The Connect- with Johnny Mitchell - How The Sinaloa Cartel Moves Cocaine Across America

Episode Date: August 30, 2026

At just 18 years old, Jacob Diaz went from growing up in extreme poverty and foster care to helping manage a massive cocaine trafficking operation stretching from the Texas border to Florida. In this episode, Jacob explains how he started as a driver and translator before eventually handling logistics, coordinating drivers, collecting money, managing stash houses, and helping oversee the U.S. side of an operation connected to the Beltrán Leyva organization. At its peak, the network was moving dozens of kilos a week, with Jacob describing hundreds of kilos moving through individual customers and millions of dollars changing hands. Jacob breaks down how the operation stayed under the radar, how cocaine moved across the country, what life was like around cartel figures in Mexico, and the mistake that eventually brought federal investigators to his door. After being convicted on a federal cocaine conspiracy charge and serving more than seven years in prison, Jacob completely changed direction and built a legitimate business helping people repair their credit and access funding. This is the story of how a teenager went from homelessness and foster care to the center of a multimillion-dollar cocaine operation—and how it all came crashing down. Go Support Jacob! Ig: https://www.instagram.com/mycreditbuilderpros/ This Episode Is #Sponsored By The Following: Hims! To get simple, online access to personalized, affordable care for ED, Hair Loss, and more, visit https://hims.com/connect NordVPN! NordVPN! Upgrade your online protection with an all-in-one security app! Get an exclusive NordVPN deal + 4 months extra here ➼ https://nordvpn.com/theconnect. Itʼs risk free with NordVPNʼs 30-day money-back guarantee! Join The Patreon For Bonus Content! https://www.patreon.com/theconnectshow 0:00 Intro: From Foster Care to Cartel Logistics 6:11 Growing Up in Extreme Poverty in Ocala 11:50 Foster Care, Family Separation & His Mom Disappearing 17:15 Learning to Let Go and Move Forward 20:03 This Episode Is Sponsored By Hims 21:48 Selling to Eat While Homeless 29:00 Selling Out of the Foster Home 34:32 Meeting the Man Who Became His Father Figure 41:54 Getting Involved In The Beltran-Leyva Organization 43:21 This Episode Is Sponsored By NordVPN 44:42 Becoming the U.S. Logistics Manager 47:17 Collecting Cash, Translating & Learning the Business 55:07 Border Routes, Checkpoints & Moving Product 1:00:57 The 70-Year-Old Cartel Mule 1:06:00 Moving 20 Kilos a Week Through Ocala 1:12:36 The Dream of Retiring in Spain 1:22:02 Cartel Security & Acapulco Nightlife 1:27:05 Living on a $30K-a-Month Party Budget 1:32:38 Why They Used One Distributor at a Time 1:38:02 How His Boss Got Back Across the Border 1:44:49 Flying Cash to Mexico 1:50:44 The 2011 Federal Investigation Begins 1:56:31 The Federal Case & Recorded Evidence 2:01:33 Sentenced to 10 Years in Federal Prison 2:06:51 Building a Credit Business in Prison Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

When I was at foster care, I was introduced to him basically because he was looking for a driver. I was working with Beltron Lava. I learned how to collect money, how much things were going for. I learned the inside of the business. How many keys would you give a customer? $300, $500? Yeah, somewhere around there. If it's not a ton or better crossing that border, they're not even going to entertain it.

I had a monthly budget of $30,000 a month. Jacob Diaz grew up broke and homeless in a Florida trailer park. Then, a chance encounter with a cartel boss changed his life forever. How does a kid with nothing go from selling dime bags of weed to moving hundreds of kilos of cocaine at a time from Texas to Florida? You're about to find out. And if you like stories like this, hit subscribe so that you never miss an episode. Okay, it's the one and only Jacob Diaz right here on The Connect with Johnny Mitchell.

Was this a route? Would you pass through Austin on your way back to Florida? No, I lived, I was living in Austin. Wow. I was living on West Anderson in 290. It was our apartment complex there. Wow. So you were here overseeing things?

Oh, no, I was just, I just came back from Mexico. So I was, I ended up staying in Austin because I needed to wait for him to come across the border. So when he came to Austin, I can just get in the car and go to Florida. I got you. So that was the only reason why I was in Austin. I ended up staying longer than I needed. So I had an apartment and I stayed there for like six months. but, you know, after that.

So Austin is a hub for cartels? I don't know. Houston is for sure. Houston definitely is. San Antonio is Laredo. Brownsville. So that whole corridor was your route. My was,

man, what the hell is that? What's on, what's there by the Browns is Brownsville? Not Matamoros. Renosa? Renosa. Yeah. Like through there, like through there, came to come up. I was on a driver to go to the border and they will take his truck and then drop his truck back off at the hotel.

And then from there, he would just drive back to Florida. And that was during that era, that was when Chapo and Sino-Lo were at war with the Gulf and the Zetas in that area. So they were trying to take those plazas. So it was super hot. Yeah, it is. It's always been hot just because the more territory you have, the more power you have, the more money you got. So, like, they, from what I know, like, they will undone it would divide, okay, you get that, I get that, I get that. So it was like, there's enough for everybody's to eat, you know, but every now and again, you'll get some movement and action with people overstepping their boundaries and shit happening behind the scenes and how they would start shooting each other. And was it the cartel of Sinaloa that you were moving product for?

No, I was working with Beltron Lava. Okay. Yeah. So that was, that's an offshoot of the Sinole. Yeah, they were, they branched off from them. So did they have an alliance with the Gulf that own those plazas in the east, like Renosa Matamortals? Yeah, they had a deal with, you know, give me a cut, you know, and you can use my, your routes, the warehouses and. Well, they had their own safe houses like in Houston and by the border. Wow. Yeah.

That's wild. And that's mostly cocaine in that era. Yeah, I never, I never sold anything else. And what was a brick going for in like 2008 on this side? I remember 2008. Oh, a huge bust. That's when the price went up. 16, 5.

It ended up being 195. Oh, on this side? Yeah, 195. That's wild. Because now it's probably like 11. I've heard it's like 11 or 12. I still don't even believe that. Like when I got popped, it was 30 in 2011.

I was selling it for 27.5. 50 at a time. I don't know, but it was, it was slower then. It was like 20 every other week. Hmm. Yeah. But you got up, you would, you would, for your boss, he'd be moving 50.

I don't know. They're moving, like, they, they come in like a big package. Yeah. And then they'll divvy up. You know, you get 20, you get 10, you'll get. So it was in the beginning, working with the same person all this time. But in the beginning, it was, it was great. You know, like 50 all the time, 50 a week, you know, as much as you can take.

But then it's like, As time went on, it just kind of was like, you're scratching for crumbs because I would have to go to another guy locally that I know. And hey, can you give me one or two? Because it was a drought. It was a drought for a while. And they weren't sending, no one was sending anything. No one was sending anything.

Did they tell you why? Was it because they were at war? Well, that was a, remember the Queen of the South? Yeah. All right. So there was a, allegedly, there was a bust out there in the Pacific, like, by L.A., like out there, south, like San Diego. That was a huge, you know, the ships that carry containers.

Yeah. So there was a huge bus, like tons, tons got popped. And when that happened, it was quiet for a few weeks. And then the prices jumped, like, overnight, 5,000 easy. Right. What would you rather, as a drug, a middleman, right, a guy who's picking up wholesale from? Yeah, I was just logistics. I was like a broker.

I was translating. Right. So as that, what do you prefer? Do you prefer an environment where it's flooded and the price is really low and you never have a drought? It's moving smooth, but you can only get one or two points per kilo. That one. You prefer that over prices being 25. For one, no one can beat my price too?

Can nobody beat the product? So they're going to get the best of the best no matter how much it costs. If it's cheaper than everybody else is, it's a no-brainer. So even if it's flooded, you're still got the best. Because I didn't cut it. I didn't touch it. We were the first person to touch it when it came across the border. And I didn't know how to cook or cut, none of that shit.

And everybody was doing that. When they got it, they would do, do, do, do, do, do. Try to stretch it. You would hear, oh, I make one key into two. I'm like, who the fuck's doing that? You know, that's not a flex? You ain't got no plug. Well, crack dealers do that, but that makes sense because that's their environment.

Yeah. But, no, Mexicans, you guys take pride on having great Coke. Yeah, the cheapest. Jacob Diaz, the only Mexican to ever have grown up in Florida. Only. Literally, I've never heard. You must have been the first. Tell us about your childhood was racked with real poverty.

Yeah. Like almost Mexican-style poverty, but in the United States. For sure, man. So as far as back as I can remember, it's been hell. It was hell growing up. One, I couldn't understand why. I was the only one out of my friends that didn't have shit. I didn't have a dad.

I didn't know that that was a thing. Like, oh, you don't have a dad? What the fuck? So I grew up with a single family home. My mother worked sometimes two jobs. We never had a car. So sometimes she would walk to work or either catch a ride with a co-worker. And since we lived out in the rural area, it was all dirt roads and shit.

So it was harder for her to get a job. So we was on government assistance. A lot of times, and a lot of times, no. Electric in the house, no food. You know, nothing really going on. I would go to school just to eat. I didn't like school. I never liked school.

So I just used to go to school every day just to eat. Just to get the free breakfast. Breakfast and lunch. And then I'll figure out dinner. And that was Ocala, Florida, right? Yeah. Okay. And that, I've seen, I was watching videos of it.

And it looks like, it's essentially the whole thing is like a trailer park, you know? But a rundown trailer park. Yeah, so I did stay in a neighborhood that was all trailers. So, yeah, I did. But it wasn't like a trailer park, you know, like a round. It was a huge, this is huge neighborhood, but it was all trailers, dirt roads, all that shit. And you were like the poorest of your friends that are already pretty poor.

Yeah, everybody. All my friends had, they all had either moms and dads, they all had jobs. They all had cars. They had cable. Cable was a big deal back in the 90s. How did you guys end up there? How did your family, is your family from Mexico? So I was born in Pennsylvania, and according to, I never met my dad.

So I never met my dad, and I don't know why, how, what happened. I just hear stories from other relatives. And I didn't find out until later, like my mom has a mental issue because her story would change. So I stopped asking. So when I was a kid, I was very curious, hey, you know, who's my dad? Where's he? why is not here? Dund-da-da-da-da-da.

And she was just telling me, you know, your parents tell you something because you're a kid. You know, but I took it serious. I'm like, man, I need to find out these answers because I know there's a bullshit answer. So, there are Mexican.

My mom was born here, though. So growing up, she would teach us English. She just, they didn't want to speak Spanish or anything. But I grew up around, you know, Mexicans and in those neighborhoods. And that's how I would learn little by little, about speaking, because I wanted to speak Spanish. I was always being made fun up because I didn't speak Spanish.

All my brothers, my two brothers, they're darker. They look. Even you have the name. I got Jose and Carlos. You know what I mean? Like, you can't fucking, it doesn't go over your head. Then you have me, you know, and my name's Jacob. And it's like, you don't know until I say my last name, Diaz.

And it's like, oh, but. Yeah. Because you go on to translate. When you start working for the organization, you go on to be a translator. That's why I asked how much Spanish that you had picked up as a kid. I picked up the bad words first, and then I worked my way up to doing, I would watch the news in Spanish, I would watch novellas in Spanish, and just be around people who didn't speak barely any English.

And then I would take out of the sentence, I would take one or two words and put it together, I'm like, oh, I know what you're talking about now. So that's how I would, and it worked, you know what I mean? I ended up translating, make it for serious shit. So I was like, I knew when I was listening. I knew what I was hearing. I knew what I had to say. Dude, that's like, did it blow your mind?

We were like, becoming bilingual was so valuable. Yeah. Because now you're talking about moving hundreds of thousands, millions of dollars. You're talking about transporting, you know, hundreds of kilos at a time. Oh, I mean, once I figured out how valuable I was, I, man, my shit smelled like roses. You couldn't tell me shit. So, because you worked logistics in the organization. And we've talked to a lot of guys in this show,

usually white guys who the cartels love because they're responsible. Making it happen. They're organized. They're making it happen. And of course, they're Americans, right? You're an American that looks Mexican. So, and are Mexican, but you're an American. So you're the most valuable because you can blend in.

You can cross the border. You have family on that side. You know the culture. But you're an American. You've got that passport. And you operate like an American. And basically, I can code switch. That's it.

So I can speak abonics. I can speak proper English. I can speak redneck English. I can speak Spanish. I can speak proper Spanish. I can speak. Right. Hood Spanish.

I can. That's amazing. And that's what they look for. They like, they like guys that dress like tee ball coaches. A chameleon. Yeah. They don't want a do with tattoos all over them.

No, there's too much attention. Way too much attention. Yeah. So, and when I say poverty, I mean, when I talk about you have a fucked up childhood, like your mom, you were in foster homes.

your... Yeah, eventually did go there. The state separated the siblings. Like, they took your brother. They took you. Yeah, so how that went down was, I was like 13, 13. And my younger brother was in a detention center

for fighting. I was only staying with my mom. My older brother moved out. He was acting, grown, doing his thing. And the state wouldn't let my sister stay with us because in Florida, I don't know about now, but at that time, the law was a brother and sister couldn't

chair a room. So you had to buy, and we couldn't afford a bigger house or more rooms. So when my mom did was she let, she let her stay with a friend of the family temporarily until we can, you know, get something more convenient, I guess. And that's when everything started slowly, but surely started to trickle down. So when my mom used to go out on the weekends with her little girlfriends, whatever, they do little girl things. My mom didn't drink, do drugs, you know that shit. I think I might have seen her drink a wine cooler once in my life. You know, what the hell's a wine cooler?

So one weekend she never showed up, but her friends did. So I'm waiting, you know, she leaves Friday night and Sunday she comes back. So Sunday, I see all her little friends come back, but they're acting weird. So I'm like, what the fuck? And me being me, I approached them and say, hey, what's up? now people call me an asshole or a dickhead but that's how you get your shit so i was like hey so what's up where's my mom oh i don't know she's one so one would say she stayed with the man another one say i don't know but y'all are all together and y'all come back together every single weekend so you mean to

tell me y'all know what the fuck happened so i felt like they were hiding stuff so i would ask and ask and ask and so about a month passed by and the landlord which is another friend of the family named Patty, which looking back is straight, fucked up on her part to do this shit. Because I've known her since I was six.

Yeah. So she comes and was like, oh, I need the rent money. And she's the owner of the trailer and everything. And we're neighbors. And I'm 13.

And I'm the one one there. And you're like, I don't have $75 to give the rent. Like, what the fuck? I can barely eat. You know what I mean? So she has, opening the money.

Where's your mom at? I said, I don't know. I thought you would know. I don't know anything. So she goes, okay, if I don't have the money by Friday, you got to leave. So I'm like, that's when I experienced homelessness. So I ended up being homeless. And you're 14?

13. And your mom's literally run out on you. Never said by nothing. That's, and how long would it be before she came back into your life? Actually, that's a funny, that's a funny that you said that. I actually ended up finding her years later, but not because I wanted to. I did it for my older brother.

So I found her in two days. Really? Yeah. And then the next county over, she's been over there like over 10 years. And what was the story? Why did she leave? Well, when I finally got to invite her,

I said, hey, let me take you out this weekend. We're going to go talk, you know. And she says, well, I ask her, I said, hey, I got a question I want to ask you ever since. You know, I was little. I said, why did you leave us? I said, not even us, but why did you leave me? Because I was a huge mama's boy, huge.

And she goes, I felt like y'all didn't love me. And I said, so I looked at her. I said, that's the best answer you can come up with after all this time. I said, let me tell you something. I said, you know, a dog doesn't even leave their own puppies? So what does that make you? Less than an animal. Wow.

Yeah, she just put her head down, and I continued on with going off to dinner with her. Wow. So you could have, it was really your brother. You had said, fuck her. I don't have a mother anymore. You had kind of ridden her off. Well, I didn't say that. The reason why I said I got it from my brother was because one day we're driving around and he was drinking and just I just watched. I was watching him deteriorate, you know, just sabotage his life, you know, just because my mom wasn't there. And what I did a few years prior to that was I was in a balcony and on Christmas. in Acapulco at a Christmas party. And I would cry, like, randomly in public because I was very depressed, suicidal, all this shit because my mom, you know, I lost my best friend, my everything. And I had everything that I wanted to ever give her,

but I can't give it to the only person that I wanted to since I was little. So it fucked me up for years. And so one day I just went outside by myself and I said, all right, I could self-talk. And I said, hey, what do you want to do? Do you want to continue living your life like this? or do you want to live your life normal

like everybody else? And the only way I can live normal was to finally accept that, the fact that she was dead. Because I can't say she's coming back because that's giving up, that's false hope. I'll just be sitting here depressed all the time. And then I would cry randomly.

I go to Walmart one day and just, I'm just bust out crying. You know, just shit like that. So I got tired of living like that. It wasn't fair to me. So I said, let me, what could I do to not do that anymore? And I was just to accept the fact that she was dead. So once that clicked, I can breathe.

I was able to breathe. I was able to laugh and be sociable and see life in a different lens and be more receptive to things around me and make plans with people and enjoy moments and create, you know, just friendships and relationships. Because at that point and time, before I did that, I didn't take anything serious. Anyone will come and try to be my friend

or I just, nope. Like they asked me simple questions. Oh, where do you work at? You know, what do you? And I'd lie. I was always just, I was always horrible. And I didn't like that. So by the time that you did find your mom,

it wasn't that crushing emotionally because she'd been dead to you for all the time. Yeah. Yeah. The emotional, the emotion part, even to this day, is, um, is not there. It's not. Have you found your dad? No. I heard.

I mean, I can. I just I got I don't know I just To me When I needed him the most Is when I really wanted to

Enjoy you know Like go fishing Go camping A little shit like that But I I'm too grown to be like Oh I need a dad Or I want to know how he's like

I mean eventually When the when the opportunity comes And when I want to But I just Like I just don't It gets to a certain point Where you're like What

That's why. Yeah. I mean, I don't have anything. There's, I don't have anything against the person, the man or whatever. I don't have anything against them, you know. I just don't, I just, I've, I guess you can say grown to where I remove my emotions a lot. I remove my emotions from a lot of situations and, uh, because when I was doing what I was doing back then, I couldn't have emotion.

I couldn't. That's why, I think that's why you succeeded. I couldn't have emotion. The emotions will kill you. for sure yeah because if you get let's say for example you owe me money and i want my ego kick in that's an emotion my emotions kick in oh you think i'm a fucking joke or you think i'm both no it's even worse when you don't even when you don't even look hard when you look soft it's even worse it's harder to hold that emotion back because it's i mean you know it oh you watch your friends pick on

the soft kid but won't pick on fucking kid with tattoos or do with tattoos like what the fuck i thought keep it uniform. You're going to be a dick, be a dick all the way across the board. Don't pick and chew. That's soft. To me, that thing, that's soft. So I didn't,

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So that it fills a generic version of Viagra. Viagra is a registered trademark of Viatra speciality LLC, which is not affiliated with or endorsed by Viatras. So you're abandoned now by 13, 14, you have no parents. You're essentially like an orphan. The state has split the siblings up. And that's when you start hustling. That's when you say to yourself, okay, I'm just going to get rich.

Well, I started, I always had a hustle mentality. Always had a hustle mentality. I didn't know it was called hustle mentality, but I started a landscaping business when I was nine, 10 years old with my buddy, just like we do the yards on the street. You know what I mean?

I'm not going to sit here and be like, oh, we had, no, I had a push mower. I did the negotiations with, I did the everything. My friend was scared. He had all the materials that I needed to go forward. So I was like, I got it from here. So he was scared to go talk to the knock on the door

and I'm knocking on door and a lady will come out. Oh my God, you're so cute. Yeah, you can rick my yard. You can cut my grass. And I'd get away with my look. So I was like, you know, they'll pay me, you know, extra 20, 30 bucks and, you know, he would help me, whatever. But, you know, that idea. And then we didn't have, I didn't have money to eat.

So for a while in middle school, I would take, I would go to the gas station and steal a bunch of gum, packs of gums. Remember when the big packs were a dollar? So I would take a bunch of those. I would steal it from the store and go to the, go to school and sell them all and give them money to my mom so she can buy us food. Wow. Yeah. Like, little shit like that I would do. Everything would change going up.

And then once I became homeless, before I went to foster care, I got introduced to selling wheat because I was hungry. It was one night where I didn't have anything to eat at all. And it was getting late. It was like 9, 10 o'clock. And everything shuts down in Ocala around that time. So I knew a girl that was delivering pizzas and she would buy weed off me. So when we're not up by weed off me, but she would, she would, actually out of her. asked me to go find her weed.

So I had a guy who I can go to for weed. And so it clicked in my head. I said, well, I can get a quarter. The quarter was like 20 bucks back then. Quarter ounce, yeah. Yeah, I get a quarter. And I can give it to her. She'll give me two large pizzas.

Because she told me, all I do is just go back and say that the person didn't answer the door, and they're going to make me throw it away anyways. So I said, perfect, we can do this, you know, once a week or however many times you think you can get away with it. So that's I was able to eat. And then a click.

So you would stretch a pizza? Like you'd get too large pizza. You stretch that bitch for four days. Well, no, I'm smashing one pizza that night. And then if I'm with like a buddy or two, whatever, because I knew I could do it again at that point. So I would like share. But yeah, like two, two, three days I would probably stretch it out.

Yeah. And then there was a moment where I said to myself, I said, well, now that I have food, I need clothes. because I didn't have clothes. I didn't have shoes. I didn't have shit. So I said, let me go ahead and get some clothes. I started selling nicks and dimes.

I'll make like five bucks profit here, five bucks, you know. And I see it. And then I'm like, okay, something's working. Something's, you know, clicking. So I started expanding more and saying, oh, you know, do you know somebody needs an ounce or a QP or, you know, half pound, whatever? And I can get it for them. and then around, I say about almost a year later,

my brother, my younger brother who came out of the Tetching Center for fighting because he was in it for about a year, he ended up going to like a boys ranch. There wasn't a foster home, it was a boys ranch. That's what they called it. And so I found that out because there was a state worker, child services, whatever. they call it DCF, Department of Children and Families in Florida.

So DCF will come out and they would look for me in the neighborhood. They never find me. They said they were looking. When they finally called out to me, they said they're looking for me for about a year. And I wasn't even hiding. I was just running the streets, you know, here and there, whatever. Because I wasn't going to school. I couldn't.

I had no school closed no nothing. I didn't know where to stay like that. So I didn't go to school. And I was away from my friends to come outside or come back from school. and then... Dude, you grew up like a character out of a John Steinbeck novel in like the 1920s. Yeah.

Like, you're just wearing overalls, and you got fucking no shoes. Walking around shoeless. No, I had shoes, but I had... One pair. Yeah, you know what I mean? Like, I didn't have... I didn't have...

When you go to school, you got to have nice clothes and shoes or whatever. I had holes in my shoes and, you know... Yeah, I had like the same three outfits in rotation. Wow. And... That kind of poverty is so... so rare in America. You know what I mean?

And at that moment, I didn't know the severity of that. I just thought it was normal because I was doing out my whole childhood. Right. And- It's like some Indian reservation shit. That's how a lot of like Native Americans live. So by the time I was about 16, they finally called up to me one day.

They were waiting if they found out where I was staying at. So they were waiting for me in a yard. I seen there was an old Spanish man there in a yard. And I didn't think nothing of it because he was wearing regular clothes and, you know, a regular car. And he was, hey, are you, Jacob? And I looked at him. I said, who are you? He goes, oh, I'm with the part of my children and families.

We've been looking for you. And I said, been looking for me for what? Oh, we want to tell you that your brother's in the heart or it's called the heart of Florida, the youth ranch, boys ranch. And we want to take you into foster care because I was under 18. And I was like, the only way. So I even negotiated that deal in a yard. I said, hey, the only way you can take me is if you put me in the same house as my brother. And he goes, okay, we can make that happen.

I said, look, when I go to this foster house and he's not there, you know what's going to happen, right? I'm going to leave. And he goes, no, no, no, no, worry about it. And as slow as they work, they finally was able to transfer him to the house where I was at in about a week or two. Because I was calling him every day. I said, hey, where's he at? And he explained to me the process, you gotta do the paperwork or transfer and all that stuff.

So when he finally came over that to the foster, to where I was at, that's when I felt a little better or a lot better now that I was with, you know, my brother. I felt like things are looking better now, you know, that we'll get to like my mom stuff later and all that good stuff, but right now, you know, little by little. And at that point, I was selling pounds out of the foster house. Wow.

Yeah. I had my window, I had my window at night because we couldn't leave that. We couldn't go outside after eight. We weren't allowed to go outside. And when you open the door, they make a noise, like an alarm. Like a store, like a gas station. So she would know if someone opened the door to sneak out.

So I use my window. I say, hey, just come to my window and tap on it. And it's come to my window. And then I would serve through my window like that. Yeah, it was like a drive-through. Walk-through. Walk-through, for sure. Okay.

So you were successful at it. Like, did you have a good weed plug? Like, how did the weed operation grow? Like, how did you network and shit? Hanging out with Mexicans. I knew some kids that had access to it. You know, we're all the same age, you know, 15, 14 years old, 16. It was normal for, like, 14-year-old kids to come up with 10 pounds.

Wow. If you're a Mexican fucking 30. Yeah. And they're all getting it from their uncles. Right. who were bringing it in by the bricks. Yeah, it's all that fucking, you know how the peel layers, that brickweed?

So it's kind of trash. Yeah, the best shit back then was like, they call it popcorn, Arizona, whatever. This is like 2001, 2002. Right. Okay, so you're selling weed out of the foster home. And you do pretty well.

Yeah. Like, I think the one video I watched said you were making like $8,000 a month. Yeah. That's a huge. I never made $8,000 a month selling weed until I, like, blew up. You know what I mean? So did you learn about saving?

I mean, that's for a kid that didn't have any shoes. No, no, yeah. That's like life-changing money. Yeah, no. At that time, just because, like, I wasn't, it wasn't, it was a lot of money, of course, to me at that time, I was like 17. However, it wasn't, I couldn't save because there was so much that needed to be bought. Like, I was, that's when I started catching up on getting my outfits, my getting my,

getting my back to school. And then I had my little brother in there and I had to worry about him too because how crazy is that your bigger brother looks good. But then you look like shit. You know, because the foster care, they give you, I won't say a stipit.

They give you when school starts, they give you $250 to go school shopping. And you're going to buy a pair of shoes and two outfits, three outfits, maybe. And that's going to last your entire year. That's all year, bro. And you get 12 bucks a month for allowance. And that's all you.

you're getting, bro. And that right there, I could not take. So that's why I just continued, because I didn't want to sell, I didn't want to sell weed, especially in a foster car, because it's like, damn, like the state is just, you know what I mean? So I'm like, fuck it. I got to do it, but I want to go like little by little. And it just started growing because I started off with quarter pounds and a half pounds, and then I just went to like getting 10 pound bags. And, but it was all, you know, like a black garbage bag. How you imagine it? And it was in a closet. And it wasn't allowed, because it's Mexican brickweed, man.

Doesn't smell. And you can keep 10 pounds in your closet and not even fucking know you got it. That doesn't get you high. It just gives you allergies. It's like grass. Yeah, you're chasing a fucking high because you're like, man, smoke another one, man.

What did a pound of Mexican weed go for? What did you get it for? I got it for about five, six hundred bucks, but I will sell it. Well, if I had to sell the whole pound, which I never really did at that time, it would go for like 8, 850, depending. I'm surprised you never met any bigger Coke plugs that way.

Like, was your plug a Mexican? Yeah. Yeah, yeah, he, like the guy that's my fucking father figured to me, he is Mexican, doesn't speak any English, nothing like that. You know, so that's why I was able to be, that's why you wanted me as a driver. But it was, I didn't have that in my head to be like, oh, I want to, I want to grow and expand.

That wasn't going to be my life. It was just right now. You know, this is what's paying the bills, you can say. right now, this is temporary. It's like someone working at McDonald's. You're not going to end up in McDonald's your whole life. It's a stepping stone.

So I looked at it as a stepping stone. Was it a right one? Probably not. But it was a stepping stone for me at what I had with little resources that I had at that time. And it was the only way I can get money.

So once I was able to get that with him, like he was giving me the weed, which I didn't know at the time until I stopped getting the weed. I found out it was him the whole time giving me the weed. Your father figure. Yeah.

But he didn't know it was coming to me until after I became a driver for him. And then he told me like, oh, because there was this one time where I had a buddy of mine in high school where he said, oh, I got a friend from Tampa. He's coming in, but he's looking for about 20 pounds, whatever. Can you get it? And I was like, I could check. So I asked the kids who were giving it to me. And sure enough, I got the 20 pounds. And I left, I went over there to him.

I dropped it off. I said, I'll be back in an hour and let his friends check it out. And they didn't want it. They, I guess it was trash. But it was something missing. It was about, I want to say, maybe close to a quarter pound that was missing.

And I'm thinking, like, but I didn't know that once I gave it back. Because I trusted them. I'm like, oh, you know, we're cool. You know, I don't got to. So I gave it back to, I gave it back to the people I got her from. And they didn't make a deal out of it

until like a few weeks later is when I finally met the guy who I ended up become a driver for. And then it was like an inside joke he would make fun of me with that. He's like, oh man, you can't sell no, you can't sell no drugs because you brought it back and it was short. And it's not, how are you going to do that, man? This is that anybody else would a, would a hurt you or something.

So tell us who, for people that don't know your story, your father figure that you're referring to. Who is that? His name? Not his name, but how, how, was he significant to you? Oh, man, in many ways, man. And how did you meet? So you met him actually because it was his bud that you were selling. Yeah, eventually when I finally met him, I was at foster care, I was introduced to him basically because he was looking for a driver.

And then once I turned, I think I was turning 18, like right around that time. And at 18, you can leave the foster home. So, well, I was going to leave that foster home. I was going to leave that foster home, I was telling him, hey, man, I think, you know, they're going to kick me out or I got to find a place. And then he's like, whoa, you can stay with me. So then once I started staying with him and I watched how the way he was treating me, it was out of love. It wasn't like, I want something out of it because I wasn't doing nothing for him. Yeah, and he wasn't giving you drugs. No, no, no, no, no.

I didn't even know about the whole Coke and all that stuff, accounting the money. I didn't know nothing about nothing. All I know was like, here's this man who dressed nice, you know, to the nines and he's he i've never seen a mexican like that i've never seen a mexican who's just like very clean cut and just very who knows about culture you know and i'm sitting i'm blown away i'm like my whole life i hung around with these fucking lawnmowers lawnmowers you know they mean horse trainers horse trainers and shit you know jockeys and shit but and then here comes a long guy who doesn't get dirty but got money and i'm like how the fuck did he have a nice house in

Mexico, yeah. Oh, because he had a house in Mexico. Yeah. And in Ocala. Yeah, well, we're renting here. Okay. We're renting in Ocala, but... Hmm. And can I ask you this? Of course, I don't want too many details about him, but he was working with the Beltran Labor organization. Was he from Sinaloa himself? No. He wasn't from there. Okay. Yeah. Because a lot of those guys, you know, they... Again, when you talk about narcos, real narcos are like your father figure, well-dressed. It looked like country club guys. There you go. You know? I got a membership to the Apollo Club. Exactly. When you go to Halisco and you go to Mexico City, the real guys move and work don't are like... You look like it.

Don't look like it at all. They look like they own companies. And they do own companies. They own legit companies. And I want to say maybe in a way because, like, you know how you can brush off, you can rub off on people. And I want to say I gravitated towards that lifestyle.

Like you have like Mexicans who, or anybody, you have people who like to get dirty for money. and people who like to be clean to get money. And I mean, yes, I'm okay but getting dirty. However, if I don't have to, why? So I found another route, another avenue. And I just gravitated towards it without even knowing. Like subconsciously, I just went towards that.

I was like, that's what I want. You know, ever since I was a kid, I've always wanted a nice life without, you know, working. Like I sort of say, like not having a nine to five and paycheck to paycheck. You don't want to live grimy. I didn't want to live like that. So when after living in the house with them for a few months, seeing the way he treated me, how he would hide stuff, I don't want me involved and stuff.

You know, I look at it, I like, damn, man, that's crazy. Because, you know, typically from my experience growing up, it's always been people out to get them for themselves, you know, which is the real world. And I've always been standoffish, like, okay, like, basically, like, what's in it for me? Like, why are you coming to me for this? So when he came to me to be a driver for him,

I kind of thought that there was some more to it. Like, you know, like, we're eventually going to be doing something crazy, right? But it never went there. I forced it on him. I was like, no, I'm doing it. I'm doing it. Right. And he was paying you, like. And he was paying for my college.

Yeah, he's the one that sent me to school. He told me to go to school. I turned it down because I barely graduated high school. Barely. I hated school. And he was like, oh, you should go to college. and, you know, do this, don't do what I'm doing. Don't be like me.

And I was like, man, don't be like you. Look at you. Right. What? Like, now I'll know you're blowing smoke. So, like, now you're hiding something good. Yeah. So once I went to school, once I went to school.

And I never liked school. So you were like his personal driver. Like Frank Lucas was the driver for Bumpy Johnson. Yeah. Oh, yeah. There you go. I didn't even think about that. It's like a heroin kingpin.

He was just driving for this connection. Yeah. So you just figured he was a wealthy guy, probably into some dirt, of course. Yeah. Later on, you found out that he was actually bringing in a bunch of weed and you inadvertently got put on with a pack. Yeah. Yep. Yep. How long after you started working for him on the drug side, did you find out about that? I want to say about a month, maybe a month or two months after. Yeah. Because that was, if it was a one-time deal when I asked for that, you know, because before that, it was just like 10 pounds. And when someone, it was 10 pounds, but I would, I would

break it up. Yeah. You know, I wouldn't, I wouldn't sell it all one, one load. And the one time that I had had someone to buy 20 pounds, it didn't go as planned. I ended, they ended up taking a little bit out of it. And I looked fucking crazy going back to sending the bag. And it's like, oh, fuck, man, they're going to come kill me over a quarter pound. You know, so.

And that was back then when, when the Mexican weed was still selling. And usually big Coke connects, big Mexican co-connects, also had a bunch of weed. Yes. They went together, you know? And then when the meth came in, that became a whole separate thing. Like, if you sold meth, that was just usually, from what I've known and the Mexicans that I've dealt with, that was a whole separate. You didn't mix something as shitty as weed with something as dangerous as selling crystal meth. Yeah.

But weed and Coke kind of go together, right? Yeah, weed and Coke kind of go hand in the hand, just like how I started, like anybody else started. They say it's a gateway drug. but gateway drug to selling drugs, not using drugs in my experience. So, like, yeah, I started off as selling weed, you know, I got the gist, I got the idea of how this world kind of works.

And then as soon as the drugs get stronger, everything else comes more serious and it gets more serious as you go up. So the Coke became, is a whole other level than weed. Weed is like, you know, you get a whole bunch of weed. It takes up a lot of space. You get a little bit of money. Coke takes up a little bit of space,

cost way more money and it kind of makes more sense to just stay with the Coke because I try to get weed out of him that don't get me wrong I had friends that were like hey man can you get me I had friends on the side

that I wasn't serving Coke but they knew I was but they couldn't take the key or two keys I couldn't break a key down I wasn't that what the fuck they go he's gonna look at me like I'm stupid like what get the fuck out of here

because he never touched his keys he would just get him and then they were gone yeah it's off never broke up they were sold before they even came. Yeah. Yeah. So when I'll run into my buddies, you know, in the stores, whatever, and they'll say, hey, man, I need, you know, I need 100 pounds. And 100 pounds is a nice

size deal. But if it's not, if it's not a ton or better crossing that border, they're not even going to entertain it. Right. It's not even worth it. So, and I didn't know, he wasn't entertaining it. And I didn't know anybody else. And I was not going to break or fix something that's not broken. So it's like, I'm not even going to stretch myself too. thin into that. Well, it's ironic because you actually never ended up selling Coke. You could have sold a ton of Coke. Yeah. You could have made your own customers. You know, you had the plug. Yeah. You worked for the plug. Yeah. You were lived with the plug. Yeah. But you just decided to, it just worked out that you just ran. You basically became the general manager of like his United States

operation. Yeah, that's one way to look at it. That's how I see it. Yeah, basically. It's just pure logistics down to hiring drivers, collecting money, figuring out what vehicles had traps in them. All the things you need to know in order to move. The shit that's in the background, that's what you need to know in order to move it. So I looked at it like, okay, if you're selling the drugs, you have all the responsibility because you have your name on it. You got to go to Joe Schmo to get the product.

And if something happens, it's nobody else's fault but yours. they're going to answer, they're going to want you to answer to that. You got to pay that debt. So as someone in my position, it was almost in a way like I was the best of both worlds. I was in the game,

but I didn't have the liability of something was to go wrong, you know, because, I mean, what could go wrong? The guy doesn't want to go drive. Like, okay, but the stuff's still here or the stuff's still there, you know, there's nothing missing.

And you don't have your money invested either. I don't have nothing invested. I just have my time. Yeah. It's my time. Yeah. Today's episode is sponsored by NordVPN. I am in the habit now since I've been sponsored by Nord of using their VPN on all my devices,

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that have to do with the business, right? Yep. So he teaches you how to count money and how does that evolve? So going to when I finally found out that he was selling dope and I had to count money and everything, how evolved from there was just basically, you know, once I've seen where the money was going,

why and then what was coming, what was it for? And I was like, okay, like, what the fuck's going on here? I was like, okay, I want to go over there. Because, I mean, I could go to school, but I'm not getting paid. I'm not, I'm not seeing these loads of cash. You know, I got to sit here, watch this cash move back and forth and then go to school. Like, what the fuck? Like, it didn't click to me.

It's like, man, what am I doing with myself? Like, what am I doing with my life? How much cash would you, would you be looking at? at. Ah, man, anywhere from, like, the least amount of cash, like, 100,000, 150, all the way up to close to a million. Yeah. Yeah, that was, because it was, I'll put it to you like this, it wasn't enough space to put

the money in back to send it into, to the border. So you have to send multiple, multiple cars, multiple drivers? We had to send, not multiple drivers, but we would have, we had to take it all out, because you couldn't send 20s because it takes up to space. So, and if you didn't get all the hundreds, if you didn't, like, we will, I would have to keep the hundreds in the 50s, not the 20s and the fives and the ones. And so in, in order to satisfy the space in there, you would have to just kind of just give them all the hundreds and the 50s, barely any 20s. Right. Yeah, you had to exchange it or tell your guys, hey, I'm not accepting 20s, give me more 100.

Because everyone's trying to up offload. I remember I had a bag full of fives and tens and 20s. That's it. Right. So everybody's trying to offload the small bills. Everybody is, the stripper money. How would you guys, would you actually have to go to a bank or to a check cashing place and change shit over? No, I would just simply make a request like, hey, man, can you not send fives?

Right. Can you not send tens? And you're working for the plug, so his customers are going to satisfy that. Yeah, they know. They know, because I would never go by myself. It's always be with him. And it looks better because, you know, you got a guy. guy who will speak English, you know, who's giving you, you know, you got to plug at your

fucking back door, you know, telling me to tell you something. And it's like, oh, that's right. And so you're translating. So your boss, the plug doesn't speak any English. Any English. And so he's bringing you around to these cash collections to translate. Yeah, to translate to collect. I learned how to collect money. I learned how much things we're going for. I learned the inside of the business all by translating. Wow. All by translating. I didn't ask for it.

And I see why he wanted me to stay away because I pick up shit and I just grow. I go and I grow. And I guess he could see that in me where it was like don't give him too much information because he's going to be very, how I say, dangerous with it. You can't give the wrong people the right information because what they'll do with it can probably excite you. That's what I did. I just excited him.

I kept growing more and learning that you don't need all this mess. Kind of just, it was to the point to where he would ask me sometimes, like, what do you think we should do? You think we should go today to collect? And I was like, I don't know, man, how long has it been? You know, like, we'll sit there and have these talks where, you know, he asked for advice and say, hey, you know, what should we do? I'll let you take the reins on this one.

And every now and again, he'd give me that responsibility to where, I guess he seemed that I was doing good and I was confident in what I was. was doing. So how did you guys keep yourself safe or insulated like because you know if one of he's given off 10 keys 20. Oh how to stay under the radar? Yeah. Like that also like how do you keep an eye on the people that are distributing for you? You know what I mean? Okay. So with with staying under the radar it's it is it is easy. So your whole the whole thing is you're trying to avoid eventually getting busted because it's going to happen. eventually getting killed because it's possible that's going to happen. So like if some people would, they sell drugs,

the first time they get a bag of money, they're buying jewelry, watches, cars, they're flashing. They don't last that long. Putting rims on their cars, you know, doing all this frivolous shit. It was a complete opposite. The more money you got, the poor you look. I mean, you're not going to look poor with the nice clothes, whatever, but it was 2006 and I had,

No, it was 2010 and it was, I had a 2000 Camry. Yeah. Factory. No system in it, no rims. Everything was factory, you know, like that. So that was a thing where it's just you, you, you learn to evade shit and not draw attention. That's why I never went out. And when I, I went to bars and everything with like, with women and shit, but it was never, or house parties, you know, but I would never go on to like, you would never see me in.

clubs every weekend. None of that. If you saw me in a bar, it was like once every few months. Did your boss expect to get caught eventually? No, I didn't expect to get caught. Bro, it was so fucking smooth. Listen, the operation was as smooth as it get.

It was so smooth, the feds told me to my face that they didn't even hear, they didn't even know about us until they popped this guy. Wow. And we were doing it, we were doing it,

I want to say big, but we were doing it at a level to where you can excite the feds with this shit. Yeah, because he was, sounds like the biggest distributor in that central Florida area. I want to say,

I want to say at one point, it was probably up there or probably more because, I mean, we had, you know, I've got a lot of shit on lock, a lot of shit. Like, a lot of people were getting dope from anywhere else, but from the guy we were getting here from,

eventually you can tell. How many people did he have? How many people was... Customers? Yeah. You would think that, okay, the more customers, the more money, right? but it's the complete opposite.

You only need one. Maybe two. Only if the one can't do it. But there's always, but there was a time where there was one doing everything. And he was doing everything. And the less people you have involved, the more time you have to do it.

So you're not going to sit there and, like, if you haven't, oh, I got a little bit of drugs, but I'm going to have like five people working for me. Like, you know, if you've been to a crack house and there's someone at the door, someone staying there, someone cleaning all the time, someone cutting, you know,

just you have too much shit going on. Too many people know. You don't, and then someone's going to get offended and they're going to fucking hate. So it got to a point where he only had one customer. Yeah, one customer dog. And he looks like the man

because he has all the keys. So the feds look at him, you know, rather than the real guy, the Mexican. Yeah, it was that. That's how it worked. So it got, to a point where you're responsible for overseeing the keys that are coming in. Yeah, I had to.

Okay. I had to. So it was getting to the point to where we were almost sharing the same role. Like, but the only thing different was like my name wasn't on it. Like my name wasn't on that merchandise. But it was getting to a point to where we were sharing the same role because whenever something happened, I knew. Before it was, was something happened, I didn't know. I didn't need to know.

the information was being held. But towards, you know, around that time when I was growing, it was, okay, I got a, I got a thing coming in. This is what we're going to do. Call what's his name. Ask him how many he needs. It'll be here tomorrow.

And it's like, I'm sitting here like, what the fuck? Like, I'm basically doing your job, but in English. Yeah. You know what I mean? Like, that's it. Like, it just organically went into that.

I didn't, it wasn't like, okay, today you're going to get a promotion. It was none of that shit. It was just. You're literally. the VP. You're like the vice president. Yeah, man, the CEO, the CFO. I'm fucking just like just

trying to trying to manage everything, but in English. So you, you had nothing to do with the keys actually getting smuggled in. That's the cartels job. Yeah, that's their job. As soon as it lands. That's our job. We take it from there. Okay. So

tell us about how that works. What was the main route coming in? So the main route, I can't remember Oh, it was in a border of Texas. I want to say somewhere around like... McAllen? There you go. Someone like, I think it's Macallan.

And where as soon as it lands, all you have to... As soon as it lands, it's all on you now. There is no... Because they're going to communicate. All right. Would you actually get that call yourself? Send your drive?

No, he would. He would get those calls, but then he would tell me to go tell this guy to go do all this. So I would say, okay, he would tell me, oh, it touched down. So I got to go send a driver to go pick it up. And we would know around the same day

when it was touching down. So it was like, okay, it's supposed to come tomorrow, get this guy ready, tell him, don't do nothing tomorrow. He's got to go down there to pick it up. And then that would be the route that he would go. And it would be that, I want to say, I-35? Yeah. Does that go through there to San Antonio,

go to Houston? I think I-35 goes through Houston. It goes. And then it comes down here. Well, like, this is the 35 in Austin. And then that goes all the way down to San Antonio and then up, you know, back east, southeast of Houston. Yeah, so that was that was a route and then hit the I-10. And that was it.

The only thing you had to worry about in Texas was the checkpoints and the weather. Because sometimes it gets so windy down there in South Texas that your car will go like this. And I had a few times where the driver was flipping out on me. He was freaking. With the car loaded? Yeah. And you can hear the wind and he's calling you. with the windows up, you would hear the whistles.

Wow. And I'm sitting there like, I don't know what the fuck can tell you, bro. Just keep going. But that's the best time to move, right, is when the weather's awful. Yeah. The best time to try to get through the checkpoints. So the best time to get to a checkpoint is when the shift changes. Yeah, talk about that.

So when the shift changes, the reason why you want to do that is because when the shift, when the shift changes, the guy or the woman, the person hasn't been pissed off yet. You know what I mean? So you got, you got them. They're fresh, man. you got them fresh. So once you find that out, the shift change, then you would try to make your, you make your way, like, okay, you got to go, start heading up here, and you start going up there. And it would get a, he would get away, man, for months, months.

Right. Every other week, every two weeks, he was going down and up, down and up. Okay, so explain that. Why, why as their shift goes on, do they get pissed off? And then why is that bad for your driver if he's trying to get through with a load? The reason why they probably get pissed off is from people like, like us trying to get away from them. Or when they get pulled over, they get a disgruntled fucking driver. And then they get pissed off and they find things. And then it's just...

People are lying. It's lying. And then they got to go do extra work because, you know, it's hard. It's hot. They got to break it down in a garage with no AC and shit like that. So, you know, they want to have a smooth... Right. So if you catch a driver, if you catch a checkpoint guard when they're pissed off,

they're more likely to say... To be dicks. To push it to send your car to secondary. Yeah, not even that. But let's say, like, you're going to a person that's pissed off, he might just be a dick and just say, hey, you know, ask you a thousand questions that you don't need to. Instead of just saying, you know, driver's license, insurance, okay, you're good. Right.

Now you got a guy saying, well, how long have you been down here? What you're down here for? You know, asking all these questions, like, oh, bro, here we go. And then you see a, you know, you're fucked when you see another car coming. So. Okay. So, and you had eyes on the border guards like that? I didn't have eyes on the border.

It would, I would just, I would get it from, uh, the driver from going down there. He would tell me, he would, he would, he would, he would, I would ask him. I was like, hey, you know, let me know, you know, if you see the same guy twice, you know, I don't, because I would, I wouldn't want you to go down the same, uh, same interstate, you know, back to back. You were just down there two weeks ago. So just go like, because there was two, two, two, I guess, uh, two back roads. It was a main road and then a road that had the two checkpoints. And that's how, I guess, from bouncing back and forth, that guy on the two checkpoints was finding like, oh, motherfucker, I remember you from two weeks. Then me pull you over for some questioning.

Okay. So you send your driver down there. Who packs the car? Are you down there supervising? Yeah. So when it comes to loading up the truck, I don't have anything to do with that as far as putting my hands on it or being down there. I don't need to be present because the people that's down there are already knowing. what's going on.

They're waiting for the driver to get there. They know the color of the car, what he looks like, and where's he staying? Because they're the ones that pay for the room. I see. They get the room for him. You're in this room. They meet them. They all meet.

They hand the keys over. They take it. It could be going across the border and back. Or it could go down the street. We don't know that. So when they go load it up and it may take a day or two to load up depending on what's going on. Because when I send him down there, he's going down there for three days. I'll say, look, we're going to make a few days down this.

You know, take your time. I always told him. take your time. There's no rush. You know, we don't need you to get fucked up, whatever. Because he had, he had, like, health issues, too. That was some, that was times where he, back of then, it was an epidemic with the oxies. So with the oxies, that was the only thing that would help him

because he had bad arthritis in his hands. His hands will stay like this without even trying. So you can't drive like that. So you got to get any of your hands like this and you can go like this. He says the only thing that'll work, because I try to giving him Coke, I try to give him everything. He says, Roxy's,

the only things that made them feel no pain. Wow. And it was like, okay. So the packing of the cars, that's all on cartels responsibility. Yeah, that's all on them, man. Yeah, because they're the experts. They're the ones who are doing this all the time. Yeah.

So, and what kind of cars and trucks would you send down there? It would have to be everything's factory. It would have to be, it was no specific kind of car. It was just, are you okay with us installing traps in your car? So we're not getting a rental car. We're not giving you a car we have. They don't have a car that you can use. It's you're going to turn your personal car into a trap car.

Wow. Yeah. Are you okay with that? And if you're doing a job already and you know how much money you're going to get, nine times out of ten, you're going to say, yeah, if you're getting $1,000 for each one you're bringing back and you're bringing back $20K, you can do whatever the fuck you want to my truck. Right.

Okay. So I got, say I got a 2016 Toyota Corolla. How many, how many keys can you fit in there? shit. I mean, this could be, it can go as far as you want to because he had, he had a, he had a, he had a Tacoma. And a Tacoma is very, it's almost like a car, but it has a bed. So at first it was the AC, the AC could fit 10. So it was 10. And then in the back seats, you build another one for 20 more. So then it was going to 30. And then, but that was over time. And then they were like, oh, we know we should do this. Because, I mean, they even thought about putting, installing those gas tanks in the back. You. You know, with the handles? They thought about doing that. Oh, what can we do? What can we do with this and this?

I mean, it could have went as far as you wanted to. Do you guys ever send like trailers? No, no, no, trailers. Like horse trailers or anything like that? Oh, yeah, horse trailers. But it would be, like, it was, oh, a couple times. It was never, it wasn't consistent. It was just, oh, like an emergency I needed to send a horse trailer.

So you can get a lot in there. Yeah, because, I mean, you're in Ocala and horses, everybody in Florida, and those horses come out of Ocala. So if you have the Ocala sticker on there and the phone number of the business, then you can use them for a few times to maneuver. Okay, so, and you'd always try to build a backstory for your drivers, right?

So who should tell us who your main driver was? This is fascinating. They actually made a movie about this. Unknowingly based off of this situation. Have you seen the mule with Clint Eastwood? I heard about it. He's like he's an 85-year-old man who's driving fucking major work for the cartels. Oh, I think I've seen some, I think I'd seen a trailer on that.

So I don't know if that was about him, but I mean... This is the real life version of it, though. Yeah, it probably is because he was up there in that age. He was like he was every bit of 70-something years old. Wow. No, he was old, bro. From Ocala? Yeah, bro.

How did you meet him? Through the guy we had to the staff. house and he's the one I he's the one to introduce us to the customers that we to the customer and they had that driver they were working with them before okay so they were they were doing their thing and then now they needed a plug so they transfer all their guys over to us so that's how I meant the driver the customer and so he had been doing this yeah yeah yeah they was like a professional yeah yeah this is nothing new to him wow yeah yeah he just didn't have any track I see. Yeah. So he got that truck as his payment towards the end when everything was done when he was working for the other guys. So they bought him a brand new, they gave him a bag of cash and said, go buy whatever truck you want. So he bought that and that's a truck we ended up using to continue doing what he was already doing. So what would what would be like the story? What is he doing? He's an old man. He wasn't doing nothing when what would he tell the, you know, if he got pulled over, what is his, what is his thing? Why am I driving from South Texas? Looking for L

land for hunting. Oh, I'm looking at... That's why they always bring his dog with him. He had a Labador. He'd always bring a lab with him. He's a hunter. He's a hunters. And he has the hunting boxes in the back

with the wild dogs and shit. He has a cage in the bed. He has Confederate flags and stickers. And he's full blown, bro. He's all in that. And there's nothing to cover. That's who he really is. Right.

He's full, like... He's out in the sticks. Good old boy. He's out in the sticks. Yeah, redneck. You go to his house, you don't have a phone signal. He just buries. all that cash he makes.

Oh, man. He probably keeps it like that. He probably keeps it like that. So when he got, when he got, when he got, when he got, when he got, when he got those, those traps in there, that was the last time I've ever spoken to him. Okay.

So you don't know if he ever. I don't know if he's alive. I don't know. To me, to my experience, to my knowledge, he's never done a day in jail. Wow. That's the best place to be in the drug game, dude. I'm never, I've,

because once he called me and that happened, I ended up breaking my phone, and that was the last time. The only way they tied me with him was because they found his phone number. I had his name, social and birthday in my wallet. Okay. That's how they fast I had to put it together. Did you have anybody else driving? No, just him.

Wow. That's amazing. So he was the driver for your whole organization. Yeah, he was taking care of all the loads. Did he drive cash back too? Sometimes he would take cash back on some occasions. because a lot of times they have their guys that would pick up the cash.

But it was for, it was like a short little amount of time where, well, since he's already coming down here, won't you just send him back with the cash? So we ain't got to send no guy up there. So that's what he was doing. And then we would pay him every now and again. Sometimes we wouldn't tell him that there was cash in there because, man, it was.

You don't want to pay him. There's a lot of money, bro. Okay, so what's the fee? The fee. For bringing work, it's about a thousand a kilo. Yeah, it's about a, it's about a. thousand for everyone, it's 900 to a thousand for everyone you bring back. And then for the money you're transporting, I want to say it's like five, five percent, five percent of whatever you're

bringing the cash to, to deliver. And that could be as much as $500,000? It could be, it could be anywhere from, yeah, 250 and up. Because it's not going to, you're not going to send no money down there unless it's a lot of money. You got to send real money down there. So yeah. So yeah, if you send them now with a million bucks, yeah, you don't want to pay. paying 50 grand, you maybe just pack it without letting them know. Yeah. That's wild. And your fee?

So tell us, so you're, you were also getting $1,000 a kilo for overseeing this? Yeah. So what I was doing eventually, I wasn't, but at the beginning, I wasn't getting paid for that because I wasn't really, I guess, hands on in a lot of things. But eventually I was getting about $1,000, sometimes $2,000, depending on how everything worked. but a thousand for sure off each one that was coming. But I wouldn't get paid every trip. I would just get paid.

I'd want to get paid at the end of our run. When the load sold off. When everything's done, like when we're going back to Mexico. Okay. Yeah, when we're done working in the United States. So you guys would bring it, the keys would come back to Ocala. Yeah. And you had different stash houses.

How did that work? Did you guys wait for the whole load that you guys were picking up from the cartel? would you wait until it was all back in Ocala before you started giving it out to your buyers or would you just hit them off as it came in? So are you saying? Yeah, would you wait? Like, what was an average?

How much Coke were you guys getting at a time? So from Mexico. So at this point, when I had a pub was 20 a week. So when you get the 20, you'd sell, you know, whatever they need. Oh, I need five today. So, but it'll be only one person. And then you go see them in two days, get the money and swap another, give another five. And you do that every time until the 20 was gone.

And then. And now it's cash back. Yeah. But that would, but to not stop the flow, like say when you're running low, like say, for example, you got like five left. And you've already made your money to pay the 20. So you would send that money back to get the 20, some more 20 coming in. Because if you leave them hanging, leave your customer hanging, it's going to, you're going to, It's like a chain reaction.

It fucks up everything. It'll slow everybody down. And then everybody's going to be looking somewhere else. And that's how they get hot. It's the supply chain. It's exactly like any other. No one holds loyalty to you. They hold loyalty to that price and that quality that you give them.

And the convenience that, oh, you know, I can always count on you. You can always be there. And there's no headaches. There's no bullshit. You know, none of that. And you guys had the best price and quality in the area. Absolutely. The best price and best quality, hands down.

And I've heard that from the customer. He was doing it forever. How much, what were you guys, so you don't know what you were actually paying for the keys, but how much were you selling them to your guy for? 27-5, oh, 27-5, sometimes 29-5. Because throughout the seven, eight months, dealing with this one person,

the price jumped 2,000 already. So it went from 20-27-5 to 28 to 29-5, and then finally ended there. but there was just one time where they owed money for they wanted to break up a key and guess make crack with it, whatever, and

they fucked it up, they fucked the whole key up and that money right there was in the air. So you guys were bringing back 20 kilos a week. You didn't bring it back in bulk. You didn't bring back like 200 at a time or something like that? No, it was...

That wasn't your game. No, in the beginning, it was 50. It was 50, 50 a week, 50 every other week. But towards, towards like as years gone by, it was just a lot of things has changed where it's just they're not dealing with you no more or not just you anymore. Now, because they've grown too. Your distributors. Yeah, your suppliers.

Yeah, they've grown too. So before it was just you, you know, you were getting, you know, the majority of it. Now it's like you're barely, you got to, it's like pulling teeth. You're like, man, come on. You know, sometimes it'd be 10, you know, or 20. But it was just whatever you can get at that time. Oh, so the Coke slowed down. It did slow down.

Wow. It slowed down. So the problem wasn't because now the problem is getting rid of it because there's so much supply. But back in 2008, 2009, 2010, you couldn't get enough of it. Yeah, because the price was going up, I guess, because there wasn't enough. The buss were happening by the tons. And so it would, you know, people had to get satisfied elsewhere. Oh, can you do me a favor?

I'm dry over here. Can you? So they all work together to give each other favors. And so just you got to, I guess you're on the bottom of a totem pole in their eyes. And they just not, they're not going to give you like that seniority, even though you've been having a 10-year relationship with them

and nothing, there's ever been a headache or a hiccup. So your boss wasn't a very big fish compared to other distributors? I don't know. I really, I really don't know about, I mean, when you tell somebody you're getting 50, at a time. That's a pretty big fish. It's enough. Yeah, but look, if there are.

But there's, there are people with 200, 100, but they're sitting on it and they're selling five at a time. Right. Just because you get 200 and doesn't mean you can sell 200 at one time. You know, you're going to always sell your fives or tens. You know, you don't want to give, you know, 20 to one guy, but like, even though you can trust them, you know, where his kid goes to school and everything. I'm not going to give you 20. No, I got to, I got to, to give you kind of protect myself. Same thing, what they're doing to us and we're doing to you and you're doing it to them.

Yeah. That makes sense. So it's like only sell what's already sold. You don't want to put all your eggs on my basket. Only be sitting on what is already sold. Yeah. Right? So it's like 20.

I know that's gone in four days. Here's just five at a time. Yeah, it's smart. That makes sense. So how, and you're just a fucking kid. You're like 20, 21 years old, 22 years old. you're going to Mexico.

Did you ever buy property in Mexico? Or did you just go there to just party? Both. I ended up investing in some property, but did a lot of partying as well. In I guess you could say in my younger years, I wasn't thinking about the future as far as now. Because for one simple reason,

it seemed like nothing was going to stop the gravy train. Nothing was going to stop it. I mean, the shit was, it was almost perfect. It was almost perfect. Because there's nothing in this world perfect. But it was almost perfect. Nothing was happening.

You're getting money. You have to worry about someone robbing you. You ain't got to worry about ripping you. You have nothing to worry about. The driver isn't going to take off on you. Everybody was on the same. Everybody was good. So I didn't have to worry about it's ever going to stop.

I could choose when to stop because I wanted to. But it didn't work out that way. But when I was doing a lot of people, partying, a lot of parting. I was around people that I started seeing as I was getting older in my 20s like, oh, you know, they're all settling down. But they're not doing what I'm doing. And I did want to eventually settle down. I've put it in my head that, you know, by 30 years old, I want to just not do anything anymore, have kids and a wife and just just gone be off the way. Did you want to have enough money to where you could just move to Mexico and probably just live off the interest?

Yeah, I was going to move to Spain. I was going to live. I was going to live. live in Spain for the rest of my life. That's the Narcos dream. That's where all the Mexican Nauter can send their kids. I didn't know that. They all go to Spain. Yeah. I didn't know that.

That's crazy. Because I had my city picked down and everything, and I was going to stay there for the rest of my life and have a European wife, Spanish wife, or French or whatever, and just live that lifestyle and just forget about everything in my past. Right, right. Did your brothers who were never criminal-minded like you, did they know the accountability, extent to that you were doing it? No, so my brothers, not even my friends knew the extent I was doing.

They, my brothers knew what I was doing. They didn't know the extent. My friends knew, knew or didn't know, I guess you could say, but they definitely didn't know the extent. They just, I mean, I never had a job, but I always had money. I had the most money out of anybody we hung out with. And they never, they don't, I never had a job. I have a nice car, whatever, nice clothes.

never wore the same clothes twice, never wore the same shoes twice, and just, there was something going on. I'm doing something crazy. But there was no one, no one ever, no one ever questioned me

because I was going to lie. They knew I was going to lie. I just, it wasn't, you could tell when, he's like, why even bother? Why even ask? You know, just, everything's going good.

Why even fuck it up? You know, because I was buying everybody's shit. You know, I was throwing, like little house parties, whatever, it would be like, or let's say, for example, I have a barbecue,

like, us, you know, I'm buying everything. I'm buying all the supplies we need and not even asking for in the back and just, I just want everybody to have a good time. So no one's going to fuck that up. Did you ever have people approach you, like trying to, like, trying to get you to give them product? Yeah. I had a few friends that tried to.

And one in particular, he's just, he was just like me, you know, very persistent, very consistent, very consistent, you know, very, he's like just blowing me up, man, come on, man, come on, man. it was so bad that he was going to give me the title to his car. And he's like, man, it's worth X amount of money. I just need you to give me a half a key. And then I'll show you that I can do it. Because he was moving, he's dead now, bless his heart. He was moving crazy weed.

And he was doing it good. There's a white boy, just rich kid, you can say, parents, you know, living a nice neighborhood and shit. But he just wanted to go on the streets. and, you know, he was doing very well. I mean, doing 50, 100 pound bails. That was the first time I've seen bails was through him. Like, even one time he, when I finally got to convincing my partner that, man, let's give this guy a try.

I mean, he's throwing titles. He's throwing collateral. You know what I mean? He's not asking for a front. He's like, man, just I want to show you they can trust me. So I eventually talked them into it and started him off with a half a key. and then just like that, it was like, okay, you're not selling weed anymore.

Now you're going to start selling Coke. And he worked out. Yeah, they worked out. How much did he end up picking up? Yeah. He was, I think we were like 19, I was like 1920. He was like 1920. He was just doing a key, doing a key,

but he was doing like quarter keys and half, half keys. But he was just, he was, he did it for about a, I'll say like a couple months. And then, he was, I want to say he was playing both sides because there was one time where he owed me money and I found out why he wasn't paying me when I needed it. But he was paying me, but it wasn't like on time.

So one time I found out why he didn't have the money when I know like, man, bro, if you have no more product, like what are you doing? So what he was doing was taking the money he got off the Coke, buying bales of weed, still in a weed game, selling the weed waiting for the money to come back to go pay me and I didn't like it. So one time I said, you know what?

just got to, I got to take something. So he offered weed, and I took weed as a, as a payment one time. He gave me 20 pounds, 20, 30 pounds. And it was, we were in a garage, just fucking three white kids. And I pull up and he's, there's a scale, a scale, I won't say like a fish scale, some shit. Like, it's a scale like you weigh big shit on. Yeah, yeah. And I, there's fucking three white kids.

What the fuck are y'all doing, man? Like, I was even blown away. I was like, man, what the fuck? What's going on here? And then they throw a bell on there and it's weighing pounds. I'm sitting there like, I'm just seeing like a little scale. Like, you know, for Coke, you can weigh, you know, a little bit of a little scale. But they were, once they broke it all up, everything, I'm sitting there like, man, this is the last time.

Because one, I'm not getting into the shit. Y'all got going on because y'all are going to get me tied up with, we're not going to make it a habit. You're not going to be paying me with weed because now I've got to sell the weed. You know, I'm not going to be sitting. I don't, yeah. Yeah, it's so messy after just dealing with clean, keeping. kilos of coke to go back to fucking with weed. So you could go to your boss, who's now

kind of like your partner, and you could try somebody out. Yeah, yeah. I could bring it to because it's, and I guess I guess you could say that was like my kind of customer deal, but because I was in charge of making sure the shit was straight with him.

Because that was my, there was like, the agreement is like, okay, if something happens, you're responsible for it. You know, if he doesn't pay, you got to pay. If, you know, if he runs off, you got to go find him. You got to, you know, do all this shit. So that was like the way, that was my way of saying. So you were making more, you were making extra money.

So you did have your own customers. Kind of. Yeah. I wouldn't really call it my own customer because, I mean, it was my stuff, you know, but it was like I was, I didn't, I, I shared the profit with, with my partner, you know, because the price he gave me, I didn't, I didn't, I didn't mark it up on, on my friend. I didn't mark it up on him because it was. the going rate. It was the going rate.

Right. So by that, that was a way of, I guess, him telling me that we'll just split the profit, you know, within so many words, you know, because you could tell someone, give it to you, you know what's just going for? And then if somebody gives it to you under that price, you get, okay, now I can mark it up to that and then make that cut and then give him the rest. So that was my way of saying, we'll just share it, split the profit. Yeah. Yeah. Was your boss, did he ever come to you and say like, hey, you can, you can be my partner? Like you're literally running his business. No, man.

He didn't never do that, man. That would have been, at that time, I probably would have said, yeah, man. I probably would have been like, yeah, man, I'd be good. Because, you know, things were smooth, but at that, but it was good that he did it, man. He probably knew better, man. And was he sending his own money back to Mexico? Yeah. He must have been, right?

Did he have a family? Yeah. No. Like sisters and brothers? No kids. No kids. No. Wow.

No. Probably back there. He might have had it in Mexico. Who knows, right? I don't even know if I have kids. And you would go party with him in Mexico? Sometimes, yeah. Wow. Would he introduce you to bosses back there? Without like a formal introduction? No. But were we around people that you could tell that we're? Yeah. Because you're talking about being at nightclubs in Acapulco with fucking guys with Uzi's and shit walking around. Yeah. So that was the thing because like that's like I was saying. I was like, okay,

you know you're around somebody because I remember very vividly that there was one one night I was in the nightclub that I frequent religiously in Alcapulco and there was this guy with you know four or five suburbans you know and you all right so four and then you like you can tell like okay man this ain't just anybody yeah so like okay and then he had those guys come out with the strap with the with the with the machine guns and shit coming out wide open getting the vi we're getting a red carpet from the owner while you have these guns but they have uh they put them in uh these i guess man purses right they'll put them in his man purses and but when they get into the club they would have they would open it up and then they have it like in the club like

it was part of your fucking outfit so they'd be walking around openly with a fucking yeah they just they just staying there because there'd be like four or five six of them spread out throughout the club. And they're just sitting there like this the whole time for hours, bro. And what really tripped me out was when I went to the bathroom one time while I was there with them, I went to the bathroom. And I think I was going to throw up or some shit. Yeah, for real, I was going to throw up probably.

And I go to the bathroom. I go to throw up and I come out of the stall and guess who I see? two guys with that but they weren't looking at me one guy was playing stupid washing his hands for about 17 minutes right because I'm sitting there and I was testing them I was like you know what

I said I don't because I thought okay it must be a coincidence there here too right they got to go to the bathroom right negative that's why I said they got a one guy because I was in there when I got to the bathroom stall I went to the pisser to the urinal and I fake piss for about 10 minutes

and they were still in there. So they're just clocking you, just making sure that you're not going to. They were, they were, they were protecting me. So your boss had security already arranged when you guys would go down? Not mine. It was the guy, it was the people that we were with. Oh, okay.

So that they had, they, they had their deal going around, whatever they were doing. But because we were all together, I guess it was the responsibility of you protect everybody who's at the table with us. So when, when I went, when I came out of the bathroom stall, I was like, man, it must be a coincidence that they're here. So let me see if they're for me or not. And that's how I found out by fake pissing. And then once I left, I said, let me do something else.

I said, because I still don't believe it. I didn't want to believe it. So you know what I did? I went outside the club. I walked out and there's a hot dog cart. A hot dog stand out there. I went to go get a hot dog and guess who followed me, those two guys. So I started tripping out.

I was like, all right. So I went in and I went to a partner. I said, why are those guys following me? And they told me, it's like, oh, they're protecting you. They're making sure you're safe. So you had a whole security brigade with you, basically. Yeah, that was the wildest. That's fucking crazy.

That was the wildest shit. I don't think Mexico's like that. They can't operate that openly. I mean, look, I haven't been to Acapulco, but, you know, in places like TJ, Mexico City. They used to do that. They can't do that anymore. Yeah, Mexico City is nice.

I don't, I didn't do too much. Even in Alisco, you don't see that. Yeah. It's just after, it was so violent in that era that they can't, Mexico can't allow it. Like, because you know in Mexico it's all about appearances, right? Everybody's lying. It's just there's too many gringoes there. There's too many foreigners.

It's too international. They can't allow. The tourism is going to get scared and it's going to, it's now the state has to get involved to satisfy the government. Right. Because the money, they depend on that money for the, for their, infrastructure and whatever the hell they got going on. So yeah, it is true when you say that, that they, even in Acapulco was like that because, but Acapulco was so wide open.

Like, because there would be, the tourists stopped coming there. The only people that would come would be people on, you know, those cruises. Right. Those are the only tourists that were coming. Or people from Mexico City, like other Mexicans were coming to vacation. Right. But no, at the height, it was like the most violent, one of the most violent plazas. Yeah, it was the bloodiest.

Like, I remember one time I seen a head come rolling in in the club. Wait, what? Yeah. In the club? Yeah. So somebody. On a whole other night, I was in the club that I frequent. Yeah, so there was, that was one moment.

Well, I thought, I heard screaming, because I'm sitting there, we're bullshitting, whatever, whatever. I heard, I heard screaming towards the entrance behind us. And it kept getting closer and closer. closer. So I'm like, what the fuck? So I look back and I see people just running different ways. And then I go to look over there. It's over there out of the bar and there's a fucking head in the middle of the floor. And everybody's in the other fucking side of the club just dance and not even don't even know it. Because unless you go over there, you won't know. Wow. Like if I would have never looked back just because of like my instinct, like, what the fuck's going on? Because I heard

bunch of girls screaming. I thought it was like drunk girls, you know, that's what it sound like. But I just so happened to look and I see people fucking scrambling. and then I go back there and there's a head. So somebody was sending a message? Yeah. And I would still go back to that club the next day. Yeah. Listen, you couldn't kill me to not go there.

Yeah, there was a point in time where on the radio stations in Alcapulco, they would announce that no one go outside after 9 o'clock at night if you had a red, black or white car because those were like, that's how they can tell like who's who? The opposition. Yeah. So me, being me, I had a black. I had a black car and I didn't give a fuck. I would go out with myself and I'll go to the club.

Oh, so the cartels will put those messages. On the radio. That's how much power they have. For the public to listen, don't go out. And the streets would be dead. Because like if you go out, you might get shot at. Your car might get shot. Yeah.

Yeah. And I don't know how I made it, bro. Like, I must have like, how you say, ancestors or like a gift, like protecting you, whatever. Yeah. Protecting me. I never had a scratch or anything. No incident to where I had,

I had guns pointing at me or what the fuck are you driving, nothing. And your boss, neither. It doesn't sound like, right? No, he wouldn't go out. He would tell me to go out. He goes, don't go out. But I'd have these friends that were just like me. Sometimes he wouldn't let me drive.

So I was like, man, I'm fucked that. I'm going out. And I call my buddy, and he pulled up in a BMW. And we're off. We're off to the races, man, for three days. I won't even fucking make it back home. I'm out there partying, doing. And you got unlimited fucking money, basically.

Oh, yeah. You don't even look at the, price tags anymore, man. You just, if you like it, take it. I had a monthly budget of $30,000 a month. That's what you could just spend. In Mexico, yeah. I was buying bullshit.

I'll party every single day except on a Monday. I think a Monday I gave myself a break. Because Sundays were badass. Oh, for real? Yeah, fuck yeah. Every day was a fucking Friday there. With money, fuck it. It could be your birthday if you want it.

Right. And it's funny, when you go back to Ocala, and you're bawling, you've got to fucking, you gotta. You gotta show less. I hate it. And that's where, that's where it would come up to where

I need to get the fuck out of here. And that's why I would, I would frequent Mexico a lot. You know, I would just keep going back for, even if it was for a weekend, I just had to go back. And I'll go there for the weekend

just to, because it was killing me to just, to, to not enjoy. Like, how do you, how do you go from that for six months, seven months straight of just being wide open?

And now you got to come over here. is like you got to condition yourself or unlearn the shit you. Right. The habits. Yeah, you got to unlearn that. And it was just, it was killing me to where it's like, I need my fix. Yeah. Can you, I kind of feel that way too about Mexico and podcasting. Can you run the business remotely?

Like, would you actually be down there talking to people in Ocala? Yeah, you, because, okay, so this was back in the next tell error. The beep beep. Yeah. So it was super easy. There was no, uh, uh, get on my phone. call, everything was radio. So you can radio for free. So I can get on a radio and do my, you know, hey, what's up, you know, hey, I got to translate. It would only be, it wouldn't be often.

It would just be whenever something technical or needed to be done. Like, I could remember maybe five different scenarios out of the years that I had to actually go to the side, go to a quiet room and say, hey, you know, what the fuck's going on, you know? It would always be with the driver or collecting money, stuff like that. You know, hey, uh, you. get on a phone and, you know, tell them what the fuck I'm saying, you know. And then I say, you know, hey, this guy is, you know, we're trying to figure out what's going on. And then they'd be like, oh, okay, I thought he was saying this.

And they wouldn't call me. I wouldn't get a call until like 30 minutes later of them, like, like, why don't you call me in the beginning? Like, you know, stop calling me when y'all was fucking about to bump heads because they're going back and forth and no one's understanding nothing. So tell us about the crew that you had under you in Ocala running that would basically doing the day-to-day dirty work. Like, you have people obviously living at the stash houses, guarding the stash houses,

but who else did you have? Did you have guys like you used to be? No, believe it or not, I didn't bring anybody, nobody that I knew, childhood friends, I didn't bring them in. Because then one thing was no one could know where I live. No one could know anything was going on. So if I bring a childhood friend in, you know, he's going to tell this person, that person, that person, you know, it's eventually going to happen. So it's easier to have someone from out of town to know where you live at.

Right. Because they don't know anybody in the city and they don't know anybody close by. So who's working for you? Besides the driver, it was the driver and the guy in the stash houses and the customers I had to deal with the translate. It wouldn't be a handful. Yeah, it was never a bunch of guys. It was just one guy serving it, one guy driving it, and one guy translating it. Okay, so you have a Mexican at the stash house, it sounds like.

And the customers that don't speak Spanish, that go over there to deal with them, and then you have to be the one translating. Yep. Okay. Did the customers know where the stash was, or would you drop it off? No, everything was at their house. house. Okay.

Or a spot we can meet up in like in the woods or something in a in like a in like a private area. Yeah. Because you don't want to meet up like a lot of people like to meet up where there's cameras. And I feel like this that's, it seems like that's the dumbest shit you can ever do. You know, you have walking cameras and regular cameras. So you want to go somewhere as private.

Plus it's more intimidating for the customer because now it's like, oh, we're in the middle of nowhere. So let's not try anything stupid. Did you have any enforcers or to anybody that you? you would send to collect money? There, I would say, yeah. I would say, yeah, I didn't have to use it. Mm-hmm.

But I did threaten once with that. You had somebody that you could. Yeah, I had to, I had to, yeah. It was the time when I got, when I was getting arrested. Right, right. Yeah, that's pretty wild. But you basically only work with a handful of distributors. And, you know, it's not in their interest to fuck up the plug.

No. So it was weird in a way. Like every run that we did, it wasn't the same customer all the time. The customer would change, but it'd always be one, max two. But it's limited to super, like, they have to be only one because, you know, the more you spread yourself out too thin. So, but it would, every, it was switched. The customer, that customer, you know, it would just switch. And like, even to the point to where I got arrested, it was even a guy I never even dealt with. that was, you know, doing all the work. Who was doing all this? So you had way more than one customer. Yeah, but not at the same time. Not at the same time. Okay, so you get what I'm saying? One person would get the entire load

of whatever was coming in. So like this. I see. So like this, like 2007, we do a run. It'd be John Smith. 2008, it'll be Johnny Walker or, you know, it's only one dude. Because sometimes the guy either, he's not doing it anymore or he has he can't take he can't take what he used to take.

Oh. You know what I mean? He's lost. Someone's got arrested by that time. Because we're gone for almost a year by the time we come back. So a lot of shit's changed. So the same customer that you had back the last time you were in the United States, sometimes he, you know, there's a guy that he knows that was getting it from him.

He got arrested or he doesn't do it anymore or, you know, something happens where you got to go find another guy. Why does it take a whole year? That's just how long it takes for the Coke to sell. Like how are you able to be gone six, eight months? No, no, I'm not gone. We're gone. When we do a run, like the seven months, eight months, every month packs up and goes.

But towards the end, within those seven months, eight months run, I would go back to Mexico back and forth. I see. So, but in the beginning, it was, you know, the run would be like seven, eight months. And, you know, everyone would go back at the same time when everything was all set and done with all, just whenever you have enough money to be like, okay, I'm good for like a while. Interesting. So even when you were getting calls from your people, you're like, nah, we're out.

Yeah, there we go. So there would be times where it's like, hey, man, when you're coming back? You know, like, I don't know. And your boss would allow that? He'd be like, yeah, we're out. Yeah. And was that? Was that?

And you never told him. We never told them we're done. Right. We would just disappear. That's how you guys stayed. That's really the way to do it, man. That's how you do. That's the way you do it.

You disappear. You hit it really hard and then you disappear. Boom. So you think that's how your boss was able to stay out of jail? I probably wasn't explaining it. I probably wasn't explaining it right. That makes sense. Yeah.

Okay. So you basically... It sucked. You basically... Right, because you're missing out on all this money. Yeah. But it's discipline, though. I feel like that's a dickhead move, but it's business.

It's not personal because if I tell you I'm about this is our last loan, you're going to get ideas. It's dangerous. You're going to get... Oh, there we go. So you're never going to know it's the last load. You'll know it when the phone line don't work. Oh, yo. That's gangster.

And we did that for like, and they never got mad when we came back. They got even happier because they were like, oh, my God, we hit the jackpot. You're back. Like, almost tears. How would your boss know when it was time? Just instinct? Like, we hit this hard enough. Yeah, because when you.

And you kind of want to identify, like, if you're getting too hot or if it's getting too hot, like, okay, you don't want to keep playing with fire. This can't, you can't do it forever. Of course not. You got to take breaks. Of course not. Like somebody, if you're given a guy 20 bricks a week. Yeah. 20,000 grams of cocaine every week.

That's going out to so many people below him. There's so many cops. It's just probability. It's actually going to happen. Yep. It's inevitable. So it would just be like, okay, we gave this guy. Like, in six months' time, how many keys would you give a customer?

300, 500? Yeah, somewhere around there. And so your boss would just say, it was instinct. I would say once you hit a mail ticket, once you get a million, like that's, when you make close to a million and profit, I mean. Out of one person. Yeah. Yeah.

Because, I mean, I can't, I've never really sat and counted how much money I'm. made because I made a lot. I mean, I did. I got fucking, I did a lot of fucking shit, but it's just, like you can only imagine how much the next person is making. If you're making good, they're got to be making better. So there's just, you know, they just, I just think is whenever you get to that number, everybody has that number in their head, getting, getting to it or close to it, then you can be like, okay, it's time to cash out. It's time to back it up, boys, and let's go. And your boss was the one that made that decision. Yep. Yep. Yep. Every time. Yep. Wow. Except for, well, go ahead.

That's fucking fascinating. Yeah, he would always make the decision. And he would let us know in advance, of course. It wouldn't be like we do to the customers. You're like, all right, man, I say about next month. Because it was like my first time when I went to Mexico, at the end of the first run is when I went to Mexico for the first time. We went together.

And he told me, he's like, okay, I think it was like June. He's like, I need you to get. how to get your birth certificate, your passport, all this stuff, because we're going to go to Mexico. And I'm like, okay, what are we doing? He's like, oh, no, we're done. We're done. So in August, we would leave. Hmm.

Whenever I got my passport, we'd leave like two weeks later. Was your boss? Did he have dual citizenship? No, it just came over illegal. So every time he came back to Ocala, he would have to get smuggled across the border? Yeah. That's why I was in Austin. Oh, explain that.

Okay, yeah. So that's hilarious. this millionaire would get walked over with other dirty legal immigrants. Yeah. That's fucking hilarious. Yeah. So like on this last run in 2010, I was in Moore, all in Mexico, and he goes, go ahead of me and but wait for me and Austin. And because it takes, there's no specific time.

Like, there's no guarantee like, oh, you'll be there next Tuesday. No. No, it's we plan on having you by next Tuesday. And shit can't happen. So and shit did happen I ended up staying in Austin for about six months Waiting for this guy Because shit was happening

Like it was hot at the border It was hot at the border They had to sit in the stash house Their stash house longer than expected No one came to pick them up for a week Like a bunch Like they get treated like shit So like no one fed

I remember one time he called me He said that we didn't get fed in two days And I'm like And then when they got fed they got McDonald's or some shit Like a little fucking brownback specials And I'm sitting in, and to hear that from him, I'm like, dude, man, I feel so bad, man. I mean, you know, you hate that. He probably hated that shit.

He could have just looked at the little stash house operator and be like, do you know how much money I have? Yeah. Do you know who I'm with? Yeah. He really, this guy stands, he sounds kind of Zen. He sounds like he has. He grounds me a lot, bro. He checks his ego.

He, he's definitely the, he's the one I talk to every day. To this day, I talk to him. And he, did he ever do time? He did time with me. Okay, but before, like, how did he grow into being such a professional? Like, how did he learn his trade? From the story, I believe from a story, he told me kind of like in a nutshell where he started off small, like most people, and working his way up and just learning that, okay, you know, watch out for this, watch out for that. So I remember one time, like, I guess.

Was he drug trafficking in Mexico? No, United States. Okay, he never operated in Mexico. No. Interesting. Yeah. Only here. Interesting.

How did he fall in? Did he have other plugs besides the Beltran Levas? Like, did he deal with other cartels? Not that I know of. Huh. Not that I know of. Yeah. But that was, I mean, that was just like a thing, I guess.

I guess it's like a culture thing where if, you know, everybody has a plug in Mexico, all you need to do is go to the United States and they'll send it to you. You know, if they trust you, you guys are. on the same page, you know. A lot of times they'd pay for your trip. They'd kind of say like, oh, like, say, for example, you don't want to go. I don't want to go. I don't think I'm done.

But what if we give you $80,000? Or what if you give you a car in a house? Oh, wow. What if we pay for your border passing? What if we pay, because it's like $10,000 to cross the border? Right. What if we just pay for it? What if we just make financially set you straight so you don't got to do nothing but just go?

And then you're like, oh, fuck. All right, one more time. Wow. Yeah. Yeah, because his plugs, when he would take, you know, when he would call it quits for six months, they were probably like, what the fuck, bro? We were moving. Yeah.

Was there ever a problem with him getting back in with his connects, like, after you guys would go back to? No. No, that was never a problem. It was more like, we know you don't want to go back to the United States right now, but you want to go later. But we want to send you back now. Like, then we got to talk. you into this thing going like now.

And it's just the next two months you're just negotiating back and forth like, you know, I don't want to go. Hey, look, we'll knock a point off the key. Yeah, you know, we'll do this for you. Hey, you know, we'll do these for you. And, you know, shit gets fucking sweeter. But when you get in the United States,

it ain't exactly what it's supposed to be. Of course. Yeah, it's always, they just slow roll you and all kind of shit that happens. But, but yeah, that's just running game, man. Wow. That is fucking interesting. And to this day, your boss is,

He's never done a huge stretch. No, he did 11 and a half. I ended up doing 10. And is he back in Mexico? Yeah. He can't come back. No. Not that he could.

He could just get smuggled back. I mean, anybody can come if you're paying for it. But now he's, that'd be great content. Yeah. I want to get smuggled across. That'd be great content. If you go interview him. Would he sit down with me?

Probably. Is he still in the game? No. He's the one I told me. to do this. He supports me doing this stuff. He's like, man, go do your thing. Wow. Yeah. So he really had a long-term plan to like, because, you know, he was sending a, ain't no money left in here, bro. He's sending that all. Everything. Every, every dime went over there. Wow. Wow. That's amazing. How long was he in the U.S. total before he caught his case?

Fubia. I would say I was with them for seven years. Yeah. But he was, well, he was in other parts of the country. before he met me for a few more years. So, but every time was being smuggled, man. How did he, how did he end up in Ocala? Like, why did that become the, okay. Family and then, uh, sell drugs. Like, he just found out that that was. He had, he had cousins in Ocala that's already doing it.

I gotcha. The same level. Huh. But then, you know, it was like, fuck, I'm, if you can do it, I can do it. Yeah. He did it better and smarter. Yeah. I would say, I would say smarter, man.

I would say smarter when it comes to just all the details you need. Like, don't look the part. Don't go out to the Mexican bars because the DEAs are sitting at the table somewhere in that bitch. Yeah, they'll sit there and plot on. They know who's coming in all the Mexicans with gold chains and rims and shit and Silveradoes and King Ranches. You can't pull up in a big truck. Come home, dog. And you don't speak English.

Yeah. How did you get your license? How did you get your truck? Right. So that was a thing. It was just, you know, it was discipline, more or less discipline. As much as you want to go into, oh, we can go one more, one more, one more. You know, that greed will ultimately get you.

And that's how I got caught with the greed. Right. Okay. So you actually never drove a load of cocaine. And locally, locally, like 10, 20 keys. Yeah, locally. I would drop it off to the stash house. I'll go to the stash house with it.

with the driver, you know, I'll jump in a truck with them and then he'll take me back. But you never ran from the border up to... Hell no. No. No, that's not for me. That's not for me, man. I'm not that kind of guy. I mean, I'm a great driver, but I'm not that guy. You did once, though, smuggle money back, right? I smuggled my money, like some flash cash. It wasn't nobody's money but mine. Oh, okay. Yeah, so, but it was out of the Orlando airport with one of the...

am I with the with the with the an ex a girlfriend that that I had at a time okay uh I had like 30 like a little over 30 thousand in cash and I ended up going into the airport and flying it with her to Mexico City okay oh but it wasn't like a big 30,000 is yeah but anything over 10 you have to report it right and so I was I wasn't about reporting shit even if I had a dollar on me So I ended up staying in the Hyatt in Orlando in the airport for two nights. And that's how I was able to study the TSA shift change, what time they shift change. And I would board a plane around the time where they would shift change. Like within an hour of them changing a shift, I needed to catch them when they were brand new.

because if you caught them in the middle or the end of their shift, they're pissed off, they're going to be dicks, they're tired, they want to go home, and they're going to want to just give you... The same strategy is having your driver cross through the checkpoints. Yeah, and they're going to give you a hard time because no one, no one teaches you how to do it. It was my idea, for one, and I didn't want to drive to Mexico.

That's a two-day deal. I didn't want to do all that, so I was like, oh, I can get it. I had the confidence level was, it was enough to blind you. And the people who followed me, I feel like, what? I could, I probably could have started a cult, but who, like with, who

was following you? Like, my girl, my, the girlfriends I had, if you're, if you're my girlfriend, like, you're going to do something. Like, you're going to, and, but you're going to, and, but you're going to love it, though, because I promise you, I promise you everything but more. I promise you everything. So my deal with her was,

when we go to Mexico, we're going to stay for like six months. And we're not going to, this isn't like, people go to vacation for like a weekend or a week or two, whatever. We're going to stay for a few months. I live there. So we're going to live there. And yeah, man, sure enough, she's like, yeah, I'll go. And I'm like, okay, but we got to do this. Okay.

So I'm in a room with their, and of course, I'm going to take the majority of it. Something was to happen. I feel like shit. So I took the majority. I took as much as I could. on my waist and the bills, the stacks were going up and down. So they're on my belt line and I, and I gave her the rest. It was probably close to like maybe a little under than 10,000, I would say. And this is before the scanners. Oh, yeah. You weren't in the x-rays. You can't get away at this.

This was 08. Yeah. So they don't have the x-ray machines. No, no, no. Okay. Yeah, this was pat-downs, man. This was like, if you look crazy, come here. So when I went, when I went in there, I mean, mind you, we were the only two in line. So I was like, okay, this is weird. So I'll go in there and I go first. And as soon as I go in, I say, if something happens to me, I said, don't come in with me at the same time like a couple. Let me go by myself and then when I'm done, you go. Because then you'll know if you're good.

So I said, once I go in there and you see something happen to me, do not act like you know me. Go home. Yeah, just go home. With the money you have on you, you had a little less than $10,000, go buy, go order a taxi. there was no ubers back then. So go order a taxi or a greyhound or whatever,

call somebody to pick you up, pay them a hundred bucks, $200 and go home and then forget about it. Don't even worry about me. So once I went in, the guy, he patted me down and he felt each and every one of those. And the whole time he's doing it,

my heart's dropping lower and lower and lower and lower into my stomach. And I swear he was setting me up. I'm like, there's no fucking weight. I mean, there are a thousand, there's a thousand, thousand, thousand, thousand, thousand and you feel them and you know that's not part of your body maybe he thought it was your belt dude bro i mean i'm i mean i don't know what fashion he was into if he made him think like that

but he's just he just patted me down and told me to go and i stood there i didn't even go i froze i'm like man i feel like if i you remember that movie blow where everyone gets up from the table and he stuck bad at the end that's how i felt and i'm sitting there like oh man if i get if i if i go forward, there's going to be somebody there waiting for me. So I was like, I stood there for a whole second, felt like an eternity, and I walked, and I looked back, I look back casually just to see her, but I kind of played it off, and then she was looking at me like, do I go? And then I keep going. And then she knows she comes in, and then once she catches up to me, because I'm already, I'm walking away, and she starts catching up to me. And then we started laughing.

Go through. Yeah, go straight to Mexico City in three hours. Yeah. Once I, once I, once the plane starts taking off, I was, every worry in my mind was gone. And especially when I come, when you start covering over Mexico City in the nighttime, you see all those lights. As soon as I've seen those, I was super straight. I was like, okay, yeah, I'm there, I'm good now. I'm super good.

Because at Mexico, you can pay people off. Yeah. If somebody says, you know, let me check you, what the fuck you got? Keep one of those. Just keep wild. Just keep something for the, buy some tacos. Yeah. You know, do something.

Yeah. Yeah, it's pretty awesome. I was in Mexico City last month, and I had a bunch of weed on me, and they were searching me going into this nightclub. I was like, just keep a few for you and hold my medicine so I get out of here. They're cool with it. Yeah, this is a whole other world, man. So you eventually, I can't believe you did as much time as you did because it didn't seem like they had a lot on you.

They didn't. So you're going to collect money from a dude. That's eventually how it all unravels. Yes, sir. What year was that? This was 2011 in the summer. Summer 2011, it was in August. Well, actually July when the investigation,

it was an investigation like a two, three week investigation, bro. It was a shortest investigation I ever heard of. And he got popped. This is one of your customers? The customer, yeah, the customer. And he's just the customer that you're working with on this run. Yeah. And how long had you before?

Had you worked for this guy? No. Work with this guy before? No. I met him a few, I say like two months before we started working. Okay. Because we had to wait for the first load. But we were just talking, get to know each other, you know, exchanging information.

You know, this is how it's going to go down. This is what we're doing. Just being on the same page. And he came as a referral? He came as a referral from the guy that was in a stash house. Okay. And the guy in the stash house brought the driver. because they all worked together in a past run with a love with another plug.

I see. So they didn't have a plug anymore. So he brought his team over to me and my partner, and then we had a team. I thought we had that team. And so when he got arrested, his brother got arrested, it was him and his brother. When his brother got arrested, I didn't know that he was on probation from selling dope from from a state bid or some shit. And he was on 10 years papers or some shit.

and he's over there moving dope like that. So I'm like, all right, you're fucking retarded. But he got popped. He flipped immediately. When the brother came to me and told me, he's told me too. He goes, the customer, he goes, hey, you know, my brother got arrested. You know, he had stuff on him. You know, we're trying to get a lawyer and this and that.

And we're like, oh, how much do you need, you know? Mind you, they owe us money. So it's like, hey, you need money to get a lawyer. We want to get your brother out, you know. So he can pay us. So we can go. back to, you know, doing what we do. And he, he's like, oh, no, yeah, we got it, we got it, we got it, we're working on,

we got an attorney this and that. So, so a week's passed by, and there's 90, a little over $90,000 in the air. So now I was like, okay, now we figure out your brother's situation, what we're doing over here. And he kept telling me, oh, you know, give me a couple days, you know, we had to spend money on attorneys. And he kept saying the same shit over and over and over. So I say like a week or two pass by And then the shit just went to the next level for me And I just go like

So I'm talking to my partner And he's telling me What he gave me the control He goes what do you want to do Do you just want to up and leave and forget Everything and we can move to Another city and continue Because 90 grand ain't shit

I mean some shit But it's 90 grand you can't make in a week You'll make that back. Exactly. Yeah, you'll make that shit back. So it's not something like, oh, I'm never going to make it. I bet you thought about that in prison, you were like, 90 grand. Could have made it in a week.

Could have got it back. Could have got back in a week. I was still fucking pissed. Of course. But you think about those mistakes. Like it, you, yeah, it's just, it takes you to lose everything for you to be like, oh, that was not a necessary. I did the same thing. I went and collected two packages of money from FedEx.

It was like 47 grand. I'm like, bro, it's a week's worth of. work. Like, I should have just let it go. Yeah. So when, when, uh, when he, when we finally got to the point to where, all right, stop bullshitting. My partner told me, hey, what do you want to do? You know, because he kept hounding me. He, I mean, I, I had to be in the middle and I got tired of being in the middle of someone fucking lying and then, and then someone freaking out going nuts, be like, hey, man, we got to get, we got to get this money. We got to get something. So he says, what do you want to do?

So I came up with an idea. I said, I know we're not going to get the whole 90. It's going to be impossible. But I'm going to get as much as I can, maybe 30, 40, 50, and then just haul ass, just up and disappear and continue with our lives. So that was the mission, and that's what I was doing. So for two weeks, I was trying to collect money

and I never got a dime. Because he had already, he already gave that to the feds and I didn't even know it. Yeah. Once I read the report, This dumb ass left it in a backpack. When it kicked in his door, it was in a backpack in a shower. So they got all the money.

And so when I went to go collect from from the final time, I said, look, now, I'm not, I'll come to you nice and more respect. And, you know, I know you're good. I know you're trying to fuck me over. However, it's not me that needs that money. It's the people that I got to give it to. And they're not going to be the same way as me when they come over to see you. and I don't want that to happen because I like you. And without blowing smoke up his ass.

And I was like, I don't want that to happen to you because I like you. And you can see the life leave his body. Like he, for a minute, I thought he turned white. Like he just, like a ghost. He knew his life was over if something, if it was going to work out. And I noticed something weird when I got close to him, he kept backing up. So I'm like, he got backing up into his car. Like he was, we were outside standing and he got backing up.

So I'm like, okay, what the fuck? And so he's like, no, no, no, no, no. I said, I said, no, I need, you gotta give me, I need something now. You know, I need a tractor because they had, they had a company, a saw company, whatever. I said, I need a tractor. I need cars. I need jewelry. I need something to say that you're trying, that you're showing an effort.

He's like, all right, give me, give me till Friday, I got you. And then right around that time is when they kicked them. my door. Wow. So what is that? And it's the feds. Yeah. D-EA. FBI. And what is the, what is the charge? So the charge is conspiracy to possess with intent to distribute five more kilos of Coke. But they don't have any product. But there's no product. That's why it's conspiracy. Okay. So did they, were they, it was basically just the word of these guys that they caught. Yep. Wow. Yeah, it's all. It's just these two brothers. Yep. And not even the stash house people.

They didn't rat on you? No. No, it was just the two brothers because when I went to trial, those are the only two that showed up. And that's the only evidence they had was these two motherfuckers. Saying that they got dope for me and me, they got me, they got, I guess you're going. They had a wire.

He had a wire on a recording the conversation and me collecting $94,000. But even in person, there's no need for me to tell you why you owe me money. If you see me, you already know what time it is. So there's no, I don't need to talk like, oh, we're not on the phone no more. We could talk wide open. It was ever like that. Yeah, but that's enough, though.

That is enough. That's enough because it's, okay, we've got the cocaine that we busted off you guys, and now here's a guy showing up saying, where's my money? That's enough for any jury. Yeah. I mean, the feds have busted people with less than that. Yep. I'm not saying it's right, but that's just what they do.

Yeah, that was like, that was a thing that. I'm sorry to cut you off. How many birds was that? Birds? 90,000. How many 94,000? How many keyless was that? Two and a half.

So how do they get you with over five? How do they charge you with over five? Because of the time we've been dealing with each other. They testify to the DEA agents saying, oh, we were working with them for seven, eight months. And we were getting 20 a week. I read everything. In trial, they said it. They said it in my faith.

They said it while they were on the stand. They're like, oh, they were 100% truthful. They told them how much they were getting it for, how much they sold it for. and everything. We've been getting 20 bricks a week from these guys. But they said everything. They didn't hold nothing back. So 20 bricks a week for seven months, that's hundreds and hundreds of kilos.

Yeah. So my charge, so because there's five or more, now you have to, now there's guidelines. Okay, five to 15, 15 to 40 or 50, and then 40 or 50 or more. So they're separate. So they, my, my plea deal was for 40. 40-something keys. It was 40-something keys that wanted me to sign to.

For how much time? 16 years. And they said they had, they found a gun in the attic of a house we were renting, but the way they wrote, they way they charged me with it, I beat it in trial

because they said that I used it in pursuant, how do they word it, to further my drug trafficking enterprise. And I said, I never carried a gun. And I said, when you, when you arrested me,

I didn't even have it on me or in my car. It was in an attic. Yeah. With, you know, it was an, it was an attic of a house that, because we'd already packed up to move when about the time they busted us. So it wasn't looking like, it wasn't, then he'd find it in a bag that was already packed. Right. It was left behind.

So we can, I can easily say it's not mine. It was there before me. Oh, yeah. So you beat that. I beat it. I beat five years. I despise it by that. Okay.

And then how did your boss or your partner, boss partner, get roped into this? Because the same way you did? Yeah, because we lived together. And we were, and he was always with me. And when they did the wire, they had cameras. He had a camera on him. And they were videoing the whole, every time I went to go collect. Okay, so they got your boss with the customers on camera.

Yeah, they got all three together. Damn. Can you imagine if he was tightening up? If he was a meaner guy or just a smarter guy, I would have never met the customers. I'd be like, you're dealing with them face to face. That's wild. So he's facing the same amount of time that you are.

Yep, it was 10 to life. And he doesn't have a record, though, in the U.S., right? He's just there illegally. So he's got a hold. Yeah, immigration hold. Yeah. So he couldn't get a bond or nothing like that. Did you bond out?

Yeah, I did. I ended up bonding out. I had to put 80,000. Yeah. Did you have a good lawyer? Yeah, I had a pretty good lawyer. I got all the way to the bare minimum. Yeah.

Yeah, I beat. I mean, I went from 16 years going to trial and getting 10. Wow. Usually when you go to trial, you get more. Jury trial? Yeah. Yeah. So what's so interesting about this, and this almost never happens, you went to trial, not just for the gun, but to try to beat the whole drug rap.

Yep. And you blew trial. You lost on the drugs. Yeah. And the judge doesn't enhance you or anything like that. No. So the judge doesn't enhance me. The prosecutor wanted to enhance me.

They recommended 11 to 14 years. But my attorney and the prosecutor made a deal, whatever, they said, let's give them, that we agree on 10. So when the judge finally was able to sentence me for the 120 months, she couldn't do it at the moment because she started crying. My judge started crying. I was her first case in Orlando. There's a lady named Charlene Honeywell, Judge Honeywell, Black lady. And when she started to cry, because they had to read off your history, your child. solid history, you know, they have to take into...

The pre-sentencing. Yeah, they have to take into effect, you know, kind of like look for ways to not, like, really go really hard on you. So... Or go hard on you. There you go. So she was like, oh, you know, I mean, she's... She's sitting there.

First, she's like, okay, so you get her 120 months, and then she starts getting a tissue, and she's, like, she's not bawling, but she's doing this with the tissue like that. And she's, like, very, I say, like, discreet or not. nonchalant with it, but she's doing this. She's tearing up. And she goes, the only reason why I can't go under 10, because you don't deserve 10 years. You don't deserve it. Your childhood has been so fucked up.

But she goes, it was, it was, you were eventually going to go to prison just by how you were moving. Yeah, how you grew up, like, without having the resources and parents and being homeless and foster care, like, you had, your cards were dealt wrong. So she's like, but I can't go under 10 years. but you don't deserve the 10 years. And then she sent him to me to 120. And then your partner also doesn't have a record.

So he gets, you know, what does he do, 11 and a half? Yeah, he does 11 and a half. And have him as a leader. That's why. I see. But that had me as a minor role, and he has a leader role. So that's why they gave him the 11. And how much did he do off of that?

Nine maybe. Can you get the drug program if you're illegal? No, you can't get the R-DAP if you're an illegal because you don't get halfway house. Right, because they can't let you out. Yeah, you don't have halfway house and you don't have home confinement. Because all the R-DAP is, how to get people to come in is they throw the one year off your sentence, they dangle it, and then up to a year halfway house. So people are trying to get out as fast as possible even if they have to do a program or not. So, yeah, I was able to take that at Coleman Lowe.

So you total off of 10. How much did you do? Close to eight. Okay. I say like, because I got a year halfway house, too. Okay, so you were locked up for seven. Seven and change. Yeah.

Okay. Wow. Well, we'll talk about that. We'll jump over to the bonus because we've been going a while. But there's some fun Matthew Cox stories that I want to talk about because you were locked up with the one and only. Matthew Cox from Inside True Crime and the Murder Man, which you guys should check out. We do a podcast together, which I want to talk about.

But man, that's an incredible story. And you've been out now and you run your own business and you know, you're a good guy, man. And the fact that you came from such hell in childhood, just, first of all, just to grow like that in the drug game, most people that grow up like that, they try to jump in the drug. game and they end up smoking crack and they're just complete crashouts. I mean, you're, you're kind of exceptional. Yeah. I really mean that. Thank you. Yeah. And it was a, man, you make me miss my time running around, bro. No, dad. Don't do it, bro. It ain't worth it. Yeah, now, bro. This right here, what you got going on is this shit. I'm too on the map. Thank you, bro. This is the shit right here. This is why I do this, so I can't go back. Yeah, man.

I'm too on the map now. But what are you doing now and plug your business? We want to get people over to your business. Yeah, so what I'm doing now is I help people fix their credit and get funding once their credit is fixed so they can start businesses or get loans for anything they need, houses, whatever. And so I found credit while I was in federal prison. I just sat, I've been sitting around for years, just trying to figure out what can I do to be a better version of myself? How can I get a 2.0 version of Jacob Diaz? The real version, not the one that I had to be to survive, but the one that who got to be my true self. And I'm genuinely a kind of person that wants to help you.

I'll give you a shirt off my back if you need it. I'll give my last dollar. I don't mind. You know, I'm in the helping because I didn't, I was in a situation where not having the resources that I needed. Had I had them resources, I probably wouldn't even went to prison or went into the drug game because I had, you know, the education from financial literacy to get the financial freedom that you need

in order to get that. So with helping people fix their credit, it's giving them a second chance at life. You know, when people, when you have no credit, you can't do nothing. I mean, you can't even get a house. You can't even get a house. You can't even get a job at some places if your credit's bad.

So, I mean, good luck getting insurance for, I mean, the list goes on. So not having good credit holds a lot of people back, which forces them to go look for other ways, which is like what happened to me, selling drugs or anybody. else, God forbid committing crimes. So the business is called My Credit Builder Pros.

And when, I mean, I'm on Instagram. And when you do, when I was in prison, I said, okay, what could I do to not go back? But I need to make, you know, a difference. So credit, the reason why I chose credit was because it's the root of all money. It's not, I'm not a loan officer or an underwriter in the bank. No, I want to get, I want to be the plug in what I'm doing. doing. So being the plug is credit. So once you have credit, everything else grows from it. So that's exactly how I got into credit with, it was a guy, it was a guy leaving. He was going

home from prison and he had a, he had a credit book, how to fix your credit. And he was throwing it in a trash. And I say, hey, wait, wait, wait, wait, let me see that book. So I got the book and I was seeing how you can fix your credit. And I'm looking for things to do that's intellectual, something that keeps my attention. So I'm reading it. I'm like, damn, this is interesting. So I tried it on myself. Because I don't want to use people as guinea pigs.

I believe that's wrong. That's wrong. It gives yourself a bad name. So what I said was, you know what? Let me try it on myself, see if it works. Funny enough, I had one thing on my credit, and it was from a lease that I broke in Austin. When I just live on West Anderson Lane.

So that was on my credit, and I owed like a thousand-something dollars. So I said, okay, let me write. I wrote the letter. Two weeks later, it can't. came off. And once I came, once I got the account off, after disputing it, I was able to jump my credit from a 544 to a 772 in two weeks. Just by writing a letter. See, most people probably don't even realize you can do that. A handwrite, which is crazier from the front. Yeah. With your, your number, your inmate number on the envelope. With the prison ID. Wow. I'm in prison, man. Believe me,

this is about a show. So that's a cool thing. And that's really cool. So you made it a whole. whole business when you came home. Yeah. It grew or I made it a hustle while I was in prison to keep myself out of trouble. And because I was growing and learning and learning and learning, it kept growing more stuff you get information for. But so once I was released, I'm like, damn, do I really want to take this for real? Because I was doing it for a few years already just in prison.

I was helping their families outside getting better credit. And the best place to learn to know if you're doing it right is to do it in prison. Not to say go back to go to prison, but you ain't got nowhere to run if you fuck someone over. Right. Yeah. So I never had a run or duck and dodge. Yeah. All my shit was straight. Like it was, I made sure it was legit because... So that was your hustle. You were doing it for people and taking stamps or whatever. Yeah. Money on the books. You know, go to commissary, buy me at Nikes or whatever. Just cash out my... Green dot. Yeah, do my green dot. Yeah, I just do shit like that. Wow, bro. Okay. So can people?

People hit you up anywhere in the country? Yeah. Or they have to be in Florida. No, not only in Florida, but we do, we serve in all 50 states. So currently we have customers in California, even Texas, New Orleans, Florida, New York, Chicago, everywhere. I even have a customer in Spain right now. Yeah. So, I mean, they, it doesn't matter to the situation just as long as you're in the United States, like an American citizen, where we can get, we can tackle like Experian, Equifax and TransUnion.

Okay, so we're going to leave the link to that in the comment and in the description. This is the best way to hit you up on Instagram or? Yeah, the best way is on Instagram. You can text me on there. I have my phone number on there. You can text me, reach out through there or hit me on a DM. Hit me on a DM and I'll reach out to you, man. And we're going to do some collabs on clips too.

So they're going to see you. They're going to see a lot of you. Yeah, for sure. Yeah, man. Yeah, I appreciate that, Johnny. Jacob Diaz, man. What a fucking, what a whirlwind, dude. I fucking love Mexican cartels.

I love drug trafficking. I'm just going to say it right now. I am pro. I'm just kidding. And I'll go along with that. I mean, I can't say no because, I mean, it's public information. It's right there. Man.

Man, well, dude, I wish you the best of luck. And, you know, you're young, dude. We're young men. Yeah, right? How do you? 40. I'm your age. I'm 46, baby, right?

What? Yeah, dog. Life's just getting started at 40, man. Damn, dog. And you look younger than your age, too, man. Thanks. A lot of creams. That's a good.

That's more like your spirit. You got a good spirit. Got a good soul, man. Thanks, dude, dude, too. Yeah, that's why. You have no hair on your face. Laser surgery. Really?

Yeah. Because you're tired of shit. I have hair here. I can grow this out, but I have no hair here. Yeah. It's kind of the Mexicans have kind of the Asian thing. You got to get that going. They're kind of hairless.

Yeah. You know what I mean? Well, Jacob Diaz, if you'd like to hear some more prison stories, because you do have some interesting prison. stuff to talk about. So head over to Patreon, patreon.com slash The Connect Show, check out his credit repair business, and we'll see you next time. Thank you guys.