Larry Lawton recounts his $20 million jewelry heist, four 12-year prison sentences, and severe abuse at USP Atlanta before detailing his redemption through the Coast Guard and his "Reality Check" youth program. He critiques the U.S. incarceration system, advocates for police reform and drug legalization, and defends his moral integrity by refusing to rat out associates despite FBI surveillance. Ultimately, Lawton argues that authenticity and personal word outweigh public expectations, urging listeners to embrace libertarian principles and live without regrets. [Automatically generated summary]
Transcriber: CohereLabs/cohere-transcribe-03-2026, WAV2VEC2_ASR_BASE_960H, sat-12l-sm, script v26.04.01, and large-v3-turbo
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Hello, world.
Today, my guest. Is the one and only Larry Lawton.
Larry is originally from the Bronx, which is where he got his start in organized crime at the age of 12.
From there, he went to become known as the most notorious jewel robber in the history of the United States.
He robbed over 15, I think it's 15 or 20 million dollars worth of jewels until he was eventually tracked down by the FBI and hit with four 12 year sentences.
Once he was finally released from prison, Larry Formed his ways, and now he helps and inspires young people to stay out of prison and change their life path.
It's also worth mentioning he started his own YouTube channel last year, which now already has over 1 million subscribers.
Larry has been through a lot of crazy, scary shit, which we get into on this one.
This has got to be one of the most fun conversations I've had on this podcast.
Please welcome Larry Lawton.
All right, we're live Larry Lawton.
Thanks for coming man anytime man that RV you got is pretty sick Lot better than the other one that went on fire Which was pretty cool.
I mean if anybody goes to my channel, they'll see the fire I put a video about the fire Everyone thought I burned it down because you know I burned my pizzeria down for the insurance money.
Well, it back in the day when I was a gangster I burned the whole fucking plaza down.
What why'd you do that?
Well, I was making more money in diamonds and pizza.
I said fuck this shit and I burned it down.
I was gonna get insurance, but they ended up not paying And they investigated me and all that, but they didn't get it.
People who know my background know that I was pretty wild back in the day.
So for people on this show who aren't familiar with your background, give them a little bit of the story.
Basically, you're one of the country's most notorious diamond thieves.
Well, we put thief because it was a word that's actually better searched.
I was the biggest jewel robber in the country.
I still am known as the biggest jewel robber in the country.
I robbed 15, 18 million.
I was hooked up with organized crime.
I wouldn't tell anybody.
I ended up going to prison for four 12 year sentences.
And then people ask, Oh, why'd you go for four sentences?
Because if I win one on an appeal, I still got to do the time.
That's why people go, Why does a guy get three life sentences?
He can't die three times.
No, but if he wins one of those life sentences on appeal, he still got life.
So that's how they do that.
But I ended up going away in 1996, and I didn't get out until 2007.
You guys were all young.
And your sound guy and your guy, he was still in diapers.
Actually, when I went to prison, he wasn't even born.
No, he wasn't because my daughter was only 18 months and she was born in 95.
And I ended up, I have a great relationship with my kids.
But my son was six.
I got out and he was 18.
And my daughter was 15 months old and I got out and she was 13 years old.
So, I mean, that's why I do what I do to try to help people and stuff like that, you know.
But I was a bad guy.
I don't.
Fucking, you know, try to sugarcoat that.
I was, you didn't want to run across me back in my day.
I would lay people's arms on curbs and snap them.
Jesus Christ.
I was the kind of guy you didn't want to.
But I didn't hurt civilians.
We called it civilians.
Okay.
All the people in the business.
Yeah.
If you were a drug dealer, you were a bookie, you wanted to be a criminal, you didn't want to fucking run across me.
It was that, that's the way I was.
Now, of course, you know, as you know me, and I help a lot of people, I, a lot of people say, oh, you know, you only started YouTube a year ago.
And it's true.
You only started doing YouTube a year ago.
A year ago.
And you have over a million subscribers on your channel.
Your channel's huge.
You do all kinds of really cool videos.
And we're actually trying new things, expanding new things.
We have now, obviously, the podcast and the TikTok and everything else.
Yeah, you're killing it, man.
But what we did, and we're trying new things.
We got a great manager, Peter, and a great team with my son, Darian, and Teresa.
Everybody who's there.
We want to try new things.
So that's why I try to tell people, try it.
It might work.
We tried gaming.
What the fuck does Larry know about gaming?
You know, I didn't grow up with gaming.
Yeah.
But what I did was, guys wanted it.
My audience wanted it.
The followers wanted it.
And we expanded.
And I got into gaming.
I mean, I play it.
I'm not good at it by any stretch of the imagination.
But, you know, we wanted to try different things.
But I didn't start what I do a year ago.
When I got out of prison, I started Reality Check, and it's a great story on how I started the whole program.
I got out of prison after doing 12 years.
Okay.
11 straight years.
Where did you do your time at?
Maximum security prison.
Maximum security.
Yeah, I was in Atlanta, USP Atlanta.
And when I was in Edgefield, I was strapped down naked, beaten, and tortured by guards, and pissed on and spit on by guards because I was fighting the abuses of the prison system.
Our prison system's broke.
Oh, for sure.
And let me tell you, it's the worst fucking prison system in the free world.
And people go, what do you mean?
I'm not talking about third world countries.
I'm talking about France, Italy, Germany, Spain, Canada.
The United States has the worst prison system in the free world.
And it's known.
And the most people in prison.
Oh, by numbers that are.
We have more people incarcerated than fucking China.
Per capita.
Not even per capita.
Per straight numbers.
Really?
They got 1.3 billion people and we have more prisoners than them.
Jesus.
It's just sick.
Well, they just straight up execute people.
Ah, everybody says that.
And that's not true.
No, it's not true.
Really?
What happens is they actually have a higher suicide rate.
Oh.
Because they.
To dishonor their family and they'll.
They'll have suicides or they have different ways they do certain things.
So everybody's thinking oh, they just kill them in these.
And that's not true.
I don't know how Iran works, or right.
You know North Korea works yeah, but as far as the pre-war.
But I was in prison from 96 to 2007 and I was on con air 16 times that movie.
Did you ever see Nick Cage?
Yeah nah, he wasn't on there with me, damn it.
I actually saw Loupe Perlman.
Remember Backstreet BOYS and all that.
Yeah, he was the founder of the backstreet boys and NSYNC and all that.
Okay, okay, fat fuck stole that money from them.
And and I when I when he was on a plane, I was getting off a plane, the plane, the plane, and he was getting on it, so to have you off to the sides.
I saw him and I said, They're gonna fuck you, Lou, fuck you, and I was yelling at him and I'm getting yelled at and all that shit.
Oh my god, he was like all scared.
So, what were you doing?
You said you were fighting.
You were fighting the system when you were inside.
That's why you got pissed on and you got your ass beat by prison guards.
What were you doing?
Well, you know, the prison system killed three of my friends.
Literally killed three of my friends.
One guy had a medical issue and he was having chest pains, this, his arms hurt, and goes to medical.
They say, get out of here.
He ends up going to work.
They have what, in prison, you work, you work.
People think you don't work, you work.
So he works for what they call CMS, which is like they maintain the prison, you know, like the plumbers and this.
It's called CMS.
Yeah.
So he works for CMS.
The guy he works for, a guard, Tells him, hey, get to medical.
You look terrible.
This guy, James Archer, a good friend of mine, lived three cells from me.
I used to play horseshoes.
Believe me, they had horseshoes.
Wow.
They took them off fucking yard quick.
Anyway, he goes in there and said, they said, get out of here.
You got mailock.
You got, here's mailocks.
You got gas.
He walks into the unit.
He looks at myself, another guy named Jimmy Brown.
We're looking at TV sets.
He walks in the unit and he goes, man, I'm dying.
We look at him.
He's, pale.
He sits down, he keels over.
We put him in a chair.
He keels over and dies right in front of us, leaving the medical dies.
Now I don't know if you ever saw a man die.
I've seen many people die.
The first thing that happens is they they, whatever's in them comes out, what they shit all over themselves.
Yeah shit, you know, it's just there's no nerves holding it and whatever it is.
So he died and uh we're, they're yelling lockdown, lockdown.
You got to run to your cell and all that shit.
And when they picked him up, They come with a golf cart down to the unit.
They were left.
Now, my cell was about three cells from the main door on the bottom floor.
And I'm looking out.
We have windows this big.
They're not real windows.
You know what I mean.
You couldn't fit through them.
You know, even you couldn't.
Yeah, good shape guy like you, not no, fat like me.
And they were laughing.
They would thought it was a joke.
And they came to every cell in the prison and they said, oh, you saw him hit his head.
I said you, you killed him.
I go off on them.
Boom, they throw me in the hole.
For 11 straight months I was in the hole for three years out of my 11 in the hole.
Is that the same as the shoe?
The shoe.
Special housing.
Okay.
Hole, special housing.
Okay.
Segregation.
Just so basically you're in a little concrete box by yourself.
Yeah.
Well, sometimes you're with somebody else.
Okay.
Most of the time you're with somebody else.
It depends on how bad you get, how violent you are, whatever.
And you don't get to see the light of day ever.
Well, you know, they're supposed to, they call it, give you wreck one hour a day.
Oh, okay.
And when you get wrecked, it's in a dog cage, a literally 10 by 20 cage, like a fucking animal.
Now, that's when they give you that.
They don't always give you that.
And they have the greatest line in the world to not give you wreck.
For the safe and orderly running of the institution, no wreck today.
Bad inclement weather, no wreck.
It's all bullshit.
They just don't want to fucking give you wreck.
Right.
So I've been in there.
I was there when they didn't give you a fucking shower or anything for three weeks.
When I tell you you don't know how bad you smell, you smell yourself.
That's how fucking bad you are.
No fucking.
I mean, nothing.
I mean.
It's just disgusting what they do to people.
I mean, our system is fucked up.
But I was in the hole for three years.
And am I a little fucked up?
Absolutely, I'm fucked up to a degree.
I think I came out of it pretty good.
I mean, somewhat normal, I think.
But, you know, I don't think people.
Obviously, I believe in rehabilitation.
I'm a different man.
When I was younger, I was a wild guy.
I never, ever say I didn't belong in prison.
Because I was robbing.
I robbed 15, 18 million.
I was hooked up with organized crime.
I was a violent guy.
I didn't hurt, like I was telling you, I never hurt people who weren't in my business.
But that doesn't make it right either.
You know, I put fear into people.
You know, you rob in a jewelry store.
I never hurt somebody during a robbery.
Never.
When I robbed a jewelry store, and I robbed one here in Sarasota.
Did you really?
Yeah, I robbed all over the fucking state.
I robbed over 20 something stores.
Wow.
And the FBI got me.
But anyway, as I'm.
Going to prison, I go, listen, I get caught.
It was a big deal when I got caught and all that.
So it was mainly in Florida you were robbing?
No, no, all up and down the East Coast.
Okay.
I was known as the biggest jewel robber in the country.
Still am.
That's where I go on TV a lot on those.
And I've been doing that since I got out, actually, of prison.
But anyway, so I never complained about prison.
Again, I don't believe anybody should be tortured.
I don't believe, and I think there should be rehabilitation.
Remember, I went to prison at 34 years old.
I got out at 46.
Now I'm 59.
I'll be 60 this year.
I was born in 1961.
I know you're looking at me like you all fucked, Harry.
And so is Ryan, right?
You're the same age as my dad.
Yeah, probably.
Exactly.
Most of the times when I do interviews, I love it.
You look great, though, man.
Is it true they say that most people who go to prisons, especially max prisons, max security prisons, you have a god level immune system?
You know what?
You might be right about that.
You know, a lot of people tell you, hey, Larry, worry about you with your COVID or worry about this.
I'm not.
For whatever reason, I'm not worried.
And don't get me wrong.
I try to think I'm not going to go to a concert or some shit like that.
But yeah, I don't get sick much.
I don't do things.
You eat, listen, you eat fucking garbage.
You're around fucking people.
I mean, they have it, and people get sick, and people die all the time in prison.
Coast Guard Ship Diving Tales00:10:29
But you're right.
I never heard that.
But I think it's just so much.
Yeah, you're exposed to so much shit.
Either you survive or you don't.
And when you're exposed to all that shit, it just builds up your immune system and you just become stronger.
You know, I do believe there's something to that.
You know, I have a bad back, I have different things, but not like that immune system.
And trust me, I never had a disease in my life.
Right.
And how the fuck that happened in life?
I have no idea.
I was the wildest motherfucking from orgies and this and you know, you name it, I did it.
Sexual.
How the fuck I got no fucking disease?
I don't know.
I really don't.
It blows me away.
And I never had even the crabs.
No?
Never the fucking crabs.
I was in the military.
Damn.
I mean, I was in the military.
I'm retired military.
Okay.
I was in the Coast Guard.
And I was actually stationed in Cortez, Florida, which is in Bradenton.
Yeah.
Brand Bradenton, if you know, oh, yeah, that's the end of Bradenton and Anna Maria.
Matter of fact, listeners know this I was the first boat on scene when the bridge collapsed in St. Petersburg.
No, you weren't even around.
I didn't, I had those guys on the podcast, two of the rescue divers that pulled all the bodies out of the bridge.
I was the first one there.
I got newspaper clippings of me picking up kids and babies and all the debris.
You know, a bus went off, a Greyhound bus went off, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, was crushed.
I got picked, I even got the newspapers from 40 years ago.
And I actually have that.
I'll show it one day.
I was the first boat, Coast Guard Station Cortez, which was our area, it was on this side of the Sunshine Skyway.
So we got an alarm, it goes off, and it says, you know, a boat hits the bridge.
It happened all the time.
We go pick a fucking boat, start sinking, and we help.
You know, that's what we did, the Coast Guard.
Uh uh.
It was the fucking, I think it was the Summit Venture.
Yep.
It was the Summit Venture, hit the bridge.
And I have pictures of the fucking bridge hanging over the front of the Summit Venture.
And it was a car.
On the thing dangling off the edge, well, it wasn't dangling, it was on it like that.
It wasn't dangling, it wasn't actually over there.
But there was a piece that was like facing downward, exactly.
No, and I, you know, and actually, when we got there, it was eerily quiet because it was fog.
And we look up, holy, and then you're seeing debris and all this, and of course, everything, but it's cold.
And we would, it took them 30 days to raise.
Uh, no, that was the Blackthorn.
I don't know if you know about that.
Yep, the Blackthorn was Coast Guard guys.
And one of those guys, you know, a guy I went to boot camp with.
So that Blackburn was a Coast Guard buoy tender, 180 foot buoy tender, that got hit by the Capricorn.
The Capricorn hits the Coast Guard carter buoy.
They crisscross, and the anchor of the Capricorn flips the Coast Guard boat, and it went down in 90 seconds.
And 20, 20, or 23 or 25 sailors died.
Really?
Coast Guard.
And they were entombed in there, in the boat.
And they couldn't lift them up.
Until, of course, the currents and it's very tough.
I bet the guys on here were divers, I'll tell you.
No, the guys that were on here were DOT divers.
So their job was to inspect all the bridges in Florida.
Ah, that's what they did.
And they were the first guy.
They claimed when they first got there, there was one boat.
I think they said it was a Coast Guard boat there when they first got there.
And then, like, Eckerd College sent a bunch of boats out.
Oh, actually, on Annamurie Island is where they set up a command center.
But the Coast Guard ran that whole operation.
Okay.
Obviously, anything in the waterways, the Coast Guard runs.
And we did all the search and rescue and then the ops.
And then, even when they were like doing debris, we had to set up perimeters and all that for boats and everybody.
I got great paper articles.
I still got them.
I just looked at them.
I have what they call a disaster album.
Of course, I was here for the Coast Guard Bridge, Coast Guard Cutter Blackthorn.
Matter of fact, I was just staying on the Skyway Bridge, you know, at a rest stop in my RV.
And there's a memorial there for the Coast Guard Cutter Blackthorn.
Really?
And I didn't see it.
It was nighttime.
But I'm going to go back there and see it.
I saw it.
A sign for it, and I do know there was one.
Did they move that ship after it sunk, or do they leave it?
No, they lifted it up.
They, you know, it's a channel.
It's there's a there is a I've dove, I'm a diver too.
I dove the Blackthorn.
That I think the boat's out there.
I think they might have put it somewhere else, they might have.
Yeah, I don't know.
It's not under the bridge for sure.
No, no, no, no, it's way offshore.
It's a couple miles.
It's like, well, I don't know if they are you sure it's the Blackthorn?
I'm almost 90% positive.
I'm gonna look that one up because the Blackthorn obviously it was.
I don't think it is.
I'll tell you why.
There were people who died in it.
They were entombed in it.
I mean, they got them out after they went to this, but they actually suffocated.
They didn't drown.
There was an airport talking about it.
They couldn't get to the air toxicity.
They died air.
No air, obviously.
And there were, I think, 13 or 12 sailors in the engine room that was sealed.
And they actually wrote stuff on the walls of the black.
On, like, you know, I love you, hon, or whatever it was.
And it was kind of sad because we were picking those guys up and, you know, when they came up.
And it took 30 days to lift up.
The currents and everything are very bad under that bridge.
Oh, yeah.
And, you know, you're a diver.
I've never dove under the skyway.
No, you can't.
It's not legally allowed.
It's a channel, number one.
Right.
Have you ever dove down the Keys?
Oh, yeah, all the time.
Do you ever dive on the, not the Mercedes, Fort Lauderdale, the Dauntless?
No, I haven't.
I haven't done many ship.
You have to be a master diver or an advanced diver, at least.
And I was.
I was a NAOI instructor.
And because the current is so bad, you drop down one side of the ship down the line.
And when you're going down, you're looking like a flag.
And if you let go of that thing, they're going to pick you up five miles away.
Literally, they don't stop anything.
They'll pick you up on a sandbar, is what happens.
Anyway, there's great diving down there.
Oh, yeah.
And the barracuders.
Oh, that's insane.
I did a lot of diving back when I was in the Coast Guard, especially in Hawaii.
Yeah.
You know, I dove on a Jap Zero that was out there.
You know, then there's what they call the blow holes and stuff.
I remember growing up around here, especially, we were always like watching Jackass.
We were big fans like Manny Puig.
Manny Puig was always like a champion commercial freediver.
And he would enter these big spearfishing tournaments and win them.
And people were, he was competing against scuba divers and he was freediving.
Wow.
And dude, he's a madman.
He made me those tridents over there.
And now he actually hunts fish with tridents and he kills.
Bores with tridents and shit and gators, crazy stuff, fucking psycho, the uh.
So do you do a lot of diving still?
Yeah, not not as much as I used to, but I do it as much as I can.
I do a lot.
I mainly do a lot of free diving not so much scuba anymore, but but yeah i'm always.
Yeah, I haven't dove since before the before I went away.
Okay, and it's just timing.
And then you're supposed to go get recertified.
It's been sold 20 years.
Yeah, not that I mean it's not a big deal.
Obviously it doesn't take rocket scientists to be a diver, But you got to know your shit, especially if you're going to go in currents and certain.
Oh, yeah, for sure.
We used to do cave diving where we would take our tanks off and get through the fucking caves.
I couldn't do it anymore.
I became, because of prison, claustrophobic.
I'm fucking severe claustrophobic.
Now, I can see there's light there, so I can get out that window.
So I'm all right.
Throw the door.
But I fucking, I mean, it's got, I can't, like, forget an MRI machine.
Not even fucking close.
They got to knock me out.
I mean, literally, anesthesia.
Yeah, I almost died cave diving, freediving through caves in the Cayman Islands before.
We used to do this thing where we would dive this ship.
We would freedive this ship in Grand Cayman, and we would go down.
The top of the ship was maybe like 20 10 feet and the bottom was like 50 feet.
Wow, that's deep.
So, we would free dive, and what we would do is we would start at the bow and we would work our way through the ship breathing air pockets.
I was just gonna ask you that it had to be air pockets.
We would find little air pockets, take a deep breath, and then we'd keep going to find another air pocket.
Holy, that's pretty crazy!
That's up, man.
It was stupid.
We used to go into caves in Hawaii and the mora eels would be oh, yeah, their teeth.
Oh, and that's the world, but we were fearless, man.
I was a young kid, I was in my 20s, man.
I didn't give a damn anything.
And then I was a bosun mate.
I don't know if you know what that is.
That's like the guy who runs the ship.
I became a boat captain, you know, not a captain, like you're full of a ship.
Yes, but you know those Coast Guard boats?
Those 41 foot, 44 foot motorboats?
I was the captain of one of those.
And I used to go out and rescue people 50 miles out, 70 miles.
We used to have to do shit that the kids today didn't have to.
We had to fucking hit a button shit.
I mean, you know, we had Loran.
Actually, I was in the Coast Guard when Loran A. went away.
And then it was the Loran C. You don't even know what that is.
No, I have no idea what that is.
Loran, they had these stations all over, would shoot singles, and that's how you picked up.
Obviously, they didn't have satellite back then.
They didn't have all the communication shit.
We had actually what they call dead reckoning.
You actually, like, if there was someone 50 miles out on the Gulf over here, and I've been out 70 miles out there, how do you get there?
There's no fucking traffic light.
When I come to your studio today, go down, make a left on Oak, you know, Oak, whatever it is, go down.
Yeah, GPS is telling me everything.
Yep.
And back then, you know, you can't, they'll give you a coordinates, right?
And they'll give you, you know, whatever your latitude and longitude is.
And they'll say, we're here, we're dead in the water, we need help, something, the boat's sinking, whatever it is.
Yeah.
And you fucking boom, you put it on a chart, and you have the fucking balls of the wall out there.
You don't just get out there.
I mean, because if you went that direct line, you would end up 10 miles away and never see them because the currents and the set and drift would take you wherever.
Football Tickets in the Seventies00:03:03
Right.
So you had to do what they call the navigation.
You had to set drift and all this on a chart.
And you had to know what you're doing.
Today, these kids hit a button.
Fucking take me here.
Takes them there.
But whatever goes.
I always tell them, whatever's if that breaks.
Well, we have a backup.
What if that breaks?
Now what the fuck you do?
Do you know how to fucking navigate by the stars?
To get home.
Right.
I mean, you go the wrong way, you're done.
I don't give a fuck who you are.
You're going to run out of gas.
Yeah.
You know, I mean.
I don't know.
Maybe it's just I'm old.
Maybe I am.
Yeah, I've never thought about it.
I've never even thought about it.
No, it's something I'd expect.
You know, I've gotten over it.
Like, I'm easygoing now.
Very easygoing.
Listen, I've been through too much of my life to fucking let things really bother me.
You know what I mean?
It's just something that doesn't happen anymore.
Everyone gets upset, but not much fucking bothers me.
Right.
Go on Pornhub or fucking U Porn or something and have fun.
Yeah.
And it's over.
Exactly, right?
Absolutely.
Who doesn't go on that?
I don't know.
I don't know anybody who doesn't go on that.
I don't care who you are, where you've been in life.
I was listening to Howard Stern.
Uh-huh.
I love him.
Oh, yeah, he's great.
And fuck, he talks about fucking you porn and all this shit.
He's 65.
Yep.
Who doesn't?
If your dick works, you go on fucking you porn.
Ryan's fucking Howard Stern.
He's on you porn.
He said you'd think he's really working.
Oh, dude.
He's really working.
He's watching porn right now.
Yeah, he is.
He's rubbing one out as we sit.
Look at his pants.
So where are you originally from?
From Brooklyn?
Yeah, Bronx and Brooklyn.
I was born in the Bronx, and then we moved up in the world, you want to call it.
When I got out, I was in Brooklyn.
And that's where I was real, became a gangster.
I was collecting at a card game, and that's where I became very.
How did you get into that world?
How does somebody enter the gangster world, the organized crime world?
Right.
Yeah.
Well, first of all, you're recognized.
When I was 11 and 12 years old, I was doing what they call football tickets.
Football tickets is, you ever see a ticket for gambling?
You pick four teams, you put a dollar and you win 10.
Right, right.
I used to do those back in 1972.
72, 73.
I'm born in 61.
And I was doing those football tickets, making about $125 a fucking week.
Jesus.
In 1972.
You're what, 12 years old?
Yeah, yeah, 12 years old, doing tickets, football tickets, and making money, going door to door to the teacher.
Who taught you how to do that?
That's where you're going.
My dad was on the fringes.
My dad was a union guy, and he built the World Trade Center.
Really?
My dad was the head guy on the World Trade Center.
And the World Trade Center is, you know, when, of course, they went down and all that.
But I was on the top of the World Trade Center, the two of them, the Twin Towers, were built in 68 to 72.
Gambling Schemes from 197200:11:35
Okay.
I was on the roof, the 103rd floor, when it was the roof, and the construction workers tied a rope to my brother and I, and we crawled to the edge.
And looked out 103 stories up.
I got pictures of that on that building.
That's crazy.
That is fucking crazy.
You know, if you drop the penny down, you could kill a person.
Oh, yeah.
Last week I had a guy on this show who was a firefighter when the planes hit.
One of the first buildings collapsed on top of him.
He survived it.
Wow.
Good for him.
I lost a friend, not a lot, but yeah.
I know there's a lot of bars in New York.
There's a place called O'Hara's.
And you go in that bar and it's downtown, near the Freedom.
Now it's called the Freedom Tower And The Freedom it's right near there and it's Ho Harris people know it on your show who go there in New York and it's got all the emblems of so many fire departments from around the world yeah, who went to the World Trade Center to help to do things and stuff like that and it's a great bar.
It's a bar, it's an Irish bar, that's.
That's a great place.
Matter of fact, the New Freedom Tower.
You know what's in there.
You know I have a good memory of the Freedom, the New Freedom Tower.
Okay, great story.
You know I started Youtube a year ago.
You know how I started YouTube.
How did you start YouTube?
I get called by Vanity Fair.
Okay.
Now, Vanity Fair, you know who they are, obviously.
How did they know who you were?
Well, of course, I'm on TV about the Casey Anthony case.
I'm on TV all the time.
I did some great fucking shows.
Your audience has got to go look at John Oliver.
You know who John Oliver is?
Oh, yeah.
I did a clip with The Daily Show.
I've been on The Daily Show three times.
I don't know if you saw it.
Okay.
It's the funniest clip.
They did that year.
It's called, if any audience wants to just Google MBA, Masters of Business, you know, MBA Ethics Oath.
MBA Ethics Oath.
You'll fucking fall out of your chair watching this.
I go on The Daily Show and they build a suit for me.
I rip it off and I yell at these Harvard and MBA students who wouldn't sign an ethics oath.
It's fucking hilarious.
But I've been on The Daily Show a bunch of times.
What'd you say to them?
What do you mean they wouldn't sign an ethics oath?
A legit, these guys from Harvard and MIT would not sign an ethics oath.
Well, for what?
For ethics, you know, to be a good businessman.
You want to raise it up a little bit, yeah.
And you can turn this to face it.
Okay, good.
Yeah, to be a, you know, have ethics.
Right.
And they wouldn't sign an oath.
So they did this skit with me, and these kids didn't know who I was.
And I was just out of prison.
This is, I think it was 2009, maybe, yeah, 2009, I think it was.
And I'm out of prison.
I got out in August of 2007.
Fucking with these guys.
I mean, they didn't know who I was.
I'm talking to John Oliver and the producer, and we'd stop, and they didn't know who I was.
This is all legit.
And I said to them, You know, I just might kill one of these motherfuckers, these rich asshole fuck.
And I'm telling this guy, and they're like, This guy fucking for real?
When you watch the clip, you gotta watch the clip.
Okay.
When you watch the clip, look at the time they say, John Oliver says, Oh, so you're calling Larry an idiot.
They go, Oh, no.
Oh, no.
You got to watch the fucking clip.
Have your audience, you'll laugh your balls off.
Is it on your YouTube channel or no?
It might be.
I'm not sure.
You can go on NBA Ethics Oath.
Okay.
Just Google it.
Just Google it.
NBA Ethics Oath.
All right.
Remember, I'll text it to you.
So going back to your early life.
Oh, let me tell you about it.
No, Vanity Fair.
Yeah, okay.
Yeah, yeah.
Vanity Fair.
What happened?
Well, how I started the YouTube.
Oh, okay.
Because I get a call from Vanity Fair and they say to me, hey, no, I don't think I've ever told this story the way I'm telling it because this is.
This is somebody's gonna get crazy because they're gonna be calling me.
I'll tell you what happened.
So I get a phone call hey, we want you to come and do a video for us, and we can't pay you, but we'll pay your expenses.
They do all that.
I mean, nice limo, room, you know, food, all the bullshit.
But I'm going to New York, so it's taking me three days, two, two, three days, whatever you got to do.
You're flying you up and all that, and they say we'll give you expenses or whatever.
But we can't pay you.
But if it works, If we get about 150,000 to 180,000 views, we're going to discuss a contract with you.
I said, okay.
I'll give it a whirl, right?
Give it a whack.
Yeah, I'm doing my reality check program, the one I developed.
We'll get to that.
So I'm doing that.
I'm working with police departments.
I'm working with schools.
I'm working with families.
I'm trying to help court systems.
And I'm struggling.
I mean, I'm making a living, but struggling.
And so I said, sure, I'll do it.
I'll discuss it.
So I go up there.
I do this fucking film.
And now, this is why I was talking about the World Trade Center.
What do they have you do?
Well, here's a member of Freedom Tower.
Yeah.
Freedom Tower, the whole 24th floor of the Freedom Tower is Con Nest Travel.
Con Nest Travel owns Vanity Fair.
Con Nest Travel is one of the biggest magazine companies in the country, in the world.
And they own all these fucking magazines.
You'll see the high end boat ones, all these fucking things, Vanity Fair, all these shits.
So, Con Nest Travel owns, I'm telling the whole 24th floor.
Of the new Freedom Tower is all studios.
Man, is it fucking set up, man?
It is fucking awesome.
I mean, really.
I said, wow, look at this shit.
You know, you walk by one fucking studio and it's a kitchen and all this.
It's a whole 24th floor.
So we're in a studio.
We do a whole video.
It takes the day.
You know how it is when you're doing production.
You work in that business.
You know what I mean.
So I come back.
I get home.
Now I have friends in the industry.
A good friend of mine, Billy Casera, who is Don Hewitt's son-in-law, owns a very big camera company called Stable Imaging.
And Don Hewitt founded 60 Minutes.
His daughter's one of my best friends.
They're great people.
Great people.
Wow.
And to this day, I go to Fire Island.
I don't know if you know Fire Island, you're over here at Fire Island, New York.
Oh, biggest party place in the world.
Really?
Oh, my God.
So anyway, we're out there.
So Billy calls me.
We talk all the time.
He goes, yeah, they're going to offer you a contract.
So now remember, they wanted 150,000 to 180,000 views.
And they usually judge views to let you know in about two weeks.
They don't say how many in a day.
Right, right, right.
It goes by two weeks, then to a month, and then two months.
And that's how they gauge a video.
Like in my videos, when I know when I get 50,000 views in a day, I know it's gonna be a good video.
Some take never, some take they run to fucking half a million, a million views.
So, this video in two weeks, two and a half weeks gets a million views.
I didn't want it 150,000, and I'm watching the views go up.
I'm waiting for a fucking phone call.
Jesus, when these fucking people gonna call me?
My buddy Billy says, lad, they gotta call you, they got the golden egg, you know?
Yeah, they figured, man, they're smart.
I mean.
They know what they're doing.
They got fucking Larry.
You know, they find, because I did TV shows with Billy.
That's how we met.
We actually did big film, like pilots.
Okay.
So, and he says to me, he goes, are they going to call?
Never call, never call.
Then I get so fucking mad.
Now people are contacting me, finding me.
I don't know how.
Emailing you.
Yeah, everything.
I fucking, I had videos.
I had videos from being on TV.
I opened my own YouTube.
I said, fuck them.
Didn't even know anything about YouTube.
Didn't know what it was.
I started working my balls off.
And I mean researching, researching, researching.
Just me.
I have no team, nothing.
I start uploading fucking videos.
I start uploading videos.
That's how my editor, who's got himself a hell of a career now, and he's got a really nice one if we cash out, he calls me.
He's 20 years old.
He's got a hell of a resume to get.
Great guy, Darren.
People know him.
Great editor.
Good guy, too.
I've already flown him to Florida and stuff like that.
So Darien did work with the Toronto Raptors.
He won some awards from high school.
He really knows what he's doing.
Really graphics and editing.
He calls me, he says, hey, he goes, I see you don't have an editor.
I'd love to work.
I says, yeah, I can't pay you.
I said, but if it hits, you're going to be taken care of and we'll work something out and all that.
Sure enough, obviously, it hits and all that.
So, without Vanity Fair's stupidity, I wouldn't have had my YouTube channel.
I would just have got a deal with them, and that would have been it.
And I wouldn't have been.
Wow.
But you're going to like that, too.
And I'm the past Vanity Fair.
They got 2 million subscribers since 2006.
Right.
I got a fucking million, almost a million one in fucking a year, a year and a month or two, whatever it is.
But it's funny because.
Did they ever reach back out?
Yeah, that's what happens.
When we did the filming.
That video, and you can add people can look it up online now.
Just go to Vanity Fair Larry Lawton, it's got nine million views.
That video, nine million views.
They write me, it's got about two million, three million, whatever at the point.
They write me to go, oh, without even fucking sending me a bottle of scotch.
Not even saying fucking thank you, Larry.
We discussed that we can't work with you, but great job, nothing.
Not a fucking thank you.
They fucking write me and say, we want you to sign the release for the second video.
And now I got my own YouTube channel.
Right, right.
I write back, and I don't just write back to whoever wrote me.
I get on LinkedIn and I find that a CEO, The COO, the CFO, operation, every fucking buddy you can think in Vanity Fair with a title.
I CC them on email.
Very professional.
I received your email.
Not only do you not have permission to post my video, so that's no.
I wanted to say how disappointed I was in why you didn't honor your deal and you still owed me $491, blah, blah, blah.
They paid that.
I get a check in a week for the $491.
What was that for the travel expenses?
It was expenses and stuff like that.
But I said, but thank you very much for doing that because you started my YouTube career.
I'm sure my buddy says people were fired.
They had to be fired.
I mean, they fucked up.
You know, it's like, you know, you got something in front of you and you see it work.
There's numbers there.
I mean, you know, numbers don't lie.
And now it's got 9.1 million views, I think it is.
Some crazy number.
And it's, but they could have had that on how many videos.
I was going to do a deal with them and they could have made a ton of money.
I was going to accept the deal, good money, but I was going to accept the deal.
Prison Life and Legal Battles00:15:00
What the hell?
I do videos, whatever.
Yeah.
But now I got this going and I love it because the voice gives me an opportunity to help more people.
Right.
To do more with a lot of people.
And I think that's important.
And it's funny because we started that conversation.
Everybody who knows me on my channel, they go, oh, he's fucking all over the place.
That's Larry.
But that's, you know, things come in your head.
That's what makes you so great.
Well, it comes in your head.
You know what I mean.
Yeah, for sure.
Things hit you, you go, oh, fuck yeah.
Yeah.
Just fucking ask it.
If I can ask you, just do it.
Because you're going to forget about it anyway.
Right.
And then you go, what the fuck was that?
Trust me, when you get older, it'll be worse.
But so I look at it like, listen, it is what it is.
We're going to get to the point.
We're going to get where we're going.
Whether it's my old career as a gangster, whether it's how I started Reality Check.
Right.
And that's a great story.
So I started Reality Check.
Which is a very no, it's got the highest success rate of any program in the country.
What is it?
I built, when I got out of prison, a guy comes up to me, golfer says, Hey, Larry, I need a favor.
I said, Fuck you.
You want me to break somebody's legs?
I just got out of fucking prison.
Leave me the fuck alone.
He says, No, no, no.
He goes, I caught my 16 year old smoking weed and he said, Fuck you, dad.
Where have you been?
Nah, I smoke weed.
I'm a believer in all drugs.
Right.
Just if you commit a crime to do them.
Right.
That's my job.
But what you do in your own house, Dan, I don't give a fuck what you do.
Not hurting anybody.
What you do in your own house is your business.
Right.
Nobody should ever fucking judge you or talk.
That's not what I believe in marriage.
That's why I'm a libertarian now.
Right.
But anyway, so he said, I said, your son told you where the fuck you've been.
I'll talk to your son.
You want to talk about having the stars aligned?
I have pictures of me in prison with gangsters, fucking murderers, fucking.
Gang members, everything, you know, friends.
And you can't do that anymore.
So it was just the timing was perfect.
Back when I was in, you could take those pictures.
Can't do that today.
So I take these pictures over to the kid.
Nah, he's a big kid, but I'm a pretty big guy.
It can be intimidating if you want to understand that.
You know what I mean?
Yeah, oh yeah, for sure.
So I sit down to the kid and I said, I only use two curse words.
I said, you told your father where the fuck he's been?
Let me show you where the fuck I just came from.
The kid looked at me.
I started, I don't believe it.
First of all, that's a great story too.
I don't believe it's scared straight.
Doesn't work.
Because if I yelled at you, you'd look at me and say, who the fuck is this idiot?
Fucking shut down and I got to get out of here.
You know what I mean?
Okay, let him fuck.
You never understand me.
But if I told you a story about a kid who got his anus cut from the top of his ass to his balls and raped and fucking seminal fluid was found in there and I read the articles and heard the screams, you will never forget that.
You probably won't now or audience, but I tell the whole exact story.
But anyway, so I started telling the kids stories and showing them the pictures.
I was there for about an hour and a half, whatever it was.
I'm just out of prison.
And the father's a golfer.
I'm a golfer.
You play golf?
Yeah, do you?
Yes, man.
Oh, let's go play golf after this, man.
Let's go play nine holes.
If I didn't have my golf clubs, now I know you're here.
I used to be very good.
I used to be a three.
Now I'm about 10, 12.
I suck.
I'm not good.
Cigars and drink.
Exactly.
Oh, you're in.
We're playing golfing.
We're playing golf.
Definitely.
And now I have another reason to come.
Oh, hell yeah, man.
Oh, I love it.
And so we're sitting there and I talk to the kid.
I go out to the gazebo.
The guy's a golf pro.
And he says to me, he goes, I appreciate it, whatever.
And gives me money, gives me $100.
I said, man, I know you just got out of prison, whatever.
Gives me $100.
Calls me two weeks later.
Now, you know I got my law degree from prison.
Now, I have the credits to be a lawyer.
I don't have the degree because I'm a convicted felon.
But I'm a licensed paralegal.
I did law for 10 years in prison.
So when I get out, I was going to go work with a couple of law firms, easily do it.
Now, did you do that to, did you help out a lot of other prisoners in there?
No, all the time.
Every day.
I hear, like, is that?
Jailhouse lawyers, you call them.
Jailhouse lawyers.
Is the reason that, I've heard that the reason a lot of people do that is so they can have some sort of value to other people in there so people won't fuck with them.
Obviously, you might not have been worried about that, but I know.
No, no, I understand what you're saying.
You know, do they do it as protection?
Yeah, most people do it.
The guys who I know who do it, and I have a very good friend of mine who does it, one of the best in the country, Paul Tolini.
And I just did a video with him, and he got two guys out with life sentences in the last month.
Damn, with life sentences.
Guy's the best.
And he knows it's about writing and how to do it.
We understand the laws and the courts.
Most of us do it for the right reasons.
Yeah, you'll get some of it, but they're idiots then.
They get exposed for not being good at what they do.
You got to love the law, and you got to love doing it to live in that law library and stuff.
I used to fight the system.
I'm going to tell you, that's when I told you I went crazy in the hole and all that.
But anyway, so the kid, the father says, calls me two weeks later.
He goes, Larry, I don't know what you did.
He goes, forget your law, forget anything.
You got to work with kids.
My kid said, Dad, I don't want to go where that guy, we missed a lot and went, I need help.
I need help.
16 years, kids' great.
That was 12 years, 13 years ago, kids' 30, married, college degree, everything.
Wow.
And he goes, Can I give your name out?
Sure.
People give me a hundred bucks to talk to their kid.
I said, fuck, this is great, man.
What the fuck?
But I loved it because you're helping somebody.
I always love to help people.
And so as I'm doing that, I get a phone call from a lady named Jean Bandish.
She's from the juvenile court coordinator in Brevard County.
And she says, hey, Mr. Lawton, Judge Reimer would like to see you.
I ain't going to see no fucking judge.
She goes, no, no, she wants to.
I said, I don't give a fuck.
You got a warrant?
You don't got a warrant.
I know the law.
She goes, no, no, no, no.
She wants to know what you do.
I said, listen, I ain't doing anything illegal.
I'm fucking helping people.
I don't want.
No, that's what she wants to know.
I still don't want to go to a courthouse.
Who fucking wants to go to a courthouse?
Right.
She convinces me that they just want to talk to me about the program, and I go in there on a Friday.
So Friday comes.
I go in there.
I don't even know how to fucking work a computer.
I don't know shit.
Now I'm pretty tech, but I didn't know anything.
My nephew, who's since passed, he shows me how to do a PowerPoint.
He helps me put a PowerPoint.
I don't know.
10 slide, 15 slide PowerPoint.
Who the fuck uses PowerPoints now?
I don't know.
But anyway, it's a PowerPoint.
And I go in there and I show them everything.
And the judge goes, Oh, thank you.
Would you like to stay for the rest of the minutes?
No.
Get the fuck out of here.
I don't feel good, man.
I'm in a fucking judge's chambers.
And every time I'm in front of a fucking judge, I'm going to prison.
It's been 11 years in prison.
Right.
11 straight.
12 year sentences.
Four 12 year sentences.
11 of.
They ran them concurrent.
Anyway, and that's how the 11 years.
So I'm sitting there and I leave.
This is a Friday.
I get a phone call Monday morning.
Jean says, Hey, Mr. Lawton, how you doing?
Yeah, good.
She goes, I just want to let you know Judge Ryman sentenced two people to your program.
What fucking program?
What do you mean?
She goes, Your program, you know, you talked about it was a fucking idea in my head.
I ended up developing the number one program that's been recognized on the floor of the United States Congress in the country, a four-part program that I still have right now.
Anybody can go on my website.
I sell it $35 or some shit.
I don't even try to get people a lot of money or anything, just enough to fucking keep the internet shit going.
Right, right.
And it's a four-part program based on my life, what prison is really like, what you're going to lose, and avoiding and dissolving bad associations.
A four-part program.
I developed it.
In fact, I'm the only ex-con in the United States who's an honorary cop.
Really?
Only man in the country.
I was sworn in in Lake St. Louis, Missouri, and I'm no cop lover.
Let me get that straight.
Cops know me.
I support good cops.
Right.
These fucking cops that harass and got bully complexes and all the bullshit or hit you for pot or bullshit drug, that crap there.
Get out of the car.
I smell something.
They want to find bullshit.
It's bullshit.
That's not what America should be about.
No.
Do I want a cop when my house is being broken in?
Absolutely.
911, help me.
Don't stop me for some bullshit.
I even came up with a couple of policies that I don't think cops should ever be allowed to stop me for anything that's non life threatening.
Meaning, if you're going 100 miles an hour down the street, yeah, you're going to hurt somebody.
But if you're going five miles an hour over the limit, you want to give me a ticket?
Give me a ticket.
They can take your license plate with their car camera.
Right.
Send me a ticket.
If you make a right turn and don't put your single light on, they shouldn't stop you.
Right.
They should give you, if they want to, they could take a picture.
Boom.
Give you a ticket.
Because once they stop you, everything happens.
You might have a little pot in the car or some shit.
Oh, fuck.
What do I do?
Oh, am I going to run?
I'm going to dip.
I'm not saying you, somebody.
You know what I mean?
And once you're in the system, for one thing, it's a vicious cycle.
It's so hard to escape it because they have you these, oh, this guy's already been busted for this, this, this, and this.
We're fucking nailing this guy.
You're 100% right, man.
You are 100%.
And it's wrong.
You know, they can look you up.
They can do everything from your plate.
And if you're a fucking convicted felon and all that, or not even convicted, I don't care.
I mean, you know, wanted is what I meant.
Right.
They shouldn't just fucking have the, that's where even cops I got convinced now.
I have a lot of cops because I deal with good cops.
Go on my channel.
There's a chief of police where we live.
I love them.
But then there's a sheriff who is a fucking idiot.
He really is.
I don't give a fuck about him.
He's an idiot.
Fucking, he's an egomaniac.
He's a fucking nut.
Is it Brevard County?
Yeah, Brevard County, Sheriff.
He's whacked, man.
He's so about himself.
His head can't get through that fucking door.
Yeah, he comes up with the Wheel of Fucking Fugitive.
Yeah.
He comes up with fucking Fishing for Justice with Wayne Ivey and fucking they go.
And these people, you know what the people fucking did?
Violation of probation.
Bad check writing.
So they put you on TV to really make you look like a jerk off.
Is that really necessary?
And then you get hardcore.
Oh, but he's a criminal.
Oh, how many.
You know, they did a study.
Did you know the average person breaks the law three times a day?
Hmm.
I'm not surprised.
I did it.
Come walking across the street.
Yeah, you jaywalked me.
Jaywalking me.
So, my point is at what point are we part of the community?
Because, see, cops should belong.
Like I said, I support good cops.
Police reform and prison reform are my specialty.
In police reforms, cops.
Should be part of your community right and if I have a kid that's so fucked up and they need Larry's help or this help It's I don't give a fuck if you go in that house and you find fucking coke or pills or whatever Don't arrest them.
I didn't call you to arrest my kid.
I called you to help my kid.
Oh But he's breaking the law or or that's the only way no, it's not We could try a lot better ways than what you just said give him a wreck it Yeah, it's a the law thing such a it's become to like now in the country.
It's almost just like this mentality of us versus them.
I, I talk about that every day.
Then yeah, us against them.
You got to break down that us against them mentality.
Yeah, imagine I was thinking about it.
I was like, imagine if we didn't have cops, we didn't have law enforcement.
What would?
What would you do?
Well, you would want to have as many friends as possible and you would want to have the weak.
Weak people would obviously want to become friends with stronger people and you would want to be able to be protected.
You would want to feel you have to have that sense of, of security or protection.
I'm just like in a hypothetical world where there's no doubt about that.
But they had that.
Think of the Roman times.
They had the king and he had his men and they enforced whatever they wanted because they were the strong or whatever on the weak or whatever.
And even back in the old days of the United States in the 1700s and they had a guy, sheriffs in the 1800s and stuff that would do that.
And they were usually criminals or drunk.
So just the fastest guy with the gun.
You know, whatever, how it worked.
But what has happened is they've gotten so much power, cops, that a lot of them can't handle it.
Now, again, there's great cops out there that want to do the right thing, want to help the neighbor, want to get the listen, everyone thinks, Larry, you're an ex-criminal shit and you were a bad guy.
I don't want the I often then tell people, listen to me.
I was in prison.
In Atlanta, we had 2,000 inmates.
880 had life.
Think of this.
200 of those, 250, fight their case legally.
450 find a lover and they live their life.
They go to unicorn, whatever the fuck they're going to do.
Great.
And 200 are fucking psychopaths.
Really?
When I say psychopaths, never belong being out on the street again.
Ever.
I don't want that guy living next to you.
Can you define what it takes for a person to be a psychopath?
What characteristics?
How do you tell?
Zero empathy, zero compassion will cut your fucking head off and go to sleep.
I know a guy who stabbed the guy, his cellmate, and went back to bed.
Killed him.
And went to sleep.
There's another guy who cut a guy's head off in prison with a shank.
These two inmates and another inmate, poor guy only had a 10 year sentence and he was getting out.
He's a bank robber.
They were in a cell.
They put three in a cell.
They put three guys in a cell.
They cut him open.
These two guys had life.
They cut him open.
They took his intestines out and it wrapped his intestines around the door.
I consider that a psychopath.
Is this the prison that you were in?
Defining Psychopathy Traits00:02:01
Yeah.
Holy fuck, dude.
I consider that psychopaths.
Now, you could look them up.
You could look these things up.
They're very easily.
What I talk about, I always tell people, you don't even have to fucking believe me.
I lived it.
Go look it up.
And you'll be able to Google it.
Yeah.
So the violent level, now again, going back to the psychopaths, how does someone become that?
Do you think they're born with that?
How do you think that it's like childhood trauma?
Well, I think there's a lot of factors that go into it.
I think what happens is you know, I hate to say this.
I think I could become a psychopath if I lived in that.
I don't know.
If you did what?
If I lived in that environment long enough.
I don't know.
Maybe I couldn't.
Maybe I couldn't because there's something deep fucking seated.
Yeah.
I always, even when I was a criminal, I used to give money to people and I cared about people.
Always did.
Always had a heart.
Right.
You know, I often talk to parents, you know, and I do a lot with parents and families and they'll ask me, you know.
I want to talk to the kid.
Once I find out certain questions, you know, he hates his parents, he hates his sister, but you find out he loves cats or loves dogs or something.
He's savable.
He's got that compassion.
He's got that empathy in him.
Now, you got to get it out.
You got to direct it.
But then you get the really psychos, maybe, you know, like you said, for whatever reason.
There's no one's home.
Nobody's home.
I'm telling you, I've seen their eyes, their black eyes.
And.
And what you can almost see in this.
Oh, there's nothing.
It's dark and those people I i've ate with them, talked with them, hung out with them and you don't think I ever trusted them.
Not for a second.
I don't want that guy cutting out, living next to you.
So i'm not a bleeding heart.
Everybody gets out of prison.
Rehabilitation vs Public Branding00:06:57
It has to be.
You know the right people, but we have too many people in prison who do change.
You take myself and I often tell young people when you're 20 Ryan yeah, I think you know it all, i'm not not, I love them.
Then you hit 30 and you say, fuck, I didn't know shit at 20.
When you hit 40, it's gonna be, fuck, I didn't know shit at 30.
When you hit 50, you're gonna say, am I ever gonna fucking learn anything?
I'm gonna hit 60 and I'm learning every day.
Yeah, because you change you change your views you change your things and I'm I'm a very I am a very I get I'm very socially liberal very socially liberal And somewhat fiscally conservative I still don't care what.
No matter what, no person in this country should have to eat cat food.
I don't give a fuck what she did wrong or her husband left her and they didn't put enough and she stole.
I don't give a fuck.
Nobody should eat cat food in this country or any country.
We should be able to feed people and I don't care how that has to happen.
But I don't believe we should just give money, just give money for lazy people.
I'm not lazy.
You're not lazy, obviously.
And I think we need to.
That's my views.
That's why I'm a libertarian.
But I believe, I think all drugs should be legal.
They've done the experiments now in Oregon.
You know, drugs are now criminalized.
Did you know LSD and mushrooms and stuff in DC is legalized?
And it should be.
You're not going to hurt.
I mean, what are you going to do?
Who are you going to hurt?
You can drink a fucking fifth of vodka and go drive down the street, but you can't eat a magic mushroom.
Absolutely.
See, my point is if you commit a crime to get the drug, you should be held accountable.
If you're robbing somebody, be held accountable.
But what you do in your own head, I often tell people you want to go in your fucking bedroom, jack off in the corner up against it, have fun, do whatever the fuck you want to do.
It's your house, your place.
You shouldn't infringe on other people's, but do what you want.
That's what freedom is.
That's true freedom.
And we don't have it right now.
We don't have it.
A lot of people, oh, we live in the freest country in the world.
Wait a minute.
96 countries, 196 countries have freedom.
Total freedom.
Much as us.
So it's not, do I love America?
Absolutely.
And then again, going back to 196 countries have freedom, but we have more people locked up.
Than any other country in the world.
So, exactly.
So, how free are we?
At what degree are we overstepping our bounds as a country?
Yes, we need government.
Yes, we need roads fixed.
And, you know, the government was originally formed, and I'm a history nut, especially like the Navy and the military and the Coast Guard was actually the first service ever out, is because we wanted to protect waterways and we wanted to protect free trade.
That's a government function.
We want to defend ourselves against another country.
That's what we need.
But we don't need government in your business.
You know, like the sheriff who wants to show these fucking people who wrote a bad check and now they're fucking the biggest villain and they're on Wheel of Fugitive and Wheel of whatever the fuck he calls it.
That's such a degrading thing.
How much fucking things did he do wrong, that guy?
Right.
If he really wants to be honest with himself.
Now, I'm not saying you can't get him, but you don't got to humiliate him on a fucking bullshit wheel of thing.
Now, if the guy's a murderer, a fucking, you want help getting a murderer that's killed a fucking kid.
Absolutely.
You know, there's crimes that we should all be pissed at.
What happened at the Capitol.
Right.
Fucking treason.
Right.
I don't care what people, Trumpers or whatever the fuck they are.
I don't give a shit.
That was fucking treason.
That was, it's beyond words for me.
I listened to Howard Stern today go off.
Really?
What was he saying about it?
Fucking thinks he's fucking nuts.
People should be in jail, prison, all this.
They're brainwashed.
And they are.
It's fucking crazy.
Scary as fuck.
Fucking scary, crazy.
And those are the things that we should be pissed at.
And we should be pissed at a murderer or me.
I was a fucking criminal.
I'm being honest.
I was a robber.
I was not good.
I belonged in prison.
Did I belong to be strapped down naked?
A guy take his dick out and pee on my face?
Without me wanting it?
I'm joking.
You know, my point is it's wrong.
I mean, I was wrong then.
And those are the crimes that should be held accountable and go to prison.
Yes, the guy wrote the check right and the credit.
They're wrong.
But do they need to be humiliated on a wheel of fugitive?
Violation of probation.
What was his probation?
You find out he fucking got six-month probation for fucking driving on suspended license.
I was just going to say that.
You know, multiple.
But now he's on the wheel of fugitive.
Do we really need to fucking goddamn humiliate people?
I don't believe so.
Now, he's such a good politician as a sheriff, and I give him that.
But he only fucking talks to the people, you know, the old people.
He scares them.
He could never get to you.
Fear mongering.
He can't get to a guy like you, who's an independent thinker who looks through him, or Ryan, or people young.
They look at him like, who the fuck are you?
I know, they tell me in my class.
Right, right, right.
You know, fuck, that guy's the biggest dick.
Listen, I know the guy.
And he doesn't want to help the jail.
You know what he did for years in the jail?
I don't know if they still do it.
They didn't give women tampons.
Really?
How would you like to have a daughter or a wife or a girl or anybody and she's on a period and they don't give them something to help themselves?
It blows my mind away.
How you can go home at night and say, oh, I did a great job.
It's barbaric, man.
It's barbaric.
It's not designed to help anybody.
None.
You know what his line is?
I want my jail to be the toughest jail.
That's not what fucking it's for.
It should be for rehabilitation.
Right.
Well, yeah.
And to hold violent people.
Jails, we fucked it up.
And going out there in the public and just saying, we need to be tough.
We need to get the criminals off the street and branding them, branding them as these criminals to the public.
It just makes people, especially older people who are more vulnerable to the media or to advertising or whatever, who have lesser bullshit detectors than we do.
Oh, my God.
Everybody talks about young people, right?
The Cost of Criminal Labels00:04:06
I love young people.
I think you guys are fucking smarter.
I think you guys are more informed.
I think you have greater views than we ever did.
And I'm happy about the way this is going with the young people because I'm only here to give you my experience, whether it's whatever.
I help young people because there's one thing you can't.
You're smarter than me.
You know how to do a lot of things.
Yeah, I know.
I have a good IQ.
But it's not that.
My point is, I have experience.
in a place you don't want to go right i have experience because i i went through life i often tell young people i say you're 30 ryan's 20.
you're not smarter than him but you're more experienced than him that's what you are and now you get a guy who's 40 years old he's been in your business whatever tv business he's gonna say well that's not smart but he's got more experience than me so you're gonna listen older people got to know that you know most older people let me tell you a great story about young people old people i'm on i was on a board with the department of justice up in new york Washington, D.C.
And at the time, I think I had a Blackberry or whatever it was.
And I'm new, but I'm working with kids a lot.
So I know a lot about young people, kids.
I say young people, you're 20 years old or whatever.
So we're at a big, big conference room.
And one of the people up there says, Ah, some of these kids we got to give up on.
What?
I stand up.
Now I can get pretty, you know, I stand up.
I take my phone.
I slam it on the desk.
Everybody looks, Oh, fuck, this guy's crazy or whatever.
I go, Who in this room?
Can program their phone quicker than their 16 year old kid.
They all assigned.
I said, you know what?
Larry gets the phone, opens the book, hits button one, opens the book, hits, I get there.
Do you know what my daughter does?
She takes the phone, starts playing with it, reboots it, plays with it, reboots it, plays with it, reboots it.
Here, daddy, it's done.
She did it quicker than me.
What does that show us?
Oh, look, I said, they learn differently than us.
And sometimes it's better than us.
And when we as adults don't listen, And just think it's our way to fucking highway, we're wrong.
And until we get out of that fucking space, we'll never better this country or better the young people.
And I'm big on that.
I love working with my.
The reason, and I believe this, my channel has grown so quickly.
And we were the fastest growing channel on YouTube.
The reason is because I have experience with my partner, my manager, Peter, genius.
Then I got my son, who's 30, 31.
And I got Darian.
Who's 20 or 21.
I listen to them.
Now, are they always right?
No.
And I make my decisions from there.
For other reasons.
For experience reasons or business reasons or whatever it is.
But I listen to them.
When they say to me, like I remember, you know, I started my YouTube channel with an iPhone.
Really?
With a fucking iPhone.
Nothing else.
Literally nothing else.
Then I bought a $30 fucking tripod and a fucking thing.
That's all I started with.
Do you film the videos on your phone?
Yeah, my bad.
Not now.
I do.
I actually sometimes do three, four camera shoots and whatever, and I use them still.
I've done this with mega TV companies, iPhones.
This is the 11 Pro Max because they're the front cameras.
Oh, yeah.
The front camera is amazing.
That's why I did it.
So Darian and my son, I flew them in.
We had a meeting and all that kind of stuff.
And they said to me, sit down.
I still had the iPhone.
And I don't know, six months ago, eight months, or whatever it was, they go, my son says, Bob.
Darian goes, Bob.
Got to get better cameras.
And to this day, I look at the same video.
I can't pick it out.
But I guarantee you could.
And I guarantee Ryan could.
Starting with a Cheap Tripod00:12:09
That's funny.
Guarantee it.
You guys are in a good space because of your ages.
And you just got to follow that.
You know, get your older guy maybe or whatever.
But you guys are in a good space because you know what your audience.
First, once you know who you're on.
My audience is young.
But I didn't notice it.
I still don't.
But we got good cameras now.
I got, you know, the cameras, lighting, and all the bullshit that we all need.
But, you know, they're on me, and I got another one here, and then I'll put this one, another sound.
We're still upgrading.
We're always doing little things.
I don't even know it.
That's great, man.
But I listen to them.
Yeah, you're surrounded yourself with smart people that know what they're doing.
I'm surrounded myself with smart people that know what they're doing.
I'm surrounded myself with the age.
Yeah.
You know, that's why I'm very happy the way this country's going.
People aren't.
Oh, it's fucking going.
Bullshit.
What the fuck is wrong with it?
Tell me.
Because they are independent thinkers, and they don't want war, and they want legalized drugs.
Okay, why not?
I often, when they start that shit, and I love this, well, it's going to be anarchy in the streets.
Oh, really?
Go to look at Switzerland.
Go look at Norway.
They're all fucking legalized, everything.
Right.
Recidivism went down, up, you know, lower recidivism, lower crime rates, lower addiction rates.
Saving money.
Tell me why.
It's big money is fighting it.
Prison system, the private prison system, they're fighting it.
Fucking people, law enforcement, you know why they fight it?
Because they get money for it.
Right.
They get fucking tons of money to fucking have drug task force and tank fucking task force.
It's bullshit.
That's military in our streets.
Law enforcement should be Andy fucking Griffin.
What do you think?
You know, Andy Griffin, remember Mayberry fucking RFD with fucking Barney?
You're too young.
Fuck.
Yeah.
I missed out on a lot of that stuff.
Yeah.
Barney Fife.
What do you think, though, is the solution to all this team mentality, tribalism, you know, this team, red versus blue?
I mean, that's obviously the cause of, you know, all the angst right now everywhere.
How do you think it answers that?
I will give you it right.
It took me, and I'll be honest, it took me, I interviewed, and I think you should have him on your show.
I interviewed the president.
of the Libertarian Party of Florida.
What was his name?
Steve Nicala is how you pronounce it.
Great guy.
Smart.
Young.
26.
Really?
Yeah, his family owns the Island Grill and eight Wendy's and all this stuff.
Great guy.
And I'll tell you why he's a great guy, because he's a visionary.
He speaks well.
And the views of the Libertarian Party, I didn't really know.
Now, I was always socially liberal.
Fiscally, somewhat physically conservative.
And when he went over the whole Libertarian Party and what they were, and I had him on.
I was in the Keys.
Blew me away.
And then I started researching it.
Then I spoke that they wanted me to speak at then their, what a big event, the state of Florida, you know, annual event.
I was one of the guest speakers.
And I liked him because I told him, I said, you know I'm going to fucking blast everybody.
He goes, Larry, I know your channel.
Blast whatever you want.
Yeah.
And he didn't restrict me in any way.
Didn't even ask me what I was going to speak about.
I said, do what you want.
That's liberty.
That's why I like them.
When you ask what's the answer, I think the two party system sucks.
Yeah.
Because they're putting you in a box.
You know, I don't know what your political affiliation is, I don't care.
Your views is what counts.
Right.
Now, you should have views that represent you.
Now, of course, you're not going to get every single thing of what you want.
But there's things in the Republican Party I can't stand.
And there's things in the Democrat I'm not.
more okay, but not, you know, same as you.
And I think we need to get away.
I think another third party's coming because of you, because of Ryan, because the young people are growing up with more open minds.
And I think, you know, they say this.
The Republican Party has fucked up because they don't believe in the, listen, the Browning of America is here.
Love it.
We are more inclusive than ever.
I have no prejudices in me.
Zero.
I just don't have them.
It's not in my makeup.
The one blessings my parents gave me, I grew up in a melting pot.
Yeah.
We didn't give a fuck you.
Black, white, Spanish, Chinese, a Martian.
If you lived on our block, you were good.
If you didn't, well, where the fuck was that?
In the Bronx.
Okay.
Yeah.
Yeah.
If you lived in that area, you were good.
If you didn't, you were no fucking good.
I mean, it was just the way we lived.
Right.
So we didn't have those specific, oh, he's black.
That's a lot of people from that area, too, right?
They feel the same way as you?
Yeah, see, a lot of New Yorkers aren't prejudiced at all.
No.
Because they live in their melting pot.
Right.
And, you know, I understand it, you know, growing up in it, but I'm hoping younger people, even when their parents were fucked up, and they are, some are, don't hate it, but they just grew up that way.
But you have that open mind, younger people.
And I think what's happened with the Republican Party, they're not inclusive enough, obviously.
They don't.
Obviously, abortion issues and religious issues.
And if you're not a fucking Christian, you don't want to fucking hail the flag or whatever.
Stop it.
That doesn't make us who we are.
What makes us who we are is how we treat people and how we are represented around the world and stuff.
Not what you fucking.
I don't give a fuck what people pray to or what they do.
That's their own business, man.
Everybody should have their own fucking say.
That's freedom, and that's liberty, man.
But they want to say, no, we're free, free, free, but you have to fucking do the fucking Pledge of Allegiance.
No, you don't.
Do you want to?
I do, but it's.
I don't.
If someone don't want to.
Good.
The guy wants to kneel for the fucking national.
Have fucking kneel.
What do I give a fuck with you?
Right.
I mean, there's.
Oh, that's the biggest.
If that's your biggest fucking worry in this world.
Oh, damn.
That pisses so many people off.
And if that bothers you in this world, you got some fucking issues.
That's what bothers you.
Oh, I'll fucking fall for the sport with a flag.
Yeah, right.
To do that.
Right.
To do that.
Hitler didn't let you do that.
We'll fucking let you do that.
That's what the fucking.
Get it, man.
But anyway, I think, and then the Democrats, they want, oh, give every fucking thing in the world away to anybody who wants free college, free this.
Well, who's paying for it?
I mean, yeah.
Well, we're going to take over the world so we got all the fucking money and oil and everything?
No.
The education thing I can relate to.
I think, I do think that the education thing makes sense.
Because you want smarter people, right?
That's the whole thing.
You want less losers in your country.
I agree, if you do.
But they have to have it make worth something.
And let me tell you what I mean.
Right when I was doing my program with the court system, it's in the courts a one judge said something, he goes, no Larry, he goes.
You got to charge for that more I go, why he goes.
It's got to be worth something, otherwise they won't understand it.
They'll just think that's another thing I had to do.
If you make education totally free, totally free now here's my grill you want to go to.
You want to serve the country you want, I don't give a fuck if it's in the uh, If you want the government to pay for your education, you should have to serve in a voluntary organization for a year, two years.
Or whatever number.
Like, you know, if you go to Israel, I'm not Jewish, but I know the countries.
If you go to Israel, everybody in that country has to serve in the military for two years.
Everybody.
Two years.
That's giving them a national thing or whatever they get paid for other than that.
But I'm talking about, like you said, with education.
I love it.
I do believe in giving free education.
First of all, obviously, if you have the brain power.
I just don't want people to maintain a certain, like, a certain sort of work ethic, a certain amount of grades.
You can't just be failing through college and get it for free.
That's what I mean.
You have to be a go getter and you have to be able to have a goal.
Be like, I want to achieve this.
And you have to.
And in my thing, if.
Or they have a couple of things.
If you work for the government, you know, in, let's say, the Department of Environmental, if you work there for five years, no bill.
Right.
You have to have something to make it worth it.
Otherwise, like you said, people are just going to.
Oh, let me go to college and waste another five years.
What's the alternative?
You spend $100,000 for a year.
I don't like that.
You can't get a fucking job.
I don't like that.
And I think it's stupid.
And we still need people often say, well, that's because they get a degree in history.
Well, it's okay to get a degree in history.
I love history.
If you don't know history, you're going to repeat it.
So I agree that you should have, but they have to at least do something, make it worth something instead of just nothing.
And I don't mean just for you.
If, If you're asking the other people, because taxes pay it, if you're asking the society for pay for your good education, do something for society.
I don't give a shit if it's volunteering on a city council boards or whatever.
It's got to be something.
And then I'm all for it, education.
Right.
I'm big on education.
Right.
Even if you just have a really successful business, you're helping the economy.
Right.
Whatever it is, there should be some kind of worth of something.
That's all I'm saying.
Yes.
And yes.
But in the Democrats, they want to just give this.
Or I believe in universal health care.
I do.
I don't think anybody should go broke in this country because they got an illness.
Right.
It shouldn't happen.
Right.
You get hit by a car, it fucking paralyzes you, you're fucked.
Yeah.
And now you're going to just lose everything you ever owned and everything else because.
Some doctors and hospitals want to make your money.
You know what I mean?
I don't agree with that.
But I do think we need a strong defense.
The alternative to that, though, I mean, look at the VA.
A lot of people, a lot of veterans, they want to get out.
I'm a veteran.
Yeah.
I mean, a lot of people I've talked to that have terrible experiences with the VA.
I don't, though.
Really?
Love them.
They've been treating me right.
That's awesome.
And I've been retired since 1986.
Really?
I got hurt in the service.
Uh huh.
And that's when I went into crime after I got out.
Really?
But yeah, I went in in 1979.
Geez, I'm aging myself.
Fuck.
I went in over 40 years ago.
I went into service in 1979.
I got out in 86.
End of 86.
Almost 80.
Actually, December 31st of 1986.
So I was in for seven years and four or five months.
And I got out because I got hurt.
And I'm a disabled vet.
And I get a check.
And I get medical care.
And I get everything.
And they've always treated me right.
Really?
Yeah.
Even through prison.
You know, it's like the long wait times.
Well, you know, if they've really come a long way, I got lucky because.
First of all, I was educated enough and persistent enough.
I do feel for older people, like an 80-year-old man, and you're asking him to do this, this, and that.
You're obviously very outspoken.
You know how to get what you want.
Right.
You know, I got a little bit more aggressive, if you want to call it that.
Some people are not.
And able to do it, you know, technology-wise now.
You know, you get older people don't can't.
They get put on hold and they hang.
I understand that.
I do feel for them.
And I think we need more elderly advocates in the VA.
Maybe it's a person that just helps the elderly that can't do it.
Because I look at my mom.
My mom's alive.
And I take care of my mom.
I don't know if you knew that.
I take care.
That's where I live with my mom to take care of her.
Oh, wow.
I moved back from Fort Lauderdale to take care of my mom.
Really?
Yeah.
Wow.
Because she took care of me my whole life.
Yeah.
For me in prison.
Now she's 80.
She'll be 88.
And I take care of her.
Free Speech on Social Media00:15:33
Wow.
Yeah.
Just her and I. That's amazing.
And I will never not take care of her.
You know what I mean?
Right.
Whatever, and that's why I built the studio and the house, right?
Right, right.
Oh, that's great, man.
I gotta come check it out.
Yeah, yeah, you gotta come in there.
Got a bar in there.
We could drink, really?
Yeah, of course, I do.
But that's you know, I mean, my beliefs and stuff.
You know, you'll love this.
A lot of people want me to run for office, right?
My channel, they want me to run for Congress or office.
I said, Do you fucking crazy?
Do you know how I will get up on that floor and tell them all to go fuck themselves?
But you know, we need, we need, I don't, I think I could do.
More good behind the scenes with a bigger and bigger channel and stuff.
Oh, for sure.
But we totally need guys like yourself who are, I would have guessed, more of a progressive or at least a person who wants to do the right thing, help more people, have fun, live life, man.
Too many people work when our age, we fucking work.
Yeah, I did too, but fucking let these guys live, man.
What the fuck?
What do you think about fucking Trump getting banned on all social media?
Twitter.
You know, a lot of people ask me that.
I'm kind of torn on it, man.
Well, I know because they're a free speech thing, but.
Not only the free speech thing, but I feel like it's just going to rile so many.
I don't feel like that's the answer.
That I disagree.
You can't let one or X amount of people.
Listen, it's a company.
They're making company decisions.
Remember this.
Right.
Listen, if it's a bad company decision and 70 million people get off them, they'll go out of business.
They're making that decision that it's not going to be that.
So if you're in a capitalistic country, don't let the government tell you you have to go and let them on either.
Right.
If you're really free, the market will determine if it's a good or bad move.
True.
Now, if Twitter fucking goes down because of fucking it loses people and all this kind of shit, well, Twitter made a bad decision.
Right.
And then some people will say, well, you know, would you let just the big tech companies run the free?
No, you're not.
The president, if he wants, can get out and make a press fucking release tomorrow.
He's not being fucking silenced.
Right.
He can get on and make a press release.
He can put out a press release.
He can get on national TV.
Yep.
He can do anything the fuck he wants.
Right.
Now, they banned every one of those platforms, that new platform, whatever they talked about, the one they called it.
Oh, Parlor?
Parlor.
They there it's in there.
I went and looked at it.
It's you make an account, no, but I looked at their law rules.
They can ban anybody at any time for any fucking reason, right?
Right?
Right?
Well, it's right there.
You don't like that to begin with, don't get on it.
But when they do it, don't bitch that they did it, right?
Right?
For sure, they're allowed to do it.
I'm not that's not my question.
If I know they're allowed to do it, do I think it's right?
Do I think it's like, don't you think that both opinions, no matter both sides of the Of the fucking aisle, no matter how extreme they are, people should be able to experience them and make a judgment on if it's right or wrong.
All right, let me give you a second.
I know what you're saying.
The Capitol, right?
People see all these crazy motherfuckers going into the Capitol with fucking rebel flags and wearing shirts that say it wasn't enough.
What was the thing they say didn't kill enough Jews?
These fucking neo Nazis that are in there, whatever.
People should be able to see that.
And understand that okay, this is crazy.
I need to.
You should be able to condemn that or, you know, make a decision about that and nobody's questioned.
They're not stopping that, they're stopping one person.
Let me ask you, let me take it to the other level, is it okay for you to go to a movie theater and scream fire fire, fire and everyone panics and three people die when they run out of the place and there's no fire right?
No, they know that free speech doesn't give you a right for that right.
Is it okay for somebody to recruit fucking psychopaths that are not so outside the mainstream?
Now, we don't let the KKK fucking do that because it's, you know, that's banned now.
You can't do that.
At what point is creating anarchy stopped?
In 1937 or 38, when Hitler become stronger and stronger in power, he shut down so he was the only one that can do that.
If we let one person, whether it's a Donald Trump, anybody, whoever is crazy, they did it with Alex Jones because he'd do whatever it is.
Right.
If we, and I get where you're going to go, if we let them create more and more havoc without stopping them, at what point do you, what happens if he says, I'm on Twitter and I want to mobilize a half a million people and I want you to get your arms and we're going to go to war?
Is that right?
No, definitely not.
I mean, that's.
Because people are brainwashed.
Howard Stern said he did.
People are brainwashed, yeah.
Howard Stern has the biggest audience in the world.
He got 15 million listeners a day.
Think of that.
Avid listeners.
Howard Stern knows if he wanted to, he could mobilize or he has a percentage of them.
Listen, I have a percentage of people.
I have a Discord.
I have a percentage of people I'm sure that are convinceable or whatever you want to call it.
So now I have to be responsible.
If I started getting crazy.
Yeah.
Should I be shut down or stopped at least for doing that?
Right.
I have to believe at some point we have to keep civility.
Because if you say nobody's allowed to do anything, you can't shut anybody down.
They can do anything they want.
Right.
Then that guy in that movie theater who goes in there and causes a riot because he says, people are going to be shot.
Run, run, run.
Everyone's going to die.
Everyone's going to die.
Everyone dies.
And an old lady gets trampled.
I'm, in this case, in the thing, what's going on now.
I think those are business decisions by those companies and let the market bear it.
Let the market bear it.
Right.
Why don't you shut Fox down?
Right.
Because they're spewing this stuff about the election.
We know it's false.
Come on, let's get everybody out there.
Yeah.
And there are people who are going to be listening saying, no, fucking no, it's stolen.
60 fucking courts, federal judges, said there's no fucking fraud.
Mm-hmm.
The own administration that Donald Trump put in said it was the most secure election ever in the history in America.
Did they really?
Yes.
Homeland Security and the Election Commission.
The guy resigned because Brunch Banner, and he did it.
All the money was put in there.
Most secure election in American history.
Wow.
So why are people just inciting people to do something stupid?
That's what that is.
People want to be led.
I know that.
I mean, people don't, like, you guys, people, I love, that's why I like young people who have, look at the ages of most of those people.
Most of them are older.
Yeah.
And I don't mean, they're not your age.
They're not 25.
Right, right.
Yeah, they're much older.
35, 40, 45, 50, you know.
Look at the guys that are sitting on the bench.
You know, they're 50 years old, 45 years old with fucked up lives.
Probably didn't do anything in their lives.
And they want to be led.
They want to be led.
And I get want to be led.
We need leaders.
But you need leaders who are going to push us in the right direction.
If that makes sense.
I mean, and so as far as I do understand at what point.
Listen, the market will bear it out.
Right.
Because if it's bad decisions and nobody goes on it, because what you're saying, are you going to go on Twitter?
I don't know if you do go on Twitter.
Yeah, I'm still going to go on Twitter.
Okay, so I guess it's not fucking.
It's nothing so bad that you're not going on Twitter.
Right.
So they made that calculation, Twitter.
Trust me, if Twitter thought it was going to lose 100 million people.
And they're going to lose all this revenue.
Twitter's not fucking taking you down.
Right.
But they made a decision.
Or they made a decision that it was so bad.
We don't care about the money.
And we're going to lose it.
But not only did Twitter do it, Facebook did it.
Twitter did it.
Instagram, YouTube.
Listen, you and I know something.
We're on YouTube.
There's monetization.
You know this.
If I do something, and I've been demonetized.
Have you been demonetized on specific videos?
Yeah, well, when you look for reasons, whatever.
When you look at it, do you alter your thing?
It sometimes does alter the way you do it.
If I look at my Twitter and we put up a video, we put up a video early and we look at the rules.
Yeah.
And we skirted them, didn't skirt them, whatever we did.
And we go back and change it because we're going to follow the fucking rule because I want to be monetized.
Right, right.
So they put the rules out.
I either follow them or guess what?
Larry don't get fucking monetized.
Right.
And I can't knock that.
That's the rule.
Do I wish it wouldn't?
I mean, yes.
Do I think I'm it?
But then when you look at it and you look deeper on their end, Sometimes it's overboards, at least I believe, but for somebody else it's not.
You know, a lot of times with content, like movie reviews, if you make them your own review, then you can monetize.
But I had a person, Russian, take my fucking videos and totally fucking change the not do a thing, fucking just put my voice in it and was making money or tried to make money.
Really?
And YouTube shut them down.
Thank you.
Yeah.
They protected my fucking thing by shutting them down.
And if you ever look at YouTube, most things they shut down is they're trying to protect somebody else's content or something else.
Right, right, right.
So, how do you knock that?
That's a business decision.
Yeah.
For sure.
And we, you and I, as influencers, what do we do?
We watch what we're doing.
We alter it.
We still want to have conversations like we're having or whatever we're doing.
But we understand there is a boundary of some sort.
Because if there's no boundary, Dan, what are we going to fucking do?
Yeah, there has to be a boundary.
I agree.
I totally agree with that.
There also has to be more conversations about things, too.
People just like to make these bold statements, no matter how untrue they are.
And people do get brainwashed by them.
And they just don't think.
There's no thinking involved.
They just like to repeat shit that they see or they hear.
Well, I don't know if it's that, but here's the problem.
At what point do you believe something?
In other words, if you're sitting in front of me and I fucking show you a video of.
A guy shooting the fucking guy and it's not altered.
Right.
Do you believe it?
Maybe.
Or do you say, not my guy.
He fucking, no, that's all.
You had professionals, you had this doing it, you're doing it.
At what point?
I mean.
That's the weird thing, right?
Because people already believe it doesn't matter.
You can't change their beliefs.
You can't change their mind.
I have friends of mine.
They filter it backwards.
Whatever they see out there, they bring it in and it either reinforces what they already believe.
Or if it doesn't reinforce what they already believe, it's got to be fake.
It's got to be altered.
100% right.
And it's sad because I have friends of mine.
Now, this incident now changed a lot of people.
Totally changed a lot of people.
I'm talking staunch fucking Trumpers or, you know, this incident.
I have a friend of mine I know for 40 years.
Older guy.
Said this ruined him.
Ruined his life.
Ruined everything.
And he was a big Trump guy.
And we used to debate, of course.
Never hate each other.
I never hate anybody.
I very.
You'll ever watch my videos, right?
I don't use the word hate.
I think it's a wasted emotion.
Yeah, I think if I hate it, it hurts me, not the person.
The person you hate don't give a fuck, it's just hurting you right?
I dislike things and I won't go to them or whatever, but I don't hate, I don't give a fuck, I just don't hate.
And I I think what's happened is this incident now has got people opening their eyes because they're seeing it.
I mean there.
I mean I don't know how you could talk your way out of this.
I don't know how you could talk your way out of this.
But there are people already saying, Oh, no, I love the couple that murdered.
Oh, that was Antiva in disguise.
Oh, I know, I saw that.
Then they find the guys who were ding, they got them on date.
They look them up on their social media for the last six months or whatever.
They're proud boy or this or whatever they are.
So now they did that one.
So now the narrative has changed.
Well, it is possible that some of the people there were there to rile it up, too, right?
It's possible that some people were there.
There's always a possibility.
But listen, if you're that.
There's also a possibility what hasn't been mentioned yet.
How do you know there weren't some Russian spies in there and they were planting some goddamn devices in there?
Totally.
George Soros paid for all of it, right?
George Soros paid all those people.
Yeah, I mean, it's so fucking crazy.
How do you fucking come up with this shit?
No, they're changing the narrative now to.
To switch it to Twitter and the, you know, all the Instagram, Twitter, what's the other one I care?
I just looked it up Instagram, Parlor.
Parlor.
And they're changing it.
Oh, now it's a free speech issue.
No, it's not.
That's a fucking free country.
To be a free country, that company can do whatever the fuck it wants.
Right.
Why is it a free speech?
Tell me why.
It is kind of weird, though.
It is kind of weird because of the age we're living in, the technologies we're living with, social media dominates everybody's lives.
To where they have what somebody sit back and say wait a minute.
Once you say most people have more interaction or communication on their phones than they do like we're having right now Absolutely so it's kind of like we're teetering on this little edge where companies like Twitter and Instagram are almost like a public utility.
No, no, no, no, tick tock.
Now another country's one right blow up.
China's tick tock blew up.
And Instagram Twitter, Facebook uh MESS, there's a zillion of them.
It really are.
If you start really getting down to them yeah, and you can go to which one you want.
So you're not being totally silenced, or you're not being just because you aren't on the biggest one right, or you went build this.
Listen, I have a uh, all that and I look at it as a tool, obviously to communicate or whatever right, but if it gets shut down, it gets shut down.
I go to the next one, You know, or if I don't like what I did, to get shut down, I change it as of YouTube.
If I do something on YouTube, that's where my main thing is.
Censorship Across All Platforms00:02:14
Right.
So I'll change it.
Or if it's not, maybe I'll get to a different platform.
Maybe it is a podcast.
But everything is censored in its own way.
So don't think, oh, this will never censor you.
That's not this bullshit.
They all put it in there so they can censor you.
Right.
But that's up to us.
You know, we laughed.
I love your logo.
It's kind of a U Porn logo.
The Pornhub logo.
The Pornhub.
Yeah.
I like U Porn, as you can tell.
Yeah.
But I love it.
And, you know, I was thinking about this when you said that earlier and we started just talking.
I go, look at the fucking platforms that never have an issue.
Porn.
Yeah.
Ever hear anything?
They're actually just recently having lots of issues, Pornhub.
They just recently got like a $600 million class action lawsuit against them and they had.
For what?
I forget exactly what it was for.
I'd have to read the article.
Someone not getting fucking passed the right way?
Yeah, something like that.
Are you serious, bro?
Yeah, man.
Yeah, they're under the fucking.
They're getting the screws tightened on right now.
And talk about free speech.
Why should they be?
Because it's probably religious right pushing this or whatever it is.
I don't know.
They had to remove a huge amount of their content from unverified people uploading their own content and monetizing it on their website.
So now they're only allowed to have.
Certain verified porn actors on there, and it's really.
Oh, I don't like that.
Oh, no, no, no.
It's fucking hard.
I don't see that with you, Pornhub.
And I think Pornhub owns you.
Pornhub's getting crushed right now.
But I think, don't they own you two, you porn too?
I thought I saw that.
I think they're all connected in one way.
Yeah, I'm not sure.
I don't know.
I'm on it enough, you'd think I'd know.
Well, there's a weird thing.
There's a lot of people that are really, really against the porn industry.
I've had people on here.
Well, that's people who don't want fucking get hard ons anymore or fucking get wet in a pussy or something.
I don't get it.
I really don't because, listen, talk about free speech.
Porn stars, I have met.
Like female porn actors i've met have the most character out of most people I meet.
I'm not sure why it is.
Age Limits for Pornography00:03:37
I've met male ones in the same way and they're I think it's because they're normal people.
What i've noticed is that to do porn you have to be desperate.
I think disagree, I think that I knew.
I knew a porn star, I think, but I think.
But her family, through college, did everything, oh totally.
But most people that i've met that i've heard about the way they got into porn first Was they were in a situation that they desperately needed to get out of financially.
And when you're that young.
That's why they got the money.
When you're that young, say you're a young, hot, whatever, 16, 17, 18 year old girl.
Oh, no, please never go under 18.
Under 18, okay, whatever.
But it happens.
No, those to me.
See, I'm a very liberal person.
Uh huh.
But when it comes to a child.
Right.
I don't buy it.
Well, whatever age, it happens.
And I don't mean Ryan.
Right.
You know, let me give you a quick one on prison.
We used to, you know, child molesters are no good in prison.
No.
Obviously.
But I used to pull.
Chomo's, that was all right.
Like Chomo's.
I used to pull the paperwork.
That means I used to get what charge there was.
Ryan, 20, whatever, 21, fucking a 17 or 16, he had a pass.
That wasn't even child abuse, we called it.
That wasn't even any.
That was free.
Right.
You, at 30, whatever, fucking a 15 year old, that's not good.
Right.
So, I know you look young, right?
But your brain should be at least old now.
I know it's crazy, you have to put a number somewhere.
If it's 18, 19, 20, you want to do it, you can do it.
It's just like the military, you can shoot.
Well, that's a whole other weird thing, too, because now you're letting the legal system decide an age when biologically, true, but biologically, people are different.
No, no, I 100% agree with that because even full mature adult girls with a giant rack at 15 years old, absolutely okay.
Strip the government and laws away from from our monkey selves and in nature that thing's fucking Absolutely, absolutely, but what since we do have laws Listen, you have a car.
Why can't you drive a car at 16 or 15 right when you're a mature?
Let's even go one better which drives me nuts How can you tell a kid to go to the military at 18 and kill somebody you can't drink right?
It's insane.
It's insane if you're 18 years old and you got a fucking rifle and you're in Iraq and you kill someone You don't think their brains are fucked up.
That's another whole topic.
But why can't they come back and have a drink?
Now they get arrested because they're fucking underage, but they can fucking take up rifles and defend the country.
I don't buy that one.
And a lot of countries don't either.
Canada can drink at 18, all that kind of shit, whatever.
But when I grew up, it was 18.
See, I don't know that feeling of that.
When I was 18, I was in the service at 17.
At fucking 18 years old, I'm in the bars, man.
I was fucking.
Oh, 18 years old.
I was a.
Fucking biggest idiot on the planet when I was 18.
Exactly.
I still am.
Me too, but, you know, that's just the maturity, though.
Since we have to put a number on it, you know, and I do agree with you.
You go back to some of the ancient times, once the girl had her period, she became a woman.
Right.
And they had kids and this and everything else.
I don't know what, but that's just the laws that came about.
Sure.
You know, and we have to have something.
Yeah.
There has to be a base level.
Ancient Laws and Modern Sex00:03:08
So what do you put it at?
Right.
My thought, my original thought I was getting to with the porn thing is that the pattern I see is that, especially with girls, when they're young, say 18 years old, they're in an abusive situation.
They're living, they're dependent on whatever it may be, an abusive uncle.
Right.
That's the only place they have to stay.
But they got to get, they got to get out of there.
When you're that young, what's the easiest way for you to make the most amount of money?
Prostitution or porn?
Drugs.
Or, right.
Selling drugs.
But that's, prostitution and porn are probably the two most common things.
Probably.
And when you get into there, you can probably make the most amount of money doing that.
Then when you start to climb the ladder, you're going to make more and more money.
I'm going to disagree because there's not, not many 18 year olds.
Who could do that on their own.
And what I mean by that is uh yeah, when you're with a pimp and you're in your construction, how do you find the guys and stuff, although the internet has changed a lot, but are they smart enough?
Because if they're smart enough to set that business up, because it's a business right, and get someone to drive and not get hurt and do everything else because they're all it is, then then they're probably smart enough to do something else and there wouldn't have been a situation, or maybe they would.
And obviously some just look at it like you and I might, and you know listen, I was always a person that sex is sex.
Sex is sex.
It's not the relationship itself.
Right.
You know, I think, you know, I often tell guys, listen, or a girl, I'll tell her, if you caught your husband getting a blowjob, would you leave her?
Oh, he's fucking done.
I said, well, then leave now.
Because if your husband can go to a bachelor party and get a fucking blowjob and that's the end of your fucking marriage, then you didn't have a deep relationship anyway.
I mean, the sex is the fucking sex.
We're physical.
We, you know, you watch Pornhub, what do you do?
You get a fucking heart on, right?
Right.
Is that cheating?
I mean, so you got the physical blow.
Oh, but there's that level.
Now, I often say now, differently, if your husband or your wife is in a relationship, then there's something deeper.
I mean, she wants the protection, the love, the whatever, the financial, whatever it is, whatever you weren't giving her, and that's a whole lot.
But if your husband goes out and gets laid, he's in a fucking bachelor.
He's at a fucking convention, and he fucking got drunk, and he got fucked.
Is it the end of all?
Some people are going to fucking call you, write you, and maybe me and say, Yeah, that is the fucking wrong thing.
You know, that's your own thing.
To me, it's not.
Right.
You know, I don't believe.
I believe.
Well, you have to have that sort of deal, I think, ahead of time.
Yeah, and I do.
Yeah.
But no, I. You have to have a mutual understanding of that.
Well, that's communication.
Right.
It gets back to that and all that kind of stuff.
I'm a believer in.
Listen, we are all very sexual people in life, and a lot of things have made.
Have fun, man.
Too many people.
Listen, you know how I'm looking at it at my age?
You're young.
You guys are young.
And which I love.
I really do.
I'm at the age where I know I'm going to live 20 fucking more years.
Mutual Understanding in Relationships00:09:52
I know that sounds morbid.
It's not morbid at all.
I'll be fucking 80 then.
I think you'll go more than that.
I'll take fucking 80.
Healthy.
Where I can get a heart on.
I can fuck, do everything I want.
I'd take 80.
I got 20 years left.
It's not a lot.
You got fucking 50, 60 years left.
Him, you know, you guys have a lot in technology and everything.
So your brains are different.
Your mind.
I'm a little bit different in the fact that I really understand my mortality.
Because I've been shot, I've been stabbed.
You've been shot?
I've been shot and stabbed twice.
Where'd you get shot?
I got shot right through the head.
You never.
What?
Right in a robbery.
If anyone goes to my video.
It went right across the top of my head.
No, not.
It went right across the top of my head.
Blood was coming down here.
Oh, my.
And my brother was shot in the back and into the arm.
Fucking.
Yeah, we had a fuck.
That was the getaway.
If they go on my video, on my YouTube, go to my play.
Do you know my playlist is one of the most watched playlists?
Really?
The Gangster Redemption series on my playlist.
If you go to my YouTube channel and go to the playlist.
Uh huh.
It's called The Gangster.
I'm the only one who's ever took his book and actually narrated the whole book in chapter to chapter in a video.
That's what really got it.
That's pretty amazing.
Yeah, that hook.
That's what started this whole thing.
Wow.
But that's in it when I got the fucking getaway.
It was a fucking movie getaway.
The bullets flying.
It's crazy shit.
So I look at my mortality different, if that makes sense.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
And I think, obviously, we all should.
I mean, let me ask you a question.
If you fucking found out you had six months to live, what would you do?
Hmm, if I had six months to live, I'd pay the doctor an extra couple thousand dollars to get an extra six months.
Yeah, that'd be it.
I wish it was that easy.
Yeah, no, fuck.
I don't know.
It's a good question.
I love doing this, man.
This is fun.
No, I know you do, but think about your life.
What would you do?
I don't know.
I hope there's things like this.
I would go surf every single wave in the world, all the best, you know, all the best surf spots.
Did you surf for white?
Travel.
I've never been to Hawaii, no.
Yeah, I was stationed there.
That's amazing.
I went body surfing.
I'll never fuck with the homeless.
Oh, fuck no, man.
The rocks in the reef out there.
Oh, my God.
I went body surfing.
I ended up 100 yards down the day, and I was a great swimmer.
Yeah.
Fuck.
I said never again then.
But I never surfed.
I used to say they can't put a cooler on that board.
I couldn't do it.
But I asked people that question because think about what you're doing now because you could die in six months.
We all could, obviously.
Something can happen.
But if you're not at least trying to obtain something, you know, a lot of people ask you, you know, what is success, right?
And I was a multimillionaire when I was a criminal.
I had my own limousine, multiple houses, boats, horses.
I was fucking multimillionaire because I was robbing it.
I fucking didn't give a fuck.
I was robbing millions of dollars a year.
So I fucking robbed 15 to 18 million.
Weren't you giving a bunch of it to the mob, though?
No, a percentage.
Percentage.
Yeah, not a bunch of it.
Not a bunch, okay.
No, and I made a lot of money.
I mean, I lived.
I lost a million dollars in casinos gambling.
I lost a quarter million dollars in two weeks.
Oh my.
Cash.
Fucking cash, right?
You think how stupid I am fucking now.
Now I'm working.
But my point is, I think people need to look.
It's not just money.
Because money doesn't make it.
It really doesn't.
Things make it.
Or feelings.
Or adventures.
Or whatever it is.
I had the houses, the homes, the boats.
And when my one sister says, you know, you're always searching for something.
And she was right.
Because I didn't like a horse.
I bought two horses.
I didn't want this house.
I bought another house.
I bought another house.
I bought another boat.
I bought a bigger boat.
What about, you know, at what point is the thing?
I like that you want to go surf somewhere and go do something.
Or, you know, me now is more, I like interacting with people.
I like to help people.
I want to go see the country.
I'm doing that with the RV now.
Yeah, that's awesome.
I'm going away for five weeks, going up to South Dakota, going to Mount Rushmore, maybe to Badlands or Wyoming.
So I'm going to do a few bunch of things, take videos and stuff like that.
I enjoy that.
But I think everybody's got to look at that and say, what are they going to do in their own life that.
If they died.
Like, if I died right now, if I went home and you heard, hey, I already died.
No, I want to make sure, you know, leave something.
I don't give a.
Listen, you came into this fucking earth naked and fucking nothing.
Who gives a shit if you go out naked and fucking nothing?
No, I think, you know, if I lived.
If I went home and you heard Larry had a car accident, holy shit.
I hope you get on the fucking thing and say, man, I had a great interview with Larry.
And you know what?
He lived a good life.
Because as much as I had the hard parts of my life, which I did, obviously in prison and all that, I also say.
I lived a great life.
I didn't leave much behind.
You know what I tell people?
And you can equate it to sex, to life, to anything.
Don't ever lay on your deathbed and say, I should have.
I will never lay, and I won't.
And I mean, I should have had sex with this.
I should have tried this.
Don't ever lay on your deathbed and say, I should have.
I don't mean like Marilyn Monroe.
You know what I mean.
Trying something, doing something.
I never want to lay on my deathbed and say, you know.
I should have.
Or, and I tell people, don't wait till you're too old.
Like, you're 30.
Young, good-looking guy.
Have your life by the balls.
Now's the time.
Because there'll be a time when you can't.
That's why I'm still lucky.
I'm healthy.
I can do things.
My back hurts.
I have a very bad back.
I have back surgeries and stuff.
Really?
So I'll show you from the whole bottom.
I got a zip up my whole back.
Really?
I had 15 vertebraes done in my back.
Oh, fuck.
15.
What the fuck happened?
Yeah, look at it.
Fucking crazy shit.
Was it an injury?
Yeah, I crushed my spine in the service.
Oh.
And I had that.
Here's for your camera.
Jeez.
That's just the lower part.
I have five vertebrae in my neck.
See if they can see that.
Damn.
Yeah, hold it back like where your face is so it's in focus.
Yeah.
Damn.
It's pretty fucked up.
That's brutal, man.
And, you know, so.
And I've done a lot, so I'm a little pretty good about that.
You know, I've done everything.
Can you still golf?
Yeah, a little hurt.
I hurt.
I used to hit a pretty good long ball.
Now I'm about 225, 230, whatever.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Xanax after on the ninth hole.
Oh, fuck drugs the whole fucking way.
What do you want?
We'll bring, we'll fucking bring Xanax, weed, coke, a little.
Like it in, so much.
Like it in, whatever you want.
Yeah.
Eight balls.
Boxies and eight balls.
We're in.
Absolutely.
The, uh, I saw, I'm a believer.
That's why I'm a believer in free sex, free drugs, free stuff.
Right.
Meaning, and I, again, responsibly.
I never say, you know, I everything in moderation protects you.
Absolutely.
You can't be stupid enough to kill yourself.
You know, as I say to people in all addictions and anything, you control it.
Don't let it control you.
Right.
No matter what it is.
Could be fucking eating, sex, drugs.
I don't care.
Alcohol.
We're all the same.
Money.
Money.
Don't let it control you.
Control it and do it.
Live your life.
I'm a big believer in that.
And until.
And then live your life.
I mean, again, then don't wait until you're 70s.
I'm fucking.
Oh, I should have did that.
I could have tried that.
Or I could have did this.
Then you're fucking too old.
You know what I'm saying?
I mean, and I was always lucky where I'm a pretty free thinker.
And free spirit, if you want to call it that.
And I don't give a fuck what people think, as you can tell.
I'm saying it on the air, so I don't give a fuck.
I really don't.
Of course.
Unless you're paying me, whoever the fuck am I going to judge me?
Right.
You know, I don't believe in judging anybody.
I really don't.
In anything.
I am no better than any man on this earth, or no worse.
I don't care who they are, how much money they make, or how good looking they are, how big their dick is, or whatever the fuck it is.
We're all the same.
We all put our pants on the same way.
I've met mega celebrities, mega people.
Nothing impresses me unless the person impresses me because of his smart.
You guys impress.
You do.
I was happy to see you guys.
I watched a few of your videos.
I didn't know how this would go.
Thanks, man.
But you're working hard.
I love it.
Keep doing it and do your thing.
And I love that.
I love them people do that because now you're making something.
Now you're going to look back and say, wow, we had a great time.
We did this.
We tried this, whatever.
I've done it my whole life.
And I was.
Was for my.
I always work for myself, whether it was a mobster or not, but it just I didn't have that mentality to be constricted.
You know, creative people can't be constricted, right?
If they are, then they're never gonna.
They're never gonna be truly happy and you could be broke and happy as a and I and I appreciate that, I mean i've been, I hung out with some dude man he's, he had an old, old rv, I mean 70 something, a little the happiest.
We were smoking hash.
What a good time I had with that guy.
I mean and boy, the stories where he went and this, and and he was truly happy.
I sat back, I was up and we're sitting drinking, drinking and smoking and it hash yeah, that'll you up.
Memories of Jewelry Store Heists00:09:14
Oh yeah well and, and I I was.
So I thought about that for a while.
I says it's the happiest guy in the world.
Man, he didn't need.
See, that's another thing I don't need, I had it.
The houses, the homes, the big.
I'm on limo and a driver.
I don't need that anymore.
I'm happy with the RV.
That's an old RV.
Well, it's pretty nice, but it's not.
The thing is nice.
Yeah, you got it.
When it opens up, it's huge, man, inside.
Oh, it extends out like the side.
Both sides.
Like a full living room.
Really?
Both sides?
Both sides.
Yeah, it's big.
Yeah, it's big.
We'll have to go out one day.
We'll fucking.
Yeah, man.
We'll do an interview.
I'll have you do an interview in my RV.
Oh, hell yeah.
Yeah.
And then that's what it is.
You ready to?
Before we wrap up, no, I want to get you to tell what was your craziest jewelry robbery story?
Well, the one where we got the shot, you know, the guy came shot and flying, bullets coming flying, and glass breaking, and the getaway.
Can you walk me through it?
Like, how much planning was involved?
Like, what was it like?
Who, like, first cut?
Did someone come to you and tell you where to go?
No, no, no, no.
How does it work?
Well, my first robbery was a setup.
But after I got good at robberies, I would get an area.
And I would know the area.
And I would literally case 100, 150 jewelry stores to make sure I got the right one in an area.
And it usually took, case it means make sure the right, just to give you an idea, you don't just rob a jewelry store.
I would know where the sun rises and sets.
So if there's glare in the window, they couldn't see in or people would be blinded.
So that was an important thing, the getaway, how close it was to other places, how many people.
I used to like to rob in plazas when there was a Publix.
Or a grocery store.
I don't know where it'd be going around the world.
Pathmark, Publix, Winn-Dixie.
Because the more people going, you could sit and watch that store without looking conspicuous.
So I would make sure.
And people are so fucking oblivious.
They'd walk by and I'd be fucking in the middle of a robbery.
But again, I knew that the sun, so they can't even look in.
Did the jewelry store put display cases that blocked where I could look in?
You know, they make difference.
I do that now.
Sometimes I help jewelry stores.
Jewelry prevention, you know, to help them not get robbed.
How is the back entrance?
Can you get in and out?
Can I park a car there?
What time are the people coming?
What time is the mailman coming?
Do police ever come by the area?
What time every employee and what car they have?
These are all things that I would know before I even did a jewelry store.
Wow.
And then know where the cameras were, where the buzzers were.
Did they have what they call buzzers in their pocket that if they hit the buzzer in a part, an alarm would go up?
Is the door have a lock on it?
I love those.
I like those.
Really?
Oh, absolutely.
Because then nobody else is going to come in.
They want me in.
I'm coming in with a Rolex watch and a suit, and they're going, man, this guy's got money.
Let them in.
But I would get to know them beforehand and know where the jewelry was in the store.
There's so much to it.
That's a whole show.
Right.
But when you case a jewelry store, as a professional, you know, it's so crazy.
People ask me to this day, could you do it?
There isn't a fucking question in my mind I can rob a jewelry store tomorrow and get away with it.
Really?
I see them all the time.
Really?
All the time.
I could rob that fucking jewelry store.
No question.
Because all the knowledge, I mean, I did so many.
I've cased over a thousand jewelry stores.
Well, over a thousand.
And that means going in and out, knowing every fucking little detail.
I go into a jewelry store now, and it's like fucking sensory overload.
Really?
I can imagine.
You know, and I go, oh man, this guy could be hit.
Did you ever just walk into a jewelry store and casually just looking at watches?
That's got to be a good one.
Well, I usually go with somebody, you know, for some reason.
And because, first of all, they're the biggest cons, too.
Jewelry stores are the fucking biggest.
Racket there is.
And I remember one jewelry store.
I went to the GIA Institute, which is the Gemological Institute of America, just to know about diamonds so they can't rob me.
You know, my fences couldn't rob me.
I used to go into a jewelry store like I didn't know what I was doing.
And the fucking owner would be fucking lying to me so fucking bad.
One guy was so bad.
I said, I can't wait to rob this motherfucker.
This fucking guy is really bad.
He must have fucking stole more money than I ever stole from people.
You know, there's a few things I tell your viewers here.
The first thing you want to do is don't ever go to a jewelry store that doesn't have a 10 powered microscope on the desk.
10 powered microscope?
On the fucking counter where you can look at a diamond the right way.
Okay.
There's certain things if they don't tell you about.
See, everybody knows the four C's, but they don't know what the cut is.
That's the most important part.
And I don't mean the cut.
Is it a round or a marquee or an air shape?
I'm talking the geometrics, the geometry, how light reflects on diamonds, what makes them better.
Where you can get a really good cut diamond and the light will reflect better.
So it'll be a less color diamond, but it'll be a better diamond because it'll glow or shine more or be more brilliant because of the cut and how it extracts light.
I love it when they show you a diamond and go, look at that!
And it's under a fucking light.
I'll make a piece of fucking glass look good.
Take a diamond and put it under the table when there's very little light and see how it how it reacts.
So when you would rob a jewelry store, did you like, were you picky of the that you took?
Oh no no, I wiped the whole.
You wiped the store, but I didn't rob the store unless it had certain things.
Oh okay, like there was usually uh, there always would be a loose box of diamonds.
Now the box would be about that big like a card box, you know, like right cards, and it'd be all diamonds And they're all loose.
Right.
So there could be a character.
What are they calling it?
Melee, melee diamond.
I forget the word it is.
Melee?
Melee?
No.
Never heard that?
No.
Maybe I got that from the pawn business.
I got a friend who owns a bunch of pawn shops.
Well, yeah, he's robbing people every day.
Oh, yeah.
They're all in the Caribbean, too.
Oh, God.
He's really robbing them.
Guy gets off a boat.
Oh, yeah.
Yeah.
But so, yeah, so those loose stones are what I'm literally calculating that thing in my head when he shows it to me.
Then I'm looking in the store and what I have in display cases, watches.
I used to get Rolex.
I loved Rolexes.
I used to get $2,000 of Rolexes.
I used to get $2,000 of Rolexes.
The $5,000 like presidentials, right?
$2,000, everyone.
I robbed 50 of them.
It's 100 grand.
Wow.
Without blinking.
They wouldn't even find, okay, put them in a bag.
They used to give them away as presents.
That's amazing, man.
That's fucking amazing.
But then the diamonds, so I'm literally, then you watch where they don't put that box.
A lot of times they don't put the box in the safe.
It goes to a back room, another safe, a false floorboard.
Mm hmm.
You know, that's their money.
That's what I want.
I want that.
Because the first question I would ask them, I'm like, I'm looking for a ring, maybe a little carry.
I had a whole line of shtick.
I'd say, Oh, I'm in the area.
I'm a contractor.
I'm in the area.
I had a nice suit, Rolex, gold chain, nice diamond bracelets worth fucking $25,000.
And I'd say to a guy, I'd say, Yeah, I'm in the area.
I'm a builder.
And I'm just looking.
I'm married 10 years now.
When I first got married, I got my wife a little ring.
So I want to look at some good rings.
He's like, Oh, fuck.
I got this guy.
He's got money.
He's in the area.
And I said, well, what do you have anything?
I want to maybe have it set.
There are any loose stones.
Oh, hold on.
After he sees, you know, they break out that box.
I said, well, let me start at the one carrot, maybe.
I'll see how small it looks.
And I'm watching where he picks it out of that box.
So if he picks it over here, okay, and he shows it to me, I look at it and all these bullshitting me with the price and the range.
Then he goes, and I go, let's make it a little bigger.
If he goes this way, then I know these are all.
But if he goes the other way and he only goes up a little bit, then I know all those are bigger than two carat.
So I know i'm my brain is already calculating that box.
Oh, there's a quarter million, my quarter million.
Okay, where are you putting that?
And my brain is working so differently as a criminal than uh, like your brain would work right.
Right, you're not looking and say oh, I can rob this place.
The Mindset of a Criminal00:15:13
I mean, it was just, it was like holy, it's like So, how did it all go wrong for you?
What was like the final one?
The FBI were great.
Oh, really?
They caught me.
The FBI.
Well, the last store robbery, a guy got out.
A robbery happened.
We didn't notice.
They robbed an air conditioner off the unit, it was a plaza.
Yeah.
And anyway, so some lady heard some commotion, came up to the window and looked in the window and saw us.
Then we knew we had to go.
Go, go, go.
Yeah.
And we had our plans.
Everything was planned.
But the guy, the only guy, got out of his flex cuffs.
And I already stole six guns out of him.
His flex cuffs?
You know, like the wire cuffs.
Oh, okay, yeah.
Electrical wire things.
Okay.
He got out of them, and there was another gun.
The fuck?
It was a gun nut.
And he started, we're running out.
All of a sudden, gunshots.
And the glass is breaking in front of it.
We're running out, and there's glass.
He's shooting at us.
So listen, we get, now it's already planned.
I had every detail planned.
I get in the car, and he levels the gun right at my fucking head.
In the windshield because the car was pulled in straight.
I duck.
As I duck, the bullet goes through the windshield, gets the top of my head, and I didn't even feel it.
But then I see blood coming down my face.
But another bullet, he shots twice, or that bullet.
My brother ducked, and it went in his back into his arm.
It's still in his arm to this day.
Holy.
Still in his arm.
Fuck.
We showed it online.
Jeez.
Anyway, and he goes, I'm hit, I'm hit.
I go, oh, yeah.
And I didn't even know I had the blood trickling down my head until I looked in the mirror.
I go, I'll drop you off the hospital.
He goes, no, fuck that, fuck that.
We went back to Brooklyn.
Where this is in Pennsylvania.
So we went back to Brooklyn and in Brooklyn we had an apartment, you know, like the mobs, this above the bar, and we had people to change the glass out of the car.
We patched my brother up, we cleaned me up we, everything was good, everything was all good.
And after we did that, got him back.
But we little did we know, the FBI flooded the area.
See, I didn't know the FBI was on me, that big.
Oh, they're already on you.
Huh yeah, for six years the guy was on me.
Matt Mullins, six years.
Good guy, too.
Nice guy.
Yeah?
Yeah, no hard feelings.
And he fucking, they flooded the area.
They got me and they ended up getting footage.
They even had footage of me buying a cup of coffee at a Wawa store.
That's how much they confiscated every camera within like a mile or two miles of that fucking area.
You know, every gas station I might have went to, every fucking thing.
They went to every jewelry store that I might have cased and they got a lady go, oh, there was a nice guy in here.
And I got his plate number because I was going to sell him a ring.
I didn't even rob that store.
And then they still didn't have me because I had the guy who worked for me.
He was a fat, fat guy.
Yeah.
He was 350 pounds.
Yeah.
I wasn't 350.
So fucking, that's not him, but I was a co driver.
And then they looked my name up and I was organized crime.
I already got pinched for having 35,000 cash in my glove compartment and six grams of Coke.
That's when they got you?
Well, no, that was another time.
Okay.
Oh, my God.
So what do they actually charge you with?
Racketeers.
Rico?
Rico.
Hobzack Rico.
Damn.
Rico is a.
Hobzack is interfering with interstate commerce under the Rico Act.
Now you can have murder under the Rico Act.
Robbery, like mine.
Robbery under the Rico Act.
Murder, yeah, murder.
Oh, robbery.
I had a guy on here too that said that he was close to John Gotti.
Oh, yeah, I know.
He was a security guard.
John A. Light, he said his name.
Oh, John A. Light, you had him on this show?
Yeah, you know him?
No, I know of him.
Okay, okay.
Oh, yeah.
He came here.
He spends a lot of time in Tampa.
Yeah, he's sitting right where you're sitting.
Oh, wow.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
He ended up ratting.
Okay.
Yeah, he ended up telling.
Yeah.
Now, who knows why in this?
I used to, you know.
You never ratted?
No.
See, a lot of people, there's like a.
I feel like I got mixed emotions about that.
I feel like, because what this guy said, John Elite said.
I know what he's going to say.
He said, like, there's no loyalty.
Everybody rats on everybody.
It's not true.
It's not true.
But he is right.
A lot of them are ratting.
A ton of them are ratting.
But that doesn't make you.
Why should you?
Doesn't your word?
Listen, I told you today.
He said basically if 20 guys went on the fucking stand and ratted him out and put him away, why the fuck wouldn't he?
I know what he said.
But that's just a way to justify what you did.
Let me ask you a question.
I told you today I'd be here at 11 o'clock.
Was I here?
You were here.
Because my word means something.
Right.
I went away for four 12-year sentences, and I was offered three years.
And I had a 15-month-old kid.
A six year old son, and a lot of money.
And I lost it all.
You know why?
Because my word meant something.
To this day, I used to look into the fucking stainless steel.
That's what it is in prison.
You don't have glass.
Stainless steel mirror.
And no.
With nothing.
Remind you, they took every dime from me.
Everything from me.
But my word was good.
To this day, I'm going to die with my word being good.
When I told you I would be here, I would be here.
Now, obviously, if the RV broke or something, I have a phone, I would call you.
That's why I even asked my son, I said, make sure you get his number.
Right.
I don't, I think a person's words should mean something.
Now, I understand why they do it, that don't get into business.
Right.
Now, and I understand, listen, I don't consider, listen, first of all, civilians can't rat.
That's another thing.
I tell you, or if you're a civilian, you see a crime, you should go pick them out of a lineup, you should do everything the fuck you're supposed to.
It's not ratting.
Ratting is you and Ryan fucking selling coke, you getting caught and saying it was fucking Ryan to get out of the problem.
That's ratting.
I don't believe in that.
Right.
I did crimes.
Nobody went to prison on my case.
Nobody.
Really?
No offense.
Nobody.
So he can't say everybody's ratting.
Right.
Are a lot ratting?
Absolutely.
They're backstabbing each other.
Sammy Gravano did it.
He knows.
He probably told you all this.
I don't know what you got out of it.
Learn it.
We didn't talk much about Sammy Gravano.
He was with John Gotti Jr. John Elite, and he worked for the bot, John Gotti himself.
And they were all murderers.
They did their shit and everything.
The shit hit the fan, and one rats after the other.
And, oh, he ratted on me.
He was going to rat on me.
I know he was going to rat, so I ratted first.
Listen, why you did what you did and why you even got in that business.
Yeah.
Listen, I sleep really, really good at night.
Yeah.
It's not because I was the rough guy.
It's not because of that.
I feel I sleep good at night because my word meant something.
I'm okay with everything.
Yeah, I caused a lot of damage.
I didn't, I guess I never hurt anybody that was in my business or any, you know, that kind of thing.
I never hurt somebody just to hurt them or anything of that nature.
So you want to call that a justification.
It's still not because there were people in the jewelry stores that were scared for their life and all that.
And I feel for that.
I really do.
I mean, you can't change it.
It's not like, oh, okay, you know, you can never change that.
But I feel good.
Because I know if I tell somebody, and they call that facing the devil.
I faced the devil and stood up to him, meaning the courts.
I faced him and stood up to him.
Now, I could have fucking ratted everybody out, my fences, everybody out.
You got three years.
Probably less.
And been home, kept money, whatever.
But you know what?
I have a great relationship with my son, you know, and my daughter.
I'm not married or anything like that.
And I got a really good relationship.
We're all wow.
That's got to be the hardest decision for a lot of people.
Absolutely.
It's such a hard fucking decision.
It shouldn't be if you know it.
Just tell my family goodbye.
Or tell them to keep my dignity or just tell on the scumbag and get my life back.
Yeah, but see, you're making it a scumbag now.
Yeah, I'm just saying, but there's a lot of ways of looking at it.
What happens if it's someone who's close to you?
Right.
I don't know who's close to you, but whoever's close to you, are you going to put them away?
Right.
At what point?
It has nothing to do with them.
It has nothing to do with them.
I see what you're saying.
Dan, it has everything to do with you.
Nobody took care of me when I was in there.
The mob don't take care of that.
He's right.
That's all bullshit.
Right, right, right.
But it meant me.
When I looked in that fucking stainless steel, I did it for me.
Right.
I didn't rap because of me.
Now, I used to hate them.
You know, oh, fuck it.
I don't give a fuck what they do.
Yeah.
They got to live with themselves.
Right.
They could justify it all they want.
They could lay in bed and justify the murders they committed.
I had a guy on here tell me a story about how when he was in federal prison, he was in there for like 15 years.
He told me a story about.
How he was walking the yard with some guy who basically got life and he was confessing all of his shit where he hid money.
He took the information and went and gave it to the feds and got money knocked up, got time knocked off.
Yeah, he's like, I would cut anyone's throat I could find.
He's like, anyone gave me something, I would cut their throat instantly.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
They call that jumping on the bus and they call it, yeah, it's called a Rule 35.
Remember, I told you the lawyer, you get a Rule 35 post conviction.
You know?
Yeah.
And it was just never my thing.
And I understand.
That's first of all, I used to teach you don't shut your mouth because you don't know you're dealing with, right?
But yeah, I mean, that's just being stupid, right?
But I think that I think that all goes to the person that, like, I said, I could leave here, have a car accident, and you're gonna say, you know, Larry's a good guy, whatever.
Oh, and uh, I know the people around me know that, and I have very good friends that that know, hey, Larry, if Larry tells you to be there, he's gonna be there because his word means something, yeah.
How much is it, would you ever get into business?
With a dude who ratted.
Fuck no.
How do you trust him?
Yeah.
If anything goes wrong.
Trust is everything.
Trust is everything.
If anything goes wrong, oh, he was going to fucking steal the money anyway.
He's the one who did the tax fucking thing.
How do you trust somebody?
Now, listen.
Again, I used to hate them, but I don't give a fuck about them anymore.
I just do your thing.
Yeah.
Someone asked me, are you going to interview Sammy Gravano, right?
Asked you to do it?
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Because, you know, I got a million.
He's got 150,000, but he's up and coming.
He was a big mob.
You heard who he is.
Oh, for sure.
I said, no.
And they, you know Michael Francis?
Who's that?
You should get him on your show.
He's got 300, good, good show.
Really?
And he's legit.
He didn't rap.
He took a plea like we all did, but nobody went to jail in his case.
That's all I can say.
Okay.
And you got into it.
He's a great guy.
Okay.
He's a good guy.
Anyway, so, and Mike and I talked about that because we're both in the mob.
Right.
You know, we're both with the mob.
And we, same era.
I was 10 years after him.
He was born in 51.
I was born in 61.
Okay.
But I knew of him.
He was the richest mob ever.
He robbed $200 million a month.
A month.
$50 million a week.
Had the biggest gas scam in the world.
What kind of scam?
They were stealing gas taxes.
What?
Go look it up.
Just put gas scam.
Holy shit.
Put Michael Francis, gas scam.
Just mob gas scam.
Okay.
Michael Francis, mobs gas scam.
Whatever you want to do.
Anyway, so, and we talked about that.
He even, so I said, you know, Michael, it's, I know every excuse they make for why they rap.
Everybody makes it.
He was going to tell on me first.
Oh, he was going to kill me.
Whatever.
Oh, they were scumbags anyway.
Everybody was doing it.
And that's their way of justifying whatever they did.
And they do that to live.
Because they took the oath to never fucking Omerta.
To never do that.
So they took this great oath, lived by it, killed for it.
Yeah.
But then when it came down to.
They couldn't face it.
That's what I look like.
They couldn't face that demo.
Right.
Now, I could have done that.
I just didn't.
And again, it has nothing to do with them.
It has something to do with me, the way I was raised by my dad.
Don't tattletale.
When you were a kid, don't tattletale.
It was just the way I was.
And I do believe everybody has to make that decision for themselves.
Now, I'll do research everybody I work with.
And anybody that fucking did that, I just don't work with them.
I'm not going to kill them.
I don't give a fuck what they do.
Go live your own life.
I live a good life.
I'm very happy.
I have a very happy life.
Like I said, Pornhub.
Yeah.
Well, whatever I want to do.
I just think everybody has to face their own things.
And what happens to me, I think, Dan, is people are making justifications for everything they want.
And I don't know.
Your word, I believe a person's word is all we have.
All we have.
Money comes and goes.
I'm telling you.
Whether you struggle now or you don't, money comes and goes.
I know.
I'm a millionaire, broke, millionaire, broke.
Comes and goes.
And I mean, broke where you can't fucking afford anything.
I mean, credit cards, everything's done.
Right.
And you make it.
You think good.
And things are good.
Then it goes.
Comes and goes.
But my word has never went.
People who know me will do business with me because of my word.
People who understand me know that he's going to tell you the fucking truth.
He don't give a fuck.
You know, I'm very honest about that.
You know, who I am or whatever I am.
I mean, I'm private to a degree.
You know, because I'm a public figure, if you want to call it that.
The foundation of who you are.
It's extremely important, man.
Yeah, and when you lose that, then what are you laying your hat on?
Right, exactly.
What are you going to say then?
Oh, yeah, like you said, I ratted, but he was going to rat on me.
And he's right about all that.
I'm not saying he's not right.
I know who he is, very much so.
Yeah.
I just, he did what he did.
I wouldn't deal with him.
I wouldn't do business with him and make it, you know, for what?
Right.
Living Honestly as a Public Figure00:03:03
You know, why?
Because something goes wrong.
Ain't nobody got your back.
So why do you want to live like that?
Yeah.
Do you want, I don't want to live like that.
Yeah.
I mean, you're going to suffer to an extent.
Depending on where your moral compass is, you have to live with yourself at the end of the day.
You got to look in the mirror.
You got to tuck yourself in at night.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And you got to also like, you got to like, every decision you make then is going to be, is it right?
What's he going to do?
How's he going to do it?
You know, oh, man, we shouldn't do that.
It's almost the same thing as a lie, right?
If you're a liar, you're always having to navigate your way through other lies and not get caught.
You know, people ask me all the time about going on shows.
And you can go back and hear shows for 10, 12 years.
Do I prepare?
What the fuck?
No.
I don't lie.
Right.
Ask me.
What did I tell you?
Did I ask you?
You can ask me anything the fuck you want.
Anything.
Because it doesn't matter to me because I'm not going to sit here and lie to you and have to worry about a lie.
Right.
Or lie.
You fucking look at me a bazillion times.
I don't give a fuck.
And that, well, that's what makes my life easier.
Right.
Of course.
You know, and people who can't, he's, oh, did I tell him that guy?
Oh, did we kill that guy?
And I told the feds this or not?
You know, that's not the way I want to live.
Right.
And people, again, I respect you guys for your age and coming up and getting experience and doing it right.
If there's any advice I give anybody is this, just be, listen, you don't have to be true to the public.
And you'll know what I mean as a public figure because you are, you know, obviously as an influencer.
But be true to you.
Does that make sense?
Oh, for sure.
I don't give a fuck what the public knows about you.
But when you look in the mirror, be you.
To yourself.
Yep.
Obviously, you don't have to fucking tell you everything because the headaches of it and society and business or whatever.
That's one way.
But long as you know who you are.
Oh, yeah.
And then you're going to live a great life.
And I think everyone should know 100%.
And I think that's important.
Well, thank you for coming on and telling this, man.
This has been a fucking amazing conversation.
I'm just going to say straight up, I didn't expect this to be such a fucking amazing conversation.
Why?
I don't know.
You're a fucking amazing guy, man.
You're so fun to talk to.
So easy to talk to.
I appreciate it, man.
You see that, Ryan?
He thought it was going to be a Shitty interview.
I didn't say shitty.
I knew you were going to be interesting just because of your story, but I didn't think we would be able to have such a great conversation.
I try to be just who I am.
That's awesome, man.
I enjoyed coming here.
You got to come on my show.
I will.
Absolutely.
Tell the listeners where they can find your stuff.
If they don't already know, which I'm sure they do, but in case they don't, tell them where they can find you.
Sure.
Larry Lawton.
Just go to Larry Lawton YouTube.
YouTube, Larry Lawton, or Reality Check Program, obviously.
But you'll find all links and all of our videos, all that kind of stuff.