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THE LARGEST RACKETEERING SCAM IN US HISTORY | Healthcare Fraudster Exposes Industry Secrets
January 23, 2025
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Hi, I'm Jean Chatsky. You may know me as the host of the Her Money podcast or the financial editor of NBC's Today Show for 25 years.
It started with a scream inside a quiet Maryland home.
A mother trying to protect the family dog and her son in the grip of a violent hallucinogenic rage. By the time it was over, she was dead, and he claimed LSD made him do it. His name, David Minor IV, and we talked to him. Listen to Invisible Choir every other week as we uncover the most haunting true crimes you've never heard of, available wherever you get your podcasts.
The whole healthcare system is such a scam. You're talking to a guy that was on the inside of an insurance company. The FBI swarming a Miami house over healthcare and wire fraud. What United does is what every insurance company does. You want to talk about a legal racket that's protected by the federal government? It's the biggest racketeering scam on the face of the planet. The official charge I was given was conspiracy to commit healthcare fraud. And looking back at it, I didn't think it was a big deal, but now I understand kind of like the cost of what I call a crime.
So what I thought was happening was we were taking the money from the insurance company and it was like, eat the loss. Fuck you. Right? No, no, no, no, no, no, no. That's not what happens. They take, they don't take a loss. They report the fraud to the federal government and the federal government reimburses them every dollar we've stolen. Okay. So now I didn't steal from blue cross blue shield. Now I stole from the American taxpayer. Right. Now I'm on the hook for that money with the federal government. So it's like,
That the whole health care system is such a scam like this whole thing would lead you man First off Luigi Mangione is a murderer. I'm not even gonna try to defend that guy but The conversation it's a total scam You're talking to a guy that was on the inside of an insurance company What United does is what every insurance company does they deny a bunch of claims? You know how many legit doctors I saw that were billing or legit hospitals that were billing for a legal a legal
Within compliance procedure they did that the insurance company was like, we don't feel like paying you $50,000. You know, we're going to deny your claim. Go appeal it. Go appeal it to who? To the same people who don't want to pay me? It's a scam. It's a total insurance is like, you want to talk about a legal racket that's protected by the federal government. It's the biggest racketeering scam on the face of the planet. The only difference is that what I do is illegal and what they do is legal. You know, so it's like the flip side to the coin. But yeah, I didn't realize the toll like
how that system is kind of like really protected and how I'm really like, what I did was it really hurt like everyday people because at the end of the day that causes like all kinds of burdens on the economy and the average taxpayer. So yeah, it's, it wasn't until I finished doing everything and I learned more about the legal system that I was like, fuck. So that's, that's what happens. That's why I affect other people. It's so I worked for a Medicare HMO. Right.
So we're dealing with low income senior citizens, people who can't afford regular health insurance. And in Miami is such a scam. You have like Leon medical centers, simply healthcare plans, sun health, human. I'm sure this means nothing to you guys, but all these insurance companies offer what's called Medicare advantage. So basically instead of having original Medicare through the government where you're covered up to 80% of your medical bills,
They get this Medicare advantage plan where basically that company is getting a subsidy from the government. And what they do is they go in and negotiate with doctors to pay them a lower rate and they get the difference in the subsidy. Okay. Right. So it's a, that's a, it's a total scam. Like there, instead of you just having your regular Medicare that pays you, it's a company that basically goes in, takes over your Medicare and like low balls, all these doctors and hospitals to make money off of you.
Just to give you an idea of how lucrative it is, Simply Healthcare Plans, a company I worked for before I quit, they made $3 billion in 2018 or 2017. $3 billion. They had actually just gotten acquired for a billion dollars by Anthem. Anthem is the same company that owns Blue Cross Blue Shield and a bunch of other giant companies. They deny claims all the time.
Even if you, and it was an HMO, so that means they had a network. You had to go in network. You had to go to an in network doctor, in network facility, unless it's like an emergency and emergency bills got denied all the time. They would deny people for going, Oh, cause you didn't go, Oh, you went to the right doctor, but you didn't file the, or your one digit off on the claim number. Oh, you, you did this, but you know, you didn't do it at fucking five o'clock, which is the time when you're like stupid shit. And they denying, they denied.
Any little reason they had to deny medical claims, they did it. And again, you're talking about senior citizens, people who we should be looking out for and not trying to take advantage of. Right. You know, they talk about scammers like what I did. Oh yeah. You're, you're a fraudster yet these Medicare HMO companies are taking advantage of old people. Like the most vulnerable class we have in society, which is elders and kids. So.
Yeah, man, like the whole thing that's going on with United. Yeah. Fuck Luigi. He's not cool. I mean, he murdered a guy in cold blood, but it does bring up the same old conversation. Like, and now how they're involving AI to like deny claims and stuff. That's a whole nother ball game. I don't, I haven't seen how that works, but the conversation definitely needs to be had. I mean, there's no reason they should be federally backed. If you get, if money gets stolen from you, you got to deal with that. That's why the fuck is that coming from taxpayer money? Why should that come from the federal government? That makes no sense.
You know, these systems, they should definitely be updated or something. It's a broken system, that's for sure.
We had a TikTok about that same topic due to million. Oh, that's fantastic. Yeah. And the guy was talking about the AI, basically the healthcare, you know, they, the AI that was denying claims and they knew was faulty, but the CEO is just like, let it roll, let it ride. Yeah. So, no, no, the CEOs are completely complicit and aware of denying these, these claims. Don't think that it's like, oh yeah, it's some guy and no, no, no, no. They're making the decisions from like a high level. They are hyper aware of what's going on in their companies.
and they're the ones making the decision to deny those claims to make the company more money. It's completely illicit and it's disgusting. It's pure greed. It's just greed. I've been using Mando's whole body deodorant and let me tell you, you can use it anywhere. Pits, balls, thighs, and even your feet. Mando's powered by mandelic acid, so it stops odor before it even starts. It blocks odor all day.
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Once again, that's shopmando.com and use the promo code COX. What do you want to do? Let's kind of start at the beginning. I actually have to start before I'm even born. I have to start with like my parents. No, I'm serious. I'm serious. And it'll make sense. Okay.
So we had a guy do that. It was four and a half hours and no, we'll do we'll go like it was 30 minutes of him talking about shit that happened before he was born. And in the end, it never tied it. But that's why I look at Colby, because Colby and I, when we when he left, I looked at each other and went, Did that motherfucker start 30 minutes for 30 minutes before he was even born? Yeah, his Yeah, it was like, Alright, well, I'm born and raised in Miami, Florida. So a big
I'm a walking contradiction. And I'm going to tell you why I'm there. I was incredibly inspired by Scarface as a kid, not for the drug dealing and not horrible. I know. I know. But follow me for a second. Not for the drug dealing and not for the murdering. I knew I wasn't going to do that. I knew that that guy was a moron for doing that. What I admired about the guy is that the guy showed up here with fucking holes in his shoes. Mind you, he got here the same way my mother did the same way the Mario boat lift. You know how?
My mom, you know how they had the whole thing under the 10, I-95 and all that? My mom was one of those people. So it was, it was a very real story for me. Like it was, this guy was just another one of the guys that showed up on the boat and how he just said, I'm going to do X, Y, and Z. And he did it. It was like, it was inspiring to me because I didn't, at that time, I didn't know anybody successful. I didn't know anybody that made money. So I was like, man, like if I could do that, but with something else, my life will turn out pretty good.
You know, and it really, it just stuck with me and stuck in my brain. Like he was like this confident, like ambitious guy. Right. So that whole, and that whole era to me is like, I've told you, that's my, one of my favorite eras, like eighties Miami, all the fucking gangster drug lords and shit. It's just, to me, it's, it's a never ending, like exciting chain of stories. Like look at the Cowboys guy. He's look how much money he's made off that franchise. He's made like,
One, two documentaries, a talkie series, and it's all like eighties Miami, Cuban drug dealer guys, you know, so that all, that all was very inspiring to me as a kid. You know, I think of his name Corbin, Billy Corbin, Billy Corbin, Jewish guy down in Miami. So, so that's how my mom got here. She got here in 1980 and the boat lift, um, with my grandfather, my grandfather, that's, that's, I lived with him for many years. My father got here in 1988.
He actually got a fake Venezuelan passport and went to Panama. And then in Panama, he took the bus to Mexico and then he crossed the border where my aunt was waiting for him to go get him. My parents met and then
Funny enough, right when I'm born in 1992, I don't know how this happened, but my dad decides to get involved in the drug trade. Don't ask me how he decided to do that after he had kids. You saw Scarface, right? This is the way you do it. Yeah. So he starts making money, make a really good living. And that lasted, that was very short-lived because
What short lived like six months or a year or two years? What's the lifespan of it? Well, I didn't find any of this out until I was older. I was like a teenager when when like I started learning. Oh, so that's why we went to Disneyland every weekend, you know. Did he did he go to jail? No, no, no, no. He he he can't he gained enough sense to where he stopped. But it was a good I would have to say good solid three years. OK, solid three years. You know, he'd tell me stories when I was older of like,
You remember that little, you know, bag that had Woody on it that I would take to like trips and that was like your bag and I'd put in lockers. Yeah, that had a hundred thousand dollars in cash in it. I was like, OK, that's great. Or my uncle would be like, oh, one time I walked into your house when you were like at school and I went to see your dad and he was like, hey, come here. And he went and he opened the mattress and you had like, you know, two hundred fifty thousand dollars under the mattress. I'd hear these stories and I was like, bro, what the fuck?
But another thing, another thing you got to understand about Miami and Cubans in the eighties, like everybody was doing it. Right. That was just the way of life. I have an uncle, I grew up with all my extended family. So all my grandparents, siblings were like my aunts and uncles. Um, I have an uncle he's, he's since passed away. My uncle, uh, Artemio it's Spanish for Arthur. He was a huge trafficker. Like he did it for years. He did it for like 25 years, never got caught. Like,
It was, it's pretty wild how it was just such a normal part of Miami in the eighties. It didn't make sense to me. And that's built the whole city. That's built the entire city, downtown, the skyscrapers, and it's, it's kind of spilled over. Like that was the basis for the boom in Miami. You had that whole gold rush you see in Miami now. It's like the second version of what happened in the eighties, you know, but now it's like fraud. Yeah. We talked about that yesterday. We were talking about how like that whole kind of from Miami up the,
the up the coast there. It's like there's tons of con men. And all these guys get arrested in New York and go to prison for fraud. They all relocate back down there. The mobsters all relocate back down there. Yeah. And South Florida, funny enough, my, my, my judge sat in court and said, you know, if this were other areas of the country, we'd be having a different conversation. But I specifically have a message from Washington that I need to send a message to you guys here in South Florida, because this is the capital, the fraud capital of the world.
The fraud capital of the world, bro. That's fucking insane. I didn't even know that. But yeah, I don't know what it is about Miami. I think maybe it's the lifestyle that attracts those kinds of people. Snakes and the con men and all the weird shit that goes on. I've never really understood it, but that's a stigma that we carry, unfortunately, and it sucks because there's a lot of great people that have built the city. You know, my grandparents, my uncles, aunts, they're just honest people.
Yeah, like that's just been the way of life down there. You know, everybody knows somebody, everybody has that uncle, you know, it was there's, so there's a funny joke that went on in the eighties. Um, when you show up at like a mini mansion or a mansion, there was this big party and you'd meet the owner of the house and you're, and you'd be like, what do you do for a living? And he's like, Oh, I'm, I'm the marimbero. I play the marimba. The marimba is the silo phone. It's like a wooden silo phone. So that act, that name caught on. So that's what we called.
drug traffickers, like Cubans in Spanish, we call them marimberos. Okay, that's like a made up term that doesn't even exist in the rest of the country. It's funny when you think about it. And then we actually tell other people who speak Spanish about that term. And they're just like, they don't even know what that means. All right. So, so anyway, so I'm born in 1992. You know, that whole that all happens. I'm like, in
elementary school kid you know my my parents are square people at this point they make money they're like doing my mom's a waitress my dad's a truck driver and then I have a fairly normal upbringing besides here and there you know again my the Miami culture had a cousin who was just like nuts you know he was a little thug on the street he's actually the one that showed me Scarface for the first time as a kid makes sense right so
And in a weird way, in spite of him kind of like being wild and like doing all that wild shit on the streets, it was good for me to be around him because my parents were getting divorced at the time. So he was good, like a good older brother figure kind of to have. I'll actually tell you the story of how he moved in. So my my parents were fighting for years before they got divorced. And then for whatever reason, I don't remember why my sister wasn't home, but I was there that night and they got an official
It started with a scream inside a quiet Maryland home, a mother trying to protect the family dog and her son in the grip of a violent hallucinogenic rage. By the time it was over, she was dead, and he claimed LSD made him do it. His name, David Minor IV, and we talked to him. Listen to Invisible Choir every other week as we uncover the most haunting true crimes you've never heard of, available wherever you get your podcasts.
It was bad. They got in a fist fight. They beat the fuck out of each other. They threw shit at each other. Like I was like hiding in my room cause I would hear glass break and that kind of shit. Thank God my cousin, my other cousin was there that night and broke them up and took them. So I actually decided to leave with my dad that night to get him out of the house so he wouldn't hurt my mother. So I left with my dad and they took my, our other cousin took us to my grandma's house. And then my cousin Louis, who's the one that showed me Scarface shows up at my grandma's house and picks us up.
or picks me up and takes me and my mom back to his house. And I live with them. We live with them for like four years or three or four years at that point. And I'm exposed to like, you know, his friends and smoking drugs and all this crazy stuff that it's what real shouldn't see. But to me, it was kind of normal. You know, it's the kind of stuff I'd see in school and
Drugs to me at that point were like, okay, you know, I never did them like that at that point. But to me drugs, like just seeing drugs like that around, it didn't really affect me. It wasn't like, oh my God, what is that? I shouldn't be doing this. It was like, okay, just another guy who sells drugs or those drugs, whatever. Right. It wasn't, I was desensitized to it, which thinking back is kind of weird because a 12 year old kid or a 13 year old kid would be like, the normal kid should be like, what's that? Right. And to me it was more like, okay,
Whatever, you know, well, and also you'd seen movies and been exposed to it. That too. That too. Yeah. I started watching other kids probably wouldn't be watching at that age. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So he, he watches Scarface every day. I'm not exaggerating every day. Like that's horrible. Our, our parents name was Yale. Like just, and we named him Yale cause his favorite line was Chi Chi Chi Chi get the Yale. Like he said it every day.
And, and like I said, in a weird way, I knew the things that were going on were wrong. Like the things he would do was wrong. The things Scarface did was wrong, but I want, I didn't want to be like my environment, funny enough, even though I ended up in prison, which is I'll get to that. I didn't want to sell drugs and I didn't want to like run around on the street. Um, I wanted to be like just different, you know, I didn't want to, I saw that as like almost like
Oh, that's what like they do. I'm not them. I'm different, you know? So that's how I kind of started watching these gangster movies as a kid to get inspiration. You know, I kind of picked what I thought was good and kind of left what I didn't like. So that was, that was about middle school. Uh, I get to high school and then my, my mom ends up marrying my stepdad. Well, they don't get officially married, but they get together. And my stepfather is, uh,
a notorious career criminal, notorious. Like he was, he had done six years, gotten caught a few times. The only reason he hadn't gotten deported is because Cubans are like a special, we have this weird thing because of like Cuba and it's a communist country. They don't have to send you back. You're here illegally. You're allowed to stay, right? Exactly. Wet foot, dry foot. All that stuff. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So my, that was like,
I mean, he tried to sort of hide what he did from us, but it was too obvious. He was a notorious gangster. He would sit on houses full of drugs and wait for the right time and bust in there with three of his buddies, beat the fuck out of everybody, steal everything, sell all the shit. There was this one story this one time my mom told me that was pretty wild. He sat and watched this guy who owned a jewelry shop for like four days and he would just follow him and follow him and follow him and follow him and follow him.
Until like he got his his schedule down and then this one time he just sat Waited for the guy that I walked in for the jewelry shop He popped his trunk open because he had seen him put a bag in there took the bag and just took off and the bag had like 50 grand in it You know, that's how he made his living like robbing stealing Selling like whatever he's in the building in FCI right now in downtown, Miami
Yeah, it's crazy. Can't get right. No, no, no, no, no, he's done. This is the third, his third fed case. Okay. And every time he's gotten caught, it's, it's been worse, like worse and worse. So that was, again, in a strange way, it was good for me because he was like an alpha male. So I got some good qualities from him. But again, don't, don't do that because you're going to end up like him, right? He ends up getting caught because they set up this whole case against him where for months,
a CI was recording him on a call. Like the feds were recording him talking to a CI on a call, on a call ever for like months. And then we're telling them, yeah, this house, you know, I know where it is. I know how much drugs it has. We're going to break into, we're going to see all this shit. And he did it for like six months or more. I remember like it was an old man. I remember him. He used to drive this escalator. I remember it clear as day. He used to come into my house and shit. It was pretty wild. So the day they do it,
My godfather, my, my stepfather leaves my house and he pulls into a gas station or something to get gas. And then as he's leaving the gas station, the feds just, they scoop them up. Um, I don't even know what the chart official charge was, but yeah, that's that he ended up getting an 18 year sentence for that. Uh, it was, it was pretty crazy. Yeah. And then my life, my mom, needless to say, it was left alone. We went through a foreclosure. My house actually burned down. That's a whole nother thing.
car repossessions, we had to move into a fucking trailer. I hated that trailer, bro. Oh my god, you can't pay me enough money to move back into a trailer park. I can't I have such a negative association with trailer parks. It's like, it's disgusting. So we think everybody does. There aren't there aren't
There are probably nice trailer parks. There are retirement trailer parks where they actually have like an association. They keep it up. It's a planned trailer park. But in general, growing up in the 80s, 90s, you had a really, they were just, because they were all a lot of the ones that were built in this 50s, 60s, 70s and 80s. They're just horrific. Yeah. And there are
I've seen them in Miami. There's a couple like real clean ones that they it's in a nicer part of town, but you still only get hit by a hurricane in one. Yeah, definitely not. It's not a good idea. But yeah. So he goes away, he gets an 18 year sentence, our life falls apart.
I'm still in high school at this point. I'm like 15, 16. And then at this point, my great grandmother dies. So my great grandmother is like the matriarch of my, my family. She raised me until I was about 15. Very good influence on me. A very good influence on like she brought everybody from Cuba. Like she was, she kind of like was like, yeah, like the leader of the family. So she dies. My stepfather goes to prison. We lose our house. So my mom is like mentally just like falling apart.
She's not doing well mentally. And at that point, I kind of just, um, I had a decision to make because she wanted to move and I was about to graduate high school. So what I did was I just ended up moving out of my own and I let her move to wherever she was going. And I stayed in Miami and I kept going to school. I was working, you know, like 10 hour days at McDonald's and then I'd go to school from
You know, what was it? Six thirty in the morning till like two thirty. So my life, I fucking hated my life from my life was terrible. It was so bad. It was like that real like work, sleep, go back to work, sleep, doing something you hate. So. There is the first time I get one of those big opportunities, right? Leading up to to how I ended up getting arrested later, but so this.
someone approaches me and it's actually like a totally legit company. And I was like, I didn't understand the concept of selling something. Like I didn't know what selling was or entrepreneurship or any of that shit. You know, I just kind of like, Oh, rich people and poor people. So someone approaches me, a really good friend of mine. He's like, Hey, these guys are like offering us just like sales job. And I was like, the fuck is sales? I don't even know what that is. So they explained the concept of like, Oh, you know, you sell something and they pay your commission on that shit. Long story short,
I get involved and I go like full throttle. What was it? It was a direct sales company selling like AT&T and Verizon and like home service, like stuff you use in your home. Okay. And I ended up building a massive team, like 600 agents, 4,000 customers. I did really well. Okay. And it taught me a lot. It taught me like, how are they going? Are they, is it like a, are they, um, is it a call center or is you knocking door to door? Yeah, it's kind of like you could do door to door. You could cold call.
Uh, now that I think about it, it wasn't like they didn't even supply leads. It was horrible, but I was just so hungry and I want you to go to a neighborhood. You block off lights. You go to the neighborhood. You just go to town. Yeah. Just knocking. Was it, is it not dialing for dollars? It's not knocking for dollars. Yeah. Driving for dollars. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So it taught me a lot of good things. It taught me like grit, be tough, you know, rejection. Rejection is a big one. People fucking hate rejection, bro. I realized I read this book. It's called overcoming rejection. We'll make you rich.
And after reading that book, I really understood like, it's inevitable, like, you'll get what you want in life as long as you keep trying. Yeah, yeah, it is the whole, you know, you have to knock on whatever, 50 doors to get one sale. Yeah. So every time you knock on a door and someone says no, then you got to count that as okay, well, that's one more towards my 50. That doesn't matter what they said. I'm now one down, you know, next door. Oh, no, not interested. Absolutely not. They closed the door. Great. Now I'm two down. I just got to get to 50. Now,
And I'll have at least once, statistically, I should have one sale. Right. If I knock on 150 doors today, I'll have it statistically should have three sales. Exactly. You still have to be good, but you know, right. It's, you know, most of those are script, right? Yeah. Just reading the script. Funny enough, that company was actually endorsed by Donald Trump. Now that I think about it. Oh, yeah. I think that's the only like private business he's ever endorsed. Funny enough. But yeah, I actually got to see him at a conference. That was really cool. I got to see him and hear him talk. And he told this cool story of like when he was broke.
He likes to tell the famous story about how he was walking with his daughter and they were walking down the street out of one of his buildings or something and some guy, there was a homeless guy and he pointed at him.
is worth more money than me or has $99 million more than me. Yeah, worth more than I am. $99 million in debt or something like that. Yeah. And then he tells the story of like, I almost didn't go to the meeting because I felt like shit and like everything, but you know, I forced myself to go to the meeting and then I met this banker who ended up like changing everything for me. So that that's another good lesson. I learned a lot of good lessons in that company. One of which is like, most of the times when your life is like on the verge of falling apart,
You're probably on the right track. Right. What's always darkest before the dawn. Yeah. That kind of stuff. Yeah. I met Ross in prison. Oh yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So that's like when we, when we interview, you interviewed me. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So, and we'll get there. So yeah. And for context, people watching Ross Mandel, who we previously, yeah. Yeah. We did a video. We could actually link it at the end of this, you know, so there you go. Click on that. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Definitely. Um,
So it goes great. I'm not a millionaire, but I'm making a great living. I get great mentorship. I'm reading books. I'm really developing myself as a person. None of us knew that the leader of that little team had a horrible pain habit. Horrible. It was really bad. And then he ends up marrying another chick that has an evil pain habit. So he was our leader and he would teach us everything.
We then he wouldn't show up and then he'd be late. And then he was like, all right, you got, you guys got it from here. And then everything kind of just fell apart. You know, once we found out, everybody got unmotivated and everybody kind of stopped doing that business. It kind of fell apart. Okay. So at that point I have to do the one thing I don't want to do, which is go back and get a regular job. And it sucked. It sucked us a lot of me, you know, when you work for yourself and you have to go back and get a job, it's not, it's not really all that good.
So I went to health insurance just because it was really the first job I was kind of offered. So I'm fucking miserable. I stayed later than I needed. You know, I'd always get my, my, my work more than done. I do extra, I'd ask for overtime. Like I did, I went above and beyond and I moved up pretty fast within the first like six months in that company. But then I start making people look bad and that kind of whole negative, like corporate America environment kicks in. And I started like resenting that company. Okay. You know,
Like in my heart, I'm just like, fuck these people, bro. Like I'm here working hard and I'm trying to make something of them, not just for myself, but I'm trying to turn this into like more than it is. So like that, that whole negative conversation that I never should have had, I should have just quit the job is what I should have done. And then, so this guy approaches me while, you know, unfortunately just the timing was bad. Like I had already started resenting that company I worked for. I had, I was broke.
the brokeest I'd been in years, which I was not used to. And this guy approaches me and he's basically like, what health insurance do you guys have? I'm like, Oh, Blue Cross Blue Shield. Why? He's like, Oh, you guys get physical therapy benefits. And I was like, fuck it. Fine. Oh, I don't know. Right. So he's like, well, let's try something out and go to go to one of these clinics and sign some papers and then call me after. And I was like, why? He's like, well, you know, we can pay you. There's some money here involved if it turns out well.
I was like, right, but like how much like he's like, well, you know, this time around, I'll give you a few hundred bucks. I was like, if you want a box, just go sign some papers. Okay. Okay. One. Can you speak up? Yeah. Okay. Sure. Yeah. Yeah. No problem. No problem. Okay. So one, you didn't ask any other questions than that. Like, no, he just said, you have to know that. No, he just said it's a clinic.
And you're going to go and say you need physical therapy and we're going to bill your... He didn't even say anything. He was just like, look, show up and they're going to give you a bunch of papers to fill out. And after that, give me a call. You're not thinking this is fraud. This is a scam. This is... Not at this point. Not yet. Okay.
I'm already kind of like, like I have a feeling there's something weird going on. You're also desperate for money and don't want to ask a lot of correct. Exactly. I'm more, you're more concerned about getting $200 than you're about. Definitely. A hundred percent. Possibly something being wrong. A hundred percent. You can always claim ignorance. Like I didn't know. Exactly. A hundred percent. Okay. And it really just looked like intake forms. It didn't look like anything crazy. I feel that when I was there. It's so willful blindness. Yeah. Exactly. That's, that's the way the US attorney. Yeah.
As they said in my case, ignorance is not an excuse for breaking the law. Anyway, so I go, I fill out the papers and then, you know, they get photocopying my insurance card, all that shit. And then the guy that was there, he's like, all right, man, you're all set. You know, the doctor's not here today, but we'll give you a call to reschedule your appointment. I'm like, okay, I'll probably have to come back at some point. All right. The guy actually ends up calling me and he's like,
Yo, did you go? Yeah, yeah, I went. All right. Look, come here. I'm here. Come to my house. I go to his house and he gives me $800. And I was only expecting like 300. Okay. All right. This is cool. He goes, Hey, all right. Well, does everybody at your job have that insurance? I was like, yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, let me tell you, I'm willing to pay you a little more now because I know this is legitimate. I'll pay you $2,000 per person that you bring over here. And I was like, now I'm just like,
So you're going to get two grand and he's going to get eight, the other person is going to get 800. No, he's going to give me two grand and it's up to me how much I pay the person. Okay. Yeah. So at this point I'm like, Oh shit. All right. Now we're talking, right? Right. And I never asked, but at this point I'm like, all right, there's something illegal here, but I don't think this is enough money to get in trouble. Right. So I'm in my head. I'm like,
It's a few thousand dollars. Yeah, I get it. It's a couple thousand dollars. He's really the main guy. I'm not. All right. Whatever. So he's robbing the bank. You're just driving the getaway car. I didn't do anything. Okay. So that excuse doesn't work. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And my whole reasoning the whole time was like, I'm small fish and they're not going to they're not going to want me. And then I refer one. I refer to I refer three.
I refer for 10, 20, 30, and it goes pretty well. And the guy's like, what are you paying these guys when you approach them? Are you telling them like a thousand bucks? Typically? I'll give you half. Yeah. Right. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. No, I don't even mention when I'm getting paid, right? Just like, Hey, it's a thousand bucks. All you got to do is show up and sign some papers. I was basically a recruiter, right? So I mean, almost no one at work said no.
Right. And I worked in a company with like 500 employees. I didn't do everybody. Obviously I knew who to approach and who not to approach. And then the guy, every time, you know, he thought we were going too much to one thing. He gave me another address and I'd send them to another place. And it was just this ongoing thing. You know, it was, it was really easy. Like I didn't have to do much. And then. So what is he doing?
He just was actually happening here. So what's actually happening here is all these clinics are completely fraudulent. Every single one of them. Not one of them is like, you know, they're basically just like here and this guy knows all of them and they have an arrangement with this guy. So somebody set up a clinic because you don't have to be a doctor to set up a clinic. Correct. I can go right now and set up a clinic and then I can hire doctors to
What is
Getting built. What are they getting built? Physical therapy sessions. And the physical therapy sessions are he's billing out what? 1500 bucks for 10 sessions and that's $15,000 or? No, on average they were doing, they were doing somewhere between 30 to my knowledge because they could have been more 30, 30 to 60 sessions. And how much does each session get? Does this insurance company pay? I don't know each, but combined per person it was like
15 to $30,000. Okay, they were pocketing. Let's say 20 grand. They're giving you right so to no, no, no, but here's the here's the kicker. So he this guy that that my plug, this guy, I don't know how the fuck and don't ask me, but he knows like, 20 of these motherfuckers, right, right. And that guy works out his own deal because he's a fucking con man and a scammer. He works out his own deal with each one of these guys.
And so the clinics are kicking him back, maybe five grand for or some of them are going 50 50. Okay, so 10 grand, he's paying you to fucking two, right? You're getting he's getting eight. And then the clinic is billing like, or like 20. Right. So they're just filling out the paperwork saying this guy showed up on the third on the fifth and the whatever. Yeah, nine. Yep. You know, physical therapy was good. A little pain in his back. Yep. 100% No, it's really just
becomes just kind of like a mill at that point. They're just cranking out paperwork that looks good. Mind you, this sly motherfucker, he's got other people that work. I don't know how he did this. Probably just like every time I referred somebody, he'd probably talk to them and be like, yeah, send me people. Of course, he lied to me because we're all fucking stealing money. So later I found out after I got arrested that he had like
Another guy there sending him a bunch of people and he like, he was like, no, no, I swear to God, you're the only guy there, you know, and me like an idiot, believing in a comment. But anyway, and then imagine he had me at my place, right? And then he had another guy that worked at another place. He had another guy that worked in another place. And he had another guy that worked at another place. He had like 10 of us. So imagine this guy's fucking he's breaking it, breaking it in with this guy first approach you at like, where'd you how'd you come across them? So
Um, I actually got, uh, referred to him like way before we started doing business. Like I was with a friend of mine and she was like, Hey, um, you know, I, cause I was really complaining about like injuries and like, she's like, well, if you need physical therapy, call this guy that I know a guy. Yeah. And I was like, okay, cool.
And I called him and he was like, no, you know, I guess, no, no, no, no. At first, I called him for the first time and he actually wasn't really like about it. He thought he's like, oh, this guy's actually want physical therapy. Is that what you think we're doing? Right, right, right. Exactly. And that's just the name on the sign. No. And imagine he's like a Miami street guy. He's like a Cuban guy. So he's and he doesn't know me. So he's probably like, oh, fuck this guy. I don't know this guy.
Like almost a year later, the guy is when the guy calls me. He's like, oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. You know, and he eggs me on. So it was through like fucking sheer coincidence. It wasn't even it just made no sense how how I ended up connecting with this guy. So, yeah. And then again, the guy's involved in like 17 different scams. The guy's like. Doing some fucking bank scam, the guy's doing some fucking shit with like like diversified.
he's an entrepreneur diversification is the it's the key to continually making money total fucking car artists is what he is i mean
I think you're just upset because he had other guys working for him. No, at my office. I was upset because he lied to me about having other people in my office. Because that's supposed to be my territory. That's supposed to be my fucking shop. Like, what are you doing? What the fuck? You're all con men. We are. We are. We are. He's a con man. You're a con man. I get it. These guys are all lying to each other. Some might have to tell you though,
There's there's there's a scale like you can't compare what I did with like fucking I don't know whether fucking What's the guy's name? That
Bernie Madoff. Yes. Like, there's levels of that. No, I know. But I know. But there's there's levels of con, you know? Oh, yeah. Yeah. No. What you're saying, like, like he wasn't bilking people out of their life savings. Like he wasn't saying no. Fuck him. I was saying I was saying we were all conning people. But what he was like just on another level. Like, yeah, yeah, yeah. Like we were all. What I did was wrong. What I did was wrong. I'm not saying I'm not defending what I did. Yeah. But like, I wouldn't do some of the shit you
You know, like later I found out he was dealing with like a clinic that was billing for chemo and like what it's Oh, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Why given a bad bad drugs and you think you're getting chemo and you're actually getting water. It's wild. It's wild. What the fucking guy did. He's I mean, it was and then the guy was always broke, legitimately always broke. Right. Sometimes he'd be like a gambler. It's so amazing how many gamblers I've met that were scam artists. Well,
They're scam artists, but if they weren't scam artists, then they'll make a million dollars a year. They're just raking in money. But they're always broke. Their work ethic is insane. They're extremely good salesmen. They're really raking in money, and yet they're always bouncing checks and they're broken.
And they're going, it's like, you're just made $200,000. You went to the casino, you walked out owed him 20. Now they pay him back in a week, they get another couple hundred thousand and they go back and they lose it again. Like it's such a sickness that you can't
understand it. I have no idea. So with him, I think it was more like money in, money out. Like it was easy money. You know what I was saying? Like easy money comes and goes. Is he buying Bugattis? Every time he goes out, he's buying like $2,000 dinners. He's paying for everything. He's a big shot.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. He's living in like this apartment. He should have been living in like an hour away from town on the beach. Like he's renovating the apartment, even though he's renting it. Like he's doing stupid shit. You know, pissing money away. Yeah. He had this Ducati. Like, bro, you don't even ride motorcycles. The fuck you buying a Ducati for? You know, that kind of shit. It's just
And then he, his, his worst vice, honestly, in my opinion was women. He, every time I was with him, he showed me a picture of a different chick. He was banging and he had like 15 different chicks. And as you know, money is kind of extremely expensive if they're, if they're out of your league, you know what I'm saying? So you're dating a 10 and you should be dating a five or a four and that 10 is costing a lot of money. It's over. It's over. It's over. And then he would, there was legitimately sometimes where he would just be like, Hey, you know, just give me like two more days.
Because he'd spent the money he was supposed to give me he spent he just fucking blow it right and then he do some other shit and come up with another 50 grand doing some scam and then he paid me from some other shit you know it was it was pretty crazy nothing worse than a con man it's a bad he's just bad with money yeah do you know any of his other scams like the specifics uh yeah one which i don't know how he didn't go to prison for was uh and i don't know how this flew this is what he told me
And I don't know how it worked out. He had, supposedly he had a contact at bank of America that like looked at accounts and he'd get a tip as to like accounts that were like heavy, like 20, 30, 40 million, right? Some stupid number. And he, he'd hit them up and he'd be like, all right, go after this one. So it'd make a check and they'd make it out for like a hundred grand. Some amount where the person might not notice.
and he'd look for people to cash these checks. Right. And he wouldn't cash them. I don't know how the fuck he did this. He'd go to a casino and he'd take out like $100,000. He promised the person 10% of whatever they got, which is insane because they're the ones taking all the risk, right? Yeah. And they're the ones who have the tax liability to people. It's so funny. People will do stuff. They're like, yeah, yeah, yeah. Give me 50. Give me. I want
10%. And they take 10% and not realizing you understand at the end of the year, you're going to get 1099. You're going to hang $30,000 in taxes on this fucking money fucking well. And they think they think oh man, I fucking got off. Yeah, I made 10 grand for nothing. No, not what just happened. It's fucking wild is what it is. So supposedly, yeah, he had the contact at the bank that knew that would overlook these accounts. I had a lot of money. And he told me, hey, go after this one.
And he'd go, he'd find schmucks off the street that were like, Oh my God, $10,000. Yeah, let's do it. And then he'd take them to a casino in the middle of the night. They'd go to the casino like one in the morning and somehow they'd cash like, I don't know how the fuck they did it, but they'd cash that check and they'd get a hundred grand in cash, pay the person. And then that's it. They parted ways. And he was doing that for like years. I don't even think he went to prison for that. He went to prison.
Well, I'll get to what he went to prison for. But yeah, the guy was just like he was he was already on federal probation. He actually was on probation because he had stolen. He used to work for Budweiser and he stole a bunch of beer and sold it and like stole. And then he claimed like, oh, yeah, I got robbed and they found that it wasn't. And he was already like had an open case. He was he was on FMA leave. What's that called? FMA late leave from from Budweiser. They were paying him because supposedly he had a broken knee. Like the guy was
Every scam possible under the sun. It was pretty wild. So the guys like every time he tries it, I'm at this point, I'm just like, bro, just yeah, keep that over there. I don't even don't even tell me about what else you're doing because I was like, you know, if I ever get in trouble, if I get in trouble, let me just get in trouble for this. And let's leave it be. I don't need like to spend the rest of my life in fucking prison with this fucking hit for just doing business with someone I shouldn't even be associating with, honestly.
Right. So what happens? Eventually, I actually end up leaving the insurance company just because, and this is completely legitimate, this isn't illegal. I get approached by a buddy of mine who wants to open a medical clinic in Florida. This is right when it goes legal. Right. This is like end of 2017. So right after Trump gets elected, we had it on the ballot in Florida to make it medical. So we, we, we voted yes.
And his idea was always like, you know how they have that saying of like, Oh, picks and shovels. Like, yeah, people got rich in the gold rush, but the people who got really rich are the people who were selling the picks and the shovels. So that was his idea of like the green rush. He was like, yeah, all right. I don't want to deal with, but what's the things, the ancillary services in that business where we could make money. And then he got the bright idea of owning the doctor's office. He's like, if we own the doctor's office, people are going to need their cards. There's no insurance involved. They have to pay cash.
You open up a clinic, you hire the doctor. That's it. Every patient that comes in pays about bucks or $200. He gets 75 bucks for every person that he sees. Crank them out. Yep. 100%. So he approached me because he already knew I had the sales background and all that stuff. And we had become good friends. This is like another friend of mine. So we open, we open the doctor's office and I leave the insurance company. Like I just drop it.
And we started doing that and that starts going really well and it's all legit money. Right. So around the time I'm already going to tell this guy, Hey, I'm done. Like, you know, I did way more than I was at this point. I'm like, you need to stop Nelson. You need to stop. Right. You've made at this point. I've probably made like, and cash that's gone through my hands. I probably had more than, I can't even tell you honestly, I like,
Was it more than or less than a half a million dollars? Close. Close. Yeah, close. Half a million dollars. Yeah. Roughly. Roughly. Yeah, allegedly. Yeah. There's write offs. There's gas. All that kind of shit. Yeah. Depreciation of your of your office. But that's money that went through my hands. Like, remember, I had to pay these people. So I didn't keep all that money. Yeah, yeah, no. So I had to like, so
You have to deal with them and there's management issues. I understand. I understand. No, no, no. I'm just saying I didn't physically keep all that money because I gave like half of it to other people. But it was hundreds of thousands of dollars I made within like 18 months. Right. Right. And so that money was funneled into a legitimate. No, no, no, no. I didn't use that money. Oh, I blew it. I traveled. I fucking. Did we just have a conversation about the idiot that was blowing all the money he made? I know. I know. I know. I totally get it. You're a jackass.
I'm going on vacation for 20 grand. You don't know what you're doing. I'm you're buying a Bugatti. That's insane. That's stupid money. I'm going to get up at the end of everything. So this is what happens when I'm just like, I have some money saved. Don't you understand? The best way is to bet it on all on black. See, I'm investing. You're an idiot. It's not what happened. I don't gamble. Anyway, I did go out on some very nice vacations.
I'll tell you that I went to Costa Rica, went to Columbia. It was nice. Anyway, so we'll talk about Columbia women later. So what happens is I have some enough money stacks to live for like a year, probably we're doing nothing. Like if I do nothing, I could live off this money for a year. Okay. And I'm like, all right, we're starting the cannabis business. I can live off of this. Let's,
Let's go legit enough. You haven't gotten caught until now. You're fucking lucky. Go tell this guy to fuck off and we're done. Right. I call the guy, the guy doesn't answer the phone. That's never happened. The guy always answers my phone call as I got something's wrong here. This is bad call. No answer. I get a call from one of his associates that I knew this lady that night. She's like, Hey Nelson, what's up? We got to meet. I was like, Ooh, here we go. I was like, all right.
Yeah, let's meet here. I give her a center and address and she pulls up and she's like, Hey, Felix got arrested by the FBI today. Oh, for what? So at that point I'm like, all right, but that's, is that all, you know, like what's going on? He's like, well, you know, he's, he got arrested. We don't really know anything else. That's that, you know? And I was like, okay.
All right. All right. Cool. You know, whatever. Of course, I'm like, all right, so take this as a sign. Stop. Right. This is over. The guy went to prison. You know, we got arrested. No, no, no. Yeah, he wasn't. He got arrested by the feds. Yeah, he's going to prison, but he just got arrested. At this point, you said he just got arrested. Right. But but when you get arrested by the feds in Miami, you get sent when you're like when you're don't when you don't get bond, you get sent to the man, the building in downtown Miami. That's prison.
That's like federal prison. You're, you're not even though it's, it's, it's a transition point, but you're going to be there until you either get bond or you get assigned to a prison and get sentenced. So he's in prison. Um, mind you, they gave him a $15,000 brawn and he didn't have the money. How about that? $15,000 and he didn't have the 15,000. That guy had made millions, millions easily since I met him, he had made three or $4 million easily in that year, year and a half.
The guy didn't have the 15 grand. His fucking wife was like going around calling like his buddies to borrow money to get them out. It was, it was fucking pathetic. Anyway, she never called me cause I don't know. I guess she didn't have my number. So what happens after that? I'm like, all right, I'm done. I'm going to leave this alone. Whatever happens happens, but I'm going to stop doing this. Right. But.
He owed me money. He went to jail and he never paid me about 10 grand that he owed me. I'm sure that was foremost on his mind. Yeah. No, but I was, but it was on my mind. That's for sure. Probably not his. So I was like, fuck man. How do I get paid? So I call, since he's not in the picture, I have to deal with the owners directly now. Right. So I'm like, let me let them know that this guy got arrested and I'm out and to pay me my fucking money. Right.
So I go and I approach these guys. They had dealt with me a few times. So they knew I wasn't like trying to, you weren't coming out of nowhere. Yeah. Cause they see my face and Felix had explained to them, the guy Felix or whatever had explained to them, this is my guy. Right. So I told them, Hey, we got to meet up. We got to talk. And then I, okay. So I go to their place and we go in the back, back office. And I'm like, listen, Felix got arrested. Do you guys know that? And they're like,
They put these faces on, they're all freaking like, what? And I'm like, oh, you guys are finding out for me? You guys are fucked. OK, well, look, that's not my problem. I need to get fucking paid, bro. Where's my money? And the guys are like, well, we paid him for some of it. This and that. And I was like, oh, here we go. They're not going to pay me. They ended up paying me half. Because I don't know, I guess I wanted to be nice guys. They could have told me to fly a kite. There's nothing I could have done about it. But they paid me. And out of courtesy, I gave him the warning. I was like, listen, this is what's going on.
I'm out. You paid me my money. I'm not doing this anymore. Of course, one of them calls me back and he's like, Hey, come back. You know, let's talk. And for the life of me, I just don't understand why I was like, yo, all right, let's talk. Right. At this point, I'm telling myself like, bro, what the fuck are you doing? You want to turn into this guy? Now you're going to have all these scams going. So basically what ends up happening is
One of the guys, I ended up cutting a deal with one of the guys and I ended up getting like what he used to get paid. Okay. So he was like, look, this is how much I'm billing. I'll give you half. I was like, okay, cool. So at this point I'm getting paid 3,500 per person. Right. And then I go off to the races again, because you can get physical therapy every six months.
So what you just go grab, I go back, I go back and I make probably just as much money all over again, if not more, because I didn't get to everybody. I only got, cause some people didn't want to do it or whatever. At that point, everybody knew the scam. Everybody knew the racket and I go to town. But then what happens? That guy goes to prison. And again, I'm not in prison yet. I'm not indicted. I'm not nothing. So I'm like,
Bro, should I count my blessings at this point? Yeah. Aren't you concerned that these guys are going to turn over on you or? I had never, I had never been arrested, you know? And I was like, at this point, like if he got arrested, now I'm doing what he was doing. I'm not like a level below him. Now I was doing what he was doing. Right. So it's like, like count your blessings at this point. So I left it alone.
And at that point, I didn't really have a choice because the main guy who dealt with me went, that's it. I didn't have like other clinic owners I could approach. So I kind of left it at that. And then at that point, the medical clinic, it was kicking ass. Like it was doing really well. So I said, all right, what? For real this time, like I'm not going to go out and look for a clinic owner or any of that shit, which of course, like since I hadn't dealt with the system, I knew like, I didn't know they were going to rat on me. I didn't know any of that shit.
I just, I was like, all right, whatever. They got caught. There's nothing I could do about that. And I just walk away. And then the medical business starts booming, right? With my body. And I just started doing that. And the funny thing is people, when I got arrested, most people thought, cause I obviously I'm, I never told anybody I was doing this, right? So like the pandemic happens or whatever. So this is like 2018. I don't get arrested until 2021.
Four years later, I really stopped doing everything in 2018. And then after the pandemic is when I get arrested, which is wild. We're thinking about it because it's like, fuck man, why'd they take so long? Apparently the FBI told me it was because of the shutdown. They didn't work for months and they came after me just like when they reopened and everything was like kind of moving again. So in the meanwhile, I'm like this entrepreneur in the, in the, in the community. I'm like breaking records in the medical company. We have like 4,000 clients in four years.
Everything's going fantastic. Everything's going really well. One of the partners gets bought out. Like everything's going fantastic. Everything really, really well. So that month, the company had actually made more money than it's ever made. So I was like, all right, I deserve a break. Let me go to, go to Columbia, which is funny. That whole thing about Thailand that you guys talk about here, it's the same thing in Columbia, the same exact thing. Like the women are like the most gorgeous women you ever seen in your life.
They'll marry you for like a dollar. You can have the most badass penthouse you've ever had in your life for like $700 a month. A meal on the street is like a dollar. It's, it's an amazing place. And then maybe eating like these women have these accents that just like, bro, they could ask me to eat a piece of dog shit and I do it with that accent that they have, I swear.
I got, I'd eat a mile long fucking turd just to eat out of where I came out of. Bad examples. All right. I hear you. All right. Yeah. The most gorgeous women you've ever seen in your life. Anyway, so I go to Columbia and I have my, my three day, three, four or five day debauchery binge. I'm like on top of the world. I have like a super fantastic business. I got away Scott free. I'm a legit guy now. I'm not breaking the law.
So I get back on a Monday and I get off the plane and we're walking towards immigration and there's these four TSA officers. Mind you, the one there's two of them are wearing regular clothes. He's like, Hey, you two step aside. And I was like, the fuck is going on here? You know, mind you, I'm coming back from Columbia. So I didn't really like, I had stopped doing it four years earlier.
Right. So at this point, I really did think like you forgot all about that. This is I got away with this. Yes. Like this is, you know, they're not going to wait four years. Exactly. Crazy. No, no, no. A thousand percent. So the TSA officers pull us aside. They let everybody pass with the last ones left. It was like this. Do you think it's ran a random stop? I have no idea at this point. I think it is weird, but again, it doesn't, it doesn't occur to me. So they stopped me. They asked me, where are you coming from? Maybe.
Why'd you go for a vacation? Who you with him? Who is he? My friend. This is mind you, this is a buddy of mine that just went to Columbia with me. They do this like 30 minute interrogation there in the hallway. Then they put me in a room to look through all my shit, fucking pat me down. After like an hour of being with them, they let me go. And I was like, Hmm, that's fucking weird. Whatever. I didn't think much of it. I just left it. It was random. That was Monday. So Thursday,
I got a call at five in the morning to my cell phone. It's a phone number I don't recognize. So I just turned the ringing off and I go back to sleep. But then I get a knock on my door. Was it a nice knock or was it a law enforcement knock? It was a concerned knock. Okay. So my aunt is my landlord. Okay. So she comes to knock on my door and I open the door and I'm like, I'm legitimately like waking up in the world.
And she says, bro, I'll never forget this. The cops are outside. They're looking for you. I was like, the cops. What? My phone rings again. And it's the same phone number that just called me five minutes earlier. I was like, I should answer this. Hello. Nelson Rodriguez. Yes. This is agent such and such with the FBI. You have five minutes to come outside of your house. Click.
Okay. That may very well be the nicest arrest I've ever heard. So they couldn't come in my house, right? Because my gates were locked. That's the only reason they couldn't come inside. And thank God that I lived. So I live in a, they have these things in, in Miami called efficiencies. I don't know if you've ever heard of it, but yeah. So I lived in like half of a house.
Thank God my aunt lived next door and she was able to come and knock on my door. Right. Because if not, who knows what would happen. They would have put it, you know, whatever. So I go outside. There's four city of Miami cops blocking off this road with like four city of Miami cruisers blocking off this side of the road with like eight cops. Another four city of Miami cruisers blocking off this side of the road with like another eight cops. There's
four FBI cars outside my house with like eight FBI agents and four of the FBI agents are fucking pointing AR-15s at my house. And I'm like,
What am I, a fucking terrorist? Yeah, this is fraud. This is ridiculous. This is a fraud case. Again, it's been four years, man. You don't understand. This is gone. It's still not, like, registering in my head. I understand that. I'm saying in general, in general terms, what are you doing? It's a fraud case. No, I get it. I get it. Nobody got hurt. This is not, no, there were no guns. There were no, nobody's been murdered. This is a fraud case. I don't know if there was, like, I'm a big Second Amendment guy. I owned a ton of guns. So I don't know if maybe they were... Oh, they might have known that. Yeah, so maybe they... Not that they keep lists.
Because they don't keep lists because that would be unconstitutional. But you heard from a guy, you may have some weapons. And the fact that you're constantly wearing a jumpsuit doesn't didn't help the situation. Definitely not. So, and this is a month after George Floyd, like a month. So I'm here like, I'm like, all right, these guys aren't gonna kill me. I take my cell phone out, I give it to my aunt,
I tell her, call my parents. I put my hands up. I turn around and I start backing up towards their cars. I don't even give them a chance to like say anything, nothing. One of the FBI agents starts telling my aunt, look, this is my card. Uh, if you want any information, we're taking them. They don't read me my Miranda Rice. They don't say shit. They pat me down. Uh, I can actually have the, where is the fuck? I have the video of me getting arrested channel seven news was out there. I back up. They arrest me and they take me.
I'm sitting in the car and I'm still like, all right, whatever. This is probably not, not for me though. Explain. She will clear this up later. I honestly thought they were looking for my dad because me and him have the same name and shit like this has happened to me like four times in my life where people were looking for me and they're actually looking for my father. So I was like, all right, we'll, we'll clear this up later. They take me all the way to the FBI headquarters in Miramar, Florida, which is like 30 minutes north, 30 to 40 minutes north of Miami.
I'm sitting there and I'm just, I'm calm. I'm like, we'll figure this out. You know, this isn't a big deal. They start bringing in other people that got arrested. And I was like, you start recognizing people. Yep. Instantly. No, no, no, no. Cheryl, what are you guys doing here? This is crazy.
Hey, it was all the people I dealt with during the whole fucking clinic scam. And I was like, bro, these guys this and these are just the low level guys are bringing or they bring in the doctor a mix. No, the doctors were never brought in. At least not with me. I don't know if they were ever brought in but not with me. They're bringing in the owners and some of the other recruiters. What about the main guy? He was already in prison. He ratted everybody out. How much time did he get though? The FBI told me at some point,
Whether, you know, I don't know if it's true or not. They were going to give him 14 years and he cooperated so much and gave so much information that he only ended up doing two. He had three years coming to him. Yeah. He could go right now and commit a crime and they're like, oh yeah, you've got three years coming. Yeah, it's wild. So he ended up doing two. So mind you, he gets arrested in 2018.
He's rebuilt his whole life before you guys. He got out in 2020. Before a couple years before you even get arrested. He got arrested in July of 2021. That guy's already out. Bump into you in a mall and be like, you're still out. You're probably behind. You might want to put some money aside. It's wild. Yeah. So that, I mean, it's pretty much game over at that point. I know what I'm getting indicted for. You know, I call a lawyer.
They let me go on bond that same day. We have a virtual court hearing because mine use July of 2021. So it's still like pandemic, all that shit. They take me from the FBI headquarters to the U S marshals office. And that's in the same building as the federal court in downtown Miami. And the whole time I'm sitting there in the, in the, in the fucking jail cell, they finger print me do all that shit. The U S marshals. I'm like, man, like this is nuts. Like I, at this point, I feel like.
some sort of, I don't know, like drug dealer, like drug smuggler. I feel like fucking Osama bin Laden or something like the amount of agents and shit that they come out with is pretty wild. U.S. Marshals like I thought U.S. Marshals like only went after like, you know, these big time cases and shit anyway. So I'm there and the whole time I'm sitting in the jail cell and I'm like, my life is fucking over. I am fucked. Goodbye plans. You know, bye bye. All those plans I had.
You know, cause I was thinking of taking the company public and doing all these crazy things overnight. I'm just like, that's, that's not happening. And I have no, I'm just like, I'm terrified at this point. I'm just like, what the fuck is going to happen? I don't know anything about federal prison. I'm probably going to get sent to a camp. I don't know about any of that shit. I'm just like, here we go. I'm going to be in a fucking bunch of prison in a fucking with like, you know, a prison with a bunch of like thugs and fucking people I don't want to be around.
I'm having all these thoughts in my head. The thought that pierced my head though was the piercing image of my mother crying. To this day, my heart just breaks. It sucks because I just don't know why I couldn't get the image of my mother finding out and being so disappointed in me because I was supposed to be the one guy in the family who was never supposed to go to jail, never supposed to get in trouble.
And I took it a step further. I didn't, I didn't just get in trouble. I got arrested by the feds. You took it a step further. All your fucking dumb ass cousins and shit and your uncles, they are the state got them, but you got arrested by the feds. So, you know, it's a, yeah, yeah. It's a graduation more grad. Yeah. It's more serious than, yeah. So they let us stew in there the whole day and we have our court date and like four in the afternoon, like damn near the end of the day.
I get out on a promissory note, Bon, because I'd never been arrested or anything. You know, my mom and dad sign a paper. They're like, yeah, we got to pay a hundred grand if he flees the country, which he's not going to. I surrender my passport the next day. I have to give up all my guns. So, you know, I sold all my guns to my mom and then I go see a lawyer and he's like, bro, you know, this is it. Uh, they showed me the discovery. It's not really all that good, but you know, we got to give this time.
This is one thing I'll say. I was so naive and this is how much I didn't understand the system. My lawyer is a federal lawyer, like federal defense attorney. He's done thousands of these cases. And the guy edged me on the whole time, like, oh, you might not go to prison. You're going to get convicted for sure, but you might not go to prison. You might not. Obviously hindsight is 2020. I didn't realize that fucking the feds have like a 98% conviction rate. And unless you're like,
I don't know, some politician who can rat out like a president of a country, you're going to prison. Right. Period. Yeah. By the time they've arrested you, their case is already done. It's solid. Yeah. Yeah. You know, unless you cooperate and get some time off, but even then, even if you cooperate and get time off, you're still going to prison. Yeah. Yeah. You're going to do some time. You're not getting, you're typically not getting off pretty clear. Correct. Correct. So the guy just tells me there's a good possibility you won't go to prison.
You're definitely getting convicted, but you might get like house arrest or probation. So the, the not knowing was what really bothered me. Like if, if from the beginning I would have known I was going to prison, I would have been okay. But I was out on bond for a year and a half while they were like doing whatever the fuck they wanted to do and putting, you know, putting some of the people, supposedly someone that co-defendants want to go to trial and they were like figuring all that shit out. So I pled guilty right away. And then I got, I didn't get sentenced until
and then I get sentenced. So I get arrested July, July of 2021 and I get sentenced in October of 2022. So I was out on bond that whole time. And needless to say in a year and a half, like I kind of want to like do, I want to figure out my life. I'm like, all right, what else am I going to do when I get out? You know, even though I have no clue how much time I'm going to get at that point or anything, I was like, you know what? I'm going to write a book because at least like, basically the way I saw it was overnight.
All the proof that I ever had of like having lived a life got wiped away. So I was like, damn, if I die tomorrow, there was no proof I was here. Okay, so I decided to write a book. And I actually have a copy here. I'll give you one. And then I write the book. So I started writing the book in August of 2021. And then I published the book in March of 2022.
I ended up doing like this book. Mind you, no one knows I'm out on bond. No one knows I got arrested. I'm just kind of like doing this and like people know me as this business guy. So they're like, Oh, it's the next chapter of his life that he's writing a book. I do this book launch party. I make like five, five grand that night. What is the book? Is it just on your Chris, a true crimes type story or is it about starting or is it just everything? Up until the point of I got arrested, but I didn't say anything about like all the fraud I did or any of that shit. It was just my life up until that point.
So needless to say, I need to write another one. So it went really well. Like I was like, okay, but how can I like do more of this? Like I like storytelling. So what can I do? And fun fact, me and Joe Rogan actually have the same birthday, August 11th. So I was a big Joe Rogan fan. I have a lot of time on my hands at this point. So I started watching him and I'm like, maybe I should start a podcast. I was like, all right, let me look into it.
And then in June of 2022, I decided to start doing it, but I did it audio only. I didn't, I didn't get cameras. I just did like me and a microphone. I started doing it. A few people listen to the episodes. They say, Oh man, this is good. Later on within a few months, I find a studio that kind of does studio time. I rent it. I started doing the episodes. And then right when I started doing the podcast in October of 2022 is when finally I get sentenced and I get sentenced to eight months in federal prison.
So what happens is they let me self surrender. So I picked January. So between October and January, I started recording episodes and I was like, all right, eight months. I do one episode a week. I did the calculations. I recorded enough episodes to schedule everything while I was away. Okay. So if you didn't know me, you thought I was still on the street. Right. Right. So, and it was your fan. If you subscribe or they have no idea you've disappeared. They have no idea. Exactly. And the funny thing is the day I got out from prison,
My mom had in me my cell phone and it was like, bro, you're a fucking dick. Where are you? What the fuck is going on? Yeah. Like people were trying to tell me congratulations on the podcast and all that shit, but obviously I didn't have my cell phone anyway. So I record enough and I, the week before I went away, I, so this is like December between December 30th of 2022 and January 9th of 2023. I spent that whole week just like scheduling everything for all those months. Man, you January 9th is my sister's birthday. Uh,
Which was yesterday. Happy birthday, Janice. On January 9th, she has to drop off her baby brother at prison. Her 32nd birthday. Fucking hell of a birthday present. With my niece, my nephew, my mom, and my sister. It was wild. So I schedule everything. And then they drop me off at Coleman. At the Coleman camp. So... Nice. Yeah. That's where Jess was. Yeah. When it was a female camp. It was a female camp, yeah. During COVID, they swapped it. They changed it to male.
Is that where you met Ross? Yeah. So I have a question. Was there a guy there named Donovan Davis? Yeah, he was in my same unit. Yeah, yeah, I wrote a story about him. Oh, that's cool. Gap. Oh shit. Yeah. Yeah. Wasn't he on Forbes or something like that? Oh, yeah, you know, he was in Forbes. Yeah, yeah. Forbes.com wrote a couple articles about him. Yeah, yeah, he was doing all the
Repairs on all the equipment and But yeah, Donovan, he's hilarious, right? He's funny. He's a funny guy. You met him at the medium at the low. That's a lot. I was there for God I was there with him for probably five years six years. When did you get out? I got out in 2019 And when did he go in you remember? Yeah about 14 maybe fuck he was in there a while
But he's got like 17 years. Fuck. He's still in. Yeah, that's why I was supposed to be getting out. Because I met him in 2023. When I went in, he's supposed to be getting out in like, February or March of this year. Oh, good for him. Yeah, that's because just because of the credits and everything.
But yeah, he anyway, so I just wanted because everybody knew him, right? Yeah, what 300 people in the camp? How many people are there by the time I left just under 500? Oh, okay. Yeah, yeah. They were they were shoving people in there by the time I was leaving and you met and you I didn't see I didn't know you met Ross there. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So so I go in strip church all that shit. I never been strip church in my life. So I was like, Oh, this is gonna be great. Change clothes. I walk in to introduce me to the Cubans.
which is weird because I would have thought that place was full of Cubans because it's in Florida and it wasn't, there was like 10, 11 Cubans. Later I found out that Cubans, the reason there were so little of them is because you can only go to a camp if you're a U S citizen. Right. If you're a resident with a green card, they don't let you go below the low. Yeah. So most of them are in the, are in the, uh, in the lows. Yeah. I would assume Miami lows probably Chuck full of Cubans. Yeah. Yeah. Or maybe the Miami camp. So,
That's like, that's it. I'm in prison. It's crazy. Like I couldn't even, I still couldn't believe it. It was, it was so hard for me to like, like process. I mean, for you, obviously it was different, but for me, it was like, how the fuck did I end up here? Like I was supposed to be this kid who just did things differently and like was a decent kid. And here I am at 30 years old, like right when I turned 30 thrown in fucking prison.
It's fucking wild that night. And then that night, I'll tell you the funny story about first night in the shower. So I'm taking a shower. I'm taking a shower. And there's I don't know the whole thing about the the the the slippers. Oh, no, no, no, no, no, no. I don't I didn't know the whole thing about the slippers. Right. So I shower slides. Yes. Yeah.
So the shower slides, I leave them at the end of the stall and I go in. So I hear someone yelling, Kuwa, Kuwa. That's what they used to call me in there in Cuba, whatever. Because my prison was full of Puerto Ricans. Like out of the 500 of us that were there, it was like 350 Puerto Ricans. It was crazy. Never seen so many Puerto Ricans in one spot. The guy who's yelling my name or my nickname is this guy named Melo. Melo has a scorpion tattoo on his fucking face. So I'm thinking like,
Here we go. I turn around and he's like, he's like, put your fucking slides on. I put them on. I finished taking a shower. I go outside. And when I'm like drying off in my room, he's like, yo, bro, you're going to get fucking fungus on your feet. Yeah, you'll get that's how like unfamiliar with the prison system. I was, you know,
I wonder how bad it really is, you know what I'm saying? Because everybody wears them, like you don't wear them. Yeah, it's disgusting. I mean, in our prison, I'll be honest, it was really clean. No, I was just saying, and the thing is, they're constantly cleaning it. Constantly cleaning it. Every morning. It isn't filthy or anything like that. But the fact is, is that
you have to understand that if this guy gets a cold, everybody's getting cold, even though they're wiping everything down constantly, you just have no idea how many everybody's using the same stuff. And there's just, and not to get gross, but the shit that guy's doing the shower. Yeah, of course. I think that that's me. That's what my thought was, because I was like, there's so many chemicals in this place. I don't think that there's anything necessarily alive. Yeah, but even if you miss a spot or something, you know, everybody's taking a piss in there and fucking wagging off in there is gross. So
that night. So that happens in the shower. Uh, the Cubans are pretty cool with me. So everybody gets me like a pair of slides, actually two pairs of slice. Not nice enough. I meet these old poppy. He has cancer now. God, okay. He's, he's not doing well. He got out after doing seven years and then he got diagnosed with colon cancer. It's fucking horrible, man. It's the coolest old man you'll ever meet. Um, he, he gets me what I need. He likes, he knows I like to write. So he got me like this notebook. All the Cubans kind of hooked me up.
So that night I'm sitting in the, in my bunk. I'm just like laying down, you know, they did count or whatever. I'm laying down in my bunk. I'm looking at the roof and I'm just like, wow, I'm in fucking prison. Like I'm in shock. I'm in total shock at this point. I can't even, I can't cry. I can't laugh. I'm so I'd never been in shock in my life. I got, well, he's in shock or when people freeze or whatever. I never understood what that was. And then that happened to me that night. And I was just like, you know,
The fuck is going to happen now. But then funny enough, you know, life is life is strange when you think you're at, you're at your lowest. It's, it's like, it's more like a, like a springboard or like a catapult to like another phase of your life. You know, it's pretty wild. So for some people, for some people, they hit bottom, they just stay there. So yeah, that brings up a question. Do you think that's a choice? Oh yeah. Yeah.
The people just let that that define them and they don't they tell themselves I'll never break. I'll never I'll never amount to anything. Yeah, I'll never get out of this. I'll never bounce back. I agree. They just that self-taught kind of just destroyed. They and you've heard the term, you know, you suffer more in your mind than you do in reality. 100,000%. And that's that's true. It's like, you know, like when I went to the dentist, like, you know, I told you,
Listen, I was so overwhelmingly anxious and worried. And it was nowhere near as bad as what I had in my mind. It just never is every time. It just never is anything that I worry about. This is going to happen. This is going to be horrible. And then it happens. There's just not right. So but yes, the same thing you to prison and just like when I got out of prison, I was told you the other day, like, that's all.
I'm going to be working at McDonald's. I'm never going to get a shot. Maybe someday I'll be able to sell used cars. I'm never going to bounce back. I'm never going to make any money. I'm never going to, it's going to, you know, life's going to be your, my expectations of life had dropped so dramatically. I just didn't have any real expectations. I wanted to do some things that I thought if I busted my ass, maybe someday I can pull these things off and I work at it. But you know, my expectations were very low. Yeah. For me, it was.
And mind you, the podcast is already working, right? Meaning like it's, it's functioning without me. Right. But I'm so in shock and so in my brain that night that I couldn't even think about that. Like whatever. But anyway, so I wake up the next morning and that's kind of gone.
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Cox and use the code Cox at checkout again That's ghost bed comm slash Cox with the code Cox at the checkout to save a whopping 50% off sitewide and I wake up They send me to Unicor to work, you know Fucking newbies get the worst jobs. All that shit. I Get acclimated, you know, who's who this and that Unicor is the Unicor is the factory that they have yeah, it's to work at. Yeah, what do they make there?
We start at like 12 cents, 10 cents an hour. No, no, I mean, what did you fabricate? Oh, we got like these long pieces of plastic and some long pieces of metal. So I'm assuming when you assembled it, it became furniture or something like that or like shelving. Oh, okay. I was gonna say, you know, because of the other one, they make the paneling or dividers for cubicles. It could be that way because we got these long things.
Supposedly never asked what you were doing. I didn't give a fuck about that place. Fuck that place the fuck So unicorn yeah, so I get sent over to unicorn and This is this is interesting how life comes full circle. So being from Miami Rick Ross is like, you know the big deal down there and Rick Ross would always mention this group of guys named the booby boys in the rap songs and
I didn't even know what that really was until I went to prison. I'm going to tell you why. So I go to prison my second day, third day, whatever. They send me to Unicor. I go to Unicor. This old black dude is like teaching me what to do and stuff. They send me back to the unit. We're done working for the day. And some guys like, Oh, you know who that is? I was like, bro, I just got here yesterday. I don't even know where the fuck I'm standing. No, I don't know who that is. Oh, that's spoon like spoon. The fuck does that make me fork? Is he supposed to be someone important? I don't know.
He's like, bro, he got pardoned by Obama. He was in Miami guy. So I ended up looking him up and I was like, oh shit, I wrote a book report about this guy in like middle school. And he's the booby boys was basically this big drug group that controlled like the black neighborhood in Miami for years. They did it there for a while. Um, and that's who,
It was weird. Me and him became really good friends. We took on this weird mentor-disciple thing. Spoon knows I'm going to write his book one day. You said he got pardoned by what? Obama. Yeah, because he wasn't out yet. Yeah. So he got a commutation. Commutation. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
So Obama was, he wasn't allowed to go down. And so that happened. They let him start working his way down from muted the sentence. Instead of you being like a pen, and then correct, they commuted the sentences where he was like, but they did it gradually. So you didn't just get let out because they realized like, if you can't, I've been locked up 20 years, you let him hit the street with nothing no halfway house.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's not good to come to another crime and go back to prison. So you have to grab. So these guys from the pen, we're going from like the pen to the medium, to the low, to the low, to the camp, to the camp, to a halfway house, then to the street. Yeah. Pretty much. So I caught him. Well, he, he maybe only had six years left at that point. He'd been in jail for like 17 years, something stupid. Uh, he's in North Carolina now, I think he's getting, he's getting transferred to the Miami camps. But anyway,
him and me become buddies, become good friends. So he, uh, that was pretty wild. Like again, I'm like, you know, I like the gangster stories and all that stuff. I ended up becoming friends with one of them in prison, like one of the gangster stories from when I was a kid. It's like, it's crazy how life kind of like, you know, does all that. But yeah, um, that was my second day in there. By the time I'm a month in, uh,
I'm used to it. I got my routine, you know, I'm doing I'm exercising. What, bro, you did 14 years, I still don't I did it too. But what's this? Like, 13 years, 14. I'm sorry, 13 years browning out that yesterday. Sorry, sorry, sorry, sorry, sorry, 13 years. Um, what do you mean? That's actually from the state started in the state and then it kind of came over. So in the state,
I don't know which state I don't know if this is all states or just in general, you're not allowed to eat. I'm sure you're not allowed to speak when you eat like the inmates in Florida. This is my understanding at some prisons. And I don't even know if they still do this but they the guards like they give you five minutes to eat. So you come in sit down across from somebody else at a long table. So you sit down you you eat real quick.
And they count down, so they start counting down. And then as they count down, and you're not allowed to talk, so it's not like, hey, bro, you're not allowed to take anything off another person's plate or do anything. So you basically just eat.
And, and you don't talk and because you're not allowed to say, Hey man, I'm going to see you guys or say, Hey, I'm leaving. You knock on the door. It's a way of saying like, you know, I'm leaving to you guys. And everybody like looks up and nods and whatever. I just started doing it because I saw everybody else doing it. So it's funneled down from the state prisons to the interesting. Okay. So it was explained to me, you know, did you have hamburger day? Of course. Why is this? Yeah. So
The way Wednesday was explained to me was that the Cubans had been, I don't know if it was Jimmy Carter, or it was Reagan, I forget who, all the Cubans were being deported. Really? Yeah, it wouldn't, you know, keep on after the Merrill boat lift. Oh, yeah, they were running rampant. Yeah, crime wave, they'd arrested, you know, thousands of them, they were filled up in Atlanta. And
So Reagan was saying was that was that that that that prison riot that happened? Yeah, Reagan was saying like, we was going to send them back. I want to say it was Reagan. I'm not positive that sounds like Reagan. He's going to send them all back. And what they did was they had a riot, they took over the prison. And then they negotiated over the course of several days after they took it over. And one, he they wanted their sentences to be reviewed and not have to go back to Cuba.
And two, they wanted, I forget what else they wanted. And some something completely silly. And the other thing they wanted was they wanted hamburgers and French fries on Wednesday, at least once a week. And so the BOP said, fine, we'll give you hamburger and French fries. We reviewed, they did everything they got the three things that they got. One of them was hamburgers and French fries on Wednesday. Thanks to the Cubans. Thanks to the Cubans. That's what I was told. I was like, that can't be true. And they were like, I'm telling you,
That is absolutely true. I'm like, there's no fucking way they're like, it's absolutely true. You know what else I heard? And I think it happened in in 96 if I'm not mistaken 1996. So it was under Clinton if that's that's true. What I also heard is that's why a certain amount of
I don't think this can be true because I'm sure there's prisons in Miami that have more than, they don't allow a certain amount, like more than a certain amount of Cubans in each prison because of that. That's probably possible. That seems perfectly reasonable.
I remember, but I remember one time I was like, I can't believe that every Wednesday they are giving us when I first got there, like the hamburgers and french fries were good. They gave us like cheeseburgers and for me it was good. Everything was good. They weren't bad, but it was too small. They were tiny. When I read this is when I got there. Old menu. You were on the new, you were on the national menu. When I got there, we were just, it was just regular food. Like it was good. And I remember thinking, man, I can't believe that on Wednesdays they give us hamburgers and french fries. That's hilarious.
And I remember one of the guys goes, it may be prison. He looked at me and he said, this is actually my cousin. He goes, it may be prison, but it's still fucking America. He said it with such conviction. I love it. He's got a point. So I actually start getting like, by the way, the friend, if you go to prison and you have friends that like ask your mom about you, send you commissary, like
You need to cherish those friends for the rest of your fucking life. Okay. If those people call you in the middle of you having sex with your dream girl, you need to stop for a second and call and talk to them and entertain whatever the fuck they want. And I hang up the phone whenever they're done. Then go back to fucking your, your dream girl, because those people, they're invaluable, bro. They're worth their weight in gold anyway. So my mom's telling me when my friends are sending me commissary, she's keeping me updated.
The podcast is actually getting some traction while I'm gone, which is cool, which was the plan. I mean, I couldn't control it, but, and then while I'm in there, they take out my celly, this Puerto Rican kid named, we used to call him Jack Sparrow. Uh, this Puerto Rican kid, they take them out and then they put some weird dude in my cell and I'm like, all right, fuck that. So I had already become friends with the, the head orderly in the other, in the other unit. So how that happened was.
The second day I got there when I was getting commissary, I hear a familiar voice and I was like, there's no way on the planet. I know this guy that is not Jose Batista over there. I look over Jose Batista. Jose Batista was my coworker at the insurance company. Okay. He also caught a separate case for me, but for the same shit, same exact thing got ratted on everything. It was, it was weird. Like we even got like more or less the same amount of time. So I walk over to him like, Jose, you remember me? Oh shit, Nelson, what's up? He greased me and he's like, yo, coming to my unit tonight.
I go to his unit and who do I meet? Ross Mandel. Ross is sitting in his, in his room with the head orderly G who also I became really good friends with this kid named Geo, who was like the unit chef. Like he would whip up stuff for us. And that's how I met Ross. Okay. Which Ross looked very different in prison. He was like 60 pounds overweight. He hadn't gotten his teeth done. So he looked very different.
But yeah. Um, so that night I become friends with the head orderly. So what happens is they shove some weird guy in my cell and I was like, yeah, I'm done. Let me leave to the other unit. So I talked to the head orderly, gee, I became friends with, he moves me over there. When he moves me over there, basically, uh, I, me and him become really good friends. And that's when I built the routine. I started writing. I read, I read a ton of books in those, I ended up getting out at five months.
Uh, I read like 31 books. I love, I love reading, man. It really, I hadn't read in a long time. So you didn't do eight months. You did. I ended up doing five because would you a halfway house or just home because of care exact. Okay. Yeah. So you know how they did the whole 50% or whatever. Yeah. I ended up getting out in five months and they, I was supposed to go straight home, but what ended up happening was they didn't do the whole home inspection or whatever the fuck. So they actually helped me hostess there for like two months and then they sent me home. So,
The cool thing was when I got let out and I was at the halfway house, I had a couple of YouTube shorts to like 150,000 views. That to me was like, Oh my God. For a channel you had just started and you weren't monitoring. Exactly. Exactly. So I get let out. The podcast is going well. Mind you, I had like scheduled way out in advance. Right. So you saw time. Yeah. So I got plenty of time.
To figure out what I'm going to do. So while I'm at the halfway house, actually tell, I get in contact with the owner of that studio. I used to record at, and I managed to convince the halfway house to give me an internship at the podcast studio. I have a fucking ankle monitor at this point and everything. So I get to go there at night and record my episodes and then just come home. So that's how I kept it going. Like I kept recording and eventually I got let off the ankle monitor. Right? So now I'm like,
mobile on probation, I can go. Eventually some guy that I had on my show, he's like, do you know this guy? And I'm like, Ian Bick, I've never heard of this guy. No, who is he? And he's like, oh, he's, he went to prison. He's a podcaster. You guys, you shouldn't hit him up. So I DM him thinking like, bro, this guy's a podcaster, legit podcaster. He's not going to respond. Hey man, I love what you're doing. I went to prison too. Would love to connect. At that point, he was just doing shorts, right? He wasn't getting started the channel yet, right?
Not yeah, this is this is October, September of 2023. Yeah, about to start it. Because I think he started in January of 2024. Or did he do? No, no, no, I think 23. Was it 23? 23. Yeah, because he had some episodes out. Oh, okay. So okay. Because when I heard about him, he didn't even have a channel yet. It was just tick tock. He was blowing up on tick tock. Yeah, he did start with the short form stuff. So
I just leave it alone. And I also knew like, man, he's busy. Like, you know how you did with your phone? How you're like, bro, this is the whole day. Like, you know, I have to get back to people like hours later, because he's the same. His phone is just like cluttered. Yeah, horrible. But anyway, he gets back to me. And then I end up setting up something with him in March of 2023. No, 2024. I'm sorry. I go up there. I record his episode. And that was my first big little pop, like of getting my first my face out there and getting my story.
I've become good friends with him since. Actually, last month I went up to his studio and recorded a bunch of stuff because I'm in between studios in Miami. And here we are. Now I'm on Matt's show.
Have you ever seen the original guy that you were working with and got out? Have you ever seen him? Never seen him again. I would rather never see him for the rest of my life for obvious reasons. The restitution was half a million dollars, and they were obligating me to actually pay $122,000. Okay, so they're splitting that among several people. Yes. Okay. And I'll get to that now. Right when I got
That's a great question because right after I got back from seeing Ian at his studio in March of 2024 and recording my episode with him, the week after my probation officer calls me, mind you, you know what this is like in financial crimes. Like they're into your, like I'm broke as shit. I'm making no money on purpose because I'm like, man, if I make more money, all this stuff, like it's just hard. It's a difficult situation, right? Because they had, they're looking at you through with a fine tooth comb that my, my,
I don't know. Can we say the C word on, on YouTube? Anyway, whatever. Uh, this fucking bitch of a, you can't, yeah, don't say that because it'll, I didn't, I didn't, I didn't, I didn't, you're difficult to deal with probation, my probation officer, difficult fucking asshole of a probation officer that I was dealing with. Uh, basically like blackmailed me into like paying more than I should. Long story short, March, right after I get back from Ian big, she calls me and she's like, Hey,
Nelson, what's up? It's, you know, such and such a probation. Hi, ma'am. How are you doing? Okay. So I don't know how this happened, but your restitution is paid off. One of your co-defendants paid her off. So you, as of today, you don't owe any more money. Well, I wanted to ask and I was like, I can't ask. Can I write? I'm not going to. So I wish I knew who it was so I could thank them. But
Yeah, I got off. I'm very blessed because that never happens ever.
Hey, you guys, if you like the video, do me a favor, hit the subscribe button, hit the bell so you get notified of videos just like this. Also share the video. We're going to put all of Nelson's links for social media and for his YouTube channel in the description box. You can go there, click on it. You can subscribe and follow. Do me a favor and consider joining our Patreon. It's $10 a month. We have Patreon exclusive content on Patreon and it really does help Colby and I make these videos. So thank you very much.
See ya.
It started with a scream inside a quiet Maryland home.
A mother trying to protect the family dog and her son in the grip of a violent hallucinogenic rage. By the time it was over, she was dead, and he claimed LSD made him do it. His name, David Minor IV, and we talked to him. Listen to Invisible Choir every other week as we uncover the most haunting true crimes you've never heard of, available wherever you get your podcasts.
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"text": " Talkspace is the number one rated online therapy. They work with many insurance companies and most people with insurance pay zero dollars for therapy or psychiatry. You can change your provider for free. This helps you find the licensed therapist who fits your needs the best. Therapy can be costly, but part of the mission of Talkspace is to provide quality care that is accessible and affordable whether or not you are insured. Talkspace makes getting the help you need easy. Let me tell you more about why I love Talkspace."
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"text": " I learned that talking things out can change your whole life. When I finally opened up about my past, it helped me understand myself and make better choices. As a listener of this podcast, you'll get $80 off of your first month with Talkspace when you go to Talkspace.com slash podcast and enter promo code SPACE80. That's S-P-A-C-E 8-0. To match with a licensed therapist today, go to Talkspace.com slash"
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"text": " Hi, I'm Jean Chatsky. You may know me as the host of the Her Money podcast or the financial editor of NBC's Today Show for 25 years."
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"text": " It started with a scream inside a quiet Maryland home."
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"text": " A mother trying to protect the family dog and her son in the grip of a violent hallucinogenic rage. By the time it was over, she was dead, and he claimed LSD made him do it. His name, David Minor IV, and we talked to him. Listen to Invisible Choir every other week as we uncover the most haunting true crimes you've never heard of, available wherever you get your podcasts."
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"text": " The whole healthcare system is such a scam. You're talking to a guy that was on the inside of an insurance company. The FBI swarming a Miami house over healthcare and wire fraud. What United does is what every insurance company does. You want to talk about a legal racket that's protected by the federal government? It's the biggest racketeering scam on the face of the planet. The official charge I was given was conspiracy to commit healthcare fraud. And looking back at it, I didn't think it was a big deal, but now I understand kind of like the cost of what I call a crime."
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"text": " So what I thought was happening was we were taking the money from the insurance company and it was like, eat the loss. Fuck you. Right? No, no, no, no, no, no, no. That's not what happens. They take, they don't take a loss. They report the fraud to the federal government and the federal government reimburses them every dollar we've stolen. Okay. So now I didn't steal from blue cross blue shield. Now I stole from the American taxpayer. Right. Now I'm on the hook for that money with the federal government. So it's like,"
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"text": " That the whole health care system is such a scam like this whole thing would lead you man First off Luigi Mangione is a murderer. I'm not even gonna try to defend that guy but The conversation it's a total scam You're talking to a guy that was on the inside of an insurance company What United does is what every insurance company does they deny a bunch of claims? You know how many legit doctors I saw that were billing or legit hospitals that were billing for a legal a legal"
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"text": " Within compliance procedure they did that the insurance company was like, we don't feel like paying you $50,000. You know, we're going to deny your claim. Go appeal it. Go appeal it to who? To the same people who don't want to pay me? It's a scam. It's a total insurance is like, you want to talk about a legal racket that's protected by the federal government. It's the biggest racketeering scam on the face of the planet. The only difference is that what I do is illegal and what they do is legal. You know, so it's like the flip side to the coin. But yeah, I didn't realize the toll like"
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"text": " how that system is kind of like really protected and how I'm really like, what I did was it really hurt like everyday people because at the end of the day that causes like all kinds of burdens on the economy and the average taxpayer. So yeah, it's, it wasn't until I finished doing everything and I learned more about the legal system that I was like, fuck. So that's, that's what happens. That's why I affect other people. It's so I worked for a Medicare HMO. Right."
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"text": " So we're dealing with low income senior citizens, people who can't afford regular health insurance. And in Miami is such a scam. You have like Leon medical centers, simply healthcare plans, sun health, human. I'm sure this means nothing to you guys, but all these insurance companies offer what's called Medicare advantage. So basically instead of having original Medicare through the government where you're covered up to 80% of your medical bills,"
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"text": " They get this Medicare advantage plan where basically that company is getting a subsidy from the government. And what they do is they go in and negotiate with doctors to pay them a lower rate and they get the difference in the subsidy. Okay. Right. So it's a, that's a, it's a total scam. Like there, instead of you just having your regular Medicare that pays you, it's a company that basically goes in, takes over your Medicare and like low balls, all these doctors and hospitals to make money off of you."
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"text": " Just to give you an idea of how lucrative it is, Simply Healthcare Plans, a company I worked for before I quit, they made $3 billion in 2018 or 2017. $3 billion. They had actually just gotten acquired for a billion dollars by Anthem. Anthem is the same company that owns Blue Cross Blue Shield and a bunch of other giant companies. They deny claims all the time."
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"text": " Even if you, and it was an HMO, so that means they had a network. You had to go in network. You had to go to an in network doctor, in network facility, unless it's like an emergency and emergency bills got denied all the time. They would deny people for going, Oh, cause you didn't go, Oh, you went to the right doctor, but you didn't file the, or your one digit off on the claim number. Oh, you, you did this, but you know, you didn't do it at fucking five o'clock, which is the time when you're like stupid shit. And they denying, they denied."
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"text": " Any little reason they had to deny medical claims, they did it. And again, you're talking about senior citizens, people who we should be looking out for and not trying to take advantage of. Right. You know, they talk about scammers like what I did. Oh yeah. You're, you're a fraudster yet these Medicare HMO companies are taking advantage of old people. Like the most vulnerable class we have in society, which is elders and kids. So."
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"text": " Yeah, man, like the whole thing that's going on with United. Yeah. Fuck Luigi. He's not cool. I mean, he murdered a guy in cold blood, but it does bring up the same old conversation. Like, and now how they're involving AI to like deny claims and stuff. That's a whole nother ball game. I don't, I haven't seen how that works, but the conversation definitely needs to be had. I mean, there's no reason they should be federally backed. If you get, if money gets stolen from you, you got to deal with that. That's why the fuck is that coming from taxpayer money? Why should that come from the federal government? That makes no sense."
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"text": " You know, these systems, they should definitely be updated or something. It's a broken system, that's for sure."
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"text": " We had a TikTok about that same topic due to million. Oh, that's fantastic. Yeah. And the guy was talking about the AI, basically the healthcare, you know, they, the AI that was denying claims and they knew was faulty, but the CEO is just like, let it roll, let it ride. Yeah. So, no, no, the CEOs are completely complicit and aware of denying these, these claims. Don't think that it's like, oh yeah, it's some guy and no, no, no, no. They're making the decisions from like a high level. They are hyper aware of what's going on in their companies."
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"text": " and they're the ones making the decision to deny those claims to make the company more money. It's completely illicit and it's disgusting. It's pure greed. It's just greed. I've been using Mando's whole body deodorant and let me tell you, you can use it anywhere. Pits, balls, thighs, and even your feet. Mando's powered by mandelic acid, so it stops odor before it even starts. It blocks odor all day."
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"text": " Once again, that's shopmando.com and use the promo code COX. What do you want to do? Let's kind of start at the beginning. I actually have to start before I'm even born. I have to start with like my parents. No, I'm serious. I'm serious. And it'll make sense. Okay."
},
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"text": " So we had a guy do that. It was four and a half hours and no, we'll do we'll go like it was 30 minutes of him talking about shit that happened before he was born. And in the end, it never tied it. But that's why I look at Colby, because Colby and I, when we when he left, I looked at each other and went, Did that motherfucker start 30 minutes for 30 minutes before he was even born? Yeah, his Yeah, it was like, Alright, well, I'm born and raised in Miami, Florida. So a big"
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"text": " I'm a walking contradiction. And I'm going to tell you why I'm there. I was incredibly inspired by Scarface as a kid, not for the drug dealing and not horrible. I know. I know. But follow me for a second. Not for the drug dealing and not for the murdering. I knew I wasn't going to do that. I knew that that guy was a moron for doing that. What I admired about the guy is that the guy showed up here with fucking holes in his shoes. Mind you, he got here the same way my mother did the same way the Mario boat lift. You know how?"
},
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"text": " My mom, you know how they had the whole thing under the 10, I-95 and all that? My mom was one of those people. So it was, it was a very real story for me. Like it was, this guy was just another one of the guys that showed up on the boat and how he just said, I'm going to do X, Y, and Z. And he did it. It was like, it was inspiring to me because I didn't, at that time, I didn't know anybody successful. I didn't know anybody that made money. So I was like, man, like if I could do that, but with something else, my life will turn out pretty good."
},
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"text": " You know, and it really, it just stuck with me and stuck in my brain. Like he was like this confident, like ambitious guy. Right. So that whole, and that whole era to me is like, I've told you, that's my, one of my favorite eras, like eighties Miami, all the fucking gangster drug lords and shit. It's just, to me, it's, it's a never ending, like exciting chain of stories. Like look at the Cowboys guy. He's look how much money he's made off that franchise. He's made like,"
},
{
"end_time": 717.483,
"index": 26,
"start_time": 689.718,
"text": " One, two documentaries, a talkie series, and it's all like eighties Miami, Cuban drug dealer guys, you know, so that all, that all was very inspiring to me as a kid. You know, I think of his name Corbin, Billy Corbin, Billy Corbin, Jewish guy down in Miami. So, so that's how my mom got here. She got here in 1980 and the boat lift, um, with my grandfather, my grandfather, that's, that's, I lived with him for many years. My father got here in 1988."
},
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"end_time": 731.698,
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"text": " He actually got a fake Venezuelan passport and went to Panama. And then in Panama, he took the bus to Mexico and then he crossed the border where my aunt was waiting for him to go get him. My parents met and then"
},
{
"end_time": 755.555,
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"start_time": 731.92,
"text": " Funny enough, right when I'm born in 1992, I don't know how this happened, but my dad decides to get involved in the drug trade. Don't ask me how he decided to do that after he had kids. You saw Scarface, right? This is the way you do it. Yeah. So he starts making money, make a really good living. And that lasted, that was very short-lived because"
},
{
"end_time": 785.486,
"index": 29,
"start_time": 755.794,
"text": " What short lived like six months or a year or two years? What's the lifespan of it? Well, I didn't find any of this out until I was older. I was like a teenager when when like I started learning. Oh, so that's why we went to Disneyland every weekend, you know. Did he did he go to jail? No, no, no, no. He he he can't he gained enough sense to where he stopped. But it was a good I would have to say good solid three years. OK, solid three years. You know, he'd tell me stories when I was older of like,"
},
{
"end_time": 812.619,
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"start_time": 785.811,
"text": " You remember that little, you know, bag that had Woody on it that I would take to like trips and that was like your bag and I'd put in lockers. Yeah, that had a hundred thousand dollars in cash in it. I was like, OK, that's great. Or my uncle would be like, oh, one time I walked into your house when you were like at school and I went to see your dad and he was like, hey, come here. And he went and he opened the mattress and you had like, you know, two hundred fifty thousand dollars under the mattress. I'd hear these stories and I was like, bro, what the fuck?"
},
{
"end_time": 842.517,
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"start_time": 814.241,
"text": " But another thing, another thing you got to understand about Miami and Cubans in the eighties, like everybody was doing it. Right. That was just the way of life. I have an uncle, I grew up with all my extended family. So all my grandparents, siblings were like my aunts and uncles. Um, I have an uncle he's, he's since passed away. My uncle, uh, Artemio it's Spanish for Arthur. He was a huge trafficker. Like he did it for years. He did it for like 25 years, never got caught. Like,"
},
{
"end_time": 871.596,
"index": 32,
"start_time": 842.773,
"text": " It was, it's pretty wild how it was just such a normal part of Miami in the eighties. It didn't make sense to me. And that's built the whole city. That's built the entire city, downtown, the skyscrapers, and it's, it's kind of spilled over. Like that was the basis for the boom in Miami. You had that whole gold rush you see in Miami now. It's like the second version of what happened in the eighties, you know, but now it's like fraud. Yeah. We talked about that yesterday. We were talking about how like that whole kind of from Miami up the,"
},
{
"end_time": 902.108,
"index": 33,
"start_time": 872.193,
"text": " the up the coast there. It's like there's tons of con men. And all these guys get arrested in New York and go to prison for fraud. They all relocate back down there. The mobsters all relocate back down there. Yeah. And South Florida, funny enough, my, my, my judge sat in court and said, you know, if this were other areas of the country, we'd be having a different conversation. But I specifically have a message from Washington that I need to send a message to you guys here in South Florida, because this is the capital, the fraud capital of the world."
},
{
"end_time": 926.664,
"index": 34,
"start_time": 903.063,
"text": " The fraud capital of the world, bro. That's fucking insane. I didn't even know that. But yeah, I don't know what it is about Miami. I think maybe it's the lifestyle that attracts those kinds of people. Snakes and the con men and all the weird shit that goes on. I've never really understood it, but that's a stigma that we carry, unfortunately, and it sucks because there's a lot of great people that have built the city. You know, my grandparents, my uncles, aunts, they're just honest people."
},
{
"end_time": 955.06,
"index": 35,
"start_time": 927.432,
"text": " Yeah, like that's just been the way of life down there. You know, everybody knows somebody, everybody has that uncle, you know, it was there's, so there's a funny joke that went on in the eighties. Um, when you show up at like a mini mansion or a mansion, there was this big party and you'd meet the owner of the house and you're, and you'd be like, what do you do for a living? And he's like, Oh, I'm, I'm the marimbero. I play the marimba. The marimba is the silo phone. It's like a wooden silo phone. So that act, that name caught on. So that's what we called."
},
{
"end_time": 981.493,
"index": 36,
"start_time": 955.794,
"text": " drug traffickers, like Cubans in Spanish, we call them marimberos. Okay, that's like a made up term that doesn't even exist in the rest of the country. It's funny when you think about it. And then we actually tell other people who speak Spanish about that term. And they're just like, they don't even know what that means. All right. So, so anyway, so I'm born in 1992. You know, that whole that all happens. I'm like, in"
},
{
"end_time": 1008.951,
"index": 37,
"start_time": 981.817,
"text": " elementary school kid you know my my parents are square people at this point they make money they're like doing my mom's a waitress my dad's a truck driver and then I have a fairly normal upbringing besides here and there you know again my the Miami culture had a cousin who was just like nuts you know he was a little thug on the street he's actually the one that showed me Scarface for the first time as a kid makes sense right so"
},
{
"end_time": 1036.118,
"index": 38,
"start_time": 1009.377,
"text": " And in a weird way, in spite of him kind of like being wild and like doing all that wild shit on the streets, it was good for me to be around him because my parents were getting divorced at the time. So he was good, like a good older brother figure kind of to have. I'll actually tell you the story of how he moved in. So my my parents were fighting for years before they got divorced. And then for whatever reason, I don't remember why my sister wasn't home, but I was there that night and they got an official"
},
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"text": " It started with a scream inside a quiet Maryland home, a mother trying to protect the family dog and her son in the grip of a violent hallucinogenic rage. By the time it was over, she was dead, and he claimed LSD made him do it. His name, David Minor IV, and we talked to him. Listen to Invisible Choir every other week as we uncover the most haunting true crimes you've never heard of, available wherever you get your podcasts."
},
{
"end_time": 1100.725,
"index": 40,
"start_time": 1073.285,
"text": " It was bad. They got in a fist fight. They beat the fuck out of each other. They threw shit at each other. Like I was like hiding in my room cause I would hear glass break and that kind of shit. Thank God my cousin, my other cousin was there that night and broke them up and took them. So I actually decided to leave with my dad that night to get him out of the house so he wouldn't hurt my mother. So I left with my dad and they took my, our other cousin took us to my grandma's house. And then my cousin Louis, who's the one that showed me Scarface shows up at my grandma's house and picks us up."
},
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"index": 41,
"start_time": 1101.169,
"text": " or picks me up and takes me and my mom back to his house. And I live with them. We live with them for like four years or three or four years at that point. And I'm exposed to like, you know, his friends and smoking drugs and all this crazy stuff that it's what real shouldn't see. But to me, it was kind of normal. You know, it's the kind of stuff I'd see in school and"
},
{
"end_time": 1152.961,
"index": 42,
"start_time": 1122.995,
"text": " Drugs to me at that point were like, okay, you know, I never did them like that at that point. But to me drugs, like just seeing drugs like that around, it didn't really affect me. It wasn't like, oh my God, what is that? I shouldn't be doing this. It was like, okay, just another guy who sells drugs or those drugs, whatever. Right. It wasn't, I was desensitized to it, which thinking back is kind of weird because a 12 year old kid or a 13 year old kid would be like, the normal kid should be like, what's that? Right. And to me it was more like, okay,"
},
{
"end_time": 1180.862,
"index": 43,
"start_time": 1153.336,
"text": " Whatever, you know, well, and also you'd seen movies and been exposed to it. That too. That too. Yeah. I started watching other kids probably wouldn't be watching at that age. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So he, he watches Scarface every day. I'm not exaggerating every day. Like that's horrible. Our, our parents name was Yale. Like just, and we named him Yale cause his favorite line was Chi Chi Chi Chi get the Yale. Like he said it every day."
},
{
"end_time": 1209.445,
"index": 44,
"start_time": 1181.408,
"text": " And, and like I said, in a weird way, I knew the things that were going on were wrong. Like the things he would do was wrong. The things Scarface did was wrong, but I want, I didn't want to be like my environment, funny enough, even though I ended up in prison, which is I'll get to that. I didn't want to sell drugs and I didn't want to like run around on the street. Um, I wanted to be like just different, you know, I didn't want to, I saw that as like almost like"
},
{
"end_time": 1238.712,
"index": 45,
"start_time": 1209.753,
"text": " Oh, that's what like they do. I'm not them. I'm different, you know? So that's how I kind of started watching these gangster movies as a kid to get inspiration. You know, I kind of picked what I thought was good and kind of left what I didn't like. So that was, that was about middle school. Uh, I get to high school and then my, my mom ends up marrying my stepdad. Well, they don't get officially married, but they get together. And my stepfather is, uh,"
},
{
"end_time": 1268.882,
"index": 46,
"start_time": 1239.224,
"text": " a notorious career criminal, notorious. Like he was, he had done six years, gotten caught a few times. The only reason he hadn't gotten deported is because Cubans are like a special, we have this weird thing because of like Cuba and it's a communist country. They don't have to send you back. You're here illegally. You're allowed to stay, right? Exactly. Wet foot, dry foot. All that stuff. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So my, that was like,"
},
{
"end_time": 1298.677,
"index": 47,
"start_time": 1269.48,
"text": " I mean, he tried to sort of hide what he did from us, but it was too obvious. He was a notorious gangster. He would sit on houses full of drugs and wait for the right time and bust in there with three of his buddies, beat the fuck out of everybody, steal everything, sell all the shit. There was this one story this one time my mom told me that was pretty wild. He sat and watched this guy who owned a jewelry shop for like four days and he would just follow him and follow him and follow him and follow him and follow him."
},
{
"end_time": 1324.531,
"index": 48,
"start_time": 1299.582,
"text": " Until like he got his his schedule down and then this one time he just sat Waited for the guy that I walked in for the jewelry shop He popped his trunk open because he had seen him put a bag in there took the bag and just took off and the bag had like 50 grand in it You know, that's how he made his living like robbing stealing Selling like whatever he's in the building in FCI right now in downtown, Miami"
},
{
"end_time": 1353.609,
"index": 49,
"start_time": 1325.077,
"text": " Yeah, it's crazy. Can't get right. No, no, no, no, no, he's done. This is the third, his third fed case. Okay. And every time he's gotten caught, it's, it's been worse, like worse and worse. So that was, again, in a strange way, it was good for me because he was like an alpha male. So I got some good qualities from him. But again, don't, don't do that because you're going to end up like him, right? He ends up getting caught because they set up this whole case against him where for months,"
},
{
"end_time": 1380.162,
"index": 50,
"start_time": 1353.933,
"text": " a CI was recording him on a call. Like the feds were recording him talking to a CI on a call, on a call ever for like months. And then we're telling them, yeah, this house, you know, I know where it is. I know how much drugs it has. We're going to break into, we're going to see all this shit. And he did it for like six months or more. I remember like it was an old man. I remember him. He used to drive this escalator. I remember it clear as day. He used to come into my house and shit. It was pretty wild. So the day they do it,"
},
{
"end_time": 1408.131,
"index": 51,
"start_time": 1380.879,
"text": " My godfather, my, my stepfather leaves my house and he pulls into a gas station or something to get gas. And then as he's leaving the gas station, the feds just, they scoop them up. Um, I don't even know what the chart official charge was, but yeah, that's that he ended up getting an 18 year sentence for that. Uh, it was, it was pretty crazy. Yeah. And then my life, my mom, needless to say, it was left alone. We went through a foreclosure. My house actually burned down. That's a whole nother thing."
},
{
"end_time": 1425.555,
"index": 52,
"start_time": 1408.933,
"text": " car repossessions, we had to move into a fucking trailer. I hated that trailer, bro. Oh my god, you can't pay me enough money to move back into a trailer park. I can't I have such a negative association with trailer parks. It's like, it's disgusting. So we think everybody does. There aren't there aren't"
},
{
"end_time": 1447.654,
"index": 53,
"start_time": 1426.032,
"text": " There are probably nice trailer parks. There are retirement trailer parks where they actually have like an association. They keep it up. It's a planned trailer park. But in general, growing up in the 80s, 90s, you had a really, they were just, because they were all a lot of the ones that were built in this 50s, 60s, 70s and 80s. They're just horrific. Yeah. And there are"
},
{
"end_time": 1464.514,
"index": 54,
"start_time": 1448.916,
"text": " I've seen them in Miami. There's a couple like real clean ones that they it's in a nicer part of town, but you still only get hit by a hurricane in one. Yeah, definitely not. It's not a good idea. But yeah. So he goes away, he gets an 18 year sentence, our life falls apart."
},
{
"end_time": 1494.07,
"index": 55,
"start_time": 1465.333,
"text": " I'm still in high school at this point. I'm like 15, 16. And then at this point, my great grandmother dies. So my great grandmother is like the matriarch of my, my family. She raised me until I was about 15. Very good influence on me. A very good influence on like she brought everybody from Cuba. Like she was, she kind of like was like, yeah, like the leader of the family. So she dies. My stepfather goes to prison. We lose our house. So my mom is like mentally just like falling apart."
},
{
"end_time": 1518.882,
"index": 56,
"start_time": 1494.36,
"text": " She's not doing well mentally. And at that point, I kind of just, um, I had a decision to make because she wanted to move and I was about to graduate high school. So what I did was I just ended up moving out of my own and I let her move to wherever she was going. And I stayed in Miami and I kept going to school. I was working, you know, like 10 hour days at McDonald's and then I'd go to school from"
},
{
"end_time": 1548.302,
"index": 57,
"start_time": 1520.469,
"text": " You know, what was it? Six thirty in the morning till like two thirty. So my life, I fucking hated my life from my life was terrible. It was so bad. It was like that real like work, sleep, go back to work, sleep, doing something you hate. So. There is the first time I get one of those big opportunities, right? Leading up to to how I ended up getting arrested later, but so this."
},
{
"end_time": 1577.278,
"index": 58,
"start_time": 1548.729,
"text": " someone approaches me and it's actually like a totally legit company. And I was like, I didn't understand the concept of selling something. Like I didn't know what selling was or entrepreneurship or any of that shit. You know, I just kind of like, Oh, rich people and poor people. So someone approaches me, a really good friend of mine. He's like, Hey, these guys are like offering us just like sales job. And I was like, the fuck is sales? I don't even know what that is. So they explained the concept of like, Oh, you know, you sell something and they pay your commission on that shit. Long story short,"
},
{
"end_time": 1606.63,
"index": 59,
"start_time": 1578.234,
"text": " I get involved and I go like full throttle. What was it? It was a direct sales company selling like AT&T and Verizon and like home service, like stuff you use in your home. Okay. And I ended up building a massive team, like 600 agents, 4,000 customers. I did really well. Okay. And it taught me a lot. It taught me like, how are they going? Are they, is it like a, are they, um, is it a call center or is you knocking door to door? Yeah, it's kind of like you could do door to door. You could cold call."
},
{
"end_time": 1636.715,
"index": 60,
"start_time": 1607.056,
"text": " Uh, now that I think about it, it wasn't like they didn't even supply leads. It was horrible, but I was just so hungry and I want you to go to a neighborhood. You block off lights. You go to the neighborhood. You just go to town. Yeah. Just knocking. Was it, is it not dialing for dollars? It's not knocking for dollars. Yeah. Driving for dollars. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So it taught me a lot of good things. It taught me like grit, be tough, you know, rejection. Rejection is a big one. People fucking hate rejection, bro. I realized I read this book. It's called overcoming rejection. We'll make you rich."
},
{
"end_time": 1662.739,
"index": 61,
"start_time": 1637.261,
"text": " And after reading that book, I really understood like, it's inevitable, like, you'll get what you want in life as long as you keep trying. Yeah, yeah, it is the whole, you know, you have to knock on whatever, 50 doors to get one sale. Yeah. So every time you knock on a door and someone says no, then you got to count that as okay, well, that's one more towards my 50. That doesn't matter what they said. I'm now one down, you know, next door. Oh, no, not interested. Absolutely not. They closed the door. Great. Now I'm two down. I just got to get to 50. Now,"
},
{
"end_time": 1693.336,
"index": 62,
"start_time": 1663.387,
"text": " And I'll have at least once, statistically, I should have one sale. Right. If I knock on 150 doors today, I'll have it statistically should have three sales. Exactly. You still have to be good, but you know, right. It's, you know, most of those are script, right? Yeah. Just reading the script. Funny enough, that company was actually endorsed by Donald Trump. Now that I think about it. Oh, yeah. I think that's the only like private business he's ever endorsed. Funny enough. But yeah, I actually got to see him at a conference. That was really cool. I got to see him and hear him talk. And he told this cool story of like when he was broke."
},
{
"end_time": 1714.275,
"index": 63,
"start_time": 1694.002,
"text": " He likes to tell the famous story about how he was walking with his daughter and they were walking down the street out of one of his buildings or something and some guy, there was a homeless guy and he pointed at him."
},
{
"end_time": 1743.251,
"index": 64,
"start_time": 1714.735,
"text": " is worth more money than me or has $99 million more than me. Yeah, worth more than I am. $99 million in debt or something like that. Yeah. And then he tells the story of like, I almost didn't go to the meeting because I felt like shit and like everything, but you know, I forced myself to go to the meeting and then I met this banker who ended up like changing everything for me. So that that's another good lesson. I learned a lot of good lessons in that company. One of which is like, most of the times when your life is like on the verge of falling apart,"
},
{
"end_time": 1773.251,
"index": 65,
"start_time": 1744.974,
"text": " You're probably on the right track. Right. What's always darkest before the dawn. Yeah. That kind of stuff. Yeah. I met Ross in prison. Oh yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So that's like when we, when we interview, you interviewed me. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So, and we'll get there. So yeah. And for context, people watching Ross Mandel, who we previously, yeah. Yeah. We did a video. We could actually link it at the end of this, you know, so there you go. Click on that. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Definitely. Um,"
},
{
"end_time": 1801.971,
"index": 66,
"start_time": 1773.865,
"text": " So it goes great. I'm not a millionaire, but I'm making a great living. I get great mentorship. I'm reading books. I'm really developing myself as a person. None of us knew that the leader of that little team had a horrible pain habit. Horrible. It was really bad. And then he ends up marrying another chick that has an evil pain habit. So he was our leader and he would teach us everything."
},
{
"end_time": 1830.503,
"index": 67,
"start_time": 1802.602,
"text": " We then he wouldn't show up and then he'd be late. And then he was like, all right, you got, you guys got it from here. And then everything kind of just fell apart. You know, once we found out, everybody got unmotivated and everybody kind of stopped doing that business. It kind of fell apart. Okay. So at that point I have to do the one thing I don't want to do, which is go back and get a regular job. And it sucked. It sucked us a lot of me, you know, when you work for yourself and you have to go back and get a job, it's not, it's not really all that good."
},
{
"end_time": 1859.428,
"index": 68,
"start_time": 1830.776,
"text": " So I went to health insurance just because it was really the first job I was kind of offered. So I'm fucking miserable. I stayed later than I needed. You know, I'd always get my, my, my work more than done. I do extra, I'd ask for overtime. Like I did, I went above and beyond and I moved up pretty fast within the first like six months in that company. But then I start making people look bad and that kind of whole negative, like corporate America environment kicks in. And I started like resenting that company. Okay. You know,"
},
{
"end_time": 1888.677,
"index": 69,
"start_time": 1859.77,
"text": " Like in my heart, I'm just like, fuck these people, bro. Like I'm here working hard and I'm trying to make something of them, not just for myself, but I'm trying to turn this into like more than it is. So like that, that whole negative conversation that I never should have had, I should have just quit the job is what I should have done. And then, so this guy approaches me while, you know, unfortunately just the timing was bad. Like I had already started resenting that company I worked for. I had, I was broke."
},
{
"end_time": 1918.524,
"index": 70,
"start_time": 1888.848,
"text": " the brokeest I'd been in years, which I was not used to. And this guy approaches me and he's basically like, what health insurance do you guys have? I'm like, Oh, Blue Cross Blue Shield. Why? He's like, Oh, you guys get physical therapy benefits. And I was like, fuck it. Fine. Oh, I don't know. Right. So he's like, well, let's try something out and go to go to one of these clinics and sign some papers and then call me after. And I was like, why? He's like, well, you know, we can pay you. There's some money here involved if it turns out well."
},
{
"end_time": 1949.65,
"index": 71,
"start_time": 1919.77,
"text": " I was like, right, but like how much like he's like, well, you know, this time around, I'll give you a few hundred bucks. I was like, if you want a box, just go sign some papers. Okay. Okay. One. Can you speak up? Yeah. Okay. Sure. Yeah. Yeah. No problem. No problem. Okay. So one, you didn't ask any other questions than that. Like, no, he just said, you have to know that. No, he just said it's a clinic."
},
{
"end_time": 1968.609,
"index": 72,
"start_time": 1950.145,
"text": " And you're going to go and say you need physical therapy and we're going to bill your... He didn't even say anything. He was just like, look, show up and they're going to give you a bunch of papers to fill out. And after that, give me a call. You're not thinking this is fraud. This is a scam. This is... Not at this point. Not yet. Okay."
},
{
"end_time": 1997.176,
"index": 73,
"start_time": 1968.814,
"text": " I'm already kind of like, like I have a feeling there's something weird going on. You're also desperate for money and don't want to ask a lot of correct. Exactly. I'm more, you're more concerned about getting $200 than you're about. Definitely. A hundred percent. Possibly something being wrong. A hundred percent. You can always claim ignorance. Like I didn't know. Exactly. A hundred percent. Okay. And it really just looked like intake forms. It didn't look like anything crazy. I feel that when I was there. It's so willful blindness. Yeah. Exactly. That's, that's the way the US attorney. Yeah."
},
{
"end_time": 2021.937,
"index": 74,
"start_time": 1997.363,
"text": " As they said in my case, ignorance is not an excuse for breaking the law. Anyway, so I go, I fill out the papers and then, you know, they get photocopying my insurance card, all that shit. And then the guy that was there, he's like, all right, man, you're all set. You know, the doctor's not here today, but we'll give you a call to reschedule your appointment. I'm like, okay, I'll probably have to come back at some point. All right. The guy actually ends up calling me and he's like,"
},
{
"end_time": 2050.794,
"index": 75,
"start_time": 2022.773,
"text": " Yo, did you go? Yeah, yeah, I went. All right. Look, come here. I'm here. Come to my house. I go to his house and he gives me $800. And I was only expecting like 300. Okay. All right. This is cool. He goes, Hey, all right. Well, does everybody at your job have that insurance? I was like, yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, let me tell you, I'm willing to pay you a little more now because I know this is legitimate. I'll pay you $2,000 per person that you bring over here. And I was like, now I'm just like,"
},
{
"end_time": 2077.056,
"index": 76,
"start_time": 2051.032,
"text": " So you're going to get two grand and he's going to get eight, the other person is going to get 800. No, he's going to give me two grand and it's up to me how much I pay the person. Okay. Yeah. So at this point I'm like, Oh shit. All right. Now we're talking, right? Right. And I never asked, but at this point I'm like, all right, there's something illegal here, but I don't think this is enough money to get in trouble. Right. So I'm in my head. I'm like,"
},
{
"end_time": 2104.787,
"index": 77,
"start_time": 2077.432,
"text": " It's a few thousand dollars. Yeah, I get it. It's a couple thousand dollars. He's really the main guy. I'm not. All right. Whatever. So he's robbing the bank. You're just driving the getaway car. I didn't do anything. Okay. So that excuse doesn't work. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And my whole reasoning the whole time was like, I'm small fish and they're not going to they're not going to want me. And then I refer one. I refer to I refer three."
},
{
"end_time": 2133.524,
"index": 78,
"start_time": 2105.555,
"text": " I refer for 10, 20, 30, and it goes pretty well. And the guy's like, what are you paying these guys when you approach them? Are you telling them like a thousand bucks? Typically? I'll give you half. Yeah. Right. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. No, I don't even mention when I'm getting paid, right? Just like, Hey, it's a thousand bucks. All you got to do is show up and sign some papers. I was basically a recruiter, right? So I mean, almost no one at work said no."
},
{
"end_time": 2157.363,
"index": 79,
"start_time": 2133.968,
"text": " Right. And I worked in a company with like 500 employees. I didn't do everybody. Obviously I knew who to approach and who not to approach. And then the guy, every time, you know, he thought we were going too much to one thing. He gave me another address and I'd send them to another place. And it was just this ongoing thing. You know, it was, it was really easy. Like I didn't have to do much. And then. So what is he doing?"
},
{
"end_time": 2183.2,
"index": 80,
"start_time": 2157.875,
"text": " He just was actually happening here. So what's actually happening here is all these clinics are completely fraudulent. Every single one of them. Not one of them is like, you know, they're basically just like here and this guy knows all of them and they have an arrangement with this guy. So somebody set up a clinic because you don't have to be a doctor to set up a clinic. Correct. I can go right now and set up a clinic and then I can hire doctors to"
},
{
"end_time": 2203.882,
"index": 81,
"start_time": 2183.797,
"text": " What is"
},
{
"end_time": 2232.244,
"index": 82,
"start_time": 2204.48,
"text": " Getting built. What are they getting built? Physical therapy sessions. And the physical therapy sessions are he's billing out what? 1500 bucks for 10 sessions and that's $15,000 or? No, on average they were doing, they were doing somewhere between 30 to my knowledge because they could have been more 30, 30 to 60 sessions. And how much does each session get? Does this insurance company pay? I don't know each, but combined per person it was like"
},
{
"end_time": 2259.804,
"index": 83,
"start_time": 2232.739,
"text": " 15 to $30,000. Okay, they were pocketing. Let's say 20 grand. They're giving you right so to no, no, no, but here's the here's the kicker. So he this guy that that my plug, this guy, I don't know how the fuck and don't ask me, but he knows like, 20 of these motherfuckers, right, right. And that guy works out his own deal because he's a fucking con man and a scammer. He works out his own deal with each one of these guys."
},
{
"end_time": 2287.5,
"index": 84,
"start_time": 2260.316,
"text": " And so the clinics are kicking him back, maybe five grand for or some of them are going 50 50. Okay, so 10 grand, he's paying you to fucking two, right? You're getting he's getting eight. And then the clinic is billing like, or like 20. Right. So they're just filling out the paperwork saying this guy showed up on the third on the fifth and the whatever. Yeah, nine. Yep. You know, physical therapy was good. A little pain in his back. Yep. 100% No, it's really just"
},
{
"end_time": 2309.906,
"index": 85,
"start_time": 2288.353,
"text": " becomes just kind of like a mill at that point. They're just cranking out paperwork that looks good. Mind you, this sly motherfucker, he's got other people that work. I don't know how he did this. Probably just like every time I referred somebody, he'd probably talk to them and be like, yeah, send me people. Of course, he lied to me because we're all fucking stealing money. So later I found out after I got arrested that he had like"
},
{
"end_time": 2339.275,
"index": 86,
"start_time": 2310.606,
"text": " Another guy there sending him a bunch of people and he like, he was like, no, no, I swear to God, you're the only guy there, you know, and me like an idiot, believing in a comment. But anyway, and then imagine he had me at my place, right? And then he had another guy that worked at another place. He had another guy that worked in another place. And he had another guy that worked at another place. He had like 10 of us. So imagine this guy's fucking he's breaking it, breaking it in with this guy first approach you at like, where'd you how'd you come across them? So"
},
{
"end_time": 2361.937,
"index": 87,
"start_time": 2340.265,
"text": " Um, I actually got, uh, referred to him like way before we started doing business. Like I was with a friend of mine and she was like, Hey, um, you know, I, cause I was really complaining about like injuries and like, she's like, well, if you need physical therapy, call this guy that I know a guy. Yeah. And I was like, okay, cool."
},
{
"end_time": 2391.22,
"index": 88,
"start_time": 2362.449,
"text": " And I called him and he was like, no, you know, I guess, no, no, no, no. At first, I called him for the first time and he actually wasn't really like about it. He thought he's like, oh, this guy's actually want physical therapy. Is that what you think we're doing? Right, right, right. Exactly. And that's just the name on the sign. No. And imagine he's like a Miami street guy. He's like a Cuban guy. So he's and he doesn't know me. So he's probably like, oh, fuck this guy. I don't know this guy."
},
{
"end_time": 2421.152,
"index": 89,
"start_time": 2392.125,
"text": " Like almost a year later, the guy is when the guy calls me. He's like, oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. You know, and he eggs me on. So it was through like fucking sheer coincidence. It wasn't even it just made no sense how how I ended up connecting with this guy. So, yeah. And then again, the guy's involved in like 17 different scams. The guy's like. Doing some fucking bank scam, the guy's doing some fucking shit with like like diversified."
},
{
"end_time": 2429.445,
"index": 90,
"start_time": 2421.886,
"text": " he's an entrepreneur diversification is the it's the key to continually making money total fucking car artists is what he is i mean"
},
{
"end_time": 2455.043,
"index": 91,
"start_time": 2429.872,
"text": " I think you're just upset because he had other guys working for him. No, at my office. I was upset because he lied to me about having other people in my office. Because that's supposed to be my territory. That's supposed to be my fucking shop. Like, what are you doing? What the fuck? You're all con men. We are. We are. We are. He's a con man. You're a con man. I get it. These guys are all lying to each other. Some might have to tell you though,"
},
{
"end_time": 2466.937,
"index": 92,
"start_time": 2455.043,
"text": " There's there's there's a scale like you can't compare what I did with like fucking I don't know whether fucking What's the guy's name? That"
},
{
"end_time": 2495.282,
"index": 93,
"start_time": 2467.978,
"text": " Bernie Madoff. Yes. Like, there's levels of that. No, I know. But I know. But there's there's levels of con, you know? Oh, yeah. Yeah. No. What you're saying, like, like he wasn't bilking people out of their life savings. Like he wasn't saying no. Fuck him. I was saying I was saying we were all conning people. But what he was like just on another level. Like, yeah, yeah, yeah. Like we were all. What I did was wrong. What I did was wrong. I'm not saying I'm not defending what I did. Yeah. But like, I wouldn't do some of the shit you"
},
{
"end_time": 2523.899,
"index": 94,
"start_time": 2495.981,
"text": " You know, like later I found out he was dealing with like a clinic that was billing for chemo and like what it's Oh, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Why given a bad bad drugs and you think you're getting chemo and you're actually getting water. It's wild. It's wild. What the fucking guy did. He's I mean, it was and then the guy was always broke, legitimately always broke. Right. Sometimes he'd be like a gambler. It's so amazing how many gamblers I've met that were scam artists. Well,"
},
{
"end_time": 2546.493,
"index": 95,
"start_time": 2524.326,
"text": " They're scam artists, but if they weren't scam artists, then they'll make a million dollars a year. They're just raking in money. But they're always broke. Their work ethic is insane. They're extremely good salesmen. They're really raking in money, and yet they're always bouncing checks and they're broken."
},
{
"end_time": 2561.886,
"index": 96,
"start_time": 2546.783,
"text": " And they're going, it's like, you're just made $200,000. You went to the casino, you walked out owed him 20. Now they pay him back in a week, they get another couple hundred thousand and they go back and they lose it again. Like it's such a sickness that you can't"
},
{
"end_time": 2581.135,
"index": 97,
"start_time": 2562.449,
"text": " understand it. I have no idea. So with him, I think it was more like money in, money out. Like it was easy money. You know what I was saying? Like easy money comes and goes. Is he buying Bugattis? Every time he goes out, he's buying like $2,000 dinners. He's paying for everything. He's a big shot."
},
{
"end_time": 2606.954,
"index": 98,
"start_time": 2581.135,
"text": " Yeah, yeah, yeah. He's living in like this apartment. He should have been living in like an hour away from town on the beach. Like he's renovating the apartment, even though he's renting it. Like he's doing stupid shit. You know, pissing money away. Yeah. He had this Ducati. Like, bro, you don't even ride motorcycles. The fuck you buying a Ducati for? You know, that kind of shit. It's just"
},
{
"end_time": 2637.09,
"index": 99,
"start_time": 2607.261,
"text": " And then he, his, his worst vice, honestly, in my opinion was women. He, every time I was with him, he showed me a picture of a different chick. He was banging and he had like 15 different chicks. And as you know, money is kind of extremely expensive if they're, if they're out of your league, you know what I'm saying? So you're dating a 10 and you should be dating a five or a four and that 10 is costing a lot of money. It's over. It's over. It's over. And then he would, there was legitimately sometimes where he would just be like, Hey, you know, just give me like two more days."
},
{
"end_time": 2666.237,
"index": 100,
"start_time": 2637.329,
"text": " Because he'd spent the money he was supposed to give me he spent he just fucking blow it right and then he do some other shit and come up with another 50 grand doing some scam and then he paid me from some other shit you know it was it was pretty crazy nothing worse than a con man it's a bad he's just bad with money yeah do you know any of his other scams like the specifics uh yeah one which i don't know how he didn't go to prison for was uh and i don't know how this flew this is what he told me"
},
{
"end_time": 2695.213,
"index": 101,
"start_time": 2666.664,
"text": " And I don't know how it worked out. He had, supposedly he had a contact at bank of America that like looked at accounts and he'd get a tip as to like accounts that were like heavy, like 20, 30, 40 million, right? Some stupid number. And he, he'd hit them up and he'd be like, all right, go after this one. So it'd make a check and they'd make it out for like a hundred grand. Some amount where the person might not notice."
},
{
"end_time": 2722.398,
"index": 102,
"start_time": 2696.408,
"text": " and he'd look for people to cash these checks. Right. And he wouldn't cash them. I don't know how the fuck he did this. He'd go to a casino and he'd take out like $100,000. He promised the person 10% of whatever they got, which is insane because they're the ones taking all the risk, right? Yeah. And they're the ones who have the tax liability to people. It's so funny. People will do stuff. They're like, yeah, yeah, yeah. Give me 50. Give me. I want"
},
{
"end_time": 2746.92,
"index": 103,
"start_time": 2722.585,
"text": " 10%. And they take 10% and not realizing you understand at the end of the year, you're going to get 1099. You're going to hang $30,000 in taxes on this fucking money fucking well. And they think they think oh man, I fucking got off. Yeah, I made 10 grand for nothing. No, not what just happened. It's fucking wild is what it is. So supposedly, yeah, he had the contact at the bank that knew that would overlook these accounts. I had a lot of money. And he told me, hey, go after this one."
},
{
"end_time": 2773.336,
"index": 104,
"start_time": 2747.142,
"text": " And he'd go, he'd find schmucks off the street that were like, Oh my God, $10,000. Yeah, let's do it. And then he'd take them to a casino in the middle of the night. They'd go to the casino like one in the morning and somehow they'd cash like, I don't know how the fuck they did it, but they'd cash that check and they'd get a hundred grand in cash, pay the person. And then that's it. They parted ways. And he was doing that for like years. I don't even think he went to prison for that. He went to prison."
},
{
"end_time": 2802.875,
"index": 105,
"start_time": 2774.326,
"text": " Well, I'll get to what he went to prison for. But yeah, the guy was just like he was he was already on federal probation. He actually was on probation because he had stolen. He used to work for Budweiser and he stole a bunch of beer and sold it and like stole. And then he claimed like, oh, yeah, I got robbed and they found that it wasn't. And he was already like had an open case. He was he was on FMA leave. What's that called? FMA late leave from from Budweiser. They were paying him because supposedly he had a broken knee. Like the guy was"
},
{
"end_time": 2833.473,
"index": 106,
"start_time": 2803.677,
"text": " Every scam possible under the sun. It was pretty wild. So the guys like every time he tries it, I'm at this point, I'm just like, bro, just yeah, keep that over there. I don't even don't even tell me about what else you're doing because I was like, you know, if I ever get in trouble, if I get in trouble, let me just get in trouble for this. And let's leave it be. I don't need like to spend the rest of my life in fucking prison with this fucking hit for just doing business with someone I shouldn't even be associating with, honestly."
},
{
"end_time": 2861.237,
"index": 107,
"start_time": 2833.626,
"text": " Right. So what happens? Eventually, I actually end up leaving the insurance company just because, and this is completely legitimate, this isn't illegal. I get approached by a buddy of mine who wants to open a medical clinic in Florida. This is right when it goes legal. Right. This is like end of 2017. So right after Trump gets elected, we had it on the ballot in Florida to make it medical. So we, we, we voted yes."
},
{
"end_time": 2889.224,
"index": 108,
"start_time": 2861.92,
"text": " And his idea was always like, you know how they have that saying of like, Oh, picks and shovels. Like, yeah, people got rich in the gold rush, but the people who got really rich are the people who were selling the picks and the shovels. So that was his idea of like the green rush. He was like, yeah, all right. I don't want to deal with, but what's the things, the ancillary services in that business where we could make money. And then he got the bright idea of owning the doctor's office. He's like, if we own the doctor's office, people are going to need their cards. There's no insurance involved. They have to pay cash."
},
{
"end_time": 2916.647,
"index": 109,
"start_time": 2889.616,
"text": " You open up a clinic, you hire the doctor. That's it. Every patient that comes in pays about bucks or $200. He gets 75 bucks for every person that he sees. Crank them out. Yep. 100%. So he approached me because he already knew I had the sales background and all that stuff. And we had become good friends. This is like another friend of mine. So we open, we open the doctor's office and I leave the insurance company. Like I just drop it."
},
{
"end_time": 2944.019,
"index": 110,
"start_time": 2917.671,
"text": " And we started doing that and that starts going really well and it's all legit money. Right. So around the time I'm already going to tell this guy, Hey, I'm done. Like, you know, I did way more than I was at this point. I'm like, you need to stop Nelson. You need to stop. Right. You've made at this point. I've probably made like, and cash that's gone through my hands. I probably had more than, I can't even tell you honestly, I like,"
},
{
"end_time": 2971.783,
"index": 111,
"start_time": 2944.224,
"text": " Was it more than or less than a half a million dollars? Close. Close. Yeah, close. Half a million dollars. Yeah. Roughly. Roughly. Yeah, allegedly. Yeah. There's write offs. There's gas. All that kind of shit. Yeah. Depreciation of your of your office. But that's money that went through my hands. Like, remember, I had to pay these people. So I didn't keep all that money. Yeah, yeah, no. So I had to like, so"
},
{
"end_time": 3001.391,
"index": 112,
"start_time": 2972.312,
"text": " You have to deal with them and there's management issues. I understand. I understand. No, no, no. I'm just saying I didn't physically keep all that money because I gave like half of it to other people. But it was hundreds of thousands of dollars I made within like 18 months. Right. Right. And so that money was funneled into a legitimate. No, no, no, no. I didn't use that money. Oh, I blew it. I traveled. I fucking. Did we just have a conversation about the idiot that was blowing all the money he made? I know. I know. I know. I totally get it. You're a jackass."
},
{
"end_time": 3029.394,
"index": 113,
"start_time": 3001.92,
"text": " I'm going on vacation for 20 grand. You don't know what you're doing. I'm you're buying a Bugatti. That's insane. That's stupid money. I'm going to get up at the end of everything. So this is what happens when I'm just like, I have some money saved. Don't you understand? The best way is to bet it on all on black. See, I'm investing. You're an idiot. It's not what happened. I don't gamble. Anyway, I did go out on some very nice vacations."
},
{
"end_time": 3056.971,
"index": 114,
"start_time": 3029.684,
"text": " I'll tell you that I went to Costa Rica, went to Columbia. It was nice. Anyway, so we'll talk about Columbia women later. So what happens is I have some enough money stacks to live for like a year, probably we're doing nothing. Like if I do nothing, I could live off this money for a year. Okay. And I'm like, all right, we're starting the cannabis business. I can live off of this. Let's,"
},
{
"end_time": 3086.869,
"index": 115,
"start_time": 3057.363,
"text": " Let's go legit enough. You haven't gotten caught until now. You're fucking lucky. Go tell this guy to fuck off and we're done. Right. I call the guy, the guy doesn't answer the phone. That's never happened. The guy always answers my phone call as I got something's wrong here. This is bad call. No answer. I get a call from one of his associates that I knew this lady that night. She's like, Hey Nelson, what's up? We got to meet. I was like, Ooh, here we go. I was like, all right."
},
{
"end_time": 3114.019,
"index": 116,
"start_time": 3087.193,
"text": " Yeah, let's meet here. I give her a center and address and she pulls up and she's like, Hey, Felix got arrested by the FBI today. Oh, for what? So at that point I'm like, all right, but that's, is that all, you know, like what's going on? He's like, well, you know, he's, he got arrested. We don't really know anything else. That's that, you know? And I was like, okay."
},
{
"end_time": 3144.155,
"index": 117,
"start_time": 3114.974,
"text": " All right. All right. Cool. You know, whatever. Of course, I'm like, all right, so take this as a sign. Stop. Right. This is over. The guy went to prison. You know, we got arrested. No, no, no. Yeah, he wasn't. He got arrested by the feds. Yeah, he's going to prison, but he just got arrested. At this point, you said he just got arrested. Right. But but when you get arrested by the feds in Miami, you get sent when you're like when you're don't when you don't get bond, you get sent to the man, the building in downtown Miami. That's prison."
},
{
"end_time": 3173.097,
"index": 118,
"start_time": 3144.633,
"text": " That's like federal prison. You're, you're not even though it's, it's, it's a transition point, but you're going to be there until you either get bond or you get assigned to a prison and get sentenced. So he's in prison. Um, mind you, they gave him a $15,000 brawn and he didn't have the money. How about that? $15,000 and he didn't have the 15,000. That guy had made millions, millions easily since I met him, he had made three or $4 million easily in that year, year and a half."
},
{
"end_time": 3197.637,
"index": 119,
"start_time": 3173.473,
"text": " The guy didn't have the 15 grand. His fucking wife was like going around calling like his buddies to borrow money to get them out. It was, it was fucking pathetic. Anyway, she never called me cause I don't know. I guess she didn't have my number. So what happens after that? I'm like, all right, I'm done. I'm going to leave this alone. Whatever happens happens, but I'm going to stop doing this. Right. But."
},
{
"end_time": 3222.807,
"index": 120,
"start_time": 3198.746,
"text": " He owed me money. He went to jail and he never paid me about 10 grand that he owed me. I'm sure that was foremost on his mind. Yeah. No, but I was, but it was on my mind. That's for sure. Probably not his. So I was like, fuck man. How do I get paid? So I call, since he's not in the picture, I have to deal with the owners directly now. Right. So I'm like, let me let them know that this guy got arrested and I'm out and to pay me my fucking money. Right."
},
{
"end_time": 3250.23,
"index": 121,
"start_time": 3223.626,
"text": " So I go and I approach these guys. They had dealt with me a few times. So they knew I wasn't like trying to, you weren't coming out of nowhere. Yeah. Cause they see my face and Felix had explained to them, the guy Felix or whatever had explained to them, this is my guy. Right. So I told them, Hey, we got to meet up. We got to talk. And then I, okay. So I go to their place and we go in the back, back office. And I'm like, listen, Felix got arrested. Do you guys know that? And they're like,"
},
{
"end_time": 3280.026,
"index": 122,
"start_time": 3250.708,
"text": " They put these faces on, they're all freaking like, what? And I'm like, oh, you guys are finding out for me? You guys are fucked. OK, well, look, that's not my problem. I need to get fucking paid, bro. Where's my money? And the guys are like, well, we paid him for some of it. This and that. And I was like, oh, here we go. They're not going to pay me. They ended up paying me half. Because I don't know, I guess I wanted to be nice guys. They could have told me to fly a kite. There's nothing I could have done about it. But they paid me. And out of courtesy, I gave him the warning. I was like, listen, this is what's going on."
},
{
"end_time": 3309.991,
"index": 123,
"start_time": 3281.169,
"text": " I'm out. You paid me my money. I'm not doing this anymore. Of course, one of them calls me back and he's like, Hey, come back. You know, let's talk. And for the life of me, I just don't understand why I was like, yo, all right, let's talk. Right. At this point, I'm telling myself like, bro, what the fuck are you doing? You want to turn into this guy? Now you're going to have all these scams going. So basically what ends up happening is"
},
{
"end_time": 3332.312,
"index": 124,
"start_time": 3310.299,
"text": " One of the guys, I ended up cutting a deal with one of the guys and I ended up getting like what he used to get paid. Okay. So he was like, look, this is how much I'm billing. I'll give you half. I was like, okay, cool. So at this point I'm getting paid 3,500 per person. Right. And then I go off to the races again, because you can get physical therapy every six months."
},
{
"end_time": 3360.589,
"index": 125,
"start_time": 3333.131,
"text": " So what you just go grab, I go back, I go back and I make probably just as much money all over again, if not more, because I didn't get to everybody. I only got, cause some people didn't want to do it or whatever. At that point, everybody knew the scam. Everybody knew the racket and I go to town. But then what happens? That guy goes to prison. And again, I'm not in prison yet. I'm not indicted. I'm not nothing. So I'm like,"
},
{
"end_time": 3385.503,
"index": 126,
"start_time": 3362.056,
"text": " Bro, should I count my blessings at this point? Yeah. Aren't you concerned that these guys are going to turn over on you or? I had never, I had never been arrested, you know? And I was like, at this point, like if he got arrested, now I'm doing what he was doing. I'm not like a level below him. Now I was doing what he was doing. Right. So it's like, like count your blessings at this point. So I left it alone."
},
{
"end_time": 3414.684,
"index": 127,
"start_time": 3386.698,
"text": " And at that point, I didn't really have a choice because the main guy who dealt with me went, that's it. I didn't have like other clinic owners I could approach. So I kind of left it at that. And then at that point, the medical clinic, it was kicking ass. Like it was doing really well. So I said, all right, what? For real this time, like I'm not going to go out and look for a clinic owner or any of that shit, which of course, like since I hadn't dealt with the system, I knew like, I didn't know they were going to rat on me. I didn't know any of that shit."
},
{
"end_time": 3443.166,
"index": 128,
"start_time": 3415.503,
"text": " I just, I was like, all right, whatever. They got caught. There's nothing I could do about that. And I just walk away. And then the medical business starts booming, right? With my body. And I just started doing that. And the funny thing is people, when I got arrested, most people thought, cause I obviously I'm, I never told anybody I was doing this, right? So like the pandemic happens or whatever. So this is like 2018. I don't get arrested until 2021."
},
{
"end_time": 3473.695,
"index": 129,
"start_time": 3444.104,
"text": " Four years later, I really stopped doing everything in 2018. And then after the pandemic is when I get arrested, which is wild. We're thinking about it because it's like, fuck man, why'd they take so long? Apparently the FBI told me it was because of the shutdown. They didn't work for months and they came after me just like when they reopened and everything was like kind of moving again. So in the meanwhile, I'm like this entrepreneur in the, in the, in the community. I'm like breaking records in the medical company. We have like 4,000 clients in four years."
},
{
"end_time": 3501.834,
"index": 130,
"start_time": 3474.155,
"text": " Everything's going fantastic. Everything's going really well. One of the partners gets bought out. Like everything's going fantastic. Everything really, really well. So that month, the company had actually made more money than it's ever made. So I was like, all right, I deserve a break. Let me go to, go to Columbia, which is funny. That whole thing about Thailand that you guys talk about here, it's the same thing in Columbia, the same exact thing. Like the women are like the most gorgeous women you ever seen in your life."
},
{
"end_time": 3521.681,
"index": 131,
"start_time": 3502.5,
"text": " They'll marry you for like a dollar. You can have the most badass penthouse you've ever had in your life for like $700 a month. A meal on the street is like a dollar. It's, it's an amazing place. And then maybe eating like these women have these accents that just like, bro, they could ask me to eat a piece of dog shit and I do it with that accent that they have, I swear."
},
{
"end_time": 3550.52,
"index": 132,
"start_time": 3522.227,
"text": " I got, I'd eat a mile long fucking turd just to eat out of where I came out of. Bad examples. All right. I hear you. All right. Yeah. The most gorgeous women you've ever seen in your life. Anyway, so I go to Columbia and I have my, my three day, three, four or five day debauchery binge. I'm like on top of the world. I have like a super fantastic business. I got away Scott free. I'm a legit guy now. I'm not breaking the law."
},
{
"end_time": 3578.217,
"index": 133,
"start_time": 3551.817,
"text": " So I get back on a Monday and I get off the plane and we're walking towards immigration and there's these four TSA officers. Mind you, the one there's two of them are wearing regular clothes. He's like, Hey, you two step aside. And I was like, the fuck is going on here? You know, mind you, I'm coming back from Columbia. So I didn't really like, I had stopped doing it four years earlier."
},
{
"end_time": 3606.357,
"index": 134,
"start_time": 3578.746,
"text": " Right. So at this point, I really did think like you forgot all about that. This is I got away with this. Yes. Like this is, you know, they're not going to wait four years. Exactly. Crazy. No, no, no. A thousand percent. So the TSA officers pull us aside. They let everybody pass with the last ones left. It was like this. Do you think it's ran a random stop? I have no idea at this point. I think it is weird, but again, it doesn't, it doesn't occur to me. So they stopped me. They asked me, where are you coming from? Maybe."
},
{
"end_time": 3635.06,
"index": 135,
"start_time": 3606.596,
"text": " Why'd you go for a vacation? Who you with him? Who is he? My friend. This is mind you, this is a buddy of mine that just went to Columbia with me. They do this like 30 minute interrogation there in the hallway. Then they put me in a room to look through all my shit, fucking pat me down. After like an hour of being with them, they let me go. And I was like, Hmm, that's fucking weird. Whatever. I didn't think much of it. I just left it. It was random. That was Monday. So Thursday,"
},
{
"end_time": 3663.626,
"index": 136,
"start_time": 3636.34,
"text": " I got a call at five in the morning to my cell phone. It's a phone number I don't recognize. So I just turned the ringing off and I go back to sleep. But then I get a knock on my door. Was it a nice knock or was it a law enforcement knock? It was a concerned knock. Okay. So my aunt is my landlord. Okay. So she comes to knock on my door and I open the door and I'm like, I'm legitimately like waking up in the world."
},
{
"end_time": 3690.52,
"index": 137,
"start_time": 3664.462,
"text": " And she says, bro, I'll never forget this. The cops are outside. They're looking for you. I was like, the cops. What? My phone rings again. And it's the same phone number that just called me five minutes earlier. I was like, I should answer this. Hello. Nelson Rodriguez. Yes. This is agent such and such with the FBI. You have five minutes to come outside of your house. Click."
},
{
"end_time": 3718.916,
"index": 138,
"start_time": 3692.142,
"text": " Okay. That may very well be the nicest arrest I've ever heard. So they couldn't come in my house, right? Because my gates were locked. That's the only reason they couldn't come inside. And thank God that I lived. So I live in a, they have these things in, in Miami called efficiencies. I don't know if you've ever heard of it, but yeah. So I lived in like half of a house."
},
{
"end_time": 3747.449,
"index": 139,
"start_time": 3719.394,
"text": " Thank God my aunt lived next door and she was able to come and knock on my door. Right. Because if not, who knows what would happen. They would have put it, you know, whatever. So I go outside. There's four city of Miami cops blocking off this road with like four city of Miami cruisers blocking off this side of the road with like eight cops. Another four city of Miami cruisers blocking off this side of the road with like another eight cops. There's"
},
{
"end_time": 3756.288,
"index": 140,
"start_time": 3747.722,
"text": " four FBI cars outside my house with like eight FBI agents and four of the FBI agents are fucking pointing AR-15s at my house. And I'm like,"
},
{
"end_time": 3786.698,
"index": 141,
"start_time": 3757.278,
"text": " What am I, a fucking terrorist? Yeah, this is fraud. This is ridiculous. This is a fraud case. Again, it's been four years, man. You don't understand. This is gone. It's still not, like, registering in my head. I understand that. I'm saying in general, in general terms, what are you doing? It's a fraud case. No, I get it. I get it. Nobody got hurt. This is not, no, there were no guns. There were no, nobody's been murdered. This is a fraud case. I don't know if there was, like, I'm a big Second Amendment guy. I owned a ton of guns. So I don't know if maybe they were... Oh, they might have known that. Yeah, so maybe they... Not that they keep lists."
},
{
"end_time": 3816.886,
"index": 142,
"start_time": 3787.944,
"text": " Because they don't keep lists because that would be unconstitutional. But you heard from a guy, you may have some weapons. And the fact that you're constantly wearing a jumpsuit doesn't didn't help the situation. Definitely not. So, and this is a month after George Floyd, like a month. So I'm here like, I'm like, all right, these guys aren't gonna kill me. I take my cell phone out, I give it to my aunt,"
},
{
"end_time": 3846.903,
"index": 143,
"start_time": 3817.312,
"text": " I tell her, call my parents. I put my hands up. I turn around and I start backing up towards their cars. I don't even give them a chance to like say anything, nothing. One of the FBI agents starts telling my aunt, look, this is my card. Uh, if you want any information, we're taking them. They don't read me my Miranda Rice. They don't say shit. They pat me down. Uh, I can actually have the, where is the fuck? I have the video of me getting arrested channel seven news was out there. I back up. They arrest me and they take me."
},
{
"end_time": 3873.643,
"index": 144,
"start_time": 3847.176,
"text": " I'm sitting in the car and I'm still like, all right, whatever. This is probably not, not for me though. Explain. She will clear this up later. I honestly thought they were looking for my dad because me and him have the same name and shit like this has happened to me like four times in my life where people were looking for me and they're actually looking for my father. So I was like, all right, we'll, we'll clear this up later. They take me all the way to the FBI headquarters in Miramar, Florida, which is like 30 minutes north, 30 to 40 minutes north of Miami."
},
{
"end_time": 3895.691,
"index": 145,
"start_time": 3875.333,
"text": " I'm sitting there and I'm just, I'm calm. I'm like, we'll figure this out. You know, this isn't a big deal. They start bringing in other people that got arrested. And I was like, you start recognizing people. Yep. Instantly. No, no, no, no. Cheryl, what are you guys doing here? This is crazy."
},
{
"end_time": 3923.677,
"index": 146,
"start_time": 3897.176,
"text": " Hey, it was all the people I dealt with during the whole fucking clinic scam. And I was like, bro, these guys this and these are just the low level guys are bringing or they bring in the doctor a mix. No, the doctors were never brought in. At least not with me. I don't know if they were ever brought in but not with me. They're bringing in the owners and some of the other recruiters. What about the main guy? He was already in prison. He ratted everybody out. How much time did he get though? The FBI told me at some point,"
},
{
"end_time": 3946.067,
"index": 147,
"start_time": 3923.899,
"text": " Whether, you know, I don't know if it's true or not. They were going to give him 14 years and he cooperated so much and gave so much information that he only ended up doing two. He had three years coming to him. Yeah. He could go right now and commit a crime and they're like, oh yeah, you've got three years coming. Yeah, it's wild. So he ended up doing two. So mind you, he gets arrested in 2018."
},
{
"end_time": 3973.166,
"index": 148,
"start_time": 3946.271,
"text": " He's rebuilt his whole life before you guys. He got out in 2020. Before a couple years before you even get arrested. He got arrested in July of 2021. That guy's already out. Bump into you in a mall and be like, you're still out. You're probably behind. You might want to put some money aside. It's wild. Yeah. So that, I mean, it's pretty much game over at that point. I know what I'm getting indicted for. You know, I call a lawyer."
},
{
"end_time": 3999.565,
"index": 149,
"start_time": 3973.848,
"text": " They let me go on bond that same day. We have a virtual court hearing because mine use July of 2021. So it's still like pandemic, all that shit. They take me from the FBI headquarters to the U S marshals office. And that's in the same building as the federal court in downtown Miami. And the whole time I'm sitting there in the, in the, in the fucking jail cell, they finger print me do all that shit. The U S marshals. I'm like, man, like this is nuts. Like I, at this point, I feel like."
},
{
"end_time": 4028.183,
"index": 150,
"start_time": 3999.974,
"text": " some sort of, I don't know, like drug dealer, like drug smuggler. I feel like fucking Osama bin Laden or something like the amount of agents and shit that they come out with is pretty wild. U.S. Marshals like I thought U.S. Marshals like only went after like, you know, these big time cases and shit anyway. So I'm there and the whole time I'm sitting in the jail cell and I'm like, my life is fucking over. I am fucked. Goodbye plans. You know, bye bye. All those plans I had."
},
{
"end_time": 4054.582,
"index": 151,
"start_time": 4028.695,
"text": " You know, cause I was thinking of taking the company public and doing all these crazy things overnight. I'm just like, that's, that's not happening. And I have no, I'm just like, I'm terrified at this point. I'm just like, what the fuck is going to happen? I don't know anything about federal prison. I'm probably going to get sent to a camp. I don't know about any of that shit. I'm just like, here we go. I'm going to be in a fucking bunch of prison in a fucking with like, you know, a prison with a bunch of like thugs and fucking people I don't want to be around."
},
{
"end_time": 4081.817,
"index": 152,
"start_time": 4055.094,
"text": " I'm having all these thoughts in my head. The thought that pierced my head though was the piercing image of my mother crying. To this day, my heart just breaks. It sucks because I just don't know why I couldn't get the image of my mother finding out and being so disappointed in me because I was supposed to be the one guy in the family who was never supposed to go to jail, never supposed to get in trouble."
},
{
"end_time": 4108.916,
"index": 153,
"start_time": 4082.261,
"text": " And I took it a step further. I didn't, I didn't just get in trouble. I got arrested by the feds. You took it a step further. All your fucking dumb ass cousins and shit and your uncles, they are the state got them, but you got arrested by the feds. So, you know, it's a, yeah, yeah. It's a graduation more grad. Yeah. It's more serious than, yeah. So they let us stew in there the whole day and we have our court date and like four in the afternoon, like damn near the end of the day."
},
{
"end_time": 4137.295,
"index": 154,
"start_time": 4109.565,
"text": " I get out on a promissory note, Bon, because I'd never been arrested or anything. You know, my mom and dad sign a paper. They're like, yeah, we got to pay a hundred grand if he flees the country, which he's not going to. I surrender my passport the next day. I have to give up all my guns. So, you know, I sold all my guns to my mom and then I go see a lawyer and he's like, bro, you know, this is it. Uh, they showed me the discovery. It's not really all that good, but you know, we got to give this time."
},
{
"end_time": 4163.916,
"index": 155,
"start_time": 4138.473,
"text": " This is one thing I'll say. I was so naive and this is how much I didn't understand the system. My lawyer is a federal lawyer, like federal defense attorney. He's done thousands of these cases. And the guy edged me on the whole time, like, oh, you might not go to prison. You're going to get convicted for sure, but you might not go to prison. You might not. Obviously hindsight is 2020. I didn't realize that fucking the feds have like a 98% conviction rate. And unless you're like,"
},
{
"end_time": 4191.493,
"index": 156,
"start_time": 4164.616,
"text": " I don't know, some politician who can rat out like a president of a country, you're going to prison. Right. Period. Yeah. By the time they've arrested you, their case is already done. It's solid. Yeah. Yeah. You know, unless you cooperate and get some time off, but even then, even if you cooperate and get time off, you're still going to prison. Yeah. Yeah. You're going to do some time. You're not getting, you're typically not getting off pretty clear. Correct. Correct. So the guy just tells me there's a good possibility you won't go to prison."
},
{
"end_time": 4221.596,
"index": 157,
"start_time": 4192.176,
"text": " You're definitely getting convicted, but you might get like house arrest or probation. So the, the not knowing was what really bothered me. Like if, if from the beginning I would have known I was going to prison, I would have been okay. But I was out on bond for a year and a half while they were like doing whatever the fuck they wanted to do and putting, you know, putting some of the people, supposedly someone that co-defendants want to go to trial and they were like figuring all that shit out. So I pled guilty right away. And then I got, I didn't get sentenced until"
},
{
"end_time": 4253.029,
"index": 158,
"start_time": 4223.302,
"text": " and then I get sentenced. So I get arrested July, July of 2021 and I get sentenced in October of 2022. So I was out on bond that whole time. And needless to say in a year and a half, like I kind of want to like do, I want to figure out my life. I'm like, all right, what else am I going to do when I get out? You know, even though I have no clue how much time I'm going to get at that point or anything, I was like, you know what? I'm going to write a book because at least like, basically the way I saw it was overnight."
},
{
"end_time": 4275.845,
"index": 159,
"start_time": 4253.797,
"text": " All the proof that I ever had of like having lived a life got wiped away. So I was like, damn, if I die tomorrow, there was no proof I was here. Okay, so I decided to write a book. And I actually have a copy here. I'll give you one. And then I write the book. So I started writing the book in August of 2021. And then I published the book in March of 2022."
},
{
"end_time": 4305.811,
"index": 160,
"start_time": 4276.886,
"text": " I ended up doing like this book. Mind you, no one knows I'm out on bond. No one knows I got arrested. I'm just kind of like doing this and like people know me as this business guy. So they're like, Oh, it's the next chapter of his life that he's writing a book. I do this book launch party. I make like five, five grand that night. What is the book? Is it just on your Chris, a true crimes type story or is it about starting or is it just everything? Up until the point of I got arrested, but I didn't say anything about like all the fraud I did or any of that shit. It was just my life up until that point."
},
{
"end_time": 4334.155,
"index": 161,
"start_time": 4306.596,
"text": " So needless to say, I need to write another one. So it went really well. Like I was like, okay, but how can I like do more of this? Like I like storytelling. So what can I do? And fun fact, me and Joe Rogan actually have the same birthday, August 11th. So I was a big Joe Rogan fan. I have a lot of time on my hands at this point. So I started watching him and I'm like, maybe I should start a podcast. I was like, all right, let me look into it."
},
{
"end_time": 4364.326,
"index": 162,
"start_time": 4334.821,
"text": " And then in June of 2022, I decided to start doing it, but I did it audio only. I didn't, I didn't get cameras. I just did like me and a microphone. I started doing it. A few people listen to the episodes. They say, Oh man, this is good. Later on within a few months, I find a studio that kind of does studio time. I rent it. I started doing the episodes. And then right when I started doing the podcast in October of 2022 is when finally I get sentenced and I get sentenced to eight months in federal prison."
},
{
"end_time": 4394.48,
"index": 163,
"start_time": 4365.572,
"text": " So what happens is they let me self surrender. So I picked January. So between October and January, I started recording episodes and I was like, all right, eight months. I do one episode a week. I did the calculations. I recorded enough episodes to schedule everything while I was away. Okay. So if you didn't know me, you thought I was still on the street. Right. Right. So, and it was your fan. If you subscribe or they have no idea you've disappeared. They have no idea. Exactly. And the funny thing is the day I got out from prison,"
},
{
"end_time": 4424.428,
"index": 164,
"start_time": 4395.077,
"text": " My mom had in me my cell phone and it was like, bro, you're a fucking dick. Where are you? What the fuck is going on? Yeah. Like people were trying to tell me congratulations on the podcast and all that shit, but obviously I didn't have my cell phone anyway. So I record enough and I, the week before I went away, I, so this is like December between December 30th of 2022 and January 9th of 2023. I spent that whole week just like scheduling everything for all those months. Man, you January 9th is my sister's birthday. Uh,"
},
{
"end_time": 4452.619,
"index": 165,
"start_time": 4424.582,
"text": " Which was yesterday. Happy birthday, Janice. On January 9th, she has to drop off her baby brother at prison. Her 32nd birthday. Fucking hell of a birthday present. With my niece, my nephew, my mom, and my sister. It was wild. So I schedule everything. And then they drop me off at Coleman. At the Coleman camp. So... Nice. Yeah. That's where Jess was. Yeah. When it was a female camp. It was a female camp, yeah. During COVID, they swapped it. They changed it to male."
},
{
"end_time": 4479.275,
"index": 166,
"start_time": 4453.592,
"text": " Is that where you met Ross? Yeah. So I have a question. Was there a guy there named Donovan Davis? Yeah, he was in my same unit. Yeah, yeah, I wrote a story about him. Oh, that's cool. Gap. Oh shit. Yeah. Yeah. Wasn't he on Forbes or something like that? Oh, yeah, you know, he was in Forbes. Yeah, yeah. Forbes.com wrote a couple articles about him. Yeah, yeah, he was doing all the"
},
{
"end_time": 4507.346,
"index": 167,
"start_time": 4479.923,
"text": " Repairs on all the equipment and But yeah, Donovan, he's hilarious, right? He's funny. He's a funny guy. You met him at the medium at the low. That's a lot. I was there for God I was there with him for probably five years six years. When did you get out? I got out in 2019 And when did he go in you remember? Yeah about 14 maybe fuck he was in there a while"
},
{
"end_time": 4527.534,
"index": 168,
"start_time": 4507.705,
"text": " But he's got like 17 years. Fuck. He's still in. Yeah, that's why I was supposed to be getting out. Because I met him in 2023. When I went in, he's supposed to be getting out in like, February or March of this year. Oh, good for him. Yeah, that's because just because of the credits and everything."
},
{
"end_time": 4556.869,
"index": 169,
"start_time": 4528.985,
"text": " But yeah, he anyway, so I just wanted because everybody knew him, right? Yeah, what 300 people in the camp? How many people are there by the time I left just under 500? Oh, okay. Yeah, yeah. They were they were shoving people in there by the time I was leaving and you met and you I didn't see I didn't know you met Ross there. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So so I go in strip church all that shit. I never been strip church in my life. So I was like, Oh, this is gonna be great. Change clothes. I walk in to introduce me to the Cubans."
},
{
"end_time": 4585.486,
"index": 170,
"start_time": 4557.449,
"text": " which is weird because I would have thought that place was full of Cubans because it's in Florida and it wasn't, there was like 10, 11 Cubans. Later I found out that Cubans, the reason there were so little of them is because you can only go to a camp if you're a U S citizen. Right. If you're a resident with a green card, they don't let you go below the low. Yeah. So most of them are in the, are in the, uh, in the lows. Yeah. I would assume Miami lows probably Chuck full of Cubans. Yeah. Yeah. Or maybe the Miami camp. So,"
},
{
"end_time": 4616.613,
"index": 171,
"start_time": 4587.432,
"text": " That's like, that's it. I'm in prison. It's crazy. Like I couldn't even, I still couldn't believe it. It was, it was so hard for me to like, like process. I mean, for you, obviously it was different, but for me, it was like, how the fuck did I end up here? Like I was supposed to be this kid who just did things differently and like was a decent kid. And here I am at 30 years old, like right when I turned 30 thrown in fucking prison."
},
{
"end_time": 4646.578,
"index": 172,
"start_time": 4617.637,
"text": " It's fucking wild that night. And then that night, I'll tell you the funny story about first night in the shower. So I'm taking a shower. I'm taking a shower. And there's I don't know the whole thing about the the the the slippers. Oh, no, no, no, no, no, no. I don't I didn't know the whole thing about the slippers. Right. So I shower slides. Yes. Yeah."
},
{
"end_time": 4675.708,
"index": 173,
"start_time": 4647.329,
"text": " So the shower slides, I leave them at the end of the stall and I go in. So I hear someone yelling, Kuwa, Kuwa. That's what they used to call me in there in Cuba, whatever. Because my prison was full of Puerto Ricans. Like out of the 500 of us that were there, it was like 350 Puerto Ricans. It was crazy. Never seen so many Puerto Ricans in one spot. The guy who's yelling my name or my nickname is this guy named Melo. Melo has a scorpion tattoo on his fucking face. So I'm thinking like,"
},
{
"end_time": 4702.637,
"index": 174,
"start_time": 4676.613,
"text": " Here we go. I turn around and he's like, he's like, put your fucking slides on. I put them on. I finished taking a shower. I go outside. And when I'm like drying off in my room, he's like, yo, bro, you're going to get fucking fungus on your feet. Yeah, you'll get that's how like unfamiliar with the prison system. I was, you know,"
},
{
"end_time": 4722.619,
"index": 175,
"start_time": 4703.097,
"text": " I wonder how bad it really is, you know what I'm saying? Because everybody wears them, like you don't wear them. Yeah, it's disgusting. I mean, in our prison, I'll be honest, it was really clean. No, I was just saying, and the thing is, they're constantly cleaning it. Constantly cleaning it. Every morning. It isn't filthy or anything like that. But the fact is, is that"
},
{
"end_time": 4747.858,
"index": 176,
"start_time": 4723.114,
"text": " you have to understand that if this guy gets a cold, everybody's getting cold, even though they're wiping everything down constantly, you just have no idea how many everybody's using the same stuff. And there's just, and not to get gross, but the shit that guy's doing the shower. Yeah, of course. I think that that's me. That's what my thought was, because I was like, there's so many chemicals in this place. I don't think that there's anything necessarily alive. Yeah, but even if you miss a spot or something, you know, everybody's taking a piss in there and fucking wagging off in there is gross. So"
},
{
"end_time": 4777.654,
"index": 177,
"start_time": 4749.548,
"text": " that night. So that happens in the shower. Uh, the Cubans are pretty cool with me. So everybody gets me like a pair of slides, actually two pairs of slice. Not nice enough. I meet these old poppy. He has cancer now. God, okay. He's, he's not doing well. He got out after doing seven years and then he got diagnosed with colon cancer. It's fucking horrible, man. It's the coolest old man you'll ever meet. Um, he, he gets me what I need. He likes, he knows I like to write. So he got me like this notebook. All the Cubans kind of hooked me up."
},
{
"end_time": 4807.739,
"index": 178,
"start_time": 4778.609,
"text": " So that night I'm sitting in the, in my bunk. I'm just like laying down, you know, they did count or whatever. I'm laying down in my bunk. I'm looking at the roof and I'm just like, wow, I'm in fucking prison. Like I'm in shock. I'm in total shock at this point. I can't even, I can't cry. I can't laugh. I'm so I'd never been in shock in my life. I got, well, he's in shock or when people freeze or whatever. I never understood what that was. And then that happened to me that night. And I was just like, you know,"
},
{
"end_time": 4833.899,
"index": 179,
"start_time": 4808.217,
"text": " The fuck is going to happen now. But then funny enough, you know, life is life is strange when you think you're at, you're at your lowest. It's, it's like, it's more like a, like a springboard or like a catapult to like another phase of your life. You know, it's pretty wild. So for some people, for some people, they hit bottom, they just stay there. So yeah, that brings up a question. Do you think that's a choice? Oh yeah. Yeah."
},
{
"end_time": 4860.862,
"index": 180,
"start_time": 4834.121,
"text": " The people just let that that define them and they don't they tell themselves I'll never break. I'll never I'll never amount to anything. Yeah, I'll never get out of this. I'll never bounce back. I agree. They just that self-taught kind of just destroyed. They and you've heard the term, you know, you suffer more in your mind than you do in reality. 100,000%. And that's that's true. It's like, you know, like when I went to the dentist, like, you know, I told you,"
},
{
"end_time": 4882.295,
"index": 181,
"start_time": 4861.374,
"text": " Listen, I was so overwhelmingly anxious and worried. And it was nowhere near as bad as what I had in my mind. It just never is every time. It just never is anything that I worry about. This is going to happen. This is going to be horrible. And then it happens. There's just not right. So but yes, the same thing you to prison and just like when I got out of prison, I was told you the other day, like, that's all."
},
{
"end_time": 4908.831,
"index": 182,
"start_time": 4883.148,
"text": " I'm going to be working at McDonald's. I'm never going to get a shot. Maybe someday I'll be able to sell used cars. I'm never going to bounce back. I'm never going to make any money. I'm never going to, it's going to, you know, life's going to be your, my expectations of life had dropped so dramatically. I just didn't have any real expectations. I wanted to do some things that I thought if I busted my ass, maybe someday I can pull these things off and I work at it. But you know, my expectations were very low. Yeah. For me, it was."
},
{
"end_time": 4926.152,
"index": 183,
"start_time": 4909.684,
"text": " And mind you, the podcast is already working, right? Meaning like it's, it's functioning without me. Right. But I'm so in shock and so in my brain that night that I couldn't even think about that. Like whatever. But anyway, so I wake up the next morning and that's kind of gone."
},
{
"end_time": 4951.442,
"index": 184,
"start_time": 4927.056,
"text": " If you sleep hot at night, you know how disruptive that can be. Whether you're having trouble falling asleep, you're waking up sweating in the middle of the night, or all of the above, that's where GhostBed can help. As the makers of the coolest beds in the world, GhostBed is your go-to for cooling mattresses, cooling pillows, and cooling bedding. From their signature Ghost Ice fabric to patented technology that adjusts to your body's temperature,"
},
{
"end_time": 4972.022,
"index": 185,
"start_time": 4951.442,
"text": " Every ghost bed mattress is designed with cooling in mind. So whether you want a plush mattress that cushions your shoulders and hips, or a firm option with exceptional support, your ghost bed will keep you cool and comfortable all night long. When you purchase a ghost bed mattress, your comfort is guaranteed. You can try out your mattress for 101 nights."
},
{
"end_time": 4995.077,
"index": 186,
"start_time": 4972.022,
"text": " GoSped.com"
},
{
"end_time": 5022.807,
"index": 187,
"start_time": 4995.077,
"text": " Cox and use the code Cox at checkout again That's ghost bed comm slash Cox with the code Cox at the checkout to save a whopping 50% off sitewide and I wake up They send me to Unicor to work, you know Fucking newbies get the worst jobs. All that shit. I Get acclimated, you know, who's who this and that Unicor is the Unicor is the factory that they have yeah, it's to work at. Yeah, what do they make there?"
},
{
"end_time": 5051.305,
"index": 188,
"start_time": 5023.66,
"text": " We start at like 12 cents, 10 cents an hour. No, no, I mean, what did you fabricate? Oh, we got like these long pieces of plastic and some long pieces of metal. So I'm assuming when you assembled it, it became furniture or something like that or like shelving. Oh, okay. I was gonna say, you know, because of the other one, they make the paneling or dividers for cubicles. It could be that way because we got these long things."
},
{
"end_time": 5078.558,
"index": 189,
"start_time": 5051.834,
"text": " Supposedly never asked what you were doing. I didn't give a fuck about that place. Fuck that place the fuck So unicorn yeah, so I get sent over to unicorn and This is this is interesting how life comes full circle. So being from Miami Rick Ross is like, you know the big deal down there and Rick Ross would always mention this group of guys named the booby boys in the rap songs and"
},
{
"end_time": 5109.155,
"index": 190,
"start_time": 5080.247,
"text": " I didn't even know what that really was until I went to prison. I'm going to tell you why. So I go to prison my second day, third day, whatever. They send me to Unicor. I go to Unicor. This old black dude is like teaching me what to do and stuff. They send me back to the unit. We're done working for the day. And some guys like, Oh, you know who that is? I was like, bro, I just got here yesterday. I don't even know where the fuck I'm standing. No, I don't know who that is. Oh, that's spoon like spoon. The fuck does that make me fork? Is he supposed to be someone important? I don't know."
},
{
"end_time": 5135.947,
"index": 191,
"start_time": 5109.957,
"text": " He's like, bro, he got pardoned by Obama. He was in Miami guy. So I ended up looking him up and I was like, oh shit, I wrote a book report about this guy in like middle school. And he's the booby boys was basically this big drug group that controlled like the black neighborhood in Miami for years. They did it there for a while. Um, and that's who,"
},
{
"end_time": 5156.561,
"index": 192,
"start_time": 5136.613,
"text": " It was weird. Me and him became really good friends. We took on this weird mentor-disciple thing. Spoon knows I'm going to write his book one day. You said he got pardoned by what? Obama. Yeah, because he wasn't out yet. Yeah. So he got a commutation. Commutation. Yeah, yeah, yeah."
},
{
"end_time": 5177.261,
"index": 193,
"start_time": 5156.92,
"text": " So Obama was, he wasn't allowed to go down. And so that happened. They let him start working his way down from muted the sentence. Instead of you being like a pen, and then correct, they commuted the sentences where he was like, but they did it gradually. So you didn't just get let out because they realized like, if you can't, I've been locked up 20 years, you let him hit the street with nothing no halfway house."
},
{
"end_time": 5205.657,
"index": 194,
"start_time": 5177.688,
"text": " Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's not good to come to another crime and go back to prison. So you have to grab. So these guys from the pen, we're going from like the pen to the medium, to the low, to the low, to the camp, to the camp, to a halfway house, then to the street. Yeah. Pretty much. So I caught him. Well, he, he maybe only had six years left at that point. He'd been in jail for like 17 years, something stupid. Uh, he's in North Carolina now, I think he's getting, he's getting transferred to the Miami camps. But anyway,"
},
{
"end_time": 5232.944,
"index": 195,
"start_time": 5205.913,
"text": " him and me become buddies, become good friends. So he, uh, that was pretty wild. Like again, I'm like, you know, I like the gangster stories and all that stuff. I ended up becoming friends with one of them in prison, like one of the gangster stories from when I was a kid. It's like, it's crazy how life kind of like, you know, does all that. But yeah, um, that was my second day in there. By the time I'm a month in, uh,"
},
{
"end_time": 5256.357,
"index": 196,
"start_time": 5233.353,
"text": " I'm used to it. I got my routine, you know, I'm doing I'm exercising. What, bro, you did 14 years, I still don't I did it too. But what's this? Like, 13 years, 14. I'm sorry, 13 years browning out that yesterday. Sorry, sorry, sorry, sorry, sorry, 13 years. Um, what do you mean? That's actually from the state started in the state and then it kind of came over. So in the state,"
},
{
"end_time": 5280.247,
"index": 197,
"start_time": 5256.852,
"text": " I don't know which state I don't know if this is all states or just in general, you're not allowed to eat. I'm sure you're not allowed to speak when you eat like the inmates in Florida. This is my understanding at some prisons. And I don't even know if they still do this but they the guards like they give you five minutes to eat. So you come in sit down across from somebody else at a long table. So you sit down you you eat real quick."
},
{
"end_time": 5293.899,
"index": 198,
"start_time": 5281.203,
"text": " And they count down, so they start counting down. And then as they count down, and you're not allowed to talk, so it's not like, hey, bro, you're not allowed to take anything off another person's plate or do anything. So you basically just eat."
},
{
"end_time": 5324.275,
"index": 199,
"start_time": 5294.718,
"text": " And, and you don't talk and because you're not allowed to say, Hey man, I'm going to see you guys or say, Hey, I'm leaving. You knock on the door. It's a way of saying like, you know, I'm leaving to you guys. And everybody like looks up and nods and whatever. I just started doing it because I saw everybody else doing it. So it's funneled down from the state prisons to the interesting. Okay. So it was explained to me, you know, did you have hamburger day? Of course. Why is this? Yeah. So"
},
{
"end_time": 5349.189,
"index": 200,
"start_time": 5324.65,
"text": " The way Wednesday was explained to me was that the Cubans had been, I don't know if it was Jimmy Carter, or it was Reagan, I forget who, all the Cubans were being deported. Really? Yeah, it wouldn't, you know, keep on after the Merrill boat lift. Oh, yeah, they were running rampant. Yeah, crime wave, they'd arrested, you know, thousands of them, they were filled up in Atlanta. And"
},
{
"end_time": 5376.374,
"index": 201,
"start_time": 5349.991,
"text": " So Reagan was saying was that was that that that that prison riot that happened? Yeah, Reagan was saying like, we was going to send them back. I want to say it was Reagan. I'm not positive that sounds like Reagan. He's going to send them all back. And what they did was they had a riot, they took over the prison. And then they negotiated over the course of several days after they took it over. And one, he they wanted their sentences to be reviewed and not have to go back to Cuba."
},
{
"end_time": 5406.271,
"index": 202,
"start_time": 5377.381,
"text": " And two, they wanted, I forget what else they wanted. And some something completely silly. And the other thing they wanted was they wanted hamburgers and French fries on Wednesday, at least once a week. And so the BOP said, fine, we'll give you hamburger and French fries. We reviewed, they did everything they got the three things that they got. One of them was hamburgers and French fries on Wednesday. Thanks to the Cubans. Thanks to the Cubans. That's what I was told. I was like, that can't be true. And they were like, I'm telling you,"
},
{
"end_time": 5421.084,
"index": 203,
"start_time": 5406.613,
"text": " That is absolutely true. I'm like, there's no fucking way they're like, it's absolutely true. You know what else I heard? And I think it happened in in 96 if I'm not mistaken 1996. So it was under Clinton if that's that's true. What I also heard is that's why a certain amount of"
},
{
"end_time": 5437.688,
"index": 204,
"start_time": 5422.056,
"text": " I don't think this can be true because I'm sure there's prisons in Miami that have more than, they don't allow a certain amount, like more than a certain amount of Cubans in each prison because of that. That's probably possible. That seems perfectly reasonable."
},
{
"end_time": 5466.732,
"index": 205,
"start_time": 5438.712,
"text": " I remember, but I remember one time I was like, I can't believe that every Wednesday they are giving us when I first got there, like the hamburgers and french fries were good. They gave us like cheeseburgers and for me it was good. Everything was good. They weren't bad, but it was too small. They were tiny. When I read this is when I got there. Old menu. You were on the new, you were on the national menu. When I got there, we were just, it was just regular food. Like it was good. And I remember thinking, man, I can't believe that on Wednesdays they give us hamburgers and french fries. That's hilarious."
},
{
"end_time": 5496.476,
"index": 206,
"start_time": 5467.312,
"text": " And I remember one of the guys goes, it may be prison. He looked at me and he said, this is actually my cousin. He goes, it may be prison, but it's still fucking America. He said it with such conviction. I love it. He's got a point. So I actually start getting like, by the way, the friend, if you go to prison and you have friends that like ask your mom about you, send you commissary, like"
},
{
"end_time": 5523.029,
"index": 207,
"start_time": 5497.824,
"text": " You need to cherish those friends for the rest of your fucking life. Okay. If those people call you in the middle of you having sex with your dream girl, you need to stop for a second and call and talk to them and entertain whatever the fuck they want. And I hang up the phone whenever they're done. Then go back to fucking your, your dream girl, because those people, they're invaluable, bro. They're worth their weight in gold anyway. So my mom's telling me when my friends are sending me commissary, she's keeping me updated."
},
{
"end_time": 5551.698,
"index": 208,
"start_time": 5523.677,
"text": " The podcast is actually getting some traction while I'm gone, which is cool, which was the plan. I mean, I couldn't control it, but, and then while I'm in there, they take out my celly, this Puerto Rican kid named, we used to call him Jack Sparrow. Uh, this Puerto Rican kid, they take them out and then they put some weird dude in my cell and I'm like, all right, fuck that. So I had already become friends with the, the head orderly in the other, in the other unit. So how that happened was."
},
{
"end_time": 5581.869,
"index": 209,
"start_time": 5552.073,
"text": " The second day I got there when I was getting commissary, I hear a familiar voice and I was like, there's no way on the planet. I know this guy that is not Jose Batista over there. I look over Jose Batista. Jose Batista was my coworker at the insurance company. Okay. He also caught a separate case for me, but for the same shit, same exact thing got ratted on everything. It was, it was weird. Like we even got like more or less the same amount of time. So I walk over to him like, Jose, you remember me? Oh shit, Nelson, what's up? He greased me and he's like, yo, coming to my unit tonight."
},
{
"end_time": 5611.305,
"index": 210,
"start_time": 5582.244,
"text": " I go to his unit and who do I meet? Ross Mandel. Ross is sitting in his, in his room with the head orderly G who also I became really good friends with this kid named Geo, who was like the unit chef. Like he would whip up stuff for us. And that's how I met Ross. Okay. Which Ross looked very different in prison. He was like 60 pounds overweight. He hadn't gotten his teeth done. So he looked very different."
},
{
"end_time": 5638.933,
"index": 211,
"start_time": 5611.817,
"text": " But yeah. Um, so that night I become friends with the head orderly. So what happens is they shove some weird guy in my cell and I was like, yeah, I'm done. Let me leave to the other unit. So I talked to the head orderly, gee, I became friends with, he moves me over there. When he moves me over there, basically, uh, I, me and him become really good friends. And that's when I built the routine. I started writing. I read, I read a ton of books in those, I ended up getting out at five months."
},
{
"end_time": 5667.824,
"index": 212,
"start_time": 5639.65,
"text": " Uh, I read like 31 books. I love, I love reading, man. It really, I hadn't read in a long time. So you didn't do eight months. You did. I ended up doing five because would you a halfway house or just home because of care exact. Okay. Yeah. So you know how they did the whole 50% or whatever. Yeah. I ended up getting out in five months and they, I was supposed to go straight home, but what ended up happening was they didn't do the whole home inspection or whatever the fuck. So they actually helped me hostess there for like two months and then they sent me home. So,"
},
{
"end_time": 5693.882,
"index": 213,
"start_time": 5668.268,
"text": " The cool thing was when I got let out and I was at the halfway house, I had a couple of YouTube shorts to like 150,000 views. That to me was like, Oh my God. For a channel you had just started and you weren't monitoring. Exactly. Exactly. So I get let out. The podcast is going well. Mind you, I had like scheduled way out in advance. Right. So you saw time. Yeah. So I got plenty of time."
},
{
"end_time": 5723.575,
"index": 214,
"start_time": 5694.599,
"text": " To figure out what I'm going to do. So while I'm at the halfway house, actually tell, I get in contact with the owner of that studio. I used to record at, and I managed to convince the halfway house to give me an internship at the podcast studio. I have a fucking ankle monitor at this point and everything. So I get to go there at night and record my episodes and then just come home. So that's how I kept it going. Like I kept recording and eventually I got let off the ankle monitor. Right? So now I'm like,"
},
{
"end_time": 5751.084,
"index": 215,
"start_time": 5723.933,
"text": " mobile on probation, I can go. Eventually some guy that I had on my show, he's like, do you know this guy? And I'm like, Ian Bick, I've never heard of this guy. No, who is he? And he's like, oh, he's, he went to prison. He's a podcaster. You guys, you shouldn't hit him up. So I DM him thinking like, bro, this guy's a podcaster, legit podcaster. He's not going to respond. Hey man, I love what you're doing. I went to prison too. Would love to connect. At that point, he was just doing shorts, right? He wasn't getting started the channel yet, right?"
},
{
"end_time": 5778.968,
"index": 216,
"start_time": 5751.357,
"text": " Not yeah, this is this is October, September of 2023. Yeah, about to start it. Because I think he started in January of 2024. Or did he do? No, no, no, I think 23. Was it 23? 23. Yeah, because he had some episodes out. Oh, okay. So okay. Because when I heard about him, he didn't even have a channel yet. It was just tick tock. He was blowing up on tick tock. Yeah, he did start with the short form stuff. So"
},
{
"end_time": 5809.462,
"index": 217,
"start_time": 5779.753,
"text": " I just leave it alone. And I also knew like, man, he's busy. Like, you know how you did with your phone? How you're like, bro, this is the whole day. Like, you know, I have to get back to people like hours later, because he's the same. His phone is just like cluttered. Yeah, horrible. But anyway, he gets back to me. And then I end up setting up something with him in March of 2023. No, 2024. I'm sorry. I go up there. I record his episode. And that was my first big little pop, like of getting my first my face out there and getting my story."
},
{
"end_time": 5822.381,
"index": 218,
"start_time": 5810.094,
"text": " I've become good friends with him since. Actually, last month I went up to his studio and recorded a bunch of stuff because I'm in between studios in Miami. And here we are. Now I'm on Matt's show."
},
{
"end_time": 5848.797,
"index": 219,
"start_time": 5824.497,
"text": " Have you ever seen the original guy that you were working with and got out? Have you ever seen him? Never seen him again. I would rather never see him for the rest of my life for obvious reasons. The restitution was half a million dollars, and they were obligating me to actually pay $122,000. Okay, so they're splitting that among several people. Yes. Okay. And I'll get to that now. Right when I got"
},
{
"end_time": 5878.473,
"index": 220,
"start_time": 5849.189,
"text": " That's a great question because right after I got back from seeing Ian at his studio in March of 2024 and recording my episode with him, the week after my probation officer calls me, mind you, you know what this is like in financial crimes. Like they're into your, like I'm broke as shit. I'm making no money on purpose because I'm like, man, if I make more money, all this stuff, like it's just hard. It's a difficult situation, right? Because they had, they're looking at you through with a fine tooth comb that my, my,"
},
{
"end_time": 5908.029,
"index": 221,
"start_time": 5879.155,
"text": " I don't know. Can we say the C word on, on YouTube? Anyway, whatever. Uh, this fucking bitch of a, you can't, yeah, don't say that because it'll, I didn't, I didn't, I didn't, I didn't, you're difficult to deal with probation, my probation officer, difficult fucking asshole of a probation officer that I was dealing with. Uh, basically like blackmailed me into like paying more than I should. Long story short, March, right after I get back from Ian big, she calls me and she's like, Hey,"
},
{
"end_time": 5936.374,
"index": 222,
"start_time": 5908.848,
"text": " Nelson, what's up? It's, you know, such and such a probation. Hi, ma'am. How are you doing? Okay. So I don't know how this happened, but your restitution is paid off. One of your co-defendants paid her off. So you, as of today, you don't owe any more money. Well, I wanted to ask and I was like, I can't ask. Can I write? I'm not going to. So I wish I knew who it was so I could thank them. But"
},
{
"end_time": 5942.005,
"index": 223,
"start_time": 5937.278,
"text": " Yeah, I got off. I'm very blessed because that never happens ever."
},
{
"end_time": 5971.749,
"index": 224,
"start_time": 5942.483,
"text": " Hey, you guys, if you like the video, do me a favor, hit the subscribe button, hit the bell so you get notified of videos just like this. Also share the video. We're going to put all of Nelson's links for social media and for his YouTube channel in the description box. You can go there, click on it. You can subscribe and follow. Do me a favor and consider joining our Patreon. It's $10 a month. We have Patreon exclusive content on Patreon and it really does help Colby and I make these videos. So thank you very much."
},
{
"end_time": 5978.541,
"index": 225,
"start_time": 5971.749,
"text": " See ya."
},
{
"end_time": 6006.544,
"index": 226,
"start_time": 5981.118,
"text": " It started with a scream inside a quiet Maryland home."
},
{
"end_time": 6031.596,
"index": 227,
"start_time": 6007.142,
"text": " A mother trying to protect the family dog and her son in the grip of a violent hallucinogenic rage. By the time it was over, she was dead, and he claimed LSD made him do it. His name, David Minor IV, and we talked to him. Listen to Invisible Choir every other week as we uncover the most haunting true crimes you've never heard of, available wherever you get your podcasts."
}
]
}No transcript available.