The Connect- with Johnny Mitchell - How An American Pot Smuggler Became Top Lieutenant For The Sinaloa Cartel: Former Kingpin Speaks

Episode Date: August 10, 2025

How does a small-time American weed dealer end up working side-by-side with one of the most powerful drug cartels in the world? In this gripping interview, we dive deep into the true story of Jon Mullins, an American who went from hustling marijuana in the U.S. to becoming a trusted lieutenant for the notorious Sinaloa Cartel. He shares raw, first-hand accounts of drug smuggling operations, life inside the cartel, run-ins with law enforcement, and the high-stakes world of cross-border trafficking. From near-death experiences to life behind bars, nothing is held back. Hit up Jon if you need solar in the Tucson, AZ area! https://www.facebook.com/people/JM-Solar-Energy-Efficient-Home-Solutions/61553962503275/ This Episode Is #Sponsored By DeleteMe! Remove your personal information from the web at https://JoinDeleteMe.com/CONNECT and use code CONNECT for 20% off DeleteMe international Plans: https://international.joindeleteme.com Join The Patreon For Bonus Content! https://www.patreon.com/theconnectshow 00:00 Cartel Violence & Interview Intro 01:22 Early Life in Ohio & High School Hustles 02:55 Steroid Smuggling Beginnings 03:51 How the Steroid Trade Worked 06:06 Getting Steroids Over the Border 07:31 Scaling Up: European Mafia Connections 10:45 Steroid Importing Logistics & Risk 13:33 Running a Car Lot & Hiding Profits 15:38 The Weed Game Takes Off 19:33 Drug Smuggling Logistics and Risks 25:03 Finding New Connects in Mexico 27:08 Cross-Border Operations & Logistics 32:22 Today's Sponsor 34:44 Working with the Cartels: Chapo Era 37:58 How Smuggling Operations Expanded 41:53 Checkpoint Runs & Hiding Methods 46:33 Managing Crews, Logistics & Losses 50:01 Growing Risks: Jackers & Internal Threats 54:12 Cartel Politics and Local Mafias 56:29 The Drug Business as War & Business 01:00:28 Operation Expansion & Escalation 01:05:12 The Fight Between Cartel Factions 01:12:04 Navigating Cartel Wars in Nogales 01:18:25 Surviving Mexico's Cartel Chaos 01:26:12 Retirement & Decline of the Old Market 01:33:44 Getting Busted: Arrests, Identity Switches & Court 01:37:32 Doing Time: Prison Life & Cartel Fallout 01:41:11 Rebuilding Life: Release & Legit Businesses 01:47:48 Life After Prison & Lessons Learned 01:53:32 State of Mexico & Reflections Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Yamava Resort and Casino at San Manuel is California's number one entertainment destination for today's superstars. Catch the Jonas Brothers return to the Yamava Theater stage on April 30th, the powerful vocals of Demi Lovato on May 17th, and the signature Southern Country Rock of Eric Church on July 19th. Tickets on sale now at Yamavat Theater.com, only at Yamava Resort and Casino, celebrating its 40th anniversary. You in? Must be 21 to enter. You survived the Miami weekend.

Nailed the speech and maxed out your credit card in the name of friendship. Now you've got one hangover, four pastel dresses, and zero reasons to wear them again. Sell them on Deepop. Just snap a few photos and we'll take care of the rest. And you at least get some of your dignity, money back. Someone on Deepop wants what you've got. Start selling now. Deepop where taste recognizes taste. It all culminated one night in my neighborhood. The Chapos hit eight houses where Beltran people were.

They filled a whole pickup truck full of bodies. They were cutting people's heads off, rolling them down the street. It sounded like a war zone. John Mullins is a former marijuana trafficker who worked as head of logistics for the Sinaloa cartel in Nogales, Mexico. He began in the early 90s smuggling steroids from Mexico back to his hometown of Cleveland, Ohio. And by the mid-2010s, at his height, he was moving thousands of pounds of Mexico. Mexican bud every day to cities across America.

He actually lived in Mexico, in Nogales, at a time when the Sinaloa cartel had that plaza divided between the Chapo and the Mayo factions, and when it came to pot, he was their number one gringo. John gives us exclusive insider insight into Mexican cartel politics and explains how cartel bosses recruit and protect valuable American drug smugglers such as himself. Today, he runs a legal business in Nogales on both sides of the border and is developed a TV show about his life. This is a fascinating one, you guys.

And remember, you can get the fully uncensored, ad-free versions of these episodes, plus bonus content at patreon.com slash the Connect show. All right, without further ado, the gringo smuggler himself, John Mullins, right here on The Connect with Johnny Mitchell. Okay, where in Ohio are you from? Born around the Cleveland area,

went to high school in Dayton, a little suburb called Gettering. I went to high school with Rob Deerick. Okay. His sister graduated with me. I see. So you were in high school in the 90s? Yeah.

I graduated in 1990. Gen X guy. Okay. Okay. So yes, you were around for the beginnings of the cocaine era. Oh, yeah. Were you dealing drugs in high school? No.

Sold fake IDs. Fake IDs. Yeah. That's good business in high school. Yeah, it was. Wow. Just making them at home? I got out of school.

I got kicked out before I graduated. So I was like, didn't know what to do, you know. Then I got, I was working in gym since I was 15. This older dude took me on a trip to Mexico because I spoke my Spanish was, after four years of Spanish, I was pretty good, you know. So I, we went down and bought a bunch of steroids, brought them back, you know, we're already working in the gym. Right. So there's big money in steroids. Definitely, especially back then.

Yeah, I made a lot of money in steroids. Where in Mexico was he taking it? We went to Mademorto San Reynosa. Yeah. But this is before it was super dangerous. Yeah, I didn't feel in danger there at all. And so you just walk into like a retail pharmacy or do you go to like a wholesaler? We had to go one day and tell them what we wanted and go back like the next day and the next day because they had to call in for us.

Call him for more. Yeah, for more supplies. Yeah, more supply. Now, what kind of steroids are these? Are these like your typical, just testosterone? Yeah, well, there's only certain things that they would sell at the pharmacies in Mexico. And it was Sustanon 250. They came in preloaded syringes.

And like these big-ass syringes, like, cool. Do you know anything about syringes? Like 18 gauge. The smaller, the number, the bigger the needle. Harpoon is. yeah um most people would take the take it out and put it in a smaller you know yeah so they sell it already loaded up yeah it's yeah it's called ready jack and all you got to do is just slam it well not there but yeah wow or yeah in your ass probably right i used to do in my legs yeah okay so my ass started

getting too big yeah yeah okay so tell us the harpoons how much did those what was your price when you went to pick them up in Mexico. It's $2 since some change. We were selling them for 20 bucks. Wow. Crazy markup. Crazy markup. Yeah. And how many were picking up at a time? Oh, thousands. Oh, my goodness. And so you're making thousands of dollars a run. Yeah, I was just a translator on that one. I was 18. I wasn't the one making them, but later on in life, I started making real good money. Oh, so that can turn into like a $100,000 a month business. if you wanted it to. It did. Wow. Yeah. Wow. As a teenager still. No, more like when I was like 20, 21, 22.

Oh, so you're just a bad boy from a young age. I guess. That's interesting. Yeah. Okay. So you're selling them through your customers at the gym or do you start to wholesale it to other wholesale? Yeah. Okay. Yeah. Okay. Wow. What are the other kinds of steroids besides the the ready made harpoon? Oh, little ampules, little glass ampuos you break open. Yeah, like Deca, Deravalin, Primo Test 250. Primo testing 250. Primo Ballin, they used to sell. Primo Ballin is like, that's like hard, really sought after right now.

Yeah, but it's hard to find, especially like straight from the pharmacy. I don't think you can find it anymore. Now, how were you guys getting them across the border? That time, we had girls drive it back. Just put it in. a convertible, put the top down, had two pretty girls, two strippers. One wasn't a stripper. One was and one wasn't, had them drive it back. It's good to just have a stripper around. They're just down for the cause, usually. I've noticed. Oh, yeah. You want a trip to Corpus Christi,

but yeah, let's go. Yeah. So, wow, it's that easy. What kind of illegality? Because steroids are legal in Mexico. They're kind of legal here. Like, what do you think? Oh, they're not legal here at all. Not at all? Like, none of those things? 1990 is when they signed the Anabolic Steroid Act, which made it like a harsher penalty. I have friends that did like three years. You're not going to do like cocaine time or even weed time, but you're doing some time if you get caught with enough. Are you like Fed time? You can do Fed time for sure. Okay. Yeah. Actually, I think state is where you're going to get more time for steroids, then you will out of Fed time. Feds usually aren't that harsh on steroids. Do you think if you, do you think you got caught? Do you think you had enough to do Fed time? If I would have? Yeah, if you guys, the amounts you guys were moving. Do you think it was enough to? One of my good friends, they threw a weed and steroid case on him and he took it to the box. He got 17 and a half

years. Wow. So now you're making huge money? Like you're making for a 20 year old kid, you're making like a six-figure drug business? I started making like 10,000. You know how it just starts to extrapolate, you know? Exponentially. Yeah, next thing you know, you're making 20 grand a month. Then you meet a different person. I got introduced to a pro bodybuilder who had,

who we got a European connection from Romania. So after that, it's just exploded. What was the difference between the Romanian connect? The Romanian guy? was hooked up with like the Russian mafia. And a lot of steroids come out of Russia, Eastern black countries. Right.

Obviously, they've always been very good and Olympic weightlifting and all that, you know. Of course. Remember that Eastern German women's swim team all look like dudes? Yes. Yeah, right. Of course.

Totally. So, yeah, back in the day at that time, if you bought Russian D-Balls in this country, we probably brought it in. Holy shit. So, yeah. So you could get it. him even cheaper than you could in Mexico from the Russians?

You can't get D-Ball in Mexico. You could get like liquid D-Bowl, but nobody really liked that too much. So we got a little blister pack Russian D-Balls. And I think we used to get them for like $16 per 100. And we would wholesale them out for 40. Wow. And then just moving them like crazy. How were they coming in?

How were you guys bringing them in? I had to go to JFK like every two weeks. and pick up people getting off the plane from Romania. With those big Samsonite suitcases, the huge ones, you know, the monkeys used to beat on or whatever, the guerrillas and the commercials. So, yeah, they'd bring sometimes two, four, all just loaded with all different types of steroids.

Did they try to conceal them? There was, these people brought zero, like hardly, they didn't even bring a change of clothes. The suitcases were just full of juice. but I imagine at that time, like this is such a niche business. It's not obvious to TSA agents, especially in the early 90s. It's not like cocaine. Like there's people probably didn't even know what it was.

I look back in it right now and like how the hell I did not get busted is just insane. It's crazy. But I mean, it's such a kind of abstract. And it had just become illegal, as you said. So, you know, it was kind of a, it was kind of the Wild West. You got in at the perfect time, you know. Yeah, pretty much. Yeah, the game has changed now.

Like, people make their own now. They order the raw materials from China and, like, make it in their bathroom, you know. Yeah. Wow. Who knows? People probably have labs. So, so you just had, they had the Romanian connect had mules coming in every two weeks and dropping up suitcases full of this shit. Mm-hmm.

And then you would drive it to Ohio and that's where you set it out? My dude, Big Dan from Omaha, Nebraska, he had people in like every major city in the U.S. So that's, that was the guy, that's the guy that got 17 and a half years. And he was the one that your main distributor. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. And others, power, there were like a whole powerlifting click, you know.

Right, right. Yeah, this is the early 90s. We talked to a guy from Britain that said, had the. same story but over there about this early 90s weightlifting steroids phenomena. Yeah. Where there's just huge millions of dollars in illegal juice. Oh, yeah. Yeah.

Wow. Yeah, there's still money in it, too. You don't hear about it too much anymore. Wow. Okay. So how long did you run like this? Well, for a while until my friend got indicted. Yeah.

then we still did it. But what we had found out, though, was all these people that could sell all this huge amount of steroids. Because we had people in Miami, Nashville, Kansas City, Minneapolis, shoot, L.A., just every major city almost in the U.S. So that's just like the Italian Mafia. That's how they can make so much money because they're all in every different city. And it's being distributed.

in these cities through customers at gyms. Yeah, there's one. Powerlifters. You got one good guy in every city who you give a bunch to. Right. And then it just fizzles down. Right. Of course, just like anything else.

So you opened up a car lot, I believe. Yeah. Is that a way to move your steroid money through? I just like the car business, you know. I think I started with like $15,000. In two years, I think I had a hundred thousand. $1,000 worth of cars, bought the, bought the card lot property, and bought a house. So, wow.

You're such an unassuming guy. That's what's so fascinating is like you're running this criminal conspiracy. You're the biggest steroid dealer in the U.S., it sounds like for this kind of, this kind of stuff. I was one of them. How's that? Wow. Yeah. And all because of my friend, the pro bodybuilder, you know, I got to give him credit.

He died a few years back. So a lot of people that are in the steroid game will know. His name was Phil Heron. He won the USA in 1995. Yeah, if it wasn't for that guy, I wouldn't be where I am. He was the guy that was moving for you, or he was your connect? Yeah, we were partners. Okay.

So, yeah, he had the connect. He wanted to stay low-key. He ended up doing three years, though, for steroids. They raided his house, and I always told him, don't keep anything in your house. You know, but... What about you? Did they ever catch wind of you? Oh, yeah.

They tried to get everyone to tell on me, but no one did. Wow. But eventually they did. But in that time, nobody told them me, you know? Okay. And I was always pretty careful. You know, I was really good at knowing, like, when to cut somebody off. Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm. What happened to your Romanian guy? Your connect. He died while I was in prison. Okay. He had a heart attack in his 50s, so... Yeah, steroids, long-term steroids. Yeah, my other friend, he died from kidney failure.

Mm-hmm. So how, at what age, did this business kind of just fizzle out? Or did you quit? Like, how did- I did quit for a minute. What I was about to say before, all these guys that were moving all these steroids, I find out they can move a bunch of weed also. Of course.

So I started going out to L.A., east L.A., and buying weed from the gangbangers out there. Right. And taking it back to, basically taking it back to Omaha. And, you know, I started off maybe 100 just to see, you know, and I was driving it myself, throw it in the trunk, boom, drive it. Made it. I mean, I can't believe I never got pulled over and got busted.

I can. You look like you work IT in some office park. I've been followed for like my, I remember one time I had like 400 and over 400 pounds in the trunk. And I'm in Utah, and the cops right behind me, like for miles. And I just have it on, I always had it on cruise control a little bit underneath the speed limit. And I'm sweating bullets. Just like, oh, no, I did not get pulled over. Wow.

Yeah, I made it. Is this the Mexican brickweed or is this the Arizona? What kind of weed is this? This was kind of brickweed from L.A. So, yeah, but they were buying it. 400 pounds, boom, week later, we need more. Yeah. So then you, you know, with dealing drugs, and I'm sure you know, it's all about logistics.

It's like, you got, you got, if you can get it from point A to point B and you got somebody waiting, you're golden. So, but the hardest part is moving it. Yeah. Getting it from point A to point B. So did you, part of you say, okay, I got to get a better price. So I have to go down to Mexico now? Um, after I stopped because after my friend got busted, I had stopped. Okay.

Yeah. But before that, we tried every which way to like get, get it over to the eastern part of the United States. Is this before mailing? I, yeah, I didn't try mailing at that time. I did a little bit. I think we sent 50 pounds through the mail, something like that. Yeah. Then I lost 50.

You know, it's easy to lose when you do that. Well, and back then the weed was so. it's not valuable like it was when I was running in the mid-2000s where pounds one pound of weed you could charge four thousand bucks for like this oh yeah from from like northern cali yeah yeah this brick weed you know you buy it for what 200 a pound and sell it for we were we were getting it for like 300 300 350 maybe okay then what was your what were you charging like 758 wow it's not bad that's a that's a double up he's going to be mad at me for when he hears this it's a double up yeah Yeah, yeah, yeah, now you found out what you were making off of them.

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Drink responsibly. B-21. Okay, $750 a pound and that's a wholesale price? That's like a good price to them. Yeah, just dumping on him, yeah. And so you just have one guy that was taking hundreds. Yeah. As much as you could get it.

Yeah, the most I could fit was like $4.40 and a big, I had to get rent a Lincoln town car, remember those old town cars, had the biggest trunk. Yeah. Because I used to like to drive the big caddy sedans, but it wouldn't fit more than like 360. So you got 400 pounds, just little old John

has to sit on phone books to be able to see over the steering wheel, John. And you got 400 pounds in your truck. Wow. And you just drive them yourself. Yeah. Yeah. But look, all right, then these guys, and I used to have I used to pay guys to come to help me drive too.

Right, right. And one comes to me and he's like, hey, my friend has an idea. You know, he's a pilot. He's a, you know, we fly to Vegas all the time. And he wants to fly it. I didn't trust it. But I'm like, all right, here, give him 100 pounds.

And they were so long story short, on the way, they had a malfunction and it crashes. The plane crash. Crashes. Fuck. Where? Utah I can talk about this because it's so long

ago Okay, did anybody What happened? Anybody died? Did they get caught with the Yeah, One lived, one died,

yeah. Wow. Yeah, and they picked them, they needed time for it. But he also, he testified against my guy in Nebraska.

Okay. And then after my guy in Nebraska, of course he was probably pissed at me because it was right. It was partly my fault that he got convicted, you know,

so. Why? Because you allowed to be a stranger to fly your weed for you. Yeah. And then he ended up testifying. They came after this guy, he got 17 and a half years, Big Dan from Nebraska.

And he said, after he got sentenced, every week or two, the prosecutor would call his lawyer saying, like, hey, if he wants to talk, you know, we, you know, let's play ball. They offered him a year and a day as long as he would think about that. Think about what kind of dude that guy is. Right. It's just a solid.

So they wanted you. Oh, yeah. Did they know who you were? Yeah. Well, what happened was a lot of that big dance friends only knew me as penguin. I can see why. Okay, that's... Well, the whole Danny DeVito played Penguin.

They used to call me DeVito or Penguerian. Yeah. Yeah, it's hilarious. Yeah. Penguino is the Mexicans would come to know you guys. So, yeah, it's just, it's hilarious. Okay. So did they know you?

Did they know that Big Dan had to connect who was bringing all the stuff over named Penguin? Yeah. Wow. So think about this. The guy that testified against him didn't testify against me. Why is that, you think? I don't know. What do you think?

Maybe he thought that he was going to get out and then go back to work. Maybe he was scared. Did you have people that would put in work for you? I never, never used it, but yeah, for sure. Okay. Who were those people? Just different people. Different people.

I can't, I can't name names. Like, not name names, but I mean, were they connected guys with these, were these mafia guys? Were these, or just paid? I was recruited by the local mafia in Dayton, Ohio when I was like 19. Right. Yeah. Ohio's got a strong Italian mafia. They did.

Well, they weren't even Italian. But they were the local, they were the head people of that area. Yeah. One dude who recruited me, he's still in prison for three murders. Whoa. Okay. So those guys you could have called up if somebody had ripped you off or toll on you. I don't mean interrupt you.

Sorry. That guy's already in prison. He was already in prison. But I had other people. I could have done something. Yeah. Plus my European guy, Russian mafia. Right.

Okay. So you just had guys. guys involved in organized crime that you could have called up for a favor or, you know, if somebody had ripped you off or stitched on your... Never did. Never did. But that threat was always there. Right.

Okay. I was going to ask that. So, so, and your distributors knew that. Yeah. They knew that you, you had the back. Yeah. That these fucking hitters had your back. Yeah.

Okay. Wow. Yeah. I never, I never did that. I was like the good drug dealer. You ever seen Talladega nights where he's like, think of myself crack, but be a nice crack dear. Like, hey, you want some crack?

Yeah, yeah. But that's necessary. When you're moving at your level, you have to at least be able to give off the threat of violence. For sure. Yeah. Otherwise, people, you know, they rob me anyways. I've been robbed plenty of times, you know. Yeah, that's.

And a smart guy will just take that on the chin. Yeah, you got to. Because I'll make that back tomorrow. Well, I learned at an early age with the guys from the, the, the mafia guys, I think we went after a guy. It wasn't even my deal. I just happened to be there for like, you think the guy owed 1,500 and they beat his ass, you know?

And I was there. I got a kick in or something like that. But he ended up telling. And then he said they stole an eight ball from him. So the cops charged that. They said, okay, an eight ball is worth $300. And the limit for aggravated robbery was like $300. So I got charged with Filoni's assault and aggravated robbery.

So the aggravated robbery, I think it carried like a max of 15 years. Did you imagine that? Yeah, yeah. Over 1,500 bucks. So I learned at an early age. My father helped me out, got me a really good lawyer and it got dropped. What did this mafia in Dayton? What did they want with you?

I don't know. I met the guy at the gym. and he bought a few steroids from me. He took a liking to me. I was selling weed for them. They had a grow operation. I was selling weed for them. And one of the guys that I was getting it through

was lying saying I wasn't paying. And I was paying. So I get a call. I got to go down to their strip club. They kick everyone out, lock the door. And they're like, well, here's what's happening. I'm like, no, I've been paying you.

And they're like, here's what's going to happen. You guys are going to fight. Whoever, whoever loses owes the money. So, I mean, I didn't pay the money, though, you know. But there was two of us there. He was accusing. So it wasn't really a fair fight. They used us to beat the, to beat the guy.

I see. Yeah. Who were these guys? Russians? No, they were just from Dayton, Ohio. It's called the, the guy's uncle was just a reputed mafia boss of Dayton. Okay, but this is not Costa Nostra? No.

These are just white guys from Dayton? There was, there was different towns that had Irish mafia. Right, right. Yeah. Yeah, real, this is real low-level stuff. It seems like... They were killers. Yeah, it doesn't mean it's high level.

They controlled the area for a long time. Had pro-boxers. Like, they fixed boxing fights. They were involved in all kinds of... Yeah, old-school stuff. Extortion, things like that, you know? Old-school stuff. Yeah.

It's... Well, this was... Yeah, this was 1991. Right. Compared to bring it in hundreds of pounds of steroids or weed, it's... Well, I guess they were cocaine dealers back in the day, but they quit. So they were flying it in. I heard they were flying it in from the Dominican.

Oh, wow. And like false. Bottoms? Yeah, the gas tanks of airplanes. Wow. Yeah. Okay. So you're in your 20s and you're seeing this huge weed market. What, what, how does it evolve from you driving 400 pounds back in a sedan to, how does it grow?

Okay. How does your business expand? After my friend. got busted and I was there was other people in Cleveland because I had my car let in Cleveland. They get busted for Coke. I'm like they were trying to snitch on me. I knew it. They couldn't get me.

And so I just stopped. Stopped. I even rented my car dealer out. Because I was worried they were going to take all my cars. That's another thing you always have to worry about. They're going to seize your properties. You got to think ahead ahead of the game. So for a while there

And I'm just like an adrenaline junkie I wouldn't feel right if I wasn't doing something illegal I'm sure you feel this You know the feeling right? Yeah It's not quite as much as you I don't think Anyways I'm sitting there all bored one day

And I watch the movie blow In the scene where they go to Mexico And they're looking for a connection And I thought it was so hilarious But I tell myself Fuck it I'm going to fucking Mexico and I'm getting a new connect. And I did it.

Okay. So you're now 30. Blow came out in 2002. I was maybe 28. Okay. So some time has gone by between when you had this thriving steroid business. I took a little bit of time off. Yeah, I went through a little bit of an addiction.

Like, yeah, I've always been a pretty good drinker. But I went through a little bit of an addiction, this and that. Anyways, I just started, I'm like, I'm going to get myself back on track. I see. Did you have money saved from when you were bawling in your early 20s? Oh, yeah, yeah. Where did you stash cash? Oh, man.

I don't know if I want to save. Oh, come on. What? Because it's like my first wife, she's Puerto Rican, and we used to have a, they're going to get mad, but I don't even talk to him anymore. We used to have a safe at her parents' house. Okay. And they kind of figured he didn't know, like he was dead set against anything illegal, just one of the best dudes you'll ever meet. She was too.

She didn't deserve to be with the person like me, you know? Okay. So, yeah, that was a long way of saying you stash cash at your baby mama's house. Okay. So, but you're careful. You haven't had anything seized? No. Okay.

And so you have enough to make a buy if you want to make a play, basically. I would have said, we're going to Mexico. I'm going to find a connect. Wow. So I did have found some people. Where did you go first? We went to Nogales. I met these one guys, this one dude, Roberto.

And I bought weed actually in Mexico. He was charging me a little over the going rate, but it was like $180 a pound, which wasn't bad. And then we had to pay the cross. The cross in Nogales is 60 across the border, then 60 through the checkpoint. Okay, okay. Hang on. So that's to pay the mule.

to drive it over. Yeah, yeah. I don't know. Well, usually the people will pay the, the mule a little less, but they're still charging 60 and 60. Okay, got it. So how long did it take you when you first went down to Nogales to find this connect? A couple weeks. Okay.

So do you just rent at a hotel? Yeah. And then just are you asking around? Like, who do you go to? I stayed at one hotel in Nogales across the line months and months. of time. Wow. Just, you know, meeting a guy who brought you to a guy. Did you have to pay people for introductions? That one, I don't. No, not really. I just kind of met him, met him through this lady. So she kind of got mad. She wanted to be in the middle, but we cut her out,

because she was just toxic. But anyways, I remember we started with this old Ford Cordova. and I think he figured out a way to fit 60 pounds in it. And are these the same kind of pounds that you were getting in East L.A.? No, they were better. Way better. Way better. The weeds got better. The big blocks.

Okay. But we had to take them and use the press and make them into little bricks. Yeah. But it was really good weed. Right. For Mexico. Right. So we stashed 60 pounds in the damn thing.

It's like a 79 Cordoba. And we used to make jokes. We used to call it La Virgen. Like, we needed some. fuzzy dice and a sticker of the Virgin Mary on the back window, you know. So I remember one time the car breaks down right at the point of entry where you give your ID to the. So and then the CBP helped push the car into the United States.

And we're watching from like over here up on the hill, up on the mountain, you know. Wow. We're watching it all. We're just dying laughing. And I'm kind of pissed because you should have a better car. I could lose my money, you know? Right. Okay, okay.

So is you're buying it from your connect, this guy that you buy, you know, 100 pounds from. Is he part of an organization? Is he part of... He was kind of like independent. This is back before Sino Loa came in and just took control of the whole town. Right. Yeah. Right.

Okay. So you have these independent dealers that are maybe getting the weed from. you know, Guerrero or wherever, you know, Durango. These are just independent pot dealers. You could find it anywhere. Yeah. So then did they help you, they find the mule for you? They did everything.

It was their operation. Wow. So like all I needed was two trips, you know, with that 120 pounds at that time because I was just starting back. So the weed was good enough. I had like, I don't know, like figure it out like 300, 300 something into it, maybe less. And drove it myself again.

Just, right. I call it. Hang, hang on. Hang on. Just relax. Sorry. So, God, damn. We're fascinated by this.

How, so they have the mules set up to pass through the border and then the checkpoint, which is, which is about whatever, a couple miles past the border. It's like 40 miles, maybe, 40, I think 40 miles. Did you know if they had the border guards paid off? No, they didn't. Okay. So they're, they're using mules that are just. prepared to just, I don't know, make it through or not.

They used to use the lady and her two kids. Wow. The lady and her two kids to get it across, then the sun would grab it and take it up through the checkpoint. And are they all, do they, who are most of the mules that they use? Are they also U.S. citizens that pass back and forth pretty easily? A lot of them just had visas.

Uh-huh. And they say they're there to work, there to shop. Yeah, going shopping. I see. Yeah. Wow. Do you know how much they were being paid?

No, no. A couple of good. grand maybe uh-huh yeah okay but when you go when you have 100 200 pounds at a time the price is still worth it yeah so to you it's like 180 that's total well i would get like 120 and i that that time i was still driving it driving it from tucson all the way up to cleveland i was getting 1,200 a pound at that time and your price is a less than 200 well with the 60 and 60 so like 120 what is that three three 300 right okay yeah so 300 bucks yeah 300 i had 300 in it and took it up with 120 pounds i was making almost

100 grand holy shit just off one run off a 30 000 investment you turn it into almost 100 you you come back like quick one and that's gone immediately as soon as you bring it up to ohio it's it's accounted for yep because this is good weed now you know who's your who's your distributor your new distributor up in oh Oh, another old-time gangster from Cleveland. He had a car dealer also. Okay. Yeah. Okay.

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removed from the internet, check out Delete Me via my link in the description and get 20% off when you use that promo code at checkout. That's promo code connect. All right. So, and so then you're waiting for it at the other side of the checkpoint to drive it back? Or do you have a driver now? We were watching it from inside Mexico to see if it gets hard. Yeah. One time when we were sitting there up on the side of the hill, we got robbed by a crackhead. I think I didn't want to give him my money. And the other guy was in, oh, no, no, no. He gave the guys some money. I was like, I'm not paying this crap. This is smart. Just pay the crack you're in Mexico. You can get killed with impunity.

I was a hothead back in the day. For sure, for sure, for sure. Yeah. And you were on steroids probably. Sometimes. Sometimes. So, okay, so you make a couple trips. Now you're back in the game.

You're stacked. Do you keep using the same connect? No. He was seeing this. He was like 48 or 50 seeing this 21-year-old girl. And he caught her with this other younger dude. And he told her, like, stop seeing him. Stop seeing.

She kept seeing, you know, he kept catching him. He goes to the guy's house, kicks the door and shoots everyone in the house. So, yeah, he had to take off. So he went on the run. So now you don't have a connect. Well, I had met his mom already, which is a funny story. Your son's mom. Yeah.

And she introduced me to her kind of uncles. They were like their sister was married to her uncle. So it's by marriage, not blood. So yeah, and then I start with them. And then I meet this other guy who's, you know, they're like, hey, this guy's with Chapo. Okay. Right off the bat, he gives me 300 on the other side. And so I didn't have to cross it, you know.

Wow. And are they paying for this? Are they fron it to you? No, he fronting it to me. Wow. It's like that. So did you realize you were with bigger players now that they're, They had 300 they're just willing to give you.

Yeah. Wow. So this is the Sinaloa cartel now. This is Chapo. This is the era where he's at his height. Yeah. He just escaped from prison. So this is like 2003, 2004.

Yeah. Yeah. So he had just... 2002. Yeah. He had just escaped, I believe. You can correct me. But they said it was in a laundry cart.

Yeah. Something like that. It was a laundry cart. Yeah. Everybody got paid off. I heard he just walked out. Oh, he might have, right? Yeah.

So, okay. So now you're figuring out, okay, okay, these are these guys from Sinaloa, and they start to take over all these plazas in northern Mexico. Exactly, yeah. And they go to war in Tijuana. So, all right. So you got 300 pounds.

Did you get a brother? Is the weed still this good Mexican weed or does it start to get better? It wasn't that good, but I took it anyways. But they only charged me 300 because it wasn't that good. So I had graduated to a way to get, I started building crates. I had this guy at a storage place. I was working out of a storage place in Tucson.

And the guy, manager of that, I was greasing him. And he would build me the crates. And then when the semis would come to pick it up, he would forklift it onto the truck for me and everything. You know, I didn't even have to be there. Okay. So you guys were moving it east in semi-trucks. Yeah.

How did that, did you organize that? Yeah. Okay. And how does that work? How do you organize a drug shipment on a semi-truck? Do you have to go to the owner or do you approach the car? No, at first we just used, it was that nobody knew what was in there. We would call it, we would call like yellow freight different companies,

and they would just come pick up the crate, which is, you know, until that time when Chopo's guy gave me 300, the first time, you know, I'm dealing with them. boom, it gets caught. Oh shit. Your low got intercepted? Yeah. The first time you're dealing with him? Yeah.

How? Somebody was snitching. Yeah. So did that come back on you? Did that look bad on you? I had to pay it. Okay. So you were out?

I paid it. So you were out, $90,000? I paid it. Not with all cash, too, because I had my, something had happened. My money was tied up. I don't know. but the guy was giving it to, he owed me money at that time too. He had like a big, a huge speedboat with twin 4-54 engines in it.

And I took that as payment from him, brought it down and gave it to the guy. He was super happy with the boat. So after that, that's when it started to just explode. Okay. So you stopped using, obviously you have to find a better method than just calling up a random freighter. Yeah. Right. So how did that, how did you figure out the best smuggling method?

Well, to get it back east, then I went back. The guy that I told you about Big Dan, he had a driver. We call him Fat Freddy. He was like 50 something, but all gray. All gray. He looked awesome. And I bought him a F350 duly. And we just, you know, it looked like a work truck and everything.

and we would throw the stuff in there, and boom, he would make it every time. It's just started. How many pounds can you get an F-350? We fit up to $5,600. Wow. How does that? I mean, I don't know what...

We put it in a big toolbox, and then we would put it in the... It was a four-door, so the whole... We would flip that back seat up like that and just stack it in there. I see. And then put a...

You put a dark cloth over top of it. Even if a cop comes in and looks in the back window, he's not going to see anything. Now with 500 pounds to fit it in that undercarriage of the back seat, do you have to compress it down? No. Wow. So you have 500 individual bricks?

I think we fit 500, yeah. Holy shit. Like 100 and something in the toolbox and like four something in the back seat. Wow. Now did, and Sina Loa, the organization's handling the smuggling across, right? You don't have to get involved in that anymore. Yeah, I didn't have to do that anymore, which was, which was, way, way better.

What a dream. Yeah. It almost seems too good to be true. Like, to me, it seems like that's the hardest part. But clearly they're the ones that know, they're the ones that probably have the border guards in their pockets. They know the people, they know people that are willing to move it across for you. Do you know how they used to do it? No, please tell them.

Oh, okay. Well, they get teams of what they call burritos, like a donkey, whatever, burritos. And they each fit some, like two. blocks. Each block was usually like 10 kilos, so it's like 22. So they put two of them on the thing like they used to make like backpacks out of the burlap sacks. And boom, there they go. They just go running through the desert. That's right. They march it across. Yes, exactly. And they have lookouts. They have a guide who takes them. And then the hardest part is when they get where they're going, taking it from there and getting it to a stash house. Right. I've done that if more than

few times. I'd never liked that. So you've picked up Borreiros after they've crossed? Yeah. Wow. Yeah, that's scary. Yeah. Why? It's dangerous. Because there's cops on those back roads. Yeah, there's, there's border patrol up every, you know, they're everywhere, man. It's just got to boom, boom, you know, early in the morning like like 730, 30 in the morning. Did they hide, they're hiding on the ditch, the side of the road. You stop, boom, they just come up, throw it in your whatever truck you got, know, then boom, you go. And they go back. Do you know where the, the stash spot is?

Like, you already have the stash spot mapped out, I assume. What do you mean? When you, when they throw the pot into your truck, you know. You got to go directly to a house where you, you know. Do they, does the organization have that set up for you or is that your job? I had to. Okay. I stumbled, I stumbled across a property management guy who was real cool.

He let me be in control of like 13 houses. so since some of the houses were down like right there by Nogales and some of them were up past the checkpoint too perfect well then I had I had about four houses I kept for myself so yeah it was like 1,200 each but I didn't care I'm paying 4,800 rent for these houses but it was well worth it so does how so you're the houses that are inside the checkpoint means the mules don't have to pass the pot over the checkpoint. No, they never did.

No, you just have to have a place where you take it and then you figure out a way to get it through the checkpoint. So that's, and then that's what I started doing. I figured out a way with some help. I had a little crew how to get it through the checkpoint. How are you doing that? At first, I would drive it. I would put it in the floor of a pickup truck in the back seat.

Would you drive it yourself? Yeah. Okay. And you look less sketchy because you're an American citizen. You live here. I trust myself too. Right, right. So you...

Sometimes no. But it looks less suspicious as a white guy going through a checkpoint who you... Yeah. If you have an Arizona ID, you're like, hey, I live... Yeah. It's normal. I live below the checkpoint. Yeah.

I had a truck with Nebraska plates. I always like Nebraska because it's in the middle of the country. Plus, I meant my dude was from Nebraska. and that truck made so many trips through there. Sometimes I would go three times a day. You wait for shift change and then you go again. Then you wait for another shift change and then you go again. Wow.

And is it harder to get through a checkpoint or is it less scrutiny than coming through the border? It's less. Yeah. And then sometimes when it would rain, the checkpoint wasn't permanent like it is now. So they would just shut down when it rained. And everyone would be like, Anddele, Andalé. Let's go. Let's go. Let's go. Let's go. Right.

But then the cops, they were pulling people over like crazy. When the checkpoint shut down, you had more of a chance of getting pulled over. Okay. I like going when the checkpoint was out. Did you have any close calls with your mules getting pulled over or anything like that? They were driving it? A few people got caught. We started this one, my little crew I had, he figured out a way we took those like U-Haul trailers that you can buy at Home Depot.

And we built out the back wall. We could fit 300. So once we got that going, man, they were giving us, or me, I was one responsible. They were giving us like at least enough like a thousand a week. A thousand pounds a week. Yeah. And we would go three to four times, three to four times a week. More like on the three, so like 900.

So we're charging 60 to get it through there. So I didn't even have to sell weed anymore if I didn't want to, you know? Yeah. Okay, so how many drivers on your little team do you have? We used to send two drivers in company shirts and a bunch of tools and the thing. Okay. What was your fake company? I didn't even have a name.

It didn't have a name. Just a bunch of tools in the back. Okay. And that's not uncommon. Yeah, contractors, laborers. It's not uncommon at all. Especially not in Arizona. Yeah.

But they were citizens. Right. For sure. Okay. Guys that you knew from Ohio? No, no, Mexican kids from the area. Oh, interesting. Did the organization refer you to these guys?

No. My little crew I had, they were from, they're from Arizona right there. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. So they grew up there. They know, I see. They know people.

I see. I did bring some people down from Ohio to, to drive sometimes. It always worked out. How much are you paying your mules? I think we paid them like maybe 20, 20. 20 bucks a pound or something like that. Okay. So bringing back 500.

Because the other kids. Everybody had to eat. So they could make 10,000 bucks a run. Somewhere around there. Wow. So then what is your profit after the pounds get to Ohio? What is that? What is your price?

Like what's your cost total per unit when it gets to Ohio? When it gets to Ohio? By the time it's gotten there, how much is your price? All right. So they were giving it to me for like, 430 in Tucson. So they would, but what they would do is they would pay me with weed for the check, checkpoint stuff.

I would have to pay my crew out of my pocket then. And then I would take the weed and send it up north. Okay. Yeah. Two different cities. So then what is your price per pound? Probably like 530 after getting it up there. There you go.

So, and then what do you sell it to your distributor for? 8, 900. That wasn't making too, too much, but it was still good. Okay, but times a thousand, that's, you know. I would send them like 400 at a time though. Yeah, somewhere around there. So 80 G's a run. Yeah, somewhere around there. Wow. Times three a week. Um, no, to, to Ohio was different, maybe like twice a month. Okay. Okay. So then are you, so the rest of the pot, you're just sending up to their distributors? Yeah, the, people would come and get it. Okay, gotcha.

Okay, so they, so the organization has their people that are taking it from them. Oh, yeah. And now you're just directing it. Yeah. Okay, so what are these other markets? Where are these other places that are- Oh, I don't know, man, because I never talked to anyone. You know, you just take a car full and just go park it, leave the keys,

and then somebody goes and jumps in the car and takes it away. That's how things work, man. Okay. So you had your one, you had your market in Ohio where you personally were selling your weed, moving your weed to. But then the rest of the weed, you were just warehousing for the organization once it got across the border, preparing it in a truck. Yeah. And then just dropping it off and one of their guys would come and pick it up. Yeah.

Okay. Yeah. Perfect. So you're like, yeah, you're literally a logistics company. That's one of the Sina Loa cartel. Exactly. Gotcha. Gotcha.

Okay. Okay. That's pretty wild. And you were charging $60 a pound for that service. Yeah. That rules. That's a good deal, dude. It was a good time. We had fun. We had fun, but it was a lot of work. I got to be honest with you, man. For sure. It's a ton of work. Whoever says drug dealers don't work is absolutely nuts. They don't know what they're talking about. Especially at this level, you've got a lot of moving parts, right? You've got stash houses. that you've got to supervise. Exactly. The property manager, you have to grease him.

For sure. What are the other kind of moving elements of this that make it tricky? Jackers. Did that ever happen? Oh, man. At the end there, there was a team of 100 Jackers, supposedly out of Tucson. And they were always like, yeah, we lost a couple of, they used to put it in a car. And right there in Nogales, Arizona.

you know, just put the car and then we'd have to go have somebody hop in it. I think we lost twice. Like somebody intercepted two of those cars. It was somebody that was in our crew. And we didn't know if it was the people working for the cartel and the other side that did it. We think it might have been. Wow. So they were stopping.

And then they would try and charge us for, you know, like it was our fault, you know. But no, I was really cool with this one guy. But, um, so that, so the jackers would stop the trucks like on the highway? No, they would, they, they stopped the car one time. They stopped the car. We were, we were taken. We were, because right there from Nogales, Arizona, we had to get it to the next town where the stash houses were. It's like a good 10 minute drive up to highway.

Yeah, they, they straight intercepted the car once made the dude get out. And that's crazy. On that one, those guys got taken to the ranch. and they didn't they came back but they were they were beat up bad oh wow they're lucky they didn't get never heard from again exactly so they found it who it was and they brought him back down to the other side did you ever hear about bodies happening like people that just disappeared you know my his uncle disappeared what happened um he was just a thief like yeah he was we tried to we tried to help him we talked to him till you're blue in the face

He just didn't. Yeah, he disappeared. He just didn't get it. And then just one day he's gone. He's gone. Did you hear about that? Like the kidnappings in the U.S., and then they bring him down to Mexico? Oh, yeah.

I was locked up with people that got caught doing that. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, that happens. Not much anymore. I don't think you don't hear about it. They're making it harder because they're putting up real checkpoints now going into Mexico because they know they're bringing in so many weapons

and so much drug money is coming back. that I think they're getting like the biometrics now, like you're going into the U.S., but you're going into Mexico. So I think it's getting a little, it's, you can't be as brazen anymore. But that's wild. Now, what about the money?

Oh, that's another whole other conversation. Yeah, it's just as hard bringing the money back as it is sending the drugs. Okay, so tell us, were you also in charge of the money? Yeah. Yeah, it's my, it's on me until I hand it over. Okay. So if you get, you're getting about 1,000 pounds

a week from... Oh, theirs right there and that I drop off in Tucson, no, it was not my responsibility. Okay, so after you got their weed to their driver, you didn't have to see their money again. No, no, no, no.

Which was good. Good, right? Yeah. But my money coming back, yeah, sometimes I would still throw some fronted on there. So, you know, I would owe two. And my own father,

my own father was like quit his job and stuff and he just asked me like, hey, you think I could get a job? And I was like, oh, like, you know, all right. Driving? Yeah. Was he Clint Eastwood in the movie The Mule? Oh, Mike, I haven't seen that.

No, kind of. He's an old guy. He's real cocky, though, man. He was like, I know. I'm not getting pulled over. I hate when people say that. So did you let your dad make a run? Yeah.

It was pretty, pretty good. He did good, but he ended up getting caught. No. He got caught with like $255,000. Okay, so you got caught with the money. Yeah. Oh, yeah, yeah. No, he had tried to drive up with a few pounds of weed.

He got caught doing that, too. What? Yeah. Yeah, he just didn't have good luck at it. He didn't know what he's doing. He was never, he was a gambler. Like, he was around mafia people like gambling and things like that, but he was never really a criminal. So then how can you be so stupid as to get pulled over?

Like, what was your- He got caught at a checkpoint. Where? Las Cruces. Okay. So, yeah. What did he do wrong? He came up to the checkpoint with his ID out.

And that's a dead giveaway. Like they don't, you know, like, you don't need to have your ID out. They just ask you citizenship and you say U.S. Yeah. Did you have to, and so that tipped him off. That's what they said. Something suspicious. That's what they said.

Who know. Yeah. And coming down, I don't know, man. I used to tell him that from Flagstaff to Phoenix, you come down out of the mountains and Flagstaff. I don't know if you're familiar with over there. It's just the worst. Like they've profiled people out-of-state plates.

They profile people. And he got caught. I didn't get out of bed for like a week when that happened. It wasn't the money. It was more, yeah. And they wouldn't even let him bond out. They wouldn't let him bond out. I tried to.

But I got him a really good lawyer, but he ended up doing like six months. So you just got caught with all this drug money, but they don't have. They can't really prove it. So what's the charge she ends up doing? Well, I guess when he got sentenced, the judge asked him, well, why did you do this? And he was just like, I did it for the money. Right.

And he was like, thanks for your honesty. But, you know, here's six months. Oh, wow. Yeah. Could have been. That's not that bad. Yeah, he took it, he took it like a, he took it on the chin like a man. So you, so the mules, did you have to school?

Did you have routes? Oh, yeah. Did you switch up the routes? for them and everything like that? Yeah, I used to sit and have talks and talks with people on what to do, how to do it, what not to do, you know. Okay. How to, yeah. Okay.

So you really were professional and conscious with where you were sending your people. Yeah, I tried to be. Okay. What was like an example of a route to get from Nogales or just across the border in, say, Tucson to Dayton, Ohio? Okay. We never go through Kansas. Never. Why?

The 70s. just horrible. Yeah. Kansas cops are horrible. I lost 68. They took 68 grand from me once coming back from Ohio. And it was wrapped and everything. And I remember being in their little office.

And they're sitting there smiling, counting my money. And I go, you're fucking dog's a liar. And everyone just busts out laughing. You know, because I had it wrapped. They shouldn't have smelled it. That was another one where I think it was some inside information. Okay.

Yeah. But yeah. So we told me the best route was go up to 25 to Denver. You can go around on that loop that goes around Denver, then go up to the 80, take the 80 the whole way. And do you coach them like stay in the middle lane? No. Like that was always my thought.

No, you stay in the right lane. The right lane, the slow lane. The slow lane. Unless you're passing, you need to be in that right lane. Okay. Always use your turn signal. go about three miles an hour underneath the speed limit.

If you go one mile an hour over the speed limit, that's a reason for them to pull you over. They can pull you over. Don't drive at night. Some people like to. I'd rather like the old man, I'd rather than drive during the day so they can see how old they are.

Yeah, right. So they don't profile them. Yeah. Right. Yeah. Some people have different theories about driving at night. I think it just depends.

I think it depends what your cover is. Yeah. Like I actually liked driving at night because I just thought that's less of a chance because I was like a 23, 24 year old kid. So I said, okay, that's less of a chance that they can see me, profile me. And also I figure there's just less there's less cops out there. Yeah. But I think it just depends. It varies whatever state you're in.

Well, I don't know if you've ever noticed every state line, you're probably going to see some cops. When you're just getting into a state, that's usually a. hang out right there. Yeah. Okay. But it sounded like you, the success rate was high. Pretty high. Like almost, you know, almost 100%. Well, not. No. I mean, I ended up, I did end up getting caught going to Phoenix as a favor with 120 pounds. Oh, okay. Which is why I ended up doing five years. I did five years on 120 pounds. Okay. All this stuff I've done and I get five years for a measly 120 pounds. When was this? Well, this was in the middle of everything going on.

And once I got caught, I changed my identity. Okay, okay. What year, how long are you running like this at full speed before this happened? Before you got caught. Oh, this was right in the middle, like, of everything. I was, I had the, at that point, I had the other crew going with, no, I don't think we had the crew going three times. a week it was before that so I had this girl come down from Ohio white girl and um it just it ended up so that I had to jump in the car too and we were just taking some to Phoenix for a good

friend and and the car we were in had a stash spot for 40 but they were like no we need all of them now and it would have been like three trips so we just threw them in the trunk it was it was wrapped they shouldn't the dog didn't smell it we got pulled over and uh The guy ram the dog around the car like seven times. The dog didn't do anything. Wow. He taps on the car. The dog sits in front of the car, which is like a common thing when they do a false hit.

So that way the dog is out of the camera view. So it's in, see, sits. That's when they sit, supposedly that's them telling you. How's he going to sit in front of the car by the engine when the weed is in the trunk? So that just, they do that. It gives them an excuse to search the car. Yes. It gives them, they pretend that the dog smells something by giving them a trick.

The dog doesn't smell anything. We had just gotten it through the checkpoint where they have dogs. So, yeah, it was wrapped where a dog can't smell it. What year is this? I got a, I think it was 2007 when I got arrested with the 120. Okay. So. And you bonded out, I assume?

Bonded out, it wasn't that much. Yeah. And nobody wanted me to stop. I think, because I, oh, wait. I had found out I had gone. gotten indicted for that first 300 that fell. I had thrown more in there. It was like 400.

So I found out I got indicted for that. I had to change my identity. All those years before? So I changed my identity. Hang on all those years before? Yeah, for when I first met the guy with Chapo. Yeah. I finally got indicted for that.

I found out by checking my own name online and you can, you can run searches on people. Yeah. So I'm like, holy shit. And everyone's like, here, we'll just change your identity. So I gave through this dude in Nebraska, like some weed, and he let me use his information. And I got a license. Do you have to look like the person? He did it matter?

He had green eyes. He had green eyes and hair. So you use his birth certificate. Social security. Social security. And then you just go get a new. Credit card. Yeah.

And then you can go get a new driver's license? You used to be able to. Wow. Yeah. Okay. So with the 120 pounds, I got busted under that guy's name. Bonded out, okay? Bonded out.

Change my identity again to my brother, let me use his name. Okay. And my brother, love you, man. Okay. So does that mean your brother's got a warrant out now? No, no. It's the time. I think they did go raid his house once when I got picked up in Cleveland finally.

But, uh. Okay. So the answer is. yes they did raid his house but he's he doesn't do anything he's like he's a real estate agent they rated his house but did they then discover that you were using his identity yeah but he didn't get in trouble okay so but now you're on the run now essentially you've got active warrants out yeah so yeah I got I got an ID in my brother's name then next thing you know I got picked up again walking down the street from they've they identified

me. Because I didn't have a car and I just walked to the store where I'm down down it. It's called Rio Rico by No Gales. Yeah. And I got picked up again. This time, it was 20 grand to get out. And my people got, they got me out right away. It was funny.

It was back when Dave Chappelle was on. And as I'm dressing out, they knew I just put up 20 grand. One of the CEOs is like, I'm really. bitch, bitch. Nice. But anyways. So I bail out again and then I had, I still had, they didn't take all my IDs. I still had another ID in my brother's name.

So they had made my woman self-deport. And when, what happened was when I bailed out, I went back to the house. Okay. and from me calling her they figured out two and two and they went to our house and it's where I had money so we wouldn't let them in and they they sat outside our house in our backyard and from everywhere for like all day long from eight in the morning till nine at night finally they get a bullshit warrant they come in and they didn't find anything so we I had over 500 grand in the house we we stashed it right and uh Actually, they were sitting right on top of it when they were raiding the house. Yeah, me and my girl are looking at each other and we were like... So you had it out of the floor? No.

We had this like decorative chair that we figured out a way to put it inside. 500 grand of one chair? Yeah. It was, it worked out perfect. Yeah. So after that, it sounds like she left. She went back to Mexico. They threatened to take our kids from her.

Okay. She was pregnant with my son. So, yeah, when I got, when I got out that time, I just picked, got everything and, and boom, and one day moved it all to Mexico. Took the 500 grand. Took that too. Okay. So now you got a ton of cases open and you're living as a fugitive in Mexico. Yep.

Much like a Mexican would, you know what I mean? This is wild. This is, that's so crazy to me. I've never heard. Now you hear about that a lot. You hear about white guys living in certain parts of Mexico. Yeah. And they're moving dope up to Canada.

Have you heard about that guy, the snowboarder? Yeah, I heard about him. He's got a target on him. He's on the run. But back then, this, I don't think, was as common. No. So, because in their mid-2000s, you didn't see a lot of gringoes living in border towns, especially. I was one of the only one.

for sure. Yeah. Yeah. So where did you guys move to? Did you move out to the country? No, there's a part of Nogales that's like more the rich area. Yeah. We bought a house there.

Okay. Yeah. Which is, what's great about Mexico's, you can just count out 250 grand on the table. To the real estate agent. Or the owner. Yeah. Yeah.

Nice. And no one. That's what happened. No one says it buys a lot of silence. Yeah. No pass on. Bias a lot of no pass on. Okay.

So I'm living in Mexico. I stayed, I think, seven years before I crossed back. Okay. And I just kept doing the same stuff. I trusted my, I had to trust my guys. Yeah. And we kept working. So did you keep the operation the same with the same stash houses?

Yeah. With the same property management company? Minus a couple. Yeah. Okay. We got a couple new ones. So who was in charge now on the Arizona side? My, the kids that were, they're two brothers.

I'm not going to name names. No, that's cool, yeah. No, but they're two brothers. They're pretty trustworthy. Okay. And,

yeah, so. And you built a relationship close trust with them. Yeah, so. But now does, now it sounds like

they are making more because they have more responsibility. So now you, it was like a, yeah. So now you have to move more product.

Yeah, but I still had, I still would send it back east. I had the old man driving, which worked well. Yeah. Until he got, he gets, that guy's always been greedy. He's, instead of just keeping it, why fix it if it isn't broke in the Ford, the Dooley, he goes out and gets a million dollar RV.

Somehow, I don't know how he got it, but like he's paying per month on it. Million, you know, one of those RVs where the walls come out. And sure enough, he's, he's taking stuff in the winter. Some, for some reason, he goes through Kansas, which I, which is, you know, it's against the rules. Yeah. And sure enough, boom, he gets caught. Right. Well, how much?

300 and something. And who's this is your, the old mule? Yeah, yeah. The old dude. Did he roll? He did. Okay. He acted like he didn't, but he did.

We found out later he did. Okay. Yeah. But you're safely in Mexico. Yeah. And actually he came back to Mexico because we were like, we want, we need paperwork, we need proof. And he came back to Mexico and it was like weird. He had called somebody else and someone else answered someone or another one of my guy from Cleveland called him.

Someone else answered his phone. Someone like, wait a minute, this ain't right. You know, we knew it was a cop. Okay. So why? now that you're in Mexico, why do they need you? Why does the cartel need you if they already know how to move everything across the border? Why couldn't they just deal directly with the two brothers in Arizona?

Because they're not like that. They're stand-up people. Okay. Yeah. That makes sense. So how does your function change? Like what are you doing down there now now that you're in Mexico? Well, it didn't really change.

Didn't really change. I just kept working. How? I probably partied more. How were you working in Mexico? Just on phones. Right. Yeah, yeah.

And in person, you know? Right. We tried to stay off the phones. Okay, so you meet your connect just to make sure all the loads look good. Yeah, yeah. Like, it became harder, you know, but you have to have trust. How so? What do you mean?

Oh, I mean, like trusting the other people to make sure, what it looks like. Because, you know, if they don't, because it started to get to a point, if the weed wasn't good enough and I sent it back east, it was like a lose, you know, you wasn't going to sell. Yeah, you lose money.

Right, because at this time, after 2007, that's when there's a lot of, getting picky, man. There's a lot of competition. There's weed coming from Cali. There's indoor weed coming from, you know, the East Coast, coming from Florida. So the weed's got to be good now.

Or else you can't sell it. Okay, so what does the Mexican weed? Obviously, you know, those guys are sharp down there. So does their weed keep improving? Like how, what does the Mexican weed start to look like as it evolves? I heard they were trying to make it better. But it was always the same to me, you know? Maybe like more into the, like, 2015-16 era.

It seemed like they, whatever, they always sent me. the same. But I heard like after that that they had gotten seeds from like Northern California and they were trying to make it like that. Right. But up until that point, does, does it get, do you have to start charging less for the bricks? I did actually have to start charging less. Okay. Yeah, my money went went down and then the jacking, the jackers that I told you about, that was another thing that started happening. So long story short, I had to go back. When you're down there in Mexico, How many pounds are you getting every week? Oh, we're still getting like at least 600 to $600 to $1,000 a week to take through the checkpoint.

Yeah, yeah. And then are you still, are the brothers still responsible for the other loads that the cartel is sending to their people? Yeah, we're all responsible. Like, yeah, there was one time where they got a card taken from them and it was, they were held responsible. I ended up paying for it ultimately, but, but yeah, it got hard. For sure.

So it doesn't sound like it's all good times down there. No. Because you're, you know, you have to rely on other people. The money's... I think the, the cartel liked it because I was kind of like, held hostage.

Right. Right. Yeah. So if they don't pay across the border, they're going to come knock on your door. Right. Who were these guys? Did you ever meet actual, you know, obviously you had your distributor, right?

Your point, man. But did you ever meet anybody higher up in the organization? Well, my one guy was direct with Chapo. Like, no, I never got to meet Chapo. Okay. But you meant one of his guys, one of his plaza bosses, right? I don't know if you know if anyone, you probably have. haven't. Have you ever talked to anyone from Nogales?

No. Oh, okay. There's a train that runs through the middle of the city. So there was, one side is for Chappos people. The other side, Mayo. Okay. So I worked for both. All right. They weren't enemies, but they weren't working really together, especially in Nogales. The guys from, from, Mayo would get mad at me for working with it. The guys with Chappo, the guy with Chappo, It was really easygoing. He didn't really care. You know, but the other guys were jealous, you know. My girls' uncles were with the Mayo.

And yeah, I would go out to the ranch and just like you see in movies. Huge ranch, like 10, 12 dudes with AKs patrolling. The dude gets out of bed. What is the first thing he does? throws on a flack jacket, you know, with the extra mags in the flack jacket. You know, like he had to live like that. Yeah. And he was one of the plaza bosses.

Yeah. Somewhere, somewhere on there. So they were literally divided Nogales up. Yeah. The chapitos and the maitos. Yeah. Right. Wow.

That's wild. They would get mad like, like for the Mexican people, like if, because they sell a lot of cocaine right there in Mexico. Yeah. Have you ever heard of the tiradores? They set up like stores. Yeah. So, but if one side gets caught selling on the other side, trouble could happen.

Sure. Sure. Were any bodies dropping around this time? Sometimes. When the bodies really started to drop was when Chappo was fighting Beltran. Right. I don't know if you remember that. Yeah, the Beltran Levas, who were another, they started out as a wing, a security wing for Chapo.

But they opened up huge drug routes. They were really successful drug dealers. And Choppo eventually, I think in order to save one of his sons, you know, really knows, but he basically started ratting on the Beltran Levas. Oh, yeah, all right. Yeah, that's just what I've studied and what I've seen and heard. So, yeah, they go to war. Yeah.

In that time, they were, like, they were fighting with the police. There was one day where they were throwing grenades at the police. The police killed, like, 12 of them. Like, they literally just threw, like, 12 bodies in the back of, you've seen the pickup trucks they drive in Mexico. They fill the whole pick up. pickup truck full of bodies. And they were cutting people's heads off, rolling them down the street, like, and sending

messages. Yeah. Yeah, it was crazy. It all culminated one night in my neighborhood where I bought my house. Yeah. They hit eight houses. The Chapos hit eight houses where Beltran people were hiding. And it sounded like a war zone.

I thought, I put my kids under our bed. We had this huge bed with these. They always say, like, it's a good place to hide, you know, because the bullets might not go through all the mattresses. So you can, and you can hear in the distance. Oh, no, it sounded like they were in my backyard. Wow. In my backyard, 50-cow rifles, sniper rifles. Yeah, like the next day I went out and there was holes like this and the cement, all the houses are cement.

You realize that. Right. Yeah. So it went on for over an hour. It sounded like a war zone. And so they were raining these. It literally sounded like they were in my yard. eight houses right around in my neighborhood.

They killed like about eight, ten people that night. So I have PTSD from it. Like loud noises will startle me. And I didn't know what it was at first. So basically the Choppos were like raiding their safe houses, which happened to be in your neighborhood. Yeah, yeah. They got them all out of there.

Wow. Then later on, like I think it was a few months later, it was when they killed Beltran down in, I don't know where he was. Guarovaca. All right. When that happened, As soon as that happened, the whole neighborhood, you just heard everybody outside.

Yeah. Celebrating. Yes. Wow. That's fucking crazy. It was lawless. Yeah. Wow.

So did, these guys had even the, like, as high as them, I think as high as some of the military on their payroll. For sure. You know. So did your, did your guy, your point man, would he tell you like, hey, this is why this is going? on? Would he kind of keep you informed about why? Not too much. Not too much, mom. Shoot, the Mayo people, everybody knew everything. So, yeah, he didn't talk too much. Like, but how did you know all this was happening? Because I saw it with my own two eyes. No, but the politics of it. Like, who's fighting who? Would your girl keep you informed?

Oh, no, the, the, the, her uncles. Okay. Her uncles. I hung out with them as far as like part, like, drinking and stuff. I would hang out with them more than I would, the Chapo guy. That makes sense. Okay. So they were working, your, your girl's family, her uncles, were working with Mayo's people. Yeah. And what were they doing? Oh, they, they just give me the weed. Like, they would be, like, they would get a cut of everything, you know. Oh, I see. Okay. So basically, they were your weed suppliers. Yeah. And they were going on the chop. From them, from the Mayo's. On the choppo side, who were you getting weed from? Oh, just that guy, that one guy. Okay. So. So.

and how did you, how did you work that out? Like, how did you, because obviously this is a very sensitive position, right? You want to give both sides love. How would you just, would you trade off? Like, how did you work that out? How did you deal weed from both of them? Like, like the blocks, you just put with a marker, you just put like whose it is. Was that your job?

Not usually. No. Okay. No. But I'm saying, like, would you take both their loads at the same time? or would you trade off? Well, yeah, if we did have both, you know, you just got to make sure the market right, you know.

Okay, so you would take the loads at the same time. Yeah, why not? Yeah. Yeah, just got to be real meticulous about that. But we paid people to, like, to wrap it, because we had to, if you get the weed, it's not wrapped. So you can't have a thousand pounds of unwrapped weed in a house, you know, unless it's like by itself, maybe, you know.

But even then, you don't want cops, because cops will just, if they suspect the house at being a stash house, with nobody knowing, they'll just come up in the yard and run a dog around the house. Yeah. So you got to wrap the weed.

Right. So we had people that would do that. Yeah. Yeah. And you'd get it ready. And then did the forms of smuggling have to be updated a little bit? Or are they still just sending cars through?

Well, they were still using the bureros back then. So that was still the primary method. Yeah. Oh, wow. Yeah. Wow. They usually had their own people picking it up, though. I only had to do them favors a couple of times.

Right. Then I started like would refuse to go pick up the weed. So you didn't, you still never had to be involved in the logistics of smuggling it across the border. No, it was just taken care of. That was. Only when I first started like,

yeah, a little bit. Yeah. So it doesn't sound like you had much to do down there other than just supervised, make sure the amounts were right. And make sure the money came across too. Okay. Yeah.

How was the money coming back over? A lot of times, just people walking. Would the boreros come back with loaded? No, no, no. It was U.S. citizens. Okay. So how did that work? They just stuff their pockets and walk across the board?

Cargo shorts. I used to be able to come with 100 some thousand in cargo shorts. Wow. All hundreds, I assume. Most, yeah, most. Okay. But you're not coming back across the border. So who are the people bringing the money back across?

The, the, my people, you know, the same, the brothers or whoever, however else, you know, and sometimes that we would tell them, hey, man, we got this, and they would send their people to pick, to bring it to. So it worked like that. So how much cash is your side, just your, your routes and your, your buyers in Ohio? How much cash is that bringing you back every week, let's say? Sometimes the, it went down, maybe like 20. to 50 a week somewhere around 20 to 50 grand a week yeah I mean it's still good money um but you're not

you're not kingpin in it like you were no um then what are you getting paid per you're still getting paid 60 a pound per uh yeah for for the the cartel yeah okay so that that was that was that was the best like for me you know less risk and yeah we made decent money doing that right right so you're still making a, I don't know, cool million or so a year? I don't know. It fluctuated. Yeah. Yeah, guys at that level never actually know how much they're making.

Not like precisely, right? Yeah, it fluctuated. Yeah. Where do you hide your, you know, hundreds of thousands in cash? Where do you hide that in Mexico? Um, our house we bought had a hidden floor safe. Oh. Um, yeah.

And, but we never used it. I called a safe cracker to come from like Tucson because we couldn't get it into it. No, nobody knew the, and everyone was too afraid to come down and open it. But I didn't want to have someone in Mexico to it. So we just didn't. We never even used it. We just, you figure out, like, places to hide it. Did you buy any property?

Did you? My kid's mom got mad at me and took like 50 grand and went and bought. bought a property once. Yeah. So we made up and so it was our rental property. Okay. But yeah, at that point I was like, I didn't know what was going to happen. So I didn't want to invest a whole ton of money in, you know, in Mexico.

Right. Right. So what are the craziest years down there? You're down there for seven years? The Beltran War for sure. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. on Tran War. Okay. And then moving on, what happened in 2014 when Chopo got arrest, got gets arrested again. Oh, yeah. Wow. Yeah, that was crazy. Like, they were, um, I got pulled over by Sicario's when that happened. We, we went out to this ranch to, to drink or whatever on the weekend. We were coming back and we got pulled over by a Hummer and a four-door F-3-50. or something.

12, 12 cicadios. I don't know if they were military or what. They were all in the military garb. Get out. It's at nighttime. They got the ARs with the lights on it. And I'm looking in there as a, like a 16-year-old girl with hers right on me. And I'm like, oh, man, I'm about to die.

Fuck. And they made everyone, all those are like five, six of us. They made everybody turn around except me. They wanted to, and they grabbed all of her phones. they grab my phone, they're going through it, checking, like, then I had my one friend from Senilo in there, who's, you know, who's this? No, this one amigo, no, I was like, with my hands up, he's like, put your hands down, but in Spanish, my, by those manos.

I put my hands down, and I'm looking at that girl, and my hands start going back up like this. And I'm about to die. He's like, I said, put your hands down. And, yeah, I really thought I was going to die, but later on, we were laughing, like, crazy about it. Is that, so those were chopos people? What happened was they started asking me, like, what kind of car do you drive? And I didn't want to tell them because I didn't know if they were, I wasn't sure if they were police or cicadios.

Finally, I told them, I was like, all right, range rover. I drive and they were like on the radio. Like, all right, you can go. So yeah, they were, they know who I was. Okay, so those were Chappos people. Yeah. Okay. So they were just looking, what were they looking for?

They were trying to see because Chappago had arrested to see if other groups were going to come in from out of time. Right. That makes sense. And we were coming in from the mountains from east. Tamalipas, all that. Right. And that's what the opposition is.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Wow. Yeah, there was, the Zetas were still going strong a little bit at that time. I was going to say, did the Zetas ever try to do an incursion on Nogales? No. They tried to get me to go over there, though, because there were some people from the area that were working with them. Wow. They were going to give me, like, trailer full of, fools of weed.

and I didn't have to do. They would just drive the trailer full of, like, who knows, 2,000 pounds. Okay, so tell us about this. How do they find out who you were? How did they approach you? From people from the Nogales, Mexico area that we're working with them. And I just kept, no, no, I'm not going over there. How did they, did they approach you?

Did they find you on the street in Nogales? Like, how did they? Well, they knew, they had my number, you know. They had, yeah. And I was just like, no, man. They were like, come on, just go over there and look at it. like, no, man, no. Now, meanwhile, none of these people are alive anymore.

No, of course not. Especially not from the Zetas. Yeah. So. And I don't get down like that. I didn't like the way they were, they would kill innocent. Like, no, I don't. Well, nobody did literally Choppo funded, uh, what is now the Nuevo

Halisco cartel. He literally paid groups of killers to go find the Zetas wherever they were. Yeah. And take them out. He literally worked with the military in cahoots with the government, the American government, to take these guys out. That's how bad they were. Yeah.

I mean, I understand they had to kill people when the Beltran war was going on. But like, I don't get down with innocent people getting involved or anything. You know, I don't like that. Was it scary to get a call from these guys? No. No, because even when the Beltran people were around, they were getting people. to work with them. But then those people that they got,

that actually worked with, like they were killing kids that would take the weed through the desert for the Beltran people, which I didn't like that either, you know. So why weren't you scared when you got a call from the Zeta is this bloodthirsty group? Do you know, did the cartel have your back? Did the Sinaloa have your...

Yeah, for sure. Yeah, yeah. Like, dude, my girl's stepfather got kidnapped one time and I called in a favor to my. guy from Chapo, they released him like that. Wow. Yeah. Okay.

So you were like a protected gringo. Yes. You were kind of untouchable. Not untouchable, but protected. Yeah. But don't harm the knot hair on your head. Okay. Yeah.

Okay. So it's not like the Zetas could just get mad and come in and kidnap you. They weren't here. These were just, these were just rogue people from Nogales that were trying to make money, trying to work with, you know, trying to, they, they weren't, they, well, they were, you know, they're not around it anymore. So, you know, I don't know. There are people just trying to get a piece of,

yeah. They were trying to introduce you to a guy and they were going to try to take a piece of that. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Everybody's trying to middleman everything. Exactly. Okay. So, yeah, that's interesting, though.

So as time goes on, like by 2015, so how did, how did Nogales change after Chappo got arrested in 2014? Did the Mayo start to take over more of the city or? No. No. So when he got arrested, I asked my friend, I go, so what's going to happen now? And the only thing he said was, much of ninoes, los chapitos. Mm-hmm.

There's much of nino. That's all he said. Right. He said, no, no, no, te precoopers, there are much, yeah, nothing's going to change. Yeah. So the sons are going to step in now. Yeah.

So it's just business as usual. Yeah, pretty much. That's why those old school guys had so many kids. Because they knew they were going to leave it. I think it might have had to do with something else too. Well, yeah, they love to fuck. Many women. But who doesn't, you know?

Okay. All right. Did you ever get involved in anything besides weed while you were down there? No, no. You can get approached to like... One time, one time when I was in Cleveland before, one of my friends from Sinaloa, another guy who's kind of independent, who I would work with sometimes, you know. And he called us and said, like, hey, can you do anything with something?

some bricks. And there's a long time ago. So, like, I don't like talking about, it's way past the statute, limitations. And he was, I was like, yeah, you know, I had a couple black guys that, they were, they were crack dealers before. So they used to sell cocaine. And they were like, yeah, we can do it. It's like, all right, we got a way to get it up there.

There's three on the way. Dude shows up with 10. So, you know, we sold it. And, you know, I don't think we did it too many more times. But, yeah. Yeah. I mean, yeah, I delved into like ecstasy before, too, with the, the, my steroid guy was going to send me an X for like $2. Wow.

$2. But I had to buy like $200,000. Yeah. I just didn't want to. So you, you determined the risk wasn't worth it with the way you were selling weed. You could just keep doing that. They gave, what's his name, 20 years for ecstasy, you know? Who's that?

Gravano. Mm. Yeah. Yeah. Okay, so, wow. We did, I used to make GHB, too. I don't know if you remember that. Yeah.

I made GHB. We sold, we sent that along with the steroids and weed to the, to my dude in Nebraska and it went everywhere. Yeah. People started, this was before it was illegal. That's another one if they catch you doing that. You'll get a lot of time for, I think. When you were down there, so you noticed that it's, the weed's not getting better. and as time goes on, it gets harder and harder to sell,

and you have to keep lowering the price on the Mexican weed. Did you ever go to these guys and say, hey, you guys got to up your game. I need, this is getting hard. It's getting hard for me to turn around. Well, I don't know. At that point, it was just, I don't know. I think I was ready to retire anyways.

Yeah. Yeah, what were your plans? What were your plans to, like, get out to retire? Go take care of. of take care of what the problems I had in the U.S. Yeah. Okay. So were you,

so you had that in your mind. You were like, I'm going to go back and face the music? Yeah. My girl said, don't do it when the kids are young. Okay. That we had a plan.

Yeah. Okay. So it sounds like you were kind of just biting your time down there. Yeah. Making, making some money and then preparing for you to go, go back and do some time in the U.S. Yep.

That makes sense. That makes sense. I didn't think it would be five years, but. Well, so you got, So your cases now, let's review, because that was a lot of, you got in a lot of trouble. So you have a case for 120 pounds. And then don't you have an open case for something else.

400 in Arizona. No, no, 400 in Cleveland, 120 in Arizona. Okay. And the 420 is the federal. It was not federal. It was state. 420 pounds was not a- 400. Yeah, it was a state charge.

So how did you have an indictment from years back under as a state charge? They just decided to pick. I think they were trying to get me federally. This guy was snitching, and he said he had a crooked U.S. Marshal and this and that. They were trying to set me up. But I disappeared on them. And then I think the state just picked up the charges.

The state of Arizona. No, no, of Ohio. But the weed got picked up where? I sent it in a crate. Right. Yeah. So it was like, they. They didn't have me dead to rights on that case anyways.

When I finally got picked up on that, they gave me two months time served on that 400-pound case. Okay. Okay. So it's not like they traced it from Arizona all the way to Cleveland. That would have been a Fed charge. They picked it up in Ohio. I guess, yeah. I'll be honest with you.

I thought it would have been a Fed case also. But I think that's what happened. The feds figured they didn't have a strong enough case. So it was the state of Ohio. State of Ohio just picked up the charges. So the weed got picked up there. That's where it got intercepted. Yeah.

Okay. I see. Yeah. I see. And then now you got a, so you have the 400 pounds there. You got a 120 pound case in Arizona, which turns out to be the one that kind of does you in a little bit. Did you have, what year did you decide to come back? Or how did that, how did you end up coming back?

People owed me too much money. So I, you know. Okay, talk about that for a second. Yeah, well, just because this thing started going haywire, like you said, the weed was getting worse. And I just, like, I didn't talk to him about that because I figured it wouldn't make a difference, you know? Because you had to be careful because they would still try and give you like old weed that didn't work. Right. Even though they were pretty cool dudes, but they still try to get over on you.

They do. If you're going to go down there, we talked about this off. camera, they will try to take advantage of you. Yeah. And I'm not being like discriminatory. I'm not being racist. Yeah. I've just seen it. Yeah. I've seen it in the media business. Yeah. So I can't imagine the drug business. You try to deal directly with, with Mexicans down there. Yeah. So would you have to like turn away loads if they, if it was like shit weed? Would you have to say I'm not taking that? Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. Okay. Yeah. But anyways, um, this dude in Cleveland owed a bunch of money. So I had to go back and

try and collect it, you know. Okay, so that's my question. How did you let the debt run up like that? How did the brothers that were supervising it? How do they let it run up? It can happen like that, you know? I mean, yeah, I think it was close to 100 grand or something, over 100 grand. So that's, that's like one load, you know, one load. Yeah. And I think they paid, if I sent like three, 400 and he paid for half of it. You know, think about that 400 times, I think it was, I was getting like 750. So even if they paid for half and the other half, you know, oh, somebody ran off with something, this and that.

It's still going to be a lot of money. So 100 grand, that's a lot of money, do you? At that point, it was. Okay. So it doesn't sound like things are going well. No, it wasn't. If you've got to come back for 100 Gs. Yeah, plus I just wanted, it was time to go too.

It was time to go. Yeah. So then I stayed up there and worked, kept, like, they kept sending more and more, too, and I worked. I wanted to be able to, like, manage things up there more than anything. So you went back to Ohio? Yeah. Wow. And started working.

Yeah, they were sending stuff. Okay. So that's how you were basically getting your money back from this guy is you were, like, supervising him, and he was working at off. We had a really good way to get it up there. So we had a new trailer. Okay. So, yeah, we were sending like three, 400 at a time. And I was, so that's why I went.

Okay, okay. So sometimes I got to like think about it because I've got so much like to remember. Like there's so much that I just forget. And I'll be like, oh, yeah, that happened. No, I get it. I get it. So, and what ID, how do you get into the country without being detected? Who, what idea?

Oh, I used that same. Remember I told you, they left one, one. idea with my brother's name on it. Yeah. I think I waited till Super Bowl Sunday. Got a little drunk after the game, walked across and was bitching about, well, this is when sports betting wasn't legal yet in the U.S., but it's legal right there. It's like, as soon as you walk across the border, there's a casino where you can do sports betting.

So I walked up and I'm, you know, it's Super Bowl Sunday. And I'm just like, ah, man, I just lost all my money on the, on, on, you know, it's a football Sunday. such and such whoever played and this and that. He's like, oh, I'm sorry, man. Just looked at all right, go on. Nice, clever. Clever, yeah, yeah. This poor bastard's going to kill himself, just wave them through.

It worked. Yeah, yeah. I was going to jump the fence. So my dude with Chapo brought me down to where they help people cross. Right. You've seen how high the fences are, right? Yeah. They're pretty, once you get up on them, they're up there, man.

For sure. So there's a little dude shimmies up the thing. and unrolls this like little ninja ladder made a rope and wood. And it's like great here. And I'm looking up there and I'm thinking like, all right, I get up there, but then I got to go down on the other. I'm like, I mean, no way. Right.

How do they feel? How do the, you know, the Mexicans, how do the cartel feel about you leaving? Oh, they didn't care because they knew I was going to be up there working. Right. Right. I mean, that's really how you got to do it. You have to have. Should I brought the dude?

a old stingray Corvette. He was so happy. Yeah, you can't manage that kind of business remotely. It's hard. It's just no matter how much you trust your people, it'll start to unravel. Very hard. You know, that's why the cartel stopped, you know, having their people work in the U.S. Now that's why they just give it to guys like you because it's too, and especially now, there's too much surveillance. You can't just kill everybody that doesn't pay, you know? Yeah, yeah, no, I'm sure, yeah. You got to have your thumb on it. Yeah. I'm like, it's so stupid.

Like, it's just, why would you just, I mean, I understand sometimes they have to, but, you know, if somebody owes you, just let it go, man. Yeah. Well, they do. I mean, that's why it's all decentralized now. Yeah. So that was what year did you come back? 2015, probably, 14, 2014. 2014?

Yeah. Okay. And then you're in Ohio under your brother's name. How long are you working? I think two years. Okay. Do you get some of your money back? Like, do you start to, do things start to go better?

Yeah, well, yeah. Did you, do you get other sources now that the weed is getting so, it's getting so competitive in the weed market? Like, do you start to get sources from Cali and other places? People were offering it. Yes. And, yeah, I was sending back some, some weed from Northern California. Okay. But it wasn't, we couldn't get the trailer to go.

over that way. So we had to mail it, and it wasn't that much, you know. Right. I mean, you could, it was, it was a lot of time involved for the amount of money. But, but it is, you know, if we could have got the trailer guy to go over there and we were working on that, and we would, it would have been, yeah, we would. What is the trailer guy? Oh, um, just another old dude that never, he's never been busted.

I don't want to give out too much information. He might still be working. Okay. Then that, you know, there's all kinds of trailer. The cops know that. Yeah. Okay. So tell us, what kind of trailer was he using?

Oh, semi. Okay. Yeah. Okay. Did he own his truck? Oh, yeah. All right. Yeah.

Nice. Nice. So you guys got pallets in there. Yeah. And is he, does he have other legitimate products in there, I assume? Yeah. Okay. Yeah.

Wow. And they put GPSs on them and everything, you know, like whoever they're running. for. Right. So there's only certain areas they can go to. Otherwise, it looks suspicious. Right, right. You just got to have the right.

Like, we used to have to go pick it up in another city and bring it back to Cleveland. Yeah. But it wasn't that hard. Okay. So you guys are getting about 400 back at a time? Somewhere around there, yeah. Sometimes three, sometimes four. How many people are in your crew back in Cleveland?

Not too many. A couple, like a handful. I had already whittled, you know, so many people had already. tried to tell on me. Yeah. And everything. So it was down. Basically, one, one black guy. Taking it and taking most of it. Oh, you know what? I started to work with some bikers,

which didn't pan out either. That was the worst. So you guys basically just got one guy who's taking it all and distributed it out. Wow. Okay. So how much are you, what are you profiting like off a pound of Mexican bud in 2015? Well, no. $3.50.

Yeah. Okay. All right. But it's still still 120 grand. Yeah, it wasn't like before, but you got to take the good with the bad. Okay. So what are you, do you have plans to eventually turn yourself in? At that time? Probably not. So you think you were just going to, was your mentality like, I'm just going to go until I get caught?

Yeah, pretty much. Okay, okay. And then just do my time, which is what happened. How'd you get caught? Speed trap. Speed trap. My brother, my brother has a full. head of hair um it's taller than me they ran they they pulled up his photo you know and i had gotten

pulled over twice before that like in the last couple months before that and it worked but this time it just didn't work so so they the fingerprinted you yeah found found your real real ID my real name yeah yeah yeah okay so if they found your identity um did they charge you in ohio first or do they I was already charged. Okay. I mean, like, how did Arizona find out? I did my time, like, a couple months in the county. I had a good lawyer.

Got me time served. And, like, when I got sentenced, the judge was like, oh, because 10 years had passed from when they indicted me to when I was in front of the judge. Right. And, like, they had this Caribbean drug task force because there's a lot of Puerto Rican and Dominican people over there. and the head of it, like, who was out for me for years and years, and, like, my whole life had to be retired already.

And the judge was like, well, what's good for you is the time that has passed is in your favor, whether or not we like that or not, it is what it is. We were going to give you a time served. So, like, two months, you know, I was like, all right. Yeah, were the statutes, I mean, is 10 years the statute of limitations? It's very hard. Once they indict you, you can't really use it. that statute of limitations because you're already indicted.

I don't know. We thought about trying it, but they said, we're going to get you time served. I wasn't going to, I was like, all right, let's go. Oh, wow. Yeah, they're not going to try and fight it. They're not going to believe you in the comments, but that's okay. Yeah, 400 pounds. You got a, it's like, that's like the line from below.

He's like, how long do you have George two years? For what? Murder. he's like, I must find your lawyer. But anyways, okay, so you got... Oh, yeah, dude, I didn't cooperate. I don't care. I know.

No, I'm just saying this is the, this is what they're going to say. But, so that's why I just wanted like a few more details. I think because of the time, like, we could have fought it with statute of limitations. Yeah. We might have won. I'm not sure. So it's not an airtight case. Yeah.

So they're like, we'll give you time served. I'm like, all right, cool. Let's go. Okay. So when did Arizona? discover that you had been... Oh, I got extradited. Immediately after you did the time in a car.

In a van with the chains around your waist and the ankle chains. Horrible. It's the worst. It's the worst. It's the worst. For torture. Four days. Four days.

Four days, dude. Just taking you from jail to jail to jail. Right? Oh, my God. Yeah, it was horrible. Terrible. It's the worst part about being incarcerated. Yeah, I got through it, though.

And it was a stake, 120 pounds. I guess for Arizona, there's so many drugs coming through their wholesale that 120 pounds is not a ton of weed. No, but they don't care. Arizona is a prison state. Like, they're worse than California for sure. But I meant like some places that would be a Fed case. But there's so many drugs going through Arizona. Yeah.

120 could just be a state case. Even all the, all the prosecutors, whatever, they're like, that's not even anything. But they still gave me five. They gave me five years because of the two fake. identities and the, the, plus the, they used the priors I had in Ohio, which ups your sense. To enhance you a little bit. Yeah. Okay. Did you, did you try to fight any of it? Oh, yeah. I didn't, uh, I became the jailhouse lawyer. I challenged it with appeals and everything. Wow. How long, how long were you in jail fighting it?

You mean the county? Yeah. Yeah. How long were you in county before? Oh, it was a good, uh, over three months, like, almost six. Uh, somewhere around there. That's not very long. Yeah, I know. It went pretty quick, though. It went pretty quick. They, like, they, they played hardball with me. And my lawyer came out and showed me emails that the prosecutor was sending her saying that we know his wife's family is cartel.

So. And, like, I was trying to fight and fight it. And they were like, no, the only thing we're going to do is, is up our plea bargain. Right. Add more time to it. Okay. Yeah. Yeah, it's a pretty good deal for how long you were out there running and gun it. That's what I said. I would like screw it. I mean, everything I've done, I should have, you know, I probably would have got more. Yeah. Especially compared to some of the other guys throughout the years, you know, the time that they did. I mean, you moved, who knows how many tons of weed. I have no clue. In your like, what, 20 year career? It's about 20 years, right? It was up there. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. 1990. 22 to 2017 or something like that?

2016, probably. Wow. That's incredible. Yeah, you definitely, you definitely skated at least. I won't do anything now, nothing. So you signed, where'd you do your time? State, but it's a private prison, Kingman, Arizona. Yeah.

I've heard nightmare stories about Arizona prisons. Yeah, it was, I was on a low yard, but yeah, it was rough. there was a people like one dude almost got killed just just on suspicion that he was a snitch um there were the drugs were horrible I mean those poor kids

with drug problems man heroin yeah heroin one one kid almost died I thought he was dead like the you know about the you know Chicano's Pisas and all that I'm sure you did yeah

the Chicano's had somebody steal like a whole gram of heroin which is a lot in the joint. Fuck yeah. So in the morning, this dude didn't get out of bed. He's in Chicano. And he was right close to me. I went over and looked at him. He's all puffy and blue.

I'm like, hey, he's dead. And he was almost dead. They revived him. He comes back three days later like, Jesus. They swarmed on him so fast. Like 60, at least 60 guys swarmed him. Just stomping him out. Oh, man.

Yeah. He probably did heroin again. That's the wild part. I was like, why would they bring this guy? Why would? Yeah. Well, because private prisons are so poorly run. They're understaffed.

They're super corrupt. Oh, yeah. A couple guards, women got caught with dudes. Yeah. Yeah. Damn, dude. What did the, did you ever hear from the organization again? No.

Did they find out that you caught your case? Oh, yeah. Everybody knew. Okay. My dude that was with Chapo, he died like two weeks before I got picked up. you got killed? No. Well,

he said he had a heart attack. Hmm. We called him El Gordo, and he was, like, really overweight. Yeah. And he liked to do cocaine. Like, he would get up in the morning and do cocaine,

like, do it all day long. Yeah. I believe the heart attack part. For sure. Yeah. Did they have any, any suspicion that you might roll? No.

You might cooperate. Yeah. Did, now, did they know about how involved you were, the authorities? know how involved you were with the Cinaloa cartel? Well, she showed, my lawyer showed me the email that the prosecutor, the district attorney, sent her an email saying, we know his wife's family as cartel. So they didn't try to, the DEA didn't come down and try to get you to cooperate or anything

like that? No. It's just a state. It's only 120 pounds. Yeah. No, I know. It's just, you have all this information. Yeah.

That's why it seems like, you know. I don't know. I don't know why, but yeah. Was your wife's family? Your wife's still in Mexico at the time and your kids. Yeah. Right. Okay.

Yeah. Okay. So even if you wanted to tell, that's completely out of the question. No, I didn't even cross my mind. Yeah. But I would. In any ways, like, they're not going to, they're not going to go across the line and grab people. They don't do that, you know?

Who? The American authorities? They don't. Now they cooperate with Mexican authorities. Like that's what happened with Mayo. They definitely got help from probably the CIA, but definitely the DEA. If I would have got caught in a big cocaine distribution thing, they probably would have came and talked to me. But I kept myself out of that stuff. Right, right. So you did how long? Total?

Five. I got five, did like four and some change. So you got good time? Yeah, you get 85%. Okay. I thought you got seven years. No, I got five. Okay. What happened as seven?

No, it's five years. I got five years for the fake IDs. Five for the weed, and they ran it concurrently. Okay, okay. Wow. So what year did you come home? 20, Christmas Eve. Okay.

Yeah. Huh. And then you went back to Mexico. I couldn't go right away. I did like three months probation first. Then I got a different probation officer and he let me go. He's like, I'm not going to tell you you can't go see your kids. Right.

It was pretty cool. Right. So was that hard being away from your kids? Oh, it was the worst. The worst, right? Yeah, that's the worst part about being in jail. Yeah. What had changed when you went back?

Everything changed. Everything changed. The weed game was gone. New people were coming. told me like it's not like before be careful like that now they're they're they're hurting women the innocent people they're doing you know it's just like just leave it alone man yeah the whole thing's unraveling yeah was it the chappos and the myos still controlling the city or was it it was the same yeah okay but it was now the kids the chapitos yeah and versus the mayo people yeah and were the

chapitos kind of getting out of control yeah and hurting there's another faction from like Navajo also that kind of started the Salazar's I think I don't know and those are like the regional guys and I don't know if they're on with chapos or I think they are but they're like they're trying to like be like on their own their own people well because they're from sonora they're actually local guys yeah I think they're based out of nowahu I'm not sure it could be from senolua well there's there's yeah they're the guys in that plaza are like they're looking at senaloa coming apart and they're like why should we let you guys who are not even from this region control this border town? So as far as like what's happening now, I'm not, I don't know, I'm waiting on some bad things that happen, to be honest with you.

In Mexico? I think, I think after the Chapito's kidnapping or however they did it to El Mayo, you know. Have you noticed now that you're down there, tell us, like, what has the violence been like since they kidnapped? noticed much. I haven't noticed much. I heard about some shootings the other day, but that's about it. But I don't know. I'm like, I haven't noticed much at all. Are you still in the same house? No. We changed. Okay. Are you guys out in the countryside? Are you still in like the rich neighborhood? It's cool. Yeah, I just want to keep it like that. Yeah, yeah. Is it more like, do you feel in danger at all as a gringo being down there? No. And yes.

Sometimes. Sometimes. It's different. I used to feel protected before. I don't feel protected at all anymore. Right. And I heard from somebody just like street talk that the Mayo people, they don't even have something worked out with. The only thing they have something worked out with is with the municipal police. That's it, which is hardly anything. Right. So I don't know if that's what the other guy. I don't know if it's across the board, but I heard that the miles don't have much worked out with the police. Right.

Why is that? Explain to us why that can mean. No, no, just explain to us why what that means and why that's volatile or dangerous when a cartel doesn't have most of the authorities paid off. It means if the other group has the full use of, of every, you know, there's all kinds of different police departments, you know, federal, state, National Guard, and military, yeah. Yeah.

So, yeah, I mean, it's a big disadvantage for sure. So they could start dropping bodies to try to get those guys back on their side. Yeah. Yeah, and now that the Chapitos are now, I'm sure you've heard, or maybe you've heard the Chapitos who looked like they were losing the war against the Mayos are now allied with the CJNG, which is the most powerful cartel. Yeah, that's why I'm just waiting for bad things to happen.

You know, I'm just going to stay out the way, work my little businesses, and hopefully everything goes good, you know. Yeah, how do you keep yourself safe? Do you try to just stay out of... I don't go out no more. I try not to, like, yeah, I used to be in the bars and everything in Mexico, but not no more. How do ordinary people feel down there?

How do regular Mexicans feel about the state of... I don't notice any worry. They're not... People that don't do anything really don't worry too much. If some violence happens, it's like, oh, it's... Yeah, it happens here and there. It's become so normal now to them that they just shrug it off. I think they're more worried about the state of the economy and the world and what's going

happen to their families in the U.S. Definitely. Right? That are getting deported back. What they're real worried about is the Trump administration just taking people's visas for absolutely nothing. Mm. Like for nothing.

Like teachers, like they don't do any teachers that are teachers in Mexico that have had visas for like 20 years. You know, and they just go buy food or clothing or whatever and bring it back. Yeah. And they're taking their. their visas for no reason. Yeah. Can't come in at all.

Yeah. Yeah, they just arrested this. I don't know if it's a, I don't know if it's immigration related, but ice, this plane landed in San Francisco. It was a Delta flight. This happened yesterday, as of this recording, and ice just stormed the plane and arrested the pilot. The pilot of this Delta flight. Yeah, a bunch of masked ice guys. You've got to be kidding me.

I haven't seen that one. I mean, and I don't. know how it's how it relates to everything that's going on but yeah i mean it's that is out of control that's just so inappropriate you know um so yeah it's going to be a very weird next three and a half years for sure yeah yeah so what kind of what kind of businesses when you when you when you when you when you went back in 2020 how long did it take you to get back on your feet or did you have everything set up it's rough um yeah i I didn't have a license.

I didn't have anything. No car, nothing. You had some money stashed away. Well, that's different. But as far as, like,

I had to get a job, you know, having a false identity charge, like, really limits you. Nobody wants to hire you with that at all. Oh, really?

Yeah. False identity. Are you kidding me? No. Because it looks like... I can't even get a job like Home Depot or anything. Like, nothing,

you know? Is that because it looks like dishonest? It's like, dishonest? It's like fraud. Fraud. Yeah. Right, right.

But you didn't have to do your probation in Arizona, did you? Yeah. Okay. I was in a halfway house. I see. So you didn't have to, how long, how long we on probation for? A year. Okay.

So you couldn't live back in Mexico. You had to stay in AZ, right? I had to stay in AZ, yes. Okay. So, and your family, did you have money put away for them while you were locked up? No, but people were taking care of them. Okay. Yeah, people owed me money.

And it wasn't that much at all. I felt horrible for them, yeah. What about your family, your uncles that were in the game? Sorry, your wife's uncles. They might have helped a little bit, but they didn't help much. That's how it is. You go away. Nobody cares, right?

Nobody cares. You do your time alone, man. You and your family. Yep. So how long, and then you, after you got off probation, you went back to Mexico. How long did it take to, like, tell us what you're doing now. I have a solar company and roofing.

We do insurance roofing. Oh. Basically, that's it. I'm going to try and start, like, some kind of a YouTube channel. Yeah, Geringo in Mexico. Those YouTube channels do well. I don't know what I'm going to do, but I like, I've, I've, have you ever watched any of the UFO shows?

the podcast. No. Something maybe to that effect. That's what you're interested in? Yeah, I've seen one in my backyard. Really? Oh, yeah. I believe you.

Yeah. That's where it happens. I wasn't alone either. I was with three, two other people, yeah. Were you freaking the fuck out? Yeah, it was weird. Yeah, it was life changing, for sure. Yeah, life changing.

That was in Arizona? Yeah. Yep. That's where you see him. Yep. Wow. And the thing was huge, humongous. Wow.

Yeah. Like the size of a football. stadium. That's fucking anti-gravity. It had to be anti-gravity. Yeah. You didn't see any propulsion on it? No. It's just, it was, it was bouncing around, like moving from point A to point B, almost at the speed of light, like bouncing around. I'm not the only one that's seen things like that. So I believe it. Yeah. I believe it. I wish I could see one myself. Yeah, it was life-changing. John Mullins, that was one of a kind. Thank you. And I'm glad you got out of the game, man. You, you know, you did pretty well. In my opinion, with everything that you were involved in, the weight you were pushing, to me, you won. That's, I'm a glass half full guy. That's how I see it, you know?

So, yeah, dude, killer, killer. We're going to switch over. We're going to get some AC going in here. And then we're going to switch over to the Patreon. And, yeah, we'll see you over there. Patreon.com slash the Connect show, the Gringo Poppy, the Gringo Burro, the Gringo Smuggler. Johnny, thank you so much, my friend. Appreciate you making the trip out here.

Thank you. Take care, guys.