The Connect- with Johnny Mitchell - Atlanta Drug Kingpin Reveals What It's Actually Like Working For The Jalisco New Generation Cartel

Episode Date: September 7, 2025

This is the story of a former street hustler, Eric G, who went from growing up in Bayside, Queens during the crack era to running multi-state marijuana operations connected to Jamaicans and eventually one of the powerful and dangerous Mexican cartels in the world before being busted and being spent to prison. He opens up about: -Growing up in a Jehovah’s Witness household in Queens during the 80s -Early exposure to drug culture through family and neighborhood influences -Starting in the game at just 13 with crack vials in South Jamaica -Moving to Atlanta and building connections with Jamaicans and the music scene (including early ties to Lil Jon & Black Market Entertainment) -Becoming a wholesale supplier, moving hundreds of pounds weekly -Trips to Mexico and meeting cartel-level suppliers -Reflecting on the dangers, close calls, and lessons learned Go Support Eric! Podcast: @innoutww IG: https://www.instagram.com/_iamericg/ This Episode Is #Sponsored By DeleteMe! Remove your personal information from the web at https://JoinDeleteMe.com/CONNECT and use code CONNECT for 20% off DeleteMe international Plans: https://international.joindeleteme.com Join The Patreon For Bonus Content! https://www.patreon.com/theconnectshow 00:00 Preview: Addicted to the Lifestyle 00:41 Intro to Eric G's Story 01:18 Travel, Culture & Haitian Roots 03:00 Growing Up in Queens & Early Family Life 04:56 80s Queens: Crime, Projects & Influence 05:51 Crack Era: Influence & Survival 07:01 First Steps into Drug Dealing at 13 13:32 Money & Hustling as a Teen 15:31 Leaving New York, Switching to Weed 17:52 High School Hustles & Magnet Program 19:29 College Years & Debate Team 22:04 Expanding into the College Market 24:31 Atlanta Hustle, Early Connections 27:00 Music Industry, Lil Jon & Black Market Ent. 31:09 Finding the Big Connect & Scaling Up 33:54 Marijuana Distribution Operation 36:16 Family Involvement & Smuggling Methods41:06 This Episode Is Sponsored By DeleteMe! 42:39 Cartel Connections & Sourcing from Mexico 47:01 Atlanta's Weed Market & Profits 55:30 Weed from Guadalajara: Cartel Supply 01:00:06 Scaling Up: Cash, Credit & Distribution 01:09:12 Switch to California Chronic 01:15:06 Moving Premium Cali Weed 01:20:27 Shipping Methods: Trucks & Freight 01:30:27 End of the Drug Game Era 01:33:36 Indictment & The Bust in West Virginia 01:40:06 Trial, Snitches & Legal Troubles 01:47:31 Winning Freedom: Beating the Case 02:07:17 Life After Prison & New Pursuits 02:10:09 Podcasting, Advocacy & Looking Ahead 02:12:58 Closing Thoughts & Connections Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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You're talking about it so much weed and so many boxes. It fill up multiple garages and multiple houses. It's tons we're talking about. Once the violence comes into play, it's only so long because your time is getting closer to the end. I was out of control. I was reckless. My guest today is Eric G.

Eric's got one of the most fascinating rags-to-rich's drug trafficking stories I've heard in a long time. He grew up in Queens, New York, in the late 1980s, and started hustling crack at just three. 13 years old. He relocated to Atlanta, Georgia, where he switched his product to marijuana. And by the late 1990s, he was supplying every trap house in the Atlanta area. By the mid-2000s, he'd become one of the biggest weed dealers in the country. He connected himself with Mexican cartels and was moving thousands of pounds a week in semi-trucks going to his distributors all over the United States.

He was even summoned down to Guadalajara to shake hands with the bosses and see the vast weed fields where his product was being grown. Not many young black men from Queens, New York can say they accomplished that. Eric did seven years in prison, got out, and is now an advocate for sensible drug policy and is a brand ambassador for legal cannabis companies. Make sure to check them out on social media. All of those links will be in the description of this episode. I love this one, you guys, and you will too.

Eric G. Right here on The Connect with Johnny Mitchell. So you're a man of the world, though, which is cool. This is, uh, I love. 43 countries since I've been home. I love talking to. And even when you were out in the streets, I don't really like to call it in the streets.

You had a lot of workers in the streets, but you were a man that got around. I did. And I loved it. That's, I think, a thing about Haitian Americans or Jamaican Americans. Haitian Americans, you got to like. Right. You're Haitian.

They tend to be, I think they tend to do better. This may not go in the podcast. And New Yorkers. New Yorkers, exactly, because they're just so, you grow up surrounded by so many, cultures that it really makes you a person of the world, even as a young person. You know what I mean? It makes you cultured.

That's right. Which is such a gift. Right. You know, what was your family like in Haiti? Well, I didn't, I didn't grow up in Haiti as a matter of my, you know, so I grew up, you know, in Bayside Queens. Yeah. My father came to Haiti, came to New York to the United States and the rest of his family

when he was 14 years old. And so, but I did take my whole family to Haiti in 2017 because, The older Haitians are always like, no, no, no, too dangerous. We can't go. I'm like, over there. I don't want to see my roots. So at 2017, I went to Haiti. I saw the good, bad, and the ugly.

And there was a lot of good and a lot of bad. And there was a lot of ugly. I think now it's pretty much all ugly, dude. Yeah, that guy, barbecue. His name's barbecue. Yeah. They say he barbecue as victims before he eat them. Yeah, I don't know about that cannibalism thing.

I don't think that's real. I think that's a myth. But he definitely tortures people. Right, right, right. That's just what I've heard. So I can't confirm nor deny that. So I want to be clear on that. God damn it, dude.

They're the only successful slave rebellion. Right. And they're paying for it still. You know about that. Yeah, as the most fucked up country, I think, in the whole world of the Western Hemisphere. Definitely the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere. Yeah.

And I got a problem with it. I'm glad you brought that up. And then it needs to be spoken about because, listen, friends, United States has been long enough. Help the Haitian people out. You know, they still got their foot on their neck. They made them pay reparations. Right.

I know for winning their freedom. But my question is if you won your freedom, violently, can't you be like, suck my dick, I'm not paying your reparations? Yeah, but they didn't want the Navy ships to show up in the shore. Right. Yeah. You know, so it's fucked up. Then the United States came in and stole a lot of the gold. And you know, all of the bullshit that goes on.

We're not to get into that, but maybe we could do another episode on it. Yeah, yeah. It's not right. The hasty people are good, so, you know, help them out. Yeah, I agree. I agree. Okay, so tell us, thank you for being here. Tell us about childhood.

Where are you from? How'd you grow up? Well, number one, thanks for having me. So I grew up in Bayside Queens, New York. You know, they say Queens is where the Kings is born. You know, I grew up with a good family. I actually grew up as a Jehovah Witness. My mother was a Jehovah Witness.

She raised me as a Jehovah Witness. I had the proper morals. And, you know, listen, we were not dirt poor, but we were the furthest thing from rich that you can imagine. You know, we grew up with one car. My father worked. My mother was a housewife. You know, we didn't have a lot of money, but we did have what we need. So I didn't go hungry, but we didn't have, you know, we weren't, we weren't

balling. I mean, I guess they called us middle class, but I guess we were middle class for a black family. Base on Queens is like a working class suburb. Yes. Wouldn't you, isn't that a fair characteristic? A hundred percent. Yes. We had a backyard small and we had a front yard. Yeah. And I knew people from, uh, my cousin used to work in UPS and, and, and he, he knew people that he worked with in Manhattan. And when they found that he lived in Queens, because he lived in Cambria, Cambridge, they thought he was rich because he had a backyard. So yeah, it's back in, you know, 1980s. Right. Yeah. So you, so you came up, you grew up. You grew up. as a kid in the 80s in this section of Queens, which was dominated by the Supreme

team, right? The Supreme team, the Corley brothers, Fat Cat, and all of that. Yeah, they were in South Jamaica and they, you know, so they, they would, they carved up the projects. It's basically what they did and all of the housing apartments and stuff like that, which was 40 projects and Baisley projects and over there and Rochester and all of that. Yeah, that's what they had. Yeah, so even though there's projects and then there's like suburban single family homes with lawns. So it's a strange dichotomy, but you guys were doing urban gangster shit that you see in the Bronx, but, you know, in the suburbs. That's what makes Queens a little different. That's right.

Hey guys, do me a quick favor. Subscribe to the channel. Drop us a like and a comment and turn on notifications. So you get alerted whenever we drop new content. Enjoy this episode with Eric G. Okay, so then when did you start to get influenced by that? When did you realize what these people were doing? Well, listen, Well, maybe I said this when we were speaking off camera. So the neighborhood that we lived in, it was working class. And when blacks had a little bit of, you know, a decent amount of money, if they were from different places, sometimes, it might have been wherever.

The Bronx and Brooklyn, a lot of times they would move out to Queens because you're able to buy a house out there, like you said, working class, suburbia. And so we were blacks that lived there right in the middle. Any direction we went in too far, there was either Italians or Jews, Asians. You know, I've been chased before by Italians. So there was racism that was right there. But we had a heavy influence of different, you know,

different people in our community when I was very young. Maybe they was 18. Maybe I was 13. And it was like that. So they might have been from Brooklyn or wherever. And this is the age of the crack epidemic. So, you know, they brought, you know, to crack hits the streets. So as a youngster, you had a very, very strong influence because you still got to walk to

school. You know, you can have as good influence as you want. You still got to go to school. You still got to walk there. You got to walk there. And in many instances, the people, the friends, the influence. in your neighborhood around you at that age, they spend more time with you than your family. So, you know, you got to think about that.

So when did you get on? When did you first try your hand? I had a lot of influences, like I said, not only the kids in the neighborhood, but I had people that was associated with those South Jamaica crews that were literally in my family through marriage. And so one of the things that we had was, you know, and these brothers that I'm talking about that were my uncles, you know, through marriage, the Colie brothers is who were worse.

You know, they used to give us a lot of clothes. You know, so we were shining, even though my parents couldn't buy those clothes. They'd give us trash bags full of clothes, sneakers, because, you know, in New York, back at that time, when you're making money, you'd only wear something once, especially sneakers. You know, and you had to have a new outfit every single day. And these dudes, I mean, they were millionaires at a young age. Yeah. They were running South Jamaica. And, you know, so I saw those influences, too.

They used to throw parties where they'd have Curtis Blow and different people that they would pay to be at their birthday parties. So this was an enormous, enormous influence on me. And, you know, I was always influenced my money. as a kid. When I was five years old and I would get money for my birthday, this is before, you know, my mother became a Jehovah Witness, so we still had birthday parties I could remember. Even if I got $5 because I got a dollar for every age, I would save that. I wouldn't want to touch it. I would save it. I wanted to make more money. And so that's when it happened. I got influenced by somebody in the neighborhood. And at 13 years old, they would give the youngsters in the neighborhood,

they would give them the pack. And they would let them distribute it out to other kids because at that time, you couldn't be charged as an adult. So if you just could get charged. as a juvenile, so that's when it started happening. And since a young age, I always loved my money. I was always able to save it. So I was like, really, I was like a young lieutenant at a young age. So there was three of us in our crew. There was more of us that were selling.

But maybe there was five of us in our crew. There was a whole lot more kids. But the kids that I would pass the packs out to, so there was a 60-40 where a dealer would get 60% and everybody else got 40, I got 50-50. Because they would give me the whole bomb and then I would distribute it out to everyone else and then still keep my same pack.

And that's how we did it. And one of the ways I was able to elug, you know, getting pulled over by DT's Dix, is what they call them, is because I saw I would walk to the Kingdom Hall. You know, that's what you, if you're a Jehovah Witness, I used to go on field service. I had a briefcase with the watchtowers and with the Bible in it. And on the way there, either on the way there or on the way home, I would stop in my drug dealer's house. Briefcase suited and booted. And then he would load me up. I'd have it in the briefcase.

So while I'm walking home, if the cops happened to pass me, you know, I make sure nobody's coming down the block. and running his house, he'll load me up. Now I'm walking home. So if the cops run down the street, they're not going to pull me over. They're not going to do none of that because of the fact I'm suited. I got the briefcase.

I know I'm a Jehovah's Witness. Yeah. And you got a G-pack and the, how much did they give you at a time? Well, they'd give me like a thousand, a thousand vows back then. You know, they would give it to us for 10. We sell them for 20.

Jumbos, you know, we could double up. So they would give me a thousand. Yeah, they basically give me a thousand. And I would give three other people to, 50 and then I keep 250. Once you, at 13, you even had workers. I had workers. Well, okay, let me correct that.

Yes and no. I didn't really have workers. Kind of I did. I kind of organized them, but, you know, we were all working for the same dude. Yeah. You know, so he gave it to me. I distributed out. So, yeah, they were kind of workers, but I didn't have direct control over them.

Like, if they didn't pay the money, he were going to deal with them. It didn't matter if you was a kid back then. They'd just get other kids your age to beat your ass. Yeah. You know, you were turning in that money. I mean, that's one thing about New York back those days. They didn't want really know no gang time, like on the West Coast. But they was in the neighborhood, Haim, and everything was sectioned up.

You know, and I was different from like when I went to the South, I noticed it was kind of a totally different thing. There wasn't no freestyle in New York. You was either working for somebody in that neighborhood or you wasn't working at all. They wasn't no bringing cracks in from Brooklyn to Queens. Now, that didn't happen. They would run you off. No, they're going to take your money.

They're going to shut you down. They're going to rob you. They're going to beat your ass and you're going to be working for them. It wasn't no free balling at no age. You was either from that neighborhood and you was aligned with the people that was one in that neighborhood, or you wasn't selling drugs. That was it. Wow.

And the story. Yeah. And those dudes were murderers, too. They didn't play. Yeah, there were several dudes. I ain't going to talk no names. Some of them is dead. But there were several dudes and it's funny that you bring that up, as a matter of fact.

There were several dudes that was driving bodies. And at a very young age, you know, listen, this is the first interview that I'm doing. I've been home for, you know, for some years just as long as you've been home. And I never really did an interview. I never told my story because I just didn't believe in that. You know, I just didn't believe in being in front of a camera, social media, and all that stuff. But, you know, I decided, listen, it's, you know, now it's time to tell the story. So when I was 13 years old, me being like the forefront of the young kids, I just always had a different aura about me.

I was the leader at a young age. And I didn't play with the money. I was always, you know, I turned it in. You just say, I was the number one salesman. I get rid of that pack fast. And so somebody, my dealer, he really actually tried to get me to do, he tried to get me to murder somebody at a very young age. And so I told you that conflict. was there.

Not just me, with me and my boys. And he had the whole plan. And he wanted me to kill one of his rival drug dealers who was in Flushing. And like I said, I ain't going to say the name, but he had the whole story.

He was going to give us the gun. And he was telling us how we can do it. And he was telling him, yo, we could just hit him. But I did have, I had a moral compass because of the way that I was raised. And he was saying he was going to give us some bullshit like $5,000 or $10,000. I don't remember the exact number

because I really haven't even told the story. So I long forgot it until you just said something that just sparked it in me. And this cat, who did that, he's actually dead right now. And he had murdered some other people before he went to prison, but then he got murdered in prison. He wanted me to kill somebody, me and my two dudes. But ultimately, we said no.

But, you know, the thought was there, but the moral compass was there. Like, man, this is a dude crazy. Fuck he's talking about it. But he was like, yeah, y'all can do it. Y'all can get away with it. Your mind is, juveniles. Yeah. That's what he wanted us to do.

That was the type of manipulation sometimes. Sure. That old dudes would have on the neighborhood, you know, on the younger dudes. Well, I mean, it was all manipulation. If you have 13-year-olds, 13, dude, you barely got pubic hair and you're selling crack to adults in the neighborhood. It's crazy as hell because...

Crazy to think about. And I thought about that. And it's frightening. And when I really started thinking about it is when I started having children. And, you know, you look at them, they're all young adults now. But when you look at them and you look at your child

at 13 years old, when you really start thinking about that shit, and you're like, you know that they still kids at 13. And then you, and you, think about, I thought about the shit I was doing at 13, and it scares you. And it's frightening, even to this day when I think about it. So you, they were giving you thousand packs, thousand miles at a time. How much did you save? Like, you saved all your money. How much did you actually make? Yo, back then, I mean, I made money and I saved my money, but I was spending a lot

too by the time. I got to like 14 years old. I was a freshman. I was going to John Bown high school. And I was, so I was in the ninth grade. It was a freshman. I used to have a girlfriend. She was 16. So I was a freshman. She was like a senior, but I had money. I sent her back and forth school every day in the town car, is what they call it. I would go back and forth in the town car. So, you know, we was blowing money fast at a young age. So I can't really say like at that age, like I actually accumulated anything of consequence. You know, maybe I might have made, you know, whatever I made in a week's time. But you had thousands of dollars you were making every week. Absolutely. Holy shit. And it blew my mind because I really, I knew,

I didn't know exactly how much my father was making. But I knew I was probably making more money than my father. And that's just a crazy thing. Like, the more and more you think about it when you look back and you say like kids, and this was happening all over. This wasn't just me. This was the era of anyone that's that young selling crack. And most of the time, they're making more money than their parents might make in a year. And they might be making that in a few months. So it's not a good influence. How, uh, and you left New York. Your family got you out of there. I left New York. My family got me out of there. Uh, you know, I started dabbling in the weed because the crack, the hard. It felt kind of nasty. I had. I had,

I had a moral conflict. You know, I seen grown men get their ass beat for own money if they didn't turn in the pack, like I told you. You know, I wasn't a violent person, but the people that I got my pack from, they were violent and they were very violent. And they were not passive, aggressive, they was aggressive. So, like, I had a guy and robbed before I never met, I never forget his name. His name was Disco Dave. And he robbed us before. He tricked me.

And he might have just robbed me for like $40 worth of cracks or whatever the hell it was. He used to wear a trench coat. He was real tall. He was a grown man. You know, at that, you know, I'm 13 and 14. remember his age, but Disco Dave, he was a crackhead. He might have been 40 years old, but they stripped this dude naked, beat this dude's ass,

whooped them. They probably beat him unconscious. I mean, they just didn't play that to make an example. You ain't going to take from them. So that only had to happen one or two times, because if you took, you ain't going to take advantage of us just because we're 13. Sometimes crack kids did because, you know, if you were bad enough crackhead, it don't really matter. You're not really thinking right.

You know, I didn't see women, you know, suck dick and do all the type of craziness. They suck in the dick of a 13-year-old and they'd grown women. Or maybe they was 18, 25, no. But they were beautiful and they were fine. And they were getting turned out at a young age. And this is what crack did. So, you know, this is something I'm not proud of. But at the same time, I was a 13-year-old kid, 14-year-old kid.

I stopped selling crack when I left New York. You know what I mean? I'm out of dabble once or twice when I got into Atlanta. But really, we became my game. And, you know, so when I left New York, I basically left the crack alone, with the exception of a time here, there, where I had my younger cousin bring like half a brick, you know, on the bus and on the train on Amtrak down there,

because I got my entrepreneurial mind going, and I still, I'm in this New York state of mind. I'm still like a young man, even though I'm a young boy, I'm in Atlanta. So when you from New York, you're really thinking like you advanced and you pass everybody else back then. And listen, I love Atlanta. Don't get it twisted.

And I'm happy I move because, you know, you get a chance to understand that people are people. You ain't really more fast or more advanced than anyone else. We might have been a little more advanced back then. No, New Yorkers still to this day, think they're better than everybody. And that's okay. I appreciate that.

And I kind of agree with it. So it's all life is based on exposure. So we was exposed to more things at that age than most. Yeah. Like the facts of the matter is you, as the melting pasta, you see different things, different fashions,

different things all over at a younger age and faster the music and everything. But as I got older and as I'm sure you saw the same thing, you ain't really smarter than no one else. You might have access at that younger age, you know, especially back then before the age of Internet and before music was all over

and hip hop on a worldwide stage, but people of people, wherever they are. You ain't really harder. You might have thought you was. At least I thought I was. We thought we were more fans. They didn't even know where Atlanta was. They were like, where the fuck you're moving?

When I'd come back, they'd be like, oh, where was you? North Carolina, South Carolina. I'm like, no, Georgia, Atlanta. But we thought we was better. That's true at that time. Then you realize that people are people and people might just have different accents

or a different way of doing things. Just because someone is talking slow or talking different. They're not necessarily different. You still get your wig pushed back in the South. A lot of dudes came to Atlanta thinking that they could take over and they ended up dead and stinking in a garbage can. Right.

Or in a trash can. So I understand that aspect of it, too. So then in high school, you were selling weed in Atlanta? I was selling weed in high school. Yes, I was. I started selling weed in high school. And, you know, there was a girl in our high school. And she used to steal weed from my father or get it from my father.

And he used to grow back then. And I went to Thirl High, South West Atlanta, the Swat. So, you know, anybody from the Swat. to Southwest, they know thorough high in that age. You know, I graduated in 91, class of 91. But, yeah, so I was selling for this girl. I was giving from her, whatever little money I can get. We had all type of different hustles.

I was in a magnet program for law and government. So remember, I'm from a good family. I'm a small kid. Yeah. But I used to smoke weed every day. Shout out to Snoop Dog because, you know, smoke weed every day. So I used to smoke weed every day, but I still will go to school and I get good grades, and I was still selling my weed on the side.

Right. So I got little hustle money because we got tokens. to ride MARTA. So we would get tokens to ride MARTA because we was in the MAGNA program, so we was out of the district. So we'd get a certain amount of tokens. But in the MAGNA program, I knew that these tokens existed.

So me and my man, which his father was actually the Magnus Center coordinator, we would steal these tokens, and then we would go to the Mata station and we would sell them to people. So we'd have like, you know, however many tokens, 500 tokens, and we'd be able to sell them for money.

We ended up getting court and getting arrested for that, but that was one of those small things. One of those bullshit cases, right? The bullshit case. A got throwing out a little diversion program. Yeah, so you were a good, student good Haitian roots right but you got New York Queens drug dealing uh in your blood now this is a good combination this is a winning uh combination for drug dealing success

it's powerful yeah so you went to college you went to emory I went to Oxford of Emery that's right and that's a good school they call it the Harvard to the South Harvard to the South that's it man uh what do they call it uh the all black what do that's the fuck they call it It's not all black now. No, no, no, no, no, no, that's historically black. You know, it's like a top HBCU. No, no, no, not Emory University. Oh, Emery's not an end part of HBCU.

It's really a very small percentage of black people. But they're number one, they're like number three or four in endowments to this day. They call it the Harvard of the South. They have a law school and, you know, Emery is Emery. Wow. They have the Jimmy Carter Research Foundation. They have a law school, medical school, and medical hospital. Emery is also one of the number one.

hospitals in Georgia. Wow. So they fucked up letting you in. Yeah, they fucked up kind of letting me in, but they wanted, so they wanted me because they had the largest debate program in the country. And I was a massive debate in high school. I went to an all-black high school, thorough high school, all-black, literally all-black. And I was also on that mock trial team, and I was good.

And what I did. So my grades was good, not A-1, but decent. I got into trouble in school often, but I was also a master debater and on the mock trial team, which is a program for young lawyers. Yeah. So they recruited me because they hit the largest. debate team in the country, but they did not have enough people that looked like me. So they wanted me to come there, they recruited me, and that's how I ended up at

at Emory. Not because of my grades. My grades was decent enough, but these awesome universities always have a program where they can let someone in, especially our minority, that may not have the grades, but I bought something to the table. Sure. And one of the things that I learned back then is those major schools, academic schools, that don't have a major academic sport program like Emory University, they recruited and spent more money on recruitment back then. I don't know if it's now on debate than on sports. Future lawyers, future politicians, judges, lawyers, most of them went to law or went to a

debate team at some capacity when they were in high school and probably college. Right. For sure, for sure. Man, I can tell just by talking to you for 20 minutes, you're a good debater, good lawyer. But you love drugs. You love making money. So just like me, that's just kind of where in college. This is where your business expands. That's right. Yeah, it did because, so I went to Oxford and I was around. It opened up my mind. It's funny because I got a podcast also, and I was interviewing someone the other day on the In-N-Out podcast.

And so he was, he's a very successful guy. He did a little bit of time. He's from New Orleans, but he was telling me, and I agree with it, I just hadn't heard it put that way before. You know, like when you stretch your mind based on what you've been exposed to, it could never go back. So my mind was stretched when I went to Oxford because I was around people. I had never been around people, like personally, that had that type of money.

So there was one particular person, like I said, there was rich white boys, there was rich Koreans, there was rich blacks. Small percentage of blacks, don't get me wrong. Very, very small. Like, only one rich black did I know. He was from Africa from Benin, and his father was a king, so that made him a prince. But so there was this rich Korean dude, and he was so rich. His father used to own an airport and an insurance company. And when I knew how rich he was, was when he got caught, he got caught.

But he got caught. Now, anybody else, if it was me that got caught doing this, I'd have been kicked out to school, no question. He got caught cheating, which in those high-class schools, you know, high-dollar schools, they'll kick you out. Of course. So he got caught cheating by copying over someone else, and he was drunk from the day before.

He wrote his, not his name, their name on his paper because he was copying the whole thing, they let him copy. Then when we was all drunk later on, he was saying, my grandfather, or my dad is so rich. that we give them so much endowments, I could fucking do anything. So his father gave him a bunch of money. He didn't get you down.

That's right. But he's not wrong. He's not wrong. And that kind of like just started making me understand wealth. He had a Mercedes-Benz. He got $10,000 a quarter that he got from his parents just to be there. I used to drive his. So they had, you know, different fraternities and this and that.

We was part of one called T-L-T-L-T-L-T-L, and then there was like other frats and stuff that was on campus. All of them smoked weed, we smoked. weed, everybody smoked weed. I became the dude the black guy that was supplying the weed. We were about an hour outside, maybe 45 minutes outside of Atlanta, original birthplace of Emerald University,

called Oxford, and it was in 45 minutes outside in Oxford, Covington, Georgia, Newton County. So I would drive back to Atlanta all the time in the West Center. I'd get from the Jamaicans, I'd get the weed, which back then it was quarter pound. Well, what happened is I was just smoking the weed with them. And it was blown away because I had the best weed. So they started giving me their money.

to go buy weed and then I'd come back. I'd get it from one place. So you had a Jamaican connect out in the sticks. Well, in Atlanta. Okay, I see. So it was only 45 minutes away. Started, I had my little Volkswagen bug. I just bought weed a couple times for everybody to smoke.

They all loved it. We were smoking. It was crazy. So then they started giving me the money for me to go get the weed. And I realized whatever I'm buying it for I can come back and sell it for twice. Charge it up, of course. Then I started telling them I need your car. So I take his car.

I'm in Atlanta all day in the bends. I had never drove a bends. I'm driving around in the bends all day. I'm taking all day. They're getting scared. I come back. When I came back, the car was intact. They're not scared anymore.

I got the weed. I started supplying the fat brothers and everybody on the campus. There's always one of you on every campus. There's one, the guy that goes to the big city, gets the wholesale price, then comes back to the little town where the college is at and just kills them. It was me. Okay, cool. How did you meet the Jamaicans?

The Jamaicans I just met because I was just buying weed. I don't really remember where, you know, how I got turned onto the spot. But they were just, they called the gates where they would have a huge steel door. and just the thing would open up New York style or Brooklyn style. Herb Gates. Or herb gates. They had the Gertz. The herb gates in the West End.

The West End is where you're talking. And they were probably situated there because that was low-income black neighborhood. But that was right, smack dab in the middle of where the HBCUs was. Morehouse, Spelman, Mars Brown, and Clark-Ladden University. Okay. Got it. And so, you know, I just formed a relationship then. And I'm coming with more and more money.

So they're giving me better and better deals. And, you know, I went from an ounce to a quarter pound to pounds. And that's what I was doing. And then when I'm supplying. them at this small school, then no fraternity brothers is buying for me, and now they sell it to everybody, but then they also selling to the fraternity brothers at the main campus of Emory, which was in Atlanta, well, actually in Decatur.

Wow. So how you're growing this business, and the Jamaicans are giving you love, and there, you find out later on, their weed is actually coming from Mexico? Okay, so, yes. What kind of weed was it at this time in the late 80s, early 90s? Listen, at that time, I believe it was.

probably actually coming from Jamaica. This is when they were still bringing it in from Kingston. It was probably coming from Miami because you had the Jamaican boys, Shower Posse and all of that. But there's another little jump, another little step when I got my real connect. And shout out to him. Shout out to I don't want to say his name because who knows what he's still doing. But I ended up meeting my Jamaican buddy from Kingston one, Port Royal.

They call that Home of the Pirates. So he really put me on in a whole other level. you know so during this time you know i'm going to school but not really so i ended up like not ended up i never finished school back then because i'm doing too much having too much fun making too much money i end up getting the off-campus house and little five points this is when we're coming up with you know honestly this is where this is where i started uh so i was friends with little john and those guys that started black black market entertainment we actually started that together so you knew them from college i i didn't know they were not in college but i just knew them

from being in Atlanta. Right. And when we ended up, so Lil John, he used to have a little saying, he would call me, because I was influenced from being in New York,

so I was influenced by John Gotti. So I always had it in my mind, like, I'm going to, anything I do on the week, I'm going to bring it to the next level. Yeah. So remember,

I hooked over my other dude, so I'm really getting, just going to another level. They didn't sell weed or anything like that, but they were, little John was a big DJ. So when Lil John was a big DJ,

a lot of times he wasn't getting the money, he was supposed to be getting. He would do, so Lil John would do parties and he would cater to different crowds like nobody else did. Like he was him for real back then on the DJ level. Right. He was DJing at radio stations, W-R-FG 89.3,

and he was rocking with me all the time, and he was doing these big parties. They were called Lil John O.E. And Five Chicken Fest. He would do them on Auburn Avenue, and he would do these reggae parties where the Jamaicans loved him because he was the best reggae DJ.

He was the best hip-hop DJ. He was the best DJ. So a lot of times he wasn't really getting the proper money. And I was like, nah, fuck that. We're going to get you. I mean, they know you're doing a party and not getting paid at the end. So then I came in. And then we ended up doing Big E is what they call me,

and Lil John Free OE and Fried Chicken Fest. So we did that a couple of times, and then we wanted to make it on a more, like, legal level. So then we started playing around. It was me, Lil John, Vince. Shout out to Vince Phillips. It was Ray McDowell, Rob McDowell, excuse me, Searcy, and it was me. And we came up with this name, you know, partly because, you know,

You know, we all, like, I was in the black market, not them. But, you know, they saw the bigger vision, which, you know, shame on me, because I didn't really see it. They saw the bigger vision. So we started, we started BME, black market entertainment. He would always say, you're a little John Gotti. You know, you're a shot caller back then. And we were really good friends.

And, you know, I had the DJ equipment at one point in time at my house. He probably had his own, too. But I had minds in my house. And, you know, we would all stay together sometimes over there. And we was making it happen, make a long story short, short story of midget. my cousin ended up getting shot because of the fool who's just that I was in. Somebody got jealous of me. As a matter of fact, I skipped

that because sometimes you just jump around. There was another dude that I was rocking with him. Before I got my major connect, I was rocking with him. Then when I met my dude, who I told you about the Jamaican, I stopped rocking with him, so he tried to send a hit on me. So me and my cousin, we had another place. We had multiple places. My cousin

ended up getting shot. It came from me. They put a hit on me. The dude was from New Orleans. I ain't going to say his name neither. If he's still out there. Maybe not. So you tried to have you hit because you You weren't buying from him anymore? I'll stop buying from him. Wow. Just jealousy, man.

Jealousy, man. So you tried to have me hit my cousin and him getting shot. I kind of not really spooked. I'm at this age. It's fucked up. I'm a little nervous because I don't know where the hit comes from at first, but I put it together. But I'm still in this New York state of mine, like 18, 19 years old.

So I shoot to New York for like three months. Right before we were supposed to get all the contract signed. So at this point in time, and this story's probably, it's never been told before. But they'll verify it. We're still all good friends to this day. You can ask any one of them. So at this point in time, I go to New York.

These dudes, they do all their paperwork. They can't get a contact with me because I'm thinking, I'm going to go to New York, I'm going to regroup, I'm going to come back, I'm going to knock this dude's head off that put that hit on me. So I go to New York, I'm going for like three months. Me, like a fool, I don't contact nobody in my mind. I'm on the low.

I come back. They started working for Germain DePree. They become the promotion team, street team for Jermaine DePree, and Liljohn becomes A&R. I come back. There was no love, running to me, we're back, these dudes just rocking, they're blowing up on the street. They're doing a warehouse and all of that, but I was out at that point.

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Drink responsibly must be 21. When you finally find your thing, you want the whole world to know about that thing. So you use a thing called Canva to make it an even bigger and better thing. Whether you want to create flyers for that thing, make presentations for that thing, or design merch for that thing, you can do anything. So people can see your thing, feel your thing, love your thing. The next thing you know, it's a thing. Canva, the thing that makes anything a thing. Right. So you were just fully off off into the drugs. Like, so you, do you think if you would have stayed put and, and, and, and been part of the founding of, of black market entertainment, but like actually stayed with them?

Do you think you would have put the drug dealing aside and just given everything to this music business? I struggle with that every day. I like to think I would. You know, they didn't blow up with the money right away. So probably I would have been with them. I mean, it could have went either way because I probably would have been making the money.

But then at some point, if they blew up, probably I would have just said, let me walk away. But the money and the lifestyle is addictive. So at this point in time, even though they attach to social deaf and they're able to get the whole parties and they're blowing and doing all this, the cash wasn't really there. I'm still making money. hand over fist.

Yeah. And it's a lifestyle that I was addicted to. So in my mind, I'm the rapper, but I'm not a rapper. But, you know, we're talking in early 90s. Right. You know, I'm making money. I'm blowing money fast for real. I'm making...

Well, Liljohn, he, what did he blew up? We first heard of him in, like, 2006. So, yeah, he probably wasn't making real money for at least 12, 14 years after he first started the label. So, yeah. You probably would have been in the street. and then had one foot in the company, and, you know, who knows what would have happened? Shit happens.

Okay, so you're back. The music is, that's already gone. So you meet this Big Connect, this Jamaican dude. Tell us how it worked and how you grew and developed with them. So he starts giving me the weed on a whole other level. He's giving it to me. I got my own money. I'm buying some, whatever it was, a few pounds.

He'd given me more money than I can handle. I mean, more weed than I can handle. So I start, I'm getting, now we're in Southwesterns and Leverner. I'm older now, you know, still in my young 20s, maybe 20, 21, somewhere around there. I lose track exactly how old I was, but he gives me reading it, and I know it's coming from Cali at this point, but he is still getting it from other Jamaicans, but I started monopolizing and taking over different houses and renting them where we were in Southwest Atlanta. We were off Camelton Road.

We were between Venetian and Avon on Elizabeth Avenue. I control that block, you know, so I got houses all over. I got three houses on that block. One were they doing like smaller things, ounces, because we were still, I'm still a distributor. So I'm doing houses and a quarter pounds And there was another house Where they come and get the pounds And then another house

Which was a safe house My family had two of them And then we rented another one When I say my family They own them So I'm renting from my family But I'm able to pay rent Like my uncle or whatever

Grandmother owned That died My uncle owned it. We rented them So that's going on there Then we got different spots all over You know Then I got older brother

And cousins and stuff That was still in New York I tell them you all I'm making money Y'all need to move down here So they move down So now it's becoming like A family thing So really

You know a lot of things, it just is what it is. All the shit always flowed around me because I always had like an entrepreneurial mind. So I'm going with the Connect. My dude is looking, getting more and more and more. They're getting in from Cali. Back then, they're getting it and they bringing it in

and luggage on the plane. This is before the Unabomber. This is at a time when you can go and you probably know about this, you can get on a plane and you can have a female ticket. It didn't matter. They weren't looking for idea or anything. You just had to have the ticket. This is before the Unabomber. This is before the Unabomber. This is before

the Unabomber. This is before all of that. So they're bringing it in on a plane. Wow. You know, and... We're getting up... And luggage on a plane's insane. That's how they're doing. They're bringing it.

He's giving it to me. I'm moving so much weed. I'm going fast and faster. He's blowing because he's giving it all of me. I'm making it disappear. Now I'm down with the Jamaican boys. Right. So...

What are they giving you at a time? Man, back day in, it was probably 10 to 20 to 30 to 40. Now I'm getting 50 pounds a week. We're going through it. I'm supplying more and more people finding out. So I got these gates built at each one of the houses, too. We got a... So there's like a vestibule, if you know what that is.

Yeah. So it's a foyer. It's a foyer. So between the door that they enter and then the door that I'm at, it's a steel door, solid steel. So they got to come in. They're in the vestibule now. I don't let them in.

So they come around. We got a wooden gates, privacy gate. I'm spending all this money to have all this. I'm forming the gates that I used to go to. And the weed gate. So I got all this for protection. We got the guns in the house. And, you know, so they have to come through.

And it's, I don't let them in where I am. And we buzz them in. Then they're in there. They're in this foyer with two steel doors. But they locked in. They can't do nothing. So you can't rob me because, you know, it's just a thing, a slot, almost like when the prison thing, that I could put the pounds through.

Because remember, I operated the one where the weight was at. So you would serve wholesale that way, too? I'm serving wholesale that way, too. It don't matter how bad they wanted to get in there. I wouldn't let them in. I know robberies go down, too. Even though we in there, we got the guns, it's a big enough slot where you could put, you know, dudes wasn't getting 100, 200, 200 pounds for me back then, but they might have got five pounds.

They might have got three pounds. We had the streets on fire. I mean, we got them. coming from all over Georgia, all over Atlanta. Dude is coming from the West and everything. Remember, I got the outlet, but I got these dudes giving me this, they're giving me the work now. What I come to find out, as I got deep in, deep into it, they love me.

I damn there thought I was Jamaican. I'm eating with them every day. They knew how to cook. I didn't cook. You know, but Jamaican men grow up knowing how to do. They were roster. So they got to know how to cook because when the females are her period, she can't cook for them. This is real.

She can't cook. If you're a roster, you don't have a woman cook for you if she's on her period. So all roster men. A real roster, they grew up and they know how to cook. So that reminded me in my Haitian food. So that's why I can get my beans and rice, my curry chicken, my brown stewed chicken, my browns to fish. So my man, he eat fresh food, fresh fish every day. So we smoke weed and we listen to reggae music.

I even started thinking I had the accent. You know, I'm full-blown Jamaican. We walk around with guns and everything in our waist. That's how we're moving. Yeah. But they got people, so the way they do it, they come over, they make it man money. So they got people in some of the people in Cali, they're sending it, but then the people, they got other people back in Jamaica.

And the people in Jamaica want to know who this dude, E, that, that, that, that, my dude, kid, I'll just say his name, fuck it, he don't care. It was back then. Kid Ali giving this weed to. And it was me. He'd get more and more weeds. So eventually, and we can get into that later or maybe not. But then them dudes come over and they're almost like they want to meet Kid Ali.

Because once they make it over here, then everybody know they get to connect. You know, the Jamaicans over there. Then they get to connect from the Mexicans, which I come to find out. and Cali. Now he'd give him, but they also, because they like, they got older than him. They were supplying him. They probably help him get over. So when they get over, they want to be able to deal directly with E. They want to be able to get me the weed. Or they, they were given, he giving me all, everything he got, and then they're giving him everything they got. And then he giving me everything they got. So I'm getting more and more because these dudes in Jamaica.

I'm talking Kingston one. I'm talking about Tivoli Gardens. I'm talking about some of the roughest areas in Jamaica, in Kingston, period. They know about a dude named E in Atlanta that make their weed disappeared. It's crazy. It's crazy. And, but still, it sounds like in the early 90s, there, the Jamaicans are just the distributors for the Mexicans. So you're still getting, you're selling all this weed, but you're still getting middleman. That's right. They're just, all they're doing is getting it and dumping it off and taking some points off of each pound. That's right. Do you realize that at some point? You're like, I could just go find the Mexicans myself. Well, you know what happened? However it happened, and I don't know,

because I don't really know what the kid is getting older. We all getting older. Probably he, you know, had a girlfriend that lived out there. His family was real big. So eventually I started going to Cali with him because he told me, well, that's how it happened. So I would, so they always had to have a lot of people that could bring the luggagees and people might get popped here and there. Right. So I ended up becoming the person that would bring the girls, bring the guys that was willing

to go out there and carry the weed. I ended up going out there with kid. So, so, so I start bringing the girls. I start bringing the different people from different colleges to different friends, everyone, you know what I'm saying? They're willing to, they're going to go out there. can get paid to bring the weed. We got a system.

They bring it. I go out there. Make a long story short. You know, and obviously there's a lot in between. But, you know, so eventually seven people got caught at one time at LAX.

Simultaneous bus. They were following them from the hotel. They were on to us. Not me. I don't get caught, but all my work. It was, you know, probably over however many pounds.

It was a lot. Probably like 350 pounds or something. Wow. They could cover, they could carry 50. Each one of them would have 50 on them. And then it was simultaneous bus. I don't get caught.

Some of them did a little bit of time. because it's LA. So it's weed. Some of them did, I don't know, 90 days, 120 days. Some of them didn't do no time at all. There was one girl. Specifically, I remember her. She was a UGA student, but she was from Russia.

And she was over here. And so basically, she couldn't get convicted because if she did, she would be sent back to Russia. And if she went back to Russia, they determined that she'd probably be put to death back at that time because of the way that she came over there. Like, they fled Russia there and no permission to come. So the judge was like, well, we can't do the conviction on her.

So they basically just dropped the charges because they didn't want her to be, to receive a death sentence because if she got a conviction, she would have to be deported. So anybody got caught. So me and kids started, we linked up with somebody

which he got connected to through somebody and his family, which was a Mexican, which was our guy that we call Frank. And Frank took it to a whole new level. Frank was obviously getting it directly from Mexico. Now we're talking about the brickweed, the bells coming from Guadalajara.

He was Mexican. He was in Cali. Frank ended up giving the weed to both of us, but kid was this connection. Frank from Guadalajara is obviously bringing it in by the tons. They're bringing in by the tons. The bales. There you go.

Does the quality get any better? Like what quality of weed is this at this point? Yo, this is, it's been through so many different things that they would call it. But, I mean, there was a period of time that we call it mid, mid, well, they call it the zona. So they call it the zona. So a lot of it might have been coming in through Zona because that part of Mexico, right, Arizona. that part of Mexico, and where that border is, is where some of the best weed comes in,

and then they would bring it to Cali. So we were getting it in Cali, but they were shipping it for us at that time in trucks. Frank was supplying us both. At some point in time, I don't really know how it happened. But, you know, and my God kid, if you see this, you know, he knows I love him to this day. Somehow the money got fucked up.

And somehow Frank was kind of thinking that it was me or whatever. And somehow he mentioned to me, you know, you got to turn into money faster. I was like, whoa, hold on. What you mean? Turn in faster. I'm turning it all into him. He's giving it to you.

I'm not responsible for all of that. So whatever happened, I don't know. But I ended up dealing with Frank directly because of that. I didn't mess up. No money. Never. Wow. So you never fucked up any money.

So now you're basically shaking hands with the kingpin. I'm him. You're them. You're him. Today's episode is sponsored by Delete Me. You guys, data brokers are everywhere, mining your information and selling them online to the highest bidder. That's why you get in all these spam emails from different

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Why are you able to kill it so hard in Atlanta? I assume it's because they've never seen weed at that time that good. And for that price? Is that it? Yeah, I had the best weed in Atlanta at the best price. They were 22-pound bails. I mean, this was fire. I mean, it was green.

It was, this is when the zoner was exploding. It was green. It was fresh. It had red hairs. It got you high. It was crazy. And I had it. And just really, I had it at a scale.

Obviously, I want to. wasn't the only one doing it, but I was the only one that I knew doing it at that, at that level, at that scale. Nobody could get it for the low like you could give it to them. Not that I knew, not in my circle. And I knew a lot of people. Trust me, I was a drug dealer's weed dealer. So all the dudes that was getting, you know, that was doing 50 or 100 birds a week, they were getting their weed for me.

And they considered weed a small thing. So a dude that's doing 100 bricks a week, he might be a multimillionaire, but he might want to do three, four hundred pounds, like it's a small thing just for some people. Some diversity. A lot of them got it for me. And I had dudes that was getting it, you know, directly from mech. I mean, it's just... So Coke Kingpins, you were also hitting them off with a smooth 3 or 400 pounds of weed a week.

Like water, like crackwork. They were my friends, personal friends. Holy shit. You know, and a lot of these dudes are still there. Some of these dudes just got life sentences. Somebody dudes just dead. But they were personal friends. And I just never wanted to really be the Coke guy.

I wanted to be the weed guy. So people probably thought I sold Coke. But I just made someone selling weed that you probably thought I sold Coke. A lot of people did because I was making more money than most dudes that sold coke. Not all. I ain't trying to say that I made more than all of them. But I made more than a lot of them because they just didn't even understand how much money could be made than weed. Well, nobody did back in the 90s.

That's right. Nobody did. And it was too bulky. The idea would always say, well, I make, you know, $30,000 or something like this. Right. Yeah. Well, they're right about that. But, you know, you're just taking a lot of big penitentiary chances.

Right. Bigger than the weed. Do you remember when the Flenneries got to Atlanta? I do. Did you ever know them back in those days? That's what I said, I knew Meach. And it's not to say that it was a personal friend of mine because he wasn't. But I did know him and I knew other people that was dealing with him.

And I hung out with him before. Were they well known in the streets? They were extremely well known. Yeah. Yeah, they were very well known. Extremely well known. And they were them boys for real. I mean, you know, they got well known on a worldwide level.

And but I knew them before they were that. Well, when I say them, Meach, you know, I didn't hung out with him and just smoked weed with them. I never did business with him before. and I never got nothing from them because I didn't sell coke but some of my friends did because they wanted me to help them ship

ship, they wanted me to show them how to ship stuff back in the weed because in between me moving to the semis and all of that I didn't send weed every which way that you could imagine and the Jamaicans used to send weed

they sent it in the head with the girls that I talked about they sent it UPS they sent it FedEx every which way that you can imagine you know Greyhound we didn't we didn't do we Amtrak we did it

so I seen it so I always been a person that knew how to get it I was I specialized and TP. So one of my boys that new that new mech, he bought me out. He came out there because he already knew I was gone so I could show him how to ship his birds. I was just an expert at packaging and doing all that. And I had the occasion to hang out at his spot on La Cianica Boulevard and we smoked a lot of weed and he talked a lot of shit. But he was him. He was him for real.

And then later on a few years later, he became him on a whole other level. Oh, you're talking about Meach's brother? No, I'm talking about Meach. Okay. Oh, so Meach had a spot out of out in LA as well. On Los Eanaica. Okay. That he would just, you know, whatever, you know, that's what they did their thing. So you show them how to, how to package up their kilos? I didn't show me shit.

That was my boy that I showed something. I see. My boy was dealing with me. What was your favorite way to get drugs from L.A. back to Atlanta? Well, the favorite way became the detracted trail. That's a whole other level. Right. There's a whole other level.

I mean, you're talking about so much weed and so many boxes. It filled up multiple garages and multiple houses. I mean, there's tons of you're talking about. Yeah. It's not, you know, there's just a whole other. the level. You remember when I talked about stretching my mind? When your mind gets stretched like that, it never goes back. It's stretched out of shape or in shape. But it's a shape. It's almost a curse. It's almost a curse. It is. That's why I told you I don't really know what would have happened

if I was with, if I was, you know, with BME and then because I'm addicted to the lifestyle and the money. I mean, I didn't make $500,000 in one day before. You know, I'm not going to say I made that money every day, but I made it all the time. But listen. And this ain't, like I told you, Johnny, I never told this story before, except one other occasion, and it was just one time. And I've been home for a minute. I never told this story because I always believed in fuck the flash.

I just want the cash. So this is everything's real. And there was a lot of dudes that didn't know me, a dudes that I looked up to in New York. They were like mythic figures on what they did, but they were well known. I was a dude that wasn't well known, but I was behind the curtain. And some of them same dudes that was drug laws, if you want to know what the era that I grew up in,

go and listen to ghetto Karam by 50 cents. Those is dudes that I knew watching growing up, and some of them dudes I ended up supplying as I got older. Like, so that's not, this is, it is what it is. That blow your mind? It does blow my mind. And I didn't talk with people, cousins, and look back. And like, you know, these dudes was him.

But for real. And now you're there, connect. I'm him on a whole other level. So to make like two, three, four hundred, sometimes $500,000 a day off of that kind of weed, the Arizona, the Mexican bail weed, how many units do you have to be moving? Like, how much are you, what is your profit after freight, after shipping, your costs? What is your profit per unit? Well, there was a time when I was getting it for, let's say, 500. And this is, you know, like, so there's a whole span.

It was, I'm getting it for five. I'm selling them for $8.50. other people probably selling for $1,200, $1,200, $1,000, $1,000, whatever they're selling for. So I'm making good money. You just do the math. But then I started going out of state. And I'm supplying to Cincinnati, Ohio. I'm supplying to Cleveland.

I'm sending bags to New York, the Carolinas, Alabama, or everywhere. We're all over. I'm in West Virginia. Now, now, instead of getting $8.50, I'm getting $1,400 for a pound. Wow. And you can dump, like, $200 on somebody? Listen, it was crazy. So, yeah, if you sold 15 or 20,000 pounds in a day and your profit was, just say, on average, yeah, I don't know, $600.

Yeah, that's about a half a million dollars. Yeah. Well, holy shit. Like I said, I didn't make $500,000 every day. I ain't going to sell you no dreams or, you know, illusion to grand door. But there was occasions when I did. But when I did that type of money, I wasn't only selling the Mexican weed. I was also selling the chronic.

Okay. Let's get into that in a sec. are you tractor trailing to all of these different locations? No. Okay. No, I come to Atlanta and then we flush it out with drivers. I see.

Different places. They either come to me and get it, but once I had people that I had in Sensey and once I had people that I had in Columbus, Ohio, and in West Virginia, we just had different girls driving it up. Okay. So Atlanta is the hub.

Atlanta's the hub. Was then? Is now. For everything. Meth? Coke. It's fucking crazy. It's everything.

Yeah. They go to the east. It's the hub for the East Coast. Atlanta is for the East Coast. What L.A. is for the West Coast. You know that. So that's what was going on. All right.

So you would get, and it sounds like your connect, Frank, from Mexico, from Guadalajara. Right. What year is this? I'm trying to determine what organization in Mexico, what cartel he worked for. Okay. This is probably going to be 97, 98, 99. And sometimes, listen, sometimes the years might merge. because I don't, I haven't, I've told bits of the story,

but I've never sat on and did an interview like this where I told the story. So anybody that knows once you reach out, like sometime I just don't have specific years, but this was around 97, 98. I know that because I was one of the first dudes to have a 540-I beamer in Atlanta. And I know that I was fucking with him doing that time.

And as some years went by, I ended up, so remember I told you I'm getting it from L.A., but then as my mind keeps stretching and stretching to where it gets so stretched out, shape. It's like a hula hoop right now. It can't never go back. Now I had end up going to Guadalajal with Frank. Then the prices went to a whole other level.

Okay, tell us about that. So why would Frank bring you down? This is usually what the cartel does, though. They want to know who is this gringo moving all this work. Bring him down because they want to meet you. They just want to meet you face to face. It's almost like they're giving you an award for salesmanship. No question. So they summon you and you go down there with Frank.

Yeah, tell us about that. I've been to Guadaliener. Guadalajara. I love Guadalajara. Tell us about what that was like. What happened? The women there are beautiful, more beautiful than other parts of Mexico. I agree. Why has everybody seem like they're good looking here, Frank? And he said, well, you got a lot of money there. And that's where tech comes to meet a lot of different things. Tech meets cartel. You got the Gucci store. You got all of the name brand. The best restaurants, you know, you've been there. So I come there just because we go on at different levels, I'm, you know, I'm able to have to bring more to the table because that's, oh, because at one point, what happened is to do that Frank and them had that, that was driving, that was bringing it back.

He ended up getting busted. He tried to set me up, but my spidey senses went off, so I never went to meet him. That's a whole other story. So I don't, I just know he got busted. I didn't get caught up in that. So now we, we're going, he invites me to Mexico. I want to get a cheaper and cheaper price.

I go to Mexico. He's got a call. I don't know if you've been up there before, but you got a call of different people to let them know that we're going to be going. We're going up into the foothills. So I could see it. I could see it.

When it's, you know, on the vine or when they take it off, you know, I could pick it like that. They took you to a field. They took me to a field. Wow. Way up in the hills. So you got to go to different checkpoints. When you go to these checkpoints, they're on the radio.

I'm like, oh, shit. So he's like, he, when we go up here, don't worry, don't worry. There's going to be like checkpoints and like, you can't just go up here. And he's like, but don't worry about it. I already call it. They know we're coming. They know it's you. They know.

Oh, shit. Frank, are you sure it's going to be cool? So, so. Like a guess of honor. Different checkpoints. and yeah, it was cool. Because you think it's like the military or the cops, but you're like, oh, no, they have no markings, they have no badges.

Right, right. Well, in some instances, it could be the cops, but the cops is working for the cartel in any instances. So they got to know you coming. They knew he was coming. And it's all good. You know, they teach you like royalty. It was all cool.

I was getting ready. I was able to see weed in a way that I had never really seen it like that before. And we were able to get a whole other price. Is that the first time you've seen a weed garden? Yes. How big was it? like what do you estimate like thousands of plants like it was it was it was thousands i was able to see it on the vine off the vine

they bought me to different areas uh and it was just it was mesmerizing to me they talked about how the whole process that they do to turn it into the bells he said they stepped on it with their feet i didn't know any of this just was like amazing shit to me right but it was it was extremely fascinating i'm like man i'm up here like for real for real i'm there and then the price level goes to a whole other level now you talk about getting stuff for like they'll blow your mind, escape. Well, first of all, was this weed from, uh, was it outdoors completely or was it in a greenhouse?

This was outdoors. Okay. And what is the point of giving you a better price when you know they'll, they'll take the price what they were giving it to you at? 100%. What is the point of showing you more love by bringing you down there, showing you the operation? Well, you know, Johnny, what do you think? I mean, I, well, I know exactly what it is.

My mind was stretched. It's getting stretched out. It keeps getting stretched and expanded. the points that can never be brought back. I'm gaining more and more knowledge. I know that there's a cheaper price. And I need to get it. So, you know, he basically said, like, listen, this is how we're going to have to do it.

They want to meet you. You're going to have to go over there. We're going to have to talk to them. You want to get for a better price. You're going to have to send your money. There's a chance that it could get bused, but there's a chance that it won't get bused. But if you get one load, if you get one load, it don't matter if the next two or three get busted.

Oh, right. So you might have gone and found a different supplier. So that's why they were like trying to, you know, woo you in, show you love. Yeah, I'd imagine that's what's within their mind. Yeah. I never would have threatened to or said I was going to buy a different supplier because the last time I left a dude already, I told you what happened. My cousin got shot, a pump shotgun, you know, his kidneys or his intestines was hanging out

of his stomach, you know, six feet of intestines. I mean, he got shot right before my eyes. It was for me. They tried to get me shotgun blast. But, you know, my reaction, I threw a bat at him and it just made him jerk upwards. So when I threw it and dug down, I didn't get shot. Yeah, a cartel wouldn't have done that. They would have maybe kidnapped you for a day and said,

Hey, what's my problem, my friend? Why didn't know what you're from you? Oh, it will give you a better price. Like, they would have worked it out. Right, right. Like, why would they try to kill their golden goose? Yeah, their money supply. They're a lot more logical than people giving credit for.

Okay. So, wow. I mean, just take a moment to think about that. this Jehovah's Witness kid selling $20 vials on the cold, windy, windy streets of Bayside Queens. God. And 20 years later, you're literally like you are a top dog. It doesn't get no higher than that, man. Yeah, yeah, it's true.

And it's a moral conflict. But not that much. And why? Because I always felt like and knew in my heart. because of like just being damned there. I ain't going to say raised, but just a lot of influence at a very young age when I got into the game,

rosters and people I used to hang out with it. I smoked a lot of weed. And reason why is because I just did not feel that it hurts anybody. So in my mind, the justification was, this is bullshit. It shouldn't be illegal anyway. And if I can get rich doing it,

catch me if you can. That was my thought process on some real shit. Okay. So what do you guys negotiate down there in Guadalajara? in that weed field. Yo, yo, the price was so fucking crazy. It damn that came down to probably $25 a pound or something like that. But at that point, when you saw getting on those levels,

it's really the kilogram that you're buying it. So it's 2.2 pounds. And then you've got to pay to get it in and get it across the border, or whatever the hell it is. It probably after expenses and everything, probably came to maybe $100, $125 a pound, some shit like that. However, the way it works is if I get my own ton,

they get their ton. So, you know, I might sell a ton in my price, I do a ton of their price. But it still, it still works out because I was him. And so, you know, at this, at this point,

you know, you're selling a lot of weed off. So your price went from like 500 down to like, I don't know, $150, 200? Essentially.

If you average it all out. So you got it down by over half. Yeah, ain't no question. You know, so there was, listen, I've never been a dude

and like, the moral conflict gets in when people owe you, right? And, and like, you know, I was never,

I was never the, the, the toughest dude. I was never, I was never no killer or nothing like that with violence. I was, so I wasn't a tough, but I was far from the surface.

So I had a lot of heart, and I didn't play. But at the same time, you know, beyond, you know, and I always had a lot of people that would, because I always made a lot of people a lot of money. So I always had people that was willing to do what needed to be done. And, you know, probably sometime I crossed the line,

never killed anybody or anything like that, but just to let motherfuckers know you're going to pay. But it was a conflict to me because I was not born, I didn't grow up like that. So I was making so much money, the thing I was able to figure out at a very young age, there's a lot of this shit like people think, and this is why I always thought I had an advantage.

Because people would think an advantage because of my roots and the conflict. Some people came into the game at a very young age and the influences that they had, they think, you got to kill somebody if they owe you money, or you got to do something gruesome to them. I always stopped shorter than, and eventually I got away.

from it completely. Because I understood that, fuck, you just got to become a better person or who you, because a lot of my business was cash out, but a lot of it, a huge amount of it, was giving people credit. So you have to become like a bank. That's how I look at it. You got to become a master at who you give a chance to. Who are you going to give this credit line to it? If they fuck up, they're not fucking me up. They're fucking their self-funk. I got dudes that owe me millions, Not one dude. Collectively, I probably had more old to me or just as much old to me as I'd have made,

and I made a lot. But I knew that some people would think it's like a video game or the movies or, oh, you got to be this killer. Now, you don't. Really, the way that you survive and make a lot of money is not hurting anybody. Because once the violence comes into play,

it's only so long because your time is getting closer to the end. So for me, I would just better be a better steward. I grew to be a better steward of who I gave credit to. But I said all of that to say, even if I lost it for a dude, and I would turn dudes up quick, because I got turned up quick. So I believe in the good of people. I knew that when dudes gave me some, I'll break myself. I gave my, my, my, my, more way that I told you about that I bought earlier to Frank because it didn't matter to me. I didn't give a damn about

all of that. What I knew is that this dude is the golden goose. If I, because some shit happened, whatever to happen. Bus here, bus did this person on me, all type of shit happened. I gave him my bema to pay a debt because I never wanted to stop that money flow. Yeah. That's the only way to scale and push that money flow. because people just don't have COD like that. They don't have cash, you know, to buy tens of thousands of pounds at a time. Maybe one or two guys do. So you kind of have to do that. Facts. Um, so now how does it work? if you're getting it in by the ton by like the 2.2 pounds, you know, per, per jump. Yeah.

So it's, the route is L.A. to Atlanta still? Yeah. Okay. And where do you go pick it up in L.A. where they say pick it up? Or are you also in charge of warehousing it in L.A.? Well, no, no, no. So I would meet the driver. I know who the driver was.

Well, that was, you know, before the driver got caught. And we'd go to different places. Normally it was in like, what do they call them, industrial parks? Yeah. So you're finding an industrial park that's kind of cool. And then you meet them at 2, 3 in the morning. And I either make my brother, my cousin, the two people, we got a van and we got a U-Haul truck. And you just get out there and you just form a chain.

And then, you know, I have different houses. I mean, my garage was looking crazy. Other people's garage, different, you know, I have it in my garage. It brings me to prison. I don't know if, you know, I was a storm man in prison. I know you wouldn't know that. But what I mean is, you know how they would be a storm man. And they might have lockers all over the compound where you got max or whatever it was that you got hidden.

That's how I had houses. Yeah. I got different people that I paid their rent. you know what I mean just to have boxes upon boxes in their garage and mine's was one of them too which was stupid I shouldn't have it but I have my in LA you had stash houses like that too no no no I didn't have to cover none of that frank it was in LA they would take care of all of that they would package everything they would get the boxes they would organize the place to meet and then they would ship it off that's such a sweet deal you don't have to worry about any of that shit all you got to do is get it to Atlanta right at that time

now did you close down the trap houses like the herb gates once you were this high up on the wholesale level? Like, did you keep those open for like small, just two, three pound dealers that wanted to pick it up? No, eventually, eventually shit happened over there. Cats got busted. There were shootouts involved. All type of crazy shit happened.

And eventually, we did. We moved away from that. So we would just have different safe houses. And a lot of the people I was dealing with, you know, they were, they were friends that I knew that. We were just friends. Those cats always paid because it was nothing. I get in whatever.

And they bring me the money later. These cats had money. And then I got some. connections to where I was bringing, once I started getting that West Virginia money and that Ohio money and that Carolina money and that, you know, Alabama money and that Tennessee money, yeah, only the people that could get it for me in Atlanta was the catch that, then I had personal relationships with because they were, they paid twice as much in other places. It didn't make any sense. Most of my stuff was going out of state. Yeah, right. So you made a lot of dudes money.

I made a lot of people money and I always did and people always love me. Yeah. And like Frank used to say, That was the point I was going to bring up. So that's where the moral conflict comes in. If somebody owed me money, I had to make a decision because it's just like the president in real life. Like the president of the United States or follow you, when you was doing what you was doing to anyone, you know, power is it has to be yielded responsibly.

So when people owe me money and I want to, like, hey, Frank, you got anybody else? People owe me money. I want to. But their idea a lot of times was he would say, well, he, there's no such thing as bad. bad payers. There's only bad collectors. So then when they start talking about, do you want us to disappear him? I was like, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, wasn't into that. Oh, so they offered that.

They offered it. Wow. But I did not take, I did not, I did not, I did not bite, because I just was never into that. So that never became a thing because I knew once they start talking about, you just give us the address and you give him, we hand to the rest. You ain't got to worry about that. So I knew there wasn't a dude that could, I mean, you might harm a hair on my head. But if I, if I, If I went back and reported you, they were going to disappear you. Wow. That's just how they did business. Wow.

I never did that. You know what I'm saying? I never did it. And it wasn't, it didn't take much for me to, like, I'm not into that. How long did it take, how long did you have to get the cartel their money back? Like after a load came through? You know, I don't know, two, three weeks, because they came every two, three weeks, maybe every three, maybe every four weeks.

Whatever you're done. Yeah, whatever I was done. It was never no pressure on me. Remember, I always pay. I paid. I built up a lot of, what do they call it, political capital. In this sense, it would be called business capital or cartel capital or weed capital, drug deal, call it whatever you want.

But they knew I was going to pay. And if something did happen, they knew I was going to pay. How much money would you deliver them out of time? Oh, man, this is crazy. You know, hundreds of thousands, half a million, million, two million. We had, oh, so we had different cars. We had trucks. We had all type of shit.

As a matter of fact, one of the way that we would get a flower. To West Virginia, we had pickup trucks. And so they would, they, they have a fake bed underneath the bed. So then you could, they put the, the bricks in there, and they would have like a rope. And then you could just, you pull that rope, and then they'd start coming out. Well, so when it went down like that, then, uh, when we went down, and the money would also come back.

So then we also have drivers that would bring the money to Cal, I mean, we had stars, stash calls, cars, cars, we had Ultima. We had trucks. We had all types of different shit with stash spots and everything. So different people would bring the money. different occasions. There was always money going back. So trucks was always moving. Right. This was a regular thing.

How many people were working for you in this whole operation? How many people he had working? I never counted it, but, you know, overtime, I don't know, 15, 20 at one time. Now, when I say working for me, we talk about runners, we talk about girls, we talk about drivers. Yeah. Then we talk about, and this is the area where it gets a little squarely. Because, like, people in, you know, whatever, viewership world, or you, whoever, they might

consider. some of the people that I was sending to in West Virginia working for me. Maybe they were, but I never really considered it like that. I don't know. I just, for me, it was a buy and sell relationship. That was a point of contention in my appeal also. Because I didn't set their prices. I didn't know their people.

I didn't know none of that shit. All I knew is that if I bought them a certain amount, they were going to cash out on a certain amount, I was going to put more on top. Because I was charging them so much, it was all good. So I didn't really have no leadership, maybe just by influence, but I didn't orchestrate or wheel,

no leadership authority over them. They tried to make it like that when I went to trial, I'm a trial dude. So, you know, I went to trial and I lost. I don't know if we're going to talk about that or not. But off record, we talked about that. But so I don't really count those dudes just working for me. No, I meant the people running for you.

Directly under my leadership. You know, listen, all the top of my head, you know, I don't know, maybe 15, maybe 20 at any given time, maybe 10, because actually running and driving it or maybe 10. Because then a lot of other people are like associates. Like, you know what I mean? I funded them a lot of weed, but they had their own people. They did their own thing. All right.

Did you, you said you had family. you brought down from New York? I did. Who were they? It was my brother. It was my cousin. My brother had moved. We all lived in Atlanta, but then they had moved back.

They had moved back to New York. Did you bring them into your business? Oh, there ain't no question about it. That's why they came down. I see. And they continued with you after you blew up? We was always an family and an extended family. So it was me.

It was my brother. It was cousins. And then it was friends that we knew from New York. We bought people down. I don't want to say they was the muscle because they sold two. They was also the muscle. They was like we had, like we was a tight family with friends. So I ain't going to really put it like it was the muscle because I told you I got out of that

But when we was really young, you know, I ain't even going to put it like the muscle I'm just going to say like we was a crew everybody saw weed they saw weed to different people And I was I was the person that shit flowed around I was the one getting it in I'll just say that Were you guys sending product back to New York We sent product to New York we sent product to the Carolinas we but the most product went to West Virginia And Ohio which was Cincinnati and Columbus Yeah those seem to be we've I've heard that

I've talked to big-time drug dealers. Ohio seems to be like a huge market. Why do you think that is? Baby, they like good weed, and they paid a premium. As long as it was green, fluorescent green and good, like I told you, they was paying $1,400. This was unheard of. Unheard of.

Unbelievable. And you got it for $200. And it was going to disappear, like lightning. We make it disappear. Everything finds a home. West Virginia, do you think that's just because it's so far away? It's so remote? Yeah, I guess so.

they smoked a lot of weed, too. They did a lot of drugs. Like I said, I never, I never got participated in that, but I know that they were doing a lot of meth, emphetamines, and they sold a lot of fucking weed, man. They sold a lot, they smoked a lot. There was 2.7% black people, and it's a bad place to catch a case.

I can tell you that right now. I never should have went to trial in West Virginia, but you live and learn. It is what it is. I'm a stand-up dude. Were your, were the people getting work in these different states? Were they black? They were black.

Uh-huh. They were all black. I had some people in Atlanta. that I, that, that, but they weren't getting it on that type of massive scale. And as a matter of fact, these dudes that was getting weed for me, like some cast that I went to, that I went to Oxford Emory with, man, they became, well, some of them became dear friends. And some of them, I haven't seen for a long time.

I would love, I would love to run back into one. Yeah. I don't want to say name because I don't know what he might be doing nowadays, but they were growing also. And that, so, so that's when I really, you know, that was one of the ways that I was really getting introduced to like indoor weed. Right. You know, and they was growing, and I'd buy everything that they grew up. Oh, interesting.

They were growing it out in Atlanta in their closet or whatever. Right, on a very small scale. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay. But I know a couple people like that. We're not a large scale indoor was coming from, like I told you, Emerald Triumph. That's right. So when did you start to migrate from moving the bails from Guadalajara to Northern California?

When did that come into the mix? Yeah, that was probably in the late 90s, early 2000, if I put a, you know, I was getting like, so I was getting weed. It was called an orange. And I was getting it from cats. In matter of fact, I was getting from a Jamaican cap, but then he plugged me with the cats that he was getting it from in Cali, which went, they were in Long Beach. And they was getting there

from, come to find out that weed, that particular weed was coming from Oregon. Yep. That's where I'm from. It was called the Orange. And I bought the Orange to Atlanta. And I was making so much money. I don't like the dates get to school with it. Like I told you, I had some of the most profitable spots in the western

scenario on Frank Street. And we had people coming from every corner athletes. It didn't matter who it was. They was coming for that orange. Right. And I wasn't there once again. I would have people sell it. But we made over $12,000 a pound because it was so far. It was so powerful. This was probably still in the 90s.

I probably jumped around. It's probably out of order because that was my first introduction to the chronic. Yeah. And we would sell it. You couldn't buy an ounce, but you had to buy it in all grams. So $840 an ounce, which was like, 12,800 a pound.

Which is just like mind-blowing to think about. And that's because there was just not a lot of it. Right. And it was so compared to all the weed that have been coming in from Mexico and Jamaica, you might as well be doing a different drug. Right. Right. It was all, it was like crack.

It was like the crack of weed. No question. It was just, and you had to be a real baller to smoke it. That's right. So that's why it got started very niche with like, as you said, in Atlanta, ballplayers and rappers and shit like that. That's right. And drug dealers.

And drug dealers. If you were. dope boy or rapper or an athlete. Right. And you had the money to buy this. And we didn't, we didn't care. There wasn't no discount. Nobody else had it.

It was on Frank Street. Shout out to anybody in Atlanta. If you were in my age group and you're watching, you knew Frank Street and you knew it was me. Back then they didn't call me Obama. They called me E. That's just real shit. Sorry, Meach. You want an ounce?

You're going to have to buy 28 grams. Wow. Well, yeah. But the thing about Meach is he already, you know, he had a place in LA too. So, you know, he didn't need to get his weed. Okay. So does it, so, so, so late 90s, early 2000. you start to, I don't know, yeah, the culture starts to shift.

Right. More and more people are starting to grow it in Northern California, in Oregon. People are starting to scale up with the indoor grows. That's right. How do you, like who brings you into that culture first? So I was already introduced to it. So I ended up getting robbed and laid down in Long Beach. I still don't know to this date in my Jamaican buddy that introduced me to them

had anything to do with it. He said he didn't. What happened? How'd you get robbed? Well, they laid me down. They knew I was coming. I come out there with my cousin. She's older than me. How much are you picking up?

I mean, I don't know. Maybe, you know, probably 10 pounds or whatever, the orange or whatever. But back then, I'm paying $6,800 for a pound. Right. But remember, I'm making $12,800. Right. But you're going there with 70 G's enough to rob you to get robbed in Long Beach. And they robbed me.

Right. You know, the people I was getting from, I know they're the ones that set me up. But they knew when I was getting out, they knew where I was going to park. As soon as I got out the car, they was there. They laid me around. They jacked me. They took the whole car. Everything.

Matter of fact, they tried to speed off. My little cousin is in the back. I'm talking about my little cousin's old, which was my older cousin's son, you know. So we had to, they tried to drive over.

He's like, no, no, please let my son. So then they stopped. They didn't realize he was in the back seat. So they were waiting for us as soon as we got out. So they robbed us. That happened. They got us.

That was a whole other thing. So obviously, I never fuck with them again. That was over. But I always knew a lot of people. So my dude, kid introduced me to one person and somebody else introduced me to another. So I ended up. getting connected through, you know, like I said, different people, whether it was Mendocino County,

Humboldt. It was really mainly Humboldt and Trinity County, but Trinity was when I, you know, got introduced to like outs, which are basically depths. I got introduced to outs and depths, but for the purpose of the East Coast, it don't make a difference down, no, they lose. They'll never use the word outs. Outts. Outers. But it, but it looked like chronic grown indoor. It was such good outdoor weed, especially like right after harvest that it, yeah, it could have been grown indoor. For the purposes of the East Coast, they don't fucking know. But I'm also getting real chronic for my people in Humbold.

These dudes is masters. One of them they even call like the grandfather a Humbold. Are they white boys? White boys. Yeah, of course. The white boys grow the best weed. They got all the secrets. This is a generational shit.

Yeah. Third generational growth and all types of stuff like that. Right, right. So your plug from Mexico, Frank, he didn't bring you up there. No, hell no. He had nothing to do. Okay. So they don't even know about it.

Right. Okay. So, do you, do you, do you, start to scale up and pick up more of the good cali weed and pick up less of the, and order less of the bud from Mexico? I did. I mean, I was still getting a lot, but, you know, the game started changing. Right.

So, you know, they were still a place for zona. Don't get me wrong. I still did a lot. You know, there was times, you know, they didn't, you know, it started switching to better and better wheat, AAA dabs, outs, ends and all that type of stuff. So that started getting reduced more and more, but I still hit a market for it. But as it got reduced, more and more. more, you know, eventually, it kind of just got faded out, to be honest with you.

Did you tell them what was going on? Like, did they call you and say, what, what's going on? Why? Frank ended up getting deported. I left that out. He caught a case. Frank courted. I don't even think he caught him.

He just got deported. Whatever happened. He was in the United States for man long, and they just, they kind of just flipped on him for like some bullshit. It wasn't even no big case that he caught him. They deported him for some shit. Whatever. He got pulled over and they, he was, like, 1978.

It was crazy. Mm, okay. So, so I still had contact with him. We were still friends. We tried some a couple times, but it just wasn't the same when he was here, you know, because then they wanted me to kind of be, like, responsible for, like, you know, they wanted me to give him an address and all that type of shit to have a ship. And then these dudes don't want to ship nothing small.

They want to ship like 8,000 pounds and 10,000 pounds. And, you know, they shipped into other people who would give me, like, you know, a ton, a ton and a half a ton, a ton, whatever it was. But it was taking longer and longer to get rid of it. And the profit wasn't there. The profit was there in Northern Cali. Yeah. So it was different, you know, I'm, you know, that's what it became.

I'm getting in from Santa Rosa. I'm getting in from L.A. I'm getting in from, you know, I got connections all over California, to be honest with you. So I'm getting my depths of my house from way up, way up top. You already know all the way in the mountains. And I'm mainly getting in from either L.A. or from Sanozo.

And I did have some people that specialize inns and Humboldt. Right. Okay. Okay. So, and then do you start to get quantity of that stuff? Oh, yeah. I'm getting quantity. I'm getting boxes.

That's when they start talking about boxes. I'm not really getting, I'm not getting a ton. But I'm getting, I'm still getting, I'm getting the case. Right. You don't need a ton. You could get whatever, a couple hundred pounds. Right. And that's where I really made the most money.

When I said I made that $500,000 in the day on a couple occasions, it was because I'm a case by now. You know, a case is, you know, a box is 100. A case is 10 boxes. Okay. So at the, you know, so somebody that I was, you know, a friend of mine, he tracked it at one point. We moving and we doing it so fast.

He said the most that we did with this group and this group was basically it was 2700 in like 10 days 2700 pounds wow so we get in depth we get ins we getting it and uh it is wow and just charging such a crazy premium it was incredible it blow your mind it blew my mind

at this point in time my mind is so so far stretched out right ridiculous right so could you make what was like a profit off one pound like 10 could you make $5,000 marking it up? No not off of one pound not me because okay I know I I talked about paying $6,8004 pound, but obviously that can't weigh down.

Yeah. So now for ends, you know, maybe I paid $25,000, $3,000. You know, the price it was dropping, but I was still paying high, but I'm still, if I'm wholesale and I'm giving the people to say, I'm still making, I'm still making a couple thousand off a pound. Yeah. Off of indoor.

Yeah. But off of depths, I mean, still, you still making, you might make, no, the price was all over the place, but you might make five, six, six, 100 off a pound of daps. Yeah. Like, I mean, this is crazy mind such a strict shit. When you, when you, when you, when you, when you, when you, when you, when you, when you, when you,

doing the number, you live, I'm living the numbers. It, it, it went from. There's nothing that I wanted that I couldn't buy. But my mind wasn't really stretched where it really should have been because you really still, you can't buy a building, you know, then, then the problem of one of the major problems is what the fuck do you do with the money? Right. What do it?

One of the hardest things is, is moving around. around the cash. And you're afraid if you get, if they break into your house, if the house burns down. How did you store your cash? In saves, uh, under the mattress, uh, in different places. I tried to spread it out. Yeah. You know, I spent a lot of it before I started being more responsible. Yeah. I was a strip club connoisseur. I was a strip club whole. Atlanta got the best strip clubs. That ain't no secret. I spent a lot of money on girls and a lot of club in a strip club. And I was in a strip club every single day. I spent a lot of money traveling with the United States and moving back and forth and just kind of like blowing money.

you know, giving out we reckless. You know, when I say reckless, a dude didn't really always have to earn it. People talk a good game. You give them so much, you know, most people don't pay. You know, I just always think I pay. Everybody else is going to pay. They don't. But, you know, we made money fast.

Everybody in my crew made money. Yeah. And that's how I went. How did it? So you're moving. You're getting cases. And I'm a case buyer. And when you're a case buyer.

How do you get cases? because this is valuable weed now. So it's not like you've got to be a little more artisanal with how you ship it, right? Because this is very, very valuable. How would you ship a case, 1,000 pounds of chronic? California chronic.

So listen, we did a UPS fetters. We did it every type of way. You make it, you make it, you make it, and you lose. You got different type of ways. You're doing boxes. You're doing tubes. I'm stretching my hands because they might be long or they might be this way or they might be big.

There's different type of ways that you ship it. But then eventually I always had in my mind once my exposure to truck. So then eventually I started getting different truckers. You know, we paid for people to get trucks. Right. And they paid us back by, you know, making money. I mean, I'm paying people.

So we paying $50 a pound for them to bring them back. They always make a minimum of $50,000 to $60,000 per trip. Because the truck is now, they always making, they bring in the minimum of $1,200, sometimes more, sometimes. Never less than $1,000 because that was just what they was used to and what they was expecting. Wow. 60Gs, just to put it on your semi. Right. That's getting hauled with other products.

Right, right. And it's getting hauled with other products. You're 100% right. They got to have a load. But what people think is that that 1,500, that that 1,400, 1,400, like, that would affect the weight. That doesn't affect the weight. It's all in your logbook. It's all in your logbook and whether or not, if your paperwork is right and you got your manifest, you got another load, there's nothing.

Because the truck could carry up to 80,000 pounds. So if you carry 80,000 pounds, they got 78,000 or 70,000, it don't matter what they had. People think that the weight when they go through the waste, that shit, and that shit don't make a difference. That could be the difference in air pressure, air tide. That could be the difference in fuel. So there was ways to do it. That was nothing. So you're not going to get searched as a trucker if you go through a way station and you're a thousand pounds off?

No, not at all. Okay. Not all. People don't even know that. There's tricks to the trade. Right. You know, you start off with a certain amount of fuel. It could be fewer.

There's just so many things. They don't even look at that. As long as that law book is right. You know, you can drive for a certain amount of hours. It's all about the fucking paperwork. And regular cops can't pull over a truck. People don't know that. They got to be DOT.

You're fucking with interstate commerce right now. And you know, Joe Blow can't just a sign. Well, put this guy over. Maybe I might pull you over for speeding. Yes. state trooper or whatever. But they can't just decide we're going to open up a fucking truck that has a seal on it and open it up just because he's Joe Blow cop that wants to be interested in you.

No, you got to have a reason to fucking open up this 18. You fucking went interstate commerce. I know about interstate commerce because that was one of my charges. Okay. So would you approach these truck drivers or how I'm always fascinated by how you flip these guys? No, no flipping. There's always based on somebody I knew or somebody that somebody knew. So they'd had a conversation

You know honesty was the number one thing Integrity these dudes you know You try to find someone honest I mean you can always say you're gonna do this You're gonna do that to someone if they run off with load But you really don't want to have to deal with that Because honestly if somebody did like I told you Like that moral conflict

I never had to deal with Like anytime it was some money laws I could always justify that I can make it back I don't know what would have happened If somebody would ran off one of them loads But I never had to worry about that Because we knew The truckers that we got

So we knew them where they lived, their families. We knew the whole setup. There wasn't no running off with the load, you know. And they never did, thank God. So we never even had to find out. Right, right, right. Yeah, that's crazy, man. That's a whole different level.

We did freight also. That's another thing. Freight's like that's when you put it on the, that's like railroad. That's like, yeah. Well, however it got there, whether it was railroad or trucks, I think some of it was probably trucks, some of it was probably railroad. We didn't deal directly with the railroad.

We just had shipping companies where they would freight it for us. We paid them. They, you know, this is two different people. You know, Mexicans that I knew, they got a relationship with this shipper. Okay. So we box everything. And then they sent it in big, giant freights. And then when it got on the other hand, then we'd have it.

We don't want to really pick it up from that freight company. So then we'd have it. We get a local carrier to come pick it up and then bring it to another one. So we had trackers. We had everything in on it. You know, and then we'd have it. But we lost a load like that, too. But we seemed to track all into the precinct.

So we didn't go and get it. So the, you say you want a, freight like a thousand pounds. You have to have somebody in the inside at that company to be able to get it in? Honestly, you probably didn't, but we did. Right. You probably didn't. You just probably had to have the right paperwork, the right business.

I call it a cover story or a backstory. Of course. So, you know, once you, if you working with a legitimate business that's already receiving and shipping is no problem. The people that we had was an insider, so we paid him extra. He already had a shipping company that he probably took over from his family or whatever. He might have been doing it for 15, 20 years. Yeah.

He wasn't just shipping stuff for us. Right. He shipped stuff all the time. So he showed us how to do it. It got the right. then you ship into another business address, but they never made it to that business address. The real heroes, if you want to call them that, the heroes of the drug trade, of the international drug trade, are legitimate shipping families who probably will never get caught. That's right.

Because there's no way really to prove unless you're wearing a wire or something like that. Me, I got this legitimate shipping company that I've been doing for 50 years and there's all of these different products. I don't search everything that comes on. your paperwork looks straight. You know what I mean? And I just charged a fee on top of it. No doubt. They're the ones that really got away with it and continued to get away with it.

They're like the only people. 1,000. That's fascinating. So would you buy out? Like sometimes Arconacts down in Humboldt, especially like not even Humboldt necessarily, but more like Southern Oregon where we go to these gardens. You know, growers that would like have 500. hundred, a thousand pounds, we'd be on our way down and they call us and be like, hey,

some guy just bought us out of everything. No question. Would you do that sometimes? Would you buy connects out of all the product? All the time. They had something that we like. We have a strain. We buy the whole thing.

We buy it. You know, sometimes it might be a collection of farms or sometimes as one dude that's growing a lot. We buy a farm. No doubt about it. Did you notice the Mexicans when they started to open up shop in northern California with those huge gardens. Did you ever get involved with them? My Mexicans were in L.A. They were in Riverside, San Bernardino County. They were in L.A.

They were in L.A. They were from East L.A. And these dudes, you know, the Mexicans, they were always, they're natural farmers. So I got it. So I didn't, I didn't talk about that. I was getting from Humboldt. I was getting from Trinity, but I was also getting from L.A. And those dudes loved me too. And they were going indoor? No. No, no, no. They was going, they was going. They was going greenhouse. They was going greenhouse. Okay. So they would have greenhouses out in San Bernardadino out in the, out of the sticks, out of the desert. Okay. And they probably have weight. They did. Mexicans never do anything small.

No, they did a lot. And they, and they hear ways to get it there, and they hear crews. And, you know, they became my buddies. And, you know, a lot of them are good people

and we're friends to this day. You know, when I went to prison and came home, you know, nobody talked. That didn't happen to me. People told on me, but I didn't tell on anybody else.

And, you know, I said, hey, good friends. And I have lifelong friends. And, you know, people do what they do based on their environment, based on what they was exposed to. But yes,

I got a lot of depths, a lot of depths, I call them Amigos. I called them Amigos. There's no question about it. Did your parents, your nice Jehovah's Witness parents, I mean, they must have been so proud. Do they know what you were doing this whole time? Listen.

Must have, right? Yeah, they did. My mother was just the host witness, not my father, but my mother was. And, you know, they knew what I was doing. They didn't, like, embrace it. They didn't know, no, no. But they knew something was up. I mean, parents aren't stupid.

No, of course. I would hide it as much as I could, but at this point of time, I'm not living at home. I'm, you know, I'm living wherever I want. I'm living in hotels. I'm staying hotels for weeks at a time. for weeks of the time, months of the time. I'm in New York. I'm in California.

I'm everywhere. I'm in Jamaica. I'm wherever the fuck I want to be. Right. So you didn't have a front business. You didn't have something that you could tell polite company. Well, at one point I did. At one point I did in the early 2000s.

I opened up a restaurant. I opened up a restaurant. I was at the forefront of, like, so I had a Soho style. Really, it was a casual upscale, white tablecloth, you know, high ceilins, exposed brick, you know, windows from the floor to the ceiling. wanted to bring a Soho style restaurant to Atlanta. And I had one. It was called Icom Bar and Beach Show.

It was right at the theater. It was right there in a historic, fairly popular district of Atlanta. Two blocks in from Centennial Park. I was ahead of the curb. I lost a lot of money in the restaurant business, but I had a whole lot of fun doing it. Right. I like to have my own restaurant.

I thought I remember. I always thought I was young John Gotti or whatever. That's right. I like the fact that I could come to the bar. Yeah. I was doing all the stupid stupid shit. I was I was I was out of control. I was reckless.

Sure. Yeah. It's hard making money remotely. but when you're not there all the time in a restaurant. Restaurants are hard businesses in general. It's a family, all business. That's why I lost so much. Yeah.

You know, in my mind, it was cool. I'm spending so much fucking money. I'm not making any profit, but I'm making money so it didn't fucking matter. Right. It's cool to be the owner of a restaurant. Yeah. You meet all type of different people.

You meet women. I mean, you know, you're married. It's just, it was reckless. I was young and I was dumb. Yeah. Yeah. For come. For sure.

You know what I mean? That's not going to change, buddy. Yeah, I know. But you get more controlled. and you get, I guess you get more wise. And you're not as reckless. Like, I learned that we're just grown kids, right? A lot of the things that we used to like doing,

we still like doing that. I used to think about that as you grow up. Like, am I going to be any different? No, I'm still a little boy. I still like some of the same shit. I still like some of the same women. Some of the shit to turn me on and turn me on now. But at the same time, of course,

I'm more control, I'm more disciplined, I'm focused. So I don't do some of the dumb shit that I used to do. Yeah, it's so fucking depressing when you put it like that. You're like, we're never going to change. We're just going to bottle it up. That's so fucking depressing. And then tell our children, don't do that. Don't do this.

If you do it, this is the way you do it. Well, they're not going to have any opportunity to do that anyways. No question. The kids don't, there is no more. The drug game is basically on that level for Americans is basically done. I think. You know what I mean? Well, for those that they're doing it is not going to be long live.

I mean, you still got, I guess, dudes out there that's probably they're trying it, you know, with, you know, marijuana, it might be over. But who knows? I got so many fucking drugs out there heroin. I thought it was make-believe. I still, not really, but I see, yo, I have people on my podcast that literally just caught a case. You know, the end of our podcast,

I have conversations with people who have been locked up before. And literally I had somebody that was a major dude, and I literally spoke at his sentence in hearing like July, like July 4th or July 5th. I mean, it was fucking crazy. He has a new case, Fetano. Wow. And this dude was a major fucking player. used to own the warehouse.

He was tied up in the Fed Toe Cards murder. I mean, his name is Andre Willis. And selling fentanyl. I was like, how to fuck? I mean, he's 57 years old. It's wild. So I'm saying there's still people, I don't understand it. No, there's still people out there that are selling hard drugs.

And it's fucking crazy. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, no doubt. You go in the prison if you keep doing that shit. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I know. It's crazy. I mean, maybe I think people do it at that age because they're like, okay, I'm wiser.

Right. So now I know actually what to do with my money. That's right. Now I actually know how to keep it low. Right. Before they've been in and out of prison. And they just don't really know anything else. Yeah.

And they get frustrated. And some dudes be trying to get it back. When they get out, people remember you like you were before you went to prison. So then you still trying, that's why you've got to really change your environment. You got to change your whole mindset. Right. Because people be thinking, like you said, I'm wiser, other dudes that they was doing it with. Yeah.

As home now, they're seeing some of the same things. they figured they could correct the mistakes they made, and they get right back into the thing. Some dudes get their fucking head knocked off. They put your dick in the dirt. Damn. Yeah, it's a street dude's like insurance policy. Like I can always fall back on the,

that's like a street dude's pension plan. I can always fall back on the drug game, you know what I mean? Right. It's a bad pension plan. Oh, man. That makes me sad. Yeah, it does. Me too.

And that's, I guess, you know, I'm guessing and I'm feeling, I'm picking up what you're putting down because I watch a lot of your podcast, you know, of the people that you talk about, you try and share the positive side of what they're doing. And it does make me sad because it's fucked up. Like, some people who's doing it, they're not bad dudes. Like, some of the best dudes that I met in my life,

I met him in prison. Like, you were not a bad dude. You ended up in prison. I was not a bad dude. I ended up in prison. And I realized, you know, I just wanted to get money. I didn't want to hurt nobody. It wasn't a bad dude.

And there's a lot of dudes languishing in prison like that. And there's a lot of dudes that just don't have a bob of exposure, confidence, or know-how to try and turn it around and do something. and they think they can get away with it, and they end up in and out, they end up back of prison, and some of them get, some of them is,

curtains for them is game over. Yeah, I know, I know. Now, at least you made it worth it. No question. When I was sitting in the box, I was like, at least I made this worth it. Like hearing what other motherfuckers,

especially in state prison, you're like, God damn, you're doing football numbers for that. Right. I'm like, at least what I did, I deserved it. That's right. Well, you went a long time, though.

I mean, you were selling drugs from basically like 1980, 8788 and Queens all the way to 2011. No. 204. Okay. 2004? Yeah, well, 205.

According to indictment in 204, but I didn't stop selling drugs. Oh, okay. Oh, you didn't? No. Explain that. Because I was out on bond for 18 months. Okay. I was planning.

I was giving up for trial. I got crazy stories. It's unbelievable. It's fucking crazy as hell. Okay, let's talk about it. So 2005, what happened? 2004, I got indicted. in West Virginia.

Well, that was the beginning of the indictment. I went up there. I was bringing weed up there, and, y'all, I just got killers. I never used to have talk on the phone, but on this one occasion, I did. I had phone that wasn't in my name. I got, you know, I was getting high going up there.

And I just talked too much. It was stupid. So I sent my girl up there. She's bringing the weed like she always did. And she get up there, but she get up there before me. So my man called me. Not my man no more. He snitched on me.

rated on me, one of the biggest rats in West Virginia. I ain't going to call his name like I did last time. Shouldn't have done that. But so he says, you know, what you want me to do? I said, yo, she's at the hotel just like last time. I said, she's going to pop the trunk, just get it out to Trump. That was what really was able to tie me into the case because they didn't know who I was. Nobody didn't know who I was.

There wasn't no investigation on me. But he was selling coke at the same time, too. And he was selling a lot of coke. I didn't know that. That's real talk. I just knew that I saw weed to him and a lot of it. Probably 320, $480. pounds or whatever, every two to three weeks, I bring it to him.

So I'm sending, well, I'm selling him, I'm selling him debts. Yeah. I'm selling him chronic. Yeah. And at that time, they still took, they still took the bells. Right, right. So I'm selling them a lot of weed. I'm sending it also to Ohio.

But I'm on my way to West Virginia on this occasion. So me saying that, thinking, oh, that phone ain't in my name. I'm not realizing this dude is on the investigation. and had been in an investigation for 24 months. He's buying a lot of real estate out there. He owned over $2 million in real estate. But he's still hustling. But he's in the Coke game.

They have him in the Coke game, but he's in small town, West Virginia. In Charleston, West Virginia, I don't know nothing about this dude's background. But this dude is selling coke. He's selling weed, and he's in a real estate game. They on him, like flies on shit. They want to get him.

They investigate him for 24 months. I find this out later. They don't have no idea. Nothing about me. Remember, I'm like a ghost. my name went on the radar or nothing. They really get to the closer end of the investigation. They got pole cameras on his stores.

He owned stores. They follow him around. I don't know this. But this dude had already got caught in the early 90s. Cooperated against his best friend, gave his best friend of life sentence. I don't know none of this. I found this out after. And now he's working.

He's, that's so fucked up. He gets fucked up, dog. So they hear me on the wire. I don't have my phone tap. They have his. I'm on a phone that's not attached to my name, but it's in my hand. So now when I come up to West Virginia, they find me. They locate me because now they scramble.

Now they got a wire on this phone that doesn't have my name on it. But they're able to get this wire. You know, it's a pen register number. They're able to get that because that phone number, who doesn't have a name because, you know, back then you just paid for it. But his got a wire and it was talking to him. So they get a wire on that phone. So now they're following him around.

Eventually they start following me around. make a long story short they tap and everything that we say at one point we realized the fuck is going on we being followed so I say to him you know we got to get rid of these phones we got to smash these phones they on us

so that's all on the wire dude it's all on the wire they got it so when they catch up to me we're in one of his properties he got a record store on the bottom and he got apartments on the top they they they so they honor him

they tell him he he has manages to call me and tell me oh they they on me they're about to grab me. I don't know they was at his house. I don't remember directly, but they was about to grab him. We in one of his apartments. He calls his homie,

which was a good move, because underneath the building that he own is like a garage. That's literally where the weed is that I had bought up there when I had told you that I told him get it out the trunk. Gets it out of the trunk,

it goes to his store underneath. So they got him, where they're going to get him, they honor him, he knows they honor him. He calls his boy, tells his boy to come there and get it.

His boy, comes around the back. We in the upstairs of the building and the apartment that he on, all of 5-0, they flooded on the whole block. They're in the front. And it's me, my man that I drove up there with me and the girl that bought it up there with me. They bang it on the door. They know we're in there. They're banging on the door. Bang, bang, bang, bang. We're like, holy shit. What the fuck? You know what I'm saying? That's when he calls me when I'm in the apartment. It's like, yo, you got to get rid of the phone. We got to, you got to smash them. So they banged on the fucking door. We don't open it. They're like, yo, it's the police.

Open up. Open up. I'm like, now I'm not opening up. Y'all got to want. Y'all got a want. They said, nah, look out of your window. Look out of the window. I went to the front. I look out of the window. The whole fucking block is flooded with police. These fucking, these fucking, this is unbelievable. This story is almost like, you can't make this shit up. But it's in the paperwork. Remember, I went to trial. So there ain't no, it's not no, this is not like story written or script or like none of that.

Exaggerations, this is how it happened. They all in the front. His dude who he called comes around the back. There's a pole camera. Comes around the back, goes in the back. gives all the motherfucking work and leaves out, goes this way. I'm in the apartment.

They say, look out of the window. So they say, call 911. I call 911 and like, oh, I'm in this apartment. They don't have a warrant. I'm not opening the fucking door. They say, oh, that's when they told me, look outside, sir. Look outside.

I look outside. I see it to cops because he doesn't have a peephole. So I can't see the fucking, even though I know, I'm scared, so many things that's going on right now. It's crazy to me, but I can't see that the police. But then they say, they bang on the door again. and she's telling me, open the fucking door. DEA is at your door.

So they say, open the door. Is DEA or we're going to kick it down? I open the door. So many things go through your mind. I had been in trouble before with local police. When I heard them letters, DEA, so many things went through my mind because DEA was back then, FBI, DEA,

all that type of shit is mythical. It's not even real to you, unless you get confronted with them. So you're really thinking like everybody's scared of the feds, the feds. You don't want to get indicted by a federal charge, federal indictment, all that type of shit. You really thinking they're like a spook and like they follow you around or they got microphone. Nah, they get more, they'll do that if they really like strong investigation like they was on him. But most of the time, like they didn't ever follow me around.

They didn't know who I was. They do it with wide types and cooperation. Yeah. And just opportunity. They're just following leads and shit. That's what they do. Yeah. So we open the door.

they go through all this shit. Remember, there's no flower downstairs. There's nothing. I'm acting done. Oh, no, nothing. What are you up here for? Oh, nothing I'm not talking to you. They take the phone.

They got the phone that was in my hand. I called that phone. So now they know, no matter what I say about it, this phone that's in my hand that's attached to me now, it was a phone call that made that call of him that said, yo, just get it out the trunk, just like last time. So they know there was at least this time, and they know there was the last time.

They know this. And so they don't indict me. They don't indict my friend, but they indict the girl. She was the girl that I said, yo, my girl's up there. They take her, they arrest her. They say, we're going to let you guys go. Well, they actually, they didn't arrest us, but they took us down.

They arrested her. Right. They took us down to wherever they fuck they took us, DEA headquarters. And they're trying to get us to talk. That's what they're trying to do. So how did you get indicted? I got indicted 18 months later. Okay.

So what happened is they try and get Brandy. And it's crazy because sometimes the sisters or the females are stronger than the man. They try to get Brandy to flip. She didn't flip. The other two dudes, Fred Tyson and Kevin Lee, yo, they flipped on me. And once they had cooperated witnesses,

so these dudes, they was looking to indict them for cracking coke. They didn't even know nothing about me. They didn't know I was coming. They didn't know it was weed. When they heard that phone call, they thinking that I'm bringing coke, which I wasn't.

Once these dudes decided that they was going to debrief and cooperate, they was able to get an indictment on me. She was in court because she had already got arrested. So she was able to tell me, yo, they're coming to get you. And I'm like, well, actually, I got indicted six months later. She said, they're coming to get you. What you mean they're coming to get me? She said, yeah, they said in an open court.

Because in open court, when they had whatever hearing they had, they said, who are these dudes in Atlanta? We want to know about the dude in Atlanta, which was me. So are these your workers that, are these guys you given work to that are telling on you? These are the dudes, like I said earlier. I don't really classify them as workers. They classify me as workers. No, but they know you.

You've done business with them. No question about it. I did business with the one dude. Fred Tyson. He gave the weed to all his other people. I knew his one other dude, Kevin Lee, but I didn't know none of the other people. But they ended up testifying against me.

Dude, I've never seen in my life. I didn't know him. The girl, Brandi Hammack, she never broke. She went to trial with me. She was my co-defendant. Wow. Okay. So it took 18 months, though, after that for them to get an indictment from

I misspoke. They came and got me six months later. Then I was out on bond. Okay. So the time that happened, it was 18 months later before I ended up going to trial and fall in their trial in West Virginia. Charles in West Virginia, I went to trial. I fell on 2005, August 19th.

I remember that day because that was the day of Katrina. That's when I fell. Oh, wow. It's about to be 20 years. Oh, shit. That's right. I did six and a half years. Wow.

Wow. Yeah. And you got sentenced to, what, 12 and a half, right? I got sentenced to 12 years, seven months, 151 months. 151 months. they gave me the low end of a guideline, which was 151 to 180 month to 188. I got the low end because I had no history, but I got all the way up to 151 because even though I started, as you know, the guideline level, the federal level,

the sentence of guidelines is on the grid. So I started at level 26, which was just 63 to 78 months. But then they gave me these enhancing factors, which they said, leader organized it, and they said money laundering in connection with the drug trafficking case. And then they said, obstruction to justice because they said, I testified at trial, and I lied on the oath. So that brought me up to level 34, which was 151 to 181.

Did your attorney, like, why did you choose to take it to trial? I guess it's because they didn't have any work. Like, what did, did your attorney advise that? He was an asshole. He advised him. He didn't know what the fuck he was doing. He thought it was all good. You know, sort of the long as my mother-in-law used to work for him, she didn't fucking

know. He was a good attorney, but only on the state. State attorneys and federal attorneys ain't nothing. He wanted to get his, he wanted to get his, he wanted to get his federal practice up through me on my back. So he told me all type of, all type of, all type of just false shit that was like, erroneous shit that was like, oh, they don't have any drugs on it, you can beat that case. Oh, they never found any drugs.

Oh, yeah, I could beat it. He had a lot of experience beating cases, and he was a trial attorney. Dale Gallipo, he ain't no good. Listen, I'm actually over there. I ain't mad at Dale, but really I was at the term. He was actually really good on state-level shit. He beat a lot of murder cases. He became known as the Three Strikes Man, and he beat a lot of cases.

When none of them cases that he beat was fed cases. And the reason why I was angry with it really still a little in my body. to this day because he didn't really take the turn the way I see it to get to know the sentence and guidelines and instruct me on the way that he was supposed to instruct me. He was supposed to advise me that the government had a very strong case against me

and that the likelihood of me winning or losing that trial, I would have lost. Because he's convinced me that they got a weak case because they never found any drugs. No, they got a strong case because it's a conspiracy and they got cooperating witnesses. So he bust my motherfucking hair when I went to trial. But I ended up getting out for that very reason.

Did they offer you a plea deal before you went to trial. They offered me five years. And my local attorney, because I had a California attorney, which was a great deal for all the work you moved. I didn't fucking know. I didn't know. You're right.

I had some friends telling me. Go hit golf balls, dude. I should have. Play with your dick. That's right. Sorry to bring that up. No, listen, that's what you do when you're in prisons. You know, you're going to switch to the left, dude.

I'm not going to play with boys. I'm going to play with my dick. Period. I'm going to get some naked ladies. It's either that or a fat lady who works in the, you know, the prison kitchen. Exactly. It's always just a big fat. gross, usually a white lady.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. You had some good-looking ones, and dudes end up getting shit behind them. They do what's called gunning. They have a string time from their toad of their dick, and they're able to tap it when they're sitting there looking at them so they can masturbate themselves. But if you get caught doing that, you're getting shipped,

you're getting locked up. But I didn't do that, but I learned that it existed. That is, could you repeat that one more time to make me laugh? Yeah, so it's called gunning. Like, there's a number of different ways you could be gunning. But gunning is if you're looking at a female walking across, dudes have been down for a long time.

They might be jerking themselves off, but you know, they come up with ingenious ways to masturbate themselves while they're looking at this woman. They might just be walking towards the unit that they're in. So they tie something to their toe. And then they tie it to their to their penis. And they're able to, you know, they're able to masturbate themselves. With the string? I don't get it.

With some type of rubber constraption or whatever. I never did it. Oh, so then you can do it and it doesn't look like you're jerking off. They don't look like you jerking off. Because if she see you're doing it and she want to be nasty, she could hit the buttons on you. They're going to come and lock it. People don't know. You can get locked up while you.

Why are you locked up? Sometimes there was some good looking guards and people would do that. You know, you ain't been out in a number of years. That type of shit, you know what I'm saying? You do different type of shit when you're, I know,

because you talk about it in some of your other interviews. Gunning. You turn it to an animal when you were. Oh, God, it's going to make me cry with laughter. Right, right. Yeah, okay. So, so, so, yeah, that was definitely something that an attorney should have told you.

Like, because I've spoken to a lot of people that, that hate federal attorneys that just make you want to take a plea. They're like, those motherfuckers are in bed with the with the U.S. attorneys. But, you know, like, a good attorney would have sat you down and been like, look, they offered you five. It's their conviction rate is like 97%. You know, you, we're moving a ton of weight.

That's right. You should take it because maybe you can get a year knocked off. You take a drug program plus, you know, some good time. And with five, you probably wouldn't have even gone to a USP, right? No question. I'm going to break that down to you. So, like you said, a good attorney, literally a competent attorney, under the professional norms of the standards of a professional attorney set by the American

Ball Association has to tell you the strength and the weakness of your case. And what is the likelihood of success if you proceed to trial? He has to. A competent attorney has to advise you on that. And that wound up becoming the basis of how I got out of prison. I defended myself and got out of prison after I went to trial, lost a trial, went through the appeal process and loss and all of that. I had local attorney because when you're in another district,

you have to hire local attorney, and he ad hocs in the out of state attorney, which was in West Virginia. I had to bring in this attorney from California, so I had to have local attorney, Troy Gatchez. And I respect him at the time. I had all that nonsense in my head thinking, oh, yeah, they got a weak case.

And that's why he's telling me that he's really working with the Fed. No, he was trying to save my ass. He said, think about your family. You got a family, and Sam Marsh is making you an offer of five years. He said, my advice to you is that you should take it. And I should have took it. Right. I didn't know.

Right. But once again, not only did I not get the advice on the strength or the weakness of my case, he didn't properly advise me on the enhancements that they could put on me to stretch me out, that they were going to punish my motherfucking ass for going to trial, for wasting their time and resources, that they were going to punish me and give me as much time as that they could, that they were going to add escalators on that. He didn't break down that. Although I started at a 26, I could have got two points.

for safety valve because it was my first time. Right. I had got three points for acceptance responsibility. Now I'm down to 21. Then I could have got the drug program. I probably might have did 21 months, maybe less. This guy didn't explain that to me. Right.

So he failed. And it's because you have the right to an attorney. Sixth Amendment right. People hear that. But what they don't know, what they don't tell you and what they should, especially for all of our men, brothers and sisters out there, you don't just have the right to an attorney. You have the right, a legal right, constitutional right.

to an effective assistance of counsel. And that is measured by the norms of the professional standard for all attorneys, which is set by the American Bar Association. And that's why they started calling me Obama because of my constitutional prowess, which ended up getting me out of prison later on. Wow. So is it pretty easy to prove?

Because when you're having these private conversations with your attorney, they're not written down. It's not like there's a stenographer, like when you're in court, writing not everything you say. So how do you prove that to an appeals court that, hey, you've got to take my word for it. This guy didn't tell me that I, that I had a, that they had a strong case. He didn't advise me on, you know, all of these enhancements, et cetera. Yeah. Is that easy, difficult to prove? Like, what's the key to winning on an ineffective counsel appeal?

It's damn possible. It's one of the hardest things that you can do is one of the most unlikely scenarios that you could imagine in your mind is next to the most improbable cause, I mean, a series of events that you would ever imagine, especially in federal court, especially when after you've lost in trial by a jury

of your peers, because what I learned when I was in there educating myself is and Clinton bought this to an end. It's like the, and I, and this fuck my mind up too and stretched it in a different direction that it's not necessarily in the interest in justice that they have. It's in the interest of

finality. So when you lose after a trial by a jury of your peers, judges do not want to overturn it. They want to keep your ass in there because they say the jury has spoken. But I was able to win on a 2255 I've been told when I was actually, I was on Matt Cox's podcast. He says it's one, I don't know the exact statistic, but he said it's one out of every 3,500 that wins that gets any type of relief. And to actually win and get all a conviction to overturn, that's why they call me Obama. I did that shit for real.

Well, you didn't get your conviction overturned. You got your sentence reduced. No, that's what I'm telling you. I got all my convictions overturned and flown out. And they set me back into the same place that I was, I could have went back to try. It was as if it had never happened. I went on a 2255 ineffective assistance

to counsel release on a habeas corpus, which literally translates to free the body or release the body. And I did that after losing a trial. It took six years, four months, and two days. But it happened. I walked out of federal court on an immediate release. That is incredible.

I didn't realize that when you had contacted me. I thought you just got a big time cut. No, you got your whole sentence wiped. Your whole case tossed. I got a toss. That is incredible. I ended up pleading guilty to a lesser charge because I was only, the charge that I pled guilty to was 60 months. And I had already did six years, four months in two days.

So I said, fuck it. And I got an immediate release. However, you know, I had already been locked up. I wanted to get home. It was right before Christmas. Yeah. You know, they came to me, you know, I won. They brought me back to West Virginia on an evidentiary hearing.

And, you know, I argued back and forth with the lawyer that they appointed because at that point in time, I already knew all this through my research. He didn't even believe the way that I was going to argue it. Because the way that I argued with was, and this is what I learned when I went to federal prison. I met a dude named Jack Cater. And I went into the law library, and I met him. He was an old black man from Alabama. And he had been down since 1987.

And he said, I was in a law library. He said, you see this in here? He said, those books up there, all in here? He said, they got a key on them. And books that say LED, lawyers edition. He said, every case has a flaw. And he said, all these books, out of one of them, there's going to be a case. That's going to be the key to getting you out of prison.

He said, but you just got to find that flaw. Wow. And you got to find that case. So I went to work because I wanted to get out. And I wanted to get back to my children and my family as much as I wanted to breathe. Wow. So I set to go on to work.

So you're arguing yourself when you're in the appeals court? When I get back, not appeals court. So a loss on an appeal. Another thing a lot of people don't know. And I know this legal shit will lose some people. So I probably need to start getting on some legal podcast because they're like, man, Obama going in

with the legal analogies and everything because I love it because one of my proudest moments. I know how hard it is. So I'm going back and forth. So you have a right to a direct appeal. I exhausted my right to a direct appeal. I went to some. Supreme Court, I applied for a writ of certiorari.

I didn't get that. They turned me down. So at this point, it's over with, unless you can prove something of constitutional magnitude that somehow one of your constitutional rights was violated. In my case, it was a Sixth Amendment right to an attorney. Right. I found something and I realized if I didn't have competent counsel, that's the only way that you can get out on a 2255, which is a habeas corpus, which is a Latin turn, which is half civil and half criminal. It emanates from London. So I was able to find something that said a lawyer cannot and shall not suborn perjury.

The subordination of perjury says that if an attorney knowingly or should have known that the testimony he put before the stand under oath was going to be false, he cannot put it before, he cannot put you on the stand, he cannot participate in that. What he would have had to do is say, Your Honor, I cannot question this, this, my client right here. advised them against testifying on his own behalf, all that we have the right, and the attorney can advise you against that. You as a client, even though you're not the master of doing your defense, you can, so people think you're the master your own defense, you're not, your attorney is, but you can, you can, you can, you can't insist that you're going to testify. So he was supposed

to tell the judge, I can't put him on this, before the stand. Then the judge would apply, say, okay, okay, let me have a, come up to the branch, we're going to have a sidebar, and then he would have told him, I can't do it. Then he would have had to put me up there in a narrative form and let me just tell you can't ask me questions he can't participate in that he didn't do that as a matter of fact he participated with me okay okay so you testified at your trial at my trial okay so and that so there's your proof right there and your attorney did not raise up his hand and say wait a minute your honor i didn't advise him to do this let's talk it out there was none of that he participated in it right exactly we schemed it out together right so that was your right there

that's your physical proof to the judge when you go back that your constitutional right was violated. That's right, because I put him in a trick box. It was not that he knew. I asserted that he did know. But in my briefs, I said, Your Honor, he knew. But even if he did know, the law says if he should have known, it's new or should have known. So I knew I had him because the judge had already said when he sentenced me, Mr. Gerval, I believe in the system. and the system operates

where witnesses telling the truth. And I believe you lied here in front of me and your story was incredulous. So I flipped it on them. I said, Your Honor, you knew I was lying.

The jury knew I was lying. And Your Honor, my attorney knew I was lying, which you did. We crafted out this whole crazy-ass, headbrained story about what was in the boxes because they never found the boxes. So ironically,

you trapped your lawyer into helping you lie, which you then used is proof to get your case tossed. Right, but I don't want to say I trapped them. Yeah, you didn't do it on purpose, but that, that is what led you to getting out. Your whole case toss was proving right there that your attorney helped you lie. Exactly.

Wow. He was supposed to tell me, are you fucking crazy? Yeah. I'm not, this story's ridiculous. Right. You're not allowed to, I can't help you. I can't help you be found not guilty. I can only take what I have within the law.

That's right. To prove a reasonable doubt. prove a reasonable doubt. That's it. He met with me in secret and my co-defendant. Brandy, who I told you, went to trial with me, a soldier. They tried to offer her a deal. That's why I tell you, some people are so stand up.

You know what she said? She told me these years later. She said, they put pressure on me. They told me I could have came home right away. I didn't have to do a day. She all I had to do was give him you. She said, I contemplated suicide before I told on you. That's why I call a sister soldier.

However, he met with her. Me, her, and him used to meet in secret, unbeknownst to her attorney. She had representation to concoct this crazy fucking lie. And what was in the boxes. Yeah, you're not allowed to do that as an attorney. So right now, I mean, you could probably get disbarred. If they wanted to, like, pursue him, you could get at least a strike against him.

Yeah, yeah, he got undressed. He won't be able to practice. The judge undressed him when I won. They undressed him in front of the courtroom, basically. Okay, so he had to be there. Well, so heck yeah, that's what I knew. Wow. Once I got the evidentiary hearing six years later, four months later, I went back and forth.

You know, the government at that point, they hate you. They don't want you to get out, even which I don't understand that. They knew I was telling the truth. The way I crafted this brief, they fucking knew it was true. Even though they wanted me to stay in. They knew it was true because it was the truth. And so. You were telling the truth about lying with your attorney.

That's the funny part about it because I went back and forth. They say all of this in their briefs. You know, so I do my briefs say, yo, I'm supposed to get back in on the 2255 motion because like I'm being held illegally because I didn't have my Sixth Amendment right. So we go through all that. Boom. They come back. Basically the short of it.

You're fucking lying. You're a drug dealer. This is ridiculous. So it's a magistrate judge at this point. The magistrate judge is the buffer between the federal, my district court judge and school I went to trial with him who sentenced me. So got to go in front of her first. Then she makes a report and recommendation or a findings and recommendation.

Each jurisdiction is different. But in this jurisdiction, it's called an F&R, finding and recommendation. So I'm finding a recommendation after, you know, we're going back and forth with the government. The government gives the response. Then I give my reply. And they basically said, oh, Elon, you got to dismiss it. This is a joke. don't even bring him back up there.

You hear what the lawyer says. The lawyer's like, this guy's a fucking liar. Basically, because now he becomes a witness for the government. So my lawyer is like, this guy's a fucking liar. You know, he's lying. I never met with him. I never did any of it. This is a joke.

Because in my briefs, I spell it out. This guy met with me. We were lying. You know what I mean? I would have never told the story. Blah, blah, blah. He's like, this guy's a liar. The judge is like, this is an upstanding lawyer.

Blah, blah, blah. He says Mr. Gibraltar is lying. So it goes through all that. Then it goes to the magistrate judge got to come back with her, F and all. Finding a recommendation. She comes back, she basically says, you know, this doesn't make any fucking sense.

I'm going to, I, my finding recommendation is that we dismiss it without merit. I have one last response, a rebuttal to the refining and recommendation of the Magistrate Judge, Magistrate Judge Stanley, who worked for David Faber, who was appointed by Bush 1 in the early 90s.

So I do one last rebuttal to her. I get the last say. I spell it out, unbelievable turn. I looked through every case imaginable. I know who appointed him, like I just told you, I know who appointed her. I went through every cursing she had over like 20-some years. I never found any case where her finding and recommendation

was one thing, and the judge didn't go along with whatever her finding recommendation is because it's a buffer. Remember, I've never seen it. Hundreds of cases that I looked at that she had is normally just like a rubber stamp. But this time it was different. After all that was done, the rebuttal to her finding recommendation, her objection to her saying that it should be dismissed without merit, 10 months of waiting, and I am at mail call one day, mail call.

You already know what it is. I see that orange envelope. I'm like, oh, my God. That's it. I already know what it is. I already know one shot won't kill. If they bring me back for an evidentiary hearing, then it's a credibility determination.

That's what the evidentiary hearing is. Now, if they bring me back, I'm going back just for whether or not they believe me. If they believe me, I'm going home. If they don't believe me, then there's no more tricks to getting out. It's over with the moment of truth. man, my hand is shaking. I see the orange enfilow. I'm damn there scared to open it. I can't even open it because I know if it says denied it is over with it. I'm going to do the rest of the time.

I ain't getting out until July 16, 2016, 2016. So I open it and it says you've been remanded back to the Southern District of West Virginia and Charleston in front of Judge, Magistrate Judge Mary Stanley for an evidentiary hearing. What facility are you out at this time? I work my way down to a camp. I'm at Maxwell Prison Camp in Montgomery, Alabama. Oh, okay. I know.

I feel that if I get back, I'm going home, one shot, one kill. I had trained for this for like five years. Remember, everything I learned going back when I was in high school and college, debate, mock trial, gave me the confidence to know when I got in prison. And then when Jack Cater told me, I had been working every single day. That's why they gave me the name Obama when I was in there. I'm working at the Law Library. I'm going.

I'm there on Saturdays. I'm there when it opens up. I'm there until it closes. I'm not playing. I'm not gambling. I'm not smoking weed in prison. I'm not drinking hooch. I got one singular focus like a laser

and that's to find that key in them books so that I can open up them prison doors and ultimately I ended up doing it and I knew that if I got this evidentiary hearing now I got the power I got all type of powers I knew that they're going to appoint an attorney they have to even though I wrote my own brief

I know that they're going to have an attorney with you that you can now I can call I can cooperate with and I had the power of subpoena so now I was able to get the other witnesses Brandy who was willing to come and help my mother-in-law who was willing to come and help Brandy's attorney, David Schlesh, who was very instrumental in helping out.

I love that man. He was a court-appointed attorney in the federal system in West Virginia at that time for 30 years, and I was able to subpoenaed to jail Gallipo. I was able to subpo. They didn't make her come up there, but he was on closed circuit because he was in California. That's your lawyer. We're a former lawyer. That's right.

So, and then so you go before the magistrate. That's right. And then you basically, is it another trial or is it just? It's a hearing. There's no jury there. Yeah, but it's kind of like another trial. That's right. Right.

Wow. All of these players I just talked about it in. And your big, your big kind of piece of evidence to show that he was in on it was the fact that he didn't say anything during trial when you said, Your Honor, I'm going to defend myself. I'm going to, you know, the fact that he didn't even speak up and say, Your Honor, I realized that we're not supposed to really let him do this. That's right. And they just believed you, basically. Well, they didn't just believe me. Yes, they did believe me.

But they believe me because it was true. I had Brandy Hamrick. I had my mother-in-law come. Oh, because they were in on it, too. They were in on it, too. They knew about his- They had been involved in conversation. Wow.

So this is the kicker. Even though there's nothing written. And it's his word up against my mother-in-law, okay, she could be biased. His word up against my co-defendant, and Brandi, she could be biased. Me and Brandi both got enhancement for lying because she testified on the Oval. But what it was was Brandy's lawyer, David Schlesh, who was from West Virginia, who had been a court-appointed attorney in that courtroom for over 30 years. And Brandy testified that, remember, she had him before I even got indicted.

And she testified that she was going to, like, take a plea at first until I got indicted. And then I knew her. She used to be my girlfriend at one time, just to be honest with you. So she wasn't at the time when we were doing our whatever we were doing. She really wasn't. We were just friends. And she was driving for me.

And we just became good friends. That's why she didn't testify against me. But she testified that she met with us in secret. And then she testified to her attorney said, Randy, what are you doing? You know, what happened to you? Where are you? Who's putting this in your head?

And then he testified to bring it all home. He said he remembered that. And he said he knew something was funny. And he said he didn't like it at the term. And he said something happened as soon as I got indicted and had my attorney. He said he knew that it was something that was up. And he even asked, to Brandi, you're acting like a child.

What are you talking about? He told her if you go to talk, because she told him about this story, our headbrain scheme that we came up with. And he told her, Brandy, if you go to trial and you tell this story, they're going to find you guilty and you're going to prison for a long time. Now, what you haven't, what we should know before you tell us, you know, before we wrap up is what was the story that you, Brandy,

and your lawyer concocted during trial? What was this big lie that you were going to tell the jury? Is that, is that what was in the boxes, boxes that was never found was bootleg CDs. because they had a pole camera. So they saw the guy that came bringing boxes out and loading it into his car. But that was at a time where... Remember, he owned this building

with the department's on the top, but on the bottom, it was a record store. And he made crazy money in reality on bootleg CDs. And this was at a time that they were cracking down on bootleg CDs. So that's the idea. That's the headbrained skiing we came up there. Because they never recovered the boxes.

God damn. How... It's so fucked up. They don't have enough proof that there was weed in there? Well... I guess the witnesses, right? That's right.

That's a roll of the dice, right? Like, you know, yeah, that could go either way. You know, the jury's there like, yeah, fuck. I don't know, they're probably drug dealers. Like, that's literally, but it's not enough evidence, in my opinion. Mine too. That's the feds, though, right? So, okay.

And your lawyer was directing this lie, this scheme. That's right. This scheme. Okay. Okay. Wow. So the dagger, after bringing brand. Andy, your mother-in-law, the nail in the coffin was this court-appointed federal attorney, Randy's attorney, who corroborated everything that they all said.

Okay. Wow. That's brilliant. That's a fascinating piece of legal, of lawyering. No doubt. It's what. It was, so it was considered a case of first impression. They say it sits on all fours.

These are legal terms. Uh-huh. And the judge, the magistrate judge at the time, you know, After the whole thing is over, we're in there, the muscles today, it's just me, the witnesses that I told you about, the two lawyers and everything, and the government is still trying to argue there stands. Judge Mary Stanley said, hold on, hold on, just please. You said, I have a seat. She said, I listen to all the testimonies. I heard from all the witnesses. And she said, there's nothing that I heard in anybody's testimony that leaves me to believe that Mr. Gerval has not been telling the truth today here. When she said that, I knew I was going home. Because remember, it's a credibility determination. Yeah. that being the case, they have to start back at the plea bargaining stage, which means they had to overturn all the convictions. They had to put me back as if I never went to trial before. So they could have charged you again. They could have charged me.

There's no way they would do it. Right. But they could go back and be like, okay, cases tossed. We could go all the way. I don't know, though. Would the statutes have run out by that? There's no statute of limitation or something like that just because I had already been charged. And I don't know.

To this day, I wish I would have, I don't know what I wish I would have did. But I think about what if I didn't plea out to a lesser charge? And they had to take me back to trial again. There's no way a U.S. Even a U.S. attorney would want to do that. Right. Nobody wants to retry old cases that they just fucking got tossed. The original one just got tossed.

Right, right. So that's what they come at you with a plea. Like, let's just give me something. Let me not look like stupid in front of my boss. That's right. And then you get to walk today. So they came at you with that. What was the plea agreement?

At first it was, five years probation, immediately releasing five years probation and had me home before Christmas. I told my lawyer, now, you heard with the judge. You know, he said, so I said, no, I'm not doing that. So he kind of got angry. He's like, what do you mean? Are you crazy? He said, the judge is about going like sabbatical or some shit, and he's going to leave.

And you don't want to piss him off. I said, and all due respect. I said, I heard what Ms. Judge Mary Stanley said, I said, I just did six years and four months. I could do a little bit, a couple more days, a couple more weeks, a couple more months on the fucking toilet. I'm not doing that. He said, why? I didn't want to take five years probation.

Yeah, of course. I said, you know, so then he came back, and he came back with one year, like, low-level probation. When he asked me, I said, I might want to smoke weed. He said, well, you shouldn't be smoking weed. I said, it's not the point I might want to. So eventually he came back. This is all in the same day.

Yeah. Came back and was like, yeah, they're willing to do it for one year, low-level. You don't have to go every time, you know. And what was your plea? What crime did you plead to? Interfiring and Interfiring and Interstate Commerce, which carried a maximum of 60 months and then they just gave me one year

low level. Supervised release is what they call it in the fans. Now they were able to get me home before Christmas. Wow. Unbelievable. Unbelievable, man. And I'm here talking to you, my guy. Yeah, yeah.

Holy shit. What an odyssey. What an odyssey. So what have you, man, it makes me want to be a lawyer. I fucking, I've wasted my life, dude. That's, but it's... No, no, no, you didn't waste your life. Because you're doing big things now

and you're reaching, you're reaching a message. You might even be doing more. more than what you was able to do as a lawyer because of this new age of social media and being able to reach so many people. So life in my mind is about having an impact and you're able to have a tremendous impact. You bring somebody like me on here and I'm able to share my story maybe to have an impact on others because what I'm doing now pales in comparison to what I was doing before when I was in the streets. You know, I'm from the streets to the streets to the streets to the streets to the streets to the street. So I went from doing community outreach with the United

United States Attorney's Office for the Northern District of Georgia with the director of the community outreach. Two, doing real estate investments and becoming like flipping houses and building houses like I was flipping pounds. Two, doing my podcast at In-N-N-L podcast, you already know, at I-N-O-U-T-W, where I have people on that have been free from some form of prison. Many of them have been free from a physical prison, but many of them have overcome the adversity and the hardship of overcoming substance abuse or mental health or in-and-out-a-different type of bad relationship. So this gives me the ability to be able to do and make an impact on others to let people know just because you make a mistake in your life, that should not define you.

The book is not over. The story is still unfolding. I'm still writing chapters to my book. I do branding, branding for Uma Sonoma, which is a legal cultivation cannabis company in Northern California, Blue Lobster. That's what I got because it's going to be one of the best strains in the world. And I would. I'm not going to say now because I'm not at leeway to say it, but they just signed a huge deal. You're going to be hearing more about OMA, but they're going to be cultivators for what's going to be one of the largest cannabis brands in the world. It's going to be a global play.

And, you know, I just always thought once I did the real estate, which I'm still doing, I'm doing an in-and-out podcast, which I need everybody to check me out at my YouTube page. I need you to, you know, press that subscribe button. You already know. But I said, cannabis, it gave me a lot in my life and I learned a lot. But I got a lot of pain through cannabis, you know. I did time in prison. I was separated away from my family for years.

And nobody knows what that's like unless you go through it. Because we remember the day we go in and the day we come out two days. But the people that love you the most, the people that rely on you and depend on you, they remember every day in between. And I said, you know, there's no way in hell. And I'm not going to be able to benefit and profit from the legal cannabis game. So, uh, that's awesome, man. That's my life.

Yeah. Fucked. That's a lot of living. Holy shit. I'm sweating. I'm still living, baby. Yeah, of course. So check out in and out podcast.

In-N-N-O-U-T-W-D-W. Yeah. Or, you know, if you can't find it that way, in-and-out podcast by Eric G. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay, so you got it. And there'll be a link to that in the description. We're going to give you a nice plug up top.

Yeah, and hopefully Blue Lobster gets the rollout soon. I mean, that's a fucking crazy good brand, dude. No doubt. One more thing, Johnny, because I watched you on, on Vlad. I got a, I know you and I know you and, a Vlad we're talking about, there's a lot of exchanges and favors and, you know, you do somebody's podcast, they do yours. If you're ever in Atlanta, or even if you're not, we'll come to you.

I'd love to have you on as a guest on an N&L podcast. You have an amazing story. I watch your stories. I watch all of the people that you have on your podcast, and you're the number one podcast out there as far as I'm concerned and what you're doing. And I want to get you on as a guest on N&L podcast. Say less. Say less.

I love doing other people's podcast. I have to hear other people's stories. I'd like to talk about me once in a while. Let's talk about it. Let's make it happen. Yeah, bro. We'll come out to Atlanta, man. That's easy, bro. That's easy.

If you got anybody out there, you think that's good for me to interview, you know. You're the first Atlanta cat. Well, you're a New York cat, but you're really like an Atlanta dude. There's a lot of stories out of there. So, yeah, maybe we'll come out there and we'll hit the road and come out and see you, man. That'll be awesome. I appreciate that. I got a lot of people in Atlanta.

I got people in Miami, Cali, New York. I got people all over. That's real shit, Milwaukee. I have some of the fascinating stories. and I know that would be perfect for your platform. And they're all doing big things right now. Big E with the In-N-Out podcast. Go check it out.

Go follow them on socials. Very, very, just an incredible interview. Everybody's got a good story, but you really told it. You brought it. You brought the heat. So please go check out the In-N-Out podcast. The link will be in the description. We will see you guys later.

You just heard the fucking saga of Eric Gerald. Big E. Thanks, guys. No doubt. I appreciate you. you my friend