 Oh, yeah, it's mind pump time. This episode is really, really interesting. We interviewed somebody from the series on HBO Max, Generation Hustle, Ian Bick. This story is remarkable, and I want to hear your comments about the story. Is he a bad guy? Is he a good guy? Does he have a future of success? Did he learn his lesson? Comment below in the first 24 hours, and if you leave a good comment, you have a good discussion with other people, and we pick you, you will actually win a maps program of your choice. It's the first time we've ever done this. So you actually choose which maps program you want if you win. So remember to comment below in the first 24 hours and subscribe to this channel and turn on your notifications. Also, there's only 72 hours left, three days left for our Maps Prime, Maps Prime Pro and Prime Bundle Sale. All of them 50% off. The sale ends 72 hours after we drop this episode. Go check them out or just go sign up MapsFitnessProducts.com. Use the code June Prime with no space for the discount. All right, enjoy this interview. So Ian, my man, what I want to do for the audience that doesn't subscribe to HBO Max, first of all, get out from underneath a rock and subscribe to them. Yeah, no, and I don't get paid to say that. I just really think it's one of the best streaming services out there. But I do want you to kind of tell our audience and I'm going to start it off by saying this and you can respond how you want. So, you know, we con 27 people out of a half a million dollars. You get what six get charged with six wire fraud and then one something else. You end up three years in prison is what you do at the age of 19. Correct? Yeah, it started when I was 17, but I was indicted at 19. OK, 19 is when you were indicted. And then you didn't quite serve all three years. You got out in good behavior, I imagine. It comes out to you do like 80 percent and then you do some halfway house time, which is like an intermediate step, kind of like a rehab facility, you could call it. And then I did a year on home confinement as a part of my conditions, a supervised release. And so you got to tell the audience how a 17 year old boy that comes from looks like a pretty good, healthy family. You look like you have a good relationship with mom and dad. And I'm just assuming, but if it's not true, tell me. But how does a 17 year old kid end up getting three years of prison time and and indicted for a hat, almost a half a million dollars of con and people out of money? I think it really start like the whole story really starts when I'm this young kid who is, you know, in theater camp. And I like being on the stage. I like being, you know, liked. I like being well liked and that popular like center of attention person. But at the same time, I also had like a like a knack for standing out and kind of like bucking authority, like in middle school. They said, don't wear flip flops to school. Of course, I was the kid that was wearing flip flops. I had like the shirt from Hollister that said, this is what happens when you party naked. And I was wearing that around. I'd always get like suspended over silly things. And that turned into one night. My friend Steven, you know, he's featured in the documentary. We go and take this insulating foam and foam the president and vice president of our community's cars because they made this rule that said no golf carts. And I was this kid driving around with a golf cart, throwing firecrackers off at people's mailboxes, putting dog poop on a door and lighting it on fire. Like I was that trouble kid. We were having like Roman candle wars, you know, shooting bottle rockets at each other. And so we do that and we get caught. And ultimately that triggers a domino effect of me getting into this community service, doing this charity for community service hours, which triggers into me throwing house parties and then doing these club nights. And that just escalates and escalates and escalates. Well, isn't the first thing that you did was you actually part of your charity or the community service. That's the word I was looking for. Your community service was you throw, you organize this party and you're donating it, right? You donate the money and you charge like $20 a head. And isn't that the first big one you throw? Is that right? Yeah, so it started with wristbands, kind of like the Livestrung wristbands. We did it called Fight for the Homeless and they were a dollar a piece. And I sell them, we raise a couple thousand dollars and I said, okay, I want to do a school dance. So I'm this, you know, I was 15 at the time and I get a meeting with the principal and I said, listen, I want to do a dance. That wasn't on the books for the year because they had like the prom, they had the snowball homecoming. So they didn't want any other dances. I convinced the guy, he says yes. And from there, I do this night at the Matrix Dance at the Matrix Corporate Center in Danbury, which is like this big elaborate building which just underwent like $20 million of renovations. And I do the dance, I execute it all on my own. I plan it, get about 300 kids to come and raise $2,000. Now, did you get them to give you the place for free because you were donating it? How did you work that all out? So they gave me a really reduced price and they were at the point where they had no access to other schools because they wanted to get everyone's prom and school dance. So they looked at me as an intermediary to, you know, be like that showoff person to say this is a really cool spot, which later leads to them offering me a job and I'm 16 at the time, getting them these big proms because proms are a big business. It's like $100,000 worth of revenue per prom. And I was that person stealing it from other venues to bring it to the Matrix. Oh, wow, that story's not told in the documentary. So you actually ended up getting a job with the Matrix and part of your job is to go out and get these proms. So how'd that go? Were you successful at it? How long did you do that? So the night of the dance, the owner, his name was Glenn Nelson who had passed away a couple of years later, unfortunately. He says, how old are you? And I said, I'm 15. And he's like, when do you turn 16? And I said, in two months. And he said, well, listen, when you're 16, you're working for me. Like no ifs, ands, or buts, like you have a job here. And then I start working there as a houseman, which was like setting up the conference rooms for these big companies, you know, like Praxair and all these big companies that had stuff there. I had office space, their GM had office space. And I set up meeting rooms. I helped with their banquets and weddings. And then they said, well, can you help us, you know, book dances? So I would go, I was vice president of my class. So I was able to take that prom and then I would go to different schools and I would take their proms. And they'd give me a 10% commission and I was making probably like $10,000 a month just in commission. I mean, it's not every month because it's only prom season, but for like two to three months that year and the next year, I was making really good money. Well, I mean, especially as a kid. Yeah, to say $20,000 to $30,000 as a kid. I mean, what do you feel like at that point? I mean, you got to be on top of the world. So to me, money was never really like a driving factor back then. Oh, really? It was never about money. Like any money I had was always like being spent on my friends. So after a night, I didn't really drink or smoke or anything. I would always be the DD. So we would pile in my dad's SUV when we'd go to like Wendy's and I was a kid picking up like the $300 tab at Wendy's, cause everyone's broke, no one has jobs, you know, their parents might give them like 10 bucks to go out. So I was that person. When I threw a house party, I was the only one that threw a party where, you know, there was a whole display of like chips, a buffet, food, wings, sodas, everything else. You went to another house party and there was nothing there. It was just like an empty space. So it was always about the experience for me. Now, you, okay, you serve time. So you've obviously been able to sit down and like reflect. Like, do you know why this is? Like, why are you not money driven? Why is it just something that, why do you want the attention? What have you reflected in all this stuff during that time? So I think, you know, in prison and even in the months when I got out of prison, I didn't really learn anything. Like I had time to reflect and I needed to go to prison to definitely remove myself from the situation of running the club. Otherwise, you know, I'd still probably be doing it now. But it wasn't until like months after when, you know, HBO approached me where I really got to look at everything and kind of see the bigger picture. Cause when I got out of prison, I was like, okay, I want to get back into the business. I want to open a nightclub. I want to do this. I want to do that. And clearly you have like that same, even though I'm older, I was like 24, 25 at the time when I got out. A person, the young adult that hadn't really learned yet. If I'm still trying to get back into the same thing. Right. So months later, and when I did that, like it was a 10 or 12 hour interview with HBO, that's when things kind of hit me seeing that bigger picture. And then even more recently diving in to like some of the causes, the root causes, you know, me being that kid in high school that wanted to be Mr. Popular. A lot of what happened to me was driven by me chasing popularity. And that really relates to like what's going on now, you know, with kids and influencers driving up their social media likes and wanting to do this and do that. You know, there's definitely a danger there. Like when you're chasing those likes and trying to do certain things, it has consequences. And you look at a story like mine where it could have, well, it did go very wrong all because I wanted to be that, you know, that popular cool kid. So that's why you were buying, you know, all the lunches and dinners and spending your money. It's because you felt like you wanted to earn their friendship or admiration. Absolutely, I wanted to be liked. You know, I was already liked at the time. I was a likable person. I was throwing the parties and stuff. So when it came down to business and I'm at a point where I'm losing money, you know, I didn't want to be that person to tell my friends, hey, I lost your money. And then it becomes, okay, I'm not gonna be liked at that point. So there was a point in the documentary where you said like, I think it was like, I needed three years to really reflect on what exactly I did. Have you been able to kind of really look into that and look at how you view rules in general and like the whole bucking authority thing. Like what do you think that is? You know, I think that had to do with, it goes back to the like park about, you know, them not liking me off the bat. So at that point, like I'm like, okay, you don't like me. I'm not gonna try to win you over. I'm just gonna, you know, like screw you, whatever. And there was just something, I was just, I think I didn't really, I was immature. I didn't grow up like now if I have a rule, like I follow it and there's a lot of rules like at work or anywhere in life, there's rules. And you know, there's gonna be times in life where there's rules where, you know, it's a great line where you're gonna follow and you're not gonna follow. And that's kind of like up to you as an adult to figure out. And that's kind of how my dad raised me. Okay, so you're planning these proms, you're making commission off them. Obviously the owner of this place recognizes that you have a skill for getting things set up. You're learning the ropes. Now, where do you go from this position? What does that lead to? So from the dance, it went immediately into throwing these house parties at my parents' house. And your parents were cool with this? Or like, yeah, go ahead, use the house or? Well, so what happened was, I would say guys, there's 15 to 20 people coming over. And they were like, okay, you know, they'd rather me be at the house than me go somewhere else and they're possible drunk driving or whatever, they'd be in control. And the first couple parties, it was 15 to 20 people. But then once I had that dance and I started connecting with like the upperclassmen, the seniors and juniors. And I was just a sophomore at the time. Everyone started showing up and they're coming in carloads of people, like two, 300 kids at our house. We live on the lake and they're bringing bottles and bottles of alcohol. Your neighbors loved you. Actually, it's a Jewish community. So they all left during like the winter months to go down south or into the city. So you planned accordingly? Yeah, so it's like a summer community. So my whole street was pretty much empty. And there's actually, it's funny, there's a synagogue across the street too. So there was like a big parking lot and everything. So it would be- Like the perfect situation? Yeah, so it'd be lined up and down. It's this private community that's surrounded by a lake. So that's, I was, such a good question, just cause I was wondering like, how did cops not get caught on this? That was my concern. Cops, we got the cops called once and they just had turned down the music. A lot of it was, I had my dad there so my dad was like the protector. If the cops came, they just wanted to see there was an adult present. So two, 300 kids show up. Your parents aren't like, hey, you said there was 15 kids. Like what the hell's going on? Nobody said anything? Oh, they were fuming. But at that point, they didn't know what to do. They're upstairs. I'm bringing them like dinner upstairs, trying to accommodate them like some wine. I'm saying guys, it's under control. Some of the seniors- I think I could see the root cause now. Because I know what I would have done if my kid did that. No, and that's part of it. I had a lot of leeway. And I know like it's very, like a lot of people look at my dad. They look at, you know, in the doc, they're like, well, you know, this is partially his fault. And I'm like, well, you know, I developed into a good person now because of all that. So I don't know if I would necessarily go back and put the blame on him because the blame's on me. You know, regardless, it's all on me. Everything that happened, that's me 100%. Well, it seems like you idolize your dad quite a bit. And he was successful in his business that he was running and you were actually working for him for quite some time and pick things up, right? And what were those things that you picked up from the way he does business? So I never really understood like that business business aspect of it. Like, yeah, and I really needed that. Like I needed an adult to sit down and say, listen, this is how you do accounting. This is how you do this. This is how you deal with banks. And I didn't have that. But with him, I learned like execution, the planning, the organizing, people skills, how to run a team, how to be a team leader because I was running these weddings and of like 30 weight staff at a young age. I knew how to set things up. I always saw the bigger picture. So he taught me that. So when you're throwing these big parties or starting off, you're throwing these big house parties with kids at your high school. You're charging money for these parties? Like how does this being organized? So the house parties, we never charged money. If anything, we would set up a bar on the patio to hide it from my parents. Cause if they found out about the bar, it would be over. I'd be off to like a detention center or something. But it would be five bucks I had, you know, for to drink all night. And that would cover the cost of the liquor. Oh, so you're your, I mean, come on. They have to know you're drinking, right? They knew they were drinking. They knew kids were, you know, bringing alcohol. I don't know if they necessarily knew I was supplying it. I know my dad was furious at like the prom one night because the prom, the teachers give out these like bottles, these clear jugs, and the kids use that to fill it with liquor. So he was like, you know, what's the purpose of them giving these jugs out? But he would always confiscate it. He was very anti-licker. So he would go around. He didn't want kids drinking. He knew that was a part of it, but he didn't know that we were drinking. We'd try to conceal it. We'd be going through the party saying, hey, don't have that bottle open. Cause, you know, there's a lot of things in local towns of drunk driving, accidents, a death. And that's, you know, goes back to when you're chasing popularity, trying to like throw one of those parties. And something happens that could change your life forever. You know, if you're one of the kids hosting the party. Well, that was another one of my questions. There wasn't any major incident that happened as a result of those house parties. Well, there was. It was me going to federal prison years later, but- That's what you're running for. We're getting to that. This is a stepping stone. But there was no, I mean, no fights, no drunk driving going. I was gonna say, like we've had many incidences, like I've gone to house parties and things as, you know, in high school and there was a major disaster that happened. You know, one of our friends like crashed a new tree, killed a couple of people in the car. Like the whole community was shattered by it, but it's just, it's amazing that you made it out of that situation at least. So right now, breaking even, you're not making any money. It's just you enjoy doing this and you're really enjoying it. You like being this person that can throw these parties. So I love like the planning of it. I love the buildup and I mean, we'll talk about it with the big shows, but I didn't like the actual party. Stressed me out like I was babysitting. I never had a fun time at my parties. I just liked that buildup. Everyone texting me saying, hey, what's up for tonight? Can I have the address, this and that? So it was all about the buildup and the planning and that goes back to me learning that planning and execution from my dad's company. The actual party, I'm thinking, okay, when's the next one? And I kind of use that concept to be a successful like networker and promoter later on when I get into these teen club nights. Okay, so now what's the next step? So you got these house parties breaking even. What's the next progression from there? So the next step is my parents finally figure out that every time I say 20 people, it's ridiculous. There's not 20 people. It got to the point where I was like bringing them a list of everyone's name that was invited and then they just didn't believe it at that point. So they said, no more parties. So that's when I came across the Palace Theater in Danbury. The owner of it, he owns a lot of real estate downtown and we did the Connecticut Film Festival through my dad on Main Street at that venue and my dad was friends with the owner. So the owner says, yeah, you could rent it out and he charges me a thousand bucks for it and it's this old prehistoric venue theater and I turned the lobby into a nightclub for the night and I call it the end of the year blowout. This was June, 2011. I just turned 16. Okay, and at this point now, you've kind of got a name for yourself in the high school. So it's not hard to get people to show up for this party. Are you now, how are you turning this into a profit or are you still thinking? Yeah, are you charging at this point? How would you make it right here? Yeah, we charged, it was $12 a head. I think it was like $10 in advance, $12 at the door. I printed flyers and I got like the logistics of how to market event. Cause I took that same concept of a school dance but now this is outside the school dance. Outside the school, you don't have the school to market. So it's like, okay, how do I get these kids to come without that network of being able to use like the school's PA system and whatnot. And there was also a real market for something outside of a school dance because kids wanted to dance, you know, but the like the school would monitor like you couldn't be within a couple feet of each other, no inappropriate dancing, it was very strict. So how do you monetize that? How do you, you know, make it a thing that kids want to go to? Cause they'll go to the house parties but how do you get them to charge for it? Hey, you can grind at this party, no rules here. So what do you do? How do you get kids to show up to this? So I kind of marketed it like it was a school dance without authority cause kids love dressing up for the dances. They love taking the photos. And they hate authority. I mean, it makes sense. Yeah, it was great. They really liked that concept. They knew I could throw a party and they liked that club environment. So I said, I branded it as a nightclub for the night. And I rented a dance floor, a DJ booth. We had bars, non-alcoholic. We were doing like mixed non-alcoholic drinks. We had bartenders. We had Danbury police department. We had like bouncers with the earpieces in and shirts that said security and walkie-talkies. It looked like a legit, like maybe a New York city or a Los Angeles nightclub for these teenagers. And I started passing these flyers out. Facebook was just getting really big. I was gonna ask you about the social media like how you've really been able to capture that now for marketing purposes. So it was all Facebook at the time. Instagram was just beginning. No one really used it. I don't think Snapchat was out then. It was all Facebook and Twitter. And Facebook events was the thing. That was the party invite. Between that and my phone, of course, I would send out, back then you could like hit select all on your invites for friends and I could have 5,000 invitations sent out like that and a snap of a finger and everyone would get it. And back then people were more interactive. Like if they said they were going, that would be an accurate account. Did you unselect certain people? No, I didn't invite everyone. Even the haters, like the kids. Because there was certain kids at the high school that would absolutely despise the events. They despised the drinking. They despised me. Right, you had to have had some haters along the way. You know, they're great marketing because every person that says they don't like something that just triggers another person to look into it to form an opinion themselves. Okay, so are you now the first? Did you make money? Did you make money? I was just gonna say. Because you had the bouncers, you have all this stuff. Did you, were you profitable? Yeah, I made about 2,000 cash for myself. It was definitely profitable. Cause we did like over 1,000 kids. So you grossed 12,000. Then you made the concessions. So after everything was paid out. And I should have made more, but my expenses were very high. Cause I didn't really know the workings of everything. I paid like 1,500 bucks for flyers, which never should have been a thing. I ordered on one of those online printing sites. And that was just, and for like 1,000 flyers. Yeah, it was like a dollar of flyers, ridiculous. Okay, so from there, now what's next? When does this start getting a little shady? So that night there was like a couple ambulance runs because people pre-game, they come drunk. Then when they get their 10 minutes in, they're throwing up in the bathroom. You have to call the ambulance. So the owner didn't really want to have that again. He didn't want that with the building. And I understood that. So I reach out to this kid, Lewis, who went to my school who DJed at the local clubs, like downtown, that's Tuxedo Junction, and this place called Club Crystal or Club Plasma. And there used to be this thing called Tea Nights when I was in middle school, cause we had DJ skate at the ice arena. And then we had Tea Nights at Tuxedo's, which I never really went to. But we'd always see the flyers all around the school like flooded. So it's mostly a 21 and over club, but then it would have this one night that's for teens. So Tuxedo's was an 18 and over club. Danbury has like a weird law with that, with the 18 and over 18 a party, 21 to drink. And then they would close the liquor on once a month to do these teen parties. The market then became very oversaturated. The mayor kind of banned them and teen parties became mute for like that first couple of years between my eighth grade and, you know, going into sophomore year. It's funny. I remember when I was in Illinois, there was a club like that that had 18 and under and it was like fenced off. But then the rest was like 21 and over and you'd end up seeing people in the 21 and over given beer and alcohol to that group. So that's interesting. That wasn't the case though with that club. Well, I mean, there was a ton of underage drinking, not at the teen parties. That was very strict, but at the 18 and over college nights, it was a known thing. I mean, to make money at a college night, you have to serve illegally to minors. Every college bar does it. So you moved to this different venue and you're trying to set up a new party. Any changes? So I went to, first I went to Plasma and the owner looks at me and, you know, I'm the 16 year old and he says absolutely not. Like we're booked for the next six months. So then I walk across the street to Al at Tuxedo's. And Al's great, this really old school Italian guy. And at that point I'm wearing like a suit and tie to work because I'm into school because I felt like I was like this business person. I had this charity, I had business cards. It's like Ian Bick, executive director of this. And I called myself, this is where it's at productions. It's like branded, formed an LLC. And you know, I go to him in the suit and tie in a briefcase and I say, listen, I want to take the place, you know, I want to run it and do events. I want to laugh a little bit. Oh, he's cracking up. He's not taking me seriously. And I'm like, okay, I want the big room which could hold like 1500 kids. And he said, no, I'll give you the small room. And it has to be like a weeknight. So he gives me this room for 750 bucks. It was called streets and that's the front part of it. And it could hold a legal capacity was like 100, but you could really fit like two to 300. And I didn't even promote it. I just sent out an invite to my friends. It was just Danbury High School kids charged like eight bucks to get in. And we did like 300 people. And that was just like one night at the club. Like it was great. On a weeknight too. It was a summer, but yeah. But even still like someone like Al would never get that meant that was extra business for him. Right. Now, what was the profit on that one? Are you starting to scale up with the business? I think I dropped this thing. Oh yeah. That's fine. Did it disconnect and you still hear yourself? No, I'm good, I'm good. Okay, yeah, that's fine. So the profit I made, I think like 500 to 1000 bucks because there was no expenses with that rental fee he paid for the security. He paid for essentially everything. The music was in there. So I realized a place like this could be very, very profitable. So now you're doing these in each one you're making a profit, you're a kid, right? You're 16 years old or whatever. How's your ego? How big is your ego getting? Are you just getting cocky as hell now at this point? Ego is through the roof, man. I mean, I just felt like I was like the king of Danbury High School. For parties, like I was running everything. You know, I was involved in, I was VP in my class. I was involved in the proms. I was involved in homecoming. They came to me and said, can you help us reboot our homecoming dance because no one would show up. It was in the cafeteria. They didn't want to spend any money. And I turned the cafeteria into this elaborate nightclub using like party rental companies. We put up pipe and drape, a dance floor, up lighting. And it was a big success. They raised like $12,000 for this veterans charity. And that's something, you know that had never been done before. Now at this point with your ego just blowing up and looking back, are you treating people a little differently? Are you acting like your ego is real big at this point? So referring to back then or now. Back then. So I didn't realize it until I saw the old footage. So Mike Squires, who took all the old footage of tuxedos that you see in the documentary. And I'm like, wow, I'm an asshole. Like I'm just looking at it like I was just, I was not like nice to people. Like I was always on my phone. They'd ask me a question. I'm just like, ah, whatever. Like constantly glued to my phone. And you know, I was always raised to be nice to everyone treat everyone with equal respect. But just looking back on it, I think I definitely strayed from being very nice in high school to then going into a period of time where, you know, I was, and also I was going through a lot. Not that that's an excuse, but I was putting on a lot of weight. I was dealing with a lot of stress, but I was just not nice to people. Yeah, you know, there's a real danger when a kid gains that much attention because you're young. You're not, you know, you don't have any wisdom yet, right? And so you get all this attention. This is one of the reasons why I think like child celebrities just have such a challenge is your ego gets so big, you just don't know until much later when you're old and you look back and like, oh shit, like what was I doing? So from there that you did that, you made a little bit of a profit. The ego's exploding. Where are you going from there? So from there, Al lets me book like three or four dates right in a row because at that point I understood marketing at each event I needed to have the next one set up. So if I did one event, I needed to have the next one ready with flyers by the end of the night to market the next one to get kids to go. So the first one, the Halloween rave, I do 750 kids and that's marketing to schools all over Connecticut and like the New York border. They were like 10 minutes away, the local towns and that's bringing in everyone we're doing. A lot of flyers at different schools you would get like ambassadors. So the first time you branched out even further. Yep, and people became familiar with this. This is where it's at productions name and my name. We'd have like our Twitter handles on the flyer like at Ian underscore BIC. And then what happens is at the time EDM electronic dance music was starting to make like a comeback or return these mashups and stuff. And at the high school proms and dances it was always just one genre like that pop music. There wasn't that mix. So I was the first one to bring to Danbury like that mix. You have like the reggaeton or you have this and this mashed up together with the hip hop and it attracted all types of people all music genres and they loved it. The kids loved it and we did 750 people then the Christmas rave. I dressed up as Santa and I was flinging like candy and stuff from the stage. We did a thousand people and then we did a paint party that did 1200 and then another one did 1500. And it was just crazy in the amount of money I was making. I'd go to Al at the end of the night and I'd have like $20,000 cash just sitting on the table. And I was taking away like anywhere from an eight to $10,000 profit. Wow. So now at this point everything's legit, right? You're not really breaking any laws. You're not scamming anybody. You have a legit business and you're making money in a legitimate way, is this correct? Except for tax evasion. I was a kid that didn't know anything about tax. But a full calendar year hasn't even passed though yet so you don't even know about taxes. Yeah, this is like six month period of time where I'm making all this money, I buy a new car. I really just spend the money on my friends too. Like we're all just hanging out, having a good time. Now at this point is your dad like, yeah, look at my kid, he's an entrepreneur. He's making good money. Are they encouraging you at this point? I don't think my mom really knew much about what money I was making. She was very out of it. She didn't know like what I was doing with the teen club nights or whatever. She knew I was getting local press from the charity. My dad definitely took an interest to like the club nights and stuff but they weren't really like guiding me. I didn't go to them. I was just like, to me, like I had a business but I didn't at the same time. There was no structure. There was no long-term thinking. To me it was just what's the next step to getting famous or to building, to getting more people to like me or to be attracted to it. Had I just done those teen nights, we'd probably not be having this conversation. I could have stuck with that, made good money, gotten like a legitimate business and that would have been the end of it. All right, so how does it start to go in the wrong direction from there? I mean, you're making a lot of money for a young kid, very short period of time. You're getting the attention that you're seeking. How does it start to go in the wrong direction? So two defining moments happen at that time. One is kids are seeing like concerts. There's a lot of touring acts. So when you're getting to be like that junior or senior in high school, your parents are starting to let you bring or go out to concerts and do things like that. So Mac Miller had came to Danbury and kids went and they're like, Ian, why can't you bring someone like him to a show at Tuxedos or wherever we wanna go to concerts? Kids were getting bored with the teen nights and also the market was getting oversaturated. Al was renting out the club to every kid that wanted to be like me and it was good for him because he wanted to get that rental fee but it was bad for my business because there was no way to differentiate the two brands. Anyone could throw my name on it. There was not like, I'm gonna get a lawyer and sue you for using my brand. So that kind of deteriorated it and I was losing control over that. So with everyone saying, Ian, you should do this. There goes the popularity thing again. I'm chasing that wanting to be like, let me try it now to book an act. And so what do you do? Who do you after and what does that look like? So my idea was to book Big Sean and Danbury. And I- This would be huge if you did that. Which would be massive if I could pull that off. And this guy, Davosay, who graduated in 2011, a couple of years older than me, had went to Rhode Island for college and Rhode Island was blowing up with these big EDM shows and hip hop shows because it's a big college school, big party school. And Dave had immersed himself into that whole production aspect with the college and doing the shows and frat parties. And he had got wind of what I was doing with the teen parties in Danbury. So he sets up a meeting with me and we talk and I kind of tell him my idea. And at this point, I had a couple other partners involved from other towns who didn't make it into the documentary. Josh Tupper was one of them that you see in the doc. And Dave actually steals my idea to bring Big Sean to Danbury. He cuts me out and takes Josh and this kid, Zach and Matt. Oh, wow, that's not in the documentary. Oh, there's so much. That's why it's gotta be a TV series, but. Wow, yeah, okay, so let's, why we're here, cause I had a question around Dave is he opted not to be in the documentary. I'm assuming this is why. Dave was a big part, like so as in the doc, and the government always said, okay, I took over $500,000, but their big point was the jet skis. So the jet skis, yes, it was a bad decision, but that only amounts to $20,000. So where does all the money go? Most of this money, I was the middleman to investing into Dave's company. And that was with the concerts. These concerts aren't free. How do I afford acts like Tyga, Big Sean, any act? These acts are getting hundreds of thousands of dollars. Where does that money come from? So money was essentially getting, I was like the hedge fund company that would then invest into Dave's production company. And all that money just got lost. So let's back up, right? Because there's some steps in between that, right? So he takes your idea and he runs with it and you're like, piss. Yeah. Oh, I'm pissed. That's crazy. I wanted to invest in it. I had money to invest my own money from the Teen Knights and they come to me like a couple days before they announced the show and they're like, Ian, we need you to promote it. Because they never thought about how they were gonna promote it and outreach it in Danbury, the surrounding towns. So we worked out a deal where I could throw my name on it and say that I booked Big Sean in Danbury with having no risk to do it, which was great exposure for me. And I got to meet like his manager and get like that whole aspect of how a big tour works and really learn about that. And they cut you in on the deal or did they pay you outright for that? I didn't get any money, it was just the exposure. Okay, so you did it for free just to get your name and get the connections or whatever. Exactly. And how does it go? Does he put this together and does it go well? He puts it together, but the show's a flop. They only had three weeks to promote this arena-sized show and my network's only like 1,500 people. So I get 1,500 people to go, but we needed 2,000 just to break even, two or 3,000 to break even. The place holds 5,000, but it was Big Sean in Danbury, which was great and he was a huge act, Grammy nominated. And what happened was the video, well, I don't know if you guys are familiar with like the production aspect, it's like these LED four by four things and they cost like 10 to $15,000 a panel. And we looked at the artist rider the day before and it says, oh, we need this video wall. And everyone's like, well, we overlooked this. So we got charged like $20,000. Oh, so they expect YouTube to have that. It's not like they brought that with their true. This is a common thing, correct me if I'm wrong, like with especially big name people, they're like, oh, it has to be a certain type. I just want to show up. It has to be a certain type of piano. I want certain lighting and stuff like that and you got to handle that shit, right? Yeah, so like tours like Justin Bieber or whatever, they're bringing a lot of their own gear and they're getting the money from the tour but a promoter booking a one-off is responsible for all the production, we're responsible for everything down to like sorting through their M&M's or their skills. How do you make profit in that situation? Like Al says, it's a very high risk business. I mean, you're putting up a hundred grand for a show that can make a hundred grand profit or you could lose everything. Plus they don't show up sometimes, right? Yeah, I only had that instance once with Chief Keef that had to do with us going not through an agent. When you go through the agency, there's never an issue. It's when it's with the manager and you're doing shady deals to try to save money, that's when there's a lot of issues with that. So you didn't have to put any money into this. You didn't really lose any money even though it was a flop. But now you're connected to a different network. Okay, so now where do you go from here? So Matt and Zach each lose like $5,000 and they come to me and they're like, oh, let's get rid of Dave, let's cut him out. We don't need Dave, let's go book our own show, let's raise the money. Cause at that point, Dave had had like the spreadsheet so I kind of had an understanding of what the cost of a show would be. The only thing we were missing is event insurance, which I didn't come to learn about like till years later, which would have been helpful to know at the time. But so we decide, okay, we wanna bring Wiz Khalifa to Danbury. We put up a poll. It was like Wiz, ASAP Rocky. ASAP Ferg and a couple other people and everyone voted for Wiz Khalifa. So we estimated that if Wiz was like $60,000 to book cause Matt, one of our partners said he could book Wiz. He had booked Asher Roth for us at the time. So we figured, okay, he could book Wiz. So we figured 60 grand for the act then with the venue, the lights, everything would be about $125,000 for the show. And they look at me, okay, how are we gonna get $125,000? So I start going around to my friends at the high school and I said, do you guys wanna throw in money? Because at the time, they would give me like $500 or $1,000 to go into the teen nights and I would take like some legal Zoom contract and I'd give them like 2% and they would make a few hundred bucks on their money. That way we were all making money. So 2% of what they gave you or 2% of the profits? 2% of the profits, two to 5% of whatever like $10,000 was. So they were making a couple hundred bucks on their 500 bucks, which is a good return. That way everyone felt involved and they all played sports whereas I didn't. So they had that network to other schools through sports to get these kids to come. So what happens is I start reaching out to kids that said, hey, we're booking Wiz, would you like to throw in money? And I was asking for a lot of money. I was asking for $1,000 to $5,000. I figured I needed like 20 people or whatever I needed to put in money. And a lot of them was like, okay, let me talk to my parents, let me do this. And it was slow rolling. And we only had like, this was November at the time of 2012. And we only had, you know, we wanted to do the show in January. So we were pressed for time. We need to get the show announced. So what happens is I said, this isn't going fast enough. Let me think of another way. So I edit the contract on legal Zoom and I said, I'm gonna guarantee their money back. So this is where the shit gets. This is where it gets shady. Yeah, this is where it gets shady. It's all legitimate at this point. And I'll explain, but the money starts flowing in. I raised $120,000 in like a week or two. Wow. Well, I mean, who wouldn't, right? You're gonna put money in, you're guaranteed to get your money back plus percentage. I mean, obviously. And you've paid them back before this with their small investments. So I had paid them back with like that, the little teen nights. And I didn't guarantee them a profit. There was no rate of return. It was a potential profit if the show was profitable. We already gained trust. Yep, and they wanted to meet with Khalifa. So that was part of the deal. They got some backstage passes. So we raised the money, my aunt and uncle put in money, all of our parents put in money, and then all these kids put in money, ranging from $1,000 to $10,000. Wow, and then what was the guarantee return, do you remember? It was zero. It was just the profit, a potential profit. Oh, I'm talking about later. Oh, he guaranteed to get their money back. And then a percentage if it was profitable. So like if they put in $10,000 on a $100,000 show, they would get 10%, whatever the math is on that. I see, I see. So they're gonna get, no matter what, they're getting their money back. It's basically with the contract. So you put this together, you got the money, everybody's guaranteed to get their money back. What happens? Well, my logic is the show's gonna at least break even. It's Wiz Khalifa. I gotta put 2,000 people in. Yeah, it's a big name. So it wasn't like a fraudulent intent. It was just like, okay, I'm gonna get the money back so I could guarantee the money. We bring it to Matt and we needed, he said we needed proof of funds for the artist. And that was believable. You know, we were kids and they'd want a legit show. And we give him the bank stub and Matt's like a ghost. He doesn't know what to do. And it comes out that he lied and he didn't have the connection to book Wiz Khalifa. So it's like the week before Thanksgiving and you know, Zach and Josh and I are like yelling at Matt or throwing papers around the office. The Matrix had given us this office. An exchange for me helping out with everything and we had this nice like office with the secretary and all this stuff. And we're like, what the hell do we do? Yeah, did you say, I just should just give everybody their money back? Or were you like, now we're gonna see what we can squeeze? Well, we are gonna give everyone their money back. You gave them the option, didn't you guys all meet and then give them the option? So what happens was Matt feels bad and he reaches out to Dave Osei to try to fix it because he knew Dave got us big Sean so Dave could probably fix this situation. It turns out Wiz wanted like $150,000 at the time so we weren't gonna pull it off. We weren't even close. We weren't even close. And it wasn't even feasible with the numbers. So Dave comes to us and says, listen, we've learned from our mistakes of big Sean, we have the connections, let's do this whole string of shows at URI and in Connecticut and let's break the money apart. So then I bring that idea to the investors. We have like this meeting at my parents' house in the living room. It was quite a scene. We were all like huddled around. And I said, listen, you guys, totally honest up front, you guys could take your money out or you can be invested in it and it's just gonna take you longer to get your money back another six months because we're spreading the show out. About half pulled out, some left some money in, some took some money out, some took all of it out and we're left with like $60,000. Okay, so now what? You got your money, now we're gonna break up the, you got $60,000, now you're gonna break up the shows. What happens from there? So Dave books like a mix of like five to six shows with artists like Mike Stud, Huey Mack, a couple EDM artists that weren't really well known at the time. And then that settled it. But then in February of 2013, he had this opportunity because we had like a buffer of $20, $25,000 left that we were just using operating expenses and anything came up. And he calls me three weeks before and he says, Ian, you know, this is a once in a lifetime opportunity to do this show with Rusco. It was an EDM show at URI which had seen huge success with like these tours of life in color, day glow, the big paint parties. And EDM was just a bubble that was bursting there. Thousands of kids were going. I had no idea really what EDM was besides from like the mashup stuff that I was doing. And we, he says this guy Rusco who was like a European act would be a major success. I could double the money on it. So we give him the $25,000 and this is where everything goes wrong from that point forward. So what happens? So I'm told up until the night of the show it's making money, it's profitable because they had other partners involved too. So it's a whole cluster mess of partners. There's my investor's giving to me, I'm giving to Dave, Dave's giving to someone else. All these people involved. But I'm getting like these daily emails or reports of how many tickets sold. Oh, this is interesting because I feel like the documentary doesn't kind of share it this way. I mean, there's so much to it that they couldn't really bring in. Dave wasn't really that much a big part of the documentary. Yeah, you gotta look for the audience so they know too because I know a lot of people will probably go watch it afterwards and there's gonna be some things that don't line up. So when you go over something that doesn't line because I'm hearing some of the stuff and I'm going, wait a second, they really pinned all of that on you in the documentary. Yeah, I mean, I don't think they really pinned it in like a negative way. I think they told like the overall of it, like this show happened and I'm pretty clear in the documentary, I thought it was a success. But the night of, I'm looking at the whole show happening and I'm like, okay, this is great. I brought my friends, the investors in a limo. We got hotels for the night and it looked packed, you know? And his partner comes up to me, Dave's partner and says, wow, this was a total loss. And I was like, what do you mean it's a loss? He's like, dude, we needed like 2,000 people to break even or whatever. And there was only 1,000 or 1,200 people there. So it was just, that was happening. And at that point, I was already telling my investors they made money. So here comes that defining point where in my head, where am I telling them they lost money? Or am I keeping it going? Do I have to lie now to cover it up and say that they made money when they didn't? Or do I go back and be honest with them and say, hey guys, you lost money. But in their eyes too, I think that maybe they would think that I'm lying to them about losing. Oh, just wanted to keep the profits to yourself. Exactly, because I'm a kid too and I'm thinking, okay, wow, this show looks packed. They're thinking the same thing too. So they are all there and they're having a great time. Exactly. So had they not been there, then maybe I would have told them that. Oh, interesting. That's another thing they don't really talk about the documentary because that's a different predicament right there of going like- Because they're probably pumped on it. Yeah, you take them in a limo, they see all these people. And now they're like, all right, tell us how much money we made. So how do I do that? How do I then tell them you guys lost? So now you're still a kid. How stressed out is this making you at this point? Because this is a bit of a dilemma. It's like, do I tell them? Do I lie? Then what does that look like? How are you dealing with the stress of this? At that point, I wasn't totally stressed. I just made the decision to cover it up because I figured, okay, the other shows, we had like four other shows planned. I could just sacrifice my profits of what I would make because they would do well. My logic was everything was always gonna work out and that got me into a crap load of trouble. But I always assumed there was something that was gonna happen next that would work out. It was very over the top optimistic and I just had no understanding that things can actually go wrong. Well, in your defense, that's not that unreasonable considering how much success you kind of had up into that point. Ego's massive because of how much success you had. You probably think you could work your way out of this. Yeah, you're thinking you could figure out a way to make it profitable, right? Maybe the next time is gonna work out there. But the difference was I wasn't in control and I think that's where I go wrong too. I wasn't in control of it. Too many people involved. Too many people involved. It's big leagues now and I had no control over anything. So the first show loses, you lie to them and tell them that, hey, we're having success. Where's the number of money wise? So we've got 100, is there 120 grand in the pot? No, it went down to 60. Okay, so you lose 60,000 on the first show? No, the $120,000, we had to give some back. Oh, that's right. Okay, so it went down to 60 because people pulled their money out. So you're working with 60, you do that show, how much do you lose on that first show? Cause I'm trying to do the math on how you're dipping into this 60. I got back about like $10,000, so the 25 to 30, so which was a big chunk of money we lost. And so I came up with a number that they made like, cause I looked at it to show like each person made like 500 bucks on there, like 1,000 or 15. So not only did I lose $20,000 of say that 30K investment, but then I was also in the whole of that imaginary profit. Of what you're telling them they're making too. So figure another five grand. Oh, this has got to be what really fucks you too, right? Cause you document all this and you create these fake spreadsheets to show people that they made money. Well, yeah, I sent them that the electronic aspect, that's where like the real fraud stuff is the concerts were very legitimate. You know, the way I went about things weren't legitimate, but the concert, if you gave money for a concert, we got the show. There was never, it wasn't like fire fest where the show didn't happen. This was, you know, I was a legitimate promoter, the shows happened. It's just the way I went about business was not ethical. And then the electronics business was the fraudulent part of it. Okay, so you're taking the leftover money and you're putting it into the next party or are you trying to get more money because you need more than that little bit that's left? So at that point, all the parties were funded, like that 60 grand got paid for all at once, minus maybe like last minute expenses or the other half of the artist's event. So that 10 grand that came back to me went right to pay out dividends or whatever. I would start stalling at that point because 10 grand wouldn't cover everyone's investors money on the 30. So I'd stall, I'd say money was taking longer to get checks in, which part of it was true because I didn't get that 10 grand for like a month and a half until after the show. It was always something with money, you know? And when it was time to pay, it would take months and months. People are gonna drag their feet. Now you're not sweating at this point. At this point, you're like, all right, the next one's gonna crush. All right, the next one's gonna, when did you start sweating? After the last one. When Nella's in, you were done. When I was done, that's when. No, it's not working. So the whole time, you're optimistic about this. The whole time, you think you're gonna pull yourself out. So what's show number two? What goes down on show number two? So, okay, that one, you're fucked, you're telling people, don't worry, I'll get your money, I'll do your money, you're probably just itching to get to the next show to get your opportunity, what happens? Show number two was a snowstorm with Huey Mack, so that just got canceled. But we had paid him in full, out of good faith, we were these new guys in the industry, so we paid him in full, paid the club in full, the show was 10 grand. I didn't get a single dollar back. I think he still owes us a show maybe to this day, I don't even know. But it was like a nine or 10 grand show, not a single dollar, so bam, another 10 just wiped. We paid for all the hotels, I transferred like one of the flights, I went to Florida for the weekend with a couple of friends, but that was it. Now none of the investors are going, this show totally got canceled, we lost money with the hell. So at the time I was being told that we would at least get a make-up date, and then we would get the venue would let us, because the venue, they wanna keep their revenue, they don't wanna give the money back, they'll say you can have a new date, only that never happened, we never got the artist date, we never got rescheduled, nothing. Wow, so now you're into the third one, what's happening there? So the third one that was Grizzly at the same club that Huey Mack was supposed to be at, and it was just poorly promoted. Like we paid five grand for this act, or six grand, plus the venue, plus everything, it was like 10 grand on a college night. Kids weren't spending 20 bucks when they could go to that night anyways, so we were just giving out free tickets at that point just to pack it. They thought it was, they figured okay, the college night does a thousand people, every Thursday we could do a thousand. Yeah, they're doing a thousand people at a dollar entry, no one, these college kids don't wanna pay $20 to get in, so just total wipe, loss, I think I got a couple grand back on our investment. Okay, now we're getting to the last show, what's happening there, so now you're like, screw, screw, screw. Well, there's stuff that happens, at what point does the headphones get involved here? Oh, further later. Oh, that's later, okay. All right, so keep walking us through here. So much of the story, it's pretty crazy. I know, I know, there is, I know. So there was actually two more shows, one was in Connecticut, which I had control over of, that, and I marketed and everything was at Toad's Place, which is a historic rock venue in Connecticut, and that lost $2,000, it came close to breaking even, that was our best-ran one, but I had no network with college kids, you know? Social media still wasn't really this huge thing, there was no Facebook ads, there was no Instagram ads, there was no way to network, and I wasn't really drive, I was lazy at that point, I wasn't that same hustler that was on the campus. Did you look for anybody to partner with, or anything that had connections like that? I was banking on Dave, Dave's company, he was the partner, he was getting half of our share, so out of 100% the investors had 50, we had 25, Dave had 25, and you know, we figured, okay, Dave would market it, he had that college connections, he was the older person, I'm still in high school, I don't have access to these college kids at New Haven or Yale or any of these areas, and I mean, we did, all right, because of the artist, the artist heavily promoted it, which is in the case with every artist, you have to really reach out and pull teeth to get artist's promotions, and we lost two grand on that, so I was able to get that show cost 12, and I was able to get the money back on that too. So that's the last one? There was one more that we put up a little bit of separate money for, we put 10 grand into this foam show at UMass Amherst in Massachusetts, and the guys scammed us, they did the show, it looked good, our partner Zach went, looked absolutely packed, and then they give us this bullshit PNL report, like that didn't even make any sense, like inflating all the operating expenses and everything and saying they had less people, we could clearly tell there was more people than that. And- Do you think they're doing this because you're kids? Do you think they're like- Well, they were kids too, I think they made a lot of money in that sense, and they didn't wanna give us our share, so we lost another 10 grand there, we tried to sue them, it costed more money, we spent five grand on a lawyer and still didn't get anything back. So this is the fourth one, now you're fucked. We're done, that's it, that's all the show. So what do you do from here now? You're like, all right. Well now at this point, you've completely used all the money that you had that people had given you, so you've wiped out the 60 grand, and you've done all these shows, now you're probably scrambling to figure out how am I gonna get some of this money back? I'm in the whole like 30 grand, I think the numbers come out too, like with getting money back from shows and then everything, cause you do still get some of the money back on those other shows that we did get back. So I'm in about 30 or 40 grand, and so then I start going to like shady people to just for loans. A couple of guys I worked with at The Matrix, I said, do you have it? I knew that like he dealt weed, so I was like, do you know anyone that can loan me money? Cause now I'm just thinking, okay, how do I make these payments? So he links me up with these guys in New York and they're giving me like 5,000 cash. At one point you're not scared to death even though you're not doing that to your dad? One, I should have went to my dad, I had no concept of how much money he made at the time. Right. So it wasn't even a thought. To me, I'd be like a screw up if I went to my dad saying I needed money. You got a loan shark, yeah. Had I went to my dad, we could have fixed everything. If I went to him, and I think this goes back to my ego too, about wanting to do it on my own, cause that would have been an easy fix, just to fix, you know, he could have got involved with the parents. We could have just came. Could have taught you some things. Yeah, we could have came clean and said, listen, the show's actually lost money, here's all the proof. You know, we'll give you this money back, this is what it is. Maybe it's a civil suit because he guaranteed you the money back, but there was no collateral, it was an uncollateral, you know, investment. So this is what it is. But I didn't do that. And I borrow from the shady people like 5, 10 grand just to stop the bleeding. People are blowing up my phone. I'm 17 at the time. What kind of drug dealer gives you 5 to 10 grand? And what do they say that, you know, hey, what are the interest rates? Like how are you gonna pay? If you don't pay this back, what are you gonna do? Break your fingers? Like what's the deal? No, these are just like some- Hold your jet skis hostage? These weren't like, I didn't have the jet skis yet, but no, these weren't like that type of drug dealer. These are like stoners that, you know, made some money selling weed and they weren't like a threat. So I didn't really look at it as a threat. I promised them like one person, I promised a piece of like that May foam show which didn't end up happening, which screwed me too. That was a one in UMass, but I'm just taking this money and just to stop the bleeding, I was tired. My phone was blowing up. Everyone's like, cause it's May now. They gave their money in November. All the shows happen, where's the money? And I said everyone was successful. So now I'm, you know, I have a real situation on my hand. So you're taking the loans to pay people back is what you're doing? Correct. Yeah. Now how you feel able to do that? Yeah, exactly. Well, I mean, with the, with the drug dealers, I was, it's not like I went to them and said, Hey, you're going to invest in this. And then I took your money and paid off someone else. I just said, Hey, I need a loan. It's a personal loan. I could, I could pay you off with a personal loan. If I went to a bank and said, I need the money to pay off a credit card, I could do that. Right. Now are you stressing yet? Are you at this point, you're shitting your pants? I was stressed. I was under a lot of pressure because I worked with people. I went to school with them, you know, so I'm just delaying, you know, I'm stalling. I'm saying there's problems with the bank. There's problems with getting the money, this and that. But it was a very, very stressful time that like April, May of 2013. Now I'm assuming though, still at this point though, you don't even probably know what a Ponzi scheme is or know what you're doing is illegal yet. Do you, or you just think you're just doing whatever it takes to get back, or do you know? I didn't know what a Ponzi scheme was until I went to that reverse proffer with the federal government. So we were never taught about Bernie Madoff. That was still too recent. There was no Bernie Madoff. There was nothing. The first time I heard the name Bernie Madoff was months after and someone said, as a joke, you're the next Bernie Madoff. And I was like, who's Bernie Madoff? Then I start Googling it and I'm like, oh shit, this could kind of be compared to what I was doing, essentially. But it wasn't, there was no intent of, okay, I'm gonna set up this Ponzi scheme, steal from everyone, do this, do that. And you know, it's this mission. You're just trying to patch holes at this point. It was just stop the bleeding, put a bandaid on. So you're digging a hole for yourself. How do you, what do you do next that makes the hole even deeper? Cause you're taking loans, paying people back, but it doesn't stop there, right? So my friend introduces me to this guy named Henry Skazafava. And he had just got this big settlement from a gym cause he had lost vision in his eye from equipment malfunctioning and breaking. So he gets like a million bucks. And this kid, Ryan introduces me to him and brings me to him. And I'm sitting in their basement and I'm telling him, at this point, this is when we're starting to get into electronics. I meet this kid, John Robill, where we become business partners and he brings me these like beats by Dre and says, listen, I can get these for 50 bucks and we could sell them for 400 bucks. Now, you know, if I brought that to you, you're gonna, you know, as adults, you're gonna say, well, why is it only 50 bucks? To me, I kind of asked it. I said, well, where do they come from? They said it's off the truck product. Like it fell off the truck. Like it's from China, it fell off the truck and it's dented damage goods. I didn't really know much about like fake, I didn't use beats, I didn't, I wasn't into that. I wasn't into flashy clothes. I wore the same thing all the time. It wasn't anything fancy. You know, I had a cheap suit and tie that I was wearing around and that was it. It wasn't about clothes. And so we get these electronics and that's when I start this. It's called WB and Wholesale, LLC for Robo and Bic. Wait a second, so you actually started in LLC to sell fucking illegal beats by Dre? Didn't think they were illegal at the time, but yes, we're selling these beats. We're selling Otterbox phone cases, which look very real. We're selling DVDs. I feel like your lawyer should have been able to use that to your advantage though, to show just how naive you were in the situation versus the intent. I'm sure the FBI is trying to paint you as this guy who's this mastermind. Yeah, mastermind, but if you know it's illegal and you know you're doing some shady shit that's as dumb as a drug dealer selling dope and keeping spreadsheets on his dope that he's selling, like this doesn't make sense. And you know, here's the thing. We went to a lawyer who drafted those contracts, these loan agreements with that rate of return. And he said, yeah, this is totally legit as long as you're waiving the right to usury, like the usurious rates of the interest because what do you can't go above 20% or whatever it was. And he is the one that's structured. I went to him and I said, listen, I want to give a 50% rate of return. And the only thing he asks is where the profits come from. And I said, well, I get that 50% number not because I'm trying to get people to give their money, but because I'm looking at the potential profits from these electronics. That's where that figure comes from. It wasn't to loop people in. It was because if we can make a 100 or 200% return on electronics, we can afford to give 50%. Of course. If you're buying headphones for 50 and selling for 400, there's no reason we can't give you 50% of that. So you were getting investors to invest in this business as well? Yeah, at that point, the concert business was on hold. I'm just trying to get out of it. And I'm starting WB wholesale. And I'm going to like people at the matrix that didn't invest in concerts to give five or 10 grand. I'm giving that to my partner, John. We're making some money. It's legit at that point. We could pay out that 50% rate. It was legit for about a month or two. Well, it's kind of legit. Yeah, besides the fact that they were fake, but we did get a lawyer to draft a contract with this guy, John. Right, at this point, you think it's completely legit. Where are you selling these beats by Dre? So John had this other guy from Bethel who I eventually meet him and he pulls up to the meeting in a Burberry suit driving a golf cart. So imagine this kid who's like our age coming to a meeting. Yeah, and he sits at these restaurants racking up tabs all day. Like we'd get in, we'd offer to pay and the owner was like, you don't want to pay. It's at a thousand bucks already. Just like drinking wine and he ends up getting charged for fraud later on separate from mine. All right. So it's just like a whole mess of kids with all this money doing all this. But we draft a contract with him saying the product's 100% legit. He's getting it from a legitimate source because that was one of my concerns. It soon comes to find out like the beats weren't registering on their website. They were falling apart. Like you'd be listening to the ear thing or the cord would just fall off. Yeah, your friend kind of brought that up that way. He's concerned and he brought that to you and said you weren't very concerned about it. Yeah, I figured I was good because to me a contract was everything. Like I looked at if you signed the contract, we were good but what I'd learn later on, the contract's only really as good as the person signing the contract too. And putting their word behind it because if it's not guaranteed with some type of collateral. So you didn't think you were liable? No, I didn't think I was liable. I thought it was good if there was an issue with fake product. So you're getting money from people to buy these electronics, to sell them. You're offering them a profit. Now that, what happens there? That goes belly up and you still owe me, now you owe people money again. So the contract started helping me, the electronics helped me bury out like that 30, 40 grand hole I'm in paying back the drug dealers from this first initial round of concerts. And then I meet Henry and I'm just trying to clear everything up. And I say, Henry, I need a loan for $30,000. That's a figure, pay everything off, get a clean slate. And he wasn't interested about where the money was going, what it was doing. He had invested into Henry, I mean to this kid, Alex, who we were getting a little electronics at the time. And he just said, well, what's your interest rate? And I said, you know, I'll give you 50%. And he said that's not enough. So he charged me on 30 grand. He wanted 50 grand back. Wow. And you said okay? Yeah, I had three weeks to give him 50 grand back on his 30K, so it was 50 grand total. And at that point, one, where else was I gonna get the money? You can take what you can get. I'm gonna take what I could get, I'll figure it out, because that was my mentality, you know? Figure it out later, do it now, I'll figure it out, maybe whatever it was, you know? So I consolidated all the debt, and I took his money, paid everyone off, and I had a fresh start. Except you owe him now 50 grand. Oh, and 50 grand, yes. So what was your plan on, how are you gonna get his money back now? So the plan was I was gonna keep the electronics business going. And, you know, really get another investor because everyone would have been paid back, go deep in the electronics. Dave gets wind of the electronics business, and you or I, and he feels bad about this string of concerts. So he starts bringing me his fraternity brothers and their parents who are investing like 20, 30, 40, 50 grand. And we still have this 50% rate of return, and I'm giving him a cut of every investor he brings. Wow, so now at this point, you're generating some serious fresh meat. Yeah, that month of June, we bring in like $100,000 in investors. And I'm like, John, you know, we could do the electronics, but the electronics never took off. And, you know, we could do it small scale, a couple of grand, but you couldn't do it. One, you couldn't do it in the 21 days I was promising people, you know, their money. Had I said, okay, six months, but then at the same time, that was me setting that days to, you know, it kind of enticed people to give their money. Yeah, I mean, that sounds amazing. Give you, you know, I get 50%, I get my money back guaranteed plus 50% In 21 days. And in 21 days. Cause I like one of the best, but you know what too, who are these adults that are not really skeptical of that? I mean, that is crazy. I think they looked at my early success with the concerts, you know, what I was doing. And everyone thought these other concerts were successful. So, you know. You were actually getting things printed about you in the newspaper too, right? There was press and people just knew like of me and they figured my dad was successful. So maybe he would be back. Plus they signed a contract and they're like, it's legal, it's all here. So if I just take him to court. Exactly, so I'll just take him to court. I mean, some people brought the contract to their attorneys and these are all local attorneys. They're not dealing with anything this scale, you know, had they brought it to like a real big law firm, they'd say, what the hell are you guys doing? So that was kind of like the basis of where this starts. So you get 100,000 in June. I know it keeps going. So what happens next? So I mean, then Henry invests a quarter million in early July because Dave comes to me and says, Ian, I was never gonna take Henry's quarter million. We didn't need it. Everything was good. Like we were at even with everyone. Like right at this point, I was still, Henry was still investing in like the electronics on the side, which was kind of not kicking off and kind of turning into like that Ponzi scheme aspect, just floating it, but it still could have been a manageable, you know, problem to solve. It was when Dave comes to me and says, Ian, you know, we screwed up this last batch. Let's do concerts in the fall. And you know, there's me. I have no interest in electronics. I hated the electronics. It wasn't my passion, you know, my passion was throwing events. And Dave brings me this whole. So you just lied up, right? Cause of the opportunities there now, Ian. Dave brings me this presentation and it's all these acts. It's two big Tyga shows. It's the Chief Keef show. It's three Kid Ink shows. It's Wale, all these big acts. Massive. Massive. Like if this was successful, the gross was like $700,000 on like a 250K investment. And I was so naive thinking every single show would sell out. And so I'm like, Dave, you know what? We just lost, but at the same time, I was listening to like all these motivational stuff varying to like motivation, inspirational stuff. Yeah, don't give up. Keep going. Exactly. You gotta believe in yourself. Keep the dream alive. Exactly. Like you asked any of my friends to say, Ian was a kid posting quotes on Instagram every day. So I figured, okay, everyone like failed to get where they were. You know, I was trying to be like that next Mark Zuckerberg. That's like every entrepreneur's story. Yeah, everyone failed. And I would Google like, do you have to fail to succeed this and that? So I said, okay, I'm gonna give Dave a chance. I bring Henry, his friend Elliot, me, Zach, Josh and Dave to this meeting at The Matrix. We get the conference room, have a whole spread like this big executive boardroom and we're looking at this presentation for shows. And Henry wanted to do concerts. So that kind of, you know, pieced together getting these ideas to do it. And I figured I could get back into what I like doing. We have this big investor and I could have done a million other things with this money. Like I could have gotten a real estate, could have got, I could have even bought tuxedos and it would have been super successful. We could have did it locally, but instead I go into the most high risk business ever. And, you know, roll the dice. Yeah, and we did. But you loved it. That's what your passion is. I loved it, man. I was just driving for it. I believed in it. But at the same time, I was super, super lazy because my ego was so big that I had already made it. I had the office, I had the car, you know, we had the bank accounts, we had the business cards and I trusted, you know, other people to do it. And that blames on me. It's not like I could sit here and say, oh, well, he lost all the money. It's his fault. It still started with me. So it ends with me. Okay, so these shows now, do they not happen? So the shows are super successful on paper, like actually legitimately making money. Like we're seeing the Ticketmaster reports. We're seeing the Venue reports. Like I said, Dave, you got to be clear with me from the start because I knew what happened the first time. So these show, like Chief Keef was gonna double our money on a 30 grand investment. It was grossing like 70 or 80K. And what happens is it's like a series of unfortunate events after each one. The Kid Ink shows, the one in Connecticut was a bomb because of lack of promotion, but we didn't, that was just a plus one. It was basically like a freebie. So that was like a one off. But the one in URIs, so basically wrap, like up and coming rappers want to pay you to get on their stage, kind of like a sponsor for your podcast or whatever they pay you to get out there. So they would pay like $5,000, you know, to go and perform and be an opener for Kid Ink. They all perform and we're like, Dave, where's the money? Someone forgot to collect the money from all these people because they don't pay you until the day of the show. So they got on stage and these are all like drug dealing type, like people, no good ethics or anything because they were just trying to get their rap career off and they leave. They didn't pay, no one collected it because it was looking good. We were gonna be super profit. We were gonna make like 20 grand that night, a profit on top of getting our money back. And it was just a complete, they didn't have the systems there to grab that money first. Systems didn't happen and then the venue bounces the check on our ticketing money because the venues hold the money. So that took like four or five months to get back. Yeah, they bounced the check of money we had in their ticketing. Oh my God. So technically you could have pulled it off if some of these things didn't occur. Oh, that one would have literally eliminated all the debt that was incurring from like these WB wholesale money, like that aspect of it. And at this point, I transitioned to calling it WB investments because I wanted to be like this hedge fund that was doing multiple things. A big thing that was left out in the documentary was I took, Tuxedos had closed and I took over their front room and invested a hundred grand into calling it Skybar. And it was an 18 and older, 21 to drink event or a club and it was like the first luxury night club. It was really beautiful, like nice deck and everything it just wasn't meant for downtown Danbury. The marketing was there and everything it could just never turn a profit. Got taken advantage of from the contractors, everything. And you know, Al was like, oh, you know, you don't need to put this money in and I was just stubborn because I was like, Al, you know, we got to make the place look nicer. He's like, okay, you know, do what you got to do. He was the one on the liquor license this and that was kind of our arrangement. He was the consultant, but you know, you really don't need to renovate. I said, Al, I'm trying to go for a new image and I just $100,000 on this. Taking it, the painter charged me like six grand to paint this little, it was ridiculous. Now looking back, be honest, okay. Looking back, do you think to yourself, oh man, it would have worked if it just wasn't for those people that didn't pay me to do the act or if it would have worked if these people didn't rip me off or do you look back and say, man, I'm responsible for all those actions and I should have just stopped. I think when you look at the whole story and you hear everything, I think there's multiple people that are involved and contribute to it, but overall, it's on me because I was the one that put it together. I was the one that really should have been out there promoting certain events too. I had this thing in my mind that I was already successful. I had this image of success, but I wasn't successful really. I was just this image, everyone commenting on my social media saying, you're gonna grow up to be a millionaire. You're gonna be famous one day or this and that. So that was driving it, but yet to answer your question, it was on me. I know it was my fault. I mean, I think about what I could have done differently to kind of like change certain things. A big thing is had I taken that money, at one point I had 600K in the bank. So why didn't I go to the bank and say, hey, I want a credit line on this money or whatever, could I do anything to do this? Should I have went into real estate? What could I have done differently? Well, it seems like, I mean you weren't as frivolous when you had the money, except for the one that they showed in the documentary when you kind of went, what was it to LA with your friend and then you guys started to really spend the money because he just acquired that million dollar amount, right? And then you bought the jet ski. Tell us about the jet ski part. So out of all in all, I probably took in like 700K or 800K of investments. Probably like 100,000 of it was like misappropriated to like personal stuff. And in my mind, I was looking at, okay, we were paying our own salaries that we would make up on these concerts down the road. I was looking at, okay, that's how I would get paid. And I would just take it out of the concert profit, like counting my chickens before they, the eggs before they hatched. So we go on these trips, I figured there it could be written off like, cause I would always hear my dad talking about write-offs and stuff with his business. But I'd never, I know it's funny, but I never really asked or anything. I had no sense, like there was no accounting. I didn't have books set up, there was nothing. It was just money in, money out. It wasn't until later where I tried to like do the books and get it done. So we'd take these trips, go on investor trips. Every dinner I'm looking at as a write-off for investor meeting, we'd go out to Hibachi, it's like $1,000. I'm picking up every tab. We go and buy clothes and I realized that wasn't really for me, so John got to keep them all. It was just like open spending on the company debit cards. And so we're in Florida and I ride jet skis for the first time. And I'm like, wow, this is awesome. Like I love jet skis. And so I call the guy from Danbury Power Sports cause I'd gotten a motorcycle from him a couple months prior. I said, listen dude, have two jet skis waiting for me tomorrow to pick up. And he's like, well, what are you looking at for price? And there's cocky Ian saying, I don't care about the price. Just have them. And I get ripped off so bad, I get like these two basic wave runners, like no modifications on it, nothing for like $23,000. They're like, oh, we'll throw in the trailer too. Now you could get two basic ones for like five or six grand each. And they're charging me $23,000 for these jet skis. Oh my God. I know, and I was just, I went, I got a bank check, had I paid in cash, it would have been different, but it's clearly on, you know, the bank account that money and the government size, cause they're very like analytical, you know, they're looking at money's coming in and then going out to this person. So there's that Ponzi scheme, but in my eyes, it's a totally different version. You know, this could have been like, if money was coming in for this person, then that money went to a concert or whatever. It was just so confusing to really look at. So that's gotta be one of the few things that started to kind of raise some red flags for the investors involved. Like they saw, you know, like the concerns with the electronics, with the headphones, and then now they see like jet ski purchases. Like what were some other things that got their cackles up that they brought to your attention? Actually, that didn't raise any concerns with them. They loved it. They kept throwing me more money. They'd say, hey, and this work to my benefit, they would say, leave your money, don't give me my return. Here's five more thousand dollars. They would just add money into it. Wow. I want your friends. That's what I want. So they would just, you know, they would add money into it. They would do a lot of different things. Well, the reason why it worked is because there's been a couple of times already where he's paid them back, right? So you've had a couple of times where they've gotten it back. So they're like, okay, you do that two or three times. You're doing well now. Yeah, yeah, you're starting to feel confident and they've seen the lifestyle. Yeah, when does this start to unravel? You know, when does this shit starts to hit the fan? So the fall is when, during the summer, I'm just paying everyone's payments with other people's money. That's like that Ponzi scheme aspect of it. But in my eyes, I'm looking, okay, one loan to pay another loan because it's structured as a loan in the contract, saying they're giving the money as a loan and can use it for any, you know, business expense. So loan payoff to me was a business expense at the time. So then in the fall, when all the concerts are bombing, there's no money coming in from that. Concert business is shot. Electronic business is folded in the club, which I put a hundred grand into, which there was me thinking, okay, I was gonna bring in 10 grand a month from that, was dead too. So I have zero income coming in. I had also invested in like a kid's shoe startup company and a website and this and that. And there was just, there was zero money coming in and all these payments were becoming due. Everyone was coming home for the holidays. Everyone's wanting their money. A big part that was left out of the documentary too was the gambling aspect. It was a big gambler went to empire and that was ultimately my downfall, which is why my bond got revoked in the end. But I would go to Empire City in Yonkers because the one in Connecticut was 21 and over and I'd went to the one in New York and I would turn $500 into $20,000 at the backer at table. So, and that goes to pay off, like when I get into tuxedos, I'm paying off artists. Like I would roll the dice. You're gambling, wow. For like the chain smokers, I owed them like $25,000 for three months cause you know, I figured I'd have the money. It was just like a whole mess. Wow. And Why did they leave that in the documentary? That's interesting. That's interesting. There's just so much. There's just too much. They're like, we only have an hour. Yeah. You did so much shit. We just got to pick the craziest stuff. I thought they did a great job telling the story. They were the first ones to really, you know, piece a story together. Whereas like the news times or local news never really was able to tell the whole story. And the feedback I've gotten from the doc is just amazing like outpouring support for the doc. Yeah. Now, okay. So when does the law get involved? When you get a phone call like, hey, we're calling you in. Even though I was in that much debt by the end of 2013, like at that point or about that $500,000 in the hole, but on paper it's over a million like with the interest rates and everything. And this is another big move that I messed up on. I kind of went to my dad and said, dad, this is the situation. Instead I go to the shady lawyer in Danbury like this ambulance chaser who was friends with my dad that had offered like for the club his full legal backing. He said, oh, Ian's got my full support cause he was good friends with my dad. He's got a million dollar law firm backing him. So instead of telling the truth to my dad, I tell the truth to Alan. And we sit down, I show him all the reports cause I kept a detailed spreadsheet of like every money person that was owed money. And I said, Alan, this is the deal. Cause at that point I was getting into hot water with drug dealers and shady people. And I said, Alan, here's the deal. This is what we're out. And his advice is, okay, he handles it in like a lawyer where he sends letters out to everyone saying we're taking over this case. The company's folding, they're bankrupt and we're gonna get back to you. So, you know, if you're a kid that thinks he's owed like $15,000 with the interest and you're getting a letter from a lawyer, you know, red flags start to go up. They're like, they're blowing up my phone. I'm not answering terrible communication skills on my part, not reaching out. I turn off my phone, I'm dodging everyone. Alan reviews everything, then sends another letter to everyone saying to some people who had technically made money, but think they're owed money that you're not getting any money back because if they had gotten those like payments, interest payments and it came out to more than they had put in, or there were some people that thought they were owed $100,000, he's saying you're only owed like $26,000 because everyone was upset about that interest number. So they are figuring, well, you know, I own the club and the concerts, they're even screwing us out of all the money. Henry said every concert happened, where's the money from it? So people start going to the local cops. Henry went first, a couple other kids started with the kids, the parents never went to the cops first. Oh, interesting. Had I, you know, talked to the parents, sat down with my dad, a lawyer, talked to them face to face, but I just didn't have the confidence or the guts to, you know, like tell them how it was, we could have avoided a lot. But instead, Alan's taking the lead on it, kids are going to the cops. The cops are, their eyes are shooting up because if they figure, okay, there's one kid that's out $250,000, there must be a hundred others and this must be in the millions. And it starts there, this is January of 2014 and it increases, it gets to the federal level because the state prosecution had turned it down. They didn't really, they looked at it as like a civil case and then the feds grabbed it and they really went very gun-ho about it. Well, yeah, they kind of made an example of you. At what point did you realize you could go to jail? Cause I'm assuming at this point you think worst case scenario, people are gonna be pissed off. You have to pay a bunch of people. I gotta pay people back, my dad's gonna be angry. At what point were you like, oh shit, I could go to jail? So even on the day I went and got questioned by postal inspectors who I had no idea who they, that we even had postal inspectors, it wasn't up until the day I actually went to jail that I thought I was gonna go to jail. Like even throughout trial, I thought I was gonna win at trial and we did win some counts. You're dangerously optimistic, you know that. Yeah, it's not, see I have like a lot of ambition, a lot of drive, which is why I excel at Whole Foods cause I can see the bigger picture and drive like, I know what the end goal is. So when I have like guided or like if I had someone guiding all my ambition back then I think it would have came out a lot different. But it wasn't guided and it was just letting me run rampant to do whatever. Yeah, I'll be honest with you. You know, I'm obviously a lot older than you. I see a lot of tremendous potential and talent but it's just, it's like you went totally. You just misguided. Yeah, totally the wrong way. Now that you've paid your dues, you're out obviously. Are you thinking that way? Like, okay, I'm gonna move this in the right direction, be honest, cause you know, I think I could do things. I'm kinda really like, I'm analyzing everything. So after the doc, a ton of people have reached out. Lot of positive support from people all over the country. Lot of job offers for like sales which in itself like you see all like the stock thing. And listen, anyone that has on their bio, they're making six figures is not making six figures. Like six figure earner. So I got a lot of those reaching out and that goes back to like me seeing a similar situation of me and them from when I went through all that. Now I'm kinda just, you know, I'm waiting for the right opportunity. I really love working for Whole Foods. I'm growing with it. It's a really good job. What do you do with them? So right now I'm an assistant manager getting ready to go for manager of prepared foods. I mean, a store manager makes, you know, six figures so that there's an end goal for me. I can get to that level. Al owns Peach Waves now, so I help him with like the marketing and stuff. So that gives me that entrepreneurial sense that keeps me alive. You know, I wanted, I was very strong about not getting into concerts or the club again, like between HBO and then the doc and then the doc comes out and everyone's like, get back into the parties, this and that. There's gotta be some pool there. Yeah, so there was like, there was two days where I'm like, okay, I'm quitting Whole Foods and I'm going to open a club and then, you know, but here we go back to that guided ambition. I've talked to like podcasters or guys in the industry or whatever. And they're like, listen dude, you have a real chance here to like be one of those success stories where you're not doing what you did before. You know, you're coming out on top of this and you're turning this into a positive. And it really has to come down to you, how your talent, like if I came here and I said, guys, I'm working on another nightclub, you know, that's not what I need to be doing. So that image is gone. I had that like guidance to stay away from that. And, you know, right now I'm really focused on selling the story for like a TV series. I think it needs to be a TV series. We have the right people behind it and that will eliminate the debt, make everyone whole. Yeah, I don't think the, you know, just my opinion, I don't think the issue is the concerts. I think the issue is, you know, how you went about it. And I think that that'll follow you no matter what you do, as long as you get excited about something. So it's not the concerts aren't the issue. Now I know what it sounds like you're just being self-aware and like, that space gets me thinking in ways that are probably not good. But you're gonna run into other spaces that are gonna do that to you. So my advice to you is the ambition's great. You're a hustler, obviously, in a good way. But you gotta be honest the whole time. And you're gonna get your ass kicked a lot. That's just what happens when you're entrepreneur. But you gotta be honest the whole time. You gotta face those hard encounters. You gotta be very transparent with people. Yeah, and everybody learns this as a kid. You just learned it the hard, like really hard way. But I learned this as a teenager. Like one lie turns into other lies that turn into much bigger. Every single one gets bigger and bigger. Well, speaking of that, you also, a lot of the people that you hurt or burned were friends. Are you friends with anybody still or did you lose all your friends? So a lot of like the kid investors, they were never really, when it all was said and done they weren't necessarily owed money. It turns out they had made money because they were early on like with a Ponzi scheme. You know, those early investors when they get paid out it was more of the adults that had lost money or people that came on later on. I'm in touch with, you know, a lot of them I actually ran into Josh. I worked a wedding for my dad last weekend and Josh was there. And I think so during the trial and everything I was like the most hated person in town even though I was running tuxedos like during this whole trial booking all these major acts because tuxedos is a whole nother side to this whole story. But I was hated. The news was just saying Danbury kid defraud this and that even up until the doc came out. But I think now there's some closure with the doc because they see kind of what my intentions were and they see, you know, for the first time my side of the story, which didn't really come out of trial because you can't tell it in that way at a trial. And, you know, I think some people, you know they look at the whole thing. I think they know like some of them have reached out to say, listen, you messed up but they, you know, they get their perspective. Some of their dollar amounts were smaller. So it's not like they had lost their whole life, you know, because of that. I think there's a lot of things to look at. Everyone's gonna, you know, form an opinion but I also think now ultimately they're looking at the balls in my court. So what am I gonna do with that next? So everything I said in the doc is only true if I actually, you know, see it through. So now it's on me. I have to run with this. I have to turn it into something. Pay everyone back. And then I could sit and they could see the intentions behind it. So looking back, what do you, can you recall or do you remember like, you know the most ultimate high moment of the whole story and the most ultimate low moment of the end or scariest moment of the whole story? I think the high moments were definitely, you know that last obviously when I was first starting out that was high, but that was small scale. So the highest moments, you know were at Tuxedo Junction, which is like that period of time when I was being investigated up until the day I went to jail where I'm this 19, 20 year old kid running this, you know growing EDM venue, booking the largest acts in the world. You know, Steve Ioki, the chain smokers adventure club. And I think a lot of like now I'm looking at to see how big it actually was. Back then I was just like, it was just, you know me doing what I knew how to do. And that showed me going back to my roots, booking these parties, Tuxedos was super successful. I know I feel like there, that there's huge opportunity just right. I mean, even when you tell the story and I'm listening to it I mean, that was the beginning. You were already showing profits early, early on before big names like that. It would be hard for me not to want to venture with you into something like that. I mean, I think the thing when like you were saying before the concerts and the party promotion I'm good at that's not the bad part, but it's associating like that high risk. Like if I'm still in debt now, how do you like obviously I could have faith and know I'm gonna do it right, but from the onlookers perspective, they don't necessarily know. So I think I have to build that trust and that would entail paying everyone back and then getting into that. That's a good way to go about it. Yeah, I like that. So what about the low moment? What was the ultimate low moment during all our scariest? Low moment? I mean, there was so many like at a very like even like with the drug dealers getting beat up or like guns pointed at you or. Well, hold on, you didn't talk about that. That wasn't the doc? Well, I know, but I want to hear about this. Okay, so I got two really good stories for you. So the first story was I had gotten 150 grand loan from this drug dealer and he throws all the money at the table and it was stacks like wrapped in 20s and that was 150 grand cash like this is crazy. So I took the money and he was, you know, I kept coming up with excuses about not paying it back, this and that, because I owed like 30 grand interest on this 150K and eventually he sends his cousin down to see me and I'm in the basement of Tuxedo's and one of, you know, these guys are grabbing my wrist and they take like the end of the screwdriver. Like, well, what are you going to do with that? And he's like, oh, you'll see anything. You know, he takes my hand, puts it out and he's just like whacking each finger with the end of the screwdriver and you wouldn't think it would hurt, but then, because he had a hammer right next to him, but he wasn't using the hammer. I thought, shit, I'm done. He's going to grab the hammer and then there's a staple gun next to that, but he grabs a screwdriver and he's just whacking my fingers and it was very unpleasant. I got the message. You paid him back? So a deal was worked out, you know, with my dad and you know, there's a lot to it, but I didn't end up dead from the whole experience. I really learned about like pushing people to their limits and kind of like, you know how to read people and you kind of see like people who you think are bad or vice versa or whatever, you know, like you learn to read and adapt to your surroundings. Oh. Yeah, nothing like that. So that's one story. Or was that two and one? So the second story is not really, it has to do with like the high moment, it has to do with the fire marshal. I think you guys are going to love this one. So Steve Ioki, it was like this hyperglow show. The mayor cancels it at the Westcon, the university and says they didn't want a hyperglow show. And at this point, we had a lot of problems with the town. The town was extorting me to use their ambulance service. They were blackmailing me, making me pay thousands of dollars a night because they were in cahoots with the government trying to get my bond revoked. They didn't want me on social media. They didn't want this. They didn't want that. And what happens is from there, they're sending the fire marshal out every night to look at capacity. So one night the guy comes out, he sees we're advertising a seven o'clock start time. So he comes right at seven o'clock and he's with a clicker, a capacity clicker because they rated our capacity at like 600. Really the place could fit 2000 but they were screwing me pretty hard. And lucky for me, we had sold 2,500 tickets to the event but I opened doors two hours early. So the guy comes to the door of this fire marshal and he says, Ian, how many people do you have inside? I said, we're at about five inside, we just opened doors. There was already 700 in the place. So had he walked inside, like he normally does, he would have said, you know, no more people and the line's already around the corner. So he starts clicking at five. I have a team on the roof with walkie talkies down the street, we're directing kids in through the back door and he's at the front door clicking these other people in and you know, unbeknownst to him, we get 2,500 people in the place the most tuxedos has ever done and he does a walkthrough like at the end of the night. He's like, looks like you got about 800 kids in here but it's okay, 2,500 kids in the building and this guy is saying there's about 7 to 800 in there. And that's just what we were dealing with every night and the crazy part about it is, you know, one, my age, two, I'm up against the federal government like on trial at the time when this is all happening and three, just all the obstacles are running this business, which was completely legitimate. You know, that venue was ran legitimately. I kept accurate accounting and there was no fraud involved with tuxedos. So had the old stuff not happened, tuxedos could have been successful and the problem was when I'd make money on a show I'd use it to pay off old debt whether it was like the drug dealers or this or I was still paying interest payments to other kids to try to make sure they didn't testify or whatever. Like I was trying to in good faith. I wouldn't say don't testify, but like here's some money. So then when it came time to like say, paint the chain smokers, you know, I used that show made a bunch of money that night but I used the money to pay off other expenses and I didn't pay them for like three months the chain smokers. Their agent, you know, from AM only or whatever the CAA in California is blowing up my email every day and I'm sitting there trying to sell off like coolers in tuxedos to pay off their fee. So it was just a lot of stuff. I'd go to the casino and the landlords were like, we're gonna lock you out. I'd have a sold out show the next night. They say we're locking you out at 6 a.m. So I would take whatever money I'd have drive to the casino, win the money and get back at 6 a.m. because he would put bolts on the doors. They would just bolt the place up. It was just all these crazy stories. Not stressful at all. Yeah. Yeah, it was just nuts. And then the club getting raided, I'd get taken out in handcuffs like 10 times for liquor violations or this and that. Oh my goodness. And you just keep going. Yeah. So something that documentary doesn't get into that I was really curious. I mean, you did almost two and a half years in prison. Yeah. What was that like for a kid, man? So prison is like, it's everything you hear about on TV, but at the same time, it's not. Have you guys ever watched Orange is a New Black? Yeah. So it's kind of similar to, and I'll tell you my experience. When I first went to prison, I was in like a holdover in Rhode Island and that's like that stuff you see on like 60 days in or whatever, like it's very like, like you're locked up, certain movement, like the metal tables, it's that prison vibe. But then when I went to like a low, a low security prison at Fort Dixon, New Jersey, it's just like this open compound. There's 5,000 people there. Everyone's different units. It's these old army barracks. And you would be surprised that the money people are making there. Everyone's, they'd have like a liquor making business. They're making hooch. Like they'd put like these bags of rotting fruit and like the hide them in the walls to make hooch. They were making like these little sterno things out of electrical wires to like make white lightning and vodka, like melting down the honey or whatever. There was the cell phone business. You know, guards would bring in phones and other inmates were selling the phones. Like everyone had cell phones. It's absolutely, it's like, it's an enterprise in there. People are doing laundry. People are doing cleaning services. So it's just the dynamics. It's like high school, but for prisoners and that. But then when I got to, I was moved around all over too. I was in Philadelphia. I was in New Jersey. I actually went to Danbury, which was right in my backyard. And I was in solitary confinement for six months because I had dated a guard's cousin. So it was a conflict of interest. What? Yeah. So the girl I was dating throughout- Conjugal visits and everything? No, the girl I was dating throughout tuxedos. Her cousin was a guard there. So as soon as I got on the compound, they, he recorded- He didn't like you right away, huh? Well, no, he liked me, but it was his job. I guess to report it. But meanwhile, I had other guards there that used to work security for me that didn't report our relationship. But with him, he was, by the book, reported it. So they threw me under investigation because they didn't want a guard being influenced by an inmate. And so I'm in solitary for six months in this old, think of those old Alcatraz or whatever with the bars or whatever. It was an old style prison. And then they let me be like the orderly. I was painting the cells and doing this. And I was, my parents would see me like once a week because you get certain visits and very, very unpleasant, but that's how I lost all the weight. Cause, you know, I was 180 pounds. And then when you're on a strict three meals a day at a certain time, your last dinners at like 3.30 in the afternoon, it was very unpleasant. But then the last year of it, I was at a camp in Wisconsin. And that's where you get like that country club, you know, thing that people talk about like club, fad or whatever. There was no fence. It was very open. Guys were literally running through the woods to meet their wives, to go to a hotel. And then bringing back duffel bags of, you know, protein powder. You guys would appreciate this. Like we're getting gym shoes. We had a whole cinder black weight set up. We made out of cinder blocks. And it was just like a whole weight thing outside, getting like the resistant bands in. Sounds actually pretty awesome. We were eating McDonald's every weekend, sushi, pizza, Chicago, deep dish bowls, everything. It was literally club fed. There was 130 inmates for, you know, one guard. Everyone had a cell phone. And you're in bed watching Netflix or doing this and doing that. And it was just absolutely wild. So it was like oranges is a new black on steroids with what was going on there. Holy shit. I can't help but think the potential that you possess that this is gonna have to be a choice that you're gonna have to make for the rest of your life. Am I gonna do this the right way? Well, even then, I bet, I mean, with a hustler mentality, it's gotta be tempting. You probably saw opportunity to make money and hustle in prison. Did that cross your mind ever? Did you think about dabbling into some of the illegal shit that's going on inside a prison? So I did a couple of things. I did like, I played dice because I had that gambling thing. So I was playing dice. I was taught silo, which is like a street dice game. And I was making good money, but you don't play for cash. You play for a mackerel. Like it's these packs of fish. Absolutely gross, but it's called like the chicken of the sea. And people would walk around with like a laundry bag with like a hundred mackerel, which would be a hundred bucks or books of stamps. Like a book of stamps was worth $10. So that was like the currency. And then you would send the books of stamps home. People would then Western Union you the money. Like every day I'm calling my dad, dad, I need a Western Union to a hundred to this person or a hundred to this person. He's like, you know, what the hell are you doing over there? And he was just like, he was genuinely worried. Cause I, you know, I was just like involved in all that. I had to be a part of it. And that got me into trouble at times because no one likes that, you know, young white kid that they thought was a sex offender. Cause I was labeled when I went to the low and you're dealing with these adults. It's called a chomo, a child molester. They're like, ah, he's a chomo. They'll give you a notice. They'll say, hey, you know, you got a week to show your paperwork, showing that, you know, what your charges are that you didn't rat anyone out. Oh, so they don't fuck you up for a week. Nobody knew. And then they would, they would check you in, which would mean like they would make you go to solitary if you turned out to be bad after they, you know, they beat the shit out of you. But luckily that never happened to me because the guards tell them that too. Like if your paperwork's not good or you're a sex offender, they're gonna tell you, they'll tell whoever. Did you witness that happening? Did you witness some dudes getting fucked up? Oh, all the time. Like you hear some crazy stuff. I mean, at Fort Dix, it's mostly a sex offender compound. So that doesn't really happen. But in other areas, like the old like lock in the sock, like crazy stuff, people, you know, in the bathroom guys, like the real hardened guys that have been down for a while, they would go to the shower with boots on, leave a chair in front of the shower and have like their boots and like a little shank in the boot, like ready to go. Like, cause they came from the higher up prisons. This stuff wouldn't happen in the lower prisons, of course, but they were always ready to go. You'd have guys walking around with like these long rods tucked into their shorts, just, you know, ready in case something happened. Wow. Holy shit. Yeah. All right, so. Yeah. I think we've covered a lot. Yeah, I'm very, very curious. I see why this could be a series, right? There's a lot more in there. I'm very curious to see how you end up in the next 10 years. I really think you got two paths here. You got a choice. We're rooting for you, man. I really, I'm rooting for you. I hope you do. Well, what do you guys think of the doc? Get some good mentors. I thought it was great. I mean, that's why you're here. Like, I watched the documentary and I told these guys, I saw it first, right? Then I turned them on to it right away. I said, you got to watch this. First of all, I was a generation hustle in general. I thought was phenomenal what they're doing. I think what HBO Max is doing is great. And I thought your story was just so interesting. Now, I have a different background than you do, but I'm a bit of a hustler and I came from, my father committed suicide when I was really young. My mom had an abusive relationship out of that. So I kind of grew up kind of fitting for myself and figuring things out. And I too made a lot of bad decisions in my early teens. Just, mine was more out of survival though, figuring things out, doing whatever it took to get by. So when I see a kid like you where I'm sure some people are, fuck that kid or whatever, I have a little more empathy because I can relate. I can go like, ah, you know, at that age, you start making that kind of money and stuff like that. And that's all you see as a kid. You don't really start to, you don't start questioning like, oh, is this ethical? Every kid makes those mistakes. You just made them big league. You know what I mean? That's the difference. And then you got, you had to pay the price for it. But I swear you got some potential, but you're going to have to do it the right way. Otherwise it's going to- Does HBO actually tell you like how the documentary is doing as far as how it's trending? Do you know numbers and stuff? I don't really know numbers. I know they'll like play with the episodes. Like they had moved me from two to 10 and they like they switched the orders of it. Oh, interesting. They do that to get viewers because if you think about it, if someone's tweeting go watch episode two and then it directs them to someone else to then watch that. So it's kind of like a smart marketing sense. Oh, interesting, interesting. Yeah, if you're putting up, hey, go watch episode three but that turns out to really be another episode. So they'll change the order. You can also judge by who's reaching out. Like if they're interested in saying, hey, we want to do a podcast series or this and that, then that show is kind of, there's hype behind it. And the showrunner really loved my episode. I think my episode definitely stands out from the rest of them. Just in the sense of the way the stories told, we had that live footage which was great from it. You got to see like that young me like actually in action. It wasn't a reenactment. And I think it really leaves like that area where it's like, did he do it intentionally? What happened? What went wrong? What's the learning experience? And it could leave like a positive ending if things are able to turn around. So now your plans now, I know you said that even HBO was considering some kind of podcast or, I mean, obviously you're trying to wrap this into a TV series. And are you actively trying to kind of pitch this, put this together, like get people behind it to help you with that? Are you getting investors? Yeah, is there opportunity? I have no intent to take money from anyone like ever. Like I just want to use my, I'd rather work at McDonald's and raise my own money before I take someone else's money. But with the series, I have this producer who I've been with, who's been with me all the way, really understands the story. And she's put in a lot of work, like character development and the stories and how episodes would look. And someone, a big production company reached out the other day and said, we're very interested in making this into a series. And we're meeting with them in Manhattan on Wednesday. So I think there's definitely a lot of interest. We kind of knew that this would come from the HBO doc. Cause in the doc, there's no money in documentaries. They don't pay the subject. I listened to Archie. He told us that. Yeah, he hits that. So it's not like I could pay everyone back from the HBO documentary. What I needed from that was to get the exposure out there. Cause no one in their right mind would want to work with us without, like Archie said again, having, you have to have something. You have to bring something to the table. So now we have this HBO doc. We have the storyline. You know, this has a lot of potential to turn into something. And we see it as, as definitely a TV series. All right. Well, I hope you're looking out for it. I hope you do well, man. Yeah, definitely rooting for you. We are rooting for you. Thanks for coming on the show. It was a fun conversation. Thanks for having me, guys. I appreciate it. All right. This is the key to health and fitness success. This is one of the things I love most about fitness is if you stick to it long enough, it makes you feel empowered because to be, in order to get fit and to stay fit, you have to take responsibility. You can't say it's my genetics. It's the way I was brought up. It's my bone structure. My parents were overweight. My parents are athletic.