The Connect- with Johnny Mitchell - Former Teenage Fraudster Speaks On Running Massive Ponzi Scheme, Taking The FBI To Trial | lan Bick

Episode Date: November 11, 2023

Ian Bick, a kid from a gated community in Connecticut, started throwing parties for other kids his age. He quickly found a calling in promoting and by his late teens he was booking concerts for some of the biggest artists at the time. His investors were promised big returns on their money as his business was booming. Little did they know, not only was he not making their money back, but he was spending on a lavish lifestyle... Go Support Ian! Website: https://www.ianbick.com/ YouTube Channel: @ianbickCT   This Episode Is Sponsored by BetterHelp!  Visit betterhelp.com/connect for 10% off your first month! Need some boost to your mental clarity? Try Magic Mind! https://magicmind.com/  For bonus content sign up for the Patreon! https://www.patreon.com/theconnectshow Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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I need money. I need cash. He said, you know, there's going to be a high percentage on that. I'm saying, that's fine. He goes to his bedroom, comes back with a pillowcase and dumps a giant stack of $1,000 and 20s rubber banded meticulously on the table. It's just big mound. And he says, you know what happens if you don't pay back this money. My guest today is Ian Bick. Ian is the host of the Locked In podcast.

You're probably seeing him on TikTok. He began his career as a party planner when he was just a teenager in suburban Connecticut. By the time he was 20 years old, he owned a nightclub, and he was promoting big-time rap concerts in the area. But things got out of control. He got arrested by the FBI. He took him to trial, but was found guilty of defrauding investors. He spent two years in federal prison. This is a dork, okay?

He did Fed Time. Got out. He turned his life around. He is now a fledgling media mogul. And of course, if you want bonus content with Ian, head over to Patreon.com. slash The Connect show for a full bonus episode only available there. You've got to go check out his podcast locked in. He's a good friend of the show.

And we're here to get the entire story right here on The Connect. I was getting beat up a little bit. Like the shady figures got me one day, brought me the basement of the club, took the end of a screwdriver, the handle, pulled up my shirt, hands on my desk, and they're just whacking each finger saying we want our money. That's when I see lights behind me start to flash. And I didn't even think. I just hit it.

I was driving like my life depended on. Then I parked the car, popped out, closed the door, and I started running. And he pulls out a burner, shang, it's like six inches. And he passes it to me. And he goes, here, that's yours. Don't ever leave the cell block without this. He was the reason I made it out of that place alive. Surrey and Bick.

Mr. Johnny Mitchell. It is great to be here. I am so happy to have you on the podcast. been a long time coming. Not going to lie, it's a little awkward since I do know you so well now and have heard your story in small clips and small bits. But I intentionally didn't pay a lot of attention to your story because I knew I was going to have you on the show.

And I wanted to hear it first, you know, how you came, how this all came to be. Because now you're like some big media mogul. You know, you got a whole prison brand, right? You're going to start making clothes for inmates pretty soon. Good idea. Oh, Bob Barker. Do you know Bob Barker is? Of course, I used to wear their clothes.

That's right. You look on the, on the, they're toothpitching. Right. Billions in the prison industry. But you're the only person I know, the only dorkier kid than me. The only person that should have been in prison, deserve to be in prison less than me. And yet you got sent up to the feds and you got this whole story. Yeah, you're just, you're just a hustler, you know, and I recognize that.

You know, you're a chip off the old block. So I see that in you. You're like my little brother, you know, but you're like pushing 30. I mean, you look like you're 17 still. 28. 28. So what's the deal? Are you Jewish?

Half Jewish. Right. From my dad's side. So I know it's, it religiously, it doesn't count, but we grew up celebrating the Jewish holidays. You know, Hanukkah, Passover. Yeah. And we celebrate Christmas, too. My mom's side is.

Italian. I actually never really talk about this. It's interesting. Because Connecticut, where you're from, where we are, it's, you know, it's, there's a lot of really ghetto deindustrialized pockets of Connecticut. But there's also, you know, white collar, high end, you know, business people that live here. And I assume you come from the ladder. But you have the, you have the hustle of a, you know, Jewish kids that I used to sell.

weed with back in Oregon. So that's why I brought it up, because I'm like, there's no way this kid doesn't have a little bit of the, you know, the tribe in him. I actually grew up in a gated Jewish community that was founded by Jewish firefighters. The whole neighborhood used to just be Jewish, and it was their summer homes. And my dad grew up there. It's right down the road. You're kidding.

Yeah. And then they founded it. Yeah. It was like a kibbutz in Israel, but in Connecticut. There's a synagogue diagonal 100 feet from. my house that my dad's dad was one of the founders of. And I grew up in this neighborhood. We actually used to break in to the synagogue and drink out of it. It wasn't really breaking in. The door was always unlocked, but they had this old like scotch and rum in there and we would go and we would

drink. We were teenagers and we thought that was cool. And whenever we ran out of alcohol during a party, we would go over to the synagogue and just grab it. But yeah, that was my life growing up. Yeah, that's so interesting. So you guys are entrenched. You go back here in the Connecticut Danbury area. Yeah, I never thought I would stay in Danbury, but I ended up coming back and living here after prison because we're in Richfield right now, but it's one minute across to the Danbury border. Yeah. This is like where my roots are. This is where it all started. And I think I want to finish it here, like finish what I started here. Right. Right. So what happened to most of your friends? By the way, so the culture, my point is the culture that you grew up in is very business minded. Like you were like a really focused guy. You're you just take one foot after the other after the other. Like you just do what's necessary if you want to become successful. Because to me that's really what it is. If you can actually have the discipline to follow a structure and to stick to the script. you can become successful and wealthy. I really believe that.

It's just most people lack that discipline and that sacrifice to, you know, go without now for greater gain later. Sometimes I think I don't have it, but you are really, really, you just have that centeredness. So the question is, like, how did it go wrong? All right, that's a very, yeah.

And that's what we're going to find out. So what did your father? Your father was in the catering business? He was actually a New York City public schools teacher, then retired, you know, like seven years after I was born, and then took his side hustle, which was catering full-time. And that's where I really got into like the event planning entrepreneurial mindset because he was a big time caterer in the city doing stuff for like the Rolling Stones. I used to go to Harry Potter premieres growing up.

He would come home one weekend and be like, yeah, I was just with 50 cent doing a barbecue for him. 50 cent would do these large barbecues over the summer for the whole Bronx or Brooklyn or something like that. And your dad would cater those? Yeah, he did Bill Clinton one time. The whole Secret Service ordeal with the, you know, that they mix up the plates when you're about to serve them. My dad said, hey,

give that one to Bill because it was the best plate. They said, absolutely not. Switched all the plates and then tried each and every one of them. A case is poison. Yeah, they made them leave the room and switch every one of them. They do that in America? Yeah. I thought that was just like in Saddam Hussein's dictatorships. They do that. This was early 2000. This was after Bill got into office and my dad has a picture with him. That's fascinating.

He got to meet them and serve them food and stuff. He's done a lot. And his old business partner was related to Giuliani. So the plan was that if Rudy Giuliani got into office when he ran, my dad would be the White House chef. Never happened. Wow. Yeah. He's going to bring them food upstate now. Yeah. That guys having some problems. So, so you saw, you looked up to successful, you know, you had success in your family, you had hustle in your family.

What did most of your friends end up going on to do after high school? I was always so different from my friends because, one, I was always the hustler. Like I was a kid that did the lemonade stands. I tried making a candy shop in the woods across the street from my house, like chopping down the trees and buying plywood until the city shut a time. town because I can't illegally chop down trees. I sold candy and energy drinks and gum out of my back back in middle school. And I just always had this mentality to go against a crowd.

Everyone was like, you got to get good grades to go to a good college and this and that. And I wasn't for any of that shit. But all my friends were. Everyone wanted to be like a lawyer or a banker or this and that. And every single one of my friends went to college, except for one that I think left Westcon to become an airplane mechanic. great job working for Pepsi right now as their personal jet airplane mechanic. Right. But 99% of the people I was in high school with went to college.

And the crazy thing is the majority of them didn't even go into the field that they went to college for. What are they doing now? The ones that went? Yeah, the ones that went to college. One friend's like an investment banker type person. Others are in, you know, realtor or lawyer or this and that. And they're in that nine to five grind Monday through Friday. You call them on a Wednesday.

Hey, you want to get dinner? No, I can't. I'm bogged down with work. Just a very, very different lifestyle than what I do. Well, it's a lot like my story. It's a little different. Like in Portland, you know, it's not as affluent as, you know, Connecticut, parts of Connecticut, but it's much the same story.

You know, everybody really, you know, just bit the bullet and when got jobs and families. And, you know, they seemed very happy. But you just loved transactions. you know, you would have been a drug dealer. I promise you, if you'd grown up in the time that I had and the environment that I did, you absolutely would have been, you know, selling weed out of your backpack in science class, right?

But you like, you know, what was it about hustle? Why do you like selling candy? Like, what did that do for you? You didn't need the money. It was never about the money with me, ever, even when I owned the club. It only became about money when I was in a hole and needed to make money.

But when I first started, it was just, I looked at it as a way to get attention to be different. And I knew that with difference came attention because that's when the spotlights on you. I grew up not doing sports. I did theater, musical theater every year for summer camp. I did the play all four years in high school. I strived off of being different. And to me, that was the currency.

It was never about the money. And that's what I liked. And that's why I'm good at what I do now. I just redirect that in a positive way. So it was about your identity. Yeah, I think that's what I was, because I was that nerdy, not that I'm much different, but nerdy, you know, chubby kid before with the red rosy cheeks and just very nerdy and that was the one that idolized the popular girls and can never get them and do all that.

And I wanted to become what all the friends that I looked up to were. Right. Because I could never be that back then. Right. Yeah. Everything man does is just trying to get pussy. That's all it is. And that's all you were doing, selling M&Ms and bubblegum is trying to get attention.

Just, you know, man. And that's what status is, you know, you could argue is what men strive for because that brings power and, you know, women and that keeps procreation going. So that makes total sense. It's kind of how I was. I didn't do the things you did. I didn't have the, I was much more sloppy. But yeah, I get that. That's what drug dealing for me did.

Because I didn't set out to think I could make millions, like, especially not selling weed. I didn't know how you, 16 years old. I didn't know how you did that, right? I just liked being the guy that had it, you know? So then you're in high school now. You're a partier? Drinker? I never got into liquor.

I remember we would always buy Dubra. It was the cheapest vodka. who would get so drunk and sick. But I was a kid that would pretend to look like he was drinking to be cool, you know, and I was always take a couple of sips. I'm already drunk. I was never into weed. I was a kid that did the fake smoking, you know, take a hit.

No one's looking, you know, cough it out or whatever. I did everything to feel cool. I remember carrying around cigarettes for a little bit because I thought it was cool to carry a pack of cigarettes and carrying around the skateboard because that whole skater phase, I put highlights in my hair and tried growing my hair. hair out long and I just did all the shit. Yeah. Then I went through the preppy phase of

wearing the polos and the cargo shorts and this and that. Right. But, you know, it was, I guess everything just fell into place where I did musical theater freshman year and they asked me if I went to throw the cast party because the senior that used to throw it

just graduated. So I asked my parents, hey, can we use our yard to throw the big cast party? This is like a 300 person party. And my dad got a tent through his company a party, a wedding tent. We put a porta potty, a dance floor, a lighting, the DJ. And we had like 300 people in the yard. And it was a success.

And that just gave me a fucking taste. Like someone that hits a drug for the first time, this was holy shit. Everyone's talking about me. This is awesome. You're getting pats on the back. Like, dude, you know, this is Ian's party. Who's Ian?

Yeah, I know. I didn't know he existed either. And now you exist. I was a freshman that, the entire school was talking about. Right, you were McLevin. I was, never back then. I became McLevin in prison.

But yeah, I was Ian. I was Ian Bick. Everyone always referred to me as Ian Bick. So that was your way in socially now as like the guy that threw the parties. Yeah, after that, the only, I knew I had to wait till the following year to throw a party of that magnitude.

So what do you do before then? You start throwing house parties. Right. So it started, I remember my first party was like a New Year's Eve party that December. That was like 40, 50 kids. And then weekend after weekend, they went from 50 kids to 400 kids showing up at my parents' house. And I would lie to them and say how many kids were coming. They got so big, we would have a bodyguard, like a bouncer at the gate to the community

with a checklist. And then kids would just start breaking the gate to come through because it was like, oh, what an shitty gate? And your parents would let us go on while they were there at the house? So a lot of the seniors worked for my dad's company, catering company. so I would have them go upstairs and schmooze my parents, like with wine and whatever upstairs. Well, we just had these giant parties downstairs, and they'd get pissed every time and say, you know, you can never have a party again. But, I mean, ultimately they would say yes, and I was very persuasive. And they would rather me be at the house where they were more in control than me somewhere else. Yeah.

They didn't know we were serving alcohol or anything. They never would have allowed that. But we had a, we have a patio by the lake. We would set up a whole bar. and have one of the high school kids work it and charge five bucks a cup. Things like that. Wow, that's so fun.

That's so fun. Anyway, how would you make money? Yeah, we would, five, six hundred bucks. A lot of it just went back to the liquor. We'd make a little bit of money, though. We'd have pong tables on the deck. We'd clear out all the furniture and the bottom floor of my house.

My room was downstairs with the guest room. So my room became like the smush room. We would do like when we saw whoever was a hookup of the night, we'd all press our ears against the door to hear what was. going down. Wow, that's... And, you know, I'm looking back on it, when you get older, people are like, how the fuck

you let someone fuck in your bed? No, dude, you let some fucking your parents bed if you if you need to. That's a homie move. It was just, it was crazy. We put a fog machine in the kitchen. And the thing about my parties is, I always went over the top to entertain.

We'd have candy, we'd have a variety of snacks, mixers, whereas you went to other parties, there was nothing. There was no mixer, nothing. It was like a hood party. Yeah. This was the spot to be. And it just got crazy. Right.

And that skyrocketed my popularity with the upperclassmen. I became the guy that was in charge of tailgates. They called me Mr. Tailgate for our cheering squad. We would serve hot chocolate in the parking lot. We would get hot dogs, hambers. I started running the high school's proms. I turned it into a business. I ran the high school's proms.

I ran their homecoming dance, turned the cafeteria into a nightclub, put up pipe and drape, put up furniture, got a DJ. We recreated the high school experience. And I was just like, there's money to be made here. Yeah. Wow. How'd you market yourself? Was there already like social media when you were in high school? Back then, it was all about Facebook invite pages. And Twitter was big back then. Instagram was just beginning. This was like 2010, 2011. Snapchat was, I guess, kind of big, but not. People were more just using it not for text. It was more for just photos and like nudes or whatever.

Right. And there was no such thing as TikTok. No. It was all Facebook groups. And the thing about Facebook groups and invites back then was that if you put out an invite page and invited 500 of your friends, the engagement was crazy. So if like 400 clicked attending, you would know 400 would show up. Right.

Now you spam people with invite pages. Right. No one either clicks or whatever. It was a totally different concept back then. Wow. I mean, you're on the cutting edge. Like, look at you. You're already using, you're using everything you used now back then.

You're learning about internet marketing. I mean, it's just like, it's a perfect confluence of things, and it makes total sense. And your father comes from party planning. So now you're making a little bit of money, would you say? Like, once you really got rolling, throwing different events, not just the house parties, how much are you making a month? So I made not really anything until I got to end a sophomore year, junior year, when I actually created a business out of it because then my parents said, listen, you really can't keep doing these large parties here. So I went and rented a theater in Danbury.

It was this historic palace theater that my dad knew the landlord and I changed it into a nightclub for the night, the lobby. Had like five, six hundred kids, charged 15 bucks a ticket. We called at the end of the year blowout, got a DJ, police officer. bouncers, bouncer, made it look like a real nightclub. I made like $1,500. How do you make money selling alcohol, I assume?

No alcohol. It's all off ticket sales. That had to be strict, run legitimately. Because you can't serve a bunch of underage kids alcohol, especially when you have police guarding the place.

Kids would pregame in the parking lot. Or maybe sneak stuff in, sneaking bottles or whatever. Yeah, that makes sense. Oh, okay. Yep. So you charge, you know, 15 bucks a ticket or whatever

times however many kids minus your expenses, that's your profit. Right. And we included like we made like a lot of mock tail, Shirley Temples, everything like that. The landlord said there was too much liability doing that. So that was a one and done thing. And that's when I stumble upon this world of nightclubs in Danbury at 16 years old.

The first one I go to, the owner gives me the run around, says he's booked for the next six months while like fakingly looking at his calendar that was empty. So I go across the street and I land at this place called Tuxedo Junction. historic rock club that competes kind of with Toad's Place in New Haven which is another historic club Toxedo Junctions had oasis there

big big names These are these are rock clubs Yeah these are rock But they also did hip hop acts They had like Meek Mill there Chris Webby was a big performer There French Montana played there And they used to do teen nights

There was this whole thing before my time called teen nights Where you would get all the high school kids to go And it's like a high school dance Without the Chaperos So girls are getting fingered on the dance floor Guys are the twerking The music and everything like that

So I end up working a deal with the owner of Tuxedo's to let me rent the front room For the night because he wouldn't give me the big room Because the big room could hold about 1,500 people They give me the front room on a weekday Which was like a fucking Wednesday during the summer It could only hold 200 kids We ended up packing that with like three or 400 people

No promotion And that's when he said holy shit you could have as many dates as you want the big room. Wow. Wow. So off of 400 people, what are you clearing? I made that one. It was cheap. It was like five bucks to get in minus expenses. So I made like 800 bucks. The real money came when I started doing, I came up with this idea to throw raves. So I called it the Halloween rave, the Christmas rave, things like that, a paint party rave. And I was the first person to mix electronic dance music with like hip hop music in our town. It was exploding in the city. Avichi, this was 2011. Avichy was big. All these big names,

Alasso. It was selling out day glow, life in color at colleges. And Danbury hadn't experienced that yet. So I start doing it. And I start making $10,000 to $15,000 profit once a month. Wow. Getting kids from the tri-state area. Wow. And just marketing through socials and now probably word of mouth to. Gorilla marketing was big. So we took flyers. You'd get 10,000 flyers printed for a couple months, go to the top of the staircase in every college or every high school. Yeah. Right before the bell rings, you drop all the flyers down the staircase and it sprays everywhere. And that works?

It would have my Twitter name on it and my Instagram name at Ian Bick, the day of the party, the price and the time. There was no such thing as pre-sale tickets back then for these types of things. Everything was day off. So if it rained or snowed, you were screwed. Right. But this was all like the power of this of flyers. Yeah.

Like we would go to parties and put them on the car windshield. Yeah. Everywhere. It would have a flyer branded. I called myself, this is where it's at productions. Because if our parties were going to be where it was at for the night, it was a play on words. This thing just exploded into a business. Wow.

And that really works. Even in the digital age, paper flyers work. This was, you know, 12 years. Yeah. You're doing it in a place where, you know, 16, 17 year old kids have no. where to party. And the walkers had slits in it where you put the flyers in it. Right. Right. Oh, it's beautiful. It's beautiful. That's kind of how I treated selling weed when I got to college. I'm like, this is a contained space. So I don't have to go to the outside world and have to start

exposing myself to try to market my product. Everything, it's 20,000 kids in one area, right? Yeah. And they all got government money and no jobs and want to get high. It's like the projects, but like for rich kids, right? So there, it's easy in an insular world with a bunch of people to market and sell. So you're kind of doing the same thing with party promoting. So now you're 17? Yeah, I'm about, I'm 16, 17. It was, it was like junior year at high school. And when you, and you know how to like talk to older people. You already know, you have this assuredness to you. Like you can go up to the owner of a nightclub and do business with them. How do you get them to take you seriously? So at this time, I'm running this business and I'm also

running a non-profit, not a real nonprofit, but in my head, because I'd gotten into some trouble. That's how this whole thing starts. I get into trouble, get court-ordered community service. So I start this thing called Fight for the Homeless. How did you get in trouble? Me and my best friend took insulating foam and sprayed the car handles of the president and vice president of our communities cars one night, mischief night, 2010, because they made a rule saying 16-year-olds, 15-year-olds can't drive golf carts. I had a golf cart, and we can't drive dirt bikes, and we can't play paintball. So we retaliated. Sure. And foam their cars. It caused five grand worth of damage. We got caught and got community service. How did you get caught?

Cameras? So they knew, I was called the black sheep of this Jewish community. So the cops came right to us. And that night, I'd like toilet paper at our own house. thinking, hey, we got hit too. So my parents are, my dad thought, you know, he answered the door and he thought his kid couldn't be an idiot and would have disposed of the evidence. So he says, sure, you could look around. They go in the garage and what do you find in the garage? Six cans of the foam still wet dripping down the can.

And then they did the hole to my friend, hey, your friend snitched on you and he admitted to everything. So we were toast. You got your first, you got your first taste of getting ratted. And I really should have, I never put the pieces together until afterwards. I'm going through that whole experience. But I always knew at a young age, never rat, you know, never talk to the cops like that when you're in a position like that. And I didn't apply my own knowledge when I went through my own criminal enterprise because I always see the good in people, you know, so I always, I never thought it would happen.

But back then at that time, as a kid, I watched enough criminal minds and CSI to know you never talk to police. And that's a great tactic they use about the old flippoor. Right. So certainly don't let them in and let them search. Yeah. But that's how white people think about police. Like, they're treated so much differently than the black community because, you know, we grew up hearing from the older people when it came to like interactions with cops.

Just tell them everything. Tell them everything and everything will be fine. But with black people, it's the opposite. It's like everything will not be fine regardless. So don't say shit. And we'll try to get. you a lawyer. You see the difference? Like it's a, it's,

you know, for me and probably for you, when you're not brought up knowing how to be a criminal and being looked at as a criminal by society, it takes you, it throws you for a loop

when you do get in trouble. I mean, you're like, God, you're scared. You're like, God damn. Like, this can't happen to me. And so you don't know how to act. And you do things that go against your own interests. Yeah, I have no problems with cops whatsoever, but I will not

talk to them without a lawyer. But you're smart about that, though. You had more I learned now. Right. After going, before then I would do whatever. Yeah. But now, after everything, even if it's a casual thing, because now I know they always have an angle. Whether it's bad or good, you don't know it

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Spirits not sold in Virginia and North Carolina. Drink responsibly, must be 21. Roger King this anonymous black guy that I knew in the county jail I was going through my discovery paperwork and I'm like, I actually looked at it and I was like, there's no way the cops would lie in the discovery paperwork. He goes, that's their job.

They're trying to get you. They're allowed to make story. They're allowed to lie to you to get you to trip over your own feet, right? And confess. They're able to do, they're allowed to do, they're allowed to fake who they are. That's what undercover police work is.

He was like, of course they can tell you lies and Sutterfuge and, you know, give you fake names and posture as somebody else. That's what they're paid to do. And I was like, God, I am such a white boy, idiot. You know what I mean? Yeah. So you get in trouble. You do stupid shit.

You're like a hooligan. You have this like hooliganism in you. You notice that? I hated authority. Right. I didn't like when someone said I couldn't do something. Because there was silly stuff. It was like, don't wear flip-flops in school.

So, of course, I'm going to wear flip-flops. They said, no back-back. So I started a backpack petition or back-backs to school. I did stuff like that. Yeah. It wasn't like, I wasn't a thief. Like, someone didn't say, don't steal. And then I went and stole.

It was never like that, you know? Yeah. It was just petty rules that I didn't see. Like, I felt like I needed to be like Robin Hood, I guess, in that sense or whatever, just to go out there and. break down those barriers. Yeah. It was like that whole, you know, you have to go to college to be successful.

Right. And I was that person that was anti the normal route. Did you not even have plans to go to college in high school? So freshman sophomore year, I was so dedicated to getting into the FBI. And I had done all my research that you had to be top in the class. You had to get into a great school. So I wanted to go to like Cornell or something like that. And I was top of my class, like top 10 AP classes by sophomore year.

all A's, I fucking cried if I got like an A minus or whatever in a class. So dedicated. And when I started down the party route, that all changed. Because then I got obsessed with business and the art of business and the art of putting things together, not the money aspect, but just the art of putting it all together. I love the process. I hated the parties themselves, but I loved the buildup. I love the people talking about. Hang on. So this is interesting. Why did you you hate the parties themselves? I just didn't have fun. I was not a drinker.

I wasn't a smoker, and I was always under pressure to make sure no one got hurt. Everyone, I was obsessed with making sure everyone had a good time. I didn't want anyone to see anything bad about the party, and you're only as good as your last event.

So I need to make sure, but I wasn't, it wasn't until like the last couple parties I hooked up with a couple girls, whatever, but I was so shy too. Like for someone you asked me about how I felt comfortable talking

to these people, I wasn't. I was always nervous around them, I just, I push through. I'm the kid that's afraid of heights and roller coasters, but I still go on it and push through it. That's a big lesson. That's a big life lesson for anybody.

Anybody listening, I have to remind myself of that, you know, because I'm fearful all the time and, you know, in show business, right? Like you're just, you're constantly worried that it's all going to fall apart. And yeah, as long as I do the thing I'm afraid of, I generally find at the end of the thing, I'm just happy that I did it, regardless of the results. Today's show is sponsored by BetterHelp. BetterHelp is America's number one online therapy. It's the holiday season and we're all depressed. The world is on fire. The economy is getting ready to return to 1930s conditions.

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I had a lot of responsibility. I was always under constant pressure to make sure my parents were happy, which they were mad at me every time. And I also, I was a kid that cleaned the whole thing up the next day too. I was always putting it back together, cleaning it up, didn't really get any sleep. I was always just the entertainer. And I was also, I hated rejection, which is why I never really talked to women or anything in high school. And it wasn't even until recently where I'm like way

more confident now and like podcasting what I do now is help me with that. But I was always just very unconfident with myself. And I think meeting you like a few months ago helped me gain a lot of confidence too because I see a lot of like, like the way you operate, you're like, who gives the shit. Like we were talking about something and I asked you a question. I forgot what it was, but you're just like, just like, just like, just have to shoot your shot. You have to do this. You have to do that. Yeah. It doesn't much matter at the end of the day. You know, and, you know, going through a lot of real problems puts these problems in perspective, you know. So, yeah. So you're 17 now. You got in trouble, but that's not, you know, any kind of criminal trouble.

What did you have to go to court? We went to, it was like juvenile court, but it got expunged after because we did the community service. We were selling wristbands for a dollar for the local homeless shelter. Wow. Okay. So you're running this. You're running the nonprofit as like community service. You're party promoting.

How does it step up from, you went from house parties to rock clubs? What's the next level? So by this point. Raves. I'm sorry. This is junior year of high school. I'm wearing a suit and tie to school, carrying around a briefcase. Like a Mormon.

Yeah, thinking that it was the most hideous suit ever. It was a cheap suit. A funky tie because my dad had a tie collection. And I just, I said that's the business look, you know? And I'm doing that. I get an LLC. I LLC my company. And I'm just navigating it and learning about business and obsessing over like guys.

I was a kid that would post quotes about like Mark Zuckerberg and stuff. on my Instagram story back, or there was no stories back then, so it was the feed. I would do things like that, and I was just like that nerd that everyone knew, I would be the middle of a classroom

and I'd get a phone call from a venue and I would just tell the teacher I have to take this. That's so cool. I was larger than life. And that became hip. It suddenly became trendy to be a nerd who had business,

who had a nerd who didn't care became the cool guy. Yeah. So you had it out a perfect time. And then I'd get a detention and I figured out how to get out of a detention. I'd text my dad and he would then say, he would call him and say, hey, I'm calling my attorney if you do not release my son from detention. And it worked every time. Wow.

So your dad kind of enabled you in a way. He was a gagster. You know, like he was a, he taught us like independence and like I'm very different than my brother. but he definitely helped create me, but I don't put any blame on him. Like some people put blame on him and stuff. Like if I had went and asked him for help, then he would have showed me the right way of doing things.

I was just very stuck. I'm a very stubborn individual. And I have to learn through things and figure things out on my own. Now as I'm older in life, I'm better at asking people for help and not jumping into something I don't know without getting that proper help. Right. You learned a big time lesson.

So let's get into that. So then you've formed your LLC now, your business, take us from there. Well, what happened was is that those club owners, club owners are shady individuals. And they're all about money. So there was 100 other kids that wanted to be like me. Right. At this point, they saw the money I was making. So the club owners are now renting it out to anyone in their mother that wants to throw a teen party.

Young kids, because there's no such thing as social media brands for what, there was no like, followings like an influencer back then. No one knew what was the difference between an Ian Bick party and a Joe Schmo party. So these parties all suck. No one's going. The market's oversaturated. Fucking up the brand. Brands fucked up.

You can't do anything. People are like handing out flyers after other events. Everyone's on to what I was doing. The gig's up. You know, it's over. You can't make any more money. And so at that point, I got bored anyways. I wanted to take things to the next level.

I had just decided I wasn't going to college And I wanted to jump in to this business full time I wanted to be a concert promoter I idolized Scooter Braun Who was Justin Bieber's manager Yes Read about him what he was doing We actually worked with them to get Asher Roth

Asher Roth was my first big act I ever booked He came for a charity show Coolest dude ever he was Asher Roth was founded by Scooter Braun And helped him through that whole thing And then, you know, Scooter did the Bieber thing around that time. But that was my first concert. And I wanted to be a major concert promoter.

I wanted to be the Scooter Braun without the managing acts. Right. I just wanted to do the concerts. Right. Yeah, that's a tough business, isn't it? So tough. But I never, I was naive. And I just figured, okay, you get $5,000 people at $30 a ticket.

There's all this money. There's so much money to be made. I don't know about the video wall, the expenses and this and that come with it. What was your first success? So I went from this kid that was super successful in high school, making all this money to someone that was like way in over his head. At senior year, I had these business partners from the town over, Richfield, the town we're in now that were in my grade. And we ended up doing a big Sean concert. That was my first major act that I did.

We did Big Sean. And how do you get a hold of these people? You hit up their agents or something? So back then, we were talking about this earlier in the sense where, you want you want to get into something, but you have to have experience to get into it. So in that world, you can't book a big act without having already booked a big act. Right. But it's impossible to book a big act.

Exactly. So we had someone that was this guy called Big Mike and Danbury. He was French Montana's DJ. He was in the big world of mixtapes, had clout with MTV, whatever. He had a connection somewhere along the line to Big Sean. He booked it for us and got us. our first foray. And once you start doing shows,

you could kind of build up a roster. They had actually did it. My partners did it behind my back because they wanted to take the show idea and they put up the money for it. There are these rich white kids and Richfield. They put up the money for it. But then they realized how the hell were they going to market it. I had the marketing capability.

So they had to bring me back in, but I wasn't an investor, which worked out because the show lost money. Wow. But we did Big Sean at the Danbury, state college, Western Connecticut State University, as their fall show, their welcome home show. We only had three weeks to promote the show. And it only sold like 1,300 tickets for a Grammy nominated artist because we didn't know

what the hell we were doing. Wow. And he was huge at that time, 2011, 2012. Yeah, he had just dropped ass. Yeah, yeah. So how much do you lay down, what's your overhead on a show like that? A show like that was, I think that one was 80 grand going into it. you have to pay Sean. Sean, we paid 40 for that. Um, so for a show like that was about 80,

but then it shot up to like 120 the night before because no one read the rider, the hospitality rider about what he needed. That was another couple grand. The video wall, we didn't know we need that. That was 10 grand. Then the venue with union labors. Every hour they're over, you're getting dinged at excessive rates. Yeah. So if things don't go according to plan, like it's never what it was. And I was a person that everything had to be a certain way. So I have it playing to the T, but I'm never thinking about what could go wrong. You know, like, what are the what-ifs? I never thought about what could happen if I do this.

It's always like, this is going to go perfectly. And it never does. 1,300 tickets is how much money. So there were different staggered ticket prices, but I know everyone lost about 50% of their or 60% of their investment because the guys I was working with put up 10 grand for whatever their share was and they got back about four. Yeah. So they took a beating.

Took a bath on that. On that show. Yep. So we're thinking, okay, we regrouped. They apologized to me because we had other partners too, a guy that was in Rhode Island and different people in the industry were like, we could do this on our own. Yeah. Like we can run this better. We have our first show.

We know what to do. We have the connections. One of my business partners who had got us Asher Roth, he says, I could get us Wiz Khalifa. So, Wiz Khalifa is. And he was enormous. He was even bigger back then. So we're thinking, great, we could do this. And he's like, okay, we could get WIS for 80K,

but you need to show proof of funds in a bank account. Do you like hit up CAA or their reps? How do you get a hold of them? At that point, no. I've never worked with an agent before. Later on, I'll start doing it. As I know how the business works. How did you get a hold of WIS?

So my business partner is saying that he has a connection with WIS, that only he has, never shared it with us nothing. And he says, hey, you need to show proof of funds. money in a bank account with a statement. We need $120,000 to show proof of funds and we had enough to get the show rolling with the profits. Right. And where was the venue? What was the venue going to be? The same college in Danbury.

It holds about 5,000 tickets. We set all together, whatever, it could gross about $250,000, huge profits. If we sold out, that's at every tier, 20, 25, 30, $35, $40 tickets. Yeah. So it's feast, it's famine, but it can be feasting too. you win in the promotion game.

Concert business is a huge payout. If you can win. If you sell every ticket and it goes accordingly. Wow. A lot of drug money gets pushed through those kind of businesses. And I realized that later on when I was dealing with drug dealers that would help me fund for money laundering to help me fund concerts. Yeah.

And it's a good way. You know, if you're a drug dealer with $100,000, you need to, you know, wash. Even if you lose money, which is likely in the concert business, you know, even if you lose 30 grand on $100,000 worth of drug money, that's still $70,000. You can now show as a statement, like show legit, you know. Yeah, because a lot of these artists like Taiga, we paid him $20,000 over a wire when we booked them, but then the other $20K was cash. Right. They're not reporting that.

Exactly. So the drug dealer gives me $20,000. I pay Tyga. Wow. And then Tiger reports 20 to the IRS. and then the other 20, his manager's taking five probably for that day, five or 10. TIGA gets a 20 from the agency, pays out his agency, and then the other 10 is cash. Totally.

And in the rap world and the drug world, let's be honest, we all know those are like, you know, jelly and peanut butter. Those are right next to each other. So, okay, tell us about that. The drug dealers, would they approach you? So when I got in a hot water with my business, when I raised all this money and lost it all on concerts and this electronic business I started. I owned a nightclub at 18 by this point. This is later on.

By the way, how did the Wiz Khalifa show go? It never happened. Okay. Why he backed out or? No, my friend never had the connection. So he lied to us. And at this point, I had raised $120,000 from friends and family. Wow.

And I guaranteed them all their money back, even if the show lost. That's how I raised the money. I got a contract off a legal zoom. And I walked around with a contract. that said, hey, invest in this concert. The only reason why this worked is because I already had a reputation that I was the party whiz kid and that I was a next big entrepreneur. The news was writing good articles about me and I had that potential to be that next person.

So that's why people believed in me and I was able to raise that money. So you were raising money like an equity fund. Yeah, I looked at myself as a hedge fund. Yeah. I was the hedge fund and I would invest the money. Right. So, but they all got their money back. You didn't have to lay any money down, did you?

So what happened was when that show went bust, we went to the investors and said, hey, it didn't happen. If you want your money back, you could take it or leave it in with me and do other shows, about half left it. And that's when we went and booked a string of shows in Rhode Island, Connecticut, New York of smaller shows. Right. And so do you built up a little resume? Yeah, essentially. But that's when I started booking acts, working with CAA, working with UTA was starting. at that point, different agencies. WME. You know, people just so they know,

you can go to IMDB Pro, and if you want to book Madonna, literally Madonna, if you have $2 million, they all have prices. So if I'm a king of Saudi Arabia, and I'm like, I want to see Whitney Houston, I don't care if she's dead. I want her, you look up her agent

online and get them on the phone. Be like, I have $5 million. I'd like Whitney Houston's dead body. my daughter's sweet 16 or whatever. Half of these agents don't answer, though. Like, none of the agents answered me until I could email them saying, hey, I booked Big Sean, this person, this person, this person. Like now, if I hit up any agent and said, hey, I worked with all these acts,

they would most likely respond. Right. But back then, they wouldn't, unless you had those connections. Right, right. Or a proof of funds. Exactly. So, okay, great. So now you're getting in with the institutions and your momentum's building.

is how does it start to get shady? Like what are the holes in your operation? Well, the holes was that I got lazy. I always found success in doing the teen parties on my own. I was in control. I managed everything. I did the work. I created success with that.

When I started raising money from people and then entrusting other individuals, other promoters, other people, it became out of my control. And I had thought I had already made, made it. You're 18 years old, 17 years old with $120,000 in a business bank account with my own office, you're thinking you're gold. You got to be doing something right. So I got lazy and I trusted a lot of individuals who did not have the same work ethic and the shows tanked. And after the first one,

this is where things turn. After that first showed tanked, I was naive and thought a couple things were going through my mind because I was getting information that the shows were doing well. And I had never seen ticket sales. I didn't see anything. So I lied. Why wouldn't you be looking at that stuff? I never asked. Ian,

I'm shocked. I was not, I was lazy. I took everyone at their word. If you said, Ian, give me 100 grand, I'll turn it into 200,

done. Like, I was just, I believed everything. You weren't on the ground at the shows, looking at, looking at the,

I went to the shows themselves. Yeah, but looks are deceiving the concert industry. You could, when I own the nightclub, I could realize a room with 500 could really be less than that, or vice versa.

Like there's, there's smokes and mirrors. It's different. It's like in comedy, you know, when you're in a comedy show, you can make what the camera make it look like. It's a packed room. And there could be 20 people there. Like it's very, it's, it's, it's mind-boggling what could happen. So that first show, I felt bad when I found out that the show lost money.

And I made the decision I could either, I tell my friends that it lost money, but they're going to think I'm stealing from them because they came the show and it looked packed and everything looked good or and I wouldn't be portrayed as a success or B, I could lie and say it made money and hope the other shows would make money. Hang on, hang on. So and this is and this is where the moral decision, you know, you took this path. Yeah. Which no judgment, but this is a key choice that was made.

what show did you lose money on? What show are we talking about? This was Rusco, the DJ Rusco. We booked him at University of Rhode Island. Gotcha. And you had had that 120,000 raised? And I put 20,000 of that 120,000 in this Rusco show. And I was told that I was selling well.

It was going to be great. So I got a limo, got a hotel, and grabbed like five of my friends to go out and see this show. Right. At the show, everything looks great. I'm partying with college kids as a 17-year-old. looks awesome. It's in this big arena, which is only half filled, but they use like pipe a drape to look at it. Right.

One of the partners of the shows comes up to me that night and he says, man, we took a fucking beating on this. And I'm like, what do you mean? That's when he tells me about that we didn't sell enough tickets, done enough time to market, extra expenses with the venue, all of this shit happened. And that next day is when I made the decision that I didn't want my reputation and that whole image of me to be a fan. failure and I just figured, okay, we have six other shows booked. We'll make this money back. No problem.

I'll eat the 20K. It's just 20K. I told the investors, we, not only did we, they get their 20K back, but it made like six grand or seven grand. So now I'm in the hole for 27. Out of that 20K investment, I got back $2,000. So it's 18K, give or take and change. What if they, what if they had called, called you on their money?

What if they said, okay, great, I'll take my return now. Well, so the contract was to be paid out the following month because we knew the ticket sale money, this, it had to go through hands. Right, right. So I got the two grand back or whatever. So now I'm in the hole for 25 when I only got back to. So I'm in the hole for whatever that math was. So then you said, I'm going to go, that's okay. The next shows will make that 25 grand back.

Plus some. Plus some. They all tank. Wow. How many shows did you do? I think there was like six or seven, and one show was I was in charge of at New Haven. That lost, the closest win we had was that lost two grand. Wow. One company, this electric foam fest company at UMass, it robbed me for 20K. Never heard from them again. Just robbed me. I invest the money, never saw it. Nothing. We tried to sue him and then the lawyer fees ate like 10 grand. Right, right. So lost money. Snowstorm on another one already. paid for everything in full, so got no money back on that. Another one was just failure after failure after failure. Oh my God.

So you were sucked at this business. Yeah. You should have stuck the house parties and selling candy. I should have stuck the teen night business and squirled the money away and got into real estate. We would be fucking sitting here. This whole building. Yeah. Wow.

I would have made so much money, man. Dude. Wow. It was terrible. So now the whole 120 that was in the fund. I didn't have the 120. because I gave back some of it. I had about 70, 60 to 70.

Okay. When you say gave back some of it. I called an investor meeting after Wiz Khalifa and said, hey, it's not happening. Okay, right. And some people wanted out. Okay, got it. But then 65 quickly, you lost 25 on the next show. Out of that 65, I invested, I think I got back like 10 grand.

So I'm out 55, right? But that's not the worst part. I promise people that each show is making money. I'm lying because once you tell one lie, you got to keep it up. Of course. They're all making money. This image is success.

I keep banking on the next one to do well. Now, is that a federal crime already? Is that investor fraud technically? So technically whenever, so the way wire fraud works is that you have to lie on the premise to get the money. So that I don't necessarily would have been fraud and I never got charged for this aspect. They had already handed me the money and I just lied about the return part. I think that would have been more of a civil case because that was all legitimate. Like I didn't illegitimately spend that money.

This was 2012. I'm 17. It wasn't even really legal that we all signed contracts. That never got charged later on. This was just me lying about the losses, but I invested every dollar of that money I got. Yeah. No, you didn't take it and go buy a summer home. It was a business deal. The investors knew the risks. And you just lost. That's what happens in business. I promised on the contract that they would get their money back at the minimum. Do you think that was a mistake? It was, but honestly, that would have just been a civil thing. If everything ended right then and there, if I had just fessed up and said, hey, I lost your money,

if they even pursued it, because we're not talking about a lot of money, it would have been civil. Right. And who are these people, by the way? You say they're family friends. Who's invested with you? My aunt and uncle put up $10,000. My dad put up like $10,000. My business partner's parents put up $10,000, and then friends, because I wanted one investor

for the whole amount. and I realized I didn't know anyone with that kind of money. So I went to a bunch of people. I had friends putting up a grand all the way up to 10 grand or their parents. How many people total in the fund? I think there's about 15. Wow. Okay.

Interesting. Interesting. Okay. This is getting titillating. Let me take a minute here. You know, I've been exhausted, right? I've been running on fumes. Okay.

And I drink this stuff, Magic Mind. It's this little company out of L.A. and out of Venice and they're just little neutropic shots boost energy and focus crush procrastination and elevate mental clarity

so I just drink one of these before or in the middle of a podcast and it's like half a cup of coffee but it's just like it's like I'm taking it's like I'm drinking Adderall but that's not bad for you and it gives you it's got all these

vitamins and minerals it's good for you and it just like locks me in so hold on let me taste it Oh, that's yum, yum. If you guys want to go check them out, they're called Magic Mind. I'll put a little link in the description. It's fire, though.

And it's certainly better than these, you know, not methy pills that I've been taking. There's no methamphetamine in those, okay, Ian? Mm. Life on the road is hard. So yeah, Magic Mind. Shout out. Thank you for sending these in. You know, we had those in the fridge.

They just came on board as a sponsor too. Oh, really? Yeah. Magic mine? Oh, yeah. Have you had them yet? Yeah, I like them. They're not bad.

A little bit of like a tangy flavor, but you adjust to it. I like them. I'm happy they're on board. Yep. Yep. Absolutely. So, okay. So now you've got a bit of a problem, but not a criminal problem.

Just an embarrassment problem. You feel like you failed, which you have. You failed miserably. It was bad. You failed zero out of seven. I mean, that's like, you're batting 0.00. When did you then, when did it elevate from just lying to them to? Well, so I continue to lie and everyone's asking for their payments and I'm working a full-time job at this point too.

I'm working for a banquet hall down the road, a corporate center and I'm like giving up my paycheck. So I'm telling people who are waiting on the ticketing money and I'm sending fake spread Sheets showing that they made money because they wanted to see detailed expenses and shit for the concerts. So the expenses were real, but the profits weren't. Right. And what the ticket sales did. Right. Now, that is a federal crime, is it not?

This was like the stuff. This wasn't to get more money. This was just like stalling. You know, this was like lying and stalling. What did you think was going to happen? I just wanted to buy more time until I came up with another idea to pay them back. You hadn't thought beyond that. No, all I wanted to do, these are my friends and family.

I'm not trying to scam them. Right, of course not. You just thought an idea will come to me. That's what I hoped. Either that, something had to give. I needed some luck. I need to keep thinking. And then one of my good friends at the time who was investor, he pulls me up at the office one day. And he's like, Ian, what's going on? You could tell me. That's when I told him everything about what happened. That it genuinely wasn't my fault. That all this shit happened. That first lie turned into a lot of lies. And he wanted to help me. So he was a, this kid John Roble. He would end up being my. co-defendant later on. And he was always this hustler type of individual. He went from selling pounds a pot to caddying to stealing golf clubs out of the golf course, to selling them to he would buy kids cracked iPhones. Fix the iPhone thing where people thought there was no money in that iPhone left and sell

it for hundreds. Wow. Guy was a hustler. Yeah. He had this business of selling beats by Dre headphones and otter boxes on Amazon. This is when Amazon's first getting big, like you could be a seller and this and that back then.

And he says, Ian, I can get these headphones Beats by Dre, which I didn't even know what they were. I was always an Apple guy. You can get them for 50 bucks and sell them for $400. I didn't know that there was a red flag

of getting Beets by Dre for 50 bucks, but he brings it, it's wrapped, it's in the case, everything looks cool. And we were getting the beats pills, everything. It looks legit. So when I see that it's like a 400 or 500% rate of return, I'm like, holy shit, this is a business. It's a viable business. What if I start, instead of getting investments in all this, what if I ask people for loans

and I can guarantee them a 50% rate of return on their loan? Because when you're dealing with product, you're not going to lose on the product. Like in my mind, I'm thinking it's not the concert business, so it's not an investment. This is a loan against our product. So I started to go to kitchen workers at the building. I worked in stuff and they would give me five or ten grand. We'd buy, I'd give my partner this five grand. Seriously, an 18-year-old.

You thought this was your run club era. Turns out, it was more of a thinking about run-club era. The good news? Someone's marathon training is about to start. Sell your workout gear on D-pop. Just snap a few photos and we'll take care of the rest. They get their race day fit and you get a payout for trying. Someone on D-pop wants what you.

you've got. Start selling now. Deepop where taste recognizes taste. Your old kid would go up to a blue collar worker and be like, I can get you 10% on your money. 50%. In 30 days. Right, right. I was saying if you gave me five grand, I'm giving you $7,500 back. Wow. In 30 days. Which is unbeatable and also a red flag. Insane. And it was a loan. So I just drafted a loan document and got the money. And I gave it to my partner, never asked, where. the electronics came from and he would show up at the office with a knapsack full of a beats by dry. It was like Santa Claus. And this is before smash and grabs. So we really, you really didn't ask much questions, did you? No. So he shows up and he was the seller or whatever and I was,

I kept getting money and he would sell electronics and I was able to dwindle down my debt with these other individuals. And I got it down to about 30K. And that's when one of my friends introduces me to this individual named Henry who had just gotten a settlement for like a million bucks. He sued a gym because he lost vision in his eye when a piece of equipment broke. So I go to Henry. This is 2013. I'm just about to turn it. I just turned 18. And I'm like, hey, Henry, I lost this money on these concerts. I'm starting this electronics business. I need to get out of this debt I'm in and have money to buy product and this and that. And I told them I'm offering 50% rate to return. Well, he said, I'm already getting a 50% of rate of return. I'm going to want more than that

for the money. And now I'm desperate and I need the money. I end up walking away from that meeting with a $30,000 check, but a guarantee that I owe him 60 grand back within 45 days. Oh, my God. Double his money on that buddy. Wow. Okay. So, and how are you selling these headphones? Your buddy, John, is the seller. He was, he's told me he was selling. them on eBay, Amazon, and stuff like that. So, and you were just the bank. If he wanted to make a big purchase of these $50 a pop beats by Dre headphones, I was in prison and I knew that that they didn't sell for that little.

But so you would basically just, you were just funding him. Yeah. You just brought in the money. Yeah. Okay. Wow. So, Ian, you know, if I'm sitting on a jury, let's say, let's say I'm, a federal juror or a judge

and I'm sitting here listening to this I find it hard to believe some of it quite honestly I do I and I say that respectfully I don't you know I was on a jury I was on a jury too you sat on a jury I went to trial no oh I thought you were said you did jury duty I did do jury duty too okay I was I went through a trial so they're they're the same questions right right so

it's just a little you know you're a fucking sharp guy right like I know kids are stupid, but, you know, it's, yeah, you know, if you want to redact some of what you just said, now is the time. There was, you had no inkling that what was going on, you know, with this guy, John, might have been shady. No, I mean, shady, maybe, but I never thought of that. I was, you got to realize all my attention was focused on how much pressure I was in. If you're an 18-year-old kid, and you have 10, 15 people calling you every day saying, where is my money? We want our money, you know? Yeah.

And kids, when they're owed money, they get mad. Yeah. Especially when they think it's their entire life savings. Right. You're talking about a couple grand. Right. That was my only focus. Yeah.

So if someone came to me and said, hey, move this pound a pot. The only reason we talked about, like, I could have sold drugs was because I didn't have the connections to sell drugs. So I was willing to do whatever it took. You could have made the connections, but I'm glad you didn't do that. But in that instance, that was my focus. There was never time to think, is this legit before it was too late? Okay.

Okay. Fair enough. Fair enough. And I cast no judgment because I did so much stupid shit and you look back on it. And you're looking back from a prison cell is the worst. Because you have all of the time to just think, how could you? Like it was right in front of my nose. But anyways, okay.

I accept that. Now you've just made a bad loan. You got a bad, you got bad paperwork. No, no, no. I'll rephrase that. Not bad paperwork. You've got a bad note. Bad paper is what they say, actually.

So you owe a lot of money on 30 G's you just borrowed. Take us from there. So with that 30, I end up paying like the 2530K that I still owed, had a little bit of more money for electronics, and we had already had some product. As soon as I paid back that money, word starts spreading out that Ian's super successful

everyone got paid back on their investments everyone made money and now he has this brand new electronics business so what happens naturally everyone starts calling me and wants to give me money

right everyone's getting win this and that they hear about how now not only is it guaranteed their money back now Ian's guaranteeing a profit and I just have this pitch

in my mind now it's so easy to talk about about you give me five grand you get 50% on your money and we can offer that because we're getting the electronics for so cheap. It made sense. In my mind, it made sense.

On paper, it made sense. You get a product. You're selling it for, you know, 10 times what it's worth. There's enough money to go around for everyone. Right. Everyone gets a hold of it. And then I'm starting to get phone calls from parents that want to give me, you know, 25, 30 grand.

Wow. Okay. Hold on. So did you take that money? I'm confused. Did you take the money that the loan and pay back the fund from the concert? business? Yes. Okay, gotcha. Assuming that the electronics business was going to make you the money back and some to pay back the guy who gave you a loan. And that would be the end of it. I would just owe the

60. Gotcha. And I was also still waiting on the foam from that foam show because I didn't know they had fucked me at that point. Oh, I see. So you thought you had 20 grand coming in. I thought I had more because of the profit. I see. We told, they were told us. So I'm thinking, okay, there's that. There's that. I'll still work too. I'm working my job. I'm at a clean slate. I'm done. I was over. I was so. My passion turned into hate. I was so upset with the whole concert thing. I had failed, but I was ready to put it behind me. Yeah, now there's light at the end of the tunnel.

Yep. Until everyone starts calling. Got it. So everybody now wants to spend money with you. Yes. It was June 2013. We took in over $500,000 in our bank account. Oh my God.

Yes. In one day? No, over the course of a couple weeks. How many investors is that? Half a million dollars. It wasn't that many. It was less than 20. because what happened was, as soon as the first one started coming in,

I immediately paid back Henry is 60. And when he got paid back, my other friend that lost the money for us on the concerts, said, Ian, I learned my lesson. You know, we're smarter now. Let's do another round of concerts. So I pitched Henry on like 15 concerts with Taiga, Chief Keefe, big names, Ace Hood, big, big names,

and Henry gives me a quarter million dollars for concerts. Wow. So between Henry's quarter million and all these people dumping money into the electronics business. Yeah, close to a million dollars in your loans and investment. Right. And now it's getting pretty convoluted. So all this money's going in. There's no accounting.

It's going to a Wells Fargo bank account. I'm walking into Wells Fargo in my little suit and tie. They're not batting an eye. They're just lending me deposit all the money. I could have done nine million things. I could have gotten a credit line on that money. I could have bought some real estate, bought some tangible assets instead. I'm sending half of that money right off the bat for artist deposits for the fall.

Yeah. And what I realized with my business was, so my plan was... So you went back to throwing concerts? Yeah. Because I figured I was a big believer and you have to fail to succeed. So I figured I already failed. Six times? Essentially, but I lumped that into one.

Right. One failure. Yeah. Look at what rationalizing can do. Look what the money can do. So I rationalize that and I'm like, well, I'm not going to college. This is my... I have another chance at life.

I have this money. And I'm thinking, okay, I know the concerts on paper, this quarter million dollar investment I made into concerts would have paid out a million dollars if everything sold out and went perfectly. So I was going to make crazy money. I knew that if I'm borrowing money at high interest rates from these individuals, the concert business does not give you cash flow because you're planning for something six, seven months down the line.

So the electronics business was supposed to be the cash flow to pay people back. Right. well that's when I learned the electronics were fake after I had already accepted the money Amazon starts shutting down the accounts right my business partner can move a couple thousand dollars worth a product he can't move 200,000 dollars worth the product okay so let me stop you there so your business partner was getting knockoff like Chinese beats by dray I was told it was coming off of a truck like it was it was whatever the prices were so cheap because it was um they fall

off the truck or whatever. That's called stolen. Yeah, but then, that's what falling off a truck means. It means they got stolen. Later on, I realize that you could go to

Alibaba.com in those sites and buy pallets of knockoff electronics. For $5,000 or whatever, overseas, dude, you're getting like 50 or 60 grand worth of ship, but it's all fake because what I had friends

that I'd get beats to when they made an investment and they'd go to the Beats by Dre site and said, this barcode doesn't, register. Wow. Or it would rattle or something. It looks so fucking real. Totally. Totally. But it was, they were all fake. So then the people who buy it complained to Amazon. And they start shutting down the accounts. It's so strict. Right. Back then, PayPal accounts would get banned. We'd have different

phones. That business never really took off. That business was good for a couple grand. The problem was I raised all this money on the basis of that. Right. So now my cash flow end is gone. And I'm taking loans because now in my mind I'm like okay it's a loan so just like you could refinance a credit card with another loan or whatever I could take one loan and pay off another loan so this is where that Ponzi scheme aspect two

of it comes where I'm taking one loan to pay off another loan. But why are you still but doesn't John know now your main investor Henry you mean? Henry sorry who's loaning you these big sums he knows that the cash for the concerts

is laid out you know he's not going to see that return. It's like a real estate deal. You're not going to see that return for maybe up to a year. Yeah. Why, why does he need to be paid off again? I thought everybody was whole. It's not him. His 250 was fine. It was the other few hundred thousand that we took in as loans. Oh, from him previously. No, that were, that came on board. Once everyone got paid back, everyone wants in on this 50% interest rate. Right. So I'd have a parent call and say, hey, here's 50k. We want 75K back. but why can't you just give it back to them if the business you know it would say hey it's no we're no

longer solvent well so one i never did that you know i got all this money so all right even if i had the like when it all comes in you automatically owe 25k of imaginary money or whatever because if you're promising a 50% rate or return also and you're held to that even if something goes wrong outside of your control like found out my business partner was lying to me i was lying It was a guaranteed loan, you know, like I'm taking in this money. And now we bought jet skis. We're going on trips. We're thinking like we're these.

That always looks great in front of the jury. We're thinking. This honest kid, he's on a fucking jet ski, his milk white, concave chest, is gleaming in the sun. We're just like, all right, we got to get a payday too. Like, we're thinking that's our salary. By company jet skis, we go on some trips. We go to dinners. It was like out of, out of.

of this money we raised, we probably misproportioned about 100K. You know, and then we did stupid investments. Like I put 10 grand into some stupid website. I'd put 10K into some shoe company, whatever. You know, I thought it was a hedge fund. That was fucking lazy, you know? Okay. All right. So I get the idea. So now we are, that makes sense. So you are paying back these individual investors for the supposed headphone business with loans from other people. From other people. Because people keep every week, people are giving their money. And some people leave their money invested.

So if you started with 5K, that turns to 7,500, you roll the 7,500, that turns to 12, 5,000, and so on. So some people, by the end of all this, think they're owed 60 or 70K off of a 5 grand investment. Now, do you realize the deep water you're in when that happens, when the headphone business winds down and you're still taking on all these investments, these loans? At the time, no, because I always had. the bank being the concerts. So I figured no matter how deep I got in

over these four months from July to September, I was going to be okay because of concerts. They're going to hit, man. And this time I'm checking ticket sales, everything's selling well, that's doing well, everything's going to be great. It's going to make a lot of money, and I could pay off all the,

I could pay off the jetskies. Any money I've spent as a part of our salary, I could pay back, everything's good. And then we started... He wipes the cocaine off his nose and said, everything's going to be better than ever. And then we started lowering the percentage rate, so 50% ended up going to like 20%, which is still a lot. Right.

I would tell people, hey, like the electronic prices went up or this and that. So eventually it would go down to 20% over 90 days or 120 days. But I was still in a deep water from that initial 50%. And you have no real accounting. There was none. Yeah. I didn't do a P&L report until the FBI came and said, hey, you're under investigation. I didn't know accounting.

This sounds like the connect with Johnny Mitchell. Anyways, we just take it in and we don't, you know, we'll worry about the rest later. Yeah, so what concerts, so this sets the stage for the big climax, what concerts were scheduled? We had, this was taking your future on. Yeah, this was September 2013. I'm 18. We had three shows with Kidink. One show with Chief Keefe.

One show with Taiga. one show with this DJ duo Cosette one show with Ace Hood and we had a show with Amshmacked and then we had some other show

and the first shows were in September with Kidink. Okay so across all shows how much cash have you laid out for that? Henry's full amount. All Henry's money went into concert. So about a million bucks? No, quarter million. Okay.

in these concerts. And then you would owe like that was just for deposits. Right. We owed like another like 300 grand on top of that. Okay. So say all the shows caused like 5,500, the profit was going to be about 400. Right. So you plan on taking it in a million over the course of like a month or so.

Over the course of September to December. The shows were laid out. Gotcha. The most expensive show was Taiga that cost 100 grand. Okay. The cheapest show was like Kid Ink, which was like 12 grand a pop or 15 grand of pop or whatever. And so the first kiddink show happens. And that's that fucking Waterbury.

You were in Bridgeport the other night. This is worse than Bridgeport. This is Waterbury, Connecticut. Yeah. And these are sad towns, folks, if you don't know, this area of Connecticut. The guy in charge of the show said, we have five tickets sold. Five or ten tickets sold. Oh, my God.

And we knew we were going to take a beating on the Waterbury one, but we didn't know it was that bad. We got a cheap deal. We hedged our bets because he was cheaper if you book him for three. shows. Why did you do it there, though? It's a nightclub. I just figured it's a HUD area. He's going to do well. And he's hood? I don't know who Kid Inc. is. The thing with Kid Inc. was he sells out all the European tours. He's great. He had a hit song with Chris Brown out. Everything was great, but he didn't translate into tour tickets. Wow. Which was interesting. Yeah. And so we had to go to the mall that day and pass out free tickets to get that place filled. Are you pretty demoralized?

No, because at that point, it wasn't a lot. It wasn't. up until after the Taiga show felt bad. Because when you're looking at it this way in the concert business, you lose 20 grand on one show. You got all these shows that are going to grow so much more money. And they were selling great on paper. Our second show in Boston with Kid Inc. And Rhode Island, the next two nights,

were already profitable in making money. So I'm like, okay, we took one beating, whatever. Fuck it. You know? And... Why didn't you consider going on the road, like actually throwing something in Atlanta or some places that are more affluent,

but also, you know, urban. I was lazy, Johnny. I had this one guy that was a concert promoter that said, hey, I'll do everything. And just give us a cut. And what I realize now is someone always has to have skin in the game. Right. Now I don't do any business deal unless the person has skin,

not just fucking equity. They need to have money invested. They need to be at risk of losing their money to make sure that's the only way you're going to get them to actually do the work for you. For me, it's pussy. You got to have pussy in the game. Yeah, but that was the driving factor.

Right. And I just, I didn't promote. I went from being this ingenious marketer to so lazy. It doesn't make any sense. Why are you lazy? Do you have a girlfriend now? I did have a girlfriend at this time. Right.

So you got laid? Yeah, I was getting laid. I mean, I wasn't an attractive kid back then. No, no, nothing's changed. I was a nerd, but I had the nice car at a Mustang convertible. Right. And I had this business that on the outskirts looks like it's super successful. Right, right.

And I'm hanging out with the biggest acts of the world at 18. Right. So you go backstage. I got pictures with Tyga. I'm hanging out with Kid Ink. We're popping bottles. We're doing all the shit. We're going to $500 dinners.

Dude. And you're posting about it. Now girls are hitting you up. My friends are at their freshman year of college and I'm chilling with Tyga. Right. He was an asshole, by the way. I'm sure he is. That was when he was dating Kylie, too.

Kylie Jenner. Yeah, this is 2013. Yeah, I would have just told you personally, because I don't know who any of these bums are, but they stink. I would have told you throw a classic hip-hop concert. Those always sell. Because people, my age and up, we'll be going, we'll be listening to bone thugs. We'll be coming out to see, you name that 90s rapper, right, until we're like 70, until we can no longer move.

Johnny, all I had to do was just take the money and go to what I was good at. buy a club. Because at this time I had already, I took over the front part of Tuxedo Junction too. I sunk a hundred grand into this nightclub. Not the back part, but the front part. I called it Sky Bar and Lounge. I ended up getting sued by Sky Baca because I had two WIs. Oh, God. And so I had to drop a Y, but that never made money. And I got taken advantage of by contractors and everything. They would, a $5,000 paint job turned into $10,000, all this shit. I think this is a perfect example of why you are successful now and will continue to be just skyrocket. Because I failed epically.

Because you failed epically and it's just you keep going. You have no real doubt. Like you had no doubt. That is a crazy thing. Like I, that kind of mindset where you're like, oh, no, no worries. I'll just sink a hundred grand here and I don't worry about taking a loss there. Well, like, you just, like, you're moving and reacting and doing less thinking. I'm resilient.

And I never had that. I was all, I'd get a shipment of 20 pounds of weed in, and I'd be scared that I couldn't move it. Like, it's, and you can't teach, like, you're built that way. I'm built this way. And so I, I really wish I had some of that. But obviously, like, it was reckless, too. You know what I mean? Like, now you, now you put in thought.

with action. Now you're marrying the two. Calculated. But back then, no. So, but who could blame you? Okay, so how many people ended up showing up to the first kidd ink show? Oh, we got like 500 kids, but they're all free tickets.

We were at the mall passing them out. Right. I think I got a couple grand back on that show. Okay, but you lost 13,000. Yeah, I lost 13,000. Okay, so bring us through. Second night. It was like a sold-out show at this venue in Rhode Island,

like a 6, 700 cap. back then, and it's still probably like this now, but people would pay to get an opening slot on the show, opening rappers, if they want to have their name on the flyer and get that under their belt. Right. So we had like 15 grand in opening rappers

that paid money, right? Well, the idiot in charge of collecting the money never collected the money. So we lost 15 grand right then and there. Right. What? Venue bounces a check on us, too, of ticket sales would take, months to collect from them as well.

Right. All this shit would happen. All these shows that actually were selling well and did well was a series of unfortunate events. That Boston show we did with Kid Inc. Never got that check to this day. It was a 20 grand investment. Nothing. Gone.

And they can just run off with it. By the time it takes to sue and this and that and go after assets. Chief Keefe, I was grossing 50 or 60 grand revenue at Toad's Place in New Haven. Yeah. You know, he blew me off. Doesn't show up. What? An hour before the concert, the line is around the door.

Oh. This is a mob scene. Chief keeps out as a New Haven police are calling us saying, hey, you have to pay us to the city for extra police because, you know, he's gang-affiliated this and that. We're like, no problem. We're making a shitload of money. We got him for 25K, paid him 12-5 up front,

but tickets, it's sold out. Like, this is a slow, All he needs to do is perform. Yeah. And we got our money. Right. We're good. Hour before the manager calls us.

And I'm heading the venue and my business partner tells me he's like, he woke up late. Don't worry. He'll be on the next flight. All you have to do is stall for an hour or two. Where is he coming from? Atlanta. Oh, Jesus. So it was like an hour and a half flight or whatever.

Right. Right. So no problem. He could get the next flight. Yeah. 45 minutes later, the manager calls it says we can't find him. This is an hour before doors open. They said, we can't find him.

There's only one more flight possible he could take, but he wouldn't get to the venue until like midnight. And at these shows, when the act doesn't show up in this type of genre on this, it could have been a fucking riot. Totally. We had to tell the venue. They said, listen, we have to cancel. We're pulling the plug.

Give everyone their money back. Venue wouldn't give me my money back, too. They said, we'll give you a free show. But they wouldn't give me the money back. And then we laid out money for the police, the marketing, his upfront fee. So I was out like 20 out of pocket out in that show. but then you take in the account all the profits I would have made

that was just lost right then and there. How much was that? We probably would have made like 30 grand and profit. Right. On top of my layout. He sends out a tweet the next morning first time we hear from saying

shout out to Connecticut wasn't the promoter's fault. See y'all soon. Never heard from him ever again. Wow. Tried to sue you go through LLCs, this and that. That was it.

That's the problem with American business. And, you know, it's the good thing and the bad thing is like, you know, in Columbia, you just go, you know, kidnap them and wait for them to pay you. But it's like here, you know, you have to go through a legal system and lawyers got to get paid. It's like it's so fucked up. But you know what I realized in that too is that contracts don't mean shit. What matters is the person signing it and if they have the intent to honor it.

But that's, you have to have contracts. That's what made America America. That was the British way. That's what made us different from the Spanish. And God forbid these other contracts. But you could get out of a contract. I, but you, to me, like, when I do business with people, Johnny, do me and you have, we do business.

Do we have a contract? No. There's a, it's, it's all about the intent, you know? But when there's, but when you're, when you're doing something that's defined like that, like, you have to be able to enforce it somehow. That's why they have courts. But you're right. It's in practicality.

It doesn't work because you're going to lose more money paying lawyers. Look at these big artists. are able to get out of contracts with their managers and stuff. I'm sure they have ironclad contracts and there's still something in there. Right. You know, there are, I think there's a way out of everything if the person doesn't want to be in it. Why would you want to be in business with someone that's not, you know, that doesn't want to be in business with you?

Right, right. You can see why companies like Live Nation just own every venue now because you can't deal with an outside venue because, I mean, these guys are going to run off with your money and you can't do anything. Like, you just want to buy that place. Like, and then you control the elements to it. You know what I mean? That's why I like having the studio because I'm in control. Right. I'm not depending on anyone else. Right.

Right. It just may, except for the video guy, but that's it. Yeah. And he can be fired. You know? In fact, he will be after this. You know, I'm Johnny Mitchell. I wave my finger. It gets done. Shane will be done. Shane's a bit hustled for us, man. Because everyone needs that one young kid that is like grows with the podcast. The young bull.

Yeah. That's right. Rogan has it. Flagrant has it. You know. That's right. So, okay, and take us through the rest of the fall. So now you're like, oh, for three. Now you're over three on concerts. Over four. Yeah. Then, um, is there any way you can make your money back with just the last two shows?

100%. Okay. With the rest of them, Tygo was a $100,000 show that was going to gross, I think, like $250,300 K. Okay. So that's like 200 grand profit. Okay. Almost sold out.

Before that even happens, we get our first win. It's this Amshmack show. Have you ever heard Amshmsham. was a big college tour. Venue sells out, we kill it. I wasn't financially invested, but my partners were, and they had been on a losing streak. They made like 10 grand.

It was awesome. Well, I'm Schmack just notorious for getting bad press, underage drinking, and getting venues shut down. The city shuts down that venue. Well, we had a show at the venue two weeks after on Halloween, the biggest party night of the year, besides Thanksgiving. We lose because the venue got shut down. No one else was available.

to host this act. 25 grand gone. Wait a minute. I thought, so you, they got shot down before you guys. You told me it was a win.

Yes, but I wasn't invested in that. That venue gets shut down and we had a concert that I was invested in happening two weeks later. Oh, I see. Gotcha.

Couldn't open for that night. We lose a 25 grand amount on the act and the booking and everything plus potential profits that it was sold out. So say it, call it another 50 in the hole. And are you still taking money in?

We're still taking money from electronics, but now I have to, now that I own the club, I'm tight for cash because people are waiting on their money. There's delays. I'm just stalling a little bit. Are people still giving you loans? A little bit, but now people are, instead of giving more money, they're just rolling over their investment, which is great for them, but doesn't help me because I need cash. And they're rolling over their investment, but their investment is already.

It's imaginary. Imaginary, yeah. So I start going to shady people for cash flow. This is when I get into the drug dealers, borrowing, you know, 150K at a time. Okay, tell us about that. So I remember I own this nightclub at this point. It's called Skybar, and some of the promoters were in biker gangs, you could call it. And I asked one of them one night, and I said, hey, I need money.

I need cash. And he said, you know, there's going to be a high percentage on that. I'm saying, that's fine. And the first time I ever borrowed money from a shady figure, he took me to his cousin, the Spanish guy, in Stanford. And we go to his house and I lay out, I say, hey, it's 50% on your money. And this one I went into it saying it's 90 days and I'll essentially clean your money for you. He goes to his bedroom, comes back with a pillowcase and dumps a giant stack of $1,000 and 20s rubber banded meticulously on the table.

It's just big mound. The FBI would later get a photo of it because I took a photo. to a video on my phone. Why? I just documented everything. It was so cool. Like in my eyes back then. And he says, you know what happens if you don't pay back this money.

This is like a scene out of a fucking movie. And I was like, yeah, I'm just assuming I'm going to get killed because I'm dealing with shady individuals. And I took the money. And I used that to pay off acts. Like I paid whatever. I help with cash flow. And I'd just find shady figures.

And I would just borrow from one shady figure to pay off another shady figure or pay off another lender. Oh my God. this is dangerous now. It's extremely dangerous. Wow. So did guys like that ask you what the investment was? So they knew that I was in the concert business and at this point

I'm not really, they know I'm not really investing. I think they just saw me as bleeding for money. They knew I was a good kid and they just, they wanted to make money. It was a win for them because they wanted to flip it and they all wanted checks back. Okay, great. So here and this brings us to money laundering. Now, were they satisfied with

losing? But like if they gave you $150 in cash. Yeah. And you brought them back a check for a hundred. It's a clean check. It's legitimate now. But would they still want to be paid back in full?

Or would they accept a loss if it was cleaned money? See, at the time, I never really knew what money laundering was or any of this. I didn't watch any of those shows growing up. So I didn't realize that I was really doing them a favor. So I gave them everything back or at least promised them everything. Oh, you didn't have to do that, buddy. undercutting, yeah. Of course. There could have been ways, I didn't even need to promise some interest. All I need to do is just give them their money minus some. I could have made money,

but I never looked at it that way. Right. Oh, wow. Isn't that funny? I had no criminal intent. They were taking advantage of you. Yeah. They were going to get double whammy. You are walking through life like a fish out of water. It's like it's so bizarre. It really is it's a television show. It's a movie. You know what I mean? Yeah. The only thing missing is your Yamika to make it even more bizarre. I was just, I was naive, man. Yeah. I just didn't know. I didn't, know any better. But you knew that money was illegal, though. I knew they were in shady shit. I didn't ask. I didn't want to know anything. What did you think the shady shit was? I knew it was drugs. Yeah. Yeah, but I didn't like know the specifics. I didn't know their business. I didn't want to deal with

any of that. Were you stressed out now knowing that you were now borrowing cash from gangsters? Because I'm not only getting now harassed by the gangsters for money. I'm getting harassed by all the people I owe buddy to that's filing up and I have a pressure that these concerts need to work out. Okay, so how much did you borrow in street money? Probably like 300 K and then with interest like 500

is what it was promised. And you got 90 days on it. Essentially it was in and out. It wasn't all at one time. You know, it would take from one to pay off another. It was like a Ponzi scheme in itself just with the cash aspect. Wow. Wow. So you have like two different elements going on basically. So now

you're just, are you just praying that this final Tyga show is a fucking hit. There was Tyga and a couple others. Okay. On that $100 grand investment, I got a wire transfer for I think $8,000. Wow. Yeah.

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mega sale at blinds.com. Rules and restrictions apply. What happened? So because of that show that got the other venue band, the dean of the campus said they didn't want bus tickets to be buses from other schools to come on to their college campus. Okay, so the venue for Tyga is on a college campus. Yes, it's the Ryan Center and it's

the college campus's arena. What's the college? University of Rhode Island, biggest party school. One of the biggest party schools in America. Oh, it's a perfect venue. Perfect venue. 5,000 capacity. I think we had like 4,000 tickets sold or whatever. But a lot of those tickets are through bus sales because you need to get the kids from all the towns. Providence, Kingston, all these different areas because not just URI would support that. So this show was marketed. It was playing for months. It was their first official concert of the year. TIGA is hot. It was a recipe for success. And we got him for a good price too. We paid him 40, which was good for that arena and stuff. It was a no-brainer to do. And TIGA was even, I would say,

on the same level as Big Sean, but we had months to market. We marketed the shit out of this. and buses trips a couple days before the show got canceled. And the thing with bus tickets is no one pays until the actual event. Like they hand cash, get on the bus. Right. That comes part of it. So we lost, like, I think, like, 2,000 ticket sales. Oh, my God.

Overnight on bus tickets. So what do you do? What did you try to do? I couldn't do anything. Yeah. I just, I was fucked at that point. Did Tyga show up? He showed up.

He was an asshole. Yeah, but was he like, what the fuck? No, I mean, Where's everybody? Those things, we still had, I think, like, the final ticket count was like $1,700. Which when you pipe and drape that arena, it looks good. Right. When you're on the stage with the smoke, it was a great show.

Right. He was a great performance. I'd say Big Sean was great live. He was great live. Those things are awesome. So you got had a good time in the moment. Sounds like the concerts were great. Pop and Asa Spades bottles of Taga, the fucking green room and that experience.

But it's a hobby. Let's face it. It's a losing hobby. Dude, I was, I was bad. I remember I was with my ex and my girlfriend at that point. She came the show and I'm just like, I don't know what the fuck I'm going to do. Wow. Because everything was riding on that.

And I had a couple more shows after. But when you lose 200K, that's a 200K swing. Right. The other fucking 20 or 30 doesn't matter. So now the glean in Ian's eye is finally starting to dim. Yeah, this was November, 2013 by December. The whole thing was bust. Wow.

No one was giving me money. Yeah. I was owed. I owed the street dealers. I owed normally. investors and I owed now Henry his return because it's the end of the run. He hasn't seen a penny yet. Okay. What's the total on that? With interest, I owed about $1.3, $1.4 million. Right. Total. Total. Did you tell anybody this? Was your ex-girlfriend the only person you confided?

She didn't even know what the situation was. My business partner didn't even really know John because he was at college. He was kind of out of it at that point. They knew I was stressing. Yeah. I'm holding this all in. I mean, they knew I was like at that point, like I was getting beat up a little bit. Like the shady figures got me one day, brought me the basement of the club, took the end of a screwdriver, the handle, started whacking my fingers in the icy cold. It was cold out. Pulled up my shirt, hands on my desk, and they're just whacking each finger saying we want our fucking money. Wow. They came to your club. Came to my club. Sky. Yep. Sky. Brought me in the basement. Start whacking the fingers. This is out of a movie. It's exactly.

Exactly. They lead you, they have a couple of goons there and they just grab you by the neck or they, or do you just go like you're being executed? So what happened was in order to stall, I gave them the key of the club because I was like, listen, if it doesn't work out, you could have the equipment, whatever. Yeah. I'm just tried for whatever. You know, I remember signing like documents saying like you could have the club and

I didn't even own the club, I just owned the business. I didn't know the building. You didn't know the real estate. Yeah, I was coming up with a fake real estate document. I was selling, you know, what is it called? water as if it was gold to these drug dealers, because they didn't know any better. And I'm just trying to stall.

It was never to fuck anyone over. I'm just stalling and I'm lying like crazy. And I was famous for keeping my phone on airplane mode or do not disturb and blocking people. Yeah. And so I wasn't answering my phone with them. And so they came to the club and me and my business partner are there one day, John. And he pulls a gun out first.

This is how it started. And he says it to John. He points at him because John would always say something slick. Points a gun to John and says, don't say a fucking thing. because John would always say something like slick back or whatever. His friend that he's with leaves him upstairs and then with John and then the other friend and me, he's like, this guy, he's like, go downstairs.

And I go downstairs and that's when he puts me on the table. He's like, stick out your hand. There's a staple gun next to me. I'm thinking that they're going to staple gun by fucking hands. No, he's going through the desk, finds a screwdriver, and just starts whacking each finger until I agree that I'm going to keep answering my phone. Are you yelping in pain? Are you taking it like a man?

Yeah, I'm a little bit of both. I'm like, dude, you don't have to fucking do this. Like, I'm trying to talk. That's what I was. I was a talker. I was trying to talk my way out of it. Say whatever I need to say to get out of it. Yeah, dude, I got a shipment of headphones, man.

At that point, the electronics was done. It was like, dude, you know, I'm just waiting. I'm just trying to stall, man. I do not. I want to give these people their money. I have no bad intentions. I'm not trying to do anything. I'm living with my parents.

At that point, I actually had a little, like, apartment above the club. that I was renting, but it wasn't, you know, and the worst part was it was around the holidays, so everyone wants their money. Of course. When you're pressed around the holidays because everyone was trying to get gifts and this and that. Did people show up at your parents' house? One parent investor showed up when I wasn't answering calls and they just came to talk to say, hey, you know, what's up?

Yeah. That was it. Yeah. And did that raise alarm with your dad or your parents? They were luckily not home that day because that was a busy season for my dad. My mom wasn't around. so I got lucky. But other than that, you know, I got really lucky with shady figures never going there.

Everything, my whole life's been a serious of luck. Yeah. You know, luck one way or the other. Bad luck, good luck. What, so now it's the end of the year, your bust. What happens? So my first step was this is when I finally, I meet with a lawyer and who was promised he was a friend of my dad's. And he promised me that he would represent me for free.

million dollars. The legal fees covered this and that and he was there to help me. Hold it. So you confessed. Who did you tell? I told my lawyer. He's the very first person. It was me, my business partner went and my dad came. My dad's hearing all the shit unfold for the first time. I give him all the names of everyone. I tell him what's happening, everything, this and that. So he comes up with a plan. He's like, okay, you owe this. First off, you're not paying anyone the interest. We're going to, we're going to calculate what they're out of pocket loss is. So say they think they owe 20 grand with interest, but they only put in two grand, and they've gotten like three grand interest payments. Technically, they owe me a grand. Not that we would ask them. Right, right.

So he sends out letters to everyone saying, hey, we're reviewing, you know, our company's books, this and that. We'll be in touch soon. Everyone stops calling me now. Well, they, first, they're blowing up my phone and after they got that letter, but my lawyer says, don't talk to anyone. We got this covered. He then does a review with his legal team. They calculate all the money that each person's owed or not owed sends a letter. So some kids who thought they were owed all this money are now getting letters saying they're owed nothing. That pissed them all off. They go to the police, the local police. Henry goes first because we give them a letter saying, hey, Henry, you made an investment, you did not make a loan, all of these concerts lost money. So you're getting pennies on the dollar.

And we would come up with a payment plan. Well, Henry had a drug issue and he was high one day anyone to the police. And when you're a local small city cop that has someone sitting in front of him saying he's owed half a million dollars or a quarter million dollars with the receipts for that, he's thinking this is the next huge scandal and there's millions at stake. That's right. And then I had all this press that I was this whiz kid. They named me the top 10 entrepreneurs in Connecticut, all this shit. And I owned a nightclub. So I have a target on my back already. This to Texas, like the guy from the wolf of Wall Street detective, automatically fixated.

Yeah, he's like a Boy Scout. Call is my attorney. My attorney is like these personal injury attorney guys. It doesn't really do criminal law, but he's like revered in the town. And he's a bulldog. And he said, listen,

you guys got no cases and that. Good luck. You know, teases him a little bit. Round this time simultaneously, I'm not talking to investors anymore, you know, like the lawyer's handling it. He said, listen, this is never going to get to court. Nothing.

He just said they're investigating. We'll set up a meeting with the police department to see what they got. So at least that was off my back temporarily. But now I have the drug dealers I have to worry about. He wasn't get, I can't send the drug dealers a letter saying, hey, you're not owed any money. So at this point also I have a gambling problem. Yes. And which is funny, I was editing that episode for that bookie.

I used to go to Yonkers Raceway. That was my spot. Okay. Because it was 18 and older to get in. Connecticut Casino's all right. are 21 and up. I was 18. So I'd go and play electronic backerat.

And I'd win good money. Wow. At that casino. Yeah. That was your game? You didn't put money down on horses or anything like that? It was always that. Wow.

And I would play backer at and the Asians would call me young boy. They would say, young boy the best. And I would turn 520 grand sometimes playing backerat. $520 grand? $500 into $20,000. Oh, gosh. I think my winnings overall, I probably made like three or $400 grand there. And I would depend on that to pay off some of these shady figures.

Sometimes I would go with cash and I'd go and run back the damer and pay people off. So you could take 20k in cash out of your winnings and go to a drug deal. And that's how I would eventually pay off like some of the biggest acts in the world. I owed the chain smokers 25 grand at one point for like four months. And I paid them off with casino weddings. This is. Yeah, it's crazy. There's like six different stories.

I'm 18 still. Yeah. The FBI started investing. investigating when I was 19, or still 18, actually. How did you shake the gambling addiction, or did that just kind of fizzle out? That fizzled out over time. I always didn't look at it as an addiction. I looked at it as something like I could turn off and on, and I looked at it as a means to an end. Like, I needed to do that, you know, because that was the only thing, I was always, you do what works. So I found that that

worked for me. And it would also later be my downfall because I'd get my bond revoked because of it. Okay. Well, wait for that. I want to talk about that. But what ends up happening is that I do this, like I borrow money from someone else in Danbury when they're really after me, borrow money, go figure, me and my friend figure that we're going to go to California to ask my aunt and uncle who are very wealthy. He's a cardiologist. Their son writes for the office, all of this. Millions of dollars. My plan is go to California with the 15 grand that I owed them and then ask them for 500 grand to pay off everyone. Well, on my way to go on this way. close with this aunt and uncle? Yeah, very close. They were like my initial investors.

It's in that. And me and my business partner make a last hurrah trip. This is the end of the year 2013 and our lives are at stake here. We're thinking we have to pull this off. On the way, after we get 20 grand from this guy that we knew, a next mafia guy who gives us a cash. And on the way, we stop, we're trying to catch a red eye flight to California, to L.A. We're like, well, we don't have any spending money so we need to go try and make some. So we stop at the casino at Empire on the way JFK and I lose all of the money

to like 200 bucks or 300 bucks. And they were running a scratch-off thing that night where you got a scratch-off ticket when you came in for their holiday special. This is like right after Christmas, right before New Year's and my business partner's drunk yelling at me on the floor, you're a fucking idiot.

We're fucking dead now and he goes and wanders off. I play the scratch-off and win five grand. On the scratch off, cash it in, turn our money back to like 17, so we were at a loss anyways, but we're like, let's get out of here at 6 a.m. We get a red eye, go to California, pay my an uncle back. We gave him a little bit less. We said, here's 12. We'll give you the other money eventually or whatever. So you have some spending money. So we have spending money. So that you were going to pay them off from all those back investments and then say, hey, would you like to loan us

another poultry investment of half a million dollars? Yeah. So you were going to de, essentially, defraud your favorite aunt and uncle that was at the tent we were asking for a load no guarantees nothing we were gonna our plan was to come clean about everything and say listen there's dangerous people after us we need the money this is more of a gift i see you know right to save our lives right and we were too chicken to ask them until like the last day of the trip so that whole trip we're driving around with a private driver we couldn't afford um we were going to strip clubs we end up fucking a porn star that was week that we paid her 200 bucks each for Brittany Olson, not Bree Olson, or her name's Britney

Olson. She's on porn hub. Yeah, she's got the angels on the back. Oh, how much did you pay her? 200 bucks each. Our driver was an Albanian and brought us to the strip club. He's like, you guys want to fuck a porn star tonight? And we're like, fuck yeah.

So we bring her in this SUV to, we're staying at a beach house in Malibu that my aunt uncle owed and we're there by ourselves in the outhouse there and we she's like I don't do four sums and I'm showering in between so she fucks me first in an outhouse it no it's a nice guest house oh I was thinking you said outhouse I was picturing you fucking earned a funny bucket sorry I meant like used by some construction workers at the side house it's three doors down from Adam Sandler's house okay a few doors down from Ily Cyrus's house and then I leave the room she takes the shower and then fucks my business partner and then the driver and then the driver is waiting outside and brings her back.

And that was our last hurrah ever. My last vacation. How'd you hit it? Do you put in some work? It lasts about 10 seconds. Nice. There we go. Easy's 200 bucks she ever made.

Yeah, but I got to say that I cheated on my girlfriend with a porn star. Wow. Did she find out? Did you come clear? Later on, she saw it on like a video or a tweet or something. You guys were already split up. We already split.

She had wrote in her diary that two things, and it's pretty funny. She wrote in her diary that I was getting attacked like by dangerous people and that me and her had a threesome with my best friend. The mom reads a diary and says you have to break up with that kid. Oh my God. Yeah. What the fuck keeps a diary? Who are you? Anne Frank?

She's 18. Jesus. Yeah. So that happened. Okay, that's awesome. I'm really glad you brought that up. That was the last. I don't really get to tell that story.

It never goes down that route. Yeah. But you knew with your old pal Johnny Mitchell. Johnny, I'm giving you the exclusives, man. You know, Johnny boy. Yeah. I might be old, but I was young once, and I know a thing or two about, you know, house houses and hookers.

Go ahead. We end up asking them on the last day. We come clean, and they said, yeah, we'll help you. We'll give you $10,000 after tax season. Hey, that's why they're rich. They don't make stupid investments. So we flew back the next day, screwed our driver out of the money. He said, we'll PayPal them, and we never PayPal them because we owed them like three grand.

we didn't have it. We spent all the money. And we went, as soon as we got off that plane, we went right to the main drug dealer's house that we owed all this money to and begged for our lives to work out an arrangement. Wow. And my dad ended up meeting him and he ended up falling, like in love with my dad, respecting my dad. Your dad met a drug dealer? Yeah, I got my dad. My dad saved my life. Who's the drug dealer? You don't have to say his name, obviously.

It's just this guy from Stanford. He's a Spanish guy? Spanish guy. So he's selling cocaine heroin? So he actually ended up getting arrested and deported. But after all this, before all this happened, he formed a relationship with my dad, got into a business and a restaurant with my dad. Wow. And, you know, it just got worked out.

We'll put it that way. With all the shady figures, my dad saved me in that. He schmused it over. They realized that I wasn't there to fuck them. See, in this business, people react strongly if they know you're intentionally trying to fuck them. Yeah. Disrespect. They also.

I never intentionally tried to disrespect them. They also knew the other thing that saved me is that word was getting out that the FBI was involved. Right. And so they didn't want to touch you. They can't harm you now if they know the feds could be watching. They can't harm me and they also are worried what I was going to say. If I would leverage my relationships to do that. Of course, of course.

My business partner tried to. I had their back because the feds found out names that only me or my business partner would know. So they're going to these shady individuals. and they're saying, no, I don't know, I've never met this kid in my life. And I'm backing up that claim. I never ratted on them. So that saved me with them too. It builds street cred.

Because they're looking at it. The kid didn't snitch. Right. You know, I didn't turn them in. I didn't try to save myself. I could have very easily said, hey, I'll hand you on a platter. Right. The biggest drug dealers in Danbury that are selling serious weight.

That's what most people would have done is in danger, even though they knew what they got into. they would just go to the feds. And that saved my life. And you could have got out of everything because you could have been like, hey, I know I pulled a little bit of investor fraud, but I'll give you guys that are moving

fucking 100 kilos of heroin. You know, or wear a wire or anything. You know, I could have done that. And I know somewhere involved with guns. Like I kind of bought guns and stuff, but I knew and my dad didn't raise me to do that,

you know? Yeah. So it was a mix of the love and respect that they had for my dad. and then realizing that I wasn't like a bitch in a way. Yeah, your dad's a G. Your dad is a G. Yeah.

Okay, so that's how you managed to get out of or straighten out the street debt. That got me out of the crosshairs of the debt. So now my life is back in a safe spot. I don't quite understand that, but okay. I mean, I get it and I don't get it. Johnny, I don't quite understand it even to this day. Right. All I know is is that a lot of moving parts happen.

Yeah, yeah. And that like if I'm ever make it like really big. and we cross pass, I'll take care of them. Right, right. You know, it's one of those things. I think it's a mutually understanding. Fair. Fair. But I'm not out there to fuck them out of the money,

and it's not like something where it's like here, you owe some money right now. Right. So, okay. So now you have the problem of the FBI investigating the fraud from your family friends' money. So at first it's local police. We go to the meeting.

This is before they had the bank records. This is 2014 now. they think that it's just all the money got spent in real estate. They think I'm a drug dealer. They think money got spent at Universal Studios. They don't know because they don't have anything yet. So we blow it off, nothing. And I got the idea to reopen Tuxedo Junction.

This is my next hurrah. Nice. You got another brilliant plan. I got another brilliant plan. I'm thinking, go back to my roots. I have no money. Just my dad's paying for the paint, the supplies I work out of deal with the landlord to clean it up because the building's sitting there.

And I'm able to redo this whole building. Like get it. up and running by myself. I have a couple of friends and I open up Tuxedo Junction and I leveraged all those connections that I had in the industry to get big acts, find some new investors and I start booking the biggest acts in the world. The chain smokers, Steve Ioki, Adventure Club, big names, Yellow Claw. Oh my God. So this is happening while I'm being investigated in and on trial by the FBI. And haven't paid off any of the debt. I get about another 200, 50 grand for people that made

legitimate investments into the club. So Tuxedo Junction, the club had nothing to do with the FBI case. This was formed after they were investigating. How did you get these people to trust you? They didn't know there was an investigation. No one knew. But didn't you have a reputation now for not for not paying money back in a fund?

In a small area, yeah, but there was no news articles yet because there was no arrest, nothing. So I met new people. Yeah. Through different avenues, you know. And people, there was press on me that I was reopening Tuxedo Junction so that attracted people to me. And I got it up and running by myself. That is incredible. And so tell us about these concerts. Were they actually successful? Well, so before that,

this opens in June 2014. I go and get a subpoena to the Department of Banking in May of 2014. And I'm thinking, okay, great, that the local investigation is not going anywhere. I can go to the feds because they're higher up. Clear the whole thing up. I go in without a lawyer and I testify for like six hours. I give them every bank record, every information, all my, my phone records, everything, just handed to them on a silver platter just to clear it up and say, hey, this wasn't intentional. People are owed money. Let's make a deal. And I left the shady figures off the list, of course. Yeah. But everyone else, names, addresses everything. At the end of the meeting, they said there's two gentlemen here waiting to speak to you. Can you talk to them? I'm like,

yeah, yeah, sure, no problem. I just talk to you guys for six hours. I'm willing to cooperate. They put me in a room and it's two guys with these old suits on and they whip out their badges and it says postal inspectors. I'm like, what the fuck's a postal inspector? And you can see they have guns on and stuff, but they have the badge. And I don't know what a postal inspector is. They begin to interrogate me for the next hour and a half, two hours. And I tell them everything. And they ask specific questions, though. See, they knew everything going into it. They were listening on my interrogation. So they're asking targeted questions about jet skis, concert investments, this and that, because they're trying to get you to lie. At the end of the meeting, they say, they hand me a target letter,

a formal piece of paper that says, you are officially under investigation by the FBI. Wow. So they do that. They do that. That's very real. Wow. So all these individuals that you see get arrested by the FBI, they know. They know it's coming. The FBI doesn't arrest, unless you're like a terrorist or something. Or like a drug dealer. Yeah, but even the drug dealers kind of know if they're being looked at, you know, because they're talking, they do not make a move until they have a concrete case. Right, of course. So they give me the. target letter. That's when I knew I was like, fuck. Never told me I needed a lawyer, nothing. None of that. Wow. I immediately, when I left that conversation, I go and search good federal

criminal attorneys. Got a lawyer, told him everything. That's when the lawyer gets involved. Right. Told my mom everything. She paid the retainer for the lawyer because my dad already knew what was going on. How much was that? It was only 7,500 for an initial consultation. The feds would later pay for everything because I had no assets. And then federal courts, you could get your private attorney appointed to you. Right. To pay for you through CJA or whatever it's called. That's interesting. Okay.

So he became my lawyer, got us a meeting with the federal government, the U.S. attorney, where it was a reverse proffer, where I got to sit down with them and they told us everything we had. And they put together their case. They said everything. They were calling me Bernie Madoff, and I had no idea who Bernie Madoff was. And you could tell. Like it was this whole big room of FBI agents, interns at the FBI. interns at the Justice Department,

two head U.S. attorneys for Connecticut, this giant room all after me. The IRS has a criminal investigation division. It was this big room and it's just me and my dad and my lawyer facing down 30 individuals. Think about the resources that the federal government put to take down one man, barely man, 19-year-old boy. Johnny, it was crazy.

Wow. And that's when I knew like this was serious. This was big leagues, but it didn't even offer me a guy. a deal. I think it was like three years, which is about what I got after going to trial. So while they continue to investigate, I'm running this nightclub. I'm running the biggest nightclub in Connecticut for electronic dance music. Right, right. And it's in their face. Like I'm getting arrested for local shit now, like liquor violation, state cases, petty stuff, because they're just after me.

Oh, wow. So the feds are sicking the local people on your operation. The fire marshals coming every night. They're looking for drugs. They're raiding everything. But no one knows in Danbury there's an FBI investigation going on until I would later get indicted behind closed doors. Like what happened was they made a deal with my lawyer saying, I would just turn myself in. Well, the feds lied and they raided my house at five in the morning with the guns and the M16s and the IRS. Your parents' house? Yeah, my parents' house. They came fully loaded up and down. While they were asleep? Yeah, knocked on the door. They're yelling, where is he? Hold the dog back, this and that. Got me while was in my boxers. Made me put on cowboy boots because I had no laces on. They were my cowboy boots.

from the school play. Oh my God. Rated the house. It was nuts and took me out and I gave them my phone password, which was the biggest mistake I ever made. Why? Because they asked me for it. Wouldn't they have to get a warrant?

Couldn't they have got a warrant for it? I was reading something that it's hard for them to get into iPhones even with a warrant. Oh, interesting because Apple doesn't want to give it up. Yeah, I was reading that even with a warrant. But I put together their whole case. Always make them get a warrant. Even if you know they're going to get it, an OG, when I was down, I told him, man, I just let them.

him search the house, he goes, make them get a warrant, make them do the work. So while I'm facing off against the feds, I'm running this nightclub. And now, is that profitable, this operation? So it was, it's a high revenue business. Like the first year we did 250K revenue. Second year was on track for 500. I was only in business like a couple of years. But it's a brand new business.

So it's not making money. So it brought on more debt. but it has some revenue, but the problem was any money I made went to past debt, so I never got ahead. So when I should have been paying the electric bill or the rent, I'm paying off some investor from two years ago. But that's good though. Like that reduces your, doesn't that reduce your criminal liability? No, because then it looks like witness tampering and this and that. And it, I needed to reinvest that money to make more money and I never did that. And so it was mixing good money with bad money. So I had to keep borrowing. It was just a domino effect of a

cluster fun. So then I racked up a $30,000 bill with the electric company. I took wood from the club and put in front of the meter so they couldn't find it for six months. The night of a show, it was the act carnage. I don't know if you know him, DJ Carnage. Huge show.

Two hours before I'm on a criminal trial. I start my jury trial, right? I got a call from my friend that's setting everything up at the club. Eversource just removed all the wood with the city and they disconnected the power. Oh! I'm just getting a criminal court after my first day of trial, the day after jury selection, and I'm calling

every electrician in town to go and set up this generator for me. And I had no money. There was no operating money. On days of the show, we would go to the dollar store to get with ticket money, we would get sodas water so we could resell them at a higher rate. Everything was down to the last dollar. So I gave a check that I knew was going to bound to the company to get a $3,000 generator, then paid off the electrician to install it. Just to get this up and run, it was crazy. Crazy things like that would happen. Did the concert go ahead?

It did. So they didn't cut the power off then. They did cut the power. I used a generator. Or the generator, of course. It was always just hit or miss. And it was luck. A lot of luck mixed with perseverance.

I never gave up. Right. Always kept pushing. So now you're already in trial. Why did you choose to take it to trial and not take the offer? We were happy to plead guilty. because we knew people owed money and mistakes were made to no jail time. But the feds were so fixated that I needed to go to jail.

An 18-year-old kid, they needed, they wanted jail time. And they didn't just want probation or a year. They wanted serious jail time. And that's why we went to trial. We believed that there was no criminal intent in this. Right. So you didn't come back with like lesser prison time, like a year and a day. They wouldn't play ball.

Nothing. Just like this is our offer. Yeah, it was a bullshit offer. That's what they do. What were you facing? According to the news, I was facing 120 years. So like when you read these fed cases, they add up, you know, wire fraud is 20 years each and money laundering is 10.

And then they charged me making a false statement for that first count. And I got indicted on 15 counts. Right. And then they just go like to the maximum of each count and then just do the math. Yeah. Really after trial what I was facing after losing, I went about half the count to trial. How long was the trial? A month almost.

Wow. And it was actually, what's interesting is, so the day of jury deliberations, the feds always want you to get convicted the first day. Like Sam Bankman-Fried got convicted after a few hours. They think that's a win. Yeah. It took the jury almost four days of deliberations. They came back after day one said we can't reach a verdict.

But in federal court, the judge has to order them to go back and reconsider under federal law. So they kept coming back saying we can't reach a verdict And then they asked the question What happens if this goes past Thanksgiving? Because this is November the day before Thanksgiving Judge says we'll have to reschedule until December This and that

They go back 10 minutes later they have a verdict They want to go home They want to go home and it was a mixed verdict Some were so on wire fraud Some were guilty Some were not guilty All the Henry counts were a mistrial But in the feds they lump everything together

Dude they are it's so dirty That's why they overcharge you because they only need one conviction. Right. Even if I was convicted on the lowest offense, they could still give you the max for that. That's what they do. They overcharge. Wow. There's no federal trial where it's just one charge.

Yeah. They hedger things. Of course. But we won the lying to a postal inspector's charge. Jury didn't like that. I testified for two days. It was just a whole big scene out of a movie. Courtroom was packed every day.

It was me and my lawyer on one side. And they got 30, 40 people. files, they make it this whole big show. Wow. And it's not guilty, it's not innocent until proven guilty. It's guilty until proven innocent. Of course it is. You're fighting for your life up there. Yeah, you took the federal government to trial. And I didn't do just that. I'm running a club where they're trying to get a closed down every day. They're going to federal court saying you need to close this club down. The judge is like he's not doing anything

illegal. He's entitled to work. They tried to revoke my bond five times because of the club stuff. They started black mailing me with the local ambulance to say I needed to start paying them three to four grand to have an ambulance and EMS stationed outside the club. So they were getting money by when someone

would go to the ambulance for over drinking like pre-gaming and then I would pay them. A federal court ruled that that was illegal what they were doing because by law they have to show up if someone gets hurt. Do you think this would have happened if you were in a bigger city where there was actually real crime and problems?

I don't think so. If you were in New York City do you think they you would have a packed courtroom? No, I don't think it ever should have been a federal case. I think someone had some connections and pushed it along because the feds normally do millions of dollars. I mean, when you think about it, this is a $485,000 fraud case. Right. The feds aren't doing cases like that.

Right, no. And also, and I'm not saying that people shouldn't get their money back, I'm just saying it shouldn't have been on a federal level. Think about how much they spent. Right. Two years of investigation. A criminal trial 10 times at it

10 times that it makes for a lot of money So did I'm curious The people you borrowed money from Did they testify? Yeah Did you have family friends That testified? Yeah but I did have family

But it always so like my uncle testified On the fed's witness list But that hurt them Yeah Because he came on and said He doesn't owe us money And he's a doctor So he said that child's mind's not developed

Individuals like that A lot of their witnesses hurt them Yeah what happened was two days after the trial started or whatever so my business partner John this is where he plays into it I made a deal with him I said listen always have my back I won't throw you under the bus I'll take the heat for it but just don't go against me he gets the best deal of his life I think they put pressure on his aunt and uncle who are rich paying for his college he gets an immunity deal to testify

he made their case because he was able to go on the stand saying that he was able to, as a co-conspirator or whatever, you can testify to my mindset. So he was able to say that we came up with this plan to defraud, which is total bullshit, but he was able to place my mindset. He cut a deal, got immunity, got probation in the state, did three years probation on a state charged misdemeanor, and that was it. This episode is brought to you by Palm Olive. Family time isn't just the big moments. It's weeknight dinners. Sitting around the table, everyone talking all at once. So when the plates are empty and the sink is full, use palm olive ultra. Palmolive's most powerful formula removes up to 99.9% of grease,

leaving your dishes sparkling clean. And the new convenient pump makes cleaning even easier. So you can spend less time tackling dishes and more time together. Shop now at palmolive.com. And that was the... And his restitution was $30,000. And that was the hook line and sinker. That's what did it.

Just one good inside witness for the feds. That's all they need. Because we had like one of the... Do you think you would have won if they hadn't had him? 100%. We had a great trial. I was straight on the stand. Yeah.

A lot of their witnesses weren't like mind blowing. There wasn't individuals that came to testify that said they lost their house. My lawyer was able to pull out of every adult that testified. So there was two aspects. One, all the kids that testified, my lawyer would say, are you out any money? And they would say technically no. So that looked good with the jury. Two, all the adults that said they came and lost money.

One, they were all well. off. They weren't on the street. And two, my lawyer hit at home that, so did you only invest because of the 50% interest rate with a 17, 18 year old kid? And they would all say yes. And you should have seen the look on the jury's face of everyone. They were, it was not. Yeah. They look bad. Yeah, that's a scumbag move. Yeah. He said this is child abuse. Yeah. He went crazy lakes to defend me. That's awesome. Yeah. That's lawyer's theater. Yeah. It was a show. it was a concert It was crazy

Wow so your boy lied To me right on it And it ratted and lied Yeah He saved himself Did you So you were found guilty Did they arrest

Did they bring you in Right there? I was released back on bond It's not like state court Right Released back on bond I'm on bond Sentencing keeps getting pushed

This is November now Tried to revoke my bond A couple times they lost But now I'm getting back into gambling because the club shows the winner's slow season for the club, not getting good acts, cash flow is slow. I do what I do best. I go to the casino to start trying to make money.

And I'm taking concert money and whatever just to make money. But I'm not 21 yet. So I'm going out of state. Well, my supervised release rules are that you're not allowed to travel out of state without permission. At first, I'm playing it safe. If I'm taking a taxi cab, I'm leaving my phone at home or putting on an airplane road, I'm paying all in cash. I then get lazier. And I start using the business debit card.

And I start having my friend drive me that helped me at the club and all this shit. Over the summer, sentencing keeps getting pushed. I just turned 21. These guys that were helping me at the club that I thought were my friends call the FBI and say, hey, we know you're after him. We know how you can get them. They placed me at the scene of that casino out of state on like six occasions. Game the dates, this and that. Their idea was they wanted to take the club from me and run it themselves.

They were having backdoor meetings with the landlord, all this shit. They turned me in. The probation officer finds out, calls an emergency bond hearing. Judge revokes my bond. Now you're in the slammer. And this is October 2016. Go to a detention center in Rhode Island, a federal holding private center and immigration center. 30 days later,

get sentenced to three years in federal prison by the judge. What were you pressing for before you got your bond revoked? What was your lawyer pressing for? So the feds after trial negotiations. The feds after trial were asking for the guidelines after the pretrial supervision report

like to show what I qualified for or whatever had me at 10 to 12 years. The feds were asking for 7 to 8, the prosecutor, which was lower than the recommended guidelines because they said it was warned of there should be a downward departure because of my age and everything and the old sent to guidelines are way out of pocket. 10 to 12 years was crazy. Seven to eight years is crazy.

So seven to eight. And then my lawyer was asking for house arrest. Right. House arrest probation. Right. I would have gotten that if I didn't get my bond revoked and pissed off the judge because he left me out for that long anyways. And I had just gotten a job at Whole Foods.

I was paying money back. Like the club was by downfall. Should have walked away from that. But it was a blessing in disguise because I needed to be physically removed from that club. Otherwise, and COVID, even if I... Why? Because you had an attachment to it. I had an attachment.

It wasn't a great business. And I need the time heals everything. So by removing me from that situation for three years, it was the best thing that could have happened to me. So the judge met in the middle. Yeah. He gave me three years and one year house arrest and three years supervised release. Right. So we're talking four years, tied, seven years.

With paper and everything. Yeah. Wow. Wow. Wow. That... I was 21. That is an odyssey. That is an odyssey. And, you know, we're going to switch over now on the Patreon just to... You know, because you've talked so much about prison, but I want to hear a little bit of it.

We won't spend that long. But I just want to wrap with, like, some thoughts. So, yeah, I mean, I love it. I love it. I mean, you made mistakes, but it's like I, in some ways envy young entrepreneurs like that. Like I didn't really have that. I was a, you know, a drug dealer that just got lucky. I was just like a small time punk who just was in the right place at the right time in many ways.

But you like, God damn, from the beginning, such a business-minded individual. And you love the creative aspect of it. You know, you love putting things together. Look what you've done, you know? Yeah. And you couldn't have done it. You couldn't have the prison brand without being locked up. So.

I needed to go to prison to have what I. have now. Prison was the best thing that could ever happen to me because that's what makes me different in a way. This whole time I'm chasing difference and the thing that got me sent to prison because I was different helped me create being different even more. That's right. That's right. And I remember that too. Sometimes I have to remind myself like that's why people know who I am. That's why people know my comedy is because it started with my prison experience. Wow. And what about your parents? Like, you know, there had to be some healing involved. Like your poor parents were in bed when the feds raided

like you were a meth house. Did that relationship? I mean, what was going through their mind? Were they under a tremendous amount of heartbreak and stress? I think they just felt my pain. I mean, they saw me suffering. They saw the weight I was putting on. Always under constant pressure and stress.

Like I don't, you know, even to this day, I don't think there's a day that goes by where, like, I'm not under pressure. I've been under pressure since I was. was, you know, this started since I was 17 years old because now it's the pressure of making things right, you know? So you're still paying off restitution? Yeah, I pay $1,000 a month now. Wow. How much have we down? What do we have left to go? I got about 400 left. Oh my God. Wait, how much? What was the total? 485. My business partner paid 30. I mean, while I was getting on my feet

and stuff, I didn't pay a thousand, but now I just worked out a deal with them where I'm paying $1,000. Right. My goal is to get like some type of big deal, whether it's a TV gig or something. that I can negotiate it, say, hey, here's 250,000. Right. Here you go. Yeah. Let's knock this off. That's right.

That's right. And if the victims, right, are amenable to that, then the government is good with that. Exactly. You go to the victims first. Gotcha. Through a lawyer. Gotcha. And you all come up with an agreement.

How many victims were there? I think there's 12. 12 or 13 on paper. What was the maximum, the highest investment? Henry's was 225,000. Henry. and that was the lowest. I think 10 grand.

Was there anybody that you were close to that you fell out with because of the money? I mean, I was close with all them, you know? Or at least I thought I was. I mean, you realize, though, that some people never really were your friends because money shouldn't change that aspect. If they were, like, I meet people now where, you know,

like, because now I got, I'm, like, traumatized by money. Like, I don't want investors. Like, it took me years just to get into a spot where I have an investor in this. And, like, I'm very cautious. this. Like if I say, I'm going to pay you on this date, like when a vendor sends me an invoice, but I has to pay at it right then. I don't like playing with money whatsoever because I don't want to be in that position. You know, I don't want to borrow from anyone. I just, it just reminds me

too much of the past. You don't want to. Yeah. And I'm like in this business where it's good, where it's not like, it's just the type of business where you don't need that, you know? Yeah. But I also knew I need to take on a partner to grow. Right. In that sense. But I realize, like, I have a great partner now who he offers to help me with things and I never got that help from these individuals before. So were they ever really my friends? Yeah.

You know, because money shouldn't change that. Well, money will change that if there's not an apology. But a friend, a friend could be mad. I could be mad at you for you lying about what you did with my money. Yeah. But if you come and apologize and be like, hey, I was just too ashamed to tell you that I, I lost it on a legitimate investment.

I was really trying to make you money. I as a friend as a reasonable person should say, that's okay, I understand. But my problem was I never did that until it was too late. So it wasn't genuine because I had lied so much that they got so pissed off the point where they turned to that law enforcement and by the time it was time to apologize

or whatever, it's too late. Yeah. Did your father advise you to go apologize before these people went to the cops? They had already gone the cops by the time my dad knew. I got you. And there was no call on the dogs off then? You couldn't have made an apology. This guy, this detective was after it.

So you think even if the people, the victims had forgiven the debt by the time the case got rolling, the feds would have gone after you anyways? I think that a lot of these individuals, they were promised by law enforcement that they would get their money back because they didn't know what was really going. on. They could have thought I was hiding the money genuinely stole. They didn't know. They just want an honest point of view. The feds promised them that honest point of view and their money back. Well, the feds lied because they weren't getting their money back right then and there because there was no assets. It was all lost. Yeah. And so I think by the time this thing eventually

went to trial from like the gist of conversations and stuff, these people didn't want to be involved with it. It was water under the bridge. I don't think these people, the people that have hatred for me right now are the people that were kids that I went to high school with that are not owed a The people that lost money, they don't hate me. They went on, they made more money. They know I'm trying. They know I'm doing things, but they're not out bashing me. The people that repost bad articles about me that hate me for what I'm doing now are people

that I went to high school with that didn't like me to begin with or never or not owed any money. Those are the people that talk badly about me. Right, right, right. Yeah, if you had been a rich man, like if you had had houses and things to trade, you probably would have avoided the case. But that shows your intent. If I had that,

I was genuinely trying to steal from these people. Those jet skis I bought I had for three weeks and gave them to a pawn shop for $7,500 because I was trying to pay off another investor and didn't realize all I had to do

was make the minimum payment to get the jet skis, like to keep paying the minimum. Pawn shop took advantage of me and I lost the jet skis. $22,000 jet skis I gave up for $7,000. Wow. Yeah.

Josh, the feds wanted you. The feds wanted you. Yeah. And they're still dicks. Like in the HBO documentary I did. Yeah. Like, they think I'm literally Bernie Madoff, Johnny. What a losers. Aren't they supposed to be intelligent people to get into the FBI? And you wanted to get, you wanted to be part of the FBI. I met with the U.S. attorney last week at just about restitution. Yeah. Nasty. Really? Just like bulldogs. Really? And it's just like, there's, I interview people on my channel that have been convicted a fraud. And they're skating the system and they're trying to not pay it back because they genuinely defrauded people. Yeah. Yeah. They're paying pennies on the dollar a month. They don't give a fuck.

And here I am trying to do the right thing and paying a lot and you're trying to scare me. They literally said, oh, you know, like you could get resentenced to prison. And my lawyer was like, no one in this 50 years of practice has ever been resentenced to prison on an old case where probation has expired. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But like that's how they're still trying to play, like your scum of the earth. Yeah, I... Look at Jordan Belfort. He owes $100 billion.

He's got yachts and the ad mansions. That's right. It's crazy. That's why it's better to be a scumbag. I will never be like that, though. My mission is to pay everything back, including the street people, everything. That's my goal.

Wow. See, they plan on getting their money back. The way I look at it, I need to make about $750,000 to make everything right, to write everything. And that's attainable in a lifetime. I think you will. No, I think you'll make millions.

I think you'll make millions fast than you think. And when it comes, it comes. Well, you know, it's, I hear stories like this about the FBI, and it really what, like, Vec Ramoswamy is, you know, the Republican who's running that wants to, like, cut the FBI like, by like 70%. Yeah. I mean, it makes a little bit of sense, because it's like

these people have no respect for the Constitution, for the Bill of Rights. They really don't. They operate like a Gestapo. And it's, So you think, yeah, it's like there's just too much bureaucracy at the top. It's like it's all becoming just a big money pot. And it's, you know, there's an argument for there. You know, and obviously you need, but you need the FBI for like, you know, these horrendous things to go on. So it's just, it's tough, man.

But yeah, you got to, you got to cut them by a lot. You got to, it's like, man, it's wild. And a lot of people are bitter too. They don't want to be. They want to be like, you're. defense lawyer, $500 an hour. That too, you know, and they don't have the balls.

They live off taxpayers' monies. But anyway. Wow, we've detracted. So, well, look, dude, I, man, that's something, Ian Bick. What'd you learn? It's the biggest you can learn from, from this whole Odyssey.

I mean, there's a lot of lessons in the story, but I would say, like, the biggest ones are, you know, be patient. I think I made a lot of my bad decisions because I always thought things needed to be figured out in the moment and had I just waited and thought things through, I could have chose a different avenue and explored options and I wouldn't have made bad decisions.

And also everything's going to work out exactly the way it should. You know, every little bad thing that happened to me would later turn out to be a blessing. Sometimes we just don't realize that at the time. Amen. So those have been very important. things I've taken away. And also just never give up, like ever. You keep pushing, you're going to beat out 90% of the people. Right. Oh, yeah. It matters way more than talent for sure. Or smarts. It's persistence.

Dude, it's a grind, man. In our industry, you know, how many people, you know, they're afraid to get into YouTube or comedy or whatever. If you're consistent, you don't miss a day posting, this and that. You're going to get somewhere. Yeah. Something will happen. Can't get discouraged. Yeah, that's right. That's right. Amen. Okay, buddy. Plug away. Plug away. Well, Johnny, thank you for having me on the show, man. People, you know, could find me just at Ian Bick.com. Yeah. See my YouTube channel, Ian Bick. We interview people. We have two episodes a week, that people that have been to prison or former addicts that have been able to turn their life around. And yeah, Ian Bick.com has all my social media. That's it. That's it. And maybe in the future you'll be touring with the podcast. Who

knows. Yeah, we're working on live shows right now. There's a lot of things. You've got a lot of stuff working on a book too. Oh, you are? Yeah, getting the book. It's, I've redirected to it to be mainly about prison because that's what I built my platform on. So it's proof of market right there. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So I'm going to be focusing on those prison stories. Okay, well, click over to the Patreon. I want to hear some of those prison stories. And yeah, go follow Ian. And I can't wait to do the live show on Sunday, man. It's going to be fun. Absolutely. Thanks, buddy. Thanks, thanks guys.