How 8 Crimes Actually Work (From Money Laundering To Diamond Heists) | How Crime Works | Insider

My name is Jimmy Tsui. I have a nickname like Bighead. I am a former high-level member of the largest triad, Sun Yee On. I decided to leave my life because I got tired and I was almost killed in 1992. They shot me five times. Do I know the person who shot me? Yes, I know the person who shot me. But I don't know why he shot me at that time. How many triads are there in Hong Kong? I can tell you that there are many triads. Sun Yee On, 14K, Shing Wo, Shui Fong. My situation is a bit special because I'm not in Hong Kong.

I'm from New York. And in New York I already have many soldiers at my command. When I joined the Tung On gang in Chinatown, New York, a couple of former Tung On members were from Hong Kong. When they are in Hong Kong, they are already a triad. Members of Sun Yee On. So after arriving in the United States, they still have a connection with a Hong Kong triad. Because some things happened, I was arrested in... 1985. I remember. So after I came out, the couple members I mentioned before from Sung Yee On, asked me, "Hey Jimmy, do you want to go to Hong Kong with us?

Maybe you can go out and have some fun first because we were already in since "two years ago." I returned to Hong Kong with them. They took me to a restaurant and told me to wait there. And then a guy came down, but he didn't look like a triad leader, anything. He looked like a businessman. They never mentioned that this guy is the leader, okay? Then the leader asked me a couple of questions, like, "What are you doing in New York? What's your position in New York?" And I tell him everything. So he is saying that, because I already have many soldiers in my lower level, all the children who follow me, will also become Sun Yee On.

For the ceremony, there is an altar of incense on the table. We have to swear a lot to God or something, and we had to drink blood wine. And then the first thing they said was I'm going to speak in Cantonese because I don't know how to translate it into English. The rule for the triad, the main rule, is to obey your boss, of course. You obey your main boss. There is only one main boss for the entire group, so you must obey him. And never against each other, never steal

money

from each other, never lie to each other, and never take girls from each other.

My boss gives me, as I remember, two, two nightclubs every month to collect

money

, what they call protection money. The shareholders must be one or two shareholders of the nightclub that is our member. In the United States, you can say that this is extortion, but they would be willing to give money for protection in the United States. But in Hong Kong, you have to be a shareholder of this nightclub and then you will have your own people to protect the club. I tell you, honestly, I tell you that we are there every night, at least 20 days a month.

We get used to it, like going to

work

. Just every day, almost on time, we were like, okay, let's go to this nightclub tonight, let's go to that nightclub tonight. Every night is like this. That's gang life. For me, I have two clubs to collect. In every nightclub they give me $20,000 a month. So I get like 40 thousand dollars a month, without doing anything, for two small nightclubs. But for the big ones, as I know, they pay like $100,000 a month for each general. Back then, the triad business was always a production company, a bowling alley. That is a legal business.

And for the clandestine business, maybe money

laundering

, maybe money from drug trafficking. They have business here, in the United States. In New York, in Los Angeles. They have businesses everywhere. Back then, I can say that all the gangs in Chinatown had connections in Hong Kong. They all have connections in Hong Kong. The generals of the other group start a drug trafficking business. Back then, it was very easy to smuggle drugs into the United States. Maybe they have some girls in the gang. They tell the girl to go back to Hong Kong, pick something up and bring it back.

At that point, it's very easy. It's not like now. When I am in Hong Kong, the film business I can say is all controlled by the triad. If you don't listen to the triad, you won't be able to get the place. Not even a place. If you don't listen to them, you will be punished. There's a movie star who comes out saying something like, "I'm not a triad," whatever. Do you believe them? You believe them. OK. But I don't believe them. Many famous movie stars who are women are members of the triad. Many people don't know it.

And we know it. Every gangster has a nickname because we don't want to use our real name on the street. Easy to remember. I have a big head and my name is Jimmy. It's too simple. Many people are called Jimmy. Lest you forget, they always called me Jimmy Bighead. They have a nickname for the monkey. They have a nickname for "tiger boy", "fat boss". They have all kinds of nicknames. Everyone has different types of handshakes, like different positions. They have different types of handshakes. Sometimes you do this and then you show it with your hand sign and then they know where you stand.

Maybe the guy you're talking to is a soldier, and then you show him the hand signal, you're a general, and then he doesn't know what the general hand signal is because he's just a soldier, so he can only shows the soldier's hand sign. So if I saw it, you're just a soldier, I don't want to talk to you. Tell your boss to get out, like this. They don't use that anymore. Only the old generation. The post-2000s generation doesn't care. They don't care about this. They only care about how many people you have, what kind of power you have, how much you have.

In Hong Kong I will never go out alone. If I go to this nightclub, at least 20 or 30 people will follow me and enter the nightclub. So they knew it. They knew you are the triad. We have experience. We can know who is a triad, who is a police officer and who is a businessman. We can say it. For triads, they have a couple of levels. But for Sun Yee On, the members of the upper level, they are all controlled by a family. No other person can take his place. Each generation will pass from generation to generation, like father and son, son and son, like that.

So until now everything is controlled by one family. After the top level, the second level is the general level. We call it 426. After 426 is the soldier. For the soldier, they call him 49. And after the soldier, they are the people who hang out with the soldier every day, but are not members yet. They call it blue lantern. This is the main structure of the triad. Of course, they have many different positions, like a white paper fan. That's the guy who controls all the money. There is another position that is to distribute the message. A special guy doing that.

Now, in this century, many positions have disappeared. So the only thing left is the top level, the general, the soldier and the blue lantern. I only saw my boss in Hong Kong two or three times. But I know his family. When you get to the general position, the boss will give you a couple of places, like a couple of trading places, so you can collect money every month. That's our salary. I'm just making sure they're doing the right thing, that they're not stepping out of line. And that is what I did. If someone gets out of line, it's okay, there are a lot of people in the group.

Many people. Things always happen, because you can't control everyone. I'd never done that before, but the worst I heard was that they were killed. That's the worst. If they did something against the company, against the group, they will be killed. After me, I have a couple of soldiers (they have been in the group for a long time, they have experience) who control all the children. They are doing all the management. So this won't happen. But sometimes in the other groups this happened. That's what I heard. Hong Kong is really small and has too many triad members.

Everyone has their own district. You control this part and 14K controls the other part. But you know what a gangster is like. They always want to increase his power. Then they enter the district controlled by Sun Yee On and the war will begin. When I was in Hong Kong, I saw another general in Sun Yee On, they have something to do with a general in 14K. They start a war. They want to take over their territory. Yes, I saw that before. But this always happened in Hong Kong back then. Back then, in Hong Kong, they always start a war, but they don't use weapons.

They always use a knife, because in Hong Kong the law on firearms is very strict. Even if they have a weapon, they are hardly going to take it out on the street. It is almost impossible for people to get a gun license in Hong Kong. When I was in Hong Kong, those who used weapons were always gangsters from China, from mainland China. They bring the gun from China, then use it in Hong Kong, then run back to China. But the original members in Hong Kong barely use the weapon. Okay, maybe the lower level type, but not the general one.

And if a fight starts, we don't get involved, only the soldiers who start the fight. If we saw something and we know that the war is going to start, we retreat and then the soldier advances. Different members of the triad are together doing something, yes, always. It's the money that talks. Don't worry, money talks. If a general thinks he can't keep the whole pie and wants to share it with another member or a different group, he will do so. Hong Kong is very small, I assure you. So you also have to make friends with other groups.

Back then, in Hong Kong prison or Macau prison, the entire prison was run by the triad. The triad gained more power than the correctional officer. In the 60s and 70s all the police were corruption, and with the triad. They

work

ed together. Not until now. Impossible. You can not. It's very strict right now. If you do something they don't like, you will disappear forever and people won't be able to find you. And you won't face jail time, you'll just disappear. I decided to leave my gangster life. They shot me five times and then I said, "No more." I got tired of it, because I'm getting old.

The way I think is different. Then I want to go back to my normal life, so I left it. I know the person who shot me, but I don't know why he shot me at that time. Then I discovered it. Because my soldier, under my command, people under my command shot his member two weeks ago. So they know I'm their general. Then he shot me. At that time he was home and I ran out of cigarettes. So I have to go down and try to buy a cigarette at the supermarket. When I closed the driver's side door and looked in the side mirror, I saw someone get out of a car behind me and then start shooting.

And then the ambulance arrived, after at least 15 minutes, as I remember. They took me to Elmhurst Hospital, had surgery, and then the doctor came and showed me all the bullets and said, "We took out four bullets and there's still one bullet inside your body." So I asked him, "Why don't you take the last one?" And he told me that "because that bullet penetrates your bone, that bullet will stay there forever." That's what the doctor says. What do I have to do to get out? Actually, nothing. I only tell my soldiers. Because I have a couple of soldiers who already control all the children.

I'm just telling you that from now on, all the money from the streets, the money from the gambling houses, whatever, I'm going to leave it all. You deal with people at lower levels, and if anything happens, you don't need to ask me. Although after I left, I started working and the FBI came to me and asked me questions. I say, "I don't know anything. I'm already gone." In the 90s, the FBI, all the leaders, all the gangsters were arrested and imprisoned. Without our help, they can no longer remain in the United States, and then they regress and now disappear.

We call the first beginning of the triad tong, Hung Mun. Hung Mun is the first. After that, they split from Hung Mun into separate triads. They call it the triad because of the three large rivers in the southeast area. So within that area, they call everyone a triad. The government people call them triad. And then they start calling themselves triad too. Sun Yee On in Hong Kong is the largest triad in almost the entire Southeast Asia area. In my time, they have like 200,000 members around the world. They have quite a long history. For all the high-level members of Sun Yee On, you now become entrepreneurs.

They are doing legitimate business. All concealment is only for lower level members. I was born in 1965 in Hong Kong. I was born in the district called Yau Ma Tei. Within Yau Ma Tei, there is a street called Temple Street. At this time, the entire street is controlled by the triad. So, when I was very young, I already knew what the triad was. And my father saw that he was getting worse, that my behavior was getting worse. He then decides to emigrate with the entire family to the United States. At that time, there was a gang called Ghost Shadows in Chinatown.

Always waiting outside school every day, like after school. They try to do something to us and they try to scare us and tell us to join the gang. If we don't, we have to pay them money every day to protect us, but we keep rejecting them. One of my classmates told us that we should go find his cousin, Clifford Wong, and he is the leader of the Tung On gang. My classmate was killed because the Flying Dragons thought my friend belonged to the Tung On gang, but at that time we are not. So we asked Clifford Wong for help and he said, "Why don't you join our gang?" So we officially joined the Tung On gang.

I started as a member of the Tung On gang when I was 14 years old. When I becamemember of Sun Yee On, was 22 years old. So I was already in the gang life for about eight years. We have a YouTube channel, Chinatown Gang Stories. We start telling the real story about the life of gangsters. We want to do our best to find every former member of a gangster, no matter what level he is at, to tell the true story of him, so that the world knows what the life of a gangster is like. I just want to say that for the new generation, don't trust anyone except your parents.

Don't trust any movie story. You are not a hero in gang life. If you're really into gang life right now, there are only two last exits. First, you will end up in prison, serving time. Secondly, they are going to kill you. My name is Robert Mazur. I spent two years undercover

laundering

tens of millions of dollars for Pablo Escobar's cartel. This is how

crime

works

. Money laundering allows cartels to produce the most lethal thing they produce around the world: corruption. It allows them to control countries, presidents of countries. Operation C-Chase was a multi-agency task force to prosecute the Medellín cartel's biggest money launderers.

Most of the people I dealt with were high-level drug dealers who had hundreds of millions of dollars. I am doing this interview in silhouette because two agencies and an intelligence agency informed me that the Medellín cartel made a contract on my life. I spent a year and a half putting together what I believe is one of the most sophisticated facades used in the underground. I built the personality of Robert Musella. I dressed for the part. He certainly had the lifestyle. He drove a Rolls-Royce, Mercedes, Jaguar. He was immersed in real business. He had an air charter service with a private jet.

We had a jewelry store chain with 30 locations on the East Coast. A large amount of cash passes through the Diamond District every day. So if you have that type of business, you have a very good excuse to know where the cash came from. He was embedded in an investment firm, a mortgage brokerage firm, and even a brokerage firm based on the New York Stock Exchange. And then my partner and I began a two-year infiltration of the Medellín cartel and the banks that supported them. One of the keys to doing undercover work is developing your undercover persona so that they have as many traits in common as you do.

Robert Musella was from Staten Island. I'm from Staten Island. Robert Musella was a businessman. I have business experience. I didn't fake accents, I didn't fake anything. It was always just me. The first person I met who was working within the Medellín cartel is a man named Gonzalo Mora, a small-time money launderer who had an import-export business. But his laundry ability was probably limited to about $50,000 a week at best. We had my partner, Emir, deal with him and just say, "Listen, my boss handles a lot of this, but he never wants to meet you. He wants to stay in the shadows.

But if you could ever convince him to come over." From the shadows, rivers would open and untold amounts of money could be laundered." At the end of those six months, Gonzalo Mora was knocking on the door to greet me. You know, it's always better to play hard to get. I also knew that these people have a sixth sense. If you're afraid of a dog, they know it. You're the first one they bite. I didn't want them to bite me, so I knew it would be working against me and undermining my cause if I showed any fear.

I said, "Listen, I have to make these people understand that they should let me invest some of their money. Your only responsibility is to introduce me to them. If I'm successful, we'll do even bigger business." He felt obligated to make introductions and then I started climbing the ladder to meet bigger and bigger people. You know, money launderers, like the ones I played, basically operate what's called the black money market. It is an informal banking system that is made available to people who operate through the metro. So, as a black money market operator, I have a supply of dollars.

My supply comes from drug dealers. Now I have to find people who have a demand for dollars. People who want to buy dollars are often importers from around the world who otherwise have to go through their central bank and spend 25% of their money to officially get dollars. I could sell it to you for 10%. My traffickers, in many cases, wanted Colombian pesos. So the best people I could sell those dollars to were Colombian importers. All I have to do is change. So I have supply clients, dealers and demand clients. But most of the time the money ended up in bank accounts controlled by the cartel, in Panama, and from there they distributed it around the world where they wanted to hide it.

Well, sometimes you had to use the money to buy airplanes. There was a guy whose responsibility was to acquire the planes, trucks and things like that that the cartel needed. He basically he was the buyer of the cartel's air force. So I dealt with him because I needed money to buy the specific aircraft they were looking for, which were Rockwell 1000 and Rockwell 980. Some of the money is smuggled from the United States to Colombia and used to pay people in the military or prosecutors. or politicians or whatever help they need to buy. Most of the money is in fives, tens, and twenties.

This is because people who use illegal drugs buy them with fives, tens, and twenties. This is collected by people who here have the responsibility of ensuring that the cartels do nothing more than collect money. They try not to have traffickers and money manipulators in the same place. Too many assets to potentially lose. So the dollars usually came to me in suitcases, duffel bags, boxes. New York was a key point. Get a million, 2 million dollars per delivery. He usually had runners pick him up and bring him back. You don't often find the guy who

actually

controls the safe on the street.

The way it

works

is that we get the information from Gonzalo Mora. Then you could give us a phone number in the form of an invoice number. You might say, "You have to contact Guapo and he will have 250 boxes. That's $250,000." They generally like to meet in a public area, so it could be at a McDonald's. They sit. Not much is said. He pushes the keys on the table. "He's in the trunk." Emir goes and gets the money. Typically, he is rubber-banded in blocks of $5,000 and $10,000, depending on the denominations. A lot of people say, "Wow, isn't it tempting?

You have all these millions and millions of dollars, and they're in cash." Unfortunately, there have been people in almost every agency who have fallen victim to the slippery slope of greed. My motivation was that information became my heroine. If I couldn't get the next big piece of information and couldn't risk more than I did to get the last piece of information, I felt like I wasn't accomplishing my mission. Yes, he was addicted, but he was addicted to information. Layering is a process by which a series of corporations, usually offshore entities, are used to continue receiving what initially began perhaps as a suitcase full of cash.

The way we stratify it, the money would first be deposited in a certificate of deposit in Luxembourg in the name of an offshore entity. That money was used by the bank as collateral for a loan in another part of the world. So let's say the loan was in Paris and it was for a Gibraltar corporation. And then that Gibraltar corporation would transfer the funds to Panama and then from there to accounts controlled by the drug traffickers. So the purpose you use the layers for is simply to confuse the path in which the money moves. For someone to trace the money back, they must first lift Panama's corporate veil and bank secrecy laws.

Then we have to drill the same in France. Then we have to drill the same in Luxembourg. You know, a lot of times what they do if they don't want to deal with a person like me, they use an army of messengers, they call them Smurfs, the little blue ones, Smurfs running around everywhere. We call them Smurfs because let's say there are 10 of them. Their job every day is to go meet their money contact, and that guy may have $500,000 in the trunk, and each of them gets $50,000 and a map that tells them where they can go locally to use cash to buy MoneyGrams. cashier's checks, money orders, traveler's checks.

They will purchase a money order for $987.25 to try to make it look like it is a payment. Leave the beneficiary blank. They generally don't want to buy anything over $3,000. So at the end of the day, the $500,000 that filled the trunk was now a stack perhaps 8 inches high of money orders and traveler's checks. There were times when they offered it to me and then took it out and washed it. That was security for them because we had no direct contact with their main money people. We had just received a box from FedEx with $500,000 in money orders. I think the biggest deposit was around $2.1 million.

There was a time when I met in Paris with Pablo Escobar's main lawyer, a guy named Santiago Uribe, and some other people who worked directly with Pablo. He had sent Uribe to evaluate our money laundering processes. And at the end of that meeting, we came to an agreement that we would receive, in a relatively short period of time, $100 million that they wanted to keep in Europe in case they had to flee. So when we came back from Europe, we started taking deliveries. One million in the morning, two million in the afternoon. He had told the people who were doing surveillance that they had to be very careful and that we should try to keep it as light as possible because they would have counter surveillance.

And one of the people I dealt with, a person who frequently met with Pablo Escobar, told me, "Make sure your people look for gringos on the street," white guys, "who are between 20 and 30 years old, in good shape, wearing jeans, collared t-shirts, solid color, running shoes, fanny packs. That's where the ugly ones hide. That's what the cartel people informally called the feds. I never wanted to go into an office. But this was becoming very important. So I met with the people who were going to do the surveillance, and there was a room full of gringos with jeans, solid-collared pullover shirts, and fanny packs, and I tried to convince them that this was the uniform. that everyone was looking for, but egos are such in law enforcement that sometimes people don't want to follow that advice.

So, anyway, the surveillance was burned and the next thing that happened is that my partner, Emir Abreu. , received a call from Gonzalo Mora. And in the background you could hear the screaming voice of Gerardo Moncada, Pablo Escobar's main manager, shouting that Musella, I, had to be an undercover DEA agent because they saw all the federal agents there. , and all deals from now on were off. And I had to talk myself out of it. I guess the point is that there are a lot of different moving parts in these covert operations, and it's pretty easy for any of us to do something that could potentially endanger someone else on the team.

All the traffickers told me, "I love your money laundering system, but the final payment is checks in US dollars from accounts that are in the United States. We want you to open US dollar accounts in Panama." Panama uses the US dollar more than its own currency. They know that secrecy is great in Panama on the part of the corporations, the banks. It is more difficult for the DEA to obtain information about the accounts. But what they also told me was, "Listen, we want your accounts in Panama because we own General Manuel Noriega, and he won't touch any of your accounts because you're with us." So now I have to open an account in Panama.

I happened to be passing by a Tampa branch of the Bank of Credit and Commerce International, the seventh-largest private bank in the world. There was a big gold sign. Because I would never have gone in there if it weren't for that. And they said, "Well, we'll give you a meeting if you can give us a resume." I had a fully verifiable resume and bank accounts worth millions of dollars, all of which the particular bank wanted to see before opening up to me and explaining how they laundered money for many organized

crime

people. And I said, "All my clients are from Medellín, Colombia.

They operate businesses here in the United States that are very sensitive, and my job is to very cautiously help them move capital across borders." He says, "Well, that's the black money market. We have a lot of clients who are into that business." He said, "Yes, Panama is where you want to be." There are many hands that go through these checks and sometimes mistakes can be made. And in fact, that's how I

actually

got into the International Bank of Credit and Commerce. That got me into the BCCI's inner circle of dirty agents, and I later met more than a dozen of them.

The number one person who managed my accounts, agentleman named Amjad Awan. He managed accounts of people who ran countries, for Manuel Noriega. He helped launder the drug profits Noriega obtained from the protection he sold to the Medellín cartel. And during that time we recorded around 1,200 conversations, all of which were used as cornerstones of the prosecution not only of drug traffickers and money launderers, but also of senior officials of the Bank of Credit and Commerce International. He needed to take the conversations to the areas where he was exposing his true intent, his involvement in criminality. He couldn't allow them to dance around the problems.

You have to try to find a way to have the conversation. So one of the things that I used during that period of time, one of the most famous entrepreneurs at that time in the late '80s, was a guy named Lee Iacocca. He ran Chrysler. Everyone knew who he was. And so when he talked to people, especially in the bank, he would say, "If my clients walked into this room, they might get confused." They'd be like Lee Iacocca. The big difference is that they don't sell cars. They sell cocaine. I dealt with corrupt bankers. I dealt with lawyers in Switzerland who formed corporations to hide the origin of our funds.

I dealt with lawyers in Panama, people who ran financial services corporations that do nothing but form tens of thousands of corporations for people all over the world. They provide nominated directors who hide the actual ownership of the accounts and control of the corporations. All of these people are intermediaries that the underworld relies on. There were other people, real money launderers at that time. , who were shipping what they claimed to be precious metals in and out of the United States, which was actually lead covered in gold, and that was their cover for depositing cash and they weren't shy about it. bank and saying, "This is a cash-generating business." If you have enough believability, it's amazing how quickly they will become convinced that you are who you say you are in June 1988.

I was told it would be that way. the first week of October that the operation would be completed. I have two years of work to do and I should finish it in about three months. Many times these sting operations result in indictments, but the bad guys are in countries that do not offer extradition. Colombia was one. Someone suggested, "Well, why don't we organize some kind of personal event?" One of the agents said, "Well, they obviously seem to like Bob. How about a wedding?" So we put this together for a supposed wedding at Innisbrook, which is a country club.

This became personal. In some cases, the children of the future defendants were part of the wedding. Wives. And the night before, one of my informants walked up to the defendants and said, "Hey, Bob doesn't know this. We're having a bachelor party. The cars are coming soon." The arrest team is there. They arrest them. Everyone was in disbelief. And the case concluded with the arrest of about 85 people, the collection of fines and confiscations of about $600 million, and the seizure of about 3,000 pounds of cocaine. Ultimately, the bank imploded the night of the arrests. You know, it was all high fives.

They wanted to go out and have a celebratory gathering. I didn't want anything to do with it at all. I was emotionally exhausted. I first found out about the contract on my life about 30 days after the sting operation. Operation C-Chase was over. The longest trial lasted six months. I was on the witness stand. I could see the hatred in his eyes, even more so in the eyes of his relatives who were there. They certainly didn't see me as a person just doing their job. They saw me as a person who deceived them. But I never tricked anyone into doing anything other than trusting me.

No one there did anything they hadn't done before. After testifying, my family and I rented a motor home. We went to the mountains, got away from everyone and tried to heal. There was a pager number, an 800 number, that they could call. The office could call me and leave me a message, and I would check from time to time, and I found out that the jury had convicted everyone on virtually every charge. I returned to the camp by a river and sat there thinking about it. And it occurred to me that it was so surreal that I had done the same things that the bankers had done, and I was getting awards, and they were about to go to jail for a long time.

And I don't take what I did lightly. Some people think it is a sign of weakness. I shed a tear or two that day. I think that was good, because I want a government with a conscience. I don't want people to high five. It's unfortunate, but the law enforcement community and private sector responsible for trying to tackle money laundering have not had much success. The United Nations on Drugs and Crime estimates that approximately $400 billion is generated each year from the sale of illegal drugs. What I really think needs to be done, you have to understand, there are two different sides of banking.

There's the sales side and there's the fulfillment side. The sales side brings the accounts. Compliance, at a bad bank, does background checks to make sure they're not dealing with a bad guy. You need to put that together. I suggest it only on accounts that have received $5 million or more in a year. I think the account relationship manager who introduced the account should file with the bank an affidavit stating that he has asked certain questions. He asks questions that, if asked, would expose whether or not it is an account managed by front men. Those questions aren't asked, and they aren't asked now because the sales side always tells the fulfillment side, "If I ask those questions, we won't get this business because you don't want to answer those questions." "You know, we have a joint counterterrorism task force led by the FBI, but I don't know how many hundreds of agencies also participate in it.

There should be a joint anti-money laundering task force that does exactly the same thing. " There has been an evolution of cryptocurrencies. There are people who have been involved in the drug world and have used cryptocurrencies. Unlike cash, you can follow cryptocurrencies. The other problem you have with cryptocurrencies is that you just need to look at Bitcoin and see. which, unlike the US dollar, its value is not stable. I don't think it's really ready for the big time in the drug world. What's big? Gold refining in the Middle East, Dubai. I retired from undercover work after the second operation when I was almost killed, and that was in the late '90s.

I am extraordinarily grateful to have the platform from which I have the opportunity to speak, and that platform is, first of all, a book called "The Infiltrator" which became a New York Times bestseller and the basis of a film of the same name starring Bryan Cranston. . And subsequently, a book came out that I wrote last year called "The Betrayal," a nonfiction book about the second covert operation I conducted. But as long as I have that platform, I will do everything I can to try to share information that can somehow help us with the problem that we face with this huge illegal drug problem in and around our country. the world.

My name is Juan Mendoza. I am a former member of the Nuestra Familia prison gang. I was a Category III and was a regiment commander in different parts of Northern California. And that's how crime works. I've been to San Quentin, Pelican Bay. In the early '90s, we were put alongside the Southern Mexicans and the Aryan Brotherhood, the Nazi Lowriders. Those were our enemies. They were putting us together in the yard and we were going to fight. If you were clever enough to pull out a gun, we'll try to kill each other. I went to prison in 1988 when I was 18 years old.

Some of my older friends who were with me in the county jail basically told me that when I get to San Quentin, the NR will approach me about committing me. I knew who to look for. The first time I went out to the playground, there was a group of guys standing in the corner who were covered in tattoos. Those were the NR members. From that moment on I was put on a 90-day trial period. It's like you're functioning within that movement, but you're not an actual member. You can do anything they ask of you. Stabbing someone, keeping someone safe, withholding documents, holding a weapon.

A lot of guys commit because they want the status, they want the title. Those guys will end up being eliminated because they don't commit for the right reasons. They are not true believers. I was a member of NR for about five or six years. People notice when you are functioning for so long and you are not questioning authority, but you are becoming a leader. Over time, the FN will come to you because the NR, in essence, is like the FN's training camp. I think it was 1994, two high-ranking members of the NF approached me, Smiley from Salinas and Mikio from Salinas.

The induction process is similar to NR. You go through an indoctrination process where you learn some of their concepts, their statutes. You have a sponsor and you have the guy you're really attracted to. They are responsible for you. When you make a commitment to NF, it is a lifelong commitment. They asked me things like, "Are you willing to kill your own flesh and blood? Are you willing to put the organization before everything else in your life?" Everything else you were loyal to becomes secondary. They write down everything. There are 14 bonuses, I mean, I used to call them my little toolbox.

Everything I needed to know how to function within that movement: conduct, discipline. They encourage you to study things like Middle Eastern philosophy, Socrates, revolutionary literature like George Jackson, Che Guevara. And then there's everything you need to know about making weapons. I can make a sharp instrument with 15 pieces of paper. It's all about how you roll it and then how you tip it. When your membership is approved, there is no big ceremony. They will meet you perhaps in a group sitting on the patio. They'll say something like, "Today we welcome Brother Boxer." I was there in San Quentin, in the courtyard, and something similar was done. "Hey, this brother is carnal now.

He's a Familiano as of right now. He's a member of the mafia." It's like he had reached a pinnacle, a point in my career where I had really accomplished something. Everything I've done was worth it. When a newcomer arrives, we'll get their information, we'll get all their vital signs, we'll get their name, their CDC number, we'll get a little bit about their history. We'll get things like his alias, his age, his neighborhood, what they called him. We will search the BNL to make sure he is not in the BNL. So the BNL, the Bad News List, is that we keep a list of everyone who enters and leaves that home.

I'm going to send a filter to all the members that are in that house and ask everyone, "Have you done time with this guy? This guy just came in. Do you know him?" Any good or bad information will be filtered. If nothing comes back, you will be welcome to the house. Then, at that point, they'll give you a care package, soap, shampoo, coffee, toothpaste, things like that. When you first enter an advertising segment or even a mainline, they give you what's called a 114 blocking order. That's like your passport. The gangs are going to ask you for that, but the only way to get a confinement order is if they freely waive it.

That's the only way we're going to get it. That confinement order will say which gang you are affiliated with. He'll say things like, if you have an S on your jacket, like a sex crime or something, he'll say it right there. So someone like that, you know, you get an S, they probably wouldn't even waive their 114 lockdown order because they already know what time it is. If you refuse to provide that information, that's it. He is someone who refused to comply with the program. Someone like that will not be welcome in the yard. If you try to go out into the yard, they will knock on the door.

I mean, there are obviously a lot of advantages to becoming a member that way. You'll get that kind of rock star treatment from a lot of young people who are on the streets and in prison. They see you as an example. They call NF members, just like they call members of the Mexican mafia, great friends. You're going to have a lot of access to money. I have learned many things that I still have to this day, although I am no longer a part of it. Things like behaving a certain way. The FN is built, is built or constructed under a paramilitary structure.

Many of the former members of the NF came from the Marine Corps. They're former Marines, so they actually took a lot of the military leadership structure and brought it to the NF. You have captains, lieutenants, commanders, an I-er category. Or for members who are new to the organization, they have no status over others. Then you have a cat II. They have shown that they have leadership potential and can give a correct interpretation of the constitution. You will become masters of cat Is. Now, to become cat III, it is the best of the best. They need to vote for you.

Then you have the internal council and the general council that basically make decisions for the entire organization. You have a general for the prisons, you have a general for the streets, andthen you have a general which is basically like internal affairs. He handles investigations, internal disputes, things like that. When you're in the SHU, you can be in charge of about 200 guys. You're not actually running the entire prison. There are guys on the main line, regiment commanders who are doing that. But on the streets, if you're a regiment commander, it might be 20 or 30 guys. I was a regiment commander throughout Northern California.

Different parts. Each time, there were probably 10 to 20 members under my command at that time. One day for me, well, it depends. For example, San Quentin, you are running Unit H in North Block, West Block. I would have to sit there and answer some research. So you get daily filters or weekly filters from all these different blocks. All day long I was inundated with kites. San Quentin is the worst place to be a leader. The main rivals for the NF are the Mexican mafia, they are following the southerners, and then there is the Aryan Brotherhood, and they are following the whites.

But overall, the situation is mixed. Everybody's mixed up out there. The northerners, the southerners, the blacks, they are all mixed. If we're talking about an ad-seg type environment, a SHU program, everyone is a little bit segregated. I spent the entire 90's in the SHU program. When you see us in the yards and we're doing burpees and doing exercises, we're not doing that because we're just trying to get karate bodies and just trying to look good. Good? We are training for a war. That is what it is. They are getting ready to go to SHU programs. They are going to be involved in a conflict.

So the SHU program is like a prison within a prison. They put you in a cell and you stay there for about 23 hours a day. You'll leave the cell for half an hour to take a shower, and then you might go out into the yard, and you'll come out into a yard where you have four concrete walls and a chamber. That's all there is out there. You have plexiglass on top. If you see a bird fly, you're like, "Damn, I saw a bird today, man." Go back there and tell the module people. In the SHU program, they got what's called a nervous system.

Everything is electric up there in Pelican Bay. They sit there and push buttons all day. You know, you've got a cop up there who's in charge of six different groups. Then you might forget that someone is in the shower or you might forget that a door is open and you'll press another button and someone else will come out. You could be there watching TV or exercising one minute, and the next minute you'll be in the stands fighting for your life. It will happen that quickly. So, we as northerners, you know, all day we had our mattresses rolled up and we were sitting by the door.

I mean, I get up and work out, I watch my TV, but for the most part, whenever there was movement or activity in the stands, I was placed at my door, ready, in case my door opened. . Because many times the COs said it was a mistake, but it wasn't a mistake. You know, they open certain doors for different reasons. I used to see them. I used to watch from my cell phone. There are many different places in the yards to bury weapons. Inside the buildings, above, in the small beams. We obviously know where they are. Under sinks or in walls, buried.

They drink it. You know, to move a gun from one place to another, they put it in their anal cavity, that's how it moves. I don't know how you want to put that, but. So, I went through wars in the Corcoran SHU in the early '90s. We were doing it with the Mexican mafia and the Aryan Brotherhood. You know, they knew we were mortal enemies, that we would kill each other if we had the chance, but they would throw us out into the yard. And they knew it. The administration there knew it. You would have to have the light on and that meant you wanted to go to the garden.

The kids used to turn off the lights because they didn't want anything to do with it. But those of us who remained active turned on the lights and went out. It's like a small enclosure before you go out to the patio, and the patio is like a small, it's shaped like a piece of cake. When you walk into that little enclosure, you can see through the patio door who you're going out and about with. Then we would go out, we would fight. Always try to position yourself so that your back is to the gunner so you can see what he is doing.

Because we were the ones being attacked. It was northerners and blacks who were gunned down there. There are no warning shots, per se, but what they have is like... it's called bertha or knee knocker. It's like a gas gun that shoots small blocks of wood. Sometimes they shoot once, twice, and then grab the real gun. But yeah, they don't give warning shots. Now, the other thing too is that the COs are making bets. They'd say, "Hey, we've got money for you, man. You better go out and do your thing, man." You know, sometimes they would take their best fighters from one building and they would take the best fighter from another building and take them out there.

When I first entered the system, I was young. I used to assault them. I used to have bad taste for certain people. And I didn't even know why I hated them. It was because I was supposed to. That's the mentality that was instilled in me. But being around them, many of them were like us. They were solid guys. If there's a Southerner and he needs toothpaste, or I have a book and he wants to read it, you know, we pass literature to each other. We can play chess in the stands. It does us no good to make that environment more stressful than it is.

Now, like I said, if the door is open, we were basically ordered to launch torpedoes and engage whoever was in the level. If we were to take off the staff, the guards, our politics could be put aside for a greater purpose where, yes, we could come together to go against the administration. You might see something like a small uprising within an ad-seg unit or something where they are not feeding us well, they are destroying our cells and disrespecting our personal belongings, like photographs and things like that, where all the world says, "You know?" That? We've had enough.

Block your window so they can't see inside, which basically forces them to come in and take your phone. It's something I was personally involved in before, in Susanville. You know, when we were going through the Corcoran SHU wars, people could debate this, but many of the COs were divided as to who they favored in that war. Even some of the female officers. It's just that you could tell that they sympathized with the north or sympathized with the south. A lot of this is just geography. Where is that prison, whether or not they have family that could be connected.

So it depends. Corruption is widespread in county jails. I mean, you see a lot of relationships that happen where female officers form relationships with inmates. Next thing you know, they're bringing in drugs. They don't get that kind of thing through the visiting room. They obtain it through corrupt conscientious officers. In prison, one of the things that is a big problem is cell phones coming in. But it's big business for conscientious objectors. They can earn between $1,000 and $4,000 by bringing a phone, a mobile phone. Having the phones is very different because, again, when I was in the SHU program in the '90s, when we were there planning someone's murder, there was a lot of lag time involved.

Or it had to go out through a letter, a coded letter, a phone call or a visit, and you would have to wait maybe a week or two for someone to drive 300 or 400 miles to come see you in Pelican Bay. . But now that you put these cell phones in the hands of these leaders, if someone has the green light, they will make a phone call. You will get a leader who will call a figurehead on the streets and it will happen in real time. "Hey, this guy has the green light. He has to go." It could happen that same night.

Let's say someone came into the level, I was in the level in the advertising segment or something, and he was like six cells down. I would make verbal contact with him. I was yelling down there, "Hey, buddy just got here. Hey, once you're situated, go ahead and get in line so he can get to you." Making a line is where you take the elastic of your boxer briefs or the threads of your sheet. You will make a line and join them together so you can put a weight at the end and then you will throw it down the steps.

It's just a way of getting back and forth to the cells. So he'll tie the kite there, and I'll pull it, read it, then respond and he'll pull it back. Ingenuity. There are many different ways to do things like that. Covert communications, there's a language we use there. It's called Nahua. It is an Aztec language and there are different dialects, but we use it so that if we are on a level and we need to communicate and there are officers on the level, we can speak on the level in front of them and they are not there we will know what we say.

There are very few people who know the complete language. They'll just know certain words, like gun, drugs, CO, hit, green light, things like that. Northerners, our color is red. Southerners, they wear blue. So the NF insignia, the hat, obviously signifies Mexican heritage. You have the dagger which means this is a violent organization. And then each drop of blood characterizes its own individual meaning. So, a drop of blood is for the guys who have shed blood by entering the organization. Blood out, that is, anyone who tries to leave the organization, is an automatic death sentence. And then the third drop of blood is for the members who have shed blood honorably, who have died in the course of their career.

I had “Our Family” tattooed on the back of my head and I covered it up. He had a star on his hairline, when he had hair, that meant NR. I had "Familiano" above my left eyebrow, being a member of the family in Spanish. And then I got a tattoo on the back of my forearm, it had an "NF" back there. The purpose of making money is supposed to be for the less fortunate members who are serving life sentences and have no means to take care of themselves. That's what it's supposed to be. Although it is a smokescreen.

There is no drip effect. There is a trickle-down effect. The money that comes in goes to the leaders, the chosen few at the top of the hierarchy, and they are the ones who use that money for their own expenses. Some of it is used to invest in drugs and invest in new regiments or new territories, you know, clearing the way for the NF on the streets. If I have a visitor who is willing to bring drugs, my gang is going to demand whatever, 25%, 50%, or I might even have to hand it all over to them and they give me back what they feel they want to give me.

You know, you're part of that gang, you're going to take care of that gang or that criminal organization. The most important thing in the jails, the county jails, the biggest currency there is soups. Everyone loves soups, Top Ramens. That's like prison or jail currency. But, you know, obviously then came marijuana, tobacco, then hard drugs and things like that. White Lightning, a cup of that, can cost like 50 bucks. But you're talking about a cup of something that's like vodka. I learned early on from a young gang member that the more violent he was, the more blood he spilled in the streets, the more respect he received.

The fastest way to rise within the organization is to hurt people. So, on the streets, in the structure, you have your regimental commander, a second in command, your squad leaders, and then your manpower. I would have a second in command and he would be my buffer. He would collect the money. He would make sure everyone followed the policy, distributing the drugs and weapons that came in from the streets. That was to keep me isolated. In the 90s, when it was very different, the regiments were called colonies in those times. Everything was compartmentalized. You had a group of thieves and another that sold drugs.

You had a demolition team. I think the influence has diminished over the years, a lot. In the 80s and 90s, you couldn't testify against the NF and live in the same county. You wouldn't even want to be in California. The threat was very real in those days. But once the three strikes law went into effect, we moved away from violent crime and began selling drugs almost exclusively. The influence is there. People know that they are out there, that they are in the cuts, that they are working. It's just not like... it's not like it was. I want to say that since 1968 is when the NF was created.

From that moment on, they took a stand against the Mexican mafia in the San Quintín South Block. This was basically when the NF got together and decided that the Mexican mafia was no longer going to abuse them. And from that moment the war began. Thus, for almost the next five decades, that war was in force. In fact, the truce began in the SHU program in Pelican Bay, the end of hostilities, its agreement. Again, the purpose of this was, for a lot of these guys who had been in the SHU program for, some of them for three decades, was to get back on the main lines and basically show the CDC that they could live in the same yard without killing each other.

So I thought it was a temporary thing. They were going to go out, someone was going to push a line somewhere, and it was going tonecessary, whether it be food or drink, whatever they need. Generally, the police wouldn't even care about these things. What matters to them are the weapons. But luckily we hid our weapons so the police couldn't find them. One of the ways we did it was we were on the second floor, so we would tie him up with a rope and lower him down to the first floor. Then all you see was a rope on the ground.

But who would expect that when you pull that rope there's a gun there? And so many secret tunnels and places to hide weapons. As for the tunnels, there were on Mott Street, Bayard Street, Canal Street, Pell Street, Doyers Street. These places. These tunnels were used as a means of escape. After shooting, you simply run into a tunnel and exit the other side of the street. That's why there are so many unsolved cases in Chinatown. I was 16 when I joined a gang. I saw it as a way to protect myself from bullies. During my years at school, I was the only Asian kid.

Then I was a victim of harassment. How did I become a member of the gang? At first I started hanging out with them and when they started trusting me, they knew I could do things for them and that's when they accepted me. And they would give you a nickname, like Bighead, and say, "Hey, you have a big head, so we'll call you Bighead." Onionhead's nickname comes from his hairstyle. The newspaper and magazines claimed that Onionhead's nickname comes from: "If you betray him, he'll make you cry. That's why they call him Onionhead." But that's not true. He looked like an onion head with his hair cut back in those days.

They tried to give me a nickname. I put an end to it. I'm that kind of person. I like to go unnoticed and keep a low profile. And I was firm about it and they respected that. But what they call me behind my back, that's another story. And we did an initiation ritual together with two other members. We kneeled and lit the incense. We served wine in front of General Guan to make an offering to him. Our blood was in the wine. We prick our fingers. After the initiation we feel a certain bond, like a brotherhood.

What Italians would probably call associate, we would call liang chai. What Italians would call street soldier, we would call ma chai. Like a captain, a dai ma. Deputy chief, that would be a dai lo, which is an older brother. The leader, dai lo dai. And that would be the guy at the top. So how does one become a dai lo? He starts out as a soldier, and if you have the qualities of a dai lo, like the gift of gab, you have the charisma, then these kids will follow you. You spend money on them and once you have a crew, you become a dai lo.

The dai would give the money to the dai ma. That helps pay for everything, including entertainment, food, expenses, the safe house, paying the rent. The money comes to us, unlike the Italians, where the money comes. They have to pay for our loyalty. What we do on the streets, basically, we improve their reputation. Many people have the misconception that clamps, triads, and gangs are the same thing. It's not. The tongs were former gang members in Chinatown who later attempted to become a legitimate business association to help new immigrants coming to this country. But there are a handful of bad apples who associated themselves with the gangs and used them to do their dirty work.

The Flying Dragons were under the Hip Sing Tong Association, the Ghost Shadows were under the On Leong Association, and the Tung On gang was under the Tung On Association. The Flying Dragons had control of Pell Street, Doyers Street, and later moved to Canal Street and Grand Street. The Ghost Shadows were in control of Mott Street, Bayard Street. The White Tigers went to Queens, Elmhurst. Later, the Tung On gang was created and took control of East Broadway. Do Chinatown gangs still exist today? Yes, they do, but they operate differently. Very different from what I grew up with.

There is no dai lo, so to speak. There is no great leader like the one we had. They keep it completely underground. In those days, we dealt with a lot of federal

crimes

,

crimes

that deserve the attention of the FBI. The NYPD did not have the resources to take on Asian gangs. They didn't even have translators available to translate. They were only there to help the FBI. But it was the FBI that solved these cases. It was around 1993. The FBI started arresting a lot of people, and that's when it started to fall apart. The people upstairs were being locked up.

So the people below didn't know what to do. Most of the gang members were arrested by the feds or killed or imprisoned. That's when I made the transition. And to be able to make that transition into the NYPD, it had to be like a light switch. It was like an on and off switch. It was all or nothing. You know, I grew up watching "Baretta," "Kojak." What happened to Steven McDonald, the story goes, he forgave the boy who shot him. And when Steven McDonald mentioned that this kid was a product of his environment, he did a lot of self-reflection and saw that the way I grew up made me who I am, and maybe I need to change.

So I joined the NYPD in 1995. But the gang was always there for me, until that day. When I took the oath, I left everything behind. I was assigned to work in Chinatown. So. I wasn't expecting to work in Chinatown, my old place as a gang member, and that was a little stressful, because what if I ran into my rivals or my gang mates? And it happened. I met my uniformed rivals. I ran into my old uniformed gang mates. Even when I was assigned to the detective team and promoted many years later, some of these guys got out of prison and I was assigned to arrest them.

Some of them couldn't make a living, so they started doing home invasions and robberies, robbing shops, taxis and all that. Now they started getting involved with different types of rackets. They didn't get involved in heroin trafficking anymore because the feds were watching that. Then they got involved in other things, like the transportation business, the dollar vans, the bus that left the state. They still had their gambling houses and the prostitution houses were run differently. Unlike those days, when you would walk into a house of prostitution and see 10, 15 or even 20 girls. So what they did was they divided it into an apartment, and they would only have maybe one or two girls.

The gangs operated very differently. Nobody wanted to be called dai lo anymore. I love the NYPD. The NYPD gave me everything I have for all those years. It's just that I had a bad experience while working with some thugs at the NYPD. That left a bad taste in my mouth. Then it was time for me to go. I left in July 2021. After more than 26 years, I started this channel called Chinatown Gang Stories to get these stories from former gang members who lived a life. Because there is a lot of misinformation out there. Much of the information came from non-Asians.

Movies, authors and documentaries. My channel will give you an accurate description of what really happened in Chinatown in those days. What did I learn from being in a gang? Just don't do it. Between social media, technology, cell phones and license plate readers, DNA, facial recognition, Big Brother watches everything you do. So there is no longer a place in today's society for gangs. My name is Bryan Sobolewski. I am a former

diamond

thief and stole $2.3 million worth of gold and jewelry throughout New England. And that's how crime works. I would compare the jewelry business to the drug business in terms of how shady it is.

You will never get the

diamond

they tell you is there. You're probably buying junk most of the time. The profit margin ranges between 500% and 800% when you walk into a store to try to buy a diamond. I was 20 when this started, 25 when I was arrested. So it was a five-year period. Then, there was my father, who was the mastermind. My brother, he was the muscle. Normally I was the driver. Normally I was the lookout. We had an internal guy. Bill was a friend of my dad. So it would basically tell us who was a good person to pursue.

If we went to a store, it would tell us where the safe is, what time the safe was opened, what time the guy would be there. He himself was a traveling salesman. That's how he knew everyone. We used Bill to place an order if it was a store, just so we knew that product would be in the store and we would have a certain quantity we could get from the store. The landscape at that time was that there were many family-owned jewelry stores. You didn't have many chains. There was Kay Jewelers, there were a couple of big chains, but most were independent.

And they had street vendors with their products in their cars, and they would travel to these stores and try to sell them to them. We tried to hit anyone who had claimed fake insurance or fake thefts before. We never go after anyone clean. And that's very hard to find in the jewelry business. You'd be surprised how many of these guys report false thefts and keep the insurance money. Finding a job is infuriating, but it's super, super, super important. It's about recognizing traffic. At what time a patrol could pass by. All of this influenced the time of day we would do a job.

Generally during the day. We didn't care about the crowds. Sometimes crowds can help you. People are interested in what is happening there. So for Seabrook, for Woody's job, the question was basically: What time does he come to work? Where does he park his car? The Raynham robbery, my brother and I went to a Papa Gino's right next door, got a piece and then went back to the car and ate it. Everyone at Papa Gino's remembered us. Each person. That's one of the things about the casing. You have to notice, but you can't notice that you notice.

So the cars we used were never ours. We would return at night, take the car. We would pull into a shopping center parking lot. I would take away someone's license plate. We would put it in the car. We would use the car. My dad would bring it the next night. He would just leave it on the lot. You could never prepare for all eventualities. There would be no scenario that we could practice and go through that would not eventually present some problem that we would have to overcome. I would come in as a customer to be as normal as possible, but I didn't like it either.

It was stressful to have a duffel bag with rope and bolt cutters in case we had to cut a lock we didn't have a key for. My dad would come in with his girlfriend. She sounds very sexist, but we needed to have a woman. Most of the street vendors we chased were men. So it wasn't necessarily about how many bodies we needed. It was more about what genre it was. One of the things we had to do was make sure we could get into the safe. We knew that the insurance company's protocol for you to have loose diamonds and be able to sell them and insure them is that every time you go to that safe to take out a diamond, that safe will be locked again.

But my dad did it in such a way that he kept sending the guy back and forth to the safe and eventually the guy would just leave the safe open. And most people did not follow the protocol to the letter. So once we knew the safe was open, we would dismantle the store. 90 seconds passed at the beginning of the robbery. So when my dad and his girlfriend come in and start talking, that's not the 90 seconds. It's been 90 seconds since Kev walks in and the guy is subdued. That's when we got to the clock. When those 90 seconds are up, I don't know what you'll have in your pockets, but we have to go.

There were times when we left a case behind. We don't take everything. The 90 second rule came from bank robbers. They tell you that you can't spend 90 seconds on a bench. Because if you go through the vault, more than 90 seconds will pass and you will be dead. It was all based on Kev. It could subdue a victim. It was handcuffs or duct tape or sometimes just being on top of them with a gun. Then my brother would jump on the case, grab them and put them down. He says, "Keep your mouth shut. We'll be out of here in a couple seconds.

No one's going to get hurt." My dad went after the safe. I went after the cases. We once came across a safe that, when we opened it, didn't have what we thought was inside, and my dad just wasn't convinced. And he started playing with the bottom of the safe, and he pressed it and he jumped out, and everything was inside. The bottom was hollowed out. So, he would always have a ball peen hammer. And those cases are not easy to break because they all have a layer of plastic in the middle. So when you hit it, there's just a hole.

You have to keep breaking and eventually push down all this piece of broken glass, and then it makes it very difficult to access the items. That's why in some of these cases, even jewelry store windows, there were people in the '80s breaking them and grabbing the windows. My dad had rules. We try not to hurt anyone. In the scenario where we went to a store that was not ours and were looking to rob a street vendor, wewe would organize so that when they pulled out the weapons, they would only point them at the victim. So we deliberately didn't target the store owner so that the victim would say, "Hey, is he involved in this?" And that's exactly what happened.

There was a plan that my father had that he wanted to come up with: we would go in and knock down as many stores as we could in the Jewelers Building in Boston. There is a real five or six story building full of jewelry stores. And it was something we squashed because the guy at the front desk was a police officer. We never had to deal with security guards because at the time there weren't many jewelry stores that required the presence of an armed guard. The only one was the double doors. And we didn't even go in.

And you'll notice that in most street-level jewelry stores there is one lobby and you can't keep both doors open at the same time. You would have to go through one, take several steps before reaching the next. And that's because they can close that lobby. And at that point, we say, no. Most of these stores tell you to enter. Now I can't enter a jewelry store without being told. They don't use a high-tech security system during the day because there is foot traffic. And those things, you know, are you talking about laser beams that shoot out once you go past them?

Well, you can't wear that during the day. Now there are cases of alarm, but again, you have to consider who responds to the alarm. When was the last time you did something with a car alarm? If during the day, during work hours, an alarm goes off, I think for a couple of minutes, most people will think it's a fluke and wait for it to go off. Most people's first instinct is not to call the police when they hear that. So now you have a live armed guard in a store. I think "Pink Panther" style jewelry store robbery went away when security systems didn't have to be connected to your phone.

So once a silent alarm is triggered, it can contact a satellite. The satellite calls the police. You can't stop that unless you find a way to cut the electricity to that entire structure. And yet they have backup systems. So, yes, if the power goes out, that security system will still work. If we took off in the stolen car, we'd run into the Bronco, throw everything back, and I'd go home. That's when I had the opportunity to start reviewing the material. We had to keep things at home. So we would have between $500,000 and a million dollars worth of retail jewelry.

At wholesale, it's probably a hundred thousand dollars worth of stuff. My dad separated it into, here are the necklaces, here are the bracelets, here are the rings, here are the uncut gems, here are the cut gems, here are the set gems. From there, we simply put them in packages that we could sell in jewelry stores. High-end stuff is super, super, super hard to sell. You know, little trinkets, little chains. My dad made more money with these little glass jars with little beads inside. If he shines, people will buy him. So for us, no, there wasn't a level of preference in terms of what you were taking.

But if I have five boxes in front of me and one is full of diamonds and one is full of gold chain, I'm going to go for that. The gold chain is much easier and faster to sell than a diamond ring. You don't want to deal with uncut produce, because then you'll have to find a place to cut it. And that is not easy to do. I would rather sell you a set stone than a loose stone because it is more made and you can charge more for it. You are charging for gold. So when you go in and buy a diamond, now you're paying for the diamond, you're paying for the weight of the gold.

Bill was our main dumping ground for many things. He was the other person. He was a jeweler in Nashua. And this was a guy who understood that the margin is where you make money, and if you buy stolen things, you can score big. So if you buy it for $0.50 on the dollar, you can already charge what you normally would, charge a little more, and really clean up. I bought a lot of our stolen stuff in bulk. Therefore, getting rid of bulk jewelry is very difficult to do. Because as soon as you have it in your hands, you are an accomplice.

So there is a lot to say. So you have to understand that after a robbery, every pawn shop is, you know, the police say, "If you see any of this, call us." So we couldn't just go to a pawn shop and say, here, buy all this stuff. We do it little by little. So it's great to have a pocket full of diamonds, but if you have nowhere to throw them or fence them... and fence is what we call the sale of stolen goods. If you get caught buying fenced stuff, you'll be screwed. And that's how most people get trapped in these situations.

The jewelry party is where you simply invite a group; It's like a Tupperware party with jewelry. So, come and see our product. We would put everything on the table, display it, and people would just look at it. And it is effective. It's a cash business. Many diamonds have laser-engraved serial numbers. You can buy fake documentation for these things. So at that time, it was rare for anything to be recorded. The technology wasn't there and the technology was expensive. So now there are certifying bodies that will give you a certificate that says this is the diamond you're buying, and this is how it's graded, and this is blah, blah, blah.

But you can pay for them. One of the ways we used to tell was by scraping glass. You could go to a jewelry store or pawn shop and they will take a small pen and hit it with a little electric current to see if it is a real diamond. You're pretty much fine buying gold, but you need to make sure it's sealed. So if you have a piece of gold that, you know, they say it's 18 karat gold but it doesn't have a stamp that says "18 karat," it probably isn't. Gold will not be magnetized. That could be one way.

I used to try, I would take some of the stolen jewelry and try to sell it as drugs, and they used to dip it in lye because they say lye reacts with the other metal that's in the gold. That is not true. It does not work. I'm not going to go to a store to buy jewelry right now. Because you are paying an exorbitant profit margin and you don't know it. You don't know if it's real. Some people are probably looking at their hand right now wondering if what they're holding is worth anything or not, but.

Diamonds are not rare. A flawless diamond is rare, but sapphires and emeralds are much rarer, if that's a word, because you don't find them flawless very often, and you don't find them treated or enhanced in some artificial way. Most of the insurance scams I observed were hearing secondhand what the person reported as stolen from their store. Every job we did, Bill was able to go and talk to that person afterwards without knowing that Bill was the one who helped rob it, we heard him say it was robbed, and it was always double. At least double. These guys are taking this problem and turning it into an opportunity.

And that's why you're paying so much for insurance, because these guys, the insurance companies, are pretty screwed. If you're really good at it, you'll know how many cops there are in that town, which is why we never did a job in Nashua, New Hampshire. Nashua, New Hampshire, had one of the best police forces of the time. I grew up in Boston with organized crime. I wasn't in this, but we all knew that the Angiulos ran the state, they ran all the waste management, all the construction. An entire section of Boston was dedicated to strip clubs and drug trafficking.

And the moment you left the combat zone and did something like that, an Angiulo or someone from that team or a police officer would beat you up for it. That was the place where you did it. And it worked very well. Bulger enters and everything is completely disorganized. There was no way we would have robbed 22 stores while the Angiulos were in power. Either they would have come to us and asked for a share or they would have said that these stores are protected and cannot be attacked. When you think, how can a father involve his children in something like this?

My dad lived a childhood very different from ours. He grew up in Chelsea, right next to Heller's Bar. Heller's Bar was a mafia bar. Right behind Heller's was a huge dirt parking lot where my dad would often walk out of his house and see a tractor-trailer pulled out of the East Boston docks, where the mob picked up most of their stuff. They would park it in the back of Heller's and sell everything there. And my dad saw this. So my dad followed all the rules. He went to university. He was a respectable member of society, unless there was something on the ground that was unbound and that he could endure.

And I think that was the mentality of most people in Massachusetts at that time. Pay your taxes, keep the man away from you, but if you see an opportunity to have a drink, take it. Initially, my father gave this guy his life savings to invest in importing diamonds into the country. This guy decided to take that money from my dad and then tell him that he never received the delivery. And my dad was in a bad place. He was in a very bad place. He finally asked if we would help him. He finally sat down and said, "Here's the deal.

You guys are going to have to get out of college. You're going to have to work full time. I don't have the money to pay for any of that." Or we could get this guy's money and set him up." And that's exactly what we did. And the beginning of 22 more robberies began. It all started as "we have to save dad." And then my dad started introducing us all the robberies like we're helping people. We're going after this guy, he's dirty, and this guy scammed people, and if we stop him, he won't scam anyone. After five, you start. to say, hey, you know, we're not superheroes and we're not here to save the world.

What are we doing? And that's when things started to get very difficult: my brother and I were very worried about how far this would go. The real victims are those people whose dignity, their right to freedom, their right to move through the world without anyone tying them to a chair and their families. It doesn't stop with them. loved that person and had to find out what happened to them. I was arrested on December 26, 1996. There was enough distinction in us to separate us from anyone who did it. There weren't many crews. There weren't many people doing jobs.

I went to rehab and stopped committing robberies, and my brother and father continued. They did two more and then they did one after prison. But I stopped because I had gotten sober and went back to school to become a drug and alcohol counselor. My brother has already been arrested. My father has already been arrested. They were both awaiting trial and I knew they would come for me. To me, prison looked a lot like a criminal university. A lot of inmates would come in there and say, "Okay, what did you do? How did they get you? Okay." And they leave knowing how to get their way.

So prison can be an education in terms of if you want to keep doing what you're doing, that's the place to go and talk to the people who were caught and figure out how to do it right. I think the hardest part of my prison sentence was not the time in prison. It's the stigma. I couldn't get them to hire me. Regret sucks, man. It really is. It's not easy to live with. In the end it was my decision. And I, you know, I could say I was 13 and not capable of making those decisions, but I was 20.

My father and my brother passed away on February 11 of last year. My brother and I had a very difficult life and complicated relationship. We very rarely got along. And when we came together, it was in situations like this. So through our drug abuse, we bonded. Through thefts, we came together. In prison we united. But every time we were out and needed something substantial to solidify that bond, it was never there. The book I wrote was called "Family Jewels" and it was my attempt to use it as a tool to talk to kids, to talk to people, maybe use how crazy this story is to scare you.

I work as a personal trainer now. I created my own certification. I wrote my own book that lists the programming for this type of exercise. And it's now approved by three or four personal training certifying bodies. I do the podcast, I do "Family Jewels Podcast." The podcast allowed me to go into greater detail. It allowed me to break down each robbery individually. My name is Jeff Turner, I have printed over a million dollars in US bills and this is how crime works. I have been called "the Picasso of forgery." From my perspective, it wasn't that hard to do, if that makes sense.

Basically, it took a lot of trial and error. The bills got better and better until they were finally discovered. And the Secret Service said the bills he was making were the best they had seen in 25 years. I started forging when I found myself in a desperate financial situation. I crashed a work truck, so I lost my job, and I had a newborn baby at home, the lease on our house was up, soI was in a desperate situation. I was just trying to think of some way to get my family back, you know? And forgery ended up being the safest and simplest way.

Most of the money I printed was the Series 96 $100 bill. I also counterfeited some of the 2013, the new "blue bills," but that was actually more of a hobby for me, a kind of challenge. The longest process to start forging was making the digital files. I would say I spent two months editing these images. Actually, Wikipedia has pretty high resolution photos in their archive and I split the image into several layers. Then you would have an image of just the background color. I would mix up the serial numbers. I knew I needed to find a really thin paper that was opaque enough that you couldn't see the strip and watermark through the front of the bill.

I went through rice paper, vellum paper, tracing paper, toilet paper, toilet paper wrappers. I ended up discovering that the Bible paper was perfect. The Bible paper shines a dull purple, just like the money. I acquired the paper of the Bible by going to bookstores and simply taking out the blank pages. Inevitably, I ran out of bookstores in Knoxville. He coated the bills with a matte lacquer spray, which basically allowed the counterfeit detection pens to mark yellow. I would also use an invisible ink UV pen to draw an invisible line on the strip. I also found a certain type of iridescent green eyeshadow that I would basically paint over the "100" in the bottom corner to replicate the color changing ink.

A cashier ran her fingernail along Benjamin Franklin's shirt to feel the stiff texture. I ended up going to a Hobby Lobby and found a fine tip glue pen. It would dry and give his shirt a little texture. The 3D security tape on the modern $100 bill was difficult to break. The Bureau of Engraving and Printing outsources a company to produce the paper and some of the security features, and I was able to find the patent rights, so they basically explained to me how to do it. The trial and error was definitely frustrating. When I started forging, I would just experiment and screw up five for every one I got right.

Towards the end I was able to make a perfect fake $100 bill in probably five or ten minutes. Some printers have broken. Sometimes the paper jammed a lot. It doesn't make much noise because I'm using digital printers, but the matte lacquer spray smells very bad. Many times hotel maids would come into my room thinking we were snorting paint or something. I'd have to say, "Oh, my wife spilled nail polish," or, you know, just make up these little lies. But eventually, I rented a house and I had fans that sucked the matte lacquer out the window, so I could spray the bills in front of this exhaust fan that sort of sucked them out the window.

In reality there were no large reserves of counterfeit money. Basically, I would try to launder the money every day. So I would print out about $2,000 or $5,000 in the morning and early afternoon, and then I would try to tear up all those bills before the night was over. There were probably 10 or 20 of the big corporations, retailers, grocery stores, Walmart type stores. And those were the best to break accounts. I also sold tickets to people. 25 cents to the dollar was the usual exchange rate. If I was tearing up a bill in a store, I would try to go to the cashiers, and if I sent women with the bills, I would tell them to go to the male cashiers.

When he tore up a bill, he gave them the exact coin to distract them a little. Most amateur counterfeiters are called at the register and given a license plate number or something like that. And I always parked my car far away, so they could never get my license plate. I stayed away from self-checkout machines because they were too difficult to beat. And some of them even have photo software that just analyzes the microprint and all that. At first I was definitely nervous because I spent so much time perfecting these bills that I would notice every little mistake or something.

I think I have an attention to detail that most people probably don't have. And the knowledge I have about security functions I study exhaustively. There were a few times I went to the same supermarket and it turns out that the bills I had spent last week, they found out. But actually, most of the time, when a cashier, even if he knows it's fake, he usually gives it back to you. During the two years I was counterfeiting, I was probably only turned away by three or four cashiers and I was spending thousands of dollars every day. Lucky for me, I think they only had like 12 surveillance videos of me.

So I was pretty good at maintaining anonymity. There was a lot of surveillance because my wife and I would tear up a bill at a specific store. Although they didn't know my name. It was just a photo. The Secret Service has the ability to build cases against people, but as far as local police, I mean, they can't do much about it, you know? Knoxville has many out-of-town dealers. Basically, drugs are more expensive in Knoxville than in Detroit, Chicago, Cleveland or Atlanta, so a lot of people go to these mid-tier cities to sell their drugs because, you know, you can get a brick in Detroit for like $25,000. and then I cut it up and sold it for $100,000 in Knoxville.

I was addicted to drugs at the time, so a lot of the time I was buying drugs with bills. With some distributors I was honest and said, "This is what I do." And I ended up selling some bills to a drug dealer in Cleveland, but there were a couple of cases where I was buying drugs from these people with counterfeit money. And the guy who actually ended up setting me up, I probably got him for about $10,000 for about a month. And he said that one day it was raining and one of my bills got wet and the color-changing makeup ran.

Then he discovered that they were fake. I was a little impressed and wanted to start buying them. These people would drive from Knoxville to Detroit to buy a block of heroin, and they would mix up $5,000 or $10,000 of my bills when they went to their city to replenish it. Every store has its own specific method for detecting counterfeit bills, and many large retailers simply use counterfeit pens. They usually just mark the ticket and then if it marks correctly they charge it. If someone is buying a really cheap item with a $100 bill, that's probably all the more reason to take a closer look.

For example, looking for the strip and the watermark helps hold the bill up to the light. Really, the best way to tell if a bill is real is to put it in a bill validator. This is the most modern blue 100 dollar bill. If you hold the bill at a certain angle and move it, the ink changes from a metallic green to a copper. It is used with magnetic ink, so if you fold the bill in half and place it on the table, you can lift it up with a neodymium magnet. There is enough magnetism to lift the bill off the table.

That's why some cashiers scratch the shirt to feel a kind of rigid texture on the bill. The banknotes are printed on an intaglio press that raises the ink above the paper, giving it a certain type of texture. Bills are really difficult. There's a really crunchy kind of feeling. Well, yes, there is a smell on the money and on my bills. I've had a couple of people, if I sprayed the matte lacquer too early to wear it down, you know what I mean, a couple of people would complain about the smell. I mean, they always accepted the bills because, in reality, my bills had all the security features a teller would look for.

So even if they were a little suspicious or even mentioned something like the smell, they accepted it because there was really no reason to believe it was fake. It was 2019. The Cleveland dealer was arrested there. They caught him with my counterfeit money or heroin, and it didn't take long for him to rat me out. And from there, the Secret Service raided my hotel room. I was in the process of printing when they kicked the door in, so they found computers and printers, and I think I had like $6,400 in counterfeit bills that I tried to flush down the toilet.

At that point I was practically caught red-handed. I was basically thinking about three years, but the Secret Service came to me and basically told me that if I pleaded guilty and showed them how I did everything, then they wouldn't charge my wife with anything and they would give me credit for cooperation and they would keep the amount of my restitution under $100,000. So with cooperation, that was reduced from 10 to 16 months. The maximum sentence is 20 years. I think white collar criminals should go to prison. I mean, he deserved to go to prison. I was lucky with the amount of time I served.

It sobered me up. It really was the best in my particular case. There are organizations in other countries that have taken up counterfeiting. Obviously it is extremely profitable and I have heard that many fakes come out of Lima and Medellín. I have seen some bills that they told me came from South America, but the quality was not very good, I didn't think about it. They are criminal organizations in drug trafficking. And in my experience, people who are in the drug trade are obviously opportunists. If there is a way to make money another way, in my experience, they will do it.

There is a "super note," they say, that probably comes from North Korea and was produced by the North Korean government, that is indistinguishable from legitimate currency. Not only does it supposedly have all the safety features, but they are all made quite perfectly. I started forging when I was 19 years old. I read "The Art of Making Money," a book about Art Williams, who was a forger in Chicago. And that gave me the original idea, but everything else was my own methods. The notes weren't very fancy, but they were good enough to sell. A friend of mine's dad was kind of a connected guy in Tampa, but then my friend overdosed and died.

I basically stopped doing it. You know, at that time I didn't want to get caught. And of course, when I started again later, it was all due to a desperate financial situation where, you know, I was racking my brain for some way to make some quick money. I don't think there will ever be a way to prevent counterfeiting. Even if it goes digital, there are still ways to counterfeit without cash; For example, someone I know was counterfeiting credit cards. The million dollars I made throughout my career hasn't impacted the economy much, I would say. But perhaps locally, it could cause people to lose confidence in cash.

In fact, many stores in Knoxville no longer accept $100 bills. They have little signs at Dollar Generals and certain stores I frequented. Obviously, this whole situation turned my life upside down. I'm sure it wasn't easy for my children. I had to go to prison. My wife and I are now separated. So, I mean, it's been hard for all of us. I am now a production manager at a printing and graphics company in Knoxville. So, yes, I still print, but no, nothing illegal. My name is Stephen Gillen. It was estimated that I stole over $5 million in high-value property as the leader of an organized robbery gang.

This is how crime works. Our gang of thieves would always carry some type of weapon, but that is to control the situation. The emphasis is not on hurting people but on exercising dominance without any fuss or unnecessary violence. I was operating in the late 80s and early 90s, throughout Greater London and the Home Counties. My first introduction to the gang was just people we hung out with and grew up with, pretty much. Robber gangs almost always know each other. They may have gone to school together, known each other's siblings, or worked together in another form of organized crime.

This is how our gang was formed. I was the leader of a gang of four, sometimes five people. You would have the lookout, who was the eye, who would leave us. You would have the muscle. He would be brute force. And then you would have the jack of all trades. He would also bring a lot of information. And then you would have someone there who was always very skilled with alarms and sensors. There were a couple of times where people were arrested. It's the nature of this game. A lot of times we wouldn't want to bring anyone else in, because we could replicate that and execute what needed to be done anyway.

But on rare occasions, if we needed another body, so to speak, there was always a selection of people within our groups. Property search is a function in itself. The properties the gang targeted were those they sent us to with specific information, usually knowing there were high-value items there. For others, there would be surveillance on them. They would be watched. The information could come from a disgruntled employee or simply from other people even close to the family. I think all this posting and display of wealth on social media, where does he live?People, what they do all the time, are very, very dangerous.

It was different back then when we were active, but now I know a lot of high-level thieves gangs who specifically get into the Internet, and that's where they target. Kim Kardashian is a name. Professional footballers. They're very susceptible to that happening to them, and it was very easy to even pick the time to go to properties because they'd be posting and saying, "I'm at the Oscars" or "I'm at the Oscars." I'm in Switzerland for the weekend shoot." A thief decodes a target in a specific way. The first thing he will look at will be the weakest part of the building.

The semi-detached houses, the ones on the corner of the road or the ones They have a lot of bushes, they would be a target. People go there in uniform as a postman or a worker or whatever, if someone looks out the window or looks or drives by, it seems like they have every reason to be where they are. A great deterrent (not a total deterrent) is for places to have a new alarm. Dogs are another one when they see obstacles like this, they are more likely to move towards an easier target. That a dog barks. But no, there have been times when it's very easy to get a big piece of meat, put a bunch of Valium on it or whatever and throw it over the fence or put it in the doghouse.

The best time for the gang to approach a target really varies, which is why surveillance and location are very, very important. The commercials were usually more at night, just because during the day there were a lot of people in these units. Breaking glass is not only noisy, but also very messy. And if you're climbing through glass, then you have a high percentage of leaving behind DNA, blood, and all these kinds of samples. It wouldn't be our preferred entry point. Overwhelming or evading private security is something that a gang of thieves would not want to do. They would look for ways to solve it.

At that time, for us, security codes for residential properties were usually four or five numbers. So, we had technologies that could connect to that to release the number, and then there were safes, and there were different ways to break into safes, or in some cases, like in the old days, people would even blow them up, but not so much. . We would seek to do as little work as possible. Basically it was about dismantling the alarm systems and overcoming that first level of protection. We had other techniques that we used to use, which was a construction foam that we could put in an alarm system that would harden so the bell couldn't ring, but then we would have to do the same thing inside.

Alarm system. Other ways to access a building are to understand the alarms and how they work. Typically, if it's not controlled by sensors, you'd know it would be metal on metal for doors. So sometimes we just cut the entire bottom of the door off and take it out from the bottom. The alarms would not go off and that would give us the valuable time we would need to get to the internal alarm system and deactivate it. Our gang didn't necessarily attack houses or commercial properties with people inside, but sometimes we did. Our gang of thieves always carried some type of weapon.

Not having weapons like guns, but that is controlling the situation. The emphasis is not on hurting people, but on exercising dominance to get the job done without any problems or unnecessary violence. People always complied because we were very professional in our approach. Places where people would hide items are usually in the master bedroom, in a closet, or in a jewelry box. Many other times they will be in the safe. Sometimes the safe is open. We've found some of these things in the most amazing places. At the bottom of closets, wrapped in socks, at the bottom of drawers, even under the bed and mattress.

One of the most successful robberies that me and the gang had pulled off was a commercial that had a lot of high-end designer items. It had alarms. It was in the center of London. It was a very, very busy place. They had given us information about this place. On this job we left two people outside on the road as lookouts. So only two of us came in as main characters. I was one of them. Once we got through the outside doors and into the courtyard, there was just a really flimsy alarm. But we put foam on the alarm.

We started wrapping things up. We had someone there, and they backed up and we loaded that truck very, very quickly. That was then taken to what we used to call the slaughterhouse, and in the slaughterhouse was where the merchandise was unloaded and then passed to the buyer. Getting rid of the proceeds of a robbery is one of the riskiest moments, but sometimes we would be stuck with certain items. I remember we once had a stamp collection that came out safe and sound. Due to the rarity and typos of some of these stamps, which was what made them valuable in the first place, it was very difficult to find a buyer for them.

Its great value translated into a much lower price, which we had to accept. We had very influential jewelers in London who crushed the stones, weighed the gold and could move any amount of jewelery very quickly. We had other people who were in the antique market. They would act as intermediaries. The paint guys, they were a different market. And I had a couple of people who worked in that area, and it was very specialized, and they usually always went to private collectors. The retail price of diamonds, jewelry, gold or antiques decreases considerably when they reach the black market.

If you had a 50 grand diamond, you would most likely buy 12 or 13 for it. With gold, you would get a quarter of the price. Scrap. Many times I had paintings worth hundreds of thousands. You'd be lucky to get a few thousand for some of these paintings. I think the market for stolen goods for robber gangs is more or less the same. Now there is a tendency to go for a lot of high-performance cars because they can be shipped overseas, have their plates changed, and there is a lot of money in this to sort out. The gang always broke down the profits, four, five ways.

Who was involved and depending on the leadership role they had in a given job. Some would finance the lifestyle of drugs, parties and going out. Others would be cars and watches or even women. Sometimes the money was definitely used to invest in the next job, the necessary equipment or even to pay someone who was giving us quality new information. Our gang of thieves was independent. We didn't have to give money to anyone else. They were all part of a wider high-level criminal network. In my time, the London underworld, its organized crime circles were tight-knit circles, but loosely affiliated.

There were some corrupt officials and corrupt police who sometimes wanted to obtain damaging documents or attacked their rivals. For the crimes he was committing I ended up in prison. My next sentences are related to organized crime. I was sentenced to 17 years, which I served in a category A prison. Many people talk about crimes they have committed, crimes they overlooked, other crimes that exist and can be reviewed or committed again. It was an education, a university of crime. Sometimes you meet really smart guys who tell you about alarms, safes and locks that might apply. I first met Charles Bronson because of our level of security within the prison system.

Charles Bronson was a gigantic character. He was an incredible storyteller and an artist. He was a very, very funny man and could change at any moment. It had to be treated very, very carefully. I never had a problem with him. I think sometimes long sentences are a deterrent. It's more about lifestyle, education and conditioning. These people need more opportunities and they need to be helped and given the right education and role models. Unfortunately, burglaries in the UK have been steadily increasing year on year. I don't think UK police are doing enough to respond to non-violent crime.

In many ways these are at a lower level of urgency and of course alarm systems are much more sophisticated now. Everything is covered in cameras, drones, directional microphones and all kinds of different ways to track criminals. This has led many criminals to turn to cybercrime and more anonymous areas of crime. I came out of prison from my final sentence, which was possession of a firearm in 2006. So many years had passed, 12 years, that the members of the old-time robber gang had dispersed. It is not conducive to having a family life. Everyone around you suffers, and I knew I needed to change my life, but everyone around me was dead or in prison and I started working on real, honest manual work.

In 18 months, I went from worker to supervisor, to managing my own contracts and starting my own business. I am CEO and co-founder of Raw Media Creative Studios, a digital brand development agency for film and television. I was born in England, but when I was six months and 3 years old, I was taken to Belfast and left there in the middle of the war. It was normal to hear the bombs and cannons. I grew up in an environment of fear, of constant violence. My surrogate mother died of cancer when I was 9, so I went back to England and London, which was foreign to me.

I had a succession of children's homes and foster homes where the basic path for me was to survive. Some of them were quite brutal. But the elders above me learned a lot about what to do, and that was the beginning of the preparation of the crime. I had guns and really serious violence around me from the age of 15 or 16. I was exposed to that very quickly. From that point on, it was largely a matter of grooming on the part of the elders. You see, here is one that we can manipulate, here is one that can be sent there.

Here is one that I see myself in that will be useful to us. And so it translates into promotions.