The Connect- with Johnny Mitchell - Rick Ross Reveals Secrets Of His Crack Empire, Being USED By The CIA, & Beating A LIFE Sentence

Episode Date: January 13, 2024

Freeway Ricky Ross has one of the most infamous drug dealer stories in the world. He is undoubtedly a part of American history and by far one of the most requested guests on The Connect. Rick joins the show to discuss his time as one of the lynchpins of the crack epidemic in the 1980s, his regrets and lessons learned, finding out he was a pawn in an illegal CIA operation and how he got out from under a life sentence in prison. He also discusses his new life after prison, how he’s helping others learn from his mistakes, and his new business ventures! Go Support Rick! Books and Merch: https://b7eab896-adc4-474a-9ab1-56ec7dd1576a.godaddysites.com/shop YouTube: @FreewayRickyRoss1 New Shop In LA: https://www.instagram.com/freewayrickys/ IG: https://www.instagram.com/freewayricky/ Website: https://freewayrickyross.com/ This Episode Is Brought To You By The Following Sponsor: Support the show and visit MOOD Go to https://hellomood.co/ and use code CONNECT20 for 20% off your order and code CONNECTFREE for a FREE 5ct pack of gummies! Join The Patreon For Bonus Content! https://www.patreon.com/theconnectshow Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

When I started, we were happy to make $20 or $30 a week. Then probably the next week we might do $100 a week. And then a couple weeks later, 200 a week, then 300 a week, and 300 a day. I learned how to addict the sellers. If they make so much money, then they're going to go buy things. I'm in now. What's up, guys? Today we have Freeway Ricky Ross.

That's right, the former Crack Kingpin at L.A. American cultural icon. Rick, if you don't know, was the biggest crack dealer in the 1980s. At his height, he was making up to $3 million a day. He was distributing cocaine for the Nicaraguans who were tied in with the CIA during the Iran-Contra scandal. In 1996, he was sentenced to life in prison. He beat his case, got out on appeal, and today he is a fully legitimate man. He's got a movie coming out several books and a dispensary. He's here to talk all about that. He's a legend. I'm tingling right now, you guys. For more Rick content, go over to patreon.com slash the Connect show. You guys wanted them. You got them right here on The Connect with Johnny Mitchell. Enjoy. My life is a mirror of America.

You know, when you talk about the literacy, schools not function in drugs, prison. You know, I have actually lived the American dream and I guess that's why so many people relate to my story. That's when I see lights behind me start to flash and I didn't even think I just hit it. I was driving like my life depended on. Then I parked the car, popped out, closed the door and I started running and he pulls out a burner, shank, like six inches, and he passes it to me and he goes here, that's yours. Don't ever leave the cell block without this. He was the reason I made it out of a place alive. Rick, thank you so much for coming on, man. No doubt. You are one of our most requested guests. So we're tickled to have you. Oh, they've been asking for me? Yes, they were requesting

you for a long time. For those who might not know you, you're obviously an LA legend, one of the biggest drug traffickers to come out of the 80s. And it's so interesting because, you know, you're just a local guy. And now you've come so far. But, we'll start at the beginning. Texas boy. Yeah, born in Texas. Yeah. Tyler. Tyler, Texas. And then at three years old or five years old, you end up in South Central. Yeah. Yeah. Eighty-seventh place cuts off at the 110 Freeway. And that's how you got your moniker freeway. Yeah, you did your research. I did. I did. Well, look, I've known about you before the rapper. Before, you know, the lore that you have now, I read about you in.

college. 2004. I'm reading Beyond a Pale Horse. Yeah. And this is about the collusion of the CIA with Nicaragua drug traffickers and the Iran-Contra scandal. So I, yeah, this is like a lifelong dream. In 2004, it had been a lot said about me already. You know, in 96, when Gary Webb did his article, Time Magazine, said that I was the most talked about person in the country that year. Even back in the 90s.

96. Yeah. Yeah. To be exact. Right. That was the year Gary Webb broke a Dark Alliance, the story. Right. So that was that, because I was only 10 years old.

So this is before social media. This is before mass consumption of the drug culture, right? This is when crack was still really bad. It was considered really bad. Well, I was, I had already been in prison. Yeah. So, yeah, I guess you could say it was, it was. was still pretty bad. So that scandal in 96, that was huge. When that book broke about the

collusion between the CIA. That was big. It was the first time Sacramento-B. When they released that story, it was the first time any major newspaper had ever released a major story on the internet. Wow. Wow. Oh, right. So this is the dawn of the internet age. It's the dawn of the internet. Right. Yes. That's incredible. Had I been out on the street, I probably would have 10 million followers right now. Exactly. But by me being in prison and not being able to capitalize on social media, I think Google was just starting as well. Yeah. I mean, a lot of those companies were really babies.

AOL, all that stuff. Yeah. Rick, I and many other people like me, but especially white Americans, grew up and were influenced by hip hop and rap. I was thinking about this last night. I am not who I am. I could not be who I am today if it weren't for the influence of black America. through rap music. I'd be a square. I'd be a dork. I'd be a Canadian or something like that. God forbid, right? Yeah. And rap and hip hop couldn't have been what it was without crack cocaine.

And crack and the popularity of it couldn't have been what it was without you. So in many ways, you, and I argue, I argue that white and black America is more united and was brought together more by hip hop and rap and its influence of popular culture than even in the NWACP. I really do. No, I agree with that. I mean, it definitely has crossed the gap. I mean, at one time, you know, they were saying that whites bought more hip hop music than blacks did. For sure.

Well, because you guys are down bootlegging it. But anyways, I'm kidding, of course. But so do you feel like there was some good despite all of the destruction that the crack era brought? Do you think there is some ancillary good? I mean, I look at life, you know, if they're giving you lemons, you make lemonade. You know, so whatever happened, it's up to us to try to take that and make the best out of it. You know, me selling crack was not something that I'm proud of. You know, I'm still not proud of that I did that.

It's my past and I live with it. You know, I accept it. as a mistake that I made in my life. But at the end of the day, it's not something that I go around and, you know, I'm like, you know, just. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You know, I made three million dollars a day. Well, you're from that generation, that you're very, you're from that old school generation that doesn't glorify because you had to live it. And, or you chose to live it, but it's a very understated.

You came before the rap. The rap glorified it. You guys left it. Right. Yeah, because if you listen to the beginning rap, you know, like Master Spade, they were more so talking about what was going on, not what they were doing, but what was going on in the community, which is something that I believe is different than what's happening right now. You know, right now it's more of a glorification for guys who never sold cocaine, but they

brag about actually being cocaine dealers and, you know, and big money havers. So to start from the beginning, you know, it's 1979. You graduated high school. 78. Dorsey High School. Yeah. Tennis Star. Yeah.

Illiterate, though. We all know this. It's wild. That's the L.A. U.S.D. Let a guy graduate high school. When you look at my life, though, my life is a mirror of America. Yeah. You know, when you talk about illiteracy, schools not functioning, drugs, prison.

You know, I have actually lived the American dream. And I guess that's why so many people relate to my story. Yeah. What was also interesting about your childhood is that you witnessed violence from a young age. I think you saw your aunt shoot your uncle to death. My mom. Your mom shot. Her brother.

To death. Yeah. Killed him. One shot. and that turned you off from violence. Yeah, well, my uncle, we had become kind of like my father, you know, I mean, me and my mom, we stayed with him, you know, even though my uncle had two kids of his own. But he was kind of like the male figure that I looked up to, you know, that I was, and, you know, I was crazy about him, you know.

Wow. So to have, you know, the one person in the world that, you know, that I, you know, that I. just adore it was my mom. You know, shoot her brother and killing, you know, was like, wow, you know, what's really going on here? Devastating. Yeah. Now, did you... My mom going to jail, you know, here I am in California.

And we hadn't been out here that long, you know. I don't know how long. Might have been six months. Might have been a year. You know, I don't really know. But for me, the time that she was away from me and I was with people who were kind of like strangers to me, you know, I don't. I didn't really know them. You know, I knew, I knew from what, you know, that now we're staying with these people when I'm meeting them for the first time.

But, you know, you're talking about I'm only like four years old because I wasn't in school yet. You know, I went to school the next year. So maybe five. It might have been five when that happened. But you're talking about still being around total strangers and a new life that I really didn't understand. But it was, it kind of set the stage for how you operated later. I mean, I don't think it's in your constitution to be violent, first of all. But I think, you know, as you're getting out of high school, that's when gang bangin really starts to grow in South Central.

Crippen, specifically. You knew that was not your path. You knew that gangbanging was not a route you were going to take very young. Well, I wanted to be. a Crip when I was around 13, 12 or 13, right before I started playing tennis. Okay. When I first saw the Crips, I was going to Manchester Elementary School. It was the end of our sixth grade year.

And a kid ran to the window and they was like, look at all these guys. And the whole classroom just go to the window and we see all these guys out and they got their blue khakis on and the overalls and they buffed. Yeah. And, you know, to us, you know, we're talking about 11, 12 year old. we're like a maze, you know, at all of these guys. And that moment, I wanted to be a crypt. Yeah, it's exciting.

They were the community figures. They were the figureheads at the time. Did you ever meet Tuki Williams, or any of those guys that started it? I never actually talked to Tookie, but I saw him, you know, from, you know, 20, 30 feet. You know, they would be at the park. Yeah.

At Manchester Park where we all played it. tennis and in basketball and football. They would be at the park, but, you know, I wasn't, I didn't have enough clout to talk to Twicken. Yeah, you're too young at the time. Yeah. Yeah. Well, you know, and you got to have clout too.

You know, you just don't walk up, you know, and talk to Tuckooke. Prison is the same way. You can't just go talk to a shock call or somebody in life without, you know, an introduction at least. Right. Somebody has to bring you there or put you on or, you know, it's a little more than just, you know, just walking up talking to them. So, but eventually your peers, the people that you're in elementary and junior high school with, they will grow up to become major gang members. Major gang members.

Yes. And this is, aligns perfectly with the dawn of the crack era. So you're at the cutting edge of this industry that's going to become in a few years, you don't even know it, but it's going to become, you know, a worldwide phenomena, crack cocaine. But before this, you're in high school playing tennis. Who are your influences? This is early, I think Arthur Ash is the only other black tennis players at the time. Not that you need influences to play tennis. No, no, no, no.

But I had them. I had them. My first ones in tennis was Robert Robinson and Larry Barnett. Okay. I don't know who those guys are. And I'm a tennis fan, but they both was already ranked in California in the juniors. Both went on to get scholarships. I think Rob played number one at,

at Bakersfield University. Larry played at UC Santa Barbara, one and two. Cornbread, who played number one at Texas Southern. So these guys became

the guys that I looked up to. They were a few years older than I. And they were doing the things that I wanted to do. You know, they were getting free tennis shoes. And so they're always looking good. And Stan Smiths at the time? Stan Smiths.

A lot, right? Case lives. Yeah. You know, so, so these are the guys that, that I was following at that time. Yeah. You know. And you were good enough to get a scholarship, correct? I could, I could beat them sometimes, you know. But don't you think you would have, you know, if you had the grades, you probably would have gone on to play in college? I would. Yeah. Yes. And then everything would have been different. Probably. Probably. Probably. Yeah. Yeah. Because, you know, I mean, I even beat Cornbread. Cornbread, when I beat him, he was, in the top hundred in the world. He was on tour with Arthur Ash. He'd been touring with Art the Ash. And what he would do is when he came off the circuit, he would come and get me from Dorsey. And we would go work out. Also Earl Prince, who played at UCLA.

He was one and two at USC. He would also come and get me. So I became kind of like a sparring partner for these guys. You know, somebody that they could get a nice little workout with. I was never as good as them. you know, like guys I would lose to in the tournament, they would kill, you know, when they saw them. So I wasn't as good as them. But it's, and it's still boiled down to having money as well.

You know, they were able, they had sponsors, so they was able to play tournaments every week. My situation, my mom was on welfare, so I might play two tournaments a year. You know, tournaments was like $15. So, you know, I go to my mom, I want to play a tennis tournament, it's $15. Boy, you better get out of here. Yeah, yeah. So I had to go out and make my own money to pay my own way into the tournament. And it's a lot different when you got one tournament.

You know, it's like, oh, you losing this tournament? You ain't playing for another. So much pressure. Yeah, it's a lot of pressure that you wind up putting on your. Spring weekends are all about family, sunshine, and evenings on the patio. Before everyone arrives, I stop by my local total wine and more to grab a great bottle to share. With such a wide selection and the lowest prices, it's easy to find something amazing for everyone to enjoy. If you're not sure what to pick, their friendly guides can help.

Find what you love and love what you find only at Total Wine and More. Shop total wine and more in store or online. Spirits not sold in Virginia and North Carolina. Drink responsibly. B-21. And you always wanted money, though. You always had an entrepreneur's spirit. I was a kid.

You've always had the spirit in you. You know, you did things, you know, I think I read in your bio. You know, one of them you worked for pimps. You would keep track of the time when their hose were turning tricks. You would knock on the door, the hotel rooms. Hey, you got to wrap it up. You would, I think. That was right after, right after I left high school that I was doing that.

Okay. How was pimping at the time? Was that like old school 70s, big Cadillacs, big hats? Yeah, some of them did. They had started transitioning to the benzene. and Rose Royces. Yeah. So a few,

if you had that, but most had the Cadillacs. Yeah. You know, older Cadillacs. Did you think that could have been a viable path for you? I thought about it. I thought about it.

Yeah. Did you have games like that? Did you have girls? No, I didn't have girls. Well, sometimes those are the best pimps because then, you don't use your own product.

But usually. Yeah, but you had to, you have to, I mean, they, they had a lot of confidence in themselves. You know, to be a pimp,

you got a lot of confidence in it. a lot of confidence, you know, to get a woman to sell her body. Yeah. And then give you all the money, you know. That takes mouthpiece. For me, it was like baffling to actually see it, you know, taking place. But, you know, they were doing it. You have this, and we're going to get to it when we get to prison,

but you are part of your ethos, part of your, the way that you look at life is optimist. and manifesting. And when you were locked up, you read books like think and grow rich, etc. That's that indefatigable spirit that you have. I think maybe part of it is, you know, being short, being from the hood. You're like the underdog. This is an underdog. This is an underdog. Did you feel that way? Did you feel like, you feel like people discount me, but watch. I always felt like I was an underdog, you know, even, even with, uh, with the schooling, you know, all my brothers are a little smarter than me in school.

You know, they all got better grades than I did. So I've always kind of felt like the underdog. And some things, you know, when we got on the football field, you know, I felt like I was in charge. You know, on the tennis court, I felt like that I would be in charge of what I was doing, running. You know, I was faster than most of them. So there were certain things that I felt that they were better than me in. And then there was things that I knew that I could outdo other people in. did you even after you know the disappointment of not going on to college with your tennis

did you feel like I'm going to grow up and be somebody like I'm gonna I'm gonna make it did you have that I was kind of I was kind of I was kind of I was kind of down you know for a while you know it was embarrassing you know when everybody found out I couldn't read you know I'd hit it for for a while you know but when everybody found that I couldn't read it was embarrassing and then I kind of shied away I used to go to Dorsey that's what we used to to play at Rancho Park. So I kind of shied away from that community. And then I started hanging back into the community where people don't care if you can read

the right. Right. You know, they want to know what type of gun you got, how well you can fight, you know, those criteria has changed on what they expect from the person. Values are different. Yeah, I guess you can say values are different. So you're out of high school. You start, you're going to a technical college now.

you, I believe, start apprenticing as a car upholstery. Yeah. For a car upholstery? Trade Tech. Well, I was doing two of them. I was going to Trade Tech to play tennis, which I really didn't go to school at Trade Tech.

I just, you know, really show up for tennis practice. Okay. And go to the matches. Coach Pete Brown and Norman Tillman came over to the house and they was like, man, we got a shot at winning the title at Trade Tech this year. We really need you to come on the team. We'll get everything set up for you with the schooling and whatnot.

And, you know, Norm filled out all my papers for me to get in Trade Tech. I took bookbinding at Trade Tech. That was supposed to be in the class I was taking. But I also was doing upholstery at Venice Skills Center. Car upholstery. Yeah, car upholstery. And through doing that, the guy that you were working for, that's when you first get introduced to cocaine.

No, no. He didn't introduce me to cocaine. Well, who introduced you? Was it all he or was it? No, Michael. Michael. Okay, gotcha. So this is around the same time. It's the same time. Did you know, had you ever seen powder cocaine? On TV. You've never seen it in real life. No. Did anybody in the ghetto? Excuse, you know, if that's an offensive term. Did anybody from the hood in 1979 have the money to spend $100 on a gram of cocaine? like was that at all? I know PCP was big.

Nobody thought it broke weed. Nobody thought it was possible. Like I imagine the only people down in the hood that had powder cocaine money were pimps, right? You hit it on the head. Yeah, right? And, you know, that was like the super fly, glorified. It was not seen as a bad thing at all.

No, no, it was, it was, I mean, because I was hanging out with the pimps. So I used to hear him brag about, you know, oh man, I blew $500, you know, on cocaine the other night. And I used to ask them, man, man, let me get in the cocaine game. Let me get in the cocaine game. Right, right. And none of them would, you know, none of them with, you know, you're too young. Stay out of that.

You know, leave that alone. Right. But they always told me, never get high. Don't you ever get high. Don't you ever get high? And you listened. Because I was like their little brother. Right.

You know, like my first low rider, this pimp TQ brought me all my hydraulics for my car. You know, he cut my car front and back for me. Yeah. So I become kind of like the gopher, you know, like I would go to the store for him. You know, I would just do stuff for them, wash their cars that they needed their car washed. So I was kind of like a gopher for him. Yeah. And even, even their girls, their girls, they liked me too, you know, like.

Like even right now, a couple of them come by, you know, where my shop is right now, one named Vanessa, she comes by. And, you know, she still treat me like a little brother. Oh, wow. I can't imagine what she looks like now. Just kidding, ladies. Just kidding. Because I want to get this straight. Did you, when you first got put on, I think it was like a couple of grams. No. How did you, how did you first?

About two tenths of a gram. Two tenths of a gram. So did you cook it up right away? Because there's the story about how the pimp first showed you what crack was. But was that the first thing that you sold or was it actually powder? No, it was powder. Okay. He Mike gave me powder the first day.

I took the powder and I ran into Martin, who was a pimp that I knew. First, we went around to all the guys, all the old heads that we thought was like super cool in the hood. We went to all of them. You know, we went to Borny. We went to Alfonso. We went to black. And then finally, it was like getting kind of exhausting because it was like, man, don't nobody know what this is, you know? Because we didn't know.

We thought cocaine was supposed to have been white. But this stuff was yellowish, like almost like. like a pea color. Right. And I was a little afraid that Mike wasn't telling me the truth, you know, about what it was. Right. And I was a little nervous about selling it. Yeah.

Because, you know, in the hood, I mean, I saw a guy get killed at the liquor store or a dollar, you know. Right. So in the hood, you know, a little money can cause a lot of violence. It don't be the money. It'll be the principal, as they say. You know, I didn't kill him over the dollar. I killed him over the principal.

Uh-huh. So we were really want to be sure about what we were doing. So we ran into Martin and then Martin cooked it up. Okay. And he was the one your first months in the game. He was your cook, right? No. He was my first customer, too.

Oh, okay. Even though he cooked it up. He wound up smoking the whole rock. Yeah. It was very little. I mean, it was so small once he cooked it up. And he took a little piece off of it. And he was like, man, ain't nothing left.

I might as well do all this. I just pay you Friday. And that turned into later on that day he came by with Big Mouse. Mouse is like a legend in L.A. You know, I didn't know Mouse at the time when he first brought him by. He was a Crip, right? He was a Crip. One of the Tuckies guys.

Okay. Swo, you know. They used to call him Big Mouse. Mouse spent $100. And that was my first sale. Wow. And then that's when you knew you were like, okay, there's something to this. This is a business. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Because $100 back in 1980. I mean, that's a lot of money. It was a lot of money. Wow. So you're on. You're on.

Oh, yeah. We're popping now. Now, how long? Now I got two customers. I got Miles and I got Martin. Right. So even though I didn't know Miles, I knew Martin well enough to know that Martin wouldn't bring nobody to me that I had to worry about. Okay. So how did those first, how did this first six months look? Were you? Very slow. Okay, very slow. Why is that?

I didn't know nobody that smoked cocaine or used cocaine. Right. You know, it was like... That's how early you were to it. Yeah, yeah. You hadn't even, a market hadn't even really developed around it. No, not like it was when, say, 82, 83, like any of my guys, I could give them five ounces and they could go out on the block and they would sell it all in maybe 30, 40 minutes. Right, right.

It wasn't like that when I started. Because, you know, what's interesting is that history tells us that crack first really took hold in the inner city around like 84, 85. But you were four years before that. Yeah. Yeah. It was truly like an infant industry. When I started, we were happy to make $20,000, $20 and $30 a week.

Selling crack. Yeah. Wow. And that was, I mean, that's like better than a minimum wage job a little bit back then. I mean, it puts, it puts. some pennies in your pocket. You know, I was able to skim a few dollars off to buy me a burrito. Wow. I mean, it was, it was slow at first. Wow. And so, and how do you market yourself? You just go around saying, hey, I got this thing. It's called crack. I just wait on,

on Martin and mouse. You know, when they needed more, they would come by. And they might come by with, you know, two girls in the car, two prostitutes in the car. The prostitutes would see me. Then when, when they wasn't around and the prostitutes would come over and buy. Right, right. And then the prostitute might bring a trick by with her. And then you meet the trick. And then, you know, it just keep, you know, person by one person at the time

where you just keep building and building. When do you remember business really picking up where crack went from being this kind of niche thing that pimps, prostitutes, tricks smoked to kind of normal everyday people? What year was that? Well, it took a couple years. my mom put me out of her house because people were coming over

and she was like, who was that in that Cadillac? Who was that in that Benz? What are they coming over here looking for you for? Yeah. Why they want you? Yeah.

So she recognized, you know, my mom wasn't a fool. So she's recognizing that different type of people are starting to come. Right. And it ain't, you know, you know, my little dirty friends.

Right. We hang out with, you know, all the time. They're not coming. These are like grown men and women. and cars and, you know, wearing suits. And she was like, what are all these people

want with you? You getting out of my house. So she put me out of her house. Where'd you go? Well, at that time, when she put me out, I had some money then. I'd already saved up about, I don't know, probably about $50,000. What year is this?

Probably $81, $82. Okay, so business isn't that bad if you're able to save, you know, $50. Oh, no, no, no. We went, you know, we went from doing $20 a week, then probably the next week we might do 100 a week. Yeah. And then a couple weeks later, 200 a week, then 300 a week and 300 a day.

Yeah. You know, so when I'm making 300 a day, you know, I'm able to keep $100 for myself. Right. So now I'm making $700 a week. And what's interesting about you is you spend nothing. Nothing. You are fascinating. You are a lesson in business discipline because unlike most people, including myself,

even in legitimate industries who do bubble, you know, right? They'll hit a lick. They'll make a stack of money. And then they're scared to reinvest it because they're like, oh, I don't know if tomorrow is going to be the same as today. I need to squirrel my money away. You got the money. Not only did you not spend it on any stupid drug dealer stuff, almost every dollar that you brought in from sales, you reinvested it into a bigger supply.

Yeah, I learned how to addict the sellers. your suppliers. Yeah, you addicted. How did you addict your suppliers? With money. Right. You became their best customer.

If they make so much money, then they're going to go buy things. You know, like they go buy their wife a candy store. Oh. So if the candy store

don't make no money, then they still got to sell drugs to pay the bills for the candy store. They just bought a new car. And me, I try not to take on none of those bills

because those bills literally make you become like a slave almost. Yeah, slave to your own business. Yeah. So I try to stay away from those things because I don't want those cuffs on me. I don't want those things to tie me down. So, yeah, I would just take my money and pull it back into the drugs. Right.

So they probably thought when I was buying six pounds of cocaine, they probably thought that I was just, just bawling out of control. What I did is I was taking all my savings and I was buying it with that. Yeah. Okay. So you owned your own product.

You never, after you got going, no more product was fronted to you. You were COD. Yeah. So you were your own man. Hey, everyone. I hope you're enjoying the episode. Let me take one minute to remind you about our long time

flagship sponsor of the Connect, mood. America's number one online dispensary for Delta 8 and Delta 9 products. Are you still living in a state where THC products are unbelievably still illegal? Don't worry. Mood has you covered. Their Delta 8 and Delta 9 products comply with all federal regulations. They're completely legal.

They're legal to order, ship, and consume. And Mood has worked with the federal government to ensure this compliance. Right now, go over to Mood.co, their website, and you'll find the widest array of gummies, edibles, flour, vape, and use promo, code connect 20, that's connect to 0 to get 20% off anything on their website. And of course, if you use promo code connect free, that's C-O-N-N-E-C-T-free, you will get a free five-count pack of gummies. All you do is pay for shipping. There is nothing to lose. Go over to mood.co right now and enjoy your Delta 8 and Delta 9 products. Now let's get back into the episode.

Okay, say the first, after your first year, how big is your re-up looking? And are you still buying, at what point do you meet the Nicaragans? At what point do you outgrow your, your original connect and move up to getting a better price? We left Mike pretty quick. Because Mike was, was snorting. I don't know if he was smoking as well, but he wasn't, he wasn't, he wasn't on his business. So, so I, we left Mike probably after about four or five months. Okay. We stopped buying for Mike. And who did you go to after that? Well, I went back to Venice, Center because I was working on a car. And so I go down to Venice Skills Center and I'm like, Mr. Fisher.

Matter of fact, Mr. Fisher stayed right over here too. All right. So I met the Nicaragua right in this neighborhood. Okay. Okay. So I go to Mr. Fisher and not looking for no connection, though. I wasn't looking for no connection. I just go down there just to chop it up with him.

You know, we should play tennis together. Yeah. So you're selling crack and playing tennis still? A little bit, not so much tennis. I pretty much gave up on tennis. Okay. I'm putting guys on the circuit now. Yeah.

You know, Larry and Troy, all the guys I went to high school with that were like my friends, I helped them go on the circuit. Oh, wow. Okay. So you're putting your drug money behind tennis players who you like. Exactly. Well, these are my friends. They're not just tennis players. These are like my, the guys I looked up to.

Like, you know what I'm saying? These are my guys. So when I go see Fisher and he's like, where you been? You know, because he knew how much I like working on cars and stuff. And he's like, where you been? Why you ain't been around? And I'm like, ah, you know, and I don't want to lie to him, you know, because it's my guy. Yeah.

You know, I don't want to tell him that I don't want to tell him I'm selling cocaine. Yeah. You know, like, how is he going to feel about that? And it just came out, you know. Oh, man, I've been selling cocaine. And he was like, what? And he was like, man, come by my house. He said, you'd thank this gold.

And I got on my neck and that Cadill had come from his job. Man, come from this job. And I went over to his house that night, me and Ali. he told me, you know, like, man, I should sell cocaine. I made $250,000, which I didn't even know what that was at the time. I was like, $250,000. Right. What is that?

Like a gillion dollars. Yeah. So he was like, I got somebody I'm going to introduce you with to. And he called the sky over. The guy was from downtown. He was a jeweler. And the guy said, we're going to introduce you to somebody. So then they called and Henry came over.

Henry was his, looked like, I thought he was Mexican. You know, I didn't know what a Nicaraguan was. I'm sorry, say that again? I didn't know what a Nicaraguan was.

Okay, okay, yeah, that's not how I would say it, but yeah, I call it a Nicaraguan. Well, you know, I speak Ibanix.

Yeah, yeah, no, no judgment. So, I met Henry. That was the first day I met Henry. And Henry, who is Henry?

Henry. And what is his connection to the Nicaraguan's? to Danilo Blondeon. His sister was married to Danilo. Okay. And Danilo is a major character in this whole saga. Yeah.

Danilo was the minister of agriculture for Nicaragua before they got kicked out. Right. Before the revolution in 1979. And that's what sent a bunch of Nicaraguan's, you know, what was called a communist or socialist revolution sent a lot of the Nicaraguan who controlled the country. They had to flee. and a lot of them came to America and including Los Angeles.

Well, all of them was part of that. Henry, Ivan, Danilo, Mr. Green, the Torres brothers. And what's so interesting about that whole cadre of people is they were all used to be politicians. And as you say, the Ministry of Agriculture. And everybody was part of the oligarchy. And then they just rolled it over into cocaine trafficking. Right. So now here they are. And there's about to be a boom. And they all were smart. Yeah. And they're very smart. They open restaurants. They had college degrees. Absolutely. Rent of cars. Right. Totally. They had rental car businesses. They were different than the Mexicans who were these street people. They were the, they were farmers. They wasn't really. They weren't workers. Exactly. Exactly. So. They wasn't going to pick no fruit.

No, uh-uh. Not at all. So we've got now here you are. you've made a connection almost to the source. They were getting their cocaine straight from the Colombians. And I'm buying now. I'm buying body. I'm like two, three ounces. Which is a lot of Coke back then. How much was an ounce back in 1981, 81, 82?

My first ounce I bought was $3,300. Oh, my God. I mean, $3,300. And this is, you know, obviously, this is great cocaine. I can make $9,000 off of it. Can we say that one more time for the clickbait? you were paying 3,300 an ounce back in 1982, and how much were you making off that ounce? About 9,000.

And you were... Well, we would cut up 9,000. We would never make... You know, you never make what you're supposed to make. Yeah. Because, you know, you're going to give... People are going to come back. Oh, man, I spent this with you.

Yeah. I need some credit. Yeah. Right. You know, stuff like that there. So you stack up 9,000. And now, how are you doing that? Take one ounce.

What are the crack economics of that? Like, how do you take an ounce... which is 28 grams. You've just spent $3,300 on it. That's insane. What do you cook that down into to make a profit of $9 grand? Well, we would cook it up in little jars, little beakers. Right.

It was like little bitty, little bitty beaker jars. And then we would have all of these jars, just fill them up with grams each, each one have a gram. And then we would take those grams and we would cut it. Okay. So what is an average? So you take a little stone off of each gram? Well, you cut it in the,

You would try to cut it. And we used to eye it on the cut. On the cut, we would eye. And we would try to cut off of one gram. We would try to do like $300. Off of one gram. So how does that break down, though, into each sales worth, what, $10 rocks? Those $20 rocks?

Each sale would be like $50. Okay. So this was expensive crack. Oh, yeah. This is $50 for essentially. We didn't call it crack anyway. That's some government stuff. What did you call it?

Ready Rock? Ready Rock. Okay. So it was Ready Rock. It was just cocaine cooked. Right. Which, that's what crack is. It's just cooked cocaine, right? You know, when, when, when we started in about this crack stuff and we thought they were adding, you know, an effedrant to it or something.

We didn't know what they were doing like. Yeah. We didn't know what crack was. So when did you, you didn't call it crack? What year did you start calling it crack if ever? When I got to the feds. Right, right, right, right. They arrested us and they was like, oh, you charged with crack. Well, you know what's so interesting. I remember reading an article, uh, quote, that quoted, you saying you didn't really see it as this thing that was so bad, like worse than powder cocaine, because you remember like, not like heroin where you see junkies nodding out dead in the street with a needle in their arm. You would watch housewives, mothers, smoke a rock and then go make dinner. Yeah. Right. You saw it as this like, clean house.

thing. Right. Clean house. Well, yeah, definitely clean house. But how bad is crack for you? Does it bring people to their knees? Well, my way that is portrayed in popular culture. My older son's mom was on crack. And heavy smoker. Yeah. And, you know, I heard about the crack, the crack babies. But that came later when she was doing it. We didn't know. There was no such thing as crack baby. But I was, I was. trying to stop her from smoking, but she still, you know, would do it anyway. But he came out perfectly fine. Right. And she would go through her little stuff, but once she would sober up for a couple weeks, she would be normal again.

Right. But I guess that craving would always be there. It's like it was really hard for them to stop a long periods of time. Right. Right. But I never saw any long-term effect. on, you know, people who use crack. So obviously using a drug like cocaine,

whether you're snorting it, shooting it, smoking it, long term, there's terrible health effects, right? Your heart will give out. There's not a lot of people, I imagine, smoking crack that started in 1980. They're still smoking today. I'm sure there are some. My uncle. Your uncle's still smoking?

Wow, he's got a good ticker. He said, he don't see anything wrong with crack. Wow. and he's he functioned as a crackhead this whole time as he had it held a job down? No, he don't work. Okay. Well, this is undermining my point, perhaps making their point. But, but you know, but here's the thing.

Like, I'm just trying because the way, what the government did to justify these incredibly unequal crack to powder sentencing guidelines was by trying to paint crack as the devil's drug as a much worse drug, the powder cocaine. But is crack? that much worse of a drug than powder cocaine? Well, a lot of the things that they put on crack, we found out weren't true. You know, like the crack babies in those commercials,

in the news clippings that they used to do, we found out that those babies were really alcoholic babies. Right. Uh-huh. They weren't crack. Harvard did a study, and they found out that there was no long-term effect of a baby on crack. Wow.

And those babies that they would have on TB shaking and stuff, those were actually alcoholic babies. Uh-huh. So what they did was they wanted to do. was they wanted to paint this picture of the crack dealer, you know, where they would have guys on TV with the guns and the violence so that they could make the loss tougher

because they knew that blacks would be the ones who would get arrested the most. I mean, even with the White House, remember the White House did that sting where the guy... Bush, right, holds up the... Yeah, but, you know, this guy was going to sell the cocaine to him about four miles away from the White House. Right.

And the cops recommended that he go over to the church. church. And they would buy it by the church, so it would be closer to the White House. So it was all kind of little props that they were doing to fear mongering. Yeah, to generate that fear. That's old school fearmongering. I mean, they did that with marijuana back in the day. They, you know, in the 1930s, Reefer Madness, they would show a black man smoking a reefer stick and then going and raping and kidnapping a white woman. Yes. That's really interesting to know, though, because, you know, you saw it firsthand. You were like, what you were doing was, yeah, you're, it's harmful.

Drugs are bad, but you didn't see any discernible difference between the effects of cocaine and, and so-called crack. I would even say that I didn't, even with people who drink alcohol, was worse than crackheads. Right. Which you probably saw a lot of alcoholism in the hood too. Absolutely. I mean, you talk about it in the ghetto. These people are trying to, I guess, what you would say, put a mask over themselves. They're not happy with where they're at. They're not happy with their living facility. They're not happy with not working. So for them, the easiest way is to block it all out.

So whether it's alcohol, cocaine, PCP, P. cigarettes. They're looking for a way to escape their reality. Right. Yes. Unfortunately, that is the case and continues to be so. So now here you are. You've met the plug, basically, right? You've met Henry. I'm in now. You met Henry. Your price goes down? Yeah. I think Henry, the first time we got an ounce for $2,600 was from Henry. Okay. So your price has gone down about $600. Tendously. Okay. Gotcha. At what point do you now start putting other dealers on and step back from hand-to-hand sales? Well, I'm still hand-to-hand most of the time. I'm still standing on the block. Still standing on the block. Yeah, I'm still standing out on the street.

I had two friends, one sold PCP and one sold marijuana, and I knew that they had money. You know, they had been doing this years for years. So I already figured that they had a little money. And I had started to understand now that the more cocaine you buy, the cheaper it gets. So I go to them and I was like, look, you're selling, you're selling PCP sticks. You're making $10 a stick. I sell cocaine. I sell two-tenths of a gram of cocaine.

I get 50 bucks. I said, mine coming 50 at a time. So I'm outdoing you right now. Eventually, I'm going to be richer than you if you don't get involved. So I talked both for them to getting involved. They both bought an ounce apiece. So now we're going, we go on, we're buying maybe four or five ounces at a time. Right.

At first I wasn't making any money off of them. Right. You're just giving it to them on the strength. Yeah. Just to build clientele. Just to build clientele. And to make the connection know that I had some money. Yeah.

You know, I don't want to lose the connect. Right. So my money started to grow even more. So now I'm able to buy a pound. Are you buying it in pound? Yeah, we start off at pounds. They didn't start us off at kilo. They worked me on that.

So you go cop 16 ounces. Yeah, it was so funny when Ivan, when I first got out of prison, Ivan was still alive. Who's Ivan? Tell us who Ivan is? Ivan was the guy who was Henry's boss. Gotcha. Even though Henry's sister was married to Danilo,

I guess Danilo didn't, he didn't really mess with Henry like that for some reason. So Ivan was the boss. And when you say boss, he's the one who's directing all of the distribution of Henry. Okay. Of Henry. So when I started buying 16 ounces, my pool partners, they kept buying ounces.

So I started getting them a couple hundred dollars cheaper. And then Ivan told me, he said, oh, don't tell him how much I give it to you for, because they only buying one ounce. They can just buy from you from now. And they don't even have to come see me no more. Right. Off of each one of them. Yeah. Every time they come.

Yeah. And how fast could they move ounces? Well, they started once a week. Yeah. And then they started once a day. Yeah. Then they started four a day. Then they started 50 a day.

Right, right. So these two guys really took care of everything that I needed eventually. Right. These two guys got up to where they were doing $400,000, $300,000 of purchase. Okay. And how much is that at the time? Like what quantity is that? It's according to what price.

You know, the price fluctuated. Give us an example of somebody spends in 1983, let's say, $300,000. What does I get you, three kilos? No, probably would have got them 10. Okay. 10 kilos. Now, okay, let's clear this up. They call you a crack dealer.

But after your two buddies become your distributors, did you ever sell crack anymore? Yeah, I did. So hand to hand? Or would you actually cook up whole? wholesale. I would cook wholesale. We used to cook up about 200 kilos a night. Stop it. I don't believe you. 200 kilos of Coke, you could cook up into crack. Yeah. How long does that take you? You must have had factory lines. Like three hours. So 200 kilos of crack, how much powder does it take to make all that? 300 kilos. Oh, okay, okay. I mean, 200 kilos. Gotcha, gotcha. Okay, gotcha. So 200 to make 200.

There's no, you're not stretching it. No, that's what, that's, that's a myth that they painted, you know, that the crack was cheap and inexpensive. I mean, it got cheaper. Right. You know, then when I first started, you know, the first kilo I bought, I paid $48,000 for it. Right. The last kilo I bought was like $9,500. Yeah.

So it got cheaper. Yeah. But it wasn't, it wasn't this cheap high, like everybody was saying on the news. Right, right. So 300, 200, 300 kilos of crack. How many people do you have, how many trap houses do you have? How many people do you have helping you cook this stuff? Because you got to sell it too.

No, we cook it at one spot. Wow. We finally, first it was, it was painful cooking. You know, we used to cook, we used to cooking mayonnaise jars. We used to go get mayonnaise jars. We weren't that smart. So we would go to the grocery store. We'd get mayonnaise jars, dump all the man egg out.

We didn't have enough sense to go to the wholesaler. who make jars and buy the jars from then. We would go get the man-egs jars. And then finally somebody turned us on to the beakers. Right. You know, where you go to Kim Lab and buy the beakers. And then we started with quarter-pound beakers. And then we started with five-gallon beakers.

Wow. And then one day I go into this restaurant and I see them with these great big pots and they're cooking all this food. And I was like, holy shit, that'd be great to cook crack in. So how much, how much Coke do you do? dump in one of those big... Like 40 kilos. 40 kilos in one pot.

Yeah. So are you stirring it with like a boat's ore? Yeah, it looks like a boat's or. It's a spoon. They got those industrial spoons. So we'd have one of those industrial spoons. I remember guys,

they want to take a picture of the rocks. I say, hell no. Yeah, right? I mean, we say rocks like this thick and like that big around. Like glaciers. Like pieces of glacier ice. Yeah.

Wow. And I imagine a whole house could get somebody high. Like unless you're We, we Before, before, before I knew that we were getting high, we were just being there with no masks on.

Right. But then eventually we started using the respirators. Wow. Like a hospital. No, no. It was like you paint cars. Oh, gotcha.

Right, right. Because, you know, I painted cars. Yeah. So I knew that, oh, these here will protect you from the paint. So they'll probably protect you from inhaling cocaine. Because we couldn't sleep.

You know, we would be up. Right. We had got hip to the coffee. The cops had started raiding about six in the morning. Oh, okay. You know, they catch you when you sleep. So what we did is we start cooking probably from about 2 in the morning. And then we would be finished about 4, 35 o'clock.

Right. And then get it all out of the house. Get it out of the house. Put in the back of the car, have everything stacked up for the next day. So you've got 200 kilos of crack. And then how many guys are you getting that off to? I don't know. Probably, we probably had about 15, 20 guys.

And this is all still. local in LA, right? Oh, no, these guys will come from all over. Okay, great. So let's, this is a perfect opportunity to talk about how the Crips, uh, expanded. They, you know, began in L.A. But they began to basically franchise or export all over the country. Crips and the Bloods. Crips and the Bloods. Uh, you know, somebody could take an ounce of Coke, uh, buy it in Los Angeles for, you know, the cheapest in the country, take it to St. Louis. And, you know, boom, now he's a junior kingpin. Yeah.

I was selling in St. Louis. St. Louis is where I caught my first federal case in. Okay, save that, because we're definitely going to get into that. But you have, now you have workers. You call them workers, but are they just guys that are buying from you? Yeah, they just buy customers. Right, right. So you have people.

And then I created my customers, too. You know, I would grow guys. Right. You know, I would look for guys that was in the same position that I was in. You know, when I used to ask the pimps, hey, put me down. Put me up. Right. So I used to look for guys that, uh, that was like that.

Mm-hmm. Yeah. You called it giving micro loans. You, you were kind of the bank. Yeah. You know? Because they didn't have money. Right.

You know. And this was selling crack was, it's different today. But back then, it was a real viable economic option for somebody from the hood that didn't have a lot of opportunity. Oh, absolutely. A lot of people started businesses with, from selling crap. Right. And do you know, like you obviously didn't get away with it, but there had to have been

some guys who made some quick money and got out the game. Yeah, that was a few. You know, because there's millions of dollars were going through the streets. Very disciplined guys. Those guys were like really, really, you know, they would set a number for themselves. Me, I tried to quit a couple times. My problem was is that some of my friends didn't get in on time. And so they was like, oh man, you can't quit. You got to just do this for me. You got to put me down. Yeah, just put me down. And what made you different? What made you different? What made you? you the guy. Is it because you had the best price? Because you had the best connect? Well, all of that played a part in it, you know, and saving my money. I think saving the money

probably was was the key. You know, having, having cash money on hand is like king, you know. Right. Because now you don't work for anybody. You control your own fate. Once I got into the nigger robin connection, they started like going against each other. You know, like they would come by the house, man, you know he's charging you too much money. Right. I can give it to you cheaper. Now you are becoming almost more powerful than your own connects because they need you so bad because you're moving it so fast. So now you've got-

And that was my strategy too. I wanted to be, I wanted them to depend on me. Remember I told you? Yeah. You know, I should like when they go buy a business for their wife or buy a new car, you know, when I see them do that, you know, I should tell the homies, oh, he, he, he, biting right into what we want to do. And you didn't learn this from anybody. That's the thing.

You didn't see, it doesn't seem like you really grew up watching business, even street business guys. No. I just picked it up. I don't know. I don't know. I mean, when you're dealing in cocaine crack, you're dealing with some really smart people. You know, people who were buying cocaine for me was pretty smart. You know, my pimps, you know, they can make a woman go out there and, and they believe that they could get almost anyone.

to go out and sell their body. Yeah. So you're talking about guys that are smart. Yeah. And then you're talking about lawyers and doctors. Yeah. You know, these are like the upper echelon people. Right.

So they teaching me business, even though they may not have been purposely trying to do it. But I'm learning from them as I go. And then, you know, I wanted to know. You know, I wanted to have a game. Yeah. And I learned from tennis too, you know, from tennis. tennis, like when I started playing tennis, I didn't have money to take lessons, but Larry and Troy and those guys were taking lessons. They had sponsors that was paying for them to go take lessons.

So I would go to them when they take their lessons and I would just watch and learn from what they would get and talk. So I kind of become kind of like a guy that could copy, you know, what I saw. Totally. And I think tennis also opened up your world a little bit. Like I think sometimes, you know, guys from the hood, their world is so insulated. Oh, yeah. Like, I think tennis and going to Dorsey, going to, which is an affluent Baldwin Hills, I think that, you know,

I think the best drug dealers, the best businessman, always have a bigger worldview. And they're able to associate with people of means at a younger age and see what's possible. Yeah, tennis opened so many doors for me. Yeah. I got to go places that I didn't even, you know, Beverly Hills.

I had never heard of Beverly Hills. And now I'm in somebody's backyard playing. tennis. Yeah. How wild is that, right? Yeah. It's inspiring. It is.

It is. And you get in to see like, oh, people ain't living like us. Right. You know, these people got, I used to play with this kid, Jonathan Canter. His grandfather was an owner of Orbach's. And the tennis coach knew that I didn't have money. So he set me up where I would go up there and they would pay me like $20 an hour to play with this kid.

Good money. And when you see, they got a tennis courthouse that was bigger than. in our house and they sitting out on the balcony and they got waiters. And you're like, wow. People live like this here and their house look like a park. You know, like this is what I want. Did you think you were going to get that when the crack started booming?

Was that your goal to get out and live like that? No, I didn't think out. When I started selling crack, I had my mindset had left tennis. I'd become a low rider. Yeah. Did you have a number in mind? Did you have like, okay.

$5,000. When me and I started, we wanted, $5,000. That's what we wanted. And that was good enough. Yeah, I was going to get my car finish from the Skill Center, paint it. Mike was going to paint it. The guy who introduced me to cocaine. He was going to paint my car for me. I was going to get my interior. I was going to go buy some rims. It cost $2,000. And I was going to live in my mom's garage. The rest of my life. And you made it. I made it. Okay. So then when you got your first million, what was the goal after that? Did you have a number? Did you say, okay, $50 million? Because you're

bring it in like a million a day. Well, you know, it got so easy, right? Yeah. Like I was telling you, one day you're making $20 a week and then next day, you know, you're making that every day. Yeah. Then you're making $100 a day. Then you're making $5,000 a day. And it just kept growing. Right. So when I was up to a million bucks, you know, I'm probably making $100,000 a day without even thinking about it. Right. You know, the money is really making the money. Yeah. You know, all I had to do was go buy the cocaine, bring it to South Central L.A. that everybody know I had it. Yeah.

And they would come and buy it. Okay, so certainly, so now you've got people coming from Texas, Ohio. You said Cincinnati was one of the best markets. Why was Ohio is such a good crack market? Because the price was high. Price was high, totally. Ohio, St. Louis. St. Louis, probably where I sold the highest kilo, I think I sold one kilo for 68,000.

Wow. And is that a kilo of crack? No, it was powder. Okay. So when guys were coming from out of town to pick up from you, a lot of these are a lot of these gang members from L.A. that you knew as a kid that have now gone to different markets. Both. Okay. Were they, so if somebody was coming to pick up, to re-up from you, and they lived in Kentucky, would you sell them powder or would you, would it already be cooked up for them?

According to what they asked for. According to what they ask for. I get them what they want. Okay. So it could be a both. Yeah. Now, did you charge more for the cookup because you had to do the labor? No, uh-uh. Okay. Interesting. This is, wow. I had no idea the economies work the same way. But I assume they make a lot more money when they sell it out in little crackstones than they would if they sold off wholesale powder. The rock just makes it easier to sell than the powder. You know, powder is loose. You know, a rock you can put in your hand and roll it around. But also it's the ghetto drug. So it's an easy thing to market when you take it back to black neighborhoods. You know, and I know a lot of of white people start coming down. Did you have any affluent white people that sold? I didn't really sell white people. Okay. Okay. I didn't need to. Yeah. No. I built my own clientele. Yeah. You know, I took my guys. Like what I did, one day we, we, we went, when I'm, I'm still small in it at this time, but all of my guys that I hung out with, you know, from my neighbor that we play football and we all grew up together, I called them all over my mom house, probably about 20, 25 guys.

Wow. And I sit them in the backyard and I talk to them. I'm giving a seminar. And I'm telling them about how I got started. Yeah. You know, and I'm telling them that I'm getting ready to give all of them what I started with, which was three grams. Wow. And if they did what they were supposed to do, then they would make it.

I also told them not to smoke. You know, I schooled them on smoking. Like, if you smoke it, this stuff is so good. You're not going to stop. Yeah. And this is before we knew it was addictive. We just thought it was just so great. The greatest feeling in the world.

Did you ever smoke? I did a couple times. Yeah. And did you enjoy it? No. It made you feel tweaky or? I don't even remember, you know, but it wasn't something that, uh, the main thing is that when I did, it was when I got my first ounce. And, uh, everybody was telling me, oh, you rich, celebrate, you know, my cousins and all that.

So what we did. They put it in some weed and we, we were smoking it. when I look up, a couple days later, my money was gone. Wow. And so I said to myself that I'm never going to do it again. Right. Yeah. Because a guy like you, a real money man, when anything messes with that money, you'll leave it alone.

Exactly. Yeah. What was your height? Your run, you have a run from about 81 to when you first get arrested in, I think, 88 or 89? 87. 87. In those years, what was the biggest year? 85, 86. Okay. What do you think you were doing? You know, they say a million a day. That's what the government alleges. Do you think you were moving about a million dollars a day? Every day, yeah. Every day. And you worked every day? That was easy. A million was easy a day. Yeah. So so much money now you're purchasing. You don't spend money, but you invest it. You're buying properties. We're buying properties. What did your property portfolio look like at its height when you were making a million dollars? I think they're about 15 million.

What kind of properties? Motels, lots. I was building motels myself. Wow. So I had bought lots. I was getting ready to build four motels. That was going to be my exit. I was going to build four motels.

I already had the one done, and I had the lots and the plans and permits for two other ones that I, as a matter of fact, I started doing one already. The bulldozer was over digging the hose and everything. I had another one in Long Beach that it was an old. run down motel that I was buying. Did you own warehouses for, you know, obviously to move this much cocaine takes stashes, traps, cooks, you know, places to put your money.

I stashed in cars, though. Oh, interesting. That's why the cops can never find it dope. Wow. So you'd take a million bucks, five million bucks, and put it in the trunk of a car. Like, we would get, like, we would get apartment over in Westwood. with the underground parking. Right.

And then we would just park the car in there. And you're over there in Westwood by UCLA. Yeah. The safest neighborhood in L.A. They never thought we'd be over there. Then the dope, what we would do is like these little cheap motels that you see around here. Yeah. We would just pull the car up in that motel, rent the room, and leave the car there.

This is brilliant. So now you have no fixed, you have no fixed place for them to get warrants. It seems like it's a constantly moving. Right. They couldn't. That's why they started fast. fabricating search warrants. Okay, okay.

We kind of push the cops into going crooked. Okay, great. So by 87, you already have a, there is an LAPD task force dedicated solely to bringing you and OLLI, your partner, down. Yeah. Tell us about that. I didn't know about them until they raided, they raided Maryland's house, one of my girlfriends. Okay.

They raided her house. I was in St. Louis, because I was setting up in St. Louis. I'm like, shit. I can get $6,800 a guy. kilo in St. Louis, I'm moving there. Sixty-eight thousand, yeah. Sixty-eight thousand a kilo, and I'm paying at that time maybe like 13,000 a kilo. Wow. So I'm like... And how many kilos are you buying at a time? 100, 150, 200 sometimes. And how often are you re-upping? Probably every day. So you got about 200 bricks every day. And this is, you're dealing now... But that's for L.A.

That was just for L.A. That wasn't for St. Louis. St. Louis. I think I sent like, I think I sent like maybe 10 kilos down there. first time. Right. But L.A. was where, you know, L.A. was like the generator. Of course. This was the hub. Yeah. And I had set up a system here where I didn't need to be here no more. Right. You know, my guys could do everything, you know. And I kind of felt like I wasn't needed anymore. Uh-huh. You know, like. Are you dealing with Blondon, Danilo Blondon now directly? Yeah. Okay. And he, do you know, he was dealing with Pablo? His, his supplier was the many of him. I don't know who he was dealing with. Okay. I, uh, I, Did you ever meet Paolo Escobar or any of the Colombians?

I don't think so. I met, he said, he said I met Menesis, but I don't even remember. I met so many of their friends. You know, we would go to the bar together, the restaurants, and people would be there. And some of those guys don't speak English. Yeah. So, you know, I didn't really know. And I wasn't caring anyway.

No, of course. Like, he used to try to get me to go to Mexico with him. You know, come to Mexico. Let's buy direct. And, you know, I don't really. You know, I'm making enough money already. You don't make $200,000 profit a day. What more do I need?

Right, right. And when you buy... I'm a South Central boy that, you know, four or five years ago I couldn't even put gas in my car. And now you've made it. Like you're, it's beyond your wildest dreams. Yeah, I probably got like 20 houses, you know, six or seven apartment buildings.

I got the one motel. My motel, when we first opened it, it was making like $5,000 a week itself. Legitimate. Yeah, legitimate money. Like with, you know, renting, renting rooms being a business. When you buy, are you buying 200 keys or do they give you some?

No, I'm buying everything. I think I think the one time Danilo might have let me go with like $30,000 or something on a $3 million deal. But you are your own man. They don't control you. No, no. Because there's rumors. You know what I should do to them? I should stack all my money on the floor like here.

We'd be sitting here. And then I let them come in the house. I call them, hey, come by the house. And they come by and the money. sitting here. What you're going to do with that? And you know what I'm doing by dope today. That's right. That's right. So we had somebody. And that's how I got my price down. Okay. Gotcha. So you're paying about 13,000 a key come around 1987. Yeah. Okay. This is dirt cheap cocaine. That's the highest quality. Not stepped on, I assume, as soon as it gets to you.

Straight off the boat. Yeah. That's right. That's right. You are your own man. Because we had somebody in here who said, who claimed that they, you were a work. So I just need to put that to rest. I was like Rick Ross was not a worker. He was a boss. I'm a worker for myself. That's right. That's right.

You were a distributor, but you were never put on. You were never, uh, I wouldn't front at no dope. You weren't fronted any dope. No. That's right. So by 87, how did you tell us about this task force, this LAPD task force aimed at taking you down? Well, the first time I heard about them was, um, they,

I read in Maryland's house. Yeah. I was in St. Louis. And Ray caused me problems to. And they said they found dope in her house. And they took her to jail. And I was like, ain't no dope in that house. I never take no dope in here.

So, you know, and I was kind of like, I want to she start using drugs? You know, you're thinking like that there, right? Yeah. So we bail her out. And I go see the lawyer, and I'm telling the lawyer that these cops are planting drugs. You know, I don't even know they line on search ones, too.

You know, they never crossed my mind that they also line on search once. But I just figured that, you know, I would tell him and he was like, oh, cops don't, Alan Finster. Oh, cops don't plant drugs. What are you talking about? Are you crazy? Yeah. What is this blasphemy? A cop would never do anything dishonest.

Yeah. And then he, I mean, he just popped out and said, yeah, if they planted drugs on me, I would hire a private investigator. And I was like, oh yeah, you know one. That's a good idea, Mr. Finster. So we hired a guy named Frenchie, who was an ex-sheriff. And he's the one that came and told us that the task force was called the Freeway to Rick Task Force. Wow. And so you had this private.

And how did you figure out that your hunch was right, that they were, in fact, writing fake false search warrants, planning dope on people? We didn't even know about the search ones. It took a long time. I mean, I couldn't, I couldn't, I could not, I couldn't fantasize a cop fabricating a search one. I mean, that's, that's some serious. Yeah, corruption. That's some serious corruption. You fabricated a search one to go in somebody's house, you know, like, you could get, the city could get sued up the yang, yeah, something like that there, you know.

So, so it was, it was unbelievable that they would do that. But that was happening. It was happening, yes. Wow. What about, did you ever bribe the cops? Did you ever pay cops in any way? I never, I never had contact with him. Wow.

The first time I had contact with them was one night, for some reason we couldn't get no drugs that night and that day. And so it was like a day off, you know? So we go to YMCA, me and, me and Ali and Corneo, Coach Ward. We go to, right over the way. here right of fact on king boulevard it was a ymca right there up in the jungle so we go there and we playing basketball yeah i i become an advocate basketball player okay i mean i was taking basketball lessons you know on how to shoot the ball wow yeah my man onion was was teaching me how to shoot the

ball and um he he played in the NBA i was working with him on his footwork from tennis and he was showing me how to shoot the ball so i was advocate basketball player so we were leaving there and we had left we had left Cornell's car at Manchester Park so I was taking him back to get his car

and we were passing out Western where I used to have my tire and wheel shop and car washing stuff at and we looked I had these big glass

windows at my place and we looked in and we saw all the guys like standing in the showroom and I was like oh man everybody's there probably about 30 guys so we go

we park in the alley I hide my car you know I kind of figure the sheriffs might know when my car So I hide my car in the alley and we walk in and we're talking to everybody and, you know, just shooting it, shooting the normal. Yeah.

So when I got ready to leave, they break the dice game up and everybody walked me out. And they walked me back to the alley where my car was at. Well, apparently the sheriffs had just raided. It's crazy. They had one of my guys in the car with him. And he told me the whole story. and they was just like he said they say oh let's pass by a big palace you know after the raid after they raided his house they was like let's pass by big palace and so when they passed by

they saw me oh i see they saw me right and uh we walked and got in the car and uh anyway we had a high speed chase you know they chased me in the car now why would you why would you run from the cops you're richer than god at this point because they're talking about they're going to kill me Wow. They didn't put the word out of it. They're going to kill me. They had just raided Ali's house like two weeks before. Yeah.

And they put a plastic bag over his head. Because, you know, we had these big safes in the house. Yeah. Even though we didn't keep money in them no more, but we still had these safes in the house. So, you know, Ali was, you know, Ollie was a hard nose. You know, he was like, fuck y'all, I ain't opening the safe for it. Even though it's nothing in there, he still wouldn't open a safe for him. He's not going to cooperate with him at all.

So they took him and put a plastic bag over his head. Holy shit. Yeah. So this is the LAPD. And the sheriffs both. Wow. You know, they took, you know, the Freeway Task Force was like two of the most elite cops from all around this area. Wow.

So they took the two mostly elite narcotic agents from 77, 108, Linwood, Firestone, and they put all these guys together and they became this elite task force. Just to take down you and Ollie. Well, they did more than just us. but because they had a track record of taking down guys. I mean, you know, they took down everybody that went after. Who going to beat them? Right. They brought the drugs with them.

Now, did they... How do you beat that? Was there evidence of them jacking drugs and then reselling them? Nobody ever accused them of reselling the drugs. No. Well, because I'm trying to figure out because... But what they did do, if they would raid you and you would have more kilos than they needed to give you the kind of time they would do, they would take those kilos out. Yeah. And then they would put those kilos on me. Right. Like now you got it.

You're doing time for this. Right. Okay. So, because this all comes into play when you first get arrested. You take you, you, you avoided this task force. They never took you down. No. They never pinned anything on you. No. They can, they never caught me. Right. Because I got, then that night they, we had the high speed chase. I get away. Oh, you got away? Yeah. What did you drive? Didn't you drive like a sob or something? A station wagon. A station I had a station wagon. Dude, you are an artist. I beat them, though. You know, because I knew the, you know, I know the street.

So I just did like a little, little thing that I was taught from, you know, from stealing cars. You know, they taught me like going to back yard one way and they come back out on the other side of the house and they usually going to miss you. Right. And, you know, I did one of those little maneuvers. Yeah. And I got away from them. Yeah. But they caught Al again.

Right. You know, beat him in the head again. So Al had told me that they wanted to kill. me. And, uh, matter of fact, when they pulled on the side of our car, because they put on the side of us before, you know, before we took off. And, you know, he let his window down and we could see his, his patch on the, on the thing that he was the police, because I was going to shoot. I had his gun. He was ready to start. She was like, if they jackers, I'm going to, I'm going to give it to him. And then he said, oh, shit, that's Tomar. And, and, uh, we all knew who Tomar was.

Tomar was, uh, his nickname was Diablo, the devil. Wow. And he was the head of the task force. Wow. And he sounds like a killer. Sounds like a mean son of a bitch. Yeah, he was pretty mean. At very least. He was pretty mean. Now, at this time, you didn't carry a gun. No, I didn't. I mean, I did sometimes. Yeah.

Like if I go to the, if I go to the skating ring or if I go to a club or something like that there, where I know I would be in a vulnerable place. Yeah. Now, in South Central, I didn't carry a gun. Right. Because you move with bodyguards when you were in South Central, right? No. I didn't have no bodyguards. No. Okay. I'm just reading. I'm just reciting your Wikipedia page because there's a lot of myths out there. People put that on there. And I didn't feel like I needed a bodyguard in South Central. Plus,

you know, I kind of, I'll be kind of like hard to see. Why? Because your stature? People just don't see me. Right. You know, they didn't see me. You're a very low-key guy. Yeah, so I look like everybody, you know. But this, I find it fascinating because you operated with a total business mind. Like you're, and this is not to dish you. It's your, it's known. Sometimes you will get jacked. People would jack you for keys and you would say, let him go. Well, not jack me for keys, but they would run off with a key.

Run off of the key. Yeah, I'd give it to them. One of my models was is that if I give it to them, they didn't take it. Right. I gave it to them. Right. So then not only you don't really lose respect and. Well, I didn't really care about how people look at how I do my business.

you know, by me not being hard nose like that. I looked at it as smart business. You know, say for instance, you know, somebody might owe us $200,000 and then the guys want to go and do whatever to them. I'm like, okay, if we go do that, now I'm going to have to bail all your ass out of jail. You know, that's going to be $50,000.

a piece. I'm going to have to go hire Alan Fenster. You know, if you come in his office, he won't 50,000. Yeah, just to talk to you. Yeah, just to talk to you. And then if you go to trial, it's going to be 100,000. Right. So now you're talking about for 200,000, we're probably going to wind up spending $500,000 trying to keep your ass out of jail. Doesn't make any sense. And now that that guy who ran off with the keys, guess what? He gets paid once. Now, now what's he going to do? So, but most drug dealers, kingpins don't think like that. But that's a, you know, I was the same way when I was out in the streets. Yeah.

And I think, too, your lack of violence, I mean, I don't know how many bodies were linked back to, you know, people that worked with you or sold your product. But I think that probably helped in when you got resentenced back in the 90s from your life sentence. I think that probably helped you get a lower sentencing guideline. Well, definitely violence. You know what I mean? Violence definitely plays a point. in the citizen guideline mechanism.

But it gives you goodwill in the community. Totally. You know, the community appreciates you when, you know, you didn't, you wasn't a bully. You know, because you could be a bully if you wanted to.

Totally. You had enough money to be a bully. I mean, I could be a bully right now. Yeah. You know, I know the guys, you know, some of my friends just getting out of prison,

you know, 45 years when I'm did. You know, went to jail when he was like 18 years old. And he's really a maniac. Yeah. You know, and he hangs out at my house. You know, he comes by my house almost every day because we, you know, we went to school together at junior high school.

And, you know, I had to keep guys like that, oh, man, stay cool, don't do nothing. Stay out of jail. Yeah. You know, so it's easy to be a bully. Yeah. You know, when you're from South Central, it's easy to be a bully. It's plenty of guys around there that want to win points, you know. And for them, you know, shooting a gun or killing somebody, they feel like that's easy work.

Was anybody mad? Was anybody jealous that this, you know, short guy, short unassuming tennis player, you know, didn't have any girls back then. He was kind of, you know, just kind of like the, almost like the younger brother figure. Were they mad that he had now blown up to be the biggest, biggest dealer in America? They wouldn't tell me that, though. No, of course not. But they said you walked around with a vest with a bulletproof vest on. So clearly you knew you had some enemies. It was a time that, that it was a little rumor out that all of the drug dealers, you know, some of the, you know, some of the. them I helped come up and had got together and they was like, man, Rick selling cocaine too cheap. You know, he's taking all the customers. Right. You know, let's get rid of him. Right.

Did you take that seriously? I did. I did. Yeah. So you started to move. Because you never know how, you know, how other people, you know, they mind be twisted sometimes. So I started wearing a bulletproof vest and started carrying my gun a little more.

Were you the exclusive distributor for the Nicaraguans in Los Angeles or do they have other customers? I don't know. Okay. Now, let me ask you this. During that time, during that run, did you ever suspect that your Nicaraguan suppliers were being protected by the government? No. I didn't think they liked the government.

Okay. This is important because later on, I mean, you had no idea about Iran-Contra during the 80s when you were moving all these drugs. But a lot of your drug money that you were given to them, they were buying guns. and sending him to Nicaragua with the help of the CIA. Correct. So you were part of this historical drama that you weren't even aware of at the time. Correct. Wow.

So 87, you catch your first case, a Fed case. No, I caught my first Fed case in 80, maybe 84 or maybe might have. I beat the case though. You beat your Fed case in 84? I beat my first Fed case. Where was that out here? St. Louis. Okay.

You beat in St. Louis. But the first time you actually go to. prison. No, I didn't go to prison until 89. And that was a... I go to, I go to, I get arrested in 87 from the, from the, from the, from the sheriffs. Okay. The cops. They arrested me in 87. Okay. I only do about 40 days on that case, though. What did they have anything on you? They planted the drugs. But remember, they had never saw me, right? So what they did is I turned myself in. It was so crazy. And the day I turned myself in. We, we, we in the courtroom, right?

and I've been all over the news because the cops said I shot at them. You know, they put on the news, I shot at the cops. Okay, so they lied too. They lied. They shot at me, but they say I shot at them first

because they shot when they were shooting, they shot in these people house. This is during the high speed? Yeah, this is during the high speed. So I jump out of the car and run and they start shooting at me, bang, bang, so they shoot up in these people house. And then they put on the news that I shot first.

Right. So my mom is crying, and she she wants me to turn myself in because I'm all over the news. Shoot to kill, dangerous, you know, be careful. So my mom called me. She's crying. Oh, baby, turn yourself in.

So I say, all right, I call Allen Fincher. I was like, man, I'm going to turn myself in. Can you set up everything? I don't want to turn myself into these cops, though. I want to go straight to the judge. Right. Because I already know, these cops are roofless. I don't want no plastic bag over my head.

Right. I don't want to, you know, no. You know, I don't want to go through all that. I don't want to get hit in the head with no flashlights. I don't want none of that stuff. Then we go into the judge, you know, I'll be good. So he set it up. And we're in the courtroom.

We're in the hallway. And my friend is sitting down in the hall. And he's like, these cops. And he said, they kept saying, man, that guy down there looked like Rick Ross. And then he come and tell me. So I just go in the courtroom because they can't arrest you in the courtroom. But they can get you in the hallway.

Okay. If you're in the hallway of the courtroom, cops can arrest you, but once you step inside the courtroom, they can't do it. So I just went inside the courtroom after he told me what they were saying. They was looking at me. So I turned myself in, the judge, take me into custody. I'm hoping I get a bail, right? Yeah, right.

He gives me a bill, a million dollars, but he put a 12, 255 on it. You know, normally... Which is what? 1255, meaning that all the money, all the property, everything has to go under investigation. You know, they have to verify that it was not drug money, that the property is not, you know, purchase with drug money. So we do that. So I go to jail.

They take me to the county jail. I can't bail out, you know, because of the $12.55. And you're being charged with shooting at cops? Shooting their cops and selling, they planted drugs too. Okay. How many tell us about that? They planted two kilos on me. In the car or in the house where they're, or in the house where they?

arrested you. No, they didn't arrest me. They never arrested me. How do they plant you with drugs when you're not even not even not even on your person? Yeah, what they say happened is when I jumped out the car, I dropped my guys, they say they, they, they, well, because when I jumped out the car, Cornell said he put the car in park, stopped the car and put in the park because I let the car running. It was rolling when I jumped out. I think they're going to kill me. So I'm running for my life. Yeah. It's not just, I'm trying to get away. I'm running for my life. So, um, Cornell put the car in park. He said once they cuffed them up and everything,

they put the kilos right by the door to car where the door was open. They took pictures of it and said, I dropped the bag as I dropped out. The judge, the judge, he kind of roasting him too because the judge was, he was like, why would the head guy jump out with the dope? He got two of his underlings in here. Right, right. And then they said when they followed me out the shop, they said I had a gun too. So when we walked out with like 30 guys,

the judge scolded him about this. And he said, so you're telling me that Mr. Ross walked out with 30 guys and he was the one carrying a gun? Right. And this is the same guy that you guys been in here telling me

all these, how smart he is and how brilliant he is and that you guys can't catch him. Yeah. He said, keep telling your story. Wow. So the judge is already. Doesn't believe these cops.

He doesn't believe him. He's already questioning their credibility already. Wow. So when they took me back to the county jail, the cops come to the county jail. Are you in L.A. downtown? Yeah. And they took me back into a little room and they interviewed me. And that's what killed their case.

So they recorded this conversation too. So when they, when they turned the tape in, the tape was all spliced and cut up. And they should have called my lawyer and told my lawyer that they wanted to come and see me, you know, and got his permission. They just violated so much stuff. So the judge was like, this is an embarrassment to the thing. And the prosecutor, he still argued trying to keep the case. And the judge was like, you should be glad that you didn't have nothing to do with this.

Wow. Because they were, I mean, it was a complete mishandling of the process. Everything was. What was that investigation like? I was rough. Did they beat you up? They did. They did.

And they recorded it too. Why would they do that? He sounded like the dumbest cops They was dumb Wow I mean If I was a cop I could have got me

Yeah You know You could have got you Yeah It probably took you know A month Yeah Maybe a little work

Yeah You know put in a little work You take Do a little time You know Do your job Right You know what I'm saying

Don't Don't just try to Come and circumvent Your job And take a shortcut And that was a problem That I had With these cops

They weren't really They weren't willing to do their job. They was willing to take a shortcut to get the end result. And so they were trying to beat a confession out of you. That's what that interrogation was about. Yeah. But they didn't want, I mean, they couldn't have wanted that tape to be played in court.

To surface. Wow. Well, and you know what's so fascinating about this time is like if this were today, that would be the DEA. It wouldn't be local cops. It would be chasing a guy making, you know, $200,000 a day. So that... I think back then, though, they were saying,

You know, because one of the cops, you know, we interviewed one of the cops on the documentary for my documentary. Yeah. And he said that nobody believed that we were making that kind of money. Yeah. I believe him, though. That's, it's unbelievable. Because I think when it was in the, the crack era really started a boom, it was such a, a phenomena to where you, I mean, it's like, it's stunning. It's stunning.

Now in history, we can, we can look back in history now and be like, oh, yeah, there were, there were probably a few records. crosses, you know, but yeah, when you're in it at the time, it just seems like too crazy to believe. But moving on, you eventually go to prison when they get you, where they put a case on you for some kilos that had to do with St. Louis and Texas. Well, you caught the two strikes in one. No, no, no, that was Cincinnati in Texas. Okay, I'm sorry, Cincinnati in Texas. Yeah, yeah.

Quickly, what happened? How many keys did they get you put you with? Cincinnati, Cincinnati, they, they, the first indictment said 40, 40, 40 some kilos a month was what Cincinnati said. Okay. On the first indictment. Did they actually get you with any dope? No, no dope. You know, the feds don't really need dope.

Right. So they just got you on a racketeering case, essentially snitches. Yeah, people saying that they saw you at this time. and estimating how many kilos you moved a month. Right. And you were able, so they originally were going to, what were you looking at for that? What were you originally looking at?

I could have probably got it. I could have probably got a license in Cincinnati. Right, right. Because they were saying 49 kilos a month for a year, year and a half. So you talk about if you add that up, you're talking about 400-something kilos. Right.

Maybe, maybe, you know, 20, 30 years. I could have gotten. Yeah, easily, easily. Because by now the statutes, the federal statutes, are giving that kind of time away to Kingpins. You got two strikes, two federal strikes, which I didn't even know there were strikes in the feds. You got two strikes for this crime.

But that went in Texas. My cousins in Texas got indicted. I had two twin cousins that I had started out, and they got pretty big. Yeah. And they got arrested in Texas. They turned on you? No.

One had called. me and was asking me for some cocaine. I was mad at him, though. You know, they had been going other places. And I was like, I ain't messing with y'all no more. And when he called me, he was like, man, you got anything? I was like, no, I ain't got nothing. But they indicting me anyway. So they were tapping his phone? His phones was tapped. Yeah. Wow. One of my guys that used to be one of my guys was serving him. So when they arrested him and them, they said, oh no, he said no, but he sent Chris. Wow, and that was enough.

They indicted me for that. Wow. And I was looking at 40 years, and they made me a deal for 10 years where I would only have to do five, so I took the deal. Now, did you? Even though I was innocent. Right. I was innocent of that case, but.

But the two strikes, this is important to your story because later on back when you caught your case at 95. Yeah. But I was really innocent of that case, though. Right. I just took the deal because it made sense. Yeah. It made sense to do five years rather than taking chance on doing 40.

Yeah, especially when you're going up against the feds. Now, did you actually end up cooperating against those cops in exchange for a lower sentence? Yeah, I did. Not really for a lower sentence, but. The cops, I'm sorry, the LA, the Task Force cops. Yeah. Yeah. I had already, I mean, that was my investigation.

I started that investigation. So that was really my investigation. So, yeah, I hired the investigator who gave them all the evidence that they used. You know, he was the guy, he gave him all the witnesses and everything. So that was my investigation. And so do those cops end up going to prison? I think six did. Wow.

35 got suspended. Yeah. And six actually went to prison. Wow. Short periods of time. Right. It's really hard to get jurors to, go against cops for known felons.

Especially back then. Especially back then. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Really back then, probably even worse. So everybody who testified against the cops,

you know, were gang members and drug dealers. Right. So, you know. Yeah, it's hard because they're not, it's criminals that are testifying against them. It's, yeah.

So the credibility is, is low. But you were telling the complete truth because, look what happened to you. Exactly. So you do about five years, little less than five in the feds. You get out.

Do you say I'm done? I was done. I was done with cocaine. I had, I'd been looking at the music business. Me and Harrios was Sellies when they started Def Row. So I'd already been looking at the music business.

Who's Harrios? Harrio. Who is that? He's the guy that started Def Row with Shield Knight. Okay. Oh, I didn't know that. Yeah. So me and him was Sally. So I was there when they started death row. Wow. Okay.

We were Sally's when they started death row. Wow. So I saw what happened with the music business. So I said, you know what? I just do some music. And I already had some music connections too. You know, I've been messing with Otis Smith, who I knew from back my tennis days. Otis had introduced me to Dick Griffey and Barry Gordy. So I had those contacts already. I just needed to put them in the play. And now while you were gone, obviously you famously, purchased a theater, right? And South Central?

The theater right there on Crenshaw and Adams. Right. Okay. And so you want to develop this and renovate it, but you're bleeding money at this point. You're spending a lot of money when you're locked in. Well, when I got out of prison, I bought that before I went to prison. Right. Yeah, I put 900,000 down on it before I went to prison.

Yeah. And I owe 300 on it. And the terms, we hadn't negotiated the terms and the contracts wasn't done. You know, I literally just gave them the money. without the contracts being done. And then my girlfriend was supposed to finish the deal for me. Well, she wasn't supposed to finish the deal. But once I went to prison, I was getting her to finish the deal for me.

Right. And she wasn't really motivated to do all the stuff. And anyway, they gave me a trouble, terrible terms on the money. Yeah. But yeah, that was going to be, I wanted to make that like the West Coast Apollo. I felt that that would give me a toe hole on the rap game. Right. It probably would have for sure.

Yeah, it would have been, it would have been the place. The place held like 4,500 people. Yeah. So it would have been the place that rappers come through and sell out and, yeah, maybe even their careers break from that. Yeah. Yeah. No, that's a, that's a, was a great idea. Um, unfortunately, when you're in prison, you don't have a lot of, you rely on everybody on the outside to do their jobs. And a lot of people just don't do it. No, they leave you for dead. Right. Exactly. Now, what about all your hotels and your houses and your houses and your, you're, you're, you're not. You're not. You're not. You're properties. Did you lose those when you went away? Yeah. Family wouldn't collect rents. And it was trouble. You know, I'm getting a letter from one letter after another one. Foreclosure, foreclosure. So you didn't really set up your legitimate infrastructure very well, the way that you had your crack empire.

I didn't know. I didn't know nothing about business. I never did business. You know, I never took Section 8 checks before. All that stuff was new to me. Right. Right. And it happened to you so fast at such a young age.

It doesn't seem like you really had time to go. And my mom, my mom, she didn't, you know, my mom was. on welfare. So she didn't really know either. And, you know, none of my relatives, you know, nobody, I didn't have nobody say, hey, let's get a McDonald's, you know. Right. Let's buy a couple of McDonald's. Let's buy something that made sense. Everybody, well, now, you know, when I, when I look back at my life, everybody around me was just basically feeding off of me. Yeah. You know, not coming with, with ideas. And that's kind of like, you know, where I'm at now today. You know, now I know to go and get people like Deidre. That's right.

Right. Right. Because I know she knows her business. Yeah. You know, she'll keep me on the right track, you know, because I'll stay on the right track if I know what track I'm supposed to be on. Yeah. You know, I'll get on the wrong track too. Yeah.

But when you have people that really have your best interests at heart and really want to see the business thrive, you know, for the sake of the business and not just their to take everything that they can get from you. Yeah. And that's what's happening with me. Even all my friends that I grew up with, they became more takers than givers. Well, probably because the money comes so easily

when you're in the game like that, that you're not forced to develop, you know, greater business skills. Because look, it's white dope, dirty money. It's the easiest thing to do. It's a crutch. Right, it's a crutch. And definitely when you got out of prison,

this time, I think you were taking advantage of by people in the legitimate world. So I'm glad to see that you're doing so well and that we're going to plug these ventures and these things you have going on at the end. But, you know, we have to talk about after you got out of prison in the 90s, you were good. You said you weren't going to go back to the game. You were determined to not go back to the game. You were, I think you were like, what were you doing? You had like some menial job when you came home.

Yeah, I was doing cleanups on construction sites. Cleanups on construction sites, gone from making a million dollars a day to, did that crush your soul a little bit? No. Money don't make me. No, it doesn't. I can tell that. No. When I was in prison with no money, I still was like, I'm Rick Ross.

Yeah. Because you have this mind. You develop this strength of character all from your mind. I'm a win. I'm a win. Yeah. Yeah. I'm going to do what it takes to win.

But, but. still in 95, your old friend, Danilo Blandon, who, you know, the head of the Nicaraguans in the 80s trafficking Coke in L.A. He's working with the DEA. He approaches you and says, hey, I need to move some product. Why did you say yes? Well, it took some time. It took six months. For him to convince you? Yeah. We did this for six months. And one day he called me at the right time. I was with Chico. Who was Chico?

Chico, my crimey. Okay. And it was his money that we put up. Right, because he had 100 bricks that he wanted to sell you. Yeah. Yeah, he had 100 that he was going to sell. And it just was easy. You know, Chico was there.

Chico was willing to do it. You know, it was just an easy, easy fix. The kilos was nine, five. at that time kilos was going for 17 my theater was in foreclosure Right I mean it was it was you know Everything was right there you know And even even with the theater

I'd almost gave up on the theater before this Yeah you know I'd almost say you know what I'm just gonna let the theater go Yeah You know I can't I can't hold it I'm just gonna just start over and just just build my life from there Yeah And then I was messing with a lot of rappers You know I had a lot of rappers that was you know

That was messing with me Yeah Cube a little bit you know, DJ Poo, chocolate, Aunt Banks, you know, all those guys were supporting my movement, Ging, Sir Jinks. So I knew that I could do it in the rap game.

Right, you know. So you felt like, and how much did you stand to make off this deal? A couple hundred thousand? Yeah, probably a couple hundred. So that you thought, okay, this could finally get the theater off the ground? Yeah, it would definitely get it out of foreclosure. I think it was like 30,000 behind on the payment.

Yeah. Okay. So, and you said, all right, let's do it. And I really didn't have to do nothing. Mine was just the introduction. Introduction. Right. Right. And of course, you're in a parking lot in San Diego and Danilo was supposed to be there and the Fed show up. No, he was there with the Fed. Okay, he was there with the feds. He probably, they gave him a gun. He was a number one snitch, man.

Yeah, he was there with the feds. I mean, how did that feel? Did you say, oh, my life. over? I felt like that because, you know, I knew the law. I've been in the fed, so I already knew the law. I have friends that got life sentences for the three strikes, so I already knew kind of where it was. So I jumped in the car and just took off, you know,

hoping I could. Took off running? Yeah. No, I jumped in the car. No, you took out, yeah, you took them on a chase. Well, they blocked me off, so I wound up wrecking the truck and jumped out and started running and, you know, had helicopters and everything.

It was a setup. You know, the whole thing wasn't, you know, I mean, it's so silly to me, right? Like, how our government would spend so much money to set me up. Yeah. But we'd spend no money to help me get set up. Right. You know, this, there's just, just arrest probably costs them $400,000, you know? Right.

Like. Not to mention, they are creating the crime. They created the crime. It's entrapment. Because I wasn't, I wasn't selling drugs. I wasn't thinking about selling drugs. No. I didn't want to sell drugs anymore.

But, you know, I was still an addict. You were addicted to money. Yeah. You're addicted to the game. And the cocaine. You know, the cocaine becomes the identification piece. Your identity is, I'm a drug kingpin. Right.

I'm the guy. I totally get that. I need that crutch. Where that crutch? I give it to me. Right. I ain't standing up good right now. Right.

Exactly. You know, you get that crutch and there it is. So it was really baffled to me that they would spend so much money to create the crime and then it takes us a trial I think our trial costs like $3 million. Wow. I mean, did they, they didn't offer you a plea deal? No, they never offered me a deal.

I tried to plead guilty to 20 years. Wow. And by the way, for people who don't know, that is very, very rare that they don't offer, you know, somebody in the feds arrested in charge of the federal crime. L.J. O'Neil, act like he was mad at me. You know, I don't know where he knew me from. That was a prosecutor.

Okay, the U.S. Attorney? Yeah, L.J. O'Neil. he acted like he was, I tried to plead guilty to 20. Yeah. You were putting your hand up. Like, yeah, I'll do it. I'll take 20. Yeah.

You know, I want to go home so I can see my grandkids. Right. And I know, you know, I had friends that had life sentences from three strikes. So I already knew what it was going to be like. Yeah. I knew how hard it was to get three strikes off of you. So I was like, hey, give me 20. Give me 20.

You know, and it was like, nah, go to trial. Plea guilty. Whatever the judge gave you, that's what the judge gets you. So you actually, if they don't want. want to let you plead guilty, you have to go to trial. Right. That's wild. That's crazy.

I mean, they reserve that only for the biggest kingpins. You know what I mean? So you go, you blow trial. I mean, it's a pretty open and shut case. You get sentenced to life. Well, you know what? One of the jurors almost held out on them. Wow.

Really? Yeah, they didn't like what they did to me. Because it was such entrapment. It was such bullshit. They called me the first day I got out of prison. Wow. Yeah, I walk out of prison and now you offer me drugs. I mean, like, what the fuck?

You got a call from Danilo the first day you got out of prison? Yeah. Wow. That's so crazy. What about rehabilitation? You know, like, you don't give me a chance to rehabilitate? Did you make a statement during sentencing? I did.

I did. Yeah. But by that time, I had learned more about the law and I knew that life sentence wasn't what I should have got, you know, so. Did you? I scolded the judge and the prosecutor all of them. Did you think it when you were, were getting sentenced to life? Did you think

there might be a chance? Oh no, I knew I was coming back. You knew you were coming back? I told a judge, I'll be back. And she said, I'll be waiting on you. Oh, wow. When I came back, she said, you sold, you kept your word. And so you went back to that judge for the appeal? Mm-hmm. So you get set up in 96?

Yep. Okay, you get sent up in 96. Are you literate by this time? Oh, yeah, I'm reading well. So you've taught yourself, you're in the law library. Every day, all day. Every day. You went to law school in prison. Yeah. All I do is work out and go to the library. Yeah. Yep. And you're reading a ton too. You're reading motivational books. You're reading

business books. I mean, you're just... I'm cramming. You're cramming. You're cramming for the final exam. I'm cramming. So how long does it take you to get... How long did it take you before you discovered this loophole that you should not have gotten that second federal strike from Texas? Well, it started with, with, with, with Alan get a call from an INS agent. I'm sorry, say that again? Alan Fincher, my lawyer, get a call in his hotel. We're in trial.

Okay. And he gets a call from this INS agent who won't identify herself or anything. And he says, I don't know what they did, but that guy that got testifying against Rick shouldn't be in this country. And so the next day we go to court, Alan comes in the holding tank, and he's like, man, I get this strange call from this guy, and the guy won't leave his name. It was really weird.

And I said, what did he say? He said, oh, Danilo shouldn't be in this country. He said a convicted drug dealer can't. An illegal alien who gets convicted of a drug crime can't be in this country. And so we go to court and he's asking a judge. Can we postpone the trial? Let me investigate this situation. I got this strange phone call.

So the judge is like, no, no, no, we're not going to do it. trial's been going on. We're not going to let you go on. No fishing expeditions. You got to come with some type of evidence. So when I got from court that night, I went to the library and I'm studying I and S stuff and, like what a convicted felon can be in this country, what it takes and whatnot. And while I'm doing that, I go to the citizen guideline book. And in the citizen guideline book, it starts to talk about. the three strike loss. Right.

You know, what it takes to get a three strike. Right. And I had never investigated that before. You know, I was just kind of like, you know, oh, you convict the felon. You got two strikes already. You already know those are two sided strikes. You know, that's what you up against. Well, when I was doing that, then it started to explain what a strike was.

And it talked about if the crime was ran concurrent, mine was ran concurrent. It talked about, the intervening arrest, which was the most important part, was had you been arrested more than one time? Mine, I'd only been arrested one time. I never got out of prison. You know, I just had different cases in different states. So you weren't arrested for the Texas strike?

You know, I was arrested for Cincinnati, and then they sent me to Texas from Cincinnati. Right. So what they did is when they arrested me, they just took me to all the places that was investigating me. Gotcha. Okay. But I never got out of handcuffs. Right.

I was literally in handcuffs the whole time. So that's how I beat the- And that was enough. That's it. That loophole's enough. The fact that- Not a loophole, it's a law. A law. Right.

But that seems like such a technicality. The way I told my lawyer you to argue with is, say, for instance, it's like we had spots. Remember I told you had spots where guys could go out one day and make $10,000 in 30, 40 minutes. Right. He probably sold 100 different people. Right.

To do that. To make that $10,000, you probably sold it, you know, 20, 30, 40. I don't know how many people, with a lot of people. Right. Each one of those would be different cases. Correct. So if you was a novice, had never sold drugs before, and one day, from what they were saying, you could become a career criminal in one day.

Right. In 30 minutes. Yeah. Not possible. Right. Our forefathers who invented the law, they understood that, and that's not what they wanted. They wanted you to be chest ties.

you'd be told about your crime, explaining what your crime was, and then given a second chance. Right. And then if you do it a second time, you got to go through the same process. Well, you know, this is your second time. You did five years your first time.

We're going to give you 10 years this time. If you do it again, we'll give you a life sentence. And that's the way they wanted it done. And it wasn't done like that. Right. It was completely stacked on. You were being, you arrested, tried, processed in Cincinnati, and it was like the federal government had this thing,

in Texas that they just wanted to pile on you really quick without going through due process. Correct. Wow. And that seems like such an obvious, easy mistake for them to make. And that's what won you of your freedom. But you're saying you discovered that loophole, that mistake they made before you even got sentenced to life? Yeah.

Yeah. I argued it to the judge before I got sentenced. Wow. So then why did you have, how long did it take you after getting the life sentence to get that appeal before the judge. About two years. Okay, so that's not very much taught. Well, if you're doing time, it seems like a long time.

Sure, sure. Every day, right, when you're facing life. But obviously, you go into that sentence, like, with, we call it in prison action. Like, this motherfucker's got action. Yeah, yeah. So you went in there with action. I figured I had action.

So you had action, uh, after two years, you go back. You read the, you read the Jesse Katz article. Yeah. The L.A. magazine. Yeah. And you saw how I was. talking to him. Yes, of course. Because I knew that I should have won my case. I knew that they would literally almost,

and then what Gary had did for me. Gary Weber. Yeah, by breaking that story, Gary Webb, sorry, Gary Webb. Is that he gave me the spotlight. Right. So I knew that my case would probably make the books. Right. And they didn't want to read like rat. They lost. Right. So I felt that I was going to get a good shot. Right. So Gary Webb, just for people that don't know, Gary Webb in 1996, the year that Rick gets his life sentence, that's when the story about the collusion with the CIA and the Nicaraguan drug traffickers from the 80s,

that's when it all breaks. Correct. So now Rick Ross is as a household name. So you've also, I think the government too is looking at this embarrassed. Like, geez, like this is shameful. And I think that also maybe helped in your resentencing. Don't you feel like that a little bit?

I mean, she probably started to bend a little bit because she took off an extra four years that she didn't have to. Right, because they could have given you 30 years when they resettenced. Okay, so what was the final resentencing when you went back there? Well, she gave me 20 the first time. Right. And then Booker and Fam Fam came out and I got another, I won another appeal with Booker and Fan Fam.

What the hell is Booker and Fam Fam? A post-conviction rehabilitation. Okay. It means that like if you go to prison and then you rehabilitate yourself, then you shouldn't be in prison. Right. Like, why are we keeping people in prison that don't need to be there? Right. And so I showed signs that I had improved myself.

So you had an exemplary prison record. And therefore that was a time cut. Right. Okay. Yeah, I think even do you think, you know, and it's possible, look, we know guys that got sentenced to life, had them on here before for crack, you know, black guys, kingpins from the 80s who got out on compassionate releases, right, when Trump passed that law in 2018. So, you know, I think you would have a good shot in getting out, even if you hadn't got that time cut.

I was going forward to be to be so smart that they couldn't keep me in prison. Right. That's why I read so much. That's why I read 300 books. You know, I read the newspaper every day. I felt that the people of America wouldn't want anybody in prison that shouldn't be there. Right. Yeah.

And I was going to, I was going to play on that. Right. So 1998 is when you go back to the original judge. And that's when she gave you, and that's when they tossed the life sentence. And gave me 20. Gave you 20. End up doing about 14. You got out in 2009.

Remember I want another appeal. So. Right. So you got out. 2009. Wow. Did you have people approach you? In these 15 years you've been out, have you had people approach you trying to get you back into the game? A couple people, you know, they play with it.

I don't think nobody really serious. Right. But I have people play, you know. Yeah. Yeah. Do you get angry? No. You don't get angry? You just say, I'm good. Yeah. I mean, I don't get really get angry about anything. You know, I'm having a great life right now to come from where I come from. Yeah.

And to be sitting where I'm at right now, I feel really blessed. Yeah. Yeah, we're blessed to have you here, my man. Thank you. So, you know, you've written the bestseller. Tell us about, because we want to plug the dispensary, but tell us about the books, too. Well, we're going to plug this up top as well. But I mean it.

Connects fans, you better go buy these books. When I was in prison, a lot of the young guys used to come up to me and ask me about game. Yeah. You know? And they was like, man, I sold drugs. and I couldn't make $10,000. And, you know, I would talk to him about business and how I thought about business

and why I was able to teach guys how to become millionaires. And it came to me that, yeah, you know, you may never get to see a lot of these kids on the street. Why don't you put in a book for him? And that's when I wrote the book. Which is called?

Freeway Ricky Ross, Untold Autobiography. And you can get it at my website. Don't go to Amazon, please. Yeah. Freeway. You got to buy it off his website. site. Yes, because of all the money goes to him. And I'm on autograph it for you. Oh, wow. Look at the key, you send it to everybody who buys it, right? Yeah. Wow. That's awesome. So you give business

advice in there. Yeah, well, you know, I basically, what I wanted to do is run down to him what it would be like if they got into the drug business. Yeah. And what would be the outcome? Yeah. I just felt that what would have been like if I would have had a book that could have told me, you know, how to go about selling drugs or how to overweight selling drugs. Right. Do you think it's better now? Do you think it's better now for young guys, young black guys from the hood? Do you think there's more opportunity now than when you were a youngster?

I don't know. It's kind of bad right now. I think it's bad right now? Yeah, it's bad right now. In terms of what? Well, you know, there's a lot of stigmatism, you know, with the way that black guys are looked at right now. You know, this image that that has been portrayed on TV, you know, the drug dealer, the gangster, the murderer. But that's been going on forever, though.

That's been going on since the 80s. You don't think it's gotten, you don't think situations have improved. No, it's worse right now. It's bad for, it's bad to be a young black male in America right now. Because back in your day, at least there was the crack game. Crack money was so abundant, you know, you made a lot of millionaires. Do you ever consider how many people you made rich? Yeah, probably about 25.

Yeah. Did any of the, your best workers? Did any of them, are any of them alive today? Are any of them free? A lot of them. I had about six friends that had life sentences. They're out right now. They got out.

They follow me. Wow. How did they get out on appeals? They stayed in that library, man, appeals. Wow. Finding loopholes. Wow. Because, you know, we look at these prosecutors as being really smart, but they're not as smart as we give them credit for.

And sometimes we give them. ourselves less credit than what we deserve. Yeah. So do you give that advice in the book, too? I try to run down my whole life to them. Yeah. You know, how they should think, what they should be thinking about, how to save your money, how valuable it is to save your money. And invest your money. And invest it, yeah. What are you some of your biggest regrets from that era? I don't really have regrets, you know, just lessons. You know, everything for me was a lesson. I learned from and I'm using all of those lessons right now with what I'm doing. I guess if there's a regret, the regret would be that I ever got involved with cocaine.

Because I understood if I wouldn't have got involved with cocaine, I was going to figure something else out. Something else was going to pop up that I would have gravitated to. Yeah, you could have done anything. Now, it would have taken you a lot longer, right? just like kind of how when you got out of prison this last time, there's been a bunch of business ventures, right? There's been movie scripts. There's been, you know, clothing lines.

A lot of them haven't worked. Well, I don't know. But you've, your mind, you have this. I don't know if they haven't worked. I mean, the clothes, the clothes, yeah, the T-shirts got me out of homelessness. You were homeless? Yeah, I was homeless since I've got home from prison.

Wow. For about a year, year and a half. And so it went from T-Chiard. But my point is, like, t-shirts might not necessarily make Rick Ross rich. But the ideas, your optimism, everything is driving the next thing. Everything is moving you forward. You know what I mean? So I am rich.

I'm rich, but people don't see it yet. Okay. I see my, I see the riches already. Like, it's like, to me, it's like, when Mike gave me that first $20 of cocaine and he gave me the story, I saw it. If what he was telling me was true, and I thought it was, and thought it could be, that I knew I was going to be rich. Now, when I went home and I told my brothers and all of the homies that I hung out with, they didn't believe it. They couldn't see it. Like right now, nobody can really see what I see right now, you know, with the cannabis industry,

with the music business, with the movie, with the books. They don't really see that. But for me, it's like, you can't see it's right there. And it is right there. And those,

all the homies laughed at you. And look what happened. You're a street legend. You're an American. You have a place in American history because South Central and crack cocaine for better or worse are a part of modern American history.

You, 5'6, Rick Ross, the grandson of a sharecropper from Texas, went and made good because you see it. Oh, absolutely. I can see it. And now you see what's coming next now. Oh, I can see it so clearly. Like, y'all can't see this? It's right there.

It's right in front of us. Yeah. It all comes from your mind. Everything that we become, I mean, that's biblical, right? What man, what is it? What man thinketh he become? If your mind can conceive it, your body can achieve it. Yeah. That's quantum physics.

It's manifesting. It's what white girls talk about on Instagram, but they're kind of right, you know? Well, you know, I look at my life. I manifested myself going to prison. and then I manifested myself out. Yeah. You know, I knew I was going to prison before I'd ever been in the police car.

How? Well, I just felt what I was doing was wrong and then I should go to prison for it. Wow. And then after I was in prison, I felt, oh, now you should go home. Yeah. Done my time.

Did people in prison laugh at you or say, oh, man, he thinks he's going home? They used to walk around with all the books and stuff. Yeah. Man, you read all them self-help books and stuff. that stuff. That stuff ain't going to help. Right. Haters. Did you have anybody... Not necessarily nonbelievers. Nonbelievers. It's okay. It's, you know, they know not what they do. Exactly. So where is your dispensary? I'm really excited. So you have to go to Rick's,

excuse me, Rick's website and buy his books. I know I certainly am going to buy both of them. You have a new one, a relatively new one that came out. But tell us about, because we have a lot of fans in Los Angeles and that come from all over the world that come to LA. Tell us about your new dispensary where it is. My new dispensary is in Sun Valley. It's 90-74 D-E-E-D-Germo. Yep. We're going to put the link in the description, by the way, so they'll be able to find it. Yeah, DiGermo, and it's in Sun Valley. Which is 10 minutes from the Burbank Airport. So you fly into Burbank. It's right there. Very convenient. best prices in town, best service.

Look at that. Look at that. We're going to take care of you. Our goal, you know, me and D, is that we want to have the best dispensary in the game. You know, we want to give people an experience that they can only get from us. You heard it. And what is your best prices, best quality, best customer service? Is that the key to making a dispensary win in a market like L.A.

you give best service, best quality, and you stay sharp, you know, you got a win in whatever it is. What is your goal from this? Do you want to have a bunch of them? Like, what is your five-year plan from now? Maybe have 20, 30 dispensaries. All in L.A. or do you want to move to different franchise to different areas? Well, we want to start with L.A. first. You know, L.A. is the cream of the crop. This is the biggest market in the world. Yeah. So we want to capitalize here. We want to also, you know, help some of the social equity applicants. You know, there was a lot of predators going on when they started this social equity thing. I won my license under social equity, by the way. Okay. And what we want to do is we want to reach out to people who don't have the money to get started

in social equity and help them get started. Yeah, that's great. Do you feel like you could make more money, more legal money than you ever did on the street? Oh, yeah. Yeah. I know that I'll be a multi-billionaire this time. And then when is the movie coming? That's what we all want to know. We've been in production now about a pre-production about a year. You know, we hired Mike Ho as a director, which either took a while to get a director. Mike is a new guy. He's one of the top video directors in the game. We were hoping that Reginald Hutland would have did it, but Reggie had took on some other projects.

Okay. And he picked Michael, Mike Ho himself personally. Great, great. Because I know that movie script has been in the works for a decade. now. Yeah, we didn't do like three or four different movies scripts. Oh my God. We had like eight writers, eight different writers. We had Nick Cassavetti for a while. Right, who wrote Blow. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. No, no. I remember I like always, I'm like, when is this thing going to, when is it finally? And you know how Hollywood is. It takes forever. Well, I don't think that Hollywood really likes my type of story,

you know, because my story is not the typical story that, you know, they want us to be on their violent, drug dealer, braving, you know, breathing fire. And, and, yeah. And that's not the case, I think my story is more going to be kind of like a love story, you know, where it was a group of guys who were like brothers and we stuck together and we did everything together and we made it work. By the way, where is Ollie? What happened to Ollie? He got a little shop, not far from here.

Yeah. He's right around the corner from here. So he's doing good. He's doing all right. Well, did he ever, did he get locked up? Like, what happened? Yeah, Ali went to jail in Indiana. Okay.

How long did he do? I think he did about seven, eight years. He had 35 years, but he wound up doing about seven to eight. Okay. All right. Well, hey, look, compared to a life sentence, it's not too bad. No, that's not bad at all. You know, do you feel blessed to be free?

Yeah, I am blessed. You certainly are. Fortunate. Yeah. So billionaire dispensaries, movies, music. Yeah, music, clothes. Yeah. Sports, you know, I do boxing too.

Yeah, I read that. I manage a couple boxers. Yeah. I think boxing is easy. How do you feel about like Hollywood and like shows like Snowfall? You know, crack is really like big now in Hollywood. You know, Hollywood gets attached to like a theme. I didn't like it.

I didn't like it's stereotyping. Yeah. It's nothing like what drug dealers really do. Yeah. And they fell right into the same stuff that the government promoted to lock everybody up. Yeah. Yeah, I agree. It's weird because, yeah, Hollywood latches onto a theme.

and one thing works, and then, you know, they run with it for 10 years. Once people see my movie, they're going to wonder why they, why was they locking up and giving drug deal so much time? Yeah. Yeah, that's what's the craziest bullshit is, and that's why I asked you at the beginning about the differences between crack and cocaine. And what we're finally seeing now is there's really, you know, the guy, the lawyer, the corporate lawyer sniffing a line of blow. and, you know, the guy down on Crenshaw smoking crack, there's no difference. Right.

But they, that was the final, in my opinion, really racist, like institutionally racist thing in America was the difference between powder, the sentencing between powder and rock cocaine. I hope the war on drugs ends soon, don't you think? It ain't going to do no good. Why not? Because they can't keep drugs out of their maximum security-dependentary.

Yeah. So they sure can't keep it out of this country. Yeah. Yeah, I agree. Education. You got your own education, man. So it's possible. You show people, if nothing else, that it's possible. So I really, I'm thankful you came on here today. I will be checking out your dispensary. Can we get D on the pod really quick? Just to plug that. I know she's over there getting ready to fall asleep.

This has been such a long podcast. You were the co-owner of, A partner. A partner. Right. Okay. But yeah, just plug the dispensary. Tell us just a little more about what we were talking about earlier about, you know, the dispensary model in L.A.

Like what has been the biggest thing about opening up a legal dispensary in a place like Los Angeles? Compliance. What does that mean? making sure that you are compliant with the city regulations. Yeah. With the Bureau of Cannabis Control for the state. Yeah. That's probably the hardest part.

It's because you have so much regulation. Yeah. You have so many people that are, you know, because it's California. Obviously, we know how hard it is just to start a regular business, much less, you know, a dispensary. But if you have the right people working. working there. Once you get started and get everything in order, yeah. Yeah, it's easy. But there seems to be a lot of money in it still. It is. I mean, I, 10 years ago, 10 years ago, I was like, ah, there's too many dispensaries. You can't make any money. The competition's too

stiff. But there's like, it seems like endless money in it. Yeah. So, yeah, I mean, I think your idea to put, you know, the location is really good for where you guys are. What's the name of the of the dispenser? Freeway Ricks. Freeway Ricks. Yeah. I love it. How long did it take you to find the location?

I think that they had the location targeted for about a year or so. Okay. Yeah. But the good thing is that they didn't do it where you, they didn't search for it where you had to have your location first and then they would give you the license. Right. They had the license first and then they found the location. That's good.

So then it gives you the freedom to like really take your time. Correct. Because location is everything. Yes. You know? And then branding, of course. Are you allowed to do deliveries or? We are starting our delivery service.

Okay. Hopefully we will be meeting with someone this week. Wow. Yeah, tomorrow. So today or tomorrow. So that's like curb serving. Yeah. You know, it's what Rick used to do.

Yeah. So we'll have, we'll have curb service. Yeah. We'll have curb service and delivery. Wow. So is that, is that something like where do you have to get a special permit to be able to deliver? Or is that something that everybody that owns a dispenser can do? With the micro business, you can do it.

Uh-huh. Yeah. With the micro business license. Yeah. Okay. Interesting. What is that? Okay.

Wow. Wow. That's a fascinating. It's fascinating how far we've come. Yes. You know, in many ways. I mean, I know Rick talks about how bad things are, but, you know, in many ways, we've, since the 1980s, you know, we've advanced in this country, I think. I think so.

I think that in cannabis, though, and I know that Rick mentioned that he has a social equity license, there are a lot of people out there. There are social equity predators. So they'll see a person of color struggling with their social equity, and they'll come in. and either buy the license from them or take the majority of the equity and make them the majority owner of the business. What is a social equity license? A social equity license is a license that is supposed to be for people who have been directly impacted by the war on drugs,

have had a drug crime, you know, and that's who those social equity licenses are supposed to be for. Right. People like Rick or people that grew up in an area where, you know, crack cocaine was a big issue. Yeah. But I find that a lot of the social. equity applicants have not been that. Interesting.

Interesting. I have felonies for marijuana trafficking. Yeah. Would that make me? Yeah, legitimately. I have three of them. I did time in prison. Would I be a candidate?

Yes. Well, you know, we might have found our spinoff business to this podcast here. Wow, that's fascinating. Well, I cannot wait to check out Freeway Ricks. Maybe we'll do a promo video there and put it on our channel. Oh, you should come. I would love to. We're having a New Year's thing.

Oh, cool. Cool. I will definitely, I don't know if I'll be able to stop by for New Year's, but I will definitely come, you know, this week and check. I just think, I mean, that's so cool. Yeah. It's so cool. And I know Rick, you know, a lot of people, because of his name,

try to take advantage of him and, you know, just reading about all of these shady business people that he, was, you know, getting involved with when he first got out of prison. I mean, way shadier and the people, even in the street that he used to deal with. So I'm very happy that he's finally found something that's really working, you know, and that's why, you know, you're a blessing. And so I appreciate you. Thank you so much. I appreciate you. Thank you for having him. Yes, of course. No, it was our pleasure. And, yeah, you guys, thank you for listening. Go check out freeway ricks when you're in l.A. Go buy the books check his website out thank you very much we're out of