All Episodes
Previous Next
Oct. 18, 2024 - MyronGainesX
01:13:40
Ian Bick Meets Fresh&Fit
| Copy link to current segment

Time Text
And we are live.
What's up, guys?
Welcome to the Fresh Hit Podcast, man.
We're a special guest, Ian Bick.
Let's get into it, guys.
Let's go!
What's up, guys?
Welcome to the Fresh Fit Podcast, man.
We're live on all the platforms: Twitch, YouTube, X, Castle Club, Rumble.
We're back.
We've been live on Fair X right now, guys.
So welcome to the show.
We got a special guest in the house.
We got Ian Bick in the house, man.
And for those of you guys that aren't familiar, I did an interview with him a couple of weeks back while I was home in Connecticut.
And we went in detail as to my background with, you know, what I used to do with homeland screen investigations.
We had a very deep talk on federal investigations, how they work.
But we're going to give you guys another perspective on the other side where Ian actually was arrested by the feds and had to go ahead and deal with from the other perspective.
So this is going to be a really interesting interview.
So, Ian, I know who you are, man.
Welcome to the show.
Can you please introduce yourself to the people?
Thank you guys for having me, man.
It's an honor.
That's the interview we did on his channel, guys.
Go check it out.
Dude, I said this a couple weeks ago, but like no big YouTubers or whoever come to Connecticut.
So it was cool to connect when you said, oh, I literally am from there.
So it was awesome.
And when I started out, I watched your guys' stuff, your clips, and you guys were someone to look up to.
So I appreciate you guys having me on.
So back in the day, you guys were enemies, basically.
Pretty much, I guess you could say that.
The type of crime that he investigated, I guess, no, yeah, because no, we investigate wire fraud too.
But maybe he was one of the agents.
He was in Connecticut.
Well, it's funny because I did a little stint in Connecticut for the New Haven office when I was working for Homeland Security.
But I think I left because you didn't get picked up until like what, 2018 or something?
2015.
I got indicted.
2015.
I went to prison in 2016.
Yeah, it was in New Haven office.
I was investigating me with the postal inspectors out of Hartford and then New Haven field office, FBI, which I found out was their field office.
And my first reverse proffer was with the U.S. Attorney's Office in that FBI building.
Shit.
Whoa.
And we'll get into all that.
We do the full story.
You guys are probably like, what the hell's going on here?
We're going to explain some of this jargon because I know some of you guys might not be familiar with the criminal justice system from the federal perspective.
So we'll go ahead and define some of these jargon type terms.
But can you kind of give us like an insight into your background, where you grew up, how that was, that type of thing?
Your intro.
So I grew up in Danbury, Connecticut.
I was born in New York City, grew up in Danbury, you know, good family.
Dad was a public schools teacher in New York in Spanish Harlem.
And he went on to become a caterer.
So I grew up around, you know, going to like Harry Potter premieres.
He did stuff for 50 Cent, Bill Clinton, like really successful in the catering world.
And then my mom was a massage therapist after doing like clinical social work.
So I was raised kind of like in that entrepreneurial family and good schools, went to private school for a little bit because I was bullied a lot, very overweight.
Everyone called me Twinkie and the Chubster.
And yeah, I was teased, always last picked.
I didn't even play sports in high school.
I did musical theater.
And, you know, family vacations, had a younger brother growing up, always had like the family dog, you know, family pizza nights.
And we grew up in a Jewish community.
Yeah.
It was called Lake Wabika.
And there was literally like 200 houses.
Everyone was Jewish.
There was a synagogue across the street from my house that we would actually break into, not break in, because the door was unlocked, but we would walk in and get the liquor for our house parties.
Yeah, yeah.
So that was.
And the synagogue is near your real estate property.
It was going up in value, man.
Yeah, and we lived on the lake.
No motorboats, but we had like paddleboards, rowboats, canoes, everything like that.
And, you know, in high school, I started out throwing house parties.
And that eventually went from, you know, 200, 400 people house parties to then going to renting out a local nightclub called Tuxedo Junction, which was a famous rock club where I did shows and made like 15 grand a night in high school.
I was 15.
Bam.
And then from there.
How old are you now?
I'm 29.
29.
Okay.
And then from there, I went on to big concerts.
I've worked with everyone from like the Chain Smokers, 21 Savage, Steve Aioki, Zed's Dead.
EDM was huge back then.
Like, I mean, it still is popular, but like 2010 to like 2016, it was huge.
It had exploded at URI, like in Massachusetts and Boston and that area.
And it translated to Connecticut because it was only a couple hours away.
And I kind of ran with it doing these, you know, giant acts.
My first show ever was Big Sean.
I paid him 40 grand, did a whole college concert at the campus.
And you did all this at this club called Tuxedo's, you said?
No, at that point, I grew out of Tuxedo's and went into the concert promotion business.
I would later come to own Tuxedo's later on while I was on trial with the feds, which was another crazy thing.
And how old were you when you started this business where you were doing like kind of like event planning?
I was 15.
15?
15.
I was making like 10 grand a night.
Tea and party promoting.
And that's essentially what I do now.
Like this world is concert promoting just virtually.
Yeah, yeah.
Yeah, you're promoting people to come watch your stuff.
Exactly.
That's an interesting way of looking at it.
So you get your feet wet doing this.
You're in high school.
You graduate.
And then at that point, you're kind of at a crossroads.
What happened there?
So once I moved on from these club nights, I got very ambitious and I started raising money from friends and family to book concerts.
My first concert I wanted to do was, this was after Big Sean because my partners kind of took the Big Sean show and I didn't get to invest money into it.
So I raised money to do a Wiz Khalifa show was my first thing.
And I raised $120,000.
That's roughly black and yellow.
Yeah, that was when it was.
It was 2012 was supposed to be the concert.
Let's go.
Yeah, end of 2012.
And we were going to book Wiz Khalifa.
And my business partner at the time said he could book them because we had just booked Asher Roth, who assigned to Scooter Braun at the time, you know, Bieber's manager.
And we believed him.
He got us Asher Roth.
You get us Wiz Khalifa.
He just said you needed $120,000 in a bank account to show proof of funds.
So I get the money.
I raise it from friends and family, but I guarantee them the money back.
I say, listen, I'll give you your money back, even if the show loses because I was so confident Wiz Khalifa is going to sell out.
Gotcha.
Well, the show doesn't end up happening because he doesn't have the connect to Wiz Khalifa.
So I go back to these investors and I say, listen, you know, we can put it into a string of shows, multiple shows in Rhode Island, Connecticut, Massachusetts.
And some of them like leave their money in, some take out, and we do these shows.
And that first show tanks.
And in that moment, I decided to lie and say it made money because I didn't want them to not like me.
I didn't want to be seen as a failure because I was already so successful before.
And I was about 17 years old when this happened.
Okay.
So you basically lost with Khalifa.
You promised you would get the money back through a string of shows.
It didn't end up panning out the way you wanted.
But I told them it made money.
Yeah, what you told them was profitable.
So instead-So they're expecting their money back then.
Exactly.
Exactly.
And that start, that one lie was like a domino effect.
Because say a show, you put 20 grand into a show.
So if I told them it made, say, 30, but really I only got back five.
So I'm down now the 15 plus the 10 that is profit.
So that's a 25 grand deficit.
Also, when it comes to like concerts or having artists, you have to pay the artists up front and hope bottle sell people buy drinks to make about your money because up front, you got to pay them their fee no matter what happens.
Yeah, so for rap, it's 50% when you sign on and announce it, 50% cash right when they show up, like an hour or two before doors when they're doing sound check.
EDM is 50% up front and then the rest day of, or you build enough relationships.
Like I owe the chain smokers 25 grand for like four months after the show because we had those relationships and it was just, it was crazy.
And I was gambling to kind of like make them their money back.
Gotcha.
Shit.
And obviously, you know, doing this as a young guy, just for the audience to understand, by the way, because you mentioned a bunch of states, Connecticut, Massachusetts, New York.
Guys, like for all of you guys that might live in Texas in these big rural areas, New England, think of it as like one big ass one state because whether you're in Connecticut, Massachusetts, you can get anywhere you need to in New England within two hours.
So hype train level four.
Let's y'all ninja, man.
Show Twitch, man.
So take the mullet.
So keep that in mind, guys, that like New England, everything is close, dude.
Literally, within two hours, you could be in another state in another major city.
So, okay.
So it's funny, that one lie.
So Wiz Khalifa fucked you up, basically.
Yeah.
Not him.
It's the person that promised to.
But if that show happened, we wouldn't be here today.
Because if it lost, yeah, it's that one thing.
You know, I just need that one show to happen.
But you know what's crazy?
Usually it's the person in the middle between you and the artist.
I was going to ask you that next.
Who fucked it up?
Was it Wiz or was it the middleman?
The middleman, because in the concert business, the rap game, when you're first starting out, there's so many middlemen.
Like, it's not like now a podcast, you deal directly with the guest.
Yeah.
Back then, when you have no connections, when you're a teenager, I dealt with six different people who I would send money to money to, to money to.
That's how like a scenario like Chief Keef is one of the guys I booked.
He never showed up.
He never paid me the money back.
And when you go to try to sue him, it's just middle, middle, middle, middle.
There's no options.
Sometimes the rappers don't even know who took the money on their behalf.
Exactly.
Two and Fuzzy.
Oh, you mean, you mean Vitaly?
Sorry, Vitalia.
Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Because they had booked Cuevo to come on this Catch a Predator episode.
Cuevo didn't show up.
I was there.
But luckily, they used like a middleman, like some kind of escrow service, I think, and they got the money back.
Usually what works with getting artists, because I have a friend that does this for a living, he will have the manager connect with him and then do a FaceTime call with the artist.
That's so it's confirmed.
At least we did a FaceTime call and he records it.
Oh, that's documented.
But here's the thing.
He was doing this in 2012.
I need more social media anyway.
And no event insurance.
Like I never had event insurance.
I didn't know any of this stuff.
You know, the content.
Yeah.
And I was just signing contracts with management companies, which hard, bro.
No Instagram.
Because Instagram was kind of like people using like that.
It was Facebook.
Oh, you're using Facebook to do all this.
We did event pages, Facebook event pages.
Back then, if a thousand people said they were coming to your event, you knew a thousand people were showing up.
Now it's just spam, you know?
Yeah.
It's not the same.
Gotcha.
Instagram was just beginning.
Snapchat was just beginning.
No TikTok.
Vine, I used for like a couple months before I went to prison.
But that was it.
TikTok was new to me when I got out of prison.
That and smart TVs.
Shit.
Okay.
So imagine now you got Jack Doherty paying Lil Baby 200K to show up to a party.
And because he has the fame and the notoriety, it's like, I'm paying the money up front.
Come through.
Just come through.
Yeah.
No, I mean, that's interesting.
Because there was a video clip of him bringing a bag of money to him.
I don't know if that was like a show or what, but because you said that they need to give at least 50% up front.
Up front.
Maybe it was the second half.
Because you know what happens, bro?
A lot of times they get like scammed themselves.
It's like a two-way street.
Either the rappers are getting scammed because the person doesn't pay them at the end of the night and then they obviously want to get paid or the promoter is against scam because they never show up.
I was going to say promoters probably get a scam way more.
Yeah.
Because they say, oh, he's going to be here at this date in time.
Never shows up.
Dude, if you search Chief Keefe on Google, he scammed so many promoters.
Yo.
Or his manager, someone has.
I know he scammed me or his promotion team did because I never got the show.
Like we literally sold like 2,000 tickets and we got a phone call from management saying he missed his first flight.
He'll be there later.
That too.
So hold on, you know, this thing fucked up.
You know what rappers do most of the time?
Well, they'll say they missed their flight on purpose so that they can't make it.
And then you had to pay him half money up front.
So it's like, well, bro, you know, I missed my flight.
I'm in the weeds.
So I can't help myself.
This is 2012.
This is when Chief Keeper was blowing up everywhere.
Yeah, he was a 25 grand guarantee.
I paid him 15 up front, and then I would have 10 cash.
But also, you got to realize like some of these deals, like I remember Little Yachty, Little Uzi, like we were getting offered them for like 25 grand.
If they sign on for that and then they blow up the next day and they're getting 100 or 200, they still have to perform for that 25.
So in their eyes, they don't really want to do it.
They don't care about a kid.
Oh, did you book him before?
I don't like blow-ups.
He was like blowing up right at the same time.
So that could have been a reason, too.
But they're like, fuck this white dude in Connecticut that has money that's paying, you know?
Yeah.
They don't care about that.
So it's funny because I was actually shocked when you said you got him for 25K.
Like 2012, Kanye had just like kind of done the I don't like remix.
So he was starting a blow up.
So you probably got him like right before.
I paid 40 for Tyga.
This was right before I started dating Kylie Jenner.
Show him, man.
Yeah.
Legendary.
No, but did he show at least?
Yeah, he did, but he wouldn't take pictures.
Very short in person.
You pay the guy that much money.
And his rider was ridiculous.
I booked him in YG.
Ryder was ridiculous.
Like, you know, those champagne bottles that are like $1,500 or whatever.
You had to get like five of those and sort the Skittles out.
It's nuts.
Was it his security there, Jerome, the big guy?
I don't remember.
There was a bunch of black guys guarding him at foreshadowed prison.
He's that guy.
That's my boy Jerome.
Yeah, yeah.
He's cool.
So, okay.
So you were saying, okay, so Wiz Khalifa.
Sorry, you're telling that story.
Yeah.
So the Wiz Khalifa show doesn't happen.
Half the investors stay in.
I have like 60 grand to play with, book a string of shows, like Rusco, Chrizzly, Mike Studd, a bunch of like lower name people, Huey Mac.
And they all tank.
Not enough promotion.
Everyone.
Did they at least all show?
They all showed.
One concert got canceled because of a snowstorm, but they all showed.
By that point, my reputation was better in the concert industry.
So once you do your first couple shows and you get a rep, they're not going to burn you.
That's like if an artist burned Live Nation.
And obviously that's a way different scenario, but it's that similar concept.
Gotcha.
I wasn't the new kid on the block anymore.
Gotcha.
And obviously, were you holding these shows in Southern Connecticut like Danbury?
New Haven, Toad's Place.
You know, Toad's Place.
Yeah.
There.
And then University of Rhode Island College Arena.
We would rent out a lot for shows.
For the audience, Toad's Place is a big bar in New Haven.
Huge Yale Hangout.
Yeah.
Huge Yale Hangout.
Who goes to Connecticut anyway, bro?
A lot of people.
Well, see, it's weird.
So Danbury worked out perfect because you get a guy playing Foxwoods or Mohegan Son or Boston and then Madison Square Garden the next night.
It's on the way.
So Steve Aioki would play Boston, then go to Connecticut's Shrine Nightclub, and then he would come to me on an off night, you know, get an extra 50 grand, and then he would go to Madison Square Garden and get his full circuit, basically.
That's why.
Exactly.
They fly into Rhode Island.
Boston's here.
Boston's up here.
And then you go down into Connecticut because you have to go through Connecticut to get to New York.
So Boston, then drives south into the Mohegan, the casinos.
Then he drives west towards Danbury, hit Danbury, and then the New York border is right there.
Drives into New York and then down south into New York City.
Because for a rapper, imagine your lifespan as a rapper can be short or quick, but tours and, for example, shows are everlasting.
Remember, New England, like I said before, you can be anywhere in New England within two to three hours.
You could literally be in any other state.
That's where they make their money too, from the touring.
Yeah, it's not music.
It's a touring.
You saw it at TI.
He doesn't want to do any more shows.
I saw him there.
And I'm like, bro, he must have won that lawsuit because, bro, I mean, that's free money.
Yeah, then he don't care.
Well, he's not popular like that musically anymore anyway.
You know what I mean?
But he gets booked for 11 all the time, bro.
Yeah, but bro, that's fucking, come on, man.
That sucks.
You know, I've never been to 11.
What?
Never.
Yeah.
Let's go.
Or Fountain Blue.
None of those places.
Now, you go, you take it.
I can't go.
You're banned from 11?
Bro, I'm banned everywhere, bro.
I tried to intervene.
Bro, this is this thing, bro.
Just got banned off Instagram today.
Like, bro, I'm banned everywhere, man.
Yeah, babe.
That's funny.
It's what it is, bro.
It's funny.
You get banned on the internet, but in real life, it's crazy.
That's crazy, bud.
So, so Wiz does a show, but you get all these other people.
You promise.
So how much are you in the hole now at this point after that string of shows and the Wiz Khalifa?
I was about give or take because you get some, you don't lose everything on a concert.
You get some money back.
So give or take, I was like 50 grand in the hole after everything, which was a lot for a 17-year-old kid, you know, who was, I was also working a job.
I've always been a hustler.
I was working at a corporate center booking proms and stuff.
And I was 50 grand in debt.
So my business partner at the time, this would later be my co-defendant that would testify at trial.
He comes to me and says, hey, do you want to make a bunch of money quick?
And he brings me Beats by Dre.
And he said he was selling these.
He was getting them for $50 and selling them for $400.
Oh, shit.
And at the time, I didn't know they were fake.
We would later find out they're fake.
But these things are brand new in the box.
They look legit.
But later on, if you registered it on beatsbydre.com, it would say this barcode doesn't exist or serial number.
But he said they were off the truck, like stolen or damaged or whatever.
So as a kid, I'm thinking, okay, you get them for $50.
You're selling them for $400, maybe a little cheaper on Amazon or eBay.
That's 100%, 200, 300, 400% return.
Let me take loans from people and promise them a 50% rate of return.
So say I went to you and I said, hey, you want to invest in my Beats by Dre business?
Give me $5,000.
I'm going to give you $7,500 back in 30 days.
In my mind, I'm thinking that's a fair return because we're making quadruple that.
But we took those money, that investment in, and found out the product was fake.
So now you're sitting on all this fake product and you owe 50% rate of return in 30 days.
So when did you, so he tells you about this thing?
And I remember Beats by Dre had just come out.
So it wasn't regulated yet like that.
When did you find out that they were counterfeit?
Like three months later and after we raised $600,000 in investment money.
Oh how'd you find out?
People coming to me about the serial number.
Okay, that's how you found out originally?
One guy came.
I guess there was a way to tell like there was a click in one of the years, but these things were bulletproof.
Like they looked legit.
They were sealed.
Did anyone sue you?
I guess I could have, but I never made it that far.
I had heard of guys like with both headphones and stuff, but we never got that far.
You know, this was like a couple month thing.
But what the real trigger was all the Amazon accounts kept getting shut down for fraud.
And this is when Amazon was like first allowing you to sell shit and like the seller account.
So we would have like 20 iPhones with a new Amazon account and everyone's reporting fraud that the items are fraud.
So they all got blocked and shut down.
So not only, okay, so just so I understand this thing here.
So you're so you're 50K into debt with the event planning and the concerts.
Then this Beats by Dre thing comes along.
You're able to raise within three months 600K of investor money.
Had you already started paying back dividends at that point after the first and second month?
Yeah, so basically what I was doing was I was looking at, I went to a lawyer and I said, hey, this is my plan.
I want to take loans from people, not investments.
I want to take loans because I was 18 now and I couldn't, I didn't have any credit.
So I'm like, well, if you can borrow from one, say, bank to pay off another bank, can I do that with people?
And he said yes.
So I would borrow from one person, put it into this pot, no accounting, nothing.
It would be our business-bank account.
And we called ourselves an investment company.
And I was paying off old people's returns until we could generate some money.
I'm thinking that's a business and legit.
Little do I know, it's a Ponzi scheme when you're taking off in the house.
Yeah, well, that's what they call it.
Network marketing.
Network marketing.
One-on-one.
Wait, hold on, hold on.
Are you borrowing from like your people?
What do you mean, my people?
You know, like Jewish?
Yeah.
Well, I'm happy.
Yeah, my dad's had a face.
It's a face card because nigga, I'm in the hood.
I can't do that shit.
Let me some money, nigga.
Nigga, what the fuck?
He's saying that people.
So like, are you borrowing from your investors that invested with you?
I'm borrowing from everyone.
Yeah.
I raised $600,000 at 18.
That's crazy, though, bro.
Yeah.
Because look at it from his point of view.
He's young, has business ideas, but no actual lives.
These are friends and family, I'm assuming, right?
Friends and family, people in sororities would tell their parents, because you got to remember the basis of this is I was so successful in high school.
And I start this new business, electronics.
Everyone gets paid back from the concerts.
No one knows they lost.
They're successful on.
You're eating all the deficits.
They're thinking I'm like the next, you know, like Mark Zuckerberg in that town, you know, like that they want to invest in it and they're eating into it.
I didn't know parents were technically taking advantage of giving, say, 50K to a kid and give me 75K back in 30 days.
And also your status is up there where they trust you off of your face.
Yeah, I mean, I have like a likable personality and people are nice to meet you.
Yeah, I was like, I was just a good, like a good person, but I never set out to defraud from anyone, you know?
And that's why I went to trial ultimately because that wasn't my attention.
Gotcha.
So, all right.
So now you got the beats by Dre thing going on.
You find out three months later, they're counterfeit after a bunch of Amazon accounts get shut down and complaints from people saying, Hey, I can't register my product.
At that point, you'd have taken about 600K worth of investment money to buy these beats, procure them, and then give them a return.
And I'm assuming within this three months, you had been paying people back and people continue to give you money.
Yeah.
What do you do at that point?
So what happens is out of that 600K, you know, like 10 or 15K went into product before we found out was fake.
But the issue became I kept borrowing on borrowing more money on the pretense of the electronics.
And then people thought they were making money from the electronics.
But the other money, I think I spent like 100 grand between dinners, trips, clothing, and jet skis were like the biggest thing because we're thinking like, okay, we need to pay ourselves a salary.
That's our salary.
But then the rest of the money went into, I bought my first nightclub when I was 18.
I put a hundred grand into that.
Bunch of contractors.
It was, yeah, there's a front room with tuxedos.
We called it Skybar.
I actually got sued by Sky Vodka because I did SKYY and they sued me for copyright infringement.
Really?
Yeah, I got sued.
I got plastered and my lawyer didn't respond.
They were going to pay me to change the branding.
They were going to give me like 20 racks.
And my lawyer responded like two days late.
So they're like, fuck it.
We're going to trial.
And I got no money.
So that was one thing.
Every contractor, I'd have contractors walking off the street saying, hey, you know, you want us to paint the place for five grand?
And I would do it.
Little did I know that was like five times the price of what it should have cost.
So I'm getting scammed left and right with that.
I invest in like a shoe business, a website, and then I put like 300 grand into concerts.
Those are the ones with Chief Keith, Tyga, Ace Hood, Kid Inc., a bunch of shows for that fall of 2013.
Let me ask you this.
So when it comes to like business and being that young, do you regret not knowing the business itself before getting into it?
Because I feel like some people find a mentor first, then they get into it, but you just put into it headfirst strong and you made hell of mistakes.
Was that like a learning curve for you as well?
Yeah, I mean, here's the thing.
I was a great marketer.
Like I can hit the ground running.
I can market.
That's what makes me good at what I do now.
I wasn't a businessman.
I don't like the business aspect, you know?
That's why I'm not in real estate or anything.
Like, I would rather, what I should have done is given that money to someone that was into business, invested it right.
I mean, imagine if I spent 600K on properties or even someone said buy Bitcoin at the time.
Oh, yeah.
You know, like there was Bitcoin was like a couple hundred bucks at the time.
You know, there were so many things I could have done or leveraged that money with a bank and get a line of credit or something.
But you feel that.
I guess a duty to your investors because you're 50K and the whole with the Whiskhalifa thing and you borrowed all this money for the Beats stuff.
I'm assuming at this point you probably paid back all your Whisk Khalifa investors.
And now you're paying back your Beats people at this three months.
So you find out that they're fake after the Amazon stuff.
Like, what was your reaction?
Like, did you yell at your partner for like kind of bringing you into this?
Because you're like, went off for him.
Like, what'd you do?
I was pissed, but I think I would have fixed the situation if I didn't have the concerts.
But in my mind, okay, you have all of these concerts booked with the biggest people in the world.
They're going to make the money back before anyone finds out.
Okay, so you're still doing the concert stuff on top of the beats stuff.
Yeah, I put about 300 grand into concerts for the fall.
This is the second string of concerts.
Now I'm 18.
This is the fall of 2013.
This is like my last hurrah.
Because if all these concerts on a 300 grand concert investment, you're grossing maybe like close to 2 million.
So, you know, then you have your other money that you kind of leveraged out with the back end of artists.
So say after a $2 million gross, if everything sells out, you're making like 1.4 million profit minus 50% to the investment.
Plus another 300 for your post, you know, announcement expenses, like paying the artists a day of things like that.
See, I was going to say, so what was making you more money at this point?
Was it the concerts or was it the beat stuff?
Well, it seems like you were doing both and saying, none of it was making money.
All of our accounts got shut down.
We bought 10 or 15 grand a product with that first investment and Amazon shut down everything.
That's like you getting banned on YouTube.
We were demonetized on that.
Amazon.
Just look at your mindset at that point because you're still young.
Doing all this bullshit of failures, money not coming in.
What do you do at that point?
How do you feel?
I just, I'm like one of those people that never gives up.
Like, I'm going to find a way, figure it out.
You know, like, I just do whatever.
Like, even starting the podcast, like, I drove Uber and did OnlyFans before I made money on the podcast.
I did OnlyFans.
You do what?
I did OnlyFans.
Yeah.
Wait, what did you do on there?
Dude, I fucking slam pictures out there to men to make money.
You know, I did what I had to do.
I made 10 grand.
You are definitely Jewish, bro.
I made 10 grand, bro.
You are definitely Jewish.
Yeah, but that's crazy.
Yeah.
I'm a hustler, man.
I'll do what I got to do, bro.
You don't ever give up.
Never, bro.
I'm going to find a way.
And I remember those first few months of doing the podcast, making no money.
TikTok was still under the old creator program and I was hustling.
You did everything.
I did everything.
When I got out of prison, I worked at pizza job.
I worked at Whole Foods from 6 a.m. to 2.30 and then worked a pizza restaurant from 2.30 to 10 p.m.
And then I did it all again.
Like, I'm just, I'll do what I got to do.
Never give up.
Dude, if I was doing OnlyFans right now, I still have men in my DMs from last year that will say, hey, are you still selling pictures or this and that?
And I don't respond to them, obviously.
In another life, I will do it too.
But I just feel like you make a lot of money.
I'm ready for BBC Gang.
They're not ready.
You know, this is actually pretty common with P-Stars that are dudes.
Like, they make a lot of money on dudes.
G4P.
But the problem is the guys want you to go hook up with other men and stuff.
And I'm not gay.
So I'm not doing that.
It was hard enough to sex them on the fucking messenger because that's where you make your money.
You make your money messaging it.
It's so funny because people think you make money off the videos per se.
Yes, but what you make money off is texting back and forth because they want that like connection to the person you're like paying to.
That's why girls do free memberships.
Yep.
Or they'll do 50% off.
In the door.
I made all of my money really from the two things.
One, if you're famous, you can kind of make money from the intrigue.
People want to subscribe, but that's short-term money.
The next main money is, you know, interacting, people asking for certain things.
Okay.
This is probably the gayest question you ever got, bro.
Yeah.
Probably one of the gays, but what's the gayest thing they did?
The gayest thing they ever did.
I mean, I didn't even think about it like that because you're doing the content like off-camera, you know?
So if you're jerking off or like doing whatever, like you got to imagine it's a girl, like you're sexting like your girlfriend.
Or like, I would never do that to a man.
I can't do that.
You know, like if I'm sitting there with a girl, I'm thinking like sometimes I would text a girl or if there's someone I was hooking up with or whoever, you're just getting that conversation going or you watch porn or whatever you got to do.
So there's a means to an end.
That's it.
That's it.
Dude, I was trying to put food on the table.
I was literally trying to pay by red.
Okay.
Okay.
I wouldn't do it today.
But it's part of the grind.
It's part of the story.
Yeah.
I think it's part of the story.
You know, it's important.
But this was after you got out of jail, right?
This is after that.
Yeah, yeah.
Come on, Fresh and Fast Forward.
Why are you so excited?
You're my OnlyFans.
God damn it.
It just makes sense.
I'm trying to cover the criminal shit.
It doesn't make sense.
Yo, bought, man.
All right.
All right.
Go ahead.
All right.
Yo, I'm getting lit up right now in the comments.
It's funny, though.
It is funny.
It is funny.
Stereotypes.
It's too much.
Okay, sorry.
Sorry.
Sorry.
So, well, I'll tell you this, bro.
Me being black, bro, you know what I like?
What?
Fried chicken.
I don't know how many male creators are comfortable saying that online.
Hey, bro.
Hey, bro.
Hey, hey, here we go.
Real honest, bro.
This is a game where I'm sorry.
I didn't even know that.
I was like, wait, no, you know, I know.
Thanks for you.
Everyone knows that.
I just gave you guys.
Look at your streams just went way up after that conversation.
There you go.
There you go.
Okay.
So going back to the scheme.
Yeah.
Because I actually am interested in the scheme.
How you did it.
Federal agent, right?
Yeah.
It's like, tell me, did we say choose for wires?
I'm trying to figure out the scheme.
He's like, did you pay taxes on that OnlyFans money?
And yes, I did.
I claimed it on my taxes for last year.
Oh, shit.
So, well, that was good live.
So you're there.
You got the concert money, the beats money.
But at this point, you're in the hole.
And then you find out that it's fake.
And then you're like, okay, well, we're still making money.
I'm going to pay back the investors from both.
But you're not profitable at this point, right?
I never made any money.
Yeah.
Nothing.
The only time I made money was high school Ian promoting club nights and then podcast Ian aside from my normal job.
Oh, so you were in the red the whole time?
Never made money, bro.
Never.
You were doing this beats and concert shit.
Yeah.
Damn.
Okay.
How did you, so I guess, so you're doing this scheme for how long before the feds catch on?
Dude, it was only like six months.
Oh, shit.
I raised all the money in July 2013.
I got 600K in the bank.
December 2013, all the concerts are done.
And they were all going to make money on paper.
Like all of these things.
But then you have Chief Keith.
You have, you know, in the rap game, I'm sure you know people will pay to open.
So I had like 20 grand in open-air money for Kit Inc.
Yeah.
The guy that was supposed to collect the money never collected the money from the rappers.
So they all formed Kit Inc.
is we did three shows with him.
But the problem with Kit Inc.
is like he's huge musically, but no one knows the name for Torre.
Exactly.
Yeah, it's one of those guys where like huge on the ground fan base.
That's huge.
Big and huge.
In public is like, whoa.
Yeah.
So that was very interesting.
But then, so everything gets lost.
And one of the investors, it was never the adults that went to the police.
It was the kids.
Because from a kid's perspective, if you invested five grand in your mind, you're like, okay, I kept rolling it over.
He owes me 50 grand.
A lot of that's imaginary money because you keep flipping it.
So they go to the police.
They think they lost their life savings.
They're set for life.
The police are like, wow, all these people are owed all this money.
Is it the beats stuff or is it the conscious stuff?
It's just the whole thing.
So both parties are going to the cops now complaining.
Exactly.
Because they all got mushed together.
So they're going to the cops.
They bring it to the state's attorney's office.
You got discovery, so you see all this.
Yeah, they said.
This is a nerdy question.
Who opened the investigation first?
Danberry PD?
Danberry PD.
Danberry PD.
They thought it was the biggest case of their life because you got to remember at the news, local news is teen nightclub owner, super successful.
They named me top 10 most fascinating people in Connecticut.
This and that.
They did all of these things.
Sensational.
Yeah, they thought I was the Jordan Belfort kind of of that town.
They were thinking, you know?
The wolf of Danbury.
They called me the Wolf of Wolf of Ive Street.
Yeah.
That was where the club was.
So I found out later on the state's attorney declined to prosecute.
And had it been a state case, I never would have went to prison.
I would have ordered restitution, you know, got the case expunged after because it was my first time offense, this and that.
Instead, someone has connections.
They push it all the way up.
And I think it was packaged to the feds as being bigger than it was.
You know, I think they thought it was in the millions.
See, you messed with your own people.
Yeah, I did.
Your people.
So these complaints.
So these complaints come in.
Dan Barry Petty opens the case.
State prosecutor declines it, which is actually interesting that the state prosecutor declines it and then the feds take it and saw me the other way around.
So what made the feds take the case?
I don't know, man.
To this day, my lawyer says, you know, they thought it was more money than what it was.
And they also thought they would plead me out behind closed doors.
They never expected to indict.
They just expected to plea deal, boom, boom, prison.
That's it.
But they wanted prison and I wasn't signing on for that.
So state declines, feds take it.
Who, and can you explain to the audience who the lead agency was and who else was involved?
So what happens is I got a, after I'm going through, I'm meeting with the state.
I have a lawyer and everything.
My lawyer ends up dropping me because he sent me.
What month is this right now?
This is beginning of 2014.
I'm not even 19.
I'm 18.
And state's investigating.
We're just thinking it's not going anywhere.
How did you get your first police interaction?
Did like a detective show up at your house?
They called my attorney who was like a personal injury attorney, which is where I went wrong too.
I should have got a criminal defense attorney.
And he would end up dropping me because he sent me a bill.
He was billing me like $400 an hour, but he was my dad's friend.
And I didn't know.
I had no money.
Gotcha.
So I get a subpoena to the Department of Banking.
And I didn't know what that was.
But I'm thinking in my mind, this is my way to clear my name.
So I go, I bring all the documents.
I lay out everything.
I do the books for the company for the first time.
Every name, number, address, transaction.
And I go to them and I testify for like five hours.
Okay.
Who's there?
You're sitting there.
You're with your attorney.
Who's there?
Obviously, the prosecutor's there.
Was it detectives from Danbury PD?
State police was there?
No, it was just two Department of Banking people, which aren't technically agents.
They're like civilians and a court reporter.
So I'm thinking this is a great time to clear my name.
After like the five hours, they say, hey, there's two people that want to see you.
They put me in another room.
I'm twiddling my thumbs there for a half hour and in walk two classic movie theater type people, movie theater or movie type guys, you know, the old suits.
They come in, flash their badges, and they say they're postal inspectors.
And I almost laughed out loud because I'm like, who the fuck is a postal inspector?
I'm like, these guys are fake agents.
They sit down and then they ask me very targeted questions.
I had no idea at the time they listened to everything I said during that interview.
They were listening in.
To use back against you.
Exactly.
So they asked me questions so they could charge me with lying to investigators.
And I ended up winning that at trial because they didn't give me the target letter until after the interview.
So just for the audience, let me explain it to them real quick.
So guys, there's an agency called the U.S. Postal Inspection Service, right?
They have something called Postal Inspectors.
Same thing as a special agent.
They're typically, I think they're 1811s as well.
They investigate any type of crime that has to do with the mail or using the mailing system.
So obviously anything that touches the U.S. Federal Mail, they get Nexus.
So since I'm assuming, were you like sending letters out or using?
Oh, no, you were sending wires, right?
They didn't know.
They thought it was mail fraud.
Like on my initial target letter, it says mail fraud.
Okay.
But they stayed on because they were the lead case agent at the time.
So they transferred to wire fraud.
But typically they wouldn't do a wire fraud case.
Yeah, they normally wouldn't.
So unless it hits a Nexus with the mail.
So that, okay.
So now it's making sense to me.
They use these departments.
What was it called again?
Department of the Department of Banking.
So this is what they did.
They use them, administrative subpoena power, bring him in, ask him questions under oath.
We can listen in as investigators.
We don't have to give him his Miranda rights.
Let him say everything.
We can use that.
Now we bring in him and we ask him the harder questions than we mirand.
Did they mirandize you?
No, nothing.
That's why another reason.
And the jury is very sympathetic to people that are not given their Miranda rights or target letters are known.
They're like an amateur.
I went in there blind.
Did they tell you?
No, the door was closed.
Nothing.
They literally just sat down and literally just said, hey, we have some questions.
And I didn't know what a postal agent was.
You know, I didn't know anything.
I didn't have an attorney.
They didn't say, hey, you should have an attorney here.
And they acted like my friends.
They gave me their business card.
They were texting me.
And as soon as I got out of that.
Did you see their guns?
No, nothing.
I didn't know.
I didn't know what I was doing.
You didn't know they were 18.
Yeah, you had no idea they were law enforcement.
I just was there to clear my name.
I built their case for them.
Like, I literally gave them everything.
So let's say you're him in his position.
What do you do?
What should you do?
Well, I'm glad that they threw out the, they basically threw out that interview that they did with you.
I didn't throw it out.
I went to trial.
I won.
Okay, but okay, but okay, that makes sense because that charge didn't stick.
Because the thing is, that's amateur arm by these guys.
If you're going to bring someone in for questions and you're going to question about a crime and the doors close and they don't have a, they can't, they don't feel like they can leave, you have to read them the rights.
Yeah.
So that's where they fucked up is they didn't read them his rights.
Miranda rights.
Yeah.
I like those rights.
Yeah, I know you do.
So, okay, so they bring you in, you testify, then on top of that, they do an interview with you.
At this point, and you don't know their law enforcement.
So, you're thinking, oh, yeah, everything's great.
I'm clear, right?
They acted like they were going to help me.
They said, listen, you're not going to get arrested.
Nothing like this.
You know, we're just here to help.
You know, let's get everyone their money back.
Yada, yada.
And then when I contacted a criminal defense attorney, he said, block their numbers, don't talk to them.
And that's when the game was on.
And he dealt, I never talked to them again until the day they arrested me in the car.
And then we were having like a casual conversation, like what me and you were talking about.
A lot of these agents, you know, after the job's done, they're very chill.
You know, they're not like the enemy, you know?
They're cool guys.
So this happens beginning of 2014.
They bring you in, you do this, this interview, et cetera.
Was it taped?
No, it wasn't taped.
Okay.
It might have been recorded.
I don't know.
They had a transcript, but that was like the agent notes, you know?
Okay.
I don't know what the situation was.
Well, back then, feds didn't have to record interviews.
So that could, because I remember 2015, a lot of United States attorney's offices passed like a thing where, hey, you need to record all your interviews, but this is 2014.
Your prior job, would you ever cross-pass with him at all for this type of crime?
Yeah, wire fraud, yeah.
Yes, I'm like this, yeah.
Take us back to the day of your arrest.
Yeah.
What were you doing?
What were you thinking?
Like, oh, I'm just going to go to the store, get some food, or whatever.
And were you nervous?
Like, were you like freaking out?
Because you're like, oh, shit.
Go to the story, get some food.
He's watching too much TV.
I'm assuming at this point, since you contacted the defense attorney, you're probably nervous now.
You're like, oh, shit, like, these guys are not my friends.
Well, I realized that.
And also, I was running the club at the time.
I now own Tuxedo's, opened it back up.
So while the case is going on, I'm booking like these big acts and doing these things.
We still do the beats?
No, that's long gone.
And what happens is I was getting back from the casino because in Connecticut, you had to be 21 to gamble.
So I was going out of state to Yonkers Raceway and Yonkers to gamble.
I would play Baccarat and, you know, pay 500 bucks and turn in.
Right over the border from Dan Burry.
It's not far.
It's like 40 minutes.
It's like he goes into New York, then he drives south from somebody.
Did you lose versus how much you won gambling?
I won more than I lost.
Yeah.
But it's luck, man.
There's no thing.
I'm not going to say I'm a professional gambler or there's a trick.
I was playing on a machine.
Got it.
You know, and I was just looking at the pattern.
So if it was always player, I would just kept doubling down.
So I come back.
I had lost that particular night.
I get back at like 4 a.m.
I go to sleep.
I'm in just like my boxers.
And keep in mind, I'm very like chunky.
You know, I got like blonde highlights in my hair.
I look like a chipmunk a little bit.
I got my cartilage pierced or whatever, the industrial piercing.
This is like January 9th.
It's cold out.
It's snowing.
Okay.
And I wake up to like a loud banging at the door.
And this is my parents' house.
And I'm in the front room.
Real quick.
Before you go into this, how long was it between you being interviewed by postal inspectors to you getting arrested?
April 2014 was the meeting.
January 2015 was the indictment.
So what is that, like eight months or whatever?
Okay.
So I'm sitting there and I look out my window and I see it's snowing.
The lights are on in the front porch and there's cars lined up and down the street with the flashing lights.
You have state troopers.
You have FBI agents that are marked or like the cars.
You have local police and then you have like the escalates, the typical like, you know, FBI type cars.
It's five in the morning now you see this?
It's like five or six.
You know, it's very early.
And I'm looking out the windows and there's guys armed like in tactical vests outside.
My mom, the staircase is right above my room.
So my mom runs down.
She's opening the door and they barge in as soon as she opens it and they're like, step back, step back, hold the dog.
Where is he?
And I like freeze.
I'm sitting on my bed and literally just boxers and they barge into my room and I'm thinking I had been getting arrested for selling alcohol illegally at the club because we didn't have a liquor license.
And I'm thinking it's another one of those because my lawyer had said, hey, the feds will let you turn themselves, turn yourself in when it comes down to an indictment because we were in communication with them.
We were cooperating to that extent.
So you knew you were going to get indicted.
Yeah, we knew when the grand jury hearings were happening.
No one doesn't know when they're going to get indicted by the feds.
It's not a surprise.
Well, a lot of times it is.
But I'm just like shocked.
So you knew after that interview with postal inspection, you lawyer up and your lawyer stayed in contact with them.
We went to a meeting with the prosecutor, the AUSA, a reverse proffer, where they sit down, tell you everything they have against you.
Now, a proffered.
When was this?
This was July of 2014.
Okay.
So April, the agents talk to you.
Just so I get a timeline here.
2013.
April they just talk to you and you do that testimony.
Yep.
July, you come in to the United States Attorney's Office.
You speak.
There's FBI agents there, the prosecutor, and they tell you what they have.
Yep.
And they give you a target letter like, hey, you're the subject of a criminal investigation.
Fast forward to January, you're getting indicted.
And you're like, what the fuck?
Like, I had been talking with you.
We thought we were going to self-surrender because the grand jury proceedings were in October.
Prosecutor emails my lawyer and says, hey, we're not going to indict until next year.
Have a good holiday season because they go away.
Yeah, we knew.
We were in the know.
So I thought I'm getting charged on another state case.
Wasn't true.
They didn't want to give you an information?
Nothing.
Feds come in.
They arrest me.
They ask for my password on my phone.
I gave it to them.
I didn't realize that I didn't have to give it to them.
Damn.
I give them the passcode and they haul me out of the house in handcuffs.
They make me wear these cowboy boots and baggy jeans.
The cowboy boots were from the musicals that I was in in high school and they had no laces on them.
They don't let me brush my teeth.
They let me take a piss with my hands cuffed behind my back and they drag me out of the house and they keep me outside in the snow in the cold waiting for the lead detective that started the whole case just to come and say, Hey, do you remember me?
Like one of those I gotcha Wilfrid Wall Street type moments.
The postal inspector.
No, their original detective from Danbury, the lead case agent from the beginning who started the whole thing.
And that he retired like a year or two after.
So then they bring me the federal courthouse.
Okay, he must have been assigned to the U.S. Postal Inspection Service then.
Yeah, they brought him on CTFO.
They had him benched during trial.
Didn't get to testify.
He wasn't a part of it.
The only one sitting at the prosecutor's desk was the lead FBI agent, lead postal inspector, and lead IRS agent were the third.
Oh, really?
Yeah, because we had CID, Criminal Investigating Division of the IRS that was involved in the case, too.
So there were those three, and then the main AUSA and then his assistant, AUSA.
There's two prosecutors, court reporters.
It was a huge ordeal.
Wow, that's wild, bro.
So that's quite a from my professional experience listening to that.
That's a lot of resources on a fucking kid.
Two AUSAs, one case agent from three different agencies.
Wow.
You should write a book, bro.
We're working on it.
I actually get a book, though.
I just got paired up with who's the blonde from iCarly.
Oh, shit.
What's your name?
Jeanette McCurdy.
Her agent listens to my podcast and we're working together.
We're hoping to have a deal in the early next year.
And I've been on like HBO Max.
They took the documentary down because they merged with Discover.
But I just filmed something for Discovery Channer channel for HBO Max.
And we're doing cool things.
Vice did like something on YouTube that has like a bunch of views.
So there's something there, but like my focus has just been the podcast.
Of course, of course.
And I didn't want to be like one of those people that just chase like my story.
So I find it interesting.
So they you do that, you do the testimony with the banking people.
Then the postal inspectors ask you questions.
Then they bring you in to tell you that they got information, you're the subject of a criminal investigation.
Then they assure you that they're not going to indict you until 2015.
December, this is December, right?
No, no, no.
January.
So they did it that you ended new year.
Yeah.
Okay.
But I didn't get to turn myself in.
Yeah, because you thought that you were going to just turn.
Why did they let you plead to like do an information?
I don't know.
I think they just wanted the optics because the news articles came out like seconds after they slapped the cuffs on me.
It was all staged, arranged.
They had it all figured out.
It's a sexy case.
Yeah, normally, just so you guys know, like when you're, you can be indicted or you can get hit with something called an information.
Typically, if they bring you in and give you a reverse profit like they did with him, which isn't common, and they tell you, hey, you're the subject of investigation, they have you fucking, you know, come in and cooperate, they give you an information, which means like you can turn yourself in.
Like they, it's not a formal indictment with a grand jury.
It's like, hey, you're being charged by the AUSA directly.
And then you get arrested and then, or you turn yourself in, and that's it.
But that's interesting that they still decided to indict you and come in.
I just think they thought I was going to plead out.
Like when we were deliberating a trial, they thought the jury would, you know, instantly return a verdict and they didn't.
And we were negotiating with the head head AUS or USA of Connecticut.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Trying to make a backdoor deal saying, hey, you know, this isn't looking good for you guys.
Do you want to, you know, we'll plead guilty, no jail time.
How long were you in jail for?
I did 27 months out of a three-year sentence.
That's after you got convicted.
So, all right.
So you get arrested by the feds that first night in January.
I go to trial in November.
I'm on bond.
I go to trial.
I was going to ask you, were you out on bond the whole time?
$250,000 bond.
A lot of people's misconception is you don't actually put up money in the feds.
You're just signing for something.
So my parents signed their house.
I got out.
I ran the club doing the shows and whatnot.
And then I went to trial on November 1st.
And it was like a month long.
How long were you locked up before your parents posted a bond?
Like four hours.
Oh, okay.
Wow.
Same day.
They got me on like a Monday or Tuesday, and I got out very quick.
My lawyer was there.
My mom called.
Saw the judge same day?
Saw the magistrate, judge the same day.
Everything was in and out, but they banned me from social media.
Which court did you go to?
The one in New Haven?
Yeah, I was supposed to go to Bridgeport, but then the judge was sick that day.
So they transferred me to New Haven.
So I had the magistrate in New Haven, and then I had a federal judge assigned to me in New Haven.
That's where the trial was.
When you're arrested, guys, you got to be brought in front of a judge within 72 hours, mostly 24.
So you're in front of the judge.
He sets a bond right then and there for you.
250K.
Family signs the houseway.
You're able to go ahead and get out.
So then you're out on bond and you're waiting like eight months.
And throughout this process, did it ever come to you and you're like, I'm going to plead guilty?
Or were like you the whole time?
Like, fuck these guys.
They arrested me after I said I would turn myself in.
I'm going to go to trial.
No, I was going to trial.
They even threatened my dad, like to arrest my dad for taxes or whatever.
And my dad was like, don't worry about me.
You're going to trial.
Okay.
I was going through it no matter what because they wouldn't give me a deal for no jail time.
I mean, the government spent hundreds of thousands of dollars investigating this over $400,000 in losses.
Damn.
And all they had to do was give me a plea deal.
They still would have got the conviction, but there's no jail time.
Yeah.
And they wouldn't give me that.
So you go through this.
Obviously, it's kind of like you and your business partner that are in this.
Can you tell us about that?
Because obviously his name probably came up during interviews, et cetera.
Yeah, his name is.
People are going to say, like, oh, did you snitch it in?
Blah, blah, blah.
So can you tell that side?
I never read it.
I mean, his name was John Roble.
He's on my whole case.
The cool thing about going to trial is everything's documented.
That's the best part.
Like, no one could ever call out my shit for being bullshit because it's all right there.
If you read the transcripts, everything that happened is right there from artist names to dollar amounts to everything.
And he testified for like two days and I testified in my own trial.
Were you testified?
I testified for like three days.
Holy shit.
Yeah, it was a the attorney literally said to the judge, objection.
This sounds like a cocktail party.
It was like a high school reunion.
You got all these high schoolers coming in and testifying.
It was crazy.
It was a madhouse for a month.
And we were talking before, he didn't decide to testify until like the day before or something, right?
They gave him like a midnight.
It was literally like in the movies, one of those midnight deals where, hey, no jail time, probation in the state misdemeanor.
You're testifying.
Because his case was state.
Yep.
Immunity.
And that's what he got.
Why'd they go after you federally?
But he got a state case.
I was a guy in the limelight.
You know, when you're out there, when you're in their face, when you're the headlines, you know, that's what they do.
It's a very, very sexy case because he is Ian Bick.
Yeah.
I mean, I was young.
You know, I own the club and they're hyping me up to be this huge, you know, nightclub owner, 18-year-old nightclub owner arrested by FBI and IRS.
Yeah.
They loved it.
Yeah.
So, okay.
So they didn't give you a deal, gave him a deal.
He testifies.
What was it like when he took the stand?
And you're just sitting there.
Dude, it was annoying, man.
You're like, throughout the whole trial because you got no clue, right?
Yeah, and you have people that lie.
You knew going into it, you know, you're passed a note, hey, this person's testifying.
But dude, seeing your best friend like testify against you.
And everyone talks about snitches and shit and this and that.
That is what burns the most.
Yeah.
When you're right there and you're fighting for your life and someone does that.
But my lawyer was like, he didn't look you in the at one time, right?
No, never.
No one, not one person that testified looked me in the ass.
You never do.
Yeah.
My lawyer said, just look at them, you know, look at them, say, try to say hello, interact with them, you know, make it seem like they're the bad people.
Yeah.
So he tests, he takes a stand, testifies against you.
Now, that's unique.
You actually took the stand in your own defense.
Yeah.
Not typically done unless I've seen like self-defense cases.
Why did you and your lawyer decide to take the stand?
He just thought I could handle it.
And he just said the biggest thing is you can't get agitated.
If you get agitated on the stand when the prosecutors cross-examine you.
The problem is not him interviewing you, your lawyer.
It's when they do the cross.
And that's where everyone fails.
It's uncomfortable.
I've been cross-examined before.
Fucking sucks, man, because they literally make you look like a piece of crap.
And that was me as an agent.
I could only imagine as the suspect.
This is why most defendants never take the stand.
So what was like the strategy behind it?
Was it like to show that you have good character?
You're a good kid.
Let the try, the jury kind of hear your side.
Like, what was the strategy there for you?
It was to tell the whole story.
Like, that's why I testified for so long.
I pieced everything together in my mind, what my mindset is, everything like that, which is why there was a lot of objections because basically I'm telling a story rather than actually giving like testimony.
And the judge allowed it.
And it was definitely important for the jury to hear.
Yeah.
And you think that made like a big factor in like the amount of time that you got?
I think going to trial definitely helps because if I took a plea deal for say the three or four years, the judge, he doesn't know me.
He's going whatever the recommendation, whatever the plea is, you know?
Yeah.
So it just worked out that it, you know.
So your testimony humanized you in your opinion.
I agree.
And I think that if my business partner didn't testify, I would have won.
And I did win most of the charges, but the feds will overcharge you.
They hit me with 15 counts.
I was going to say, so what were you indicted for versus what did they convict you of?
Nine counts of wire fraud, three counts of money laundering, and then lying to postal inspectors.
Did each of those counts come from the, I'm assuming, a combination of your Beats business and your promotion business?
Yeah, and it's based off of transactions.
So they'll be like, count one, you know, $50,000 wire on this date is wire fraud.
You know, and the verdict was very messed up because some of them were not guilty.
And in order to prove wire fraud, one of the counts or one of the aspects of wire fraud is you have to have criminal intent.
So how could I have no criminal intent in one transaction for the same time period, but then criminal intent in another?
But you can't appeal a, you know, an unorganized or unlike doesn't make sense type of verdict.
You know, there's no appeal basis for that.
So you get convicted, you lose.
When did you actually go to obviously at that point, did they remand you right there?
Or did you get a little bit of time to turn yourself into Bureau of Prisons?
How'd that work?
It's not like the state.
That's like one of the biggest differences.
In the state, if you lose a trial, nine times out of 10, you're getting remanded right then.
Right then and there.
Yep.
Feds, if you have no issues, you're allowed back on bond.
I was on bond for almost a year because sentencing.
keeps getting pushed.
I mean, you look at Donald Trump's case, sentencing gets pushed.
It's never the date they set it for.
Yeah.
You know, so it got pushed.
We strung it out a year and my bond actually ended up getting revoked a month before sentencing because my friends that worked with me at the club reported that I was going out of state to gamble.
So I wasn't allowed to go out of state as one of my conditions of release.
They reported it because they wanted to take the club.
Judge got pissed, took away my bond, and now I'm sent to a detention center in Rhode Island.
And I didn't see the light of day for almost three years later.
Holy shit.
So, so they gave you like kind of a year.
Well, it didn't mean to be a year, but you got a grace period to kind of get your affairs in order.
And then you ended up, okay.
So you go in.
What was that first night of prison like?
Dude, it was scary.
They stuck me with like a heroin addict that was just off the streets.
Damn.
And he was like spazzing out, like tearing up his arms.
I'm on the bunk butt bunk, top bunk, because he was there before, and you're waiting for like 72 hours for your TV shot.
And they give you the bag lunch.
And he's like, are you going to eat that while like scratching all over?
Skins flying everywhere.
I'm like, dude, I don't, I'm not hungry, man.
I got a figure shit to worry about.
Like to have this sandwich.
And he's trying to say, you can't do this.
You can't do that.
This, that.
And I remember like that first shower, you know, like in the holding detention center, you have the group showers.
And I'm not showering in front of a group of men.
So I would like wait awkwardly and I would have like my parents.
I'm a little kid at this point.
At this point, I'm 21.
Okay.
I just turned 21.
Oh, yeah, because time had elapsed.
And it was just, it was a surreal experience.
And I didn't know what I was going up against.
So there was a guy who we saw yesterday in jail.
He mentioned fuck food, fuck air.
All he wanted was ass.
Did you encounter a booty warrior in jail?
Like someone that wanted my ass?
Yeah, booty warrior.
Yeah, prison guard, man.
He tried to get my muffins.
A prison guard?
Yeah, prison guard literally tried to fuck me.
A male prison guard tried to fuck me.
You know how to tell that story?
Yeah, so it was at the camp.
I know me and you talked about it, but for real.
I don't care.
So it was at a prison camp.
This was like the last few months of my sentence, and I'm working in the bakery.
And everyone called me McLovin in prison.
I know.
I got McLovin tattooed on my own.
Oh, my God.
And I got like a portrait of McLovin on my thigh the other day.
That's cute.
That's part of it.
Yeah.
So anyways, everyone's calling me McLovin and I'm McLovin, the baker.
And me and my bunk mate worked the bakery.
You ran the bakery.
And that morning, he got, he didn't get woken up, but I got woken up.
What jail were you at this point?
Because they moved you around.
Oxford Federal Prison Camp in Wisconsin.
This is just a camp.
And were you able to walk around and shit like that?
It was like a campus?
Dude, I was the guy that ran through the woods to bring back McDonald's sushi pizza.
Like I would run through.
I would escape to there's no fence.
So I was the runner and I would run through, bring back a knapsack.
Guys would leave to go hook up with their girlfriends or their wives.
Really?
Dude, everyone has a phone.
That's why Boost Mobile is in business.
It's because of federal prison.
Everyone has a Boost Mobile, untraceable phone plan.
There's no iPhones.
You're on a Samsung.
There would be nights I'd be on my bunk watching Orange is a new black.
Oh, wow.
Or wearing orange.
Power is like the biggest TV show in federal prison.
Power.
Yeah.
You're familiar with Power?
Yeah, that's how I've been able to have some of the guests on my show because they're so fascinated that everyone watches Power.
We'd smuggle in hard drives.
Like people would put hard drives up their ass to watch Power.
And let me, for the audience real quick, some of you guys are probably shocked at what he's saying.
So guys, there's different levels of security in the federal prison system.
There are ones that are low, especially when you're about to get out.
You said you had a few months to go, right?
Yeah, this is like.
So typically, if you're well-behaved and you only got a few months to go, they'll put you in a low-security prison.
Whereas damn near a college campus, people are walking around.
No one's handcuffed.
It's open campus.
I don't know.
Dudes are running around to get food, but fuck it.
The yellow, I guess.
But they have one.
And I know this, they have one at Pensacola that's low like that.
I remember once I go interview a guy for a case, and he was like walking around.
So I was like, what the fuck is this?
So did you meet anyone famous in jail?
I met a couple people.
I was with, it was either Big Meach or one of the other guys that was on the west side at Fort Dix when I was at the low there.
Four dicks?
Yeah, it's a...
Wait, wait, wait.
It's called Fort Dix.
It was an Intel, bro.
Yeah.
So let me get it straight.
He almost got graped by a booty warrior.
And you got to hear that story.
Sorry, finish it.
Well, so I was with him, and then I was with Joe Judice from Desperate Housewives, Teresa, or whatever.
And then I was with George Papadopoulos from Trump's whole thing.
So, anyways, I'm at this camp now, and he calls me to the kitchen that morning at like 4 a.m. and not my bunk mate.
And the guard tells me, Hey, your bunk mate wasn't feeling good, so you didn't come.
And normally we would get called at different times, like they stagger by an hour or whatever.
So I'm in the bakery.
There's no cameras.
Standing next to this guy.
He's like penis pencil-shaped, wores like pants all the way up to like his, you know, chest.
Smells kind of bad, very skinny, and just weird-looking dude, you know?
And he's standing next to me, and I'm scooping the muffin mix into the muffin container.
It was pre-made muffin mix.
And I'm standing there, and then all of a sudden, I feel like a touch on my elbow while I'm scooping the muffin mix.
And I look to the right, and he quickly pulls his hand back.
So I'm like, maybe I had like a bug on me or some muffin mix or whatever.
No big deal.
I'm going to get back to doing my job.
I go back to scooping the muffin mix and then all of a sudden he does it again, but this time he's like massaging it.
He's like McLovin.
Rubbing it.
McMuffin.
Not saying anything.
He's just breathing heavily, rubbing it.
Yeah, breathing heavily.
And that hand goes to my thigh.
What the fuck?
The thigh.
Hey, yo, pause, nigga.
Yo, that's crazy.
The thigh goes to my ass.
And that's when I'm like, I turn around like that.
And he like pulls his hand back.
And I'm like, I got to go.
I'm like, I'm done with the shit.
This is a couple hours in.
I go back to my cell and I tell people what happened.
And they're like, well, you know, maybe it was a one-time thing.
Like, maybe we can utilize him to get product in or, you know, more cell phones or something.
Yeah, maybe we could do something.
And everyone was like, well, did you hit him?
And I was like, no, because there's no cameras.
Like, it's always their word over mine.
So that happens.
Two weeks later, I go into the walk-in freezer.
That's where they keep like the eggs in the fridge.
And in the freezer, they have the cookies, like the good stuff and the cream cheese.
And normally these are locked.
So the guard would unlock it, stand outside, and maybe go to his office.
This guy unlocks it, lets me in and shuts the door behind him.
Yo, yo!
Freeze!
Hey, yo, pause!
Get over here!
So you're in a freezer.
What are you doing?
No, no, no, no.
I think he locked.
He locked you in by yourself, right?
No, we're both in there.
Oh, shit.
Hold on, hold on, all right.
That was you.
What would you do?
I was hoping it was just hit by himself in that.
Listen, is you and a booty warrior in a freezer?
What do you do?
I bet you.
I put my hands up when we fight you, man.
Side of the box, buddy.
Do our dice.
They're going to turn into Guy.
Damn, dude.
Okay, cool.
So me and him are in this, and I go and grab the tray of frozen cookies.
And I'm holding this tray up.
So you're playing it off trying to be like polite, I guess.
Yeah, I'm just like, I don't know what's going to happen.
So I grab the tray and I'm trying to walk.
Like first, I'm standing like head on with this tray.
And he's like standing there, arms crossed like this in front of the door.
So I'm like, all right.
And then he like goes to open the door, but his body is blocking half of the door.
So like his, his like butt is up against the, like the side of the door.
So he basically, long story short, he forces me to walk out with this tray with my butt rubbing against his dick going out of this thing.
And that was the final straw.
That's when I reported him.
He got removed from the compound and they launched an investigation.
Did he get arrested?
No, never got arrested.
I tried to sue.
They covered it up, but I have the DMs like two, like three, four years later when I started the podcast and I told that story and it went viral.
Oh, shit.
A guard from that prison reached out and he said, hey, was this guard so-and-so?
And I said, yeah, how'd you know?
And he said, that guy's been accused of doing that multiple times.
So I don't know where he is now.
He doesn't work for the system.
This must sound weird, bro.
Yeah.
You could answer or don't answer.
Oh, when you walk past him in the freezer.
Yeah.
And you were like trying to get out the door.
Oh, my God.
It's fresh.
Yo, what's going on?
Was there any feeling or indication of like hardness?
No, bro.
I'm not gay.
No, no, no.
No, for me.
No, no, no.
He's asking if the guy has.
Oh, it was like kind of quick.
You know, you're rubbing against.
Like, yeah, I don't know, man.
It was just a weird, it was a weird situation, you know?
It's very weird.
And I think like any other inmate would have like hit him.
But I was like young white McLovin, you know?
Yeah, as you can see.
Obviously, awful experience, but like, yeah, I mean, hitting a prison guard is not the way to go.
So like, obviously, you report it.
The guy liked kids, though.
That's what we were getting at, you know, because there's 200 other men.
I'm the one that looks the youngest.
So he didn't harass nobody else.
No, this wasn't like a gay thing.
This was he likes kids, you know.
I'm a young kid.
I look young now.
So imagine what I look like at 21.
Yeah, I look like I was 16.
Yeah.
Fucking weirdo.
So you get out.
So we've got a few minutes here because it's 847.
Guys, he's got to go get some food.
Yep.
So you get out, right?
Obviously, you had that terrible ordeal.
Fuck that guy.
You get out.
What's the first thing you did when you got out?
Yeah.
Thought I was going to get into go back in the nightclub business, realized I couldn't do that because I had no money.
When was the day you got released?
This was January 2019.
I'm like 24, 23.
I got five guys, burgers and fries as my first meal.
And I was at the halfway house.
Were you in Wisconsin at this point when you got released?
Yeah, they flew me back home to New Haven and I went to the Waterbury, Connecticut halfway house.
Okay.
And I was under there for a few months.
And then I went on home confinement, the ankle monitor for a year on probation.
That was like one of the conditions.
And I got a job at Whole Foods and I worked there.
I went from $15 an hour as a hot bar cook to by the time I left three years later, I was going to make over $100K that year.
At Trader Joe's.
Whole Foods.
Oh, Who Foods.
No, that one's all Whole Foods.
Sorry, my bad.
That's ops.
Yeah.
Trader Joe's is ops.
No, and I was a prepared foods team leader.
I was making like 33 an hour and crushing it in overtime.
I got an apartment.
You know, I had a girlfriend at the time.
I had a dog, a car.
Where are you living at this point?
Danbury, Connecticut.
Yeah.
Never left Danbury.
And I rebuilt my life from that.
But then eventually it's like, you know, when you're an entrepreneur, you get burnt out.
And in corporate, you can only do so much with them, without them not holding you back.
Of course.
So my friend convinced me to start sharing prison stories on TikTok because COVID exploded this whole prison talk and prison YouTube thing.
YouTube in general exploded, yeah.
Exactly.
I missed the ball on that.
This is a couple of years later.
This is 2022.
And he convinces me to tell stories about the club and stuff.
So imagine that you get locked up.
Sorry, you get out.
And then like a year later, the world shuts down.
Yeah.
And it was kind of cool because half of it was, I was on home confinement and the whole world was on home confinement.
Yeah.
Yeah.
With you.
Yeah.
Like, feel how I feel now, motherfucker.
But had I started telling these prison stories during then, I'd, you know, I would have did you ever do a club with 1090 Jake?
Yeah, I did a show with him.
He's been on my podcast.
Shout out to 1090J.
Shout out to him, bro.
He's a good dude, man.
Very good dude.
Yeah, he's a very good dude.
He came to my studio.
I flew him out, not first class.
He's like, hey, you know, if it was anyone else, they're flying me first class.
And he came on.
We formed a relationship.
I picked him up at the airport and we were just like talking.
Because he went through the state system.
You went through the federal.
Yeah.
And I get in the door with a lot of these hard guys because they know I went to trial and my paperwork's clean.
So like it's yeah, you never told.
Never told.
Never added.
And then my fifth TikTok talking about solitaire because I was on the shoe for six months went viral.
1.5 million views in like a few hours.
And then ever since then, two years ago, I've been posting content every day, turned it into a podcast.
Tell us your, because we don't have much more time.
Tell us your favorite prison story and then we'll close out.
And then from me, just tell us what you've learned and what they can learn from not to do to end up in your position.
Oh, you want to get motivational to have that?
Yeah, something for them.
Whichever one you want to do first, the motivation thing or the story?
So favorite story, and this is like what really blew up the podcast because like no jumper, world star, all these people took up the story.
When I was at Fort Dix, this is my first like designated spot, the lowest security prison.
And it's ironic they call it Fort Dix because there's all sex offenders there.
Oh, everyone thought I was a sex offender.
No one bothered.
So the way it works is when you get to a yard, they're supposed to check your paperwork.
You run with the crew.
Everyone thought I was a sex offender and no one came up to me.
So I'm hustling.
I'm moving around.
I'm trying to sell cell phones.
But isn't everyone else a sex offender there too?
Yeah.
And then there's some good guys.
Gotcha.
But all the white guys are really sex offenders.
And if you say you're there for fraud at 21, no one believes you because the feds don't really pick up 21-year-old fraud kids.
That's all white dudes.
Exactly.
And a lot of those guys are chomo, sex offenders is what they call them.
Gotcha.
So I'm hustling.
I'm doing dice.
I'm doing all these things.
And these guys from Baltimore, because Obama had lowered a bunch of drug sentences.
So they were able to come down from a medium or a penitentiary to a low.
So they see a white kid who looks like a sex offender making moves, hustling, not running with anyone.
They come up to me.
I mean, prisons are typically racist.
It's by cars and fed in the feds.
It's by cars.
It's like your state.
Are you in Connecticut?
Are you in New York?
Are you in New England?
They come up to me and they said, Hey, we'll be your protection.
I'm like, oh, I'm good.
I don't need protection.
Like, everything's good.
I haven't been an issue.
And then they were like, let me holler at you real quick.
And it's these two jacked, you know, black guys from DC and they pull me in the bathroom.
And there's only one guard for 400 inmates, no cameras, three stories.
It's an old army.
It's a low security prison.
Yeah.
And they bring me into the bathroom and they're like, listen, this is what you're going to do.
They give me a number.
Have your people put $1,200 a month or whatever.
And we'll protect your phone because they knew I had a phone.
And these are guys that have been down 15, 20 years.
They don't have a phone.
They're like, we'll hold it for you, this and that.
I'm like, guys, no, I'm good.
Like, we're straight.
Everything's good.
And right then and there, one of the guys slaps my glasses right off my face.
They go over, they break, they fly across the bathroom.
And the other guy like picks me up and puts me up against the wall.
And he's like, listen, you don't have a choice here.
And the other guy then pulls out a steel rod and like puts it up against my neck.
And he's like, listen, you're going to pay us or you're going to get hurt.
And kind of right after that, you know, I strategized a little bit and I went up to the biggest dude that like ran the New York card.
And I said, how much do I have to put on your books to be protected in here, to be good?
And I paid him like 50, 100 bucks a week, and I became like his bitch, kind of.
Like people were looking at it as we can't fuck with that dude's hustle.
He's taken care of.
And the guys backed off of me and those guys ended up getting set up because they were doing too much movement and trying to extort and no one wants heat brought to the building.
So someone put a phone in their boot under the bed.
They got taken out to the shoe and brought back to another prison.
But that whole paying for protection story, when I told it, because everyone would say in the comments, my cheeks are still red from that slap from that day, which was pretty funny.
So you had to go and get, were these, the guys that slapped you from Maryland, were they gang affiliated?
Were they bloods, Crips, or any of that?
I don't know any of that because it didn't really operate gangs.
It was just like cars, like the DC guys run together.
Those are like the booty bandits of the prison.
DC in Maryland has that booty baby.
Did they try you like that too?
No, not at first.
Okay.
They just wanted money.
Not at first.
They just wanted money.
They knew I was a white kid that had money whose dad took care of him.
And I had a phone.
They didn't like that.
So they sent me up.
And, you know, so for, so you, this New York guy, you just paid him, what, $1,500 a week, you said?
No, I paid him like 50 to 100 bucks a week in commissary.
He had nothing.
Yeah.
The other guys won like $1,500.
And why was this guy like so respected where the Maryland guys didn't want to fuck with you?
He was big?
He was with the New York car.
So the New York car runs that prison.
Yeah, they're not going to interfere with that.
New York outnumbers Maryland and Baltimore 10 to 1 in a prison like that.
So they couldn't do anything.
And those guys ended up getting run up out of there.
So when you ate lunch, breakfast, dinner, did you sit with them?
No, I was kind of just like, whatever.
Like I sat with my bunk mate and stuff.
But when I first got there, they made me sit at the sex offender table because I thought I was a sex offender.
So I was used and abused a lot in prison because of my looks.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Because there's not many guys that look like you that are young.
So dude, that must have been terrifying being there as like a 21-year-old kid.
It sucked, man.
It was a bad experience, but it turned out to be the best thing that could ever happen to me.
So like my advice to people would be like, sometimes you have to use your most embarrassing, most failure moment in life to your advantage.
You know, I ran with that.
I used it.
I embraced it.
And my life changed.
And I became successful the day I started talking about something that the world looks at as your most embarrassing moment.
No one talks about prison.
A lot of celebrities that go to prison don't talk about prison.
And I'm very open and honest and real about it.
And that's what I think brought me to a new level in my life.
And I found success from that.
Good job, bro.
No, man.
I mean, thanks for telling your story, bro.
And like, you know, obviously that's not difficult.
I mean, sorry, that's not easy to share.
And I really appreciate it.
I know you got to get going.
So I'll give you the last word, bro, and then we'll close out here.
And then where can I find you?
And where can I find you?
Just IanBick.com, you know, Ian Bick on any platform.
I'm probably one of the only Ian Bicks.
So it's easy to like search and stuff.
And, you know, we're growing.
We got a bunch of listeners.
You know, Mike Tyson sponsors the show now, his weed company.
W. Yeah.
So we were doing cool things.
Ric Flair's, you know, energy company.
Woo!
Yeah.
Woo.
Oh, we need Rick Flair on here.
We do, actually.
Ric Flair will be good.
He lives in Florida.
All right, we'll talk off on him.
Yeah, he lives in Tampa.
I think I'm interviewing him next month.
Okay.
Let's do it.
Yeah.
And then you guys are welcome to use my studio whenever he saw it.
It's really good.
Yeah, he has a studio up in Connecticut.
We'll do a part two when I go back and visit my parents.
Definitely.
Every time I go up there, I'll do a pod with you.
Yeah, whatever you guys need, man.
You know, it's all about helping each other and building in the community and stuff.
Thank you for coming, bro.
No, thank you for coming, Ian.
I really enjoyed it, man.
Guys, here's Ian Bick.
Please go check out his YouTube channel, man.
Check him out everywhere.
He's on TikTok.
He's on YouTube, etc.
Check out the interview that me and him did with if you guys want to get a different perspective.
I shared some stories I've never shared before on his podcast.
Thanks so much for coming, guys.
He's got dinner to catch.
So we'll catch you guys back here with some lovely ladies in a bit.
Please.
I ran, I ran so far away.
▲
Export Selection