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All Charges Dismissed: Ryan Bloom’s 18-Month DOJ Nightmare · Nightmare Success In and Out

• 0:00
  I talked about in the very beginning that you had this raid
• 0:03
  and and that in your neighborhood with your family
• 0:06
  and there's a picture of you coming out of of your house with
• 0:09
  your shorts on T-shirt and you know, all of a sudden your life
• 0:13
  is under siege. Did you have any idea that that
• 0:16
  was going to I had. No earthly.
• 0:18
  I got a phone call from my wife. She was travelling with two of
• 0:23
  our children, she said. Ryan, someone has called my
• 0:28
  phone over and over again. He says that he's an FBI agent
• 0:32
  and he is coming to arrest you. There's no way.
• 0:36
  Like what? What happens when your worst
• 0:39
  fear becomes your reality? Hi, I'm Brent Cassidy, welcome
• 0:43
  to the Nightmare Success In and Out podcast where we explore how
• 0:46
  to overcome your fears and nightmares to set yourself free.
• 0:50
  We're going to be exploring this topic with guys that was in
• 0:52
  Leavenworth with and others who survived their own nightmare.
• 0:56
  These stories can be inspiring, sometimes sad.
• 1:00
  There's some humor, but hopefully you can come away with
• 1:03
  a nugget of something that'll help you knock down some of the
• 1:05
  prisons you built up in your own mind.
• 1:08
  All right, welcome back Nightmare Success and out
• 1:11
  listeners. This is where you count for what
• 1:13
  happens when your worst fear becomes your reality.
• 1:14
  How do you adapt, survive, overcome, set yourself free.
• 1:17
  So who are we talking to today at Nightmare Success?
• 1:20
  Well, we've got our own Ryan Bloom and I'm going to tell you,
• 1:24
  Ryan and I are fellow people on the white collar support group.
• 1:28
  And he, he actually spoke to the white collar support group, not
• 1:32
  this Monday, but the Monday before and, and we had a
• 1:35
  conversation about a week or so ago.
• 1:39
  Ryan, as everyone knows who comes to this podcast, I hear a
• 1:43
  lot of stories. I've never heard a story like
• 1:45
  this one. This story is, I mean, every
• 1:48
  person that ever gets federally convicted are indicted, is
• 1:54
  looking for all charges dismissed, all charges
• 1:58
  dismissed. That's what happened to Ryan.
• 2:00
  But before that, he lived through an 18 month ordeal, a
• 2:03
  nightmare with the DOJ that opened with a shocking front
• 2:07
  yard gunpoint arrest and then it ended 18 months later with the
• 2:13
  dismissal of all charges. This case has it all.
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  It is also something you never see or hear.
• 2:21
  You had a disqualification of a assistant US attorney.
• 2:27
  That hardly ever happens. I I bet it's less than 1% of any
• 2:31
  percentage of what you can get to.
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  The other thing that just got me about this story is, is that
• 2:39
  Ryan was, I mean, when you have federal charges in the USA is
• 2:44
  versus your name, you're up against the wall like you've
• 2:47
  never felt in your life, man, the courage that he showed, he
• 2:51
  said he didn't feel courageous. I felt like when he told me this
• 2:54
  story, you couldn't have gone through this without
• 2:57
  unbelievable courage. And he, he researched like
• 3:01
  someone, you know, like your life depends on it, which you
• 3:04
  should. And we're going to talk about
• 3:06
  all that. But he got the right attorney
• 3:08
  and these guys wanted to fight. They knew that they had a case
• 3:11
  that should be fought. And Ryan did the work to get the
• 3:14
  ones in the in there in his corner to make it happen.
• 3:18
  I can't wait. So you jump into all this.
• 3:21
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• 3:54
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• 3:57
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• 4:02
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• 4:05
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• 4:07
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  Trust me, you'll be moved, challenged and changed by her
• 4:44
  story. Ryan Bloom, welcome.
• 4:47
  How are you? Hey, Brent, I'm doing well and
• 4:51
  excited to be here. Well, I'm excited to have you
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  and, and I've been excited ever since I have heard this story
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  because this is one of those stories.
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  It's just a feel good story. Yeah.
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  Did you financially get whipped upside the head?
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  Absolutely. But usually you get whipped
• 5:06
  upside the head and go to prison.
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  So this is a whipped upside the head and you walk out with a
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  victory. And I just how are you feeling?
• 5:14
  Because this is something that just happened weeks ago.
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  It's wild because we knew that the case was going to be
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  dismissed back in November, but we couldn't talk about it.
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  And so that was its whole own dynamic.
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  And I thought that after I found out the case was going to be
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  dismissed, I thought I'd feel relieved.
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  I'd feel just this weight lifted.
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  I might feel happy. I might feel so I didn't know
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  what. I didn't feel anything.
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  I just felt completely numb. I mean, I just, it was, I felt
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  like AI felt like a zombie and it was just almost like that 18
• 5:55
  months of weight left me with just nothing left emotionally to
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  give. It was, it was so weird.
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  It was so weird for a couple of weeks.
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  Well, and I think what that too is, is that you were running on
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  adrenaline like you were, you were sprinting through a
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  marathon and then all of a sudden they say it's over.
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  You didn't even know where the finish line was.
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  And, and there you are. Well, let's go back a little
• 6:19
  bit. Sure, you're an Oklahoma guy.
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  Have you always been in Oklahoma?
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  Yeah, born and raised in Yukon, that's the western suburb of
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  Oklahoma City. Went to school up at Oklahoma
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  State, moved back here. You know, I have a wife raising
• 6:38
  kids here, live fairly close to both of our folks and, and just
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  kind of an Oklahoma guy through and through.
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  How many? So you got Mom, dad.
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  You have siblings. Yeah, so I have one sister.
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  OK, one sister. She's married with kids that are
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  my kids age. Very tight knit family.
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  That's great. So just a good Oklahoma and and
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  you've got I think 4 kids and a wife and and you know this so.
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  I, I, I married, married my first girlfriend.
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  We've been together. I, I mean, we've been, you know,
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  for 21 years now and just felt like we grew up together, like,
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  you know, grew up together, you know, married and get, you know,
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  just, we just been through every stage, every bit of our lives.
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  It just feels like we've been together and just been together
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  through all of it. I think that really means
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  something because you and I don't know, you don't know this,
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  but what you just said. My wife, I know she was 13.
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  I was 15 and yeah, we went, we've gone through every single
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  life stage together. And so when, when our nightmare
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  landed on us, it was just incredible on how she just
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  grabbed hold and, and, and was such a great role model and, and
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  rock for our girls. And you know, you don't, you
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  don't ever expect a nightmare and you never, you know, you
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  never want your spouse to go through something like that.
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  But man, it really, whenever you hit bonds, you had it really
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  tightens them up or it breaks it off.
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  You know, there, there's two ways, I guess to go with it.
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  But so Ryan, I mean, you're a younger guy, but you were having
• 8:17
  you were having success. Can you kind of walk us through
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  how you got started in your business and, and, and then when
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  this will kind of step through the process of how this
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  happened? Sure.
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  So I'd worked in oil and gas construction, specifically in
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  kind of the electrical and power delivery.
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  You know, the oil and gas industry is huge in this state.
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  And I'd worked on the kind of service side.
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  And then I'd also worked for a couple of the bigger energy
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  companies here in the city, and we were in a pretty hard bust
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  cycle for the industry. And someone who'd worked with me
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  before came to me and said, Ryan, I've got this incredible
• 9:08
  opportunity. Google Fiber is coming to
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  Oklahoma City, and we need to get out in front of it.
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  And we need to start an underground utility company
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  because there's just going to be this incredible amount of work
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  right here in our front yard. We never laid a foot of Google
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  Fiber that opportunity. Never.
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  They ended up canceling that. It never came about.
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  It never came, but we over a span of about 7 years my or six
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  years with, with this business partner, we, we just built it up
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  from nothing and, you know, hired employees and bought
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  equipment and grew the business and we.
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  You know, it was a construction business basically.
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  Yeah, it was, it was a utility construction business.
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  And, you know, in the aftermath of everything, it, it just, you
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  know, kind of adding it up and it, it struck me, you know, that
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  that we had, we had done $60 million worth of sales and our
• 10:08
  entire time in business, we'd paid out about $30 million in
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  wages over that time period. And when I went bankrupt and
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  when it all fell apart, like the only comfort I had was I just
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  thought about $30 million worth of employees rent, birthday
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  parties. I felt like that was the lasting
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  legacy of this company that that eventually failed.
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  It was just, you know, it meant a lot to the employees and to
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  the customers for that period of time, you know, until it didn't.
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  Yeah, it changes people's lives. You know, it's one of the things
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  that is not talked about a lot is when, you know, something
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  goes through with the federal investigation and and the
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  company goes through that process with, you know,
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  indictments and things. It, it destroys the business,
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  but but it, it, it absolutely changes people's lives forever.
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  That did nothing but just work and we're loyal and we're a part
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  of something that was their livelihood.
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  Sometimes it's hundreds, sometimes it's thousands of
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  people that are affected by that.
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  It's just it's something that's always stayed with me because it
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  was what I went through and what my family went through was
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  horrible. But the people that were just
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  coming to work every day didn't really know anything that was
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  happening except that they were doing a good job.
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  They had to go out and find another job.
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  And that's it's a, it's a so. Yeah, In kind of kind of my
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  story was that the business had failed and gone through
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  bankruptcy and everyone had had kind of moved on.
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  We thought, I thought I'd moved on.
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  And then that's when the nightmare, that's when things
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  went from bad to worse. Yeah, bad to worse.
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  So and I, I think from remembering talking about how so
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  you had a relationship with this bank and and the bank for an
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  easier way to talk about it was as they were factoring or, or
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  buying your receivables, which was basically collateralizing
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  your business loan to be able to whether it was a line of credit
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  or whatever the case might have been, you had a relationship
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  with the bank in that capacity. Yeah, and it was actually bigger
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  than that. So we had a this bank that
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  loaned US money on everything. They loaned US money for
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  equipment. They had, you know, a lien on on
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  all of our property. This bank really was, you know,
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  largely kind of the capital cornerstone for this business.
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  And then among those things they purchased accounts from us.
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  The really it was the, IT was that entire program that really
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  ended up serving as, you know, the basis for the entire, you
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  know, criminal nightmare was around this basically.
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  And they're very careful not to call it factoring.
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  They never used the word factoring, but was around this
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  program called business manager and it was supposed to provide
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  working capital for the business.
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  And that's how we market. That's how they marketed it.
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  That's how we used it. And really only after the
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  company was, you know, dead and gone did they turn around and
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  weaponize that and accuse me of abusing that program to the
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  level of committing felony bank fraud.
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  Yeah, and that, that's where it gets really dark quickly.
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  So, and, and you later find out the reason why they're turning
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  this, this screw on you and tightening it is because they
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  have insurance and they're thinking if they can turn this
• 14:03
  the way they want it, then they'll be funded and all will
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  be good and you will be gone. And everything they do just keep
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  goes forward. So you, you know, I talked about
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  in the very beginning that you had this raid and, and that in
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  your neighborhood with your family and there's a picture of
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  you coming out of, of your house with your shorts on T-shirt and
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  you know, all of a sudden your life is under siege.
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  Did you have any idea that that was going to happen?
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  I had no earthly idea. I got a phone call from my wife.
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  She was traveling with two of our children.
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  She said. Ryan, someone has called my
• 14:45
  phone over and over again. He says that he's an FBI agent
• 14:50
  and he is coming to arrest you. I, I just, there's no way.
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  There's no like what? Had anything been going on
• 14:59
  before this point in the sense that contacted by the FBI,
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  contacted nothing, OK. No.
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  So I've not, I have not heard a word of anything.
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  I've not had anybody, you know, confide in me that that they've
• 15:18
  been entered like, like there were absolutely no indications
• 15:22
  whatsoever. And I called this phone number
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  that I realized I had missed calls from this, from this
• 15:29
  number. And I, I said, who is this?
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  What's going on? And this guy says, I'm Special
• 15:38
  Agent Ben Busek with the FBII have a warrant for your arrest.
• 15:45
  I'm posted outside your neighborhood.
• 15:47
  You need to come out of your house with your hands in the
• 15:49
  air. And I said, what?
• 15:51
  How many iTunes gift cards do you need me to go get?
• 15:54
  This has to be a scam. And he said, it's not a scam.
• 16:00
  You'll know when you look outside your window and I look
• 16:04
  outside. I mean, I just like, pull the
• 16:05
  curtain back and here are three silver sedans and six FBI agents
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  and their Navy Blue Jackets with the yellow lettering on them.
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  And I am just, I'm in shock. And what I'll never, ever, ever
• 16:25
  get over is my 9 year old son was with me alone.
• 16:29
  And I looked at him and he'd kind of heard all this play out
• 16:33
  and he thought it was a big practical joke.
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  And he had the biggest smile on his face.
• 16:38
  He just was like, what on earth? This is going to be hilarious.
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  This isn't even real. Someone's playing a joke or
• 16:45
  something. And I'll never forget him
• 16:47
  smiling. I'll never.
• 16:49
  It's me so. You go outside the house, what
• 16:52
  happens next? So Agent Music had told me to
• 16:55
  come outside with shoes and I had called a law a, a, an
• 17:01
  attorney friend and said, hey, what the heck.
• 17:04
  And he's like, I don't know what to tell you.
• 17:05
  Check for a warrant, check their badges, make sure you're not
• 17:09
  being kidnapped. And in all of this, I came out
• 17:12
  with my shoes in my hand because he'd said to come out with shoes
• 17:16
  and my brain didn't process to put the shoes on.
• 17:19
  Shoes on, right? And so, and, and when I step
• 17:22
  out, I mean, they're like, you know, like in a defensive
• 17:26
  position. And so I get my shoes on and
• 17:29
  they scream at me to put my hands in the air, put your hands
• 17:31
  behind your back. And I mean, just in an instant,
• 17:34
  I'm cuffed, spun around, and I'm headed for the car.
• 17:38
  And I said, my son, my son, my son's in there.
• 17:41
  My son, my, my son is in there. And they're like, oh, really?
• 17:46
  Huh. All right.
• 17:49
  Do you have anybody you can call?
• 17:51
  And I I said, yes, can I please call my dad?
• 17:54
  And he had told me not to bring a phone.
• 17:56
  Yeah. I didn't have anything with me
• 17:58
  other than my shoes in my hand. And luckily, my dad is one of
• 18:01
  the last people in America that still answers every phone call
• 18:05
  that's placed to his cell phone. And so he answered.
• 18:07
  And I said, Dad, it's Ryan. I'm not kidding.
• 18:11
  The FBI is arresting me. I have no idea why our son is
• 18:16
  here alone. Can you please come?
• 18:18
  And he's like, I'm on my way. And they wouldn't let me go tell
• 18:22
  my son what was happening. They wouldn't let me wait.
• 18:24
  They just put me in a in the back of the FBI Ford sedan, sat
• 18:29
  me down on the cuffs, which was very unenjoyable, and drove off.
• 18:35
  With their nine year old son in there.
• 18:36
  So he's inside and watching through the window and then he
• 18:42
  just went and hid and he's very resourceful and smart.
• 18:45
  Don't know where he got it from, but he got his iPad out and he
• 18:49
  was trying to track me because he thought, well, I could figure
• 18:51
  out where Dad's at using Find my.
• 18:54
  And obviously he didn't know I didn't have anything with me.
• 18:58
  And he's trembling and he's shaking because my dad comes
• 19:01
  into the house and, you know, he hears the door open and he has
• 19:04
  no idea that it's safety. And so my dad scoops him up and
• 19:09
  takes him home. And to this day, he won't talk
• 19:12
  about it. Wow, how traumatic, you know,
• 19:14
  for a nine year old. I mean, it's traumatic for a 50
• 19:17
  year old. I mean the, the, and, and as you
• 19:21
  know, Ryan, as you've gone through this, it's random.
• 19:24
  They don't have to do that. That didn't happen to me.
• 19:27
  That happened to somebody else. That was in our case.
• 19:29
  I don't know why. Nobody knows why.
• 19:31
  They just decide that they're going to do it that way and they
• 19:33
  don't do it to others. But what they do is absolutely
• 19:36
  everyone is totally affected by it.
• 19:40
  It's scary. It's guns, it's the FBI, it's
• 19:43
  it's law enforcement rating something that's your personal
• 19:46
  property. And, and, and then to have that
• 19:50
  type of situation with the son that's there to see all this is
• 19:53
  just heart wrenching, Especially when you find out in the end
• 19:57
  that this was not supposed to have been done because this was
• 20:01
  a stupid case. But so they take you in this in
• 20:05
  this car. What are the next hours like for
• 20:09
  you? So I asked him, what on earth is
• 20:12
  this about? And he just says this has to do
• 20:15
  with your company and the Alliance Bank.
• 20:19
  And I said OK. And he's like, do you want to
• 20:23
  talk? I was like, I think I've seen
• 20:25
  enough cop shows. Don't talk.
• 20:28
  Not supposed to. So.
• 20:31
  And so we're driving and I'm sitting on these cuffs and I
• 20:35
  mean, I'm thinking I'm going to lose a hand.
• 20:37
  And I said, and they pulled over because they wanted to get their
• 20:41
  vests off because, you know, they had their bulletproof vests
• 20:43
  on. And it's, you know, July in
• 20:45
  Oklahoma. So they take their vests off.
• 20:48
  And I said, hey, is, is there any way we could kind of
• 20:51
  readjust these handcuffs? He's like, yeah, if you want to
• 20:55
  talk. I was like, I wouldn't be at
• 20:58
  this point. I'm like, I will do anything to
• 21:00
  not be sitting on my cuffed wrists.
• 21:03
  So I sign away my Miranda Wright and he proceeds to ask me
• 21:07
  questions and he proceeds to tell me that I never did a
• 21:10
  project in Omaha or a project in Lincoln and just starts rattling
• 21:14
  off these very specific projects that my company did.
• 21:18
  Right. That you know for sure because
• 21:20
  you were actually part of that and have pictures and everything
• 21:23
  else and. Receipts.
• 21:24
  And just starts telling me that I've lived in a made-up fairy
• 21:28
  tale world for the last period of my life.
• 21:32
  And I'm like, wait, what? And he's like, who?
• 21:34
  Who could I talk to that would verify all this?
• 21:37
  I mean, I'm giving him witnesses.
• 21:38
  I mean, and he's taking notes. And then I'm.
• 21:41
  According to my attorneys, I start interviewing him.
• 21:45
  I start questioning him. I start asking him, you know,
• 21:48
  did you look at this? Did you see this?
• 21:50
  Yeah, like just they're like, we've never seen someone in an
• 21:55
  in custody interview to begin interrogating the agent, but you
• 21:59
  did. And finally, he was frustrated.
• 22:01
  He just was like, listen, if you're if if you're going to
• 22:04
  keep this up, we're just going to take you downtown.
• 22:06
  So they take me to get arraigned.
• 22:07
  And I mean, I get processed at the Marshalls.
• 22:09
  They swab my cheek for DNA. They take fingerprints.
• 22:13
  I'm held there all day. They appoint a public defender
• 22:16
  because I didn't have an attorney to represent me.
• 22:19
  And later that afternoon, they cuff my wrists to my waist to a
• 22:27
  chain down to my ankles. And I waddle into court and
• 22:32
  plead not guilty. And the prosecutor doesn't
• 22:36
  oppose me being released the same day on a $5000 bond.
• 22:41
  And there's my dad out, you know, out in the crowd and, and
• 22:44
  just this totally emotional moment where I get uncuffed 20
• 22:50
  feet in front of my dad. And I mean, and I'm just sobbing
• 22:54
  at this point. I mean, I'm just so overwhelmed.
• 22:56
  I just can't even believe what's happened.
• 22:59
  Well, so you get released. I'm trying to remember the part
• 23:03
  of your story, Ryan, what you had, the public defender.
• 23:06
  Did you make the change then or did you do it later down the
• 23:09
  road? Well, no.
• 23:11
  So the we got a recommendation for.
• 23:15
  Well, then the other thing was I was going to ask you so that
• 23:18
  they they read out these charges that you're guilty of.
• 23:21
  What were you thinking when that happened?
• 23:23
  So this public defender had showed me the US sentencing
• 23:28
  guidelines, whispered him to me because she says, hey, in 5
• 23:33
  minutes that judge is going to tell you that you're facing 30
• 23:36
  years in prison. And I just want to show you what
• 23:39
  you're actually facing. And she's like, look, you're
• 23:42
  only facing five years. And I was like, that is not the
• 23:46
  comfort that you probably think it is.
• 23:49
  That's the good news. That's the.
• 23:50
  Good news. And so I mean, I mean, I'm just,
• 23:55
  it's a blur because again, like you're in this courthouse and
• 23:58
  you, you, they don't tell you where you're going.
• 24:02
  You're just walking down the hall with other guys in orange
• 24:06
  jumpsuits. I'm still wearing my shorts and
• 24:09
  T-shirt. And then all of a sudden you're
• 24:12
  just thrust into this massive courtroom.
• 24:15
  There's, you know, and you're just, I mean, it's just, it's
• 24:19
  just sensory overload. Well, yeah, it's since you're
• 24:22
  overload and and you know, you're just basically taken off
• 24:24
  the street from your house and all of a sudden you're shackled
• 24:27
  in front of a judge. Yeah.
• 24:29
  And so to answer your question out in the lobby, I'm introduced
• 24:34
  to the best criminal attorneys in Oklahoma City.
• 24:38
  And that's the title. I'll to this day I would I would
• 24:41
  say the same thing. And they said, hey, listen, you
• 24:44
  know, we're going to be your team and we're going to enter an
• 24:47
  appearance. And hey, we, we've talked to the
• 24:50
  prosecutor. This must have been building for
• 24:52
  months. They only charge folks after a
• 24:55
  long, thorough investigation. And we're going to have the
• 24:58
  files Monday, maybe Tuesday at the latest.
• 25:00
  And we'll have a clue what we're looking at here.
• 25:03
  But hey, this has been building for a long time under the
• 25:05
  scenes, behind the scenes. One of them wanted to know why I
• 25:09
  ignored the target letter and he didn't believe me.
• 25:13
  Not didn't believe me. He was very skeptical that I
• 25:16
  would just be plucked out of my front yard like that.
• 25:19
  As a, you know, family man with community ties.
• 25:24
  No, no violin, no history whatsoever.
• 25:28
  He's like that. That's unusual.
• 25:30
  I don't know why you didn't get a target letter, but he said to
• 25:34
  me, he said you pissed off the wrong person is all I can tell
• 25:39
  you. You pissed off the wrong person.
• 25:42
  OK, that's, that's fantastic advice.
• 25:46
  That's So what? How does this how does this
• 25:49
  proceed? Well, so it takes a couple of
• 25:53
  months, it takes a month before we get any evidence because they
• 25:56
  had to go and. Are you working at this time, in
• 25:58
  this couple of months? What?
• 25:59
  Are you doing so? Here's what's wild I you know, I
• 26:01
  go home. I think the world has ended.
• 26:04
  I can't control the story with my kids.
• 26:06
  They took that away from me, so I didn't.
• 26:08
  I didn't get to be the one to tell the kids what was going on
• 26:11
  or control the narrative at all with with my.
• 26:14
  This hit the news. Yeah, yeah.
• 26:18
  So there's a press release that I find when I'm driving home.
• 26:21
  And then the hurt gets amplified because news, major news
• 26:27
  outlets, didn't pick it up, but the rumor mill did.
• 26:31
  And so just the link to this justice.gov press release
• 26:36
  spreads like wildfire. You know what I think's funny,
• 26:40
  it's not funny, it's awful is that people talk about that they
• 26:44
  don't ever believe the news. You know, there's this thing
• 26:47
  about not believing, you know, mainstream media or anything.
• 26:50
  They don't believe the news but they automatically when they see
• 26:53
  a justice. Press release 100%.
• 26:57
  Yeah, yeah. There's this total faith in it.
• 27:00
  And these are people, this is shared rampantly by people who
• 27:06
  claim to be, claim to be your friend, you know, claim to
• 27:09
  follow, you know, a certain moral and ethical code.
• 27:13
  But in reality, you know, this was just, you know, this whole
• 27:18
  weekend, it's just spreading and it's getting shared like
• 27:22
  wildfire and everybody's getting reached out to about it.
• 27:26
  My parents, people are texting my wife, you know, hey, how's
• 27:29
  life? Like, that's weird.
• 27:30
  Why have three people ask me how life is this one weekend that
• 27:34
  we're just processing this? And so it just kind of becomes
• 27:36
  this worst kept secret that I couldn't control.
• 27:38
  I was rarely ever the first person that got to that that
• 27:41
  would be able to tell friends and family what was going on
• 27:45
  because this press release is just gained a life of its own.
• 27:49
  So. Yeah, you asked me about
• 27:52
  working. Sorry, I answered another
• 27:54
  question that's. What I was going to go back to
• 27:55
  because you, you were living in this terrible upheaval that you
• 27:59
  were working. Yeah, so I, I had started a new
• 28:03
  job a month prior and I emailed the owners of my company and
• 28:10
  told them what had happened and just prepared to lose my career
• 28:14
  over it. So they'd hired me to start a
• 28:17
  department of their company and I thought there's no way they're
• 28:20
  going to need want anybody hanging around that has anything
• 28:26
  like this going on. So I sent it off and just
• 28:31
  prepared for the shoe to drop the shoe drop.
• 28:33
  I got asked to join a phone call with all the leaders and owners
• 28:37
  of the company. And it, it's a big company, it's
• 28:39
  a very influential company. And I told him everything I knew
• 28:43
  at that point. I, I just laid it all out there
• 28:48
  and they said we got to take this under advisement, we'll get
• 28:51
  back with you. And so the CEO called me a few
• 28:56
  hours later and said, hey, listen, you know, we believe in
• 29:00
  innocent until proven guilty. We believe that innocent people
• 29:04
  can be targeted by the justice system for unjust reasons and go
• 29:09
  build this thing. And we'll be in touch.
• 29:11
  And we're going to put some folks around you to make sure
• 29:14
  that you succeed. And we succeed in this whole
• 29:17
  thing succeeds. Wow and.
• 29:20
  We're behind. You have no idea like you have
• 29:23
  no idea like it. That changed like that was the
• 29:26
  biggest. That's a game changer.
• 29:27
  Absolute game changer for the kids, for my wife because, you
• 29:31
  know, no job, no house, no food on the you just can.
• 29:34
  Imagine that is that is just. Spiraled.
• 29:37
  Yep. Just absolutely spiraled without
• 29:40
  their support. I mean, just lifelong loyalty
• 29:42
  from me. Just lifelong loyalty.
• 29:44
  I mean, it's just incredibly principled for a business owner
• 29:51
  in another. State they're taking a risk.
• 29:53
  Take the risk and say we believe in you.
• 29:56
  But I promise you I will return. I will return on their risk a
• 30:01
  thousandfold for them. If that's the last thing I do on
• 30:04
  this earth, I will. And you.
• 30:06
  Remember, you know when you go through these things, right,
• 30:09
  man, it is, it's, it's, it's branded on you to remember the
• 30:13
  people that stuck with you because you feel it.
• 30:17
  You feel it to your bones. I want to take a break here
• 30:19
  because I want to talk about when we get back, how you
• 30:24
  started stepping through this and how you started taking
• 30:27
  control of your own reigns, not knowing anything.
• 30:29
  You've never been, you've never been indicted.
• 30:31
  I want you to walk us through how you tackled this and ended
• 30:34
  up coming out on the other side. You know, a lot of people don't
• 30:37
  like how they show up online. Many individuals think there's
• 30:41
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• 30:43
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• 30:45
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• 30:48
  reputation from scratch or you're repairing search results
• 30:50
  after a negative news story. Discoverability can also help
• 30:53
  you how you portrayed on popular AI services like ChatGPT.
• 30:57
  To learn more, visit discoverability.co, itsnot.com,
• 31:00
  its.co listeners. A Nightmare Success can take
• 31:03
  $100 off with coupon code Nightmare Success.
• 31:07
  And the Nightmare Success podcast is sponsored by the
• 31:10
  White Collar Support group. That's where Ryan and I reside,
• 31:13
  the world's first support group devoted to people navigating the
• 31:16
  white collar criminal justice system.
• 31:19
  I'm a member of the White Collar Support Group.
• 31:20
  And I tell you, this is a bunch of people who help each other
• 31:22
  through the criminal justice journey for free.
• 31:25
  Whether you're just starting your journey or you made it
• 31:27
  through to the other side, this is great space for.
• 31:29
  You can join us on Zoom Mondays, 7:00 PM Eastern Time.
• 31:32
  For more information, go to prisoners.org.
• 31:34
  That's prisoners.org. So what I want to talk about,
• 31:38
  Ryan, is a lot of people get scared into paralysis when this
• 31:43
  happens because most people have been business people.
• 31:46
  And we're talking about this type of situation where they've
• 31:48
  been business people, they've been in control of things, you
• 31:51
  know, they're directing growth and so on.
• 31:53
  But they've never experienced this, never thought they would
• 31:56
  ever experience this. How did you start strategizing
• 32:03
  and figuring things out to get to the result that you got to
• 32:06
  walk us? Through it.
• 32:07
  Well, yeah, So when I told my attorneys that I had a factual
• 32:12
  basis and a factual rationale for every single transaction
• 32:20
  that my company had done, they said that's great, organize all
• 32:25
  that. And so I just spent dozens,
• 32:30
  hundreds of hours pulling in documents to underpin every
• 32:36
  single bar none, every single transaction that we had done.
• 32:43
  And in the meantime, after several weeks, we got the first
• 32:47
  of the FBI investigation sent to us and figured out that the FBI
• 32:53
  had interviewed 3 witnesses 2 weeks.
• 32:56
  No, sorry, interviewed 3 witnesses the week before the
• 33:00
  sealed grand jury indictment. And that was it.
• 33:03
  That was the investigation that had been done.
• 33:06
  And so then they went and started interviewing folks who
• 33:11
  had all seen the press release, who all had a narrative to align
• 33:15
  to, and they just start getting out there interviewing anybody
• 33:20
  with a pulse that had ever had a negative interaction with me.
• 33:26
  Yeah. And I always think that's
• 33:26
  interesting how that works that way is that, you know, you get
• 33:29
  this talking indictment and then you go and then they create, you
• 33:33
  know, these people that are scared to death, you know, start
• 33:36
  talking to them, but they're they're scared to death.
• 33:37
  If they don't say what they're supposed to say the way they're
• 33:40
  supposed to say it, then they could get tagged into this
• 33:43
  thing. Most people call that witness
• 33:45
  tampering because when somebody for the defense side tries to go
• 33:49
  out and clarify or prove up their case, that's called
• 33:54
  witness tampering, which by the way, they charged you with that.
• 33:58
  Eventually, yes, I did eventually pick up one of those.
• 34:01
  Yeah. But but yeah, so you know, it's
• 34:04
  interesting in in the justice system, we're very concerned
• 34:07
  about, you know, tainting the jury pool, right, Worried about
• 34:11
  jurors. Are we going to have jurors that
• 34:13
  come into this with? With a clear mind.
• 34:16
  Or whatever, but there's no concern about biasing witnesses
• 34:22
  and the Department of Justice can put out a narrative and it's
• 34:27
  a CHEAT SHEET if you will for any would be witness of this is
• 34:33
  what you're here to help me support proving.
• 34:36
  And the extent to which you align to this will have direct
• 34:41
  benefits to you in terms of whether you're able to stay out
• 34:45
  of this or not. Exactly.
• 34:47
  You said that really well. Well, I appreciate that.
• 34:50
  And it's wild too, because in almost every three O 2 we're
• 34:54
  reading, you know, the agent asks the person they're
• 34:58
  interviewing to give their opinion on my guilt.
• 35:03
  And it's wild because, you know, he's asking a disgruntled family
• 35:09
  member from 10 years ago. And it's like disgruntled family
• 35:12
  member believes Ryan committed this crime.
• 35:16
  You know, disgruntled former employee that has no information
• 35:19
  about what's going on presently believes Ryan is guilty.
• 35:24
  And it's just weird. Like, like how awkward is that
• 35:26
  to get to the end of this thing and say, hey, I know you have no
• 35:29
  facts whatsoever that pertain to the charges at hand.
• 35:33
  Just want just want someone's advice.
• 35:35
  You think that guy's guilty? Yeah, what's your offended?
• 35:37
  It's just bizarre. Yeah.
• 35:39
  So Ryan, you've got a whole bunch of interconnected web of
• 35:45
  things that happens. When do you find this out about
• 35:50
  the bank president, the Oklahoma president, the the FBI?
• 35:55
  Why? When?
• 35:55
  When does that come into your world?
• 35:59
  Yeah, so we start getting all this evidence in and there's
• 36:03
  just a lot of kind of just wild connections, you know, that that
• 36:10
  surface. You know, this one, I've never
• 36:12
  figured out how this I think this is just coincidental.
• 36:15
  But I find out that one of my kids, her best friend, is
• 36:22
  closely related to this FBI agent.
• 36:25
  And I want you to imagine how weird it is for your child to
• 36:29
  tell you that they were at a family event and met the FBI
• 36:35
  agent that's coming after you. Yeah, that's a weird deal.
• 36:40
  So that that one was very strange.
• 36:42
  But the biggest one that came to light is, you know, I start
• 36:46
  looking at these names and this prosecutor, Assistant United
• 36:51
  States Attorney DH Dilbach, and his name is on the press release
• 36:56
  that he chose to put out. So, you know, I have friends and
• 37:01
  folks reaching out to me and they're like, hey, you know, we
• 37:04
  know DH Dilbach, this is wild. You guys are the same age.
• 37:09
  He goes to your church, he goes to a different congregation of
• 37:12
  your church. And I'm researching him and I'm,
• 37:16
  I compare on Alliance Bank's website.
• 37:20
  Here's a board of directors and prominently listed, as, you
• 37:24
  know, one of the shareholders, founders, you know, this is a
• 37:26
  guy with a profit and loss interest in this bank is Joseph
• 37:31
  Harris Junior. Well, Joseph Harris Junior is
• 37:35
  also the president of the University of Oklahoma.
• 37:39
  OK. That's a big place.
• 37:41
  DH Dilbek's wife, Mackenzie Dilbeck also works for the same
• 37:47
  massive university, and that wouldn't be weird other than
• 37:54
  she's worked there for 10 years. And for the majority of those 10
• 37:59
  years, she has directly reported to Joe Harris Junior.
• 38:04
  And when she starts at OU, this is all public record.
• 38:07
  She's making $50,000 a year and now she's making $310,000 a
• 38:14
  year. And while I'm not saying don't
• 38:17
  know, I can't opine whether those raises were merited or
• 38:20
  not. What I can say is that if there
• 38:24
  was somebody who had been instrumental in my wife or me
• 38:29
  personally going from 50,000 to $310,000 a year over a very
• 38:35
  short period of time, I would have a significant loyalty.
• 38:42
  My judgement would be clouded by how influential that person had
• 38:49
  been. Particularly when I find quotes
• 38:53
  where Joe Harris junior is praising Mackenzie Dilbeck,
• 38:58
  praising her work, nominating her for these roles in these
• 39:01
  positions. And Joe Harris wears this other
• 39:03
  hat where he is a profit and loss owner, director, founder of
• 39:08
  a bank. And Mackenzie's husband, DH is
• 39:11
  prosecuting me. It just that's.
• 39:14
  Incredible. It just stunk.
• 39:16
  When you told me that, that there's nothing that smells good
• 39:19
  about that. It it smelled awful.
• 39:23
  It smelled awful. So when when you uncover all
• 39:26
  this and connect all these dots, what is the response from your
• 39:30
  attorneys with this type of information?
• 39:32
  So they at first, they're like, listen, man, the US Attorneys
• 39:38
  Office is not a collections agency.
• 39:41
  They don't go do favors for their friends.
• 39:44
  If they brought a horribly weak case to try to bolster an
• 39:51
  insurance policy, that just that would be unheard of.
• 39:55
  And that's a wild connection. But we need to understand the
• 39:59
  facts. The problem was the more they
• 40:01
  understood the facts. I mean, one of them told me
• 40:04
  late, you know it. Months later, you know, I kind
• 40:06
  of laid it all out for him again.
• 40:08
  And he said, I got to camp out on this.
• 40:10
  And another one who's prosecuted, not prosecuted,
• 40:13
  defended in federal court for 30 years in this city, said this is
• 40:19
  making the hair on my arm stand up.
• 40:22
  And they're having these conversations with Dilbaq and
• 40:26
  with Agent Busick and the demeanors weird.
• 40:30
  The comments are weird. Everyone's just getting creeped
• 40:33
  out because nothing and it reminds anyone of any
• 40:38
  prosecution they've ever been a part of.
• 40:40
  So you go, you're and I, I don't know if this is around the same
• 40:44
  time, but you, you're in Vegas at this trade show.
• 40:48
  Yeah, so, so we're trying to meet, you know, my guys are
• 40:51
  trying to meet with with Dill back to get him to understand
• 40:56
  and go through these accounts 1 by 1.
• 41:00
  And I mean, it's so crazy. Brent, a friend of mine and I'm
• 41:03
  going to give him a shout out here, Brian.
• 41:05
  Brian was a good enough friend. He went with me and we dug up
• 41:09
  rock samples from some of our projects because Dilbeck was
• 41:14
  taking the position that we had charged a rock adder and there
• 41:18
  wasn't really rock. And he is an AUSA, was really
• 41:22
  interested in understanding if we truly dug in rock or not.
• 41:25
  OK, so just imagine my friend and I, my friend from my
• 41:29
  community group at church, going out on a Sunday with shovels to
• 41:33
  a job site that that neither of us had ever been to.
• 41:37
  And we're literally coming in with Ziploc bags full of rock
• 41:41
  samples. Now, my attorney told me I
• 41:44
  wasn't allowed to call them boulders because apparently
• 41:47
  boulder is a slang word for a large volume of cocaine.
• 41:51
  So don't, don't walk into your attorney's office saying you got
• 41:53
  boulders. You got to walk in and say, I've
• 41:56
  got rock samples. I've got big rock samples.
• 41:59
  And so we're just trying to like shrink this thing.
• 42:01
  We're we're talking about it like it's a tumor that we're
• 42:03
  trying to shrink with the facts. And he's just not, he's just not
• 42:08
  movable even on the fringes. And so it just is really obvious
• 42:11
  to everyone, we're just going to have to go try this case.
• 42:15
  There's just not, we're not going to get any, that there's
• 42:17
  just no sense here. They're just not going to change
• 42:20
  their mind. No, and I mean, and listen,
• 42:22
  we're getting these three O twos, which if you guys anyway,
• 42:26
  listening at three O 2 is where the FBI basically summarizes
• 42:31
  conversations that they've had. I want to talk about three O 2
• 42:34
  real quick because a lot of people don't know what a three O
• 42:35
  2 is. SO3O2 is when somebody does an
• 42:38
  interview with somebody. Here's the interesting thing,
• 42:41
  and this is one of those things that could change things like
• 42:44
  overnight. We have so many different ways
• 42:48
  to record. I mean, our phones record
• 42:50
  anything like these little gadgets, anything records.
• 42:54
  One thing that the FBI doesn't do is they don't record their
• 42:57
  conversation with you and they write it down from their summary
• 43:01
  of their notes. Why would that be?
• 43:04
  Well, there's one reason why that would be is that they can
• 43:07
  actually charge that person for lying to the FBI.
• 43:12
  But there's no proof from the person who got recorded because
• 43:15
  they didn't ever got recorded. Those are summaries of their
• 43:19
  notes and memory. And if, if it if we just made
• 43:23
  one change that an FBI agent had to record their interview with
• 43:29
  the witness, wow, wouldn't that be big?
• 43:31
  Well, then you'd get to hear what they actually had to say,
• 43:34
  right? And not the FBI agent writing a
• 43:38
  narrative wishes what he wishes they had.
• 43:41
  Said a narrative of what his thoughts were about that
• 43:44
  witness. Well, in my case, the FBI
• 43:48
  interviewed a witness and the FBI was unequivocal that I drove
• 43:54
  the witness down a specific St. on a specific day in January of
• 44:00
  2023 in a Tesla cyber truck. That vehicle did not exist to
• 44:06
  anyone. It was not even on the market
• 44:09
  for another year. So just imagine you're getting
• 44:11
  all these reports back. Yeah, that's a bad they're.
• 44:14
  Telling you their best evidence is this contractor that says you
• 44:18
  never even contracted with him. And I've got pictures of my
• 44:22
  crews on the job sites and they're telling, you know, man,
• 44:26
  the jury's not going to appreciate this guy buying a
• 44:29
  cyber truck, you know, when his business is struggling and
• 44:35
  they're describing a vehicle that wouldn't even exist for
• 44:39
  another year to anyone. And, and, and, and they're just
• 44:43
  like, I mean, the attorneys are like, man, I'm starting to
• 44:47
  doubt, you know, is this prosecutor very intelligent?
• 44:50
  Is he very sharp? Is he bright?
• 44:52
  This even this agent, they're like normally these agents and
• 44:55
  these prosecutors, they're just impressive.
• 44:58
  They're impressive. They figure stuff out.
• 45:00
  They tell you what you did, where you did it, when you did
• 45:03
  it. They dotted their IS and crossed
• 45:05
  their T's. And then in this case, it's just
• 45:07
  almost like the Keystone Cops have the keys to your freedom
• 45:12
  and they are not taking it seriously.
• 45:16
  They're not. They're like, we've never seen,
• 45:19
  no one had ever seen behavior like this out of an AUSA, out of
• 45:24
  an agent until. It's just, it's believable
• 45:26
  because they ended up getting disqualified.
• 45:28
  What at what point did you decide that, you know what, if
• 45:32
  I'm going to go forward with this and I'm going to, I'm going
• 45:36
  to grit down and go to trial. When did you decide that these
• 45:39
  attorneys weren't your attorneys and you were going to go get a
• 45:41
  real guy with swagger? Well, to be fair, these guys had
• 45:47
  swagger. I'll give them that.
• 45:50
  And, and I do, I do appreciate the work that they did early on
• 45:54
  in the case I well, you know when.
• 45:57
  Let me back up on that because I know a lot of attorneys.
• 46:00
  There's a lot of attorneys that have swagger.
• 46:03
  There's very few attorneys that have swagger that think that
• 46:05
  they can beat a federal ASUA in a courtroom.
• 46:10
  There's a lot of guys, they get swaggered to be able to get you
• 46:13
  down to a year and a day or whatever.
• 46:17
  But the guys that have the elephant sized balls that go
• 46:21
  into the courtroom because they win, those are that's a that's a
• 46:25
  small, that's a small few. That is a small few when 97% of
• 46:30
  cases of federal cases plead out to being a shop that can and
• 46:35
  it's ready and will actually go to trial is rare.
• 46:39
  That's a different shop. And I felt very fortunate to
• 46:42
  find one that wanted my case by scraping together every family
• 46:49
  resource I possibly could I could afford.
• 46:53
  And when it was time to go to trial, I brought on some out of
• 46:59
  State Council to turn the tables on the government.
• 47:03
  Let's talk about how you did that, because I think it's
• 47:04
  impressive how you found them. How'd you find them?
• 47:08
  So one thing that I was doing throughout this whole time
• 47:10
  period was I got a Pacer monitor subscription and I was furiously
• 47:15
  reading, reading, reading. I mean just every night.
• 47:19
  Pacers go is where all the cases are.
• 47:21
  Pacers where all the cases are exactly and they're buried.
• 47:24
  They're not easy to find. And I mean I'm searching by
• 47:26
  keywords. I, I'm just reading cases and
• 47:31
  upon cases and within all through the system.
• 47:34
  And I mean, I'm tracking cases that my judge has on his docket.
• 47:37
  I'm tracking cases that this prosecutor is, is working.
• 47:41
  I'm tracking fraud cases all over the country and just
• 47:45
  keeping up with them. And so there's this big case out
• 47:48
  in Washington state, kind of a novel cryptocurrency case.
• 47:53
  And I'm reading the motions and the pleadings in this case.
• 47:58
  And I'm, I'm just, I'm loving it.
• 47:59
  And I'm just like, this guy is impressive.
• 48:01
  Who on earth is writing this stuff?
• 48:03
  This guy is good. This guy's absolutely just
• 48:07
  putting the government on its constitutional burden.
• 48:12
  Who is this guy, and is there any way he'd ever consider
• 48:16
  getting involved in my case? So I sent him an e-mail because
• 48:18
  his e-mail was at the bottom of a motion in another case, in
• 48:22
  another, in another state. And he jumps on board.
• 48:25
  You go down and see him and he's in Nashville, right?
• 48:28
  Yeah, so I hired a guy by the name of Alex Little.
• 48:33
  Now at this time, he I now know was working on the Chrisley
• 48:38
  pardon that kind of made him blow up in the media after I had
• 48:42
  engaged him. Yeah, well, he was also on the
• 48:44
  Nevin Shetty case, which was a big he was on.
• 48:46
  The Shetty case, that's actually where I got to, so that's where
• 48:49
  I found him, yeah. And so.
• 48:51
  Nevin Nevin went through quite a story and journey of his own.
• 48:55
  Yes. And so I, you know, I had
• 48:59
  engaged him and he was very interested in all my binders and
• 49:02
  my exhibits. And I mean, I just had built, I
• 49:05
  mean, I had built trial binders by this point.
• 49:08
  And so I flew out to Nashville, took PTO from work and used my
• 49:13
  reward points to to fly to Nashville and just stayed out
• 49:17
  there for a couple of days. We went through the evidence, we
• 49:20
  met the whole team and it was like, all right, we're going to
• 49:23
  trial. So how long is that all that
• 49:24
  process take? Well, so I was indicted in July
• 49:28
  of 2024. Then kind of we had our first
• 49:33
  big round of meetings trying to kind of get the government to to
• 49:38
  see this for what it was in like November time frame.
• 49:42
  And then it was and then it's kind of starting to fall apart.
• 49:46
  It just we're not making progress in January and February
• 49:50
  and we're getting discovery related to these insurance
• 49:53
  policies that really started to provide in our minds and
• 49:58
  explanation for all of this. And it just was like it just was
• 50:02
  obvious it wasn't going anywhere in in early spring and March is
• 50:07
  when I hire those guys. It's right at the time that he
• 50:10
  announces he's going to issue a superseding indictment and then
• 50:14
  what was to be the trial would have been six months later in
• 50:18
  September. OK, so then some stuff starts
• 50:23
  happening and you start getting a feeling that, hey, maybe,
• 50:29
  maybe something's going to big change.
• 50:31
  How does that come about? So I had an anonymous tipster
• 50:37
  that told me that Mackenzie Dilbeck was about to get
• 50:41
  $100,000 a year raise as sponsored on the Oklahoma Board
• 50:47
  of Regents agenda by Joe Harris Junior.
• 50:52
  And this new title that even within athletics, sounds like
• 50:56
  it's her role to interface between the athletic department
• 51:00
  and its stakeholders, including the administration of the
• 51:04
  university. And man, it just stunk.
• 51:09
  It just really, really stunk. Again, I'm not saying that was a
• 51:13
  quick I got to. Remember, this is the wife of
• 51:16
  the man who's the AUSA. Yes, my prosecutor.
• 51:20
  'S wife Harris is the founder of the bank.
• 51:23
  Yes, and we're having conversations, we're getting
• 51:27
  insurance policies. It's stinking to high heaven and
• 51:31
  even the guys that were like a USAS don't do shady stuff like
• 51:35
  this. They're getting the same weird
• 51:37
  emails and weird vibes and just just just weird.
• 51:42
  Just acting, acting like a witness and a or a suspect more
• 51:47
  than acting like an AUSA that knows what you did, where you
• 51:51
  did it. It just was just completely
• 51:54
  atypical behavior and language. And so I'm actually I'm at a
• 51:59
  work event that I was already already scheduled to be at
• 52:02
  happened to be there and run into some guys and we talked
• 52:07
  about going to breakfast and we go to breakfast at this event
• 52:10
  and it's common cordial. But I talked to these guys about
• 52:13
  my case and I thought that they would have information about why
• 52:18
  a different witness would say we never contracted to do the work.
• 52:22
  But I had all this proof. All right, listen, I already had
• 52:25
  the proof. I, I didn't need that witnesses
• 52:28
  testimony either way. I already had the proof, but I
• 52:32
  was trying to figure out it seemed like if someone answered
• 52:37
  that this was like a contract dispute that was undesirable
• 52:41
  because they've made and, and we when we learned that they had
• 52:44
  filed a claim on their bank Fidelity policy alleging fraud.
• 52:49
  Well, what do you know? Everyone they're calling is not
• 52:53
  saying contractual dispute, They're calling everyone they're
• 52:56
  saying fraud, fraud and fraud is very different from a contract
• 52:59
  dispute. And so I was like, hey, it was
• 53:02
  somebody influencing this guy to say these things because I don't
• 53:07
  understand why a person would say that, you know, that, that
• 53:12
  my company had never even been engaged to do a project when in
• 53:16
  actuality we had and there was like a mountain of proof about
• 53:19
  it, including emails with this witness.
• 53:21
  Why would they do that? Well, I and I explained my
• 53:25
  concerns about being railroaded by the Department of Justice and
• 53:28
  it wasn't 4 hours later and my attorneys are calling me and
• 53:33
  they're like hey, shut down the self investigation, whatever.
• 53:37
  However the fruit plate went at breakfast, it was not digested
• 53:41
  well and I, I mean, I was, I was sick at my stomach, not from the
• 53:47
  fruit. The fruit was fine.
• 53:48
  Yeah, So what? What happens next?
• 53:50
  And they're. Like, hey, AUSA, Dilbeck wants
• 53:54
  you to agree not to talk to any witnesses about your case.
• 53:59
  You know, essentially, like, wants you to agree to a gag
• 54:01
  order. And it wasn't in my conditions
• 54:04
  of pretrial release, But he wanted to add it.
• 54:06
  And I said, OK, well, what happens if I don't?
• 54:09
  Like, what if we say no? It's like, well, we'll have to
• 54:11
  go argue in front of the judge. And I was like, well, listen, if
• 54:14
  Dilbeck wants to spin up this crazy narrative, including the
• 54:19
  fact that I tricked this guy into going to breakfast, but I
• 54:23
  have text messages where this guy suggests breakfast and sets
• 54:27
  the time and place. And I said, when are we going to
• 54:29
  start pushing back on these false narratives where Dilbeck
• 54:34
  chooses a well, chose me as a criminal, works backwards to
• 54:38
  select a crime, then works backwards to find the evidence
• 54:41
  and only the evidence that supports the conclusions he's
• 54:45
  made. They're like, Ryan, this is not
• 54:48
  the war you want to win. Let's just agree to it.
• 54:50
  And I said, well, what if I don't?
• 54:53
  And they said. Dilbeck's going.
• 54:56
  To move, to detain you, to put you in prison until your trial
• 55:03
  if that's what it takes to silence you.
• 55:06
  Not, not ain't an unusual. Move, by the way.
• 55:09
  So what did you do? I accepted the change in
• 55:11
  conditions and. I And in that same breath he
• 55:15
  announced that he was going to take it from one count to 10
• 55:17
  counts, that he'd be waiting for me with seven years of
• 55:21
  sentencing exposure at trial. He could plead guilty and he'd
• 55:25
  ask for three years. So the trial penalty was four
• 55:28
  years and there was just no move.
• 55:31
  And there's just no movement. Everything we'd shown him, all
• 55:34
  it had done was strange, his resolve.
• 55:38
  Strengthen his result. And what's crazy is is.
• 55:40
  The counts that he superseded with, we hadn't even discussed
• 55:43
  him yet. It was like, I just wonder, like
• 55:47
  in his mind, we discussed half, we've discussed the first half
• 55:51
  of the alphabet. We didn't cherry pick.
• 55:52
  We discussed the first half of the alphabet and at the end of
• 55:55
  it he had not found one action that he could legitimately
• 55:59
  prosecute, so he just went and chose from the second.
• 56:03
  He just got a Super City indictment came up with.
• 56:04
  He just went and got a superseding.
• 56:06
  Indictment. It was crazy too.
• 56:07
  I. Mean I want to add 2.
• 56:08
  I don't want to pile on, but one of the creepiest emails we got
• 56:11
  from him, which again, my attorneys forward to me, you
• 56:14
  know, I'm not communicating directly, but he makes a list of
• 56:18
  all the transactions and he says in his words, I've colored the
• 56:25
  I've I've colored the non fraudulent transactions red and
• 56:29
  I've colored the fraudulent transactions green.
• 56:33
  And we were like, what? And I said, are you kidding me?
• 56:37
  The times that I committed 18 USC 1344 bank fraud are green.
• 56:44
  Who highlights the crime in green?
• 56:47
  He did, and he actually got asked about it.
• 56:50
  And this was telling too, about how incompetent this FBI agent
• 56:55
  was. He said, well, I wanted to make
• 56:57
  it really easy for the FBI agent.
• 57:00
  Green means go investigate and red means stop investigating.
• 57:07
  It's like those are both horrible.
• 57:11
  Like just imagine. Sitting on the other side of
• 57:13
  this and. You're hearing this and you're
• 57:14
  like, is this a joke? Is this a joke?
• 57:17
  The only thing serious. Having fun?
• 57:20
  Yeah, exactly. So Ryan, how does?
• 57:22
  It happen that. This gets in front of the judge,
• 57:25
  and the judge makes the ruling that the guy is disqualified.
• 57:28
  Oh my goodness. Yeah.
• 57:29
  So I'll Fast forward through a lot of.
• 57:30
  Time here, we get ready for trial, we send out subpoenas, we
• 57:34
  subpoena 30 parties and everyone gives us back all the evidence
• 57:38
  we have that these are real projects, real contracts, you
• 57:42
  know, that, that, that there isn't fraud here.
• 57:45
  Every, we, we get something back for everything.
• 57:47
  We don't have any unprotected, you know, we've closed every
• 57:53
  loop and, and again, some of them, you know, you had a ton
• 57:57
  with certain customers that generate a lot of documentation.
• 58:00
  You know, it was, it was a mix. We, we did some, we had a, an
• 58:04
  investigator that went out and met with witnesses and
• 58:07
  reinterviewed witnesses that the FBI was saying, well, this
• 58:10
  witness says this. And then you know, our private
• 58:13
  investigators like, no, they're actually saying this.
• 58:15
  And it's like the opposite. We do forensics.
• 58:19
  We, I mean, we are just absolutely preparing for trial,
• 58:22
  aggressively filed, filing pretrial motions.
• 58:25
  And finally we decide that there's no way for me to defend
• 58:31
  against the witness tampering charge without bringing in Joe
• 58:36
  Harris Junior, the president of the University of Oklahoma with
• 58:40
  a trial subpoena. And let me tell you, that's
• 58:43
  wild. That's wild when?
• 58:46
  You've got. A private investigator getting
• 58:49
  on a flight and he's going to come hang out in Norman, OK,
• 58:53
  until he can serve the university president with a
• 58:56
  trial subpoena on a football field.
• 58:58
  It like the season was starting. And I mean, we're like.
• 59:02
  We'll find him somewhere, particularly because the bank's
• 59:06
  attorneys were willing to take service for everyone else from
• 59:10
  the bank except for Joe Harris. However, they spoiled the drama
• 59:16
  and like at midnight one night as we're preparing to go serve
• 59:21
  him in person, the bank reverse course and said, no, we will
• 59:25
  take, we'll take, we'll take trial subpoena service for Joe
• 59:28
  Harris junior. So then what?
• 59:29
  How how does how does that end up ending?
• 59:32
  Up knowing that he's in the mix of all this in the courtroom
• 59:36
  with the judge with a disqualification.
• 59:39
  Yeah, so, so after that. And, and again, so dense, but
• 59:44
  there's just so many bad faith conversations, emails where my
• 59:49
  attorneys really began to view this assistant United States
• 59:52
  Attorney as as dangerous, as unethical, as bad faith.
• 59:58
  And it's just in everything. It's in representations he's
• 1:00:01
  making to them. It's in his responses to
• 1:00:04
  pretrial motions and just kind of this fear sets in.
• 1:00:08
  That this guy is so bought in, he would literally trick a jury
• 1:00:13
  like trick, like resort to trickery if that's what it took
• 1:00:16
  to convict me. And he's moving all over the
• 1:00:21
  place on theories he's not agreeing to.
• 1:00:25
  He's just, he's not upholding any kind of mutual
• 1:00:30
  understandings. He's just, it's like very
• 1:00:34
  slippery. And so they said, you know.
• 1:00:37
  Ryan, I just you. Know all of the all of this
• 1:00:40
  that's come out all the discovery we've gotten back, you
• 1:00:44
  know, because again, the judge actually made a comment in one
• 1:00:47
  of his briefs that he wishes he had known about this sooner.
• 1:00:51
  But it was like the totality of evidence had just built.
• 1:00:54
  It was kind of like there was a little bit there to start with.
• 1:00:57
  And it's just growing. And I mean, we're finding
• 1:01:01
  Instagram photos where Dilbeck is drinking Moscow mules with
• 1:01:05
  his next door neighbor, another of Alliance board member.
• 1:01:11
  And it's just like, it's just like this.
• 1:01:12
  Never ending. Never ending well.
• 1:01:14
  It just keeps getting bigger. And they're asking and
• 1:01:18
  challenging him about this stuff and he's not consulting with the
• 1:01:22
  advisory office within the Department of Justice.
• 1:01:25
  So he's not taking all these steps.
• 1:01:27
  He's not that the court doesn't know about like truly, your
• 1:01:31
  attorneys actually file a motion to have him disqualified.
• 1:01:34
  That's where it lands, so we finally file.
• 1:01:37
  A motion to disqualify Assistant United States Attorney DH
• 1:01:40
  Dilbeck because of the relationships with Joe Harris
• 1:01:44
  and with another board member, Blair Humphreys, his former next
• 1:01:48
  door neighbor. And how long does it?
• 1:01:51
  Take for this motion and it's filed to you get a response
• 1:01:59
  positive from the judge that disqualifies an AUSA prosecutor.
• 1:02:05
  So pretty quickly, the government responded.
• 1:02:09
  And it was, you know, how dare you, right?
• 1:02:12
  Why would you ever? The nerve.
• 1:02:15
  And. Then what surprised us was I was
• 1:02:18
  in Nashville preparing for my to, you know, preparing for
• 1:02:21
  trial to testify in my own case. And the judge ordered us to
• 1:02:25
  respond, which is kind of weird because normally, you know, the
• 1:02:29
  judge just kind of lets you kind of volley it back and forth, and
• 1:02:32
  then he makes a decision. And so we responded, and then we
• 1:02:36
  showed up in court for a scheduling hearing.
• 1:02:39
  And that's when the judge heard evidence, if you will, from both
• 1:02:44
  sides about the conflict motion. OK.
• 1:02:50
  So he rules and. Disqualifies the AUSA.
• 1:02:55
  Is there any, like is it just a matter of fact ruling or it is
• 1:03:00
  does he give descriptive words of why he's done this So the the
• 1:03:04
  ruling did not come out? Until the next day.
• 1:03:09
  OK, if I remember, he didn't. He didn't rule the arguments.
• 1:03:12
  OK, they heard arguments. Still back and again this.
• 1:03:15
  Is in the public record, so this isn't an accusation.
• 1:03:18
  This is what happened. Initially indicated he didn't
• 1:03:20
  even know one of these board members and then we pulled, set
• 1:03:23
  up the Instagram photos and then all of a sudden he did.
• 1:03:26
  The criminal supervisor Jessica Perry for this area was
• 1:03:31
  screaming the F bomb at my attorneys and at her attorney's
• 1:03:36
  table. After Judge Bernard Jones walked
• 1:03:38
  out, I could hear her slamming doors and screaming going down
• 1:03:43
  the hallway. This hearing had gone so badly
• 1:03:47
  and so embarrassingly. And I'm just sitting there in
• 1:03:50
  the crowd just, like doing like that Baby Yoda, just like, what
• 1:03:53
  is going on here? And so he issues the ruling and
• 1:03:58
  you know, it sometimes judges issue an order and an opinion
• 1:04:03
  where they really go into all the things.
• 1:04:06
  He just issued an order that kind of just recapped all the
• 1:04:09
  stuff that we presented. And what did you think?
• 1:04:11
  I mean, what did you think this is?
• 1:04:12
  This is like. Something that doesn't happen,
• 1:04:14
  what was going through your mind so I would get the filings
• 1:04:18
  about. I mean, were you immediately
• 1:04:19
  thinking that possibly this could mean?
• 1:04:21
  That they're going to just dismiss the case?
• 1:04:23
  No. OK, no, so my attorney, I'd get
• 1:04:28
  the. Filings about a minute after
• 1:04:30
  they would and I get this phone call from my attorney and not
• 1:04:34
  Alex Ted who really. And he was the one that was
• 1:04:37
  doing all the writing like Ted was doing 90% of the the
• 1:04:41
  day-to-day work was Ted and he's freaking brilliant.
• 1:04:44
  And I just I get this phone call and I mean it's like Ted can't
• 1:04:47
  even get the words out. What, what.
• 1:04:49
  And then you know it comes through and we just we were
• 1:04:51
  shocked. We were shocked because even the
• 1:04:54
  judge was like he said, he said I as a judge, I want to follow
• 1:04:59
  precedent. I don't want to set precedent,
• 1:05:02
  but I will. This is very disturbing.
• 1:05:06
  Well, OK, so you get a new. Case or not, a new case, you get
• 1:05:10
  it. You get a new prosecutor.
• 1:05:12
  Then what is how long is this new prosecutor on the case to
• 1:05:17
  your attorneys talking back and forth with this new prosecutor
• 1:05:20
  that it appears that this is not going to be the same vigor and
• 1:05:26
  umph that Jill back had. Yeah.
• 1:05:29
  So we get a new. Prosecutor, if you're listening,
• 1:05:32
  Danielle London like to give you a shout out.
• 1:05:34
  I know it could not have been easy.
• 1:05:36
  I know that the office politics must have made it very difficult
• 1:05:40
  to walk this back. But thank you that you did.
• 1:05:44
  It was the right thing. But yeah, Danielle London is on
• 1:05:48
  the case. She's experienced, she's bright,
• 1:05:51
  she's typical the USA and I mean just right out of the gate.
• 1:05:55
  She and my attorney are just having quality normal everyone's
• 1:06:01
  everyone lives on planet Earth. In all the conversations with
• 1:06:05
  Danielle London, it's rational. She's not she's not giving in.
• 1:06:09
  She's not like, whatever you want, but we finally can have,
• 1:06:13
  like, a rational, adult, deconflicted conversation about
• 1:06:20
  just the facts because like, once Dilbeck's gone, it's like,
• 1:06:23
  that chapter is over now. How long does it take for
• 1:06:26
  Dilbeck to be gone? To where?
• 1:06:28
  You get your attorneys noticed that they're going to work out a
• 1:06:32
  deal where they are going to dismiss all the charges and have
• 1:06:36
  some kind of supervision thing. How long did all that take?
• 1:06:40
  Yeah, so we had we. Still were ready and wanted to
• 1:06:43
  try the case quickly but just scheduling it was like it was
• 1:06:47
  going to be October then November and then you know Alex
• 1:06:51
  had for the case for the trial right Yeah for the trial Alex
• 1:06:55
  yeah Alex had to go try another trial.
• 1:06:58
  He I guys got a busy schedule but.
• 1:07:01
  And so it turns out that the trial is going to be the, you
• 1:07:04
  know, start the week after Thanksgiving.
• 1:07:07
  OK. And so that's locked in.
• 1:07:09
  And then in early October, I think it was Danielle London
• 1:07:13
  reached out to my attorneys with just kind of this like, can we
• 1:07:17
  talk about why there have been no plea discussions in this
• 1:07:20
  case? Like what's.
• 1:07:22
  Yeah, just kind of this real kind of open handed, the soft,
• 1:07:26
  soft openings. Can we?
• 1:07:27
  Can we? Just talk like grown-ups.
• 1:07:30
  And so they have some conversations.
• 1:07:32
  With her and. There's kind of some ground
• 1:07:35
  rules laid that everybody feels good about.
• 1:07:38
  South Ted and Alex came to Oklahoma City in mid-october,
• 1:07:43
  met with her, met with another AUSA that's very experienced and
• 1:07:46
  just laid out all the evidence. Just, I just literally just
• 1:07:49
  tried our case in front of the, you know, in front of, you know,
• 1:07:54
  2 prosecutors. So do they make a deal there or
• 1:07:58
  is? Something happened after that.
• 1:08:00
  Well, we left and you know I took.
• 1:08:02
  Alex and Ted back to the airport.
• 1:08:04
  We had Chick-fil-A and weighed the likelihood that they would
• 1:08:09
  dismiss it. We considered that they probably
• 1:08:11
  should dismiss it, but there was an option kind of a conditional
• 1:08:15
  kind of a conditional dismissal option that they had talked
• 1:08:18
  about that they thought I, you know, that, that that had merit
• 1:08:22
  to it. And you know, they did typical
• 1:08:25
  lawyer stuff. They said it was a better than
• 1:08:27
  50% chance that they had succeeded.
• 1:08:30
  And I dropped them off and they took off for Nashville.
• 1:08:35
  Wow, So what? How do you find?
• 1:08:37
  Out how do? You find out that this is this
• 1:08:39
  is all after 18 months of a nightmare on your family, your
• 1:08:42
  kids, everybody's lived through this.
• 1:08:44
  The press, how does it come? How's the news come to you?
• 1:08:46
  So there's three weeks of silence and.
• 1:08:49
  I mean, just dad silence and they're like, hey, we just need
• 1:08:52
  to stay put. We don't need to ask for an
• 1:08:53
  update. Let's just stay put.
• 1:08:56
  And then on a Friday morning in November, I get a phone call
• 1:09:00
  from Ted and he says, hold on. I'm I'm circling in Alex and I'm
• 1:09:04
  with my wife. We're, you know, at at home
• 1:09:08
  alone. And they debate who gets to tell
• 1:09:12
  me. And Alex says, hey, it's over.
• 1:09:14
  They're going to dismiss your, you know, they're going to
• 1:09:16
  dismiss all the charges. There's going to be this
• 1:09:19
  diversion that's set up that's, you know, it's, it's going to
• 1:09:22
  show dismissed on your record. It's, it's over the charges, the
• 1:09:26
  underlying charges that are dismissed.
• 1:09:28
  You know, for 18 months, you're going to have to do what you've
• 1:09:30
  done this whole time, which is have a job and not break the
• 1:09:34
  law. Yeah.
• 1:09:35
  Kind of like a supervision. Kind of like a supervision and
• 1:09:40
  you. Know a way for them to walk out
• 1:09:43
  with saying that they. Didn't give up everything.
• 1:09:46
  It was like, yeah, but they. Dismissed all the charges so you
• 1:09:50
  and. Your wife are sitting there.
• 1:09:52
  I think you've told me you were numb.
• 1:09:54
  What was your wife's reaction? Just crying?
• 1:09:56
  Yeah. Had to just be a total.
• 1:09:58
  Like just you're. You're you're fighting,
• 1:10:00
  fighting, fighting, fighting in the just emotional vomit.
• 1:10:03
  Yeah, just. Imagine your stomach is just
• 1:10:06
  full of every emotion and it all just kind of comes out all at
• 1:10:08
  once. So what do you think, Ryan
• 1:10:11
  about? If you were talking to somebody
• 1:10:14
  that recently got indicted and like you already threw up that
• 1:10:18
  97% people that are indicted plea, there's a lot of attorneys
• 1:10:23
  out there that said just give it a chance.
• 1:10:26
  Don't. Fold immediately because.
• 1:10:28
  You get with an attorney that is used to making deals because
• 1:10:31
  they do it almost all the time. What would you tell somebody
• 1:10:34
  about because you're you've experienced all of this, I would
• 1:10:37
  say that. If you have a plausible defense
• 1:10:45
  strategy, whatever that looks like, and I'm not a lawyer so I
• 1:10:49
  can't make plausible defense strategies.
• 1:10:52
  If you have a plausible you believe that what has happened
• 1:10:55
  to you. Has been wrong and you have
• 1:10:58
  something. To stand on right, you have
• 1:11:00
  facts, you have facts to. Stand on you.
• 1:11:03
  Have you know some viable, viable way to challenge any of
• 1:11:10
  the five elements of whatever fraud they're coming at you
• 1:11:14
  with? Then you have got to go get a
• 1:11:20
  trial attorney team. You've got to go hire someone
• 1:11:26
  who guys it on a trial, right? And and and they're not afraid
• 1:11:30
  to travel. They try cases all over the
• 1:11:33
  country, right? You're got to have.
• 1:11:37
  You got to have. You.
• 1:11:38
  Got to have you know, they, they come.
• 1:11:40
  In and it's lat and it's called Pro Hawk VJ.
• 1:11:43
  I call them pro Hawks. They got to swoop in.
• 1:11:46
  You got to get some pro Hawks that will swoop in and will
• 1:11:51
  zealously fight for you and put you in a position for an
• 1:11:54
  acquittal. Because we believed that I would
• 1:11:58
  be acquitted, we also feared that if my restless leg syndrome
• 1:12:04
  made me look nervous, some juror might not.
• 1:12:07
  What would a juror think? What would a juror think?
• 1:12:09
  And that's and. That's the whole thing.
• 1:12:11
  I mean, they're good. Enough at stacking charges that
• 1:12:14
  can, you know, some of them carry 10 years, some carry 20
• 1:12:16
  years and you can stack them and and they can, they can go
• 1:12:20
  20406080 a hundred 200 years. So you have to have this just
• 1:12:28
  built in. I don't care.
• 1:12:31
  I'm going to do it anyway and with the right team.
• 1:12:34
  But I reason I wanted you to tell your story and how what you
• 1:12:38
  had to do. It wasn't easy.
• 1:12:40
  There was nothing easy that happened.
• 1:12:42
  I mean, you, your, your family went through hell.
• 1:12:44
  Your kids saw stuff that they shouldn't have seen, but you
• 1:12:46
  stayed up, Sold our house to pay lawyers, sold your house to.
• 1:12:50
  Pay lawyers, you stayed. Up night after night after
• 1:12:53
  night, researching stuff that you would have never researched
• 1:12:55
  in your whole life. But you were fighting for
• 1:12:57
  yourself and your family. So there's nothing easy about
• 1:12:59
  it. But you did the work to get the
• 1:13:01
  right people in play to to be in a place where you could actually
• 1:13:06
  file these motions to where a judge could hear it.
• 1:13:08
  It would scare off the US attorney's office to the point
• 1:13:12
  where they said, hey, what are we doing?
• 1:13:14
  Let's talk about this. So it's it's just an incredible
• 1:13:17
  story, Ryan in fortitude, persistence, courage, grit.
• 1:13:22
  I just love it. And and it's it's one that I
• 1:13:24
  hope a lot of people listen to that, you know, for the people
• 1:13:28
  who've already gone through this, it just makes you feel
• 1:13:30
  good that somebody did it for the people are getting ready to
• 1:13:32
  go into it, man, do the work. And and you know, if you've got
• 1:13:37
  the the Elvis I gonads to go into it, make sure you got the
• 1:13:40
  right team. But if I was going to ask you,
• 1:13:43
  Ryan, what's your biggest take away is through all this, what
• 1:13:45
  would what do you think you'd say?
• 1:13:47
  You know, I would say that my biggest.
• 1:13:49
  Focus in the aftermath of all of this is just doing business,
• 1:13:55
  doing life, surrounding myself at work and at home with high
• 1:14:02
  quality men and women of integrity.
• 1:14:05
  Because the non paying customers that caused me to go bankrupt in
• 1:14:12
  the 1st place. I'd been warned that they were
• 1:14:16
  slimy and I thought, well, I'm not slimy and I'm going to have
• 1:14:20
  my IS dotted and my TS crossed. And if they try to get out of
• 1:14:24
  what they owe me, I'm going to have every I'm going to have
• 1:14:28
  everything on my side. You know, I look back at, you
• 1:14:31
  know, I dealt with this banker for a long time, dealt with this
• 1:14:34
  bank and you know, he just was unreliable, just didn't didn't
• 1:14:38
  really always follow through on these things.
• 1:14:40
  And so I thought, shame on me to think that, that you know, that,
• 1:14:45
  that there that, that you can work with unreliable, slimy
• 1:14:49
  people and you can think that they're going to hold up what's
• 1:14:54
  right and do what's right when the chips are down for you.
• 1:14:58
  And, and I just, I always, I had this like naivety about me that
• 1:15:02
  I thought if I did the right thing, told the truth, that,
• 1:15:06
  that it would work out for me. And then I realized I'm the one
• 1:15:10
  painted a criminal. I'm the one painted a bad guy.
• 1:15:13
  And maybe the real bad guys, you know, have to face consequences
• 1:15:18
  for lying to the FBI. Maybe they don't.
• 1:15:20
  But I just look at like this company I'm with now that you
• 1:15:23
  know it. And I don't just respect that
• 1:15:26
  they stuck with me. I just respect that they do
• 1:15:29
  business right and they do right by people even when it's
• 1:15:32
  inconvenient to them, even when it costs them money.
• 1:15:34
  And I'm just, I'm just obsessed now with just trying to surround
• 1:15:37
  myself with like minded folks that want to do it right and
• 1:15:41
  just running in the opposite direction of anything that even
• 1:15:45
  smells creative, smells like self help, smell shady.
• 1:15:49
  I'm just just Get Me Out of there.
• 1:15:51
  Just Get Me Out of there. I just just, if you fly up here
• 1:15:55
  and the decisions you make, you know, they won't be able to pull
• 1:15:59
  you down, you know, here like they can when you're flying
• 1:16:02
  closer to the ground. Yeah.
• 1:16:04
  No, I, I, I think it's a great take away.
• 1:16:06
  Don't swim with the wrong people because you can get, you know,
• 1:16:09
  you can get it on you and, and, and you're with a great company
• 1:16:14
  and thank God they, they, they stuck with you and gave you the
• 1:16:16
  opportunity and what a reward they got out of that.
• 1:16:18
  You know that that what a great situation for somebody to say,
• 1:16:22
  listen, innocent till proven guilty.
• 1:16:24
  We're going to stick with the NCA through this because they
• 1:16:26
  had, you know, there was fire all around.
• 1:16:28
  So I think it's a great and I want to add too, you know our
• 1:16:32
  department. At work has taken off, we're
• 1:16:34
  growing, we're expanding like it's incredible that their
• 1:16:38
  patience with me in return, you know, we built successful
• 1:16:43
  profitable projects all through that time period, built up
• 1:16:47
  customers, you know it's like like yeah, it's good for both
• 1:16:50
  sides. My other take away too would
• 1:16:52
  just. Be if you're.
• 1:16:53
  Out there and someone in your life that you have any decision
• 1:16:58
  making over, you know, finds themselves down the barrel of of
• 1:17:02
  this, like use some judgement, use some judgement, listen to
• 1:17:05
  it. And just I mean, how incredible
• 1:17:07
  for both of us that they're able to, you know, I'm able to build
• 1:17:10
  value for them. And then they also protected and
• 1:17:13
  were everything to me when I need it.
• 1:17:15
  It it's just it's amazing. It's fantastic and I love it.
• 1:17:19
  Love it for those guys out there that that take a chance and give
• 1:17:22
  people that are in this situation in the soup like you
• 1:17:25
  were, or when they get out and go into re entry and give
• 1:17:28
  somebody a chance because they're really looking for one.
• 1:17:30
  And fine. There's been all kinds of
• 1:17:32
  articles written about the fact that these people desperately
• 1:17:34
  want jobs and they're going to be more loyal percentage wise
• 1:17:37
  than just the regular person. So, so remember that if you're
• 1:17:41
  starting a business or you got a business that's looking for
• 1:17:43
  people. Talk about gratitude.
• 1:17:45
  I want to give a shout out to Homestead Financial who lets me
• 1:17:48
  use this podcast studio with all the fancy cameras and lights.
• 1:17:52
  I appreciate it. If anybody has home mortgage and
• 1:17:54
  he's out there Greg, after you have as your guy, he knows all
• 1:17:56
  that stuff. Hey, if you're looking for a
• 1:17:57
  book out there, I got one, check it out on Amazon or Barnes and
• 1:18:01
  Noble. It's not even our success,
• 1:18:03
  loyalty, betrayal, life behind bars, adapting, finally breaking
• 1:18:05
  free. Got time to leave me a review on
• 1:18:07
  Apple that just love it. Love reading that stuff helps
• 1:18:10
  the show. And if you want to know what I'm
• 1:18:12
  doing, go to brentcassidy.com. I spell it wrong.
• 1:18:15
  Spell it with ATY, not a DY, as I used to say to my people when
• 1:18:18
  I was writing my emails. Back and forth from love and
• 1:18:19
  work. Stay strong.
• 1:18:20
  I'll do the same. And this is a great episode
• 1:18:24
  that's a little bit different than our normal episodes.
• 1:18:27
  And I like that because this gives some people out there hope
• 1:18:32
  that I stick to it. I've got the facts in my favor.
• 1:18:35
  I'm not going to give up. I'm going to fight.
• 1:18:37
  And then you fought and won. What a great story.
• 1:18:41
  What a great story, man. Thanks for sharing it.
• 1:18:43
  Well, thanks for having me on. All right, folks, nightmare
• 1:18:47
  success. In and out.