Speaker 1: If money comes power, and sometimes people could get lucky,
Speaker 1: you know, not the smartest people that get lucky and
Speaker 1: they have that money that shouldn't have power, and they
Speaker 1: say power corrupts. What you see us today, asked, is
Speaker 1: what you're seeing us before? It didn't change us. A
Speaker 1: lot of the structures, specifically in Chicago during the time
Speaker 1: period where minorities would be suppressed. So it's they just
Speaker 1: didn't have the money the way those cool leather jackets
Speaker 1: the Panthers had. What they was trying to run their
Speaker 1: neighborhoods at that point, the threat is just a white
Speaker 1: person saying you're coming home. You get attacked and sucked over.
Speaker 1: Just forbid this. In those early points, the guy that
Speaker 1: is willing to stand in front because he got a
Speaker 1: good debt all you can really throw a punt. It
Speaker 1: doesn't necessarily have any leadership skills or abilities. It's funny
Speaker 1: because people call those nerves and stuff gil. That's a
Speaker 1: compliment to me. It's pretty tough to me. I feel
Speaker 1: like that ain't cool now, And the beginning THERD wasn't cool.
Speaker 1: That was like rcle. Yeah, but you're doing things like
Speaker 1: because you watched a lot of movies and a lot
Speaker 1: of videos. You know what, sail, If I did everything
Speaker 1: that they did, I'd be dead, like I tell them,
Speaker 1: I'd be dead and broke. So I'm hoping that, like
Speaker 1: when we're telling our story, and you know, I talked
Speaker 1: to my wife about this all the time that people
Speaker 1: I think that we're trying to glamb my life. What
Speaker 1: we want you to know is that there's a lot
Speaker 1: of stuff right now. I've got to st Jackson and
Speaker 1: I'm Charlie Webster and this is surviving old Chappo. The
Speaker 1: twins who brought down the drug wall. Can you imagine
Speaker 1: being taken on drug runs by the age of seven
Speaker 1: years old, taught the family business, and by the time
Speaker 1: you're seventeen, you've got one million dollars in cash under
Speaker 1: your bed. And that was just from three months work
Speaker 1: for the Flores twins. That was just the starting point.
Speaker 1: They were out on their own. The dad futuritive in Mexico,
Speaker 1: the brother in prison. I remember having a note left
Speaker 1: in our door and my brother's house forward staying at
Speaker 1: there was a notice call me come twin coming in.
Speaker 1: When I did car it was it was Tommy. He
Speaker 1: was my brother's I'm connect the stores of for getting drugs.
Speaker 1: He tells me, Look, I just pulled into the McDonald's
Speaker 1: right here. I'm getting twenty six and I remember just
Speaker 1: put it into to meet him. No, and he's stands,
Speaker 1: increase me. How you've been? How's your brother? He tells
Speaker 1: me right away, like litten, I'm gonna post it. I
Speaker 1: wanted to offer you work to see if you wanted
Speaker 1: to up work with me. I got kettos of cocaine
Speaker 1: and I wanted to know you needed something. I was
Speaker 1: like I needed something, like but look, I want to
Speaker 1: give you something. I'm pretty sure that you your brother
Speaker 1: could move it. I just wanted to discuss if you're interested.
Speaker 1: And I was like, well, I'm interested, but I'm not sure.
Speaker 1: You know I could help you really know, Like I
Speaker 1: was like, well, let me calls someone I know that
Speaker 1: it might be interested. I call him, you know, like
Speaker 1: you know, this trustice friend in our family ends up
Speaker 1: becoming our very first customer and we need to go
Speaker 1: to eat something. You know. He doesn't take me too serious.
Speaker 1: I'm still nervous, like you know, I don't have no
Speaker 1: money to buy him, Like, no, don't worry, I'm gonna
Speaker 1: lend them to you. Just be careful, you know. He's like, look,
Speaker 1: just go home, man, I'm gonna be sending my brother,
Speaker 1: you know, to go see you. So I remember going
Speaker 1: home him showing up. I remember, you know, tell him
Speaker 1: go around the back. I've opened the card board. He
Speaker 1: pulls in. I still remember he has a gold camera.
Speaker 1: It's sunny out, you know. I'm like, okay, I'm waiting
Speaker 1: for him, tuning to give me a bag. He says,
Speaker 1: hold on. He gets off the front seat, jumps in
Speaker 1: the back seat. I know what he's doing, like from
Speaker 1: my express with my brothers, like there's a station department. No,
Speaker 1: they call it a trap. So I can see him
Speaker 1: in the back seat pulling it out. When I go
Speaker 1: get the bag, I'm gonna pull it with my shoulder.
Speaker 1: I'm like, what you know, it's heavy. I don't know
Speaker 1: what's in it, but I'm thinking, okay, going to the house.
Speaker 1: He pulls out and I opened the bag and I
Speaker 1: see that there's like bricks and bricks, and I'm like,
Speaker 1: what are you saying? And now start calling him and
Speaker 1: there's dirty kilos right wait a minute, So I call him.
Speaker 1: I'm like, man, I think you brother made a mistake.
Speaker 1: He sent me thirty kilos. He laughed. He said, and
Speaker 1: don't worry, man, You're gonna do good. Don't worry about it.
Speaker 1: Just do what you gotta do. Com Me when you
Speaker 1: when you have some money. That was like a big moment.
Speaker 1: I remember me and my brother talked to me. He
Speaker 1: have the keys, like wherever we're gonna do, We're gonna
Speaker 1: tell him. Now, we're gonna tell him. I was excited
Speaker 1: and I'm like, oh, we got this, Like I'm spending
Speaker 1: the money in my head. First thing you do is
Speaker 1: we could a window open on the keilos, which is
Speaker 1: common for some reason. I always see the keylos like this,
Speaker 1: and you could a little triangle. Now you pull back
Speaker 1: to those people who don't know a kilo. Actually, depending
Speaker 1: on where it comes from. At that time, it was
Speaker 1: more common to actually have ky locokine looks like a
Speaker 1: flat brick, like more of a a brick shape. If
Speaker 1: it comes to different shapes, it's not they come with
Speaker 1: inner tubes, because if they're throwing in the ocean, in
Speaker 1: the water, you know, yeah, that's the kind of condom.
Speaker 1: It feels like. It's not that from you know, the
Speaker 1: source where it was made. Because they're going to take
Speaker 1: the precaution to make sure that it's protected, it doesn't
Speaker 1: get wet, and it has later it comes laters, plastic,
Speaker 1: clear layers. It might be a tape, it might be
Speaker 1: a duct tape, aluminum foil, you know where in Chicago.
Speaker 1: A lot of times by the time it gets there,
Speaker 1: someone already has opened it, put a cutting agent into it,
Speaker 1: reshaped it, and send it so it doesn't need the rubber,
Speaker 1: you know, kind of the balloon. So it's a fast
Speaker 1: way to tell. And it also has a stamp inside,
Speaker 1: which will come from like the fact three it was made,
Speaker 1: or the or what they call the laboratory when we
Speaker 1: buy kilos, the what stamp do you want? And you
Speaker 1: could say rolex a frog, a bear. I'm looking at
Speaker 1: the brick. It has a stick on it. It has
Speaker 1: a dollar bill, a hundred dollar bill with a picture
Speaker 1: of a woman. And I'm painting back the layers and
Speaker 1: we look and we see that it looks good, like
Speaker 1: it looks smell. It smells good. Did you know what
Speaker 1: it should smell? Just think smell. You're going back to
Speaker 1: my brother's days. Just you know, he always made sure
Speaker 1: he got the best quality and the reason why it
Speaker 1: has to come package like that's because you can't buy coke,
Speaker 1: like no one will buy code from me at that time,
Speaker 1: coming from my bag, because that means that you could
Speaker 1: easily put cut into it. And these are made for
Speaker 1: us to actually they're sold in the street for them
Speaker 1: to be able to either cut it or you can
Speaker 1: make it the crack. They need the purity. And my
Speaker 1: older brother they used to call him the re rock key.
Speaker 1: What they'll do is take a good kilo, put some
Speaker 1: cutting it, make it back look like a regular kilo
Speaker 1: because they want, I guess people who snort, why not
Speaker 1: like break it or whatever the cases. So we would
Speaker 1: help in the process. So you need what the smells like,
Speaker 1: and just to qualify when you mean it means it
Speaker 1: makes it with something and you need some kind of
Speaker 1: vitamin or yeah, you know something like you know that's ingestible.
Speaker 1: We looked at the cocaine and it has like a
Speaker 1: nice little glass. He kind of like a probly kind
Speaker 1: of looked to it. Gossie. You know, we're like, okay,
Speaker 1: it's good, so uncil we you know, like we're excited.
Speaker 1: My older brother that had these stash compartments made in
Speaker 1: the in our home, and one of one was in
Speaker 1: my bedroom and there was there was a mirror, a
Speaker 1: mirror on the wall and it would have two remote controls,
Speaker 1: one for the power and one for the to pop
Speaker 1: it like a trunk. The reason for the power is
Speaker 1: just in case they come. And the FED had like
Speaker 1: equipment that were the surgeries and power surchers, power schurgers
Speaker 1: that would make things open. So we've cut the power off.
Speaker 1: I remember couldn't power on. I could hear the more
Speaker 1: to run and then popping it and it was still
Speaker 1: working good and throw all the ketles in that then
Speaker 1: calling that customer. Come on. Our customer comes and he's
Speaker 1: like I showed him. It was like he feels back
Speaker 1: the layers and the Southern and he's like, man, you
Speaker 1: got some kilos and you really got one. Yeah, he's like,
Speaker 1: holy shingle. Look, man, don't tell nobody you have them.
Speaker 1: You know, let me make some cause we've seen his
Speaker 1: eyes lit up. We knew when he did that. He
Speaker 1: was like, I'm going to take advantage of this situation.
Speaker 1: And I think instantly we started kind of like saying
Speaker 1: we're not gonna depend on one person. You don't have
Speaker 1: us literally by the balls if he was our only customer,
Speaker 1: so he takes them by the end of the night,
Speaker 1: like he came back with the money. I think it
Speaker 1: took its longer account the money that they didn't actually
Speaker 1: sell the kilos, because remember you're coming and you have
Speaker 1: a pile of you know, ones and fives and tens
Speaker 1: and twenties, and you're like, we don't have no money.
Speaker 1: Would sound that say it's account The probly took of
Speaker 1: like four hours. I think the excitement was it was like,
Speaker 1: I can't believe we just made you know whatever, how
Speaker 1: much is it? It was like maybe twentieth thousands, but
Speaker 1: it was still a lot of money for us. We're
Speaker 1: seventeen years old. Just to recap, we went from not
Speaker 1: having much one day to having a minuteous worth of
Speaker 1: drugs in her hands seventeen years old, to being able
Speaker 1: to sell them make money. And now you know what
Speaker 1: the money we made were seventeen that day. You know,
Speaker 1: I said before we were hugged, we were addicted to
Speaker 1: that life. Junry Cars closed going down. You know, we
Speaker 1: hadn't paid to every going into every club. We're seventeen.
Speaker 1: We want to be where all the dolts are he
Speaker 1: took money for that. You're easily spending thousand lots of
Speaker 1: day and anything food and food restaurants. We were used
Speaker 1: to eating good. We're wasting a lot of money and
Speaker 1: we're like walking work. So my brother and I started
Speaker 1: saving money. We say we hustled hard and we just
Speaker 1: saved saying we took the money we just needed to
Speaker 1: live on. And I remember things like once we had
Speaker 1: that millond, with this, we could buy Vintikilo's cash right,
Speaker 1: make a hundred grand four times a month, like we
Speaker 1: can't live even We did it once a where we
Speaker 1: can't live off, that's something wrong with us. It wasn't
Speaker 1: allowuntil we started having pronounce with the Fens that we're
Speaker 1: doing a lot of dumb things. Their older brother, Armando
Speaker 1: was the only person they could rely on, and he
Speaker 1: was now in prison, so with no one else to
Speaker 1: turn to, they decided to take a quick trip down
Speaker 1: to Mexico to cool off with the Feds and get
Speaker 1: so much needed fatherly advice. I still remember going to
Speaker 1: being in Mexico and my father sending us down and
Speaker 1: he pointed out our our mistakes. You're ready on the run,
Speaker 1: he said, listen, you guys gotta figure out what you
Speaker 1: guys want. You're here, like where you're gonna live, where's
Speaker 1: your cart? If you didn't think about none of that,
Speaker 1: you just here you spend your money on and what
Speaker 1: he would call them things and and bullshit. We talked
Speaker 1: about the future, like our business, you know, our our
Speaker 1: plans about the wood is you know how we can
Speaker 1: make it better? Like what we could actually do, And
Speaker 1: he would tell I wanted to know something. Prisons hard,
Speaker 1: Prison is hard, and you guys don't want to go
Speaker 1: to prison. But he's right, I don't want to go
Speaker 1: to prison and don't. And I think it was a
Speaker 1: wake up call like Okay, we're only going to start
Speaker 1: focusing and what we're going to do and what we're
Speaker 1: doing wrong. And me and my brother just started like saying, okay,
Speaker 1: let's focus on it, concent trade on being successful. And
Speaker 1: they helped that. When we got back, the feeder are
Speaker 1: still on us. Let's be And it wasn't about let's
Speaker 1: be successful, let's not get caught. The main goal was like,
Speaker 1: don't get a cut. The twins returned from their three
Speaker 1: months Mexican sabbatical armed with their father's expert advice and
Speaker 1: set about building their business in Chicago. It was funny.
Speaker 1: We never said let's just start by that, and degree
Speaker 1: was sold. Set in that You're like, there's too much
Speaker 1: money to be made. Our customers d drugs and began
Speaker 1: to inverse, like out of the profits that we're making
Speaker 1: and back into the business. It's like me, You're wondering
Speaker 1: where to seventeen year old learned the entrepreneurial skills to
Speaker 1: start their own business. Well, it turns out I learned
Speaker 1: it from the same place many kids do. Yeah, right,
Speaker 1: welcome to mcdwals. Might I take you order? Yeah, that's right,
Speaker 1: amongst the happy meals and the chicken nuggets. That's where
Speaker 1: Pete and Jay refined their trade. I go to mcdonals,
Speaker 1: apply for the job. They give me the job. I
Speaker 1: love the job and the sense of responsibility. A little bit.
Speaker 1: I've seen that there's nothing but fifteen and sixteen year
Speaker 1: old kids working at McDonald's and I'm thinking, like, and
Speaker 1: they're making McDonalds millions and millions of dollars. The learned
Speaker 1: managers come again, so someone the workers at that time,
Speaker 1: I didn't know English, probably did read it. How write
Speaker 1: with guests like they made that restaurant, one of those
Speaker 1: successful restaurants in the city. Why could it be created
Speaker 1: the system where you can't mess it up, Like you
Speaker 1: can't mess it up, man, you can learn how to
Speaker 1: run McDonald's on a day, like you know. And I
Speaker 1: took advantage of opportunity. And that's what I was seeing,
Speaker 1: Like I was learning the business part at McDonald's. Like
Speaker 1: it wasn't just like I'm learning to do fries. I'm
Speaker 1: learning the girl. I watched the dishes, I did the
Speaker 1: drive through, I did the front. We were working there.
Speaker 1: We were like, man, lunchtime on was packed. There's a
Speaker 1: black like they're making money, Like we're learning that valley.
Speaker 1: And I think that helps as well because later in
Speaker 1: my career, like I had to do the same thing.
Speaker 1: You know, I'm I'm I'm pushing hundreds of kilos at
Speaker 1: the time, you knowing, addicting what we're gonna need the
Speaker 1: first of the month come around, I'm gonna need a
Speaker 1: lot in the middle of moment. I'm gonna have another way.
Speaker 1: So I'm making these these arrangements for my trucks to
Speaker 1: beat ready to go. Within a couple of days of
Speaker 1: the personal month, I'm picking up millions and minutes of why.
Speaker 1: Let me explain why, because for some months it was
Speaker 1: government checks coming or people get paid, just like first
Speaker 1: of it, like we're those are are money making times.
Speaker 1: Those are the times that you want to have the
Speaker 1: drugs available on the streets, need them. I'm thinking to
Speaker 1: myself like, wow, one of McDonald's one day, not just
Speaker 1: thinking that they're making a lot of money for you know,
Speaker 1: people own it, but just for the structure of it,
Speaker 1: like business concept. The way they did things was so
Speaker 1: like even that before I read any books on business,
Speaker 1: it was real simple to me, like this is perfect.
Speaker 1: I think it was also the team environment that working
Speaker 1: something collectively. I think that people always say that they
Speaker 1: want to be a part of something and like that's
Speaker 1: where they joined gangs and stuff. I think that commitment
Speaker 1: when you bring people together and you're doing something something good.
Speaker 1: It doesn't have to be positive, but like working with
Speaker 1: the out a group of people, like I could see
Speaker 1: myself being a team leader and working like that's what
Speaker 1: I look for, like just to be involved. I think
Speaker 1: remember it took that concept and how to treat our workers,
Speaker 1: you know, and what we could do for them to
Speaker 1: make them feel more comfortable, more safe. You know, we're
Speaker 1: gonna take that and continue to grow it and and
Speaker 1: and learn from that. For me, though, those tedious little
Speaker 1: details like that, McDonald's win the extra mile to make
Speaker 1: you know, the catchup pump and the mustard pump to
Speaker 1: release exact amount of mustard, the exact amount of catchup
Speaker 1: needed for everybody to taste the same every time, Like
Speaker 1: you know what you're gonna get. That's why people go
Speaker 1: to accounts that because it's great burgers, because you know
Speaker 1: what you're gonna get. I remember they said, well, wash
Speaker 1: your hands, you know, every fifteen minutes. Yeah, And I
Speaker 1: went to wash my hands and they had a system
Speaker 1: for that, and they actually have to tell people how
Speaker 1: to wash their hands. Here's the remainders are signs everywhere,
Speaker 1: just in case, and look, this is what I wanted
Speaker 1: to do. Later on, I remember to look, this is
Speaker 1: gonna be our system because the last thing you want
Speaker 1: to just have key little missing work at McDonald's thinking
Speaker 1: like he didn't at the beginning stage, like and you
Speaker 1: dropped something, throw that ship out. I didn't cost you
Speaker 1: another thing. Man, get the customer what they want. They
Speaker 1: ain't cost me you nothing. At one time they were
Speaker 1: both working and Um one of the older Mexican and
Speaker 1: guys I was working there. He was from Mexico, didn't
Speaker 1: know English. We won't got a black of cheese and
Speaker 1: he was walking back with it and the cheese fell
Speaker 1: on the floor. The floors are greasy, they're dirty. Now
Speaker 1: he picked on the block of cheese. Now it looks
Speaker 1: like a pepper jack cheese and he was about to
Speaker 1: put it back on. The cheese continued with me and
Speaker 1: my brother like what are you doing? And then we
Speaker 1: look at each other, We're like, it's not your fucking cheese.
Speaker 1: There's a thousand blocks of cheese and the freezer. Trust me, Mike,
Speaker 1: that was not gonna care. They don't care more that
Speaker 1: you're give somebody some cheese with hair on that. But
Speaker 1: it's Joe's the mentality that you would think it's common sense.
Speaker 1: We had that problem. Were some of our people who
Speaker 1: they were like, no, no, I'm not going to leave that.
Speaker 1: There would be like it's not your don't worry about
Speaker 1: what's gonna be loss. Worry about yourself. And we learned.
Speaker 1: You know, industry even here, a lot of people say
Speaker 1: they got shopped because they would get up there their
Speaker 1: chain and leave it. But we looked at the give
Speaker 1: you get me that position. You're one, it's yours tomorrow
Speaker 1: go by another one learned to take a loss when
Speaker 1: we worked it like I think in probably jay and
Speaker 1: not a lot of insight. And I got a good
Speaker 1: feeling to like being moved around and do all. My
Speaker 1: brother got a little signs of power to that he
Speaker 1: wanted to abuse right away. I'm in charge of sending
Speaker 1: people to do things, and he's not happy that he
Speaker 1: has to go clean up department. And it's Friday night
Speaker 1: and this bumper a bumper traffic and told me say,
Speaker 1: if one's closing it around, and he's like yes. My
Speaker 1: brother could have chose any one or the other twelve
Speaker 1: workers there, and he would decide to choose to me
Speaker 1: every Friday or Saturday night I worked, or Sunday, which
Speaker 1: was happened to be the biggest busiest time for a
Speaker 1: little village, and he would choose me no matter what.
Speaker 1: For some reason he thought he was teaching me a lesson.
Speaker 1: To me, I was just like, you just wanted to
Speaker 1: rub it in. Why would you send back that I'm saying,
Speaker 1: like he doesn't understand, like like every boy, every other man,
Speaker 1: every other person would be like, you know, today's your turn,
Speaker 1: Charlie tomorrow. I did have other piloy. I didn't want
Speaker 1: to be like, I know, if you're just sending me
Speaker 1: because your brother, you're just sending me because your brother.
Speaker 1: At the same time, I wanted my brothers to feel
Speaker 1: okay that he worked in my dolls were you're good brother?
Speaker 1: Like so what he wanted to make sure that I
Speaker 1: felt comfortable working with that do me a favorite? I
Speaker 1: didend let's go back right now we're saying like that
Speaker 1: as a square protrucer. So everyone out there who's working
Speaker 1: at McDonald's just that's great for sure. But you know
Speaker 1: what you could want more? You can on where you
Speaker 1: will have to be like, oh my god, I love
Speaker 1: cleaning up the whole parking lot with a broom. You
Speaker 1: could to yourself, this isn't gonna be like the template.
Speaker 1: What are what's the big deal? What? What was the
Speaker 1: big when they sent me every day and went every day.
Speaker 1: So it's funny how we would go through these motions. Anyways,
Speaker 1: it was a great experience for both of us. I
Speaker 1: think the neighborhood McDonald's and little village, Chicago was an
Speaker 1: old haunt for the Forest family. It was the very
Speaker 1: spot where their father made the deal that got him
Speaker 1: arrested and where the twins made their first ever deal
Speaker 1: that got their business started. We started implementing little things
Speaker 1: that we could do it. First of all, we can't
Speaker 1: have drugs where we're living, so we need somewhere though
Speaker 1: put them away. We would call stats somewhere, so we needed, like, uh,
Speaker 1: a stash, a place to stats from. So we started
Speaker 1: off with garages, empty garages in regular neighborhoods. And we
Speaker 1: started like just we would get a bunch of them,
Speaker 1: those three or four of them. We started like saying, okay,
Speaker 1: we're gonna invest in in vehicles with static compartments. Instead
Speaker 1: of buying one or two, we said, okay, let's buy
Speaker 1: three or four. After you started making the money, it
Speaker 1: wasn't about the money anymore. It was about this is
Speaker 1: what we do for me and my brother. I mean,
Speaker 1: there's times where we didn't know how much money we had.
Speaker 1: We just know we had a lot of money. Our
Speaker 1: friend Gus, he takes us to the to the shop
Speaker 1: and says, look, buy these money machines. And I'm like,
Speaker 1: do I really need it. He's like, do you want
Speaker 1: to do with things right? And do you want to
Speaker 1: keep doing things the way you're doing. I remember when
Speaker 1: I was like okay, and he pulled two money machines
Speaker 1: out and it was like like six thousand dollars. I
Speaker 1: was like, six thousand dollars for these two money machines,
Speaker 1: like I can cull him by hand. Later on, I
Speaker 1: was like, that was one of the best decisions I've
Speaker 1: ever made. A part our business to a different level
Speaker 1: when you could package your money and send it like
Speaker 1: the way they do it, whether it was a minute
Speaker 1: dollars or fifty minute and the safe time in your
Speaker 1: manage station. And I remember the machines. I tell you
Speaker 1: it was my favorite machine and I looked for everywhere.
Speaker 1: It was like toyo, come and see fifty. If you
Speaker 1: didn't have that machine, like, let me go somewhere else.
Speaker 1: With the business we were doing, we burned through a
Speaker 1: lot of machines. It was a concept we added as
Speaker 1: a as a cause that every month we were going
Speaker 1: to buy poor machines. Every month we're spending and it's
Speaker 1: so sad when they were like, oh, we don't make
Speaker 1: them them. We only refurbished, and I like, what when
Speaker 1: that kind of money starts rolling in the streets, start talking,
Speaker 1: especially in a place like Little Village in the nineties
Speaker 1: where gang violence was so dominant that mothers were too
Speaker 1: afraid to let their kids have parties, ride their bikes
Speaker 1: in front of their homes, or even take the bus.
Speaker 1: It wasn't long before Pete had a gun put to
Speaker 1: his head in a home invasion, and the extra attention
Speaker 1: certainly didn't help them With the Feds. We started noticing
Speaker 1: that there would be there from early morning too minut afternoon,
Speaker 1: and then we felt like bring gonna have more patience
Speaker 1: than them. We started making that our schedule get up
Speaker 1: five six in the afternoon. It's a streets called make
Speaker 1: sure we were not be followed, Will park our regular
Speaker 1: cars with our phone, take the battery off our phones,
Speaker 1: parked the cars and go jumping our other cry and
Speaker 1: go to work. When we count it. We could be
Speaker 1: out delivering drugs, collecting money, counting money all to the night,
Speaker 1: early morning hours. Once we knew it was like BI
Speaker 1: six and when it was time to us to go
Speaker 1: back home and go to sleep and let them sit
Speaker 1: there all day and what she all that and it
Speaker 1: helped us save money because we were not out spending money.
Speaker 1: It helps us in a lot of ways, like we
Speaker 1: could do this and we do things right, we could
Speaker 1: beat them. We also started to find out that we
Speaker 1: were the people that were they were interested, so we
Speaker 1: could get other people to do our business for us.
Speaker 1: Then we could be selling drugs when we were sitting
Speaker 1: at home. So not long after that, we acquired our
Speaker 1: first worker who was really close friends of us growing up,
Speaker 1: and in the way, we started training them to a
Speaker 1: business that almost came match to us. They are like
Speaker 1: and then like we were we ever did this before,
Speaker 1: Like I'm just trying to come and down do what either.
Speaker 1: We started noticing that he would make dumb decisions like
Speaker 1: your what are you doing you like? And that kind
Speaker 1: of was taught us that what we knew we couldn't
Speaker 1: expect someone else to understand or no, if it was
Speaker 1: that he parked the car in the garage the wrong way,
Speaker 1: because you know, we couldn't get to the status. Whatever
Speaker 1: the cases, I'm like, now you gotta take the car back.
Speaker 1: Got like those little things details, I think naturally, without
Speaker 1: even noticing, we were kind of we started becoming leaders right,
Speaker 1: he when he questioned us, we're gonna start kind of
Speaker 1: implemencing a system that we didn't know at that time,
Speaker 1: was from what we learned, you know, working on the downs.
Speaker 1: I think the biggest thing to get someone's respect like
Speaker 1: that was that they've seen us, like I'd get in
Speaker 1: the car and put fifty in the back seat and
Speaker 1: delivering myself like I didn't have a problem doing that,
Speaker 1: and go pick up the money and do the stuff
Speaker 1: that I was asking someone else to do for me,
Speaker 1: you know, And if there was a situation where I
Speaker 1: didn't feel comfortable doing it, I wouldn't have someone else
Speaker 1: doing that, That's plain simple. Nor I would never do that.
Speaker 1: And at the end of the day, I never went
Speaker 1: to bed or went to party or did anything until
Speaker 1: I knew that everybody was home safe. I think people
Speaker 1: can even understand how how involved we were in our
Speaker 1: day to day business, Like you weren't talking to no
Speaker 1: one but me, and I'm gonna, you know, negotiate the price.
Speaker 1: We're gonna negotiate the quantity, and then they could call
Speaker 1: them like all right, listen, send me fifty kilos and
Speaker 1: make sure that the business parts taking care of. Then
Speaker 1: we could car our workers and be like, listen, you know,
Speaker 1: go to the slashouse and um, get fifty kelos. Call
Speaker 1: me when you're at the house before you leave, confirmed
Speaker 1: the count. Before you get to the house, drive around,
Speaker 1: make sure they're no funny cards in neighborhood as soon
Speaker 1: as you walk in the house, before you even go
Speaker 1: to the kilos. Check the front door, check the mailbox,
Speaker 1: like the last thing you wanted to builds panting up
Speaker 1: in front. We found out that it wasn't good that
Speaker 1: we were using our phone like a right there phone
Speaker 1: and if people will get ahold of you there and
Speaker 1: you're calling your one, and we started realizing that the
Speaker 1: pledge will just listening and wait. They are saying, well, okay,
Speaker 1: we're gonna buy these phones and this is just for
Speaker 1: me to talk to you know, they're not registered, they're prepaid.
Speaker 1: If no one wants that. We had these phones and
Speaker 1: we just called this phone to that phone number and
Speaker 1: we could talk about whatever we want. So we kind
Speaker 1: of call it like a clone the phone. Like. So
Speaker 1: we had our house phone, which was a phone that
Speaker 1: was registered to our our name that we use, you know,
Speaker 1: for our family, and then everybody else got one of
Speaker 1: these clone phones were like I'm going to talk to you.
Speaker 1: Don't call away from this phone, and that that's sort
Speaker 1: of heart. The poondes are hard to get. It was like,
Speaker 1: don't mess up this phone, man, don't call no one.
Speaker 1: And I still remember like if someone jumps in the
Speaker 1: car and uses your phone or something, let me know,
Speaker 1: let's throw them away, like don't risk so much or
Speaker 1: laziness and trust me. Like at the end, we're spending
Speaker 1: ten thousand dollars a minute a week. And then because earlier,
Speaker 1: you know, when cellphones were still expensive, right, Pete and
Speaker 1: Jay soon worked out that to be successful they had
Speaker 1: to make sure they were ahead of the demand and
Speaker 1: always have a supply of drugs available. This became instrumental
Speaker 1: to their success. In fact, when the tragedy of nine
Speaker 1: eleven happened and America's borders were immediately tightened, the brothers
Speaker 1: were the only ones with a local drug supply. Actually
Speaker 1: in the US, their business dominated, so it was a
Speaker 1: scaling parted just killed them. We actually found out that
Speaker 1: having one source of Appla wasn't cause we're depending on
Speaker 1: one person, so we had to start ranch now looking
Speaker 1: around then the same way we're looking for customers, and
Speaker 1: we're always looking for a social apply before they I
Speaker 1: think the insentuals laid down the foundation of our operation
Speaker 1: was to have the stash houses because if you can't
Speaker 1: keep the work, save the cocaine, the drug, saving the money. Said,
Speaker 1: you're kind of like you're starting out wrong. How many
Speaker 1: So we started off like with our first one, it
Speaker 1: was a sticker shock. We're like, you know, we started
Speaker 1: off with garaging. You know, it's easy if you can,
Speaker 1: we'll go up for people who we need. You know,
Speaker 1: I need your garage down dollars one. And we didn't
Speaker 1: like the in and out in these like regular neighborhoods.
Speaker 1: They creates traffic that people getting dozzy. And then and
Speaker 1: those neighbors that the costs pull you over because you're suspicious.
Speaker 1: They pull you off the car, they search your car,
Speaker 1: they don't ask you can see your license if they
Speaker 1: get the funk out of the car right now, I
Speaker 1: need and you're like, here's my license and they'll step you.
Speaker 1: So we never took no drugs to little villas. You know,
Speaker 1: we buy brand new cars and we clip them. We
Speaker 1: could go to the car out and we were actually
Speaker 1: we were shopping for the clothes. I'd be like, give
Speaker 1: me that car, that one, and that one and that one.
Speaker 1: As soon as our vehicles started getting a little old,
Speaker 1: there's something funny. We give those sorry customers, and we
Speaker 1: take the new ones, and we try to have a
Speaker 1: consistent car, Like a consistent car, consistent color in that
Speaker 1: wouldn't look suspicious going. You know, you have a stash
Speaker 1: house and you don't want tanging different cars coming in there,
Speaker 1: or shiny car word like, okay, that's so many cars
Speaker 1: going into that. We wanted to be consistent. Does he
Speaker 1: want the most common cars? Keeping the business off the
Speaker 1: police radar also meant operating where the police weren't, like
Speaker 1: the fancier parts of town. So along with the cars
Speaker 1: came nice houses, houses that, for all intents and purposes,
Speaker 1: look like someone lived there, furniture and all, but the
Speaker 1: only thing actually living there piles and piles of drugs.
Speaker 1: We're fortunate too to have a woman introduced us by
Speaker 1: one of our sources. Her name was Actually she was
Speaker 1: deep into like this fraud life. So she would go
Speaker 1: to these renters and high end you know, neighborhoods and
Speaker 1: be like, um, you know, human resources for I'll say,
Speaker 1: we're bringing a bunch of employees many housing. Not only
Speaker 1: would she do that, she would go furnish the house
Speaker 1: like perfectly and showly passed in pants in the house,
Speaker 1: like if you just walked out a winebat on the table,
Speaker 1: dish where clothes and the thing, you know, laundry. I'm like,
Speaker 1: I hope that's not heard their laundry. But you know,
Speaker 1: in the way we can what we helped to train
Speaker 1: your to what we need. And we just paid her
Speaker 1: very well, and it was perfect to feel like that.
Speaker 1: She was so trustworthy. She becomes like intimately we become
Speaker 1: really good friends and she's dependable reb be like I
Speaker 1: could lead drugs it and SLEEPO and I and not
Speaker 1: worry about it. So we liked our thing was better
Speaker 1: make sure and it was good. We'd be like, we
Speaker 1: want to tach garage to garage, you know in the
Speaker 1: nice area. And and I'm saying that because the rent
Speaker 1: would be like five dollars dollars one month. You know
Speaker 1: they do they expect the two year leads or whatever
Speaker 1: somewhere a d and plus her expenses in the furniture.
Speaker 1: So me, we really would actually talk about the property.
Speaker 1: For instance, if we had it for a while with it.
Speaker 1: That house probably made us five million dollars worth it.
Speaker 1: It kept the safe give the average were too read
Speaker 1: the house, we drop it, we just walk away. That
Speaker 1: never happened and they could never trace anything back. I
Speaker 1: asked she she just became part of the team. She
Speaker 1: was a character because she was a bipolar. We know,
Speaker 1: we had to worry about people's mental health, like we
Speaker 1: had to take Carol and doctors. And that's just who
Speaker 1: gets to the house. And we have the people who
Speaker 1: get us the cards and the people who do the
Speaker 1: compartment of people who work for us. I mean, you
Speaker 1: can down the list the people who get us the phones.
Speaker 1: It was the whole chain of being like logistical and
Speaker 1: being a manager, right, so I would say like I
Speaker 1: would have been a beast at Amazon well, because people
Speaker 1: don't understand in order for me to sell those two
Speaker 1: thousand keys, we had to have at least four thousand
Speaker 1: keys in the process, meaning the pipeline and the pipeline.
Speaker 1: I have to actually check the quality of the work myself.
Speaker 1: We don't trust no one. I'm checking the work. I'm
Speaker 1: making the deals. We have to retuate the price between
Speaker 1: when I'm I going to receive these keys wherever we're
Speaker 1: they're going, and what's the price right now? How we're
Speaker 1: looking because you make a deal the price and the
Speaker 1: prices go down. What's you take your hand? Let's check
Speaker 1: the hand you Oh, it's a whole Yeah, you got you,
Speaker 1: you got you know Ko sitting back too. You were
Speaker 1: a thousand kilos in California in the border, you know,
Speaker 1: across the border, you got you know, in transportation, there's
Speaker 1: a prostle. You gotta bring the money back. Little truck
Speaker 1: weighs a certain way. You have to think. Okay, So
Speaker 1: we had three and fifty kilos in there, and we
Speaker 1: calculate that every build ways around the ground. So you're like, okay,
Speaker 1: I keep fit the same amount of money money, So
Speaker 1: I would wait, I would package the money on a
Speaker 1: thousand bills, which is okay. You literally have them blad.
Speaker 1: The money is weighing two tons, Just send back, Just
Speaker 1: send back. So if you get on the scale and
Speaker 1: the truck gets on the scale and supposed to wait
Speaker 1: something and it's over, you have a problem. You don't
Speaker 1: think about that, then you're not doing right. So we
Speaker 1: have to calculate with the way. You know, what's the
Speaker 1: way they're gonna give you, because money weighs a lot
Speaker 1: when it's involved when they're doing those movies like the
Speaker 1: heist movies and they're running out the back. So I
Speaker 1: mean only people that know would know, right. So we're
Speaker 1: sending back like nine hundred pounds of money. Sometimes that's
Speaker 1: not my truck. Be like this is good, Like they
Speaker 1: have a good route, it's a good routine, good driver,
Speaker 1: good everything. How are we're packing it in? We're gonna
Speaker 1: send whatever money we could, eighty million dollars, whatever we could.
Speaker 1: That was the money we had to pay back to
Speaker 1: the car top was our money. So the same smuggling
Speaker 1: rules that you take the keys and get to the
Speaker 1: backwards that it's backwards, and it's another rus getting back,
Speaker 1: getting in back and make sure gis so. In the
Speaker 1: foreign countries. The only thing that you could buy Joe
Speaker 1: into the cats. I tell them, I said, you can't
Speaker 1: go there with a credit card. You know, that's a
Speaker 1: whole process on its own, and it's one of the
Speaker 1: harder parts of the business. Believe or not, Like transporting box.
Speaker 1: I do believe that's something. With everything that we know,
Speaker 1: we'd make great consultants for the government for the right percentage.
Speaker 1: Everything that they're doing is not working. Like any good
Speaker 1: delivery business, the more demands, the more stock you need,
Speaker 1: But of course you need somewhere to keep all that stock.
Speaker 1: For j and Pete, they eventually had more stash houses
Speaker 1: than they could keep track of, so they began naming
Speaker 1: them after the local points of interest they were near,
Speaker 1: as far as anyone else knew. Eats and Jay's workers
Speaker 1: just really enjoyed stopping by seven eleven, the dry cleaners, well,
Speaker 1: the salmon shop, quizners. But there was one other place
Speaker 1: they loved to visit. We love that West Loop area,
Speaker 1: a little bit in downtown in Chicago and right by
Speaker 1: Oprah's Winfrey studio, and we would meet people there sometimes
Speaker 1: and we'd be like, meet me by the rich pitch.
Speaker 1: All right, I'm meeting by the Richard And that was
Speaker 1: like our common theme, like I'm making an OPA for sure.
Speaker 1: And what's funny is that when from have you one no,
Speaker 1: not less, I'm saying like, I don't mean her studios
Speaker 1: right there. And we would actually play ball across the
Speaker 1: street at Hoops, the gym that was right in front
Speaker 1: of Washington Street. We would hang out there downtown that
Speaker 1: was like safe at the time and quiet, and we
Speaker 1: could eat their shop there and live there and it
Speaker 1: felt like home, Like I mean, that was our playground.
Speaker 1: Just you know, like me implement these little things experences.
Speaker 1: All workers always had cottage shirts, this blue one, you know,
Speaker 1: downtown workers, right, put on your shirt when you're driving
Speaker 1: Seaport on easy. Just follow the rules. Things that we're
Speaker 1: not gonna stick up. We could still just how we're wanting.
Speaker 1: We have our shirt just in case we had to
Speaker 1: do something, don't were just those little bit implements will
Speaker 1: be able to like maneuver in the streets like comfortably.
Speaker 1: And how old we at this point? Plenty? Move over,
Speaker 1: Jeff Basos. The Flora's Twins had a complex shipping supply chain,
Speaker 1: moving drugs across America. By this time, they were just
Speaker 1: twenty years old, not to mention a small workforce and
Speaker 1: even a strictly enforced dress code. I remember when I
Speaker 1: met Jay, he actually shook my hand, and then I'm like,
Speaker 1: that's weird. You know, everybody is that that polite? And
Speaker 1: he was just well mannered. There's a couple more important
Speaker 1: characters I'd like to introduce you to who are pivotal
Speaker 1: to the Twins story. Meet Val Val had a reputation
Speaker 1: in the local scene back then, I think say nineties
Speaker 1: Kim Kardashian. She was the o g known for her
Speaker 1: extensive use of plastic surgery and her stylish fashion choices,
Speaker 1: but pink was her go to color, so she became
Speaker 1: known as Barbie because she looked so much like the doll.
Speaker 1: Val and Jay got together and eventually married. He reminded
Speaker 1: me of my dad. My dad is a Chicago police officer,
Speaker 1: and he raised me and my sibling to the best
Speaker 1: that he could. While if I may have been the
Speaker 1: child of a police officer, her background is not all
Speaker 1: that different to Jay's. I felt like at the time,
Speaker 1: I was around the wrong crowd, and I felt like
Speaker 1: I kind of got addicted too being with a bad
Speaker 1: boy because they were mysterious. I felt like I was
Speaker 1: very shy, you know, being a kid when I was
Speaker 1: growing up. I just was in a situation where there
Speaker 1: was people around me, and you know, they were bringing
Speaker 1: drugs from California to Chicago. And I started off by
Speaker 1: being a mule. And a mule is somebody that would
Speaker 1: take a trip, whether it's to l a or whether
Speaker 1: it's to Mexico and bring drugs back to Chicago. And
Speaker 1: I started that at a very young age, eighteen years old.
Speaker 1: My mom raised me to be very strong, and I
Speaker 1: felt like there's nothing that a man can do that
Speaker 1: I couldn't do better. I felt like I don't need
Speaker 1: to depend on anyone. I could do it myself. I
Speaker 1: just started getting addicted to this lifestyle and I just
Speaker 1: continue to take these trips and I continue to risk
Speaker 1: my life. I would drive from Mexico to Chicago without stopping.
Speaker 1: I wasn't going to stop. I was fearless. I come
Speaker 1: from a family of law enforce meant every time that
Speaker 1: I would get stopped, I was like just name dropping
Speaker 1: and everybody knew who my family was. I felt like invincible,
Speaker 1: and I felt like I was never gonna get caught.
Speaker 1: I was only going to allow my parents, you know,
Speaker 1: to see what I wanted them to see. I would
Speaker 1: tell them what they wanted to hear because I didn't
Speaker 1: want them to worry about me. So as I was
Speaker 1: taking all these trips to Mexico, I always had a
Speaker 1: reason for not being here, and it's like I never
Speaker 1: wanted them to worry. So it's like I almost lived
Speaker 1: this double life without them knowing. They got caught in Mexico.
Speaker 1: The car was in my name. Another worker was supposed
Speaker 1: to bring it up. They kind of got scared and
Speaker 1: didn't want to drive it. So I immediately jumped in,
Speaker 1: like I'll just take it myself. I jumped in the car.
Speaker 1: I drove it up to the border and there's these
Speaker 1: border stops. They'll pull you over and they have these checkpoints.
Speaker 1: They'll lift your car up on lift and they'll start checking,
Speaker 1: you know, the gas tank. They dropped the gas tank
Speaker 1: and they found the drugs. The guy that I was with,
Speaker 1: he was scared, and I was like, listen, the car
Speaker 1: is already in my name. It's okay. They're gonna go home,
Speaker 1: like I'm just gonna take the weight because there's no
Speaker 1: point of all of us going to prison. They put
Speaker 1: me in front of a judge in less than seventy
Speaker 1: two hours and they sentenced me to ten years. Up next,
Speaker 1: I'll surviving El Chapel, the twins who brought down a
Speaker 1: drug lawd They would give me one phone call a
Speaker 1: month to call my family, and I think that was
Speaker 1: the hardest thing, just telling my family that I was
Speaker 1: in prison in Mexico. I think that was my biggest fear,
Speaker 1: more than being there. I know that they cried so much.
Speaker 1: My sister told me she slept on the tile floor
Speaker 1: because she wanted to know what it felt like to
Speaker 1: be where I was at Surviving El Chapo. The Twins
Speaker 1: Who Brought Down a Drug lawd is hosted by Curtis
Speaker 1: fifty s Jackson and me Charlie Webster. Our producers all
Speaker 1: myself alongside Jackson mcclennan. Research and editorial support is from
Speaker 1: Casey Hurts. Edit and sound designed by Ni Cooper Ella,
Speaker 1: original score by Ryan Sorenson and additional music by Nico Palella.
Speaker 1: Executive produced by Curtis fifty cent Jackson and myself Charlie Webster.
Speaker 1: If you'd like to know more about this story, head
Speaker 1: over to lions Gate Sound dot com. Curtis fifty cent
Speaker 1: Jackson presents a lions Gate Sound and G Unit audio
Speaker 1: production exclusively for iHeart Podcasts.