- 2 days ago
Category
📺
TVTranscript
00:01The head of the biker gang, he pulls out a screwdriver
00:05and he just starts whacking.
00:08He's just like, where's the money in?
00:10I knew that I got to figure this out or end up dead.
00:16Coin of the day was a crypto scam.
00:18Just the mention of one of these coins
00:20would make millions and millions of dollars for us.
00:24I went to a register and handed them the counterfeit bill.
00:27Like, oh, should I just run out the door?
00:32Pulls out a gun, says, we're going to go down in the basement
00:35and have a little chat.
00:36In that moment, I'm like, we're dead.
00:39I scrambled to try to get rid of the evidence.
00:42I grabbed all the counterfeit money and threw it in the toilet.
00:46They were still hitting the door with the battering ram.
00:51It's FBI, it's IRS, they're state troopers.
00:54The whole street is lined up with flashing lights.
00:58My lawyer said, you're going to do time for this, brother.
01:00And I'm like, for that?
01:10My name is Jimmy Watson.
01:11I ran a $40 million crypto scheme with the famous tech billionaire John McAfee.
01:18Until he ended up dead.
01:22I was raised on a ranch in West Texas.
01:25I had a really good childhood on that farm.
01:27I just loved playing army.
01:28I would just dig holes all over the property.
01:30My dad was always going up and trying to feel them falling in them and stuff.
01:36I always knew from the time I was little that I was meant for something big.
01:42I knew that I was going to go serve my country.
01:45I felt like it would be the ultimate, highest calling in the world
01:49to jump on a grenade or charge a machine gun nest.
01:54My family was gung-ho about me joining the Marine Corps at 16, 17 years old.
02:01I chose the Marine Corps because they would take me with a GED and my parents' signature.
02:06My parents signed me away so quick it's not even funny, and it changed my life forever.
02:11I was in First Marines and we were the first Marines to invade Afghanistan.
02:21That's where I grew up.
02:23My whole adult life was spinning war.
02:26When I was in the Marine Corps, I saw these SEALs.
02:29They were badass, tattooed up, muscled guys, looked like prisoners.
02:33I idolized those guys.
02:35I decided to go all out with the SEAL teams and I worked my ass off and was finally accepted.
02:40I became a Navy SEAL at 27 years old.
02:44The missions and the SEALs are brutal.
02:47I mean, try hooking and climbing from a moving vessel onto a massive ship in tumultuous seas where we just had two SEALs die last year.
02:57You know, it's freaking dangerous.
02:59During one of these exercises, I was injured.
03:03All I remember is I was on a breath hold.
03:05I started seizing out underwater.
03:08And I bumped into my buddy seizing out.
03:10But he looked, it startled him.
03:12So he grabbed me.
03:13He cracked my Secumars, the two bottles of oxygen on my side, rocketed me to the surface.
03:19He saved my life.
03:20But it also created a bubble in my brain.
03:25That created some neurological issues for me, pretty hardcore.
03:29And so I retired out of the SEALs.
03:31My dream career, all of a sudden, that just goes away.
03:35Now that I was out, I didn't know what to do with myself.
03:38I felt like I lost my identity when I got out of the SEAL teams.
03:40I'm like, God help me.
03:41Like, surely my life is not over, right?
03:44And so all of a sudden, my buddy calls me and he's like, yo, bro.
03:50He's got a very distinct voice.
03:52He goes, I know this guy who needs protection.
03:55And he wanted a former Navy SEAL.
03:57And so he's like, you want to go protect this guy, McAfee?
04:00I'm like, who the heck is McAfee, bro?
04:02He's like, yo, check your computer screen.
04:04And I'm like, oh, that McAfee antivirus guy?
04:07And he's like, yeah, him.
04:10John McAfee was looking for a bodyguard and he wanted a SEAL.
04:14That was the call that changed my life forever.
04:18In the next two hours, I was heading off to San Diego Airport,
04:22flying to Ocracote, North Carolina.
04:25So I show up to John McAfee's house.
04:28He's super guarded.
04:29He's got massive gates around his house.
04:32He's got three crazy attack dogs.
04:34I walk through the door with all these guards.
04:37They all have pistols on.
04:39But there's smoke everywhere.
04:40Everybody's smoking.
04:41Everybody's drinking.
04:42John McAfee comes out.
04:43And without a shirt on, he's got tattoos.
04:46He's got the white salt pepper hair, crystal blue eyes.
04:49And he's got like this Mac tin across his chest.
04:53And he's like, let's talk outside.
04:55And I walk outside with him and he stops abruptly
04:58and turns right to my face like he's going to kiss me.
05:00And he's like this close to me.
05:03And I can smell the cigarette and scotch all over him.
05:06And it's like he stares right through you.
05:08He's got the crazy raspy voice.
05:10He said, who is the most feared man on the battlefield?
05:15And I said, sir, I don't know.
05:17And he looked at me.
05:18He goes, the oldest man is the most feared man.
05:22And I knew exactly what he meant.
05:25You don't know .
05:26You better fear me.
05:27That's what he was telling me in that one little statement.
05:30He says, do you understand what I just said?
05:32And he stared at me and I got chills.
05:34And I said, yes, sir.
05:36And because of that first meeting with John,
05:39I absolutely 100% was all in.
05:43So I moved into this house and I had this beautiful downstairs,
05:47massive, massive bedroom.
05:49So I went to sleep with this Glock 40 pistol by my side that first night.
05:54And I wake up at 2 in the morning.
05:57And this shadow figure is standing over me.
06:02And I wake up and I'm so startled that I automatically have my hand on the pistol.
06:08And I see it's John McAfee looking down upon me.
06:10And he's got his gun out and he goes, are you ready?
06:13And I said, I guess, yeah.
06:14And he goes, all right, follow me.
06:16And he just jumped off my bed and ran.
06:18And I just run up the stairs after him up to the very top deck.
06:23And he just stares out the window with these binoculars at night for a long, long time.
06:29And he's like, do you see that?
06:31And he gave the binoculars to one of the guards.
06:34And one of the guards is like, yep, I see it.
06:37And John says, blinking lights, right?
06:39And he says, that's right, blinking lights.
06:41And he's like, now, come here, son, to me.
06:43He always called me son.
06:44He said, what do you see?
06:46And I'm staring.
06:48And I'm thinking, dude, I don't see nothing.
06:50Like, I don't see nothing.
06:52And I just said, sir, I believe you, but I don't see it.
06:57And all the guards, like, look at me like, you're stupid, bro.
07:00Like, you know, you're dumb.
07:01So the very next day, John McAfee calls me outside.
07:05He's got an envelope.
07:06And I can see it's like a full of money.
07:08And I know I'm getting fired.
07:10He's like, son, you know that blinking light last night?
07:13And I said, yes, sir.
07:14He goes, you were right.
07:16There was no blinking light.
07:19He hands me the thing of money.
07:21He told me to fire the security guard that said he saw the blinking light.
07:26Because everything was a test to John McAfee.
07:28Everything.
07:29And now he knew he could trust me.
07:35John McAfee was deep in the crypto game.
07:38In 2017, crypto was the total wild, wild west.
07:42There was no rules, no regulations whatsoever.
07:46John McAfee's company was all about crypto trading, all about marketing,
07:51all about setting up different platforms with blockchain technology.
07:55John McAfee had a following of a million people almost on Twitter.
08:00And 75% of them, we did a study later on, 75% of these people did exactly what John McAfee said.
08:07So John realized this influence.
08:09And so John came up with a coin of the day.
08:12Coin of the day was a crypto scam.
08:14On Wall Street, they call it a pump and dump scheme of the cryptocurrency.
08:19A pump and dump scheme is basically you invest into something.
08:23Nobody else knows you've invested in it, but you're the authority behind this product.
08:29You take this product and offer it to the market.
08:32Everybody jumps on board.
08:34The value skyrockets.
08:36And while this value is skyrocketing of this product, you simply pull all your money out.
08:42That's the best way I can describe coin of the day.
08:45John trusted me so much.
08:47I would pick the coin, I would hand it to John.
08:49John would invest a million dollars in this coin, let's say.
08:52And then the next day, all he would do is he would mention the coin on his Twitter account.
08:57He wouldn't say invest in it.
08:59No, he would say this is a coin, but I'm going to say Doge today.
09:03That's the coin of the day.
09:05But McAfee never said to invest in this coin.
09:08He used that reverse psychology.
09:10The market skyrockets.
09:12It would go up 400%.
09:14About five seconds after he would tweet, I would just push sell.
09:17That's how fast this was.
09:19Just the mention of one of these coins on his Twitter account
09:23would make millions and millions of dollars for us.
09:26We never cared about the coins.
09:28We just wanted to sell them for a quick profit.
09:30So he started giving me more and more and more responsibility every day.
09:34Like, epic responsibility.
09:35One day, John McAfee just tweeted out that I was the CEO of his company.
09:40I was running his company, but I had no idea I was leading it until that moment.
09:44We were making tens of millions of dollars.
09:48I went from growing up on this poor farm in Texas to a multi-multi-millionaire.
09:53It was crazy.
09:55I was flying high on life.
09:57I was boozing it up.
09:59I was doing speed and nose inhalers.
10:01It was all out party all the time and making a ton of money doing it.
10:05I was on top of the world, but I had no idea that I was about to be crushed by it all.
10:11So one night, we're in John McAfee's mansion in Ocracoke.
10:20I'm closing up the office.
10:21I'm armed.
10:22And my primary duty at this point is always, no matter what, protecting John McAfee's life.
10:28Number two is making sure millions and millions and millions of dollars are coming into his treasury.
10:34And I go downstairs, and I hear this bang, bang, bang, bang, bang on the glass door.
10:41And I'm kind of shocked that I looked, and there's this guy, and he's just crazy.
10:47He's got drool coming out.
10:49His eyes are really wide.
10:50He's yelling and screaming with his tongue out.
10:52And he's already broken through one major threshold on the property.
10:57So I have every right to put him down.
10:59I'm willing to die before I let this guy into the house.
11:02I draw my pistol, and I walk up to the glass real calmly.
11:06And I said, back up.
11:08I'm staring him at his eyes.
11:10He's staring at me in the eyes.
11:11So I have my pistol like this, and I open the door.
11:14He says, I'm here for McAfee.
11:16And he charges me, runs into me.
11:18I grab him and, like, launch him off the balcony and stairs.
11:23And he just lands like a head dart onto the concrete.
11:26He's kind of out of it, but he's getting up.
11:28And I jump on him.
11:30And I put my knee in his neck.
11:33And I put the pistol up to his head.
11:35I'm like, bro, if you move, I'm gonna kill you.
11:38And he just stopped.
11:39He just paralyzed.
11:40And he's like, okay, okay, okay, okay, okay.
11:43Calm down, calm down, calm down.
11:45I really believe he was just a crazed fan.
11:49McAfee had the tendency to make people crazy.
11:53And I was the only thing standing in between John McAfee and those threats coming at him.
12:00One night, I'm working late at night, like every other night, doing these business deals.
12:05It's 2 a.m. in the morning.
12:07I'm just closing up.
12:09One of the guards offered me a drink.
12:11And I drank it.
12:12And about 20 minutes later, I literally felt like I started tripping off LSD.
12:19Like everything closed in.
12:22This massive dark presence came over me.
12:25And it was like a voice told me to get up and run.
12:29I ran out of the house.
12:31I stripped out of my clothes.
12:33It was dead of winter in Ocracoke, North Carolina.
12:36I crawled in this wet marsh and hid in the mud, covered myself in the mud like the predator.
12:42And waited there all night just shivering.
12:45I don't know if John drugged me, but something happened.
12:50I lost my freaking mind for 24 hours.
12:53It was the coldest night I've ever had in my life.
12:55And that's pretty cold coming from a seal.
12:58I did the walk of shame back in the morning, back to the house.
13:03I was pretty sure that John McAfee had drugged me at that point.
13:07But I still didn't know.
13:09John said, calm down, go to sleep, take these pills.
13:13I said, no.
13:15I said, I'm not taking those.
13:17And I told him straight to his face, you're not the man that I thought you were all along.
13:22I see right through you now.
13:24I know exactly who you are.
13:26And I'm freaking done.
13:30And then I left the house with nothing.
13:33Left everything.
13:34Left everything.
13:35Gold, silver, everything.
13:37I had no idea that this was the last time that I was going to see John McAfee.
13:45The FBI started sending letters to my house and I knew that this could do us both in.
13:50They'd heard about our pump and dump crypto scam.
13:52They wanted me to squeeze on John, but I wasn't going to snitch, so I went on the run.
13:58I was a fugitive from the FBI on the run for two years.
14:02I was in Colombia, El Salvador, and Nicaragua.
14:05I was super paranoid.
14:07I just kept moving around, kept moving around all the time, paranoid.
14:11And John McAfee was on the run as well at the same time in Spain.
14:14They say every outlaw comes home to see their mom one last time.
14:19I was no different.
14:21I was homesick.
14:23She's like, where you been?
14:24I said, Mom, I've got some things to tell you.
14:26I said, I just bought a one-way ticket to Bali.
14:30And if anybody's ever said bye to their mom or relative or loved one one last time, it's terrible.
14:36It's gut-wrenching.
14:37All of a sudden, after I told my mom this, this black SUV just slams up, almost like runs into me.
14:48And a guy, he opens the door, and he said, Jimmy Watson?
14:53I put my hands up and I turn, and there's like 15 FBI agents just swarming me, plainclothes, bearded-out guys.
14:59It might sound crazy to say, but I got this major sense of relief.
15:04Like, thank God it's over.
15:08Like, my life may be over.
15:09I might be going to prison for a long time, but at least I'm not on the run anymore.
15:15I was charged with eight felonies, conspiracy, crypto touting, money laundering, wire fraud, conspiracy to commit fraud, and racketeering.
15:23My lawyer said, oh, man, it's 12 to 15 years, Jimmy.
15:26You're going to do time for this, brother.
15:28And I'm like, for that?
15:29For the crypto thing?
15:30I get let out on house arrest, and they put this big old R2-D2 ankle bracelet on me.
15:37And John, I wasn't surprised he was arrested in Spain.
15:40You know, he loves Spain.
15:42I'm on house arrest for like a year and a half, pending trial, because I'm waiting for John McPhee to be transferred from his Spanish prison to America.
15:52But he's fighting like hell, because he don't want to be extradited back to America to stand trial with me.
15:59And one night, my phone just starts blowing up.
16:03I get a call from my lawyer.
16:06John McPhee lost his extradition case yesterday.
16:10But that very hour, they found him hung in his prison cell.
16:15He's dead, Jimmy.
16:19It was heartbreaking to hear that John McPhee died.
16:22John was like a father to me, but he was also like a SEAL commander to me.
16:28And on top of that, you know, when John McPhee died, John owed me a lot of money.
16:32I basically committed a $40 million fraud scheme and had nothing, nothing to show after all that was said and done.
16:44My name's Jeff Turner, and I've made over $1.5 million printing counterfeit cash, known as the Picasso of counterfeiting.
16:52I grew up in a suburb of Tampa called Palm Harbor.
16:55You know, I played t-ball and baseball, had a lot of friends, was pretty normal American dream type childhood, really.
17:04I started high school, and I took a whole lot of art classes, like art, 2D, 3D, all the painting, drawing, sculpting stuff.
17:13At about 15 or 16 years old, I started printing fake IDs just to buy beer.
17:18Just being able to fudge reality with a printer, I mean, it made you feel like, you know, sky's the limit.
17:25A few years later, I ended up reading a book called The Art of Making Money.
17:30And it's about a counterfeiter up in Chicago named Art Williams, who was printing $100 bills.
17:36He kind of broke down replicating the features that people look for to distinguish whether the bills are real or not.
17:43That was the lightbulb moment. I thought that I'd be stupid not to try printing $100 bills.
17:50But then, I met a girl named Jessica, and we get married and start a family.
17:56Finding out I'm having a baby, it's almost like a frantic feeling, you know, like scrambling to make money.
18:04And at this point, I just lost my job, and I didn't have money to even pay the rent.
18:07Getting a new job, it's like you have to apply at all these places and wait for an interview, and then even if they do hire you, you get paid in a month.
18:17That wasn't going to work. I was desperate, and I didn't have much of a choice.
18:22Counterfeiting seemed to make the most sense.
18:26But also, I was a husband and a father, and I couldn't risk getting caught or going to jail.
18:34I knew I needed to make bills that were flawless.
18:41I just literally 12 hours a day, every day, focused on making the highest quality bill that I could.
18:48I knew I needed two sheets of paper that was thin enough to glue together and opaque enough to show the strip in the watermark when you held it up to the light, but not through the face of the bill.
19:02Bible paper was just perfect for everything I needed it to be.
19:07My wife was running a nonprofit that distributed Bibles to families in need, so we had constant flow of Bibles.
19:15So I would kind of go through all these boxes and rip out the blank pages.
19:22Step one to making money is getting the digital files.
19:25I would take a camera and take a photo of a real $100 bill and upload the photo so I could edit it on Photoshop, layer all the images.
19:34After getting the digital files ready, step two is printing them on Bible paper.
19:39Step three is glue them together with the strip and watermark in between.
19:45Step four, I found a holographic eyeshadow that replicated the color-shifting ink perfectly.
19:52Next, I spray the bill with a matte lacquer spray so the counterfeit detection pens will mark properly.
19:57So these pens have an iodine-based ink. The paper is manufactured with starch, so the iodine in the ink reacts with the starch in the paper and turns black.
20:09Real money is printed with starch-free paper so it doesn't mark black, it stays yellow.
20:15By spraying the lacquer, you're just coating the paper to avoid that chemical reaction.
20:19This is obviously a piece of prop money we got from the internet.
20:24I don't recommend anybody actually doing this and it will put you in prison.
20:28I was obsessive, obsessive over it.
20:32Like my wife would get frustrated with me because I was so obsessive.
20:36I finally got the bills looking good. I felt completely confident with how they looked.
20:42So I decided to just break the bills myself.
20:44Breaking bills is basically laundering the counterfeit money into legitimate money.
20:50Just walk into a store and buy something with the fake money and get the change.
20:54The first store I went into, I was super nervous.
20:58I walked into the dining room at like 1145 and they were closing up.
21:04And I ordered a couple tacos, gave her the bill, and she just held it up real quick and put it in the drawer.
21:10And it went as perfect as you could imagine.
21:15And when it went so smoothly, it was just kind of a shock.
21:19Like I almost was expecting to just like bolt out the door or something.
21:23But after that first time I broke it, I just tried it again and tried it again.
21:29And then after about 10 times without any issue, it just seemed like it was too easy.
21:34Every day I printed at least $1,000 to $2,000.
21:40There was definitely a thrill of getting away with something.
21:44I felt confident in spending them just about anywhere.
21:47But you still don't know how some cashier who handles money all day every day is going to react to it.
21:53One time I went into a store and I didn't know their process.
21:58It was the first time I went there.
22:00And I went to a register and handed them the bill.
22:03And he like put it in a bill validator machine.
22:07It blinked red.
22:08And he did it again and it blinked red.
22:11At that point I was like super nervous.
22:15So when he said, just one second, I got to call a manager over here.
22:18Like, oh , should I just run out the door?
22:22My heart was pumping.
22:24But I knew I can't just run out of the store.
22:27It's guaranteed you look guilty and they're left with the evidence.
22:31You know, they've got the counterfeit $100 bill and you're on camera running out of the store.
22:35So I just, you know, stood there.
22:37When the manager arrived, she put it in the bill validator machine a few times and it blinked red every time.
22:43Now I know I'm screwed.
22:49And then she said, oh, it must just be an old bill or the machine's messing up or something.
22:53And she accepted it anyway.
22:55So I got pretty lucky.
22:59I never went to that place again after that.
23:02At that point, our lease was up and we started living at hotels.
23:05And I just went all the way in with this.
23:07Like I treated it like a business, like a job, like move around from city to city.
23:11Hit up as many stores as I could as fast as I could and then leave.
23:15The stuff I was buying meant nothing to me.
23:16The whole point was to get enough real money to cover my living expenses and then, you know, have a few hundred bucks at the end of the night.
23:26Living out of hotels, eating out, all this was pretty expensive.
23:29So then I kind of had to scale the operation and that's when I really started printing more like, you know, $4,000 or $5,000 a day.
23:35It got a little difficult because every bill you print, you need to rip apart a Bible.
23:43Not completely. All the text was still there, but the blank pages.
23:48Me and my wife would take trips whenever we wanted, you know, and most of it was to break bills.
23:55It wasn't so much vacationing.
23:57Going from city to city, I'd hit up bookstores in the city to acquire Bible paper.
24:02The Bible paper is too thin. It'll jam up if you just try and feed it in a printer.
24:06So I would stay up all night basically centering Bible paper on regular printer paper and just taping the edges.
24:13So I'd have a stack like this for the next morning to then print on it and then spray the lacquer.
24:19I was probably working a good 12 to 14 hours a day.
24:23Throughout my time living out of hotels, I ended up meeting lots of different criminal organizations that would buy bills from me.
24:29Between what I was selling to them and what I was breaking at stores myself, I was probably making about $50,000 a week.
24:38It's easy money and the thrill of it is it's just super addicting.
24:43And we were able to live very comfortably.
24:45We went on trips, you know, all the time, not only for fun, but also to make more money.
24:52You know, lots of jewelry, designer bags, designer clothes, stuff like that.
24:56Good Christmases for the kids and out, you know, out to dinners all the time.
25:02It was good to have to not have to worry about money.
25:06And, you know, my wife and I had a plan.
25:09We were going to move up to Cleveland, Ohio and buy a house and kind of just sell wholesale, like in real bulk
25:18and begin only dealing with with one person, a drug dealer named E.
25:23So I heard through the grapevine that E might have been arrested up in Cleveland.
25:30I didn't know if he had my bills on him or not or if he was talking to the police about me.
25:36One day, about six hours into printing, E calls me.
25:40I know when E calls me that he's been arrested, but he doesn't know that I know.
25:46So we talk for a minute and I keep it completely vague.
25:49I try not to admit anything on the phone.
25:51We don't really discuss much, but we plan to meet the next day.
25:56I don't have any intention on actually meeting him, but I kind of just want to print this money and get out of town.
26:02So I tell him like, yeah, we'll meet up tomorrow.
26:06The next day, my wife decides to go shopping.
26:10About 20 minutes later, I hear a knock on the door.
26:17I assume it's my wife maybe forgetting something and coming back.
26:19But as paranoid as I am, I always look through the peephole.
26:24And when I look through the peephole, it was just solid black.
26:28I knew someone's thumb was over that peephole.
26:31Which means whoever was on the other side of that door didn't want to be seen.
26:36No one knew where I was at this hotel room, like no one.
26:39So I knew I was either going to be arrested that day or get killed.
26:44Then I started hearing some guy say, yo Jay, open up, yo Jay.
26:52But that's when I looked through the window and saw just like the shoulder of somebody like trying to hide behind the wall.
26:59But I saw just like the Knoxville Sheriff's patch on his arm.
27:03So then I was like, .
27:06At that point, I knew that the room was going to be raided.
27:10I had three printers running.
27:11I had counterfeit bills laid out all over the bed, in the bathroom, drying, hanging up, everywhere.
27:19I looked over at the door and bam, they start hitting it with the battering ram.
27:24Boom, boom, boom.
27:26It made my heart drop as soon as I knew that they were actually coming in.
27:30You know, I scrambled to try to get rid of the evidence.
27:34I grabbed all the counterfeit money and threw it in the toilet and flushed it.
27:38The first pile of money in the toilet went down.
27:43I threw another batch in and went to flush the toilet and it just sat there and the toilet was out of water.
27:49They were still hitting the door. Boom, boom, boom.
27:53And I just knew it was, I was done.
27:56So I basically just lost hope.
27:57And I went in there, sat on the bed and lit a cigarette and just waited for them to kick the door in.
28:04Ooh.
28:06When they finally busted the door in, it was the Knoxville Sheriff's Secret Service Drug Task Force Organized Crime Unit all rushed in my room.
28:15I was charged with conspiracy to counterfeit U.S. obligations.
28:20I was facing up to 20 years in federal prison.
28:23I knew at that point that, like, the jig was up.
28:26I was caught red-handed.
28:28The Secret Service said that I became known as the Picasso of counterfeiting.
28:32The bills I was producing were the best they've seen in over 25 years.
28:38The Secret Service ended up offering me a deal.
28:41If I pleaded guilty, they wouldn't charge my wife with anything.
28:45And I made a video showing them exactly how I made the bills.
28:49So that's why I got sentenced to 10 months.
28:52Ooh.
28:53The concept of money is extremely valuable and important.
28:58But currency, like Federal Reserve notes, are just paper.
29:02It's just a piece of paper.
29:04But it can sure get you in a lot of trouble if you mess around with it.
29:10My name is Ian Bick, and when I was 18 years old, I was the mastermind of a $500,000 Ponzi scheme.
29:18I grew up in Danbury, Connecticut, and I got picked on a lot in elementary school for my weight.
29:25They'd call me, you know, Chubbs and Twinkie, and kids would come up to me and, like, slam my books down.
29:31They would, like, throw me into the locker.
29:33Just, like, really mean stuff.
29:35And that definitely affected me.
29:37I didn't want to be bullied anymore.
29:40I wanted to find a way to be important.
29:42My dad would give me 20 bucks for school lunch,
29:45and I would take that money, go to the local CVS,
29:49and buy candy, gum, energy drinks to sell to kids.
29:53I earned the reputation of being the candy man.
29:56And I was popular.
29:57I was on my way up.
29:59And before I knew it, I was owning the part of being this, you know, entrepreneur businessman with a suit and tie.
30:06My dad would tie my tie every morning.
30:08I had the nice pants, the shoes, and a sports coat.
30:11And I'd walk around in a briefcase.
30:14I loved it.
30:16I finally felt like I meant something.
30:18In my mind, the next step up from this was a school event.
30:22And my first thought was, okay, let's do a school dance.
30:26I got a DJ. I got the uplighting. I did everything and made it really cool.
30:30We grossed a few thousand dollars.
30:34And, you know, I realized in that moment that I can not only get what I was chasing after that popularity and wanting to be liked,
30:42but I can also create this into a business and make money from it.
30:44So I had hatched this plan with a couple of seniors at the time to rent out this old theater called the Palace Theater in Danbury to start throwing nightclub shows at.
30:57I would charge 12 or 15 bucks to get in, and I would do them once a month.
31:01And by the time I was going into sophomore year, I was running the most popular teen club night in the area.
31:06The next step up from that is concert. My partners, there's like three of us now, they end up booking one of the biggest hip hop names at the time who had just won a Grammy.
31:18So we worked out a deal where I didn't have to put up any money or risk any money, but my name got to go on the flyers like I'd put it on.
31:25So that started to give me some credibility.
31:27And then the night of the event, the place is packed.
31:30It's the coolest thing in the world. And everyone is looking at me as like the top promoter.
31:41So after that, me and my partners, we got back together and said, we're going to do it better, but three concerts.
31:48And we had our eyes set on another very popular rap artist.
31:52But the catch was we needed about $120,000 to pull this off.
31:55We don't have $120,000. So we come up with the idea that we're going to start raising money from investors, friends and family.
32:03I went to as many people as I know, and I told them, you're guaranteed your investment back.
32:09On paper, we were going to gross like a million bucks and make like 500 grand in profit.
32:14It wasn't a scam. It was a legitimate opportunity.
32:17I was accepting investments from kids that were my age, 17 year olds, 16 year olds, and their parents were writing them checks.
32:23And within like three or four weeks, I had $120,000 in this bank account.
32:30What ends up happening is that first concert was kind of a dud.
32:34The second one, artists will pay thousands of dollars to open for a big rapper.
32:39But that night, someone forgot to collect the opener's money.
32:42We end up losing money on the show.
32:44The third night, this huge arena lost their liquor license, and there was a snowstorm.
32:49Literally a series of unfortunate events happened with every concert.
32:54They all bombed.
32:56We were supposed to make like a half a million bucks.
32:58We didn't get any of that. I literally got nothing.
33:00And I hadn't even told my business partners what had happened because I didn't want them to not like me.
33:07At that time, I was deemed this highly successful individual.
33:11Imagine if word got out that I had failed, that I had lost people's money.
33:16So now I have this situation.
33:18Do I tell my friends and family that it really lost money?
33:22Or option B, do I lie to them, say it made money, and hope that the next concert would make up for that lie so I could pay everyone back?
33:31And I ultimately chose to lie to them and say that that show made money, and I made a spreadsheet showing imaginary profit.
33:40The biggest mistake of my life.
33:43But now, I had to get the investors and my friends their money back, plus a profit, and I have no money.
33:50I needed a new plan.
33:51So when you can't get money from regular people and you have no credit to go to a bank, me backed up against the wall, I decided to borrow money from local drug dealers.
34:02These guys had five or ten grand that they would give to me, and I would just take from one to pay off the other and keep flipping it.
34:09So all I'm doing is taking new loans in and paying off old loans.
34:12So in my mind, I'm thinking, okay, I could borrow money from Peter to pay Paul, which I didn't know was an actual crime.
34:19I had no idea that was a Ponzi scheme.
34:21We didn't learn about that in high school.
34:24So a Ponzi scheme is when you take money from one investor and pay off another investor, but you're not actually using the money to invest into anything.
34:32You're just taking the money from one person to pay off the other.
34:35There's no tangible asset.
34:38So now all of my focus is on, okay, I need to pay back these drug dealers.
34:43So there was this head of this motorcycle club.
34:46And I say, listen, I need to borrow money, and I just need as much as you could give me.
34:51And he comes back like 20 minutes later with a pillowcase, and he dumps 60 grand on this table.
34:58And he looks at me when he gives me that money.
35:01He's like, listen, if you don't have this money back, I'm going to kill you.
35:06And it was definitely the most frightening moment of my life.
35:11Now the pressure's really on.
35:13I'm 18 years old.
35:14I owe $1.3 million to bikers, drug dealers, friends, family.
35:21Everyone's blowing up my phone like, where the is my money?
35:24Get me my money.
35:25Get me my money.
35:26I'm fighting for my life.
35:28And everything's closing in.
35:36The intensity of the Marine Corps boot camp is like none other I've ever heard or seen.
35:44Day one, our main drill instructors.
35:46I can remember them just screaming and yelling.
35:49And then I remember him saying, who's the youngest guy in here?
35:52And stupid me, I was always the youngest guy.
35:55I'm like, like this.
35:56And he looked at me, and he marched over to me, and he went, boom, sucker punched me as hard as you can.
36:02In the stomach, I lost all my air, flew backwards over a footlocker and onto my back.
36:08And I thought, my God, where the hell am I?
36:12Like, Mom, I want to come home.
36:14It's not just yelling.
36:15They're putting their hands on you here.
36:18And that didn't stop for three straight months.
36:22I think what the Marine Corps boot camp teaches you is absolute attention to detail.
36:28That's how you win wars.
36:30It helps to become a great hustler, too.
36:34I'm under constant pressure, whether it's my friends or drug dealers, the bikers.
36:39They want their returns, I'm past my due dates.
36:42Some people even showed up to my parents' house.
36:44Like, I'm in constant fear, literally all the time.
36:48So one day, I'm at this club with John, one of my best friends at the time.
36:52The head of the biker club comes in, and he's followed by another one of his guys.
36:56They walk in, lock the door.
36:59And the main guy, the head of the club, the president, pulls out a gun and points it at us.
37:04And he is mad.
37:06He's like, we're going to go down in the basement and have a little chat.
37:11In that moment, I'm like, we're dead.
37:13Like, we're literally getting killed.
37:15We get down, and there's a desk, and then there's a chair, and then the little lamp.
37:19Like, a little interrogation room, but in this cold basement.
37:22The main guy, he pulls out a screwdriver.
37:25He's like, put your hand on the table.
37:27I'm like, I'm not putting my hand on the table.
37:29And the other guy grabs my hand.
37:31My hand's held down, and he just starts whacking.
37:34He's just like, smash.
37:36Where's the money in?
37:38Smash.
37:39Where's the money in?
37:40Another whack.
37:41And he just keeps hitting it, and I'm like screaming.
37:43I'm like a little girl, genuinely screaming, saying, I'm working on it.
37:47I'm going to have it.
37:48I'm saying everything.
37:49And then they're just like, make sure you answer your phone.
37:52Have our money.
37:54Get out of here.
37:56I knew that they were capable of hurting me, and that, you know, real.
38:00I've got to figure this out.
38:02Or end up dead.
38:04I finally go to my family's attorney and tell them everything that happened.
38:08The drug dealers, this and that, because I have no one else to go to.
38:11And he mails a letter to all of our investors saying, hey, no more communications with Ian.
38:16You'll be dealing directly with me.
38:18WB Investments has experienced financial problems.
38:21We'll get back to you.
38:22So imagine being an investor.
38:25They're pissed.
38:26So they start going to the local police to report that Ian Bick stole hundreds of thousands of dollars from everyone.
38:33And that's when the investigation begins.
38:36Once the bad guys, the shady figures, the bikers, and the drug dealers got wind that the FBI was investigating, they completely backed off and left me alone because they didn't want to get caught in the crosshairs.
38:48It was the FBI investigation that honestly saved my life.
38:53So it was like January 9th or 10th, 2015.
38:57I'm hiding out at my parents' house.
38:59And all of a sudden there's just like a loud banging on the door that wakes me up.
39:04And I quickly jump out of bed in my boxers and I go straight for the blinds and look out the windows.
39:09And it just looked like a scene from one of my parties, only this time it's FBI, it's IRS and the tactical vests, the guns, there's state troopers.
39:18The whole street is lined up with flashing lights.
39:21Everyone's there and they're all surrounding the house.
39:23And they barge in and they're like, are you Ian Bick?
39:26And I'm like, yeah.
39:27And then they said, get up and put your hands behind your back.
39:31And then they dragged me past my parents and they hauled me to the courthouse that morning to face my arraignment.
39:37I was charged with 11 counts of wire fraud and one count of making a false statement to federal law enforcement officers.
39:43My Ponzi scheme caught up with me.
39:46I knew the party was over.
39:48The night that John McAfee died, the Texas judge actually released me to go to Operation Restore Warrior, a three day retreat.
40:02While I'm there, two guys say, hey, Jimmy, we want to pray for you.
40:07Whatever, man.
40:08I don't believe in any of this stuff.
40:10And then they were praying for me.
40:13And at that moment, I just bawled like a baby for the first time in my life.
40:21I just cried and cried and cried.
40:24I don't know what happened, but my life was changed.
40:29It was a new lease on life.
40:33I got a beautiful wife.
40:35I got a beautiful little son that's eight months old.
40:39I'm living the dream.
40:41And my hustling days are behind me.
40:45So after getting out of prison, I now run a print shop.
40:49So I'm still printing, but it's mainly boring commercial printing.
40:53Not quite as exciting, but it pays the bills with real money, not fake money.
40:58So I got out in 2019 after like 26 months.
41:05I think there's a lot I learned from my story.
41:08I think you have to be honest, you know, in business and everything.
41:12So I've learned about thinking about the consequences of actions
41:15and how I'm going to redeem myself and how I'm going to pay everyone back.
41:18Now I have a podcast where I interview former felons, addicts, prosecutors,
41:23people from all walks of life of the criminal justice system
41:26where I hear their stories without judgment
41:28because that's what I always wanted for myself.
Recommended
41:31
|
Up next
5:38
38:14
43:16
42:28
1:14:07
41:31
10:13
3:16
1:59
51:06
48:10
48:37
43:24
42:57
48:15
43:59
49:48
1:23:31
43:12
Be the first to comment