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- [00:00]
A
Before we start this week's episode, a quick note. This show exists because of people like you. If you want to help us keep making episodes like this, you can support the Hidden Third on patreon@patreon.com thehidden third. There you'll get access to bonus content, lots of behind the scenes and much, much more. And if you haven't already, please follow or subscribe to the show wherever you're listening or watching and leave us a rating. A Review Comment it really helps us over here. Thank you so much.
- [00:32]
B
It was like this very dramatic like change in my life. I just went from more or less sleeping in the public bathrooms and staying in my friends places and trying to find different friends basements I can sneak into that they'll let me sleep at for the night and gotta be out before their parents are up kind of thing to all of a sudden, you know, I've got more money than I have to do.
- [01:00]
A
Jonathan Wall, thank you so much for coming on the podcast. I know we've been talking for a few months. I'm happy we made it happen. You actually couldn't fly out to LA because you're currently still on parole, right?
- [01:09]
B
Yes, well, probation on probation management parole system on probation.
- [01:13]
A
That's right. So Jonathan, yours is actually one of the craziest stories I've ever heard in the criminal justice system. In 2019 you found yourself in a federal supermax in Baltimore, facing 10 years to life not for violence, not for hurting anyone, but for moving weed across state lines. The same thing that 45 minutes away from you in Washington D.C. you could do completely legally. Legally, while you sat in a maximum security cage, cannabis corporations were going public on the stock exchange. It's I think really crazy. Government overreach in a way, your story and which is why I really wanted to have you on the podcast. But before we get to where all the trouble started, talking about, tell me a little bit about you. So you're from Baltimore, right? I'm originally from Baltimore. Right. We were just talking about the Wire. Best show ever done, written by David Simon and it's all about the about Baltimore. So if people haven't watched it, they should on hbo. But that's Tell me about growing up in Baltimore and then how you got into the business.
- [02:15]
B
No worries. So I grew up probably a little bit closer to Baltimore than Philadelphia. Like kind of like right in the middle an area of called Harford County. The town I grew up in, it's called Haverty Grace and I don't know, it's kind of like your typical suburban, you know, east coast. All, all those areas kind of. It's like in between, you know, DC all the way up to New York. They're all kind of more or less the same. And I kind of grew up in that era where, I mean, I guess it's kind of later on that, that, that, that whole middle class suburban, especially the east coast area, got like very decimated by like opioids. Kind of like grew up through all that, had a lot of friends, all got, you know, all died from the like, the proliferation of fentanyl when people thought they were taking prescription pills before people even knew about that. I guess it's all later on, you know, that's like how I grew up.
- [03:03]
A
But still happening now, different kind of drugs. I mean, still opiates. I was in Philadelphia, in Kensington, doing this story about tranq dope a couple of years ago as well. So. Yeah, so that whole area has been really badly damaged by the opiate epidemic. Yeah.
- [03:17]
B
And it's, and it's pretty on. It's been ongoing for a long time. I mean, there's a reason why the Wire, like David Simon wrote the Wire, since you mentioned it, just because that's, I mean that was over 20 years ago and you know, not much has really changed.
- [03:28]
A
Yeah. And so did you grew up, was. You got, you had a lot of friends who got addicted to.
- [03:33]
B
Yeah. Like later on, you know, it seemed like, I mean, I was fortunate enough to not have kind of slid past all of that, but I just, I just watched it all kind of happen around me. It was pretty, it was very prevalent. But yeah, I mean, starting before that, I mean I grew up in my parents, you know, still together. You know, they're great people. They, they, they obviously really wanted the best for me. I have a younger sister and it's just us four. I think when I. They really, you know, they're like regular middle class parents and really worked hard, one of the best for their kids. But they, they had wanted, they. Because they wanted to get like the best education possible their kids. I know my parents, they really stretched to try to put my sister and I in this private school that. And, and my parents never had any nice brand new cars or anything like that. And these kids at the school obviously were very, you know, from another like stratum of society. And so I think maybe when I try to think back on maybe like what caused me to break bad, so to speak, you know, I think a lot of it probably goes back to just from Kindergarten, first grade. I went to the school where I never really fit in.
- [04:34]
A
Right.
- [04:35]
B
Felt like the Beverly Hillbillies always showing up and you know, and like my dad's driving this like, you know, 40 year old early, I mean at the time he got 40, but like, you know, early 80s, like diesel Mercedes pulling up and all these other kids are getting out of like brand new Escalades and brand new cars. And it was just like a different class of society. And I always knew and felt like I didn't really fit in there. I started probably, I guess like dabbling in drugs and.
- [04:56]
A
Dabbling in drugs?
- [04:57]
B
You mean using or drugs and alcohol? Probably around like middle, like the end of middle school, early high school and
- [05:02]
A
so eighth, ninth grade.
- [05:03]
B
Yeah, probably eighth, ninth grade was getting, just getting in some trouble. There was weed or what drugs are you. Weed, like you know, drinking alcohol. But obviously like, I don't know, I kind of like extended other stuff so.
- [05:13]
A
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- [07:36]
B
it's like I'm trying to decide how I should say this on camera. I've been thinking about this a lot. A lot of what led to this was when I went to the school, there was this. There was this guy who was like a trustee at the school who was like a. He had. He's like a. I guess he had like a Ph.D. in psychology and, like, donated a bunch of money to the school. And he had. Had. And so they kind of gave him, like, free run of the place. And so, like, he would kind of like, pick these kids there that. That had. I don't know what. How he chose which kids would be he would like, kind of take under his wing, but he could take him out of class whenever he wanted to. Take him back to his house, take him into, like, you know, he had like, his own little, like, kind of office of the room and just like, hang out with him and get him out of class. And so, like, as a kid, you know, obviously, cool. I get to go to this guy's house around the corner from the school. Instead of being in my, you know, like 10, 10am Math class or whatever it is, I get to just leave and skip out and go play Grand Theft Auto or whatever. But, you know, the guy was. I mean, he was obviously a pedophile.
- [08:38]
A
Right.
- [08:39]
B
And so. And so I think that. I mean, it wasn't like, as bad as, like, other people have it or what I think is portrayed necessarily, or so I'm not trying to give that impression, but I think that obviously, as kids were really impressionable. And I think that's kind of. It kind of just. That's where when I look back on my life and I try to look back on where I kind of like, deviated from, like, what was expected of me and where my life, the trajectory was supposed to go on and probably goes back to, like, around that moment. So you.
- [09:11]
A
You said he picked some kids, right?
- [09:13]
B
Yeah. I mean, there was, like, other kids.
- [09:14]
A
It wasn't like you were one of them.
- [09:15]
B
Yeah, I was one of them.
- [09:16]
A
And he would take you guys back to the house and what would happen?
- [09:18]
B
Well, I mean, it was. It's not. I don't. I'm not like, trying to, like, it Wasn't like, as bad as I'm trying to. Like, it's like it probably sounds necessarily, but, like, heavy. He obviously wanted to be around, like, younger boys and it wasn't like he necessarily. I don't know what happened with, like, the other kids. Right. But, like, it wasn't necessarily like it ever. I don't think he. Maybe he knew which ones that you could cross the line with and which ones he couldn't or.
- [09:44]
A
Did he ever do anything inappropriate with you?
- [09:46]
B
Not necessarily. Right. But, like, very, like, suggested, like, like he did.
- [09:51]
A
He was. Was he ever naked in front of you?
- [09:53]
B
No, it wasn't like that, but it. Sorry, I was just trying to figure out how, like, to talk about this on cameras. I never discussed this and I didn't really want it out in public record too much. But it's one of those things where it's like, anyone who knows about my story or, like, when I had, like, no reason to have ever, like, gone into, like, breaking the law and getting in the situation I was in. A lot of it, probably, like, a lot of it, like, clearly stems back to that, like, I look at, like, my life that's like, really where things kind of, like, deviated.
- [10:19]
A
I'm sure that had a, you know, act on you, of course. Like, how could it not?
- [10:23]
B
Yeah, I suppose. I mean, it's so. I don't know.
- [10:25]
A
So you tell me what you're comfortable telling.
- [10:27]
B
Yeah, I'm sorry. I'm just trying. This has, like, been on my mind a lot, thinking about, like, how I'll come up here. Like, how do I, like, share this? Because I don't want to, like, hold back necessarily. And then people, like. And then they're not be like, understood like, how I could have ended up, like, dropping out of high school and living homeless in. As a teenager and which. Which obviously led a lot to me doing what I was doing. Ended up being, like, at the end of the day, like, really intoxicated by feeling like I had to make so much money before because I knew that this, like, window of opportunity with cannabis was only going to last so long before corporations took over. And I think I, like, justified a lot of it because I knew what it was like to be homeless and not have any money. I mean, there's a point in time where I was, like, sleeping in a public bathroom and.
- [11:05]
A
Okay, wait, wait. We'll get there.
- [11:07]
B
No worries. Understood.
- [11:08]
A
But you felt some sort of not being safe around this guy in a sense, or you felt like something was awkward.
- [11:14]
B
Yeah, it was awkward. And like, and it was. I mean, it was. He would, like, say things were suggestive, and you. And you knew and kind of knew what it was. And. And as a kid, it's like, you almost feel bad because you're like, man, I'm taking advantage of being able to get out of school because this guy has chosen me. But I. I, Like, I don't know. I think. I just. I think that it kind of gets in your head a little bit, and. I don't know, it just.
- [11:36]
A
And did you tell your parents at the time?
- [11:38]
B
No, I never told them, you know, until this day. Till this day, it's like, you know, so it's why it's weird to talk about it on camera. Like, the world to hear about it, you know, so it's like, it's not. Yeah. I mean, I've never. Never told my parents about it.
- [11:49]
A
Have you told anyone?
- [11:50]
B
I think I told probation, like, when I was doing my psi, because it was one of those things where it's like, all right, they want to know before the judge sentences, you know, like, why did you break the law? What happened in your life to cause you to end up being here, the other side of the stable? And so did this guy ever get
- [12:04]
A
in trouble for anything?
- [12:05]
B
He's dead. But it was one of those things where it's like, I think that the school should have clearly known. I mean, his kids wouldn't talk to him, and he was. It was very.
- [12:12]
A
His own kids.
- [12:12]
B
His own kids wouldn't talk to him. Right. And that's kind of a bad sign. And then when your grandkids, you can only see them under, like, very supervised situations. Right. Like, that's kind of like a key. Like, that's an indicator, of course, you
- [12:24]
A
know, and this guy, you said he was a big. He gave the school a lot of money, and because of it, he had a lot of.
- [12:30]
B
He had a lot of access. Yeah, access.
- [12:31]
A
And he was able to come into the school and literally pick the kids he wanted to take back to his house during school hours.
- [12:37]
B
Yeah.
- [12:37]
A
And then hang out with the kids and. And who knows?
- [12:41]
B
Yeah, more or less. Yeah. As.
- [12:42]
A
And.
- [12:43]
B
And he had, like. They gave him, like, his own little office there. He was. I guess, because he was. He had a PhD in psychology, and he had some money, and he donated money to school. And because it's a private school, they considered him, like. Like, I think they called him a trustee. And so because of that, like, you know, he kind of had the. The delay of the land, and it
- [12:59]
A
was probably under the Pretense that he was doing some sort of study.
- [13:02]
B
Well, he. It was more like picking out the troubled kids and trying to help them, you know, so he would pick out kids that might not be doing as well in class or been getting in trouble or been causing kind of, you know, kind of like the more rebellious middle school kid types that. That aren't really getting with the program. And I guess it was under like, the whole pretense of, you know, I'm a. I have a PhD in psychology. I'm going to help, you know, counsel these kids and help them be better. And, And I don't know, is obviously, as over the years have come out since then, we've all seen all these scandals that have broken out, like the Boy Scouts and with the Catholic Church and it's everyone, I think society at large is pretty, pretty aware that, you know, pedophiles, they try to. They try to position themselves in these places of access where they can obviously get around children. And I'm not necessarily saying that the school is at fault. You know, I don't think that they necessarily knew, but I don't think today that would have ever been able to happen. You know, I mean, I would think. I think that now that there's such a more awareness of that, of that kind of activity that I don't think today it would have been necessarily as easy for him to have. For just like anybody to donate money to a school and have access to kids. I just think that when I look back, like, I mean, obviously, like, that was probably where it's like a lot of the drug use and a lot of the, like, not doing well in school and not really having much, you know, I mean, I wasn't really doing what was expected of me. My parents had. They had a pretty high standard. They really made a lot of sacrifices to try.
- [14:29]
A
And I would say it obviously changes your view of the world. Right. And it gives you a sort of skewed vision version of the world.
- [14:39]
B
Oh, for sure. That makes you very cynical at a
- [14:40]
A
young age and also not as trusting of adults and those positions of authority and power as. As you would be as a fifth and sixth grader, you know.
- [14:50]
B
Yeah.
- [14:51]
A
So this happened to you, and obviously it sort of changed your. And you know, that it had an impact on it. It was after that that you started.
- [14:59]
B
Yeah, it was definitely after that that I started. You know, like, I. I almost like forced my parents to like, not let me go back to the school anymore because I. I mean, I didn't want to be around the guy. I didn't want to have to say why I didn't want to go back to the school. And a lot of it has to do with the fact that I knew I didn't really fit in there. And you know, I was just different. I don't know, I just wasn't really part of that, you know, like private prep school society, those type of kids. And once they had, they had kind of conceded to me trying to go, go to public school at that point, you know, I don't know, I just really got into skateboarding, didn't really care about school. Smoking, weed, drinking alcohol, skipping school. Kind of like a cynical view in the world and didn't really expect to really ever make anything of my life. And so at some point I, you know, my parents had me pulled out of school and they had me sent to this like a, you know, the, like what, Paris Hilton? Like those kind of places. They sent like those people. Yeah, I went to. Well, I went to a wilderness camp.
- [16:01]
A
Yeah, those are tough.
- [16:02]
B
At 15 I was tough.
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A
I don't know how those things exist. It's crazy.
- [16:05]
B
It's crazy.
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A
Was it one of those really brutal ones?
- [16:07]
B
Oh, it's insane. Yeah, I got, I got kidnapped out of my parents bed in the middle of night. I probably hadn't been home. I mean I was 15 years old, right. And I hadn't been home for. Oh man, I probably hadn't been home for like a month. And on that, at some point, like I would just stay at friends houses or stay like sneak in their house at night, sleep in their basement, you know, do whatever. Just not really go, go home. And my parents, it wasn't like they did anything. And I obviously feel terrible for what I put them through because they didn't deserve any of that. But I think I was just really ruled by my emotions and just was kind of, you know, you know, it's being a teenager stuff.
- [16:37]
A
Yeah.
- [16:37]
B
And, and anyway that.
- [16:40]
A
So they hire this company. When you say you were kidnapped, I don't think most people even know that this exists in America, but you can basically get your kid into one of these programs. And what they do is they will come to your house in the middle of the night and you'll take your kid. He still what? They'll wake him up, grab him and take him into these centers because this sort of forced program because you're not an adult yet and you don't get to choose and your parents decide that you're going to be sent to this place. Yeah, that's exactly it in the majority of cases. I think, obviously parents have good intentions and they are trying to do the best they can for their kids. But the reality of many of these programs, I'm not sure if at all. If all of them, but at least many of the ones that I've looked into, they're incredibly brutal. They do everything but rehabilitate or work on behavioral. They actually make you, you know, feel really bad about you. I mean, tell me about your experience.
- [17:32]
B
Yeah, I mean. I mean, you hit the nail on the head. It was so I'd been kidnapped out of. I mean, I call it kidnapped because I don't know what else to call it. You know, these, these massive. That's what I call it, like bouncer looking type guys came and grabbed me in the middle of the night out of my room. My.
- [17:47]
A
You're crying. What are you doing?
- [17:48]
B
My mom was there crying. I didn't know what's going on. You know, I was handcuffed and thrown in the back of a rental car.
- [17:53]
A
Yeah.
- [17:53]
B
Handcuffed me. Threw me in the back of a rental rental car and. And took me in handcuffs through BWI Airport. You know, like, they had papers that obviously had said show they had custody of me. And I think when we got the airport, they. Yeah, I mean, the whole thing was crazy. They. So I get flown out. They take me from. We fly from BWI in Baltimore to Las Vegas.
- [18:16]
A
Just you and the bouncers?
- [18:17]
B
To the bouncers. Yeah. And they.
- [18:20]
A
Wait, your mom. Sorry, just. When you left the house, your mom was crying.
- [18:23]
B
I was crying, obviously, like, she didn't, she wasn't happy about having to do this and I'm sure, like, it really impacted her.
- [18:27]
A
Yeah. And you're. And you were crying or you were asking, please don't do this, or. What are you saying?
- [18:31]
B
Yeah, I mean, I don't really. I'm not. You're saying, like, I'm too tough to have cried. Right. But I think that, I don't know, a lot of times, like, did you
- [18:38]
A
realize what was happening?
- [18:40]
B
I realized what was happening once. By the time we're at the airport, you know, I kind of had an idea. They. They made it seem like I was going to some kind of like Outward Bound type camp. You know, it was going to go like whitewater rafting and what.
- [18:52]
A
Whatever. I can't.
- [18:52]
B
I can't really remember what the guy said, but it was only gonna be a couple weeks and I'd be back home. They drop. So they fly me out to Vegas. They dropped me off this other guy who drives me all the way out. And the place is called Red Cliff Ascent. And it's like one of the more brutal. Like, there's a. There's a lot of them in Utah. And I don't blame my parents, because
- [19:08]
A
this was in Utah.
- [19:09]
B
Oh, yeah, it's a whole industry. Yeah, it's a crazy industry. And it's. It's. I. There's got to be some kind of correlation with the fact that the Mormon culture there, you know, they don't drink caffeine, they don't consume any substances they have. They at least try to portray, for the most part, like a very pure, you know, livelihood. And so I. I don't. I don't know. I'm sure that it's just interesting that, like, there's this culture there specifically that is all about fixing kids and getting them off drugs or out of their. Whatever, like, behavioral issues they have. And. And yeah, they drew me out there.
- [19:43]
A
And I'm sure there's something to do with legalize, with how it's some sort of legislation that allows for these places to exist in a way that they wouldn't be allowed in other states. Yeah, I know that in some states in the south as well, these exist, but I know. Yeah, that. That. That it's. It's huge there. And you were. So you arrived and the idea of the program. Tell me if this was. This was a wilderness one. So you were camping the whole time. How long were you there for?
- [20:09]
B
I was there probably a little over 100 days. You know, 100, 810 days, which is long. Some kids are out of there in 60 days. But I. I was. I didn't really get with the program for a while.
- [20:20]
A
So that's three months.
- [20:21]
B
A little over three months. Yeah. I was there a little over three months.
- [20:23]
A
And get through the program is if you behave and do everything they want you to do.
- [20:27]
B
Exactly. They had, like, phases that you had to work through. And, like, as you completed each phase, you had to. Eventually, I think. I can't remember what it was. It might have been like, eight phases you had to do there. And as you would earn your way through each phase, eventually if you completed the eighth phase, you'd be able to leave. And I think the most, like, the quickest I'd ever heard of anyone doing it, There was maybe like eight weeks, something like that, 56 days. But, yeah, I was there nearly twice that long.
- [20:53]
A
And what was the most absurd thing that could give me some examples?
- [20:56]
B
That was crazy. So we. We weren't even given backpacks. So we, and you didn't camp the same place every night you had. We were taken out there. And don't be wrong, it's beautiful. I mean looking back on it compared to prison, you know, it's obviously would have preferred to. Preferred that than, than I haven't been in, you know, in prison for as long as I was. But they, at first they wouldn't even give you a backpack. You would get a tarp and you'd have to carry all your stuff in there. So it'd be like rice and lentils and various like camping stuff. And you have to put it in a tarp and you roll it up and you'd have to take like a, like paracord and they teach you a certain way to wrap it up with paracord and you know, you'd create ribs in the spine so it'd be like a backpack and you'd roll up your sleeping mat in it and you know, your sleeping bag would be inside of it. Then you'd have to take like a seat belt material and like feed it through and like make your own backpack. And eventually if you like made it past, I think it might have been like the fifth phase, you could earn a backpack. But yeah, for most of the time you're hiking about 10 miles a day. I mean depending on the. It was dependent on the weather because I got there in May.
- [21:54]
A
Right. Because it also gets, I've seen some video footage of this stuff and it's, it gets, it's brutal. It also gets super cold. You guys are not. Some kids don't have, even have sweaters. They're not given any proper equipment to be hiking or appropriate clothing for the weather conditions. And we're talking about 15 and 14 and 16 year old kids. It's, it's insane.
- [22:15]
B
That's insane.
- [22:16]
A
And the whole idea behind it is that, and the food also is not great. Right? Yeah.
- [22:20]
B
But I mean that's like the least of it, you know.
- [22:23]
A
Right. And I think the idea behind it is that if they're, they're going to teach you, they're going to make you a strong man, they're going to beat the, the, the, the discipline and discipline into you. Right. And once you go back home, you'll be a great student, you'll be obedient, you'll be do everything your parents we want you to do because we're gonna. Yeah. Scary straight. Yeah. But also take away, take out any sort of individuality that you have. Right. If you're, you might not be a great student, but you're really into. Listen to like hard rock music or whatever it is. And they're just trying to make you force you into these ideas in their mind of what a kid should be for sure.
- [23:03]
B
Absolutely. And then there's one huge aspect of it is like the. They call them educational consultants. And so a lot of times, you know, because my parents were like going to different therapists and psychologists trying to figure out like why I was so defiant there. We are like a. Defiant, like a defiant disorder. I think there's some kind of like behavioral defiant disorder thing they call, they diagnose me with. So more or less, I guess like being a rebel for the sake of it. And I guess when parents are going and dealing with like psychologists that deal with kids specifically, there's obviously this whole industry where these educational consultants are, have like a pipeline to all these psychologists. They're like family psychologists and family counselors. And so there's obviously, I'm sure, some kind of like referral program that goes on to where they're incentivized when kids. And I'm not saying this wasn't called for. Right. I mean, I was obviously like in a bad place in my life and I wasn't acting as I was supposed to. I was getting in trouble, wasn't going to school. So it's not like I wasn't called for. And you know, I. It took me a long time to, you know, to necessarily forgive my parents for this because I was a kid and I held, I held on to some resentment for it. But I mean, I absolutely get it now.
- [24:11]
A
Do you think they regret having done it?
- [24:13]
B
I don't know. Regrets. It's hard to look at it that way. Right. Because things happen the way they happen. Right. And I mean we have a great relationship today.
- [24:20]
A
And when you left the camp and you told them everything you had to go through, they still thought it was a good idea to send you there.
- [24:25]
B
I mean you don't have any communication with them.
- [24:27]
A
But you left eventually, right?
- [24:29]
B
Well, when I eventually left.
- [24:30]
A
But you hang out with your parents
- [24:32]
B
after being there before I graduated, you know, the program after being there like 100 something days. And the educational consultants had convinced my parents, well, look, he's made a lot of change, but the change isn't going to stick unless you send him to this other place, you know, because it's a whole racket, you know, it's all about the bottom line. And they're all getting some sort of like referral commission for getting kids into these extremely expensive programs. Fortunately, my mom, she worked for the government, so she was able to use, I guess, some of the health insurance that I'd had to pay for this. Yeah.
- [25:03]
A
So where do they send you after that then?
- [25:04]
B
So I stayed in Utah. I went to what was called like a residential treatment center for juveniles in like just north of Salt Lake City. And I mean it was. I don't want to. It was like a prison. It was like a nice house and a big house, a bunch of kids. But I mean, man, there was a lot of really, really messed up kids in there.
- [25:19]
A
And right. You're not even being sent to these places because you had a drug addiction or it was because you were defiant because you defined.
- [25:26]
B
But there was a drug addiction. There was like, definitely substance use. Right. Like, I mean I was smoking weed and I was drinking alcohol. I wasn't really doing anything harder than that.
- [25:32]
A
But like so many kids, I mean these are normal behaviors that I think most 15 and 16 year olds out there being defiant to their par parents is very common. I mean not every kid, but a lot of kids out there are defined towards their parents. And then experimenting and starting to smoke weed and alcohol at that age is also not, not crazy.
- [25:51]
B
I. I hear. Yeah, I definitely hear you. But at the same time, I just think that if I hadn't been sent to this place, I don't know, I mean, I could easily. When I look at kind of like what I mentioned earlier, like growing up that area and seen so many friends that have died from opiate abuse or people I just grew up with, I mean, I can, I don't know, dozens of kids. Right.
- [26:10]
A
Wait, so there is a part of you that thinks that actually was good for you, that you didn't in a way.
- [26:13]
B
Like, I mean, I think it was a terrible experience and it was. And I think there's a. I have qualms with the way the whole thing functions and operates. But like that kind of arrested development aspect of it did pull me out of potentially a trajectory that, you know, I still ended up in prison and international fugitive and all this stuff.
- [26:29]
A
So it's not like, not sure. Actually, you know, I forgot to mention the international fugitive part of it all.
- [26:34]
B
Yeah, it's not like, no worries. It's not so it's not like I ended up like, you know, in, in this like ideal, you know, just paragon members society. But I, I think things could have been a lot worse for sure.
- [26:48]
A
Okay, so you. That you went to the behavioral. To the other place, the residents, residential therapy place and.
- [26:54]
B
18 months.
- [26:55]
A
18 months. Okay.
- [26:56]
B
I remember one of the main, one, one of the things that really this is what I held on to for a long time afterwards and a lot of why I had so much resentment at my parents when I came home. So when I came home, this was kind of what led to me kind of being homeless as a teenager and, and like almost in like a worse position than I was before I left. But fortunately it was relatively temporary. But I remember they used to have these things they would call them family days. And so your, you know, everybody's family would all come out and they would like do these like big group therapy sessions with like everyone's family there. And I, I hadn't, I didn't know that my mom had been diagnosed with breast cancer. Yeah. And they, they, I remember they had my mom tell me she had cancer in front of all these people and their parents. Yeah, that was rough. And, and so like, rather than what something should be, like a really private. Of course, you know what I mean? And so anyway, that kind of, that, that was, that was rough. And so eventually I get out of there. Right. And, and so when I come home, you know, it's didn't last long, the like the honeymoon era of being home. And so I made it through my junior year of high school. Did all right. And I think grades weren't the best. Right. But I like made it through, went to school every day. It wasn't like an issue. But my senior year I just kind of lost it and just parents and I weren't really getting along. I'd really held on to a lot of resentment to them for this whole experience for having put me through that, which you know, they were totally justified in doing it. It wasn't like it was their fault. You know, like there's, there's a lot of naivete that, that like families go through and parents that just want the best for their kids.
- [28:28]
A
Yeah.
- [28:28]
B
When they end up like, it's not like they want to have to send their kids to these places and. But you know, when you're a 17 year old kid, you don't get that. You don't, you don't have that like awareness. And so anyway, I, I remember I, I left the school that I was at junior year and I started my senior year at the local public high school. And at that point it was just so easy to skip school. And my parents are kind of giving up at this point and because they tried everything they could. And so I, and I just stopped going to school. And for a while I was, I was living, you know, homeless, like staying at friends houses. And some point it got to where I was sleeping in this, in this like public bathroom in my town. I mean it was new, it was concrete, but it was like a room. Right. And it was down the street from a friend of mine's house. House.
- [29:13]
A
Did you leave your parents house or they kicked you out?
- [29:16]
B
It was a mix of the two. It wasn't like you can't be here, but it was like if you continue like doing this behavior and not going to school and, and failing drug tests, you know, you can't stay here.
- [29:26]
A
And at this point you. It was still wheat that you were usually.
- [29:29]
B
Yeah. So much weed, you know, so mostly weed and, and drinking alcohol. I think there was like a little period like during this time coming up, like after all my parents that, that you know, maybe like some cocaine use. But it wasn't like, you know, I'm a kid that can't find a place to live. It's not like I can afford it, you know.
- [29:47]
A
Right.
- [29:47]
B
But yeah, I mean it, I don't know. So I ended up. I had a friend that lived around the. It was crazy situation. The guy is one of my co defendants and, and we've known each other since we were like five, six years old. Grew up playing, you know, just soccer and lacrosse like for the, you know, like the local recreational teams. And at any rate, he, his, his dad had been on the run for a coke case, a cocaine case for years, like, you know, and wasn't in touch with the family. And no one knew where he was. But his mom, she, I mean, she had to take care of the whole family, you know, and she had to support the family working at, she worked at a restaurant, was like a bar manager. She didn't get home till late. And so I would, I would, I would go hang out at his house all day and because he lived down the street from this like public, you know, restroom kind of that was attached to this like little promenade. Because the town I grew up in is like right on the water. It's like real beautiful. It's right where the Susquehanna river meets the Chesapeake Bay. And so there's this little like wooden promenade that people go to that kind of like walks around like right there on the water. And anyway, they built this new bathroom. I can't believe I'm even talking about this. They built this new bathroom that was like. There was like new construction, you know, I don't know, it's like a concrete building. And concrete floor. And every now and again, you know, I would just make sure when I was at Chris's house that I would. I'd leave and grab some blankets and pillows and go down there and.
- [31:09]
A
Why were you sleeping at your friend's house?
- [31:11]
B
Well, I just did. I was there so much.
- [31:13]
A
You didn't want to be like a.
- [31:15]
B
I mean, eventually I moved in. Right. Eventually she let me move in after, like, so many.
- [31:17]
A
The mother.
- [31:18]
B
Yeah, the mother. After so many times, her coming home early, it's like, what am I doing here at 11:30 at night? And eventually let me move in.
- [31:23]
A
Oh, you. Because she didn't even know that you were sleeping in the public bathroom next door.
- [31:26]
B
Yeah, exactly.
- [31:27]
A
And then when she found out, she said you could. Yeah. And you would just. You. So you bring a blanket and a pillow and you'd sleep there.
- [31:34]
B
Yeah.
- [31:34]
A
And you. Were there ever people that would come in and see you there sleeping?
- [31:37]
B
No, because, I mean, no one's there in the middle of the night.
- [31:39]
A
You know what I mean?
- [31:40]
B
It wasn't like I would be there.
- [31:41]
A
Right.
- [31:41]
B
Like, like camped out, living there, you know, it's really just like, if I couldn't find anywhere else to sleep.
- [31:46]
A
Were you. What were you thinking at this point?
- [31:48]
B
Like, I don't know. I mean, I was just thinking really hopeless. I just didn't. I wasn't like. And it wasn't like, hopeless. I think I'm like that, you know, I. I'm not going to go anywhere with my life.
- [31:57]
A
It's just.
- [31:57]
B
I don't know. I think when you're in that kind of situation, you're not young, it's hard to really have any forward thinking. Like, I'm not thinking.
- [32:02]
A
Yeah, your brain isn't fully developed.
- [32:04]
B
Yeah, exactly.
- [32:04]
A
And you're. Yeah, yeah. You thinking also, Life sucks.
- [32:07]
B
Yeah, exactly. Like, what am I. How am I going to, like, deal with tomorrow? Like, what am I going to be doing? What? Like, what am I going to do to make sure that I can eat tomorrow? To make sure that I can, you know, I have a place to sleep. Where am I going to go? Can I stay at a friend's place tomorrow? Could I stay in, like, you know, this friend's car or whatever? Right. And so, I don't know, at that point in time, I wasn't necessarily. I wasn't thinking about the future all
- [32:29]
A
that much, you know? And so was it soon after this that you started?
- [32:33]
B
Well, this is kind of what, getting in the business. Yeah. So I. I never really sold weed in high school in that area since I got back, because it's like, all my friends sold weed. You know, what am I going to do? Am I gonna buy weed for my friends to sell it at a charge and then sell it back to them? That's. I mean, that's not. That's not gonna work. And so I fortunately, like, one of the good things I did when. When my friend's mom let me move in is I immediately went and got my ged, which was. Which was, you know, that's great. Just great to have. Right. At least, like now somehow, I've been on this terrible path and I've made all these bad decisions, but now I have my high school diploma before I would have normally had it, so at least it's out of the way.
- [33:07]
A
Yeah.
- [33:08]
B
And. And I think that I was. I received something in the mail that I got, like, in the 99th percentile in the GED, and they, like, invited me to, like, some kind of, like, national awards banquet to receive my diploma.
- [33:20]
A
Oh, wow.
- [33:20]
B
And because I guess, like, the people who score the highest in the GED and a lot of people that take the GED are like, actually really smart kids that are trying to pipeline, like going a faster pipeline into whatever, six.
- [33:30]
A
It's not doing. It's not high school dropouts.
- [33:32]
B
Usually not. Yeah, well, at least those people, right? And I guess somehow, I mean, I don't remember the test being very hard. And apparently I scored so high on it, they invited me. I didn't go because I was like, what is this, dinner for schmucks?
- [33:41]
A
Oh, my God.
- [33:42]
B
So around that time, I. I went to a friend's birthday party, and I met this guy who was like a. Like a huge weed supplier, you know, this guy out of Philadelphia. And all of a sudden, I now realized that, all right, all my friends are buying quarter pounds and half pounds. Well, no, they're buying them far down the line, high school kids. And now, I mean, this is a guy who's bringing hundreds of pounds at a time from California to Philadelphia. And so I immediately just struck up a. I don't know. I don't know what led us talking to one another, but when we forged a connection at this birthday party, and next thing I knew, I was. I realized I can take. If all my friends are buying quarter pounds for twelve hundred dollars, and I can go get a pound of weed for 3, $800 from this guy, all I got to do is get him to drive me up there. And, you know, I've made, what, I mean, twelve hundred dollars. I Mean, that's a thousand dollars. You know, I've just made all. And I've never seen a thousand dollars for my life at that point. And you know, I barely have any. You know, my friends are paying for me to eat at this point right now. And so that, that was where kind of like the switch happened. Immediately that I realized like, oh, wow, there's something here. And, and me, before I knew it, I mean, I saved up $10,000 while I'm still living at my friend's mom's house. And but it wasn't like I looked at it like this would be a long time thing. And so I went and there's a place in Maryland called Ocean City. A lot of people go to like college kids and they work a restaurant job or a bar job for the summer. And I went there and I worked for, you know, the summer and just like a busboy and. But like during that time, I'm still now selling weed in, in Ocean City to like all these college kids while I'm going to work. And I'm making so much more money doing that that I don't know, it didn't, it didn't really take long for me to realize like this was, there was something here. And it was, and this is probably 2013, 2012, so legalization is just starting. You know, Colorado, Washington, Washington D.C. they'd already legalized in some form or fashion. Everybody knew that California and Oregon was where everybody was going to get there. I mean, you can get weed from Colorado, but it's mostly indoor. It's hard to get like larger quantity, it's more expensive. Everybody knew that like California was a place you could go and you could go and do this. My plan at first wasn't to go there and necessarily send it back to Maryland and all these other states, but it was really, I mean, I don't want to be necessarily dishonest. I think that was probably part of it, but I think that was more so my mind, like a stepping stone of like how I can, you know, generate more capital and then take that and actually do something legitimate with this, right? I can, you know, go. And in my mind I'm thinking like, how can I grow, like, you know, get my own farm, start growing weed, just selling it in California and I create a livelihood. And so it wasn't long after that that I had, you know, you know, I had enough money to move out there and I, and I went. Move to California.
- [36:35]
A
Wait, how, how long after that?
- [36:37]
B
Within the, like six months probably.
- [36:39]
A
So at this Point you were just, you were buying it from this guy, bringing it to your town and basically selling it amongst your friends.
- [36:46]
B
Yeah, more or less. But I mean it went parabolic pretty quick. I mean we're not talking about just one pound. I mean probably within, within me, within that, within six months of that first pound transaction when I went up and, and you know, use my friend's money to pull together to all go get, you know, them all get their quarter pounds. Yeah, within six months I'm getting a hundred pounds a week.
- [37:08]
A
And how much money you're making a week within six months?
- [37:10]
B
I mean at that time cannabis, I mean we was so much more expensive. So I mean let's see if I was, I might have been paying like 3,500 a pound back then, but to 32 then I would get to go down to like 3,200 and I was consistently making 5 to 600 a pound.
- [37:26]
A
And how many pounds were you saying?
- [37:27]
B
I'm 50 to 100 a week as an 18 year old kid, you know, I mean it wasn't, it wasn't long before I had hundreds of thousands of dollars and didn't know where it came from or less. You know, so it's like, it was like this very dramatic like change in my life. Like I just went from more or less sleeping in the public bathrooms and staying in my friends places and trying to find different like friends basements I can like stay, sneak into that they'll let me sleep at for the night and got to be out before their parents are up kind of thing to all of a sudden, you know, I've got more money than I have to do with and, and so obviously anything else I'd ever tried before, you know, even like working as a busboy and like doing that stuff during those restaurant jobs, I mean there was no comparison. I was like, this is, I'm not going to go down this one route when the other one is clearly far more lucrative. And it's, you know, there's this general idea amongst people that like it's not really, it's weed, like the society's accepting it, there's, it's going, it's becoming legalized. It's only gonna be a matter of time. Especially like, I mean this is still when Obama was president. So a lot of people really thought that he was going to legalize it before he left office.
- [38:29]
A
Federally?
- [38:29]
B
Yeah, yeah, like federally, you know, because federal laws haven't, I mean until what Trump just did recently, federal laws hadn't changed, have not changed at all since 84.
- [38:37]
A
Right.
- [38:38]
B
So. And crazy enough, they still don't really matter. There's this whole rescheduling, which I'm sure we'll get to later. They. They just passed a law on the Supreme Court. Well, first off, he didn't pass. They. When he signed that executive order and got them to change, the law was non. Retroactive. So it means it doesn't affect anybody.
- [38:55]
A
Right. Who's in prison right now, charges. I know. And then. Yeah, yeah, we'll get there. So you were. Okay. So then six months, you hit hundreds of thousands of dollars more money than you knew what you did to do with it, and you decided you're going to move to California.
- [39:08]
B
Yeah, so I decided to move to California.
- [39:10]
A
Why?
- [39:11]
B
Look at that new outfit. You know, not only there first, I'm paying retail prices from a guy that's already bringing it over. And I'm starting to get an idea of what it really costs over there. If he's charging me 2500 for a pound, I know he's getting them for $1200.
- [39:25]
A
Right.
- [39:26]
B
And at that point in time, I guess like six months, a year later, I mean, it was. It was pretty crazy how fast as states were becoming legal and there was starting to become a lot more like a larger supply and a lot more people involved in it. It didn't take long for the prices to start dramatically dropping. And also another thing that I realized is that, like, how do I make my friends far more successful at what they're doing?
- [39:48]
A
Right?
- [39:48]
B
Like, if I can invest in these people and I can give them lower prices than they're gonna get from anywhere else, if I can do the same to my competition, all of a sudden I'm gonna have a far larger network.
- [39:57]
A
Right.
- [39:58]
B
So I more or less started undercutting the market.
- [40:00]
A
Yeah. So your friends were also selling weed? They were selling the weed that you were given?
- [40:03]
B
Yeah, more or less. Yeah. I mean, and they'd always been kind of like the. I mean, obviously, because I was a kid who was getting in trouble and smoking weed and skateboarding and stuff. All through high school, I already hung out with kind of that crowd. I was already friends with the weed dealers, and I knew all the people that. That were already doing, you know, were selling weed, more or less.
- [40:19]
A
Right. Okay, so you arrived in California. Where did you go?
- [40:22]
B
And I moved to Santa Cruz. That's where I first went to.
- [40:24]
A
Yeah, because you knew. Actually that's. I hung out with an amazing. We did a story about black market weed, and I spent a crazy night where there was a gigantic thunderstorm in this guy's in. In Santa Cruz at the time and we were staying in his backyard. He had like a large grow of. Of weed in his house and property and it was all black market wheat, unregulated weed. He tried to go legal and the right as you all, as you know the regulations and the taxes, it was all very complicated and costly and it didn't work out and he didn't get the licenses he needed and so he kept selling it illegally.
- [40:59]
B
Yeah, that's a very common story.
- [41:02]
A
Yeah.
- [41:02]
B
Santa Cruz has really become the Mecca of at least one of the larger places that a lot of the legal rows are because you have all those old. Yeah, you go south of Santa Cruz. Yeah. You have like all like in Watsonville towards Monterey, you have all the old like agricultural areas. And it used to be so many. You'd see these. If you drove down like the 101 or through the one that area, you would see all these like hold abandoned like massive greenhouses. They have like, you know, they'd be like square acre greenhouses with. It would be like an. A frame roof that would kind of go across the whole thing. And you'd see these old dilapidated ones. Now they're all full of cannabis. Yeah, because it's such a, you know, up in Humboldt it's so much harder to get two people there, so much harder to police.
- [41:42]
A
Right. And these, these, this is all the legal farms by the way, belongs to big corporations and big cannabis companies. So you go up, you get, you get to Santa Cruz and then did you have any contacts there or did you start making contacts from scratch?
- [41:55]
B
Yeah, I mean, I kind of started making contacts from scratch. I mean, I don't know. I'd always really been in skateboarding, so it's not really that hard to go
- [42:01]
A
someplace and where you, where, where do you square your weed and then go from there?
- [42:04]
B
Yeah, you know what I mean? And just like start meeting people through skateboarding was usually kind of pretty easy way to kind of like make contacts and meet people. And you know, everybody at least knows a guy who knows a guy. And it's just a small area that, I mean, it didn't take long before I really made sufficient contacts there.
- [42:21]
A
And then what, what did you build?
- [42:23]
B
One of the first things I tried to build was. I mean I was probably, probably like 19 or 20 years old. I tried to build. I guess the first one was I had some greenhouses that were like up in like Boulder Creek. And this was before Prop 64 so this was back when, when it, when it was still medicinal. So all you really had to do was go and get a. Go get. Find an attorney and pay them some sum. It'd be. It usually it would be like a. However much you paid, there would be like a dollar amount for every client that they would give you, which would. I mean, it's like a total, like, arbitrary fake thing. Just so if the cops show up, it's just. So if the police show up and they want to go to the fire department, they want to count your. Count your plants. At that point in time, you could have. I think it was. I can't remember what it was. Might have been seven or 10 plants per patient, you know, and so we have these massive binders and, you know, we had like 10 hoop houses just, you know, full of. Full of cannabis that was not going to any of these patients.
- [43:16]
A
Right. You know, that's so ridiculous.
- [43:18]
B
Yeah, I mean, it was. Yeah, it was a crazy time.
- [43:21]
A
That's. It's interesting because you're seeing it from the business guide. I, I remember we did a story about, like, just showing how easy it was to get one of these cards as a. As if you were procuring it. But I had never thought about what it was like for you guys if you were braided and if you. You had to show some sort of paperwork. Why are you growing so much weed? Who are you selling this to? So you actually had to have that paperwork.
- [43:39]
B
All you have to do is have a binder. You just kept on spot.
- [43:41]
A
Yeah.
- [43:41]
B
And I mean, like, the binder would be like. I mean, it wouldn't close. It'd be like this, you know, and
- [43:45]
A
it was all fake. Full of fake names.
- [43:46]
B
I mean, they're usually real people, I think.
- [43:49]
A
Fake clients.
- [43:50]
B
Yeah, they were. They were. They were never. I mean, the cannabis never went to them. It wasn't like we had like some kind of like, pipeline of making sure that it got directly delivered to these patients. And that's how. I mean, that's how it is for everybody up there. There's nobody who's. I'm not gonna say nobody. I'm sure they're like. I know there are like, legitimate, like, people in that space that do provide cannabis to the people who have the medicinal cards and have some sort of, like, agreement set up with them. But most of the people up there are all at that time were. That was how they would, you know, get carte blanche, more or less to. To grow however much they wanted to.
- [44:25]
A
And so that's what you were doing. So you started by having some greenhouses, which you paid for. How? With the money that you brought from.
- [44:31]
B
Yeah, with the money that I brought out there and invested a lot of money in greenhouses up there, I think had a. Like a mansion in San Francisco that we had filled with like 50 lights. And it was so funny at this point in time, it was back.
- [44:43]
A
Oh, so you were doing indoor grills?
- [44:46]
B
Yeah, because a lot of it was like I would invest in these with. I'd find growers. People were like good, talented growers. And I would invest money and we would have like some sort of profit sharing and I would usually deal with like the distribution of it.
- [44:56]
A
And you were shipping it all to the East Coast.
- [44:57]
B
Well, so it depends. Like, a lot of the cannabis that we grew in California, we'd actually sell in California. Because if you and I are partners, hypothetically, and I'm taking responsibility for all of the product that belongs to both of us, and I'm getting more money for it, not only are you going to want to make sure you get more money for yours, I'm now responsible if anything happens to it. So in all reality, it was like there was like two things going on. You know, a lot of the cannabis that was being grown in California would stay in California and you'd sell to brokers and you can. You don't have to charge what you, you know, you're really charged about the same prices that you're buying stuff for. So to a lot of people, that might not make sense, but just for like a risk, liability aspect like that. And because that was really the trajectory I was trying to go on, I wasn't. I knew that there was only going to be so long that I could necessarily be sending weed out of the state. And. And I was. It was really just trying to look at it as a way to get startup capital to go and do this, to do, like to really legitimize myself eventually.
- [45:52]
A
But because you were seeing, you were saying, you were thinking that this is going to become legal everywhere eventually. And I'm already setting myself to having this company. This cannabis company.
- [46:01]
B
Yeah, exactly. And that was really.
- [46:02]
A
Which is. Was everybody's plan at the time, for sure.
- [46:04]
B
And it's one of those things where, like, you know that because it's federally legal right now, you can't go get any kind of, I mean, short of you having like access to hedge fund, private equity financing.
- [46:12]
A
Right.
- [46:13]
B
Venture capital financing, you know, you're not going to get a loan, right?
- [46:16]
A
You know, no, you can't because it's
- [46:18]
B
any federally insured bank. I mean, I know there's credit unions that do work with cannabis companies, but any federally insured bank, they can't touch it.
- [46:26]
A
Yeah. So because we. I did a story about black market weed in California. I. There was. I remember some of the things, like some of these people that working in. In. In. In. In the ca. Even in the cannabis. Even people who had dispensaries legally, there was a lot of security around it because they were constantly being. I don't know if you. Did you experience any of this? Some of them had bodyguards with them. I remember there's a dispensary not very far from my own house that they so crank a crazy number. Like once a month they'd get before they then finally got security. But once a month they'd have the guy, the owner of it, had been, you know, robbed at gunpoint and handcuffed and chained, and they took out the money from the business. But time and time and time again, even when he had security and all of it, because you can't put money in the bank.
- [47:13]
B
Exactly.
- [47:14]
A
So you have to, you know that these businesses are full of cash.
- [47:16]
B
Yeah, it's crazy. I remember back before, like, bitcoin, it became what it is today. I remember a lot of, like the small dispensaries, they would have like a bitcoin ATM because they couldn't run, because they couldn't take a card. Like, you couldn't pay with Visa or MasterCard or whatever. So what they would do is you would go. If you couldn't pay cash. Cash, they would, you know, you could buy bitcoin there at their ATM in the dispensary and pay them through cryptocurrency.
- [47:37]
A
Wow.
- [47:38]
B
I remember that. That was like a thing for a little while.
- [47:40]
A
So did you. What did you do at the time? It was a cash business for you too. So what was it like? How did you make sure that that cash was safe and what were you doing with it you can't put in the bank. Where were you stuffing it?
- [47:53]
B
I mean. Well, I mean, I guess because it's been long enough, those statute limitations are up. They got. Most of them stalled it anyway between them and the attorneys. But I mean, at the time, you know, buy precious metal and cryptocurrency and put away cash anywhere you can. I mean, I don't know. There was. I lost a lot of cash too, because it's not like everything works out, you know, frequently. What kind of ended up causing me to go so far down the path of. Instead of where I started out there, where maybe I'm just sending home, you know, like pelican cases in the mail with so, you know, 10 to 20 pounds in them per package. Nothing super crazy, right. But I ended up from going from there to what ended up like the activity that I was doing that eventually led to my case. There's a big leap. But a lot of that happened because I tried to really break into the industry, especially post proposition 64 when it had become recreational legal in California and I'd spent a lot of money on trying to get legitimate licenses and build legitimate crows. I remember there was a grow that, I mean, and California is notorious for this, like at this point in time where you'd have these local municipalities that knew that this was a cash cow and they could take advantage of these people. And there was no like federal or lawful protection. A lot of these people had. I remember Calaveras county was a common place that had given all these people licenses that they paid for and then they revoked them at the last minute. I remember I had, I had paid for this license for a grow in Hollister, which is, it's a town called Hollister. They, There was this artichoke farm that had. They called it a silo, but I mean it was just really a big old barn. But I guess because it didn't have like a second story or. I don't know why the guy called a silo, but I mean it was really just a large barn. And I remember I, you know, gotten this agreement that was cleared by the city council and spent a bunch of money to kind of grease the wheels to get this to happen. And, and I, I mean we put in 150 lights in this place all at the time, you know, thousand dollar plus gavitas and expensive H Vac systems and built a whole second story. So it was like all these different, like 25 light rooms on the first floor and then more on this, on the, on the second floor above this got a massive, I don't even remember how many kilowatt generators the generator we got. I mean, we spent a lot of money in this. More or less easily half a million dollars.
- [50:19]
A
Oh, wow. And so, and then what happened?
- [50:22]
B
Well, as soon as we're ready to turn on the lights, mind you, I'm paying like $25,000 a month for, for just the rent at this place. And as soon as we get ready to turn on the lights.
- [50:31]
A
Meaning you had a license.
- [50:32]
B
You know, we had a license, yeah. It was legit it was, it was totally legit. It was cleared with city council. They knew about the property. We had actually gone to them, you know, we paid a bunch of money and we'd gone to them and asked them to find us because we knew that they're now that was legal and they were going to be allowing cultivation in their county to find us properties. Like a list of properties that we could potentially use that were zoned appropriately.
- [50:54]
A
So you could expand and build more of these.
- [50:55]
B
Yeah, well, this is before you got in the first one. Right, that's where we found that.
- [50:58]
A
Oh, that's, that's how you found that one.
- [51:00]
B
Yeah. And so, and so at any rate, the, you know, I'd spent all this money in building this thing out. Now that they all of a sudden. Right, right. Just coincidentally, right before we're going to turn on the lights and actually, you know, put some plants in here and really start growing, all of a sudden we get zoned inappropriately. Now we're no longer zoned correctly to cultivate cannabis. And so now I've spent all this money, I'm hemorrhaging money every month to keep this place open, keep it afloat.
- [51:24]
A
Why do you think that's happening?
- [51:25]
B
Oh, I know what happened. I mean it was because of the guy that we rented the property on. He wanted it. So I mean, small town. Yeah, absolutely. I mean.
- [51:33]
A
And you think he pay this in?
- [51:34]
B
Oh, for sure, yeah. And I'm sure that now he's probably still using that property and probably, you know, made off. I mean this was a common thing. It wasn't like this isn't like a one off situation that I dealt with along. Lot of people dealt with this all over the state. A lot of people dealt with it in Hollister. It was.
- [51:48]
A
That is so up.
- [51:49]
B
Yeah, it's pretty wild. And you know, I'm like a 20 year old kid so they just look at me as this kid with this money and easy to take advantage of and there's no recourse or anything I can do about it. And so, you know, of course I walked away from it, but after going through that I just became a little disillusioned with the whole idea of being able to go fully legit, at least in this way. Right. Like the only thing that's making me money at this point is sending it out of state then and, and even like maybe growing the stuff that was in state with these not licensed grows. We're selling it in the state just to brokers and people driving up from LA or Whatever. And at that point, you know, I kind of, I'm still a young kid and I've already, I don't know, I had the whole Defiance disorder thing already going on and so I think I just became very, just solely focused on, all right, well, like how can I make the most money out of this so that by the time this thing is over with and there's, you know, no money to be had in it and it's all completely controlled by, you know, now I mean you have all these massive cannabis corporations that are publicly traded and John Boehner is the CEO of the largest one. It's crazy, right? But at any rate, like I saw that this was clearly what's going on in my early 20s and I know what it's like to be homeless. I know it's like to have nothing and I know that this might be my only shot to ever make any kind of money that I could potentially go and buy business or try to put into something to have like a save livelihood for us, my life.
- [53:07]
A
I mean if the system is you, you're going to try your best to circumvent the system. Yeah, exactly, yeah, more or less, essentially that's the case. So what did you do then?
- [53:15]
B
At that point I just think I just started growing it larger and larger, you know. Now no longer am I sending USPS flat rate boxes and maybe like a moving pod every now and again. Now we started getting into like tractor trailers and filling up tractor trailers. And here's the thing is like I developed such a network out there at this point point that I, I'd lost a lot of money on losses. Like there'd been times where things got lost and make it people didn't pay, you know, just like just issues with it being like a business where there's very little recourse and you know, or just like regular early 20 year old kids, you know, not violent and didn't never carried guns or did anything like that. And so like there was never, you know, somebody didn't pay. It was just we stopped doing business with them and. But because I always paid my debts, like if I ever owed again, you know, I would deal with suppliers, a lot of, you know, like Vietnamese and Mexicans and anybody who really had like access to large quantities of cannabis in California, you know, I had connections through and I always paid. It didn't matter, like if I lost or I took a loss or whatever, it didn't matter. Like I always pay my bills because I knew my credit line was so much more Important than smart, the. Than just like trying to salvage whatever money I can get out of deal. And so because I knew I had access to like unlimited quantities, you know, I didn't. I might have lost money on certain stuff that I'd sent out at times I might have taken losses on. You know, there was times where like truck got popped with a bunch of money coming across the country, or at least that was what we were told and didn't matter what happened because I lost the money. And so there was just, I don't know, they got to this point where I just knew that I had unlimited access to whatever I wanted, as much as I wanted of it. And I knew I had at least a substantial network in Baltimore. And at this point I started meeting people from other parts, like through skateboarding and through other people I've met in California. And just through just generally like trying to network a little bit, either if it's like going to fish shows or whatever. Right. It's just like, you know, meeting people that I knew were like in the space that. I started developing a network just around the country and started. I mean, we started sending for. It started off with loading up tractor trailers. You send freight and, you know, maybe put 500 to a thousand pounds there and holy shit.
- [55:26]
A
Like, hindsight with stuff. Oh, yeah.
- [55:28]
B
I mean, a lot of what we would do, we had a couple different ways and it kind of like progressed, right. Like we're start. We're talking about after that grow that had happened in Hollister that I kind of got screwed on, you know, it started progressing to different means and methods of getting it to the. To other states. And you learn, you start, I don't know, figuring out which ways work and what don't. I remember there was a time, man, I remember I was so mad when that show Ozark came out because they had showed this. Remember how Jason Bateman hid his money in a pontoon boat?
- [55:58]
A
In a what?
- [55:58]
B
In a pontoon boat. You remember that?
- [56:00]
A
I don't. I actually watched. It was. Yeah, okay. I watched season one. Was it in season one?
- [56:04]
B
Yeah, it was in season one.
- [56:04]
A
Yeah.
- [56:05]
B
He hit a bunch of money in the pontoon boat and well, that was like something we did. Like, we took a pontoon boat and we like cut off the pontoons and we stuffed it with weed. And then we got a tig welder and weld it back on.
- [56:14]
A
Yeah.
- [56:15]
B
So we would shrink wrap it and send it across the country. We would get these big knack boxes, you know, there's like, they're the brands knack like K N A C K. Yeah. And we would get these knack boxes, these big job boxes were like electricians, job cabinets that would, you know, I could fit 500 plus pounds in them. And we would. It got to a point where we've got four or five of them in a freight load all crated up and go drop them off to the freight yard and send them across the country. We had this crazy like flatbed. That's like a flatbed pull behind trailer. And we would buy. You'd put. You have to put like a certain kind of car on it. You can't put like a Honda CRV because who's gonna, you know, it's gonna be bizarre when you got a trailer with California plates and. And like a car that nobody would.
- [56:58]
A
Shitty car that nobody would want.
- [56:59]
B
Yeah.
- [56:59]
A
If they would.
- [57:00]
B
Well if they were, they would send it like the 18 Wheeler, you know where like it's stacked up with a bunch of other. A bunch of other. A bunch of other vehicles. And so we, we knew this guy who was. He like worked on the film set, you know, from the Valley in la and he worked on like all these different film sets and he was like a master fabricator. So we had a trailer that had these actuators in it, kind of like hydraulics with electrically powered. And it would. You take off the rails. I mean it's like just a flatbed. Right. So it doesn't look like it's hiding anything. So it's not like a horse trailer. It looks like a flatbed. So it looks like there's nothing there. And if you, you would take off like one of the blinker lights and you pull these wires out and you'd hook it up to like a car battery jumper, you know, you know like the thing. Use a car battery. Yeah. So we'd hook that up and all of a sudden the actuators would. They would.
- [57:47]
A
And all of it was stuff.
- [57:47]
B
And then. And this couldn't hold that much. Right. Like Mike and hold like £300. But that was like how we bring the money back. And so obviously if I'm sending you. If I just sent you smart.
- [57:55]
A
So you'd send like a container with the weed there, but the money would come back.
- [57:59]
B
Exactly. But in the meantime, because it's all credit, it's all a credit based system. Like the only way that I could have ever done and moved as much weed as I was moving is that if I was making guys have to cash it out as soon as I send it To New York or Baltimore or wherever they like. What's going to stop them from coming to California and doing it themselves? Right. How can I make it worth your while to not have to come to California and instead have a consistent steady supply of always having, you know, never running out. Right. And always having it at still such a fair price that, that you know like you don't need to come to California. You might have business, you might have a family, kids. Like you don't want to come fly out with your money and figure out a way to come back it back just because it's cheaper in California. How can I get you like a great supply of you know, whatever indoors you want. Then you have like some of the cheaper commercial indoors and light depths and outdoor. Like a perfect mix whatever you want and have it consistently brought to you to make sure that you don't come to California. But instead you always are dealing with me. That's gonna be credit and I'm getting it on credit anyway. So at least a lot of it. I mean of course there was, it got to the point where like so
- [58:57]
A
you, you basically so people understand you're giving people the drugs before the even pay you so that they are able to sell it first, make the money and then sell give you what they owe. Which is by the way the cartel business model as well. You know that.
- [59:09]
B
Yeah, I mean I, I, I think there's, you know, I do know that because it's interesting. I, I, I got in a situation when I was in my early 20s with these guys who at the time I didn't realize it but I mean obviously they were cartel affiliated and they had sent me a bunch of stuff that wasn't what it was supposed to be.
- [59:24]
A
Right.
- [59:25]
B
Like I went and reviewed it and looked at all the, what it was supposed to be before they loaded it up and it was all thick, decent, you know it's just like some like Mexican outdoor. It wasn't like it have seeds but it was, you know, it was just like commercial outdoor that was like blue dreams and like old green cracks and just AK47. Like old strains have been around a long time. People didn't really want.
- [59:45]
A
We're talking about cannabis.
- [59:46]
B
Yeah, yeah, just cannabis strains. But you know these weren't like the newest. Yeah, just like heady strains. Like this was just kind of very commercial outdoor but it was at such a cheap price that yeah sure, I'll take these on credit and I can get them mood for you. And of course when it showed up they were all not what they're supposed to be. I mean, they were all like, just man. I mean there was so much seeds in it and it was garbage. There was nothing I could do with it. No way I could sell it. And I realized at the time it's this. These guys plan to put me in debt to them.
- [60:14]
A
Yeah.
- [60:14]
B
Because I saw how they done this to a friend of mine. I never did this. It wasn't like my business model wasn't like how I can get people in debt to me and make sure that they don't ever pay off their bill and they're always dealing with me. It wasn't like that. It was like, how can I make it convenient for you to not have to come to California? Because I'm going to get you the same. Yeah.
- [60:28]
A
In your case, it's a positive, not a negative. They would do it. They would do it more. They would force you. But they would also, like, you know, if you go to them and ask them, you want to go do business with them and want to deal with cocaine, cocaine with them. For example, you're, you want to supply cocaine somewhere in America, they will send you cocaine or they'll give you cocaine on credit, but they eventually also send you fentanyl and say now you have to start and it's also on credit. And then you're forced to start selling fentanyl even though that wasn't your plan. Maybe you don't even know how to self. And oh, that's not. No for sure you want to be doing. And yes, that happens a lot.
- [61:00]
B
I'm totally, I'm certain of it because like, I mean I'm dealing with probably like the softer kind of cartel guys and I was like dealing with them. It was just like, you know, this early point in time in my 20s when I'm still trying to feel out which people to deal with, what connections to deal with, who. Who's worthwhile.
- [61:14]
A
Right. Did you sell that?
- [61:15]
B
Made, by the way, sell it. But I paid them off for it. You paid hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of losses on that. Because I knew what they were trying to do. I knew that they sent me garbage that they knew I wouldn't be able to sell. Because the whole plan was how they can, they can get me in debt to them in a way where this garbage, this garbage seated crap isn't going to be worth anything anyway. But so how can they take something that's already garbage and force it upon me, know that I'm never be able to sell it but then now I'm I'm owned by them. I'll never be able to pay it off.
- [61:44]
A
The next load is probably going to be fentanyl or something like that. Something that you never wanted to sell in the first place.
- [61:48]
B
I don't know about these guys. I don't think that's it. Like it was. There was never like any discussions of or like I think that they were like primarily weed guys. Like I'm sure that there's like tears in like the cartel structure of what, of who deals with what. And I don't get the. I never really got the vibe that these guys were like dealt with harder drugs necessarily. But they would be shocked. I hear you. That I've met and I'm sure that like maybe if they weren't then they totally are now because there's not money anymore, you know, like nobody's right.
- [62:15]
A
Yeah, I know.
- [62:16]
B
I'm sure that like things have changed for them. But at the time I could tell that it was, it was clearly like that was a ploy to get me in debt to them as early so
- [62:22]
A
they can get you to work for them and you. But you pay them off. And so that didn't happen. But okay, so. But you were doing the same thing, which was very smart in your own way. It wasn't. You weren't trying to get people to become indebted to you, but you were trying to make people be happy with the way that it was going. Right?
- [62:36]
B
Yeah. I mean it's like a logistics network. Like how can I, how can I make it so convenient for you that
- [62:40]
A
he'll never have to come to California?
- [62:43]
B
Exactly. And so it's so like I would obviously try to find ways like how can I to provide like the fairest prices, the highest, you know, quality of and like an array of what you're looking for. I mean it got to the point where I had like a private telegram channel and I would always be tape posting. I mean I guess it was like later on because eventually we got into using these FedEx stores and I don't want to like put the game out there too much because I'm sure that
- [63:04]
A
these people are still doing on this the FedEx. FedEx was one of the biggest distributors of cannabis from California when I was reporting on it a few years ago.
- [63:11]
B
Yeah. When. Well we. So we. Some partners of mine, these guys I got associating with and doing business with, they. They opened their own FedEx stores. And so they realized like if you pay FedEx like Premier overnight, make it look like it's going from a business to a business. They're so, like, they're. They're so prioritized in keeping your business and making you pay. Because, I mean, we'd be paying thousands of dollars per. Per package to get it overnight to the other side of the country. And I think that they're so prioritized to keep your business. Like FedEx is, you know, I mean, they're a publicly traded company. You know, their whole bottom line is like, how can they increase benefit for their shareholders if you're paying for, like, the highest tier of their service and large frequency? I don't think they even look at it. I'm sure that, like, the stuff that if you send it through FedEx and you put it on ground, then it's going to take five days. I'm sure there's some inspection. I mean, they're a private company. Well, I mean, they're publicly traded company. They're not the government. So they're not like usps. They can just open your package if they want to. But I think that when you're paying them, you know, when you're. When you're paying, you know, thousands of dollars just to ship the package, it's
- [64:13]
A
not in their interest to be looking what's inside that package. They just. They want to make money.
- [64:17]
B
Yeah, yeah, we end up. Ended up eventually. That was eventually where things moved. The trucks would still go on, but, you know, that. That's a process.
- [64:24]
A
So then you wait. Did you open FedEx stores?
- [64:27]
B
I didn't open them.
- [64:28]
A
We're using them.
- [64:28]
B
Yeah, I was using them. I knew some guys that own their own FedEx stores.
- [64:32]
A
And so at the peak of your business, how much weed were you shipping from California to the east coast or anywhere?
- [64:40]
B
Yeah, it was more just east coast eventually. I mean, once the FedEx thing came about, now it's like, we can get it. Now we don't have to worry about truck like, you know, using. I mean, we still sent the trucks to primarily, like Baltimore, Philadelphia area, which was like, where, like the majority of my network was and the people I knew. But yeah, between Baltimore, Philadelphia and. And a lot of stuff from Philadelphia then get taken up in New York. But with, you know, once you started doing the FedEx stuff, expanded the whole country. Because now it's like I don't have to worry about trying to put together a massive freight load. You might be a guy in Florida and you only want £50. But I continue that in one shipment. And it gets you overnight. And so, I mean, we had a whole way at FedEx where we'd put these packages together and each package could hold. I mean the way that they looked. And then as I said, I want to like assuming I don't, I don't want to blow the game up for these guys if they're still doing their thing. Right. But the way that these packages looked like their awkward shape, you would never would have thought that it was weed. We would have thought that it was because of like there are these long, elongated, kind of bizarre looking packages. You would have figured it had to been something, some just something different. You wouldn't.
- [65:41]
A
It's just like a poster kind of thing or like a photo like rolled up. Was it rolled up? I mean you were trying, you're trying to be vague.
- [65:49]
B
Yeah, sorry.
- [65:50]
A
It's trying to get you to rat.
- [65:52]
B
No. Yeah, definitely not that. I just don't know what I'm trying
- [65:55]
A
to, to get you to me where you understand.
- [65:57]
B
It was just they, they were just very different shape. There wasn't just like your stereotypical box. And so we would send these in three part packages.
- [66:02]
A
So.
- [66:03]
B
And sometimes if you, if you didn't have enough addresses, we would send FedEx and UPS on the same day. So now boom. We just got £100 to your house overnight.
- [66:09]
A
Oh, okay, so what a peak. How much?
- [66:12]
B
And like out of state, not California, because there's still like a lot of brokerings going on in California.
- [66:17]
A
All of it. Give me all of it. Like how much money were you making, how much were you selling and how much was yet being shipped across, across the country?
- [66:24]
B
I mean. Thousands of pounds a month.
- [66:26]
A
Thousands of pounds a month were being shipped across the country.
- [66:29]
B
Yeah, at least, at least 2,000 pounds a month probably being shipped across the country. And then this, all this all came
- [66:34]
A
out in your case there. Is there?
- [66:36]
B
Yeah, it all came out my case. I mean the feds, they, they, I mean they, they're. Yeah, they're well aware. I mean they seized, you know, a seven figure sum and they, they from you? I mean. Yeah, throughout the. Not, not specifically on me or from, you know, but it was, it was definitely evidence in the case.
- [66:51]
A
It was seven figures and more than a million.
- [66:53]
B
Yeah, I mean it was, it was, I think I got like something around 2 million in cash.
- [66:57]
A
In cash?
- [66:57]
B
Yeah, it was just re up money.
- [67:00]
A
It was just what.
- [67:01]
B
It was the money from like, it was just the money from one transaction. You know what I mean? Like from, I mean this was like if you'd sent like if I, I'd sent these guys, you know, 2000 pounds. And, and obviously, you know, if you're getting 2000 pounds and paying around, you know, 900 to 1200 a pound at that time, I think some of the higher end stuff would go 1500 then. I mean now the market's completely bottomed out. I'm sure this stuff probably only costs 500 today, but, but then, I mean it's probably around, you know, it's around $2 million.
- [67:28]
A
Holy.
- [67:29]
B
Yeah.
- [67:29]
A
And this is just from one transaction.
- [67:31]
B
Yeah, just one transaction.
- [67:32]
A
One ship on. And where. So you. Oh. Holy. And where, where do they find that money?
- [67:37]
B
So the crazy thing is, so they, we had, we, we'd sent out the flatbed trailer I was telling you about that, you know, we put like a, a classic car or something on it. And I remember I'd gave the guy Chris that, that I'd lived with that take me in when I was younger. I, I remember we put this like Jaguar on it and he thought it was like the coolest thing, like this James Bond kind of car. And I just told him he could have it. And we, you know, just put something else back on the, on the trailer for the money to come back kind of thing. And anyway, that trailer sent me about, we sent him. We, we'd sent out the trailer to go pick up the money from the last shipment we'd sent, which was probably some, you know, as I said, it's probably around 1500-2000 pounds. Whatever we could fit in four to five of those knack boxes all crated up and just sent out on the flat on, like on the tractor trailer. And I would never tell the guys the exact ETA of when the driver would be there. I mean, I would tell them what day ahead of time before he left. You know, like be at the warehouse because we had like warehouses rented all over, you know, Baltimore area, some in Philadelphia, New Jersey. And they were primarily just for places for these trucks to come in. You know, you can't, can't just be doing this in the backyard. You know, you gotta be able to back a truck into somewhere that has a door and be able to hide it from, hide what's going on. And so they were all this at the warehouse waiting for the to. I mean they had the money all vacuum sealed and put in these Mylar bags and they had that all ready for the, for, for the like the flatbed that could only carry like £300 or so. But it was really just something for, for them it was like a big something for you to have. In the meantime, While I try to get this out, I need to get the money to be able to get you another load. But I sent you here these £300 on the trailer that we really use just primarily for bringing the money back. And, and so anyway, at that point the, the, the feds. So I guess we're already on us. And they, somebody was cooperating and, and they knew about the shipment that was coming in. But the driver, he had hit some like, like, I don't know, some, some bad weather outside of like Pittsburgh coming across I80. And so I didn't tell anybody in Maryland. They just showed up at the warehouse thinking the truck was going to arrive that day. And that was the day the feds raided. So the truck is now like stranded in Pennsylvania trying to figure out what to do because he can't go to Maryland. But the thing is now that money was getting ready to be put on that truck. That was all what they had got because it was getting ready to be brought back.
- [69:48]
A
Oh, so that's the money they got?
- [69:49]
B
That was the money they got? Yeah, it was just the money that was coming back for the last load that been sent to them.
- [69:53]
A
I mean, that is, it's, it's an insane amount of money that you were making at the time. What were you. Tell me, like, what was your life like? What were you spending it on? I mean, honestly, I always ask this because it's always mind blowing and it's
- [70:04]
B
crazy because it's like it's all gone, you know, and, and in a lot of ways it's almost like a blessing. I know that sounds crazy, but I, I'd really become very deluded in my thinking because I had this whole like. And I think I justified a lot of it because of knowing what it was like to not have anything. I felt like I had to squeeze every last drop out of this while I could do it. And then in just, in that in itself, you become very like money centric and very obsessed with it and, and, and you think that you're not. But like, looking back, obviously that was all I cared about. All I cared about is how I can make as much money as possible. I'm sacrificing most of like the good times in my early 20s that I could be traveling the world or doing any of the things I'd want to be doing because. And I would have vacations ruined every time I did travel the, you know, go somewhere because I'd be so focused on trying to make sure that, you know, everything was running seamlessly as it's supposed to be.
- [70:49]
A
Right.
- [70:49]
B
And so I become.
- [70:51]
A
So, yeah, let me just say something here is that. That if going back to you, you're fitting in school too, right? You're. When. When you go through that experience of not feeling that you fit and part of it was because of not having the same kind of money that other people in your school had, then you become obsessed with making money so that you can sort of, I suppose, and it was like, fill up this gap that you had when you were younger.
- [71:15]
B
Yeah, I think a lot of that at first, like, was more about knowing that I'd never had any other chance to like, make that kind of money before. And then that became an easy justification for letting it rule my life, you know, and, and, and I was really living like, very like, devoid, like, you know, like, of. Of any kind of, like, purpose and meaning in my life. Like, really using a lot of drugs at this point. Oh, you were far harder drugs. You know, it was. I got. I was using a lot of ketamine. Like, I really, really into ketamine. And, and you know, I was just like, every day. Oh, yeah, I was probably doing every day. You know what I mean?
- [71:48]
A
Shots or what. How are you.
- [71:49]
B
I mean, it's just, you know, I was snorting ketamine, but I was just doing a lot of it and. And it just became like, what did
- [71:55]
A
it do to you?
- [71:56]
B
I think because I was probably just so stressed out a lot of times trying to deal with all this stuff and juggling all the time. It just totally checked me out. I don't know. It's like, it's like psychedelic Xanax, you know, like, it's, it has a very, like, psychedelic and profound aspect to it.
- [72:10]
A
It's what Matthew Barry died from.
- [72:12]
B
Yeah, well, I think, I think, yeah, he drowned. But, yeah, which, because. Yeah, but it's interest. Bizarre drug because it's like one of the. It's like very hard to overdose on it actually, because it actually elevates your heart rate even though it puts you under. And that's why it's like so commonly used by paramedics and like battlefield medics and stuff like that. But it's very addictive, you know, it has some serious chemical hooks. And I, and I, and I, I was just. I don't know, I, I. Because I've become so obsessed with making money and it being the main driving force in my life and that. I, I just really, I don't know, like, a lot of my relationships, they were, you know, I didn't Take. I didn't value them the way that I should have. Everything was always quantified to a dollar amount. And I thought because, like, I was giving a lot of it away and generous and always giving homeless people money and always buying the dinner tab, that all of a sudden that made me a good guy. But it didn't, you know, and it's bizarre. It's like one of those things. I realize now that, like, the only form of currency that really matters is, like, attention and time, you know, because, like, if you can't notice something, if you don't have the attention for it, you can't love it. And if you don't have the time, you know, to spend on something, you can't love it. And, yeah, I was just totally. I just feel very focused on. On, like, this illusion of things that didn't matter and I don't know. And, like, I didn't think I was, like, materialistic, but I was clearly materialistic and. And I was really unhappy.
- [73:39]
A
Yeah, I'm sure. Yeah. And your relationships become transactional, right?
- [73:42]
B
Yeah, absolutely. And also, you also kind of. You're, like, setting yourself up all the time to be, like, taken advantage of by people because people only look at you for what you have or what they can get from you or what. And, like, you're valuing yourself that same way. And so, yeah, it was just. Yeah. I mean, I certainly had more money than I knew what to do with and didn't exactly invest it all that well. And so here's what it is. I mean, I feel like I'm far better off for it now.
- [74:07]
A
Yeah. I think that people looking from the outside, if they look at your story, they think, wow, boy, that must have been such an adventure. Must have been the best years of your life. You had all this cash, you're running this big operation, you're probably, like, super cool amongst your friends, but you're portraying it at actually quite sad time of your life. Yeah, in a way.
- [74:25]
B
Yeah. Yeah, no worries. I. I mean, looking back on it, there was obviously a lot of fun times, a lot of stuff. But I mean, I look back on. I mean, I'm far healthier and a better mindset today not having that. You know, I'm not saying there aren't a lot of people with money that are. They're great people, but I've definitely noticed my experience that, like, it does. It's not like, it definitely takes away, like, you can only focus so much attention on certain things and. And, yeah, it's just. I don't know it because I become so obsessed with it. And I felt. And a lot of it's like that survival instinct, not just because of what I've been through before, but because when, you know you're doing something that's only going to last for so long, you know that, like, you're like running on the hamster wheel, right?
- [75:04]
A
Yeah, yeah, exactly.
- [75:05]
B
You got. And you got to get everything you can out of it. And. And so it's like I was really sacrificing a lot of things. I should have been enjoying my life that didn't. That weren't so focused on that.
- [75:14]
A
Did your parents know this was happening that were. You were working on what you were?
- [75:17]
B
Yeah, they didn't know to the extent. Right. Like, it's not like my parents knew that I was, you know, obviously, as I started becoming more independent and was taking care of myself. Taking care of myself in the sense of like, like, you know, obviously like a lot of the drug use stuff wasn't taking care of myself, but the, you know, like, just being, like, independent and like, independently wealthy, it was a lot easier for me to, like, reconnect my parents. And as I got older, you know, you start to understand, like, what I was doing at the time and when I was a kid, that had led that to them sending me to these wilderness programs.
- [75:50]
A
Right. What were you doing to them as well?
- [75:51]
B
Yeah, yeah, like, what I'd done to them, what I put them through. And so, like, obviously I wanted to reconnect with them and we. We became a lot closer. But, like, thank you. I think in their mind, right. During that time, my early 20s, they thought I'd moved to California, started growing weed out there, had like, a legitimate company and was just, you know, it was a part of this new fledgling industry.
- [76:06]
A
Right. And. And they had no qualms about that. They thought it was happy he's making money.
- [76:11]
B
Yeah, I don't think that. I don't think it was like, their ideal. Like, it wasn't like, oh, man, like, my parents. My parents probably never even smoked weed. I know my dad never has. But I think it was like one of those things where it wasn't what they necessarily wanted for me, but it was so much better than what they thought they were going to get out of me. Me at some point. You know, like, by the time I was. I was like, really getting in trouble my teenage years and, like, it really looked like, you know, like I was going nowhere and, you know, might not live to see 20 kind of thing. Right. And which is a common thing. A lot of those kids I was hanging out with before, I'd had that kind of arrested development taken out of, you know, taken to those programs and was kind of removed those situations. A lot of those kids have all died from opiate use. And so I can really. I can easily, easily see what could have happened, and I could easily see what my parents were worried about happening. And I think that. Yeah, I don't know. So I. As I got older, I at least started to realize that. And I also came to understand how valuable relationships with your family are, you
- [77:05]
A
know, and so, yeah, yeah, your mom is incredibly important to where you are at these today. And I want to talk about that as well, but. Okay, so how did it all implode?
- [77:15]
B
I mean, this is going to sound really bizarre and, like, I don't know how much you're gonna believe this or if anyone's gonna believe this. Maybe anyone who's experienced 55 Meo DMT will maybe understand this and explain.
- [77:28]
A
So 5 Meo DMT is a drug that comes from frogs in Mexico mainly.
- [77:34]
B
Yeah, yeah. Sonoran Desert toad.
- [77:35]
A
Yeah.
- [77:36]
B
So I had. And I know this sound really bizarre. It's just the timing's really crazy. And like, anyone who's gone through this, like, it's. It's a very profound experience and it's just really interesting that.
- [77:45]
A
So it's a psychedelic substance.
- [77:46]
B
Yeah, it's psychedelic substance that. That. I mean, other people have different experiences. I had a really traumatic experience. It's very, very powerful, psychedelic. Having any sort of, like, toxins and, like, bad stuff in your system. And I'm in Vegas way longer than I was supposed to be because I just couldn't leave and just doing all these drugs, taking ecstasy and doing cocaine and ketamine every day. And. Anyway, I find I knew I had to come back to this thing, so I flew back the day before. And so I've got all this bad stuff in my system and I'm just. My intentions aren't right. And I went into this and I had an awful experience. I mean, like, I was, like, writhing on this guy's floor in pain and. But it was crazy. Like, I had this, like, sudden awareness afterwards, like, the next two weeks that, like, my life was about to dramatically change and that I needed to. I needed to get my affairs in order and needed to get myself clean. I needed to stop using drugs. I need to stop doing what I was doing. I needed to get everything together and I totally ignored. All I did was continue to do more and More ketamine to kind of like check out from it. But like now like the light switch was on. Like I knew that something was going to happen. And ironically enough the dominoes started falling right after that. I mean, like, look, I, I was obviously living in house cards anyway. It's not like I'm sitting here saying that this necessarily really caused it, but it, it is just strange timing.
- [79:07]
A
You know, a lot of people talk about that, right? Yeah. People who have done not just ayahuasca as well, any sort of psychedelic.
- [79:15]
B
Yeah. But definitely like the, the dimethyltryptamine, like DMT and 5me with DMT. Like anyone who's done it, like a lot of people, like it's, it's like a life changing thing. Like, I don't know, it's, it's, it's dramatic. It's a very dramatic experience. And, and, and, and just, I don't know, like it's coincidentally, it's just bizarre. Like right after that happened and obviously I went into it the worst intentions. I was like, I'm probably at my absolute low. Right. Like the lowest. It was just like, like my like quality of being a human being. Right after that happened, the dominoes started falling and people get sort of started getting raided, but I'm like totally ignoring it. And it wasn't like directly people I was dealing with directly, but it was like people down the line. And so everyone thought, oh fine, we'll just stop dealing with them and we'll just go and deal with, you know, continue to do our thing and, and nothing's happening, it's not a big deal. And then, and then, yeah, I mean it probably wasn't six months later. The, you know, they did, the feds did like a. I think they rated like 15 places all at the same time.
- [80:12]
A
Where were you at the time?
- [80:13]
B
I was with my family in Portugal, ironically.
- [80:16]
A
You were on vacation?
- [80:17]
B
I was on vacation, yeah. I just, we just gotten there.
- [80:19]
A
And was it sort of one of the first vacations with your family that you were taking?
- [80:22]
B
Yeah, it was probably cool in the first, like all of us together, like my sister and my mom, my dad and I.
- [80:27]
A
Had you invited them to that?
- [80:28]
B
Well, I think we discussed it probably, I don't know, maybe like nine months prior. I think we'd like gotten the tickets and like planned out like the reservations and where we're going to stay and like what. Wherever we're going to go.
- [80:40]
A
It's funny that it's my country. Portugal. Yeah. And so, okay, so you get there and it Was you had just landed
- [80:46]
B
or a couple of the other day. And then had been. Had found out on the phone that. That, like, all these places have been raided.
- [80:54]
A
Who called you?
- [80:55]
B
Chris had.
- [80:56]
A
So that was your partner?
- [80:57]
B
Yeah. Well, this was interesting. It's kind of like I felt like this kind of, like, obligation to him for a really long time. And so there's some stuff I didn't realize were going on in the meantime. I. I had felt. Because, like, I was homeless and I didn't have anything. And Chris had taken me in. I had always felt this kind of, like, obligation to him. And sometimes it's interesting, like, how. Like, the. Like, sometimes when the power dynamic switches in relationships. How that affects people. Because they don't look at it necessarily the same way you do. You know, I'm sure that, like, I was like, a charity case, you know. And so I think. Yeah, Sorry.
- [81:32]
A
No. So you think you went from, like, being a charity case. To being sort of in more of a position of power, right?
- [81:37]
B
Yeah. Now it's like I'm providing, like, all this. Like, I. When I. I kind of consolidated my network in. In. In Baltimore and in, you know, Virginia, Baltimore, New York, the whole, like, east coast area. Like, I. That I was in a lot of. Like, obviously we're sending the FedEx stuff in other places. And we still send some of the FedEx stuff there. But like, that pre. Predominantly, like, the freight that we were sending out, we'd send to Baltimore. And, like, I'd kind of, like, made him the point guy. I was like, listen, I'm gonna make you, like, I run all of my people, like, through you, you know, And. And so, more or less, right. Like, he's now in this position where he's distributing thousands of pounds to all these people that weren't necessarily his network. But they gotta go through him. And I'm essentially, like, telling them, like, look, all these people that I deal with. And I'm charging this price. I'm going to give it to you at a point cheaper. So all you got to do is take it, deal with the inventory, get it to them, collect the money back. And, you know, you're going to make a point on every single one. And so, you know, it's a, you know, point that you. Points on top of what you're already making. I mean, it was. It was a lot of money. And I didn't realize this at the time, but he's taking this money and he's coming out to California on his own. And so he sends back and thinks he's going to send his own freight. And so long story short, I didn't know this until later on I get my discovery and I really see what happened to my case. But he had, he had sent this like, freight from, I guess from somewhere in California that had, I guess it must have been, it wasn't even anything crazy. I mean, it must have been like a hundred, it might have been like 200 something pounds. And it got stopped by Homeland Security in Tennessee. And he never told me, never said, hey, like, you know, I had this issue, I sent this stuff out, right? Because obviously you want me to know, I'm gonna look at it like, dude, what like you, you're doing this one thing if you're doing this with your own money. But like we got like a, you know, seven figure tab right now, right?
- [83:22]
A
Yeah.
- [83:23]
B
And yeah, anyway, so he, he, he, he had sent that out and it got popped. And so obviously he's getting investigated, of course.
- [83:29]
A
Yeah, yeah, for sure.
- [83:31]
B
And I'm still sending him stuff. We're in direct communication and I mean. And anyway, so that was like one of those things that kind of like led to this all happening. But he was the one that, that had called me and told me that, that, you know, like, we got an
- [83:44]
A
issue like all our places are being.
- [83:46]
B
Yeah, it's got raided. You know, Fed's got all the money and you should get an attorney.
- [83:51]
A
And then you.
- [83:51]
B
It's always a bad, bad thing when your friends are telling you, like, why do I need an attorney? What do you mean they caught you
- [83:58]
A
and then you did, you got an attorney?
- [84:00]
B
I did, yeah. I didn't even tell my. Until you think he, he all testified against me at the end of the day.
- [84:04]
A
Oh, he did. He went in court and testified again.
- [84:06]
B
They all did. Yeah.
- [84:07]
A
It's all right, Everyone who worked with
- [84:09]
B
you, let's see, there was, I mean, everyone who worked for me. A lot of people didn't get caught up in my indictment. Right. The only people that caught up my indictment are the people I've worked with in Maryland directly. Right. You know what I mean? Because I mean, I went to trial, so it was the, the case they, they was the people they, they were investigating in Maryland because it was like the Maryland Fed. Like, it was, you know, I was DEA out of Maryland and really, it was kind of bizarre. It was really like a task force kind of situation. It was like the DEA working with like these local county sheriffs that had like a drug task force because they're on i95, which is like a big drug corridor. And they obviously get a lot of federal funding to. To combat drugs. And they. They decided that going after us for cannabis was a priority.
- [84:45]
A
Right? So, okay, so. So then you're in Portugal with your family. You get this call from Chris, you contact a lawyer and.
- [84:52]
B
Well, no, not until I got back into the United States. For my. My mind, I'm thinking this, like, they're my. Might be a long time before I can get back in the States. And I don't have the. I don't right now. Like, I. I'm not in a. Most people that are planning on fleeing the country, if they're already out of the country when it happens, they're like, oh, man, cool. I'm already here.
- [85:08]
A
Yeah.
- [85:08]
B
You know, but I was on a family vacation. It's not like I brought and money with me to be able to survive as a fugitive. So I'm thinking in my mind, I got to get back as soon as possible and figure out. I got to figure out how I can get my affairs in order and get all my money together and release what can be salvaged and what's remaining. And we're gonna, you know, I gotta get out of the country.
- [85:27]
A
So where did you fly to?
- [85:29]
B
I flew right back into. I. I believe. Yeah, I went straight back to San Francisco, you know, flew into sfo, but I mean, I flew back and had a layover somewhere. I couldn't remember. I can't remember, like, where I came through.
- [85:41]
A
Yeah, I think.
- [85:41]
B
I think I came through Dulles. It might have been where the flight came back.
- [85:44]
A
Were you afraid that maybe a little bit your name was going to be at the.
- [85:47]
B
I definitely was. I definitely was afraid that, you know, they might. Might arrest me then and there, but I had no issues. You know, I made it right through. And it was kind of one of those things where I could. No one had else been arrested. This is the weird thing, right? This is how, you know, the feds are building a case is like if they raid a bunch of people and take all these things, right? And you have to understand these guys, I might have not been selling anything other than cannabis, but these guys were selling other drugs. Not necessarily like your stereotypical hard drugs, like cocaine and like heroin or fentanyl. But, you know, like, a lot of these guys are like people who go to, you know, as I said, like fish and disco biscuits, concerts, you know, it's a drug. A lot of people do drugs there, right? So you got. You got like all the extra ecstasy people and ketamine. And lsd. Lsd, They've got lots of lsd. Right. And that's a drug that the Feds normally take really seriously.
- [86:29]
A
Yeah, very.
- [86:30]
B
You know, and, and so when they raided these guys houses, they, they found not just cannabis and, and money, but I mean, I think one guy had like a gram or two lsd.
- [86:40]
A
Wow.
- [86:41]
B
And I mean he never went to prison, but, but I mean they found a lot of drugs and so like other things that would be, you would think, would have been higher priority than cannabis because it was interesting how like all these guys only had to plead guilty to the cannabis case. And I think a lot of that had to do with the fact that I went to trial and like they wanted to. The cannabis was their big priority because at the end of the day, in the Fed's mind, it's like the cannabis laws haven't changed. Right. The Cole memorandum might have came around with Obama in like the Obama years to legally protect like licensed cannabis operators that, that are following the state laws, but like we're not doing that. I mean it's, it might have been like a, an attempt of something I was trying to do, but at this point, obviously we've steered far away, farther away from that. And, and in the Fed's eyes, right, like the, the cannabis is just, until recently was a Schedule 1. Right. It's a higher priority drug than cocaine or fentanyl because you can get those still in medicinal manners. I mean, when I was first fighting my case, that was only, I think it was only a year afterwards that they had actually upped fentanyl from a Schedule 3 to a Schedule 2.
- [87:40]
A
Yeah.
- [87:40]
B
Because it used to be very low.
- [87:41]
A
I don't think most people know that. Us.
- [87:42]
B
Yeah.
- [87:43]
A
But at one point, yeah, it was, it was, yeah, Schedule three.
- [87:46]
B
It was the same, same as like Tylenol Cody, you know.
- [87:49]
A
Yeah. It's crazy. Okay, so you then came to the then. Okay, so you got sephard. You get your affairs in order. You're basic. You're basically trying to do what, you're getting the money.
- [87:58]
B
Well, yeah, I'm trying to get money. And now nobody wants to deal with me, right. Because now I'm like a, I'm a pariah, right. Because everyone looks at me like, you know, all these people that I'm dealing with, I think that they're my friends. I think that we have this like some sort of like, you know, loyalty or fealty to one another, but I mean really it's just a money making enterprise and now the gig's up Right. Like, we've made all this money together, but now I'm a liability, so.
- [88:22]
A
Of course. Because you're being investigated.
- [88:23]
B
So they're investigating by the feds? Yeah, absolutely. Conveniently enough, a lot of them are holding a lot of. A lot of my money.
- [88:30]
A
Right.
- [88:30]
B
And so, like, these. Yeah, so these guys with the trailer. Because the trailer never got popped, Right. We sent it up to, like, somewhere near Boston and then drop off that weed and pick up a bunch of money coming back, and now all of a sudden, the trailer got popped, too, and.
- [88:42]
A
Whoa.
- [88:42]
B
Could never happen. Come on.
- [88:44]
A
Yeah.
- [88:44]
B
You know what I mean? Like, it was never my discovery. That never happened.
- [88:46]
A
So you never got that money?
- [88:47]
B
No, of course not.
- [88:48]
A
Right.
- [88:48]
B
But, like, these guys. I mean, they're looking at it like, all right, well, the gig's up, and, you know, he's made all this money, and we're not gonna be able to work with him anymore, and we got to take what we can get. I mean, that's just the nature of the. I guess the nature of the game.
- [88:58]
A
But you still had. You were able to get some money together?
- [89:01]
B
Yeah, I mean, it wasn't. I mean, there wasn't. I'd certainly taken a lot of losses through all this stuff, but, I mean, we've been doing this long enough that there. There was definitely money left over. That was a priority for me to want to get back into the country before. Before leaving.
- [89:13]
A
Right. And you're not going to tell me where you was hiding?
- [89:15]
B
I mean, it was. It wasn't like hiding in any kind of, like, crazy places. It was in, you know, rent an apartment and put it in somebody else's name and, you know, just leave it in there and. And never really, you know, I move some furniture in, but never really spend much time there. I mean, that was, like, a common thing. We had stash houses for weed, stash houses for. For places to put money. It wasn't like. It wasn't like, buried in some crazy
- [89:39]
A
place or anything like that in the woods under a big rock. Okay, so then. And then. And then you. And then you fled, and then you decided you.
- [89:47]
B
Yeah, that was. It took a lot of time to try to get the money together that I wanted to get, and nobody's been arrested yet, and things are getting weird, and so. But, like, they. But it's getting weird because there's, like, a lack of action, you know, and so obviously, this is, like, the whole grand jury stuff's all going on at this point, but I don't really know that. And I I contact this attorney. He was, he was one of the guys who represented El Chapo. And just, I'm not trying to relate myself.
- [90:16]
A
Which one. Do you know his name?
- [90:17]
B
Eduardo Ballaraiso.
- [90:18]
A
Oh, wow. He's a well known attorney. Yeah, that's right.
- [90:22]
B
So I contacted him and I didn't even tell him my name.
- [90:24]
A
And so you contacted him and said, what do you, I, here's my case,
- [90:27]
B
potentially might have a problem. I want to figure out if you can find out if I do kind of thing. And so I, I didn't, I wouldn't even tell my name. And I met him and I paid his, paid like a $50,000 retainer. And, and then he went and went and talked, I guess the connections, people he had and was able to figure out that there was, I mean, obviously he's not doing this, I want to preface this with he's not doing this under any sort of form or fashion of trying to prevent me from doing what I'm supposed to do.
- [90:55]
A
He's trying to represent you.
- [90:56]
B
He's trying to represent me. Right. I'm not telling this guy, hey, I want to know if I'm, if I should go on the run or not.
- [91:01]
A
Right.
- [91:02]
B
There was no explicit thing like that. I just wanted to figure out if, if he can figure out my name, then I know I have a problem. And so he calls me back after a week or two, after I, you know, I paid him this retainer and says, well, you know, there's, there isn't, there is a sealed indictment underway and, and there's only one California resident on it. And so, like, if, you know, as long as, if you're not Jonathan Wall and you probably got nothing to worry about. Yeah. Really? He said, yeah, yeah. So that, that was, yeah.
- [91:31]
A
And he said, yep, that's, you know,
- [91:33]
B
what, what do we do next kind of thing, you know. Yeah, because obviously I'm not going to tell him that I'm, I'm, you know, should I go on the run? You know, something like that, you know, but obviously now I knew, I knew that they had enough information, they knew what was going on to know that it's not just these guys in Maryland that they know where it's coming from. And so at that point, you know, I moved out of my house immediately and got rid of all my phones and kind of really started living like a ghost. I had like a, like a, like a surf fan, like one of those Volkswagen West Valleys I'm practically living out of now because I'm, you know, I'm worried at any point in time. And crazy enough, I mean, it's just crazy how sometimes like the synchronicities of things work out. Because I'm hanging out with this friend of mine a lot that has like a, he has like a little shop like ceramics and, and like car, like auto shop that works on Volkswagens. I just known him through that, that, that was in Santa Cruz. And his neighbor, his neighbor had like a vodka distillery and like his own vodka distillery in this like little commercial business park. And it just so happened that he, his mom lived with him and she was Guatemalan. And not only had he spent time in Guatemala, but he had dated an attorney down there when he lived there for years and he knew how to get passports and he'd go down and introduce me to all people I needed to know. And so obviously you can't take a bunch of cash across the border. You can't just go into Mexico with your life savings in duffel bags and just walk across San Ysidro and be fine. How am I going to get my life savings and what I plan to live off of?
- [93:04]
A
You actually can. You know, there's no. I've, I've, I've tried that. We, we followed a, a gun trafficker once going south with guns from the United States across the San Diego border into Mexico. You can drive and nobody stops you.
- [93:19]
B
Well, I hear you, but there's a chance still, so I didn't want to take that chance. And plus, you know, I'm, you know, it's pretty dangerous to be walking around Central America and Mexico with that kind of.
- [93:29]
A
Right, you don't want to. Yeah.
- [93:30]
B
So I went, took it all and, and got a bunch of check. I went contact the attorney ahead of time in Guatemala. And so I had, I had like already set up my new identity and bought like a bearer shares corporation down there. It's called a bearer shares corporation. So it's like you buy a business that's already been set up in someone else's name and if you have the like, certificate for the bearer of shares, it's your business now. It's a shell company, right. And so now you can open bank accounts, do whatever you want with it. And so now that I have the, the business name of this, I went to some contacts that I'd had and brought them a lot of valuables and cash and had them write out all these checks and, you know, all these checks written out to this business. And I know that the checks are going to expire in, in, I think it's like 90 days was what it was like if like a check from the United States internationally, this would be checked. This would be cashed in like a Guatemalan bank. That has to be, you know, after the date that it's written on. It has to be. You can't try to cash it 90 days later or after 90 days. It's like the threshold. And so I didn't want to be in a situation where now I'm a fugitive overseas and these expire and I gotta like contact these guys and be like, hey, you know that cash I gave you with that check, Can I send you back the old check and got you a new one? And so I had all these checks written out for different dates throughout times that I knew would be like a safe amount to cash, always under 10,000. So it's like I got a portfolio full of all these checks and a cryptocurrency thumb drive and, well, and went, we went right across the border and. Oh, I forgot I should also tell you how I went. I didn't, I didn't leave on my passport either. I had a. Obviously you can't put this friend on blast like that. But I had a friend that had kind of owed me a serious favor. He had gotten kidnapped in Baltimore from parking in the wrong place one night. And he paid his ransom. And I'd always use his fake id when I was younger. That's just like, to get in the bars and, you know, buy alcohol and stuff like that. And, and I asked him, I mean, I come to him like, you owe me kind of thing. But I know that he was well aware that, that, I mean, he'd been kidnapped in this crazy situation in Baltimore there. He had, he, he didn't want to pay for parking at this warehouse we had. And, and he wasn't really involved like the business, he's just like a childhood friend. And the warehouse had like a bunch of music stuff in it. And like he would go there and like play guitar and play drums. I got all this, like, because we had just a cool place to hang out and do stuff. Sure, yeah. We're using it to, you know, unload trucks. But how often is that really happening? You know, we gotta, you know, use other, you know, it was always a good idea to like, try to get other people that were already involved or in the net. Like involved enough to kind of know what's going on. Yeah, but maybe not like directly participating to maybe be tenants or hang out these wear out like the warehouse or do stuff. Because then other People in. The neighbors see people going back in there and other stuff's going on and they don't. They're not going to suspect. That's weird. Like, I noticed that these guys only come here about once a month and they pull a truck in and then they back all these cars in and they leave. We don't see them again once a month. And so anyway, he, he. This warehouse is in Baltimore and some. It's not really in the best area and it. I don't know. So I know I've kind of gone on a tangent to get away from it, but the story is so crazy that it's almost like worth telling, like how I ended up with this passport. So anyway, he, he didn't want to pay for like the $5 a night parking to be right in the back of the warehouse. Instead he wanted, he's like, drives like at the time, it's like a brand new like red little sports car, like a Volkswagen like R32 GTI or something like that. And he, he decided to park on the other side of MLK Boulevard and walk at like 10 o' clock at night. And so as soon as he gets out of the car and he's like grabbing his like art easel out of the back of the car in like West Baltimore, these kids come up to him and stick a gun in his chest and they try to, they try to carjack him, but turns out his car stick. So they can't dry stick. Yeah. So they end up holding, you know, they end up holding him at gunpoint, driving around the city all night, calling everyone he knows to pay to get money.
- [97:11]
A
Yeah.
- [97:12]
B
So.
- [97:12]
A
And you guys ended up paying, of course.
- [97:14]
B
Yeah. It was craziest thing. They, the kid, I'm the, I'm the one like negotiating, dealing with the kid on the phone. We don't know what happened. We were thinking that something happened with the warehouse and there's like a way bigger issue on our hands. I mean, not that it's an. I mean the main issue is him and him getting hurt. But we're thinking that I also, this is like correlated to the warehouse because we knew he was there there, but completely unrelated turns out. Right. And so anyway, he's getting driven around at night with this gun at his head and he pays ransom. But we're trying to negotiate, which is
- [97:40]
A
how much, by the way.
- [97:41]
B
It's like 1200 bucks.
- [97:42]
A
Okay.
- [97:42]
B
It's like, you know, it's nothing in comparison of like what, what it could have been and what we would have paid. Obviously, to get him back. And at any rate, the kid that I'm dealing with, I mean, they ended up. These kids were like, all, like, juveniles. I mean, they're like 13, 15. I think one was like, 17 years old to kidnap them. Oh, they were kids. Just. Just kids. Right. And so it was crazy because the one I'm dealing with on the phone, I mean, I could not make this up. He told me to call him Ass Wipe. That's literally what he told me to call him. That was his name, right? That's a guy that I'm dealing with. His handle, his moniker, and that we're negotiating this ransom with. And we.
- [98:16]
A
We.
- [98:17]
B
He directs us to go and put the money on the corner of Lombard and Cary street in Baltimore. So he tells us to go get these black liquor store. The, you know, like the. Like the black plastic bags they give you for. Yeah, alcohol isn't supposed to hide what's in it, but, like, you obviously know that it's that when you see the black bag. Anyway, he told us these black bags put the 600 and 600 in inside of them and then tape on the outside for ass. What? I swear to God, couldn't make it up.
- [98:44]
A
And.
- [98:45]
B
And anyway, so we drop them off,
- [98:46]
A
and I was like, straight out of the wire.
- [98:48]
B
Oh, yeah, no, I know. That's why I figured you'd appreciate it. So I was like, I got to have to, like. I have to explain to you, like, how. How I ended up with this guy's passport. And so anyway, the. They let him go. They keep his phone. And. And yeah, the whole thing was wild. What was crazy is that the police kind of got involved in a little bit because I guess he called his parents first. His parents didn't believe it, and they went to the police. And the police are like, oh, no, your kid's trying to extort you for drug money. And. And so I guess eventually he had to go talk to the police, and they didn't really believe the situation. And then it might have been like a week later they called him him. And they had a very similar crime that occurred, but these two people had gotten killed inside of a car. And apparently these two girls had gotten killed. And. And I guess they caught the kids and he had to go to a lineup and the same people. So it was crazy, you know, I mean, it was like. It was. Wow. Obviously it must have been a really scary experience for him, you know, and at the same time, like, to, like, see how close it could have become to.
- [99:44]
A
That's crazy.
- [99:44]
B
Yeah. It was wild. So anyway. So anyway.
- [99:46]
A
Wow. So this is the guy you guys of.
- [99:49]
B
I'm not gonna say we look identical, but it's close enough where I think, like, you know, like, you know, you're just another widow and Mexico, another way they look at it.
- [99:59]
A
So you drove, you drove then. So you drove down, you flew.
- [100:02]
B
I walked across then because I didn't want to fly out of the United States on his passport, using his passport across into Mexico and then I would use it to fly from. So we, we walked in from like into Tijuana and flew the Tijuana airport, which is a lot of Americans do anyway, because it's a lot cheaper flights if you're flying international, if you, like already live in Southern California, most people, a lot of people are going to the Tijuana airport before they fly out of San Diego. And so we go walk across. You know, my friend's neighbor comes with me and we, at any rate, we fly to Mexico City, then we fly from Mexico City to Tapachula. And he's like, dude, don't worry, I know exactly how we're going to be able to get you into Guatemala. And it'll look like if they ever figure out I have been there, I
- [100:42]
A
figured I've done a story on immigration for intelligence. It was actually the death train. It was the first story we done on immigration here. It was about the.
- [100:49]
B
Because that's like where the, that's where they all have to come get off and try to get extorted and all types of crazy, terrible stuff happen.
- [100:54]
A
So that is just across the border from Guatemala. And that, that porting process, I already, I, we, we did that. Yeah.
- [100:59]
B
It's a crazy thing.
- [101:00]
A
It's open, completely open. You can go back and forth between Mexico and Guid right there.
- [101:05]
B
So he went and walked across the bridge.
- [101:06]
A
Yeah, I did.
- [101:07]
B
And so I went down by, like, you know, we. Down by. Go down by the river.
- [101:10]
A
Yeah.
- [101:11]
B
And they have like these guys on these like little boats that they bring
- [101:14]
A
the migrants from Guatemala into Mexico.
- [101:17]
B
Yeah. Never south, really. They're always bringing them north. And then when they go south, I don't know if this was going on when you were there, but when I was there in 2019, there's like the largest Walmart I've ever seen in my life. And it is like, it is not even in Tapachula. It is between the airport, which is already south of Tapachula, and the border. Because the thing is, in, in Guatemala they have like, really high import taxes. And so, like, all Your little like tiendas they have. They get all of their, like most of their stuff from Mexico and it's all smuggled in.
- [101:45]
A
Yeah.
- [101:45]
B
And so like you have these guys in these little rafts and they're like made out of like the inner tube tires of. Of 18 wheelers.
- [101:50]
A
That's right.
- [101:51]
B
And. And they got their stick and they go across. Yeah, totally. They bring the migrants north and they. And they're bringing like toilet paper and Coca Cola and South. South. And so I don't know, I probably paid a guy like, I can't remember how he. Pesos.
- [102:03]
A
It's probably like $2.
- [102:04]
B
Yeah, it was like the equivalent of like two, $2.
- [102:05]
A
Because the. The trip across the border is like five minutes. Minutes.
- [102:09]
B
It wasn't a long trip at all. You know, I was. I was stuck waiting in that little village on the other side longer than I was on the boat.
- [102:14]
A
That is insane. And meanwhile in your pocket you have a crypto, a thumb drive. Thumb drive with a ton of bitcoin and.
- [102:22]
B
And a crazy amount of checks in this backpack. And I probably kept. I probably had like a hundred thousand dollars on me and like in. In just 100 bills, you know, this is not. Doesn't take up that much space.
- [102:30]
A
So you have hundreds of thousands of dollars. Oh, no, even more millions.
- [102:34]
B
Yeah, definitely. Somewhere. I mean, at the time, bitcoin wasn't worth what it is today. And.
- [102:40]
A
Okay, give me an more or less an idea.
- [102:42]
B
I don't know. I knew you were gonna ask this.
- [102:44]
A
No, I know.
- [102:45]
B
Of course I know, I know, I know. I mean, we're talking. I mean, it wasn't anywhere near the kind of money that I'd made or what I'd had or what I'd even should have been able to leave with because there's. I had. Eventually there was. Came a point in time where it's like, I gotta get out of the country before I can stick around just hanging out in the van and in Santa Cruz, hoping they don't find me. Because I'm trying to get all. Get every money, Every bit of money that I can get back. Right. And so it was probably somewhere in the ballpark of maybe, I don't know, it was over a million dollars, but it wasn't. It wasn't over three. You know, somewhere between there.
- [103:16]
A
Somewhere between one and three.
- [103:19]
B
You know, in my mind I'm like, this is not enough. Like, how am I gonna live as
- [103:23]
A
a. Yeah, because that's what you were spending in a month.
- [103:25]
B
Yeah. You know what I mean? Like I've gotten so, like, acclimated to just wasteful spending and having no, like, comprehension on what a dollar's really worth.
- [103:35]
A
Right.
- [103:35]
B
That. But yeah, I was like. I mean, at some point, you know, it came time that I had to. Had to leave before I could just stick around forever.
- [103:42]
A
What's the town in Guatemala? I'm trying to remember what it's called. So it's Upachula, and then you go to Guamal, and I can't remember the name of the one.
- [103:47]
B
I can't remember the name of the village, but.
- [103:49]
A
Okay, so then you went from there to Guatemala City.
- [103:52]
B
So his. Yeah, his, like, ex girlfriend that he knew from. From Antigua, she came and picked us up. Drove all the way, picked us up.
- [103:59]
A
Is really beautiful.
- [104:00]
B
Yeah, beautiful. Spent a lot of time there.
- [104:01]
A
You did? Is that where you were as a fugitive?
- [104:03]
B
Predominantly. I was really in Nicaragua most of the time because Nicaragua doesn't have an extradition treaty. But the problem is I had to cash these checks in Guatemala because they're written out to a corporation that was a Guatemalan corporation. And so even though I'd opened a bank account with Bach in Nicaragua, because I hadn't incorporated the corporation in Nicaragua, I had to. I had to, like, frequently go back to Guatemala to.
- [104:25]
A
To.
- [104:25]
B
To, like, deposit the checks. So that was kind of how I got stuck there when Covid happened and then what led to me coming back.
- [104:32]
A
But mainly you were living in Nicaragua. Where?
- [104:35]
B
In Papoyo. It's, like, near San Juan del Sur.
- [104:38]
A
Okay. Yeah. Is it a beach town?
- [104:40]
B
That's beach town. It's beautiful. Like, great surf. It's cool. It's a cool place. But. But I was spending because I would go back to Antigua or, like, Guatemala frequently. I spent a lot of time in Antigua, too. Like, those were like. I think the most of the time I was on the run, it was between those two places.
- [104:51]
A
And then people would ask you. I'm assuming the first thing they ask you, your name. And what do you do? Right. What would you tell people?
- [104:58]
B
I mean, I definitely couldn't tell my name. That was on my Guatemalan pass short, so that I ended up, you know, buying down there because, you know, I mean, at that point in time, even now, my Spanish isn't like, you know, the best, but certainly, you know, so
- [105:10]
A
what was your fake name?
- [105:11]
B
I mean, you got to keep it close to what your real name is, you know, and so I think I went by, like, Jack or something like that.
- [105:16]
A
Okay, and what did you tell people you did? How did you.
- [105:19]
B
I really tell them I did anything necessarily. I kind of tried to play the whole kind of digital nomad kind of thing. But the reality is, I'm be honest with you, like, I didn't spend much time around people. People, certainly not Americans or Westerners, because I was scared to death.
- [105:32]
A
Yeah.
- [105:32]
B
You know, I mean, I don't want to be found out, you know, especially like those places. I think you don't realize this but like if there's a reward out on you, those little, like a lot of people go on the run down there.
- [105:41]
A
Yeah.
- [105:41]
B
And so all those, like.
- [105:42]
A
Did you meet up the fugitives, by the way?
- [105:44]
B
No, I didn't. Not that I knew of. I'm sure I met some, I definitely met some people that, that, that I had like inkling suspicions of. Like, I remember there's this drug dealer and this like Australian drug dealer in Nicaragua that, that just, you know, sold coke and ketamine and just hung out in San Juan and, and, and I obviously had my inkling suspicions about him.
- [106:02]
A
You know something, there's a, these guys that are, they're known as the, the gringo hunters. Where they do, what they do is they're, they're paid by either family members or law enforcement to go and chase all the fugitives that exist throughout South America.
- [106:18]
B
There's lots of stories of dudes getting rendered back. Like they'll go to like, because a lot of people think like if you go to like an extradition free country, like that doesn't have like extra states, that doesn't mean they can't extradite you. And it also doesn't mean they can't render you back.
- [106:29]
A
Right, right.
- [106:30]
B
Like they can force you back. And if you're back, you're back. There's very little they can really do about it. And there's usually bounties involved.
- [106:36]
A
Right.
- [106:36]
B
And so a lot of people are trying to get those rewards. And so if you're a fugitive and you're like staying in hotels and hostels and making yourself like integrated into the community, there's, you know, everything sticks out to these people down there. You know, they're, people are a lot more observant than sometimes.
- [106:53]
A
Yeah. And so, and this lasted for how long? How long were you there for?
- [106:57]
B
About a year. Yeah, about a year. And then what happened happened and the lockdowns that were insane. I had gone back to Guatemala to, to deposit some checks and this must have been maybe in March and I was there and the, and like I'd like rented like a little house like through like an Airbnb type thing on there that was like a classified listing. And at any rate, they. The lockdowns were like, they came out of nowhere and they weren't. I mean, I wasn't in the United States for any of the COVID lockdowns, so I. I can't speak on how they were from my experience, but just from what I understand, from what I've seen and what I've heard from people and from what I was seeing from being in, you know, in jail, fighting my case while Covid was going on, that they. They were just insane down there. I mean, you couldn't leave the house. You're going arrested if you. They were trying. They were so worried because, you know, they don't have the medical infrastructure and hospitals down there to be able to deal with a mass pandemic. And it's so early on, no one really knows how. How deadly this thing really is. You couldn't leave the house or you get arrested except for, like, certain hours of the day to just go to, you know, the, like, essential businesses like a pharmacy or grocery store. But other than that, it was like a curfew. You. And it was like 6 o', clock, 5 o' clock in the afternoon. You couldn't leave until, like, 7 o' clock in the morning, and it'll be 5 o' clock in the afternoon. And these would only be certain days of the week. And then, like, for the weekends, you couldn't be out at all, and you could never go outside of, like, whatever municipality you were in. So I'm probably gonna butcher the pronunciation, but I was like, stuck in, like, Sacatepeca estate, which is where Antigua is. And if I tried to go to Guatemala so much as Guatemala City, they have these, like, I mean, like blockades almost like set up like a. Like a, like a border crossing kind of, you know what I mean? To make sure that people weren't going in and out of. Of different municipalities because they. If there's, if any. If there's like a contagion in one area, they're trying to, like, lock it down and keep it there. Meanwhile, Nicaragua is completely open. You know, I mean, I'm hearing from people there that, like, it's completely open. They're like, not even regarding the pandemic as being a thing. And I'm just stuck there. And I really got into this. Really. I mean, I was already.
- [108:55]
A
I had already.
- [108:55]
B
It was kind of like running from some demons as it is. When I went on the run, not just from my case but just from like the substance abuse and, and just kind of the way that I was living that just because I went on the run and I'm running from something, it's not like all of a sudden that those things aren't going to follow me there.
- [109:11]
A
Yeah.
- [109:11]
B
You know, and in Guatemala and Nicaragua you can go to Formacias and really get whatever you want. You can go to. Especially when you're talking about ketamine. I mean, you can go to the Nicaragua. Same thing with Guatemala. You can go and see these like, they're like animal farm supply places and you know, I. Ketamina and get people, get us the kind of you want. You know, they'll have all these different types Ketanol, Ketta said Anisket and these like, like 500 milliliter, like giant bottles. And I remember I walk out of there with like a 24 pack. Like it was like natural ice over my shoulder and. And so it just got really bad. You know, I'm like running for my life. I can't communicate with my family. I was dating this girl for a long time. We had a pretty serious relationship, like living together and. And you know, she was supposed to come down there and you know, planning on having a kind of a life on the run down there. And you know, she ended up not coming. And I mean, I totally get it. Like, come on, like, it was fun while it lasted. Right. But I mean, like, there's no reason for you to hijack your life over. Over like the situation I've gotten myself into. It have been cool if you told me this before I left, but yeah, you know, it's. It's all right. But.
- [110:18]
A
So she didn't go? Yeah, no.
- [110:19]
B
Yeah. I mean, I couldn't blame her though. I mean, I was already like. Like it wasn't like I was. It wasn't like it lasted all that long that I was down there, that I was taking care of myself.
- [110:28]
A
Yeah.
- [110:29]
B
I think like being isolated and having. And just having all that stress and really dealing with that and having that like monkey on your back of substance abuse use, especially something like ketamine, it's not only very addictive but like kind of takes you another place and takes you out of yourself. Do you really kind of get like addicted or like stuck on that, like being able to check out out. Because when your life is so bad, like it's. You're able to completely check out from it.
- [110:53]
A
It's the only thing you want. You're looking forward to. Yeah.
- [110:55]
B
So I really got into a Bad place where I was just doing a ton of ketamine and. And I just knew this wasn't sustainable. Eventually, like, after Covid, and I'm stuck inside that. The house all, you know, all day long, practically not eating and just doing tons of ketamine.
- [111:10]
A
And.
- [111:11]
B
And yeah, eventually I just realized I was like, this is. This is like, I'm gonna die. You know, this isn't gonna. Like, what is this all gonna be for? You know, and there was no, like, light at the end of the tunnel. And when the pandemic was gonna end, it just eventually after, like, months down there. So from, like, probably March to. To June, I think I came back at the end of. Sometime the end of June, eventually. During that time, I'd reached out to this author, actually. He was like a.
- [111:38]
A
He.
- [111:38]
B
He had a crazy cannabis case in the 80s. His name's Richard Stratton. And I'd found him on LinkedIn and I'd read his book about, like, being on the run as a fugitive in the 80s, 70s and 80s with a cannabis case and. And then eventually wrote another book about his time in prison. He, like, represented himself at trial, you know. Crazy bastard. And he. And I reached out to him because I was like, who's. Who can help me in this situation right now? My attorneys can't help me. They're all pissed because I fled the country and, you know, I. I told them I was going to beat my arraignment and they never heard from me again. I can't drag my parents into this call. My parents, everyone in my life has left me because I've just become more or less a total cancer to their existence because of the problems have I gotten myself into and also because of just the way that I was living, you know? And then what, What I, like, you know, I can't really blame him for that, but it was just a really dark place that I got myself into. And I just. I don't know. You can only run from things for so long, and it was like, either I'm gonna do this forever until, like, it. It doesn't, you know, it just. I run out of rope or, you know, or I. I should come back or, like, and figure out the best way to do it and. Because, like, I don't know, at the end of the day, like, I know that I was doing something I should have been doing, right? In a way, right. It was. It was illegal. I was making money, more money than I should have been doing doing it. But at the end of the day, there is like this strange set of like systemic nepotism that exists that allows a substance to be treated in the eyes of the law one way when it's dealt with in this manner that they make it extremely difficult to deal with. And I, you get ripped off left and right. As I explained to you, what I went through trying to, trying to go the legitimate route versus, you know, it's still the same thing at the end of the day. It's a plant, right? It's a, it's a, I mean it's a. That it's natural, it's naturally here. God put it here, you know, and, and that's not to say there may be some problems with it and people. You can overuse any, a lot of things, but I mean there's plants that are poisonous. Right. But the fact that you can allow this to be legally sold in one way and in another way, you're looking at 10 to life in prison. Because that was the other thing is I, the, all the time that I was doing this. Yeah, you know, it's a little illegal, right. Like, you know that you're selling something not in the regulated manner that not all that long ago is being treated a whole lot differently. But there was no awareness of like, like the federal like guidelines and the statute of limitations for cannabis. I had no idea that cannabis was still a controlled dangerous substance, like tier
- [114:03]
A
one, assuming that's one Schedule one. Yeah. And also. Yeah, I mean the, the, the, the grayness of all of it. Right. But also the idea that I don't think most people know, but a lot of the resources, the money that is being made by taxing the legal business of cannabis, at least in California, that money is then being used to go after the black market of cannabis, which is you thinking, because they sold it to you as like, like once they legalize cannabis, there's all this money that's going to come into the state that's going to be used to then, you know, build schools and roads and whatever it is, infrastructure. And actually I'm sure part of it is, but a lot of it is actually then going right back into fighting against the black market. And the reason that black market exists in California, you will talk to, you know this better than anyone is because the data there's not a, a animal because they've made it becoming legal so incredibly difficult and challenging and costly. They didn't make it, made it practically impossible unless you are a big corporation and you have a shit ton of money to start with, to start a business from scratch.
- [115:06]
B
Absolutely. Yeah. They make it. And because the whole design, really, it's interesting because there was. There was a point in time, like, we had. We were like, making a lot of hash, and so we had built this massive hash lab that was all, like, ASME certified. Like, it was. It was a really, like, it was a large operation. And so it got to a point we also. We're doing, like, kind of some consulting for, like, legal cannabis companies. We're trying to build their own hash labs. And it was funny because I meet all these guys that were, like, you know, private equity guys and. And, like, worked for pharmaceutical companies and all this stuff.
- [115:34]
A
Yeah.
- [115:35]
B
And, like, not at all the grassroots people that had just come out there and started doing this and growing cannabis as, like, a way. And like, as a way of, like, a livelihood to support their family. And it was a totally different. Different scene of people that would. That were really involved in all these large companies.
- [115:49]
A
And that's what was so unfair about it. All right. The people that for years and years were punished for being in the cannabis business. And then when actually cannabis becomes legal and they've spent their lives in this business, now they don't even get an opportunity to legalize their business.
- [116:03]
B
Exactly. Yeah, of course. And it would never have been legal if it wasn't for these people constantly being renegades and refusing to, you know, do what they were told. You know, it was always people that knew the government stance on this was. Was totally skewed. Right. That they knew the government was wrong. And because the government was wrong, they were still going to continue to cultivate this and to share it with people. And now they're the people that are being. Has been completely squeezed out of it.
- [116:28]
A
Yeah, absolutely. Because, you know, people realize that there's money to be made.
- [116:33]
B
Exactly. And there's money to be made in this bizarre, nuanced manner where it's so. So like they suffocate the industry in a way, and they make it such a requirement to come at it with so much capital.
- [116:43]
A
Yeah.
- [116:44]
B
I mean, there's a lot of places that, like, you can't have a criminal record to ever get a license. And I mean, that's. That they don't say any type of criminal record. They're talking about, like, oh, if you have a cannabis criminal record, you can't get a cannabis license. I think New York's like, one of the only places that actually have some sort of, like, social equity program to give people cannabis licenses.
- [117:00]
A
So you contacted this. This writer guy who it's essentially kind of a similar story in the case that he was.
- [117:07]
B
And he'd been through it. And so it's like, how many people do you know, Right. That have been on the run, have had the. Found themselves in these situations. Right. And so it's like when you're really trying to figure out what the best thing to do with your life is and what to do is you got to find somebody no matter what you're in, whatever what you're dealing with. Right. You have to. We, we learn from the people who have been through the same things as us. You know, this is a really bizarre, obscure, you know, situation to be in. So it's like there's a very limited.
- [117:32]
A
No. One guy.
- [117:33]
B
There's a very limited pool of resources, you know.
- [117:35]
A
And so you called him and said,
- [117:36]
B
hey, more or less, I reached out to him on LinkedIn. Yeah, more or less on LinkedIn. I reached out to my LinkedIn. It's the only place I could find him. He didn't have like social media or anything.
- [117:45]
A
And then he turns out to be very important for you, right?
- [117:47]
B
Yeah, in a lot of ways. I mean, he definitely, he certainly convinced me that I needed to come back and.
- [117:53]
A
Yeah.
- [117:53]
B
But also that I need to come and back that in a way that, you know, this whole cannabis, like the, the, the whole paradigm is so screwed up that there, there's still this. You, you can have it legal in one hand, in one form or fashion, and it's very restrictive for people to get involved and only. And, and it's, it's like the complete opposite of like the antitrust laws are supposed to be in effect here. Right. They make it so that only certain people can participate, so that they can have, have more or less a monopoly in the market. I mean, for the longest time I almost wondered if that's why they were not making it federally legal, because then you. Each state, people can go in and set up their own enterprises in each state and all be the same company, but they'll have like their Michigan version, their California version, Colorado version, and yeah,
- [118:37]
A
it benefits a lot of people.
- [118:38]
B
Right, Exactly. And so at any rate, they. Yeah. So I, he convinced me I need to come back and that he had the attorney for me. That. Which ended up really being a screwed up situation.
- [118:50]
A
But.
- [118:50]
B
And we'll get to that. But this, he, he went to. There's this guy he went to prison with that he knew whose son was an attorney and he was a writer. And he was like, he had thought he had. Had all these like, like, like kind of Social justice pursuit, cases that normally other people wouldn't take on. You know, I think he'd won, like, a massive, like, settlement for, like, the homeless in Denver that because, like, their encampment had been, like, destroyed by the Denver police. Like, he took on the cases that other people wouldn't take and tried different approaches to fighting the government. Like, he was very much about, you know, trying to show the government where they were wrong and go after that, like a very idealistic right. And so he connected me with him and the more or less had convinced me to come back and have him retain me. And we were going to go to trial with this, and we were not going to go to a trial in the sense that I didn't do it. It was, you know, like there were that. Even though the government never had any evidence against me, hard evidence where they caught me with, you know, any weed or I was ever attached to any of these places they raided. You know, I mean, the way this conspiracy laws work is like, all they need is somebody to get on the stand and say that you did this, and then they get another person on the stand and say you did this. You know, that's all they need. I mean, hearsay is inadmissible with conspiracy laws. But all the other. All the other charges, it's, you know, you have to have some kind of substantiated evidence.
- [120:12]
A
Yeah.
- [120:13]
B
And so the idea wasn't necessarily we're going to.
- [120:15]
A
To.
- [120:15]
B
I'm going to come back and go to trial to beat this and try to convince the world I didn't do this. It was more or less to try and see if we could get a. It's called jury nullification. And so it's like, how can you show the jury what's actually going on, what the consequences are and how much time the government's giving these people for something that's legal and so that can be acquired in. At the time, Maryland was medicinal, and it hadn't gone recreationally legal yet. But you could still go to the medicinal dispensaries in Maryland with a card and you could obtain in cannabis. Right. The same state that they're prosecuting me federally for, where I'm looking at a mandatory minimum of 10 years. And so, you know, we decided that.
- [120:53]
A
So it's almost like confronting them, showing them how ridiculous the situation is. More or less. Yeah.
- [120:58]
B
You know what I mean? And maybe I wasn't necessarily the best person for this, you know, in the sense that it wasn't like I was like, necessarily dispensary Owner who had gotten caught up. Like. Like some people have.
- [121:07]
A
Right. You were actually shipping.
- [121:08]
B
I was absolutely. Certainly owned up to that. That's what it is. Right. But at the end of the day, this thing is so much bigger than me. You know, it's this, like, it transcends anything that I was doing. The fact of the matter is, like, there are people whose lives are being ruined, getting far more time than I got. Right. There's guys in federal prison today with life sentences for cannabis cases, and they're not coming home regardless of this, you know, schedule three thing that Trump just did. They made sure that that wasn't retroactive. And then. And you know what? They. I found this out this morning. You know what the Supreme Court just ruled on in the last week. No, now on 3582, which is the compassionate release motion that people. That was, like, brought about with the First Step act, where people could file for compassionate release if they had been, you know, like, overly sentenced or they had any kind of means for the court to give them some kind of mercy in letting them come home or reducing their sentence. Coincidentally. Right. Just after Trump passes that, that the Supreme Court rules that no longer is a non retroactive law change, a reason or grounds for compassionate release. So if the laws. Yeah.
- [122:16]
A
So if the laws change, if now it becomes legal across the country, they're not. It's not retroactive. Doesn't matter.
- [122:21]
B
You.
- [122:22]
A
You can't ask for compassion in that case, even.
- [122:24]
B
Because.
- [122:24]
A
Right.
- [122:25]
B
Which is crazy because it becoming legal or becoming, at the very least, on a step towards full legalization with it being rescheduled, you know, not just down to 2, but all the way down to a 3, which is, you know, very accessible. Lots of things that are schedule three are like every, you know, Tylenol and all. Cody. And I think, you know, even, like, more. I don't know.
- [122:47]
A
It is, to me. It's just. What I don't understand is who does this benefit?
- [122:51]
B
Like, why.
- [122:52]
A
Why not release people that are in there for decades for life because of these cannabis cases.
- [123:00]
B
Yeah. Something that nobody ever died from. Something that.
- [123:03]
A
So I was reading this morning when I was preparing for this, that it was. I have numbers here. I have anything from 3,000 to 10,000 people are currently held federally for marijuana. But that this doesn't account for the hundreds of thousands of cannabis arrests that funnel through local and county jails each year.
- [123:20]
B
Yeah, I totally believe it.
- [123:22]
A
Yeah.
- [123:22]
B
I mean, there's. I bet you there's every bit of 5,000, probably 10,000 cannabis cases that are all while in federal prison. I mean, I met a ton of guys, a lot of them with way more time than I ever had.
- [123:32]
A
Majority of them probably minorities, right? Majority of them, yeah.
- [123:36]
B
I mean, it's all across the board. I mean, I'm not gonna. I'm not gonna sit here and pretend that people don't, you know, that. That. That minorities don't get punished more severely.
- [123:44]
A
For sure.
- [123:45]
B
That. That is. That is just a given fact. Statistically is proven.
- [123:48]
A
Yeah. It's like four times more black people. Yeah. Punished four times more.
- [123:52]
B
Yeah, I totally. And I definitely can with that. But I'm just saying that, like, it. Like this even, like, it still transcends even the racial aspect in the sense that there it's. I met a lot of also white guys in prison that have. That are doing, you know, life sentences or decades for cannabis. Obviously, it's disproportionate.
- [124:09]
A
That's. That.
- [124:09]
B
That's a given. Right. But it's. It's definitely been an issue that is drastically.
- [124:14]
A
Right. And that's why as a journalist, you follow the money, you try to figure out who's this benefiting. Why. Why is this that the case? Why is it. Yeah, why is it that the Supreme Court, if that's the case. I hadn't heard that. But why are they passing this law? And why is it that more people aren't looking at this and saying like, this is a waste, wasteful resources. These guys should not be in on a cannabis sentence.
- [124:34]
B
No, I totally agree. I think a lot of it has to do with the fact that when you go to prison, and I'm sure anybody who's gone done, like, Senate periods of time in prison will. Can relate like society. I mean, like, you like, cease to exist. Right. And. And I think a lot of it is because they know how violent and institutionalized, like, how. How much prison can institutionalize individual. I almost feel like they're not very incentivized to kind of bring you home because, like, now, like, you're. The likelihood of recidivism, regardless of what you did once you've been to prison is so much higher.
- [125:03]
A
Yeah, it's like 60, 70. Yeah, yeah.
- [125:06]
B
It's something crazy. I don't know what the statistic is, but I know that, like, once you go to prison, once there's a high. Like it is. You have a higher chance chance of going back than you do have not. And just statistically speaking, but I think a lot of it has to do with the fact that everything in our country and Obviously I'm a capitalist. Right. I was a drug dealer. Right. So that's like the most pure, unadulterated form of capitalism. It probably is. But I think that the fact of the matter is that our country is so systemically across the board all of various things that shouldn't be necessarily capitalist enterprises. They, they have become such. And they have a bottom line and they're. And what if your business is prisons? At the end of the day, your main priority is trying to keep them full.
- [125:48]
A
Yeah.
- [125:49]
B
And trying to build more. And so it's a situation that benefits very few people that has had a drastic effect in the United States. And I think that it's. This is something that can't be disputed because when you look at the, the population of the pri, the prison population in the United States and you compare that to the rest of the world, it's like we have more people incarcerated in the United States than the next 10 countries combined. And so. And a lot of that, I think
- [126:12]
A
it's 20% of the world's incarcerated.
- [126:15]
B
I certainly believe that. And it's a lot of it becomes. Because it's become such an industry.
- [126:19]
A
So you decided. So then you came here and then how long was your trial?
- [126:23]
B
Well, because of COVID was going on. I was in. It's called Chesapeake Detention Facility. But Baltimore doesn't. Maryland doesn't have any federal prisons. Well, they have Cumberland, which is. Might as well be West Virginia because it's all. All the way in western Maryland. But it's like it's right on the border. Yeah, but they don't have any like federal pre trial. You have. So like what happens is like the feds have like, they have a contract with, you know, like the Maryland Department of Corrections to house the federal pre trial inmates as they're fighting their cases. And so I was at what was the old Baltimore or Maryland's level four supermax. So it was built to house guys that never came out the cell. And so obviously when we're there in pre trial cell. Well, for the first year or so of COVID we weren't coming out the cell. We come out for like maybe two hours a day. And then you're in the cell 20, 22 hours a day. And it was like staggered, so they would only let so many cells out at a time to shower and use a phone. But then.
- [127:17]
A
And this is, this is also the crazy thing. This is before you were even convicted.
- [127:20]
B
Oh yeah, it's before I was even convicted. And this was the hardest time. I did this Is this. I mean, this was. This place was a. It was a gladiator school. It was nuts because it was co. What's so crazy is because it's a state run facility, but you're a federal inmate. All the infractions or whatever you do, short of getting charged of a crime, they're not going to carry over to your federal, you know, to your record with your actual federal crime. So, you know, you're not gonna. You stab a guy, you're not gonna lose any good time. As long as they don't press charges, you're, you know, nothing's gonna.
- [127:54]
A
So people are doing crazy.
- [127:56]
B
It was wild. I mean, it was. It was. It was. Yeah, it was. It was nuts. I mean, I saw some. Some crazy, like. Oh, man. So my first. This is my first week there. So what they would do after. So after I. When I flew back, I came in through lax, right? And so there was two flights were coming out of Guatemala at the time, and there was one every, like two weeks. And they'd only just started doing this because there's so many Americans that are caught up in other countries. Covid pandemic's not going to end anytime soon. They're trying to figure out, like, we got to get Americans back in the country. I book a flight and I had two options. One would go to Houston, I think one week, and then we'd go to lax. The next week. I'd pick the LAX flight. And so I got arrested as soon as the plane came in. You know, I guess my attorney, because I now at this point retained this guy through. Through. Through Richard Stratton that he knew and, and he had contacted them to obviously let the U.S. attorney's office and let them know that I'm coming back. And so they came on the plane with, you know, AR15s, full Homeland Security, all the feds in the airport came on to you know, have their little. Sorry, A little bit of action. I'm sure they're probably not getting all that much action.
- [129:07]
A
Yeah.
- [129:08]
B
So, yeah, I mean, it was like a battalion came on the. Came on the plane.
- [129:11]
A
Holy.
- [129:12]
B
You know, they're masked up already as it is and body armor and, you know, assault rifle rifles and came and pulled me right out of my seat right in front of the rest of the plane.
- [129:20]
A
It was like El Chapo came and. Sit down.
- [129:22]
B
Yeah, I guess. I mean, it was. It was a spectacle, that's for sure.
- [129:26]
A
And then what?
- [129:26]
B
Well, then it was crazy because the Marshall drives me there. He's like, man, weed. What you Know something in Los Angeles.
- [129:32]
A
And he's asking like, dude, you might. You must have. You must be here for real. Like, what were you doing?
- [129:36]
B
Well, because obviously, like, they knew on the warrant and all that, like, paperwork they had, you know, flying. They knew what I was being picked up for. They still had their protocol. I guess I had to pull somebody off a plane. But like, like, when the marshal is actually driving me to MDC Los Angeles, the guy, he's in there, he's like, dude, what the. What the hell?
- [129:49]
A
You're here for weed?
- [129:50]
B
Here for weed? We did all this for weed. I mean, what is nuts? And so anyway, I go to mdcla, I'm there. And because it's Covid, it's. You're there. Everywhere you go is locked down. And so you're in the cell immediately for two weeks before you can even come out the cell and be in any sort of general population.
- [130:09]
A
Right? It's. You're quarantining, essentially.
- [130:11]
B
Quarantine. And so they. I would get quarantined there. Then I had a bond hearing just because it was Covid. And California's letting everybody out. They're letting out murderers. Sorry, they're letting out all types of people because of COVID Although, of course, this was the state. They. I had a bond hearing and the magistrate wouldn't let me out, which I didn't expect to get let out, but, you know, why wouldn't you ask? And they. She said that she wouldn't let me out because of the alleged amount of narcotics I distributed in the community, caused me to be a threat. Threat to the community. And there's only two reasons. Like, they're supposed to not let you out when you're, when you're in pre trial because you haven't been convicted yet. And it's either you're a danger to the community or your flight risk. And I would think I was like, you know, I'm probably an egregious flight risk, but I don't understand the danger to the community part. But anyway, so that's funny. Yeah. So I, I, after the bond hearing this, they. I knew I was now going to get like, extradited back across the country to, To. To Baltimore. And so I, I went to Orange County. They put me like a federal. It's kind of like similar to the Baltimore situation. It's not a federal spot. Not like mdcla. Like, it's not ran by BOP guards. It was ran by like, Orange county sheriffs, but they have like, federal pre trial there. So they held me there for a little while. Then they put me on a plane, you know, Conair, you know, everybody all shackled up. And it was crazy because it was like the law that they did the flight. We went, picked up some people. I guess I left in a van and went to Victorville, and then we picked up people at Victorville, got on the bus, and then we went from Victorville to McCarran. The. The airport, Los Angeles, or, I'm sorry, Las Vegas. And I'm just thinking in my head, I'm like, man, oh, how life has changed, you know? So we were getting ready to go on the plane. It was wild. Remember this guy?
- [131:50]
A
He.
- [131:50]
B
He's. He's in like a paper suit. So you already know that he's probably a mental case. You know, they. They'll put people in paper clothes. Like they're. They're like made of paper.
- [131:58]
A
Why?
- [131:59]
B
Usually it's like a punishment. I mean, like, I eventually got put in paper before, like when I was in the shoe later on, but because it's more uncomfortable.
- [132:05]
A
What's the idea between.
- [132:06]
B
Yeah, what's. The whole thing is the feds have this whole, like. I don't know if they really call it this, but there's, you know, like. Like scuttlebutt that they have like a. A protocol that they call no touch torture. It's like all these ways that we can, like, really make you miserable without having to actually put our hands on you. And that doesn't mean they won't put your hands on you.
- [132:25]
A
Trust me.
- [132:25]
B
I've definitely seen. Seen them, you know, do that plenty of times. But they. They have ways to just really psychologically, you know, just kind of to screw with people. So anyway, this guy. But usually, like, you know, somebody like. I mean, this is early on, so I maybe didn't know it at the time, but looking back now after having this experience, like, I know that there was something up with the guy because he was in a paper suit, but so we're getting ready to go on the plane, and he's just one of the first guys to take on a paper suit. And he faints and in handcuffs, shackled up on the stairs, because it's not like you're going on like a regular, like when you go through the gated airport.
- [132:58]
A
Yeah.
- [132:59]
B
And so he, like, faints and like falls down the stairs and the cops like, grab him and pull him under the wing where nobody can see him, and somebody runs in the plane. He grabs like a little pelican case. And I don't know what they hit him with, adrenaline or what. But moment wasn't all that much longer. He's being brought back on that plane. And my point is that, like, no matter what you do, you are not gonna miss that flight. So they. He's like, hands are, like, shaking, and they. And they bring it back on the plane. And we took off. We flew into Oklahoma. And at the time, because of COVID the. The federal transfer center in Oklahoma was closed. And so they took us to this, like, disgusting, dirty jail outside of Oklahoma City called Grady County. Everybody called it Shady Grady. And if anybody's listening to this, has ever been there. I mean, it is like cockroaches everywhere. Disgusting. And you're in one room with, like, 45 other men, lights on all the time, triple stack bunk beds, baloney sandwiches for dinner every night. And this was, like, the first time I'd ever seen any prison violence. You know, it just totally shocked me. And it was. And it was crazy because, like, really, the.
- [133:57]
A
The.
- [133:58]
B
I didn't understand, like, kind of the protocols about prison. Like, things are. Things really happen in prison and how you're supposed to, like, the tribal aspect of it, you know, Like, I grew up in Baltimore. I'd never. You know, I had black friends, Hispanic friends, Asian friends. Right. Like, I just. I'd never really experienced the kind of racism that you. That just exists, like, in that tribal fashion in prison. And so anyway, I say all that to say that there's this guy, he was probably a mental patient, and he. I don't know where he got it, but we're waiting when we come into Grady county to get tr. Like to get brought to wherever they're going to house us. And so they've got. Let's say this is a unit that holds 45 people or whatever, this one room, but there's probably 80 of us in there, more than that, because all the bunks are taken. Taken. All the places that are taken. You know, people are just sitting on the ground in weird places. And if that's all filled up, a lot of people just standing up. And we've been there for hours just waiting for them to process us. I don't know where this guy got this thing from, but he had a plunger like the. It was like a fiberglass plunger that he'd broken off. And there's no way that he could have brought this on the plane with him.
- [135:00]
A
Right.
- [135:00]
B
Unless, like, you know, I mean, he.
- [135:02]
A
Right, Yeah.
- [135:04]
B
I mean, this.
- [135:05]
A
It was very hidden. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
- [135:07]
B
He's a savage. He did that, but. But he had this plunger that was like. And it looked like it was like made of like fib, like almost like industrial fiberglass. Was like shave shape, like, you know, it been shaped down. It's probably like, you know, long. And there was this guy that I'd been in transit with all the way since Orange County. There was other white guys from like, like Catalina island, like a big meth case and was sending meth, I guess to the Midwest. And you know, one of those situations where I remember the guy said to me, he's like, yeah, I mean, I'll probably never come home. Because I guess like he, you know, all the meth that comes across the border that gets sent to those, you know, Midwest. Especially like those areas like in North Dakota where it's like you have all the people that are working on those, like, you know, the fracking and all that big industry out there and they punish. They do not take that kind of stuff lightly. And so anyway, he, he was looking in the. They had this one way glass and you could, if you block the light, you could see through it. And so it was kind of like the studio here where there's that glass pane and there's like these, this. The area that went out into the hallway was all one way glass. And if you put, you know, he put his hands up and try to see like, when are they gonna come and process us. And all of a sudden this guy walks up right behind him. And you know, he's just a. He was a massive black guy, much bigger than the guy. And I don't know where he got this plunger from. And he stabbed him right in the back and stuck him right in the
- [136:24]
A
back with the plunger. But like it went through him.
- [136:27]
B
Oh, it got stuck in him. It was sharp enough that I mean, he got it out of him. But it, but like it, it was like it was left and stuck in the guy's back. And, and of course, like immediately all the other white guys and I guess like some of the Serenos, because there's like a, like a prison gang, like kind of alliance between like the whites and the Serenos I'm completely unaware of because I haven't even really gotten indoctrinated into the prison like protocols because I've been in quarantine and covet everywhere I've been. And, and I remember I really got chewed out because I just sat on the. Where I was at and just kind of was just shocked that I was
- [136:59]
A
seeing this, you know, and you're like, what's going to happen to me?
- [137:02]
B
Yeah, what the hell? You know what I mean? What's gonna happen to me next necessarily? But it was awareness that, like, anything can happen to you at any point in time, regardless if you instigated. Because I didn't instigate it. He's looking. Trying to look through the one. My glass. And anyway, the. I really got chewed out afterwards for not, you know, I, like, I was. Because it was another white guy. I was supposed to have, you know, I was supposed to have immediately gotten in there and, and, and like, you know, protect, you know, got involved myself
- [137:29]
A
against the black guy.
- [137:29]
B
Against a black guy. You know what I mean? Which is just like antithetical to like how I've ever always thought.
- [137:34]
A
Right.
- [137:35]
B
And. And yeah, it was. Anyway, so after that happened, obviously the cops now come in because I see it on the camera. And now, funny enough, I mean, we might have been sitting there a lot longer had. Had this not happened because now they're. They're actually processing us and getting us where we have to go ago. And then after that, I got. I probably was only there two weeks before I got flown then to Baltimore. And the flight was going to, I think, Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, but I was the only person on the flight that came into. To Baltimore's, you know, supermax Chesapeake tension facility or whatever. And anyway, the. It's a whole long way to get to where I was trying to tell you about what some of the stuff that I saw there. It was my first week when I was in quarantine. Now that there's not much help and assistance in places for people with, like, mental issues. They all end up in prison. You know, our prison's just full of mental patients. And that's probably what the guy was that. I'm sure that's what the guy was that stabbed the guy in the back. You know, I'm sure he was just a mental patient who knows what he did. And that's not to say mental patients aren't capable of violent crimes and doing terrible stuff, but it's just not going
- [138:36]
A
to make them better.
- [138:36]
B
It's not gonna make it better.
- [138:37]
A
Yeah. And they're eventually going to be released and be danger to bigger danger, far
- [138:41]
B
bigger danger of society. And I think that also goes back to what we were talking about earlier, about how, like, once you've been in prison.
- [138:45]
A
Yeah.
- [138:46]
B
Society now looks at you entirely differently and like a liability and they don't really necessarily want you out.
- [138:50]
A
Yeah. Nobody's giving you a second chance. Yeah.
- [138:53]
B
And so anyway, this guy had to been a mental patient because all night he would kick the door, right? These big steel doors. And we're in like in a two tiered unit and it's probably like 20 cells, maybe like 10 on top, 10 on the bottom, maybe a little bit less than that. And they would let us out, out one hour a day. Each cell would go out and you'd be able to shower and call, use the phone for 15 minutes. And then you, you know, they would, after a little bit less than an hour, they lock you in, bring out the next cell. And so other than that, I'm just. No books, no anything, just sitting there, you know, staring at the ceiling, just waiting for what was going to come. Kind of thinking about my situation when I got myself into. And this guy would just keep kicking the door, boom, boom, boom, boom, all night long. And I mean, this was crazy. He, I guess he had, he had like stored up feces one day because he blocked the window and when the cops came in, because like if you block up the window, that is a huge transgression, right? Because they can't see in now. They don't know what you're doing. They don't know if you hung yourself, don't know what. They're popping that door, they're coming in, they're pulling you out. And when they went to do that, this guy was naked and he covered himself in his filth and he fighting these cops off and, and it was nuts. It was just totally insane. I never, never seen anything like it. And, and yeah, so obviously, you know, they come in and they mace the living hell out of him. And now we're all breathing in mace and I gotta, you know, it's Covid. So it's already like a respiratory, you know, you guys are so worried about, you know, respiratory diseases. I mean, that's not to say that the mace wasn't called for. I don't know how else you would have subdued somebody. But anyway, that was like the real shock moment. Like, oh my God, where the hell am I?
- [140:29]
A
Like, these are the people that I'm surrounded by.
- [140:30]
B
These people I'm surrounded with. Yeah. And so, and that's not to say there weren't a lot of like really good dudes there that I, that I connected with that were, that were just like, you know, good salt of the earth people that, that obviously I'm out of. I'm like fish out of water. This is not my element. That, that, that you know, showed me the ropes and, and like they didn't let that, like, you know, especially because Baltimore has such a long history and documented history of, like, racial policing and, like, you know, just, just. I don't know, what do they call, like, redlining or green, I can't remember the term for it. Where, like, the, like all, like, the busing stuff that kind. In, like, Boston. And Baltimore's always had, like, an education system that's, like, been terrible and been, you know, been known for just, you know, you have people coming out of there that can't even read, and they're getting passed and giving high school diplomas just for showing up and, and like, there's, it's like a whole forgotten population. And so obviously, in my mind I'm thinking coming here, it's like, you know, I'm gonna be treated a certain way because of my race. And obviously this is all at the same time as the George Floyd stuff's going on. And, and so with that being said, I mean, I, I, it was nowhere near as bad as I thought it was going to be. Right. I mean, there was a lot, there's. I struck up, like, a lot of great relationships with good guys I'm still in touch with today. But that's not to say that there wasn't like a. I mean, I was probably one of the only white guys in most of the units that I was in. You know what I mean? Like, it. Just because Baltimore is such a, it's such a racial system there that short of you being a. The international, you know, going to the,
- [142:00]
A
you know, like a massive cannabis dealer.
- [142:02]
B
Well, I don't even think it was canvas part. I think, I think all the guys in my case that got caught with other drugs didn't go on the run, they all got bond, you know, I would have gotten bond. Wait, do you.
- [142:08]
A
Yeah. Do you think that if you hadn't.
- [142:10]
B
Oh, yeah.
- [142:11]
A
Fled, you would have just gone bond?
- [142:12]
B
I would have gotten bond.
- [142:13]
A
So it was the fact that you flew that actually.
- [142:15]
B
Yeah, for sure.
- [142:15]
A
And you hadn't thought about this before you fled?
- [142:17]
B
Well, I fled. I wasn't thinking about ever coming back. You know, it wasn't really till Covid. And, like, things got so bad down there, and I'm, and I'm.
- [142:25]
A
But if you got only gotten bond, why not just, like, live with that? If that was actually.
- [142:29]
B
Bond is a temporary thing. You get bond to fight your case.
- [142:33]
A
Right, okay. But, okay, so my question is, did you think when you left the country, when you became a fugitive, did you think that you was there a part of you that thought I should just stay and fight this and there's a chance that they won't give me prison time. Or did you. Or I guess contacting El Chapo's lawyer and him knowing your name. Name gave you a pretty good idea that it was very high chance that you'd end up in prison for sure.
- [142:54]
B
And that's also when I kind of figured out the ramifications of what I'd done. Like, I didn't. I didn't think that this was a 10, like a mandatory, you're doing 10 years in prison thing. You know what I mean? Like, I just. I had no idea. I didn't. I had no. I just didn't. Couldn't fathom that. And. And it's. That's on my fault of my own a lot of ways. Right. Like, if you're going to do something, you should be very aware of what the consequences are.
- [143:15]
A
Okay, so all this, the. The choice Chesapeake, all the stuff you're telling me is this is all pre trial still?
- [143:20]
B
Yeah, it's all pre trial. And so this is all, like.
- [143:22]
A
For.
- [143:23]
B
You know, as soon as I got in there, you know, and so anyway, I fought my case there for. For. I was probably there about two and a half years. I took two years to go to trial. And then after I went to trial, oh, man. My. My attorney, I think he kind of, like, a lot of ways I know he was motivated to convince me to go to trial in this jury nullification thing to. Not only is it more expensive, it. It provided him access to, you know, mostly stealing all my money. He has a whole crazy thing. The guy's been disbanded. He's been disbarred already for other behavior with other. With other clients. And.
- [143:50]
A
Was this the son of the lawyer?
- [143:52]
B
This is the son of the guy that Richard knew. I mean, this guy. I mean, he's already been disbarred.
- [143:58]
A
And so does Richard know that?
- [143:59]
B
Yeah, Richard's aware of what the guy did. I mean, it's not his.
- [144:02]
A
He literally stole your money.
- [144:03]
B
Oh, yeah. Yeah. I mean, he came in there and convinced me that I had to give. That I should give him and trust him. He's like. But my. My. My dad did all this time in prison. I know what it's like. I know what it's like to lose everything. Your friends are going to steal everything from you. You can't trust anyone. Trust me. I'm saying. I'm telling you, I grew up in poverty, and I. And I knew what it was like watching my dad's friends and these attorneys and everybody come and show up and take all of his stuff when he went to prison. And I grew up in the projects in the barrio with my mom after my dad went to prison and had nothing. Right. I know what it's like. I'll look out for your best interests.
- [144:32]
A
And so you gave him the money.
- [144:33]
B
I gave him access to the cryptocurrency recovery phrase and gave him access to everything.
- [144:39]
A
And he took it all.
- [144:40]
B
Look at all is what it is. You know, I mean, a lot of ways all gotten gains in other ways. Right. Like, I mean, I'm not trying. Like, look, money is a very pressing issue, and it's what people need to survive.
- [144:52]
A
Right.
- [144:52]
B
Like, I mean, it's now more than ever without. With the state of the economy. But I mean, something saying in a lot of ways that obviously I was looking forward to getting out and having some sort of, like, safety cushion to be able to rebuild my life from. And. But in. You know, but in a lot of ways, I feel like it's. I can't do any. There's nothing I can really do about it. I'm sure I could sue the guy and I could try to go after him and. But, like, he's not gonna have it in a place that it can never be found.
- [145:18]
A
Right.
- [145:18]
B
It's not like I can't call an exchange. It was a cold storage wallet. I mean, the guy's got an office in Mexico City, and he lives in Mexico City half the time. And now he's been disbarred from the United States. I can't even expect him to be in the States. So it's like, I don't know. It's. It's such an exercise in futility.
- [145:32]
A
Yeah.
- [145:34]
B
It's just something you got to learn to live with. And it's not like.
- [145:36]
A
I don't know until. But he was. This was the guy that actually represented you at trial. Yeah. And do you think he did a good job at the time? No.
- [145:42]
B
I mean, there was some crazy. I'm actually. Trial should have been a mistrial. I mean, look, obviously I did what they alleged that I did a lot in a lot of ways, but it turns out. So you don't. The feds, they withhold a lot of discovery when you go to trial or when you. When you're fighting a case. Like, if you plead guilty, you're going to probably find out very little about what.
- [145:57]
A
Kate.
- [145:58]
B
What they actually had on you. And when you go to trial, though, they're obligated to Provide everything. It's called your jinx. Your jinx discovery. And anyway, they. He had in. In my jinx, it turns out they lied at the grand jury transcript. The cops had gotten the stand and deliberately lied. They. Which is totally. I mean, that's. That's everything else is fruit of the poisonous tree after that, right? I mean, I should have been able to walk just because of that. And. And I probably could have fought emotion and tried to fight it afterwards, but. And that's probably a lot of the reason why I ended up having that settlement. I mean, we had filed this motion after trial with the public defender's office because of the. The terrible representation I'd gotten. And. But at any rate, before we, you know, get to all that, the. It turns out that we got. The day before we started voir dire, which is jury selection, he comes to me, he's. He tells me, he's like, why? I'm talking about Wadira. But he got it the day before. So we're talking at the table and he's like, look, we got this. We got this in the bag. They lied to the grand jury transcript. It turns out that one of the lead, like, agents on the case, I don't know, he's like a D agent because the guy was like a Harford county task force. You know, he's like. He's like a deputized federal agent. The U.S. attorney is, you know, talking to him in the. I'm just reading the grand jury transcript, but as the conversation must have gone, he's saying, you know, they're talking about the seizure of the cannabis that they'd gotten in Tennessee. Right. The Homeland Security stuff, because that was like the only real large amount of cannabis they ever seized. And they had to find a way to show that I was the one that sent it when I hadn't, and I knew I hadn't. Right, but.
- [147:30]
A
So is this the one that you was busted from your friend?
- [147:32]
B
Yes, this is how I really found
- [147:34]
A
out that even existed. Yeah.
- [147:36]
B
Yeah. And so at any rate, it's not. They're charging me with conspiracy to distribute metric tons of wheat.
- [147:42]
A
Right.
- [147:43]
B
Which in all reality, it's like, you know, it's not about what, you know, it's about what you can prove.
- [147:47]
A
Right.
- [147:48]
B
And they may have known that that was going on, but short of maybe some of the ledgers that they found in my co. Defendant's position, you know, in their possession, not in mine, there's not much way to prove that. And so what they did is they lied to the grand jury transcript. And they said, I mean, it was crazy. I'm sure I, I'll send it to you. Like the, the transcripts, you can see it. They, I think it was something like a. Can't remember. It might have been like 90 kilos or 88 kilos, something like that. Something close to that. And because the feds measure everything in like metrics speak, it's all kilos. Right. And so they use that, their advantage in this graduate transcript because the, when
- [148:23]
A
the U.S. how much that is.
- [148:24]
B
Yeah, well, that's the thing. The U.S. attorney is. When he's asking the, the agent, you know, he's having him testify in front of the grand jury about what was in the seizure, what they gotten after they said, they must have said, I mean, they say what the amount of kilos are, but then the US Attorney goes back and says, you know, the guy's name was Agent Majeski. And he says, agent Majeski, if you don't mind, just you help clarify some things just to make some more, just to provide better understanding for the, you know, good, you know, American ladies and gentlemen here at the, the grand jury that have taken off work to be here with us today, could you please just give him a better understanding of how much weed, marijuana that actually was. And before he even gets a chance to say anything, because I can see it, the stenographer literally put Agent Majeski's name, expecting him to, to be able to respond, but because he got obviously interrupted, it was.com Asia Majesty. Then it goes, the US Attorney again, that was £2,560, wasn't. It wasn't something close to that. Like, I understand that US here with the federal government, we measure everything in the metric system, but you know, Americans, they, they're not, they, they're not going to know the difference between I don't know how many kilos a weed that is. It's either, you know, pounds, quarter pounds, ounces, things of that nature. And that's not the metric system. Could you, could you please elaborate?
- [149:38]
A
Yeah.
- [149:38]
B
Before you. I think Agent Majeski, obviously knowing that like this U.S. attorney is not trying to make him perjure himself, it says that was. I don't think I have my calculator on me at the moment, but I think that sounds about right.
- [149:51]
A
Oh, wow. And it wasn't, it was 80 kilos. You said 80 something kilos, which is about 102.2 pounds per kilo.
- [149:57]
B
So. Right. It was probably like 200 something.
- [149:58]
A
Yeah. 200 pounds. Yeah. Holy. And they were saying. They were saying basically there was 10 times what it was actually the reality.
- [150:04]
B
Exactly. And so that was. And that was how they were able to invite me for a ton because they had to have physical evidence.
- [150:09]
A
So. And why was it not a mistrial then immediately the. Right there.
- [150:11]
B
Well, I brought it up. We. It's all in my trial transcripts. We like got them on the stand and got them to admit that, you know, caught them in their lie, essentially. But it didn't matter when seven people go up and testify against you anyway and say, like.
- [150:22]
A
And so the. All the people were all your friends. What. What was that moment like for you when, particularly when you're like best friend.
- [150:27]
B
I mean, it was. All right, look, at the end of the day, at this point, like, I'd already kind of accepted it and expected it. It wasn't.
- [150:33]
A
I mean, I'm sure it was hurtful.
- [150:34]
B
I mean, I don't know. At this point, it was already like. And people are going to do what they're going to do, right? And they're going to do what's obviously best for them in the situation. And after you realize kind of like, all right, this guy was already sending weed. I went by himself, like from California and not really involved in me or letting me know, which is not my business. If you're, you know, you could obviously put our whole operation at jeopardy by not doing this properly. You could have came out and came and dealt with me. I would have taken your money and. And taken you to the farms and let you buy it yourself. And, you know, if this is your profits from what you've made from what we're doing, dude, I want you to make money. I want you to be more successful. That's great. Yeah, you can load that up with our load and we'll put it in there together. Like, you don't gotta be sneaky about it.
- [151:13]
A
Right.
- [151:13]
B
You know, because at least I know that I'll make sure that it gets there. It's gonna be. Nothing's gonna happen to it. And because there's. There's protocols you got to go through to make sure that it's not as. Just easy as you take it once or twice and throw it in a box. I mean, like, you to have to set up companies and put it in right. People's names, especially when you're doing the freight route, you have to know the right places to drop it off. You have to either have them pick it up at a warehouse or show up with, you know, with a truck and a guy With a, you know, metal clipboard and a hard.
- [151:35]
A
He didn't know any of this.
- [151:36]
B
Didn't know any that. Right.
- [151:37]
A
And. Okay, so you then. And. And what was the sentencing like?
- [151:41]
B
Well, sentencing came later. What. What's happened is during my trial, there was. There was this really crazy thing that happened. It's in the New York Times article. And so this was where I really should have. My trial should have been a mistrust trial was that. And I was really. This is where I was really mad at my attorney. And this is, like, kind of where our rift happened. And what led him to sending me this, like, crazy invoice letter afterwards. Like, he sent me an invoice after trial after I'd already fired him for, like, I don't know, like, it was like, $1.2 million or something like that. After I had a retainer agreement that my, you know, my defense would never cost more than 150 grand, and I paid for it in full. But obviously, this is his way of trying to put his. Just, you know, put that money on taxes. I'd be able to tax whatever he took. I don't know. Long story short, he. So what happened is they had this guy take the stand on my case, and this was the guy they had the most stuff on. He. He got in, caught with all types of drugs. Tons of ketamine, tons of different kinds of pills, Ecstasy pills, mdma. I mean, like, it was like, you know, the Silk Road in this guy's house. And he told the. He testified on the stand that I had made a death threat via a coded hand signal to him in the courtroom, which was totally, you know, fictitious, you know, and he said the death threat that I made was that I took my hand and I put my thumb and my forefinger together, and I put it on my forehead like that. And then it meant that I was gonna shoot him in the head and kill him. Said all this in front of the
- [153:05]
A
jury, as if you're gonna go with a bullet, put a bullet. Right.
- [153:08]
B
That's what he was saying. That's what that meant.
- [153:10]
A
That.
- [153:10]
B
Yeah.
- [153:10]
A
And that this happened.
- [153:12]
B
This happened in trial.
- [153:14]
A
But he was saying he did that. That you said, I did this from the table.
- [153:16]
B
From the table in the testifying, in front of everybody. And so obviously, I've never done it. And I'm demanding that, like.
- [153:22]
A
And there are no cameras in there.
- [153:24]
B
That's what I was asking my attorney. I was. Ask them for the camera footage, and then I demand us. Do you ask them to pull the surveillance tape because federal court, they. That's why you always see like the cartoons of people when they're in federal trial, because no cameras are allowed to be in the courtroom. But there's certainly surveillance cameras.
- [153:37]
A
I'm sure there are.
- [153:37]
B
Yeah. So I'm like demanding that they, that they pull this. I never made this death threat. I've never made a death threat anybody in my life. You're going to tell me that I didn't. They never called me on a phone call or a note or a kite trying to get it out of the prison to get rid of these guys before they testify. But now all of a sudden that he is testifying, I'm suddenly going to threaten his life.
- [153:54]
A
Come on, come on. You know, like, like, why do you think he said it?
- [153:58]
B
I have no idea. I mean, it was weird because we. It was right after recess. They had had a recess, like a 15 minute recess, came back and then immediately, the U.S. attorney, he says, you said that the defendant, Mr. Wall here, just a moment ago, he did something to you right now just before this last recess. Could you please elaborate on that for the court? And then he goes on to say that I had done this. And so.
- [154:21]
A
That is insane. Wait, do you think it was the assistant attorney general or some sort of. Was it the government who made him do that?
- [154:27]
B
I think that it had. They had really set up my trial in a way that they really did. Didn't want. I mean, they, they had to make sure that I was painted out to be a criminal and then a violent criminal and to separate me. Because we were pushing the whole, like, legalization aspect. We had people outside the courtroom passing out pamphlets on, you know, like, on jury nullification, how, you know, cannabis. And shouldn't. The federal government shouldn't be treating it this way and going after it this way and trying to bring awareness. Because I'm. If I'm in the cannabis industry and I'm selling weed and I don't have an idea of how the government really treats cannabis, I know that none of these people in the jury do. They're not going to think that I'm looking at decades in prison. And so at any rate, we, because of that, because we were. Our whole defense was focused on the discrepancy in cannabis laws and how certain people were treated differently because of it. They really had to make sure that I couldn't look like just a regular guy who was selling weed or somebody was a legal cannabis operator, because that
- [155:24]
A
would probably have a ripple effect on other cases that they have. I don't know, maybe.
- [155:28]
B
I don't know.
- [155:28]
A
But they wanted to make sure that.
- [155:31]
B
They wanted to make sure that. Yeah, because I think at the end of the day, they're very incentivized to make sure they win all their trials. That's why they don't ever go to trial. Not only is it expensive and it costs a lot of money, they, if they lose at trial, it's. I. It's like their career is just thrown off.
- [155:46]
A
Yeah, Your. Your lawyer at the, at the, at the time when he was trying to. To get this, the nullification case, he said, you can buy weed and donuts in Washington, D.C. but 45 minutes away in Baltimore, my client is locked up in a cage. He said something like that. But none of this worked, and particularly not with that supposed death threat that never really happened.
- [156:05]
B
Yeah, well, that's the thing, is that should have been a mistrial. I should have gotten another trial from that because I'm being charged with conspiracy to distribute cannabis. I'm not being charged with conspiracy to commit a death threat. So when you're on the stand testifying hearsay, it may be inadmissible, but it has to be strictly related to what I'm being charged with. You can't go on the standouts and just say all the. Out of the blue that I did something that's not related to the one I'm being charged with, especially when it's clear perjury. And, and so I immediately, you know, the whole courtroom, like, erupted, and I'm trying to get my attorney to, to do something about this. This is a mistrial. And we were hoping to get a mistrial. That was the whole point. Right. Because we figured that if we can convince the government that we can at least get one juror, just one juror to not want to convict. Right. They need a unanimous verdict. They need all 12 jurors to have the same verdict. And if we can get just one to not want to convict for cannabis. I. We didn't think, especially that time you had. It was now during the Biden years. And so you had a, A more Democrat. You know, the U.S. attorney's office wasn't ran by Republicans anymore. And we figured that. And by. Here's the other crazy thing is, you know, this is all at the same time as the Brittney Griner is going. Being considered as wrongfully incarcerated for being caught with cannabis, trying to bring it into Russia.
- [157:17]
A
Right.
- [157:17]
B
You know, there's this like a large push in society for, you know, there to be different treatment for Cannabis. And Biden had just pardoned everybody. It was crazy. Why? With the sentencing, Biden had just pardoned everyone for federal cannabis possession. Yeah, not a thing. No one's ever been to the feds for possessing cannabis. Right. Plenty of people have been in state prison for it, but never in the feds. And, and if they have been charged with it, it was maybe because they were in like a national park or in Washington D.C. with it or some kind of federal area and they had a small amount of cannabis, but they never went to prison for it. So it didn't actually get anyone out or change anything. But one of the marshals is, I'm walking to the courtroom and I just got sentenced, you know, nearly a decade for, for cannabis. They, they, they were like, what? Like, I thought Biden just pardoned everybody for this.
- [157:58]
A
Yeah.
- [157:59]
B
And, but yeah, I mean, that was the whole. Our plan was that we could, we need to get a mistrial so that
- [158:04]
A
they thought that out of the 12, at least one of them, at least one of them. This is ridiculous. Listen, they're not going to put me behind bars, pretend to like this.
- [158:10]
B
And even though if you get a mistrial, they can always come back and try you again, they have to re. Indict you. And we figured that it would be too much trouble than it was worth and they would probably just decide not to pursue another trial.
- [158:20]
A
Yeah. And then. Okay, so then it ends. They go in to. Right, the, the, the, the jury, they deliver.
- [158:27]
B
Yeah. I mean, this was afterwards.
- [158:28]
A
This took like two hours.
- [158:29]
B
Only two, two and a half hours maybe.
- [158:31]
A
Yes.
- [158:31]
B
That was very much for you.
- [158:32]
A
You knew when they came back, knew
- [158:36]
B
after two and a half hours that it was. And also I knew this was really a long shot. I just kind of, I don't know, I maybe was kind of idealistic. I thought that it just seemed like the right thing to do, that, that someone had to bring awareness to this issue. Obviously I don't want to be spending that like the rest of my life in prison, but I just had a feeling. I was like, this judge isn't going to give me more than a decade. It wasn't until I saw my PSI afterwards and realized that they had this thing called enhancements. And I was looking at a lot more than that for having gone to try trial because they punish you for exercising your constitutional right. And I mean, fortunately we had all these issues in my case that you had the, the grand jury transcript issue, you had this death threat that I, they knew I was able to get back on in an Appeal on.
- [159:13]
A
And, and at the end, how much time did you get?
- [159:15]
B
I got eight years.
- [159:17]
A
So that's what they said during the sentencing.
- [159:19]
B
That's what they said during the sentencing because Eight years. I got eight years. You know, obviously this is like far overly punitive punishment for, for cannabis that they, you know, they came back and they said, listen, we will offer you under the mandatory minimum, we will give it to you under the safety valve, we'll give you eight years. But you have to surrender all your appeal rights, you know, because they knew that there was all these issues. And at this point in time, I just done through my PSI beforehand where they give you your guidelines and they racked my guidelines up. It wasn't like I was looking at 10 years anymore. And I just put my family through this traumatic experience. My attorney just ran off with all my money. I can't afford another trial. And so, you know, at that point it was just like the only, the only really decision to make.
- [159:57]
A
But you ended up not doing eight years. What happened?
- [159:59]
B
No, well, it did. I did the full eight years, but.
- [160:01]
A
You did eight years?
- [160:02]
B
Yeah, well, I did, I did six and a half. Six and some change. But the thing is, in the feds, you get a little bit of good time.
- [160:06]
A
Yeah, and I'm served. Did you have any.
- [160:09]
B
Well, I had the time served all the time I was in jail too. So it's like. Yeah, from 20. I got out in 2026. And so.
- [160:15]
A
Yeah, you just got out in three months ago.
- [160:17]
B
Yeah, three months ago.
- [160:18]
A
And how has life been since?
- [160:19]
B
Sounds, it's been great. I mean, it's been different, you know, it's challenging for sure. The world has changed a lot. Just with artificial intelligence and everything seems to be moving so much faster, you know, so it's.
- [160:30]
A
So it's. Wait, so actually I was under the impression that you'd gotten out with the Biden pardons for people because he pardoned a bunch of people who were in there for, for, in prison for cannabis. But you know, you actually did your full time. But your mother was trying to get that, right?
- [160:45]
B
Yeah, she was. Yeah, my mom, she definitely was. I mean, she's, she's a saint. You know, she was at the White House on 420. You know, woman's probably never smoking weed in her life and she's like doing all this, like charity work for these, like this place, this company or not company. I'm sorry. Charity. Freedom Grow. It's like, you know, they help cannabis prisoners and help put money on their
- [161:04]
A
books and the Last prisoners. That, that's another last prison project.
- [161:07]
B
That's another one. They, they, they, they're more attorneys that are like, you know, cannabis corporate law attorneys that, like, work for cannabis companies. And Mary Bailey, you know, she's a saint. She, she runs the program and she helps, helps all types of cannabis prisoners are just doing time with, just helping them with getting gifts for their family during the holidays and.
- [161:24]
A
Right, but none of this actually helped you and you ended up having.
- [161:26]
B
Yeah, none of it. Yeah, none of it. None of it got me out early and.
- [161:29]
A
Okay, so tell me now, what, what's left?
- [161:31]
B
Yeah, I mean, life's, it's different. I, I mean, I initially getting out, you know, I just went back and stayed with my parents first. Actually, you know, the day after tomorrow, I'll be moving to, I got a new place. I got a, you know, regular job and, you know, I'll be the first time doing that in a long time. But it's cool. It's working for a company that they, like, recycle tires and turn them into diesel fuel. It's kind of cool. Something different to try. Yeah, I mean, it's just very different world than it used to be. It just changed.
- [162:01]
A
I have no doubt that you're going places. You are incredibly, you can tell that you are very, very, very smart person that ran, unfortunately on the illegal side. But you, you ran a big operation, a big business. You have incredible skills, and I have zero doubt that you're going to become something big.
- [162:22]
B
Thank you. Thank you, Mariana.
- [162:23]
A
It's true, Jonathan. I really, I really, I, I, I can tell that you're, yeah, you're just very smart. You are very, very talented at what you did and, and I think you will find an opportunity to do it legally. I, I, I really, I have no doubt. Yeah.
- [162:36]
B
For you, that means world.
- [162:37]
A
Yeah, it's true. I, I, I know that we'll be sitting here and in five years, if not less, and you'll be telling me about all your successes.
- [162:45]
B
Appreciate that. Thank you. Thank you, Mariana. Look forward to it.
- [162:48]
A
It's true. So keep your head up.
- [162:51]
B
Yeah.
- [162:52]
A
You know, I know that a lot has changed, and I'm sure this whole experience has made you grow a lot and realize what's important in life. You've talked about that.
- [162:59]
B
Absolutely.
- [163:00]
A
And I really, I can't wait to see what's next for you, because I know it's big things.
- [163:03]
B
Absolutely. Appreciate it. Thank you.
- [163:05]
A
Anything else you want to say? Say, are you, are you as convinced as I am?
- [163:09]
B
Yeah, I mean, I think I think so, yeah. Sorry, I don't mean to get emotional, but I. I appreciate it.
- [163:13]
A
Yeah.
- [163:13]
B
Thank you.
- [163:14]
A
Why are you getting emotional?
- [163:16]
B
I mean, it's.
- [163:17]
A
I don't know.
- [163:18]
B
It's just been. It's. You know, someone have faith in you after having gone through this. It means a lot. You know, it's been a traumatic experience in a lot of ways. Not. Not like anything in comparison what other people go through and other people have been through it in, you know, in the system and some of the things I've seen and some of the stories that I've learned about what people go through, but, you know, I'm. I'm really just grateful, you know, I'm grateful to. To have another chance. I'm grateful to. To still be young and to have my family and to have, you know, Have. Have opportunity in front of me and. Yeah.
- [163:49]
A
Yeah. If I were to have a business, I would be very happy to. To hire you to run it.
- [163:55]
B
Yeah. It's funny you say that. Yeah, I think you'd be great at it. Yeah. That's what the guy said that hired the me. I actually knew him through my friend, a friend of mine that I did a lot of time with, who's still inside his attorney that he, like, represents him pro se, because, I mean, they have a crazy, you know, dynamic going on. But anyway, he had introduced. He had introduced me to the attorney when I got out, and this attorney, he went. You know, when he had. My friend had introduced him to me, and we got connected. He'd said, he's like, man, I know that you're probably looking at things like, like the world is gonna look down on you for what you did, but I could really use someone like you in my business. I consider it a net positive. Like what. What you did and what were you. What you were able to.
- [164:34]
A
To do with.
- [164:35]
B
With at such a young age and how successful you were to be. I think that's a net positive. And I. I would really like to hire you.
- [164:41]
A
Yeah. Yeah.
- [164:41]
B
So, funny enough, I'll actually be starting there next week.
- [164:44]
A
Yeah. Oh, that's amazing. Yeah. So often the people that I interview in these black markets, the skills, you know, can be transferable, and if they're given those opportunities, they can go on to lead their own legal businesses and do really well in the world.
- [164:57]
B
Absolutely.
- [164:57]
A
Yeah.
- [164:58]
B
I definitely see the corollaries.
- [164:59]
A
Yeah. Yeah. So I wish you the best of luck, and we'll reunite again in five years, and we'll see where you're at.
- [165:05]
B
Thank you, Mariana. I appreciate it.
- [165:07]
A
Thank you so much,
- [165:18]
B
Sam.