Loading summary
Liberty Mutual Ad Voice
Liberty Mutual customizes your car and home insurance. And now we're customizing this ad for your morning commute to wake you up, which could help your driving. Science says that stimulating the brain increases alertness, so here's a pop. How many months have 28 days? What gets wetter as it dries? What has keys but can't open? Locks? If you don't want to hear the answers, turn off this Liberty Mutual AD. Now 12 months. A towel, piano. Enjoy being fully alert.
Mike Yard
Liberty. Liberty. Liberty. Liberty.
Podcast Narrator (True Crime or Girlfriends Podcast)
When a group of women discover they've all dated the same prolific con artist, they take matters into their own hands.
Mike Yard
I vowed I will be his last target.
Podcast Host or Advertiser Voice
He is not going to get away with this. He's going to get what he deserves.
Mike Yard
We always say that. Trust your girlfriends.
Podcast Narrator (True Crime or Girlfriends Podcast)
Listen to the girlfriends. Trust me, babe. On the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcast, I got you.
Podcast Host or Advertiser Voice
Find your sense of place this spring with Pura. Each scent is inspired by memory and destination. From lavender fields in bloom to coastal mornings under soft sunlight. Designed to transport, the collection brings fresh seasonal fragrance into your home. So every room feels like somewhere you'd rather be. Shop now@pura.com that's pura.com isn't it time to find your sense of place this spring? Try Pura and bring fresh seasonal fragrance into your home to find your sense of place this spring.
Steve Fishman
To listen all at once Ad free. Subscribe to True Crime Clubhouse on Apple Podcasts. Welcome to Lives of Crime. True Crime from True Criminals. I'm Steve Fishman from Orbit Media. Today's episode is the story of Mike Yard. Mike is now a successful comedian and headlining shows around the country. But before that he spent some time as a stick up man toting around a big ass gun. Mike chose crime for very specific reasons. Some might call them laudable. Those reasons involved his dad. We call this episode then you get caught.
Mike Yard
I moved to New York City when I was 13 years old. St. Croix, U.S. virgin Islands. And that's where I was born. My pops was like really well respected in the Virgin Islands. He was a scientist. He did like experiments on moon rocks and stuff like that. He was a brilliant dude and I love that about him. I love that he was an intelligent black man. He spoke like three different languages, French, Spanish, English. So yeah, I looked up to him. I wanted to be like him when I was growing up. And he was always there whenever I needed him. I would be at home at night sometimes and if he wasn't home, I couldn't Go to sleep, you know, like, that's what he meant to me. Like, my pops was my hero when I was a kid, you know, like, before he started smoking crack, My father lost his job in St. Croix. So he decided because his friends were urging him to move to New York, they would help us out until we got on our feet. He made that choice, and he moved to New York. And it was very hard for him to get work. It was hard to find a job as a scientist just coming out of nowhere. When you have that level of education, most people feel like you're way too overqualified to work at whatever bullshit job you tried to get. People that he thought were, like, his friends were telling him, like, you could stay with us. You know, we'll make sure that you're good. And then they all shitted on him. When we got. We were homeless for a while. That was one of the worst things was being homeless. Like, not having a home to go to. That shit was. That was tough. I used to stay in a basement. One of my father's friends had a maintenance company. He worked for the building. He would go, like, clean offices and stuff like that. He'd let us stay in his maintenance office in a basement. There was only one bathroom that we could, like, jimmy open with a. A butter knife. We would have to go upstairs in the building. It was a gay photo studio, so they had, like, naked dude pictures on the wall. But that was the only bathroom that we could get into. My mom couldn't even be with us. She had to go to live with her sister in Houston because we had nowhere to stay, and we weren't going to have my mom and my sister be homeless. I think that's when my pops really, like, kind of lost it, living in a damn basement in Manhattan and having Jimmy the bathroom door open so he can go use the bathroom. And that's when I really saw him, like, start, like, getting detached.
Liberty Mutual Ad Voice
Liberty Mutual customizes your car and home insurance. And now we're customizing this ad for your morning commute to wake you up, which could help your driving. Science says that stimulating the brain increases alertness. So here's a pop quiz. How many months have 28 days. What gets wetter as it dries? What has keys but can't open? Locks. If you don't want to hear the answers, turn off this Liberty mutual ad now. 12 months. A towel, Piano. Enjoy being fully alert.
Mike Yard
Liberty. Liberty. Liberty. Liberty.
Ana Navarro
I'm Ana Navarro, and on my new podcast, Bleep with Ana Navarro, I'm talking to the people closest to the biggest issues happening in your community and around the world. Because I know deep down inside right now, we are all cursing and asking what the bleep is going on. I'm talking to people like Julie K. Brown, who broke the explosive story on Jeffrey Epstein in 2018. These victims have been let down time and time again for decades and decades and decades by local law enforcement, by federal law enforcement, by administration after administration.
Podcast Host or Advertiser Voice
The Justice Department through, I think we
Leigh Ann
counted four presidential administrations failed these victims.
Ana Navarro
Listen to BLEEP with Ana Navarro as part of the My Cultura podcast network, available on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
Podcast Host or Advertiser Voice
Will Ferrell's Big Money players and iHeart podcast presents soccer Moms.
Leigh Ann
So, I'm Leigh Ann. Yeah. This is my best friend Janet.
Podcast Narrator (True Crime or Girlfriends Podcast)
Hey.
Leigh Ann
And we have been joined at the hip since high school. Absolutely. Now, a redacted amount of years later, we're still joined at the hip.
Podcast Host or Advertiser Voice
Just a little bit bigger, Hips wider.
Leigh Ann
This is a podcast. We're recording it as we tailgate our youth soccer games in the back of my Honda Odyssey with all the snacks and drinks. Sidebar. Why did you get hard seltzer instead of beer?
Podcast Host or Advertiser Voice
Well, they had a bogo.
Mike Yard
Well, then you gotta. Do you want a white collar supper?
Leigh Ann
Here, just hang it.
Mike Yard
What are y' all doing? Microphones. Are you making a rap album? Oh, I wish. Could you believe I would buy It
Steve Fishman
Cuts through the defense like a hot knife through sponge cake.
Leigh Ann
That sounds delicious.
Mike Yard
Oh, you're lucky I'm not a drug addict. You're lucky I'm not an alcoholic.
Ana Navarro
You are lucky I'm not a killer.
Mike Yard
I love this team, and I'm really trying to be a figure in their lives that they can rely on. Oh,
Podcast Host or Advertiser Voice
listen to soccer moms on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts.
Mike Yard
We moved to this building, 660 Hagerman Avenue. Everybody in the neighborhood called it Vietnam. It really was like Vietnam when I grew up. All the wild shit, all the shootouts, like, it was out of control. You go outside and you just hope you make it home that night. Because I know a lot of people that. No, I was just with them, and then they're dead. One day I was coming into my building, and then I opened the door and there's a shotgun in my face because the dude that lived in my building was trying to shoot somebody. Across the street was like, get out the way. My father started losing so much weight. He wasn't eating, like, there would be, like, days where he wouldn't even come home. There were times when we had issues with people because of something that my dad did. I was in college. I was at Hunter College for Computer programming. And I came home and people met me at the train station from my building. And they was like, yo, it's war Zone out there right now. Your brother just had a shootout. That the dudes from 721. Because my dad stole some stuff from them. And they approached my brother. And my brother, my oldest brother, you don't come at him with no shit like that. So he went upstairs, got a gun. They came after my pops. My brother lit that bitch up. I never had a conversation with my pops about why he smoked crack. My pops was. He was the breadwinner. And when he couldn't do that anymore, I think it broke him. So I didn't blame him for that, you know, I just. Yeah, I've never had a conversation with him about it. I never felt like I needed to have a conversation with him about it. I never felt, like mad at him. I never felt like I wanted to know why he smoked crack. I just knew he was doing it. And it made me hate crack dealers. My dad was like a. You know, he was. He was. He was. He was doing crazy shit, man. You know, he was selling, like, our speakers, and I was a dj, he was like, selling shit. And, you know, my brother just lost it one day. I think it really hurt him that my dad was hooked on crack and all this shit. My pops, he was really, like, acting like. Like a fiend. He was trying to drink a whole fucking bottle of Bacardi. And my brother was telling him, like, you gotta stop this. You gotta stop this. And he just would not. He could not hear him. And he started fighting my brother over a bottle of Bacardi Rum. And I'm like, are you really gonna fight your son? What is going on with you? He just went off. I mean, they really, like, went at him. And my brother was, like, beating him up. My brother ended up choking him out, had to pull him off. Now my brother gotta live with that, you know? Like, nobody wants to be the kid that choked out his fucking dad. That was a sad day. That was a very sad day, man, because my dad was my hero. And to watch him and my brother go through it, and my brother was, like, beating him up, you know? He was so hurt by what my father was doing when that happened, I was like, wow. Like, this can't be our family, you know? What I mean, and I think just being here, being around this, is why we're falling apart like that. After my brother fought with my father, we sat down and he felt really like, he was really like torn apart about it. And we basically our conversation was, we just gotta get the fuck outta here. Like this, this place is gonna kill us, this place. Like we can't live like this anymore. So we figured if we could get him out of that neighborhood where crack was so prevalent and all these drugs were so prevalent, like, you know, that maybe that'll change stuff. And I just decided like, who has money? Drug dealers have money, so fuck em, let's take their shit. So it was that simple to me. People are robbing transit workers, like why would I rob somebody that gets a check every week? Like there's never gonna be enough money there for me to change my life. The only people that are going to have enough money for me to change my existence right now are the dudes that are doing wrong are the drug dealers. They're making shit, tons of money and they're flaunting it in your face. Every day. Every day you go outside, these dudes got big ass rope chains on and all kinds of dumb shit. They got big ass lion pendants with red rubies in them. And I'm like, I'm sitting here starving and you walking around here with all this dumb shit on, so why wouldn't I rob them? So I just decided that's what I was gonna do. And I weighed all the odds, like they might have guns, I might get popped, I might, you know, I might go to jail. And I, and I decided that it was worth it to get my family out of the situation that we were in. I'm gonna go stick up these motherfuckers cause we need money, we need to get the fuck outta here. And my brother was just like, I'm riding with you. So I made that choice. I was 17 years old. I knew exactly what I was doing. When I got into crime, I knew exactly what I was doing. I was trying to make enough money in as fast amount of time to get my family out of that neighborhood. We were leaving the building and then my oldest brother and he saw us and he was like, where y' all going? And of course he was game. So he jumped in the car and we all went. Well, this is how I learned how to rob people. It was logic to me. It was element of surprise. I would pick, pick a person, pick a dealer, pick a block. You don't know that I'm even watching you. You know I'm watching you. I might be in my car, you know, just sitting like, half a block up. But these dudes are really dumb. Like, they don't really pay attention. Especially if you're like, a street dude that's selling on the street. These motherfuckers are very predictable, man. They do the same thing every day. So if you pay attention and do your research, then you don't have to shoot anymore. You catch them on the right day. Like when people get their checks first and the 15th, that's when they come out and they spend money. Drug dealers work in shifts, too. Like, they'll be out there for 12 hours, and at that 11th hour, they got a shitload of cash. I'm watching the whole time. I don't just run up on somebody and rob them. No, I'm watching you. So you're on that same block every day. You do the same thing every day. And I get your. You know, your routine. You know, I'm watching you. I'm watching when you get your re up. I'm watching when you, you know, when you give the money to the main guys. Then when it's time to hit, then I hit, and then you get God.
Podcast Host or Advertiser Voice
Will Ferrell's Big Money players and iHeart podcast presents soccer Moms.
Leigh Ann
So, I'm Leanne.
Mike Yard
Yeah.
Leigh Ann
This is my best friend Janet. And we have been joined at the hip since high school.
Mike Yard
Absolutely.
Leigh Ann
Now, a redacted amount of years later, we're still joined at the hip.
Podcast Host or Advertiser Voice
Just a little bit bigger, Hips wider.
Leigh Ann
This is a podcast. We're recording it as we tailgate our youth soccer games in the back of my Honda Odyssey with all the snacks and drinks. Sidebar. Why did you get hard seltzer instead of beer?
Podcast Host or Advertiser Voice
Well, they had a bogo.
Mike Yard
Well, then you got it. You had a white collar sub here.
Leigh Ann
Just hang it.
Mike Yard
What are y' all doing? Microphones. Are you making a rap album?
Leigh Ann
Oh, I would not.
Steve Fishman
I would buy it Cuts through the defense like a hot knife through sponge cake.
Leigh Ann
That sounds delicious.
Mike Yard
Oh, you're lucky I'm not a drug addict. You're lucky I'm not an alcoholic.
Ana Navarro
You're lucky I'm not a killer.
Mike Yard
I love this team, and I'm really trying to be a figure in their lives that they can rely on. Oh,
Podcast Host or Advertiser Voice
listen to soccer moms on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
Ana Navarro
I'm Anna Navarro. And on my new podcast, Bleep with Anna Navarro, I'm talking to the people closest to the biggest issues happening in your community and around the world. Because I know deep down inside right now we are all cursing and asking what the bleep is going on. I'm talking to people like Julie K. Brown, who broke the explosive story on Jeffrey Epstein in 2018. These victims have been let down time and time again for decades and decades and decades by local law enforcement, by federal law enforcement, by administration after administration.
Podcast Host or Advertiser Voice
The Justice Department, through I think we
Leigh Ann
counted four presidential administrations, failed these victims.
Ana Navarro
Listen to BLEEP with Ana Navarro as part of the My Cultura podcast network, available on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
Mike Yard
Hi, it's Alec Baldwin. This season on my podcast, here's the thing. I'm speaking with more artists, policymakers, and performers like composer Marc Shaiman. Once you've estab that you have the talent, it's about the hang.
Liberty Mutual Ad Voice
It's the pleasure of hanging out with
Mike Yard
the people that you're with. You know, Rob and I was always a great hang. We would sit in kibbutz for hours and then eventually get around to the music. That's what I mostly think of when
Liberty Mutual Ad Voice
I think of him.
Mike Yard
The time together. Laughing Lawyer Robbie Kaplan.
Ana Navarro
The great gift of being a lawyer is the ability to actually change things in our society in a way that very few people can. I mean, you can really make a difference to causes in the United States if you bring the right case at the right time. Marriage equality, yeah, Windsor's the perfect example.
Mike Yard
And journalist Chris Whipple. Every White House staffer, they work in a bubble called the West Wing. And it's exponentially more so in the Trump White House. Listen to the new season of here's the thing on the iHeartRadio app or wherever you get your podcasts. My first robbery, actually, I robbed somebody that I knew. He was the first one on the list. I sat in my car, me and my brothers, I had a Pontiac 6000. Sit for like maybe an hour or two. Watch them, watch how they're moved. What you really want to know is who is the dudes that's holding the pistol? Because there's somebody out there with a pistol on. The dude selling the drugs don't got the pistol on. They got money. They might put it in the grass. Because if the police run up on you and you get caught with drugs and cash, that's a problem for you. Patrick dude was like standing next to the monkey bars. Dude on the swing. I told my oldest brother, go around, come through the back so you could get the swing situated. And then we just ran up on him. We came from three different directions. They have no idea that we're coming to rob them. By the time he realized what was happening, we had the pistols out. I had a.357. That was my gun of choice.357 Magnum business. I pulled out a.22A North 20,32 or.380. No, I'm pulling out a banger. The minute you pull out a big ass gun, people get nervous, so they're gonna just give it up. My brother was like, you know what this is? Give me all that shit. My heart going, like, beating, you know, like, yeah, we're in it right now. You know what I mean? My heart be beating fast as shit. He was just looking at me like, wow, you really doing this? And my brother was like, shut the fuck up. My brother was so aggressive. I was like, damn, I hope you don't shoot this dude. I went and grabbed a brown paper bag full of money, and my brother dipped in his pockets and took everything he had. And then we just left. We didn't run. We just walked away, got in the car, and got the fuck out of there. We didn't like, celebrate our first robbery. No, we was just like, how much? We just counted the money and we got like 4,000. That money was used to bring my mom from Houston to New York. And that's when our family was finally whole again. I definitely felt better when I robbed the drug dealer. I always felt like I accomplished something. I felt like there was so many people that weren't gonna get cracked today, you know what I mean? Because I took it. I took their shit. I thought about my father every time I robbed the drug dealer Because I would tell myself that he probably sold my dad crap. So, fuck, Sometimes you get 4,000, 5,000. I got seven, eight grand in one. Fifteen grand. That's the most I ever got. That's a nice payday. I've never made this kind of money in a day. So, yeah, when you do that, you feel like, wow, I just came up, you know, maybe if I do this 10 times, I could have enough money to get my family out of here. Maybe put a down payment on the house. And I had to pay for college too, so it all made sense. One of the dudes we robbed, after sticking them up, we were running down the hill. We got back to the car. As we pulled out of the parking spot, the cops was on us. They was already on us. And I'm like, how do they know anything. Maybe he had a cell phone. You know, people used to have those flip bones back then. I believe that the dude called the cops. We were driving, but they put on the lights. And I told my brother, we got a great rid of these guns. Like, we can't get pulled over with these guns. So I'll just throw the guns out the window. I said, I don't think the cops will see it. And I threw the first gun that hit a lamp post. I couldn't believe it. It hit a lamp post, bounced back into the street. Like, the cops swerved around it like they already knew there was a gun there. And then I threw the other gun out the window, and it hit a damn fence. Like, there are no houses on this stretch. But the minute I throw the gun out, it hits the damn fence and lands on the sidewalk. And they pulled us over, and they went back, got all the guns, searched the car. They searched the car so hard, and they didn't find anything. I didn't know that my older brother had taken the drugs from the dude. And then one of these cops, I don't know if he was a rookie or whatever, he wanted to make a name for himself. He was like, nah, they gotta have more than just guns. They gotta have more than just guns. And he went back in the car, man, and he went back and he started, like, going through all of that stuff, and then he figured out that, wait, this thing is loose. And then he pulls up the damn. The COVID of the speaker, and he goes, jackpot. My brother had the drugs in the speaker, like, in the back of the car. And that's when I was like, damn, we go to jail. We go to jail, you know, I was just, like, really pissed off that I was going to jail. Like, I'm just like, y' all really locking me up for robbing a drug dealer. Like, why am I going to jail for this? You know what I mean? That's really what. What I felt like. I definitely told the cops. I was like, yo, but I robbed a drug dealer. Like, I'm on your side. Like, I really tried to sell it. They was like, nah, motherfucker. And I never got to finish college because I ended up going to prison.
Steve Fishman
Mike Yard spent a year in prison, vowed never to return and didn't. Instead, he found he had a talent for comedy. First stand up and then script writing. Mike has turned his life experiences into a pilot for tv. Stay tuned. To find out if he's playing near you. Go to ikeyardcomedy on instagram. The creator and host of Lives of Crime is Steve Fishman. Executive producers Steve Fishman and Kevin Wardes. Senior producer, Simon Rentner Producer and engineer, Austin Smith. Story editor Dan Bobkoff. Our sound designer is Bianca Salinas. Assistant producer, Eric Axelrod. Special thanks to the inimitable Fisher Stevens, the glamorous Rhea Julian and our agents at wme, Evan Krasek, Marisa Hurwitz, Ben Davis. Lives of Crime is a production of Orbit Media in association with Signal Company Number One. Follow us @orbitmediafm on Instagram, TikTok and YouTube.
Liberty Mutual Ad Voice
Liberty Mutual customizes your car and home insurance. And now we're customizing this ad for your morning commute to wake you up, which could help your driving. Science says that stimulating the brain increases alertness. So here's a pop quiz. How many months have 28 days? What gets wetter as it dries? What has keys but can't open? Locks? If you don't want to hear the answers, turn off this Liberty mutual AD. Now. 12 months. A towel. Piano. Enjoy being fully alert.
Mike Yard
Liberty. Liberty. Liberty. Liberty.
Podcast Narrator (True Crime or Girlfriends Podcast)
When a group of women discover they've all dated the same prolific con artist, they take matters into their own hands.
Mike Yard
I vowed I will be his last target.
Podcast Host or Advertiser Voice
He is not gonna get away with this. He's gonna get what he deserves.
Mike Yard
We always say that. Trust your girlfriends.
Podcast Narrator (True Crime or Girlfriends Podcast)
Listen to the girlfriends. Trust me. B on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
Mike Yard
If you're watching the latest season of the Real Housewives of Atlanta, you already know there's a lot to break down. Portia accusing Kelly of sleeping with a married man. They holding K. Michelle back from fighting. Drew Pinky has financial issues. On the podcast Reality with the King I, Carlos King, recap the biggest moments from your favorite reality shows, including the Real Housewives franchise, the drama, the alliances, and the tea everybody's talking about. To hear this and more, listen to Reality with the king on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcast.
Podcast: The Burden
Season/Episode: Season 4 – Lives of Crime, Episode 4
Title: Then You Get Got
Host: Steve Fishman (Orbit Media)
Guest: Mike Yard
Air Date: April 14, 2026
This episode of "Lives of Crime" features comedian Mike Yard recounting, in his own voice, how he was driven by family loyalty, desperation, and survival instincts into a life of armed robbery. The story swings between moments of humor, heartbreak, and raw honesty, diving into Mike’s upbringing, the collapse of his family’s stability, and his calculated decision to rob drug dealers. Presented in a first-person style, the episode is intimate and direct, examining the roots of criminality, the complexity of familial bonds, and the blurred lines between villain and victim.