The Connect- with Johnny Mitchell - A Sitdown With The Real Walter White: How An Honest Citizen Became A Synthetic Drug Kingpin

Episode Date: November 24, 2025

Johnny sits down with Pete Polis — a former Long Island baseball standout who went from MLB prospect… to becoming one of the largest dealers in Washington state history. Pete’s story sounds like something ripped straight out of Breaking Bad. After a promising baseball career with stints in the Blue Jays and Yankees organizations, a series of self-sabotaging choices pushed him out of the sport he loved. Settling into small-town life in Washington, Pete lived straight — raising kids, running a furniture store, and even building a massive food bank that fed hundreds of thousands. Then one conversation in his garage changed everything. What started with OxyContin and fentanyl patches evolved into full-scale trafficking. Pete quickly found himself moving hundreds of pounds of meth and heroin weekly, working directly with suppliers tied to the Sinaloa cartel. He watched the early waves of America’s fentanyl crisis from the inside — and unknowingly helped introduce the drug that would devastate the region. After a federal takedown and serious prison time, Pete is now fully legit, running sober-living homes and helping addicts rebuild their lives. This is a wild, emotional, and brutally honest look at how fast a normal life can turn criminal — and how redemption is still possible. Need help staying sober? Check out Pete's sober-living homes. https://www.seasonshousing.org/ This Episode Is #Sponsored By The Following: Mando! Control Body Odor ANYWHERE with @shop.mando and get 20% off + free shipping with promo code MITCHELL at https://shopmando.com ! #mandopod Ridge! Take advantage of Ridge’s Biggest Sale of the Year and GET UP TO 47% Off by going to https://www.Ridge.com/CONNECT #ridgepod Join The Patreon For Bonus Content! https://www.patreon.com/theconnectshow 00:00 Pete's Early Life & Baseball Dreams 07:45 Growing Up Around Crime & Sports 13:00 Minor League Baseball: Challenges and Setbacks 23:00 Early Baseball Problems & Canada 26:03 Start Smelling Good With MANDO 28:16 Fight, Ejection & Minor League Life 32:45 Success in Sales, Setbacks, and the Road to Tri Cities 44:30 Falling Into Drug Circles and New Temptations 46:57 Get Up To 47% OFF At Ridge 48:43 First Steps Into Opioid Dealing 55:50 Prescription Pills and Fentanyl Patches 01:03:00 Cartel Connections & Expanding Operations 01:11:00 The Furniture Store Double Life 01:20:00 Rising Paranoia and Deeper Into the Game 01:31:30 Fentanyl Changes Everything: Addiction and Fallout 01:40:50 Addiction, Violence, and the Law Closing In 01:47:30 Getting Caught: Law Enforcement and Sentencing 02:03:00 Withdrawal, Consequences, and Reflection 02:09:30 Building a New Life After Prison 02:13:50 Seasons Housing and Redemption 02:15:30 Conclusion and Bonus Content Announcement Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Yamava Resort and Casino at San Manuel is California's number one entertainment destination for today's superstars. Catch the Jonas Brothers return to the Yamava Theater stage on April 30th, the powerful vocals of Demi Lovato on May 17th, and the signature Southern Country Rock of Eric Church on July 19th. Tickets on sale now at Yamavat Theater.com, only at Yamava Resort and Casino, celebrating its 40th anniversary. You win? Must be 21 to enter. You survived the Miami weekend.

Nailed the speech and maxed out your credit card in the name of friendship. Now you've got one hangover, four pastel dresses, and zero reasons to wear them again. Sell them on Deepop. Just snap a few photos and we'll take care of the rest. And you at least get some of your dignity, money back. Someone on Deepop wants what you've got. Start selling now. Deepop where taste recognizes taste. When I say they're like family to me, I mean, I went to the weddings. I hung out with them for years.

And you think these were guys working with the Sinaloa cartel? Oh, yeah, I'm sure of it. Something dark happened when that fentanyl came. It just changed everything. The drive and looks at me and says, you're a cop. And he has me a foil, a pill. I said, smoke this. I'm not smoking that.

He goes, you smoke that, you're not getting it, and you're not leaving the truck. So I smoked the whole pill. Every time you have a come up, you always have a come down. I turned to my buddy. I said, dude, I think I'm going to get arrested. Today's guest is Pete Polis, a former professional baseball player from Long Island, who went on to become the largest fentanyl dealer in the history of the state of Washington. Back in 2013, Pete's baseball career was over,

and he was living a square life, managing a furniture store in Pasco, Washington, when a chance meeting with a Mexican national changed his life forever. He started off selling small amounts of cocaine and oxy cotton, but soon, Pete was working directly with the Sinaloa cartel, smuggling back hundreds of pounds of meth and heroin every week from Phoenix, Arizona. Pete was also on the ground floor of the American fentanyl epidemic, and he virtually introduced this poison to the central Washington region

and made millions of dollars for his bosses back in Sinaloa. Of course, Pete eventually got busted and did a stretch in the feds, but nowadays, he's fully legit and running sober living homes for addicts in the Tri-City area. And for more crazy stories with Pete, go check out the bonus episode over at patreon.com slash the Connect show. Pete's story feels like an episode of Breaking Bad. a suburban square who fell into the life of major organized crime. It's wild.

You're absolutely going to love it. Ladies and gentlemen, I give you Pete Polis right here on The Connect with Johnny Mitchell. Dude, you live in a tiny little central Washington town. Yeah. A long way from Long Island, man. Long way. It's the other side of the planet. I moved there in 95 after the baseball strike happened.

That's why I went there. I see. She goes, you know, Major League Baseball had a, they had a strike. And then they wound up cancel the whole season in 1995. That was the year, GEDY got drafted and all that stuff. Right. And I was with them for about, I don't know, six, six, seven months during spring training. And then went through a whole spring training with a strike happened.

And then afterwards, my agent sent me to Tri-Cities Washington to play with an independent baseball team. Holy shit. That's out there. And you stayed. Stayed. Now, tell us about childhood. Tell us where in Long Island. Were you always a baseball player?

Yeah. Wow. Since about four or five years old, you know, grew up a son of a detective. That's going to be funny too. Really? Yeah, he was detective for Apache de Bronx, my dad. And it was baseball, baseball, baseball.

Ever since I could walk. It was baseball. He saw I had a gift. You know, I don't know nothing. He throw balls. I'm hitting him pretty good. So he saw the gift. So he just thrived on that.

Yeah. It's like a stereotype. You're an Italian family from Long Island, his dad's a cop in the Bronx. And whose mother cooks pasta. My mother passed away just recently. God bless her. Rest her soul.

Yeah, but she at least got to see a turnaround. The last time before I got out of prison, the last time things she said to me was, you're dead to me. Somehow she convinced the cop to come into the jail and give me a phone, pull me off. I said my attorney, she lied.

Just to tell you, you're dead to you? Just to say, she said, you're big man now. You're arrested. in there with you. Good job. I'm like, she says, I don't know, you're dead. It's like a Scorsese movie. It's like, it's like Olivia from the Sopranos. Tony's mom. You're right. Hey, guys, do me a big favor and make sure to subscribe to the channel.

Hit that notification bell so you get alerted whenever we drop new content and smash that like button and leave us a comment if you're digging this episode. All right, back to it. Okay, so you're in Long Island. Long Island, obviously. Levittown, Long Island. Levitown. Breeds, criminality, drug addiction. Back in the day, to be honest, back in the day in the 70s and 80s, I didn't know much about drugs at all.

I knew organized crime families ran a lot of the places around there, ran a lot of the clubs and nightclubs to, you know, construction companies, cardboard companies and whatnot. Did you know what, like, the wise guys were? Did you know who the people, what joints were mobbed up? No, no, not when I was real young. I just know that, you know, aside from baseball, me, my dad had a certain thing we'd love to do. And he loved to go collect bottles. Now, in New York, you know, when you go collect the bottles and bring them in to recycle them, it's, I think, 10 cents or something like that.

I don't know what it was back then, but it was good. So he just loved to go collect bottles from dumpsters, and I go with him. Is he Chinese? No. No. Johnny. Unbelieved to this day, he still does it. And I kid you not.

a big thing with our family. But I asked him, what do you get out of that? And he said, probably about $125 a week. And he says, every time I get that, I buy one stock of Exxon Mobil Gas, and he's been doing it for 50 years. Wow. So he's remodeled this house. But that's how I finally realized who was connected, who wasn't connected and whatnot.

Through bottle collecting? Yeah. I went to this one, if you haven't much about dumps. this stupid conversation, but you would think people just throw the bottles in there and don't care. Well, this one club would put the bottles back in the cardboard boxes when they used to open up and I can fold them both sides and they used to stock them up. Like, didn't just throw bottles in it. They were stocked in the cases already. So I saw that and I would collect, you know, 25, 30, 40 cases on a Friday night, Saturday night and Sunday night. And they did that for

about six weeks. And one day a guy comes out and dressed in a nice repeat suit. And he said, hey, kid, what the fuck are you doing in my dumpster? I said, what does it look like I'm doing? I'm collecting the bottles, number one. Number two, it's not your dumpster. It's a town of Hempstead. I said, this is a public parking line. He goes, get out of here. Come here. Let me. Let me talk to you. So I hopped out and he put his arm around me and said, I've been watching you for weeks. He goes, you're at 5 a.m. every single week

in you're here collecting. He goes, how would you like a job? And I said, doing what? He said, just sweeping up cigarette butts. The guy's standing in line at this club and they throw the cigarettes in the ground. He goes, I just want to clean. I said, how much?

He goes, 20 bucks a day. I was like, that was in the 70s, 1970s, 5, 76. I said, sure. So my school, later on, my school was across the street in a big parking lot. So I came to every day after school.

My dad would drive me there, and I spent 35, 40 minutes, you know, doing that. Wow. Faithful. And when I was done, I bang on that little metal door. See me, hey, Pete, come on, you. You give me, pay me the money. Every day.

And it went on that for about six months. And then he asked me to come inside and be a barback. Now, when I said this on one of the other pockets, like, no way, I ate, nine-year-old kids to be a bar back. I misspoke. he wanted me to get the bar ready. And I went open. I couldn't be there at night.

But he wanted me to. So I'd go down there. I'd see five Heineken cases this. And I'd go down. I would just stock all the bars and clean up. And then, you know, I'd go home after that. And that, that went on for years. We were talking about probably until I was 19.

Okay. And then you got a job actually working as a, you said it's a gopher? Yeah. What is a go for the mom? Get stuff. A go for, yeah, right. A go for this. Go for that.

Yeah, 100%. And mainly was like, I don't know if it was Thursdays or Fridays, they had card games and stuff like that. And I'd go to work to the card games. They'd go in there and, you know, if Bobby wanted the drink, I just go up there, get my drink, bring it back. And everything's behind closed doors. It's not publicly, you know, you can't get in trouble being underage.

But I would just do that. Clean up after them. Pete, go get me a sandwich, go deliver this, go tell this, go get that. it was a girlfriend kid. I was young. I didn't care. I was making good money. So you're like Spider from Goodfellas.

Except didn't get shot. No. Well, I got shot later on, but not from them. Okay. Do you remember what family this was? Yeah, but I don't even know if I should say it. Yeah, you should. They're all gone or rat.

They're not. They're still operating. They went away to Brooklyn Detention Center. They wound it up. So years went by, and they had another club. It was going to be a team. club in the front side of the club. So the back was good club, teen club, no alcohol served. This is pretty popular. And then, for the record, I'm not racist at all. But in those days,

blacks weren't allowed in those clubs. They didn't like them in the clubs. So like that. That's not shocking anyone if you know about Italians from Long Island. Yeah. You know, that was a stigma that you had to, you know, but that wasn't me. I was a baseball player. I didn't care. But certain people did. So that went on. And I don't remember the day. I could probably look up on the internet because it's all over the internet back then. But they winded up burning down the club.

You know, the club burned down public record. Yeah. You know, they burned it down. And then they put themselves as police officers. And I said, all public records. So they, they wind it up. They were ex-cops that were, you know, crime. That were running the joint.

They were running the joint. And they burned it down for the- They knew that. So they did a fake counterfeit money sting. They went around to all the restaurants in town. And they say, hey, back in the day, believe it or not, people did trust people. So they say, hey, you know, we have a kind of money sting in this area. We need to collect the money.

Here's the form is. If the money's good, we'll bring it back. If the money's bad, here's a receipt saying that. And they did that until they got caught. Wow. And when they got caught, they winded up, the fire marshal wound up ruling that fire arson. and hit them for the arson also. So they got 16 plus years in Brooklyn, you know, federal penitentiary.

You know, one of them, I think, passed away. They're, you know, 90s now probably. I don't know how well they are. The Lucchese's? No, no, it was... 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,

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Shop total wine and more in store or online. Spirits not sold in Virginia and North Carolina. Drink responsibly must be 21. It was Paso family. Okay. They were connected to Gain, me and those goodies and stuff like that. Right, okay. So they were like an undercru to like one of the bigger families.

To be honest with you, it was so long ago. I know what I did for them. Yeah. I know the support they gave me. You know, then I say support because every little league team I played on, they sponsored it and had their club on the front of the T-shirt. I mean,

it was, they loved me. They didn't treat you bad. They didn't make me do anything bad at all. I just, I just was little peedy to them. Amazing. And it's just basically to pay your way.

It's like spending money as you play baseball. Baseball. I was so young. It was just money that I put in my pocket. My dad helped me play baseball. You know, I wound up to get a full ride to college, so I didn't pay for college either. Wow. So where'd you go to college?

New York Tech. They have a good baseball team? Yeah, Division I at the time. Where the fuck is New York Tech? New York Tech's Old Westbury, New York. Okay. So like North, like Westchester. Yeah, yeah.

So went there, they gave a full ride. And we played good teams. University of Miami, Longhorns. We traveled, you know. We played. And I did that for, you know, three years, my junior year and then wound up getting drafted my junior year. Wow.

What position you play? I was a catcher. Tall catcher. Tall catcher. Not as tall as tall as you. How tall are you? I'm six foot six. Six four?

Yeah. Yeah. That's a really. I don't look up to many people. You got to have really good knees. I still do. And good legs to be a six four catcher, right? Wow.

But I got five years full scholarship. Were you a good hitter? In high school, I was a real good hitter. still I believe I still have the home run record who cares but still 1988 home run record they haven't been broken college 300s and then when I got drafted

it's a it's a whole different beast when you get drafted they don't I'm not saying they don't care that catches can hit or not but they really want catches to concentrate on calling the game running the whole team being able to work with the pitchers study everything. They don't put as much emphasis on.

You're right. So I think I was maybe a 240 hitter. I mean, my baseball cards are online. I mean, you know, it is what it is. That's remarkable. Okay, so you got drafted. 42nd round. Got drafted. Yeah. By who? Blue Jays. I love the Blue Jays. I almost won it.

I know they did. Almost took it. So and so then you go off to Single A. Is that the process? Went to Alberta, Canada. Yeah. Play with Medicine at Blue Jays. I played with them for, I think, two years. Johnny, I got into a really bad fight. I don't know how many people got kicked out of Canada, but I was one of them. I was. I got into a, I drank a little bit because I was under

the microscope when I was young. And I really try not to be that way. I'm a father of three kids, three boys. And I try not to press them, but I was, you can't do this, you can't do this. So when I got a little taste of freedom, I just went crazy. And I remember going to, you know, a game, a bar one day after a game and some girl wanted up coming up to me, handing me a rose and, you know, saying, hey, you're my favorite baseball player, blah, blah, blah. And I don't know what the hell I was thinking at the time. I once had been pissed off because I don't normally do this. But I cracked the rose and flipped it out.

I said, I don't want this rose, you fat ass and I walked away. And I don't know what I was thinking. Like, because that's rude. Now I would never do that. It's brutal. Brutal, isn't it? It's like, who do I think I am. They are pigs up there, medicine hat.

They did. Yeah. Big time. When that happened, I got a top of my shoulder, and a guy was behind me, he said, hey, that's my girlfriend. I said, well, why don't you put a leash on? Why would you, why would you have your girlfriend come up to me? He goes, she likes watching your play.

I was pretty rude. I said, let me buy you a drink. He said, all right. So I wanted to buy him a drink. As I turned around, he whacked me right in my mouth, and then wind up taking one of my chains off. So I went outside and got a couple of my teammates. It was, I think it was called the Asiniboia Inn,

Believe it I think it was a strip club that we stayed on top of in the hotels. Yeah. And I went down. I got two guys from Dominican Republic,

one guy from Texas, and we went there and fought 17 hockey players. Holy shit. They were rolling their sleeves up. The guy was with took off, which that was not cool. So it was like a brawl.

It was like a hundred percent. You didn't even see that anymore. Yeah. So we had a full out brawl. Remember those big old ashtrays that were back in the day? And that got smashed over my nose. I got cut.

in the ear. But we did some damage to the guys. Next day, we ran out of there. They're called Mounties. They're not even called cops. The Mountie showed up that night, knocking a door, and we had people taking care of the wounds. And we answered the door, and they said,

hey, you guys just sent a boy in? No. What happened to your face? Oh, we were wrestling. All right. And they left, and I thought, cool, we got away with it. But we show up to the stadium next day, and everyone's out lined outside to sign autographs

and they had my card. They said, hey, Pete, can you sign that? I'm like, yeah. And they locked me up. And they arrested me. And then brought me to us three, four, they arrested. And the vice president, I think Bob Nelson at the time, it was Bob Nelson. He had a fly to bell us out.

Wow. Of the baseball team, of the Blue Jays. Yeah. Holy shit. They had a bell us out at the time. And I was sent home. You know, I got in trouble. I was supposed to go to Instruction a ball.

If you don't know anything about baseball, Instructionable is you had a great season. Whenever else goes home, you got to go to Instructionable in Florida. And most likely going to break with the big spring training only. But that's a big step, though. It was a big step to me. Yeah. And that got canceled quick.

So I went home, came back to the next season, flew in there, was in the parking lot. I don't know how the hell people found out, but they had to kill polis. sign in a back of a pickup truck. These people sitting there out because they didn't like me. And I'm like, what's their problem? And they said the medicine hat hockey team hasn't won a championship in a long time. And they were in the championship, but they had a forfeit the first game because a couple guys had broken jaws and they couldn't strap.

Oh, because you guys fucked them up. And they said that, so they were mad. So I go out in the baseball field. And I'm sure it's just a pen lighter, but they had like little lasers on my chest in there. Yo. In the baseball, and they said, hey, you got to go. We have to. So they fired me and just say, if you can't have you, they don't like you.

We're Toronto Blue Jays and that does not like you. Right. Right. So they waived you. So you're out of the organization? Out of the organization. Where'd you go? But you got back in.

Where did you go? I got back in. Yeah. I went to staying in Sarasota, Florida. Uh-huh. I ended up walking into a bar one day. had nowhere to stay at the time because I'm fired now, you know, no income. And I met a guy there and somehow, some way, he's like, hey, you know what?

Where do you stay? And I said, bro, I am not gay. So he's like, no, I'm not. He goes, you look like a baseball. I said, I'm a baseball player. I'm trying to get a job. He said, well, you can stay in my place with me and my fiancee across the street. He goes, if you read one page of the Bible each night.

And I wasn't not a religious man. I was like, I can fake that. free rent? Sure. He goes, that's number two, don't sleep with any of my my fiance's friends. I was like, I didn't know they had a lot of guests over there. I said, fine. So I was on the couch. And, um, winded up, my,

my agent winds up getting me a tryout in 94 with, uh, white socks. Okay. And I wound up staying with them for, for, for maybe four to six months. Wow. To see if I could break with that team. It was interesting because Michael Jordan was playing at that time. So I got to warm up with him and no shit. hang out with him.

So this is like AAA now? Spring training. It's a combination of everybody. I see. And that spring training. Yeah. I see. Different fields and whatnot.

But the open spring training, yes, I got to hang out with Jordan, Frank and Tom. Frank Thomas at the time, huge guy. And Jordan was, he's an instant character. Jordan? He's a dick, right? He was really nice to me. He just called me New York. He didn't remember my name, but he called me New York.

I messed him a little bit. I meant one time he had, I think the Knicks and the Bulls were in the championship during that spring training. And I winded up, rustling through the crowd and taping, you know, Nick's cane bulls or something like that to his chest. He's like, all right, New York, I got you. I mean, it was funny. Yeah, that's.

Yeah, he was, you never seen spring training in your life sold out. Every ticket sold out. It never happens. Crazy. But when they told me, man, it's going to be like World War III out there. I went out there and there was, I don't know how many dozens of helicopters and, because it's just for him. Unbelievable.

They delivered a brand new red corvette with a crane on that field with no miles on it and gave it to him. And he literally said, why don't you give it to one of the guys that don't have the money to buy? I could buy your dealership. He's a real one, dude.

He was nice. I mean, he asked me, hey, I'm signing a bunch of autographs. You want anything? I said, do you want mine? He's like, huh? I said, you want my autograph? I said, because you're a baseball player to me.

And where are you? I said, no, man, I'm good. And we laughed about it. And he took the bus. He was like an international Superstar. He took... Yeah, but he bought a bus.

Oh, but he was still there with the single A, like, guys getting paid 15 grand a year. I used to warm up with him. Wow. Of course, Johnny's like a breath. People here, the pie, my previous pie,

oh, you didn't play anything. And I looked your name up and like, it's right there. It doesn't matter. So I did that. So how did you play? Did you make the team? No, I didn't make the team.

Nope. I didn't. I wind it up not making Because I was trying for big leagues. That's what I wanted to do, because you can do an open tryout. And if you have a good enough, good enough season, spring training season, you can break with them. And I had a decent one, but, you know, not good enough. But then I winded up just leaving there.

And I was going to work on a few things and then try another team. And I winded up going, the guy that was staying with, we picked up, we used to practice with a guy name. Actually, it was John Ford Griffin. I don't know if you remember. but he was at the Yankees. But when we did it, he was, I think, I think 11 or 12 years old. And this guy, Richie was a, he was the hitting coach. So we used to go over this kid's house,

who his dad owned an insurance company, you know, multi, multimillionaire owned half of Tampa Bay Devil Ways at the time. And we would just hit with him. So we picked him up from Sarasota High School and we drive him and we saw Prax him. So one day we got to Sarasota High School really early. And Richard was like, hey, you want to go throw? warm up a little bit sure so I went on the field and we started throwing out of second base and I

see this guy in the parking lot looking down and on the phone and I'm like what is this guy doing he's like I don't know man so he was up walking to the field and I says hey can you can you throw it on the second base and give you all I said sure so he's on the phone he's stop watching he's like he's like can you do that consistently I said yeah he's like what are you doing for dinner tonight my mind goes and you know I'm not gay but it wasn't there that. He's like, what we think about becoming Yankee? And I was like, whatever, dude. I said, you don't have that kind of power. And he pulled this car and he was the Yankee scout, picking up the sun and happened to see me on the field. And I went there that day, got a hat and

wound up 95, wound up, you know, breaking with the spring training with the Yankees. That was the Gita got drafted. Once again, no one believes you. Don't care. But DJ, we wound up hanging out with him. and, uh, so you made the team off of one tryout. You made the, didn't even have a tryout. I was signed from, from the side of the road. As dumb as that sounds. And people want to, I mean, I don't know what to tell them, but you just got to look. It is there.

And that's enough, a scout is enough to, enough pull for the, um, whoever the owner. For spring training, 100%. Okay. Yeah. Oh, okay. So did you, did you make the regular season though? Well, strike. I wouldn't, I don't know.

Oh, shit. That strike happened. I had a really good season. And, uh, it. I think it was with Jeter, Jimmy Layrich, Jimmy Key, Wade Boggs. There's all those guys at the time. And the strike happened. And they had people crossing the picket line scabs and non-scabs.

I didn't know what to do. I asked them. And they said, man, don't cross the line. You're guaranteed to get fired. Just hang back with us. So I hung back. And I didn't probably a really good time. And I was able to play three, four months with the big leaguers until the season got canceled.

And once season got canceled, since I didn't cross the line, couldn't do nothing. So if I just went home and that's when I wanted to get a phone call from my agent about an independent baseball team in Tri-City's Washington, Tri-City Posse at the time, now they're the dust devils. I think Russell Wilson played. I know Russell Wilson played for them a few years ago. Okay. So this is how you end up where you are now. Correct. 25 years later, 30 years later. Yeah, they just had a, they just had the 30-year reunion for that baseball team a few months ago when I went there and saw all the guys again.

So tell us about for the people who don't know, Tri-Cities, Washington. This is Washington State. Tell us what kind of area like that is. High desert? You would think because of Seattle, it's a lot of rain, but it's high desert area.

Yeah, it's the middle of Washington. Yeah. Central Southern Washington. Spokane, Yakima, Seattle, you know, high desert area. Yeah, it's just desert. They ain't shit out there. It's Indian reservations,

casinos. I don't know how much too many casino. Wild Horse and Casino. And a lot of Latinos. It's agriculture. At that time, when I flew in, Johnny, there was the airport in Pasco, and then there was one gas station, and that was it. There was wheat fields or whatever kind of fields.

And I told the owner, I was like, man, the stadium's right there. I said, you ever see the movie, feel the dreams? And he's like, huh? I'm like, if you build a day, it will come. He's like, you're freaking stupid. I like, why don't you buy up all the property? they're going to want them anybody's going to want them on a stadium

and like, no, nothing's here, Pete. I'm like, all right, cool. So I left it like that. To date, Pasco was the fastest growing city in the country. Is that right? For how many years in a row? Well, they got over 30,000 houses now

just in Pasco alone. Yeah. We went from, I don't know, maybe 175,000, whatever it was back in the day, now close to 400,000. It's pretty packed now. Yeah.

When I was at the Two Rivers Correctional Facility, the OG fans will appreciate this. That's in Humatilla, Oregon. We got the Pasco radio station. So I have no love for that area. It's hot. It's shitty. It's boring.

It sucks. But a lot of people move out there because, yeah, you can get, you know, a nice suburban house on a cul-de-sac, you know, more affordable than Seattle, certainly. No more. Or Portland. Not anymore. Yeah, so it's blown up.

Upwards of, you know, three, four, 100,000 now for just a... Oh, yeah, that's America, right? Yeah, but it's growing, especially with the nuclear power plant out there, and, you know, they moved a lot of corporations out there. Right. You know? Do your balls stink?

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I mean, it was good, but it was independent. They were owned at the time. Gosh, who are they owned by? I don't know. I think we went to Colorado Rockies was one. I mean, they switched over the years, but they were, they had a main club. At that time, it was independent.

So it was independent of it, but still funded by big leaguers. Now I think it's the Colorado Rockies or the L.A. or Dodgers something like that. Now it's at Farm Club now. I see. I see. Yeah.

So they're integrated into the MLB. Were you trying to make the league? Or had you kind of just, had you given up hope of making it to the MLB and just, I don't know, were you just content to play baseball there? Maybe I did give up hope. I don't know. I mean, I had a good time. You know, I had good seasons.

I mean, not tremendous seasons, but I can, my main thing was I threw people out. I was a very good defensive catch, and I threw out 70 plus percent of the runners. No one stole, no, partly anybody stole me. Hitting was still in the 200s. Yeah. But once again, when you throw a majority of people out and you can block and you can call a game, you're worth your weight in goals. Now catches a home run. Right.

Right. Do you regret thinking back to that bar fight when you were playing with the Blue Jays, do you think you could have made it if you would just stay the course and not fucked up like that? I think a few of my decisions along those lines. If I wouldn't have made those decisions, I think I would have. I was with the 1988. I was on the Junior Olympic team in Sioux Falls, South Dakota. Had a real good tournament, was asked to go to the big Olympics baseball team and said, no, because I missed home. Huh.

Just almost like a self-sabotized type thing. Right, right. Exactly. Which carried on most of my life. Exactly. That's a self-sabotaging. Why wouldn't I go? I'm asking you.

Yeah, you're 18 years old. Think about it. It's your dream. Yeah. I mean, I played with Pete, I think it was Pete Rose Jr. And this is when Jason Veritech and Charles Johnson Jr. was all there, you know. Like when I got drafted, I didn't want to go in the 42nd round. I wanted to go earlier.

I was going to go back, play my senior year. The scout at the time, Neil Summers was his name. He slapped out a. a newspaper that said baseball team goes bankrupt in New York Tech. I didn't even have a baseball team to go back to that year. And you still... So I was going to, my college, I'm sorry, my college coach and my high school coach, we're going to make some phone calls.

And there were teams, University of Miami, Texal homes. They said UNLV that they would honor my scholarship. I'd have to red shirt because those guys, those big leagueers were, playing that year. I have the red shirt and then come in another. That's two more years of college. A lot of things can happen in two years. I just didn't think like why. I'm going to wait and then maybe go 10th round or 15th round. So I just said I'll just sign and I'll get two years of experience with professional baseball instead of college. Exema is unpredictable. But you can flare less with ebb glist. A once monthly treatment for moderate to severe eczema.

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That's got to be what self-sabotaging is, right? Yeah. You don't take the risk because you don't want to not succeed. Were you using drugs? No. You just were a drinker. Yeah. Like most baseball players.

Yeah. Drinker. No, I didn't know. To be honestly, I didn't know about drugs until the 2000s, near 2000s. That's what I started hearing some things, but still never, never really got into drugs until I was in my 40s. Yeah. It's incredible. It's just, it's, how does that happen?

I don't know. I don't know. I mean, people go through midlife crisis when they get older. So you, so you have this journey where take us to when you finished baseball to how you got back and started running furniture stores and started to, you know, get involved with these shady characters that would lead to your downfall. Well, I came around the baseball. I didn't really do much. I had kids at the time. I was walking and stuff like that.

I ended up applying for an enterprise, run a car management position and winds up getting, you know, like a management trainee. They call them or whatever. I wanted up doing that, I think, from 98 to 2000 and made it up to branch manager. I think I don't beat my time, 50,000, 55,000, I think. I did that for two years straight. And then one day I was listening to some music in the office. And the area manager came in and didn't like what I was playing. So she turned it off.

I turned it back gone. She broke the CD. I quit. Dumb. Sabasosh. You know, kind of. Then didn't know what to do from there. So I literally went back to walking around.

I used to go by this one car lot and take my kids there and, you know, describe different cars and what they look like and, you know, the engines they had. And the owner came out one day and said, hey, can I ask what you do? I said, what do you for a living? go, I'm not working. He goes, I see you every day with your kids. He goes, you know this lot probably better than some people that work here. I'm like, well, I don't know. He goes, I was like a job.

And I said, doing what? And he said, selling. And I just thought real quick, I didn't have a car, didn't have an income. I don't think I had a cell phone at the time. I don't know. I said, if you give me a key to the car, any car I want to drive, a $2,500 signing bonus, and a cell phone. I said, I'll take it.

And he said, come back tomorrow, we'll talk about it. Came back the next day. He had a check for me, keys. I thought I selling cars and I was good at it. And I did that. I did that for a couple years, making decent money, you know? But it's hard, pounds on that pavement every day until, you know, off-site sales, midnight and whatnot.

I had, I met a couple different people through that. One day I met a gentleman, dressed real nice, suit and tie, Rolex watch on. He just said, I don't know, you know, some people just have something about him. Like, what are you for a living? You know, you want to know. And I caught him one time. He said, I just, he was, I own my own corporation. I was like, dang.

I said, you look like you're doing pretty good. He's like, I'm successful. I go, man, you ever hire? He's like, not really. I go, well, if you ever hire, I will quit on the spot and I'll come work for you for free until I earn a living. He said, I'll keep that in mind. So time went by.

He wanted to come back again. and saying, hey, you still want that job. I said, heck, yeah. He's like, let's do it. So I went upstairs and quit, 10 grand a month, whatever it was, eight grand sometimes, depending on, and gotten him and got to talk to him. We drove around for a little bit.

He took me to a church. And I said, what's this? And he's like, this is where I work. And I said, it's a church. I said, you own a corporation. He goes, I do. It's a 501C3. I said, what am I going to do?

He's like, I don't know. You said you wanted to work for free to here. to you earn the money. So I guess you got to think of what to do. Like that's crazy. Like I was once again in a position that I was unsure of my income. So we walked around the church and they had different ministries. And he opened up a pantry or something like that.

There was some food in there. And I said, what's this? And he goes, this is my, this is, how would we feed the people in the community? I said, bro, you couldn't feed my family in this thing. I said, a food bank should be some. something big, he goes, well, maybe start there. That's what you can do. Go raise the money and go build what you want.

You know, so I winded up talking to, interesting, I talked to my wife who was an employee there 20 years before I ever married her. And one of our friends, I asked them to make me a brochure and I was going to go hustle. I was going to go in the streets and hustle and raise money. And I made different appointments with different companies in the area, big corporations. And I wound up meeting with a big sheet. metal company. And I had the whole board directors meeting. I had everyone was there, handed out. And I got to the point where I told them it was a food bank for the community.

And the owner, CEO, said, what are you doing here? I go, I'm raising money for a food bank. He goes, you said it was an investment opportunity. I said, it is. You're investing in the community. He's not giving you shit. I'm not giving. And I said, you know what? I don't need your money, you fat ass. And he's like, this is my place. Because you can get out. I'm like, so. I started to gather my stuff up and vice president was in there and cleared the room and said, Pete, you know who that person is? I said, yeah, I said, but man, he's rude. I said, he thinks just because he has money.

He can talk me that way. He's like, what do you need? I said, man, I'm looking at this warehouse. It's $779,000. I need to raise this. I'm going to make this big, huge warehouse. I'm going to feed the community. Then he said, you know what?

And the manager, the finance manager from the church is there. The pastor was there also. says, well, how about this? How about I'll help you guys purchase this? I mean, it's a long story, but to make it short, we walked out with $7,7,000 next day to buy this old oil refinery warehouse and convert it into a food bank. And it was a lot of work, but the community was on board. I had to raise like $62,000 for escrow and to do core samples since it was oil,

they had to make sure it wasn't polluted. and so I sold tiles. I looked in the ground and saw a 12 by 12 tile and a 6x by 12 tile and I thought if I could put the family name on that, I could probably sell the small one for 500 and a large one for 1,000 as a write-off. So I pitched it.

I went around the community and met when I said, man, you're going to help you, the foundation, the cornerstone to this. I mean, I got the lingo down. Amazing. Wow. And raised the money. And to this day, I think they just closed down,

but it was brought up during my sentencing. The judge brought up that they did the discovery in the background investigation. They said, man, you've raised in the millions of dollars to build this food bank that fed 750,000 people with 15 million pounds of food for that church. He says, now you're sitting here on drug charges. He goes, what the hell happened to you?

Like, man, I just can't get into it. Wow. So that's how... Well, we're going to get into it. Yeah, so that went on for almost a decade. Running a food bank. And are you getting paid? Are you paying yourself through the 501C?

I wound up earning a salary from the church. Okay. You know, it was only a couple thousand dollars a month, but it was still something. Okay. So you weren't making bank off of this food bank. I didn't make a dime of that. That was a right off of the church. That was a ministry.

Okay. But we impacted the community. We had Macy's and Target and all these big companies giving us semi-eastern. truck's full of stuff. So if you need a food, if you need a clothing, if you need something, we can get it for you. And I did that for that for almost a decade. It's amazing. And then my pastor died when, like literally.

Went to the doctor, had a pain. Next thing you know, you had cancer. Within 30-something days, it just killed him. And it destroyed me. Like, I finally found what I thought was my calling. And he died. So I ran. I literally quit that church.

ran to Arizona. Did you take your family or did you run from the family? I kept my kids my kids with my ex-wife. I was remarried. I took her and left the kids there that were going to do the summer and winter thing. But I was so messed up, man. I just, I wasn't even thinking at that time. I just think I need to get as far away from that hurt as possible. Right. And start new. So you went to Yuma, Arizona. I went to Yuma, Arizona to work for a safety compliance, ocean compliance safety company in the prisons. So I was in prisons teaching inmates how to use, it's called the Vici dollar. You can call, you can make outside phone calls to companies about the OSHA, but not using

a phone, using a headpiece and a double click because they're inmates and you can't do that. So, but I was teaching them how to sell and then paying them and helping them earn some money. I mean, I think they made $6 an hour, $3 an hour in the books, $3 an hour on a check when you leave. And you can't have any violations, no shots, no, no. nothing. If you got in trouble, if you're one minute late, you got fired. So it was a very coveted position for the inmates. Yeah.

You know, and I was in there managing. And to me, that wasn't what I wanted to do. I mean, it was something for the time. So I took it. But I remember my first check that I got, I looked at it, and I was like, what? I can't do this. It's a bullshit. Yeah.

So I said, is there any position in this company that you can make more. more than that. I don't want to know what I'm going to make a month. I want to bust my ass and make money and be rewarded for that. And he said, you can do sales, cold calls. You can call companies and try to sell most of the stuff and you get paid, uh, I think, 7% whatever it was, a certain percentage, but you can get paid for that. You make your own hours. If you don't sell anything, you don't get paid anything. If you want to work 20 hours a day, work 20 hours a day. You do what you need to do. And I started excelling in that. That, within within an hour

I made more than I made on the whole paycheck doing his call so I was like this is good so right around the time of the Valdez oil spill you remember that back in the day they were doing hazmat hazwopper cleanups

selling stuff that you have that certain PPE to wear and we were calling every place around that area and was just killing it but I had a lot of requests for on-site training. Like, they were paying people bank to go there and clean up.

He's how to get trained, 40-hour training, and then you can work. But the company is with did not do on-site training. And I made sure of that. I asked the owner, he goes, we'll never do that. I said, okay. So I went home that lunch period and had my friend make me up an on-site training website that I can show up and I was going to use the material and I was going to send people to the site. And so my first weekend, I closed like $39,000 in sales. Wow. And I sent people

out there. And the receipt from the company went to my work email. And that was a conflict of interest. So I got fired. So you're a go-getter. You're taking opportunities. You're clearly an entrepreneur. You just have it in your bones to just make shit happen creatively. But nothing nefarious. But you seem kind of your life is kind of hapless. 100%. Yeah. You're. You're your life is hapless in the fact that you seem to fall into these opportunities and then you get canned on the back end. Yeah. So you go into furniture sales or is that when we went back to Washington? The vice president of that company still liked me.

I said, hey, I go, what am I going to do? He's like, go sell furniture. I said, bro, I'm like I sell furniture. He said, anybody with a heartbeat can make $40,000 a year. I'm like, I don't know. I said, there's only three places in town. So I went there and asked for an interview, and they said, they're going to give me a call back. I went in six days in a row.

And they know. So finally I got so irritated. I was saying, hey, what in the hell the why I have to do to get somebody's attention about making money for this company? And I think the at that time, the manager was there. This whole store manager was there. And she's like, I'm right here. I'm going to help you. I said, I've been here six days in a row.

None of your salesmen at all came up here. me for if I needed help with anything and I'm trying to get hired here and she goes well let me call you Saturday by 11 so 1101 on Saturday I call her and I said listen this is bullshit you guys told me 11 o'clock she goes fine your hire just come in come in tomorrow so I went the next day and they asked they told me I was going to shout to somebody I said I ain't shadowing anybody I said I don't want anybody that didn't approach me I just took because you know Johnny sells or sells doesn't matter what you sell them it sells so I was so I was so I winded up getting hired within two weeks I made it to a sales manager position where I was able

to negotiate my own percentages bonuses for delivered bonuses for delivered for delivered for the people the salesman on two places so when it all came down to it it was probably between 11 and 15 grand a month if I worked hard I did you know it was a what they called at the time a million dollar rider is just a hundred thousand dollars in sales a month for the company consistently. So I was number one in that area for years. So I didn't think that was my calling, but I thought, man, I'm pretty set, you know, making 150, whatever, 40,000 a year. I got a nice car. I run two businesses. What can go wrong, you know? And then I got a call about a family emergency with my kids and I just need to come back home. And I don't, I don't. When it comes to my kids,

nothing stands in the way. So I literally quit on the spot. I, online. I rented a two-story house in Kenwick and I looked for the reach the franchise from that store in my area and I was in that area. So I blindly emailed them my stats and the application. And they said, no at first, but then the owner saw that and then he hired me on the spot. Still a very big cut in pay because you're going from a whole town with three stores, two I sold from. to try cities that has 20 furnishes stores. So you're not going to make the money you make. So you're back here.

What happened to your kid? What was the emergency if you don't mind me asking? Can you talk about it? No, I don't talk about it. Okay. No worries. It's nothing big. It was just something that happened between him and my ex and something like that.

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What went wrong? My God, my own head. I was sitting there one day and my kids, my kids had their friends over. And one of the guys went into the garage to make a phone call. And I just heard, I kind of leaned down. when I heard opiates and blah blah blah and I was like what he's talking about and he's like I heard a dollar a milligram and this I'm like fuck that's that's making good so when he came out I'm like hey bro I heard your phone he's like I'm so sorry miss post says don't be sorry I said

what do you talk I said where do you get that kind of money and he said well he goes I got clients that will buy hydros or you know oxies and dollar a milligram I said 30 30 bucks a pill 100 he goes yeah he goes you know I see I go you know where to get that stuff he's like you go to doctors and stuff like that and so he says or you can you know how old are your how are your kids and they're friends this is in 2013 so was that 12 years ago so they're teenagers right you know the teenagers one one wasn't born at that time okay so so your teenage son's friend is already selling oxies yeah yeah he was older but he was already selling oxies. And he was getting him for 30 and selling him for 100? No, I don't know what he was

getting him for. I just know that he was selling it for a dollar milligram. Right. And what were, what was he saying? Most people were requesting. How many milligrams? The higher the better. You know, the higher better. They didn't like the, the hydros because he see the middifin in there. You could. And when he tells me he can't smoke him, I'm like, what do you mean smoke him? He's like, yeah, he said, you can crush him up snowed him, smoke him. He goes, you can dilute them and shoot him. I'm like, what? He goes, but, but, he goes, but, but, he goes, but, but, not the narcos because I have synonymifin. You don't want to shoot Thailand all three.

I'm like, hmm, I need to do some research. I'm new with this. I didn't do this. You're naive. I'm naive. And I'm very, but I'm very curious. And I already moved back home and took about a $50,000, $60,000 pay cut. Right.

So I was still doing good. Anybody make, anybody to make $60,000 a year or more is doing good. So not all places, but in Kenilwick, Washington for sure. at that time, you're doing pretty good. Yeah. You know? And now, let me think about it. But I was curious, naive to it, very curious.

So I started asking questions, and I started hitting my contacts that I've known there, from almost my whole life there, and found who the dirty doctors were and found out, you know, can I get an appointment with them? And just literally just started seeking it out. Okay. So you realize it was illegal? that's the funny thing I can't really think back to that time I didn't know I knew it was illegal but I didn't know

the repercussions are going to be so much in my mind did you maybe think okay well I know this is technically illegal but it's not like there's some gray area in it did you not think it was like a felony the way that like selling heroin would be a felony like how did you rationalize it I don't think I did I think I just said I'm good enough at what I do I'll find a way and won't get caught in my mind.

Okay. So you knew it was illegal. You knew exactly what... Well, I knew what time it was. Yeah. I didn't realize at the time, different drugs had different repercussions. Schedules.

Schedules. Yes. Schedules. I didn't know all that at the time. So... And you've never done drugs? I've gotten to injuries before they maybe gave me some hydrocodone or something like that. I was never hooked on them like that.

Right. maybe must relaxes, you know, later on in my years, I take muscle relaxes. A lot of times it was to do with my, my, my pastures death at the time. You know, I wanted to just numb my brain, so I drank a lot. And when you drink a lot, you hang around bars, you just, yeah, I'm going to do stuff. But it was never, it was never to the level that I was about to get into, ever. So, all I knew is that I'm making good money. I have a store that has a lot of people coming in and out of it.

You're managing this furniture store? I'm managing a furnace store. And I would mostly sell at night on my lunch hour. And then since I managed a store, I was able to sometimes take breaks. And hey, I want to go run and get a drink and then go deliver. So I really picked and chose who I wanted to deal to at that time. Because it was close friends only because my trust level, you know, I didn't trust that many people. Right, because it's a small place still.

Small place. It's a small place you're getting and you're sourcing oxies from dirty doctors. Tell us about that. Well, yeah. First, I got my own. You know, I went to the dirty doctor, but with a legitimate injury that I've had for years, but never saw it, you know, any kind of medicine for it. And funny thing is I went in there.

It was a female. And she winded up during the physical. She winds up either tapping or grabbing my ass or something like that. And like, and I looked at it, I was like, is it, are you, are you for real? And I said, it's like this. And she goes, it can be. And I was like, man, I'm not into that. She's real dirty.

She's not good luck. She's real dirty. But so she said that. She goes, hey, I heard you can sing. I said, what the, I had a friend of mine and I used to go karaoke in a lot. And she heard you can sing. I said, that is so freaking random. What are you getting at?

And she said, I guess her husband. was high somewhere in maybe Colorado, the oxygen was lower and had an aneurysm. So he could still think, but his body was kind of, he can't really get around anymore. And she goes, he used to go singing with me. She goes, would you go singing karaoke with me?

Maybe once a week or something like that. I said, well, what are we talking about for prescriptions? And she's like, well, what do you think you need? And I said, well, I could definitely, definitely use some oxies, Xanax, and fentanyl patches. Wow. So my first appointment, I got 120 oxy 15s, 15, gosh, 1550 MCG microgram patches and 150 X.

Every time I went back, it got more and more. Wow. And all you had to do was go out karaoke with this old sad woman. Wow. Yeah. Okay, so that's a lot of money. So in my mind at that time, Johnny, I said,

that's a doctor, dude. Yeah. I just got to watch what I'm doing with. I can make a living off this. You know? And so in my mind, I'm like, well, doctors give me a prescription for us, so I can't get in trouble for that.

Right. How much did 120 oxies cost you? For Phil. Without insurance, everything costs about $200 dollars for the whole prescription. And selling each pill for. Yeah, 15 bucks a piece.

So crazy, but it went up quick. It went up to 30s. So like 20s real quick. And then I was getting 180 of those. And I was getting the 75 and 100 MCG fentanyl patches, which I didn't know.

I just thought, hey, you put them on. That's it. I didn't know there was a whole entire thing with that. Okay, tell us, I'm fascinated by this. Tell us about, because this is like 2013.

So fentanyl from Mexico hadn't, like, exploded yet. Tell us about the fentanyl patches. What are those? They're transdermal fentanyl patches. So you put them on, and then over a period of 24 hours, it releases it, like a time release. So you don't feel it. Wow. You don't feel the entity system right away, but after a while you do.

But there's always ways to go around it, which I didn't know at the time. So I started looking into it. And then, you know, you get people that come. over put the patch on then you can put a towel over it and an iron and it the heat instantly releases into a system. Did you know how deadly it could be? No. Did anybody OD that you sold a fentanyl patch to?

No. Thank God. Thank God. Because I see how many people are dropping right now. But back then, I'm not going to say I didn't, you know, no one, no one abused my stuff, but I knew everyone I dealt with and I didn't have any. Now a lot of them are dead. last two years.

Uh-huh. But at that time, I did not. So were your clients, like, did you notice their addictions getting worse and them demanding higher, higher dosages? Not yet. Okay. Tell us about how the business grew. It grew substantially.

Um, and then once word got out that I was dealing a lot of my friends that knew me from back in the day and that it was pro, hey, you have it, you ever want to go into this line. You haven't had this line. And so I had a guy come by and throw some coke my way, and I did not know about that. I knew about it, but I never did it. And to me, I thought Coke was worse than pills. Because, you know, pills were prescription in my mind, and Coke was not.

So he said, just, he goes, just give it away then. I don't care. Just, it's yours. It's free. So I gave it to one of my friends. I said, hey, go see what you can get for this. And it took 20 minutes to call back. He goes, dude, what was that stuff?

I go, I said, this guy gave me some Coke. He goes, how much can you get? I said, I have no clue. I didn't know what I gave you. It was a gram. I don't know. And he goes, dude, if you can get more, he goes, my guy likes it. And he's like, well, how much is he like it?

And he goes, he'll buy what you can get. So I call the guy back and I said, hey, it's, uh, he got his interest. He's like, I knew I would, how much you need? I'm like, I don't know. I said, well, how much is going to cost me? He goes, I'm just going to front you. I know you. So I'm so cool.

So what are you going to do? He drops off an ounce, you know? It started that way. and then it comes so the I still wanted to keep things away from work so I got four or five real good people I knew can sell and they meet on my house and my apartment at Thursdays

and I have a whiteboard and I would put the host the colleges in the area and I load them up and I say right you're going to go to eastern you're going to go to you know this one this one this one I think three or four bigger colleges and then meeting back your son they were the proceeds so we were doing it like that oh and you were giving these guys Coke I was yeah I was giving four guys each, maybe an ounce or two hours,

whatever it was at the time. And they would leave and they'd go partied up all weekend long and sell. And then come back and we just, we just keep doing it. Wow. And were you keeping the pills going? Were you keeping the opioids going? Yeah, yeah. I kept it going because everyone, like, I mean,

we're talking doctors and lawyers. It was, I didn't know. You seen the movie Blade? I never saw Blade. I'm the only one. There's a part when like the sun, they do a fast of the sun going down and then the nighttime

and how people, the freaks come out at night, so to say. I didn't realize it was such a night life. Like, people during the night just came out that I didn't know and now were readily available to meet. So you were surprised by who was using drugs. Oh, yeah. Especially in like a small town like that where everybody's keeping airs, keeps up appearances during the day,

but, you know. 100%. Yeah, they're suppressing a lot of, of what makes them feel the need to get high. Yeah. Okay. So I guess a freak, I guess a freak accident sort of thing

was one night, Thursday night, I had my whiteboard out, and I had people over the house. I guess one of them was on, remember Skype? When Skype started getting, so they were on a Skype video call

with a family member in Tijuana, just family member. And I'm, I'm doing my thing on the whiteboard. And I guess the girl had a baby with somebody involved with Cynol Cartel and just said, who's that guy? Oh, that's so-and-so's boyfriend. What the hell is he doing on a whiteboard just later night?

And she told him, he's like, I'd like to meet him. Didn't know that. Just said, hey, my friends want to meet you. I just thought, cool, just another deal, no biggie. I said, who are they? I said, I don't want to meet them with anything on me. I want to just meet them, shake their hand, get a feel for them. So they set it up.

They came to my apartment, but... Wait a minute. So one of your dealers... No, one of my friends that was hanging out of the house. Oh, I see. It was a Mexican guy. No. So he had a baby mama from Tijuana.

Yeah. Oh, I see. And then on the Skype... They were in Tijuana. Actually, San Diego at the time they were in San Diego. They were talking Skype and saw me. So... And just like that?

You told them you were a Coke dealer. They go, I'm going up there. Within two days, they showed up in my house. Wow. First got a phone call. didn't recognize this, hey, this is so-and-so. I'm friends with so-and-so. They said, I can meet you?

I'm like, all right, cool, just come to my apartment. Let's walk out. They said, can you meet us in the parking lot? I said, why? And they said, well, a truck broke down and it's getting towed there. And I need to know where to park. I'm like, all right, well, I went down there and had a Ford, I think a Ford Ranger. And they pulled in and they showed it a truck.

So they parked it and they had one of those hard top canopies. And they say, we want to know if you'd be interested in helping us move some stuff. I was like, who are you? And he told me, and I'm like, well, what do you need help moving? I said, and he almost like, probably, I don't know how many pounds of meth were in the back, but it was all lined up the bed truck with the clothes. And I was like, my son told me, Dad, don't ever get involved with meth is dirty. Wow.

So I can't do that. That stuff's bad. He sent it up from California. He was driving it there anyway from wherever. he had people in that area but asked me and like well I don't know what I can do with so I don't even get involved in that they said well it'd be beneficial if you'd help us out I don't know how to take that but I'm like well how about this I'll make a couple calls see if there's any interest while you're in town let's go get some beers and hang out

because I hung out in there I called I think I don't know a surgeon or something like that a lawyer and I think they, I think I maybe so two, three pounds, maybe four pounds for them, you know, from that thing. You're only a thousand bucks a pounds at the time. Wow. So. How long are it taking itself four pounds of meth? A couple of phone calls. Well, I made the phone calls.

They made the commitments. I just took it. I maybe, maybe three, four days, maybe. Holy shit. That's a lot of meth, dude. It is. Is that retail? You're selling it out?

Are you just giving off pounds to? I just, whenever they wanted for it, that's what I, That's what I told the guy. I wasn't even going to get. I said I'm helping out. To me, if I didn't take, if I didn't take payment for it, then there's no strings of taxes. I don't have to do anything else.

I just help them out as a friend. Cool. So, sorry. So he winds it up, saying goodbye to me. Six months, seven months past, don't hear a word from him. One day I got a call and he says, hey, so-and-so, you remember me?

I said, yeah, what's up? He's like, well, the guy that introduced us, just got arrested. in trying to cross Tijuana border with some marijuana and he's in prison. I'm like, yeah. And he's like,

I know that you used to live in Arizona and I want to know, maybe if you can help us bring some cars back. I said, I'm not bringing any cars back with drugs. He says, no, he said, you don't have to. He says, just, you know, be a pilot or be an anchor. I'm like, yeah, he's like, yeah, just three cars, you know, one in the front,

one in the middle, one in the back. I say, what does it pay? And he told me, I'm like, I'll try one. So I did that. What do you mean? What do you mean? bring cars back. Explain,

explain yourself. One of the, you know, cars that were loaded with drugs would be the middle, the middle car. We had a front car,

maybe a mile two that would drive ahead and communicate. We couldn't get more than, I don't know, the mileage because of the two-way radio that it wasn't cell phones,

it was that you can communicate with them. And then the anchor one, how I was explained to it, maybe I'm wrong, but how I was explained was if the front guy noticed any cops,

notice anything out of the ordinary, he'll let the middle guy know, give enough time to either slow up, fix, do what he'll do. If for some reason, that guy misses it and he gets pulled over, that's the guy in the back, it's his responsibility

to get that cops' attention off them, do whatever it need to do. Yeah, cause an accident, go start speeding. Whatever, correct. Okay, so he's the anchor car. So this is after the drugs have already crossed into the States, right?

Oh, they're already in the States. Okay. Yeah. They're in Phoenix, and I'm just going to drive the Phoenix. pick it up and drive it home. And are you the front car? I was the front one for a while.

How much are you getting paid per run? I got paid in product. Okay. I don't want to get paid in cash. I wanted to get paid in products. At that time, you know, Coke was doing good, so I was lying I'm getting Coke from them. I don't even know.

I don't even know what it was, how much it gave me, but it was a decent amount in my mind. How do you not know? Like, I actually don't buy this, Pete. How do you not know? You're a successful drug dealer by now. You're a smart guy.

you're a salesman. How do you not know the quantity of cocaine they're giving you? Because at that time... You have to weigh your product out to give it to customers. You must know something about the way. It was a weird thing. To me, it was... I know I'm driving, but it's free.

To you, it's free, so you don't... To me, it was free. So I took it... Don't you have a scale at home? Oh, yeah. I had plenty of scales. So you didn't take the Coke and just simply place it on the scale when you got home? It would be equivalent to however it had to be at the time,

it was equivalent to about... about five grand a trip around. So I just don't know what that, what that. Maybe like eight ounces or something. You were mulling, helping mule back Coke, just selling it off in grams and eight balls? Or did you still have people hustling for you? I had people hustling.

I really had a full-time job, so I didn't want to, I didn't want to expose myself yet. Okay. But you're making good money. I was making good money. yeah, I was making good money without it. So to me, it was, I didn't, when I say to you, I don't know, I didn't care. Because I really honestly did not care.

I was, I liked taking the trip, but I thought it's cool. Yeah, worse. And I'm getting free drugs. I'm making good money anyway. Are you getting high now? Are you? I've tested, I've tested, I've tested, but I wasn't addicted. But I, you know, I try Coke and meth.

I would try it and keep me up on the trips, you know. Sometimes I do two trips in nine days, eight days. That's long. Okay. So you're now moving, you're really working with these guys. Yeah, on my days off, I would move. I'd move that because he asked me to do it. I did it a couple times.

And I said, hey, I'm not going to just work for you. I want with you. You're like, I want. And he's like, well, we can partner up on this. And so we did. We just partner it up. And anything that I needed, he would do it. And when I, I don't know what other podcast was on when I was talking.

They said, I can't believe you subject to your kids to that. you don't think i i wasn't thinking straight obviously i would never ask you a gay ass question like that this is the connect i don't know what kind of square podcast what kind of christian podcast how could you subject your kids well because they asked me did you keep your kids out of it and i said my my one son he was using and he knows i wouldn't sell to him so he's getting it from other people that had really honestly bad and when i say bad stuff they would take they would cut a lot of stuff and I don't trust what they were doing with it. And people were getting bad batches and stuff like that.

So I didn't want myself. I winded up, have my son come on me with a couple trips. Oh, how can you subject your son to that? Dude, fuck, you didn't tell me all that.

All right, so what's your son? Is he smoking meth? What is he doing? What is he? At that time, he would do everything. Okay.

Pretty much. He would do everything. But I know it sounds terrible. But I don't. didn't want him buying from, it sounds stupid. It wasn't even money because he didn't buy from me. I gave it to him. But I know people that were cutting stuff with bad stuff and I don't want, I know that's no excuse, Pete. I don't know what to tell you. I wasn't thinking straight. No. No, it's just rationalizing. Yeah. It's, you're already in a hole. You know,

but they would come by. They would watch my kids, which sounds dumb. When I'm out of town, at that time, I was divorced. Who was going to watch my kids? I mean, I had people babysitting them, but they were older. Right. But driving them. school and they were like family but i say they're like family to me i mean i went to the weddings hung out with them for years and you and you think these were guys working with the cinaloa cartel oh yeah i'm sure of it i'm sure of it but i mean like i said yeah they were i guess they were they were friends of yours but they were they were good to me of course and you know i'm sure i made them a ton of money but but when i say we did things beside that like we went on vacation and

Well, it was fun to me. It was fun. It didn't seem like you're doing something terrible because... Well, the business is very chill on this side of the border because they got to lay low. They're here to make money. Yeah. They're not here to, you know, getting shootouts with cops. 100%.

Yeah. Okay. Did you know what kind of quantity you guys were bringing back on these trips? I think at one point in time, when I learned how to start wrapping it, that's a whole process to wrapping it and you put the, uh, the Treis Flores, local. and then you put the hot mustard and you wrap it and saran wrap and you're doing all stuff and then you have to put it in I think it's like electrical tape or some kind of black tape afterwards and the layers have different smells to it to try to deter the dogs dogs and stuff

like that and when I was doing that and learning how to put them in you know taking the the glove compartment out and put them up inside the glove compartment okay so they had you at the trap spots in Arizona yeah loading the cars down yeah yeah in different stores and warehouses. Wow. That's what I said. When I said, I was friends, when I walked in, hey, PD, how you don't? And no, quite, who are you?

They knew who I was. So I was with them so long. So it was, it was a family. So how much work? So you were actually wrapping up. Was this mostly Coke? Was it mostly meth? The three things for sure in the beginning was, was Coke, meth, and heroin.

Yeah. You know, the, the, the meth already came packed. It was another stuff that needed to be cut up and put in there. So. So the Coke, and the, the Coke and the heroin needed to be cut up. You mean like... Need to be prepackaged and stuff like that.

So how did it get across the border? I don't know. I just picked it up in Phoenix. I have no clue. So you would unwrap the Coke or the heroin? The Coke and the heroin, it was if it was a big chunk of it, they would weigh it out and break it down to a smaller piece of so it could be hidden easier. Oh, I see.

Yeah. Okay. It wasn't like over the border. It was here. We were just making sure that they were in one pound or two pound chunks, making sure they had a good form to it so they can be stuck up in there. Okay. So they were just breaking it off a kilo blocks and then making them into pounds.

Yeah. I see. Okay. So how much, yeah, how much coke were you bringing back? At the pinnacle at one point in time, I think it was around 30 kilos at one time. But it's not big. 30 kilos takes up this much space. Right, right.

It's really not big. It's a lot of Coke, though. It's, well, it was Coke, mess and all combined. Oh, so you would combine them. Yeah, just the packages. The packages were, you know, two-pound packages or one-pound packages. Okay. So you bring back a variety, one of all three.

All three of them. Wow. And then we would meet, you know, whoever was following me at the time when I got into it. Because I just wanted to know how much the middle guy got paid. And it was significantly more. So I said, well, I've never gotten, in my mind, I said, I've never gotten pulled over. I'm an upstanding citizen with no record, never been arrested. As you look at my background, you'll see, you'll see, I said, man, I'm a perfect candidate.

Even if a cop pulled me over, I could talk my way out of it. That's my thought. What was your backstory? You must have had a backstory if you got pulled over. Yeah, I'm getting the rest of my stuff in Yuma. I used to live there for years. And due to a family emergency, I had to come home. And I still have, here's the address, my license.

I still had the Arizona license good until 2035. Yeah, good. So I had that. And what kind of cars would they have? Different ones. Just modest. cars? Yeah, Fort Fusions. I drove a lot of Ford Fusions. We had a truck once, big old Chevy truck. But if just ones that the wheelwells were big enough to put things

in the wheel well. Yeah. And these, the guy driving and the anchor car, these were Mexican or Mexican Americans? Probably Mexican Americans. Because they were on the side of the border. Right. I mean, one time I went to L.A., which I wasn't going to one of the regular spots in Phoenix. and went to a FedEx store in L.A., I think it was at a drug store that also has FedEx and had a box that was shipped there and went in there and opened up. There was all stuff in there. I didn't know they did mail at the time because they didn't know. Welcome to my world.

Yeah, they do that cross-border too. Yeah, so we did that. So, I mean, once I got it back to Tri-Cities, I had a, I had a, I had a spot that we would meet and it'd be off the beaten path and it'd be up and up where in between Tri-Cities and Yakima area where it's mountain, lot mountains, but the hills and then we went to this little canyon area where no one can see and there's like a really weird area like, why are we here? And I said, because you can hear the sounds, you can hear from miles, you can hear choppers,

you can hear anything because of the reverb in that area. So we used to go there and break everything down. and then I used to get my stuff go my way and they go their way. And how much would you get if you brought back, you know, 30 keys of all these different drugs? What would they give you?

A lot of the stuff was spoken for at the time. I got cash up until the pills started coming to picture and that was in 2013. I don't know exactly the exact date, but I know they had, because I asked them, the pills seem to be selling. So they said they didn't get, yeah.

Okay. Well, at that time, it wasn't called. It wasn't called Fentanyl Pills. They called, I think, 30-30s. Right. But they were from Mexico. It's fentanyl. Now, now, I can say it with positivity, yes.

And then I didn't, I really didn't know. I didn't know the whole scope of it since I've been watching it for how many years what it's doing. And so you're taking these runs. You're getting in, you're getting in tight with this family. And you're still working at the furniture store? Yeah. So you're like Walter White almost. You're like a square during the day.

Well, I guess, yeah, squared during the day. Wow. But it started getting, I started getting so busy that the line between my job and my extracurricular activities, it was so blurred. I couldn't do it anymore. I had so many clients. I couldn't do it anymore. And are these still just users or are you off the? Users?

These are users? Yeah. Because you're still at the retail. level, you're not, you're not hitting people off of work. No, these are, these are users and guys that sold for me. Okay, yeah, both. Yeah, so it was getting so busy. Didn't realize at the time because I've never seen any,

I've heard people get addicted to Coke. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know what is in there to get you addicted to it. Same thing with meth. I understand you can't die from meth, coming off a meth, cold turkey. You know, you get tired. Right.

But there's nothing in it like with fentanyl that, you know, a lot of benzodia is that will kill you from getting off. So I, to me it was weird. I was like, but when people started using the pills and I get addicted, the concept of time didn't work with them. They can't say, oh, pizza worked till eight tonight. Let's wait until he gets home. It was showing up at my work and saying, hey, can you come see me outside?

I was like, dude, we can't be doing this. Like, they would show up in my work. So I had a- You had to quit. No, I had to find out I can intermash both of them. That's what I did. So I winded up, taking all the guys with coming to me and saying, okay, there's a mattress store connected to this with a public bathroom in between both.

Text me when you're at the bathroom. I'll have everything pre-packed. I'll come each in the bathroom. But that still wasn't because there was only two stalls in there. And then I sat down one night and I had the guys over all my work. And I was thinking, we have to do something so that you got to take the heat off me a little bit. So I said, I'm going to come in early. I'm going to pre-package and preset different packages, pills all over the store. Only I will know. The bigger ones are

in the back. I said, clients are going to come in. They're going to ask me to put something on layaway. That's the key word because the layaway cannot happen without the manager's approval. Right. So as long as I'm working, they're going to come get me. And the layaway for bedrooms was pills all they away from living rooms and kitchen and stuff like that was coke and stuff like that so they would come and say hey this guy wants to put something on layaway so as i was walking this huge store what do you want and we just talk and we just say how many pills are all right go go get this i know it sounds freaking dumb i had them in vases oh i had them in stuffed discontinued pillows that you cannot sell so someone couldn't just come in and grab it and find the drugs in

because it was an item that shouldn't be sold, but I put him in there knowing that and I made the exception and signed off on it and sold them that. Or I'd put stuff up in ottomans, in refrigerators, I'm sorry, recliners, and have the truck go deliver to the house. So they would just come to the house. They know what's in the recliner. It's a $50 recliner because it's discontinued.

And then they know it's taped up inside, and the guy delivers it gets the money, brings it back. And everything goes through the front desk. person. So I wind up in the midst of it, the front desk person would do the sales for me, would weigh, put, whatever was in my office, which is the only place that didn't have a camera. And they would put in an envelope, staple the receipt to it for the layaway, come out, hand it to the customer, and the camera just sees the receipt going back to the customer and setting up delivery. And they would come in and constantly see me. Wow.

This seems like a lot of work. Most people would just quit their job. Well, it got to that point. It got to the point where all the sales people almost all the salespeople were working for me. From the furniture store. From the furniture store. Yeah, because some people quit. And everybody works at a furniture store as a junkie anyways. So I winded up going and I wind up getting to the point where it got so freaking packed and so hectic. Would you have more people in there buying drugs than you would

for furniture sometimes? That's a good question. I don't know. I mean, you must have been making a lot of money at this point. Because you're getting free, you're getting essentially free cocaine, meth, and pills. But what I had- And you're getting them in varieties too. Correct, correct. But what I had to try to, like, ease my day, I would pay a lot for drivers, for runners, for people to just be at my house. You know, I started getting paranoid.

I mean, it gets bad. I mean, but if you make $50 grand a month and that's your take home, I mean, that's, that's, that's gross, you're walking away. It's a drug business. Every time you have a come up, you always have a come down. Always. I don't know about you. But every time I seem to have a freaking $30,000 weekend,

I get cracked in the head and robbed or someone knew where it was or something. I mean, always. You couldn't go to your cartel guys if you got robbed? Yeah, but like you said, what are they going to do? Go start shooting up here in town and, I mean, to them, it was like, hey, It's no big deal. Exactly. We know you're telling the truth.

Just hear some stuff. We have so much more drugs than it is worth to go kill somebody. But it got to that point where one salesperson did not work for me. And she made a comment one time. The company just got bought out to a private franchise, to a private owner. Can you name the, you can't name the furniture company? No, I can't. Ashley Furniture.

I can't. Ashley Furniture. Remember, folks, if you buy furniture at Ashley Furniture, you're supporting drug trafficking. You're so dumb. IKEA. No. No. By the way, were you the only one?

I assume you were the only guy getting it from the cartel, right? They weren't giving it to any other wholesalers in town. Any other white guys? No, I'm sure they were. They had a few people that they were dealing with. You know, it wasn't just me. These little towns are such money makers for the cartel. It's a no-brainer.

It's so easy to take over because there's only a few competent dealers and no competition. Portland is the same way, Portland, Oregon, where I'm from. Everybody that I was locked up with, especially in county jail, getting ready to go to the feds, was all just Mexicans. They didn't even know what state they were in. They were just like, nobody has the bomb, meth, heroin. You know what I mean? Yeah. That's crazy.

But I mean, that one girl made a comment one time to the new bosses and they said, I think Pete sells drugs to the customers. And they go, why would you say that? And she goes, he's always high-fiving people coming out of the bathroom and then they leave. Why would he do that? She just had nothing to do but to look and watch. She didn't like that. I sold a lot.

I don't know what the reason was. Maybe because she was telling the truth and she didn't like it. I don't know. But they wind up coming to me and saying, hey, we had an accusation today about, they call you the pill guy. I'm like, don't know what you're talking about. They said, well, would you take a UA for us?

I said, sure. So I went to the lab, took the UA, passed. Because I had stuff, you know, obviously I knew I was going to pass. And winded up in another two, three weeks. They asked me to do it again. I did it again. And then on my day off, I came in, what's called the full enchilada, a full enchilada bed deal,

which you can sell a tempapedic mattress, you'd sell the base, you sell the comforters, you sell the pillows. Every aspect of that sale, it's called the full enchilada. And it was on my day off, it's like $14,000 sale. So I came in, they said, hey, you need to go take a UA after this. I said, it's my day off. And I'm leaving after this. I said, I'm working on my day off.

And they said, well, you're going to take it. I'm like, no, I'm not. They said, if you don't take it. we're going to consider that your resignation. I said, you can't do that. I said, I don't have a write-up. I don't have anything in my record to prove anything otherwise, and I've already passed two. And they said, we said what we said. So once I was on to sell, I went home, and they called up, and they said, hey, you've been fired because we accept your resignation, you've been fired. I said, so you're firing me. So I wanted to try to file an LNI claim, and they wouldn't do

it. They said because they warned you it was going to be a resignation. And so now I have a whole new set of problems. I don't have a store. I don't have a place that I can go into to handle all the customers. Everyone knows where I live. So they started coming by the apartment. And they didn't know the exact, a couple of them knew the exact apartment, but they knew the complex and where I came from. So I did that for a while. The guy below me, he was a, I guess he was a lawyer. And he wanted up calling me and saying, if he come downstairs for a second, he's right below me. I went down. I said, what's up? He goes, man, what are you working with? I said, what do you mean? He said, what are you working with right now? I said, he was, please stop. He goes,

75 people came to your apartment today. I said, not that many. He goes, I'm telling you, me and my fiance are watching and counting. All day long, we hear the stairs. I'm like, well, I don't know what to tell you. He goes, so I took out some coke and showed him. He did it. And he's like, that's some good stuff. He says, give me five bucks. He goes, all right. He goes, some advice from a client to a customer. He goes, from a lawyer. From a lawyer.

He goes, you probably need to look at the other place to stay. He goes, I'll have you later. I like you living here. He says, but you're going to raise red flags. So I did a midnight run, which just said at midnight, I had another, I had one of my dealers go purchase or rent another apartment like a mile away. And at midnight, I packed all my stuff so no one can see me leave. and I shot over there, went into the new place,

thought, hey, it's all good now. No one knows where I'm staying. And my son one day gets on his bike says, I'm going to ride down the block to Albertsons. I didn't even tell the guys I was working with. My partner, as I told nobody. And he left in about 10 minutes later, I get a phone call from him from some weird number.

I said, what are you doing? Whose numbers? He goes, Dad, some guys in this truck just pull over and asked me to get in and through the truck in the back, I'm through the bike in the back of the truck, and we're down in the apartment right now. I said, put him on the phone. I said, bro, what are you doing?

I said, you don't take up myself like that. He's like, you can't just move without telling us. I said, I can. I don't owe you money. And they said, no, but you know, wait, it freaked us out, Pete. We don't know what happened. You're not at our place.

We don't know where you're at. We think the worst. You're going to roll. We don't know. So I was like when my son came back and, you know, and it was nothing bad. Right. Everyone says, bullshit, that's kidnapping.

Did your dad, did your son? I mean, obviously, you'd been, he'd been on trips with you, which is crazy. But did he know who these Mexican guys were that you were hanging out with? My name, yeah. They were friends. Like I said, they took them to school. You know, when I went to high school, they took him to school. They hung out, played games.

Yeah. Came over on holidays. I mean, it was like, it was that type of, I know, that type of relationship. You know, I know it sounds bad. I'm not making. So you were trapping, you were trapping out of an apartment, even though you had all this dough and all this, you had the plug. At this point...

I tried not to. Yeah. I mean, I really did try not. I set up other ways to deliver. Did you, did you, you know, you're dealing with opioids and then you're also dealing with upper stimulants. Did you notice what was the difference between the clientele for each? the opiates just people will kind of come hunt you down to find you right because they have to have it

and and a few times I got set up I got my my skull cracked open because someone knew I had a bunch so they wanted to meet me and they wanted to meet me in a dark place and they said hey we don't trust you know let's meet and it was in a street open but dark and um One thing led to another, they flipped me some bad shit. I was going to buy a bunch from them because they supposedly had all these pills, and I'm looking to buy as many as possible. And they threw me something I can tell by the weight and the feel of it that it wasn't it. I threw it back to him.

And he's like, he says, you don't have to open. You have to trust me. I said, bro, we're talking thousands of dollars. I can trust you. So I opened up and looked down. He hit me on the head with a pipe. And it cracked my head open. You know, I got robbed that time.

And the only time I got I got set up and shot back. I don't know what date was exactly. But when I, one of the guys that was my partners, he winded up getting picked up. So that connection, I don't know exactly what date it was, but that connection went away. Your Mexican connection went away. So I was for the bigger dealers in town

until I can find out what's going to go on, I started buying from them. And I had money, so, you know, it wasn't small deals. You know, they could have boats or a thousand pills at a time. But the one time I got in, I got given some product that looked pretty good. And I said, well, let me meet you guy. And I got in the car. And everyone told me, Pete, I don't feel good about this one, man, don't do it.

And I hopped in the back of the car with my friend, who I wind up found out, set me up on this whole thing. Didn't know it's going to get shot. but he just wanted the pills, which is, I'm saying, but the pills is greedy. They just have to have him. As soon as I got in,

they locked the door and there was no knob on the back door. So I know when you put it in park, usually it all open up. So I had my hand, as soon as I called in the park, I opened up and try to get out, and there was someone out

that had a gun to me. And I said, get down. I said, I'm not getting down. And I said, not going to be any bitch. And then I hit my phone and make it light up. And I said, oh, shit. And I tried to pretend

I had a phone call, and they bought it for a few seconds. I'm like, hold on, guys. And I started walking away. I got about 30 yards away. And they started running after me. And they ripped my pockets. They took my cash, most of it.

And as they walked away, I was like, you guys were a bunch of bitches. You have to rob him. Four guys who robbed me. He could shut up. Boom. And he shot me right in my heel and blew my heel out. Wow. So.

God, damn. That went from, I went to the hospital after that. I tried to call around because I knew once a gunshot and hospital cops. Yeah. Well, one of the guys that I supposedly tried. trusted that bought for me that was in that arena. Yeah. So I just come here and I'll look at it real quick, take care of it.

And when I went in there, the cops are waiting there for me. And they interrogated me and they said, you know, what happened? I said, well, I got, I was walking down Court Street and I tripped over a rock. And I thought I hurt myself. I tripped over a rock and hurt myself and I realized I got shot. I got, you know, I'm freaking dumb that sounds. I said, that's what I'm sticking with. He goes, so you were walking, it's actually in a newspaper the next day.

40-year-old man walking down, course, you get shot. It's so stupid. Right. But I told him that's what happened. Anyway, he started interrogating me more and more, and I just, I just, you know, check myself out. They didn't take care of that. I almost lost my foot, had cellulitis.

My foot blew up. So now I was trading, I was trading pills for antibiotics. I couldn't get antibiotics. I couldn't go to doctors. the amount of the amount of prescription that I was getting from that doctor. Yeah. Started raising alerts from the pharmacies. Oh, I see.

The original doctor. The original doctor. He started giving you pills. In overload. So the last time I went to the pharmacy, they said, we don't accept their prescriptions anymore. I said, what do you mean? They said, they're under investigation. I said, what?

Sure enough, that doctor was on the investigation, got indicted, was arrested. I didn't follow. I know they did very small amount of time and I know why they did that amount of time. Yeah. You know? But so there was no pharmacies anymore to go to. Every client was blacklisted from the pharmacies and from pain clinics.

So I couldn't go anywhere. So I'm now going out. So they closed down the oxy business, basically. They closed, well, they tried to close it down in the direction I had it. I threw my phone out when that guy got arrested. Got a new phone. Metro PC. I remember you measure?

PCS. So they had, you put your email address in to your phone and it pulls up all your contacts. So I saw one contact that had a plus, I think, 5305.

What it would have been Mexico? 5-7. 5-7. Yeah. And, uh, it might be Columbia. I can't remember. I think it was 5-3,

whatever it was. But I text that number and they said, who is this? And I said, Pidi, oh, it's so-and-so. I said, what the hell do you have this phone number for? And I called him and start talking. And he's like, you didn't think,

he didn't think I was who I am. I said, what are you talking about? And this person that I used to drive around Phoenix to Greyhound stations because he had no car was really the main guy that was the whole time. I didn't even know it. He was a guy running this whole ring.

He was a guy running what I was doing with my part and everything. I was like, oh, you're kidding. He's like, no. He says, what do you need? I said, oh, so-and-so got arrested. He goes, ah, yeah. He goes, I know, I don't like to deal with him anymore.

I said, well, you can't. He's arrested. He goes, what do you need? And at that time, I was buying him for 14. In the very beginning, the blues, Bexies, whatever you call in the fentanyl bills. Yeah. For $14. Okay.

And what were you selling them for? We sold them for 30, 35, when there was a drought and there was a drought a lot of times. We went as high as $100 a pill. We have auctions and people would buy it. You have no idea. You say you want this for 50? I got a guy who wants it for 75. 100%.

Holy shit. 100%. And people like, oh, bullcrow. I said, I'm not joking you. And you're never put in a position that you feel like you need something and you're going to die ever. Besides then. So he hooked his deal up and said, you just got to go to Phoenix and meet my guys. I said, I've been there a million times.

No problem. I said, I beat it tomorrow. I said, how much I get him for? He goes, five bucks. I was like, oh, man, I'm done. I'll kill it. So I drive down there, I go to the, I think it was a traveler's in or I hop, and there was someone waiting there.

And when I got out, because they wanted to know a car I was in. So a guy handed me a letter. And I said, go to here. So I went to another place, got there. He handed me a number. I called the number. Guys on the phone talking to me. He's like, where are you at?

What are you driving? Where are you right now? He's on a hot box shoe when you get close to right where I'm about to make a left. you'll hear a noise and sure I didn't know what it was but like on my ear he goes did you hear that said yeah he goes make a left park and it was just an alleyway that was so dark and I was like shit in my pants so they were doing that to probably following you well making sure no cops were on you right yeah yeah but that guy was in Mexico and he once this person got arrested certain people went back to back to Mexico didn't want to come right but they but they were they were sending you on this

treasure hunt probably following Yeah, making sure that you didn't have a tail. 100%. Yes. Wow. So he says, get out, walk. And I'm walking and I see the lights flicker on way down there. And I get in the car.

When I got in the car, there was a guy in the back with these devil dermal stings. Right. He was going crazy. He had cats all over his face, gun laying across his lap. And the drive looks at me and says, you're a cop. I said, no, I'm not. He goes, yes, you are. I'm like, I'm not.

And I said, here, call someone so and he called me. He's like, dude, this guy's, he's not, he's been with these years. He goes, he's so-and-so. He's like, this is him? He looks like a cop. He's like, he's not. He just do it. So he ends up the phone and he has me a foil and a pill.

I said, smoke this. I said, well, I don't smoke that stuff. I'll do, I'll do a pill. I'll do drug, button. I'm not smoking that. He goes, if you smoke that, you're not getting it, and you're not leaving the truck. I'm like, I'll smoke it.

So I smoked the whole pill. You smoked up a whole fentanyl pill? A whole fentanyl pill. Bro. Never felt like in my life. It was like, what did you feel like? Butterfly, I don't know. Butterfly's cool feeling.

I don't give a shit feeling. It's something that I just instantly, as bad as it sounds, fell in love with that feeling. We're always told and warned about how such a small amount of fentanyl can kill a person. If you didn't have any tolerance for it, how could you survive smoking a whole pill? those pills, they don't put hardly anything. They put a small amount in the batch. Right.

And it's just a small amount. I see. Yeah. I see. I knew the. So, like, 0.1% of a gram? Oh, I don't even know. Who knows?

Right. They say a tip of a pencil. Right. Is enough to kill you. I don't know what it is. I just know that they had, people were smoking these things. Yeah. You can smoke up to 10, 15.

Now I don't, now they're, I'm not saying, they're more dangerous, but people seem to be dropping dead quicker now than back then. Hmm. But I liked it. That's all I know is I liked it. Wow. Went on. So how much did they give you?

How much do they give you after you smoked it up? It was a thousand pills. Okay. He's picking up a boat. Yeah. For five bucks a pill. Yeah. And you can still sell them for...

Oh, I already had them sold. They already pre-sold. Oh, shit. Yeah. So I literally went there and waited two days and I'd come right back. I'm on the job now. I can be on the road a lot, you know? Wow.

So I did that, and I did it a bunch. You know, I can't tell you how many times, but 50 plus times in my, you know, my, the days of doing it. Oh, so now you're making hundreds of thousands of dollars. They will make hundreds of thousands of dollars. I understand. At a thousand, if you buy them for five, selling for 30, you're making $25,000 profit, or one free pill for every one you smoke.

If I took it myself, but I had drivers, I had, I was getting ripped off. I had, I mean, it happened. I had not gotten to the gun situation before. So you had the whole, you had the whole crew now. You had a whole crew bringing it back. I've had a crew. They were just driving the coke and stuff like that.

But something, something dark happened when that fentanyl came. It just changed, it just changed everything. I wasn't worried in the very beginning about getting jumped, about getting hit, about getting, I never really worried about it.

I thought people would respect me for who I, they don't, they don't care. But something happened when those pills came in, that's when I, brought a blade before because it was a weird, eerie feeling at night like you can't trust anything. Did you see people turn in into addicts?

Oh, 100%. When you started bringing these things back? 100%. Yeah. That's not bad. I mean, what am I going to do? I'm so far in. Okay, so you're becoming an addict.

You're hooked. Oh, yeah. Okay. Yeah, after that first time, 100%. Wow. One pill. How much are you smoking? When I got arrested, 40, 50 pills a day, you can smoke easy.

God. Now, let's go back to the science of it. The fentanyl is in your system, and it gives you, you can feel the effects. If you're not used to taking drugs, you'll feel high. And that would be about maybe a week.

You'll get that feeling. That's it. But after that week, you start to get sick in 40 minutes after you take that first pill or if you smoke it, because I wasn't taking it. And that's another,

I know people drop dead from that, but people take it whole, and they can drop because it's only a simple at once. Right. But you smoke a little bit at a time. In my mind, I was justifying it. But 30, 40 minutes after that, you start to feel sick. Yeah.

So you just take that pill to feel better. You're just getting well. You're getting well. So it went from, let's get high, until let's get well. I can't get out of bed until I can smoke four pills and feel better. Oh, my God. So for one week, you're getting high. And then for the next however long until you die or go to prison,

you're just getting better. You're just getting to zero. That's how I still now. That's the crazy thing. Wow. So think about that. That's opioids. So if I were buying pills myself at 20 bucks a pop, that's $1,000, it's $1,000

that I'm consuming. But. Yeah. And now you're going other drugs. And then you get ripped off. And then you have, I started, I got pulled over once or twice. So I started getting paranoid. I had six different drivers that would drive me around.

You know, I always was always always told if. There's no hand-to-hand, you know, there's no hand-to-hand transaction. They can't get you. So I'm like, cool. Sure, sure. So I started, I started using Heidi Key magnet things and putting pills in that. And then, and then having my guys go by on bicycles and popping them on the license plate in the parking lots of we'll be meeting them.

So when I meet them, and it sounds so cliche. But I'm like, hey, you have the money I let you borrow? Right. And they give me the money. And I said, I'll just give you a couple minutes. if they came in and me, I have money. I didn't trans. I have no drugs.

When they call me a few minutes afterwards, I'll tell them where it's at, or parking lots or stop signs. Or, um, they have those, those sprinklers, the Heideke sprinklers, and I,

and I put them at, over at a certain park, and I'd bury them and send coordinates to each split so that I wouldn't get caught. Twinkie boxes and garbage cans in the toilet bowls and the containers in the Pelican,

waterproof things. I just dump it in the third stall in the back. No one's going to open up a public bathroom and look in the back. It's gross. This is so bizarre. Yeah. So it was Airbnb's would just,

I just heard about them during that time. And we would rent the Airbnbs and we put them up in the vents with a string that was connected. So once you pull the string and it comes down, anything that I can do to get to not do a hand-to-hand. He must have never slept. I didn't.

And you get rid of a thousand pills in a day. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. If you're moving. I mean, if you could personally smoke... That's only 10.

That's only 10 customers. Right. If you could personally smoke 50 pills a day, I mean, you just see the scope of this market. But you never really smoke them by yourself. I'm going to tell you that right now for the record. Yeah. You always, you have people around you. So when I say 50 pills I'm going through, I don't...

People took hits off of it. I don't know if it's a full pill, but I'm just giving general. he's there. But yeah. So you put the other drugs to the side and just focused on I still had them. I still had them for personal use. I still had them for friends. I still liked Coke that didn't want to get into that. And you know, meth for the drive. I always thought meth was a dirty, dirty drug. Someone said, I mean, why did you think that was dirty and not fentanyl? I said, one's a prescribed and one's not. So one's okay. Even though I know it's not right. One's prescribed by the Sinolea cartel.

a guy with horns on his face. Yeah, it was... Very naive of you. It's very... You can see how this is a television show. This is like a television show in my mind because it's like small town, white America

that's like playing bad guy. I know. You know, it's like... And don't believe it because the first few times I got pulled over, I have my detectives card in the windshield of the car. And they're like, oh, who's that? Oh, my dad.

Oh, you dad's a detective? of, oh, he was, he's retired now, and then look it up and say, oh, yeah. Oh, man, have a good day, bud. Yeah. Nothing. It wouldn't think. So you never got popped with any of the trips you were taken. Nobody ever got popped. I got, I got pulled over a couple times. They never, they never searched it. No, no, no. No, no. I know one time, I wound up on my trips, I got nervous. You know, I haven't really talked about it a lot, but I got nervous. Once I realized that I was going to be the main car driving. I got real nervous and I think it was my first trip being that middle guy. I, every rest up area, I would let air out of my back tire. And then I called my point. I said,

dude, there's something wrong with this car, man. What's wrong? I said, back tire is flat again. And he sends someone to pump it up or, and it happened two, three times. I said, bro, can I just be honest with you? He's like, yeah, I go, I'm letting the air out. He goes, what the fuck you doing? I said, bro, I said, I don't know. I'm nervous. I don't. He goes, we can't turn back. I have, we have, we have time limits. So I said, well, I said, can you get you guys over here real quick? And they said, for what? I said, I'm just going to pray over the car. They go, pray over the car. You're going to pray. You think God is going to protect a drug guy. I go, I don't know. I don't think that. I said, but it's going to make me feel better. I said, hey, my son is doing bad stuff, but I'll never

disown him. I said, so he's my father in heaven. So I don't, he's not going to, I don't know. I just don't want to die. All right. I don't want to go to prison. He's like, oh, do what you need to do? And they said, I'm freaking crazy local. I'm like, whatever. I prayed over there and did it. Those aren't real Mexicans. If they don't believe in praying over a batch of fat.

Well, they believe in front of, whatever. I don't know what it is. But anyway, so I got nervous. I got nervous doing that. They said never got pulled over like that. But I was at one point in time. I remember the change to thinking I'm never going to get caught. Right.

To thinking, I'm screwed now. and we had a friend of mine had a trap house that he let me use to deal after a few months he told me I can move in there and so I had the one apartment and then this where I do business at

so I can separate the two well the trap wind up becoming the home because you never leave there and it got busted a couple of times I mean SWAT team cat team whatever was they pulled out everyone lined up they ran everyone's backgrounds

And always with me, they would say, all right, you go, you post, you can go. They're like, dude, stop hanging around these guys. These guys have to know good. I said, yeah. So the third time, the head of the cat team at the time, he said, I'm curious by something. He goes, this is the third time we've raided a place that you're at. And you have no record at all. He goes, I just, what are you doing here?

I said, well, I said, you know when Jesus walked the earth. I said he didn't hang out with the kings and queens he hung out with the guys in the miry clay and try to show my better way. He goes, so you're telling me that you're at these trap houses just tried to get these guys off drugs and had a better life?

I said, yeah. Because I remember that. Have a good day. And I walked away and felt the sharpest stab. And I turned to my body. I said, dude, I think I'm going to get arrested. He's like, don't say that. I go, dude, I just mocked God so bad.

I just used my relationship. to get out of an arrest. And I said, that's kind of, that doesn't go un-nosed, doesn't go and punished. He was, I thought, I've got to punish you. I said, he doesn't have to. I said, I just did it to myself. So that cop made, he told me later on,

he made it his personal vendetta to find out everything about. He started asking, calling around. He said, he looked up everything. One day, I was in Best Buy parking lot, two in the morning. My son was supposed to turn himself in, for some missing court date. He's supposed to turn himself in at a certain time.

And he didn't. So I drove him there and he's like, Dad, I'm not ready yet. So I went around the block to Best Buy two in the morning. I'm sitting in the parking lot waiting. I said, make up your mind, but we have to either crop or get off the pot. Put my feet up on the dash and I wake up. My son hits me and his way just lights are on us. And I was like, he knocks the window and he said, Mr. Polis.

I'm like, shit. I said, what's up? He's like, I finally found a way to arrest you. I said, do you think so, huh? I said, what did you put me over for? He goes, there was a disturbance at the jail. Now, I was just at the jail. And I walked my son up.

He threw, you know, he didn't want to go in. We went back to the car. He goes, we followed you. I said, you didn't follow me because it's like a block away. He goes, whatever. Here we are. I said, he goes, you left for Arizona in 2008. I said, yeah?

and he said, I said, here's my driver's license. He says, thank you, you won't be needing that anymore. And he tucked it away. And he said, did you know that your license expired in 2010? I said, yeah, but I have a Arizona license. He was here in Washington. I said, yeah. He says, if you don't pay it, if you don't pay your expired tabs and your license, it's suspended.

You see the keys in the ignition? He said, you're under arrest for driving on a suspended license. He said, I'm not betting man, but I bet you if I search him, I'm going to find some pills. I said, well, I said, the odds did go in your favor. And he pulled me out, and I had only 10 in one of those hidea pens. And I took that, and he listened and he broke it up and found 10. I was arrested.

I was like going over cognizance's. Yeah, yeah. But that's one arrest. Ryan Reynolds here from MnMobil. I don't know if you knew this, but anyone can get the same premium wireless for $15, a month plan that I've been enjoying. It's not just for celebrities, so do like I did and have one of your assistants assistants assistants

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Yeah. So now you're, now you can be searched. Now I'm the system. Yeah, you're in the system. They got your prints. And he continued. to impress people. Everybody he saw me with,

they would arrest for leaving that area and then lean on them for me. Right. And this was like a local detective for like the Pasco? It was a task force assigned. It was Operation Clean Sweep. It was they were assigned

to try to take down the fentanyl deals in the area. Right. And they said, your name keeps coming up. Everywhere we look, your name keeps coming up. So we're looking at it. So yeah. So it went, it went to that point. I don't know why the day I got arrested.

I don't know why I wanted to go to court. But I had, I wanted to get the license. I wanted to get unchanged and get my license back. I thought I can go to court. Okay. So when you get arrested, when you get busted, how long between when that cop first got on you and arrested you for the first time

to when you got busted by the feds? Six weeks. That's all. Yeah. Wow. Because he pulled me out a few times out of the trap houses and the places that they bust. He pulled me out.

And he knows me. It was that last time when I told him what I was doing that he really, I guess, sort of researching me. Right. And were you sucked up? Like, what is a fentanyl addict? This is a dumb question. I sent you a picture of my.

Okay. So you were all sucked up like a, like a junkie. Yeah. You were emaciated. Yeah. Okay. So you're really more of a, you're more of a junkie than a drug kingpin by the end. Yeah.

100%. Okay. 100%. Everyone's getting arrested around. I'm hearing stories about the guys that I was. dealing with. They're all going down in these huge raids and I'm just trying to get, because he took my license. I was trying to get my license to get out of town. And it didn't go that way. Your ex-wife must have known about what was going on, right? Yeah, because my son was getting arrested

and she was hearing stuff. And one of her good friends was a cop and kept saying, dude, your ex is into some bad stuff. And your son was a fentanyl addict? Yeah. Oh, man. Yeah. So when you got busted, how, was it the state? Was it like the task force or was it the DEA? Oh, no. When I got arrested, it was D.EA, FBI was there, ATF, they didn't know what to expect. Wow. Because all the other dealers, too, when they had, there was guns involved, money involved. The last place that I was dealing with, they had a safe in there like $100-something,000

in there, and they took that. And so they all came 30, 40 agents plus agents were there when they got arrested. They came to your place? That came. Well, my son's friend had a. Motel 6, and I was going to go in there, take a shower, have my friend pick me up and drive me to court. So when I got to take the shower, he calls me and says, I can't get, I can't get to that place because the roads blocked off. There's a bunch of feds there. And like, hmm, he says,

helicopters, drones, he goes, I don't know what's going on. He said, but I can't get to you. He said, you got to make it to me. So I went to the, I went to the balcony. My son goes, Dad, I think they're for you. And I go, no. He goes, I think there's. I think there's feds. I'm like, no. I went on there on the phone, my buddy looking around, and I seen a Dodge truck pull up and look at me. And then reverse and went across the street to the Great Wall, China Cafe or something like that, and put binoculars on me and my stomach dropped. I said, oh, shit, I think it is me. So I went in there to put some, I had no shirt on. I was going to go get dressed real quick. And then I get in there, and I started doing my hair. I don't know why.

I was in my hair and I see the mirror to the outside door and I see like an AR, some kind of rifle come and call my name. I said, and Pete Polis, I'm like, yeah, they go, can you come out of here? I said, can you come in here? They said, not for another five minutes and 29 seconds, waiting for the warrant to get signed. I said, so I came out about this close. I was like, I'm looking. He's like, it's so surrounded you're going nowhere.

I'm like, it doesn't mean I just give him. I didn't know what to do. You know, I try to act tough. I try to act like it didn't bother me. I was scared, you know. Yeah, of course. It's a huge, when I went outside and saw how many cops lit that place up

and the dark suburbs and the windows and the indictment when they said you're federally indicted and it was a weird looking, you know, it didn't say Benton County. It said United States of America versus, I was like, what the frick is that? So it was a Fed case. It's not like it got turned over to the feds later.

No, it was a Fed case from the beginning. Wow. They used a two minor, pick up arrests as an indictment. I mean, I'm not, I'm definitely not going to sit here in bad mouth. Cops, but there's, I mean, some of the cops are not, not upright and honest in their tactics. But then again, I was a drug dealer,

so I don't expect them to be that way. Okay, so you got arrested. What, what did this discovery paperwork when you first got brought in? What did it say? It just had two counts of distribution, and it showed the two times that I was arrested, and they had five people cooperating. Right.

That will have to cooperate against me. They had testimonies on when they met me. And what I started providing for them in the beginning and how much I was selling it for and where I would meet them. And so it was four or five guys from the get-go. Were those, did they lie on the paperwork? Or were those real?

No, that was their get out of jail, free card. They used their jet. Right. But these were real people that you were given product to. Yeah, they were real people. But they would lean on people. on purpose. You know, driving down the street,

we'll pull you over, you served. No, I didn't. Yes, you did. I mean, it's whatever, but they were cooperating. So I went and got arraigned. I remember I just, I was just about to smoke a pill

and I was because I was feeling like crap and I got arrested and I said, this is going to be a tough one. Yeah. So I went there. They brought me before the magistrate and she said I'm up on two counts of distribution, each punishable up to 20 years.

I'm looking at 292, months in prison. I'm like, I don't even have a record. I mean, minor ones, but nothing. Yeah. So I went there and I got, I went through three attorneys, which I thought was weird. I had an attorney that was excited about the case. He said, I can't wait to do this. This is a real cool case like a movie. I'm like, all right. He's like, how'd you do that? And so he started talking and a week later, conflict of interest. I guess he got pulled off my case. And then I was given another one that for four weeks, I told, Everything that I did, you know, because I wanted the best, if I can get a deal possible.

And then after that, he represented one of the girls that was testifying against me. So conflict of interest. Yeah. Because she got picked up, so he had to take her. But he knows everything about me. And then the third one, you know, he got me. He didn't do anything for me, bottom line. I mean, my base offense level was a 16.

They said it was 42. but I had no prior. It was my first time arrested. Yeah, wow. But, um, imagine that being your first time getting arrested is a Fed case. Yeah. A Fed bust.

Yeah, Fed bust. Yeah. And they, and they, I kept fighting and they said, 292 something. Then I went down to 190-something months and 181. And they got down to the prosecutor said,

um, we're willing to cap it at 60 months if you just plead guilty to one count. And I said, then they said, If not, we have a few people that's going to cooperate about you trafficking drugs from here to Phoenix and back over the last three years. And I'm like, how in the hell can they prove that? So I was like, to my attorney, I said, can they, can they go back in time and prove that I was,

that I did it? And they said, well, yeah, they have, they have license plate readers. They have, they have debit cards. There's only a few gas stations along those routes. if you were seen there at all, she can get you for that. She goes, and then you're looking at 10 years because we're going to supersede indict you for a conspiracy and blah, blah. I said, well, if I plead guilty, those guys that are ratting on me, will I get a, you know, will they reduce sentences? She said, no.

I said, all right, you're guilty, whatever. Yeah, 60 months. It was 60 months. And then because, yeah, because of my, I had a downward variance for charitable works done to community, which was the food bank. They brought that up. Okay. So when you went to court, you had people speaking on your behalf. Speaking of my, but the discovery and the background investigation brought up what my, what I did. Right. Like the judge was a little dumbfounded. Like I don't cop, pastor.

But they must have been able to see your, your drug addiction too. I feel like that helps those mitigating circumstances. Like, this guy's a fucking junkie. Yeah. You know, even though you started off as a drug deal. I think I'm a two, two 20 now. And I think back then I was, bucks 70 something buck lady you were sucked up sucked up were you uh how was coming off of it when you were in jail hell right

I used to have to sleep above the heroin addicts in the in the Inverness jail in Portland coming off of that shit and sometimes I would get into fights when that happened just so they would send me to a higher wing because I'd want to get away from those dudes like send me to where the criminals are at because it's a brutal you smell

you can smell the opioids coming out of you you're crapping you're puke screaming. Yeah. I guess they, when I got there, the drunk tank, so to say,

was filled. And I saw, everyone I was arrested with, I saw, and I saw my son on the floor. So I just said, I got to use your mattress. And I went there and covered up.

I think five to six days went by before I ever got my, my mugshot. They didn't, I was on the floor. They didn't disturb you. They didn't disturb. Yeah,

it got to the point where, People were, I remember people pounding on the window saying this guy needs a hospital. This guy's dying because I was screaming. It hurts so bad. I never thought Johnny in my life that I would, you know, I'd say, I'm not a kind of guy who would shoot anybody. But when you're like that and you're like, and you have pills on you, in my mind, I'm going to kill you and take your pills and then worry about repercussions later because you don't think, you can't, you can't rationalize.

I think straight on that. It hurts so bad. Yeah. So I would say physical withdrawals. And of course, everyone wants to think I'm lying. But it was about eight to ten months before I could appear, have a good night's sleep without restless legs. You know, probably two months of restless legs, bad. No dreams.

You're like, you're the living dead. You don't have dreams on. You don't dream when you're on fentanyl. You don't. You just, you wake. up in pure panic because if you sleep two hours, you're already in full-blown withdrawals when you wake up. So you wake up and you start to puke and you smoke a pill and you feel better.

And then you can get the energy to start getting up and getting ready. Second pill. You can maybe have a little bit of breakfast. It's just, it's dumb. You're a slave in your own life. Yeah. And that's what I was. It was so difficult.

But I remember seeing the light of day. I remember actually having a dream. a good dream. Most of my dreams towards a six, seven, eight month mark were me trying to get a pill and going all around town. And then all of a sudden I'd get one. And I finally were in a truck stop area

and I can light up. And then the wind came in and knocked it down a drain. And I was trying to get the drain undone. It was nothing but nightmare of dreams like that. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's terrible. But that's what I went through, but I remember having one good dream.

And I was like, maybe I'm on the tail end of this. And, and that's when I, you know, I started, I started noticing people coming in and out of jail all the times. I started asking questions like, why do you guys keep coming? My first time here, I don't want to come back. You guys come back twice in a week.

Yeah. What's going on? Oh, it's our hustle. I said, what do you mean? They said, there's nothing out to first beat. Like, we go out there, we try to get a job. They don't provide us nothing, no support, no housing, we don't have nothing.

We just last as long as you can last without using and then we have to use and start selling again. if we get, they said, but man, DOC, you have eight violations before you do any real time. So we know we have like five more violations before we. I'm like, you guys got this thing worked out. That's when I started thinking, man, I've been, I messed this whole town. I thought I messed the whole town up. But there's a lot of other drug dealers there.

But I did. I mean, I was a burden in society at that time. Yeah, you got a lot of people high for a long time. You were one of the biggest distributors, probably, at least amongst your circle. I would say if there's now, I mean, the last couple of years are huge. But at that given time, you know, if there was five big dealers, I was probably in the top five. You know, everyone that was big got arrested. And we're talking about that lived in Tri-Cities, not just came to sell, but living here.

I mean, I wasn't hurting for money at the time. You know, you literally employ boosters, more boosters than you know what to do. You know, if they know you pay good, they come by, you got brand new stuff. stuff all the time. Right. So you trade fentanyl for stolen shit. I mean, did everything. Yeah.

You know, Rocky Vivals, his, here's a pill. His three jeans worth $300 took a sit. It's nothing. The corruption, the moral corruption of, of being a slave to addiction is so crazy. I mean, it's just constantly plotting. Yep. It's constantly rationalizing.

It's constantly, yeah, doing the wrong thing. And then you have like, you know, you touch a nose. I do this. And it's like things I'm used to doing for so long that it's being a habit. Like, oh, you're still using it. Because you look like a method. I'm like, I'm like, I'm like, I've got a dry mouth. You know, you're nervous being on a show.

You're being vulnerable with what you say. You know, you're telling people pretty much, hey, look at me. I'm a menace of society. I subjected my kids to all this crap. Wow. Yay. I mean, I'm not proud of it. So looking back now that you've had some time out, you did four years.

years. We're going to switch over. 42 months to the team. I did every, every, every, yeah, I had a six month, uh, downward variance. Yeah. 48 to 42. So, uh, for, including state that rank currently. Okay. Yeah.

Looking back, what do you think it is? What do you think it is about your life that, uh, you know, you just kept falling into these things and then you fell into, you know, drug fentanyl trafficking? What, what do you think it was? I know it's a really, really loaded question, but, you know, when you go through the program, A-A-N-A. You're supposed to... I didn't go through any of those.

You didn't? I was supposed to, I went through treatment. It's a three-month intensive outpatient treatment where it would be, I had to go somewhere for three times a week, three hours per day. And they wind up having me say, you know, what your struggle, success is, you know, and what you're clean date and whatnot. And, you know, I didn't go to the A-A-A. I'm not downplaying them, but that was.

wasn't my thing. My thing really was relationships and my relationship with God, even when I was selling out, a good relationship with him. Right. So. But why would, why would you do that? If you had a good relationship with God and you were making money, I mean, I don't know, is this something deeper, or did you just want the money? And you just saw the opportunity. You know, I, I think I just saw the opportunity and, and jumped on it. I don't think I was, I don't think it was mentally all there. I was still hurting from my pastor dying. I went through divorces. I mean, my life wasn't the best. I mean, on the outside, people looking, oh, you're a nice car, you have a nice job, you make good money, it must be good. But there's always something there when nobody wants you around.

Because I have bad traits myself. So it's pain. It probably was. It probably something to do when I was a little kid. I don't know. I don't know what made me do. What made me work for an organized crime family? I don't know.

It was exciting to me. You know, I know people say when you're done playing professional baseball, there's PTSD. And I'm like, I don't know about it. And they said, well, they said you're used to playing in front of crowds. Yeah. You're playing for attention. You get that affirmation. And when you take it all away, a job just doesn't kick it.

And I'm like, totally. I believe that completely. I don't know. Maybe. Maybe I wanted to feel like the man again, you know? I don't know. It's happened with a lot of athletes, though, like professional professional athletes. You know, there's this one football player.

He was like a huge weed trafficker. I can't remember his name. They did like a 30 for 30 on ESPN about him. You know, obviously, oh, Hanson, we've had him in here. He wasn't a professional athlete, but he was part of, like, the biggest college football dynasty in history. Yeah. There is something about that in your competitive. Athletes are competitive. So, you know, building up a drug empire is like that's, you know, something that's, that pushes them to want to be like the man. Yeah. I mean, I can see that

because, I mean, you go to, when you're playing, you go to restaurants, you go to bars, you, oh, free drinks, come eat here, do this. And I'm not even in the big, big leagues, but they still treat you amazing. Right. Then you go to like, hey, there's a 30 minute wait. Like, you know. Right. But it maybe it was some of that because it was times I go to eat, Olive Garden or whatnot and I say, hey, people come up to me and they say, hey, see that guy in the corner, he's one of the biggest deals in such and such area. He liked to talk to you

afterwards. I'm like, so maybe, oh, I'm getting drafted. I don't, you know, it just felt like it felt like it felt good to be noticed about this. So maybe it was that. You felt like being the man. You're kind of the man. Maybe I just grew, I grew up now and don't really care about being. It took me years to want to talk about it on air. And the reason I do is because people said, hey, after hearing that story, they said, not only is it crazy, it'd be like a bad TV series, but it gives me hope that I don't have to come out of prison and fail because I think 97%, 98% of people, the recidivism rate,

they go right back to selling. They don't make, oh, they make it and they don't do good. Maybe they have just a regular job. I don't know. but I mean you may we're in a top percentage of doing something

with our lives afterwards you know I never really thought about that but that's true that's very true and now being in recovery myself yeah

I see when people say dude you would we remember you were so far in like and to see you come out and be on top of the game and it's another area they say it really blesses us

I'm like well so I start and it's difficult talking about it. I get a bunch of crap every time I talk on a podcast about what I did to my family and my kids and my ex-wives. I'm like, listen, it is what it is. Well, tell us what you're doing now, because you're doing excellent. Tell us what the, what the hustle is now. This is a racket. He's so stupid. Well, I was locked up, seeing all those guys coming in and out. I decided to be part of the answer, so to say, instead of adding to the problem. So I wrote a business plan for a

and sober organization. It's called Seasons Housing. And we help transition people coming out of treatment and out of prison and jail. We put them on the houses and we have Rapper on Service and we help them transition into the society in a better way to have to be to be set up, help them with any areas they need. If they need to get their license back, we help them. If we can come up with the fine money to help them pay.

As long as they stay clean and get their stuff done. And we started out with one house, obviously, and then we're up with the five houses now. And they house, how many people per house? It depends. My women's house has nine, nine women in there. Some of the bigger men's houses have 10 to 14 people in there, two people per room. What's a little bit different about? I know that if you were to trust me in a house without supervision and without direction,

it's going to become a trap house, I think. Yeah. You know, so I made sure that me and my partner have managers at every single house that do UA's, random UA's. They have house meetings, rules that go by, chores, everything that you need to do. Like, you already know, to be addicted to something, or maybe you don't know, but to brush your teeth and have good hygiene as an addict, you don't get that many people that do that. They sacrifice one thing for the other, you know?

I want to go get a pill instead of brushing my teeth. teeth. I mean, but I understand that, that I was like that too. So I make sure that these guys and girls get the treatment they need and get the things they need to succeed so that when they, it's about a 15-month program in this house. And these are all people getting out of prison, like coming out of prison? Either getting out of prison, getting out of jail, getting out of a treatment facility, you know, it's on the detox center and they need a place to stay. Right now. We work with the Department of Corrections and the drug courts and we haven't been in the houses now because the owners are living examples.

Me and my partner, both we had history of drugs in the past, history of getting arrested, and now we are going to be part of the solution. Yeah. At least we're giving people, you know, a roadmap to success.

And it's free of charge to them, for them. For them, it is. Okay. It's state money. It's tax money. Like they have housing vouchers for department of corrections.

Yeah. housing vouchers or as part of a diversion, like with drug court, you can be, you can be looking at 18 months in jail. Right. Or if your case seems to be good, how about we'll put you in this house for 18 months and we'll help you get back on your feet again, transition. Okay. And that's what it is.

Okay. So then they would pay for that. I see. So you, I mean, look, you don't really need to advertise because you're in with the courts and stuff like that. I have a waiting list of 200 plus people. Wow. I don't have enough houses.

Well, shout out. You need investors, though. So shout out, like, how they can get a hold of you. And what the return is, you might be looking at one, you know? I'm trying to get into this. You know, I'm a predator. I'm trying to, you know, I'm trying to squeeze money out of the dope game somehow. I understand this, Johnny.

I've been approached before about investors, about people that had big money and they want to invest. But what they want in return, like, I'm not doing this just so that somebody can invest a million dollars and make $15 million back. Right. They got to have a good heart and want to help people. For sure. So I don't, I'm going to be asked, I don't even know what kind of invests. We have a detox center that we're looking at moving into mid, mid next year. I think the remodel for this old hospital, I think it's about a $50 million project.

Wow. But they have a deep medical detox. They got a diversion. They got inpatient, outpatient. And then we'll have the housing in there. And once again, 15, 15 month, 15 month program, if they graduate, then they can, you know, when they move out. And I know with the drug court, they take their crime and they shred it.

Wow. Which is cool in Washington. So they're in this drug program. If they stay in the house for 18 months or whatever it is and they successfully complete it, their charge that got them there is shredded. And they, I mean, that's a good. That's a good thing. That's a good thing.

I'm looking at when I got off of probation a year early because of the work I'm doing, they said I could be up for a presidential pardon for the work I'm doing and the fact that it was really a one-time arrest deal will a good outweigh the bad? I don't know, but they said I can apply for it and if it happens, I don't think it erases it. I think it maybe seals it, something like that.

I mean, you can never forget your crime. But I mean, you can be like the website is seasonshousing.org. Seasons housing? Yeah, Seasons's Housing. If there's any whales listening to this show, they have 50 sticks to invest, 50 million. I got that in pesos. So, P. Polis, what an epic, epic saga of a life.

Incredible. Sabotish life, maybe. Well, you know, it all happens for a reason. And so you're doing good now. You're housing the people that used to come in when you were in jail saying, we got nowhere to go. I've had a few people that was when I was, when I was, when I was, writing that business plan when I was locked up. I had a few people say, man, it's never going to happen.

No one's ever going to give money to an ex-dealer to housing. I'm like, well, it's going to happen. If there's a way, God will make a way, guaranteed. And there was some of the ones that came in and said, man, I just can't believe you did it. Like, that's crazy. You've only been out four years and full-fledged, you know? So, yeah, I mean, it's an interesting battle. But, I mean, I still got my own demons to deal with, you know?

Yeah. You know, I'm just hoping to get the way. word out. I've had a couple of calls about shows, but I don't know who to try. I asked Owen. I don't know who to trust. Oh, yeah, we can do this. I'm just going to wait and see whatever happens. I don't trust any of them, but you know, if they come with the check, take it. All right, we're going to switch over to Patreon because I want to talk about prison because you were in Sheridan from my home state of Oregon. Probably saw some interesting things. And then, yeah, we'll talk, we'll just bullshit.

Was that? Oh, yeah. That's right. Victorville and Lompoc. So we're going to talk prison talk. Pete Polis, we'll see you guys over at Patreon. Patreon.com slash the Connect show. Thanks so much, buddy. That was super fun. Appreciate it. Thank you.