I Was A Prison Gang Shot Caller | JD Delay
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- My name is Ian Bick and you're tuned in to Locked In with Ian Bick. On this week's episode, I interview TikTok prison talk superstar and former career criminal, JD DeLay. Thank you for watching and make sure you tune in to Locked In with Ian Bick. We all make mistakes, experience failure, and fall down in life. But if you decide to get back up and use it as fuel to your fire, you can choose to not let it define you. You can make it through to the other side

and turn it into an opportunity. I went from owning a popular nightclub when I was 19 years old to becoming a federal inmate by the time I was 21. Join me, Ian Bick, as I interview people from all over the country who have experienced the rock bottom of the American justice system.

JD DeLay, the man, the myth, the legend, one of prison TikTok's biggest stars. Actually, honestly, you're just like one of social media's biggest stars in general. Thank you for coming on the show today. It's an honor and I'm glad you're in your normal uniform. Those nipples are hard as shit over there. I wish you guys could be here right now to see those. They're like pecking out. You've lived quite a crazy life.

Like absolutely crazy. You've been through so much and you really like you have this amazing life now. You put out so much positive energy. Anyone that sees you on social media falls in love with you, falls in love with your message. But before you got to that point, you had to get through some very serious stuff. I mean, you essentially became a career criminal. What was your childhood like growing up? How was life for you at a young age?

Okay, so look, I want to be really clear about this. My parents are amazing. They're still in my life. They've been the most supportive, amazing parents. They did like everything right. If I could be, if I could choose the man that I want to be, it would be my father. And my mother is just an amazing person. Like I may look like this, but I'm still a mama's boy at heart, right? So

So somebody when I was six years old molested me and that sent my life on a different trajectory than I think it would have been if that hadn't have happened, which is part of why I'm so passionate when I talk about sex offenders and pedophiles, why I've perpetrated a lot of violence against them, why I'm talking about it as much as I do trying to raise awareness. I also try to talk a lot about the stigma of

surrounding men and particularly young men who've been sexually assaulted. When that happened, I was six years old and right around then was when I started acting out. And my parents didn't know what was going on because I didn't tell them what had happened. I didn't feel safe. I was raised in a very religious home and...

I had this whole stigma and thought in my head that it made me gay and that there was something wrong with being gay and that I was going to go to hell for that. So I just kind of kept it inside and it manifest in bad behavior. And they took me to a doctor. The doctor said, oh, he has ADHD. And from there, the doctor handed me a prescription for Ritalin and said, this is going to make you normal. This is going to make you fit in. This is going to make you like other kids. And what six year old kid doesn't want to fit in?

and be normal and like get along with the other kids. So that I think later on in my life gave me an affinity towards stimulants and manifest in a really severe methamphetamine addiction. I can't even imagine, you know, being that age and having that something that traumatic happening to you. And then I like a lot of people that watch your social media videos. They don't even know that part about you.

I try to be as vocal about it as I can. You know, I started out, I didn't even really cognitively process what happened to me until I was in my early 20s.

And like a light bulb went off when I was in rehab because, you know, from the time that I got started on the Ritalin and then I moved to other drugs like street drugs, you know, for a long time, I just did what I call hippie drugs, you know, marijuana, psychedelics. And then it sort of progressed into, you know, some Molly and ecstasy.

ketamine, cocaine, stuff like that. It was a progression and it went for quite a while. It wasn't until I sobered up as an adult that I actually realized cognitively, like this was a thing that happened to me. This had a huge effect on me. I was actually in rehab and I had a panic attack about it. And they sent me to a psychologist. I was diagnosed with PTSD and this was long before I'd ever gone to prison.

So, you know, it really wasn't something that I was able to even grasp or tackle at the time. And that's a common thing for kids when they're sexually assaulted, for them not to really be able to handle it or grapple it until later on in life. At what age are you fully blown addicted to drugs?

Um, well, I didn't meet that white girl methamphetamines until I was 23 years old. Why is she called a white girl? That's just on the streets. You call it that white girl. Uh, there's that, you know, there's that white girl. There's some people just call it girl and then heroin or opiates are often referred to as boy. Um, so, you know, when, when I took that first hit of meth,

It was absolutely like something clicked. I was like, this is it for me. I like literally discontinued the use of any other drug. And I just went all the way down the rabbit hole with it because it felt so familiar from having that feeling as a child when that doctor gave me that prescription and you know,

Ritalin and Adderall are one molecule literally off of methamphetamines. It's an important molecule, but it was that same familiar feeling and it felt like home. And that wrecked me. Absolutely wrecked me. The choice that I made and I take full accountability for it. Like normal people, people without, you know, mental disorders don't decide one day.

I think I'm going to smoke meth today. That's not something that happens to people who don't already have other underlying issues. But, you know, the second that I put that into my system, it was, it was a done deal from there. So you're a teenager, you're addicted to drugs, meth's your drug of choice. When do you start committing crime to kind of like fuel this drug addiction?

Oddly enough, almost immediately, you know, it was within months of the first time that I used methamphetamines to the first time that I actively stole a car. And like I was the lookout. But, you know, dude stole the car. I got in. We took off in the car. I had such a rush from that. I was like, I need to know how to do this. You have to show me. And he was like, all right, cool. I'll show you.

So it was very, very quickly. And it's not like, it's not like I was out shoplifting, like literally stealing cars. You went instead of stealing a pack of gum, you went right to the big leagues. Yeah. I had never, I never shoplifted in my life. The only crimes that I had committed up until then was I sold weed. I sold acid, you know, just really minor types of sales, but I had never done any actual like victim oriented crimes, property crimes, anything of that matter.

Wow. So when's the first time you're arrested? The first time that I was arrested was about a year later and I got hit with a simple possession of methamphetamines.

in the state of Oregon, which at the time was a felony. Now it's decriminalized. So they're not pinning a felony stigma on people anymore for the symptoms of substance use disorder. But at the time I remember distinctly thinking, okay, I'm a felon for the rest of my life. Now, if I fill out a job application, I'm

I have to mark that box that says felon. If I fill out a housing application, I have to mark that box that says felon. So really, what's the difference if I have one felony or five felonies or now 58 felonies? Now, you were thinking that this was going through your mind at that young age. I'm always doing the math on things, bro.

bro. I'm always judging things, risk to reward. The problem is I have a huge fuck it button inside of me. There's this point that I get to where I get overstimulated. I get stressed out. I get depressed. I get anxiety because of my PTSD. And I just say, fuck it. And I go off the wrong end real fast. So you were,

addicted to drugs but you were engaged like I've met a lot of drug dealers where they're very or not drug dealers drug addicts that they're very out of it they're disconnected you knew what you were doing and you were analyzing the decisions you were choosing part of the reason that methamphetamines appealed to me was because due to my PTSD I have to be constantly situationally aware because I'm constantly assessing threats in any type of a situation any type of a room and

I'm always aware of what's going on around me. And methamphetamines didn't take away from that. It absolutely amplified that. So, yeah, I try to see things two or three steps down the road from every decision that I make, if not farther. Where are your parents during this? While you start stealing cars, you're doing drugs. Where are they?

fucking agonizing. My parents were absolutely agonizing over the lifestyle that I had fallen into. I remember, and I've had a lot of rock bottoms in my life, but the absolute worst feeling I've ever had in my soul was my mother tracked me down at a cheap hotel that I was staying at. And she waited in the parking lot for hours to see me come in or out

And I came walking up with like a sub box with two 12s and an amp attached to it. Wire still hanging off. I just stole in the car. I was bringing the subs back to my hotel. Absolutely high out of my mind. And my mom was in the parking lot and she begged me. She said,

I cannot continue to do this. If you don't change your life, I'm not going to be able to be a part of your life anymore. Please don't take you away from me. Your family loves you. We need you. We want you here. And I looked at her and I told her, I love you, mom, but I have to go. And when I got back into that hotel room, it was full of girls and one of my homeboys and everything. But I remember going in the bathroom and crying because I knew that I had left my mom weeping in her car in the parking lot.

But you didn't change. You couldn't do anything about it. At that point in time, I was an absolute slave to that substance. And that's what I don't think a lot of people understand. It's like, it's agonizing to watch people in active addiction, but you can want to stop, but you don't have the capability to do so. For me, I didn't come down until I was cuffed up in the back of a cop car. I have never voluntarily come down in my life. Uh, you know, I'm

three and a half years clean and sober in recovery right now, but I didn't stop of my own accord. I had some help from the secret service and the SWAT team. They put me in a position where I couldn't get any meth. If I were to put one in right now, if I were to hit a meth pipe once right now, I would not stop again until I was in cuffs. I absolutely understand that about myself. Now on that thought, what's the craziest thing you've had to do to fuel your addiction?

Um, so I did collections for a while with some 1% bikers. Uh, we used to go into houses. Uh, I would hold people, hold everyone in the room down with a shotgun while they would do their collections. People that owed the money. Uh, one time we went into this house and they didn't have anything.

Any of the money or any of the drugs left that they had been fronted. So the guys decided they were going to take the water heater. You can actually use a water heater in one of the recipes for cooking old biker crank and

And they ended up stealing the water heater. And I had to hold people down for like 45 minutes while they took the water heater. That was pretty crazy. And how old are you when this is happening? 26. So this is, you're already like 10 years into a life of crime. Well, no, I didn't start doing meth until I was 23. So, I mean, this, you can see how this went off the deep end really quickly. 23, 25.

I hit meth for the first time. You know, within a year, I'm a felon. You know, within a few months, I had been stealing cars. Three years in, I'm working with some 1% bikers, you know,

holding a shotgun on a room full of people. Now that first meth charge, you didn't go to prison for that. I did not go to prison for that. In the state of Oregon, a meth charge, your first meth charge is going to be 10 days. I did 10 days in county jail. Hated it. Hated it. Just 10 days. Just 10 days. Absolutely hated it. It was the biggest deal to me at the time, sitting in there, coming down off meth. I was miserable. I was like a wet cat.

in there. And now like if you were to put me in a jail cell for, you know, 60 days, you know, five months, I'm absolutely fine. I have a routine. I know what to do. I read a lot of books. I do a lot of pushups. I find somebody to stand on my shoulders while I while I do squats.

and that's how I do my time. But my first time in jail, it was absolutely miserable. I didn't know what to do with myself. All I wanted was to get out and do more meth. So had they given you some more or a longer jail sentence, you might have deterred your ways. Maybe your life would have been different. I don't think so because I've done seven months. I've done four months. I've done 11 months. I've done six. And I always got out

And ended up going back to the same thing. Now, when I did my 36 months in prison, I managed to stay completely off of meth for several years, but I was still drinking and I wasn't working any type of program of recovery. The type of addict that I am, I completely and totally understand that I have to work actively every single day.

to do something for my recovery, to keep building and fortifying my recovery so that I don't end up back in that jail cell. Now, as an addict, do you have any near-death experiences?

I mean, I've done a lot of high speed chases. I'm nine and 11 at a high speed chases. I've only been caught in two of them. And every high speed chase is a near death experience. You know, if you're running red lights, if you're going down one ways the wrong way, if you've got two wheels in the bike path and two wheels on the sidewalk, you know, there's not only are you putting yourself at risk of dying constantly, but you're putting everyone else around you.

and severe risk, but that's what it takes to get away in high speed chases because most of the time you're not just going to smoke the cop and, you know, outrun the cop, especially with the radio. That's what people don't understand. It's that radio. If they can radio in other cops, they can pin you in. But if you're making yourself enough of a hazard to the community around you, they end up having a certain amount of liability. So they'll pull back. That gives you enough time to dodge the dump, jump the car and,

and just start running. I used to be able to hop fences super quick, not so much anymore now that I weigh, you know, 255. Wow. So you're very vocal about that. You're labeled as a career criminal. What's a career criminal? A career criminal is somebody who just compulsively built their life

on a criminal lifestyle. You know what I'm saying? Like I wasn't working at Denny's and I accidentally got hemmed up because I made a bad mistake. My lifestyle was oriented around crime. And there was a very real progression to that. I started out stealing cars. I realized that was a terrible lick. It wasn't working for me. So I started selling drugs. And at a certain point when I started selling drugs, like hard drugs, it became obvious to me, the people around me

that were selling drugs were starting to get busted more and more and more. And it felt like the task force was closing in on me. So I decided I had to change everything up. I had to stop messing with the people that I was messing with. And I had to find a new hustle, basically.

So I had a friend that was doing fraud and doing very, very well for himself. And that's what I started doing. I asked him to teach me what was up with the fraud that he was doing. And it started out really rudimentary. You know, we were printing up payroll checks. We would get somebody's payroll check.

try to guesstimate the number on the check for what, you know, the next check number that would have been unused might be. And we would print out checks and then we would send people to cash them. And it was super hit or miss. So I ended up,

landing on credit card fraud and we were printing up IDs, printing up our own credit cards. There was a million different ways that you can make money when you're doing credit card fraud. It's not like, you know, $500,000 worth of fraud like you, sir, but. - He's shooting at me now. - Oh man, shots fired. - JD, this episode's about you, man. It's not about me. - All right, all right, bro. Fair enough. - Interesting. Okay. So,

Have you ever had any really crazy like drug deals gone wrong or drug exchanges when you were picking up as an addict or selling or anything that you did around drugs? Okay. So I've never told this story before anywhere except when public speaking, but I had a plug for a while. And just so you know, a plug is somebody who's your distributor. They're the person that you're buying from.

who had threatened one of my friends that was a female. She owed him some money. He didn't like that. He said that he was going to put her in a cage and burn her with a torch.

So this dude, I was having this dude come meet us at the hotel room and he was super late. And I was like, yo, one of my friends had a pit bull and he had a cage. And I'm like, yo, bring that cage over here. So we got him to the hotel. I put him in the dog cage. I made him take off his shoes. He had some really nice Nikes on. I didn't want him to mess his Nikes up because there was there was still dog shit in the dog cage.

And I had him take off his shoes. I took his wallet. I took his phone. I took his dope. I took his scale. And I had him in the dog cage for several hours while I sold all of the dope that he had on him. I sold to his customers. I sold to my customers. Right in front of him. Right in front of him. I made him watch. And I did that partially as a lesson that you don't threaten.

threaten women like that and partially as a lesson not to be six hours late man are you kidding me I had customers calling me he said I hit him up I'm five minutes away cool I can get to you in 15 minutes and then they're calling me half an hour later like what's up man this is really unprofessional I got customers too so it holds up the whole chain of supply and it was costing me money so it was like a two-part lesson that he learned and at the end of it I even let him keep his shoes when I let him go

which I felt was gracious. It's so interesting how one, not only how self-aware you are of like the environment and the people surrounding you and your actions, but how many principles you are kind of abiding by as like this criminal, you wouldn't expect that. I know people make fun of like criminals in jail. Like you'll see on videos, they're talking about how, um,

criminals or felons in prison have all these rules and it's like, oh, well, you know, why do they have all these rules that they like to abide to in prison? And here you are out there committing crimes, living by this, these set principles. Look, there is a code of conduct for convicts. There's a

And convicts live by a code. There's certain set principles that date way back to when the Irish started gangs in this country. And, you know, the Italian mobs and mafia abided by these codes. And they were very important. They were very prevalent. They were rules that you lived by that not only helped you in your career as a criminal, but they also helped the community and they helped separate people from

uh, basically the men from the boys. And that's what I always chose to live by. Now, a lot of people don't choose to live by that anymore. There's a lot in today's culture that glorifies snitches. And I want to preface this by saying, I do not believe you can snitch on a sex offender. I don't think it's even possible. If someone is hurting a woman or a child and

anyone, anything like that, if it's a sexually based crime, there's no snitching run that it's all fair game because the rule above that is no women, no children. And I think that that like broadly opens up to the disabled, the elderly, uh, you know, anyone who's weaker in society, you don't fucking cross that line. But when it comes to snitching,

It's glorified these days and it's just rampant. You know, you've got dudes like six, nine and he's still making records. He's still making money. I don't know why that dude is breathing. Wow. I mean, I think it also depends on the celebrity status of them going into it and what it like, not, not condoning the snitching aspect, but just that they have like six, nine had this huge brand and he went off and snitched does the entire millions of followers.

just like drop him at that point. It's like an interesting perspective because not everyone's by that code and social media plays a big part in it. Look at the Wolf of Wall Street, massive on social media and he's,

snitched on everyone in his case. It's just like a really interesting perspective on that. Well, and here's another part of that. Like, so I don't believe that a civilian can snitch. If you're a civilian, if you're not in that lifestyle, you, you're not a snitch. If somebody steals your car and you call the cops, that's what you're supposed to do. That's how you're going to get your car back. If somebody breaks into your house and

A civilian's supposed to call the cops to get their stuff back, to report that crime. That's not snitching. But if me and you go commit a crime and I get caught and you don't and they offer me time off of my sentence and I put you out to dry...

That's some cold shit. That's some coward shit. That's heartless. Yeah. When you sign up to do a crime, you know, the consequences. It's so funny. Like I'll read comments about six, nine for perfect example. And they're like, Oh, you know, if you were facing 40 years, you would snitch too. But it's like, he knew what the consequences were signing up for that, to get involved with that. It's not like he was thrown into that and then snitched his way out of it to get out of it. He knew signing up.

He either knew signing up or he was so ignorant and stupid that he was just out there doing crimes, not knowing what the consequences could be. Like, here's the thing for me as a career criminal, I always knew what the consequences could possibly be. And I judged everything on a risk versus reward system.

If the reward was big enough to make the risk worth it, then I might proceed. If it wasn't, I wasn't going to do it. I always knew what I was going into before I went into it. Now, there's situations and variables that can happen with every type of crime. Say me and you go do a burglary, and we're just planning on breaking into these people's house when they're not home, and we're going to steal something. We know where it is. It should be easy, right? Cut and dry. Say those people come home.

Say somebody's asleep in the house. We didn't know that's an occupied dwelling that automatically adds time to the sentence, like in any state. Now say they come home and I'm with you and I'm like, man, we just got to get out of here. But you G up and you shoot one of them. I'm just as culpable as you are in that. I'm going to get that, that big boy time on that just as much as you are because we're committing those felonies together.

So you have to do all the math. You can't just half math things. And I don't know if six, nine was just ignorant about what he was getting himself into. If he was just high and got himself, got in over his head or what his situation was. I haven't looked into it that much, but if you're a professional, you have to look at all the variables before you walk into a situation period. Did you ever physically hurt anyone in relation to crimes? No.

That's on record. Anyone that you physically hurt, anyone on record? Nothing on record. I've never had a violent crime on record. What I will say is that when I went into prison with my mindset as someone who was a childhood sexual assault survivor,

I basically took it that it was my mission from the beginning. You know how some people go in and they're like, I'm going to beat up the biggest, baddest dude on the yard. I was going in there and my whole mindset was I'm going to take out every single pedophile, every single rapist that I can get my hands on while I'm in prison. That was my goal. And then I got there and it started to like, just look like sand at the beach. There were so many people who were down on funny style charges with just horrific stories behind them.

And, you know, if you beat someone up and then you go to the hole for four months and then you get out, you know, it is an actual deterrent because solitary confinement, to me at least, in my mind, solitary confinement is inhumane and it is torture. Spending four months locked up like that, being walked back and forth from the showers on a dog leash, on...

all chained up, like that's garbage and you don't want to go right back. So I started looking for getting the ones that I could with getting away with it. And luckily there are some CEOs that'll let you know who's who. And they'll also open doors for you. They'll, they'll cover for you. You know, when the, when the pedophile or the rapist comes and they're like, he caved in my face, they'll tell him straight up. You fell down. If you want to go to medical, you fell down. Do you understand?

So, you know, there are CEOs in there who aren't with the whole sex offender thing, but there's a lot that protect them now too. And I think it's even more like I've been out of prison since 2010. Since then, they've started handing out hate crimes online.

for people who put hands on sex offenders. Like they're a protected class, which to me is insane. I don't get that at all. - All right, let's get into prison 'cause we know you're a career criminal. You did all these car theft, drugs, you name it, you were involved into it and you land yourself in prison multiple times. How many times were you in prison for and what's your longest sentence?

Once for 39 months. I almost went back to prison a couple different times, but I went to prison for 39 months in the state of Oregon for UUMV, which is unauthorized use of a motor vehicle, which is Oregon's version of GTA. It's basically GTA. They just have a different wording for it. So, you know, I got hemmed up for stealing three cars. All three of those had high-speed chases attached to them.

Now, do you think you were one of those cases where the system kind of failed in the way where they kept letting you out and not giving you serious prison time after each charge to get you to that point? No, I think that Oregon was deliberately at that point in time, letting me out so that they could stack some charges because Oregon was systematically giving people 39 months for UUMVs at that point in time. And I think that they let me out multiple times so they could put me away for longer. Interesting. That makes sense. Now,

I know my audience and just me in general is so curious about what your prison experience

life was like because it's so drastically different from mine. I mean, we're sitting across from each other and we've lived two entirely different prison lifestyles. I was at Lowe's and camps in the federal system. You were at these higher security prisons around different types of people on a state level. What are the politics like in prison and what type of people are you running with? Are you in a gang or who are you associating with?

Let me just start with this. I don't really consider the reception center or intake to be an actual prison. So I'm going to just say my first actual day in prison where I got to hit a real yard was at Snake River. Snake River is gladiator school in the state of Oregon. I was classified as a minimum security inmate, but it's a medium max there. So I shouldn't have even really been there. But the first day that I hit the yard,

I saw somebody die within five minutes of me hitting the yard was stabbed underneath his armpit he bled out he had been trying to extort a gay kid who he didn't really do his research on the kid the kid was in there for killing both of his parents he just thought the kid was small and he was going to push him over and he was a big tattooed gang member and this dude went to shake his hand literally

lifted his arm up and stuck him right underneath his arm and hit an artery. He stuck him two or three times, maybe more. He knew that that artery was there. This kid went out there with full intention to murk this dude and he bled out before they could get medical to him or get him to medical. So that was like my first five minutes on the yard. Um,

uh, quite a rude awakening to get there and see that happen. It was exciting. And then I got back to the unit and I got to meet my first celly at an actual prison. And everybody had been telling me he was at work when I got there. Right. Everybody's like, yo, he's a cop killer. He killed two cops. He's, he's a really solid dude. And I was like, okay, cool. You know, I'm sold up with a murderer. Let's see how this goes. And he walked into the unit and

And he was just an older, bald, mild mannered, really respectful, like genuinely compassionate and kind dude. As soon as he got in the cell, he's like, Hey, I know it's your first day. What do you need, man? Have you had deodorant? Do you need some food? Like he was just really kind. And when it came down to it,

He had all this credibility on the yard for being a cop killer. He was remorseful. It was a vehicular situation. He was in a high-speed chase, and he ended up smashing into a cop car, and I guess a couple cops died. And he was not proud of the situation. But if you're going to get yard cred...

in prison being a dude who he was like four or five, four, five, five. If they're going to give you credibility and respect off something, it's kind of a no brainer. You just take it. You know what I'm saying? If you saw someone like me on the yard, white, nerdy kid, maybe a little chubby, young looking, what do you do? What's your reaction? So look, there are tons of people like that and everybody's going to go through a paperwork check. I'm going to check your paperwork.

Just like I'm going to check the dude who comes in with face tats, tat it all down the back of his head saying he's a gang member. I don't care. You're going to get paperwork checked. What's the process of checking paperwork? Walk me through a situation. Okay. So, I mean, you always want to gauge things differently with different types of people. It's a read the room type of a situation. So you see me walk into the room. Look, here's how I tried to deal with it.

the majority of the time I would walk up with my paperwork. I would put it down on the table. I would say, this is my paperwork. This is what I'm here for. I need to see your paperwork right now. And as long as your paperwork came back clean and we're just talking, I mean, we're not going in depth. I'm not reading your case, but if you're down on sex offenses, then, and it's your first day, then I'm going to ask you, cool, man, what do you need?

And we're going to try to take care of you. That's how it kind of worked where I was at in state prison when I was there. I don't know what they're doing a decade and a half later. You know what I'm saying? How long did they have to show their paperwork? Immediately. So right on the bus, they got to show everybody who comes into state prison.

in Oregon has their paperwork. And what happens if the, if, if the paperwork says they're a sex offender or a rat, what do you do? Well, so look, it depends on the situation. Um, if they're a sex offender and they're not in my cell, I'm going to lay it down to them. Like, look, you're going to have a really hard run here. This is not going to be good for you. Uh,

You're going to get fucked up a lot of different ways. You can reduce how much you get fucked up though by paying me because you can pay me not to fuck you up. I'm not going to protect you from everybody else, but you can pay me not to fuck you up. And if people know that you're paying me not to fuck you up, they're not going to take you off mainline because then they'll be fucking with my money. So you'll probably still get the shit kicked out of you, but you won't have to go to the hole. And it's very likely that no one's going to kill you.

And that was morally okay in your mind? Like to protect them in that sense? Well, that's just kind of the climate that was going on there. But you can only do that if you are a gang member.

Like that's how it worked with gang members. Now, if they put a sex offender in your cell, that's 1000% go time. Like you have to perpetrate serious violence against a sex offender. If they're putting yourself, they either have to immediately get on that door and tell the CEOs, yo, you got to get me out of here or they got to get their whole facial structure caved in. What kind of corruption do you see from prison guards?

Corruption or hustle? Either one. I mean, like either one. I was a career criminal at the time. I was still looking for ways that I could make money while I was in prison. So a lot of people are like, oh, that guard's bringing in tobacco. That guard brought in meth. That guard brought in phones. Bro, that's opportunity. That's opportunity to me, not corruption. Like the whole system is corrupt.

The way that everything works in the system is based off of capitalizing on human misery. So if I'm locked up and I can get a CEO to bring me in packs of Marlboros for 50 bucks a pack, they're paying $5 a pack. They're getting $50 a pack. I'm making 250 off that pack. As far as corruption, like, you know, there's...

The whole system is set up to bank on human misery. So there's a lot of people in there with mental health issues, with substance use issues that they should be getting treatment. They should be getting taught life skills. They should be getting ready to go back into the community because the majority of these people are there on minor crimes and they have outdates. Now, how do you want your neighbor to come back out of prison?

A worse criminal, hardened, beaten, and traumatized into being more of a threat to the community around them or helped, like shown the way to recover, shown the way to be productive, shown the way to operate in society without hurting other people. It's the system that's corrupt. What's something you've had to do in prison that you're not proud of, but you had to do to survive and went against your moral compass?

I had to put hands on one of my best friends. So I was, uh, I did end up, I didn't go in, in a gang, but when I went into prison in the intake center, they do an assessment on everybody and they looked at my tattoos and they automatically assumed that I was in a gang and they labeled me as a gang member and they started selling me up with people from this gang because that's just what they do.

It just naturally flowed. It wasn't a white supremacist gang. So I was cool with that. They were, they were people that were like-minded with me on a lot of things. It was more of a family clan type of a thing than it was an actual, like, you know, hardened prison gang. So I ended up being a part of that with them. And one of the dudes in my gang fucked up. He did something on the yard that he should not have fucking done.

And we either had to let the other gang that he had done the disrespect to fuck him up or we had to fuck him up. And I lived in the same cell with him. So I just figured it was my responsibility to take care of his violation with him. So we went in the cell. He knew it was coming. I kept it entirely respectful. What do you mean he knew it was coming? He knew that we were fighting when we got back into the cell because...

The way that this worked with this situation, the only place that we were really all together at the same time was the chow hall. We had our own table at the chow hall. We actually had two tables at the chow hall. And I wanted to put it to a vote as to how we should handle it, because it was important to me that everybody was on board. If we were going to do a move against one of our own,

Everybody had to be on board. Otherwise, it would cause strife and division. We put it to vote. So when we went back up to our cell, we already knew what time it was. And just you and him in the cell? Just me and him in the cell. And he ended up...

He ended up with a really big portion of his face, black and blue and fucked up. And he gave me a shine or two. So he fought back. He fought like a G bro. I was proud of him. He was smaller than me, which was part of the issue that I had with it. If he had been my own size, I wouldn't have felt so bad about having to do it. But really in the end, it's like, these dudes aren't going to play fair with you.

If we don't handle it, we have to let them handle it. That's just all there is to it. That's the politics. Are you like a prison enforcer, so to say, of your gang? No, I was... So at the time at OSP...

I had gotten there and the dude who had the keys to the gang got punked out. A dude from another gang came and literally called him a punk in the chow hall. He worked in the chow hall, called him a punk, called him all sorts of other stuff. I'm not going to say on social media, told him he wanted to fight him right then and there. And the dude who had the keys in my gang that I was in backed down.

So we went out to the yard. We all met on the yard and I like left my unit when I wasn't supposed to, I was on, I was on D block and we didn't have a yard with E block, but I went out there so we could all talk and vote this thing up as to how we were going to handle it. That's how we handled everything. We voted on it and we voted that he had to be taken out. And at that point in time, I had the most, uh,

I had the most time in and I ended up being handed the keys. I didn't want the fucking keys in. I did not want to be in charge of making the decision as to which one of my brothers has to go handle this violent situation, go to the hole, spend six months in the hole, maybe spend 18 months in IMU. I did not want to deal with any of that shit.

I just wanted to kind of be there and do my thing. It wasn't on my agenda to end up having the keys to my car. And it just kind of happened that way. So I wasn't as much of an enforcer as I was somebody who was... Shot caller, essentially. I hate that term. I hate that term. It doesn't really apply to the organization that I was a part of because we put everything to a vote. But, you know, there has to be a head to it.

And so that's the situation that I was in. Are there situations like before you became the head of this group, were there situations where they said, Hey, you got to go after this guy and he's a lot bigger than you, you know, stronger, whatever. And you, you, you're faced with that. So I had been told that I had to go handle business a couple of times because

Uh, but it wasn't anything that I was really worried about. Um, and one of those times I should have been worried about it. Uh, the dude kind of fucked me up a little bit and I underestimated him another time. I ended up fighting one of the dudes in my own gang and he was absolutely smaller than me. Uh, and he fucked me up pretty bad too. Like it, it was not an equal fight. The dude, the other smaller dude that wasn't in our gang, he

He fucked me up, but I still fucked him up more. The dude that was in my gang, he was significantly smaller than me and he minced me and I still fought back and we had a good fight. Uh, but yo rest in peace, Lloyd frock, that dude, I got all the respect in the world for him. He got out of prison, man. And within a few months he was in Southeast Portland and, uh, he was walking one of his kids to school and he got shot.

killed walking his kid to school in a drive-by within a few months of getting out of prison. Wow. That's crazy.

Now you're putting the shoe multiple times as a leader of a gang in prison. I'm sure you're in and out of the shoe. What are some of the crazy stories of why you were put in the shoe? I saw something on Tik TOK about how you were in the shoe. You got out, you were looking forward to some new food and you had to do something to put you right back into it. Let's hear about the shoe in the state prison. Okay. So the shoe in state prison, uh, you know, I went at snake river, um,

and I also went at OSP. So I've been to the shoe in, in both of those different places. Uh, I don't know how it is in any of the other joints in the state. Uh, I would say that OSP was like a much like nicer environment. Uh, like snake rivers shoe was very Lord of the flies. It was very dirty. It was super well lit, uh,

OSP shoe at the time when I was in the shoe there, they just been remodeling death row and then remodeling the hole. So we ended up in like I was housed in death row in overflow. And that's where I did my time in the hole when I was there. But it was still the situation where, you know, you're in the cell, you're

All day long, you get like two to three showers a week, just depending on what the guards feel like doing. And if they hit you up about it when you're awake, a lot of the time they'll walk in the unit at like 430 in the morning and they'll go showers and then they'll turn right back around because they don't want to do it because they don't want to deal with it. Because like the policy and procedure is that you can't come out of that bitch unless you're cuffed up.

And like at Snake River, they walk you on a leash. At OSP, I never had them walk me on a leash, but you have to back up. You have to, you know, put your arms through the tray slot at the cell door and then they bring you out and they take you to the shower and you put your, they put you in there. You put your arms back through the tray slot. They uncuff you. And then you get like,

I think like a three to four minute shower. You never know what temperature the water is going to be. The showers in there are tiny. So whatever temperature that water is coming, that's what you're getting. And you can't get away from it. It's not like you can step away to avoid the water. A lot of the times it would be ice cold. A lot of the times it would be scalding hot. It was never a pleasant situation, but you wanted to do it because, you know, you're only getting two or three a week. I never once saw any type of rec time offered.

And I know that they're like legally entitled to certain amounts of rec time, even when you're in the shoe. I never saw it. But you kind of go insane after a while in there. Like whether that's temporary or whether you just come back by degrees. I'm not sure. I mean, I'm pretty fucked up. Now, why were you put in the shoe these times? There were different things. One time I got a tattoo and it got MRSA tattooed.

And the MRSA climbed all the way to my armpit. Like my whole arm was lit up with MRSA all the way to my armpit. And my Sally was my tattoo artist. And he goes, bro, you really have to go. That's not going to get better on its own. And I'm like, yeah, I don't want to go to the hole. He's like,

I don't really care. You have to go, bro. Like that's moving for your heart. You're going to die. It's going up your bloodstream. So I go to medical and the lady was like, oh my God, I feel so bad for you. That was terrible. Like we need to get you on some stuff right away. And I'm like, does that mean you're not going to like tell the CEOs and I won't get written up? She's like, no, no, absolutely not. You're definitely going to the hole. So, you know, I did that. Another time there was a dude that,

supposedly had snitched on somebody from my gang who was at another institution and he was on site i happened to be the first one that saw him i just took flight on him on site when you're in prison on site means that it doesn't matter if you're standing in front of the captain and 50 guards you see him you serve him you got to go after him uh dude was on site i took flight on him uh

We both got, he fought back. So it was a mutual combat. So we both got four months in the hole. And we went, we did our whole time. It was 120 days in the hole. And when they release you, there's like a row of little closets that you change from your, your green jumpsuit back into your regular mainline clothes.

In Mainline in Oregon, you wear jeans, a white t-shirt, and they have these blue button-up shirts. And they bring you your property box. So I'm sitting here. I'm looking at my TV. I'm looking at my soups. They starve you out in the hole. It's terrible. Best weight loss program. I mean, it absolutely can be, but it's pretty miserable. So I'm staring at all this stuff, and I'm like, yes. And they open up the door, and I walk out, and I look over, and this motherfucker's right there.

And I just went after him again. So back in the hole. Yeah, it was right in front of three CEOs and he didn't fight back at all. So he didn't go back to the hole. I got a unilateral, which was a 180. So I did four and then I went back for another six.

Back to back. Almost a year in solitary. It was super trash, bro. It was not my best moment. It was a bad decision. I got out of the hole and my homeboys told me, Hey, uh, that dude, by the way, he didn't snitch on our homeboy. Our homeboy snitched on him and he was trying to clean it up, but don't worry. We had the homeboy who was a snitch and lied. We had him stabbed up. He's in PC now. And I'm like, so you did 10 months in the hole for nothing.

I hurt somebody twice for nothing. I bought the consequences to those actions, but I went after somebody who had legitimately been snitched on and I hurt him twice. How do you live with that? After finding out he was innocent in that situation,

Like that's got to keep you up at night a little bit. Look, I've done a lot of things in my life, both in criminality and in addiction that hurt people on many different levels. And there's nothing that I can do to make that up now.

That's part of why I'm so active in my community as far as doing community outreach. That's part of why I'm so active in recovery. That's part of why I try to keep things on an educational and positive level when it comes to social media, when it comes to my posts, because I try to educate people so they don't go down that same road. I try to help people that are lost to get out. I try to help people that are struggling to stay out.

Uh, really the only option that I have at this point with a lot of the wrongs that I've done is to make a living amends. And that's where I just live in a way that I try to do, uh,

more, more help to the universe than harm. I try to do no harm and I try to make everybody else around me is life a little bit better in whatever possible way that I can. Will that ever add up? I don't know. And do I agonize about that? Absolutely. Do I wish that there was something that I could do to go back and change all that? I do.

But at this point, all I have is moving forward in the most positive way that I possibly can. And I hope that that's enough to balance the scales universally at some point. I respect that. And I think a lot of people will definitely respect you saying that.

You were talking about the prison tattoos, MRSA, almost losing the arm, all that. How many, obviously you're covered in tattoos. How many of your tattoos are prison tattoos and what's the experience like getting a tattoo in prison? So look, when I got out of prison, I had almost every single piece that I got while I was in gone over on the streets with darker ink, thicker needles, thicker lines, um,

I wanted it dressed up considerably because I didn't want it to look like prison ink. So when I got out, I had all that done. But man, for me, I always had a full box. I had a good reputation in prison. I had a TV and at OSP, you know, people who have a TV, everybody wants to be your celly. So it was pretty easy for me to move in tattoo artists.

And have them live with me, tattoo me. And I just feed them and we'd watch TV and it was pretty much just square. You know what I'm saying? Like I got a lot of free tattoos. It was an old school penitentiary with the bars on the door, like total Shawshank Redemption style. It wasn't one of these new facilities.

It's an old school place in Oregon. So we would take a Popsicle stick with a piece of a broken mirror or a broken CD on it. And you would have to sit there with that thing outside of the bars looking both ways down the tier to watch for the cop in case they were walking, holding their keys so that you couldn't hear them so that you didn't end up getting busted. Because then you're both going to the hole. Your tattoo is going to be half finished. It's just trash. Wow.

What are some rules in prison that the average person that's never been to prison before would ever expect to be a rule like in real life? Like I know in some scenarios with myself, um,

Not flushing when someone's sleeping, when you're in the cell or courtesy flushing after. I mean, it took me 21 years to figure out what a fucking courtesy flush was. So what are some of the rules in your prison that the average person would never expect to be a rule? So look like right off top, because I just did content about this. If there is a fight in prison, everybody's first reaction, if there's a fight, is to gawk at it. Right. You see the people on the freeway, you know, when there's a huge

back up on the freeway and everybody's doing two miles an hour and you get up there and you're like, it's a car crash. You all didn't have to stop. It's on the other side of the freeway. It's that type of thing. But in there, if you stop and you're gawking at a fight, that brings attention to that fight.

Those people might have gotten away from that if there weren't 30 people standing around being witnesses. So if there's a fight, mind your business. Mind your fucking business. Don't look in other people's cells. Mind your fucking business. That was me. First weekend, I'm looking around like, I'm nosy as shit. Not out of like, I didn't want to snitch on anyone. I didn't want to do anything. I was just so curious about prison life.

So I'm looking in everyone's cell and I'm getting yelled at and I'm getting checked because that's not okay to do. Well, and that's part of the thing, man, is that a lot of the time it's just somebody who doesn't know. There's no disrespect intended. They're not trying to be a witness so that they can go tell on somebody. It's just that they don't know. So like if somebody's doing something like that, it's always been my opinion. We bring them up. You know what I'm saying? Bring everyone around us up, educate them, let them know what the expectation is so that they don't get in a wreck.

You know, there's a lot of dudes who just want to go after people and disrespect them and punk them out the first time that they do something. That's never been me. It's like, hey, homie, like, I don't know if you're aware of this, but we don't get down like that here. And let me explain to you why and everything so that you don't end up doing that to the wrong person and getting fucked up because people get fucked up in there for stupid, petty shit.

I had a celly actually in Multnomah County Jail. And this was a younger kid. They put me in the cell with him and his whole face was black, black and blue. And I was like immediately like, yo, did they just put me in with a sex offender? They put me in with a rat. He showed me all his paperwork. He was there on some simple type of shit. It wasn't a big deal. And I'm like, so what happened to your face? I don't want to talk about it. I'm like, well, you're going to fucking talk about it because I need to know who the fuck I'm sold up with.

And he said, look, the last dude they had in here told me I had to sit down to pee.

And I thought he was joking, man. It's my first time ever in jail. It was my first night. And I got up in the middle of the night and I was taking a piss. And all of a sudden he grabbed me by the back of my head and started slamming my head into the brick screaming, you got to sit down to pee motherfucker. You sit down to pee in here. And I'm like, whoa, I never want to be that dude. You know what I'm saying? Like this was just a young kid. I think he was actually there. He was like

23 or 24. I think he was there on some child support non-payment. That could have been me. And he got his whole shit caved in bro. Like I guarantee you his face has permanent scarring from that dude over not sitting down to pee, which that's another prison rule. You had asked about prison rules that I got sold up with a lifer who that was one of his rules. And you know what? I'm a tourist here. I'm doing 39 months. If I'm living in your home,

And you're going to be here forever. And I'm doing 39 months. And you tell me that I have to sit down to pee. Bitch, I'm going to do it. I got no problem with that. I guess there's like a piss radius, like a mist radius when you pee standing up. And he didn't want to live with that. It's his house, man. What's a day in the life like in prison for you? What's your routine on a day-to-day basis? Routine is get up, do breakfast, sleep.

go back to the cell. I mean, it really, it depends on if, if, if I have a job or not, I refuse to work inside institutions. I don't care. You're not going to get me to do it. I don't even care if it's one of those cool industries jobs at snake river. They have, and here's another thing about the corruption at snake river is

prison, they have an AT&T call center where they're using prisoners for slave labor in a call center and they make like a dollar 20 a day. Ooh, I don't care. I didn't come to prison because I want to work for not enough money. I came to prison because I want to get the big money by hustling fast. And that's what I did in prison too.

But, you know, there's the call center at OSP. They have a furniture shop where people make furniture. They have all different types of ways that you can make $1.20 a day. But if you're working in the kitchen, you're going to make like $0.30 a day. The fuck I'm going to do with $0.30, bro? You know what I'm saying? Run that up your ass. I'm not doing it. What's your biggest prison hustle? Biggest prison hustle? I mean, so like...

I don't play cards at all whatsoever, but we made good money off of a dude that was running a P-knuckle table and we got a percentage because if people didn't pay, we insured that and we would fuck people up. We would get the money one way or the other. It was going to happen, but we got a percentage off that. Extortion is a huge hustle in there. I didn't like extortion very much. I didn't fuck with it as much because I don't want pedophile money. It was against your morals.

You know, at that point in time, I had a pretty seared conscience, bro, to be honest with you. Like, I wasn't operating out of, like, the heart that I have today. But even then, at my grimiest, it felt dirty, and I didn't like it. You know...

A lot of it was getting tobacco in tobacco was a huge hustle because you cannot legally smoke in prisons in Oregon. So if you can get a CEO to bring you in packs, you can bust that down into two for fives all day long. And every cigarette you can make like five cigarettes out of it. So what's the currency? How are they paying for the cigarettes? Sometimes they were doing the, the, the green dot cards. If they wanted to like to buy packs, you know, I'd buy a pack for 50, I'd sell it to him for 150. Um,

or sometimes, you know, just canteen mainly. I did, they sold protein powder

in Oregon prisons. And it was like $30, I think for a bag of protein. And it was probably the most garbage. It was that knockoff. Like, yeah, just like dog food ass protein powder. But I thought I was doing something in there. So, uh, I would get, you know, a lot of protein, a lot of coffee, uh, soups and envelopes. You know, they didn't have the tablets and the email. You could not, when I was in there, you could not email nobody. So envelopes were pretty solid currency.

You walk around with a stack of envelopes with the stamps already on them. Oh, they didn't. Fanning them out in your cell like you're flexing on Insta. They didn't sell individual stamps. They just sold the envelopes. They sold the envelopes that came pre-stamped. Gotcha. Yeah, we had the books of stamps. So people would have like stacks of books. And if they were holding onto them for a while, like you would pull them out. It's rubber banded. Like picture like, you know, $100 bills. This was like 100 books of stamps. People are just wadding around.

So you get out of prison, you put this all behind you, you get out, but you can't stay away from crime. You go into the counterfeiting business. I got to hear about that.

Okay, so no, when I got out of prison, I did really well for a few years just drinking, but I wasn't working a program of recovery. I wasn't doing anything for myself to build myself, to heal myself, to deal with my past traumas, and to put myself in a better situation or direction in life. I was just kind of numbing out with drinking. So when a situation arose where I was being cheated on,

And I figured out that I was being cheated on. It was just an instant reflex to me. I don't want to feel what I'm feeling right now. How do I turn these feelings off? And I started lighting the bowl from the bottom again. So trauma has always influenced your decision. Trauma has been a huge trigger for me. Like, like,

literally the pull of gravity type of trigger for me. So, you know, I ended up relapsing on the meth and I ended up getting into two different cases in the state of Oregon. The first case was a UUMV, you know, amazingly enough, it was another car theft case. And I ended up beating that even though I was completely fucking guilty, 100% guilty. I was able to

concoct a story that built enough reasonable doubt within 12 jurors of my peers. You went to trial. Oh, I ran that bitch all the way, bro. They were, they were talking. Uh, so originally when I got sentenced for my UMVs, they were giving me 13 months for each of them. All of a sudden they're talking about five years. I'm like, run that up your ass dog. What? Wipe that all over your chest, bro. Sing it for me, dog. I'm not doing that. Uh, so I went to trial with a jury and,

And I was dead guilty and I ended up winning. What's it like to hear not guilty when you know you're guilty as shit? What's that feeling like? I didn't believe it. I had to look at my lawyer and I said, does this mean I get to go home? And he looked at me and he said, shut up. The judge is still talking. Paid lawyer. Paid lawyer. Yeah. Uh, I had a really, really good lawyer on that case and he didn't even see the angle that ended up helping me get off. Um, so unauthorized use of a motor vehicle, uh,

But in the way that it's written in the state statute, you have to move that vehicle for it to be used. Otherwise, it's just unauthorized entry. You can start the vehicle. You could be in the vehicle. You can do whatever. So they charged you wrong. They charged you wrong. Well, they didn't have a witness saying that I moved the vehicle. They had a witness saying they saw me in the vehicle. So I was able to build enough reasonable doubt with the jury that they could not find me guilty of that.

So, and I lied, man. 100%, I didn't like the consequences of my own actions. And I took the stand and I did some bitched up shit.

I lied. Like, it's not something I'm proud of. It's not something that I would do today. But in my mindset, then I used to have a saying, if you tell the cop, if you tell a cop the truth, you're lying to yourself because you're going to get yourself fucked up. You were looking to save yourself. We've all been in that position where you have to do what you have to do to save yourself. Absolutely. And I wasn't going to tell on anybody else, but I was damn sure going to lie about me doing anything. So I got out.

And I had every intention, man, because I had had this like come to God moment in this this holding cell while the jury was deliberating. And I'm like, God, if you just get me out of this, like I'll do anything like I'll never touch meth again. I'll never steal another car. Shit. I won't even smoke cigarettes. You know what I'm saying? But you're a lion through your teeth right there. If you would have given me a polygraph test at that point in time, I believe I would have passed it.

I believed that I would have passed it because I didn't want to live that life anymore. I didn't want the consequences. I didn't even want the lifestyle. Like I, I felt sick about where my life had gone and where I, what I had become. Cause at this point, you know, I'm sober. I've been sitting in, in County long enough to go through trial. I'm sober. I'm life reflecting. I'm looking at everything that I've done. I've already gone to prison once. I know what it is and I didn't want to do it again, but I got out.

And I knew that I had gotten off on a lie and I thought I was fucking bulletproof. Like me swerving the consequences of my actions through dishonesty was the worst thing that could have happened to me because I thought I was fucking bulletproof. I was Teflon dog. You know what I'm saying? And that's really not how it worked. I was high again within a week and I was back in the same unit on County jail facing another UU MV within a month. And, uh, I ended up,

There was a UUMV and a theft one, and they wanted 10 years on this because the theft one and the UUMV are both class C felonies. And since I had such an extensive property crime record, they were ready to run me wild all the way with it. They were going to, you know, stack them consecutive and give me the max time that they could possibly give me. So I was facing 10 years.

I got a really good lawyer. He got me out of jail and I was sitting talking to him and I'm like, I have a bad feeling about this. He said, their case is really weak. And I'm like, yeah, but my gut's telling me it's bad. And he goes, well, you know, you beat that last one and it was a lot better case. And I'm like, I don't know, something feels different this time. I said, what's the extradition radius on this? And he said, delay, don't do this. And I said, no man, seriously, this is what I pay you for. What's the extradition radius? He said, it's connecting states.

So about two days later, the day before trial, I flew out to Florida and I was a fugitive from justice for eight years. Wait, so you could live in Florida and they couldn't get you from Oregon? Bro, I went through, I went through jail multiple times. I, you know, the whole time I was on house arrest.

I had warrants in Oregon. How could they not extradite in the U.S. from a state to state? A lot of people don't know this, and I probably shouldn't even say this like in public because then some people are going to be like, oh, that's a great idea. I'll just book state. But you got to check what your extradition radius is. Oregon has like for class C felonies. Oregon usually has connecting states radius for extradition. They won't come get you past the next state over.

And also specifically Oregon and Florida, like Oregon is a very blue state. Florida is a very red state. And they've had some sort of like economic beef where they haven't done business with each other for years. So Florida was a very safe state for me to move to. So you get out, you go to Florida and you're back into crime. What do you do? I did good for, well, I did good in the respect that I wasn't doing meth and I wasn't doing crime for about five,

three years, but I was still drinking heavily. You know, I never had a, a serious period of time where I was like sober. I was working a program. I was in recovery. Even when I'm not using meth, I'm still drinking myself half to death all the time. Uh, you know, I might not be out committing crimes, but if I go out to drink and somebody says something sideways, I'm knocking them the fuck out. You know what I'm saying? Like it wasn't living in, in

a proper lifestyle. But, you know, about three years in, I relapsed on meth and I didn't want shit to do with stealing cars anymore.

So I started selling dope and it turns out that I'm really good at selling fucking dope. You went to the big leagues. Dope sells itself. First of all, like a lot of people like act like it's fucking hard to sell dope. It's only hard to sell dope because you're stupid, bro. Dope sells itself. You don't live by a code. You don't have rules that you follow. And that's why you get fucked up. I sold dope for a long time on a major level without getting fucked up.

But there was just so many people around me that were snitching. So many people around me that were getting busted. I just had this bad feeling. Like I felt like they already had done a controlled buy on me. And so I switched to fraud. And then, you know, I did the fraud for a while. I got busted by the Secret Service and the SWAT team. The Secret Service was there because...

We had branched off into counterfeiting a bit. I met up with one of my friends who had just gotten out of prison for fucking counterfeiting. This didn't turn into a federal case, though. No, the feds didn't want to pick it up because there was not substantial enough amounts. You got lucky. I absolutely... Well, did I, though? No.

Because you had microwaves and saunas and hot tubs and sofas. I mean, when the audience finds out that you only got house arrest from this whole thing, you go, you skip out on Oregon. You got on Oregon. You got a, you're a career criminal. You land in Florida. You're selling some serious drugs. You decide one day, I don't want to sell drugs anymore. And you get into counterfeiting and then you get house arrest.

Tell me that's not lucky, JD. Look, man, I got blessed and graced far beyond what I deserve. And that's part of why I constantly feel that there's a need for me to give back in any way, shape or form that I possibly can. Because I did a lot of scumbag shit, man. And I was in a really bad place in my life. And that's not an excuse. My actions hurt a lot of people around me. My actions hurt the community around me.

So anything that I can do to better the communities around me now, I'm going to do them. But yes, I probably did get blessed that I, that didn't go federal. What year was this that you got arrested for the counterfeiting? 2019. 2019. That's your most recent case. Well, so look, man, let's talk about that. So yeah, no, uh, 2019 is when I got busted for the counterfeiting. How old are you then?

41, 40, 41. Yeah. So I get busted for the counterfeiting and the organized fraud because...

I wasn't so much involved in the counterfeiting. Like I was doing a little bit of like helping my buddy out. I rented us both rooms on a dummy ID with a dummy name, with a dummy card. Um, and I had all the credit card stuff in my room and the ID printing stuff in my room. I never wanted to be involved in counterfeiting because it brings the attention of the feds. Uh, and that's exactly what the fuck happened. Um,

So we got hemmed up with that and they gave me like some crazy, like $58,000 bond. I bond out. I go back to Daytona. I'm like literally working at a bar, sober bartending, going to treatment. This was the first time that I really embraced this.

that I had a fucking problem. And then if I didn't fucking fix it now, my life was never gonna be shit. - So this was the moment you decide you wanna turn your life around? - Absolutely, absolutely. And I'm facing less time for this shit than I had faced on other situations. - What do you think it was? Why were you triggered now that you wanna get your life together? - Man, I'll tell you what, in 2019, I tried to kill myself twice. I had tons of dope, tons of girls,

All these people were my fake friends around me. There wasn't a single fucking gadget that I wanted that I didn't have. Like I had access to whatever and nothing made me feel good anymore. The drugs didn't make me feel good. Money didn't make me feel good. I didn't want shit to do with the girls around me. Like nothing made me feel good or whole or happy. And I just felt like it was going to be like that for fucking ever.

And so I tried to take my life twice in 2019. For some reason, it didn't work. And I'm super grateful that it didn't work because I never would have known the life that I have today. But I was so desperate and hollowed out and empty inside that objectively from a career criminal standpoint, I was doing the best I'd ever done. But like emotionally and spiritually, I was fucking dead. And so when they actually picked us up,

in Port St. Lucie, in the Hilton Garden Inn parking lot.

Uh, you know, the feds swarmed us, the secret service and the task force, the SWAT team, they jumped out of bushes on us. We pulled up and I was like, I've got a bad feeling. We need to get out of here right now. And the dude who was driving was like, no, no, no, it's good, bro. Don't even worry about it. Soon as we parked, I knew what time it was. I got out of the car, the truck that he was driving and they immediately started coming out of the bushes. I just threw my hands in the air and I felt this relief, bro.

Like normally when the feds run up on you and they've got automatic weapons pointed at your face, you feel something, but it's not fucking relief. I was relieved. I was like, this can finally fucking be over. I need this to be over. And they took me to, they took me to jail. I didn't even try to make a call to get bonded out for 12 days. I just laid on the fucking floor. Sobered up. Sobered completely up. And I had a situation where there was so I,

I was one of three or four white dudes on my unit and I was the seventh man in a six-man cell. I was literally sleeping in a boat on the floor. I had like rusty water leaking out of the water fountain into my bunk and

Uh, there were fire ants that were crawling in through a, of like a crack in the wall. They're biting the fuck out of me. And I laid in bed all the time. Like I, I had given up completely. I was just done. Like I was hollowed out. And, uh,

They sent somebody into the cell to take a shit and he's like hey you're gonna have to get up it was another white boy you're gonna have to get up I have to take a shit and one of your bunkies told me that I had to come in here and shit because they're playing cards in my cell and I said run that back on him bro tell him to suck my dick while it's soft I'm not fucking getting up I'm not doing shit.

Uh, you're not shitting in this cell. I'll fight all y'all bitches. I was just in that place. Right. And then like six or seven dudes come in and they're like, the fuck did you tell him to say to us? And I'm like, fuck. So I get up and I think that we're about to fight. And my, my, my roommate, the cellmate that told dude to come in there and shit said, Hey, everybody get out of here for a second. And he looked at me and he said, bro, what's going on with you? And I said, I don't give a fuck. He said, no, you, you give a fuck. Something's going on with you. Where are you at with God?

And I was like, bro, there ain't no motherfucking God. And he sat and talked with me for like literally seven hours. And at the end of it, like I felt like this weight was lifted off of me. He explained to me that like God doesn't have to be something that you put a name on. God doesn't have to be something that's in a fucking book, but that there is a God. And like the way that he explained it to me softened my heart.

to be able to like think that there was something outside of myself and that that something might give enough of a fuck to actually help me. So at the end, he asked if he could pray with me and we prayed together. And I stayed up that whole night in my bunk, just thinking about everything that I had done, thinking about how desperate my life was, thinking about how I needed to change. And in the morning I got up and immediately started calling bondsman. And I just worked it out where all I needed was the signer.

And one of the CEOs came in and said, delay video visit. I was like, what? I wasn't expecting a visit. And it was like my best friend, Shonda. And I walked over to the video and she's there. And I'm like, Hey, Shonda, will you do me a favor? Do you want to sign and be responsible for $58,000? If a fugitive from another state who can print IDs doesn't decide to go to court. And she's like, dude, you're lucky. I love you. And she signed it for me. You think this was fate? Like everything in your life led up to this moment, right?

I absolutely think that I received some sort of universal grace. I think that... You think the universe genuinely knew you were ready to change at this point? Absolutely. Absolutely. And there are so many moments throughout the process of my recovery that have led me to believe that and cemented that after this. So my sentencing judge, I had already pled guilty. My sentencing judge was looking at me like I was a piece of meat, bro. Because I open pled.

And after I changed my plea, he looked at me and he's like, I'm going to see you real soon. We're going to get you booked in here as soon as we can for sentencing. And I just had this sunken feeling. I'm like, okay, I'm definitely going to prison. But I knew that I deserved it. And I was willing to go sit down if I needed to go sit down. Because at this point in my life, I'm taking accountability and responsibility for my own actions and the consequences of

are not something that I get to choose. When I fuck up, I don't get to choose if I like the consequences or not. I have to ride that out. And this is the first time ever in your life at 40, 41 years old or however old, around that age that you've taken responsibility. Yeah, absolutely. And...

The day before I'm going into sentencing, my attorney calls me and he's like, "Hey, your judge has COVID. There's two judges that you can choose from to go see tomorrow, or we can put it off until he's back." And I'm like, "Well, I don't have a great feeling about him." And he's like, "No, no, definitely pick a different judge." So I Google both the judge's names.

One of them is the drug court and mental health judge. And I'm like, that's our guy because I'm going in. By the time I went in to get sentenced, I'm a recovery coach. I'm a peer support recovery specialist. I'm a smart recovery facilitator. I work at an outpatient and I work at an inpatient. So I've been actively doing Narcan distribution and I've started a nonprofit to raise funds for people in early recovery to get mental health help in our community.

And I was able to go in and show him all that. My lawyer literally wheeled in a TV for the judge to show him the three different times that I was on the news for my community outreach. And the judge was like, I don't even know what to do with you.

And I was like, well, your honor, I absolutely deserve prison. I own that. I did these things. I take accountability. If you give me prison right now, I respect it. But if you wanted to give me some sort of amended sentence like house arrest, where I can continue to work in my community in a positive way and to build my life and my recovery, I would appreciate it. But whatever you decide is up to you and I'll respect it.

And that's exactly what he did. But he told me, he said, are you sure you don't be sure you don't want to just take the prison right now? He's like, I'll give you two years in prison right now.

Or I'll give you two years house arrest. But if you come back in front of me, if I see you before you're completely off probation or ever in this courtroom ever again, I'm going to run you wild. He's like, do you know how much exposure you have on this? I'm like, it's a long time. He said, yeah, I'm going to max you out and I'm going to run everything consecutive if you ever come back here, boy. And I believe him in my heart of hearts. I know that that dude would break me off. JD, that's awesome, man. I mean, there's so many people that...

are deserving of a second chance that don't get it the judge will throw the book at them at that point and the judge had every reason knowing your history knowing your background to throw the book at you and they didn't and you've been able to change it and come out on top of that and that's just you know you don't hear those stories every day so it's heartwarming to know that you were given that chance and you've been able to run with it what was house arrest like for you

House arrest was amazing for me. I got to continue doing work in my community. You know, when I went into court and I got given house arrest, I had 11 sponsees. Like, what were my sponsees going to do if their sponsor got arrested?

thrown into prison. They were going to have to start over from the beginning with their steps and everything. Um, I got to build my clientele with recovery coaching. I got to continue to work at this outpatient treatment center, uh, running classes that I was very passionate about. And most importantly, I met the love of my life while I was on pretrial. And I told her, you should not get attached to me. I'm going to prison. Like from the start, I told her I was going to prison. Um,

And she refused to let go. I told her when I go to prison, you need to move on. She's like, that's never going to happen. I got married while on house arrest. No temptations to use again either. So look, there have been two situations that I think absolutely would have derailed me in the past. Like I know for a fact in the past, if I wasn't working a program, I would have been

I would have been entirely derailed no matter what I was doing in my life, other than working the program that I work. Uh, my service animal of 13 years, uh, my, my dog for my PTSD, she passed. Um, she was blind, diabetic, had heart problems. She was old. She lived a full life. She passed right in my arms in the house while I was on house arrest. Uh, you know, as soon as she started to suffer, I had somebody come out and put her down and, uh,

I was very lost without her. But on December 28th of last year, one of my kids that was in Oregon, he moved from Florida back to Oregon to go to barber school. He graduated barber school shortly after Christmas. And he got a really good job lined up at like the coolest, hippest place in Eugene, Oregon to get your haircut, Analog Barbershop. He went out to celebrate. There was some drinking going on.

And somebody offered him some cocaine. It had fentanyl in it and he didn't make it. And I know beyond the shadow of any doubt that

That if I wasn't aligned with my program, if I wasn't aligned mentally, spiritually, and physically with where I need to be in my recovery, that I would probably be dead already. I'm sorry for your loss, JD. Thank you, brother. I appreciate it. Wow. I mean, I can't even imagine like to go through that, to go through those losses. I feel like in your life, it's been traumatic experience after traumatic experience, but it just goes to show the growth that

All your previous traumatic experiences have led to relapse, but you've gone through a traumatic experience. Losing a child is unreal. It's an unreal feeling. And you've been able to hold it together. What's kind of like kept you grounded in that? Look, here's the thing that it boils down to for me is that I know that it would be the most disrespectful thing that I could possibly do to my child's memory to use that as a permission statement for me to bitch up

and to numb out and not feel what I have to feel and process and go through to honor his memory. Because his memory deserves my pain. His memory deserves my grief. His loss deserves me feeling every inch of that. And if I were to go back to drinking or to doing meth, that would be disrespectful to him. And I would be a bitch for that.

My recovery coaching business is called Hardcore Recovery for a reason. Yeah, what do you do now? What's the recovery? So I own my own recovery coaching business, Hardcore Recovery Coaching. I own Convict Clothing, which is a clothing line based on my life experience and some of the rules of being a convict as opposed to being an inmate, you know, the conduct of criminal code.

I have a non-for-profit that raises funds for people in early recovery to get mental health services. I run a Narcan distribution network in Daytona Beach where we actually go out into the hard hit areas that are like most affected by the opioid epidemic there. And we hand out Narcan, we hand out free socks, we give people snacks and we offer them resources right on the spot.

We've had countless times where we'll go and approach people and we'll be offering them these things and they'll be like, I want to change today. And we can take them to detox because of the networking and the connections that I have in that recovery community there. And as soon as they get out of detox, we can put them into a sober living program where they can get extended help. So that's been really cool and vital.

And in your free time, you're this polarizing social media figure. You've been banned on TikTok almost twice now. And it's really crazy. TikTok bans you and then you come back, swing and make a new account. And you're almost at 500,000 followers, probably close to a million across all your platforms. What made you decide to get into social media? So the thing is, is that I never meant to be

a content creator. I worked during the pandemic. I worked for a local media company doing camera work and editing and a little bit of production. And when the war in Ukraine started, I never wanted to be on TikTok, but I wanted to see the ground footage that people were posting on TikTok from the war in Ukraine, because I don't trust anything that I see on the media. And

So I joined TikTok and I ended up putting out a few little videos and one like 15 second video hit like 2.5 million views. I was literally about to get tattooed on house arrest in Florida, listening to Limp Bizkit, drinking a monster energy drink. And that's all that the video was. And yeah,

it went all the way up. Like it went hard and like Fred Durst commented on it. One of my favorite musicians, Nothing Nowhere commented on it and I was like, this is cool, man. This is great. Then I started talking about recovery and a little bit about my history and background as a criminal and going to prison and it just built and it snowballed and I got a call from one of my friends, Jessica Kent,

who told me, why are you doing everything just TikTok? Like you're not posting on any other platforms. She said, you should be on YouTube doing full length because then you can really get into depth about what you're talking about. And you would be able to build like a solid audience on a platform where they're not going to take your platform away because it only took a few months for me to get to 280,000 followers on TikTok.

And then they took it away. I got banned for making too many jokes about murking pedophiles, which is something that I still do. I just do it a little bit more low key and

So I started my YouTube and it just kind of snowballed. It's taken off. All the stuff that I'm doing on Facebook has been doing really well. And it's like Jess said, people just kind of take you as the internet's big brother. Why do you think people resonate with you so much? I mean, the average person has not been like a career criminal. They haven't stolen cars. Obviously, a lot of them have struggled with addiction, but all the other crazy stuff you've done,

that doesn't really fit their profile. Why are they drawn towards you? Look, I think that a lot of it has to do with the fact that I just don't do bullshit. Um, I am who I am. I take accountability for the horrible things that I've done. I've done some horrific shit, bro. I've hurt people. I've caused a lot of damage, but I take ownership and accountability of that. And I've moved forward in the best possible way that I can. And a lot of it is just the way that

that I see things like I don't do racism. I don't do homophobia. I embrace everybody. I try to love everybody and I want to see everybody win. Like in my view, we're all connected universally and what's good for you is good for me is good for them.

And I just like to be a unifying positive force in the universe because I was a negative force in the universe for so long. So for me to be able to do that is super gratifying to me. And I think other people see that. And I think that that's attractive to people because there's so many people who build their platforms on sensationalism where they're bolstering things up or on fear or on division because those things sell like the media has proved it. That's the type of shit that sells.

And like, I have some pretty horrific stories and I'm honest about it, but they're real. And I'm not trying to glamorize anything. I'm not trying to make myself look like anything that I'm not.

I'm just a person who's found a better way to live. And I want everybody else to be able to find that as well and be our best selves day to day. People like people who are vulnerable. I think that's why they're vulnerable and they're open and they're raw. That's why people gravitate towards me. There's hundreds of people talking about prison on TikTok, but when they come across my page, you know, I could have been anyone's kid, like that young 20, 21 year old that went to prison for a bunch of stupid mistakes and, and,

And is just telling a story like that's such a relatable concept and I'm open about it and I'm raw about it. And I'm like, yeah, I didn't know that you're supposed to, you know, pee sitting down or you're supposed to courtesy flush. And I didn't know you're not supposed to look in people's cells. And I'm just like so open about that. And people very much relate to that aspect of it because it's like a different twist than what say someone like you gives them in that regard. Yeah.

One thousand percent in the very first video that I saw of yours, you were talking about paying for protection in prison. And a lot of people have done that, but most people aren't going to come on social media and be like, yeah, you know what? I was fucking scared in prison because prison's a legitimately fucking scary place a lot of the time. And so I paid for other people to protect me. And I think that was the first video of yours that I ever stitched. And I was like, I love this guy. I love people like this.

you know, he's honest and he's open about it. And like, he didn't want to get down. So he found a way to use his intelligence and his assets that he had to not have to put himself in that position. And I think me and you connected through that, that form of vulnerability and like, man, like I've talked openly about my kid dying. I've talked openly about being sexually assaulted as a child.

I've talked openly about the struggles that I've had in recovery. There's been times that I've gone on lives and I've told everybody, Hey, I'm really triggered right now. Every molecule in my being wants to go use meth or go do fraud. Like this is what's going on in my life. And I'm just very open about that stuff. And people always receive that really well. Now that you're becoming like this big social media influencer, what kind of DMS do you get? I get some wild DMS. I'm curious, kind of like what DMS you are. I know you're in a relationship. Um,

Um, but I'm sure you browse through them or see them. What are those like? I don't look at my DMS unless somebody gets my attention in a comment and says, Hey, like I need help. Can you, can you look at your DMS? Uh, and even then it's hard for me to get through them all, um, to be able to find specific DMS. Do you have a lot of women chasing after you? Not that I see. Uh,

Uh, I'm very married. Like, I don't know what type of married other people are, but I am super fucking married. Uh, I love my wife. She's my best friend. I'm with her constantly. Like she literally wrote out house arrest with me. Like she was on house arrest as well. She modified her life to fit my life so that she could be of the utmost support to me and the utmost service to me while we were both going through this situation together. Um,

That type of loyalty you will never find twice. Plus the fact of the matter is that she's just the raddest dopest kind of soul I've ever met. So that's great. If there's, if there's stuff like that going on, I don't really see it. I get called a dilf sometimes. I'd like to fuck my, my wife had to tell me what a dilf is dead ass. I was like,

I think this dude just called me. Do I look like I give a fuck? And I think he's drunk or something. And she's like, what? Let me see that. She goes, bro, he's calling you a dad. He'd like to fuck. And I'm like, oh,

Well, I was really rude to him and I feel like he complimented me. That's fucked up. What do you think is the infatuation with the bad boy prisoner? Like men are obsessed with that. Women are obsessed with that. What do you think it is? Knowing that you've met a lot of criminals, you yourself were a criminal. I'm a criminal. The woman liked that. Why is that? I don't know. Maybe it's the...

Maybe it's the confidence. Maybe it's the ability to thrive under pressure. Maybe it's that, uh, we know how to navigate certain situations and we conduct ourselves in, in ways that, uh,

just project that confidence. You know what I'm saying? Like somebody who's been to prison out here on the streets, what are you really going to do to me out here on the streets? You're going to shoot me? Okay, cool. Run that shit, bro. I had, there were people in OSP chasing people around with needles full of AIDS blood to try to stab them over $30 weed debts. I don't give a fuck. Shoot me. You know, I don't know. Maybe it's mommy issues and daddy issues. I'm not sure.

What do you know about drugs now that you wish you knew back when you were first starting to use them?

I wish I knew how quickly things devolve into a situation where you are an absolute slave to a substance. And not everybody has that. There are people who can dabble, they can put their toe in the water, feel if the water's warm or not, and they can walk away from it. But you never know if you have something inside of yourself that's going to operate differently in your brain with the neurochemistry of your brain,

And it's going to rewire the neural pathways of your brain. And you are going to become absolutely enslaved. And like, I don't want to be a slave to anything. Like I don't want to live that type of lifestyle. I don't want to wake up in the morning. And the first fucking thing on my mind is that I have to get fucking high. And I'm going to chase that all fucking day, every fucking day, especially with my drug. Cause you rarely ever sleep. So you'd be up eight days at a time, just chasing that fucking powder or dust in a bag and,

It's an empty fucking life, man. All right, JD, last question for you. And it's the most important one of our conversation. What is your message to the person that's struggling with addiction, going through a life of crime, struggling with loss, traumatic experiences? What's your message to them? What do you want to give to them?

My message to people out there is that you are worth it, that I believe in you. Things can get better, but they only get better if you put in the work. And sometimes that takes surrendering yourself to something outside of yourself because you're going to have to relearn how to live and how to do everything differently. And when you've been doing the same thing over and over for so long, you have literally worked neural pathways into your brain that aren't natural, healthy, or sustainable for yourself. And

And your mind will literally send a signal that's instinctual. It's an instinctual thing. Human beings are just animals. We are a human animal. And one of our biggest instincts is to survive. So when you have worn neural pathways into your brain that tell you that you need a substance to survive, it's going to be the fight of your fucking life to get off of it.

but it's literally life or death right now because the drugs on the streets are fucking killing people. And it's not just the fentanyl. There's the ISO, the trank, the xylosine that are Narcan resistant. It is literally a death sentence to be out using street drugs right now, but I believe in you and you're worth it. Reach out to someone, get help. JD.

Thank you for coming on today. Thank you for sharing your story. I'm excited for the world to hear your story and who you are as a person. There hasn't really been much content of like all of your stories put into one. And I'm excited to share that with the world. You have a great inspirational story and hopefully it saves some lives and inspires others.

So again, thank you for coming on. And honestly, I was most afraid of you out all the prison TikTokers. But I think you're kind of, you know, no offense, maybe you're a little more bark than bite because you're like a teddy bear when you get to know the person. But no, I love you, JD. You're like a big brother to me. And I'm excited to see our relationship develop, see where you go, see where both of our businesses grow.

And maybe a year from now, we'll sit down. We're in like a big studio in New York City or something. And we'll have another conversation. But JD, I wish you the best, man. I love you too, Ian. Thank you for this opportunity, man. You are family to me. I'm friends with your dad now. So I hope you like the deal. I'll be over for Christmas. Awesome, guys.