The Chris Voss Show - The Chris Voss Show Podcast – Among the Bros: A Fraternity Crime Story by Max Marshall

Episode Date: January 7, 2024

Among the Bros: A Fraternity Crime Story by Max Marshall https://amzn.to/3NV7x21 A brilliant young investigative journalist traces a murder and a multi-million-dollar drug ring, leading to an unprecedented look at elite American fraternity life. When Max Marshall arrived on the campus of the College of Charleston in 2018, he hoped to investigate a small-time fraternity Xanax trafficking ring. Instead, he found a homicide, several student deaths, and millions of dollars circulating around the Deep South. He also opened up an elite world hidden to outsiders. Behind the pop culture cliches of “Greek life” lies one of the major breeding grounds of American power: 80 percent of Fortune 500 executives, 85 percent of Supreme Court justices, and all but four presidents since 1825 have been fraternity members. With unprecedented immersion, this book takes readers inside that bubble. Under the live oaks and Spanish moss of Travel + Leisure’s “Most Beautiful Campus in America,” Marshall traces several “C of C” boys’ journeys from fraternity pledges to interstate drug traffickers. The result is a true-life story of hubris, status, money, drugs, and murder—one that lifts a curtain on an ecstatic and disturbing way of life. With expert pacing and a cool eye, he follows a never-ending party that continues after funerals and mass arrests. An addictive and haunting portrait of tomorrow’s American establishment, Among the Bros is nonfiction storytelling at its finest.

You wanted the best. You've got the best podcast. The hottest podcast in the world. The Chris Voss Show. The preeminent podcast with guests so smart you may experience serious brain bleed. The CEOs, authors, thought leaders, visionaries, and motivators. Get ready. Get ready. Strap yourself in. Keep in keep your hands arms and legs inside the vehicle at all times because you're about to go on a monster education roller coaster with your brain now here's your host chris there we go the iron lady sings that that makes it official i didn't hear it this time but we'll just assume that it went thanks for joining the chris voss show folks welcome to the big show and as always the the Chris Voss Show is the family that loves you but doesn't judge you,

at least not as harshly as your mother-in-law. We have an amazing author on the show who's broken an amazing story and documented in his new book, Among the Bros, a fraternity crime story that came out November 7, 2023. In the meantime, be sure to follow the show, refer to your family, friends, and relatives. Go to goodreads.com, 4chesschrisfoss, linkedin.com, 4chesschrisfoss.

Subscribe to the big LinkedIn newsletter, the 130,000 LinkedIn group over there. And chrisfossfacebook.com and chrisfoss1 on the tickety-tockety. Max Marshall is going to be joining us on the show and talking about his latest book, which is an interesting story

that's harrowing and disturbing, according to the billing, about fraternity life so we're going to get into his story and what goes into it and why you should buy the book and get it as a page turner max marshall has written stories for texas monthly gq sports illustrated esquire and the new york times this is his first book among the bros and all that good stuff welcome to show max how are you i'm good it's good to be There you go. So give us any dot coms. Where do you want people to follow you on the interwebs to get to know you better?

Yeah, just max-marshall.com. You can find me on there. My email's on there. You can reach me on there. And then the book is available, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Audible, Kindle, wherever books can be found. Wherever fine books are sold. There you go. Exactly. Might be some alleyway bookstores too you go but stand this alleyway bookstores you might get stabbed that's what happened to me last i had to get a tetanus shot last time i was in one anyway so thanks for coming on the show congratulations on the new book give us a 30 000 overview what's inside your new your new story sure so i was in college the same time as all the guys in this book 2012 2012 to 2016. And when I was in school, I was in a fraternity and I saw a pretty shocking, at least shocking to me, amount of Xanax flying around.

Wow. on international flights or some of you might take if you get a panic attack while taking a test or something. But turns out it's a massive party drug. You can mix it with basically anything. People call it a sidecar drug, like the little sidecar next to a motorcycle and like a cartoon and or I guess in real life too. But yeah, you can mix it with cocaine and ease the paranoia, mix it with acid and you know, you can fall asleep on a comedown. But the most common is mixing it with five or six natty lights, and you feel like you had 15 or 16. Wow. And so it kind of falls into that whole blackout culture trope. But all that's to say is I just saw so much of it, and none of my friends were sort of warned

that it was so addictive you could die from withdrawals. It's one of two drugs that's that addictive. Really? And, yeah, I mean, you can have seizures. It's pretty dangerous stuff. And after school, I became an investigative journalist. I kind of had written some crime stories investigating big international drug cartels. I started to wonder, where do all these Xanax pills

come from on college campuses? Because they're not coming from Pfizer. They're not coming from CVS. They're basically fake, chalky Xanax pills. And so I googled Xanax bust fraternity, like a good investigative journalist. And the first result was an article in the Charleston Post and Courier about fraternity guys that got caught with 40,000 Xanax pills, plus an assault rifle, grenade launcher, a few pounds of cocaine, dozen pounds of weed.

So I was like, okay, I'll start looking into this. And then a defense lawyer let it slip that actually they got caught with closer to 3 million pills. The police had let them get away with it, never announced that they had confiscated that many pills. And a student had been killed in a murder. Others had died of overdoses.

And the story just kind of grew and grew from there. And that's when I kind of knew there was a book there. Wow. Grenade launchers, cocaine, 3 million pills. That's Fridays around here yeah yeah yes yeah yeah there you go so you trace a murder and a multi-million dollar drug ring and i guess you find that part of this is it was was involved in your own fraternity or was it other fraternities around the nation so yeah i mean i knew guys in my fraternity who were dealing

certainly and i think the year before i got to college, there was a pretty big FBI bust at my school as well. But yeah, something I found out kind of doing this reporting, and this is something that people knew all over the Deep South. If you talk to guys at fraternities at Georgia, UNC, Ole Miss, like the big Southern SEC schools, they all knew that the pills started at Charleston. And so they would start there. And then these fraternities would use their pledges and basically ship the pills out kind of through the fraternity system all over the US. It's like a network. It is. Yeah. I mean, it's a massive, massive. And the press when it happens kind of described it as like a drug ring.

But the guys who were in it said, no, no, it's more Mary Kay, Cutco, you know, a multi-level marketing scheme. Wow. Yeah, or a pyramid scheme, depending on who you ask. There is a guy on your cover of your book with a pink shirt, so the Mary Kay thing. Exactly. Yeah, yeah. I didn't even think of that. Subliminal marketing is always key. Yeah.

There you go. So this is really interesting do you do you know the the opioid crisis has kind of filled the news cycle do you think this is really an unreported untapped thing that more news agencies need to look into absolutely i mean so the statistics are are pretty harrowing in the same period since I want to say 2000 opioid overdoses have gone up eight X Xanax overdoses have gone up 12 X. So it's an even faster rise. And then if you look at a lot of opioid overdoses,

there's actually Xanax involved. Wow. And what there's sort of a breaking sort of line of thought in addiction science right now that what we're in is not an opioid crisis it's what they call a polypharmacy crisis which is basically when you're mixing drugs the synergistic effect is much worse than an opioid would be alone and funny enough that's the same idea as a sidecar which is what you know the guys were calling xanax but when you combine xanax and opioids it basically slows down your nervous

system and you're breathing so much faster than either do alone. And yeah, like something like 40% of opioid overdoses actually involve Xanax. And so it's sort of the hidden sidecar, you know, sitting right along this, this bigger crisis. Yeah. I'm just going to go back to heroin then. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, well, that's, it was funny. I was just going to go back to heroin then. Yeah. It was funny. I was talking to one addiction specialist at Sanford, and she was like, oh, yeah, back in the day, people just kind of had one drug and stuck with it. You were a heroin guy, or you were a booze hound,

or you were a coke head. But certainly, when I was in college, it was really like my generation is all about mixing and matching and customizing. And so it was very much I've certainly had nights myself and seen nights of others where you're like oh shit i'm on four things right now and you're sort of like balancing them you know and yeah the and by the way the attorneys folks say don't do heroin that's a joke people we do comedy on the show keep that in mind don't write me don't write me and say things but you I mean, at my age, I'm so glad I'm over all that stuff.

I just sit and mainline high caffeine coffee. Yeah. And that's what I do. I just jam a needle in and get a pump in the morning and I'm good throughout the day. In fact, I just keep a pump in me throughout the day. I can tell. Yeah. So what do you think?

You found that, I mean, this goes into something called Greek life. What does that mean? So, yeah, I mean, Greek life is the fraternity and sorority system in American colleges. And there are a lot of kind of movie cliches of fraternities. You know, you think of animal house or old school. But something that's not talked about as much is the fraternity system, the sorority system is really where America, the elite of American society congregates. And it's been that way since the beginning, when fraternity started in the 1800s, basically up until the 1800s, only really wealthy kids went to college. And then in the

1800s, middle class students started showing up from their farms and, you know, wanting an education too. And basically the guys from, you know connecticut all came together and said all right well we don't want to drink with those guys so what are we going to do and they're like oh i know well what if we create a club that's just kind of for us and that's continued over time and if you look at the statistics over 70 of every dollar given to american universities come from greek life alumni So it shows you the amount of wealth concentrated. And then all but four presidents since 1825, 80% of Fortune 500 CEOs, all but a handful of Supreme Court justices,

all are from Greek life. And so even though it's only 2% of our population, it really is kind of the closest thing we have to like a world order almost, but it's not, it's kind of hiding in plain sight you know people imagine something like the illuminati or something but really it's just oh you know i was an sae with him and we like you know i'm gonna help him get this job or something it's not in that sense it's like very banal but in another sense it is kind of the it's one of those like skeleton keys that helps you understand the american elite i think the bro

culture yeah now there's a face of a young man on your on the cover of your book is this a generic face or is this someone who was involved with the story you uncover so the guy on the cover and you can see him over my shoulder he's the founder of sigma nu from the 1860s. I think that photo was taken in the late 1850s. And the kind of crazy thing, and I talk about this a little in the book, is you can look at fraternity composites over the years, and you can look at a composite from 1870 and a photo from 2022, and they have the exact same haircuts. And so that guy, I guess in mirror, that guy, he has the exact same haircuts as all the guys in the book. And so we took that photo and then threw the pink, the pastel Mary Kay shirt on him.

He should be okay. I don't think he's going to sue you for you. Yeah, I mean, that was, yeah, that's a nice thing about it. Yeah, I haven't heard from his ancestors. There you go. But I like how you threw a pink polo on him. So it's got that sort of 80s effect going on there. I think that's a polo. I don't know. Oh, yeah. I lost that a fashion. That's

something for my thing. But so what do you want people to come away from when they read this book? What do you want people to think about? Sure. So I mean, it's a few things like, first of all, it's like a page turning crime story. And so I in some ways, I just want people to be immersed in the world and kind of get the specifics of kind of how this all works from Rush to hazing to this crazy drug ring. But if there is like an eat your vegetables component to it, I guess it's a few things. It's one, I think the book's kind of about the consequence of a world without consequences. These guys can kind of get away with anything. The book opens with a bunch of them going on a mountain weekend and basically burning down a cabin. And then the alumni come in to basically pay for it and make it go away. And then,

you know, just through the book, it's just DUI here, simple possession there, you know, drug dealing charge, robbery. And each time the parents sort of step in or the alumni step in or the fraternity national chapter steps in and kind of makes it all go away and it's almost like that um that tarantino movie death proof you know that movie it's it's it's about a stunt driver that kits out the driver's seat of his car with all this safety barring so basically no matter what wreck he gets in he's going to be okay yeah and if you're in the passenger seat and there's a wreck you're you're done for and if you're in another car and there's a wreck you'll probably die but you're in this passenger seat where nothing can happen to you and i think or your driver's seat and i think

if you can be in that death proof box like of course you're going to do crazy stuff. And I think the book kind of gets crazier and crazier as the guys get away with more and more. We have that kind of build here at the show when I do the show. Oh, nice. Yeah. I thought you were kind of in some sort of box behind the green screen. You do look,

you look very safe. Um, mainly it's to keep me contained. Uh, and there's, it's, it's pretty much a rubber room behind the green, but I did hear some echo. They let me, they let me know every now and then they put, Mainly it's to keep me contained. That's good. And it's pretty much a rubber room behind the green.

I did hear some echo. They let me out every now and then. That's nice. They just put the food underneath the cell door. But this is kind of interesting. We see a lot of this in all sorts of different things. If you've got parents that have money, influence, power, fraternities, and colleges have money, I'm sure colleges, maybe there's been some that where they just want to make stuff go away or hide stuff for the

you know they get they get massive donations and like you said lots of funding from these guys when they go on to work for big corporations and ceos and stuff like that you've been kind of seeing the fight over that going on right now with the you know harvard definitely president resigning and i think there was another i can't remember the other college where she resigned and yeah i think it was pin maybe yeah yeah and the donations i guess the people who are donating money were the biggest pressures on getting them to resign and and the loss of donation money or the threat of and so it's kind of interesting to see money influence that and welcome to America, I guess. Yeah. I mean, it's, it's funny. I think a lot of people don't realize that the, in some ways, the main job of a university president is fundraising and,

you know, growing these massive endowments, you know, the biggest schools have multi-billion dollar endowments and then the smaller schools are all trying to catch up and i think when people wonder why is greek life so resilient even though you know one kid dies every year from hazing and many more die from you know alcohol or drug related accidents and incidents i think one of the simplest answers is well 70 of every dollar given to a college is coming from these alumni like why would you want to turn that spigot off? And so, yeah, it's just, you know, the cliche of money talking. Yeah. Did you find that some of the people in these distribution networks that were maybe kingpins or, I don't know,

head of local chapters and stuff were kind of maybe tied to some of the richest parents and the most kind of elite? Yeah, I mean was it was an interesting thing right because the sort of classical reason you know if you take like a criminology class for why someone deals drugs is economic need just like simple as that right like rational choice theory it's basically you know i live in a neighborhood where the opportunities i have are so limited that this is like by far the clearest path to putting food on the table. But when you find these kids that some of them, you know, have trust funds

or certainly, you know, are driving into town with Mercedes that their parents bought them, it's like, what, why deal drugs? And it's almost this inverse thing of, I think there's status in showing how much you can get away with. It's, you know, oh, if a middle class kid is coming to school and he has student loans to pay, you know, he can't go out seven nights a week and he can't, you know, break the law and then have his parents bail him out. And it's almost a sign of prestige, basically. And this is what some kids even told me. You know, there's a quote in the book that literally says it's a sign of prestige that i can get away with this and so it became this kind of crazy status game so i think that was part of it and i think another part of it is sort of like

college of charleston specifically has really really wealthy kids coming from like greenwich connecticut westchester these like super wealthy New England suburbs, northeast suburbs and if you're upper middle class and next to a literal Rockefeller or Rothschild you might feel like oh man like I'm broke and so I need to if I want to get bottle service this weekend like I better

figure something out. Yeah plus you're trying to impress girls. Oh yeah that's I mean that's so much of it. Jason getting laid and stuff like that in college. There's a little bit of that going on here. A hundred percent. Yeah. A little bit of the gender ratio at college of Charleston,

something like three to one girls to guys. And so really, yeah. Note to self, go back to college. Yeah. Yeah. So there you go.

Those are good odds. I like that. The, I mean, and when there's millions of dollars circulating around this, I mean, it's no chump change, right? No. Yeah. I mean, you can basically pay for your college at the very least.

Yeah. Well, one of the guys in the story, he was a little older. He was a fraternity guy from South Carolina, and then he was in his late 20s, early 30s by the time everything got busted. But he was the first guy in American history to have Bitcoin seized by the DEA. Oh, wow. And if you look at the amount of Bitcoin he got seized with and then took it up to whatever it was, the 2021 or 22 peak, he would have, I don't know, like $40 million or something. Holy crap. So, yeah, I mean, there's very real money in this stuff. There you go. he would have i don't know like 40 million dollars or something holy crap so they're

what yeah i mean there's very real money in this stuff there you go with xanax you know i i never took xanax i never played with it i mean is there long-term effects and damage that maybe some health effects that we need you know your book warns about that you know it would seem if it can cause seizures and stuff that maybe there's maybe some long-term effects of overuse of it definitely so i mean the first thing to say is even though xanax sometimes gets prescribed for everyday generalized anxiety there's never been any study that's shown that it's effective in treating generalized anxiety it's good for it's good for panic attacks and it's good for seizures but if you just have that sort of ambient everyday anxiety, what it does is it basically calms you down completely.

And then the next day, the anxiety comes back worse. And so that creates a very addictive cycle. And like I said, it's so addictive that you can die from withdrawals. And so that's the sort of main problem that it causes is just incredibly habit forming. And you need more and more and more to kind of get to sort of zero, but then yeah, there are long-term cognitive effects ranging from sort of like paranoia, worse panic attacks than you've ever had before.

But then especially with the elderly, it causes a lot of dementia as well. And there's like memory effects too, which I guess isn't that surprising because when you take Xanax, it often leads to blackouts. And so it is definitely doing something up there in the memory.

Yeah, it'll be interesting to see the long-term effects on it. You said different members of SCOTUS and people who work for the government. That might explain some SCOTUS rulings. Yeah, for sure. Then it might explain the citizens united ruling um so yeah this is really interesting do you do you find i mean i guess kind of a dumb question do you find any feedback from colleges or fraternity

associations that maybe you pinged for comment on the book yeah i mean you know, you know, I reached out to all the fraternities for comment. None of them really wanted to talk. You know, they kind of would send back stuff from their lawyers. I do think there might be a bit of a Goodreads campaign from some of these fraternities to review bomb it. Yeah, which, you know, what are you going to do? But yeah, the thing is,

the drug ring is one thing in terms of the hazing that I talk about in the book. And there's some pretty wild hazing, you know, there's a guy who gets waterboarded and there's definitely some pretty intense stuff in there, but it's all decently open secrets if you're in that world. And something that's kind of funny about the fraternity world is, you know, it's known for this sort of cloak of secrecy and when it comes to outsiders there is a cloak of secrecy you don't really talk about it but then if you're inside the bubble people won't shut up about it like i remember going back to texas for thanksgiving break and all people would talk about is their craziest hazing stories because all of us were in fraternities and it became this sort of

you know dick measuring contest for lack of a better phrase it probably took place in some hazing things some of the hazing things they do man are just insane and then the desk kind of got out of hand there and i think colleges had to start clamping down on stuff yeah it was just crazy of course one of my favorite movies is old school yeah i think there's some hazing that goes on definitely definitely so there you go so you go through this you tell the story of it and all that good stuff do you do you see is there any future storytelling you see coming up is there any future books you're working on yeah so right now sony's options this book as a film it would be a great film yeah so yeah and so yeah talking to them about that there's some interest for a documentary as well.

Um, I have a podcast coming out in a few weeks about something else entirely. And then, yeah, getting back to figuring out book number two. There you go. There you go. Well,

this has been really interesting. Give us a final pitch out to order the book to everybody in your.com. Sure. So yeah, it's among the bros, a fraternity crime story. You can find it as Chris said, wherever good books are sold, Amazon, it's Among the Bros, A Fraternity Crime Story. You can find it, as Chris said, wherever good books are sold. Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Audible, Kindle, kind of anywhere. And

then my website's max-marshall.com. And yeah, my email's on there and feel free to reach out. There you go. Thank you very much for coming on the show, Max. We really appreciate it. Yeah, I really enjoyed it. There you go. Thanks to our audience for tuning in. Order up where refined books are sold among the bros. A fraternity crime story that came out November 7th, 2023. Thanks so much for tuning in. Go to goodreads.com, Fortunes Chris Voss, LinkedIn.com, Fortunes Chris Voss, Chris Voss 1, the TikTok, Chris Voss Facebook.com, and Chris Voss YouTube.com. Thanks for tuning in.

Be good to each other. Stay safe. We'll see you guys next time. And that should have a sound.