 You can now follow me on all my social media platforms to find out who my latest guest will be and don't forget to click the subscribe button and the notifications button so you're notified for when my next podcast goes live. Was your dad killed, Remy? You know, there's a lot of controversy behind just, you know, the story goes he was bitten by a dog. So then the second thing she did was she ran my background and when she did a background check she found out that I had two warrants off my wrist. I had a warrant in New York and a warrant in Jersey, I didn't know I had warrants and at that point I was petrified because I thought, oh my god, like my life has finally caught up with me. For me it was like, I had failed so much, I had failed as a son, I failed as a brother. I failed in my record company, I failed in so many different aspects of life that I was tired of failing and I decided that I'm not going to fail anymore. I'm not, I'm not, it's either I die, or I have to die before I fail. There's more people enslaved around the world today than any other time in human history. Today there are more slaves, and you know, slavery's been around since the beginning of time and there's more slaves today than any other time in human history. And again, that's urban harvesting, that's trafficking, that's labor, that's people being used for testing, that's people being used to move drugs in. It's a massive pain. Boom, we're on. And today's guest we've got Remi Adelaike, is that correct? Yes sir, Adelaike, you got it right brother. Yeah, good man. First of all I just want to say thanks for coming on the show brother. Navy Seal turned actor, writer, lit man of many talents, you've now got a degree. And now you're doing a celebrity SES, phenomenal story brother, I've read up on that lot and watched a couple of your podcasts, it's good to have you on the show. It's good to be on the show, thank you so much for having me. It's an honor, a blessing, thanks for the invite. Before we get into everything brother, I always go back to the start of my guests. Where you grew up and how it all began? Yes, so I was actually born in Nigeria. I lived the first five years of my life in Nigeria. I was born into, well my dad was a well-known Nigerian engineer, and he engineered one of the first man-made islands in the world. He was not known as Banana Island, but it was known as the Green Development Project. And fast forward because there's a lot more to the story, but the Nigerian government pretty much stripped my dad of his most valuable asset, which was the island and all of his wealth was wrapped up in it. And we went from rich to poor. And he died within that period of us going from rich to poor. He died within weeks. And so my mother was American, she met my dad in New York City when he was on a business trip, and then they got married five months later. And then my mom moved to Nigeria specifically Lagos. And so after my dad died, my mother permanently relocated us to New York City specifically to Bronx. And so that was kind of how I jumped upon. So to speak, it's interesting because I have a lot of half siblings. I have about four half siblings who they're about 16 years older than me. And they all went to boarding school in the UK. And after they finished boarding school, they went to university in the UK and they all stayed. So I have a number of siblings who actually still live in London and do business in London and Nigeria. And that would have probably been my path and my father didn't pass away because he was getting ready to send us to boarding school. Me and my brother in the UK before he passed away. How old were you when they passed? I was five years old. I was five. And he was starting businesses in Nigeria? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So he had a car dealerships engineering firm that was probably his most lucrative business and an art gallery, so he was an entrepreneur. And his goal was to essentially, he was educated and my dad was actually educated in the UK as well. So the University of London, he got his bachelor's and master's in architecture and engineering. And he actually was on the British Financial Planning Council back in the 1670s, I believe. And then he was on the border to World Trade Center. But after he had a master of his wealth and success in the West, and he went back to Nigeria and established his businesses there. And then years down the line, that's kind of when I came along. So yeah, a lot of his businesses were international. I mean, he was always traveling. We were always traveling with him as well when we were young. Paris, London, Germany, the US. So his businesses weren't just in Nigeria. They had a lot of them were started outside of Nigeria in the UK and in America. Was there a lot of corruption in Nigeria? Yeah, yeah, yeah, a lot of corruption. A lot of it, I mean, even to this day, you know, there's still a lot of corruption in Nigeria. And that's what ultimately led to my father being stripped of everything was corruption. And, you know, and then all this is untimely death. So yeah, it's sad. I went back to Nigeria to finish writing the end of my book. And it was just as soon as I got off the plane, you know, the customs officers were like, do you ever give me how much money do you have if you want to come in? So it's like, you got to give him money that we got pulled over by the police. And they demanded that we gave him money in order to pass. And just, I mean, just then you see the massive, I mean, as wealth gaps in every country, even here in the United States, but it's just, it's just, it's, it's, it's massive in Nigeria. The wealth gap and the financial gap. So a lot of that is due to corruption. What was the islandy belt? Was it Banana Island or something? Yeah, it was known as it was. So it's now called Banana Island. It was initially called the Lugung Development Project. And it was my dad developed it because he wanted to create like a Wall Street, a financial sector that wanted to just serve Nigeria, but that would also serve the all of Africa. And so he, you know, he bought this swamp essentially, dredged the foreshore, high Dutch engineers and dredged the foreshore to create land. So as you know, Heathrow Airport is on a manmade island. I believe he had the Palm Islands in Dubai. My dad was one of the first people to do that to dredge, to high Dutch engineers to dredge a foreshore to create a manmade island. And so, you know, after the island had formed, he had then, you know, had all of these schematics and plays because he was going to build buildings. And he had signed deals with McDonald's, Marks and Spence, Disney, all of these different companies to do, to essentially allow Nigeria to be like a central financial hub for a lot of businesses to operate in Africa. And, and yeah, so it was known as the Lugung Development Project. But then after it was stripped from him, it was renamed to Banana Island. And now it's Banana Island and some of the most, some of the wealthiest Africans in the world live on Banana Island, and Gote, I think there's a lot of famous rappers that have property, Naji rappers that have properties in Nigeria. So it's, excuse me, on Banana Island. So it's a very well known place. In fact, the guy who used to be my dad's security guard is now like, he's the custodian of the island. So he's a charge of the island. You know, there's a lot of controversy, but just, you know, the story goes, he was bitten by a dog. He went out and was super stressed out because of what happened, went for a walk outside, bitten by a dog, contracted rabies, went to the hospital in Nigeria, got medication of medication. The, the, the coronal report was that the medication, the wrong medication went to go take a bath after taking the medication and never came out. So, I mean, they say a heart attack, but they also attributed it to the medication that he was getting. So your life, you've started off in a good family, loving family, rich, everything that you could ask for. It's been took away at five years old. What happens with your life then? It's still a kid, do you know what I mean? Can you remember much of it? Just a little bit, you know, my, my, my, you know, we had a lot of pictures and stuff that always, my mom showed me what we came to the States to always, you know, kind of refresh my memory as to the life we live, the parties that we went to, the school I went to, you know, and those sorts of things. So, you know, I do have a somewhat of those memories, but as far as when I came to the States, yeah, all those memories are fresh, like for me, because that's to me where my life really, really began, you know, and it was, it was a very rough environment, you know, bronzes. I don't know what's the equivalent in the UK, your, you know, hoods, so to speak. But I have a good friend in London. His name is Jason Devill, and we talk often and he always tells me about the projects, the slums, I guess you call it, or projects that he grew up in, how rough they were. He equated them to the Bronx or Compton or South Side of Chicago. But, you know, the area I grew up in was a very, very rough area. It was crime rate, a lot of drugs, crackheads, gangs. The mafia was very prevalent when I was coming up. So we had a lot of guys who, I would see the mafia guys going to the local stores to collect taxes from the store owners. So it was like, yeah, it was a very, very rough, rough area, you know. But the cool thing is my mom did a great job of masking the reality of what had happened. She did a good job of essentially, you know, trying to, inside of our little apartment, paint this picture of success, and everything was all right. Even though on the outside, when we walked out of our doors, it was crazy. How hard was it to adapt from the rich kid from Nigeria to then go into the Bronx? You know, I tell people all the time, my mom did a great job masking the reality of what had happened. You know, she kept our apartment pristine. She brought a lot of my dad's art, so our apartment was filled with art that I had grown up around. She worked multiple jobs to try and give my brother and I the best life she could in this small apartment in Bronx. And so at a very young age as a boy, about five, think at five, six, seven, you know, you don't really, your world is so small. I mean, the majority of the world is the house or apartment that you live in, and that in and of itself is big to you. So it didn't really affect me. That transition didn't affect me because I still had three meals a day. I had toys. I saw my dad's art. As a matter of fact, I remember when my mother told my brother and I that our dad had got it. And she put my brother on one side and me on the other side and she said, look, your dad's gone and he's not coming back. And we were so young and didn't fully understand the concept of that. And I think a part of it too was my dad traveled so much that to us it was like, oh, dad's just gone on another trip because we didn't understand the concept of that. And so after she told us the news, we just said, look at each other and went back to playing. And my mom didn't cry at all when she delivered the news. So I think to us that signal to us that everything was all right. Mom's not crying. She's not falling apart. That must not mean a bad thing. So let's go back to doing what we do, what we're doing. And so I said, I'll have to say that my mom did a fantastic job of masking the reality of what had happened in order to shield us and protect us from breaking down or just having a meltdown or having some type of psychological, negative psychological effect because of the death of our dad. And it wasn't until I was about eight years old that I finally realized what was going on because I would see things, you know, I would go outside more and then, you know, my mom would let me go to the corner store by myself and I would see these drug dealers and see these crackheads and, you know, I would see them go my mom to the rental office and watch her, you know, a day for extra time to paint the rent and, you know, watch as my mom would give my brother that food and stand in the kitchen doorway and watch us eat because there wasn't enough food for herself. So as I began to pick up on these things as I got older, that's when it kicked in and I was like, oh my God, you know, the life that I used to have is not the life I have anymore. And I remember, I'll never forget this. I remember being in my bedroom and staring at a picture of my father and I was eight and I just remember breaking down in tears and I just remember, you know, my mom came in the room and she said, what's wrong? And I said, mom, we don't have the life that we have and we want his dad's gone. He's dead and he's not coming back. And I wish that he was here so that we can have a better life. And I think that that's when it finally hit me. And, yeah, I was eight years old at the time. Does that become a big moment in your life to then not try and toughen up, but try and survive basically because your mom clearly had it well, had the pain well, the heartache. But for you to see that at a young age, especially eight, you're still not, you're nowhere near fully grown. So how much does that play a massive effect on your life now? I think that, you know, at the time, the effect that it had, just looking back in retrospect, it unconsciously propelled me to seek out a father. Like, I didn't realize it, but I was seeking out a father. I was seeking out a man to essentially feel that void and teach me how to become a man. And it was at that age, and as I grew older, even more so until my 9, 10, 11, 12, that I really began to look to the streets of the father and hip-hop and hip-hop culture and to teach me how to be a man and teach me how to talk to women and teach me how to make money. And, you know, I was heavily, heavily influenced by the streets and hip-hop culture. And, you know, that led me down a pretty dark path from, you know, I started out stealing from my mom and then that progressed to stealing from local stores and then that progressed to stealing from jobs and then that progressed to selling drugs and that progressed to running high-level scams. And that all came from not having a man to show me, hey, this is how you're supposed to live. I see and hear what you're hearing from this music and what you're seeing from the streets. But that's not a good path for you. I didn't have that. All I had was what I saw in the streets. And because that was all I had, that's what I saw to mimic. And, yeah, it led me down a really, really dark path. But it was a gradual thing, you know, just like I started out small, just, all right, don't have a dad who I looked to for a dad. Oh, look to the streets, listen to music. Oh, these guys are talking about stealing. These guys are talking about, hey, you got all the money and then girls are going to respect you and girls are going to like you. And if you punch somebody in the face and disrespect you, then, you know, you're going to earn everybody's respect. So we'll punch people in the face, go fight, right? All of those things had molded me into the teenager that I eventually became. And it all came from the absence of a father. How much influence does the rap game have back in the 90s, like Big A, Two Pack, Nas? Because they still have influence now. Their music's still listened every day, every month. They're still getting millions and millions of views. Like, how hard did you see the kids from the street then becoming successful? Was that a massive influence then in the 90s as it was? Oh, yeah, it was a massive influence then. I mean, I think, I mean, even going to school and just hearing how the kids spoke in my class and walking, not just in school, but walking to school. I remember as a kid, you know, 11 years old and I'll never forget this. I was getting ready to cross the street and then with these two older gang members, they had to be like 16 and 17 and they had a kid who was probably about my age and they were forcing the kid to beat up this other small kid and they had jumped in and they were beating up the other small kid as well. And you could tell them about what they were saying and how they were acting. It all came from that hip hop and he disrespected you. This is a little kid. A little kid getting beat up by another little kid and two teenage kids. And you could tell that a lot of that influence was this kid disrespecting you. And you got to remember hip hop, the big thing in hip hop is don't let anybody disrespect you. Everybody has to respect you. And so that came from music that, you know, and I'm sure there were some other things tied to that deep down session, but I think a substantial influence came from the culture. I mean, hip hop culture permeated the Bronx. I mean, that's where hip hop was burnt. And so it wasn't just me. There were other kids that were like, I'm going to get this money. So I'm going to go sell drugs. There were kids in middle school selling drugs, you know? Because it's like, I got to get this money because that's what you get when you listen to music. And the way I quote this is, when you go to other suburbs and in suburbs, you have like YMCA, like I live in a very wealthy suburb now. And so what do we have? We have flag football programs. We have like cheerleading programs. We have like the YMCA. We have like these, where the military comes and, you know, gives talks. And so we have engineering and all these technical schools and influences around. So a lot of the kids want to fall into that. They want to do that. Why? Because that's what they see. That's what they hear every day. Even at my kids elementary school, the stuff that the teachers do, the things that the teachers expose the kids do, they expose the kids to, it influences them. And it shows them, hey, the world is big. You could be an engineer. You could be a doctor. You could be a lawyer. You could be an architect. You could be an entrepreneur. And because they constantly seeing that and getting that and in return getting that from their parents, me being an entrepreneur and an actor and a speaker and my wife being a doctor, like my kids are just through osmosis. They're just like, I can do that. I can do anything good versus in the Bronx in the 80s and even now in inner cities, when all you hear constantly is sell drugs, sleep with multiple girls, be a player, shoot somebody if they talk, then that as that gets into your spirit and gets into your mind just naturally becomes a part of who you are. And it had a huge influence back then. And I think it still does now. I've worked in inner cities and I volunteered my time and I go into school sometimes and it's just like nothing is new under the sun. You see these kids with their pants sagging and these rags, these colorful bandanas hanging out which signify what gang they're in. And I went to this one school where this is the last shot for the kids. Essentially, if they fail out of the school, they're going to jail because these kids have gotten in multiple trouble in school or they have some type of criminal offense and so they can't be in traditional schools. They get put into this like, I don't know, almost like a jail school. And this is their last chance and if they fail or if they hit somebody or they shoot their stab somebody, they're going to jail. And I remember speaking at this one school here in San Diego and just looking at the kids and being like, dude, I used to be you. Put away with that culture. Put away with that mindset. You can be great. You can be somebody. You don't have to be a gangster or a thug or a hustler. There's so much more to you. But the environment at the end is just so penetrating and so consistent that it's hard for them to break out of it. Yeah, it's tough because it's survival more than anything you watch or read. It'll condition your mind to what you want to believe and think. So it's difficult if they're seeing people from the streets then becoming successful with the nice cars, the jewelry, the women, they think that's the life to lead. But realistically, it's a fucking fake life. It's bullshit. And your dad was clearly an intelligent man, but when you were at school, did you suffer because you were took out of that environment? Did you not believe in yourself as much? No, I always believed in myself. I always believed that I was going to win. I had too much confidence. I had too much confidence. And especially when I saw what I was doing was working. When I saw when I was selling drugs, I was making money. I mean, by the time I was 19, I had built this massive, I was bringing in thousands of dollars a week. I bought a freaking brand new $52,000 car. I was like, I mean, I was, I was laundering my money through a record company that had started. I had Artisan Uncheck. I still have, I keep the CD on my desk. As you can see right there, 19, right? And these are the guys or the artists that I had. And we had made this album. We were doing small little tours and we were, you know, we were recording in a studio and all of that was very expensive. But I was, I was, I was financing it through illegal money. I was taking the legal money and running it into a record company. And, and, and because what I was doing was working and had been working that I was over the company. I was just like, hey, what am I doing? Is that suit she wearing? The clothes? Is that suits? What about it? That's a suit. Yeah. Where did you get that inspiration from? Cause it's not really. Yeah. So, so, so. Yeah. So, so, you know, that came from P Diddy. Well, they used to call pop daddy back in the day. Yeah. And so, you know, all of the owners, you know, P Diddy would always wear suits. And there was a joke back in the day. He would wear shiny suits. He was a shiny suit man. And, and so like, I was a CEO of this production company. So I started for them when we did this photo shoot. I was like, I was the CEO, all executives, including myself. We're going to do away with the baggy clothes. And we're going to put on suits. You know, kind of show that we, that we're real, you know, we're real street hustlers and get people to take us a little bit more seriously. So yeah, that's not typically how I dress, but all of this, three other guys in suits as well. And we did that to kind of establish who's who in the hierarchy, you know, the, the Racklands versus the executives. What sort of drugs were you selling back in the day? Was it crack? No, I was doing coke. We definitely have not been selling weed back then, was it? Yeah, a lot of people selling weed, you know, but I was going to weed dope. You know, I was, those were my go-to. I wouldn't sell, everybody would sell what would happen was everybody was selling in the city. So again, me being, being, thinking outside the box, I would drive, I would take a train before I got my car, I would take a train up to upstate New York, Kipson, New York, where all the universities were. And we're all, you know, some birds are, and you know, the white kids are, and I would go sell drugs out there because there was just too much competition in New York City. You know, there was too many, you know, there was just, you had drug deals on every corner. And then you had the drug wars against different drug deals killed each other. So it was like, for me, I was like, I'm not trying to fight in the war. I'm trying to make money. And so I went upstate New York, and that's what I would do. I had a good friend of mine, um, Ricardo, who I grew up with in the Bronx, and his family moved upstate New York to give him, to give him and his brothers a better life. And so, you know, I went up there in his area where he lived, and he gave me a place to stay, and both me, him, and another guy who's, the other guy used to sell drugs, but he's still in prison to this day. Um, he got caught up, and he's in prison, he's been in prison for like the last seven or eight years. You know, and, uh, and that was, that could, that should have been me. I would have been there with him. Um, but yeah, man, um, yeah, this is, yeah, yeah, we're going to, we're going to upstate New York and do my thing, and, uh, come back down and replenish, go to Washington Heights, uh, to the Dominicans and buy more drugs, and then go back upstate New York, and that's how I made my money. Did your mum ever find out what you were doing? No, no, I was pretty good at what I did. I, well, thinking back though, that she, there was so much money coming in. I know that she suspected. I think, I always say that I think a part of her knew she just didn't want to believe it. And so, she just kind of ignored it. But I could have be wrong. I mean, she could have not, I mean, more to what she didn't know anything. But my mum has always been a pretty moral person. And I think that if she would have known, she would have, she would have really gotten my ass about it. So how does a kid making money, making thousands a week selling drugs, got his own record label to then joining the Navy Seals? I was, uh, 19, had breached my peak. This was December 2001. I had kind of transitioned from selling drugs to selling legal phones, which made me way more money than selling drugs called blow-up phones. At the time, drug dealers, cell phones had kind of just started. And drug dealers were, uh, trying to find a way to communicate without getting caught. And so I would essentially sell what we call blow-up phones, which was phones that were created with, uh, dead people's credit, um, or the credit of people in hospice and activate those phones. Those phones would stay up for 90 days. They would use them after 90 days. They'd get a new, a new phone number and a new phone. Um, and I would sell the phones for anywhere between $300 to $1,000, or sometimes $1,500, depending on the model of the phone. And that came with the service and everything. And so that was, uh, that, that's where I made a lot of my money. You know, I made way more money doing that to selling drugs. And it was, it was less risky at the time because they weren't a lot of, the police didn't know how to track this thing and work it out. And so I say a lot to say, like, and, uh, then when I was in December, I, uh, got involved in a deal with a drug dealer where I had sold him. It got to the point where he started doing what I was doing, but with my product. So I had access to the phones and the lines of credit. And so I sold him tons of phones. And instead of him distributing them to his people, he started selling them. So now he's making double what I was making, which I didn't care. Well, I sold him, I want to say, like, maybe a hundred phones and, um, they cut off within like two weeks. They're supposed to be on a stay on for, for, uh, for 90 days. And, uh, it turned into a bad situation. My life was threatened, threatened my life, threatened my mother's life, uh, indirectly. And, uh, and that was a wake up call for me. You know, I had money. So I gave him that money. And I made a couple of a few hundred more bucks, gave him that money. Then that's when I decided, you know, I can't do this anymore. Um, you know, I always, when I was a kid, my mom would spank my brother and I. And I know nowadays people are against it. And that people have their theories as to what spanking can do to a kid. But I can tell you what it did for me was it showed me that there's always a consequence for an action. It showed me that if you keep down a specific path, you're going to get a proverbial spanking by life. And that proverbial spanking can be a bullet to the head. It can be a long prison sentence. Or it can be you getting punched, punched in the face and beat half to death, death. And so I'm grateful for my mom for spanking me because it really told me that it really taught me that there's a limit to doing bad things. And at some point, that was going to come knocking on the door to get his reparations. And so when that happened with that drug dealer, that was a big spanking for me. That was a big like, all right, it's gotten away with a lot for a long time. And you have to stop or things are going to get even worse. And at the same time on top of that, the fed started figuring out what me and other people were doing with the cell phones. And there were a few people who I worked with got caught and got sentenced to federal prison, got prosecuted and sent to federal prison. So it was a combination of those two things. And I was just like, I don't know what I'm going to do, but I can't do this anymore. So fast forward, you know, that was just, that happened in December, January. I was really trying to push my record companies. I remember, you know, I had meetings at Deptia about this album and other record companies. And I was really pushing, trying to get a label deal because they would do label deals with, they wouldn't just sign an artist, but they would pay you a sign, or buy you a type of entire company. And a lot of you were still running. And that didn't work out. And I just sat home from January and so June doing nothing. And then finally in June of 2002, is when I was laying in bed and I heard this voice speak to me. And essentially said, you need to get out of here. And then I heard that voice is clear today. And that voice said, you need to join the military. And I was just like, what? And joining the military was totally contrary of who I was because I hated the police. And I associated anybody in a uniform as the police, whether you were a firefighter, whether you were the army name, whatever. And I had a great disdain for the government as well. And so I didn't want to do it. That's why I say I know that that idea wasn't me. I remember making it for when I was in high school, they would use power TC kids, which were the kids of kids is what we call them because they would wear these fake military uniforms and do high school in their military uniforms because usually all kids are playing on bullets in military. And I just remember just saying, just make it fun of me talking about how corny and cheesy and how much of a simps. Simps wasn't a word back then, but how much a simps they were. And so it was totally contrary to who I was, but I remember after hearing that voice and fighting that idea, I looked around my room and I just said to myself, what else do you have to show for? You have nothing to show for. You've been around for 19 years, going on 20. Your brother's in college. You've done all these illegal things. Your record company didn't work out. What else are you going to do? And so, you know, I said, yeah, screw it. You know, what else? What else do I have? And so I'm also assured I went to the Navy. I went to, first I went to Marine Corps Recruiters' Office. The recruiter wasn't there. And then I went into the Navy Recruiters' Office and there was a recruiter there by the name of Tiana Reyes. And the first thing she did was she had me take a practice asap test because I told her I wanted it to be a seal. Well, let's see. You can qualify to be a seal. And I took the practice asap test and I passed it to you in the Navy, but I didn't qualify to be a seal. So then the second thing she did was she ran my background and when she did a background check, she found out that I had two warrants out from my rest. I had a warrant in New York and a warrant in New Jersey. I didn't know I had warrants. And at that point I was petrified because I thought, oh my God, my life is finally caught up with me. The guy, the people who got caught up when you said the federal prison, I thought that's what the warrants were for because I didn't know what the warrants were for. And I got ready to run out of the office. And she said, well, you know, I was like, I'm getting out of here. I'm not trying to go to jail today. And she said, well, if you go out there, you know, there's nothing good out there for you. I was like, well, what do you want me to do? And she said, do you have a suit? I said, no, why? And she said, do you have some nice pants in a collar shirt? And I said, I said, yeah, I could find something because that suit and that picture, I had actually borrowed from somebody. And so she said, come back tomorrow. And I said, for what? She said, shut up and just come back tomorrow. She was from the Bronx. She had joined an ABU. And then after she did her time in the Navy, she came back as a recruiter. And I came back the next day and she was in her dressing room and she took me to both judges. She took me to the judge in New York and the judge in New Jersey. And both of those judges advocated, she advocated on my behalf in front of both of those judges and asked them to expunge my record. Both judges, you know, because the charges weren't like crazy, the fairies wasn't like murder or rape or anything like that. The judges both, you know, expunged my record and it was in part because 9-11 had taken place not much later. And so they were up the mindset that if this guy is trying to turn his life around after the active war, they will clear his record so he could join the Navy. And then she went a step further and she fudged the paperwork to sneak me into the Navy. And that's kind of, it all happens really fast. I mean, like I went to the, I had that thought, went to the recruiter and two years later I was in, I was in Chicago and Navy boot camp, but had change and beautiful moment. Yeah, man. How was, who do you think the voice was? Think about that? Yeah, I believe it was, no, I believe it was the voice of God, you know, like, you know, for a long period of time I fluctuated between atheism and agnosticism. So at that time I want to say it was God but I'm looking back on retrospect, I truly believe that it was God's guidance because, especially because when I look at how things transpired because like I said, I heard the voice, I obeyed that voice. I went first, I walked down the street, I grew up on, I went into Marine Corps Recruiters Office first, which I thought that part out of the story, sat in the Marine Corps Recruiters Office for 15 minutes and then no one showed up, there was coffee on the desk but the person didn't come in and the staff must have been in the bathroom or something. I left, went into Navy Recruiters Office and I meet the one Navy recruiter who's willing to take a risk on me. And she died, you know, just to kind of jump ahead a little bit, she died two years later and I spoke to her family afterwards, like years after years later and they said that that's what she did. They said that, you know, her brother told me that's what he did for her and he got some charges but that's what she did for him when he got some charges, she was in the Navy, she left, but she flew back home to the Bronx, took him to a friend at the Air Force Recruiters and got him in the Air Force because she didn't want, and then another thing her brother told me was she would, and when she was a recruiter, she would drive around Co-op City in the neighborhoods that she grew up in and she would pull up to drug dealers and say, come on, man, we grew up together, I see where your life is going, come with me, like let's go join a military, let's go get a better life, you know, there's more out there to the world, she would essentially, she would like a Robin Hood, she would go get these dudes in the hood and like put them in the military because she saw where their life was going and I say all I have to say, I heard that voice, I go to the Marine Corps, if he ran my background, he wouldn't have done that for me and I know that for a fact because I get messages from kids all the time, we've heard me share my story on podcasts and other platforms and they say, like, how did you get into the Navy? Because I have this misdemeanor or I have this thing on my record and I've been trying for years, I've written senators to write me a letter and I can't get into the military and what can you do? Can you help me out? And I'll tell them all the time, it's all about the recruiters. Matter of fact, I have a cousin who I tried to get into the military because he had got a charge, charges in Atlanta and I flew him out to San Diego and no one would touch him because of his small record, no one would work with him. So I say all I have to say, I believe it was the voice of God that guided me, not just to the recruiter that day but to that specific recruiter who would work with me to help get me into military. Where do you think you would have been if you never met this woman? Because she sounds phenomenal. The world needs people like that to give people chances when they don't think they've got anywhere to go. Where do you think your life would have been? She's potentially saved your life. She saved my life 100% and she said those people when we were at the judge one of the things she said was those people make mistakes that doesn't mean that they don't have potential. Those people make mistakes and that's so true and if she didn't do what she did I for sure would either A be in prison for sure because like I said the guy who rides with Brown who I used to run with and sells drugs and do all that he's still sitting in prison. And the crazy thing is he was in prison in Pennsylvania got released from prison and then got put in prison in New Jersey because of charges that he had warrants and for doing the stuff that we were doing and he's still sitting in prison right now. So I know I would either be in prison or I'd be dead 100% What was the training like for the Navy? Because a black kid from the Bronx as well I think even you says there's only 1% as well a less than 1% who passed the training for Navy SEALs how hard was it then was there more against you then to pass? Yeah, so for the Navy the Navy was easy the start there Navy boot camp was like egregious and easy and that's where I'll never begin because I remember my first time the first night in boot camp all with the kids there were so many kids when you hear these whaling and crying from these kids because this is the first time I'm ever leaving home and I'm sitting in my bunk just cracking up laughing you know because he had this kid from the heart of the streets of the Bronx I'm listening to these kids from all across America they're crying in mommy I want my mommy and so that was easy but yeah, SEAL training was to even get into SEAL training it took me I had to check in time I went to my first command which was Naval Hospital Camp Pendleton and I just put the pedal to the metal when it came to training I didn't have a car so I would run 3 miles to the pool jump in the shallow end try to figure out and then run 3 miles back home back to the barracks I got it as that from dummy's book which was an academic book to study so that I can get the scores the academic scores I needed to get into SEAL training and then I just started making up workouts and you know after 6 months I had qualified to go to SEAL training I checked into my first command January 2003 which was Naval Hospital Camp Pendleton and I checked out in January 2004 going to SEAL training and the train just to get to that point was nuts it was like sometimes I think how did I do it and the answer is just mental I wanted it and that's kind of how I am now when I want something I will run through walls to get it and so the training to get to SEAL training was extremely hard and yeah when I got to SEAL training it was I mean it was horrible it was the worst it was the most physically and mentally challenging thing I've ever done in my life what sort of training do you need to do for to become a Navy SEAL? I mean it's everything in floods you're doing underwater swims two-mile time ocean swims and freezing cold water you're running miles miles of soft sand you're doing obstacle courses you're getting tortured you know there's a week in SEAL training called hell week when it starts on Sunday night ends on Friday night excuse me ends on Friday morning and you stay awake for that time and you only get two hours of sleep on Wednesday and two hours of sleep on Thursday but other than that you're up and it's just straight torture they keep you cold and wet the entire time it's the point we're towards the end of hell week you're hydrophobic you're terrified of the word the worst part of SEAL training is the cold they do this evolution called surf torture when they lay you down and a lot of people don't realize this but even though SEAL training is in Southern California the Pacific Ocean is freezing cold the Atlantic Ocean is on the US coast side it's warm especially when you get down to Florida but on the west coast the Pacific because that comes down from Alaska the Pacific that current that word is freezing cold even in the summertime and in the wintertime it's like ridiculously freezing cold and they lay you down in the Pacific and they just lay you down until people quit and you know my lowest core temperature I hyped out numerous times we call it hyped out but I call it hypothermia hypothermia in numerous times and my lowest core temperature at one point was 88.7 degrees they pulled me out they'd be a stuck thermometer in me and my core temperature was 88.7 degrees Fahrenheit which is not good you know I don't know what that's equivalent to that Celsius but that's you know the the norm for the average human being is 97.1 that's the norm you know when it comes to your temperature I was at 88.7 that's dead yeah that's so yeah that was that's another thing you do dives through first phase and you go to dive phase and dive phase it's you learn an open circuit close circuit dive then you have a week called pool week where you have to do all these dive tests where you have to swim down to your dive tanks and on one breath and put on all your dive gear on the water then you got to do that blindfold you have a buddy gear exchange where you got to take all your buddies dive gear underwater put it on and you guys got to share the oxygen the tubes to breathe then there's pool comp where they tie your hose in a knot spin you around pretty much destroy your tanks on the water and they do it when you exhale so you know typically when you go on the water we all inhale go on the water what they do is they where they watch your your bubbles go out on your tanks and as soon as your bubbles go out which means you exhale the air then it hits you and they tie your hose in a knot and you have to figure out how to keep yourself calm and not just untied a knot because that's the last thing one of the last things you do but fix your entire rig your straps turn your air on all these different things in a proper sequence and if you do one thing out of sequence you fail the whole thing and you're doing that with no air because you exhale air out of your lungs and then you get to third phase and you do survival and you do land warfare and weapons training and you got to say and come back to island which is where the island we're going to hit you scream and it's just nonstop torture it's just it sucks within the days it sucks and that's why the attrition rate is what it is I mean the class that graduated was started with 270 and only 29 of us graduated and that's the way it is every class you know they'll graduate 15 guys 20 guys 29 guys 30 guys you know 20 guys that's the way it is every class you know you get all of these guys who show up and you only get a few guys to make it through How long is training for? to become an EBCU? 6 months and after BUDS you go to SQT which is about 4 months so after you graduate from BUDS you get the rating of the SEAL so I'm not sure how it works in British military but like in Navy we have ratings so if you're a Corman then that's a Corman's a medic you get the rating of an HM if you're an OS which is an operation specialist then your rating is OS OS intelligence special so all these different jobs Wyand is like an admin person that's a rating so once you graduate from BUDS you get the rating of the SEAL which is SO special operator and then after after that you go to SQT which SEAL is involved in that which SEAL is like search, evasion, rescue and escape I mean that's where they actually get further they strip you and you get beaten we went to give information we went not to, we get starved we're in a cell that's miserable and then you go to freefall school static line jump school and then all the other follow-up training that's about 4 months and after that then you go to your SQT what made you stick it? was it the fact that you didn't want to fail was this your last opportunity in life what was it? freefall time and anything in life when you want to do something you have to have a deep rooted emotional reason as to why you want to do because that deep rooted emotional reason why is what's going to sustain you when things get rough when the winds and waves of life come then that deep rooted emotional reason why is going to act as an anchor but if you don't have a deep rooted emotional reason as to why you want to do something if you have a superficial reason because I want girls to like me or I want to be I want to be an actor or whatever because I want to be famous those are all superficial reasons and you have superficial reasons as soon as things get tough you're going to walk away and what sustained me was I had a deep rooted emotional reason for me it was like I had failed as a son I failed as a brother I failed in my record company I failed in so many different aspects of life and I'm not going to fail anymore I'm not it's either I had to die before I failed like that it's either depth I make it who I fail those are only three options and that was what carried me through it's just like I have nothing left this is all I had there is no plan B did you have to do training twice or did you not do hell week twice I did hell week twice I went through all hell week twice crazy fuck I wanted it man that was horrible that's why I have a lot of the pain that I have in my body now it's because I went through every phase of steel training twice you know it's I'm one of a few people that's done that you know and I don't recommend it yeah because I'm a big fan of David Goggins as well and I think he was two or three times that that's mental toughness that like people don't even make it through the first week you've went back months and months to go back again for the second time was it a were you trying to prove yourself that you weren't a failure or other people I don't want to talk about the mindset but what was that then to keep pushing you to then go back and go through more torture and pain did you feel alive then in that torture and pain yeah definitely felt alive and I felt that report I I just and I credit it to my mother you know my mother you know as I shared earlier she had a hard life she went from being a very rich wealthy woman to being poor and you know when you when you reach the top you can you can get complacent you can you get comfortable you know living this like where you have nannies and drivers and cooks and all of these different things and it's all taken from you and she could easily went down a different path but instead like I watched this woman work hard like sacrifice suffer to provide for my brother and I you know and I think having a person being able to see that every single day see somebody who lives breathes and eats grit and determination that just becomes a part of your nature just like we talked about earlier how hip-hop and you know influence and influence the kids and this it just became a part of what they did and how they live my mother and the way she was and the way she lived and persevered that just became second nature to me because I saw an example of it every single day and so fast forward to seal training it was just like alright life is hard but the way you live hard life is with hard work that's how you beat it that's the only way to beat it and so yeah going back wasn't like ah this is something like okay it's time to go do it it's gonna start but time to go pay the man time to go pay the man that's it so when you're doing it for the second time obviously it would have broke the majority of people but they make you then know what you're then enhance you for everything that you are going up against yeah 100% 100% it definitely gave me an advantage because I knew everything I was coming all the games that they were gonna play I read it so when we're in Hell Week and it's Thursday and they're like or Wednesday and they're like you guys suck we're gonna keep this week this is gonna be your first class then Hell Week is gonna last next for three days I was just like yeah whatever I heard them so like right now I really knew what was coming I knew that when the beatdowns were coming and how long I kind of had an idea how long it would last I had an idea how long surf torches would last and you know so it did give me an advantage you know for sure what was the feeling when you passed everything you've done in your life from selling drugs to letting your mum down to letting yourself down letting your dad down like all that failure failure failure to then pushing through to the toughest training problem in the world like it's up there with this training like to then accomplishing that and then is it graduating you do for the SEALs what's it called you have a big graduation ceremony how was that coming for you it was you know it was it wasn't as gratifying as one would expect why? it was just like now it's time to go to work because like I didn't go to SEAL training to graduate if that may if that makes sense I went to SEAL training to be a SEAL I think that that's where it can why a lot of people quit because you get people that they don't have that deep emotional reason why but they also don't they're not they don't they're looking at the wrong outcome the wrong the outright outcome is okay you make it through and now you're going to be a SEAL it's not just about surviving to that and so um you know similar to SAS who dares lives you know for us it's not about freaking surviving to the end it's about coming to the course facing your demons and beginning the steps towards conquering your demons so that you can go back into society a change person and operate with the lessons that you've learned through the course that's what our that's what the SAS who dares lives is about right and so that that was in similar similar passion to me it wasn't about graduating and getting to that it was about facing my demons fighting becoming a new person and becoming a SEAL so I'm going to do a job so when I finally graduated it was like oh well I was like all right let's go to work let's go let's go and do the job you know so so what happens once you graduate what where do you go to travel around the world do you stay in America yeah so yeah so when you I graduated in my case you know I got I got orders to a SEAL team went to a SEAL team on the west coast you know worked on two different SEAL teams actually and you start to do what's called a work up cycle where you do train with your team so the first part of the work up is where you go to your specialization schools or whatever you're going to specialize in so you're a medic then if you go to advanced medical courses if you're a sniper then or you want to be a sniper then you go to sniper school you go to advanced sniper school and then after that you come back meet up with your platoon and then you do training as a platoon and then do another block of training and then you deploy and that was my that was my talent you know 18 month about an 18 month work up 6 to 7 month deployment 18 month work up 6 to 7 month deployment 18 month work up 6 to 7 month deployment and uh you know that was you know what I did most of my deployments were all to the middle east um got to do some cool stuff really really cool stuff and uh you know got to do an augment with with a tier 1 unit um and yeah man it was it was it was everything I dreamed of man it was to be able to really feel like you're making a difference in the world because you're you know you're operating the tip of the spear was it was and then coming from where I came from you gotta understand man I was I was a drug deal at a bronze man a drug deal at a bronze and now I didn't be you know gearing up to get ready to go to operation go after HBT I mean that that doesn't happen and uh you know another cool thing is I got to live the best in the best world because I was a human guy so you know I told you earlier that each every seal uh has a specialization sometimes multiple specialization so I was a human guy which stands for human intelligence so I was able to go to a lot of intelligent schools and and you know you know learn a lot of cool things as it relates to tradecraft and money sources and doing that stuff so I got to do intelligence stuff overseas where you know in civilian clothes beard grown out have conversations with people and doing surveillance counter surveillance and building intelligence packages and then passing as intelligence packages up the chain of command and and getting that information vetted and then getting and kick back down to us and getting a green light to go pick down a door and get a bad guy so I got to live in the kind of like this spy world and it also kind of live in this in this operator and I'm a dude from the hood you know so uh I'll never forget it I will never forget this I'll never forget I was it was I was it was May of 2010 I was in a very hostile country I won't name the country and I remember being on this it was sorry it was May 5th May 5th of 2010 because it was single to my own we have a holiday here called single to my own and uh I'm at the CIA compound poolside with these CIA agents and drinking corona beers and just looking at this beautiful pool used to be you know a bag of every well known bad guys palace that was a burden into a uh a CIA and I just remember sitting at the pool drinking these corona's I'm just like damn how do I get here like like like like it's like pitching myself like this can't be real you know what I'm saying and uh but man I've had a plus life I had a plus I enjoyed it see the training you done twice how how how did that mentally keep you stable in hostile environments especially if you were a spy try to get intelligence like to be so cool calm and collective like your second stint of like how weak make you become who you are I think the ability to be able to be stable in hot situations and all that came from my upbringing you know there's this uh there's a saying our seals and I think this can go for SAS and SBS and uh other special forces groups are special forces operators born or made which means are you born with everything that's needed to be to be an operator or are you you know through life or you nurture into this operator I think it's different for everybody I think some people are born with specific skills just like you get kids who are born with a gift for singing and they're going to be the best singer people who are born with a gift for swimming they just their bodies just designed to be they got to grow with long arms and long legs and a proper torso everything to be you know Michael Phelps right uh I think it's a combination but I think some people they're born with it some people they they they learn it over time they learn the skills it's acquired over time some people's a combination or the 1730 whether it's 1820 whether it's you know uh 6040 I think it's a combination for me I think I was born with it but then also I think the way I grew up you know really it made me that mental toughness my mom like I said my mom was a very strong willed person and she was a hard person on me and my brother you know how I got into writing you know starting with my mother she would make my brother and I read New York Times articles and write reports and if our reports weren't near perfect she would make us pick another article and write again you know my mother was all about do it right the first time we would have to wash and dry the dishes every night my brother and I one night it'd be my turn to wash and my brother the next night you know it'd be my turn to dry my brother's trying to wash and if those dishes weren't washed perfectly and dried perfectly then she would take all of them out put them in the sink make us do it again you know my mom was a very very instill is I mean a very hardcore you can see on Instagram people think she's my sister because she she's this big fitness woman and she's 70 years old and she's running and doing all this crazy stuff that you know 30 year olds can't do and she's always been like that though and I say that to say between my mother the environment I grew up in especially you know walking the streets of the Bronx having to be able to be able to read people having to be able to tell what somebody's gonna lie or somebody's ready to fight you or whether a shootout is about to happen being able to you know read you have to learn how to read people to survive in that environment so between that and the mental toughness that I acquired from the DNA from my parents we had my mom kind of nurtured through life I feel like when I came to steel training I was gonna make it through steel training I don't think steel training I don't think it's still training taught me anything more I think what it did was it it showed me how to apply what was already there and it showed me that I could apply what was already there and so fast forward to now when it comes time to operate all of that stuff especially from the Bronx in a way that all came into play when I was going to meetings with sources I could immediately tell when they were lying it wasn't because of the steel training it was because I grew up in the Bronx I had to immediately tell when somebody had information that they wanted to give me and it wasn't that they were lying they were just terrified and having to learn how to kind of massage that in a graceful way I had to touch that information out of them so again it was I don't credit a lot of it to steel training now obviously I had to go to specific schools like I said I had to go to human schools so there was certain things that I learned and there was certain things that I know terms and things that you know maybe I had kind of learned in the streets I was able to put tags on that I learned in the actual school programs there were other things there was a human operator and definitely as an operator we would shoot movement and communicate it but as far as the mental we're talking just the mental toughness and fortitude and the ability to be able to have emotional intelligence and read people and read situations that had always been there How hard was it to gather intelligence in a war zone? It wasn't hard for me man it wasn't hard for me again I think because it's not like you have one conversation everything works out it's a process it's a process and I can't go into all details because obviously sensitivity around the way we do what we do but the process wasn't hard for me the outcome is always hard but the process wasn't hard for me because I'm a very patient person and because I've gone through processes going through CO2 and it's why it's always different things you know it helped me go through the process with risk Was your life ever in danger? Of course it was Was there any scary moments for you that you thought you might have killed? Of course it was I mean it's war when you go to war it's war so yeah I mean I've been in a lot of situations and thank god I survived a lot of all of them you know I've had a lot of friends who happened that didn't but yeah it's war man obviously you can lose lives you can lose brothers on the streets you can lose them at war how hard does that to lose someone you've spent a few years with seeing them get their life took it well how hard does that yeah man it's rough man this picture I'm pointing to I'm not sure of you so this kind of fraying thing those are guys on my team who died you know the pictures and the write-ups so I framed that and it goes bigger than what you see because my camera can't go but those are all guys that you know I've lost you know and I keep a list of guys on my guys who I've served with whether going through Buds or whether served with in the teams keep a list of those guys on my computer as a reminder of a bandit and me and the points of me continuing to fight in a different way and serve I've had many men on who's served in the army the special forces and we've became good friends and we're going to go with ptsd how do you what's the program like in America for guys who've served for their countries there's a lot of help because there's help but not so much as there should be there's a lot of help for men who serve in America yeah I would say so there's a lot I mean you know when you serve like one you have you can get a VA loan for a house so it makes buying a house easier and then paying for college I didn't have to pay for my bachelor's degree I didn't have to pay for my master's degree as a matter of fact when I was in school I got paid while I was in school you know from the government so yeah I mean you got free schooling and you got you know VA loans all kinds of and if you get a disability rating then you get all kinds of other benefits so I get like a mini retirement you know I get my kids get to go to college for free because I served in the military I think America really takes care of of their troops there's about to get there may be a law passed in the next few months where you know I have to pay proper tax on your house have a disability rating so I mean there's tons of benefits I mean I just got and I tore my labrum while I was in the teams I've been out of the military since 2016 so for you know six years and I just got my I got a PRP procedure done on my shoulder which is very expensive thousands of dollars a seal foundation paid for maybe seal foundation for excuse me seal future foundation paid for how long were you in the military for 13 years 13 and a half so that's a long time so why the decision to leave a certain amount of years before you can leave or you know for me while my contract was going to expire typically a lot of guys especially after they get over the 10 year mark they tend to stay in because it's like why not do the pool 20 years and get a retirement but my first son was born in 2014 my second son was born in 2015 I wanted to be home I wanted to watch them grow up and being a seal you're going so much and so I just wanted to I wanted to be home I wanted to be a family man wanted to live a normal life and you know I was in grad school when I got out so you know my plan when I got out you know I had a good savings but then also you know I was going to go into business consulting so that was a plan was to go into business consulting and and that's why I was getting my master's degree so you know I kind of had a plan but it didn't work out quite as expected but you know that's kind of how everything happens for a reason and you know a few months after I got out I got out in January 2016 and in May of 2016 is when I got my starting Hollywood. Yes amazing career you've had which we'll touch on the decision to leave the military was that because obviously your dad wasn't there when you were when a kid when you've got your own sons you realised how important that is for the father to be around yeah that was a big part of my dad died when I was five as I mentioned so I wanted to be around for my two sons you know it's now expanded so now I have three sons and a daughter so No wonder you work so hard now brother so when you leave the military what was the steps then for your life then I know you've got a bachelor's degree you've been in Hollywood blockbusters you've been transformers you've worked with Ryan Reynolds if you worked with Gerard Butler as well Scotsman. Yeah I did a movie with Gerard it's gonna come out in January I did a movie with him last last summer that's gonna come out this January it's called the plane Yeah he's Scottish as well How did you go on with the accent though? Oh it's good it's good I'm good with accents I'm good with being able to pick up what people are saying just because I've traveled so much so yeah yeah Scottish accent So how does a kid from the Bronx like life basically going nowhere to be either dead or going to prison to then becoming an AVCO passing to the toughest courses on the planet to then being in Hollywood blockbusters like did you do acting classes? No no no so as I said I was in grad school when I got the phone call and for business because I was gonna go on business consulting and this woman reached out to me and she said hey Michael Bayes looking for somebody in your background to be in the next Transformers film are you interested and can you come to set tomorrow and I was just like yeah I'm just writing papers I think I could come you know and so she said alright send me some pictures so I could show the Bayes send her some pictures and then she was like alright you're approved I had one day on Transformers turned into three weeks and three weeks turned into six months and that's essentially there's a lot more to the story but I won't get into it right now but that's what started my career in Hollywood and then from there I started consulting and acting on other commercials and then at the same time I'm still volunteering with different nonprofits going to schools, going to prisons working with human trafficking organizations and and I did a human trafficking trip and I'm going to say summer 2018 it was like July end of July beginning of August and I went down to Dominican Republic and Haiti with Operation Underground Railroad which is an organization that employees form special operations guys at CIA guys to rescue kids trapped in sex trafficking and organ harvesting and when I was down there I was just I mean the stuff we see is just heartbreaking and that's when I was just like I need to take my skillset as a filmmaker and somehow merge this to fight the fight against human trafficking and interestingly as soon as my flight landed back in the States after that trip I had all these messages from Michael Bay's producing partner my case was just like yeah we've been looking for you Michael Bay wants you to consult on a movie Six Underground so that's how I got back from that trip and I immediately jumped into working on Six Underground with Netflix and Ryan Reynolds and Corey Hawkins and those actors and then that's when I again everything was a gradual process and that's when I got into writing films as well and then I started working on more films and TV shows and it probably kind of you know gradually worked from being actor consultant to being a writer to being a writer now writer director and producer so this is like it was a gradual thing it didn't all happen once it didn't all happen from the standpoint of I wouldn't be an actor at all I was just down into it and I was just like I love storytelling and then it turned into I love storytelling and I love being able to be able to have an impact on the world through storytelling specifically human trafficking and there's some other topics I want to cover as well at some point in my career and then it just grew from there and now we are where we are today I'm doing movies with Gerard Butler and I'll be How did you work with Mark Wahlberg? Yeah, with Mark Wahlberg on Transformers, great guy awesome guy Yeah, that's a list of phenomenal names and you touched on the human trafficking how bad is that on this planet at the moment? It's horrific, pull up a chair it's horrific as of now it's projected as a $32 billion industry it's the organ harvesting side of it which is what I focus on and my film focuses on is estimated at a $1 billion industry there's no real way to know the statistics for sure as it relates to organ harvesting because it's so under the surface but it's a massive massive thing in the world and during a pandemic online recruitment as it relates to human trafficking jumped 22% during lockdowns and a 25% increase just on Facebook 95% increase on Instagram I mean it's a massive massive undertaking 30,000 victims of just trafficking not labor, not organ harvesting just sex trafficking die from disease or torture every year you know every year every year 365 but every year women and children account for most of the 600 to 800,000 globally trafficked victims it's something that it blows my mind how many people are not aware of this it's an it's an epidemic it's a pandemic it's just so widespread and it's happening all over the world and as I said it's about to surpass the drug trade why do you think there's so little spoke about it on mainstream media though I think because it's such a horrible thing that people and I could be wrong but people think that if we don't talk about it maybe it'll go away if I stick my head in the sand it'll go away and you know it's not a topic that I think that media is of the mindset that it's not a topic that the general public wants to hear about and I think that that's a travesty because when I talk about it or when I show films about it people are just they're angry they're more angry that they have not been made aware of it than they are being made aware of knowing that these atrocities exist there's more people enslaved around the world today than any other time in human history today there are more slaves and you know slaves have been around since the beginning of time and there's more slaves today than any other time in human history and again that's organ harvesting that's sex trafficking that's labor that's people being used for testing that's people being used to move drugs in it's a massive thing yeah the world's a fucked up place there's so much beautiful things going on in it as well but a lot of people are not brainwashed towards it but a lot of people are staying in a bubble where they work their 9-5 job they don't realise what actually goes on the destruction, the pain, the misery the deceit that everything is controlled and that's why some things are easier not to talk about because then people believe what they watch and read so if you don't talk about it like you say then it doesn't exist me and you even speaking about this people think those numbers can't be true but it's fucking true I've had Olly Allerton on as well he was in Celebrity S.A.S he was Special Forces and they were in I think China and it was thousands of kids going missing weekly or monthly like the numbers were unbelievable like the pain and destruction like you say it's such a big trade now like it's just fucking sad to think because I'm a father as well, I've got kids so it's like you do everything to protect them and when you hear people talk about it you don't realise the extent to actually what goes on and how hard that is to try and protect people now especially with social media as well and so many people can be brainwashed and conditioned and to believe in what they want like how do you think those problems only going to get worse Olly yeah, especially now when we're going to a global recession it's going to get way worse you know and again it's one of those things where it's this machine it's this monster that's been around for a long period of time but with technology it's allowed it to be more vast it's allowed these organ harvesting and these human trafficking networks to work more fluidly because they can communicate for example there's a story out of India with this Nigerian like computer engineer who created this website and he was able to essentially create a kidney black market where poor Indians in India would go on his website and they would essentially sell one of their kidneys you know and for just to get a few hundred bucks you know that would be gone in less than a year and that all happened because of technology as I mentioned earlier during a pandemic there was a 25% increase on the web as it related to recruitment you know why is it growing it was a 95% increase of recruitment on Instagram so technology has allowed this thing to grow even more faster here in the United States the biggest problem of human trafficking is on the border and what has happened in the past I interviewed a guy about three days ago who was trafficked from Venezuela to Colombia to Mexico and it finally escaped he was enslaved, finally escaped and crossed into the United States and what he said was the gangs and the cartel what they're doing is they're sending they're creating these fake travel agencies and they're sending messages to coyotes all across South America they're sending these digital ads as well all across South America and other parts of the world to let people know hey America has an open border policy according to their politics according to their politics the current president said they're not turning anybody away so these cartel and gang members have taken that soundbite and created pamphlets and digital pamphlets to draw people to the border so that's how this guy got caught up he received a digital pamphlet saying hey, this travel agency wants to help move you into the United States they're best based in Mexico so he traveled from Venezuela to Colombia got to Mexico this travel agency I say that after the border after a few days a car pulls up at gunpoint orders them into the car he gets into the car and beat them up stab them and then they drive into a location take them out of the car open a trunk there's three girls in the trunk who was also part of this travel agency who were lured to Mexico through this travel agency that car gets taken to a house in Mexico massive house he gets into the house with 100 people from all across not just South America but people from other parts of the world they were all lured to this place the girls were used for sex trafficking the kids were used as mules to move drugs into the United States because apparently the kids don't get vetted as harshly as the adults and the men were used for labor or their families had to pay a ransom and after the families paid the ransom these guys were executed because they were no use to this gang anymore and so it's a problem everywhere and it's very, very real and as you said I think people don't think it's real but here's an interesting thing too in working in the human trafficking space and doing all this research for my film that I have worked on it's not hard to find information there's articles and vetted news reports everywhere I told you about that story in India there's another story in India that's very well known news where this woman she was in a very impoverished part of India and she received a message online stating that she could get a job in New Delhi and because there was no job opportunities where she was and so she got excited packed up her bags got to New Delhi the job, I say that in air quotes essentially her new boss collected her at the bus stop and gave her a small apartment for a few days about three days in he came to the apartment and said hey you gotta go get your medical check up in order to start working it's a new policy she goes to this clinic in this kind of shady part of town and strips to get ready to do her medical examination she overhears through the door somebody come in and says yes she's gonna be donating her organs she's gonna be giving this organ in this organ because of how her attentiveness saved her life she got dressed bullied out reported this organ harvesting ring to the police and it got exposed and everybody doctors, nurses were arrested and this was a multi-million dollar organ harvesting ring that had been going on for a number of years there's a story that came out of Pakistan recently where police freed 20 people from an apartment and these people again were lured because hey come get this job and they were right before that apartment got raided the very next few days later these people were supposed to get their organs their kidneys, their kidneys taken out and sold in the black market you know Cairo, Cairo is like the capital of the world as it relates to organ harvesting you know so this is something that goes on all around the world there's another story as well they came, I'm sorry I'm rambling on because all of these things are just coming to me but I'm just trying to show the reality of it so that people can freaking wake up and stop digging their head in the sand and saying that's not real, that doesn't happen that's just a horror there's a very well known story out of Costa Rica where a group of Israelis Israelis brokered these deals but there's an Israeli broker who went to Costa Rica and started this human organ harvesting thing with this doctor in Costa Rica where Israelis can fly in they would pitch poor Costa Ricans to sell their kidneys the poor Costa Ricans would sell a kidney for this Israeli and for Israelis that were flying they would get the surgery done in Costa Rica and get a new kidney to pay for it all on the black market so I mean there's no real way to estimate how much money organ harvesting makes because it's so under the surface and it's just happening all over so it's really hard to pinpoint statistically but it's estimated at least at a minimum I think that that number is very low it's estimated at $1 billion a year Yeah it doesn't seem much because you see it sounds like a horror film but I know places in Thailand and stuff like that people used to just get drugged into an apartment organs cut out and left in a nice bath people are waking up with fucking hardly any organs like it's so extreme do you think it's just so easy for people to now be groomed online where people want a better life so they're groomed to then people say they can give them a better job money house apartment and they're very naive towards that this stuff actually goes on Yeah it happens in three ways the work that I've done in different human trafficking I found it happens in three ways you have the willing you have the person that's willing you have the victim who's like I'm desperate and this is well known in Egypt and specifically in Cairo where you get people who are extremely desperate and they're trying to escape poverty and find buyers or find a broker to sell a kidney this is well documented this is not something I'm pulling out of my ass and so you have you have the people who are willing to give up an organ now let me give you a real world example that I experienced when I was in Dominican Republic I was in Dominican Republic operation operation in the ground railroad in 2018 and we were in this slum in Dominican Republic there were a lot of poor places in the world so I've seen a lot of crazy places where it's like how do people live like this but I was in this place that was an absolute slum in Dominican Republic I mean the road that was meant for cars we couldn't drive a car we could barely ride a freaking school to motorcycle down and the roads went down and they would be shouting around called shacks along the road and this guy one of the locals pulls me into this chapel that had to be no bigger than my guest bathroom and it's this family and about four or five people in it cramped in it and at the end of the chapel was this casket and it was a baby and it had to be about six months old and but the guy told me was the baby died because this particular slum doesn't get clean water and so the mother she wasn't getting the proper nutrients to be able to breastfeed so she had her milk dried up and so she was using the dirty water with a formula and that's how they died and the reason why he showed me this was because we know that this particular slum that's why we were in this particular slum we knew that this particular slum the parents would sell their children to traffickers in the north of DR we were in the south of the Dominican Republic they would sell their children in the north of the Dominican Republic why because that's where the Europeans and Americans and the Australians and the South Africans and all these different people would go to have sex with kids now you would ask yourself why in the hell would a parent do this and I'm a parent of four kids I got a daughter I would never do that but the reason why this particular guy in the chapter was he was trying to show me and give me a reason as to why a parent would do that because for these parents it's like well if I don't do this with this kid then I only have two kids died because they can't get proper water they can't get proper food but I'm not trying to make it understandable because in my mind it would never be understandable but just kind of connecting that to the people in Cairo that sell their kids they're so desperate that they're just like I do anything to just have an opportunity I do anything to just be able to get into America I'll give up a kid tell me what you need and I'll give it up and that's what we're seeing around the world is you know when people are desperate they will do desperate things and like to us we don't understand it but it's similar to them not understanding how how we can belittle or curse out or talk badly of our political leaders or our presidents right just like in some of these countries you get to talk bad about your president we don't understand how you can talk bad about the prime minister you talk bad about this they don't understand it because in their country they get killed there is no freedom of speech in their country so for them it's hard to understand how we in the UK and the US have free speech and say anything we want to say not just about through the figures but about other people in people in power they can't grasp that concept because they don't live here in their country they get killed whereas we can't grasp the concept of a parent selling their child or a person selling their kidney in order to get a few thousand hours where's the first place in the world for human trafficking? well I mean America it's really hard to pinpoint but what we do know is that as it relates to human trafficking America is the number one consumer of content pornography specifically that involves traffic victims so Americans drive demand as it relates for material that's been created with traffic victims and that's just on the same side now this guy I was telling you about earlier what entered you earlier this week who was trafficked from Venezuela eventually escaped into the United States he the biggest epiphany I got out of that interview was that because of how much disorder there is on the border America is creating this massive collection point for traffic victims in Mexico so Mexico has now become like a big trafficking hub as well right? Cairo as we know historically has been a big freaking as known to be the capital of the order harvesting order trafficking excuse me but you also have India India is notorious for this not just sex trafficking and organ harvesting also labor as it relates to that and that's another thing when people hear of human trafficking they automatically go to sex you know it's more than just sex trafficking it's organ harvesting, it's labor it's the male order brides from other countries that have been stolen from their home and now they're being sold on the dark web or the black web to wealthy men countries and now they're married to these guys and they were sold so there's different facets of human trafficking and in some countries one facet may be more prevalent than another facet for example like I said in Cairo in Egypt the organ harvesting is that's going to be more prevalent than probably in Thailand where sex trafficking is a massive undertaking just like it is in Cambodia and other parts of the world I don't think you can really pinpoint one country that is that's the way it's all happening the majority of it is happening it's happening it's heartbreaking even and they take the kids not just for sex but they cut their eyes out or cut their legs off so they can get more money when they're begging for money that goes on and people think they only see it in films it's more extreme than what people think yeah and when you think about it too you know far as pricing wise a clean heart and lung or lung starts like the fee the price starts at $130,000 so it just starts there which means that it can go up probably until a million dollars if you know how desperate a person is and how wealthy a person is a liberal kidney goes for just under $100,000 and corny is the eyes go for about $30,000 so if one human being let's just conservatively say one human being can sell for anywhere between $300,000 to $500,000 I'm just being conservative it's probably more than that depending on as it relates to the black market trade of human organs let's just say one human being what could go for between $300,000 to $500,000 how much time would it take for a trafficker to earn that money from a sex trafficker yeah that's panties would take a lot of time versus one day being able to earn upwards I'm sure it could be way more than $500,000 I'm just being conservative so people don't say this guy's outlandish but $500,000 and then on top of that it's less risky for a trafficker why because when you're trafficking a girl for sex you have johns that are coming which means that they could pass on diseases and damage her or they could beat her or the john to be an undercover cop or to be working for an NGO you know there's a a lot more risk they could that this girl one human sex trafficking ring and another sex trafficking ring and they could beat these these battles because this trafficking ring has these girls on this block and these girls on this block and now it's this competition whereas they don't have to worry about the risks they're just harvesting organs you know it's a lot more money it's very very lucrative it's lucrative and you know you think about kids go missing people go missing all the time and you know and the sad thing is and going back to the question you asked me earlier about you know why isn't media talking about this much I think it's important because media doesn't realize they don't have a good understanding of the numbers which nobody really does you know there was a case here in the United States and I'm sorry from rambling on but there's a states here a case here in Dallas in a Dallas Mavericks basketball game where a girl she's at the basketball game with her father a playoff game and she goes to the bathroom and she disappears doesn't come back you know they look at cameras everything what the cop said it was like she's a runaway okay the parents were desperate they you know scoured the internet they found a human trafficking because they just knew their daughter they knew their daughter wasn't going to run away they found a human trafficking nonprofit that was run by veterans those military guys those melt veterans scoured the dark web and about you know I came up with those eight days or three weeks later they found her being trafficked on their dark web drugged and trafficked they set up a stain rescued her and arrested all of the people that were part of this sex trafficking ring and guess what they were at the game they were looking for a soft target right but the police and authorities just wrote it off oh she's just a runaway how many people have just run away when it happened they were taken and so yes it's a mess yeah that should be global news that when you talk about drugs somebody moving 10 kilos 20 kilos that that money's nothing compared to people 10 people being trafficked that's 5 million pounds basically if you can get 500 500 grand a body some people maybe traffic 100 bodies kids in Africa kids in Thailand it's easy to get people because like you say there's parents selling their kids for $100 $1000 to then those kids getting sold on for hundreds of thousands of pounds like people are desperate people sell their soul all the time but you don't know the extreme like America UK it is a better living here it's a high quality of living but when you're in the slums people do anything for their kids to survive and that's what we're trying to talk to Sean so how there was three ways there was one was the willing willing participant that you have the people who are tricked and this is a big thing that happens in Dubai and a lot with the labor so in Dubai you have a lot of girls and then and also sex, labor and sex they're lower to Dubai for a better life as soon as they land in Dubai from East Africa and other parts of the Middle East and India as soon as they land in Dubai their passports are taken by the traffickers so they can't leave they put in these shanty shacks and girls are used for sex and guys are used for labor a lot of Dubai was built on the back of slaves now with that said that is the so you've got the willing participant you have the person who is tricked he's just straight up taken kind of like the example with the guy who I shared who I interviewed earlier this week where he was taken and freaking you know trafficked you know taken against his will and there's a lot of other stories and then another thing which my film covers is the link to trafficking as it relates to urban harvesting and terrorism you know a lot of terrorist groups especially ISIS you know when their financial lines were cut because of intervention so I was just kind of leaving it at that you know they had to look at other ways to get money and one of the ways they got money especially in end of 2016-2017 was through trafficking Yazidis girls you know and trafficking girls in northern Iraq and selling them for sex and selling them for organs and labor and other things so there is a link where and what we do it can also it's a national security issue as well you know it's a national security issue but again those are the three different methods I wanted to talk about Is that the film The Unexpected? Yeah so my film is called The Unexpected that film is going to be September 30th and that's based on true events around a person I don't want to give away too much but a person who is trapped in the national organ harvesting ring and I really went to painstaking details to assure that it was as authentic as possible whether interviewing people first hand knowledge for things that I saw and actual stories of actual people so it's a very authentic and realistic thing that's based on true events and that's going to release on YouTube on October excuse me on September 30th so that's going to release on YouTube on September 30th so can you send me all the descriptions and all the links for people to then go and watch that absolutely we'll touch on that, we'll get you back on again we can touch on that more just before we finish up, we'll talk about your book transformed as well, where can people get that they can get that wherever books are sold, Amazon Barnes & Noble I'm not sure of the name of the book stores out there but pretty much Amazon, most of the people in the UK got my book they got it on Amazon let's touch on just before we go Celebrity SES, you're doing the UK show now working with Foxy and Matt Billingham two good men, how's that show going for you? That was awesome man, that was awesome that was a great experience, Billy and Foxy are awesome Rudy's a great dude too Billy, I love those guys they've become my brothers to me yeah man, I just had a great time working on the show, we just got announced I'm going to say two days ago maybe yesterday I can't remember but they're doing a US version which we already shot, so Foxy and Billy are in that as well, along with me and that's going to air here in the US on Fox, so that's going to be a big one I know a few of the contestants on it, I know Shannon Courtney Carolyn Best in the UK one of the good people last question brother, just for anybody that's struggling or battling with mental health, what advice would you have for them? I would say attack the seed I always say I struggle with mental health as all of us do I think every single person does struggle with some whether it's self-doubt whether it's regret whether it's negative self-talk, I can't do this I won't do this, I'll suck we all struggle with some level of it and a few pieces of advice that I try to give to people who have a struggle especially when it comes to depression and attack the seed whatever that negative thought is deal with it counter that negative thought with positive self-talk counter that negative self-talk with positive self-talk, so if you say to yourself today's going to suck and that just keeps them a bar to you then beat that back with today it's going to be a great day I'm still alive, I got good health you know what I mean I still have a family attack the seed positive self-talk listening for coming on today and telling your story I thoroughly enjoyed that very proud of you for everything you've achieved no doubt your mum's very proud of you from the kid from the streets to your career's only basically just beginning as well with the new stuff that you've got coming up it's amazing to see a lot of people get inspiration from your story would you like to finish up on anything brother? no, just say look out for the film September 30th if you follow me on Instagram Facebook and LinkedIn I'm dropping teaser interviews from the actors producers and behind the scenes and where they're showing their experiences as it relates to human trafficking the experience working on the film and yeah keep a lookout for that that's going to be September 30th thank you my brother for coming on again I appreciate it, God bless you good luck for the future and I'll see you soon God bless you, thank you too brother