The Jordan Harbinger Show - 432: Larry Lawton | From Jewel Thief to Honorary Cop Part One

Episode Date: November 17, 2020

Larry Lawton (@LawrenceRLawton) stole over $18m in diamonds and spent 11 years in some of the toughest federal prisons in the country. He works with The Reality Check Program to keep youth out of trouble that would land them in prison, and is the co-author of Gangster Redemption: How America's Most Notorious Jewel Robber Got Rich, Got Caught, and Got His Life Back on Track. This is part one of a two-part episode. Stay tuned for the rest later in the week! What We Discuss with Larry Lawton: How young Larry fattened his wallet with $125 a week in 1972 (equivalent to over $750 a week today) with various scams, thefts, and hustles. How Larry wound up getting into the jewelry robbery game, and what he did to maintain control over the situation when he had a gun pulled on him his first time out. Why Larry spent over $10,000 to get a professional education in the jewelry trade when he decided this would be the focus of his criminal career. How a business owner can ensure their place isn't the one chosen when a potential robber is casing businesses in search of an easy target. How Larry would plan and execute a heist when he was a career criminal, and what he would do afterward to hide his trail from the inevitable investigation. And much more... Full show notes and resources can be found here: jordanharbinger.com/432 Sign up for Six-Minute Networking -- our free networking and relationship development mini course -- at jordanharbinger.com/course! Like this show? Please leave us a review here -- even one sentence helps! Consider including your Twitter handle so we can thank you personally!See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Coming up on the Jordan Harbinger Show. So if I rob a million dollar picture, I couldn't get $30,000 for a million dollars. 10% is $100,000. I couldn't get that. And am I going to take, you know, the heat you're going to get for robbing stuff like that? And then where do you get rid of it? That's the key. You couldn't get rid of it.

I'm sure there's, listen, there's bias for everything out there. Maybe some eccentric billionaire in Spain that puts it in his basement, goes down and jacks off to it. I don't know. Listen, in my criminal career, what I learned is you get it, you get rid of it, and you get the money, and goodbye. You don't hold things. You're not a retailer. Welcome to the show.

I'm Jordan Harbinger. On the Jordan Harbinger show, we decode the stories, secrets, and skills of the world's most fascinating people. If you're new to the show, we have in-depth conversations with people at the top of their game. Entrepreneurs and astronauts, spies and psychologists, even the occasional jewel thief, And each episode turns our guest wisdom into practical advice you can use to build a deeper understanding of how the world works and become a better critical thinker. Today, Larry Lawton, he's got to be the only ex-con in the United States to be sworn in as an honorary police officer. And he's the only ex-con ever to be recognized on the floor of the United States Congress for his work with helping young people and law enforcement agencies. Larry Lawton spent 11 years in some of the toughest federal prisons in the country.

But let's be real. That's not why we're here today. We're here today because he stole over $18 million in diamonds. Today, we'll go inside the mind of one of the most prolific jewelry thieves in American history. Come with us today as we plan a fake heist, and we hear stories you won't get anywhere else. No matter how many rounds of Grand Theft Auto you've played or how many movies you've been binging since the pandemic started,

Larry is a fascinating character. He's a prime example of a turnaround story and why I believe there are a few truly bad people mostly just bad decisions. This is a really fascinating episode. It's two parts. So today's going to be part one with Larry Lawton. And if you're wondering how I find these folks,

they always come through my network. All these authors, all these thinkers, all these characters you hear in on the show. It's all because of the network. I'm teaching you how to build your network for free. You might not use it to book guests for your podcast. You might use it to get a promotion or a job. Whatever, I'm not here to judge it.

Jordan Harbinger.com slash course is where I'm teaching you how to do that. Most of the guests on the show, they subscribe to the course. Come join us. You'll be in Smart Company. Here we go with Part 1 with Larry Lawton. So how did you get into the business of stealing gems? I know you grew up tough in the Bronx. Your neighbors were kind of working class and or in the mob,

but how does that lead to you stealing gems? Well, I mean, first thing is I grew up around that life. And when I say the life, the mobs is next to me. The mobs are down the block. The guys with the Cadillacs, the money. And then there's the working families, obviously, like you said. But I was always a hustler. When I say young, I was 11, 12 years old doing football tickets, making money.

I remember making $125 in a week in 1972. You know, I mean, that's a lot of money for a kid. And I was, what were we doing, gambling with it, partying with it. I'm going to do a math on that. Yeah. How much a week? $125 a week. 172, $125, that's $775 in today's money per week.

And I was just turning 12 years old. So that's $3,000 a month at age 12? At age 12. Making money hand overfoot. And gambling it and losing it and partying and waiting, going, doing crazy things, buying the stupidest stuff in the world because I'm a kid. But I love to hustle. I learned to hustle.

And then we graduated to even stealing cars. We used to steal meat. We literally put, was it Safeway or Pathmark? It's a northern grocery chain. We put them out of business, Jordan. We were stealing. We had guys working in there, bringing out the meat and the lobsters, putting it outside. We'd pick it up at night.

We'd go sell it up and down the avenue. We always had hustles going. Then we were stealing cars and bringing them to a chop shop in New York. And we were getting 500 bucks a car. We didn't care what it was, 500 bucks a car. How were you stealing the cars? Oh, we had to hotwire the cars. Well, we had a couple guys who hotwired or the best way was in New York, a guy pulls up to a bagel store.

And it's not like most areas. They pull up to the bagel store. They leave their car running. We'd wait. They'd go in. We'd jump in their car. We'd gone. Literally.

Oh, man. Back in those days, it was very common. People would start their car up in the morning and go in, get their coffee and get their heater going, and defrost their windows and all that. Or cool it in the summertime. Oh, let me go put the car on, get it. nice and cool. And we'd see the car running on the outside, walk up, jump in the car, boom, gone. You're done. And literally, some of, they didn't have GPSs, they didn't have the on star and

all that kind of stuff they had today. So it was easy to do. We'd take him before you know it. That car was a hunk of metal, literally a hunk of metal off of a golf course called Pelham Split Rock in the weeds, if you want to call it, bushes, woods, whatever we used to call it in the Bronx. I mean, in the Bronx. You don't have that much kind of woods, but you did, I guess. So I started doing that until I went into service. I was a pretty wild kid. I went into service at 17 years old. But when I got out of service, I got hurt in the service. And when I got out of the service, I got retired, military retired. I went back to Brooklyn and I knew the hustle game. So I had some connections, some people from the old days who were now my age and they're doing stuff in the

Bronx and Brooklyn because connections go all over the city. And, the guy, I ended up getting a job with Mack the bookie. Mac was the biggest bookie in New York. They say when Mack died, the economy went down. He used to take what they called the layoff action. See, a bookie's job is not what people think. A bookie's job is not being a gambler. A bookie is the house. So what they do is, let's just take a game the Giants first the Jets. I'm just going to take a fictional game. They want $100,000 on the Giants and $100,000 on the Jets. They make 10% Vig. It's called Vig or juice. who wins, they get 10%. So they make 10 grand. They do that with a million. Now you make it

100,000, whatever it is. Well, when a bookie gets a lot of money on one side, what does he do? It's not like I could say no. So what he does is he takes that money. He goes to a guy like Mac, the guy I work for who would take $50,000, $100,000 on the game because he was the house, house. He was the house for the bookies. So when a bookie has too much on one side, he lays it off on Mac. And they negotiate the line because the line will be different because the line moves a lot. Well, I worked for Mac. Guy got me a job working for Mac. And I was behind the stick taking bets of 500 and nickel and dime. A dime is a thousand, a nickel. And I was also muscle in a card game, meaning being the bouncer. Anybody got out of hand. They had a card game. When I say thousands and thousands of dollars

being thrown around down there. You know, my always thought, Pat, and I was the crazy guy. I was, how can I rob this place? But, you know, you're dead if you do that. But it's just in my book, I explained wanting to rob the guys that I knew there was millions down there, but I said, boo, that's a suicide mission. But anyway, like you said, getting back into the crime, my first robbery was a setup. My first robbery was a guy wanted the insurance job.

So when they wanted an insurance job, they called me and they said, Larry got a job for you and blah, blah, blah. here's what it is. The guy wants the assurance. You're going to get to keep the jewelry and he's going to get his money and we're getting a cut of this action. I said, okay, good enough. Sure enough, I had to set it up just like a robbery. What he gave us was I knew how many people were going to be in the store and I knew the best times to go, like, you know, when there's the least customers. Because I ended up understanding the business a lot better after I started becoming so good at what I did because after my first robbery, Jordan, I says, wait a minute, there's so much.

I made $150,000 cash, $1980, I think 89 maybe. So this is the first time he knocked off a jewelry store. Right. I read that that was an insurance job, right? It was like an inside job from the guy. It was set up. Okay, so he set it up saying, basically, you robbed my store, I'll claim the insurance money, and for your efforts, either you keep the stolen stuff and fence it or I give you this

cash. Well, no, he wasn't involved in that. That was come from my boss. You'd get the stuff, bring it here, we're done, we'll cut the money up, and that's it. Okay. And they knew what to do with it. And I ended up knowing what to do it, of course. But yes, that's exactly how it happened.

So I knew there was going to only be one person in the store. I knew there wasn't going to be somebody in the back behind a double mirror. I knew that nobody was going to come in, like the owner's going to pop in out of the back door. I knew that because those were given to us. Those were the information given to us. And once that happened, and I don't know. I'll tell you we'll talk about an adrenaline dress because the girl behind the count had no idea. She actually reached for a gun.

And I was so quick, you know, I jumped over the counter so quick. And I said, are you crazy? And I was pointing a gun at her. And I had a BB gun. I didn't even have a gun. I didn't need a gun because you're lucky she didn't shoot your ass off, man. Exactly, you know, you know. But I was a little bit quick.

And I often laugh more people. I wish I had a gun. I wish I had. Trust me. I'll take that gun away from you. I mean, most people think it's, oh, I'm not a gun. I'm going to be a badass. it doesn't work that way.

And then if you kill somebody, you've got to live with that, you know, whatever it's wrong, right or indifferent. I know your childhood had, there's so many stories from your channel, and I encourage people to go look at it. We'll link to it in the show notes. I mean, you had, like, boosting the cars, there's stuff about you. You threw a Molotov cocktail at a guy fishing. I got to say, that goes beyond prank.

You could have lit that guy on fire. That guy could have died, man, horribly, in fact. Well, the way we did it, no, it probably sounded worse because he was on a jetty. Now, it definitely made him jump in the water because you couldn't go the other way. So when you're on a fishery, you break the glass into the jetty. Of course, there's glass all over the place. The fire goes there and there's only one way to go. And that was to the water.

It is bad. Obviously, I was a little crazy kid, but I don't encourage people to do it either. As you know, Jordan, if you watch my videos, I always emphasize to make the right choices. Live through this crazy life I have, but don't think it's the way to go because you might not survive. But listen, I've been stabbed twice, shot, car accidents, and operations and hit with a bat. And you don't want to try this life. It's crazy, you know. But it sure does make a good YouTube channel.

Yeah, it sure does. So you're a great earner for the mob at this point, right? You're kicking money up and you're knocking off more and more jewelry stores. Because is it just like the first one was so profitable? You said, well, geez, this is easy. I'm just going to keep going and find a few more of these and keep doing it. That's exactly right. So actually what happened was I started doing other things as well.

The money was starting to come in, so I did other things with the money. Ended up investing in clubs, you know, loan sharking money. It was a big profit of mine. Then I'd rob other things. I had a bookmaking operation, so I would get guys in and they'd owe me money. And before you know it, he's a warehouse manager. So we can't afford his bills. We robbed the warehouse.

He lets us in the warehouse. I rob a whole warehouse for plumbing supplies. and they never knew they were robbed. The warehouse was the size of a football field. And they never even knew they were robbed. But I was making money. So you talk about earner. But the jewelry, right.

I mean, after I made that kind of money in one head, I said, wait a minute, I got to keep doing this. I mean, this is just too much money. And I was always about the money, though. I wasn't a drug addict doing it. I like the power and the money. I mean, let's face it, both of those things are very addicting. That's what most people go for.

for in life, but obviously these should go the right way. And that's what I always emphasize in my videos as well. You said never rob anything you can't get rid of and always have a plan to move the goods. I assume you learned that the hard way, right? I mean, just sitting on some stolen stuff for weeks or months at a time seems dangerous. Exactly. Matter of fact, you know, we used to rob trucks and stuff at airports. And we had some electronic gear. We couldn't even get rid of you. So we're selling it for nothing and then the risk is too high. And I learned that lesson there, and it was funny because it bode me well when I, I had a guy, I was in charge of a security guard company. I had a guy go from where I was to the Miami Convention Center.

He was gone and he calls me, he says, Larry, he goes, I got all these Picasso's. I got Picasso's, Rembrands. You want them? You want to rob them? We could set this up easy. It's a done deal. So what the first thing I do is not say, yeah, let's rob it. I mean, what am I to do with all these pictures, I call New York, I couldn't get three cents on the dollar. Three cents. So if I rob a million dollar picture, what are you going to get? I couldn't get 30,000 bucks for a million dollars. 10% is 100,000. I couldn't get that. I couldn't get 30%. Am I going to take? You know the heat you're going to get for robbing stuff like that? Every person. And then where do you get rid of it? That's the key. You couldn't get rid of it. It's too famous to steal. Well, it's not just too

You don't have the connections. There are, I'm sure there's, listen, there's bias for everything out there. Maybe some eccentric billionaire in Spain that puts it in his basement and goes down there and jacks off to it. I don't know. But there are some sick people out there that, you know, do crazy stuff. But I don't know, Jordan. Listen, in my criminal career, what I learned is you get it, you get rid of it and you get the money and goodbye. You don't hold things.

You're not a retailer. You know, you're a wholesaler. The one thing I always say I should have did. I robbed so much jewelry in my life, probably 15, 18 million. I should have taken some of that percentage and opened a store in Radeo Drive in California, my own store, and reset it, redo it, do everything I'm going to do, and I could have, it would have been worth 50 million today, the best. And I had the money, I had everything to do it.

I was too much of a fast and loose guy. I was too much of a criminal. I didn't think positive with I'm here. I had such a good business brain with loan chalk and bookmaking and getting clubs and burning them out and doing certain things, but I wasn't a legitimate think of in business. I made a lot of money, but I made it the illegal way. And it was always with tilt of that illegal. Now, of course, obviously you do everything illegal.

You pay your taxes, you do this, you get your permit from the city, you do everything you're going to do. But that's just the difference now compared to it was one. I was running wild. You learned a lot about diamonds, and this is before internet. How did you self-teach about gemstones? Because you ever see that movie Catch Me If You Can? Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.

You know what Frank Abagnale, Leonardo DiCaprio, he gets caught by Tom Hanks, and he goes, all right, how'd you cheat on the bar exam? And he goes, I didn't cheat. I studied for it. This is what this reminds me of. Like, you know, Internet, like, you know, you became an expert in the gems, which is kind of, first of all, why did you do that? Why was that important?

Don't you just take everything that's shiny and sparkly at a diamond heist? You don't have to worry about it, right? No, no, I did become an expert. Matter of fact, it's funny. He's one of my fans on my Discord. I have a Discord. He's a jeweler. He's an actual Jewelor.

He's a young, 23-year-old young guy, and he's a jewel, and his grandfather was 83, and they're in the trade still. And I was telling him just the other night, Jordan. I went to the GIA. It's called the Gemological Institute of America to learn about diamonds. And I did that under the table, and I paid. 10 grand. And because I didn't want to get screwed. When you have that criminal mind, you're always thinking, who's going to screw you? How are they going to screw you? How are they going to get over?

You got to be one step ahead of people. When you're divvying up jewelry and you got a million dollars of jewelry on a table and you want to know what it's worth. Besides some stupid tag that means nothing, totally nothing. The biggest criminals are the chores. When you look at it, you want to have an idea of what it's worth, how clean it is, what it is, what watches, what. worth, whether it's a brightling or this watch or a Rolex, whatever, and wide it makes them tick, what makes them worth so much money, what types of jewelry, can it be taken out, can it be, you know, the gold melted and the piece reset, because all signature pieces have to do that. So I wanted to know all about that because I didn't want to get screwed by people that are

criminals just like me, and I never was. I got lucky with some very good people. I don't know where they are. They never went to jail. maybe they got lost or something. I don't know, but nobody's doing the crime that was happening. So that's what happened. I'm one of the only ex-felons in the whole world, in the United States, at least, who went

away on a RICO Act alone. Can you explain a little bit about what that is? I mean, that's the organized crime, racketeering act? What do you mean you're one of the only felons that went away on that alone? RICO is racketeering influenced corruption organization. That came out in the 1970s to get mobs just to get the higher-ups, so they can get the Well, you have to have other people that are your co-defendants or at least the people who work for you that are testifying or something happening because it's an organization. How am I the only one that goes away under the RICO Act alone?

Because I wouldn't rat. I wouldn't tell on anybody. And I had a partner who was John Rodriguez. I don't know who John Rodriguez is. There's probably 100,000 John Rodriguez is in Miami. In fact, this isn't even a secret. In 2001, I'm in prison already since 1996. The federal government charges me with the same exact charge as they charge Bill Clinton.

18 U.S.C. 1001, which is filing a false statement. I said my partner was John Rodriguez. They took me to trial and proved that I was lying. And I ended up getting another 12 months run concurrent, but that's a great funny story of how that happened. just because I wouldn't tell who my partner was. Oh, I see. So they just leaned on you for that. Were you getting a thrill from robbing or was it just like, I don't really like doing this,

but it's paying the bills really well? Or was there like, were you kind of hooked on it? It's an amazing high, Jordan. I've done every drug in the book. There was no drug better than walking out of that store with X amount of dollars of diamonds. And not only that, there were some people who I robbed today. They were trying to rob me as a customer, literally. And I said in the back of my head, he don't know he's getting robbed.

But they were trying to rob you. And there was total a high that was just like you want. I used to always want to be a fly on the wall, Jordan. See how long it took them to get out. See how long it took the cops to figure out what happened. See what they did. Of course, I wouldn't. That's like being a fire, you know, arsonist and watching your fire burn.

You know, those guys get caught all the time. Yeah, they do because they always watch the fire. They always do. You're listening to The Jordan Harbinger Show with our guest Larry Lotton. We'll be right back. Have you ever had a moment where you think, man, someone should really do something about this? Then you realize, maybe that someone is you. Well, with the help of GoFundMe, you can change someone's life.

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people. Start your GoFundMe today at GoFundMe.com. That's gofundme.com. Gofundme.com. Back. Now back to Larry Lawton on the Jordan Harbinger Show. The side note, I caught a couple arsonists in Detroit

back when I was helping with the fire department. We had something called Devil's Night. I think it's pretty much only a Detroit thing. It's a day before Halloween. And people go around and burn lots of things down, which is not so much a thing anymore,

but we used to catch arsonists all the time. They would burn down, abandon, or old buildings. And they were always around. Whenever we'd see a fire, the firemen would come and me and this volunteer organization, we would go around looking and people would say, what do you doing? That guy's long gone. And we'd say, hell no, this was not an insurance job. It's a thrill seeker. So just the way they did it, the cops would go, it's a thrill

seeker. So we would find somebody standing on the roof or sitting in another place looking at it. Of course, the problem is a lot of people are watching a fire. But you could, it's the crazy guy who smells like gasoline. That's the guy who did it. They're not too hard to find. Yeah, I totally agree. I mean, obviously I was a professional. Didn't do that. I got caught by just good police work. You can't knock that. The FBI is the best there is. Don't let anybody kid you.

They got more money and more resources and are all educated and they all know what they're doing. Some local cops are, come on, let's face it, look what's going on. They can't get cops, period, to be workers today. So how much do you think these guys are really that into their jobs where they're that good with a budget to do what they want? So they don't even have the budget, you know, to fly here to do this kind of testing to do this. The FBI, don't play with them. How do you pick the target for a robbery and business owners pay attention here?

Because you didn't just go, hey, there's a jewelry store, let's rob it. You obviously, there's some criteria for which ones are going to be the easiest to knock off, right? Oh, absolutely, Jordan. I mean, I would case a thousand stores before I pick the one I want. I mean, I'd go to a city and it'd be hundreds. I can't even probably count how many I actually case because I'll go around to a whole city or an area I'm in and I'll eliminate some right off the bat because they did certain things. And I often talk about what jewelry owners could do to prevent a professional like me.

There's two types of robbery. There's a professional like me and then there's the smashing grab. Those guys are, you know, they're not going to get anything but a watch that's in the display counter and there's ways to prevent that. But the guy like me is the hard guy, is the guy that's watching him for weeks and knowing who's coming, who's going, what time they're going, what time they're going, what time they open, who opens, even what routes they take home. What are some of the things that we don't have to go into the full workup because

that is on your channel, but what are some of the things that business owners can do that you think, why don't they do this obvious thing or not so obvious thing to keep out burglars? Like, what's the deal? You know, I did a whole show on that. There's so many ways they can just prevent the professional list. You could put up a double-way mirror, meaning even if I think it's a double-way mirror, it'd be great. Or you could put up a sign, one sign right in the store, 24-hour off-site video monitoring. If I saw that, I don't know if somebody's on their monitor and sees me come in and then once I'm done, it's on.

I used to take the tapes out of the VCRs back then or whatever it was that they were recording the video on. Today it's all streaming. So all you got to do is let the criminal know. You want to prevent robberies, Jordan. You don't want to just catch them. Catch them is great, but you want to prevent them. I often tell people, anybody who has a home, go to Home Depot, buy this gadget, cost $15, and it's the best home alarm system you'll ever buy. All it is is a beam of light that goes across your door at a certain height. If that door or somebody breaks in or comes through that door, that alarm screeches like,

you know, a really, really loud screech. And that's all you want because you want them to run away. You don't want them to go, oh, let's silent. Let's get him on tape while he stabs you, you know, kills somebody, you know, don't do that. Get rid of the perpetrator, you know, get rid of a criminal. So if you put a sign up in a store that said 24-hour off-site monitoring, you know, Bell security systems, you know, best in America, whatever bullshit you want to say. I don't know if it's true or not. I'm not going to play with it.

You don't want to have a display case in the front window that a person from the outside can't see in. I love to you go to those stores and I got a beautiful display case. I said, this is great. It's perfect for me in the store. Nobody can see in. They don't know what I'm doing in the store. They don't know who's in that store. Oh, I see.

So the display case prevents people from seeing through the window. You want people to be able to see you robbing the place from the street. Right. It gives me a lot more caution to do the place. I would do robberies when the sun was coming up or the sun hit the glass at the right time because you can't see in. I didn't do it when it was a cloudy day or it could have been a cloudy day, but the way the light or the way the glass on that place looked, it had to be perfect. And that's easy fixes. I mean, you should alternate where you go to work. You know, you get in such a groove of employees. They go the same way,

they park in the same spot. They do everything, Jordan. It makes it so easy for me because I know who's there. I just go by and see the car and I'll go by multiple times at a day, and it makes it easy. If I have a delivery, I would stagger my delivery. You should call the, what is it called, FedEx or UPS and say, listen, on Tuesdays, I want to be delivered by, you know, after 1 p.m. On Wednesdays and whatever it is, I want deliveries in the mornings. Because that would throw somebody looking at your store. I said, man, when did it come and I got to know? And there's little things like that you can do.

And of course, the display cases should be obviously certain, not only locked, but you shouldn't put more jewelry out than necessary. You shouldn't go to a place where you hide your good jewelry because I'm watching that. So little things like that. They also have buzzers in their pocket now. And that's an alarm. It's silent alarm. This is fascinating because I think a lot of people wouldn't expect you to, they go, oh, he's looking for the place where all the jewels are out. The minute detail of waiting for the glare to be right on the window so that people couldn't see in from the street because that gives you a 10, 15 minute window of just putting stuff in a backpack or whatever and running out. it just makes it impossible for other people to see it. That type of detail, that I assume is what separates you from those idiots that crash the car through the front door, get out, they're smashing

all the cases. They got a bunch of cut glass and Rolexes or whatever watches, low-end ones, and then they run out the side door and get on like a, what are those, a tiny little scooters, and then they're cruising somewhere, and it's like, look for three dumbasses on a scooter with a backpack that has glass parts falling out the back because there's a hole in it. Like, you see these guys on YouTube and you just go, these people have either never robbed anyone before or they have just been lucky as hell so far. Well, you got two things. Like, what you're saying is the professional like myself is going to really plan it and have a getaway and do everything I know I need to be done. And when I say needs to be done, I mean, so I'm not detected until a point

when you know you are. But what you were talking about is just, smash and grab, usually drug addicts. But there is one gang around the whole world right now called the Pink Panther Gang. They are notorious. I haven't heard from them in a while, but they've done some brazen brazen robberies, and they're known. But they're very organized. They're not the smashing grabs. They come in hard, but they know what they're doing. They know where the stuff is. They know where the safe is. They know how to get to it. They know what they're doing. They're not the smash and grab. The smash and grab your rights. The guy that just runs in and looks school to smashed a cup of glass, you're going to get what you're going to get.

Like you said, low-end shit, because who's going to put the best there? And then you're going to be eventually caught because you're going to make this so many mistakes today to be made. Someone asked me, hey, Larry, how would have you like to live in the 1920s? The things I think about is no fingerprints, no DNA, no cameras, no, just the guy with the fastest gun wins, I guess. But it was kind of like today's technology, but it's so funny because even when they had technology when I was around, I beat it. So if there's technology, it is a way around it. And there's a way

around anything. It's the will of the people is what it is. That's what all it is, the will. And if you got the will, you rob. You've got a couple of rules that I want to go over because these are interesting. One of which was, how do you pick the target? You had a couple rules behind that. One, though, was never rob a place just because you need money quick. Why not? I mean, isn't that why a lot of people rob places? That's the drug addict thing we were just talking about, the smash and grab, right? It leads to that kind of sloppy execution. Yeah, that goes for all. And bank robbers.

I knew professional bank robbers, professionals, got away 50 banks. And then I knew the guys who did it once or twice and they got away with it and did it with a note or whatever and they were just hard up. And that's just the way it was. Those were the kind of guys that 99 out of 100 times are going to get caught. And they probably need to get caught to get their addictions done or whatever help they're going to need because the professional is the guy that's doing it for a living. The guy that says, wait, I'm raising a family on this.

I got to know what I'm doing. I was told by a buddy of my says, Larry, you know what? How many percentage of people were like you? Zero. What do you mean? I am one. He goes, okay, one. He goes, think of that million people you see.

How many have done what you did and everything you've done and even survived it. And now you're an honorary cop and you're recognized on the floor of the United States, Congress and all the guy. There's nobody. He goes, that's what makes you so interesting. and why your YouTube channel's blowing up. This is the Jordan Harbinger show with our guest, Larry Lawton. We'll be right back. Thank you for listening and supporting the show.

When you support our sponsors, that's what keeps the lights on around here. You know, now that I've got all these jewelry, store robin skills, I'm getting ideas. But I won't need those ideas. If you buy a freaking mattress or whatever it is we've got here on the show today, come on folks, just one mattress. Jordan Harbinger.com slash deals, that's where you'll find all of the sponsors listed on one page.

And don't forget, we've got worksheets for every episode. This one is no exception. Those are linked in the show notes as well. Jordan Harbinger.com slash podcast. And now for the conclusion of part one, here with Larry Lawton. I'm curious now, can we, in a very non-instructional way, I would love to sort of have you plan a fake heist with me, not to detail, but what's the first thing that you do? And obviously, I will leave out any key details.

It's not a how-to primer on grand larceny or armed robbery. And if you're listening watching out there, if you rob someone, we want you to get caught. I can speak for you on that one, right? If somebody learns from you how to rob something, we want them to get caught. I want them to get better. You know, I want them to get better. You know, when you say court, I don't want them to ruin their lives. And that's what's sad.

And yes, they should be held accountable for what they did. I'm going to go with that. But I don't like to see somebody rob something and get 20 years in prison. Yeah, no, especially if you're 25 or you're on freaking meth or something like that. Yeah, you're a kid, you know, I mean, you're a kid. Are you wrong? Absolutely. Should you be held accountable? Absolutely. Should you ruin the rest of your fucking life? No. No. I do a lot of work in prisons. And I got to tell you, man, the amount of potential that you see in there that's just wasted. You'll meet a guy's in there who's 32 and they'll say, how long have you been in here? 12 years. Wow. You've been in prison for 12 years? Yeah, but I actually was in juvenile detention before that. So I'll go, when were you last, like a free man? And they'll say, 15 years old, 16 years old. And I'm just thinking, wow, imagine getting caught for the dumbest thing you ever did. And most of them have not killed anyone. A lot of them have, but it's also gang members kill another gang members at age 15, 16. And you know, I won't go off on this tangent because I've

talked about this a lot on the show. But you get somebody who at age eight watched their mom, or their dad killed their mom, moves in with their cousins. Their cousins are in a gang. There's eight kids in a family with like one lady who works at a grocery store, raising all of them. So they barely get enough food. I mean, they're not even getting enough food. And then they're riding around in a car. Older cousin who's 16 selling drugs. This kid's still nine, 10 years old at this time.

Then somebody says, I'm going to kill you and, you know, your brother or whatever. And they're chasing him home from school. So he gets a gun to protect himself. They do kill his cousin. And then they come after him. He shoots somebody. Oh, he's a gangbanger, juvenile detention. then later on in and out of prison, tried as an adult, prison from 15, 16 years old,

all the way to age 32, never had a normal life. And I'm thinking, would I have made different decisions than that kid did at that stage of life? Probably not. I probably would have done the exact same series of actions. And yet they're in prison in the program that I work with at Defy or Hustle 2.0. They're taking responsibility for that. But then I go, okay, well, how long a two year out?

You got, you're 32, your life's not over. and they go, I got 18 more years, and I go, I don't say this out loud, but I think to myself, you're never going to be able to bounce back fully from that. Like, you might, I hope that you get a job and a career and you have the life that you want, but you can't just start over at zero or negative 10 at age 45 or 50 and then come out and do something. It's hard. First of all, I love what you said.

And you was a thousand percent correct of saying, and I talk about this all the time, Do you think it's the same if our kid is growing up in a doctor's household, mom and dad, and a kid's growing up in a hood hearing gunshots as moms are hookers, dad's in jail? But you can't do that. I'd say it's the same. It's not. Yeah, it's not the same. But, Jordan, as I try to teach young people and I look at myself, I got out of prison

at 46 years old, $46, $67,000 in debt. I'm lucky I had my family and I had close friends. Otherwise, I don't know where I'd have been. but you can do it. You know, yes, you're right. Is the odds against you? Yeah, I don't mean it's impossible. I just mean, would I be able to do it?

I don't know, man, especially if you have no family, no friends, everybody you know is in a gang that sells drugs and says, hey, come back and work with us. We're moving heroin now. And you go, no, I'm going to work at a bike shop. Like, it's just such a... Right, right. You're 100%. Yeah.

It's so impossible to even think of. And they go, what are you doing? You made in a week what I would make. before lunch on a Monday, and I wake up at 11 a.m. You're an idiot. And you think, I am an idiot, but I'm not going to go back to jail. But I mean, how often do those forces fight against one another in your head? And you can't even pay for your kid. You don't have the ability to go out on a date. And you still got tattoos all over your face if you were in a gang that young. So who's hiring you? Like, they don't even want you to check the customers out at the register.

They go, Tommy, can you stay in the garage? You're scaring everyone who comes in with little Tommy to buy a bicycle. Well, you know, you really hit on a great social issue. And I'm very big on social justice and criminal justice reform and prison reform because it's so broke. It's a money machine, Jordan. You know, up until only, I think about, oh, no, I was in, so it was about seven years, 10, 12 years, whatever it was.

The United States used to execute juveniles. I mean, they don't anymore. I think 2006, they stopped it, whatever it was. My point was, they just came up with the case. because I testify in court on this case as well, they were given juveniles life sentences without extenuating circumstances. Are you kidding me? Listen, the science is proven that the male brain does not mature until 25. And now you're telling a kid who's 16, up, your life's over. You're never going to change, whatever it is. I'm also going to go back to, I don't even believe our military

young kids should be at 18 with guns and war shooting people because they've done enough studies to know those kids are fucked up when they come home. And why are we not addressing that as well? So we need to address those kind of incidents and say, wait a minute, what are we putting out young people? Yes, they did it back in World War II and the old way, but things have changed, technology, sensory overload, so many things. Kids didn't get the responsibility they do back in the day when their moms were working

during the Depression. And the kid had to do something and work at 12 years old. Right. You hear like, my grandpa worked, he was doing woodwork in carpentry when he was 13 with his dad. And it's like, I was playing Xbox until I was 24. I'm not that kid. I'm old. I don't know how old you are.

Like I said, 50. Okay, I'm 59. I was working in New York City at 15 years old going to my uncle's printing shop down on the trains. And I got kicked out of a job in a movie theater for drinking in the bag. But as a teenager, but I get, you're 100% right. The brain wasn't there. Yeah, that's why I was still doing stupid shit. I just happened to get sucked into the lure of the criminal world, and it was very hard to break until, I don't know if I ever would have broke it.

Obviously, being honest, you hoped to say you would. I had an FBI agent asked me, Matt Mullen, nice guy, just since past, I would have liked to interview him. That would have been good. He became a nice guy. He was a nice guy. He didn't hate me, you know, he knew what I did. He just said, hey, you didn't kill people. You were good at what you did.

He goes, I've been looking for you. But anyway, he says, why didn't you quit? Larry. I mean, you were wealthy, you had the money. And I go back to your earlier question. It was the high. It was the excitement of winning, literally winning. Even to this day, more than the money, and the money is good. I look at numbers to see where we're going. I want to hit the million. I want to hit two million. I want to win. I always had that attitude of winning. So you're saying you had these goals when you were robbing as well. Yeah, exactly. I want to win. I want to win. I want And this was the way to win.

This was the way to get more power in the mob family. This was, you know, being a bigger earner. I had a lot of respect because I made a lot of people a lot of money. Don't get me wrong. It's not because Larry's a good-looking guy. That's what is not. It's because Larry made a lot of people money. And that's the difference.

But you made me sad by saying that and you opened my eyes. And it's so true, it's the young kids that go to prison and get. And I've seen that. And that's why I developed a reality check program. when I got out of prison was because I seen too many young people come to prison. First of all, they think they're badasses. Not one of them make it or think they don't become badasses. Trust me, I was in maximum security prisons.

They're manipulated. They're raped. There's a zillion things that happen to these young people. And they're sucked into gangs and either they had a date. Now they don't have a date. They become addicts because they're weak. They're not even mature yet. And we're doing that to them.

When you say have a date, you mean a release date. and then they just do so much bad shit in prison that they just keep pushing it, and so they're just there forever. Exactly, Jordan, yeah. You know, you guys got a date for 10 years, but he stabs somebody, kills him, and he's got another seven years tacked on, or whatever it is. Or he gets caught selling drugs or hustling drugs, and they give another two, three years, and then it's more violence.

And he's so crazy when he comes out, if he comes out, because he's been in a hole. I was in the hole for three years. The hole fucks you up. There's no question. I mean, I have PTSD. We know that. obviously I'm from the military at BTSD, and I'm retired militarily with that as well. But prison just screws your head up.

You go to the hole and you're a sensory deprivation. It's so crazy. It's so inhumane. I mean, some states are trying to bar it. I understand why they use it, but then they ended up using it as a tool instead of as a last resort. Let me tell you how bad a jail is. We have a jail that does not give sanitary pads to women. Think of what I just said.

Oh, your daughter is on her period. She gets arrested for something and they didn't give her. I have story after story of girls that call me and said, Larry, they wouldn't give me pads. I had no more toilet paper and I'm bleeding on my gown. Not only is it unsanitary. I have a daughter who's 25, Jordan. That just rips me up. The sheriff will say, I don't want my jail to be a country club.

Are you kidding me? Are you kidding? Yeah, I think basic human rights are, and country club have a, they're pretty far away on the spectrum. You know, it's so funny, I can't tell you how many judges and police chiefs and people I know have come to me after the fact and said, hey, Lai, I need your help. My kid is doing drugs or my kid got caught doing this or my kid's association with a gang, what do I do? I always help, but I want to tell them, you know, go fuck yourself. Look what you're doing to people. All it took your kid, I just, I don't have the heart.

I want to help kids and I want to help people. But, you know, we have people who should run things with compassion, not with vengeance or vilify people or evil. And people need to know it and they don't. They get the glad handling politician instead of the man who manipulates a budget. I got a sheriff who won't even release his line item budget to the county commission or the public. What do you fucking do with the money? I don't get it. Why wouldn't you do that, Jordan?

Yeah, because some of it's going into a place. he, well, a lot of it's going somewhere where he doesn't want people to see it, possibly his own pocket or contracts with friendly companies or something like that with his buddies. I want to get to back into the heist thing. How do you set up the heist? We talked a little bit about what you look for planning in the beginning as well. You're not robbing everything around yourself, right? You're going to another town. You're what, checking into a motel. You stay there for 10 days and start looking at the stores. How does it work? Well, it depends. First of all, you're right. First thing is you find an area you want to be in. Once you're in that area, then you, what I call mobile case,

which means run around in a car and finding it. I'm already not looking at the value what's in the store yet. I'm first looking at if a store could be done. And what I mean by that, you know, there's the sunrise in the east and falls in the west is the face of the store east so I know when the sun rises at the morning or when it, is it facing west? So when the sun comes down, I'll be doing the store later in the afternoon. Is there something in front? of the store. What's next to the store? I'm not going to rob a police store that's next to the police station, obviously. Sometimes it doesn't matter. The best stores I used to like to rob were in plazasers with windixies or publics or grocery stores because there's a lot of people coming and

going. So it's easy for me to sit in my car and watch that store without being a suspect. Oh, what's he doing? He's waiting for his wife to, you know, come from the store. He's reading the paper. Once you find that part of it, that's the outside case. Then it's the inside case. And then you go into multiple stores, you ask certain questions. My questions were, hey, I'm in the area. Ten years ago, I used to be a small contractor. Now I'm a wealthy, he sees my Rolex, he sees all the money, you know, nice clothes.

And then he looks and I said, yeah, I'm looking to upgrade my wife's ring to about a two-carat, really good ring. You know, my budget's anywhere between 10 and 20,000, maybe more if it's right. I'm in the area. I'm a builder or whatever it is. And he might go get a box of diamonds. He can bring that box of diamonds out or loose cut diamonds. I, Jordan, would look at that box and I can calculate the value of that box after he pulls two rings, two pieces.

I'll ask him for a two-carat ring. Depending on the box where he pulls that, I'm watching. And then I'll say, well, how about a little smaller? depending on which way he goes on that box, I can pretty much give you a good estimate of how much that box is going to be worth to me. Could be worth $300,000, you know, $250, $500,000, whatever it is. And I always watch where they put it

because a lot of times, Jordan, they won't put that box of diamonds back. It doesn't go in a safe. It goes in a false floorboard in the office or another safe in the office. Not the big safe that's right out in the open. They all show. You know, that's kind of like they put stuff in it

is a great safe and all that. But some of this other stuff is kept out of there. Hmm. And another hidden spot. But they're not slick enough to, you know, get a guy like me. And while I'm in there, I'm looking where the cameras are. I'm looking at where the other employees are, how many employees there are. And then I'm looking at where the buttons might be on the counters.

There's so many multiples in the store. So you do the outside case first, then you do the inside. And while you're in that inside, I'm telling you the value. I usually robbed wholesalers. That means jewelers that sold to other jewelers. Because they had more stones and better stones or whatever. More stones, more loose stones, more quality stuff. I pretty much stayed away from the chain stores, the sales, the mayors, those kind of things.

Because they have a one central location and they bring stuff there. And if you want it, they have to call. It's a whole different animal than a real jewel, I call it. Gotcha. Okay. So the money is in the loose stones, not in like the redstone. not in like the ready-made stuff. No, no, no.

Money's everywhere. Money's everywhere. Depending on what it is. Obviously, the gold is worth money. I mean, you can get penny weight on gold. But it doesn't matter. And some signature, but like diamond earrings, they're already set, and they're pretty much studs, whether a carrot, a carrot, a half.

They might be a gorgeous set of stud earring. That's just because they're not loose, doesn't make them. Obviously, loose made it easy to sell. How long does it take to plan each heist? You know, is it like a few days? Is it like a month? Or is it like you can do it in an afternoon? No, no, no, no. It's anywhere from probably two weeks to a month. Okay. That's a lot of sitting in parking lots. Is that the majority of the time is like watching the place? Well, once you get the place, that's part of it. That could take days or weeks, even depending on where you're at and how many you have to go in.

Then you nix them at the end. It because something happened. It was wrong. You thought you were noticed. Like you said, where do you stay? We always paid cash and never left the room. Like a motel room? Yeah, cheap hotel room or cheap garbage one or camping one time. I went camping. I did videos on that. That's so funny. But yeah, we stayed inconspicuous.

We didn't go out to bars and places and, oh, look at these three guys walking around or two guys. You know, who are they? Whatever. Didn't do anything like that. Even the car we had. You know, I didn't want it to be spotted or the plate to get a ticket or anything of that nature in the area. So you don't want to mess with that.

And then during the robbery, we had fake plates. But you had fake plates. What did you just steal another car's plates and put them on the car? They got some car in that kind of, not vicinity, like that kind of car. So let's just say it could be off a truck. And then, you know, someone they get the plate numbers. They go, yeah, these are on this plate number. They look it up real quick and it's a truck.

They go, oh, fuck, now they're looking for a truck. Okay. But, you know, they don't know. It'd be opposite color in a car or stuff like that. But those are the little things so take. And then after you get the diamonds, after you complete the robbery, then it's the process of getting rid of this stuff. And within 24 hours, I had rid of all myself. Oh, wow.

So you fence it right away. Oh, yeah. I make my phone calls on the way up, and we would incinerate our clothes, incinerate all the labels and boxes and everything else that was taken. It would be all gone and down into a bag. And once it was there, the negotiation, if you want to call it, started. Interesting. Okay. And I heard something about you looking up how many cops were in the police department or something like that.

Can you tell me about that strategy? That was kind of an interesting technique. Yeah, absolutely. Depending on the area you're not usually in big cities. You're in a smaller place. So you look at the number of police. Give an example, where we are right now. We live in a city called Rockledge.

I think the police departments have about 60 companies. Maybe not even that. I think less than that. And now how many cops you think can be on the road? You just go look it up. You can look it up. It's public knowledge. So you can say, okay, that Grogly's got, you know, three shifts and, you know, six cops,

eight cops on a shift. If you saw two of them over here, you know, what's the odds? Where are they? And it's easy to pick them out and actually find out where they are. In fact, I used to, like I've taken off a maltoph cocktail, threw in an area to see how quick it took the cops to get there. Once the cops got there, you know how many cops are in the area because this is how many cops can go to your robbery quick enough to get you. Oh, interesting. So you're using, I guess that's not misdirection. It's just more like a test run, right,

a test run where they don't know what's going on. I've got some thoughts, but I'm going to hold them to the end of part two because this is a two-part episode. Part two will be out in just a couple days, if it's not already by the time you listen to this. I wanted to give you a quick bite of a recent episode I did with Simon Sinek. He's been on the show a couple times. Simon is one of the most sought-after speakers and mentors in the corporate world, but he's no stuffed shirt. Well, here are some of his wisdom from the elite levels of public speaking, as well as his organizational skills that keep him at the top of the game. I have a vision of the world that does not yet exist. I'm trying to build it. And whatever it takes for me to advance that vision, speaking, writing, teaching, whatever

it is, I'll do it. I remember when cell phones were just starting to show up. You know, there was this great promise that we could leave the office because of this device. And in reality, it backfired is we don't leave the office, the office comes with us. Right. We're always at the office, you know, because of the device. One of the things that happens when we take the office with us is if we're not constantly engaging in checking in, we actually feel guilty that we're not. You know, you're walking to the subway, you're on the device. If you're off the subway, going to the office, you're on the device. We take the phone. with us for the bathroom. You hold it in and look for the phone. There's something I'll be about that.

That's so true. You know? When we're not connected, we actually feel guilty. And the reality is, is that ideas don't happen when we're connected. Ideas happen when our minds have an opportunity to wander. And this is why we have our great ideas in the shower, when we're driving, when we're out for a run, when we're just going for a walk. Because the brainstorming session actually isn't the time to solve the problem. The brainstorming session is the time to ask the question. Allowing ourselves these disengaged times is absolutely essential for innovation. It's absolutely essential for problem solving. It's absolutely essential for creativity to disengage with the device.

The problem is, I don't know when it's going to happen. When I was writing Beaches Eat Last, I would have so many ideas in the shower, and I would forget them as quickly as I had them, that I kept a dry erase marker in my bathroom and I wrote on the tiles. And so as soon as I got out of the shower while I was brushing my teeth, I'd write an idea in the tile. And so when I was standing there the next day, brushing my teeth, I'd be staring at my writing.

on the tile, and I'd sometimes have another idea. And so it looked like a beautiful mind. It was ridiculous. All the tiles had these little chicken scratches all over. And I didn't want to raise any of them because I didn't know what ideas were going to be sparked. But my point is, is like, if you figure out what works for you, do that. Keep a notebook by your bed. If you go for a run, take a notebook with you.

I usually carry a notebook in the back of my pocket at all times because I don't know when I'm going to have an idea. And like I said, I lose them as quickly as I have them. For more from Simon Sinek, including why it's important to have a worthy rival to stay sharp, check out episode 300, right here on the Jordan Harbinger Show. Thank you to Larry. Links to all his stuff will be in the website in the show notes. Please do use our website if you buy books from guests or buy any of that stuff that we talk about on the show. It does help support the show. Worksheets for this episode in the show notes, transcripts in the show notes.

There's also a video of this interview going up on our YouTube channel at jordanharbinger.com slash YouTube. I'm at Jordan Harbinger on both Twitter and Instagram, or just hit me on LinkedIn. I'm also teaching you how to connect with great people and manage relationships using systems and tiny habits over at our six-minute networking course, which is free, over at Jordan Harbinger.com slash course. Dig the well before you get thirsty. Most of the guests on the show, they subscribe to the course, they subscribe to the newsletter. Come join us. You'll be in smart company where you belong. This show is created in association with Podcast One and my amazing team. That's Jen Harbinger, Sanderson, Robert Fogart, Ian Baird, Millie O'Campo, Josh Ballard, and Gabe Mizrahi. Remember,

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