The Connect- with Johnny Mitchell - Confessions Of A Harlem Drug Lord: How A Homeless Immigrant Became The Crack King Of New York City

Episode Date: June 1, 2024

Martin Mejias, known on the streets of New York City as Chango, grew up in Harlem after his family immigrated from Puerto Rico. At a young age he was quickly exposed to the illegal drug game in his neighborhood and before long became a part of it. It wasn't long before he was full-on selling and manufacturing crack cocaine and swiftly became a young kingpin with an entire crew working for him. He tells us about his days in the illegal drug market, the bust that landed him in prison, the destruction he caused on his community and family, and decisions that led to him turning his life around. Go Support Chango! IG: https://www.instagram.com/chango_cp5 Chango's Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/CHANGO842 This Episode Is Sponsored By ROCKET MONEY Stop wasting money on things you don’t use. Cancel your unwanted subscriptions by going to RocketMoney.com/CONNECT Join The Patreon For Bonus Content! https://www.patreon.com/theconnectshow Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

80% of the building is drug dealers, 10% are residents, and the other 10% of drug users. I was gladiated school, and that's where I learned exactly what crack was. As far as crews and young kids, nobody had what we had. The guy with the most coke is the one that rules. My guest today is a Harlem Street legend. He goes by Chango. Chango grew up on the west side of Harlem, New York, in the 70s and early 1980s, and he began selling crack when he was just 13-year-old.

old. By the time he was 18, he was running an operation that employed 45 workers who distributed 5 kilos of crack cocaine per day throughout four city blocks on the west side of Harlem. His crew was dubbed YTC, or the Yellowtop crew, and made so much money and committed so many murders that the New York City Police Department established a task force for the sole purpose of taking them down. Chango is the last of a dying breed of New York City drug kingpins, who became unimaginably rich during the crack epidemic of the 1980s. And he's here to tell us all about how he did it. And for bonus content with Chango,

including stories about his time in prison and helping take down corrupt New York City prosecutors and cops, go over to Patreon. Patreon.com slash The Connect Show. Without further ado, there'll never be another like him. I give you Chango right here on The Connect with Johnny Mitchell. I'm walking up to block one day where I live on 107th Street, and I noticed three guys walking behind me.

I don't know them. Get this, this, this, every feeling. And I got boxed in by H.I.U. Four cars. That's when I got kidnapped. That's when I see lights behind me start to flash. And I didn't even think. I just hit it.

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

cell block without this. He was the reason I made it out of a place alive. There's so many problems embedded in the ghetto, in poverty, in whatever you want to, whatever label you want to put on places like where you come from. Yeah. And it all begins in the mind, don't you think? For most people, some people can't, like if it's in the mind, for some and they can't get out of it or beat it and that's where they stay. Because you're from a really unique time. What year were you born?

72. Wow. In New York City. Oh, I was born in Puerto Rico. Okay. And when did you move to New York? Three months after I was born, I needed emergency surgery. So my mom bought me to New York. Okay. Okay.

Yeah. And we stood here. We went back only one time when, you know, we experienced a lot of homelessness. When we went through the shelter system in different people's apartments and we've got to reserve

this person's living room floor and we're going to put a blanket on there and our winter coats go into pillowcases and those become our pillows and we all got to sleep there always clean and we're always eight but never had a place of our own. So we were like

my brother's gripe and my gripe used to be we can't even invite no friends because we're able to fuck do we invite them to. Right. And if we don't have a place to live, we definitely never had Atari, Calico, and none of that shit. You know what I'm saying?

Where was your dad? My dad was never in our life, even though he's always been, he still works today. My father has today the same job he got when he was 20 years old. In New York? Yeah, and he's 66 years old.

Wow. Wow. He was paying union dues to 32 BJ, which is the biggest union in New York City. I don't know about other places. When the dues were 25 cents. Imagine those have gone up a little? A whole lot, you know?

$0.0.40 cent dollars. So, I'm in that union right now. So he's worked 54 years. But we never had a relationship with him because he was afraid that his wife will find out that he had a relationship with my mom. And when he met my mom, he told her that he was a widower. His wife was dead. And he met my mom in Puerto Rico on vacation.

Oh, so he's not Puerto Rican. Yeah, he's Puerto Rican. Okay. So he was just on vacation when he met your mom. So you guys were your dad's second family. Yep. The secret family that every old school Latino man has. I don't have one.

But yep. Right. Old school. Yeah, yeah. You're more evolved. Yeah. So how did you end up in Harlem? Um, well, we were living on a hundred six street in the building that we would live.

You know, Manhattan, if you, if you, if sometimes some of us believe that the entire Manhattan is Harlem. You know what I'm saying? Depended on where you are. Yeah. So, but, um, we, we lived on a hundred sixth street in the building we lived in. caught fire. So we had to move from there. We ended up in an apartment

across the street from there also on 160th in Columbus Avenue, 932 Columbus Avenue. And we lived there for, you know, maybe two or three years. And I don't know what happened exactly, but something happened with my mother's case who she was dependent on public assistance at the time.

So they have these things that are called face-to-face meetings where you have to go in person and you have to bring your receipts and your lease and to make sure that everything is up to date. So I don't know what happened with one of those face-to-face meetings, but because of that, they stopped paying the rent.

And now we had to move from there. And then we ended up on 105th Street. And then the blackout hit in New York City. We here was that, I think, 77 or something like that. And then we had to move from there. And this cycle kept going on moving from place to place because my mother's always stood single with all three of us. And she didn't work.

And she got a language barrier. So for those reasons and more, we had to keep moving from place to place. And we ended up in family homes. We ended up in... Sometimes I'm walking with certain people and I could show them randomly. 137 Street in Probeer, yo, look, we lived in that basement right there

and they'll be like that basement. That's a grocery store basement. I was like, we lived there for a week. Wow. So in New York City, you go to New York City, right? You know those black gates that are made out of iron in front of the grocery stores in front of the buildings.

So the bed that we used to sleep on was right beneath that gate that's on the pavement outside up there. So the bed is right here, and that's the gate, right? You see that wood right there? And so anytime somebody walked through there and steps on that, you hear that. And anytime your little kid comes running,

like we used to do in other places and jumps on it, bang, you like, what's going on? And in New York, that's every three seconds. People never stop. 3.2 seconds. And we're on Broadway. way. So because of that, we had to go.

And then we got into East Harlem, which is Latin, you know, Third Avenue, Lexington. And we lived over there. And there was another fire. We lived in 220 West 111st Street between 2nd and 3rd Avenue. And, you know, my brother and I will go around the corner to an associated supermarket and pack bags to get money. Yeah. Help my mom.

We little groceries. And the half that we would keep, we would go watch B Street over. over and over and over again. On 116th Street, Cosmo movie theater. Wow. It's not there no more. That used to be an iconic spot. So you remember the beginnings of hip-hop?

For me, I don't know if that's, you know, when it's... No, I don't have no memory of Ku-Hirk. I didn't know who that was until I was much older, you know? Yeah. We were discussing yesterday, like, what was the first hip-hop song? And I remember WikiWiki, Wiki, Wiki. I don't know if that's what it was called, but that was the... You know that song?

No. You know what that song is called, Alex? And, um, Qua, you remember Quame? You don't remember? Quame? Yeah, with the Pocodots. Yeah, your life is played out like Kwameh and the fucking polka dots. Yeah, they killed it later. But he was popping back then.

Right. So back, the dope, my hip hop was, was, I would say started then. I don't think that that's the beginning of it. Yeah, but you were really there at the infancy in the early age. Yeah, I was there in the beginning. Yeah, embryonic stages, yeah, because, um, I remember my brother had a crush on his girl. named Yvette that lived across the street from another place that we ended up in this is in Brooklyn and he used to play Deavette by Al Qujayfar.

He's like, what's going on? I mean, to be, you know, the time you were born in, you came up real hard, real fucking hard. But to see the beginnings of hip hop, to be there, to witness the infancy of hip hop and then crack cocaine, you know, four or five years later, wild. I mean, it must have been kind of exciting. It was, it was, I thought, when young, I was, before crack, I got introduced to free base. That's what crack was in the beginning.

Yeah. You know what I'm saying? Well, that was the rich man's. Yeah. So that's how I, that's how I got an introduction. I started seeing that. So, so check it out. We moved to Brooklyn when we ran our places to stay in Manhattan.

And for kids from Manhattan, they don't want to go to Brooklyn to live all of a sudden. So we end up on Fulton and Jerome. rough, rough area, right? And we live in this house. And it's a temporary thing because the dude that owns it, he owns a grocery store around the corner was called Lesboa Super Rec.

But he has a crush of my mom and my mom ain't pointing out for him. So my mom, she sleep with us in the room that we have. And so it became a thing where at one point, he cut off our lights so we could move. But we ain't.

ain't got no way to go, so we ain't moving. We fucking turning candles on this motherfucker. So then he turned off the gas. Now we can't cook. So we got to eat out, but we don't have money to be eating out. So we had to go to Manhattan. My mother would cook pot of food in her sister's house, and we take that to Brooklyn. All of this shit is dysfunctional, but it's survival mode.

Because you're on the train with pots and pans and you're helping your mom cavi this shit, and you don't really want to do. You don't look cool. You feel awkward. So, but we're still there. Then he cut off the water. Now the shit got tricky. You got to brush your teeth every morning.

You got to take a shower. You got to flush the toilet. So now we have to go to the basement and shit in paper bags and walk them out to the front, throw it in the garbage. That shit got. It became too much at some point. We don't have heat. So my mom sealed the windows with black garbage bags. Now you can't look out the fucking window.

You're a little kid. You ain't going outside. you knew to this neighborhood. You can't even look out the goddamn window. And you start, you know, stressing out. So we moved from there again to another place in Brooklyn on Linwood. Terrible spot. Third day there, there was a shoe out in front of the building.

My mother took us out of there. Constantly moving around, trying to find the, you know, the best place. This is all before we left to Puerto Rico. Now we go to Puerto Rico because we have ran out of places to live in it. And we're living in a family house that's there that nobody uses. It's forever there. still there right now. But now we're not used to living in Puerto Rico.

And this is not New York City. And we don't have no friends. And there's kids that don't like us because we speak English. And they feel like, you know, in school we have an advantage. The girls are intrigued by us because we them guys that came from out there. They call it out there in New York City. It came from out there. So we're doing our best to acclimate, but it's not really working out.

Because we have a place to live. But it's not like we, you know, HBO, you know, Showtime, you know, Cinemax back then. You know, we got like four channels. And I got to get permission from my uncle to watch his TV. And he's a grumpy motherfucker that don't want us touching his TV. All you want to watch on this, soccer and other stuff. So I take to scuba diving as a sport. But then it became a hustle for me.

And my brother took into like hunting squirrels and making bow and arrows. and that's how he used to entertain himself. And then when I would come from fishing, I would borrow like flippers, a harpoon gun, a mask, snorkel from family and friends that used to live in that neighborhood associated with my family growing up because I had eight uncles, nine aunts. All of them were raised there. None of them were allowed to move until they were 21

because my grandfather was a preacher for 28 years and he was on them. Is this in San Juan? This is in Puerto Rico. The town that I live in? Yeah. This is in, it's called Mount Navo. Okay. It's right in front of the beach.

Okay. It's Mount Navo, Patillas, Guayama, Arroyo. Throughout that whole strip, we have family because they didn't move far. It moved to the next town this way or that way. So I take to scuba diving. I like, you know, going in the water. I'm coming back with fish. I'm shooting fish.

I'm getting octopus. I'm getting lobsters. I'm getting crabs. Everything, putting in a net bag. I'm swimming back up. And, you know, I go into the. beach in front of where we live at, but by the time I snorkel along the coral, I'm two miles down or three miles down or more. So when I'm coming back tired with my net bag, with all that,

all those color, you know, I got to imagine all these colors of these different fishes and lobsters and the antennas hanging out through the net back. Cars are hunking. So I could sell them whatever I'm willing to sell them. So by mistake, I said, I learned or I could make money doing this shit. But sometimes you get back to the crib with an empty bag And I'm like, damn, I sold everything You know, because my job was I'm filling my mom's refrigerator With this stuff, you know?

So then I would sell half and keep half. I'm allergic to certain things. So I would sell that stuff and I would keep the other stuff. And that became a hustle for me. So then with that money, I started buying little pieces of wood and wheels And we made a little like terrible looking cart with wheels and I started putting on mangoes and yucca and yame and kinepas and lemon and lime on there from from around the house that is growing and it's growing wow you know some of this stuff is a burden

to have growing because you're not using it and you got to constantly be cleaning this otherwise you got fruit flies surrounding your property so when I can't fish I'm selling fruits and vegetables and through this strip a lot of gringoes come so they like I And I got my sign and it says four for one dollar of certain things. So they like, you speak English? And I'm like, yes, I do. And that made the transactions easier. So I was able to sell them whatever they wanted that I had, platanos, guine.

I'm saying plantains or bananas, yucca, yams. And that's how I started putting money together for my escape back to New York. However, I made a mistake and I told my aunt my plan and she took my stash. She didn't steal it. She just gave it to my mom. She said, yo, this guy is planning to leave. He told me he's saving money. He has this much for the flight.

And he's saving now for the taxis because it's a $100 cab ride to where we live at. It's in the country from San Juan. So when she gave her that plan and my money was gone, I should destroy me. But didn't your mom? Wasn't the whole plan for you and your mom and your. No, I was planning. My mom was, my mom was willing to stay in Puerto Rico and that's that. you know right so I was thinking if I could go back to New York maybe I would have it would have failed you know but that's that was my plan to come back to New York and somehow get an apartment and somehow make money and somehow send for my brother and then get my money but it wouldn't have worked because it sounds more like from an outsider's perspective you're like why would you want to go from living with no lights no water in Brooklyn you know the hood where they're shooting at each other to like this tropical beach you know like you're poor there but at least you can make a living and survive

off of the ocean. Immaturity. Yeah. Immaturity. I no longer had a little girlfriend there, though. You know? I couldn't go outside

anytime I wanted to. It's 7 o'clock at night. Everybody should go to sleep in the country, you know? You were addicted to that New York Fast life already. Every morning, you got this motherfucker going,

uh-huh, uh-huh. Every morning. I'm throwing shoes at the roosters. I couldn't get used to it. Yeah. So, but later in life, visiting over and over again,

now when I was making money and I go back to Puerto Rico, back and forth, that's when I really appreciate it. That's when I used to, I could stand somewhere and smell the fruit still on the tree vine. And I'm like, man, that's special. The small things, you know? Yeah. You got to lose everything sometimes to appreciate everything. Hey, guys, real quick, let me tell you about an experience I had recently.

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All right. It's about to get interesting. So we are we in Puerto Rico? My mom sees that we're not happy. No matter what she's trying to do for us, no matter, you know, we got to go to school with uniforms. We're not happy about that shit. It's hot every goddamn day. So we didn't know it, but she started putting her own plan together to bring us back to New York.

So one day we're coming from school on a bus. That's another thing. Me and my brother hated to do get on his bus. And the bus stops in front of the house that we live in. And we, I see from the window when I'm getting out in the aisle, I see that my mother's receiving a priority mail envelope. Was it a priority or FedEx? So I see the colors, blue and red colors with the white in the middle.

And I'm like, what could that be? That's only nobody. That's like for important people that get mail like that. You know what I'm saying? I'm thinking. You ain't rich. That's like some, you know. So I rush over there.

You know, we just got to cross the street. But I'm curious, like, what is in that envelope? And she's trying to rip the little cardboard off. And then she turns it over. As I'm walking up to her, she's turning it over. And all this red fills her hand and there's TWA tickets. TWA. And I'm like, what?

What's that? She said, we're going to believe here. And I was like, Lord Jesus. When? And she was like, four days. And I was like, what? Who sent the tickets? Does she buy the tickets?

My aunt's husband. Okay. Yeah, my own husband, rest in peace. What did she do with your money that your aunt stole? I don't even know. I don't even remember. See, my aunt didn't steal it. My aunt took it because she was scared that I might leave.

She was like, you know, he's capable of that. So you don't leave him with that money. So she gave it to her to hole. I could have got it back like little by little, but they weren't trying to put it in my hands, like, here, start over. So the plan is now we're coming back. And to a friend's home temporarily, all this was set up for us. So we do.

We get back to New York. It was cold. We're pulling up in a car to 160th Street in Columbus Avenue, where my aunt and her husband live at. That's going to be our first stop. And as we're getting there, I see, you know, my old neighborhood, but it looks different. I see a lot of Dominicans.

So as the car is pulling up, it's in the eve. I don't know what time it is, but it's dark already, right? And a lot of the stores are still open, and I see a lot of people hanging out. And I don't know none of them, and they don't look familiar, but a lot of them have curly hair. And those were little like perms that the Dominicans were doing when they come over during that time.

That was a style for them. What is the difference? What is the most marked cultural difference between Puerto Ricans and Dominicans? Between them? Yeah. Like what is the big difference? You know, you're both Afro. Right.

You're both Afro Latino. You both speak rapid fire Spanish. You both curly-haired. Nothing to me. In my opinion, nothing. But Puerto Ricans, Dominicans have always had beef and problems and race issues, unfortunately. So when I see them, I'm a little intimidated because I don't know, on these people. and this is they, everywhere, I'm talking about everywhere

as we're coming through Columbus Avenue. And we go upstairs to see my arm, we come down, and now they're going to take us to where we're going to be at temporarily, which is four buildings down on Columbus Avenue, but on 105th Street, my own lives on 106th Street. So now they're explaining to me all these people, you're going to stay away from them. And what they are doing is selling crack.

And I'm like, what the fuck is crack? Yeah. I never heard of this, you know? But now they look scary to me. They put the spook in me, like, you know, stay away from these people. So we go upstairs to this apartment and they show us our room. There's little bunk beds there and there's another little cot. And there's two windows in the front.

And this is where we're going to be at. In the kitchen, in the kitchen is the bathtub. That's the New York apartment. In the kitchen is the bathtub. No, no privacy or nothing. The bathtub is here. And right over there is the stove and the reframing. And then there's another bedroom over there

And then there's another like half bathroom over there So this is where we're gonna be at That's where I saw That movie was it called Ferris Bueller's Day O That's during that during that time And that movie was out So we're talking like 85, 86

Oh 86 87 Something like that Okay And And so I thought We're cool We got beds We got windows to look out of

You know We got a place to chill. That's it. Wow. Two weeks after we got there. We know we got registered in school. We get home from school. My mother tells us we got to move.

I'm like, what? What happened? She didn't want to tell me what happened. But we later found out. Same issue. That's a single man. He thinks he's got a woman through a catalog. He wants her to not be sleeping in the room with us.

He wants her to sleep in his bedroom. But that's not what she signed up for, and that's not why we're here. You don't got a fucking mail-old of family, motherfucker? What the fuck you think? So we got, we're leaving. So from there, everything that we have fit in Glad garbage bags. It wasn't much, and we got to each carry one. We moved to a SRO building.

You know what SRO building is? Single rental occupancy? On 109th Street, 312, West 109th Street, between Broadway and Riverside. Wow. So that was gladiated school, and that's where I learned exactly. what crack was. And how so? How was it bad?

Because there's 12 floors. There's maybe 20 rooms on each floor, 10 on one side, 10 on the other, two bathrooms in the hallway for people to share. And 80% of the building is drug dealers and 20% 10% are residents and the other 10% are drug users. So it's action all day long.

And you hear shootouts in the hallway of the building. You know what I'm saying? You come, you see shells on the floor. In the morning time, my mother always had to go into the bathroom and hit it with ammonia and bleach to clean before we get ready for school so we could use it because during the nighttime, they're using it as shooting galleries, injecting needles. You know what I'm saying?

So she had to clean the toilet, clean the bathtub, clean the sink, clean the floor, and now we are allowed to go in the bathroom, and now we could use it. And then we come back in the room and we get dressed for school and we leave. But that was an adventure because you got to go along the steps half the time because the elevator don't work or is being held. And you go on the steps, you turn this step, somebody's getting fallatio.

You go down on the next step, somebody's banging the vein with some dope. You go down on the next one, somebody's making a deal, and they might be quiet while the little kids pass by, but we know what's going on. And we're thankful and feeling blessed and lucky that nobody's harming us there, right? And slowly we're sinking into the cosmetic of the place. So there used to be a big-time drug dealer that ran the whole building. His name was Mojetto. Ironically, he got arrested by the same task force a lot earlier than we did. But that's how he went down in his crew.

Was he Puerto Rican or Dominican? He was Dominican. Now, at this time on the west side of Harlem, because Dominicans are known for dominating Washington Heights, you know, 165th Street and higher. But on the west side, low numbers, 106th Street, was it's Dominicans dominating the crack trade from the beginning? Yes, all the way up to 165th, all the way up to the bronze,

all the way on 137th, I'm 145th, on 155th, on 155th, on 165th. So you would say that overall they were the biggest, they were bigger drug dealers in Puerto Ricans in New York City? As far as crap. Okay, okay. What were the Puerto Ricans down from? Do you know why that was? I don't know.

I don't know why, but, um, You think it's just to have connects to wherever the source country? Well, you know, in order to have a good dope connect, you've got to be part of a small circle. Anybody could sell dope, but are you selling good dope? If you're not getting China white, you're not at the time. If you're not getting China white, you're not selling good dope. And the Chinese had the China white. Yeah.

And so maybe the Ricans were just plugged up with them. I believe that it was easier for Puerto Ricans who were already here and in the mix since, you know, early 80s. No, way back when they're done. there was a time that people sold penny bags of dope. Right. So. Oh, right.

So the Puerto Ricans had a legacy of selling dope. So that just carried over. That's what I believe. That's my experience. That's what I've been. And the people that I know and my mentor, he only sold heverin. Right.

And I learned how to cut and package heroin and compress heroin from him. And he explained to me the history. You know, at the times the Chinese would sell you a brick of dope and it was round. It wasn't a brick. It was a circle because the way they were importing it was in wheels. Wow. Is that right?

Yeah. And, you know, boy George, famous heroin dealer. Doing that era. That's the error. Yeah. He's from the Bronx and he was like a 20-year-old making millions of dollars a week. With dope. With heroin, yeah.

So it's just I don't. It wasn't too smart. Well, with the party he had. But, yeah. But that is interesting. That's what's that? You familiar with that case? Yeah, I am.

You know, he had a part. party on the yacht and a guy who's working on the yacht was federal. Crazy. Witnessing all this crazy shit. Yeah. So, but the Dominicans for whatever reason had the plug to the Colombians. So they had the wholesale Coke. Always.

And there are a few choice Dominicans to have had major dope operations in New York City. One of them was, I can speak about it because he's not here no more, was Caballong. And he's from the Bronx. And we sold him. It wasn't my dope that I sold him. I saw him dope that belonged to my mentor. And that's how I met him. Would a Dominican put on like a young Puerto Rican kid in a Dominican crew?

Or were they discriminated? I wouldn't be able to, from my experience during that time coming up, Dominicans weren't like us. A lot of us, when we started Yellowtop, were Puerto Rican, right? And they didn't like us. Yeah. And they would, in a disparaging way, describe us. as Puerto Ricans.

Yeah. Yeah. And we never really understood, you know, we know we didn't do nothing to you, just don't like us. But, you know, I started to learn that that's, you know, everybody that's Spanish, don't like another Spanish person.

Right, right. Everybody got this shit. Yeah. Yeah, Puerto Ricans have always, unfortunately, been like the butt of the joke. Unfortunately. Yeah. But.

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I met my future business partner, which is Tito. Yeah. So I had a little extra freedom, and I would come home a little later than other kids, you know. And I would come up 109th Street in Amsterdam to hit Broadway and then go between Broan River, South to go to this hotel that we live in at, which is the SRO building. And he had a lot of freedom and he would be outside too.

And we were both young. And I met him there and we started talking and little by little talking a little. We started hanging out in the after school center, center 54. That was a part of our junior high school, Bugatti, Washington, 107th in Columbus. And we just started talking and he had the same problem out. He needed money. So that's what bonded us. And then he had more connects though.

He was more aware of the street. His stepdad was a Coke dealer, so he knew who we had to go to. And we went to him and bought an eight ball. You know what the eight ball is, right? We bought three and a half grams of Coke. And we got a crack addict to cook it for us because we didn't know how to cook it

and we gave him a piece. How old were you at the time? I was in my teens. Yeah. And we gave him a little piece, a little rock for cooking for us. And then we went and bottled up to rest and we took a chance and sold.

it. And it was so easy to sell it back then. You just post up. Yeah. And everybody had it and still, you could not have enough. Wow. You could not have enough. Like we sold that, we sold 100 bottles. That's what we made. A hundred vials. And what does each vial sell for? Those that we made, you know, there's different prices. Those that we made were nickels. $5. So we made $500. Now we had enough to buy an ounce, though. Yeah. That's the kind of money. Three and a half grams of powder got you 100 nickels. which is $500. And the eight ball only cost us $90.

Wow. Right? So, and we gave the piece to Homeboy, so that was whatever it was, but it was a little more that we could have made. So now we knew we're going to always give it to India to cook, and we're going to always get it from Santo your stepdad. And we repeated that process until we got to 62 grams.

When we got to 62 grams, now we knew we could buy from anybody because now we had cash available to go buy. It wasn't a lot of. cash at the time i think a 62 would be 1200 or 1250 yeah so doors opened up for us because of that because now we can make a decision we don't have to go to your to your stepdad and we started going uptown 140s now the trade up there was they selling cookup and cookup is basically crack already made the downfall to that is that you don't know what's in it right and a lot of

times they have B-12 in it or come back or who knows what else. Sometimes they would make it with gasoline. You don't have a choice. So after you buy it and you go sell it, if your customer base don't like it, you stuck. Right. You know, your only alternative is to buy more from somewhere else if you have money left and mix some of the shit that's already done with the good shit and slide it that way. But it hurts your business.

You know, you're selling an inferior product and the customer base knows it also. So we did it for a little while, though. Because it was, you know, at the time, instead of paying $17 a gram, let's say for cocaine to then cook, you buying cook up at $12 a gram. So we think, and you can buy more and make more. That's where we learned less and that more.

You know, what you need is always quality, not quantity. Because then you can choose how much you want to step on it. Well, you can't step on crack. Well, what I mean step, I mean, you can choose how much bacon soda to put in it. Sure. You can make your own decisions. Yeah.

Yeah. So, and at the time wholesale, if you're buying even a 62, that's considered wholesale for crack dealers, the Dominicans basically have it monopolized. Yes. Okay. So how did you get around that? How did you find the powder at wholesale? During that era in that neighborhood, you take a chance anytime in any neighborhood,

you go do this, but you take an extraordinary chance. When you go to that neighborhood at that time, which was controlled by Blackie, rest in peace, when you're going up to the bike cooked up crack because it is hot like a motherfucker. There's police on roofs with binoculars, seeing what you, if you're doing something funny, if you're buying something, they stop your car,

they're radioing it in. There's a lot of stick-up kids, and we were kids. So during the time, some of the Dominicans that are selling coke have a half a brick and a zip lock under a car, a random car in a triple beam scale. They don't want to waste time. Like the customer comes, they want

to right here, let's go. We're not going to waste time that you're going to wait for me to come back from upstairs and maybe somebody else already took you because there's that many people. The neighbor is saturated with drug business. So we spoke to a guy, his name was Peluche, and he sold us some coke, and we

took it to India, and India cooked it for us. And he sold it to us for a good price. So we started buying Coke from him for a little while and getting India to cook it. And then we started buying coke from people in our neighborhood and cooking it. And then we started making noise because we got cheese lines

and cheese lines. So people say, yo, I'll give you. It's like any supply that sees, you could get rid of coffee. He's gonna, I got coffee for you. I got the best beans in the world. So that's what happened with us. Doors opened up and now people in the neighborhood that sell weight want to be our supplier.

So now you have multiple connects. And we're playing all of them. That's playing on, hey, down the street, they got it for 10 centigram. That's right. That's what he did. I will go talk to this guy while this guy's looking so that he knows what I'm looking for because he knows what I do and he knows what he does. And then I would cross the street.

Yeah, what's all? He's like, yo, what's up, man? Talk to me. I see you talking to this guy. Then I would tell him, he's giving me a good price. You know, how much? I would, you know, low-ball him. Yeah.

And he would be like, I can match him. Yeah, yeah, but he's giving me consignment. And I'm like, oh, he goes for this. and sometimes they would and now we always paid we always paid and that got us a good reputation so it kept going up 500 grams is a kilo

then we had the neighborhood serious guy that owns the sneaker store his name was Fogarty selling us coke you go in there like we go into like we're buying sneakers his store was on 190 in Amsterdam we go in there like we're going to go buy sneakers and we leave

even with a box of sneakers, but it's a kilo in there. Consignment. Credit. And that's good Coke? Yeah, it was A-1 Coke. What are you paying on a brick? At that time, 17-5 from him.

Those days will never be back. Never be back. Those were great times. You could literally buy a thousand bricks, right? It's like Bitcoin. A million seven. And now it's 35, you know? I'm cashing this shit in.

And shoot. One-shot deal. So 17-5. and you'd have Indio cook up 1,000 grams? Yeah, 100 grams at a time. So how much? No, no, but by the time we're doing the brick, I learned how to cook.

So I'm cooking my shit myself. So off a 17-5, off a thousand grams of powder, how much crack does that bring back? Depending on what vows we would use, because we started on economical warfare in the neighborhood. Right. Okay, this is great. So at, yeah, the crack crews around this time

keep dropping the prices of their bottles to where... If they got a lot of guns, they could do that. Explain that. You cannot do that unless you could hold that down. So other people are going to stop making money, other crack dealers. And they're all going to get together.

You know, it's not good to have a conspiracy form. You know, you're not good for you to be alone and a conspiracy is forming against you. Yeah. So all these guys are suffering from the same guy. You're undercutting the prices. Right. So you would end up going.

They're going to go shoot you. won't you either or take off your worker or whatever they're going to talk to you but now if they could get you to do what they want now you no longer have the right to be out there you can understand how that goes? Because you're weak yeah so

so if you don't go because you know you can't do what they tell you now you have to expect to get shot at and so you need guns to shoot back right did you ever get into a price war like that where you said fuck it we're going to drop our bottles down at $3. That's what that's what I meant by we started an economic

Uncle War, but yeah, we took a, we took a brick and we started doing buy one, get one free. Fuck your prices. Wow. So, okay, explain that. How many, explain if you're taking a kilo and cooking that up, what is, are you selling them in dimes? No, we're over the bottles. We alternate it. If the only strong crew around, like us, was Purple Top and we had a, like a cold war with them, and we had a neutral block between.

us, which is 106th Street. So they have from 150th Street down, and we have from 10th Street to 110th Street. So on 160th Street, they and neither did we let anybody work there. That was just empty block, right? Wow. And sometimes you could probably find somebody that was sneaker, but it's not even worth addressing because you got heat coming from both sides, you know?

So if Purple Top is selling, it goes by numbers, the vials. Let's, for example, 031, right? If they're selling 031 round bottles, we'll sell 027 illusion bottles. Illusion meaning picture of shot glass at a bar. See the bottom of it? Which is designed so you get less liquor, but it looks like you got a lot.

So we would use illusion vows that are smaller than this in reality, but look like they're more because of the illusion. Right. You know? Wow. And then we figured out if we use the caps that belong to the old 34 bottles, those come with a stem inside. It's not just a cap.

So you will see a little. And then you just have to fill the vial to that little stem and it's full. So why use the ones that are without a stem? You have to keep putting more in. Then we figured out instead of just smashing the crack and filling a vial, if you cut it in perfect little, little miniature boxes smaller than a tic-tac, You can stack them on each other and less goes in. Wow.

So you weren't even weighing these out. No, never. It's just whatever fills that bottle and you decide to charge whatever you think you can get for that. Yes. So they would sell 031s for $5. We would sell 027s for $3. Okay. So you're selling $3 and they get one free?

This is different. If I come outside today and they have 028, we're going to put 034. They're selling them for five. These are four. Now tomorrow, they're selling them for $4. They switch that up and they're selling NICs, we're going to sell trades in order to continually assault them. Right.

Because they already have all their work prepared. Yeah. So they have to finish it. Yeah. But we're switching every day and they can't keep up. And that's how we climbed over them. You're literally operating like it's any other commodity. It's like the stock market up and down Coke prices.

Depending on the day-to-day basis. So when we did the buy one get one free, we need. we never gave away anything for free. Everybody just felt like they were getting something for free. Well, you're still profiting. So what are you off of a kilo? No, I mean, they never got an extra bottle. They never got the extra bottle.

Okay, okay. They got two vows. Right. But this one had the stem in it. Right. And the little piece that was taken out from there goes into that bottle. It's still the same amount. Still the same amount.

Yeah. Okay. So what do you make, what do you profit off of a kilo of powder that you cooked up into in the rock. That always something, that was always something that alternated. Sure. What are the variations?

So let's say we make out of 029, 30,000 vows, which is usually you're trying to make 25 or 30,000 vows out of a key, right? And I'm going to sell them for $3. That's 90 grand. Yeah. Wow.

And a key goes in a week. Incredible. Because we used to leave hours for other, we used to, so now we, we told everyone they cannot work around there. No, no, no, then now there was no Dominicans working. You cannot work between six at night and six in the morning at all, unless you're working for yellow.

So where we're going to work? A lot of them asked, well, you can work from six in the morning to six at night. But that meant all of them had to work during that time. So it made it harder for them. And who's negotiating? You guys are teenagers and you're operating. We have big guns. You're operating like countries.

You're operating countries with truces. Hey, no, but this is a neutral block. It's insane. It's insane now when I think of it then. It was just normal. Normal shit was, you know? And they tried to get us out, but it didn't work. We were like, we're not leaving this at all.

So did you have to drop bodies in order to, you say big guns? What do you mean? You know, when we got arrested, we got arrested. We charged with nine homicides and 14 to 10th murders. And that was in the course of running those blocks between 107th and 111th. You know, occasionally somebody, the problems we had were all territorial. There was, we didn't have none of those, none of the violence, what I'm trying to tell you is had to do with, I'm fucking somebody's girl or somebody did something to me.

Personally, it was all always business. And that's literally the opposite of the violence. There's no violence over territory anymore in New York over the drug trade. Because it's like it's all done. I don't know of any. I think it's all done on cell phones. Yeah, yeah. People do services now.

Yeah. And delivery, right. Yeah. So how many people did you have working for you? There was 48 employees. You and Tito. Yeah. Running it.

So 46 plus him and I. How did you, and these are all Puerto Ricans? We had two black dudes. Shout out to Damon. Shout out to Rahim. and everybody else was Puerto Rican or Dominican and maybe six reververs

eight De La Cruz yeah yeah three cousins four brothers you know that kind of thing yeah no white guys no I don't I don't remember any I was joking I know did white people come through via in though? What of course

yeah pilots stopping in yellow taxis to get online I got a 95 I got a 95 on my report card because my Spanish teacher got on my line and I was like, yo, we have to talk. Wow. I traded crack to get that grade.

Wow. Straight up. That's wild. And then you're showing up to school and you're... I didn't have to go to his class no more. But you kind of went to school still. I went to school to chicks like... Yeah.

Third period, fourth period, see who I could take to Capri Motel with me or take them to another hotel. But I wasn't... I was no longer interested in school. I didn't understand what is the point of school. Yeah, you just made more in a week than the teacher makes all year. And, you know, before that time, my purpose of going to school wasn't to learn either. My purpose of going to school was to like, I'm going to be warm for eight hours in school,

depending on where we're living at. Sometimes we don't have heat. So I'm going to be warm in school and I'm going to eat this, dad. And then I come home. So what did you do for mommy when you came up and, you know, now yellow top crew is running? Did you move your mom out of the SRO? Of course. Yeah.

We were, we ended up living on a hundred-seum shoot in Amsterdam, Upper West Side, which is very trendy now. Yeah. And she kept that apartment for 30 years. Wow. When I got arrested, I sent her to Puerto Rico and I encouraged her to find a house. My mother would never accept money from me. I would have to sneak money into her coats, into her purse. If she's in her sister's house for the weekend in Brooklyn,

like throw away her dresser to the bed and get new shit. Otherwise, she won't accept it. So with her, it was never a money thing. And she never knew really what I was doing. I told I work in this store in the Bronx. I gave her a far-dress knowing she's never going to go over there because she don't really come. My mother would never, people in the building didn't know.

that that was my mother. She wouldn't come outside. It's always been that way. She's just very very shot. So your crew of 46 people who you didn't discriminate, you let you're an equal opportunity employer. I don't want anybody suing me. Yeah, right, exactly. Me too and you. How much did they get paid? How did the shifts work?

I know it was 12 and 12 usually back then. Can you explain for the people like how crack crews operated? Like the employees? There was a number of ways and we tried them more. The way I liked the most was paying them off of bundles because they pay themselves and you don't have a payroll, you know. And their incentive is greater. Sell more.

So let's say when we were doing deuces, $2 bottles, right? That's where we killed everybody, right? $2 bottles, right? They will get a 100-pack. And let's say they get $30 off 100 pack. Now, 100 pack goes in minutes because they're $2. So anybody that has money to buy from purple at 5 or from green at 10 is no longer going to do that because they could get more over here. For $5, you buy one vial off a purple.

With $5, you buy $2 off a yellow and you have enough money to buy a lighter or stem. So you get more of your money. And it provided them with a hustle where to all the white guys that don't want to come to buy or are scared, don't want people to know, they don't want to get robbed. And they have that guy that they know that they could trust, they might give him 50 bucks like, yo, go buy me 10 nicks. This guy's buying him 10 deuces.

Right. And he's giving him to him. And that guy's going to be happy because he don't know the price. Now this guy has $30 in his pocket. Right. So they can do kind of like side transaction. They do it all day. When he smokes those 10, he's going to call that guy again.

Right. And that guy again is either going to have bottles for himself or $30 in his pocket. He'd do that 10 times a day. He got $300 in his pocket. So they always used to tell us, we fuck with child because you can make money with you, not just get high. Right, right. So you got 46 people working every day. Yeah.

And they're selling how much can what? Well, the shooters weren't working every day. you know. Yeah. Okay. So you just had shooters. You just had people reserved just for that kind of thing? Yeah.

Okay. So how many crack dealers? How many workers moving bundles every day? Oh, you probably got four guys per shift, but you got a chop up crew that's in the apartment, chopping up, you know, and packing. And how much are they paid? They paid $30 per ounce, and they do 10 ounces each. So they get $300 a day, yeah. Wow.

Incredible money back then in the 80s. for... I haven't seen that money yet, again. Yeah, right? You know, back then it was a burden to have singles, like a real burden. You know, fuck I'm gonna do with all these singles. You know, you got $200 dollars in singles.

That's just stink. You got crack addicts carrying money in the crack of their ass so they don't get robbed and their shoes. Yeah. They're wet. They're dirty. And all that money together starts to stink in your crew.

Right. And then do you have cribs just to hold the money? No, I've never had no crib to hold money. We have money to take chicks to. like, you know, and we stashed money there. Yeah. But it wasn't reserves, like traditionally. You see a cartel, do you got to create just to count money.

No, I never had that. Did you have, so you had a, you had a crew to bag up, vial up. You had the pitchers. Yes. Do you also have the lookouts? Lookouts, managers, yeah. Okay. So tell us about them.

Who were the managers and the lookouts? What were they paid? What was their function? So the managers managing the spot. He could stand as far away as he wants from the spot because he's managing not only for trouble, but for the police. Yeah.

And they all had earpieces to talk through with the lookout so that they don't have to be going across the street. They could just tell him, yo, the cops are, he could just be standing around and he's just telling him the cops on Manhattan Avenue right now. And he's not getting hot. He's not yelling, Po, po, you know what I'm saying?

He's just letting him know on an earpiece. Wow. And then the guy in the middle of the block, his job is to direct, the line because there's always a cheese line. And only five customers are allowed in at the time to the alley. So his job is to receive information from this guy in Columbus, from that guy on Manhattan Avenue.

And by him feeling safe, he tells five guys to go in. And now five guys come out, five go. When he, when that middle guy tells the line, Teddy, all of them disperse. And that's a funny, it's not really funny, but that's it was a weird thing to see because you just see all these people, and they all look the same, you know, dirty, dispersed. Someone are coming between cars, some are crossing the streets. Some go down the blocks.

They'll go back up the blocks. Some go around the corner. And the cops will come and they don't know what to do, what's going on, what's happening. They can never arrest. There's never been one up until all of us got arrested. There's never been one YTC arrest because I climbed into an abandoned building and I put a hole in the wall and the bricks with a chisel. And so the customers, the customers never knew who they were buying from.

They could only stick their hand in. And the guy that's in the lobby of that abandoned building, he serves them. He's in there watching TV, listening to music, with stolen electricity. One guy shot himself in there trying to shoot a rat. So you guys never got pinched on like just a jump out boy raid? No, it's impossible. You too smart for that. Because they were, when he says Teddy and all the people dispersed, the guy that's in the hole.

That's what we used to quote. the guy that's working in the hole, he goes upstairs to whatever floor he wants to. Yeah. And gets ready in case something's going to happen. And in there, you know, on this floor, we got guns. On another floor, we got a lot of drugs stashed

so we don't have to keep bringing it there, you know what I'm saying? And then there's an escape route there because the building is the building that's adjacent to it, we made a deal with one of the tenants, who's a customer, that if this worker knocks on his window, his bathroom window,

it's an alleyway. So the cops can't even see what's going on. This guy runs upstairs. He knocks on the window. He goes through. The guy gets $30 per entry every time. So he likes one, though. There's foot chases.

He's looking forward to that the window being knocked on. Yeah. Tuesday and Thursdays. That's what they said when they'd send him through. Yeah, yeah. When they, when they, when we used to, we'll get to that part of the color code thing. But, um, so when when he goes up there and he goes through that window, he's in another building on the same block, on the same street, but in another building.

So even if the spot were to get raided and never did in five years, there's nobody there. Right. And you don't know where he went. You don't even know if he's still there. It's an abandoned building. So some apartments have a bunch of debris in it. Some of them have half construction in it. Old mattresses.

You can never search it. Yeah. People don't know now Harlem was falling apart back then. There was just so many. A lot of dilapidated building. So many places to hide. So many places to run. So many places to stash.

So many places to live in as, Um, what's the word, what they call that? Squatting. Yeah, squadding. Some people took over a band of buildings and just cleaned them out, sealed the windows, and that was their building. Yeah. And now you're in business.

Yeah. So it's literally 16 year olds taking over New York City buildings and opening up shop. And now it's-marked. Yeah. And now it's 30 grand a day or whatever it is. Yeah, yeah. When you come by, you might see a shoot in the window. He came to the block to hang out to supervise,

make sure there ain't no problems. And he has his gun and he's on the third apartment three-bee, but there's no window. There's no window. The wind goes through and everything. And you come down the block and you might have to tell them, yo, I can see you from half the block.

You got to get out the window. It's, it's, it's, it was, it was an adventure and a wild time because you could literally have a shootout out of abandoned buildings and you're shooting out into the street. So you have people dumping down onto the street. It has happened, yeah. Like snipers in a war. Not, not one shot.

Snipes on about Klan Klan, rapid fire. Wow. Because somebody showed up that, We know it's up to no good. Trying to rob you. Trying to stick us up or apply, you know. It was a coveted position for Tito and I to have. Well, who owns yellow tiles, them two little kids.

Yeah. And so the tops, the colors of the tops were used as a way. Branding. Branding, exactly. You guys, it was all about marketing and branding. Some people pressed the glassine bags of heroin. They would put a stamp on it, like Boy George, obsession, right? But with the crack, it was vials.

So you know yellow top, that meant 107th through 111.11. And that was good dope. Those are the $2 bottles. Color coordinator, yeah. Right. And so who were the closest competition? Purple. The purple top.

But this didn't exist. The color thing didn't exist until we got there. We're the ones that said this is how this is going to go. And we did that to try to emulate our mentor with his heroin operations. because we didn't, we, we couldn't find good heroin. That's why we didn't get into that. So in order to, in order to benefit from the branding, we said we could use colors.

I think it was Tito that decided that we could use colors. So then we went around, we went to the smoke shop and picked the color and we picked yellow. And then we went around to the other people told them, you can sell yellow, this is what we're going to do, this is how this is going to be, pick a color from this chart, and that's going to be your color. And they had to pick a char.

You pick pink, that's it. You're going to be pink from now on. Next guy, next guy, next guy. You know, silver, green. Nobody can sell yellow. So if you sell yellow, you have a problem. Yeah. Because you definitely try on to disrespect and, you know, and take money out of what we're doing.

Wow. So nobody never did that. You were able to wield such power like you just told other crews what it was and they listened to you. Well, why is that? I don't know. I don't know at the time if it was about power. I think it made sense to them, you know? Right.

It was just logical. Yeah. Like, because because it's a benefit. It's beneficial. Yeah. People that are coming through for yellow are not going to stop. If you're saying black, black, black top, black top, green top, silver top. They're coming for yellow.

Wow. And that's it. Think about Wall Street white boy traders coming from the financial district. The place that runs the world, right? Guys making millions of dollars back then in the 80s. And they know what yellow tops are from black. kids in Harlem. Do you know what I mean? How wild is that? And they have. I've sat with some while they, while they have smoked our product. Yeah. And I would wonder, how is this dude not dead?

He is, he is popping. This is in 92. He is popping. That's when I first learned about Perkins says. He is popping Perkins says. He's drinking whiskey and he's smoking crack in front of me. Holy shit. Crazy. Wall Street, dude. And then, you know, suit and tie and and, and shirt. And shoes and cufflings and all of that. And I'm looking at this and I'm like, drama. Yeah, but those are good customers. Those are good fees. Those are the dudes that will come and, you know,

they give you $500 bill to tell you, let me get what you got for me for that. Yeah. I don't want any problems. I just want to get out of here. So if you have you got workers, how many, so say a bundles, 100 bottles, how many bundles are you moving a day in these blocks?

I know, it's a hard question. I don't know, man. I don't know. You got two shifts. Let's say 50 bundles this shift, 60 bundles, that shift. But tomorrow is 100 bundles per ship. At a point where how we were calculate it is by the hour. And you know you're selling $900 an hour.

So we know they're selling 300 vows an hour when we're doing trade. Oh, my God. Or they'll beep and put eight. And that means they're going through eight. They made $800 an hour. Yeah. we know we got $16 hours, $800 or $900, $19, $16 today. But if it's between the first and the seventh and people got their checks or the SSI checks or their welfare checks, we know that that's going to increase.

Those are the busiest times, the first. Because we are three blocks away from a major housing project. Right, right. So all that flow is coming over there. Right. Oh, my God. Tens of thousands of people. And sometimes it gets scary

because you can't stop these people from coming and you don't want to at the time discourage them. But the cops might be coming. They might be three blocks away. And there's nothing going on because this guy already said Teddy and everybody's put away.

But all these people that are coming from 150, 1004th, 1003rd. They don't know that the cops was on 108 Street. And even if they are, they don't have to worry about that because they're not actually doing nothing yet. But they're all stopping on 107th Street.

So there was a constant presence of all kind of filth. When would you decide to switch a spot up? What you mean, switch a spot? Meaning, so you've got different locations. This is all happening between 107th and 111th, right? 110th. 110th.

Okay, so basically four blocks where you stash, you cook, you distribute, you count, rinse and rinse a repeat, where the fiends actually go to the lines. did you start moving them indoors as the blocks got hotter and there was more cops around? Or where did you actually do the serving from? And when would you decide to like switch up a location to serve? Okay. To go hand to hand.

So since we are primarily on 1007th Street, we mostly stuck to 107th Street, but we can put it in on any of those other blocks. Okay. We never would do that. There came a time where we have, we're paying some cops off and they're letting us know during this time. I skipped.

We could go back whenever you want. So there came a time where we're paying some cops off and they're letting us know. They're watching you from this window, right? That's what's going to happen tomorrow. That's what happened yesterday. Whatever they say. So we tell the guys, go around the corner. You can't film around the corner.

Now they can film that building all day. Nothing is happening there. So the guys will work around the corner for two days or three days and another. And any building that we pick, but we have certain ones where, the tenants weren't complaining about this action in their lobby and everybody in there kind of like looked the other way and then we don't want to be in those other buildings because over there, the church guy lives there

and he's going to make a big deal. You can't really do that to him. So we would alternate buildings, not blocks. Right, right. And then, let me see. There came a time during that investigation that we would let the guy sell on the street but across the street

because that's the building they're filming from outwardly so they can't film downwardly. I see. And we play that in the game constantly every day, you know? Sometimes they will come and the anti-crime unit would park in front of the building. They would get out the car and throw a stink bomb inside the hole. That's the only thing that they could do.

They're paying like a game. They're going to throw stink bomb and they fuck you motherfuckers type of shit. Wow. You know? So when they would do that, The rule is to call in a 1013, which is an officer in need of immediate help. So you call in a 1013 on 110th Street in Amsterdam.

They have to answer. They're three blocks away. So they have to go over there and look around. And while they're looking around and trying to figure out what the fuck happened, all the customers are there. And the minute somebody says, Teddy, because they're at the light over there,

everything shuts down. They might come back and be like, fuck it. But an hour later, you make another call on robbery and progress on 100A Street. They again have to go. They have to fill out of DD5. And they have to, if they want to come back or give up. And that's the game that we played with them in order to cause a rush. They left.

Another crowd is building up. It's time to make another call. Set it out. And they go back again. And you have workers on the street who are communicating with the fiends like, hey, it's down the block. It's in that building. It's epic.

Go, go, go. Go, go, go. Yes. Today we're in 62. That's a building. Right. So, we're in 64. We're in 65.

We're in 71 around the corner. And that's where they were followed. And the guy on the corner, working at the time, his name was Feeney, a good, good friend of mine to this day. And he's the only one that would be there with an Armani suit, shirt, tie, shoes, Dora. He didn't fit like he was a drug dealer. He was a staple to us. Smart. Smart.

So is that how they knew who to look for, the fiends? Because those, the guys that's steering the customers, those are. The same guys. Those are the same guys. Right. So you wanted to keep the same guys. Yeah, the face. Yep.

Exactly. Exactly. Now, about the cops paying the cops off, what was that about? Who are they? And how much did you have to pay them? How did that come about? That kid, Tito organized that through a guy that, We know, and that used to work for us.

And that cop, he ended up pleading guilty to a YTC indictment. And how it worked is he tells, I was in jail when Tito made that connection. And so when I got out here introduced me to him, and now we would meet him on 17th Street in a building that was familiar to him. And that's where the introduction took place. And then any time to get information, we got to go meet him in that building. And occasionally he could slip something as he's passing. in the neighborhood or he stops you in your car.

But mainly we'll meet him in his building down there. And he would tell us, yo, this guy has a warrant or this guy made a sale or you better hide this guy. They're looking for him. Or this guy's a witness in the shooting. They picked them up and took him to grand jury. You know, whatever. Those are, that's what he would give us.

But if we have specific questions, he would also answer them. Or if we want them to take down a picture in the precinct, they have like a warrant board. So the cops during road call could look at it in case when they get in their cars They have a fresh look of people that I wanted So yo, you could take that picture down from there He would whatever he could do he would do

How much would you pay him? It depends, you know, usually $400 to meet him Talk for 10 minutes, see you later. That's that. He wants to scoop on Coke Because he used to sniff coke. Like, yeah, you could go take coke from this dude It's going to be over here.

He puts it in this mailbox and that's your pay. And how often were you meeting him? Um, right before the, right before we got a, you know, they had a relationship already while I was in. Okay. Right before we all went down, I would see it maybe two times a month. Okay. Oh, it's a pretty cheap. That's cheap information.

500 bucks a meat. I mean, yeah, yeah. I mean, you could look at it that way. It's worth that. It seems like a worthy investment. It was worth it to us. What was, did he give you a piece of information that you remember that, like saved your ass? Like, oh, hey, this one of your workers is wearing a white.

No, no, nothing like that. Nothing like that happened with us. The most valuable information for me was when he would give us information about the guys that I wanted for murder. In your crew. Yeah, the drug shit, you know, thank you and all that shit. Yeah.

We weren't really worried about no drug charge. We had the best lawyer in New York City that you could have and she was like my mother, so she's doing anything and everything. And cases are getting dismissed. and we never worried about drug charges. I had one drug charge and it was a fake charge they put on me because I got arrested for pistol whipping a dude on 15th Street. I got caught with the machine gun on 107th Street

and I got out nine hours because of this lawyer and her connections. So that pissed off the actual anti-crime cop that arrested me. He was like, how to fuck you out here already? And then I boasted about my attorney so all of a sudden I had a burglary charge. Like two weeks later, now he's arrested me for a burglary. I never burglarized no place.

But I had a chalice in my hand. It was New Year's. I had a chalice and I was pouring moed into it and drinking out of it on the block. And turns out that that chalice was stolen from a church. I bought it. I didn't even know it was gold. Right.

I didn't even know what I had in my hand. Right. And he's supposed to charge me maybe with stolen property. but he charged me with a burglary. So he takes me to the 24th precinct and they tell the sergeant, you know, you gotta go in front of the death sergeant and they book you.

He writes down what you were bought in for. He's like, this dude's not no burglar. And he's like, do we need the OT? And he just waved them off. They put me in the pen and that was it. Then I got out from that. So then they charged me with a sale. That's what I was trying to tell you.

I only had one sale and it wasn't my sale. You know, I never sold nothing to the cops. And you, because you were never touched, you weren't touching anything at this time, except the cash at the end of the week. Yeah, a few titties, some money, that kind of thing. Yeah, so what year did you come? I assume the cops and the detectives by now, whatever, 89, 90,

when things are heating up for real over those years. You're making crazy money. Do they know you and Tito or the guys? Yes, absolutely. Okay. So you guys tried to never touch, never got caught anything, but, you know, have guns on you. Yeah, nothing, nothing.

So were you? That was our fault, you know, because it probably would have helped if we ain't buying motorcycles and cars without license and getting stopped every day for driving cars without license, you know? Yeah. And Tilo used to rip up the tickets and just throw it back at them. So it would have helped us if we weren't so overt with everything we were doing.

Yeah. So were you doing that? Were you driving like foreign whips and doing that old? Yeah, yeah, yeah. But we were too young, so we didn't look right in these cars, you know? Yeah. I got, we got, um, he has, a 5.0 Mustang convertible.

I'm in an Accura. We're racing down Columbus Avenue. We two literally, you know, we kids, we're teenagers. Yeah. And then tomorrow I'm on a motorcycle speeding all the neighborhood. I got, I got two bikes taken from me, the DEA and regular police. And that gets around in the precinct. And then I wanted to show off and my ego was hurt.

So I went and bought another one. This time I wouldn't stop for the police. I would keep going. So we made ourselves hot, is what I'm trying to tell you. Yeah, well, everybody did, though. Everybody did. We should have known better, though. We should have known better since everybody else did.

Because your second generation crack dealers, you know, crack really hit in 84, 85. You were not then hustling. You were a little too young. Yes. Did you look up to cats like Alpo and the Harlem crew, Rich Porter and, you know, A-Z and all them? Yes, yeah. Okay. Because Alpo will come.

with maybe 30 or 40 other guys on motorcycles through Columbus Avenue. And I was into motorcycles. So I was definitely impressed by that. Yeah. Were they already imprisoned by then? Or did you ever, like, cross paths with them? Alpo and that whole famous crew.

Yeah, yeah. We had an unfortunate incident where one of the members from his crew was shot and Tito was arrested for it. He was shot in the chest a couple times, uptown. I'm 141. He's a legendary guy I respect him

His name is Gangster Lou Yeah He's been around for a long time Yeah And he was very talented with music Uh huh Yeah, I heard of Gangster Lou Did he survive?

Yeah, he survived Okay They took Tito to the ambulance And he told the cops It wasn't him Do you think you made More money Than the other crews

Yeah, sure And we always have more coat The guy with the most coke is the one that rules. Unbelievable. They didn't ever have a plug. Like none of the people in that neighbor had a, they were plugs in the neighborhood. As far as crews and young kids,

nobody had what we had. Did other crews go? Were you still going to the same guy who had the shoe store? No. Okay. Not. No. Did you get better plugs?

Yeah. Who was the man at the time? At the time I got a plug where I was able to buy for a shoe. short while bricks for 15.5. Love. Love. 155. Impossible.

Impossible. Great Coke. Yeah, yeah. A1. At the time, at the time, Metro Coke and Scorpion were what? Was the best. The first generation was Centavo Coke. Centavo is a cent.

Yeah. And the Coke was called that because they had a lot of, that you could put an ounce. It looks like you got 100 grams. It was fluffy and expansive. this soft, right? So it sits there. Right. So with the eye, it looks like it's a lot.

Right. And then you had at that time, the, what reigns supreme was fish scale. And that's the opposite. That's super compact. It's compact type. But when you open it, you see the scales. Yeah. It'll shine.

Yellow, a little yellowish glitter. So that's what was ruling at the time. And were those Dominicans that you were copping from? For us, yeah. Okay. But when I got, as far as the fish scale, but when I got, when I paid the law, lowest was from a cat, smooth cat from uptown.

His name was Benson. I mentioned his name because I got his permission to mention his name. He's still outside. He didn't go down with us. Wow. I never mentioned his name. And he was a big motorcycle guy. Wheelies, you know,

racing motorcycles. He was doing a lot of things. He was a young guy also. But, you know, our introduction wasn't so good. Sorry Benson, if you listen. he had a girlfriend and she became my girlfriend and then she became my wife and obviously him and I had a fist fight

then we had a shootout and then he became my connect wow and now we tie friends to this day and none of us talk to her what about the shootings like you know you had nine murders linked to your indictment

can you talk talk about those? Yeah, whatever you want. Well, first of all, what were they over? Well, this is the thing. We got indicted for all those murders, right? But it wasn't necessary because as Tito or me associated with those other murders, some of them were ours.

But the ones that weren't is because I hired a guy because I know he shoots. Because now two years later, when we get arrested, or three years later, who did different people for different timing, he still has that murder. but he's down with YTC. So, you know, it's like a camera chick that they did. They're going to include it like if it was belonging to us.

And it is not. It just belongs to him. But he wasn't working for us when he killed that guy. Right. And they just lump it in. I hired him because I know he kills guys, right? Yeah. Or I hired him because I know that he is, you know, unapproachable.

So that benefits me to have their presence around. And who were these killers back then during the crack era? Like, who are these killers? Are they teenagers like you guys? Are they junkies? No, no, no, no, no. So these are like real like murders.

Young guys like us. Yeah. Young guys like us that, um, that's what they're into. It's no different than now. It's no different. That's crazy. Seems a little young, you know,

to be like doing something. Just like now. It seems like, but it's so serious. Murder's so serious, you know. Yeah, murders, you know. He can't get no more serious than that. How much would it cost you back then to get somebody taken out? It don't really cost nothing, but if you are part of an organization, it ain't about it.

I'm paying you extra. Per body. How much were your shooters on retainer? Like, how much did you pay your shooters just to be there? Well, that depends on who was who. Some guy might get $5,000. He might have not shot nobody in six months, but he gets $5,000 out that money every week. Right.

You know? Right. So if you got $5,000 for the last three months, and you got $4,000,000, 40,000 or 50,000, whatever is. You didn't do them, but now you got to do something. Yeah. You already got paid. Right.

You know? Wow. So you paid. And some people would be willing to shoot based on the loyalty to the crew. Right. So, right. He's telling you, yo, I'm going to light this dude up because of this reason. This is what he did or this is what he said.

This is what I found he's trying to do. And it was up to Tierra not to decide yes or no. And if both of us didn't decide yes together, the rule between he and I is, it doesn't get done. So we both have to vote on it Yeah Yeah So was there ever a rift Between you and Tito

Or were you guys always Like in sync Yeah we went to this day So wow So you had shooters just paid Just in case you needed them Basically Listen, it was a chaotic time

And there's people Trying to get at us All the time So you knew you're gonna need them Yeah, we knew that for sure You know in fact you know We knew we can't survive without them Yeah

Okay so a little more detail if you could like why did you why would somebody have to get knocked off for for a couple of just give us a couple of reasons why if you are plotting to kill us that happened a few times yeah if you are

if you stole a significant amount of work right like if you were a worker yeah but that I'm saying those are the reasons that particular thing never happened because um there was a there was a shooting in Harlem that had nothing to do with us, but it was by three members of our crew. It had nothing to do with us.

It has something to do with one guy driving his car in the neighborhood. That was the newest guy that was down with us, right? So he had no say-so and no seniority. But he was driving down the block in Harlem. He was looking at some people strange. They look at him strange. He muffed off to them. They shot at him, hit the car.

He comes back to the block. He lies to two other employees and tells him that I, Tito want them to go handle the block. They believe them and they go with them. And somebody ends up dead. That's a YTC murder. Right. But it had nothing to do with me and Tito at all.

Did you ever get robbed? Did stick up boys ever get to you? Stick up kids? To me personally, you mean? Yeah, to your crew. No, no. To two members one time, when I opened up another spot, a few blocks over, they got robbed once or twice by the same guy.

But we never found. found him. We will go looking for him like let's go see if this dude is around randomly and we never found him. Did you ever have workers get shot at by like crews? Because you know if you're selling deuses now you're fucking up

everybody else's business for purple tops. Yeah, but that was our neighbor. So there was no we were the hierarchy. There's no there's no voting. Yeah. There's no there's no grievance box. There's no complaint box. That's what I mean. So you have you have people on the front lines getting shot at though?

there's been a few guys that have gotten shot at and shot yes yeah okay one time pito got shot crossed on the street but he had a bulletproof vest on the guys in the car took off we know who did it one of them is dead one of them is sometimes it back in the neighborhood right now did did did that murder he didn't die but the one the guy who did well i guess my question is did were there any murders that went unsolved to this day no no man you know when you get an indictment, right? You either feel lucky or happy that something is not known about you. Or you are eternally depressed because you know they have everything. That's the latter we fell into. Yeah. It was a 95-count indictment. It was more than 100 pages and everything was in there.

For instance, we had a stash apartment in Allen, is it Allen? Somewhere in a Bronx, right? And the owner of that house lived in the first floor. And the duplex that we had was on the second floor. And we had two guys living in there that were on the run for murder. Right. And they would take their girlfriends there too and they would stay there with them. So the only way for them two guys to make money is to chop up. So we have to give them work to chop up constantly so they could make money.

But now they're playing music. both of them sometimes arguing with their girlfriends. The guy from downstairs, the owner, he's saying they got to go. I don't want them here anymore. So, Tito and I go, and we moved them to Parkchester. That's the area in the Bronx.

We rent the little co-op and we move him in there. On the day we move him in there gets raided. While we're downstairs. One guy is upstairs in the apartment putting things away. One guy is downstairs ordering pizza to take back upstairs. Teeter and I are downstairs waiting to leave. Our job is done. We moved them there safely.

We moved guns, silences, grenades, everything into there, crack. There was even some dope we moved into there. Boom. One hour after everything is done, they got raided. They found street sweeper silences, machine gun, calico, 38, 9mm, millimeter, crack, Kia Coke, dope, jewelry. And worst of all, both of their girlfriends, cards for those senses when you go when you're pregnant,

that's an ID So when we finally got arrested on the indictment was all of that even though no one got caught even though it was a fake lease even though there was no prints taking and nothing, all that stuff got confiscated but nobody got arrested.

The guy that was in the apartment was Damon and he ran, he jumped out the window in boxes, no sneakers on and ran and got away. Yeah. Peter that was downstairs buying the pizza to take upstairs, the other guy that's on the run, he saw when they came. Sure.

He's wanted for murder for two of them. So he left. He called us and told us what happened. And we went back. And then we picked up Damon and tried to reorganize, see what the damage was. But bomb squad was there because of the grenades. So that made the problems bigger.

You know, you're like, fuck, man. This is an issue now. Why, you guys were running around with grenades back then? Those are good to throw on somebody. car we were thinking at the time. Where would you get grenades from? That shit is sold everywhere back then. You know, when you a guy, he would come with like a portfolio suitcase.

It's not a suitcase, but, you know, the artists have these big leather suitcases. They put canvases into it. So he would come with that and he would have AK, this week got an AK-47 and they got 238, he got two grenades, he got some other shit, you got whatever he's selling. And he sells that and then he goes back to Virginia. He comes back again. He's like, yo, I got more shit, what you need. Boom, boom, boom.

But he's doing that with different people in the neighborhood. Right. So everybody is armed to the T. Everybody's armed to the T. But the people that could buy the most is us because we're making the most. So everybody knew, like, them little kids have a lot of guns. They're wild. They're dangerous.

So, you know, leave the motherfuckers alone is what they used to say. And you had a street sweeper at one point? We had a few street sweepers. That's on the indictment also. Yeah. Street sweepers at the time were easy to get. You know? The hardest, well, the most unique guns at the time that we got, for me at least, was a calico and a desert eagle because at the time, that's my first time seen a desert eagle, you know?

That's a big gun for a little guy like you. Yeah, but we got rid of that shit. That shit was too big. Right. You know, we got rid of it. It's not like a New York gun. No, that shit is like some Charles Bronson shit. Yeah, right, right, right.

I used to carry around Glockes. That's what I used to carry around. That was my favorite gun at the time. Or the burrata, the lethal weapon, Beretta, 15 shot. Wow. And all those weapons were easy.

$500, $400, $400 to buy. Yeah, it's nothing. It's one bundle. Remind me whenever you remember. So I don't interrupt your flows to tell you about this gun dealer that. No, I want to hear about it. Just remind me.

No, I'd like to hear about it right now. Okay. So I'm in the neighborhood and I'm on the block. and I see Gloria. That's a skinny white chick. She's this skinny, but she wear black tights.

So the tights are baggy on her. You know, the spandex tights? So she's bringing a customer to the spot, and that gets my attention. She's a white dude. So I'm checking it out, looking, but she is from here. You know what I'm saying?

She is purple and she's yellow and she's silver. So I'm trusting that she knows what the hell she's doing. So she brings a me. in there, he steps out, he waits for her in a pickup truck, she goes back in, they leave. I'm still on the block, they come back, she does the same thing. I go into the building and I ask,

what's up with home girl? What, what, she keep coming away? Oh, yo, my, my employee tells me she brings me a gun and then she brought me another one. I'm like, gun, he's not a gun guy. He goes, yeah, he shows me in the box. He shows me at 32, he shows me a 38 in the box. Like, where she got that shit from? I don't match her.

You know what I'm saying? So he's like, I don't know. So I go back up the block. I'm trying to see where she's at, what's going on, because she's trading guns for bundles. And the bundle is a deuce bundle. So you're selling guns for $200. I want to know who the fuck you are

and buy a bunch of them off of you. Yeah. You know, get them for less than $200. So she comes back again with the guy. I walk to the pickup and I look. And the entire back of the pickup is just boxes. Wow. And I go, nah, it can't be.

What the fuck? I had a V-neck t-shirt on. So I take off the V-neck t-shirt on and I cover my face. I go in my mailbox. I get a hammer. And I come outside and I decide, I'm just going to stick this dude up

and take all that, like take the pickup, take everything he got back there. I hid behind a car. I don't think they see me, but I believe they did see me because at that time, when she came out of the building, he reversed out of the block.

instead of going forward where I was going to intercept them. But what I didn't know and what he didn't know obviously is that earlier they repeated that process on Amsterdam Avenue and sold guns up there.

So other guys had the same idea. So when he reversed and left, he knew he wasn't coming back here, I'm assuming. And he started going back up there to buy. And up there they robbed him. and shot him and took 84 guns from the back of the pick of the truck.

He was in Clinton Correctional Facility with me later years later. Damn. They took every gun he had in the back and his personal gun from him. Wow. Now the whole hood uptown is strapped. Unfortunately, the guys that did that were

enemies of ours. So now we have to think about it. Like, damn, this fucking got all those guns. And some of those guns are the ones that, four of those guns are the ones that were used on the last time a hit was put on me and on Tito. In his case, he got shot in the head and in the arm. And a sergeant that was supervising or surveillance on the YTC spot also got shot that day. But those guns produced that kind of attitude where everybody could get shot. Wow.

When you found out, how would you find out there were hits on you? And where were those coming from? One time word of mouth And the other times I just saw it when it was happening And I was just blessed to to catch up on it And make my own moves Okay, can you talk about that? Yeah, which one?

All of them. So one time I'm standing on the corner with this dude That was down with us, his name was Jesus And we observed this lady coming towards us She's looking a little weird She has a dress on and it's late night, and she walks towards us. And when she gets closer and closer,

I see she has some ugly ass ankles. And that leads me to see she has sneakers on. So I'm like, what the fuck? Turns out it wasn't a chick. It's just a dude dressed in a dress. When he came out the store and passed us, he looked over to us and pulled out. You could see if you're into that lifestyle,

somebody passes you what motion they're doing and you could assume safely what that might be. So by the time he turned, as soon as he started turning around, we dispersed. He shot, but he didn't shoot any of us. He didn't get any of us.

There's another time where, because of the shooting with gangster Lou, two guys that we believe was associated to that crew. We don't know who they were, what they were, what they were paid, what their names are. But they were on the block. And one of my employees called me and told me, oh, there's two suspicious dudes over here, blah, blah, blah.

This name is Mejo. And turns out they had bulletproof vass on and machine guns. They got arrested on the block. You can't be on that hot-ass block standing around with that on you. Yeah. Unless you one of us and we have stash spots where mailboxes, the grocery store, the Homeway allows us to do that in there, or the buildings or the abandoned building.

So they got arrested for that. The last time they tried to hit me was in 94. And three times I've played dead. The last time, it was Raymond, who is in Wendy Correctional Facility right now with 42 years, he put out a hit on us because he offered to pay us money to sell heroin on our blocks. And I told him, no, he wasn't happy about that. So he started selling $3 bottles on Amsterdam, not himself, but he gave drugs to somebody to do that. So I went over there, took the drugs from the guy, pulled out on him, took his money, threw it in the street.

So it's not like I'm trying to rock. I'm saying fuck you and let everybody take your ship for free. So then he decided, all right, I'm going to put a hit out on them. So he got a guy that was down with us to deliver to him a picture of me that he got from my apartment

and for him to hug Tito when he's in a cab pointing out, look, the guy that's getting hugged. That's one of them. His name is Tito and this is the other guy that is a picture of him. So a five member team came through. If you want, I got the paperwork for that, like the sentencing minutes. If you needed to include it, I could send it to you.

I didn't bring that. And I didn't send that to Brian. I just sent them a bunch of stuff, but I could send that to you. So he distributed these guns and he paid $20,000 for me, $20,000 for Tito, so we could get hit. So I'm walking up the block one day where I live on 107th Street and I noticed three guys walking behind me. I don't know them. And I get the feeling, get this, this, this, very feeling. So I'm like, hmm, I walk.

a little more, I stop, they stop. This happened three times. I walk again. I'm trying to get up the block. I'm racing with time because at any minute, these motherfuckers could decide to start shooting if I'm correct in what I'm assuming. So the third time that I stop and look back,

these dummies start looking at the Scott. They ain't a near star on Columbus Avenue, and I'm like, yeah, something's up with this. So I go around the corner and I go into the grocery store, where we have guns and where we can we have say-so. So one of them walks in behind me. Blum, now my heart.

You never been scared that at least in your ears, you could hear your heart. Maybe you're not even hearing. Maybe it's a vibration. I don't know, but you, boom, boom, that's how I felt. Because now I know this is for sure. He monkeys around looking for potato chips, but every time he grabs an item to purchase,

he looks at me. and he got a soda and he looks at me he puts it on the counter he talks to the guy about some fucking cigarettes he turns around and he looks at me now I'm certain there's going to be an issue here so I walk out the store

but I jammed the door with my legs so he can't push it the other two guys are standing right there though so now I'm trying to figure out how do I get past these two dudes so I look at the traffic and it's coming slow and as soon as it gets closer

So I'm going to just sprint across the street and hope that the cars, as I pass them, are putting distance or blocking what I think can be happening here. I do that. I spin across the street. Across the street, now I'm talking to an employee that used to be down with us from Chelsea,

and I'm telling him, yo, this is what's going on. I think these dudes is problem. And I have another dude that's down with us. And his name is Ernie. I didn't tell Ernie because the last time me and Ernie were looking at people that had an issue with us, Ernie shot five people,

and now we went to jail for five or tenth to murder. So I didn't want to tell him because his trigger fingers and it'll be faster, right? So I'm talking to this guy, but this guy puts him work too, right? He puts in, well, you know, for sure work. So I'm talking to him and telling him,

you know, this is what's happening, and Ernie is rolling a blunt, and he's looking at what I'm talking about. Even though I'm not talking to him, he's looking over my shoulder, and he finally says he licks the motherfucker paper and goes

I'm gonna get a gun I'm gonna go get a gun and he starts to cross the street to the spot when he got over there he has to go in the building to get it and holster it

and come out before any of that could happen the guy I'm talking to grabs me and tries to pull me now I don't know what he's doing

or playing and I snatch his hands off of me and he didn't waste no time all I heard was the sneakers. He's running up the block hard. So I turn around to see what's going on and there's a dude coming behind me doing this.

So now I turn around to start running. I got a few steps and then I hit my leg on the bumper of a car that was the defender was crashed in so the bumper was extended out and I and I hit the floor when he was shooting. So he thinks he hit me and I could see him there and I start shaking so he could feel, like I said, I played that a few times. So I'm adding a little, you know, a little something to him because he's still there. And I don't want him to come closer and shoot me.

I'm trying to convince him like, you hit some shit. That's why I'm shaking. And you better get the fuck up out of here. So he's basically standing over you. He could come down and just put one in your head if you want. I got that paperwork too if you want. Wow. So out the door comes Tito's brother with the gun that Ernie went to go get.

And he starts shooting at the duel. You know, he's letting it off. And now the dude has to run towards 100A Street where there's a car waiting for him and the other guys. And they take off. Now, damn, that's a shitty hit. 40 grand.

That's a sloppy hit. It wasn't over, though. By the way, where is your gun? Why you buy all these guns all the time? Because they're near, but I can't have them on me because I really got caught with a machine gun. Right. Okay.

Got it. That's another funny. need. Yeah. Yeah. So they leave. We don't really know where it came from

because it could be anybody. And about a week before that, I went and did a... How would I... How could I... I read... How could I put this? I did a hostile takeover

of five kilos in somebody's apartment. Wow. So I'm thinking, okay, this is for those five kilos that I took. Right. But it wasn't that. So two days later, Tito's on the block.

Everybody's on point. Everybody has to carry. And we're not allowing people to come through the block that you don't know. So three guys come on the block and they're wearing hoodies. And Rahim, one out of the two black dudes that work for us, is telling them, take your hoodies off. Because he's talking with Tito in front of the door of the spot. And they're like, oh, chill, we don't have no problems. We don't have no problems.

We're just looking for weed. He's like, all right, but take you. your hood off because I described to Tito what the dude looked like that was on me. And he had like pizza pie face, you know, all the little like acne holes in the face. Yeah, yeah. And he had his ears stuck out like this. Okay. So I gave him that description.

So take off your hood. They're trying to see maybe this is the same people. So they're trying to procrastinate, taking off their hoodies and cracking a joke and saying chill. But by the minute they started taking off the hood. one pulled out. And now Rahim tried to pull Tito inside the building and they start shooting. So Tito got hit right here.

He got hit in the arm. Now, what those two didn't know is that we're under surveillance for the last six months. So on 160 shooting Columbus, there's a car parked. There's a sergeant supervising the surveillance and there's two dudes there and one of them is recording.

The yellow top in action. Got that video also as far as the The drug operation. Yeah. And what you think they're going to do? Right. And they pull up right there. It's one block away.

They come out of their parking and they pull up in front of the building as Homeboy shooting. He thinks this is yellow top. Why? They look like they belong in the neighbor. They're in an undercover car. They got plain clothes on. He don't know who he's shooting at.

So he turned right, start shooting at them. Oh, he's bucking at the cops. Yeah. And a cop. The sergeant got hit in the arm. He was in the back seat. So now they had to take off again to get out the danger. Yeah.

But what the guy didn't know is that anytime you're doing surveillance, there's multiple cars in the neighborhood station. Yeah. In case something happens, they could converge on whatever the fuck they want. So he didn't get off the block. He got caught right there. And he's still doing a bid for that. I don't think so.

He got an elephant man beating on the block. What is that? You never heard of that movie, The Elephant Man? I have, but I haven't seen it. My man, I fucked him up. He got those Tom and Jerry Naps with the three little hairs on top. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's what he was looking like.

He got TV sets in his eyes. Got missing teeth. He can't beat. They're pressing his face against the bars. And, you know, you've got buildings and they got the gates, black iron bars around it. They're rubbing his face on the bars. You know, there's ladies in the windows yelling at the cops because they think that's one of the members from Yellowtop.

That's from the neighbor. And he's getting just a little police brutality going on. Yeah. So what he did is he made a deal to call his friends to pick him up like he got away. And they had a designated spot where they were supposed to pick him up at. And when they came to pick them up, all of them got arrested. And that's how it came out. And we started learning.

So I went to their arraignment. Once I found out that they got caught, I went to the arraignment because it's baffling me. Who is this? So we could attack. And they were from Brooklyn, from Sutter Avenue in Brooklyn. They are addresses, you know, their family's there. I'm just there listening to their arraignment. And I'm going, I don't got no beef with Brooklyn.

And the only dude in the neighborhood that fucks with people from Brooklyn is Raymond. Oh, suspect number one. So two days after that, Raymond is bragging about how Tito got shot in the head. But next time they're going to make sure that they do it better. Blah, blah, blah, blah. Hold on. Let me stop you there. What happened?

So Tito got hit in the head. Is he leaking? Like, how did he survive? He survived because the bullet, from what we understand, first hit the, they pulled them into the spot and they're closing the door. Yeah. They're shooting. The bullet first hit the door, which would slow it down. Right.

And then hit him. So it didn't go into his. No, it was stuck right there. It was stuck in like the bony part of the head. Wow. And the other one was through the arm. Holy shit. So two days later, Raymond is bragging on 109th Street about what he did.

to us. We never made any moves like this against him. It's important to say. Yeah. We used to get money with him. We used to buy kilos from him when we are alternating between people that we buy drugs from. Yeah. We used to buy kilos from him for three points more than the market value because we just appreciating that he's giving it to us on credit. Yeah. And we all cool and we all go to the tunnel nightclub together and the balladium and we're chilling. We bring bras back to the block. So it's credit. Fuck, you give it to him. It's like paying some interest on a credit card. You know what I'm saying?

So we were cool. We fucked some of the same girls together. All this wild shit that people do. So this dude's master plan against us is like a bully move because we've never done nothing to him. So now he set this up. He's on 109th Street talking about this. And there were two young ladies that heard him

because they were near him. I don't want to give away where they were at because then other people they'll know who they are and they're still in that neighborhood. So one of those females came and told me, I was on 107 shooting in Columbus. You told me, yo, this motherfucker's up there right now

and I heard him say this. That's the first time I found out who it was. Until then, I didn't know where this is coming from. So I said, where? So I went in my mailbox. I got my Glock. I got another Glock from my apartment. I gave it to a fellow who was my

my shadow, rest in peace. And we went to 209 shoot to see if we see this guy. Say, Aram out right there. When we went up there, he's in front of his building. And he knows what he did. But he doesn't know that we know. So he's looking at me. I'm looking at him.

I'm trying to get closer to him, little by little, not push too fast. He's in front of his building. And I don't know what he got on him. And he's there with a few other people. And it's broad daylight. And you're not thinking like, damn, if the cops are watching,

us on 107th Street, what are they, what's going on on 109th? Like there could be people watching right now. I did the truth. It felt like I had a desert in my mouth and throat of, of anxiety and dread and, and, and, and the need to take action. Mm-hmm. Okay. So you were worried about the cops.

I was like, like, I was like in the desert, like, as far as what I could see, because I only was seeing him, even though it was other things going around me, it seemed like everything else was blurred. And I'm seeing him. And I'm trying to, um, make him feel comfortable, so I'm not approaching him. And he's trying to sleep me. He's offering me guns for whomever did that Cetto.

You could handle it. You need guns. And I'm like, all right, all right. Boom. Because what he didn't know is that the day before, we also sent for a shooter from Puerto Rico. And that guy, or two of our other guys, just passed him because that's the plan that I created.

They passed him. So he's stuck looking at me, but they just drove right by him real slow. And I can see them. And I'm seeing that they stopped. And I'm seeing that Coco got out the car. So I'm entertaining you in your conversation until Coco tapped him in the shoulder.

But he is not turning around. He's not turning around because he's assuming whomever he was just chilling with that's trying to get his attention, obviously it's not as important to watch me and fellow. But finally he turned around and nine shots went off. And he fell right there in front of his mother's building.

Done, dead? Nope. Man, he got shot in the nuts. Black people cannot shoot. He got shot in the nuts. He got shot in the neck. He got shot in the chest and the stomach. Got shot in the hip.

He got shot nine times point bank, point blank range. Now, I'm there with the mentality of, you got what you deserve. I didn't fuck with you. You fucked with me, right? Yeah. And out of the, The corner comes running a blue and white freeze with his gun out.

Hat falls off. He's free, get on the floor, motherfucker. My man that's here from Puerto Rico don't speak, no English. And in Puerto Rico, they shoot back at cops. Yeah. So I'm considering, I'm in between the cop and him and the dude on the floor and fellows next to me. And he finally lays down, he puts the gun on the concrete. And the cop is reaching him.

I tell fellow, shoot. And he's like, no, no, no, no. I'm saying, give me the gun. He's like, no, no, no. And he pushes me. He says, go, go, I'll do it. And he pushes me forward. And he pulls out his gun.

He turns his head so he don't bust his ears. He didn't shoot at the cop. He starts shooting up. Boom, boom, boom, boom, boom. To distract the cop. The cop goes crazy. He's literally under a car calling for help. Shots fire, shots fire, shots fire.

And homeways over there, bleeding. And out of everywhere, you hear sirens, because when you call in a 10-13, all available cops have to come. It don't matter if you're housing, if you're on a bicycle, if you're giving tickets, they all have to converge.

So I'm seeing lights and cops come from everywhere. At the same time, everybody from the neighborhood is running towards 109th Street. And the only people that are walking in the opposite direction is fellow and I, which made us look suspicious like, we're the only two that are not concerned

with knowing what happened over there. Right. Right. So the cop is yelling. he's he's bugging. I have his testimony also. And I started yelling at Coco to get up. Coco doesn't know me.

We haven't met yet. How much had you paid him? Nothing yet. But how much? What was he agreed upon price to bring a hitter from the island? Ten stacks. Ten stacks. Quick one day.

Go back. He'd never been here before. So anyway, he finally gets up. He takes about three steps, but then he remembers the gun. So he takes these sets back to pick up the gun. That was valuable. time he killed the cop is yelling, freeze, this, that, the other.

He runs down 109th Street. Up 1009th Street was coming cops. He didn't make it pass 1009th Street in Columbus Avenue. Boom. Fellow and I walked to the- What happened? They shoot him? No, he got arrested.

Okay. Fellow and I walked to, there was an article store at the time on 71st in Columbus. Walked there, bought a new outfit, changed, got rid of that gun that he had, and went to Brooklyn. Went to Brooklyn. Went to Brooklyn. Made some phone calls to the neighborhood. find out what's happening.

Nobody knew nothing. Then somebody I know called me and called and, yo, that bitch ain't died and just hung up. And that's what they were talking about. He was talking about him in the hospital. In the hospital, he told him, I know who shot me. It was Chango.

And I'm not talking to none of you cops because YTC has cops in the payroll from your precinct. I have that statement also. Wow. And that, that, that, that, that, that intensified the investigation because now internal affairs had to come on also

and add to this. Because now you got corrupt cops involved. Yeah, so that opened up a can of worms. So four days later, I come to the neighborhood to pick up some money. I got to go here to pick up $20,000.

I got to go over here to pick up $30,000. I ring the first bell. They're not there. I ring the second bell. Is somebody that used to work for me, young kid that I was mentoring. He looks out the window

to see who, Who's ringing the bell is me. I could tell he just got out of his bed. So I know the money's not fixed. You know, it's not fixed. It's not. So I tell him, I'll be back, bro. I'm coming back to pick that up.

That's his sign to get it going. I go back across the street to the first place that I went to pick up money to see if somehow now they answer. They don't answer. I come outside to cross the street. Fuck it. I'm just going to go up there and help this motherfucker count those money. And I got boxed in by H. four cars.

That's when I got kidnapped. Well, we're not done. No, no, no. We're not far from done. You know, I'm being sarcastic. You know, I didn't get kidnapped. I mean, I got arrested. That's what I'm trying.

So they arrested me for the YTC case. And I never made it back out. They didn't even give me no bail. I mean, they didn't arrest me for the YTC case. They arrested me for the Raymond shooting. Right. And now they didn't give me no bail. And they put me in front of the worst judge that you could have.

So my attorney Lynn Stewart said, something's going on. not supposed to be in this court because this courthouse is just for, you know, organized crime, multiple murders, drug crew. In my mind, I'm, well, a few of those things match, right? Yeah. So she's like, I wonder what's going on. She has beef with that judge.

That judge before tried to get her indicted for defending another drug gang, do, right? So I'm thinking, but what's up with bail? She's like, this judge doesn't give bail. Never, ever. And you get the max, and she runs your time consecutively. Oh, my God. So I'm like, what the hell is this? So why am I over here?

So I'm in North facility on Rikers Island, trying to be an entrepreneur, meaning I'm talking with the Colombians trying to meet a new connect because at some point they're going to have to give me bail. And even if they don't give me bail, I could get the connect to Tito. And even if they don't give me bail, I'm not going to get a lot of time for this dude because my lawyer is going to destroy him if he ends up coming to court. So you figured you could beat this case. Yeah, I was expecting to.

How are you going to come to court? We're going to have to talk about your murders and everything else you've done. Yeah, Raymond. And Raymond is the only thing they have. They don't have any surveillance of you. No, none of that. There was no cameras or nothing like that, no video, or nothing. Tell us about your attorney really quick.

Oh, that's good. That's a legendary lady. Yeah, please. You ever heard of it? Mm-mm. Okay, her name was Lynn Stewart, rest in peace. She was Larry Davis lawyer. She was the Sheikh's lawyer with the World Trade Center bombing.

She's done a lot of big cases, lot of radical cases. Originally, she was a school teacher. She used to say I'm her youngest. I used to say she's my second mom. She has a son named Jeffrey Stewart and Brenna Stewart. Jeffrey Stewart is an attorney still in Manhattan. Her daughter's an immigration attorney.

And Lynn was about black and brown people. Yeah. She don't care what you did. She could help you. She could save you. She could be the case for you. That's what she's going to do. Wow.

And she worked for her. Well, for a murder, 30 grand. Drug cases, 5,000, 7,000, 8,000, 10,000, up to 15,000. How many cases did she work for your crew in the time it was operating? I don't know, me, two dozen, it's a guess, you know? Yeah. They wanted to include her in our indictment. Wow.

Yeah, but they couldn't. They wanted to charge her with, what that's called? Like assisting you guys? Yeah, but they have a name for it. If it comes back to me. is something counsel, which means you are dedicating an unprofessional amount of time to just helping a drug crew be cases. And in doing so, you're helping them get ahead. Right.

That's illegal. When you know, when you know that the people that are paying you are who they are, yeah. Would you, obviously, every attorney that gets paid in cash knows where it comes from. But did she know specifically everything that was going on? you keep information from her in order for her not to get in trouble? Well, I definitely never got her in trouble or tried to get her in trouble. But since our case went to that judge and that judge tried her indict her before for another drug crew, it was what she wanted to do again. It was her second opportunity to do it.

So you're on Rikers, but you feel like you could beat the case. You're trying to meet. I was definitely going to beat the case. Definitely. Yeah. Would you ever try to take out a witness? Did that ever cross your mind? Did we ever?

I crossed our minds all the time. We never had to do it. A threat will work, a payoff will work, you know? A scare would work. So you guys pulled all that stuff to get witnesses to be quiet. I've been on my motorcycle and homicide stops me on a motorcycle. When you see homicide stopping a guy on a motorcycle, homicide is homicide.

But they got word that I'm in the neighborhood and they stopped me on a motorcycle to threaten me because they heard we have threatened the witness. And it was true what they were telling me. I denied it. But I knew what he was talking about. Um, so tell us how this, you're on Rikers with no bail. What happens next? What's true? Your own Rikers fighting this case. Fighting the Raymond case. Yeah, yeah. So I'm talking with these Colombians because I'm trying to network to get a connect either for me or to get them to Tito. Yeah. I'm there with them. We're socializing every day. It's easy thing to

accomplish. Yeah. This is. a big deal. This is going above the Dominicans. When you meet the Colombian, that's the plug. That's the source. I've had conversations with Dozier. I will have 50 keys in my crib right now, but I can't go to that crib. I'm here with no bail. I have a crib over here and this is

what I have, but I can't help. You can call your cousin, your brother. You could trust. I could have somebody with you. I was trying anything I could to shake, you know, get a handshake for a connect. And how much money did you guys have in the re-up? Like, how much money did you have to make a

buy if you met one of these cats at your disposal at any given time. I mean, we would have just put personal money also into it, you know? We're talking quarter million. We're talking about a buck 50. Buck 50? Yeah, too. You know, with a buck fit, you pay for half and you get the other half on credit. Yeah, so you got $300,000 worth of a coat.

So we're talking like 100 keys? No, more than that. Sorry, 300,000 to get you. No, 300,000 not going to get you. 300 keys. No, at what price? 10 Gs, I don't know. No, with those.

those dudes, we're going to get the same price that I got from Benson that time. 15, 16, around there. Oh, okay. So for 150, you got 10 bricks, you get 20. Right. Okay, sure. And then the next time you get 20 and you get 20, you know, so that was the goal. And what's your, how many bricks are you buying a week now at this time when you get pinched?

Like how many are moving through the spot? Well, five, anywhere between two and five, depending on how much heat is in the neighborhood, how hot we are, how much money's available to put out. Yeah. Would you guys pick up quantity? Like, would you pick up a month's worth of keys? Or would you just- Five is a month?

Okay. Okay. So you're only moving about a brick and crack. We're moving one a week. That doesn't sound like a lot. It doesn't sound like it because you're listening to the one, not the 30,000 vials. Yeah. Oh, is it hard to source 30,000 vials every week?

Like, whoever made these, the companies that made crack vials back in the 80s, dude, they were, they were eating. They were eating super, super. I met a lot of Yemenis dudes that that's what they were doing. Wow. And they would chew on cat all day. You know what that is?

Yeah, cat. I'll say, I pronounce it wrong. You're a cat. And they would show us or their guns. They're like, look what I bought. I bought this in my country. Like, you know, like K, M1s with money from this alone.

Wow. So would you actually go to like the wholesaler for the lives? No, at the time, 100th century in Lexington Avenue. Every neighbor has smoke. at the time because smoke shops are getting paid, setting drug paraphernalia, mostly in cigarettes and beer. So we would go to 110th Street in Lexington,

and we buy, you know, two boxes of this, two boxes of that, and that's how we was able to switch the caps, and they would allow us to do that. Right. Because those caps are gold, you know, they could end up with a surplus of motherfucking vows without cats because they're setting us the caps that go to those vows. But they were cool about it, and we were good customers,

so they was whatever we needed, we got. So what was your price on? a single cap, single bottle. Well, we used to pay $120,000 per case. Mm. So we're buying like a $3 bag of vows for $1.25 because we're buying a couple of boxes. Right. Okay.

Okay. So, yes, you're moving. So about 30,000 transactions a week. Yeah. That's fucking crazy, dude. But more sometimes, you know, I'm just giving you the humble, you know, sometimes people would be exaggerating shit in the newspapers. I'm telling you what the real story is.

You know what I'm saying? So, because I love doing these numbers. Like, if you break that down- You're a math guy? I'm a math guy. I'm not good at math, but I love to, like, break it down to, like, just to give people an idea of how many people were smoking crack in that era,

that's 120,000 drug transactions a week. Over five years, you've had millions and millions of people coming through your spot. That's what they said. It's fucking mind-blowing. That's what they said. But... So much money in the hood, man.

Every... Every hood is where... And wherever you see extreme poverty, there's a lot of money. Because it's all going to the rock instead of... It's going either to the rock or to the Coke or right now to the weed. You know, how many dispensaries aren't open in the city right now. You got sometimes three per blocks. One on there, two on this side.

Next block, one on this side or two on that side. Everywhere you go. Yeah, you can function smoking weed. I know a lot of people function smoking crack too, but, you know, it did a lot of things. I only see a handful of people who still smoke crack. And I see two customers still today that smoke crack that used to smoke our crack. And I wonder how, both of them are dudes. How are these dudes alive?

Yeah. Yeah. I can't believe it. 60-year-old smokers. Yeah, I mean, there still are some, you know, eventually they'll have, their hearts will give out. It's bad for your heart to keep smoking cocaine like that. that, but, man, I don't know. In every hood, there's still crack spots.

I'm sure they're still getting it. There's one in my neighborhood. It's not my neighborhood, but it's seven blocks away, you know, going towards the east side. Uh-huh. You have to also consider that some, those are transactions on the street. There are drug dealers that will buy, you know, G-packs from us, thousand vows. Okay. So you were actually selling wholesale to outside crews, too?

to, they were in Cruz, they were, you know, there were single dude operations that they take, they take a thousand cracks with them to Nyack, New York, or Rockland County. Right. And they don't, it's easier for them to buy a maid where they know it's good and it's all packaged. And they don't have to have a stash spot.

They don't have to have a place to back up at. And it's already done. And they just get on a bus and they take it with them. And those $3. They're selling them for $10. So they're making more money buying them like that. Yeah. if they were buying coke and cooking up coke.

They're not risking, losing nothing when they're cooking. None of that. Yeah. There's a small town. That's like kind of small town crack dealing. You were, this is, your crew is the highest level of professional crack dealing. Do you think that's true? Yeah, I believe that.

I believed it done. We used to take it very, very, very serious. Yes. You're 18-year-old kids. I was going to say this is an enormous amount of responsibility for an 18, 19, 20-year-old kid. Think about that payroll. You pay 46 people. Yeah. Every week.

Every week, you're paying 46 people. The only times that we didn't pay 46 people is when we're paying the pitches and the lookouts of the bundles. Right. So they're paying themselves. And when you, after paying everybody out, you've got your net for the week.

Are you sending money back to Puerto Rico? Like, how are you hiding money? I don't send no money to Puerto Rico. I was uneducated about money. So I'm making money and spending money and women and hotels and trips and jewelry and this car and that more. motorcycle and these rims and that other motorcycle and that other chain.

Yeah. Stupid shit. Yeah. I know. I never like to talk to old kingpins about this because it's like, God, how many buildings could we have bought in Harlem with one week's worth of vile money that's worth that white people are fucking spending $2,500 a month on apartments? Studio.

With the bathroom in the shower. Yeah. Studios right now. You know what I mean? $25 in my neighborhood. Yeah. Where you used to like. But do you know.

step over dead bodies, ma'am. But I never like to bring that up because it's so sad. But how could you know? Do you know what I like? I like to just, you know, we only as sick as our secrets. And if you could own the truth, nobody has no power over you with it, you know? Yeah. And at the time, to add to that, we personally knew of brownstones that were being sold for a dollar.

And we never, we just were, we just were ignorantly willing to die in the same shit that we were doing. You know, you go to the, you, you're in a club and you ran out of money. You could come uptown and put your own hand in a hole and tell to me, let me get $3,000, hurry up. Yeah. And, you know, you have a 24-hour ATM machine. It's like you didn't even appreciate at a certain point, the power that you had, because it was so normal and you were so young. And you or I thought that's going to be like this forever. So.

Do you know of any hustlers that actually got out of? of the game and like ahead that didn't have to do long bids that actually invested in- Yeah. I got out and lasted three weeks before they arrested me. No, I meant like retired. Retired. No. Yeah.

No. It's just too much money. It's unthinkable. I mean, some people, a lot of people get killed before they could make money or make a lot of money. So our mentor was 23 years old when he was killed. And before we actually met him and got a strong relationship with him, we would hear that he had a million dollar party

because he got off of this stamp or for no mercy stamp or for whatever other stamp. It might not happen for him with every stamp that he owns, but with that stamp it didn't, they're having a party. So he didn't get to retire. I doubt he ever thought about it. He was after that shooting on the Houston, 90 days later, he was killed on 109th Street

with the other guy that was with him. They were together again and the same crew came back and killed him. Yeah. So tell us how you eventually ended up getting out of Rikers for the Raymond shooting. I never got out of it. They picked me up and charged me with the YTC case.

Okay, so they... So while I'm with the Colombians, and we're watching a soccer that I hate to watch, but I'm saying I got to watch this shit. This is a business little... you know, thing we got going on here. The news came on, the Spanish news, and I see my neighborhood.

And then I see one of my guys and another one and another one, and they're all on a chain gang game put into paddy wagons. And I'm looking and now I'm listening and now I'm stressed out. So I went into myself and locked the fuck in. And the next morning, nothing happened.

And I still, you know, you got that fear in your chest. Nothing is going on. I'm not trying to move around too much. much. But the next day, the cell opened. And I know what it is. But I stick my head. I'm like, what's up?

With attitude. And we fuck you open it myself for all. Because they're setting up breakfast. And the only people to get released are hospital runs or court runs. So I say, I don't got to go to no hospital. He said, you go on the court door. And I say, I don't got a court date. He says, yes, you do.

And I said, no, I don't. I'm like, don't say that shit. I'm cool where I'm at. All right. Stop bothering me. Lock this shit. And he said, you got to go. Now I know you can refuse.

And I know the Ninja Turtles are going to come if I fucking refuse. So he says, handle it in the receiving room. You have one shot in the receiving room to clear up that mistake before they put you on a bus. By telling another CEO and he looks on the computer and maybe it was a mistake. Maybe they want somebody else. They got your name. Okay. I get down there and my tone changed rapidly.

because they said, listen, you're being produced to Supreme Court in Manhattan. You cannot refuse. It's mandatory. So it's up to you whether you go okay or you get down there in an ambience, but you're going. We're gonna produce you to the court.

So they took me back. I got dressed, came back, went in the bullpen, got on the bus, got to court, got the butterflies, the caterpillars, the centimeters, to everything in my stomach. I'm walking through the inside of the court building, and I see, that's my employee. Different bullpins.

Yeah. That's Rahim and this guy. That's this guy. That's Tito. That's this one. And they brought us all to formally charges with the indictment. Which was? Yellow Top Crew.

Wow. So they had it like the United States versus Yellow Top Crew? 95 count, 100 page indictment. Big like this. I still have a copy. And that's what we were being charged. So five at a time, four at a time, three at a time. they took guys up, charged them with their counts on the indictment,

brought them back down. And throughout the whole day, that's what was happening. Wow. And then everybody goes to back to Rikers Island. When I went back to Rikers Island, now my classification is too high for me to be where I was. So they packed me up and put me in a CMC house. CMC is central monitoring case.

And that means Albany has their eye on you all the time and reports are being, you know, you may not know it, but the CEO that's working is giving paperwork so he can fill out about whatever you're doing. You're playing cars. You're sleeping. You're hanging out with Blasey-Blazzi. You're talking with this guy all day, every day. Were you charged as the ringleader?

Tito and not both. Okay. Is this the feds? There's a state. Wow. That's what I was found so crazy is that you were not charged in federal court, like how the DEA didn't want you. You know? They wanted us and they were aware of us

And I've had contact with them Because they confiscated a motorcycle from me Had it for about four days And they confiscated it from me And they told me We're taking this bike And next we're gonna take you And I'm thinking in my mind

Oh shit Yeah Satisfied with just the motorcycle Yeah But so I know they were aware And then I tried to hire a lawyer To fight Getting my motorcycle back

Because at the time Olau was being used that they could confiscate whatever the fuck you got as long as they think it was bought with drug proceeds. Now you could get it back if you could prove that it wasn't. But you're going to pay a lawyer to fight a case, basically. They call that civil forfeiture. Civil forfeiture.

It's their way to steal and they still do it. They still do that. They still do it. They get big money with that. Yeah. It's theft. And they use it for themselves, for the police department, for the county, for whatever the fuck they decide.

They reappropriate it. They'll take that car. they stole from you, they seized from you, and they'll go arrest somebody else with it. And that's legal, huh? So, but why do you think now in this day and age, if somebody at your level selling that much drugs, that will probably be a Fed case now, right?

Definitely would. I just don't think it was then because there was a lot of garbage in it. How so? Well, they may have been aware of the corrupt cops. They may have been aware of flaws in the case. You know what I see? And the feds like to have a perfect 98% conviction rate.

So they will pass on a case if it's... If it's not airtight. Yeah. If they know that shit could fall apart or this is going to happen or that. They could predict what's going to happen with their experience, you know? And there are so many drug crews in New York City back then that they probably wanted to deal with, like, your suppliers. Like, they want the brick handlers. You know what I mean?

Yeah. They want those crack crews too, man. when you're selling crack, you're making out of money, right? But you at the dirtiest level of that game, you there street to street combat, you know,

even if it's not you that's selling it. Right. So it's just, you kind of luck out with getting a state charge, I feel like, right? Well, because if you go to the feds

and they sentence you to 25 or whatever, you're doing 85% of that, you can parole maybe out of the state and do less time. I don't know. I mean, it just seems like if you have a choice, you'd rather have like state charges

because they're easier to beat. Well, there's benefits to both if you have to deal with that kind of situation. For me, I thought it would be better to be in a state at the time simply because I could still get conjugal visits. So I'm thinking that's going to be something. They were doing that back in the second day.

They still do that to this day. In New York. Wow. Yeah, that was implemented after the Attica riots. Yeah. Yeah. If these guys are getting laid, they're not going to write. They've got family. Yeah. There's something to look forward to. You've got to behave in order to be a part of that program. Right. So it works for them also. You know, they get a benefit. There's a mutual relationship when it comes to that. But the feds, you probably could do better time. You probably could get a decent cop out. The feds, I think the feds are pretty fair when it comes to plea bargains. You know, they give

people are an opportunity to plead. Whereas the state, like with a lot of people in Raphael, you don't take 12 and you blow trial, you're getting 213 years. So there's guys in the feds that take 20 years for four murders. Yeah. Yeah. Now, you know, the feds have mandatory minimums for everything. For the weight, you know, for the quantities in drug cases.

In the state of New York, is there something similar? Like were you, did you get hit with the Rockefeller laws or those different? Yes. Okay. So what was the maximum you were facing? 183 to life. Yeah. They have to throw that in there.

They can't just say 183 years. They got to say 183 to life. If you lived 183, you get to go home. Wow. But, but, you know, and the state is, you're doing time. and dirty-ass places is the bottom shit. All I'm trying to say is in the fairs,

it's like a greater caliber of people. Of course. Yeah, of course. So did you and Tito, Tito's also the ringleader? Yeah. Is it like a RICO case, like a state case,

like it's a federal... Yeah, without the RICO mentioning, yeah. But it's the same... We got a conspiracy one and conspiracy two. Okay. So we got charged as leaders with every crime.

Right. Right. Even if you didn't touch them, that's your leader of a crew. Every sale that was made goes tough. Even though I'm on a recording telling one of my employees, don't sell to nobody that's coming dressed like this and he's going to have a female. The dude comes. He's with the female. He's dressed like I told him.

And that employee kept selling to him. Like if he's a crack addict, and he's buying 100 packs at a time, sometimes 300 at a time. Nobody's smoking like that. Right. And he's dressed like I told you. And then I come to the neighborhood and I see you doing it

and I tell you and you tell me I'm paranoid. I go stand across the street. This is a true story. I go stand across the street. The customer goes in the building with this particular person. He's wired. And on the tape, he's telling him,

you sure you ain't cops? My boss told me that you were part of a cop. And he's like, your boss, who's your boss? And he threw the little window in the building. So you see the guy with the red Nautical suit? He said you're the police. Like, nah, I ain't no cop, man.

He was a cop. Damn. And so at some point he told him, I don't want to keep buying these vows, bro. Introduce me to the boss, so I could buy weight. So he told them, I can't introduce to the bosses, but I could get it for you. And he would get them periodically 100 grams

from the Dominicans and set it to him. But it's us that are getting charged with those sales because he told him he's getting it from us. in order to make the sale. Wow. But he's selling him, he's selling him, he's selling him Coke for,

at the time, maybe for like $12 per gram extra. So it don't benefit him to let the guy go. It benefits him to believe that I'm paranoid in order for him to, every time that guy comes, he makes $1,500 off of him clean for something that he don't even,

he don't have to put a penny into. He's just getting it from A and giving it to B. So what are the, other workers facing? Like, what are the guys like that? Everybody involves? What are the lesser charges? Sales. Mostly sales, possessions, or conspiracy to sales or possession.

Okay. That's the most redundant charge. Yeah. Yeah. So what other evidence besides controlled buys like that and wires? What other evidence did they have when you found the discovery? They had 14 attempt of murders, shooting. that, like you said.

But how, though? Did they have CIs? They got CIs, but they got victims and they don't need his cooperation. They have hospital reports. They have police reports. And they have the CI that says, yeah, he got shot because of this.

So they get mentioned in there, how? Through overacts. Which is when they say, you know, in order to, you made these two moves and furtherance of your conspiracy to do that over. there. So these two things that you did, get it? So every

RICO conspiracy case is going to include overacts. Yeah. So this murder, even though it didn't have anything to do with this drug sale or vice versa, it's all part of one big crime. Once they put the conspiracy word in there, you know, that's the worst charge you could sometimes have. But what evidence, though? Like, like what is it? Did they have any physical evidence? Did they find a gun

with a fingerprint on it? Did they find? They never found, you know, Back then, they didn't use DNA like that. There was no gun with fingerprints in it. Nobody got caught with a weapon that was associated with a homicide. None of that happened. But when you have a group with a conspiracy charge and you got six to eight months worth of video footage of this operation

and cheese lines and people in and now, and sometimes a guy comes to the door and he's looking, but you can see a gun in his waist and they zoom in and they're taking pictures of all that. And then later he's talking to you in your car and they linked us all that way. conspiracy for everybody that means all they are related to each other with these motherfucking crimes

and did they ever get you on like a boy George you know party where you were spending a bunch of money or anything like that what did they what were something

like the wild I had no evidence on me really just I didn't get caught ever with anything as far as that case I didn't get I didn't get rated

and they found anything nothing zero so the only thing they ever got you with was an Uzi a Mac 10 just on like a separate humble.

Yeah, in the beginning. Yeah. Just on like a fluke, right? Yeah, and that was included in there too and as an override. They said, you were protecting your neighborhood with this machine gun. So it was literally just hearsay

that you were the boss. And then that thing... They got more than that, you know? Well, they got the guy pointing out to this undercover that that's... What happened is... pointing out to you that that was the... I quit.

I quit. I sold... I sold a portion. I sold them. I sold... I sold my portion to Tito of yellow. For how much? I don't want to say that.

Come on. Come on. It was a basement. It was a friendly thing. Okay. It was a friendly thing. It wasn't, I need to get something. Yeah.

And I didn't keep the money. I put it up for somebody else's attorney. I just didn't want to have to come out of me for it. So, and then another spot that I had gotten throughout throughout that period, I sold it to the guy that I had managing it. You know, I could tell you that price to him. I told him, just give me $50,000. You don't have to give me $9.000. I'm going to come get five from you.

This is day, 10. Five, that way. That's it. So, what was your question I got thrown off? Well, the question was what evidence they had that you were the boss? Okay. So I didn't get caught anything. I ain't on no wiretap.

I didn't go to the gun again ever. But the were conspiracies all that they needed. Because when Raymond got shot, he said what he said about me. There's been other people that have gone shot. and they said the same thing. I had an argument. I mean, Tito had an argument with a do on a hundred-twenty-fifth Street one time.

I'm with him. I shot him two times. That came up on the paperwork. The apartment in Parkchester, the realtor that I and Tito went and got it for, although it was a fake lease. He then admitted that, yeah, it was to us that he rented the apartment to

and we used fake paystuffs. On the lease, I wrote Julio Iglesias. And only him and I knew that. And that came out of court. So I saw why. So, So by getting the backstory from different people, they put the case together. By using surveillance all the time and pictures, they knew who's who and who's in the neighborhood and who's controlling.

They used pictures of me on the block where maybe eight guys surrounding me. We all talking to show, look, see, every time it comes to the block, this is the guy. I have all of that in their own words on paperwork. Yeah. Did they lie at all? Well, was it a pretty good case? It was a pretty good case, I would say. So what was the first plea deal?

Did you get a plea deal? They, hold up. Yes. They, they, I don't know if they want to attribute this to lying or if they made an mistake. But one of my co-defendants is Damon, they charged him with a homicide that he didn't do. That was a friend of mine. And they didn't have an explanation. He was just charged with it.

We weren't even charged with it. Excuse me. Just he was charged with it. So that's, that's one of the guys that I got to. homicide off of them. My plea bargain, I was begging for 25. And they wasn't trying to hear it. And different DAs changed.

And then I have... What about the cops? What about the dirty cops? How much time? No, no, no. Were they part of that indictment? Did they arrest them? Only one of them got arrested out of the two, and he got his own indictment, and he got

arrested, and he pleaded guilty. He got three years. Okay. He pleaded guilty to bribery. And the other guy didn't... The other guy got off? Temporarily. He became a member of the task force since he has so much knowledge of the neighborhood and the characters of the neighborhood.

They gave him a membership to that task force. And that task force is responsible for arresting the NFL crew, the Wild Cowboys, the Purple Top crew, the Jerry Coral Gang crew, La Campan. And what's that of the famous natural-born killer crew? So all of these people that he knew He became an asset to them Because of the people that he knew in the neighborhood He was able to mingle and find shit out for him He had a lot of history

So now he's shining in the pictures for the newspaper With the collars that he's making And he got recognized in New Jersey By the cops he sold three kilos to Yeah And that my vulgar name is A.J. Maloney's no. And they went and then they went and told on him? Or how did

that? They came and arrested him. They came in arrested him. Damn. They contacted the hire-ups in the Manhattan District Attorney's office and let them know they come in to get him because he's down with that task force and that's at the top. Wow. And

so he was shining as like this hero cop. Yeah, yeah. But then he got caught selling three keys. He already has sold him. Yeah. Yeah. So did you have anybody that was threatening? Did the DA say, hey, we got plenty of witnesses if you take this to trial that we're going to testify against you? They didn't have to tell me that I knew that already. Okay.

Who were some of those people that would have testified? Did any of your crew break? There's people breaking every crew. That's normal shit. Okay. So you have people that were telling. I wasn't worried about that because those people just could talk about drugs. We didn't discuss murder and shootings with none of those.

None of the workers. People that are only selling drugs, only looking out, only delivering, only bagging up. There's no purpose. They don't make those decisions. Did they have your shooters? Do they arrest the shooters? We all got arrested. Nobody got away.

Okay. So you had some of those people would have testified if you had taken it to trial? Do I believe that? Yeah. Yeah. Wow. Okay. So how long were you on Rikers for?

How long were you fighting him? I was three years. Yeah. It's a long mother. fucking time to be on Rikers Island. You've been on Rikers? No. I've been in Oregon jail and it was long enough bro. Well, Rikers, on Rikers, there's 17 jails

and only one is a female jail. And if you see them see, there's only one that you could go to at the time. When you see MC, they keep you in the borough houses, Brooklyn House, Bronx House, and Queens house. So, being on Rik is the worst place you could be. as far as jails.

What was your lawyer, Lynn, did she have, was she optimistic? What did she want to do? Did she want to take it to trial? No, no. She told me we can't go to trial. And if we do, you have to decide whether you could live with 100 or 183, because let's say I beat half of it.

With this judge, she's never going to be in favor of any motions that I put in, any objections that I make. So, you know, this judge used to be a district attorney. Yeah. And now she's a judge being super hard on crime for the purpose of running for the main position of district attorney in New York County, which she did unsuccessfully two times. So she had her motive and her plan and her scheme, just like everybody else. The officers and the corrupt task force members had their scheme and their plan. We had our plan.

Everybody had a plan. And it's 1994 now. It's 1994, the summer of 1994. Yeah. So New York is coming down hard as fuck on crack, on street crime. It's Giuliani now. So everything, it's no more cowboy years. Like the cowboy years are coming to an end. And these crews that are going down are getting spanked. And they back to back. 33 days later, I think, same task force, same judge took Purple Top, our competitors. Wow. Yeah. Four months later, they took the people that filled in my spot. that the other spot. That was an independent spot that I, in eight months,

they caught eight murders, natural born killers. Yeah, but you were there for five years. Yeah. Which is an eternity for how much, how much dope you were moving,

how many people were getting killed. You start thinking in that time. Yeah. So how did you, you have, how did this resolve it? So how did it adjudicate itself? You did 15.

So what did you end up taking? I took 15 to life. Yeah. I was, I was fighting for Rockefeller relief. I made it all the way to the appeals court with a novice issue and I had a high power attorney

that took the case for free because he was interested in the points that I had and he wanted to be responsible under his name to establish that for his career but we lost so basically I pleaded guilty to conspiracy to possess and distribute narcotics the law when it was

reversed for Rockefeller sentencing only gave relief to you if you have possession or sale. The word conspiracy is not involved. Right. So if you get caught 100 keys, you're eligible for resentencing. If I only planned to get 100 keys from you, I don't get no relief. So the only way it was worth it is if you got caught with everything. Yeah.

Yeah. That's why I always, I've always said that. It's better to get caught with more because if it's your first time. Yeah. You might as well. It makes no difference. You might as well go as hard as you can on your first run because at least you can go to the feds now.

Like in your case, right? Like there's little technicalities in the law. Or you can go to the feds and, you know, now they have like the, what do they call it, compassionate releases and stuff like that. They make some kind of way for lifers to get out early, you know? That's only over there, though. Yeah, and the feds.

And Lynn Stewart ended up in federal prison. And that's how she got out. Compassion and relief. Okay. So let's, oh, man, should we save that for the Patreon? Whatever you want. How your attorney ended up in federal prison. That's why.

We'll say that for the Patreon. But I want to wrap up with your story. So you're fighting it for three years. And you eventually take 15 to life. Did Tito take the same thing? No, no, no. See? So, and with this, I'm going to be little dicey because I'm not trying to hurt

certain people's names, right, that are still in the legal field. So it was rumored that I had an unethical relationship with a young district attorney that happened to be on that task force, right? Okay. So, um, I could I put this. So one time I was having a sexual conversation or one that could be interpreted as such. and one of her colleagues heard it and reported it. Over the phone?

In person. Where? In the courthouse. Okay. So, um... With a DA. With, with, she was, yeah, she was one of our DAs. Damn, it's gangster, bro.

So, so what happens is, um, I'm not allowed, um, what I did with her is I got her to help me get my guys plea bargains. So I got Tito a plea bargain. You asked how much? He didn't get 15. He got 12. And then I got Damon 12, but he didn't take it on time. So he ended up taking 15 to 45.

And then I got fellow six years. I got shorty seven years. I got Sebastian 15 years. Because the trick is you help me get my guys off. You still come up because you. you're getting the convictions. A plea bargain and a trial conviction is the same thing. Numbers.

Yeah. So she's building up her resume. She was young, 27 years old, I believe, and young and hot and in there for the, you know, some kind of unprecedented that she would be there in that position because those dudes that run that task force have 40, 50 years in law enforcement. Right. But now she's shining.

Right. But now this conversation that was heard took her down. Hold on. So you were, were you fucking her? No. Really? No. You were just having this like,

I mean, no, no, that's what they said. That's what I'm just telling you that. That's what they said that that was happening. Like I told you in the beginning, I don't want to tell you too. I'm going to be dicey about that because, you know, I don't want to get nobody in trouble. That's still a lawyer.

That's still, you know, doing a career, is doing whatever they're doing. But, you know, it wasn't what they thought it was. Would there have been, I could ask a question like this, would there have been an opportunity of isolation to where you could have had sex with this woman, even though you were in custody? Yes, yes, yeah. So the reason.

And then you guys would talk. Yeah. And this is where you would convince her, hey, you'll still get your stats, but I want my guys to get off with good deals. Yes. Okay. So originally it was her boss that said no. when I tried to plead to the 25. Okay.

Now I got 15. So that also caused a little problem, whatever the problem was amongst them up there, and the people that make those decisions, you know? And in the court system, once they offer you time, they generally respect it. They don't get mad at you. They get mad at you and give you more if you don't take it,

but they don't say, well, you didn't take it yesterday. So today is 15 and a half. Usually they have a respect for that. That's the plea deal. Eight months later, you decide you change your mind. You're not going to go to trial. They haven't raised it yet. It's still available to you.

And are you holding out, the longer you hold out, the more they're willing to give you a deal. Is that kind of how it works? Some cases in our cases, I don't think that helped because the longer we waited, the more people came forward from other places that now we're not scared to talk. Yeah, but then why would your original plea go from 100 to life all the way down to 15? It was if you blow trial, if I blow trial, I would have got 183. Okay, so you got it down from 25. Yes, that's the number that I originally asked for.

And you know what? I prayed for 15th life sentence. And through her is how I used that senior dude, Mark Tebens, the task force detective to go out and have sex with different girls. We've talked about that, right? Mm-mm. So that's who I used for that Because him and her were very tight

Can you explain that? I think I said a lot already No, but what about how who is this cop? I don't understand that's that's the He was a senior detective that was working for her And He's been responsible for a lot of big cases A lot of big time arrests of you know big gangsters

Yeah And And, you know, I used to use them and to go to a woman that I used to be dating or have sex or go try to have sex with this other chick or have sex with this one. While you were on Rikers, he would... While I was on Rikers, you know, I had no bail. But if he picked, if anybody would have badge in the right paper goes pick you up to be produced, the correctional officers have to produce you to that agent so that agent could take you to court.

but they have no way to prove if you was actually in court. They just know that you made it back and he turned in the paperwork. He signed it and by and that's it. Nobody asks no questions about that. So he could just drive to Rikers, pick you up, bring you into the city to and have you meet your girl so you could get laid. Yes, that's what I did. Now, why would he do that? What was he getting out of this?

He didn't get nothing from me, but he had a relationship with her and she's doing the new and shining and his career. is about keep going. So the more that he, what's the word, the more that he networks with her and pleases her, the more favor he's going to have in that unit.

Right. And my original. So she loved you. She was doing all this. Did she know you were going to sleep with other women? I don't think she loved me. I don't think she loved me. But why would she do all this then?

This is a chick that was dedicated to, really, she was in the wrong place, I believe. She wasn't really about giving people 100 years and 200 years. She was a woman that was into the Make-O-Wish Foundation. She liked helping kids. She liked doing other things. And she knew Lynn. And that's how I got introduced to her.

And, you know, I did my best to charm her. And things worked out that way. So she just liked you as a person. And she was trying to help me genuinely within her reach with what she could do. But you know, because this could be interpreted as like, there's a detective picking up Chango once a week and taking them out of the jail. Did people look at you? Like, oh, this motherfucker's cooperating. They don't know what the fuck I'm doing.

They don't know where I'm going. Right. I could be going to court. Okay. That's not something I told people, but I'm only speaking about that publicly today. People don't know. I've spoken about it in the course. The courts already know about all of this happening.

and I spoke to them because I got interviewed in order to help with the different exonerations that I participated in. So I had to admit to these things and talk about them. So they know, you know. And they asked me dead on if I've had sex with, and I gave in the ass, same answer, I said no. So I'll ask you one more time.

Why do you think, what do you think this young DA was getting out of doing this for you? I'm controlling the numbers that she's receiving. What do you mean the numbers? If I'm getting five of my guys to plead guilty today, that's worth money to her. She's getting those convictions. She's shining.

She's cementing her relationship there. Right. It's quit pro quo. Okay. Okay. Got it. So you were basically getting your guys to plead. Yes.

I would talk to my guy. Let's say I'm talking to Shorty Rock today. I tell them how much you're willing to take. They don't know my relationship with her. Only I do. Yeah. How much you're willing to take? He tells me I'll take eight, eight in the third to 25.

That was his answer. That was one of our youngest guys, Shorty Rock, and one of the most loyal when he was in from the adolescent houses. So he tells me I'll take an eight and a third to 25. When I'm talking to her, I tell her this guy, he's willing to take seven. And the guy that told me he's willing to take 12, I tell him he's willing to take 10. That was my plan in order for when I come back to them,

they don't talk about they change their mind, they want less. I'm already getting you less. You was going to take 12. I got you 10. You're going to take 8. I got you 7. So I'm trying to guarantee a yes from you. So this goes smoothly.

So if everybody pleads guilty, there's nobody left. There's nobody to cooperate against. So you were literally acting as their lawyer. You were almost acting as lawyers for your crew. Legally is called you acting as an agent, really. It's illegal. That's illegal to do. Sure.

This whole thing's illegal. That's illegal to do. You're going out getting pussy. Yeah. Facing life in prison on Rikers. But you know, my plan was ready to escape, though. Really? Yeah, yeah.

So what was your plan? Go back to Puerto Rico? I didn't have a plan other than I know I could get out because I'm going to go see this girl. She lives on the third floor and I'm going to come down the fire skate while this dude is distracted or I'm going to have her distracted and I'm already going to be in my neighborhood. So I'm going to bounce. The main place that I will go was in a park. apartment that faced Central Park West in Manhattan. So the entrance to the park is across the street diagonally.

And once you enter that park, you have access to go as far along to 59th Street, Columbus Circle, or all the way to the east side. So he couldn't report. He can't report that I'm missing. He has to figure out if I'm hiding under a bed, if I'm in a closet, if I'm in the building, where the fuck I went? Did I go west, east? So I had about a good 40 minutes before he's going to give up and call it in. And he... And then he's going to look weird.

He's the one that shot himself in the head. So to him, this was nothing. You know what I'm saying? Wait a minute. So how did this resolve? The cop ended up shooting himself? Yeah, he killed himself. Over what?

Why? His own conscience. There's a few people who are doing time for murders that they didn't do that he put on them. Wow. Wow. Yeah. So why were you in a... never able to carry out that plan, that escape plan.

I didn't think it was going to have a long life. It probably wouldn't have. When I would open the windows, my hands would tremble. Yeah. Because I, and I would immediately be thirsty. Mm-hmm. Yeah. And I could, and she lived on third floor.

It's like right there, you know, you could survive jumping into the garbage or on top of a car. But I was just going to put the ladder down on the fire escape and go down. Yeah. I'm going to Central Park. Wow. At the time, I was running every day. I used to just run and work out. So my plan was to run all the way to the east side.

Once I'm in the east side, I'm out of the entire jurisdiction. And from the east side, go somewhere. But did you have any money left? Yeah, I had money left. That was part of the plan to get that money. But I, in my heart, knew that it was not going to last long. And in the end, I didn't do it. And sometimes early on I would regret not doing it.

But in the end, I got over that regret and realized that it was the best thing that I did just to stick it out. Yeah. Yeah. So you finally take the plea. That's unbelievable, man. I take the plea. Me and Tito got sentenced on the same day, the same day. Were you the last people to get sentenced?

No. Okay. We took our pleas, and on the same day that we got sentenced, we got sent to downstate because of our security level. And we got to downstate correctional facility. They didn't want us there because they said, you guys got too many enemies here. So they sent us to Omyra. When we got to Omyra, the superintendent was waiting for us and told us the same shit.

You got too many enemies. You guys are not staying here. They locked us down. From Omyra, I got Lynn to start calling Albany and put pressure, and they sent me to Sing Sing. When I got to Sing Sing, I only lasted there three months. I got stabbed. I got jumped and stabbed.

I went to the box. And then they needed myself because somebody else was killed. And I'm the only one that's there without. of institutional ticket. I'm there for security. I'm there because I don't want to sign protective custody and they don't want to keep me in population. So their next move is administrative segregation.

So that's where they put me in the box. Even if you didn't do nothing, if you were under administrative segregation, you get the same privileges as the box, which is zero. You're under a punitive kind of thing, you know, an umbrella. So a dude that I know, killed another duel and they needed a sell to put them in.

They picked me out the box because I'm the only one that don't have an actual ticket and they put me in involuntary protective custody. Once an involuntary protective custody, the memorandum is within five days, they're supposed to put in a transfer order from this. And they did. So from Sing Sing, I went to Clinton because I just got stabbed up and because it's a high profile case, they put me an APPU in Clinton. That's a jail, that's a prison inside of that prison.

Separate, only for high-profile cases. So that's where I was with Joel Rifkin and the Happy Land Killer and the Zodiac Killer. And my man that put his baby in a microwave and nuked it and all kind of serial rapists. Yeah. Crazy. Had an FBI agent in the cell under me that was in charge of the Gotti case. Wow. I had motherfucking all kind of wild and weird people.

What did your What was your family going through at the time? What was your mother thinking? Hell. Hell, because my sister died. And so right after my sister died, 90 days later, her daughter died. And so my mother was going through that. And she didn't know the facts about me.

And she's thinking I'm going to get out any day. But I'm trying to complete a long-ass bid. So it was excruciate. for her. Did you expect to get out right at 15? No. Or did you expect to do life? I expected to do life. Yeah. That's the way to go in,

in my opinion. Now, in California and Oregon, I just speak, because I, this is the only places I know where I've done time. Historically, if you had an L, whether it was five to life, 25 to life, they would never parole those people.

You know? Even if you got five to life? Yeah, it wouldn't give you five. to life. But my point is, like, if you got popped on a body and you had 30 to life, they would, they just didn't parole you. Like you were getting, you were doing life. Yeah. But in New York, was that common? Or were they actually paroling people that had, you know, a number plus life? No, no. Back then, you could get, you know, 12 and a half to 25 for two murders and three attempted murders. There was a period where you could get work release even if you have a murder.

It's crazy. the time where you get bail for four murders, which was $250,000. And you had life, though. So you had, no, I'm showing you how loose the courts were, right? So that's where it starts. So parole, people getting, if you could get work release for a murder, that means everybody's getting parole.

Yeah. But then Pataki came into office. Right. Governor Pataki. Yeah. And parole was almost non-existent. No matter if you got life or not, you're going to have to CR. you're going to have to wait for your conditional release date

and if you have tickets or fights or get any of those while you're waiting for that condition then you're going to have to stay longer and you figured as a guy with a high profile case a lot of enemies there was no way you were going to be able to behave yourself I didn't think I was going to survive that time

because everybody that we got rid of shot and took over their neighborhood that wasn't the only spot we had right We took over other neighborhoods. Everybody you don't want to see, you see in prison. Yeah. And you already got stabbed, what, your first week or your first months in prison? I got stabbed in Sing Sing, maybe a month after I got there.

Do you think they were trying to kill you? I don't know. I think they were pussies to tell the truth. They had a washed-up, motherfucker, put the head out on me because another guy that I don't know that wasn't down with me. which is the guy that I took the drugs from and threw him in the street and his mind in the street. He pretended like I was his co-defendant

and told them that I told on him. He was a lookout. He was a manager for Purple Tile. He had nothing to do with me. So they told him, prove he showed the paperwork. He didn't have the paperwork. So then they came to me and told him, yo, we could get rid of him for you

and we could hold you down, but you have to, you know, help us out. You know, we've read your news article. You could get a lot of work. You could bring heroin. And I told them, Nah, that's not happening, bro. That's called friendly extortion.

You know what I'm saying? You're not going to get drugs for you stupid. And I'm looking at the dude that's telling me this. He's a jailhouse alley cat, basically. And I'm telling him, that's not happening, bro. I'm not doing that. So then they put the hit out. And one dude held me and two do stabbed me up in the eight block tunnel.

Wow. Where? And Sing Sing. But where in the body do they stab you? Oh, I got hit in the chest and the ribs and the arm and in the back. Did you ever carry anything? Yeah, I had something on me that day. I just couldn't use it because the dude that was holding me knew I had it.

That's why he bear hugged me. And I had magazines on. I had magazines on in certain areas in case because I already knew that this was going to happen. So I went out. I would go out already when I would go out to the yard. And once I turned down that punk ass awful from this fat motherfucker, I knew. that is on because they can't get no benefit from me.

They're trying to use me to get a benefit for themselves with this heroin and that's like my ticket. But if I accept that, then that's going to be my fate for the entire 15 years wherever I go. So I told them fuck that no. And so now I'm their enemy.

Yeah. You know? Wow. When did things start to finally calm down in your 15-year stretch? I would say when At the age of 27. Because you went in.

How old were you when you got arrested? Almost 21. And how old were you when you first started hustling? When I first committed a crime with drugs, 10. Right. But the Yellow Top Crew, the formation in the Manhattan Valley was... 17, 16 years old. Yeah.

Wow. We had a five-year run, basically. Yeah. Yeah. What an era. What a time, man. What a time. You know, good and bad, though.

Mm-hmm. I learned a lot of things. Everything I learned wasn't illegal. Yeah. And people only talk about the people that you kill or you sent to kill, but I have saved some lives too. I have stopped people from killing other people that I like the work's cool with. So, you know, nobody makes every decision the best way they can.

Sometimes you just got to work with what you got. It's the craziest era in U.S. inner city history, man. It's for us, to this day, certainly for me forever, I consider that I've survived a war, literally, because just like people were, just whatever we were trying to do,

people were trying to do to us too. And, you know, you get tired of giving them shots and they get sent at you and it's ricocheting. And after a while, you just become desensitized to all of that. Yeah. That's how a lot of guys we talk to, like, unique, he feels like he's survived a war.

And he's not being hyperbulous, you know. No, I think he's right. It's true. Yeah. Did everybody... And you suffer. And you suffer from the same... Same thing psychologically.

You know, when it's over, like soldiers that are in war. PTSD, paranoia, blah, blah, blah. Do you think it's better now for the hood in New York now that there really is... There's not this robust drug trade anymore? Oh, yeah. Okay. Way better. I'm glad that that shit is not around.

It's old. I don't look at none of that the same. I don't ever promote it. I don't, you know, I discuss it when I have to. Like right now. Yeah, that shit is disgusting in reality. You know, nobody stays the same. And then as you mature and refine yourself,

you want to move away from the things that you did. And if you got kids or a kid, you want to teach better. so you want to be better, you know? So I don't look at that like I used to. I used to be proud of the accomplishment at such a young age to accomplish so much, right? And to provide in the form of being able to for five years keep a payroll.

If you're into business, that's something to be proud of. Some people can't keep a payroll. Sure. So you're proud of the gimmicks that you created that took off, you know what I'm saying? You're proud of the branding. You're proud of all these things that you accomplished that help you get.

there but now when you when you sleep with that shit in a prison cell for 15 years and you sweat it out you know that she wasn't the she wasn't cool yeah but you would have done it with anything man you did it with seafood oh yeah on the beaches of Puerto Rico that's for sure you just you were a hustler man yeah my mom used to tell me um you're gonna be sick when you get older because you're always talking about money that's all you talk about and I was eight nine 10 years old at the time because I used to get a dollar from her and buy a hundred penny cookies to resell to my own friends or cousins. And I never made a dollar because I was sending them for a penny.

I didn't understand yet that I had to put a profit. I never made no profit, man. But coming from where you came from, from being homeless and, you know, getting your lights and water turned off. I mean, these are dreadful conditions. Dreadful conditions. Yeah, man. Who wants this shit in a bag at that, you know?

Who wants to do that? But, and who wants to see their mom suffering all the time? And worried and stress. And my mom has never did no drugs. If my mom throws a party, nobody comes because she won't have alcohol in the party. Wow. Yeah, even coming that shit. Eat that turkey by yourself, lady.

Yeah. Did, uh, is all of your crew that went down? Are they all out? Do they all get out? No, no. Three didn't get out. Three didn't take the plea bargains that I got for them. So they blew trial.

And they're doing... And because of the relationship. or the alleged relationship between her and I, they removed her and they put a whole brand new person in so to protect the integrity. So those guys didn't get out in time? They didn't take the plea bargains that I got them on time. So whatever, what did they get?

Two got 66 and one got 100. So they're never getting out, probably. They have appeals they have to work on. And they have the same issue as the other guys that have been exonerated with the same task force. member who killed himself. Man, thank you for coming out here, dude.

I appreciate. Thank you for having me here. I mean, I feel like it's an honor to talk to anybody from Harlem, anybody from that era. You know, you are a dying breed. Yeah, I believe so. Yeah. I'm happy to be here, though, man. This is for me important also, and there's also a privilege for me to be here, man.

Yeah. So we're going to talk some more on the Patreon. Do you have anything? How does that work? How does that work? The what, Patreon? Yeah. You said we're going to talk.

Yeah, we're just going to switch over. People that are subscribers, paid subscribers. This will go out to the masses. But our super fans, they pay a subscription and then they get a bonus episode. It's just quick. We want to take it. No, whatever time you need, I'm saying, I just don't know how to you, what do you mean? So what do you call me on what is?

I know what Patreon is. I have a Patreon page, but how do we talk on Patreon? We're going to sit here and we're just going to end this and then keep people. talking. I thought you meant like you're going to call me on Patreon. No, I know. I didn't say. So, okay, so this, what we're going to talk now is going to Patreon.

That's what you mean. No, no, no, no. We're going to do this is going on YouTube, on Spotify. This is going out to the world. But there's some extra stuff that, you know, that's going to go for the paid subscribers. You know what I mean? Like a VIP type of thing. Exactly.

Exactly. I'm going to try to wear and the crystal. We got to weed at least, you know. Yeah, yeah. So thank you, man. And we hope that these documentaries that have been made about you. Can you talk at all about that really quick? Just plug yourself.

Yeah, plug the Instagram. You got an Instagram. Anything you want to plug, let's do that. Yeah, yeah. My Instagram is Chango underscore CP5. And what I got going with Alex Wright, my producer is we got a documentary series coming out called Trust the Lords. We drop it on Apple or Tooby and everywhere else that comes calling. I just did my first movie role in a picture called Love,

Music Shelter by Alex Scotland, aka Bonnie No Clyde. I'm working on trying to get another part. The part that I did for her movie, they liked it, so they decided to extend my role, so they're going to give me new lines to add to put into, you know, so I could get more screen time. Yeah. And those are the things that I'm working.

I'm working on on a feature film also, everything that I'm doing with Alex, right? And a documentary also. That's going to include everything we spoke about, And everything that we didn't speak about. But everything that we didn't speak about, when you want to speak about it again, we can't. Yeah.

I'm giving you VIP now. All right, man. I'm honored. I'm honored. Any questions you have? Yeah. Any feedback you get? Anything we didn't talk about is because you didn't ask or I didn't say.

You just have to marry an arrangement so we could talk again. You got my number. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Maybe out there in New York, you know? And if you want to do that, we could do that. Yeah.

Okay. So, yeah. Just, just, I mean, and you could see documentaries about this. I've watched several on YouTube. Oh, yeah. You know, the story is so deep. The streets, you could talk about this for days and days. There's so many stories within the stories.

Right. So go check out, Chango. Go follow him on Instagram and can't wait to see the docu series. And then we'll see you on Patreon. Patreon.com slash The Connect Show. I, um, you know, I was, that APPU unit, like to explain, it's where Shine was at, is where Tupac was at. It was the old dirty bastard was at. I got old dirty bastard as far as far as.

phone call when he came there. Shine, I had him in the cell next to me. We cooked together and talked for the whole time that he was there. Tupac had left right before I got there. And I think that's where I mostly matured in my life. It's where I read the most. It's where I was into myself the most. It's where I worked out the most.

And so sometimes you may not want to be some place, but it might be the best place for you, even if it's that place, you know? I forget to mention anything. to draw that's that's the lesson that's the lesson it's a beautiful lesson thank you chango thank you appreciate your brother well problem