The Iced Coffee Hour - MrBeast Winner Breaks Silence On Stealing Money, Going To Prison, & Hitting Rock Bottom

Episode Date: August 31, 2025

Upwork: Visit https://upwork.com right now to post your job for free Pipedrive: Get started with a 30 day free trial https://pipedrive.com/iced ZocDoc: Go to https://www.zocdoc.com/ICED and download the Zocdoc App for FREE Shopify: Sign up for a $1 per month trial period at https://shopify.com/ich $1 will provide 1 person with clean water for a year: Go to https://teamwater.org to donate today! Follow Ian Bick: On Youtube - https://youtube.com/@ianbickCT?si=NbheCwTwOkesCXzP On Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/ian_bick Website - https://www.ianbick.com/ Apply for The Index Membership: https://entertheindex.com/ Add us on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/jlsselby https://www.instagram.com/gpstephan Official Clips Channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCeBQ24VfikOriqSdKtomh0w For sponsorships or business inquiries reach out to: [e-mail] For Podcast Inquiries, please DM @icedcoffeehour on Instagram! Timestamps: 00:00:00 - Intro 00:01:42 - Hearing about Beast vid 00:02:35 - Are prison influencers real? 00:04:42 - Most viral prison story 00:08:07 - How MrBeast reached out 00:10:27 - Vetting for Beast vid 00:12:40 - Was Beast prison realistic? 00:13:34 - Was drama in video real? 00:18:10 - Sponsor - Upwork 00:23:36 - Beast prison library 00:25:45 - Interacting with others 00:28:49 - What Beast cut from video 00:31:37 - Living without a phone 00:33:41 - Sponsor - Pipedrive 00:34:59 - Living with a stranger 100 days 00:38:37 - Strategy for the challenge 00:42:59 - Winning $500,000 00:43:42 - Restitution payments explained 00:46:01 - Live events business and why it failed 00:57:57 - Do you regret what you did 01:04:05 - Sponsor - Zocdoc 01:05:15 - Sponsor - Shopify 01:10:28 - First day in jail 01:13:36 - Food in prison 01:14:39 - Smuggling in prison 01:16:15 - Hardest part of prison 01:16:55 - First day fight myth 01:18:28 - Most fun thing in prison 01:18:49 - Getting used to no privacy 01:21:31 - Violence in prison 01:25:07 - Smuggling continued 01:27:42 - How to improve prison system 01:29:21 - Dating in prison 01:33:23 - Making friends inside 01:33:52 - Most difficult experience 01:35:29 - Choice to not split money 01:38:24 - Watching the video back 01:39:10 - Opportunities since Beast vid 01:42:42 - Advice for people going to jail 01:43:16 - Prison habits you still have 01:44:54 - Constant distrust in prison? 01:46:43 - Smart prisoners 01:48:23 - Any innocent prisoners? *Some of the links and other products that appear on this video are from companies which Graham Stephan will earn an affiliate commission or referral bonus. Graham Stephan is part of an affiliate network and receives compensation for sending traffic to partner sites. The content in this video is accurate as of the posting date. Some of the offers mentioned may no longer be available. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Okay, when I sell my business, I want the best tax and investment advice. I want to help my kids, and I want to give back to the community. Ooh, then it's the vacation of a lifetime. I wonder if my head of office has a forever setting. An IG Private Wealth advisor creates the clarity you need with plans that harmonize your business, your family, and your dreams. Get financial advice that puts you at the center. Find your advisor at IG Private Wealth.com.

I build this maximum security prison. And if this cop and this criminal survive a hundred days together, I will give them half a million dollars. I went to prison when I was 21, and I never expected that would help me when a Mr. Peace video. My prison experience was just crazy from all the different prisons I was in, to all the incidents that happened, to every little thing. Do you feel bad for what you did? It was ridiculous. I was 18, two months after graduation, and I had like $600,000 in my bank account. And then I hit rock bottom. How accurate was Mr. Beast's prison to real-life prison?

Physically, it was very realistic. Like, the guy had the actual prison toilet. But mentally, it was different without having real prison guards pulling the strings. What do you mean by that? Like 90% of the prison violence is caused by guards creating this environment. The inmates run the prison, and the guards let it happen. But I didn't realize how hard it was going to be. Is there anything in the video he didn't want the audience to know?

So, Ian, I really enjoyed your video with Mr. Beast. 100 days in prison for almost $500,000. There's a really interesting video. I'm happy to have you on. It's cool just to reach out like that and you're like, I'm down. I'll be right there. And then I think like three days later,

if that you're here. Yeah, thanks so much for inviting me. It was actually funny because I saw Mike Malax video and then I watched Madge's video and that was being filmed while I was doing it. And then I was like, I want to go on this podcast. And then mine came out and then you hit me up and here we are a couple days later in Vegas.

Pretty cool. But we have a fascinating story. You made a ton of money. We're going to get into how you're spending it. What are you doing with it? But first, how did you hear about this show? When did you know you were going to do it? So this past February, it was the beginning of February I got reached out to by just a generic casting producer that was like one of those company production companies, not affiliated with the Beast team at all. I've been reached out to producers like this probably like 20 or 30 times since starting on TikTok a couple years ago. And, And normally it's like dating shows, reality TV shows. I actually quit my job at Whole Foods after getting like 10,000 followers on TikTok because I thought I was getting casted in some new dating show. What were you doing on TikTok? Just talking about my prison experience, being in prison and just telling all those stories from my perspective.

And I didn't realize that COVID had exploded this whole world, this whole world of prison TikTokers and prison YouTubers where people are getting all these followers talking about their prison experience. Do you think people are lying about those prison experiences? Like if they're getting all these views and money from telling the craziest stories, how often do you think they're just making them up? Yeah, who would know, right? I think some, so I'll tell you from my experience.

So I'll have guests on my show where you'll hear that exact story being told by another guest, but just in a different way. And it's always the ones that really listen to the show. Like they'll come in the studio and they're like, big fan of the show, I listen to all your episodes. and then you kind of know that they took that story from another person on the show. So if that happens, then I think it's pretty safe to say that that probably happens in a general space watching other people's TikToks talking about prison.

But where I think I came into this prison TikTok world and prison YouTube world was I gained a following talking about it in a different way. Like I literally came out and said I paid for protection federal prison. No one was doing that before, especially from my point of view. What do you mean by that? So I went to prison when I was 21, and I went to federal prison for three years. I got a three-year sentence. And I literally paid someone to protect me while I was at the federal prison because these guys tried to extort me.

Everyone thought I was a defender, a chri-they-call-em a ch-a-old because of the way I looked. I was a white, nerdy kid, looked like Harry Potter. They actually called me McLevin in prison, so I got the McLevin tattoo. And then I have a portrait of him on my leg. They actually were trying to get them as a guard in the Beast video, but it didn't work out as like a cameo. But they called me McLevin in prison. And just like in the Mr. Beast video, I'm able to, my personality type is just able to adapt and kind of like be funny and be kind of calm in that. Like I'm shy, but I'm not shy at the same time.

So I was able to just befriend people. And I guess the way I looked and people thought I was like funny. and it just naturally clicked. I was like their little brother. The guards would call me squints from the sandlot. So I was just, everyone's like little brother, and they looked after me. What was your most viral prison story

you talked about on TikTok? So there was three major ones. That one I just told you. That was the one that really kind of like exploded the platform where like World Star, no jumper, all of those sites took it and ran with it. The other one was in the Chow Hall, my first day at the prison Chow Hall.

I went to sit down, I got my tray of food, sat down at the table, and everyone at the table stops eating. I'm not really paying attention to it. I just got out of the detention center where the food was horrible. And I'm at this new facility Fort Dix, a low security prison where there was like a buffet line and pudding and jello and all this great food, a salad bar. And I sit down at the white guy table. I just figured I had to be with my own race, like what you would see in prison movies and I sit down there, everyone stops eating. And one of the white guys, big, bald, kind of jackdude tattoos, uh, kind of slams his hand on the table and it's like, hey, you. And he says that a couple times and I'm looking at him. Um, at that point. And I'm like,

are you talking to me? Like, I don't know. I just got here. No one knows me. And I'm like, looking behind me and whatnot. And he explains to me that I'm not allowed to sit there. It's for good, uh, good, it's a good paperwork table. You. you have to have good paperwork. And I'm like, what's paperwork? And he explains that paperwork shows that you're not a defender. You're not a rat. You didn't snitch on anyone.

And until you get your paperwork, you're not allowed to sit at that table. And I was explaining to him that I'm there for fraud. And he looks at me. He's like, yeah, that's what they all say? And I'm like, what do you mean? That's what they all say. And he points to this table behind me. And he says, you belong over there at this table.

And I look around. It's a bunch of old white guys with the same type of glasses I had on. that are staring at me like fresh meat. And that was a defender table. So that was like my first experience realizing what I was going to be labeled at in a federal prison. Eventually, I got my paperwork and everything got sorted out. But that was like the reality of it. Most people that are there in federal prison for fraud are not 21 years old, they're like in their 30s or their 40s.

I was definitely on the younger side. And the guys that are offenders will say that they're there for fraud as a cover story. So what is like the main difference in prison life between someone that's an S-O and someone that's there for something else? Like what is their existence in prison? This episode is brought to you by Defender. With its 626 horsepower twin-turbo V8 engine, the Defender Octa is taking on the Dakar rally. The ultimate off-road challenge. Learn more at landrover.ca.

Look like. So I was at the highest security. prison I was at as a low, so I can only speak on that. And then I went to a camp after where there's no offenders. But at a low, basically, basically if you're a defender, you're not allowed to be in your room. They're 12-man bunks. After wake up, you can't stay in your room throughout the day. You have to go wherever the defenders would hang out in the library or you would see them actually playing dungeons and dragons with like fake wands out on the yard. So they all hang out together. They all hang out together. younger, older ones, they are the ones that have to clean your room.

If there's a defender in your room, they're cleaning your room for no pay. They can't sit in the TV room. They don't have a chair to sit in. They have to go to the chow hall and sit at certain tables. These are all inmate rules. These aren't prison rules like that the staff create. But at Fort Dix, a low security prison, it's a heavily defender compound because that's the only place these guys can go. at the higher security prisons, they'll get physically hurt.

But the prison does frown upon that. So how did you get the call from Mr. Beast? So in February, that casting agent slid into all my DMs on every platform. And in my mind, I'm like, I'm not, this here goes another one. Like, I'm not going to even respond. And they don't use the term Mr. Beast. They just said we're casting prison content creators. And I saw that.

And then a bunch of other prison content creators because we're all friends, just like I'm sure you guys are friends with other people. in your space are all like in group texting, hey, did you just get this offer? Did you just get this, like this casting agent reach out, all of these things? And so I ended up taking the call. I'm not sure why I did it, but I did it at the time.

It was just like a gut thing. And what I liked about this casting producer is they were ready to do the call right away. Normally with the casting producers, they'll schedule something for two or three days later. It's like an hour. It's like a whole big thing. I was free at the moment.

I hopped on the call and I did a half hour talk. And there was no, like, like childhood stuff, it was all just tell me everything about prison. And I think what I, what won her over was I had built an actual prison cell in my studio where we do skits, like funny reenactments and stuff. So I showed her at the real prison toilet. I had everything. They asked about my tattoos. We just had this whole conversation. I sent that in. And I had assigned an NDA at the time. And that's when I learned it was about Mr. Beast. They don't tell you it's prison related. They don't tell you how many people. They don't tell you how many days.

then they don't tell you about the money. It was just, it's a Mr. Beast video. So then when did you find out what it was that you were doing? Three weeks later, that same casting agent follows up and says, hey, you made it to the next round. Can you meet with someone on the Beast team? I get on a call with now her and the lead casting agent of the Beast team. The questions on that call were more like,

what would you do with the money? What would you do if you lost? What would you do if you stayed for 100 days? This is when I learned it was a 100-day video. and I said, all right, let me get back to you tomorrow because I said I had 24 hours to give them a yes and that wouldn't even guarantee me a spot. And so I text the casting agent right away

and I said, I'm in and she said, are you sure? Like, you could still take some time? And I said, no, like everything works out. I could do this. A few days later, I'm on the call with the psychologist. I had to do like a 500 question questionnaire before and then an hour call with the psychologist. Just getting a vibe, feeling everything like that.

That seems like very, very intense vetting. You went through, like, I don't even know how many calls you mentioned and, like, interviews and this and that. And then the psych evaluation. What were they probing for? So I think this one was super strict and intense because of the felon part. So they, from their perspective, they needed to cast the perfect criminal in a way. Like, they needed to cast someone that wasn't going to be too, like, there wasn't going to be too much negative feedback, but was also a criminal.

Someone that wasn't going to reoffend again or had a high potential. to reoffend. So a lot of the psychological questions are like your current mind state, your family, business. They do a whole social media deep dive to see what your social media is like that goes through that whole round. And then there was a lot of like confined spaces, questions, like mental decision making questions, like standard stuff you would see on a psych eval. But they were definitely, I think this was more extreme than anything because of the felon aspect. I mean, they needed to have someone with the felony that is going to, I mean, when they're casting, they're keeping in mind, can this person make it the whole 100 days? Because if you show up there,

think about how much money's on the line from the crew to the set to the prize winnings. And in our competition, if one person left, it's over. Will they have still posted it? I think that from what I've heard from the Beast team, like it has to be a certain amount of days. Like, they have to have a workable video. I think if I left anywhere before like day 50, I don't think they would have had enough for a video. Makes me wonder, because they're doing so many challenges, how many of them they just don't end up posting

because someone walks out. Yeah, I've heard rumors, like, of a couple that didn't get posted. I don't know the details of that, but I'm sure it happens, and you just don't see the light of day of them ever. I mean, the casting, there's a lot of pressure on the casting. You're taking two random strangers, putting them in an environment like this,

especially this when you have a cop and a criminal. And that was the other thing. Like, a lot of the prison community is, like, anti-cop or very outspoken, like 90% of the prison violence is caused by guards, um, creating this environment, creating these prison politics that all of these rules that the inmates make. The inmates run the prison and the guards let it happen.

That's, that's so interesting. So, yeah, okay, well, we can get on more of the prison stuff later. I'm curious,

how accurate was Mr. Beast's prison to real life prison? So physically it was very realistic. Like the guy had the actual prison toilet hooked up. Even in my studio, we didn't have a hooked up. toilet. Like, he had the real deal. He had the real prison shower, prison bunks. He had the actual, like, 500-pound metal table, like, drilled in to the concrete. So realistic. I think mentally it was

different because, like, in real prison, you're not going 30 days without a book. That's why me and him would always bicker, like, on every check-in day about how this is a fake prison, this is in a real prison, because there's more to do in an actual real prison. But again, this is a challenge, and I understood his standpoint. But from a physical, part he made it very real and they based it off of like their art team based it off of prison movies prison shows it was really cool even the doors the tray slots like they spared no expense to make this super legitimate how accurately did they depict the drama that was going on between you and the cop so the drama wasn't real um all the drama pieces not that it was scripted he doesn't script anything we scripted

it ourselves so the drama that you see in the video was real but me and Lenny were doing it as a joke to punk him. So Jimmy didn't ask you guys, hey, like, make this into a bigger deal. But you were just like, you were like, hey, I'm bored in this pseudo prison. May as well make some drama. So the first fake drama we had was on day 30. And we really wanted them to put it in because Mr. Beast's reaction was priceless. We devise this plan with the books, as you guys saw in the video.

And I passed Lenny a note and I said, hey, let me take the books and I'll smuggle them out. We make the deal go along with it. And Jimmy was filming another video. and came back a couple hours later, like you guys see in the video, Lenny winks at me while I'm sitting on the bed, and that's when he says, I want the Bible,

why do you think you could get the books? We're arguing back and forth for, like, three hours, like a real fight, like the tensions in the room. They called the casting department and the team, the creative team saying, hey, I think one of them is going home. Like, it was real. Jimmy walks in,

and I say to him, I'm like, hey, I can't stand next to him. Like, I'm ready to go home if I don't get the library. Like, the tension was there, all the way to the way to the, the last second where he's like, well, who's getting the books and I say me after a long pause. That was all real, not edited. And Jimmy, like, lets out a huge sigh of relief because he thought it was real and we pumped him over it. But that was like the first scripted drama on our part. No one

ever told us to say anything. What they will say to do is just whatever you guys talk about, keep talking about it. Like I said, I talked about wanting a haircut like every day because they need a way to introduce it into the video. But they'll never say stir up drama or do this or do that it's all real. Wouldn't they know though if you're devising a plan because it's all recorded? Like how much of this can they not get on camera? Like I'd imagine passing a note. There's someone watching you pass a note. They saw us pass a note, but they did. I wrote it in the bathroom. There's no notes like no cameras in the bathroom or showers are in the back. So they didn't see what I wrote. And they didn't know what the plan was. And then he winked at me and they didn't see it

or whatever that you ask anyone on their team, they would have thought one of us is going home on day 30. And also by that point, I was complaining heavily because I wanted to quit like probably 10 or 15 times in the first 10 days. Why? So for me, I went to real prison and that prison experience gave me a good break from all the disaster that was going on in my world, all the stress, everything, I was overweight, I was miserable. I was in a massive amount of debt, failed businesses, all my friends abandoned me. It was a really bad spot. So those three years in real prison was a great break and a reset and I got to plan what I was going to do in the future. I get out. I rebuild my life. I work at Whole Foods and then I'm able to create a successful business and have a really good

life. Then you go leave that all in the line and you go into this environment where you have no phone. You have no internet, no family, no friends, no communication. You give up your life and you don't know how your baby's doing on the outside and the baby being my podcast and what I was able to build, literally trusting someone else with that. And I always compare it to, would Jimmy be able to go off the map for 100 days and not know his analytics? I mean, how many times do you guys look at your analytics in a day and respond to comments? Like, I was doing all of that.

I was a one-man team before my friend came into the picture. I was doing all the posts, all the editing, everything. So I was literally trusting my whole life. And this is a great topic to talk about later, too, is that I would never have risked my whole platform for a Mr. Beast video because you can't depend on just that money or just that exposure to blow you up. And I think that's where a lot of contestants might go wrong after a Mr. Beast video if they don't have their own lane or their own content. So I had all those things in mind. So for me, I was miserable being away from all that. I'm a worker by trait and like to be

physically hands on. So to be in an environment where you have nothing going on. Because you can only talk to someone, I mean, we talked probably the first four days or whatever about our whole lives. But after that, how much is there really to get to know each other on that level? So we did things like we made a chessboard and graved it into the table. And we used vitamins and gummies and stuff that we had as pieces. And then we made like the basketball hoop and a pull-up bar with my bed. But that's all we had to do. And we lived through like getting the three meals a day and going to the rec yard once a day and splitting up the time that way.

But a lot of it was nothing, you know. It was just sitting there. So to me that was the hardest part. Now let's talk about something that every growing business runs into. Eventually, you hit a point where you need help. You just can't do everything yourself. And that is where our sponsor, Upwork, is there to help. Companies at every stage turn to Upwork to get more done and find more flexibility in the way they staff key projects and initiatives.

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Like all of the drama was just you and him plotting to make things fun, to make things entertaining. Was there ever a part where you guys were feuding a little bit? So the snoring was definitely like the first real drama, I guess you could call it real drama. That could be annoying. Yeah, it was more me solo drama because it was at night. He was asleep. He was a heavy sleeper at night.

I went to bed early and I was up like all night listening to these snores and I'm like flipping out on the camera in the middle of the night. Like I was pissed about that because I wanted to sleep. So there was that. And then at day 50, I was pissed not necessarily at him. But I was just angry that one I was thrown in solitary during the vows. So that was real. That was all real. Yeah.

So this is when I really realized how legit Mr. Beast is and anyone could say whatever they want about them, but this, like, I think solidifies it. When that happened on day 50 where only one of us could pick the visit, in my mind, I'm thinking, okay, he's, this is going to happen. They'll focus on Lenny and then they're going to let me say hi to my family or something. They flew them out there all the way from Connecticut. Like, I'll have time with him to see them. And he got his edit for the video, everything's good. They put me in solitary. I'm thinking, okay, they're going to open the door any second.

They got the shots. Everything's good. None of that happens. I've literally in solitary for like five hours waiting. They put my family back in a car and set them all the way back to Connecticut. I didn't talk to them. How did your family feel about that? My dad's pissed to this day.

So something that didn't make the video was that on day 80 because every check-in, I would say, Jimmy, this is a real prison. Where's my phone call? And we would go back and forth and he would always string me along. And on day 80, he finally gave me a face time, like right before that rock. challenge. So that was the first time I got to talk to my family. We were able to send letters because we bought the commissary, but we couldn't receive letters back. So they had a whole stack of letters for us when we got out. But on day 80, you know, I face time my dad for like five minutes

when Lenny was deciding on the rock. And that was the first time I got to talk to him. My dad, like, is yelling at Mr. Bees, like at the background. I'm still mad at you. Because my dad doesn't, he's almost 80. He doesn't really understand how this all works at its content, you know. But I had told them before I left, listen, I'm not paying for you guys. Like if there's a visit and they offer money, I'm not doing it. I want to keep the money to see you guys because I saw in other videos you could pay for a visit. But that's what essentially happened. I realized how real it is, nothing's scripted or you're being recorded 24-7.

So those were the only things that you really feuded about was the solitary confinement and then the snoring. Yeah, we fought about the rock, though, too. So Lenny made that decision on his own because I was so happy about the phone call and focused on that. I left it to Lenny to make the decision on the rock. He inspected the rock. He's like, bro, we got this. This is easy. That first hour, we're just swinging it because we didn't have the proper tool yet. We didn't have the chisel yet. We ended up finding what we needed in the book and then they gave us a chisel because they knew that you needed the chisel for it. But I was pissed at him. I was getting beat up like splinters and blisters and blisters and we were both

getting hurt. And the rock was not budging. So explain the offering that they made to you with the rock. Okay. So with the rock on day 80, they came in and they said, hey, do you guys want to make money? This is the first challenge in 80 days where we have the opportunity to make money. They say, if you want to do this challenge, they don't tell us what it is yet. You have to pay 50 grand to enter. So we pay the 50 grand. We go outside and we see the rock. We heard noises outside all day, like them moving everything around, but we didn't know what it was. We see the rock. They took our 50 grand. then he explains that if you break the rock and get the key, you'll get your 50 grand back plus another 50 grand, so 100 grand total.

And so Lenny decides to do that, take the rock deal, and I was going to support him. And I thought we would be able to do it. But I didn't realize how hard it was going to be. That rock was hard. It was a granite rock that they literally drilled it at the top, put a cement block in it with a key, and then flipped it over. So that's at the bottom.

That's why you see in the video, we're trying to pry it with the chest press, to flip it over to get to it and it wasn't working. How did there just happen to be a book that you found in the library? So I think that it might have been planted. Like they had that plan from day one because they have all the challenges planned. Like they know what their plan is. But also there was a lot of random books in there.

Like they did a really good job. That was like a real prison library. They had every book you can possibly imagine in that library. It didn't look like they had that many books. There's a lot of books. And so there just happened to be a book about like, rocks and how they work and how you can open them. Yeah, how did you find that?

It was a masonry book. And so by that point, by day 80, I knew every book in that library because I was going in there for an hour a day. I was tearing books out. I was ripping them apart. I was skimming through it. And I was reading a book a day, too. I was literally reading a book a day.

I read the whole, um, Lord of the Rings series. Wait, how are you reading a book a day if you only had an hour? I smuggled them out. Remember in the video? Oh, yeah, yeah. Yeah, I started smuggling the books out on day one. Actually, the first night we got the challenge when Jim Jimmy turned around, I was able to get the Bible out for Lenny.

Did you not worry at all that you smuggling books could somehow jeopardize the challenge? Or did you believe that Jimmy would not cancel the challenge or anything for you smuggling books? So I was definitely scared about it. Like, there was more things we could have done in the video that I could have got away with from a content perspective. But then, like, me who has been to prison and it's like, I don't want to get in trouble for this. Like, I don't want to break the rules that were break the game. They would always say, it's your sandbox, do whatever, but don't break the game. game. So I didn't know if that classified as breaking the game. For example, when we turned down the

kitchen, they had to dump all that stuff out of the kitchen to, like, to remove all the stuff that they filled in there. And it was like sitting in the rec yard one day. They had it on a cart, and I was going to steal it all. And I was like, I don't want to get in trouble. And I later found out that they would have used as content. Like, I wouldn't have got in trouble for it. So their definition of breaking the game is like if we're smashing windows or prying something apart. But the books, they let me roll with it. They didn't yell at me at that. I mean, that happened on day 30. And we didn't see Jimmy day 40, the boys came for commissary, and then we got scolded for the books on day 50. But he let it rock. And they said afterwards that they wanted a reason to use solitary.

So how often were you interacting with people other than the cop? It's very rarely. I mean, on day one, when you're filming the intro, everyone's around, Jimmy's around, then he comes in two days later. That's all real. Then every 10 days he comes in to film with you. That's all real. But then you have the production team that was dressed as cop or as guards as correctional officers. So when they would deliver the food, these are the guys that are making notes while they're watching your camera, the cameras, because someone has to physically watch the set, take notes if something happens, change your mics. And then they would feed us so they would get the keys and they would come down the correctional officer outfit. So you get to talk to them

there too. And then they had like the god mic hanging above where we would like, we gave them all names, all the guards. So we would call them like LT or shot caller. We'd come up with names and sometimes they would banter back. But for 90% of the time, you're alone. Throughout the process, though, Jimmy would come through on tours. Like you brought the Make a Wish Foundation through.

All the streamers that leak clips from the video came through at different various points. He did a lot of tours. That's really interesting. Yeah, so people would get to see it. And we didn't think any of that stuff was coming out. But I guess they want them to leak it. What about like the video cameras and the audio equipment? Like how I feel like, you know, for us, like we have to swap the batteries.

We got to do all of that. I imagine if you're recording 24-7 for 100 days, there's going to be a lot of production issues. Were there any like leaks there that you saw? No, so they have like a full-time production team that's on. And remember, he had three sets going on at the same time. He had the plane. He had the gym. We would literally yell across to match.

You would? Yeah, we would. And his video at the 21-minute mark, you see us yelling, a yo across the field to him. Wow. So you see that in his video. And then he came to us on day 80, day 90, and day 100 because he had gotten out by that point. So there's that.

And then we saw them like setting up the whole crane for him to do the hanging challenge, like when they lifted them up and whatnot. But they would have production guys come in, change out cameras, change wires. They're always like doing stuff because they built this whole prison in two months. So there were some like tweaks that they had to work on. But other than that, everything's, you know, very legit. We had our vlog cameras. We had our microphones and that was it. How much do you think it cost to make that video?

I'd say with like talent, production, the prison, everything, probably like $3 million. That's what I think. Makes sense because if he's running at a loss on a lot of these videos, he probably loses a little bit on this video, but makes it back with feastables or just brand recognition. And over time, like, what are the estimates on those apps say? Like, that video is at 80 million views right now, and it's made, like, 400 or 500K in revenue. I don't know how that all works because I don't have numbers like that. But overall, you know, I'm sure long term, he'll make that money back on the video. And it's all about cash flow and getting the revenue in and more views.

And, you know, and he's got feastables and he's got everything else, too. And merch and sponsorships. Is there anything in the video he didn't want the audience to know? They don't do any. Like, they take such good care of you. Even when we're in solitary, they made sure we had the AC units in there. Like you've seen the video me laying on the floor, the AC units there. They installed AC right away when they realized there was no AC in the building and they had to get AC put in because it was in winter when we started.

But then the springtime happened. They're so good about care. Like they're not going to let you get physically hurt or anything like that. They want to make sure you're good. They're checking in on you all the time between casting or they had a doctor come every 30 days to weigh us, make sure we're good food-wise and everything like that. So they're so professional in that regard. Makes me think, speaking of getting hurt, Jimmy should do a Survivor episode of creators.

Get 20 creators together on an island and literally recreate Survivor. That would be great. For a million dollars. He should have all his old contestants, kind of like what Barstool is doing now with like the Barstool thing or whatever, the beach thing.

But he just put out a post saying you wanted to do a Hunger Games version, like a spend, obviously no one dying, but there was like a trending post talking about the hunger game. I don't know. I think Survivor's making a comeback. Yeah. So I think a lot of people would prefer Survivor. I think it would be good. I mean, he's got so many... Trauma between people. Yeah, he's got so many different angles he could do about it. But have them

get hurt. It's like that. I don't know about physically. I would love it as a viewer, but I think that it would cause a lot of controversy. For creators, you just know what you're getting into. If you understand you're going to an island and you're going to have to eat bugs and coconuts, you know what you're getting into. If you get hurt, it's part of the challenge. is Jimmy, I would win. I would win. Put me in any challenge, I'll win. I'm curious, what was your first impression of Jimmy? So I didn't really know what to expect with him. I was definitely very intimidated by him and nervous about him on day one. I didn't know how he would be. I watched his diary of a CEO interview with him the night before I went in. And when I met him,

he's just a really nice good dude. Like he'll make jokes like a normal person. He'll, he played chess with me. we played basketball with him. He cares so much, especially about the people in his videos. Like, some of, like, his directors would come and say, hey, Jimmy, wanted to make sure, like, you're generally okay because I was always complaining about the phone call or things like that. And I'm like, yeah, it's like, it's content, you know, I get it. So he's just, he cares a lot and he's just a really nice dude, but he's extremely busy. So when you're there for 2400 hours, we probably maybe spent all together two hours with him out of all that time. You know, he's flying for different videos.

He's recorded all these videos while we were there, and it's really cool to see the videos he worked on, like, while we were in there and what he would tell us about. But he's just a good dude. You got to respect the hustle, and I appreciate the opportunity he gave me. What was it like going without your phone? Dude, at first it was hard, because I was always on my phone. Then it's so peaceful.

When are you ever going to get a chance in life to go 100 days without a phone or any piece of electronic? When we got access to the computer in the library, It only had Wikipedia on it. It had no games, nothing, just Wikipedia. So that was like the first electronic thing. But it's refreshing, but it's also hard at the same time. But it's also nice to not have to owe anyone an answer.

I think it would have been harder if I had like a wife for kids or anything at home at the time. I think that was definitely harder for Lenny. How was it going on your phone for the first time after 100 days of not having it? So I got on my phone like right away just to look at all of my data and stats and stuff. And there's like this clip of me freaking out. because I finally passed like 100,000 followers on Instagram. And I was so curious about how my YouTube was doing and everything. And I was just like consumed by that data and looking at it.

So it was nice. And we ended up all going out with the Beast team that night. And I got drunk for the first time in like 100 days. We're at the bar. The first time in 100 days. Yeah. Night before the challenge. You're getting drunk.

No, I didn't drink the night before the challenge. It was like 105 days. But anyways, I go back to the hotel room. It's like 3 a.m. And I'm trying to fall asleep. And I couldn't fall asleep. So I just stayed up all night, worked and then, you know, got the tour of, like, his studio the next day and then flew home that night. But it was good to be back on the phone, connect with people, be back on social media, see what I missed.

They would mess with us. Jimmy would be like, hey, did you see that aliens are real now? They just confirmed it. And then when you'd ask him about it, he walks away and never comes back. So there would be stuff like that. He would have streamers, like, give us, like, random stuff, random information that was, like, fake or whatever. He has fun with you. He would come by at like 11 o'clock at night some nights.

Or what was cool to see is that whole, what was at that challenge, the viral post about the thug life stuff with the pictures, where he was like holding up cash. Oh, yeah. Yeah, he was due. He did that at the prison. He did that while that was all going on and stuff. So that was cool to say.

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days by going to PipeDrive.com slash iced. There's no credit card and no payment needed. Once again, that is PipeDrive.com slash Iced and you can get started in minutes. Not hours, not weeks, not years, not decades, not centuries, but minutes. Huge thank you again to Pipe Drive for sponsoring this episode, and now let's get back to the podcast. And how was it living with a complete stranger for 100 days? To me, it was fine because I did that before for three years, you know? Think about all the random people I had to live with and adapt to and be in sales with. I did six months in real solitary at one point. So that was easy for me. It was, it was fine to do that. Well, you said six months in real solitary? Yeah, so that was the

other reason why I didn't like the Mr. B. Solitary because it's half the size of real solitary. It's bigger in real prison. Why were you in solitary? So the first time I was in solitary was because I got caught on a contraband phone. We all had contraband cell phones in prison. There were like LG smartphones and our room got raided and they got into the phone and there was a video of me getting choked out of us wrestling. Like we were just messing around. And one of the guys in the room was like choking, like squealing on the floor and they raid the room. They see the video, they call me the lieutenant's office, they put the whole room under investigation, they put me in the solitary for that, like, under protective custody, I guess in a way, and they asked if I wanted

to leave there. And I'm like, yeah, everyone's trying to extort me here and give me a hard time. And I was in New Jersey. I wanted to be at the Danbury Federal Prison, which is my hometown where I'm from, what Orange is the New Black is based on. Yeah. So I sat in the shoe there for like six weeks. They finally shipped me to Danbury, but on the way to Danbury, so New Jersey to Danbury is about an hour and a half drive, right? You know how long it took me to get by prison transport bus from New Jersey to Danbury? About a month and a half. Wow. So when I left at Fort Dix, they brought me to Philly. Well, first they brought me to Brooklyn, spent a night in Brooklyn, then I went to Philly. I was in solitary there for six weeks because if you travel from the shoe,

whatever facility you're in in transit, you have to go to the shoe. I sat there for six weeks. What do you mean like the shoe? Solitary. It's called the shoe, the special housing unit or the or... So what is it like in there? So it's like half the size of this room and width. And double bunk bed, prison toilet, a desk, and that's it. You got one shower, three showers a week every other day. Three meals a day, no commissary.

You're on kind of restriction. Ruck yard five days a week for an hour. So that's kind of like where Jimmy got that theme from. That's more like solitary. When they come in to get you, both you and your cell may have to handcuff yourself behind your back. in the slot, and then they come in, they get you, and they move you out. So that's solitary. People could be there if they check in. That's called like checking in for protective custody,

or if you get caught with a phone or under investigation, anything like that, you're in solitary. So I finally make it to Danbury, and that's five minutes from where my parents lived. And I get on the yard, and now I know about paperwork and how to maneuver, and I knew people there and people knew me, and they knew that I didn't snitch or I wasn't a defender. And I'm on the yard for like 15 hours, didn't even meet my bunkmate yet, and the lieutenants call me to the lieutenant's office and say, are you Ian Bick? I said, yes, they said, turn around, put your hands by on your back, and they handcuffed me, and they bring me the solitary there. This solitary looks like Alcatraz, like with the three tiers and the actual bars on it, like you would think is what a prison looks like. I later found

out that I had dated a guard's cousin, and he reported a conflict interest, saying that because he worked there, you know, that could lead to a conflict of interest, exposure. Like, if I tried to get contraband from him or anything, it could put him in a compromising position. So I was in the shoe there for three or four months, waiting to get transferred. And then they finally brought me to a camp, but it was in Oxford, Wisconsin. They put me on Conair, shipped me all the way out to Oxford, Wisconsin. And then I spent my last year in a prison camp. Now, when it comes to the challenge itself, did you have any strategy that you discussed with Lenny? So on day one, we kind of talked about not spending any money.

And then we, good thing is like we, by day nine, we talked amongst ourselves of, hey, let's not, let's actually spend a little bit of money to get through this to help us. Yeah. Because then on day 10, we got offered the $50,000 offer, $25,000 each to spend money for the rec yard. So our strategy was overall, don't spend a lot of money, but then we realize you kind of have to in these videos. And they reward you for that by giving you out. options to make money like we saw with the rock. And that's why I spent money on commissary, too. What was the money best spent? Definitely the rec yard. I mean, being able to get fresh air for those 100 days was great. And it helped split out the time. Having that hour, we picked our

rec time at 5 p.m. So it was, dinner was at 8.m., so meals were at 8 a.m., 2 p.m. and 8 p.m. So doing it at 5 p.m. kind of broke up the day. And then why we didn't, take the kitchen was because we didn't want to give up the rec yard after just 10 days of having it. So that's why we turned it down on day 20. And honestly, how much did you trust him out of 10? I trust him 100%. Like, I could tell he was just a good guy. He was very religious.

And I think throughout the whole thing, if anyone didn't trust anyone, it's him not trusting me, just based on my past and that I'm branded as a criminal in it and everything like that. But I trusted him fully. You could tell he was just a good person. You ever just like meet that person and you just know they're like a good dude. That was him. It's just a really solid guy. Were there any topics you were afraid to talk about that were just on camera because

you're constantly recorded? Like sometimes Jack and I will be, you know, riffing back and forth and some taboo topics. Yeah, maybe there's some jokes every now and then that we make where it's like, you know, there's no cameras around. So maybe you forget about like or being recorded. So we like at 10 p.m. when like we took our mics off to go to bed, we would always talk about, like, relationships or just whatever, like, random stuff. But the one thing I never talked to him about was that at one point I had an only fans when I was

first getting started in podcasting because he was like super against only. Like it came up in conversation about like only fans and like it was despicable and like all of these things. So when I first started, when I quit my job, I had no money. I wasn't making money on the podcast or whatnot. So I was literally driving Uber doing DoorDash and I had OnlyFans. And it was 90% men that subscribed to me. And I made like 10 grand in a month.

In one month? Yeah, bro. I was telling feet picks, other picks. Are you serious? Yeah, dude, it was crazy. I still got guys to this day, DM me and be like, hey, do you still have the only fans? So you just put a link up and you made 10 grand in a month?

Yeah, about a month and a half. But yeah. Is there a dollar amount where you would consider doing that again? I think now I would probably make serious money doing it because it might have a huge following now. It's way bigger. That was like when I first started in the early days. Are you worried about that? that stuff being recirculated?

No, I mean, who cares? You know, like, if it comes out, it comes out, what are you going to do? You know, it's not the end of the world? Why don't you do it, Graham? Graham, you know what Graham does? He loves doing this. He's like, hey, you should do this. You should do this.

And Graham would be like, me? No, I would never do that, but you should do it. He's a business guy, though. He's looking at the dollars. He's a business guy. Just saying, I want to help other people. That's very nice of you. I'm thinking of someone else other than myself.

Sure. So if you are in desperate need of another $50,000 a month, then maybe you could do it. But I think that, like, if you're getting buying and you're paying your bills, you know, you're doing, you're doing fine. You know, maybe if you really want to, by all means. No, I think that chapter is closed. Especially after doing a Mr. Beast video and stuff. I can't. I feel like that would be kind of like slapping him in the future. Yeah, I can't do that. I can't have any scandals or anything like that. You know, it's just not, it can't do it. But it's a part of the story, you know, I'm going to own that. I'm not going to hide that. Just a genuine part of the story. It's, well, he'll probably watch this. But, yeah, so it is what it is. Would you say you ended up becoming really close friends with him after 100 days? Yeah, we're really close.

I mean, a couple weeks after he came and we recorded the episode for my podcast with me and him. And then I did one for his podcast. We went to dinner. We talk almost every day. He's just a good dude. He's curious about content. He learned a lot for me. I learned a lot from him.

And we have a close relationship. What was it like winning $500,000? Well, I didn't technically win $500,000. Yeah. But it was, I don't know. This episode is brought to you by FedEx. These days, the Power Move isn't having a big metallic credit card to drop on the check at a corporate launch. The real Power Move is leveling up your business with FedEx intelligence and accessing one of the biggest data networks powered by one of the biggest delivery networks.

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Via rail, love the way. I think that it's not what you would really expect. I mean, my take home was $240,000. But I had gotten a couple paydays like that in the last couple of years, so it didn't really hit me necessarily, like, as hard as you would expect. And I also gave $150,000. of that as soon as the wire came into restitution to bring that down because from my court case, I had about 500,000 restitution. Now my balance today is about 197,000. Today. Today, yeah. That's after

Mr. Beast, after paying money from, you know, my business and everything like that. So that brings it down to that. So how do restitution payments look? Let's say you fraud someone out of $500,000. You get $500,000 in restitution, go to prison, you get out. Could you just file for bankruptcy? Like, how do you, how many, payments do you need to make? How long of a term is it? There's a certain percentage of your income. How does it look? So you can't file for bankruptcy on federal restitution. I'm not sure how it works in the state. At your sentencing, your judge is going to order a payment plan through the term of your supervised release. So for example, Wolfel Wall Street during his supervised release was 50% of his income. Mine was $1,000 a month. Usually after that supervised release ends, it's called the financial litigation unit. They're like the U.S. Attorney Team that goes after. civil stuff because it becomes civil after. They kind of hold that, you know, payment plan to the standard or you'll negotiate with them or talk to them. The worst thing you could do is avoid them and not pay.

So when I got off supervised release, I was paying me $1,000 a month once my business started or after I left Whole Foods and I met with them and we agreed on the $1,000 a month. But when I get bigger chunks of money than I pay more towards it, I think the biggest thing is just showing trust because they can't go after you. Like if you're not paying, they can sanction you. They can levy your bank accounts and do things like that. What they say is that the judgment's good for 20 years. And then after that, it kind of falls off. But I'm going, at the ray I'm going, it's going to be paid before the 20 year mark. But you look at a guy like Jordan, and he still owes like $98 million. And that case was, you know, 20-something years ago.

I read somewhere that he's paying like 10 grand a month. So who do you mostly owe it to? just investors that were a part of the case. There's about 12 people. Are they like your friends? Old friends. Yeah, friends, parents of those friends. I had raised money for a concert business. Concert business is the worst business you could go get into, overpromised, underdelivered,

which was okay in the sense where if I had just been honest and said, I lost your money, it would have been okay. It would have been at best maybe a civil thing. But it turned out to be I lied about those losses and said, I made money when I didn't. And in that sense, a Ponzi scheme kind of grew from that because I was taking loans from some people to pay off others, just to continue to lie and buy time to pay off their investments. Yeah, let's talk about that. How did you get into doing this?

So my dad is a caterer, and I grew up, like, going to the Harry Potter premieres and going to, like, cool events in New York City because he would cater these events. And I always had a passion for that. And I had a passion for business at a young age. I would sell candy out of my backpack in middle school, and I would have lemonade stands, and I was always like a hustler in that sense. Then where it really starts is my beginning of sophomore year, high school. Me and my best friend foamed these cars in our neighborhood.

We lived in this gated neighborhood where there's like a president and a vice president, and they said, you can't ride golf carts. And we had golf carts at the time, and we felt like offended. So we took insulation foam, foam their cars at night and got caught for it and got sentenced to community service. And my community service project was, I came up with it to sell like these Live Strong type bracelets for a dollar apiece and call it fight for the homeless. That kind of grew.

I raised a couple thousand dollars for charity and I decided to make a school dance from it. And I made a school dance, organized it, rented the venue, did all these things just as a sophomore in high school and realized that if you could get 300 kids to pay 20 bucks, to, you know, go to a school dance, this could be a business. A few months later, um, when I turned 16, I start renting out this local club in Damary called Tuxedo Junction doing teen parties. I called it like the Halloween rave, the Christmas rave, a paint party where we threw washable paint like a day glow at kids. And I would make 10 or 15 grand a night once a month all in cash doing these like teen parties, no alcohol and that type of thing. That's when I decided I wasn't

going to go to college and that I had this business called myself, this is a where it's at entertainment, kind of like a play on words that this is where it's going to be at for the night and got my first LLC, like my junior year of high school. And then I thought the next step for club promotion was concerts. And the very first concert I ever booked was Big Sean in Danbury. And then after that, started booking other concerts. Did he show up? He did, yeah. I only had one person not show up. That was Chief Keith. But you had Big Sean show up. And how much did you have to pay him to? That show is he was 40 grand at the time. 40,000.

This was in 2012, yeah. And how much, so how much did you make from that? That we lost money. So the concert business is so tough, especially in the arenas. And you're also, it's not a brick and mortar location. So when you're a promoter and you're renting a location and you lose money, you don't even really have a brand to show for it. You know, at least if you have a brick and mortar, people are getting familiar with

the space. With the event, you don't have to start over every time. Never had event insurance. We did everything wrong you could possibly do. I mean, we were kids. We were 18 years old, 17 years old. And you booked Big Sean. Yeah. Did you talk to him?

No, that day I met him, but not to book him. But, yeah, I met him that day. I got a picture with him, dealt with his tour manager. I booked 21 Savage, Chief Keith. How much was 21 Savage? 21 Savage. I gave 24,000 to. And Chief Keith?

How much was he? He was 25,000 at the time. Didn't show up, though. What happens if they just don't show up? In a case like that, it's tough because you're going through a management team. They're hidden by a different LLC. you're going to spend more money than, you know, what it takes. Why pay them up front or why not pay half now and half later?

We paid half up front, the 12, 5, but then you have where we lost money was security, the venue. He literally sent out a tweet. So first, this shows at 8 p.m. The manager calls us at 7 saying you missed his flight. He'll be on the next one. Then an hour later goes by, we can't find him. We don't hear from them until the next day where he sends out a tweet saying, sorry, Connecticut, wasn't the promoter's fault.

That was it. Never got that money back. I booked the chain smokers, Steve Ioki, Adventure Club. How much were the chain smokers? For that night, it was a Thanksgiving Eve party.

This was right after they dropped selfie, but before they dropped, don't let me down. November 2014, I gave him 25 grand. What about Steve Aoki? Steve Aoki,

I wasn't the personal one booking him, but I think he got like 75 grand for that club because that was a smaller capacity. It was at my club, though. Did you ever make money

from any concert? Yeah, there's plenty. I, you know who Blau is. I did him a couple times. We had money with him. Oh, Justin, right? He lives down the street. Dude, no way.

He knows who I am. Really? Yeah. So he was the very first big DJ I booked. So it was second DJ. I did GTA at Tuxedo Junction. So he was good friends with this company called Envy Concepts that did a lot of shows with him. That's how I got all the big names.

So I booked him twice at my venue. And I put up like a post like before I got into content. He had responded back. to it. But he's a really nice guy and stuff. So anyways, we did him on a Wednesday night, had like 2,000 people there, packed out place. Like, we have, I'll show you the pictures after. It's really cool. He's like, his arms spread out. It was like a really, it was a small club. And what we'd get these artists, because they would play in Boston. Then they would play at Shrine and Foxwoods in Connecticut. Then they would hit Danbury, which is an hour away.

And then they would go to New York City. And because we were in all ages club with no liquor, we could pretty much do any night. Where did things go wrong? So things went wrong. with my business before I own the nightclub. It was the concert promotion where I was taking money from investors, promising them a guaranteed profit. So say I went to you and I said, hey, man, give me 20 grand. I'm going to give you a guaranteed profit back because I was so confident these shows were going to work out and you'll get it back after the concert. Well, if the concerts all worked out, everything would have been great, but they failed miserably. When I booked TIGA for 40 grand at this arena show,

there was an incident, remember I'm schmacked, so it was a big college tour. Yeah, I do. Yeah, so there was an incident where they got like this bar shut down, the venue lost its liquor license, a whole big issue. And the dean of the campus at the University of Rhode Island didn't want buses from outside schools coming to the venue. So we lost like 2,000 ticket sales in the matter of days from kids from other schools. So I lost on this TIGA show. I paid 100 grand for the whole show with production and everything. My wife. wire transfer after the show was for $16,000. So I lost $84,000 that night and one night. So all of these things were piling up. And simultaneously, I had like this electronics business where we were buying like these Beats by Dre for like 50 bucks that turned out to be fake. So I was promising people a guaranteed profit. I'd say, hey, give me $20,000 as a loan and I'll give you a 50% return on that. I didn't know that 50% was extremely high. I was just basing it off of what we could sell the product for. Beats by Dre, 50 bucks, selling it for 400 bucks. You could afford that. So it pretty soon quickly turned into that business getting defunct and I'm

borrowing from one person paying off another. I didn't have credit at the time. I'm thinking, okay, this is a loan. I could use one loan to pay off another loan. Like you borrow from one bank to pay off another bank or get a loan for another loan. And then the whole thing collapses after a few months. All the concerts failed. The electronics business failed. And I'm like $1.2 million in debt with the interest with all like the promise payments. And this was in January of 2014 or of 2013, or December of 2013. What was it like having all that money come in your bank account, though? I remember I was 18 years old. It was July 2013, two months after graduation, and I had like $600,000 in my bank account, my business bank account, knew nothing about

accounting. I'm this kid I would wear suit and tie to high school thinking I was like this business guy with a briefcase and just, I, I have a baby face now, so imagine me back then walking into a Wells Fargo, depositing all this money. Like, no one really batted an eye. It was just an interesting scene. And, you know, we did stupid things with it. Like, we bought a pair of jet skis, thinking it was like a company car, but company jet skis. We did like a couple trips with like other investors and dinners and stuff and clothes. But for the most part, it was just a lot of stupid decisions that should not have been made. and we just didn't know how to run the business. How did you get caught? So all of this happens. I'd get a lawyer, a lawyer friend in December 2013.

Keep in mind this lasted six months, this whole thing. And he sends out letters to all the investors, like 15 of them, 12 or 15 of them, saying, hey, the company, we called ourselves WB investments at the time, is like basically bankrupt and we're going to analyze to see what you owe. and his logic or what you're owed, and his logic was, don't give anyone a profit, just give them their out of pocket back. So say you invested $20,000, you had gotten back $10,000 in payments. You're really only out of pocket $10,000. But as the investor, you're like, whoa, hold on a minute. I was promised like all of this interest. So you think you're owed $50,000. So everyone got pissed and they went to the local police department. I went in with the lawyer, met with the local police department. They were kind of fishing around. They escalated it to. the Department of Banking where they subpoenaed me. I didn't know we had a Department of Banking, and I thought this whole thing just needed to be cleared up. So I went there without a lawyer, testified for like five hours. This is when I was 18 years old in 2014 and April.

After that meeting, they say there's two gentlemen, they're waiting to meet with you, and I'm sitting in this room, smaller in this room in like a closet, and two guys and, you know, old suits come out and they show me their IDs and they say they're postal inspectors. and they start asking me questions. And I didn't know that they had listened into the whole interview and that they had very targeted questions towards me. At the end of the interview, they served me a target letter from the FBI saying you're under a federal investigation for wire, fraud, mail fraud, money laundering, a bunch of things. And at that point, that's when I got a federal attorney, a criminal defense attorney. A couple months after that, I'm 19 now. We met with the U.S. Attorney's Office for this thing called a reverse proffer. A proffer is where you give the government information about like the case, or co-defendants are reverse proffers where they say what they have on you to kind of, you know, look at what the case is. And I'm in this big room at the U.S. Attorney's Office in Connecticut with FBI agents, U.S. attorneys, interns from the U.S. Attorney's Office and IRS agents because the IRS was on

the case too. And they laid out this whole case. And basically I was in a and I didn't budge. That was actually the night I had the Blow show. And I said, hey, I got a sold-out show with Blow tonight. This doesn't really matter. And I was just very arrogant and cocky and, and, and, and, and, and, and, um, that kind of started the whole war. And then in January, 2015, I got indicted five o'clock in the morning, FBI agents, IRS, uh, the state troopers, local police department, banging on my door at my parents' house at 5 a.m.

I had just gotten back from the casino because I had a little gambling habit at the time. And, um, they woke me up. I'm in my boxers. and they haul me out of the house in handcuffs and in cowboy boots because they needed me to be in shoes without laces and I was in the high school musicals throughout high school so I had those in my closet.

Did you have any contracts with the people who gave you money or was it all just word of mouth? I had contracts. I actually went, that was one of our defenses at trial. I went to an attorney, told them exactly what we were doing

and he wrote me this one-page contract saying I waived the right to usury, like usury claims, and that these were loans, just loans for business purposes. one-page document, and that was it. So in hindsight, had you just said nothing when they started probing you,

would you have gone to jail? I don't think so, because I made their whole case for them. I gave them all the documents, everything. I put it all together, names, phone numbers. But even before that, all I had to do is just say, I lost your money, and there wouldn't have been any fraud. I'd just started lying profusely

because I didn't want to let anyone down. Do you feel bad for what you did? or do you think that the punishment didn't really fit the crime? I definitely felt bad about losing everyone's money. I would have pled guilty right then and there if it was no jail time. I went to trial because my plea deal was for like four years. It was ridiculous.

I was 18 and they wanted to send me to prison for four years over a very relatively small amount compared to what they normally prosecute. Yeah, that's the part that was confusing because it seems like the amount of resources that they went after for the amount of loss that's there. Like, they would spend more.

more money on your case than would cost just to put you to work and have you pay these people back. The cost to keep you and send you to prison for that long could have just paid the restitution. Oh, the cost of the trial. I mean, keep in mind, this is a one month's trial. They were flying out people from all over the country because everyone was at college at this point. Agents, there was a task for it. Like, it didn't make sense. I think they thought it was bigger than what it was. I think they thought it was in the millions because normally with these fraud cases, there's always more to be discovered and there wasn't. And it was very quick people. a time, and I think they thought I was going to take a plea deal, which I would have if it was no jail time. So that's what kind of got them pissed off. And what pissed them off even more is that while my whole case is going on, I open up this club Tuxedo Junction that now went out of business from the old owners. I take it over and I'm doing all these concerts, like with Blau and Zed's

dead and the chain smokers and all while on bond and on bail and, you know, taking the government to trial. Were you making good money during that period of time? It was hit or miss because the problem was I had this new business, which was completely underfunded. I mean, literally, there would be nights where I was taking ticket money and running next door of the dollar store to get sodas to fill up the bar to sell it. I was so underfunded. And the problem was, is that it was a brand new business, and I had some early losses, like, as in any new business, losses early on, like a couple of concerts failed miserably. So say I made 10 grand with Blau, and then I would do another show that would lose 15. I'm already in a deficit from the past. I'm underfunded. I have no funding and I'm taking on more debt.

So there would be periods of time, like the chain smokers, I owed them 20 grand for like six months. And I'm like going the casino to gamble to win money to pay their agents so I didn't get blacklisted. I was selling equipment at the club. I was doing whatever I had to do to make that happen. What was your game of choice? I'd play a Baccarat. I know I'm pronouncing it. Bacra. Bacara. It was elected. So this is what ultimately sent me to prison. I would go to this casino called Empire City and Yon and it was electronic table because I wasn't 21 yet. So I couldn't go to the Connecticut casino. And I would take like 500 bucks and play this electronic machine.

I would ride the streaks. So when it's going all player or all banker, I would just continuously double down on that. You can only bet up to two grand, but I would just keep putting that, that, that and doubling it down. There'd be days I'd make 500, turn 500 into $30,000. That's how I was funding the club in the later days. How did you get so lucky?

Because you could lose that, like just. I mean, you could say, that about how did I get cast in Mr. Beast and how did I do everything I've been able to accomplish, you know, over that. Luck is a big part of it. There's no rhyme or reason to it. There's no skill. It was just a part of my, I guess, destiny the way I look at it.

But one of the conditions of my supervised release for bail, I had a $500,000 or a $250,000 bail was that I couldn't go out of state without permission. So what ends up happening is they find out because one of the guys that was working for me snitched on me and wanted to take the club for me. and they told the FBI after I got convicted at trial that I was going out of state to gamble. So they did an investigation a month before sentencing, the judge revoked my bond. That's what really pissed the judge off and sent me to federal prison. He told me the party's over.

It was a whole press release on it, and I got put in a detention center a month before sentencing. Do you think you needed that to happen to put you in place or to like teach you a lesson? Like could you have been where you are today had that not happened? So I think mentally, I could have done it probably in half the time to really figure life out. Yeah. But I think those three years are the best thing that could ever happen to me because it gave me the prison story that helped me build the platform I have. Because my prison experience was just crazy from all the different prisons I was in to all the incidents that happened to every little thing. I wouldn't have been able to do that if I got in like a year and a day.

Or my dad and I were talking about this the other day. If I had just gotten house arrest or probation, me and you wouldn't be here today. my whole story came from prison. I always thought my story, like, I remember being in prison, trying to write a book, trying to be Jordan Balford, the Wolf of Wall Street, getting my story option and stuff, thinking how cool it was that an 18-year-old owned a nightclub and booked all these acts.

But then it's like Billy McFarland kind of already did that. You know, he had that story, the Fire Fest thing and whatnot. And it just, it wasn't it. It wasn't hitting. It was the second when I started talking about prison from my perspective that everything changed. So I needed that. was the best thing that could ever happen to me.

What happened to the fire festival? Do you have sympathy towards Billy and his failed fire festival knowing what you know about the entertainment industry? No, I think Billy's kind of a piece of shit, honestly. Like, I've talked to him on Twitter and it gave me the runaround. Like, when I first started, I wanted to have him on my show.

Yeah. He was too good for me, like, sent me to his manager who sent me to another manager, that sent me to another manager. Like, just very sketchy. Then, like, funny enough, he called me, or his manager called me last year because they wanted me to do that karate fight thing against him,

but they didn't want to pay me for it. And it was just like a silly thing. And my following's bigger than Billy's. And he had all this press. I just think he's not that likable. Like, I'm just not a fan of him. And the Fire Fest thing, like, people could pair me to him. And it's like I was able to actually do the shows.

He never produced a successful show. But I guess in some ways, like, I feel for him about how the shows ended up. But you got to, you can't, like, in some sense, your mind, you've got to be like, you're selling tickets. How is no one figuring this out logistically? Because this could have all been avoided. I mean, the concert could have happened. Remember that doctor's appointment you were supposed to make a while ago, the one that's been sitting on your to-do list for weeks, maybe months? Maybe it's just that overdue annual checkup, that weird rash you keep Googling, Graham, or your dentist reminding you that it's been two years since your last cleaning.

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Thank you so much to Shopify for sponsoring this episode. I don't understand how you were make it as much as you were and you had probably very little expenses living with your parents. Like, how could you not have just shifted some money around to slowly pay back investors? And also, like, are these relationships with these investors destroyed now? If they were, like, your friends growing up and you were borrowing money from them, borrowing money from their parents, you're paying them off now. But, like, how are those relationships?

Well, I couldn't pay them back when I started the club, like Tuxedo Junction, because there would be losses at the club. Like, if I made some money, I would lose on another show, and then you have the bills, you have the overhead, you have staff. It was never, the goal with Tuxedo Junction, the club that I owned after the case during the trial was to build it up a big enough name where I could sell it and pay everyone back. And I never got to that point. My bond ends up getting revoked and I don't accomplish that. The relationships now, I mean, some people have reached out and, you know, made amends with the guy that was actually owed half of the money, $250,000, passed away from an overdose a few years ago when I got out of prison. He had won a big lawsuit with a gym, lost vision in his eye when he was 80. I got a bunch of money. That's how he had the money. So there's that.

I've talked to like his, the mother of his child. But other than that, some people have reached out. I think people are just happy that they're getting the money. I think that's all it really comes down to. I'm curious also, like,

I see you wearing a necklace. The chain. I see you wearing a chain. That looks pretty nice. Oh, this was a gift. That was a gift. Yeah. So like, what do these people think

if you're still owing them money and restitution and you go and you spend your money on like nice things? I mean, you didn't buy the chain, but like if you're buying a new car or you're buying a new this, new that, like, has that ever came to the mix? Do you ever think about that? I mean, maybe it comes to the mix, but I'd pay so much in restitution. I mean, I gave up the last year I paid like $60,000 or $70,000. This year I paid almost, it'll be over $160,000

with the monthly payments and everything. I mean, if you think about it, the average person in my position that was way more than me pays pennies on the dollar. I'll give you a great example. I saw Matt Cox was on your show. He owes millions of dollars. He makes way more money than me on YouTube. I wonder how much he's paying towards restitution. Who is he paying restitution to? All the victims that are a part of him, that got defrauded through him.

And he'll go out and say that his thing was a con, you know? I give him credit for, you know, doing that. He's very opposite of me. But, yeah, but to answer your question, like the majority of my money goes to restitution. And once I get a book deal, that'll all go towards restitution too. I mean, $197,000 of restitution left is not that much money. That's going to be paid off in a year, tops. Why didn't you just go to these people and say, hey, I'm really sorry, I messed up?

Before, like, the police got involved, just apologize and say, I'm going to spend the next four years of my life paying you back and, you know, just have like a heart to heart. do you think that would have alleviated? 100%. If I was just honest with everyone from the get-go, instead I would just avoid it. Like when people would call me about money, I would turn off my phone or block them. I just didn't know how to be aggressive

and come clean and tell everyone the truth. And by the time I was ready to tell people the truth, no one believed me. Why do you think it was so difficult to do that? I think I had this, you know, I was popular, I guess, in high school from the parties and throwing house parties and building.

I was successful in high school. I think I wanted to keep up that image. And I felt bad about losing everyone's money, and I thought I could eventually make it back. And I couldn't. But I should have just been honest with everyone. What was it like the first day in jail? What's the process like to do they shave your head?

Do they put you on a like an orange junk? Shave your head, right? Do they tattoo some numbers in your arm? What are you talking about? Do they not shave? No. I thought they, are you kidding your head now? It's not like military.

Really? Yeah. Maybe I'm confusing the two. I thought you just get there, they shave your head and they put you in an orange jumps. No, but my first day, like, when I got my bond revoked, I was chained and shackled. They put a ball and chain on your ankle? Give you a, yeah. My first day, I was chained and shackled and put in a van where I had to go in this van with, like, six other inmates to Rhode Island where the detention center was.

And everything's so slow. Like, when you go through processing, it's like two hours. long, three hours long. Everything just takes forever, going through the paperwork, going through yet the one phone call, going through fingerprints, and you're fed like a tray of cold food from whatever was left in the chow hall. And I just remember getting put in that cell. It was like a solitary cell that first night. And I was in there for 48 hours because I have to do your TB shot. And you can't go out into general population until that passes. But I just remember that feeling of being locked in there that first night. You know, not all your freedoms taken away.

And that's, I think, a feeling that came to me when I was doing the Mr. Beast video. Like, it was even harder during the Mr. Bees video because I could leave whenever I wanted, but there was so much at stake. Yeah. Was it surreal? When did the reality set in being in jail? I would say after all the appeals got exhausted, like, I always had hope that I was going to get bail pending appeal or I was going to win the appeal and go home. So that got me through, like, the first I'd say, seven, eight months. And then when everything got exhausted, you're kind of already adjusted to it.

And you're like, okay, this is going to be okay. What was your first night like? First I had a bunkmate that was like he was like a crack head or a crack addict who was detoxing, itching himself all night long, pacing the cell. I wasn't hungry and I couldn't sleep. So he ate my tray of food. And he was telling me all these things about what to do in prison, what not to do in prison, all of it completely false.

but just kind of like bouncing around the cell. He was just like, oh, make sure you're, you know, you're sitting with just the white people and, you know, don't do this, don't do that. This is how you take a shower and. Were you trusting of him at the time or you were like, ah, there's no way that what this guy's saying is true? I honestly, I was kind of scared of him because you're putting to a cell locked. There's not like an emergency button or anything when you're in the cell. I go, this guy, me or something.

No one would find out, like, right then and there to save me. Couldn't you have talked to a guard and said, hey, this guy's like on. something or he's coming down. Like, he's on something. He's not on something. He's clearly off something. But it's just like I don't feel safe.

I guess you could have, but I was just, man, I was just in a fog. Like, my, one minute I'm out free, running the club and then the next minute my bonds revoked.

And, you know, I went in that courtroom, not going home, you know? I went there, a free person and walked out in handcuffs. What was the food like in jail? Um, at the detention centers,

that sucked. There's like no second. that's like a tray of food. It wasn't the best. All the federal prisons have like a set menu, like a school lunch program that changes like quarterly. Like cheeseburger Wednesdays or hamburger Wednesdays. Every Thursday was chicken day.

It's like a broiled burger. But depending on where they make it, like the food sounds get on the menu. If you pulled at the prison menu, which is available online, sounds great. But depending on the location that they make it. So say you're at a low security prison

where they're feeding 2,500 guys, that food quality is going to suck. they're building it or they're cooking in a batch. But then when you get to the camp and there's 100 guys, the food was excellent. Bigger portions, it was well-seasoned. We had a scratch bakery. I got to work in the bakery, too, where we're having, like, fresh Danishes and bagels and donuts and pizza.

And then inmates cook their own food, too, like make their own commissary items. Then there's the whole smuggling food. I mean, there would be nights that we smuggled in Chicago deep dish pizza in Wisconsin, sushi, chicken, burritos, everything like that. So how was smuggling in prison? So smuggling, I had just seen at first inmates have cell phones and like Chinese food and stuff like through the guards at the lows. A lot of that comes through the guards. Now there's drones and everything that fly it over.

But when I got the opportunity to personally smuggling items was at the camp. And I saw guys running through the woods because there's no fence at the camp. And there's only one guard before count or after count because they count you throughout the day. These guys would run across the field, run through the woods and go to the low. local motel, have their wife, wife or girlfriend pick them up, go to the motel and hook up with them, and they'd have someone at the camp keeping guard to make sure they don't call an emergency count or anything, and then they'd sneak back in. I would do that sometimes. I'd never left the actual grounds. I'd just run through the woods to the border, and I'd pick up bags. People would pay me

to pick up the bags that would have cell phones, that would have food, that would have sneakers, weight equipment, anything, and then you'd just run it back. How do people go to a camp versus a prison? So camp is, it's set by point level. So if you have like 11 points or under, then you could go to a camp and you can't have a dangerous crime. You can't be a defender. Age plays a factor. How many years you can't have more than, I think, 10 years to go to a camp? It's like, that's why they call club fed.

That's the makeoff of club ned, but it's club fed. It's a lot of, I would say, white collar criminals or low-level drug offenses. And it goes by a point system based on your criminal history. You're schooling, everything like that. So what part of prison out of everything was the hardest? I had a male prison guard almost. For this episode that you're watching here, we had to probably cut out 30 plus minutes of it for the main release

because we talked about a lot of, Jack mentioned a lot of stuff here. What about dating in prison? You're white knuckling, like grabbing the soap. Do you like movies about gladiators? We just can't put it out on YouTube because we know if we did, the whole episode is going to get shadow ban. That's why we have a membership. So if you want to see this entire video uncensored,

and Jack, asking all of his questions, that were a little weird. You could join the membership, see the full thing. There we go. Okay. What about the saying where if you go to jail, like you're supposed to beat up a guy, you know? You have to prove yourself ever?

Right. It's like, find the biggest guy. I just kick as it. Well, I clearly didn't do that at the Chow Hall that day. That was my moment to do that, you know, when I should have stood up for myself. up, but I didn't. But there are guys that do that. I hear those stories all the time. And I mean, it's a very real thing. Should you have stood up for yourself? 100%. I had a chow hall?

Yeah, I caused all my, I should have swung at the guy or not. Actually? Because my paperwork was fine. I wasn't in the wrong. You should have hit him? Yeah. I should have hit him right there. Why? But I feel like he would have beat you up. It doesn't matter. It's just you're proving that you have it in you. From there I was looked at as like kind of like a in a way, if you think about it. And were there as a Precussions of being the B word? Were there, like, things that happen? Um, guys just trying to extort me. Like, I was the white kid running around that didn't really run with anyone.

So they're not gangs and, like, the lows. It's called a car. Um, and the car is, like, who you're riding with. And that goes by the state. So there's like the New England car where it's like Connecticut, Massachusetts. There's a New York car. There's a New Jersey car. Um, and I never ran with anyone.

I was like, just by myself. I didn't know how these politics worked. So when I started gambling, like playing dice and playing spades and I had a contraband cell phone, these guys that have worked their way down for maxes or medium security prisons are like, who's this white boy run around without anyone thinking like he's hot? And I just didn't, I didn't think I was hot shit. I just didn't really know what I was doing. I was just having fun.

So they looked at me as like fresh me as prey. What was the most fun thing in prison? Fun thing. Definitely sports or like people are very into the sports. There would be sports teams like basketball league, softball league. I love playing softball at the camp or basketball and also Spades, which is the card game that we play in prison or CELO, 456 dice. We would play that all night for hours. That was a lot of fun.

Did you ever get used to the lack of privacy? I think in the detention center is where you have the least amount of privacy because you have the group showers where, you know, like you're literally shower. It's like a YMCA type thing. And then also in solitary where you're literally. literally peeing and pooping into the same toilet, you know, as right next to your bunkmate. So you would have to make like a makeshift curtain sometimes or you have no privacy in solitary. But then at like the camps and the lows, there's actual stalls or shower stalls or shower curtains. You have way more privacy in those scenarios.

Was that uncomfortable for you? 100%. There would be days like I would like, if I really had to go to the bathroom, I would hold it in all night for them to pop the doors for breakfast. And my cellmate would walk out to go get breakfast. I would skip breakfast and use the bathroom. Then there's this whole thing about like how to use the toilets properly in a cell, like sitting to pee. I didn't realize you have to sit to pee to not be disrespectful.

Like if you stand up and pee, because there's no toilet seats, the pee could hit the toilet that you also sit on and hit the guy's bed, whoever's on the bottom bunk. So you avoid that by either kneeling the pee and just, you know, peeing while kneeling or sitting to pee. So the first time I ever was standing up because I thought that was normal I got yelled at by my bug maze.

You can't do this in here. This isn't how we do it. Also, another thing that's big is you can't spit in the sink. Like when you're brushing your teeth, they want you to spit in the toilet your bunk bit because sometimes they'll wash their clothes in the sink, which doesn't make sense. They'll wash their boxers in the sink,

but you can't spit in it. Just all these little simple things. Another big one is at the chow hall, you have to knock on the table before you get up after you eat. And I didn't know why everyone was doing that, but it's a sign of respect that you're finished your meal, peace be upon the table, and someone could take your seat after. So you always knock after you finish your meal. Was there like a kingpin at this prison?

Plenty of kingpins, but what you're thinking more like a shot caller. Yeah. Yeah, like they call them head of the cars or the shot caller of the car. Those are the guys that are like checking paperwork that are, you know, probably down for a while and they're running things. And yeah, they're all the time. But it's not like what you see in the movies in like a low or a camp. It's more those, what you're thinking of is more on like the mediums or the higher security prisons. Best prison movie ever is that movie called Shotcaller.

You ever watch it? You got to watch it. It's really good. That talks about a guy that went to prison for manslaughter that ultimately got life in prison after he teamed up with like the Aryan Brotherhood and stuff to protect his family because he was threatened. So it shows the whole evolution of becoming like a shot caller. Did you ever see any acts of violence between prisoners? So my very first act of violence was when I was at the detention center after I got my bond revoked,

sitting in line to get my tray for chow because in the detention centers, they bring a cart, they have all the trays. Another guy cuts this other guy in line, turns into a whole thing. You would think, like, what's a big deal, you know? Like, we're not in high school or middle school, just address it, whatever. And these two start swinging at each other, throwing punches, stuff like that. happen, then just normal fights, you know, like fist fights. And then guys at the low, especially like the Mexican guys and stuff, we're all walking around with like steel rods that

are like this long, just tucked in their pants. It's crazy. And did the prison guards not think anything of that? They'll search you and stuff. And if you get caught with it, it's a hundred series shot, which is like the worst infraction, you'll lose some good time. You could go with the shoe. Like, if you get caught with the cell phone, you're going to the shoe. But most of the time, people will toss it where they're running around or you got to keep in mind there's, at these facilities, there's one guard for 400 inmates. And at Fort Dix, like, it's an old army barrack, so it's a giant building, three floors tall, that has a staircase on either side. So when the guards coming up one way, there's lookouts and everyone's running the other way down with the phones

and the knives and whatnot. How do you charge your phone? So this is why they didn't have iPhone because you can't take the battery out of an iPhone. They had these LG Samsung's, and I'll tell you why Boost Mobile still in business is because of prisoners. They would do the unlimited plan. Don't you have boost? Yeah, I do. Oh, bailed. So they're in business because I have been in prisoners, but literally everyone has a phone plan

because at the time, I don't know if it's true now, though, but you could put a fake name and just pay it, yeah. Yeah. Everyone's doing that and everyone's using cash app on the phone. Cash app is huge and Western Union is huge because people put money on your commissary through Western Union. So you're paying Boost Mobile for these phone plans, which aren't linked to you or traceable,

and guys would pop the battery out, and they would convert the MP3 player a little sandist that they sold on commissary into a charger where the battery plugs into the MP3 player, which plugs into either the light, like one of those fluorescent lights, that you would have one of the guys in the electrical department unscrew and hook up to make it look like it's like it just in the light or whatnot, or you would plug it in at the computers because we had computers to email on, but that was more risky because that's like next to the CO's office.

But you would just see batteries all the time because the logic is if a battery gets popped, it's only four or five hundred bucks to replace. If a phone gets popped, that could cost you thousands. You would see some guys get a phone and lose two phones in a week. It's pretty crazy. And then guys would make little pouches in their pants pocket. That would be a guy's hustle making pouches for people. So if the guards padded you down, they would think it's just like your junk right there and not the actual phone.

But if they have the wand on you, you're kind of screwed. And then there was a little pocket phones, like the little booty phones. Guys would shove up their butt or just walk around with it, like on their hat, like on their skull cap and just do laps and have the headphones in. So how much is it to buy a cell phone in jail? So at a low security prison at the time, it was like 1,500 or 2 grand for an LG, like used Samsung, more if it's a little new. But at the camp, it was 200 bucks. Now, this is 2016, 2017, 2018. It's probably way more expensive now. It all has to do with the economy and how things are doing with like shakedowns and stuff. Camps are obviously the easiest because there's no

There's no fence that's easier to get in. But I mean, also now they have drones and stuff. You see videos on TikTok all the time of people dropping in drones and whatnot. It's crazy. What other things did you see smuggled into prison? A lot of food, like Chinese food, sushi, pizza, good meals. Like we had a whole Mexican buffet one time. It was pretty crazy.

We're just sitting in the cell eating this like tins of food, gym clothes, watches, jewelry. Pretty much anything from the street is considered. like a high commodity item, protein powder was huge because we would empty the creamer. They didn't sell protein powder, just protein bars on commissary, but they sold creamer jars of creamers.

So you would empty the powder and stuff that with protein powder to hide it. So that was interesting. You get a lot of stuff on commissary, though, too. And how would you make money in jail? A lot of hustles. So you have like the guys that rent the cell phone. So say you bought a cell phone for $2,000,

there's guys that can make thousands and thousands of dollars off that $2,000. They'll sell, they'll rent phone time to people for, say, 30 bucks, 30 macros, fish pouches or three books of stamps because a book of stamps was $10 each. And you have this prison money. Say you have like 100 macrels. You would then sell those 100 macros to, say, the bookie or to someone that is, say, wealthy and wants to use macros to pay for a haircut or their room cleaned or laundry. And they would send money onto your books on your commissary account for, say, 90. bucks. So that's how you convert prison commissary into real money, like street money. And then other

hustles were like room cleaning pay so everyone gets assigned a job, but most people don't work their job. They just have someone else do the job for them. So you pay that to them. There's pretty much anything is a hustle. The barber gambling, the bookie is probably the biggest source of income there. You ever see anything really clever? Stitching pouches is kind of interesting. Yeah, pillows. We don't have pillows. So people making pillows. I think the most clever ones are the chargers, the phone chargers, what these guys could do. Also, if you get someone on the maintenance team, because inmates run everything, the facilities and everything, you get someone on the maintenance team. You pay them like $200 to come drill a hole in your wall or on the floor to hide your contraband or hide your phone

or something like that. Where I had my phone was under my bunk, it was cinder block. We had the guy come in, drill a little slot and then put the rubber like mat right up against it so it looked like the hole wasn't there. Wow. Things like that. What do you have pillows? I don't know. It's so weird.

They don't have pillows. That's why I made a comment about the pillows on the beginning of the Mr. Beast video. No pillows. They have like in the mattress. They have like a slant type of pillow built in. But other than that, they don't have much of anything. How would you improve the prison system, having been through it? I would divide the politics aspect of it.

Like gang members should not be mixed with non-gang members because then you have this whole issue of politics being created, more people getting recruited. I would kind of like cut the head off the snake, separate more of the violent offenders, because what they're doing is they're mixing. You get a violent people with people that are there for nonviolent crimes. It doesn't make sense. And then also have more programs, more rehabilitation. There's no rehabilitation right now in the prison system. Do you think the prison system is set up to rehabilitate people, or do you think that it just continues to like perpetuate cycles of violence and crime? It's definitely not meant to rehabilitate people. I mean, you look at their halfway house program was a great example where you're

supposed to be released in the community before the end of your sentence, help find work, help get on your feet. They just kind of set you out there to fend for yourself. There's a lot of under-experienced staff or little-to-no staff. There's more rules. Like, it didn't make any sense. When I got to the halfway house for three months after, like, I got out, there's all these petty rules about curfews and times, and they make it so hard to find a job and you're not allowed to have a smartphone. You were, but it was 2016 now. Could you not have a smartphone? They wanted you to just have a little flip phone,

but you're already released to the world. There was just all these little things that just didn't make sense, a lot of petty rules. When I got to prison, I thought that there was going to be programs. Like you hear about these college courses. None of that's there. It's all just talked about, or they might have been there at some point,

but they don't actually exist. I would say state prisons do a better job depending on the state than the federal system. The federal system is terrible. What about dating in prison? You ever hear the dating app, plenty of fish? POF. So that's like the number one dating app used by inmates in prison.

Are you serious? People would make this a hustle. So you would see guys go on POF, swipe with people, match with people, and talk to them on the phone or do FaceTime dates. And they would hustle these women and get them to send commissaries. So this guy would be on call with one woman, she'd send 50 bucks. then he would go to another woman. They're all sending money and these guys are making hundreds of dollars doing it.

Then on visiting day, he would have like three or four visits in the day because these women would come and visit him. There's like I understand like there's this fascination with like serial with women like sending fan mail and stuff. I saw that firsthand in prison with all of these individuals that these women obsess and latch onto if they've never met before

and take care of these guys, send them money, come visit them. Granted, there are some guys that stick with their wives or girlfriends for a long time, but most of the time people are just meeting people organically or they're also cheating on their wives or girlfriends by talking to other girls. How do these guys have so much pull? That's a game. My understanding is that you kind of, you know, when you're dating, you kind of have to have something to offer to the other person. But if these guys are in prison for, I don't know how long, you know, how can they, like, what do they have? It makes no sense.

Communities across Canada, hourly Amazon employees earn an average of over $24.50 an hour. Employees also have the opportunity to grow their skills and their paycheck by enrolling in free skills training programs for in-demand fields like software development and information technology. Learn more at aboutamazon.ca. People love it. It's a new era of like, you know, write a prisoner or pen pal or anything like that. people just are they love doing it they'll reach out to it i mean it's like i look at like all the fan mail about like that brian coberger guy um with the idaho and stuff and it's just like what goes through these people's minds to do why do you think so many women are attracted to to the guy in prison is it because there's like a mystique about them or like oh it's the bad boy or

do you think it's i could fix this person i don't know about i don't think it's fixed i think it's just like that attractive aspect of it and it's also another great question is female prison guards sleeping with male inmates. You're literally risking your career, your life, you have all these options in the world, and you're going after these guys that are in prison. And maybe it's an attention issue where these guys will obviously give the female COs so much attention. So maybe that applies to the people in the street. These women are not getting the attention they want. And these guys, they know they're locked up. They know they're in one spot. they think they can't cheat on them, but they kind of really can.

Maybe not physically. But, you know, it's just, it's interesting. You didn't date around in prison, though? No, I did make a Tinder and I did POF, but POF was too spammy, but then I made a Tinder and Snapchat. I would go live for my Snapchat. Girls would, like, send me nudes and stuff from my old snaps in prison. In prison? They just, like, people, it just doesn't make sense, you know?

There's just, like, that mystique with it. And then, like, when I got out and got on a dating app because I had lost a bunch of weight and stuff, Girls, like, knew who I was because it was a small town. They knew I just got out of prison, and they were interested in that, you know? Like, when I was single, a lot of my DMs were from my target, like, woman that would reach out to me was a single mom, like, in her mid-30s, has kids, but no dad in the picture. And that's who would DM me? So would you say, then, if someone's out there right now and they're trying to find a partner, but they're struggling with it, what they should do is find a way to go to prison. and then create a Tinder or plenty of fish account

to then find women to date once they get out in a few years. That's inefficient. You could just lie. Just set up like a pseudo jail cell behind you, getting out in a week. Yeah, something like that. Just send you some commissary money. The whole dating thing is just like so weird, like in today's culture.

But I think there is definitely people like someone that I think they like the redemption arc of like someone going to prison and coming out and getting their life together. I can't really speak for the people that are. into the people that don't have their life together and are kind of like bums or have like six kids or something like that. Did you make any really close friends while in prison? Yeah, I met a few. Like I had my first bunkmate from Fort Dix. He watches my episodes and talks to me pretty often. I have another guy that was by bunk bait that worked with me in the kitchen that I talked to. We visit each other. He's in Chicago. But I've gone there. He's come to me. I've had like four of them on my show. And I stay in touch with quite a few of them. A lot I've reached out. So it was, it's interesting those bonds. You know, just like my relationship with Lenny, I've built with other people. So of all of these things that you'd experience, such as lying to investors, going to court, going to trial, going to prison, and then doing the solitary, being in a Mr. Beast video for 100 days, being in solitary there, what would you say out of all of those was the most difficult? I think owing money, like at that young age, being in that much debt, failing to that level when you experience success, I really genuinely thought, like I had that.

success and I was going up and up and up and I was going to be like something big and I think to get kicked down and lose it all and really I think that even beyond that is being portrayed as something that you're not. I think like I think what really was the benefit of the beast video is it got to show my true character and intentions at heart. I mean on day 99 I had the option to take all that money and I could have paid off the restitution with that and I didn't because of that bond I built with Lenny and a lot of my decisions throughout that video were to make sure that you know like Lenny didn't get her too. I had to think of both of us. And I think when I went through what I did at my age, the news blasted me. It was very one-sided. They'd never got the full perspective.

And I always made even worse decisions trying to do the right thing, but it was just not the right way of doing things. But having that amount of pressure and hate and seeing all those comments from people that you went to school with and that you were close with and really just, you know, making you feel really lousy and miserable about yourself. And I'm not saying I didn't deserve that. But some of it was a little bit extreme too. And it was just definitely, that was the hardest aspect, I think, of my whole journey. Was it a difficult decision to not split the money? So I wanted to take all the money as in a sense where, like, I wanted to win the lottery.

You know, it was that feeling of it would be great to win the lottery, but I know I'm not going to. So in that moment is, I want to hit this button, take all the money, but I know I'm not going to because that's not who I am. I'm not going to, I'd be no different than what. everyone has said about me in the past if I took that money in that moment. Because he earned that money. He did the 100 days with me. I granted it, it was a show. It was a competition. But when you, everyone says, like, there's a lot of people in the comments are like, I would have taken the money. It sounds easy all of a sudden done. Just like saying you'll do 100 days sounds easy. But when you're in the belly of the beast, it's a lot harder. But when you're living with someone for 100 days,

you form a connection, you know? Did you know that he wouldn't take the money? 100%. And did Did you think he thought you would or you wouldn't? I think a part of him thought, especially after seeing the video, how Jimmy was putting it in his head, Jimmy wanted me to take the money because that would have been great content for him. He even said to me in the cell, he's like, dude, I'd love for you to hit that button because no one's done that before on one of his things on one of these 100-day videos. It would have been great content. If I had hit the button, it was only because I didn't want to be in solitary because I had such a miserable experience. It was literally PTSD.

Like it was literally like a wave of emotions being back in there. but that 24 hours that last time felt way better than the four hours I was there the first time because it was the feeling of I know I'm going home after this there's not another 50 days I have to do so that got me through it um I got sick as a dog then I ate something bad or something I was literally because the toilets in there were like these little uh plastic toilets and they give you a tent to put up in there so I'll shined my brains out at 12 o'clock of the dark putting my poop in a garbage bag and passing it through the door for the for the um for the guard um but If I, Lenny and I had talked about it, like, if we were in a situation, we were kind of predicting something like that. We'd just send the money to each other. So I think he knew that even if I did hit the button, I would send him the money. Like his half. But it would also- Was that even legal? Because we asked Jeff from Beast games, who won the money, you know, what's to stop you from just, you know, taking everything and then splitting it with someone? Yeah. So Lenny had brought that up, too. I didn't read the contract. Like, I just skimmed through it and signed it. I had like a couple hours to sign it when I got it.

but I think Lenny said that that you couldn't do that. I don't know all the specifics. I guess I could read it now, but I mean, I probably would have done it anyways, but I also knew that how they would have painted the picture of me. You know that. Was it going to make it at the video? Oh, yeah, he set the buddy to Letty, you know, afterwards. It was literally end with, I mean, look how they edited it.

They did a really good job editing that to make it look like I left. And they wouldn't have put that in. They would have just said, Ian took all the money, that's it. And I would have, that would have destroyed everything I've worked for. I mean, the criminals would have loved me, but anyone knew, you know, they wouldn't have been too kind to that. What was it like watching the video back? So I actually got to watch a rough edit of it like the week before, which I was surprised about, but they kind of showed it all. And we gave them like some feedback of, hey, do this or do that.

And it was interesting to see. I like watching the reaction videos from people. I've watched on the plane, I watched a couple of reaction videos that other creators did. But I guess the sad part about it is like you do so much. I guess the sad part is you miss the moments that didn't make it in because you remember everything that happened over those 100 days. Like we did so much. There were so much that, you know, you're 100 days of your life.

But I feel like they did an overall good job of getting the good moments. And I thought it was a really nicely done edit. I found it to be exciting. What are some of the opportunities you've gotten from that? So this goes back to like what we were talking about. earlier about like why I wouldn't have taken it if I didn't have the episodes planned out. People, one of the things they sell you on, like when you're on the casting call, they're like, it's Mr. Beast, like this is a big opportunity and this is how they can kind of, I guess,

get away with the pressure of the timing, like giving you no time to prepare and it's boom, boom, boom, boom. And I get that. He's a big content creator. Like, who's not going to want to work with him? But they kind of hold that on you like that it's this big thing. It could change your life. And when you think about it, right?

If you look at my following after Beast compared to before, like there's comments saying, oh, you got all this because of Mr. Beast. And that's not true. I had 1.2 million followers on TikTok before Mr. Beast. And I think I went up like 20,000 on TikTok. Audio downloads and stuff, I'm up 20% since the release over the past week, which is cool. And my YouTube's up. I put on like 15,000 subscribers. But conversion-wise, I went up like 3,000 Instagram followers. It's not as big for the exposure that it is, it doesn't really convert that well. I think Madge's video is the exception because he became one of them, like one of the boys, and he was physically posted. They don't tag you in anything. I'm not tagged in any of the posts. Any following I got was because we were working the

channels all day, responding to comments, making posts, putting out clips, doing like the solo episode, like me interviewing Lenny and me talking about my experience solo and responding to as many comments on the Beast video. But they don't promote you in that. that sense. I mean, perfect example is a guy that won Beast Games. I think he's got 60,000 followers on Instagram. That was one of the most watched shows in what, Prime History. You would think that that would convert to a lot more on YouTube, on Instagram. It's just that following doesn't convert. Maybe it's the audience demographic or whatnot. But I look at it as if I tanked my YouTube channel for three and a half months to do this, would it have been worth it? And I think the answer is no.

I think it's probably also like attachment to the person in the video itself because Madge, like, lost all this weight. And so now people are curious to see, like, how is that going to all play out? Whereas in this situation or in Beast games, it's more about, like, the competition itself and, like, other sorts of things. Also, in Match, like, he had very high emotional swings,

ups and downs and stuff like that. So you feel, like, a lot more of a connection with him. It's tied to the personality, yeah. And there's nothing wrong with that. You know, I'm not complaining. I'm very happy. My, I think, what I've built and having that flow, I think it helps me get in the door

for new opportunities like going on bigger podcasts and just kind of like stabilizes you with like just in general working with a creator like that and everything. I think it's good and that'll live there forever and it'll open the door to more things. How are the comments in your video? You said you were responding to people. So the comments were pretty interesting. Not so I there wasn't like too many negative comments. It was just a lot of people calling me like a fake criminal like on the repost like on those big news article ones that drop, like on World Star or like whatever those big, you know, pop culture ones were. People calling a fake criminal or how easy they could do it or how like everything scripted or staged. People thought it was scripted or staged, which, you know, it wasn't. There was

comments about how everyone, I think the biggest topic of conversation was the ending of would they have taken the money or would they have screwed them over? And I know a lot of my new subscribers, I came to my channel and watched the videos appreciated that I didn't screw them over and that they enjoyed watching my content after. Is there any advice you have for someone who's going to jail? Yeah, don't do what I did, which is, you know, definitely figure out kind of like the prison politics of it. Figure out who you need to kind of like associate with who you need to, you know, be involved with. And definitely don't gamble. Gambling gets you into a lot of trouble in prison.

Even dealing with any type of contraband, doing stuff you're not supposed to. do and kind of just like observe the environment and see kind of watch and see before you jump into everything and know how to move around do you have any prison habits you still practice today um i guess one thing is maybe like food like i'll like i'll eat quicker like because i'm used to like eating quick and then like getting off at the table because the chow is so small and you're kind of trying to clear the room for the next guy or you're hovering over your food i guess i would do that. Definitely don't sit to pee anymore. It was weird going in the shower for the first time after prison because of flip-flops. You use flip-flops that whole time because the showers are gross.

Even the Beast video, I use flip-flops every shower for those 100 days. So being able to keep your feet in a regular shower was nice. I would have no idea. What other little things like that do people not realize? So like the toothbrush, like Jimmy had us used a little baby toothbrush for the full 100 days. Normally in real prison, you would be able to, you get the state issued toothbrush, toothpaste deodorant, which sucks, like the Bob Barker, smells terrible or has like no scent. We had to use it the whole 100 days because on commissary on day 40, he offered us a Colgate toothpaste for 10 grand with like real deodorant, one toothbrush. What are we going to do with one toothbrush? So obviously, we didn't buy that. But we had to go the whole 100 days with that, which

was really rough. Imagine using a thumb toothbrush for 100 days and like the little baby soap and everything. That was terrible. But there's things like that. Also, I guess, you know, living on a bunk bed, you can't, like, sleep on your back or on your stomach. My bunk bait would always, like, hit my bed when I was sleeping on my stomach because you would always say, like, the booty bandit would come and get you. Things like that. There's all those like in the weddows. I said the same thing to Jack, too. Don't sleep on your stomach. If you're in prison, is there just a general, like, air of distrust around like like like how how difficult is it to just go up to someone be like hey talk to me straight like how's it going tell me about what's what your life this and that like can you really

connect with people is there always like this like little under under feeling of of like distrust and and like in danger i think there's always that feeling of distrust i was too trusting of people i thought everyone was my friend and it's those same ones that are your friends that will slip a kite or plant a phone on you or steal out of your locker or anything like that or set you up. There's obviously a few genuine ones. I think those are the ones you keep the friendships with the years later like I've been able to. But the majority of people are just trained not to trust anyone. Can't blame them for that, you know?

It's a lot of snakes in prison. There's a lot of scumbags. You see that with like these jailhouse lawyers, just everything. You know, everyone's out for themselves. And I guess in an environment like that, you kind of have to be. Does it help to have tattoos in prison? Didn't help me. It didn't help you?

No, because I guess the way I look, like my face, my body doesn't really match my face. That's like a big comment on my social media. I guess for the most part, I guess it would help people, just not me in my situation. Did you ever get into a prison fight? Just that time I got slapped. I didn't really fight back. And I got cornered like a couple months later by a bunch of like the newer car guys because of that whole drama because I had hired one of the guys in their car to do the protection over me.

and that caused drama and, like, prison politic type stuff. Never got a prison tattoo either. I was thinking about it, but it kind of sketched me out. But prison tattoos are pretty legit. They would use, like, the guitar strings as needles. And they'd get, like, real ink smuggled in from the street, which was cool. And they would use, like, the radio to make a tattoo gun. That's safe?

These people sound smart. What's stopping these people from going out and having, like, productive careers where they're, you know, entrepreneur or they're making money, you know, like, once they get out? Is it just like, like, these, this culture is just instilled in them to, like, don't trust people, you know, steal from people or whatever it is? These guys are so smart. I mean, you see a lot of these guys making hooch, this thing called White Lightning, which is like distilled honey or whatever into like Baca. They would do all of these things and make thousands of dollars in there and send it, a lot of the Mexican people will send it home to their families. They'll do so well. And then when they get out, they just can't convert that in anything.

A lot of the drug dealers I interview, like, they're super successful. build like these empires, I guess you could say, go to prison and then they just can't figure it out after. It just doesn't click for them. Some do. Don't get me wrong. Some do. But a lot of them don't. And then that's when I think they're, I think the problem is that quick money. Once you experience that, that's kind of hard to, you know, go away from. I think that's really the biggest issue. I tell all the people that I talk to that ask me for advice or want to get into content right away. I say, go work a regular job first. Go work as a dishwasher in the kitchen. That That's what I did for 15 bucks an hour working at a hot bar at Whole Foods.

And eventually I worked my way up to a manager where I was making $30 an hour. But I was able to rebuild my life, build my credit, get a dog, get an apartment, get a car, do all these things just off of a normal job and be a contributing member to society. And that was a very humbling experience. I think if I got out and if I got cast in the Beast video, the first week I got out or started making money on social media, my attitude would be completely different. Was there anyone you met in prison who was innocent? Me personally, I haven't met anyone that was innocent, but I have interviewed people and talk to people that were actually genuinely innocent. And literally every guy you meet in prison, and I know I was one of them that was like,

I'm innocent. I don't deserve to be here. But I did get to witness, like, in 2016, the Obama partons, where people literally serving 20 years got to go home that day because he reduced it down to like 15 or 12, like the drug times. I think there's a lot of people. that are over-sentenced, guys with 20, 30, 40 years, crazy sentences for a minimal amount of drugs.

But truly innocent, I think that's a dime a dozen. I think you'll see that more in state prison because the feds are very thorough. I wasn't around too many, you know, and I think that's where the cases you see, like, those convictions on. But all the, I would say all the fraud guys, I'm innocent, it didn't go down this way or that. And when you read about them, when you get out,

I don't know, it kind of makes sense, you know. But I get their perspective too, like I was one of them. And for the longest time, my whole thing was like, I didn't have the intent to do it, but I still did it. And people still lost money because of it. So it doesn't, just because I didn't have the criminal intent doesn't mean it wasn't wrong and became a crime in that. Because even if a crime's accidental, it doesn't take away from the fact that it's still a crime and you broke the law. So that was one thing I learned from that. Do you think there's any better system than prison?

like maybe like a, you know, like a home sort of stay, like, what do they call it? I think I've talked to a lot of people that were like in the state system has really good work release programs where you're working. That's how it should be. Like if I spent those three years working, paying a piece of it to restitution and a piece to like maybe the government like for the funding of the monitoring or something. But it really should just, most people I feel like could be house arrest, good monitoring type system like a GPS type thing and just work. Work a job, you know, monitor communications. There's got to be

something with AI that could be even better at this, but the prison thing doesn't make any sense. For the really violent offenders, yes, but for the average amount of people, no, it doesn't make sense at all. That's why camps are the most pointless thing ever. I mean, granted, they are closing down a lot of camps right now. I know Trump's doing that, but it just, the camps are so silly. Imagine spending 10 years in a, like, an adult day camp where you're just spending, your time playing sports, doing botchy ball, and I don't know, just like living the life, I guess, you know, but you owe $50 million to investors. It just doesn't make sense. Yeah. So it's more practical to have that person just work and see, I think they should be in those

cases working. All the money gets funneled into like a federal-owned bank account. Money gets taken out from there automatically and they pay you like a wage. Yeah. And you see a lot of, I speak in a lot of like these men sober house. and stuff and some county jails that have these programs, which are great, where guys are on a work release program, they get to work. They also get to pay some expenses to the facility, but they also have money to give their kids Christmas presents or birthday presents or actually account for their money and have a card to, like, order stuff, but it's still structured. That's how I feel like it should be. I would have much rather to work those years, you know, it just makes

way more sense. But what they're, what they, the current system doesn't really make sense at all. Thank you. I appreciate you coming out here on short notice. I'll link to all of your info down below in the description. And also, if you guys haven't donated yet, to Team Water, there is a link down below in the description. Come join us, donate. It's almost up. How much does he have left to raise?

I feel like we're going to hit it, $40 million in the month of August. So if you want to be a part of that, highly recommend it. Link is down below, as with your information as well. Yeah, thank you guys. It's a lot of fun, man. Thanks for inviting me. Thanks for coming on. That was a blast. Thank you guys so much for watching. As always, we can't do this without you, so it really means a lot. Thank you guys for watching.

Oh, one more thing. Okay. I'm kidding. Until next time. Bye.