call my own attorney, and they tell me what my charges are. So I was arrested for conspiracy to distribute antiblocked steroids,

attempted possession to distribute, which I'd never seen in my time in law enforcement, and then possession with intent to distribute. I'm like, okay, that's interesting. So I go see the judge, and the judge says, you know, hey, you know, are you able to go to court in two weeks in California? Because you really don't need to be here right now. Right. I'm like, yeah.

And he was actually disgusted that I was. even in his courtroom. He's like, why are you even here? Like, this could have been a subpoena. And I'm like, I wasn't by my choice, Your Honor. And so he ends up saying, yep, you're free to go. Two weeks, you got a court hearing in California. Take care of it. Okay, I go back. I had to sit there for another like three or four hours because California wouldn't remove the warrant from the system. Right. And the U.S. Marshall finally comes up to me. He's like, hey, man, by this time, it's literally just me. Everybody else has been transferred out. He's like, dude, what are you doing in here? He's like, I just got to ask because I looked at your, you know, your PC deck.

like what you're arrested for. And he's like, attempted sale of a steroids. He's like, how much, like, it had to be a lot. And I'm like, no, it's for a vial of testosterone. And he's like, what do you mean? I was like, dude, you know I'm a cop, right? And he was like, oh shit. He's like, we had no idea.

He's like, we had no idea your cop. No one told us. So he's like, well, it makes more sense. It's obviously very politically driven, you know. And I'm like, yeah, he's like, test. He's like, dude, everybody's on that. And I was like, I don't know, man. I was like, hopefully this gets cleared up.

He's like, oh, I'm sure it will. this is crazy. He's like, I've been here 15 years. I've never seen that before, ever. So finally, he just tells me, I hear him yelling at the San Francisco office telling him, hey, you need to pull this guy's warrant so we can release him. And they just wouldn't do it. So he finally was like, hey, man, I'm going to release you. I got approval, but you still have a warrant in the system. So don't get pulled over. Right. He's like, this should be out tonight or whatever. So I get released and I go home. And, you know, and my, my ex-wife, me were already kind of like on, you know, already on the outs anyways. And so she was already in the

process of moving and doing her own thing. So she moves out the following day. So now I'm, you know, arrested and, you know, life blown up again. I got this, uh, this, uh, flight check ride I got to go do in a week or whatever. And I'm just, you know, trying to wrap my head around what's happening in my life. And now I'm on pretrial probation. So they tell me, hey, you know, you were arrested for drugs. So you got to call in every single night. And if you have, like, they assign you like a color or something. You're purple. I don't know. Yeah. Yeah. You ever had to do this? Yeah, so every night I'm calling, you know, and like you got to drive all the way an hour away to the place to do a urinary analysis if you need to.

So I'm sitting there doing that every day, you know, can't drink, you know, obviously you can't do drugs, which I had no history with drugs anyways. And so that's, you know, I enter the pretrial probation. And I thought this would be taken care of relatively quick. This is August of 2023. And that was not the case, obviously. So time goes by again. You know, I'm sitting there on pretrial probation. I'm going through that process.

And, you know, I'd gone out. I did my indictment in California, which was pretty basic. It just, it was a little interesting watching the court system operate because I was, you know, waiting there as a gentleman who was going through his thing and he was like a career, you know, career criminal, if you want to call him that, you know, high value issues. And the officers testifying against him, they say, hey, we want him to be, to remain in custody because he did a robbery with a AK-47, and then he stole a car right after that,

and then he got into a chase with us, crashed, and we took him into custody. He had another pistol. We got the AK. And we think that he's a danger to society. He's a documented gang member. He's got 15, whatever, felony conviction. So we think he should stay in custody.

And the judge goes, no, I think he, I think, you know, he's going to be okay. We're going to release him. And so I'm sitting there, and I'm looking at my attorney, I'm like, oh, well, we're good. Yeah, I'm going, I'm leaving. Yeah, so we watched that, and then he, that guy leaves, and he's getting released that day. So I walk up, and she immediately just dives into me because what had happened was we were all arrested, right?

So there was police officers arrested for a vast number of things from fraud for cheating in college, essentially, because they paid a girl to do some college classes. they then in turn got a 5% pay increase at work. So they said, oh, fraud, bank fraud, right? You cheated and now you're getting paid, so bank fraud. So they got arrested. Fraud. They didn't defraud the bank.

They defrauded the government. Yeah. So it's like wire fraud or, yeah. And maybe that's what it was wire fraud with them. Yours was bank. Mine was bank fraud. And so wire fraud, whatever it was that they had got. So they got arrested for that.

And then a couple other for steroids. stuff on theirs. And then, um, and then a couple for like civil rights deprivation things for like deploying a canine on somebody when you don't need to. Yeah. Uh, things like that. Which, you know, all questionable. Um, but all of us are arrested, right? So now it's this really big case that's like hitting Fox News. It's hitting CNN. So it's all over the place. And apparently they were trying to, you know, go out and do these, uh, grand jury indictments on us, but they weren't getting them. So they, you know, finally it got it because there was a bunch of racist text messages that were released, right? And it was racism between cops, you know, apparently I was in there,

which I wasn't. It was on my work phone. I didn't even have. We had to prove later. But so they released all these to the public on accident, right, right before the grand jury. Hey, don't, you know, but they're out there. And they did such a good job of redacting it that if you just highlighted the redacted stuff and hit copy and paste into word. Yeah, yeah. It unredacted everything. And it was in the news. So all of our addresses, our phone numbers, everything, we're out to the public now.

And they didn't care. So that was all just out in the open now. And so, you know, all these cops get arrested. I get arrested, but we're all different. But I'm sitting in this indictment hearing. And she looks at me and she's like, oh, all these cops in here, you know, you guys are a disgrace basically to the badge and everything that you did. And she's like lecturing.

And I'm like, okay. You know, I get that. All right. Like, so what's the deal? And she's like, you, you need to put $100,000 up to stay out of jail. And I'm like, you just let the guy walk out with nothing. He didn't have to put anything down. And they're like, well, if you don't have it, you got put a, you know, a lien on your house.

So I had to sign my deed over of my house to the government saying like, yeah, I won't run away. And I'm like, you know, and my attorney tries to tell the judge, he says, you know, hey, your honor, with all due respect, like, these are different docket numbers. just because you're making some of these officers maybe that you think are violent or, or a, you know, a flight risk, you know, put these. My client has a minor charge. He's like, this is anabolic steroids. Like, I don't think this is a big deal.

And so she just lost on it. I was like, they're all the same. Every single one of them is the same. And I'm sitting there thinking, like, I'm looking at my turn out because I'm thinking, like, is this legal? Like, can she do this? Can she actually say that, you know? And I mean, of course, I guess she can.

And so we were all like lumped into this. same boat of this is what you guys are and it doesn't matter you're all the same you know you're all dirty cops right and even though many of the cases were different and so you know I end up putting up the $100,000 on my house go back I get back on the pretrial probation and I sit there and I kind of reenter that world of like well what the hell do I do now you know I can't go I did pass my check ride by the way so I can fly but I can't fly anywhere so but I I'm like, well, I got to find a new career field. So I don't know what I'm going to do.

So I go back to school for my master's degree. And so while I'm off on pretrial probation, I get a master's degree in sports psychology. And, you know, just kind of figuring out, like, I'm going to have to work for myself because clearly I'm going to end up with these felonies. But even in this time, all this time is passing. We're getting no information from them. Nothing on the investigation. Nothing if there's anything even moving forward.

Like, are these charges getting dropped? Like, what are we doing? The feds, they're not dropping the charges. Yeah, exactly. So, you know, we learned that that's clearly not the case. And so I'm just playing the waiting game for them for a long time. And then people start getting, finally start going to trial or whatever they're doing. Most people are taking plea agreements.

So the first guy takes a plea agreement. And they kind of classified him as the ringleader because he, it was his girlfriend that was doing the college courses for people, which wasn't him. He wasn't even getting any of the profits from it. She was. But she had obviously testified against him. And she was the one who apparently, allegedly, started this whole thing with an anonymous note, which I can't even explain that on here because we really don't even know how this thing truly started.

But somehow they ended up with a warrant for our ICloud accounts, which is what got him in the door. And so he gets sentenced to like 30 months. And we're like, oh, my God, like 30 months for, for because she's doing some college courses for these guys and they're getting a 5% bump because now they have a college degree. Yeah. And so now and now this guy who, you know, it's his friends, he's going to go to prison for 30 months and, you know, and he admits to them takes an information charge basically saying like, yeah, I sold steroids too or whatever. So they hit him with all of them, sentenced them to that.

And we're like, goodness, this is, this is wild. Like who would have thought that this would happen, right? then you have these individuals in the middle who just cheated in college and they had the wire fraud and they all get sentenced to three months in federal prison. So you're like, okay. Mind you, they've all paid back what they had taken, right? Of course, they didn't count that as restitution. They just said that was a donation to the PD.

That's how it was accepted in the news. It literally said that the PD accepted as a donation, but they wouldn't accept it as restitution. So now they had to pay restitution too. Yeah, exactly. So they paid back what they owed, but then they also paid restitution. So those guys went to prison for three months. And it kind of left like a handful of us. I was just like thrown on the back burner.

And, you know, one of the reasons was I think was I didn't have a whole lot of value to them. And I wasn't really a big part of this. They're meat and potatoes of this case, which was the civil rights deprivations, right? That's what they wanted the most out of this, to show that cops are racist. They're targeting people and they're out injuring people. and they're corrupt. You know, this was, you know, defund the police time, federal takeover with the city of Antioch where I was working. Like, that was the goal, right? And so, so I'm just sitting there in limbo. A few of these guys are getting sentenced. And so I finally talked to my attorney. I'm like, hey,

what are we doing here? Because I'm out of money, pretty much. I've burned through all my savings. I've lost everything that I have now. I, we need to figure this out. So he's like, well, you know, we can, you know, just take a plea deal. and end this, if that's how we want to do it. And I'm like, yeah, at this point, I really don't care. Well, I had a co-defendant in this. And obviously, as you know, you get discovery in these cases, right? So we get discovery and we know exactly what they have against us, right?

And they had every text message between me and this other guy talking about antibalk steroids and, you know, what they were and, you know, giving them to them. And I'm like, okay, there's, you can't defend this. It's just, it's plain. It's right in front of your face. There's even pictures. Right. So it's like, okay, you can't get past this. And, but my co-defendant, he kind of says, hey, you know, no, this was, they framed me. They put all this stuff on my phone and I didn't have anything to do with this. And, and I had kind of told them when we were talked for it. I'm like, too, just take a plea deal. I don't care what you do. You can testify against me for all I care. Like, I don't, let's just get this over with. Like, whatever's going to happen is going to happen. This has now been like four years since this started. Literally, I got raided in 2020. I didn't get convicted until 2026. And I'm like, this has to end, man.

Like, nobody can survive. You know, like this has to end. And, you know, I'd found out that his, the buddy he was getting the steroids for, who's, you know, in SF, he was testifying against him saying, yeah, he was getting me this or whatever. I'd read his interview and discovery, you know, you get all that stuff. And so I'm like, okay, well, the FBI 302s. Yeah.

So I'm like, this is done. Like, everybody should just probably walk in there, like, all right you got me yeah let's just give us our sentence and go so they um well the other guy he he goes onto a podcast and he heavily has a distaste for the government and stuff like that and he kind of puts that out there while he's like in trial so he was charged with two things he had the civil rights stuff and he had the steroid one with me i only had the connection with the steroid the civil rights side of it he goes into trial and gets a mistrial because his attorney apparently had like a breakdown in the thing and they give him a mistrial.

And so he classifies it as a win because usually they, I guess, don't probably go back for those mistrials. If they don't get them, they sometimes will just let him go or let you accept a lower plea or whatever the case would be. And he was only charged with conspiracy to, for like civil rights violations. It was just the conspiracy side of it for sending some text messages about going out and, you know, fucking people up or something like that. I don't know the details of that side of it, but it was something along those lines. But now he's on a podcast, and he's talking bad about the assistant U.S. attorneys. He's talking bad about the judge. He's talking bad about the whole government system and how they're framing him and doing all this stuff.

You know, and so that goes really bad for him as far as his reputation with the government, and now they really don't like him. So they approach us. They're like, hey, would you be willing to do a cooperation agreement? And first off, I haven't heard from you guys ever. now they want a cooperation agreement. And I'm like, okay, like, what, what is it? Like, what are we looking at here? Obviously, my attorney is saying, yes, you need to do this because he's going to

keep you out of jail. Yeah, he's keeping me out of jail. That's his goal. And he tells me, hey, man, usually people that cooperate if you can provide some significance or some help, and it'll keep you out of jail. Not guaranteed, though. But let's try it. And so he's like, let's at least see what they want.

We'll go have a meeting with him. Well, I go down. And really, they just wanted me to confirm everything that I had in discovery. And I'm like, I'm kind of like weirded out because I'm thinking, you guys don't really need me for this at all. Like you have everything. No, but it's nice to have somebody on the stand say, yeah, I remember texting him. Exactly. That's it.

That way they don't have to put up a thing and say, these are text messages. The jury connects with someone and sitting on the stand saying that this is true as opposed to them saying, we, instead of them having a technical advisor sit on the stand and talk about how they downloaded this and they downloaded it. They're like, I don't know what the fuck you're talking about. that guy said he remembers texting him. Exactly. Yep. And so, you know, they tell me, hey, this is what you would need to do. And it would just be about your, what you did with him.

Yeah. That's all we need you up there for. We're going to show you some text messages and just confirm if you sent those. Yeah. Like, okay, fine. If this will get this over with, let's do it. But kind of my goal, I was hoping, was that the minute he would see that I was going to testify because he gets the same discovery and that the other guy was going to testify,

he would just take a plea deal. Like, be smart with it. and let's just all do what we have to do. Right. And he doesn't, of course. So he takes it to trial. And I'm like, God, now I got to do this. So I fly out.

And so I end up having to testify. Very quick testimony. It was just exactly what I just said. Basically, hey, these are your text messages. Did you send these? Yep. What does T mean testosterone? Like Barry kind of cut and dry.

All right, you're free to go. Well, he ends up getting obviously found guilty of the conspiracy to distribute. He never actually did. He just talked with me about getting it for his buddy. His buddy also confirms, you know, yes. These are my text messages. These are my text messages. He was supposed to give me this.

Yep. So he gets found guilty and then he gets remanded into custody until, you know, and the judge, I think had said something along the lines of like, you know, you're remanded because of your lack of, you know, empathy or accountability with this. Probably would have left him off on house arrest or something. But I think he ended up on house arrest. but however, I didn't really follow what happened at that point. But he still was pending his next trial on the civil rights stuff.

So, of course, with me, I'm like, okay, well, I've done my part. When can I be sentenced? I just want to get all of my life. Oh, no, no, no, we need to get him through his trial in case something else happens and we need you back. But they were kind of being standoffish. And I'm like, okay, I think it was because I didn't have like, I didn't have like a, it's not like I had a bunch to give them.

And I remember telling him, like, isn't that good that I don't have, I wasn't a dirty cop, so I don't have information on a bunch of cops. So, like, isn't it good that I don't have that to give you? And it's weird because I think they really wanted me to be more dirty, so I had more information, right? And I'm like, I just don't have that. I'm sorry, this is what I have. It's what I did, and that's all I can account for. And so I have to wait for him to be sentenced.

And so the other guy that was involved in that Civil Rights stuff with the canine, he gets sentenced in the meantime for seven years. and I'm like, holy shit. Like this is a, that's a big sentence for, for, you know, I think he had 22 dog bites. And I know this guy personally, and I've always known to be like a really, really good guy. And I truly, like, in my heart, don't believe that he was ever out, you know, doing anything bad.

Right. He was doing his job. He was a go-getter. He wanted to really work his way up in the ranks. And he was just a hard worker. And, I mean, the guy worked a million hours of overtime. And I, I truly believe. like he shouldn't have been found guilty, in my opinion.

You know, and that's just because I knew him as a person. And so I think 22 dog bites, from my understanding, 21 of the 22, they found him not guilty. And then on one bite, his roommate, who was also arrested during this thing for tampering with a wired investigation of some sort, which was all weird. He was the guy who clearly had given out all the information in the beginning of this. we all kind of piece that together later. But he testified against him. They were like best friends and lived together and stuff like that.

But he had testified against him on that dog bite because he said, oh, yeah, I was there for it on a ride-along from a neighboring agency. And I witnessed the dog bite. And yeah, he probably didn't need to. However that went, you know, it's all out there, obviously, in public record. But he testified against him. So that guy gets sentenced to the seven years, which was obviously that was tough for me to see because 30 months was hard to see.

Now you see people getting tested. Yeah. Seven years, I'm thinking, man, I'm actually, this is like, I'm going to prison. You know what I mean? Like, there's no way I'm not at this point. And then my co-defendant, his comes up and he gets sentenced for conspiracy for the civil rights and then conspiracy for anti-block steroids. He gets seven and a half years. Right.

I'm like, oh, my God, man. Like, this is. Yeah, but he went to trial. Had he not gone to trial, he probably would have gotten fucking 12 months or three months or whatever these other guys were getting that was minor. As opposed to, no, I'm going to go to trial. You go to trial, you get, it's a trial penalty. Yeah, trial tax, right? Yeah. And so, you know, and I obviously wasn't aware of that aspect of it, but thank God I followed my attorney's advice, right? And so I'm like, okay, well, he just got seven years. He got seven and a half. These guy got 30. All these other guys are getting three months. So I'm like, okay, I'm going to at least get six months to a year, I would guess, right?

No, I would think you would get nothing. But yeah, I initially would have thought I'd get nothing. But then when I'm seeing all these sentences, handed out. I'm like, gosh. So then I meet with, and I don't know if this was kind of the same process for you, but in pretrial, I met with probation, U.S. probation, and they did their interview with me. Yeah, yeah. Okay. Your pre-sentence report. You probably would have gotten three months if you hadn't testified. If you had to cooperate, I'd say you would have gotten the same three months. They were giving these other guys. It's like a slap on the wrist. Yeah. Like you're in and out. You're probably out in two months. Yeah. Yeah. And that's probably what would have happened. And probation interviews me and they go, no, this guy shouldn't go to

prison. Right. And then, so we're waiting on the government and we're like, okay, you know, we did what we did our part. We understand that we didn't give you as much as you would like, but we did our part. And so we're, we're kind of expecting them to come back with the same thing and say, hey, we'll give him this downward departure. You know, he helped out. He did what he was supposed to do, even though he didn't have really significant information. He still confirmed what he did. Accountability. You know, same thing. Three years probation, whatever, like probation put. And they don't send us anything. So we don't get there. sentence report until literally like the day before I'm going in and I'm like, oh, great.

Well, I get it and it's, they're asking for a year and a day. And I'm like a year and a day. Like, are you kidding me? Like, what for what? You know? And mind you, in the meantime, I kind of, I kind of passed up on this. Sorry. But how I ended up with bank fraud. So I was only charged with Antiblock Steroid stuff. Right. And during, when I went in to finally plead guilty and just I wanted to get this over with, they had me taken information charge for bank fraud. And so I'm talking to my attorney about it. And my kind of understanding was he's like, hey, they have to have you take this. Because if you testify and you don't take this, then it looks like you're only testifying because they're not giving you this felony, right? Like you're doing

it in response to like, hey, if you testify, we won't charge you with bank fraud. Right. So he's like, so you kind of have to take it. Like it's, you don't really have a choice. So I'm like, All right. Well, at this point, I'm like, whatever, I just want this done. What had they said you'd done? So what had happened was, is I had a, I was buying my house in Texas, and my house in California, I had, you know, I had almost enough money to pay for the house in Texas cash. But my house in California needed to be remodeled, and I needed to remodel my house in Texas. So I tell my realtor, hey, I want to buy this house, and I want to move out there, renovate it,

and I want to be able to, family can move, then I can move back, go back to California, renovate this one and sell it. So that way I don't have to, you know, have this limbo where people are living through a construction site. She's like, oh, that makes sense. She's like, well, okay, we should get you approved, no problem. So we go to get approved.

I don't get approved with the debt to income ratio because. Your DTI is too high because that mortgage is still out there. Well, the problem was is I actually made enough, but I was on workers' comp leave. So I just needed a letter from workers' comp that said, hey, he makes this much on workers' comp. So it was coming from two places. The first one said, yeah, we'll send it to you.

They sent it to me right away. And it showed the total amount, but it only showed what they were responsible for. I needed the other entity, the insurance company, to show, hey, yeah, he gets paid this much for me. Well, the lady over there just hated life or whatever. So I call over and I'm like, hey, I just need you to send this over. It's just exactly what they sent so I can get approved for this home loan. And she's like, I don't need to do that. yeah, I know you don't need to, but can you be a good person for five minutes and just type that?

Because that's the only way I can prove income because this is tax free. And she's like, no, I don't need to do that and would not send it to me. And I'm like, this is crazy. So I write a letter trying to say, hey, this is what I have. And they're like, now we can't accept that. You need this. So then I'm told, I'm giving advice, hey, just get a, have somebody sign a rental agreement on your property. Right.

So I'm like, okay. To offset. Yeah. So I go and I get a rental agreement signed. And so they sign it. We submit it. But then they say, hey, we want an appraisal of what the rental or what the rent costs out there. And I'm like, oh, my God, now I've got to pay for that.

So my buddy is like, dude, just delete this on that form. So it just shows like you get the money. You know, you can change it. You actually get this money, right? I'm like, yeah, I can prove it. Like, I have paycheck stubs. He was like, just delete it. Who cares, bro?

Like, you're not lying. And I'm like, well, worst mistake in my life, right? Because I'm like, yeah, I guess that's right. Like, I'm really not lying. But at the same time, I'm falsifying a document. So I'm falsifying a document with the accurate information. You know what I mean? So it was like this really gray area.

So I'm thinking cop side of me is like, would I ever arrest somebody for this? Absolutely not. Like you have proof. This is what you did. Okay, I get it. You doctored this document. But can't you lie down a loan application? Yeah, exactly.

So, okay. So I do that. I submit it. And they're like, perfect, you're good to go. Everything works out. You know,

I end up selling all the properties. Bank never loses a dollar. The feds go to the bank and they ask, hey, do you desire any prosecution against this guy? Nope. And they refuse to even give a statement. They're like,

no, this guy pays us. Probably thinking, hey, this guy pays us, I think I've paid $100,000 in interest on this house. You know,

I'm like, I'm a great customer to have. So no victim with it. But I still end up with the felony bank fraud. And so, you know, We're coming up to the sentencing. A year and a day.

Yep, year and a day. So they asked for that. And then I walk in there. I wrote a letter to the judge basically, you know, like everybody probably does. Right. And I go in to read it and super emotional, right, just because the only thing I think about is my kids. You know, I don't care. If I didn't have kids, I, whatever, you know.

Right. Even if you send me to a year, like, okay, yeah, I can do that. But losing my kids and then, you know, the repercussions of that, right? Like, I'm already divorced. So now it's like I'm going to have to try and get custody back when I get back out. I'm going to have to pay back child support. I'm going to feel like this is going to ruin not just my life, but my kid's life. I'm going to lose my house while I'm in there because I have nobody to take care of it.

And I'm like my everything's going to fall apart and just crash around me, you know. Like I have even animals, you know, it's like, and I have a girlfriend that lives with me. But if I go get away for a year, can I expect her to stay with me? You know what I mean? That's a lot to ask of somebody. She would, for sure. But, you know, that wasn't something I would want to do. So I'm, you know, I'm just, I'm finally just like, I don't, you know, I don't really know what to tell you your honor other than I messed up, you know, and I did, but I never heard anybody.

And I'm going to stand prideful of that to say like I never, you know, discounted the badge or dishonored it or, you know, my military service, all of that was honorable. Like nothing I ever did was against somebody else. But yeah, I used standard block steroids. I gave them to friends. I understand the severity of it. Yes, I doctored this document, but I never intended. intended to, like, steal from anybody or victimize anybody. And so the judge kind of looks over at the, um, at the USA and he was like,

you're going to have to, like, really justify to me why you want this guy to go away. Yeah. To prison. And, you know, they, they kind of only, their only response was just that deterrence. You know, hey, this is going to deter other officers for doing this. And, uh, yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

And I'm like, you know, no one's going to remember my name in a week, you know, so is it really going to deter anybody? Probably not, but that was kind of their only thing. And like part of me looks back at the AUSA wasn't necessarily like they weren't like bad people. I get everybody's doing their job, right? I get it. This is their job. But at the same time, it's like, have a soul, like have, have a heart. And part of me is like, did he only say that just to, because he, he knew like deterrence is not a good enough reason? I don't know. You know, I guess I'll never know that. But I always try to see the good in people. So I'm like, maybe he's, he was just like, hey, throw this guy a bone at for once instead of giving him a laundry list

of reasons why I should go to prison. Right. Or maybe he just didn't have any. I don't know. But at the end of the day, the judge looked at me and was like, no, this, you're not going away. Mr. Harris. Like, I can't justifiably send you away.

So you're going to do three years of probation, 100 hours of community service. And he's like, it seems like you've, you know, served your country. You've served your people. You were a good cop. And he's like, you know, you made a bad decision. You've owned it. You know, go try and get your life back. And kind of sent me out of the door.

right and and so you know fast forward till that was the last thing that was in January and uh obviously 2026 26 yeah so six months ago and since then it's just kind of been a roller coaster on what do I do with my life right now I have four felony convictions it's like you leave there you know feeling great right like oh my god I'm not going to prison I thought I was going to prison for sure and I leave there I'm not going to prison I get to go home to my kids I've been lying to them the whole time telling him, dad's not going anywhere, even though I'm thinking, dad's probably out of you guys. And so, you know, very, very good moment. But the second I walked out of the door instantly, my mind is like, well, how do I get

rid of these felonies now? Like, how do I change my life? You know, how do I earn a living? You know, and I'm like, well, I'm going to need a pardon, you know, which I'm in the process of trying to get right now. And so I'm like, well, I don't, you know, how do I go back to being a contributing member of society, right? Because that's really what I need to do.

It's like I'm like, I'm not somebody that should just be sitting there, you know, collecting military disability only and surviving. Like I've always been a, you know, contributing member to this society. And I want to go back to being that, you know. And, you know, so I decided I took kind of the last bit of money I had. I invested into a mentorship for like coaching, online coaching. So I'm like, I know fitness really well. I'm a nerd with, you know, with that. So I was like, maybe I'll just start online coaching.

And I started that a month ago. and literally my first month, you know, brought in over 40 grand, which was shocking, which changed my life because my, just right before that, my savings account was $58. Jeez. So, you know, I walked around on average with, you know, three, two to $300,000 in my savings, always. I was very good with money. But then after divorce and, you know, through this process, you know, my dog had back surgery.

Like everything that could go wrong went wrong. Lawsuit with the pool that I've lost probably $100,000 on. It was just one thing after another. My air conditioner went out of the house, thousands of dollars. And I'm just like, goodness, every chunk of money I had saved and stockpiled to survive, gone. And I literally, right before I launched a few days before I looked at my bank account, I had $765 in my savings, or in my checking, $58 in my savings. And I'm like, this is like my hell Mary.

I got to launch this online coaching business. Right. I got to make something of myself or else I'm going to lose my house. I'm going to lose everything I have. And so I did it and I'm starting to rebuild finally, you know. And who would have thought that, you know, since doing that, I got back on social media eight weeks ago and now I'm sitting across from you. Hey, you guys.

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