The Connect- with Johnny Mitchell - A Truck Driver Reveals How He Trafficked BILLIONS In Drugs Across North America | The Connect

Episode Date: December 31, 2023

Rich Laferrere was a simple dispatcher and driver for a transportation company in a small Connecticut town. Before too long he found himself putting those skills to use smuggling pot all across the eastern seaboard. This new found business eventually scaled to the point of having connects across the country and eventually landing him in the spot as the top logistics person in the US for the most notorious crime family in Canada. He was making millions, powerful and respected...until one day it all came crashing down and he was face to face with the federal government. Today he consults with the DEA and lives a prosperous life running his own business, a far cry from his days as a smuggling kingpin! Join The Patreon For Bonus Content! https://www.patreon.com/theconnectshow Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/6mc4qAxpztC6D20wzeS91C Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

The first place we go to is a cartel house. We pull in, immediately behind me, a car pulls in and blocks us in. I've probably got 40 plus thousand on me in my front pocket. And things aren't going well now. One guy brushes up against me, and another guy goes over to the girls and tells them to get out. That's when I knew. What's up, guys? On today's episode, we have a man named Rich the Transporter.

He's one of the biggest smugglers we've ever talked to on this show. He trafficked untold amounts in a 20-year run. He started off as a small-time dealer from rural Connecticut and worked his way up to eventually become the exclusive distributor and logistics person for the Montreal Mafia. He was the number one guy in the U.S. for the biggest Canadian mafia. His stories are wild. He's now fully legit. He runs a successful legal transportation company and he consults with the DEA. If you want to hear about his almost decade of informing, go over to the Patreon.

Patreon.com slash The Connect show. This episode will blow your mind. Let's get into it. You've got Rich the Transporter right here on The Connect with Johnny Mitchell. Now, I am in charge of receiving everything coming in, collecting all the money, storing it, separating it, banking it, distributing it. I'm the transporter. That's when I see the lights behind me start to flash.

And I didn't even think. I just hit it. I was driving like my life depended on. Then I parked the car, popped out, closed the door, and I started running. And he pulls out a burner, shank. It's like six inches. And he passes it to me. And he goes, here, that's yours.

Don't ever leave the cell block without this. He was the reason I made it out of that place alive. Rich. Rich. Good to see you. You have a unique episode because unlike most people who come on this show with something to plug, whether it's a book, a movie appearance. a new podcast they're starting.

You are an obscure anonymous person. Nobody knows me. Dope boy who beat the feds. You have an odyssey of a story. And you're just on here telling it for the first time. I have the exclusive. You do. So it's my pleasure.

It might as well. Glad to be here. So tell us where you're from. Give us a quick background. Yeah. I mean, eastern Connecticut, small little town, woods. You know, we've got sawmills and gas stations. It's pretty much the industry out there.

Lots of woods. Quiet. Um, very unassuming. Um, I'm, uh, you know, from a, you know, regular, you know, lower to middle class family, I guess, you know, middle class. Yeah. You know, I mean, they own homes. You know, I grew up with your grandparents, you were telling me. I did, uh, nine years. Did nine years with the grandparents. Yeah. Uh, that was great. I mean, you know, those are the first memories I ever have. My grandparents. I don't have any memories of my mother and father together, uh, ever. And they divorced when you were like one years old? About one. Uh, you know, my mother was. Uh, you know, my mother was. Uh, uh, you know, my mother was. Uh, uh, you know, my mother was. Uh, uh, you know, uh, you know, 16 when she got with my father. She was from an abusive family. And my father was a means to get her out. Yeah. Was he older?

And my father, my mother's beautiful. I mean, you know, it's kind of bizarre to talk about your mom in that way. But I know what men see in my mother. Well, yeah, she's only 16 years older than you. Yeah. She was like, you know, she's like a bond girl, you know. She's like one of them. Oh, yeah?

And my father, no doubt, you know, fell in love with her instantly. Was he older than her? Yeah, about seven years. Oh. Oh, so you were, it was a crime. You were conceived as a statutory rape. Yeah, yeah, my, my dad's passed away now, so he won't. That's okay.

He won't be too mad about me saying that. Biblically, I don't think there's any wrong with that. Back then? Yeah, it was the 80s, man. 70s? Oh, okay. I'm a 72 baby, brother. So did you have any criminality in your family that you knew of?

Well, you know, first time I ever saw, my grandmother loved me to death. and she was the best thing that happened to me, okay? She was the only person in my life that was on my team, okay? So when I say this, but my grandmother used to steal matchboxes for me, I would see her doing it in the store. You know, we go shopping at a place called Caldor. Hello, flashback, that's how old I am.

And I'd see her, you know, Richie, oh, he likes that little matchbox. You like this little matchbox, Richie? And, you know, I'd like that. You know, and I'd see her. Right, right. Did that kind of teach you to like, hey, if you get away with it, it's not really wrong? I literally was so young that I saw it and knew it was happening. And I didn't think it was right or wrong.

I was like, I'm getting a toy. Right. So what does that have to do with criminality? You consider that crime? Well, I mean, it is, I mean, it's stealing. And this will lead to things down the road. It's dishonest behavior. This thing that I saw will lead to things.

Right. Little do I know then at seven. six, five, you know, my earliest memories. Okay, so at nine years old, did you go, you left your grandparents, did you go back to my mother? Okay. Chaos. Okay.

My mother is now nine years older, so what is she, she 26? You know, there's alcoholism in our family. Yeah. Okay. And it's prominent, it exists. I never drank as a because as a result, I don't drink as well. I don't drink, I don't do hard drugs. because I saw what that does.

I always say my parents taught me how not to be. Which is still a lesson. It's still like it's the same lesson. It's the same lesson. When you can grow up and, you know, learn how to fix the mistakes and the trauma that that, you know, brings upon you. Yeah. When did you first get introduced to drug dealing and drug trafficking? Yeah, this is, I'm in eighth grade.

My mother's boyfriend at the time is roommates with a guy named Scott. He's about five doors down. We're living in these condominiums outside of University of Connecticut. This is where I'm from. I start working for Scott. He has a carpet cleaning business, a legit, Scott. It's a carpet cleaning company. And he would take me on jobs and we would stop off at places.

go inside people's houses and come back out. And, you know, hey, Richie, I'll be right back. Little than I know, he was, you know, he's dropping off below. He was, you know, I figured this out when his best friend Jeffrey, who I become good friends with, comes up from Miami to visit a lot. Right, right, right. Jeffrey's cool, too. Yeah. He's cool.

He's brown. He's short. He was a Mr. USA at one time. Chicks loved him. Uh-huh. Bring a short brown built guy into Connecticut with them girls, man. They lose their freaking minds, man. Of course.

They never seen that. So he was bringing up blow. Their moms would be chasing him down. Like, hey, you were out with my daughter last week. So this guy was bringing up Coke for your guy in Connecticut. You know, I'm young. I'm not putting it all together. You know, like I'm not understanding Coke comes from Miami.

And Jeff just has Coke. He's coming up with Coke. If he was from Texas or Montana, I would think the same thing. All right. How did you know? How did you see it? Like, how did you know what was happening? Yeah.

So, Scott was very influential in my life. I mean, you know, I'm going to talk about the criminality aspect of my relationship with Scott. But Scott was very important to me. You know, he took me to my eighth grade graduation because my mother was too busy doing something else. And he got up and cheered for me. That meant a lot. I'm an only child. I don't have brothers.

I don't have sisters. I don't have a tight-knit family. Wow. And he was very important to me. So the stories I tell about Scott, it's true, obviously, but it was more to it, right? I looked up to Scott. He was my...

He was like a father figure almost. Big brother figure. Yeah. Yeah, because he's like, what, 27? Yeah, and he's cool, man. He's got chicks coming in and out, man. They're video recording him. Him and Jeffrey are...

Banging your mom. I'm kidding, of course. Well, my neighbor, I mean, his roommate was, yeah, for sure. So you're isolated. You got no siblings. Your mom is not even parenting, really. Yeah, I'm starting to become independent now. Yeah, at a very young age.

I'm 13, 14. And yeah, yeah. So it eventually came down to where I saw my first big paper bag full of cash. And I became the. money counter. He would let me count money for him and organized the bills. You know, he was a dealer. So he was getting all sorts of bills, 50s, 20s, 10s, fives. At 14 years old. 14 years old, either in his apartment or in a hotel room, we would just go there.

This is, okay, this is post eighth grade. It just graduated eighth grade. Summer of eighth grade, 14, what were you doing? I mean, I don't know. What were you doing the summer before going into high school. I was a count now Coke money. Tell you that much. You weren't doing that. No. My friends were in like fat camp or, you know. basketball camp, right? I'm in hotels and I'm getting like a close up. I never touched Coke.

He never let me touch it. Right. I didn't bag it. I didn't wrap it. I didn't weigh it. But the money, money was my job. Do you remember how much money at a time you'd be counting up?

I mean, their paper bags would just loose money. Right. Five grand. You know, a small bill, but there's a lot of cash. A lot of cash for an eighth grader from a poor family.

Like, that's an infathomable amount of money when you're that age. I'd never seen anything like that. It's almost like magic. You don't even appreciate the value of it. I wanted it. Right. Right.

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Drink responsibly. Be 21. Did you see cocaine? Oh yeah, I saw it. Do you remember, was it like a kilo? Was it like a big block? Or was it an ounce? Probably a couple ounces at a time. routinely, and he broke him up into small little baggies. And sometimes, you know, they would run out of rubber bands, you know. And Jeffrey and I would leave Scott in the hotel room with the blow. And we'd be driving around a little town in eastern Connecticut just going a convenience store looking for rubber bands. And, you know, you'd think that'd be easy to find.

Not so. Not so. You've got to go to like a stationary store. But we weren't doing that. It's a dumpy little eastern Connecticut town. They might not have that. We're driving our T-top Camero, man. kidding me. We're not driving around all night long.

We're chilling, going off the street. I'm now putting together the deliveries. And, you know, he takes me out, you know, and, you know, leaves me in the car, a bureau of back, Richie. We were doing collections, you know, we would drive, you know, he would. So this is about 86, 1986, 1987? 86, yep, I'm going into freshman year. Okay, so it's the 80s.

Coke's booming. Yeah. This all makes sense. I'm kind of living with him at this point now. I mean, you know, I'm crashing at his house. again, he's only five doors down from our condo. Mom doesn't care. She loves it.

Yeah, right. She's, I'm not there. I'm not in the way. She's drinking? Look, she's 26, man. She's got a life ahead of her, man. Look, I'm not blaming my problems on my mother.

My mother had problems. And she didn't do the best things she could have done. She didn't break the cycle like I did. I broke the cycle. So when in high school, You mentioned you were a basketball player. That's positive. Were you a good Hooper?

Oh, yeah, man. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I went to technical school. Okay. So, yeah, I'm living with Scott at this point now. Were you selling for him? No. No, he just brought me along.

I was like his little protege. Yeah. I mean. Usually protege's apprentice for their, you know, their boss. Yeah, I mean, no, he had no intention of ever turning anything over to me. You know, it wasn't anything. Like, I think here's a thing. That was a better option than what my life was offering at the time.

Right. That's the best way I can put it. Like, yeah, because he can buy you clothes. He can buy you dinner. And he would. He can send you to school. So I'm with, you know, and I'm also learning this cleaning company is literally a cleaning company. Yeah, yeah.

It's legit. We're legit doing carpet cleaning. Right. Did you help him with? that too as like a side job? Oh yeah. I was cleaning carpets and I was getting paid. Gotcha. And I was also

stealing a lot from Caldor of all places where my grandmother had once stole from me. I now pick up the torch and I start running a black market in high school for Walkman's. I'm in the Walkman generation Johnny. Walkman just came

out in 86. Yeah. And if you could get one with an equalizer on it, get out of here, man. Okay, just, you know what I mean? You know what I'm saying? So you're stealing Walkmans and selling them. And cassettes and selling them at school. And I got a nice thing going. Why did you need to steal if you were working and living with a Coke dealer and who had a cleaning company?

I was making money. No, look, I wasn't making, look, he was paying, like, I wasn't getting paid to go on runs with him. I was just hanging out with him. But I was only getting paid by cleaning carpets. Okay, so he wasn't giving you any drug money. No, no. I would get in, like, for counting money, I wouldn't get anything for that. Later in life, I wouldn't count money for free, but then I did.

Yeah, no, no, he, but you know, I wanted more and, and I liked being the man. Yes, yes. 100%. I can relate to that. I can totally relate to that. It gives you an identity. It really did. I was, look, I was the cool kid.

You were a cool kid from selling Walkmans. I got, I got legally emancipated. at 16 years old. Dude, that's all I wanted back then. I took my mother to court and destroyed her. Of course. What are you going to say? I mean...

Was I going to lose? Right. Right. I wasn't saying I was living with a Coke dealer and now you should let me be more responsible. So did you actually get into selling small time in high school? No drugs. Were you smoking pot?

No. Wow. So you didn't touch anything in high school? Not until after high school. Wow. I was a jock, bro. I was a basketball player. I was a starter.

You know, I was a freshman varsity player. Wow. So you were four-year varsity? I would have been, but I got kicked out of that school. And then ended up in military school and ended up in another. Johnny, I was a new kid in school nine out of 12 years moving around. So you were just getting in trouble? Well, that time I got in trouble.

Are you fighting? Like what's the antisocial issue here? No. Well, because of the black market stuff. This is a tech school. Tech schools don't, you know, this isn't, you can get kicked out of tech schools. God, I would have given you a smack in the head if I was your guardian. I want to smack you now.

What, like, what's, okay, none of this makes sense. Yet you didn't touch drugs and you didn't sell drugs. And I grew up around it. I mean, I grew up, but at this time in my life, it is, I'm going back to Scott's house after basketball practice, and there's Coke and money on the table, and I got to count it. Did you want to play in college? Did you have aspirations?

Were you good enough to have, like, gone to, like, a junior college or a D3? No, who's going to say that they don't think they were good enough? Me? I wanted that. So you didn't want to grow up to be like Scott? I didn't aspire to that, but I thought it was really cool. I'm not going to even front on that and act like I didn't. Like I thought somehow he wasn't being, you know, I knew what he was doing and I liked it.

He was a Marine. Ex-Marine. Yeah, I guess. Yeah. So he sounds pretty thorough, though. He sounds like he kept a pretty tight ship around his business. Yeah. I mean, in hindsight, when I know about the business now, he didn't.

Uh-huh. He got too big, too quick. Was he using his own product? Oh, most definitely. Okay. Bring us to your first drug sale. You don't go to college. Okay, I'm out of high school.

Graduated in 1990, I'm out of high school. A friend of my works for a furniture company, trucking company, delivering furniture. And I get teamed up with a driver. I'm the helper slash map reader. Driver's a big Jamaican dude. Kev. This is in Connecticut. Yeah, nickname Smokey.

is what I call them. It's my personal name for him. And I got introduced to weed, like, that day. Yeah. Day number one. Just do you smoke a half an ounce a day driving an unclean freight truck doing 15, 16 stops a day. And they don't take seeds out.

Yeah, those Jamaicans, yeah, smoke a Jamaican bud. Blowing up in your face popping. How do they do? What the fuck is the problem? Well, that weed is such that you could smoke it like a cigarette and still function. I mean, it was probably like 4% THC. Oh, Mexican Bricky. Yeah, yeah.

Compresso. Yeah. You know, we had all the name. You know, Mexican bricky, compressor. Yeah. Commercial, you know, but that's all there was back then. Yeah, it's Bamer. Right.

I mean, this is, this is 92-ish. Right. This is Dr. Dre, the chronic. This is Newpedah. This is Cypress Hill. You know, that's what we're into. Right. No, but that was Goodweed.

That was West Coast weed. The East Coast. Oh, yeah. Tell us about the weed at that time. Oh, no. I'm just talking about the music at the time. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. you know, this at the time.

And the good weed was out here. Weed is starting to become a popular subcultural thing. Yeah. So what was, what was, on the East Coast at that time in the early 90s, what kind of weed classes of weed were there? That's it.

Just the Mexican brickweed? Mexican, what about the Canadian kind bud? I hadn't seen any of that. I'm getting from Jamaicans in the city. Wow. That's what they're getting. Okay.

You know, my friends are paying $60 a quarter. I said that Kevin one day, he brought an out of, work with him. I go, I go, that's a lot of weed. You know, what do you, you know, what does something like that even cost? He goes $60. I said, wait a minute. A whole ounce cost $60. A quarter cost $60, 30 miles down the road where I live.

Right. Boom. Yeah. To tink. All my friends who smoke now are going to get their weed from me. Uh-huh. It happens within the first week of working there. Right.

So we're driving along and he just starts rolling big joints up. You know, between, not driving and rolling, in between stops, you know, we deliver, boom, boom, roll up, being joint smoking. I'd smoke with him because I don't want to be like the white boy loser who won't smoke weed with a guy at work. Yeah, I got stuck with the stiff, you know what I mean? So, you know, I instantly start off smoking like 10 joints a day. And it's completely natural for him. This is, and then they get home and then they sit in their cars in the parking lot in the hood and smoke 10 more joints. listening to the music.

And were those street dealers in Connecticut cities back then, mostly Jamaican? The ones I dealt with were. That's what I can tell you. The ones they dealt with were, I mean, I can't say that every black or brown guy. That makes sense, though,

because this is during the posse era still, the end of the posse era, when, you know, the gangs, the big gangs from the island would come up to the northeast and send their soldiers into the cities and start, you know, retail cell or drugs.

I'm sure that was happening. So I was in the Jamaican section of town. Let me preface by saying that too. So I'm really only going to see that. I mean, you know, cities like here. I mean, Hartford's a small city. So you were in Hartford. Hartford, Connecticut.

Yeah, yeah, that's hard hit in Hartford. I'm on Barber Street and Tower all my Hartford, buddy. You know what I'm talking about. Yeah, that's a, that's an impoverished working class, you know, dilapidated, especially back then. It's been fixed up a little now. Concrete jungle, I mean. But it's, it was hood.

And Kev lived in a project. You know, the big square kind of projects were everything echoes. Yeah. And this dude, I used to come picking up QPs, which was so much weed. Right. A QP was so much weed. When you're 18 years old, four ounces of weed. I dumped it out on my little table and some overflowed.

Yeah. What? Right. So you remember that? When four ounces was, you were like, oh, my God, I'm federal. I was making four times on a quarter pound. I mean, $60 quarters, I'm getting $60 ounces. Right.

So you're picking it up from Kev. You're making, how much money are you making off a quarter pound of wheat in 1992? Well, I mean, a quarter pound of wheat I pay anywhere from $250 to $300, it depended, you know, how many hands are in the way. And I was selling it for $60 a quarter. So, I mean, you're looking at, you know, $60, $1.20, $240, $480, $480 an ounce. And I'm paying for a whole quarter pound, 300. Yeah.

So you're tripling your money. I mean, you're making Coke level margins off a pot, which is unheard of. Yeah. So how does that progress? Yeah. So it just gets bigger. I now suddenly, look, pretty much all of my friends around me smoked.

So instantly, I had an instant market. Right. And anyone that they got their weed from, I took them too. And now I got the guys who bought quarter pounds. You know, I would do an aes in quarters. And then I found the guys that bought ounces in quarter pound. And it progressed that way. And then I'd find, you know, older folks tended to like to buy quarter pounds and up

and then not have to see people for a while. You know, I had some doctors. I had a professor at Boston College just from a friend of a friend. friend who got weed for a guy. You know, I'm a networker. Yeah, you're a good salesman. You're, you seem like you meet people easily. People want to tell me things.

That's my ex-man ability. Yeah, I also know when people are full of shit, that's my other ability. Yeah. It progresses to about a half a pound, you know, within six months. Where does the running come in? Like when you step up from a dealer or a supplier to a traffic? It's probably about four years later. Oh, so you put in your work.

You put in your time. Oh, yeah. Oh, no. I didn't get big time until the, and I got big, big time in a short period of time at the end, but I was slow and steady for many years. Yeah.

And you're picking up, who's your supplier while you're, you know, a street dealer, basically? Well, it was Kev. It was Kev the whole time. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah.

I bought from Kev for a good two years. And then Kev moved away. But, but, but, but, but Kevin and I aren't done yet. Okay. Kevin and I aren't done. So I'm moving up. is Ket, with the money you're making Kev, is he able to quit his furniture delivery job?

No, no, you know, he, no, his mom, you know, his mom wanted him to work, you know. Most people don't know this. Most pot dealers, I would say 95% of pot dealers have second jobs, real legit jobs that are their primary income. Yeah, until they have this business on the side. And until the business supersedes. That's right. And then 2% of that 5% of,000. left over end up making 50 grand a year. And then the top one or two percent become people like

you. So how, yes. So I start getting to the point now where Kev is now becoming a bigger buyer from his guy, from his Jamaican guy, who I never meet. I always meet Kevin. And you know, I'm getting weed, Johnny, in bizarre ways. We're driving down cemetery. you come this way, I come that way, roll your windows down. That's literally happening. I'm going in the projects. Kevin would yell out his window, yo, what you need?

And it echoes, you know, it's like, I'm a white guy. I'm the only white guy around for miles. I'm going to dodge dart. Get out of here. I'm driving a piece of crap. Living lavish. Oh, yeah. So, yeah.

So now his dealer is like, like, hey, Kev, you're buying some more weed, you know? So, you know, let's talk about maybe getting some, he wants to give Kev more. Right. And then Kev now wants to give me more. So it just, it was like a win-win for everybody. I mean, really, Kev just. And you know that never got any pushback on the quality?

No, man. In fact, the word chronic is a 92's thing. I mean, yeah, we know about that. Kev would call the weed the chronic. I would go home and call the chronic to all the white boys and they would go berserk. Right. So it was better because I told them what it was. But it was still Mexican brickweed.

It was whatever. Okay. So when did you start seeing better weed and specifically the KB's kind bud from Canada? Yeah. Canada weed. I see that last. I see California goodweed first. That's the first place I find out.

You know, that's an extremely long time jump from where we are. Okay. I'm dealing in the Mexican brickees. We'll just make, you know, you want to cut it down from 92 to about 2004. Wow. So there was a market up until 2004 exclusively and a huge market. Like how much money were you making in 2004 off of? I was probably pulling.

in 5G a week, 6G profit after re-uping. Not a ton of money. I mean, look, I'm still working. I'm a working guy. But yeah, I'm probably doing 5G a week. You know, I'm probably moving 20, 30 pounds every couple of weeks, maybe three, four weeks. Yeah. You know, it explodes when I start moving into Texas.

I have a friend of a friend who's a driver and his brother's in Texas says I can get cheap weed. And again, Brickies are still happening, but I'm paying in 2004 for Mexican Bricky, I'm paying at my lowest at home, 1,100 a pound. This is Connecticut. We're so far behind.

Yeah. For Bricky, you can throw it at someone and seriously hurt them. Yeah. Seriously hurt them. Right, right, right. Build a Connecticut two-story home with it. You can't. I start going to Texas.

I'm, uh, I mean, I'm now in the car hauler game. Okay. Tell us about that. Tell us about your background in transport. Yeah, transport. I start off as a driver. I'm what they call a four-car driver. I drive a truck that carries four cars. We're super original with our names. And 10 car drivers, too, give us how many cars they haul. Maybe 10. You'd never figure out. And these are private cars, people that want to transport their cars a long way. And so they pay the trucking company.

Yes. Snowbird business, we call it. Okay, gotcha. Winter and Florida, summer in. Right. So these are pretty well off folks. Tons of that. But we're also doing auction cars for just, you know, shipbag dealers.

Right, right. Auto dealers. No, that was accurate. And I start remembering the days of Kev doing some weed pickups and the unclean freight truck and how great that is. Like what a, like you're a working man. Working man gets away with anything. Who messes with a guy humping fucking humping, you know,

couches up three floors of stairs, you know? Right. So Kev would pick up some weed occasionally in the truck. And I thought, I can do that. Right. I can do that. I can get myself loads to New York City. And, you know, Kev had turned me on to a connect in New York City that worked like three times.

And then it just got so scary that I just was like, nope. Who was that connect? So this was Kendrick. Kendrick was a nobody, but he knew somebody. And Kev knew him. So I could never meet without Kendrick Because Kendrick, you know, wouldn't get his And Kendrick was a flake

But Kendrick knew a guy with weed I never met the guy with weed But Kendrick always hooked me up Took good care of me. I was paying about $200 a quarter pound now At this point. And I'm buying like a pound at a time Which again was...

That's a whole other level. Seemingly so much. But I was a car hauler. I would get jobs to go down there. Right. And you know, I would deliver And I would have meetups. Hey, let's meet up here, meet up there. You know, I'm a truck.

You know, it's got to be truck friendly. You know, and there was problems. Oh, yeah. truck something on here all the time. No, they don't. So that was going great. I did that three times. I bought a pound each.

At least quadrupled my money on those. Right. And again, your market is like suburban retail ounce, quarter pound drug dealers in Hartford. Older. Yeah. Well, 30 miles outside of Hartford. You can't make money selling wheat in Hartford because you're getting so cheap. Literally 30 miles outside of Hartford, weed is four times as expensive.

You're in the sticks. in the sticks. Yeah. There's a lot of money in the sticks. And people want to deal with a guy like me in the sticks. They don't want to go to Harper to do what I did. Right. They're not do, you know, I mean, we were involved in a drive-by.

I mean, we've had. When you were buying weed? When I was in Kev's, my stepbrother and I went to go buy weed there after work one day. And this car comes screaming in the parking lot, and we're in the car smoking a blunt. Come screaming in the parking lot. It's our buddy Omar, and he's screaming something about people chasing him. And we're like, what? Now, Kevin, the Jamaican was a big guy.

He was about 6-6-3-50. Wow. Big dude, okay? A teddy bear. But you don't know that. So he, we get out of the car. We're like, who's chasing you, Omar? We get up and we're going to walk.

You know, we're tough. We're going to take care of this. We'll mess with our friends. We start walking up. Car slows down. We see a gun come out. And let me tell you what, man. Superman's got nothing on the stuff I did.

I mean, my step-brother drove an old. crappy Chevy Camaro and I don't know man how I dove through that window and got in that car they never fired I'm not trying to play like they fired but they pointed it right at us and they didn't have to fire to get me to run I tell you that but sure yeah those were some things man and you know I learned a lot about the you know ghetto life from Kev of course so did you have a piece on you do you ever carry a piece when you went to I have owned a gun before I I bought a hot gun yeah um just for fun my friends and I would drive around like Miami Vice and pull up with his 9-mill and my 357 shootout

the speed limit 30 signs in the woods. Yeah, a real hillbilly shit. Oh, absolutely. I mean, we'd literally be like, okay, this is embarrassing. But we would literally, my buddy had a 280Z with T-tops. And we would drive around with our guns. And we would like hit the e-break and be like, and then get out, do, do, do, do it, do. Defing ourselves in each year.

Oh, my God. We're too stupid to know he don't stand on the side. Oh, yeah, we're shooting signs. and we're shooting at them. It was a little at a night. It was insane. Yeah. Connecticut.

That is, you guys are Northern Hicks. Boston Hollow. Let me tell you something. I'm even crazier. No, it ended up being really close to a specific agent that I know his house. Asian?

Agent. Oh, like a D.EA agent. Wow. I would learn this later. And I would hear stories of him telling stories of these things. Wow. Okay. So it sounds like now, you know,

creeping up on the late 90s, You're a guy, young man making good money, but you're not rich. You've got a good side hustle and your legit job is driving for this car hauling company. Correct. I'm a driver. I move up in the biz. I become dispatcher. Right.

Okay. So now perhaps you can imagine a scenario in which I'm no longer driving a truck to New York to get weed. I may have a driver doing those things for me now. Right. I've got to recruit this driver. Right. Right. You know, those things would happen probably a dozen times.

Okay. I had a couple black drivers that loved doing New York City work. They loved the city because they knew it. So they didn't mind taking a tractor trailer into the city. Most tractor trailer into New York City? Yes. Wow. Yeah.

When we were car haulers, you know, I'm now in control of all the car haulers, two cars, four cars, six cars, ten cars. Ten cars. The ten cars are the stretches. Wow. So you would actually be in charge. you would hire drivers as a dispatcher to go pick up Bud in New York City. Yes, I would pay them money to, hey, when you're down picking up at MPG, which is a lot that ships cars, the Audi's at the time, Audi's and Volkswagen were coming into the Newark Port,

and we had the contract to bring them out to the said dealerships right in my area. Oh, I see. So it was super easy to throw a duffel bag or a little backpack into a trunk of one of the 10 cars. So how did that, how did you reach scale? So now this is all building to something. Yeah, Houston. Okay. Houston.

Houston. Houston. Um, I follow up the lead from one of my drivers. Um, my, my, my, my, my, my, my first driver I ever hired who we became tight. And, um, his brother introduced me to, I'm in North Houston, by the way. Ghetto. This is like Hartford, but times 10. Mm.

My driver's brother doesn't, not in the wee game. But his neighbor, Johnny is, Goldtooth Johnny. So I meet Johnny. I pull into the place for us. It was great. All the kids are playing sounds, man, there's people talking. I pulled in and my rental Mustang and get out of the car

and a place goes like silent because I'm a narc. I mean, I'm a clean cut white guy. I'm a narc. Everybody shut up and Clarence comes out. Hey, Richie. And everyone's like, oh, okay. All right, cool. And they go, took a little time to get used to that.

But gold tooth Johnny, man. He knows Mexican. So I'm being tantalized with $600 pounds of Mexican bricky. And when you were paying in Connecticut now, 11. 11 is the cheapest I ever got in Connecticut for weight. You just cut out two people right there. Two people. All I had to do is travel 1,734 miles to get it.

Wow. Exactly. And how much cash do you have now to re-up? Because now you got to connect, but now you need buy money. Well, that, I mean, that type of discount, man. And my first purchase was 60 pounds. Wow. I'm in Houston.

I'm being driven around to the Mexicans. The first place we go to is a cartel house. We pull in, immediately behind me, a car pulls in and blocks us in. And I go in, and I've got, I'm wanting to buy 60 pounds. I've probably got 40 plus thousand on me in my front pocket. And they, they. don't want to bring the weed out to me to see. They say, I have to come in the house.

So I don't really want to go in the house. Like, just bring it out and show it to me. I'll give you the money right here. But no. So I go in, go through Johnny and I. And go through Johnny's packing. I don't know it. I'm glad I didn't know it, but I don't know it.

I'm in the kitchen. There's a big block of 10 pounds on the counter, and I'm like, oh, sweet. I break it open and it's loaded with seeds. Loaded. and I can't. Can't move that? Yeah.

So I'm in their house telling them this is not, I can't do this. I think I literally said something like, I'll get like beat up if I bring this home. I'll try to be funny. You know, I'm a talker. I'm a communicator. And this is what saves my life or saved me from getting robbed. So the mood changes when I'm not buying the weed. Everybody's smiling when I walk in the door.

And then when I say, no, the frowns start showing up. And there's probably 10 men. There's six-ish women in a living room that I can see through a cutout in the wall. We're in the kitchen. And you're in the ghetto. Oh, yeah. North Houston. Yeah.

Mexican ghetto. And I'm blocked in and I'm here. I'm here. This is happening. And things aren't going well now. I'm not taking it. And I'm like, look, man, I want to come back every month. Like, I want to let them know, hey.

Don't rob me now. I'm going to come back every month and we're going to make a lot of money. Like this is what I'm going to, this is what I do. One guy brushes up against me and I feel him rub my cash in my pocket. And another guy goes over to the girls and tells them to get out. That's when I knew. I'm picturing Ethan Hawk and training day right now. Well, get that bathtub clean.

Okay. I know what he was talking about. And when I saw that, it gave me chills because. They literally did that. And the women got up and went. And now I'm, hey guys, you know, look, here's all you got to do. Take this back to the guy and say, got any other stuff? And then bring that.

I'll be back in an hour. Call me. No problem. And I start walking out the door backwards because I'm not going to turn my back. You know, I'm not. And I remember when I got out that door. Because, you know, silence is. scary and they weren't talking are these chicanos or mexicans like they they're everybody speaking

spanish they're they're little brown are they speaking spanish yes okay one of them the first guy i encounter appears to speak some english but as soon as i say i'm not taking it it gets quiet and it gets little you know tense so i'm walking out the door and i remember specifically just thinking where could i run from here like but they let me out and I'm walking back to the car. And it's like that's, you know, it's like that old saying, you know, it was like 10 feet, felt like a mile.

We get in the car, gets in that pickup truck behind me, unblocks us, and we pull out of there. My heart's racing a mile a minute. My legs are like numb. You know, I don't even know how I'm walking, really, to get to the car because, so we get no weed and I'm flustered.

I'm like, we got to, do something else. Okay, I got another Mexican house we can go to. I'm like, nah, man, no, no, no. We got to figure something out. So what I need weed. Can't go home without weed. Indeed, no.

We drive around. And this is when it gets, this is when the ramping up happens. I meet Shorty. Also a Mexican guy? Nope. Black guy. Hmm.

But he's pretty tight with the Mexicans. He's got a good gig. He gets from a guy who gets over the border. And he only deals in tons, I'm told. Right. And dude, I'm not aware of tons of weed. I believe it. I'm sure it exists somewhere, but I hadn't seen a ton of weed.

That's 2,000 pounds. It's daily. We show up. Shorty doesn't want to meet me in person. They're scared. I'm a white guy. Johnny goes in. Shorty does come out at the end when we've already packed everything up and says,

hey, come back. Let's do this again. So I'm kind of feeling pretty good about that, you know? So I got my 60 pound now. Pack it up in the truck. Get the hell out of there, man. And you were able to get that from 600? Yeah, the shorty stuff was 600, which was actually, like I said, as I found out later, my next time in Houston.

Okay. So were you able to cut out Goldtooth Johnny and deal directly with Shorty? And then did you ever? And how I did that? And did you ever, were you ever able to cut out Shorty and deal directly with the Mexicans? No. Okay. So you never actually.

I didn't want to get cut out with Shorty. Shorty is important to me later. Okay, so great. So how do we get 60 joints from Houston all the way up to Connecticut? Yeah, I mean, car hauling. So my driver at this point is no longer working for United Road, which is the company I was working. Oh, wow. Shout out United Road.

Hello, wow, United Road. They're so big around here, too. Hello, everybody. Love United Road. They afforded me many great things. And so you're dispatching for United Road. Yes, but my driver isn't working for them. He just picked up a job with some car hauler company out of Houston.

Okay. So he's doing runs pretty much from he and my driver lived in Maine. Let's just call it out like that. Okay, but how did you, did you send him specifically? Is this a guy you knew? Yes, he used to work for me. Okay. He was one of my runners when he used to work for my company.

Okay. Now he's quit that company because he got fired. I didn't fire him. One of my other managers fired. Okay. So I would coordinate with him. Hey, when you're going back to Houston. Because when you go back to Houston, I need you to take 36, 40 grand down.

I think it was actually 40 grand. Okay. I had to have some spending cash. I remember that. I need you to take 40 grand down to Houston. I'll fly down there. I'll meet you. I'm going to go meet your brother and we're going to do the thing and whatever.

He goes down there with the money. I fly down and pick up go to Johnny. And he started taking me around to Mexicans to buy from. Oh, so he took you to his connect. Yeah. Wow. And let me explain a little bit about the Mexican black relationship in Houston at the time.

Mexicans don't like to sell weight to blacks for cheap. If you're a black man, you want to buy 10 pounds, you're going to pay three times what I'm going to pay. Yeah. So I could literally buy weed that Johnny couldn't. It's crazy. And Johnny's introducing me. But Johnny's making 200, I find out, on these pounds.

So they're really 400. Just as like a referral fee. Referral fee, which I'm glad to pay. 600 is still a home run from 11. Right. So, yeah, my driver, Steve, is working. in Houston. So he's now reloading. He's getting re-dispatch.

Okay. So how do you take, I'm sorry, cut you off? No. How do you fit 60 pounds in, like how many, how many cars are you taking on that, on the, the hauler? Well, I mean, 10. 10 cars. Yeah, I mean, 60 pounds in bricks are only like three bricks about this big. A 20-pound brick is like.

Right. So we've talked about this before. We've, we've talked about this as one of the, probably the most surefire ways to move drugs across the country is in car hauler. Private cars. 100%. Yes. You've got the bill.

I did that so much. And if you get pulled over, your driver gets pulled over. So much. He's just an employee. There's so much, right? Two levels. Two levels. These are my cars.

These private individuals registered their cars. They said there was nothing illegal in them. Like, give us that. And then the plausible deniability of the owner of the actual car. When you go after them, hey, I didn't put that in my car or someone must have done it. Right. There's like three levels. Right.

And then there's me. That's a whole other level. That's right. And then there's me who doesn't exist. So it's got to go from the private owner of the car to the owner of the company to the driver all the way to get to you. No way it's going to happen. There's no way that's happening. So, I mean, unless my driver talks.

Everybody snitches. But who talks? Nobody snitches. No, no. In this game, there's no snitches. No. Zero. So did you, okay, so how many, so your driver decides how many, so many brids.

go in each car? Well, I mean, I'm pretty much, you know, it doesn't matter which car. I mean, it's just a big duffel bag. Do you put them all in one car? One big giant duffel bag. I have a hockey bag. Got it. Hockey bag can fit like a human body in it.

Right. You're familiar with a hockey bag. They're huge. A Mexican brick pounds look like kilos. They came in 20 pound bricks. Oh, okay. So I had three 20 pound bricks. Okay.

Wow. You know, they were surprised at about, you know, that's all. You know, stacked on top of each other. put that big around, pretty square. And this is nice stuff. You know, this isn't bad. Not really seedy, pretty fluffy. I'm happy with the first purchase.

I'm going to kill it. Yeah. So, yeah, we load it up into whatever random car, but I always want it on the head rack. As high up in the hardest place to get to is the head rack car. You're climbing fucking ladders or you're fucking scooting fucking little catwalks to get to it. And also, dogs don't smell up very well. There's a tip for everybody.

dog smell out and down. Oh, wow. Fucking boom. So you get it on the highest rack, pushed in, right? You don't want to have it be the car at the very end. The last one that could be inspected. Right.

You know, you're going to sift through nine cars before you get to that one. Yeah. So if you're going to get me, you have to know. You have to know. Exactly. You have to know.

Did you ever have any problems on the highway? Never. Wow. So the other backstory is all these trucks that I'm dispassing legit. Just legit. Yeah. Hey, Johnny, go pick up those cars and bring in Kansas City. I'm not getting a lot of stories about truckers getting pulled over and searched.

In fact, I can't remember one. And I dispatch hundreds of trucks. At this point, that little company I worked for, we became corporate. We became, you know, as we said before, United Road was huge. We were the largest transportation company in the auto industry for a while. And then they split in two and became even bigger. Yeah. So you had really looked at the market.

I could see. These guys aren't getting pulled over. You looked at the probabilities. It's legit freight, bro. That's the answer. Yeah. You got legit freight and paperwork. You're done. Yeah. Like, you're breezing through that way scale. Okay. So how much you have to pay your driver? This is the first run. 60 bricks. I gave him five grand. Give him five grand. Okay. He was as happy as hell. So then what is your final price then? You got the bricks back in Connecticut.

How much has a pound cost you to get up all the way up to Connecticut? Yeah. So, I mean, it was 36,000 to buy them. I gave him five. It was 31,000. left, but I'm selling the, you know, 500 and change that I've now, a 600 and change that I've now invested in it with paying him. You know, I mean, I'm still four timesing my money. Right. And now, I mean, I'm getting, by the way, I'm getting 16 and this weed is really good. Some people I can get even 18. So I'm getting 1,600 at the time for the 600 dollar pounds out of Houston. Wow. Okay. So now does your clientele explode because you've got the wholesale price now? Are you able to then? I just brought 60 pounds in for the first time.

Right. Like it took me 10 trips to get 60 pounds with Kev. Right. Right. 10, 15 trips. Yeah. I was never buying pounds from Kev. A quarter pounds. How long does it take you to get rid of the 60 pounds? I think they were gone in less than 30 days. Okay. Yeah. Now, I put some out on consignment. Look, you know, when you get that kind of weight and your guys are used to a quarter pound or a pound,

and then you dump them two pounds on them, I say, pay me for the pound. And then take the second one for no money down. I'll see you in a couple weeks. Yeah. And that worked great. I mean, look, all these people, I don't have any strangers. I'm not soliciting people. I don't get that kind of business.

Everybody that I sell to, I either got weed from and smoked myself after the Kev days. You know, I mean, not every single joint ever smoke came from Kev. Of course, I bought weed from other places and people. That's how I would meet people to take over. Yeah. So were you able now? with this because now you're the man there's nobody higher than you unless a Mexican takes it up himself are you able to consolidate your list of workers like are you able to weed people out that really

aren't very good earners and say okay I'm gonna just take four of my best guys drop all the work on them let them build up their bank rules and now you know I got less transactions man you know if we were talking and hanging out back then you you might have convinced me to to do things that way. But I was hands-on. Yeah. And I liked being hands-on. You know, what about the heat?

I mean, look, I'm from a rural area, man. I grew up there my whole life. Me driving down the streets in my neighborhood, there's no worries, not to mention I'm a white guy. Who's pulling me over? What am I doing wrong? I got registered cars. I've got clean record. You know, I never really got caught for any of the burglary stuff.

and the thievery stuff. And they never got caught for that legit, other than my school. And they didn't turn me in. They just kicked me out. So I don't have a police record. Yeah. So things are,

things are clocking now. So you got, you move 60 pounds. I still have small clientele and big. Oh, wow. I'm still keeping the small guys because they're my friends.

They're my friends. You're busy now. My friends aren't selling weed for me. My friends are consuming it. Right. The people I took from them, the suppliers that either sold me weed

or sold them weed, they're the one selling from me. My friend didn't join me on this. None of my friends joined me. You know what I would do back then? If I had, once I moved up to supplying the wholesalers when I was at that level, if my friends needed weed to smoke, I would refer them to my workers. Like I put, I tried to, I tried to give them as much business as I could.

Yeah. So I got to take a step back. That makes sense, but I'm super social. Yeah. And, you know, I'm also, Johnny, I'm an only child. Friendships to me are a little bit different. Are you an only child? No.

Okay. You have no fucking idea. No, I don't. Because you have someone you can call that. I have loved in my life. So, I'm sorry. So I'm an only child and friendship is important.

You know, I told me I got emancipated. I didn't have to stay in high school. I wrote my own sick notes. I won't be in today. Yeah. But I didn't do that. I didn't write my own sick notes and say I won't be in today. But I could.

My friends are in school. Right. Of course. What am I going to have? hang out and watch, you know, wheel of fortune or whatever it's on at noon in the middle of a day, you know? Totally. Okay, so do you keep the job? You move these 60 pounds. Nothing really changed for me, but I'm getting a shitload of cash. How does this become, you know, four times as big as it is now? Yeah, shorthy. Because now you're on. Now you're federal. 60 pounds

across state lines. Yeah, and I've got awesome transport. So why, why not do it as often as possible? Of course. Let's hit the nail. while it's hot, right? And you know what I mean? Strike the iron when it's hot. Make hay while the sunshides. Boom. So, yeah.

So next time I go to Houston, I don't tell Shorty. I don't tell my buddy's brother. I don't even tell my buddy I go. I just fly in on the silent rent the car and I'm a numbers guy. I'm an attention to details guy. So of course I memorize Shorty's address. And I just cold call him. showed up, knocked on his door.

Shorty was like, looked like Tupac and his buddy looked like Ice Cube. So I always refer to them as Tupac and Ice Cube. But Ice Cube shows up at the door with a shotgun answering the door. And I'm like, hey, it's me. Remember? Like Shorty, you know, I'm a friend of his. He told me to come back. Shorty comes around.

Oh, man, Art Rye, so glad to see you. And I'm like, ha. Great. So now the first thing I want to get out of the way with Shorty is, hey, man, I jumped over to your two people that you know. Are you cool with that? Of course he was. But, you know, I wanted to be respectful. You know, I understand I'm a white guy and I just jumped over two black guys to get to him.

Now, maybe you might not think of that. Why do you care? Why does that matter? But, you know, it does matter. That can look, that can seem dickish, you know, to have cut them out that way, just to buy them. past them. Well, that's why, that's why you never let, if you want to stay in deals moving forward, you never let the buyer, which is you meet the connect, which is Shorty. But here's the thing, right? The people I'm dealing with aren't exactly class A citizen. So Shorty won't trust them to take his

pounds and sell them to me so that I don't meet him. Of course. That's why when you have the bank roll, there's nothing you can do. Shorty would, wants the guy with the money. Shorty wants the bank roll guy. Exactly. Exactly. The clean guy who comes in, pays cash. is gone in 45, 50 minutes. Right, right. So how much did you pick up the second trip? Like 80 pounds. We ramped it up a little bit.

Now I'm getting them for 400. I just cut Johnny and Clarence out at 100 bucks a pop. Money in the bank. So you're picking up 80 pounds for like 40, four times eight. Four times eight is $28,000. $28,000. Wow, $32,000 gets you 80 pounds of weed. So I'm paying even less for more.

Wow. And then what do you turn that over? I'm still getting strong 16s, man. Absolutely. And the quality is good. So off of like a $35,000 investment, let's say, for the transport fee, how much do you turn that into? I mean, 100,000? Easily.

Wow. Easily. In a month. And, you know, some of that is re-up money. Yeah. You know, I sit and I watch a lot of these guys talk and, you know, I hear a question like, you know, how much were you worth at the time and how much were you making? and that's a hard really, you know, I mean, you're going to get estimates. Yeah. Because there comes a point in time when you're making money on top of money, on top of money.

And, you know, there's no like bank account you're checking, you know, there's no. And how are you, well, depends. A lot of people kept a lot of thorough notes, as we know, you know. Yeah. But how I kept debt notes? How did you start? Because when you, when you have that kind of weight now, how did you start expanding on the distribution end? Yeah. So I got, so I'm really ramping up.

Again, throughout this whole process back home, I'm networking. You know, I'm, that never stopped throughout the entire story. So if I don't say the word networking from the rest of the, just assume it's been going on. Yeah. Because this is what it is. You let people know we're on now. Oh, yeah.

And, and again, I'm now getting to that next level. Like, you know, I took my buddy's dealer. Now I'm taking the guy he used to get from. Right. And then I get from the guy he used to get from. I mean, I'm just working my way up the ladder. And I'm getting the introductions from people that I've known for years. They're safe.

Yeah. You know, so. So do you have dealers buying from you that are coming out of town, coming from out of town and picking up and going back to their markets? Yeah. Yeah. Still within Connecticut, though, mostly. I mean, I had a couple, look, Connecticut, Mass, Rhode Island.

Get through a stone and hit anyone from anywhere. The Northeast. New England. I'm in the eastern corner. I'm 15 minutes from Mass. I'm 30 minutes from Rhode Island. Right. So, yeah, there's a few out of towners.

That professor I had was in Boston, Boston College professor. And was he moving work for you? Was he actually picking up weight? No, he was a quarter pound. Only bought a quarter pounds. You were still selling small bags, even off of 80 pounds? I was still selling A's to my friends. Jesus.

So you just wanted all the money, Rich. But again, these are my friends. I wasn't selling A's. I wasn't, you know, my dealer, my top guys weren't buying A's from me. But my buddy, my best friends from high school. So you had a client list longer than my... It was long. Mother's dick.

It was, I had a phone that you had to scroll. Wow. Wow. Wow. So you always had money out and coming in. Yeah, always had money out, man.

Okay. Again, that's another hard task when you have to talk about the kind of money you make. Because, you know, the money that's out there, you always have money out there. There's not a dealer in the world that says he's got zero money owed to him.

Okay. So how does it, how do we level up? California. Okay. I mean, California is happening, you know, networking. What does that mean? What does that mean? Well, networking is going on. I'm hearing of a guy. Hey, there's this supposedly some,

uh, uh, you know, guy that gets the weed from Cali, you know, this is what he's getting. These are the prices. So I'm like, hmm, I have a friend in Cali, the very friend that dropped me off here today. Um, I said, hey man, who do you know? You're in California. You're surrounded by Mexicans. Who do you know? Again, we're still talking Mexican bricky. A few weeks later, I get a phone call back. And he says, hey, I got a guy. Come on out. I come on out and I meet another Mexican out here now.

In L.A. California. Yeah, a little town called Paramount. Yeah. He's not there anymore. So I don't mind saying. Close to here. Yep.

And this is one of the most epic car hauler experiences. So I plan a trip. But I'm going to get money out here. You know, I've got to truck the money out. fly in this trip. So I have now infiltrated the, I'm no longer with United Road. Okay. We separate in 2006. I infiltrate the trucking company that my driver, I told you quit my place and went to work for a Houston company. Okay. What does that mean infiltrate? I get them to hire me. Okay. I've become an employee to, to dispatch their trucks for my purposes. I see. So my driver's working for. My driver says, hey, I know a really good dispatch.

You guys have to check him out. He's a hot shot up in Connecticut. He can dispatch from Connecticut. He only have to be here. I fly to Houston, meet the guy, set the deal up. I blow him away. I save his IFTA license. He didn't report for like fucking three years.

I fudged it and faked it for three years. Got him out. And you've got a good resume. Oh, yeah. Dude, I'm the man. Spotless record. And you're moving hundreds of pounds a month. Yeah.

I'm the transporter. Yeah. You're rich the transporter. And I'm the transporter in legit freight. Yeah. In the car hauling, I am somebody. Was somebody. but at that time I am somebody. I mean, I've been paid to go on interviews.

How do you get the re-up money, the cash? Say you're buying 100 pounds at $400 a piece. It's $40,000. How do you get $40,000 in cash? Not a bunch of cash, but too much to take on a plane. How do you get it from Connecticut to the buyer? From the guy I'm buying from. The seller. The seller. Of trucks. Trucks. Okay, but that's what I mean, which truck? The car haulers. Okay, so you take it...

So I'm booking freight. So you take an empty car hauler. Yeah, I'm in charge of an empty car hauler. My job is to legit load this car hauler with freight. Right. My friend is a driver. Company doesn't know Steve is my friend. Right.

Steve refers me. I know a guy, but certainly we're not friends. I know him. I get the job. Steve is my friend. Okay. I'm now booking cars in the East Coast to have to go to California. It's their final destination.

And I'm in an enclosed car hauler. We're only hauling high end. Right. You know, we're picking up all on East Coast, New York, Bentley, picking up Jaguars, Corvettes. Okay. So your driver, your friend, you will... I'm dispatching him. You will dispatch him all over the Eastern Seaboard to pick up luxury cars and send

them to Cali. And then he'll meet me. But he's got the money. The money the whole time. Yep. I have, I have like a fire safe. Yeah. So yeah.

I mean, the freight's going to. You know, money didn't even have to go in the cars. I mean, you could, all the firebox is that big. You put it under the bed. Again, if your paperwork's right, your logbook's right. Mm-hmm. You know, we knew when the time the truck leaving Connecticut, 6 a.m. You must leave my area at 6 a.m.

Because when you leave at 6 a.m., you miss way scales. You only have to cross two. Denver, which is a 24-hour. And Utah, which is 24-hour. You have to hit those two. Right. But I can drive across the country and not hit one till Denver. So you as a dispatcher know where the truck stop way stations are.

We have apps for it. How do you get around that? How do you get around that if you've got an extra 100 pounds on your hall, right? That won't put you overweight if that's what you're getting at. That won't put you overweight. What is the what triggers like a red flag, like a secondary search? If you pay for it's not right. And there's a problem with the driver.

Well, like Bill of ladings. Where did you pick up these comments? Where are they going? Right. There must be. Bill of lading is you have to carry it as a driver. It's a requirement. It's not an option.

Yeah. Yeah. Gotcha. So you have to show this. And when you show this and everything checks out and your driver's medical car is correct, his license isn't suspended. Yeah. He's got no violations. His logbook is right?

It's just like, not overweight. Yeah. What's a problem? Right. Exactly. Okay. So this is almost full proof. So tell us about Cali.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. man. I mean, so I meet up with my Mexican Connect out here, and I'm getting 60 pounds, starting off small because I don't, first time. And it shows up in 20 pound increments over the course of like five hours. And you're just waiting there?

Yeah. Now, look, apparently the cartel will never put a full load in a car. I'm sure you've heard this. You have to have heard this. I mean, they don't like to deliver full loads. one shot. They'll send three cars with 20 pounds. If you buy them 60 pounds, they'll send three cars with 20. And they'll come at various times. They won't be in a row.

It's the same as having them all in the same car. Right. Right. So that's my first lesson in, okay, this is how they operate. Because in Houston, I put it in order. It would be there. Right. So now we've got to get back to the East Coast. So we finished the deliveries in the cars that we had on, San Francisco and so on and so forth. And then I get a load, a straight load, a land rovers out of Riverside, California, go into,

Rhode Island. Perfect. 30 minutes from my house. Perfect. Unbelievable. Yeah. 60 pounds get loaded into the Land Rover on the head rack boom coming home. Nice.

And I've now set up my Mexican guy out here. So tell us about, so that becomes the main connect is the Mexican cartel from L.A. Yeah, but I don't forget about Shorty. Mm-hmm. I don't purchase Mexican Bricky from him anymore, but I eventually get into some trading later when the good weed comes in. Okay. Tell us about the good weed.

tell us about the money you know now to really get into good weed we got to kind of start getting into some of the Canadian stuff okay tell us about

dealing with the Canadians so you know my clientele is enormous one of my distributors is Greek he knows a Greek from Montreal

he says you got to meet this guy I'm house sitting at my neighbor's house next week let's try and set something up so

comes up next week come on over. I get there and there sits Nikki. I meet Nikki for the first time. Nicky's got 10 pounds of Kush, but only it's not cush and it's not good. Because I'm an expert, man. I'm a weed guy, man. I'm into my weed, right? I know what good weed is. I'm just not moving it yet because it's too damn expensive around East Coast. There ain't no money making. There ain't no money making there. So there was no market for the really high end stuff, even in 2006. And my British people were pushing back on New East Coast. And my East Coast. people were pushing back on new weed.

They wanted the same old, same old as safe is what we've been used to. Right, right. And my clientele was older than me. You know, I tended to hang out of people 15 to more years older than me. They were my people. So, um, Nick, I, I meet Nikki and we're talking and he's trying to push these pounds on me. I don't want them. But he keeps telling me you're not leaving here without them.

And I'm like, okay, he comes down so low on the price that I have to take them. Yeah. And he doesn't want them. money right away. And he says, hey, I got this chick in California. We should maybe talk again about something going on in California. I know a girl who's hooked up. Now, all I know from him, he's from Montreal. Oh, I know. Greek from Montreal. So I sell his weed. Now I got his money. And we exchange numbers. Now we're in contact. And my other Greek buddy, he's not in the middle. He makes an introduction. He understands how it goes. He's a distributor. He ain't looking to make 100, you know,

Yeah. So now Nikki and I talk. I got the money for him. I show up. And I, you know, I got it right. Right. It's correct. It's when I said it was going to be probably sooner.

And he goes, let's go to California. And I'm like, okay. He knows I have trucking. Obviously, my Greek buddy told him about me. Right. You know, he's not meeting me just in a random, it's not a random, you know. Right. These two probably conspired to, hey, man, let me talk to this guy.

He's got transport. So, yeah, I got transport. And he was interested in getting his money out to Cali. And in kind of payment for that, he would bring me along to meet his connect. Who is his connect? Athena. She lives in California. She knows everybody.

But he also knows a guy from Long Island who now lives in California. And he knows guys too. But he's talking to me about Athena. I take, I think I took 120,000. of my money and he probably took 60 or eight. He definitely took less than me. And I package it up, get it shipped, book another load of cars,

money's going out, a couple days later, I fly, we fly separately. He shows up a day before me. He's at Athena's house. I land, gives me directions I go.

So we go in, we start planning. Hey, so what are we doing? I got transport. You got the weed. Let's start getting it going. She hooks us up.

So she hooks us up with OG indoor, which is the God. Right. The God. we're still paying in L.A. in 19, or I mean in 2000 and change, 2,600 for indoor pounds. Right. And that's the best price. That's a wholesale price. And you can't buy 50 or 100 pounds of OG. No, you get like 10. And you got to see like three guys to get 10. Right. Right. And you got to see three. Out of those three guys, two of them are shady. That's right. Exactly. And that's how the market was. There was no in between. It was either Mexican brickweed for 400 bucks or the. the highest quality indoor fire looks like a different thing.

Doesn't even look like this plant from Mexico. And that was like it's 3,000 a pound wholesale. Yes. Retail would go for 6,000. Yeah. So you picked up from her. Yeah, we ended up with 15 pounds in total of that. But then now we go to meet the New York Connect, Ronnie.

Ronnie is Nikki's friend who lives out here now. So we're going to go up there and we're looking to buy 80 pounds. We have enough money by 80 pounds. We're hearing we can get $1,400 pounds of Northern California shit delivered to Simi Valley. Wow. One hour and a half, two hour ride from Tongaanga, if I had, I'm not mistaken somewhere around there. We get right off the highway, man. We meet at a plaza with a chili's in it, a couple of Mexican restaurants.

And the deal was, no one takes my money and it leaves my site. I need money and product in the same room. Are you clear? Three days earlier. Five days earlier. Are you clear? Oh, yeah. Are you clear?

Oh, yeah. So we get there and he wasn't so clear. It was, I need to take your $140,000, whatever the hell it was, $140,000 down the street for a little while. And then I'll come back. I look at Nick and I say, nope. Not doing it. Ronnie goes, whoa. And, you know, you can see his face because he stands and makes.

a lot of money on this. And I'm watching this cocktail of like confusion go on in his face where he's just like, what do I do? I can't let this blow up. So he starts off, how about my license, man? I'll give you my license. Your license. Yeah, it's a tough thing. Your license for $140,000. Your license. Yeah, I'm going to really be able to get you with this. He finally takes Nick aside, has a little conversation with him, and Ronnie drives off. And Nick tells me he's going to get his five-year-old daughter. He's going to go bring her here for us to hold on to so that he knows he's serious and he's not so that we know he's not going to rip him off. And I remember looking, and we're in a Chili's parking lot, man, I, you know, I rented a Caddy DeVille if it wasn't

creepy enough. I got a five-year-old in my back seat. I got to like play like hide and seek with and like games on my phone. I'm trying to make her so comfortable and she's like, where's my daddy? And, you know, Nick is sitting there like, this is, He's just like, rolling through his phone. Yeah. You know, I'm trying to make this poor girl just like, I'm wondering to feel so. I have, I have kids. Yeah.

I have a child. Right. Are you married with a kid at this point? Yeah, yeah. I've been married. Yeah. I mean, yeah, I met my wife out of high school. So we've been together this whole time.

And your wife knows about what's going on? Yeah. I mean, she sees it. She finds stacks of cash in the house. Well, she loves that. Yeah. She loves, you know, how much money can I spend today, you know. She loves that.

Right, right. Of course. Who doesn't? So, and where are you, what are you doing about with the money? Like, how are you keeping, on your end, in Connecticut, how are you keeping yourself safe? Do you have stash houses where you keep the product? Do you have? I'm going to get there in about two weeks from the story right here.

Okay. It's going to explode from here. And I'm in stratosphere and I don't even, I'm so busy now. How many pounds a month are you moving? On an average month. Right now, I'm buying 100 pounds anywhere I go. Right. I'm buying 100.

Like 100 is the start off point. Yeah. You know, uh, Nicky's in it too. So if I'm buying 100, he might be getting 30, 40. Right. So you might be hauling 150, maybe 200 pounds. Oh yeah, but we got the car hauler gig, man. This is, this is no, this is no problem.

So how many runs are you doing a month? How many times are you making a load like this? At this point, probably twice. Not, not probably. I was out there again in two weeks. After this one, you know, the kid came back with the weed. We gave him his daughter back. Everything was great.

High five. And next time the meeting was better. The guy who didn't want to meet us said come to our house. So every time after that got easier. Yeah. Garage meat. Here's the product. And so now you're Cali Connect.

You've got your Cali Connect. It's Mexican weed, but it's better quality? Or what is the difference? Well, the, the, the. Oh, you're buying Northern California. Yeah. The Ronnie stuff is great. We're talking Blue Dore.

We're talking shipwreck back in the day. We're talking chem dog. Right. So this is like this is the shit that I was moving. This is the first time. This is like outdoor. Yeah. Tally weed, but looks like indoor.

It's really high quality. You're getting it for cheap. People back home have not even seen it. No. And they think it's indoor. Like I remember I used to send bricks. Exactly. I used to send bricks of outdoor that I would buy.

And I would just call it. Oh yeah. This is some greenhouse. Greenhouse. This is some greenhouse stuff. Now it's light depth. I got some light debt. Exactly. And they would lose their minds on the East Coast because this was the first time they were getting introduced to West Coast, Cali, fire weed.

This, I told you I was slowed and steady for a lot of years. Yeah. This is where that becomes, that's history. Okay. All right. Great. This is nut job. Money just, I couldn't even tell you how much I made.

Don't even ask me. So off of all. You can ask me, I'll guess, but I probably can't really tell you. Okay. So let's just do the math. Yeah. Say a hundred pound run. You paid.

I'm paying $1,400. Yeah, 14. I get it down to 12 eventually. We're down, we're down to 12. And I'm getting it delivered to Simi Valley. Yeah. We're using Tunga as a drop spot. Yeah.

But we need a warehouse because Athena is. Hang up, but what are you flipping it on the East Coast? A pound you bought for $1,200 bucks. Oh, my God. Three grand plus. Wow. Three grand plus. I had $4,000 buyers.

Wow. But look, that was the black cherry cush, you know, the high, you know, the most beautiful of the 80 or 100 pounds that you comes in that duffel big garbage bag. Yeah. the best ones. And is your client list growing? Is your client list always growing? Or do you finally start to like get rid of the people who aren't really working for you?

So I now have to transition my people to, yeah, my clientele is, yes, it's growing. I'm now reaching a new group. I'm reaching the high end people now, which I wasn't reaching before. I was Mexican brickeys. Right. But now I have to convert all those because I'm not buying Mexican brickees for a while. I haven't seen Shorty, not seeing my Mexican guy in Paramount anymore. Right.

So I'm now switching to high end, and I have to switch everybody over. So, again, I'm still probably triple profiting. I'm still probably tripling my money. And how much are the, how much are your best distributors picking up? If you bring back 100 pounds. Yeah, so I really ramp them up, man. I mean, my big guys are minimum 10, 20 pounds. Yeah.

I mean, they, you know, and they're moving it. Yeah. They're moving it. I mean, some guys are slower than others, but, you know, you got a couple thoroughbreds in there. Right. That surprise you. And they're taking it back to their mark. markets and they're giving it to guys who are then taking it to their even more remote markets.

At this point, I'm in the six figures of just money owed to me. Right. I mean, I mean, my, my, my, my, my list, you know, you try not to keep lists, but you can't help it when you got 40 fucking people on it. Yeah. That's like a million dollars in revenue almost a month. It's a lot of money. Yeah, we're just scratching the surface. I mean, this is the beginning.

This is when I start losing the concept of money. Right. You know. Okay. So where are you keeping your money? What are you doing with it? So I'm making so much of it, man. Nikki says my people up north need a warehouse.

The warehouse just got popped in the Albany area around 2009. Albany, New York. Okay. They're looking for a new warehouse. I went to one of my distributors' house that night to drop off some weed. And there's a kid sitting in his living room that's buying weed from him. He says he has a warehouse for rent. I mean, this is how I didn't even ask him yet.

So I'm now got a warehouse because the people up north need it. And I'm getting my Cali wheat. I'm getting hundreds of pounds out of Cali. I'm probably done three trips before this warehouse deal comes up. Nikki is impressed as fuck because I got transport. He just gets to fly around and make money and hang out with me. How does Nikki, the Greek, the Canadian, how does he make money out of all this? Because he's buying his own pounds for cheap.

And he's got distribution, Cape Cod, he's got New York, he's got Long Island. Okay, so how does the, what about the Canadians? How do they come in, how do they fit into this? Right here. Okay. The warehouse. I got the warehouse literally the next day. Without question the next day.

Nikki and I go look at it. He gives it the approval, calls the people up north. And by his people, I mean, the other Greeks he knows. That's all. They're just Greeks to me. He knows a big shot because a woman he buys weed from in my, Montreal, his husband, her husband is connected. Tell us about the Montreal family that you are going to tell us how you ended up working for them.

Who is the Montreal, the Montreal Mafia? They have very entrenched Sicilian, Calabrian, Italian mafia families. They are the smuggling family. I mean, you know, when you bring it down to the early days, I mean, it's them. Right. This is their thing. this is what they do. They've been running since prohibition.

A lot of those early Canadian mafia families got rich running booze into America. I know some of those guys. Wow. Yeah. I've heard many stories. Probably dead now. So the connect in Montreal is another Greek, Marcus. We just called him old man because he was fucking old.

He was old man. And old man was an old time smuggler. back in the alcohol days. And he was a smuggling guru and I learned a lot from him. And he took me out of his wing. But so anyways, the, the warehouse deal was they needed a place

to unload tractor trailers of weed. Wow. They were doing it in Albany. Albany got torched. Something happened. So they needed a new place. I get a one in Connecticut. They're like, fuck it. Three more hours. No big deal. They were getting legit freight out of Montreal coming down into within five miles of my warehouse.

Like they got a home, run and they bring the weed in fuel tanks. Wow. So these are real international. This is the first time that I'm like, whoa. This is the, this is the cartel for Canadians. This is the Canadian cartel. I'm getting 235 pounds twice a week out of fuel tanks. And they have a brilliant, brilliant hiding space. It's brilliant. Later, we'll talk about it. No, let's talk now. Now, let's talk about it. We're on the podcast. Okay, we're in. fuel tanks. They buy extra wide fuel tanks to carry more fuel. But the key is when a truck goes through the border, it goes through an x-ray. We all know this, right? But what most people don't know is there's a section of the x-ray, which, where you're sitting,

that constitutionally they're not allowed to x-ray a human being driver. They would have to take him out if there was any reasonable suspicion to remove him to x-ray the truck without him in it. But when you just go through it as a driver, they omit the section where your body is. That wide. Right. So we pushed the tanks forward.

And when I say we, I mean, they. They push the tanks forward and they hollow it out and they weld it and they put a brilliant hide spot. Oh my. It takes, I mean, I learned to do it. I was the unpacker and I had to repack. With money. We used to use wood. Yeah.

Yep. So we have a little square about this big that went on the fuel tank and we put a do not step sticker on it okay and the way we made it look like we weren't changing it all the time is we would have we would take sand and wood ash and we would take the undercarriage spray that you put in your car like their undercarriage rhino liner bullshit yeah which the whole tank was coated in yeah we would recoat the top and use sand and wood ash and blow it all all over the sticky undercarous spray we had just sprayed to give it the road worn look to use it can't be brand new right of course not just like smoke you can't have brand new bolts right

going through hide spots they got to be rusty and you know you can't put brand new bolts in and one see the brand new bolt you know it would just fucked with wow okay so so how long does it take to get this operation to where the the greeks who are essentially working for the italians right but i don't know we all did you ever meet them did you ever meet the bosses I got to preface something. I don't know who the bosses are during this time. I don't know that I'm dealing with, you know, fall off from the risuto family.

You don't know. No one's saying names up there. They're telling stories of smuggling, but not for whom. Right. And the risudos were to Canada, what the Gambino family was to the U.S. 100%.

Yeah. The most entrenched mafia in Canadian history. Absolutely. Yeah. And the smuggling was their forte. Wow. So, and by the way, where, so they would get you 250 pounds twice a week? Not for me.

I wasn't buying this weed. Okay. I was a distributor. I was a receiving. I was shipping and receiving, brother. I'm the transporter. I'm shipping and receiving. I receive the weed in the tractor trailer.

Bring it into the warehouse. I take it out. I package it. Put this one in this duffel bag. Put a red ribbon on it. That goes to Cleveland. Put this pile in this double bag. Put a yellow ribbon on it.

That one goes to Philly. Wow. So at first, I'm only getting paid. By the way, I tell the Canadians I'm paying double for the warehouse. They say they'll cover the pay for the warehouse. So I'm making 1,200 a month just on rent. I'm paying $1,200. I tell them it's $24.

Yeah. I get a warehouse you can bring a tractor trailer in and do a U-turn and come back out. How big is that warehouse? It's big as fuck. For $1,200. Wow. The guy was underwater with taxes. So that how are you?

So they've got, the Canadian mob has got, distributors all over the U.S. Your job is just to take the work, organize it for each market. And then some Canadian guy comes and gets it from me and he goes and delivers it. Oh, so you don't even have to put it on your trucks.

No, it's all local now. I mean, it's all coming into Connecticut now out of Canada. California has slowed down for me because I don't have the time. I don't have two weeks to give to California at this moment. And Athena wants me out there. So are you making more? How much are you making? I'm making

stupid money. But how much per pound? I get paid $6,000 to unload a truck and to put it into bags and bring it to a safe house to hold it, which is only six miles away. At this point now, I'm renting a little mobile home. Okay. And that's the safe house. Yep. I'm just storing weed in it only. This, this particular customer I'm getting all this weed from, they're taking 235 pounds about every other week. We'll call them the Massachusetts customers. Everybody's name in this organization, they were called something. Like maybe we had a Jonathan account. Anybody you met was Jonathan. Yeah. This is the Jonathan account. Uh-huh. So that's all you knew. And who are these guys? Are they white? Are they Italian? Are they French Canadian? These are white people from the Central Massachusetts area,

Worcester, Massachusetts area. Yeah. Kind of a hard hitting, you know, rough and tumble town. Gotcha. So, so you're, you're simply the one. you're shipping and receiving and making $12,000 a week, just doing that, just getting it ready for, you don't even have to traffic it. As a transporter, all you care about is cost. That's a great gig. All you care about is cost per mile as a trucker.

What are you making $4 a mile? Make it $5 a mile. Right, right. I was making like a thousand dollars a mile. Yeah. A thousand dollars a mile to traffic in my town. Now, are you still moving your own work as you're also? Yeah, yeah.

So I've still got weed coming in. Like, I'm now getting. some weed from Canada as well. Nico's bringing it. Nicky's bringing it down. Right. How is Nikki getting it in? So there's so he's getting it in through the border up in.

There's a casino. There's two towns, it's Cornwall and Messina. Messina is in New York. Cornwall is in Canada. There's an Indian reservation there. Ah. And there's one specific little town. It's a little peninsula where the Canadian border goes through it.

Yeah. there's tunnels there's people who live there that are on the take who drive to work every day and bring pounds across the border okay and that's how a guy who's picking up like 30 to 50 not a huge trafficker but you know somebody who's moving mom and pop operations yeah that's how they do it and there's less law enforcement because it's Indian land

absolutely and there's a lot of it you can drive for 10 15 minutes and not be out of it and it's so remote so I live remote. This is really remote. This is like, you know, a little bit west of the Adirondacks. So it's remote. Yeah. Yeah.

There's like one gas station and one blinking light. Wow. So, and what were the other ways? Those are the bikers. The bikers controlled the casinos. Interesting. So they were coming down. They were coming delivering weed.

I'm getting a name for myself now in, in Montreal, all because the drivers who deliver the weed, they love my spot. They like me. I'm professional. When they show up, I'm there. Whip the doors open. There's no dicking around. There's no waiting land.

Like, I'm the transporter. You know, I make sure that these guys are taking care of. I know how to do this. So you have basically a quarter ton of weed every week going in and out of this warehouse. Yeah. Plus, I don't know. And it's getting distributed all the way down to South Carolina, North Carolina. Unbelievable.

And then you have. Philadelphia, Ohio. New York, New Jersey, Connecticut, Rhode Island, Mass, Vermont. Several locations in New York. Yonkers, the city, the island. But I'm not distributing it yet, but I'm getting a name for myself. How did they trust you? How did the mob in Montreal, how were you the guy?

Was it the word of Nico? Nicky. Nikki introduces me to old man, and I impressed a shit out of old man. I literally become the golden goose as they called me. That was their nickname for me, which is kind of says it all. But I mean, I'm doing this now for probably two or three months. And every now and again, a Canadian may get hemmed up at the border and he can't come down to make a delivery. Hey, Rich, would you mind?

Time out. Nobody knew my real name. Nobody ever said, hey, Rich. It was Andy back then. Okay. Okay. Even with Nick, by the way. We need to preface that.

No Canadian ever knew my real name. I would do a couple loads. Yeah, I'd take a load down to New York City for you. No problem. You know, they throw me, you know, $1,000. And then it'll be two lows and three loads. And the Canadians were really sloppy coming down here. They were sloppy.

They're out of the country. They're coming into our neighborhood with Canadian plates. They're all drug addicts and alcoholics. The party in hotels with the doors wide open, double parking. I mean, you know, just, unprofessional. So I literally knock all of them out.

They're all gone now. Nobody from Canada come down to distribute anymore. I'm doing that. Still got some guys coming down picking up cash, but I eventually knock all them out. Now I'm distributing the weed

and now weeks later, I'm going back and pick up the cash to the tune of about, I'm like bringing, I'm picking up a million dollars every two weeks. In product? Or cash?

Cash. From the product, so you never got paid being delivered. Right. You never delivered. You got to wait until it's sold. Right. Yep. A lot of it was pre-bought, prepaid. You know, the, the mass account, they would prepay. Yeah. I would get their money first. The mass account was great. They would pay me to not deliver to them. What do you mean? Exactly. They don't want strangers in their town. They would pay me to have a safe place for them to come get it from me at my safe house trailer. Wow. So,

So you would take this cash sometimes up to a million bucks for various pickups. Right. You collect it all. You put how much literally a million dollars? More? Like how much would... More. I mean, I was now...

What was the most money you ever put into a tractor trailer to send back to Canada? Oh. And how do you... One point five million. Holy shit. And then... The trailer thing got busted. Okay.

The tractor trailer thing ended. Okay. We got about a summer and a half. We got about seven months out of that. Right. And that's just what happened. But that's seven months of two loads a week. Yeah.

235 pounds. So you just, it's like 1000 million pounds. Yeah, I don't, I don't know about that. But look, just kidding.

It's, yeah, it's a, it's a lot of, it's, she, one route made the millions of dollars. Now it gets buzzed.

So distributing all that and then going back and picking up all the money from anywhere from, like I said, Vermont all the way in North Carolina. I would deliver and then weeks later go back and get money. So you would go down to those markets and get the money. Oh, yeah.

Oh, okay. So if I dropped off there on. Monday of this week, I would come back two weeks later to get paid. Okay. So now three weeks. Right, right. Okay. Wow. So how many spots? And I was doing a lot of those. Hang on. Rich. Let me ask these. You're talking about me here, buddy. I got to get this detail because it's very intricate. And I want the people at home to understand. You're taken, you're at the apex of, you're the first hands that touch the loads when they get across the border. How many at a time in one

load. 235. Great. Stop right there. 230 pounds. How many markets? How many cities? They might get split

to four duffel bag going to four different places. Great. So 50 pounds a shot. New York, Philly, Ohio, North Carolina. And you're taking them to all those places? And I'm, how? Are you putting them on your car?

This is car stuff. Okay. So you're a setting drivers. I'm doing most of this. And I have, you yourself are driving? Yes. It comes to a point when I can't do it alone anymore.

Of course. Three good friends of mine. Okay. And we're busy. We're busy. Wow. I mean, I'm still making plans to get back to California. I have to re-up for my people.

Nick's not bringing down nearly enough for me. I'm taking all of his stuff and he's starving his clients. Wow. So your business is almost falling by the wayside because you're so busy running. So I hire guys and I'm still going to Cali at this point with my trucks. I'm doing that with Athena without Nick. now. Okay, so you're sending... I've now taken his two connects. Hang on, Rich. So you're

sending your drivers for the Canadians to all these different cities. Do they have spotter drivers? Like, and what does the economics look like? How much do they get paid? At this point, I'm not running spotter drivers. I'm running white guys in cars. That's about all you

need. And, you know, whenever you put more than one white guy in a car, you know, every time you add a person, you add the element of what the fuck are these guys doing. Yeah. So one guy driving out of Connecticut And keep in mind, New England, man, You can drive through three states in an hour.

Yeah. So to be in New York and have Connecticut plates, no one's looking at you. It's not a big deal. It's not like Illinois having Connecticut plates. Right. You can't drive through Illinois with Connecticut plates. You can get them pulled over. Right.

Ohio's the same way. Right. So would you... Now, I'm paying them like a grand, two grand, depending on the distance. Right. You know, maybe I took to North Carolina, right? Maybe I took that one.

I'd send another guy to Cleveland, to another guy to, you know. And then how much are you making per, per load. Say if it's a load of 235 pounds, how much you make in off of each pound? Well, I'm getting paid for the delivery. Like, there's like a fee for the delivery. Okay. The cash, I'm getting paid 2%. So if I'm picking up $100,000, I'm getting $2,000, just to drive to Philly and pick up money and come back. Okay. Interesting. But I'm doing this stuff. I mean, I don't think I had back-to-back days off. I mean, honestly. I mean, honestly,

At this point now, I'm full bored. I'm like at my house a few days, a month. You know, and that's tough, right? Yeah, that's tough. So I'm now squeezing in Cali runs. Bringing home hundreds of pounds for me through the truck while my boys are delivering stuff, doing pickup, doing money, pick up, storing things. I was also storing the money.

Okay. Yeah, where would you store the money? So now I rent another house for money. I have the trailer for the weed. I rent another house for the money, like a legit. house now. And that was also meant for my driver to sleep in. I wanted him to have a place to stay near me.

So money's being stored there. And I also have to count and organize and kind of like we're doing with the weed. You know, we're putting a certain thing going certain places. Yeah. In the beginning, all the money was going up north. And then one time I picked up $1.5 million, collected it all, counted it. And they said, only send $400,000 back, keep $1,000. point one. We're doing something else with that down there. And who are you taking orders from in Canada?

This is still old man. Oh, this is still old man. Okay. But I'm about to get the call that somebody wants to meet me. Okay. I don't have a passport yet. I'm in the States, man. I'm a States guy. You know, I get a passport. Yeah. So I do. And I get up there. And now I'm face to face. I had never met, old man. You go up to Montreal? Yeah. So now I'm up in Montreal. I'm being called up. Somebody wants to meet me. Wow. You're getting summoned by the process.

Literally. Literally. Now, and this is because of the mass account. I told you about them earlier. The mass account. They were in a big. They were big distributors. They were getting two, you know, 200.

A lot of times that full truckload from Canada was for them. All going to them. All going to them. So there were times when it was going to, and like I said, I only moved that six mile. They came and got it for me. And I got paid the same as if I went to Philly for it. Wow. Okay.

So. Good account. I go to Canada. I mean, I'm like a rock star up there. And I'm not trying to be facetious or sound like a douchebag when I say that. But, I mean, they had a problem before me and I cured it. Yeah. And I don't even realize my value at the moment.

Yeah. I'm still a little naive. I'm going to say that. Okay. So what was that like? Like, did you meet? I mean, do you go into Little Italy in Montreal? And yeah, so I go, um, old man has a place right in St. Catherine.

Yeah. Which would eventually become my third, the third floor become my apartment. Oh, wow. I'm, I'm staying with old man and, uh, while I'm in town. Mm-hmm. And we're just telling stories. He's, he's teaching me about all these things and different ways that they smuggle and all this operation and how long, far back it goes.

And he's really bringing me in. Okay, tell us. What are some of the, what was like the enlightening smuggling? techniques he was telling you about. Well, okay, well, so they do it every way boats, motorcycles, bicycles, on foot, quads, car trunks, tractor trailers, jet engines, legit freight, shingles, lumber, and all the various locations are controlled by various groups. You know, And I learned about the Italians for the first time. These are the people that called to meet me

because something was said about me by the mass account that I wasn't aware of. So I go up. Now, can you tell us a little more about the structure really quick? So you have all of these different groups controlling different routes and methods of smuggling. Are they working for the Italians? Yes, they're, well.

Or like who's, and who's growing the weed up there? by the way. This is a huge quantity. Yeah. He's a huge. Who's actually, what's the manufacturing up there at this time? I'm going to be straight up. I don't know the answer to that.

I'm not involved in where did you get the weed. Right. Okay. I'm a transporter. Okay. I care not about where. I care how I'm going to get it there. Yeah.

And, you know, they're not looking to divulge everything. And I'm not asking either. We, we jump in a car and he goes, I'm going to take you out and meet somebody. You're going to meet Frankie. He said, all right, Frankie. We meet it. his bar, beautiful bar. I mean, like, just too nice for a bar to have nobody ever in it.

Yeah. You know what I mean? Beautiful wager. A beautiful waitress, beautiful bartender. I mean, this is, you know. Yeah. And I meet, there's six other men in the room. Five in me.

Six of us in the room. Okay, five in me. There's players from the bikers. There's players from the Italians. And there's players from the Greeks. Okay. And they all want to meet me because I've been moving their product. And be notes to me, I don't know I'm moving bikers products.

I don't know I'm moving Italian products. I don't care. Right. So they start, we start kind of planning, hey, you know, we got to kind of work together in this thing. You're in the state. We're up here. Let's sort of figure out a way. Let's maybe start a business.

Like maybe we should, you know, we have this jet engine that's loaded with copper and lead. X-ray. secrecy, right? A jet engine, what? A jet engine, a legit engine off of a jet. Maybe like a... I mean, it fits on a tractor trailer. It takes a tractor trailer to carry it around.

Right. They have one. They bought it. And it's got so much room in it. Mm-hmm. And it's lead. You're driving right through the X-ray. Right. There's lead.

Right. So we're talking about me opening up a jet engine repair. Right. Jet engine service. On the states and the states have. Yeah. I already had the warehouse. Let's just blow out on an LLC. Yeah.

I don't know. Yeah. So I meet the me up there. I meet the trucker up there. He's the brains up there. I'm the brains down here. We instantly are like, game recognizes the game. Good to meet you.

And who was that guy? He's the guy with the trucks with the fuel tanks. Okay. And was he a Greek, Italian, a biker? Who is he? He was under the Italian's thumb. I don't know what his now. Nationality necessarily was.

He was on the Italians team. I guess we can call it that. So we do our discussions. And the biker guy, his stuff was about to start coming to me in trunks of cars. The truck had gotten popped. The tractor trailer truck got pop leaving my warehouse one day. Just before the border.

But it was empty. I didn't put cash in at that time. They told me not to. Just random. it got popped shaky driver got caught with the receipts why are you putting in

why are you stopping so many times for fuel when you have a fuel tank that large you can make it from here to the Mississippi with that tank brother why you stop in three times you're here in Montreal right popped but nobody got hurt

there's no work just an empty stash they just found the trap just found the trap yeah yeah so now that we still got to get to me but we can't use trucks anymore so now it's it's getting trunk to me bro trunks of cars, man.

You know, 1999 Buick Lasabors. Skecky fucking people driving it. I'm meeting people at Applebee's. Yeah. Switching cars. You know, they go in to eat. I go in to eat.

They give me their keys. I take their car to my safe house. Unload it. Bring the car back. They go home. And doesn't that freak you out a little bit? Because like these are drug addicts. Like who would be taking that kind of risk?

And they're not getting paid a lot of money. You know, like that seems that seems amateur. Honestly, I mean, honestly, there were some regular people. There was a husband, wife, and a child that would come down and loved them because they were just like me.

But yeah, we got some shady one. We had an 80-year-old man. Wow. That would come down to the casino all the time. And we were taking lows out of his spare tires. I mean, at this point, man, I'm getting four, five, six hundred pounds a week. Oh, wow. It's... So it's a constant flow of drivers.

It's a constant flow of weed coming in And money pickups. It's every day all the time. I'm doing something. And how would you get the cash back into Canada? What was the most common way of doing that? Trunks of cars. Yeah.

So we leaned on the bikers in the casinos because the trucking thing had lost its way. So we were leaning on them and the bikers were slightly sloppier. Wow. After the meeting that we had, I was said, now we're going to go and meet the guy that actually wanted to meet you. That wasn't the meeting that I went to that I just told you about. wasn't the meeting. Okay. There's another one. So we go to another town in Montreal and we go to a restaurant and I had always heard four brothers. What is that? Four brothers. The four brothers are doing this. The four brothers are doing that. And what I found out it wasn't four brothers. It was two

brothers and two brothers. Two and two. They just called them the four brothers. But I don't know who they are yet. Apparently the Massachusetts account had sent word to Canada that you better not ever send anybody other than Andy slash rich. Yeah. We love him. He's what we want. He's American. He's smooth.

He's on time. He's legit. Everything works out always. The money's right. When I package money, I package it a specific way. My rubber bands are done in a way. And their banker was the same way.

I never met their banker, but we would have been buddies. He was OCD like I was. So I sit down at the table and I'm sitting in front of this guy. I know him by nicknames. And I know he's above me. He's above my guys. But I don't know he's the guy.

I don't know. I don't know I'm at the table having conversations with the guy. Who's the guy? The boss. The boss. The boss of bosses. At that time. Of the Calabrian.

At that time. Family. His, yes, he is the guy. His father had just been. been killed literally around this time. I could maybe even have been one of the times I was up there. Wow. That was that time and I was there a lot then.

And the basic just of the meeting was you're doing great, but I have a problem. And I go, what's the problem? And he goes, well, they tell me that you're talking about California. And I go, okay. Their driver might say, hey, you ever gone to California before? Sure, I have. Yeah, I get weed out there sometimes. Oh, okay, yeah, so do we.

Apparently every time I said anything, this guy was running right back to his boss and telling him everything, and that boss was telling him, and my guy was basically telling me, stop talking to these guys. Even though you're not saying anything, their boss thinks you're trying to horn in

on their California stuff. And my boss is thinking, I'm trying to get pieces off of his customer without him getting a piece, right? He thinks maybe I could be making a side deal with mass guys. I was going to say, because you could, you were in the position.

Of course. To where you could take all their clients. That was happening. So you were taking some of their distributors? I don't know. I mean, look, I might have done it. I was helping some people move stuff. Right.

Yeah. Because think about it. It's like you got a line on better weed than the Canadian weed. You got Cali fire now. Yeah. Why wouldn't you just start in Canada. It's pretty good. Right.

But it was, it was Canadian weed was on its way to being. completely pushed out. Because by 2008, 2009, that's when I started sending California and Oregon product out to the east. Oh, you came east. And by 2013, 2014, I mean, the prices were coming down on the East Coast so fast because everybody was doing it. Because that was the only way to make money. And now I don't think there's any market for Canadian Bud on the East Coast anymore. So these guys are, this guy was, you know, the boss in Canada. So, But I don't know it. I don't know it.

And I just know he's my boss. Yeah. But I certainly don't think for one second at this time that he's the guy who he is. Again, I don't know his real name at the time. I know nicknames. Yeah. I get handed my first Blackberry and my first jammer at this meeting. Wow.

What's a jammer? A jammer is a device that we could put in this room right now and turn it on. And it gives us a bubble of protection where you can't be hacked. You can't, your phone can't be. It's a literal protection. It's like a little mini EMP is kind of the best way to... Wow. So that's like these Canadians...

These guys are for real. The BlackBerry is encrypted. This is this is encrypted. There's passwords in, passwords out. Yeah. To receive one, you have to put a password in to send one. You must put a password in. And because of this technology,

which gets wiped about every three to four minutes from several different servers all across the world. Yeah. That's how this works. This is the banking system from Europe. This isn't new. Right. This started from banking, and they just took it.

All of our phones came from Europe. You can't get them here. And they would put in everyone's nicknames and hand the blackberries out. My nickname at this point was given to me by the boss, and I'm the lion. The lion. And do you know what that reference is? Are you familiar with who the lion is? No.

The lion was the first cocaine smuggler for Pablo Escobar to bring cocaine into Miami. Yes, yes. I didn't know who the line was when I was given the name. Did not know until I watched narcos and television. Wow. Honest to God's truth, man. Wow. So you're a member of the family almost.

You're not a maid guy, but you're an associate of the most powerful. I'm plotting and planning. In Canada. You've got a direct line to them with this encrypted phone. And here's the crazy stuff. The big boss is now communicating with me, skipping Marco and Marcus and Frankie. And the old guy.

Yeah. Old guy and Frankie with the bar. Okay. No, no. I'm still communicating with them. Yeah. Yeah. But apparently this guy is a hands-on type of guy.

So we're now communicating. I've got three people communicating with me. Okay. So take us, move us forward. What pact do you guys come to while you're up there? Like what did you guys agree to and how did that expand the business? How my trucking company was going to work for them. you know, but mostly it was money.

How much am I making to do this? Okay. And, you know, what are you expecting of me to earn that money? Yeah. So now I am in charge of receiving everything coming in, collecting all the money, storing it, separating it, banking it, distributing it. It's nonstop.

And I'm getting more and more responsibility. And they're about to pop the question on me with the $1.1 million that they, told me to hang on to, we're going to do something else with. Yeah. That was for Cali Coke now. They want me to switch. Wow. We need help here.

Wow. All right. My personality is when you need me, I want to come through for you. That's my drive. That's what made me the best. I want to be the best you've ever dealt with. It's my only goal. That was a little bit of a change, but I thought,

I'm a transporter, man. Like, what doesn't matter? Yeah. Cars, you know, seafood, generators. I mean, you know. Okay, do they have, did they have a Coke connect already in Cali? Yeah, they do. So, of course I say yes.

I mean, of course I say yes. So now I got to bring $1.1 million out to Cali in a fucking duffel bag. And by the way, okay, so this is incredible. So you are more of a money manager now than a drug traffic. at this point. You're essentially just a high level employee for the Canadian mob. How much money? What's your percentage? What did you end up negotiating with them for your pay for being a money manager? Yeah. So I was still getting the 2% and and which you know, doesn't sound like a lot, but it was a lot. So what would that come to every week, every month? It's okay, just for money.

I mean, just for money. I mean, look, if I picked up a million dollars a week, you know, I'm, I'm getting... Four million a month times 2%. Yeah. Yeah. I mean... What is that?

80 grand? Yeah. I'm getting... That's not that much. 2,000 on every 100,000. Yeah. And I'm picking up a million. Yeah.

You know, so... But I'm also getting paid for storage. Right. Like, I'm the banker now. Right. So you're storing... And I'm getting paid. Like, I negotiated to get paid for counting.

Wow. And how this happened was hilarious because they assumed I had a money counting machine. I did not. I was counting it by hand alone by myself because I couldn't let no one know how much money I actually had. So how long would that take you to count a million dollars?

One time I had a million dollars. I said, I got the money. I'm back at the house. I'm going to start counting it. I'll call you when I'm done. An hour later, the big boss calls me, you done? Are you crazy?

No. I'll let you know what I'm done. An hour later you called me. Are you done? No. I'll call you when I'm getting frustrated now, bro. Don't you get it? It's a million dollars, man.

I picked up bags of money sometimes that would be in a paper bag with no rubber bands. No, they would just be loose. You dump it out. So it was always a joke. So they finally sent me down a money counter. They were like, dude, you've been counting by hand this whole time? I'm like, yeah. And they were kind of like laughing at me.

Like, you never thought to ask us for a money machine? You know what I mean? Like, oh, I didn't. So you're making a percentage off. counting, storing, the work. And then shipping. Okay. So then.

Now I'm shipping it. What do you think you're shipping and you're shipping all over the country? Yeah. Deploying drivers. Yeah. And then sending the money back. So you're just, you're all logistics.

I'm only making money every time I touch something. So how, what were you clearing on a good month? A couple hundred grand. Okay. Gotcha. So you're this is a, so you're just.

There could be some months that were more. Yeah. I mean, honestly, sometimes I don't. No. So you're making a cool couple million a year. It's easy to say. I still got some brickies going on.

We haven't touched on, I used to trade Denver weed to Shorty at one point. Okay. Four to one. Wow. Four pounds of his weed for one of mine. But I still have some brickie hold off. So I still had some brickies buying 20, 30, 40 pounds. Yeah.

And now I'm pushing 100 pounds of Cali stuff. And I'm pushing extra weed. Sometimes when I get paid from the Canadians, I request to be paid in weed. Uh-huh. Because it's... You make more. I love win-wins. they pay less for the weed than they owe me.

I sell the weed for more than they owe me. Right, right. Who loses there? Yeah, it seems like a better deal. We all love it. But then it's still more work for you. So maybe you don't always want to do that. Maybe you just want to be money guy.

Yeah, but I had to be everything. Yeah. I mean, I was the guy handling everything and I wanted that control. So you're working all the time. All the time. Okay, tell us about. And still going to Denver, still going back to Houston occasionally, still going back to Cali, moving.

thousands of pounds a month a week. I mean, and you have so many people working for you now. How are you keeping yourself safe? Do you have burner phones or do you have also encrypted lines that you give them? What are your security? I don't give out BlackBerry's everybody. That's no.

But yeah, I have got bins of cell phones at this point. Bins. I don't know how many cell phones I had. I don't know. 200. 200 in like a two-year period. That wouldn't seem crazy.

Yeah. No. I've looked, you know, I've saved lots of those phones. And I've looked back at some of the contacts. I can't even remember who they were. There's so many. Like, who's McGrinder? Who the hell was that?

Yeah. That still bothers me to the day. Who was McGrinder? So tell us about the Coke. Yeah. Tell us about the Coke. Okay, so first trip out, $1.1 million. Again, tracked the trailer.

We're done with the car hauling now. Driver got himself fire from that job because he disappeared again. Now I have to infiltrate a second truck company, which is a, refrigerated freight, reef freight, they call it, frozen seafood. Okay, okay, so explain what that truck is. Explain what that is. So this is a trailer. This is not a

car hauler where you can see the car. This is a trailer with a freezer unit on it. It keeps everything zero degrees or whatever to hell. Gotcha. And so you went with your resume, still spotless, and said, hey, I'd love to do dispatching for you. I actually I actually called the owner of the company

they were from Vermont and I told him to come down to the casino know in Connecticut to meet me. I said, you need to come here and meet me. I'm going to work for you. Wow. Okay. So I blew his brains at an awesome upstairs, VIP room, him and his wife, and boom, I'm hired. Okay. Now I'm in control of his refrigerator. Gotcha. And I'm making him legit money, just like at a stallion, by the way. Right. So you're still, yeah, you're still working legit. You've got a legit income. They're loving it. Yeah. And I'm loving it. And what is your legit income every year? Like what on paper, how much you making a dispatching? At 2006, I, I, quit corporate and don't work anymore. Yeah, but now you're hauling for...

Oh, for this guy. Oh, yeah. It's a thousand bucks a week. How much? Thousand bucks a week. Right. So now you have something on paper. You can at least declare. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Oh, yeah, yeah. Yeah. From the companies that I got my way into, I'm absolutely getting paid by then, but, you know, thousand bucks a week. And I'm doing it from home. Right. I'm not going to Vermont to sit in office. I'm not going to Houston, you know. Okay. So money goes out. One point one million. That's for 50 kilos. We're paying 22,000 a

kilo, which is a good price. Uncut. Hasn't been touched. In 2009. Straight out of the fucking spare tires, bro, right to me. And where are you meeting the connect? The first time I ever met was in Palmdale. Wow. Mexican?

Yes. No. Nope. First one were white guys. First ones were Italians. In Palmdale, California? So the first time I do this, no. So the first time I do this run, I think they might have sent

their own Italians out here to collect the Coke and then give to me. Right. Because the first time I did the 50, I picked up 50 all at once. And I thought, this is easy. Wow. This is easy. We met at a Palmdale hotel and they came 50 at one shot. They were white guys.

They were Italians. I thought this is great. Were they Canadians? Did you recognize a Canadian accent? No. I didn't even consider. They probably were. I was assuming they were from out here.

But later on, you know, hindsight, looking back, you figure things. out, you know. Okay, so you brought them the money. So had they already purchased the Coke? Yeah, no, so I brought them the money first. So we need in Palmdale, they take the money from me. Gotcha. And they go do the thing. A few days later, they come back. And then we load the truck. I get another load going across the country, coming back home. 50 kilos of Coke. Now are you like, no weed. 50 kilos of Coke. Now you're getting, you have 50 joints. You got 50 bricks of Coke. I'm not in the truck. I'm flying at this point only. Right. The money went out without, you know, there was signs. And you got your trust

driver. Like, is that's a huge deal. Like, what if that gets lost? You're going to be a big trouble. It's someone else's money. Yeah. Yeah, but is that going to be your ass, though? Well, you know, was that ever discussed? Yes. What did the boss say if you made a mistake like that? Well, it was pretty understood that you're responsible for the freight that you have. Yeah. It's just like in the real world. I have cargo insurance. That's so when I pick up your generator and it falls off my trailer, I own that generator, I have to pay for it, right? It's cargo insurance. So think of it in that

way. If I'm carrying their $1.1 million across the country and something happens Or you're 50 kilos. Or coming home, which is course is worth 10 times. I mean, the amount of money a kilo goes for in Canada at that point. 50,000 bucks, easily wholesale.

And they've already cut that kilo into four nodes. Totally, totally. So it's really about $200,000. Yeah, oh, insane. Yeah, that's no joke. That's what it was. Okay. So who, but who do you put in the driver's seat taking 50 bricks across the country? My driver. Same guy's been hauling with the car hauler and the frozen food. Now, did you have any kind of oversight? Did you have a tracking device on there? Because 50 kilos of Coke, people could just lose their mind and run off with it. What kind of, what? So I have GPS.

Okay. And I, right after this trip, I buy my own tractor trailers and I'm done with the infiltrating truck companies. I just bought my own. Right. Because I could just buy a truck over the weekend. You know, I could just drop 30 grand on a truck, 40 grand every day if I wanted to. Did you open your own LLC? Absolutely. Okay, great. I still operated today.

Okay. I still operated today. So tell us about how that first load, you get it across the country. Get it across the country. I'm being paid $2,000 a kilo because at this point, on this first run, I'm only getting paid to bring her from Calibat to Connecticut and I'm handing it off. I'm not crossing it over the border. Got it. Okay.

So they already had their people waiting for it in Connecticut. Yes. at my warehouse. Okay, got you. They were, you know, meet me at the warehouse. They were doing it in like, RV tow behinds. They were doing, you know,

they didn't take all 50. No. One guy got 10. One guy got 12. Yada, yada, yada. Three, four guys. Spare tires, the old man, the casino guy, you know. We were doing all the tire swapping in my warehouse.

I had air compressor. I had, you know, I have a truck company now. Wow. I got air compressors. I got tools. I'm working on shit. Okay. So all of the packaging.

I'm doing all that. All of it. You're preparing. I'm getting paid for. for that. You're preparing all of the smuggling. All of it. Wow. So you are so important. You are not just important. You are indispensable.

When I go to Canada, look, hey man, you know what? I'm talking about this and, you know, I'm gloating, but at that time, I was the golden goose. These guys were tripping over themselves and meet me. And as a result of that, I'm getting jobs from other families that aren't related. And other family want to meet me. And I have meetings with them in

California. I have stories of other family members from different groups. But all Canadians still? All Canadians wanting a piece of me to see if they can get in. Right. Right. And I blew a couple of their doors. I blew them off. There were a couple of jokers. So you made 100,000, easiest 100,000 you ever made. Yeah, man. I made 100,000 bucks in six hours on an airplane, man. Holy shit. Okay. So how does that ramp up? Tell us about the cocaine. Yeah. So those 50s make it up. Those 50s make it up to Canada. everybody's happy, man. You know, it made it, man.

High-fiving. Yep. You know, my big boss on Blackberry is just, you know, exclamation points, you know what I mean? Mm-hmm. We had an awesome scam going for money. What these guys were doing was, if you were a kilo customer,

I would say to you, I'm in Canada. You and I are in Canada. You're my customer for Coke in Canada. Yeah. Give me your $100,000. I'll get you your four kilos, five kilo, whatever. we're charged them. But I need to charge you a point

because I've got to move your money over the border to get into California. I got to charge your point. But in truth, that money never left Canada because I had money in the States already from the weed game that I'm collecting. So you just use that to buy their coat. Now, this was there.

This was there. I wasn't in on this racket, but I knew about it. But I would turn that, I would do the same thing going north. I would now, I would now taking people's money and telling them,

was bringing it to Canada. Right. But I wasn't because they owe me so much money that I have money up there too. It's already waiting in Canada. I always have money in the States or in Canada. Always. Yeah. There's never a time when I don't.

Right. And you were keeping it at that apartment that you had in Montreal? Yeah. I do make a trip to Canada up to California in here and that's when I get my condo in Huntington Beach. That's another safe. I never slept a night in it. Only drugs went in that condo.

Right. right down by the Bellatora Mall, man. Yeah, I know where that is. Wow. So in Canada, so you would just take a fee, you would tell them you were moving their money across the border, but you were just taking the money you already had in Canada and delivering it to them.

By the way, this is all U.S. currency. U.S. currency? It's all U.S. currency. Okay. Were there any, did you find any problems with, like, the exchange rate or, like, how does that work? Because people are buying Coke in Canadian dollars. Yeah.

But the kilo buyers, it was all. all U.S. currency. Yeah, I didn't get into any of the politics of the money. Any of the weeds, yeah. You're way, you're way too high up. Yeah, I'm not, I don't know that stuff. I don't know if there were maybe discounts here and there for that. I'm not aware of that stuff.

Okay. Wow. So that's just another way to make a little bit, another ancillary income stream. So now I, uh, you know like seven streams of income at all times. I'm about to get like three more. Okay. Because, uh, old man, uh, we have a, what I call a drug dealer appreciation party. things are going so great

I get called up again and we're going to go way up north of this party town that they've owned a few houses and they rent the whole floor of the hotel out for us and I'm not going to sit here and say this party was for me

I'm not going to say that but I was the attraction there people from everywhere and I don't know any of them you know I don't know who they are there's just a lot of people at this house in the woods

and we're all talking. And everyone's like, Andy, Andy, Andy, come talk to me, Andy. What are you doing, Andy? What's going on, Andy? Wow. I end up meeting this guy, Boston Tim. From New York.

Boston Tim from New York. Nice. He lives in New York. Of course he lived in New York because his name's Boston Tim. By the way, you were, that reminds me of Boston, George. You were to the Canadian mob

what George Jung was to the Medellian cartel. You know, When I saw a blow, I was like, whatever. Nice. Fuck this guy. Whatever, dude. I did that in a week. Yeah.

But no, no, great movie. George Young is a fucking legend. I'm talking to this new guy now and he works for another family. Don't ever know who they are. Boston Tim is super professional. He's even, he's next level to old man. so careful but he loves me

he starts trusting me to take money for his people out which I had to bullshit both my people I had to tell my people I would never move anyone else's shit with theirs and I had to tell these people I would never move their shit with yours right right but I'm a logistics guy I'm not making two trips when I'm already making one

right so so you would start piggybacking multiple people's money across the border in one hall Yeah, I was only doing money for that family. They had it handled out here. Yeah. They had it handled. But so the next round, so, you know, the party happened, all the mingling and all that.

And, you know, people just are, you know, they love me now. I now have that third floor apartment and I meet a Canadian woman. I now take over her apartment. So I own that. I'm renting that now. How much money of your own would you keep in Canada out of time? 50 grand. What? That's it? That's it. That's money for me. My money. Yeah, but I'm saying like my money.

Like, money that you would move for other people, like if you were trying to make a point. Okay, here was the beautiful part about being the banker for the Canadians. I already had the money they owed me. Sometimes I would allow the money they owe me to stay up there. Right. For me. Yeah. Play money. Yeah. I didn't keep money up there. I wasn't doing the money laundering game. In the end, I did it a few times going north. I said I was going to buy people weed. that I was already getting delivered to me. It was already a done deal. But I was telling them I had to go get it

and bring their money and charging them. But after all that, the next load's coming down about two, three weeks later. I'm still delivering weeds. They're still coming in the trunk. That stuff's not stopping during all this. That's not stopping.

Okay. So Coke is coming and weed. I'm now combined the two. Okay. I'm now, I just added another product. So you're just busier? I'm just busy. Now, let me ask you this.

are brickweed is is brickweed finally gone extinct yeah yeah the shorty trading stuff only takes place twice and then i just can't i just can't and what year is this i don't have time for short what year is this we're at 2009 10 we're approaching the end okay yeah so the end is coming brickweed is about dead at this point um especially in these markets but i find my own smuggling spot in upstate new york that becomes mine your own route i own route your own route into canada everyone pays me to use my route now. Explain that. How is that possible? And where was it? Networking is always going on.

Yeah. Always happening. At a buddy's house one night, a guy I know owns a hunting shack up in upstate New York. Really? Where? Oh, it's here. Oh, wow. That's close to the border. I should meet him. We meet. I say, I could maybe give you some money. I could maybe help you out if you can maybe let me use your place.

as a storage facility. So I take my wife and kid to a great adventure up in late George and leave them there for two days and I shoot up north and I hang out with this guy at his house. And he starts telling me how he's got hunting rights

and various people's lands. Uh-huh. And this guy takes me down a road, I could show it to you on the map. He takes me down the road where there's a road that goes right to the Canadian border. there is nothing but a little gate with a stop sign on it.

And that's the border wall. It's not a wall. It's just a guy's backyard. That's the line. It's just the line. And it's on private land. Back in the day, the roads used to go all the way through. Now they have a, they have a thing.

And now you make a U-turn right at the board because you used to go all way through. Now you can't. This is just a signs as welcome to Canada. Yeah, but you can't drive through it. It's a gate. Right. You're supposed to go through the border patrol. You can't cross through here.

There's a stop sign after all. Yeah. So I get hunting rights on that property. What? This guy takes me to the owner of the property that he has hunting rights on. And it's on the border, I just told you. So while he's showing it to me, the old man farmer is mowing his lawn outside and we stopped to chat him up. And as soon as you mention, it's all about who you know up there.

Yeah. We were on a specific road that was named after a family. we got a place over on blah blah blah lane oh you know the blah blah blahs oh yeah we go yeah of course I know them and now you're in hey can I hunt here and that's such a fascinating culture too that those families go back to hundreds of the french Indian wars of yeah like 1812 and a lot of them are Canadian so they're friendly they're not you know they're not like what the fuck man we want to be near my border for yeah right right exactly so that very day when I get the hunting rights. We drive about a quarter mile down the street to go turn around to go back now. I've

now done what I've done. This is my new spot. I'm going to fucking figure out a way. But they don't know what you're planning on doing. No, no, no. Okay. The, I get out of the truck to go take a piss and I'm literally pissing in Canada. So that's how close it is. I took a piss in Canada while standing in the United States. So I said, this has to happen. Something has to happen here. We actually nicknamed it the handshake. Because you could shake hands in two different countries. Yeah. That takes about a month to get up and running.

I got to get the old man on the other side. He starts going into that town on the Canadian side and starts talking up people. He goes to tag sales and antique shops. And he's talking people up to try and get a feel for what's going on and where. And he gets a pretty good vibe that this area is not hot. No one, you know, he thinks we can do this. He thinks this is doable. I mean, you know, dirt bike, no problem.

I mean, you only got to cover about a mile. It's about it. What do you mean a dirt bike? Well, like, we can get things on over the border with a dirt bike. Like inside of a dirt bike? Yeah, no, like a guy driving it with like a backpack with 10, 20, 30 pounds. I mean, you know, I'm not talking about taking over the world and replacing the biker's trunk deal, replacing the boats or the jet engines and all that.

I'm not talking about replacing that. I'm just giving another avenue. to smuggle things. All right. I also used to smuggle myself in and out of Canada through there because, as you know, the more times you cross through a border. The more you're in the system. Yeah, and I was in the system.

Whenever, towards the end, when I got pulled into the border, I went into the special room every time. Right. Because now you're hot. Every time. And you, have you ever been in a special room? No. No door handles.

No windows. A guy behind a fucking thick glass with paperwork on you. Yeah. asking me questions about what happened in high school. Right. They got your file. They know you, buddy. I legit didn't remember.

Yeah. I don't know, bro. 25 years ago. Wow. 30 years ago. Okay, so tell us about the route. What would you use it for?

So, I mean, I would smuggle money in and out, mostly personal money. But then it got to a point where they felt comfortable using it. Old man has scoped it out. And we had some, you know,

we had about a mile distance, uh, East to West mile, okay? Right. To cross the border end. Yeah. And we never one time had a problem. Never one time had an issue.

Never one time. So tell us about who were the people you would pay to get on the dirt bike. So that was done by old man. But I had met these guys. They lived in old man's apartment too. Old man's apartment was like a, was like a hostel for the smugglers. Like when I came into town at first, I stayed there. I took the room of a guy that used to hump stuff in backpacks by foot.

Jean Guille. Yeah. Wow. He was just, Canadian dudes. Yeah. Oh, yeah. Man. They smuggled in every way. And once I found that spot, we were using that, you know, for smaller stuff. Were you getting coke across? No, never did coke through. I did money and people.

People was, so now I'm into people now. Wow. So you're, your people smuggling. How would you get humans across? Would you just walk them across? Walk them across. And where'd you? Like, like, you and I walking down the street. Yeah. Yeah. What about, like, what about, I mean, it's exactly the same on the southern border, pretty much in the most remote areas. I mean, there's a good spot.

And then there's not good spots. I mean, now were you not worried about radar or, you know, like, so they had told me that there's like heat stuff, yeah, signature stuff. I mean, I never, I never experienced any issues. Who were you moving across? Was it Mexicans? Was it like South Americans? No, no, these are people that want to get smuggled.

Mexicans want to get smuggled. Well, okay, but I mean, in the sense, no, these were like connected people that wanted to get into the states without anyone knowing. I got you. Criminals that didn't want to pass through checkpoints. Got you. There, there, there, there, there, there, there was a murder in Long Island of a high ranking mob boss. Uh-huh. That supposedly I,

he came through my spot got across to Canada. I didn't meet him or shake his right nothing, but I allowed these things to happen on my space to go through your route. I didn't always receive everybody coming across you didn't need a receiver if you were smuggling yourself across you already had that set up. How much is how much is, how much would like a, you would get, what kind of fee would you get for bringing somebody from us? Five, that's great money for just one guy. But I would give, I split that with old man.

What old man, okay. So tell us how does, progress us through how this all leads up to the fall. Tell us more about the coke smuggling. How big did that get for the Canadians? I did about 10 trips. Never bought more, never bought less than 50 kilos. How, what was the most you ever picked up? 55.

They always ranged from 50 to 55. And did you finally meet with Mexicans? Oh, I mean, yeah, yeah, so only the first time did I have the white guy experience, which was awesome. Every other time with that was miserable and terrible. Why? Because you can't get, it took me two weeks to get 50 kilos. So you had to bring the money there, give it to them, and wait for them to bring it piece by piece. Yeah, so the first time I go back out, Sands the Italian guys, I'm going to meet Pablo.

Where did you meet them? At a Long Beach hotel right by the airport. Wow. I got a duffel bag so fucking big. I had to put it on the dolly to get it into the fucking room. That was like $1.1 or $2 million. And I'm going to get a phone call

and these Mexicans are going to come grab the duffel bag from me and bring it to their men. And then over the course the next few days, I'm going to start getting 5, 6, 7 kilos at a clip. And so you just have to wait at the hotel? Two weeks it would take about. Oh, my God, you'd be in a Long Beach Airport motel for two weeks. Yeah, but I have my Montreal girl with me.

She now is flying with me. She's like my baggage handler. Oh, and you're having an affair, too. My plane booker. She takes care of all my needs. And did you have your place in Huntington Beach, too? Yeah, but I never stayed there or slept there. That was going to be money, storage, drug storage, and place for me to stay.

But I was in Tunga when I stayed with Athena. Okay. And what's the price of a kilo at this point? 22,000. It always was 22,000. Okay. And never went up or down. So that load of money they take about two hours later, I get a call for my people saying

and there's $8,000 missing. They told their boss that you took your cut already. But of course, I didn't. How can I take my cut? I hadn't got this shit yet. My cut don't happen until I get home. Yeah. So I said, look, guys, I didn't rip you off.

Previously, they had overpaid me twice by $10,000 twice, and I gave them money back. Just a point of reference story. That's who I am. Yeah. And that's why they love me. Yeah. I gave them 10 grand back twice.

You were honest Andy. When they, I was honest Andy. Clipping off their pot customers. But whatever. We'll take that part out. I didn't hurt them. I didn't hurt them. No.

I mean, it didn't slow anything down. I just did an extra thing. Right. So bottom line is that van lord of Mexican, they stole eight grand off the top, went back to their boss and said, he took it already. So they didn't, they didn't. They never knew it was me. So it took two weeks for me to get the product.

I'm meeting people at fucking Denny's, man. I'm driving down back row. No back rows. Like little residential parks in people's garages. it's kind of lunacy. I don't like it. It's chaotic. And I complain to the people up north about it.

I don't like it. It's chaotic. Fixed as shit. Yeah. So grab those 50 kilos, move those back. Same way. I have trucks now. I own trucks now.

These are my trucks. I've got the best smuggling tool. I bought a shit ton of granite countertop. Eight foot by four foot. Four feet high, eight feet. long. I bought like 30 of them. They come in a big fucking crate all lined up side by side.

Super heavy, right? Super heavy. Yeah. Took them out. We hollowed out all but the outside too. Yeah. I could fit 200 pounds in there comfortably. Yeah.

Comfortably. And kilos? Forget it. Forget it. Easy. Money, forget it. Mm-hmm. So now I'm just shipping this rock back and forth.

Yeah, my flatbed. Same driver. Yeah. Same driver. We're still doing it. Look, I'm a firm believer, man, that if you do something the same way 10 times, you're going to get busted once. Yeah. So I've always been a mathematical tweet guy.

So in my brain, if I switch it up every two times, it's like kind of starting that 10 all over again. Yeah, you'll be fine. Yeah, you know what I mean? So if I switch it up every three, four, five time to do a different method, I think I'll be able to get away with that forever. I mean, who's going to, you know? And do you know, like, do you have a big nest egg of cash? personally that you're stashing. Yes.

So at this point now, too much money's coming in. You're a millionaire now. I don't know, I don't know where, I don't know how much money every avenue is making me at this point. I know my overhead is insane. I got a place in Canada I'm paying for.

I got a safe house. I got a safe trailer. I got my house. Yeah. I got Long Beach apartment. I got trucks. I got pay my help. Yeah. I mean, if I'm not blowing out 50 grand on overhead, I'm not blowing out a dollar. Yeah. So I'm Home Depot bucketing money.

Yeah. I'm vacuum sealing it, double triple, home depot. Where are you bearing it? My parents' house. I hid stuff in a chicken coop in my mom's house. I bury stuff out in the woods and all kinds of places. Yeah. And I always had about a hundred grand for me.

Just get out of town money. I always slept with 100 grand. Yes, me too. You know. I said, get out of town cash. I never left my house without a minute. minimum of 5G in my pocket. Even if I was just going out for an hour.

Yeah. I might need something. Right. You never know. Right. So what happens? So these loads are coming in. Man, money is so crazy.

So busy. You know, I do six, seven more of these kilo trips. And we're no longer bringing out big duffel bags full of cash. We're now, I'm being told now I have to separate the money into $22,000 bricks. And I trade brick for brick. You give me a kilo. I gave you $22,000. And that's to cut down on theft, right?

Right. My people, you know, because I complain. I said, you guys better get a fucking better system because you got ripped off last time. And I don't want to be the guy who they blame for stealing from you. Like, your shitty system is putting me in danger. Yes. Right. With you.

I can't have you thinking I'm stealing. So that deal works out well. But I'm still waiting two weeks every time to get 50. You know, that doesn't change. You're never getting 50 kilos at one shot. You're never getting into 10. I never got 10. Five to seven at a clip.

And do you think that was just a way that the cartels secure themselves? They'll never put a load. You know, I've heard other people talk about, you know, receiving thousands of loads and trail it. Man, I don't know anybody who puts a thousand pounds in a, I mean, I guess it happens. I think if it's their own people. But it's got to be like mega cartel with if you're, if you're the son of a boss from Mexico and you're, in Cali, they could probably trust you, but you are just a white guy working for an organization that they can't get to. There's no way to really secure themselves, but by taking this

over precaution. Well, you know, if I'm fed, they're only going to get the first guy that delivers a seven kilos. Right. Exactly. Right. The other 43 are going to stay at home and, and hey, we lost seven. Yeah. Move on. Exactly. So these trips are going. This is, happening probably monthly. Yeah. And we are still coming in and it's still coming in and it's those accounts are getting bigger. My Cali stuff's getting bigger. I'm still dealing with Athena.

Okay. So Athena's your main weed connect now. For Cali. She's the one that's getting. Well, they're my connects. I've just taken her in with me because I want her there with me. So how many pounds of weed are you moving at this time? Like how big are those holes? Me personally, not wheat. Not weed. I'm moving for other people. Yeah. Well, both actually. Well, me personally,

probably 100 to 200 a month. Okay. And then other people's weed? We're talking tons. I mean, over the course of all west, all west coast? Well, between Canada, weed coming down, being getting paid and can't, sometimes I get paid 75 pounds would be my pay for a job.

Yeah. You know, I get like a hundred grand cash and I say, give me some weed too. And they'd figure it out, hey, how about 75 pounds and 100 grand for that? And how would you run the business? Like how if you had, if a customer in Connecticut wanted, 20 pounds of weed and you were stuck in Cali for two weeks.

I made phone calls. Yeah, you had people helping you. Yeah. So when I wasn't around, I had receivers who were taking these cars from Applebee's and bringing them to my safe house. Did you ever get ripped off in the course of doing this? I never got robbed. I got burnt by the Crips out here one time for 15 pounds of, I'm sorry, for 20 pounds of OG Cush. the first meeting, they showed up with five pounds of beautiful OG Kush.

Second meeting, they had me meet them at a church, and they threw the product in my trunk and said, we better get out of here. It's hot. So I never saw the product until I got all the way back home to Tunga, which is about an hour and a half away. Yeah. I opened the bag, and they gave me fucking bunk,

fucking garbage. So I paid $2,500 for 15 pounds of shit. And I got five pounds of, but I still made money. I still made money. I still made money. I mean lifetime, that's the price you pay for doing business. That's it. I only ripped off 15 pounds. Never got robbed at gunpoint.

Never got robbed. I never, never. Well, the level you're dealing at is so high that there's just too much money. Everybody has to work together. There's no real incentive to rip a guy off. And can I just explain a little money story? Remember way back we talked about Nikki was getting weed from a woman whose husband was connected, which turned out to be old man.

Yeah. She would get a percentage from Nikki for everything he would do with her ex-husband. You understand? Hey, Nikki, I'm going to give you my ex-husband. Yeah. But everything you do with him, he's going to pay me and you're going to pay me. Yeah. Just because just for the introduction.

So when I kind of, when, look, Nikki disappeared and ran off to Greece because something happened with two kilos of heroin. He was supposed to hold it. Something happened. I'm not being coy. I don't know. Literally, I've heard something happen. So either he lost it, sold it, stole it.

I don't know. He's gone. But now this woman who I've never even met, she thinks I owe her money because I'm in on Nikki's dime. Yeah. Well, Marcus and I quickly say, fuck her.

You and I just won't tell her what we do. Yeah. You know? But the reason I told you that is, that's how it works man like in in that game if they turn you on to something they expect you to pay them in perpetuity yeah like a royalty payment just for an introduction that's crazy i push back on that yeah no that's crazy i push back on it and i didn't do it yeah um so i'm in i'm in the i'm in the crazy days i make a mistake one day in my haste and my networking and and i was

just looking for another good outdoor guy here in Connecticut. And my original buddy who would turn me on to the first Mexican who dropped me off here today. He has a white guy friend who has some high end. What year is this? 2010? 2011? Yeah, this is 2010. Yep.

Okay. I decided to send him $8,200 in the mail. And I've smuggled lots of money, and there's a way to smuggle it. And it's so simple. You fold your money in half. Yeah. Never put money in a box. flat,

flat meaning not folded, because money looks like money. No matter how you look at money through, whatever x-ray you look at through, it always looks like money, right? I would fold it in half and put it between Post-it packages. I smuggled hundreds of thousands on airplanes

that way in the early days for the trucking. Look, I trucked most of my money out west. Sometimes I flew it when I was only flying 50, 60 grand in the early days. Right. Pre-9-11. Yes. And I would take, no, no, post.

Oh, interesting. because I didn't start going to California until after that. But what I would do is I'd fly with another person. So I'd give him like 20 or 30 grand. You can put 10 grand in your wallet in hundreds. Right. And then you can put 10 grand in your pocket. Wallet goes through the machine. Pocket, you go through the walkthrough.

Yeah. You're allowed to have 10 grand on your person. Right. Whatever's in that wallet is not related to your person. But if you get caught with all the money, it's over 10 grand, they can take it. Right. So we used to book, I used to buy cars on eBay, but I wouldn't really buy them. I would call somebody, you know Brad Garrett from Everybody Loz Raymond?

He was selling a Camaro one time on eBay, and I set up a deal to come buy it because he was selling it for like $60,000. So you know what I'm thinking, right? I can now bring $60,000 bucks on a plane. I've already called his assistant. I've set up an appointment. I've left my name. I'm going to be there on this day. I've got my cash.

So you may take my cash, but I'll get it back tomorrow. But it never got stopped. So I never had to use that scam. I never had to use it. Never got stopped on a plane. Interesting. Okay. So what happened?

How did it, how did it, you know, all parties must end eventually? So the $8,200 that I sent to California got taken in Long Beach store facility. You sent it through FedEx? No, USPS. Okay. It goes along Beach store. Okay. He got picked up.

I got sloppy. I sent it between two fucking t-shirts, you know, just put money in it. Went through the radar, boom, taken. Now it's only $8,200 bucks. That's not a crime. No. Over 10's a crime.

Right. But they told me that it looked like drug money because it was in only 20s. They wrote me a letter and told me that. So they said, we're not giving it back. Even though I wrote a letter saying, he's selling a car, I'm buying it. I sent him cash.

Okay, so I'm stupid. I'm stupid. I'm stupid. That's all I am. I'm just stupid. Never got it back. that was the first thing that landed on the DEA desk. Yeah. That was it.

Why the fuck would you write a letter to the government? It's $8,200 bucks. You're a millionaire. Why did I fight the $8,200 bucks? I mean, I didn't want heat. I thought I could make it go away. Oh, so you were kind of like in plain sight saying, hey, I got nothing to hide here.

You took my money. I'm letting you know, hey, yeah, this is me. I did. I'm not super bright. I sent cash. I wanted this guy to know I was serious. I didn't want him to sell it out from under me. So I just mailed him money overnight.

Right. I was going to blow the guy away. And he was going to show up tomorrow and it'd be $8,200 in his mailbox. That was pretty much what I said. And they wrote back, no. I mean, have you ever anything more stupid than we think it's drug money because it's in 20s? You know, 20s is the most common piece of paper that floats around this freaking planet. Do you know that?

20s. 20s. I mean, you could argue that something even dumber than that is engaging with the feds. Yeah. But I beat them. So there we go. Don't bury the lead. Don't bury the lead. So this is the first time that you get on the Fed's radar. Yeah. So I'm doing a trip in California now. I'm on the Fed's radar, but don't know it. My truck had a problem. I had to get into the shop. It ran into a problem in New York City.

Broke down. I had to have it towed back to Connecticut with a couple hundred thousand bucks in it. I'm going out for weed for me, doing another Athena trip. Gotcha. And Denver. Doing a little Denver, a little California, Denver coming home. And my truck goes down.

We set up trucking with another trucking company who I knew a guy who worked for them and said, hey, can you get to San Francisco? And he says, I think I can try and finagle something. And I bank on this deal to get my car back home. We have to use a car. my personal car this time because my truck broke down. So I'm going to drive money out myself

with my girlfriend and her little fucking dog, which is a great cover, by the way. Yeah. White guy, hot chick, little doggy. No one, no one. So we drive the money out. Everything's fine. Pick up the weed.

Everything's great. A car hauler falls through. It doesn't work out. So now we've got to make a decision to hump 200 pounds back in a car and do it cowboy style. Right. And I don't like it.

Athena really doesn't like it. I'm paying my driver 10 grand a clip now for all trips. Okay. He's 10 grand a clip. 10 grand coming out, 10 grand going back. Right. It's great money. Yep.

And he takes the car. He's all the way back to Vermillion, Ohio. So he's got 200 pounds in one call. 200 pounds in two hockey bags. We fit 100 pounds in each hockey bag. And he's got him in the back of a Chevy Equinox. Okay. With the slide over cover, it kind of pulls over to kind of hide your little.

Yeah. So, you know, you can't see it. Yeah. But it's there. Yeah. And the seats are down, by the way. Okay. Because top talkie bags are six foot four almost.

Right. So he breaks the rule driving at night. That's right. Through Illinois and through Ohio. I know these states. These are zero tolerant states. With Connecticut plates. Yes.

When they want to steal money, they hit the westbound lanes. When they want to see a weed, they hit the eastbound lanes. That's how it works. He gets popped. We had a little bit of cash left over mixed with the weed on this trip because the Denver people didn't come through with as much as they were supposed to. I have grows going on in Denver at this point now. I finance grows.

Okay. So you've started to put your money in legal weed? No. Illegal grows. Okay. I gave a couple of guys 10 grand to start up a grow for me so I can have my product that goes to Shorty. Yeah. Denver to Texas is a better logistical trip.

Right. Of course. It's close. Denver, we would never come in here. Yeah. So I have two girls going from me. I ended up getting two.

Remember I said I only did a shorty a couple of times after that. Yeah. I only got two cycles out of it before I had to move on. It was just I couldn't get to Denver enough. Okay. So he gets popped in Ohio and calls me the next morning. From jail? Well, they, yeah.

No. Nope, they let them out. So I knew. He was talking. And they put the photos from the bust of, you know, they take the picture of the weed and the money. It was only $75,000 in cash, but there should have been no money. And there should have been 20 something more pounds. So he talked.

Yeah. Of course. He talked about everything that he had. ever done. And who I was connected with, Athena, Nikki, Canadians, people, I had a money guy in Connecticut too. I had,

you know, I didn't need them at the end, but in the early days, it was good to have a guy that would pitch in 20, 30, 30,000, when you're trying to pick up 40, 50 pounds. Yeah. He talked about the money guy, you know, he, and the DEA already had my 8,200 buck file on their death. So now it's, whoa, we just popped a guy with 200 pounds.

and $75,000 and it's in my car. Oh, the car's registered. Do you that Chevy Equinox is registered? That's mine. Yeah. Slipping. It happens. I mean, the truck went down, man.

It was not fixable. So I had to drift. And this is your most trusted driver? Been with me from the beginning. Wow. Now, I got to preface it by saying, yes, we had those conversations. I drove across country. with this man about six times.

So you don't think we talked a little bit. Of course. And as you can tell, I can talk a little bit. So what happens after that? So now he's working for the feds and he's playing me for where I am. I'm now no longer talking to him about business. I know he's been busted.

I'm not talking to him about business, but... But you act like you don't know that he's been busted. I know he's been busted. And, you know, he's been busted. know, when someone who works for you gets busted in this way, you can't abandon them because then they rat you out. Yeah. But if they don't stick to the plan, you get ratted out. So you kind of have to abandon them. I had to stay. Well, but in my thought process was, I don't know what he said. You know, he got caught with 200 pounds and 75,000. That's what you

talk about. Yep. First time I did it. Stupid me. I can't believe I did this. Have you ever done it before? Nope. But no, it wasn't that. Look, you know, you also can't, when a guy's in that position, if he don't got the heart or the spine, you know, you're not really tested until you're in that chair in that room. And, you know, he caved. And so why not just switch everything up? Why not get rid of all your phones? Why stay in communication with him? I mean, I was always switching things up, but I kept in communication with him because I didn't, at the time I thought it was smarter to just, look, I wasn't giving him any info, but they were pinging my phone. So they were pinging my phone. And I didn't want to believe that he was going

on trips. And every time he came to my house for a couple bucks, or I gave him a Nissan Pathfinder one time. And, and, you know, I don't get it. Why are you in communication with this guy? So he's allegedly, he's telling you that he's out on bail. Yeah. He's telling he's telling me he didn't talk. And the reason that they let him out, was because they bought his story that it wasn't his. And he's out. And I'm setting him up with lawyer meetings. I'm like, okay, cool.

Here's our next step. We already have the lawyer set up. I remember. And we had the lawyer. And I'm trying to get him to, hey, you got to contact him. But he's stalling. And I mean,

this is only taking place for about two weeks. Yeah. So this isn't like I was talking to him for months. I mean, but he had said enough. And they, they pinged me, which would become my,

my last trip of, 54 kilos. They pinged me out there in California. They ping me coming all the way across the country. Now, I wasn't driving. I had a driver. And pinging means they got... Pinging my phone to see where I was.

Hey, his phone pinged in Vegas. His phone pinged in L.A. It's phone pinged in Iowa. So does that mean they have a wire up on you? Or they're just tracking... No, they're just tracking me to see where I was going. And do they even need a warrant for that? Apparently not.

I mean, it's on good, you know, Intel. Yeah, so they could just ping you without a warrant. No, you know what? They probably did get a warrant. Right, but they're not tapping your phone yet. No. Okay.

No, they never tap my phone voice. Okay. Just location. Okay. Canada stuff is still going on. Blackberry stuff. I'm not worried about communicating through the Blackberry because they're not onto that. They don't even know that.

They know I'm dealing with Canada, but you know why they don't know? Because I didn't know how high up I really was. I knew I was. You must. But I never knew at the time that the guy I was talking to was the guy. The guy doesn't talk to transport. Yeah. Right.

You ever see Vito Corleone talking to, you know, I mean, he only talks to Luca Bratzi because it's his daughter's wedding for Christ's age. You know, other than that, those two don't communicate. Yeah. Right? They don't. In the real world, they do. Apparently they do.

So they pop. My driver as soon as he crosses into Connecticut, they had been pinging both of us. You know, they pinged me and they could tell who I was calling and talking to. Okay, hang on. So the driver's got 54 kilos of Coke now. White guy. Not, okay, obviously my driver got to bust. But he's gone now.

Yeah. I got to replace him. How did he get busted with, oh, yeah, you replaced him. Because they were pinging him and they knew I was coming back with something, but didn't know what. Ah. So as soon as he, look, they probably picked him up in New York is what I'm going to estimate. They probably pick them up in New York. Yeah.

And because Connecticut are such hoars, they didn't want to bust him in Connecticut because then they got a split. If it was all cash, you have to split it with New York. Right. That's how it works. Okay. So they don't want to do that. So they wait until he crosses right over the Connecticut line. Boat him up instantly.

He gets popped. I don't know it. I'm already home. In fact, I'm in New York City setting up a deal with a pot agent that's about to get me to the grower in Eureka. Wow. So I'm going now. I'm about to overstep all of the Ronnies and the Angie's peoples. You're going to go straight to the source.

I'm going to straight to Eureka. Yeah. And this is happening. I'm being set up with a guy in Redding who worked with this guy. A pot agent. That's fascinating. A pot agent. They used to be pot. There probably still are.

Yeah. Literally just middlemen who just connect to people. I know a grower. I'm a pot agent now. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. So there was big money in that back in the day. The DEA decided to hit me in New York City.

But they fucked up. I didn't have anything. I was only going down to talk. They thought I was going down to make a deal. Now, they knew I didn't have the key loads because they already busted the guy. that day. But they decided to hit me the same day. Okay?

He's going to follow this because it gets crazy. So I go to meet the pot agent. I go to his apartment. I meet him in the basement parking area. We walk the city. We go to lunch. The DEA are with me the whole time. I don't know.

Following you. Oh, yeah. They're with me. They're eating lunch with me. They're taking pisses next to me. Holy shit. Yeah. I don't know.

And of course, this guy doesn't know. This jackass, for whatever reason, is carrying a backpack. He's a young kid. He goes to NYU. He's carrying a backpack with $40,000 in it. I don't know this. It's not for me.

Not for me. I don't know anything about it. We're going down there to talk. Why he takes $40,000 with him on a walk-through town with a stranger, when you're coming right back home again, I'll never figure out why he did that. We get back from our lunch. We go into the basement to go get my car.

Bum rushed. Fucking cars everywhere. People fucking get down to it. I don't even think. think they're talking to me. So I'm ignoring them. I'm not getting down. I'm like, yeah, man, someone's fucked. Yeah. Where? This is on the street or? This is in the parking garage. I'm about to go to the attendant to say, can I get my key? Get down now. And I don't get down because they ain't talking to me. And you're clean. I had two joints. No, one joint. Smoke one the way down.

I had one for the way home. And are these undercovers? Is this New York, are these New York City cops or these DEA agents? This is the EA agents. Connecticut and New York combined together to come knock me out right there. But I don't have anything. But they get the 40 grand up. This guy. This poor bastard thinks I ratted him out. Right. He even says it to me while we're both in cuffs on the floor. He's like, you fucking rat to me. I go, I didn't fucking rat you. This isn't for me. Because I don't, this isn't for me. Right. This isn't for me. You, you have a problem. You got me hemmed up. Yeah, maybe you ratted me out. That's what I'm, yeah. So,

they have to let me go. I jump in my car. I smoked that joint the way home, and I go back to my safe house. I put my head on my pillow and I go to sleep. I can avoid it a quick one there, man. That was close. Next morning, I got my mother and my brother-in-law

at my house because I'm taking their spare tires because I'm going to load them with blow, but they don't know. I'm just taking their spare tires. I'm going to use them. But the kilos have already been confiscated. I don't know. He got busted.

Okay. Okay. Gotcha. I don't know he got busted. All right. He delivers the Coke to me. 54 bricks. Holy shit.

That night. So after they failed, they already busted him. They failed my bust. Right. That night, he delivers the coke to me. And I pay him, you see, I pay him $17,000 on the spot for that run. That was his fee. That was his fee.

For that one, yeah. It was 20, but he owed me $3,000. And you're at your warehouse right now? I'm at my safe house. Okay. I don't have money in this house at this point. So I take the kilos that, well, I do. I have my spending cash there.

I don't have anyone else's money. So now I've got the equinox in my yard. It's already been busted. I don't know it. Next morning, 20, 30 cruisers, 30, 40 guys, dogs, every, you know, everybody. And I'm in a small town, back road. Yeah. And don't you know the school bus that,

picks up my son. He wasn't on it. Drives by as I'm being walked out. So. And they fight all the Coke? One of the agents says, so how much weed you got in there? And I'm like, I'm looking at some of the other guys. I'm like, do you guys not know?

Do you guys not know? They already had the dog in the truck. They were going to get in the truck. they didn't have a warrant for the truck, but they could have gotten it. I found that later. They only had a warrant for the house. Wait, time out.

I got that backwards. My bad. The only had a warrant for the truck. They only had a warrant for the truck, not for the house. Obviously, they got the truck already. So he says, how much weed you got in there as they're getting ready to open it?

I go, I don't know. There's a few things in there. He opens it up and the look on their face. were like how many are in here? I said, I don't know, 50 or something, 50, 55. And they're like, oh. So they let my mother go. They let my brother-in-law go,

even though they knew that they kind of knew something. You know, I was using my people's spare tires at the time for various things. And so I get taken in. Hang on, hang on. What's the bust? What's the whole? Okay, 54.

Okay, so 54 kilos, 119,000. cash. There was some blow paraphernalia on a tray from my biker buddy friend of mine. I don't do blow, but yeah, there was that. And there was 75 pounds of weed. In the truck or in the house? In the house. Yeah. I didn't have money in the house. Did you let them into the house knowing they were going to get a warrant? Yeah. When they came to the door, I looked over my mother, my brother-in-law, and I said, it's over. Yeah. It's over. I would have done the same thing. Like I just let them in. And this is how I beat them. And we will switch over to the Patreon, folks.

Yeah. Rich, that was incredible. It took us a minute to get to the juicy stuff. We know there's a lot. I left so much out, but maybe we'll talk again. That was incredible. Congrats on your freedom. But we want to hear all about it because that was back in 2012.

Yeah, that was, yeah, that was end of January. And it's taken you now. now 13, almost 13 years to finally adjudicate and beat the case. Yeah. So that was incredible. But we're going to switch over to the Patreon now because we want to hear about the case and how you beat it. Thank you guys.

Go over to patreon.com slash the connect show to hear about Rich's case and how he beat the federal government. Not a lot of people can say that. No.