Money Rehab with Nicole Lapin - A Trail of Smoke: The Saga of a Weed Kingpin's Criminal Enterprise and Jail Time

Episode Date: August 31, 2023

Before he was caught, Eric Canori's business was flying high. Literally. Before marijuana was legalized anywhere in the US, Eric ran one of the biggest marijuana operations on the East Coast. Today, he tells Nicole his story, and it's got everything you'd want in an adrenaline-pumping crime thriller: buried treasure, lost love, a police chase— and, of course, self-actualization. Find Eric's book, Pressure, here: https://www.ericcanori.com/

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Find a co-host at Airbnb.com slash host. I'm Nicole Lappin, the only financial expert you don't need a dictionary to understand. It's time for some money rehab. Today, I'm throwing you a little curveball. I'm talking to someone who ran a completely illegal business. Our conversation is full of examples of what not to do in business. Like, gosh, I don't know,

don't run an illegal business. But it's fascinating, I have to say, to talk to someone whose personal story sounds straight out of Ozark or The Wire. I love following all money trails, even the ones that lead to some very dark places. So I hope you find this conversation as interesting as I did. Eric Knorr, welcome to Money Rehab. Thank you for having me, Nicole. It's a pleasure. So we have had a variety of guests on the show, Fortune 500 CEOs, senators, Olympic gold medalists, NAACP Image Award recipients. But never have I ever had someone on the show who I can say has run the largest high-end marijuana wholesalers in the country. So first, let's start with how the hell that happened.

The way I started is, imagine being in a position where you're a young child and you're just looking for a safe place to sleep and food to eat. So my hustle really didn't come out of wanting fancy things right away. It was more just about survival, food and shelter. So my hustle really didn't come out of wanting fancy things right away. It was more just about survival, food and shelter. So I started selling weed in high school, did it all through college. And even when I graduated college, that's when I really expanded my organization along the East Coast of the United States in the early 2000s. So when you say you didn't want fancy things right away, did you later want fancy things? Well, there was always that little tick in me,

because I remember in high school, all the pretty girls always sat at the table with the kids that had all the newest, coolest stuff, whether it was the new skis, the new mountain bike, the coolest shoes, coolest backpack. Those guys seemed to be getting all the attention versus somebody like me with the clearance rack items wasn't really noticed. Keep in mind, that might have been a confidence issue too, right? Maybe it just lacked confidence because I didn't have what other people had. I'm not exactly sure the psychology behind that, but that's just what I noticed from my lenses.

So at your peak, you said you were doing $50 or $60 million per year in sales. So first, I guess, what is the time frame for this early 2000s? I started selling weed in 1995, 96 in high school, about 10th, 11th grade. But by college is when I started expanding my business. By college, I was doing close to a million dollars a year in sales by my senior year of college. My margins were small though, so I was only making 5%, 10% on each deal, sometimes 15% if I was lucky. For me to scale up to 50, 60, 70 million, that wasn't until probably 2006. That was when I was really rocking and rolling. I had an account in every single state between New Orleans and Boston, Carolinas, Florida, even over in St. Louis, Virginia, Pennsylvania, lots in Brooklyn, lots in Manhattan, Brooklyn

area. There was just tons because that's a hub for the East Coast for all cannabis distribution. That's been going on for decades, well before I was around. Now, keep in mind, I wasn't the biggest player. I was one of the biggest players. There's other people running huge 18-load wheelers out of Canada and also Mexico. But what was unique about me is I did it all without a gun or the government ever knowing my name. I was very quiet about my organization, very low key. You would never know. If you sat next to me in a bar, you'd think I worked with computers or something. But just to be clear, this was illegal. Correct. This was before cannabis was legal in any state. Cannabis wasn't even legal, I think, until 2012 in Colorado. And this was pre-crypto, right? So

you were doing business, I take it, mostly in cash? Yeah, everything was cash back then. It started with fives, tens, twenties, and then it was hundreds. And what did you do with all that cash? I spent a lot of it on entertainment and experiences. I didn't buy a lot of things because my life was, I was constantly moving around to evade law enforcement. I never wanted to stay in one place for too long. Not that they were really following me, but there's always heat in the periphery.

I've had a few people that tried to wear wires on me over the years, but I spent it on experiences. I didn't buy a lot of stuff. I spent it on girlfriends, girls, traveling, nice hotels. I just like good food, nice hotels, and to work hard. So girls, you mean like strip clubs, prostitutes? No, I never liked strip clubs. It was tough for me to hold down a full-time girlfriend because my schedule didn't allow that. If I said I was going to meet you for dinner at a certain time, I usually couldn't follow through because when you're running loads over the Canadian border, you can't say work's done at 8 p.m. It's whenever there's a window to get it in and there's no notice of when that window is going to be. So for me, at the end

of a long day, if it's 2 a.m. or midnight, the easiest thing for me many times was to flip into the yellow pages and find a high class escort. It wasn't just about sex. It was about female energy company. Right. But for me, I just needed that female energy in my life because I didn't have it. I was just a workhorse. Right. So, yeah, I spent money on escorts, but it's not where all my money went. So with most of the cash, though, aside from escorts and experiences, did you launder it? Did you try to get it into actual bank accounts? But for me, laundering it was still, I felt like if I was arrested, the feds could seize it one way or another in a bank account, no matter where. Even if it was offshore, I didn't have the skill set to really move millions offshore yet. There were people on the periphery that had approached me about it, but I was very careful who I associated with and who I talked to because it took me a while to trust somebody. Were you paying taxes? I paid taxes, but that was on my legal business. I had a legal business building natural swimming pools and waterfalls.

It was a small little seasonal business that I enjoyed. It was just a front for me to run my illicit operations once the sun went down. Did you get any inspiration from shows that you were watching? Yeah, my favorite show in the late 80s, early 90s was Miami Vice with Don Johnson. You know how a lot of kids, the role model might have been Michael Jordan or Hulk Hogan or whoever. I spent a lot of time watching Miami Vice on old VHS tapes. My mom had recorded the show and I would sneak into a room and watch that. And I just thought Don Johnson was a cool dude. I liked his suits. I liked the way he carried himself. I liked the women that used to be on his arm. And for me, I always said, I want to be that

guy. By just watching that show, I kind of learned the mechanics, the basic mechanics of the underworld, drug dealing, smuggling, how you get caught, how you evade law enforcement, what are flags they look for when they're following you, just little basic things. And I took those and applied them to my own game and hustle. And it really helped propel me in the underworld and evade a lot of the threats that were surrounding me. How did you get into marijuana? Did you like it? Did you just see it as a business opportunity? For me, it was unexpected business opportunity. I started, I was selling candy first off in middle school and grade school. I would make 10, 15 bucks a week doing that, which was

a lot of money back then. How I stumbled upon cannabis is because I wasn't allowed to play sports a lot in high school because my grades weren't up to par. I'd be above an 80 in every single class in order to play sports. So my mom was very strict. And I ended up just hanging out with the stoners, the people that didn't play sports. And I smoked weed a few times after school. And for me, weed was a way for me to socialize with people. It was a way of being accepted because when I got really high, I could just laugh off the truth and reality of my existence. But you weren't addicted during the years that you were running this business, or were you?

I wasn't addicted, but it got to a point where the only time I could socialize comfortably was if I was either drinking or smoking. The only time I could socialize comfortably was if I was either drinking or smoking. So things started falling apart in 2009, right? You went to Bonnaroo. What's the story there? Yeah, I took a week off and I left my business in the hands of a few other lieutenants and drivers. And that's when things started to crumble for me and my organization.

But what happened when I went to Bonnaroo was, well, first off, I had a huge organization. I had four different loads waiting to be delivered to me once I returned back to my hometown. I had over $4 million of product coming to me that week. What happened with one of the loads in particular was I hired a female mountain biker named Missy Giovi to drive the load from California to New York for me. Most all my other loads were coming out of Canada, but this particular load was coming out of California. And I hired this mountain biker because I knew mountain biking was founded in the northern mountains of California. So I figured if she got pulled over by the cops, they might ask

her for her autograph because she was somewhat famous. She won several world cups for being one of the fastest female mountain bikers in the world at the time. I paid her 60,000 to drive the load. It's only four or five days work. And she did it a few times, but then she eventually subbed the drive out to her massage therapist without telling me about it for only three grand and didn't even tell the massage therapist there was cannabis in the back of her trailer and crates. Anyway, that driver got pulled over for speeding. They put a GPS on the truck. She cooperated and delivered the load to my hometown in Saratoga Springs where Missy met the load and jumped in the truck pretending she drove it the whole five days back to me. And they followed the load right to one of my properties, the feds,

and they arrested me. There's a lot that goes into it. I knew there was a tracking device. I saw a plane flying in the sky that was following me for a little while. There were cars all around the perimeter, about three to five miles out. I actually evaded law enforcement. I actually ditched them at over a hundred miles an hour on the highway. And I got away almost, and it was a point where I could have went and got a passport for 60 grand and fled, but I decided to come back and face them at my house. And they put the cuffs on me. They didn't know my name. And they wanted me to work undercover for them. They're like, nobody knows we're here. You have a small window to cooperate. If you do what we say, you don't have to go to jail and get on with your life, basically.

But I didn't. They put me in jail. And they found like a million and a half cash in my house for another load that I had coming that day that I had to buy. And they didn't have a strong case. I knew they didn't have a strong case because they didn't know my name when they arrested me. Like if they had been watching me and they had a real deal indictment, they would have known my name. So I felt like I was somewhat safe and protected in a way. Just to be clear, a load, is that a certain amount of marijuana? Yeah, the load that she had was worth about $1.1 million. And this was a long time ago, going back almost 14 years ago. So cannabis was much more expensive back then.

Now, cannabis costs nothing. It's everywhere. It's practically free. So it's a totally different industry than when I was in the game a long time ago. So it was expensive back then. So after you got out, you got back in, right? I got in briefly for a season. Legally, I helped a farmer with cannabis, but it wasn't that easy to get out. I was facing trial. They still wanted me to work for them for years and they re-arrested

me saying I was laundering money to pay my legal fees because my lawyer was close to 700 grand. They put me back in jail before trial for several months, still wanted me to work undercover. My lawyer eventually came to me after a few months. He's like, hey, listen, if you give them the rest of the money, they'll let you go. There was a series of deals where it led to me being escorted in shackles out of a jail cell into upstate New York, where I dug up several chests of gold bars I'd buried over the year. And I ended up giving them close to $10 million in gold bars and another couple of million in cash they had seized from my house. And that was my form of cooperation in order to reduce my prison sentence so I wouldn't have to work undercover for them. You had $10 million in gold scattered around Lake George that was seized.

What the actual what? I know, right? Sometimes I think, what was I doing? It's funny how I just all action sometimes really didn't process through. It's like a little squirrel. I was up there bearing things out of fear, right? It was like, oh, I'm going to save this up for when I'm retired. I get that.

But Eric, most people think about retirement and they think 401k, Roth IRA. They don't often think millions of dollars in gold bars. So how did that happen? To me, it wasn't a lot of money. I was like, is that going to even be enough? Because you're a product of your environment. So I was surrounded by other multimillionaires on a daily basis. So for me, I just looked like, eh, there's things I couldn't afford. I can make millions of dollars and still couldn't afford certain things I wanted to do. So I really didn't think I had that much money. Actually, I always wanted more, more, more, more like a fucking fiend, you know, which is okay. I still love money, but now I've found

balance where I play a little every day. Right. So I work hard every day, but I also retire during the day. So I live a full, balanced life like it's my last day rather than living for some unknown future. So really, it sounds like what you were addicted to wasn't the marijuana, but the money. Oh, yeah, I love them. I love the money. I don't even like weed. I haven't smoked weed a couple of times since college. I quit smoking in college because it clouded my vision, clouded my awareness, my perception of what was going around. There's a lot of moving parts in my organization. I had to be wary of who's wearing a wire, who's trying to set me up. So I quit smoking weed 20 plus years ago. The weed was initial when

I was very young and I was insecure. What did you think the money was going to get you? Happiness? Pretty wife and a little nice house and some vacations. Instead, it helped me leave the game with honor because I didn't have to work undercover for them. So at least I can say that to myself. My reputation is more important to me than all the money in the world. And I don't know if that's a good thing or a bad thing, but I like to do people right around me, you know, and just know at the end of the day, I haven't fucked anybody over. I don't owe anybody money, but there's a lot of people that owe me money and things. So I can live with that type of life. I just could never live a life where I owe somebody money.

Hold on to your wallets. Money Rehab will be right back. I love hosting on Airbnb. It's a great way to bring in some extra cash, but I totally get it that it might sound overwhelming to start or even too complicated if, say, you want to put your summer home in Maine on Airbnb, but you live full time in San Francisco and you can't go to Maine every time you need to change sheets for your guests or something like that. If thoughts like these have been holding you back, I have great news for you. Airbnb has launched a co-host network, which is a network of high quality local co-hosts with Airbnb experience that can take care of your home and your guests. Co-hosts can do what you don't have time for, like managing your reservations, messaging your guests,

giving support at the property, or even create your listing for you. I always want to line up a reservation for my house when I'm traveling for work, but sometimes I just don't get around to it because getting ready to travel always feels like a scramble, so I don't end up making time

to make my house look guest-friendly. I guess that's the best way to put it. But I'm matching with a co-host so I can still make that extra cash while also making it easy on myself. Find a co-host at Airbnb.com slash host. And now for some more money rehab. You went to jail for two years.

What did you learn during that time? It sounds so simple, but it's be loved for who you are rather than what you have. I can't tell you how many years I, you know, my girlfriend, we had a little apartment, I remember in Soho. And I'd walk out the door to all these like different trendy things. I'd just buy, she'd just buy clothes, pile them up for me. Half of them didn't fit me. Half of them, I wasn't even comfortable in. They weren't me. But it was about being noticed for what I had rather than who I was. It wasn't even comfortable. So prison taught me to become the best version of myself with nothing naked. Right. So now really what's important to me is exercise, healthy diet, food. Like, how do I feel with nothing? And then once I become the best version of myself at that level, then I can start adding on the bells and whistles, my favorite jacket, my favorite shoes and whatever, but I'm not attached to those items. The key with money I've

found is it's okay to have a lot of money, just don't be attached to it. And how did you learn that while you were in prison? Well, first off, you don't have much in prison. So you have to learn to be happy with a little towel and blanket and toothbrush and the basics. But also there were some great mentors around me in prison. I surrounded myself with older gentlemen that were in there for maybe, say, tax evasion or wire fraud. One was a former mayor. They really inspired me in some ways and helped me grow up because they were double my age. There was a lot of knowledge and wisdom they shared with me, both about relationships and money and what's important

in life because those guys are closer to their deathbed than me. So they're going to speak the truth about what's important, love and becoming the best version of yourself, not only for yourself, but for those around you, for your significant other, your partner, your lover. I recommend not prison, but somebody designed like a prison retreat, a place where somebody can go without their phone stripped of everything they have and just face themselves in a mirror and say, this is who I am. This is what I do. And this is what I want. Is that your next business?

I'm thinking about I was thinking about building retreats, but I don't want to do it alone. I'm tired of working alone. Like I want a good team around me. And you're only as strong as your weakest link. So I need people around me that are a similar passion and that are detail-oriented, organized, and stuff. And I haven't really had the time to put that team together. I know it's out there, but it's on my radar, yes. You said in a New York Post article, a juicy one, that at Bonnaroo, quote, this time I put my heart ahead of my business. As it turns out, that was when everything collapsed do i regret it fuck yeah so eric what exactly do you regret do you regret going to bonnaroo do you regret

getting caught do you regret starting this whole thing well exactly what i said in that quote was i regret putting my i don't know if i do regret it. I'm going to tell you though, the fact is I put my heart ahead of my money that week. There was this girl I met at Coachella in 2008. I met this girl and I had eaten a bunch of psychedelics that night. And all of a sudden, I looked to my far left and some girl with this flowy dress came out of the dark black crowd, walking straight towards me with her eyes locked into mine and we got really close we might even dance and touched a little and the night proceeded and i thought it was true love i was like this is the woman for me this is a blessing this is what

i've been waiting for this is what i worked so hard for all my life find a nice woman i could retire with right and I stayed in touch with her for a few months. And then we made a plan to meet up at Bonnaroo. And I knew I shouldn't have left my business, but I left because that was my only window to see her. And I left my business in the hands of other people, which they're good people, but they just didn't understand the mechanics of what it takes to run an organization at that scale, there is zero room for error. The slightest error and you're in cuffs and it's game over. It's not like a legitimate business where you fuck up one day and then you come back the next day and go to the boardroom and have a

quick meeting and say, let's not do that anymore. Let's do it this way. So you had to have 100% success rate in order to survive in my business. And mine was like a 99.99, but until then. But do I regret it? Yeah, because I'm not with that girl. She was a very nice girl. I shouldn't say anything bad about her. She was a nice girl, but... Do you hold her responsible for getting caught? I don't hold it. Listen, it had to happen. If I didn't lose the money that way, I would have lost it another way. You have to lose in life in order to understand what's good. lost it another way. You have to lose in life in order to understand what's good. If you just keep winning all the time, you're not going to learn. You learn the most when you crash and burn and you sit there alone, fucked. When you're sitting alone, at least personally,

I did my most growth when I was at the bottom. With the increasing decriminalization of marijuana, do you resent the fact that you went to prison? No, prison is so long ago. I don't even remember. It was a great thing for me. It gave me a higher level of awareness of what's really going on. And I understand people better. I understand people at the top, whether you're a jet setting executive or you're somebody at the bottom trying to pay your water bill. I met a wide variety of people and I understand, I have a better understanding of people's motivations, why they do what they do. Most importantly, it gave me time to sit alone with myself because a lot of times we are so busy keeping up with everybody around us and just fielding all the texts that come into our phone and bombarded with invites and other people's problems that we often don't have time to face our own problems. We really don't. We just keep going. And some people just pop Advil like it's nothing to keep going. And me, I always didn't keep going. No phone in a prison cell.

You just sit there and look at yourself in the mirror. You do push-ups and you try to think about how you're going to be a better person when you get a second chance at life. Do you think that if you hadn't gotten caught, you would have tried to get a license as the years went on and gone legit? No, I would have built retreats. I don't like cannabis. I think cannabis, it slows the neural pathways to the brain. And I say, I know I'll get crucified for this,

but I've met a lot of people that smoke weed on a daily basis. And I think it's great for some people. It's a good medicine. If you have severe pain, maybe you have back pain, it could be better than taking certain pharmaceuticals, but for daily recreational use, me personally, it's not for me. And I don't recommend it because it's going to slow your neural pathways and it's going to sometimes, in my opinion, make you cranky when you have to keep up with the reality of this world. The reality of this world is not, it's going to be chill, bro.

It's not. The reality of this world is not it's gonna be chill bro. It's not The reality is you got to keep moving in order to keep up because everything's going to keep going up Your property taxes are going to go up. The groceries are going to go up. Everything's going up So if you want to keep up with everything that's going up, you need to be going up Not down But you have two different companies right now, right? One is still in the cannabis space. Yeah. I help somebody that has a farm and I'm a partner on that, but I'm out of the business. I'm on my way out the door right now. It's just not, I don't like waking up in the morning and touching

something that I'm not passionate about. Life's too short. You know, we always say, oh, it's going to be better when this happens. It's going to be better when that happens. No, it's not. Life isn't later. It's not next year. It's not tomorrow. It's today. It's right now. This is it. Walk out your door and get hit by a bus tomorrow. There's no tomorrow. And that's crazy. And it really can happen. Just think about how many times you've texted and drive and you're swerving and you're like, oh, fuck. You just don't know. It's dangerous out there. You got to live for today. You said something else in the article I found interesting. You seem to be a little bit sore about the fact that as an illegal business, you had less room for error than a legit business. Is that right? You said you, quote, did things right a thousand times and messed up once.

Well, quote, in a legitimate business, you mess up, have a corporate meeting and get back on track. So what's the point here? It seems like you feel it's a little unfair. Basically, I did a million things right and then one thing wrong and I was out of business. Here's where I feel a little sore about the whole topic is I don't mind that they took away my money or I went to prison. They took away my career and my team. My team, I spent 10, 15 years building an airtight team. I had a really smooth operating organization. Unfortunately, there was one person in that organization, Missy, that brought it down. But other than that, they took away my identity in a way. That was my family in a way, my team. I never went back. I'm not going back. So all those people are dispersed and long

gone. So that's what I lost. It wasn't the jail or the financial punishment. It was the team. In a legal business, you can have quarters where you lose financially, but you're not going to lose your whole team. My business, I lost everything, my whole team, the money, my identity. And it was just poor planning in some ways on my behalf. Do you expect having all the same opportunities as an illegal business that somebody would have in a legal one? No, but the federal government did break a few rules in order to get me. I talk about that in the book. If it was an even playing field and I broke the law with some skill, that didn't hurt many people, in my opinion. I mean, cannabis is legal now. In my

opinion, it was a weed. I liked to smoke it back then, and I sold it in a nonviolent way. I knew what I was doing. I knew the rules of how the government could investigate people, and I operated fully aware of those rules and the type of evidence they needed to bring me down. And had they followed the rules with their search procedures in my homes and stuff, they wouldn't have had me that easily. That's for sure. Do you consider those days like the glory days? Do you miss them? I do miss the thrill. There's something unique and thrilling about living outside the system and not answering to anybody for me. Now, I'm not going to go back to that. I'm already red flag for life. I'm burned. So that game's over. But it was a wild experience. I can find that in

other places for sure. But at that time in my life, it was a wild experience. Do I miss it? No. I miss some of the feelings, but I won't go back. My days are over breaking the law. I end our episodes, Eric, by asking our guests for one piece of money advice listeners can take straight to the bank. Do you have a money tip, a legit legal money tip, I should caveat for listeners to use that they could take to save, invest, help with financial anxiety? Yeah, this is the biggest thing and it's probably the simplest and a lot of people already know it, but you have to constantly remind yourself of it every day. Do not spend your hard earned money to impress your friends, your neighbors, or anybody that's surrounding you. Because honestly, to get the new car every single year or the newest this and the newest that, you know it does very little for you

except for you to show them that you could actually afford it and that you are a winner and successful. You have nothing to prove for you. They are not going to be there when you are dead. So buy the things that make you feel happy rather than what you want people to see you bought. Comparison is the thief of joy. Oh, I like that quote. I haven't heard that one. Thanks, Eric. Thank you, Nicole. I appreciate it. Money Rehab is a production of Money News Network. I'm your host, Nicole Lappin.

Money Rehab's executive producer is Morgan Lavoie. Our researcher is Emily Holmes. Do you need some money rehab? And let's be honest, we all do. So email us your money questions, moneyrehabatmoneynewsnetwork.com to potentially have your questions answered on the show or even have a one-on-one intervention with me. And follow us on Instagram at Money News and TikTok at Money News Network for exclusive video content. And lastly, thank you. No, seriously, thank you. Thank you for listening and for investing in yourself, which is the most important investment you can make. Thank you.