All Episodes
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 Air Podcast, man.
We're a special guest, Ian Bick.
Let's get into it, guys.
Let's go!
And we are live.
What's up, guys?
Welcome to the Fresh of the Podcast, man.
We're live on all the platforms, Twitch, YouTube, X, Castle Club, Rumble.
We're back.
We're even live on Fed Rec right now, guys.
So welcome to the show.
We got a special guest in the house.
Um we got Ian Big in the house, man.
And uh 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 uh Connecticut, and uh we went in detail as to my background with you know what I used to do with online screen investigations.
We had a very deep talk on federal investigation, how they work.
But we're gonna 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 gonna be a really interesting interview.
So um, you know, I know who you are, man.
Welcome to the show.
Can you please introduce yourself to the people?
Uh thank you guys for having me, man.
It's an awesome interview we did on his channel, guys.
Go check it out.
Dude, I I said this a couple of 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 I when I started out, I I watched your guys' stuff, your clips.
Um, 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.
Like the type of crime that he investigated.
I guess not, yeah, because no, we investigate wire fraud too.
But maybe he was one of the agents out of the house.
No, no, he was in Connecticut.
Well, it's funny because I I did a little stint in Connecticut for the New Haven office when I was working for Homeland Security.
Um, but I think I left because you didn't get picked picked up until like what 2018 or something.
Twenty fifteen, I got indicted.
2015.
I went to prison in 2016.
Yeah, it was a New Haven office that was investigating me with the postal inspectors uh out of Hartford and then New Haven field office uh 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 need a full story.
That's a lot.
We you guys are probably like, what the hell's going on here?
We're gonna explain some of this jargon because I know some of you guys uh might not be familiar with the criminal justice system from the federal perspective.
So we'll go ahead and define some of these uh jargon type terms.
But um, you know, 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.
Um I was born in New York City, grew up in Danbury, you know, good family.
Dad was a um 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.
Um he did stuff for 50 Cent, Bill Clinton, like really successful in the catering world.
Um, and then uh my mom was a massage therapist after doing like clinical social work.
So I was raised kind of like in that entrepreneurial family and uh, you know, good schools, went to private school for a little bit because I was bullied a lot, very overweight.
Everyone called me Twinkie, um and the chumpster, and yeah, I was teased, always last picked.
Um I didn't even play sports in high school, I did musical theater.
Um 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, uh because the door was unlocked, but we would walk in and get the liquor for our house parties.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Um that was a good thing.
The synagogue is near your real estate property, it was going up in value, man.
Wow.
Yeah, and we lived on the lake.
Um, no motorboats, but we had like paddle boards, um, rowboats, canoes, everything like that.
And um, you know, in in high school, I started out throwing house parties, and that'll uh uh eventually went from you know 200, 400 people house parties to then going to um 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 fifteen.
Bam.
Um and then from there, so that's 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, um, Steve Ioki, Zed's Dead.
EDM was huge back then.
Like I mean, it's still as popular, but like 2010 to like 2016, it was huge, man.
It had exploded at URI, like in Massachusetts and Boston in that area, and it translated to Connecticut because it was only a couple hours away.
Yep.
And I kind of ran with it doing these, you know, giant acts.
My first show ever was Big Sean.
Um 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 um and went into the contour promotion business.
Um I would later come to own Tuxedo's later on while I was on trial with the feds.
Okay.
Um, which was another crazy thing.
But 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.
T and party promoting.
And that's essentially what I do now.
Like the this world is concert promoting just virtually.
Yeah, yeah.
Yeah, you're promoting people to come watch your stuff.
Exactly.
So um that's an interesting way of looking at it.
So you're you get 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 fan uh friends and family um 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.
Yeah, that that was when it was.
It was uh 2012 was supposed to be the content.
Let's go, right?
Yeah, end of 2012.
And we were gonna book Wiz Khalifa, and my business partner at the time said he could book them because we had just booked Asher Roth, who was signed to Scooter Braun at the time, you know, Bieber's manager.
And uh we believed him because he got us Asher Roth, you get us Whiz Khalifa.
He just said you needed a hundred and twenty thousand 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's gonna 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 I that 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 decide 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 you basically loss was 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, which you told them it was profitable.
So instead, like So they're expecting their money back then.
Exactly.
And that start that one lie was like a domino effect.
Because say a show you put 20 grand into to a show.
Yeah.
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 desk 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.
Cause up front, you gotta pay them their fee, no matter what happens.
Yes, fun to hand it back in.
For rap, it's fifty percent 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 fifty percent up front, um, and then the rest day of, or you build enough relationships like I owed the chain smokers 25 grand for like four months after the show.
Uh, 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 go and then just man.
So Twitch, man.
So um Jake the Mullett.
So keep that in mind, guys, that like uh New England it everything is close, dude.
Literally within two hours, you could be in another state in another major city.
So um, okay.
So that it's funny, that one lie.
So Wiz Khalifa fucked you up, basically.
Well, yeah, no, him, it's the person that promised it.
But if that show happened, we wouldn't be here today.
Because if it lost, yeah, it it's that one thing, you know.
That all I just need that one show to happen.
Well, you know what's crazy?
Usually it's the person in the middle between you and the artist.
I was gonna ask him that next.
Who fucked it up?
Was it Wiz or was it the middleman?
The middleman, because I in the concert business, the rap game when you're first starting out, there's so many middlemen.
Yeah, 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 to money to to money to.
That's how like a a scenario like Chief Keefe 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 they're operators don't even know who took the money on their behalf.
Exactly.
Oh, you mean you mean Vitali?
Sorry, Vitalia.
Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Because they had booked Quavo to come on this with Catcher Predator episode.
Quavo to show up.
I was there.
Yeah.
But luckily, they use like a middleman, like a some kind of um 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 a little FaceTime call with the artist.
That's so it's confirmed.
At least we did a face on call and he records it.
Oh, so that's documented.
But here's the thing.
He did he was doing this in 2012.
Before social media, and we're gonna take two kids.
And no kidding 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 I'm gonna do.
Imagine bro, like it's hard, bro.
No Instagram, none because like Instagram was kind of like people like that.
It was Facebook.
Oh, you're using Facebook to do all this.
We did event pages of 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.
Uh 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 I'm actually now you got uh Jack Doherty paying Little Baby 200k at a show at the party.
And it because he has the fame and the notoriety is like, I'm paying the money up front, come through.
He's coming through.
Yeah.
No, I mean that's that's uh 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 sure or what, but you're saying that they need to give at least 50% up front.
Up front.
Maybe it was the second half.
Because you 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 promoters getting scammed because they never show up.
I was gonna say promoters probably get scammed way more.
Yeah, because they say, Oh, he's he's gonna be here at this this this day and time.
Never shows up.
Dude, if you search Chief Keefe on Google, he scams so many promoters.
Yo, or his manager, someone has, you know.
I know he scammed me, like or his promotion team did I never got the show.
Like we literally sold like two thousand 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 ain't fucked up.
But you know what rappers most of the time?
Well, they'll say they missed her flight on purpose, so that they can't make it.
And then you put you'd pay them half the money up front, so it's like, well, bro, you know, I missed my flight.
I don't know the weed, so I can't help myself.
This is 2012, this is when Chief Keefe was blown up everywhere.
Yeah, he was a 25 grand guarantee.
I paid him 15 up front, and then I would add 10 cash.
But also you gotta 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 a hundred or two hundred, they still have to perform for that twenty-five.
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 blew up?
He was like blowing up right at the same time, so that could have been a reason too.
But they're like, uh 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, uh, because I was actually shocked when you said you got him for 25k.
Like 2012, yeah, Kanye had just like kind of done the I don't like remix.
So he was starting to blow up, so you probably got him like right before.
I paid 40 for taiga.
This was right before he started dating Kylie Jenner.
Shout him, man.
Yeah, legendary.
No, but did he show at least?
Yeah, he did, but he 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 uh champagne bottles that are like 1500 bucks or whatever.
Yeah, you gotta get like five of those and uh 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 guarded him.
They foreshadowed prison.
I'll tell you that he's that guy's shit, man.
Yeah, yeah.
It's cool.
So okay, so um uh you were saying okay, so we're uh Wiscalifa.
Sorry, you're telling that story.
Yeah, so the the 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, um, like Rusko, Chris, Mike Studd, a bunch of like lower name people, Huey Mac, and um they all tank.
Oh, not enough promotion, everyone.
They at least did they at least all show?
They all showed um one concert got canceled because of a snowstorm, but they all showed.
Okay.
By that point, my reputation was better in the in the concert industry.
Um, so once you do your first couple shows and you get a rep, they're not gonna burn you.
That's like if an artist burn live nation.
And obviously that's a way different, you know, scenario, but it's that similar concept.
Gotcha.
I wasn't the new kid on the block anymore.
Gotcha.
Yeah.
Um, and obviously, uh, you were you holding these shows in Southern Connecticut like Danbury?
Uh New Haven, Toads Place.
Um you know Toad's place, yeah.
Uh there and then University of Rhode Island's uh college arena, we would rent out a lot for shows.
Um for the audience, Toad's place is a big bar in New Haven, huge hell yell hangout.
Yeah, you huge yell 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 Sun or Boston and then Madison Square Garden the next night.
So Steve Ioki 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 get his full.
It's like a circuit, basically.
That's why.
Exactly.
They find a Rhode Island Boston.
Boston's here.
Yeah.
And uh uh Boston's up here, and then you go down into Connecticut because you have to go through Connecticut to get new to New York.
So he Boston, then drive south into the Mohegan, the casinos, Then he drives west towards Danbury, hit Danbury, and then the New York border's right there.
Drives into New York and then down south into New York City.
Because for a rapper, imagine your lifespan of the 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 be you could literally be in any other state.
That's where they make their money too, from the touring.
Yeah, yeah.
It's not music, it's a touring.
You saw that TI doesn't want to do any more shows.
I saw more.
Yeah, yeah.
And I'm like, bro, he must have one 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.
No, you go, you take it.
I can't go.
You're banned from 11?
Bro, I'm banned everywhere, bro.
I tried to interview.
Bro, this is this nigga, bro.
Just got banned off Instagram today.
Like, bro, I'm banned everywhere, man.
Yeah, man.
That's funny.
It's is what it is, bro.
It's funny.
You get banned on the internet, but in real life, it's crazy.
That's crazy, man.
Um so uh so, but you get all the or you get all these other people.
Um you promise so how much are you in the hole now at this point after that string of shows and the whiz califo?
I was about give or take, because you get some money, 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's I was also working a job.
I've always been a hustler.
I was working at a corporate center, um, booking proms and stuff, and um 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 beats by Dre.com, they 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 $100, maybe a little cheaper on Amazon or eBay.
That's $100, $200, 300, $400 return.
Let me take loans from people and bar 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 five grand, I'm gonna give you $7500 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?
Um 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 they could have, but it 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.
Um, 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 um like the seller accounts.
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 I just so I understand this this thing here.
So you're so you're 50k into debt with 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.
Um 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't I do that with people?
And he said yes.
So I would borrow from one person, put it into this pot, no accounting, nothing 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 Burning Mayoff in the house.
Yeah, yeah.
Well, that's what they call it.
Now we're marketing one-on-one.
So 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 out of the family's.
It's a face car.
Because nigga, I'm gonna hood.
I can't do that shit.
Let me some money, nigga.
Nigga, I'll bulk.
What the fuck?
He's saying that people so like are you borrowed from your investors that invested with you?
Is what he's doing.
I'm borrowing from everyone.
Yeah, because I raised $600,000 at 18.
That's crazy though, bro.
Yeah, I'm just because look at it from his point of view.
He's young, has business ideas, but no actual.
These are friends and family, I'm assuming, right?
Friends and family um 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 the city.
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 when they trust you off of your face.
Yeah, I mean, I have like a likable personality, and people like me.
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 where that's why I went to trial ultimately because that wasn't my attention.
Gotcha.
So all right.
So now you got the 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 a hundred 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.
Yeah.
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 of tuxedos, we called it Skybar.
I actually got sued by Sky Vodka because I did S KYY, and they sued me for copyright infringement.
Really?
Yeah, I got sued.
I got plastered, and my lawyer didn't respond.
They were gonna pay me to change the branding.
They were gonna give me like 20 racks, and my lawyer responded like two days late, so they're like, fuck it, we're s 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 what 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.
Um 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 Keefe, Taiga, um, um uh Ace Hood, Kid Inc., a bunch of shows for you know that fall of 2013.
Let me let me ask you this.
Um, 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 were put into it head first strong, and you made hella 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'm I don't like the business aspect, you know.
That's why I'm not in real estate or anything.
Like I I would rather I 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.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
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?
Yeah.
There were so many things I could have done, or leverage that money with a bank and get a line of credit or something.
But you felt that I guess a duty to your investors because you're 50k in the whole with the Whisky Leafer thing and you borrowed all this money for the beats stuff.
I'm assuming at this point you probably paid back all your Whisky Leaf investors, yeah, 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 one off of 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 I in my mind, okay, you have all of these concerts booked with the biggest people in the world.
They're gonna 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.
This is now I'm 18.
This is the fall of 2013.
This is like my last hurrah.
Because if all these these concerts on a 300 grand concert investment, you're grossing maybe like close to two 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.
Gotcha.
Minus 50% to the investors.
Plus another 300 for the your post uh you know announcement expenses, like paying the artists a day of things like that.
See, I was I was gonna say, so what was making you more money at this point?
Uh was it the the concerts or was it the beat stuff?
Well it seems like you were doing both in the same time.
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 on YouTube.
We're demonetized on on uh on that Amazon, dude.
Just look at mindset at that point, because you're still young dealing with all this bullshit of failures, money not coming in.
What do you do at that point?
How do you feel?
I just I I'm like one of those people that never gives up.
Like I'm gonna 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 like made money on the podcast and did OnlyFans, yeah.
You did what?
I did OnlyFans, yeah.
Wait, what'd you do under?
Dude, I fucking slang 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, bro.
That's crazy.
Yeah.
I'm a hustler, man.
I'll do what I gotta do, bro.
You don't ever give up.
Never, bro.
I'm gonna find a way.
And that would I remember those first few months of doing the podcast, yeah, making no money.
TikTok was still under the old creator program, and I was hustling.
We 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 gotta do.
Never give up.
That's what you learned from this nigga, bro.
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 would do it too.
But I just feel like You make a lot of money.
They're not ready.
You know, um, you know, this is actually pretty common with like, you know, P stars uh that are dudes, like they make a lot of money on dudes.
G for P. But the problem is the guys want you to go like 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.
People think you make money off the videos per se.
Yes, but you make money office 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.
Yeah.
Or they'll do 50% off.
In the door.
I made all of my money really from the 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 uh what's guessing they did.
The gay the gayest thing that you ever did.
I mean, I didn't I didn't even think about it like that because you're you're doing the content like off camera, you know.
So like if you're jerking off or like doing whatever, like you gotta imagine it's a girl, like you're sexting like your girlfriend.
Okay 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 it's someone I was hooking up with or whoever, you're just getting that conversation going, or you watch porn or whatever you gotta 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.
No, I was literally trying to pay by red, okay?
Okay.
I wouldn't do it today.
But it's it's part of the grind.
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 the stuff.
Yeah, yeah.
We said again, come on, freshly fast forward too much.
Damn it.
It's gonna make some trying to cover the criminal shit.
It makes sense.
You have man.
All right, all right, this guy.
Go ahead.
All right.
Uh yeah, I'm getting lit up right now in the comments.
It's funny though.
It is funny.
It is funny.
Stereotypes.
Uh it's too much.
Okay, sorry, sorry, sorry, sorry.
So uh well, I'll I'll tell you this, bro.
Me being black, bro.
You'll you know what I like?
What?
Fried chicken.
But let's let's I don't know how many male creators are comfortable saying that online.
Like that's what I'm saying.
Hey bro, hey bro, hey, hey, but they're real honest, bro.
I gave you guys something right there.
I didn't even know that.
I was like, wait, well you know, I know.
Thanks to you.
Everyone knows.
Yeah.
I just gave you guys look at your streams just went way up after that conversation.
There you go.
So okay.
So go back to the uh to the skee.
Yeah.
Because I actually am uh interested in the scheme how you did it.
Federal agent, right?
Yeah, it's like we say for wires.
I'm trying to figure out the scheme to do this crime, bro.
Yeah, like uh He's like, Did you pay taxes on that OnlyFan money?
And yes, I did.
I claimed it on my taxes for last year.
Oh shit.
So well, that was good life.
So you're there.
Um you got the you got the um the concert money, the beats money, but at this point you're in the hole, and then uh and then you find out that uh it's fake.
Uh and then well, and you're like, okay, well, we're still making money, I'm gonna pay back the investors from both.
But you're 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 gonna make money on paper.
Like all of these things, but then you have Chief Keefe, you have you know, uh in the rap game, I'm sure you know, people will pay to open.
So I had like 20 grand in opener money for Kid Inc.
Yeah.
The the guy that was supposed to collect the money never collected the money from the rappers.
So they all perform his name, Kid Inc.
is better than that.
Yeah, we did th we did three shows with him.
But the problem with Kid Inc.
is like he's huge musically, but no one knows the name for touring.
Exactly.
Yeah, it's one of those guys where like huge they don't know it.
On the girl fan base, that's huge.
Big in Europe in public is like, who that was very interesting.
But then so everything gets lost, and one of the investors it it was never the adults that went to the police, it was the kids.
Because from a kid's perspective, you if you invested five grand, in your mind you're like, okay, I 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 stuff.
Is it the beat stuff, or is it the uh the conscious stuff?
So both parties are going to the cops now complaining.
Exactly.
Because they all got mushed together.
So they're going the cops, they bring it to the state's attorney's office.
They got discoveries, so you see all this.
Yeah, they said This is a nerdy question.
Who opened the investigation first?
Danbury PD.
Stanberry PD.
Dan Barry P. They thought it was the biggest case of their life because you gotta remember at the news, local news is teen nightclub owner, super successful.
They named me top ten most fascinating people in Connecticut.
Oh this and that.
They did all of these things.
So they thought I was a b I was the Jordan Belfort kind of of that town.
They're thinking, you know.
The wolf of Danbury.
They called me the Wolf Wolf Ives Street, because that was where the club was.
So I found out later on the state's attorney to declined to prosecute, and had it been a state case, I never want to went to prison.
I would 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 I think they thought it was in the millions.
See, you mess with the wrong people.
Yeah, I did.
Yeah.
So your people.
So these complaints.
So these complaints come come in.
Dan Barry Pete opens the case, state prosecutor declines it, which is actually interesting that the state prosecutor declines it, and then the feds take it and swore 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 I they would plead me out.
Um 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.
Yeah.
Who and can you explain to the audience um who the lead agency was and who else was involved?
So what happens is I get a uh 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 sends what month is this right now.
This is beginning of 2014.
I'm not even 19, I'm 18.
Um, and wow, um, state's investigating.
We're just thinking it's not going anywhere.
And then how did you get your first police interaction?
They're 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 their with your attorney.
Who's there?
Uh obviously the prosecutors there who was uh was it detectives from Dan Bray PD, state police who 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.
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 US 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.
Um they investigate any type of crime that has to do with the mail or using the mailing system.
So um, so obviously anything that touches the US Federal 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 tr 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 may okay.
So now it's it's making sense to me.
They use these departments what was it called again?
Department of Bank.
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 it in and we ask him the harder questions and we did they mirandize you?
No, nothing.
That's why I another reason.
And the jury is very sympathetic to people that are not given their Miranda rights or target letters are known.
They fucking amateurs.
I wasn't there blind.
Did they tell you you couldn't?
No 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 media.
Did you see their guns?
No, nothing.
Yeah.
I didn't know.
I didn't know what I was doing.
You didn't know that they're eating.
Yeah, you had no idea they were law enforcement.
I just was there to clear my name.
Yeah.
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 um 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 um okay, that makes sense.
Because that that charge didn't stick.
Because the thing is that that's amateur armor by these guys.
If you're gonna bring someone in for questions and you're gonna question about a crime and the door's closed 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 as rights.
Miranda rights.
Yeah.
I like those rights.
Yeah, I know you do.
Um 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 you're thinking, oh, yeah, everything's great, I'm clear, right?
U they acted like they were gonna help me.
They said, listen, this you're not gonna get arrested, nothing like this.
You know, we're just here to help, you know, let's get everyone their money back.
Um, 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.
Um 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.
Yeah.
A lot of these agents, you know, after the job's done, they're 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, etc.
Um was it taped?
No, 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.
Um well back then uh feds didn't have to record interviews, so that that could because I remember 2015, a lot of you know United States attorney's offices like passed like a thing where hey, you need to record all your interviews, but this is 2014.
Your prior job, would you ever cross paths with him at all for this type of crime?
Yeah, wire fraud, yeah.
Yeah, something like this, yeah.
Um take us back to the day of your arrest.
Yeah.
What were you doing?
Were you thinking like, oh, I'm just gonna 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.
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 owned Tuxedos, opened it back up.
So while the case is going on, I'm I'm booking like these big acts and doing these things.
We're still doing beats.
No, that's long gone.
Okay.
Um, 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, uh, and and and Yonkers to gamble.
I would play back a rat and you know, pay 500 bucks and turn it into the room.
Right over the border from Danbury, it's not far enough.
It's like 40 minutes.
Yeah.
It's like he goes into New York, then he drives south and did you lose versus how much you won gambling.
I won more than I lost.
Yeah.
But it I it's luck, man.
There's no thing.
I'm not gonna say I'm a professional gambler or there's a trick.
I 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 keep 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 my cartilage pierced or whatever, the industrial piercings.
This is like January 9th.
It's cold out, it's snowing.
Oh, 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 um meeting.
January 2015 was the indictment.
Okay.
So what is that, like eight months or whatever?
Okay.
So um 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 um with the flashing lights.
You have state troopers, you have um FBI agents that are marked, or like the the cars, um, 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 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 um, 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.
Oh, so you knew you were gonna get indicted in the street.
Yeah, we knew when the grand jury hearings were happening.
No one doesn't know when they're gonna get indicted by the feds.
It's not a surprise.
Well, a lot of times it is.
Some like, but I'm just like shocked.
So you knew after that interview with post 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 uh 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 gonna 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 guys.
We thought we were gonna self-surrender because the grand jury proceedings were in October.
Prosecutor emails my lawyer and says, Hey, we're not gonna indict till next year.
Have a good holiday season because they go away.
Yeah, we were we knew we were in the no.
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.
Bam.
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.
Um 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 willful Wall Street type moments.
The postal inspector.
Uh no, their original detective from Danbury, the lead case agent from the beginning who started the whole thing.
Okay.
And that he retired like a year or two after.
Um so then they bring me to the federal courthouse.
Yeah, he must have been assigned to the U.S. Postal Inspection Service then.
Yeah, they brought him on, but they had him um bench during trial, didn't get to testify.
He wasn't a part of it.
Um, the only one sitting at the prosecutor's desk was the lead FBI agent, lead postal inspector, and lead IRS agent.
Where the third?
Yeah, because we had CID criminal investigating division of the IRS that was involved in the case too.
So there was those three, and then the the main AUSA and then his assistant, AUSA.
There's two prosecutors, court reporters, it was 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.
Uh two AUSAs, one case agent from three different agencies.
Wow.
Um, you should write a book, bro.
We're working on it.
I actually um I just got paired up with um who's the uh the blonde from iCarly.
Oh shit.
What's your name?
Jeanette McCurdy.
Jeanette McCurdy, her agent um listens to my podcast, and we're working together, we're hoping to have a deal uh in the early next year.
And I've been on like HBO Max.
They took the documentary down because they like merged with Discover, but I just filmed something for Discovery Channel 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.
Um, 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 the 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 gonna indict you until until 2015.
December.
This is December, right?
No, no, no.
January.
January.
Oh, so they didn't date you into New Year.
Yeah.
Okay.
But I didn't get to turn myself in.
Yeah, because you thought you thought that you were gonna just turn.
Why did they let you plead like doing information?
I don't know.
I think they just wanted uh the optics because like 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, you know.
It's a sexy case.
Just so you guys know, like an if 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 could 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, they 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 and I just think they thought I was gonna plead out.
Like when when that when we were deliberating at trial, because 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 um of Connecticut.
Yeah, trying to make a back 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?
Uh I did 27 months out of a three-year sentence in the Fed.
This is about 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 in November.
I was gonna ask you, were you on out on bond the whole time?
250,000 bond.
A lot of people 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.
Um, I ran the club doing like the shows and whatnot, and then I went to trial November 1st, and it was like a month long.
How long were you locked up before you your parents posted 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 me.
Saw the judge the same day.
Saw the magistrate judge same day.
Everything was in and out.
Um, 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 uh a federal judge assigned to me in New Haven.
That's where the trial was.
When you arrested guys, you gotta 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, 2050 K. Family signs the house where you're able to go ahead and get out.
So then you're out on bond and you're waiting like eight months, and like throughout this process, did it ever come to you and you're like, I'm gonna 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 gonna go to trial.
No, I was going to trial.
They even threatened my dad, like to arrest my dad for taxes or or whatever, and my dad was like, Don't worry about me, you're going to trial.
Okay.
I was going through it the 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 um you go through this.
Obviously, it's kind of like you and your business partner that are in this.
Yeah.
Can you tell us through about that?
Because obviously his name probably came up during interviews, etc.
Yeah, his name is.
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.
Yeah.
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 my own trial.
Oh, you testified?
I testified for like three days.
Holy shit.
Yeah, it was it.
It was a the the 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 for a month.
And when we were talking before, he didn't decide to testify until like the day before something, right?
They gave him like a midnight, it was literally like in the movies when those midnight deals where hey, no jail time, probation in the state, misdemeanor, your 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, you know, when you're 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 I mean, I was I was young, you know, I own the club, and they're hyping me up to be this huge, you know, nightclub owner, eighteen-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 it was annoying, man.
You're like it throughout the whole trial because you have people, right?
Yeah, and you have people that lie, you knew going into it, you know, you're past the note, hey, this person's testifying.
But dude, you seeing your best friend like testify against you, and you you know, everyone talks about snitches and shit and this and that, that is what burns the most.
You know, when you're right there and you're fighting for your life, and and someone does that.
Um, but my lawyer was like, Yeah, he didn't look you in there at one time, right?
No, never.
No one, not one person that testified looked me in the air.
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 the 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 um, 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 you know, the cross, and that's where everyone fails.
It's uncomfortable.
I've been cross-examined before it 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, because this is why most um defendants never take the 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 j 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's 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 you the amount of time that you got?
Uh, 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 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 gonna say, so what were you indicted for versus what did they convict you of?
Nine counts of um wire fraud.
Okay.
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 um uh promotion business?
Yeah, and it's based off of transactions.
So they'll be like count one, you know, fifty thousand dollar wire on this date is wire fraud.
Yep.
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 uh an unorganized or um un like uh 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 ten, you're getting remanded 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 uh 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 they gave you like kind of a a year, well, not 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 um 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 uh top bunk because he was there before, and you're waiting for like seventy-two hours for your TB shot, and they give you the bag lunch, and he's like, Are you gonna eat that while like scratching all over skins flying everywhere?
Like, dude, I don't I'm not hungry, man.
I got a bigger shit to worry about.
Like I have the 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 uh in front of a group of men, so I would like wait awkwardly and I would have like my boss.
There's no kid at this point.
Um at this point I'm 21.
Okay.
I just turned twenty-one.
Oh, yeah, because time had a time it 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 we saw yesterday in jail.
He mentioned fuck food, fuck gear.
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 do that.
You know, I tell that story?
Yeah, so it was at the camp.
I know me and you talked about it, but for the last time.
Yeah, I don't care.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
So it was at a prison camp, uh like a couple this is like the last few months of my sentence, and I'm working in the bakery.
Um, and everyone called me McLovin in prison.
Um I got McLovin tatted on the club.
Uh yeah, and I got like a portrait of McLovin on my uh uh on my thigh the other day.
That's cute.
That's funny.
Yeah, so anyways, everyone's calling me McLovin, and I'm McLovin the baker, and um me and my bunk mate worked the bakery or ran the bakery.
Okay, and that morning he got uh he didn't get woken up, but I got woken up.
Which jail were you at this point?
Because they moved you around.
Oxford Federal Prison Camp in Wisconsin.
This is just a camp.
And um Were you able to like 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 r there's no fence.
Oh so I was the runner and I would run through, bring back a knapsack.
Um 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.
I there would be nights I'd be on my bunk watching orange is a new black.
Oh, wow.
Wow, or wearing orange.
Yeah.
Power is like the biggest TV show in federal prison.
Power.
Yeah.
You know you're familiar with power?
Yeah, that's how I've been able to like have some Of the um guests on my show because they're so fascinated that like you know everyone watches power.
We would 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 uh they have one, and I know this uh they have one at Pensacola that's low like that.
I remember wanting to go interview a guy for a case, and he was like walking around and so I was like, What the fuck is this?
So um did you meet anyone famous in jail?
I met a couple people I was with um, it was either Big Meech or one of the other guys that was on the west side at Fort Dicks when I was at the low there.
Fort Dicks?
Yeah, it's a it's called Fort Dicks.
Well, like, so let me get it straight.
You almost got griped by a booty warrior.
And you gotta hear that story.
Well, he didn't pull some questions.
Sorry, finish it.
Well, so I was with him, and then I was with Joe Judece um from Desperate Housewives, Teresa or whatever, and then I was with um George Papadopoulos um from Trump's whole thing.
So, anyways, I'm at this camp now, and um he calls me to the kitchen that morning at like 4 a.m. and not my bunk mate, and he 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, um, there's no cameras.
Um standing next to this guy, he's like penis pencil shaped, uh, wors like pants all the way up to like his you know chest.
Um, smells kind of bad, very skinny, and um just weird looking dude, you know.
And he's standing next to me, and I'm I'm scooping the muffin mix into the muffin container.
It was pre-made muffin mix and uh 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 gonna get back to doing my job.
Yeah.
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 thighs Hey yo, pause nigga.
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 gotta go.
I'm like, I'm I'm done with the ship.
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 then 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 a door behind me.
Yo, yo!
Freeze!
Hey, oh, pause!
No, for real, freeze, pause.
Get over her!
So you're in a freezer.
That's what you brought.
But a booty warrior.
What do you do at that point?
No, no, no, I think he locked you he locked you in by yourself, right?
No, we're both in there.
Oh shit.
All right, make it up.
That was you, what would you do?
I was I was hoping it was just hit by himself in the scene.
You and a booty warrior in a freezer, what do you do?
I bet you put my hands up when we fight you, man.
You are dice!
I turned it to Guile.
You know what I'm saying?
Damn, dude.
Okay, cool.
So me and him are in this, and I go and grab the tray of frozen cookies, and I'm I'm holding this tray as well.
You're playing it off trying to be like polite, I guess.
Yeah, I'm just like, I don't know what's gonna happen.
So I grabbed 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, alright, and then he like goes to open the door, but he 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, um, and they launched an investigation.
Um you 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 was so 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.
No, no, no, go on.
Oh.
Any in a feeling or indication of like hardness.
No, bro.
I'm not gay.
No, no, no.
No, from the case.
No, no, no.
He me he's asking if the guy had to.
Oh, it was it was like kind of quick, you know.
You're rubbing against like yeah, I don't know, man.
Like uh this one's what it was just a weird, it was a weird situation, you know.
Very weird.
And I think like any other inmate would have like hit him.
But I was like young, white McLovin, you know.
Yeah, it's as I mean it's obviously awful experience, but like, yeah, I mean, hitting a prison guard is not the way to go.
So like obviously you reported it.
Um the guy like kids though, that's what we were getting at, you know, because he there's all there's two hundred other men.
Yeah, 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 I'm a young kid.
I I look young now, so imagine what I look like at twenty-one.
It was a P. Yeah, I look like I was sixteen.
Yeah.
Fucking weirdo.
Fucking scumbags.
Um, so you get out, so and we've got a few minutes here because it's uh 847 guys, he's gotta he's gotta go get some food.
Yes.
Um You um 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 the day you got out?
I thought I was gonna get in the uh to go but go back in the nightclub business, realized that I couldn't do that because I had no money.
Um this was January 2019.
I'm like 24 or 23.
I got um uh 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 uh I was under there for a few months, and then I went on home confinement, the ankle monitor for a year um on probation.
That was like one of the conditions.
And uh 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 gonna make over 100k that year.
At Trader Joe's Whole Foods.
Oh, whole four.
That one told Whole Foods, sorry.
My bad, that's ops.
Yeah.
No, and uh 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, like where are you living at this point?
Dan Barry can be a good one.
Okay, yeah, never left Danbury, and uh I rebuilt my life from that.
But then eventually it's like, you know, um when you're an entrepreneur, you get burnt out.
Yeah, and in corporate, you can only do so much with them without them not holding you back.
Of course.
Um so my friend convinced me to start sharing prison stories on TikTok because COVID exploded this whole prison talk and prison YouTube thing.
Yeah, YouTube in general exploded, yeah.
Exactly.
I missed the ball on that.
This is a couple 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.
It was kind of cool because half of it was uh I was on home confinement and the whole world was on home confinement.
Yeah, yeah, with you.
Yeah.
Like feel how I feel now, motherfuckers.
But had I started telling these prison stories during then, I'd you know I would have to do it.
Did you ever do a club with 1090 Jake?
Yeah, I did a show with him.
He he's been on my podcast.
Shout out to 1090.
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.
Um he came on, we formed a relationship.
I picked him up at the airport, and we were just like talking and 'cause 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 um I my fifth TikTok talking about solitary because I was on the shoe for six months, uh, 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.
And tell us your because we don't have much more time.
Um tell us your favorite prison story, and then uh 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 it.
Yeah, something something for them.
Whatever 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.
Um 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.
So but all the white guys are really sex offenders.
And there's 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 casts.
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 um dice, I'm doing all these things, and these guys from Baltimore because by uh 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 typically race it's by cars and fed in the feds.
It's cars, it's like your state.
Um, are you in Connecticut?
Are you in New York?
Are you in New England?
Okay.
They come up to me and they said, Hey, um, we're will 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 body.
It's a low low security prison.
Yeah, and they bring me into the bathroom and they're like, listen, this is what you're gonna do.
They give me a number, um, have your people put you know, twelve hundred bucks 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 gonna pay us, or you're gonna get hurt.
And kind of right after that, you know, I 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 500 bucks a week, and I became like his bitch kinda.
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.
Um, 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, uh, which was pretty funny.
So you had to go and get were these guys the guys that slapped you from Maryland, were they uh gang affiliated?
Were they blood scripts 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.
You know DC in Maryland has that booty baby.
Did they try you like that too?
And you're like, no, not at first, but they didn't okay.
They just wanted money.
Not at first, they just wanted money.
They knew I was a white kid that had money and whose dad took care of them, and I had a phone.
They didn't like that.
So they sent me up.
And um you know So for so you this New York guy, you just paid him what 1500 uh a week, you said?
No, I paid him like fifty to a hundred bucks a week, and commissary the other guys won like fifteen hundred.
And why was this guy like so respected where the 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 gonna 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 runned up out of there.
And okay.
So when you ate lunch when you ate lunch, breakfast, dinner, did you sit with them?
Um no, I was kind of just like whatever.
Like I sat with my bunk mate and stuff.
Um, 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 I 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.
Right.
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 have found success from that.
Good job, bro.
No, man.
I mean, you know, thanks for telling your story, bro.
And like uh, you know, obviously that's not difficult.
I mean, sorry, that's not easy to share, and I really appreciate it.
I know you gotta get going.
So yeah, I'll give you the last word, bro, and then we'll close out here.
Jan Bick.com, you know, uh Ian Bick on any platform.
Um 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 and W. Yeah, so we we're doing cool things.
Rick Flair's, you know, uh r energy company.
Woo!
Uh yeah, we'll um we need Rick Flair on here.
We do actually.
Rick Flair would be good.
He's it lives in Florida.
All right, we'll talk off.
Yeah, he lives in Tampa.
I'm so I I think I'm interviewing him next month.
So let's do it.
Yeah.
Um, 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.
Um we'll do a part two when I when I go back and visit my parents.
So definitely.
We can't.
Every time I go up there, I'll do it, 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, he has Ian Bick.
Please go check out his YouTube channel, man.
Check him out everywhere.
Um, he's on TikTok, he's on YouTube, etc.
Uh, 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.
Thank you so much for coming, guys.
He's got a dinner to catch, so we'll catch you guys back here with some lovely ladies in a bit.
Peace.
I ran so far away.
Export Selection