People on the block
thought we were crazy because we were selling
to white people. ♪♪ First time I sold coke,
I was 14 years old. And then we took it
to next-level, where we stopped dealing
on the corner. ♪♪ There was nobody doing it
like I was doing it. We started handing out
10,000 business cards. Like wildfire. [ Cellphones ringing ]
Just blew up. ♪♪ We couldn't keep up
with the demand. I'm like, "Yo, I need your help.
I need your help," and that's where I fucked up. I was being tapped by the Feds. [ Cellphones ringing ] And I'm like,
"These motherfuckers. These motherfuckers, man." ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ My name is Coss Marte,
aka Coss the Boss. I grew up in the Lower East Side
on Manhattan. It was a very drug-infested
neighborhood back in the day. It was a place where,
probably, every 10 steps I took as a kid,
I would see a heroin needle. It's not the galleries
and poodles that you see today. It was, like, Iraq
or some shit, you know? A war zone. My mom came to New York
six months pregnant with me. Three months later,
I popped out. You know, first American-born
citizen in my family, so it was just my mom and I
for a little while. My dad and my sisters came
from the Dominican Republic, when they got, like, their visas
and stuff like that. My brother was born
a few years later, but it was a struggle. ♪♪ I really understood poverty
at a very early age. The fact that I was
born poor and... I don't know --
I felt a divide even racially, even, like, watching,
like, the TV shows on TV. It's, like, you know,
"Step by Step" and, like, "Full House," you know --
white families have it good, you know,
living in white picket fences, and they have a big house, and I'm, like,
sleeping head-to-toe with all my siblings
in one full-size mattress, you know, four of us in one bed. Growing up, we were close-knit,
but we were always kind of doing our own things,
but, you know, living in a two-bedroom
apartment with six people, you're pretty close-knit, even if you don't want to. And you feel like life is unfair
as a very young person, and I wanted more. I wanted to be rich. ♪♪ So, school was pretty easy
for me growing up. I did pretty well. I remember in third grade,
like, the teachers asked my mom to skip me a grade because I, literally, had nothing but 100s. It was just too easy for me. My mom was actually a teacher
in the Dominican Republic. When I was a kid, she taught me,
like, how to multiply and all the math stuff that really helped me
in the drug-dealing world. My dad had the bodega downstairs
in front of the building, and, you know, I remember
waking up before school, opening up the bodega, you know. I had to sweep, mop,
you know, wipe shit down, and then head to school,
and then after school, come back, work the counter,
real child labor shit. The first small crime
I committed, I remember going to
the Economy Candy store, and they had baseball cards. You see, I was, like,
a big baseball-card collector, and I used to steal
the baseball cards there. You know, buy, like,
a Mary Jane candy, pay 5 cents
and walk out with, like, $5, $10 worth of baseball cards and try to sell them at school. One of my cousins who was, like,
my best friend growing up -- he was a bad motherfucker. He's locked up right now, but he was a bad influence
on me, too. He was the one that smoked weed
with me for the first time. At 13, I started dealing,
like, nickel bags and stuff. I was the kid that was
smoking in school. It just opened the door because
the other kids wanted to smoke, and so they would be like,
"Yo, get me this," and I would go down the block,
get it for them. So that was, like, the first
time I made any transaction. It was scary because it was,
like, the first time I brought, like,
a nickel bag to school, and so it was, like, you know,
passing it under the desk, and it became, like,
a supply and demand for me. ♪♪ I had a beeper,
and I remember we used to do, like, codes and shit,
you know how you used to do backwards, like, hello,
the 43770, you know, do, like, small,
little dumb codes like that. I'm with my little brother,
and we're walking. I got a beep from my boy who lived in the building
next door. We met up in the park. He bought a couple nickel bags
off of me and he's like, "Yo, do you want to smoke?" So I sat down,
rolled up a blunt. At that time, I used to roll up
fucking football blunts. I really didn't know how
to roll. I thought... I was like, "Yo, I'm the best
fucking blunt roller." I smoked a little bit,
passed it back. He passed it back to me. Next thing I know, I feel,
like, this grown ass man just, like, grabs my arm. Undercover cops just come
after my brother. Coss: I drop down to my knee,
and he's like, "This is Detective
blah-blah-blah," and he cuffed me right away. I just started shouting, crying. I was wearing my D.A.R.E. shirt. And he's like, "Ah!" And so he was like,
"Don't take my brother!" And, like,
ripped his jacket off and was like, "I'm part
of the D.A.R.E program!" And so I was just telling
the police officer, "I'm part
of the D.A.R.E program. I'm part of
the D.A.R.E program." You know, I think the cops
kind of, like, almost took a step back and really kind of let Coss go
with a warning, called our parents. It was the first time
where it hit me hard that my brother was
up to something. People that I knew
in the community were up to something
that wasn't probably good. My mom was mad. My mom was, like,
strictly, like... She thought marijuana
was, like, the devil. My brother definitely
got the talk, and I think my parents,
you know -- My parents weren't ignorant. My dad was more practical
and was, like, just, you know, basically told me, like,
"Be smart about it," you know, "Don't do it outside where
you're going to get seen by other people and get caught,"
you know, "Do it inside." Chris: That's when I kind of stopped hanging out
with my brother, just because of the reaction
my parents had. But obviously... as a kid,
I'm not going to listen. I feel like all adolescents want
to have some sort of rebellion. From nickel bags, it turned into, you know,
dime bags of coke. The first time I sold coke was,
I was 14 years old. I'm standing on the corner,
and this cokehead came up, and he's like,
"Yo, I need two bags of coke." I was like, "All right." So I went down
to Stanton Street, and Stanton Street,
I knew this guy and I bought two bags of coke
from him for $15 a pop, and then came back and sold it,
you know, and made $10. That was the first time
where I was like, "Yo, I can make way more money
than selling nickel bags of weed when I'm, like, profiting
like 2 bucks a bag, and, like, these people
are coming for $40 worth." You know,
it just opened up my eyes. From dime bags of coke,
it went to 20s of coke and just being out there
for, like, a year and a half, two years,
just in and out, hustling. There was nobody that was
doing it like I was doing it. I was just, like,
up all day, all night, and that's how I progressed,
and after awhile, I, basically,
inherited the block. I would be sitting on the stoop.
People pass me the money. I'll have, like,
the Nextel walkie-talkies, be like, "Yo," you know,
"Hit them with this amount," and so my boy would
be on the roof or through one of
the building apartments and just throw it off
the side of the building. And I'll tell people, like,
"Go around the corner, catch the shit
coming off the roof, and then just keep it moving," so it was not, like, a hand-to-hand transaction. I mean...
it was pretty obvious that we were doing stupid shit
like that, but for us, our mind-set was,
like, technicalities are that I'm not hanging
any drugs directly to them. It's coming off the sky, like God sent it to you... ♪ Hallelujah ...and you have no proof. You're just handing me money,
you know, so that was my mentality
behind that operation. I don't even remember
the first time I met Joey, but I knew of Joey and, like,
seen him on the block, seen him in the hood. My name is Jose Lallave, and in Spanish,
it means "the key." People call me The Key. I first met Coss probably in the early 2000s. When I really started
messing with him, I was, like, 16. Joey was always doing
all types of other hustles, like, setting up shop
right on the corner and, like, I'm hustling
and I'm like, "Yo, what the fuck is he doing?" And he's, like, open up the box and just selling,
like, white tea for a dollar to, like, Chinese people, and just, like,
coming up with $1,000 off, like, selling shit like that. You know, he had his own way
of doing things. I had my own way,
and he was just the perfect
one-two punch for me. We were ambitious
and determined. We didn't realize that,
at the time, that we had certain
entrepreneurial skills. And so one day,
he comes up to me, and he's like, "Yo, I need
this amount of work." I think he bought, like, maybe,
like, $500 worth of coke, and I gave him, like, a discount so he could make money
off of it. And then he came back
and was like, "Yo, I need more,"
and then he went over there, sold whatever he needed to sell
to whoever he needed to sell, and then came back
and bought more, and I'm like, "Yo, I'm out," and he's like, "Yo, I need more. I need more. I need more.
Now! Now!" Just, like, very demanding
and aggressive. I saw that similarity of,
like, having that hunger, having that desire to be rich,
and I was like, "Yo, I need help
running the block," and, right there and then,
we just made the decision. We put our money together. I think we just bought,
like, 2 ounces of coke or something like that
and, you know, we just started
operating together. We formed a union that night,
and that's how it all started. And the energy that we just
bounced off of each other, like, I've never seen
a hustler like him, and he's never seen a hustler
like me. We both had that hunger
where we were, like, any way, means necessary, we're going to
get this motherfucking money. It was this rookie cop. He was like, "I'm going
to search him again," and I'm like, "Fuck." ♪♪ Joey and I went into
business together. For us, it was like
business never ended. Dealing coke,
selling crack as a teenager, I was just hungry. We worked our ass off. Every day, 365 days a year. We never had no time to hang out
or be with our families. I don't even know
what holidays are. I don't give a shit
about none of that. [ Chuckles ]
This is embarrassing, but I remember him,
you know, going in between cars
and taking a shit, like, 'cause we didn't want
to get off the block. Like, he was like,
"Yo, I can't do upstairs. We're going to miss a sale,"
and, like, he's like, "Yo, but I got to use
the bathroom," and he, like,
went between cars. Like, yo, this motherfucker
is serious. He said, "Yo, Coss,
get me toilet paper," and I'm, like,
getting toilet paper, throwing it at him like a
football, like, it was a fucking movie. Like, even brushing our teeth, we would, like,
buy the quart of water, buy a new toothbrush,
buy a toothpaste. We actually took,
like, No Doz pills, like, caffeine pills to,
like, you know, keep us up because, like,
at 4 or 5 in the morning was when it became, like,
this extra wave of calls and people showing up
to the corner. There was, like, no other corner
that was, like, really operating
as, like, 24 hours a day. I remember, I went home
after like three days. I was, like, up in the streets,
tired, like, hustling all day, all night, and I was staying up
days at a time, but I remember having,
like, 5,000 bags of crack, $50,000 worth on the street,
and I just finished, like, getting it from my connect, and I get to my mom's crib. I was living on Broome
and Eldridge at the time, but I went over there 'cause I picked up the crack
from my connect in the first floor
of my mom's building. And I, like, just start
watching TV there, just chilling,
and I had, like, a big hoodie and I got, like, a big-ass
plastic fucking ziplock bag of just a whole bunch of crack, and I fell asleep there. My dad woke me up, and there was crack everywhere
in my mom's apartment. Like, literally, it was,
like, from the bathroom, kitchen, to the living room, and it was just, like, a whole
bunch of crack everywhere. I felt so embarrassed.
I was like, "Oh, shit. How the fuck all this shit
got around?" I didn't know how the hell
it got all over the apartment. I must have been sleepwalking
because I was, like, dead, and I woke up in the couch pretty much in, like,
the same position. Like, it was raining crack,
you know? ♪♪ Hallelujah.
[ Chuckles ] [ Sighs ] Yeah. Yeah, my brother used
to sleepwalk all the time. You know, he would just get up, sometimes just go to the couch,
turn on the TV, and just sit there,
and he was asleep. And my brother is
a hard sleeper, so, like, he's knocked out. He's sleepwalking.
You want wake him up. Coss: My dad passed me
a fucking broom and a dust pan, and we just started
sweeping up everything and putting it in the ziplock. I was just really surprised
that he helped me pick it up. I guess he understood that, you know,
he couldn't throw it away. That would've probably had
some repercussion in the street. He's like, "Get that shit
out of the crib." He's, like, "Whatever,"
you know, like... Yeah, not a lot of people
know about that. ♪♪ There was this crackhead
named Chula. Chula was, like...
next-level fucking gangster. Like, I seen her, like, bring a knife to a gunfight,
literally. So I get a call from her,
and she's like, "Yo, come to building A." It was, like, 3 blocks. "Go upstairs
to the crack house." I got like 50 bags of crack
on me, and I knock on the door,
opened up. I go in there, make the sale. Next thing I know,
like, the fucking cops, they bring, like,
a big black fucking shit that they knock down
the door with. They, like, bang the door, and the other crackheads
was just, like, fucking scared, and I was scared, and Chula was by the door, and she, like,
fucking stood by the door and was, like,
put her whole body into it. I had like seven bags
of weed on me, and so I took
the seven bags of weed, and I just threw it
behind the stove, and then, eventually,
they just rammed the door. About like 10 cops and detectives come in,
and they start searching the whole apartment,
and they find the weed. One of the crackheads
snitched on me and said, like,
"That was his weed." I thought it was one of those
situations where I'm like, "Yo, I'm only going in for weed. I'm good, you know,
blah-blah-blah." I get out to the hallway. I'm in cuffs, and there
was this rookie cop. He was like, "I'm going
to search him again," and I'm like, "Fuck." I remember I had
a Rocawear jacket. It was, like, one of those
flight jackets, and in the seam of it, I had a little hole
just slit right there, and I had a whole bunch
of bags of crack throughout the whole seam
of the jacket. And so he opens up the, like,
you know, spreads my legs. I'm still in cuffs, and, like,
he was very aggressive, where he, like, banged my head
up against the fucking wall, and he searched me,
and then he felt, like, a little slit and just put his finger
in there, and that was it. You know,
he saw one bag of crack. Then he saw two, three. They just kept coming out, like, "Shit, this is going to be
a serious situation." He was like, "What the fuck?" So, then he took, like,
a switchblade knife and ripped my whole
fucking jacket off me with the cuffs on me,
and that was it. That was my first felony. I had to be sent
to Rikers Island. ♪♪ It was a shock,
but it was a shock because I didn't want
to tell anyone about it, especially once I got into
middle school and high school. Slowly, he almost
became invisible. Coss: It's not a pretty place. I remember, like,
laying on my bed, and it was just, like,
thousands of mice just crawling
all over the floor, just like a horror movie, and I remember, actually,
the second day I was there, somebody got stabbed on my bed
with a broomstick. ♪♪ Chris: My brother had
a Uber-style delivery service before there was,
like, Uber Eats. Before there was Seamless,
there was Coss and Joey. Coss: This guy,
like dropped on my bed. Then I'm like, "Yo!
Get the fuck off my bed." The riot team came. We call them The Turtles because
they come with, like, this... They look like
Ninja-Turtle outfit suits. The Turtles come in, and you
need to embrace for impact because they come in
with the batons. They just start hitting people as soon as they come in the door and just banging anybody
in the way, so you just got
to hit the ground. And so they bang up
a couple people. They take people to the box. The whole fucking dorm
is just, like, everything is just flipped,
beds all over the place, you know,
and I get back to my bed, and my sheets were, like,
just covered in blood. And I remember, like,
the officer was like, "Yo, it's night. Lights out.
Everybody go to bed." I'm like, "Yo, I'm not
going to fucking bed. You got fucking blood on
my fucking sheets right here." You know,
I flipped the mattress around. There was blood
on the other side of the fucking plastic mattress, but at least I got a clean sheet
and went to bed. ♪♪ So at 17, I got probation. I felt like I was not going
to sell drugs anymore. I was going to turn a new leaf and, like, do the right thing. So, I graduated
from high school. I got accepted to UAlbany. I was, like, one of
the first people in my family to go to college,
but I brought some weed with me. I was just going to smoke it
for myself, and my roommate, he was like,
"Word, what you got?" So, like, I showed him
and he's like, "Oh," and he bought, like,
$100 worth right away. I had no intention
of selling drugs up there, but it was just...
supply and demand, you know? Next thing I know,
I was brining ounces of coke up to Albany and selling it. So, like, my branding was, like, these, like, plastic
ziplock Superman bags. After a month and half
in college, we threw a crazy party. We had like 200, 300 girls.
The cops raided us. Boom, knocked the door down. In came dogs, the whole K-9 unit. They found, like,
the Superman ziplock bags. They gave me an ultimatum. They said, you know,
leave this school, or I could get arrested, so I got, like,
banned from college. I don't know why that was not
a wake-up call for me, but I go back to Manhattan. I, like, went back
to the streets and did it again. It was when, like, white people started moving
to the Lower East Side. ♪♪ Gentrification. Real estate started going up,
rent was ridiculous, so that, in turn,
brought better clientele. So, Happy Endings -- It was a massage parlor
back in the day, and then it became
Happy Endings, the bar and club. When Happy Endings opened up,
there was, like, a set of just, like, hipsters
coming down the block. Joey: These bars and lounges
in the community offered better prospects
and was far more lucrative. Coss: Joey and I, literally, would just go up to people
and say, "We have blow." People on the block
thought we were crazy because we were selling
to white people. Everybody thought
a white person was a cop. We took that risk, and we became
that first group to hustle to, you know, random people, and that's where
our hustle changed. ♪♪ Joey: I made a proposition
to him -- "Let's create a service." Everybody was still doing
the street corner thing. I already knew that
the service phone thing, nobody else was really
delivering stuff. Nobody else was really
trying to cater to the high-end clientele. You know, from there,
we took it to next-level, where we stopped dealing
on the corner. ♪♪ Joey and I went to Kinko's, and we made
10,000 business cards and, like, made it legit. It was all black, said "Happy Endings"
three phone numbers on it, and it said "24/7" on it,
and that was it. We started handing
out the cards. A wildfire. We used to take huge risks,
but you know what? The business cards
affected the business and really took it
to the next level. Basically, our target
market changed, and we branded ourselves
as Happy Endings. There were so many phone calls
after that. Like, literally,
our three phones that I had on that business card just blew up. My brother had
a Uber-style delivery service before there was, like,
Uber Eats, right? Before there was Seamless,
there was Coss and Joey. Then it got to the point
where we had five calls, like, every other minute. I mean, we just couldn't
keep up with that pace, so we had to employ people
that was from the block. They didn't have their license,
so we started buying bikes. In the beginning, it was local, so we had to meet
the demand there. Then it started expanding. People started calling
out of Jersey. People started calling
out of Long Island. Coss: Everybody was
hustling for us. Everybody that was
our friends growing up became our employees. We started wearing suits because
I caught that crack case, and then I was going
back and forth to court. I spent, like, a year going
back and forth to court, and every time
I would go to court, I would wear, like, you know, a button-up, a tie,
a suit sometimes, and I was, like, selling drugs, like, on my way going to court or, like, coming out of court. That's how the business suits
started, and just acting
more professional. Dealing drugs on the corner, sitting on a milk crate,
was completely different from, you know, wearing
a business suit and going down to Wall Street
and just fitting in. It took a turn, and it felt like we were
incognito for a minute because, like,
cops would stop us and let us go sometimes. It's, like, we were
wearing suits. We looked like we had
a legit job, you know, we were running late
to work while we were, like, doing 100 miles per hour
down Fifth Avenue. Joey: And then the whole
pitch line business cards stapled with a bag of coke, "Listen, we're punctual,
proper attire. We go anywhere." We were one of the first people in that time frame
to have a service. Chris: Seeing kind of,
like, the people that was coming up to him
were much more professional, were much more white,
much more educated. You could connect the pieces. We changed our language. We changed the way
we approached the individuals. I was not like, "Yo.
What's good? Blah-blah-blah." It was, like, actually
speaking correct English, not ghetto language, making sure
people understood us and, like, proper handshakes and, like, basically doing
a start-up where you're, like, being scrappy
in every other way, and then turning corporate. I think when Coss really hit
that other level, I think he became
more responsible in his lifestyle, but I think, at that point,
he was so deep into the game, it didn't change
his decision-making overall, and that's when you realize
that, you know, it was something much greater
than what we saw when he was 13 and 14 years old. And that's when the business
started, like, fucking booming. ♪♪ I seen this white guy. He looks at me,
and I look at him, and he's like, "Coss Marte?" And I'm like, "What the fuck? How the fuck
do you know my name?" He's, like, pulls off his badge. [ Cellphones ringing ]
The calls were getting so insane that we were, like,
literally picking up two phones at a time, like, we couldn't keep up
with the demand. It became a real operation
after a while, where we had
multiple dispatchers. It was like 12-hour shifts, and then just a whole
bunch of drivers. It picked up so fast. The first few days, it was,
like, $700 to $1,100. Then towards the summertime,
and out of nowhere, everything was
just consistently, everything over $3,000 a day. The goal was, if we made $3,000
a day for 365 days a year, that's $1,095,000. Coss: And then we had, like,
stash houses in the Bronx and in Washington Heights. It was, like, business 101
where we were like, "All right,
this is the game plan and this is how it needs
to be structured." Coss wasn't the dealer anymore. Joey wasn't the dealer anymore. They had multiple levels within
the organization structure, and they managed it
almost as a CEO. You know, you could say
Coss was like the CEO, and Joey was more COO. With the service,
those were your clients, and you could gauge a quota
off of that. Thursdays, I make this amount. Fridays, I make this amount. Like, if it's Fashion Week,
that's going right on you. It doesn't matter. That's, like,
one of the biggest week. The New Year's week is one
of the biggest weeks. Certain holidays --
like for Thanksgiving, it slows down because people fly
to go see family members. They clean up. There's not that much action
going on in the city, but as soon as that weekend,
Sunday passes, they're right back at it,
calling 1,000 miles per hour. Coss: Cash was everywhere,
stacked with rubber bands. Like, $20,000 was,
like, this height. Stashing it in closets,
shoeboxes. You could stash like $30,000
per, like, Jordans shoebox. I probably was pocketing, like,
close to $3 million a year. I was only, like, 21, and we was just
buying dumb shit. Stupid mink coats and chains and watches and shoes, and we'd go, like,
to the Louis Vuitton store of Fifth Avenue and just, like, come out with like
a small little shopping bag, but we'd be spending,
like, $10,000. Chris: You know, Gucci clothing. He had the new Timbs,
and then having two cellphones. I saw the symbolic wealth
that he carried, and also just
the respect, right? People in the neighborhood
started talking that my brother kind of was the guy they wanted to be
because he had everything. Coss: Joey and I,
wearing business suits, eating fancy dinners, always get, like,
a bottle of Grey Goose at Peter Luger's
and all this shit. Joey: Every day was
like a party. We just did whatever we wanted. We didn't have no sense
of responsibility. Coss: So I ended up getting
my girlfriend pregnant, and I wasn't ready for that. It put a lot of pressure on me
to make more money, and I'm, like, juggling,
like, running the business and then, like, trying
to take care of her, and I started just eating
everything she ate. We was just overindulging,
living, splurging. Whatever I wanted, I got. ♪♪ We went to make a delivery in,
like, right by Central Park, and I think it was,
like, August, so it was, like,
not cold outside, but we were wearing,
like, fucking mink or some type of furs,
stupid shit, and I remember Joey had,
like, the matching fucking hat, like, the mink hat with
the fucking mink jacket. I don't know who said it first,
but we was like, "Yo, let's take
a horse and carriage," and we were like,
"Yo, how much is it for the day? We want to go to the
Lower East Side to our block. We'll give you $500,"
and he's like, "Nah, like, the ticket
is going to be, like, 1,000." We was like, "Fuck it.
We'll give you $5,000," and they were like,
"Nope, nope, nope." And then this guy was like,
"All right. I'll do it." We were, like,
literally stopping traffic. Those horse and carriages
are super slow, and so many cars,
like, beeping, and we're, like, going down,
like, Fifth Avenue, and people were just like
buying drugs off of us on the horse and carriage. Somebody had said,
"Listen, I'm on 39th and 7th." I said, "Oh, shit.
I'm a block away." He said, "What car you in?" I said, "I'm not in a car. Believe it or not,
I'm in a horse and carriage." He's like, "Oh, you guys
are fucking crazy." We, like, stopped
in, like, McDonald's with the horse and carriage,
brought it to the block. We had more little kids,
like, feed it, like, apples and carrots. I don't know how, like,
we got away with shit like that, but we got away with it. ♪♪ At the height of everything, Joey got locked up. Joey was doing, like, a year, and so now I'm, like,
running everything on my own. There was this one guy.
He was our dispatcher. He started stealing shit. Behind my back,
he started a new phone and made new business cards, and he was, like,
making these sales and stealing our customers and directing them
to a new phone. And then this guy named Dominic,
one of my first customers, who bought a lot of cocaine
from the beginning, Dominic had my personal number,
so he calls me. He's like, "Yo, this guy
gave me some different shit. He actually gave me
a new business card. Do you have a new number?" And I was like, "What?
What the fuck is the number?" So I got that number.
I called it. The dispatcher picks up,
and I'm like, "Yo, what the fuck
is you doing?" And I got all the phones
that he had in his possession. I switched those numbers, and I took that number
that he started not knowing that that phone
that he started was being tapped by the Feds. ♪♪ And that's where I fucked up. What I did, I was
in a stash house in the Bronx. I'm doing all
the dispatching now. I didn't trust anybody anymore, and I was sending people
to the different locations. I'm sending these guys. They tell me, "Copy.
I'm heading over there," and then the phones
were being shut down. [ Tone ]
Automated voice: We're sorry. The number you have reached
is not in service at this tim, and there is no new number. And so I'm like,
"Yo, what the fuck is going on?" So I'm, like,
calling other drivers. I'm like, "Yo, I need your help.
I need your help," and people are, like,
not available. And then I had no drivers,
and I'm like, "Fuck it. I'm going to make
this delivery myself," and so I leave the stash house, and as I walk out
of the stash house, I see this white guy. He looks at me
and I look at him, and he's like, "Coss Marte?" And I'm like, "What the fuck? How the fuck
do you know my name?" He's, like, pulls out his badge, "This is drug enforcement agent
detective Joseph King," and he says that, "Your whole operation is over." I, like, opened it up. I stick my fingers in there, and there was, like,
10 tabs of acid. My mind was like,
"Fuck it," you know, "What more do I have to lose?
Let me just get high." On my way down to the precinct,
they stick me into this, like, minivan,
and then they take my BMW, and they drive it next to me,
just laughing. I'm like, "These motherfuckers. These motherfuckers." As soon as I walk
in the precinct, people are clapping
and whooping and hollering and saying, like,
"You're done. You're done." They take me to this corridor,
where they have like 10 cells, and as I walk down,
I just see, like, all my drivers in those cells. They take my wallet.
They take me to the bathroom. They, like, strip search me. I had, like, I don't know, like 100 bags of coke
in my underwear, and they were like,
"What the fuck? You have, like, coke everywhere. Like, you have more?" They give me back my wallet. This wallet, I had a little
zipper type of stuff inside. I, like, opened it up. I stick my fingers in there, and there was, like,
10 tabs of acid. My mind was like,
"Fuck it," you know, "What more do I have to lose? Let me just get high." I took the 10 tabs of acid. The bars were, like, waving. ♪♪ I felt, like, I could just,
like, open up the bars and, like, escape. ♪♪ And then they take me
to the interrogation room, and that's when
it really started hitting me. And I was fucking tripping,
like, tripping like crazy. ♪♪ They told the judge
that I was high on acid. Judge was like,
"You're on acid right now? [ Distorted ] You're on acid?" [ Normal voice ] I'm like... He's like,
"Get him out of the courtroom. ♪♪ We're going to hit him
with the kingpin charges." I ended up in Rikers Island,
going back and forth to court. Me and my dad went
to the courtroom where we heard the conviction, and just staring at my brother, I felt like there wasn't
a human there anymore. I felt like that wasn't
the person I knew. It was kind of, like, a moment where I felt like he was lost. Joey: Coss got locked up.
I came out. I was motivated to get in --
right back into it, and I went,
and I turned the phones back on. Sure enough, they started
the investigation all over, and it was the same officers
that arrested him. That's how I ended up catching
this case, nine flat. Coss: I got 7 years,
and I was sent upstate. My son was 18 months old
when I got locked up, and it really, really killed me
to be away from him. You know, I wanted to
come home to my family. Chris: I stepped up,
started taking him to baseball games, hanging out with him,
kind of giving him a father figure to look up to. Coss: Chris had my back. You know, we got really tight, and I owe him a lot for that. ♪♪ I was in
Greene Correctional Facility. I see Glenn, and I'm like,
"Yo, Glenn, what's good?" And he's like, "Yo, what up, yo?
Blah-blah-blah." I met Glenn, I think, when he was
in elementary school. I remember him being bad. He was, like,
the really bad kid. Well, it's crazy
because I used to see Coss every day on the block,
and then I get locked up. Next thing you know,
I see Coss popped up at Greene! I'm like, "Holy cow!" He's heavyset -- the biggest I've seen him
his whole life. He had, like,
some B-cups, C-cups. He was...
He had the belly. He had, like,
5 pounds on his face. I'm like, "Yo, what the hell
happened to you?" ♪♪ Coss: I didn't think
I was, like, fat, or I didn't feel like
I was going to die tomorrow, but when I went upstate, the first thing they do is,
like, take blood work, and then they send you back
to your cell unit. Maybe, like, two
or three days later, they sat me down
and they said, you know, "Your cholesterol levels
are really high." They was like, you know,
"If you continue, like, living that lifestyle,
you could probably die of a heart attack
within five years," and I was like, "What?" He was probably on the verge
of, probably, 300 pounds. Coss: And what they recommended
was to, like, eat correctly and to work out. I, like, stopped drinking,
like, the prison Kool-Aid, eliminating carbs, eliminating,
like, the processed sugar, literally maybe 150,
200 calories on my plate. I just started doing dips off the side of my bed,
push-ups. In, like, 5 minutes, I was like,
"This shit is too fucking hard." I went to my bed,
and I, like, laid there. My son was in my head
all the time. I started thinking, like, "Yo,
I need to get back into shape." That's when I hit the yard. At first, I felt embarrassed. When I get up to the
pull-up bar, I'm, like... like, struggling,
and people are like, "Yo, get this fucking honeybun
out of here, man." I just started doing laps. While I was running the yard,
people were, like, calling me Fat Forrest Gump. They were, like, screaming,
"Yo, he's back! That honeybun motherfucker!" I just went, "Fuck you!" And I just kept
running and running. And every time, every morning
I would come out, I would see Coss
jogging the yard -- foom, foom, foom --
by himself. Coss: And, eventually,
I started building myself up, where I was, like, running
two hours at a time. I noticed that I was, like,
losing crazy weight. They give you
the state-issued clothes, and so my pants were,
like, falling off me. And I lost 70 pounds
in 6 months. You could see the definition
of his cheekbone. We thought he wasn't eating,
you know? We were worried about him. I felt, like, freedom in a sense because I just kept running
and focused, and it was, like, a time
for me to meditate. Had the freedom
to take the time off and actually go and visit him. I thought it was important
to have his son, you know,
see his dad once in a while. I think Coss was just trying
to, like, reinvent himself. Coss: Glenn worked out with me. Other guys started running
with me, and we just started
doing our own routine. Working out with Coss
was intense. He was really militant.
He was focused. He was strong-willed,
and the workout would actually, you know, help us,
you know, get some sleep, because it's hard when
you're all alone in your cell and you're thinking about
what the world is doing. I had two months left
towards my incarceration, and this officer says,
"This is a drug test." He was like, "Don't fuck
with me today. It's not my day." So they put you on a wall,
and as soon as he gets, like, in between my, like,
my nuts, like, I move my body a little bit, and he punched me
behind my head. I dropped down to the ground,
pick up my glasses. The officer thought I was
going to attack him. So as soon as I turn around,
he presses the button... [ Alarm rings ] ...and then they threw me
in solitary. ♪♪ I did 30 days in solitary,
and I was facing 3 more years. I started praying and asking God
how can I give back for the wrongdoings
that I've done. I felt regret that
I hurt a lot of people, and I wanted to give back. What came to my mind
was fitness. I wanted to start
a fitness company. So I started writing, and I made it, like,
a 90-day routine. I pictured myself doing
a boot camp. It sounds crazy. I might be a little
schizophrenic or whatever you want
to call it, but it felt like
I was training people and I was, like, acting. You know, it's,
like, closed doors. You got nothing to do. I'm training and imagining that there's people
right in front of me, and I'm, like,
working out with them. ♪♪ So, I came home. I'm 160 pounds,
like, super-skinny, pretty much lost everything, all my money. You know,
going from job to job to job and nobody wanting
to open their door. So, I went back to my mom's. I live on my mom's couch. I think my relationship with my family was not easy. They didn't believe
when I was inside and told them, like,
"Yo, I'm coming home. I want to do the right thing." I think he realized
that the time that he lost, and he was just trying
to make that up. My favorite memory of him, man,
seeing him home, man, transformed and all that. I was happy to see. That was my favorite
memory of him. I went to the park and started
doing the workouts there, and I, like,
took a broken piece of pipe, stuck it between fences, and, like, just started doing
pull-up bar training, like, seeing the, like,
some of the guys that I used to hang out with
back in the day just sit on the bench, just
looking at me like I was nuts. Him -- he had a goal. He already set it.
He already knew what he had do. He just had to go
about doing it. I came out with the idea, like, "Yo, I'm going to do
a prison-style boot camp. I'm going to get people out here and work out and all this stuff, and, yo,
this is going to pop off. I know it's going to pop off,"
and I just did it. One of the biggest, like,
fitness health blogs, you know, in the country,
they reach out, and this lady comes,
and she's like, "So, you know,
what's your plan for the future? I want to build a prison. Nah, it just came out
of my mouth. I was like, "I want to build
a place where, you know, people going
through a prison gate, maybe wearing jumpsuits
and come work out with me, take a mugshot, you know, five-minute showers,
all this crazy stuff," and then I did it,
and it came into a fruition. I raised money, and then I started looking
for, like, prison gates, found out that eBay sells,
like, a lot of prison gates. So Conbody is
a prison-style boot camp where we hire formerly-
incarcerated individuals to teach fitness classes,
and today, it's become a fitness lifestyle
media brand. I hire people coming out
of the system because I felt the pain
when I came home. We have a zero recidivism rate.
Nobody has gone back. Anybody that has worked for us
has not gone back to the system. Chris: I think one of the most
important thing that we all learn
is that you can change. There was a moment where
I thought my brother was lost. My brother was invisible to me. I barely spoke about him. You know, he was
on the verge of death. He was on the verge
of his son not having a father. You know, he was on the verge
of not being known for anything in his life, and I think that's
what changed him, and it's something
that all of us are proud of. Coss: So, I opened up Conbody in the exact same corner
on Eldridge and Broome, where I first got arrested at with Chris,
when he had the D.A.R.E shirt. And then it went back
to full circle, and now I'm selling
fitness there. You know, today we've trained
over 20,000 people with Conbody. You know, from an idea
that started in solitary, it became into, you know, a real thing, a reality. [ Police siren wails
in distance ] You should record the po-po. That's part of the brand.
I watched this the other day. It was fascinating. I’d love more content like this. I’m a boring suburban nobody so this stuff is a life I’d never lead.