Mr Beast Contestant Winner Reveals What He Was Locked Up For

Summary

Juicy Crimes with Heather McDonald

Episode: “Mr Beast Contestant Winner Reveals What He Was Locked Up For”

Release Date: September 17, 2025
Host: Heather McDonald
Guest: Ian Bick

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Overview

This episode dives into the remarkable true crime story of Ian Bick—a young entrepreneur from Connecticut who landed in federal prison for fraud, later became a viral TikTok/YouTube prison content creator and podcaster, and eventually starred in the massively viewed MrBeast “100 Days in Prison” YouTube competition. With her trademark mix of irreverent humor and curiosity, Heather explores the lighter, juicier side of Bick’s criminal past, reality TV fame, and prison-to-content creator pipeline.

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Major Discussion Points & Insights

1. MrBeast’s 100-Day Prison Challenge ([00:28]–[03:45], [61:02]–[79:17])

• Concept: MrBeast constructed a realistic prison set for a YouTube competition, where Ian (an ex-inmate) and a former cop had to cohabitate for 100 days, with $500,000 at stake.
  • Heather calls it “brilliant…really well done and very interesting” ([03:08]).
• Production Details: The prison set cost nearly $2 million, re-creating a real prison experience with uniforms, food, and facilities ([02:08] Ian).
• Casting: Ian describes being recruited last-minute due to his content on prison life ([61:02]–[62:20]).
• Authenticity: Neither contestant had access to outside contact or phones, except a single FaceTime call with his parents ([63:01]).
• Emotional Dynamics: The game required cooperation and negotiation between contestants with opposing backgrounds—a former criminal and a former cop.
• Strategy & Morality:
  • Ian on not betraying his teammate for the cash: “Try spending 100 days with someone—you’re not going to screw over the person…he equally deserved his share as much as I did” ([69:21] Ian).
  • On broader life lessons: “You should always be living your life like the world is watching” ([71:51] Heather).
• Aftermath: Ian and the other contestant (the cop) have stayed friends, collaborating on podcast content ([72:20]–[72:49]).

2. Ian’s Upbringing and Path to Crime ([03:45]–[14:30])

• Raised in a privileged Connecticut family—father a successful caterer, mother a stay-at-home mom ([03:45]–[04:31]).
• Early anti-authority streak, vandalism as a teenager, but also entrepreneurial: organized charity events, school dances, and large house parties ([05:06]–[13:52]).
• Transitioned from throwing parties to promoting underage events at nightclubs, making significant profits by age 18 ([12:09]–[13:52]).
• Decision to skip college “because I had already mastered event planning” ([12:48]–[13:52]).

3. The Fraud Scheme and Collapse ([14:30]–[27:06])

• Attempted to scale up to college concerts, borrowing large sums from friends, family, and acquaintances with promises of high returns.
• Simultaneously operated an electronics resale venture (unknowingly selling fake Beats by Dre headphones).
  • “I could promise people a 50% rate of return…You’re buying something for $50 and it’s $400” ([14:56] Ian).
  • Ended up $1.2 million in debt when events flopped and products proved counterfeit ([20:53]–[21:12]).
• Classic Ponzi structure emerged: used new investor money to pay back previous “loans,” never intending straight-out theft but quickly resorting to deception as things unraveled ([21:23]–[22:56]).
• Arrest and investigation followed rapid collapse. “It was literally just an accident…I didn’t intentionally set out to steal from anyone.” ([22:09]–[22:56])

4. Legal Consequences and Prison Experience ([27:06]–[50:00])

• Prosecutors demanded prison time, even when Ian was willing to plead guilty in exchange for restitution and house arrest ([27:06]–[27:45]).
• Dramatic FBI raid on his family home: “There’s like 30 cars lined up. Tactical vests. You would have thought I was a terrorist...The articles were already coming out before they even slapped the handcuffs on me.” ([28:08] Ian)
• Community stigma and lasting social impact—“People always remember that first image…you’re guilty before you ever even go to trial” ([28:38] Heather).
• Sentenced to 36 months in federal prison, one year house arrest, and three years supervised release; served 27 months ([32:05]–[32:12]).
• Prison life:
  • Initially at a low-security facility, not a “white collar” camp.
  • Targeted for extortion due to youth and appearance; paid for protection ([32:32], [48:17]).
  • Solitary confinement for months after a wrestling incident surfaced on contraband phone video: “Solitary sucks...stuck in the cell for 23 hours a day, five days a week…lost almost 100 pounds.” ([44:32]–[45:22])
  • Detailed the social and psychological pressures, hustles (contraband phones, commissary economy), and cultural dynamics (e.g., the meaning of “paperwork” in prison, misidentification as a sex offender, celebrity inmates like Joe Giudice) ([32:32]–[43:52]).

5. Post-Prison Reinvention ([50:00]–[62:20])

• Initial struggles to sell his story—unsuccessful with agents and book deals (“that killed my dreams on that” [50:52]).
• Took hourly jobs (Whole Foods, pizzeria, Uber) to pay restitution; moved up to management ([54:00]).
• Eventually leveraged his prison experiences into viral TikTok and YouTube content, then launched the podcast “Locked In with Ian Bick.”
  • Started by sharing prison stories, then expanded to hosting ex-criminals, law enforcement, and more ([60:02]–[61:02]).
• Used OnlyFans briefly for income (“I did OnlyFans…made like 10 grand in a month” [59:00]–[59:35]).
• Now sees his “worst experience” as an asset, bringing awareness to the realities of incarceration—turning lemons into lemonade.

6. The Reality of Fame and Redemption

• “Now my mom shows me off to her family…she’s proud of everything…she’s been able to see the success that came from the worst thing that could possibly happen to anyone” ([78:43]–[79:17]).

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Notable Quotes & Moments (with Timestamps)

“Try spending 100 days with someone—you’re not going to screw over the person…he equally deserved his share as much as I did.”
— Ian Bick ([69:21])

“You should always be living your life like the world is watching.”
— Heather McDonald ([71:51])

“The FBI…you would have thought I was a terrorist…the way they treated this…The articles were already coming out that I was arrested before they even slapped the handcuffs on me.”
— Ian Bick ([28:08])

“Solitary sucks…stuck in the cell for 23 hours a day…lost almost 100 pounds.”
— Ian Bick ([44:32])

“The one thing that the world thinks is the worst thing that could ever happen to you, I turned it into my biggest asset, sharing stories.”
— Ian Bick ([57:54])

“I did OnlyFans…all males that were interested…just like personal stuff, feet pics, body pics…made like 10 grand in a month”
— Ian Bick ([59:15])

“I was in over my head…It was literally just an accident.”
— Ian Bick ([22:09])

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Key Timestamps for Reference

• 00:28 – Introduction; MrBeast segment setup
• 03:45 – Ian’s privileged upbringing and early trouble
• 09:10 – Shift from school to entrepreneurism
• 12:09 – House parties to nightclubs
• 14:30 – Start of fraudulent activities
• 20:53 – Rapid collapse; debt piles up; emotional breakdown
• 27:06 – Legal battle; plea deals; FBI raid
• 32:32 – Prison assignment; impostor stigma; extortion
• 44:32 – Solitary confinement, reading, coping mechanisms
• 54:00 – Post-release jobs and reintegration
• 57:54 – Starting TikTok, YouTube, and podcast journey
• 61:02 – How MrBeast casting happened
• 69:21 – Ethics of the MrBeast contest
• 71:51 – “Live like the world is watching” segment
• 78:43 – Family’s proud acceptance

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Overall Tone & Style

Conversational, candid, and laced with humor—Heather’s curiosity meets Ian’s willingness to be open about his youthful mistakes, unfortunate luck, and eventual growth. The episode balances outrageous anecdotes (teen parties gone wild, OnlyFans stint, reality show drama), hard truths about the justice system, and motivational moments about personal reinvention.

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Recommended For

• True crime fans who prefer the odd and juicy to the unremittingly bleak
• Anyone curious about modern YouTube celebrity culture intersecting with real-world crime and redemption
• Listeners interested in the prison system, Ponzi schemes, or viral content creation

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Listen/Follow: ianbick.com
Podcast: “Locked In with Ian Bick”
Heather McDonald: heathermcdallin.net

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Transcript

[Ian Bick]

Sam.

[Heather McDallin]

Hello and welcome to Juicy Crimes. I am very excited to speak to our guest because it involves several things I love in the crime world, which is fraud, grifter type behavior on your part. Stealing from people and lying and stealing from another. Correct?

[Ian Bick]

Yeah.

[Heather McDallin]

And reality shows, YouTube, and even a Real Housewife connection. So this is gonna be juicy and welcome to the show. Ian Bick, welcome to Juicy Crimes. You two have a podcast based on what you did with your life. So let's just get into it. Let's just get into your life and how you came into my world, which is a YouTube version of Mr. Beast, which you are on a video right now that has over 100 million views for. Let me just tell my audience about Mr. Beast because they might not know. You probably have heard about Mr. Beast. He's the biggest person on YouTube. And if you're like me and you have young men in your life, they've been watching and enjoying his work for years. And it's really genius what he's done. He basically built his own TV network studio through his success on YouTube. And he set up what could have been, I think, on an entire, like, series, like a Big Brother, but we got to see it in 30 minutes, where you and another individual go into a studio built prison for 100 days and sees what's gonna happen and who's gonna win the money. And that was fascinating.

[Ian Bick]

Yeah, yeah. It's crazy that he actually built a real prison. Some people in the comments were like, oh, it's a green screen. No, he literally in his field bill probably cost him almost $2 million with everything, the whole production. A real life prison with the prison toilet. Everything. Everything you would see in a prison, he had there, down to the uniform, down to the food, everything. It was so realistic.

[Heather McDallin]

So what he did in this was really brilliant. He basically, he does game show type challenges in these long form, like 30 minute videos.

[Ian Bick]

And.

[Heather McDallin]

And he took a person who had already spent some time in prison, which is you and another gentleman who, you know, was living a very normal life, married with kids, but he was a actual prison guard.

[Ian Bick]

He was a cop. Oh, sorry.

[Heather McDallin]

He was a cop.

[Ian Bick]

Police officer at the nyc.

[Heather McDallin]

Police officer. And older than you.

[Ian Bick]

Yeah, he was early 40s.

[Heather McDallin]

And you at the time, you're 30 now. So this was just a little while ago.

[Ian Bick]

Yep.

[Heather McDallin]

And you guys either, you know, you could. One of you could get all the money, which is 500,000, or the other one could get it, or you could quit halfway through. You had, you know, free will to leave whenever you wanted, but then you wouldn't get the money. Working together, not working together, getting along. And really, really well done and very interesting. So first let's jump back to what puts you in the real prison, which would then make you eligible to be a contestant on this Mr. B show. Where did you grow up? What's your background?

[Ian Bick]

I grew up in Connecticut. I was born in Manhattan. My dad was a public schools teacher, then retired and got into catering. He did private parties. He was pretty successful at it and he still does it now. But I would grow up going to the Harry Potter premieres. He did stuff for like Bill Clinton, the Rolling Stones. He had a very successful career in the city. And then my mom was a stay at home mom with me and my brother, who was four years younger. And we grew up in my dad's summer or summer home at the time that they converted into our house. Where we grew up. It was a little private Jewish community gated on the lake and had a very normal upbringing.

[Heather McDallin]

I mean, I don't even think it's normal. It sounds like it was extremely privileged. Privileged to the extent that. Are your parents still married?

[Ian Bick]

Yeah, they're still married.

[Heather McDallin]

So already to me, you have two parents in the home raising you. That's the top of the privilege pyramid. Then you also have parents that are, you know, a stay at home mom is a privilege. A dad that, you know, built a successful business on his own is a privilege. And you got to do these fun, perky things, living on the lake, all that. So where did it go wrong?

[Ian Bick]

So I got into some trouble in middle school. I was very anti authority. It really starts in my neighborhood. There was like a president and a vice president of our community. They would make these rules.

[Heather McDallin]

Of the gated community.

[Ian Bick]

Yeah, they have like a whole board of directors. It's pretty.

[Heather McDallin]

So you're talking homeowners, Homeowners association started to piss you off?

[Ian Bick]

Yeah.

[Heather McDallin]

As a 12 year old.

[Ian Bick]

Yeah. As a teenager they would say like, you can't ride dirt bikes, you can't play paintball. We had a golf cart. Like I couldn't ride it without a license. These all, they had all these rules and I was just very anti authority. And so one night, me and my best friend, we vandalized their cars. The president and the vice president, we didn't intend. We didn't think that it was going to damage their cars. We were just.

[Heather McDallin]

How did you, what did you do?

[Ian Bick]

We took insulation foam and we put a little bit in the locks of their car handles. Just trying to make it so they couldn't get in. It dripped down the side of the cars and caused, like, five grand worth of damage. And we didn't realize it was gonna do that.

[Heather McDallin]

How did they find out it was you guys?

[Ian Bick]

They just. They were calling me the black sheep of the community because, like, we were setting off fireworks. We were doing ding dong ditch. We were doing all of these things.

[Heather McDallin]

And is this while your dad was currently still a public school teacher or he had already started his company.

[Ian Bick]

Yeah, he had retired when I was, like, 4 or 5 and already started.

[Heather McDallin]

This successful catering company.

[Ian Bick]

Yeah.

[Heather McDallin]

For movies, premieres and things.

[Ian Bick]

Everything. Yeah. So that's what happened. We got caught, got sentenced to community service.

[Heather McDallin]

What was your mom doing at this point? Was she just horrified, or was she like, oh, it's just a blip in.

[Ian Bick]

His childhood, Everything my mom did, everything I did that got in trouble always horrified my mom and really upset her. I think the person that suffered through the most throughout everything was definitely my mom and my mom's side of the family because they grew up so differently. You have to go to college. Not entrepreneurial. Very, very different. And I think she always put a lot of blame on my dad for my issues because she thinks I took a lot of what I did from my dad.

[Heather McDallin]

Why does she think your dad was the. Why does she think it was your dad's genes that caused you to be misbehaving? Because it's interesting when parents that both raise the kid want to, like, point to the other person's genes or their family saying, it's your fault that our kid is fucked up.

[Ian Bick]

I think he just always believed in, like, kind of staying. You don't have to stay within the lines.

[Heather McDallin]

Okay?

[Ian Bick]

You can color outside the lines. And that was very. Not how she was raised or how she envisioned me being raised. I think it definitely the first big devastation for her was that I chose not to go to college by my junior year of high school. Whereas that was kind of, like, always the plan for me to go to college and that.

[Heather McDallin]

How was your grades in school?

[Ian Bick]

So in middle school, they were atrocious. Barely got to high school. I was put on one of those lists where it's like, kids to watch out for. Like, the naughty kids. Like, these kids are troubled, which upset me. So I did the opposite and did really well my freshman year of high school, because by the time freshman year came along, I wanted to be in the FBI. That was my grand plan. And I knew you had to get into a good school and get good grades. So by Sophomore year, I was in the top 10 of my class.

[Heather McDallin]

Okay, so now me as the mom would feel like, how awesome. He's really turned it around.

[Ian Bick]

Yeah.

[Heather McDallin]

So now at this point, your younger brother. So it's just the two of you?

[Ian Bick]

Yep. He's four years younger.

[Heather McDallin]

So are you guys close? Is she afraid you're a bad influence or is he totally different from you?

[Ian Bick]

We fought a lot growing up. Like, we would always. So when my parents were gone and he was playing video games with his friends, me and my friends would, like, shut off the power to the house and take airsoft guns and we would have airsoft wars inside the house. We were always at it. Like, me and him fought a lot. Now he works with me and we're very chill. We're not, like, close, but we're, like, friendly with each other.

[Heather McDallin]

I think this is where when people are like, I'm so sick of seeing these tiktoks about boy mom versus girl moms. And this is the kind of stuff that does separate us as women raising children is when you have. When you're a woman raising boys and they're doing shit like this, and then your friend has girls and it's just so much nicer.

[Ian Bick]

Yeah, I think my mom would have been happy with a girl or just any kid that wasn't me at the time. But everything worked out in the end. But at the time, it was so fucking funny.

[Heather McDallin]

Okay, so things are going well. You're doing good in school then how do you decide junior year now? I don't wanna go this path of college and FBI and do something else.

[Ian Bick]

So that incident I was telling you about with the foam happened my freshman going into sophomore of high school. I got sentenced to community service.

[Heather McDallin]

Okay.

[Ian Bick]

And my community service, I chose to take, you know, remember those, like, Love Strong bracelets?

[Heather McDallin]

Yeah.

[Ian Bick]

I put Fight for the Homeless on them, ordered them online, and started selling them for the local homeless shelter. So that kind of kicked off. And then I became pretty popular in the school for running this organization. Yeah, I called it Fight for the Homeless. The local news did an article on it. We raised a couple thousand dollars. And then I start wearing, like a suit and tie to school, carrying a briefcase. Like, I'm this director of this nonprofit, and that turns into me doing a school dance, because normally school dances are ran by the school. I convince the principal to let me do a dance that was outside the normally scheduled calendar year.

[Heather McDallin]

Right.

[Ian Bick]

I do a dance. It's super successful. And as far as making money, like.

[Heather McDallin]

People buying tickets to go Exactly.

[Ian Bick]

And that's when profit it clicked in my mind. Well, kids want dances to go to, but they don't want like chaperones saying you can't, you have to dance six feet apart. Or they want to be able to pre game and drink to the, to the dance and, and they want unedited music where it's not like blurred out. So I said I'm going to start doing house parties. So I did three or four hundred people house parties at my parents house. I would always lie and say 30 people are showing up and 300 would show up. And eventually it got to the point where they, they were like, is it.

[Heather McDallin]

Still in the gated community? 300 kids are coming?

[Ian Bick]

Yeah. So because.

[Heather McDallin]

And are they, are you, are you making the money off the US$10 to come in or.

[Ian Bick]

No, this was all free. This was just building my popularity. We would sometimes sell, sell five solo cups on the patio.

[Heather McDallin]

You gotta spend the money to make the money. Right. I'm just saying this, you gotta put, just like Mr. Beast, you gotta put all your money in it. And even when my parents started their business, my dad, they were realtors. And my dad said the first year we made so little. And that entire, all that money went into marketing for the next year.

[Ian Bick]

Yeah. So I was building a brand. I called myself this is where it's at because this is where the parties are gonna be at for the night. Eventually my parents got fed up with me.

[Heather McDallin]

Now are you getting girls? Are you like, is this also resulting in like chicks liking you or what's happening?

[Ian Bick]

No, I was a like chubby, nerdy. Like I was very shy around women. I was very introverted. I still am introverted in a lot of ways, but I'm also extroverted because of the job I have now. But I was just, I liked being the behind the scenes guy. Like I was out front, but I was behind the scenes. So when I eventually owned my own nightclub, I loved the buildup of planning and executing, but hating the nights of the actual event. I never really enjoyed them. I was always thinking about the next night.

[Heather McDallin]

Now was their house ever damaged with these big parties?

[Ian Bick]

No, they were mostly for the most part outside. We would get like a big party tent because I did like the after prom party and I was in the musical theater all four years. So we did the cast party every year and we'd get a big tent, put it in the yard, porta potties, a dance floor, a dj, everything.

[Heather McDallin]

Right now at this point as the mom, I'm thinking this Is great, right? This isn't terrible what you're doing. Right? This is all good, still.

[Ian Bick]

No, My high school years were good. And then I turned that into a successful business where I'm doing. I rented a local nightclub and I would do teen parties.

[Heather McDallin]

Right.

[Ian Bick]

And I under 21, parties into money.

[Heather McDallin]

Yeah, yeah.

[Ian Bick]

I was under 18, we got kids from all over and I would make like 10 grand profit a night, once a month.

[Heather McDallin]

So then when you say, hey, I'm not going to apply to college and go because I really like this, then was that still devastating or were there like had some confidence in you just being an entrepreneur?

[Ian Bick]

So what happened was, junior year they said, why don't you go to Johnson Wales? Because I was interested in hospitality for the weekend. They paid for me to go to the Florida campus in Miami to do like one of those see if you like it things.

[Heather McDallin]

Okay.

[Ian Bick]

I spent the weekend there and they brought us to the Fontainebleau Hotel, Miami, and they said, this is where you can get an internship. And the interns they introduced to us were making minimum wage polishing silverware after a four year degree. And they said that they wouldn't even get into your specific field until after the first two years of college out of the four year plan. @ that point. I already had a corporate job working for this corporate center, helping them book proms and running banquets and stuff when I was 16 from that school dance. So I was already doing that and making more money doing that. So I didn't think that I needed to go to college to do that. Would college have been great to learn about business and how business has worked and everything? Yes. Looking back on it now, but for the field I wanted to go in the actual event planning, I felt at the time that I had already mastered that and I didn't need to go to college. So that was where the decision came in. And I think they were okay with it because they saw my business was successful. I was very successful in high school. I made great money. It was a great business. Where I went wrong was when I tried to scale it leaving high school and started taking money.

[Heather McDallin]

Let's hear how it started to go wrong.

[Ian Bick]

So I move on from these club events and I figure the next step from doing club events was concerts. I wanted to book big acts and I was able to book big acts. Like I've worked with Big Sean Tyga, big, big names. And then when I owned a club like Steve Aoki, the Chainsmokers, Blau, Zed's.

[Heather McDallin]

Dead, you owned a club like you actually owned the property?

[Ian Bick]

I owned the business at a club. But at first, I started doing colleges. This is where the federal case came in. Because I was doing concerts at college campuses in Connecticut, Rhode island, and on.

[Heather McDallin]

The actual campus, not at the frat house.

[Ian Bick]

Yeah, I would rent like the. The. The. The arena, like University of Rhode Island. We. We rented the Ryan center out.

[Heather McDallin]

Okay.

[Ian Bick]

So I was borrowing money from friends and family as, like, investments to fund these concerts.

[Heather McDallin]

Okay.

[Ian Bick]

And simultaneously, I had, like, this electronics business where we had this connection that was going to get us Beats by Dre, which turned out to be fake. But we didn't know that at the time.

[Heather McDallin]

Well, explain that how.

[Ian Bick]

So we had these. This guy that we met that would give us Beats by Dre for $50. They retail for, say, $400 depending on which one they were. So in my mind, if you're buying something for 50 bucks and it's $400, that's like a huge return. So I could promise people a 50% rate of return. And because we were dealing with product, a tangible product, I figured there's no way you can lose money because you'll eventually sell it, worst case, at cost. So I would go to you and I would say, hey, let me borrow $10,000 and I'll give you a 50% rate of return back in 30 days. Because that's how I figured I would sell the product. So you would give me 10 grand, and then in 30 days, I would give you 15 grand back. So that was one of the ways how we were raising money, and we structured them as loans. This episode is brought to you by Jack Daniels. Jack Daniels and music are made for each other. They share a rhythm in the craft of making something timeless while being a part of legendary nights. From backyard jams to to sold out arenas. There's a song in every toast. Please drink responsibly. Responsibility.org, jack Daniels and Old no. 7 are registered trademarks. Tennessee Whiskey, 40% alcohol by volume. Jack Daniel Distillery, Lynchburg, Tennessee. Mint is still $15 a month for premium wireless. And if you haven't made the switch yet, here are 15 reasons why you should. One, it's $15 a month. Two, seriously, it's $15 a month. Three, no big contracts. Four, I use it. Five, my mom uses. Are you.

[Heather McDallin]

Are you playing me off?

[Ian Bick]

That's what's happening, right? Okay, give it a try@mint mobile.com switch.

[Heather McDallin]

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[Ian Bick]

The problem was we took in all this money. This is when I was 18, took in about $500,000 within that first month.

[Heather McDallin]

And these are all just like from family, friends, parents. Like, who are you getting all this?

[Ian Bick]

These are friends from high school. Some people that had kind of towards the teen clubs and had made a couple grand that trusted me. And I had this. I had this brand kind of already. People were looking at me as super successful and they were friends, and then they were parents of those friends.

[Heather McDallin]

Okay.

[Ian Bick]

And people that would talk about it. So I take in all this money, come to find out the product is fake, the electronics are fake, and we never ended up selling any. So what ends up happening is I'm.

[Heather McDallin]

So you never get a shipment of them, or you get them and they're like, crap. They're not.

[Ian Bick]

We got the first shipment, but then it was. They were all fake. The ebay and Amazon accounts were getting shut down.

[Heather McDallin]

Oh.

[Ian Bick]

So we didn't actually end up selling any.

[Heather McDallin]

Got it.

[Ian Bick]

But I'm already taking in all this money now. Aside from doing the electronics aspect, I'm also taking that money and putting it into concerts. The thing about the concert business is you're not getting a return right away. So I was borrowing money, saying, I'm going to pay it back to you in 30 days. But these concerts are six months out. So what I was doing was I was taking one loan to pay off another loan. Because I'm thinking, just like you are refinancing a house with one loan to another. I had no credit. I'm not. I can't borrow from the bank to pay off another bank. Let me just borrow money from one investor to pay off another one to float it until these concerts happened. I legitimately booked concerts with these people. The concerts did happen. The problem was every single concert failed horrendously.

[Heather McDallin]

Why the kids weren't going or what.

[Ian Bick]

It was a series of unfortunate events. Like, for instance, I booked Chief Keef and he never showed up. There was one scenario where the dean of the campus at URI said no buses were allowed on campus because there was another incident at another club and we lost like 2,000 tickets overnight. That was when we booked Tyga. We were overpaying for artists. We were kids. We didn't know what we were doing. And there was always so many middle people. Like, I was just like the financier, I guess. And then I would deal with the middle person that dealt with another middle person that Dealt with another middle person, and no one knew what they were doing because we were all 18 and we're doing big productions. Things were over budget. And whenever I looked at a budget, I always. I was always. I think one of my flaws was I was overly optimistic. So when I look at a budget and the venue can hold 5,000 people, in my mind, okay, that's. We're going to make $200,000 if every ticket sells. But the concert business is not a guarantee. It's not always going to sell. Then you have bad weather. We didn't know about event insurance, artists not showing up, lack of ticket sales, lack of promotion. I hustled in high school. I was always a hard worker, doing the promotions, passing out flyers, doing everything I had to do to sell these venues out. Then I got too cocky and arrogant, and I'm taking all this money and I'm not doing the work behind it. And I'm sitting back like, I'm this big CEO. And then obviously you add in like dinners, going to dinners, taking trips. We bought a pair of jet skis, which was like, stupid, but we thought we had made it. That was like our big thing. That was like the big thing in the news article. Like, you hear about some of these fraud guys that they. They put their kids through school, they buy a plane, they buy cars, they're doing. They're buying houses. My big purchase out all this money was a $20,000 pair of jet skis, which the government, like, shredded me apart for. That was like the big thing. So we did stupid things like that.

[Heather McDallin]

How do you feel about the guy that did the Fyre Festival?

[Ian Bick]

I hate him, like, so. And the reason why I'm angry with him is because he acted like. So when I started my podcast and stuff, I reached out to him and I was like, hey, this would be like a great episode to do. He threw me through so many loop, like the ringer just to. He gives me his email to his assistant, who gives me to another person, Billy McFarlane. So I'm going through three different people, all for them to say, he's not going to do it. So that happened. And then also, it's just like he never booked a successful event. People compare me to him, but my events happen. We put on a good show. If you ask any one of our guests that came to the show, they got what they paid for. The investors didn't get what they paid for, but the guests got what they paid for. It was always a good time.

[Heather McDallin]

So what year is it when you're doing these big shows, but you're having these setbacks with talent. Weather the buses, the schools, like what year are you now maybe starting to panic because you, you're borrowing this money and the money's not coming or what happens.

[Ian Bick]

So most of these fraud things are happen over years and years. This was a six month period from the time I turned 18 in May of 20 to December 2013. Everything fell apart. And with the interest, I was like $1.2 million in debt. But half of the money is fugazi. Like it's, someone is investing ten grand.

[Heather McDallin]

Are you just thinking it's gonna work out or are you starting to like literally lose sleep and stress out? And you're like, you know, it's procrastination, it's lying, it's deceiving. Like how do you deal with that on a daily basis? Do you feel like it's gonna crash or you didn't feel like it was gonna crash?

[Ian Bick]

In the beginning I was so confident in these concerts. But then the first one fails and then it's okay, well there's gonna be this one here. And then you keep pushing it off and you keep telling lies banking on this one concert. But it was realistically never gonna, you know, even if that concert was fully sold out, it still wouldn't fix everything. Cause it gets to a certain point where you have more debt than what the concert could actually bring in.

[Heather McDallin]

Now what about the staff, like your event staff? The person that's coming and being security, just helping the people that would be on your payroll. Are you able to pay them their, like their salary for the event?

[Ian Bick]

Well, we didn't have. Everything was vendors, you know.

[Heather McDallin]

Oh, so you didn't have like a big payroll thing?

[Ian Bick]

It was just me. I never had employees when I owned the club. That would be different. Okay, but that's later in the story. But now when I'm just doing these events, when I was 18, there was all subcontractors. They always got paid because that's what you're using the investor money for. So the investor money legitimately went. It wasn't like I took money from you and then it got spent on everything else. The issue at hand was I was saying it was going to electronics and it was going into concerts, or there was some misspending. But out of all like the $500,000 that was brought in, I would say probably a hundred grand was misspent and 400,000 went into legitimate investments that made that all lost money. The problem was the lying behind it. And I kept stalling and I was saying, hey, your money's coming and this and that. And I felt bad. I didn't intentionally set out to steal from anyone. It was, it was literally just an accident.

[Heather McDallin]

When did all come crashing down?

[Ian Bick]

So, January 2014. My friends or people that invested, they, some say you're an 18 year old kid, you give me two grand, you kept rolling it over and you think you're owed 20 grand. They're like, where's the money? Like, this is everything. They think it's a million bucks, you know?

[Heather McDallin]

Yeah.

[Ian Bick]

So they go to the local police station. I got a lawyer go to the local police station. They're just kind of fishing around. They think I'm a drug dealer. They think I spent all the money at Universal Studios. Like they're just fishing.

[Heather McDallin]

Why Universal Studios?

[Ian Bick]

Because we had taken one trip with some of the investors to Universal, to California. And then also they, at the time I had owned my first nightclub. It was like this thing called Sky Bar. At the club I used to promote at, they had a front room that I took over.

[Heather McDallin]

Okay.

[Ian Bick]

And so they think I own the building. They think all of these things. This is before they get bank records and stuff. That's when the investigation starts. Somewhere along the line, by the time I turn 19, it gets kicked up to the federal level. I get called to the Department of Banking. I meet with them without an attorney present, sit with them for five hours, tell them everything, put the whole case together, the documents. Because I didn't feel like I did anything intentionally wrong. I'm trying to clear it up. I'm like, yeah, I owe the money, I lied. I'm just trying to figure this out. I was in over my head.

[Heather McDallin]

So when you go to the bank without any attorney, are you telling your dad that you're like in a pickle? Are you just still just acting like everything's fine?

[Ian Bick]

So my dad at that point, because I had went with my lawyer before, like when we went with the police station, he knew about the whole situation, but the lawyer kept saying, everything's good, don't worry. And the lawyer was a friend of ours who said everything was free and then sent me a bill for 15 grand. And that's why I didn't have a lawyer to go to the Department of Banking. This guy set me up to dry. And I'm just a kid. So I went by myself. Didn't tell my parents. Sit with the Department of Banking for like five hours. At the end of the meeting, these guys are waiting for me and they Turn out to be postal inspectors. I didn't know we had postal inspectors. That's when they hand me a target letter from the FBI saying they're investigating for mail fraud, wire fraud, a bunch of other things. And they, you know, that's when, that's when the federal investigation officially began. And that's when I got an actual criminal defense attorney to help me throughout the whole case. And that's when I told my parents like what was going on, that I was being investigated.

[Heather McDallin]

And what was their reaction?

[Ian Bick]

My mom was devastated. I mean, she's the one that had to pay for the attorney for us, like for the retainer. And it just, it definitely caused a lot of friction. And I'm so. I was so stressed at the time. It was to be that young and to have like the whole.

[Heather McDallin]

Now where were you living? Did you have like a swanky apartment?

[Ian Bick]

No, never. I was just. Lived with my parents even when I owned the club. Later on, really always I lived. I moved out of my parents house for like two months to live above the club. But yeah, I lived with my parents. I wasn't living a lavish lifestyle at all. We had spent, at one point, we went on a trip with some of the investors that were kids and I spent like five grand one day on like Gucci clothes and stuff. And I was like, this isn't me. I don't like these outfits. I had a business partner that was into like the preppy stuff who ended up not getting charged and he testified against me. He got all those clothes and stuff. I was never into that. I don't wear designer clothes. You know, anything nice I have now is like gifts from guests or anything like that. I'm just not. It never interested me.

[Heather McDallin]

When did you start getting the tats? The tattoo, Not a very good Jewish boy thing to do.

[Ian Bick]

Yeah, the tats I've gotten since I got my first one at 16 and then throughout like the case and everything I got. I had most of my tats before prison and then some from like this arm or after prison. But most of my tattoos were just like kind of, I guess my coping mechanism and stuff because I was never addicted to drugs or anything. Never really drank.

[Heather McDallin]

Do you think tattooing is a bit of addiction?

[Ian Bick]

Oh, it's definitely an addiction now. I haven't gotten a tattoo in like two years. Yeah, well, actually I've got. I've gotten one related to like content. I got McLovin and a portrait of McLovin because they called me McLovin in prison, you know, from superbad oh, yeah, yeah. They said I look like McLovin. So I've gotten those recently. Those are my only tattoos recently.

[Heather McDallin]

Okay, so then you. It's. It's out on the open. You've got the attorney working on it. Is the attorney telling you, like, we're going to get you out of this, or is he like, we're gonna have to do a plea deal? Like, what. How did you end up being sentenced? What happened?

[Ian Bick]

I tell the attorney the whole story, and he believes me, that I didn't intentionally defraud anyone. People got defrauded, but it wasn't intentional. We were trying to. Our whole point why we went to trial was that I didn't set out with bad intentions. And we just wanna, like, clear this up. I would have pled guilty, but they were so set on giving me prison time. They offered me, like, some outrageous plea deal.

[Heather McDallin]

The government.

[Ian Bick]

The government, they. All they cared for was prison time. They didn't care. Like, I could have pled guilty. They never would have to spend money on going to trial or anything. Could have pled guilty and then maybe house arrest and mandatory paying the money back. That's it. I would have pled guilty to that.

[Heather McDallin]

Yeah.

[Ian Bick]

Instead, they wanted prison time. So they indicted me. Like the whole raid at my house at 5am with the FBI, the IRS.

[Heather McDallin]

So your mom's, like, sleeping in. It's like a boom, boom, boom.

[Ian Bick]

She was right there. She gets the door open. They're like, step back, man. Step back. They're rude. Just like, it was devastating. And they indicted all in the gated community. Yeah, cars. Oh, you should. You know, like, how did those.

[Heather McDallin]

How did the head of the homeowners feel about that?

[Ian Bick]

You know, those community groups, like, next door or whatever, they're all like, what's going on? At that? Why is that? Why is there all these cars? Because the FBI, they make a big presence. There's like 30 cars lined up. Tactical vests. Like, you would have thought I was a terrorist.

[Heather McDallin]

Yeah.

[Ian Bick]

The way they treated this. And then they set up the press. The articles were already coming out that I was arrested before they even slapped the handcuffs on me. Yeah, that's what they do. They tip it all off. You have no chance to defend yourself, and it's. You're guilty before you ever even go to trial.

[Heather McDallin]

Right.

[Ian Bick]

That's what it is.

[Heather McDallin]

Perp walk coming out of the house. I was very hard. So my sister's a criminal defense attorney and she always says that's why it's harder to be a defense attorney. Than prosecutor. Because people always remember that first image that they see, which is the person being arrested, you know, in the suit, handcuffs, all that.

[Ian Bick]

Yeah, it's. It's pretty interesting.

[Heather McDallin]

Yeah.

[Ian Bick]

What they do, I mean, they had me in cowboy boots from, like, the musical theater days that were in my closet because they said I needed no shoes with laces. So I had cowboy boots on, a little vest. My hair was a mess, my mug shots terrible. And then, yeah, I went, wait, so.

[Heather McDallin]

Are you walking out of, like, cowboy boots and shorts?

[Ian Bick]

I think, Yeah, I think. Or I had baggy jeans on. I don't know. It was a mess. They didn't even let me brush my teeth. It was just. It was not pleasant. They took my phone. I gave them my password like an idiot. I was just like, in the moment. I gave him my password.

[Heather McDallin]

To your phone and everything?

[Ian Bick]

To everything. And I thought that they were going to let me turn myself in. Like a lot of these people, you could turn themselves in because we're co op. Like, my lawyer was in talks with the U.S. attorney. They were just not happy. And also, simultaneously, I had managed to open up the club like that I used to promote at. That went out of business, and I started this whole new business that was completely legal. Everything was legitimate, booking concerts. So while my whole case is going on, I'm running a nightclub. So that's why the headlines are so juicy. Danbury teen nightclub owner arrested for fraud, money laundering, and I'm doing big acts with, like, the biggest DJs in the world.

[Heather McDallin]

That is juicy.

[Ian Bick]

While I'm on trial.

[Heather McDallin]

That is a juicy crime.

[Ian Bick]

Yeah. So they were into that. And the U.S. attorney kept trying to revoke my bond, saying there's girls running around their underwear drunk at the club. All of this. So I run this club with no liquor license, nothing underfunded, taking on more debt all through my trial up until the day my bond got revoked in 2016.

[Heather McDallin]

So wait, when you get arrested that day, you're. They don't give you boss.

[Ian Bick]

You have got bail.

[Heather McDallin]

Yeah, you got bail. Okay, so you're living at home, waiting for the big trial. How long is the trial? Like, is it a jury trial?

[Ian Bick]

Yeah, I went to a full jury trial in the feds. It was almost a month long. I was in November of that year.

[Heather McDallin]

And your mom and dad are there every day?

[Ian Bick]

Pretty much. My mom went. My dad was there every day. My mom went most days. I testified too, for two days.

[Heather McDallin]

And what's the community? Is a community on your side or are they not on your Side and like, is it awkward for your mom to go and, like, walk around the neighborhood and like, you know, I think.

[Ian Bick]

It was awkward for my mom up until I became successful later in life because I was just a small town. Danbury has like 100,000 people. Everyone's so judgmental. You should have seen the like. I remember when I was eventually in prison reading all the comments from a contraband cell phone in prison of all your friends or the people you thought you were friends with in high school, talking about, this guy's such a scumbag. I never liked him, like, all of it. Because the articles get shared. You know, when one of your friends gets arrested now it's all over Facebook or something. They read every line in the article. They use all of that and they just eat it up. And same thing when I first got arrested and people were very mean and hateful people that you. Ex girlfriends, ex friends, everything. They're just so nasty. And like, they just take that side of the story.

[Heather McDallin]

Yeah.

[Ian Bick]

Even when I went to prison, though, when I got out of prison, people would say, oh, I thought you were still in prison. Because the guy, like in the article, it said, I'm facing 120 years. That they just added up all the charges because each count. But people are clueless about what actually goes on the system. So people would be like, oh, I thought you were still in prison.

[Heather McDallin]

So you do get sentenced to how much?

[Ian Bick]

I got three years, so 36 months and one year house arrest after and three year supervised release.

[Heather McDallin]

How much time did you do?

[Ian Bick]

I did about 27 months inside, then got released to a halfway house where I got on home confinement and then supervised release was started in May of 2019. I did that for a year on house arrest on the ankle monitor, and then two more years just on probation.

[Heather McDallin]

So did you go to, quote, unquote, a white collar prison?

[Ian Bick]

So at first I went to a low security prison, which is everyone. Everything from sex offenders to violent criminals that have worked their way down, like, points wise because it goes off a point system. Everyone thought I was a sex offender in prison. They called me a chomo, like a child molester.

[Heather McDallin]

Why did they think that?

[Ian Bick]

The way I looked, my glasses. I was young. There's no young white kids in prison for fraud. So they thought I was lying to them. So. Because all the. When you. When you think typical fraud guy, they're in their 30s, 40s, 50s, with a family.

[Heather McDallin]

Yeah, yeah.

[Ian Bick]

You're not 21 years old. I was 21 when I went to federal prison. I'm Christian McCaffrey, pro running back and Abercrombie is an official fashion partner of the NFL. I'm not kidding when I say NFL by Abercrombie broke the Internet last year and I think this season's lineup is even cooler. And so does my wife who keeps stealing all my hoodies. Stay fit for the season and Abercrombie's newest arrivals Shop NFL by Abercrombie in the app, online and in store.

[Heather McDallin]

When did making plans get this complicated? It's time to streamline with WhatsApp, the secure messaging app that brings the whole group together. Use polls to settle dinner plans, send event invites and pinned messages so no one forgets mom's 60th and never miss a meme or milestone. All protected with end to end encryption. It's time for WhatsApp message privately with everyone. Learn [e-mail] this episode is brought to you by State Farm.

[Ian Bick]

Checking off the boxes on your to.

[Heather McDallin]

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[Ian Bick]

You choose an option that's right for you. Whether you prefer talking in person on the phone or using the award winning app, it's nice knowing you have help finding coverage that best fits your needs. Like a good neighbor. State Farm is there so guys would say, where's your paperwork? I didn't know about this thing called paperwork or anything like that.

[Heather McDallin]

What is paperwork? What do you mean? You have paperwork when you're in prison.

[Ian Bick]

Paperwork is showing like your charges that you didn't cooperate. You're not a rat, you're not a sex offender.

[Heather McDallin]

Okay?

[Ian Bick]

And I didn't know anything. I didn't know how prison politics worked. The only prison show I watched going into this was Orange is the New Black. I didn't watch Prison Break.

[Heather McDallin]

I didn't watch Girls.

[Ian Bick]

Yeah, which is Girls Prison. And I was actually watching that show. I finished the final season in prison. I was watching out my bunk. People in prison are so funny. They'll watch Love After Lockup from Prison. I know that show, all of that. So yeah, I went to Fort Dix. That's where Joe Giudice was. I ran into him at the lunch line.

[Heather McDallin]

Let me hear about that.

[Ian Bick]

What do they call him? Juicy Joe or whatever. So Therese, I followed Theresa's case because I was from Danbury and she went to the Danbury low security prison. So I remember all the headlines like everyone she go going there in the morning and her sentence was structured so when she got out, Joe would start his sentence.

[Heather McDallin]

Right.

[Ian Bick]

So I would see her in the visiting room visiting Joe because she was allowed to visit him when they were still together with the kids and everything when her kids were a lot younger. But yeah, I'd run into. I never really talked to Joe, but I was stand. Stood behind him in the lunch line. People treated him like a normal person. But there would be photos that leaked to like TMZ with him working out or something. I remember that famous pic of him like buff and stuff because everyone has contraband phones. And I remember when I was in the camp later on, George Papadopoulos from Trump's team was at the camp. So we were trying to take photos of him and sell him to tmz. But the problem was he was only there for two weeks. So he. It was like headline news for a couple days and then no one cared about it after that.

[Heather McDallin]

So as a, you know, a young white boy, was your fear that you would get assaulted and you know, used as someone's bitch?

[Ian Bick]

Yeah, guys would try to extort me all the time because I was young, white, didn't ride with anyone. Like I wasn't in a gang or I didn't join. They call them cars in the lower security prisons like the state you ride with. The biggest thing was I didn't know how prison politics worked.

[Heather McDallin]

Did you think about getting a prison consultant before going?

[Ian Bick]

We hired a prison consultant when I was in prison to try to get me to a closer prison or a camp because we always thought I was going to go to a camp.

[Heather McDallin]

My point is that's what Teresa calls it. I went to camp for a year.

[Ian Bick]

Yeah. So she went to an actual camp. Like that's where you hear club fed, a cushy like white collar joint. They sent me to a low security prison, which was not the cushy prison. The camp has no wall or no fences. It's very relaxed. No sex offenders, no violent criminals or anything like that. My points were one point too high, which I think was intentional on the government's side to not send me to a camp. But anyways, we hired a prison consultant. I think that they're a lot of them are scams or at least back then. I've met a couple decent ones now, but they over promise and under deliver. We paid like three grand. They said they were going to get me moved closer to home because there was no reason why I shouldn't have been at the Dambury low security prison. Instead they sent me to New Jersey. That's three hours away. That's where Juicy Joe was okay. So we paid a consultant. He never did anything. They don't do anything that. They're all, you know, it's, it's crazy.

[Heather McDallin]

So did any guy try to get.

[Ian Bick]

With you, like in a sexual way? No.

[Heather McDallin]

Yes.

[Ian Bick]

No. And that never happened. So you hear stories though, people would be like, gay for the stay.

[Heather McDallin]

Yeah.

[Ian Bick]

Where they're. They, they say, well, actually they don't even want to be called gay, honestly. Like there would be like jacked shot caller type dudes that are hooking up with men and if you called them gay, they'll probably stab you because in their eyes are not gay. They're just getting off for the time they're there. They're gay for the stay, essentially. Yeah, but that would happen. But no, I was never into men or had any sexual encounters. I remember the first night I was in the detention center. I actually dropped a bar of soap in the shower. I was like, there's no way I'm picking that up. Because in high school you get like, the words are like, don't drop the soap. And that's what all the Twitter comments were when I got arrested too. Like, don't drop the soap because it's such a common term.

[Heather McDallin]

Right.

[Ian Bick]

That doesn't actually happen.

[Heather McDallin]

Literally did drop the soap.

[Ian Bick]

I did drop the soap. And I was like, I'm not picking that up. I was not picking up.

[Heather McDallin]

Do you think it's kind of an exaggerated thing that people that don't want to have sex with men, unfortunately, are assaulted in prison or. No, that does happen against your will where they like, you know, act like they're your friend and then lock the door and you're, you know, passed around to five guys.

[Ian Bick]

No, it does happen. I've interviewed guys on my show about that. That's horrible stories. I had a male prison guard come on to me in a sex away when I was at the camp, like feeling me up like a male prison guard coming into me.

[Heather McDallin]

And what do you say or do?

[Ian Bick]

You can't really do anything in that situation because it's their word against, you know, yours. And you're always going to lose. There's no cameras and so do you.

[Heather McDallin]

Just act nice but. But not interested or like, what do you do so it doesn't escalate where they just take advantage of you or, or when you don't want it?

[Ian Bick]

Well, in that situation, I ended up reporting him, like after a couple times of him like feeling my elbow or my butt or my arms or trying to corner me in the walk in but you hear about girls, female inmates getting assaulted by male officers all the time. Yeah, that happens, you know, and they say it's consensual, but there's no consent when you're an inmate. And there's male inmates that hook up with female officers all the time too.

[Heather McDallin]

Right?

[Ian Bick]

A little bit more. They're not getting like rape.

[Heather McDallin]

That's like that juicy story about the female prisoner that was kind of hooking, I mean, female guard that was hooking up with both of them or something. And so the two of them got escaped. I forgot.

[Ian Bick]

Oh yeah, Escape at the end of More. That was a great Netflix documentary. Yes.

[Heather McDallin]

Patricia Arquette. Yeah.

[Ian Bick]

Yeah, that was crazy. Cause she wasn't even that attractive at all.

[Heather McDallin]

I mean, that's the thing. I'm like, I just think, you know, these guys are charmers and all of a sudden you're, you know, a middle aged woman. And what was crazy is that she had done that job for so long and then just, it just happened one day. Like that was it. She just fell for it. Fell in love with the guy, helped him get out, ruined her life, died.

[Ian Bick]

I think it's very circumstantial too, because you have the woman, she had a terrible home life.

[Heather McDallin]

Right.

[Ian Bick]

So I think it also goes into that too. And they're not looking past the bigger picture. When you have these guys where, you know where they are, they're not cheating right on you. They're stuck there. They could be attractive. They have that bad boy type image. And, you know, you're not getting laid by your husband at home or he's miserable or a deadbeat or whatever. You're gonna be attracted to these guys in some way, you know.

[Heather McDallin]

Yeah. I've talked a lot about this on the show of like the fascination, but to me it's not that fascinating. It's obvious, just like you said, why women fall in love. Why I did fall in love after lockup in the beginning of that series, why they. And I've said it. It's like, because I know where he is all the time. He's always happy to hear from me. You know, he never tells me, like, stop yapping. You know, this was one call he'd like to hear from you. Thrilled to see you every Sunday, you know, and it has all the time in the world to write you beautiful letters and tell you that you're all there thinking about. But then oftentimes these guys are also doing that with other women.

[Ian Bick]

Yeah. Oh, it's a hustle. Like they'll go on this app was like, plenty of fish, which was popular. Pof. They'll hustle women. These women know they're in prison, so.

[Heather McDallin]

The prisoners can go on regular apps. It's not just a prison app.

[Ian Bick]

No, it was contraband phones. I know there's tablets and stuff now. I didn't experience any of that at the time, but we had cell phones. You'd buy them for a couple of grand on the prison market.

[Heather McDallin]

So somebody's like, I can get you a phone.

[Ian Bick]

Exactly.

[Heather McDallin]

And you're able to hide it and no guards see it, or they see and they don't care.

[Ian Bick]

A mixture of both. Either you're hiding it or guards will see it and take it, or guards and see it and they won't. And you get. You lose good time and stuff. Fortunately, that never happened to me. But it also is reversed, too. Like, I was watching Love After Lockup recently, and you see these, like, guys from damaged backgrounds that are spending all these money on these women who are in prison.

[Heather McDallin]

Oh, the other way.

[Ian Bick]

Yeah, the other way around. That's too.

[Heather McDallin]

The women are hustling the men as well.

[Ian Bick]

Yeah, exactly. It's just so.

[Heather McDallin]

Yeah. I mean, people are just so. Just need to feel like, that love and that attention. And I think there are women that would rather go to bed every night knowing that in their mind, there's this guy that's just pining for them behind bars. So it's not like they're single, but they know where their man is. And, you know, and it's crazy. And especially when the crimes are bad. You're like, I cannot believe this.

[Ian Bick]

But I'd like the serial killers. I don't understand that.

[Heather McDallin]

Serial killers are murdered. They murdered their wife. Oh, you know, like, I'm just. Or the Menendez brothers, in which that one, the older one, Lyle, he's cheated on his last wives, even getting married.

[Ian Bick]

Why are you marrying someone that has life in prison? I don't get it.

[Heather McDallin]

And no conjugal visits. So it's not even like, you know, every six months, you guys have the sleepover in the trailer.

[Ian Bick]

It's nothing that's actually happening in New York, which is interesting, too.

[Heather McDallin]

Which is what?

[Ian Bick]

The trailers. Like, you could get a weekend thing in the trailer. I think that's a cool concept. I can understand having a relationship that way.

[Heather McDallin]

Yeah.

[Ian Bick]

But even still, like, there's so many other people in the. In the ocean out here, so plenty.

[Heather McDallin]

Of fish in the sea. So. Okay, so how did you make. Once you were settled, you knew you had to do these all these months, at least you almost three years or two and a half. You did about two and a half, right?

[Ian Bick]

Yeah.

[Heather McDallin]

How did you, like, set your mindset to, like, make the most of it?

[Ian Bick]

I think what helped me get through my sentence was I moved to so many different prisons. Like, just, like, I had so much bad luck in the concert industry. Yeah, I had so much bad luck in the prison system. The first time I got put in solitary for, like, three months and moved was because I got caught on a cell phone on video getting choked out by one of my cellmates. We were just wrestling for fun. But they got into the phone, they saw the video, and they were like, do you need protective custody? The time these other guys are trying to extort me and trying to get me to pay them money and stuff. So I said, yeah, get me out of here. Like, I'm ready to go. Spent three months in solitary.

[Heather McDallin]

What was that like?

[Ian Bick]

Solitary sucks. That's why I put up such a stink about it in the Mr. Beast video, because his solitary was even smaller than normal solitary. And those first, like, you'll never understand unless you've been through it. Those first couple hours of that door getting shut and you have no movement. Solitaire is way different than normal prison, where you have time to move around, there's things to do. You're literally stuck in the cell for 23 hours a day, five days a week. Because on the other two days, it's 24 hours a day. They only do rec five days a week for an hour every morning in another cage. They'll handcuff you to go take a shower. They'll handcuff you when you're in solitary. Yeah. Three showers a week, three meals a day, no snacks. Lost a lot of weight. I was like 180. I mean, £280. Before prison, I was a big boy. Lost almost £100 in solitary over six months because I kept being in solitary.

[Heather McDallin]

They've better than Ozempic.

[Ian Bick]

Yeah. They eventually moved me to Danbury, which was my hometown.

[Heather McDallin]

So wait, when you're in the solitary, can you have a book?

[Ian Bick]

Yeah, you can get a book.

[Heather McDallin]

Okay. So you could read. Is that. What did you do?

[Ian Bick]

So I read a lot. At one point, I was reading a book a day. I read, like, the Harry Potter series. I read Wolf of Wall Street. I read a bunch of books.

[Heather McDallin]

And so since you can't get out, the person comes and gives you your food, and you're like, here's this book. Could you bring another one back?

[Ian Bick]

So you get the Book cart once a week. So if you get in there on a Tuesday and the book cart already came Monday, you're kind of out of luck unless you have a good cellmate who has books.

[Heather McDallin]

Okay.

[Ian Bick]

Cause your parents could still. Could still Amazon you books. You could still get that, but it takes a few days, and you have to send a letter out. And it's a long process.

[Heather McDallin]

So someone that has the people giving them money, they can have books, like, purchase, like, owned, but the other people are sort of depending on, like, the library. Yeah.

[Ian Bick]

Or people will pass around books, too. Like, sometimes you'll get a good guard and you'll say, hey, can you have so and so? Send me a book. And most guards will do that, you know? Or in Danbury, the solitary had the bars, like Alcatraz, kind of, so you could fish the book. Like, you would tie the book up to a sheet and, like, send it down the way for people, or people would pass it cell to cell. But some solitaries are like the solid door, so you can't pass anything through.

[Heather McDallin]

And then what was the visiting like?

[Ian Bick]

Visiting? You get visits once a week when you're in solitary or an orange jumpsuit. And you only. It's limited to, like, two hours when you're not in solitary. You can get a visit every weekend. Some places that are at a higher capacity. It rotates, I think, every other weekend, depending on what category you're in. But at the camp, you could get a visit every weekend. I think it's Friday, Saturday, Sunday, Monday, or Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday, something like that. It's like four days or three days.

[Heather McDallin]

But you can only go and see people one day, one time.

[Ian Bick]

No. So, like, some guys that would hustle women would go onto a visit at like, say, 12, leave the visit and have another visit coming at 3, which was crazy. There would be instances where you'd see a guy get called for a visit that had no idea he had a visit coming, and it would be like, his other girl that he was hustling. These guys hustle girls all the time.

[Heather McDallin]

For the money on the.

[Ian Bick]

For the money to say, hey, baby girl, can I get a hundred bucks? You know, and then hang up. Boom. Call the next one.

[Heather McDallin]

And then what? The money that you get on the books, is that like the ramen food? The better. Like the bean burritos? Like, what is it? It's just the better food you're buying.

[Ian Bick]

Commissary items, you could get shit. I mean, it's like a supermarket. You got, like, Doritos. You got like hostesses. Like, you could get soda. You got a Ben and Jerry's ice cream on your commissary day. Get all these things. Granted, they're marked up. Get a MP3 player like those little Sandis MP3 players at Bed, Bath and Beyond for 20 bucks they're charging 120 bucks for. Get a radio, you get shoes, you get sneakers, you get clothes, you get everything like that.

[Heather McDallin]

So somebody like you that, you know, they're assuming you come from a family that could give you money, then how do they, like, threaten you so that you give some of your commissary money to them?

[Ian Bick]

I mean, they'll just do it in force. Like, I had guys pull up on me, yank me in the bathroom, slap, like, the glasses off my face, hoist me up against the wall and say, hey, you're gonna pay us this money. This is what happened at the low.

[Heather McDallin]

And what would you do?

[Ian Bick]

Well, in that case. So I ended up, like, kind of paying for protection where I had the biggest guys from, like, the New York car gang or whatever kind of look out for me. And I gave them commissary every week to make sure no one bothered me.

[Heather McDallin]

And would you tell your parents, like, I need this extra money so that I have, like, security?

[Ian Bick]

I didn't really say that, but my dad kind of knew what was going on. My dad really. He held me down. Like, my mom has no idea how much. My dad. Like, my dad was the one that sent all the money.

[Heather McDallin]

How much do you think your parents are sending you per month?

[Ian Bick]

I mean, there would be some months. I'd get, like, 800 or a thousand bucks. For my dad, especially when I bought a cell phone, he would send me, like, a couple grand.

[Heather McDallin]

So you could get the cell phone?

[Ian Bick]

Yeah, so I could get. He knew how do you charge it? So people would. There's no iPhones because you need the battery to come out, because you always want to keep the battery separate from the phone. So if the battery gets caught, you still have the phone and you just buy a new battery. So guys would, like, take the fluorescent lights and have, like, the inmates from the electrical crew come and hook up the lights so you could charge the battery in the fluorescent light or in the ceiling fans or the little MP3 player they would convert to a, like, a portal type thing. You'd plug the battery in and leave it by the computers, because we had computers for email and stuff.

[Heather McDallin]

And do you have a little thing in your room where you're, like, crossing out each day and, like, really Keeping track of how much more you have.

[Ian Bick]

Not till the end. I mean, when you're counting down three years, it sounds like a lot. Honestly, it felt the first three months were the hardest. And like doing the Mr. Beast video, where that was a hundred days. I was counting down every day. That felt like three years. You know, my three years in prison felt faster than the Mr. Beast video.

[Heather McDallin]

So you, you get out when I.

[Ian Bick]

Got out in 2019, January.

[Heather McDallin]

And then what did you start working on?

[Ian Bick]

So my plan was I wanted to be the next Wolf of Wall street, get my story rights published, use some of the money to pay off all my restitution. Because I had. My restitution was like 495,000, get a movie deal from that, open another nightclub, everything. None of that happened. I queried like 300 literary agents while I was in prison from a contraband phone I had.

[Heather McDallin]

Are you writing your book at?

[Ian Bick]

I wrote like three chapters and then I had paid someone to like help me type it up or whatever. And then I had like a writing agency that I paid a couple grand to to help me with the query letter. Sent that all out, heard nothing, got out of prison, sent them all out again, heard from three people, sent them the first couple chapters, and then never heard anything again. So that was. That kind of like killed my dreams on that.

[Heather McDallin]

And that's when you're like living in the rehab place.

[Ian Bick]

I was living at the halfway house. And then how was the halfway house worse in prison? If I could do this all over.

[Heather McDallin]

What Sherry Papini said. Yeah, she said the halfway house in Oakland was worse than being in the prison.

[Ian Bick]

Yeah, if I could do it all over again.

[Heather McDallin]

Why are the halfway houses so horrible?

[Ian Bick]

A lot of them are for profit, so they're trying to make it so they have to keep their margins. Well, so the food's worse, the food's skimpy, they're run down, it's low overhead. And I think the biggest thing is your staff. Your staff, they're paying minimum wage to and they need like college educated kids that are look like a case manager, a counselor. I went through three case managers in a four month period. They're looking at as a stepping stone to get the real job they want for like, experience. So they're looking at us as like guinea pigs. They don't care about us. They were case managers younger than me. I was like 23 or 24 at the time. These were people that were 21, fresh out of college, 22. They didn't even know how to deal with individuals like us, there were so many rules, way more rules in prison. It just, it's designed to fail. And these aren't rules that the federal government's making. It's rules that the halfway houses are making. They just, they were very petty. The curfews, everything. It was so silly.

[Heather McDallin]

Have you followed at all Todd Chrisley's journey?

[Ian Bick]

Yeah, I have.

[Heather McDallin]

And everything they're doing I think is pretty important about kind of exposing that the prison system has to be.

[Ian Bick]

It's so corrupt, revamped. I know, like in a guy like Todd Chrisley's case, he got special treatment.

[Heather McDallin]

Yes, of course.

[Ian Bick]

Because I saw how they treated the celebrities that came into prison. Like they would literally tell me how they do it. So like George Papadopoulopoulos at the camp. I think George, I mean Todd Chrisley went to a camp. I'm not sure because of how much time he had, but I know for George you would barely see the warden come up. The days leading up to it, the Warren was there every day. They were talking to inmates, answering concerns because they knew TMZ and all the news reporters are going to be outside. They make sure everything's good, they take care of you, they're giving you extra time, anything you need, you know. And then the days when he first arrives, it's a ghost town. They don't want you coming out of your cell, they don't want you going out in the front. Like the place is on lockdown. They roll out the red carpet because they don't want any bad press. And as soon as the press dies out, everything's back to the way it was. It's all, it's all a show, you know, they don't want anything getting out when you have a high profile inmate like that.

[Heather McDallin]

But you don't think Joe Giudice got.

[Ian Bick]

I think he did in the beginning, but by the time I encountered him, he was already three years in, like he went home like a year I think after. So it was adjusted then. You'll have outbreaks like the TMZ article and stuff like that. But in the beginning I'm sure he was treated like royalty. Any celebrity that goes to prison, I mean, look at how many of them get to self surrender and everything. They're treated very well. And then when time adjusts and the press moves on, then it's. Everything's back to normal.

[Heather McDallin]

Wow.

[Ian Bick]

But it's all, it's all a scam in a way. It's all smoke and mirrors and you know, I'm sure They rolled out the red carpet for him. And he had a vastly different experience as a white male than I did in prison, so.

[Heather McDallin]

Because he was famous in New York.

[Ian Bick]

Because he was famous. Yeah, exactly.

[Heather McDallin]

And so the horrible halfway house is done. And then where do you go?

[Ian Bick]

I got a job at Whole Foods. This is when I start supervisory lease, the first year on the ankle monitor. And I got a job at Whole Foods. Cause I had gotten a job there before prison to try to pay restitution, look good for court. I had applied to, like, 100 places. Not even Red Lobster would take me as a dishwasher.

[Heather McDallin]

Because you had it. Because you're a convicted criminal at that point?

[Ian Bick]

Oh, yeah, I was convicted. They all the press. There was so much negative press, and they just didn't want to hire me.

[Heather McDallin]

But the Whole Foods people. Because they personally knew you from before.

[Ian Bick]

Yeah. And my crimes didn't count against their system or whatever. And what I found out, too, is most places don't. So I have federal crimes. A lot of places do state background checks by state. And I only had a misdemeanor on the state or federal sex crime cases, and I didn't have any sex crimes. So I passed a Whole Foods background check. And in three years, I worked my way up from a hot bar cook making 15 bucks an hour to the team leader, prepared foods department running the deli, the hot bars, the salad bars, everything making 33 bucks an hour with overtime. I was going to make over 100k before I left. And I was helping them open new stores. I ran a team of like 40 people, rose through the ranks. Covid really helped.

[Heather McDallin]

And at that time, are you living on your own then?

[Ian Bick]

Yeah, I was able to re. You know, get good credit, get a car, get a dog. I had a girlfriend get an apartment. Did. I moved out very quickly.

[Heather McDallin]

And then because you had to pay restitution, was it a portion of your check that came out all the time, or you did that on your own?

[Ian Bick]

So the judge ordered a thousand bucks a month, but when you're living on your own, it's kind of not feasible working at jobs. So I was paying a few hundred bucks a month. I didn't really start paying major restitution. And you still have to go to.

[Heather McDallin]

Like, a probation office officer or.

[Ian Bick]

Yeah, so I would check in. I was on, like, the lowest setting or whatever. But then covet happened. They weren't coming around at all. I was drug tested in the beginning. And then my probation officer was chilling. He realized I don't do drugs. And I was just working. I when I first got out and started at Whole Foods to support the apartment and stuff, I had two jobs. I would work at Whole Foods from 6am to 2:30, then go to a pizzeria and make pizzas till like 11 o' clock at night. And then I would drive Uber or doordash when I lost that job during COVID And then I always had the job at Whole Foods and I was grinding. I've always been a hard worker.

[Heather McDallin]

So then how did you decide to apply to this Mr. Beast show that just came out?

[Ian Bick]

So what happens is in 2022, one of my friends that was the videographer of the club said, ian, you know, you're not going to work at Whole Foods your whole life. And at the time I was so dedicated to Whole Foods. This is my career. I'm going to be a store manager. Everything's great. But he painted the picture of like you're an entrepreneur at heart. You're creative and also corporate sucks. Working for someone else sucks. It never ends. Especially in the restaurant business. You're putting out a fire every day when you have a team of 40 people call outs, personalities, everything, the hot bar getting destroyed from customers, like everything, it just builds up. So we said, why don't you start sharing your story about the nightclub on social media? Because Covid had exploded this world of TikTokers and YouTubers talking about prison and all of these things, which I knew nothing about. And so I start making these like very cringe videos, me talking about my experience at that time. I had like an HBO documentary that came out and a Vice documentary that.

[Heather McDallin]

Came out just about you or you just.

[Ian Bick]

So I was a part of a 10 part series where each episode featured someone different that was on HBO. And then Vice did like a 10.

[Heather McDallin]

So one episode was on you?

[Ian Bick]

Yeah.

[Heather McDallin]

Oh, okay.

[Ian Bick]

It's not on HBO anymore since they merged with Discover. But the story ends with me just getting out of prison working at Whole Foods.

[Heather McDallin]

Okay.

[Ian Bick]

So I start telling stories about the nightclub. And then on my fifth post, the fifth day, because I was doing one a day for the first time ever, because I was always so embarrassed to talk about prison. People think prison is this embarrassing thing that's a taboo topic that you're not supposed to talk about. And even at court, like defense attorneys will say, listen, the person's life to ruin because they went to prison. It'll be hard to find a job or whatever. So for whatever reason, I decided to make this video about my time in solitary. And it goes viral on TikTok, like 2 or 3 million views.

[Heather McDallin]

What was your. What was the gist of your solitary story?

[Ian Bick]

Just saying how I was in solitary for six months, lost all this weight, had to, you know, use share a bathroom with someone, do all these things in the cell that goes viral. And ever since that day, I started posting on TikTok and every social media, posting shorts just about stories from prison. The one thing that the world thinks is the worst thing that could ever happen to you. I turned it into my biggest asset, sharing stories. And I didn't realize there was this World of Prison YouTubers and Prison TikTokers that was a very kind of oversaturated market at the time.

[Heather McDallin]

But I'm not people necessarily filming within the bars. It's once they get out.

[Ian Bick]

Exactly. Just telling their stor where I fit in was I was this. The way I looked, this McLovin type individual, you know, with the glasses and stuff, saying I was in federal prison, but not that I was some hard shot caller, but that I paid for protection or had all these different stories from my perspective. And the following grew. And so within a few months, I had about 100,000 followers on TikTok, a few thousand on Facebook, a few thousand on YouTube. And I said, I'm getting burnt out sharing my story because I literally was just in my car four or five times a day making clips about my story.

[Heather McDallin]

At least making a little bit of money.

[Ian Bick]

Making no money.

[Heather McDallin]

Okay.

[Ian Bick]

Because at that time, the TikTok creator program had dried up.

[Heather McDallin]

Yeah.

[Ian Bick]

Facebook, I was making some money. So I maxed out my credit cards. When I quit my job, I was doing doordash. Uber had an only fans for a couple months. You didn't only I did only fans.

[Heather McDallin]

Like, for. Who was your audience?

[Ian Bick]

It was all males that were interested.

[Heather McDallin]

And what kind of stuff are you doing on only fans?

[Ian Bick]

Just like personal stuff. Like feet pics. Just like body pics. Just whatever.

[Heather McDallin]

I made like you show your wiener.

[Ian Bick]

I did. I showed the wiener.

[Heather McDallin]

Would you do videos of you, like masturbating?

[Ian Bick]

Private videos. But I made like 10 grand, 10, 15 grand in a month.

[Heather McDallin]

And would you talk sexy to the guys?

[Ian Bick]

Yeah, but that was weird. That's why I gave up doing it. I was like, I'm not gay. I don't want to do this. Okay, so.

[Heather McDallin]

But you made some money.

[Ian Bick]

I made great money. And I only had a few thousand followers on Instagram. I always think I'm like now with all the following I have, I. I make so much money, but I Can't do it with like sponsors and stuff. Can't actively do that. And I would probably need someone that's gay to run it. So I'm doing all these things, not making any money. And then I get the idea for the podcast and I start the podcast called Locked in with Ian Bick.

[Heather McDallin]

And when did you start that?

[Ian Bick]

That was in January 2023.

[Heather McDallin]

Okay.

[Ian Bick]

And I start interviewing other people that went to prison was kind of my concept. And it was very cringe at first. I didn't know how to interview people. Kind of learned along the way. Went from one episode to two episodes a week, eventually to three episodes a week. And now I do five episodes a week. And it just started to grow. And I'd have all these people come on and share their stories. And I got better at interviewing. Now we have about a million listens a month between Spotify, Apple and YouTube and it's growing rapidly and I'm building a brand around it. And I have everyone from law enforcement to ex criminals, to ex addicts, to attorneys to corrupt FBI agents to anyone that's been involved in the system, victims, whatever. And they come on and share their story. And it's really cool format. That's when the MrBeast team reached out to me this past February. A casting producer saw my prison stuff. They said they were looking for someone that was in the prison space. I didn't know anything about a cop being involved, that it was gonna be a hundred day video. Nothing. They don't tell you anything.

[Heather McDallin]

Yeah.

[Ian Bick]

And I got cast in it two days before I actually went. They said, hey, you're in. They're very hush hush about anything. I didn't know anything about it. I just figured it was prison related because of who I am. That I was a prison content creator. Why else would he want me? Never watched a Mr. Beast video up until they actually said, you're casted. And then I stayed up with my friend.

[Heather McDallin]

Yours was the first one I watched.

[Ian Bick]

Yeah. And then I stayed up with a friend for almost 48 hours straight editing the 70 episodes I had stored already.

[Heather McDallin]

Pre recorded of your podcast.

[Ian Bick]

Yeah.

[Heather McDallin]

So that you could have stuff to put out.

[Ian Bick]

Everything came out while you're gone. While I was gone. So there were some people in the comments saying, oh, it's fake. Because he was still actively posting. Yeah, I had it all scheduled. And then my friend ran my social media, got it. Because one thing I knew was I wasn't going to risk everything I built for this video. No matter how much money I made or the exposure, it wasn't worth everything I built. And I made the right decision because it all.

[Heather McDallin]

So where was this. This prison thing that he built?

[Ian Bick]

It was in North Carolina. He has a big plot of land and studios, like, huge studios in North Carolina. It's really cool. He's super professional. Everyone's great. Like, it's a great experience. And they're just really good. They're. They're just that. I've worked in TV and I think they're better than tv. They have a lot of former tv, I'm sure, working.

[Heather McDallin]

I'm sure. I mean, they have to for they. How well it's done.

[Ian Bick]

And TV's kind of drying up in a lot of ways, so a lot of these guys are migrating to him and that just. It's a good experience. Like, you'll see some people that talk negatively about him, and it's all because they've just heard rumors or whatever. He's. He's legit. Everything's legit. He is so legit. Where it's like, if it doesn't fit the video, if there's not a way to introduce it into the storyline, it's not happening. Like, it's like, it's not like when the cameras weren't rolling, we were on our computer or phone. I did not use a phone the whole time, except for when on day 80, he let me make a FaceTime call to my parents, which wasn't in the video. But he did that because I can. I was like, come on, Lenny got the visit. You know, just, can I have a call?

[Heather McDallin]

So what. This video is really cool because it's like the two of you are, you know, from two different worlds on many things. Like, you have this privileged background, but you're the criminal. And he has, like a working class background and he's the cop and he's married with the three kids. And you're single. And you guys have to banter and bargain with each other about things. And one of the first things is that you're sharing the room and he's a snorer.

[Ian Bick]

Yeah, that was real.

[Heather McDallin]

And I've heard that about whether you're in the Teresa type camp or whatever, that you hear women crying and you hear this crying, snoring and that. Like, not being able to sleep in prison is the real torture. Is that true?

[Ian Bick]

Yeah, I would say so. And, like, when I was at Fort Dix, it was 12 man rooms, six bunks, no AC. It's hot. You're on the top bunk. You're hearing Farts, smelling farts. You got snoring everything. When I used to snore, because I would snore a lot, my bunky would hit the bottom of the bed to get me to wake up. It's just a lot, you know, especially when you're in solitary and it's two people and they're snore or they're gross or whatever. You had to have some guys that wouldn't clean themselves or anything like that. But the hardest thing about the Mr. Beast thing was that there was nothing to do. We didn't get a book till day 30. Yeah, that's the hardest part. Rec was only an hour a day.

[Heather McDallin]

Did they have therapists, like on call and colleagues you really like, we're gonna have a mental breakdown.

[Ian Bick]

So we actually. You would get on a call with the thera, the psychologist that. Because we went through a big psychology screening beforehand, he's the one that gives the final approval. But once a month, every 30 days, they brought in doctors and they brought in psychologists for a phone call. So that's all happening. They care about your mental being. If I said, like, I'm not having, like, if I'm mentally off or whatever, they're gonna address it right away. So they're very good about that. That's the professional aspect. But other than that, everything.

[Heather McDallin]

There was someone watching at all times just in case someone got to a desperate spot.

[Ian Bick]

The production team is. There's round the clock people on the camera. There's what, 30, 40 cameras. You're miked up all the time. And they have take notes because you got to think it's 2,400 hours of footage condensed to 30 minutes.

[Heather McDallin]

And you know what is amazing is so like last night I was with my son, who you met, who works with us.

[Ian Bick]

Oh, that's your son?

[Heather McDallin]

Yeah, he's my son. Yeah. And I go, come on, let's watch this documentary. And he's like, how many are there? And I lied. And I said, it's just one. Because he's like, why is everything drawn out so long? And he goes, mom, I'm telling you, next time you want me to watch something, it has to be. I have to comment on the second episode when it gets good. And you just have to fill me in because this is torture. And I'm like, I'm sorry. Cause but then he was right. The second episode, it was two parts. The second episode, I was like, okay, now it's getting juicy. So to watch that, I was like, yeah, this didn't. If this was on network tv, it would have been spread out among eight episodes, and we don't need to see it in eight episodes. Like, it's. You know, that's also the genius of Mr. Beast and YouTube and things like that. Like, you know, it doesn't have to be so. I think it was Conan o' Brien who first made a joke about how these documentaries that we're all watching right now do not need to be so extended to this many episodes. Just fucking get to it.

[Ian Bick]

I will say what was good was the Unknown Number One. I just watched it.

[Heather McDallin]

Oh, yeah?

[Ian Bick]

Yeah. That was the first series in a while. I watched every episode.

[Heather McDallin]

Well, I loved it, too. And that was fun because I made Drake watch it and he didn't know. Now I know every story that's ever happened in the last 30 years. That's juicy. So it's very rare that a doc will start and I don't know who the perpetrator is or I don't know. In Dateline. I know it's the. You know, like, I already know because I remember in 2008 when this story happened, because I. Yeah, no, no, not that one. But I'm saying lots of that one. That one happened in 2020.

[Ian Bick]

You got to get her on the show.

[Heather McDallin]

So I. That weird woman, I. Yeah, the fact.

[Ian Bick]

That she did the Netflix documentary, I didn't think she would actually be the perfect.

[Heather McDallin]

Well, I did an interview with Dr. Drew about it, and he said the most interesting thing. And he said, don't ever underestimate the power that television has, that people want to be on tv. They want. I mean, there's so much attention. When you think about a reality star and why there are so many narcissistic people and housewives that end up behind bars is because they already have that personality. And now the fact that, like, you have someone following you around. Me, as someone that is a comedian that did TV and did sketch. Anytime I've been put into, like, a reality show situation, whether I'm just a friend at a party and then the cameraman comes around, I'm like the codependent person. The person that's, like, not very selfish. I'm like, oh, well, this isn't. Like, this is. I gotta make something happen. Like, this isn't interesting. I'm boring. This guy that's got this big, heavy camera on him. But to somebody else that's like, oh, for five years, I've just had someone follow me around and hang on my every breath. And then if it goes away, I think those people Get a little fucking weird. So, like, I can see why this world of reality TV and TikTok or whatever it is, why it's so attractive to a certain person who's mentally ill that requires that kind of attention.

[Ian Bick]

Yeah, no, it makes sense.

[Heather McDallin]

So then you're doing the thing and was there any moment and I am gonna spoil the video for you, so go watch it and then come back. Was there any moment where they gave you these challenges where you could kind of fuck over the other guy or stay working together for the majority of the money? Was there any time that you really thought, fuck it, I'm just gonna take the money, or did you see the big picture of whether that's God rewarding you in the afterlife or just America liking you?

[Ian Bick]

So, I mean, I think anyone in that position is going to think about taking all the money.

[Heather McDallin]

Yeah.

[Ian Bick]

And I thought of. It's like, it's the idea of if I won the lottery tomorrow, what I would do with it. So it was one of those thoughts. I wasn't going to win the lottery, so I knew I wasn't going to actually end up taking.

[Heather McDallin]

And the money was 500,000, but it.

[Ian Bick]

Was a little bit less because you had.

[Heather McDallin]

Yeah, because you had gambled. Not gamble, but you had done some challenges.

[Ian Bick]

And there's so many people that are like, I would have taken the money. You try spending 100 days with someone, you're not going to screw over the person. Person. Now if it was a week, maybe even five days, yeah, I'm taking the money. It's a competition. We gave up a few days of our life, but spending 100 days. He equally deserved his share as much as I did. And the only reason why if I would have hit the button, it would have been because I couldn't stand solitary because I had voice like, I don't want to do solitary again. I don't like this. I would have hit the money and send him half the money. But then they wouldn't have put that in the video. They would have casterized me and it would have hurt my following and my platform. So I did the right thing by hitting the button. But it was never a thought to screw him over. I never would have screwed him over. We built a bond and a friendship. And I think that really one thing about Jimmy and Mr. Beast is that everything has an arc, like a storyline. He showed it's. It's greater than just a money or a challenge. There's an actual story to this. And whatever trolls have to say in the comments or Whatever that. Can't see that aspect of it. He did a lot of good with the video. And I think it really showed the narrative of who I am as a person compared to what, like, the news or the government or whatever was saying about me. Like, if I was really such a bad guy, when I have just taken all that money or just anything in.

[Heather McDallin]

General, because had you taken all the money, which is 500,000, versus having the choice of possibly splitting it, and you were pretty confident he wasn't going to fuck you over, and then. Then your restoration, rest, restitution would have.

[Ian Bick]

Been over with, would have been all gone.

[Heather McDallin]

And. But what I also think is what I was explaining after watching it, when we were talking about it with my son Drake, I was like, see? But the thing is, what's really fascinating about the whole thing, which people really need to live their life like this today, is the world is watching, meaning the world is watching the YouTube video. So you're right. If you would have screwed him over, yes, you would have gotten this extra couple hundred thousand dollars, but then you would have been hated and canceled and not been able to make lemonade out of the lemons, you know, and see what else you could do. And I think that's, like, a really important thing, is that you should always be living your life like the world is watching. Because in the world that was so quick to cancel somebody a few years ago, and maybe they were canceled, they are able to come back. And I feel like the break is shorter and shorter, like, because people forget and they move on to something else. And also, the power of Internet cancellation is not where it was.

[Ian Bick]

Oh, it's way different now.

[Heather McDallin]

Way five years, you know, five years ago. People are tired of it. So you should try to do the right thing and build, you know, and do the right thing for all the reasons of, like, the universe rewarding you, but also just. Yeah, who would want to listen to your podcast? Who would want to follow you after that? And. And even if you. Yeah. Gave him the money, you know, afterwards, it's like, it wouldn't have the power of, like, just doing the right thing in the moment. Do you guys keep in touch?

[Ian Bick]

Yeah, we talk all the time. I had him on my podcast. I went on his.

[Heather McDallin]

Where does he live?

[Ian Bick]

He lives in Long Island. Not too far. About an hour and a half for me.

[Heather McDallin]

On the East Coast?

[Ian Bick]

Yeah, on the East Coast. So, yeah, he's a good dude. He's starting getting into content. He's doing his thing, and, you know, he's just a He's a good guy. We stay in touch all the time. Yeah, he supports me, I support him. And that's like a lifelong friend there, you know, after that. But I know I did the right thing and I wouldn't change the outcome of it at all.

[Heather McDallin]

Yeah, but there was parts where you guys got a. They bring in an older TV with like a VHS tape.

[Ian Bick]

Oh, that was terrible.

[Heather McDallin]

And what were some of the. And they said you could watch these movies, but only one hour a day. But it's these movies, the choice of these movies, which look to be about like, what, 20 or 30 of them.

[Ian Bick]

Yeah. One of the jokes I said was it would take us a week to watch the Titanic.

[Heather McDallin]

Yeah. And so. So what were the movie type choices? Were they. Did they interest you?

[Ian Bick]

There was a lot of great movies, but they're all just on VHS tapes that we would have taken that deal had it not been an hour a day.

[Heather McDallin]

Yeah.

[Ian Bick]

At least it needed to be an hour and a half. We were negotiating with him, which didn't make the cut. We're like an hour and a half. Hour and 45. Said an hour and 10. We got him up to. No way. It's not worth it.

[Heather McDallin]

And what would you give up to have the TV?

[Ian Bick]

30 grand.

[Heather McDallin]

Oh, okay. So, yeah, at that point I was saying. So I was saying to my son, I'm like, you know, when my dad was. He was in World War II, and when he was only 20 years old, he said they had to take the military ship all the way from Japan back to San Diego. And they really only had like one movie and they'd watch it over and over again. And all the guys learned every line and would act it out. And my dad was like. Became like the lead in the play. So I would say, like, I always thought if I have ever had to go to prison, which I've thought. I mean, it's weird how much I've thought about it. Why your. Why your story really interests me. You know, mostly just cause I'm like, I sleep with like eight pillows and I'm like, I don't know how. I would have like one little pillow. I have a side pillow like all this. But I always thought, oh, it would be scary. You know, these women would probably still hate me. But then I'm like. But then I would learn to like impersonate the guards and do funny stuff. So I was like, in that case, I would have been like, okay. Depending on what the content was, I could watch if it was a whole series of sexicity from beginning to end. I would have definitely been like, we have to do it. I will act it out. I will learn every line. I think that that's how I would survive if I had another person. I would just be like, I will entertain you in every possible sense of the word. And so that part I thought was really interesting. And also when he's like, I need the library time cause I need to read my Bible. And you're like, well, just because I'm not religious, that doesn't really seem fair. And then I thought the same thing. I'm like, why don't you just go and read something fun and juicy and then just tell them about it, you know, and entertain him that way.

[Ian Bick]

Well, that's why we came up with the idea to steal the books. That was kind of like our plan when he gave us us that that time I think would have made it like. I think Jimmy's mistake was he gave us time to think about the decision where like he disappeared for a few hours and came back. So we concocted a whole plan about I would take the library, I would go in, steal all the books for him. That was the plan. And then we faked that beef, me and Lenny, to trick Jimmy. So we just faked an argument. They thought we were going to quit. This is day 30. We're fighting with each other, which looked very serious for like three hours. And you could feel the tension in the room when Jimmy came in. So they were shocked when it unfolded.

[Heather McDallin]

Yeah. And then my son said there was another video that he did. And I don't know if you're familiar with it, kind of a similar concept, but it was a bunker with a man and a woman. And Drake said that the woman was so annoying that the guy just said forget it.

[Ian Bick]

Yeah, I guess that was really legitimate and whatever. I talked to that guy now. Cause a lot of the. So you're in a. When you think about it, there's probably like 8,108 Mr. Beast contestants in the whole world.

[Heather McDallin]

Yes.

[Ian Bick]

So we're kind of like this Nick community now.

[Heather McDallin]

Right.

[Ian Bick]

So they all follow each other and stuff. But there's really not that many. There's only a few of us.

[Heather McDallin]

Right.

[Ian Bick]

And he has them back in other videos and stuff like that, cameos and whatnot. But it's a very tight knit community. But yeah, that was all real. I talked to Susie from the White Room, that trap video. So I'm getting to see a lot of them.

[Heather McDallin]

So the girl that was so annoying, what made her so annoying?

[Ian Bick]

I guess she wasn't helping with cooking or cleaning. Like, there was a point in the video like, I did. I stopped sweeping. Like, I was like, I don't care about cleaning the cell up. Like, it kept getting dirty. We're in a field. There's bugs everywhere. You know, I don't care about this. So I didn't. I gave up on cleaning. But, like, we were in a situation where we had to cook or anything. To me, I felt like I was on vacation at one point. Like a miserable vacation. But I was like, listen, I've been working for the last, you know, five, six years. I just want to do nothing, you know, have no responsibility.

[Heather McDallin]

Yeah, I wondered that too. I said, you know, I have such a hard time falling asleep and staying asleep, especially in the last couple years. And I'm like, I wonder if I really didn't have any responsibility. I didn't have to think about content, who was on my show the next day, what was going on with my kids, whatever. I was just in prison and I had to do a year if there weren't people snoring and all that. I wonder if actually my sleep would be better.

[Ian Bick]

Yeah, I don't know. I know my sleep got pretty messed up because my sleeping schedule changed and stuff.

[Heather McDallin]

Yeah.

[Ian Bick]

So it was harder to get to sleep that when I got out of there, I was up for 48 hours straight just on adrenaline. Just so excited.

[Heather McDallin]

Yeah, I'm sure. So excited just to be, like, out and that you had the money and.

[Ian Bick]

Like, so excited to be out of there.

[Heather McDallin]

And then what was the turnaround from filming it to when it got put out?

[Ian Bick]

So we wrapped June 9, and it came out August 16. But there's some videos that come out very quick. He just had a bunch. He. He filmed three 100 day videos at the same time. Like the weight loss one. We saw the gym where MASH from the Weight loss was filming. So we'd go out there and wave to him because that was across the field. The airplane video that came out before ours was filmed at the same time. So things like that. He's always filming videos. He's going around the world and filming.

[Heather McDallin]

Yeah. That's so cool. Well, thank you so much for coming. This was really fun, and I'm so glad that things are going so well for you.

[Ian Bick]

Thank you. I appreciate it.

[Heather McDallin]

And is your mom a little more relaxed now in her life?

[Ian Bick]

Oh, now she shows me off to her family because, like, there's celebrities like, I interviewed that, like, her family knows about. She'll send it to them, she shows, like, the Mr. Beast thing. Like, she's proud of everything. And I think that, like, there was a good moment, like this July, we went out to dinner for her birthday and I paid the bill. And to her, that, like, meant a lot. And so she's been able to see the success that came from the worst thing that could possibly happen to anyone. So now she's, you know, it's good. It's a lot of positivity, and she sees the support and love that's around me now.

[Heather McDallin]

Well, that's great. I'm so glad your family's still intact and lovely. And tell everybody where they can follow you and listen to your podcast.

[Ian Bick]

Just go into ianvick.com, i have everything linked together. It's pretty simple. And that goes to Spotify, Apple, YouTube, everything.

[Heather McDallin]

Well, awesome. So great meeting you.

[Ian Bick]

Thank you. Yeah, you too. Thank you.

[Heather McDallin]

Thanks, everybody. Go make sure that you have subscribed to this, that you share it. Spread the word. Juicy Crimes is the new podcast where it's at Juicy Scoop, of course, every Tuesday and Thursday. And everything'[e-mail]. thank you so much.

[Ian Bick]

Olivia loves a challenge. It's why she lifts heavy weights and likes complicated recipes. But for booking her trip to Paris, Olivia chose the easy way. With Expedia, she bundled her flight with a hotel to save more. Of course, she still climbed all 674 steps to the top of the Eiffel Tower. You were made to take the easy route. We were made to easily package your trip. Expedia made to travel flight inclusive. Packages are atoll protected. Yo, this is important, man. My favorite Lululemon shorts, the ones you got me back in the day. I think they're called pace breaks stickers. The ones with all the pockets. I just got back from vacation and I left them in my hotel room. And dude, I need to replace these shorts. I wear them like three times a week.

[Heather McDallin]

Could you send me the link to where you got them? Oh, also, my birthday is coming up soon, so. Anyways, thanks, bro.

[Ian Bick]

Talk soon.

[Heather McDallin]

Looking for your newest go to's Lululemon. What's new gear drops on Tuesdays. Every Tuesday, head to lululemon.com to shop. What's new gear.