Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast - Why Innocent People Get Convicted | Lawyer Exposes Corruption

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Starting point is 00:00:51 Trusting the jury is a tough thing. He's like, I'm innocent. Goes to trial, he gets 45 years prison. Had they done their job? That's a school teacher wouldn't have been murdered. Now they owe him money. it's obviously not me. So this was all set up from the police.

Starting point is 00:01:06 Yeah, from the get-go was all set up. You're always coming straight from law school into the public defender's office. And, you know, I mean, I'm in law school, for God's sakes. I really don't know what's happening on the streets. Right. And you start learning real quick what is happening on the streets. So you go from, I got my Juris Doctorate degree,

Starting point is 00:01:30 to, you know, here's all these escorts and these drug dealers, and they're telling you what went down and how they got caught and the ins and outs of it. You're like, oh, okay, I had no idea. Are you, I mean, are you even, listen, I had 13 years in prison, are surrounded by drug dealers? Right. And still, to this day, these guys will come and sit down and start talking, and I'm like,

Starting point is 00:01:52 well, what does that mean? You know, they use the street lingo, because it's always changing. The problem, too, from their perspective is they think nobody knows what's going on. Their phone gets searched. They're looking, the cops are looking through all this communication on some Snapchat or whatever. And people think you can't get at Snap. You can get at your snaps, please. Yeah.

Starting point is 00:02:14 And then all of a sudden they're like, well, I was talking about a sandwich, you know, I was talking about, no, you weren't. Like, they know. It's pretty obvious from the context. But. Yeah, I was going to say, I read a, I wrote a book called Generation Oxy about these guys that were, these guys. guys that were doing doctor shopping. And they were like high school students who, as they were graduating, they started this and they went to different colleges and got scholarships as wrestling. They were all in the wrestling team, and they started shipping it all over the country.

Starting point is 00:02:46 But, you know, when you would read the, you know, they have like a, when you read the transcripts of their, of the wire conversations, you know, I need, man, I need, you got any blueberries? I need six blueberries. I need, I need, I need, you. You know, I eat four green apples. It's like, what are you, what are you doing? The cops aren't stupid. But they think that. Yeah.

Starting point is 00:03:11 I mean, they're not grocers. No, no. It's pretty funny that they come to you and they're like, well, they don't know what's going on. Oh, no. They know what's going on. And I had recently, it was a huge racketeering case. And it was oxy. And the problem now with the drugs is that the drugs are getting.

Starting point is 00:03:32 mixed in with f***le. So they're always put, they're putting, they're putting on everything. Right. And I'm no scientists. And, but you could just, I mean, you can put a, remember Dave Chappelle used to have this joke about like, we're going to sprinkle some crack on somebody when the cops do something wrong. And that is you just sprinkle a little that in anything that you're dealing and you can cut it up

Starting point is 00:03:54 and you can make it go farther and you can make more money. Right. And then they get smacked for like trafficking in fission all. I've had several clients come to me. They swore they were not trafficking in fraud. Because they don't know their supplier. Yeah, they don't know what they have no idea what they're getting. They bought this from some Mexican guy who's been, and he doesn't even know what's coming in over the border.

Starting point is 00:04:16 No, but they'll test it. It makes them feel a certain way. And therefore, well, this must be oxy. This must be what, H or whatever. No, no, it could be a hundred other things. And then it just gets more and more serious. So, you know, I know you probably talk to those. those guys in prison, but it's just getting worse and worse and worse.

Starting point is 00:04:34 And I, you know, well, I was just thinking the lingo, because let's face it, you come down from up north and you're, you're thrown into the mix. And I'm, I'm going to go out of my, I'm going to assume that you, uh, you weren't raised on the streets. No. You were probably middle class, you know, you're middle class guy. So, right? And you're being thrown in there.

Starting point is 00:04:53 And you're, you've got these guys coming straight from the projects talking about, you know, yo, yo, yo, you'll see what happened. I had two doves and a, uh, uh, You know, and what do they call a stack or rack, five racks and this and a dove, and you must have been like, what are you saying? Fortunately, they would translate for me. But yeah, absolutely. Can I get a translator?

Starting point is 00:05:14 He's speaking English. I know. I know. So, but it was. You get thrown into the fire. Yeah. And I think the hardest part is not even the law, but the hardest part when you get thrown into criminal defense is just, and I'm sure you felt the same way.

Starting point is 00:05:31 go into prison where you kind of you start learning about human nature you start learning about things about human nature that you didn't think you were going to encounter or learn about and so i remember when i first got to the office we had this case where um these two male dancers they they were on tour they're always male dancing whatever that is and they would bring home a young lady after the dance and so they brought home like this tiny little 90-pound girl, and she calls the police and says that she was roughed up and assaulted. Right.

Starting point is 00:06:10 Now, this is when I first get to the public defender's office, and she wrote a two-page sworn affidavit that was just straight out of, like, some sexual story about how she was abused. And so the cops finally get the statement, and they decide to go into the apartment. And the apartment is like what you have set up here. You walk in a front door and you've got a bedroom over there and a bedroom over there.

Starting point is 00:06:41 And these two dancers each had their own bedroom and there's a living room in front. And the cops put these guys immediately in handcuffs. Right. Because what she was accusing them of, and this was in 93 or 94, they'd still be in prison. Yeah. So maybe I gave something away.

Starting point is 00:06:55 But the point is they start laughing at the cops. And I'm like, why are you? laugh and what's going on they're like what go behind the TV behind the TV there's a camera we recorded the whole thing so the one dancer comes in he hits record then they bring the girl in they bring in a girl different girl every night they record the whole thing it was completely consensual she had the time of her life but they wouldn't give her a ride home they were just total dicks and she wanted their number to come back again they're like we don't do repeat It's like we get enough fresh from our dancing.

Starting point is 00:07:32 And she was really offended. And so you could see her own video calling her fiancé. And you could hear, you could kind of be like, she's looking around, she finds an envelope, and then she calls the police. They don't know this. They're already in their rooms sleeping. They didn't want to hang with her.

Starting point is 00:07:50 And this is right as I get to the PD's office. And we're representing this girl on filing a false police report because this is a lesson learned in terms of she's not taking back her story. The cops watch the video. Ma'am, you are going to have handcuffs if you don't take back this too. She refused. She absolutely refused. Totally had a way out and everything.

Starting point is 00:08:14 Yeah, they gave her a way out. And, you know, we see this all the time. You can drop bombs on people's lives. You can wreck them with accusations. And really, there's no consequences. This is probably one of the first times I had seen. consequences. I was just thinking that typically these false accusations, once they're found out to be that they were, it's completely fabricated. Nothing happens to these people that do this.

Starting point is 00:08:39 I know. That's amazing. Oh, it is amazing. We're representing this girl because she wouldn't take back the accusations. There's a video. There's a video of her literally walking. The video never stops. They didn't right in front of her bother stopping the video. Right. So long, remember VCRs like they had it on six-hour mode. So here we are, but it's a lesson learned in terms of, as you can't get people to admit they're lying. And I know that our clients, they want this show. Like, he's lying and you need to prove he's lying.

Starting point is 00:09:15 Dude, I can't prove. I mean, I can do the best I can. But this woman was confronted with video and she ain't taking her story back. And that's very typical. people will hang on to their lies for dear life. And that's just what, if you're accused of something in Florida, that's just what you're stuck with. They want you to do the, was it the Perry Mason?

Starting point is 00:09:36 Yes. Those Perry Mason moments where the guy, okay, you've got me. I lied. Yeah. I'm not, or somehow I'm not a good enough attorney because I couldn't get these people to cough it up. They ain't coughing it up.

Starting point is 00:09:49 What happened to her? She got, the offer was 90 days, jail. And that judge demanded 90 days and she's going to turn herself in. And that judge got sick and we got another judge and we moved up the court date for the other judge to get her like 30 days. Oh, okay. So she got 30 days in jail. But had that gone to trial, those guys would have gotten They still be in right now. 30 something years later, they'd still be in. I was locked up with a guy that had gone on a cruise with, admittedly, and this was probably to his detriment, was it with his, like, his fiancee, right?

Starting point is 00:10:34 Black guy, it was his, I don't know if you know this, you probably know this, you know. And this is just something I learned in prison. It's a cultural thing with black guys. Probably get me in trouble, but they have what they call a wifie. You ever heard of the wifie? I've heard of it. Okay. So they'll, women that are an overweight woman that's unattractive that has a good job. Right.

Starting point is 00:11:00 This guy who's good looking guy, she's never get with him. But they call her their wifie. And sometimes they'll even marry these women and move in with them. And, you know, they go to their parties with them and they play the part in front of all their friends. But they're allowed to have a girlfriend. Or two. They're allowed to run around. Don't embarrass me.

Starting point is 00:11:25 Whatever. You stay here at night. And that's his wifey. That's kind of European, too. Like, the Europeans are like, look, I know he's a man. Right. Just don't embarrass me. Right.

Starting point is 00:11:36 And she's a woman. Just don't embarrass me. I would not go over well. I can tell you that right now. Just saying, I've heard that similar, similar story. I've been using Mando's whole body deodorant. And let me tell you, you can use it anywhere. Pits, balls, thighs, and even your feet.

Starting point is 00:11:52 Mando's powered by mandelic acid, so it stops odor before it even starts. It blocks odor all day. I'm talking 72 hours. I love the scents too. My favorite is bourbon leather. It smells amazing. You can choose from other fresh options like Cloverwood and Mount Fuji. And the best part, no baking soda, no paraben's, just clean, safe deodorant for your whole body. I've added Mando to my daily routine and honestly, I feel fresher and more confident. It works way better than just showering a lot. alone. Use promo code Cox at shopmando.com to get 20% off plus free shipping. Once again, that's promo code Cox at shopmando.com. So he goes, they go on a like a carnival cruise line. There's always shenanigans too. It's pure. You could do a whole series. Yeah, carnivals, they've, they've had it. But he goes on this. He has a room with the wifie and he's got a separate room. And she knows about it. Like, it's on her credit card. So she, she goes to bed for the night. He goes to a bar. Now, the bar is after up to 10 o'clock or something, it's, you know, it's whoever is there, whatever. There's no age limit. But after 10, it's like, it's adults only. He goes to the

Starting point is 00:13:10 bar. He walks up. Girl is there chatting with a couple of guys, starts chatting with him. He, she asks, or he buys her a drink. He said, I mean, I'm assuming she's 21 years old. She's there. The bartender's serving her. Right. He said, she proceeds to have several drinks. Somehow or another, and I'm going to get the story wrong, I'm sure.

Starting point is 00:13:32 He ends up leaving because she's talking with the other guys. Right. As much as with him. And he's like, eh. So he goes back to his room, goes to lay down, can't go to sleep. At one o'clock or something, he leaves to go back to the bar, see if there's anybody else there. Goes back to the bar.

Starting point is 00:13:50 He gets into the elevator or when he gets out of the elevator, the two guys and the girl are all getting on the elevator. And they say, do you want to come with us? Right. And she looks at him and she's like, yeah. And he's like, okay. So all three of them go to his room. He's like, I got a room.

Starting point is 00:14:12 Right. They go to that room. They all have sex with her. Right. These guys leave. He leaves. The girl, I don't know when she left, but he goes back to the wife, the wifie, goes there. Five or four or five o'clock in the morning there's banging on the door.

Starting point is 00:14:31 He opens the door and it's two like security guards and like the manager or something. And he's like, what's going on? They're like, you need to come to security. It's like, what's happening? He gets down there. He said, when I walk in, they tell him, we've got to go over something. When he was, when I walk in, he said the two guys are there at a desk. He said, one of the guys is just full-blown, just crying.

Starting point is 00:14:55 I mean, he's like, I mean, just, he said, tears running down the guy's nose, just puddling and just can't, you know, just inconsolable. And he's like, what is going on? And so these guys are just shaking their head. So the girl, what she did was after they had all separated, she immediately went and went down and told the, uh, security that these guys had assaulted her, you know. Wow. And there were three of them. And they brought her into the room. She went back to the room because they had given her some drinks. She didn't really know what was going to happen. And when she got there, she said no. And they just, you know, weren't taking no for an answer. And so, and by the way, she was 15. Oh.

Starting point is 00:15:41 So he, of course, you know, first of all, he's like, he's saying like, and here's what happens when they start talking to him. He's like, yeah, no, we went back. We, we, we, we, this, like, what are you talking about? But these guys already know she's 15. He watched her get served 10 drinks. Right. He's like, she's, what are you talking about? And then they, of course, they say, no, she's saying this. She's saying this. And by the way, she's 15. He's like, 15. Right. You're talking about. She's in the bar. It's 11 and 1 o'clock in the morning. Right. Well, he ends up going to, and he's, by this point, he's already a, admitted it. They've already admitted. These aren't police officers. The order of those questions

Starting point is 00:16:19 really got him off a little bit. Right, real bad. So when he gets back, he says, so he basically is told to stay in his room and when he comes, when they come back to the port and gets off, the FBI arrests him because it's, it's a, you know, whatever they're in international waters, whatever that's the case may be. Right. Kind of like aircraft. So he gets arrested. They all get arrested, but they end up not, I don't think they charge or the other guys got, they got off somehow or another by agreeing to testify against him. And they, even though their stories were less aggressive, oh, I know what it was, the DNA came back with him and not them.

Starting point is 00:17:02 And somehow or another, that helped them in some way. Regardless, he goes to trial. He goes to trial. He pleads guilty. He gets 20 years. It comes out when his lawyer is doing the research. And by the way, he had already passed a police academy. He's going to be a police officer.

Starting point is 00:17:19 He's literally, he was waiting. He had been hired, I think, and was going to, and he started in like 60 days or something like. I mean, and he had been working as a security guard for like four or five years. Right. So he's like, he's going to be a police officer or deputy or something. I mean, it's just derailed his life. So he's, he gets 20 years. And during the course of the trial, it came out that the,

Starting point is 00:17:44 The girl had a – this was the third or fourth time she had accused someone of an assault exactly like this. And those had all been thrown out, like two of them been thrown out. One guy took a plea, you know. And so – and none of it's allowed in. For some reason, federal court, they wouldn't allow any of that in. So – and like I said, this is – it's funny because Frank Amadee – this lawyer in – prison was actually handling the case because I actually asked because the guy kind of was telling me it because he wanted me to write a story about him and I talked to Frank and Frank was no of this is

Starting point is 00:18:23 exactly what happened went through the whole thing and like I said I'm sure I got some of the stuff wrong but in the end I think that the problem that he had a separate room the the situation with the wife the fact that he's married that the jury was just looked bad it didn't look it doesn't look Oh, geez. It's heartbreaking what happens on some of these cases where you just get misled or what have you. I had this guy, and he was accused of the same thing. He was a really well, like, well-built, but he's a black dude in a resort hot tub with two 15-year-old girls. And mom comes up, right?

Starting point is 00:19:05 And mom sees them like just close together and she goes ballistic and she calls the police. And he ends up playing to an offense, right, against both of these girls. And now, he doesn't go to prison. He gets probation. But you know probation is a trap. That's a whole other thing. He violates probation six times. Now, I am on the sixth violation.

Starting point is 00:19:32 He hires me on the sixth violation. and he's telling me he goes, I'm innocent. Like, I really just took a plea because this is probation, and I would go to prison on this, and now he has a judge on the sixth violation that is sending everyone away on this type of assault. Right. So I said, okay, you're innocent. I tell you what, we're going to hire an investigator, and we're going to go talk to these girls. They're not 15 anymore. They're like 31.

Starting point is 00:20:03 Right. So we track one down in Georgia and we record, our investigator records the conversation, knocks on the door. Oh, yeah, I remember that. Did he really? No, he didn't do anything. There was pressure from my mom. Like, he's literally being honest, right?

Starting point is 00:20:20 Will you please give us a statement? Will you please give us a sworn statement? Right. Yeah, sure. I'll give you a sworn statement. Bless her heart for giving us a sworn statement. Now, you would think this would go well. Yeah.

Starting point is 00:20:33 we try to get the other girl. She's like in Guam or somewhere. I don't know. She's, and we couldn't even get a private investigator to kind of go work her in Guam. They had to do something. And she's just, doesn't want to talk about it,

Starting point is 00:20:48 doesn't want to do anything to help out. And like he can rot. You know, she doesn't care. So we go to the judge. And the judge is not very receptive. Here we are, sworn statement.

Starting point is 00:21:02 He didn't do it. And then the other girl doesn't say anything. And the judge still hits them for like 13 years prison. Oh. I know. I know. And it was like we- And that's not the charge you want to go to a state prison with.

Starting point is 00:21:15 No, it's not. And I'll tell you what, like we did everything we could, but I was surprised that nobody for 15 years and a zillion violations had ever looked into the fact this guy was innocent. Right. It's just that a 15-year-old girl doesn't stand up to her mom that, maybe this dude did something to them, and he really didn't. And it's rough in the state courts sometimes on those charges. They will bend over backwards to hit you.

Starting point is 00:21:46 Yeah, I mean, well, I was going to say, luckily, I'm being locked up. I didn't see a lot of innocent people. Like, I love to, you know, what kinds of people that are locked up is like, no, I know. What kinds of people saying they're, you know, saying that there are, there are, There are all kinds of people that are locked up that are saying they're innocent. You get in there. And I've met multiple guys that are like, yeah, man, you know, like, yeah, this is, they,

Starting point is 00:22:10 they ding me. I was bullshit. But then you start, more you talk to him, the more you start to realize, like, hmm. Me too. I mean, look, I'm telling you like a couple cases, and I have a million guilty ones that have done the same thing. But in my mind, what sticks out are the ones that really are innocent. Yeah, there's some guys that it's, you're guilty. but it's really more just like stupidity.

Starting point is 00:22:36 Like you did one stupid thing that got you involved in a conspiracy. And then, even then, once you were on the indictment, you could have helped yourself. You could have done this. You could have, no,

Starting point is 00:22:48 I ain't going to talk to the police. Okay, listen, it's, oh my God, listen, we can't go to trial. The years just keep going up.

Starting point is 00:22:54 The more they're like, I'm going to not say anything, you're going to just keep sticking up. You're still a probation at this point. Yeah. You know, no, I'm going to trial.

Starting point is 00:23:02 or I'm not going to help. I'm not going to sit down with them and fuck the police. It's like, oh, God, oh, no. Here it goes. Stop, stop, stop. Next thing you know, you're doing 10 years in prison because I'm thinking one case in particular because you answered a telephone. You passed a message on to somebody.

Starting point is 00:23:16 Or I knew a guy that got, I don't know if you got five or 10 years. You got a little chunk of time, which to me it's sad because someone says I got five years. I'm like, nothing. But I think you got five or 10 years because. these drug dealers were actually, where they sold drugs, he was friends with them. They'd gone to high school. They came to his house.

Starting point is 00:23:40 He's sitting on the couch. There's three guys. And then they brought in another guy. And for some reason, he said, no, something's wrong with this guy. He's nothing to do with. Shut your mouth. Nothing to do with you. Just because they're sitting in your room, having conversation.

Starting point is 00:23:58 And he says, I'm telling you guys, something ain't right with this. guy. That's the police. And the guy, they start arguing. And he's like, I don't, look, I know I don't know you. I'm telling you right now, as a result of that conversation, they put him on the indictment. They're like, you're intricately involved in this whole thing. And let's face it, as soon as they grab a couple of guys, they say, hey, if you're willing to testify on this guy that, that tried, almost got our officer killed. Because he was, he was, he was another cover and he did end up busting them, you know, two weeks later or something. And so as a result of that, they didn't think that was cute at all. Of course, somebody says, yeah, yeah, no, no, he's always involved in that.

Starting point is 00:24:33 He's, he helps us out. He kind of helps us plan things. And we've hit drugs in his, you know, they start saying stuff that's not true. He says it wasn't true. Right. But regardless, because he got involved and you didn't really do anything, but it's it. You're on the indictment now. It's over.

Starting point is 00:24:46 Yeah. Those guys are actually in the worst spot. And that is very painful to see from my perspective and yours when you were in prison is that you have the low guy on the totem pole that has nothing to give. Yeah. Like, you have 15. co-conspirators, and they're all making money with drugs, they're all living the good life, and then you have that dude that just said a couple things.

Starting point is 00:25:10 Yeah. He can't point the finger at anybody. Yeah, he can't even help. He can't even help himself. He can't help himself. These other guys are getting 10 years. He's getting 5 or 6. Yeah.

Starting point is 00:25:19 Like, these guys should be getting 30. They were all involved. They were doing this for years. They still have money. When they get out, they still have money. And yet, they did less time than that dude. It's a rig system in that sense That the less you know and the less you're involved

Starting point is 00:25:36 The more time you're gonna get on a conspiracy I reckon to I think What I have a question what happened with uh so I came across your Is it TikTok? Was I have YouTube and then yeah and then TikTok is like the same thing yeah I think it was TikTok I think it was TikTok that I came across and I was scrolling and I came across and I came across And it was just you doing a TikTok. You, there's a, we have an FBI, a retired FBI agent that comes on the program named Tom Simon. And he does these daily TikTok where he just talks about different cases, you know, within like a minute to two, maybe three minutes of the most.

Starting point is 00:26:17 It's good that he can keep it that short. Yeah, yeah. Congrats for that. He's good. But, and so when I saw you, you were same thing. You were standing there just telling the story. So I immediately thought, oh, this is like a Tom Simon. And I was like, oh, no, no, this is an attorney.

Starting point is 00:26:30 And you were telling the story about the plea deal that was given to one of your clients. And he was basically going to say, yeah, I'll take it. And you were like, well, there's no, he's giving you the top end. Like, there's no benefit for you to take it. Right. Let's go to trial. And I remember when you said that, I thought, whoa, whoa, whoa. And I went, you're the one that's, you, because usually the defense attorney is like, take a plea, take a plea, but take a plea.

Starting point is 00:26:56 But for you to have, and I just remember the thing. oh, that's, you know, if that's true, I'm sure it's true. But I remember thinking if that's true, like, this is a good attorney. Like most attorneys would be like, okay, like next, you're out of my hair. Right. And that was an asshole judge, and that's the problem. It wasn't like me being this great attorney, but this judge is such an ass. And he would see just like certain people and certain charges.

Starting point is 00:27:24 And he'd be like, I'm not taking anything. It's the max. and I was like, well, you're just asking for a trial. What was the, what was the? It was either like battery, DUI, it's just a misdemeanor court, you know? And this happened several times. A year in jail would be the max. And why, Judge?

Starting point is 00:27:46 Like, why would you even be that way? You're scaring these people. And then we're just going to end up going to trial. And I remember when we won that trial, which we shouldn't have won. Like, we get lucky as lawyers. just get thrown a bone or something. I'm like, oh, thank you, Jesus. And then he threw the file, like, across the room.

Starting point is 00:28:05 He was so mad at the verdict. And, I mean, that was 30 years ago, probably. That was at least 30 years ago. So, but yeah, these judges are, I mean, most of them are nice, I will say. Yeah. But sometimes they get a little rogue. And what you don't have any choice is a defense attorney. You're like, hey.

Starting point is 00:28:26 And they were not going to give you. you any more time, even if it wasn't a year, even it was, what are you going to do? If you, if you offer them six months jail in these faces a year, probably not going to give them a year anyway after trial. So I don't know. What's the benefit to, because if you're telling them, you know, well, I'm going to give you the max no matter what it, well, then, so, but there's supposed to be a benefit to taking a plea. Like, you get, just like there's a penalty if you go to trial, there's a benefit, whether it should or shouldn't be that way, I don't really know the legality of it. But let's face it, there's a, where they always say the trial tax, whatever. But it's,

Starting point is 00:29:02 yeah, there's, you know, you're going to get dinged if you go to trial and you should, there should be a benefit if you take a plea. I should get less than what I'm facing if I take a plea. Right. And if I go to trial, then I should get hammered. You know, I had a racketeering case that just resolved last year. And I don't know if there was a dozen people in it, but several of the guys. took a 25-year men-man. It was five or six-year men, five or six-twenty-five-year men's on the drug charges. And I was kind of surprised. At least two people just took 25-year men-man, no trial, no nothing.

Starting point is 00:29:40 And I guess in theory, the threat of stacking them, like, well, then you could get 50, you know. But I'm like, I don't think the judge is going to go that hard. Right. So, but it happens. People will plea to that. They get they get scared and you know it's a scary system. So you know that. Yeah.

Starting point is 00:30:00 Oh, yeah. Yeah. Yeah, I don't want to be in front of a judge again. No. For anything. What is it that? It's the, I used to say that anybody got my, when I was leaving prison, I used to say, listen, I'm not coming back.

Starting point is 00:30:20 Like I'm searching everybody that gets in my car. You know, some guys got like, oh, that's a good idea. You know what I'm saying? Like, well, I can't tell you how many guys I've seen. You're paranoid, but it can serve you well to be paranoid. Right, but I can't tell. I've seen so many guys that have gone to prison because they were driving in their car and their buddy had a weapon.

Starting point is 00:30:43 And then they go to get pulled over and the guy's thinking, nah, I'm not worried about it. These are not your buddies like you thought they were. Right. And they're facing time. Right. And he's, You don't need AI agents.

Starting point is 00:30:52 Which may sound weird coming from Service Now, the leader in AI agents. The truth is, AI agents need you. Sure, they'll process, predict, even get work done autonomously. But they don't dream, read a room, rally a team, and they certainly don't have shower thoughts, pivotal hallway chats, or big ideas. People do. And people, when given the best AI platform, they're freed up to do the fulfilling work they want to do.

Starting point is 00:31:16 To see how ServiceNow puts AI to work for people, visit servicenow.com. So, you know, he's a convicted felon. So he didn't have any weapons. His buddy, he knows he's convicted. Like, we don't have weapons. So the next thing you know, the cops are pulling them out of the car. You're two convicted felons that have drug charges. They're asking to get out.

Starting point is 00:31:34 You'd have no problem. You get out. They search the car. There's a 38 under the seat. You're like, oh, no, no, no, no. You know, I don't have any weapons. I don't. Well, we found a 38 under the seat.

Starting point is 00:31:45 Your buddy's sitting there going. And then when they both get their attorney, suddenly the buddy's saying, hey, wasn't my car. I don't know what's in that car. Whose car was it? This guy, you know, he's a, you know, and then it's, this guy's on probation or parole or whatever, supervised release. And now it's like, okay, well, even if you, even if they drop all the charges, you were

Starting point is 00:32:08 still arrested for this charge, you could still possibly get a violation. Or if you get charged with it and your buddy agrees to say, hey, it was, it wasn't my gun. It was his gun. It was in his car. So he gets to walk away because he doesn't care about you. And then you're looking at five years, you know, maybe more, maybe three. Three, the mandatory minimum is three just for being a convicted felon in possession of a firearm in the federal system. If you have drugs, five.

Starting point is 00:32:36 Right. And then, of course, depending on what you're, if you already have multiple arrests, who knows what it could be, seven years, eight, nine, ten. Right. If you're category one, two, three, four, it is there different categories. Yeah. You're in category six, like, you might get eight or nine years. because this jerk off left a gun underneath the seat. And I, you know, my clients struggle with the science on that end because I'll always ask them.

Starting point is 00:33:00 I'm like, all right, dude, is your DNA on this? Is your fingerprint on that gun that's supposedly your buddy's? Well, it might be, you know, I checked it out. I'm like, well, then you're going to be. But that is my, that's my little checker. Like, all right, dude, what do we got? Can I send this to forensics? And sometimes the forensics will cost more than I cost.

Starting point is 00:33:21 Right. So you're talking about a lot of money that the general public doesn't have to send a gun off to a lab. Right. And a lot of the labs are like former law enforcement anyway. So then it's, oh, God, you know, you got to get somebody you can trust to analyze it. And then if it comes back clean, you know, then you got lucky. But a lot of times, like you said, it might have actually been the dude's going to. Oh, I don't want that tested.

Starting point is 00:33:50 Yeah. Okay. Yeah, don't suggest that. Right. We get that a lot with the sexual, you know, assault cases where we have to mitigate for these people. And we have to explain, like, we can pay for a doctor to do a psychosexual evaluation where they'll hook electrodes up to you. They will read you stories to see how your body responds to certain stories. because we want to say, oh, my client would never do that.

Starting point is 00:34:22 He would never do that. He doesn't have thoughts like that. He's not interested in anything like that. And here's a doctor saying what a great guy is and how clean he is. But then you get these clients, thankfully, that are like, oh, don't bother. Don't spend the money. I'm not going to come back. I'm not going to pass that evaluation.

Starting point is 00:34:42 So, you know. Yeah, I was going to say there was probably four. 40, 50% maybe in Coleman, you know, what do they call, Cho's. What's that? You've heard the term Choes? No, what's that? You ever heard the term, the, called Cho-Moes.

Starting point is 00:35:01 In state prison, they call them the, you know, people that are interested in children that are underage. Oh, okay, right. In state prison, they call them Moes. Okay. In federal prison, they call them Chomos. This is the terminology, yeah. Yeah.

Starting point is 00:35:18 Yeah. But those guys, there were just tons of them in the low security prisons. And these are for photos for pictures, right? Right. And there was one guy there. I've mentioned this case a few times. Well, there was a few cases that I've mentioned a few times. But one of them, this was the one guy that this was a German,

Starting point is 00:35:43 from German guy from Germany in Germany. on, I don't know what it was. I don't know if it was an email, it's whatever. He's in some kind of a, you know, something where you can, they're texting children or something or messaging them. Right. He thinks he's messaging a sexually curious 14-year-old boy, a gay boy. Right.

Starting point is 00:36:09 And it's really a 45-year-old pissed off FBI agent. Absolutely. Gith on an airplane flies, to the United States. Wow. Wow. Lans gets arrested. Wow.

Starting point is 00:36:24 But they couldn't touch him there. They actually convince him to come to the U.S. So they grab him. He gets arrested. He ends up getting 25 years because in his mind, he's going to be able to get transferred back to Germany, right? Like a treaty transferred? Right.

Starting point is 00:36:43 Yeah. Nobody in Germany was helping him. Right. no interest in the, because if he had gone back to Germany, he would serve out whatever the sentence was there. And he basically would be released almost immediately because the age of consent was lower or was something like that, lower or at the same level. And it was almost not a crime there. Like it was a much less crime. And he would have been in a better situation. So, but yeah, he had been locked up for 10 years or something like. And nobody, they weren't helping at all.

Starting point is 00:37:15 Well, this is a problem in terms of these detectives creating crimes and creating criminals rather than detecting them. They've kind of gotten lazy in terms of, I don't even want to detect crimes anymore. Let me just lead some people on. And we saw that in Orange County. They were running a situation where they'd, a mom, a mom would post that she wanted to have relations with a dude, right? And now you've got an attractive mom. You've got a hundred guys swooping down. And she'd reel you in and reel you in.

Starting point is 00:37:53 And then she'd be like, oh, well, I got a daughter too. And now, okay, you have half of the guys that drop out. Yeah. But then half of them are like, I'm not interested in your daughter, but I am interested in you. And you're coming on pretty strong, and this is great for guys. And it's just entrapment. And one of our judges had the balls to start throwing those things out.

Starting point is 00:38:14 but it's difficult to get those kind of charges thrown out. Oh, yeah. Because everybody just bends over backwards to convict you. But in this case, they were really misled in terms of, hey, I have something perfectly legal. And then let's close this deal. And then by the way, and they wouldn't even tell you the age sometimes of the daughter. Right. So then you're like, well, I don't know how old this girl is.

Starting point is 00:38:38 Right. But they were just trying, they were creating crime nonstop. And then they go on the news. oh, we busted some ring and all that. You didn't bust a ring. You created some stuff. Right. And then you made your own ring up. Who is the joke?

Starting point is 00:38:51 There's a joke at Colmer. They said 80% of the child photos on the internet were circulated by the FBI. Right. You know, they were like, I'm telling you. Right. And then they just start arresting the people once they look at them. Well, and in the federal system, if you, because I had, there was a few guys there that were like they were downloading, you could go in for like a hundred bucks, you could buy a

Starting point is 00:39:18 bunch of movies, random movies that were, that were like real movies. Like you're getting die hard. You're getting, you know, um, uh, before streaming basically. You bought, bottom in bulk, put them on your hard drives. Yeah. And so they end up having, they'll, they would throw some movies in there. So when they're negotiating the $100, they'd say, hey, we also have, you know, porn. And this type of porn. And this type of porn. And guys would be like, yeah, I'm not really interested in that, in that kind of porn, you know, but, you know, whatever, you know, whatever. Like, they're not thinking, you know, they're like, yeah, whatever, listen, bro, like, I just want, you know, you have these movie. Yeah, we have these four movies and we also have this other stuff.

Starting point is 00:39:57 They're like, how much is it? But give them $100. They download it the whole thing. A week later, their door is getting kicked in and they've got it on their computer. And that's it. You pay for it and downloaded. You're in possession of it. Possession is, I think, four, mandatory minimum of four years.

Starting point is 00:40:10 There's guys walking around the jail who are like, I didn't even see anything. I didn't look at it. Or I did look at it. I did click through and saw what it was and turned it off. Yeah. But they're like, deleted it. You saw it.

Starting point is 00:40:22 You saw it. Or they don't mean delete it. It's still on their computer because they had to be in possession. Right. You downloaded it. And they hit you with all these different charges. Oh, that's where the psychosexual evals come in sometimes where you have them take a polygraph. I'm really, you know, they pass the polygraph, they passed the test.

Starting point is 00:40:39 And you can at least say that dude really had no intent. Right. But, man, it's vicious out there as far as that goes. They're doing more time than the people that are actually assaulting. Oh, no doubt. They're doing more time. You would hear in the state, like they catch some guy who's, you know, you know, doing things to a 13-year-old girl, is a 45-year-old girl,

Starting point is 00:41:02 13-year-old girl, and he gets probation or gets two years and then gets probation. And then it's like, okay, this guy downloaded some photographs, and he's got eight years. You know, it's like, easy. This is, yeah, this is, or if they, of course, listen, there's also, there's some guys. I mean, I'm not, I'm not saying that any of it's okay. Right. But there's also some guys in there that were, are, are just, I mean, they've been in, they'd been in state prison twice, maybe three times.

Starting point is 00:41:28 Now they're in federal prison. It's a real problem. And some of them, it's a real problem. Yeah. Yeah. No, I, and there was some gal out of Polk County, and not recently, but she, this is, is hell has no fury, right? She's upset at her husband.

Starting point is 00:41:47 She downloads it onto his laptop and then calls the police. And that dude goes, he actually, I don't know if he went to prison, but somehow they got deeper. Because he just kept saying, I'm innocent, I've never seen this stuff. And they forensically discovered on the back end that she was downloading it, while he was at work. So they undid his conviction, and then they went back and they arrested her. So I was thinking that was going to be one of those where she got away, Scott, for he.

Starting point is 00:42:23 They let him go, but nothing happened to her. I guarantee there are several of those. Yeah. Absolutely. But that's an easy setup. Oh, it's easy. It's so easy. They just, they presume, and I've had a couple of them where, like, the dad is on the

Starting point is 00:42:41 registry, so to speak. That's a safe way of saying it. And my client ended up being the 18 or 19 year old boy. So the dad was in the cop car for the pictures. And my client comes out to the cops as a 19 year old boy and says, I did this, not my dad. Now, they really had no way of knowing because it's just like a community computer or iPad or whatever that was in the house. And so and the restrictions while they're on probation, I remember that client violated his probation by, they'll search your phone when you go into probation, right? And you're not allowed to look at adult content

Starting point is 00:43:25 if you're on that sort of probation. Yeah, you're banned, which is reasonable. He had adult content on there. And we go to court. Our defense, legit defense is, I'm 19 years old and this is my 18 year old girlfriend. Like we're just recording what we do. Right.

Starting point is 00:43:46 And we did win that violation because he was just recording what he was doing with his girlfriend. But it was adult content. And I think we got away with one. Because with the environment now on that, I think he'd be in prison. Just for recording what he's doing. Right. Yes. Can't have it. Can't look at it.

Starting point is 00:44:07 Nothing. No, no record. Listen, I'm so freaked out by the whole situation. It's just in general. Like, I can only imagine, you know, even, I'm so freaked out like a Jess. My wife's daughter has a bunch of, when this was years ago, young friends. One of her friends came by had a new car. And they kind of, you know, they're enamored by me, right? Like, oh my gosh, she's got like, oh, she's a huge YouTuber. They all think I'm cool. Right. And he comes by and the daughter's not there. Well, she's not there. Oh, he's coming on.

Starting point is 00:44:42 I showed her in my car. Oh, okay. I said, all right. He's like, yeah, so what's going on? And I was like, uh, nothing. I'm standing at the door. Right. But he's a young kid.

Starting point is 00:44:51 He's like 16, let's say. Right. Um, and I'm like, nothing. And he's not here. He's like, okay. Uh, well, you know, uh, so what do you, what he starts trying to talk to me? I was like, yeah, man, listen, I'm busy. I can't, you know, but I could tell he wanted to have a conversation or maybe even, uh, yeah,

Starting point is 00:45:07 come in, whatever. It's like, it doesn't, I don't care. I don't care. You know, there's no, in my mind, I'm, you know, so, I guess just concerned at how many times I've seen things go. And I'm not saying that they all go wrong. Like, you know, like I said, 99% of everybody that's, I've met is they should have gotten something. Yeah. But in general, it's like, I can only imagine where you, these guys get picked up and they'll hang out with like a, they're, oh, this is my daughter's 15 year old and she's just here waiting for it. No. You're not waiting for her to come home. Oh, I just come in and watch TV.

Starting point is 00:45:42 No. Yeah, that's a good move on your part. Very good. You know, when you said the wife put the CP on the guy. You know what makes me think of? Do you remember Sam Kinnison? Yes, of course. He used to have a joke.

Starting point is 00:45:57 He used to have a joke where he said, I think. You can't say most of his jokes on YouTube. You could clean it up. Well, you know what he, no, this is what he did was it was, he said I had, man, he's like, listen, I was dating this girl. And I, I was, it was, he's a, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm drinking all the time. I'm barry in. I'm, I'm out at these, at these, uh, comedy clubs.

Starting point is 00:46:22 I'm getting drunk. He said, I'm, the girls are coming up to me after the show. Right. I'm hooking up with them. I'm, right. It's horrible. I was a horrible human being and, and I, and I, it's a one day I come home and my girlfriend's there, and she finds out about just a ton of them.

Starting point is 00:46:36 She's found out. Somebody told her. And I'm like, I'm sorry. I got no excuse. You're right. I'm a horrible human being. What I did was absolutely wrong. I am so sorry.

Starting point is 00:46:48 I understand it's over. I'm going to leave. He said, and I go to leave and she says, no, no, don't, don't. And she says, she comes up to me, she hugs me. She said, don't leave. Don't leave. And she, and I hug her and I think, oh my God, this woman, this woman's going to forgive me. Right.

Starting point is 00:47:07 She's going to forgive it. I know where you're going with this. Oh, my gosh. He goes, but what I didn't hear was when she said, don't go, don't go. And through the sniffles, I must have missed where she said, I haven't got you back yet. Yeah, exactly. He said, and a week later, he said, she's packing my bags. And I go to the airport.

Starting point is 00:47:30 And I put my bag on the conveyor belt. And it's going through and I'm standing there. and all of us and I hear, oh, hey, who, who, who, who, who, I think, what's going on? I'm looking around, and somebody goes, gun, gun, weapon, he's got a weapon, he's got a weapon. And I think, holy shit, someone's trying to get a weapon on the plane. Right. I see the cops, they're all running out of different doors coming running.

Starting point is 00:47:54 I'm like, oh, wow, I'm about to see some shit. Yeah. He said, next thing I know, they run up to me, and they're pulling their weapons. They're on the ground, on the ground. I'm like, what, what, what? look because they're pointing to me and I put my hands up and I they slay me on the ground and I think that bitch yeah like they pull a like a 44 magnum fully loaded in my brief or in my luggage right and he's he was just it listen he didn't realize at the time but I can and it's so I can't tell you

Starting point is 00:48:26 how many times I've been put my my bag on the right and I'm thinking And I love Jess, boy. Yeah. Please, baby. Yeah, I haven't done anything to deserve. I haven't done anything. Yeah. We did have a little bit of an argument yesterday.

Starting point is 00:48:45 Doesn't amount to prison time. Yeah, I don't think. She would never. She would. Because she packs my bags. And I pick up the bag. And when you hear the thing, did anyone pack, give you anything? Does anyone packed your bags?

Starting point is 00:48:58 We're not really listening. And I'm like, yeah. Well, yeah. Someone did pack my bags. Yeah, I agree. When I was a PD, I had this, well, it was in my division, so I was helping, but it wasn't really my case. But I was fascinated by this couple that thought they had hit the lottery because they were told like, hey, look, there's a couple cars in Chicago, right? And they're nice Mercedes.

Starting point is 00:49:27 Why don't you take them, drive them down to Orlando, and we'll give you $40 or $50,000 each cash. when you come down to Orlando, and we're going to report them missing up there. We're going to collect the insurance from the lot, and then, and so there's this couple that doesn't have any money, and they're like Thelma and Louise on this thing. They're so excited. They get to Orlando, and then they're like,

Starting point is 00:49:49 Orlando, the people in Orlando, like, well, we can't do the $50,000 each, but what if we give you, like, 50 and then we'll give you some cash to, and we'll take the cars? and the woman's super excited because she loves co-she's like, oh, yes, I'll take all this. And then the guy's like, yeah, but what are we going to do with this? And with this whole thing's going down, and then they throw in some more baggies.

Starting point is 00:50:17 Like they don't even know what these baggies were, but it was age. Right. But they didn't even know. Now, mind you, they're just getting set up the whole time. And these people, you know, like I said, the creation of crime. Right. Where they were, there's no more joy than this Thelma and Louise moment from Chicago to Orlando. And then they, of course, they have to turn on each other as they, as the case goes on.

Starting point is 00:50:43 And they, this setup was extraordinary in the sense that they knew. They had one girl that was going to turn on the guy and was going to use drugs. So this was all set up by the, by the, by the police. From the get go. From the get go. Yeah, from the get-go was all set up. And they even, you know, the age was, all of this was like 25-year men-man amounts of drugs. And these people were not drug dealers.

Starting point is 00:51:12 They were not anything. They just wanted money. They wanted to go on a joyride on some expensive cars that they couldn't afford and then cash in when they got here. And instead, they're like all doing 25-something years. They were willing to sign up for the grand. They did. And that's an easy. Grand theft auto is not that big of a deal compared to 25 year men's.

Starting point is 00:51:37 But I was thinking of something you said before where like they're with the movies where they're throwing in movies that don't have anything to do with what you bought. Right. And now you're going to prison. They were throwing in H and maybe one other product that they couldn't even identify. I couldn't identify that baggy like in, in discovery. But they got, they got extra. years for the stuff that was thrown in just to try to sweeten the deal. But the cops were laughing the whole time. They knew that they just, they had a buffet of drugs, we'll just keep throwing

Starting point is 00:52:11 and keep adding up the prison time for two people that just wanted to steal cars. Do you remember the DEA reverse things? I mean, there were a lot of them. Yeah. So this was about 10 years ago, 10 or 15 years ago. The DEA was, we're setting people up, and it was real simple. They were just going to kind of drug dealers, known robbers, and they're going to them, they're saying, look, they would have a confidential informant go, look, I know where there's, you know, there's a bunch of blow, right? Like tons of it.

Starting point is 00:52:49 And cash at this stash house. There's a guy in there. You got a 38, or maybe there's a guy in there. He didn't even have a gun, bro. Right. You know, okay, all you guys got to do is go rob the place. And this is happening over and over again. These guys are pulling up, getting out of the car, and the cops are usually grabbing

Starting point is 00:53:08 them in the yard before. And sometimes they would kick the door in. It's like to catch a predator almost. Right. Right. Right. Right. So sometimes they would kick in the door, but it's loaded with police officers, right?

Starting point is 00:53:19 So, and it went. And so first they did it a few times, and it's successful. They get some guys, grab some guys. they kick in the door, they grab them. The guys are, they're, they're pretty well wrapped up, right? And so it went from one year, it was like, there were like 400 of these. Oh my gosh. Oh, no.

Starting point is 00:53:40 Then the next year, it was, it was like 750. Then the next year, this is throughout the whole United States, though. Right. Then the next year, it's like 1,100. Then it's, I think it gets up to like 27 or, 270 or 3,200, whatever. Wow. It's just happening every day they're doing it because it's so easy to catch these guys. And I've mentioned this kid a bunch of times.

Starting point is 00:54:04 It's funny because my buddy, Zach, is actually remembers the guy's name, talked to him all the time. I just, I remember he was a nice kid. I don't know that I ever really had much of a conversation with him, right? He was a black kid in a wheelchair. I don't really know him that well. He's like 18 years old, 17 or 18 years old, sitting on the couch.

Starting point is 00:54:24 His brother comes in one day and says, hey, I need you a little bro. That's how they talk. I need you a little bro. Why shaking her head? I need you a little bro. And so he says, I need you to drive a car for me. And he goes, well, what, okay, what's going on?

Starting point is 00:54:45 So it's him and his buddy. They're like, we talk to a guy. We know where there's a stash house. $100,000. I'm going to give you $10,000. All you got to do is drive up. Let us get out. Let's go in the house.

Starting point is 00:54:56 we're going to get in the car and then just drive. Right. And he's like, okay, he doesn't have a job. He's got no money. He's like, I mean, he's never asked me to do anything ever. Seems like I'm not really doing anything. He's like, oh, cool. Like, I'm just dropping you off.

Starting point is 00:55:10 He doesn't realize you just rob the house. You know, it's like the guy who drops you off at the bank, your buddy's off at the bank to rob the bank. Okay, no, no, you just robbed the bank. Well, I know, I never got out of the car. It doesn't matter. No. So he drives him there.

Starting point is 00:55:23 As they're pulling up, the brother's get out of the vehicle and they start running towards the house with their weapons. They don't even get all the way into the house. I think maybe they kick the door or something like that. And the vehicles start pulling up. Guys jump out of, you know, the bushes, whatever with their guns, screaming and hollering. The brothers start firing. Oh.

Starting point is 00:55:45 These guys fire back. He sees his brother getting shot multiple times. They're all shooting back at each other. He punches it and drives off. the police vehicles or whatever, the federal vehicles slam into his vehicle. He jumps out of the vehicle because he thinks, even though they did notify who they were, he's thinking it's like a rival gang. He doesn't know what.

Starting point is 00:56:09 He's so scared. And I understand. It's the fog of war. And I understand that because when I got arrested, they pulled up in the SUVs, locked up, everything, jumped out with their guns, and were all the way to me with their weapons. And before I even, I actually for a few seconds thought, I'm about to get robbed. Yeah. I'm getting wrong.

Starting point is 00:56:32 I was in a shitty neighborhood. Because you're going to focus on the gun too. Right. You're not really looking at everything else. Right. It wasn't until I realized that there was a, there were white letters that said, you're not reading secret. That gun is like super focus.

Starting point is 00:56:43 So it wasn't until he got right up to me and kind of with the gun and we're like, get on the ground. I couldn't even hear what they were saying. Like they were telling me, get on the ground, get on the ground. And I'm like, it went until the guy, he ran up to me. They know I'm not, you know, put his hand on my shoulder. And he goes, bro, get on the ground. I was like, oh, shoot.

Starting point is 00:56:57 And I got on the ground. That's kind of when I realized, oh, Secret Service. Yeah. So he jumps out of the car and runs. As he's running, they fire at him. They blow his leg off at the knee, clean off. Oh, my gosh. So he ended up with, and I know Zach has told my buddy, Zach knows exactly what he got.

Starting point is 00:57:16 I think I've always said 20 years or Zach said 30 or I've said 30. It was like he got like 30 years because they charged him with the brother's murder, Right? Because you were involved and there was somebody. Yes. felony murder. So both those guys, I think, got killed. The brother and the friend, because they did shoot back.

Starting point is 00:57:35 Yeah. He was running, lost his leg. He was in a wheelchair. They were still fitting his prosthetic. So he had to go up being a wheelchair. And, yeah, he ended up getting like 20 or 30 years, never got out of the car other than a run. Didn't have. So what ended up happening with those, so they don't do the reverse stings anymore, the DEA for

Starting point is 00:57:56 for some reason. And the reason was there was finally one case where there was a guy who was probably close to being mentally retarded, right? Like he's got like an 80-85 IQ. Right. They come to him. C.I. comes to him. A couple of guys, same type of scenario, friend or a brother.

Starting point is 00:58:15 They come to him and they say, listen, we know where there's a stash house. We want to rob the stash house. So this is basically the case I'm giving you right now is the one where it was such a set up, they said, okay, we're going to stop doing this. Like, you can't do it. You can't, we can't do this anymore. They almost have a conscious. Right. Almost, right. Well, I mean, it's obvious because it was in the news. It was a huge case, right? And what happened was this kid, this, this slow kid who's never been in trouble before, who sits home and plays video games all day, his brother or a friend of somebody, they end up convincing him to go with them.

Starting point is 00:58:49 And they tell him, listen, we're going to rob the house. We need you to get like a get a gun, get a pair handcuffs, and get a badge. Because we have to be able to show them we're cops to get them to let us in the, you know, so that way we'll run in screaming because they do this. You know, when they kick in the door, a lot of these guys will scream, you know, you know, Tampa Police Department, Tampa PD, police, get on the ground, please, so that they don't get shot. So the guys are compliant right away.

Starting point is 00:59:19 So they say, get a badge. He says, oh, okay, okay, yeah, yeah. So he's going to do it, right? He's going to do it. Because they're going to get them, we're going to get a million dollars or something ridiculous, $100,000, you're going to get $10,000 or $20,000 or $100,000. He's like, oh, okay, they've all we done this all the time. We got it.

Starting point is 00:59:33 It's all wrapped up. Okay, great. So when they show up a week later, he does have a weapon. He went to his grandfather's house and found his grandfather, his grandfather, who's deceased, found his, got his, knew he had a gun, like an old, whatever, it was an old service revolver, something like that, nonfunctional. Doesn't have a pen. not work.

Starting point is 00:59:55 Right. Knows it doesn't work. Tells them it doesn't work. They know it doesn't work. He's got the gun. They're like, did you get a badge? No, I couldn't find a badge. Like, I don't have a car so I wasn't able to.

Starting point is 01:00:09 Luckily, I'm two blocks from my grandfather's. I was able to get the badge. Can't get a badge or the handcuffs couldn't get it. I, you know, they were like, well, we told you where to go. I know, but I don't have a car. It's too far for me to walk. They said, well, don't worry, we got it for you. They give it to him.

Starting point is 01:00:23 They give him everything. Wow. They go to the house. Everybody jumps out. They don't even get in the house. They grab them in the yard. Right. You've got a kid that's, he's almost got an 80 IQ.

Starting point is 01:00:38 Right. See what I've been talking about like an 80, 85 IQ. He can't read. He never graduated high school. He's in the SLD classes in high school. He plays video games all day. He's never been in trouble. He did get a gun.

Starting point is 01:00:53 Right. A non-functioning, yeah, basically a fake gun. Doesn't work. You gave him the badge. So do you know why they gave him the badge? Because it's an enhancement. Because if you pretend to be law enforcement, you get more time. So he's looking at 20 years.

Starting point is 01:01:09 Yeah. You're looking at 20 years. And so it's a complete setup. So what ends up happening is that case ends up in the newspaper. And they show the statistics of how they were doing a few hundred. Where are my gloves? Come on, heat. Winter is hard, but your groceries don't have to be.

Starting point is 01:01:36 This winter, stay warm. Tap the banner to order your groceries online at voila.ca. Enjoy in-store prices without leaving your home. You'll find the same regular prices online as in-store. Many promotions are available both in-store and online, though some may vary. To thousands within like five or six years, and it's so bad, It's so easy to entrap these poor kids who are living in the projects who have no hope of getting out of it. Not that they have no hope, but it's difficult.

Starting point is 01:02:06 And they're just setting him up and throwing away the kids. He can't win in front of a jury. Right. They won't even really let him say, oh, entrapment. Like, it's not really a great defense, right? Right. So you're just going to be a monster who's- What did he get?

Starting point is 01:02:20 Did he get anything? I want to say that they drop the truck. That's the one that where they successfully argued. And they said. okay, we're not going to do this anymore because they ended up changing their policy. It was so egregious that they changed their policy. Like you went out of your way to find this kid who's sitting on the couch because one of his buddies knew he's slow.

Starting point is 01:02:43 I could convince him to do anything. I'm like his only friend. He's selling drugs. He gets busted. He needs to lure some people into this thing. I can get this kid who's mentally handicapped practically. He'll do anything. Wow.

Starting point is 01:02:56 he's never been in trouble he's never broken the law right but i know i can convince him in florida that would be grounds you know entrapment is is part of entrapment is egregious conduct right it can be other things but egregious law enforcement conduct will get you there but you know thinking back remember when weed was all the way illegal there was no medical marijuana yeah and those might as well been h yeah and that those dealers were getting hit all the time and because there was were soft targets. Like, I mean, my weed dealing clients, I had several of them, and they got hit just like that, except it wasn't a setup. And the thing was, one of them, man, I'll tell you what, they were like rich college kids, but they just decide, you know, they're rent in this house,

Starting point is 01:03:46 and they have a safe. And yeah, they're selling to all their friends, right? Because in this college, like, nobody's going to go to the bad part of time to get their, you know, whatever. So this was an easy target. And they get the home invasion and they get everything ripped off. And they had some good money and they had a good amount of money. And they call the cops, though. They call the cops and say, we got a home invasion.

Starting point is 01:04:14 But they don't tell them what they do for a living. They don't tell them everything that they took. But the cops, you know how they are. They're not stupid. They're not stupid. So you know those rooms that you see on the documentaries where they're, okay, they're not in that room. People think that you're being recorded in that room. Of course you are.

Starting point is 01:04:31 They're in the lobby, right? They're in the lobby waiting. But the cops aren't stupid. They let these two sit in the lobby for 45 minutes and they start telling each other, well, God, how much did they? Well, they took like 14 grand. They took three pounds of this and whatever the coach, whatever the names of the, the they're rattling off the inventory and the cash that got stolen and the cops are just sitting here recording this now people are coming and going into the station you know they don't think

Starting point is 01:05:01 they're being recorded yet and they're trying to get their story straight right they're like what what are we going to say we got to cover all this up and I was just like you guys are such soft targets I mean they're lucky they're alive really and then they're talking about it you know oh gosh and the same way with the back of police cars too still to this day. I don't understand why people just start jibber jabbering. Like the cop will be friendly. Hey, Matt, you know, if you want to call your wife, you know, I'll let you call your wife or whatever. And then they'll walk away, but they're recording the inside the car. Like, yeah, they found it. Yeah. Oh, they're going to find it. They haven't found it yet. But they're going through the trunk.

Starting point is 01:05:42 I'm like, oh, my God. This is all on video. Like, stop. So I watch entirely two minutes. too much of the cop videos, you know, of them with the body. Listen, the body cameras are so much entertainment. Oh, yeah. They knock on the window and they say, your license registration, you know, and the person cracks the window and they go, why are you pulling me over? Right. And they're, well, because you rolled through the stop sign or whatever, you know, I have it on

Starting point is 01:06:13 dash camps, you know, well, I'm, I love the sovereign citizens. Oh, my gosh. I'm not driving. I'm traveling. right. Immediately call again that we got a problem here. Like, you know, we got a 1272 and we get, give me somebody here. There I know, this, I'm going to be breaking this window in about two minutes and yanking

Starting point is 01:06:32 you out of here because you're already a problem. It's like, what are you doing? Yeah. Just, you're going to get a lot, you're going to get a ticket. It's no big deal. It's, you just turned this, you turned a traffic violation into, into a felony. Like, some of these people. And then they put.

Starting point is 01:06:49 them in the back, or they do maybe something completely different. They argue and argue, and then they put them in the back. Like, I love the girls that get caught shoplifting, and they stick them in the back of the police car, and then they're, you know, don't, don't did it. And they put you together. Oh, yeah. If they put you together, like, they're not, they don't want you, they're not hoping. It's a sign. It's a sign. And they're waiting, too. They've got, they're waiting, waiting for the recording to, you know, prosper. What was the other, uh, oh, uh, well, I was going to see, the other body camera ones are great, where they go and they get somebody passing a bad check and the cop, you know, they've got, they're sitting, they're sitting in

Starting point is 01:07:27 the manager's office at the bank and two police officers walk up and they're like, hey, what's going on? Hey, we're going to go ahead and, uh, what's going on here? You know, let me come over here for a second. It's like, oh, man. And they gave them fake IDs. They do all the things. And it's like, you were trying to pass a bad check. You opened an account two weeks ago. You guys have dumped $20,000 in in checks that are no good. You've been pulling out the cash. This is not your name. Right.

Starting point is 01:07:53 You know, it's, and then they just lie and they try and try and try and get out of it. Yeah, but that's a, that's like a safer crime than, like, people robbing the,

Starting point is 01:08:03 the pizza delivery dude or what have you. Like, how much do you think you're going to get, you know, from a convenience store even? They got most of that locked up. Even the guys that robbed banks don't go. Like the average bank robber gets $3,500.

Starting point is 01:08:17 Yeah. It does. It's way too much risk. Yeah. Passing a bad check is not a bad deal compared to these other things. You know, it's funny. I would talk to the guys in prison, like the drug dealers in prison, and they used to always were, they always thought, like, you've got,

Starting point is 01:08:36 I had a lot of balls for going into a bank with a driver's license and fake documents and sitting there for, like, how long are you in there? I'm like, I don't know, be 30 minutes. It could be an hour or two. It depends, you know, and until I get the money or till whatever happens, right? Like, maybe I'm applying for a mortgage. They're like, what's the thing? And they're like, bro, and you just sit there.

Starting point is 01:08:55 Like they were like, and I'm like, you're here for, for, you know, 1,200 pounds of marijuana. You went to a deal with a gun where the other, you didn't, like that, that, you showed up with, everybody's got guns and you're, you're, you're, you're dealing in keys of, of blow or, right. That's, that's insane. Like, I would never do that. because they're saying, I would never go into a bank and do what you did. I'm like, that's a joke compared to what you're doing. Yeah.

Starting point is 01:09:24 It's just, it's what you're familiar with. Right. You know, like they were perfectly comfortable knowing everybody had a pistol on them, and they're there to drop off six keys and pick up 180 in cash. And it's like, that's insane. Right. These guys will kill each other for that. It seems like if your goal is just to get money,

Starting point is 01:09:44 there are safer ways to get money than, you know, using guns and using drugs. There's definitely better crimes, but like you said, they're not used to it. Now, I mean, now with the way things are going with computers and AI and the agency that these machines have, like, how is this going to end up? Who's going to be responsible when my little agent is off taking stuff from a bank somewhere? And I didn't ask it to, but I just asked it maybe to get some money or make some money. and then all of a sudden it's going to be rampant

Starting point is 01:10:21 that people don't even have to do this anymore. Or that the kids are going to program these things. I don't know. Well, or it's also that technology is like the flock, what is it, flock? Is that what's called the flock? Flock cameras? Yeah.

Starting point is 01:10:38 It's insane. Like, I mean, they're able to say, this place was robbed, what vehicles were in this area. Right. Okay, here's six of them. Where did they go? What are the tags?

Starting point is 01:10:50 Who owned the vehicles? Where are they? Oh, okay, the guy went here. We can follow him all the way back to his house. It's like, this is insane. Like, you'd be foolish. Or, and then some of the other things with the AI is now a lot of the older crimes or scams that people catch on to. For instance, this happened to my mom one time.

Starting point is 01:11:14 I think I've mentioned this before. is my mother got a message on Facebook. And it was from a friend to hers. And the woman said, now keep in mind, on my mom's Facebook, she had lots of vacations that she and my father had been on. They happened to have gone to Budapest a few times. This woman said, my mom's name is Margaret. Margaret, I need your help.

Starting point is 01:11:39 I'm in Budapest. We lost our, like, they lost like their suitcase. their wallets or whatever, our passports, everything, we have no money. Can you, can you wire transfer us or whatever, Western Union, because this was probably 20 years, 15 years ago, let's say. Can you send us money? Western Union, can you send us like, and it wasn't a lot of money. It was like $1,500, right? Which to them, that's like, if you're in Budapest, that's probably like getting 10 grand. So not that I don't even know this person was in Budapest. I'm assuming they were probably actually in a call in a call center in Nigeria.

Starting point is 01:12:15 Yeah, for sure. My mom was actually thinking about sending the money. So I think they went, they went back and forth a few times. And my mom just, it's just so happened that I want to say my sister had come by. And my mom said that, you know, Maria, so and so, yes, here's what happened. Does that sound fishy to you? and the reason it sounded fishy to my mom was that they hadn't spoken in a few years and that she was very close with her daughter and her son-in-law.

Starting point is 01:12:50 And there were all these other people that's like, why did you reach out? Why would you reach out to me? Right. We're friends. We're Facebook friends. We don't talk a lot. Right. Like there's 10 other people in your circle that you would have reached out to before me.

Starting point is 01:13:05 And that's the only reason that she did, I only asked my mom before. before she actually went to probably go do it. Because $1,500 for my mom was probably not a big deal. Right. And so now you could do the same thing. Yes. With video. Yeah.

Starting point is 01:13:24 You just clone that person's face and you call them and you FaceTime them. And listen, if I saw that, I'm sending the money. Right. I'm not even going to question. It's so good. Right. I wouldn't even, who would question that? Of course, John needs money.

Starting point is 01:13:39 I'm, you know, oh, yeah. And if they could, you know, you might question if, like, I haven't talked to this guy in two years, but if it was someone closer that, oh, yeah, we had had dinner, you know, whatever, two months ago. And maybe it was, hey, they're in Georgia and they need to get back. And it's like, yeah, man, I'll send you. Of course, sure. No, like, hey, what happened?

Starting point is 01:13:58 You know, like, if the scenario was slightly different, I could see me sending $1,500 to somebody without about. These robots could do it all night or agents, all night, millions of people. and these folks wake up with money in their bank account. Yeah. Yeah, overseas. It was somewhere in Romania. There was a little town in Romania.

Starting point is 01:14:18 They called it like Scam City or something. And it was they had the most per square mile. They had the most Western Union stores in the world. Wow. And that they there were just, it was just there was, because it was an article in Washington. It was from the police. Like they had like four police or three police that were busting the scammers.

Starting point is 01:14:45 Right. And they had like, we got no budget. We have no budget. Nobody cares about this. Right. Because they're stealing from Americans. Right. You know, and they were like, so they don't care.

Starting point is 01:14:54 And this was once again, this article was 15, 20 years ago. Right. Probably 15 years ago. And we were just talking about how they were extremely poor. It was a poor country. And, you know, and they said even when we would grab these guys, the guys would be like, why are you guys even arresting us? Like, I'm not stealing from Romanians.

Starting point is 01:15:07 We're stealing from American, rich Americans. Right. They're not even missing the money. Do you ever see like 90-day fiancé? You ever see that show? I know it. I've seen a... These guys, lonely dudes, lonely American dudes,

Starting point is 01:15:22 are going overseas to find women and vice versa. Right. And a lot, some of these guys, they're sending money constantly. And they never even see, they're like, don't even FaceTime this girl. Yeah. And the whole time I'm yelling at the TV, like, can you FaceTime? You know where this is going. Yeah.

Starting point is 01:15:42 No, I can't. I've send her my last dollar. She doesn't want to FaceTime. We just talk on the phone or we text. And it's like, now you're going to do FaceTime to get money out of these lonely guys. Yeah. And it's going to work. I saw the one where the guy was, I don't know if they're all like this or not,

Starting point is 01:16:01 but the guy is basically, is like, rented a room and he's waiting for his Ukrainian girlfriend to arrive on the plane. And he's sitting there and he's waiting. He's like, I haven't talked to her in like four days. But I know she's getting on the plane. And I know she's got to be on the plane by now. I mean, she's landed. And he's just, I haven't talked to him. He's got roses.

Starting point is 01:16:18 It's just like, oh, yeah. Like, bro, there's no six foot tall, blonde hair, blue-eyed Ukrainian about to walk through custom. It's not happening. No. I do have a question because it's funny. my buddy Pete and I used to talk about this in prison all the time. You know, these guys would hire some material. This is federal, but it works the same in the state.

Starting point is 01:16:47 And I'm wondering how it works for a public defender. You work for the public defender's office? Just when I started out in 93 and for a couple years. And now you work? I've been on my own for 25 years. Oh, okay. Well, then it's even worse for you. Only for this scenario.

Starting point is 01:17:03 is because, you know, like Pete, Pete, and there's a guy named Frank Amadeo and Pete, there's a bunch of guys that they did legal work, right? My buddy Pete was locked up for like 26 years. Right. 26 years and did legal work almost the entire time. And he's a super, super smart guy. I mean, just, like, brilliant. So he did a ton of legal work, and he was like, I, you know, I get these guys in here.

Starting point is 01:17:29 You know, they come to me and they paid their, they paid their defense. turn, you know, $30,000. And he's like, for a federal case. And he's like, and they think, they, they think that their lawyer has adequately represented them. And he's like, and they're probably nice guys. He is, but I have to sit down and I have to explain to him, like, you gave the guy 30 grand.

Starting point is 01:17:54 You had, you know, 500 hours of, of wire tapes, you know, of wires. you've never listened to them. You know, and the guy's like, right, you know, my attorney did. He's like, no, no. Like, let's think about this. What is your attorney charge an hour? You know, oh, he's like, he's like, 100 bucks an hour. Like, okay, now listen to this.

Starting point is 01:18:17 Think about this and do the math. And then, you know, you add up the math. It's like, you know, you need hundreds of thousands of dollars for him to have listened to the, and that's if he just played them and listened the whole time. He's got to stop. He's got to take excerpts. He's got to put together a pieces of who you were. where you were in this transaction, the whole thing.

Starting point is 01:18:36 He's like, you can't listen to. No. You can't, you don't have, he doesn't have the money to do, even if he hired, um, paralegals at $30 an hour. They, you didn't give him enough money to listen to 800 hours or 400 or even 150 hours of wires. So what I'm wondering is the public defender. And we always joke.

Starting point is 01:19:03 that you're going to take my case, you know, it's a complicated case, right? Because they have different levels. Right. So complicated case, I think the federal defense attorney has got like $12,500. Right. Something like that. And then, so if it was just a regular case, like the first thing they get is they get like $5,500,000. It's because you hear it about.

Starting point is 01:19:25 You're going to plead them out. No, no, this is a complicated one, your honor. They always try and get the complicated. Right. And then they go, okay, 12, 5, okay. What if you like, and then if they went to trial, they got something else, like really, like a lot, like $22,000. Or you can start billing per hour on the state level. You could bill per hour if you go to trial. But you seem like, yeah, there's not enough money.

Starting point is 01:19:49 They have 150 attorneys in this, in their office. Yep. An inexhaustible budget. Yep. How, so one, I'm wondering, what is, what does the public defenders get paid? And two, how can you possibly, why is a system set up that they think that you, that it's, it's, I'm going to say, I want to say fair, but that's, you know, because the problem is, is that, you know, like in the, in the Constitution, right? Like, you know, you have, you have, the right to have an attorney. Right. Doesn't say you have a right to have an effective attorney. Right. Just an, and people are like, no, no, no, no, no. Right. Just an attorney. And, and the other problem is, is that, you.

Starting point is 01:20:30 until I went through the system, you know, like an idiot, never, never occurred to me. I just never thought about it either. Is that people think like, oh, no, I got an attorney. Okay, well, who's your attorney? Oh, is this a guy got out of the... No, we're like a commodity now. Right. They're all the same.

Starting point is 01:20:44 Yeah, it doesn't matter. Yeah. Oh, my gosh, that is ridiculous. So I'm wondering, is it the same in the public defender where they give you a set fee to represent someone and then it... You're on a salary at the public defender's office, so you're just on a salary. You know what it was? I was thinking J-U-A.

Starting point is 01:21:00 Is that if it's the federal public defender's office, you are on a salary. And actually, the salary, and this was like 20 years ago, was like 80 or 90,000. They get paid well. They get paid well. They still get paid well. But I... That was federal. I didn't know what it was the state.

Starting point is 01:21:16 I agree with you that you do end up defending these cases where the government dumps all this stuff on you. And I had this recently. I resolved it last year as a racketeering with... Have you ever heard of these 21 houses? There was a 21 house in Tampa. They were all over. And they're like, they call it human trafficking on, but it's not, okay? Basically what it is, is this a brothel.

Starting point is 01:21:46 And you go in for $20, you have this woman for 15 minutes, and then the dollars for your protection. What do you do with the other 13 minutes? Yeah, yeah, I know these guys. And so they dumped on me. They dumped three years of camera footage on me outside the house. So they set up a camera on a pole. I have three years of pole cam footage.

Starting point is 01:22:13 And I'm like, really, how am I going to go through three years of video footage? Right. I mean, this is, I'm just one guy. Now, this is a vast racketeering conspiracy, which really you could just, legalize this stuff and then it wouldn't be a big deal. But these houses, this conspiracy, this racket, have been going on for like a decade because they refused to let white people go into the house, first of all. They would only allow, you know, Mexicans basically to go into the house, which they kind of successfully weeded out a lot of undercover. Yeah. Like really, they just,

Starting point is 01:22:57 They just couldn't catch these guys. They spent years. And I couldn't go through all three years of that pole cam. But what would surprise me about, just as a side note, would surprise me about these houses is they were extremely busy. So these women would run through 100 guys in a week. And the deal at the house was only you had a rotation. You could never have a woman repeat.

Starting point is 01:23:23 So they had a different woman every week. and that's what kept the guys coming back, like the weekly special. They would get bored with the same girl, right? And this was a racket that had been going on forever. And eventually they were able to put a stop to it. And I mean, just boatloads of people went down on this. But I was surprised at how long they could,

Starting point is 01:23:46 number one, I was surprised at how long they could get away with this. They would always buy a house in a poor neighborhood, you know. And the people in the poor neighborhood are like, I'm not going to interfere. whatever's going on. Yeah, they mind their own business. Yeah, it's like nobody called. You literally have 15 strange dudes going to the back door all day, every day, and nobody called it in.

Starting point is 01:24:08 And they wanted, on the news, they wanted to call it human trafficking. But I had all the discovery in these women were begging, begging to get in this house. They were, they made a lot of money. They got tips, things of that sort. and the 15 minutes was well enforced. Like the guy would come bang on the door and say, I need another however many dollars, otherwise get the hell out.

Starting point is 01:24:34 They had like bouncers. And they're not being held there against their will? No, they couldn't prove that. They had to kind of get rid of those allegations. But it made for nice, sensational news that these women are stuck in this house. In the meantime, they were just, they were begging to come back.

Starting point is 01:24:54 back. And also, trusting the juries is a tough thing. And I know I can get into disputes with other defense attorneys about this, but I lack a lot of trust in random Floridians. I love Florida, but you're going to pick six to 12 randoms, and they're going to decide your fate. And I remember a good friend of mine had to go to trial on a case where, and I watched some of it because it interesting to me and he had supposedly pistol whipped his wife and they were in a bitter divorce and he's like dude i have never done this i've never pissed i never know this i am totally innocent now mind you in florida it's mandatory prisons like aggravated battery with a firearm right it's not that you shot the projectile but it is that you hit the person with it so he is

Starting point is 01:25:46 racking up years and years of prison for this supposed domestic thing He is totally innocent. He's like, I'm not doing prison. Then they did what, well, how about probation? I'm not doing probation. How about one month of probation on a misdemeanor? He's like, I'm innocent. I'm not doing one month of probation on a misdemeanor.

Starting point is 01:26:09 Goes to trial, he gets 45 years prison, 45 years. I think the dude is still in prison to this day. And he could have had a month of probation on a misdemeanor. Now, when you get into these he said, she said situations, you have to be real careful about, okay, you're innocent. I totally get that. But this is a lot of risk you're taking. And I, you know, I side on.

Starting point is 01:26:36 Here's for pistol lifting his wife. There clearly were no married men on that jury. Right. Right. Well, the state might have picked a good jury for sure. And sometimes, you know, you just have believability. And he said, she said. and Florida law is just very harsh on some things

Starting point is 01:26:55 when it comes to firearms. Right. And that was a manipulation, I think, of the intent of that crime. So it is what it is. I just, I don't trust, if it were up to me, if that, I would be like, hey, dude, you know, please.

Starting point is 01:27:11 I mean, really, don't roll the dice with these randoms. Your life is, I don't, I'm happy that you're innocent. Yeah, and that's great. Yeah, you can tell everyone. everybody that while you're out, you know, or you can spend the next 45 years in prison telling everybody you're innocent. Like, which one do you want to do? Yeah, exactly. And I know you're... A misdemeanor? They offered a misdemeanor one month probation. I'll take a mistimilar. What are we talking about?

Starting point is 01:27:38 You know, I was hovering around that case and I think because he was in a nasty divorce, he was not wanting to give her the edge. Like this was the edge that she needed and the nasty divorce was this crime. But still, it is a lot of risk. You know, people, you can believe, they'll just believe you sometimes. And there's not a lot of evidence.

Starting point is 01:28:05 And there was a wacky case in Osceola, which I handle Osceola too. And your editor may have to edit this out. But I'm just going to tell you how wacky the case was. So, you know at the hospitals, you come in pregnant and you deliver, they do this DNA test. And the DNA test came back that it was... They automatically do a DNA test now?

Starting point is 01:28:27 When they don't know who the father is. Like sometimes they... So it came back incest, right? I don't know if you could say that. But it came back that this, you know, 18-year-old had relations with somebody related. Now, the backstory. was that dad. It's Florida.

Starting point is 01:28:46 Yeah, exactly. This is what you look at the news. You go, oh my God, it's Florida. Oh my God, it's always Florida. And this dad was out of her life. He was in prison her whole life. Dad gets out of prison when she's like a teenager and she moves in with cool dad. And apparently this relation happens and a kid pops out.

Starting point is 01:29:08 Now, the case gets dismissed because she goes to court and she says, my dad is a drug addict and while he was asleep, I had relations with him and out pops this kid, right? Now the judge did exactly what you're saying. The judge is like, I don't believe this, but all the evidence we have is that this was not consensual. And dad said that too. Dad was like, I never knew that I, you know, I drink a lot and I do drugs a lot and I'm passed out a lot. I never knew I didn't have relations with my daughter. And they dismissed the case. It goes up on appeal.

Starting point is 01:29:49 And this was a crazy decision to me. The appellate court overturned it and said, we don't believe the victim. We don't believe the victim. And you can continue pressing charges against this guy, which is like, it's a very strange. It's a very strange situation. I mean, if anybody has the right to press charges, it's the victim. The victim's not saying she wants to press charges. And the victim is telling a story.

Starting point is 01:30:18 And again, maybe it wasn't true. How do you win that at trial anyway? Like, she's not going to cooperate. I mean, he took prison time when he lost the appeal. He got his trial, you know, they dismissed the charges. And then the state appealed. You know, this is another thing. State always appeals.

Starting point is 01:30:37 They got all the appellate money. They got all the appellate lawyers. Every time something goes wrong for them, it gets appealed. My clients can't always afford to just appeal every little decision. But I think that that dismissal should have stood. It was unbelievable, but this is Florida. Crazy stuff happens in Florida. You have to accept the crazy.

Starting point is 01:30:58 This is what the woman's saying. And they literally said, we don't believe you. We're going to throw your dad in prison, even though you both have the same story. There's no video, there's no evidence that this was consensual. So what are you going to do? Florida. I was thinking about that conversation in Norway that I had with my cousin, who's like my, look, it's like, so I went to Norway for a, I'm Norwegian, for a family reunion.

Starting point is 01:31:33 And, you know, we're eating at this table. There's 200 people there. And, you know, there's a blonde. very attractive blonde that keeps looking at me. This is when I was young and attractive. And so we keep glancing at each other, glancing at each other. And this is a horrible thing. But we're glancing at it.

Starting point is 01:31:56 And her mother even leans into her and says, stop flirting with your American cousin. And we don't really know how we're related. So we end up going later. And she didn't speak great English, which is way better than my Norwegian. So we go and we talk and she's like, how are we?

Starting point is 01:32:15 I was like, I have no idea. She's let's find out. So we go up to the chart. Your, you know, Olga's, you know, great-grandson. It's, you know, for, you know, Ullad. You know, their origin names, which are ridiculous. And so we go all the way and she's like, so that makes you my, like, she's like,

Starting point is 01:32:37 fourth cousin, like that? And I went and I said, that doesn't make us shit. I said, I'm from Florida. I said, we marry our first cousins. Yeah, that's right. She died laughing and we were just supposed to laugh. But that's what makes me think of, gosh, what was it? It was the Wolf of Wall Street where the guy is married.

Starting point is 01:32:57 He was married to like his first cousin or second cousin. Oh, yeah. Did you ever see that? No. And it's in the Wolf of Wall Street. Like his wife is like his second cousin or something. It's, oh, it's insanity. But yeah, Florida.

Starting point is 01:33:09 It's an interesting place. You know, what's funny is I always say this, is that most people, if you're not from Florida, they think of Florida and they think of Miami Beach, you know, beautiful women, palm trees, you know, that's what they think. But that's like 5% of Florida. Like 95% of Florida is pickup trucks, Confederate flags, you know, rednecks, hunting. Like, it's kind of like, it's like northern Georgia. You know what I'm saying?

Starting point is 01:33:37 Like it's very little of it. is beaches and and I don't experience that so much because I'm in downtown Orlando so the downtown Orlando is this own pocket of something different than that I I don't think I've seen a Confederate flag in downtown are you kidding ever listen there is a 60 no is it a hundred foot it's like a 100 foot by 80 foot Confederate flag that flies on 75 every every day and it's on this 200-foot pole and you drive by and it's blowing in the wind. Yeah. And, you know,

Starting point is 01:34:15 and we live in Wesley Chapel, which is actually a very nice little sub, kind of like a suburb. I go to this place called Saddlebrook because I play a little tennis. Yes. Okay. That's in Wesley Chapel. Yeah.

Starting point is 01:34:26 And there. They're building a ton of, a little sub, not little, they're huge subdivision. But even then as they grow and grow, I mean, you know,

Starting point is 01:34:35 even now we drive to our house. We're driving by cow pastures. There's cows. There's, you know, you're driving. And there's, you know, and still, I'd say 50% of the vehicles are still pickup trucks and, right, you know, SUVs. And then there's, you know, Okachobi. Right.

Starting point is 01:34:49 You know, there's, you know, there's all these little tiny towns in the middle of nowhere, and there's just tons of, you know, it's pickup trucks and it's, it's gone, which, you know, I have a problem with, but it's, it's very much kind of like, it's like living in Georgia, South Carolina or something, you know. It's the South. It's the South. Yeah. Yeah.

Starting point is 01:35:09 Do you have like repeat clients? I do have repeat clients. That's for sure. And sometimes the repeat, you can scream them for repeating. So if they're sitting where you're sitting. What do you mean? Yeah. Like if they blame themselves for what happened, like I screwed up.

Starting point is 01:35:30 I shouldn't have done this. They're not going to probably be a repeat client. But if they blame their stupid girlfriend for putting that gun in the car, If they blame, well, you know, she spent a lot of money and I was behind on the rent and I had to, if they're blaming everybody else, I'm like, well, you have an accepted responsibility. You're probably coming back. But, you know, I had a car ring case several years ago and I thought it was pretty brilliant and it basically got broken up from, you know, hell has no fury, like Sam Kinnison, like what you were saying. because what they were doing was they were buying salvage cars and up north. There were certain states that would sell them a car to give them the title.

Starting point is 01:36:19 And they'd find a range rover that was totaled, you know, recently. They drove it off the lot and it's totaled. So it's still a 2026 range rover. They get the VIN number. And then they just go steal that, they just go steal that range rover. Right. And then they'd swap them. They'd swap everything out.

Starting point is 01:36:39 And they had been doing this forever. It's great. Oh, it's a good one. It really is a good one. As long as you can find, you know, these states that will just give you title to the total of car with the VIN number and everything, well, they could just go do the rest. But there was a nasty breakup. And the girlfriend knew what my client was up to. And this is so many times, like, you wouldn't have gotten caught.

Starting point is 01:37:06 But you effed around and found out. Right. You know, and that's how they got caught. It was just a breakup. She just said, I'm calling the cops. I'm going to call the police and tell them what you're doing. And this happens a lot, you know. And I know Chris Rock has a whole video on like, don't drive with your upset girlfriend, you know.

Starting point is 01:37:28 Like, she's got weed, you know. You know, you just pulled over for a speeding ticket. And she's upset enough to just rattle off every bad. thing you've ever done. And I remember another similar car case where after this case, a lot of the insurance companies started changing the way they did business because it was a similar scam where my client would call the police from the parking lot and there'd be it, they'd put a little, I mean, just to sell the deal, they'd put a little glass on the ground like their window got broken to the went to the car.

Starting point is 01:38:05 Right. And be like, oh, my car got stolen. It's a ranger over whatever it is. And so this was a similar branch of fraud where they would buy the title,

Starting point is 01:38:16 salvage title, to a really nice car. And then they'd insure it down here. Here's the title. They'd get it registered down here. And then they just claim it stolen. They never had the car. There's no car at all.

Starting point is 01:38:28 There's no car. The car's in a dumb lot in New Jersey. And they just bank. They just kept. banking. But the problem was with this, you have to find enough people because I can't have my car stolen three times. I get one shot and then you get one shot and you get one shot and we all make a hundred grand because these are nice cars. But one detective just had a whim and decided to go up to New Jersey to this lot where it was last and the car was still there in the junk. And the junk,

Starting point is 01:39:04 Yonk Yard. And he's like, yeah, he flew all on an insurance thing. Yeah, just he flies up there. He's like, oh, my God, this is still here. I wonder how many more of these are still in the lot. And sure enough. So what ended up happening with that little scam that was pretty successful for a little while is I think if you're a new client at State Farm or progressive or whatever, they'll make

Starting point is 01:39:31 you show them the car. but they weren't, you didn't have to show them the car back then. That's how they could cash in on this. And they just, you know, they would just collect checks. I have a buddy Zach. Do you remember when, I'm going to say it wrong, I'm going to say Shoney's. Yeah, Shonys. Denny's, Shonys, where they were getting sued because black patrons were saying

Starting point is 01:40:00 that we're getting horrible service, were sat let, like, We're being discriminated against. They don't want us here. And so there was a lawsuit going on. And it just so happened. And this was 20, 30 years ago. My buddy, Zach's brother, who actually just passed away about a month or two ago. His brother and another guy named Glenn, they were best friends.

Starting point is 01:40:24 Glenn's a white guy. Zach's brother was a black guy. So Glenn happened to be working at like, Shoney. Or Denny's, whichever one it was, he was working there. And so he's working there. And I don't even know if it was the one that was being sued, but it's one of those breakfast-style restaurants. So he's working there.

Starting point is 01:40:47 And he says, listen, and he's been working there for like six months or a year. And he says to Zach's brother, which I forget his name, let's say Ron. He goes, Ron, he goes, why don't you come in and order him? and get at my station and order food, and we're going to create a scenario. And so he comes in. Oh, my gosh, yes. Orders food and says, hey, man, can I get a refill on my Coke?

Starting point is 01:41:14 And he's like, and so he's the waiter. He's like, yeah, bro, yeah, I got you. And he waits on somebody else, brings them their food, waits on somebody else. And then as he's leaving, hey, hey, don't forget about my Coke. He's like, yeah, man, I got you. Leaves comes back, brings them their food. And so everybody can hear this happening. coming, comes back again, he says, hey, he said, man, I'm sorry, man, can I, can I really, can I get

Starting point is 01:41:37 in my Coke? I just want to, you know, I've, I've asked you several times, and he's, and he's, and he leaves again, comes back without it, and then the guy goes, man, can I get, what's going on? Do it? Why can't get my Coke? And he turns, and he says, and he says, man, that's why I hate waiting on you fucking right. Right. Inward, you know. Yeah. And he's, and, and he goes, and he's like, what? And he said, man, you just, he's like, wait. And these two are friends. They're friends, though. So, like, it's a total setup. Right.

Starting point is 01:42:06 So he storms off and the manager comes over. This guy gets up, it's like, I want to talk to the manager. The manager comes over. So Ron's like, I want to talk to the manager. Manager comes over. He said, this is what just happened. The other patrons are like, hey, man, I was sitting right here. Your waiter's totally out of line.

Starting point is 01:42:22 This guy's been, it's been 20 minutes. He brought our food. So they start giving him phone numbers and stuff. So the manager, look, we've got his witnesses. Of course. Oh, my gosh. And so he says, so he fires him. He fires, he fires, he fires, you're fired.

Starting point is 01:42:38 Get out of here. Okay, he leaves. He says some more stuff, rocks off. He gets the guy's phone number and everything, right? And he's like, man. And he says, look, I'm going to have somebody call you. I'm so sorry. He leaves.

Starting point is 01:42:48 He said, man, I'm telling you. He said, it wasn't two days. It may have been that day. They get a phone call from a lawyer offering him like $80,000. Something ridiculous, like $50,000, whatever it was. Wow. was immediate. Let's say it's 40,000.

Starting point is 01:43:03 Like, it was immediate. They were so, it was so egregious. They were so concerned about it. Gosh. And then, of course, they all, because they don't want them to be a lawyer, right? Right. And they also know what's going, you know, the environment. This is not something we want.

Starting point is 01:43:18 And, of course, they're not thinking Glenn because Glenn's been working there for a year. Right. You know, you don't work somewhere for a year. And the lawsuit had just come up six months ago. They did make a lot more money with that. Yeah. So he gets, and like I said, this is 25, 30 years ago, right? This was back in the 90s when this was happening.

Starting point is 01:43:36 I think I was in college. So that happens, they get paid. They're thrilled. Yeah. Of course, you know, they're really good with money. So two weeks later, they're like, you know, once they've bought a used Corvette and they've blown the money. Right. They decide, you know what we're going to do?

Starting point is 01:43:52 We're going to get Glenn to go get another job at like a Shonis or, you know, whatever the competitor was. So he gets a job there. A month later, they do the same thing again. And get more money? No, because this time, they were supposed to get more money. Right. And this time I think they got a lawyer. And I believe that the lawyer got a phone call from, you know, Denny's lawyer.

Starting point is 01:44:17 And they said they had run them through the Accord system, which is an insurance system. And they said, these two knuckleheads just were written to check for $40,000. a month and a half ago. Right. You know, and they're like, they're like, they're like,

Starting point is 01:44:35 they just did, this is the exact same. Well, you're lucky, we don't call. And so he calls them and he's like, hey,

Starting point is 01:44:40 listen, man, what are you doing? Yeah. So it breaks down immediately. But it was like, that's, that was one of those things

Starting point is 01:44:48 that's like, they were in a situation. They probably could have made a, and they had decided like they could have, what everybody they talked to was like, you could have got way more money.

Starting point is 01:44:54 Yeah. But they got them right away. You know, the lawyers go and stride right away trying to get, before you get a lawyer, before anything happens, let's settle this. Yeah, I had a case at Disney where Disney's rushed to get people, make sure they don't have a lawyer on their little bus accidents, right?

Starting point is 01:45:12 They got all these trams, all these buses. They get into accidents, right? And my guy was on the inside, trying to cut the checks and convince them not to get a lawyer. but in fact he had set up some chiropractic places and everything else so when you got injured he he was like well you know he needed some help at this place and this place so he's cutting himself checks to all these companies they were legit companies except they weren't legit yeah yeah and eventually they're giving him a kickback right no he's literally getting all the money oh he's not he's not sending it to I mean, they're legit corporations.

Starting point is 01:45:54 There's no chiropractor there. But he's running out of, like they ran out of Denny's and Shonis. He's running out of people because what he would do is he would call you and go, hey, you were on that bus on that accident, because there's 15 people. How does Disney know? And he's the gatekeeper. How do they know who's on that bus? And he just constantly is calling up friends, hey, you want to make 50 grand.

Starting point is 01:46:16 You want to make 80 grand. Well, you were on this bus, you know? And eventually, like somehow. they found out. It took a long time for them to find out. But they, but they got screwed in a way because of that rush, hey, we want to pay this before a lawyer comes in. Well, now you've got this pain point of this guy that is running this and he could be cutting checks and he was. You know, I mean, it could have gone on for a long time, but you know, people get greedy. Then they figure it out. Have you ever, have you ever had a, do you ever, do you ever represent

Starting point is 01:46:51 anybody for murder or anything like that? I don't anymore. That was more of a public defender thing, but I never got like death penalty qualified. So we had at the PD's office only one person, one or two people that would do a death case. Are they all death penalty cases? No, but a lot, I mean, sometimes they are.

Starting point is 01:47:14 And you have to be qualified to do that. Otherwise, they won't give you the case, right? Because if they just give you like a first-degree murder case, they could almost boot you off. They could boot the attorney off just by saying, oh, we decided we want the death penalty now. Well, now you need somebody qualified. So they always have somebody qualified. Right. But, you know, in private practice, there's not a lot of murder going on that these people can't afford those cases.

Starting point is 01:47:43 I mean, murder in Orlando is almost exclusively a public defender thing. I can't remember a private attorney. I mean, you can get private attorneys sometimes, like, cheap if they want the fame or whatever. And we've seen that, but usually it's exclusively government lawyers. Yeah. What is the bulk of what you see? Or is it just people are just knuckleheads? Are they just, like, low-level, you know, what's the majority of your clients that you represent?

Starting point is 01:48:15 Is it mostly drugs? I would say it's mostly drugs. And it is, you know, interesting things happen on drug cases, but, and luckily for us, we have digital forensics now that can kind of, I had a guy that was drug trafficking in Brevard, right? Now, the cops pulled him over because they recognized that he had a suspended license. Now, in fact, I think he was a black dude after midnight with dread. and they just pulled him over. Yeah, just driving while black.

Starting point is 01:48:52 Yeah, exactly. He had a ton of drugs in the trunk. And they said, well, we recognized him from a previous time when he didn't have a license, right? And he still doesn't have a license. And that's why we pulled him over. Lucky for us, we have this thing that the cops do. It's called a David system, driver assisted, whatever. So they can ID because the cop was like, oh, yeah, I IDed him through David.

Starting point is 01:49:17 and it said he had a suspended license. Well, we went to Tallahassee, and his login information, that cop's login to the David system, was like 20 minutes after the stop. Right. He did not check to see if that dude's license was suspended. So I was so happy.

Starting point is 01:49:36 I'm like, we are getting this thing thrown out. Congratulations. Your 25-year-man has gone away because this cop lied about why he was pulling you over. My client was very, excited. He was so excited that he went out and drug trafficked again before I could get that dismissed. Yes. And this time, they actually legally pulled him over. So, I mean, I can't save people from themselves. But the digital forensics sometimes bites the cops in the ass in terms of,

Starting point is 01:50:08 you said you ran this name. Tallahassee says you didn't run the name. Tallahassee says you didn't do this. We've got you, we've got the printouts. know, we've got the data. And then, but nothing ever happens to those cops when they, like, nothing happened. Like, it's not like they're like, the district attorney says, hey, we're going to charge you for lying on a police report or for fabricate. No. No, no, they never, there's no accountability, I think, on the government side. I don't even think there's accountability when people accuse folks of something else.

Starting point is 01:50:39 You could just drop a grenade in somebody's life. Yeah. And then, oh, no, she lied. And other than that one case I told you about, I'm, I mean, literally 33 years of doing this, and I don't see anybody getting punished for lying and putting people through hell. Yeah. U.S. attorneys, the stuff that I've seen and the transcripts I've read and the things that they say, it's just, it's like they're just allowed to just do or say absolutely anything they want. You know, even at my sentencing, which I pled guilty, but I mean, they, you know, my U.S. attorney was saying stuff that was like,

Starting point is 01:51:17 you 100% know that's not true. You know, like we, like months earlier we had been, you know, I was debriefed and you mentioned this, you know, which was, I'd had a robbery where a bunch of stuff got stolen and I was trying to run up the, you know, my claim. Yeah. And so, you know. Everybody. Yeah.

Starting point is 01:51:39 Yeah. But I mean, you have like, what people don't realize is if you said, oh, you've got a, you have, you know, $50,000. personal items that you can claim. Yeah, but there's caps on them. So it's like you get $3,000 for electronics. You get, you know, $5,000 for jewelry. Yeah, jewelry. Exactly. So I'm trying to say, hey, we had $4,800 in this. We had $2,200 in this. And I'm just right, we're writing them up to try and max out some of them. Sure. Not all of them, but, you know, so we're, and one of the things we, we put down was that we had an AR-15, which we didn't have, you know. And so that was,

Starting point is 01:52:25 that was one thing. And the other thing, I was charged with a gun, which the girl I was dating at the time did have like a 38 or something or a 9 millimeter something. And it was in a gun case that I didn't even have the combination to. But it had been stolen. And the government found a receipt. They sent a receipt in her name, and I was charged with a felon in possession of a firearm. So when I get them to drop that, when we explain,

Starting point is 01:52:54 I didn't have the gun, never had the gun, you can ask her, she'll tell you, I've never touched the gun, she'll tell you I didn't ask, I told her not to buy the gun. And the second, and then I explained about the AR-15, you can also ask the girlfriend, that's what we did. I've never had an AR-15, I never held one. We get in front of the judge, and so they drop it all.

Starting point is 01:53:11 In front of the judge, and the judge is like, he's a violent offender, he was in He was in, he had constructive possession of, you know, this firearm, which she already knew I didn't. He had an AR-15, and she said something ridiculous. He was a fully automatic machine gun. Some ridiculous magazine. Not even that. Like, it's like, I don't, it's not a fully automatic machine gun.

Starting point is 01:53:34 And it's just an AR-15. It's like a rifle, you know, and just completely. And I'm sitting there like, like, she knows all this is intro. And you just, and I granted. I already played guilty, but it's just inflammatory. You're just trying to get the judge to just think on this horrific person. And so, I mean, you see the defense attorneys doing these, I'm sorry, the government saying these ridiculous things and the law enforcement gets on this on the stand and they say things. And then they even get blatantly caught and just nothing happens.

Starting point is 01:54:07 I mean, is that, I mean, how frustrating is that? And you, and you know, we know. in advance what they know a lot of times. Right. And so they're just up there lying. You know, they're up there lying. I had a motion to dismiss recently on just a domestic battery situation. And I know that the victim, the alleged victim, purported victim,

Starting point is 01:54:35 had called the state attorney and said, I'm out of town. I can't make it to the motion. Motion is set for 8.30. and an honest prosecutor would have been like, Judge, I know this person isn't coming. We'll call the hallways. So they call the hallways for their witness at 8.30. He's not there.

Starting point is 01:54:54 Oh, well, let's give him a few minutes. We had to wait till 10.30 to finally acknowledge that this person wasn't coming. That prosecutor knew the whole time that person wasn't coming. That prosecutor was told that person was not coming. But he sat there and made me wait. It's those little things. Like, they know stuff, and yet they'll just dig and, you know, jerk you around, jerk my clients around.

Starting point is 01:55:22 It's difficult. They have all the power, all the guns, all the money. They really do. People don't realize that. And that's why that one guy I was telling you about you, you're innocent. This is a big debate with folks. You're innocent, but you really want to go to trial and risk. what these people are going to lie about.

Starting point is 01:55:44 Right. Okay. I'm here for you. I'll do it. We win some of them. But, man, if my life were on the line, I'd take the misdemeanor and the probation. Oh, yeah. And can you imagine the position I'm in?

Starting point is 01:55:56 I always say, listen, if the DEA came and grabbed me right now and brought me downtown and said, we've got you on a, you know, five kilo conspiracy of, you know, powder, and I've never even seen it. I've never seen, I've never even seen, you know, ever. You wouldn't know what. I wouldn't know what. I wouldn't know. And they said, yeah, we've got you and you're done.

Starting point is 01:56:21 I would say, well, can I get a deal? Like, I know, I can't go to trial. We're so cynical. Yeah, I already know. We're so cynical. I know I'm done. Yeah. Can I, what can I give?

Starting point is 01:56:30 Can I do five years? Yeah. We both know I don't know about this. And I'm not going to argue that because I know you'll get me. But what can I get? What's the deal I get? Because, you know, I know, I know I'm just done. If you go to trial,

Starting point is 01:56:40 I already know they got four guys. They're going to say I was there at the deal. You know, I'm done. It's over. I'm going to get 20 years. Can I get five? You know, what can we do here? Yeah.

Starting point is 01:56:48 And I know I had a client years ago, and he was accused of abusing somebody underage. And he didn't do it. But he was like, you know what? I'll take a couple years because otherwise, the minimum man, it's like some ridiculous, you know, decades in prison. And so when you get out, they want to give you. counseling, right? Because, you know, you have this problem, you did this thing, you need counseling. I get it. You do need counseling, except he didn't do it. So they make you, pretend. What's that? Now he has to pretend. No, no. They have an innocence polygraph. They make you take a

Starting point is 01:57:25 polygraph for your innocence, right? And he passed these innocence polygraphs. So if you pass the innocence polygraph, and I think there's a technical term for it, and I just don't know what it is, he didn't have to do the counseling. He passed that stuff with flying colors, but he took prison time. You know, he took a couple of years. I think it might have been five rather than do a ridiculous amount of time. And, you know, they're not treated well in prison. No.

Starting point is 01:57:52 But five beats 30. Yeah. And, you know, some of these people are very convincing in what they say. Right. But they're lying. I think on the jury, you want to believe people. You want to believe, first of all, you don't want to believe I always have this guy note named Red Bull. Well, we call him Red Bull because his scam was based on Red Bull vending machines.

Starting point is 01:58:17 But he always says that during voir dire, he had one of the guys got up that they were questioning, one of the potential jury members. And they said, do you think after listening to all the evidence that you can find him not guilty? and he said, well, I mean, he was indicted on 34 counts of wire fraud. He did something. Right. And Red Bull is like, he's like, that's like, he's honest. He's just said what I knew everybody else was already thinking, but at least he said it.

Starting point is 01:58:51 And he said, you know, he was struck, of course, but that at least he said it. He said, everybody else is thinking that already. Like, if you're sitting there, you already look guilty. And the jury naturally believes that everything the prosecution is saying is true because they're the good guys. Right. But until you go through the system enough time, you start to realize like, well, they're not, I'm not saying they're bad, but I'm saying they're not always the good guys. And they're always going to skew things slightly. And people will hear what they want to hear.

Starting point is 01:59:27 You know, and you could do this in writing. If I say, you know, he stole nearly a million dollars. When you repeat that story, you're going to say he stole a million dollars. That's not what I said. He actually stole $780,000. Well, you said he sold a million. No, I didn't. I said nearly a million.

Starting point is 01:59:46 It's subjective. 780 is nearly a million dollars. So, you know, people and they're, you know, they're very good. You know, attorneys are very good at those. subtle tweaks and they know that you'll interpret that in a way that is to their advantage. So sometimes it's a blatant lie and then sometimes it's just a subtle tweak. It's a, you know, it's funny. People are always saying, you know, oh, something's got to be done.

Starting point is 02:00:16 It's a horrible system. But it's like, yeah, the system's really not bad. It's just that you've got humans involved. And humans are, like, it's a good system. It's just a shitty. situation when you've got all these people. And then they always, when they pass these laws, they give, they, they make the laws so general that they can be manipulated. And, and, you know, and it's just, it's some people, you know, if they, if you were arrested by the police,

Starting point is 02:00:44 then you should go to jail. And it's like, wait a minute, now, wait, hold on, you know. And then these prosecutors will give you, he said, I'm willing to give this guy five years probation. They guys says, no, fuck you, I'm going to trial. I didn't do this. And he goes to trial. And then he gives him 20 years and he sleeps like a baby. He's like, wait, you were okay with him getting five years paper. Right. So you don't really think he deserves 20. You were going to give him five. Maybe you thought he deserved a couple years. The system is very vindictive. You gave him 20 and you were okay with that. Yeah. Yeah. Very vindictive. Yeah, you can't even, we had a judge in Orange County and you have these turn in dates, right? And my friend's client had a turn in date for drug trafficking. It's a

Starting point is 02:01:26 three-year men-man. You have to show up in court, and then you start your three years. Get your fares in order. He didn't show up. Now the judge can do anything. Judge gave him 30 years. They went up, that went up on appeal. Like, that is vindictive. Right. They said, no. They let the 30 years stand. Are you serious? Usually they say, no, we'll give him, resentence him. Right. I was love when they, in the federal system, they'll say he has to be, you can't do that. He'll be resentencing and they send him back to a different judge. No, in the federal system, they send him in the same judge. Wow.

Starting point is 02:02:00 You have to, you have to prove that the judge is doing this out of spite. For some reason, then eventually they will send him to a different judge. Because a lot of judges, they'll go back to be resentenced and they'll go, okay, 10 years. Right. Let's say they gave him 10 years. No, it's out of the guidelines. It's too much. You can't give him 10 years.

Starting point is 02:02:21 Oh, okay. You have to resendent. And they don't say what. Guy leaves, comes back, and they go, he goes, okay, well, I'm hereby resendence to you to 120 months. He goes, whoa, your honor, that's 10 years. Right. The appellate court said you had to re-sentence him. I just did.

Starting point is 02:02:37 Right. He's been resentenced. Wow. Then they go back and they come back with another. So you now have to wait another, it's another 18 months. Right. Maybe if you're in prison, you might be doing it yourself. You might be paying a lawyer.

Starting point is 02:02:49 You go back. Then they go back and they say, you think now they're going to give them another judge. no, no, they'll send him back and say, no, he's going back. But you have to sit in some within the guidelines. And then he'll go, okay, you get the top end of the guidelines 41 months. You know, do you see what I'm saying? It's like, what are you doing? I have a buddy that's currently locked up.

Starting point is 02:03:11 So I can't mean. I'm not making it bore you with what a knucklehead this guy is. But, you know, and my wife doesn't understand this. But you go to prison and there are some people. that make your stay easier. Does that make sense? Like it's, you know, you're surrounded by just, you know, by these people that you're just like,

Starting point is 02:03:32 I don't like any of these people. Like I shouldn't be in this situation, but there's one or two people that you're like, this is the guy that makes me laugh. He's funny. I can talk to like, and you get this bond. Right.

Starting point is 02:03:45 And so as a result of that, I have a soft spot for this guy. Right. He's just doing a long stint then because you've been out a while. Right. It's funny. This is funny.

Starting point is 02:03:54 We used to, I've told this before, but at that point, I had 26 year sentence, right? I got my sentence cut twice. But I had 26 years at that time. We were both in the medium security prison. And he had 16 years, I think. And so he, the other day, so I'm sorry. So one day he tells me, he says, bro, I had the weirdest dream the other day. Like, you were calling me.

Starting point is 02:04:19 And I was outside and you were inside. And I was trying to hit five to accept. call and it wouldn't go through and I really needed to talk to you and I go have a question I go I'll come in your dreams I said I'm always in prison and he goes right you got 26 years like right you're going to be in prison and when I get out and I was like damn I got out six months or before he did so you know I I end up getting out six months before and we end up just by coincidence we end up um gosh living four or five miles away from each other wow like and I'd been out six months and then he got out.

Starting point is 02:04:55 And so he got out. And one day I got a phone call from a guy who said, hey, listen, do you know a guy named Isaac Allen? I went, yeah, why? He goes, he's here. He's at my buddy's house. I was like, are you serious? He was, yeah.

Starting point is 02:05:09 He's here with an ankle monitor. He went to the halfway house, came to stay here with his brother. And he's like, and I said, oh, where were you? And he said, oh, you know, I ended up saying I knew a guy who was a cold. And he was like, I was the Coleman at one point. Yeah, what's his name? He said, Matt Cox. And I was like, I know him.

Starting point is 02:05:26 And he's like, that's my buddy. So called. So, but since then, he's gone, got out for a while, went back to prison. But on a small, there are always fraud charges. Went back for a fraud charge, did about a year, got out. And then was out maybe a year, back to prison. Right. Another set of fraud charges, which is where he is right now.

Starting point is 02:05:46 I got you. He's sitting in the jail. specifically, going to go to trial. Right. Now, keep in mind, even if he's sentenced to the felony, he's already done the time for it. Right. But he's going to trial to beat the felony. Here's the reason.

Starting point is 02:06:06 If he takes the felony, he's telling him right, they're telling him time served, time served. Take the felony, time served. He's like, no, I'm going to trial to beat the felony. And they're like, why? You know, like, these lawyers are like, why? He said, I'll take time served a misdemeanor because he's on federal probation. So if he goes back in front of his judge with another felony, he's going to give him, I think he can give him like 38 months or something. Oh, yeah.

Starting point is 02:06:34 And he said, or worse. Actually, that's not sure. I think he can get him like 28 months, something like that. Well, he knows exactly what he can give him. Right. He can give me this much. He said, but here's my fear is that the judge gives me another five years of paper. And the reason he's concerned about that is his judge, everybody says their judge hates him.

Starting point is 02:06:55 Right. Judge is not like him. So he's like, my fear is he'll give me like five years and then he'll let me have to go through a process of appealing it. And he'll drag it out and I'll end up doing two or three years on something that I've already did a year for in the state. So he's like, but if it's a misdemeanor, he doesn't have a choice. but to re- He's locked in. Yeah, he had,

Starting point is 02:07:23 it's not a technical, or it's a technical violation. All he can do is say, we're putting you back on probation. Right. And his probation was basically up. He had like a month left. So he'd be done in a month.

Starting point is 02:07:34 Did they give him the misdemeanor? We're waiting. Wow. He hasn't gone. He has, he's still, I think he's going back to court. Is it March 3rd?

Starting point is 02:07:43 Yeah. Wow. And even that, I don't think is the, I think that's just a set like a, trial date or something. He's just, but yeah,

Starting point is 02:07:52 he's just kind of a knucklehead. He just keeps going and. People do not learn. I totally get that. You know, you mentioned something about, you're talking in prison to the people about their attorneys.

Starting point is 02:08:03 Right. And like, look, they're not doing any work. You know, some of them are not doing any work. And I had one of those cases recently, I was a little more than recent. And this guy got

Starting point is 02:08:14 25-year men-man on a firearm charge. shot somebody, whatever. But the point is, it was an, it was an, it was a, no, it was an, it like grazed his ear and it was an accidental discharge. Maybe he's a bad shot. Yeah, no, it really was. And anyway, so he hired a private attorney.

Starting point is 02:08:34 Now, the private attorney goes to see him at the Orange County Jail when he gets the money up front. Two years go by, and he never sees this guy, never hears from him. the family's begging two years. He's sitting in jail waiting for trial. On the day of trial, his attorney is like, here, take 10 years, right? Take 10 on the 25. And he's like, dude, I've never seen you. I saw you two years ago.

Starting point is 02:09:03 Like, really? Now you want 10 years? Like you, and he says, no. And he goes to trial and he gets 25. Oh, God. So I get called in. In Florida, we call it a 3850, which is an ineffective assistance. counsel.

Starting point is 02:09:17 2255. Is that what it is in federal? Okay. And so what this attorney had done was we have this thing called youthful offender in Florida. And if you're 21 or younger, you can get this special sentence. You don't have to get the firearm mandatory that somebody got shot. You can get like six years max. He let that birthday go by.

Starting point is 02:09:42 While he was in there, he just let it fly by. and so by the time he went to see him on trial day. Now, fortunately, I got that guy out of his 25 years. It took many years. And at the trial level, the judge denied my 3850. We had to go back up to the appellate court and say, come on, don't deny us. Let us have a full hearing. And eventually, we had a full hearing.

Starting point is 02:10:10 But I'm telling you, you hit the nail on the head. some of these attorneys get, he got paid very good money on a big case, up front on a very big case and never talked to the guy for two years. I mean, one, I mean, it's just, it's just such, it's just such a scumbag move. Oh, it happens, though. And sad. The other thing is, it's like, how can the judge deny you?

Starting point is 02:10:38 And it's like, it's this is very clear. It's pretty, Your Honor, I know. It's clear. He didn't know. He just got a nice chunk of got $25,000 up front the day of. He's trying to convince him to, like, he never did any work. This guy's ineffective, without a doubt. There's no way you can say he even attempted to mount a decent defense for this guy.

Starting point is 02:10:57 Right. And the judges are like, no. Yeah. Yeah, the whole system is just kind of rigged like next case. Yeah, yeah, you jaded, like you said. We're not, we're not going to deal with it. You know, some Orange County, have you ever heard of these conviction, integrity? units? I know. It's an American thing, right? But I don't know if it's still around, but Orange

Starting point is 02:11:19 County had a conviction integrity unit where they were going back and looking at stuff and making a determination as to whether or not that person really was innocent. And then if they were, the prosecutors would get them out. Oh, nice. I don't think it happened very much. But it was like a nice press release. It was a nice thing. I don't think. But they did do, you remember the oxy craze with, you know, in Florida, it was, it was like a 25-year-man man, 15-year men-man for just a bottle of them because they were so heavy. Yeah. The pills were so heavy. So I worked on this case where this gal got 20, I didn't do, I didn't do the case, but she got 25 years.

Starting point is 02:12:07 And she basically just got set up, you know, standards set up. she's a nurse she had pain she's not a drug dealer just a nurse with pain and so she was acquiring pills well I got in on one of those integrity situations we got this new

Starting point is 02:12:25 prosecutor in Orange County her name was Aramis I Alice she was she was a public defender and she ran for a state attorney and she got it and she went back and she came to some of the private attorney she's like you know some of these 25-year men-mans are not fair.

Starting point is 02:12:43 And she called it the PIL project. And I got a couple girls out that were serving 25, like, within four or five years. And because she just thought about it. She's like, let's go through our records. Who got screwed on those 25s? Right. And we're going to get them out. And she did.

Starting point is 02:13:02 I wish there was more of that because that's a waste of money to have, you know, those people in for 25. Yeah. Well, I mean, I think most of the. drug things. It's like, yeah, these sentences are, they're, you know, the draconian, right? Like, they're outrageous. It's like, come on, you could put these people in a program. How many, how many drug treatment? You could, nice drug treatment programs. You could put these guys through five or six, ten different drug treatment programs for half the money. It's going to cost

Starting point is 02:13:32 to lock these guys up. Like, it's, it's just, it's just stupid. Like, but, you know, whatever, nobody's asking my opinion. You know, like I've always said, you could basically drop the budget for the prisons for, you know, 70% and dump half of that money into education and the other half into drug rehabs, and you probably get a hell of a lot further than you're getting with the mass incarceration.

Starting point is 02:14:01 And all the crimes that those folks are committing to acquire their drugs, you're getting rid of those crimes, Right. You know, it's not just the possessions, it's the theft and some of the other crap that's going on. And you and I both know, drugs don't enhance harmony. There's more fighting, there's more violence, so you get the treatment in, you're actually lessening all sorts of crime. Yeah.

Starting point is 02:14:28 Yeah, they ain't going to do it. Yeah, nobody cares. Nobody cares what we think. Oh, I was thinking, did you ever read the book by John Grisham, The Innocent Man? No. Oh. It was, it's, I think it's, I don't know if it, at that time, it was the only, uh, true, or only nonfiction book he'd ever written.

Starting point is 02:14:50 Oh, it was nonfiction. He's not one at that, he may have written more since then, but at that time, uh, and I'll, it was one of the things which killed me was the entire time this guy who, this guy who, had sex with this woman who was a prostitute. He, he, he, uh, the prosecutors had, there was DNA. Uh, there was DNA, but at that time they, I don't think they could test it for anything more than, let's say, blood or something, whatever. Right.

Starting point is 02:15:23 Or it was close to his match or something along those lines. Right. So, like the entire time during the trial where he's saying, I, yes, I know her. Yes, I know her. Yes. had slept with her, but I did not sleep with her that night, nor months, for it had been months. And of course, she was, she'd been, you know, the person had left, she'd been attacked, left DNA inside of her, and she was murdered. So he said, and I didn't do this.

Starting point is 02:15:50 And he's on death row. So, uh, geez. So finally the Innocence Project comes in. And he's, this guy's waiting to be executed and say, always saying, didn't do it, went to trial, the whole thing. an incident project comes in and now they can test DNA. So they test the DNA. And when they test the DNA, it turns out that it's not his DNA.

Starting point is 02:16:16 Also, by the way, I think the- There's probably some other killer too. Well, the expert in that one, the expert that they put on to say it was his DNA, botched the entire DNA. So first of all, when there was DNA, when there's DNA, at that time, project was like, oh, there's DNA. They didn't want to take the, because they were like, it's a guarantee, it's him. But eventually they looked at it and they were like, this doesn't even match. Like, how did this person get up and say that this was just completely some expert

Starting point is 02:16:45 witness that was paid that was just botched it? Didn't know what he was talking about, right? They do this all the time to these experts. They just say what the people want them to say. Right. So they end up getting the, so when they find out, they get it retested and they say, it's not his DNA. It's somebody else, this other guy's DNA. The prosecutor won't let go of it, will they? You know what they said? What?

Starting point is 02:17:09 Now, the whole time they said, this man knew her, broke in the house, she killed her, did it alone. It was him. Now, when they found that information, they go back in front of the judge, they're like, judge, it's somebody else, clearly. The DNA is not our client. You got to let him out of jail. They say, Your Honor, this just means.

Starting point is 02:17:31 that he was working with someone else. Yeah. Like, you're, the entire trial, your, you know, your theory was he's worked alone. Right. It was him alone. Now you're saying there's an accomplice. And the whole thing, you know, those types of cases, it kills me. It's like, oh, come on, man, I get it to an adversarial, but this is not the guy.

Starting point is 02:17:53 Now, ultimately, he ends up getting out of jail. You know, eventually they, they tried, they get him out of jail. Oh, of course, of course. There was another one. I cannot remember the guy's name. He has a, like his last name is like, I don't know, Russian or something. It's tough. But he was 14, is he 14 or 15 years old?

Starting point is 02:18:13 I'm going to say he's 15 years old. 15 years old because he wasn't driving. So he's a 15 year old, awkward kid in high school. And one of his fellow students took a shortcut through some woods to go to our house. house. You know how these subdivision. Every crime doc has something about the woods. It's right out of there.

Starting point is 02:18:35 It was. Got to stay away from the woods. She gets attacked. She gets sexually assaulted and choked to death. And I think her face was covered up. The person threw up her some clothes over her face. She's found, you know, she doesn't show up for home. They search.

Starting point is 02:18:55 They find the woods where she's dead. So they get a. They get a, what is it, a psychological profile. Mm-hmm. They take the psychological profile, which is it's somebody that probably knew her because her face was covered. It's someone that knew her a routine, so it's probably might be somebody at the school. She's a kid. So they go to the school, they start talking to her friends.

Starting point is 02:19:19 Is there anybody that might know her, anybody? And they go, well, you know, there is this one weird kind of, it's a little awkward kid. He's in one of her classes, and I think he knows her. And they're like, oh, okay. And he said, you know, I did know her. I knew her to say, his name is Jeff, it's Jeff something. Anyway, and they're like, so he's like, he's like, yeah, no, no, I know her. So, you know, but we weren't like friends, but I knew her enough to say, you know, hey, hey,

Starting point is 02:19:44 Jeff, what's up? And that was it. Walking in the woods, no nothing with her. Yeah, he's just an awkward kid. And he, of course, his alibi is I was playing with these kids basketball over here. It's a loose, you know, but it's still half a mile away. Right. maybe a mile away.

Starting point is 02:20:00 And they bring him downtown. Right. They bring him in several times, by the way, to question him. Right. But they're questioning him as if we need your help. Always. Right. What do you, you know, who do you think could have been involved?

Starting point is 02:20:16 Now, he also, by the way, at this time, wants to be a police officer someday. Oh, Lord. So he thinks, wow, like I, he admires these guys. What do you think would be involved in this, Jeff? Like, what do you think they would? You know, I don't know, because this is what we're being told. We think it's someone in the school. Really?

Starting point is 02:20:34 Well, I mean, I, you know, she's got some, she's had boyfriends before. I know she dated this guy. So he's, you know, he's just like, doesn't know. He just thinks he's, and so what happens, he thinks he's being helpful. Eventually they bring him in. This is over the course of weeks. One day they bring him in. And they start explaining that they're focusing in on him, that they think maybe he might know.

Starting point is 02:20:53 We understand that you were infatuated with her. We understand. Now they start adding stuff. Yeah. So he, no, no, no, no. They question him for, by the way, they bring him in at like eight or, like nine o'clock in the morning. Grab him in front of it, the whole school. They go all day.

Starting point is 02:21:11 He doesn't know he can leave. Right. Mom doesn't know he's there. Right. They questioned him all day. And he said, by the time it was done, he said, I've got the one police officer who's trying to help me. The other one who's threatening to hurt me. and slamming his hand and scaring the hell out of me.

Starting point is 02:21:31 Every time he opens the door, there's officers outside in the hallway, clenching their fist looking in there, you know. And he said, and basically the one officer explains that, look, man, I'm just trying to get you out of this building. These guys want to hurt you. Right. And they tell him, he's like, look, if you just write up a confession. Yeah, oh my gosh.

Starting point is 02:21:51 And he said, he said, you know, he's like, that way I'll be able to at least tell them I'm bringing you home and we can work this out later. but there's no way I'm going to get you. Terrified. He ends up, he said, you have to understand, by the time I write the confession, this is something people don't realize that there are lots of false confessions. Oh, yeah. People don't understand that.

Starting point is 02:22:10 Well, people think I would never. No, you don't know. You don't know what you would do in that situation. These people are skilled at doing all the physical things like you said. And he's a kid. To get you there. He's just a kid. Well, people also, when you hear about things like Stockholm syndrome, they think,

Starting point is 02:22:26 you're telling me that this person kidnapped you. And two weeks later, when the cops show up, you're like, no, no, this is my, like, is it Samantha Smart or I forget what Elizabeth, Elizabeth Smart. She was stopped by the police officer. She's telling the police officer, this is my father. What are you talking about? No, I'm not the, I'm not the girl. You're like.

Starting point is 02:22:45 When the detective rolled up on her. Right. Even, and that was twice. This was once, and they let her go. Yeah. And then another time, then weeks later they catch up to her again. And this time they're positive. It's her.

Starting point is 02:22:56 And it takes them hours, hours. She finally get her to the police station before she admits it. Yeah. So, but he's curled up in the corner crying like a baby, and he signs the confession. And then he thinks he's going home, and then they put the handcuffs on him, and they take him to jail. Then they tell his mom he's been arrested. After the press release, after everything, they tell the mother. He ends up going to trial because then, of course, he gets a lawyer, and he goes to trial.

Starting point is 02:23:23 and there's there is semen. They tested against him because they're sure it's him and it's not him. And what they say is, no, the girl, the victim, by the way, the girl was promiscuous, she had a boyfriend that was his semen. They've never tested the boyfriend. Wow. But that's what they say at trial.

Starting point is 02:23:45 Right. Just lying. We're going to make up stuff. We're just going to blatantly lie and say, oh, it's not his. It's the boyfriend. She had had sex earlier that day. the day before. And Jeff's attorney never said, where's the boyfriend's DNA?

Starting point is 02:23:59 How do you know what's the boy? Did you test it again? Nothing. Just blatant lies. Right. And so they go, he loses. He gets, I forget, he gets like a life sentence or 45 years, whatever it is. He goes, goes to prison as just a child.

Starting point is 02:24:14 And horrible child for, of course, murder of a young girl, goes to trial, fights it, the entire, realizes that his lawyers aren't. helping him. He's not going to... Fights it for years and years. Finally, when he tells us story, it's actually great. And he's still an awkward guy. You talk to him and you look at him and you think,

Starting point is 02:24:36 I can see how they... Bullied you. Yeah, and then they picked you out because you're not a... You were never a cool guy. You're an awkward kid, and I can see how the detectives were able to get you to do this. And why the other kids pointed at you right away. Kids are cruel. Yeah.

Starting point is 02:24:51 But when he tells a story, you know, he finds a story. You know, he fought, he's like, and he'll go through everything because he did the legal work himself. Oh my gosh. I did this. I did a teacher, 16 years. Finally, the, finally, he applied to, after he lost everything, he applied to the Innocence Project. Multiple times. You've been turned down like twice.

Starting point is 02:25:11 He finally gets a low-level person who's like, it's just somebody who's helping out, right? And they'll test the semen. Like, they tested the evidence. Well, they were going to test it. She convinced, I think it was her, I think it's a woman, like an intern, convinces them to test this. It's expensive. Oh, yeah. It's cheap now, but it was expensive then.

Starting point is 02:25:35 We're to $15,000. Like, we're not dumping $15,000 into this. Right. Guys lost every appeal. They got boxes full of people that are writing to them saying. Right. Finally, they're supposed to test it. The testing is going to be done.

Starting point is 02:25:50 and it's going to, you'll have it back within 90 days or something. Okay. So he's sitting there and he said, I'm, you know, waiting. And he said, one day he gets to the guards are like, hey, man, you got to visit. And he goes to, I do? He's like, no, he's like, my mom comes to visit me like that, mom. She's not supposed to come for weeks, you know? Right.

Starting point is 02:26:09 He goes in there and there, there's a woman is there. And she's like, hey, listen, Jeff, I'm your attorney. And he's like, okay. And she's like, okay, they're going to tomorrow morning. we're going in front of the judge. They're going to let you out. Do you have anywhere to go? And he goes, what are you talking about?

Starting point is 02:26:24 And she said, he said it literally took her about 45 minutes to an hour to convince him that this had happened. Right. He goes, no, no, no, the DNA, the DNA came back. It's actually this guy that they know who it is, the guy that's locked up in like another state. So code it for stuff different day. after he murdered the girl. Right. Six months later, he murders a school teacher with two kids.

Starting point is 02:26:54 He gets caught for that one. Right. And he's in state prison. Had he not got caught on that, this dude would still be in, though. But, well, worse than that, had they done their job? Yeah. That school teacher wouldn't have been murdered. Exactly.

Starting point is 02:27:09 And so Jeff is eventually convinced. He's like, what do you do? He's like, they haven't even tested the deed. She's like, no, it was tested. Right. He's like, but we're not even, it takes months. She's like, it was tested. We got the results back already.

Starting point is 02:27:23 They just, you know, it just happens so quickly. So he goes in front of the judge. The judge lets him out. They're now going to retry him. What? Yeah. But, you know, they do that for a while to try and negotiate with you on what you're going to get. Because now they owe him money.

Starting point is 02:27:38 Yeah. It's obviously not me. Yeah. And the system failed all the way across the board. So he ends up getting a couple million dollars. Right. Goes to law school, becomes a lawyer. He's now a lawyer.

Starting point is 02:27:52 Wow. In, I don't know if it's a, it's not in New York. It's, anyway, somewhere up north, one of those square states. So he, and so he, I think he works with the innocence projects, and he actually is getting people out of jail now. Wow. But it's like, if those detectives had done, had, had, had, done, just done their job and not bullied some kid into signing a confession by coercion. And nothing happened to those detectives, by the way, nothing happened.

Starting point is 02:28:23 So if they, he wouldn't have had to spend 16 years in prison. The, the, the taxpayers of that state wouldn't have had to fork out a couple million dollars to pay him. And there'd still be a school teacher teaching school and would have been alive to raise her two kids. Yep. all because some jackass, a couple of jackasses decided we can probably bully. They just decided we like this kid.

Starting point is 02:28:50 We like this kid for it. Right. And that guy, by the way, the guy had, he was a homeless guy at the time who had mental problems. He was sleeping in the woods. And she walked through and he saw the little girl and he attacked her. Yeah, woods are just, they're dangerous. It's bad. Yeah.

Starting point is 02:29:06 Stay out of the woods. Yeah. It's like whenever you watch a, you know, a horror movie. And they say, well, is that, did you hear that in the basement? Like, don't go in the basement, bro. Right. Yeah, exactly. Don't go in the basement.

Starting point is 02:29:17 Yeah, these are givens. Yeah. Hey, you guys, I appreciate you watching. Do be a favor. Hit the subscribe button in the bell so you get notified of videos just like this. If you want to get in contact with John, we're going to put all of his social medias in the description box. But by all means, please go to his YouTube channel and subscribe.

Starting point is 02:29:34 But we are going to put all of his social medias there so that you can follow and check out his videos. They're super entertaining. That's how I found him. Once again, I really do appreciate you guys. Thank you very much. See you.

Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast - Why Innocent People Get Convicted | Lawyer Exposes Corruption

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