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00:00My client list was full of CEOs, real estate developers, heads of countries.
00:09Who needs Ocean's Eleven when you have four rednecks from Texas?
00:15This was the easiest money I ever made, but my world was about to be...
00:19The next thing you know, the SWAT team is at my door with guns.
00:23There's a fight at the pole. You've got to get there. One of them's got a knife. They're going to kill each other.
00:30My name is Kristen Davis. I'm known as the Manhattan Madam.
00:40And I made millions running a prostitution business for the rich and famous.
00:46I grew up in Fresno, California. I was raised by a single working mother.
00:51She was a Sunday school teacher. We grew up very low income.
00:55And if I wanted things, I had to earn the money.
00:58So I grew up understanding that hard work is what it takes to make money.
01:03And that the only one that gets in your way is you.
01:08I graduated from high school at 15, so I graduated two years early.
01:13And at 16 and a half, I signed up for a temporary agency.
01:18And they placed me in an office job, which just happened to be with a commodities broker.
01:23I enjoyed learning, and I was really good at math.
01:28So in the early 2000s, I was recruited for a high-profile job at a hedge fund.
01:34When I started to work at the hedge fund, it was completely overwhelming.
01:38At that time, it was a very decadent world.
01:42Hedge funds were not regulated.
01:43There was a lot of drugs, there were women, there was alcohol, there were trophy wives,
01:50there was all of this lavish lifestyle.
01:53And now I've got traders that I deal with every day.
01:57They managed even more money, so therefore they made the firm more money,
02:01which meant they could behave even more badly.
02:05Nobody's going to question if they spent $100,000 that month on girls.
02:11And I thought it was fascinating that the sex industry commanded so much money from these men.
02:18And it was just considered normal.
02:21I had reached the glass ceiling, making $160,000 a year.
02:26I wanted to be a trader.
02:27Those guys were making $2 million a year, and that's what I wanted to do.
02:32But I was always told no.
02:35One day in my office, I was reading the New York Post.
02:39And the article said there are millions of dollars floating through escort agencies.
02:45More money than I could ever make in my lifetime being in the back office of a finance company.
02:50I've seen finance guys using escorts for years.
02:54And I thought, maybe if I could find girls, this would be a viable solution.
02:59So I decided to test the waters by placing an ad on Craigslist.
03:03And I did so from my job because I worked 14 hours a day.
03:07The ad said, beautiful girls wanted.
03:10And it listed out the features which I thought would be appealing for the men in this industry.
03:15College educated, pretty, in good shape, beautiful, to provide companionship for men.
03:23When I clicked post, I had a lot of anxiety.
03:28I thought, do you really actually want to do this?
03:30And then I thought, you know, well, let's just see.
03:33It won't hurt to just see.
03:34The next day, I walked into the office.
03:38The HR person was standing at the front.
03:41And they said, we are firing you, effective immediately, for using the business hardware for personal use.
03:48And I said, but all of your traders are using escorts.
03:52You're going to fire me for placing an ad?
03:55And they were like, we're putting this picture of you at the front.
03:59If you ever try to come back, we will have you escorted from the property.
04:02I was in complete and total shock and had no idea what I was going to do next.
04:09That was the moment I decided, I'm going to sell sex.
04:14So I spent a few days researching other agencies, how things were done, what their girls looked like, where they were located, what they were charging.
04:24If I'm going to put a price on my freedom, I want it to be the most amount of money.
04:28And my price was always at that time in my head, $2 million.
04:31If I could make this work, I'd be free.
04:34When you have money, you don't have to take s**t from traders.
04:38You don't have to take s**t from anyone.
04:40It was time for me to be in control.
04:43How do I achieve that goal?
04:44Before we did anything, I needed to have a location.
04:50I didn't have a location because I was just fired from my job and I didn't have any money to get a place.
04:56So I converted my high-rise one bedroom into a two-bedroom.
05:01And we opened with one girl in my apartment.
05:07The first girl I interviewed was stunning.
05:13She looked like a young Selma Hayek.
05:16And I didn't have any other options also.
05:18Like, I didn't get that many people responding to the ad to where I could be so choosy.
05:23But, you know, it was just me and her.
05:25And she really wanted to work.
05:27I knew when I opened, I needed to get my building's doorman on board.
05:33So I went to the doorman and I told him, you know, I'm opening a work-from-home business.
05:38Just want you to know there's going to be a lot of foot traffic.
05:41And I handed him $300.
05:43And he said, no problem.
05:45I said, can you just let them in without buzzing me each time?
05:48And he said, okay.
05:52The first client that came up was nerve-wracking.
05:58I left the apartment, went for a walk outside, and I just kept thinking to myself,
06:04I hope everything goes okay.
06:05I hope he's not a cop.
06:06I hope we don't get arrested.
06:08I don't know what's going to happen.
06:10You don't know if the girl's going to be okay.
06:12Selling sex is a dangerous business.
06:16We opened and everything was great.
06:19We made a ton of money.
06:21I think that first week I made about $5,000.
06:24There were probably 20 clients.
06:27And it proved to me that this would be financially viable.
06:31Our price point was $500 an hour.
06:33It was a 50-50 split.
06:35So she makes $250.
06:37I make $250.
06:38And then the next step is like, okay, I'm not going to play small.
06:42I'm going to play big.
06:42Because if I get caught, you know, it has to be worth my while.
06:46Similar to hedge funds, the greater the risk, the greater the reward.
06:50I realized, okay, we have to find some more girls.
06:55The next step was scouting talent and trying to figure out where to find them.
07:01Whether it's Craigslist.
07:02I would ask girls for referrals.
07:04I had memberships at all the hotspots, which allowed me to go to these exclusive events that catered to models.
07:12And I would just go pick up women.
07:13I sort of perfected the art of the pickup as a woman.
07:17I would just strike up a conversation if I thought she would be a good fit.
07:22And I would just tell her, you know, well, what are you doing for work?
07:26Oh, model.
07:26Well, how's that working for you?
07:28And they would say, well, not so good.
07:30New York's really expensive.
07:32Well, do you want to make extra money?
07:34What if I can help you with that?
07:35And they would say, okay, well, what do you do?
07:38And I would tell them.
07:40And we would become friends.
07:41Some of these women, I would court them for six months until they would decide to come work for me.
07:52I started out with a handful of girls and building and building and building.
07:56And, you know, I successfully had some of the top models in the world.
08:02I went from $1,000 or more an hour to $4,000 an hour with a four-hour minimum.
08:10At our height, I had 200 girls working for me.
08:14I had six apartments.
08:16I was running this like it was a Fortune 500 company.
08:20Most of the women that came to me didn't have experience.
08:23What people in New York want is a high-end model who can have a conversation.
08:30I had a whole protocol for what do you say when you come in the door?
08:34What do you do?
08:36At the higher price point, they are not paying for sex.
08:39They're paying for an experience.
08:41And that experience revolves around you making them feel good as a man.
08:48And to have this woman show interest in you is so flattering.
08:53Some of them needed, you know, help in how to show interest in a genuine way.
08:59There's also some safety checks.
09:01I send you to the call at 10 o'clock.
09:03At 10, I want to know that you're at that call.
09:06If I don't hear from you in five minutes, ten minutes, there's a problem.
09:10Now she goes in.
09:11She collects the money.
09:12If it's a credit card, she needs to get a credit card imprint.
09:15If it's cash, she needs to collect the cash.
09:17And then she tells me, okay, I'm in and collected.
09:20Now the time starts.
09:22If at the end of the hour, he wants to extend, we call you.
09:27Just checking in.
09:27Are you staying or going?
09:29And he says, I'd like to keep her overnight.
09:31And so now we start negotiating.
09:33Okay, well, you paid $1,200 right now.
09:35It's $9,000 for the night.
09:38We book his credit card.
09:39We say, okay, well, the night ends at like 8 or 9 a.m.
09:42So talk to you then.
09:44Bye.
09:46At some point, if you've made $100,000 in New York in four weeks as a girl,
09:52you're going to max out on all my clients.
09:54So now where can I put you to keep making you money?
09:58I decided to expand into different cities.
10:01So first it was Philly, then it was Boston, then it was D.C.
10:05In my prime, I had 10 apartments all over the country.
10:09So they'd spend, you know, a week there, make $7,000, take a week off,
10:16come back to New York, see a few of their regulars.
10:19I would say 80% of my clients were noteworthy people.
10:23You know, my client list at one point in time was over 10,000 names.
10:28CEOs, real estate developers, finance bros, athletes, politicians, heads of countries.
10:36One of the main challenges of this world is risk management.
10:43I had one client.
10:44He was using his company credit card, but his father owned the company.
10:50And one day I look at my bank account and I see a withdrawal for $48,000.
10:55He had charged back on $48,000 of credit card charges, which also meant that I lost 50% of that money
11:04because I had already paid the girls.
11:07So now I'm down $24,000.
11:10So I call him and I'm like, hey, what happened here?
11:13And he says, well, my, you know, it's my father's company.
11:16And he charged back on all the charges.
11:19Okay, but you still need to pay me.
11:21A day goes by, I call him again.
11:24He said, I'm still working on it.
11:25I said, you need to work on it quickly.
11:27Another day goes by.
11:29He doesn't pick up my calls.
11:30I get a text.
11:31On the third day, now I'm angry because you're dodging me.
11:35So I have, you know, my set group of people that I employ.
11:39The men in black, they would go and muscle their way into my money.
11:44And I had them come in their escalade and pick up one of the girls that had seen him,
11:49park across the street from his house.
11:51And I called him.
11:52And I said, hey, I want my money.
11:55Where's my money?
11:57And he's like, I'm still working on it.
12:00My dad, I don't know how to cash.
12:01I said, you better figure it out.
12:03You see that escalate outside?
12:05And he's like, yeah.
12:06And I said, that's my people.
12:09And the girl rolled down the window and did a little wave.
12:12And I said, and that girl's seen you.
12:14Is your wife home?
12:16Do you want her to come talk to your wife?
12:19Because I need my money.
12:21This client is freaking out.
12:27And he said, I'll get your money.
12:31I'll get your money.
12:31Don't let her get out of the car.
12:33And I'm like, no, I mean today.
12:36Figure it out.
12:37Next thing you know, I have a call.
12:39I have a cashier's check for you.
12:41Where can we meet?
12:42I just literally went to the corner where he was standing,
12:46grabbed the cashier's check.
12:48You went on my way.
12:51I was making $200,000 a day.
12:53And business-wise, I was on top of the world.
12:56I was making more money than all the finance bros, finally.
13:00I'd love to say that I was able to enjoy the money.
13:05But the whole time, I was really concerned about whether or not I'd get arrested.
13:11You know, at my height, I had everything.
13:13I have more than met my goal of $2 million in the bank.
13:17I can retire.
13:19I'm going to go to an island somewhere and sip on a coconut drink.
13:24I'm starting to wind the business down, getting rid of some of the apartments.
13:28And I see the news that Elliot Spitzer was caught with an escort.
13:32I shared with another agency.
13:34Elliot Spitzer was governor of New York at that time.
13:38He had been in office a few months, and there were massive amounts of calls for his resignation.
13:45Every girl, which is like 30 or 40, that had seen Spitzer was calling me scared.
13:51I wondered what is going to happen.
13:52There was no doubt in my mind that I was going to get arrested.
13:56I called my attorney, who we will refer to as the world's worst attorney.
14:01And he said, okay, gather all your records.
14:06Gather your credit card imprints.
14:07I had audio of Elliot Spitzer.
14:09I had everything.
14:10I gathered it all up.
14:11He said, give me all your records, and I'll negotiate turning yourself in.
14:15You know, maybe they'll be easy on you.
14:17Maybe turning myself in would also mean that they don't come for any of my girls.
14:22I thought I would just be able to turn myself in, and it would be a no-drama, no-case scenario.
14:28The next thing you know, the SWAT team's in my door with guns.
14:31There were two helicopters overhead, 90 police cars, blocks of Manhattan shut down for me.
14:41And I walked out like, holy moly, all of this for me?
14:45I felt like I had just hit America's Most Wanted.
14:49Like, I have done something so heinous, I could not believe the amount of resources spent on this arrest.
14:57I was facing one count of Class E felony for promoting prostitution, which is a very low-level crime.
15:06However, I had one count of money laundering for over $100,000, which was a Class C felony, which was five to seven years.
15:18I sat in Rikers Island in solitary confinement for four months.
15:22They put me in there to scare me so that I wouldn't talk, because my black book could destroy the lives of the who's who and the political elite.
15:32I was very lucky that the Supreme Court at that time changed the definition of money laundering, so they had to drop that charge.
15:41And I pled out to the promoting prostitution, which they gave me time served.
15:47I was free and broke.
15:51All of my money was frozen, and I had nothing.
15:56I felt like I did all of this for nothing.
15:58I tried to go back into finance, and lo and behold, I'm no longer employable.
16:02If I was a man, I'd be a traitor at Goldman Sachs.
16:08Then I said, okay.
16:09I had a difficult talk with myself in that you've been your own worst enemy, and what can you do to help yourself be successful?
16:15And so I started trying to secure a tangible skill that I could make money on, and I got to work.
16:26My name is Jeff Hopper, and I pulled off one of the biggest heists in Las Vegas history.
16:34By childhood, we lived in a very small town in Woodville, Texas.
16:39It is as boring as it sounds.
16:41As a kid, all of us are asked that question about, what do you want to be when you grow up?
16:46You want to be an astronaut or, you know, a paleontologist?
16:49Well, I always wanted to be a pirate.
16:53Pirate lived at the edge of everything.
16:56I had this desire always to try to get away with things.
17:00At 14, I started shoplifting, but from there, it quickly escalated.
17:05And so at 15, I was still in cars.
17:09I was studying to be a pirate, and I was doing my very best.
17:13My dad didn't care if I did wrong.
17:16In fact, he encouraged it.
17:18My dad, Royal Hopper, was a local postmaster.
17:23Whenever somebody betrayed him, and they would hold their mail,
17:27he would let me know when they left out of town so I could break into their house.
17:30He couldn't afford to do anything himself.
17:36But he had a mischievous, very poorly behaved son that he could put up to doing anything.
17:43And so I would, because I enjoyed the thrill of it.
17:46But then, my dad lost his job as the postmaster and moved to Vegas.
17:54He got a job at the Stardust Casino as a security guard.
17:57One day, I get a call from my father.
18:01He told me he had been robbed at work.
18:05At first, I was worried.
18:07But it turns out, I shouldn't have been.
18:09So my dad set himself up to be robbed by my brother.
18:16My father, when he got this job as a security guard,
18:20he would escort the daily receipts in this unlocked metal cabinet.
18:24My brother had stolen a radio from one of the guards
18:29and listened and waited until my father had escorted the receipts to one of the side doors.
18:37My brother stepped out, pointed a gun at him,
18:40loaded the money into a bag,
18:42and went and got in a taxi cab and drove off.
18:45The whole robbery took about five minutes for $155,000.
18:52I'm shot.
18:54And now, they're planning another heist, a big one.
18:58And they want me to be part of it.
19:03And he handed me an envelope.
19:05And he said, I want you to think about it.
19:07And there was $10,000 cash and a note that said,
19:13this is just pennies compared to what we will have.
19:17Holding that money was like I had just opened the treasure chest
19:22and my dreams were in my hands.
19:27I was working nine to five at a lumberyard.
19:30And I walk up to my boss and I told him,
19:34go f*** yourself.
19:35Clocked out and walked out the door.
19:39So my dad really didn't have any qualms whatsoever taking from a casino.
19:45For him, the casinos were just organized crime.
19:48And he noticed two things that made them ripe for a target.
19:53One is their arrogance.
19:55Nobody believed that anybody would have the guts to rob a mob-owned casino.
20:04And second, their inattention to detail.
20:07And if you can create chaos, people are reacting to the chaos.
20:12They don't know that you are walking through the casino to take their money.
20:18The Final Four basketball tournament is the second highest betting day in Vegas.
20:25In 1992, the Final Four ended up being on a weekend.
20:31So all the deposits would be on the armored car that was going to be picked up Monday morning.
20:37And that became our date.
20:38My dad met us at a diner outside of Las Vegas.
20:43And laid out the plan using blocks and Hot Wheel cars.
20:47My dad wanted four of us in on the heist.
20:50My childhood friend, Wes, would be the muscle.
20:53So his job was going to be to pull the gun out of the holster of the guard.
20:58And then grab the money bags and take off running.
21:01My brother, Bobby, had no problems pointing a gun at somebody's face.
21:06So his role was to intimidate the guard once Wes picked up the money bags and ran.
21:11My dad would be the getaway driver.
21:14My job was to time the heist perfectly and create an epic distraction.
21:19For three months, I watched these guards come in and out, timing people every day.
21:26How long it took the armored car to drive into the parking lot?
21:30How long did they sit in the truck?
21:31How long did they stay in the counting room?
21:33How long did it take them to come out and get it down to the millisecond?
21:37Because every second was going to count.
21:41Who needs Ocean's Eleven when you have four rednecks from Texas?
21:44For the heist of work, we knew we needed a distraction.
21:52We decided on smoke bombs.
21:55Smoke bombs were going to create chaos.
21:58All these people running everywhere trying to get away from whatever was going on.
22:03So we used some military-grade smoke powder.
22:06And we had to disguise it.
22:09We put it into a drink cup.
22:11Put our straw in.
22:13And then we put the fuse down the straw.
22:18You want to use a lighter that's real dependable and be ready for chaos.
22:26The night before the heist, I couldn't sleep.
22:30And so for several hours, I walked the streets of Las Vegas, thinking, what have I gotten myself into?
22:37And it's too late to turn back because if I don't do my part, then my brother, my father get caught and they go to prison forever.
22:46And the adrenaline, that was like literally taking a syringe full of the most toxic drug you can think of, knowing that in two hours, I was going to start off the largest heist in the history of Las Vegas.
23:01It was the day of the heist.
23:05My position was to sit on this bench and wait for the armored car.
23:11I'm sitting there.
23:12I see the armored car.
23:13And as the armored car turns, I see the station wagon, my father driving.
23:19That meant the heist was on.
23:22And I get up and start walking towards the casino.
23:25And the whole time, I'm counting to myself.
23:28And I had counted so many times watching the stopwatch that I can count seconds without looking at a timer.
23:35And I went in, walked through the casino, counting the whole time.
23:41And so my part was going to be to make this phone call to distract the house security.
23:47And it had to be timed perfectly at the same time that the armored car driver was going to leave the counting room.
23:55In the meantime, Big Wes and my little brother had come into the casino carrying their smoke bombs in big gulp cups.
24:06Their role was going to be take up their positions on each side of where the counting room was.
24:11And when they could see the armored car driver in the window to light the fuses of the smoke bombs.
24:18And I looked at my watch and it was time.
24:21I picked up the phone and reported to the house security.
24:28There's a fight.
24:29There's a fight at the pool.
24:30You've got to get there.
24:31One of them's got a knife.
24:31They're going to kill each other.
24:33Sir, sir, we have three pools.
24:34Which one is it?
24:36And I hung up the phone.
24:38Knowing that they're going to have to send people to every pool.
24:41And all the security guards run at one time to the pools.
24:46And I looked to my left and there's smoke beginning to billow out.
24:51People are running from that location.
24:57People right here next to me are jumping under tables, screaming, they've got a gun, they've got bombs.
25:04There's no guards left.
25:07Just the armored car driver carrying three money bags, a million dollars on his shoulder on the same side that his firearm was on.
25:18Wes knew that all he had to do is grab those bags and pull down and it was going to spin him around.
25:25He dropped to the ground and he was going all Clint Eastwood and, you know, go gunslinger, Wyatt Earp.
25:30No.
25:31My brother grabs two of those bags, kicks the firearm.
25:40They went through a set of doors that leads to the dock where my father was waiting in the station wagon.
25:48I walked out the doors as cops running with their guns drawn run past me.
25:53The car that I was going to take was in another parking lot.
25:57I got into the vehicle and I'm waiting.
26:00I'm thinking to myself, am I going to get news at some point that my brother and my father are dead?
26:07I drove around this spot where I'm supposed to meet my brother.
26:14If he came out and the cops were around, I had to leave him there.
26:19He walked out casually, just as calm as he could be.
26:24He just got in the car, put the seat back a little bit and just said, let's go.
26:30We've had one goal, get to the airport.
26:36Walking through the airport, we were terrified.
26:39Every cop, every security guard were watching the television set about the heist that just went down.
26:47We walked through thinking, they're going to open fire on us at any moment.
26:54Waiting for that flight was the longest wait of my life.
26:57And then, when we got our tickets and got on the plane and went back to Texas.
27:07We had gotten away with it.
27:09Ultimately, we got away with $1.1 million.
27:15My dad took the money, split it up into separate boxes and sent it to different locations
27:21so that no one would have all the money in one spot.
27:25I received a package that had almost $100,000 in it.
27:32It was two weeks to the day after the robbery, and I got a bang on my door.
27:38Bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam!
27:40It's the FBI!
27:41Open the door!
27:43And I take out my bottle of Jack Daniels.
27:45I had spent a lot of money on this bottle, and I was not letting it go to waste.
27:48And so I said, you know what, if I'm going to go to jail tonight, I am going to go drunk.
27:54There were three FBI agents, three U.S. Marshals.
27:57They were all carrying weapons, and they were all pointed at me.
28:01Come back!
28:02And then they cuffed me, and my girlfriend walked out,
28:07and there was a lady cop having a conversation with her.
28:09She wasn't in cuffs, and she looks at me and says, I'm sorry.
28:15I didn't know that she had gotten in some trouble.
28:18She signed a deal to tell the FBI that I had the money so that she could get less time.
28:23And so they took me to jail.
28:25So something we didn't realize, that from the very first robbery,
28:29the Gaming Commission, which are a very powerful force,
28:33there is equivalent of an FBI.
28:35And they knew that my father had something to do with the first robbery.
28:39But they just didn't have any proof.
28:41So they'd been following him and collecting information.
28:46There wasn't that much on me, but there was 20,000 pages of investigation on my father.
28:53The Gaming Commission, I used to think, oh, they're just stupid.
28:57And these are some of the most intelligent people on the planet.
29:00We might have been outsmarting the security guard that is in his retirement age at the casino.
29:04But to think that you were outsmarting one of the top investigation units in the world,
29:10and you are four rednecks from Texas.
29:13No, probably not.
29:15Ultimately, I was convicted of conspiracy and aiding and abetting,
29:19and served five years locked up.
29:22My father, my brother, and Big Wes and I ended up at the same prison.
29:26The goal was to do my time, behave myself to the best of my ability, get out, and rebuild my life.
29:34My father, of course, was thinking about what crime would we commit next once we get out.
29:39And I told him, I'm not included in that. Thank you.
29:41My name is Jonathan Dubiton.
29:46I conned the government out of over a million dollars using food stamps.
29:50I was born in Newark, New Jersey.
29:54Out of my four siblings, I am the middle child.
29:57My mom was a single mom working as a nurse.
30:01She was always at work.
30:03She was making $10 an hour, and it just wasn't enough to take care of five kids.
30:07We had to basically feed ourselves and raise ourselves.
30:11As I got older, I was able to get a job, and I was able to help out my mom.
30:15So I was the first one in my family to go to college, and my mom was so proud of me.
30:21But college was expensive.
30:24One day, I was just minding my business, and, you know, I think a card just fell out of the sky.
30:30And I was like, oh, wow, someone's student ID.
30:32And something clicked in my brain, like, wait, your student loan goes on his student ID.
30:37And it's like, you can use it just like a bank card.
30:41So I pick up this student's ID.
30:42I go into the bookstore.
30:45I was buying books.
30:46I think I bought, like, a game system.
30:49I bought everything that I could out of the bookstore and left.
30:55All of a sudden, I see a cop, and he tells me, put your hand behind your back.
30:58Come with me.
30:59He takes me to jail.
31:01And when I get back to school, they kick me out.
31:04I have $0 in my bank account.
31:06I still was trying to figure out my next move.
31:08And I found out my mom had cancer.
31:10And my mom's insurance didn't cover the medical costs.
31:14I was such in need of some money that I was willing to do whatever illegal things that I had to do to get it.
31:21And then Chris, a guy that I grew up in the neighborhood with, he had a notebook full of names and birthdays and socials.
31:30And he was like, I'm doing tax fraud.
31:33And he's like, yeah, man, I'm about to be rich.
31:35And I thought, okay, I need money to help my mom.
31:39Maybe I can go use this.
31:40But it turned out tax fraud wouldn't work for me because there's so much scrutiny and you have to do small amounts to fly under the radar.
31:48And then the light bulb went off.
31:49Food stamps.
31:51Food stamps is given to people that are less fortunate.
31:54If you're homeless, if you don't have a job, the government puts the benefits on a card, which is called the EBT card.
32:01The EBT cards work just like a debit card.
32:03You just only buy food.
32:04All you needed to apply for food stamps was the name, birthday, and social, and the rest of the information I just came up with.
32:10So the social worker will call for the food stamp interview.
32:13They will ask you a bunch of questions to see if you're eligible for the food stamps.
32:16So you need to get yourself a burner phone that doesn't have your name attached to it.
32:20You will need a burner phone for every application that you put in.
32:22The key to making all of this work was to stay organized.
32:25I hired a friend to help me keep track of everything.
32:28So we would have phones 1 through 50.
32:30We had a list of people 1 through 50.
32:31So if phone number 10 called, we would know that it was Joe Smith calling.
32:35And that's how we kept track of who was calling for who.
32:39So the social worker will call, and I will pick up with Joe Smith.
32:43He's 60 years old.
32:45Hello?
32:46Yes, ma'am.
32:46This is Joe Smith.
32:48Yes, ma'am.
32:48I live at 123 Adams Road.
32:51I had to play, like, a role of 50 people per day.
32:54Yes, I can help.
32:55Sometimes a woman, sometimes to be an older man.
32:57How you doing?
32:58Yes, this is Jimmy Rowan.
32:59It would be times that I would have to do two or three interviews at the same time.
33:03Like, I'll be on a call, and this phone will ring.
33:05I'll be like, I'll just put this on mute, pick this up.
33:08Yes, ma'am.
33:09Uh-huh.
33:10Yes.
33:11Mute.
33:11Hey, this is Annie.
33:13Yes, I'm homeless.
33:14Wait.
33:15Yeah, hello.
33:17It was a job.
33:18When your food stamp application is accepted, you receive a food stamp card in the mail.
33:23With this EBT card, you can either purchase food with it, or you can take your balance
33:28and trade that food stamp balance for cash.
33:30But I couldn't just walk in the store and ask a random person.
33:35I had to find a plug, which is a store owner, that was comfortable enough to trade the food
33:40stamps for cash.
33:41We're not buying.
33:43We're just coming in there to give the card in exchange for cash.
33:48So I would give him a stack of EBT cards.
33:50He would give me the cash up front, and over the next week or two, he would slowly take
33:56the money off the card.
33:57And it would seem like it's a real person coming in his store to purchase items, even
34:03though no items are actually being purchased.
34:04First, we're splitting the government's payout 60-40, where I get the 60%.
34:09And then when he's done with it, he would give them back, and I will come with more cards.
34:15I was making a few thousand dollars at first.
34:17I probably made about 10 grand the first few months.
34:20And that's when I decided to go really big.
34:23We went from doing 50 names on the list to about 200 names.
34:26Now there's 200 phones ringing.
34:28Now I have to imitate 200 people.
34:31It got to a point where I was getting tired of picking up the phone, doing two or three
34:36calls at a time, not being able to go anywhere from nine to five, and I knew that it's going
34:41to require multiple versions of myself.
34:44Absolutely.
34:45So I hired people to answer the phones as the fake identity.
34:50I hired someone to actually put the applications in.
34:52I hired people to make the IDs for me.
34:54I had a 10-person team, and nothing could stop us.
34:57I didn't see anything wrong with what I was doing.
34:58I wasn't actually stealing from a person.
35:00I was stealing from the government.
35:02Once we upped it to 200 names, I'm making about $15,000 extra a week.
35:07This was the easiest money I ever made in my life.
35:11But my world was about to beat.
35:14When I got the money from the robbery, I was supposed to keep a low profile.
35:18But one of the things that I'd always wanted was the state-of-the-art speaker system.
35:24The ones that would blow out the neighbor's windows.
35:26And that is the first thing that I bought.
35:29And I wanted to, you know, get some new clothes.
35:32And I wanted to look good.
35:34If I was going to be a pirate, I wanted to look the part.
35:37I was going to have the treasure and everything.
35:39And so I spent $5,000 or $6,000.
35:42I was buying stuff and giving people money.
35:45And I was being the absolute worst case scenario of what you should not do when you do something illegal.
35:52What I know about the FBI is they are patient.
35:56They will wait until you make the mistake you need to make for them to have a case against you.
36:02I was so tired of giving 40% away to store owners.
36:06So that means I needed my own store.
36:08I opened up my own storefront.
36:10It was called JJ Good Groceries.
36:11I hired one of the little homies in the neighborhood.
36:15And his job was to sit there and manage the store.
36:17The store was just a front.
36:19It was only to swipe cards.
36:21I might have had one or two customers a day.
36:24But my store was making $1,000 on the back end.
36:26And I could finally take care of my mom.
36:30I was able to pay the bills, take her to chemotherapy, and pay for any doctor visits.
36:36At this point, the cards is bringing me $100,000 a month.
36:38But I have a store that can only filter out $60,000 per month without drawing a red flag.
36:45I need more stores.
36:46With five stores, I would have been making $50,000 to $60,000 a week each.
36:51I successfully opened up my second store.
36:54Then I'm in the process of opening up three more stores.
36:56Like, literally putting the paperwork in.
36:58I'm about to sign for the lease.
36:59Everything is about to happen.
37:01I was the man.
37:02You know, couldn't nobody tell me nothing.
37:04The next day, it was about 5 a.m.
37:07I hear a loud banging on the door.
37:12It was the police.
37:14And I really think I'm dreaming.
37:15So I go back to sleep.
37:17I hear some more banging.
37:18Police open up.
37:19So I yell back, like, yo, stop.
37:21I'm knocking on my door.
37:22So now I hear voices in my home.
37:25I have my girlfriend laying next to me.
37:26I have two homeboys and his child downstairs.
37:29So they say, hey, everybody come down with their hands up.
37:32Everybody goes out but me.
37:34I'm trying to just put it away.
37:36I got cards here.
37:36I got envelopes here.
37:37I got cash.
37:39I go downstairs with my hands up.
37:41And I had guns pointed at my head.
37:44I thought it was over.
37:45When you have guns just staring at you, that fear, you're frozen.
37:51You're, like, in a state of shock.
37:52And if you do the wrong thing, they could blow your head off.
37:57He's like, you know why I'm here.
37:59I said, no, I don't.
38:00He's like, well, I'm with the USDA.
38:01And things started clicking.
38:03He's like, well, you're not under arrest, but this is a search warrant.
38:06He's like, so do you have a store?
38:07I said, yeah.
38:07He's like, what's the name of it?
38:09I said, Jay Good Groceries.
38:11And his man is writing it down.
38:13I'm like, oh, no, no, no.
38:14I said, I need a lawyer.
38:16And he's like, you know what?
38:17You've got it free to go.
38:18We're just going to search this place.
38:19I leave for a few hours.
38:21I come back.
38:22My place is upside down.
38:25They took all my computers.
38:26They took all the phones.
38:27They took all the iPads.
38:28They took every electronic I had in there.
38:30They also found cars.
38:31They found cash.
38:32They took a safe.
38:33And I get a call from my lawyer.
38:34He's like, you're being charged.
38:37Conspiracy.
38:38Food stamp fraud.
38:39Wire fraud.
38:40Mail fraud.
38:4115 different counts of felons.
38:44I'm thinking I'm about to go do at least 10, 15 years.
38:48These are some serious charges.
38:49And I was scared.
38:53I was sentenced to 45 months in federal prison.
38:57And I was devastated.
39:00The court wouldn't even allow me to even talk to my mom or even give her a hug goodbye.
39:05I f***ed up my future all over some fake food stamps.
39:11And I truly regret it.
39:13I started Think Right PR in 2019.
39:19Over the last five years, I represented Roger Stone, General Flynn, RFK Jr., Rudy Giuliani.
39:27I helped them with their branding.
39:28I developed their business.
39:29But in the last few years, it's really been crisis management.
39:33It's been dealing with scandals.
39:35And how do we recover from that?
39:37Which seems to be something I'm really good at.
39:39After my own experiences, I am scandal queen.
39:43One of the most significant experiences that I had while I was incarcerated was encountering a prison chaplain.
39:53His role was to serve the people around him.
39:57And that planted a seed in me.
39:59So today, I work as a hospice chaplain, giving support and care to people at the most difficult time of their life, the end of their life.
40:09And although I'm a chaplain today, there's still a little bit of pirate in my heart.
40:14I served 26 months.
40:20And I was just a few months of getting out of prison before I lost my mom.
40:27My mom was the most important person in my life.
40:30And that really took a toll on me.
40:33Upon release of my prison sense, I took all of this built-up emotion and I give motivational speeches.
40:40And speak to young kids and take my story and flip it.
40:46You know, because I know it's other people in my shoes.
40:49And I wanted to be that example.
40:52No matter what you went through in life, the ups and downs, the trauma, you can come out and become a whole different person, whatever you want to be in life.
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