A man recounts being followed and arrested by DEA and IRS agents over a drug operation. He describes the buildup to his arrest, his family's involvement, and the emotional toll of federal agents closing in.
So tell me how the bus goes down. So I told you I got followed in 2008 by an airplane. I shut down, said I'm. I quit. Everybody was coming to me, and I had a lot of people under me. I mean, you know, from the, you know, from the people that were working with me all the way down to the low, you know, people that were selling weed to other people. And there was probably a good 70 people, you know, that this all flowed to. I quit. Eight months, nine months down the road, everybody's, you got. We have to open up. We have. We need to make money. And I said, okay, here's what I'll do. I'm going to find a new guy to get a house that nobody knows. I'm not going to tell anybody who it is. I'm going to have my brother Sam and Chuck, a guy that I could really trust, run the house. And Aunt Lori, my wife's Aunt Lori, is going to trim, take care of the house and, you know, the lawn and everything. And I'll open up another house. I'm not going there. I think all you guys are going to get busted. When you do, don't mention me. And I get my equal cut. So you're going to drop off an envelope with my equal cut. So I opened up, and as things were going, we started making money. Was. The house was open, and everything seemed going fine. People started getting pulled over. You know, state troopers are pulling over my people. I could feel it. I mean, I felt the tension. Yeah, I was nervous even when I wasn't going to the house. And I seen. I got pulled over today. My other guy, I got pulled over today, you know, and they're trying to follow him, find this house. So, yeah, I felt all kinds of pressure. I knew I was the ringleader, and I knew that the cops were onto us, you know, What I didn't know was it was the feds. For three years, the North Central Narcotics Task Force followed me. They couldn't. They couldn't get me. So they finally talked the DEA to take my case. Once the DEA got my. Took my case, we were done. My coach's son was at my house. He was a good friend of mine. And I had one of my partners say, hey, man, you gotta. We gotta get that stuff out of the house. We gotta clean that house out with all the lights and everything that was still in there. And I got pissed off and I said, okay, I'm gonna go rent a storage locker room right now. And I hung up. What? I didn't Know is he was calling to make sure I was home. And they were all outside. The cops were all outside waiting. So I said, ricky, come with me. And we got into my Excursion, which was backed into the driveway, put the key in. I looked to my left and the whole street was lined with cars on the left side, all the way as far as I could see. I said, I knew, I was like, this is it. This is the big bust. Instantly knew I dreamed about that moment. I seen the cars, the line of cars down the street. It happened in my dreams. The first car pulled up, guy gets out, you know, they got out with the gun, hands up, you know. So they took me in the garage and handcuffed me and started reading my rights. And that was it. And it was the DEA and the IRS that came in. 40 vehicles, something like that. And at the same time, everyone else got busted, which I was wondering why my phone wasn't. My cell phone wasn't working. They had, they were able to jam it, you know, the feds. So they busted my brother Sam, they busted Aunt Laurie, they busted, you know, Chuck, they busted my brother in law John, which I didn't even know. He had nothing to do with it. But they were growing in a house behind my back I didn't know about and they assumed that was my house too. So they busted him. And I was the leader of an 11 man conspiracy. Is there a certain relief at that point? No, that wasn't a relief at all. That was just like a bad. It felt to me like it was a bad nightmare, a bad dream that, that I'm going to wake up from that this didn't happen. Your adrenaline's just my mind. Literally for a year after I went to prison, for a year, every night I went to sleep, I said, I'm going to wake up at home. Really talk about a powerful thing your mind is. That's powerful because literally every night I went to bed, I would say, I'm going to wake up from this dream tomorrow.
