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- [00:02]
Jim Lettrochet
Acast powers the world's best podcasts.
- [00:06]
Nikayla Matthews Akome
Here's a show that we recommend. If you've ever dreamed of quitting your job to take your side hustle full time, listen up. This is Nikayla Matthews Akome, host of side Hustle Pro, a podcast that helps you build and grow from passion project to profitable business. Every week you'll hear from guests just like you who wanted to start a business on the side. If you can't run a side hustle, you can't run a business. They share real tips and so I started connecting, connecting with all these people on LinkedIn and I saw target supplier diversity was having office hours. Real advice. Procrastination is the easiest form of resistance and the actual strategies they use to turn their side hustle into their main hustle. Getting back in touch with your tangible cash and sitting down and learning to give your money a job like it changes something. Check outside Hustle Pro every week on your favorite podcast app and YouTube.
- [01:00]
Jim Lettrochet
Acast helps creators launch, grow and monetize their podcasts everywhere.
- [01:06]
Aura Advertiser
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- [02:17]
Jim Lettrochet
acast powers the world's best podcasts.
- [02:21]
Nikayla Matthews Akome
Here's a show that we recommend.
- [02:25]
Taryn and Cami
Do you want to know the best part about being married to a woman? That there's no man involved. I mean, true, but I was gonna say that it's a sleepover every single night with your best friend. Oh yeah, that part's cute too. I'm Taryn. She's Cami. We're married. And staying up is our weekly pillow talk out loud with you. We're giggling, we're gossiping, we're arguing. Classic marriage stuff. Just having fun being wives while we navigate growing up and building a family together. Then our sleepover grows. Our listeners call the Pee Pee hotline with their own gossip, burning questions, late night spirals, all the stuff they'd only tell their best friends. So it's a private sleepover, but you are invited. Staying up with Taren and Cami. New episodes weekly follow Wherever you listen.
- [03:04]
Jim Lettrochet
Acast helps creators launch, grow and monetize their podcasts everywhere. Acast.com.
- [03:23]
Interviewer
So when I began creating this series, I was searching far and wide for stories of incredible survival. And I'm sure you'll agree that we've certainly found many of those. And at the very start of this project I said these situations are ones that people either found themselves in unwillingly, such as Michael Thexton and the 1986 Pan Am plane hijacking, or Barry Hoss and his 10 year ordeal in an Indian prison. And then, well, then there's those who have actively placed themselves in potentially highly dangerous and life threatening situations. And today's guest, well, he most certainly falls smack bang in that category.
- [04:04]
Jim Lettrochet
Moon in the sky I'm looking at the moon in the sky this shouldn't come as a surprise but I can't sleep. War in my mind I'm trying to fight a war in my mind I don't know who's the winner tonight but it ain't me.
- [04:32]
Interviewer
Chapter One. I was there to work on my fear hello. Here he is.
- [04:37]
Jim Lettrochet
Can you see me?
- [04:38]
Interviewer
I can't see you, no.
- [04:40]
Jim Lettrochet
Let's see.
- [04:42]
Interviewer
There he is. I feel like I should have the North Korean national anthem ready just to play on your arrival, sir. North Korea. You only have to say the name. And it evidently invokes images of a brutal regime, a country controlled by a dictatorship that stretches back to 1948, when the founder and first supreme leader Kim Il Sung took power. It's a country that is shrouded in secrecy. While some mock the regime and its leaders, of course, the now Kim Jong Un, there are plenty of people, including the country's own whole, that suffer at the brutality of those in power. North Korea is a country that you can travel to. However, it is strongly advised against by practically all Western governments to do so. Should you decide to go against this advice and indeed make the trip to the dprk, then be warned, you better be an obedient tourist. Because if not, well, not even the great Leader's own brother is safe from retribution. Entering Kuala Lumpur airport in the grey suit, this CCTV appears to show Kim Jong Nam. He continues into the busy departures hall where an audacious assassination is apparently about to take place. So what on earth possessed a man from Denmark by the name of Jim Lettrochet to not only go to North Korea, but to do so undercover as a billionaire arms dealer looking to expose this regime? Well, before we even get there, we still have to talk about his time in the French Foreign Legion, cocaine trafficking and two stints in prison. Yes, if this was a script for a Hollywood movie, you'd be laughed right out of the boardroom. However, this is not fiction. This is the life of the man that the North Koreans would come to know as Mr. James. From reading your book, which again, is amazing, would it be fair to say that you had quite a tumultuous upbringing to say the least?
- [07:12]
Jim Lettrochet
Yeah, yeah, you can say that. I think it took a crazy turn also during to the time, because in the early 80s you were rather like everybody else. You are a troubled kid. So I have ADHD and I'm dyslexic. I think my only crime at that time was that I couldn't shut up in class. It's, it's not like I come from a broken home. I always had food on the tables and stuff like that. I think the big game changer was when I was 12, my teacher convinced my mom it would be in everybody's best interest if I came to a boarding school for trouble kids. It was my. How can you say it? The start for a crazy life in the wrong direction. If you could say.
- [08:06]
Interviewer
Yeah. I mean, you actually say in the book from the age of 12 onward, you hated every single day of your life.
- [08:13]
Jim Lettrochet
Yeah, yeah, that's right. I mean, I, I don't think it's healthy for a kid in such an early age to be told that you're not like everybody else. And if you take a guy who have ADHD and put them in a regular classroom, they will fail because that's not the way they learn. And if you are exposed to things that you're not good at, continually your self esteem becomes lower and lower and then you start to have low thoughts about yourself.
- [08:50]
Interviewer
You know, you also talk about, at one point, did you get taken in by a family who were adopting sort of kids from all sorts of backgrounds?
- [08:58]
Jim Lettrochet
Yeah, I mean, after the boarding school, I went to a school home for boys and after that I had some foster parents. Yes.
- [09:08]
Interviewer
So can you explain that whole foster parent situation for us, I mean, because, you know, obviously most people who get fostered by other parents means that they don't have parents. But you did still have your mother and.
- [09:18]
Jim Lettrochet
Yeah, no. So the thing was. And that this was not like they adopt you. It's just like you live with some new parents. And this guy, he was actually the first person in my life I actually respected because my entire life people have been yelling at me, being quite rough at me. And here was a guy who. Who actually saw everything in another perspective. Because you have to understand, like, I think in denmark around the 70s, it was illegal to hit kids in schools and in any kind of institutions. But in those homes, that rule was a little blurry. That guy I lived with, he used to be the headmasters of some really rough homes. And he was quite pissed about that. A lot of the staff didn't honor the new law and he was fed up about the bureaucracy because he actually wanted to do it different. So his older years, he decided, fuck that he bought a farm and he changed it into a place where he could have kids and try to do something good.
- [10:31]
Interviewer
I mean, you say in your book it was the first time in a while that you actually felt normal.
- [10:34]
Jim Lettrochet
No, it was because he never yelled at me. He actually showed me another way. I mean, he actually treated me like a human being. Is that because my ADHD stopped? Because he made sure I went back into a normal classroom? I kind of thought because he was actually always nice to me, never yelled at me or anything, that I kind of owned him. So, like, before, I wanted to say something because when you have adhd, you're very spontaneous. You just come up with shit and stuff like that. So it actually made me think a little bit before. It's not because I didn't do fuck up, but I would say I did less.
- [11:12]
Interviewer
You're a bit more control than normal.
- [11:14]
Jim Lettrochet
Yeah.
- [11:14]
Interviewer
As Jim grew up, he says that he was afraid of everything. And he wanted to not only confront his fears, but overcome them. And how do you do that? Well, by joining the French Foreign Legion, of course.
- [11:36]
Jim Lettrochet
Today you would say I have. I had anxiety at that time. I was just a. But, but I mean, if you're overprotected, I'm not saying that you should be fearless, but I think, I think if you're controlled by your fear, it limited everything you do in life. It. It limited in. In the business. It's like, oh, I'm not sure because everybody else have done the same kind of company. It would lim. So and it did, because I was afraid of everything. I was afraid of dogs, I was afraid of big boys. There were so many things I was afraid of. And I thought, okay, this could be a good thing to take the bandage off one time for all Jim.
- [12:20]
Interviewer
That's one hell of a bandage ripoff. To go from being afraid of everything to thinking, oh, I'll go and become a legionnaire.
- [12:26]
Jim Lettrochet
Yeah, As I said, when you have adhd, you're quite spontaneous.
- [12:40]
Interviewer
But overcoming his fears wasn't the only driving factor to head off and join an army stooped in history. He was also escaping the Danish weather.
- [12:49]
Jim Lettrochet
You know, in Denmark we have shitty weather nine months a year and it's cold. I don't like the cold. So I thought, okay, because I, I'm this generation who grew up with Jacla Van Damme. So I had seen Jacques La Van Damme. He have done two movies about the French Foreign Legion. So I thought, I mean, everything I saw there was in the desert. And what I could have done, I could have gone to the library and opened my book. I didn't. I just put my face and. And I realized that perhaps I should have gone to the library because the first four months of my training was in the French and were never free. So much in my life. It was horrible.
- [13:33]
Interviewer
So young Jim is off on a new adventure set on conquering his fears of the world around him. Signing up for the legionnaires in Paris, he soon heads off to the south of France. At that time, 300 men would apply each week with only 30 being chosen. Jim was one of those 30 and was soon thrown into a rigorous training course for four months, which he says taught him some extremely valuable lessons.
- [13:59]
Jim Lettrochet
I learned to not lose my head in stressful situation. They will give you like, like say five or seven different tasks and you will only have time to solve three, perhaps four of them. So very quick you learn, okay, which one is the most important. So that's one of the things. And due to my ADHD and my ability to do a lot of fuck ups, I became quite good of doing push ups. I mean, when I arrived I could do 10, I could not even do one pull ups. But in the end I could do, I don't know, think around 20 and between 50 and 100 push ups because I did so many mistakes. So mistakes came in handy in my physical things.
- [14:42]
Interviewer
Yeah, yeah.
- [14:43]
Jim Lettrochet
What I never learned was my coordinations are not that well. They're so bad that I was not allowed to throw a hand grenade.
- [14:50]
Interviewer
Don't let Jim Touch a grenade?
- [14:53]
Jim Lettrochet
No, no, no, no. And, and another thing is that in the Legion you have tradition of singing because like back in the days when, when they walk through the desert, they sing a lot of different songs. And no, I never learned to sing. I never learned it. I mean, imagine you have a company, 50 soldiers, more than 50% from Eastern Europe, speaking French with a heavily dialect even there. You're the only one that asked to shut the fuck up. And you have to understand, I was not there to become a pro soldier. I was there to work with my fear.
- [15:36]
Interviewer
The French Foreign Legion is stooped in history, first forming in the 1800s. Its selection process is notoriously tough and men from all over the world each year take on the challenge to join its ranks. So Jim was slowly using his time as a legionnaire to conquer his fears, one of which was jumping, as he puts it, from anything higher than around three metres. So if you're afraid of jumping from heights, not even great heights, naturally, when you get the choice of your regiment within the French Foreign Legion.
- [16:09]
Jim Lettrochet
So therefore it made sense to sign up for the paratroopers.
- [16:13]
Interviewer
Yeah, of course, why not?
- [16:17]
Jim Lettrochet
And you first had a three week course where you learn, because the parachute you use is round and that means you hit the ground quite heavily, quite hard, and so you have to make a roll when you hit the ground again, because of my combination is not that good. I never really learned to do that proper. So the first time we went up to a plane, because in the end of those three weeks training, we should do seven jumps over two days. I remember that when we were ready to go up in that plane, I mean, I didn't feel good, but I thought, okay, it will come, of course, that you will get away. But again, I thought, okay, if I should be the last one to jump out, then I have to stand in the plane and think about, oh, when is my turn, when is my turn and when is my turn? So I saw, okay, what about if I'm the first one? So I moved myself up, so I was the first one who came up. And it's like a Hercules. So you go up in the back and you attach yourself in the ceiling, because the parachute open automatically. If you can imagine, you have a backpack on and then you have back over your parachute, you attach it to a line in the plane, so when you jump out, it pulls the bag off and the parachute comes out. I was ready. We all sat down, the plane took off, and in the height of between 300 and 350 meters, they opened the door Just, that is fucked up. And you have to imagine you fly with like 300 kilometers per hour. Everything in you say, this is just stupid. So an adjutant, that's the rank of the soldier, he just stood in the door, he took a doll with a parachute, threw it out. And that's to test, like, the wind direction and stuff like that. When that is on, he said, okay, stand up. We stood up. He said to me, okay, come and stand in the door. There's a red light and a green lamp, and right now it's red. When it becomes green, you jump. I said, yeah, yeah, okay. How hard can that be? And I was standing there, and I remember while standing there, I was like, this is such a bad idea. I mean, everything in you say, you should not jump, the light turns green. And I froze. So. So this guy just kicked me in the back. So I just fly out of the plane. And that was. That was my first jump. And I hit the ground like a bag of potatoes. Just like, bam. And I did three more jumps that day. I did three jumps the other day, so that was seven. And I realized, nope, nope, nope. You would never learn to enjoy that.
- [19:34]
Interviewer
So at no point did you suddenly go, this is exhilarating. I love this. I'm going to keep doing this.
- [19:38]
Jim Lettrochet
No, no, I hate it. I have done 21 jump in the Legion, and I hated every one of them. I will tell the last 14. I was drunk every time I kept six packs of beer under my bed. So. So when we were going to jump, I just like, all right, give me. Drank those. So my nerve would come landing on the ground. That was the part I hated.
- [20:05]
Interviewer
Right?
- [20:06]
Jim Lettrochet
Because first it's just like, you jump out and just. That is crazy. Like, will it open? Okay, okay, fine, it's open. And when you're up there, it's like, in less than one minute, you will hurt yourself badly, hit the ground, and then boom. And then you pick up your stuff. Yeah, that was horrible. But I learned so much else. I learned to speak French as well.
- [20:37]
Interviewer
Yeah, well, there's a positive. Yeah, it is absolutely incredible. So. But you never actually saw any sort of form of war, did you? Or any sort of actual combat?
- [20:48]
Jim Lettrochet
No, no, no. Luckily, I didn't at that time. I was sad I didn't. Because that would have been the ultimate test of meeting your fear. Because what is more frightening than being in a war situation? But today, I'm really, really glad I didn't. ACAST powers the world's best podcasts.
- [21:28]
Nikayla Matthews Akome
Here's a show that we recommend if you've ever dreamed of quitting your job to take your side hustle full time, listen up. This is Nikayla Matthews Akomay, host of side Hustle Pro, a podcast that helps you build and grow from passion project to profitable business business. Every week you'll hear from guests just like you who wanted to start a business on the side. If you can't run a side hustle, you can't run a business. They share real tips and so I started connecting with all these people on LinkedIn and I saw Target supplier diversity was having office hours. Real advice. Procrastination is the easiest form of resistance and the actual strategies they use to turn their side hustle into their main hustle. Getting back in touch with your tangible cash and sitting down and learning to give your money a job like it changes something. Check out side Hustle Pro every week on your favorite podcast app and YouTube.
- [22:22]
Jim Lettrochet
Acast helps creators launch, grow and monetize their podcasts everywhere. Acast.com premiere hosts on VRBO deliver quality vacation rental stays with fast responses and clear instructions.
- [22:34]
Taryn and Cami
Oh, I had a question, our host replied.
- [22:37]
Interviewer
Super quick premier move.
- [22:38]
Taryn and Cami
Wish I had a premier group chat. They won't even write me back.
- [22:41]
Interviewer
Book a top rated stay with a premier host if you know you verbo with VRBoCare.
- [22:47]
Nikayla Matthews Akome
Help is always ready before, during and after your stay. We've planned for the plot twists, so support is always available because a great trip starts with peace of mind.
- [23:03]
Interviewer
Chapter two I didn't see what I was doing as that bad. So Jim's time in the Legionnaires would come to an end and he headed back home. He describes that time as therapy for him and helped him to get his head straight and overcome a lot of the fears he'd carried with him at a younger age. When he returns home, he gets himself a job as a telemarketer of all things. But as I'm sure you can imagine, it's not long before the lure of adventure is calling and he heads off overseas. Spending time in the party scene of Ibiza is where Jim would try his first drug at the age of 21. Eventually, he makes his way to Tenerife, where he gets a job in a bar. And it's while working in this bar that he would make a contact. A contact that would eventually lead him down the path to becoming a very big player in the world of cocaine trafficking. However, it didn't just happen overnight.
- [24:00]
Jim Lettrochet
At that point, I had no vision of being a criminal or selling drugs. And the thing was like for many Years I didn't see myself as a criminal because after Spain I went home to Denmark and the whole tech electronic era started. And in the beginning it was just because that I bought drugs for me and my friends. Yeah, so, so we could take it when, when we went out and due to I'm quite extrovert, it was almost me getting it. And I, I would call the guy I was getting it from, he said, listen, if you buy a little bit more, you get it cheaper. And in that way my own stuff started to be free and I made a little bit more money and, and then it was just like more and more people found out I had it. And that's actually how I started. I think it was first when, when I stopped working that I thought, oh, I guess this is what I'm doing now.
- [25:03]
Interviewer
Jim says he's often asked if he felt bad about selling cocaine. And the simple answer is that at the time, no, he didn't.
- [25:16]
Jim Lettrochet
I'm coming from the countryside. I'm not born in copenhagen. I come 60km outside Copenhagen and the town I'm from is like a working class town. And I grew up with like, you want to be a lawyer, you, you want to be a doctor, you want to be a part of politician, become a dentist. I mean all those people, you were told this is the people you want. I mean this is what you want to achieve. They're the top of our society, they're the one with the answer. And suddenly with all those people becomes your clients. It's, it's a little bit difficult to see what you do. It's wrong of course, you know, it's entirely, it's not entirely legal. But I didn't see myself worse than in, in, in denmark in the 80s and the 90s you had like cigarette smugglers who got cigarettes in without tax. And those guys, they were almost seemed like freedom fighters because people were pissed about this to pay so much on taxes. It's, it's funny how that the law, in some way people say, oh that's criminal, but this is not really criminal. So it was also that way I saw myself at that time that I didn't see what I was doing was that bad.
- [26:36]
Interviewer
The one thing I quickly learned about Jim is he's no showboater. He's not here to big note himself as some mastermind of a criminal empire. Name dropping celebrities he hung out with or in fact getting into the nitty gritty of just how much cocaine he was in fact selling. What sort of levels are we talking at? Did you get to with your selling of drugs. How much were you buying and selling at one point?
- [27:03]
Jim Lettrochet
Oh, let's not get into numbers. No. Let's say in the beginning it was just a big party.
- [27:12]
Interviewer
Yeah.
- [27:13]
Jim Lettrochet
So it was a whole new world that opens itself to me. I mean, suddenly you were partying with all the people you read about in the magazines and stuff like that. And I know I said I didn't see myself as a criminal, but the fact is it was criminal. The sentence for dealing drug is quite high. So at one point I start to think about if I should survive in that business. I had to rethink the whole structure. So I thought if, if I buying from somebody in Denmark, I don't know who he's buying from, I don't know who he's selling to, and that's a risk. So I start thinking about, what if I can bring it into the country? Then I have, then I don't have that problem. And what if I send to the end user? So in the end, that was how I. I got my business, got pure cocaine into the country and sold to the end users.
- [28:11]
Interviewer
So you literally. There was no middleman, no one else involved. It was you from start to finish.
- [28:15]
Jim Lettrochet
Yep.
- [28:17]
Interviewer
So there was no one that. Yeah. As you said, there's no one that can. Can potentially screw you over?
- [28:22]
Jim Lettrochet
No.
- [28:23]
Interviewer
Obviously, eventually you did get caught. But at any stage, did you think about giving up? You know, because I'm sure you were making a fair amount of money. Did you get to a point where you went, you know what, I've got enough cash here, I might just call, I've been lucky. Let me call it quits?
- [28:34]
Jim Lettrochet
Yeah. I mean, that would be a smart thing to do. But the thing is, I didn't have an implant. The reason why I got caught was because at one point, my connection outside Denmark was caught. And then I started to buying until I found a new one from a guy in Denmark. And that was how it all started. I broke my own rules, and he was important a lot of stuff. So it was a big case, about 50 kilos of cocaine. Yeah. They wanted to charge me for 8.7 keys of cocaine. In the end, I was sentenced for 1.6 kilos, and I had a sentence for five and a half years in prison.
- [29:21]
Interviewer
So Jim is arrested, convicted, and sentenced to just over five years in prison. Although he says at the time it really didn't bother him. In fact, it didn't even make him quit his day job.
- [29:34]
Jim Lettrochet
While I was criminal, we had a saying saying if you can't do the time, don't do the crime. If you have been punished your entire life, punishment doesn't work on you. Yeah, it doesn't. I mean, look at this United States, they have some of the hardest punishment. It's like 2 million people say in prison.
- [29:53]
Interviewer
Yeah. It's the highest incarceration rate in the entire world.
- [29:56]
Jim Lettrochet
Exactly. And it's actually some of the hardest prisons you have, so it doesn't work. And that was the same with me. So, no, there was no time that I was thinking that I should stop being a criminal. So I continued while I was in prison.
- [30:11]
Interviewer
You're continuing your criminal enterprise from. From inside prison.
- [30:16]
Jim Lettrochet
Yep.
- [30:23]
Interviewer
So of course, in one minute remaining, we interview men and women incarcerated in the United States. And I hear all sorts of horror stories of how the inmates are treated and how they spend such a large portion of their lives inside locked up in small cells. So I was keen to hear from Jim just how prisons in Denmark compare.
- [30:42]
Jim Lettrochet
The basic is the same because your freedom is still taken, you're still locked away. I normally say the only difference between Danish prison and the American prison is that in Denmark you should not be afraid that you will get raped, but your freedom is still taken.
- [31:02]
Interviewer
Yeah.
- [31:02]
Jim Lettrochet
And in the beginning, you also locked away like 23 hours a day. What, while you're waiting for your sentence. And in my first sentence, I. I waited for my sentence for more than a year. So I was in isolation for the first two months and then I was waiting for getting my sentence for like basically one year. And in that year, you have, you have visit once a week where you sit in a room where the people who come and visit you and a police officer. But then things loosen up when, when you have the sentence. It depends what kind of prison you get into.
- [31:41]
Interviewer
So were you in a. What they would classify as a maximum security prison or were you just in a general.
- [31:46]
Jim Lettrochet
Not. Not in my first sentence. I mean, until you get your sentence. This is kind of crazy. That's also something I argue about, because while you went waiting for your sentence, that's actually the hardest part. And that doesn't make sense because what if you're innocent? I mean, you're just waiting for getting your sentence. So they put you in a place that is really, really hard. The reason why it's not that hard for me is not because I'm a bad guy, a tough guy or anything. It's because I've been institutionalized my whole life. Yeah, that's why. That's, that's also my survival in the French Foreign Legion is that I'm used to this structure. It's just different forms, but the basic is the same. You have people that ask you to do things in. Not in a nice way. This whole institutionalizing station is a part of you. But I could imagine. I mean, I cannot even imagine for a regular person going into that and being innocent, how they will handle it afterwards, mentally.
- [32:52]
Interviewer
Yeah, well, I mean, the number of the men and women I speak to within America, it's very similar. As soon as you get charged, you go into what they call jail. Some of them spend like two. A guy I spoke to spent two and a half years in there. And they say that the jails are worse than when you get into prison because you get more freedom when you get to prison than you do in the jail.
- [33:10]
Jim Lettrochet
Yeah, that's right. I think that's a. I mean, it makes no sense.
- [33:13]
Interviewer
It absolutely makes no sense.
- [33:15]
Jim Lettrochet
No, no, but. But the whole prison system doesn't make sense. Because if we should think logic about this and not how to get voters. Because if you get voters, you use list bible consents that an eye for an eye, a twos for twos and stuff like that. But that, that doesn't work. You get a lot of voters because a lot of people are quite simple. Oh, yeah, yeah. We have to be punished.
- [33:37]
Interviewer
Yeah.
- [33:38]
Jim Lettrochet
People don't look at the bigger picture. I'm not seeing that there should not. Of course, if you do something that have to be a reaction, you have to take responsibility for what you do. But if you have a person who have done something bad, and if we don't, don't start executing people, then it's our mission to make sure what we put in here comes better out there.
- [34:02]
Interviewer
Yeah.
- [34:02]
Jim Lettrochet
Otherwise we created a monster that makes the street more dangerous for you, for me, for our kids. So while we have those people in custody, it should be our finest task to make sure they come out as better citizens.
- [34:18]
Interviewer
The amount of people who said I had to go to prison to become a real criminal. It's a school for criminals. That's all it is, really. There's no reform.
- [34:26]
Jim Lettrochet
No, no, no, no. And even politicians know I'm right in what I say, but there's no voters in it. Want to try to explain if. If somebody shot your brother, no matter what happened to him, it would not take away that pain. You will always have that pain. So, of course, because if anybody shot my brother, I wanted to shoot him. That's of course, that's the feeling. But it's not like If I have shot him, I will feel better. It wouldn't change that. I still miss my brother. But if you look at that, if we're not killing that person and we put that person in jail, wouldn't it be nice that we can make sure something happens so he won't go out and shoot another person afterwards or be so insane that he goes out and shoots him? And we're not thinking about that? And that's the whole problem about the prison system.
- [35:24]
Interviewer
So Jim was serving his time, and towards the end of that sentence, he would be allowed to spend weekends back home. And it was during this time that he would meet the woman who would turn his life around.
- [35:35]
Jim Lettrochet
So I said to her, I'm in prison. I'm serving for dealing drugs. I helped a friend. I know it's bad, but right now I take an education. I'm a key account manager, which is not entirely a lie. And we started dating. And when I was released from prison, we went to India and we got married.
- [36:02]
Interviewer
Well, eventually.
- [36:04]
Jim Lettrochet
And went back to the cafe. I sat down, I started drinking my soda, and out of the blue, two big figures came and jumped me for the bag. And that was the cop. And at that point, I really thought I was fucked.
- [36:21]
Interviewer
And after his second and final stint in prison, he would be released and eventually found his way to North Korea undercover as a billionaire arms dealer in North Korea.
- [36:35]
Jim Lettrochet
He said, okay, we drive and then we start driving towards the streets in Punyang. And suddenly outside Punyang. And in the end, we just ended up in an area that didn't look like a place you wanted to go.
- [36:52]
Interviewer
Next time on what I survived.
- [36:57]
Jim Lettrochet
I'm looking at the moon in the sky. This shouldn't come as a surprise, but I can't sleep. War in my mind. I'm trying to fight a war in my mind. I don't know who's the winner it tonight, but it ain't me. Acast Powers the world's best podcasts.
- [37:36]
Nikayla Matthews Akome
Here's a show that we recommend. Hello. Hello, it's Brooke Devard from Naked Beauty. Join me each week for unfiltered discussion about beauty trends, self care journeys, wellness tips, and the products we absolutely love and cannot get enough of. If you are a skincare obsessive and you spend 20 plus minutes on your skincare routine, this podcast is for you. Or if you're a newbie at the beginning of your skincare journey, you'll love this podcast as well, because we go so much deeper than beauty. I talk to incredible and insane inspiring people from across industries about their relationship with beauty. You'll also hear from skincare experts. We break down lots of myths in the beauty industry. If this sounds like your thing, search for naked beauty on your podcast app and listen along. I hope you'll join us.
- [38:23]
Jim Lettrochet
G' Day mate. Clint Anderson here. Down Under Horsemanship and I are taking over Las Vegas with a live high stakes horsemanship event built for the arena and streamed worldwide. You'll experience three full days of education, horsemanship and a whole lot more. There are two ways to get in on the action in person. Tickets are available but limited, so get planning the livestream tickets will bring the event direct to you, plus a recorded copy for your future viewing. No Excuses Nation is coming August 28th through 30th. Learn more at downunderhorsemanship.com Most people don't
- [38:54]
Taryn and Cami
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