Ken Behr | Discussion Combustion Podcast | #278

[00:00:00] We'll have this discussion. Discussion? What discussion? This is a discussion. Combustion. Coming to you from Denver, Colorado, this is Discussion Combustion Podcast with your hosts Kevin Batstone and Arthur Rawe.

[00:00:15] But I actually, last week I was in Dallas to do another show called Mike Travath. I was Dallas. You get down there often? No, I mean I grew up in New Orleans so I'm, yeah well if you read my book I ran some dope out of Texas.

[00:00:28] So I drove through Dallas but a few times but um no it's okay it was cold and wet and uh uh it was all right but uh Mike drops a good he's an AV seal who had me on again outside of his normal but he takes everybody so it was a good show.

[00:00:43] Nice. And for those who are unfamiliar with Ken Behr here, this man has lived quite a life. He used to deal uh explicit information and will not deal explicit information but illegal stuff.

[00:00:58] substances I should be more specific. Now an author turned your life around I'm guessing in a lot of ways we listened to some interviews on you but like we said we didn't want to find all of the information so then that way we could still kind of learn some things.

[00:01:12] Yeah we want to kind of hit the ground running a little bit so for our viewers and listeners can if you want to just kind of give a little bit of a background on yourself and you know where you started and how you got to where you're at now.

[00:01:21] Yeah so uh I'm an older guy as you can see I know I look good for my years I you know you can't hide I'm 67.

[00:01:28] Um I grew up in the in the heyday of the explosion of the like when I turned 12 I was in New Orleans where I'd left my farm and we lived in New Jersey moved to New Orleans.

[00:01:38] That was 1969 that was you know in 65 as I say in the book there was Bobby Sox, Buffon hairdos, Bobby Darin and Elvis Presley.

[00:01:47] By 69 it was Woodstock, Free Love, Sex, Drugs and Rock and Roll and I came of age in that at the exact same time I lost my father and my grandfather in the same short period of time.

[00:01:59] And my house burned down but that's not relevant uh although I you know um it was a tough year or so and I just got involved in the drug thing in New Orleans started getting high.

[00:02:10] But then in 1973 my mother moved us from New Orleans to South Florida to get us away from drugs and that was landing in Palo Alto at the same time or if it was 1849 you'd been in the gold you know San Francisco gold rush.

[00:02:26] We landed right in South Florida right at the explosion of the drug uh you know the coke coke not in cocaine but marijuana.

[00:02:35] And so so how would you compare the weed back then and nowadays though like how are you feeling?

[00:02:41] Very good question um the weed now is excellent obviously but the good weed back then the Colombian gold the Colombian red the Jamaican lamb's breath was kick-ass weed.

[00:02:53] But one of the problems you bring up is when I lived in New Orleans we were getting Mexican weed and it was terrible and people didn't really like smoking it was stems and it was terrible.

[00:03:03] But when I moved to Florida at 16 all of a sudden the weed had a different um a different following.

[00:03:10] Everybody smoked it and they had great buds and so it was a coming of age for that.

[00:03:15] And that's what happened.

[00:03:18] Columbia is the closest South American point to where Florida and Columbia had this great bud and so Jamaican weed wasn't as good but the lamb's breath was the good weed.

[00:03:27] So it started coming into South Florida just because it was if you wanted to you know it was 1500 miles so if you loaded up a plane or a sailboat with a bunch of fuel or whatever you could make the trip in one run you know one clandestine night so to speak.

[00:03:43] So that's why at one point we had five friends bringing 200,000 pounds at a time off the coast and then smugglers would go out and hit it with you know cigarette boats and and pleasure crafts and like an example of 54 foot sport fish boat would hold about four or five thousand pounds.

[00:04:03] A cigarette boat would hold two to three thousand maybe twenty five hundred so and I was right in the middle of that.

[00:04:09] I was working for a yacht broker introduced me I had my own drug little thing going you know like any young entrepreneur I was hustling as hard as I could to make a buck and build myself higher up in the business right.

[00:04:23] You start out on the bottom and you try to find better connections and better sources and better distribution points and since me and all my friends were doing it.

[00:04:32] I mean it wasn't even close everybody was trying to touch it or was touching everybody.

[00:04:38] Yeah.

[00:04:39] Now was this at a time to can like you know one of my favorite movies of all time is below you know with Johnny Depp and the George Young story was this kind of parallel during that time frame.

[00:04:48] So I'll tell you something I don't watch any of those movies I get PTSD.

[00:04:53] I did not I read the books I did not read below but yeah so I think George probably came cocaine really started in 73 when I moved to Florida was mostly all marijuana and the cocaine that was here was very expensive.

[00:05:08] And I was selling coke in high school don't get me wrong but like a quarter ounce by 1985 you know we were smuggling in 300 kilos on a clandestine airstrip and coke was everywhere.

[00:05:21] I'll give you an example in the early 70s a big time smuggler told me he would supply a kilo of pure cocaine was $57,000.

[00:05:31] I wasn't that guy to buy it at that time in the mid 80s when we were smuggling in loads of coke I was paying or selling between 10 and 11,000 a kilo.

[00:05:41] So the market had gotten so flooded and George was part of that I think big wave.

[00:05:49] You know he was working with Carlos Escobar, George Ochoa he was working with Carlos Lader.

[00:05:57] Carlos Lader is actually you know was the guy that I actually had a friend of mine that Carlos Lader who was the guy that basically set up the transportation for Pablo Escobar and came up with the first ideas.

[00:06:10] I mean the first guys were moving coke like in a false bottom suitcase or in a dive tank at the end.

[00:06:18] Raiders were bringing in concrete pillars like made filled with coke or you know you know.

[00:06:25] How about like US customs like I've heard that like ICE the ICE agency for immigration that that's one of the biggest traffickers of humans in the world.

[00:06:35] And then that like US customs is one of the biggest like drug importers probably now of the world as well.

[00:06:43] So like how do you feel about like there's probably corruption everywhere right.

[00:06:47] So in my book I go into great but not great to you though but I do go into it.

[00:06:51] I'll give you a funny story when I was a kid I my dad had passed away and I always say if my dad taught me how how good right how right good you know right and wrong.

[00:07:01] To do the right thing.

[00:07:02] Yeah yeah I met this at about 18 I met a guy named Sandy Perkoff who was you know a yacht broker but he'd also there's a movie out called Tin Man Tin Man about these guys that sold aluminum siding sale and in the 70s in the 50s out of Cleveland.

[00:07:19] He was that guy.

[00:07:20] He was the guy in the movie.

[00:07:22] He was one of the tin men that actually got that he told me the stories before the movie came out.

[00:07:27] And one time I was sitting with him and I I was 18 or 19 he had sent me to the bank to deposit about $16,000 to buy a speedboat for a smuggler.

[00:07:36] When I came back the smuggler was in our little place and the smuggler said let me tell you something kid when I land in Columbia in my little plane and they're throwing the bales in American military cargo planes land soldiers come out and they use forklifts to load the drugs.

[00:07:52] And just so you know the American government gave the soldiers in the Civil War opium to keep them marching.

[00:08:02] World War II we traded with with Lucky Luciano.

[00:08:06] He got in trouble for smuggling heroin and we gave Lucky Luciano a pass.

[00:08:12] He was in jail for life because he helped control the docks in New York and help the the Italian mafia worked with the Italian underground in Italy.

[00:08:22] Again smuggling heroin the American gave him a clean bill of health and America was all right with that.

[00:08:27] When we were in Vietnam we were smuggling we were giving the warlords a free pass and helping them smuggle heroin in exchange for fighting in Cambodia.

[00:08:37] So the American military has been involved in American government and smuggling drugs and dealing about yeah.

[00:08:43] Remember the CIA going back after Carter there was a big push to defund the CIA.

[00:08:50] So they started smuggling drugs and also and that's how there was the Iran Contra scandal.

[00:08:57] And that was about American pilots flying down to Central and South America to Honduras and trading guns for cocaine to bring back up so they could sell the cocaine.

[00:09:08] There's a theory that the crack epidemic was started by the American government.

[00:09:13] Yeah, so I've heard that one.

[00:09:14] Yeah, I've heard that.

[00:09:14] I just didn't know the roots of it and how I mean that makes sense.

[00:09:17] You start to break down some of those layers of it.

[00:09:19] Yeah, I've actually had a friend of mine personally.

[00:09:21] I know that landed a plane load of cocaine in American military base.

[00:09:25] Wow.

[00:09:26] Now whether he was sanctioned by the American government or the soldiers were working covertly, but he definitely I know the guy personally.

[00:09:35] We smuggled.

[00:09:36] That's the pilot that did the 300 kilo trip in the Everglades that I did with them.

[00:09:41] So, yeah, the American government's been, you know, involved in this for many years.

[00:09:47] That's pretty wild.

[00:09:48] So what do you recall like the largest run that you did or like the most amount quantity that you ran in like in a single job or like what was the largest one?

[00:09:56] Well, so I wasn't I used to run.

[00:10:00] I had a couple of things going.

[00:10:01] I had a good friend of mine that I went to high school with that moved back to Ohio.

[00:10:04] So for 12 years, we were running loads of pot up to Ohio.

[00:10:08] We did some coke, but we just we decided he didn't want it in his family life there.

[00:10:13] So mostly just weed and we would move.

[00:10:18] For 12 years, when I got busted the second time, I got charged with running an ongoing criminal enterprise, Rico, and they said we had moved marijuana up there for 12 years and we would move a thousand to two thousand pounds at a time.

[00:10:31] But probably I would say other than working with smugglers who were doing like my friend Donnie Steinberg one time was bringing in 40,000 pounds from another time he brought in 200,000.

[00:10:44] I was working maybe not actually doing the trips, but maybe, you know, setting up the title work or whatever they told me to do.

[00:10:52] I was a kid, but the 300 kilo trip we did into the Everglades, the 300 kilo cocaine trip was probably the biggest one that I ever was on the ground unloading the coke, loading it into a car and driving it out.

[00:11:07] I'm trying to like picture what 300 kilos of coke looks like.

[00:11:12] It's like a pallet.

[00:11:14] A few car lengths?

[00:11:15] Well, so I'll show you what a kilo would look like.

[00:11:20] This is pretty much a little smaller than this box.

[00:11:24] Usually they're a little bigger and a little higher.

[00:11:27] So 300 of these.

[00:11:28] But this is a little smaller.

[00:11:30] The kilo is usually a little bigger than this.

[00:11:33] So you must have known like it was a matter of time before you were going to get busted, right?

[00:11:37] You knew you could probably tell it was coming or did it completely cut you off the car the first time you got caught?

[00:11:40] The first time I got caught, we had smuggled.

[00:11:43] We had a friend of ours, same people that had me put the $16,000 in the bank years later, had smuggled 40,000 pounds into Canada and had it sitting in a fish packing plants in the freezer.

[00:11:59] They're stuck.

[00:12:00] They couldn't sell it.

[00:12:01] It'd been there like a year and a half.

[00:12:02] So they got in touch with me and my friend Bob Silver Bullet.

[00:12:06] And Bob was the one I did my first load with, which was 600 pounds of Jamaican land's breath out of Jamaica when I was like 19.

[00:12:15] We went up there.

[00:12:16] He goes, Kenny, you want to help us move the 40,000 pounds back to America?

[00:12:20] I go, why would we do that?

[00:12:21] They couldn't sell it in Canada.

[00:12:23] It turns out Bruce left off the fact that weed was terrible and wouldn't get anybody high.

[00:12:27] So we had a seaplane that Bob had at that time.

[00:12:30] And we did six or seven trips because you can land an airplane at night on a clandestine runway.

[00:12:37] A seaplane, you can't land at night.

[00:12:40] You need to be able to see the water.

[00:12:42] So we had to do it in broad daylight.

[00:12:44] And it didn't hold as much.

[00:12:46] And it wouldn't take off the lake to, you know, just whatever.

[00:12:49] So we brought in a bunch of trips late.

[00:12:53] I would sit on logging road, you know, reading a book.

[00:12:57] He'd fly in.

[00:12:58] I'd go walk out.

[00:12:59] He'd bring the boat up, the seaplane up to the corner of the beach and the woods and unload it.

[00:13:05] And now I got busted with that load driving it to, uh, with four, I got busted with all 1400 pounds driving it down the highway.

[00:13:13] I like a couple months later.

[00:13:15] Yeah.

[00:13:16] I mean, look, I've driven with expired plates before and like driven around with like, I had like a couple of Mason jars of like some homegrown wheat that I used to, to, to push out.

[00:13:28] Nothing like what you're talking about.

[00:13:30] Um, and that used to make me extremely nervous.

[00:13:32] So I couldn't imagine like after all this time, because how, how long were you involved before that first time that you actually got, got caught?

[00:13:44] Like over 10 years, you were like in it, like dodging bullets.

[00:13:48] So I was selling drugs in high school and we were doing pretty good.

[00:13:52] Actually, my brother and I, we did it in my mom's house.

[00:13:55] And my mom would be at, well, she knew finally one time she found four pounds of weeds.

[00:13:58] She just flushed it down the toilet.

[00:13:59] And we said, mom, look, I said to her, listen, you know, we're selling drugs out of the house.

[00:14:03] Why don't we partner up?

[00:14:04] You put up some money.

[00:14:05] We'll take care of it.

[00:14:05] We'll kick you back.

[00:14:06] And she was like, no, you know, she wasn't doing that.

[00:14:10] So, um, so, um, we, um, I've just got where I apologize.

[00:14:18] I kind of got brain fade there for a second.

[00:14:20] Uh, like how, how long you had been doing it prior to actually.

[00:14:27] So from 1973, when we were selling, running our little business out of my, my mom's house,

[00:14:34] very prolific.

[00:14:35] The guys in town named our house, Bears Bar and Grill, BB and G.

[00:14:40] And everybody would come by.

[00:14:41] We would make concert packs.

[00:14:43] Like we'd give you a half, a little bit of weed, a little bit of blow, a couple of quailands

[00:14:46] and a pack of rolling papers.

[00:14:48] You know, we were industrious.

[00:14:49] So that started in 1973.

[00:14:52] I got busted the first time in 1988 and the second time in 1992.

[00:14:57] So about 20 years from 1973 to 1992.

[00:15:03] Yeah.

[00:15:04] That's a long time.

[00:15:05] Yeah.

[00:15:06] It was a business.

[00:15:06] I kept doing it.

[00:15:08] Now you said one, I was funny.

[00:15:10] I was talking to my old code defendant the other day, the guy that actually had set me up and

[00:15:15] we kind of said, you know, what we didn't see then, what we see now is only.

[00:15:19] Only several things were going to happen in the end.

[00:15:22] You're going to get busted.

[00:15:23] We're going to get robbed.

[00:15:25] You might get kidnapped.

[00:15:26] You might get killed, but you never thought it was going to happen to you.

[00:15:29] You know, kids are invincible.

[00:15:31] My joke is if your mother said, if Johnny jumps off the bridge, are you going to do it too?

[00:15:36] And the answer is, does he live?

[00:15:40] He lives.

[00:15:40] I'll give it a shot.

[00:15:41] So, um, yeah, you think you're invincible.

[00:15:45] I used to race cars with my drug money.

[00:15:47] I went auto racing and you say, how do you go out in a pack of cars and not think you're

[00:15:51] going to catch on fire or break your legs?

[00:15:53] It's not going to happen to me.

[00:15:54] It's going to happen to the other guy.

[00:15:56] But looking back, I should have known that sooner or later I was tied up and robbed.

[00:16:01] My partner was robbed and kidnapped and dropped off in the Everglades.

[00:16:05] You know, I mean, we should have known the end was going to end the same way.

[00:16:09] And remember the first time I got busted in 88, I kept working.

[00:16:13] My, my friend, Bob Silverbullet, the guy that brought the seaplane full of weed in had brought

[00:16:18] in a load of Coke and I would literally, I was going to Massachusetts.

[00:16:23] I got busted in Massachusetts.

[00:16:24] So I'd have to go to court.

[00:16:26] The Coke was in DC.

[00:16:28] Several times I went up to court wearing my suit to go to court, stopped in DC, went to

[00:16:36] the stash.

[00:16:37] We had two warehouses, one with the Coke and one for the money drop.

[00:16:40] I would have my runners meet me in DC, load the Coke up and then fly to Massachusetts for

[00:16:47] some hearing or pleading.

[00:16:49] So I remember saying to Bob, I said, Bob, you know, I'm out on 1400 pounds bail.

[00:16:54] If I get caught with a couple of kilos of Coke, they're going to bury me under the jail.

[00:16:59] But what could I do?

[00:17:00] I needed to make money and I didn't know any, I just.

[00:17:03] Yeah.

[00:17:04] So, so no day job, like no cover job that you did.

[00:17:08] Occasionally I'd start a business.

[00:17:09] I had businesses and a window washing company.

[00:17:12] What we used to, I used to actually for a period of time, I was painting houses.

[00:17:18] Did you sell their paint?

[00:17:19] No, but I used it.

[00:17:22] Okay.

[00:17:22] I'd like to go to Home Depot with my credit card and go, see who I am?

[00:17:26] You better mix this right.

[00:17:27] But literally, I remember we would have like paint buckets in the back of the truck that

[00:17:34] had kilos of Coke or samples.

[00:17:35] Or I remember one time I had to go into one of my guy's place to pick up some Coke or something.

[00:17:41] He lived in a building and we went in as painters with buckets, went up, got the Coke, came down.

[00:17:49] Yeah.

[00:17:49] Yeah.

[00:17:50] Wow.

[00:17:51] Mostly it was just for money laundering.

[00:17:54] Yeah.

[00:17:55] Got to clean the money.

[00:17:56] And it's just like, okay, so now we're into 1992.

[00:17:59] And so what did that look like, like from a legal standpoint?

[00:18:01] And then, you know, where does the story go from there?

[00:18:03] So in 92, I had gotten married.

[00:18:07] I had a one and a half year old daughter.

[00:18:09] And let me tell you, everything happens at the worst possible moment, right?

[00:18:14] I spent $40,000 on my wedding, 10,000 on my honeymoon, 9,000.

[00:18:18] I know I'm going running up to about 9,000 for the ring.

[00:18:24] Went on my honeymoon, came home and told my new wife now, we've been, you know, we had a daughter together.

[00:18:30] We got married.

[00:18:30] I'm going back to work.

[00:18:32] And she said, don't go, please.

[00:18:35] I remember this girl was flying around in planes and going in limos and riding jet skis and speed boats.

[00:18:40] She goes, don't go.

[00:18:41] We're married now.

[00:18:43] Let's get it.

[00:18:43] I'll get a job.

[00:18:44] You'll get a job.

[00:18:45] I'll eat bologna white bread sandwiches.

[00:18:48] We have a daughter.

[00:18:52] I just spent, oh, I even sold my car.

[00:18:55] So I had to go make some money.

[00:18:57] Drive out to Texas to load up a load.

[00:19:00] And now it was only small loads.

[00:19:02] Like the weed had changed.

[00:19:04] It went from being $245 a pound, 1,000 pound trips to $800, $900 a pound like California weed.

[00:19:13] And I didn't care.

[00:19:15] I'd move it up to my partner in Ohio.

[00:19:17] And I'd make, let's say it's 100 pounds.

[00:19:21] Instead of making $40 a pound, I'd make $500 or $800.

[00:19:25] Right?

[00:19:25] I'd get it for $900 and sell it to him for $1,800.

[00:19:29] So if it took him a month to sell it, or two months to sell it, I was still making good money.

[00:19:36] So I get up there and he set me up and I got busted.

[00:19:41] So now I got-

[00:19:44] And he like had kids and stuff too, right?

[00:19:46] Like he was trying to protect himself.

[00:19:48] Yeah.

[00:19:49] Because I remember you talking about that in one of your interviews and how-

[00:19:53] Yeah.

[00:19:53] And I agreed with this.

[00:19:55] Like, you're like, I can't be mad at him for calling that out because I know what kind of business I got into.

[00:20:01] And like when I heard you saying that stuff, I was like, okay, that's respect.

[00:20:05] Because it's like, you know, we kind of know what we're doing to a certain extent in life.

[00:20:11] And like in the back of our head, we know that there's consequences for everything.

[00:20:15] So I thought that was somewhat admirable that you're like, you know what?

[00:20:19] That's all right that he did.

[00:20:20] Maybe I would have done the same thing.

[00:20:22] At the time, I didn't understand it.

[00:20:24] But when I found out later, his father and him had a big piece of property.

[00:20:29] They had his house and his parents' house on the property in a barn.

[00:20:32] And the weed that he was-

[00:20:34] He had other weed he got busted with was in that barn.

[00:20:37] And the cops who came in go-

[00:20:38] And the prosecutor up in this town was a mother.

[00:20:42] He goes-

[00:20:43] He comes in with, you know, the SWAT team.

[00:20:45] We're going to put your mother in jail.

[00:20:47] We're going to put your father in jail.

[00:20:48] We're going to put your wife in jail.

[00:20:49] Your kids are going to be orphans.

[00:20:51] And we're going to take all the property, everything in your parents' house and everything you own.

[00:20:55] And he's in his underwear handcuffed in his living room.

[00:20:58] And the prosecutor did the same thing to me.

[00:21:00] You've got three seconds.

[00:21:01] You're going to help her?

[00:21:02] You're going to cooperate or not?

[00:21:03] And he said, yes.

[00:21:05] When they arrested me, I said, no.

[00:21:08] Because years of training had taught me, your first deal is not there.

[00:21:12] Your first deal is, you know, you're not going to make your best deal.

[00:21:15] But I also wasn't nursing my house, my wife, my, you know.

[00:21:19] Yes, it was all on the line.

[00:21:20] So now I come back from three months in jail in Ohio.

[00:21:25] And I paid, I hired a lawyer.

[00:21:28] I lost 100 grand in weed.

[00:21:30] I had to pay for my bond.

[00:21:32] I remember now I come back from Ohio and I'm basically broke.

[00:21:36] I started, I bought a $400 yellow, canary yellow, like Chrysler station wagon.

[00:21:44] I remember it was either $300 or $400 I paid for it.

[00:21:46] I was paying one friend's house and then working part-time in a auto repair place to make money.

[00:21:52] And I get a phone call from, I have nothing.

[00:21:54] And all my friends, I called from jail and told all my friends, don't talk to me.

[00:22:00] I don't know what's going to happen.

[00:22:01] I don't know what they're going to expect of me.

[00:22:03] Do not do anything with me.

[00:22:05] And my friends knew I got busted.

[00:22:06] So there were no way they were, you know, I was persona non grata.

[00:22:10] Nobody called 10 to me doing.

[00:22:12] But I get a phone call from Sandy, friend of his, another yacht broker, who had tried to do a Coke deal with me like earlier.

[00:22:22] And he's a yacht broker.

[00:22:23] He doesn't sell drugs.

[00:22:24] I walked out of his house going, gee, Dave's trying to buy a kilo of Coke.

[00:22:27] Look, that's cute.

[00:22:28] He's trying to set me up.

[00:22:29] But I never said a word to him like, oh, you're trying to set me up.

[00:22:32] I know you got busted.

[00:22:34] Dave had gotten busted.

[00:22:35] Now, you remember conspiracy.

[00:22:37] If you said back then, you're a yacht broker.

[00:22:39] Someone comes up and says, I want to buy a yacht.

[00:22:42] I'm going to pay you cash.

[00:22:43] I got some smugglers from Columbia want to buy it.

[00:22:46] And you say that and they got you on tape.

[00:22:49] That's conspiracy.

[00:22:51] You might as well have been bringing the load in yourself.

[00:22:53] So Dave calls me up and I'm at my house and I don't know what I'm going to do.

[00:22:58] I have no look.

[00:22:59] I wasn't going to set anybody up in Ohio.

[00:23:01] I had 17 people rat me out.

[00:23:03] There were 17 people in Ohio.

[00:23:07] So Dave says, how would you like to work for the DEA?

[00:23:10] And I'm in my living room.

[00:23:11] I'm like, what?

[00:23:12] Don't say that.

[00:23:13] And I ended up meeting him at a restaurant, having a clandestine conversation.

[00:23:17] One last one, so to speak.

[00:23:19] And he set me up with the DEA.

[00:23:21] And I said, Dave, why are you doing this?

[00:23:22] He said, I'll get credit for everything you do.

[00:23:25] I've already told him you're a big time smuggler.

[00:23:27] You know, everybody in the business, you've been doing it your whole life.

[00:23:30] He built me up.

[00:23:31] Good salesman.

[00:23:32] I said, Dave, I'm not a big time smuggler.

[00:23:35] But I had been doing it for 20 years.

[00:23:38] And he hooked me up with this DEA operative and they brought me in the fold.

[00:23:42] But I never turned in one of my friends from my life, my neighborhood.

[00:23:47] I turned in people with three, you know, six degrees of separation.

[00:23:52] Or people, it was strange.

[00:23:54] People came out of the woodwork and they go, hey, I know you're in big trouble.

[00:23:57] I got a name and a phone number for somebody.

[00:24:00] You know, I mean, it was weird like that.

[00:24:02] But I mean, look, you know, not everybody has to believe in a higher power of the universe

[00:24:10] above or a God.

[00:24:11] But I'm the luckiest guy on earth.

[00:24:14] I mean, my lawyer once said to me about a year ago, the lawyer that worked on all my

[00:24:18] cases, he goes, you were just so extremely cunning.

[00:24:21] And I don't think it was.

[00:24:22] I accept that.

[00:24:24] But I think I was just extremely lucky.

[00:24:26] And there's a higher power that looked after me.

[00:24:28] And I sit today in a beautiful home with a beautiful wife, four wonderful kids.

[00:24:36] I make a decent living.

[00:24:37] I'm not, you know, I'm not living.

[00:24:40] I'm not going into bars, spending $6,000 a night on champagne and girls.

[00:24:45] I'm not spending five, six thousand a week in racing cars.

[00:24:48] But Jimmy Buffett said it best, made enough money to buy Miami, never meant to last, piss

[00:24:55] it away, make Miami, piss it away so fast, never meant to last.

[00:25:01] Yeah, the money is not ours.

[00:25:03] And that's the thing is like, you know, you can have these outlandish experience and live

[00:25:08] this crazy life.

[00:25:09] But there is a beauty to a simple life and having enough and knowing that you have enough.

[00:25:16] And even though it's fun to splurge and stuff like I get it.

[00:25:20] But so my question is, so you've been through this like you were doing the informant stuff

[00:25:28] like and now you've written a book and you're going on multiple podcasts and, you know, great

[00:25:35] job on all the all the promotion and networking for all that.

[00:25:38] But like, don't people like have it out for you?

[00:25:42] Like, are you like safe?

[00:25:44] Like, how does that work?

[00:25:45] I hope not.

[00:25:47] You know, listen, I'm a lifelong.

[00:25:50] This doesn't go away.

[00:25:51] It stays with you for life.

[00:25:53] You know, I started out as a criminal.

[00:25:55] I walk into a restaurant to this day.

[00:25:57] I look at all the faces.

[00:25:59] I can tell you what size pants that guy is wearing.

[00:26:02] Sometimes I over I never sit with my back to the door unless the guy I'm with is packing.

[00:26:07] Then I figure if he's packing, let him sit with his back to the door because I'm not

[00:26:11] packing and I'm, you know, and but it was 32 years ago.

[00:26:17] And the one thing that we found is everybody rolled.

[00:26:21] Everybody that I busted cooperated.

[00:26:25] I mean, maybe there was the one deal at the very end where we did a 10,000 kilo cocaine

[00:26:30] bust in Canada with the Irish mob, the Italian mob, the Hell's Angels.

[00:26:35] You know, those were our customers.

[00:26:37] But that wasn't me.

[00:26:39] I was just put into that by the DEA as a player.

[00:26:44] They needed guys like my handler, my DEA handler built a team and he liked to have us all around.

[00:26:52] You know, I had this.

[00:26:54] I've been doing it for 20 years.

[00:26:56] I know more about it than him.

[00:26:57] If I had to sit down one time, he told me to meet him.

[00:27:02] He was in Fort Lauderdale there.

[00:27:03] He lives in Jacksonville, which is like six hours away.

[00:27:06] That's where the DEA office was.

[00:27:08] And he goes, meet me.

[00:27:10] You know, I go down to a hotel room.

[00:27:11] He goes, you need to proffer yourself.

[00:27:14] And I go, what do you mean?

[00:27:15] He goes, my, my, you know, proffers went so people know that you're going to work for the government.

[00:27:21] The government says to you, Paul Manafort did this in the last Trump administration and went to jail.

[00:27:26] Tell us everything you know about everybody you ever did business with and everything you say won't be used in a court of law.

[00:27:33] But if you leave one thing out, if you hide anything and we can prove it and find out about it, find out about it, prove it, whatever.

[00:27:42] Everything you said again that you said can be used against you and you're going to jail.

[00:27:46] So he calls me up and I'm with my wife and my baby.

[00:27:49] I drive down there.

[00:27:50] He's got a legal pad.

[00:27:51] He goes, my, my supervisors want you to proffer yourself.

[00:27:55] And he starts.

[00:27:56] So proffer is like you spill all the beans, but if one bean is left in the can, you're fucked.

[00:28:02] You're fucked.

[00:28:03] Sort of thing.

[00:28:04] Okay.

[00:28:04] I look at him.

[00:28:05] I go, I can't do that.

[00:28:07] I grew up here.

[00:28:08] These are my friends from high school.

[00:28:10] What do you want?

[00:28:10] My wife, I'll be going to jail.

[00:28:12] And my wife, my baby, my, now my wife at this point is pregnant.

[00:28:16] So, you know, which shouldn't have done that.

[00:28:19] But, um, and I'm going to, I can't leave my family alone like that.

[00:28:24] And I can't turn in my friends.

[00:28:26] I'm not going to do it.

[00:28:28] You know what he did?

[00:28:29] Puts the pen and paper down.

[00:28:30] Let's go get a steak dinner.

[00:28:31] It's deeper.

[00:28:32] So we go into the restaurant and for some reason he picks a table in the back and he has me sitting facing the door and he's a big guy.

[00:28:41] And he says, this is right out of a movie.

[00:28:44] Actually, he goes, see the guy sitting at the bar?

[00:28:48] And he's like this big.

[00:28:49] I go, yeah.

[00:28:51] He goes, the guy with the black jacket?

[00:28:54] Yeah.

[00:28:55] He goes, I'm going to pay the bill and I'm going to walk out the door.

[00:28:58] Once you, I walk out to clear the door, you walk up to him, tell him Captain Bobby sent you that.

[00:29:04] My code name was Kilo Bravo.

[00:29:07] That was my DEA handle.

[00:29:09] And his was Captain Bobby.

[00:29:11] That was his fake name.

[00:29:13] Tell him Captain Bobby sent you.

[00:29:15] So I'm just going to walk up to a complete stranger and talk drug deal, which I did.

[00:29:19] And I can do it because I had 20 years of experience.

[00:29:22] I go, hey, buddy, remember when the kilos came in duct tape?

[00:29:24] And then they came in plaster of Paris.

[00:29:26] And then they came in the fiberglass and this and that.

[00:29:30] And I could talk a 20-year history.

[00:29:33] And so me and the guy, I think the guy was also working for customs or the DEA.

[00:29:37] I think he was also.

[00:29:38] I remember he was wearing a jacket in Florida.

[00:29:41] So that kind of maybe had a wire on.

[00:29:43] And I remember scanning the bar and looking to see if anybody was with him, backup or anything.

[00:29:47] But we talked for about an hour, had a few drinks.

[00:29:50] And he didn't, nothing happened.

[00:29:52] I think he was trying to set me up.

[00:29:53] Who knows?

[00:29:54] But so you were about to spill the beans.

[00:29:57] And then the person that you're spilling the beans to was like, wait, let's, let's go introduce you basically to one of his like comrades at the bar.

[00:30:06] No, no, no.

[00:30:08] Because I think I got lost there.

[00:30:09] Yeah, I wasn't going to do it.

[00:30:11] I wasn't willing to be proper myself.

[00:30:14] So he just puts the pen down.

[00:30:15] And then he brings me to a steak dinner.

[00:30:17] And at the end of the dinner, he says, I'm going to get up and leave.

[00:30:21] There's a guy at the bar.

[00:30:22] You know, he probably had a lead or, you know, a name of somebody, you know, somebody that wanted to do a drug deal.

[00:30:28] So he tells me, you go talk to him.

[00:30:30] I'm leaving.

[00:30:31] Tell him I sent you.

[00:30:32] But I would play the role.

[00:30:33] My role with the DEA was I was Captain Bobby, who was the big smuggler.

[00:30:38] I was his right-hand man.

[00:30:40] I was his lieutenant.

[00:30:41] So I would, every time we did it, a lot of times we did things.

[00:30:44] I was Captain Bobby's go-to guy, which I'd been in other places for other guys, kind of.

[00:30:50] So it was nothing new.

[00:30:52] Or myself.

[00:30:54] That's what happened.

[00:30:55] So that's an example of the 20 years of experience, you know, to this day, I could walk up to any, you know, there's people, you know, I've been out in LA.

[00:31:06] People, you know, there's people selling drugs out, you know, I'm still got my finger in the pie, but on the legal side, you know, so I can still talk the talk, but I don't have to worry about getting in trouble.

[00:31:17] Getting in trouble.

[00:31:17] You know.

[00:31:18] Seems like the safer side to be on, Ken.

[00:31:20] I would take that side.

[00:31:22] Yeah.

[00:31:22] Yeah.

[00:31:23] 110%.

[00:31:24] I don't want to, I would never.

[00:31:26] Here's the thing.

[00:31:27] I mean, a lot of the interviews I've done, I'm very bravado about all the busts and, you know, people, we would set people up and they would cooperate before they got the handcuffs on them.

[00:31:38] And I remember looking at one guy, go, dude, man up, you know, as I'm being handcuffed on the ground with them, only I'm going to get up and walk away.

[00:31:46] He's going to jail.

[00:31:48] Every single person I busted, rat, rolled instantly.

[00:31:51] They never thought about it.

[00:31:53] They didn't give it two weeks.

[00:31:54] Nobody threatened them.

[00:31:55] Nobody threatened their family.

[00:31:57] They rolled as soon as they hit the ground.

[00:32:00] So, you know, as I had a guy in prison who pulled me aside when I was waiting to get in jail, waiting to get bond.

[00:32:07] But he'd been done 15 years.

[00:32:10] And he said to me, listen, the mores and values you're clinging to died a lifetime ago.

[00:32:15] Your co-defendant is in one cell and he's already ratted you out.

[00:32:18] Your other co-defendant will rat you out.

[00:32:21] You need to, you have a one and a half year old daughter.

[00:32:23] He goes, when I got busted 15 years ago, I had a one and a half year old daughter.

[00:32:26] I saw her one time.

[00:32:30] If you get an opportunity to change your life and go straight and you have to cooperate, that's what you should consider doing.

[00:32:37] But if you do that and you ever go back to selling drugs, you're nothing more than a snitch and a rat.

[00:32:43] You should get everything that comes to you.

[00:32:45] But here's the thing.

[00:32:48] And I thought about this when I was doing the soft white underbelly, you know, as I spoke.

[00:32:52] Nobody wants to be.

[00:32:54] I was raised on certain morals and values.

[00:32:57] You know, you don't lie.

[00:32:58] You don't steal.

[00:32:59] You know, you know, I call it the cowboy way.

[00:33:01] You know, you don't, you know, you don't throw the first punch.

[00:33:04] You don't shoot a man in the back.

[00:33:05] I grew up on old Westerns, right?

[00:33:07] And not in that was you don't snitch or rat.

[00:33:10] But come on, we've all been on the playground when the kid goes, don't tell the teacher.

[00:33:15] Don't be a tattletale.

[00:33:16] You, right?

[00:33:17] I mean, you guys aren't drug dealers, but didn't you as a little kid?

[00:33:20] Like, don't, don't tell mommy.

[00:33:22] Don't talk, you know?

[00:33:24] So we're ingrained not to do that.

[00:33:28] And it never sits well with me.

[00:33:30] Yeah, you watch some of the videos.

[00:33:32] I have a lot of bravado in telling the stories.

[00:33:35] But in the end, I, I never accept what I did, even if I did it for all the right reasons to save my family and to change my life.

[00:33:44] Knowing full well that everybody I did do it to ratted within seconds and didn't put a thought to it like I did.

[00:33:50] You know, that's just, you know, doesn't give me.

[00:33:55] So is it more like, like, I, like, do you feel bad for being like a part of the distribution of like a legal substance?

[00:34:07] Or you're, you feel more bad, like, because the code got broken to a certain extent?

[00:34:13] No, the code got broken.

[00:34:14] I have no moral, no rep.

[00:34:16] I mean, marijuana is completely harmless.

[00:34:18] I've had prosecutors, I've had DEA agents tell me nobody should go to jail for marijuana.

[00:34:23] You know, it's just ridiculous.

[00:34:25] It's, it was the longest running war on, longest, America's longest running war is the war on drugs.

[00:34:33] And it's the most, it's been a trillion dollars.

[00:34:36] It's a war against its own people, whether it's marijuana, cocaine, fentanyl.

[00:34:42] And I don't, believe me, I'm not condoning cocaine or fentanyl or opioids, but there could, might have been a different way to do it.

[00:34:52] Not saying it would have worked, but marijuana, completely harmless.

[00:34:56] And coke was harmless until crack came along.

[00:34:59] And, you know, and I, and guilty of smoking.

[00:35:02] You know, like, I wouldn't, like, if somebody had some 1969 blow, like, I would probably, I would probably try it.

[00:35:09] It's trash now.

[00:35:10] Yeah, I would probably try it.

[00:35:11] But like, nowadays, like, you get, you're concerned, like, what is, what is even in it?

[00:35:15] What's in it?

[00:35:16] Yeah.

[00:35:16] Right.

[00:35:17] Well, now you can go to Walgreens and buy a test kit for your blow.

[00:35:20] You know, make sure there's no fentanyl stuff.

[00:35:22] But you know what?

[00:35:24] It's funny.

[00:35:24] You say the same thing.

[00:35:25] In the very beginning, when I was just buying a quarter ounce and we were half-gramming it out to, you know, high school friends or whatever, we did it just to get head stashed.

[00:35:34] It was cut.

[00:35:35] But every now and then, you'd find a rock in there and you'd take a razor blade and you'd pop it open.

[00:35:40] It was just shale.

[00:35:42] And, you know, like I say in the book, that stuff was almost orgasmic.

[00:35:47] You know, it was just clean.

[00:35:49] And when you sniffed it, it would go right in and it'd give you this warm feeling.

[00:35:53] And it wasn't as addictive as the shit that followed that was cut.

[00:35:57] They were making coke with ether.

[00:35:59] And then they, you know, they stopped shipping ether to Columbia.

[00:36:02] They started trying to.

[00:36:03] So what happened?

[00:36:04] Now you have to make coke with diesel fuel and other, you know, it just went, it was cut.

[00:36:09] When I, when I first was a kid, when I left Jamaica with my first 600 pound load that I did out of there,

[00:36:17] I was 18 or 19 or something.

[00:36:20] One of my smuggling friends said to me, a kilo of pure cocaine was 57,000.

[00:36:25] Pure was 50,000.

[00:36:27] But remember those again were people bringing it in a false bottom suitcases, dive tanks,

[00:36:33] hidden in maybe a couple of kilos in a plane.

[00:36:37] The, the coke in the end, when I smuggled in the 300 kilos, we were paying between 10 and 11,000.

[00:36:45] I was buying it for 10 and selling it for 11.

[00:36:48] So, you know, it was, the market was flooded.

[00:36:52] The business had changed and the stuff had been cut to death and maybe even not even.

[00:36:57] So, yeah, I agree with you.

[00:37:00] Although I've had two open heart surgeries, a pacemaker.

[00:37:04] I just had my shoulder replaced.

[00:37:06] I found a scar in my body, that was a surgical scar.

[00:37:08] I don't remember the surgery.

[00:37:10] I've had 12 procedures.

[00:37:11] I'm, I'm 67.

[00:37:13] I probably shouldn't do coke.

[00:37:15] And I won't.

[00:37:16] My wife, current wife is very straight.

[00:37:18] She said, listen, when she found out about my past, she said, look, and when she first met me,

[00:37:22] she goes, you can smoke all the weeds you want.

[00:37:24] It's good for you.

[00:37:25] You do one line of coke and I'm leaving you.

[00:37:27] And I said, if I do one line of coke, I might be leaving also.

[00:37:32] But, uh, yeah, you had your fair share of it.

[00:37:35] Yeah.

[00:37:35] Yeah.

[00:37:35] And so like, what do you do to fill a great blow in the seventies?

[00:37:39] And so, you know, I know now you're making me want to.

[00:37:41] I'm even having a, having like a quaalude.

[00:37:43] I've never even had one.

[00:37:43] I used to get down.

[00:37:44] I used to get down on painkillers heavy.

[00:37:46] So in my heyday of doing drugs, which I don't do anymore.

[00:37:50] Um, man, it was just different.

[00:37:52] You would have loved quaaludes.

[00:37:54] The first time I was in New Orleans, I was like 14 or 15.

[00:37:59] I can't remember.

[00:37:59] I had my car.

[00:38:00] So I was 14 at least.

[00:38:01] And some girl goes here, eat this.

[00:38:04] She shoved it in my mouth.

[00:38:06] I go, what?

[00:38:06] She goes, I go, what did you just give me?

[00:38:08] She goes, don't worry.

[00:38:08] It'll make you do what you want to do.

[00:38:11] Meet me.

[00:38:11] And she told, I was at 14 and 15.

[00:38:13] We're in bars in New Orleans at that time, 1970.

[00:38:16] She goes, meet me at this other bar.

[00:38:19] And by the time I'm driving over there, like, look.

[00:38:21] And she took me home.

[00:38:23] And that was like my first or I think my second sexual experience.

[00:38:26] We used to sell quaaludes out of my house.

[00:38:29] We sold weed, coke, and quaaludes.

[00:38:32] And then we had friends of ours.

[00:38:33] They were called the hole in a wall gang.

[00:38:36] They were little guys like, you know, high school guys.

[00:38:38] They would take a sludge hammer, break a hole in the side of a drugstore, steal all

[00:38:42] the quaaludes and bring them to us.

[00:38:43] And we would buy them and sell them.

[00:38:45] I had jars of the shit.

[00:38:47] But I didn't really take too many.

[00:38:49] Here's the thing.

[00:38:50] I don't like being too far out of control.

[00:38:53] So when everybody, you know, if somebody would eat two quaaludes, I eat a half.

[00:38:57] You know, everybody wrecked their cars on them.

[00:38:59] Everybody got laid on it.

[00:39:00] It was, it was, it was a, it was a lot of fun.

[00:39:06] Makes for great stories now, obviously.

[00:39:07] And so how do you fill that void now?

[00:39:09] How do you get like that, that adrenaline rush?

[00:39:11] Like, are you still involved in auto racing?

[00:39:12] Are you a fan of it?

[00:39:13] Are you around?

[00:39:13] Like, what do you do to fill that void?

[00:39:15] I'm a huge fan.

[00:39:16] I have a lot of friends that are professional in the professional series.

[00:39:20] The drivers all got old, but the mechanics are still friends of mine, like IndyCar and stuff

[00:39:24] like that.

[00:39:25] But, um, you know, I just get up, I go to work and, uh, I don't know.

[00:39:31] I just, I'm an adrenaline junkie.

[00:39:34] You know, I think the trip we did, the 300 kilos and I made 20 grand that night, which

[00:39:40] doesn't, it wasn't anything to me.

[00:39:42] 20 grand wouldn't have got me out of bed like that.

[00:39:44] But don't forget in 1985, that's like 40 grand or 50 grand today.

[00:39:48] But I did it because all my friends were doing it and it was an adrenaline rush.

[00:39:52] You know, let's go on, let's go set up a fake runway.

[00:39:55] We were there in the middle of the Everglades.

[00:39:57] We had M16s, not, I was not the security guy.

[00:40:02] I had an M16 and hand grenades that my other friend had traded Coke to a U.S.

[00:40:09] to the army special forces.

[00:40:10] And they, and he had one of my friends that claymores, hand grenades, machine guns.

[00:40:16] Of course, he had traded it with his brother-in-law who was an army ranger.

[00:40:19] And then all the smuggling guys were getting them to use them on their trips.

[00:40:24] Um, you know, I just worked my ass off and, uh, I'm happy to be here.

[00:40:29] And somehow my adrenaline junkie, although I do have a few sports cars that I drive really

[00:40:34] hard occasionally.

[00:40:35] My wife always yells at me.

[00:40:37] She goes, slow down.

[00:40:38] You're driving like a maniac.

[00:40:39] And I go, I should duct tape you in the car and put toothpicks in your eyelids.

[00:40:43] Cause if you saw how I really drive when you're not in the car, remember I have professional

[00:40:48] auto racing or experience.

[00:40:50] So when I drive a street car, I get a lot of yaya's out of that.

[00:40:54] I always, I have to look at my mirror.

[00:40:58] I have to look in my mirror when I go home to make sure nobody's really pissed off at me

[00:41:03] the way I drove to see if they follow me home.

[00:41:05] So that's one of my yaya's is to push my sports cars to the limit.

[00:41:10] That's maybe that's like, that might be all I have left guys.

[00:41:13] As far as adrenaline, you know, Hey, I mean, you know, it's been a hell of a journey.

[00:41:19] So one thing that you were talking about though, is, um, how marijuana and look like I've kind

[00:41:26] of struggled with the opiates things.

[00:41:28] I got over that.

[00:41:29] I've had, I've changed my relationship with, uh, with alcohol.

[00:41:34] And it seems like whenever I'm talking about overcoming addictions, cause I still use marijuana.

[00:41:38] People are like, you know, marijuana, like they always give it a break.

[00:41:42] Right.

[00:41:42] And I'm in Colorado, so it's, it's cool here.

[00:41:45] But in other States currently you can get arrested for having weed.

[00:41:52] And it's, it's crazy.

[00:41:53] Cause a lot of these prison prisons are not even federally owned.

[00:41:57] They're like privately owned prisons.

[00:42:00] And then they actually try to make sure that the beds are full.

[00:42:05] So in certain counties, if you have like a private prison, then you have a higher likelihood of

[00:42:11] getting booked and put in there because that gets the prison profit.

[00:42:16] And then like, there's some kind of loophole where like, if they don't have enough prisoners,

[00:42:19] then they could charge it back to the state or something.

[00:42:22] I forget what I was hearing about that.

[00:42:24] But before we jumped on, you were talking about a cause that you had for people that were arrested for non-violent marijuana charges.

[00:42:34] And, um, and you had some information on that.

[00:42:36] I want to, but I want to tell you something just so we a hundred percent what you just said,

[00:42:40] I totally understand it.

[00:42:42] And I've said the same thing.

[00:42:43] And I know people that sell, one of my friends sells food to prisons.

[00:42:46] He said, I said, what do you say?

[00:42:48] He goes, well, we have this powdered donut that's frozen that we, and I'm thinking, yeah,

[00:42:52] Tuesday, Wednesday, and Friday, powdered donut.

[00:42:54] I know you, I didn't tell him because he doesn't know my past, but, um, I'll just give you two things real quick.

[00:43:02] Last year, 250,000 Americans were arrested for cannabis, 92% for simple possession.

[00:43:09] So the war on drugs is the longest running war and it's a war against our own people.

[00:43:14] And people still go to jail today.

[00:43:15] I got interviewed earlier by a guy who had Robert Plattshorn on.

[00:43:20] Robert Plattshorn was a friend of mine.

[00:43:22] He did 30 years.

[00:43:24] Randy Lanier is another friend of mine.

[00:43:25] He did 27.

[00:43:26] My other friend did 22 and my co-defendant did 10.

[00:43:31] Seems like almost a fair deal at 10, right?

[00:43:33] It's crazy for pot.

[00:43:35] So my friend, Randy Lanier, who you got anybody that's watching the show can Google him.

[00:43:40] He was one of the largest smugglers in us history, Indy 500 race car driver,

[00:43:45] champion race.

[00:43:46] He's also a racer.

[00:43:47] He has a charity called freedom grow.org and freedom grow.

[00:43:52] And I'm actively involved in it in many ways is a charity to help nonviolent cannabis prisoners.

[00:43:59] Help them through their, help them try to get them out of jail.

[00:44:03] Try to help their families.

[00:44:05] You know, remember if you're in jail and it's your kid's birthday, you can't send them a gift.

[00:44:10] You can't even send them a card unless you have a prisoner who's artistic draw you up a card.

[00:44:15] And then that card, you have to pay them somehow, either money, food, candy, something.

[00:44:21] You have to, in jail, everything is traded as a trading value.

[00:44:25] Something you value more for something you value less.

[00:44:28] And so freedom grow.org is a charity that I'm 100% involved in all the sales of my book, all the sales of my merch on my website, one step over the line.com.

[00:44:40] So there's hats, t-shirts, all that.

[00:44:43] Everything's sold on Amazon, my book, my audio book, my Kindle book.

[00:44:47] If you buy it on my website, if you buy it from Amazon, all the proceeds, all the profits are going to Freedom Grow from now until January 1st.

[00:44:56] So if you guys can get that out there, it's all I got left to give is to try to help my fellow man.

[00:45:02] And it's a, I've had DEA agents, I think I just said this, and prosecutors tell me that nobody should go to jail for marijuana.

[00:45:10] But they'll still put you in jail because that's the business.

[00:45:13] Nobody was happier about the drug wars than the cops, the lawyers, and the politicians.

[00:45:19] I had a lawyer one time say after I got busted in one of my cases, I don't know what to do.

[00:45:23] He goes, if I were you, I'd stay in the drug business.

[00:45:25] Just don't get caught.

[00:45:26] I go, that's the advice you're giving me?

[00:45:27] Because what does he want?

[00:45:29] So yeah, guys, freedomgrow.org is a charity that I would love to support through this podcast if you guys can help out.

[00:45:38] For sure, yeah.

[00:45:38] Yeah, freedomgrow.org.

[00:45:40] We're going to leave a link for that below.

[00:45:42] Yeah, we'll just scroll down, click it down below.

[00:45:44] Easy access there.

[00:45:45] We'll do anything we can help to drive some traffic over there, Ken.

[00:45:47] Yeah, you can see the book behind me, but here's the book.

[00:45:52] One Step Over the Line.

[00:45:55] Confessions of a Marijuana Mercenary.

[00:45:57] And, you know, all the proceeds will go to Freedom Grow.

[00:46:02] So here's my honest moment with you, Ken.

[00:46:05] As prior to recording this, we were checking out some of your stuff and there's some haters in the comments.

[00:46:11] They think that you're faking this.

[00:46:13] Yeah.

[00:46:13] And I wasn't too sure.

[00:46:15] I was like, I'm going to give, you know, we're going to talk to the guy and see what's good.

[00:46:20] After talking to you, I believe that you're being genuine about all this story.

[00:46:25] And so what do you have to say to all the haters out there?

[00:46:30] You know, I've answered a few.

[00:46:32] I'll give you an example.

[00:46:33] One guy was saying that there's no way that I'd have to go out and buy my own tape recorder and wire.

[00:46:38] So what do you think?

[00:46:39] The DEA gives every snitch a James Bond starter kit?

[00:46:43] Yeah, they told me, go out and buy this tape recorder.

[00:46:46] Go out and get this wire.

[00:46:47] These are the tapes you got to use.

[00:46:48] This is how you have to tape a conversation.

[00:46:51] And you're on your own.

[00:46:52] And if you don't produce, you're out of the program.

[00:46:54] And I don't, everything in my book is 100% accurate.

[00:46:59] I say this to the fuckers who think I'm lying.

[00:47:02] I'm 67 years old.

[00:47:03] I got a wife and four kids.

[00:47:05] Why come out now after 30 years and make up a bunch of bullshit?

[00:47:10] Somebody, one of the haters said, there's no way that the American military would allow weapons off the base.

[00:47:21] The other day, I pulled the newspaper article.

[00:47:23] Everything's on my website.

[00:47:25] You go to my website, you see my speedboats.

[00:47:27] You see my race cars.

[00:47:28] You see my pictures of me in Jamaica.

[00:47:30] I think there's pictures of a runway.

[00:47:33] On my website are links to the news, to the actual stories.

[00:47:39] And I had to go back and research some of this to be accurate.

[00:47:42] You know, because it's been 15 years, 32 years since I actually got busted.

[00:47:47] So, yeah.

[00:47:48] You know what?

[00:47:49] Anybody that thinks I'm lying, why would I do that?

[00:47:52] And I'm not exaggerating.

[00:47:54] Look, there's a couple books out there.

[00:47:56] One of them called Saltwater Cowboy, which is a guy that was a big time smuggler.

[00:48:02] His book is great.

[00:48:04] He definitely was a big time smuggler.

[00:48:06] He definitely went to jail.

[00:48:08] He's a great author.

[00:48:09] I tell everybody to buy the book.

[00:48:11] But when they say he moved X amount of weed, no, he's telling fish stories.

[00:48:16] Because weed only came in certain times of the year.

[00:48:20] Like it harvested in October.

[00:48:22] Remember, it's not like today where you go into an indoor grow.

[00:48:25] You're in Colorado.

[00:48:25] You go into a dispensary and they're growing it inside.

[00:48:29] The weed was harvested in October through Christmas and New Year's and all that up until March.

[00:48:35] Plenty of weed.

[00:48:36] And to the summertime, the only weed left would be the weed that was not good enough to sell because the market was flooded.

[00:48:42] So, not to throw, I forgot his name, but I'm telling a 100% true story.

[00:48:49] And anybody that thinks I'm not, you can go fuck yourself.

[00:48:52] Yeah, what are they doing?

[00:48:54] All the haters, what are you doing with your father and their mom?

[00:48:57] They're always going to have haters.

[00:48:58] I'll tell you what they're doing.

[00:48:59] They're in their mom's basement hiding behind a keyboard.

[00:49:02] That's exactly what it is.

[00:49:04] That's just what this, yeah, that's what this, you know, anytime you come public with something, you tell a story, you share an experience, you try to empower people, people are going to hate.

[00:49:12] We've seen it for years, you know.

[00:49:13] So, keep doing what you're doing, Ken.

[00:49:14] So, one question we do like to ask every guest that comes on this program, now that we got the haters out of the way, is that if you can offer one piece of advice, that when humanity hears this tomorrow, when this drops, everybody's going to be better off hearing it.

[00:49:25] What would that piece of advice be?

[00:49:29] I'm going to use two quotes from Oscar Wilde.

[00:49:32] One, be yourself, everybody else has taken.

[00:49:36] Two, I might be paraphrasing.

[00:49:38] Every saint has a past, every sinner has a future.

[00:49:41] So, no matter how dark your life is or where you're at, there is hope on the other side of the tunnel.

[00:49:47] You just got to put your nose down and hard work.

[00:49:49] And, you know, I know in the end of my book, I say everybody has a story, you know.

[00:49:58] I mean, you know, where's your bones buried?

[00:50:00] You know, everybody has a story.

[00:50:03] And you guys know that by interviewing people.

[00:50:05] So, tell your story.

[00:50:06] Don't be ashamed of it.

[00:50:07] That's my advice.

[00:50:09] Great advice.

[00:50:10] Yeah, for sure.

[00:50:12] I do like that.

[00:50:13] Every sinner.

[00:50:14] No, no.

[00:50:15] Every saint has a past.

[00:50:17] Every sinner has a future.

[00:50:20] And, you know, it's crazy.

[00:50:23] Like, I'm in my mid-30s and just how life has these different phases of, like, you know.

[00:50:29] And then now I'm at where I'm at as far as, like, you know, not being so caught up and, like, doing stupid shit.

[00:50:35] But it's just interesting.

[00:50:36] It's interesting.

[00:50:38] And, you know, that's a hell of a time.

[00:50:41] I mean, setting up runways.

[00:50:42] Did you ever fly a plane, too?

[00:50:44] Or, like, you were never a pilot?

[00:50:46] No.

[00:50:47] No.

[00:50:47] Bob Silver Bullet, my pilot friend, he bought a trainer plane.

[00:50:50] He was training himself.

[00:50:52] And he goes, hey, how would you like to learn to fly?

[00:50:55] I'll let you use my plane.

[00:50:56] You put gas and oil in it.

[00:50:57] And you can use it to go get your pilot's license.

[00:51:00] And I was doing so much blow.

[00:51:02] I was a kid.

[00:51:02] I was drinking and partying.

[00:51:03] I go, nah, I'll kill myself.

[00:51:05] But one time, me and Bob go up and he wants to touch and goes.

[00:51:09] You know, you land practicing your landings.

[00:51:12] And we're out going to an airport out in the middle of like a road, you know, where it's not in Fort Lauderdale Airport or Miami.

[00:51:18] But you don't do those there.

[00:51:19] And Bob and I are flying.

[00:51:21] And I prank out the blow.

[00:51:22] And he goes, give me a couple hits.

[00:51:23] So I give him a couple bumps.

[00:51:25] And we're doing touch and goes.

[00:51:27] And he goes, give me some more.

[00:51:28] And then we hit really hard.

[00:51:30] And I'm like, we almost crashed the plane.

[00:51:32] He goes, don't give me any more.

[00:51:33] And that was neat.

[00:51:36] When he said that, I go, yeah, I'm not going to learn how to fly.

[00:51:38] I did all loads.

[00:51:40] But I really wasn't into smuggling because I had this gig going to Ohio, moving thousands of pounds, making $40,000 a trip, you know.

[00:51:50] And so I had that.

[00:51:52] I had my own.

[00:51:53] I was selling kilos.

[00:51:55] I mean, like we run 10 keys to Tennessee, you know.

[00:51:59] So state borders are safer than the international borders is what you're saying.

[00:52:03] Well, smuggling trips have so many moving parts that you don't have control of.

[00:52:07] When I was selling 1,000 pounds in Ohio, I had three cars going up there, sometimes four.

[00:52:12] Sometimes we had so much we would have to rent cars from Hertz or National, put air shocks on them so they don't drag.

[00:52:20] And we'd bring the cars back with the air shocks.

[00:52:22] So we had mechanics around town servicing all the cars.

[00:52:26] So but I did do a lot of smuggling trips.

[00:52:30] You know, when you add them up, like 600 pounds, like the one in the Everglades, it was we made a runway in the middle of a dirt, you know, a road.

[00:52:39] Like we put calium sticks, you know, glow sticks and and beacons.

[00:52:44] And these things called fireflies were like the first, you know, LED lights.

[00:52:49] They were military shit.

[00:52:51] The pilot was landing.

[00:52:52] He looks over.

[00:52:53] He goes to the copilot.

[00:52:55] He told me the story afterwards.

[00:52:56] It was a pitch black road.

[00:52:58] Nothing.

[00:52:59] They hit the radios within like two minutes.

[00:53:02] Boom.

[00:53:03] He turned to the copilot.

[00:53:04] He goes, look, it's Miami International and I know customs.

[00:53:08] And they landed the plane.

[00:53:10] And one of the things people don't know is how deadly this is.

[00:53:13] That pilot, the second trip never made it.

[00:53:15] He died in Columbia in a fireball, you know, with 300 kilos of coke and, you know, 700 pounds of fuel in the plane.

[00:53:22] My other friend died in the DC three.

[00:53:25] Another friend of mine was thrown overboard, tied to an anchor coming into Fort Lauderdale.

[00:53:29] People.

[00:53:30] I have a friend of mine in a wheelchair for 40 years.

[00:53:33] He was shot in a drug deal.

[00:53:34] Another good friend of mine went up to New York to pick up the payment for two kilos of coke, 70 grand at the time.

[00:53:41] And the mob, the guy that he sold it to killed him.

[00:53:44] I mean, Aldo was my friend.

[00:53:46] I mean, he would have given the guy the 70 grand.

[00:53:50] You know, I got home invaded and tied up.

[00:53:53] They tried to kill another friend of mine.

[00:53:55] So we had to put a contract out on those guys.

[00:53:58] Luckily, they got arrested before the hit team got there.

[00:54:01] But it's a brutal business.

[00:54:03] Thank God you can walk into the dispensary and buy a few things.

[00:54:07] And by the way, when I was in Texas, I flew out there with some weed and the people were talking about it's illegal out here.

[00:54:12] So, you know, I had it all vacuum sealed.

[00:54:16] And, you know, it's stupid, right?

[00:54:19] For a couple of joints.

[00:54:21] Yeah, like we talked about at the beginning of the show.

[00:54:23] Yeah, for a couple of joints, just for personal use.

[00:54:26] That's all I had.

[00:54:29] Yeah, it's wild.

[00:54:30] Do you ever come through Denver, Colorado?

[00:54:33] Not lately, but I used to ski a lot in Colorado.

[00:54:36] I don't have anybody out there anymore.

[00:54:38] I had a friend living in Aspen.

[00:54:39] I used to go visit all the time.

[00:54:40] But if I do, I'll come hang out with you guys.

[00:54:42] Yeah, come on out.

[00:54:43] We'll get you on the couch live action.

[00:54:45] We'll do another podcast.

[00:54:46] You know, you're in the wheelhouse now.

[00:54:48] Yeah, man.

[00:54:48] I'll be happy to do it.

[00:54:49] But I can go out there and check out the scene out there.

[00:54:52] I spent a lot of time in Oregon and L.A., you know, in the scene out there.

[00:54:57] You know, I have some friends that are growers out in Oregon.

[00:54:59] And, you know, I've helped them move some.

[00:55:04] I got into a car.

[00:55:05] Since, you know, it's legal now, quasi-legal, you know.

[00:55:09] I was actually moving CBD out of Oregon into L.A.

[00:55:12] And it's not really legal.

[00:55:14] You have to drive through the agricultural stop.

[00:55:17] But it's CBD.

[00:55:18] CBD.

[00:55:19] But at the time, it wasn't legal.

[00:55:20] But it was, you know, you wouldn't go to jail for it.

[00:55:22] But you might get arrested and released, you know.

[00:55:24] So I've done some of that over the last, pre-COVID.

[00:55:28] We went out there.

[00:55:29] Again, not marijuana, just CBD.

[00:55:31] But now it's all changed.

[00:55:33] It's all more lenient.

[00:55:34] But, yeah, I got back in the old vehicle, put on my little disguise.

[00:55:39] It was driving along with a load of CBD.

[00:55:42] So it's, you know.

[00:55:44] And it's legal in L.A.

[00:55:47] It just wasn't legal to move from Oregon to L.A.

[00:55:50] It was, you know, it wasn't going to go to jail for that.

[00:55:53] But, you know.

[00:55:54] I don't want to do anything that puts me in jail.

[00:55:56] And I would never, I don't think I would ever rat anybody out again.

[00:56:00] So that means I'd have to go to jail.

[00:56:02] And that's not something I want to do.

[00:56:03] I would never, I would never be a rat again.

[00:56:06] I wouldn't do that again.

[00:56:08] I couldn't.

[00:56:10] Well, we're definitely happy that, you know, out of all the friends, RIP, we're happy you're still with us.

[00:56:16] That you were able to, you know, find a way and have a family.

[00:56:22] It sounds like you're having a more peaceful, relaxing life right now and going towards some good causes.

[00:56:29] So we're definitely going to leave a link in the show notes for the, what was it again?

[00:56:35] It was the.

[00:56:37] Freedomgrow.org.

[00:56:39] Freedomgrow.org.

[00:56:40] Thank you so much.

[00:56:41] We'll leave a link for the book and also to your website.

[00:56:44] So everybody check out what Ken's doing.

[00:56:47] Crazy stories, man.

[00:56:48] It was great sharing some time with you.

[00:56:49] That was a good podcast.

[00:56:51] I like it.

[00:56:52] By the way, to the haters, fuck off.

[00:56:54] Yeah.

[00:56:55] For sure.

[00:56:56] The hell with the haters, Ken.

[00:56:58] Drives me crazy.

[00:56:59] Yeah.

[00:57:00] But anyway.

[00:57:00] And they're going to keep coming.

[00:57:01] So we just got to keep this train moving because they're, you know, the more eyes and ears you get on it, the more haters are going to come.

[00:57:07] So, you know, we're in it together.

[00:57:11] All right, guys.

[00:57:12] Thank you so much.

[00:57:14] Thank you for your time as well.

[00:57:16] And we're going to be in touch.

[00:57:19] Are you on like Instagram?

[00:57:23] I'm not.

[00:57:24] I should be, but I'm not fluent in it.

[00:57:26] But I'm on.

[00:57:27] I just got on Blue Sky.

[00:57:29] I'm on.

[00:57:30] And I have my website.

[00:57:31] I have Instagram.

[00:57:32] I just have to.

[00:57:33] I have to get it all correlated.

[00:57:35] Kind of.

[00:57:36] I got you.

[00:57:37] Yeah.

[00:57:37] And no one likes doing the social media.

[00:57:39] It's a pain in the ass.

[00:57:40] It's a great reach.

[00:57:41] It's a pain in the ass.

[00:57:42] We'll be sure everybody knows where to find you.

[00:57:44] Yeah.

[00:57:44] We'll definitely appreciate your time.

[00:57:46] Thank you, guys.

[00:57:47] Thanks for all that.

[00:57:48] Yeah.

[00:57:48] All right, guys.

[00:57:49] Thank you so much.

[00:57:51] Yeah, of course.

[00:57:51] Thank you, guys.

[00:57:52] What a cool show.

[00:57:53] Thanks, guys.

[00:57:53] Appreciate you.

[00:57:54] Appreciate you.

[00:57:55] See you again.

[00:57:56] Peace.

[00:57:56] You can.