The Connect- with Johnny Mitchell - A Career Pot Smuggler Reveals A Lifetime Of Drug Trafficking & Being First To Grow Indica In Jamaica

Episode Date: March 23, 2024

Steve James learned the power of money at a young age. In rural Georgia during the 1950s he discovered the basics of business by watching his grandfather hustle ranchers for cattle. He took these lessons and applied them to crime. By the age of 13 he was smuggling in pot from Panama and became the main distributer in his town. He continued scaling his business which eventually led to him trafficking seeds from Afghanistan and starting the first indica grows on the island of Jamaica. He's here to tell us all about his life story; crime, addiction, betrayal and a federal case that landed him the crosshairs of the FBI. Go Support Steve! Website: https://indicathebook.com/ Book On Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/Indica-Steven-Person-Marijuana-Jamaica-ebook/dp/B09HHNSM4Z This Episode Is #Sponsored By MANDO! Control Body Odor ANYWHERE with @shop.mando and get $5 off off your Starter Pack (that’s over 40% off) with promo code MITCHELL at www.shopmando.com! #mandopod Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

First, we got the seeds. And if you look on the map, longitude-wise, if you go from Afghanistan, it goes straight to North Georgia and North Alabama. So we brought the seeds and started climatizing them. And then after they would grow there, we took them to Jamaica and climatized them there. They had never seen anything like it. I've done over 20,000 drug crimes. I've only been caught for two.

Steve James is a career drug trafficker, what we in the business call a lifer. He's a baby boomer, born in a small suburban Georgia community. He began smuggling in bricks of Panama Red from South America in the early 1960s when he was only 13 years old. Later, after he graduated from college, he moved to Jamaica and became the first person to ever grow Indica on the island. He ended up successfully smuggling over three tons of high-grade indica bud from Joe. Jamaica into the U.S., and he got away with it. Today, he's retired and out of the business, and he has a book out right now about his experience called Indica,

which you can pick up on Amazon. For this and more war stories with the oldest drug trafficker we have ever had on The Connect. Head over to Patreon right now, patreon.com slash the Connect show. Without further ado, I give you Steve James, the Indica King, right here on The Connect with Johnny Mitchell. We finally hooked up with some Colombian guys. and we paid for like one key and they fronted the other. Sold that in a week and got back down there and my buddy David says,

they're going to kill us. He said, the guy told me that it didn't matter if we had the money or didn't have the money. The only thing that he was glad about is he didn't have to go to Atlanta and kill us. He could kill us right there in Miami. That's when I see the lights behind me start to flash. And I didn't even think. I just hit it. I was driving like my life depended on.

Then I parked the car, hopped out, closed the door, and I started running. And he pulls out a burner, shank. It's like six inches. And he passes it to me. And he goes, here, that's yours. Don't ever leave the cell block without this. He was the reason I made it out of that place alive. Steve Daniel.

Yeah. How are you, sir? I'm good today. Yeah. You are the elder statesman of podcast guests on this show. You are by far not only the oldest guest. but the oldest hustler, kingpin that we've had on. It's an honor and a privilege.

Let's get right into it. You are from northern Georgia. Yeah. Grew up in the 50s and 60s. Tell us about the culture. Tell us about the history of hustling and moneymaking and business in your family that goes back generations. Yeah.

Right? to the segregation of the South and how that led to you initially getting involved with pot dealing. Yeah. Yeah. I grew up in rural North Georgia about three and a half miles from the Tennessee line. And my folks were into cattle. And my grandpa was the moneymaker of the whole family. and he had a big cattle truck. And what we'd do is I was a little kid, you know, five, six years old, he'd throw me up in the cattle truck, and we'd go visit farmers. And farmers had no way to transport.

Transport is everything. It's transporting in the drug business is everything. If you're not transporting, you're not making money. So my grandpa had this big cattle truck, and he'd go up to a farmer, and the farmer would have five or six cows that he wanted to sell. And my grandpa would say, look, I can load these up in the truck, take them to the market, and you'll get whatever they tell you. We don't know what you're going to get.

But I've got money in my pocket, and I can pay you here on the spot for your cows. And you don't have to worry about it. And it will be in cash, and it won't be a check. or I can charge you a haul bill of $25 and you get, I'll bring you back to check and I'll hand it to you, but it'll be whatever they make at the market. So what do you want to do? Take cash now or bet on the market. And so most of them would take cash.

We'd load it up. We'd take them to a holding pin, fill them full of salt and water and feed and make $20. dollars on every cow that we purchased. So your grandpa was just middlemanning. Yeah, he'd just buy and sell. Buy and sell. That's all we did. Buy and sale. Classic.

That's the way to be. He would not hold these cows more than four or five days. Yeah. Just like your pot pounds. Yeah. Just mark it, marking them up. Turn, turn, turn.

Wow. And so that's, and you recall, you know, being like in Sunday school as a child in the 50s with, and you'd have $200,300 in your pocket. Yeah. Which is an unfathomable amount of money for. for a kid in the 50s in Georgia. It was embarrassing when they called me out on it. Wow.

Nobody had any money at Sunday school. I don't know why the Sunday school teacher asked how much money does people have. But I just happened. I'd sold a cow and cashed a check and had it in my wallet. Yeah. So that was your earliest lesson in business. Yeah. It was from your grandfather.

He said, he said, you want to go someplace? good for lunch today. We're at a stock market. And I said, yeah. He said, I said, but grandpa, you didn't bring any cows down here. And he said, watch this. So he found a guy that wanted to sell cow and not put it through the auction. So grandpa just, you know, paid him cash right there. So it didn't go through the auction. He paid him like 300 bucks. And he got a, he got a guy that wanted to buy a cow. And so grandpa said, here, you know, you need this cow right here. And the guy said, I don't know.

And 325. No, no, no. No, he started out 350. He said, no, let's have it for 325. And the guy bought it. So my grandpa didn't even have a cow to auction, but he bought one and sold one, made $25 bucks, and we went and ate. Yeah.

And so you knew that that is what you wanted from a young age is money. you saw the freedom and the power that money provides. You didn't want to be one of the men in your town that would go off to Chattanooga to work in a plant, which is what your father did, I think, right? Correctly. I think by eighth grade, you were making more money than he was. Correct. So do you remember getting introduced to pot for the first time?

Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. I had a couple of friends, Bobby and Johnny, that would come and visit what they did. What they did was across the street from my house was a store, and this old lady ran the store, and these were her grandkids that would come to visit. First, they were stationed out of Washington, D.C., and we got to be friends, and they would stay for two weeks in the winter and two weeks in the summer, and we ran around together. And then they got stationed in the Panama Canal Zone.

So one summer, they bring weed with them when they come. Right. Yeah. How did their father work for the government? He was a colonel or, yeah. Okay, so he was part of the military. Yeah, yeah, he was bigwig. Wow. And so they were able, his kids could load up and fly on a plane.

Wow. Yeah. Without getting searched. Nothing. Nothing. It's like, how are you going to get a 14 year old kid? You know, what are you going to do, you know? Who has that connection?

Yeah. So 14 years old, these brothers. would bring back pounds of Panama Red. Yeah, kilos. Kilos, right. What was Panama Red like? It was a nice, really good weed, probably, you know, three or four percent at the time, you know. But that was considered good weed.

Yeah, and it wasn't very stemmy or seedy, you know, so it was really good. One brother was 14, the other brother was 12, and I was right in the middle. I was like 13, you know, so it was a, it was a. a good deal. And you were a pothead. You liked smoking pot. Yeah. You still smoke pot. Yeah. You're high, a little high right now from the dubie you spoke before this interview. Maybe. Maybe. But you did, was it natural, the natural next step to sell, to sell it for these guys? Yeah. They, you know, they said, what we did was they brought some and it was about Christmas time, you know, when they brought like a kilo. And we took it and broke it down.

and we didn't have scales. So one finger would be a nickel bag, two fingers would be a dime, three fingers they called a lid, and four fingers was an ounce. We sold for 20. So you could get a $5, you know, nickel bag,

but the thing about it is, we were only paying $9 a kilo, you know, which is 36 ounces about. So you sell your first dime bag, you pay for your whole kilo, you know after that it's all profit all profit dude you thought it was easy hey guys i know a lot has changed since the days that steve was in the game one of those big changes is personal hygiene you can't have fumes anymore mando is leading that change check it out mando was created by a doctor who saw

firsthand how normal b o was being misdiagnosed and mistreated does that three and one shampoo from those leading brands leave you needing a second shower just a few hours after the first. From the founders of Loomy, Mando Whole Body Deodorant is helping men conquer their odor in a new way. Formulated with mandolic acid, Mando has long-lasting 72-hour odor control that actually stops odor before it starts. Best part is you can put Mando anywhere. Pits, packages, feet, skinfolds, back, knees, everywhere. To top it all off, Mando's Cologne Quality Sents were created with men in mind. Pro tip, try their best-selling scent bourbon leather. It's a game changer. I love it. I haven't worn any kind of scent, cologne, since I was in high school, but since Mando hit me off with their

bourbon leather, I am smelling fresh. My girl is loving it. Once you experience fresher underarms, a fresher package, and fresher feet, you'll never go back. The market for men's products is growing, but let's be honest, a lot of them suck. I'm constantly on the road doing shows, filming episodes for my channel, and between traveling hotel gyms, hotel rooms, being on the road, running around,

I get pretty rancid. Mando sent a care package and I gave them a try while we were just in Florida and let me tell you, this stuff stood up to the challenge of the heat and the humidity down there. I was honestly skeptical

because I've been let down so many times by other products, but my pits and balls smelled fresh and inviting all day. I know this because I made by producer do smell checks once an hour. Mando deodorant is serious. is seriously safe to use anywhere on your body. I'm talking about your pits, your genitals, belly

buttons, belly cracks, stinky crevices, even your feet. Mando whole body deodorant is powerful enough for the toughest body odor, but gentle enough to use everywhere, allowing you to put Mando on family jewels without any worry because Mando is aluminum-free, baking soda-free, cruelty-free, die-free, and it's also vegan. Mando's starter pack is perfect for new customers. It comes with a solid stick of deodorant, cream tube deodorant, two free products of your choice,

like mini body wash and deodorant wipes, plus free shipping. Luckily, I have a discount code to help you get hooked on my favorite smelling whole-body deodorant on the market. New customers get $5 off a starter pack with our exclusive code. That equates to over 40% off your starter pack.

use code Mitchell, M-I-T-C-H-E-L at shopmando.com. That's S-H-O-M-A-N-D-O.com. It's time to smell better naked. Trust me, your partner will thank you. Let's get back into the episode. So you became at 13 years old the distributor of this Panama Red,

these bricks of Panama Red. That's how we're bringing out Panama. And you started just by going around to the kids in your neighborhood that played in. They were riding around with baskets on their on their bicycles selling weed. But in our community, I knew that shit wasn't going to last. Somebody was going to get busted, you know?

So I had a friend whose daddy had the alcohol distribution and the gambling distribution of ML King Boulevard, Big Nine, back then, as they called it, before it was ML King. That was before King was assassinated, you know. We're talking 64, 65. 6566. And this is in Chattanooga, Tennessee. And there are all these nightclubs. And so this kid that I knew, his daddy would load him up with liquor and punchboards

and gambling devices, and he would deliver them to the black night clubs. So I said, hmm, if he's going to be going up there every Thursday afternoon, I'm going to cut him in. So I went to him and he said he'd take me up there and introduce me and everything. And I took a big bag, a grocery sack bag of nickel bags. And I went up there and started selling to all the black people at the nightclubs. Yeah. And you're 13, 14 years old.

Oh, 13, yeah. And this is pre-Civil Rights Act. This is segregation. Yeah. And I think in your book, you talk about the power that white people and segregation had. you were little white boys walking through a black ghetto neighborhood, but you couldn't be touched. Right.

Because nobody dare lay a finger on a black person, especially on a white kid or a white person. Yeah. Did that cloud your, did that make you prejudice? Like, did you grow up with prejudice in your family? No, I grew up with black people. I knew black people.

Okay, my, our maid, Effie, you know. She practically raised me. Yeah. You know? Yeah. So, and she had all her nephews and nieces and everything and I'd go play with them, you know. Yeah. All my clothes that I'd outgrow would go to her.

Right. So when I'd go to school, I would say black folks wear my clothes. Right. Right. So you didn't, you weren't taught white supremacy by your, no. Your parents, your grandparents? No, it was, it was so tough. Everybody was trying to hustle.

I mean, if a black guy could hustle, he hustled. You know? Right. My grandpa didn't get in the way of hustle. Right. You know? And when our school got segregated, and I was playing football, I'd take a pickup truck and go pick up the black football players and take them to practice and take them home

because they didn't have a ride. And if they didn't have a ride, they couldn't practice. and they weren't going to be on the team. Right. And you guys weren't going to be very good. And we weren't going to win. I didn't care if they were green. Yeah.

You know, I wanted football players. Right. So, but it's amazing the salesmanship and the mouthpiece and the balls at 13. You're going around and selling, talking to bar owners in the Big Nine, this district in Chattanooga, and fronting them the wheat. Yeah. Right? Well, how did it work?

Yeah, I owned like quarter pounds, you know, that pay, but on a pound, they'd front of a pound. So, yeah, how did that work? How much would you give each bar and then how much would you make? I was selling them, ounces were going for 20, okay? So there's 16 ounces, and so I'll have them for 160 bucks, $10.00, they would double their money. I always put anybody that I always,

worked with, I wanted them to be able to double their money. Right. And you're paying $9 for a kilo. Yeah. So you're paying $4.50 a pound and making how much off that? Yeah, like $155. Wow. Back then.

That's more than most grown men were making probably in a week at the plant. Oh, yeah. Average hour is $100 a week back then. Wow. Wow. So what was your, when you were 14, how much, money you think you had. What'd you do with your cash? I got a safe for my birthday. Everybody asked, what do you want for your birthday? What do you want for your birthday? And I had taken my money

in a ball jar and had gone across the creek and hit it under in a root ball. You know, a tree had fallen over and I hid my money in a ball jar. So when I got my safe, when I think I was 14, years old for my birthday. I got safe and I lugged it upstairs and put my money in it, man. I felt like a businessman. Yeah. So you knew about saving. That was like you just stashed your money. Yeah. Did your parents know what you were doing? Not at that time. Okay. Yeah. You think they would have been proud of you? Not at that time. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So you move a couple of loads of this Panama Red for the neighbor boys who are bringing it back. Yeah. How many times did you do that? You do that? You know, that before you had to find a new connection.

We did it for 10 years. 10 years. From the time I was 12 until I was 22, what happened is one of the brothers got killed in Vietnam. And when that did, the older brother had just finished University of Georgia, got a big job in Atlanta, and he was out of it.

Right. So after 10 years, our little marijuana ring spun out. Right. But how much, what did you think you made in 10 years? Oh, geez. you know, I don't know.

Some years, my college years, I probably made 40 grand a year. Just never, you know, just. Yeah. The late 60s. Yeah. It's like making $200,000 a year now. Oh, yeah. And they would bring, it was basically, they would only go back to Panama once a year.

So you had. Twice a year. Okay. They would, they'd bring it up in the summertime and in Christmas. Right. So you basically, you had to make load stretch for six months. Yeah. And how many kilos would you move every six months, you think? That would bring up about, oh, no, between the two of them, about 100 kilos.

Wow. So about 200 pounds. Yeah. And duffel bikes and stuff. I would have to go with them. I went over there and would pony back some to get the weight right, you know. Yeah. So you're moving like 400 pounds a year as a teenager. on the ML King. Wow. That's all pushed through the black neighborhoods. Yeah. And most of it went out in what that. I went into a nightclub in the afternoon.

And there was a guy sitting at a desk like this. And there was, he had just a pile of matches sitting there, you know. And he was putting, he was taking a nickel bag and putting them in match boxes. and he would put five in a nickel bag. He'd make up five match boxes and they'd sum for $2 a piece. So he doubled his money. Right. So everybody was making money.

Everybody was making money. I made sure everybody made lots of monies. That way they'd be happy. Yeah. But you were the exclusive distributor in this area of Chattanooga. Yeah. For that Panama Red. Yeah.

And then so did you think, okay, I want to step this up after the Panama connection, went away or did you retire? What were your goals after that? I lost my point people. You know, when you lose your point people, your point people keep you insulated. You know, the point of the sphere is what gets broken off. You know, I want to be toward the middle of the sphere. Right. You know, I wanted somebody else to go, open up, make the connections, and then bring it to me after they got it all done.

I didn't want to go down there for any initial anything. I wanted, you know, kind of wrapped up nice when I went there. Were you worried about law enforcement? Not back to him. No, not back when I was a little kid. Yeah. There were no feds. There was no DEA even.

Nothing like that. When did you get into cocaine? I did cocaine in college a little bit, not much, you know. It was really expensive back then. Yeah, yeah. And it wasn't in good. Right. Right. But after you got out of college, you graduated from the University of Georgia with honors.

Yeah. Got laid a bunch. Yeah. You lived in basically like a hippie commune. Yeah. We rented a huge mansion. And we had like I had four girls and two guys living with me. I mean, everybody had their own bedroom. You know, it was like hippie town.

It was like animal house. you know, with girls. Yeah, it's so interesting. Like you're this southern good old boy. You have these southern good old boy roots, but then it's meeting with the time of the hippie movement in the late 60s in Vietnam. And it's one of the best eras to be a drug dealer.

Yeah. Because the markets are opening up. And then in the 70s, there's a whole bunch of new affluence and then cocaine starts making its way into the greater, greater America. You moved to Atlanta after college. Yeah. You start selling computers. Yeah.

Which are brand new, right? Yeah, yeah. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. I did.

know, $70,000, where most people were making, at that time, 12,000. Yeah. Yeah. And you were a party boy. Yeah. Yeah. And we got all these clubs and do cocaine and, you know, all this stuff. When did you get into moving it? Let's see. About 1970, 77, 78, 78, 79. And who was your first connect? My first connect was my first connect. Excuse me.

It happens to be my wife's ex-husband. Right. Your current wife's ex-husband. My current wife's husband that passed away was my first connect. Wow. And he was a guy. He was just a guy like you, a white guy. Yeah, computers.

We're all in computer business. Was he bringing it up from Miami? No. He had a contact in Birmingham. Okay. Yeah. And we'd go to Birmingham, get it. And so you're just small time at the beginning. Yeah, selling houses and stuff like that. But then you stepped it up. Yeah. You make your way down to Florida. Tell us about how that happened and then how you really get connected with Colombians. Yeah. We got down there and started trying to find some wholesale distributor for cocaine, you know.

back then cocaine was going like for 64,000 a key. Yeah. Yeah. Dude. But we were buying it and sold up for 100 grams, so there's plenty of money to be made. 100 per gram? Yeah.

Yeah. E ounces were $2,800. Yeah. You know, so what we did is we finally hooked up with some Colombian guys, me and a buddy in mine by the name of David Harper. And David, we had some money, and we paid for like, one key and they fronted the other. Okay?

And these Columbians, we didn't get our conversation right somehow. They expected us to grab that other key and be back the next day to pay them. Well, my buddy said, you know, I'm going to stay here. Okay. So the Colombians kind of sat on him while I left. Just as insurance in case you didn't come back. You know, we were leaving, you know. So I hustle my ass up there.

So two kilos of cocaine in a week. Wow, just in grams and eight balls? No, in an ounces. To other dealers. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. Sometimes half pounds.

Mm-hmm. You know, quarter pounds, half pounds, stuff like that. And sold that shit in a week and got back down there. And my buddy David says, they're going to kill us. even though you have the money. I said, what do you mean they're going to kill us? And he said, the guy told me that it didn't matter if we, if we had the money or didn't have the money, if we were,

he said, the only thing that he was glad about is he didn't have to go to Atlanta and kill us. He could kill us right there in Miami. And I said, what? He said, man, it's all messed up. So that's, he, me and him went to meet these guys thinking, This could be it, you know. We had money to buy extra, you know.

And as it turned out, the guy that I had met when I was a little kid in Panama was these guys' boss. Right, right. So he was, that was just. I like to. When Jorge walked to that big fat Panamanian with that little bitty stupid mustache wore, I liked our shit, man. I thought they're going to kill us. And then here I am with a guy.

I'm 30 years old or something, 28. And I had known this guy half my life since I was 14. He was the guy that was growing the pot and selling to your neighbor boys. And then that was the pot that you were selling for them. Yeah. And so you had actually ended. up meeting him when you were a teenager. Yeah, down in Panama.

In Panama. Yeah. He left Panama because of, you know, corruption, Noriega and his mama and brought them to the States. And it was coincidence. Yeah. It just freaking. That's crazy.

That's crazy, man. It's crazy. And he was just fucking with you. Yeah. And so, no. Oh, you were actually planning? Yeah, the two Colombians had brought me there to say, you know, these are the two guys were going to whack.

So Jorge was ready to kill you, but then he saw it was you and was like, oh, okay, I guess not. That's how Colombians did business back then. Yeah. Even though you guys had the money for the buy, you just hadn't brought it fast enough. Right. Wow. Did that ring alarm bells? Did you say, wow, this is a dangerous fucking business?

Yeah. But when I got Jorge, my price went from 60. $34,000 a key to $32. Wow. And could you double your money on that? Double my money. What I would do is back then at $32,000 a kilo is less than $1,000 bucks an ounce. And back then, ounces were going for $2,000.

So I could dump off the kilo and say, you know, here it is. I didn't have to break it down or anything after a while. So you could, and you were moving about two keys a month and make it an easy 80, Oh, yeah. And then the pot comes back into play. Yeah. What happens is we all got to do. Memorial Day weekend is almost here, and it's time to kick off summer right.

When I'm getting ready for the first big weekend of summer, total wine and more is my go-to, especially when I'm firing up the grill with family. I'll grab refreshing beers, easy drinking wines, and some hard seltzers for the cooler. And with everything that goes into summer, it's nice knowing you're getting the lowest prices. Total Wine and More. Your Memorial Day made easy. Shop Total Wine and More in store or

online. Spirits not sold in Virginia and North Carolina. Drink responsibly must be 21. Dicted. Dicted the money. And Coke. Yeah. I mean, it was crazy, you know. We were in Miami

and we were sitting at a kitchen table with these Colombians, me and my David, and they said, you want to smoke some crack. We said, what is it? Oh, it's hard cocaine. So I remember that very well, that episode, because when we sat down, it was daylight in the afternoon. And then after a while, it got dark.

And then after a while, it got daylight. And then, after a while, it got dark. I said, I've got to get the hell out of here. I had sat in the same clothes at the same coffee, at the same kitchen table for two frigging days. Couldn't wait until we cooked up the next rock. I said, oh, dude, you know, this is the devil. Yeah. So there was four of us that we used to meet at my house.

had a big ranch house, and we decided this is killing everybody. This is, we would take 100 pounds apart and drop it off at a guy's house. And a month later, we'd go by and pick up the money. No big deal. What if he got into it? And he smoked an ounce a week. Big deal. You drop off a kilo of cocaine to a guy.

That's a different story. Yeah. They start doing it. You know, they can't control. They don't keep up with their money. I took so many good pot guys and ruined them with cocaine. Wow. Ruined them.

Ruin them. Ruin their marriages, ruined everything. You know. Whereas when there were pot guys, had families and everybody was cool. Mm-hmm. You know? So we decided fuck cocaine in 1985.

there was this kid that had gotten a scholarship. He was an All-American. I think his name was Bios or something like that. And he died of a cocaine overdose. Yeah, Len Bias. Yeah, he died of a cocaine overdose, one of these guys. Yeah, it was Len Bias. Anyway, and he was the senior in college and had the future in front of him.

And after he had been awarded that night, he ended up ODIN and dying. And so we decided, you know, we're ruining it. people this crap, you know? And we decided we're going to get back in the marijuana business, something that we really love. And that's when we made the decision to go to Jamaica. That's right. And set everything up. We were just sick of it, man. How did you, and this is kind of an ingenious move, you discovered that Indica was grown, could be grown on the same lines of latitude as it is in Afghanistan. Yeah. So take us through how. how you built the farm up and how you got the seeds.

Bring us through that whole thing. Yeah, this process took probably seven or eight years in total. First, we got the seeds. And if you look on the map, on a map, longitude-wise, if you go from Afghanistan, it goes straight to North Georgia and North Alabama. So we brought the seeds and started climatizing. them, getting them so they'd grow. And then after they would grow there, we took them to Jamaica and climatized them there.

You're talking four years. Right. You actually went to Afghanistan. Yeah, a buddy went to Afghanistan, brought the seeds back in his hair. Wow. Yeah, smoking them back. Yeah. Yeah.

And then you plant them in Georgia. That's what climatizing is? Yeah. Is you replant them, grow more plants. Get the seeds from them. Right. And then we took them to Jamaica and did the same thing to where we could, you know, put a crop in. Right.

How many seeds to make your first crop? Oh, I don't know. Thousands? Yeah, four or five thousand seeds. We ended up with about 1,800 pounds. Right. Out of about, you know, 3,600 plants. Where in Jamaica?

Right outside Montego Bay about two hours. How much land did you have to buy? Well, it was about. that we got. And it was probably, I don't know, 40 acres or 50, you know, wasn't huge. But you hired a whole team, a whole team of Jamaican laborers. Yeah, what happened is after we got the land, we got the land, you have to use locals. I mean, you know, you can't be bringing in outside people.

You know, you got to use what's there. So these guys have been growing pot all their life, you know. They just never had seen seeds that look like the seeds that we had were four times larger than the seeds they had ever seen. They thought they were like pinto bean seeds or something. Yeah, they thought, you know, they thought they were beans instead of marijuana seeds, you know. So I remember getting the guys together and we had we had a motion. hotel room at the time. And let me tell you about Rossi Fires and Jamaicans. They do dreadlocks. And there's a reason they call them dread, dread locks. And I've seen this done. And what they do

is they go out and get fresh cow manure. Okay. And they roll it in their hair and make cones. right cones like eight or ten cones and this is fresh green cow manure and they sit in the sun all day long till it dries all right and then they stand up and shake their heads and when they shake their head shit flies yeah okay so here i'm in a motel rowing here i'm in a motel road with five of these guys, they had just finished doing their hair a couple of days before. You talk about odor in the room. They don't really bathe a whole lot, and soap's not really, and nobody had shoes. And you get in a tight little motel room with five of these guys, Jesus Christ, that's about make you throw up, dude.

Right. They're dirty. They're just dirtier than any rednecks from Georgia that you can imagine. They're complete mountain people out there. Yeah. And they're either farmers, like subsistence farmers, or they're marijuana farmers. Yeah. This is what they do.

So we hired these guys and got the land. You had to pay the local chief tenants, right? Yeah, we gave, there was a policeman there and a religious leader. And we both gave them watches, you know. That's all it took? Yeah, watches, yeah. Wow. Do they know the kind of money you stood to make?

Well, yeah. They thought we were foolish. A couple of white boys going to come to Jamaica and do good. Yeah. Give us a watch. Sure. Sure. Use the land.

We don't care. And they were there to protect you guys too. Yeah. Plus, after the crops, we'd give them a kickback. Right. After every crop. Right. Yeah.

And you had distribution already set up in the States. What did your, what did that look like? Who and where were you moving it to? We sold. all over Atlanta Chattanooga Nashville

Cincinnati Ohio yeah Washington D.C., Maryland How many people did you have running for you? Oh, there was about

probably eight. Wow. Eight guys making trips. 100 pound runs? Yeah, and more. Yeah. Yeah.

So you crop your first 1800 plants? or you got 1,800 pounds. Yeah. Okay, so you got about 1,000 kilos on your first crop. Yeah. Wow.

And then tell us how you got 1,000 kilos of Indica from Jamaica to the states. On a boat. We would buy boats and we would have to hire a captain. And so we would own the boat, but we needed somebody to drive it. So we got to a Swedish guy. that, you know, he was, you know, he was a gamer. And, you know, he showed us how to load the boat and put the pot, tear the boat up, put the pot in. It just looked like a regular boat, you know.

Yeah. And then when we got to shore, we'd have to rip up the, you know, the boards and, you know. Where would you guys unload? We did in different places. We had a guy that worked at a state park in Florida. Where in Florida? Up this coast, the western coast? Yeah.

Yeah. Okay, Gulf of Mexico? Yeah, it wasn't there. We would come up from Miami and keep going up to the left side of Florida, you know. And you weren't worried about coast guards? No, not at the time. No, we were just making our run. You know, we're going to do it.

You know, we would come this far. You know, we're going to stop. Cowboys you guys were. Yeah, we didn't have a lot of fear in us. So you had the kilos built into the inside of the panels of the boat. What we did is we created our own press. Right. And we would press out 20 pound bales.

Right. That way, you know, kilos were too, you know, be too many. Right. So you press, so that's how many bales? 50 bales? Yeah. A thousand pounds or a thousand kilos? 50 bales.

Yeah. Gotcha. And it's in like a commercial. Is it like a lug? Is it a yacht? No, it's like a 38 foot fish investable. Okay. Yeah, that had plenty of open space and stuff where you can line the walls and line the floor, you know.

How much money had you invested up to this point? In the grow? Yeah, in the grow. When you talk about buying the land, buying the boat, hiring the labor. And this is all funded on cocaine, by the way. Okay. You hire five guys. Okay.

They go to the farm. They take their machetes. Okay. Well, these five guys have five wives. And they have five children each. And by the time we got ready to plant, it was a village there. You know, like 30 people around.

Half of them under the age of five or ten. Yeah. You know, just a little village, you know. Yeah. You know, playing soccer, kicking. around, everybody barefooted, you know, eating, you know, eating rice and bananas, you know. Yeah. And that's a village around your pot field.

Yeah. They built little huts and their wives and everything, and they'd come out of their hut and go to work and go back to their hut. You know, we didn't transport anybody anywhere. Right. Once they got to the farm, they stayed there. Yeah. So how, but what was this investment?

We brought food in. So what was the total investment? Geez, we were probably three or four hundred thousand into it. Yeah. We had spent. It's a big risk. If we didn't, if it didn't work, you know, all those years would have been for nothing, you know. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah, you probably would have gone bankrupt. Yeah. So you get the first load of a thousand keys makes it. Yeah. You guys unload. How long does it take you to get rid of a thousand bricks? Well, in 20 pound bails.

But we broke it into pounds and stuff like. Well, I remember we had, I had a ranch house, okay, four bedrooms, two baths, sat up on a hill, very secluded, all right, and you would go up the hill and pull in behind the house, and there was enough room behind the house to park 20 cars, okay? And then I had a detached garage, and above the garage was an apartment. Okay? And in that detached garage, I'd have like eight people in there bagging pounds apart. Wow. It'd take them two days to buy that into a single pounds apart. And for people who don't know, let's explain the difference between Indica and the traditional setiva.

Yeah. And why Indica is better and was more expensive. Yeah. The setiva was running about three or four percent, you know. THC. THC. And it was real stemmy and real seedy. And Jamaica,

CETIVA, hell, I've seen Cetiva plants 10, 15 feet high. Right. But Indicol, it grows about five feet high. And it looks like a Christmas tree. Right. And you pet and buddy and the weed that comes off there is a 20% THC prepared. Wow. So you could take one bag.

an ounce of setiva and smoke it in a week, whereas you'd take a quarter ounce of indica and smoke it in a week. And setiva was the main thing on the market. Yeah. That's what the Mexicans were pushing. Columbia. The Colombians. Everybody. Yeah.

Everybody had. That was like when my generation thinks about our parents smoking joints, like their cigarettes. Yeah. That was the Sativa because it hardly did anything to you. I wouldn't leave the house until I had five joints rolled up. Right. Once Indica got there, I just need to roll one. Right.

So this is completely revolutionary when it comes to the marijuana market. Well, back then, Sativa was selling for 80 bucks an ounce and we were selling for 300. That's wild. I remember what I used to pay 300 an ounce in 2004. Yeah. So imagine in 1986, 86, 87, you're getting $300 an ounce. Nobody had ever seen anything like that. Were you worried that because of that price point, you were going to limit your market?

We didn't care. It went. It took me like two months to sell the first load. Right. So was that the same amount of time would have taken you to move Sativa? Yeah. You didn't really see any difference. And your profit was 10 times as great.

Yeah. You claim to be the first person to grow Indica in Jamaica. Yeah. Absolutely. How do you know that for a fact? The way our farmers reacted when those purple leaves first popped out, they had never seen anything like it. They had been growing pot in Jamaica their whole entire life. Right.

And when these wide, big, broad leaves started popping out, These leaves were three times or four times wider than the leaves of a setiva plant. Yeah. They were. Right. I could just tell they had never, ever seen anything like that in their life. Right. Right.

And once they got a crop through and they smoked a joint, dude. They knew. Ross does know their pot. Oh, yeah. So that was completely new to them. Yeah. Did it have since then, did you think other. growers in Jamaica adopted Indica after you?

Yeah, or strains. Yeah. I haven't gotten a load out of Jamaica in years. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So you make your first trip.

It takes you two months. What do you profit off of 1,800 pounds of indica in 1987? Jeez, I don't even know. Over a million. Easy. Wow. Yeah. A million dollars to your pocket off of 1,800 pounds.

Yeah. Wow. So the game has changed. You're a kingpin now. Yeah. Were you, did you feel like you had achieved like your boyhood dream? You go from selling $5 nickels on the streets of Chattanooga, and now you're bringing in loads from Jamaica. I remember this.

I was catching a plane to Cincinnati, and I went through the airport, and they had magazines for sale, and I bought a gentleman's quarterly. And I was looking at, on the airplane up there, and there was a suit in there that I thought, man, I've got to have this suit. It was a two-piece bone. They called it, it was like vanilla bone. It wasn't white. It was like a bone suit. And I said, man, I've got to have this. And in the magazine, it sold in different shots, but it sold in Cincinnati.

And I was flying to Cincinnati. I was in a big fancy hotel. And I called him up. They sent a guy over, brought a suit, had it tailored, took it back, fixed it, brought it back to me, along with a pair of. $800 loavers. This was in 1989, $800 pair of shoes, $2,000 parachute. My silk shirt was like $150. I knew I'd made it. When you can pick out clothes from gentlemen's quarterly, fly to the place that they're being sold and buy them. Yeah. You were making cocaine money off of weed. Yes. Yeah. So you've got distributors that are taking it all across the country and 100, 200 pound runs.

Now you go back and plant a new crop back in Jamaica. How long does it take you to crop? How many plants are needed to get 1,800 pounds of indica? About 3,600 pounds. Wow. How long does it take to crop from the time you plant? 90 to 120 days down there. Did you spend the time over there or were you in Miami waiting for when you were with it during gross season?

I would, I would stay in Miami. And I would go when there would be an event at the farm. When they got the land, I was there. When they hired the farmers, I was there. When they planned the first crop, I was there. When they harvested the first crop, I was there. You know, when they loaded the boat, I was there. How did you start to launder your money when you made your first millions?

Where did you put your money? I bought land. In the States? Yeah, unimproved land, just farm land, unimproved land, stuff like that. I also had a guy that wasn't much money, but it was enough to where what I would do is there was a guy that I'd give him 20.000. $1,500 in cash, and he would write me a company check for $2,000. And I would put $2,000 in my bank account every week. So that's $100,000 a year.

Well, that $100,000 a year was legit money that he $10.99 me. Right. Okay. And then I pay taxes on it, and I buy houses. And when they want to see my bank account, I'll show my bank account. And when I go to the bank, they'd say, how much money you make? And I go, oh, about $2,000 a week. You know, and then, and I showed the money.

Yeah. So you had a legitimate income as an employee. Oh, yeah. That's how I rented apartments and bought apartments. You know, you ain't going to go down there and give cash for an apartment. You know, I show my bank statement. Yeah. What was the job that you were supposed to be getting this money for?

I was contract labor. Okay. Wow. It's good money for a contractor back then. Yeah. Wow. So you had your basis covered. You never got arrested.

You never took one pinch throughout this whole era leading up to the Jamaican grows. Yeah. We got, we did the Jamaican grow, got in, got out, clean. Everybody that went down there made money, got in and got out. You did four grows? Yeah, about four grows. You did four crops. Yeah.

Was that the plan at the start was just to do a handful of these big crops, move it, and then get out? We didn't even know if we could do it. So why'd you stop? We stopped because of... Now you're like, shit, I don't know. We should have kept going. To me, like you said, it was just farming.

Mm-hmm. You know, I just wanted the weed. You know, I didn't care where it came from, you know. But you're making a million dollars a run, farming? Over a year's period of time. So then why would you? Why would you quit that? Well, did it get hot?

Did you ever get robbed? Yeah, we got, we got robbed. Jamaica is different. If a white man makes eye contact with a Jamaican, they owe him a dollar. They owe him a dollar? Yeah, if you make eye contact with Jamaican. That's an unwritten rule or in the Constitution? Yeah, well.

You just didn't make so much hot contact. Uh-huh. Yeah. So you've got the best pot in Jamaica. Nobody's ever seen Indica before. Right. This is a poor country. You got a bunch of rude boys that have nothing to live for.

I imagine you are a target. Yeah. Yeah. We had a warehouse there. And right before we were starting to make one run, I was, I was in Miami and we got robbed. Mm-hmm. The whole load was gone. Cleaned out.

out. Then there was another crazy guy that came down and kidnapped the wife, the wife of one of your business partners. Right. Right. He kidnapped the daughter. Yeah. Yeah. And, you know, was going to hold her for ransom and stuff like that. So it got crazy. And then, you know, Indy got sick. She got tuberculosis. Who was Indy? That was my buddy's daughter. And she was about four or five years old. So you decided let's finish it out here and get out. Yeah, and we got that while we could get out clean. Because, you know, we were getting too familiar down there.

Right. We had overstayed our welcome. Right. Smart. You were very, even though you were a cowboy, you kind of knew, you always had like this internal radar that told you where the, yeah. when your time was coming to an end. Yeah.

And it put you a step ahead. Tell us about the last load that you brought back from Jamaica. The last load that we brought back from Jamaica was we knew it was going to be the last load. You know, we were ready to get the hell out there. And as we were coming from Jamaica to Miami, the boats started taking on a little water, you know. and, you know, the farther we got, the more water. And we started the pumps on it. And we started pumping water out.

Everybody was getting scared. We had a Swedish captain, and he wasn't very religious, but there was this good old Catholic boy on the boat, and buddy, he was running his rosaries, you know. And everybody thought they were going to die. The captain called the Coast Guard. called May Day because the boat was sinking. And we finally got to Miami, just as the boat was about to go under, we tore, we took

axes and we basically just dove in and started chopping the boat to pieces, getting the bales out and throwing them up on the land. And I kind of kept up with the number of bales. I knew there was one more bail down there. I just had to dive down there and get it and push it up to the top, man. You know, I dove down into the water. Yeah, I dove into the, I dove into the boat as the boat was sinking and sucking water down in there. And I pushed that bell up with all my mind.

And we got out there and the freaking boat sunk. And we just left it there. Wow. We just, you know. Do you know if the cops ever recovered the boat? Yeah, I'm sure they recovered the boat. It's kind of sticking out a little bit, you know. It's bobbing.

Yeah. Before it goes all the way down. Maybe they never found it, though. Yeah, they found it. I'm sure they found it. But we were able to load up in bands on the dock there and get out of there. And you unloaded in Miami? That's so crazy to think about now.

Miami's the most like developed, well-guarded, you know, seaport city on the east coast. Yeah. And you guys were just brazenly unloading pot bails, like right on the port of Miami. I had smugglers that said that they would go out to the... the mothership and just put the pot bells on the bow of the boat didn't even cover them up and just run right in right crazy you know you paying off cops too um in jamaica yeah in jamaica yeah but um well that's easy to do yeah but in the united states i'm there i never paid in cops off in the united states so you got the did any of the loads get uh damaged from water

We wrapped them. On 1,800 pounds, there would be about 140 pounds of plastic. Right. 140 pounds of plastic that we wrapped these things in. So tight. So tight. So tight. Yeah.

I mean, over and over. If you thought it was good, you did it again. Right. I mean, 140 pounds when, you know, that's a lot of plastic to route. Wow. That's wild. I've weighed it before. 140 pounds on 1,800 pounds.

So you just add another. How much does one bail weigh? About 20 pounds. We kept them, you know, we didn't, you see, a lot of people make bigger belt. We, you know, 50 pound bail. Some people can't lift 50 pounds. Yeah, 50 pounds. So 20 is good.

Wow. And he's the rot size. So everything, you got the bales off the sinking boat and nothing was damaged. Yeah. We wrapped them. We had a press and those Jamaicans would, like an old Tommy wooden press. And we had to turn a wheel. And they'd press that down in there and we cut it and clip it and get it just rock.

So you get that last load off. You sell your last 1800 pounds of Jamaican indica. You make your million bucks. Everything's cool, man. Why not get out of the game? Yeah, yeah. I basically got out of, we got out of the growing game. Right.

We didn't get out of the game. We got out of being farmers. Right. Yeah. Yeah. Let me tell you. Spend three months in 100-degree weather where you're sweating, even at 9 o'clock at night, sweat running off your nose at 9 o'clock.

at night, you know. It gets old. Yeah. Yeah, I never had any interest, even in the height of my trafficking days, to grow pot. I had, at 12 years old, I've had probably a hundred different grows. I did this grow, and it was great, man, it was great. And then we thought it was going to make it. And then in the South, they have dove hunters. Okay? The dove. The Hove hunters went out hunting doves and found our field. Oh, wow. So that one was gone. We finally, when I was a little kid, like 14 or 15, I'd grown about 40 pounds,

and we had it in a barn letting it dry hanging from the rafters there. And there was cows there, but they kept the cows out. But it was starting to be like October. and so the guy, my buddy, his little brother, he went, opened up the gate and left the cows in the bottom because it's going to be cold that night. Well, what did they do? They stood on their hind legs and ate as high as they could up on our,

and when we walked in the next day, our 40 pounds was down to a pound. They ate all that weed? They ate every stick of that weed. High as fuck. High as fuck. Why'd you do it? Well, I didn't know they'd eat that pot. They ate our pot.

Dears, rabbits. Oh, man, I've had, I would take trays of indica seed and give them to farmers and say, look, you plant this. Let me know when you've got it dried, I come by your whole load. I would provide what the crop to them. They'd grow it and then sell it to me. Yeah, that's the way to do it. We did that for years, years and years. So you're a millionaire now, and you're out of the growing business.

No more farming, no more growing, no more headaches, right? You're just going to be your grandfather. I'm going to give you a price. I'm going to buy it and sell it for a markup. The middleman. What's your next play? Now you've got to find a supplier because you, you know, you're not your own supplier anymore. Who did you start working with after that?

I started working with a guy. out of Nashville. His name was Tony D. And he's passed away now. But we would, I'd go to Nashville and he had, he was, I always used point people.

I wouldn't a point guy. What's a point person? You, you're a point guy. I'm not a point guy. I'm going to make you into one. Oh, shit. Okay.

Oh, exciting. So this is what I would do. I'd get point people. Point people were people that had but gall and guts and could talk to anybody and weren't afraid to go into a foreign country or talk to foreign people or anything, but they had no money to back it up. So the point people would go, make the contacts. Once they made the contact, then I would supply the money. They would buffer me between. So you were just the, they were the fixer.

Yeah, they, like my buddy David. My buddy David, he recently got our cocaine connection going in Florida. My buddy David got the plants started growing in Jamaica. This buddy Tony got the Houston connection going. So these are just people. The point person is the person you send in first on the ground, the infantry man, first over the hill of the trench. The point of the spear.

Yeah, the guy and the most dangerous part. And he basically makes sure that everything's cool, everything's safe, and then you come in with the money. Right. Do you ever meet your suppliers or do you always use the point person? I never met my, there was the Mexican supplier's name over there was Pablo. Polo. Polo was his name. And I never met him.

Right. But Tony did. So you just have the accounts. You're just the salesperson. I'm transportation and distribution. Right. And I'm the one that made the money right. A lot of these guys, they would do their first load, and they would make all this money,

and then they would let their worst habits come into effect. Right. Their deepest, baddest things, cocaine, whores, crack, you know, and they weren't reliable, you know. So my point people would be reliable for about a year or two, and that would still be my point people, but I didn't let them touch money. Right. So how would you transport? Did you have couriers? Yeah, we had about three or four guys that would bring it up in their trunks of their car. I had a Mercedes-Benz, the SL-500 that I could compress pot. Using the backseat, I could get 800 pounds in one load.

And one Mercedes. In one Mercedes. I had that shit stacked around me inside the car, in the trunk, everywhere. there wasn't I could barely I had enough room I could drive was the muffler not scraping against the ground

no but it was close it was a real good car wow would you be driving yeah I drove so you drove the load yourself oh yeah and you never got pulled over you never had a problem with the state troopers

well we used to get outfits get up stuff but we we bought we bought border patrol uniforms. Wow. Okay. I like this. You bought Border Patrol uniforms. Actual ones? Yeah. Real actual Border Patrol uniforms. How do you buy a Border Patrol uniform? Who do you go to? Through, they had them in San Antonio at Army surplus. Wow. So I go into like a cop store. Yeah. We went to a cop store. Wow. Do you have to show ID? Like, how do you do that? Especially not back then.

No, back then. So anyway, we were my Mercedes, and I always drove, you know, and Tony was riding with me. And we had, you know, I think we had like two or three hundred pounds in the trunk, all right, but nothing in the, in the cab, in the inside. And so we stopped. Tony always liked to have coffee, coffee, coffee, and so we stopped at McDonald's. and for some reason he wanted to drive. And I don't know.

So instead of fixing his coffee right then and there at McDonald's and starting it up, we go through the drive-thru and we pull out on the road, and he starts, you know, doing his creamer and holding the coffee cup between his legs, you know. And he does a creamer and the sugar. And I mean, and... Buddy, you got 300 pounds in the truck. Maybe 10 and 2, please. And he's driving with his hot, hot cup of coffee between his legs.

And he spills it. Burns his nuts. He swerves. Okay? There's a Texas Highway Patrol behind us. I'm shitting. I'm in the passenger seat. and I reached down there

and I put me a border patrol hat on. Wow. I am straight. I look so straight. I look like I can do now. I never grew long hair or beard or nothing. No, you look like a total civilian, total square. Ah, boy, I've got stories about that.

I used to carry this dog shit out of people. They wouldn't do business women. Okay. So anyway, so we're pulled over by a Georgia, I mean, a Texas. highway patrolman. Right after we were coming from Houston and it was right after we passed Interstate 20 going north. Interstate 20 runs east and west.

We passed it at that McDonald's at the exit and we got pulled over. And Tony's going, oh shit, oh shit. And so I put the border patrol. had them. I just didn't know what else to do. So the cop comes over, you know, stops us and he gets out of his vehicle and he leans in and he looks at Tony and said, I need your ID, driver's license and your, you know, insurance card registration, you know. And then he looks at me and he looks at me and he speaks into this microphone on this lapel. He, he speaks. And he. He says, and he speaks into this microphone on a repel. He said, I don't need any back at it. It's one of us. Nice, dude. Nice. I don't need any backup.

It's one of us. Wow. So Tony gets out of the car. The cough, his pants are wet at his crotch. The seat of my Mercedes is wet. He looks at the cop and he said, I spilled coffee on my nut hot coffee and that's why I swirbed the coptis laughed he cut us loose man wow wow wow border patrol driving a brand new Mercedes yeah yeah I didn't know they get paid so well yeah wow that's uh that's a trick I used to do when I was running I would put like army stickers on the back of the car yeah just little things like that uh there's a kinship with the cops in the military you know we would do when we're coming out of Florida we had on every one of our cars we had Florida Georgia Florida's sheriff boys home is that they have a boys home the sheriffs of

Florida have have a boys home and you buy and you put a little stick on the back of your car is that like an organization like a sheriff's fraternity or something like that check it out here wow and so all the times running those loads you you got them through every time yeah wow wow so what are we now now that you're not growing indica you're you're back to moving setiva yeah did that affect your market at all, your buyers or anything like that? Did you have to make new accounts now that? Because people get used to, you know, people in different markets. They're going to smoke quite a bit of the world.

Right. When I, when, look, pot is aerated today. Pot is everywhere. When I was growing up, there wasn't no pot. Nobody had pot. If you had pot, it was going to sail no matter what it was. It could be dirtweight at sale. Right.

It could one ounce of marijuana. could hold 14 grams of seeds, it would still sell. Still sell. Yeah. There's a total demand and lack of supply. Best time to be a drug dealer. You boomers had it so good. You don't even know. When I was a little kid, I told my mom, I wanted to, you know, be a baseball player. And she said, why? And I said, well, they only played four or five months and they get the rest of your year off. Okay. So when I started first got in the weed business, it was just like that, man. We would start.

Whalen in October, and the last load would come in the last of May, and we would take June, July, August, and September off. We just acted like we were on vacation for four months. We'd make enough money in eight months to live for four more. Yeah. Yeah. But sometimes coming October, we're getting pretty skinny. Yeah, right? Because you don't have enough dope to sell. Or money. Right. Yeah. So were you saving any, or were you just blowing? it. I did, you know, I did save some, you know, you're there. So you're now running for Mexicans. Those are your, those are the new suppliers. Right. Yeah. Either we were coming out of San Antonio

with a bunch of Mexicans down there. It was about six or eight guys that would supply us in, out of San Antonio. And then this one guy would supply us out of Houston. Okay. So I, I was either getting loads out of San Antonio or Houston. How much were you picking up at a time? Oh, you know, like I say, you know, anywhere from 200 to 800 pounds. Wow, 800 pounds. Would you, if you got, if you picked up 800, would you get a better price? Was there a price break after a certain quantity?

Yeah, well, back then we were getting, we were buying it for 600 and selling it for 900. Okay, so you're 600 a pound, flipping it for nine, selling 800? 100. A hundred pound lot. Right. Yeah. Right. And they were selling it for 12. Right. So you're only making $300 bucks profit. Yeah. But if you're done $1,000 a month.

Yeah. $300,000 a month. Yeah. Okay. So this is a million dollar, multi-million dollar a year enterprise stuff. A lot of work, a lot of driving. Right. Yeah. A lot of seeing a lot of people collecting a lot of money. How many different workers, how many different distributors after you move a load from your suppliers, how many different people did you? you have running for you? Like taking it back to their markets? Oh, you know, 20, 20 guys,

20 different people going in all kinds of different directions. Yeah. Okay, let me tell you, this was in the day where there was no cell phone, no GPS. Okay, how do you, how in the world, do you keep up with a couple of hundred guys that might be calling you from Jamaica, Miami, Nashville, San Antonio, Houston, you know, San Diego, all these people calling. How in the world? Plus, I'm traveling, staying in a different hotel every night. How do I make this work? When I was in the computer business, we had a toll-free 1-800 number.

You guys don't even know anything about long-distance. charges, do you? I do. I remember. I couldn't call grandma in Canada. Or else your dad beat the fuck out of you. For more than 10 minutes. Yeah. Anyway, it was that way. All right. So when you'd make a telephone call, you would, you'd spend 12 bucks. Right. Just a call down to Jamaica. Yeah. Oh, Jamaica was 16. Houston and they were like $2.50 to $4. Wow. Every time, three minutes. Three minutes. Okay.

So what I did was when I was working for this major international computer organization, I had a roommate that worked there with me. Okay. And his name was, let's just say his name was Bob Black. All right. And so he ran the customer hotline. All right? And so there was about,

I don't know, 50 people in his department, okay? And so one of my guys would call up and ask, on a 1-800, he would put one quarter, Bing, dial 1-800, and the quarter would pop back up. It didn't cost him a penny to call me. Nice. He had to have a quarter to make it ring, but the quarter would pop back out, and he'd say,

I need to speak to Mr. Black. And I said, instead of taking up this guy's time, you just, when you talk to Mr. Black, you give him a telephone number that you're going to be at and what time, Eastern Standard Time, you're going to be there. Wow. Okay. So all day long, Mr. Black would take calls for me. He didn't get numbers.

He didn't get names, no names. Wow. I said, when they, when you. talk to Mr. Black, you speak. Eric Cove, 205, blah, blah, blah, seven o'clock, Eastern Standard Time. It was all Eastern Standard Time, no matter where they live. Right.

Okay. So what I would do is at 5 o'clock, I'd call Mr. Black. Mr. Black would take these calls, and he would put them in order of time that I needed to return the call. So the first call would be at 6 o'clock, second call, 7. Next call, 8. Let's call 830. Let's call 9.

Let's call 9.30. Let's call 10. So he was your secretary. He handled all the communication. Right. So if one of your buyers needs 100 pounds and he's in Ohio, he would call Mr. Black and say, I need to speak to Steve? All he'd say was he would give him his phone number and what time he was going to be at that pay phone, Eastern Standard Time. Only two things.

Wow. Or it's your phone number and what time. Yeah. And then you would call every night, you would call Mr. Black, get that phone number, and then you would find whatever phone you could, a pay phone, a phone in a hotel you were staying in, and you would call. And all these people, all these people that I called were standing at pay phones. Yeah.

Every one of them. Waiting. Waiting. Man, you're a fucking dinosaur. No, I'm just kidding. I'm just kidding. That is unbelievable. And this was only 30 years ago.

But the world is completely different. You see the thing about it? Almost 40. Yeah. Early 90s. I knew people, you know, down Florida, they'd call somebody in Ohio and then the guy in Ohio would get in trouble or the guy in Florida and then both of them be in trouble. Right.

Because they're talking to each other all the time, three or four times a day. Right. Yeah. Nobody ever talked to me except when I called them back on a pay phone. Wow. You literally protected. yourself from wiretaps, police raids. I mean, you were thorough, Steve. I gave up profit to a point, man, so I wouldn't have to meet the supplier. Yeah. I didn't care about meeting

supplier. Yeah. And your distributors, you could, they could, the feds could never get a wiretap on them because they never knew where the calls were going to be going. Yeah. Because they were on pay phones. Yeah. Wow. Call in an 800 number to a corporation. that had 100,000 employees. Right. How are you going to shake down 100,000 employees? How much would you pay Bob Black for being your secretary? His rent.

Nice. Good deal. Oh, wow. His rent kept going up. He would move. It started out. It started out in an apartment for 800 a month. Yeah.

And then he said, hey, man, I'd really like to have a house. So he ran the house, you know, you know. Kept upgrading. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Wow. And this system worked pretty much flawlessly. Yeah. For how long? How long were you running after Jamaica? Were you running your loads out of Texas to the rest of America?

About three or four years. Making millions. Yeah. And you're back living in Georgia? Yeah. Okay. In the town you grew up in? Yeah. Wow. You're just a small town boy still. Like it's so weird because you have this thirst for adventure. yet you love home. Yeah. Well, I was protected there. You know, when I got busted with that 400 pounds at my house in the valley, there was a news crew that came to the local feed and seed.

Do you know what feeding seed is? It's where farmers go to buy their feed and their seed and stuff like that, you know. And in this particular feeding seed, this guy was wealthy and he had bought a bunch of barber chairs. Okay? And these farmers all sitting around in these barber chairs, you know, and they go, well, what about old Steve Daniel up there on the hill up there? They got 400 pounds from him. And they go, oh, hell, he's been doing that for 10 years. You know, everybody around here knows what he does.

Oh, he told it to a cop. Huh? Well, how did that? So everybody in the town, no, no, you're just saying like you were known. A news crew came down and were interviewing locals in the little town that I grew up. And they said, well, how everybody knows what he does? No, he's been doing it for 10 years. What are you talking about?

So everybody in the town knew you is this big pot kingpin. Yeah. But nobody told it was a little, it was just an accepted part of life. It was kind of like this guy is a cattle. man. Yeah. This guy's got a job at the plant. This guy owns a feed lot and Steve sells weed.

It's weird too because you think like southern, small town, southern culture is very like law and order. But it's not really like that. It's actually outlaw. Outlaws. You guys distrust the federal government. Oh, yeah. And big government. Yeah.

And so you want to protect your own. It's very clannish in a way. Yeah. Yeah. The county next to me. didn't even come back into the union until 1963. Right. They were mad about the Civil War.

No, it was called the state of date. They didn't come back into the union. They didn't, look, you think this is funny. They didn't come back into the union. Guess what? Every road in that county was dirt because the government wouldn't pay any roads because they didn't recognize the federal government. Wow.

Wow. Yeah, that's a good. Hey, I guess you get what you pay for, but like, it's good for you. Yeah. Because you know government men aren't coming in there. No, no. So when did you get arrested for the first time? Tell us about that.

You said it was with 400 pounds? No. Actually, the first time, okay, in one of your podcast, you talk about the drought. Mm-hmm. The drought will make. people do stupid, stupid, stupid things. Yeah. Tell us, tell us what the drought is. The drought is that period of time when the last load is sold sometime about June 15th

until the first load gets here sometime in October 15th. It's that drought in the summer when you spend the 4th of July and nobody has pot. The 4th of July and you can't even smoke a joint. Anyway, that's a drought. And the drought to a dealer where all these people are calling wanting weed, it's just, you know, it's just crazy. They'll go out and do stupid shit to try to get weed for stupid people. So that's what I did. I went to a party, and there was a guy there, and we were doing cocaine, you know.

And I said, you know, I'm not that much into cocaine. I'd like to have some weed, some marijuana. And so he said, I'll get you where you live, and I told him, he said, I'll bring a pound over. So he brought a pound over and we sat and smoked and everything, you know, and I said, well, let me have that pound. He said, no, man, I've got this promise to somebody, okay, tomorrow I'll bring you some pot. I'll bring you 100 pounds tomorrow. Whoa. Yeah.

During the drought. Yeah. Okay. Okay. So that's rare. I went. All right. I said, what is it? He said, this is a load coming out of Alabama, Dothan, Alabama.

I know the guy, and tomorrow, he's supposed to come up and bring me 100 pounds, so I'll have all the weed you want to buy tomorrow. Okay? And so I was, I was, I was going to pay him $900 a pound for this weed, 90 grand, all right? And so the Chattanooga Police Department back then, they used less than honest people to work for them as confidential informants. And they got paid when you got busted. So when I got busted with 90 grand, That sum of bits that ratted me out got 30 of it. Wow.

And the cops got the rest. So they busted you for a hundred pounds. But it wasn't, you know, it was a, it was a setup. It was reverse sting. A reverse sting. Yeah. So do they even wait for the pot to get there before they arrested you? This is what happened.

They brought, he brought in that pound. All right. And then they had. a couple of bales rolled up, you know, taped up. And so the guy rolled up, the confidential informer rolled up. And, you know, he was a guy. He said, look, he said, you know, these are the guys from Dothan. They wanted to come to make sure that I wasn't going to rip them off for anything.

And so they brought in these two bales, okay? And 50 pounds each, supposedly, okay? So I had this knife I always used. It was a Gerber knife. And I popped up in this knife. and I cut a bell open and I looked at it and I was go, I said, yeah, this will work. And the guy standing there supposedly from Dothan says, hey, let me look at that knife. I had him a knife and he says, you're under arrest.

Whoa. That scared the shit out of you? That was it, man. Wow. I was popped. So what happened? How much time did you get for that? They were supposed to record me and the recording didn't work.

All right. I bought the best record. criminal attorney I could, Leroy Phillips at the time. And back in the day, I paid him 15 grand. And we pleaded out. I lost my 90,000.

I had to give that up. Right. That was gone. But what we did was I went, I had to plead guilty to a, since to reverse it, I didn't have pot. They had, the cops had the pot.

Okay. So he argued that reverse, you know. And I, I did 45 days on 100 pounds. Wow. But I took a felony. Sure. You could do a lot worse, though.

And it was unsupervised. Uh-huh. Release. Okay. So you got out, you did a county jail. 45 days. Cat nap, we call that. Yeah.

Now you're on probation, though, and you got a felony. So now you got a sheet next time you get caught. Yeah, but it's a, yeah. It's going to be a little more serious. Yeah. When is the, tell us about. the big case that ultimately led to the federal indictment? We were bringing pot out of San Antonio.

And while... How long is this after your first arrest? About six months. Okay. And did you slow down after that? Or when you got out, did you get right back in the game? Well, I was waiting for the next load to come in. So it's about six months.

I think I went in jail after Easter and got out sometime in June or July. Okay. You know, anyway, so I was kind of waiting around. And I had an opportunity later on to get a load out of Texas. And one of the guys. that I befriended in county jail. He was Richard Davis is his name, and they called him Richie Rich. And he was a real young guy, had a Corvette, could sling weed, you know, right and left.

Anyway, he was in county lockup. So when he got a lockup, he came to visit me, all right? And so I gave him 20 pounds. He sold it and back and forth, back and forth, a few little deals, you know. Well, I get in 1,100 pounds, and he comes over to the house, and he said, man, I need to pick me up like 20 pounds. I said, oh, man, you know, come, you know, some other day. Yeah, you know. Come out with some real money.

Yeah, come out, you know, some other day. And he said, no, man, you know, come on, help me out. So I was busy and I made the mistake of saying, come on, follow me. So he followed me down to my main house with my detached apartment. I was living in a rental house in Chattanooga. Right. Okay, trying to keep things separate. Yeah.

So I made the mistake of letting him follow me down. And what happened was I friend him like 20 pounds and he got busted that night. And he rattled me out. Okay. So he tells the cops and then did they build a big, did they build a larger case? Yeah. Like how did it end up getting the FBI

and the feds involved? Well, without weight, it went federal. Okay. So how long after they busted him did you get busted? Oh, like the next day. Okay. So they got a warrant and they raided.

Did they find the 1100 pounds? No. They rated my house in Chattanooga, arrested me there. And then while they had me sitting on the side of the bed, they said, the way, we went to your house in the valley. I went, oh, shit. But I'd moved out. I had 11 and moved out seven the day before. Oh, okay. So they only got 400. Yeah. Okay. So 400 pounds.

You get charged in federal courts. Yeah. But you only did, I think, five months or something like that? Yeah. There is an attorney in Georgia that's real famous. I saw him on TV the other day. You saw him on TV. His name is Stephen Sadeau, and he has represented every rapper, every doper in Atlanta. Right now he's represented a guy by the name of Donald Trump. I heard of that guy. You heard Donald Trump?

Yeah, he's a big-time pot dealer back in the day. Well, yeah, Donald's using, you know, Donald's got a criminal case, so he had to get a criminal attorney. So he got Stephen Sadeau. the one I used. And Stephen Sadeau had my case moved from Atlanta, where there was a very hostile prosecutor to Alabama. And lo and behold, in Alabama, the prosecutor there met with us and said, you know, we really don't want to put you in jail. we just want everything that you've got.

All your houses, all your cars, all your jewelry, all your bank accounts. Wow. Everything that you've got. That's what we want. And we're going to put you under a five-year special probation where you leave the house at 7 in the morning. It has to be at home at 7 o'clock at night. you cannot leave your area unless you get it done. So one time I was going to have to go to,

I wanted to go to Panama City with my girlfriend. And so I put in the paperwork. I left Chattanooga. First thing I was supposed to do is when I got to Panama City, report to the police station, tell them that a bad guy was in town and that I was staying in a hotel. and what the hotel was, my room number, everything. And then when I left, I had to tell the Panama City police that a bad guy was leaving

and that I was going back to Chattanooga. Yeah. It sucked, man. Yeah. Yeah. Well, I mean, you get to go to Panama. And they also put in there a little special provision that if I did anything wrong, a DUI, anything wrong in the next five years, they would send me back to one.

100% of my probation. What was your, what was the time you could have got? So this is like a suspended sentence. Oh, what, they, Steve said I was looking at 15 years. Right. Yeah. So I doubt you would have done that much time, maybe. But did, so what did you end up forfeiting to the feds?

I forfeited two houses, a Mercedes, a Harley. 30,000, one bank account, 90,000 another bank account. A Rolex watch. Just a bunch of stuff. They wanted everything I had. And did they get it? Just about. Right.

I was able to put some land into a buddy of mine's, when I got busted, I put some unimproved land into a buddy mine's house. They asked me about it. I just started making payments on that land so that slide. They didn't want to make payments on money. And then I put a house in my mom's name. Right. Right.

So you're basically, they basically wiped you out. Yeah. More or less. You spent how long on probation? Five years. Five long years. Did you get a job? Yeah.

I got a job. Doing what? Hey, I have a college education. So in Y2K, I went back to work for IBM. Okay. Your old computer gig. Yeah, my old computer gig. All right.

So you hadn't, this is now, you're like about 40 years old. It's June. It's 40, yeah, 40, 41. And it's June of 1998. And Y2K is coming in in 99, you know. So, and you haven't had an honest job since your computer days 20 years before. In 74, 75, 76. Okay.

That was the last time I had a real job. Yeah. 77 maybe. So what were you doing for IBM the second time? Selling the Y2K. You know, all the computers were going to quit, you know, come year 2000. So I had about 50 customers. My buddy had about 50 customers.

And I was selling the AS 400 with enterprise software for wholesale distributors. And I made about 5,000 on each sale. Okay. And there was 50 sales. So I made like 250 grand. In one year? Yeah. Wow.

In 99. And then about March of 2000, he came to him and said, you're done. Yeah. Turns out my computer's still working. Yeah. Remember that scare tactic? Yeah. What a grift.

That was unbelievable. My last three or four sales, I called the people up and they said, I haven't looked at the contract yet. And I said, contract. I said, we've got a board on the wall. And when your check clears the bank, we put your name to be installed. Otherwise, we don't care about no contracts. Yeah.

But that was the easiest sales I ever made. Easiest. That was popping them in. Yeah. So you're a natural salesman. You were great at anything you did when it came to making money. So you made a quarter million bucks your first year on probation, second year on probation or whatever.

What did you, did you say great? Like, did that give you the confidence to go forward in the legal world? Or were you, were you itching to get back into the hustle? No, no. After that, as far as hustle, starting in, I got everything squared up, you know, June of 98. Before I went to work for Abbey Him, though, I had one problem that I had to say. solve. And that was a $580,000 tax lien. On what? On me. Back taxes. Wow. From the government, from the DEA? Yeah, from marijuana sales. Okay. Okay. So I'm about a week before I'm supposed to go to prison, the IRS, the special agent out of Rome, Georgia calls and says, man, you owe $580,000. And I said, yeah, and I'm going to square that up as soon as possible.

And she said, you are. And I said, yeah, I said, I will meet you. She said, I will meet you anytime, any place. I said, that is perfect because I need your full name and your address. And I need your mom's maiden name. And she said, well, you need all this stuff to put on my federal. visitation application. If you want to come see me, I'm going to be in federal prison and I've got to get you, you know, cleared to come see me. She said, fuck you. And I said, well, fuck you. I said,

I'm not going to have too many visitors. And I cheer like a woman to come visit me in prison. So you never gave her that check? No, never got that check. What happened? Do you still pay restitution? Do they forget about it? What happened? I hired an attorney. Bernie, and he got it knocked down to 58,000. And I told him, I'm not going to pay 58,000. He said, well, go get the worst job you can get. So I went and got a warehouse job for $750 an hour. Did that crush your spirit working for $750 an hour when you are used to making millions of dollars a month?

Well, I didn't want to pay the $580,000. But it's at $58,000, Steve. Yeah, but that 58 was just, you know, I wanted it gone. I felt like, I told the girl, I said, you give me back my 400 pounds and I'll pay your, your IRS. I can't get that pot back for you. I said, you are charging me income on weed I don't have. Yeah. How's that fair?

Yeah, right, right. I mean, you're already taking my life. You took all my assets. You're acting like I sold that 400 pounds instead of it getting compassed. Okay? And you charged me income on stuff I didn't make, you know. So what have you done with the rest of your life? You go to prison, you get out, you do your stretch. Yeah. What's the next 20 years looked like for you? Well, I married in 2002, I married the straightest girl you could ever imagine. And for the next 10 years,

I went to church, didn't do anything. Just didn't do anything. She and I are divorced in 2012. And during that period of time, I watched a movie, and the name of the movie was Saving Grace, all right? And it was about an old English broad that had lived in a man. whole whole whole whole entire life and was married to an aristocratic person. And he gets killed.

She finds out that he has mortgaged her estate and she's fixing to lose it. So her and the gardener decided to grow pot to save the estate. Well, they grow pot. They're suddenly to a gang in London. The London gang decides to rob her. The police side of the busher. Everybody comes to her in our house at one time. She gets arrested.

She writes a book on how to grow marijuana, makes a million, saves the mansion. I'm sitting at Harley Davidson making less money I did in the eighth or ninth grade. And I'm thinking, I'll just write a book. I'll write a book to save, you know, to get some of my money back, you know. Yeah. So I sat down and I tried to write a book that's the best weed book ever. kind of like a combination of Hunter S. Thompson, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas meets the weed world of Farscomb. Yeah, that's a great description.

Indica, folks, go read Indica. I read it. I breached through it in like two days. It's sex, drugs, money, rock and roll, freedom, adventure. it really like embodies the spirit of that time and I think gives us a even better idea

into who you are a better look into who you are which is just a man that wanted adventure at the end of today does that describe you? Yeah when I was growing up one of my favorite TV shows was

you know about spies You know, you know. And so I would watch these spy movies and see how they did dead drops and all this kind of shit. And so what I did, starting from about age eight or nine, I'd have the front story and then I have the back story. I'm going to go, Mom, I'm going to go see Billy Jones who lives up the street. Oh, okay. Now you be sure you go there. We might call us here to make sure you're there.

Well, on the way to Billies, I'd see four or five my other buddies that my mom and dad wouldn't want me to see. I'd go to Billy's. She called. I'm there. Everything's cool. On the way back, I'd see four or five of my buddies that my mom didn't want to see. You know, so you always had the front story and the back story. You always were thinking like that.

You've always thought like a crook a little bit. Yeah, yeah. Secret Agent Man was the name of it. What have you been after all this time? Adventure. Really? I tell you, there's nothing like doing a deal, man. You know that.

Yeah, yeah. Counting the money, you know, thinking, man, this is so cool. I don't have to work to live. Yeah. Every time you got a load of 800 pounds through. And start counting that money. Yeah. Yeah.

Did you feel like you had your adventure? Do you feel like you want more? No. Oh, I've had more adventures. I've, look, I've done over 20,000 drug crimes. Over 20,000 drug crimes. I've only been caught for two. Unbelievable success.

Yeah. More than, you're one of the most successful drug dealers we've ever talked to. You made more money and did less time than I think anyone that we've ever had on this show and anyone I've ever met. And the odds of getting away with moving, you know, over the course of your career, how many pounds do you think you moved? I probably, I was thinking the other day, I've probably sold over 100,000 pounds apart. Yeah, yeah. I've been doing it for 60 years. You're a lifer.

Yeah. You're a lifer. In the book, I basically described two of the drug rings that I was involved in. But I was involved in 12 or 13 drug rings. Yeah. You know, many, multiple drug rings. Sometimes I worked with three different drug dreams in one week. Yeah.

One week. Meaning you had different suppliers and different point people. Yeah. And different distributors for people on the other end. Yeah. People that you were giving it to. And the odds of getting away with that over six decades and only doing five months in prison are miniscule. When I was in the computer business, I had this.

rent-style house secluded on top of a hill okay and I would be working and people would say they'd call up and say hey man I need to get 100 pounds I'm at work so I'd call this other guy hey you got that weed yeah so-and-so wants 100 pounds I said meet him at my house all right then me and then leave me like I I'd make like a hundred bucks or never pay them and never leave my office. Yeah. I make, you know, 10 grand in one day. Yeah.

And they just leave it under my door stoop. Just middle manning. Yeah. Wow. Just phone calls. Yeah. Wow. Well, Steve, unbelievable.

You have an amazing story, an amazing spirit. Plug the book. Tell people where they can find the book. You can find my book at Amazon. You type in Indica, I-N-D-I-C-C. Steve Daniel, and my book pops up. This book takes me from the time I'm 12 until I'm about 38 years old. So this book has a lot, a lot going for it.

I think it's the best weed book ever. I agree with you. Steve, thank you so much. We're going to switch over to the Patreon now and talk some more war stories. Thank you so much for coming on here. Everybody run out and buy Indica and then, buy indica smoke some indica and read indica right right um and thank you so much patreon dot com slash the connect show uh is the patreon account where you can hear our bonus episode steve thank you so

much brother thank you talk to you later thanks guys bye