police cars all over the place marks memory of rifles boom just a door just flies off the hinges hands above your head don't move get on the [ __ ] ground now and similar to your saying with Takashi because he got fifth line yeah there's a lot of people on YouTube right now talking about to Kashi I'll have no idea what they're talking about even the hip-hop channels 50% of the prisoners today are in because of drug charges that's what changed the war against drugs when you were in did you see some guys were like that just doesn't belong in here you know justice system is a business model if you go to trial it costs the state hundreds of thousands millions they want everyone to sign a plea bargain and go over to the prison system just about down if everybody exercised the right to trial the system would collapse it couldn't afford to do all the trials you're going to prison how was Ella you sit in the wrong place it's all over I was at the point where I was about to kill myself in the jail he got so rough it's one of the lowest points of my life so today we have an interesting guest with us Sean at were just to kind of give you a little bit of background about him they call him the ecstasy kingpin they called him at one point the Bank of England he sold a lot of ecstasy in Arizona I know why are we talking about ecstasy today on value taemin he was deported from the state's December of oh he has not been there since but his business operation was 200 employees reporting to him at one point and ranted like a real company back in the days when he was doing this in Arizona for four years and so I'm excited about taking a different angle with them because a part of it we're going to talk about his dealings with Sammy the bull Gravano Mexican Mafia you know what it is to be in prison how do you kind of position yourself when you go in but also at the same time I want to talk about some of the you know rates of people going back into prison where some people can do to avoid making bad decision for that to ever happen and when you do come out what can you do to never go back and so having said that Shaun Atwood thanks for being with us in rally time it's a pleasure Patrick great to see you here yes and your story is very interesting I got to tell you thank you so walk us through before you became you know you got into this world who was Shaun Atwood in high school decades before bumping heads with summing the ball as a teenager in this country didn't grow up with much money but when I chose economics in my high school only six of us chose it the teacher saw had an aptitude for it he started giving me classes on my own explaining the financial times all the numbers how the stock market works then when I was 16 I went through my dad's for money to invest he told me to bugger off I hit my nan up and she gave me fifty pounds like just under hundred dollars and I doubled it first they have dealings on British Telecom sure so I was hooked at 16 at 16 Wow telling all the mates in my little town I'm gonna go to America I make a million fly all you guys over that was my dream so from there on so at what point did you make it to the States okay so I went off to college did a levels did Business Studies that you need and then headed out to Arizona because I used to visit my answer as a kid and it really dazzled me the lifestyle in Arizona Arizona desert I've come from a little chemical manufacturing town in the northwest that makes sense planes coming in you see the swimming pools in the back yeah let me ask you personality-wise high school were you were you the good grade were you the good kid were you the popular kid that you date the hottest girl you the enemy I was getting beat up by the rugby players I was one last to grow in size I had anxiety I almost got beat to death by some drunks and that compounded my anxiety so when I went out to clubs and stuff I wasn't dance it was too self-conscious I had this shyness when the rave scene began I took ecstasy wouldn't stop dancing all night long won't stop making friends with strangers and that became my crutch over ten years for over ten years I'm doing drugs people seen this wild and crazy party animal but I was self-medicating for PTSD from almost getting beat to death by these drugs unbelievable yeah and how did you get introduced to it the first time was it just you went to a club yeah in this country in the 1980s to get in the club you had to dress in a suit and tie and it was very snotty like snooty they wouldn't let you in the bouncers if you weren't dressed right the kids were sick of it they started breaking into warehouses breaking into airplane hangars we're in all this call of clothing and taking ecstasy and you dancing all night long at these illegal party so it was like a revolution in music it was suits back into these corner nightclubs yeah in the 80s and the kids were sick of you know you get to line up and the bouncers would look at you and if you're not dressed right you're not getting in so this week so we were like you know f that we're just gonna start doing our own thing breaking into warehouses airplane hangars we're in all these psychedelic colors baggy jeans British Knight sneakers this is what you're this is what you would you say this is Lady this is late eighties early nineties cuz I went to Arizona in 91 what happens when you go to Arizona I know you got into the stock market yourself how did that happen free so I arrived in Arizona as an illegal alien got no worries alien yeah okay just got my student credit cards so I'm now in a race against running out of money on my student credit cards to make money join a brokerage and quickly learn it's commission only they sell them you've got to do these classes for months to get my Series seven I said I haven't got time to do the classes for the series seven put me in for it right now and then they said well alright we'll take a chance and he was like the guy running it was like a mafia mafia kind of guy his mannerisms and I think they were hooked into the Mafia this this penny stock outfit was that I just got my that's how I got my foot in the door any stack smile and dial mirrors on your quad you got to be pacing with a 25-foot curly cord cuz pacing smiling brokers make more sales you're only as big as your numbers the rap on the board for the month exactly like wolf of Wall Street and that's the world you came out of I was it was a baptism of fire I quickly realized what they were doing so talking about power moves me and another rookie broker we realized these guys were just putting people in chop stocks we got some newspaper articles about them photocopied the entire accounts from the entire brokerage was sneaking at night for copying all the accounts we jump ship to a more stable outfit and took all these accounts with us and so what happened then well they were threatening to big the guy the past you know he was the threats were getting issued and we went out and bought guns to blow up my partner's car some of these guys yeah I mean it's a competitive world if I'm late at night getting all the fouls the clients in you Colin with another place yeah well you're still doing penny stocks no no when we moved we we saw what that those guys were doing so then we will I actually trying to make our clients money by putting them in the stocks like Motorola would had the brick cell phone yes Intel so how what did you do people wanted to do high-risk investments taking these clients over from the penny stock world so what I looked at was America West Airlines junk bonds mm-hmm they were trading 10 cents on the dollar and they went back up to par yeah so I did really well on them didn't sell them at par but sold 100% return multirole was another good one because of the BRIC cellphone they were doing great as well they were going up consistently and so the point where my commissions I was grossed in half a million dollars a year in Commission five years then I was the top guy in the office I had enough money to retire from it but I was dying to get back into the party scene and I was thinking do I want to go in the rat race and get up at 6:00 you know 5:00 in the morning six [ __ ] money sales meeting or just make money from the party scene and that that that excitement and greed took over first off which Biddy were you part of what was the broker-dealer dude there was various ones over the years and the last one was Joseph Charles was cleaning for birthstones got it yeah were you ever with a Morgan Merrill were you ever with Merrill offered me a hundred grand to move over to them and cuz they wouldn't let me sell short shares and they wouldn't let that but they wants me to buy their proprietary companies I refused how did you get into the world where you said what if I start selling what was that accidental was it intentional how did that take place the rave scene has such a big impact on me in this country one of the goals I set was when I make a million America I'm gonna transfer that scene over to the Sonoran Desert and in the beginning I am just buying pills cuz I've got so much money and showing off or giving them away to my friends this is the transition point now where I'm still in the stock market as a broker but then I'm seeing you know when you give away drugs for free you attract a lot of friends and then I'm doing the business potential of it the local dealers could only supply you know up to 100 pills at a time found out they were getting them out of LA so far as an experiment I'll buy files and pills see how long it takes to get rid of these they have a gun in a weekend yeah at thousand and a weekend yeah so what were you buying them a delay for alright so this is before I really knew yes acknowledged so in LA in the beginning my first transaction was probably I don't know around $12 for a thousand pills and they were going for 25 to 30 dollars in the clubs so you're to X in them immediately yeah so now are you were you selling it yourself were you move into tau or will you have another guys where you sell at 16 you know I make the four on and how I'm talking right off the bat not to become a business right off the bat I've got my business partner bodyguard with me wild man this huge guy from my hometown he's like my muscle and we're in an apartment he's in he's moved into with summer people and we throwing these parties every weekend and that was when we brought those thousand pills back and we just sold them all out through that party so you and you and another person saw the thousand and yeah people were coming and they jumped by like 50 or 100 at a time and they just take them off to another party yeah and it just went throughout the weekend so 12 25 to 30 you buy for 12 you sold for 25 to 30 so what did that we can do to you well not all I would say 125 says if someone buys a hundred I'm giving them a deal sure of course well you know I'm seeing this fast almost doubling of my money and I'm thinking I can just be doing this kicking back having the time of my life you know just hanging out with wild and crazy night people or working all these long hours and I sacrifice my slow and steady progress how quickly was your transition away from production you know how was it like was it immediate you were like I'm I can't even be seen myself doing it was a like a three to six month process I was having so much fun and then going into the office so burnt out because of all the drugs I was doing I was doing up to 20 hits of ecstasy on the weekend and throwing other drugs in the mix even taking the xanax didn't recover me properly I was getting so burnt out cuz of all the pills and the long hours I needed to sleep after the partying the transition was quite fast so what's fast one week two weeks a month was it like well numb before you Deportes isn't banned for being a menace to society was in the country for a couple of months I was during that what during his visit was my transition a couple of months couple months kinda so you leave the Biddy you're not doing anything anymore what are they saying what are they thinking about you being gone do you know what you're doing or not yet I'm sure some of the guys were partying with you so it was such a big deal for me to just to go from one to the other I didn't even tell them and my parents actually called the brokerage and asked where I was and they said they'd heard I've been my car was found burnt out in Mexico caused this panic amongst my family from being in this legitimate person to going into this criminal underworld I didn't know how to you know what to say to the the BD people so I just as a ceased and occasion yeah we're there any signs in high school of you doing a creative activities where somebody would say I think one day he's probably gonna be doing something or like you were doing during lunch hour I would run to the corner shop buy sweets like / drops and strawberry bonbons and run back to the school and sell them for double the price and it also get like dinner coupons for them as well and get my dinner with the dinner coop yes so sells you've been selling for a while always that a natural sales personality yeah got it even in high school so you even ice cover the entrepreneur budding entrepreneur did so wholesale to retail so so now you have this weekend you tell yourself I spent $12,000 about a thousand pills you know I'm coming back turning these for 25 to 30 or somebody buys 100 wholesale say 20 bucks this was the easiest ten grand I made in a weekend with your body your you know bodyguard you know your security from there you what do you thinking next okay I can scale it how soon did you start expanding to hold the phone level we were getting them out of LA for a year or two and my demand in Arizona now is so high these guys out of LA can only provide five thousand pills at a time so I figure out they're getting them out of Holland so I can't leave the country I start selling people over to Holland with testing kits you could buy from a website called dance safe an ecstasy pill should be one hundred hundred twenty-five milligrams of MDMA and clay usually like a beige color or a faded color often the pills that have got artificial stuff in them are colored but sometimes the color can just be food dye but the color is often a heads up and I was cognizant that if I'm selling tens of thousands of pills someone could potentially die it's extremely rare but it's usually when there's a bad ingredient so my people took these testing kits and it changes it was like a blue purple color so nobody ever died after pills and they brought back such a pure product I was getting you know known as English sean's pills the Bank of England's pills it got to the point where the competition with their colored pills were saying you know these are English sean's they were trying to capitalize on my brand lashauwn's yeah yeah so what was your a Vegas order you got from Holland biggest audio was 40,000 hits someone smuggling mission yeah and this was before 9/11 so don't try this at home if anyone's watching this but back then you could just put thousands of pills into your luggage in pillowcases or in screwed into computer towers and get on a plane I had one woman she got on a plane with pills in vitamin jars landed at Sky Harbor Airport got stopped customs took her into a room opened the luggage put the pills on a table and said what are they and she goes vitamins and they said cool put them back in the luggage just said ha have a nice day yeah and believable yeah at the 40,000 mark how much are you paying for them at that point at a peak of this now in the late 90s my organization is structured like a corporation so we've got heads of each faction under me which vary from 10 to 20 depending upon what's going on at that point in time so I've got 10 to 20 different factions over time so I'm fronting out now the heads of the organization up to five thousand at a time maybe at ten dollars or maybe eight dollars to kind of with that person they then front them out to their middle people at 15 or 20 depending on how much they take and then they get sold into the clubs and to the raves at 25 to 30 so if I am bringing in 40,000 at $3 our last $2 gotta add in all that all the smuggling cost the transport costs and the legal costs as well so if I'm bringing him in let's say no more than $3 and I'm getting 40,000 front of them out at 10 quarter of a million quarter million per 40 yeah and how much what do you remember what you were moving per month was it the ideas like what's your peak month so it was sporadic we had quarter of a million months only like every I don't know every two or three months something like that but over time it was four years I was doing this so added double I wasn't dealing as many as fast as Sammy the bull but like the Tempe Police said over time it was more than he dealt you ran for four years I think he ran for a year and a half so you sold more than Sammy the bull and at the time he was also in Arizona yes did you guys ever face-off did you ever have a sit-down with her and any meeting like the heats is seen in the movie were Pacino and then he was sitting on top I locked down the Arizona rave scene because I was an early entrant and it was a lot of competing little cliques those little cliques would come to me as the Bank of England to lend money for the parties and the drug deals whatever now some of those little cliques had disputes so me and wild man would mediate those disputes and you know in the end we incorporated all these different little cliques into my organization so I had the local people locked down all of a sudden these new kind of ecstasy dealer started showing up in the club scene at the raves like steroid head jocks he had the devil's dogs these white supremists I think there are may sir or Chandler these these big dudes and I'm like you know who are these guys stepping on my toes so we're all getting really curious because we had no idea where they were coming from now I was married to a woman she'd done a university degree but she was also doing lesbian internet porn she had a bisexual lover a female and she said look you knew what yeah yeah yeah that I encouraged and she said look her girlfriend's boyfriend is one of these new dudes and he wants to meet you and discuss business opportunities so I still don't know who they work for so I take one of my bouncers with me Rosetti he's packing the gun to this nightclub my wife and we got her and Rosetti hangs back with the gun they don't know he's with me this is the guy the Spaniard comes out and goes you come into that you know the VIP room I want you to meet my business partner I go back there on my own Rosetti slipped back this way he's watching me and then this massive you know six foot six now four plus guy comes out I'm sat down on the sofa between these two guys you're sitting between the big guy stole everyone's ass offices to get out of the the the area reeling and leave the room and we sit down on this sofa like I said early arm you know I'm taking drugs because it makes me wild but inside I'm the shy anxious person person why I took GHB going in and the GHB is hitting me when we're on when we're sitting down on the sofa and I introduce me this is the Spaniard and the other guy mark I think the other guy's name was so I just playfully grabbed these guys I gotta show them a bit of a crazy mofo so I grab the knees and you know they were like it was a bit crazy and they were like look Shawn we're moving a lot of pills and we know you are and we know you look down with the local people you've got a good relationship with them how would you feel about moving pills our pills will give you a good price and I said lot and where are you guys these pills did those colored pills I'm getting pills from Holland I've got a reputation to uphold I'm not gonna mess around with these cold pills a lot of them Calif it's made in America so the Spaniard he was he was okay with whatever he was calm but the other guy he was like how you know how do you think you are disrespecting our pills one call to Sammy the ball and we can have you taken out to the desert now the word of John Gotti and all that making you know news and I'm thinking these guys just talking [ __ ] what at this point have you heard it a name Sammy the bull yet like a John Gotti new on the news but no I'm talking local Arizona that he's gone up against you so you haven't heard Sammy boy but maybe these guys are plastic gangsters throwing this name how trigger me got it but when I got out and saw my bouncer he's like but you know hey you know this is this is serious now if it is the ball because I'm he's murdered up to two dozen people who so I'm I'm high on GHB and this is starting to sink in a bit as we're going out of there so how did that end how did that end with them alright so it didn't end well because I told him law I'm staying with my people and doing my own product there's enough room for us to coexist but I will give you guys a heads up since you guys have been running around in the clubs in the rave saying you the biggest drug kingpins since you know whatever a lot of heat is starts come to the scene me and my security people are noticing undercover cars with cameras taking pictures please coming in pretending to be from out of town trying to set up ecstasy deals nothing like this was going on before you guys came into town so they were like alright well Spaniard was like okay well thanks for the heads up and I said look it's not each other we've got to worry about its the cops eventually that about proved accurate so let me ask you at this point you said you you went four years he went a year and a half yeah at what party or four was it that he got in 9899 around then that those guys started popping up into the scene ninety nine is when they started popping up in the scene I'm guessing okay I'm guessing got it so you're you you've been going for a year year and a half while they pop up in the scene yeah okay so you never had a faceoff directly with Sammy there was no what happen was well I was getting protected by the New Mexican Mafia so I felt a fair degree of safety because even those guys coming into town the New Mexican Mafia were formidable I mean these guys have got a lot of heavy duty no I'm thinking these guys have got my back they're more powerful than these guys the drugs is telling me now you be comparatively safe but what happened was my bouncer when we left at me said how long will the peace last if this is real for real they lured my top sales guy Skinner who was moving a lot of product for me to a nightclub in Scottsdale under the pretenses of buying pills from him took him into the men's room knocked his teeth out knock took tens of thousands of dollars off him that was the heads up that things were getting heavy yeah I moved to Tucson after that how strong were you at this point meaning how deep were you at this point not deep of movers deep of strength power street cred you know enough gangs on your side or the right muscle on your side that people don't want to cross you my philosophy always was if this goes to the violence or murder level it's a whole new ballgame the police are gonna look at us differently and then we're gonna get sent down for a lot of time yeah I've got the New Mexican Mafia behind me but utilizing that is going to cause me even bigger problems in the long run just the fact that they're behind mean people know there's enough of a deterrent to give me that street crap and keep the debts getting paid so I moved over 100 by 100 miles or so away to Tucson in a million-dollar house on a mountain and the gated guarded community sin Bacchus well you couldn't even get into that neighborhood without going through a guard you had to call a House bill banana was up and further along the mountain range was paul mccartney very familiar with that area yes almost beautiful place you some want to live that's where the people do son it's like a dream how it goes to the mailbox and there would be deer around the mailbox the Lightning would bounce down the mountain up a house and when there was the rain a waterfall would fall beside the house and a little stream of it's amazing so at this point what what do you you buy yourself no one's around your wife's not around your muscles not around your friends are not around the party scenes not around your wife's girlfriends not around no one's around you by yourself what are you telling yourself how are you telling yourself Sean you're in too deep you got to figure out a way to get out or are you saying let's double down go to another state what are you thinking I am thinking I'm safe now into some I've got a right hand man who I trust with my life or no or take a bullet for me Cody Bates he's dead now he was doing the rounds of Phoenix he had rented apartment out just for the cash only me and him knew where it was so I don't even have to leave the house now everything's just running automatically while these guys are doing whatever they're doing in Phoenix so I'm just trying to enjoy the money doing all this crazy stuff I've still got my security team a bouncers but what happened there was a challenge to my dominance let's say when there was a situation whereby my wife went on a mission with one of my guys and they ended up sleeping together yes what happened there so we had to set an example and to make sure everybody wasn't trying to overthrow me because even my guy Skinner now who was my top sales guy he was smoking Sherm and crystal meth and crack and cuz I had moved out of Phoenix power-play now he's thinking he's going to take over my business with they suffer one of my security guys and they're spreading words that I'm going down and that they're going to be taking over and that my people needed to work for them so we have to get that in check what does that mean I can't comment any further okay yeah I got it so Cody Cody was Cody or Debates right Cole Debates did he he's no longer on did Cody Bates died when he was with you was it afterwards other Antonis Bates well the reason I made him my right-hand man and head of the security team was cuz he didn't get high so me and my all my friends are running around like lunatics on these club drug cocktails and he's babysitting people taking people home making sure nobody's odine and stuff like that when I first met him he was suicidal and we were like family so when we all got sent down he went back into that suicidal depression got on heroin self-medicating his family sent him to a rehab run by Scientologists they put him on a drug that had a side effects of suicide and hung himself at the Scientology Center yeah himself I wrote a book partytime about all of that and the publisher Random House made me contact absolutely everybody have them sign legal papers to say it was accurate and they wouldn't sue me and they wouldn't sue the publisher and what I did was I interviewed all these people on skype recorded the conversations and there's so much more information I've forgotten because I was so high that I was able to put into the book what was the event that led you to go into prison I'd actually quit the importation of ecstasy a year before the SWAT team came I've been married three times I've met another woman she taught me out of it and because things were getting so heavy as well she was late look this is really risky now it's dangerous the New Mexican Mafia guys they'd all got federal SWAT team raided I was almost at the house as the feds came I was just dropping one of the guys off actually what I got caught up in that Sammy the balls crew got taken down in the beginning I'm thinking thanks carps you've took out the competition I should have been thinking it's going to be me next but the drug scrambles your decision-making processes it's telling you you'd get away of anything this woman talked some sense into me and it was almost a year later I thought I'd got away with him I never got caught doing a big drug transaction never got caught speaking about a big drug transaction on the phone never even got caught of any drugs what statute of limitations in Arizona is seven years so I had to accept my karma cheerfully ten witness statements came forward and SWAT team came may 16 2002 how was that so I was back to stock trading online I was enrolled in poly were bad yeah I was that relevant normal life of this woman yeah I'm stock trading online I'm enrolled in a Spanish classes at college I'm up early in the morning because Arizona time New York time stock markets open hmm all of a sudden boots thudding up the stairs of the apartment bang so I jump up look through the peephole it's blacked out I'm thinking is it someone coming to rob me posing as the police just found out or is it really the police go to the window police cars all over the place marks rifles more boots coming up the stairs girl fruits of the bedroom to my missus what we gonna do better let them in half way forget it just just this door just flies off the hinges hands above your head don't move get on the ground now so you see all those guns open up in front of you yeah ha almost at my heart speeding of us feel the sweat coming on the hearts your souls reliving it right now you see those guns and your thinking your life is open in seconds if they opened up right now and they're looking at you like they want to put one in you so you just drop down real fast and they crush you and the detective then I said the crush does the detective just yank me up by the cuffs and he was like English Shawn you're a big name from the rave scene we finally got you I'm sure this raid he's gonna get you big charges and he's just talking he'll [ __ ] at me yeah I could have a nemesis in law enforcement yeah so what happens next so I'm thinking hey you know I'm bi I don't understand the statute of limitations at this point I do understand some things that the New Mexican Mafia schooled me on and they I got the lawyer that they recommended so I'm thinking there's no drugs they've not caught me speaking about drugs because I banned you know I wouldn't talk on phones or anything over the years what can they do I'm AAV thinking they're gonna say well there was no drugs there's no charges we'll let him go but they slapped on me you familiar the Takashi six nine situation quit now it was the Arizona State equivalent of Rico so now I've got conspiracy continuous criminal enterprise crime syndicate all these charges and I'm not versed enough in law to understand what they mean it became apparent and that because all my money was seized I had full all money people over from England put money in their names and the police had put a virus in my computer netbooks Trojan horses show me where all the money was so they took absolutely everything you or the people you've flown from UK they took that the money that was in their names everything Wow yeah yeah it was a multi-agency investigation had software engineers from Washington doing all this stuff with white stuff in my computer I had to call my parents and say look I need money rely and that was you know I'd structured it so if I got arrested my friends would bail me out they had money cops outsmarted me they arrested all of us together so we have nobody to call but your parents how was that phone call like column I mean yet there's one of the lowest points of my life just to hear the heartbreaking their voices to hear to feel how sick they're feeling that the son it was a child protege stock market guy they come over and visited my million dollar house and I told them I was doing all stock trading it's after the light look here's what's gone down and you know if I don't get money basically I'm probably never going to get home because I got to the point was facing a 200 year maximum sentence you get two hundred year maximum sentence yeah Wow and similar to you're saying with Takashi's because he got fifty they're talking 50 you got 200 yeah there's a lot of people on YouTube right now talking about Takashi and they have no idea what they're talking about even the hip-hop channels they're saying is his trials gonna be next year in September he's gonna get at least the minimum 30 years because that's his minimum the justice system is completely Alice in Wonderland those figures mean nothing what will happen is the prosecutor over time will plea bargain with these guys it won't even go to trial that trial date if it you know it's probably gonna get moved multiple times they'll be in court every month filing motions each side going back and forth and you don't have to snitch in my case what we did I met an old-timer who was doing life and he said look get a good lawyer and do what's called a united front so in my case at over a hundred people arrested with me only four agreed to cooperate we had a united front under Alan Simpson it was the lawyer that the New Mexican Mafia had represented and Sammy the balls case 57 people were arrested approximately all agreed to testify yeah so I think because we had this United Front hardly anybody's it really frustrated the prosecutor over 26 months they pulled up every dirty trick in the book on me they I mean I was at the point where I was about to kill myself in the jail he got so rough but at the end at the end of the day me I was the head of the crime syndicate wildwoman was number two while Wildman's what woman out of the real wild man was number three and none of us got more than ten years so I thought that was at the end of the day that was really good because of the loophole my lawyer got as a first-time nonviolent drug offender non-uk US citizen I ended up serving just under six years just so what would your saying is you think some other things gonna happen with Takashi's 16 yeah what will happen with Takashi 6-9 right now the prosecutor will have organized the criminal organization the crime syndicate in level of importance so maybe Takashi will be be on the shotty maybe shut he will be a or maybe it will be the other way around just cuz they want to get to Kashi because he's the big headline that will enhance their careers so they will then say to everybody like effort and K and L they'll say to FK and L look you guys are small down here you're facing life sentence is you're all co-conspirators you all go down for each of those crimes you guys testify against these guys and we'll let you do time served that's generally what bill say and that's what they were saying in my case now they've separated to Kashi six nine there's all this speculation saying he snitched already he's gone to prison for snitches none of that is verified I think it's far too early probably for any of these guys to just just just roll over in a prosecutor shot he's obviously worried about it because in court he's yelling now don't fall don't bend in front of the judge which is a really bad idea that's not a good strategy I had a situation like that happen in my own case now if you're forming a united from how are you gonna get word for the prison system to your core defense not to snitch well they've separated to Kashi so it looks like you snitch in so psychologically that will work bad against the other co-defendants but you can get what's called kites these are letters sent by trustees throughout the jail system we will send a letter from Takashi in this prison over to that prison those religious services my guys we heard the whole two back rolls of the religion services we will all give each other our hugs and I update them on all the legal news the other thing is if the cache is in a separate prison when he goes to court with his co-defendants they're gonna be in a row of holding cells right outside of the courtroom kites can be passed from some sell-through trustees they think they can stay tight they can get the word out that they're doing a united front Takashi's got the money to get such a high-priced lawyer to fight back these low-level guys are thinking right we've got no money we've got scammed scumbag public defenders who just want us to sign plea bargains these guys have got the money to get the high-priced lawyers they're just gonna let us end up getting you know we're gonna have no legal representation but - cashy right now needs to get the word out we're doing a united front and paying for a high-priced lawyer I'm not snitching and hope that everybody stays tight because once people start to snitch then the sentence will go up for the people who are highest in the organization so what happens walk us through you're going to prison how was that like I mean who who are you what prison did you go to what level can I get a little bitter that's all right so because I hadn't cooperated prosecutor they pulled out every dirty trick in the book so my first year in the jail I've got this United Front telling everyone not to agree so the prosecutors like how can we get him away from his co-defendants let's get him over to maximum security because all my co-defendants on minimum medium-security now how she did that she knew I was applying to get my bail reduced my bail was $750,000 cash only she sabotaged the bail hearing very crafty these prosecutors she filed additional charges and with an additional seven hundred fifty thousand dollar bail so the judge not did he not only reduce my bail he maintained my original bail accepted the new bail which made my total bail 1.5 million when you bail goes over a million you're automatically reclassified to maximum security autumn so that's the guideline yeah so that's how I ended up my second year in maximum security now by the end of that they tell that's where they're telling me like like you're going to get 200 years because every time you spoke about drugs on the foil and carries five to ten years and this isn't deals this is just personal small stuff if we go to trial lose we could stack that up to a maximum 200 year sentence and they made it clear there was a guy before me a two-hour to son a dealer he had a similar case he refused to sign a plea bargain for 15 years and they gave it he went to trial he gave him two hundred two hundred years two hundred every charge carried ten years maximum and they stacked all of his charges they they didn't run them concurrently they run them consecutively the justice system is a business model if you got a trial it cost the state hundreds of thousands millions they want everyone to sign a plea bargain and go over to the prison system just about down 98% of the cases go to plea bargain that's it in Arizona name only only 2% exercise their rights with trial if everybody exercised the right to trial the system would collapse it couldn't afford to do all the trial got it so that's how I ended up in the highest security levels because the prosecutor just have had it in for us because we wouldn't we wouldn't cooperate like some eatables people and so that kind of didn't favor you because they were hoping you would they were hoping that we would lay that they thought we weren't cuz some eatables people all did they couldn't understand why we were so tight but what happened was over the years you know I knew these known these guys for years I've grown up with some of them people were scared of Wildman in the New Mexico mafia guys it was you know we were just all this in in the jail be one of the biggest groups in the jail well everybody went we're all hugging each other and updating each other and I've been even people that didn't know me the prosecutor had what was getting him to sign exhibit a people in my case that I didn't know saying you bought your drugs from outward you were working for that word because then prosecutor just makes the fault they don't care they've got nothing to lose they've got absolute immunity so whatever they say they portray people and doing things a lot of time that legal paperwork it's utter [ __ ] because they just want to put you in the worst light they made me out to be the Antichrist so they've got all these people who don't even know me sign in Exhibit A one guy Chicano gang member he was in court will exhibit any says the judge like Your Honor I have no idea who Edward is and the prosecutors telling me is it's a sign it's like yeah so you're in prison what do you you've never been in prison before I'm assuming this is your first time yeah so what what are you thinking like who do I team up with oh my god who do I go to who do I associate myself saying Shawshank so you go in there and it's all racially divided and it's the whites the blacks the mexican-americans so right away some skinheads from the neo-nazi Aryan Brotherhood come up to me hey we want a word with you getting that cell over there because I have been put in tower six I wasn't with my co-defendants at this point in time so I go into the cell close the door behind me biggest one gets in my face he's like what are you charges what are you charges now I mentioned my charges to you I said earlier I didn't understand what all that meant conspiracy and everything so I said to my don't understand what my charges mean but isn't a good answer now how they think I've got something to hide so they got me up against the wall about to smash me what do you mean you don't know what your charge is meaning you a chomo you a chomo I don't even know what a channel is it at this point so much child molester hmm yeah so I pulled out my charge sheet they saw him for drugs but the main business of the gang is selling drugs to the prisoners so they loved that they saw my bail was $750,000 they were like damn you guys the Mafia who did you guys kill and I was like no just raves ecstasy then they explained the rules you got to follow if someone calls you a punk a [ __ ] or hit you fight him on the spot the whole gang will smash you most take showers they'll smash you for bad hygiene can't go and make you friends with the guards they'll smash you for snitching car said the tables of the other races they'll smash you for that and so on and so on yeah just giving you the lowdown Oh give me your lowdown right away you sit the wrong place it's all over yeah but it wouldn't mean by then it's all over if you say you sit with the other races off you go to the whites table and sit on like the head dude see cuz you just think you're getting your lunch and that is how it works you're gonna get your head smashed into a toilet yeah just like that I had to get too used to the sounds a heads getting bashed against toilets and bodies getting thrown around so who did you go with at that point like you've got no choice they tell you this is how it works you're white you know if we have a meeting you come to the white boy meeting you sit with the whites you in your cell he's supposed to have white cell mates now white white sir nad white-supremacist this is just white this is the Aryan Brotherhood prison gang they got it they've got the swastikas they got the lightning bolts they got the warbirds yeah wait wait they completely control the prison system for the white race were you required to get any of the tattoo is in there to someone else they you rose to represent there's only few actual equivalent to made men gang members shot callers and probate and to join the Aryan Brotherhood for example the probates God I had to collect a debt beat someone up get your SS lightning bolts get your Swasey tuff be a full member you got to murder someone in the jail for them oh you have to murder someone get a full yeah guys so who when you were in you were in how many different types of prisons Wow over the course of this whole thing I was in to remand jails and then in the Arizona Department that was my first 26 months and then over the Arizona Department of Corrections about four or five different prisons and then I finally a deportation facility now I actually did time in super maximum-security where I wasn't supposed to be and that was because the prosecutor final farewell just to mess with me after I was sentenced she accidentally put mice nine and a half year sentence down as 34 years on the paperwork to the prison system you're nine and a half to accidently she did it she put it on a story for just to mess with me so I got fast-track to Supermax how was that well looking back now I'm glad that she did all this stuff cuz it's created a more extreme story so Supermax my cellmate was he had like a pentagram tattooed on his forehead part of a cult list doing drinking blood and doing human sacrifice yeah yeah this is who you ran in with this is in super Mexico super high security is killers serial killers death row shits lingers there's a whole row of [ __ ] slingers because you can't settle your disputes in Supermax oh yeah this because you're locked in your cell they weaponize crap so the basic method of that is a chicken bone below pipe crap on the chicken bone you're going past the cell they dart you chicken bone gets into your blood system your blood circulates the crap throughout your your damages your immune system and two-thirds of these guys have got hepatitis C just from sharing dirty needles that's the basic method the Rambo of the shits lingers was this guy called Magnum and he would let the [ __ ] piss concoction he would leave it for days until mold grew on it and he rigged his cell up with like crap Aziz it make shampoo bottles into bazookas with tubes on them and then when a guard goes past audit the staff replies yeah I got our aura a prisoner he just opened fire on them and they came in they stripped him out took everything out of his cell put him in a dry cell naked handcuffed and they figured that was it he wasn't gonna be able to get them that day they'd underestimated his resolve magnums stood at the front of that cell was molten crap in his mouth and when the guard came and malt and Magnum Unleashed the molten crap the guard was so surprised and shocked he raised his mask up and some of the crap went up his nose yeah yeah so you've seen some interesting things at the super maximum weight how long was it how long were you at the super maximum I was in the Supermax and about three or four months before my sentence got fixed by my lawyer to what it should have been in the first place so Shan how many different levels are there in prison system in every up in every security level from Supermax the minimum how many are the levels from the minimum to Supermax it depends on whether it's federal or state and how many prisons the system has got so there might be like and the UK is different from the US but in general this is a generalization you could say there's minimum medium maximum super maximum but there's all kinds of other types of facilities as well such as lock downs and things like that got it yeah so when you're in prison I mean I'm I'm hearing there's access to everything you can buy drugs you can buy steroids you have phones you can buy what was the biggest commodity what was the most expensive drugs and that was what causes the most violence and death and murder the illegal marketing drugs the estimates were four trillion dollars a year right now that has corrupted everything it comes into contact with including the prison system mm-hmm when you go start arresting people who mostly got addiction issues a lot of my friends in prison were Marines come back from wars PTSD got on the street drugs ended up in prison the highest arrest category back then when I was arrested was weed possession Wow a million arrests a year almost a weed possession million a year and they come to prison and graduate to heroin and crystal meth so the absolute priority of the drug gang is this you've got this ideal target market place of a mix so guards are smuggling drugs in for the gangs nurse was arrested bringing drugs in for the Mexican Mafia while I was there drugs are getting dropped off in drones these days visitors are bringing drugs to visitation in the lowest security levels there is more drugs in prison than anywhere on the face of the earth but dealers in prison are boasting that they're making more money inside than they were selling drugs before they were arrests where they keep the money where they keep the cash it's a street-to-street oh got it yeah so say your mydlink yes and I'm a customer yeah your woman outside goes and pays my woman outside of visits you know cash is exchanged I got it yeah and it's still taking place street to stream and so hoping when I come out I have some cash sitting around that's waiting for me if you're not super done if you're an entrepreneur yeah that makes sense you're in you had some dealings with the Mexican Mafia but the Mexican Mafia connection for you wasn't in prison that happened prior to that I know right and how close did you get with them all right so I mentioned wild man's first visit yes wellman opened a lot of doors for me because like I mentioned about my anxiety stuff he wherever he goes people take notice he's 25 26 phone trying to think what the American a [ __ ] that is now maybe like 250 300 pounds he's knows he's pointing over his fist to twice the size of mine it's just got all human teeth marks all over his knuckles so at these apartment parties we were throwing in the early XE days he'd have like Russian mobsters coming up Mexican gangsters coming over agender Native Americans Street gangbangers just as a collective Mack electic mix of people and that's how I got to meet all these different people now at one of these apartment parties I was applying the ecstasy and there's ruggedly handsome Mexican American guy shows up with long dark prison tattoos on his arms and he's supplying the coke and the weed so as we're both the suppliers we start chilling and talking and a Tempe police man walks in he goes I could smell we've mount side nobody move so gdug the Mexican American guy's name is and I've never seen anything like this before just whips out he's gone points at the cops head says the only one who's not leaving is you [ __ ] everybody run so I'm like holy [ __ ] you know I'm just like [ __ ] we're all gonna get arrested now I've got drugs on me so we all we all just ran off into the night basically now this was a huge apartment complex called Rancho Murieta in Tempe Arizona it's got all these other buildings and as part of my organization when I had people in apartments we would structure apartment complexes so like the drugs are here the cash is here in the apartment and protection is over here in North partment so if anything went off we could move everything around but legally so we I went up it's one of these other apartments and all hell's breaking loose now please sirens and so we're all in there thinking cops are gonna come should we flush our stuff next thing bang bang on the French window is it the cops we open the French window it's G dog he's like let me in so he says the police haven't got a warrant he schooled us they can't come in without a warrant they haven't seen me coming here turn the lights off everybody shut the table nobody move if they come just don't open the door mm so we were debating when we were over to flush the drugs and he's like don't sweat it so he was right the cops came and they were knocking on the door we didn't answer they went next door they went all over the complex and at the end of the night I said to him look because you're so hot here why don't you come over to a house I've got in FINA so that's what what we didn't he stayed there and then he said Shawn because you and your friends had my back me and my brothers have got your back I had no idea what that meant so a couple months later cuz my brother wants to meet you so I go over to this street in Tempe the goalies lowrider fancy show cars on the street go to the front door his brothers like shot guy know her wife beater on shots down to here just looking to [ __ ] me with this mean face then he hears me speaking he's like damn you talk funny homie it's like I guess you are from England come through meet my homeys so I go into the living room with G dog and there's all these massive tattooed Mexican American guys got the chains on they're looking at me like they want to eat me you know who is this guy they've got like guns aks mini machine guns slabs of crystal meth slabs of cocaine weighing scales I'm looking around the room see the biggest TV I've ever seen they've got a little screen watching all the comings and goings on the street like holy [ __ ] that's not on I saw it and a Rambo movie rocket-propelled grenade launcher on the TV yeah so I'm thinking these guys are heavy-duty and I was always nervous every time I went over the jet from one time they said look I women too coming over and we're gonna have an ecstasy party we're gonna try your stuff out so I went over the Oh going back to the first time one of them actually swung we spoonful of coke in my face that first time and he's like snort this and I'm walking over Jews like yes that's it just to see if I was a cop you know and that guy I won't say his name but when I did learn who they were that guy was actually a hitman who done quite was putting in quite a lot of work at that point in time yeah so they say we're having this ecstasy party and I go over in the night because they've run out of pills and they're all an ecstasy for the first time but these guys when I got over there like these big sweaty overgrown teddy bears picking me up bugging me England man we love your pills trying to tell me their life stories but every time I went over there after there it was back to that lethal atmosphere now the only way I learned who they was was because years later I was dropping gdug off one night and the whole neighborhood was blacked out the police were out with light ones guiding trending as we pull up to the house federal SWAT team are bringing all these guys out in handcuffs and we just kept going and it was news headlines that they knew Mexican Mafia most powerful violent criminal and organization in Arizona they tried to assassinate the head of the Department of Corrections the prison system they were taking out witnesses please all kinds so the good thing that came about was my debts are in the hundreds of thousands and people knew I was click that with them and the money started to come in a little bit faster yeah so that was your experience with the make which which one of the which one of the gangs in prison were the most feared okay I mean it varies probably prison by prison from your experience in prison what happens is the numbers with the most pics on the numbers with the least it's a shame because well I say it's a shame but from a power-play move the Chicanos the Mexican Americans and the Mexicans they would be the biggest but they're at war in the Arizona prison system yeah they've been at war since the 1990s if they were united they would every night they'd be the biggest where I was housed in medium security in the beginning I would say it was the Mexicans Mexican Americans slightly over half then the whites then the blacks less than a quarter and the Native Americans and others fraction in America we u.s. is roughly four point four percent of the world population is what US has right but they have 22% of world's prisoners so four point four percent world population 22% prisoners and when you study their stats nineteen fifty per hundred thousand we had a hundred and fifty prisoners per hundred thousand fifty today that numbers around seven hundred and over a half if T percent of the prisoners today are in because of drug charges that's what changed the war against drugs you know when you were in did you see some guys we're like that just doesn't belong in here you know he he should go in a different route and do you think sometimes the association of a guy that got him for weed or something like that being around others he learned other bad habits that when he got out he brought that you know habit into the streets what are your thoughts have experience with that but mass incarceration of low-level drug users is incentivized by a conspiracy between politicians legislators the private prisons and all of the other predatory contractors making money off this so the media puts out these headlines saying prisons are for murderers rapists pedophiles and drug traffickers like Pablo Escobar and on the other side they say how easy prison is to keep a public hating on prisoners what the average arrest was a black kid or a Mexican kid with a bit of weed getting a 2 to 5 year sentence and what I saw and so what did you meet kids in prison where you're looking and when I say kids average arrests yeah yeah so what are you like why are you in what is this a full of these people almost a million arrests a year for weed possession in America at the height of the war on drugs let me ask you having experienced different levels what would you suggest what would you cuz in the in UK you guys are all like 125 per 100,000 it's different where the highest incarceration rate in Europe because the same political private prison influences are corrupting our system here they tried to open the biggest kid's prison in the Western world in this country last year the prison was going to get a hundred thousand dollars plus per year of taxpayers money per kid they asked to make half of young people experiment with drugs they can fill it up with young kids on drugs all day long it went to House of Lords and Lord said is this something we're gonna be proud of and they shut it down they shut it the politicians and the corporation's are still trying to get it pushed through so so there's there's a battle there right one is somebody's watching this they're saying oh my gosh but he you know you you gave ecstasy to people you're a drug dealer you you know you have a lot of kids that you taught and taught them a lot of bad habits you know and you you you hurt some families that's what you did okay fine and then there are those people that will say yeah but let's just say guy that's doing which should he be going to prison what should it's not fair for him to go to but we got to keep the drug dealers off the street the balance of it how do you balance that up for somebody that's seen this yourself I write about the war on drugs people like Pablo Escobar Cali cartel America made things like that so I've researched this thoroughly you've raised a few separate points there I take full responsibility for I did I deserve to be punished I got off lightly by having a high-priced lawyer and doing a united front defense I learned a lot of lessons in prison I'm actually the poster child for it but Arizona's got the highest incarceration and highest reoffending according to FBI stats some of the highest in the country you tell my recent division tap of stats yeah I'm talking about FBI stats yeah over the years that I've looked at what is the purpose of prisons in the police the police were started out of London by Robert Peel if you look how crime has been defined for millennia murder robbery rape drug traffickers like myself not excusing that person a murders rapes robs person B mm-hmm there's always a victim mm-hmm when they ramped up the war on drugs and said who the easiest people to arrest kids with weed when you arrest the kid with weed who's that person hurting himself yeah so the whole purpose of the police which was to take person a out of society that hurts hurts person B has been subverted by the war on drugs a kid with weed is hurtin themselves maybe their family that's a cry for help that kids need mentorship that kid may need some mental health counseling that kid needs encouragement in life and what do we do with them we put them in a place where they're going to get indoctrinated by a neo-nazi gang who idolize getting Hitler tattoos and swastikas and you got a murder someone to be a full member and you're gonna make your criminal connections and they're gonna give you a swastika on your forehead so when you get out and go for a job interview you can't get a job you're gonna come right back to the game and the jail is gonna say hey if we educate these people if we give them the high school diplomas when they get out they're gonna stand a chance in life no let's allow it to be drug and gang infested mayhem because when they get out we'll give them fifty dollars gate money say have a nice day they're gonna go right back to crime because it's drunk drug and gang infested man yeah yeah and when they get arrested $50,000 of taxpayers money per year right back to the jail or the prison I think it's up to 70,000 now I'm just quoting figures when I got arrested the racket on the tax base shakedown I see that so the percentage that I saw is after one year 56% 56% of prisoners make it back in yeah three years is 67 percent five years is 76 percent so once you go in there's a very high likelihood of you getting back in within the next one three five years Corrections Corporation are boasting in the annual reports that shareholders our profit growth is guaranteed because they keep coming back they're not correcting people they're breaking them so Shawn let me ask you two people if you're speaking to somebody right now a kid who's 22 years old yeah messing around with stuff selling weed selling coke selling ecstasy selling whatever it is he's selling on the streets what do you tell someone like that because when you're in it sometimes you know I remember when I was coming up I was doing my own version of things and you almost feel like you're not infamous untouchable like I can get away I can outsmart the system right what would you say to somebody that's in that moment saying you know I'm gonna be able to get away he got caught but I'm not gonna get caught I felt like I was above the law and the drugs was telling me that we were joking we're above the law were living in the movie drug scrambles your decision-making process is you're not thinking normally or surrounded myself with equally crazy people reinforcing each other's insane behavior I would say to those kids do these prisons and these politicians the contract in the tens of billions they want you out doing drugs they look at you as suckers to arrest because they know they're going to get you in Chile and make money off your back now what I didn't understand is the road of drug use is very long the pleasures extremely high in the beginning in the pain is low you don't see what's coming at you down that road and young person because the the pleasure is so high you're always chasing the early high but you never get it back so you make sure drugs up are you move on to harder drugs over time in the background the pain is slowly anything and when it crosses if you're addicted you can't stop I only learnt this in the jail it made me ashamed of putting people on that road I knew I couldn't change my path so I my main thing is now he's telling school kids my story so they won't do what I did but in the jail I saw the horror of what drug use led to 90% sure not my heroin crystal meth 2/3 hepatitis C 9 the 90% yellow jaundice skin teeth rotting out and I thought to myself I popping up people on that road you know actually I should be ashamed now to treat all those guys with hepatitis C interferon 30,000 a year would bankrupt the system so they say to them you know you're not getting the treatment some sue in court they've got money other got legal skills and it takes years just to get the treatment and by then the liver it might have advanced and that they made it bit can even be saved anyway some of them would win the treatment after this big court battle and the final hurdle was right congratulations you've won your treatment treatment doesn't work unless you stop the drugs now you got to stop the drugs and some of the girls guys were so addicted they would keep doing the drugs and choose to die rather than save their own lives that is the power of addiction so my point here is young people think about what's gonna come at you down that road I was given a front row seat and it's an absolute horror show now if you've got an addictive personality like me there's nothing wrong with channeling that energy into positive atoms so I put it know I do karate I do body combat yoga and meditation really got my anxiety down save my sanity interesting yeah yeah when's the last time you touched drugs I didn't touch drugs since I got arrested yeah Oh since you got arrested you haven't touched stopped it yeah Wow yeah and so and so let me ask you you haven't been in since you got out no what did you do to make sure you didn't get in because you know it's very easy to come to UK and maybe use some of those habits here because your crime was in Arizona you can start a new thing over here how come you didn't do various factors stopped me going back I read over a thousand books and just on the six years a lot of philosophy in psychology and they enabled me to go deep inside myself and address the root causes and not to go back to it the therapist said if you give something up and it fiction even if it's a negative one there's a space inside you and you've got to fill it mmm don't replace it karate body combat exercise yoga these things they keep me level-headed I still go out and dance my ass off all night at some of these clubs like ministry should check ministry out while you're here or some of the gay bars of Clapham Common where they got the hands in the air dance moves yeah I just closed my eyes get into the vibe and dance to feel those endorphins cascading physical movement causes the brain to release the chemicals being dolphins to cascade you don't have to be doing these other things it's just it's just a shot core physical activity can get you sports is a great one for young people I advocate yeah so you you replaced a bad habit with something else as which it is what does I got yeah so so you know and I know you give away a lot of books nowadays you you're yeah you're in the business of giving away books I do public events on a vessel on Amazon I've got almost ten books oh well life stories party time hard time prison time and from the profits from my sales at my public events I donate books to kids in state schools and to prisoners and in the last three years now I've managed to donate twenty thousand books do yoga believe in karma all these kind blog readers sent me books from all over the world because my writing was smuggled out the jail it went on to attract international media attention all these kind people who's like a real Shawshank Redemption moment we're filling the prison library up so I give back now to these kids and these prisoners in the hope that reading will help them in their journey and in a last question I'll ask you as we address that a little bit I'm curious to know what you're gonna say obviously you you've thought about this I'm in the financial industry so for me everything within the industry I have to study because I'm in that space I mean short space the good bad and the ugly what would be the solution like what would really be the solution to not have some of these petty crimes that people are doing to put them in prison do you separate petty crime you know petty criminals in different prison do you put him through a 90-day probationary school kind of system where you're on lockdown what would your suggestion be I say this and the UK to people we shouldn't be following the American we should be following the countries that are closing prisons down right now because of the guts per capacity so petty crime like I said it's low-level drug use should that even be a crime these people need help Portugal had over a hundred thousand heroin addicts they were following the American model he said this is not working anymore let's legalize let's decriminalize let's see what happens the police said if you do that what kind of examples it sets a young people decriminalizing heroin there'll be people doing this all over the streets what actually happened was the addicts were no longer afraid of getting arrested they talked to the health teams who counseled them and Portugal more than half the heroin addicts of all of the types of drug users heroin is a miniscule amount of drug use but disproportionately it causes the most petty crime shoplifting burglaries which isn't petty crime it's more serious and an acquisitive crime it causes the majority of it when you legalized and decriminalized because it doesn't cost most much give these guys medicinal grade opium is just a plant that cost hardly anything doesn't cost the taxpayer much then they don't have to go out stealing are they so the petty crime around it collapsed as well and the transmission of diseases from sharing dirty needles it would be interesting cuz you know when you go to Alcatraz the first thing they do when you go to San Francisco I don't know if you've been they show you the stats here's how many people have done this here's how many people are in prison here's how many inmates we have here's what's going on with this here's what's going on with America here's where Marco ranks I think number one in a number two is Russia and then you see the stats going down yeah I don't know if America's figured out the perfect solution on how to do this I saw there's a 76 billion dollar-a-year number that we spend for prisons and this is a 2011 stat is what I saw I don't know if we figured out the way but I do believe that there needs to be major adjustments being made because the direction we're going in the current status one in 20 Americans will at one point go to prison yeah one in twenty that's a pretty big number to have one in 20 go to prison yeah so either you know it doesn't need to be that many going or there needs to be a better step process one two three on what happens and how you go to it what are your thoughts on that America does have it figured out exactly where it wants it this is all school money they don't want any changes they want to be profits in tens of billions a year in contracts of this private prison system that's just the private prisons include the prison guard unions includes the lawyers include all of the contractors of the prisons there's like a pipeline to prison program in America now to enhance this catch the kids judges the old money wants to maintain this US federal government has got weed as a Schedule one substance more harmful than crystal meth and cocaine with no medicinal value whatsoever because that's what maximizes corporate profits they're not interested in the welfare of these young people are getting tossed into into these prisons there's people doing 25 to life for joints of weed on the three-strikes laws there's people doing it for peat stealing pizzas 25 to life in California they tried to repeal the three strikes law in California 25 to life is stealing a pizza guy was doing 50,000 a year 1.25 million for ten dollar pizza why are we the taxpayers of California paying for this when it went to get repealed people who put money up put money up to get it introduced stop it getting repealed prison guards Union of California Broadcom exclusive provider of telephone services to the California state prison system the taxpayers money is a feeding trough to the corporation's to these parasites the conte the political contributions to the legislators and the politicians coming down are in the tens of millions why change that it's just one big money go around by a select group of people but what's happened is the American people are sick of it at the state level you guys are now voting to legalized and decriminalized weed that's not the u.s. federal government that's the people the people over there are sick of their kids getting from these prisons where they just graduate to harder crime the sick at their kids who're having the seizures can't get the cannabis oil going into comas and dying all these evil politicians who have maintained this for years have caused all these kids to die over the years we couldn't get their medicine but when you now produce a kid the internet and technology is making all this word spread so fast these evil politicians can't go up against these dying kids and that's how it's falling and falling at the state level and that's the hope I think the floodgate is open now and the whole thing is gonna collapse yeah that's what you foresee taken absolutely yeah yeah interesting yeah shot final thoughts for you what are your final thoughts you have if you were to say here's my experiences here's what I've learned here's what I suggest what would you say I'd like to say to the fellas in prison especially and entrepreneurs outside I've seen parallels in both worlds hmm you know as a best-selling author for now on Amazon I've got to have a good product I've got to know how to market my product I've got have relations with the right people if you're in prison because you were running the drug business you've got all those skills plus you're watching your back avoiding the police doing all this other stuff as well your skill set is enhanced so I hope that people who see me I've got out of prison become a success story I hope that inspires them to do well in the world as well what book would you suggest the viewer to read I think because of the way you've structured it yes people have been most interested in my years before I got arrested and my jail time so that party time is everything when I got arrested my dealings with the mafia rising to the ranks in the ecstasy world and then hard time is first going into the GLS that was the deadliest period of time for me I've also got hundreds of questions answered on my YouTube prison questions playlist as well yeah you by the way he has stuff that he talks about Pablo Escobar you talk about how the callee worked with you know the DEA to help take out Pablo it's real interesting things you talk about on your channel by the way here's what I want you to do I put the link for the books below for you to go buy his books but if you got anything you took away you got questions for Shawn he's on Twitter I know you and I were going back and forth yesterday on Twitter send him a tweet or send me a tweet based on what she took away from this interview and if you got any questions for him shoot the questions over two minutes what would that being said Shawn yeah thank you so much thank you thanks for coming up
This guy did a talk at my school years ago, really interesting dude with a lot of crazy stories
Isn’t this the guy Eddie was talking about with the Epstein stuff that he didn’t want to discuss in the podcast?
He's not allowed in the US because of all the druglord stuff.
He did a podcast with True Geordie which is worth checking out though
Atwood got taken in by a really bad con artist last year and released a bunch of videos of this dude and his over the top fake ass stories.
He got called out by that Navy Seal on youtube that busts fakers for a living and he highly suggested that Atwood is a much bigger piece of shit then he would admit and that he should be careful.
Take that as you will. Not sure what to make of it tbh.
Not sure if saying 'maybe Joe should interview him' makes this a 'Guest request' thread but to try and stick to rule 3 if it is heres the guys wikipedia.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shaun_Attwood
Guys obsessed with Epstein so you lot would like him lol.
I read his book. Interesting shit. Joe Arpaio is asshoe.
Idk how i feel about this fella but Boy he sure has a lot of buttons on that button up
I hate this interviewer
This was a good listen