1265: Joe Loya | Confessions of a Bank Robber Part Two

Summary

The Jordan Harbinger Show: Episode 1265

Guest: Joe Loya
Title: Confessions of a Bank Robber, Part Two
Release Date: January 1, 2026

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Episode Overview

Theme:
In this gripping second installment, Joe Loya—once known as the "Beirut Bandit"—continues his incredible chronicles of robbing over 30 banks, his traumatic upbringing, brushes with law enforcement, prison violence, and his eventual transformation. Jordan and Joe dissect the psychology and mechanics of crime, the impact of trauma, breaking cycles of violence, and genuine redemption. It’s a raw, searching journey through the darkest places a person can go, and proof that even from there, a return is possible.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. The Mentality of a Serial Bank Robber

• Living Without a Sense of Future (02:27)
  Joe explores how deep trauma created a survivalist mentality, stripping him of hope and making short-term impulsivity his norm:

  "I don't believe I have a future... a trauma is so intense, you're only looking at surviving the next day in front of you." (Joe Loya, 02:27)

• Trying to Outsource the Risk (05:05)
  After release on bail, Joe tried to teach another man to rob banks for him, but the plan comically backfired.

  "He didn't have the minerals for this." (Joe Loya, 05:55)
  "He goes in... but he didn't get anything. That told me no." (Joe Loya, 07:04)

• Failed Heist Antics (08:27)
  Joe’s “student” drops stolen money in a parking lot, creating chaos, and ultimately only netting $900.

  "It was the Benny Hill skit... I was just like, I don't need the hassle." (Joe Loya, 08:27–10:30)

• “If You Want Something Done Right…”
  After failed attempts at delegation, Joe resumes robbing banks himself.

2. Tense Getaways and Narrow Escapes

• Dye Pack Disaster (10:40)
  One heist goes awry when a dye pack explodes, blinding him with tear gas; he escapes by mere seconds.

• Four Banks in One Day & Close Call with Police (12:21)
  In a feat of audacity, Joe robs four banks in a morning, barely eluding law enforcement as his car overheats and he bluffs his way out of being caught.

  "I got over $50,000 in my trunk." (Joe Loya, 13:30)
  Joe’s calm demeanor and savvy manipulation charm highway patrol into dropping him at a rest stop, all while carrying money from four robberies in a fanny pack.
  "Now remember, I've got a fanny pack around my waist that has about $40,000." (Joe Loya, 16:18)
  "They loved me and they ate it up." (Joe Loya, 17:45–18:52)

3. The Importance and Flaws of Eyewitness Testimony

• The Double Saves the Day (20:22)
  A lookalike with similar methods is mistakenly identified for one of Joe’s robberies, shaking the credibility of other identifications. This leads to a plea deal with far less prison time.

  "I have an official double... all those positive IDs just collapse, my timecards become boss." (Joe Loya, 22:42)

4. Prison: Brutality and Breakdown

• Hellish Scenes & Fire Attack (27:24)
  Joe describes prison as unpredictable and violent, recalling an incident where an inmate is set on fire in his cell.

  "He starts squirting inside. And then he lights it on fire..." (Joe Loya, 30:31)
  "The final indignity... he got beat down with a fire extinguisher. He lived." (Joe Loya, 31:35)

• Psychological Collapse in Solitary (32:21) After being held for two years in solitary confinement over a murder investigation, Joe describes a full mental breakdown—hallucinations, voices, and the immense struggle to maintain sanity.

• Spiritual and Emotional Awakening (35:44)
  Solitary sparks reflection, writing, and a reexamination of self. Joe talks about putting out a "tough guy" front to buy privacy to write and feel.

  "I had to periodically really pretend like I was ready to stab someone... so I could be in my cell becoming a more sensitive man." (Joe Loya, 36:25)

• The Hardest Reckoning: Looking Within
  Confronting inner pain, remorse, and shame is described as more frightening than external violence.

  "All the crimes I did and all the violence I did... I was made for that... But going inside and dealing with the internal stuff, I was afraid of going in there." (Joe Loya, 36:51)

5. Forgiveness, Compassion, and Breaking the Cycle

• Understanding His Father, True Compassion (38:34)
  Joe differentiates between forgiveness and compassion, describing how seeing the roots of his father's violence changed everything.

  "He was a little boy who had been beaten and beaten... like a tree you keep beating, it grows crooked." (Joe Loya, 39:50)
  "When I had compassion for him, there was no need to forgive him at all." (Joe Loya, 41:50)

• Self-Compassion is Hardest (44:41)
  Granting himself the same understanding is, even decades later, an ongoing struggle.

6. Life After Release

• Reintegrating into Society (45:19)
  Joe's preacher’s son background and social skills aided his re-entry, and his writing talent found quick recognition and validation.

• Talking to His Daughter About His Past (49:23)
  When his daughter begins asking about crime, Joe gently introduces his criminal history, emphasizing personal growth and societal forgiveness.

  "I show her the book... your dad, when I was a young man, I was very angry. I made a lot of mistakes. One of the mistakes I did is I robbed a lot of banks." (Joe Loya, 50:30)

• “What Does Prison Smell Like?” (53:00)
  A child’s curiosity highlights the odd details—prison isn’t one smell, but “myriad,” from tuna and cigarettes to Bengay.

• How Others React (53:55)
  Most are surprised by his gentle demeanor, finding it hard to picture him as a violent person.

7. Reflections on Crime and Redemption

• Heist Movies & Podcast Ideas (54:46)
  Joe considers launching a podcast breaking down the realism of heist movies, drawing on his extensive real-world experience.

• Could He Rob a Modern Bank? (58:51)
  Technology is a barrier, but the real deterrent now is the loss of reckless rage and a sense of the future:

  "I don't have the requisite rage anymore... even if I went back to crime, I would never think bank robbery is the hustle." (Joe Loya, 59:13–60:45)

• Relationship with Father (61:22)
  Now strong and loving, their relationship is rooted in compassion for past wounds yet focused on building positive memories.

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• “Every day was impulsive, just trying to survive.” (Joe Loya, 02:27)
• “If you want something done right, gotta do it yourself.” (Jordan Harbinger, 10:30)
• “The plan was comical. It’s the Benny Hill skit!” (Joe Loya, 08:27)
• “The worst of it is everybody has cameras now… that's one of the most dangerous things.” (Joe Loya, 59:13)
• “All the crimes I did and all the violence... I was made for that. But going inside and dealing with the internal stuff, I was afraid.” (Joe Loya, 36:51)
• “I don’t need to forgive my dad. I have compassion for him.” (Joe Loya, 41:50)

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Timestamps for Key Segments

• 02:27 – Surviving day to day, not caring about the future
• 05:05 – Trying (and failing) to train an accomplice
• 08:27 – A slapstick bank robbery attempt
• 10:40 – Dye pack explosion escape
• 12:21 – Robbing 4 banks, near miss with police
• 22:42 – The “double” that saves Joe from a life sentence
• 27:24 – Prison violence: the fire attack
• 32:21 – Crackup in solitary and hallucinations
• 35:44 – The strange safety of a tough reputation
• 36:51 – The terror of honest self-reflection
• 38:34 – True compassion, not forgiveness
• 45:19 – Reintegrating with society as a writer
• 49:23 – Telling his daughter about his past
• 53:00 – What does prison smell like?
• 54:46 – Plans for a “Heist Movie” podcast
• 58:51 – Could you rob a bank today?
• 61:22 – Current relationship with his father

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Tone and Language

Joe’s language is candid, reflective, and sometimes darkly humorous. He’s unflinching about both the absurdity and pain of his past, frequently switching between streetwise anecdote, honest regret, and profound psychological insight. Jordan maintains a tone of fascinated incredulity, empathy, and curiosity throughout.

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Why This Episode Stands Out

• Raw and Real: Joe’s storytelling is both harrowing and hilarious, peeling back the layers on trauma and criminality.
• Prison Insights: Unvarnished depictions of prison life, including violence, madness, and strategies for survival.
• Transformation: The psychology of change—Joe’s unexpected path to writing, compassion, and family after so much pain.
• Practical Redemption: Rather than a simplistic moral tale, Joe’s story digs into the ongoing effort and complexity of redemption.

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Recommended For:
Anyone interested in human psychology, true crime, transformation after trauma, or the inner workings of both criminal worlds and rehabilitation. This conversation is equally about chaos and hope—the sobering consequences of survival at all costs, and what it actually takes to change.

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For more: jordanharbinger.com and search for Episode 1265, "Joe Loya | Confessions of a Bank Robber, Part Two."

Transcript

[Jordan Harbinger]

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[Jordan Harbinger]

Welcome to the show. I'm Jordan Harbinger. On the Jordan Harbinger show, we decode the stories, secrets and skills of the world's most fascinating people and turn their wisdom into practical advice that you can use to impact your own life and those around you. Our mission is to help you become a better informed, more critical thinker through long form conversations with a variety of amazing folks from spies to CEOs, athletes, authors, thinkers, performers, even the occasional drug trafficker, investigative journalist, astronaut or real life pirate. And if you're new to the show or you want to tell your friends about it, I suggest our Episode Starter Packs. These are collections of our favorite episodes on topics like persuasion and negotiation, psychology, geopolitics, disinformation, social engineering, China, North Korea, crime and cults, and more that'll help new listeners get a taste of everything we do here on the show. Just visit jordanharbinger.com start or search for us in your Spotify app to get started now, this is Part two with Joe Loya. If you haven't heard Part one, of course, go back and listen to that. We're going to continue his amazing story right now where we left off last time is that you were out on bail. Your aunt had put up her house to get you on bail, and you are just in such a place in life that you really kind of. In your words, you just didn't care about anything. It wasn't, I'm out on bail. I better go get a job at Target. It was Robin Banks again, and I was just. I think most of the audience, myself included, is just like, why? Damn it.

[Joe Loya]

You know, we started that whole entire story. I've never started a story with the question you asked me. How does somebody do this? Like, how do you get to do 30 banks? I try to track the movements that erode my sense of posterity. I don't believe I have a future. So there's nothing inside of me like, oh, I got to protect my future. I better get a job. I start. Better start saving money for the future. I better get a profession so that I can rise in the ranks in the future. None of that. Because a trauma is so intense, you're only looking at surviving the next day in front of you. You know, in fact, that's the way I've come to understand people who mess up, Mess up, mess up, mess up, mess up, mess up, mess up, mess up, mess up. Is that they're only trying to survive that day to get to the next day in hopes that maybe one day they can make the jump to goodness. So they're just surviving every day, and they're making mistakes because all they need to do is get to the end of the day, and then they wake up the next day, and it's just day and day. And then you see people change, like me, and you realize, oh, every day was impulsive, just trying to survive. The things we're facing are challenges outside of us. Like, challenges came to me. I could stab them, beat them. It wasn't the external challenges. It was all the challenges inside of us that a lot of us don't have language to process. I told you, when I had grief as a child, what did they tell me? Don't cry.

[Jordan Harbinger]

Don't cry.

[Joe Loya]

Yeah, because your mom's in heaven. Which compounded my pain because now I'm feeling guilty. All that's internal. I told you, one of the worst things that happened to my child had nothing to do with physical beatings. It was what I heard and how my body metabolized that thing my dad said to my brother. What is that? It's all internal. Our internal compass is so messed up. It's like looking at a compass that's just spinning. There's no true north. No. Like, there's no nothing. It's just spinning out of control. And nobody can help us figure out how to grab a hold of this trauma, place it down, ground it, and start working on it. What's given to us instead is language of, you're a sinner, you're a bad person, you're a super predator. You're all that stuff, right? Psychopath, narcissist, like, but we're just trying to get by. We're trying to do it now. Over time, we can become habituated to the underworld, to the other side of taboo, to the grand transgressive life. And it's hard to get out of it once you've allowed your trauma to get you in there and swim in it. It was challenging for me to get out of it. And then, you know, then you're a mess. Then it's like, you can't play well with others. If you let me out, I'm going to hurt more people and go back in kind of thing. And that's where I kind of was at that time. I was at the place where no sense of future, no job. I don't want a job.

[Jordan Harbinger]

You had an interesting idea as well, which was, teach another guy to rob banks. So what was the plan here? Like, teach him to rob banks and you take a cut and there's less risk for you.

[Joe Loya]

Obviously it was like, I still want to make bank robbery money, but the FBI have my photo and they know my M.O. like, if I go rob a bank, they're going to look at that photo and go like, wait, we just locked this guy up a month ago. Yeah.

[Jordan Harbinger]

And he's out.

[Joe Loya]

He's a Beirut bandit. Right. And I wasn't a disguised kind of guy. I was just in there, let's get it, let's get the hell out kind of thing. So what I thought was, I knew this person, and this person was a little older than me. When I was younger, I thought they were kind of a tough person, and I thought, let me recruit this tough person. But by all measures that I now measure toughness. This person had no toughness.

[Jordan Harbinger]

Yeah.

[Joe Loya]

When I was younger, I looked up to them, but they didn't have what I had. They didn't have gravel on their craw, as they say. Okay. You know, they didn't have. They didn't have the minerals for this. So I take them out and I say, okay, here's what we're going to do. You got to go in there, you got to say these words, and they're basically as my mouth. The person resembled me a little bit as well, but the person was four inches shorter than me. What's happening is I go to this guy and I say, hey, you're gonna run in there and you're going to say these words, and they're gonna give you the money and, you know, look menacing when you say them. And he does. He goes in the first time. He comes right out. And I'm parked far away, but I can see him. So I. I pull in on an alley so no one can see him jump into my car. And he jumps into my car. He ran to my car. And now I'm, like, all pumped up, like, oh, shit, they're coming after us. Let's go. And I take off, and I'm excited. Just like I'm concentrating on. I'm a getaway driver at that point. Like, who's coming? What's going on? And then finally, when it settles down, I realize we got away. I turn to him and say, hey, man, so how much did you get? And he said, I didn't get anything. That told me no. What?

[Jordan Harbinger]

So he's also an idiot. Aside from being not tough, he's a moron.

[Joe Loya]

Like I said, he had no body. He wasn't frightening. He didn't scare anybody. He had no menace. He didn't have the rage, which is what always got. When I went in there, I was. I was raging. I was prepared to, like, to injure myself and injure others, that kind of thing. So I get so upset. It was a waste of time. We put ourselves at risk. So I pull over and I scold him, and I say, here's what you need. Here's how you need to think about it. I said, those people went up to your house last night where you were asleep. They went upstairs, they grabbed your pants while you were sleeping. They took them out. They grabbed your wallet. They took all your money. Your money's in that bank. All moral authority accrues to you now.

[Jordan Harbinger]

Yeah.

[Joe Loya]

You are in a position to go get your money. They took your money. That's how you have to go in there to think about it. So I sent him in the next time thinking that, okay, I gave him the hype, right? I gave him the game. So now is one of these malls where, like, there's a big parking lot and then there's a parking lot beyond it is a big place in Orange County. And as soon as I see him coming out, I'm going to go across this Big boulevard. And I'm going to wait for him on the street, for him to get in my car, because I can drive there fast and he can run there. I see him step out of the bank, and as soon as he steps, there's one of those doors that when you open one, the other one kind of moves to, you know, because the wind or the air.

[Jordan Harbinger]

I see.

[Joe Loya]

So he opens the air. He opens one door and the other goes. And there's this eddy of air, and he's holding the money like this and just. It just goes all up in the air. Oh, my gosh. And then everyone inside could see, oh, this is a knucklehead, man. Yeah, we're not supposed to be afraid of this guy. He's grabbing. He gets as much as he can. And it's like the Benny Hill skit. Where's one guy and a crowd falling, right? It was so, like, comical. And I'm over there now, parked and waiting for him, and he comes running across that boulevard, almost getting hit by cars. And I'm looking in my mirror and I'm like, oh. And the other people, they don't want to cross the boulevard. They stay there. They start pointing at him. He robbed the bank. And all this traffic that's finally stopping at a light. A truck turns left onto the street where I am. They see him. I see the car take off. And they only see one person in the car. The back of my head. Because he's so short, he's in the front seat. They can't see him. So they think the guy who's driving this car is the guy who just robbed it. They chased me, but I'm at RX7. I take off and they can't read my license plate. They don't do anything. But I'm going so fast, I'm like a hundred in a. In residential. Oh, man. And I come up to a dip, and I cannot slow down in time. I hit that dip and I. I go flying. And when I land, I know I've just broken my. My oil pan. I limp about a block and a half away. The lights are going on, flashing. I drop them off and I say, get home. And he goes in on AutoZone and he hangs out there talking to a guy, just, you know, bullshitting, guy to guy, man. A man for like two and a half hours. And now there's a dragnet out looking for him. But he's just in there chilling. And I go and park the car and I run away. And I. Eventually I get away just by Running through the neighborhood and getting, you know, have my brother come and get me in Orange County. But the point is, when we finally get home, I said, how much did you get? And he said, $900. And I was like, you are worthless, man. Yeah, that was my experience of trying to get somebody. And so on bail, I robbed the next three. I was just like, I don't. I don't need the hassle.

[Jordan Harbinger]

You want something done right, got to do it yourself. That's what they say, right? Did you have any close calls with getting caught? There was a time where your car overheated. This is kind of a funny story. And I thought you were done for at this point.

[Joe Loya]

There's a couple of times. I mean, one time the money exploded.

[Jordan Harbinger]

Like a dye pack or whatever.

[Joe Loya]

The bag exploded. Dye pack exploded in my. My bag in the middle of the street. And when I went to pick it up, there was a big hole in it, a big red plume of smoke coming out of it. And when I go to pick it up, there's also tear gas in it. Oh, and I lean in a boat and I got cat like reflexes, right? So I pulled back, but not before it's in my eyes. And now I'm like blinking, blinking, blinking, blinking, blinking, trying to grab it, go into my car. I'm running through a park holding a bag with a big old red plume of smoke coming out of it. My car was parked away. I think I mentioned I always parked far away. Yeah, bankers walked out. They could look sideways. Everything there was a getaway car, but I was far away. They probably saw me, though, because it's just follow the smoke trail. I get to my car, open my trunk, I throw it in the. In a sports bag, and I zip it up. And so, no, no more smoke. But I drive away. And I got away. I barely got away because I was. My eyes were like a little bit more tear gas and I would have been done. So there's that time. Another time was I robbed four banks in San Diego in one day. It sounds like a lot, but it was actually almost like three, because I robbed one bank and I was so angry with the amount of money I got, which ended up being like a thousand. And it was like pulling teeth to get that thousand. So I walked in the next bank right next door and robbed it. Even though the police were coming, I didn't care. I was like, so angry. I robbed it and I was able to get away. And that was the first two. Knocked them out. 10 minutes I was done and was able to, you know, bank two banks first thing in the morning. That's why it was easy to route for on the way out of San Diego. Have you driven up from San Diego on the five?

[Jordan Harbinger]

Sure, yeah.

[Joe Loya]

Okay, so on the way up, there's a, another border where they stop you. And there's also a big, a big stretch of land where on the right hand side coming north. Camp Pendleton, the marine base. I'm there driving up out of San Diego and all of a sudden I hit like the freeway stopped. We're stopped, we're parking lot. We're not moving. Slowly we're stopped. And I'm in my uncle's car as a BMW. My car starts to overheat like I didn't realize at the time, but the fan in that car, if you're not driving it, the fan just stops. It was overheating. So I pull over to the side of the road. I'm able to get over the side of the road off. And I can see in my rear view mirror that a cop is coming highway patrol way back there, also on that side lane, right. And so I try to move ahead so I can get out. You know, I'm like this, I try to move ahead so I can like give him room to go by. And when he pulls up, he scolds me, I'd take you in right now if there wasn't a cop injured up front. You're not supposed to drive. And I said, I'm not driving, man, my car's overheated, I don't give a fuck. And he just takes off. And I was like, I got over $50,000 in my, in my trunk. Yeah, A bunch of change of clothes.

[Jordan Harbinger]

And maybe a dye pack in there that you don't know about.

[Joe Loya]

I might, maybe. But no, this is another tire. Wasn't that so? But the fact is that I have a lot of money. I'm getting away now. I'm there and I'm thinking, these people may have stopped for me. This might be for me. So remember I got arrested border going to Mexico because they were looking for stolen cars. So I'm thinking this might be that kind of thing again, right? I get out of the car and I start walking backwards because I want to see if I can get a find one of those call boxes so I could see if I can get a truck to come on and help me. But you know what, all the call boxes have a big iron mesh over them and a big X. And I'm like, oh, these guys are shrewd. They don't want me to get out of my car and go and try and get somebody else to drive me away.

[Jordan Harbinger]

That would have been a good plan.

[Joe Loya]

Yeah. So I'm thinking. Yeah, I'm thinking they're very clever. So I have to walk forward. And when I walk forward, all the call boxes, even moving forward another mile to an off ramp, they're all blocked, too. So I start walking on the offer. I'm thinking I'm going to go underneath the offer and go back. Walk back or hit your ride? Going back. I go to the bottom of the off ramp, and there's a cop there directing everybody into Camp Pendleton. And apparently what happened, they had closed the freeway, and now five lanes of traffic. We're having to, like, move out of one off ramp. So that. That's why the traffic was so intense there. A mile at least of this parking lot traffic. So I go down the bottom. It's the cop who had stopped me. And I said, I told you my car was a wreck, man. I need to. Is there a gas station in here? He says, no, you got to get on the freeway and go back way. I said, thanks. So I go under the freeway. I start going up the off ramp, and I hear, boop. And I turn, and there's a highway patrol with two guys, and they pull up next to me. Where are you going? I said, your partner back there? My car overheating. Your partner told me I have to walk back this way. And they're like, get in. I'm like, okay, I'll get in. And I get in the back seat, and I'm bouncing in there, like, oh, I've never been in the back of a cop car before. And I'm playing it off. I'm 20 on 26 or 20, 27, I think I'm wearing, like, khaki shorts, topsiders. I'm wearing a UCLA tank top, baseball cap. I don't look like a bank robber. I look like I just got out of college. I look like I could be a college, you know, like, grad student. They're like, oh, where. What are you doing? Where are you. What are you doing down here? Or where are you going? I said, oh, you know, my car broke down. I got to call my uncle to come and get me. I said, but I was down here. I said, what were you doing down here? I said, I met this woman at USC and we hit it off. I came down here. I spent a couple days with her, but, you know, she just got crazy, man. You know how it is. And so now I'm using this as I'm appealing to the misogynist. And I'm right. I'm like, let's be buddies now. I'm not a guy to be worried about. We're all the same kind of male.

[Jordan Harbinger]

We're all jackasses.

[Joe Loya]

They're like, yeah, yeah, of course. And all of a sudden, there's camaraderie. Yay. Geez. I'm just a guy who's down here. And don't we know how women are like that kind of. Right? Yeah. And so they go along with it, and then they say, hey, so what? Why is it all locked down? I said, well, there was a shootout, and one of our guys got crashed, and the bad guy, he got shot, and he's dead. And I said, oh, man, that's terrible. What? How's your guy doing? How's your boy doing? And they're like, well, he's gonna make it. He's in the hospital now. I said, does he have a family? And I showed great compassion. I just. Like, I'm caring about the cops, you know, Like, I'm a guy who appreciate the cops doing the work for us, and I let them know I'm appreciative, and. And they're buying it, man. They're just totally buying it. Now, remember, I got a fanny pack around my waist that has about $40,000. It was all I could fit in there. Wow. And I just robbed four banks there in the city. So I see a rest stop coming, I say, you know what, guys? Just drop me off here. I said, sure, we could take you to gas. No, no, no. I'm going to go in here. There's a taco truck there. I'm gonna give me some to eat. I'll call my uncle. I'll have him pick me up. I sound almost a little spoiled, like I'm gonna make my uncle do all the work. I'm not, you know, like, I'm letting them feel like I'm just a guy. There's nothing dangerous about me. There's none. None of that. Well, they drop me off and. And I try to get. I say, hey, there's no way to get out back. You know, back. I pretend like never been in a police car before. A cop car that doesn't have any, like, handles right. And they're like, oh, yeah, we got a bunch of bad guy we don't want to get. No, let me get you out.

[Jordan Harbinger]

That's fine.

[Joe Loya]

I said, let me out. And I come to the front window. I'M like, hey, man, thanks, guys. I really appreciate it. And they're like, we could drive you. You sure? I'm like, no, I got this. Thanks. And I was just as super friendly as you can get. And they loved me and they ate it up. And they go, I call my uncle. I said, what the hell is going on, man? He's like, oh, yeah, the fan, whatever. He's the one talking about the fan. I wait till all the traffic dies down. I get over there eventually, and I just drive away. But when? It was interesting to me about this story the next day, that night, I get a call from a friend that I've been in San Diego County Jail with when I got arrested. First time at the Mexican border, right? He called me up, hey, Joe, you know what it says? I said, yeah. And he says, were you doing any work down here today? I said, yeah, why? And he says, you're on Crime Stoppers. And they said that. They said you Route four banks. And they said that they think you're Indian or Pakistani and they think you live in Tijuana. I said, oh, okay. Thanks for the heads up. Now I know I was in Crime Stoppers, which means in the morning when these guys showed up to work together, and there's a pictures of me, like, if you guys see this guy, look out for it. And I wonder if they looked at each other and like, yeah, we're not gonna say nothing.

[Jordan Harbinger]

We have a back of our stuff. Exactly.

[Joe Loya]

Did they say, oh, yeah, we had him in the back of our car. We know he's going to LA or like, whatever, right?

[Jordan Harbinger]

What do you think about the crime scene? And drove him to a rest stop and then let him go after having him in the back.

[Joe Loya]

What do you think they did? Did they just. Did they speak up?

[Jordan Harbinger]

No way. Like, no way, no way. They looked at each other and they were like, wasn't him, right? No, no, no, no. He was too nice anyway.

[Joe Loya]

Yeah.

[Jordan Harbinger]

They just were like, no, no. Like, there's no chance that they brought that up to anybody, possibly not even each other. Where do you hide the cash after you rob a bank? Because you can't just put it into another bank, but you have a lot of money. I mean, are you doing that Breaking Bad thing where you put a big pile of money and you lay on it? I mean, money's pretty gross, actually.

[Joe Loya]

I did. I did one time. I did one time. So, yeah, I did, actually. And you're. That's where that was. That was a fascinating time because I just laid the money on the bed, you know, it wasn't a lot. It was maybe at the time or $70,000 or something in cash. But I laid it on the bed and when I lay on it, all of a sudden, man, I smelled like there was shit on the bottom of my shoes. I get up and I'm like, where is that smell? And I look at my shoes, there's nothing there. And then I look at all the money and I lean forward and I'm like, oh, man, this money stinks. And you don't think of money stinky, but everyone's greasy paws are on. And that that money stunk when I was on it. I realized, oh, money stinks especially. You have that much money out. That was an interesting observation to make about. Money really stinks when you have a lot of it.

[Jordan Harbinger]

Yeah, it's kind of gross. Eventually you get caught for real. Lead us through how you get caught. But then since you had the double, they got confused and they couldn't pin it on you.

[Joe Loya]

Okay, so when that guy robs that.

[Jordan Harbinger]

Bank, the guy you train, the dummy.

[Joe Loya]

That guy tutored, Right? Right. When he robbed, he used my mo. We have a bomb. I have a gun. Give me the money. Now, you know, so when he robbed those two banks, the FBI gets notified there's a guy out there who robbed. Here's his MO Goes over the thing, whatever. They're like, oh, that sounds like Joe Loya. So those two guys who are investigating the FBI, they go to the bank and they have a six pack of photos. One of them is me, and they show it to two women. And two women point at me and say, this is the guy who robbed us, right? Now, I wasn't in the bank, obviously. So they go and they rescind my bail. And the FBI agent, Special Agent Keith Cordes, who we befriended each other much later, but Keith Cordes, he calls my dad and said, hey, man, you're sorry to say, but your son started robbing again. And my dad's on. He says he's considered armed and dangerous. So if you want to help him, tell him to turn himself in because I probably won't be the one who arrests them. And they'll think he's dangerous, he could die, he can get killed. So my dad gets a hold of me or I call my dad, hey, what's up, dad? And he says, turn yourself in. They know you rob that bank. So I wasn't in any bank today. I says, they know you robbed it. They haven't positively identified. I said, dad, I swear on mom's grave. I was not there. Now, Mom's grave, sacred to me. And so when I said that, he was like, oh, okay, I'll tell him. So he calls the FBI back and he says, listen, my son swore on his mother's grave, which is, you know, I believe him. He wasn't in that bank. So he said, have Joe call me. So I call Special Agent Cordis. I said, dude, I wasn't in that bank. You can't rescind my bail. It wasn't me. He said, all right, I'm going to go the next day. I'll go tomorrow, and I'll check. And the way they could check is he gets the tape, and the person who is standing at the counter, the counter will come to a certain place on me, and it'll be 4 inches taller on him. So he goes the next day, sure enough, I have a double. Because those two women were just robbed. And they both identified me, which means fresh identification, positive identification was totally wrong, which means all the identifications when I got arrested. And they went back to people who had been arrested 18 months before, you.

[Jordan Harbinger]

Know, who had been robbed 18 months before.

[Joe Loya]

18 months before, 10 months before, eight months. All of those are suspect now because I have a double. So when he. When I call him, he says, joe, listen very carefully. Go to your attorney and tell them that you have a double. You have an official double, right? And so I do, and my attorney goes to the DA and I get arrested. In the meantime, they go to the. I get arrested soon after, three days later or something, and my attorney goes to the DA and says he has a double. All those ones are suspect. And not only that, I had time cards at my job saying I was working that day. Positive ID trumps time cards. But when all those positive IDs just collapse, my time cards become boss. And so I have an alibi now where I was. But except for three banks, I didn't have an alibi for them. So they said, we'll have him plead guilty to three banks. We'll give him eight years or something like that, and he'll do seven. And I was looking at 36 or something like that, 36 years. So I was like, where do I sign? You know, like, I got love. And that helped me that. That guy who resembled me, it actually helped me. So that. That's why I robbed 30 banks. And, you know, the FBI has been on TV on the show, I almost got away with him. They said they actually suspect me of 30 or 40. That's their count. I know from my own account, it was 30.

[Jordan Harbinger]

So that guy, not only he, so he only stole 900 bucks, but he saved you like 29 years on your sentence. So he actually had the biggest take of all. That idiot.

[Joe Loya]

He ended up doing me good, but, you know, I ended up doing good by choosing him and getting him in that spot.

[Jordan Harbinger]

You can rationalize almost anything if you need it badly enough. Speaking of which, time for some ads. We'll be right back. This episode is sponsored in part by Huel. One of the hardest parts about hitting my protein goal is not actually the protein. It's doing it without accidentally eating a million calories of other things. Because you start the day with good intentions and then you're like, cool. I've had plenty of protein and also an entire day's worth of calories before noon. That's why I use and recommend Huel's high protein starter kit, the Black Edition Ready to drink plus the Black Edition powder. Because it makes protein. There's so many jokes I'm just gonna get canceled for making it makes protein consistency way easier without turning every meal into a calorie bomb. On chaotic days, grab a Black Edition ready to drink. It's a complete meal with 35 grams of protein, 27 essential vitamins and minerals. It's gluten free. It has no artificial sweeteners, colors or flavors. It's filling. It's easy. You guys know where my head is at right now. I just know it. And on days home, I use the Black Edition powder, which is great because it's customizable. I can keep it simple, add ice, whatever, and it's still a high protein complete meal that fits my goals. Plus it comes out to under five bucks per meal.

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[Jordan Harbinger]

This episode is also sponsored by Shopify. If you've been sitting on a business idea for a while, I'm going to call you out lovingly. You don't need more planning. You need momentum. Don't be that guy that fails because they never launched. And January is where you got that fresh start energy to finally change the script. Don't let February show up with the same old maybe someday story. And the easiest way to make it real is to start with Shopify. Shopify gives you everything you need to sell online and in person. And millions of entrepreneurs have already made this leap from huge household names to first time business owners just getting started. You can build your store fast with hundreds of beautiful templates you can customize to match your brand. And Shopify's built in AI tools help you write product descriptions and headlines and even edit product photos which removes a ton of the friction that keeps people stuck. Marketing is built in too. Email and social campaigns to reach customers wherever they scroll. And as you grow, Shopify grows with you. More orders, new markets, all from the.

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[Jordan Harbinger]

Don't forget about our six minute networking course. It is free. It is non cringe. It is down to earth. It'll make you a better connector, a better colleague, a better friend, a better peer. It's all about relationship building and six minutes a day is really all it takes. Many of the guests on the show subscribe and contribute to the course. Come on and join us. You'll be in smart company where you belong. The course is free. There's no [e-mail]. now back to Joe Loya. Prison sounded like chaos. I mean what you wrote about or what you talked about in the podcast, you think like oh, prison is boring or prison isn't like tv. It sure seemed like it was almost like tv. Some of the stuff you described, the chaos that was going on. You mentioned that. I think you either saw or at least heard a guy getting lit on fire in his cell. I mean what, what the hell is that? What's that all about?

[Joe Loya]

Yeah, that's a crazy place. I'm watching a show right now called the Night Of. It's on hbo. It's about a guy who's innocent and. But he gets pulled up in the system for a murder that he didn't commit and he starts going through being a fish in prison. He gets confronted with all these things that he's totally unaware of, all the intrigues. What's a fish first termer like first time in. He's just a little guy and they're sharks and this vicious. He's just, he's got. He might as well call him a guppy, right? He's just new like I was when I went in. I didn't know was the what. Fortunately, I had some experience of doing time before. A couple of guys there knew who I was. They knew I had a little reputation at the person I was before because of violence I had committed and earned respect for that. So I can show up with a little something. Not only that, I happen to be fortunate because one of the most renowned neighborhoods in California prison system is the neighborhood where I was born in Maravilla in East la. That's just by chance. I was born in, like, a legendary place in the lore of prison gangs and prison violence. So I'm able to say I'm from whatever villa and goes, oh, who do you know? And I just tell them whatever. But I had some access to some resources that when I first went to Lompoc that. That other guys didn't have who just going for the first time. But this show I'm talking about was I'm with my girlfriend. I'm realizing there's a lot of things that are going on to actually happen. They've accelerated it for the purpose of the show. But there's a lot of things you have to confront that are scary, that are dangerous, and if you're not savvy, they can come at you. And it was very wild. The fire one was. I worked in the sign factory, and in the sign factory, there's a place where all the flammable stuff is. And they would open this big door, and me and another guy from the order, we'd go inside and they'd close and lock it up. And the only person allowed to come in was a guard and another inmate. They'd come with a cart and they would give us a list of the. The paints and the acetone or whatever they needed, and we would give it to them. And we were locked in there. They'd lock us in again, and we just had to keep inventory of the stuff. And then when they came in, we would give them the stuff. But we always smuggle stuff out. We were smugglers. We would take it out and we would sell it. He would smuggle out acetone. And acetone is what you could use put in a spray bottle. You could set someone on fire with it, Right? What happened? One night, it was late at night, a guy was in the TV room. He gets out of the TV room and the guard says, okay, stand in front of your cell. And he has a spray bottle of acetone in him. He goes on the first floor, the guard goes to the third floor to start letting guys into their cells from the TV room. And most of the guys are in their cells going to sleep. This is 11 o' clock at night, at 12 o' clock at night, whatever. And these guys. You're allowed to stay in the TV room on the weekend for two hours. And every hour a guard comes there and says, hey, who wants to get out now? And then the next hour, okay, everyone get up. And it was one of those moves. It was late at night and this Native American sleeping in a cell. This guy who has the water bottle, he's a white guy, he goes to the cell and he starts squirting in the room on the floor, on the guy's blanket, just. He starts squirting inside. And then he lights it on fire. He goes to the next cell and he's doing the same thing. Lighting on fire was this guy's friend lighting and lighting on fire. But at this point, that guy is starting to hear this guy scream on fire in the first. So he gets up and he's able to kind of like put a pillow in it. So that guy doesn't have a chance to get him on fire. The only guy on fire is in the first cell, and he's on fire. He has long hair and everything. Now I'm hearing screaming. I go to my window and I could see the unit right across a little patch of grass. And one cell is lit up on fire. And that's the guy who's screaming, trying to put it out. It was terrible. And that wasn't the worst part. When the guards come, they all rush to that unit because the guard hits his panic button. All the guards come, they grab the guy who had lit it on fire. They don't know who he is. He's just standing out there because the guard had to come down to put him in a cell. They put him against the wall and they say, here they come with fire extinguishers. And they pull the guy out and he's just sitting there kind of. They've put him out of fire, and he's laying there and they're waiting for the nurses to come. And the guy who lit him on fire, who's sitting across the tier just waiting in the. All the hubbub. He walks over there, he grabs a fire extinguisher right there and he starts beating the guy he just set on fire. Wow. He starts beating him, the guards tackling him. So the final indignity wasn't just a fire. It was that, you know, he got beat down with a fire extinguisher. He lived.

[Jordan Harbinger]

But, man, it's just these people are like animals and they're some of these people.

[Joe Loya]

Yeah.

[Jordan Harbinger]

That's really, like, the brutality.

[Joe Loya]

We're animals out here, too, but we're just. We have logic, and we try to, like, hide all our animals, but, like, polite society.

[Jordan Harbinger]

Like, for me, I'm just like, wow, that level of brutality is actually insane.

[Joe Loya]

Yeah.

[Jordan Harbinger]

You get in your own fight. You have almost like a spiritual experience in solitary confinement. Tell me about that.

[Joe Loya]

Yeah. So, you know, I was. I was. For the first half of it, I was a criminal. I was committing crimes. I was doing everything I could to, you know, to make money in there and doing all the hustles that are against the law. But I get pulled up. I get swept up in a homicide investigation and six other Mexican guy. Five other Mexican guys, and they keep us there for two years before they say we didn't have anything to do with it.

[Jordan Harbinger]

Because you're in prison for seven years at this point.

[Joe Loya]

Yeah. Yeah. So this is the middle of my term. Yeah, right in the middle of my term. And while I'm in there, for sure, I'm doing everything I can to stay sane. I'm doing exercises. I'm doing concentration games. I'm trying to, like. Because you're locked in a cell the size of a parking stall for, you know, 24 hours a day, 23 hours. Some days, you know, they let you out to go to walk in a bigger cell for wreck five times a week and then three showers a week. So, you know, you're locked in there for a long time. I do a lot of reading. I do this stuff. But my mind slowly started to fragment, and I started hearing voices. I had a hallucination that there's a little ball boy in my cell. I cracked. I see this bald boy in my cell, and I'm like, oh, no. I've seen guys crack in solitary confinement and they do crazy things. And I was like, oh, no. I can't tell the difference between reality and fantasy now. So I'm in that realm. There was a guy once, he came out and he went in, Bobby. And when he came up, he put red pencil on his cheeks. He tucked his T shirt in to make it look like a halter top. He rolled his boxes up to make them look like panties. And he came out, Sally, oh, my gosh. There was another guy, just rubbed feces all over himself when he went crazy. And just. And they got to try and get him out, and nobody wanted to go in there to drag him out. People go crazy. They do crazy things in there. And. And I was thinking, oh, no, I'm on that spectrum, like, I know that this isn't cool. I just saw somebody that feels as real as anything. I've. As if I, you know, in the visiting room, you know. And as I'm lying there thinking I'm a wreck within the day, I realized, oh, you know, when I was a kid, a seven year old bald kid I knew when I was seven and he was, he drove his, rode his bike in the neighborhood and he, he had leukemia and he's riding. We become friends and he said, hey, can you come to my house? I got a little club in my garage. And I asked my mom, she calls his mom and we go over there. We're best friends now. It's just two blocks away. I ride my bike over there. And his garage, the parents had set up a little clubhouse in the back. So we go in there and he grabs his hair and he takes it off and he puts it on the, on the thing. It's got all these loops of tape in there. I'm like, what's going on? He goes, I'm sick. That's nothing. Because when he would ride his bike coming in a neighborhood, he had his hand on his head, he was riding his bike and the little hair was flapping up. You know, I knew there's something weird with his hair. You know, he had leukemia and three or four months later he died on the way to church. My dad told me, my friend died. He's in heaven now riding his bike. And so I'm thinking, oh, I knew a bald kid and my psyche pulled up, this bald kid out of nowhere. I'm visited there and it's so humbling, this experience of going mad, of having this hallucination. I know how to perform. Prison maleness. I know how to perform. Don't mess with me. Like I've done violence already. And now I have this homicide investigation that I survive and when I come out. There's something that happens to you when you're investigating for a homicide and you don't get the case. Right. What men in prison think is, oh my God, you beat a homicide.

[Jordan Harbinger]

Right.

[Joe Loya]

You're a killer. Yeah, it's easier for them to think that because it's safer. You don't know if I killed someone. I may have, though. And so you don't want to bother me. And what that did is allowed me distance from people because now I've been writing the last year in prison, trying to save myself. I'm writing, I'm thinking of stuff. I'm writing stories. The first one story I Wrote that ended up in the memoir was about this bald kid, right?

[Jordan Harbinger]

Yeah.

[Joe Loya]

And so I'm writing all these stories from my past, and I need time in my cell to keep writing and investigating who I am. The great irony of my second half of doing time was I had to periodically really pretend like I was ready to stab someone or whatever and commit violence on people so that I. I.

[Jordan Harbinger]

Had to project that you could get some peace and quiet, hurt you, so.

[Joe Loya]

That I could be in my cell becoming a more sensitive man. That's hilarious. Writing to investigate myself, you know, that's. That's.

[Jordan Harbinger]

I'm having a spiritual awakening. Get away from me or I'll stab you in the face with a pen. I'm having a compassionate awakening. And if you disturb me, I will shiver you with a sharp toothbrush. Yeah. This is crazy. What was scarier than going to prison or having to take a cold, honest look at yourself?

[Joe Loya]

Cold, honest look, because all the crimes I did and all the violence I did, and starting with my dad, 16, it was like, I'm wired for that. I'm made for that. I already committed so much violence that I know I'm fearless. I've robbed 30. I walked in there, you know, ready to die. I'm a fearless man. But there's a reason why I was doing this external stuff because I didn't want to go inside and deal with the internal stuff. I was afraid of going in there. So what I realized when I started investigating myself was, man, this is hard. This is scary. I was going to have to change. I was going to have to confront all these griefs that. That are actually. Those are the animating force to do what I'm doing, to live the way I'm living. I need this rage to survive here, to survive in the underworld. I need the rage. So all of a sudden, I'm thinking about dismantling my rage and confronting my grief to take away the power of the rage. And I'm like, I'm going to be Nate. Well, I'm like, I might as well be, like, melting my armor, because that's what I. And the armor is what I need to survive in here. So it was scary. Like, it was super scary. And then, of course, you know, there's all the grief that comes up that I'd shut down. And the conscience. I had a conscience now. That was a baby conscience. And I was so distraught to think about all the harm that I had caused. I opened up a little bit of my conscience, and everything was waiting to just. Yeah, all the Bad that I've. I'd kind of pushed away. And there was a lot of bad and a lot of regret. It was a lot of shame. So it was heavy on me. It was super heavy. I wasn't sure how I was going to cope with it. So the writing was super helpful that way.

[Jordan Harbinger]

Did you start to understand your father a little bit more being in that position in solitary and started having that, I guess, awakening from the sound of it?

[Joe Loya]

Yeah. You know, it's this interesting thing where I was raised. Protestant, Christian, Evangelical. You know, they always tell you, you gotta forgive people. I also got this little Buddhist tract in solitary, and I started doing this correspondence course with, you know, sort of Eastern ways of looking at the world. And what was interesting about that was that I had been forgiving my dad for years, and it never took. In fact, when I came out of prison, there's a lot of people who've been forgiving their dads, and they never. It doesn't stay. It's hard to do that. And I figured out the reason it was hard for me was I was always thinking, I'm going to forgive my dad. And at the beginning of that is ego. It's me. And what it started sounding like in my ear was, I'm so magnanimous, which is already ego. I'm so magnanimous that I'm going to bestow something on this lower person so that we can. I can elevate him so that we're now, fine, we're good now. But in order to make that happen, I have to bestow forgiveness on him. And to me, that power dynamic does not feel. That didn't feel cool. It didn't feel. I was like, no wonder it doesn't work. It always starts with I. And so I read about compassion in a way that blew my mind. Because what compassionate told me to do was, you don't forgive them. You accept them for who they are. And the reason they are who they are is because look at their childhood, right? If you look at my dad's childhood, his father brutalized them. He was so bad that sometimes he would make my dad sleep in the chicken coop outside. I know this because his brothers and sisters told me. He was raised in such a violent home that he watched his mother get brutalized all the time. And he had to process that and the grief for that, right? So I looked at my dad and I started seeing that the guy who's in our home doing what he did, he wasn't a monster. Was he behaving monstrously yes, but he wasn't a monster. He was a little boy who had been beaten and beaten. And he was like a tree that you keep beating, it grows crooked. More importantly, it was like a little unlicked cub growing a grizzly size. He didn't get love, he got violence. What's he going to do? He's going to grow up and be this angry bear. And when I started looking at my dad's formation, I said, I don't need to forgive him. I just accept that he is who he is because this is what happened to him. And the biggest thing in me was I realized that we shared a grief that animated our violence as well. He was totally in pain by the death of my mother. It fractured him and it destroyed me too. And so when I was able to look like, oh, our violence is underwritten in many ways by the death of my mother, the absence of my mother. And then that made solidarity between us. It's like I found the hidden likeness before, it was just, oh, you're a monster and I was brutalized by you. Now it's like, no, we share the same grief. And more importantly, our anger is trying to disguise that wound. So my dad has the wound, I have the wound. We have all these wounds from our childhood. We're the same. And when I had compassion for him, there was no need to forgive him at all. I see. And so when I tell people that, they say, have you forgiven me to death? No, never. I have compassion for him. And another way to have compassion, compassionate way to look at it, was he may have socked me, he may have choked me, he may have done all those things, BB with a bat. But I don't take it personal. And people are like, how can you not take it personal? It literally happened on your person. And I get it because I didn't understand it before either. When people would say that, I was like, it happened to your person. How do you not take it personally? And the way you don't take it personally. And the way that helped me move away from, oh, my God, he did all this thing to me was that if you had lined up a hundred sons, they were all going to get beat because it wasn't about the sons, it was about what was in him. And he didn't know how to deal with stress. And he was always going to beat somebody. And then that way I was like, it's not about me. And so I don't look at it like, you did this to me. I look at it as you did this to yourself. Your conscience now has to deal with what you did to your boys. Your wife told you, take care of my boys before she died. And the courts took us away because you failed at taking care of your kids. You have to live with that shame. You have to live with that grant. I let it go. I have compassion for you. It didn't happen to me. I said this at a conference once, Sun Valley Writers Conference. And there's a famous writer there named Frank McCourt who wrote a book called Angela's Ashes. I don't know if you've ever heard of it or read it. One of the greatest, bestselling memoirs of all time. And Frank McCourt came up to me afterwards, and he said, you know, I've never been able to verbalize because the book Angela's Ashes was how his dad was such a drunk and spending all the money and beating the kids and being his wife was that some of the kids died because they didn't have food. And his dad was terrible in that regard. But Frank said, I've been trying to articulate this, but you articulated so well, because I don't feel like I need to forgive my dad. And nobody understands that. He says, I really appreciate that. Behind him was a guy named Brayton Breitenbach, who was this great poet from South Africa. He came from a big family. Breitenbach's were prime ministers and generals and that kind of thing. But in the 60s, he became a radical. He ran with Mandela's crew, the African National Congress. And he had to leave the country because there was death threats. He went. He snuck back a few years later to see his mother. He was snitched on, and they arrested him, and he did time with Nelson Mandela. Now he was free. He's a great poet, sensitive, sweet man. He comes up to me after I talk about how I didn't forgive my dad, and he was like, man, that's exactly how I feel about my guards. I don't need to forgive them. I have compassion for them. So I feel like this idea, if you've gone through really terrible abuse by people, and one of the ways you can let go of this trauma of having been brutalized by authority is to realize it wasn't about you and find a way to move away from it, not with forgiveness, but with compassion for them. Like, that's the way they were raised to see the world. And that's what was. That was the system they were raised in, you know?

[Jordan Harbinger]

And so were you able to apply that same realization to yourself, that compassion for yourself?

[Joe Loya]

It was easy to give it to my dad. It was really hard to give it to myself. That's a good question, Jordan. That's a great question. It was so much harder for me. And you know what? Sometimes I struggle with things and I realize even at my age 64, I've been out 29 years now, sometimes it's still hard because of the regret and the shame that I've been wrestling with all these years. Sometimes in a moment of like, real spiritual emotional fatigue, it's hard for me to give myself compassion. But that was always going to be my work, right? It was always going to be my work, and it's what I strive for.

[Jordan Harbinger]

When you got out of prison, were you ready to be around normal, good people? Was that something that you fit back into easily?

[Joe Loya]

I'm a preacher's son, right? So I have social skills because of that. And then I was that very smart. And so also I learned I had a lot of savvy having been in prison and being able to look at people and stuff. So I came out with confidence that I would be able to, like, graft myself onto the body politic, the host body of, you know, of. Of citizenry. Yeah, I was scared that I might fail, but I wasn't afraid that I could connect with people again. I had had a correspondence with this writer named Richard Rodriguez for a couple years. He's a great essayist. And he was like, I'll get you work as a journalist. You're already a writer. You're a better writer than some people I know. And he gave me all this confidence. So when it came out, I had a pretty soft landing. Cause I got gigs writing pretty quickly. And I'm also a fortunate writer in that when I started writing, people would come to me and say, can you write on this topic? Can you write on that topic? And so I wanted the rare writers who I didn't have to pitch a lot. I didn't have to go and say, can I write for you? Can I? You know, it's just people would come, hey, Joe, this happened. Can you write this? Joe, this happened. So I was fortunate when I came out to have that validation. Like, I published within three months in the examiner, six months, I was in the LA Weekly and then the LA Times Op Ed page. So I was getting a lot of attention. And that, that LA op ed piece got me on 48 hours. Dan Rather be on Bank Rover and stuff. Yeah, yeah. So that's how it happened for me.

[Jordan Harbinger]

This is how people become the thing they hate. One rational choice at a time I shall now shill mattresses and or vitamins. We'll be right back. This episode is sponsored in part by cookunity. Something I never thought would be a stressful part of being an adult is figuring out what to eat for dinner. And now that my parents come over every night, feeding the kids and grandparents is the ultimate mental load nobody ever told me about. That's why cookunity has been such a win for the family. You open the app, you pick meals from a rotating seasonal menu of 300 plus chef designed dishes and you are done with no meal planning, no grocery run, no we have food but somehow we have nothing to eat kind of situation. These are restaurant quality meals that come fresh, not frozen. Made by legit chefs, Food Network people, James Beard Award winners, acclaimed restaurateurs meals like Sundae sauce, Rigatoni by Dustin Taylor and Chicken Korma by Gaurav Raj. Lots of bold flavors, fresh ingredients. Pick from options like protein forward, fiber maxing, mood boosting and better for sleep so you can keep it healthy. Fiber maxing sounds like an explosive change to your diet. Anyway, they keep it interesting. They still make everyone happy without turning dinner into a nightly production. Plus, everything is fully cooked and heats up in as little as five minutes. So instead of spending your evening cooking and cleaning, you're actually eating together.

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[Jordan Harbinger]

Jordan I've got Homes.com as a sponsor for this episode. Homes.com knows when it comes to home shopping, it's never just about the house or the condo. It's about the homes. And what makes a home is more than just the house or property. It's the location. It's the neighborhood. If you got kids, it's also schools, nearby, parks, transportation options. That's why homes.com goes above and beyond to bring home shoppers the in depth information they need to find the right home. It's so hard not to say home every single time. And when I say in depth information, I'm talking deep. Each listing features comprehensive information about the neighborhood, complete with a video guide. They also have details about local schools with test scores, state rankings, student teacher ratio. They even have an agent directory with the sales history of each agent. So when it comes to finding a home, not just a House. This is everything you need to know. All in1homes.com. We've done your homework. If you like this episode of the show, I invite you to do what other smart and considerate listeners do, which is take a moment and support our amazing sponsors, those who make the show possible. Everything is searchable and clickable over on the [e-mail] deals. If you can't remember the name of a sponsor, you can't find a code. You're not sure if that code ever existed. Do email us jordanordanharbinger.com we're happy to surface codes for you. It is that important that you support those who support the show. Now for the rest of my conversation with Joe Loya. You have a daughter, correct?

[Joe Loya]

Yeah.

[Jordan Harbinger]

How did you tell her about your past? And I wonder how you tell other people. How do they normally react?

[Joe Loya]

For some reason, we got the impression, you know, kids hear things, they know things. She'd already been school. A lot of the parents in school knew that I was, you know, had been in prison or whatever. So I suspect that she was hearing things from other kids or something. But she got the impression that I knew something about banks because we started, we hung out all the time, you know, we were very close. And I was picking her up from taking her school, picking her up. And one day she was like, do you know anyone who's robbed armored cars? What's a bank robbery? And so I realized, okay, she's asking questions around the edge of what. What happened with me? And I didn't know when I was going to tell her, but I felt like I needed to introduce her the concept of what happened. Now, I was prepared for this because ever since she was little, when there was a cartoon where some kid offended the group of people and he was shunned, and then they had to figure out how to get back to him, get him in and absorb him back into the group. I would always highlight those. You see, sometimes people do bad things, but we have to be willing to let them come back in their little society. I was constantly hitting where those themes and they're in every show. There's episodes in every show, you know, little kids show. And so I was preparing her for this for years before she got to seven. So she was two, right? I told her mom that I was going to tell her. I think it's time to tell her because she's asked three times this week about bank robberies. So we decided that one Saturday we were going to spend the day with her because Once you spend a long time with the kid, you're doing things, they just feel safe. Their nervous system is so calm. And then we're like, hey, let's go get some froyo. You know, we go get some frozen yogurt and we bring it home and we're having a great time. We've been together for six hours, seven hours or something. And said, hey, I got something to tell you. And she goes, what? And I said, I bring my book. And on the COVID of my book, you know, the title of my memoirs, The Manhua grew his prison cell. Joeloyer ltd. You can get it and I'll sign a copy of it for you. But, yeah, it's the Manha grew his prison cell. And I pull it out and on the COVID is this really the iconic photo of me walking out of a bank at the surveillance. FBI surveillance photo with a trench coat and a suit and a tie and all that stuff. And, you know, with my Ray Ban sunglasses, looks pretty badass. Anyway, I come to show her. I said, listen, a long time ago, your dad. When I was a young man, you know, I was very angry. I made a lot of mistakes. One of the mistakes I did is I robbed a lot of banks. And when I did, I went to prison. I changed my life. And I came on, I'm a writer now. You know, you see me always writing. And the society has taken me back in because they saw that I changed my life and that's why you and I get along. I'm a good father now. I'm a good person. And so I changed my life. And I show her the book. You see, I wrote this book and this about how I changed my life. And her first question was, oh, did you have to pee in a bucket? And it turned out I was like. And I told her, I was like, no, I wasn't in the Bastille. It wasn't an 18th century French prison, as I said, because I had seen the image he was talking about. There'd been this cartoon in Phineas and Ferb where some guy goes to prison and when he gets locked in a style, they give him a bucket that he has to do his business in, right? And to her, that's what she imagined prison was. And she asked one or two questions, and then she was like, can we go play? And that was it. Like, I just needed to introduce a concept. And knowing that we've now begun a conversation about it. And over the years, she would ask, did you have a best friend? What did prison smell like? She would ask me questions are really interesting to. To have that conversation, but that's what I told her.

[Jordan Harbinger]

I'm afraid to ask, but I will anyway. What does prison smell like? That's not a bad question. Kids always have really good questions, actually. Often I should say, yeah.

[Joe Loya]

The answer is it smells myriad. On any given day, you walk by one guy's style, it smells like tuna. They just open a can of tuna. You walk in another guy's house, smells like cigarettes. Another guy, the devil's lettuce. Like, you walk through it and you're just. Every cell has a different stench coming out of it, right? Or also one guy, he was this Cuban guy, he loved the smell of Ben Gay, and he thought, oh, it's really a strong scent. So he would get this boiling water from the. Where you. You get your boiling water for your coffee. He would put it in a mop bucket, and then he would put Bengay in there. And so he would mop his floor with Bengay. And so that. That scent came out of the cell really strong.

[Jordan Harbinger]

Yeah. Eucalyptus.

[Joe Loya]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Something, whatever. So I told her, it's just at any given time, it just. Different smells. There's not like one smell.

[Jordan Harbinger]

Yeah, okay. You were going to tell me how other people react when you explain what you used to do. I mean, on a podcast, we. We ooh. And on get the whole story. But what about the average person?

[Joe Loya]

You know, it depends. When it comes up differently, people find out about it too, you know, through other people. The biggest response I get is like, you don't look like a violent person.

[Jordan Harbinger]

You don't.

[Joe Loya]

Because I come out here and I don't let anyone read violence off me. I'm not trying to intimidate anyone. I don't perform that hyper male thing out here at all. You know, I still have aggression for me that I dialed from a 10 down to about a 2 or 3. That's as low as I can go. And it's still sometimes a little intense for people, but mostly there's no real. And that's the response I get. People are like, wow, it's hard to see you like that. My girlfriend told me that just last night when we were talking about prison and stuff. She's like, man, it's hard to imagine you being that guy because now I'm kind of a big old sweet bear. So, I mean, I'm a big guy and everything, but I'm kind of a nice guy. So most of the responses are like that.

[Jordan Harbinger]

You ever watch heist movies? Or anything and think like, nah, I love heist movies.

[Joe Loya]

In fact, I'm trying to put a podcast together where every week I talk about a different heist movie. There's hundreds of them. They come out all the time, and I have opinions about them. So I want to do a podcast in which I break down a heist movie.

[Jordan Harbinger]

I think that's a really fun idea. You know, you could take a scene and go, this would not work. Or, here's why. Or this would. This is a bad idea. There's a better way to do it, but it wouldn't look as good. So Hollywood chose this. This one.

[Joe Loya]

Let me hit a note on that real quick. In the podcast, what I would do is I would have guests who were in a heist movie, wrote a heist movie, directed a heist movie. You know, acted in a heist movie, like somebody. Because I was a baby driver. So I could have anyone there.

[Jordan Harbinger]

That's right.

[Joe Loya]

I could have Jamie Foxx on. I can have John Hamm on. You know, I could have people who I know who are in the business who've directed, written, whatever. So I feel like I'm in a unique place for that because I'm, you know, I've consulted in Hollywood for, like, a consultant and was a baby driver. So, anyway, go on.

[Jordan Harbinger]

Yeah, I think that would be fun. Let me know if I can help with anything like that. That sounds like a fun side gig, a little project.

[Joe Loya]

Yeah. Right.

[Jordan Harbinger]

The banks you robbed, they were all in la, right? So. And I assume you keep your money in a bank now and not in a dirt pile in the back of your garage. Did you ever rob a branch of the bank that you now use as a customer?

[Joe Loya]

I didn't rob. Only in la. I robbed as high as Ventura and all the way in San Diego. Okay, but like, Southern California. Yeah, I'm Southern California. Yes, yes.

[Jordan Harbinger]

You know, because if you rob a Bank of America, are you a Bank of America customer now?

[Joe Loya]

That's exactly right. I gave bank of America the blues, and I'm a great customer for bank of America. And I like bank of America. They've done me nothing but good. And so it's weird. I pulled this move once. I talked to this guard at my bank of America when I was living in another city. And I went up to him and I started talking, man, you know, I see you here all the time. How do you like your job? Is it dangerous? Whatever. We got kind of, like, friendly. I said, like, how do you, you know, how do you make sure that you're protecting everyone. He says, oh, and he gives up the gang to me after a year or two, right? I told him I was from east la and he says, yeah, my mom moved me from East LA because she didn't want me getting the gang. So I came up here and so we. We had the solidarity thing. He told me a lot of things about bank Robbies and stuff. And one day I say, I know, man. I was once in a vault when it got robbed.

[Jordan Harbinger]

Technically true.

[Joe Loya]

Yep. And he was like, really? I was like, yeah, man, it was scary. And that line is. George Clooney says that line in. In the movie he did with Jennifer Lopez, out of sight, he leans into a banker and he says, hey, man, I was once in a vault when I was robbed. And we already seen him rob a bank and he was in the vault, right? So I use that line with this guy and I wonder if he ever figured it out. But yeah, my bank is cool.

[Jordan Harbinger]

This is like when you told your dad, I swear on mom's grave I was not in that bank. It's like, okay, well, he said he didn't rob the bank. Well, that's not what I said. What I said was, I was not in the bank. Again, technically true.

[Joe Loya]

That's all I was admitting to. And what's interesting about that story that I didn't get to. Cordis liked me. Special Agent Cordis liked me. He never met a bank robber like me. He told me so. We were driving to the court and he was in the back. He said, I never met anyone like you, Joe. Your friends are so nice if I understand what your dad did to you, but I've never. Usually gang bangers are here, tattoos, drug addicts. He says, I don't. You're really smart. You can be whatever you want. And then his partner said, I've never seen him weirded out about a case like with you. And I told him, hey, Curtis, too much analysis causes paralysis, so let it go. And he was like, that's exactly what I'm talking about. He says, I could use that with my boss, man. That was the kind of relationship we had. So when he called me on the phone, he says, you have a double. Tell your lawyer about the double. But I'm not going to talk to you about how your car was found a mile away, overheated. We're not going to talk about that. Right. Like, so even he knew that I was very particular and specific about what I was admitting to, which is I wasn't technically. My feet never hit the tile of that bank. Right. I was never in on the other side of that door. But I'm not saying that it wasn't the getaway driver. Fortunately for me. The weird thing was that the truck that was following me, like I said, there was only one driver because they only saw my head. So there was a way in which my car may have been involved, but he couldn't prove anyway. Bottom line is that he let that go.

[Jordan Harbinger]

Do you think you'd be able to rob a Bank in 2025 from a technology standpoint? Because now there's so many cameras, and there's so much better. Like, they're 4k before, when you were doing it as, like, grainy shot, can't read the brand on your shirt, one angle. You know, the tape's all messed up because it's 20 years old now. It's like 4K view, parking lot, every corner of the place.

[Joe Loya]

That's not the worst of it.

[Jordan Harbinger]

No.

[Joe Loya]

That's actually the easiest thing overcome. The worst of it is everybody has cameras now. So I could be walking out of bank, and it's like, hey, look at that old man walking. I could have a disguise. They're like, look at that old man walking away. That is actually one of the most dangerous things is you don't know who's taking photos of you or just video of you. You don't. It's out there everywhere, right? And also, cameras are way more ubiquitous than they've ever been. They're everywhere outdoors, so you can get picked up a bunch of different ways, and they could track you. Like, okay, he passed this camera going that way, and let's go this way. And we find another camera over here showing them going this way. You know, you can be tracked. So that's a challenging one. But also the biggest challenge is that I don't have the requisite rage anymore to go in there and rob. I was capable of doing a lot of things because I was driven by rage and the I don't care attitude. Right? And I don't care about my life if I put it on the line. I care about my life now, and I have a sense of posterity. I'm an older man. I didn't have the young rage that I had. So when I think about it, I don't think worry about cameras. I don't think about it. So I really think about, do I even have what it takes to muster up to do a 30 bank robbery? No. If I was desperate, I think I obviously have muscle memory and I could do something, but I Don't feel like I'd get away with it. And also, something would have to be dire. They're holding my family hostage. Whatever, whatever. Something like that. But I could do it. But I'm not sure that I would get away with that because, like I said, that's when the cameras and everything come into play. Sure. Even if I went back to crime, for whatever reason, I would never think that bank robbery is the hustle.

[Jordan Harbinger]

You ever walk or drive past a bank and go like, oh, yeah, I robbed that place before.

[Joe Loya]

Oh, all the time when I was in la. There's a lot of ghosts. In fact, I'm going to go visit a friend next week. Driving down and she says, I live in Ventura. I've known her since high school. I robbed her bank and she was like, man, I could have been to the bank when you were out there. I said, yes, you could have. So she told me she moved to Ventura. She said, I'm sure you didn't rob a bank of Ventura. And I said, you're wrong. I didn't rob a bank. I robbed the bank not far from you, in fact. So, yeah, I mean, I. I have in. In Orange county, where my brother lives. I've passed banks that I robbed, and I've been able to tell him, well, here's how I got away and whatever. But, yeah, I have.

[Jordan Harbinger]

What's your relationship like with your father now?

[Joe Loya]

It's really close. You know, when I got out of prison. When I got out of prison, I went up to him and said, check this out, dad. I've done a lot of bad. You've done a lot of bad. Why don't you let my bag cancel out yours and you let your bed cancel out mine? Let's just start fresh. I have all this compassion towards you. I want to be a new man. Let's start over. My brother and him were having problems, and I wanted to model for my brother, how I got over a lot of things to get to my dad in a really healthy way. And so my brother got on board. And we've been working with my dad since, you know, 1996, and he was not doing well. And our love helped him get back on his feet and help him out. And all these years, we've been pretty tight. There was a couple years after my book came out where he was kind of upset, the way he was portrayed. But, you know, we worked through that. We, you know, I knew we were going to have a very long relationship. He's now 80. My brother and I love him every Time I'm in la, I see him. I'm in the Bay Area now, but my brother hangs out with him every Tuesday, takes him for, run a bunch of errands and stuff. You know, we call him a couple times a week. I talk to my brother almost every day. So we're a tight family now. You know, we don't have my mom, but we have each other. One of the ways in which we. We get along really well is my brother and I feel like my mother loved this man. My mother loved him. No getting around it. All my aunts on her side, everyone knows my mother loved him. And so to honor my mother, we carry on that love for my dad, hold the love she had for him, and respect that love. And it makes it easier to approach him and deal with him with love. And so we just throw a lot of love at the relationship. And, you know, my dad's pretty articulate, and at this age, he, you know, we can have conversation with him. He's having memory loss now, and things are starting to happen with him in that regard. But he still has his faculties enough so he can remember things from the past. And we talk about a lot of things in the past. But about 15 years ago, I stopped talking about our past. I said, I don't want to talk about what happened anymore. You're my dad. And moving forward, because he would always talk about, like, oh, I was a terrible dad. I was a terrible dad. He's beating himself up, so stop talking like that. I said, you're still my dad. You think you were a terrible dad because you stopped daddying it the minute I stabbed you, but you're still my dad. You can model an end game for me. Show me how I'm supposed to leave this world. I need you. You're still my dad, man. Be good. Show me. He took to that. He was like, all right, that's to your dad. And so what I would do is when I was with my daughter, when she was born, she would do something that was something. She would copy me. We had little things. I played with stuff. And I was copying my dad, what he did to me when I was a kid. And so she would do something I would call my dad. Hey, man, look at that thing you did for us. It's now third generation, man. So I would constantly say lovely things about how he did a bunch of good things. I wanted to always highlight the good things and how they rippled through me and were rippling into my daughter. And that was helping him heal, too, because he only had a sense of himself as being a terrible father from 0 to 16. And I'm trying to let him know those spikes of bad behavior were small compared to all the good that you did for me and my brother. I'm an artist because of my dad. I have good facility with language. There's a lot of things that I appreciate in the world because of my ideas. And so I try to always remind him, dad, you did good, man. And my brother's super talented and super smart and super, you know, educated and an artist as well. So we feel like we got that from my dad. And we always let him know, you did us good, dad. You did. You know, there were some moments in which it was traumatic, but overall you did things that hurt us, but you gave us so many tools and resources so that we could work through it. So it's just complicated. It's a paradox of life, you know.

[Jordan Harbinger]

Joe Loya, thank you very much. It's a fascinating story, really.

[Joe Loya]

It's wonderful to be here, Jordan. I appreciate you asked a bunch of good questions. So kudos to you, man.

[Jordan Harbinger]

Thank you. Think you need top secret clearance to catch war criminals? In this preview, Elliot Higgins shows how everyday citizens with nothing but wi fi and curiosity are uncovering global crimes that governments tried to bury.

[Elliot Higgins]

Bellingcat does something called open source investigations. Thanks to smartphone technology, social media and the wealth of information we have online. Stuff like Google Maps giving you satellite imagery, ship tracking websites, plane tracking websites, all kinds of information that's accessible to you now. I started doing this in 2012 as a hobby. I just tried to figure out how can you prove if a video has filmed somewhere and I realized that you could compare landmarks visible in the video with satellite imagery and do a kind of spot, the difference fit. Now that's a technique known as geolocation. But Batman, then it was just me playing adult. Spot the difference on social media platform. I think when we live in an era where the truth is constantly contested, especially on the Internet, it's good to have something where you can not only point to the evidence, but the actual process you use to come to your conclusions and open it up for debate. Because there is a tendency for people just to read stuff that reinforces what they already believe and that causes a lot of problems. If we're going to have a debate about something something, it should be on actual facts, not just the opinions of a newspaper columnist you've just read. What we do is important. It's not just about allowing people to see our working, but giving them the ways to actually do it themselves. And if we let the world just be run by people who want you to shut up, then it's going to be a very dark place indeed. For me, it's really about taking open source investigation and getting as many people as possible to use it. Yeah, I'll just say give it a go if you're interested, because that's what I did and like, turned out quite well.

[Jordan Harbinger]

To hear how bellingcat is using open source sleuthing to expose war crimes and rewrite the rules of intelligence, check out episode 1192 of the Jordan Harbinger Show. When you hear stories like this, it's tempting to file them away as extremes. That guy, that life, that kind of person. But what stuck with me here is not the fedora or the money or even the bank robberies. It's how ordinary all the steps really were. One decision, then another. Fear the first time, and less and less fear every time after that. Until the thing that once felt impossible starts to feel routine. This isn't a story about how to rob a bank. It's a story about how people normalize the unthinkable and how trauma, when it goes unexamined, doesn't disappear, it just finds new outlets. What happens after that is really what matters. The reckoning, the cost, and whether you're willing to take a cold, honest look at yourself when there's no adrenaline left to hide behind. Thank you all for listening. All things Joe Loya will be on the website in the show. Notes, advertisers, deals, discount codes, and ways to support the show, [e-mail] deals Please consider supporting those who support the show. I'd love to see y' all sign up for the newsletter as well. I write this thing every week. It comes out on Wednesday. It's a two minute read. This is not a bunch of stuff that's going on with me. It's a gem from the show and that makes it a great companion to the show. So jordanharbinger.com news is where you can find it. Don't forget about six minute networking as well. Over at sixminutenetworking.com I'm jordanharbinger on both Twitter and Instagram. You can also connect with me on LinkedIn and this show. It's created in association with podcast one. My team is Jen Harbinger, Jace Sanderson, Robert Fogarty, Tata Sidlowskis, Ian Baird and Gabriel Mizrahi. Remember, we rise by lifting others. The fee for the show is you share it with friends when you find something useful or interesting. In fact, the greatest compliment you can give us is to share the show with those you care about. If you know somebody who's interested in a good redemption tale, a crime tale, a bank robbery tale specifically, definitely share this episode with them. In the meantime, I hope you apply what you hear on the show so you can live what you learn. Sounds weird to say that during a bank robbery episode, doesn't it? I'm in the redemption stuff, so you can live what you learn. And we'll see you next time.