The Connect- with Johnny Mitchell - Exposing The War Against Sammy "The Bull": Arizona Drug Kingpin Reveals The Mob Rat's Dirty Secrets

Episode Date: December 8, 2024

Shaun Attwood tells his incredible story of how he went from a working class childhood in England to becoming a successful stockbroker in the United States to running a multi-million dollar drug smuggling empire and eventually doing time in one of the most controversial prison systems in North America. He talks about the web of operations he set up that spanned multiple continents and the blood feud his crew had with the famed mafia underboss Sammy "The Bull" Gravano. Shaun also gives insights on the law enforcement operation that spanned years to take him down and the horrific conditions in prison he faced when he was locked up. Today Shaun has a very successful podcasting career and is an accomplished author. He also does tons of outreach work to help the youth of today not make his same mistakes and steer them away from a life of crime and drug addiction. Go Support Shaun! YouTube: @shaunattwoodOFFICIAL IG: https://www.instagram.com/shaunattwood/ Website: https://www.shaunattwood.com/ All Links: https://linktr.ee/shaunattwood This Episode Is #Sponsored By The Following: MANDO! Control Body Odor ANYWHERE with Mando and get $5 off off your Starter Pack (that’s over 40% off) with promo code MITCHELL at https://shopmando.com #mandopod PrizePicks! Download the app today and use code CONNECT to get $50 instantly after you play your first $5 lineup! Mint Mobile! Support the show and get your new 3-month premium wireless plan for just $15 a month at https://mintmobile.com/connect Join The Patreon For Bonus Content! https://www.patreon.com/theconnectshow Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Drink responsibly must be 21. Exocity was in very high demand. We couldn't get enough to sell. It started out with me just hawking of myself in the parties. And now I'm in a million-dollar house on the side of a mountain in Tucson. That just completely drastically changes. The gangbangers, the Russian mafia, Mexican mafia, multiple houses blown up. Just endless ma'am.

Don't stop every day. Sean Atwood is a former drug kingpin who grew up in England. As a boy, he dreamed about coming to America and getting rich. After college, he relocated to Phoenix, Arizona, where he got a job working as a stockbroker. But soon, he found himself rubbing shoulders with cartel players in the Phoenix underworld, and he began moving ecstasy imported from Amsterdam. By the time he was 30 years old, he was overseeing a multi-million dollar a month ecstasy distribution ring that spanned the American Southwest.

His crew even went toe to toe with Sammy the Bull Gravano, who was attempting to muscle in on their ecstasy market in Phoenix at the time. Sean eventually got popped and spent nearly a decade in maximum security prisons in Arizona, some of the worst in the country. He started documenting his time in the system, and today he's not only England's most popular true crime podcaster, but he's a prolific author. He's published 17 books, all of which you can find online. And for an amazing bonus episode with Sean, you know what to do.

Hit that Patreon, baby. the Patreon.com slash the Connect show. Without further ado, this is a long time coming. It was a pleasure to sit down with my good friend, Sean Atwood, right here in the Connect with Johnny Mitchell. So walk into this room and there's a naked, hog-tied man, and he just looks terrified. And I'm thinking, who are these guys, you know, stepping on our toes? He told me, one call to Sammy the Bull and we can have you taken out to the desert.

So that was the point then where I realized something heavy is going on. And we all just strapped up and messed up and just kicked the door and just stormed into the house. 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. And then I parked the car, popped out, closed the door, and I started running. And he pulls out a burner.

It's like six inches. And he passes it to me. And he goes, here, that's yours. Don't ever leave the cell block without this. He was the reason I made it out of a place a lot. Because you've been, you lived in America for almost 20 years. That's where you did your dirt. Yeah.

You came back. You've been home for almost 20 years. Yeah. And you've talked to every manner of criminal, ex-criminal gangster from Britain that there is. So amongst the thieves, putting aside the intelligence agencies, right? We're going to, let's be mainstream and call MI6 and CIA. We'll call them legitimate. because even though they're not elected, technically we elect the people that fund them.

Who of the underworld, who has a bigger, more important underworld? Who are the biggest gangsters? Americans or Brits? In terms of the mafia, it's America. Still? Yes. You think? Definitely.

The Italian mafia? No. I'm looking at it historically right now. If you're looking at it present, then it's the cartels. But I think drug traffickers make more money. in Britain. I really do. That's just a tentacle of the cartel. Sure. Okay. So who are those guys now? The Albanians.

What guys? The people in Britain that are the cartel. That would be the equivalent of like what the Sinaloa cartel is to the United States. We only have one area of the UK that was classified as a cartel. And that's part of Nottingham. And it's the area called Bestwood, the Bestwood cartel. And one of the founders of the best wood cartel is a guy called Dave Gunn, who I've interviewed, his brother Colin Gunn, a co-founder of the best wood cartel, is doing life for murder. Wow. These are white boys. Yes. Wow. And were they connected with South American suppliers? Product was being brought in from foreign suppliers, yes. Okay. Yeah, I mean, it definitely seems like Brits or,

are crazier. I'm talking about, you know, America's kind of an anomaly because the cartels are Mexicans who are not American nationals. They don't even live in America now mostly. They have people who they distribute to and they go to prison, but the guys don't set foot in the U.S. for good reason. In Britain, it's how would you, I think, I think people born here are just less afraid of the law because you do less time in prison? You do less time in prison. There's not the guns like there is in America, which carries more serious consequences.

From my experience, I think the British are more reserved. From what I saw in America of my dealings with, like the New Mexican Mafia, the things I walked in on are experienced with them, just like out of Rambo movies kind of things. Really? Yeah.

Wow. We're going to get to that. The new Mexican mafia. I've never even heard of them. La M.A. I've heard of La M.A. Yeah. It's the Mexican Mafia.

Never heard of the new branch of that. So you've got the old school Mexican Mafia. Right. And La M.A., the new Mexican Mafia was formed out of the California prison system. Okay, so that, what is the distinction? Because La M. There was a division with the old vying for control and power. They've got big long wiki pages.

is when I taught this. But the new Mexican Mafia, it's like Chicano's. Sure. Yeah. Okay. Well, I'll look that up because the Mexican Mafia are Chicanos, you know, and they formed in the California prison system. Maybe this is Arizona bridge.

No, no, there was a division in the Mexican Mafia, which created a new Mexican Mafia, the younger generation, went against the old. Yeah, as they do. Yeah. As they do. Yeah, I mean, I don't know. This just seems like a much better place to be a gangster in Britain because, as you say,

there's less a chance you're going to get shot. I mean, getting knife sucks, right? That's an awful way to die. But you do less time, less gun violence. And there's more money in drugs. There's no money in drugs in the United States anymore. Not really. So I disagree with all that.

Wow, really? Yeah. I think that America is the biggest drug consumption country in the entire world. always has been and it gets worse every year. And in this country, we don't consume nowhere near as much as America. For example, being in Arizona on the border with Mexico,

I could get a kilo of Coke for like, what, $12,000, $15,000. This is back in the 90s. And it was proper pure stuff. When I got deported back to the UK in December 2007, people were trying to shove coke up my nose and I was looking at it and the price of it and how cut it was.

I didn't do it. By the time it was getting here, it was, it's far more organized in the States than it is here. You think so? Definitely. I mean, I know the consumer suffers here. The consumer is getting shipped product, right?

Yeah, yeah. And it's selling for a lot more. So that's good for the supplier, Because you are so far away and you have less competition, it seems like in my theory is, and it's fine to disagree, my theory is because there's so much less competition, it is more controlled here. There are groups that you have to know, and it's so much further away from South America, that it's proprietary. These contacts in the ports and the other ways that it get in is much more hierarchical. therefore the money is much greater. This is my theory.

Because if you can get a key for $12,000, that means the guy down the street, your professor of archaeology at Arizona State is also getting a key for $12,000. So it's just going to be a lot, just like everything in America. Yes, it's an enormous country. There's a huge market,

but there's so much competition. And, you know, it's not good for a drug dealer when the price of Coke is that low. It's not good for anyone. Except for the consumer. What you're saying is the profit margin is higher to get it here. Here, yeah, absolutely. But we've only got 60 million people.

So you have a limited consumer base. Yeah. I don't know. As an American, I'm like, if everybody's cutting their Coke to 5%, why don't I just cut mine at 10 and take all the competition? But, you know, look, you lived it over there. So I'll take your word for it. Yeah.

You remind me of me a little bit because you come from a middle class home. don't you? So my mom was a stay-at-home mom in the beginning, and my dad was a door-to-door insurance salesman. All right. We grew up on a terraced house, so a row of houses just joined together, in a chemical manufacturing town called Widens,

which is almost equidistant between Liverpool and Manchester, slightly closer to Liverpool. Okay, so not nearly the childhood I had. I grew up much, much more affluent than that. So would you call yourself, like, I don't know, Working class, lower middle class. Witness will be classified as a working class town. But by the time you're 14, you're just a bright guy.

Does money you're driving, did you feel poor? Is that why at an early age you're trying to get into the stock market and, you know, jockeying to make money? I don't think as a kid I had much of a concept. Well, when I watched that movie, Wall Street, everything changed in my brain. And I'm watching Gordon Gecko give you speech. Greed is God! And then my aunt, who became my mentor, she lived in America and I used to visit him. She was like, Sean, it's fuck I'll be fucked in the business world.

You get out here. You're from England. You can fucking slip these Americans' throats. It's a slight program. Wow. Art. Your auntie. My aunt.

This is the aunt that when I was 16, she changed my date of birth in my passport. in America when I was Arizona visiting her, took me out nightclubbing and was introducing me to all these beautiful American women as Paul McCartney's nephew. Wow. My parents weren't happy with her. Your aunt's a gangster?

Yeah, my parents were not happy about the passport thing. What did your aunt do out there? She's not out there anymore and she doesn't want to have any details revealed about it. Okay. She was running ecstasy for the cartels. Let's say she was in fraud.

Oh, she, oh wow. Not committing it, busting it. Ah. So she knew every trick in the book. Wow. Yeah. Wow. Yeah, that's why she was able to change the day to birth on your passport, I assume.

Wow. Claire arrived with a visitor's visa, six-month visitors visa. And she said if they asked you for a visa, we'll just go the printing shop and type print H1B1 work visa into your passport. Yeah. But all they do is arrest Mexicans in Arizona, so they probably won't bust you. And that was true. Every day I was seen on the news,

the Mexican migrants getting arrested. I'm working on the top floor of this stock brokerage business with all these New York, Italian, feisty people. No deportation officers came then. So you saw immediately, you were like, oh, this racism shit's pretty good. Well, it was working in my favor, let's say. Yeah, of course.

It's all about taking advantage in America. Wow, so most people are influenced by like Scarface, or for me it was a movie called Paid and Full. You were influenced by Wall Street. Wow. Wow. Yeah, that's a great movie. Greed is good.

So 15 years old, you go to visit her on a six-month work visa, and you didn't return for a lot of years. No, no. The visit was just a visit. I finished university. I did business studies degree. So I was like 2021 when I moved to America. Yeah.

Okay. And you were taking ecstasy, right? 1991. You were raving. So the rain scene started in this country while I was at university. And it just, prior to that, you had to line up at a nightclub and wear a shirt and a tie. And the bouncers was only like the pretty women in. And they looked down on everyone.

And all of a sudden, young people just smashing, warehouses open, smashing her plane hangers open, putting the speakers in there, dressing in whatever the hell they wanted and taking this new drug. And I'm seeing it on the TV every weekend. It's like all these wide-eyed young people just like grinning. And the cops like, don't know what to do. I'm like, I want a bit of that. Yeah, right. Yeah.

Right. When were you 19 when you first took it? 20? Around then, yeah. It was good. Good X? So a fellow out of my economics class at university said, come and check this out in Manchester.

So I'm in my mom's little red car. Just passed my driver's license test. And we go out there. and when we're in this room all the people are just stood around like there's this music boop-oo-do-boop-p-p-p-p I'm thinking this is crap you know

all these people are stood like looking at dance for as if expecting an elephant to materialize this music sounds like signals from outer space what the hell am I getting into and then my mate he scored some pills and some wraps of speed English speed is a lot different from crystal meth and we can get to that later on

So I left my friends in America who just arrived from England at my house and said, just help yourself to whatever's in the safe. And that ended in a crazy story. Yeah. Anyway, a gram of Billy Wiss, speed, your neck it, just drink it with your drink. And your ecstasy pill. So I do all this. And then my mate, about 30 minutes in, he's like getting up and dancing.

He's like, come on, dance. I had social anxiety. I would never dance. I was afraid, you know, to talk to people and make friends and stuff like that. And I'm like, no way am I dancing? No way am I dancing? And then about 10 minutes later,

I just felt my knees buckle. And I had to sit down. And I'm just sat there. And I just feel all my tension melting out of my shoulders and my back and everything just going like on fire. Just like a lovely warmth. And I'm looking up. People are just walking past me in a baggy jeans

and smiling down. I mean, I'm smiling up. And then I see my mate and he's like, and then we just went and danced and I just never stopped. After that, it became my religion. Wow. Yeah, it does, it has that effect.

You're like, why am I not on this all the time? That's how I feel when I take MDMA and mushrooms. I'm like, what am I? I do this once in a while. Like, I should be on this all the time. This is the height of consciousness. This is, you know, it's, they really nailed it with that one.

And they figured out how to isolate those, chemical properties. And I don't really know that there's anything, you know, I don't know if there's detrimental health effects to it or not, but it is, it's funny how it's come back around now as like a medical, as like a treatment for things like, as you say, anxiety, PTSD.

But back in the 90s, it was just British kids. And it made it to America too. People were just getting fucked up. Did you ever imagine that you would get into selling it? no my goal was just to make a million in the stock market by the time I was 30 and fly my mates over from the UK including wild man tell us who wild man is so wild man was a maniac who grew really big in his high school and he had red dots in his head telling him to hurt people he was picking school

teachers up and putting them in rubbish bins so they were so afraid of him they had him outside raking leaves with the cur-taker. Now, there was a little gang we called the sweats. We watched that movie, the Warriors and the Wonders called ourselves the sweats. We were quite harmless in comparison.

Sure. But Wildman's oldest brother was the leader of our gang. And Wildman would want to join because he was the youngest. He was two years younger than me. And he'd say to him, well, if you eat dog shit, we'll let you join.

And he'd eat the dog shit. And then he'd beat the shit of him and say, fuck off, all of him, you're not joining. In the end, end, I splintered off from the sweats. And me, Wildman, and Wildman's cousin, Hammy became a little click. And there's a tree, there's a quarry at the top of my town called Pexhill, and it's got a quarry. And there's a tree overlooking it.

And we'd sit on the tree. And it was like, what are you going to do when you grew up kind of conversation? Hammy would ask us. And they say, you know, Peter, Peter Wildman, what are you going to do when you grew up? And he says, well, I've got red dots in my head telling me to hurt people. I'm going to go to prison. And Hammy would say to me, what you know, I'm going to go to America, make a million, fly you guys over. And you're not going to go to prison, Peter.

I'm going to get you a job as a wrestler. And you're going to fight Hulk Hogan and Andre the giant and the British Bulldog. And you'll be all right. But everything that we predicted on that tree came true. He went off to prison. And I went off and made the money in the stock market in America. Wow. And then eventually flew them over.

Wow. That is profound for such a young man to have those aspirations. That's like an immigrant story. Yeah, I was an immigrant. That is real. Like you really saw America as the land of milk and honey that it is. You know? Wow.

How are you going to make this money from the stock market? In the beginning, I wanted to be an investment analyst. But when I arrived in Arizona, I realized it was predominantly stockbrokers because of some very wealthy areas, Sun City, Paradise Valley, etc. et cetera. And it was a lot of cold calling in the beginning. It was commission only in the beginning. I was living off cheese on toast and bananas and my student credit cards worried I was going to have to come home. But five years in, I was the top guy in the office, grossing half a million a year. I mean, on secretary, cold callers. But that's when, while man got out of prison and I flew him over

and everything changed. Wow. Yeah, that sucks at first. I could never be a cold caller in a, in a boiler room. Have you watched Wolf of Wall Street? Of course. It was just like that. So everybody's doing Coke too. They had biker gangs dropping off meth. We'd get limos full of meth and strippers. And that was my indoctrination into the work world. So they'd have these power sales meetings in the morning, six o'clock in the morning sales meeting because the stock market at different hours from New York. And they'd have like these high producing brokers, chewing eyes popping up their heads like they were on Coke. and our boss Ronnie looked like a mafia dumb and they were like

you're only as big as your numbers on this board for the month smiling brokers make the most money we had to have mirrors to smile in pacing brokers make the most money we had 24 foot curly cords so everyone was pacing all the time if you're calling your wives

if you're calling your girlfriends other brokers are calling your clients and they pound the board look at these numbers on the board how big are you on the bar for the above almost knocking the board off the wall and we were like fresh in the workforce

young people like this was like military style marine style indoctrination crystal meth is for closers they would tell you yeah I didn't

I wasn't on the meth in the beginning but towards the end of the five years when I was introduced to meth that made my sales go through the roof because my aggression, instead of asking for $10,000 on the phone, I asked for $100,000 on the phone. And that works. That kind of audacity works in sales, I think. Yeah. Wow. Yeah. So are you sniffing it and then going to work or are you smoking it? Primarily, I was sniffing it and eating it. Yeah. What do you consume? How do you eat meth?

Throwing your mouth, chew it and swallow it. Mm. It doesn't taste very nice. Yeah, I can't imagine. And I ended up with like, I think I've probably had stomach ulcers or something at one point. Is this biker dope? Is it speed or is this now like the shit they get from Mexico? All right. So we're going back to my introduction to meth was about 96, 97. So yeah, there was still biker dope then. There was bathtub crank.

There was pink champagne. There was yellow lemon drop. And then we started to get it from the Mexicans later on from California eventually. Were you doing coke before meth though? I was never a fan of Coke. too mild sure go balls go bigger go home dude yeah yeah sure okay I was never a drinker I went straight to chemicals but that was ecstasy and speed and with the coke when it came to coke versus meth you're just doing lines and lines of coke meth just one rail

yeah superhuman for the whole I got my shit question I've got a disclaimer here I now work in drugs education in schools and skirt the living day out of kids. With the horrors of the jail, our piles jail so they won't get involved in drugs and drugs. I'm not trying to

glamorize what I did. That's okay. We'll put a disclaimer. Thanks. We're going to take that part out. You bastard. Wow.

So you're fucking 26 years old, rich for a 26 year old, half a million bucks a year. Yeah. Do you feel like you've made it? I mean, this is incredible. I've got twin turbo, Mazda RX7,

like a fast and furious one with the bow surround system and this blue metallic paint that changes call it. I'm not traffic lights and I'm on meth. And I'm blasting like Commander Tom, German techno. And everyone's like looking at the motor saying, yeah, show us what it could do. Show us what it could do. As soon as the light changes, it's like a spaceship. That was the meaning of life to me at that age.

And God, you must have loved America. Look at what it's done for me. And the English accent, the women. You get laid now. The English accent. Yeah, that's what it is. You can fool a lot of women. I know a lot of women that complained about the fucking STDs they got from these British blokes with these kind accents.

Oh, dear. So, and there's nothing. It's all material. It's a perfect American immigrant success story because it's completely vacuous. It's all based on materialism and drugs and the high. Until wild man arrives. And it just completely drastically changes. It gets worse.

it goes to the next level and there's nothing yet until he arrives Okay Yeah So you brought wild man over Yeah What about your other friend Hamie comes later on

Okay And he's the one who I leave with the safe And he's supposed to stay for a month But that trip ends abruptly Yeah Did you expect to Live out your life in America Did you expect to become a citizen?

Yeah Did you get your citizenship? All my marriages never lasted long enough Oh, you were marrying for the green car No, but incidentally, they never lasted long enough. Yeah, how could they? How could they? We couldn't.

We were unstable. Yeah, I'll say. I'll say. So, Wildman comes over. What is the plan with him? So I want to get him a job as a wrestler. I'm still idealistically thinking this. I get him a shared house near the Georgian dragon British pub in Central Phoenix,

thinking he'll just have a peaceful drink with the expats while I focus on getting him employment. What happens is me and my girlfriend go over there one night and a bunch of Mexicans open the door and I say, where's Peter? And they're looking at us like, no Peter. Like, yeah, Peter lives here. Where's Peter? No Peter, no Peter.

And we can see they've got guns. So me and my girlfriend start backtracking across the road. And Wildman just bounces across the road all happy. I'm like, Peter, what's happened to your place? We could have got shot there. What's going on? And he said, they're the local crack dealers.

They like to move around a lot. They're buzzing because I can do a $100 crack rock in one breath. It goes sizzle, sizzle, sizzle, sizzle, tingle, and it calms down my red dots. So they're giving me as much free crack as I want while they stay in my place. And I'm over here in their place. And the one at the back is from Columbia. He's running them and he wants to invest in the stock market.

So not only is Wildman better for society when he's high on crack, he's not thinking about killing people. He's just found you a client. This is a good, like the Cali Cartel. This is a good friend. Wow. Okay. A client I can do without.

So this guy ends up being part. You find out this guy's part of the company organization. No, I have no clue because they don't volunteer that information. No, of course. But I've written a series of books about Escobar and the Cali cartel. And it was that Cali cartel dominated the export of the white around that period of time. So I assume there might have been. Right, because by 95, 96, Medellin is basically disbanded as an organization.

Pablo Escobar's dead. Right. And now Collie is the juggernaut. They're the biggest cartel on earth. So this makes sense. Wow. Okay, so what becomes of this? So a month later, my aunt calls me at the office and says,

Peter's place is headline news. Someone's been shot dead. There's yellow tape around it. You need to get your ass up there. It might be him. He might be dead. So I sped up there in my RX7, see all the people, police tape, cops, media.

I got sketched out, went back to work. and I waited until later in the day when that had all calmed down. So there was blood on the doorstep. I go into the living room and there's a homicide detective talking to Peter. And we had a conversation with the homicide detective. The homicide detective told me one of the most horrific stories I've ever heard in my life. I don't know if you wanted me to give you that as an aside. Okay.

Once that all is all finished, I say, and the homicide detective's gone, I say to Peter, what happened? And he said, a couple came over to buy crack from the Mexicans, but the Mexicans are back over the street. So the female went over the street to buy the crack, leaving the mail with me. And the male had a gun on him. And I said to him, I'm from England.

I don't know how guns work. Can you show me how guns work? And he said, yeah, the safety's on and pull the trigger and shot himself in the head. Yeah. There you go. This is America, folks. and just died right in front of him on the step. Yeah.

Yeah, well, I mean, look, it was going to happen one way or the other if you're that stupid. Interesting. Yeah. Okay. No problem. No harm or foul. It's just a crackhead. How do you eventually, how the fuck do you go from a drug addict but legitimate businessman to

you know what later becomes you know heavily involved in drug trafficking so that took four years was it progressive would you say like looking back on it it was a slippery slope all right so wild man's first visit the mayhem just escalates from last story i told you until he's living in rancho marietta which is in tempi and we've took over this apartment how's he making a living He doesn't make a living. Any amount of money he put in front of him, he spends it right away, and any amount of drugs you put in front of him,

which consumes right away. He isn't even safe to drive. I've told people don't let him drive. And one guy, one of my bounces let him drive, and he just tried to drive it into oncoming traffic right away. Yeah. So anyway, at this apartment complex, Rancho Marietta, wow, man invites in all the homeless people,

all the local crackheads, the strip of tease girls, the Native American, transgender, streetwalks, prostitutes, the gangbangers, the Russian mafia, Mexican mafia. Everyone's in there. And that is where I meet the connections for my criminal enterprise. He gets deported for being a minister's society and banned from America for life. As he should.

And he's gone then for a couple of years. While I'm building, building, building. So do you, I mean, were you released? that he had left, this guy that's bringing chaos into your life? Or did you not think like that? Like, was your life chaotic enough to where, like, it was just kind of natural to have such a psychopath around you? Because I bonded with him at such a young age, it was like, if someone walked in the room, me and Wildman could read each other's minds and we would know what was going to happen next. Like, if he was going to knock this person out, or if he was going to

like this person, I could just tell. When he was about to do something, his eyebrow would go up. His face would stay completely calm, but one eyebrow would just go up. And that meant he was going to do something insane. So to answer your question then, it ran much deeper than it just him being an irritant with his crazy behavior. It was like we were almost one mind. He would say to me, I am you and you are me.

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as you were still working as a stock broker? Yeah. Okay. Yeah, because, you know, you're, I don't know, you know, stock broking is not always this consistent pile of money. You know, it's got vagaries and, you know, it ebbs and flows. But why did you choose to sell drugs? Were you not, was the money, was the money drying up in stocks?

There's a thing called Bob's burnt out broker syndrome. So when you're going full tilt on meth and you're in, the office all day and you're making all that money. It gets to a point where you just feel completely burnt out. And then Wildman came over, which opened the release valve for me just to go full on partying. And I made a decision, do I want to stay in a rat race and work these long hours? Hmm, actually, we've tried to test the ecstasy market while Wildman was there.

And that experiment turned out to be very, very, fruitful. I thought there's an arbitrage opportunity here. I can go full on in that direction. And that's what I did. But there was some, that's also, I was still a stopbrook when I met the New Mexican Mafia guys. And there was like a turning point in my life at that point because I saw some horrific things that happened with them. You saw murders? I'll give you an example, then. So I was at the office one day. And I had a guy dealing ecstasy for me called Fish in Ranch Marietta. By now we've got multiple apartments in that complex we're utilizing. So partying in one, selling out of another, stash house another. So Fish calls me and he says, can you grab

Wildman and Seth? We've got a situation. Seth was another broker, really big guy, started hanging out with Wildman, got on the Meph, and threw a computer at our boss and got fired. So then he was full time hanging out with wild men after that. So I said, right, I'll try and get him and I'll come right over. By the time I got over there, Fish and his girlfriend answered the door. She's crying, and I think someone's done something to her, and they want Wildman to beat the guy up. And then I hear this noise. Zzz.

And I'm like, what's that coming from the other room? They'll let your best go look. So walk into this room. And there's a guy I've met through Wild Man's apartment parties. We'll call him Alex. He's got stately silver sweptback her, older Mexican-American-looking guy. A bunch of Mexican guys is giving them orders in Spanish. They've all got cattle prods.

And there's a naked, hog-tied man with a rockabilly quiff on the floor. And when he gives the instruction in Spanish, they electrocute him. Piss shoots out of his dick. his eyes almost shoot out of his head. He's gagged so he can't like make too much noise. And he just looks terrified. So seeing that in Scarface, that kind of thing,

but then walking into it, it's a bit different. It's visceral, isn't it? I was crapping myself. I've never ever claimed to be a gangster. I'm a business studies graduate, a stopbroker gone wild. I had gangsteritis.

I've watched too much scarface type stuff. And I'm seeing this. now and it's the real world and I'm crapping myself. So I'm thinking if they see I'm crapping myself, I'm a liability. I've got to put on a brave face here. So I'm looking at Alex and he's just giving me this welcome to the family smile. So I say, looks like you've got the situation under control. I'll tell wild man, he doesn't need to come or if you need any help, you know, let us know.

And I've got to get back to work. And he was cool with that. And I just walked out of that room. heart going like crazy fish and his girlfriend are there and I'm like what's going on man what's going on and he said the guy on the floor was one of my customers as you know I'm selling your product I'm also selling product for them the guy came broke in you stole your product you stole their product I called you I call them and they got here first so I'm driving back to work thinking that guy's probably going to get killed or something wow yeah but

What happened was I later found out they contacted his roommates and said 10 grand or he's getting taken out to the desert and they paid up. Yeah, I mean, you must have felt like you're getting in over your head. I did. Well, I still didn't decide not to go down that road. I parked a car in the car park at the stop brokerage and the boss's secretary. She's getting in her car. And I'm counting excessy cash on my lap. And the next day, the boss calls me into the office.

And he says, Sean, you're on a crossroads of your life right now. You can keep doing the hard work and build on your success and go up here. Have a nice house in Paradise Valley. Like, you've always dreamed of. Or you can go down here in his eyes wide and like, you're going to go to hell basically. He knew. Wow. He could just see it in your, I mean, I'm sure you look like shit.

You know, people on drugs that think they're getting away with it are like, I'm fooling everyone. And everyone, people are like, what are you talking about? there's fucking a bird nest in your hair. I've looked at pictures from then. I do look a bit like a Moby on crack. Yeah. Were you bald back then? Yeah.

Oh, that's hilarious. So, God damn. So does that affect your performance then? Being on drugs and then spending part-time dabbling and, well, not really dabbling, but really like selling ecstasy, does that fuck up your stockbroking? And when do you eventually have to leave that? My heart was gone from the same. stop broken.

Yeah. So I just let it all crumble and walked away from it. I, in one day, I left my house, my girlfriend and my job, I moved into a secure high rise in downtown Phoenix and didn't let anyone I work with know what had happened. It got to the point where one of them called my parents and said that my car had been found burnt out in Mexico. and my parents were really panicked and they didn't have a way to get hold of me

because I was going off the grid into this underworld and they thought I was dead. But what is, why? Why did you do that? Because of my criminality. I wanted to sever all ties and go into the underworld without anyone being able to trace me.

But as a challenge? Because they didn't want to get arrested. Okay, but why even go down that road in the first place if you've got, if you've made a lot of money as a stockbroker, why not just quit and then, you know, figure out the next best thing in the legal world? Pablo Ascabar was worth billions and his brother Roberto said, why don't we just buy our own island and kick back and retire and we won't get killed and we won't spend the rest of our lives

in prison? And Pablo Askeba said, I put the president of Colombia in power. I've got thousands of people working for me, I'm running it, and you want me to just kick back on some island, it's ego. The answer is ego. I didn't need the money. I had a lot of money in the stock market. I thought I was living in a movie.

I'd say to my mates, we're living in a movie now, like port fiction, something like that. We thought we were characters. And the more drugs we did, the more our ego's inflated. And I surrounded myself with people doing equally insane behavior.

And we all reinforced that delusion Yeah. That's right. Delusion is what it is. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. I find these stories incredible because I never did drugs while I was a drug dealer. It's probably what made me really good at it. And, you know, even though I was good at getting away, I was really conscious of what I was doing, you know. But if you look at successful drug traffickers, it all drug addiction almost always accompanies it. Wouldn't you agree? I don't think I've talked to one. I mean, Chapo Guzman was a, you know, I think he would pretty sure he was a cokehead, you know, up to the highest drug lords. It almost always, maybe not those guys from Collie. They were like the shrewdest criminals you can get. But, you know, who knows? Underneath that, that veneer, it's probably some dark, dark behavior. That makes sense.

You're living in a delusion. That's perfectly said. You're 27 or 28 when you walk away. When you go away from stockbroking. Yeah, when you go. 96, 97. I was born in 68. Okay, so you're 28 years old.

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The big boys have got the green and the white lockdown. I don't go stepping on their toes. Because when I did form an alliance with the New Mexican Mafia, we were getting things off them for our people, and they were getting things off me for their people. And it worked out perfectly because of the new Mexican mafia. we were all the stuff we were getting was opposites.

Right. Okay. So what were you getting for them? So for them, I was getting the E. The first time. So when I walked into the house the first time, the guy who answered the door looked at me and he's like,

basically we'd help this guy's brother escape from the cops one night. He'd pulled a gun on a cop in a party place that we had. The cop had smelled weed from. outside and said no one move and he was about to call cops and this guy just puts a gun to the cop's face and says the only one who's not leaving is you motherfucker, everybody run. So we all run off into the night.

This is that same complex rancho Marietta. I ran to Fishy's apartment, the guy who, from the earlier story, Fish is dealing for me the cops are going to come here. We need to flush our shit. He's shitting himself. Next thing, bam, bam, bam on the French window. And it's

G-dog, the guy pulled the gun. And he schooled us. He's like turn the lights off they can't get a warrant that fast if they knock on the door just don't answer turn the TV off and that's what we did and the cops came they went and I said to him I've got a house in Phoenix you're too hot here let's go and do some meth and shoot some pool and we did and we bonded and at the end of it he said cause you and your friends helped me me and my brothers have got your back and then it was so many months later I went to the house with the lowriders outside of it the brother answers the door mean face here's my English accent and lightens up a bit

because they're very suspicious. Takes me through to the living room. They've got a rocket-propelled grenade launcher on the TV. There's all kinds of scales and all kinds of weapons and slabs of this, slabs of there. They were doing the Coke, the crystal meth, and a hydroponic weed, which were things that we utilized,

but we didn't mass market. I was mass market in mostly the ecstasy, but I could also get ketamine, acid, mushrooms and things like that. So the first time they all... I mean, these guys were all in the, you know, wife beat a vest,

big tattooed Mexican-American guys the chains on, looking at me like they wanted to eat me. And it was always so lethal in there. I always wanted to get out fast. But the night they did ecstasy for the first time, they ran out and they said, come back and bring more.

So I go in there while they're all blazed on ecstasy. And they were all smiling. and picking me up like big sweaty teddy birds and trying to tell... We love the French, yo. Trying to tell me their life stories. Yeah. Do what Cholos like you?

They really like you. That was the only night they liked me. It went back to lethal every time I went over there. Okay, so it sounds like you were supplying them. They would supply you if you had like a Coke deal or a weed deal or whatever. But you wanted to focus on ecstasy.

This is going to be your million dollar racket. Yeah. Who are you getting it from at this time? All right. So there was a guy called Acid Joey, who was another friend of mine, dear friend who's dead, stocky Navajo guy, but he was the best dancer. The reason I clicked up with him,

I saw a circle of people around him watching him dance. It was like his body was fluid. He should have been in music videos. I waited until he went outside, and I said, I want whatever you're on. And he could get like 50 to 100 max of XC pills. some local dealers. He found out where they were getting from out of L.A.

So two car loads of us went to L.A. to test a bigger deal like 500,000 to 1,000. There was Seth, there was Asid Joey in one car, and me and Walman and the other. All those guys are dead now. And we get to this guy's house, and he's not there?

Wildman's like, I'm just going to fucking smash his door in and take his fucking shit. Who the fuck does he think he is leaving us, fucking out here. I'm like, keep the wild man under control guys. Come on, though. And the guy showed up. You see that movie Point Break?

Oh, my God. Of course. That's every American kids bar mitzvah. He was with a bunch of surf a gangster dudes. I'd already been pre-instructed to go in on my own. So I say to Wildman, look, if I'm not out in like 15 minutes, then kick the fucking door in.

Because I didn't know what I was getting into. So I go in. And I said, can I try a pill? because I always chew my stuff without a drink so I can taste it because I know what actually tastes like he's like do you want to drink I'm like no I don't want to chase it I'm just going to chew it

and I chewed it and it tasted right and he brings out the biggest bag of pills I've ever seen so far in my career and I hand over the bills and I remember the pill hitting me on the drive home this was before I had any fucking smarts about smuggling I'm in my twin turbo

with the first seat we've got Renaissance Sasha and digweed playing on the surround sound and the ecstasy kicks in and I just feel the fur tickling the back of my head. Sure. Next thing my eyes are rolling, I'm going to like 120 miles an hour in this twin turbo driving out with no, if I had it got pulled over then, it would have all ended right then.

Yeah, it would have saved you. Would have saved me. Yeah. So, yeah. Wow. So now you've got an LA connection. What do you pay? What is a pill cost?

If you buy like a thousand ecstasy pills, a boat of ecstasy is they? call it. What does that, what did that cost you back then in LA? The old terminology was introduced into Arizona through the Gravano Enterprise. Oh, really? Yeah. So back then, we called them flyers before the boats. Flyers. Yeah, like rave flyers. Okay. Yeah. So a flyer in the clubs was going for 25 to 30. If I'm buying a thousand out of L.A., depending upon how well I know the person, because I ended up with a few L.A. connects. Like, anywhere from like 8 to 12, it varied around there.

I would say. That's your price. This was back in the 90s, middle 90s. Okay, so that's a middleman price. That's not a very, that's not a great price for what I know the real top dogs were paying. Yeah. We're getting for like two bucks a pill. Well, that's why I started to go to Holland. Right. So how long did that take you? That took me, that out. That took me a year or so. Okay. Yeah. Did, and what kind of bank roll did you have to go over there with? Like, did you have a, I couldn't leave the country because I was an illegal alien. Right. So you can't leave America. No. So how did that connection get going? Well, first of all, how did you build up?

You've got a connection in L.A. now. How do you build up the business in a world like ecstasy where it's all depends. Your profit margin really comes from the sales directly to those people at the rave that are paying $25 or $30 a pill? So how do you level up? Because you certainly have workers now. you're not you're not you're not you're about the peak of it no no how do you build it up to where you're now how do you expand so ecstasy was in very high demand we couldn't get enough to sell okay so we had to go through holland for that reason as well instead of getting a thousand to five

thousand now i can get tens of thousands and then at the peak of it you know it's costing me at like you know, $2 now. Yeah. Two, three dollars with the costs of smugglers and legal costs, that kind of things. So let's just say I'm, with all my costs of smugglers and everything, let's say it's $3. It's costing me. I've got, I've divided it like a corporation.

I'm drawing on my business studies degree now. So I've got the heads of all the different factions of the corporation. So a head of a faction might get $5,000 on tick. for 10 and I'm paying free. So seven is my profit times five. But if I'm bringing in tens of thousands per shipment and I've got a dozen factions, for example, the largest amount we ever brought in was 40,000

in computer towers through Mexico. My profit on that was hundreds and hundreds of thousands. Yeah, because over 12 people, 35,000 a shot, you know, it's 450,000 of you right there. They had a lawyer to do this documentary with the Gravano's, that's coming out in January in America. They had a lawyer go over my paperwork and ask me questions to ascertain my profit.

I'd never done that before. And they calculated it was at least $5 million and the street value of the drug sold was in the tens of millions. Sure. Because I had quite a long run. The Gravano's didn't have a very long run. They were in and out and arrested.

Really? But my run went from 96, 97 to May 16, 2002. Right. So even though the deals weren't massive, over time it added up. It added up. Yeah. So how long does it take to turn for your, your bosses in the corporation to turn over 40,000

ecstasy pills? It would depend on the amount of raves that were going on at the time, the demand from the clubs, the strip clubs, the gay bars. We had all that lockdown. Wow. Yeah. So did that? And so it was there.

Within weeks. It was their responsibilities to give it to workers in those places. Exactly. It would pass him out. Exactly. Okay. Gotcha. So, yeah, you were out of there.

You were invisible at this point. Started out with me just hawking them myself in the parties. Yeah. And now I'm in a million dollar house on the side of a mountain in Tucson. Down the road is down the mountain range is Paul McCartney, incidentally now. It's back in my life. Wow. Yeah, no shit, right, yeah.

Liverpool in the house. One of my neighbors, what was it, Bananao Senior was one of my neighbors as well. Wow. Yeah. Wow. And you're a 30-year-old kid? Yeah. Yeah.

Was that your first million? Was that in the ecstasy? Or did you actually become a millionaire off stockbroking? I invested in 30,000 shares of a company called Pacific Satellite Nonsatra, around $5 a share. And during the dot-com bubble, it went up to over 50. And that was just one of my holdings? And you were putting ecstasy money behind it, or this is before the X?

I would fly people from the UK. And I had like a spider's web. of bank accounts, credit accounts, car loans, house rentals, stock market accounts. We had investments in clothing, rave clothing, music stores. So there was this spider's web. It was just like a money go around to London. Yeah. But you really got your money into those stocks and you hit that arbitrage.

Yes. Wow. Do you think you made more money doing that than actually in the sale of the ecstasy? I think during the dot-com bubble, me and my wife would wake up and we'd look at where the stock market was. And I'd be up like six figures on the day from the previous day. But that all collapsed as well. That collapsed almost as soon as the drugs did.

It all collapsed together and my psychology collapsed as well. Right. Wow. Wow. Yeah. Wow. Yeah, so did you cash out or were you holding the bag in terms of stocks when the bubble collapsed in, I think, 2001 or something? So not only a lot of it was spent.

And I'm glad because the cops would have took everything anyway. But I was cranking it on margin and trading options. So it was geared. So when the market fell, my stuff got wiped. Wow. Yeah. How you made your connection in Holland. Why is Holland just the rudimentary American that knows something about drugs and crime knows that the Netherlands is the spot where they make the X, right?

I don't know about today. I think it's a little different because it's kind of MDMA. But why was Holland specifically in the 80s, 90s, 2000, the spot for global ecstasy manufacturing? I don't know. Okay. I just grew up. I just grew up with everyone's, the pills were always from Holland. that's what they told us, white doves, Eurodollars, Mitsubis,

I don't know what caused Holland to become the hub, but it was the hub. How did you make your first connection there? So because I couldn't leave the country, I sent people from my enterprise to Holland to get samples. We bought testing kits from a website called Dance Safe. And when you test the pill, it turns just like blue-purple and you know the pill should be 100, 125 milligrams of MDMA and clay. Yes, that's how we ascertained what was pure. That's simple, just something you order on the internet.

Yeah. And I'm sure it wasn't hard to find a purveyor over there. No, they just went out to the clubs and met the dealers. It was really easy. Yeah. And then we brought samples back and we experimented with smuggling methods. Okay, tell us about that. So we had stock market annual reports hollowed out and pills

glued into the stock market annual reports. That was one of the methods we used. How many pills can you get overdoing that, though? We're not at the big... Sure. We're just testing and... Yeah, sure, sure. Like hundreds and hundreds of low thousands.

Okay. Yeah. We had people with them strapped to the bodies, coming through customs, we're strapped for the bodies. In the end, we lost a few people at airports, and that's when we got advised. to bring them through Mexico.

Okay, tell us about Mexico. How did the operation work? How did you get it from Holland to port in Mexico? All right. So we had to pave the way in Mexico first because I realized there was danger down there. And I know now, you know, from researching my books, that all of Mexico's divided into plazas

and you've got to be good with the locals to smuggle through it. So I sent wild man and wild woman down there to pave the way. my friend said if they behave like they behaved in america the mexicans will kill them and there were some situations but they did pave the way who's wild woman so wild woman's done two interviews on my channel and she stopped because she doesn't want to relive it but she is from liverpool a scouser extremely tough in fact the cops i've got surveillance footage of her

chasing wild man down the street with like fans trying to smash his head in. They were both extremely violent people. Were they in a relationship? Yeah. Okay. Collectively called the wild ones. Yeah. This all makes sense.

They're perfect for each other, quite literally. Well, they weren't trying to kill each other or kill other people. So romantic, though. Now, you set them down there just blind? Yeah. To get the blessing to move product through? Was that the idea? Well, they were hot as well in Arizona, so there was multiple reasons.

So I sent them down there with a guy who finds them a place to stay. There's no telephone communication for us either with them. We've just got pages and things like that. And I send him back with supplies a week later, and he says, the house has been blown up. The Mexicans have killed them. And I think, oh, my God, he's terrified. He said, I got the hell out of there. I don't want to die.

blah blah blah so i had a guy working for me we can call him frankie flowers or something he was an ex u.s military sniper chicano guy spoke spanish knew what was up and he went down there and he talked to the locals and ascertained that the wild man's on you know they just moved in they'd had a fight and they stopped for a cigarette break and the gas pipes aren't as strong as in England and America so during the fight a gas pipe had cracked and when they stopped for the smoke break a wall of blue a carpet of blue flame just emerged

and he grabbed her and as they're leaving the front door it's just like out of the movies just the windows all and then they said just like this prehistoric like pump fire engine came Wow. Ages later, which didn't. They're passing buckets of water like a movie from the 1950s. Yes.

Hilarious. Wow. Wow. Okay. So when did you, how did this resolve? How did you figure out, you know, who to talk to? Because those are drug routes that are controlled by whatever cartel is operating in that plaza. Yeah.

So we found out just through the course of doing the show that drug routes mean they come in, they kill a bunch of people that pay off the military and the cops. Now they own that route. And then guys like you are paying them attacks to move products safely through. Is that accurate in your experience? At the peak of it, they were running wild man around in military jeeps, calling him L.O. So de Burr because of his fighting style. And he paid everyone off with ecstasy and acid. He was paying off military. Everyone down there that was local, he was paying off with ecstasy and acid.

And the military didn't come in. I mean, these were like cartel, like guys who wanted to do business with us. They wanted me to start collaborating with them with Coke, which wasn't my thing. I was just like playing along just to get the ecstasy through there. Wow. But they were in awe of Wellman because he had no fear of anybody. Wow. Yeah.

He, we had a big shipment coming in. And I was telling everyone to lay low and just behave themselves. And Wildman comes storming into the condo. with a crack rock and he opens it I've just been fucking ripped off I said Peter calm down it's a $10 crack rock I don't care if it's a $10 000 crack rock or 10 fucking thousand

ecstasy pills nobody fucking rips me off and his eyebrows up here and his veins are popping out of his head he's a big guy 29 and a half stone one stone is 14 pounds and he was six foot two when he died

29thstone like this fucking big not a bodybuilder, just like... He was shaped like a bur. Yeah. Shaped like a bur. And he's like, well, take me back to this guy.

I'm like, Pete, if I take you back, promise you won't do anything. Driving down the main street, there's cops on that side of the road, there's cops on the other side of the road, as the dealer's ripped him off. I'm like, Peter, there's cops everywhere.

If you do anything, I'm out of here. I'm not going to do anything. I'm not going to do anything. Vehicle comes in slowly to this bus stop. He uses the motion of the vehicle to smash the crack dealer's head into the bus stop pole and knocks him out and jumps out

and just start mulling him like he's like doing this burthing and I just took off. So I get back to Wild Woman and another one of my guys, Cody Bates, who's also dead. And we're like, we're going to have to bail him out of jail now. The cops surely are going to have him for this. He did it right in front of him. And we're just getting ready to send Cody up to the jailhouse.

And Wildman just walks in. Why did you drive off, you fucking bastard? Like, Peaches just did that in front of all of the police. They're all fucking mates of mine. I'm giving them ecstasy and trips and fucking... Yeah. So he had it like that. Wow, he had it like that.

Towards the end of it, he didn't have it like that. There was a local guy whose mom was with the Mur. The what? The Mur, M-A-Y, M-A-Y, M-A. The guy who runs things, the local Mur. Oh, the mayor. Gotcha. Yeah, yeah.

And her son... Did you ever lose that accent when you were over there? I tried to maintain it. My original accent, you wouldn't understand. Yeah, I don't think so. My original accent was fish, chips and peas, love, salt and vinegar. That's why I had to change. Yeah.

So, wild man hired the son of this woman who was dating the Mur to go on a trip to Holland. he was tweaked out and getting high on the supply and he was dropping pills. I don't know the full story, but this is what Wildman told me, but he got busted. And then it turned for them down there. They ended up living on the beach.

And they just knocked back over the border before 9-11. How did you get the ecstasy to Mexico? How did they, did they all that side handle it? Did you have any involvement or any input? No, no, we handled everything. Wow. Okay, tell me about it. So when we had a few people busted internationally, bringing it into America, we consulted a lawyer and the lawyer is like, here's what you've got to do.

And he was the one who explained to us about, you know, spring break and flights and routes and Hermesia Airport and all that kind of thing. Wow. So I rented a beach front property on the Sea of Cortez, which the wild man's demolished. and the owner of that became a witness against me in my grand jury indictment. Well, that's later in the story. Got this beachfront condo down there where now I can go and party.

And we've got flights going from Armacio to Mexico City. From Mexico City, it's France to Paris and then the train to Holland. Because flying out of Holland is the red flag for ecstasy. Right. So if you're coming from Paris or London, it's more secure. They're not looking at you as hard.

Exactly. So then they come back from Paris, Mexico City. Hang on, hang on. How do they load the ecstasy? They're just checking it in their luggage. It's just before 9-11. Right. We had people who just put them in pillow cases in their luggage.

But if you want it to be more secure, like some like computer towers. Right. Yeah. Literally that's it. And then they just check their bag and they put it under the plane. Yeah, but after 9-11, everything changed. You couldn't do that. Of course.

So they'd fly then. Earth, France, Mexico City, Mexico City, Irma Cio. Hermesio then we would switch a room. So we've got this property in Porta Penaeusco, Rocky Point. Pills would be brought down there, especially at spring break. That was ideal, you know.

Totally. So so many gringoes around. We've got these SUVs, University of Arizona stickers, diving tanks. Get the whole back story. Yeah. student looking people,

clean cut. And if it's backed up, you know, they're getting through. We never lost anyone for bringing it in. Who did you send to drive it over the border?

Are these also like white Arizonans? Yeah, they had to be the most clean cut. Cody Bates, who became my right-hand guy who's dead now, he just looked like

some preppy, clean cut. He was getting pulled over all the time with loads. And he just talked to the cops. Yeah. Get out of it. Sounds a lot like my story, man.

And remember, I'm not supposed to leave the country because I'm an illegal alien. I was going into Mexico because I knew I'm a white person and when I got to the border, I are you a US citizen? Yeah, and I flashed my driver's license. Have a nice day. Yeah, you didn't need a passport back then. Didn't need jack shit.

Wow. Yeah. How much would you pay these mules? So it would depend upon their circumstances. Some of them were in debt to me. So it would cancel debts. Some would be paid thousands. And they were buzzing just to get a trip to Holland.

They were competing to go. Wow. Wow. So you really are running a continuing criminal enterprise. I was charged with that. Yeah. I bet you were. There was over 200 people involved.

Wow. Over 100 were arrested in separate groups eventually. Wow. Yeah. So how many you think you're bringing in like one run from Holland every month? It's sporadic. It depends. how fast they go.

Yeah. Whether there's any dramas, whether there's, you know, situations, because situations did arise, like when the Gravano's entered the market. Okay, so tell us about that. Tell us about it. For people that don't know

or not aware that can't remember the history of Sammy Gravano, most people don't know that after he turned state's evidence against John Gotti famously in 1991 or 92, whenever it was, Gotti goes to prison for life,

the mafia is never the same he goes into witness protection but gets shipped to Arizona but I think a couple years later this is maybe seven, eight years later he decides to get to the ecstasy game so we've got the locals locked down

and that's by virtue of there was a lot of competing clicks in the Arizona rave scene I'd pull up in my twin turbo and they'd be asking me questions and they start calling me the Bank of England So I started to invest in their projects or if they had beefs, then we'd call them in. Me and Wildman would adjudicate and settle their beefs.

But through these relations, that's how I had a couple hundred local people working for me. So any information, even when I was not hawking the pills myself, any information, any dramas, any outsiders trying to come in, all information flows to the top very rapidly when you've got that many local people working for you. So what happened was a new kind of Exeter dealer appeared just like these steroid head jot type characters that didn't look like us.

Italians. Guineas. Yes. Gindaloons. In the leopard print polyester shirts and the tight pants and the buzzed haircuts. Right. And this was

late 19. The gold chains and the perfume. You smell the cologne. That's where you know. They're from Bensonhurst, Brooklyn. This is late 90s now. And I'm thinking, who are these guys, you know, stepping on our toes?

Right. And I was married to a woman who was bisexual. She was doing a lesbian internet poem when I met her. She joined a strip club just so she could just seduce the stripper that she fancied. But anyway, she was in a lesbian relationship with a female who was in a heterosexual relationship with one of these steroid head jock. dealers right so through to females a meeting was arranged at a bar called heart five in tucson and then i meet these guys and um one's amicable they're playing nice and nasty this is a spaniard

in this big six-n-half-foot blondehood jock and um the bottom line is they want me to start collaborating with them and i say i've got a good reputation for my press is from holland why i wouldn't want to be peddling your colored pills. The big guy jumps out. Who the fuck do you think you are disrespecting our pills? One call to Sammy the bull and we can have you taken out to the desert. Did you know who Sammy the bull was? Yeah, from the news.

But I thought he was blowhardened. Because people just throw names out all the time, don't they? I'm Russian mafia. I'm Mexican mafia. I know the cartel. I know the Italian mafia. Did you know that Sammy was like the most famous rat in the world? That he shouldn't be doing anything?

No. All I knew. this is the 90s. I don't know if all that was out at that point about him. I think that all get exposed later on. No, no,

that was all common knowledge. Oh, yeah. They had pictures of him on the stand in the front of Time magazine. Yeah. Because I was dealing with him

while he was in witness protection. That's right. Yeah, I wasn't paid attention to the news anymore once I went into the underworld. Right. So. But you knew that he was a mobster.

Yeah. I knew about Gotti and the murders and the takeover and all that stuff. So, I've, got a security guy there with me who's my bodyguard and I've previously said to him you know if these guys tried to kidnap me open up on the motherfuckers and he's saying to me as we're walking out who are they what what are they about and I'm like the claiming Sammy the bull and he said wow

that's fucking big time mental mafia murder multiple murder stuff and I said well the spaniard was actually quite nice diplomatic and I said to them it's not each other we're want to worry about because we can sell as much as we get. That's the demand is so high. It's the feds. Since you guys have been running around, your runners are in the raves, bragging you, the biggest XC barons in the world, all loud and flash.

The cops are coming in, pretending to be people from out of state trying to set a bus. You've got cop cars, filming license plates. You've lit the scene up. It's not sure we need to worry about. It's the fence. And that's how that meeting ended.

But then my top sales guy, Skinner, he's in real name. His nickname was Scully, which he uses in the document. That's going to come out in January, his real name anyway. He gets lured to a nightclub in Scottsdale by a faction, we assumed, of their organization. We weren't 100% short at the time. And they take him into the men's room and take his product and knock his teeth out, take his money, take his gun, everything.

So that was the point then where I realized. something heavy is going on. Wow. So I moved then from Scottsdale to Sinvaccus in the Catalina foothills, in a gated guard. You can't even get up the street without a story calling your house. Cause of that threat. Yeah.

But the history of the Gravano's getting involved in the X-E-Ring is, now bear in mind, I'm operating out of the shadows, and they're trying to operate out of the shadows. So it's not like we're all volunteering who we are. So I didn't understand the dynamics at that, that time of what was going on. All I knew is this name had been thrown out. Yeah.

But now I know the dynamics of it is the guy running the ecstasy ring before the Gravanos came on the scene as a guy called Mike Papa, one of the steroid head jocks, who later turns state witness against the Gravano's and goes into witness protection himself. He brings Gerard Gravano in and Karen Gravano in. Those are the kids? Yeah.

Okay. Sammy's not in. Sammy is upset with the kids have been in. But he's saying to them, I'll let you do so many deals. And they'll help you, but you've got to get out of it. And the cops catch him saying, I think they're asking for money for gas. Yeah, I'll give you $60 for gas or whatever, $60,000. He's putting money into the ecstasy.

So that's the witness they use against Sammy. Wow. Yeah. So was there a difference between the quality of ecstasy that you had and what Sammy's crew had? We call their pills colored wanka pills. I love it. And they were trying to arrange meetings with me and tax me. And I'm like, who do they think they are coming to Arizona when we're with all the locals?

And I've got the new Mexican mafia back in me. But was that with their pills worse than yours? What does the quality? Worse. Yeah, that's why we call them a wanker is that. Right, right. It's a British term. Okay.

I thought you called your pills that. I'm sorry. Okay. No, no, our pills were tested, we've tested. with Dance Safe, equipment, and all that. Right. And so you tested their pills too? You must have.

Yes. Okay. They were on the website, all over the website. Dance Safe had all the new pills. Every week they were updating the pills. Wow. Putting what's in them. That's fascinating.

So at one end, it's a very federally hot business. Like this is real Fed time if you get caught selling it on the distribution side. Yeah. But on the consumption side, Ecstasy was like the way that. pot is now. Like, you know, to put it on websites and to be able to freely test it means people aren't worried about getting caught doing it, right? Like, there's like a community of ecstasy users. Well, the purpose of dance safe was to save people from taking toxic substances so they wouldn't die. Would people take toxic ecstasy and die back then?

People have died from people putting things in ecstasy from the beginning of ecstasy. Wow. What would people put in it? so there's what was it dx something was one of them the substances everything from speed to rat poison oh yeah

speed wouldn't kill you necessarily but rat poison would wow it's rare that people do die off excessy but I mean perhaps now with fentanyl in the US maybe that's a little more prevalent but it does it's again it's a love drug

so it seems like it would be at least in the lower ends of the distribution in the consumption ladder, much more of a cooperative, peaceful kind of community. We had a health minister in the UK who got fired because he publicly announced that taking ecstasy was safer than horse riding. And it probably is. Statistically, yeah.

Yeah, of course. Okay, so yeah, really, they're selling shit product compared to yours, wankers, as you say. Well, wankas. Ego comes into it again back then. Whether it was shit or not, we would have. said it was shit because they were our rivals. Right. Okay, so, but nobody, it's America, nobody can tell you where to sell. Like I said, the only people you have to worry about in America are the cops.

Yes. And I stand by that. That's why I promise you they're bigger gangsters in Britain because you try that gangster shit in America. We're going to come get you and we're never going to let you out. So is there ever any other confrontations? Do you have dealers from your crew and dealers from his crew at the same rate? at the same time? So we broke in an agreement whereby they had the clubs,

like Axis radius in Scottsdale, and we had the raves, but if their people came, we wouldn't jack them. And if we went to their clubs, they wouldn't jack us. But there was so many different factions of them. So we might be dealing with this faction that's running access radius and have that agreement with them. but on the other extreme

another faction knocked my mate's teeth out so you're never sure what's happening but it got to the point where because Gerard Gravano himself told me this story when we were incarcerated he said

they had a bounty on me and a striptease girl had called it in I was at the crow bar gay bar in central Phoenix we were just chilling dancing I had wild man with me wild woman G-dog, whose brother was the New Mexico Mafia.

He was like one of my bodyguards. We had Cody Bates, who was the sensible one. And they all said, look, it's getting a bit moody here. Something's not right, and we need to leave. And as they were arriving, we just left. But he said, he told me that they were going to take me out to the desert and ransom me. And if the ransom wasn't paid, eliminate the competition. Wow.

And partially that was motivated because he was, living in the shadow of his dad. If you're a mafia kid, you got something to prove, haven't you? You got big shoes to fill. Yeah. Wow. Yeah.

So you had that kind of ego and bullshit. Did you ever meet Sammy while you were? I've never ever met Sammy or claim to have met Sammy. Wow. Yeah. But did you meet Gerard later or the daughter? We found out where they lived while we were still active. I had striptease girls infiltrate their house.

And we were ready to react. we were attacked. But you're, as you say, you're like me, you're a businessman. So you were going to have other people do the dirty work. Of course. Yeah. I tried it once. I didn't want to try it after that.

After he got his teeth knocked out, we located a house that was linked to that. And we all just strapped up and messed up and just kicked the door and just stormed into the house and took everything. Charging down the hall with a gun into an unknown situation, it took a lot of crystal meth and GHB for me to get my bravery up. I bet. But I realized I shouldn't be doing this. Yeah. Right.

Yeah. Yeah. It's scary. Doing violence is scary. Yeah. I'm not a violent person. You know how scared you are just to get in a fight? Like when you're a teenager,

think about like going to like rough somebody up for some money like you're a mob enforcer. Like most people can't do that. That's why that kind of violence, that shock really works because most people can't. can't fathom doing that to another human being. This is why it takes major indoctrination to get people to go fight wars overseas and kill people. It's a real anti-human. Which makes it even weird as to why I was attracted to Walmart because he was like that

from the get-go. I think looking back, and I've had therapy and stuff, I was obsessed with Marvel Comics with the Fantastic Four and thing. He was like the personification of that. Okay, so it's starting to get, it's bubbling. The feud between you and the Gravanoes are bubbling. Yeah, they've got a bounty out on me. I heard there's a bounty, but I don't know what's going on.

Someone tells me that they're offering 10,000 to have my head on a silver platter. That's how it was put to me back then. Wow. Yeah. What year is this now? 2000? This is about 99, I think, around then. Okay, so they took a fall pretty quickly.

I think 99 is when he got popped. Oh, was it? Yeah. Okay. So how long did that last? Did that end with the feds busting their crew? Or did you guys just kind of like work it out? No, if there was an uneasy, like, for example, we were in Rocky Point, and I've got my route

through Rocky Point. It was a spring break, and they sold out, and they came to me to re-up. Right. So there was times when we were working together, and then other times when it just turned nasty. Right. Yeah. Did they have the, where were they getting their stuff from, I wonder? I don't know.

Where was, I wonder where maybe LA, right? That weaker ecstasy stuff, Canadian ecstasy, whatever. There was a lot of wanker pills coming out of L.A. as well. Yeah. All right, maybe. Right. Gosh. So, but things moved pretty steady for you for five or six years.

That's a long run to be operating at such a high level. Yeah. The cops said the gravinals was like a flash in. pan. They did a lot in a short period of time, but I was like slow and steady. Yeah. Did you have an out plan? Did you see with all this?

I thought if I fly people over from the UK and put money in their names, if I get popped, my mates can bail me out. My parents will never find out. I can fuck off out the country. And the cops put a virus in my computer called a Netbus Trojan horse, which showed them the web of accounts. so they seized everything the day I was popped and they popped all my mates as well so I had no one to turn to and I got to contact my parents then for money

to get a lawyer. How did they first get all these warrants though? How did they start building the case? There was a grand jury indictment of 10 witness statements so there was the guy who owned the beachfront condo that the wild ones destroyed

there was a couple of wild ones related to situations there were some people who worked for the Gravano Enterprise who were trying to get their sentences reduced by giving information about me even though they didn't know what they were talking about. But the main witness was Skinner,

my top exe sales guy who had his teeth knocked out, because we were a little brother and big brother. And Wilman wasn't there. When I brought Wildman over, it was bigger brother. And I was hanging out with Wild Man more. And these are the things that can bring entire organizations down. Petty, like, jealousy over friendship.

Like, chick stuff. That's like girl stuff, dude. So he got so upset about Wild Man that he schemed against me. And he had a fire bomb launched at Wild Woman's apartment in Tempe while Wildman was in one of his federal deportation prisons. Come through the window, just missed her head. And then these Southside gangsters showed up and said, we're with Englandly show and we'll take you to safety.

You know, come in here, bring your product in here. They were going to rip her off. I didn't know they were messing with. She's like, I'm from fucking Liverpool. I don't know you from fucking Adam. You think I just got off the fucking banana boat, do you? I ain't get no fucking car. And they just had to fuck off.

Wow. So Wildman then asked me to expedite his release from deportation. Now why is he getting deported? You never told us why. There's so many wild man stories it would take 10 hours. Sure. Multiple houses blown up. People just getting annihilated by him. Him just robbing everything he can get his hands on. Just endless mayhem. Don't stop. Every day. Every day he did something. Wow. Wow. He become unhousable. Houses set on fire. Not even like threatening people setting him on fire. Just tweaking. and burning things and falling asleep.

I picked him up on the sides of roads, covered in soot with his eyebrows incinerated, saying, Sean, I fell asleep. Saw all this smoke. I thought it was in a Pink Floyd video. And then I realized the house was on fire. He was unhousable. He was banned from all the hotels.

He had to live in Tempe Beach Park under a tree with a Rambo knife and a baseball bat at one point before one of his final deportations. So that was just his last deportations. lifestyle. So the answer is crack. He would smoke crack and meth, mostly meth, more so than crack, for two or three weeks without any sleep.

He would go walkabout and we wouldn't see him for days. He'd come back with his feet all busted up, his shoes all busted up. He'd go to the south side on one of these walkabout, just walk into someone's house. And they'd just find him in a room in the house. And he'd get arrested. They said if he went into the projects, they would kill him. And there was a period where when Wilman wasn't here, he met this black chick at a house party. Wellman's party trick was he'd sit there and say,

does anyone want to hit me in the face as hard as they can? Or taser me, you know, the taser? And the people would line up to hit him and taser him. And he would be laughing like his toes were getting tickled. This black chick walks up to him and says, that's nothing. I fucking taser my pussy. And she grabs the taser. And she's got a boyfriend there, who's a big guy.

and she sends him off to go and get food, the boyfriend. And then she tases a pussy. Wow. And it was love at first sight for them. It's hot. So got together? When the boyfriend came back, he said, she's moving in with me and we're coming over to get all her stuff from yours later on.

And there was a standoff. And he could see him, Wildman's eyes. And he backed down and he left. And that was Wildman's first visit. They were like Bonnie and Clyde on the run together. Yeah. Wow. So it's like he doesn't have any...

concept of like anything but the moment. He has no concept of anything but the moment. And things that we avoid, he attracts to. So if there's something violent, he goes to it. Wow. If there's danger, he goes to it. I wish he was here today. I would love to talk to him.

Oh, man. We've got about 200 videos of him on the channel. There you go. Go check out Wildman. He lives on. Does he explain why he became this way or what he blames? He does give a bit of it, but he's not a blamer.

Yeah. He takes full responsibility and has no regrets, he says. Did, well, I'm sure he doesn't. Did he ever get sober? No. Well, he was down to alcohol and weed. But, like, when I met him at the airport

when he got deported, his request was like these big liters, multiple litre bottles of cider, the apple beer and some smokes. I mean, you just, glug, clug, clug, clug, the whole thing. You look like assuming. he arrived in the airport.

He had long hair from prison and this white thing or he just looked like this crazy sumo. You know what? They don't make characters anymore. And he's a character. That's what the internet's done. It's done a lot of great things for society,

but it's made everybody kind of the same. I think it's making young kids a little stale because everybody needs to act a certain way and put on their best, you know, face for, you know, the internet. But it removes character from people. And this motherfucker is a character. That's why they loved him on YouTube, because he just say anything.

So he's about to get deported. You, unbeknownst to you, you've got all these people coming out of the woodwork talking to the feds. Oh, yeah, the grand jury indictment. The grand jury indictment. Tell us about, so Skinner is his name? So Skinner. Skinner was jealous of your friendship with him. with the wild ones.

Did he ever get, was that it though? That's the reason he started ratting? Because wild woman was moving up the ranks and selling a lot of pills. And so there was competition with him there as well. So what he did was he firebombed her.

I expedited wild man's deportation, smuggled him back into the country. We had like Mission Impossible Style teams of people bringing him in multiple times with Canada and Mexico. They got him in. And then he's one trap mind is then, I am going to murder Skinner.

That's all he can think about. He's doing. meth, he's doing the crack, he's going to murder Skinner. Skinner's rightfully terrified, but unbeknown to us, he's so scurvy's life, he goes to the cops and gives him the inside scoop and leaves the state. Now, I learned from a guy later on who become a cellmate called Joey Crack, who was one of my workers. This is when the Italian Mafia took over our building in Towers jail, and they asked me who I wanted to have Mars in my cellmate, and they put Joey Crack in with me. Joey Crack's telling us wild man stories every night, and he said that

during that period of time I'm referring to, he was looking for Skinner, and he showed up at Skinners, and Wildman was in there, and Wildman just grabbed his neck and started squeezing it, and his eyes were like popping out, and he's like, Wild Man, Wild Man, it's me, crack, it's me, crack, don't kill me, don't kill me. Wow. And he said, Wildman's sweat was just dripping off his ears and down his face, and his eyes like the devil. And he looked around, and Wildman had every weapon known to humanity laid out, like baseball, All bat, knives, hammers, pincers, golf clubs, everything.

It's shocking. He never got murdered. Skinner. Wild man. Wild man. Yeah. You know? It's a strange thing, isn't it?

Because he never used guns. He said he didn't need a gun. So the Colombian guy that he wanted to invest in the stock market, the day Fish called me and asked me to come over with Wildman and Seth. Wellman and Seth were collecting crack debts in central Phoenix for the Colombian. And they were going in places where people had guns. And Seth told me the boss of Colombian said, give us your money. And they're like, you know, we've got guns.

Why should we give us your money? And Wilma's like, I don't need fucking guns. You want to fucking shoot me. Fucking shoot me right now. There was a situation where he was bodyguarding, freelancing. a guy, a dealer, and they went to a casino, and the dealer fell asleep in the car, and the wildman took his money and just gambled it all the way right away, because money would just be gone the same day, Walmart, no matter how much you could get.

The dealer got the surveillance footage from the casino and saw Walman do that, and sent a car to collect him in Tempe, and the car came, and they all had guns on well man they're all saying get in the car and he's like why why should i get in the car you're gonna shoot me i don't give a fuck go on just fucking shoot me yeah how can you how can you rationalize i don't know i guess when you're that crazy it's kind of like when you're supposed to act crazy on your first day in prison because people there's nothing scarier than crazy and maybe that's even when somebody has a weapon you know they'd rather just run away nothing so we were in a we were in a strip club and the dirty dozen came in and there was me

Wildman and G-dog and his eyebrow went up like he was going to kick off with him. We had to drag him out with that. There was tons of him. They looked like Vietnam vets, scars down the face. They would have killed us. Wow. And he wanted to fight him. There was a giant came into a pool hall

looked like Andre, but like a cracked out version. Tall guy, skinny, giant teeth and everything. Eyebrow goes up. I'm like Peter, don't do anything. Like he's going to listen to me. walks over to the giant, holds his arm out. I'm Peter, what's your name?

My name's this. Peter does not let go of his hand. He's squeezing it. He's looking at the guy, goes, if I were you, I'd be in the circus, you fucking freak. And the giant looks down and goes, what did you do say? You heard me, I'd be in the circus, you fucking freak.

And Wildman's been up for weeks. Again, his eyes are like, the devil. And the giant's looking into these devil eyes. And there's like this standoff. and the giant back down. Took us outside, showed us his car, which was specially made. He was sitting in the back because of the length of his legs,

gave us his number, and said he wanted to come kick it with us and come debt collecting. Wow. That's nothing I could ever do. Do you have any grudge against Wild Man, or do you blame him for anything that happened to you? No.

On the contrary. Because I would say you're a little crazy for allowing yourself to be around that for so long. Like I don't care. Maybe I'm a little bit of a sociopath or I'm just an American and I have less loyalty than like a British

guys do. And I admire that about your culture. You're a very loyal culture. I just would turn my back on somebody like that because I'm all about my bread and I just can't be around that kind of no offense, stupidity. When you're on drugs,

you don't see it as stupidity. It's exciting. He's like a character in a movie, like an enforcer. Right. sure literally a character and a movie and it kept people paying of course of course they didn't have

Walmart didn't have go and beat him up he would just move in with him because he was so unhouseable all the time and it cost so much to house him I was grateful if someone would be money and he could move him with him if he moved in with you all your furniture was getting taken out by the Mexicans

the place where furniture never comes back from there'll be pimps and hookers cooking up crack in your kitchen to be the homeless people, the gangbangers, the mafias, 24-7,

just going around the clock. That was your house. Every single person he moved in with, moved out, except for one woman who was very tough, this tough New Yorker, and was trained while man up

to walk her dogs and everything. That's crazy. So Skinner tells the tale, you know, he goes to the FBI, Did he or the DEA? Tempee Police. The Tempee Police.

And then he skips town. Yeah. How long after that did they put the whole case together and the arrest come? They had been investigating me since the 96-987. Oh, wow. Yeah. Was that wild? Did you know they were or was that only after you got arrested?

Didn't know anything. So I saw the paperwork. Wow. So the witness statements on the grand jury indictment, there was 10. They spanned many years. And they said that I moved around a lot. I changed my name. I used aliases.

And just when they thought they were about to figure out where I was and what I was doing, I'd disappear. That's why it took so long. So they got a wiretap authorized in the end. Okay. And they had you tapped talking dirt? No, not me. But it was a conspiracy.

So the wild woman's phone was the main one. And it just 10,000 calls plus from that. People dropping my name. English Sean's ecstasy, English on this. Yeah. And there you have it. That's all they need. Yeah. So was it a Fed case or a state case? So the Gravano case was a multi-agency investigation. Right. There was a multi-agency investigation looking at me.

But when they saw Gravano that Sammy was involved, they paused me and went on him. But when they put him away, they went back to me. Yeah. But the feds dropped it and just let the state charge me in the end. Yeah. That's fascinating. That's what happened with my case, but this isn't nearly as organized as what you had. Why do you think they ended up dropping the feds didn't want the case? I think that the state had, my lawyer told me that the state had missed the boat. So a year before the SWAT team raids came, I'd been advised to get out the business. I met a woman fall in love and she was terrified of me, my friends. And I got out the business. There was no more importation. The Wiatap had. happened after that, primarily on Wild Woman's phone. And Wild Woman was sourcing meth and other stuff

from other people. So they recorded this 10,000 calls and the deals totaled $5,700. And I think the feds probably saw that and thought, $5,000? $5,700. What does that mean? No, that's not anything. Exactly. I'd stopped importing. So you weren't even, you weren't selling any drugs when you got arrested. Correct. Wow. It was a mass statute of limitation. No, of course, of course. Yeah, seven years.

So, but this is big because it shows, at least if I'm a judge with a little bit of like empathy, I would say, oh, you made a decision to at least try to do the right thing. What were you doing in that year? Did you get off drugs? What was your plan moving forward? No, I couldn't get off drugs because I didn't address my demons. I was sneaking out on the weekends and getting high with Wild Man and G. dog. And your girlfriend didn't know.

Didn't know. Well, she knew. She suspected, yeah. What was your plan for money? Did you have enough? Were you just trading stocks? Market collapsed. Yeah. I'd stopped importing. So the resources would dwindle rapidly. And we were planning to move to California because my name was so hot. I was in Scottsdale Community College. I was doing kickbox classes and going to gym, getting fit again.

And then May 16th, 2002. There was a knock at my door. By the way, what did your parents? Certainly, you didn't go all this time without talking to your parents. What did they think you were doing? They flew to the house in Tucson in the mountains and saw the swimming pool and saw me stock market trading, day trading, and knew I was investing in raves, throwing raves, but not the pills. Yeah. And just thought if it was hunky dory.

Wow. But there was a situation. So I was at one house during one of their visits. and I mentioned earlier about Assy Joey who was dancing who hooked me up some grungy people came to the door that I didn't recognize and I think I was in the living room

with my parents watching like Braveheart not Braveheart Bruce Willis die hard and I see these people and I've got a shotgun for home protection so I say to my parents keep watching the movie and I thought they wouldn't see me

get the gun and go to door and I go to door with a shotgun and say you know what do you guys one we're looking for acid Joey doesn't live here he owes us money he owes me money um well do you know where he is yeah he's in san fran trying to score i'll tell him you guys came here and asked for him but you shouldn't be coming here this is where i live and i appreciate if you didn't i was like brandishing the gun and they backed off and left when i turned around my parents saw me with the gun and my mom said she was suspicious after that wow yeah but that was the first time yeah but i said

to them. This is Arizona. This is America. Everyone's got guns. Sure. You have shotgun for home protection. People have guns in the cars. It's normal. Yeah. I imagine your parents. I picture like the scene in Blow because he's from like a real working class family and he's got this mansion in Miami and Ray Leota, his dad is there. And he's like, well, I hope it makes you happy, George. Like was your dad, you come from relatively humble beginnings, you know, even by England's standards. Were your parents proud of you?

Yeah, for achieving so much in the stock market, yes. Wow. What about your aunt? Where was she this? The one who mentored me. Yeah, the one who, yeah. One who fucking taught you how to lie. She eventually had to leave the country in a hurry. Oh, and you can't talk about it?

No, she doesn't want me to. Okay. Yeah. Wow. Interesting. Interesting. Intriguing. She has a straight life now, so. Yeah. Okay, but she was investigating fraud back in the day. How is that illegal? She was employed by a company to bust fraud.

Right. Yeah. It doesn't mean she didn't herself. Who's the best fraudsters? People busting the fraudsters. Yeah. Fraudsters, themselves. The fraudsters who are busting the fraudsters are the best fraudsters. That's right. God, that my head's spinning. Yeah. Fraudsters who bust the fraudsters are themselves the best fraudsters. And vice versa. The bosses who get busted. Yeah, exactly. Wow.

They're not every trick. But she got out of the country. Yes. Did she know during this time your run? Did she know what was happening? None of my family members knew about anything. Oh, she'd already left or something. Yeah.

Okay. Yeah. Wow. And she's the one who brought you over and is responsible. I used to stay with her. She used to mentor me when I was starting out of the stock market. Okay. So did you think if you would move back to California,

seeing as how your money was. dwindling and you were bringing some of your members of your crew out there you were probably going to gear up to do something again who knows what would have happened because i hadn't addressed my issues that took incarceration and sobriety and therapy and reading philosophy and psychology yeah okay let's talk about that um first of all you you get arrested the the leader of this conspiracy you're facing 200 years not initially initially i've got a dozen charges and they classify me as serious drug offender status, which is 25 to life. Right.

Okay. So they're saying 100 plus 25 to life. It's the second year they bump it up to 200 because I get a new indictment. Oh, shit. Okay. So you're in jail fighting the case, right? For 26 months. Because you're an illegal immigrant.

There's no bail. You got a no bail hole. My bail was $750,000 cash only. Oh, I'm shocked. They even gave you that. They probably wouldn't in this day and age. Yeah. And then later on, when I asked for a bail reduction, they doubled it to $1.5 million cash only.

So you didn't make it. Not then. Yeah. Okay. So what was the second indictment? They surprised you with. Just another dozen charges, similar. They also indicted my girlfriend to stop her from visiting me.

And they indicted my wife. So my girlfriend was my lifeline. She was visiting me three times a week. They charged her for having a prescription pill about a written prescription right next to it, which is a classic felony. And co-defendants can't visit co-defendants. It was all about breaking me down psychologically.

In Gravano's case, there was 57 people arrested, and they all rolled over quite quickly. In my case, we were all fighting it. We had a lawyer from the New Mexico Mafia as our United Front, and over the 26 months, only four people cooperated. Wow. Which is really impressive, because we were so loyal and bonded. Because there were how many people in your indictment? First indictment in the first group, I think, was about a dozen, 12 or 13. There was multiple groups.

Right. Yeah. And those dozen are. so those were the distributors giving it out to those groups, right? They said these were the heads of the continuous criminal spies. But they weren't. They weren't. Some of them weren't.

Me number one, wild woman number two, and wild man number three. Wow. And wild man's already out. No, he's back because you got him back in. Yeah, we're all arrested on the same day. Yeah. He was a good man to get arrested with because when we arrived at the jail, we're in a van, 12 of us, half men, half women.

And it's a subterranean entrance where all the new arrestees are lined up. So you've got like gangbangers, homeless, people who've been fighting the cops, people drunk. And you got like, I think they were like, look like sex workers. And the drunks were heckling the sex workers and stuff. And they see our female co-defendants get off the van. And they all start heckling the females. And while man's watching this on the van. And I see the eyebrow go up.

His face just remains completely calm. So by the time he's getting. getting off the van, the redneck cops telling him to get down and he's not getting down. And he looks at all of the men in the queue, heckling the women. Because a wild woman's getting heckled and she's not happy. She usually would say something, but she was just having a bad day. So he's looking at the men off this top step. He's like, you lot, disrespecting our women.

I'm going to be in there with you all in a minute. And I'll fucking have any of you. and then just to emphasize the fact he raises his chin right up and he goes you think I won't and the veins are popping out of his head and they all just shut the fuck up

you just channeled him do you do that with every podcast? No wow I think I've just brought my larynx wow that's when you say like you said something very deep and very gay

earlier you said you felt like you were him and he was you like our minds were thinking as one right that's amazing we we knew if there was a situation unfolding yeah what was about to happen I knew what he was about to do and he knew what I was thinking just because you'd known him your whole life yeah and we were in so many situations like that um did you think you were going to get a plea deal or did you expect to you know by the end

when all the evidence came out the second indictment did you think you it was you may get 25 to life in an awful Arizona state prison, which I can't even imagine. All of the above, all of the above. You go through cycles of worry and hope. Yeah. The lawyer came about because when I was getting stuff from the guy, the lowrider house, with the rocket prognade launcher, he schooled me. Remember prior to that, I was speeding along in the RX.

He said, if you ever got pulled over leaving our house, tell the cops when they asked to search your vehicle. No, because you're in a hurry. You've got stuff to do. They don't have the right to search your vehicle. If they don't have probable cause, it's the fruit from the forbidden free and they can't hold it against you.

Where if you really get in deep shit, you need to call this guy. He's a loophole lawyer. He's expensive. And I'd put money at the side for this guy if it came to that, but they took it. So my parents remortgaged the house. Oh, they must have been devastating.

Yeah. To pay this guy. I'd still be in prison if it wasn't for him, this lawyer. Wow. Okay, what was the loophole? This is fascinating. That's why I love the legal system, especially in America. So every month I'm going to court, I never get to speak.

Prosecutors portray me to be the Antichrist. And my lawyer's portraying me to be this child, protégé, stock market genius kid thing. None of it's true. Right. It's just theater. The truth's somewhere in the middle. That's right. Every month this is going on, and all emotions are going against me completely.

And in the end, I think it got a bit stale because the cop, the detective was really pushing hard. And there was a dispute at my final sentencing. He found a loophole for foreign nonviolent offenders. It was called a half-time release, which would apply to the balance of my sentence after I was sentenced. So I've done 26 months on remand. If I get sentenced, I was sentenced nine and a half eventually. I would only have to do five and three quarters. But when the detective heard that at the sentencing hearing,

when all these people have flown all over the world to speak on my behalf, well, we've gone through the fighting this for 26 months and we think it's over. When the detective heard that, he freaked down. Loss his mind, yeah. And the judge took my lawyer and the prosecutor away for a discussion and we're off oh my god what's going to happen now and when he came back he said the plea bargain stands and that was that that's the law yeah that is amazing that's like it's like so many people we've talked to have been locked up drug mules in south america yeah this is kind of

the u.s's version of that but they have something in the law saying yeah if you're foreign and you get caught we're going to give you a relatively light sentence and just kick you out of our country. We'd rather have you not using our resources or be in our great nation if I dare say so myself at all. Thank God for that. Thank God for the USA. The USA

both ruined and saved your life. Totally. How fucking what was that? Oh my God. Were you singing zippity duda out of your asshole? When you go from facing 200 years, it's getting

sentenced to nine and a half. It's the happiest day of your life. Yeah. I was floating on the ceiling at the corner. lease on life. Yeah, I could see when I was going to get out. Okay, so nine and a half, you only, you've been in there, two and a half, right? 26 months. Yeah. Oh, so, okay, so two.

And you ended up doing, what, an extra? Five and three, total. Okay, so you did an extra three. Yeah. We'll talk about that on the Patreon. I'm not as interested in the prison stuff from you as I am in you. It just doesn't make any sense. Talk to me, baby.

Talk to me. What was the trauma? What were the issues? What was what from your rainy little town? Yeah. South of Liverpool. What did it to you? There's so much trauma in this country.

Yeah. What is it about you? Like you had the world by the fucking balls, you know? And I know drugs played a drug addiction played a huge part in that. But where does drug addiction come from? It comes from all these. Yeah. What's what you've been masking?

your whole life. So can you explain what you were able to work out later? I don't think I can ever explain it fully because it's too complex to psychodynamics. I can distill it down to some simple theories from the therapist. But I also want to say that the world hates a whiner and you can't blame these things on your behavior. I take full responsibility for what I've done. So what the therapist said was I had social anxiety as a teenager. There was a situation where I just passed my driver's license test, went to fill up my mom's little red car with petrol, four drunks started to behave abusively towards me. That movie Rambo had just come out, and I thought it was brave to stand up to them.

Big mistake. These were like 20-something-year-olds, rugby player-sized guys. I'm encircled. They got me on the floor, kicking my head in. One's got an iron bar, smashes me in the face. See these lovely veneers here? They knocked the bottoms of my teeth out with this iron bar. Wow.

Yeah, an Englishman, those teeth are way too straight for an Englishman. they're running American Dentistry. So I'm laying there in a fetal position and I can't feel them hitting me anymore. So I think they stop, saw up my eyes and they're still pulverizing me. And I'm thinking, I just beat me up.

I feel like I'm about to die. I thought they would kill it, trying to murder me. So I went unconscious and I woke up in this pool of blood and they smashed my car windows. I went to hospital. All the problem was my teeth. I was fine and ribs

and stuff was hurt. But after that, then I wouldn't dance. I wouldn't talk to people. I was really, like social anxiety was increased. And then when ecstasy started, I wouldn't stop dancing.

I wouldn't stop talking to people and making friends with strangers all night long. So I was self-medicating to become social for over 10 years. But I didn't understand. at the time. Yeah. And you were taking your power back, like by being,

you're so powerless being assaulted like that by adults when you're only 15. I think, you know, my amateur opinion, you being this ecstasy kingpin, you know, controlling all these people. It's perhaps the reason it's kind of you taking asserting power again.

The power, the thrill? Yeah. You've got Walmart next to you. You're walking the club. The bouncers are looking at you like, who the fuck are these guys? Yeah.

You get the Mexican. mafia helping out this English immigrant what? You're in a movie? Yeah, you're in a movie that's what it was. That's what it was. And you had these just wild, you know, kind of circumstances of luck that, you know, ecstasy was popping at the time and you could make money out of it and your aunt

bringing you over. When I sobered up in the jail and the cloud lifted out of my head I didn't know was there and I look back I could not understand how I was alive and how I'd put myself in these environments and in these dangerous situations and got away of it. It made me shiver from a sober perspective

that I'd done that, the house of the New Mexico Mafia, the grenade launcher, came on the news when they all got busted all the murders they'd done. Yeah. It was serious murder machine stuff. Wow.

Going down to Mexico, where does the cartel? Yeah. And I've just got the wild ones running amok to pave the way. it's just a whole insane but somehow it worked and I got through it yeah yeah

you're just an innocent guy you're just an innocent you're just a guy having some fun boy next door yeah you're just a boy next door made good dude made good and you're a cool guy you like to have fun back then yeah totally I would have liked to party with you you know sometimes it's as simple as that

yeah wow that's so thank you for saving that for the end that makes more sense now that makes more sense now so you've been back for almost 20 that's amazing December 2007 but my blog

my internet presence started in 2004 my writing was smuggled out of the maximum security Madison Street jail run by sheriff Joe Arpaio who was world famous for being America's toughest sheriff infamous yeah so writing about the cockroaches dead rats in the food the guards murdering prisoners the gangs murdering prisoners

all that stuff off, my aunt smuggling it out, it got picked up by the Guardian, was it the independent, no, the Guardian newspaper and the BBC. Yeah. 2004, that was my first internet presence. Wow. Yeah. And you loved it.

It seemed like, because you still, 20 years later, you know, it seemed like you would love to create. Well, the channel we created in 2007, I was released December 2007, and we started to do videos like how to survive Sheriff Joe Apio's jail. Yeah. I wasn't posting very often. but that's when it's beginning. Have you since met Sammy the Bull?

You must have. No, I've never met him. You've never had them on your show? We were banned from collaborating by the documentary makers until the documentary comes out. And it's been pushed back twice. It's now January. We have got a podcast scheduled and advertised on my channel

that keeps getting pushed back, which will be our first. Wow. I've communicated with the sun over there. but not the dad. I got his info. You want it? Who?

Sammy's. Yeah, I've got it, but I'm not allowed to collaborate with him. Yeah. So you're about to meet him in January after almost. Not meet him because I can't go there and he can't come here. Well, you'll talk over the airwaves. Yeah. Wow.

Wow. People think he was running that ring. He wasn't. Yeah. He was a big name. They could get a medal off by putting him away. He just got fucked by his name. He did.

I mean, you look, he shouldn't have, you know, if you dodge what was certainly going to be life without parole in a maximum security federal prison, you better just like not talk about any ever talking a phone again. Don't behave like OJ. Yeah, yeah, exactly. That was his OJ moment. Yeah. Like, they got OJ on some bullshit for, you know, retribution payback. Yeah. And they gave him 10 years.

And I think they gave Sammy that too, right? They gave him. On the X-See. Yeah. I think he got 50. at least. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, it's brutal. Yeah, both the systems, I tend to talk a lot of shit about the British system after doing now 10 podcasts and just hearing how corrupt it is. But America's the same way. Like they have enough law that's run by human beings that have grudges, who have egos,

who want to make headlines. They have enough to where they can, they can fuck you in a way that it basically is corruption. You know what I mean? It's human nature corruption. Yeah. Yeah. And cruelty. But you've really, man, you've built a life for yourself, dude. Thank you.

That is unreal, man. How long did it take you to maintain your sobriety, get to this super fucking, this place of higher consciousness, and you meditate all the time and do yoga and you've got a beautiful family and, you know, a newborn son? how long did that take after coming home? First year, I'm at my parents' house. I'm on the dole, which means your employment benefit. That's welfare. Yeah, they're telling me that I need to go on meds, because I did do some meds while I was incarcerated,

because it's insane, isn't it? And it makes you insane. And I told them that I'm out of prison now, I don't need to do the meds. They said, that's grandiosity. We need to double your meds. Jesus. While a man gets out and tells them,

he needs the meds. and he's got red dots in his head telling him to hurt people. They tell him you're making that up so you can just have better benefits. And there's nothing wrong with you, completely normal. Remember the my mom's like, I'm normal? They said I was normal.

So I'm on the doll. I'm a parent's house the first year. Now, one of my ecstasy suppliers out of LA was a DJ called Mike Hot Wheels. It became one of my closest friends. He got busted by the feds. So he got deported a few years before me. He ended up with a nice,

house in Surrey and I moved from my parents to his house and I lived in his bedroom for 10 years building my socials and writing my books. Are you serious? Yeah. It's like self-imposed prison almost. It was. I was discussing this with generally over night because we were describing how I went from that space to the same space. Yeah. Because that's all I needed was that kind of a space. Yeah. Yeah. Wow. So coming from living lavish, right? Big houses and fast cars and this big open, hot expanse of the Arizona landscape, right? To this rainy fucking rock that is England and a tiny little bedroom with nothing.

When you didn't have to, you could have tried to get a job on whatever Britain's Wall Street is. You could have taken something more traditional, but you were able to just leave that all behind. Yeah. Like you were, you seem like you mentally got over it losing all that lifestyle. All right. Pretty quickly. Am I right about that? The first year I was incarcerated, I was craving the lifestyle back.

When they told me I was facing 200 years, there came a crunch point. I was in Max security, living with the cockroaches, skin infections, bed sores, dead rats in the food. Mexicans. Hundreds of, you know, what's the heat out of 120, 130? There's nowhere coming in. it got to the point where I was thinking I've got to spend the rest of my life like this I might as well just kill myself

and I plan to slash my wrists after a guard of the security water and just bleed out with the cockroaches but before I was going to do it I wanted to say goodbye to my family and friends I remember I was allowed seven photos so I've got the photos out of my mom dad, girlfriend, sister

and I started crying his tears coming thinking my mom's going to get a call saying your son slashed his wrist in this foreign jail I couldn't bear the photo putting a fruit out and then a prisoner a limps into myself the next day.

Steel rodding his leg pins. He's got hepatitis C. He's got syphilis. He's got stomach cancer. He's going to dine over in a couple of years. He's telling me his story. And I was thinking, I was feeling so sorry for myself last night. I was going to kill myself. Listen to him. And what I'm getting at is, the million dollar house on the mountain and the plasma screen TV didn't matter anymore. The swimming pool, the jacuzzi didn't matter anymore. I went from being. this narcissistic, hedonistic party person, the walls of howling me to go back and do it, two, thinking, I just want my life back and I want to start helping these people who are around me,

who are suffering. Ferdom couldn't even read or write. I want to start articulating their situation. And the blog began then from that drive to expose what was going on in Sheriff Joe Pires. My mom didn't want me to do it. There were so many people murdered in that jail. it had Nat Geo researched it. 57 people died over five years

around the time I was there. Guards murdered a blind prisoner. They murdered a men's steel prisoner. People can Google Brian Crenshaw, Scott Norberg. So my mom didn't want me to do the blogging. But we decided to do it and like I said, my aunt smuggled it out. People can go back. It's all timestamped till to this day

and read my original entries. It's called John's Jail Journal, J-O-N-S-Jail Journal. So what I'm trying to get that is. Sounds like helping people is what... Activism and helping people. It put me on this mission to expose what was going on. Because I thought America,

one of the most civilized countries in the world, how can they be... I'm not saying prisons should be easy, but guards murdering a blind prisoner, a mentally ill prisoner, gang members murdering prisoners, guards just bringing the drugs in, having prisoners fight,

and just watching to making bets on who's going to win. It's just like this Netherworld that I didn't think could exist. So it put me on a mission that I've still been on to this day, writing all the books. When I got out, my series of books was based on deconstructing

the war on drugs and mass incarceration. Yeah, you have 17 books. So if you don't know Sean, a lot of our listeners and viewers will know who you are. But if they don't, Sean is a prolific author. He's got 17 books. where can they get them?

All my books, all my socials, my YouTube, it's all under Sean Atwood. If you go on Amazon, e-books, audio books, paperbacks just put Sean Outwood. Is there one book in particular that they should start with? Party time. Okay, cool. Go check up party time.

And then there's hard time is Sheriff Joe's Jail. And then prison time is Department of Corrections. Okay. This is fascinating. We'll talk about that on the Patreon, a hard time. Because that was a, that was national. news after that scandal broke out. Fascinating.

But yeah, that's amazing. That is an amazing, almost religious moment that you had with that guy there. And, you know, if you believe in fate or you believe in the power of the universe, that was certainly he was that moving force, right? That divine intervention, rather. Him and the prosecutor up in the ante, get me facing 200 years. The pressure every month of going to court and it's just increasing. the sentence increasing

gets to the point where something in your mind just snaps and that the English show on this character's persona you're not thinking about that anymore all you're thinking about is getting your life back right yeah maybe we are the baddest gangsters in America from the government down to the

people you know doing the killing inside of our jails yeah Sean that was that was amazing thank you for that thanks coming all this way brother yeah dude thank you for everything dude seriously you're one of the inspirations for my channel so so check him out Sean out one on everything S-H-A-U-N and we're going to switch over to the Patreon now for a little bit more with Sean

Patreon.com slash the Connect show shawney thanks buddy cheers