Embezzler Turned Prison Entrepreneur | The Hidden Third with Mariana van Zeller

Summary

---

Podcast Summary: "Embezzler Turned Prison Entrepreneur"

The Hidden Third with Mariana van Zeller
Episode Date: December 17, 2025
Guest: Justin Paperni (Former stockbroker, prison consultant, and advocate for criminal justice reform)

---

EPISODE OVERVIEW

This episode explores the hidden world of white-collar crime through the remarkable journey of Justin Paperni—a stockbroker turned embezzler, who after serving time in prison, reinvented himself as a leading prison consultant and advocate for criminal justice reform. With honesty and unusual candor, Justin recounts how he fell from success, the mechanics and rationalizations of his crime, his time in prison, and how he's now helping others through his consulting firm. The conversation is a deep dive into personal accountability, systemic failings in finance and justice, and the path to redemption.

---

KEY THEMES & DISCUSSION POINTS

1. Justin Paperni’s Background and the Path to White-Collar Crime

• Upbringing and Early Ambition
  • Raised in privilege in Encino, LA; parents and coaches instilled values, discipline, accountability (03:04-04:35).
  • “Nothing in my past that would suggest someday, like, I'm going to prison.” (Justin, 03:23)
• Entry into Brokerage Industry
  • Driven by ambition, influence of “wrong corporate culture” and idolizing the wrong people.
  • Did not follow advice from his cousin at Goldman Sachs, who warned: “Don’t be a stockbroker. They’re nothing more than a used car salesman.” (07:21)
• First Steps Toward Crime
  • Initially worked honestly; driven by the perception of success as much as financial need (09:13).
  • Disillusionment with sales-oriented, cutthroat brokerage environment.
  • “I felt exploited.” (21:13)
  • Decision to leave Merrill Lynch and start anew at a smaller firm.
  • Later joined a partnership, which became fraught with resentment over credit and reward.

---

2. Mechanics & Rationalizations of White-Collar Embezzlement

• Discovering and Exploiting a System Glitch
  • Angry at being denied a raise, Justin finds a way to route 100% of commissions to himself rather than the agreed 25%; repeats act over 15–20 trades (22:47-27:24).
  • “If you look hard enough, you could always find a glitch. If you feel as if you've been harmed, exploited or wronged, you can always find a way.” (22:50)
  • “It was sickening. It was disgusting. I'll never forget it to the day that I drop dead.” (23:22)
• Rationalizing Unethical Choices
  • Stuck in a cycle—feeling harmed leads to entitlement, which leads to wrong action.
  • Cites Nietzsche: “The value of something isn’t what you attain with it, it’s what it costs you.” (24:41)
• Further Crimes at UBS
  • Transfers to UBS with a lucrative bonus; pressure to perform leads to taking on a dubious client (“Keith,” a hedge fund manager with track record of fraud).
  • Justin helps develop and circulate indemnification letters to shield himself and UBS from liability, focusing on self-preservation rather than protecting clients (35:11-36:08).

---

3. The Unraveling: Investigation, Prosecution, and Sentencing

• The Downfall

  • A forged letter triggers the investigation—a client fakes Justin’s signature on a document falsely guaranteeing fund safety (41:55-44:02).
  • Justin tries to deflect blame, but the scheme is exposed.
  • “It was too late. It was done.” (44:17)

• Federal Investigation and Denial

  • Interactions with FBI agents are marked by denial and obfuscation (48:20-54:55).
  • Lies to both lawyer and FBI about his involvement: “You hire lawyers and then lie to them.” (51:54)
  • Downfall is confirmed when his partner Keith becomes a government cooperator, pleading guilty to conspiracy and implicating Justin.

• Emotional Fallout

  • Justin describes devastation, numbness, and self-pity during the process.
  • “I spent my 40s making up for bad decisions of my 20s and 30s.” (41:55)
  • “There’s a consequence from not doing what you’re trained to do. There should be a punishment, a lifelong stain that accompanies bad choices.” (37:39)

• Sentencing

  • Pleads guilty to conspiracy to commit securities fraud; receives 18 months in federal prison, three months in halfway house, three years’ probation (63:49-65:15).
  • Victims in court express satisfaction at his imprisonment.
  • “Even though they got their money back, it doesn’t replace the shame and pain they went through.” (65:22)

---

4. Prison Life and Transformation

• Early Days: Resentment and Isolation
  • Justin describes prison camp as “big boy timeout”; comes in still regarding himself as a victim (67:04-68:48).
• Mentorship from Michael Santos
  • Guided by Michael Santos (serving 45-year sentence for a drug offense), who emphasizes the importance of preparing for life after prison.
  • “You should probably reevaluate how you serve your time.” (75:17)
  • Justin begins to blog daily, finding unexpected purpose, connection, and outside support (77:27-79:31).
  • “Michael encouraged me to begin documenting my journey... create assets that don’t exist.” (77:27)
• Building Toward Redemption
  • Authored book, Lessons from Prison, with guidance from Santos.
  • “I began to learn every day from Michael... and began to develop what is now White Collar Advice.” (81:46)

---

5. The Prison Consulting Industry and Criminal Justice Reform

• What is Prison Consulting?

  • “All of the media I've done all over the world, they would introduce me as a federal prison consultant... I'm not a consultant. I am his [Michael Santos’s] ambassador, his best student.” (91:30-92:24)
  • Details White Collar Advice’s model: offering free resources and focusing on creating “assets”—documentation, education, mitigation—for clients.
  • Consultants primarily help with mitigation, sentencing prep, and post-prison life; majority of clients are white-collar and well-resourced, but also includes anyone seeking reform (84:05).
  • “You don't pay for consulting. It's a waste of money. We give it away for free.” (93:53)

• Reform & Philanthropy

  • White Collar Advice is for-profit, but a portion of proceeds funds Prison Professors, a nonprofit delivering educational and reform programs in prisons and jails (90:14-91:20).
  • “The nonprofit funds all of it, and I fund it too, through White Collar Advice.” (88:21)

• Change and Stigma

  • Discusses imbalance in criminal justice, impact of privilege, and two-tier system.
  • “There is a change in this country, I believe. Four or five, six years ago... there’s no doubt.” (71:50-72:13)
  • Heavy stigma for ex-convicts; Justin advocates for radical transparency as the only way out of shame (102:22-106:10).
  • “The way you overcome and you run towards the shame.” (106:08)

---

6. Systemic Failings and Broader Impact

• The Business of Incarceration

  • US spends $80–$87 billion annually on corrections (73:05-73:32).
  • “There’s a huge ecosystem that employs case managers, counselors, wardens, people who work within the prison. It's, it's really big business.” (73:52)

• Prison Conditions and Reform

  • Mariana cites the HBO documentary “Alabama Solution,” highlighting inhumane state prison conditions and lack of empathy from public/officials (107:36-110:43).
  • Justin: “Even when you’re in prison, there are basic rights that you should be able to live with dignity.” (110:14)

• Best Practices for Change

  • Focus on building values and skills during incarceration for successful reentry.
  • Emphasizes incremental, authentic effort over empty talk.
  • “It is hard work. It requires someone to say, like, I'm going to start creating something today.” (127:39)

---

MEMORABLE QUOTES & MOMENTS

• On rationalizing crime:
  • “If you look hard enough, you could always find a glitch. If you feel as if you've been harmed, exploited or wronged, you can always find a way.” (Justin, 22:50)
• On the cost of wrongdoing:
  • “The value of something isn’t what you attain with it, it’s what it costs you.” (Nietzsche quote, 24:41)
• Facing the stigma:
  • “There’s a consequence from not doing what you’re trained to do. There should be a punishment, a lifelong stain that accompanies bad choices.” (37:39)
• Prison as sabbatical:
  • “It's not really 18 months or two years in minimum security camp... it’s kind of a sabbatical in many ways. As much as people hate hearing that, it's like, don't blame me. I didn't build the prisons in this country. I'm doing the best with what we have.” (38:01)
• On authenticity and redemption:
  • “I’m not a consultant... I am [Michael Santos’s] ambassador, I am his best student, and these are the lessons we teach... We give everything away for free.” (91:40)
• On building a new life:
  • “If you can do it on your own, you should. You need to start immediately. You're late because the government's working full time to build their narrative of you.” (93:31)
• On hard-earned success:
  • “There's nothing more rewarding than not bullshitting and not telling people to do what you haven't done done. That's what's rewarding.” (118:38)

---

TIMESTAMPS FOR MAJOR SEGMENTS

• Early Life, Upbringing, and Career Start: 03:04 – 10:07
• Ethical Decline, Merrill Lynch and Bear Stearns: 12:01 – 24:40
• Committing Fraud, Rationalizations: 22:47 – 27:24
• UBS, Hedge Fund Client, Indemnification Letters: 28:08 – 39:45
• Collapse & Investigation: 41:55 – 54:55
• Plea, Sentencing, and Impact on Identity: 63:49 – 67:22
• Prison Life, Santos’s Influence, Building New Purpose: 67:35 – 81:46
• Creation & Philosophy behind White Collar Advice: 82:00 – 91:40
• On Prison Consulting vs. Authentic Reform: 91:30 – 93:53
• Justice System, Privilege, and Broader Economic Realities: 73:05 – 74:53
• Ethics, Empathy, and Conditions in US Prisons: 107:36 – 112:40
• Reflection, Regret, and Redemptive Cold-Calling: 121:49 – 128:52

---

FINAL REFLECTIONS

Mariana and Justin close with a powerful message about the complexity of accountability, the need for empathy in reform, and the redemptive power of honest self-inventory and incremental change. Justin’s story is both a cautionary tale and a blueprint for transformation—showing how the worst moments can be harnessed into authentic service for others, and how even in a hyper-punitive system, it’s possible to build a new narrative and “engineer” a better future.

---

Listen for:

• Raw admissions about the emotional cost of white-collar crime
• Eye-opening details of the US prison industry and consulting “business”
• The untold afterlife of conviction: reputation, restitution, and rebuilding
• Hard lessons in self-awareness, humility, and advocacy

For resources or information on justice reform and white-collar advice:

• White Collar Advice
• Prison Professors

---

Transcript

[Justin Paperni]

This episode is brought to you by State Farm.

[Interviewer]

Listening to this podcast.

[Justin Paperni]

Smart move. Being financially savvy.

[Interviewer]

Smart move.

[Justin Paperni]

Another smart move. Having State Farm help you create a competitive price when you choose to bundle home and auto bundling. Just another way to save with a personal price plan like a good neighbor, State Farm is there. Prices are based on rating plans that vary by state. Coverage options are selected by the customer. Availability, amount of discounts, and savings and eligibility vary by state. And then he says, are you sitting down? I said, no, I'm showing property to a friend of mine in Woodland Hills. And he said, well, you should pull over. I need to tell you something. And part of me is like, why are you even calling me? I haven't heard from you in a year. Like, I've moved on. I have a real estate license. I'm crushing it, man. Things are great. And that's when he said it's going to come out soon. That your former client, Keith, the hedge fund manager, has been cooperating with the Department of Justice in an ongoing probe. And for the last year, while you've been playing golf, lying to the FBI and selling real estate, he's been cooperating. And a press release is going to come out stating that he's pled guilty to one count of conspiracy to commit securities fraud with a cap of 60 months in prison. And that release is going to state that there is an unnamed, yet to be unindicted co conspirator who helped facilitate the fraud. I'm like, well, is that me? He's like, that be you? I said, well, how long will I get in prison? Like, why are you calling me? It's been a year. This isn't. I can't reconcile what's happening. And now I'm pulled over on Ventura Boulevard in Woodland Hills next to a Paquito Moss. I think it was thinking how my life has changed while this nice girl sitting in the car waiting to go see a condo in Woodland Hills, that's.

[Interviewer]

Kourtney Kardashian, is just sitting there waiting for you.

[Justin Paperni]

She's waiting in the car while I'm taking a call outside.

[Interviewer]

So, Justin, this is not our first time. We've actually done this interview before. Unfortunately, it was in the early days of the podcast, and turns out the cameras weren't recording.

[Justin Paperni]

It was the best podcast I ever did, and no one will hear it. Hope you're happy.

[Interviewer]

But you were so sweet and gracious enough to come back, so thank you. And I loved our interview so much that I really wanted you to come Back.

[Justin Paperni]

Thank you.

[Interviewer]

Let's repeat the best interview of the ever. Let's do it.

[Justin Paperni]

I'm grateful to be here.

[Interviewer]

And I'll do a little intro. You're a very successful stockbroker. You made a ton of money, and then suddenly you were convicted of fraud. You spent 10 months in prison, where you wrote a very successful, popular book called Lessons from Prison. And now you're a prison consultant, which I'm really looking forward to diving into that, which is a term I've never heard. And you're a leading voice, which is much more important. A leading voice in criminal justice reform. So welcome to the Hidden Third.

[Justin Paperni]

Thank you. It's good to be here. Quick correction. People like to knock. How long my prison sentence was, because they say, like, 18 months isn't long enough. So you said 10 months. Actually, 13. Very long.

[Interviewer]

13.

[Justin Paperni]

13 long months in prison. Three months in the halfway house here in Hollywood, which is an experience maybe we can discuss a little bit. And then three. Three years on probation. And I've been home 16 years now.

[Interviewer]

I promise that the third time you come on the podcast, I'll get it right.

[Justin Paperni]

Very good, Very good.

[Interviewer]

Let's start again. Your childhood. What was it like? Where did you grow up and what was that like?

[Justin Paperni]

Very fortunate. I grew up in Encino, which is about 20, 30 minutes from here. Jewish enclave outside Los Angeles. Every opportunity you can imagine, parents that taught me right from wrong, an older brother who was tough and fair. We got along just fine. No trauma, no. Nothing in my background that would suggest someday I'm going to be serving 388 days in prison. And I just didn't have good role models with my parents. As a baseball player, I had coaches that, like, really held me accountable. Discipline, tough leave practices, crying like, this isn't fair. This is awful. But I, I that compelled me to become a better player. So nothing in my past that would suggest any problem with the criminal justice system. There was one name I knew from the 80s and 90s who had gone to prison, and that was Michael Milken. Just because I think I played baseball with his nephew at Encino. And you knew he was the junk bond king who went to prison for making $600 million at Drexel. That's the only person I knew. So things changed, of course, when I grad USC and I work my way into the brokerage industry. But there's nothing in my past that would suggest someday, like, I'm going to prison, which is much different than a lot of really good men that I serve time with who came from what? You would hear these cliches. Broken homes, poverty, parents in and out of prison, very few opportunities succumbing to game gang life at a very early age. You could understand, as a lot of judges would say at a sentencing hearing, you don't excuse it, but you could better understand how they would end up there. In my case, there's no justification or explanation other than I made really bad decisions knowing that I was making really bad decisions and there was a price to pay.

[Interviewer]

So you didn't, you weren't like a teenager thinking, one day I'm going to be in prison. You never even crossed your mind that this was ever going to happen.

[Justin Paperni]

In fact, when, when my family or friends read the COVID of the Los Angeles Times that said UBS Broker Pleads Guilty to Fraud and it mentioned my name, so many people called my mom and said, you know, if there's one person that I never would have imagined that would have gotten into trouble, it would have been because I was a good student. I never cheated. I went to class on time, I got good grades, I went to usc. I could have gone to a number of schools. Baseball was my, was my job. It was a full time job. If I got to practice late, I didn't play real accountability. So people were just stunned when they saw my name.

[Interviewer]

So what went wrong? What happened?

[Justin Paperni]

I think I was a victim of a corporate culture. When I was around baseball players, I would act and behave like them. Discipline on time, working hard, character, teamwork. My circumstances or environment really played a role in how I responded. So when I graduated SC and I'm working as a broker, I saw a.

[Interviewer]

Where'd you graduate from?

[Justin Paperni]

Sorry, I graduated USC.

[Interviewer]

98.

[Justin Paperni]

USC.

[Interviewer]

Sorry, USC.

[Justin Paperni]

USC in 97. I think when I was a young broker, I was influenced and I began to idolize the wrong, the wrong people.

[Interviewer]

So did you always want to be a broker when you were in school?

[Justin Paperni]

You were thinking, I didn't always want to be a broker? No. My parents went through a really difficult divorce in 1993, graduating high school. It was the Rodney King riots. My dad has a business not far from there and it was a very difficult time and we went to therapy as a family and it really helped. So I, I went to USC studying psychology, thinking that I would go to graduate school and become a therapist. Yes. And then my.

[Interviewer]

Why was it hard for you, the divorce?

[Justin Paperni]

Well, I, I lived a pretty sheltered, coddled, privileged life. So to get that news that they were divorcing after 23 years of marriage was A lot to take in together with graduating high school and going off to college, moving from the only home that I had ever known. It was the first sense of adversity I'd ever faced. And I wasn't someone who blamed me or I wasn't like that. They just, they, they grew apart. So that was a lot to take in. And it's part of the reason I was glad I went to school at USC to be closer to home because I think it was hard on, hard on my mom. Women don't always do as well in the divorce, at least my mom didn't do as well as she should have the case. Unfortunately not much I can tell you. So that was hard. Then when back to being at usc, I had a cousin who was a managing partner at Goldman Sachs in downtown Los Angeles. Mom said maybe you should just go intern and watch him. Maybe you have interest in the brokerage business. And my interest was growing because following my parents divorce my mom began to invest and learn more about the market, try to undo some of the losses from the divorce, which can be really expensive. So she called him, his name was Todd at Goldman Sachs. He said have him come down like at 4 o' clock in the morning. That's very early. Yeah, because he gets up early to trade.

[Interviewer]

To trade with East Coast.

[Justin Paperni]

Yeah. So I walk in and he said so, so you're the baseball player. And I recall walking in in a suit and tie, but my tie was tied to like right here. I didn't know how to tie, it was terrible. And he said so you're the baseball player, what do you want to do? And I said well, maybe go to graduate school, but I also have interest in the brokerage industry. And he said don't be a stockbroker. They're nothing more that's, they're nothing more than a used car salesman. You have to go to graduate school or go to business school. And that was kind of the start of not following advice from people who I think had my best interest. I was driven to, you know, I think want to make money, graduate. I rationalized that because I was a baseball player at usc, a lot of my friends who were going on to play in the major leagues with big bonuses would give me their money. Didn't immediately turn out to be give.

[Interviewer]

You your money as a broker. Give me their money as a broker.

[Justin Paperni]

They would give me their money to manage. And it was very intoxicating to be on the trading floor at Goldman Sachs hearing 50 $100 million orders. It was intoxicating it's kind of like playing baseball in front of 10 or 15,000 people. There's a thrill to it, an excitement to it, but. And I was really hooked. Of course I was naive. I presumed every place would be like a Goldman Sachs. It's like starting off in the hall of Fame. You don't realize you started the minor leagues. So when I graduated sc, I started at Merrill Lynch. I was part of a training class and it was nothing like Goldman. It's a factory. So many brokers coming and going. If you don't hit your numbers, you're gone. Student loans, you immediately have to make money. So for me, I liked the thrill of never having a salary, of just saying I'm going to succeed on my own merit. I wasn't afraid to become a broker because baseball teaches you a lot about rejection and failure on a large scale in front of people. So I just became a cold calling stockbroker. Also a cold walker as well, where you literally just walk into businesses unsolicited.

[Interviewer]

And trying to get people's business trying to run and. Can I ask you a question? Was making money always important for you? Did you want to always want to be rich?

[Justin Paperni]

So when people speak of white collar crime, they'll often default to greed, right? I certainly can be a symptom. For me, all of my needs were met, they'd always been met. So I wasn't necessarily driven to make a ton of money. I liked the lifestyle that I could provide. I think I liked how I might have been perceived from other people. As a young executive at Bear Stearns with good money but assets, a home, some investment properties, the perception that others had of me, I think I liked and I probably played into it a bit. So I think that's what I liked as much as the money. And that what. That's partly what made the fall even harder. Because that image I wanted others to have of me gets shattered when it's, you know, your name versus the government.

[Interviewer]

Okay, so what happened? So you're working at Merrill lynch at this point?

[Justin Paperni]

I started to make bad decisions pretty quickly into my career at Merrill Lynch. So what happened was through cold walking, just like walking into businesses. Can I shake your hand, yes or no?

[Interviewer]

So tell me a little bit about that. How, how did it start and what were you doing exactly? Were you good at it?

[Justin Paperni]

I'm assuming I wasn't a very good cold caller. But I always knew that people respond differently to you in person. So I would put on a suit and tie and have a little brochure with my name on it and my business card. And I would walk along Ventura Boulevard and Encino all the way down to.

[Interviewer]

Sherman Oaks and say what?

[Justin Paperni]

I would walk in and say, I'm not here to just sell anything today. I just need 30 seconds of your time. And the market's rolling right now. And I'd be so appreciative if you're interested in making more money if I could call you tomorrow and run this investment idea by you.

[Interviewer]

How old were you?

[Justin Paperni]

I was 22, so I just graduated USC. So some people would be like, get out. You're not invited. And don't you see no solicitation sign? And I'll never forget one dentist saying to me, you have a lot of chutzpah at Jewish. You have a lot of chutzpah walking in there. I'm like, well, you know, I have 60,000 student loans from USC, and if I don't bring in business, I'm gonna get fired. I grew up right here in the hills of Encino, and I can't go running back to mom to tell her I didn't make it. And I really believe in what we're selling. So if you're open to making more money, I think this could be a good idea for you. If you're open to doing that. And they say, like, God, you just, okay, call me tomorrow. And I'm like, hold on a second. That's the blow off. I'm like, I know what the blow off is. Like, okay, I give the blow off. What that means is you're going to tell me to call you tomorrow. Who's that over there? That's my assistant. What's her name? Jennifer. Jennifer. You just heard Dr. Schmidt say, Don't I call tomorrow. You're going to put him through because he has kids that he wants to put through college. So I would just do this in the room, and people would look at me like, who is this guy? Probably get out. But a lot of times I would call back and they would pick up and they would open up an account and the market was doing well.

[Interviewer]

So you were a good cold caller.

[Justin Paperni]

You sound walker.

[Interviewer]

Cold walker.

[Justin Paperni]

I would just walk in.

[Interviewer]

Yeah, that sounds amazing. You sound great.

[Justin Paperni]

Not a good cold caller.

[Interviewer]

Okay. You weren't a good caller.

[Justin Paperni]

Out of the blue, you'd be like, drop dead. Don't call me.

[Interviewer]

Right.

[Justin Paperni]

It's different when someone.

[Interviewer]

Yeah. Face to face.

[Justin Paperni]

Always totally different.

[Interviewer]

Which is why I like this much more than just doing remote podcasts or audio podcasts. I love the personal Connection that we get from looking at each other's eyes.

[Justin Paperni]

Yeah, I totally agree. So when I was at Merrill, I was succeeding on my own. And then they wanted the young brokers like me to partner with the senior brokers. And I didn't want to do that. I said, I'm just going to sink or swim on my own. And they gave me an ultimatum. And they said, within 90 days, you're either going to merge your small book of business, it was maybe $10 million, with a senior broker, and together you're going to be partners or you go, bye, bye. So I'm like, okay, I'll assess for the next three months.

[Interviewer]

What was it about your personality? You think that you're junior broker. You thought, I don't need a senior broker. I just want to do this by myself.

[Justin Paperni]

I. I believed in what I was doing. I. I never generated a trade just to make a commission. I felt like I was giving good advice. I think people liked me. I was hard. I'd get in at 5. I'd leave at 9. I was hardworking. I was honest. And I didn't need Merrill lynch as much as I needed a work ethic and an ability to think that I could actually help people.

[Interviewer]

Right. You're also a very confident person. You are confident of your skills and your ability.

[Justin Paperni]

I didn't. I didn't. Part of the reason a senior broke, a junior broker would partner with a senior broker is because they think it's going to, like, eternity in the business. Like, wow, I'm young. This senior broker is going to mentor me. I'm going to be successful. What happened is, and what I later learned is the junior broker, at least in my experience, ends up managing the senior partner's book of business, which means the junior broker stops prospecting. They stopped bringing in business. They were managing the senior broker's book of business all day. And because they're getting a smaller piece or lion's share of the commissions, they don't make enough to live.

[Interviewer]

Right.

[Justin Paperni]

So what happened after a few months was I saw friends of mine flunking out of the business.

[Interviewer]

And you're more like an assistant than you are.

[Justin Paperni]

You're not. I. My job was to prospect. They were. They weren't teaching us how to read charts and really to manage money. We were salesmen to bring in money and buy stocks the firm was recommending. It was really simple and clear what, like, success was for them to bring in money. So one day I'm in the human resource room, and I hear an older broker Named Mike, who is supposedly mentoring like three junior dudes, talking about how he had raised like $10 million that day. And I asked him how. And he went on to say he raised it essentially because these junior brokers, that he was meant, they flunked out of the business. They weren't making enough money to live. So then he, of course, takes over their assets. And that's when I'm like, this is kind of a wretched business. People are out for themselves. Fundamentally different. When I was a stock bro, when I was a baseball player, where if you work hard and perform, you're going to play whether you have a scholarship or not.

[Interviewer]

And it's teamwork, right?

[Justin Paperni]

Team where there was no teamwork there. I felt they were exploiting these younger brokers. Long days knew, knowing they're going to flunk out of the business to usurp their book of business. And I told my manager, Ron, I said, I'm just. I'm not going to do it. And he said, well, this is required now. And I said, well, I'll leave. And I did. So I resigned from Merrill Lynch. Oh, wow.

[Interviewer]

I didn't know that.

[Justin Paperni]

Yeah, I wasn't going to be a part of a senior partnership where I'm going to go from cultivating relationships and building my book of business to picking up phones and giving stock trades all day. I'm good. I don't need Merrill Lynch. I'm okay. So I left and I went to a small firm called Crow Whedon, and every client that I wanted to come with me came with me because I had done a very good job. And I told him the truth, why I left. And I was at Crow Wheaton, succeeding. But then finally I wanted to reach out to my friends that I played baseball with at usc. It had taken a few years, so.

[Interviewer]

Because at this point, you were established enough and you felt confident enough to reach out and try to get their business.

[Justin Paperni]

Introducing Meta Ray Ban Display, the world's most advanced AI glasses with a full color display built into the lens of the glasses. It's there when you need it and gone when you don't. Send and receive messages, translate or caption live conversations, collaborate with Meta AI and more. Be one of the first to try Meta Ray ban display. Visit meta.com metaraybanddisplay to book a demo and find your pair. I remember one of the first, because you tried before. I said this to business school classes. I said, I remember the first time I lied. Before I graduated usc, a sales manager at Merrill lynch said, do you think Your baseball player friends will give you money. And I said, of course I'm going to ask them. I lied because I knew I wasn't immediately going to ask them because it's different to be told no from someone. You cold water, you know, they don't know you. It's not personal. But I didn't want to hear no from, like, my former teammate and friend. It would have been, like, such an affront to me, like, what's wrong with you? So it took a few years before I even had the courage to ask. And it started by asking an agent. His name is Danny Lozano, and he worked at the Beverly Hills Sports Council. And I knew Danny from USC because he was representing teammates of mine, like Gabe Alvarez, Jeff Jenkins. So he used to come to campus to recruit. So I knew him because we all lived together. So I reached out to Danny and I said, I've been a broker for several years. And he's, oh, here comes the sales. I said, yeah, well, I'm selling something. And I said, I'd love to work with your. Your guys. And he said, well, you're too. You're too young. Like, the green is the. You're too green is the phrase. I didn't even know what the hell that meant. I still don't fully get it to this day. I'm 50, so I'm like, what does that mean? Are you not going to give me a chance? He said, well, let me introduce you to someone. And he set up a meeting at El Torito Grill in Beverly Hills with Danny, a gentleman named Kenny, who was seven years older than me, graduate of USC as well, grew up in Encino. And me, Kenny was very close with Danny. They were fraternity brothers at usc. And Danny told me Kenny managed money for all of his players. So he said, why don't you meet with Kenny and maybe you two could form a partnership. And Kenny did offer me a chance to join the partnership. But I just said a couple of minutes ago I was averse to partnerships because of what happened at Merrill lynch, right? But like, our values change in life. I was a little older. I could have gone to Bear Stearns at 26, the youngest broker they had hired. A lot of status. It certainly would have been more money working with professional athletes. It made sense to do it, even though I was generally averse to partnerships because they tend to end badly. And unfortunately, this one started to go badly about six months after joining, I said, yes. I left Crow Whedon, and when I went to Bear Stearns, Maybe I had 30 or 40 million dollars under management. Kenny had more than 100. He'd been doing it much longer period of time. So we combined our book of business, and when, the day that we partnered, I was going to get 25% of the production, he would get 75%. In other words, you call in and say, I want to buy a thousand shares of Amazon. The commission's $1,000. I would get 25%, Kenny would get 75%.

[Interviewer]

Got it.

[Justin Paperni]

And I felt that was fair when we started our partnership.

[Interviewer]

How much money were you making at the time then?

[Justin Paperni]

Maybe like 400,000 a year.

[Interviewer]

And this is what year?

[Justin Paperni]

1999.

[Interviewer]

Okay, so that's good. A really good amount of money.

[Justin Paperni]

It was good money, and I was a saver. I wasn't an aggressive spender. I bought my first apartment building, and I wasn't a lavish. I liked seeing money in the bank account. I didn't spend like some people would on watches and cars and homes and travel and private jets. Like, I didn't. I didn't do that. A part of me liked looking at the bank account and seeing, okay, there, there's. There's money there in case something slows or stops.

[Interviewer]

You spend on, on watches now because you have a really nice watch.

[Justin Paperni]

It's a nice watch now. It's a nice watch now.

[Interviewer]

You've earned it.

[Justin Paperni]

I've earned it. I've earned it. So the, the partnership felt right when. When we started. But about six months in, I had brought in a client that was doing around $100,000 a month in production.

[Interviewer]

And that's a lot at that point.

[Justin Paperni]

I think it's a lot at any time just for one cl. And it's consuming a lot of my time. It's a lot of complex trades. But after about six months of at least $100,000 a month, I did what I would encourage any young executive to do, to not say, you want to raise because you need it or you want it. I need a watch, I need a car, I need a house, but because you've earned it. So I walked into his office to.

[Interviewer]

Your partner, to the partner's office, my.

[Justin Paperni]

Senior partner's office, kind of with the data that said, you know, I put it in front of him with hopes he would look at it and just quickly say, oh, yes, I'm going to give you a raise. But it was how much this account had been producing, and I suggested that I should get a raise or a bump based on the 25% didn't feel equitable anymore. And he Just sort of mocked me and said, you're at Bear Stearns because of me. You're very young and you probably wouldn't have closed that client unless I trained you. And you know you're not getting a raise. So there's a number of things that went through my mind. My life didn't change if I got a raise that day. Nothing really changed. It was taking credit for my work, which really bothers me. It should bother anyone that does good work and creates. People steal. They create. They pawn it off as their own. We deal with that every day in my business right now. Every day someone produces something that they stole from Michael or me. It's just the reality of it. And people aren't going to invest the time to even know. So they may think that person actually produced it. So it bothers me now, and it bothered me then. So he's taking credit for my work. And some people don't need thank yous in life. Some people may say, I make a ton of money. That's enough. I had friends that made millions of dollars playing Major League baseball, said, I don't think the manager liked me. The GM liked me. I did my job, I got paid well. I don't need a thank you from anyone. I got paid to do what I'm supposed to do. I wanted to thank you. I appreciate you. You get in early, you stay in late.

[Interviewer]

You wanted validation you're somebody that I.

[Justin Paperni]

Don'T need it anymore. It's a consequence of my prison term. You could argue I went from so emotional and react to everything. And my wife would probably tell you, you're too stoic, you're too emotionless to good or bad news. I'm numb to it at this point. There is no question now, but you were. There's no question at 50, having been home from prison for 16 years, with what I've done, what I'm striving to do, what's come at me, the ups and downs of not just going to prison, but building a life around it. Despite serving just 388 days in prison, I'm numb to it. In the last three weeks. Someone says, I want you to hire me, and if I don't, I'm going to create some AI deep videos that said I was a client of yours and you stole from me. I'm like, dude, do your work. I don't even know who you are.

[Interviewer]

Right.

[Justin Paperni]

Whatever you want to do is great. I've never spoken with you before. And if you want to come home from prison and threaten and extort to try to grow your business because I'm not going to hire you. Have fun. Do your worst. Right? Everything you can imagine has come our way, like any business owner has. The point is, unlike when I was a 27 or 28 year old kid at Bear Stearns and I didn't get a thank you, I took it personally. Three or four o' clock in the morning in bed, I'd roll over and say, why am I not getting a thank you? Doesn't he know how hard I work? I'm in at 5, I'm in at 10 without recognizing what I'm making. Then I rationalize, well, he gets in at 11, he leaves at 3 to go golf at Bel Air LA Country Club under the idea he's bringing in business nonsense. I felt exploited.

[Interviewer]

You think that's bad? I mean, don't you understand? Doesn't your older self understand why your younger self was feeling that way?

[Justin Paperni]

Sure. But you can feel exploited and you can feel pressures to be told, thank you and I appreciate you and you're a valued member of this team and you can rationalize the unfairness and say, when I was a baseball player, this would not have happened. And this is a wretched, sickening industry. The problem is what I did next, which is seizing an opportunity to enrich myself when my partner wouldn't give me a raise. And to sum it up quickly, when you called in to sell the thousand shares of Amazon, it was a thousand dollar commission. I found a glitch in the system that enabled me to keep 100% of the commission.

[Interviewer]

Oh, wow.

[Justin Paperni]

I was only entitled to 25%.

[Interviewer]

How did you find that?

[Justin Paperni]

If you look hard enough, you could always find a glitch. If you feel as if you've been harmed, exploited or wronged, you can always find a way. And that's how I went. From a kid from Encina who knew right from wrong, with parents who held you accountable to not giving into a partnership at Merrill lynch because the senior brokers would exploit me building my business the right way, never generating a trade simply for a commission, even if it would put me higher up on the board because it wasn't the right thing to do. To suddenly, three years later, stealing commissions you think you're entitled to.

[Interviewer]

Okay, tell me about the first time that ever happened. And how did you find the glitch in the system? Like, what was that moment like for you? You were sitting at your desk.

[Justin Paperni]

It was sickening. It was disgusting. I'll never forget it to the day that I dropped Dead. I get chills now even thinking about it. At Bear Stearns, it was really like an old school trading firm. Nobody wanted offices. Like if you want an office, like you're a dinosaur, you want to be on the floor. That's where the action is. Even the biggest brokers making 20 million bucks a year on the floor. So it was Kenny and me. And when a trade comes in, you click the commission that it's going to go the number. In other words, I would have my own number, JP91. Kenny had KP89. Our joint number was JPKP93. So when I did your thousand share trade, it should have gone to the JPK3 where it's going to then break it out to 25 to me, 75 to Kenny. When I entered the trade, you see the option where it could have just been my number, which would have been JP 91, where 100% would have gone to me. And that should not have been an option. There should have only been one option. And then from there it disperses. So I remember looking at it and thinking, what happens if I click this? What if I click it? Is the entire commission going to go to me? And I thought, well, maybe it won't even let me click it. But I knew that it would let me click it. And I did. And I ran the trade and I hit enter and the trade executed. And the next day I looked at my commission sheet and 100% of it went directly to my number. Wow.

[Interviewer]

Do you remember how much money that was?

[Justin Paperni]

A few thousand bucks. We did some big trades, but here's what happens. And it was confirmed when I read this Nietzsche quote in prison. I've written a lot about it in my new book after the Fall. This quote I read in the prison library where it says, the value of something isn't what you attain with it, it's what it costs you. And I read that quote in prison. I thought, so profound. When I stole those commissions, what had I attained the money I thought I was entitled to. But at what cost? What was it costing me? My sanity. Because every time the phone rang, I thought I was going to get caught. My branch manager, Kenny. I began to neglect other clients who helped give me my start. Because I was so consumed with getting this recognition. Every time I walk into the office, I'm like, oh, they have found out I'm going to lose my career. What have I done right? So I try to approach things not from what you attain with it, but what it costs you. And it really, it cost me in many, many ways, I was in a relationship that I neglected. She went on to leave. I don't blame her because I wasn't present, I wasn't engaged. When you live as a victim, it's a terrible way to live. And I acted as if I was the victim. And the way to rectify it was by stealing. It was never my fault.

[Interviewer]

It's such a good way of putting it because we all have been in those situations, right, where you're, you know, where you like find $100 on the floor and, you know, it probably belongs to somebody that's going to come and look for it or a wallet or whatever, and you're in that moment, like, maybe I could just put in my pocket and walk away with it. And there's. If you think about it that way, like, what is this going to cost you and how bad you're going to feel? I mean, obviously your example is a much bigger example. But we've all had those moments. What's the right thing to do? What's the wrong thing to do that's going to benefit me immediately or the wrong or the right thing to do, which eventually in the long term is going to bring me for, you know, the further.

[Justin Paperni]

There's actually a really good book by Dan Ariely who are predictably irrational. And in the book he talks about how people cheat and actually like, the further removed you get away from money, the easier it is to cheat. I think he used this analogy at Duke Business School where you walk, you open up a refrigerator and you see six $1 bills and six Coca Colas. And nobody took the $1 bills. They would just take the Coca Cola. But it's still stealing. And that's how a lot of. That's how the market melted down in 2009 because it's collateral debt obligations. The further remove you get from money, the easier it is to rational cheat. Because most of those bankers who were partly responsible for the economy crashing would never have gone into Chase with a gun and said, give me $5 million.

[Interviewer]

It's funny because it's a little bit like Michael Santos told me how he thought about what he was doing because.

[Justin Paperni]

He never touched the cocaine.

[Interviewer]

He actually never touched the cocaine.

[Justin Paperni]

The further there's that makes it easier to cheat and break the law. The further removed you get away from it for sure.

[Interviewer]

Exactly. Okay, so this happened. This is the moment that you.

[Justin Paperni]

And I'm afraid I'm going to get caught. And I'm like, this is terrible. I can't function. And I didn't think about coming clean.

[Interviewer]

And I got, wait, this didn't happen just once. You kept on doing it.

[Justin Paperni]

I did it over a period of many months.

[Interviewer]

How many times do you think you did it?

[Justin Paperni]

Maybe 15 or 20. And what happens when you cheat is when you get away with. Kind of emboldens you to keep going. They're like, they haven't figured it out. And then you've done it enough times where it's like, well, I've already started. I'm not going to stop. But you really rationalized that this is how much I'm really entitled to. Had he given me the raise, I would have made this much. So I need to take matters into my own hand and get there. And an opportunity came when UBS in Century City offered us a multimillion dollar bonus to move our book from Bear to ubs. And I was thrilled to get away to start anew, because I figured they're never going to find out. I told myself when we left, I've done something wrong. I'll never do it again. I've learned my lesson. And the irony is it was clear I did not learn my lesson.

[Interviewer]

Because what happened, you went straight back at it when you got to UBS.

[Justin Paperni]

Well, we went to UBS June 16, 2001.

[Interviewer]

And just to stop you there. It is interesting because. Because it's where getting caught is actually many times favorable to you.

[Justin Paperni]

That's why a lot of people.

[Interviewer]

Because you won't stop doing it unless.

[Justin Paperni]

Right. Well, you interviewed my friend Matthew Bauer. Matt said the day they raided him, he felt sort of free. Cause it was up, it was over. There's a lot of truth to that. The waiting and wondering if they're going to find out, are they going to get you? That is the hardest part. It's so cliched. Tom Petty sang it for a reason. It's so true.

[Interviewer]

What does he say?

[Justin Paperni]

Waiting. His great song Waiting is hard. It's true. Ask any person that's waiting to get sentenced to prison.

[Interviewer]

Please don't tell my husband. I didn't know that.

[Justin Paperni]

Okay. Waiting to get sentenced to prison is harder than any day you'll serve in prison. Because in prison at least, it's clearly defined with a beginning and an end. So we go to bear. June 16, 2001. We go to UBS, I should say, with this big bonus. And of course, they have expectations for us to produce. And then six or seven months in, Kenny and I had only brought over half of our book of business. For myriad reasons, the business had changed a Bit. I had certainly neglected some clients at Bear Stearns while I was so fixated on commissions. Some chose not to transfer their account to us. I think we got a little complacent and UBS was upset. They didn't see the money. So they begin to put pressure on you. Where's, where's the bonus? Where's the assets, where's the commissions? We gave you a lot of money, you're not proving worthy of it. And then you see guys beginning to get let go who got similar bonuses and they're not getting let go for ethical violations, as UBS would say. They're just not producing. And that was very. We are very concerned that you're going.

[Interviewer]

To be, you're going to be.

[Justin Paperni]

They find a way to get rid of you when you get a bonus like that. It's a lot of money and you spend and invest and if they were to let you go, they claw back the money and they're going to get it. It's very expensive process. So we had to find a way to get our numbers up. And that opportunity came one year to the day after we went to UBS. June 16, 2002. Someone named Keith who ran a small hedge fund called and said, I have a 6 million dollar hedge fund. Can I transfer it to you? You? And I said of course you can.

[Interviewer]

Where did you meet Keith?

[Justin Paperni]

I worked with him earlier in my career at Crow Weeden and I knew then that he was dishonest, that he would say anything to close a deal because I would hear him lie on the phone to generate a commission.

[Interviewer]

This was back when you first met him?

[Justin Paperni]

When I started, when I was at Crow Weeden, yes. I, I knew him to be dishonest and he called to transfer the 6 million. I didn't know that Bear. Bear Stearns had fired him for all of the losses and aggressive heavy training. So he was looking for a new home. He transferred the 6 million to UBS.

[Interviewer]

And you knew this was probably not a good idea, but you really wanted the money, you wanted to keep your job and you wanted to show up.

[Justin Paperni]

A number of things went through my mind. My job is to raise money as a broker. So this is certainly what I'm paid to do. Is it my job to judge the morality of my clients? He's managing the money, not me. We have checks and protocols and compliance here at UBS. Am I going to turn down $6 million? Of course not. So I knew the person that I was working with, but also am I in a position to really judge his character. Considering I too had acted, who am I to judge? I bring in the money. So we brought in the money. Six million bucks. He transfers over the six million, and within about six months or so, he's doing $100,000 a month in production. This new client, Keith, so it's certainly getting our numbers up, but with the heavy commissions, there was a lot of losses in his hedge fund. So really quickly, he's coming at the monthly compliance reports. Heavy losses. Compliance manager Paul's coming into my office like, this dude loses a lot of money. And I said, paul, I don't manage the money. He does. Every trade is unsolicited.

[Interviewer]

Why is compliance involved at this point?

[Justin Paperni]

What heavy losses? You transfer in a six. He transferred in 6 million, and six months later, he'd almost lost all of it.

[Interviewer]

And what can that possibly mean in.

[Justin Paperni]

Terms of he's a terrible trader? Why are we working with someone who every trade is a loss? They're not right for our company, even though they generate heavy commissions, is what compliance should have said.

[Interviewer]

But so explain to me, because I don't know the financial world very well, but isn't it your job to help him figure out what he should be investing in?

[Justin Paperni]

Right. So that was not my role at one point I tried, and it came back to bite me in the eyes of the government.

[Interviewer]

How so?

[Justin Paperni]

Well, so what happened is he brought over 6 million and then he lost it.

[Interviewer]

So he comes and he just says, I want the money to be put here. And here.

[Justin Paperni]

He brought a $6 million to UBS, a $6 million hedge fund. He was a terrible trader. If he would go long, the stock would go down. If he bet it was going to go down, it would go up. He was a terrible trader. So he lost the 6 million. It was down to, like, zero. Now, it's not illegal to lose money, but clearly our suspicions were like, he's probably not the best trader. He loses every penny. He generates a lot of commissions. That doesn't look great. And it went from bad to worse when he then went out and raised another 6 million. Right? So imagine a salesman making a presentation to you and your husband that says, hey, Mariana, no big deal. I'm only down 100% this year. Things are going to turn around. I'd like your million three and the college funds you set aside for your kids. You'd be like, get out of my home. So when he continued to raise more money and those checks would come to his hedge fund at ubs, we knew he was only raising money by lying to people because no normal person otherwise would have given him money. So he raised more money and he continued to generate really heavy commissions.

[Interviewer]

So he was telling people he was making all this money, the money they were investing with him was making all this money.

[Justin Paperni]

Correct. How else could he raise money?

[Interviewer]

Right.

[Justin Paperni]

He couldn't.

[Interviewer]

Right. And then. Okay, so you realize this immediately?

[Justin Paperni]

Well, I knew once he lost the 6 million, we had a problem. And then when more money was raised, I knew we also had a problem because I knew with his trading patterns, he was going to lose that money too. And he began to lose it. So as he's losing another 6 million, I grew concerned and I went to my branch manager, Rich, and Kenny, my partner, was there and Paul, the compliance manager was there. And I said, let me just be very direct. Can. Let's address this. This guy loses a lot of money and he pays us a lot of commission. And I'm afraid that if he continues to lose money, his investors are going to want their money back and he's not going to have it. They may come to ubs. So that's when Paul, the compliance manager and Paul should not have been a compliance manager. If you're a people pleaser or can be manipulated, you should not be in compliance. Let me be very, very clear about that. Like, your job as a compliance or auditor is to like, ferret out fraud. You're the first line of defense. You should not be able to be manipulated. You have a different code of value than a salesman. That's why one corporate code of culture for a business doesn't work. Everyone has competing values. So I can see that he was kind of on the salesman's side when he should not have been. He should have been. This guy is fired. He's not good for it for our company. I don't care how much in commissions he produces, he's a loser. He loses money, there's risk. Instead, he kind of took our side, Kenny and my side, which was the trades are unsolicited because that's something the branch manager asked, who the hell's making these trades? Look at every ticket. Unsolicited. Every trade is his own. He manages the money, not us. No one in his hedge fund is an individual client of ours at ubs. They are his clients. These are the rationalizations that make white collar crime possible.

[Interviewer]

So what's the worst that can happen, right?

[Justin Paperni]

He's managing the money, not us. What I'm trying to do is be proactive. Everyone in the room, I'm trying to be proactive. And create a, like an indemnification agreement. Let's write a letter that says if you choose to give money to my client, Keith, the hedge fund manager, you indemnify UBS and me and Kenny and everyone at UBS that says you chose to make the investment. If you lose money, that's on you.

[Interviewer]

And you can't come after us, UBS or anyone here. And this was your idea. So you told them that we should do this.

[Justin Paperni]

UBS loved the idea. They loved my ingenuity in trying to keep the account alive, the commissions flowing, but also protecting ourselves from the continued fallout, not if, but when investors might want their money back. And I really thought that letter would protect me. I thought it was pretty genius. I'm going to be very straight.

[Interviewer]

I think it is very smart.

[Justin Paperni]

I'm going to be very straight with you.

[Interviewer]

I mean, you didn't have the interest of the people whose money was being lost and burned, but you did have. You wrote an interest in that.

[Justin Paperni]

You just summed up a really important point you can't gloss over. At no point. I accept response for my own decisions. When I bring in others, I'm just talking as part of the story. But my decisions are my own. At any time, I could have stopped it. And it was easy at the time to rationalize. My branch manager says it's okay and the compliance manager says it's okay. And my senior partner said it was okay. That's how you rationalize. At 28 or 29. I'm 50. I see it fundamentally differently. I always knew that it was wrong. And irrespective of what they did, I had an obligation to do better. I didn't. And someone deserved to be punished. And I was. But back to the mindset. At the time, there was no thought of people who were investing money and losing.

[Interviewer]

No.

[Justin Paperni]

0.

[Interviewer]

You weren't thinking about them at all?

[Justin Paperni]

No. I had convinced myself that they're doing their own due diligence and choosing to invest with him. And I had never met or spoken with them.

[Interviewer]

Yeah.

[Justin Paperni]

Is it really my job to step in and police them and tell them to stop? Should I call them? They don't know me. I had convinced myself. But the truth was.

[Interviewer]

Except that you knew they were probably.

[Justin Paperni]

The best decision would have been to fire him. Now, I didn't think about like the SEC or the Department of Justice. I didn't have outright proof yet that he was running a fraud. Fraud. But just the fact that someone raises 12 million and lose it while they're paying 100 to $200,000 a month, and the only one benefiting is us and him. Because I later learned he was taking some of that money to sustain his lifestyle. In a classic Ponzi scheme, if we're the only ones winning, that's not really right for the investor. So we had many opportunities to do the right thing. But to your point, I did not consider them, which is why some people take such pleasure knowing that I or someone like me would go to prison. There's a consequence from not doing what you're trained to do. There should be a punishment, a lifelong stain that accompanies bad choices. And like, I get it, I embrace it. If it were my mom or dad, I probably would want it too. And so I was not thinking of.

[Interviewer]

Them as in, if it was your mom or dad who had lost money. Pain.

[Justin Paperni]

And I've now learned the punishment isn't really prison. We can talk about that later. It's not really 18 months or two years in minimum security camp. That's not the punishment or pain. That can be the easiest part. It's a chance to recalibrate. It's kind of a sabbatical in many ways. As much as people hate hearing that, it's like, don't blame me. I didn't build the prisons in this country. I'm doing the best with what we have. But it's the lifelong stigma that accompanies the conviction. You're greedy, you're a criminal, you're a narcissist, you're a thief, you're a thug, you're scum. You deserve everything that comes to you. That's what some people think. Indeed, that's what some people will comment and say.

[Interviewer]

I want to talk about that when we talk about prison, because there's a documentary I did, just watched that approach that. And I want to talk to you.

[Justin Paperni]

Yeah, we will.

[Interviewer]

So tell me. Okay. So you came up with this brilliant idea of.

[Justin Paperni]

And UBS loved the idea. So we get. They love the idea, and we get the letter created. And I told my client, Keith, I said, hey, man, anytime you send me money, make sure this disclosure document is signed. And he said, no problem. So once we began to get that disclosure document, it really did embolden us to think that we are protected. And he continued to raise money. But after about 15, maybe 18 months, I actually met someone for the first time. Someone who is considering investing in his hedge fund. And it changes when it goes from faceless to actually seeing someone.

[Interviewer]

Absolutely.

[Justin Paperni]

We talked earlier that things change when you see someone in person. So I attended a meeting on a Friday afternoon in Century City where it was my partner Kenny Keith, the hedge fund manager, me and a gentleman named John, who was thinking of selling his $5 million hedge fund to Keith. Then we're at this meeting in Century City, and a few minutes into the meeting, my partner Kenny said to John, this small hedge fund manager, so why are you thinking of selling your hedge fund to Keith? And John said, I've seen the rate of return on the hedge fund. Performance sells itself.

[Interviewer]

Oh, shit. And you knew that was bullshit.

[Justin Paperni]

Yeah, because I knew he lost every penny that he raised. So clearly he's thinking of selling his hedge fund. He was a little greedy too, because Keith was going to give him 5%. So if he has 5 million, he's looking to retire. Keith is going to scratch him a check for $250,000. So he was a little influenced as well. He could have done more due diligence. The government said it didn't change. There's no way to dispute that. When I heard him say, performance sells itself, I sat there, as my grandpa would say, lump on a log. I tend to be talkative, verbose. That was a time I had no problem shutting up. And I just, I was like, what do I. This is bad, man. And I just sat there like this, Like, I looked at my partner, I'm thinking to myself, like, what, are you insane? Why would you ask that? If there's one question you don't ask, that's it. So within a few minutes, I kind of abruptly ended the meeting. And we're back upstairs, Kenny and I, I'm like, this is, you know, this is. Dude's gonna give 5 million bucks, you know, and then it was this rationalization. He's got to do his own due diligence. He's going to sign the disclosure document if he invests. It's not our job to police the fund. We're doing our job, which is to raise money. And even though he was my senior partner and I knew what he was saying and I was agreeing with it, I knew all of it was wrong. Wrong. No question. No, but I lacked the discipline to say, you know, I'm going to fire him, and if I lose my job and they want the money back, fine. And I wouldn't have lost my job. I'd have been fine. I could have left. I could have started over. When you make short sighted decisions, it's like, who cares if you make 50 or 100 this month or for the next year if it's to your Long term destruction. You lose your reputation, your freedom, your licenses. Everything I made legally or illegally went to lawyers and the government to pay my restitution. I spent. I'm 50. I spent my 40s making up for bad decisions of my 20s and 30s. And I'm not a victim. It's all my fault. I blame no one but myself. No one I've learned a lot of valuable lessons from and I hope it makes me a better husband and father, believe me. But I always knew that it was wrong. But knowing and doing are two. Two totally different. Two totally different things. So we would convince each other that it was okay. But he began to strategically kind of detach himself from the client a little bit more.

[Interviewer]

Kenny, your partner, yes, I give him.

[Justin Paperni]

Credit for that, was shrewder than me. And I began to do more, continue to do some of the day to day work. And there was just more evidence that came in when a press release was issued that he issued stating that his hedge fund was averaging 27% a year. Wow. And I read it and I wanted to pretend that I didn't read it. And later that would come back to bite me when I interviewed with the FBI. But it all came crashing down December 15, 2004. I'd been working with Keith since June of 2002. And my branch manager called and said, I need you back at the office. I was on a lunch date at Houston's in Century City. And as I make this walk back through the Century City mall to the 30th floor at the UBS office, I knew my life was going to change. Now I sensed my life would change when I took Keith's money a couple of years earlier because I knew who I was. When you grew up in Encino, you don't think prison change, you just think some problem, some issue, something's going down down here. So I walked in and my branch manager said, sign your name for me eight times. And he put in front of me a document. And there was a cover letter on the document that said, is this true? And that day, an investor in my client's hedge fund, one of his clients, like advisors, sent a fax to my branch manager that said, is this true? In the second page of that document was a letter on UBS letterhead. And the letter was, was said, if the GLT hedge fund, which was Keith's hedge fund, if my hedge fund goes out of business, UBS will step in and insure your portfolio for their full and total market value. Sign Justin Paperni. Oh, wow. So my branch Manager asked me to sign my name to see if that was actually my signature. It was not. When Keith the hedge fund manager, would come to my office, on the way out, he would grab UBS letterhead. Wow. And when some of his investors grew concerned about their investment, he would send them this letter on UBS letterhedge with my forged signature stating if he goes belly up, their assets are insured. So that day, an advisor said, is this true? And that's when the investigation really began.

[Interviewer]

But it wasn't you. It was forged. So how did you.

[Justin Paperni]

Right. So I tried to get righteous. I tried to get, like, on the right side. Like, this is. We got to fire this guy. Who are we dealing with? This guy stole letterhead. He's forging my name. I'm totally insulted. I want nothing to do with this guy. But you. If it was too late, it was too late.

[Interviewer]

Because they started an investigation.

[Justin Paperni]

It was too late. It was done.

[Interviewer]

So, wait, so the letter did not. The letter that you got the clients to sign did not indemnify you. Didn't protect you guys.

[Justin Paperni]

We'll talk about that more when we talk about the FBI agent who arrested me. He's now a good friend. Paul Bertram. He brought me out to the academy to speak. The FBI academy. I'll tell you what he said about that when we were walking, when he gave me a tour of the FBI. Before we speak. When we get there, I'll tell you what happened.

[Interviewer]

Yeah. So, okay, so tell me, how did things start? How did you realize that that. Shit. This is actually not so.

[Justin Paperni]

I knew it was bad. So UBS says, would you be open to speaking with corporate counsel the next day? I'm like, sure. I'll tell them everything that I know. So the next day, I interviewed with corporate counsel, thinking they would be on my side. But I'm not so fool. I'm so foolish. Of course they have their own agenda, right? They can't put a corporation in prison, but they could hold someone accountable. So I interviewed with UBS for eight or nine hours. At the end of the interview, they said, we don't want you to come in until this is resolved. I'm like, all right. What does that mean? They're like, don't come in until this is resolved. I'm like, what about Kenny? They're like, don't worry about Kenny. Close your eyes. Exhale.

[Interviewer]

Feel your body relax. And let go of whatever you're carrying today. Well, I'm letting go of the worry that I wouldn't get my new contacts in Time for this class. I got them delivered free from 1-800-contacts. Oh my gosh, they're so fast. And breathe. Oh, sorry. I almost couldn't breathe when I saw the discount they gave me on my first order. Oh, sorry. Namaste.

[Justin Paperni]

Visit 1-800-contacts.com today to save on your first order.

[Interviewer]

Order 1-800-contacts.

[Justin Paperni]

So for the next three weeks, nothing happened. I'm just like sitting at home like, well, this sucks. Am I going to get fired? Like, what do I do? This is uncomfortable. Like, what do I tell my clients? So 15 January 2005, my branch manager called me back into the office. I'm like, oh, this is all blown over. I have my desk back. So I walked in and they said, we're firing you for inconsistent answers you gave during your interview with corporate counsel. And I'm like, well, so you're not firing me me for us continuing to work with this hedge fund manager that lost every penny he raised, you're firing me for inconsistent answers I gave. And I think he alluded that UBS thought I could have shared more or given more. I said, what more could I give? I was with these people for 10 hours so they let me go.

[Interviewer]

Were you inconsistent in your answers?

[Justin Paperni]

I don't think so. I'm sure there was some blaming and excusing, but I told it as I saw it. Then I spoke pretty openly about the indemnification letter, that it was my idea and why we created it and there were significant losses and heavy commissions and complex trades and. But of course they have emails as well where I'm emailing compliance about the letter and suggestions I have and why. So they, I confirmed all of that and I think they took the approach as the main broker on the account. I might not have given as much as I should have to management and creating that letter. And had they known more, they would have fired the client, which is just so absurd because no one had any interest, interest in firing the client, including me or my partner.

[Interviewer]

Right?

[Justin Paperni]

But they have the right to let me go. And they did. And that was in January of 05. And you know, now I'm thinking, wow, I'm 30, I've already been to four firms. Are they going to come back and want the money, the balance of the bonus? I wasn't thinking of people who might have lost money. I was very self centered, I was very selfish, I was naive, I was very short sighted. I thought it would just blow over and I would find other opportunities. And I did. I went immediately and got a Real estate license. I sold real estate for several years before I went to prison. At Sotheby's in Calabasas with my good friend Sam Pompeo, I was thriving. And again, I told myself, I'll never do anything wrong again. I'm so grateful that I got away with this. And then things changed. April 28, 2005. Three months after I left UBS, when two FBI agents showed up at my home. Home. And these people have everything. Do you know what new young FBI agents do at the FBI Academy?

[Interviewer]

No.

[Justin Paperni]

They read our emails all day. They go to signal, signal WhatsApp. Email, text. They piece it together so beautifully, like a puzzle. These people are really brilliant and smart. They sit there all day, like in a cave. What are you doing? Every email has been stitched together. It's truly remarkable.

[Interviewer]

That's not good news for me.

[Justin Paperni]

It's actually very scary. Yeah, it's very scary.

[Interviewer]

So they came in and they had all your emails, all your information.

[Justin Paperni]

First off, they had, like, all the FBI, like, the FBI hat, the jersey, the shoes.

[Interviewer]

Do they knock on the door?

[Justin Paperni]

Yeah, they knock on the door and they come in pairs. It was Chris Anderson and Paul Bertrand.

[Interviewer]

Okay, those were the first ones.

[Justin Paperni]

Paul's gonna watch us. He gets a kick. And when I. He laughs. He laughs. When I describe. It was all FBI, the yellow words, the hat, the shoes, the sweats. I mean, come on, we know that you work for the FBI. Please. So they walk in and they roll in binders.

[Interviewer]

No way.

[Justin Paperni]

Yeah, yeah. It's like, I'm five' ten. It was as tall as me. And I'm like. And beautifully collated. It's incredible. I'm like, what is this? They're like, well, we're here to talk about your role in the GLT Venture Fund. And I'm like, what are you doing here? Like, yeah, we're going to tell you again. We're here to talk about your role in the GLT Venture Fund. And I said, well, I don't work at UBS anymore. They said, yeah, we're aware of that. We'd like to talk to you about your role at the GLT Venture Fund. So I said, like, what are these? Like, what are these? These right here? Like, what's that? They're like, well, those are just some documents we'd like to review with you. I'm like, well, how many are there? Like, what do we have? Like, this is a lot of paperwork. Like, now. They're like, yeah, right now. But, like, we're going to do it now. You're in my home. I wasn't expecting this. They're like, yes, we'd like to do this right now, so maybe I should get a lawyer. They said, you can call a lawyer. That's a good idea. So I call a civil lawyer. Terrible idea. And I said, the FBI's in my home. He's like, let me speak to him. So I'm like, oh, Agent Bertrand, this is. Is Bob. Hi, Bob. Agent Bertrand, FBI. What are you doing in my client's home? We're here to talk about his role in the GLT Venture fund. We have some questions for him. Well, why don't we reconvene in a month or so after I've spent time with him and Paul Bertrand said, I can do that. Just walks out.

[Interviewer]

Oh, wow.

[Justin Paperni]

And they left like, no big deal. The FBI comes into my home. My whole world is shook. He just walks out like, it's no big deal. You can tell he'd been doing it for a while. He was desensitized to ruining people's lives. That's what I thought. Does he know that? He, he has just changed the trajectory of my life and he bears no responsibility for it.

[Interviewer]

And this is the guy that you're friends with now?

[Justin Paperni]

Yeah. Great dude. Yeah. Good guy. And so I hire a lawyer, lie to the lawyer, or I don't really tell the full truth. Something that is very common of a white collar defendant. We blame, we excuse, we deny, we rationalize. It ain't me, it's this guy. You can't really get to the truth. And if you can't get to the truth, and if a lawyer doesn't really probe, how can they really defend you? They can't. It's why so many people load their lawyer. And a lot of times it's not the lawyer's fault. You haven't given the lawyer anything to.

[Interviewer]

With. So you what is just in, in like, broad sense, you told the lawyer.

[Justin Paperni]

I can get in a raw deal.

[Interviewer]

Yeah, I like, I, I, I. How could I have.

[Justin Paperni]

I'm the whistleblower.

[Interviewer]

How could I have known that this guy wasn't.

[Justin Paperni]

It was more money. It was more trying to take a righteous approach. Like, they're punishing me because I'm the one who had the idea for the disclosure document. They're punishing me because I maybe made more of the commissions. They're punishing me because I was the one always dealing with the compliance. If anyone addressed it was me.

[Interviewer]

They're using you as a scapegoat.

[Justin Paperni]

Yes, they're Trying to paint me out as some rogue employee who acted alone. That's not fair. Everyone has a role. And while I'm selling that message, the lawyer is a buyer. He believes it.

[Interviewer]

He's believing everything he said.

[Justin Paperni]

Yes. And there was very little probing, like, well, Justin, did you think it was strange that you're making 50, $100,000 a month off a hedge fund client that's losing? Of course, I never disclosed the meeting where that investor John thought a return existed. I didn't disclose the press release that said he averaged 27% a year. And I deleted it. It was selective information. And if you give selective information, how can you really expect a lawyer to defend you? You cannot. So that's why I've joked I should write another book called how to Flush Money down the Toilet. You hire lawyers and then lie to them.

[Interviewer]

You don't tell them the truth.

[Justin Paperni]

Yeah, of course. So we meet with the FBI a month later and. And I'm really. I'm not prepared. And the interview opens, and my lawyer asks them, is, is my client a target or witness or subject? I didn't even know what the hell that meant. And did you know the FBI can lie to you?

[Interviewer]

No. They can lie because they said no.

[Justin Paperni]

You know, they can. It's all done for a greater good. They can make up investigations. Remember that very popular Varsity Blues case? We had all those parents in the kids.

[Interviewer]

The parents who paid for college for their kids.

[Justin Paperni]

Yeah, we had a bunch of them. And they entrapped them, I would argue, because when Rick Singer, the cooperating informant, called on a recorded phone call with the FBI and the U.S. attorney at the time, Eric Rosen, who's now a defense attorney, Rick Singer told Lori Loughlin, Mossimo, Genially and others, my IRS nonprofit is under audit, and we need to discuss how you got that money to me through this. His. His. His non profit was never under audit. That was the ruse, that was the trick to get all these parents to open up and discuss. Well, how should we say, I got the half a million dollars to you to get my kid into USC or Harvard or Yale? What should we say, Rick, I don't want you to fail your audit. It. The whole thing was made up. So, yes, they can.

[Interviewer]

And you know this because. They were. Some of them were your clients.

[Justin Paperni]

Yeah, we work with 12 families.

[Interviewer]

Right. You were their prison consultant.

[Justin Paperni]

Yeah, we're going to talk about that later. So when my lawyer asked that question, they said, justin is a witness. That's better than even, like a subject or a target.

[Interviewer]

Yeah. Definitely.

[Justin Paperni]

I later learned they lied. Of course I should have known. Of course I should have known. So. So a few minutes in to the interview, Paul Bertrand, the FBI agent, pulls out a document. Like, reaches over. He's got all the binders, and he says, can you read this? I said, what am I reading? He said, well, Justin, a couple of minutes ago, I asked you if you recall reading a press release that talked about 27% a year. And what did you say to me? I said, no, I don't remember it. And my lawyer's starting to get nervous.

[Interviewer]

Because he knows where this is going.

[Justin Paperni]

So Paul said, as a reminder, I asked you twice, do you recall a press Release talking about 27%? And I said, no, I don't recall. So he said, okay, just read this to me. So he pulls out a document. He asked me to read it. And in this email, I say to my client, he says to me, I've never lied to you. And my response was, is that the pot calling the kettle black? I enjoyed your press release talking about your guaranteed return fund and 27% a year. That's an email I sent to Keith. So then Paul Bertrand says, they kind of, I think, had a little fun with me, you know, because I think they wanted to give me a chance. And I later learned that had I told the truth and confirmed what they already knew, that I would have remained a witness or a subject. I would not have been the target of the investigation. And that was confirmed when he introduced me to speak at the FBI Academy in March of 2011. And I think he said it knowing that I could. I was overcoming everything that I had created, and I was on my way to something better. He knew that I could take it.

[Interviewer]

Right.

[Justin Paperni]

Still, it was humbling to hear before I spoke to a thousand agents. There's no doubt. So I lied. Shit. And he asked me to read it again. And he said, so, do you recall a press release?

[Interviewer]

Oh, my God. And what were you feeling when you're reading this?

[Justin Paperni]

I'm done. And I later learned, well, the interview ends. My lawyer abruptly ends it, and he's like, that is. That is. You've obstructed an investigation. You've. You lied. You've lied to. You've lied to a federal agent. So that in itself is a crime, obstructing an investigation. We've worked with many people who have been charged. Charged for lying to the FBI or obstructing an investigation. We got a call from a son who the government alleges obstructed investigation into his father's pharmacy because he wasn't transparent. When they want to go after the son, now they. People aren't playing. They're especially in this. This DOJ with doctors and physicians and the fentanyl and the overdose there is. This is the priority of this DoJ, besides tariffs and immigration. Okay, so, yes, I lie. And he said, well, that's obstruction. And then I'm like, what happens next? He says, you know, I don't know. And then nothing happened for one full year. And a part of me thought, okay, I never got caught when I took commissions. I facilitated this hedge fund. I lost my job. That's consequence enough. I'm out of the industry. No, I lied to the FBI and nothing's happened. I'm never going to do it again. I'm truly reformed now. I'm so grateful that I never got caught. And then about a year to the day or so after that interview at the FBI, I get a call from that same lawyer that says, are you sitting down? I said, no, I'm driving. I was actually selling real estate at the time. She was not famous at the time. Nobody knew her then, but I was showing property to my old friend Courtney Kardashian in Calabasas. She had her dash store that just opened like that April or something or March, but nobody knew her.

[Interviewer]

I love said Courtney, as if I knew who that.

[Justin Paperni]

But she was very nice. But I'm showing. Just showing her property, right? And. And then he says, are you sitting down? I said, no, I'm showing property to a friend of mine in Woodland Hills. And he said, well, you should pull over. I need to tell you something. And part of me is like, why are you even calling me? I haven't heard from you in a year. Like, I've moved on. I have a real estate license. I'm crushing it, man. Things are great. And that's when he said it's going to come out soon, that your former client, Keith, the hedge fund manager, has been cooperating with the Department of Justice in an ongoing probe. And for the last year, while you've been playing golf, lying to the FBI, and selling real estate, he's been cooperating. And a press release is going to come out stating that he's pled guilty to one kind of conspiracy to commit securities fraud with a cap of 60 months in prison. And that release is going to state that there is an unnamed, yet to be unindicted co conspirator who helped facilitate the fraud. I'm like, well, is that me? He's like that be you. Like, what does that mean? What happens next? He said, well, David Willingham, the US Attorney who is now a defense attorney, has told me that we're open to a plea agreement. If not, we're going to indict Paperni and take him to trial. I said, well, how long will I get in prison? Like, why are you calling me? It's been a year. This isn't. I can't reconcile what's happening. And now I'm pulled over on Ventura Boulevard in Woodland Hills next to a Paquito Moss. I think it was thinking how my life has changed while this nice girl sitting in the car waiting to go see a condo in Woodland Hill.

[Interviewer]

Bills, that's Kourtney Kardashian, is just sitting there waiting for you.

[Justin Paperni]

She's waiting in the car while I'm taking a call outside.

[Interviewer]

And knowing that you're.

[Justin Paperni]

I'm on the phone outside getting this news from my lawyer. And he said, they're going to indict you or we can negotiate a plea agreement. I'm like, well, how long will they want in prison? He said, well, probably five years. I'm like, well, what about my Keith? What's he gonna get, 50? He ran the whole thing.

[Interviewer]

Right.

[Justin Paperni]

And that's when I learned a little bit about the kind of the warp nature of the system. If you cooperate, I don't begrudge him, but if you cooperate and help them advance.

[Interviewer]

So Keith cooperating, sure.

[Justin Paperni]

He'd been cooperating for a year. So that's what my lawyer said, that I was actually looking at a prison term. He used a word I didn't know at the time. I now know it. He used the word tangential. He said, even though you were involved more tangentially or on the periphery, I'm like, don't throw out words I don't understand. Please. What the hell is. What is happening here? He said, because he's cooperating even though he was the orchestrator of the offense, because of that cooperation, he's looking at a shorter sentence than you. Big part of the reason people cooperate. It helps the government catch more cases, advance the career of a prosecutor who wants to look good on television, maybe run for office, say it's about victims or justice, become a high powered defense attorney. Prosecutors have an agenda to advance their career, and no better way to do that than having defendants cooperate.

[Interviewer]

So wait, do you think that when the FBI knocked on Keith's door, his response and his conversation with them, his interview with them was very different than yours?

[Justin Paperni]

No question.

[Interviewer]

So he decided he was just going.

[Justin Paperni]

To say the truth as well as he understood it. I have no doubt that he. Everyone has an agenda. And I have no doubt that he probably said, set the tone, that Justin and I knew that this was losing money. And when he created a disclosure document, it was because. So I have no doubt he made us. As if we were in cahoots together. There is no doubt about that.

[Interviewer]

And when you were interviewed, you didn't say any of that. You made it seem.

[Justin Paperni]

I focused on what our team had done at ubs. I focused on the disclosure letter, the document.

[Interviewer]

Do you think his interview was before yours?

[Justin Paperni]

I know he had met with them for a year before. Oh, no, no. They came to my home April 28th of 05. I know he had spent several months working with them before. No doubt, because I know, like, 99 of what they ask you anyway, they already know the answer to.

[Interviewer]

Wow. So you. But you. When they knocked on your door, obviously you had no idea that you'd been talking to them.

[Justin Paperni]

And I had still had some conversations with Keith, like, hey, I'm sorry I cost you your job, and, you know, this and that. So I knew that.

[Interviewer]

Are you pissed at him for not having told you that he was talking to the FBI?

[Justin Paperni]

How could he. That would rip up his cooperation agreement. He had four young daughters. I don't begrudge him what he did. My. No, no. It was all my fault. I don't know. Everyone.

[Interviewer]

I mean, it wasn't all your fault.

[Justin Paperni]

Everyone has an agenda. Everyone's trying to engineer an outcome. He's trying to engineer an outcome to get the shortest sentence possible.

[Interviewer]

Yeah, I understand that. But still, he was a willing participant in something that he knew was wrong alongside you. And then he.

[Justin Paperni]

Let's first question. He platoon. He went to prison, but how much.

[Interviewer]

Time did he do?

[Justin Paperni]

Well, they actually. He got indicted on your charges, so they ripped up his polygraph agreement. And that gave me a second chance at veracity, if you will. But because they ripped up his plea agreement when he got indicted on new stuff.

[Interviewer]

New stuff that I wasn't related to this case.

[Justin Paperni]

Correct, Correct.

[Interviewer]

So he was doing other stuff that.

[Justin Paperni]

Was like he was supposed to turn assets over, and he created some strawbriars to try to keep money and stuff like that.

[Interviewer]

And this was unrelated. Not with you?

[Justin Paperni]

Not related. Had nothing to do with me. Correct. He got indicted while he was cooperating. So they rip up the plea agreement, the cooperation agreement. He ends up getting 60 months, which is the maximum under his original plea. And after I learn that they're going to want me to plead guilty. I'll never forget it. I remember getting off the phone with my lawyer thinking, like, so now I'm just supposed to, like, get back in my car and go show this nice woman, like, real estate? As if I just didn't get this phone call. Like, that's what's going to happen now. Like, call the agent. Is the lockbox on? It was so weird that you. You just get back to your life knowing what's brewing on the other end. A U.S. attorney preparing for an indictment in a trial unless I agreed to negotiate a plea agreement. So it's a lot to take in. And I didn't take it well, because as soon as that ended, I went home to my home in Studio City, and I began to go into, like, kind of like pity mode. Like, I knew better. How did I end up here? I began to punish myself. Not really through drugs or alcohol, just not taking care of myself. Poor diet.

[Interviewer]

Yeah, you were shutting. Remember, you were eating a lot, eating.

[Justin Paperni]

Poorly, shutting out family, beginning not to attend events like a Mother's Day. Having to hire a lawyer and scratch a big check to a criminal defense attorney. Even driving to downtown Los Angeles to meet the lawyer, you know, sickened me. I so badly wanted this to be over. And then thinking it could never be worse than what I'm enduring right now. And I hadn't even pled guilty yet. But what happens is you begin to. You get conditioned, you get numb. At least for me. So when I was a younger broker and I felt my partner exploiting me, I got very emotional. He's stealing from me. He's taking advantage of me. This unjustice cannot. This is unacceptable. And I would overreact. I took commissions I hadn't earned. I violated our partnership agreement. Then you learn they're going to indict you, and it's like, okay. You're very tough to take in. Very tough to take in. And I would respond emotionally. Then you get more bad news, and you're like, okay. You just. You're just a little numb to it. Then it's like, plead guilty. Please don't issue a press release. The Department of Justice, Justin, we have to. It's a deterrent. We have to let other people know. Then you read the press release, and you're like. Like, okay, it's fine. I'm okay. I'll like, I saw that Charlie Sheen documentary recently, and he divulged some really interesting details. He's like, look, I said it, and a piano didn't fall out from the sky. Everything is fine. That's right. Right. So part of me, when I would get more of this bad news, I'd think, okay, I'm fine. There's a DOJ press release. How that's bad. Then they'd issue another press release. It's like, okay, that's bad. Then you get another legal bill for $87,300. Okay, that's bad.

[Interviewer]

The Santa isn't falling down.

[Justin Paperni]

Right.

[Interviewer]

You just.

[Justin Paperni]

Just say you get through it. And then you realize, well, as you go through it, maybe it's not as bad as you think. Or I'm just becoming numb to the fallout. I'm becoming emotionless, non reactive, conditioned to it. And then eventually when you get like sentenced to prison, which I got 18 months, it was, if anything, it was a good day.

[Interviewer]

At least you get going too fast here. You pled guilty. You decided, okay, I'm going to play guilty.

[Justin Paperni]

I did. I pled. I pled guilty to what kind of conspiracy to commit securities fraud. And then a year later, I got sentenced. I spent some time.

[Interviewer]

And what did you do that year before you got sentenced? Were you preparing?

[Justin Paperni]

I just worked. I had hoped perhaps that I could avoid prison. I worked selling a lot of real estate to pay the lawyers. My restitution turned out to be about 5. UBS paid all of the victims back.

[Interviewer]

So the letter didn't work, the indemnity.

[Justin Paperni]

I'll tell you about the letter next. So UBS paid all the victims back, back. I contributed to that. They stilled me with about a half a million dollars in restitution. I don't know how they came up with that money. Because it didn't go to victims, it went to the irs. Maybe it was a portion of the commissions I had earned while working with him they wanted to hit me with. So I plead guilty. And for that year, I'm saving to try to make as big a restitution payment as I can in front of Judge Wilson with hopes that would buy me out of prison. And it doesn't buy you out of prison. It can help, but it can be very much perceived as just because you have resources and you can scratch a check. Check shouldn't keep you out of prison. What about the guy who's working harder, who accepts more responsibility but doesn't have the money? Is it fair that he should go to prison? Makes sense, yeah, in a way. So I worked, I saved. I made a hundred thousand dollar restitution payment. The government asked for 24 months. And Judge Wilson essentially said I'm tired of salesmen turning the other way for money. Most don't get caught. You did, and you're going to prison. And he sentenced me to federal prison for 18 months.

[Interviewer]

What was your reaction when you heard.

[Justin Paperni]

That there were some victims in the front row who took satisfaction in it?

[Interviewer]

Some of your victims. Some of the people that.

[Justin Paperni]

Yeah. Even though they got their money back, it doesn't replace the shame and pain they went through and waiting. They had been harmed, and I can understand them wanting retribution.

[Interviewer]

So they were like jeering. One of your worst moments of your life. They were clapping.

[Justin Paperni]

Yeah. They spoke too. They said, we want them to get five years, the maximum. And so they were happy.

[Interviewer]

Were your parents there?

[Justin Paperni]

My mom was there. And I regret that she was there. My dad wasn't there. I regret that my mom was there. I recall I was wearing a. A suit that I had bought a couple months before that that was already too tight. In fact, a button popped during the sentencing hearing. I was like bulging out. I'm like, I just bought this suit like, what, What. What is happening here? And I had to pee. The button popped.

[Interviewer]

Your mom is a mess, I'm sure.

[Justin Paperni]

Yes. And then I read my statement and. And it gave me 18 months. And I remember looking at my mom and she's in the front row and I'm like, what is wrong with me? Why would I have her here? I felt that same way when she took me to prison with my brother. I'm like, what is she doing here? It's another bad mistake. The victims were happy. Judge Wilson gave me two months to self surrender to prison.

[Interviewer]

I think if this happened to my son, I would have wanted to be there too, though. I don't think you could.

[Justin Paperni]

She wanted to support me. I think some parents may blame themselves. Too coddled and too much opportunity and too much success. Too young. And I think a big part of my trying to pick myself up after the fall was to make her proud. My parents proud of me. To show that I could overcome this adversity that I created. And it all starts with accepting responsibility. But that didn't really happen until I got to prison and I met Michael. Up until I went, I was still very much the victim. UBS was exploiting me, painting me out as a rogue employee who acted alone. Kenny was never charged. It's not fair.

[Interviewer]

Kenny was never charged. The guy who ran the hedge fund who lost?

[Justin Paperni]

No. Keith was charged. He got 60 months. Kenny was my partner. He was never charged.

[Interviewer]

Why do we have two names with case?

[Justin Paperni]

I know he was never charged.

[Interviewer]

Okay. Keith was never charged. Kenny was never charged. Keith was charged. Okay. Keith hedge fund manager was charged. For how long?

[Justin Paperni]

He got five years.

[Interviewer]

Oh, wow. Okay.

[Justin Paperni]

And he went to Lompoc and I went to Taft federal prison camp, April 28, 2008, which was three years to the day after the FBI showed up.

[Interviewer]

Right. Which is a minimum. Okay, so tell me now about your time in prison security.

[Justin Paperni]

It's a minimum security camp.

[Interviewer]

And they call it like the country club.

[Justin Paperni]

Some will call it a Club Fed because you'll see the bocce ball and the pickleball and the tennis and.

[Interviewer]

Do they actually have those sports in there?

[Justin Paperni]

Sure they do. Wow.

[Interviewer]

That's why they call it that.

[Justin Paperni]

That's a big part of the reason I call it that. Yeah. So I surrendered. I was 33 years old. And when I got there, I was really lost. And I told myself, I'll use the opportunity just to get in better shape. It's kind of like a fat farm. It's like big boy timeout is what it is. Really. I said, I'm going to use it to get in a little better shape. And I presumed I'll just return to selling real estate, which is what I had done successfully for three years without any problems. In fact, part of the reason I got a shorter sentence was Judge Wilson commented on some of the letters my real estate clients submitted about how I had helped them made really honest ethical decisions, including decisions that cost me a commission. But it was in their best interest. So I was beginning to get on track with good decision making as an executive. It didn't change that I saw myself as a victim and I shouldn't be in prison. And then when I got there, Michael Santos, whom you interviewed, came up and said, how you doing, young man?

[Interviewer]

And just to contextualize it, Michael was there on a 20 something sentence for cocaine trafficking.

[Justin Paperni]

Working. Michael was there on a 45, 45 year, 45 year federal prison sentence, which under the old law, 1987 meant he would serve 26 consecutive years in prison. He served eight years in the penitentiary in Atlanta and then worked his way down to the camp where he served his last 10 years. Now, I was aware of Michael because he was such a prolific writer on michaelsantos.net so before going in, my mom would send me his blogs. So you're going to this prison, he's there, he can help you. I already sent him a letter and I was very dismissive like, I ain't reading no blogs from some drug dealer. That's Been in prison for 22 years. I was just in a really bad spot. Right. Nothing that my. No comments that would make my mom proud of me. Like, hey, you're responding well. Terrible. I just tell defendants, sounds like an asshole.

[Interviewer]

You sound like an asshole.

[Justin Paperni]

It's terrible when defendants are like, what should I do as offendant? I'm like, just do the exact opposite of what I did.

[Interviewer]

Everything you did.

[Justin Paperni]

Yeah. So I get to prison. Of course I know who Michael is. Everyone knows who Michael Santos is.

[Interviewer]

Inside prison. He was like a celebrity.

[Justin Paperni]

Yeah, everyone. There's no one who doesn't know him.

[Interviewer]

Yeah. He has such a presence.

[Justin Paperni]

And he won't watch this because he hates anything that makes it look like he's some celebrity or star. Everyone knew Michael Santos. So we're both in D dorm upstairs, and he comes up to me. I'm in the big TV room watching the stock market because there's a bunch of TVs in there. And he's like, how you doing, young man? I'm like, yeah, I'm doing great. I'm in jail. I'm in prison. He's like, how long you here for? I said, 18 months. He said, I'll do every day of the sentence with you. Because he still had four years left to serve and. Or five years left to serve.

[Interviewer]

Wow.

[Justin Paperni]

And from there, I really kept to myself. I began to just exercise and a lot. I. I became a long distance runner pretty quickly.

[Interviewer]

Inside the prison.

[Justin Paperni]

Yeah, there's a track there I would run hundreds of miles around. I would run hundreds of miles around that dusty dirt track. And I found.

[Interviewer]

Can we talk? I actually want to talk a little bit just about the two tier system, which I think is really interesting, which I miss. I think everybody has heard, like the low security prison and maximum security prison, but I don't think most people sort of understand what that means and in many ways how unfair it can be. So I understand why there is a two tier system, obviously, and the division is violent and nonviolent, but it's also very often a division between poor and wealthy. Right. Because if you're wealthy, you can hire better lawyers. You can. Eventually the outcome is better for you, and it can possibly land you in camp instead of a high security prison. Right.

[Justin Paperni]

I've seen it both ways. So there's no doubt hiring a better lawyer, perhaps having the ability to mitigate differently, could lead to a better outcome. But I was also at a sentencing hearing two weeks ago after the Dodgers won in 18 innings in front of Judge Blumenfeld. Who told someone in our community who's going to prison for 21 months on January 5 because of the privilege and wealth that you had, I'm going to make it harder on you. There are people in this courtroom who have not had opportunities you have had. And I can't excuse what they did, but I can understand it. I'm going to hold you to a higher standard, which is why I'm going to give you this sentence.

[Interviewer]

But that is the exception. The majority of you see much more.

[Justin Paperni]

I've. I've been to 1500 sentencing hearings since my release in 2009.

[Interviewer]

Hear that a lot more.

[Justin Paperni]

Good. I've seen it more. There is a change in this country, I believe, four or five, six years ago around, and I believe that Varsity Blues case had a lot to do with it.

[Interviewer]

College scandal. Yeah.

[Justin Paperni]

There's no doubt, I think that the George Floyd, you know, death and all of that, the idea of privilege and wealth and two tiered, I thought that brought a lot of social justice. Yeah, I think it's changed over the last five years.

[Interviewer]

And it's not bad because he's right, you know, in general, vast majority, you.

[Justin Paperni]

Can be right, that the sentence, you should be held to a different standard. The next question is, does it make sense to warehouse this husband and father of three in a minimum security camp without fences and barbed wire for 21 months when he could be working and contributing to his community? It's a waste of resources to send either way. Yeah, but back to the prison. I mean, as we discussed earlier, it's very expensive warehousing people in this country.

[Interviewer]

Actually, can I. Do you mind? It's a question that I always, I think is so interesting because most people don't know. Matt, can you search on perplexity? Perplexity is a platform we use. They sponsor us. And it's great because it's, it's a. It's an AI platform. But you can ask them any questions and they can source it and they usually come back with really good answers. But can you ask, Matt, essentially, how much money is spent, to help me.

[Justin Paperni]

Phrase it, how much does America spend on corrections every year?

[Interviewer]

Exactly. Here it is. Okay, so this is what perplexity says. The United states spends approximately 80 to $87 billion annually on corrections, including both public and private prisons and jails at the federal, state and local levels. The figure has increased steadily over the past few decades and includes operational costs such as salaries, benefits and infrastructure. That is cool. Crazy. That is an insane amount of money.

[Justin Paperni]

So that addresses why so Many people who should not be in prison are in prison because there's a huge ecosystem that employs case managers, counselors, wardens, people who work within the prison. It's, it's really big business. So there's a reason America has I guess, 5% of the world's population and we warehouse probably 25% of the world's prison population.

[Interviewer]

Yeah. So that's another thing that I learned.

[Justin Paperni]

Yeah, it's big business.

[Interviewer]

Yeah.

[Justin Paperni]

So I can see how that business sends people to prison that shouldn't be there, but to the prison portion of it, as expensive it is. You do want people in the lowest security possible. If you know you should be in a camp if you've been designated there. Yeah.

[Interviewer]

You don't want to put a white collar criminal, somebody who just did minor fraud, housed with a. But many of them violent offender.

[Justin Paperni]

But many of them are actually, if you get taken into custody or you go through detention or transit for weeks and months, some people go through Victorville in Oklahoma, you can be in a county jail or a detention center. So that absolutely happens.

[Interviewer]

Right. Pre trial detainees or even if you.

[Justin Paperni]

Get taken into custody at sentencing. I had 60 days to self surrender to prison. Not every judge allows you to self surrender. Sometimes they take you to right to detention center right here in twin towers in downtown. We have had tons of people there over the years for many, many reasons. So I would agree that, that the sentences can be too long. I think we send too many people to prison. And yes, you could argue there is an imbalance.

[Interviewer]

Of course there is a wealth, a wealth imbalance in prison, just like there is outside. And even the fact that you're hired as a prison consultant, which we'll get to what that means, but the vast majority of people can't afford that. And it helps tremendously. Right. It helps prepare people to go to prison who have to go to prison. Well, and we'll, or, or maybe they don't end up actually going to prison because you start working with these people as a prison consultant even before their trial and their sentence.

[Justin Paperni]

It's true, many don't. But I should also say, let me address that for a moment and I'll start with going back to prison. So when I met Michael that second day, I knew who he was and he tried to advise me in those early weeks. How are you spending your time? What are you doing? What is success for you? What is the outcome you're trying to engineer? I'm like, who the hell talks this way? And I kind of avoided him for several Months, all I did was run and read. And then I began to see guys really scared to go home. Imagine you serve one, two or three years and you're like scared to go home because you can't be a doctor or a lawyer anymore. So one day I'm in Michael's cubicle and I sound like a total fool and I'm trying to show off about how many miles I can run and how many pull ups I can do. Like, I haven't felt this strong since usc. He's like, hey, bud, how much are people gonna pay you to do those pull ups and to run those fast miles? I'm like, no, one, one. And that was an aha moment for me together with seeing friends of mine scared to go home. And he said, you should probably reevaluate how you serve your time. See, you think you're different because you exercise all day. You think that makes you better than the guy that watches Jerry Springer all day. It's the same. Neither of you are preparing for the hardest part, which is going home. And maybe you have a rich friend at USC that's going to hire you. God bless you. You, what are you earning? What skills are you developing? How are you engineering the outcome you want? And it was, it was very transformative for me. Now by that time, he had handed me some literature to read, philosophy that I was embracing. I didn't understand it. He would walk around the track with me and explain it. Like one passage he had to explain more than 20, 30 times. It was insane.

[Interviewer]

Was it Socrates or.

[Justin Paperni]

It was all of them. It was Socrates, it was Nietzsche, it was Kierkegaard, it was, it was Aristotle. And sometimes he'd say, did you, do you actually have a degree from usc? And I said, I got dumb after college. I got stupid. So that's what he still says it. Now, one thing he said to us.

[Interviewer]

That I love, which is exactly about what you were talking right now, which is the idea that most people, people will tell people when you go to prison, they'll tell you, do not think about the outside world. Concentrate on what's happening inside these walls. And he says it's the exact opposite. You should actually not think about what's happening inside these walls and concentrate and focus on the outside world and prepare yourself.

[Justin Paperni]

Yes. So that aligns, aligns with his prongs, which is to educate himself, get a master's degree, publish and grow a massive support network. Right. I'm sure he talked to you about his prongs and 10 year goals. You can't develop a support network if you're isolated from the rest of the world, if you're shutting down visits, if you're not writing letters. So Michael encouraged me to begin documenting my journey or as we tell people in the white collar advice community, create assets that don't exist. So I said, what does that mean? And he said, well, you should write. Write a journal or a blog. I didn't even know what a blog was in 2008. Write a letter and put it out there for the whole world to hold you accountable. I can assure you it will make your parents proud because I see your mom's tears and visitation. You've got to show that you're finding meaning through this experience. You've got to ensure this doesn't define the rest of your life. There are collateral consequences that follow. You have learned prison for you is the easiest part of the process. You're in a camp. No fences, no barbed wire, no violence. You exercise, you run, you read. This is, you have no wife and children at home. You will never have an easier prison experience. You are wasting it. So, 12 October 2008, at about 4 o' clock in the morning, in the prison library or quiet room next to Michael, he helped me handwrite this first blog. And it says, it's October 12, 2008. I'm sitting in my assigned cubicle at TAFS Federal Prison Camp and about five pages, and I put it in the mail and send it home. And when I put it in the mail, Michael said to me, you made a commitment to write every single day. Can you follow through on that commitment? And I said, yes. So from 12th October 2008 to my release, 28th May 2009, with Michael's help, I wrote a blog every day. But something interesting happened about a month in, to the chagrin of other prisoners who said, I'm a tourist there. For a short window, I began to get tons of letters at mail Call just from people reading the blog, thanking me for providing a glimpse into this world of imprisonment, prison. And it was surreal to hear my name called at mail call. And like one day it was like 20 letters, no way. And some staff was off put, as they said, you're not in prison long enough. You're a tourist, you're not an expert. And I'm like, you're right, you're like a prisoner.

[Interviewer]

You're talking about prison.

[Justin Paperni]

I'm not an expert. I'm serving one year. You know who the expert is? That guy over there, Michael Santos, who's teaching me every lesson I conveyed then and now comes from the 26 years Michael served, which is what we'll talk about in a little bit more. We cover prison consultants. So I'm getting these letters at mail call. And then one day I'm in Michael's cubicle, and I say, God, all these people, they, like, write me. They're sending me money for my books. I'm not asking for money. And he said, you are helping a doctor, a lawyer, a businessman might better identify with you. A USC stockbroker who served 18 months, maybe more so than me. A guy that's serving 45 years for a drug offense, who has more knowledge. I mean, there's no part of the experience Michael has an individual endured. Trial, he served a year in segregation, transit, eight years in the penitentiary. The high medium, the low, transfers, books, marriage in prison, mentoring, teaching, everything. There's nothing. There's no one that has that level of depth and breadth of experience, yet people are writing me and not him. And he said, well, there could be an opportunity here for you to actually help people by continuing to write and provide value. And then we're walking the Track on Thanksgiving, November 2008. And my ego's growing a little bit because I'm getting these letters. And I wasn't concerned that other prisoners were off put by the blog because some of the wives and girlfriends would send in my blog and say, why aren't you as productive as this guy? And they'd call me in and say, look, dog, you've been in here for eight months. I've been down for nine years. And I said, I'm not writing anything negative. I didn't even want to defend it or justify it, But I knew my release was close enough, and I wasn't writing anything that bad that would compel someone to really want to have a problem with me. But I know the wives and girlfriends would send in letters, like, do what he does. Some dudes didn't like it. So on Thanksgiving 2008, I'm walking the track with Michael, and I said, I'd like you to help me write a book. And he said, you want to do that? I said, I think I do. I want to go all in. It's been very fulfilling for me to know that I'm helping people here, and I sense an opportunity to help others and to help myself. And I said, you have four years left, so why don't we partner, I know what you want to do. Because he would love to say, I'm not coming home. And I'm not going to tell someone how to shop in the commissary or how to get a better job in prison. I didn't serve 26 years in prison to do that. Let me be very, very clear. He would tell you the same thing right now. He said, I want to my. The outcome that I want to engineer is to change America's prison system. It makes a failure of too many. I was as ready to go home after eight years in prison as I ever was. I've been inside for 22 years. I want to reform and change this system. I want to do exactly as you saw me do with that book you just saw me handwrite called Earning Freedom, Incentivizing Excellence. I believe rather than calendar pages turning, people should be able to earn their way home. I have no doubt he said that. And of course, that's the work he's doing right now with the Bureau of Prisons, the deputy director. He's in all of these prisons across the country. But I tell people Michael did that work every day through 26 years in prison. There was no prison reform that advanced his release date. No First Step act, no Second Chance Act. He did it to build a record, to find meaning in the journey, and to teach and help people. So when people are like, how does Michael end up touring all of these prisons with the deputy director and wardens? How is he in all of these prisons and in D.C. meeting with these people? I'll say, well, he engineered it. Starting when he went to prison in 87, he built a record or assets like, we're encouraging you to create. You've got to create just as Michael did. That's the only reason he's in the room with these people. And Michael encouraged me to do that. The book helped. Lessons from Prison. And over the next three or four months, all I did well, really, the. I would say probably eight or nine months. I just learned every day from Michael. He'd get up at 1 o' clock in the morning. Crazy, crazy. I'd meet him in there about five o'. Clock. Yeah. And there was only one time he asked me to leave the room. Joan Peter Celia, a professor at Stanford, sent him a letter that said, I'd like to write a book with you. And he said, I need you to leave the room so I could write this book. He had it done, like, in three days. I'm not joking, but I would just work with Michael for 10 or 12 hours a day, learning about prison, the system. And we began to engineer this outcome where when I left prison in 09 I would begin to develop what is now white collar advice with the understanding that he had four years left to serve. But resources that I would generate would help support what now is prison professor's charity. So till this day a percentage of every sale that comes in goes to the nonprofit which influences millions of people. But that all started walking around that track in prison knowing that he was going to engineer outcomes to influence millions. And I would do the day to day boutique consulting supported.

[Interviewer]

The consulting helps people who have been found guilty of something. Right.

[Justin Paperni]

All stages. We have several cases right now that are civil people dealing with fda, FTC or SEC issues.

[Interviewer]

And it's all people who've got. Who've gotten in trouble in some sort of white collar criminal crime.

[Justin Paperni]

We'll work with anyone willing to do the work. It tends to be people involved in a civil or government investigation. So doctors, lawyers, celebrities, politicians. Most have come through white collar advice in some degree.

[Interviewer]

Can you give me some names of some celebrities that you've. The ones that you can talk about that you've represented or celebrity cases that we all know about. We were, you know, you did the college scandal.

[Justin Paperni]

Yeah, we were. Or we have attorney client. There's actually, there's actually going to be. There's actually going to be a good asset coming out here soon that talks about a really unique relationship that Michael had with someone very successful. So once that comes out, I'll share it with you. We'll be able to talk. You'll be able to talk about it. It's going to be out very, very soon.

[Interviewer]

Okay, good.

[Justin Paperni]

But a lot of. A lot of people.

[Interviewer]

Do you want me to say it?

[Justin Paperni]

A lot of people. A lot of people. I guess you could say, you can.

[Interviewer]

Say yes or no. You can deny if you want, but I had a list. I mean you worked with the Foundies, the founder of Meundies. We talked about that before.

[Justin Paperni]

Is that okay? Yeah. Jonathan. Yeah.

[Interviewer]

And he actually came up with a. Meundies being a very, very successful underwear.

[Justin Paperni]

He was in our New York Times article. He gave permission. So anyone that I mention, I. That's what I mean.

[Interviewer]

And you. And. And he came up with this business plan in prison, which was just before.

[Justin Paperni]

He went to prison or just before he went to. He grew it while he was in prison.

[Interviewer]

Jen Shaw from.

[Justin Paperni]

We work with Jen. Yeah. The Housewives of Utah. Yeah.

[Interviewer]

Salt Lake City.

[Justin Paperni]

But a lot of these people, they've really. It's sort of like I'm very transparent with them. When they retain our team. I'll Say, look, let me just be direct. We're going to help you engineer the outcome you want, which I know is a shorter sentence. You want to get out of prison early or you want to go directly home. You don't do that by hiring a prison consultant. We'll talk more about that soon. You do it by putting yourself in the shoes of a stakeholder like a prosecutor and judge. How do they proceed? View. So someone like Mossimo, for example, Mossimo genially his wife is Lori. When Moss reaches out, he says, you know, I want to provide value to.

[Interviewer]

Who are they?

[Justin Paperni]

They college. So Lori Loughlin, she's the actress, the actress from Full House and her husband is Massimo. So like when I met Moss through his lawyers at Latham and Watkins. But Moss said, you know, I'm. I want to help people. If it, I hope it helps me, but I really believe in the nonprofit mission and what you're striving to do do. How can I get involved and help work with Michael to help people in prison. He was very genuine and he was very vested in working with Michael to create something. So successful defendants just don't make it about them because it looks self serving. It looks very opportunistic. Instead they say, you know, I want to find some meaning through this. I want to provide some value. I want to help. Which I think led to a shorter sentence with community service he eventually did through the non profit. But there was an asset that he could put in front of Judge Gore or Eric Rosen, the prosecutor or a case manager in prison. It wasn't fake. People try to fake their way through it. I'm sorry, I'll never do it again. I want to find meaning. I care about prison reform, but there's no assets to actually defend what they. It just sounds good. And we're so busy, we don't scrutinize it or look into it. So the people that we work with, I make very clear there's going to be a transactional component to this. You're going to give my company money to begin creating assets to help engineer the outcome you want. Want. Are we in agreement? Yes. Do you also understand that so much of what we do is not proprietary, especially in the age of AI. Do you recognize that you could do all of this on your own if you wanted to? Because everything we do, we give away for free. Come to our webinar books, podcasts, we give it all away for free. Some people with a budget who want to engineer this outcome, who value time more than money, hire our team. Yes, I Want to be one of those people? Cool. Here's what we do. With a lot of the money you're going to send me, we give it to the nonprofit.

[Interviewer]

I mean, it's a little bit like anything, like housework, right? You hire people to, you know, get the tap working again or the air conditioner broke.

[Justin Paperni]

What I'm conveying to people and what Michael helped me understand, we want to change America's prison system, not just by releasing people, but by demonstrating why they are a candidate for mercy, why they have earned instead of why they have earned freedom. And you can't do that through talk. You do it through what Michael did through 26. You build a record that shows you're different than the government's version of events. You are educating yourself. You're growing your network. You've developed values and skills. You are law abiding. You earn your way home. That's what the nonprofit does. That's the policy that has already influenced the first step act more reform. Inside of the prisons, more than 4,000 people have a [e-mail] where they can write from prison for free. The nonprofit funds all of it, and I fund it too, through white collar advice.

[Interviewer]

Right? So wait, so the white collar advice boutique consultancy company, you guys get paid, and there is no problem with getting paid for doing what you do, which is helping people with lesser sentences or helping them prepare.

[Justin Paperni]

And it's their entire lives. We've had agreements go from 100 to 3 million bucks. And I'm telling you, you don't get 100 or 500amillion dollars by telling someone how to shop in the commissary or how to write a sentencing statement to a judge. It's the totality of their life. They're managing businesses. There's reputational fallout. Some convictions have cost people, people in our community, billions of dollars. It's engineering an outcome. It's like that 10-10-10 model from Susie Welch. Every decision, 10 minutes, 10 months, and 10 years, 20 years out. That's what Michael taught me to do. I'm 50 now. He would ask me, what do you want to look like in 5, 10, 15, 20, 25 years? How do you reverse engineer that outcome? It starts with what you do today. So we want people in our community to do that same thing. And it starts with what is the perception of a stakeholder, of a prosecutor. They think you're trash. They want to judge you for this out of character moment. They are not trained to look at the totality of your life. Life Your judge no different. He is biased, there's no doubt because he was probably a former prosecutor. He's not a fan. So we want to begin to create some asset that shows why they're different, what they will do moving forward to become part of the solution. If you created a victim, you identify with the victim. You're not just paying money back to avoid prison. It's the right thing to do. So the messaging is where a lot of defendants fail. It's self serving or they, they outsource all of the work to their lawyer. And I say that knowing that off puts lawyers. But we have attorney, a client with more than a thousand law firms. A good lawyer without a God complex is not threatened by that statement. But it doesn't change. A lawyer is paid to say why their client should avoid prison. And a federal judge we interviewed on YouTube said exactly that the defendant has to do. They're the star of the show. They've got to do the lion's share of the work and we help them do that.

[Interviewer]

And then part of the money you guys make in White Collar Advice goes to prison professors.

[Justin Paperni]

And we documented. That's right.

[Interviewer]

Can you tell me what prison professors. Professors isn't what you guys do there.

[Justin Paperni]

So while we're here doing this interview, Michael's on a plane to Michigan where he's going to speak in a federal Milan federal prison. Then he's going to go back to Kentucky and West Virginia and he'll see Sean Combs who's serving time at Fort Dix. Okay. So he's touring all of these prisons, implementing our programs, inspiring and teaching millions of people in prison. The Bureau of Prisons doesn't pay for that work. The government shut down anyway. There's no money. Staff's working right now in the BOP without money. So while he's traveling the country, that is very expensive. No prisoner pays for any of the programs. They're poor. When they need books, we send it. They don't pay for it. Someone has to fund it. So all of these trips, the travel, the books, the programming is funded primarily through resources the white collar advice obtains. We send a portion of that to the nonprofit. So we tell people, come to our community. This is a real win win for you. You have the transformational aspect of influencing millions of of people through the nonprofit, getting invested in volunteering. And you're also going to work to engineer that outcome with our team at White Collar Advice. And that's great. People love it. They become a, they've really become a part of something.

[Interviewer]

Are There other prison consultancy companies out there? Or like, if I go on perplexity, let's say, and I say I need help, would they find? Would they find?

[Justin Paperni]

So this is a big topic and something I spend a lot of time kind of having fun with. So all of the media I've done all over the world, they would introduce me as a. As a federal prison consultant.

[Interviewer]

Yeah.

[Justin Paperni]

And my message is, I'm not a consultant. I'm not a prison consultant. Any dude like me can go to jail for 388 days and fancy themselves an expert. Or you go for one or two years and suddenly you're a fixer. I'm no fixer. I served one year in a minimum security camp 16 years ago. Everything I learned and teach comes from my friend who served 26 years. Every lesson at White Collar advice comes from the 26 years that he documented. I tell people I am his ambassador, I am his best student, and these are the lessons we teach. You don't need a prison consultant, especially in the age of AI. What is a prison consultant going to do? You tell you how to shop in the commissary or how to get a better job? It's absurd. We give everything away for free.

[Interviewer]

Yeah. So you have a problem with the title you don't like.

[Justin Paperni]

I think they're charlatans. They steal all of Michael's.

[Interviewer]

Oh, but they exist.

[Justin Paperni]

These people exist? Sure. They steal all of Michael's work to begin with. With everything is stolen from Michael, who pioneered preparing for sentencing, properly, mitigation, creating. All of it's stolen from Michael and a lot from me. They claim to be a fixer or expert, which you cannot be when you serve one, two or three years in one camp. What are they fixing? They offer guarantees. They prey on the vulnerability of people. Because I know if you're in trouble, the only thing you want is to avoid prison or get out. So people are vulnerable. They're easy to exploit. I tell people you don't pay for consulting. It's a waste of money. We give it away for free. We have a weekly webinar. We have books, we have podcast. [e-mail] is there from Michael. Tell me someone better equipped to teach you how to prepare than Michael, who did 26 years in prison. The thing that you should invest in is the creation of assets. And I tell people, if you can do it on your own, you should. You need to start immediately. You're late because the government's working full time to build their. Their narrative of you Their vision of who you are as a father, as an executive. They're working full time with our tax dollar to advance their agenda, which is going to make them look better when they become a dollar defense attorney someday.

[Interviewer]

Right.

[Justin Paperni]

Or run for office. So they're working full time.

[Interviewer]

Right.

[Justin Paperni]

What are you doing to demonstrate that you're different? And that's why you have to create and build on it over time. Most people with a budget say, I'd like to create with your team. Some people say, I'd love to. I don't have the budget. Which is why we say that's why we have so much free stuff to teach you how to do it. But you don't need a prison consultant. It is a disgusting, derogatory word where people.

[Interviewer]

So that's how you, how, that's how I introduced you. I actually use those words, I think prison consultants, consultant.

[Justin Paperni]

I, I, I am, I'm, I'm a husband, I'm a father, I'm an executive who had an experience to the criminal justice system. I've learned a lot of lessons through 16 years. But I don't want to profess to be someone that I am not. I don't want to profess to be some expert. When I served one year in one camp. I proudly say everything we teach comes from the 26 years that Michael served. Have I learned a ton over 16 years with thousands of people. We've helped, of course, working with lawyers, the collateral consequences of a conviction, picking yourself up, how to hold a lawyer accountable, of course, the tons. But to me, the idea of hiring and giving money to a prison consultant to learn how to get a better job or shop in the commissary is absurd because we give all of that away for free. And if people have questions, come to the webinar and I'm going to answer that directly for them. I don't think people should pay for.

[Interviewer]

It because you're online. Right. So if I do a search on Perplexity right now for what to do if I get in trouble or what would lead me to find white collar advice. If people don't know, like, what kind of query out there would lead people?

[Justin Paperni]

Probably white collar crime. I want a shorter prison sentence. White collar crime investigation.

[Interviewer]

That's a good, that's actually a good one.

[Justin Paperni]

Yeah. I got a target letter. What is, what is federal prison like? How do I get a shorter sentence?

[Interviewer]

Huh? That's a good, yeah. So if a person types, Matt, can you look on Perplexity and see, See, I want a shorter prison sentence. If that will. If that will show up Justin's I.

[Justin Paperni]

Actually did a recent search of that and I saw where I came up within Claude and I saw that you use Perplexity too. I've used Perplexity. I saw that I came up in like chatgpt a Perplexity Gemini search because that's a big part of. Because, well, we create so much content and we give it all away for free. But it has to be structured the right way for AI to crawl and find find it.

[Interviewer]

Let's see what Perplexity says here. Securing a shorter sentence for a white collar crime often depends on early and thoughtful defense strategy, demonstrating mitigating factors, cooperating with authorities and leveraging expert legal resources. Notable examples and dedicated organizations provide real world world guidance on what works and why. And here experts and resources and here you are. White Collar Advice offers professional guidance on creating mitigation strategies that prove candidates are worthy of leniency, drawing on the experience of individuals who have successfully served substantially shortened, shortened sentences. How many clients do you have right now?

[Justin Paperni]

Yeah, so I would. It depends where people are like different parts of the journey. Right. So I would say someone is still a client even if they're in prison in their home. Because a question could, could pop up. But we have every day, couple of days, someone retains our team, really a.

[Interviewer]

Couple a day that reaches out and say we want.

[Justin Paperni]

Well, this comes back to what we wanted to engineer. So it wasn't by accident. And I share this, not to be self serving, but for the person going through a crisis, what they need to engineer as well. So in 2025, having done this for 16 years, I could easily show you that thousands of people organically come into our community every single month. Not through a Google Ad or cold calling anyone, but we've produced so much helpful content for so long. Everything is free. Free. Books, blogs, podcasts, webinars. It is so much that people like the information they come into our community. So by virtue of thousands of people coming to our community every single month and with people facing federal, state crime, civil, we work with a lot of people, doctors and lawyers, dentists who want to keep their medical license. Because preparing for a sentencing hearing is no different than preparing for a licensing hearing. To keep your medical license, you have to show that you are different than the other events. So yes, if thousands of people come in every month, it would make sense that every day or so someone's going to work with our team in some capacity. So the answer is a lot. But we're in a position to be able to serve them. This creating enables us to help a lot of people. But with consulting, it's hard to define. If someone gives you money like we're going to talk about, you might feel better. It's not really clearly defined. It's fundamentally different. If it says, okay, we're going to interview you and we're going to create. Create something. We're going to get it to the probation officer. Why would we get it to the probation officer? Let me tell you why. That probation officer is going to recommend how long you should serve in prison. Does it make sense to try to influence that probation officer? Yes. Why didn't I get that advice from my lawyer? I don't know. But I can share with you an interview from a federal judge that said he would be astoundingly impressed if he saw a defendant write out that life story and get into the probation offer before sensing, my God, I want to do that. Well, why? Why is that also valuable? One, it can influence the recommendation the probation officer makes because they can see this asset. But two, in the white collar crime world, these sentencing can takes weeks, months, and years.

[Interviewer]

Right?

[Justin Paperni]

So if you say you're going to do something in October 2025 and you're not going to get sentenced to April of 26, that gives you more time to build a record. Which is why when people say, hey, my sentencing was delayed a year, is that good or bad? I'm like, I don't know. Tell me what you do every day. Sometimes they tell me what they do and I'm like, that's bad. You should go to jail today and get credit because you're not doing anything that's going to get you a shorter sentence. Some people like Moss and others like Jen, say, I'm going to build. I'm going to create and show why I'm different, how I'm part of the solution. Cool. Then we document it, develop an asset. So then you go to a set scene here and you can say, your honor, I gave this to the probation officer last October. Now it's April. Here's updated progress. And by the way, whatever sentence I get today, I'm going to continue to update you on my progress. So if they get sentenced to progress prison, six months later, they write a letter to the judge from prison. Your honor, you gave me this sentence on this date. You told me you were given a shorter sentence for this reason or a higher sentence for this reason. I'm writing to give you an update on the progress I've made since I've been in prison. I'm not just engaged in program. Here's what I learned from it. It's not, I read a book. Here's a book report I read. Why I read it. How will help me moving forward. You then share that with the probation officer. Why is that relevant? You want to travel on probation. You want to get your job approved so the earlier someone can begin to create, the better. My point is, you don't do that with a prison consultant. You do that with people who have documented it, who have done it, who have shown what that looks like, who have engineered that outcome. Not just we've done it in our own life. So we have more authority to say, this is how it can help you. But it requires doing work today that might not help you for years. That is the trick. I just wrote chapter five where I discuss meeting my now wife, Sandra. We went for a walk around the lake. Take. And I was on a dating website. And I wrote earlier in the book how the dating website wouldn't let me disclose that I had been to prison. They thought I was joking. I'm like, I'm not joking. I think a woman should know that this dude went to jail. And they made me take it out. So with Sandra, I'm driving to Pepperdine Law School to lecture, and she was in London at the time. And she's like, what do you do for work? And I'm like, ah, it's five o'. Clock, I'm driving to lecture. I'm stuck in time. I'm like, just go to my website. She like your website? I'm like, yeah, just go to my website. Let me know if you're okay with it. I was just. There's the irony that I could speak to thousands of people about why I went to prison, but I couldn't tell this beautiful woman on the other end of the line that I went to prison. I built a career around it. I took the easy way out. Go to my website. So I don't hear from for like a week. I'm like, damn, I screwed it up. Then she sent me a message that said, I reviewed your website and I reviewed your blogs and I think you want to help people. I have a sense that you want to help people. And the point that I'm making is when I wrote that blog and book from prison, it was to help a doctor, a lawyer, a mom whose son is going to prison, to maybe get me off probation early to get my job approved so I didn't have to go work at kfc, which is where they want you to work at the halfway house here in Hollywood. Nothing wrong with kfc, but I didn't want to work for the Colonel, So that was the outcome I was trying to engineer. I didn't know that by writing a blog on a Saturday in November of 2008, that it would compel my now wife, a beautiful woman, to see me differently, you know, years later when I met her. The point is, you don't pay a consultant. You invest to create assets and develop it for the rest of your life. And I share them with my children. My son Jason is 7. My daughter Alyssa's 11. I share with them what I create and why I started and why they should do the same thing. And you memorialize it. And then in time, you see the contradictions. I can't believe I wrote that. I feel differently now. That's the right as a human being to feel differently 30 minutes later than you did an hour. That's our right. Right. But I just believe in documenting it. And that's what we help you. And it's so satisfying for them to memorialize it, to share it. And then people begin to see you differently. They begin to judge you for what you're doing and who you're becoming, rather than bad choices you made. And you can't do it by talking about it. You've got to show them.

[Interviewer]

Yeah. It's interesting. There is such a stigma in this country regarding prisoners or anyone who's served time in prison. Right? There's. There's a real stigma that I imagine for you. You spent so much time sort of talking about what you do versus what the idea of what a prison consultant does. I'm sure there's a lot of people that criticize you for trying to help. You're a smart guy. You have all the time in the world. Why spend that time and those resources and your intelligence trying to make people who did bad things or trying to help bad things. And I know why.

[Justin Paperni]

Because. So I'll tell you, sometimes when I film a TikTok or YouTube video, someone will be like. They'll say, I love your videos. You're so great. What you do, the advice. This advice is applicable to everything, to everything. But I just can't believe the people you help. And my response is the people. I'm that person, the person that you are giving. That was me in 2008. But here's the trick. You see me differently now because of what I've built. I want to help people do that same thing. I want, want, and you think that helps?

[Interviewer]

Do you think they change their minds?

[Justin Paperni]

They say, well, I didn't approach it from that perspective. You know, I can see. I know how I see you because of everything you've built and what you've done. I sense you're genuine and wanting to help people. I watch your videos. I've read your book, and I'm like, well, that's. We encourage people in our community to do the same thing. So in time, people will see them as you view me, but I will tell them the way you're being critical of people in our community. I was that person. Right. You're essentially saying the same thing about me a long time ago. But there is a connection or brotherhood or sisterhood that comes. Comes with working with people. There is an understanding. There is a connection. And I think because I'm so open about what I've done and I did more bad things, but we don't have three days here to talk about it. I think I'm so open about what I've done, it compels them to say, well, I feel comfortable speaking with you about it, and I want to kind of engineer that same outcome. And I'm not just saying financial or it's. I don't want this to define the rest of my life.

[Interviewer]

Of course. Yeah. I think there's a real blind spot with people where they can never imagine for some reason. I think it's also lack of empathy that they can't imagine that it could be them, that one day they could make a mistake, do something wrong, need to survive, whatever the situation that will lead you to commit a crime or make a mistake that will land you in.

[Justin Paperni]

There's a sense. There can be a sense of righteousness. I mean, I've had people in the chapter I just wrote of the book, I actually open up where I'm giving a presentation in front of a thousand accountants in Arkansas. And 30 seconds into my presentation, I said, like, anyone can make bad decisions that end up in prison. That's going back to 2010. And 30 seconds in, some dude who's like six, five in the back row stood up the hugest hands I've ever seen. Like the bfg, the giant. I'm like, sir, it's not time for questions or discussion yet. He said, don't ever think that I can make the same bad decisions that you've made. I've been an accountant for 20 years. I've never taken a shortcut. And I said, you're right. I apologize for insinuating. Everyone in this Room can break the law. So I have to be very careful about that. I'm not suggesting anyone can. I know I made bad decisions, but I do know there can be a sense of occasional double standards. Right. Of people who might have done something and didn't get caught. And that conviction really does change. It changes absolutely everything. But the way that you overcome. You talk about the shame or the stigma, the way, at least for me to overcome it is by doing what Michael taught me to do. You talk about it, you share lessons. You don't run from it. Right. In the age of AI and Google, you can't pretend end you didn't go to prison or there's a press release and some people try to do that.

[Interviewer]

I think that's what you should do with every bad decision and bad things that happen in your life is not be ashamed of it.

[Justin Paperni]

And totally, it's like the shame paradox, the way you overcome and you run towards the shame.

[Interviewer]

Yeah, absolutely. I'm a big believer in that.

[Justin Paperni]

You talk about the shame and there's value in talking about what it used to be like. It's cathartic. So even I recall when I was in prison, I read a lot of books, but in chapter two of the Picture of Dorian Gray by Wilde, he writes about. About something akin to. It's very easy to poison the existing moment if you focus on the life you once had, the successes you once had, because you can't appreciate what you have now. And I suffered from that. When I came home from prison, I wouldn't appreciate what I was accomplishing that some school flew me to New York to speak and they gave me a check like, why? I can't believe it. It I'd look at the check, not fully appreciate it because I'd be like, wow, just two and a half years.

[Interviewer]

Ago, you were making 100 times this.

[Justin Paperni]

Yes. And that comparison is a difficult way to live. And focusing on what you once had is a difficult way to live. But by writing about it and being open about it, people going through this will understand. Okay, that could be in my future too. I can relate to that. I can understand how Justin's feeling because I'm no longer going to be a doctor or a lawyer. I've got to recalibrate as Mount Boy or would say I've got to develop a new business and brand and it may take years before I ever get back to where I was, if I ever do. So that would. That took a long time for me to fully appreciate and no longer live in the what I Used to have. And it's. That also is a terrible way to live because it can be difficult to move forward.

[Interviewer]

Of course. Yeah, absolutely. You know, you definitely 100% should watch this documentary that's on HBO. It's by Andrew Jarecki, and it's called the Alabama A Solution. You haven't watched it yet?

[Justin Paperni]

I haven't.

[Interviewer]

It is amazing. It basically follows for several years what's happening inside. A lot of it is filmed by the prisoners themselves. What's happening inside all these different state prisons in Alabama? Horrible conditions. I mean, people, correctional officers beating prisoners to death, overdoses, drugs being dispensed and given many times and sold in prison many times by the correctional officers themselves. Violence, just inhumane conditions. And one of the things that shocked me that most. Apart from the fact that this is actually happening in the richest country in the world, you know, I've seen this in other countries I've been in. I've filmed in prisons in Brazil and in other. And these horrible conditions exist elsewhere. I just didn't expect it to happen here in the US So it was shocking to me. But I think one of the most shocking things was that there is a bunch of prisoners that basically get together and the sort of leaders that decide that they're going to fight for the rights of the people in prison because literally they're seeing their cellmates being beaten for no reason by the correctional officers and dying. It's insane. And then them lying to the parents of those dead people and saying that they had attacked them and coming up with all these excuses that weren't lying to them, basically. So they start trying to reform from the inside and they go on a strike because they realize that there's a lot of money being made by prison work. So they go on the strike and they say, we're not going to work for the state of Alabama anymore until you change the conditions inside the prison.

[Justin Paperni]

The prisoner said this.

[Interviewer]

The prisoner said this. And they're working with this film group and they start. They're filming all of this and they're filming the conversations they're having between all the different prisons inside the state of Alabama, all the different state prisons. And they all. They all overnight stop working. They would refuse to work, which is amazing. It's so brave what they did. You know, you can disagree with what they did. Obviously, you do not condone the crime, whatever put them in prison, but still, the conditions are horrible. It's inhumane. Nobody should live like this. And they're being stomped on by correctional officers. I Mean treated worse than dogs in many cases. So they're very brave and they did this. And to me, what was most shocking was hearing how the attorney general, many in the media, in radio shows, they played some snippets and they interviewed the attorney general and how they would talk about prisoners. And to them it was like they're in prison. Prison. Why do they think they should have any rights? Have they not looked at their feet and seen the shackles? How do they. What, what are they experting? Good treatment?

[Justin Paperni]

That that's a common statement or refrain when people say if they were so concerned about their conditions or how they would live, they probably shouldn't have broken the law. And that's a terrible thing to say because even when you're in prison, there are basic rights that you should be able to live with dignity. You need resources. Many people in these prisons state worse than federal, are poor with nothing coming in. And it's very easy for people to rationalize and say, well, these are criminals. They're getting exactly what they deserve. And if they were so concerned, they shouldn't have broken the law.

[Interviewer]

Yeah.

[Justin Paperni]

And they forget that lacks empathy and understanding.

[Interviewer]

Absolutely. A completely understanding. And also, like equates. This is the thought process between people that are less, countries that are less developed and people that are less developed in their thinking. Because it's called correctional system. Right. It's supposed to correct people, it's supposed to reform them. You're supposed to leave prison a bit better human being than when you went in. And what it's doing is it's taking all humanity away from you.

[Justin Paperni]

As I'm sure Michael told you, the longer you people should read his book Inside Life Behind Bars in America and Earning Freedom, where he writes, the longer you expose someone to corrections, the less likely they are to function and succeed after they're released.

[Interviewer]

Exactly.

[Justin Paperni]

But as you mentioned earlier, it's an $80 to $87 billion industry, so there's incentives to keeps people inside. Sure. And even as the nonprofit prison professors is implementing, implementing programs in prisons and jails across the country, we have a small nonprofit with funding from white collar advice to make it possible. But that doesn't mean tons of people are concerned about people in prison. And where do a lot of the resources go? Police unions or guard unions? They want more guards, more security, hiring more staff. So you have all of these competing issues, but the primary goal should be how do you have safer communities? You have safer communities if someone is released from prison with values and skills. Even if you hand someone a job if they don't find value in work, they ain't going to to work. Yeah, Right. So that's what re entry should look like the day someone gets there. But there are changes coming, at least in the Bureau of Prisons. I mean, Michael is going to be now leading admissions and orientations. When you go to prison, you go through a training. It takes two weeks to clear A and O. The training when I was in prison was like, it's a seven minute video, then a two minute video. There's no training. Then they just throw you out into the compound. Michael's leading that A and O training now.

[Interviewer]

Yeah.

[Justin Paperni]

This is what you should be doing while you're here. You should be building. You should be doc. You should be earning free freedom, building a pathway out of here. At Capella University, learning online doesn't mean learning alone.

[Interviewer]

You'll get support from people who care about your success, like your enrollment specialist.

[Justin Paperni]

Who gets to know you and the.

[Interviewer]

Goals you'd like to achieve. You'll also get a designated academic coach who's with you throughout your entire program.

[Justin Paperni]

Plus, career coaches are available to help.

[Interviewer]

You navigate your professional goals.

[Justin Paperni]

A different future is closer than you.

[Interviewer]

Think with Capella University.

[Justin Paperni]

Learn [e-mail]. and so there are changes coming. Good.

[Interviewer]

And a lot of it because of the work that you guys are doing.

[Justin Paperni]

Really? What? Michael, I'm grateful that white collar advice supports it, but I can't tell you that I'm traveling to 50, 60 prisons this year on Ubers and Hampton.

[Interviewer]

But you're doing your part of the.

[Justin Paperni]

Work, and that's the outcome we engineered. So that's when.

[Interviewer]

That's very smart.

[Justin Paperni]

Sure. So, like when I see some, you know, comments from people, and again, I'm at a point where I'm numb. It has no impact on me. But when someone's like, oh, I can't, you know, you guys, you, you. I think you guys make a lot of money or it's not fair. I saw you in the New York Times. Or why are you on a Dr. Phil podcast? And that people get jealous. They're envious. They don't understand one how long our team has been working to build a record, to develop assets, to actually help people, to work with more than a thousand law firms to speak at judicial conferences, to interview judges. It just didn't happen overnight. You know what had happened? Walking that dusty track with Michael where he asked me, what does success look like for you? What are you trying to engineer for the rest of your life? That was a long, long time ago. So when, you know, even people are like, how was Michael Santos visiting prisons? It's like that upsets you. Do you know what he's, what he did for 26 years in prison, do you know the outcomes he's, what he's producing that upset you. So envy is a terrible thing.

[Interviewer]

Yeah.

[Justin Paperni]

There isn't a great deal of sympathy for people in prison because it's not like if someone gets cancer, you didn't choose to get cancer. There's an otherness that accompanies a crime. Like we chose it.

[Interviewer]

Yeah. And it's to me, you, I think my parents always taught me this. You're judged by how you treat people with less power than you. Right. And not by how you treat people with more power and more important than you.

[Justin Paperni]

Right.

[Interviewer]

And that's very humbling and I think it's a very important lesson. And so if you're, you're not treating these people well in prison because it's a reward for all the bad, you shouldn't be rewarding them for the bad stuff they did, but you should be treating everyone with some sort of empathy and humanity, whoever they are, whatever they've done in the world. And only by extending that humanity towards other people are you having an impact and hopefully creating kinder human beings around you and educating them, which is, is also part, is not part of prison.

[Justin Paperni]

Somehow, not, not enough. It's, it is getting better. But the problem is it's a right, it's a very volatile environment and you do have people that have been in and out of the system their entire life. And of course, some people in prison have no entry and re in reentry or programming and developing a law abiding life. So you need more security. But there's no doubt, I mean, even in some of the BOP prisons, like even during COVID you know, because some viral videos got out with prisoners that are iPhones and they shouldn't. But it's like, you know, we're here in Covid. We have to wear a mask. There's no soap to wash our hands. There's no soap in the showers. The commissary is closed. We can't shop. So it's like, well, it's filthy. It's a filthy living situation. It's almost like inhumane.

[Interviewer]

In the Alabama Solution documentary, you can see the cells full of rats. He has a bottle. The guy, the leader has a bottle. Where that night he had like 10 rats that he had picked up and he was getting fines or treated badly because he would put his you were supposed to have your food bag on the floor. He was in solitary and he kept on figuring out how to hang it because or else the rats would eat it. But every time he did that and he hung it, he would spend more time. And so whatever it is, there was some sort of punishment for that. I mean, these are not conditions that anyone should live. No one should be treated like that. I'm sorry.

[Justin Paperni]

It's inhumane. It's not safe. It also puts security or staff at risk too because it could lead to prisoners becoming volatile. Volatile when you feel as if you have no choice in an, in a violent environment to begin with. It can create safety issues for staff. And I know many good staff would like to fix it, but there's only so much they could do and there's only so many resources a lot of these states have and with little money, the last thing they want to do.

[Interviewer]

Is make it more comfortable.

[Justin Paperni]

Sure. I mean even like with the Doge cuts earlier this year, the trickle down down, the non prison professors does work in every California prison. Every prisoner. And they would give, I think California would give a small purchase order for the program and help offset some of the nonprofit costs because it's very expensive. Then with the budget cuts this year, California told the.org we don't have the funding for it. And Michael said that's okay. I'll do it for free. I'll travel, I'll give you the programs and products at no cost.

[Interviewer]

That's great.

[Justin Paperni]

Prisoners shouldn't suffer because the state of California is cutting their budgets for people in prison. Prison. But not every non profit's in a position to do that. Because Michael has resources. Not one penny of what's raised goes to him. Even when someone buys a book for 50 bucks and it may cost him 20% as much to produce on Amazon, he doesn't keep the spread. 100% of those resources support the nonprofit. Many non profits are not in a position to do that. Where they got to pay in a salary to an executive director, they need to offset costs and pay themselves. I mean, so many nonprofits, it's like 75% of what's raised pays staff. None of that here. Even when I came home and it was like, oh my God, I just flew to Temple in St. Joe's in Villanova for, you know, two grand, all expenses covered and I'm going to net $200. After everything in my. I knew I was going to be okay because I was implementing lessons Michael taught me and I knew that I could be Resilient and develop skills and overcome it, even when nothing was coming out in. And it all started with using this experience as an asset being part of the solution, despite the inevitable criticism that comes. And I get it.

[Interviewer]

Right? Yeah. I mean, there's nothing more rewarding than having a direct impact, positive impact in other people's lives. Right.

[Justin Paperni]

There's nothing more rewarding than not bullshitting and not telling people to do what you haven't done done. That's what's rewarding. Okay. There's a lot of motivational speakers. They do the online gurus. I can make a million dollars this month if you buy my 89. They've never done it right. So they don't feel good about the money. It's why so many people, they might achieve something if they haven't earned it. I'd argue that's a different conversation. Some friends of mine that grew up as celebrities whose parents made the big money and they handed down many of these depression issues because it was given to them, they didn't earn it. Okay. What's satisfying is that I've been authentic about it. I'm not a consultant. You're not hiring me to do that. I'm advising you to follow this path that changed my life. It's helped other people. It's good to help people, but it's also good to have authority and to be authentic. And if anyone were to ever question me, it's like, well, I'll just show you. I'll show you. Talk to someone. That is what's very rewarding.

[Interviewer]

It feels it's authentic, authentic, real impact.

[Justin Paperni]

It's not make believe.

[Interviewer]

And particularly I think in the case of people like you and Michael, who are people who made mistakes in their past and could have not owned up to those mistakes or could have been depressed their whole lives or could have not changed their lives around so dramatically like you guys did. Now you're using your platform, your voice, your time, your intelligence to create change around you.

[Justin Paperni]

The only way you get the change. See, part of the problem is not everyone. Everyone. It's like not everyone wants to do the work. And we should embrace that. It's kind of easier said than done. That's the title of the last chapter. It's easier to say that you're going to live a certain way in prison when you have no responsibility. And it's another thing to actually do it. Like, I address and I'm like a walking contradiction. I ask you to do something I'm incapable of doing, like being open and honest. Then telling my now wife, Sandra, go to my website, because I didn't have the courage to tell her what I did on phone call. It's easy to tell people what to do. I don't always take the advice. The, the way you get there, it's. It's so cliche. Like the tortoise and the hair. Right. It's like incremental, slow and steady wins the race. It's like, do a little bit today, do a little bit tomorrow. You do. And then before you know it, it's like, wow, I have a really comprehensive body of work. And maybe I created something that my case manager throws in the trash in prison. They're not a fan. Okay, Maybe the probation officer loves it. Maybe you want to go back to that judge someday for a resentencing. Or maybe the judge loves it. We've seen it all. But it requires like, you can't outsource work to a lawyer. You got to embrace the perspective they have of you. And it requires high levels of introspection. Like, if you did it, you kind of have to share why you did it, what you've learned, the motivations behind each choice, the choice itself. That's the only way that people will find you believers. It's the only way that people will then say, like, I think you're stronger because of this. Like, because you've seen the consequences that follow bad choices. But you can't do that by running and not reading good literature. It really requires. You have to fall in love with learning.

[Interviewer]

Right. You have to do the work. Yeah.

[Justin Paperni]

You have to fall in love with being uncomfortable and embarrassing yourself. Like failing on a big level. I did that in front of audiences when I came home from prison. Just like I cold walked as a 22 year old stockbroker out of USC. That same suit that I wore to sentencing that was tight was now so big a nice cleaning cleaner told me I should throw it in the trash. I used a pass from the halfway house with this huge suit on. My mom picked me up at the Vinewood halfway house. I had four hours. She drove me to downtown Los Angeles. Angeles. I had a bag of books, Lessons from prison. And I wasn't allowed to communicate with Michael. My probation officer wouldn't allow it. So I had Carol, his wife, say, tell Michael tomorrow I'm doing it. It's freaking happening. I said I was going to do it. I'm doing it. And Michael was proud of me. So I had bags. Lessons from prison in a bag. My mom dropped me off in this suit. Where I look like a total weirdo. Like, it was so huge. I look like a weirdo. But a part of me wanted to suffer through it. I wanted to return to the town that had just sentenced me to prison in the same suit. I had to close the loop. So I walk in uninvited to these law firms, I sneak past the security guard and I do like the same pitch that I did when I was 22. Like, I'm not here to sell anything. My name is Justin Paperni. I was just released from prison. I'm here seeing some lawyers dropping off copies of my book Lessons from prison. That helps people prepare for, you know, prison and the experience in coming home. What a lot of lawyers do is take the books and leave them in the conference room. So when you're visiting with client, you could handle. That was kind of like my pitch.

[Interviewer]

That's smart.

[Justin Paperni]

And then they'd be like, who are you again? And I'd say, hi. And I was so nervous. I would give the same pitch, like, hi, I'm Justin Maprin. I'm not here to sell you anything. And all these people are looking at me like, who is this guy in a huge suit pedaling a book, clearly not invited. So she's like, jason. I'm like, no, it's Justin. She said, jason or Justin, whatever. No lawyer is available to see you. And I said I would try to be a little, I don't know, quirky or witty or funny. So I'd say like, you don't want the book? You don't want. You have no interest in this book. I hand wrote this book from prison. I'm expecting maybe out of guilt or empathy, you're going to take the book. No lawyer will see. We need you to leave now. I'm like, I got it. I've enjoyed our time together. I would leave and I go to another law firm and another law firm. One lady threatened to call my probation officer. Ironically, it's a lawyer I ended up working with years later. She's very nice. She just said she had a bad day. But here's the message for people. I cold walked for three hours. The last lawyer, his name is Mark Worksman. He's a great lawyer. He's the only lawyer that shook my hand and I said, I need you to take the book out of sympathy and guilt. I said, my mother's waiting in the car. I've got to get back to the halfway house or they're going to violate me and send me back to prison. No lawyer today shook in My shook my hand or taken this book. Wow, I need you to take the pocketbook. And he said, justin, I would love to read your book. I said, really? So he shakes my hand, he takes the book. I'm at the halfway house the next day doing some pull ups and he says, he calls me and says, hi, Justin, it's Mark Worksman. He didn't say, I love your book. He didn't say, I like your book. He said, I scanned your book. I think it could help people. Would you send me 10 copies, Mark? I'd love to. In the messages over the last 16 years, I don't focus on, on getting thrown out of offices because I had dignity in trying. I was proud of myself for following through on what I said I was going to do. Here's what I focus on. I've done more than a million dollars in business with Mark in referring clients to me and vice versa. So I tell people. I don't focus on the nine lawyers that threw me out and made fun of me or the woman that called me Jason instead of Justin or said I wouldn't even take the book if it's free. I focus on the fact that, that, that was a million dollar cold walk. But it happened because I began learning from Michael in prison and I said I was going to do something and it was uncomfortable. My heart was pounding when I did that cold walk more than going to federal prison that first day. And I knew if I could get through that and do it Even if all 10 threw me out, that I could do everything that was to come. Speaking on live television, speaking in front of 15,000 people. I tell myself, if I could do it looking like a fool in that big suit. That day out of prison while on a pass from the halfway house where I wasn't focused on sex or food or sports or wasting time. It was, my buddy's got four years left to serve in prison. And we're going to engineer this outcome. And to do that, I need, I need lawyers.

[Interviewer]

Yeah.

[Justin Paperni]

So I'm so proud to document that because someday your children, why, they're going to deal with rejection and failure and nervous nervousness and being looked at differently. And you're odd and you're weird and I tell my kids I'm all of them. And that's good.

[Interviewer]

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, there's two lessons from that story of your walk. Ins is persistence. Right. Not giving up. And you stayed at it till the end.

[Justin Paperni]

And you liking some pain too. There's a, there's a little bit of a Weird. There's a little bit of a weirdness, too, that you. Yeah.

[Interviewer]

But I also think it's the act of kindness from the lawyer.

[Justin Paperni]

Right.

[Interviewer]

Being able to give somebody, you know, their hand and. And some time to read your book and scan it. I mean, it's an act of kindness to a person, a stranger, which I think is so important.

[Justin Paperni]

Here's what I also learned. That sales pitch I tried to do. My name is Justin. I only need 30 seconds. I'm not here to sell anything. That's what I thought I should say when I was. When I did what I do best, which is just be really vulnerable and really honest. And sure, you could argue maybe there was some guilt there and take. But it led to the result that I wanted. However I got there, I wasn't manipulating him. I was telling him the truth. My mom's in the car. I just got out of prison. I have to get back to the halfway house. Please take this book. That was better than what I was doing previously when I was just very vulnerable and honest.

[Interviewer]

Yeah, yeah. Authenticity usually always helps. Right?

[Justin Paperni]

He's writing a forward to the new book, but I think of people like that who gave me that opportunity. But it all started with the willingness to try it, which comes back to what we discussed a few minutes ago. It is hard work. It requires someone to say, like, I'm going to start creating something today. Like, you're here. And the success that you've had, awards. It all started because you had some vision and you began to implement. You failed, and you've pivoted and you've started over. It's not going to work. Long day, sacrificing time with my family. But you've engineered the outcome that you want.

[Interviewer]

I did. Yeah. I started when I was 12 years old.

[Justin Paperni]

None of it is by accident. Yeah. So people have to do that. The problem is some people stall and delay. Say, well, I'm going to wait till I get sentenced. I'm going to wait till I come home from prison. It's like, well, look at people. Look at people that you admire. Look at someone successful. Like, did some. That entrepreneur athlete you admire, that politician. Politician. That artist. When did they start? They started at 12. When did Tiger woods start? He started at 5. The best day would have been yesterday. The next best day is today, right?

[Interviewer]

Yeah.

[Justin Paperni]

And not enough people are willing to do that. But those that are and do, this experience turns out to be a blessing in many ways.

[Interviewer]

Amazing. As always.

[Justin Paperni]

Good to see you. Yes.

[Interviewer]

Thank you so much for coming on the podcast.

[Justin Paperni]

We covered a lot.

[Interviewer]

We did cover a lot. I love our conversations because they get very deep as well.

[Justin Paperni]

Yeah, it was. I haven't covered some of this, which feels really. Which feels really, really good to talk about different things. And you ask questions that I have, you haven't gotten before. And you have a level of engagement where I can see you are genuinely interested.

[Interviewer]

I am.

[Justin Paperni]

Yeah. So I'm really thankful to talk about not just white collar, but more so the work that white collar is doing to impact millions of people in prisons and jails through prison professors.org I'm such.

[Interviewer]

I'm. I love the work that you guys are doing. It's so important, and there's not enough of it out there. And I wish you guys all the luck. And if there's any way I could help, I'm here.

[Justin Paperni]

Thank you very much. And, Doug, here we have the Limu emu in its natural habitat, helping people customize their car insurance and save hundreds with Liberty Mutual. Fascinating. It's accompanied by his natural ally, Doug. Limu is that guy with the binoculars watching us. Cut the camera. They see us. Only pay for what you [e-mail] Liberty Liberty. Liberty. Liberty Savings Ferry. Underwritten by Liberty Mutual Insurance Company and affiliates. Excludes Massachusetts.