Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast - Whistleblower Cop Exposes Corruption

Episode Date: May 17, 2026

Richie Caruso, a former correctional officer, recounts how he exposed violent corruption and staged inmate “gladiator fights” inside a California prison system, risking his career and life to become a whistleblower against the institution he once trusted.⁣ ⁣ Richie's links - ⁣ https://www.facebook.com/richard.caruso.90⁣ ⁣ Do you want to be a guest? Fill out the form https://www.insidetruecrimepodcast.com/apply-to-be-a-guest⁣ ⁣ Go to GoodRanchers.com and use code INSIDE to get free meat for life, plus $25 off your first order.⁣ ⁣ Get 10% sitewide for a limited time. Just visit https://GhostBed.com/cox and use code COX at checkout. ⁣ ⁣ Send me an email here: [e-mail]⁣ ⁣ Do you extra clips and behind the scenes content?⁣ Subscribe to my Patreon: https://patreon.com/InsideTrueCrime ⁣ ⁣ Check out my Dark Docs YouTube channel here -⁣ https://www.youtube.com/@DarkDocsMatthewCox⁣ ⁣ Follow me on all socials!⁣ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/insidetruecrime/⁣ TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@matthewcoxtruecrime⁣ ⁣ ⁣ Do you want a custom painting done by me? Check out my Etsy Store: https://www.etsy.com/shop/coxpopart⁣ ⁣ Listen to my True Crime Podcasts anywhere: https://anchor.fm/mattcox ⁣ ⁣ Check out my true crime books! ⁣ Shark in the Housing Pool: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0851KBYCF⁣ Bent: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0BV4GC7TM⁣ It's Insanity: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B08KFYXKK8⁣ Devil Exposed: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B08TH1WT5G⁣ Devil Exposed (The Abridgment): https://www.amazon.com/dp/1070682438⁣ The Program: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0858W4G3K⁣ Bailout: https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/bailout-matthew-cox/1142275402⁣ Dude, Where's My Hand-Grenade?: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0BXNFHBDF/ref=tmm_pap_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=1678623676&sr=1-1⁣ ⁣ Checkout my disturbingly twisted satiric novel!⁣ Stranger Danger: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0BSWQP3WX⁣ ⁣ If you would like to support me directly, I accept donations here:⁣ Paypal: https://www.paypal.me/MattCox69⁣ Cashapp: $coxcon69 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Not available in all states. Have you ever looked at some of the most successful women and wondered how did she get there? And how does she make it all work? Well, here we have some answers. I'm Karen Feinerman, the host of how she does it. You may have seen me on CNBC's Fast Money. Every woman I admire has a story, a pivot that challenged her, a risk that paid off. On the podcast, I sit down with CEOs and industry leaders who are carving their own paths,

and they share with us how they build lives of impact, meaning, and financial success. So join us, subscribe to how she does it with me, Karen Feinerman, wherever you listen to podcasts. We shouldn't be putting these guys out on these yards and shooting them. And I went into these files of inmates I knew had been shot, and I'm putting them in my uniform. I realized it went all the way to the director of corrections. So it contacted the FBI. And I was just fortunate to expose it without it costing my life. Explain to me exactly what is the gladi air fights.

Well, originally it was the integrated yard program in which they integrated different races and gangs that had been at war with each other for years and other prisons. But in those other prisons, they were in their own isolation yards with their own race. When they came to Corcoran, they integrated these gangs and they put them out there on these small yards together. So what happened was these fights were so predictable every day based on their gang affiliation that we were able to predict who was going to fight, who was whose enemy. So officers took it upon themselves sometimes to set those fights up and then cover them up, like in Preston Tate. These inmates knew that basically they had to come out and get involved in a physical education

to save face amongst their own gang. So why exactly are these officers allowing this to happen? It's all about power. It's about respect. We want them to know we're running this. You're not running anything. We don't care if you're the head of the Mexican Mafia or the head of the Airing Brotherhood,

we run this program. I'll give you an example. We had an incident in which an officer was feeding the top tier. And this one inmate said, hey, officer, such as such, my oatmeal's cold. Well, the officer just kept feeding. going down the cells. He's like, hey, didn't you hear me?

My oatmeal's cold. He can't come out. It's maximum security. Yeah. The officer was ignoring that inmate. And then finally, the inmate yelled out, well, fuck you, right? The officer said, what did you say? Now, there's the disrespect.

So now at 1 o'clock that afternoon, that inmate's going to go out to that exercise yard, that small yard. Guess who's up in the gun position? The officer up at that tier that got disrespected. So now, just because of that little disrespect, that inmate's coming out to exercise, not knowing him saying, fuck you to that officer, now he's going to be under the gun. And so that's the message being sent.

What would happen is, Matt, when you have law enforcement or anybody that is in a use of force situation, there's a gray area to all they're going to have to do is articulate. Well, I felt great bodily injury is about to occur. Because inmate Smith was 6-4, Inmate Jones was 5-8, in-may-Smith picked in-may Jones up and was going to pile drive them. Therefore, I shot him with a mini-14.

Okay, good shoot. That's how it always was. Right. So all I'd have to do is articulate that to justify me shooting a lethal round. Up in that tower that I'm working in, we have three weapons, 37-millimeter that shot what we call knee-knockers,

the wooden blocks. There's like five of them. And that's what the inmates always wanted was the knee-broad blockers. We also had an H&K rifle, 9mm, that bullet would go in you and explode and not come out and hit the victim. I also had a weapon the mini 14, full metal jacket, that would go through you and the victim and bounce around that yard. All I had to do is articulate based on what I saw in that yard to justify the use of force that I was going to use. And I was always blessed, good shoot. Well, guess what?

Other people were shooting with lethal rounds. I had the reputation of shooting the blocks. I said, there's no way that I'm going to shoot another human being knowing that we're setting up these wrecks. We're setting up this altercation by knowing that Inmate Jones and Inmate Sanchez fought yesterday, therefore their salaries are coming out tomorrow and fighting the next day. So that's how they became predictable that it was. It was just you get, you get into that, that comfort zone of that violence and you're blinded, like, well, this is what the Department of Cruces wants. This is what the governor of the California wants.

And so. I mean, is that what you're being instructed to do? Yeah, absolutely. So it's just, are they trying to acclimate these guys to living together? Is that the whole thing is they're saying, if they can't acclimate here in the shoe, they can't be put back on the main line. That's what they would justify. That's how they justify the integrated yard program, right? So it's almost like SS officers standing in Auschwitz,

watching people walk into gas chambers and no one's speaking up. You become part of it. Everything's being paid by the Department of Corrections, the Jet Skies, the pool, the house, everybody in the town you live in is copland with five prisons around it. So everybody's telling you you're doing a great job, right? and then the sergeant would call down and say, how many fights are you going to have today? Well, we'll have one at 9 o'clock,

and we'll have one at 1 o'clock. And they're like, the sergeants were like, okay, we'll kick the fighters out, both of them at 9 o'clock, we'll get the paperwork out of the way, and then we'll be able to kick back the rest of the day. So it went from that to predict it. So one day I'm in the gym,

and I'm working out with some correctional officers, and we're going to shoot Sanchez at 8, and then we'll shoot Smith at one. And there was police officers working in the bench. You go, excuse me? You're going to do what? Oh, yeah, yeah. We know they're going to fight.

So we're going to shoot them. I say, I'm shooting them with the blocks, you know, but we can't stop from coming out, right? And these cops are looking at it's like, what the hell is going on down at that prison, right? I was still drinking the Kool-Aid, right? But I was shooting the blocks every day. I had shot in the blocks more than any other officer at Corcoran.

I think I shot him over 40 times. Within the years we're talking from 88 to 94, seven inmates have been killed by officers with bullets. Over 40 were shot, some paralyzed, right? So I'm shooting the blocks. And my homeboys that I'm working with is you need to shoot a real round. You need to send a message. Because they know you're going to shoot those blocks.

So you need to send a message with a real bullet. I'm like, fuck that. I said, I am not going to shoot another man over and I know they're going to go out there and do this, right? But you also know they're not, they're doing it because if they don't do it, then their gangs turn on them. Absolutely. So you're either running out there and getting into a fist fight and possibly being shot with the block gun, or you're going to, or if you don't do it, then you may get stabbed by, you may end up getting stabbed, whatever.

When you go back on mainline or the next day, you may end up getting stabbed by one of your, by one of your own gang members. Absolutely. So the public doesn't understand that, Matt, the peer pressure that the inmates are dealing with amongst their own gangs. That's the only reason they're coming out. So once I'd shoot them with the blocks, they'd have the abrasions of the blocks. And they're walking back to the cell. Like, that's a badge of courage. Like, that's right, brother.

I took care of business. So, and my guys were like, that's three hours of paperwork. Once you shoot a weapon in that environment, it's three hours of paperwork. You've got to do an incident package. Okay. So the sergeants were like, let's get the paperwork out of the way. It's NFL Sunday, games come out at one, let's shoot them at 10, right? So this was the mentality, right?

That all of a sudden, I had heard about this one shooting named Martinez, right? And I heard that- This is an inmate? An inmate Martinez in the shoe, and they shot them, and it was questionable. But I hadn't seen the video, right? And I just kind of let it go, and I'm still drinking the Kool-Aid thinking we're doing the right thing. And then all of a sudden, this inmate named Preston Tate was shot. And I had officers that were there say, we called over across the prison and had this female officer come over.

Because we wanted to watch this fight. And they're all up there in the gun booth. They kicked the black inmates out, inmate Tate and inmate James, and then they kicked two Hispanic inmates out. Well, the Hispanic inmates charged across the Yonge. yard and gotten a physical altercation with the two black inmates. The Hispanics were the aggressors. And this officer's telling me this, right? And so the officer in the booth shot the blocks and then immediately shot the 9mm

and shot Tate's head off. Okay. So I'm hearing this that shot Tate's head. The black inmate. Okay. And so I'm hearing this saying, I say, I have to go to the library and pull up the fish to see what the press release was on this. incident. So I go to the library and the prison statement was the African-American inmates failed to heed

warning. They were the aggressors. There was a possible weapon on the yard. Therefore, necessitating a shot being fired where the officer missed and it hit Tate and a head causing his death. I knew it was all bullshit. Those African-Americans were the victims. So I knew the whole report was bullshit. There was no weapon on the yard. They were justifying the use of force, right? So I go to my lieutenant, and his name was Rig, and he was another Marine. I said, this is all bullshit. I go, what we're doing here is bullshit. I go, all these fights should not be happening. We shouldn't be putting these guys out on these yards and shooting them, right? And therefore, furthermore, I was getting ready to be promoted to sergeant. And I had the most shootings with the blocks.

They wanted, like I said, they wanted me to send a message with a real bullet because they wanted me to get blood on my hands to be part of them. Right. So I refused to do it. So I went up my chain of command and said, this is wrong what we're doing here at Corcoran. And they're just hushed us away, hushing us away. You know, I didn't realize how much time I was wasting going to the grocery store until I stopped going. You go in for one thing, leave with 10, and somehow you still don't have dinner figured out. That's one reason I like good ranchers.

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Good Ranchers.com. American Meat delivered. So when I would work a double, I'd work midnight. I'd check out keys to records and I would go into records with my flashlight. And I went into these files of inmates I knew. have been shot and I'm running off copies and I'm stealing pictures and I'm putting them in my uniform to take to my house. I'm gathering all these evidence because I know the inmates that were involved in these shootings and I want to show what's happening at Corcoran, right?

So when you talk to the sergeant and my lieutenant. I'm sorry, you're a lieutenant. So you go to him and he just, what does he say? He just says. Well, he looked in it. He looked into it and he agreed with me. He goes, go get the incident reports. Okay. So he was on board with me. His name was Lieutenant Rigg, and he was a former Marine also. Okay.

So your goal, what is your goal at this point? My best, our intentions were, let's take this up our chain of command. To get it stopped. To get a stop. And our people will recognize this is ludicrous, what's going on here. We need to stop this, right? And we were hushed away. So that's when I started going into files and stealing the evidence and putting it at my house, right?

So what are you thinking at that point? Are you thinking at that point? Because you know they're not on board. No. So going up higher probably may not be on board either. I realized that went all the way to the director of corrections, maybe to the governor's office, right? And I needed to get this outside eyes on this. So contacted the FBI.

And the FBI knows that I have this evidence at my house. How do you contact the FBI? You just call them? We had somebody, we were both scared, me and the lieutenant. So we had another supervisor, contact them, and let them know. Caruso's got evidence at his house of these wrongful deaths. Okay? So then I get a call from the FBI.

And it was a special agent Murphy and Oswald. And they go, Officer Crusoe, we understand that you have evidence at your house of shootings at Corcoran State Prison. I said, yes, I do. They go, can we meet with you and we share this evidence with me, us? I'm like, absolutely. Matt, at this time, I'm thinking, we're. We're all going to be on the same page. We're all going to come to the conclusion that these inmates should not be getting shot.

And the procedure of the integrated yard policy is bad. And we need to abandon it, right? So I agree that to meet with the FBI that come to my house. And so I go to work. And that night, my conscience starts playing on me. I'm at Corcoran at this time. This is 1994. I'm at Corcoran for five years at this time.

So I've been in many use of force incidents, cell extractions, kicking ass, taking names, but I've always stayed within the guidelines of my job. You know what I mean? They'd always used me over and over and over. So the last person they ever thought that was going to come forward and basically blow the whistle on the prison would be me. And the only reason I was able to do that because my warden was loyal to me, right? So it started playing on my conscience that if I talk to the FBI,

they're going to kick this warden's door in, and they're going to just humiliate them, right? So during that shift, I went up and I knocked on the warden's door. Nobody is in that environment, you have to go up the shade of command. Right. You can't just go to the warden. And I walked in, and he goes, Crusoe, come on in. And I walk in, and I had my head bowed.

And I said, sir, I said, I think my career in law enforcement is over. And he looked at me, he was, what are you talking about? I go, all these shootings, all these killings here at Corker. and they're all unnecessary. I go, we're setting these scenarios up. He goes, Cruz, let me worry about that. I go, but I got a meeting in the morning with the FBI and Matt, his face turned white.

He goes, I said, I've taken evidence out of this institution and I have it at my house. And he's looking at me scared, right? I go, what do you think I should do, boss? And he looked at me and he realized he couldn't tell me not to meet with the FBI. Yeah. He said, you do what's in your heart, right?

So I finished my shift. I go home. I tell my wife, my daughter, she's five at the time. And I said, tomorrow morning, you guys got to disappear. I said, I have to do something with the FBI. And I go, I go, Janine, I go, you know what I've been collecting. You know that I'm trying to stop this violence. And she just goes, can't you just get another job?

And I'm like, no. I said, why should I get another job? I've done nothing wrong. And this just continues. And it's just going to continue, people are getting killed. And so the next morning, she gets my daughter ready and they leave. And within 30 minutes, there's a knock at my front door. And these two plainclothes FBI agents are standing there.

And I invite him in. And at this point, I have all the evidence laid out on my bed in the back, in my bedroom. And I walked them back there. And I'm telling them about each incident. and the abuses, and the female FBI agent is nervous, and she starts pacing. And I recognize that she's nervous, and I said, what's wrong? She goes, you want me to tell you what's wrong?

I said, yeah, she goes, you went to your warden. And you told them that you have this evidence at your house. I go, well, can't we just all work together and stop this violence? And she said, Richard, it doesn't work that way. She goes, when you told your warden that, you basically admitted that you stole this state property out of this state institution. He called the Director of Corrections who notified federal investigators or state investigators, and there's two cars, two state agents on their way to your house right now, as we're standing

here, they're going to kick your front door in and they're going to seize this state property unless you hand it over to us now and start this federal investigation. Matt, I just looked at them. I got a garbage bag. I started throwing everything in a garbage bag. And now I got all this evidence in the garbage bag. and I hand it to the FBI. We start walking out the front door of my house in Hanford, California,

and two state cars pull up, screeching up. I'm standing behind the FBI. I work for the two cars that pull up. I'm part of that family, not the FBI family. But now I'm standing behind the FBI, and they get out and they go, SSU, they go FBI. They go, he works for us. They go, where are you going to take him?

The FBI goes, you don't need to know. They go, what are you going to talk to him about? they go, you don't need to know. They go, this is a federal investigation. Yeah, supersede state investigation. They go, this is a federal investigation. Now, you need to stand down. And the SSU, the one SSU agent,

walks right between the FBI, like parts of him like the Red Sea, and gets an inch from my face like I'm a cartel drug dealer and says, did you give him that stuff? And I looked at him like, yeah, isn't that what we're supposed to do? He goes, he shook his head and disgust. and FBI threw me in their vehicle. These two agents were told to back off. They got in their vehicles.

Now there's a 35-mile ride to Fresno. And we're driving, and these two are in a hot pursuit, these two cars, right? The FBI is calling in their plates, calling in saying, we can't believe they're not backing off. We've ordered them to back off. They said, Richard, there's two scenarios playing out here. Either one, they're not state agents, maybe private investigators, or two, what you have in this bag

is going to bring down the House of Cards at Corker State Prison. So then they whisked me up into the FBI office at Corker, or in Fresno, and these two show up at the desk. We want to talk to our employee. They said, no, the head of the FBI come out and said, if you don't leave, we're going to arrest you, that you're impeding a federal investigation. They go, well, he works for us.

We just asked me if he's going to talk to us. So the head of the FBI comes around the corner where I'm at, and he's like this, Matt, he goes, do you want to talk to the SSU agents right now? He's shaking and said, no to me. I said, not right now. I don't. And he comes back, he goes, you guys need to leave,

but we're going to arrest you. So now the feds, I'm with the feds for probably six hours. And I laid it all out. Everything that I did, everything that I took, why I did it, why I'm trying to stop the violence. and why I'm trying to stop the violence is I'm going to kill somebody and 100% get away with it. I'm getting promoted to sergeant who are in my happy little life. All I got to do is shoot and kill an inmate.

And the only person that was going to hold me accountable is God. And that was the only thing that was weighing on me is I couldn't, my moral compass of everything I was raised with for my father and my brother and seeing my name. And this is not who I am. I didn't sign up to do this. These people are human beings. That's my brother out there. That's my brother Tony out there on that yard. And so I said, I have to stop it.

So I interviewed the FBI for six hours. They realized this is going to be huge, right? And after we're done, the son's going down. They go, we're going to bring you in front of a federal grand jury in a couple of days to get your testimony on record to cement it. So they, 35 miles back to Hanford. and we pull up and the sun's down, right? And like I said, the whole neighborhood is correctional officers

and people that work at the prisons. Well, the gate on the side of my house is flapping. So the FBI says, stay in the vehicle, they pull their weapons, and they're out there clearing this around my house. My wife sees someone with weapons in the backyard. She starts screaming in the house. So I jump out of the car and I run in the house, and she jumps in my arm.

She goes, what is going on? I said, baby, I'll tell you, just calm down. I go, this is the FBI. And so the FBI came and said, Richard, we'll call you tomorrow, right? So I said, okay. So what was the gate? It just happened to be open? It just happened to be open.

Okay. So then I start explaining to her my day. And within 15 minutes, Matt, there's the doorbell rings. Ding, dong. It's 10.30 a night. I grab my pistol and I hold it to my, I go to the door and I crack the door. Guess who it was? The warden?

The two state agents. Oh, okay. And they go, you work for us. why don't you want to talk to us? And I said, why did you act like you did with the feds? Why aren't you all working together to stop this violence? They go, Richard, it just doesn't work like that. He goes, they said, will you please come down to the police station and tell us what you gave the FBI?

I said, he goes, he was, this is the weirdest fucking thing ever. It's none of your business. You've already been told by the FBI that this is an FBI investigation. You've already been told that I don't want to talk to. you. Absolutely. He goes, but you got to come back to work. He goes, you got to come back to work. And I'm like, okay, so I want to do the right thing. So I agree to go to the Hanford Police Department. They take me down there. It's like 12, 30, 1 in the morning. And they start the tape recorder. And for the next three hours, I let them know what I stole, what I did. And as the one

investigators interview me, the other one's like this, the one like this going, oh boy. Right. I gave them pictures, instant reports, VHS tapes of real shootings. But you're also admitting to what's, is that, is it theft from a, not if you're trying to, if you feel crime has occurred. Yeah. Yeah. So that there is, I'm wondering. Yeah, I'm wondering what the.

They can't bring charges against me if I was doing it for my own personal gain. But if you're doing it to expose like a crime, then it's, okay, then it's different. Okay. So the feds were covering me there, right? Right. They would have arrested me in a minute at the state. Yeah. So they just knew that this is horrible, right?

What you gave them, right? So they put me in the back of their car. Can I say one more thing? Sure. Sorry. Yeah. By boy, you shouldn't have told the fucking warden. Because I'd be thinking immediately they're going to start fucking throwing away.

I don't know if they did or not. But in my mind, I'd be thinking they're going to be covering their tracks, getting their story straight, as opposed to had they known nothing was going on when the FBI. guy puts their whole case together, indicts everybody, swoops in and grabs everybody, they're dumbfounded. But by giving them, you gave them the heads up because you thought that your warden was a decent person and it wasn't. It was a decent person to me. But he didn't understand, or you thought he did not understand what was going on when in fact, he absolutely knew what was going on. And Marines don't do that to the people, their people. We don't, we don't chop off the heads

of our people in our chain of command. Well, that was a mistake. That was a huge mistake. And that's why the FBI was pissed at me. So now I've cooperated with the SSU, state investigators, and with the FBI that day, now the state investigators put me in their car. And I know the route back to my house. Well, they start heading to the outskirts of town, right?

We didn't have cell phones. I'm like, where are we going? They go, we got to take care of some business. And they head out to this cotton field. And now they got me on the side of the road by this cotton field. And I'm thinking, they're going to shoot me. This is it, right? There's a pay phone.

They get on the pay phone. They call the director of corrections, and they said, we got Caruso in the car. It's not going to be good. Boss, it's not going to be good. This is what he gave the feds. And the director said, well, tell him to go to work, and we'll figure this out, right?

I go, this is over for me. It's over. But I thought you were going to kill me from the side of the road by the cotton field. So they take me back home. and Word gets out amongst all the staff and inmates that something's happening, right? The press hasn't picked up on it yet, and nobody knows who the whistleblowers are. The warden does, right?

He knows it's me, and he knows it's a lieutenant rig. And so now Word's starting to get around. And one night I'm working midnight shift, and I get a call from Central Control that the cops are at, police are at my house. and what was going on is we had officers, we assume, it was obviously them. The officers that were involved were banging on the windows of my house, acting like they're going to come inside and my wife was hiding in the closet with my daughter and they start banging real soft and start banging.

And they were like on four corners of my house, scaring my family, death threats over the phone. And I'm at work. I mean, I'm still at work, right? You can't get phone calls while you're at work. Well, they called me to let me know. The police are at your house. Your wife's okay.

And I had talked to the police. And he goes, yes, we've seen footprints in the flower beds. There were people out here, Richard. So the threat that I'm under is real. And going to the supermarket, my wife's getting these dirty looks from these other officers' wives. Like, you know, he's tarnishing all of us by cooperating with the FBI, right? You know how to get around that.

don't shoot unarmed inmates. Maybe don't, maybe don't, don't, don't, uh, arrange opportunities to be able to fucking murder people. Maybe,

maybe, I mean, granted. And then, then you don't have to be, you don't have to be, you don't have to be concerned about being tarnished. Exactly.

But they're all drinking the Kool-Aid of the California Department of Corrections, big money. And it's like that they were blinded. They were living there, who cares mentality? Well, who cares until it happens to one of your family members?

They don't realize that 75, 80% of inmates are incarcerated, have an alcohol or drug problem, and probably 95% of them didn't have the defense that OJ had. They had public defenders, or they pleaded to whatever a violation in another year. They don't understand the system. So I was under the threat of the whole community. But let me tell you this, Matt, there were people in the community like yourself. There were good officers in the community that made it me able to hold it together mentally.

to where if I thought that the community hated me, everybody hated me, I don't know if I could have held it together emotionally because I was destroying everything, my family, everything. And once I went down that path, I knew my career was over, right? But I didn't care because I knew I couldn't kill another human being

and have that on my conscience unless that inmate was doing something wrong. Then I could shoot somebody and protect another person. But I'm not going to put them out there and I know the wreck's going to happen. So what happened is I get a phone call at my house from a reporter named Mark A. Rex. And he goes, Richard Caruso, I know who you are?

And I go, who are you? He goes, I name is Mark A.Rex. I work for the Los Angeles Times. He goes, I want to tell, I'm telling the story on Corcoran, and I know what you did. And I know what happened at your house. I want to tell your story, Richard. I said, I'm not interested. He goes, Richard, stop.

He goes, before you hang up, he goes, nobody in case. California knows who you are or what you did. And if something happens to you or your family, Richard, nobody's going to know. He goes, let me tell your story to California and give you some kind of assurance. At least if something happens, they're going to know what you're involved in. And I talked it over with my wife, and I said, he's right. He goes, I need to educate the public of what's going down. Yeah, that media attention is actually keeping you safe.

Absolutely. In that case. I didn't have any idea. Because it's not like, it's not like you. were going to the media, telling the story, and then notifying all the people that might want to harm you. No, the people that want to harm you already know what's going on. This is now shedding light on them. It's a better chance for them to be like, fuck, we better not keep fucking with this guy because now the light, now everybody knows what's going on.

They know what's us. Absolutely. So I agreed to interview with Mark. I didn't know who he was. I didn't trust him. I said, meet me at this hotel in Fresno. It was old. It was off a skid row and I knock on the door and this guy opens the door. He goes, Richard Crusoe. I'm Mark A. Rack's. I said, I'm Richard Caruso. We go inside this hotel room. For the next two hours, I tell him my story. And within a couple days, my story's out on the front page of the Los Angeles Times. Now, everybody knows what I've done, right? And so I come into work. The inmates know, like I said, we got 5,000, almost 6,000 inmates.

Worse than the worst. I don't know if you ever saw them work. movie American Me, but I had all those guys in my unit. I had Joe Morgan, all of them, all of them. And one of the heads of the Mexican Mafia, he's coming to yard. He's in what's called a walk alone yard because he's such a high profile leader in the Mexican Mafia. His name was Benjamin Peters, Topo, bringing him out to the yard. I'm the gunner. And bringing him out, he's in shackles. They unshackle him through the door. I hit the door. He goes out to the yard. and he looks up at me and he says, we know who you are.

I go, what are you talking about? Mexican mafia. He goes, we know what you did. And I said, I don't know what you're talking about, Topo. He goes, nothing's going to happen to you, Caruso. And I'm like, it just hit home right there. I go, like, wow, the people that everyone thinks are the bad guys are now going to be the ones that are going to protect me because I've got to go to work in this environment.

And there's no, and they put it. a hit on me to be killed in that environment, the guards that were involved, and they go, we know about that. We know about that. It's not going to happen. So, okay, you skip that part. The guards, so the, you. People involved, they put a hit on me to be killed inside the prison.

So they wanted some of the, one of the inmates to harm you? Yes, yes. And he was telling me, it's not going to happen. That's the pull and the power, the MA and the Mexican Mafia have in the California prison system. And I was like, I was dumbfounded that my family wanted to basically kill me. And the people that I hated in the beginning were the ones that were going to protect me because they appreciated what I did and what I sacrificed. And so I was like, wow. So the death threats kept happening. So I got an emergency transfer from Corcoran up to Vacaville. Okay. So now I'm working in Vacaville.

I roll in the first day. I was just to say they're going to kind of be the same, aren't they? Well, I walk in the hole. I'm going to work in the hole in an ad seg. And one of the officers goes, do you want to see yard fight today? I'm like, do you know who I am? I'm like, what did you say? He goes, yeah, we're putting the fighters out there in the ad seag yard.

And that way we have the rest of the day to get back. I'm like, really? So I'm calling the FBI saying they're doing the same thing up here in Vacaville, right? So I go back home, I'm living in Napa at the time, and my doorbell rings, and I go to the door, and this guy standing at my doorbell at the door, he goes, Richard Crusoe, my name's Lowell Bergman with 60 minutes. I want to tell your story. And I'm like, I'm not interested.

I go, I don't even believe you're with 60 minutes. He goes, you call Mark A. Racks from the L.A. Times. So I go, just stand by. I call Mark. I go, there's a guy at my house named Lowell Bergman, and he says he wants to tell my story about Corker and he goes, Richard. He goes, trust the law. He goes, you got 60 minutes right there on your doorstep. Tell your story to America.

So for the next week, Lowell was the producer for Mike Wallace. Okay. And Mike Wallace and Don Hewitt that ran 60 minutes, they weren't just going to put their reputation on me. I had to show them evidence with that whole week of, this is who I am, this is what I've done, and this is what I've given the FBI. So they've done a week of research on it, and then Mike flies out. So Mike Wallace flies out. We're in Fresno.

And Mike's very cordial to me, very nice. And him and Lowell are not really getting long. You know, they're just not that they're not getting long, but I could tell there's not much conversation between them, right? I'm like, what's going on? Lowell is Mike's producer. And so Mike is treating me very nice. We're going out to dinner, you know, and at the end of the,

third day of doing the interview, I told him, I said, my father thinks I'm going to be killed. He's 80 years old, old Italian man in upstate New York, and he's fear that I'm going to die. And it's like 11 o'clock at night. He goes, Richie, he goes, come on. He takes me over to pay phone. He goes, call your dad. And he goes, what's your dad's name? I said, Angelo.

So I call my dad. That's like two in the morning in New York. And he answers to the phone. He goes, hello. I go, dad. I go, it's me. I go, I'm here. with 60 minutes and someone must have talked to you and I hand it to Mike Wallace and he goes

Angie he goes yeah who's this he goes this is Mike Wallace he goes bullshit he goes this is Mike Wallace for 60 minutes and we're here and we're going to watch Richie's back the whole way through so my dad really I really appreciated that with Mike doing that right I'm like wow so right right now Matt what I have that other whistleblowers don't have is the power of the media and I can pick up the phone to CBS, San Francisco Chronicle, everybody's on my story. Where other whistleblowers don't have that fortune

so they just get starved out, they get discredited, they end up getting up to yourself or whatever. But I had the blessing of the national media at my disposal. So I go back and my story is not airing on 60 minutes. It's been two months. I'm like, what's going on?

I trust the 60 minutes. So I get a phone call from the San Francisco Chronicle from a reporter there, Pam Podger, and she goes, Richard, they're not going to tell your story at 60 minutes. They're going to throw in the shit can. I said, what are you talking about? I go, Mike promised me. Mike promised me he's going to tell my story. They go, no, they're mad at Lowell, Lowell Bergman.

I said, why are they mad at Lowell Bergman? They go, this is Lowell's last piece for 60 minutes, and they're going to stick it to him, and throw your piece in the shitter because Lowell went to the New York Post and told that he had Jeffrey Wagbon and the Philip Morris whistleblower and that he had that in 60 minutes isn't going to run that piece. I'm like, what? I go, I call CBS Evening News. I go, I need to speak to Mike Wallace.

He said, who's this? I said, it's Richie Caruso. Mike is on the phone. Richie, how are you? This and then I go, Mike, listen, stop with all this. I go, why is it my piece airing? I said, well, we're doing editing and this and that. I cut the shit.

Yeah. I said, you're mad at Lowell Bergman. I go, I know what you're doing the Lowell. He goes, well, what do you mean? And I told him, I go, he has Jeffrey Weigbond, the whistleblower from Philip Morris, and you won't run that piece because you're being feared, you fear being sued from Philip Morris. I go, if you don't run my piece, Mike, I'm going to date line tomorrow, and I'm going to let him know about this. They go, he goes, I'll call you back.

Within about 20 minutes. He goes and he talks to Don Hewitt. Within 20 minutes, he caused me back. He goes, we're going to run your piece next weekend. I had a threatened 60 minutes. Right, I know that. Little did I know that two years later, the movie The Insider with Al Pacino came out,

and Al Pacino played Lowell Bergman, and it was about 60 minutes and not running that story about Jeffrey Weigbond. And in the movie, The Insider, it made it look like Lowell Walker. away from 60 minutes, but he didn't. My piece was his last piece, only because I threatened. They were going to use it and trash Loew's last piece, but they didn't because I called. It's just kind of a slap in the face. To Lowell Bergman. Okay. A Lowell Bergman is a professor

at, I mean, he's taught, teaches journalists, journalism at Cal Berkeley. He invited me to come to his class and I spoke to his class. They did a Q&A for about an hour. And like I said, I had the power of the media, and the media basically protected me the whole ways. So now I come out on 60 minutes, and I'm living in Napa, California. I'm working at Vacaville Prison, and I get word from an officer of Vacaville. They found out who I was, and he's scared something's going to happen to me. So I said, you know, this is enough. and I went and I went to human resources.

I said, listen, I said, I have no problem doing my job, but you guys are taking no precautions and safeguarding me. And I went to the FBI and I said, what are you people going to do for me as far as safeguarding me? I mean, do you have like a program that you put me in until the trial's over? And the U.S. attorney was like, Richard, you're doing what you're supposed to do as a peace officer. Why would we put you in a special program when this is what a peace.

officer is supposed to do. I'm like, well, I'm getting death threats. I'm getting, my family's getting threatened. So the feds were not protecting me. The state wasn't protecting me. It was myself in the media. Mark ARAX in 60 minutes, they were the only ones protecting me by educating the public who Richard Crusoe was.

Right. So when that happened, I walked off the job and said, you know, I can't do it anymore. I can't be behind these walls because eventually something's going to happen. So the state, by the way, I want to mention that when you say you're saying behind the walls, I don't think people realize that it's not like you work at a target. You know, like the procedures that it requires just to get into the prison, like you, it's not like cops are walking by. It's not like that, like you are the police force within this confound.

found confines, but that there's, these prisons are not located like they're not, they're not a three minute drive from the local precinct. Like these, they're way out in the middle of nowhere. Right. They're, they're insulated from within that anything, and they're extremely dangerous. Like, it's not hard to have somebody walk into an area like, hey, go get such and such for me. Okay, no problem. You walk into an area. They lock the fucking door and then three inmates are allowed in that room and it's just you and three inmates. You don't have a gun. Right. You don't have shit. Right. And guess where they put me to work? Where? In the kitchen. Okay. By myself. With the knives and the cutlery or all the, all the fucking, yeah. No gunner, just me.

Yeah. It's, you know, it's, it's such a, it can be such a dangerous situation if the, if the guards, I mean, it could be dangerous if the inmates want you, want you gone, but it can be extremely, I'll tell you a good example of that. is, which people think, people don't realize this is the way it works, is that in the, in the, in the, inns, the guards are typically extremely polite to the inmates because these are inmates with life sentences that can kill the guard. They have nothing to lose, and it can be very dangerous for the guards. So the guards tend to be very polite and respectful to the inmates. You get to the medium, the guards are a little bit.

less polite. You get to the low, they're talking to you pretty shitty, like you're a real scumbag. You get to the camps, they talk to you like you're an absolute fucking dog. Because they can, because as you go down in custody, the inmates get less and less violent. And they know you're not going to bust the grape to get up the custody. Right. So they know they can talk to you however you want, because a guy at a low is not going to do shit to a guard, no matter how he talks to him. Why? Because I don't want to go to a, end up in a medium. I worked my way down from the medium or from the pen. So it's funny because people think it's the opposite.

Like if you're at the pin, the guards are super mean to you, but they're really not. Right. It's the opposite. But I'm saying that's how dangerous the situation is, is you have to have situational awareness. And if you're behind, if you're in a pen and someone wants you hurt and they're in a position of power, it's not hard to put you in a position, whether you're an inmate or a guard where you can be in a bad situation. where you could get hurt. Within seconds.

All right. And for me, people have done time, like level four inmates, maximum security inmates that are watching this podcast will be quick to tell you there's a big difference

between a convict and the inmate. And when you're on a level four yard, and you're amongst convicts, you're amongst men with lots of time. They don't want the cops up in their house. They don't want the cops in their face. and as an officer, you learn to manage these convicts with respect, and they appreciate the respect.

An inmate's going to snivel and whine about everything, and usually I would just let the lifers and the convicts manage their people, and that's how I was effective by being firm and fair, but having that respect with the inmates that had a lot of time or the shock callers and letting them know. I know what you have up in your cell. your radio is not yours, you probably got a tack gun or whatever. You don't want me up in that house, so manage your people.

And when my sergeant comes in a unit, grab a broom. You know, make me look good. I'll make you look good. But don't be sticking anyone when I'm here. Don't be killing anyone. And it's a weird mindset of respect between convict and officer, but it definitely exists. So you go to human resources. You say, listen, I can't do this.

You go to the FBI. They're like, you know. This is what you should be doing. This is, you're doing what any officer should be doing, Richard. So, you know, I'm caught with, they, they're forcing me out and they want me to medically retire. They want me out of there, okay? And they're, and so they're not going to help me in any way, the state. So they just want to write me off, give me half my, half my wages in retirement and my, in my benefits.

and just get them out of here, right? And I'm like, no. I go, I'm not going to accept this. I'm not going to accept that just because I came forward and did the right thing, there's nothing psychologically wrong with me. I can do this job, but you're making it sound like I can't do the job anymore.

So what they do is they send you to a state psychiatrist. And the state psychiatrist is a higher gun for the Department of Corrections. And they want the Department of Crouches wants that state psychiatrist, it's like hiring an expert witness in court. They work for the state. Yeah. So they want the state psychiatrist to say,

Crusoe is unable to do his jobs as a correctional officer. So when I went into the state psychiatrist, I required a VHS, the TV, and I put all the paperwork on his desk, and I made him watch 60 minutes, and I said, I can do this job. And he just, he couldn't believe it. He couldn't believe what he was seeing.

So in his evaluation, back to the Department of Corrections, was there's nothing wrong with this officer? You need to put him in a position where he's safeguarded until the trial is over with. And the state came back and said, we don't have a position for Officer Crusoe that is outside the walls. Well, we knew that they had positions like yard crews, transportation. They could have put me at the academy. But the bottom line, Matt, is they wanted me.

out of the department. Yeah. I was going to say there's plenty of places. There's tons of, tons of administrative jobs about for the Bureau of Prisons. Right. And the federal bureau, certainly every state that isn't even close to a fucking prison. Right.

So, so before I was on 60 minutes and my story was told in 60 minutes, I was trying to get an attorney to represent me, to fight for me, right? But these attorneys, they didn't want to take on the state of California because, you know, the state of California has endless funds, right? once I was on 60 minutes, I had attorneys coming to me. They wanted to be attached to the story.

So I got a law firm out of San Francisco. John Scott, he started representing me. And they filed a case in federal court, my case, in which I was being, my civil rights were being violated because I was on 60 minutes reporting these crimes and I'm being retaliated against. I'm not being protected. So when the state was trying to make me retire,

that was substantiating that you're not protecting him. So they were adding to her case. But I'm not sure if you're aware of the litigation and when you file a lawsuit or like a federal lawsuit, the process of summary judgment and then it goes in front of a judge. So when you file that lawsuit in a brief, the other side is filing their answers to your lawsuit to try to discredit you. That goes up to a judge. Now, I didn't know if that judge was in the Republican pocket.

or the Democrat box. I was a Republican. You know, I was all about, hey, tough on crime, doing the right thing. But the Republicans wanted me dead because they were about build more prisons, throw away the key. The Democrats were about, let's find an alternative to these nonviolent drug offenders that are filling our prisons up across America, right? So I'm like, I'm just kind of the guy in the middle.

And so I didn't know the judge that had my case at federal court in San Francisco is he a Republican? Is he a Democrat? Is he in the pocket of the Department of Corrections? I didn't know. So if you get over that hurdle of summary judgment and he gives you the blessing that you have enough evidence to go in front of a jury, then you don't know if a jury is going to award you whatever or nothing is guaranteed in that world. So I hadn't got to summary judgment yet, right? And I get a call from the Capitol in the Sacramento and from a state senator Richard Polanco's office, and he was the head of the Democratic Party. And the lieutenant governor at the time was Bustamante. And him and Bustamante were good friends, and they're both out of Los Angeles.

And Senator Polanco's people said, Richard, we're going to have hearings on the Department of Corrections and what's happening at Corkman State Prison. We need you. We need you to come in. We need you to meet with the senator, and we need you to educate the senator what you did. Basically, what I did with SSU and the FBI. And he goes, and we're going to change the department forever. So I said, I'll get back with you guys. So I called my civil attorneys, and I said, listen, I just got a call from the capital of the state of California.

And the head of the Democratic Party wants me to come up and meet with him. And another senator named Quentin Cop, he was the independent. He was going to be in these meetings. And I needed to let them know what I did. And my attorneys, my civil attorneys, like, absolutely not. you're not going up there. We filed the case. They're going to just chew you up and spit you out. They're going to get all the information and they're going to just discard you. I said, well, nobody's protecting me. The feds aren't protecting me. The state's not protecting me. The only one's

protecting me is the LA Times is 60 minutes. I go maybe if I go up there and cooperate and try to to show the truth to these politicians that someone will listen to me. So I disregarded what my attorney said, and I went up to the state capital in Sacramento, and I secretly met with these senators. And for days, I'm showing them evidence of what court was happening at Corcoran, and they're just, just dumbfounded. They're like, wow. So then they start having hearings, and I'm going to be one of the star witnesses in the hearings. And the whole, the state legislators are now Republicans, they're saying this is all hogwash. Governor Wilson is calling me a liar. and basically the Democrats were like, no, he's not a liar.

We're going to show you what's going on down there at Corcoran. For two weeks, they have these hearings in Sacramento at the Capitol. And I'm one of the star witnesses, and I got all the bad guys filling the whole courtroom behind me, snickering at me, staring at me. I have the national media in front of me with all their cameras, CBSE News, all these major outlets. And I'm sitting there telling my story as I am here today, and I'm sticking to the truth. And after I told my story, these senators started hammering the Department of Corrections because what happened was when I did what I did, the feds came in and spent millions of dollars

investigating this. And you've got to understand, this was going here for five years. For five years, bad, I don't know if every time I turn the key on my truck, is it going to explode today? Did I hurt some politician? What I did I blackened? And so the pendulum's way over here to do the right thing. And now it's starting to come to the middle to where both sides are looking at each other saying,

okay, well, we see indictments are going to come down on these officers, right? And I tell my story, they have the hearings, and these senators, Polanco, and they're hammering the department because out of 2,000 shootings at Corcoran, blocks and everything, we had over 2,000 shootings, they investigated one person, me, state. They didn't go in and reopen those other shootings and come after those officers and try to discipline them. Matt, they suspended me from work for 90 days

and I wasn't working at that prison anymore. So here the retaliation, these senators are seeing what they're doing. You know what I'm saying? And it's so obvious that I was able to prove how they're retaliating against me. At the time, I was putting myself through a six-month post-police academy. And before I went to this academy, I sat the head of the academy down and said, this is who I am. Can I have a life in law enforcement?

He's like, you're the type of officer we want. Absolutely. I said, but the state is going to try to tarnish me. And he goes, never going to happen, Richard. Two days before graduation, after six months, I'm standing in formation, and two white cars pull up to the police academy and the agents get out, and they're talking to the head of the academy, and they're pointing over at me. Do you know who he is?

You're going to let him graduate? And the director of the academy asked them to leave, and he called me into his office. He goes, Cadet Caruso, he goes, I am embarrassed what just happened, that they tried to tarnish you and tell me not to let you graduate. You're going to be an outstanding police officer. And I went and told my attorneys this, and the senators heard about this,

and they went after the department, how do you show up at his academy, two days before he's going to graduate and trying to tarnish him? And it was just consistent harassment by the Department of Corrections. They were trying to discredit me. But here's the best one.

Out of those 2000 shootings, the Department of Corrections fills out a memo and sends it to the FBI because they know that I'm going to be their prime witness. and they sent a memo over there saying, back on this day,

Officer Crusoe sent out this inmate that had hurt a younger person to be shot with the blocks. And so you might think twice before putting him on the stand. And I'm like, what?

So the senators had this memo and they were drilling the Department of Crutch. Who told you to send that memo to the Department of Corrections, and they're all pointing at each other. Like, nobody would admit it, right? So back up before the state, before the hearings in Sacramento, I get notified that indictments are coming down.

And I tell my wife it's over. They're going to indict, we're going to have peace, and they want to... That's just the beginning. Yes. The U.S. attorney that I'm dealing with for the last five years wants to meet me at my civil attorney's office in San Francisco with the two FBI agents that were in that car. We go there, and this is before the hearings in the Senate hearings.

And I'm sitting there with my wife, and the U.S. attorney comes in with the two FBI agents. Richard, this is the deal. We're going to indict. I spend four years, five years, man, I've been dealing with this. He goes, but the Department of Cresche has sent us a memo saying that you sent this inmate out there, and he got shot with the blocks. and you send him out there because he heard a kid. I was like, what?

I go, I never did that. I go, don't you see they're trying to tarnish me? They know I'm going to be on the stand. He goes, Richard, I'm offering you 46 years in federal prison. He goes, that's my offer. Slaps his book. They head out. My attorney's looking at each other going,

what just happened? And the one attorney goes, what just happened? It's called quid pro quo. They're going to get those eight officers. Now they're back in bed with the state, and they're going to get Caruso. So my wife's crying in there at the table, and I'm like, oh, my God, I told the attorneys,

I said, I got him on tape for years telling me I'm a hero, telling me I've never been a target of any investigation, saying if they did, if they had what I had, they were thrown in a dumpster, right? He goes, you got all those on tapes with the FBI? I go, yeah. He goes, I got just the guy. So there was a guy named Harold Rosenthal that was part of OJ,

and they had his, they contacted me and he goes, Richard, he goes, you had tapes? I said, yes, I got tapes. He was $10,000. I'll listen to those tapes. And I go, I don't have 10 cents. I don't have 10 cents. So I had to get $10,000 at credit. And I gave it to him, and he transcribed the tapes.

And he wanted a meeting with the U.S. attorney in the, in the FBI agents, down in Fresno. He goes down there, and they're all in there. after they offered me four to six years. And he goes, my client has been a hero. My client never did that. You know he never did that. He goes, furthermore, I've heard you, Agent Murphy on the phone telling him about a high-speed chase and about how you would have thrown everything in the dumpster, calling him a hero,

calling him never been a target of any investigation over all these years, asking him to steal stuff out of the prison. You used him. And the U.S. attorney said, stop. He goes, he's got take. He goes, yeah, he's got tapes. He goes, we're not going to indict Mr. Crusoe. They realized they were screwed because I was going to expose them. So here I am thinking the FBI's got my back,

and now they're going to throw the Department of Corrections of Cookie and get Caruso as they get the eight, right? So it's coming out that these eight officers got indicted, but guess who's paying for their defense are millions of dollars in defense, the state of California taxpayers? Now, if you get indicted by the feds, you think the taxpayers of Florida are going to pay for your attorney? No. So now the taxpayers are like, why are we paying millions of dollars to indict these bad officers, right?

So now that's all going on in the press. So that's when I get a call at my house again in Napa. They've accused me of being someone that set up a person that hurt a child. the feds offered me four to six years I basically gave him the finger and told them how I was disgusted in them and now I get a phone call at my house in Napa saying Richard Crusoe this is

Governor Davis's office there was an election between Governor Davis Gray Davis and Dan Lundgren Governor Davis was a Democrat got elected to be governor in California Richard Polanco went to him Senator Plonco went to him and went to the Department of Corrections, the director, and said,

we need to take care of Caruso. We need to take care of that guy. He did the right thing. And the governor called me at the house in Napa and said, Richard, thank you for what you've done. Thank you for everything you've done. You've changed department. As a result of what you've done, they don't put them out on the yards anymore. They put them in cages.

They changed the shooting policy. Now there's psychological evaluations for new high. hires, you've changed the department to be a better department. The shootings have stopped. Furthermore, I'm going to give you my attorney, my personal attorney, to sit with your attorneys, and I'm ordering the Department of Corrections to settle your civil lawsuit. Matt, I was like, wow. The people that my attorneys don't tell me, don't talk to them in Sacramento, are now making me whole again.

and I'm like, they're ordering the Department of Corrections to settle my civil lawsuit. So we go to the pyramid building in San Francisco, and the Department of Corrections is sitting on one side. I'm sitting on the other side of this table with my attorney and the governor's attorney. So for years, I'm sitting across from these same attorneys through depositions, and they're just glaring at me. They hate me, right? And so they're talking about this kind of money. you know, we gave him his retirement, we gave him his benefits. Yeah, he did the right thing.

But, Your Honor, he has nothing else coming. And then my attorney stands up and says, this guy's been a cop since he's been 18 years old. Why does he have to reach for his Burger King uniform just because he did the right thing? And then they put us in different rooms. And they make me an offer around $700,000. And I said, no, no.

And they go up to around $900,000. I said, no, no. I said, my career is over with. You ruined my career. I said, I'm going to leave here after my attorneys take 33 and a third with over a million dollars. We got to call the governor for this. So they call the governor and the governor gets on the phone and goes, Richard, I'm going to give you this.

It's the largest amount given to a whistleblower at that time in the state of California. And I wanted you to know how much I appreciate what you done. He goes, but don't rub our face in it. And I said, sir, I'm not. I'm not trying to rub your face in anything. I just want to go out with my life. And so he gives me the largest settlement to a whistleblower at that time, the state of California. And once that was agreed upon, $1.5.

$1.7 million. So at that time, now the Department of Corrections comes around the table and wants to hug me. These attorneys that have looked at me like I'm a piece of shit for all these years, and I felt like, get away from me. Get away from me, right? And the FBI is like, wait a minute. You told us he set up a yard fight. Now you're giving them the largest amount to a whistleblower.

They realized they got played. They were played. So now I get my settlement. I just want to put all of it behind me. The feds are dirty. The state is dirty. They're all got their own agendas. And I was just this officer, this Marine,

wanting to do the right thing trying to stop this violence, right? So I go back to my house in Napa. I'm working out at the gym, and I come home from the gym, and there's a white car sitting outside my house. He gets out, and he says, FBI, Richard. I go, I know who you are. I go, I know who you are. What else?

Yeah, I go, I know who you are. He goes, you know, we're getting ready to have the trial down in Fresno on those eight officers that got indicted. I said, guess what? I'm not interested. Now they want your help? Now they want my help again to go down and testify. I go, you got my testimony on the grand jury transcript.

You don't need my help. I go, it's going to be a circus. You have five prisons around that federal courthouse. It's going to be a circus. I don't want anything to do with it. I don't trust you, people. You're going to put me in federal prison over lies. The department said, he goes, we realize they played us.

We apologize to you. And I'm like, I don't believe you. And I just, I walked to you. He goes, we're going to subpoena you. I said, I don't care. You can speed in what you want. I walked in the house. I called CBS evening news, Mike Wallace.

I go, Mike, they want me to come down and testify. he said, Richard, listen. He goes, we're going to be in the front row. He goes, you started the ball rolling. You got to see it through. Yeah, I was going to say, you know, those guys, they got a better chance, a good chance of them getting away with it if you don't testify.

Absolutely. So I go, okay, Mike, I'll go testify. If you guys are going to be there, I'll testify. Because they knew the whole story, high-speed chase. I've played them tape recordings of the FBI talking to me about how we were chased at Fresno with me with the evidence. Right. Right.

So I said, okay, I'll testify. So they have Vordier where they're picking the jury down in Fresno at the Federal Corps House, and the Fresno B is covering this. I'm reading in the papers. And it says that the feds are letting people on the jury that have connections to prisons. One has this application in the Beegard, another one's sister is a nurse at the prison, another one's aunt works at the prison. I'm like, what's going on?

And people like, Richard, they're throwing the case before it even starts. Yeah. Because they don't want to open a Pandora's box of all these other civil lawsuits are going to come out of Corcoran from other inmates' families, and they just want this to go away, right? I'm like, unbelievable. So I go down to testify, and when I go walking into that courthouse, Matt, Canvas, I'm walking in.

I get in there, they see me coming. Now I'm the $1.7 million whistleblower in the States like, oh, shit, he's going to get up there and talk about this money. Right? And that means the jury is going to believe everything. We just gave them that money. Right. Right.

So when they see me coming, the defense attorneys for the state, they want to sidebar with the judge. And so they put me in a special room. And they tell the judge, we don't want to bring up that settlement. And the judge says, well, I'll tell you what. You know, we'll tell Mr. Cruz, so he can't talk about it. But Mr. U.S. attorney, if the state talks about it, talks about money, you can follow. So the U.S. attorney comes in and he says, Richard, don't talk about your settlement.

You can't talk about it. Just answer the questions, right? So I'm like, yeah, absolutely. I don't trust either one of them. Yeah, I just went out of there, right? I've already made a change in the department. It didn't matter if these officers are found guilty because the shootings have stopped now, right? I did what I needed to do.

So I get up there on the stand. They don't want to talk about incidents at court or prison. The defense doesn't want to talk about shooting. policies or why they had the integrated yard policy. The defense had a contract and they're waving it into the air to the jury. And they go, Richard, what is this? I said it's a contract with Paramount pictures. Paramount pictures. Ladies and gentlemen, the jury, this is all about a movie. This is all about a movie. And Mr. Cruz was mine that he's made up. That he's create high speed chase, Richard? Wow. It's going to make a great movie. I go, yeah, we were chased by the state.

They go, really? They said, ladies and gentlemen, the jury, we're going to put the FBI up here on the stand tomorrow, and they're going to tell you that Mr. Cruz was a liar, right? And he goes, Richard, how much do you tend to make if this movie gets made? I said, ballpark a little over $700,000. $700,000. Mr. Cruces, that's probably the most money you ever made.

And I looked at him, I go, they just gave me a bunch more. And he goes, he realized he messed up. Yeah. And he goes, it sits down. and Mike Wallace is looking at the U.S. attorney, stand up. Tell the jury why Richard just said that. Tell the jury that they just gave him $1.7 million. Never stood up, never followed up.

They want this case to die, right? So now Mark A. Rex of the LA Times and 60 minutes are pissed. They see what's happening inside this courtroom. I'm pissed. I get in my car, I go home. The next day they put the female FBI agent up there on the stand. they go, Agent Murphy, high-speed chase, you guys were getting chased by state investigators with cruiser on your car?

That sounds like a movie. She's like, well, my partner always, you know, drove fast. I don't know if I'd call it a chase. Well, Mike Wallace, in the L.A. Times, I've already heard her on tapes that I have saying it was so unprofessional. They were chasing us. Fear, fearful, right? She's changing her tone now.

So she gets off the stand and Mark ARAX goes up there and goes, you're a liar. I've heard you on tape talking to Richard about this high-speed chase. Their face turned white and she ran over to the U.S. Attorney's table. Verdict comes down, not guilty on the officers, right? I'm like, that's fine. I said, but there's no more shootings and policies were changed. The environment was changed to make it to make it a better environment for these kinds. convicts. I said, I could sleep with that, right? I never had a personal vendetta after any single

officer. It was the policy. It was I was going to kill somebody and get away with it and have to live with it. So I said, that's fine. And so the next day, I called the U.S. attorney, and I left a scathing voice message saying, you're just as dirty as the state. I should have never trusted you. I should have never trusted the FBI and shame on you. And he wrote me a letter, and he goes, Richard, he goes, what you did for the state of California is unheard of, and we appreciate it. He goes, furthermore, he goes, as far as the high-speed chase is concerned, two people can be at the same place at the same time and have different accounts and both be telling the

truth. And I'm like, that's not true. One of us is lying. Yeah. And that's not what she said before. Exactly. One of us should be held for perjury. And so I saw then that, you know what?

I was just a small pawn in this big chess game in which I did what I did with with pure intentions to stop this violence. And everybody had else, all the rest of the people had their own motives of why they wanted to use, how they were going to play this game. And at the end, they were going to pick me off, put me in prison for four years. And they were going to get these eight officers. And then the case was going to die in court. no other inmates could have lawsuits.

So vicarious liability, their biggest fear is that if they found guilty, all these shootings and the liability and the money the state would be paying out to these families, make this case go away. And that's what they did. So after that, you know, I decided, you know what? What do I going to do with the rest of my life, you know? And Paramount Pictures has bought my rights in a guy by the name of Mario Casar. and optioned my rights for four years.

And I never heard from, never heard from him. You know, I just got shelved. I got my rights back. And my agent's name was Mickey Freiber. And Mickey and I went down to Hollywood. And we did the Dog and Pony shows in the studios. And I walked in and we were getting ready to walk into Universal Studios. And a producer named Casey Silver, who was one of the heads of Universal,

had what was called a discretionary fund. he could green light a project right there. And before we walked in, you know, my agent's like, Richie, let me talk. Let me sell this, right? I said, okay. So we walk in and Mickey starts talking and said, you know, start telling him puts a 60-minute piece in.

And Casey's sitting there. Casey's looking over at me. He goes, I want to hear from Richie. So I stand up and I show him, I go, when I took Charles Manson out of his cell and shackles and Casey's like, you had Manson? I go, I had Manson, I had Sirhan, Sirhan, I had Juan Corona. He goes, I want this story.

He goes, we're going to buy this, Mickey. So then now Casey buys my story for Universal, and he pays a screenwriter, Universal pays a big money to write a script. Screenwriter comes to stage with me for a couple days, and he writes a script called Judgment. And I'm like, well, maybe this movie will get made, you know? And so now I've never been to this stage. and 9-11 happened.

And instead of Universal making my movie, Casey made the movie called Gile with J-Lo, bombed, and the latter 49. I got my rights back. I'm done with this Hollywood thing. Now, I'm like, they're just, you know, they buy people's stories, the movies never get made.

90% of them get shelved. And it's like, I'm done with it. But I mean, they buy your story, options. They give you some good money up front, and then they got a right to option it for two more years. And I went through all that, but it was like, it was exhausting. And I saw Hollywood as, you know, just a bunch of people that, you know, the movies that were being made were based on true story, uh, animation movies, put a rock in the movie and you know you're guaranteed this much money. You didn't have the authentic screenwriting like Citizen Kane or these stories.

screenwriters that were writing great scripts like Forrest Gump. They were just getting quick stuff out of the papers and the national news. So it's like, I'm done with this, right? So I moved and I moved on the East Coast and I'm sitting there and there was a show called The Dan Abrams Report. And Dan Abrams people were at the Michael Jackson trial in Los Angeles and the jury's out on Michael Jackson. And Dan Abrams wanted me to be on his show via,

a satellite to the trial to basically tell America, if Michael's found guilty, he's going to the Corcoran Protective Custody Unit. What's his daily routine going to be? So I'm there talking about, you know, what Michael's going to face during the day, and he's going to have to take a shower in front of other inmates, and a lot of inmates like Charles Manson and others are in there. And a lot of the inmates will try to get close to him and try to get in his trusted circle. And Michael's probably, you know, crap in his pants watching this.

because the jury's out. He doesn't know what's going to happen. And so the next day I get a phone call from MSNBC saying, Richard, there's a director in Hollywood that's trying to get a hold of us. His name is Rick Roman, Rick Roman Wa. And can we give him your number? I'm like, I already did the Hollywood thing. It's never going to happen.

And I go, yeah, you can give him my number. He calls me the next day from Hollywood. And he goes, Richard, he goes, I love your story. He goes, he goes, but nobody owns the rights. I go, nobody owns the rights. He goes, I would love to make this movie, this prison movie. He goes, I want to use your story as the basis. And he goes, but I don't know anything about prisons.

I go, I said, listen, Rick, I said, you know, I've been through the whole Hollywood thing. It's hard to trust anybody there. I go, if you want to meet me fly to where I lived, the next day he flew to where I lived. And we were in a hotel room. And basically, I handed him my rights because I was like, you know what? Maybe this guy can do something.

So we had these index cards, these white index cards on the bed, and I'm writing scenes to an unnamed prison movie, right? And he's just like, he's like, well, we got him here in level one. How do we get him in the shoe? And I'm creating all these scenes of the inmates. And so then he goes back to Hollywood.

And for the next eight months, probably two, three times a week, I'm educating in my gangs and the Mexican mafia, the Aryan Brotherhood, lowriders, and Texas Syndicate, and the black guerrilla, I'm educating this man out of prison.

Okay. And so probably nine months later, this is in 2007, he said, pack your shit. I go, what do you mean? He goes, we got green lighted. We're making a movie. I go, making the movie.

I go, are movies getting made? I go, he goes, it's called felon. He goes, I said, who's in it? He goes, Val Kilmer, Sam Shepard, Ann Archer, Stephen Dorff. I'm like, really? He goes, yeah, come out. You're coming out for eight weeks. So I go out there and, and, uh... Do you have an agreement with this guy? You hit the nail on the head. I didn't use my agent, and I had, we shook hands, and he guaranteed me, he would take care of me on the back end of the movie. Oh, no. Exactly. Exactly. Once everybody gets paid,

then I'm going to give, I'll take care of you. Huge mistake. Yeah. Man, a huge mistake. And I wanted to believe, just like I wanted to believe the feds and I wanted to believe the state. And I'm this, I'm just this guy from upstate New York that wants to believe and people are good people, you know?

And unfortunately, I did not have that kind of agreement. So I go out there, we make felon, he introduces me. This is the guy that all the prison scenes, you know, I, he, I, he, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, Me and him had a blowup on set in which it's probably the fifth week, and Val Kilmer's there. And Val and I, Val's on, we made the prison yard. We had it all made. And the longest yard had the part of the Santa Fe State Prison,

and then we bought it for three months to make felon. And so Val shows up. And, you know, Val, and they all knew that it's about my story. So I got treated a little bit differently, right? So I'm out there talking to Val on the yard, showing them how an inmate acts in the security housing unit on that yard, how they're pacing, how they're looking up at the gunner. And Rick, the director, yells at me, Richard, quit showing Val how to act. I'm the damn director of this prison movie. And I said, you might be the director, but this is my story.

You haven't, you didn't know shit about prison until you met me. And me and him got in this verbal confrontation. and unfortunately I was going to go home because I was just disgusted on how, you know, I was useful for all the information in the beginning. And then I was getting just set aside. You're using all my scenes that I wrote and everything in the prison movie that I created. And now you're going to take credit for it. And so then the next day, we shook hands and he gave me the whole camera crew.

He says, I got to do something this afternoon. Richard's the director. You follow Richard. Richard, I need these three scenes. Cell extraction, agassing, and two inmates arguing in holding cells. And all those scenes are going to be in the trailer, a felon. So he's basically telling me, yes, you, you know, I'm sorry, right? And I appreciated that. And I took the camera. I was in charge that day as a director. Did I get a credit as a director or a writer? No. And I should have. And so, but my whole thing, at was maybe this prison movie is going to get made. I've never been at this level, right? And I was all in all of this happening and not realizing what was really going on

was my story was being in bits and pieces were being taken, right? And so then we make the movie and felon comes out and it's well received. You know, my biggest thing, my biggest thing in the movie was I knew an American me that the Mexican office, was disrespected, and people that were involved in that movie were killed by the Mexican Mafia. So I wanted to make sure the inmates, because we had a casting call for extras in Santa Fe, New Mexico, so we had a gang members showing up. So we had to interview them and make sure there was peace between these different sections,

and we're getting ready to shoot a scene. I want to make sure we're not disrespecting these gangs. And I had this old Hispanic inmate. We had them out there on the shoe yard. He's like, hey, Crusoe. I need to talk to you, man. I'm like, listen, bro, we're getting ready to say action. We're getting ready to shoot.

No, no, I need to talk to you, bro, right now. I said, bro, is your problem? He goes, there's going to be a problem. I said, what's going on? He goes, you got to set up over here by the shitter on the yard. We can't be set up here by the shitter. He goes, our people will think that we hang out by the shitter. He goes, you got to move us.

And I realize the mentality that you're right. I go, we got to move you. So we moved them. we had a guy show up as one of the extras that we didn't know who was a serial killer in Santa Fe. And if you Google felon, serial killer in the movie Felon, you'll read about it. He had killed one or two people. And we didn't know who we didn't have time to do backgrounds. So he knew that he was coming to a movie called Felon.

And we had thousands of cells that we were walking amongst inside that prison, that he could have grabbed one of us. he could have grabbed a crew member, and he knew he was a serial killer. And after we made the movie Felon, he killed some more people, finally got caught, and it came out serial killer in the movie Felon. So it was the, so the whole experience of meeting some of the good people, Harold Perrinow, some of the good people that actors that were in the movie that took a pay cut because they loved my story and seeing the reception of inmates because I wanted you, Matt, when you watch felon,

to say, wow, that's how they cuff. Yeah, that's how it's done. Oh, that's how it's done. I don't want you rolling your eyes thinking, this is all bullshit. Yeah, every time I see a movie where they've got the bright orange jumpsuit, not that they don't have orange jumpsuits, I mean, in like jails and stuff,

but I've never seen a brand new, bright jumps, blue, jumpsuit ever. These things are 10 years old. They've been worn and washed a thousand times. They're torn. They're beat to shit. They're ripped like they're faded. But you ever see walking?

You're like, anybody's been, you're like, come on, man. I've never seen a fucking brand new one ever, ever. You just see all these little tiny things. Or they cuff you in front and the guys are walking like, they're not cuffing you in front. Or they cuff the guys and they're walking them around the other inmates through the yard or something.

And like, that's not going to happen. That guy could be stabbed. Like, what do you do? Like, there's all these little things that's like, you couldn't have dropped a couple grand on somebody to explain. Or their patches look so fake. Yeah. You know what I mean?

So I'm proud to say, you know, and I give the director, Rick Roman Wall, that with him and I and the other people that were involved, you know, when you Google one of the top prison movies ever made, felon is in the top 10. And so that means a lot to me. But through that process, and I think it was because he was mad at me because I confronted him in front of Val Kilmer, that he went on and used some of the stuff that he researched with me, initially with felon, some of my story, he made shot caller, and he made the snitch with the rock. Yeah, yeah. So some of all that prison stuff was me, stuff I gave him.

If you remember Sons of Anarchy, when Opie is in the county jail and the guards are setting up for the gladiator fights, that's all my story. So my story being the national media, people have picked and, you know, picked parts of it out and used it in different films and storylines. And I just sit there kind of smiling, knowing that that's my stuff. So I never did it for financial gain. But basically, you know, he could have gave me a credit as a writer or, as, you know, our director's credit. But my story is still out there, and it's still valuable.

And, um, it's- Well, and, and, and, and, and,

and, it's, it's, none of the stuff that you heard is in, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And people know my story, they're like,

they want that part to be, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, role of my story is, uh,

goes into this huge prison and looks at these convicts and inmates as pieces of shit. And, those guys that ended up saving his life in the end. And, man, I don't know if you ever seen the movie Training Day, but I was in... I love Training Day. I was in the jungle doing something for Prince Harry in Los Angeles,

and I was there packing up this vehicle and this Mexican roll up on me. And he said, hey, home boy, what are you doing in our neighborhood? And I said, I'm doing something for veterans for Prince Harry. He goes, right on. and I look at his chest and I see the handprint of the Mexican Mafia. And I realize the Reaper is standing right in front of me. And all he's got to do is whistle.

And I'm done. If I'm a dirty cop, I'm done. And I look at him and I go, you done time in California? He goes, yeah, Corcoran. I go, yeah, me too. I go, when were you there? He goes, during the 90s in the gladiator fights. I go, really?

Me too. He goes, what's your name? I go, my name's Caruso. And he bowed his glasses down. and he came at me, Matt. I didn't know if he's going to stick me, hit me, and he grabbed me, and kissed me on the cheek. Because you know what your name means in this neighborhood?

I go, bro, can I videotaped this? And I videotaped it. I sent you to video. I videotaped it. And on the video, he talks, this man sacrificed everything to stop the killings of our people and we'll never forget that he did that for us. And so I use my story now to help trouble youth

or help veterans that are in a dark place or help people, addicts that, you know, that don't know what incarceration is about. And I use it to grip them, grab them, and then talk their language, and then talk about choices and consequences. Talk about what the outcome is going to be. Talk about there is no loyalty in these gangs. I've had the OGs, the shot callers, the original gang members that started these games from Crips, bloods to prison gangs with the light over their head and them talking just like this talking they

didn't want to lose those visiting privileges they didn't want to lose their commissary they didn't want to lose their conjugal visits and they're snitching on each other left and right so loyalty amongst thieves there is none and all these people talk about snitches get stitches it's all bullshit Matt because they'll all talk when they feel the pressure of losing a privilege or their freedom put them in that situation and when that light is over their head. In my experience, probably 90% of them talk. And it's unfortunate because I've had young men, young men that grew up in war zones in South Central

that I look at them and I see so much potential. And, you know, the cell door will open up and I'll say, tuck your shirt in, make your rack. And they're like, yes, officer, yes, officer. And you know what I'm giving them? I'm giving them structure. And I'm saying to myself, maybe if he had structure young in his home,

instead of growing up in that one parent home where he or seen his father disrespecting his mother or his father is incarcerated, maybe if he had structure that he wouldn't be here in this prison. And that's the whole thing. People say, Richard, well, what is the solution? I say, incarceration is a huge business. Let's not be fooled.

When they take that inmate or that convict and they put that exon in them as a felony, or a felon, then they put them back in the same environment of the hood and say, you can't be around prostitution, you can't be around gambling. They know they're coming back. We're putting them there to fail. But if you get that same inmate who has a nonviolent felon, say he's got a drug charge or whatever, and you say, you know what, we have a trade program that's nine months long,

if you complete, if this welding trade or whatever, and you complete it and you graduate, will knock that nonviolent felony down to a misdemeanor. Give them a chance because the worst thing you do is take someone's hope away. And when you take that hope away, that person becomes a dangerous person. But if you give someone a chance and say, this is your one chance, you know, you can expunge that felony. Then maybe you would see the racism rate get lower. But let's face it, these kids coming out of the hood, they're not scared of prison. It's a better environment for them.

I had, the Mexican mafia uses what we call border brothers that aren't illegal. They're not found to be legal citizens in America, but they committed crimes and they're incarcerated in California. They use them as torpedoes to go out. They don't want to go back to Mexico. They're living a better life in the California prison system. So the whole mentality of incarceration is, I believe you do the time, you do the crime, you do the time. but let's have a fair playing field for everyone just because someone has money, why do they get expert witnesses compared to another person who's poor and he's getting a

public defender? So I just, I think it's the best system in the world, but it's very broken. And I'm not a sympathizer, but I believe there's alternatives to nonviolent criminals. And pumping fear into the public is very, effective. When 9-11 happened, they said, hey, you don't want airplanes falling out of the sky. They created TSA. Well, when they tell you, you don't want murderers and others climbing over those prison walls into your neighborhoods, you're going to say, pay them whatever you got to pay them. In reality, that's not happening because we have it under control. But we want that inmate to come

back. I'll give you a story of, I had this inmate, African-American, he's probably in the 70s. He's done 35, years. And we were taking them to the, to the subway station, the bus station, train station. We had his ticket. $200 gate money ticket. Take him to the train and we go

to uncuff him. We uncuff one hand. He breaks away and starts running. Now we have to tackle him. We tackle him. We go, what are you doing? You know what he said to us? He's going to get three years now.

He goes, I'm nobody out here. I'm somebody in there. It's too hard out here. He goes, I'm somebody in there. We had a guy that they called for R&D. It was his release date. He didn't show up. They called him again.

They called him for about an hour. And then they closed down the prison. Everybody had to go back to their cells. They found him on the rec yard hiding because he didn't want to be released. It's like, he was like, well, we're, and there's no gate money in federal prison. Right. He was like, well, like, basically they're going to drop me off at, they're giving me, putting me on the bus. The bus, I'm going to be dropped off the bus station in my district.

And I'm going to be told to call my probation officer within 48 hours. He's like, I've been nowhere to go. He'd been locked up so long. He'd get no family. He got his got nobody. He's like, he got, I think he got, I don't think he got any halfway house. Nothing. He's like, I got nothing.

He'd been in trouble, I think, a bunch of times or whatever. But yeah, that, that's. It's a big fear. Yeah. Oh, yeah. So I understand that. Yeah. So, I mean, prison is a huge industry.

And like I said, I'm not a person that's a sympathizer, but I'm also not a man that is going to kill somebody, get blood on my hands just to keep my mouth shut. And that all goes back. That credit goes back to the way I was raised in my belief in God. And ever since that, I don't sit here. and I don't use my story in a shitty diaper saying, poor me, poor me. I say, no.

I said, wonderful things have come from what I've done. I lost everything, but God's always brought it back to me. And he's opened doors for me to change people's lives. And I've changed people's lives with my story. I had a Marine get a hold of me. This is about four years ago, and he goes, Richard, he goes, I just got back from my rack. He goes, I go on Facebook.

He goes, I work in the oil field. And he goes, it's like Groundhog Day every day. He goes, I don't have my purpose-driven life anymore. He goes, I go on my Facebook, my coffee. I look for Crusoe's Facebook page because you always got your arm around a veteran. And I go, he goes, it makes me feel knowing that that brotherhood's still out there. And I said, listen, brother, I said, you can do that. There's nothing special with what I'm doing.

He goes, well, if I decide to do something, will you help me? And I didn't know this guy. And he goes, I said, absolutely. So four months later, he calls me, he says, Richard, can you meet me at Camp Lejeune, North Carolina on April 3rd? I'm like, what's going on? You live in Texas. He goes, I sold everything. He goes, I got my truck, and I'm pulling a little camper.

He goes, I'm going to walk across America for six months, and I'm going to feed veterans and law enforcement. I go, let me tell you something. If you do this, I'll have hundreds of Marines watching you. I will fly out to California and walk in with you to your old union. together. And we fed thousands. We did it six months. And I looked at him as an apple off of my tree. And now his story is motivating others to do things. So I use my story to motivate others, help others, saying, I'm nothing special. There's no difference from me to you. And you can do the same thing by using, you know, hardships in your life. You don't have to sit in that shitty

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Upgrade your sleep with Ghostbed, the makers of the coolest bed. in the world. Some exclusions apply. See sight for details. I go, you know, I will understand you've got PTSD, but are you going to use that as an excuse the rest of your life not to get out there and be your best self? And I try to motivate them to get out there and find their purpose-driven life again. So I've used my story to help others in recently, Senator Polanco. We're talking 30 years, man, almost 30 years, almost 1994, just recently called my wife that I just got married. My wife, Phyllis sitting over there in which I married, called her to tell her what kind of man her husband was.

And so for people to have that feeling about me that I made a difference, I took a stance, I sacrificed for that stance. I didn't know what was going to be the outcome, but God always provided for me. I'm not a Bible thumper, but God always provided for me. To hear today, you give me the opportunity to be on your show and reach your fans and your million followers to say, I hope some of them look at me and say, there's really nothing special about him,

and I can get out there, and I can shake that stranger's hand, and I can make that person in the shadow feel like a somebody, because that's what I do is I take 15 minutes out, and I shake that hand, and I let him know, I see you. If you need me, I'm here. Hey, you guys. I appreciate you watching. Do be a favor. Hit the subscribe button, hit the bell so you get notified of videos just like this.

Also, if you'd like to get in touch with Richie, if you go in the description box, we're going to leave the link to his Facebook and any of the social medias that he has, but it's pretty much Facebook. Go to Facebook. You can message him, contact him there. Once again, I really do appreciate you guys watching. Also, if you want to be a guest of the program, we're going to leave the link to our website so you can go there, fill out, go to the guest page, fill out an application.

Thank you very much. See ya.