- 3 months ago
- #hustlersgamblerscrooks
- #realityinsighthub
Hustlers Gamblers Crooks Season 2 Episode 5
#hustlersgamblerscrooks
#RealityInsightHub
🎞 Please subscribe to our official channel to watch the full movie for free, as soon as possible. ❤️Reality Insight Hub❤️
👉 Official Channel: https://www.dailymotion.com/TrailerBolt
👉 THANK YOU ❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️
#hustlersgamblerscrooks
#RealityInsightHub
🎞 Please subscribe to our official channel to watch the full movie for free, as soon as possible. ❤️Reality Insight Hub❤️
👉 Official Channel: https://www.dailymotion.com/TrailerBolt
👉 THANK YOU ❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️
Category
😹
FunTranscript
00:00Selling sex is a dangerous business.
00:04We park across the street from his house, and I called him.
00:08Where's my money?
00:10You see that escalate over there?
00:12Do you want her to come talk to your wife?
00:14Because I want my money.
00:18I was going to start off the largest heist in the history of Las Vegas.
00:24I conned the government out of over a million dollars using food stamps.
00:30My client list was full of CEOs, real estate developers, heads of countries.
00:39Who needs Ocean's Eleven when you have four rednecks from Texas?
00:45This was the easiest money I ever made, but my world was about to be ****.
00:49The next thing you know, the SWAT team is at my door with guns.
00:53There's a fight at the pool.
00:55You've got to get there.
00:55One of them's got a knife.
00:56They're going to kill each other.
01:00My name is Kristen Davis.
01:08I'm known as the Manhattan Madam, and I made millions running a prostitution business for
01:13the rich and famous.
01:16I grew up in Fresno, California.
01:18I was raised by a single working mother.
01:21She was a Sunday school teacher.
01:23We grew up very low income, and if I wanted things, I had to earn the money.
01:29So I grew up understanding that hard work is what it takes to make money, and that the
01:35only one that gets in your way is you.
01:38I graduated from high school at 15, so I graduated two years early.
01:43And at 16 and a half, I signed up for a temporary agency, and they placed me in an office job, which
01:51just happened to be with a commodities broker.
01:54I enjoyed learning, and I was really good at math.
01:56So in the early 2000s, I was recruited for a high-profile job at a hedge fund.
02:04When I started to work at the hedge fund, it was completely overwhelming.
02:08At that time, it was a very decadent world.
02:12Hedge funds were not regulated.
02:14There was a lot of drugs.
02:15There were women.
02:16There was alcohol.
02:18There were trophy wives.
02:19There was all of this lavish lifestyle, and now I've got traders that I deal with every
02:26day.
02:27They managed even more money, so therefore they made the firm more money, which meant they
02:32could behave even more badly.
02:35Nobody's going to question if they spent $100,000 that month on girls.
02:41And I thought it was fascinating that the sex industry commanded so much money from these
02:48men, and it was just considered normal.
02:51I had reached the glass ceiling, making $160,000 a year.
02:56I wanted to be a trader.
02:57Those guys were making $2 million a year, and that's what I wanted to do, but I was always
03:03told no.
03:05One day in my office, I was reading the New York Post, and the article said there are
03:11millions of dollars floating through escort agencies.
03:14More money than I could ever make in my lifetime being in the back office of a finance company.
03:20I've seen finance guys using escorts for years, and I thought, maybe if I could find
03:25girls, this would be a viable solution.
03:29So I decided to test the waters by placing an ad on Craigslist, and I did so from my job
03:35because I worked 14 hours a day.
03:37The ad said, Beautiful Girls Wanted, and it listed out the features which I thought would
03:43be appealing for the men in this industry.
03:45College educated, pretty, in good shape, beautiful, to provide companionship for men.
03:54When I clicked post, I had a lot of anxiety.
03:58I thought, do you really actually want to do this?
04:00And then I thought, you know, well, let's just see.
04:03It won't hurt to just see.
04:04The next day, I walked into the office.
04:08The HR person was standing at the front, and they said, We are firing you, effective immediately,
04:14for using the business hardware for personal use.
04:18And I said, But all of your traders are using escorts.
04:22You're going to fire me for placing an ad?
04:25And they were like, We're putting this picture of you at the front.
04:29If you ever try to come back, we will have you escorted from the property.
04:32I was in complete and total shock and had no idea what I was going to do next.
04:38That was the moment I decided, I'm going to sell sex.
04:44So 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.
04:53If I'm going to put a price on my freedom, I want it to be the most amount of money.
04:58And my price was always, at that time, in my head, $2 million.
05:01If I could make this work, I'd be free.
05:04When you have money, you don't have to take from traders.
05:08You don't have to take from anyone.
05:10It was time for me to be in control.
05:13How do I achieve that goal?
05:17Before we did anything, I needed to have a location.
05:20I didn't have a location because I was just fired from my job and I didn't have any money to get a place.
05:26So I converted my high-rise one-bedroom into a two-bedroom.
05:32And we opened with one girl in my apartment.
05:37The first girl I interviewed was stunning.
05:43She looked like a young Selma Hayek.
05:46And I didn't have any other options also.
05:48Like, I didn't get that many people responding to the ad to where I could be so choosy.
05:53But, you know, it was just me and her.
05:55And she really wanted to work.
05:58I knew when I opened, I needed to get my building's doorman on board.
06:02So I went to the doorman and I told him, you know, I'm opening a work-from-home business.
06:08I just want you to know there's going to be a lot of foot traffic.
06:11And I handed him $300.
06:13And he said, no problem.
06:15I said, can you just let them in without buzzing me each time?
06:18And he said, okay.
06:22The first client that came up was nerve-wracking.
06:26I left the apartment, went for a walk outside, and I just kept thinking to myself, I hope
06:34everything goes okay.
06:35I hope he's not a cop.
06:36I hope we don't get arrested.
06:38I don't know what's going to happen.
06:40You don't know if the girl's going to be okay.
06:42Selling sex is a dangerous business.
06:46We opened and everything was great.
06:49We made a ton of money.
06:51I think that first week I made about $5,000.
06:54There were probably 20 clients, and it proved to me that this would be financially viable.
07:01Our price point was $500 an hour.
07:03It was a 50-50 split.
07:05So she makes $250, I make $250.
07:08And then the next step is like, okay, I'm not going to play small.
07:12I'm going to play big because if I get caught, you know, it has to be worth my while.
07:16Similar to hedge funds, the greater the risk, the greater the reward.
07:20I realized, okay, we have to find some more girls.
07:24The next step was scouting talent and trying to figure out where to find them.
07:31Whether it's Craigslist, I would ask girls for referrals.
07:34I had memberships at all the hotspots, which allowed me to go to these exclusive events that
07:41catered to models, and I would just go pick up women.
07:43I sort of perfected the art of the pickup as a woman.
07:47I would just strike up a conversation if I thought she would be a good fit, and I would
07:52just tell her, you know, well, what are you doing for work?
07:56Oh, model.
07:56Well, how's that working for you?
07:58And they would say, well, not so good.
08:00New York's really expensive.
08:02Well, do you want to make extra money?
08:04What if I can help you with that?
08:05And they would say, okay, well, what do you do?
08:08And I would tell them, and we would become friends.
08:11Some of these women, I would court them for six months until they would decide to come
08:17work for me.
08:18I started out with a handful of girls and building and building and building, and, you
08:27know, I successfully had some of the top models in the world.
08:32I went from $1,000 or more an hour to $4,000 an hour with a four-hour minimum.
08:41At our height, I had 200 girls working for me.
08:44I had six apartments.
08:46I was running this like it was a Fortune 500 company.
08:50Most of the women that came to me didn't have experience.
08:53What people in New York want is a high-end model who can have a conversation.
09:00I had a whole protocol for what do you say when you come in the door?
09:04What do you do?
09:06At the higher price point, they are not paying for sex.
09:09They're paying for an experience.
09:10And that experience revolves around you making them feel good as a man.
09:18And to have this woman show interest in you is so flattering.
09:23Some of them needed, you know, help in how to show interest in a genuine way.
09:27There's also some safety checks.
09:31I send you to the call at 10 o'clock.
09:33At 10, I want to know that you're at that call.
09:36If I don't hear from you in five minutes, 10 minutes, there's a problem.
09:40Now she goes in.
09:41She collects the money.
09:42If it's a credit card, she needs to get a credit card imprint.
09:45If it's cash, she needs to collect the cash.
09:47And then she tells me, okay, I'm in and collected.
09:50Now the time starts.
09:52If at the end of the hour, he wants to extend, we call you just checking in.
09:57Are you staying or going?
09:59And he says, I'd like to keep her overnight.
10:01And so now we start negotiating.
10:03Okay, well, you paid $1,200 right now.
10:05It's $9,000 for the night.
10:08We book his credit card.
10:09We say, okay, well, the night ends at like 8 or 9 a.m.
10:12So talk to you then.
10:14Bye.
10:14At some point, if you've made $100,000 in New York in four weeks as a girl, you're going
10:23to max out on all my clients.
10:24So now where can I put you to keep making you money?
10:28I decided to expand into different cities.
10:31So first it was Philly, then it was Boston, then it was D.C.
10:35In my prime, I had 10 apartments all over the country.
10:39So they'd spend, you know, a week there, make $7,000, take a week off, come back to
10:46New York, see a few of their regulars.
10:49I would say 80% of my clients were noteworthy people.
10:53You know, my client list at one point in time was over 10,000 names.
10:58CEOs, real estate developers, finance bros, athletes, politicians, heads of countries.
11:06One of the main challenges of this world is risk management.
11:13I had one client.
11:14He was using his company credit card, but his father owned the company.
11:19And one day I look at my bank account and I see a withdrawal for $48,000.
11:26He had charged back on $48,000 of credit card charges, which also meant that I lost 50% of
11:34that money because I had already paid the girls.
11:37So now I'm down $24,000.
11:40So I call him and I'm like, hey, what happened here?
11:43And he says, well, my, you know, it's my father's company.
11:47And he charged back on all the charges.
11:49Okay, but you still need to pay me.
11:52A day goes by, I call him again.
11:54He said, I'm still working on it.
11:55I said, you need to work on it quickly.
11:57Another day goes by, he doesn't pick up my calls.
12:00I get a text on the third day.
12:02Now I'm angry because you're dodging me.
12:05So I have, you know, my set group of people that I employ, the men in black.
12:10They would go and muscle their way into my money.
12:14And I had them come in their Escalade and pick up one of the girls that had seen him,
12:19park across the street from his house.
12:21And I called him.
12:22I said, hey, I want my money.
12:25Where's my money?
12:27And he's like, I'm still working on it.
12:30My dad, I don't know how the cash.
12:31I said, you better figure it out.
12:33You see that Escalade outside?
12:35And he's like, yeah.
12:36And I said, that's my people.
12:39And the girl rolled down the window and did a little wave.
12:42And I said, and that girl's seen you.
12:44Is your wife home?
12:46Do you want her to come talk to your wife?
12:49Because I need my money.
12:54This client is freaking out.
12:57And he said, uh, uh, uh, I'll get your money.
13:01I'll get your money.
13:01Don't let her get out of the car.
13:03And I'm like, no, I mean today.
13:05Figure it out.
13:07Next thing you know, I have a call.
13:09I have a cashier's check for you.
13:11Where can we meet?
13:12I just literally went to the corner where he was standing, grabbed the cashier's check,
13:17you, and went on my way.
13:21I was making $200,000 a day.
13:23And business-wise, I was on top of the world.
13:26I was making more money than all the finance bros, finally.
13:30I'd love to say that I was able to enjoy the money.
13:34But the whole time, I was really concerned about whether or not I'd get arrested.
13:40You know, at my height, I had everything.
13:43I have more than met my goal of $2 million in the bank.
13:47I can retire.
13:50I'm going to go to an island somewhere and sip on a coconut drink.
13:54I'm starting to wind the business down, getting rid of some of the apartments.
13:58And I see the news that Elliot Spitzer was caught with an escort I shared with another agency.
14:05Elliot Spitzer was governor of New York at that time.
14:08He had been in office a few months.
14:10And there were massive amounts of calls for his resignation.
14:15Every girl, which is like 30 or 40, that had seen Spitzer was calling me scared.
14:21What is going to happen?
14:22There was no doubt in my mind that I was going to get arrested.
14:25I called my attorney, who we will refer to as the world's worst attorney.
14:31And he said, okay, gather all your records.
14:35Gather your credit card imprints.
14:37I had audio of Elliot Spitzer.
14:39I had everything.
14:40I gathered it all up.
14:41He said, give me all your records and I'll negotiate turning yourself in.
14:45You know, maybe they'll be easy on you.
14:47Maybe turning myself in would also mean that they don't come for any of my girls.
14:51I thought I would just be able to turn myself in and it would be a no drama, no chaos scenario.
14:57The next thing you know, the SWAT team's in my door with guns.
15:02There were two helicopters overhead, 90 police cars, blocks of Manhattan shut down for me.
15:11And I walked out like, holy moly, all of this for me?
15:15I felt like I had just hit America's most wanted.
15:19Like I have done something so heinous.
15:22I could not believe the amount of resources spent on this arrest.
15:28I was facing one count of class E felony for promoting prostitution, which is a very low level crime.
15:35However, I had one count of money laundering for over $100,000, which was a class C felony, which was five to seven years.
15:48I sat in Rikers Island in solitary confinement for four months.
15:52They 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.
16:01I was very lucky that the Supreme Court at that time changed the definition of money laundering.
16:08So they had to drop that charge.
16:11And I pled out to the promoting prostitution, which they gave me time served.
16:18I was free and broke.
16:21All of my money was frozen and I had nothing.
16:26I felt like I did all of this for nothing.
16:28I tried to go back into finance and lo and behold, I'm no longer employable.
16:32If I was a man, I'd be a traitor at Goldman Sachs.
16:37Then I said, OK, I had a difficult talk with myself in that you've been your own worst enemy.
16:43And what can you do to help yourself be successful?
16:46And so I started trying to secure a tangible skill that I could make money on.
16:51And I got to work.
16:53My name is Jeff Hopper, and I pulled off one of the biggest heists in Las Vegas history.
17:04By childhood, we lived in a very small town in Woodville, Texas.
17:09It is as boring as it sounds.
17:11As a kid, all of us are asked that question about what do you want to be when you grow up?
17:16You want to be an astronaut or, you know, a paleontologist?
17:19Well, I always wanted to be a pirate.
17:21A pirate lived at the edge of everything.
17:26I had this desire always to try to get away with things.
17:30At 14, I started shoplifting, but from there, it quickly escalated.
17:35And so at 15, I was still in cars.
17:39I was studying to be a pirate, and I was doing my very best.
17:43My dad didn't care if I did wrong.
17:46In fact, he encouraged it.
17:47My dad, Royal Hopper, was a local postmaster.
17:52Whenever somebody betrayed him, and they would hold their mail, he would let me know when
17:58they left out of town so I could break into their house.
18:00He couldn't afford to do anything himself, but he had a mischievous, very poorly behaved son
18:09that he could put up to doing anything.
18:13And so I would, because I enjoyed the thrill of it.
18:16But then, my dad lost his job as the postmaster and moved to Vegas.
18:21He got a job at the Stardust Casino as a security guard.
18:28One day, I get a call from my father.
18:31He told me he had been robbed at work.
18:35At first, I was worried.
18:37And it turns out, I shouldn't have been.
18:40So my dad set himself up to be robbed by my brother.
18:44My father, when he got this job as a security guard, he would escort the daily receipts
18:52in this unlocked metal cabinet.
18:55My brother had stolen a radio from one of the guards and listened and waited until my
19:01father had escorted the receipts to one of the side doors.
19:06My brother stepped out, pointed a gun at him, loaded the money into a bag, and went and
19:13got in a taxi cab and drove off.
19:16The whole robbery took about five minutes for $155,000.
19:22I'm shocked.
19:24And now, they're planning another heist, a big one.
19:30And they want me to be part of it.
19:33And he handed me an envelope, and he said, I want you to think about it.
19:37And there was $10,000 cash and a note that said, this is just pennies compared to what
19:45we will have.
19:47Holding that money was like I had just opened the treasure chest, and my dreams were in my
19:54hands.
19:54I was working nine to five at a lumber yard.
20:00And I walk up to my boss, and I told him, go yourself, clocked out, and walked out the
20:07door.
20:10So my dad really didn't have any qualms whatsoever taking from a casino.
20:15For him, the casinos were just organized crime.
20:18And he noticed two things that made them ripe for a target.
20:23One is their arrogance.
20:25Nobody believed that anybody would have the guts to rob a mob-owned casino.
20:34And second, their inattention to detail.
20:37And if you can create chaos, people are reacting to the chaos.
20:41They don't know that you are walking through the casino to take their money.
20:49The Final Four basketball tournament is the second highest betting day in Vegas.
20:55In 1992, the Final Four ended up being on a weekend.
21:01So all the deposits would be on the armored car that was going to be picked up Monday morning.
21:07And that became our date.
21:08My dad met us at a diner outside of Las Vegas and laid out the plan using blocks and Hot Wheel
21:16cars.
21:17My dad wanted four of us in on the heist.
21:20My childhood friend, Wes, would be the muscle.
21:23So his job was going to be to pull the gun out of the holster of the guard and then grab
21:28the money bags and take off running.
21:31My brother, Bobby, had no problems pointing a gun at somebody's face.
21:35So his role was to intimidate the guard once Wes picked up the money bags and ran.
21:41My dad would be the getaway driver.
21:44My job was to time the heist perfectly and create an epic distraction.
21:50For three months, I watched these guards come in and out, timing people every day.
21:56How long it took the armored car to drive into the parking lot?
22:00How long did they sit in the truck?
22:01How long did they stay in the counting room?
22:03How long did it take them to come out and get it down to the millisecond?
22:07Because every second was going to count.
22:11Who needs Ocean's Eleven when you have four rednecks from Texas?
22:18For the heist to work, we knew we needed a distraction.
22:22We decided on smoke bombs.
22:25Smoke bombs were going to create chaos.
22:27All these people running everywhere, trying to get away from whatever was going on.
22:33So we used some military-grade smoke powder, and we had to disguise it.
22:38We put it into a drink cup, put our straw in, and then we put the fuse down the straw.
22:48You want to use a lighter that's real dependable and be ready for chaos.
22:53The night before the heist, I couldn't sleep.
23:00And so for several hours, I walked the streets of Las Vegas, thinking, what have I gotten myself into?
23:08And it's too late to turn back.
23:09Because if I don't do my part, then my brother and my father get caught, and they go to prison forever.
23:15And the adrenaline, that was like literally taking a syringe full of the most toxic drug you can think of,
23:24knowing that in two hours, I was going to start off the largest heist in the history of Las Vegas.
23:33It was the day of the heist.
23:35My position was to sit on this bench and wait for the armored car.
23:41I'm sitting there, and I see the armored car.
23:44And as the armored car turned, I see the station wagon, my father driving.
23:49That meant the heist was on.
23:51And I get up and start walking towards the casino, and the whole time, I'm counting to myself.
23:58And I had counted so many times watching the stopwatch that I can count seconds without looking at a timer.
24:06And I went in, walked through the casino, counting the whole time.
24:10And so my part was going to be to make this phone call to distract the house security.
24:17And it had to be timed perfectly at the same time that the armored car driver was going to leave the counting room.
24:26In the meantime, Big West and my little brother had come into the casino carrying their smoke bombs and big gulp cups.
24:35Their role was going to be to take up their positions on each side of where the counting room was.
24:41And when they could see the armored car driver in the window to light the fuses of the smoke bombs.
24:49And I looked at my watch, and it was time.
24:54Picked up the phone and reported to the house security.
24:58There's a fight.
24:59There's a fight at the pool.
25:00You've got to get there.
25:01One of them's got a knife.
25:01They're going to kill each other.
25:03Sir, sir, we have three pools.
25:04Which one is it?
25:06And I hung up the phone, knowing that they're going to have to send people to every pool.
25:11And all the security guards run at one time to the pools.
25:16And I looked to my left, and there's smoke beginning to billow out.
25:24People are running from that location.
25:27People right here next to me are jumping under tables, screaming, they've got a gun.
25:33And they've got bombs.
25:34There's no guards left.
25:37Just the armored car driver carrying three money bags, a million dollars on his shoulder, on the same side that his firearm was on.
25:48Wes knew that all he had to do is grab those bags and pull down, and it was going to spin him around.
25:54He dropped to the ground, and he was going all Clint Eastwood, and, you know, go gunslinger, Wyatt Earp.
26:00Nope.
26:06My brother grabs two of those bags, kicks the firearm.
26:10They went through a set of doors that leads to the dock, where my father was waiting in the station wagon.
26:17I walked out the doors as cops, running with their guns drawn, run past me.
26:24The car that I was going to take was in another parking lot.
26:27I've got into the vehicle, and I'm waiting.
26:30I'm thinking to myself, am I going to get news at some point that my brother and my father are dead?
26:37I drove around this spot where I'm supposed to meet my brother.
26:44If he came out and the cops were around, I had to leave him there.
26:48He walked out casually, just as calm as he could be.
26:54He just got in the car, put the seat back a little bit, and just said, let's go.
27:01We had one goal, get to the airport.
27:05Walking through the airport, we were terrified.
27:09Every cop, every security guard were watching the television set about the heists that just went down.
27:17We walked through thinking, they're going to open fire on us at any moment.
27:24Waiting for that flight was the longest wait of my life.
27:30And then we got our tickets and got on the plane and went back to Texas.
27:35We had gotten away with it.
27:39Ultimately, we got away with $1.1 million.
27:45My dad took the money, split it up into separate boxes, and sent it to different locations so that no one would have all the money in one spot.
27:55I received a package that had almost $100,000 in it.
28:02It was two weeks to the day after the robbery, and I got a bang on my door.
28:08Bam, bam, bam, bam, bam.
28:09It's the FBI.
28:11Open the door.
28:13And I take out my bottle of Jack Daniels.
28:15I had spent a lot of money on this bottle, and I was not letting it go to waste.
28:18And so I said, you know what?
28:20If I'm going to go to jail tonight, I am going to go drunk.
28:24There were three FBI agents, three U.S. Marshals.
28:27They were all carrying weapons, and they were all pointed at me.
28:32And then they cuffed me, and my girlfriend walked out, and there was a lady cop having a conversation with her.
28:40She wasn't in cuffs, and she looks at me and says, I'm sorry.
28:45I didn't know that she had gotten some trouble.
28:48She signed a deal to tell the FBI that I had the money so that she could get less time.
28:53And so they took me to jail.
28:55So something we didn't realize, that from the very first robbery, the Gaming Commission, which are a very powerful force, there is equivalent of an FBI.
29:05And they knew that my father had something to do with the first robbery.
29:09But they just didn't have any proof.
29:11So they'd been following him and collecting information.
29:16There wasn't that much on me, but there was 20,000 pages of investigation on my father.
29:23The Gaming Commission, I used to think, oh, they're just stupid.
29:27And these are some of the most intelligent people on the planet.
29:30We might have been outsmarting the security guard that is in his retirement age at the casino.
29:34But to think that you were outsmarting one of the top investigation units in the world, and you are four rednecks from Texas.
29:43No, probably not.
29:44Ultimately, I was convicted of conspiracy and aiding and abetting, and served five years locked up.
29:52My father, my brother, and Big Wes and I ended up at the same prison.
29:57The goal was to do my time, behave myself the best of my ability, get out, and rebuild my life.
30:04My father, of course, was thinking about what crime would we commit next once we get out, and I told him, I'm not included in that.
30:11My name is Jonathan Dubiton.
30:16I conned the government out of over a million dollars using food stamps.
30:22I was born in Newark, New Jersey.
30:24Out of my four siblings, I am the middle child.
30:27My mom was a single mom working as a nurse.
30:31She was always at work.
30:33She was making $10 an hour, and it just wasn't enough to take care of five kids.
30:37We had to basically feed ourselves and raise ourselves.
30:41As I got older, I was able to get a job, and I was able to help out my mom.
30:46So, yeah, I was the first one in my family to go to college, and my mom was so proud of me.
30:51But college was expensive.
30:54One day, I was just minding my business, and, you know, I think a card just fell out of the sky.
31:00And I was like, oh, wow, someone's student ID.
31:03And something clicked in my brain, like, wait, your student loan goes on his student ID, and it's like, you can use it just like a bank card.
31:11So I pick up this student's ID.
31:13I go into the bookstore.
31:15I was buying books.
31:16I think I bought, like, a game system.
31:19I bought everything that I could out of the bookstore and left.
31:22All of a sudden, I see a cop, and he tells me, put your hand behind your back.
31:28Come with me.
31:29He takes me to jail, and when I get back to school, they kick me out.
31:33I have zero dollars in my bank account.
31:36I still was trying to figure out my next move, and I found out my mom had cancer.
31:41And my mom's insurance didn't cover the medical costs.
31:44I was such in need of some money that I was willing to do whatever illegal things that I had to do to get it.
31:51And then Chris, a guy that I grew up in the neighborhood with, he had a notebook full of names and birthdays and socials.
32:00And he was like, I'm doing tax fraud.
32:03And he's like, yeah, man, I'm about to be rich.
32:05And I thought, okay, I need money to help my mom.
32:08Maybe I can go use this.
32:10But 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.
32:18And then the light bulb went off.
32:19Food stamps.
32:21Food stamps is given to people that are less fortunate.
32:24If you're homeless, if you don't have a job, the government puts the benefits on a card, which is called the EBT card.
32:31The EBT card works just like a debit card.
32:33You just can only buy food.
32:34All you needed to apply for food stamps was the name, birthday, and social, and the rest of the information I just came up with.
32:40So the social worker would call for the food stamp interview.
32:43They would ask you a bunch of questions to see if you're eligible for the food stamps.
32:46So you need to get yourself a burner phone that doesn't have your name attached to it.
32:50You would need a burner phone for every application that you put in.
32:52The key to making all of this work was to stay organized.
32:55I hired a friend to help me keep track of everything.
32:58So we would have phones 1 through 50.
33:00We had a list of people 1 through 50.
33:02So if phone number 10 called, we would know that it was Joe Smith calling.
33:05And that's how we kept track of who was calling for who.
33:08So the social worker would call, and I would pick up with Joe Smith.
33:13He's 60 years old.
33:15Hello?
33:16Yes, ma'am.
33:16This is Joe Smith.
33:18Yes, ma'am.
33:18I live at 123 Adams Road.
33:21I had to play, like, a role of 50 people per day.
33:24Yes, I can all.
33:25Sometimes a woman, sometimes to be an older man.
33:27How are you doing?
33:28Yes, this is Jimmy Rowan.
33:29It would be times that I would have to do two or three interviews at the same time.
33:33Like, I'll be on the call, and this phone will ring.
33:35I'll be like, I'll just put this on mute, pick this up.
33:38Yes, ma'am.
33:39Uh-huh.
33:40Yes.
33:41Mute.
33:41Hey, this is Annie.
33:43Yes, I'm homeless.
33:44Wait.
33:45Yeah, hello.
33:47It was a job.
33:48When your food stamp application is accepted, you receive a food stamp card in the mail.
33:53With this EBT card, you can either purchase food with it, or you can take your balance
33:58and trade that food stamp balance for cash.
34:00But I couldn't just walk in the store and ask a random person.
34:05I had to find a plug, which is a store owner, that was comfortable enough to trade the food
34:10stamps for cash.
34:11We not buying.
34:13We just coming in there to give the card in exchange for cash.
34:18So I would give him a stack of EBT cards.
34:20He would give me the cash up front, and over the next week or two, he would slowly take
34:25the money off the card.
34:27And it would seem like it's a real person coming in his store to purchase items, even
34:32though no items are actually being purchased.
34:35We're splitting the government's payout 60-40, where I get the 60%.
34:39And then when he's done with it, he would give them back, and I would come with more cards.
34:45I was making a few thousand dollars at first.
34:47I probably made about 10 grand the first few months, and that's when I decided to go
34:51really big.
34:52We went from doing 50 names on the list to about 200 names.
34:56Now there's 200 phones ringing.
34:58Now I have to imitate 200 people.
35:02It got to a point where I was getting tired of picking up the phone, doing two or three
35:06calls at a time, not being able to go anywhere from nine to five.
35:09And I knew that it's going to require multiple versions of myself.
35:14Absolutely.
35:14So I hired people to answer the phones as the fake identity.
35:19I hired someone to actually put the applications in.
35:22I hired people to make the IDs for me.
35:24I had a 10-person team, and nothing could stop us.
35:27I didn't see anything wrong with what I was doing.
35:29I wasn't actually stealing from a person.
35:31I was stealing from the government.
35:32Once we upped it to 200 names, I'm making about $15,000 extra a week.
35:37This was the easiest money I ever made in my life.
35:41But my world was about to be...
35:42When I got the money from the robbery, I was supposed to keep a low profile.
35:48But one of the things that I had always wanted was the state-of-the-art speaker system.
35:54The ones that would blow out the neighbor's windows.
35:56And that is the first thing that I bought.
35:59And I wanted to, you know, get some new clothes.
36:02And I wanted to look good.
36:04If I was going to be a pirate, I wanted to look the part.
36:07I was going to have the treasure and everything.
36:09And so I spent $5,000 or $6,000.
36:12I was buying stuff and giving people money.
36:15And I was being the absolute worst case scenario,
36:18what you should not do when you do something illegal.
36:22What I know about the FBI is they are patient.
36:26They will wait until you make the mistake you need to make
36:30for them to have a case against you.
36:33I was so tired of giving 40% away to store owners.
36:36So that means I needed my own store.
36:38I opened up my own storefront.
36:40It was called JJ Good Groceries.
36:41I hired one of the little homies in the neighborhood.
36:45And his job was to sit there and manage the store.
36:47The store was just a front.
36:49It was only to swipe cards.
36:51I might have had one or two customers a day.
36:53But my store was making $1,000 on the back end.
36:56And I could finally take care of my mom.
37:00I was able to pay the bills, take care of the chemotherapy,
37:03and pay for any doctor visits.
37:05At this point, the cards is bringing me $100,000 a month,
37:08but I have a store that can only filter out $60,000 per month
37:13without drawing a red flag.
37:15I need more stores.
37:16With five stores, I would have been making $50,000 to $60,000 a week each.
37:21I successfully opened up my second store.
37:24Then I'm in the process of opening up three more stores,
37:26like literally putting the paperwork in.
37:28I'm about to sign for the lease.
37:29Everything's about to happen.
37:31I was the man.
37:32You know, couldn't nobody tell me nothing.
37:33And the next day, it was about 5 a.m.
37:37I hear a loud banging on the door.
37:42It was the police.
37:44And I'm really thinking I'm dreaming.
37:45So I go back to sleep.
37:47I hear some more banging.
37:48Police open up.
37:49So I yell back, like, yo, stop, knocking on my door.
37:53So now I hear voices in my home.
37:55I have my girlfriend laying next to me.
37:56I have two homeboys and his child downstairs.
37:59So they say, hey, everybody come down with their hands up.
38:01Everybody goes out but me.
38:04I'm trying to just put it away.
38:06I got cards here.
38:06I got envelopes here.
38:07I got cash.
38:08I go downstairs with my hands up.
38:11And I had guns pointed at my head.
38:14I thought it was over.
38:16When you have guns just staring at you, that fear, you're frozen.
38:21You're, like, in a state of shock.
38:22And if you do the wrong thing, they could blow your head off.
38:27He's like, you know why I'm here.
38:28I said, no, I don't.
38:30He's like, well, I'm with the USDA.
38:31And things started clicking.
38:33He's like, well, you're not under arrest, but this is a search warrant.
38:36He's like, so do you have a store?
38:37I said, yeah.
38:37He's like, what's the name of it?
38:39I said, Jay Good Groceries.
38:42And his man is writing it down.
38:43I was like, oh, no, no, no.
38:44I said, I need a lawyer.
38:46And he's like, you know what?
38:47You've got it free to go.
38:48We're just going to search this place.
38:49I leave for a few hours.
38:51I come back.
38:52My place is upside down.
38:55They took all my computers.
38:56They took all the phones.
38:57They took all the iPads.
38:58They took every electronic I had in there.
39:00They also found cars.
39:01They found cash.
39:02They took a safe.
39:03And I get a call from my lawyer.
39:04He's like, you're being charged.
39:07Conspiracy.
39:08Food stamp fraud.
39:09Wire fraud.
39:10Mail fraud.
39:1115 different counts of felonies.
39:14I'm thinking I'm about to go do at least 10, 15 years.
39:18These are some serious charges.
39:19And I was scared.
39:23I was sentenced to 45 months in federal prison.
39:27And I was devastated.
39:31The court wouldn't even allow me to even talk to my mom or even give her a hug goodbye.
39:35I f***ed up my future all over some fake food stamps.
39:41And I truly regret it.
39:46I started Think Right PR in 2019.
39:49Over the last five years, I've represented Roger Stone, General Flynn, RFK Jr., Rudy Giuliani.
39:57I helped them with their branding.
39:58I developed their business.
39:59But in the last few years, it's really been crisis management.
40:03It's been dealing with scandals, and how do we recover from that, which seems to be something I'm really good at.
40:09After my own experiences, I am scandal queen.
40:15One of the most significant experiences that I had while I was incarcerated was encountering a prison chaplain.
40:23His role was to serve the people around him.
40:27And that planted a seed in me.
40:29So 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.
40:39And although I'm a chaplain today, there's still a little bit of pirate in my heart.
40:44To be continued...
40:44To be continued...
Comments