The Connect- with Johnny Mitchell - How San Francisco's BIGGEST Drug Lord Became The Top Cocaine Distributor For The Medellin Cartel

Episode Date: March 30, 2025

James Beasley Jr. rose from the streets of Hunter’s Point to become San Francisco’s most notorious drug kingpin, moving 1,000 kilos of cocaine a month for the Medellín Cartel at the height of the crack epidemic. In this exclusive interview, Beasley reveals how he scaled his empire, outsmarted the DEA for years, and ultimately served 27 years in federal prison—not for drugs, but for tax evasion, like Al Capone. Now a free man and a millionaire once again through real estate, Beasley reflects on the street game, surviving the feds, and what it takes to rebuild. From cartel meetings in Colombia to front businesses in the Bay, this is a raw, unfiltered story of power, loyalty, betrayal—and redemption. 📖 Grab his book: Deep Rooted: San Francisco’s Most Notorious Crime Boss https://jamesbeasleyent.com/ Follow James on IG: https://www.instagram.com/drooted/ Help our brother Matyas overcome a difficult time and donate here: https://www.gofundme.com/f/qnpshd-matyas-retten-hws-cci-behandlung This Episode Is #Sponsored By Mando! Control Body Odor ANYWHERE with @shop.mando and get $5 off off your Starter Pack (that’s over 40% off) with promo code MITCHELL at https://mandopodcast.com/mitchell #mandopod Join The Patreon For Bonus Content! https://www.patreon.com/theconnectshow Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

I wanted to be the biggest, the baddest. I literally buy a kilo every day for a week. Went to buying two vans and had a compartment underneath it that held 250 kilos in it. This guy calls me up. He says, Louis should send you a thousand kilos. James Beasley Jr. is the biggest drug trafficker in San Francisco history. At his height, he was moving a thousand kilos of cocaine every month directly for Pablo Escobar and the Medellin cartel. He grew up in Hunter's Point on the south side of San Francisco.

Francisco, surrounded by a family of gangsters. James began his criminal career in 1980 at the age of 17, selling dimes of coke outside of a neighborhood liquor store. And by the time crack exploded in 1985, James was clearing $8 million a month selling literal tons of cocaine throughout the San Francisco Bay area and up the west coast of the United States. He was moving products so fast, he even got summoned down to Columbia to meet with the bosses personally. Finally, in 19, After 1889, after years of chasing him, the DEA finally arrested James. And what made his case so extraordinary is that the feds were never able to put a kingpin charge on him. They never found any product.

So they were forced to charge him with tax evasion, the same thing that they got Al Capone with, and something that's almost unheard of in urban drug kingpin cases. Still, James spent the next 27 years inside federal prison. He's now been home for over 10 years, and he is a multimillionaire again, This time, by buying and flipping houses, he is the self-proclaimed foreclosure king of the Bay Area. Stories like James's are so remarkable and rare that it was an absolute privilege to get him on the podcast. Make sure to go get his book, Deep Routed, San Francisco's most notorious crime boss, available now on Amazon and on James's website.

And for a bonus chat with James, where he tells us war stories from the feds, as well as his real estate secrets today, head over to the Patreon. Patreon.com slash The Connect Show. Ladies and gentlemen, this is an all-time great episode, a true OG James Beasley Jr., right here on The Connect with Johnny Mitchell. I'm the youngest person in the history of the United States. They're going to be charged with a tax evasion. There's no cocaine confiscation in my case, not one gram. So my grandmother's telling me, turn yourself in, and she convinced me to turn myself in October 26, 1989.

I didn't see the streets again until May 4th, 2015. So why do you think the Bay Area produces so much game? So many players, so many pimps, so many big time drug dealers. Why are our black people specifically from San Francisco, from Oakland, why do you just have this swag? That's interesting. Where are the roots of that? Well, for me, mine is in my DNA.

That's why the book is deep-rooted. So for me, the reason why I named the book deep rooted is because the game is so deeply rooted in me. You know, it's a tale from the bay. They say, you know, it's not on me. It's in me. One that can really truly confess to that. It's in me. It was born in my DNA.

It's from your father. It's from my father. my grandparents, you know, that's where it started from. Can you tell us about that? Even though my grandparents, my grandparents were hardworking blue-collar people. They did no wrong, you know. I don't think my grandmother, you know, ever stole anything. You know, like when we were kids and you would steal a piece of gum or something,

she always stressed she never stole anything. She was just a hardworking woman. And my grandfather worked at the shipyard, H&Aid shipyard. And he eventually developed gas and lead poison from cleaning out the gas tanks. And so they got a nice settlement from that. And that really, you know, helped the family out a lot.

But before that, it was just straight from the hustle, you know, from, you. You know, it's the tale is five, five new girls married men, and then they took on their last name. You know, that's, so that's why you have the newts, the Tatums, the Beasleys, the Nelson, Davis, and Oguns. Yeah, so you come from Hunter's Point, San Francisco, Southside, San Francisco. Yes. And all, and those four families, it's a bunch of different cousins and siblings. things and pretty much everybody was hustling.

By the 70s, everybody was into heroin and rackets. Right. Yeah. Tell us about that. Like, I think you were helping your father young move smack. Yeah, my father, and I talk about it in the book. My father, James Beasley, Sr., was like revolutionaries. He, cutting edges of the black guerrilla family,

the Black Panthers. So a lot of, in that era, from my understanding, it wasn't like slick and it was more like rough. You know, they used the word, they used the term a hog. You know, we say he's a boss now. But back then, they were hogs. Yeah.

And they preyed on people. And mostly the prey was on white contractors, coming to the ghetto and building. And kind of the same thing that you hear about in New York, you know, with the mob extorting the contractors and stuff. So that's what my father did for a living. You know, he extorted to truckers and everybody did anything to do with construction. He extorted them.

Incredible. Yeah. You know, and, you know, he would go into meetings and people would say, hey, James, you know, you ain't got no business here. You don't have, and he always carried a bag, a leather bag, like, well, we call them Renee Pouches. And he would go in that bag and pull that gun out and put it on the table. This is all the credentials I need.

And they were shaking in their boots, and the contractors would pay them. Wow. And ultimately, well, he had a friend named Morris Phillips that was head of redevelopment. And redevelopment was an agency that was over most. of the urban housing and building. So, you know, he would tell him, hey, this guy just got a contract up here. That was his prey.

Oh, I'm going to go see him then. Yeah, he'd go see him. Shake him up. He'd pay him. Imagine how cutting edge that was. That, for a black, the gall of a black man in the 60s, to go extort mafia,

Italian mafia style, go extort white developers. Yes. This was in the 70s. 70s. Early, early 70s. Early 70s. That's very audacious.

Yes. So he went to federal prison. He went to federal prison for a trucker by the name of Chet Smith, dimed him out and told the fence on him and they indicted him and Morris Phillips and they went to federal prison. So while he was in federal prison, in federal prison, you can meet anybody that you want to meet. So if you want to learn how to rob banks, you can hang with the bank robbers. You want to sell dope, you go hang with the dope dealers.

You know, you want to go to be a pimp? You go hang out with the pimps. You want to be a forger? Go hang out with the fordress. And it's called game. You know, I never describe prison as prison. I describe it as college. So he met a guy who had abundance of China White.

And he was on a furlough. He was on a furlough leaving McNeil Island, which is up in the state of Washington, and he was on this way to Boron. Boron was out in the middle of Des Barstow. And in the middle of that, you know, he met, you know, the supplier, handed him off, met me, handed it to me,

and I took it back to his girlfriend, and we went in business. And she showed me how to package it up. But I really, at that time, I was really, really young, and I wasn't supposed to be in the game, so I was more like a delivery guy. Wow. But you were delivered bricks, I think kilos of... O ounces.

It was ounces. Okay. And who was supplying China White in the early 70s? Was that a Mexican thing or was that an Asian thing? It was Mexican. Wow. Did you have any idea the magnitude of what it was that you were dropping on? No, I was only 16 years old.

Yeah. You know, I was 16 years old. Going to high school, you know, I had a 1972 cougar. you know, it was really clean. And I'm going to school with, you know, $1,000 in my pocket. Like that's normal. Exactly.

It's crazy. Wow. So your dad's now hustling. He's doing less extorting. He's using you. Well, he's in prison. He's in prison. You're running this for him while he's still locked up.

He's doing it. And then he comes home on furloughs. What's a furlough? Furlough is where the prison lets you go home for about a week, a couple of days. And then you report back. They don't do that anymore. Hell no. I wish they did. I missed that.

Yeah, too many cats running off. Right. You know? Wow. So he's running that shit. And when he's in the feds, that's where he joins the black guerrilla family? No, which before. Okay. Before that. He did a bunch of time in the state, state prison. Can you tell us about who the black gorilla family is or were? From my understanding, because it's before my time, it was a black. a black revolution, uh, a black revolution gang. Yeah.

From prison. Right. George Jackson. Started it started in, uh, the 70s, early 70s or mighty meets the 60s, late 60s, you know, from, uh, George Jackson. Yeah. That's what I. I think it was Solidad prison. Yeah. And the book Solidad Brothers and so forth. Yeah. A lot of those gangs or those,

they wouldn't call themselves gang. probably, you know, the Black Panthers and stuff, they started out revolutionary, but then the dope money came in and inevitably took over. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, took over. Exactly. Because it wasn't no money. It was very little money in being a bully or extorting somebody.

And it was more money in drugs. That was not a lot of money in marching either. Exactly. Sticking up for your rights. Yeah, they wouldn't get nothing. Yeah. Right. So I think that's really what it is.

The key to the reason there's so much game. and so you guys are so fly and individualistic is because San Francisco in the Bay Area is that. It's always been the counterculture of everything that happens in America. Like it happens first in California. And like the epicenter is the Bay. I think a lot of it too is because we don't have gangs. You don't have gangs, you're right. We don't have gangs.

So it's like we not marching against each other, you know, represent. a color, you know, or a neighborhood, you know, now, now it is now, but in my era, it was not, you know, and I think a lot of it is, it was game. You had to really be a sharp guy, be able to think, you know, you had to use this more than this or more than this. Now they're using these and they're using this. They don't use this anymore. They don't use this.

You know, so we had to come from what, you know, what the Pips is supposed to say. we had to come from the hip. You know what I'm saying? They don't do it no more. Why do you think pimping is so, why do the best pimps come from San Francisco? Like you grew up also with a lineage of pimps, I think, in your family. Yeah, Ronnie, my mentor, Ronnie Newt,

Ronnie Newt, how can you not be a pimp with a name like Ronnie Newt? Exactly. Ronnie Newt was about 17. He had 18 holes, Rose Royce, House in Oakland Hills, with an elevator in it. At 18.

At 18 years old. And I was a little. a little shorty. I was probably about six or seven. I had a baseball glove and a ball in and I'd be hitting to talk to him. Man, I want to learn how to pimp, man. I want to learn. Teach me how to pimp, man.

Teach me how to pimp. You know? Yeah. Why did you decide ultimately, I mean, obviously there's probably more money in drugs. But why did you do some, did some dudes from your era that you grew up in choose to just pimp? They said, now fuck the drugs. This is what I'm going to do.

This is my hustle. Did you grow up around dudes like that? Yeah. In the book, you know, I talk about my short stint of pimping. It just didn't pay, you know. At that time, for me, women, the whores were using drugs. Their pimps were using drugs. So sex became cheaper, and there was no money there.

So I said, hey, man, let me sell what they like. And that forced me more in the direction of the drugs. That makes sense. So as more of these prostitutes became drug addicted, they lowered the price that they would sell themselves for. Yes. That makes sense. Yeah, and you said most of the pimps ended up as don't feel.

Yeah, they ended up on to stuff themselves. Yeah. I think being a pimp's a really lonely life. I mean, imagine just trying to deal with one woman. Oh, no, now I got 20. That sounds like... I never wanted to rely on a woman to take care of me. Yeah.

You know, if she don't go to work, sell sex, then I don't make any money. But I know them drugs is going to sell. Yeah. Even bad drugs sell. Somebody going to come get it. That's it. So you started out. When did it become cocaine?

I think you were about 16 or 17 when you first got it. Like I said, originally, I was just dropping off ounces of Heron for my dad and Renee. and then that switched over to a small stint of me selling marijuana. And I didn't want to stand out on the corner. So I had a couple girls selling weed for me. And it was kind of slow. And, you know, not really producing what I wanted. You know, I probably made more money dropping off stuff for my dad.

During that time, then I was making off the weed with the girls. And my first child, Monet Beasley, she was just about, to be born and I had a cousin of my Ricky Page told me hey man pamperts and milk pamperts and milk is going to wear your ass out you got to come up with something else what what I'm going to come up with these I don't know but you better figure it out you better figure it out dude because this ain't going to get it you know I was working construction you know and I was like ah you're right man you're right and so one day I'm driving through the projects and I see two old classmates of mine that

what the Catholic school would be, a guy named Lance Moore, another guy, Thomas makeup, man Harris. And I saw them out there and I stopped and had a conversation with them. And what are you guys doing down here? And they say, man, we're selling Coke. Come down here and join us. I was like, nah, I'm not going to come down here. I don't step on your guys' toes or anything, you know.

This is your area. You guys carve this out. Do your thing. Man, it's room for you, man. Come on down. And that was the turning point for me. Yeah. I went down, you know, it wasn't on the main street, third street.

It was on the little side street, fixed Gerald, Bob's H&K liquor, which is still there. Wow. And all the, you know, all the real stomp down junkies hung out on this corner. And I went down there and I started selling dimes. And this is like 1980? This is 80, 80, no, 81. Yes, you're about 18 years old. Hey guys, I hope you're enjoying this episode.

Please don't skip ahead. This is not an ad read. This is about a young man who needs our help. His name is Matthias, and he's a longtime fan of the show, and he's suffering from something called Ellers-Donlo's syndrome, which is a rare illness that causes all kinds of horribly painful symptoms in the body like craniovascular instability. And what that is, is basically all the ligaments and the muscle

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going to cost him about $14,000 per round of injections. So he needs to raise about $60,000. And of course, insurance doesn't want to cover it. Matias has raised close to $20,000. So he's almost a third of the way there. I've already donated myself, and so I am humbly asking you guys to help out if you can. As little or as much as you feel comfortable with. I'm telling you the best way to get ahead in life is by giving. I didn't start getting all these great things happening to me from the universe until I started to give. And I love opportunities to help out, not just a fellow fan, but a fellow human being. The government's not going to help us. Insurance companies are going to help us. We have to help ourselves. I've checked out Matias's paperwork and his doctor's recommendation.

It's going to be at the GoFundMe site so you can see that this is not a scam. It is all legit. To donate, click the GoFundMe link in the description of this episode. I thank everybody in advance and so does Matthias. All right, let's get back into it. Back then, you're selling Coke. This is obviously predates crack by like four or five years. Oh yeah, crack wasn't even.

Well, let me take that back. Crack was around, but it wasn't called crack. It was rock cocaine. It was rock cocaine. It was rock cocaine. and they weren't a lot of people wasn't a lot of people didn't know how to cook it and it wasn't sold in a rock form you had to buy it in a powder form and get somebody to cook it for you in a little small vows yeah so no that's the reason it didn't take off sooner in the 80s was that nobody wanted to the drug the drug dealers didn't want to risk they didn't know how to do it they didn't know how to cook it right right you know they had they had to learn they had to learn how to cook it and I think by the time that it became a mass marketed product that they didn't know how to cook it like 85. You were already a kilo dealer.

Oh, yeah. You never even fuck with crack. No, no, not until much later. I mean, I think really what happens after the Olympics in 1984, Los Angeles, is when things just took off for everybody, you know, because you got those people coming from all parts of the world into Los Angeles for the Olympics. And those athletes are trafficking drugs.

in here. Really? Things got cheap. Wow. You think so? You think that was the turning point? I think that was a turning point. Wow.

But I wonder who was like the first neighborhood, who was the first, it must have been L.A. The first drug dealer to say, now I'm going to rock this all up. Most definitely Los Angeles. Right, right. Most definitely.

You know, if you have any inklet of the drug game, you got to give that to Los Angeles. That, that, goes to them. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. But in 1980, 81, you're just, you're in front of a liquor store selling times. Yeah. I'm selling dimes. Is it everybody? Is it just to black people from the neighborhood? It's from anybody that pulled up. I mean, it was, it was more of a Heron corner. Right. But I, I, you know, like I said, my friend Thomas and my friend Lance were selling Coke.

They were like probably one of the first people down there to sell coal. Yeah. You know, and like I said, we were young. And so it's like, hey, you know, you're coming down and get your hair on. You get some coke too. Right. And I think you moved a lot of the junkie, the heroin junkies, away from opioids altogether. To coke.

To Coke. So you're actually doing a good thing. By some people's standards. Do you think so? think that is true, though, that a lot of the heroin junkies, the fiends moved over to cocaine? I do. Wow. I do.

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Your Memorial Day made easy. Shop total wine and more in store or online. Spirits not sold in Virginia and North Carolina. Drink responsibly must be 21. But you came up quick. Like you were just sharp. Like you were always ambitious. It was a numbers game for me.

Yeah. It was numbers. It was numbers. It was numbers. And guys didn't understand that. you know, like now, even now, you know, man, I, I do my best thinking when I'm asleep. You know, it's like, you know, I talk to a guy in a podcast. It says, Ben, you know, dementia runs in my family.

I haven't got it. The brain still, still work. My daughter, Jemis, says, that brain's still working, huh? Yeah, baby, my brain still works. What were your ambitions when you first realized? realized, oh, this is good business at 18 years old. Like, did you want to become, did you have a goal with the drug game? Or were you not thinking?

Were you just for the moment? No, of course I was. I had, of course, I had Ronnie Newt, you know, as a measured stick, you know, and I had saw the things that he had done. And then I had a cousin, you know, Charles Tatham Senior. I had saw what he had done. And then, you know, we had some old. timers, you know, these guys

been, you know, dead a long time, but he was probably Colain Wales rest in peace, Willie Buck Henderson, rest of piece. Those were some of the larger guys, you know, in my father's era. Yeah. And I looked up to those guys, you know.

I grew up admiring pimps and players. You know, I didn't, I didn't admire Willie Mays and Willie McCovey. You know, or, you know, or anybody that sung, you know, like R&B singer stuff, that's... You wanted to be wealthy off the game.

I did. You know, my thing was I wanted to be, you know, the biggest, the baddest. Yeah. You know. Yeah. So you have two... How do you grow this little thing? Tell us how you really came up.

You had to get the better price. You just kept getting better and better prices on Coke and more of it. So tell us about how that grew. Well, I was... going to a cousin of mine, Goldie Go, one of my favorite cousins, and he showed me how to read a scale,

ultimately cut, you know, Coke, because what Renee, she showed me, but I wasn't allowed to touch it. I just observed, and I was more, like I said, a delivery guy. But Goldy Gold actually took me in, and you put this much cut on,

this much coke, this is how you fold, the seals and this and that. But his prices wasn't that good to me. So it was kind of forced me out to business and I was paying too much. Yeah. I think an ounce was like $2,200. It's crazy.

Yeah. And so, and that was just, and it was to everybody. It wasn't just we're cousins. And okay, this is my cousin. I'm going to charge him, 16 or 17, 18, and charge everybody else 21. My price was the same as everybody else. I couldn't make any money. I couldn't get any customers.

He had them all. I couldn't get them. So I had another cousin, you know, Chill, who really helped me out, who really, really helped me out a lot, you know. And everything I bought, he gave me. I started, I went down to a quarter ounce. I would buy a quarter ounce of $580 bucks, well, $5.25. He'd give me another one. And I'd get to a half ounce.

He'd give me another one. I got a whole ounce. I would buy one ounce. He'd give me another ounce. I got two ounces. I buy two ounces. He'd give me two. I got four ounces now.

And it's really, really taken off. Because now I'm in a position where I don't even have to cut it anymore. I just realize that I'm selling dimes. That's $10. And I got 10 of them in a gram. That's $100. Who's getting $100 a gram? Nobody.

Right. I am. Mm-hmm. So I was able to grow. And now people are migrating to me. You know, and they said, hey, you know, young bees, he got good Coke. It's cheap and it's good. You know, so now I got a couple guys that's running for me on the block.

Now I can get off the block. Right. I can just package it up stuff for them, drop it off. and I can go and start venturing off into other areas in the city that's trying to find people just like me. You know, that's what I did. You know, like even when me and my guys went out, it's crazy because I said, you know,

we'd be at parties and chicks be all over. I'm not interested in chicks. I'm interested in guys. I'm interested in customers. I want new customers. So I'm looking for someone in every part of the city. So I can introduce them, to what I have.

And then by the same token, they have crews. Yes. That's right. San Francisco, no gangs, just drug crews. Yes. It was just cruise of cats. And your goal was to just network. Everybody was network.

Everybody was network. My thing was to get me somebody in every area. And it wasn't, and I didn't operate. They worked for me. They were, I'd like to say, they were independent contractors. You know, they bought. I sold. I gave them a product

that was cheaper than anybody else could give it to them for it. So people say, well, what did you do for me? I gave you a product at a cheaper market that you couldn't get

from nowhere else. That's what I gave you. And it was a perfect storm because as more and more Coke comes in and gets better from South America, more people are using, therefore more people are getting into the game,

want to get into the game, is to sell. So now you have more customers, Yes. To sell your good Coke to. And it's just, you just see this, this juggernaut bubbling. And I think you finally met, well, your first Latin American connection was really like, I believe how you got into like the kilo game, right?

What were their names? Sal and Egger. Right. And who were they? They were some guys that I met through a friend named Louie. Louis was the first person She was giving me good prices But not like Aladdin could

And so one day I'm sitting in front of a barbecue spot Famous barbecue places San Francisco Vic and Betty's And I have a cousin And Craig Craig Ogan's And me and him sitting in my Corvette We're talking He sees a guy

The guy says hey man I'm on the 16th And so he comes Hey man this guy wants to man I'm not selling that dude No Cocaine are you crazy I said, how do you know him? He said, he introduced Charles, which is my cousin, CT Jr. He said, he introduced him to his connection.

I was like, oh, for real. By this time, Charles is in jail. So somebody has to feel this void that he left. You know, so I'm like, man, I need to get that place. I need to get that spot, you know. but how do I do it? I got to break away from the A team and come up with my own.

And that enabled me to do it. This connection. This connection. I went on his soul, the guy Louis is 16 for Coke. I saw him the next day. He wanted another one. And I went to his house.

And lolly behold, his wife and I had went to elementary school together. No, he wasn't to cops. and then they stayed two doors from my auntie. So boom, he said, man, how much you're paying for this stuff? And I told him, oh, man, you're paying too much. You know, I remember the first, I think the first kilo I bought, well, I bought a half a key for 21-5.

So that's basically 43,000 in a kilo. And he's telling me, man, somebody's kicking your ass. I can get it to you for 32. Huh? You're lying. No. He goes and gets me a half a car. kick. Wow. And 32,000 for a brick back then was unheard of. Unheard of. Unheard of.

Nobody even had the money to buy a brick. So what I realized, actually what I was paying per ounce. So ounces were 2100. I start selling for 1,800. So now the competition, the 18s, they're selling them for 1800 now. I said, okay, well, I'm going to 1500 now. So. And by the way, people should know the A-Team is comprised of your

family members. Yes. Who became your Coke competition. Yes. This is very strange. Yes. They were just a group of Beasley's and Nutes and Well, they were Tatum's. They were Tatum's and they took their childhood friends

and put them together and created the A team from the TV show. Right. 18. That's it. So I have a guy, my, my, one of my main guys, Donnie Robinson, Donnie started the B team, which is the Beasleys. Right.

I see. So Donnie, during this time, everybody was wearing those Letterman jackets, you know, no, I'm sorry, started jackets, the starter jackets. And Donnie went, guys. got everybody a starter coat, blue, trimmed and gray with B team across the front and your street name on the back of it and passed them out. Right. Yeah, you're that blatant.

Yeah, we were that blatant with it. But the A team wouldn't give you the family price. No. So you couldn't come up. They were kind of holding you down. So you said, I'm going to go over to the B team and start basically my own organization. That's what I did. This is a message from Mando telling you to wash your stankin ass.

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I love these guys. I should have brought some down from my bathroom. I got Mando all over my body and my house. Smell fresher, stay drier, and boost your confidence from head to toe with Mando. Wash your ass, you dody. This Latin connection, were these Colombians? They were from South America. Okay. Well, Colombians in South America. Can we specify? Well, they weren't Colombians. Okay.

So they were probably getting it from Colombians. You still didn't have, you still didn't have the wholesale, the connect. You had a better price. I had a better price. You weren't getting it from the source just yet. Not yet. Not yet. But still, you're getting enough love to where your price is so low. you're just taking customers because you're now conducting a price war.

And what I talk about in my book. You know, the war. You know, and I know everybody thinks, oh, war, they're fighting. No, we're family. We love each other. It was just competition. It was like I really describe it as two high school jocks. One plays basketball, one plays football, and they both jockeying for the same girl.

Right. white girl yeah yep yep so now you're maybe i think 20 21 by this point and i think one of the keys because i'm always curious i'm like okay how what is the competitive advantage that you have in the coke game i think for you is you were just so responsible for your age like it was just very easy it seems easy oh you just go get a columbian connect and you have the best price now that easy but everybody was always fucking up and you just conducted yourself like a CEO. Well, it was business. It was, it was, it was business to me.

You know, this is how I took care of my family. And I wanted my guys to do the same. Take care of your family. You know, it's like a tree with branches and leaves. You know, when we go somewhere, you know, I don't want you to, I don't want to be the only one standing out. I want everybody to stand out. So everybody was a boss in their own respect. Right.

Because everybody that was a branch for me, they had, you know, five, ten guys working for them. Yep. Yep. You know, so it was really a corporation, like you say, it's really a corporation. but we just pedaling illegal drugs. How many guys did you have on the B team that you were given product to? Probably about eight guys that got it directly from me.

Yeah. And everybody else I made, you know, go to those eight guys. And I think you had like a 10 kilo minimum. Like if you weren't buying 10 bricks, you can't even talk to me. You can't talk to me. Right.

I wouldn't even, I wouldn't talk to you. Guys try to talk to all the eight, go talk to him, you know, go talk to him. At what stage did you stop even touching it. Like if somebody made an order, you said, okay, you're going to get a phone call and then you'd have a courier bring it. Probably when I started getting 100 or better, you know, because my guys were, like my main, my main guys were buying like 25, 30 on their own. Right. You know, so now, I mean, And so I would be taken from them.

And that's something that I think happened with me in the A team. That's why it didn't grow like that because that's what they were supposed to have done. Step back and let your people eat too. You can't eat everything. You know, I mean, how do we grow? Yeah. I got to allow you to grow. Right.

So basically you're everybody, if you're buying 100 kilos, you're only, you're only, you're going to put a couple of points on what you give your guys. That's it. I see. Whereas the A team wanted to stretch it and hold it down, but it's more work and it's more risk. Exactly. And I think they ended up going to prison before you did. Yes, they did.

Because of these kind of sloppy business practices. But let's work up to how you got 100 bricks and then 250 bricks and then a thousand bricks. So you've got your first Latin connection at this time, again, before crack becomes like the the biggest thing to hit like the urban areas ever. How much were you moving a week? How many bricks? What were you making? Well, when I finally clicked in with Edgar and Sal, they had a falling out.

They had a falling out. And they split their customers. And Edgar got me. And, you know, I, you know, I, you know, I'm buying, at this time I'm buying like two kilos myself. And, you know, one day he says, hey, it was real Christmas time. And he says, hey, man, I have a gift for you. I don't have a gift for you.

So he comes to my house and he has two boxes of Don Perrione. And it says Don Perrione outside. One of them was a case of Don Perrione. I'd never had Don Perrione in my life. It was a case. The other case had five kilos in it. Turning point. Turning point.

What was the ticket on those keys? I think at that time I might have been right around 26, 28, about 28, by 28. Yeah. And that's how I was able to start selling for $1,000. Right. At that time. Because I'm saying to myself, boom, with a little bit of cut, I can stretch the 36 and the 40. Yeah.

And if I sold the $40 for $1,000 a piece, that's $40,000. Only paying $28. Yeah. So 12 times five. So, yeah, so you just made off of five birds, it's 60 G's, and you're getting rid of that in a day to your people. No, probably about a day, probably about a week, a good week, a good week's work. But that's a millionaire. That basically made you your first million, I assume.

And so, yeah, that helped me. to really dive in and corner the market. You know, I remember a guy. Because now you're sorry to cut you up, but now just for people, just to get people's context, he started out selling ounces for 2,200. Now he's lowered the street price to a thousand bucks.

They were mad at me. They were mad. We had a family meeting. They had to have a family meeting about it. Oh, what is he doing to the market? What is he doing? Stop it. Stop it. No, man.

I think that we have. the deal. This is my deal. I said, hey, man, here's the deal. You buy from me, I'll stop. Simple. Yeah. They declined because they had their own connection. You know, I mean, you know, they had their own, they, they, they, they had their own connection. And they were, you know, they were happy in, in their respect, what they were doing. And, okay. You know, let me go on back over here and keep doing what I'm doing that. And you took more of the customers. You got the better price. Yes. Wow. Okay. So, but, you know, but, but, but, but, you know, uh, C.T. Jr., he was gone. He was gone to prison. So it was just, you know, go to go. So now it's just he and I, you know, we have a little friendly price for. But at the same time, we know, and if you know, you know, we're controlling probably 75% of the city. You know, and I, you know, I, you know, I, you know, I, you know, I, you know, you know, I, you know, you know, I was telling the guy the other day, a guy calls me up, and he says, a little small-time guy. And he says, hey, Jay-B, you know, I read the book. Okay. He says, I listened to the interviews.

Okay. He said, I'm from the city. Okay. He said, you know, we all were bosses. You're right. He said, well, you know, I don't think anybody, you made it like everybody worked. for you. And I says, no, I didn't make it seem like that. And he says, yeah, because, you know, we all were bosses. And I said, hey, I said, you know, okay, if you got drugs from 1980 to 1990,

those drugs came from the A team to B team, chill. a guy by the name of Blackhead. Those four controlled the drug trade in San Francisco. Those four people, you know, the, you know. The city's not that big. The city's not that big. But we had people coming from Oakland, Palo Alto, Richmond,

you know, my cousin Gold, he opened up a car wash in Berkeley, you know, and he's in the East Bay and he's cutting deep until Oakland's trade, you know, to the point where I had to have a talk with one of my dear friends, you know, to put them together so it didn't be a war. Right. You know. But I do think at a. certain point. I could be wrong, but I think you eventually become the top out of those five groups.

I think you become the man. I don't think anybody was, I mean, were they all getting a thousand kilos on consignment from Colombians? That's a big deal. Colombians don't just deal with you. They don't do with you at all. So I think it's a good summation anyways, but let's move up to this. Okay. Oh, by the way, tell us about, so that's a lot of market. That's a lot of markets. A lot of people using Coke. Oakland was Little Darrell who was the son of Felix Mitchell. Right? Oh, I'm sorry. No, he's, uh, his auntie has a child

by Felix. So, so Felix would be essentially an uncle, but not a, not a blood uncle. Right. But, you know, uncle. And then he came up under, you know, Felix, you know, in the mob. Can you tell us about who Felix Mitchell is really quick, please?

Felix Mitchell was a very flashy guy that sold a lot of Harron in Oakland. And a lot of people, including myself, you know, tried to take a page out of his book and implemented to myself. Felix is probably one of the, he will go down as one of the largest drug dealers in the Bay Area. area. Yeah. You know, that much respect, you know, to him, you know. Um, yeah, when he got killed, there's YouTube footage of his funeral going through Oakland and it looks like a mafia funeral. Yes. There's like Bentley's going through it and, you know, this giant, gaudy purse. You know, it's ridiculous. But yeah, he was really like a drug lord for a time. And why he was murdered in federal prison, I believe. He was murdered in federal prison. Can you, what is the lore behind

that? What was behind that? Some people say it was about a $10 debt. A $10 debt. At this time, he was in Leavenworth, Kansas. And at this time, you could have money in prison. Well, it was only dimes, dimes and quarters. Dimes. And so he supposedly loaned the guy, some, some roll of dimes, and the guy didn't pay him when he was supposed to pay him. And he had some goons that was, you know, sniffing up his butt. and wanted to make a statement for him, hey, Figles, the guy didn't pay me, but he's down there gambling. So they go down and they shake the guy up.

And the guy in the guy's mind, he thinks, Phyling sent him. Bigleys didn't send him. And so he ends up coming into the Felix Hill and stabbing him. And he dies. And so it was his kind of godson, if you will, God nephew, little Darrell, who was. your generation. Little Daryl's my generation.

Little Daryl is one of the reasons why deep-rooted is even a topic right now is because he was like, hey, man, I know the story. I'll write, you better write because he wrote a book. Is he incarcerated?

No, he's out. He's out. Okay, because I believe he was sentenced to life. No, he had 35. I had 30. He had 35. And he was an even younger kingpin than you. Oh, yeah. He started out when he was about 17, man. Because according to this book, he's 19 years old with 100 birds. Yes.

When you're 19, you're a child. Like now. Like when I was 19, I was a, I was a kid. I was, I was taking beer bongs and in Toga, at Toga parties in college. He's dealing with hundreds of kilos. Huge narcotics. Yes. Fuck. Good times. Good times. That's a good times role. Right. So he was, so anyways, that's the, that's the, that's the, that's the, that's the, setting that we now have, Oakland and San Francisco. And basically, I assume it's just these six groups that are controlling all of the drugs

in Northern California, the Central Valley, and up into Oregon. Yeah. And I say, you know, and I say, you know, I went across the bridge, you know, and partnered up with, well, actually,

he came, got me. You know, he partnered up with me. And I was like, man, all the people in Oakland, why do you pick me? He says, you're different. You're really, really different, man. You know. You were.

He said, you're different. He says, I think, you know, and I've been trying to meet him. And he'd been trying to meet me, you know. And we met, you know, we met in Caesars one day. And, you know, we talked. And we actually flew home together. Not knowing we were on the same flight. We flew home together.

We talked. And I told him, you know, what do you know? What areas do you know in San Francisco? Man, I don't know me any areas, man. I see, you know, okay, you know what the palladium is. Yeah, I don't want to palladium. He don't know what I'm bringing him. I just told him to meet me there and I hand him a brick.

I didn't bring no money. What are you going for? I don't want nothing. That's yours. I just want your order. give me your order. He says, okay. He took it back and he called me.

He says, hey, man, good work. I like it. You know, what's the ticket? 15. He says, okay, well, let me get 100 of those. And I said, no, he says, you don't have them. I says, no, you already got one. I'll give you 99.

So you were able to give him kilos, for 15,000 apiece? Yeah. So then what was your ticket? At that time, I think I might have been paying 14. I didn't make a lot of money off him. Whatever. It's 200 Gs for passing it off.

Yeah, it was a volume. Yeah, of course. It was a volume what I could do. And the only reason why I made $1,000 because he made me charge him that. He told me, hey, man, I said, man, I'm just giving you what I pay for it because I know what we can do.

He says, no, you got to make something. I said, don't worry about it. He said, how about a thousand? I'll pay your thousand over costs. I said, okay. You know, and that was part of the thousand that I'd gotten. He was my first 100-kilo purchaser. Wow.

So you just wanted to just. I wanted to be able to move them because I'd never gotten a thousand. Right. And then when you're a Colombian seat, that you're moving it like that, I mean, you can do no wrong. exactly how many hundred kilo customers did you have by the end uh i had him most of my other i had a guy out of uh sano out of no he's out of pal alto rusty uh rusty uh rusty would grab a hundred from me also you know but my other guys were like 50s and 75s and stuff like that and then like my

my my main guy you know donnie donnie robbins and he had a lot of people. So Donnie, Donnie had a free reign with me. He knew where they were kept. He could just basically go in and get what he wanted. Right. You know, a,

a doc, you know, somebody won't 25. Go get them. So this, it essentially sounds like the B team was just a union of all bosses. Yes. But you were the one that was bringing the supply in.

And you say, I was just a guy that had to, connection. You facilitated the logistics of it. Exactly. Go grab what you need and I'm going to take a little fee for the shipping and handling. Exactly.

Wow. Fascinating. You know, I mean, that's why I say, you know, I'll put my guys right now today in 2025 against anybody else's in the world. Yeah. You know, so let me, in the country. Mm-hmm. you know, a lot of people don't even,

a lot of people don't even have five guys that they even associate with that was part of their crew. You know, there's no crew no more. You know, Donnie was able to take, you know, the B team and start Kings of Cali. You know, Kings of Cali's been around for 25 years as a motorcycle club. Yeah.

You know, that was a spinoff. That's a spinoff of the B team. Yeah, wow. And there was so, and I assume there's so much money coming in, everybody's eating tough, to put it lightly. There's very little violence. Very little. Very little.

I think you guys torched a guy's car from L.A. We torched the guys, Rose Royce. You know, he came from Los Angeles to the Bay Area. He was fighting a murder case. and his partner asks me what I'll allow him to work to make money to go back to fight the murder case. I said, sure. Sure, no problem. But here's the thing.

I didn't have any problem with that. And I don't have any problem with anybody. You know, I don't have any problem with Crips. I don't have any problems with bloods. I don't have no problems with anybody. This is just an area that I was born and raised in, three generations. deep. And I wasn't sharing it.

I don't want to share it. I would know outsiders anyway. So I let him come in and do his thing. And I said, don't bring anybody up here. Don't come up here and set up shop. Don't bring four or five of your homeboys up here. And he tried me.

I had his car burnt up. Yeah. And told him, go back, go back to Los Angeles. Right. And I told you, don't do that. Yeah. You know, so people have gotten a misconception of me saying that. Mm-hmm.

No. Bloods and crips are more than welcome in the Bay Area. They were welcome under my time. Okay. It sounds like, no, it sounds like they were welcome, but they just had to buy from you. No, they were welcome to visit. They wasn't welcome to set up. shop. They wasn't welcome to come in there with 10

of their homeboys and take over a section of the city like they did in most cities. Right. And states they were, that's what they were doing. We just didn't allow that to happen in the Bay Area. No. Because you're right. They did that everywhere else in the country. And I said, you know, some of my friends, I mean, like he was a friend of mine. You know, more than again, that wasn't the case. The case they were not allowed to come set up shop.

They were allowed to come up there and visit their family and whatever they wanted to do and just don't bring your crew. So were you guys prepared to take it there though? Did anybody, was there any one of your crew ever get murdered? Was there any, did you ever have to, I'm not asking you if you ever had to do it, but were you prepared? Because you guys ran around with Uzi's and tech nines and all that crazy shit that everybody did back of the era.

Were you guys prepared to, you know, get wet if you had to, you know, get funky like that? Oh, yeah. I mean, everybody knew. I mean, it's like, like we would go to clubs. Don't get into it with them dudes. Their 20 dudes, leave them dudes alone. You don't want the problem with them. And that's how we were.

It's very logical, very level-headed people. Yeah. I mean, we didn't operate like that, you know. this is more I think Oakland did more than we did we we we didn't have it we didn't have that problem Oakland had you know some some some some turf wars and stuff San Francisco we're more liberal

you know um nicer people again is that is that you know like like like like like my home boy E40 like you know you pop your collar you know that is more in San Francisco San Francisco have more players right you know and again at the end of the day, we all got alone.

Well, it's such a small city. I mean, it is dense, but it's very, very small. And the black community is very small. And you have to operate smarter. Whereas in Oakland, it was the ghetto back then. A little grimy, little grimy. It's grimy, and it kind of still is in certain places. So, you know, because it was known as the murder capital for a while.

Correct. But whatever it was about San Francisco, the fog, probably the fog. You don't feel like killing anybody. You don't have to. Yeah. You know, we just didn't do that to each other. I always felt like it was enough for everybody. Mm-hmm.

You know, and especially with the numbers that I was given that I made it relatively affordable. Right. For everybody. It was affordable. It was no need for that. You know, everybody respected everybody what they were doing. Mm-hmm. You know, I mean, you know, you had the Harper's, you had the Brenners, you had the home team.

the A team. You had to B team. You had to, you know, he had to bails. You know, I mean, and, you know, everybody pretty much, you know, came together when we needed to. You know, there was a couple other independent guys in there, but everybody came together. If, hey, man, you know, I, I need this, you know, you know, I need that. Okay. Come get it. Yeah. Your price goes from $42,000 down to $12,000. Yes. crazy $12,000. That's $12,000 a gram. Yes. For one kilo. Okay. Now your mind is working like mine worked. Yeah, 100%. So game recognized game, as we say in the Bay. So $12,000, tell us, you eventually end up going down to Columbia. Yes. Now you're shaking hands with the source. Yes. This is pretty epic. Tell us about that. Because I don't think you get into it in the book. Tell us about how you really meet.

Well, I'm doing straight because it's game recognized game. So I ended up meeting, it was a drought. It was a drought. And there was no Coke. I mean, just literally no Coke. And at the time, it was my girlfriend. And she told me this guy that, you know, her family knew was a friend of her brother-in-law's. He had Coke.

I said, he ain't got no Coke. He has coke. So I go to his house. So I called him up, hey, Jerry. check it out man you know i'm gonna come by and holl at you know because it's not talking on the phone go by his house and says can you get me some coke yeah i give you some coke i said how much can you get how much you want mr keel don't see my go over his house he calls i go i go get the money i come back and man i'm tell you we we open this thing up man and it's the most beautiful

It's cocaine I ever seen in my life. You know, this time it's called Mother Pearl Fish Gales. But the whole thing falls apart. Nobody wants shake. That's what we call it shake, duff. Nobody wants that. I can't take that. So now he takes it back.

And he comes back but one hard. And I take it. And I literally buy a kilo every day for, week from this dude. And I told him, I said, hey, man, you know, you know, I want to buy more, but I just don't want you telling my business. You know, I'm just really, you know, about to stretch my wings and I'm really trying to stay under, too. Because this guy had a big mouth.

And, uh, meant, well, he just talked a lot. And so I said, man, I want five kilos. What? I buy five. I buy five kilos from him. for a week straight. Boom. I said,

well, did you just give me the connection? He said, give me 10,000. Look off, no. And I end up getting the connection for, I think,

at this time, it was these big screen TV, the big floor model, big TVs with the wooden panels on them. So they were probably like $2,600. So I give, I buys him a TV and gives him like two ounces, I think, and he gives me the guy's number.

And he gives me the guy's number. And, I mean, this dude is so old. Johnny, this dude is so old. And he's like this when he went in the middle of the deals. He's shaking. Like, you got Parkinson's. But, you know, he'd come in and we do the business. And then once I got him from Jerry, he would come to my house.

You know. And this is a Colombian? This is a Colombian. Okay. and what's he dropping off now? Now he's dropping off Fives, my fives, my mom's I'm still at my fives.

And then I kind of graduate to seven, eight, then you know, we get to 10. And then he comes to me one day and he tells me, he says, hey man, I'm, I'm, I got to leave. I said, what do you mean? You got to leave? The office, we called Columbia,

the office. The office is telling me I have to go to, New York. I said, what? He says, so I'm going to be God, man. I said, man. Now, at this time, a lot of guys from the Bay Area were going to Los Angeles

and getting robbed or killed. And people were losing money. It was just crazy in Los Angeles at this time. And so he tells me to give him $54,000 for the connection. And I says, no. So my uncle tells me, well, what are you going to do?

What are you going to do if you don't pay him? You're going to risk taking the money to L.A.? So he says, go back and negotiate with him. Negotiates with him, gets him to $36,000. He brings the guy to my house, introduces me to the guy. And I'm telling you, man, I went from $26 to $22,000. just overnight. It's like, wow.

Mind you, they're like 32, 28 on the street. Lights out. Lights out. And then he brings you a thousand bricks. No. No. Sorry. I don't want to bury the lead.

We, we, we, we work together for probably about four months. And he fucking disappears. he fucking disappears dude you know um and i'm like damn no i'm sorry i went too so one time he doesn't have any work he doesn't have any work now i'm up to like 20 things 20 25 things and he's not around right he's not around and i send the money to l.A but i had a guy in the bay area who tells me i can give him to you, but he was a little higher, and he told me he didn't want to take my ones and fives. I'm not taking your ones and fives. You got to take it all.

No. I said, okay, fuck you there. So he calls me back, and he says, okay, I'll take him. Money's gone. I said, the money's gone. What do you mean? It's gone. It's gone.

It's just gone. But it wasn't gone. He was sitting on my floor. I packed this money up, man, and sends it to Los Angeles for the next day. day and my cousin Ricky gets caught with the money at SFO. I'm sick. So my connection, he calls me up that same day.

And he says, hey man, I got the loot. I mean, he says, I got the work. And I says, I need to talk to you.

Don't come to the house. Let's meet at the Kentucky. And I say, man, look, this is what happened. Waited on you, nothing happened. said the money in Los Angeles got caught up

got to give me a dare soul to pull up some more money man you know I said I got some money but it's going to take me a day to move around and navigate through it to get it he says don't worry about it take these this is the first time he's ever giving me anything I was always buying them man I take them in and I break those 25 things down

and I make them 35 Right. And I sell them off and they're complaining, man. They complain all over the place, right? They just help me out, help me out, help me out, help me out. So we eventually get them off. I pay them off. We do it again.

So essentially, probably I ended up doing that probably about two, three times. They got my money back. And then he disappears on me. He disappears. I don't hear nothing from him. and it's actually the day, this is I remember it, I'm over in Oakland getting some rims put on my Corvette, and I'm walking, and he's calling me,

and I'm trying to find a pay phone. He's paging you. He's paging me like crazy. And I see a newspaper stand, and I see the newspaper, Oakland's drug king, Pence, slain in prison. I put the money in and get the newspaper. I go to the phone.

And I'm trying to call. I'm trying to call. I'm trying to call. I'm trying to call. And it just ain't going through. So then I get another call. And it's area code 213. And they says,

Lewis is calling you. Why are you not answering the phone? I said, man, I've tried 10 times. It won't go through. I said, can I call and collect? They said, yeah. And they said, look, just slow down, dial all the numbers that appear on your screen on your, my pager. There was so many numbers, I'd never fucking made a international call call.

You know, probably if you pull guys, if they were honest, I'm 62. You pull 62-year-old guys and ask how many guys ever made an international fall call? They probably say none. So here it comes 0-11574. That's the area code. Crazy. And then the number. And then the number.

Then his code, at the end of it, which was 66. So that's how I knew it was him calling, trying to call me, right? And I answered. He says, and our word was, are you ready? We didn't say, are you ready? Yes. He says, are you ready? Yeah, man, where you been?

Got hot, they had to get out of there. Don't worry about it. I got you. Okay? Boom. He says, somebody's going to call you tomorrow. This guy calls me up, and he says, hey, man. He says, Louis just sent you a thousand kilos.

He says, however, I'm going to give them to you 200 at a time. Is that okay? Yeah, because I don't want them. I don't want all the fucking thousand. He said, I'm going to give you $200 at a time. I said, okay. That was the first time I've gotten $200, and I sold Little D the 100. Did you feel like, wow, okay, now I'm on.

I made it. Oh, I made it. I knew I made it. I knew it in. It was no stopping me. No. When Colombians will just give you credit, you can't get any higher. You can't get any higher.

You cannot, you cannot get any higher at all. What year was that? This was in about 86. about 86. And it's 22,000. Oh, yeah. No, that's when I went down to 12,000. That's when I went to the 12,000.

Holy shit. So now they want to know who's moving all this work. Right. Who's moving all this work? The bosses in Columbia want to know. They want to know who's moving all this work. So he says, hey, man, can't get a passport and come over here? Yes.

Man, I'm like, what the fuck am I doing, man? Am I even coming back? Am I even coming back? Fly to Miami, fly over and picks me up. But we party, hang out. Where'd you fly to? We flew into Bogota. You fly to Bogota.

Fly to Bogota. Okay. Do you know which cartel family you're going to meet? I don't know anything. Okay. I just know, I know that his source of supplier was Pablo. I never met Pablo. Okay.

So you were going to the meet that you were dealing with the Medellian cartel? Right. I don't. And at the time, they were, you know, it was a, it was a guy, Carlos Lairor. He was, his name was. ringing a lot at that time. That's all I knew. Right.

You know, I don't need, Pablo probably was. Pramelo was big, but his name wasn't ringing like it eventually did. Right. So I go in, we sit down, we talk and bring some guys in,

and I stayed like two, three days and party, just, just partying. They just, let me see this face. Yeah, hang on, hang on.

First of all, party and how did you party? I mean, clubs. Okay, you never used cocaine, though. No, I drink. Yeah.

I didn't smoke weed. I just drink. Okay. So you're in Bogota partying. Who's the connect that they're, who do they introduce you to? Well, we're going to leave him.

We'll leave him anonymous. In the dustbin of history. Yeah. Okay. Did you ever meet Pablo? I never met Pablo. Okay. He just told me that that's,

that was his. He was an emissary. Yeah, that was his source. Exactly. Okay. And it probably not even him, the guy that he ended up introducing me to.

The guy that he introduced me to and then him. That's who he was getting it from. And so you're basically there on like a business networking. Well, they want to see who's this guy. Who's this young guy in the state says moving all this Coke? Fascinating. You know, so it's like, and I had to come by myself. And I couldn't bring one of my guys anything with me.

You know what I'm saying? So, I mean, it was, it was scary because I mean, I'm like, I don't know where the hell I'm going. Right. And again, I don't know if I'm coming back. And back, Dan. anybody could get killed. Anybody could get killed.

I mean, but I knew that I had, my business was always straight. And he was straight with me. So it was like, yeah, you got to get over here. Wow. That goes to show you just how, how much they had the finger on the pulse of everywhere their material went in any part of the world. They knew. They knew.

They knew exactly where, you know, it was going. Yeah. And, you know, and I remember one time, man, I wish I would have took that opportunity. It was a time that, because they would go from, they would go from Columbia into Miami, drop it in Miami. And then we had people that would drive it from Miami to Los Angeles. And then sometime I would pick it up in Los Angeles or they would bring it all the way. And we end up buying two vans. We end up buying two vans that had a compartment underneath it that held 250 kilos in it.

And so the money's in one van, the kilos in another. We be parked, we just switch keys and go. So that was, the route was Columbia to Miami, to Los Angeles, up to the bay. Yes. That's the four-way stop to get to you. Right. Now, they offered me a deal. If I go to North Carolina, I can save $4,000 a kilo.

But I don't know no. in North Carolina. $4 million. You can save yourself. But I have to drive from North Carolina back to the bay. Had I known what I know

now, I could have went into Atlanta. I could have stayed here in North Carolina. But I might have got a life sentence too. Yeah. Because I met a lot of guys in the system that was moving way less than that ended up with life sentences.

Why? I don't know. I think the law. was a little stiffer there. But the federal laws are the same everywhere. It's federal. They were stiffer. You know, guys, like I saw guys, I saw more guys in D.C., Florida, Atlanta, get more

life sentences than anywhere else. So they had the harsher prosecutors, the harsher U.S. attorneys. Yes. Now, you know, they say the Northern District, which is the Ninth Circuit Courts of Appeal, was the most lenient. Right. And when the sentencing guidelines came into effect in 1987, from November 1st, 1987 to November 1st, 1988, the Ninth Circuit did not use those sentencing guidelines.

They were to continue to sentence people under the O law. Which was what? Which was old law was pretty much, I think you got, you got, you got more good time. because under what I'm sentenced under is a citizen reform act that you only got 54 days a year. It's all you got. And I think they were,

I don't know how, they were getting it much more. Like, for example, on my 30-year sentence, I did 27 years. A guy under the old law did 17. Right. So I actually did 10 years more

under the new law. Yeah. So again, the Ninth Circuit Court of a, Pills, Ninth Circuit, all the judges, did not, which is basically California, did not use that sentencing guidelines until the Supreme Court came back and said, you know what? The sentencing guidelines are constitutional, start using it. And it was something that was continues to be fought for many, many years.

Yeah, that makes sense. Okay. So obviously California is the most liberal liberal, liberal, excuse me, political. politically liberal place. Yes. So it follows that most of the judges would sentence drug dealers and drug kingpins leniently. Or more leniently. More lenient.

But you came in after the mandatory minimums were already there. But, you know, my case, my case itself, I think that if I had gotten my case in Sacramento, had I got my case in Los Angeles, I'd have got a life sentence. Interesting. Interesting. Okay. We're going to get there because this is also a fascinating part of the story. So now you're moving 1,000 kilos for the Medellian cartel.

Right. I mean, every week, how long does it take you to move a thousand? No, probably about a gut month. A month. Okay. A month. Okay. Six weeks.

So you bring in, but off a thousand kilos, how much do you net off that? What do you profit off it? I'm anywhere, again, depends on the guy, the person, but it's anywhere between. a maximum $4,500 only, anywhere from $2,000, $2,500, $4,500, depending on the person. Yeah. $4 million. Yes. Wow.

Okay. So now you've got your, with white collar dudes cleaning up your money. I mean, you're at like the top of San Francisco elite financial institutions washing your money. Yes. I'm actually, you know, downtown, you know, which, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know to be a area. So our downtown is considered a financial district. And I'm a guy that's going in there with kilos.

You know, I mean, those big execs like to have their parties and do things. They're buying kilos and they wash it money. Really? Yeah. So you were giving work to those guys too? I was giving work to those guys. Wow. That's crazy.

Okay. And also, I should point out what's so fascinating about the Bay Area hustlers from your era is even when you were a multi-kelo dealer, you guys all had front businesses. Yeah. Right? Like yours, I think you owned. I had a delicate test it. Yeah.

Here's the beef. I had a liquor store, Kirkwood Liquors. I had a roofing company at drywall, Jamie Roofing and Drywall. And I owned a 7-Eleven, which wasn't, it was a, it was a prototype of 7-Eleven. We called it Mom and Pop, you know, mini-market. Yeah. because 7-11 actually wanted 22% of our grocery seats to use their logo. Right.

Everything had to be bought from them. So it was like, man, why would we give up 22% of our grocery seats? And we could do the same thing without 7-Eleven. So that's what we did. Right. Right. And then I was parted into a body shop. Were those businesses strictly to wash cash or were they profitable on their own?

No, I didn't make any. I didn't make money. You're just moving the money through it. I'm just moving money through it. I mean, when I opened them up, it was in hopes to make money, but they didn't make any money. Right. And you didn't care, really? I didn't care.

I mean, one of my things was because I was helping kids in the community, you know, by giving them jobs. Of course. And, you know, a safe haven to go to, like, the, the, uh, my delegate just had a bunch of arcade games in there. And they'd come in there and played arcade games, a bunch of penny kids. a bunch of penny candy junk hot dogs and you know hamburgers and that kind of stuff you know were you known in the community in hunter's point and bay view and these you know south san francisco the black neighborhoods did your name was that associated with drug kingpin the way in oakland little darrells were okay so the kids knew about james beasley jv yes okay but that makes sense you're

making four and a half million dollars a month month and a half you don't care if your mini mart is in the black no i don't think you don't think you don't care. Or gives a fuck, right? Yeah. So now you're, the way that you're insulating yourself, now that you've got a thousand kilos, you've got real responsibilities now. A big debt. Yeah, you had a big debt too.

Right, right. Did, uh, did you ever fuck the money up, by the way, for him? Fucked the money up. Yeah. Did you ever fuck the money up? I probably wouldn't be here. Right. Okay.

That's a good point. Did you ever get hit? Did you the spot ever get raided? It never did. You cops never took. any work off you guys. Let me tell you something. That's fascinating.

I met a lot of people. And I'm sure you've interviewed a lot of people. And they all say this, okay? But I didn't get caught with nothing. Not only did I not get caught with nothing, Johnny. No one in my crew ever got caught with nothing. My case has not even that much cocaine in it. No cocaine.

There's no cocaine confiscation. in my case, not one gram. So does that mean even their people never told on them, your guys? My guys never told on me. But I mean, it sounds like even their people didn't tell on them. Because if they, my case, my case arose out of a tax evasion case. I'm the youngest person in the history of the United States, never be charged with a tax evasion.

I was 25 years old. when you think about tax evasion, do you honestly think about a black kid from the ghetto? No, you don't. Think about Al Capone. There you go. You think about somebody in New York, Columbo family or the Gatties or somebody,

some old white man 70-something years old. You don't think about a 25-year-old black kid from the ghetto. You just don't because I'm barely old enough to even file taxes. You don't can't file taxes until you're 18. Most people at 18 don't go get jobs. You probably don't get a job until you're probably 21 in life. So you're coming to me, charging me for tax evasion at 25 years old. Right.

But the feds were on you. Like they were trying, they were working in conjunction with the, you know, the Bay Area task force. Yeah, but they couldn't get nothing. No. They got nothing. What was the key that? Like, how is that possible? I mean, I know it was a different time.

It was the 80s. There wasn't as much technology. But how, how is it possible that they never got any work, a thousand bricks a month through your crew goes out to hundreds of people when you break it down from the kilo buyers from the B team all the way down to their buyers all the way all the way down the chain i mean it's it's insane that's i believe a hundred thousand grams going out how do they not get any work well a thousand times a thousand how many grams is that that's a million that's a million grams going out very carefully very carefully right and we've

controlled who we gave it to. We controlled the market. You just, again, remember I told you, you couldn't just buy. You couldn't just buy for me. I only gave it to those people. They only gave it to their people. And after that, probably who knows and who cares after that price. Right, right.

But, you know, from the most part, the core, the core was solid. Yeah. And again, you know, it's just not by chance that book is deep rooted. Yeah. And the fact you had the best price and the best quality, that you could be selective about who you gave it to because people had to come to you. Exactly. Yeah.

So they didn't find a... Nothing. There's no compensation of nothing. Nothing. Nothing. Nothing. Okay. They were trying to get you on tax evasion.

And it was a couple of people in the financial institution, I believe, that were cooperating with the IRS, with the criminal division of the IRS. Yes. Can you elaborate on this? Because it's fascinating. Most cases, most drug cases are not made this way. Exactly. Exactly.

So I had an accountant by the name of Robert Doyle. And Robert was a very smart guy, man. And he, you know, he was laundering money for one, as I say, as I described in my book, one too many drug dealers. You know, he had an amazing, profitable accounting firm. You know, Doyle Williams and Company in Oakland, they had some of the top athletes that they were their counties for. And he slid one too many drug dealers in there. And he was larger in the money, you know.

And he would like say you're a square guy. And you're a square guy. And you want to, you have a, you're losing your house. You can't get a loan. you go to your accountant. I'm losing my house, man. My credit is bad. I can't get no one.

He'd get you a loan. Guess where your loan would come from. J.B.'s drug money. Exactly. Wow. Exactly. J.B.'s drug money would save your house. Through a real estate company, like a holding company,

I assume that he would set up. Okay. But the source of the money... It was me. Right. But to show legitimate income, it has to come from somewhere. You have to show the first point of entry into the financial system. I call the

seed money. Yes, seed money. So and what was that strategy? Well, what I would do is I'd give him the cash. Right. And he'd take care of it. That wasn't my problem. Okay. So he didn't know how he was, the seed money was going into the system. I'd give him the cash and he'd do the work. And all I know, it would come back. It would come back in a check. Yeah. It'd come back in a check. And that check was deposited in escrow. And you got that check out of escrow. And I was on your

property. Right. On my company. So you were the first lien on this problem. Second lien. Okay. So and then he managed that money, the legitimate money as well, you know, after it came through all cleaned up. How did the IRA, like, and so he started, he got jammed up? His wife. Okay. Right. His wife, his wife started having a fair. And I talk about it in the book. His wife started having a fair with a DA agent, uh, uh, uh, Mendoza. Robert Mendoza. she started terraceda dole started having an affair with him and she spills the beans holy shit are you kidding me that's how the whole thing unraveled was that on purpose do you think that DEA agent started sleeping with this broad to get to you what happened is that they were

following a guy they were they were they were following a guy uh Oakland had a special unit I think it was SSU some type of unit that would follow state parolees and they were following this guy, Bobby Danks, and Teresita was a real estate agent, and they were riding around in this big 560 Mercedes Benz. And they're looking at these properties. So when she drops Dank off, does parole you know, she drops Dank off, he goes in, hands her a shoebox. She goes on about our business.

Dank gets back in his car, and they stop Dank, go back in the house and find out. $207,000. And they find all his paperwork. See, I never had my paperwork for my loans and stuff. I let him keep it. I didn't need it. I knew what I gave him. I knew what I was getting back.

So Bobby was a person that, you know, paranoid. He wanted his own paperwork. So they went there and they confiscated $275 from him and his paperwork where he had made loans. Right. I see. So they go to the accountant's office with a search warrant for more Bobby records. In the process of that, they stumbled across James Beasley. A couple other drug dealers, they go back to federal court to get a warrant to seize my stuff.

And they seized my stuff. And that was how you first got on their radar. That's how I first got on my, well, I think I was on their radar already. Right. But that was like their lucky break. That was their lucky break. Like, wow, this dude is just not running around him buying cars. this dude is really trying to take this money and go legit with it.

Yeah. And I think that's the part that they don't want. No. No. They do it, but they don't want a black man to do it. Yeah. And you were, now what year is that that they first hit hit on you? I think 87.

Okay, 87. So by now you're a millionaire many times over. What, did you have an exit strategy in my mind? mind? I did. Okay. I did. I had an ex- My thing was when they came to arrest me, I wasn't even doing anything anymore. I hadn't seen a brick of cocaine in probably eight months. I wasn't even seeing it. You know all I was doing? I would pull up with my double bag and load it up with my profits and I'd ride out the sunset. You never saw work.

I didn't see it again. All I did is made the phone call. I made the phone call for it to be delivered. Once it got in, they'd inventory it and I would tell them what to do with it. And that was it. And when it was all said done, the bill was paid.

This money was there. I'd go pick my money up and I'd be gone. And were the logistics getting the work from Los Angeles? after it had made it across the country up to the bay. Was that all handled by the Colombians or by your team? No, by them. Wow. So all, they got it all the way to the stash house.

And then... And then... And then how... Rancho, Rancho. I'm sorry, Rancho. Rancho Cucamonga. And then they would bring it up to the Bay and where was it warehouse when it got to San San Francisco? I had apartments.

I had apartments all over the Bay Area. Okay. And then you, when your guys beeped and they said they're ready, they knew where to go pick them up? Yeah. I mean, like, for example, like, we had got to a point where most of them were being, when I got them, they were parked in Rancho. Then we would bring them up as we needed them. Oh, interesting. So you never really kept bulk work in the bay. No. Wow. I didn't have to. I'd go, down and get it. Remember, I remember you had the van that carried 250. Yeah. So we never had no more than 250 up there at a time. Right. Because that's all the van would hold. Sure. Sure. Sure.

And then this guy gets 20. He gets 50. This guy gets 10. Right. And then at the end of the month, you're just picking up a duffel bag. Heavy. Heavy. Heavy duffel bag. Yes.

Or if I needed some money or something, I'd run in. I might need some. I'm going to grab 50,000. I could 100,000. I mean, I'll just take it off what I got coming. That's nothing. No. And you own a ton of cars.

Yeah. You know, and these are the cars that we, that the rap that I grew up listening to and not even listening to like you can't even call it admiring like i lived through too short and e40 and mac dray and and now guys like larry june and everything they rap about from corvettes to the style it all comes from guys like you yeah of course okay but i'm saying it all comes everything that they rap about comes from guys like you from your generation so larry june and burner has a song and it talks about

I got a GNX Grand National like James Beasley. You heard that so? I mean he always talks about his Grand Nash so maybe but pull it up okay I will

I will we'll do. So E40 has a song it's made like the one Rick Ross made of BMF He says, I keep my mouth shut like James Beasley. Now, I have heard that song.

Yeah. Wow. Wow. That's wild. Yeah. See, it all comes from the culture that the drug dealers created. And then the rappers went and glorified, right? Exactly.

Which they pay no homage for. You know, it's like, too bad I can't sue you for infringement. I know. So bad as I can't sue you for using my name. I know. You know what I'm saying? I know. You know, it's like, it's like, they get to actually talk, rap, walk, dress like we did.

But I don't have to live the consequences. Exactly. Exactly. Well, you pave the way. You should feel good about that. Yeah, I wish I could just give a little, you know, a little stipend every night and the end from them. Well, we're going to get into it because you're doing well now. But I want to talk about, okay, so it's now 1989.

Okay. And you are in rarefied drug dealer air. You're not touching any work. You're just picking up cash and then a clean check. So it sounds like the IRS was investigating you through your accountant's horrible wife, Mrs. Doyle, for now like two years, two and a half years. What other evidence are they gathering? Well, so they're like, okay, so I have a guy who made a, they made one, I have one guy. He wasn't indicted with me.

One of my brothers, Ernie Stansberry. Ernie was one of Donny's workers. and he Donnie brought him into the phone and said hey man I'm going to use him as one of my carriers I said okay go ahead I approved him go ahead and he took some cocaine to a guy

who was an informant and I think he was two kilos and he went to prison he got five years so he's in federal prison So they know that this guy is a part of the B-T, you know, not directly to me, but they know that he's a part of it. So when I say there was no confiscation, that was it, but that wasn't in my case. That was in his own case.

You know, so that was another part of the investigation. Okay. Okay. So, but what about the money laundering? The tax evasion came from, they called it unexplained wealth. When you say, for example, that I'm, 1985, I think I claimed I made $46,000 on a tax return. And the government goes out and do a net worth on you. they go and get your credit card bills. They go and look at your PG&E.

They run your credit and see everything that you have credit. So cars, they go to the car dealership and say, oh, you know, how much money did you put down in this car? They're going to tell them. So they get the paperwork on that. And then they do a net worth. And they say, well, damn, Beasley said he made $46,000 in 1985. but we show that he spent $300,000.

Yeah. So what did that money come from? Yeah. Right. So they said the only legitimate source they can see it coming from cocaine. Okay, but how are they able to prove that in court, though, if they don't have any work? Where did I get the money from? Right. But you could say maybe I was selling marijuana.

Like how do they, you know. I wasn't known for a marijuana dealer. I'm known for a cocaine dealer. Okay. That's what they say. That's what they say. I understand that. But where is the evidence coming from?

Manifactored. That's, that's, that's, that's, that's, that's, that's, that's, it's called ghost dope. Doge. Did the guy that, uh, snitched on one of Donnie's workers, uh, and with the two kilos, did he say it was James, it's all coming from James? No, they put him on a stand. They put him on a stand. He said that he didn't know me. He said he didn't know me.

He saw me one time. sitting in the Mercedes, but he didn't know me. He didn't know if the drugs came from me or not. He didn't know. Okay. So after the 89 earthquake, it's the end of 89, this is when you get arrested. Fed's, DEA, IRS, all that? All that.

How do they arrest you? How did they hit you? Well, I was supposed to get arrested the day of the earthquake. But the earthquake happened, I didn't get arrested. which was a, I think it was 17th, October 17th, 89 was an earthquake. And I got arrested to 26. And I was at my liquor store. I was at my liquor store sitting in the back of my partner's limousine discussing how many cars I needed.

I was going to get married. And how many cars did I need it? He says, hey, man, look, police everywhere. I looked around. I said, shit, I slid down in the seat of the car. Start this thing up. He starts it up. So I go to this hotel called the cathedral,

and I called my attorney, and I told him. And he says, man, I think you got indicted. So he calls over there and comes back. He said, yeah, you got to indict it. He says, they say, they know you know that you ever want. If you don't turn yourself in, they're going to start kicking indoors. So I got some cash laying around. you know, I don't want them to kick indoors.

Yeah. I got cash yet. So I said, okay, so I'm like, ah, so my grandmother's telling me, turn yourself in, turn yourself, I'm saying, no, I'm not going to turn myself in because I wasn't. And she convinced me to turn myself in October 26, 1989. I didn't see the streets again until May 4th, 2015. Wow. Wow.

So 25 years. 27. seven years, sorry. Don't short me. Yeah, right? So you weren't able to bond out? They wouldn't give me a bond. It was no bond.

It was no bond based on some violence that happened. And one of the guy, another guy that was laundered money for me. And he was laundered money for me and getting properties for me. He had turned. government informant. And he was ultimately murdered in this office. They attributed it to me. Wow.

So when I went for bail, they tried to attribute it to me. But ultimately, you know, they didn't, they didn't pin it on me. They convicted. But they use it. They use it to detain me. The U.S. attorney tells the judge,

look at, his organization is tied to this guy who got murdered, don't let him out. Exactly. That's enough. Exactly. Because you had the money to bail out. Yes. So the two guys, two guys had ran off to Texas.

They extradited them back to Texas and then ultimately, the guy that they ultimately charged went on the run and they eventually called him. You know, he had his, he had plastic surgery done and they still called him. Oh, these are guys who did the murder. Yeah. Okay. Were those Colombians? No.

They were black. Did you know them? Yeah. Oh, wow. And so they're down now. No, one is dead. I think one is out and I don't know what the other one is. Wow.

And what was the beef with this guy, this accountant, doing the- No, he was, this was a real estate broker. Oh, what, did he run off with some money, screw people over? No, they just, he was getting a lot of homes for drug dealers. Okay. Why did he get murdered? Because he was telling.

Right. Okay. And a part of that was telling on you, I assume. He told on many people. Okay. So now you've, they weren't able to put the king. This is really interesting. They were not able to stick the CCE on you.

Right. So a lot of people don't know what a CCE is. Continual criminal enterprise. Correct. The King Pit Act is what it's known as. That's right. And obviously that is, that's self-explanatory. But they, they, the U.S. attorney went to Washington, I believe.

This is how high up your. case right. To get approval, you can't file a CCE, continue criminal enterprise on someone just because you want to. You have to go to Washington to get approval. So you get the approval of Washington and they got, you have, you have to prove $10 million, gross receipts, $10 million dollars in a 12-month period time. That's, that's one of the elements from a CCE. From drug sales. So if you can prove that, then you can get to CCE. But they didn't have any. anything. They had no dope on you. And whatsoever.

So, but the charge was? The charge was tax evasion, money laundering, possession with intended to distribute and conspiracy. How, how could they give you possession with intent to distribute? Based on what?

Based on one guy tells them, me and his brother did some things. His brother bought 50 kilos for me. He picked him up. His brother bought 75 for me.

He was supposed to pick him up, but he got arrested. So that's 125 kilos. So then the two kilos Ernie got caught with. Okay. Then they found a drug ledger inside of Madam C's purse

in Rancho, Cucamong. which detailed 580 kilos. Right. So they added them all, it was 367. So they added them all together. The total was about 580. Correct.

The total was 580. And that's what they sentenced me for. Right. But not. Not one. No, no, of course not anything on you. But really just the testimony of a couple of people who could have been lying, right? They weren't.

But they could have been. They were. Well, I mean, the guy was an adult thing. The guy was a dope thing. and they knew he was a dope theme, but they, that was the only smoking gun they had. Right.

So they used it. Okay. So that makes a little more sense. So they're able to put 580 kilos combined with all the tax evasion. That's how they're able to put a possession with intent to distribute and a conspiracy charge. Yes. But not a kingpin charge because they don't know how much money you're making off of it. They don't know.

And then, you know, but what they ultimately did, what they built in, with the new law is they built in a thing called a four-level enhancement for a managerial row. So if you exercise a managerial role over four or five individuals, you can get a two-level, you can get a two or four-level enhancement. I got a four-level enhancement. So that made my sentence go, I was basically looking at 14 to 17 years.

Okay. Then the four levels kicked in. I went from 27 to 33. Right. The judge went in the middle and gave me 30. Okay. So you decided you're locked up in where? Do they have a federal holding cell, holding jail? I was in Dublin. I was in Dublin, California. No, I'm talking about when you're fighting the case. They're Dublin. Okay. You're in Dublin. I'm in Dublin. I'm in San Francisco County,

jail and I'm in San Jose County jail. Okay. So why did you decide to fight the case? Your attorney must have thought, you know, they don't have a lot of evidence. Because they didn't. Yeah. They didn't have a lot of evidence. Hmm. Okay. Did you know what you were?

No, I did not know what I was facing. I did not know. Did they offer you a plea? They never offered me a deal. And they wanted you, James Beasley. So now when I asked for a deal, I asked for a deal. Hey, give me a deal. Hmm.

So, okay, what do you, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what, what are you offered? I'm not offering anything. I want 15 years. My prosecutor, George L. Bevan Jr., said, that's, tell Beasley, that's the most popontrous thing I've ever heard him getting 15 years. It ain't going to happen. Tell them to start with 20. Hmm. No, I'm not starting with 20.

No. No way. I know hindsight's 50-50. He says, start with it. Not that he was going to give it to me. Start with it. Shit. But what I know today that I didn't know yesterday,

all I could have gotten to was 20 years. I shouldn't have gotten no more than 20 years because you have, they go hand in hand. 841. is a possession. You have to possess it to be able to do the conspiracy, which is the 846, 21 U.S.C. 846 is a conspiracy. 848 is the CCE.

So you have, you have, you have 21 U.S.C, A1A, B1B, A, yeah, B1B and B1C. B1C. is a catch-all provision 0 to 20 years when there's no dope in the case. Lawyers don't know because they didn't never study these sentences and guidelines.

Right, and this was brand new. This was brand new. Yeah, so they had nothing to look at. No case studies. They didn't do they work. They didn't do they work. I should have been sentenced under A-41 B-1B1B. So did you're a lawyer?

I'm sorry, B1C, B1C, General 20. B1B was 5 to 40. B1A is 10 to life. They take and slam everybody under B1A because it's 10 to life. Five kilos or more, you go to B1A. If you got caught with four, you go to B1A.

be. If you get caught with nothing, you go to C, which is zero or 20, and that's why I shouldn't be. Wow. So do you feel, because obviously you had the best criminal attorneys, money to buy. I had, I had a guy by the name of Tony Sarah. Tony Sarah was a big hell's angel lawyer. Okay. Representing all the hell's angels, beating everything. You know, at the time, he's probably the number three drug lawyer in the country. Yeah. Expensive? Very.

How much were you giving him? I paid him a million bucks. Right. So then do you feel like he fucked you? No, he just didn't do his work. He didn't do his work. He didn't do his homework. I didn't, what I just relayed to you got relayed to me by a guy in prison.

who you got guys again remember I said this was college this was in jail this was college pay attention if you go to jail pay attention you can become anything that you want to become because their guy is in there that's going to teach you yeah so I was already buying real estate I just got sharper

when I went in there so this this guy had a life sentence out of Pasadena and he told me he said hey man you got fucked and he showed me. He showed me in the books. And I continue to fight, fight, fight,

to try to get out. And boom, here comes New Jersey versus a print day. Says all you can get is 20 years. However, it wasn't retroactive. So I couldn't get it. Oh, no. At what point in your stretch did you meet that guy? Did you realize that?

Probably in 2001, 2002. So you're about 11, 12 years in. Okay. Wow. I filed it. The court says, yep, you're right. You're right. However, is that retroactive?

So I said. Did you write it back and say, come on, man. Come on. It's me, baby. No violence. No nothing. Nothing. No, tell us about the trial real quick.

You decided to go to trial. You went to the box, as we say. I had no choice. I had no deal. Yeah, you had no deal. So. Now, we're in trial. So here's the thing with the government.

The tell is you can convict, you can indict and convict a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. It's just that easy to do. Okay. Throw some shit up against the wall. Just that little bit of it has to stick. And you're convicted. Right. What we did is we put up roadblocks.

Stop this from coming in. She can't testify. If she testifies, this don't come in. She don't testify. This doesn't come in. He don't testify. This don't come in. I had eight people.

Unheard of. Unheard of. Eight people. Eight people refused to testify under a grant of immunity. They try to get these people to testify. You can testify and tell everything you want to tell, even incriminate yourself. And nothing's going to happen. And they refused and they went to jail.

Wow. It's unheard of. What did the rest of the B team? I should have asked you this. When they arrested you, did they take down the other members of the B team? I went by myself. Wow.

I went by myself a couple weeks later. They brought in my cousin, Madam C. They brought her in. A year later, they bring in Donnie and Aaron. Okay. And what were their fates? Donnie, of course, they had to deal with him and Ernie. Oh, and they brought Ernie back.

They brought Ernie back. and re-indicted him again with us. Oh, no. So he was doing five, got another five. So I think Donnie had a possession with some guy. Aaron had possession with a guy, and they'd let him plead to theirs. I got convicted, which I had nothing.

I say, man, you guys better take these deals. So they took their deals. One got, I think one got five, one got seven. Okay. Okay. So, and what are the other guys you were associated with given work? They kind of got away. Wow.

Yeah, they vanished. they vanished and got away Oh my God that is unheard of That's true leadership man Some of them Some of them like some of them like They didn't go out with us

They didn't party with us So they just kind of stayed in the shadow Yeah A lot of they didn't hang with us So if you didn't hang with us You didn't know that I was their supplier Right It's like even some of the people I named in the book

You know And people say Why did you do that? Why did you name it? It's my testimony. If I had changed your name, Johnny, they would say, who's Johnny Mitchell? Who is that? He didn't grow up with us.

He didn't hang down there with us. It's almost too much explaining. Tell the story the way it is. If you were in that era, you would appreciate it. You appreciate the book. You know, and you could tell the tales and tell the tales and stories yourself and you could say, I remember that. Opposed to calling me or going on social media's hand.

I don't remember that. Who is that guy? He didn't live next door to us. Too many unanswered questions. And I can just go with the truth because nothing in the book is going to get anybody in trouble today. No. And a lot of the names are not government names.

They're street names. Yeah. That's it. You know, if you know, you know. I mean, this is just a real leader you are, James, because you took the, now, did you have an opportunity? Not that you would ever tell. And it's funny that a great anecdote in the book is when you're going to trial for a state case. I think you like beat somebody up with a bat and you called and they kept trying to, they kept lowering their plea deals.

They're like, and my grandmother didn't say, no. And even your grandmother was like, you will never confess to anything. That's right. So you'll never confess to anything, much less tell. But did you have an opportunity? Could you have given up guys on the B team? They never asked me to. What about your Colombian connects?

They never asked me. This is crazy. They never asked me. And now why is that? They wanted you so bad or they were like, maybe we don't, maybe he doesn't have it like that. I don't know. They never would ask. They, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the thing.

They never went to my attorney and said, hey, tell James. There was no. But, what, what, probably one of the things, probably one of the things is because, Tony Sarah is his big anti-stitch lawyer. So they knew don't go to him with it. Yeah. Because he's a non-starter.

He wasn't going to do it. Right. So it was kind of just a lost cause anyway. Yeah. And so, you know, we, you know, when I, when I hired those attorneys for those guys, we had a, they had to commit to me. Because I paid the bill. Yeah. I paid your bill. So you might represent. him but remember

I'm cutting your check so your first obligation is him but you also have one to me so this is what I asked if he decides to cooperate all I want you to do

because you can't tell me ethically you cannot tell me so what I want you to do is resign off the case that's how you'll know That's how I know. And everybody stayed solid. Everybody stayed solid.

And I was able to take that and pass that down to other people that had large groups. It's what you do. Lawyer resigns off the case. You know, you know the guy's hot. He's warm. Get away from it. So you're filing motions and your people are refusing to testify. And, you know, it's really got all the echoes of like a mafia case.

You go to trial, though, in 1990. How long does the trial last? And what do they present? What is the government? I think we went for about six weeks. And what does the government present? I mean, the government presents, well, I ended up, ultimately, I ended up pleading guilty to the tax evasion. Because I didn't want to put my mom, my two grandmothers on the stand to testify about the unexplained wealth.

Yeah. So I said, well, you know what? if I plead guilty, that doesn't come in. So that was the whole idea. Me plead guilty and none of the money comes in. We're just going to go to trial on a dry drug case. I see. We got to be able to win this case because there's no dope.

So you didn't have to forfeit a bunch of money or property. No, I mean, they took property from me. I had some stuff over in Hawaii that they stats from me, a couple of other stuff and the money that I lost out. the airport, took a couple of cars, just, you know, but, I mean, it doesn't sound like a huge hall because you pled guilty on it. Right. Okay.

So who did they have testifying on the drug side? The drug side was, uh, was the guy Sylvester. Who else was it? Uh, Ulysses Johnson, Rick Sanchez, Bill Brooks, a guy, Bobby Evans. Hmm. Who else? And are these, are these drug dealers or account?

Okay. I didn't know. Right. I didn't know them. It was just like, James is a hot ticket. You know, let me tell.

Yeah. You know, let me tell, you know, and getting the witness protection program. Right. Or whatever, you know. And, and I mean, so they were shaking trees

and trying to get anybody and everybody to tell on me. They handed me a witness list the day of the trial. The prosecutor went to the judge and says, hey, you know, people are getting killed all around this case and, hey, we don't want to expose our witnesses. We're going to wait to the day of the trial. The day of trial, he walks up to my lawyer and throws a list on the table with 180 names on there.

You got to figure out who's the defy this telling. Right. Because he didn't want to still tell us. Wow. I can't believe that's legal. Wow. Did you feel like you had action? I did because they had no dope.

I mean, it's like, where's the evidence that? I'm under like, where is the evidence that I have to see the evidence? And a lot of the feds is hearsay. Yeah. A lot of it is hearsay, man. Much of it. Yes. Probably most of it.

And they go for it. Yeah. Man. Well, what did you think when you got sentenced? Were you like, okay. I'm never getting out of jail. I never saw myself doing the 30 years. But at some point,

in the first beginning, I was like, I'm not going to do this 30 years. I'm getting out. I'm getting out. I'm not going to do 30 years, man. So, and that's how I was able to keep my strength.

Yep. Through saying, I'm not going to do 30 years. I don't know when I'm getting out, but I'm not going to do 30 years. You know, I kept saying, exercise, exercise.

Get me through this, give me through it. It took more than that. What else? What did it take? Well, it was the exercise. It was the people that I surrounded myself with from the streets,

you know, and my grandmother. Yeah. My grandmother, my mom. What about your kids? My kids were relatively young. They were young at the time. You know what I'm saying?

But as they got older, as they got older, I relied a lot on them, you know, to come see me and say once they were grown. Yeah. And so, you know, you weren't able to win the appeal. Unfortunately, that law is not retroactive. When did you decide, oh, I'm going to get into real estate when you came home? Well, because I was already doing real estate before I left.

Right. But I wanted to get sharper. Yeah. And it was a guy named David Tetter. And David Tetter was a guy who introduced me to, what was his name of it that he called anyway so what you basically do

you basically find someone who has good credit they don't have the money to put down on the place you give them the money they get the place in their name you're a 50% owner you put the down payment out they make

the monthly payments at the end of 12 months months or 18 months, they refy it and give you your money back plus your interest or they sell it. Or you end up with the property. That's killer. You're the bank. You're acting as the bank. Exactly.

All right. I want to talk about this on the Patreon because I always like to show people, you know, and talk to guys like you, how sharp you are. You became a millionaire legally. Yes. So, I mean, it's a tragedy in a way. What happened to you? I mean, certainly you deserve to sit down and do some time. you did a lot.

This is the consequence. The consequences were also the benefits of being first in on the American crack boom. You got to make money that a hustler, even the sharpest dope dealer, will never make now. Of course. But you also, you had to do more time than you should have. Yes. I don't know what more to ask you, except just to say it's been a pleasure. It's been a pleasure.

And you seem like you're doing great and life is, you know, are you cherishing it? I am. Okay. You know, I want to say this, man, that I didn't write this book to glorify the game is not. It's not to glorify. I don't wish this on anyone. I don't want anyone to have to do what I did the 27 years. You know, man, I drill.

Even though my kids are my, my kids ain't saints. you know, by no means, but they're good kids and they work and they're hard workers, you know. And I tell them, hey, don't get in trouble because I did enough time for you guys. And I preach it to my friends' children. I did an unc did enough time for all you guys. You know, it's another way. It's a better way. I'm not glorifying this at all.

This is my testimony and a deterrent from people. to think that they can do what I did. You know, I just see so many garbage stories. And it's like, that's garbage, you know. And I said, I can tell my, my story's better than that. I just happen to be in a smaller market. But I'm in a market. when things are genuine, authentic.

You know, you're not going to find a James Beasley in New York, Florida, Ohio. You're not going to find a James Beasley in Los Angeles. You know, they got a few good, they got a few smart guys, you know, and I always, tip my hat to this one guy, man. And I say he's one of the smartest guys that I ever met from Los Angeles. And that's Michael Harrio Harris. I've heard of him. He's a very smart guy.

He's one of the sharpest guys that I haven't met out of Los Angeles, man. You know. Yeah, we've talked to a lot of people on the show, obviously. A lot of dudes that were, you know, thick, really, really in it. but none, quite like you, you know? Exactly. I mean, even when you look at the structure,

you know, the, the black guys from New York, Harlem, they were, none of them had straight Colombian connects. They always had Dominican middlemen. You know, they did well. You know,

they were making crazy money and living that fast life, but it usually ended horribly. Yes. Tons of murders, life in prison, a lot of killings. you know, suffering in prison.

Bay Area cats just do a flyer. Even in the hell of prison, I don't know. It's just, it's the swag. It's the game, man. It's, uh, it's the West Coast. It's just a better way to live. You know, it's crazy because within the system, you know, and I tell people it's sad because we segregate ourselves.

You know, when you go, the jail, the institution hands you a rule book. Here you go. But that's not the rule book. It gets you through. You know, it's the other rule book you get.

When you get, when you come in and somebody says, where are you from? I'm from the bay. You know, you come in, white guys are over there. you know, this there for this, the white guy's phone, black phone, black TV, white TV, Mexican TV.

You go into child hall, black sit over there, white sit over there, makes sense, Asians sit over there. They don't have to, they don't have to police us. We police ourselves. And it's sad. Yeah, what are we doing, guys? Exactly. We segregate ourselves in jail, man.

Yeah, yeah. I think the excuse is like, well, this is how we keep order. That's what they'll tell you. Yeah, but, you know, it's like, it's a lot of division. Yeah. It's a lot of division. It's a lot of division, man. And it's, and a lot of it, I think, even started from the state, from the state pen.

And it spills over to the feds. Because the feds, when, you know, back in the day, if you went to the feds, you were somebody. For sure. Let's take everybody now. Everybody. It is rejects. Yeah. Like, man, you're in the feds?

What are you doing in here? You got a pistol. That's all it took. Oh, yeah. Oh, man, I met a guy, man, that literally had six grams of crack cocaine, and he was at the feds during the 10 years. So, fuck. Yeah.

You know, so again, you know, a lot of it is like, you know, we segregate ourselves and it's bad, man. This is, you know, you know, and I think, again, a lot of it comes from the state, you know. It didn't come from the fans. It came from the state where, you know, you know, California is split up. Yeah. The way it's split up.

The politics. The politics. Yeah, the politics is, you know, bloods, Crips, you know, North, The Norethalios, Mexican Mafia, you know, Serenios. You know, that's where all the division comes from. It started in that state pen. Yeah. Well, crabs in the bucket. And it's built over and just watered down the federal system, man.

Yeah. Yeah. that and as you say like the drug game isn't what it used to be but that beast still needs to keep eating you know that that bureaucracy the prison industrial complex they need bodies okay there's no more james beasley's but there's a guy with who's been locked up three times and he's got six grams of crack and now his points are crazy let's take him you know that's and that's what they do and that's why it's like i've never seen a book that explained just what we talked about the sentencing guidelines and books don't talk about that even if you can go back to all the people

that you've interviewed johnny how many have actually broke that down how we just broke it down not many that's why i created this show so we could actually break down how you move up in the drug game like you did you know but you got to know you got to know the consequences yeah and a lot of people don't know that they don't they don't know the consequences of what you're facing you know we So that's my job. My job now is to advocate for that, you know, to be able to reach out to the community and tell people, hey, look, this is what you're facing, man. You know, and now, now the biggest thing that that's happening now is that I'm about to embark

on wellness, mental wellness. Tell us about that. Well, the thing, you know, we used to use the word, the R word. We can't use it anymore, which was retarded, retardation. You know, a lot of these kids are suffering from mental wellness. You know, they're using these drugs, these pills. You know, I went through a period where it was stress. You know, it was stress for me, and I didn't understand it.

I didn't know what I was going through in prison where I was just so stressed out, you know, where I was running to the doctor every day, like, oh, man, my neck hurt, my back hurt, this hurt, that hurt. And they said to me one day, man, there's nothing wrong with you medically. We're going to send you to psych services. And I was a little embarrassed about it, you know. And I went to psych services. They did an evaluation.

They said, man, it's nothing wrong with you. And I would call home and tell my grandmother, she says, you're nerves. So old people called the nerve. Yeah. Now today it's not nerves. It's wellness. It's mental wellness. Mental illness, yeah.

Exactly. So that's what I'm embarking on now to try to help the young people, you know, to deal with that. You know, it's like, you know, I have a friend, you know, her son got in trouble. And, you know, for some minor stuff, just minor stuff. And they were going to three strike this kid out. And, you know, she got a good lawyer and went to bat, you know, for him. and they were saying, hey, he doesn't need prison. He needs a program.

Yeah. They put him in a program that saved him. And so, but he's just one that got saved. So my mission is to try to save as many as I can from entering to the prison system. Let's try to help him. The biggest thing now is what is fentanyl crisis that we deal with. Phentanyl is probably, believe it or not, Fittinol is probably big as the AIDS epidemic.

It's killing just that many people. And the epicenter, just like AIDS, San Francisco. Yes, exactly. So, you know, I'm throwing my hat in as an ambassador for San Francisco, man, to try to clean up this fentanyl crisis. Well, it's one of the greatest cities on earth in, by far the best state on earth. And, you know, I had to move out because I need to wait for things to get better. But I'm glad that you're helping.

and I'm glad you're staying and there needs to be black people need to stay in San Francisco and stay in the bay and uh and I also through your entrepreneurship that's another thing that I that's what we're going to talk about on the bonus episode because nothing keeps you on the straight and arrow and out of prison like money like your own business you know and and it's it's a fucking terrific business that you have the real estate yeah we'll talk about it to the bonus but I let me plug the book okay so um yeah go get right now deep rooted by James Beasley Jr. It's just, it's such a San Francisco story.

And if you love the Bay, if you love California, if you love the genre, and my listeners do, it's available on Amazon. Yes. Of course, it's where I bought it. And I breeze through it. It's a great read. Do you have social media?

Can they follow you there? So the book is on, of course, Amazon, as Johnny said. The book is also on my website, James Beasley, E-N-T-com. You can get it there Or Amazon If you're into Bay

You can go to Marcus Bookstore And get it Awesome You know, I'm on Instagram As D-R-O-O-T-E-D Pages open Yep

You know I got 21,000 Followers You know And yeah The internet's gonna see this man You can get a lot more So all those links will be in the description.

James, this is a pleasure, man. Thank you for having to be, Jay. I really appreciate it. Yeah, of course, of course. And we're going to switch over to the bonus now. Patreon.com slash the Connect show for a quick little wrap-up chat with James. Man, killer episode. Thank you, man.

I appreciate it, G. Take care.