Chris Collins talks about evading law enforcement surveillance while running an illegal operation, and how his family dealt with the fallout. He describes specific encounters with cops and the tactics he used to stay ahead of them.
Give it.
Give me an idea of the scope of the operation at that point. How much were you doing a month in sales?
So I was making about $470,000 a year cash. And my two partners were also.
You were making.
That's what I was making. And my two partners were making the equal.
So about a million and a half, which is a lot of money back then, right?
Yeah, that was a lot of money. And it was consistent, you know. But I shut down after that plane followed me. I said, you know what? I'm done. I'm quitting. I had all these houses. It was completely shut down. Meantime, the cops were going through my garbage consistently. The garbage. The garbage man told me, you know, that the cops are going through your garbage. I said, I do now. I said. He thought I was in a biker game because I had Harleys and he was a biker, so he felt like he needed to tell me. And I gave him an envelope, and I said, listen, every time the cops want to take my garbage, come down the street the opposite direction instead of the direction you normally come in. So that's what he did. He would come down the opposite way. And as he went around to go meet the cops with my garbage, because he didn't shut the thing that smashes the garbage, he left it sitting there. And then they would take it. I followed him, stayed back pretty far, you know, binoculars, and followed him to the cops. Listen to the police scanner. He would take this garbage out. They put it in the back of a pickup truck, and then they would go take it to the police station and open it up. So I got a little creative with that. We had a baby at the time, and Bryn. And so I was putting all dirty diapers and dogs, feces and bags, and making it look like that was something like I put in a black bag, I tie it up, and I'd go and put it out by the garbage like it was something, you know, illegal. Really. It was dirty diapers and dog feces. They probably didn't like it.
And you didn't think at any time to just leave town?
No. I mean, I had a family. I had three kids. My wife was going to college to become an rn. At the time. I didn't know that. Sorry, give me a second. First, I was trying to pull stuff out of people, so I didn't know at the time my wife wanted to divorce me because of the stuff that I, you know, I was doing. I was a bad guy, a really bad guy.
So how is it affecting her, though? The bad guy?
Part she didn't like, the bad guy. Part she didn't like them. She didn't like me. Well, I was doing the money, right? Yeah, we both liked the money. I mean, it was. And, you know, I had a lawyer that was pretty much almost full time. You know, I. I gave him so many clients and so much work. And he told her, he said, hey, you don't have to explain anything. You don't need to know what your husband does because he supports you and takes care of you. That's all you need to know. You just need to know that you're being supported and taken care of.
Does that work?
It didn't work for her because.
Does that ever work?
Other stuff? Well, apparently not. I mean, she knew about these things and like I said, she was going to school, become an RN so she could eventually leave me. And this was before I got busted.
So is the lesson in that. In that, in a sense that you shouldn't have told her?
Well, she knew when we made the decision to move into this house in. In Cary, Illinois, to grow weed, she was living in that house where I was growing weed. So she knew, but her plan was to get out. Both our plans were to not do this forever. You know, it was just. I said, hey, listen, I'm going to take a leap of faith and try to do this to get out. I've tried everything. I tried construction, I worked legal jobs, I had my own business. Did the selling the weed thing on the side. None of it. You're just staying, paying your bills, you know, And I wanted more than that. And I said, I'm going to take a chance. You don't have to come with me. And she decided to come with me. We took that chance with Mike, you know, but no, it wasn't meant to be. Forever was meant to be. Make a lot of money and then get out of it. But.
But without verbalizing it to you, she was planning on an escape?
Yes.
And how did you find that out?
She told me after I got busted.
