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How did a title company owner go to prison? Jacqueline Polverari · Nightmare Success In and Out

• 0:01
  What happens when your worst fear becomes your reality?
• 0:04
  Hi, I'm Brent Cassidy. Welcome to the Nightmare Success
• 0:07
  In and Out podcast, where we explore how to overcome your
• 0:10
  fears and nightmares that set yourself free.
• 0:12
  We're going to be exploring this topic with guys that was in
• 0:15
  Leavenworth with and others who survived their own nightmare.
• 0:20
  These stories can be inspiring, sometimes.
• 0:22
  Sad. There's some humor, but
• 0:25
  hopefully you can come away with a nugget of something that'll
• 0:27
  help you knock down some of the prisms you built up in your own
• 0:30
  mind. All right, nightmare.
• 0:33
  Success. In and out.
• 0:34
  Listeners, we are back. We are back.
• 0:37
  It's where you come from. What happens when your worst
• 0:39
  fear becomes your reality? How do you adapt, Survive.
• 0:43
  Overcome set yourself free? Well I've been excited for this
• 0:46
  interview because my guess she she is a girl on the move.
• 0:52
  I mean if you read about it's Jacqueline Povier.
• 0:56
  Povieri is that how is that right, Jacqueline is that how
• 0:59
  you say God I I I can mess these things up in a heartbeat.
• 1:03
  We just started and I've I've, I mean it's Povieri, Povieri,
• 1:10
  Povieri. People love it when I'm.
• 1:14
  I'm pronouncing names. But it's POLVERA RI, right?
• 1:21
  We're not, We're not going to say your last name in this
• 1:24
  interview ever. Until the very end.
• 1:29
  I want to tell you a little bit about Jacqueline.
• 1:33
  She is the founder of Evolution Re Entry Services and she has
• 1:38
  over 25 years of proven successes in mentoring and
• 1:41
  therapeutic environments and criminal justice.
• 1:43
  Re entry. Her experience working with
• 1:45
  trauma and the criminal justice field culminated through her
• 1:48
  personal journey of making poor choices over a decade ago that
• 1:52
  eventually she ended up in prison.
• 1:54
  She has since used her professional expertise and
• 1:57
  sociology background to dedicate herself to improving the
• 2:00
  policies and practices affecting women who are justice impacted,
• 2:03
  and she's got master's degrees to go with all this stuff.
• 2:06
  In this arena, Jacqueline has focused on criminal justice
• 2:10
  advocacy reform and re entry services, specializing in trauma
• 2:14
  as it relates to women and their families relating to
• 2:17
  incarceration. She's also been a featured
• 2:20
  keynote speaker at several criminal justice and psychology
• 2:23
  conferences throughout the country.
• 2:24
  And I've heard they are very motivational from people who
• 2:28
  have attended those. And she was just inducted into
• 2:32
  the Hall of Change in Connecticut.
• 2:35
  And I'm going to have Charlie Grady on here in a couple weeks
• 2:39
  who was a big part of that. And he's going to try to make
• 2:43
  that a national program that goes from state to state.
• 2:45
  But I love the whole idea of it and what they do.
• 2:48
  She also hosts a a monthly podcast called Criminal Justice
• 2:52
  Cafe. Want everybody to check that
• 2:55
  out? That's Criminal Justice Cafe.
• 2:58
  I can't wait to unpack all this before we do.
• 3:00
  I just want to recognize our show sponsor, Auto Plaza Direct.
• 3:03
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  car lot looking for a car? Nobody likes to do that.
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  Auto Plaza Direct Tell em Brent from Nightmare Success sent you
• 3:41
  Jacqueline here. We are.
• 3:43
  Welcome. Hi.
• 3:44
  I I gotta take a break. I gotta go buy a car at Auto
• 3:47
  Plaza Direct. They take away all the pain and
• 3:50
  hassle they do. Right.
• 3:52
  So so Jacqueline when you know you and I talked and you've been
• 4:01
  through one heck of a journey and and and what you're doing
• 4:04
  with your life experience and and pushing that all back in and
• 4:08
  and and using your experiences to really help other people.
• 4:14
  Can you take us back a little bit into just so people can
• 4:18
  figure out where Jacqueline, little Jacqueline, what was her
• 4:21
  life like growing up? Mom, Dad.
• 4:23
  Siblings. What in the world brought
• 4:24
  Jacqueline to this point? Wow, that's a lot this.
• 4:29
  I don't think we have enough therapy sessions for that.
• 4:33
  I I grew up in a middle class family.
• 4:36
  I have two older brothers. You're the baby.
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  You're the. Baby, the family.
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  My. Oldest brother is perfect at
• 4:42
  everything he does. Perfect.
• 4:44
  That's an older, older sibling, right?
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  Football player, baseball player, musician.
• 4:49
  Anything he touches. My, my brother, my middle
• 4:52
  brother, that's also older than me.
• 4:55
  He's also very talented. So I grew up in some pretty big
• 5:00
  shoes that I had to fill. I think there that was more in
• 5:03
  my head than in. Reality.
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  I'm sure it was, yeah. Of.
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  Course, of course. The baby, the family gets to see
• 5:08
  everything too, so they see what the older siblings are doing.
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  What about mom and dad? Where were they in your in your
• 5:14
  world? Well, my mother was home and my
• 5:19
  dad was in insurance. He sold insurance.
• 5:22
  He was in insurance business. He was busy a lot.
• 5:24
  He was working a lot. But he was my hero.
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  He was like, wow, you know. Every time.
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  He's a guy. He had his big dot matrix
• 5:31
  spreadsheets that that used to print out with all I.
• 5:34
  Remember those? Sit there and go through with
• 5:36
  him. The old 80s where those things
• 5:38
  just came and just rolls and rolls and rolls and you can make
• 5:41
  like a walkway. Yeah, Yeah.
• 5:45
  So that's I it's kind of, I played a lot of tennis.
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  Yeah, lot of tennis, because it was the only sport my brothers
• 5:54
  didn't play. So I I found tennis and dancing
• 5:59
  were the two things I didn't do. So I did a lot of that, and then
• 6:01
  I was really an academic kind of person.
• 6:05
  That doesn't surprise me. Yeah, one of those nerdy people
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  with the I had the dictionary with all the.
• 6:10
  I still have my dictionary, all the highlights in it, stuff like
• 6:13
  that. So did you like school?
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  I mean, if you were, if you were nerdy, was that kind of thing
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  that you were into high school getting good grades?
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  I hated school. You hated school.
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  You were a nerd that hated school.
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  That was funny because way back then, like now, the kids have so
• 6:30
  many days. They have to be there or they we
• 6:33
  didn't. I never had to go to school, so
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  I I was one of the skippers I used to.
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  But I'd go to school, I would skip and just stay in the band
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  room the whole day, play my Instagram, I play flute and I'd
• 6:45
  show up when there was tests. So I did really well, I.
• 6:48
  Guess you did. Really.
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  You were a great taste test taker.
• 6:51
  Yeah, I guess I know. Or I cheated.
• 6:54
  I can't remember. It was so long ago.
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  It's it was a long time ago but that you bet you got good
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  grades. So what were you thinking in
• 7:01
  high school that you were going to grow up and do?
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  It's very funny, actually. My guidance counselor told me
• 7:09
  that girls like me go to hairdressing school.
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  OK. So I did.
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  I signed up for hairdressing school.
• 7:16
  I hated that too. Is that like cosmetology?
• 7:19
  Is that what that is? Yeah, yeah, it was like you
• 7:21
  know, so I I was so bad at it too.
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  I was so bad that they never even called me to do anyones
• 7:26
  hair. So I remember.
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  I guess that is bad. If you can't, I was.
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  Really. I was really bad.
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  So I I did graduate and then I left and went to college.
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  I said This isn't. So how long does that like
• 7:39
  cosmetology school? How long is that a year?
• 7:41
  Yeah, I think it was like 9 months or a year.
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  So then you you got done with that.
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  You just jumped into college, yeah.
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  I worked one day in a salon, OK? And I Oh.
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  I said it's not for you. Yeah, definitely was not for me.
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  No, I didn't have any of the acumen you needed to have this
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  to to be successful in that. So you roll into college.
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  Where'd you go? I went to South Central, which
• 8:04
  is a Community College. It's not there anymore.
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  South Central Community College. It's now Gateway.
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  God, I'm dating myself. They renamed it.
• 8:12
  Brent for bringing this. Well, I, I, I was down in my
• 8:14
  hometown Springfield, MO, not too long ago for this little
• 8:18
  thing and and my elementary school and junior high is gone.
• 8:23
  It's a it's a Menards now and it's just they just mowed it
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  down. It's that's what you know you've
• 8:27
  got. No it's not even there's no
• 8:29
  existence of it. It's gone.
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  That's. My high school, too.
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  It's gone. God.
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  But yeah, I mean, yeah, again. Back then, we had no, we didn't
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  have to go to the Ivy League schools.
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  You know, I was perfectly happy going to Community College,
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  taking my time, figuring things out.
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  I worked at Smith, Barney, Harris, Upham and company, my
• 8:51
  first. I loved that job.
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  I was destined to be a stockbroker, not actually, but
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  in my. Mind you, thought so at the
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  time, yeah. Yeah, it's funny.
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  Nobody's ever asked me this. I've done millions of interviews
• 9:03
  and no one's ever asked me about this.
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  So it's it's, it's, it's. But you like that job.
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  Oh. I loved it, but there were no
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  women stockbrokers back in 1989 when the stock market crashed.
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  I was the assistant to the vice president in New Haven, CT, and
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  he was kind of my mentor. OK, I learned.
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  I learned everything about business not from college, but
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  from him. Yeah, well, that's usually the
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  way it is. The street smarts comes when you
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  actually get into this to the real.
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  Yeah, yeah, yeah. And he was tough.
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  He was he was an architect by trade and then went and became a
• 9:43
  incredible but he was an old school charter so he charted the
• 9:48
  stocks so every night I'd have to chart the stocks for him.
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  It was really cool And the coachron 1000 ticker tape just
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  came out the new you know where we had we could put the we had
• 10:00
  a, you know you put your things in by the wire, your settlements
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  in by the wire. But we had the Coachron 1000, so
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  I learned that inside and out in my geekism.
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  And that's where my business stuff started.
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  That's how it started. So what was the next step from
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  that? Oh God, Marriage, right?
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  So you got married. Yeah, I got married and stayed
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  married 10 years. I had two kids that were great,
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  and I stayed married because I had two kids.
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  Sure. And during that time, I really
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  worked for myself. I had business consulting.
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  I did a wedding wedding consultant business for A.
• 10:40
  While that's a big business, I know that business well.
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  With three daughters, Yes, that's those people.
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  Those people really can figure things out.
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  Yep. Right, right.
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  Yeah. Back then, not so much, though.
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  People were like, what the heck is this wedding consultant?
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  Nobody wanted to pay me to do wedding consulting, So yeah.
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  So I kind of just worked for myself, and I worked in theater.
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  I'm a member of the International Alliance of
• 11:06
  Theatrical Stage Employees still to this day.
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  And I didn't. Yeah.
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  Did you ever do any acting? No, God, no.
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  No, I took theater. I I minored in theater in
• 11:17
  college and I got, I got BS in acting and AS in directing.
• 11:21
  So I I wasn't, I wasn't an A actor.
• 11:23
  I did like directing, though, which by the way, I think
• 11:27
  looking back on that and that directing class, and I really,
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  really loved it. I think it's really good for
• 11:33
  business and building a business because you have to convince the
• 11:38
  audience and the actors that this is real and they have to
• 11:42
  see your vision, and it has to come to a point where it's all
• 11:47
  believable and everybody's moving in the same direction.
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  So I think there's something to I think maybe every business
• 11:52
  person should take a directing class, because I think there's
• 11:54
  something to it. It would be so cool, 'cause we
• 11:57
  we were this stuff. If we did most of the design
• 12:01
  work to go to New York, 'cause we're we're in New Haven, it
• 12:04
  would be so cool. 6:00 in the morning we'd go in and the
• 12:08
  theater would be dark. By 7:00 it was a live show and
• 12:14
  you know, pops, wardrobe, sound, carpentry, it all came together
• 12:21
  and it's magical, really magical.
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  I love it. So you get married, you have
• 12:27
  kids, and where did you get into the title world because you
• 12:34
  became the founder of this big title company like?
• 12:38
  Actually, I was going for my divorce.
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  So what, what happened with that?
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  How did because up until that point what we talked about,
• 12:47
  there's nothing that you've talked about with title or real
• 12:50
  estate or so how, how, how did you venture into that pathway?
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  I was going through my my brother had a title company and
• 12:58
  I was going through divorce and they did notary Closings.
• 13:01
  I had my notary from Smith Barney from years ago.
• 13:04
  So I I was doing that part time along with wardrobe stuff while
• 13:10
  I was figuring out the whole divorce thing.
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  And my brother had a partner who I went to high school with and
• 13:17
  we were not the best of buds. In high school.
• 13:21
  Yeah, yeah. We we just.
• 13:23
  I just. I had this feeling ironically.
• 13:26
  You didn't date him or anything, it was just you just didn't get
• 13:28
  along very well. Yeah, we were just different.
• 13:31
  And I, ironically, I said to my brother one day, I think she's
• 13:34
  stealing from you and he got really mad And so we parted ways
• 13:40
  and I said, OK, well this is what I know now, so I'm going to
• 13:42
  do this and. I thought that's how it started.
• 13:46
  That's how Fusion started. Wow.
• 13:48
  OK. Yeah, it started by accident
• 13:51
  because it was back then. It was notary Closings.
• 13:54
  It was just notary Closings. Yeah, title searching.
• 13:57
  And my brother only worked for attorneys.
• 13:59
  And I thought, OK, well, I don't want to, you know, hurt him.
• 14:03
  So I went to title companies and got work, and it was a big
• 14:09
  turmoil in my family. Huge.
• 14:11
  Big turmoil because you guys were in the kind of the same
• 14:14
  arena. Yeah, he didn't speak to me for
• 14:16
  four years. Oh my gosh.
• 14:18
  Because my my father worked for him after he retired, and then
• 14:22
  my other brother came to work for me.
• 14:25
  Oh my gosh. So it wasn't a family business.
• 14:28
  It was a family competition. Yeah, it it was.
• 14:31
  And I just kept saying my mother was all upset about him.
• 14:33
  I said don't worry, mom, my brother, he'll come work for me
• 14:36
  one of these days, 'cause I knew it.
• 14:37
  His, I knew what his partner was really ripping him off kind of
• 14:41
  thing. And then, two years later, he
• 14:42
  came and joined us. So it it became a family
• 14:46
  business. Yeah, yeah, way too big.
• 14:49
  Because then my cousins I hired, I hired everybody in.
• 14:52
  The Yeah, well, the thing about a family business is that, you
• 14:55
  know, it's it's I always kind of headed to because my brother and
• 14:59
  my dad and I were all in business together.
• 15:02
  It was, you know, it's like being a, you know, like the Bee
• 15:04
  Gees or or you know one of those bands like who's the lead
• 15:08
  singer. You know you have to find who,
• 15:10
  who fits what role, which it worked for us because we were
• 15:14
  all different enough that we kind of found our own lane.
• 15:16
  But it can get kind of. I don't know what you would call
• 15:22
  it. It's different.
• 15:24
  Yeah, it it really is a lot and I didn't anticipate that.
• 15:29
  And then I was getting remarried in 2004 and I then trained my
• 15:38
  husband to do title searching. So now he came as an employee as
• 15:43
  well. So I had all these employees
• 15:45
  doing title searching and closing.
• 15:47
  And the company's growing. I mean, it's a big it becomes a
• 15:51
  successful company. How did it run into?
• 15:59
  Where did your nightmares start? The day I opened the company,
• 16:05
  No. That's where it started it.
• 16:08
  Started. No, it was really, it was
• 16:10
  growing really fast and I had so many people and Connecticut's
• 16:15
  laws were changing. And in Connecticut you have to
• 16:18
  be an attorney to write the title policy.
• 16:21
  So I thought, well, this is easy.
• 16:22
  I'll just go into business. I'll have an attorney join us.
• 16:25
  And I I'm doing. Paperwork.
• 16:27
  As well. So I brought an attorney in as
• 16:29
  my partner. That was where it went wrong.
• 16:32
  I gave 48% of my company to to the.
• 16:37
  Attorney. A friend of mine, yeah, I
• 16:38
  thought he was a friend and he was an attorney and that didn't
• 16:42
  go over well with the fame either that I just gave it to
• 16:47
  him because we needed him to write title policy.
• 16:49
  But then we did a one stop shop. We brought in a mortgage guy and
• 16:55
  it was we were doing commercials on TV that.
• 16:59
  Now I read about it, I mean, it was a big company, successful
• 17:02
  company. Well.
• 17:04
  Successful for maybe six months. Yeah, you know, And success is
• 17:08
  what we've we've learned. Success is different.
• 17:11
  So true. So true.
• 17:14
  So then my success was really just making everybody proud.
• 17:19
  Yeah, I I had a lot of father issues, and I hate saying daddy
• 17:23
  issues, but so father issues and I wanted to be #1 and I wanted
• 17:28
  to be seen and I was always not. I was always the awkward one.
• 17:36
  I was always the awkward kid. And so I just wanted to prove
• 17:41
  myself and just kept pushing and pushing.
• 17:45
  I was working so much and just pushing and pushing but what I
• 17:48
  wasn't recognizing is. And you think, Jacqueline, what
• 17:52
  you were pushing for recognition, for credibility,
• 17:56
  for everybody. See, I did it.
• 18:00
  Yeah, it wasn't for me, right. You know, you learn later in
• 18:03
  life that, you know, you do things for yourself and.
• 18:06
  Right. I never did.
• 18:07
  I never did anything for myself. It was always to prove that I'm
• 18:11
  smart. Prove that I'm you know.
• 18:13
  And you can do it. Yeah.
• 18:16
  Plus you you would have had a lot of pressure on you too with
• 18:19
  everybody that's involved in that business you're related to
• 18:23
  in some way that. Yeah.
• 18:25
  Everybody's counting on you. It was a lot.
• 18:29
  And my best friend was my business manager, so that was
• 18:32
  even tougher and I should have recognized it when I went to get
• 18:36
  it. I had to go work at a job.
• 18:38
  So I I became a loan officer for Wells Fargo and I should have
• 18:41
  thought, wow, why do I need to get a job if I own this company?
• 18:46
  Yeah. Why am I needing an extra cash
• 18:47
  flow? Yeah.
• 18:48
  Yeah, yeah, that didn't even 'cause.
• 18:50
  It was just that mechanism, that grind every day and that
• 18:54
  sickness in your stomach. And it became something I hated
• 18:59
  every day getting up. I was sick to my stomach, and
• 19:05
  the mortgage industry started to now decline.
• 19:08
  It was in 2008. The big crash.
• 19:12
  Yeah. And I thought, OK, what are we
• 19:15
  going to do? So now my partner, I had known,
• 19:18
  I was just paralegal. I had known he had been taking
• 19:21
  mortgages and not paying them off directly after they closed.
• 19:27
  And he back then they had prepayment penalties.
• 19:31
  So I think the thing he was doing was paying it off.
• 19:35
  He was paying it off on the prepayment penalty was done, so
• 19:41
  he made this extra amount of. Money, yeah.
• 19:46
  Because, yeah, there was a Ding. Now you.
• 19:47
  Now there's no Ding on it. There isn't no payment penalties
• 19:51
  in Connecticut. But there was a lot of that.
• 19:53
  So I thought, OK, well, I have my house, I can take a mortgage
• 19:57
  out on the House and fund payroll.
• 19:59
  And I had a loan officer that was in our office who said, Oh
• 20:03
  yeah, we can do this. You know, this is what you need
• 20:05
  to make. I had no idea what I made.
• 20:08
  I really know that. Yeah, you were just trying to
• 20:10
  get get the job done. I don't even think my grow the
• 20:13
  business. Yeah, who the heck knew?
• 20:15
  So it was like a two week process.
• 20:18
  It wasn't like today. It was a no income, no
• 20:20
  verification loan. Took it out that quickly and I
• 20:23
  funded the payroll. When the money was wired in to
• 20:27
  the attorneys our trust accounts, I funded our payroll
• 20:34
  with it and then thought, wow, I don't have the money now to pay
• 20:39
  the. Mortgage That's.
• 20:39
  OK, I'll pay both mortgages. It'll be OK And I did.
• 20:43
  I maintained paying both of those mortgages and then it
• 20:47
  really imploded when he came, my attorney, the attorney came in
• 20:52
  one day and he said I need to speak to you.
• 20:54
  And on the front page of the paper was him and some other
• 20:59
  guys in this scam that they were doing.
• 21:02
  He said I need to come clean. I said, well come clean, it's on
• 21:04
  the front page of the paper. And that's when I decided, OK,
• 21:08
  we got, I got it part ways, that's it.
• 21:11
  We we have to part ways. This is on the front page of the
• 21:14
  paper. And I did.
• 21:16
  I brought the title search company.
• 21:19
  We separated. He took the closing company.
• 21:22
  I took the title search company back to my house and tried to
• 21:26
  figure it out. And then that's when the FBI
• 21:30
  came knocking at the door. What was your thought,
• 21:33
  Jacqueline, when that happened? Were you, were you thinking
• 21:36
  something like that was going to happen because he was kind of
• 21:38
  over here to the side and and you were trying to break it all
• 21:41
  up or or was this a complete shock?
• 21:44
  I had no idea. Luckily there was an attorney
• 21:47
  across the hallway from us where we had our office and I brought.
• 21:52
  I went in to speak to him and he said and he actually did my LLC
• 21:56
  paperwork and he said to me when I was giving the attorney the
• 21:59
  48%. Why are you doing that?
• 22:01
  Yeah. Why are you doing that?
• 22:01
  Yeah. And then when I went in there,
• 22:03
  he said I saw the paper and everybody saw the paper we know
• 22:06
  and he's he. That was my only saving grace
• 22:10
  because he said to me, be prepared that something's going
• 22:12
  to be coming down the Pike here because they're going to start.
• 22:15
  Once that happened, he was starting to be investigated with
• 22:19
  his. Whole.
• 22:21
  Yeah, they start, they started digging into all his stuff.
• 22:24
  And so I had that attorney that I had already been speaking
• 22:31
  with. So when the FBI knocked, I
• 22:34
  called him immediately. And he also had a criminal
• 22:38
  defense attorney in his office who did right by me so much.
• 22:45
  That's a good thing. He he really did.
• 22:46
  I was. I was really lucky because when
• 22:49
  I got raided I I didn't know anything about this stuff.
• 22:55
  I I really. What What was like?
• 22:59
  I mean, with that happening, Jacqueline, it wasn't just you.
• 23:02
  So your family and everything is what what's everybody saying?
• 23:06
  Like, what's the what's the the dinner table Talk about the FBI
• 23:10
  comes and knocks on the door and and there's an investigation.
• 23:14
  Nothing. Nothing.
• 23:16
  Zip. Wow it.
• 23:18
  Was and and I never recognized that until way later when you,
• 23:23
  you know when you finally can breathe and you start thinking
• 23:25
  about what? What happened?
• 23:28
  Nothing was said. No.
• 23:31
  What happened? Are you OK?
• 23:33
  What's going on? I'm nothing.
• 23:38
  No chatter. Just I'll you know we're
• 23:44
  standing here for you. That's it.
• 23:47
  Not even recognized that. Maybe they had a part in it.
• 23:50
  Yeah, nothing. So the investigation How long
• 23:54
  does this thing last? Let's see.
• 23:57
  My crime was in 2009. I didn't plead guilty and my
• 24:02
  plea agreement was in 2012. For three years, yeah.
• 24:06
  And. Then I didn't surrender till
• 24:07
  2015. Wow, what a long time.
• 24:11
  Yeah. So were you on pretrial?
• 24:13
  For what? Over three years it.
• 24:16
  Was five years. It's a long time.
• 24:18
  I was on pretrial for three years and I thought that seemed
• 24:20
  like a lifetime. Yeah, yeah, it was.
• 24:23
  It was a lot. And I was working with the FBI
• 24:25
  because the attorney I had at the time said, you know, if
• 24:29
  there's anything that you have that is not on your computer,
• 24:33
  you need to let us know. Now you can help yourself a
• 24:37
  little. What if I have?
• 24:39
  I had Wells Fargo, so I they were doing robo signing at the
• 24:44
  time, so that was a big thing back then.
• 24:47
  And sign signing, doing mortgage assignments and they were robo
• 24:51
  signing them prior and had piles of them.
• 24:54
  So I was compiling all these assignments that were robo
• 24:58
  signed from. I thought I was going to bring
• 25:00
  Wells Fargo down when an idiot I was.
• 25:04
  So what? What was their when it when it
• 25:07
  got down to the nitty gritty of it?
• 25:09
  What did what were they? What were they charging you
• 25:11
  with? I originally had, I think it was
• 25:17
  6 counts. I think I don't even remember
• 25:20
  how many counts because originally because I owned the
• 25:24
  business with my partner, everything he did it was all we
• 25:29
  weren't Co defendants, right? But.
• 25:32
  They they deemed it as a kind of a conspiracy.
• 25:35
  Yeah, yeah. And it was considered relevant
• 25:38
  conduct. So I ended up pleading guilty to
• 25:41
  what I did and a closing that I knew what was going on with and
• 25:47
  I actually was the notary on. So I pled guilty to two counts
• 25:51
  of bank fraud and then went to get sentenced.
• 25:56
  And The funny thing is when you get.
• 25:58
  Sentenced. Did you ever consider Jacqueline
• 26:00
  in that whole process of things? Were you always thinking, I'm
• 26:02
  going to plea or were you thinking when you first got into
• 26:05
  it? Did you think I'm going to try
• 26:07
  to find my way out of this or did you think No, I've I've got
• 26:10
  to figure out how to get out of this and play as quickly as
• 26:13
  possible. Yeah, no, I immediately the
• 26:17
  first meeting, my attorney said we have a meeting and that's
• 26:21
  when I knew they were I was being charged.
• 26:23
  They put my mortgage in front of me and I said yeah, I did that
• 26:26
  absolutely. I did not even waver and I felt.
• 26:31
  Which I think is interesting because in that moment you just
• 26:34
  explained it before you got into this, you took your, your, your
• 26:37
  house to pay for the payroll. They call that money laundering.
• 26:40
  But in a entrepreneurs world, you're thinking, I've got to fix
• 26:46
  this, I've got to make this work.
• 26:49
  And then you later find out that that's a really bad word and and
• 26:54
  it's a federal crime and and you know, some of those things are
• 26:57
  just like, you know, when they they hit you across the face,
• 27:00
  it's like, Oh my God. Yeah, well, it was bad because
• 27:03
  what I didn't even take into consideration, if I had played
• 27:06
  that game that I knew I would never play, they they could have
• 27:11
  charged my family with money laundering.
• 27:12
  Every one of them, yeah. Which is they did say to me, you
• 27:16
  know, 'cause what I did say is, look, I did this, I will tell
• 27:21
  you everything that happened. But my family is not culpable to
• 27:25
  any of this. They said, well, we can charge
• 27:28
  them with money laundering. And I said, well, do you really
• 27:30
  want to put my parents in prison for money?
• 27:33
  They had no idea what was going on, nor did they care, quite
• 27:37
  frankly. They just wanted a paycheck.
• 27:39
  And that's sad when I think about it, but it's the truth.
• 27:42
  I had so much burden on me that I was grateful to get out of it.
• 27:50
  Yeah. Did you, when they came to you
• 27:55
  with the plea, did they have like a range that they were
• 27:58
  giving you that it's probation to this or it's this to this?
• 28:03
  No, because I was working with them so I was getting this 5KK5.
• 28:10
  I forget what they call it. Letter That is for cooperating.
• 28:14
  OK. I thought it was going to be
• 28:16
  more than because like I said, I really thought I was.
• 28:20
  I was going to bring Wells Fargo down and I was giving them a lot
• 28:25
  of the robo signing stuff. But in reality it was the lower
• 28:28
  line people, Wells Fargo, the people at the top, they just
• 28:31
  said they didn't know anything. But the notary, everybody who
• 28:37
  robo signed it prior to we're the ones who got trouble.
• 28:41
  But so I really didn't. Even my attorney kept saying to
• 28:45
  me, you do have exposure now. I don't know what that meant.
• 28:48
  I thought, exposure, people are going to know.
• 28:51
  And he did say you're going to have some prison time.
• 28:55
  And I how was it? I thought, no, that's not
• 28:58
  possible. I'm paying my mortgage.
• 29:00
  I didn't like in my mind I was paying it.
• 29:05
  I wasn't. I didn't steal any money.
• 29:07
  I took a mortgage on my house and I was paying that mortgage.
• 29:11
  Right. The thing is, my name wasn't on
• 29:13
  the House. The house was only in my
• 29:16
  husband's name when I did the mortgage and signed his name to
• 29:20
  it. And the crazy thing was not one
• 29:23
  person ever asked to speak to my husband when I did this
• 29:26
  mortgage. Well, that's how reckless the,
• 29:28
  yeah, industry. Was back in.
• 29:30
  Yeah, it was crazy. It was the wild, Wild West then.
• 29:32
  Yeah, yeah. People get in two or three
• 29:34
  houses. There's, you know, no money down
• 29:36
  and yeah, crazy world, Yeah. It was.
• 29:39
  It was so Jacqueline, you you go to sentencing and what do they
• 29:45
  say? Wow.
• 29:47
  I had judge Janet von Archerton who was very fair in
• 29:52
  Connecticut. I I got a great pull.
• 29:54
  I guess there's, you know, you pull whatever.
• 29:58
  And she was tough. She was she was fair.
• 30:02
  But she really made me think and shamed me.
• 30:09
  You know, you have a family because my family came to the
• 30:11
  sentencing. You know, they looked supportive
• 30:14
  behind me. And you have a family.
• 30:16
  Look at your education. You have children.
• 30:18
  Shame on you. You should have known better.
• 30:21
  And what do you say to that? I should have.
• 30:23
  So how do you explain when you're feeling less than to
• 30:28
  someone? How old were your daughters at
• 30:31
  the time? My son was my son's, the oldest
• 30:36
  and my two daughters were in. I think they were all in high
• 30:40
  school at my Scranton. Seeing I think they were all in
• 30:43
  high school. OK, what was what was their take
• 30:47
  on all this? They didn't have.
• 30:50
  They didn't understand why my family didn't helped before.
• 30:56
  Like I remember my son saying to me, I don't understand this.
• 30:58
  Mom and I sat them down immediately and I was very
• 31:01
  honest with them because. I think that's helpful.
• 31:03
  I think that's why you are so good because I want to get into
• 31:06
  that too. And what you do now is, is
• 31:09
  there's there's, you know, there's two ways to handle it.
• 31:10
  One is to act like nothing's going on and put it in a closet
• 31:14
  and then all of a sudden it blows up like a nuclear bomb.
• 31:16
  Or there's another way to help them understand what's going on
• 31:21
  so that they can deal with it, 'cause you know that they're
• 31:24
  they have to deal with once, you know, you and I talked about
• 31:28
  this on the phone the other day, when somebody goes to prison,
• 31:30
  the whole family goes to prison. So everybody handles that
• 31:33
  differently. And how a parent handles that
• 31:36
  situation is so difficult because like you said, it's it's
• 31:39
  a, you know, there's so much, this is the weight of the world
• 31:45
  is what you're dealing with. I.
• 31:46
  Think that's true too. And I think it's so different
• 31:49
  because you have a A dad going or a mom going.
• 31:51
  I think for a mom it may be a little bit more.
• 31:54
  It's more emotional because I'm the one who made the breakfast,
• 31:59
  the lunches, you know what I mean?
• 32:00
  And it was. But I just didn't look, I'm
• 32:03
  imperfect. I I never used the word mistake.
• 32:07
  Because I believe in free choice.
• 32:08
  I I am free will. I made really bad choices.
• 32:13
  And those bad choices were on me.
• 32:15
  And I tried to really push that. It had nothing to do with them.
• 32:21
  It's kind of like when I went through my divorce many years
• 32:24
  ago. Telling your little kids this,
• 32:26
  you know, has nothing to do with you.
• 32:28
  It was really, it was tough. And I think what's tougher is
• 32:33
  that they loved me anyway. I expected anger.
• 32:38
  I even with my husband, I expected anger.
• 32:41
  I expected lash out. I didn't get that I got support
• 32:47
  and. Understand.
• 32:49
  Yeah, And it's like as kids. Kids see things I think more
• 32:53
  than we realized. My kids saw how my family
• 32:58
  toxicity was. I didn't.
• 33:00
  I thought it was normal because I grew up in it, but then when I
• 33:04
  parented, I wanted so badly to parent different that they only
• 33:08
  saw at holidays and and so forth.
• 33:11
  So they really saw, you know, at a holiday when I never spoke.
• 33:14
  And they're like, mom, what's that about, 'cause I was always
• 33:17
  put down. If I said anything, it was
• 33:19
  wrong. It was, you know, So I learned
• 33:22
  not to really try to over shadow anybody at a dinner table with
• 33:29
  with family. But it was crazy because the
• 33:32
  things my kids in and my husband told me, my husband, because he
• 33:36
  was my second husband. I met my first husband when I
• 33:39
  was 15, so he knew my family toxicity.
• 33:43
  But my husband didn't, really, because we had gotten married in
• 33:47
  2005 and he didn't really know the childhood stuff.
• 33:55
  And my kids were just very shockingly insightful.
• 34:01
  Yeah. And I learned more from them
• 34:03
  than I do from a lot of people. Just some of the things that
• 34:06
  they've come out with that like. Yeah.
• 34:09
  You know. I think that's great that you
• 34:11
  had that situation and a husband and the and the kids that were
• 34:14
  supportive. So you find out a sentencing
• 34:19
  that you're going to go to prison and I can't remember
• 34:22
  Jacqueline, was it a year, year in?
• 34:24
  A day. Year in a day, OK.
• 34:25
  I didn't understand that day, so I didn't know.
• 34:27
  Well, that was a good thing for for those, those who are, if you
• 34:31
  get a year, that's different than a year in a day, because a
• 34:34
  year in a day I think ends up being about eight months a year,
• 34:37
  you got to serve a year. And yeah, that's that's actually
• 34:40
  a good thing. Well, before we get into that
• 34:42
  'cause I want to, I want to go into your strategies of how you
• 34:44
  went into that unfamiliar, primitive world.
• 34:47
  But I want to recognize the White Collar support group Show
• 34:52
  Sponsor Nightmare Success is sponsored by the OR The White
• 34:56
  Collar Support Group, the world's first support group
• 34:58
  devoted to people navigating the white collar criminal justice
• 35:01
  system. I'm a member of the White Collar
• 35:03
  Support Group, and I can tell you that it is a bunch of people
• 35:07
  who help each other through the criminal justice journey for
• 35:10
  free. Whether you're just starting
• 35:12
  your journey or you made it through to the other side, this
• 35:15
  is a great space for you. You can join us on Zoom Monday,
• 35:19
  7:00 PM Eastern Time or 4:00 PM Pacific.
• 35:23
  For information, go to prisonist.org.
• 35:26
  That's prisonist.org. Start here.
• 35:28
  So, Jacqueline, you get sentenced a year and a day.
• 35:34
  Walk me through that. You know you voluntarily
• 35:38
  surrendered to a place. What's going through your mind?
• 35:43
  A year and a day and all. You know what went through my
• 35:47
  mind? All I heard in the entire
• 35:51
  courtroom was my husband crying. I never heard him cry before and
• 35:55
  my kids weren't crying, 'cause they also never heard him cry
• 35:59
  before. And that's all I heard.
• 36:03
  And then I heard my attorney and I had a different attorney at
• 36:07
  sentencing. I heard him say do not cry and I
• 36:11
  didn't understand that, so I just.
• 36:13
  You said you don't cry. Yeah, he said it to me, and I
• 36:16
  just stood there frozen. I didn't quite know about any of
• 36:20
  it because it's also surreal. And there was nothing back in
• 36:26
  2015 to even prep me for what was about to happen or what
• 36:30
  emotionally I could feel. So I didn't know what to feel.
• 36:34
  I didn't know if it was, you know.
• 36:36
  Kind of numb. Yeah.
• 36:38
  And I still hadn't gone to any therapy at all and dealt with
• 36:42
  any of the toxicity that I had gone through.
• 36:45
  And I just stood there. And then afterwards, I remember
• 36:54
  consoling my husband and him saying, and I was like, look,
• 36:58
  I'm OK, I need for you to be OK, 'cause you're the rock he is.
• 37:02
  He's a rock to us. And I don't really remember a
• 37:08
  lot of it after it. It was so emotional and draining
• 37:13
  and it felt so good to have it over it.
• 37:18
  Just what what I thought was over, you know, I I thought, OK,
• 37:22
  I'm going to just go do these 7-8 months.
• 37:25
  And and that is a mindset you want to get it over.
• 37:28
  Once you know you're going in, it's like, you know, I I think I
• 37:31
  had a dead period of like from November until January 14th.
• 37:35
  And you know, that's such a weird time period 'cause you
• 37:37
  know, you go. I went through the holidays and
• 37:39
  Christmas and and the whole thing just felt like I was dead
• 37:42
  man walking. I just wanted to get it over or
• 37:45
  get it started to get it over. Yeah, it is.
• 37:48
  Same with me, 'cause I went through the hall, they they gave
• 37:50
  me a choice if I wanted to go prior to Christmas or after, and
• 37:54
  I I surrendered January 5th, 2000. 15.
• 37:59
  So it it's weird because you almost think you're it's like
• 38:02
  there's a death coming because it's it's my last Christmas,
• 38:06
  it's but it's really not, you know and I try and tell people
• 38:08
  that this is your first Christmas of the, you know,
• 38:12
  first Christmas of being healthy and you don't feel that way.
• 38:17
  I just felt everything was the end, and it was.
• 38:20
  My life, Well, and I think a lot of it too, Jacqueline, is 'cause
• 38:23
  you're going into a world that is so unfamiliar and you know
• 38:28
  nothing about it. And because it's the unknown,
• 38:32
  your mind makes it out to be a monster.
• 38:35
  And I always tell people, you know nothing as bad as your mind
• 38:38
  makes it out to be. Not even prison.
• 38:40
  And you know that what that thing that starts going into
• 38:46
  your mind of that fear of the unknown, it's so big.
• 38:51
  And you know, for me my biggest surprise was, was was walking in
• 38:54
  there and and seeing how many people within the 1st 30 to 45
• 38:58
  minutes were trying to help me in this new world I was in.
• 39:02
  Right. It's crazy it.
• 39:03
  It's really. I took Promaga classes before
• 39:06
  prison because I had no idea. I thought, for sure I'm going to
• 39:09
  have to defend myself. I've never gotten to an
• 39:11
  altercation in my life. And now I'm going to have to,
• 39:14
  you know, I can't dance around somebody.
• 39:16
  What am I going to do? And it was funny because walking
• 39:20
  into that environment the first time, all I saw was chaos.
• 39:24
  It was just a bunch of normal women, chaos and and a bunch
• 39:31
  coming up to me saying, taking the things out of my hands,
• 39:35
  saying let me help you, let me show you where it was.
• 39:38
  There was no bars or locks or it was quite ridiculous in my mind
• 39:44
  because once I got there and I did intake, the guard said to
• 39:52
  me, OK, the camp's up there and and I thought, well, what do you
• 39:55
  mean up there? And it was winter back then.
• 39:58
  It snowed. It doesn't snow in Connecticut
• 39:59
  anymore. It was winter.
• 40:02
  And I said, you mean up there? And I thought it was a joke.
• 40:06
  And he said no, take all your stuff and.
• 40:08
  Start walking. I did.
• 40:10
  It, yeah. I walked up this huge, big hill
• 40:12
  and there was this like building that was, it looked just like
• 40:17
  all you could see is the windows and you could see it was a
• 40:20
  basement and that was the camp and you walk into.
• 40:24
  It was a really long building, very small but long.
• 40:28
  And I walked in and it looked like a grammar school, you know,
• 40:32
  the floors of a grammar school that.
• 40:34
  Yeah. And I walked in and all of a
• 40:37
  sudden it was a long hallway. And that's it.
• 40:40
  Jacqueline, It's so funny that you say that because what, like
• 40:44
  Leavenworth, You know, the penitentiary was 1879 and looks
• 40:48
  like Shawshank Redemption down the hill.
• 40:52
  This place, you know, this was one of those.
• 40:54
  I think there's only three camps that had fences around.
• 40:56
  This is one of them. But inside that fence, it looked
• 40:59
  like a old rundown elementary schoolhouse.
• 41:03
  It it was really rundown, but that's what it looked like.
• 41:06
  It looked like an elementary school that had been, you know,
• 41:10
  neglected for 50 years, but it did not look like didn't look
• 41:14
  like the penitentiary. No, not yeah.
• 41:16
  Yeah, because ICE self surrendered to the Big Huge.
• 41:19
  Yeah, they that's what they do. They scare you to death, put you
• 41:21
  on the locked in place for a while and then you don't.
• 41:24
  Then then you know that you don't know anything and you if
• 41:28
  they put you in there forever, there's nothing you can really
• 41:30
  say. And then they finally come get
• 41:32
  you gonna. Do, Yeah.
• 41:34
  I'm not supposed to be here. Yeah, that's what everybody
• 41:36
  says. Yeah, and and that's a hard
• 41:38
  thing too, because the minute you walk through those doors,
• 41:41
  your control is gone. So gone such a weird, I always
• 41:45
  say it almost feels like your freedom feels like it's like
• 41:48
  like coming off your skin, you know you're prisonized or as you
• 41:51
  go through that intake and it's like it just falls off of you
• 41:54
  that that freedom. It's it's a weird phenomenon to
• 41:59
  lose your freedom and know you have no more control.
• 42:01
  Yeah, it is. And especially for someone in
• 42:05
  the financial crime space, because that's all it's about is
• 42:09
  control. You.
• 42:10
  Need to control everything. And when you don't have that
• 42:14
  control, it can go two ways. You can really just bunker in
• 42:18
  and figure out what happened or you could be one of those.
• 42:21
  OK, let's write administrative remedies and fight everything.
• 42:24
  Because the only two things that I've seen in the past ten years
• 42:29
  that happened and I was not going to be there long enough to
• 42:34
  cause problems, and I didn't want to write remedies and I did
• 42:38
  write one or two, but I just wanted to get it done.
• 42:43
  With So how did you handle it? Like, what did you do when you
• 42:45
  were there? What do you do?
• 42:47
  I I I surrendered with Teresa Giudice.
• 42:50
  So the day I surrendered, of course there's all media out of
• 42:53
  fraud. My attorney calls and he says
• 42:55
  I'll tell you when to go because you know her publicist or
• 43:00
  whatever was going to let him know.
• 43:02
  So I wasn't going anywhere the same time she was because it was
• 43:06
  so much media outside the prison and she self surrounded at like
• 43:12
  5:00 in the morning or 4. Wait, who was this?
• 43:15
  Teresa Giudice. Oh yeah, the the yeah I have a
• 43:19
  problem for. Her.
• 43:20
  So I'm going to call that out right now.
• 43:22
  She does not make muffins in prison.
• 43:25
  I have. To say I forgot that, yeah,
• 43:29
  yeah, she was a big deal going in.
• 43:31
  There, yeah, she she was a big deal and at the time and so when
• 43:36
  I went. And didn't they have the split
• 43:39
  deal where she served her time and then her husband then served
• 43:42
  and then he got, I think, deported to Italy or whatever?
• 43:45
  Yeah, that was something. Else, yeah, she just came out
• 43:47
  with something in People magazine that it was the one of
• 43:51
  the IT was the best, the nicest place she's been.
• 43:53
  The grounds were beautiful. She made banana nut muffins for
• 43:57
  the camp and she didn't, you know?
• 44:00
  And then in 2016 she said it was hell and there was maggots in
• 44:04
  the food. So who knows, You know, she did
• 44:06
  not. Never, never cooked anything.
• 44:08
  It it it really, I think for me, I got so frustrated.
• 44:11
  I was tweeting and stuff at her because don't glamorize prison.
• 44:16
  Why? Because you have a cookbook out.
• 44:18
  You're now going to use those women.
• 44:21
  Not even that. I think it's, you know, these
• 44:23
  daughters are looking at you and you're telling them their mother
• 44:27
  is in that prison having a good time.
• 44:29
  Right. And I really kind of went off
• 44:33
  the rails for a week. So I realized, what am I doing?
• 44:36
  Yeah, it's it's the glamorization, the
• 44:40
  sensationalism of of prison that people love.
• 44:44
  And it's not sensationalized, and it's not glamorized at all.
• 44:47
  It's definitely not glamorous. Yeah, it's very humbling.
• 44:50
  Very humbling and those every family member who has a loved
• 44:56
  one incarcerated is my hero. And people say, well, why do you
• 45:01
  say that? Because they are doing prison
• 45:05
  with you and they've done nothing wrong.
• 45:07
  Yeah. And they're on the outside
• 45:09
  having to deal with it. I you know, I I didn't really.
• 45:13
  I I selfishly, you know going into prison, I was, I was
• 45:18
  thinking because I remember the night before I went in, Julie
• 45:20
  and I went up and we could see like the sun was going down and
• 45:24
  the guys were walking the fence line and you could kind of see
• 45:27
  inside. I didn't say anything to Julie
• 45:29
  but I was thinking Oh my God, that's I'm going to be in there
• 45:32
  tomorrow and it's not going to be for a week but I've got a
• 45:35
  five year sentence that's going to be me tomorrow night in one
• 45:38
  of those bunk beds. But then as I was in and I
• 45:42
  realized what was going on while I was in and I was, I was, I was
• 45:46
  functioning and and got into my own world, I was thinking how
• 45:49
  hard it was for Julie on the outside that she was living this
• 45:54
  life. She and she she she gave a good
• 45:57
  analogy that you know, like Christmases and holidays and
• 46:01
  birthdays, It's like having somebody that's in the hospital
• 46:03
  that's sick. You can go to those functions,
• 46:06
  but you're always thinking about the person that's in prison so
• 46:10
  that it's just a it's a whole different type of of prison that
• 46:14
  they're in on the outside. And I didn't really start
• 46:18
  thinking about that until I was actually in prison thinking, OK,
• 46:22
  I'm, I'm going to be OK here. But they're the ones that are
• 46:25
  dealing with some stuff all the time.
• 46:28
  That's so different. Well.
• 46:29
  That makes you a really good guy, 'cause I can tell you
• 46:31
  there's not a lot of people. I was very selfish when I was
• 46:34
  there. I didn't recognize that at
• 46:37
  first. I I didn't recognize it at all.
• 46:40
  I just was, you know, called my husband.
• 46:42
  I need this. I need this.
• 46:44
  I. Need money on my books?
• 46:46
  Yeah, kids were fighting over who could see me and have alone
• 46:49
  time with me, for I was very selfish because thinking back
• 46:55
  even more thinking back at the kids were fighting to see who
• 47:00
  could be alone with me in visiting.
• 47:02
  But I was frustrated because they were fighting and I
• 47:05
  couldn't. I mean, they were two of them
• 47:08
  weren't through all in college, actually, at that point.
• 47:10
  And it was a lot. Visiting is a lot.
• 47:16
  And instead of. Stressful.
• 47:18
  Yeah, I just. We had a couple of times where
• 47:22
  the, I think I told you this Jacqueline were the visiting
• 47:25
  cops. She just decided that when the
• 47:27
  got halfway full the visiting room, she just turned people
• 47:29
  away. Yeah.
• 47:30
  It's OK if somebody lives around there, but for Julie and the
• 47:33
  girls, they drove 4 1/2 hours to get there and twice that
• 47:36
  happened. Where?
• 47:37
  She just said. Not today.
• 47:39
  Yeah, that was the. Only he doesn't have enough
• 47:41
  points when obviously I did. Yeah, exactly.
• 47:44
  And that's the only altercation I had in prison was over that
• 47:48
  because my family visit me my my only my husband and my kids
• 47:51
  visited me every week and I lived an hour from the prison.
• 47:56
  So I had a really good friend that inside whose family was in
• 48:02
  Maine. So they were four hours, five
• 48:05
  hours from the prison and I remember being in visiting and
• 48:09
  they had gotten there and they got turned away.
• 48:13
  So I got up and I said no we'll we'll leave and I got yelled.
• 48:17
  I got in trouble for that. I got in trouble for offering to
• 48:21
  leave and he. Was upset You're trying to take
• 48:23
  control of the situation to solve the problem.
• 48:24
  Yeah, you can't. Yeah, There's no common sense to
• 48:26
  it, but yet the women expected me to, and there was a few that
• 48:31
  just stopped speaking to me, 'cause they thought that it was
• 48:34
  unfair that my and it was unfair.
• 48:37
  Yeah, yeah. Well, yeah.
• 48:39
  I mean, prison has so many ridiculous rules.
• 48:43
  So, Jacqueline, you get you start to get close to the door,
• 48:45
  'cause that's kind of the thing that happens.
• 48:47
  You get first, you get, you know, you go in and you don't
• 48:49
  know what to expect. And then you get used to the
• 48:51
  routine. Even though you hate the
• 48:53
  routine, you get used to the routine.
• 48:55
  Then you start getting close to the door and is you get kind of
• 49:00
  like a little weird. So what?
• 49:02
  What were you thinking? What?
• 49:03
  Like, what were you thinking? I'm getting out of here and I'm
• 49:06
  gonna do what, 'cause you've done so much.
• 49:08
  Did you plan that? No, no, not at all.
• 49:12
  I didn't have a clue. I just wanted to go home.
• 49:15
  I plan to go. I I mean, my title search
• 49:17
  business was sustained and I had shrank it down and my older
• 49:26
  daughter was over. It was kind of running itself.
• 49:29
  So it was still working. So I was going back.
• 49:33
  To work. And had to catch up on all the
• 49:36
  accounting for a year of counting, you know, but I didn't
• 49:41
  factor in the fact that I was going to a halfway house.
• 49:44
  So the transitions from federal prison camp to a halfway house
• 49:51
  is dramatic. It is, I guess, people that
• 49:54
  couldn't understand when I say it, but it is a harsher prison.
• 49:59
  Yeah. In a halfway house, there's more
• 50:01
  rules. There's stricter guidelines.
• 50:04
  And much more lockdown. Yeah, again, an hour from my
• 50:07
  house. So I would drive home every day
• 50:09
  to work and then drive back at night to sleep because we were
• 50:14
  allowed, federal was allowed to have their cars at the halfway
• 50:18
  house where state could not and it was state and federal.
• 50:21
  Although federal could not have cell phone, that's.
• 50:23
  Interesting. I didn't.
• 50:24
  I didn't. I've never even heard of a
• 50:25
  federal state halfway house. Yeah, yeah.
• 50:28
  We had boats. It was federal on the 1st floor
• 50:30
  and the rest of the house was state and.
• 50:34
  And so every day I would drive home and I thought, how does
• 50:38
  this make sense? Yeah, financially, how does it
• 50:41
  make sense? Emotionally, how does it make
• 50:43
  sense? And again, so you come home and
• 50:46
  you're expecting to be able to have a life, and it's not.
• 50:52
  So you go through the halfway house and then you transition
• 50:55
  again to go home into home confinement, which again has
• 51:00
  different roles. So you have rules in prison, you
• 51:02
  have rules in the halfway house, then you're going to.
• 51:06
  And all of it gives you PTSD because at any time they tell
• 51:08
  you we can jerk you back in 'cause you're still under BOP
• 51:11
  custody. Correct.
• 51:12
  Yeah. And and it's not that I had one
• 51:15
  author right about me in his book saying that I acted the
• 51:19
  victim because I said there's PTSD, but it has nothing to do
• 51:23
  with being a victim. I'm not a victim system at all.
• 51:26
  I created my own situation and I it's not that.
• 51:32
  It's that the system is broken for anyone, not just me or
• 51:36
  anybody that's there. There's no rehabilitation or
• 51:40
  emotional support that that you can give to people to help them
• 51:46
  succeed. It's as almost as if you're set
• 51:49
  up to fail, not to succeed. Sure.
• 51:52
  So it was for me, it was a backward thinking kind of.
• 51:56
  So you know I got through all of that and then I go to the
• 52:01
  three-year probation and I had a great probation officer.
• 52:06
  She, I mean I don't really go out that much anyway.
• 52:09
  So I didn't travel that much. It was it was easy to do
• 52:13
  probation with her because she was fair and I didn't ask of
• 52:18
  anything except I work from home.
• 52:20
  So I just want to work and got through that.
• 52:26
  And that's when the hard stuff started, you know?
• 52:30
  And that's what I tell people today.
• 52:31
  Prison's easy. It's after.
• 52:34
  All the re entry and that's where you're doing all the good
• 52:38
  work. So, Jacqueline, where did you.
• 52:42
  I mean, 'cause. I mean if you look on this, I
• 52:44
  mean how many different organizations you're involved
• 52:46
  in. There's a whole sheet that I
• 52:48
  printed out here. You know that you're involved in
• 52:50
  all these different what what went on?
• 52:53
  Did your brain just turn into? I'm.
• 52:55
  I'm going to start just step in action steps and and get into re
• 52:59
  entry. I'm gonna be an advocate.
• 53:00
  I'm gonna change things. I'm gonna help people.
• 53:03
  I'm gonna be a what? What happened?
• 53:05
  No, I I The day I left Danbury, I remembered saying all along,
• 53:11
  When you're there, people say I'm gonna change things.
• 53:14
  I'm gonna help change things. Sure.
• 53:15
  And when you leave it, it was a weird thing, 'cause I cried not
• 53:20
  because I was happy to leave, I cried because the women I was
• 53:23
  leaving there, the good people. Left them on the battlefield.
• 53:27
  Right. And I knew the summer was, you
• 53:31
  know, it was 100 and something degrees there.
• 53:32
  We had no air conditioning and. I Yeah, we didn't either.
• 53:35
  Older women, they couldn't breathe Right they?
• 53:37
  Yeah, it's hot. It's hot and it was a 73 year
• 53:41
  old woman that had just brought in two days before I left.
• 53:45
  How so? I remembered that promise and
• 53:49
  the desperation letters. And I really.
• 53:54
  I went to therapy and I thought I had my my masters in social
• 53:58
  work from way before. And I thought, wow, this
• 54:01
  therapist can't help me. She doesn't have a clue.
• 54:05
  What you've been through? What I'm going through and I
• 54:07
  started Googling and looking up things and I found Jeff Grant's.
• 54:13
  White color. Support group and I started in
• 54:17
  2015 slowly going to those meetings and I met up Jeff lived
• 54:21
  in Connecticut. So yeah, for and with Jeff.
• 54:23
  Anybody check out Jeff Grant. I can't remember what episode it
• 54:26
  is. It was April last year, but he's
• 54:28
  phenomenal story. Yeah, yeah, it's, it's really
• 54:32
  and it was the support group was very different back then.
• 54:35
  It was smaller. It was more after it was re
• 54:39
  entry more than today. I think it's more pre trial but
• 54:42
  then. I I think it probably is there's
• 54:45
  there's a there's a kind of a combination but I think it
• 54:48
  weighs more towards pre trial. I think the thing that's
• 54:50
  interesting is, is that you guys in Connecticut, there's a whole
• 54:53
  bunch of you that are like this re entry world of people that
• 54:59
  are really doing a lot. Do you think it's just, I mean I
• 55:03
  I'm just thinking of people I've had on like Louis Reed and you
• 55:06
  and Jeff Grant and I mean I I I shouldn't even start naming
• 55:10
  names because there's so many different people that have that
• 55:12
  have been in that area that have really done a lot.
• 55:17
  Well, Louis Reed actually has done the most for me than any
• 55:21
  person because he showed up, you know, and that's the biggest
• 55:25
  thing after when you're home, you meet people that are going
• 55:28
  through it, you talk to them, you connect with them, but it's
• 55:30
  the people that show up for you when you're in your time of
• 55:34
  need. And that makes all the
• 55:36
  difference to me. And I think I slowly started.
• 55:41
  What happened was it was started with my notary, my notary
• 55:45
  public. I was a notary public since
• 55:46
  Smith Barney, and my renewal for my notary came up and I just
• 55:50
  sent it in and they came back and they wanted to.
• 55:54
  This is after I came home. They were going to charge me
• 55:58
  because they said I lied on the renewal.
• 56:02
  One of the questions was have you ever been convicted of a
• 56:04
  crime as to moral turpitude, that had to do with your notary
• 56:08
  public? And I answered no, not thinking,
• 56:12
  because I had nothing to do with my notary, had nothing to do
• 56:14
  with different. Charge.
• 56:17
  Your crime was moral turpitude. The moral turpitude, yes.
• 56:22
  But I was confused at it. So they denied me that and I
• 56:27
  chose to go to a hearing and then I was told, well, you know,
• 56:32
  you can get charged for perjury and that's a state crime.
• 56:34
  And so I said I'm, I'm going to fight this anyway.
• 56:38
  And I had a hearing on it and Louis Reid showed up and I fell
• 56:42
  apart during that hearing. That's crying.
• 56:45
  And. And he stepped right in.
• 56:47
  And he said, Judge, may I 'cause I think I called the prosecutor
• 56:50
  a liar. And I was, I was really upset.
• 56:52
  And he said this is what PTSD looks like.
• 56:56
  This is what trauma looks like. And that was the first time
• 57:01
  anybody really showed up for me. And I thought, he is doing
• 57:05
  amazing things and I want to be like him, but how do you be a
• 57:11
  Lewis Reed? Nobody can.
• 57:12
  Right. Nobody.
• 57:13
  He's he's the rock star of the Yeah.
• 57:15
  And you can't. I mean Glenn is like my my
• 57:18
  mentor now and I just but you you meet people along the way
• 57:23
  and that white the white collar support group.
• 57:26
  I met incredible people that I am so friendly with today.
• 57:32
  But Connecticut I have to give us a lot of credit because
• 57:35
  Connecticut really gives us a second.
• 57:39
  I don't want to say a second chance.
• 57:41
  They give us grace, they. I like that word grace.
• 57:45
  To make mistakes without and they they really do.
• 57:50
  I mean, I have been welcomed home.
• 57:53
  I went back to Albertus Magnus College and I get emotional with
• 57:58
  it because I got my masters at Fordham and for social work and
• 58:03
  they denied me because I haven't found anything for my masters in
• 58:05
  criminal justice. I got denied from a lot of four
• 58:08
  or five different three maybe, I don't remember, but so many
• 58:11
  different universities I applied to.
• 58:13
  Albertus didn't even have it on. The question wasn't there.
• 58:18
  And so I was able to go back into the criminal justice
• 58:22
  program there. But I should say I learned about
• 58:27
  transparency from Jeff. It was different people.
• 58:31
  I don't remember in 2000 I wasn't going to be transparent.
• 58:34
  This was never my plan. So in 2016, Jeff said.
• 58:41
  In 2016, Jeff said to me, why don't you write A blog for my
• 58:48
  for my group? And.
• 58:51
  I I said no way, I can't write A blog, he said.
• 58:54
  I I think it'll be good for you. So I I wrote it and I emailed it
• 58:57
  to him and he said this sucks. See.
• 59:01
  He's so honest. He's like, wow, this is.
• 59:04
  I want a true honest. Like, I told my story.
• 59:08
  This is pretty telling this story.
• 59:10
  I want to know be vulnerable. I was never able to do that.
• 59:15
  I'm not good at that because I had so much toxicity around
• 59:18
  feeling we didn't do emotions and feelings And and I wrote my
• 59:22
  first blog for him and it said, you know how I survived Danbury
• 59:28
  federal prison and I'm like, OK, it's out there.
• 59:32
  And I was terrified because you know Jeff, he doesn't do
• 59:36
  anything small. So it was everywhere.
• 59:40
  And I never asked my kids or my husband how they felt about it
• 59:45
  again. I was being selfish and I
• 59:51
  thought, OK, the world didn't come crashing down around me.
• 59:55
  I knew I wanted to do one thing. I never wanted to live my life
• 1:00:00
  ever again with having to look behind my shoulder.
• 1:00:04
  Ever. I wanted to.
• 1:00:06
  Walk in truth and own my story. Yeah, and they and they that
• 1:00:14
  gives you the power back. You know, you take the power
• 1:00:16
  away from the people. Yeah.
• 1:00:18
  When you stand out in front of it, yeah.
• 1:00:20
  Right. I mean, we're imperfect and I
• 1:00:24
  was very imperfect, you know. So how do you take that
• 1:00:30
  imperfection and turn it into not having people judge you for
• 1:00:36
  that imperfection or those poor choices?
• 1:00:39
  Not having people. You know, I had issues with my
• 1:00:42
  neighbors, big issues with my neighbors, and I decided that I
• 1:00:47
  was forgiving them all. Anybody who had wronged me for
• 1:00:52
  me, I was going to have a clean slate.
• 1:00:54
  Just. Didn't give them space in your
• 1:00:56
  head? Yep, I love that.
• 1:00:58
  And Louis helped me with that as well.
• 1:01:01
  And I just let it go and I said, OK, what do I want to do?
• 1:01:09
  And then I just, who knows, right?
• 1:01:11
  Brent, you've been here. How long you been home?
• 1:01:14
  Seven years now, OK? Seven years, right?
• 1:01:16
  Seven years flown by and. How did you know you?
• 1:01:20
  Did you think, oh, I'm going to have this great podcast?
• 1:01:22
  No, no. It's one step.
• 1:01:26
  And I love it. Right, right.
• 1:01:28
  It's one. It's like a passion of mine.
• 1:01:30
  Yeah, right. Yeah.
• 1:01:31
  It's crazy see so many incredible people in the stories
• 1:01:35
  and I don't know one step, it's it's that old.
• 1:01:39
  What is it? The Santa Claus movie?
• 1:01:41
  One step after. Another Yeah, but I mean, I
• 1:01:45
  think it's what I think is. So it's fascinating because
• 1:01:51
  evolution re entry services is is all about taking a hold of
• 1:01:56
  and it even you even talk about specializing in trauma and then
• 1:02:00
  it families relating to the incarceration it's it's stuff
• 1:02:03
  that needs to be talked about because it's all in there and so
• 1:02:07
  many people hold it back in. But I think what you're doing,
• 1:02:12
  what I I think I just know Jacqueline, what you're doing is
• 1:02:15
  you're you're giving them a voice to get it out and to heal
• 1:02:20
  and to breathe and to deal with this.
• 1:02:25
  It is trauma. Yeah, but you know what, Brent?
• 1:02:28
  They every woman I've met did more for me than I've ever done
• 1:02:31
  for them. The family group was where it
• 1:02:35
  really I told we talked about this, I I, there's never been a
• 1:02:39
  family group, and my daughters wanted to talk about it.
• 1:02:42
  We did a podcast with Jeff. It was me, my two daughters and
• 1:02:45
  Jeff and my little one was going to She got her masters in
• 1:02:50
  criminal justice with me. That's awesome.
• 1:02:52
  Albertus And so I thought, why isn't there any support groups
• 1:02:57
  for families? Yeah, so I started one and that
• 1:03:01
  first support group, I sat there and I get emotional.
• 1:03:05
  I cried because I thought this is what I did to my family and I
• 1:03:11
  never saw until that meeting. That's when it all came.
• 1:03:15
  Yeah, I learned more from those families than I could possibly
• 1:03:21
  like daughters and spouses and thinking these beautiful people
• 1:03:28
  who are supporting their loved ones are frozen in time, Afraid
• 1:03:32
  to have a good time, afraid to, not afraid but it.
• 1:03:37
  Feels awkward. Yeah, loved one by enjoying
• 1:03:40
  themselves. Yes.
• 1:03:43
  And then I sat and had the real conversation with my husband.
• 1:03:45
  Is this how you? I never asked him how he felt.
• 1:03:49
  And he we always we got really close while I was.
• 1:03:55
  I thought we got really close when I was in Danbury.
• 1:03:58
  But really he was getting closer to me in a different way because
• 1:04:05
  he was the supporting one. I had always been the supporting
• 1:04:08
  1. So now my mind just after that
• 1:04:12
  first meeting was I thought this is.
• 1:04:15
  Yeah, you were sold. Yeah.
• 1:04:17
  This is a good thing to do. Is the family piece and it's.
• 1:04:21
  It's amazing how you find things like that and it just fills you
• 1:04:24
  up. You know, I've I had a guy that
• 1:04:28
  he was, he'd been out for a week and a half and he emailed me and
• 1:04:33
  he said I read your book in prison and I did a book report
• 1:04:37
  on it and he said it really helped me.
• 1:04:40
  And he said I just want to reach out to you.
• 1:04:42
  He said I just got home. I'm getting, you know, now this
• 1:04:44
  second step of my journey and we ended up talking and it's things
• 1:04:52
  like that that really are like I'm so happy that he took that
• 1:04:58
  and was able to use it because we have our journeys, they're,
• 1:05:02
  you know, the the common line is we go through a nightmare.
• 1:05:05
  How we survive that nightmare has different storylines to it.
• 1:05:08
  But I think it's so great when Someone Like You, Jacqueline,
• 1:05:13
  will take that overall experience that you have.
• 1:05:16
  You've and you've had a wonderful brain all throughout,
• 1:05:18
  but you're using that in such a positive way to help people.
• 1:05:24
  And you know one of the things I find, you know, talking to
• 1:05:28
  different people is, is that there's so many good things
• 1:05:32
  going on all across the country. But really there's no dots that
• 1:05:34
  are connected. If if one of these times we
• 1:05:37
  could just make it all connect so that it's like creates this
• 1:05:40
  tidal wave of of good for re entry, it'd be a wonderful
• 1:05:43
  thing. Yeah, yeah.
• 1:05:44
  It's funny because when I spoke to you, I think you had said
• 1:05:47
  something about Lynn and I said, Oh my God, Lynn.
• 1:05:49
  And I've been friends for a while and I've been friends with
• 1:05:51
  Lewis for a while and then I'm friends with Glenn and and and
• 1:05:56
  it's funny because you meet all these connections and I've come
• 1:06:01
  together with them all, not in one space.
• 1:06:04
  Well, few of them I have. But in different spaces, yeah.
• 1:06:07
  Different spaces and especially I think with the re entry
• 1:06:11
  organizations, there's the sense of competition that saddens me.
• 1:06:16
  It. Really does.
• 1:06:17
  And I'm now collaborating. So, you know, there's this group
• 1:06:22
  in Nevada called Prison Families Alliance.
• 1:06:25
  Frank it's amazing. Where is it?
• 1:06:27
  In Nevada and they have they that's all they do is family
• 1:06:34
  support groups and they do them every day of the week.
• 1:06:37
  They do them in person and they do them on Zoom and they have
• 1:06:41
  different types of they have sibling meetings they have.
• 1:06:44
  I like that. Yeah, they would.
• 1:06:45
  Have. So it's not, it's not just a
• 1:06:48
  Nevada they're they're able to to reach out wherever.
• 1:06:52
  Yeah. And then they have one meeting
• 1:06:56
  where all you do is write and share your writings.
• 1:06:59
  And I met Julia, who was the Co founder of this maybe five years
• 1:07:05
  ago. And her and I have always, she's
• 1:07:07
  called me quite a bit. We've tried to connect and I
• 1:07:09
  just haven't. But now that I'm getting so, so
• 1:07:12
  the company is getting larger. I don't want to ever make the
• 1:07:15
  mistakes I've made. So I started to collaborate with
• 1:07:18
  other companies to pick. I have the beliefs I believe and
• 1:07:21
  the values I believe. So she's picking up the family
• 1:07:26
  group and I know she's got 14 facilitators that are amazing
• 1:07:31
  and I know that the families will be in the best support
• 1:07:37
  space and it's still going to be the same time through my
• 1:07:40
  website, the same thing. And then the women's support
• 1:07:45
  group I collaborated with, the Beautiful Heart Ministries is my
• 1:07:48
  friend Clover and she also is does amazing things.
• 1:07:53
  And so she started a women's support group.
• 1:07:56
  So I've collaborated with her to move the support.
• 1:07:59
  I love that you're doing that, and collaborating is a way to
• 1:08:02
  connect the dots. Yeah.
• 1:08:04
  Yeah, and and to make it bigger in a way that it doesn't have to
• 1:08:07
  compete. I love that.
• 1:08:08
  Right, right. And lifting each other up
• 1:08:09
  because I think there's a lot. Of.
• 1:08:11
  It's it's in any space where people are trying to make money.
• 1:08:15
  When money's involved, I mean pretty.
• 1:08:18
  RAW, especially in something like this.
• 1:08:20
  Yeah. And then it really gets weird.
• 1:08:22
  Yeah. And it's where because you come
• 1:08:23
  home and you're more, I'm much more comfortable speaking to you
• 1:08:27
  in this space than I am. I spoke the other day at the
• 1:08:31
  we're trying to pass some legislation for title searching
• 1:08:33
  to be licensed in Connecticut. I was so uncomfortable, but yet
• 1:08:37
  I'm an expert at title, sure. And I was uncomfortable.
• 1:08:40
  But in this space here, I'm more comfortable because it's a
• 1:08:43
  community that I know welcomes me.
• 1:08:46
  In that space I had to lead with.
• 1:08:50
  All right, this is, you know, this is my background, because
• 1:08:52
  if I didn't lead with that, somebody would have came back
• 1:08:56
  later. Well, and I I think again
• 1:08:59
  Jacqueline by leading with it, because there's only two ways to
• 1:09:02
  go with it. There's one you just, you try to
• 1:09:04
  hide it and hope that nobody finds out, which is almost
• 1:09:06
  impossible and nowadays because they can Google and do whatever.
• 1:09:09
  But the other is, is to lead with it.
• 1:09:10
  You take the power of it, Whoever was going to bring it up
• 1:09:13
  or make a big issue, you lead with and tell them how or what
• 1:09:16
  and when, and then it's out there and then you can move
• 1:09:19
  forward. Right.
• 1:09:20
  Right. Yeah, but you own it.
• 1:09:22
  It is. True, It's yours.
• 1:09:24
  It's such a weird thing for me because my name is legally, my
• 1:09:27
  last name is Purcell. I never.
• 1:09:29
  Changed it. Purcell would be so much easier
• 1:09:30
  to say. Right.
• 1:09:31
  I know. And I I just because I got
• 1:09:33
  married, you know, you get married and.
• 1:09:35
  You you. Yeah, yeah, yeah, you need.
• 1:09:36
  To change it, you're, you know, and so the court.
• 1:09:39
  I still don't know how if I'm just going to say Paul Vieria,
• 1:09:43
  Paul Vieria, Paul Vieria. Still not saying it right?
• 1:09:49
  So it's kind of a weird thing for me because my company, they
• 1:09:53
  know me as Purcell and it's like, wow, I got to combine
• 1:09:56
  these names somehow and then everything on Google it, it's
• 1:09:59
  just a weird thing. And so I I leave with it.
• 1:10:04
  Anyway, people couldn't find it because, I mean, I was on the
• 1:10:08
  front page of the Connecticut newspapers about this title
• 1:10:11
  searching thing. And I said to the reporter, I
• 1:10:13
  said, look, I'm going to tell you right now, you need to put
• 1:10:15
  this in, You need to put that I know fraud because I committed
• 1:10:19
  fraud. Yes.
• 1:10:20
  Or else you're gonna have people discredit.
• 1:10:22
  They're gonna say, hey, that's that girl.
• 1:10:24
  Yeah, and I would never want a reporter to do a super to me and
• 1:10:27
  not be blindsided. But Jacqueline, tell me a little
• 1:10:30
  bit about this, this the Hall of Change, because I think the more
• 1:10:35
  I read about it, the more I think that it's so great that
• 1:10:37
  that's providing an incentive for people that are doing good
• 1:10:40
  work and then they're getting recognized.
• 1:10:42
  And, you know, you've got a board that recognizes this and
• 1:10:44
  all these different people that are involved.
• 1:10:46
  Can you tell us a little bit about that?
• 1:10:47
  Because you're in there now it. Is Yeah, it's Connecticut Hall
• 1:10:50
  of Change. Charlie Grady, who works for the
• 1:10:54
  FBI, yes, actually going to be retiring, I think this year.
• 1:10:58
  Going to have him on the show. Is this going to be the first
• 1:11:00
  time I had somebody on from the FBI?
• 1:11:01
  He's let me tell you, it's funny.
• 1:11:03
  And he's a 20 year actor, right? Right and.
• 1:11:06
  He's big films and soap operas. It's crazy.
• 1:11:09
  I mean this guy, this is like they should do a movie about
• 1:11:11
  Charlie Grady. They really, really should.
• 1:11:13
  And the The funny thing is, is when we he came over, the first
• 1:11:17
  time I met him, he stopped over the house and he said, oh, I was
• 1:11:20
  at a house I think across the street.
• 1:11:23
  It ended up he was at my house 15 years ago.
• 1:11:27
  Our daughters were friends all through school.
• 1:11:30
  Oh God, that's crazy. And we didn't know it.
• 1:11:32
  And my husband remembered him. Small world.
• 1:11:35
  Yeah, my husband said, Don't you remember?
• 1:11:36
  We didn't like them. They were the ones that always
• 1:11:38
  stood in front of us. And I'm quarter.
• 1:11:40
  I love, I love him. He's such a wonderful, beautiful
• 1:11:44
  person. So he created what is called
• 1:11:46
  Hang Time and her time, and from Hang Time and her Time, which
• 1:11:50
  are support groups in person, he then created Connecticut Hall of
• 1:11:55
  Change, which the State of Connecticut inducts 8 people
• 1:11:59
  every year who are justice impacted and have changed their
• 1:12:03
  life completely for the better and are doing great things for
• 1:12:07
  Connecticut or hopefully in other states as well.
• 1:12:10
  Yeah, no, it's it's, it's, it's fantastic.
• 1:12:12
  And then they even have you go and and speak and do and I I
• 1:12:16
  just, I I love the idea And I he's, you know he was telling me
• 1:12:19
  that he's talking about trying to get into Maryland and and to
• 1:12:22
  Illinois and and hopefully become a national organization.
• 1:12:25
  Yeah. When I tell you Brent, when when
• 1:12:27
  I got the award we were at this big theater in Hartford, CT
• 1:12:31
  called the Webster and it was packed and I was ready to go up
• 1:12:35
  and Charlie goes, I just want to let you know that you're
• 1:12:37
  sentencing judge and the state. The.
• 1:12:40
  State's attorney, the US attorney is here.
• 1:12:42
  And I thought, well, you didn't tell me that before and I had no
• 1:12:46
  idea really what it how large it was.
• 1:12:49
  So I I never prepare anything when I speak anywhere because
• 1:12:53
  I'd like to try and just speak from what's.
• 1:12:56
  So I got up and I stood there and I said, well, this really
• 1:13:01
  threw me for a loop. My sentencing judge, Janet Bon
• 1:13:06
  Arterton, is here today and the US Attorney is here today.
• 1:13:09
  And I said, I do want to say thank you to her.
• 1:13:13
  And 'cause everything went quiet.
• 1:13:14
  When I said my sentencing did, then I said I want, I don't
• 1:13:18
  think they expected me to say thank you.
• 1:13:21
  But I said she was very fair. And she said what I needed to
• 1:13:25
  hear. And I think that it's difficult
• 1:13:30
  for another woman to be sentencing a mother.
• 1:13:32
  And my three kids spoke at my sentencing, so it had to be.
• 1:13:36
  And through my through my journey, getting my masters in
• 1:13:39
  criminal justice, I learned that second hand trauma is a real
• 1:13:42
  thing for these judges and prosecutors, and it's tough for
• 1:13:46
  them. And people think it's not.
• 1:13:48
  And then I looked at the US attorney.
• 1:13:49
  I said, I'm not saying anything to you, 'cause I'm afraid of
• 1:13:51
  you. And then I said to Charlie, I
• 1:13:54
  said, I really hope Charlie wasn't one of the FBI guys that
• 1:13:57
  read. Exactly.
• 1:13:58
  I don't do too much what. Could you say at that point you
• 1:14:02
  have to just kind of make kind of?
• 1:14:04
  He's got to roll with it. Congratulations on that though.
• 1:14:07
  I mean that's that's a huge accomplishment and it's it's
• 1:14:12
  quite a panel that that that goes through and vets this out
• 1:14:15
  and it's a real honor. Connecticut does, and they did
• 1:14:18
  the Impact award, which was amazing.
• 1:14:21
  They do these awards in Connecticut that would not
• 1:14:23
  normally allow people to feel they're making a difference.
• 1:14:27
  Fox 61 and the United Way did a Connecticut Impact Award, and I
• 1:14:34
  was a finalist on that and the people I was in the room with,
• 1:14:38
  and it was a huge ballroom and it was amazing.
• 1:14:44
  The people that I was finalist with, yeah.
• 1:14:50
  And I no, I mean I I read up on it.
• 1:14:51
  I I think, I think it's it's an incredible honor.
• 1:14:54
  You should be very, very proud of yourself.
• 1:14:55
  And I just hope that this is something and I I think you know
• 1:14:59
  Charlie Grady's the type of guy that can get it done, that we
• 1:15:03
  see this over and over and over in every state.
• 1:15:05
  Because I think it it makes people feel good about what
• 1:15:10
  they're doing if they're doing good things, and that's a great.
• 1:15:12
  Thing. Yeah.
• 1:15:13
  And especially when life it's not it's not even.
• 1:15:17
  I don't think that life makes us feel bad.
• 1:15:20
  It's people make us feel bad and feel less than.
• 1:15:24
  And when you make really poor choices or you have an addiction
• 1:15:28
  or you have any kind of thing that steps out of what we
• 1:15:32
  society considers Norm is dutched and I really am proud of
• 1:15:37
  the state of Connecticut for what they are, what they have
• 1:15:40
  done in. Yeah, they're a model state.
• 1:15:43
  They really are. I really, I really am impressed
• 1:15:46
  with Connecticut. After all, You know, I've talked
• 1:15:49
  to people in different states. Michigan's another state that
• 1:15:52
  does a lot. So Jacqueline, you know, I
• 1:15:56
  always ask people this and I, you know, you've gone through so
• 1:16:00
  much and you're doing so much. What do you think is your
• 1:16:04
  biggest take away from all this that you've gone through?
• 1:16:08
  No one's ever asked me that. But you know what it is?
• 1:16:10
  It's to cherish my family more and not worry about being
• 1:16:18
  judged. And when I do things, do them
• 1:16:20
  for myself. I never did anything for myself.
• 1:16:23
  And I I put the people I loved last because everything else was
• 1:16:28
  so important. And knowing they're going to be
• 1:16:30
  there often we know they're going to be there so often we'll
• 1:16:33
  just put that aside. But we'll do that tomorrow.
• 1:16:35
  We'll do that tomorrow. I don't do that anymore.
• 1:16:37
  I'm a I'm a new grandmother and I go see my granddaughter and
• 1:16:41
  that's it. That's awesome.
• 1:16:43
  My son's in New York. He's a musician.
• 1:16:45
  I go to every performance, yeah. You don't want to waste any time
• 1:16:49
  and you know what's important that's that's it's great advice.
• 1:16:53
  That's just great advice. That's a great take away because
• 1:16:56
  family is it and that is your success and and you want to take
• 1:17:00
  it all in as much as you can whenever you can.
• 1:17:04
  Now there I There's still times where I think, you know, just to
• 1:17:08
  if the family's around, there's just me silently thinking I'm
• 1:17:11
  just so glad I'm here because I wasn't at one point.
• 1:17:14
  Yeah. And The thing is, you know what?
• 1:17:15
  But I used to think my family. When I said my family, I
• 1:17:19
  wouldn't think of my husband and kids first.
• 1:17:21
  I always thought of my mother and father and my brothers, and
• 1:17:26
  that was my family. Yeah, but now I mean my my
• 1:17:30
  parents will be married 65 years.
• 1:17:32
  This year we. Live in our in law apartment.
• 1:17:34
  And not everybody's married 60. Five.
• 1:17:35
  I know, right? They're so dear to me.
• 1:17:37
  But my family is my husband, children, my granddaughter, and
• 1:17:43
  then my parents. And I'll always take.
• 1:17:46
  I mean, parents are everything to me, but my husband deserves a
• 1:17:49
  little bit of kudos now and he deserves the time.
• 1:17:53
  So yeah, he's been that's all the way through, that's.
• 1:17:55
  It's funny, whenever I go on the Google and I Google myself to
• 1:17:58
  see the number one thing that comes up is who is Jacqueline
• 1:18:01
  Pulveri's husband? And I guess I'm like, really
• 1:18:03
  don't think you'll ever see my husband.
• 1:18:08
  I love it. So, Speaking of Googling, what's
• 1:18:10
  the best place for people to get a hold of you?
• 1:18:12
  How do you get in touch with Jacqueline?
• 1:18:14
  Yeah, it's just evolutionreentry@gmail.com and
• 1:18:20
  our website evolution reentry. Great website.
• 1:18:23
  Dot yeahitreally.org. We just switched to the.org.
• 1:18:25
  We just became a nonprofit, which is which is wonderful.
• 1:18:29
  I'm happy about that. Awesome.
• 1:18:32
  Rolling out our home ownership program.
• 1:18:34
  That is the big deal this year. That's a huge deal and you know
• 1:18:40
  having a place for people to live and have something and own
• 1:18:44
  something and and you being involved in that is, is is
• 1:18:47
  important work. Yeah, a home, that's what.
• 1:18:50
  Is a home not some place you're renting, but it's it's your
• 1:18:53
  place. Yeah, I mean, you know, I do
• 1:18:54
  title searches all the time, but when you're seeing foreclosed
• 1:18:57
  properties empty everywhere for years and they're not being
• 1:19:01
  used, but we have a housing crisis, wow, Let's get together
• 1:19:06
  and talk about that. So we're doing our first home in
• 1:19:09
  March. I'm really excited to be able
• 1:19:12
  to. I hope that's not something that
• 1:19:13
  just grows and grows and duplicates because that's so
• 1:19:16
  needed, so needed. Jacqueline, thanks so much.
• 1:19:21
  Shout out to Homestead Financial here.
• 1:19:23
  That offers me to be in this great podcast room.
• 1:19:27
  And if anybody needs home mortgage needs, it's Greg.
• 1:19:29
  AFTIA, if he's your guy, if you're looking for a book, go to
• 1:19:33
  my place at Nightmare success on Amazon.
• 1:19:37
  I love you know. If you like this show, follow,
• 1:19:39
  subscribe, like, comment, leave reviews on Apple, go to
• 1:19:43
  brentcassidy.com. I spell it wrong.
• 1:19:45
  It's with a Ty, not a DY. Sean and David never showed up
• 1:19:49
  at my house and said we're all brothers.
• 1:19:51
  I was always wanting that and as I used to say when I was writing
• 1:19:58
  my emails back and forth from Leavenworth, stay strong.
• 1:20:00
  I'll do the same. Jacqueline, thanks so much for
• 1:20:02
  taking time out today. I'm so proud of all the stuff
• 1:20:04
  that you're doing. Thank.
• 1:20:06
  You so much, Brent, for having me.
• 1:20:07
  This is really great. It was great seeing you.
• 1:20:09
  You know, you talk to people, but you don't see them.
• 1:20:11
  You don't see them? Here we are.
• 1:20:13
  I know. Nightmare success in and out.
• 1:20:16
  Thanks everybody.