Latest / Nightmare Success In and Out / He Built a $13 Billion Empire… Became a Fugitive | Steve Keller Story

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He Built a $13 Billion Empire… Became a Fugitive | Steve Keller Story · Nightmare Success In and Out

• 0:00
  So we had, we were having lunch in the White House discussing
• 0:02
  the green card for this, this woman.
• 0:04
  And so, yeah, we had lunch at the White House and on on Monday
• 0:08
  and then that coming Friday. And I get a phone call 7:00 in
• 0:12
  the morning from my assistant Karen.
• 0:15
  And she says thieves. She goes, I don't know how to
• 0:19
  tell you this, but our company is being raided, an armed raid
• 0:24
  by some 80 to 100 FBI agents. My first response was Karina, I
• 0:29
  was out till 3:00 in the morning at the time with three insurance
• 0:31
  companies and that I said, look, I I do not need these
• 0:34
  shenanigans this time in the morning.
• 0:35
  You know this, this has got to be a joke.
• 0:37
  So Monday I'm in the White House having lunch and Friday my
• 0:41
  office is getting raided. What happens when you're worse
• 0:44
  here becomes your reality. Hi, I'm Brent Cassidy, welcome
• 0:48
  to the Nightmare Success In and out podcast where we explore how
• 0:51
  to overcome your fears and nightmares and set yourself
• 0:54
  free. We're going to be exploring this
• 0:56
  topic with guys that was in Leavenworth with and others who
• 0:59
  survived their own nightmare. These stories can be inspiring,
• 1:04
  sometimes sad. There's some.
• 1:06
  Humor, but hopefully. You can come away with a nugget
• 1:09
  of something that'll help you knock down some of the prisons
• 1:11
  you built up in your own mind. All right, welcome back nine
• 1:16
  more success and now listeners, this is where you come for what
• 1:19
  happens when your worst fear becomes your reality.
• 1:20
  How do you adapt, survive, overcome, set yourself free,
• 1:26
  folks, don't forget to follow. Subscribe, share this thing out
• 1:30
  like it up. I really appreciate it helps the
• 1:31
  show. So who are we talking to today?
• 1:35
  We're talking to Steve Keller and Steve and I've had an
• 1:40
  incredible issue here in the last 30 minutes just trying to
• 1:43
  get both sides of this thing to to work and record.
• 1:46
  But I think we've got it figured out.
• 1:49
  So who is Steve Keller? Well, I just got done reading
• 1:51
  his book and I got to tell you his story is like a thriller
• 1:55
  that you'll put on Netflix and can't put down.
• 2:00
  So what did he do? Well, he was a bold entrepreneur
• 2:02
  who revolutionized the multi billion dollar settlement
• 2:06
  industry, life settlement industry, founding Calco,
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  launching the first ever securitized bundles of life
• 2:13
  insurance policies on the New York Stock Exchange and
• 2:16
  capturing 65% of the global life settlement market known as
• 2:20
  viatical settlements. Calco's viatical settlements
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  gave terminally ill patients an unprecedented way to access
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  their life insurance benefits while they were still alive.
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  It was groundbreaking. It was enormously profitable and
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  then it collapsed with the help of insurance companies who were
• 2:39
  happened to be his competitors. There was an indictment.
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  He went to trial. He had years of being a fugitive
• 2:48
  in Panama, and he was finally caught and arrested in Panama
• 2:53
  and spent nine years inside the federal prison system.
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  This is 1 incredible story and I can't wait to jump into all
• 3:01
  this. It's got a story about
• 3:03
  decisions, consequences, entrepreneurs.
• 3:05
  How did they thrive and live and survive the fall?
• 3:09
  Before we jump into all this, I want to recognize our show
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• 4:37
  Steve, welcome in, finally. Thank you.
• 4:41
  Yeah, Family life's full of hurdles.
• 4:45
  It seems I said, I said to Steve, it's 2 old white collar
• 4:48
  guys trying to figure out technology here and and somehow
• 4:52
  we figured it out to get it going.
• 4:54
  So Steve, I like I said, I just finished your book and I don't
• 5:00
  think I mentioned one on the intro there that the book is
• 5:03
  called Pay to Play and it's available for a pre-order on
• 5:09
  Amazon, Barnes and Noble or wherever you get your books.
• 5:11
  And I think you mentioned that it's going to be arriving on
• 5:15
  bookshelves in May or June. So get in that pre-order.
• 5:18
  So Steve, wow. So I feel like I know you
• 5:23
  because I just I just finished your book last night.
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  But yeah, I know you grew up in a little town, I think it was
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  Western Kentucky. Actually, Eastern Kentucky
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  Eastern. Kentucky, Eastern Kentucky,
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  little town of probably 3-4 thousand people.
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  Tell me a little bit about that growing up as a kid.
• 5:42
  Well, I mean, it was a it was a good life.
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  It was very small town, rural, everybody knew everybody.
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  And so, you know, it had that Mayberry ambiance, if you will,
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  to it. So it was a good place to for
• 5:59
  kids to, to grow up. Then there was, we were without
• 6:04
  a lot of a lot of things they have now.
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  I mean, we had one semblance of a fast food chain.
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  It was not even a chain. It was a independent,
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  independent store where people would go.
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  I'd buy ice creams, hot dogs, whatever.
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  And it's called the freezer fresh and it has, it has the
• 6:23
  concept of the fast food chain, but it wasn't when you go up to
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  win an order. They had to, they had to produce
• 6:27
  it from scratch. So it, but that's, that's all we
• 6:31
  had. So it used to be the, the
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  hangout for young people and, and people went off to drive
• 6:37
  through town and circle the freezer fresh and drive back
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  through town and do it about 100 times a day.
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  So, but there wasn't a lot going on in West Liberty at the time.
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  Well, I know your dad had his own business.
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  It was, was it, I remember, was it a salvage yard or something
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  of that sort and that business type, Yeah.
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  Yeah. So, yeah, he, he was an
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  entrepreneur and he started back in the 50s, he started a salvage
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  yard that's the recycle of wrecked cars, the parts and
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  whatnot. And it was hugely successful.
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  My brother later took that over a years later and started out
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  the last couple of years and I think they were the largest
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  probably in Kentucky. Wow.
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  And so I know that you kind of carried a title there for maybe
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  still do as you were a state champion pole vaulter.
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  Did that happen your senior year?
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  That's actually my junior year. So it was, it was kind of a
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  crazy story. We very small town, we had no
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  track. And I met a guy that moved there
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  from Ohio and he had been a track star in his previous life
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  there in Ohio. And he introduced me to this,
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  this sport pole vaulting, which nobody had ever heard of and in
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  that small town or I didn't know what it was so.
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  But after I had researched it and talked with him and he
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  agreed to become my private coach, we built a facility
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  behind my house in this seven acre field and we piled up the
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  the mounds and the behind where you land was sawdust and the
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  runway was sawdust. And we built a the box where you
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  plant the pole in out of wood. And we borrowed a pole from a
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  neighboring university, Morgan State University.
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  And the standards that hold the pole, I didn't have a pole, so
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  it held a string that was tied with two Chuck Norris's on each
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  end. And that's what I that's what I
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  jumped over. And so I can only go so high in
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  that practice facility without it hurting because you're
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  landing on sawdust. So when I would go to the meats,
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  I would win the meats and I would keep on jumping.
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  And one day somebody came over to me and said, hey, Keller, he
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  said, you already won. Why are you still jumping?
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  And I say, well, it's the only place that doesn't hurt the
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  land. To practice.
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  Yeah. So, so that's that's where I
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  really got my practice was at the beats.
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  So yeah. And they continued on and I
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  ended up I ended up winning the state in my junior year and I
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  think I'm the first person in the history of that town to win
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  a state title. There's been numerous after I
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  paved the way, but I think that was that was it.
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  Yeah, so you get you. You're a pole vaulting champion,
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  graduate high school. Where do you go?
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  What happens then? So I went to, I went to
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  Georgetown College and I went there basically on a football
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  scholarship for Ponte. So I, I was pretty good partner
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  and I, I did do some pole vaulting there while I was there
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  at that small school. That's a school in Lexington or
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  outside of Lexington, KY. It's in Georgetown, KY and very,
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  very small school. Coming from that small of
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  hometown, I felt overwhelmed going to a larger college and
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  had the opportunity to go to UK on a football scholarship.
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  But I I turned it down and I knew I just wasn't at that
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  level. That's interesting because that
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  that would have been a lot to take in as a a young kid.
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  Like we're going to University of Kentucky and, and, and being
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  on the football team. And so you so you took the
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  smaller route. What were you thinking in
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  college, Steve? Were you thinking about finance
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  and different things that you, you know, you ended up with Dean
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  Witter? What was what was going through
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  your mind? What am I going to do when I?
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  Grow up. Yeah.
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  And so I've, I've always had an entrepreneurial mindset.
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  I mean, from when I was three years old on, I was always doing
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  something. And in elementary school, I
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  remember buying a, it's a Willy Wonka Chocolate Factory off of
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  this neighborhood friend of mine.
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  And I talked my mom into finance with me and, and we've, we made
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  candies and I was, I was making candies to sell to students and,
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  and it got really large. And that to the point where I
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  was, I was selling more candy bars to these kids and they were
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  buying lunches. And then, and back then we had
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  government subsidized lunches. So if the students went and
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  spending enough money, then the government would, would cut it
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  back. And so this became such a issue
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  for me or for the school that they, the principal called me
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  into his office and that and shut me down and said, look,
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  you're, you're not allowed to sell any more candy bars up
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  here. And and that was it.
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  That was the end of my business and that was the first time the
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  government shut me down by. The you got some foreshadow in
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  there. So yeah, that was the first,
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  first episode of mine by Rennes with the government, with being
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  successful. Oh my gosh, so so you graduate
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  college, you, you got the background of being an
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  entrepreneur. What do you, what, what, what
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  happens next? What's your next step that that
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  goes on in your life? But Georgetown was such a small
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  school that there was a couple of level of classes that was not
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  being fulfilled and they just, they cancelled them.
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  It was two classes I needed to graduate.
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  So my option at that time was to take those in Louisville,
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  University of Louisville, which I did.
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  And it just what happened? I was dating a girl up there
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  that might have had a little bit to do with it, but so I went up
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  there and I started, I had a lot of time in my hands.
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  So I started selling computers. And it's this was when the first
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  laptops were really introduced and the first Mac, or I think it
• 13:07
  was Lisa was back in the day. So I got exposed to that and I
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  work for a retail computer store and there was a gentleman that
• 13:19
  came in during Derby and he was there looking for a particular
• 13:26
  type of printer. And I showed him a program that
• 13:30
  I had created to trade stocks. And he was like, how do you know
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  how to do this? I said, I've been doing it for a
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  while, you know, that's what I do.
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  And he goes, how would you like to have a job, you know, making
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  $100,000 a year doing this when you graduate?
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  And I said, yeah, that sounds good to me.
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  So he said, give me a call and give me his card.
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  And when I graduated, I, I went to Little Rock, AR, where he
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  was, and I was introduced to the bond houses there.
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  Chicago's got commodities, New York's got stocks, Little Rock's
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  got bonds. And they had these these these
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  brokerage houses that sold bonds to credit unions and banks and
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  whatnot did large people, not, not individuals, just all
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  institutional. So I did that for a couple
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  years, was homesick and moved back home and got a job for Dean
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  Witter at that time. So then you had this situation
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  with Dean Witter where, you know, you're doing, I think,
• 14:36
  gosh, you've got to be like, in your early 20s.
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  Yeah, a guy named Chris comes up to you and he shares this idea
• 14:45
  with you. You guys are in cubicles kind of
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  whispering back and forth and Chris is Can you share that
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  story with us? Sure.
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  So Chris, Chris Conway, he's still in the industry and he's
• 14:59
  at works out of New York now and been very successful and stayed
• 15:02
  in the industry. At the time, though, he, he came
• 15:06
  to me and he was telling me something he had heard.
• 15:09
  I don't know where, but about the, at the, you know, at that
• 15:13
  time we were starting the AIDS epidemic.
• 15:17
  That's when we learned that this disease had had come about and
• 15:22
  the, and the people were, you know, struggling with it and
• 15:25
  the, and the, the, the country was worried to death.
• 15:27
  We didn't know what it was just similar to COVID, but as far as
• 15:33
  not the disease, but the, the panic, the pandemic.
• 15:37
  But so he was telling me about people were selling their life
• 15:43
  insurance policies as a form of healthcare to raise cash to pay
• 15:48
  for medications that were not FDA approved and just for
• 15:53
  whatever. And my, my first response was
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  this. This sounds morbid, but I didn't
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  look on the other side of it. I didn't look on what a great
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  services is to people that desperately need cash and don't
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  have anywhere else to go. It's it's, it's a lifeline.
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  So about two weeks later, I had a company, a guy that I was
• 16:23
  dealing with with, and Dean Witter, and he called me up and
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  he, he had a, he had a, a unique company he was trying to raise
• 16:32
  monies for and he's fallen short or oversold the stock and they
• 16:36
  really didn't have any more assets to, to sell and he needed
• 16:40
  to raise more cash. It was a water filtration system
• 16:44
  that you put in a grocery store and it put it into a paper
• 16:47
  carton, which is novel. I thought I thought that was a
• 16:50
  great idea. And so the idea just came to me
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  about using these policies, you know, and this could be a way
• 17:00
  that you wouldn't have to go out and sell individuals on buying
• 17:06
  these policies, which I think we've been very difficult at the
• 17:08
  time. And, and that this was a way
• 17:12
  that I could go to 1 institution that they had a problem.
• 17:15
  You know, these people had a problem, they wanted the money.
• 17:17
  So marry the two together and solve the problem.
• 17:20
  And so when I took the idea to this water company, they, they
• 17:27
  were all over it. And that's, that's when I knew
• 17:30
  that I had something here that made sense and that people
• 17:35
  really wanted. And then?
• 17:38
  Found somebody to that would invest in buying these policies
• 17:41
  and that the the thing that I thought was the entrepreneur Dr.
• 17:48
  was that you just first went to the bank and you know the story.
• 17:53
  This guy ends up in your life again.
• 17:55
  But you know, you, you go and you, you know, you put a
• 17:58
  business plan together, you send it to him.
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  You know, you go meet him at his corner office at the what is the
• 18:05
  5th 3rd's bank? And, and, and he just is a
• 18:10
  complete asshole and says it's the most stupid ID's ever heard
• 18:15
  of. Thanks for wasting my time.
• 18:18
  And, you know, don't let the door hit you in the ass.
• 18:21
  And The funny thing about that story is, is that you come back
• 18:25
  and buy that building as the company that you built ends up,
• 18:30
  you know, becoming a much bigger organization that this man could
• 18:33
  have never imagined. So I thought the there was
• 18:39
  something that happened in that time period where you were
• 18:44
  trying to do everything, Steve. And sometimes entrepreneurs
• 18:49
  think that they can do a little bit of this, a little bit of
• 18:51
  that, a little bit of this and and somehow something it'll work
• 18:54
  out. And I thought it was very wise
• 18:59
  of your dad. You called him one day and you
• 19:02
  just said, you know, he said, yeah, how's it going?
• 19:05
  And he just told him, I'm doing this, I'm doing that, I'm doing
• 19:08
  this. I'm you know, like all over the
• 19:10
  place. He said, son, you got to focus
• 19:12
  on one thing. You know, it would be one place
• 19:14
  at one time, and. And that seemed to stick with
• 19:18
  you. And it seemed like from that
• 19:21
  point, I mean, I know that you met Grant shortly after that,
• 19:25
  but that that somehow registered in your head to think, no, I do
• 19:29
  have something good here. I should focus on that.
• 19:32
  Yeah. Well, I, I think a lot of
• 19:35
  entrepreneurs, they, they throw things on the wall and whatever
• 19:38
  sticks they go with. So, you know, and it's like I
• 19:44
  remember the CEO of the entrepreneur with FedEx, you
• 19:49
  know, the the first day that they spent $50 million and, and
• 19:53
  they shipped one package and his staff, his staff came to him and
• 19:57
  said, Oh my God, Fred, this is, this is a terrible deal.
• 20:01
  This is a disaster. And he said, what do you mean
• 20:03
  this is a disaster? He goes, it works.
• 20:05
  We just got to do it 50 million more times.
• 20:07
  So when you, when you got, when you got one thing.
• 20:11
  That that works and you can see it work.
• 20:13
  You just got to replicate it. So when my father advised me,
• 20:18
  which I, you know, thank God he did, but advised me to, to
• 20:23
  settle on one thing. I had to look and say what did I
• 20:26
  made money on? You know, what works, what's
• 20:28
  proven? Even though it was a minuscule
• 20:31
  scale, it did work. And so that's when I but
• 20:36
  everything I had back into Calco.
• 20:39
  And you had this, this young kid that walks into your office,
• 20:43
  he's got a Mickey Mantle card and he's, he's asking to trade,
• 20:46
  I think his grandparents stock or whatever that thing was.
• 20:50
  He sold you on the Mickey Mantle card.
• 20:52
  I think you guys went back and forth.
• 20:53
  I think you bought it for $400.00 and, and you realized it
• 20:57
  was really for market price was 375.
• 21:00
  You thought I, I need this kid, he's good.
• 21:03
  And you guys fly down for an appointment, meet with a guy to
• 21:08
  try to sell a policy, and then what happens on the way back?
• 21:14
  On the way back we experienced a lot which.
• 21:17
  By the way, you had a really good meeting.
• 21:19
  By the way, you had a great. Meeting, we had a good meeting.
• 21:21
  We got, we got the the company off the ground that we almost
• 21:26
  didn't get off the ground ourselves.
• 21:27
  So we we, we come back in this horrid storm.
• 21:31
  And Grant was just a young pilot.
• 21:34
  You know, he's a really good pilot, but he's very young.
• 21:36
  I mean, he's way younger than I was at that time.
• 21:38
  And I was young. Yeah.
• 21:40
  So we had found ourselves in the middle of this torrential storm,
• 21:47
  this rain. And I mean, it was bouncing the
• 21:50
  plate around so hard and so fierce that I I didn't know we
• 21:53
  were going to make it. So by the grace of God, we, we,
• 21:58
  we went through a look like a, a needle of a clearance in the sky
• 22:05
  that, that, that a couple clouds parted and we got through and
• 22:10
  got out of the storm together. But it was a very, I would say
• 22:17
  white knuckle experience and both of us made it through and,
• 22:22
  and I think it, it really bonded us from then on, you know, to,
• 22:26
  to what we're about to do in the future with the, the company and
• 22:28
  all. Well, so the company then that
• 22:32
  was your kind of the first big deal.
• 22:33
  I think it was a $40,000 policy. You know, it comes in the mail
• 22:36
  and, and you guys are off. This is, this is a thing and
• 22:41
  it's, and it soon comes to be that, you know, this is a, a
• 22:45
  novel idea. It's, it's a new path.
• 22:49
  But one of the things you've got to figure out, Steve, in this
• 22:52
  path is you got to get more policies to to get to be able to
• 22:57
  sell. So how did you, how did you
• 22:59
  figure that next step out? Well, at that time there was,
• 23:06
  there was these mom and pop brokers that were popping up and
• 23:10
  they were advertising, you know, to get policies in and we would,
• 23:14
  we would go to them and, and use them.
• 23:16
  And, and then there was one larger company at, at, at one
• 23:20
  time that we befriended and was able to get a large volume, you
• 23:26
  know, through this. I would, I call it back then it
• 23:29
  was a, the, the mega company that existed in that, that, that
• 23:33
  so but yeah, that's what we're looking at doing.
• 23:36
  And the first broker that we used was in Ohio.
• 23:42
  And she was just a, she didn't have, I mean she had a company,
• 23:46
  but she worked out of her house and that was probably our our
• 23:50
  first go to, to access policies through a broker.
• 23:53
  So the thing starts taken off, you start growing.
• 23:59
  I mean, it was just you and your receptionist and and Grant and
• 24:04
  some people you were kind of just piercing all together.
• 24:06
  But I mean, as it as it reads, your story reads is it happens
• 24:10
  pretty quickly. I mean, you're a young man.
• 24:14
  I mean, at that time, how old would you have been, Steve?
• 24:17
  I think I was around 47 years old when I started.
• 24:20
  And so, you know, by my early 30s is when the, the company
• 24:25
  really kicked in and started seeing growth.
• 24:28
  And, and I, I think, I think for years when this thing took off,
• 24:33
  I think we're experiencing like 9000% a year in growth.
• 24:37
  It was massive. It was hard to.
• 24:39
  It was hard to contain, hard to handle what?
• 24:41
  Was going through your mind with that type of situation.
• 24:44
  Your, your small town kid, you take an idea and it works and
• 24:49
  you're getting this incredible growth and you're becoming
• 24:53
  somebody that's in the industry that's making a splash.
• 24:58
  But the other thing that you know, that runs alongside this,
• 25:02
  and you and I were talking about this before we got on, when
• 25:05
  you're the first to do some of these things and be the
• 25:08
  innovator, it also causes friction in the industry because
• 25:12
  you're creating a, a lane that is going to affect somebody
• 25:16
  else. And you know, one of the things
• 25:18
  in this story is, is that you've got insurance companies and I
• 25:22
  didn't realize that the percentage was as high, but they
• 25:24
  count on 90% of their people lapsing their policies for one
• 25:29
  reason or the other. What you were doing, you were
• 25:33
  creating a system that didn't lapse because you had a, you
• 25:38
  were built, you were building in a system that you're actually
• 25:41
  paying out, paying somebody a little bit more for their cash
• 25:44
  render value and, and paying them less than they would get
• 25:48
  for their payout, ultimate payout.
• 25:51
  And then you, you know, you played that gap, but what it did
• 25:55
  to the insurance company was, is, is if they played that game,
• 25:58
  they were looking at 90% of these people not being around to
• 26:02
  collect. And you were closing that gap
• 26:06
  and all of a sudden you've got you making a huge splash and
• 26:12
  insurance companies not liking it.
• 26:14
  Right. So, yeah, I mean, I didn't wake
• 26:18
  up one day and say I'm going to disrupt the entire insurance
• 26:20
  industry, but that's that's that's what happened.
• 26:24
  And they at at the time, you know, because this is this was
• 26:28
  all new and they were fearful that this thing would just get
• 26:34
  out of hand volume wise and to where it would really put a dent
• 26:40
  in in the whole system. And.
• 26:43
  Well, you went after another lane too.
• 26:45
  I mean, the, the, the beginning of this viatical settlements
• 26:48
  'cause I had a, a fraternity brother that went into this and
• 26:50
  made a ton of money when he was in San Francisco.
• 26:54
  And so, yes, it did start in the AIDS, in the, the AIDS epidemic.
• 26:59
  But then as it came around, you started seeing, well, there's a
• 27:02
  65 and overcrowd and, and then you started to, to widen that
• 27:07
  lane to create more policies, to create more growth.
• 27:11
  They created even a bigger tidal wave for these insurance
• 27:15
  companies who were not planning on paying out.
• 27:18
  So when did you first realize that this was causing
• 27:26
  competitors and the insurance industry to see you as a threat?
• 27:33
  I, you know, I really didn't look at it on that angle all
• 27:38
  along. I mean, I was just, I was so
• 27:41
  busy putting this thing together and growing and we came out with
• 27:43
  a life settlement market in 1998.
• 27:47
  I'd hired Williams and Conley out of Toronto, Canada.
• 27:51
  They're the largest actuarial firm in the world to prove out
• 27:54
  this model. And we spent a year with them
• 27:56
  working on that and then rolled out the the the life settlement
• 28:01
  in 1998. And we attached it to a bottom
• 28:04
  of a commercial. We we ran the first national
• 28:06
  commercial in this industry in the history.
• 28:09
  Which I want to talk about. I want to talk about that 'cause
• 28:12
  I think that that that was big elephant ball stuff.
• 28:16
  You know, you, you, you decided that we got it.
• 28:21
  You know, we could get more business here than do they said
• 28:23
  what we could almost get to. Well, we'll figure that out.
• 28:26
  You decide you were going to do a 3 minute commercial on, on
• 28:33
  network TV and the only way you could do it was you had to buy
• 28:37
  three big markets and that was going to cost you $1,000,000.
• 28:42
  And, and everybody sits around the table and thinks, well, well
• 28:45
  I guess we can't do that. And you go in, who do you call?
• 28:47
  How do you get this done? So yeah, so I reached out to let
• 28:55
  me step back one second, but my mind said is never it, it can't
• 28:58
  be done. It's like, how do we get it
• 29:00
  done? How do we do it?
• 29:01
  What's the solution? There's a way and I, I got to
• 29:03
  tell you, Brett, I didn't have $1,000,000, so I had a lot
• 29:07
  riding on the line. But you know what, I was so
• 29:10
  perturbed at that time because I couldn't get doctors to stand
• 29:14
  behind us. They were seeing these patients
• 29:17
  that came in were terminally ill often times and you know, they
• 29:22
  thought, well, you know, they're able to pay their medical bills
• 29:25
  and all, but they didn't see that they weren't able to pay
• 29:27
  the, the rent, mortgage, food, you know, this stuff.
• 29:30
  So it, it just infuriated me. So when I made this commercial,
• 29:35
  I did it in the hospital and had a doctor staff to recommend it.
• 29:40
  That, that that's why. But so, you know, we, we were,
• 29:47
  we were running low on volume and I thought, you know, what a
• 29:51
  great way to reach out to masses here and get the policies in
• 29:54
  direct. So we did this on started out
• 29:57
  with the viaticals, which is the terminally ill side.
• 30:00
  And and then let me explain that that's that's policies that are
• 30:04
  listed as with a life expectancy of five years or less.
• 30:08
  OK, So that's how it started out.
• 30:11
  And so I called a buyer of our policies and because he had a
• 30:18
  lot of monies in escrow and he wanted more policies to buy and
• 30:22
  we didn't have them. It's not like, you know, we're
• 30:24
  manufacturing widgets or something like that.
• 30:26
  So our, our, our business relied upon our marketing efforts.
• 30:32
  So I call him and I say, look, I think I've got an answer to the
• 30:35
  problem. And I told him about the concept
• 30:39
  of doing this major commercial on national TV and prime time.
• 30:45
  And he said that sounds awesome. What's it going to cost?
• 30:50
  And I said, well, it's $1,000,000 and he's like
• 30:52
  $1,000,000. Are you kidding me?
• 30:54
  And I said no, I said I've got some policies I can put up and
• 30:58
  pledge against it, you know, but I think it's, I think it's going
• 31:02
  to work. And he goes, well, how soon do
• 31:04
  you need it? And I said like 3 days and he
• 31:06
  got come and glued. And so I said no, I just have to
• 31:11
  commit to it in three days. I said, you know, you don't have
• 31:14
  to have the money then. But so he, he, he came up with
• 31:17
  the money and we ended up producing the commercial and in
• 31:23
  the middle of the commercial, the middle of the run.
• 31:26
  So I did, I did one month in New York and one month in Las Vegas
• 31:30
  and, and Arizona, then one in, in California.
• 31:36
  And I think we were down in Vegas area, that's when the life
• 31:41
  settlement that I created came about and I didn't have another
• 31:46
  $1,000,000 to do a separate commercial.
• 31:47
  So I called the ad firm and I said, look, can you put a
• 31:51
  tagline on this thing that says if you are a 65 years or older
• 31:54
  non terminal and want to sell your policy, you can and you
• 31:59
  know call our company. So they said OK, yeah, we can do
• 32:02
  that. So when I did that, I had a
• 32:07
  massive amount of calls hit the phone banks.
• 32:10
  It it actually blew up our phone banks.
• 32:12
  And back then Oprah was on and when, you know, everybody and
• 32:15
  their mother watched Oprah. So when this ad hit on Oprah, it
• 32:19
  it jammed up the, the backup systems, the phone banks,
• 32:22
  everything just completely blacked us out.
• 32:26
  And we had such a huge response on this thing.
• 32:31
  And it wasn't necessarily just from people wanting to sell
• 32:35
  their policies. It was a lot of insurance agents
• 32:38
  that they were calling us to sign up as agents for Kelco and
• 32:42
  saying that we've got a whole book of business like this.
• 32:44
  We, we would like to, you know, send to you.
• 32:47
  And in, in within two months of coming out with that product, we
• 32:52
  had $9 billion hit our door. Good Lord.
• 32:56
  And, and we, we couldn't begin the whole industry couldn't
• 32:59
  begin to buy all this. I think the whole entire size of
• 33:02
  the attical market was 2 billion.
• 33:05
  And so my staff came to me and said, he said, Keller, we got a
• 33:10
  problem. And I said, what is the problem?
• 33:12
  And they said we've got $9 billion of policy.
• 33:15
  So we can't, we can't afford them.
• 33:16
  I said, what are we going to do? You know, this is another form
• 33:19
  of failure. And I said there's only one
• 33:23
  thing to do, it is Wall Street. And that's that's where I went
• 33:27
  next. So walk us through the Wall
• 33:30
  Street thing, because nobody had done this.
• 33:33
  No, no, nobody had. Nobody had reached out to Wall
• 33:37
  Street to. Which is brilliant, by the way.
• 33:39
  When I'm reading this, I'm thinking, wow.
• 33:40
  It's one of those things you slap yourself on the head and
• 33:42
  think, wow, OK. But you know, it was a situation
• 33:47
  where the path just led me. I, I, I didn't, I didn't
• 33:52
  necessarily lead it, but I was, I was trying to overcome these
• 33:56
  obstacles kind of like our, our phone conversations started out
• 34:01
  earlier. But exactly how are we going to
• 34:02
  get this solved? Yeah.
• 34:03
  How are we going to get this solved?
• 34:05
  But I went to went to Wall Street and I met with Lehman
• 34:09
  Brothers. They were, you know, one of the
• 34:12
  older investment banks at the in the world at the time and
• 34:17
  they're no longer in business after the meltdown of 19.
• 34:21
  What was that? 2008. 2008 I mean, yeah, so but
• 34:28
  anyway, they were alive and well, one of the largest ones
• 34:30
  back then. And I met with them and they
• 34:34
  basically said that, you know, we're we're not going to do this
• 34:38
  deal with you and and unless you have some kind of reinsurance on
• 34:42
  these policies, I say, what do you mean?
• 34:45
  They said, well, we can't just buy policies and expect and wait
• 34:48
  for somebody to die. You know, the bond holders, what
• 34:50
  I guarantee and all. So I said, well, how do I do
• 34:55
  that? And they say, well, we want you
• 34:56
  to insure the insurance. So I called Lloyd's of London at
• 35:02
  the time and had them come down to Lexington, KY, and we spent
• 35:07
  three days with Lloyd's developing his first reinsurance
• 35:13
  product that reinsured the policy.
• 35:16
  So the way this worked is if the actuaries were wrong and the
• 35:21
  person left lived two years above the time that he was
• 35:24
  supposed to expire, Louisa London would would pay the banks
• 35:28
  off, pay the interest, pay everything and take over the
• 35:30
  policies. And then they would sit and wait
• 35:33
  on the person to expire so and also get your money back.
• 35:38
  So I went back to the banks for that.
• 35:40
  And you know, what happened next was not what I intended.
• 35:46
  I was just trying to get a deal done, but the banks no longer
• 35:50
  looked at Kelco, this little company from Kentucky, as having
• 35:54
  the the asset base, the wherewithal to support the
• 35:59
  funding that we were asking for. They looked for Lloyd's and
• 36:03
  Lloyd's had deep pockets and Lloyd's extended a credit line
• 36:08
  to us. That was mind blowing to me at
• 36:11
  the time. 5 million. Dollars, wasn't it?
• 36:15
  Yeah, they, they extended a $5 billion line of credit to us.
• 36:17
  So, so then that's, that's how Calco grew so big so quick is
• 36:23
  because we wasn't basing our assets any longer or, or small,
• 36:29
  you know, $1,000,000 assets. We were looking at the $5
• 36:32
  billion line of assets. And so this took me to deal with
• 36:38
  a, a lot of different banks of Wall Street because I, I told
• 36:40
  each one, I said, you know, there's not one bank large
• 36:44
  enough to, to make a deal and the volume we're getting and
• 36:48
  it's going to take several. And it did.
• 36:52
  Well, you know, and it reads like, you know, something that
• 36:55
  you read about. It's one of these, it's, it's
• 36:59
  almost like one of those things you read like about Google or
• 37:02
  something how it just explodes. But this was a industry that is,
• 37:08
  you know, not a sexy industry, but you guys were exploding it,
• 37:13
  you know, like my family was in the funeral business, you know,
• 37:16
  but there's there's opportunities where people don't
• 37:18
  see those opportunities. But you kept taking this and
• 37:22
  getting it bigger and bigger and bigger, where you get to the
• 37:26
  point where somebody says, Hey, I want to buy you.
• 37:29
  And I think the guy was Jerry from Atlas.
• 37:31
  And. And how'd that all go Well?
• 37:38
  Let let me, let me back up one second and I'll, I'll get there.
• 37:42
  How, how, why this thing became such a ravishing the company or
• 37:49
  growing company and Wall Street. So when I was dealing with
• 37:53
  Lehman, one of the first meetings, we got back together
• 37:56
  and, and had the Louise of London's behind us.
• 37:59
  And we were in this cramped little office and there was
• 38:04
  like, you know, 6 or 8 suits in there.
• 38:07
  And I get a nudge from the director for Lehman Brothers.
• 38:13
  And he said, Steve, can I see you out in the hallway?
• 38:15
  And I said sure. And I had no idea what was going
• 38:18
  on. And, and it was definitely not
• 38:22
  protocol. So I went out there and I talked
• 38:24
  to him and he said, who's the guy sitting beside your vice
• 38:30
  president? And I said, I had no idea.
• 38:33
  I thought he was with you. And he goes, no, he's not with
• 38:36
  me. He goes, we're going to go back
• 38:37
  in here and find out what's going on.
• 38:39
  So we went down. We, we, we got back in the room,
• 38:43
  sit down. And he said, without any further
• 38:46
  ado, we're going to go around this table and we're going to
• 38:49
  introduce ourselves. So, you know, I introduced
• 38:52
  myself and my vice president introduced himself, my CFO Keith
• 38:56
  Trash, you know, with Coco. And then this guy beside him, he
• 39:00
  started laughing and closing these books up and they and that
• 39:04
  he was at a very British accent. He said, OK, gentlemen, he gigs
• 39:09
  up. He said Mike Lomax with a on
• 39:12
  capital. And so he was from another firm.
• 39:17
  I don't remember yeah, if we talked to at that time or not.
• 39:20
  But so, you know, his corporate espionage at at its best.
• 39:24
  And and I was like, wow, did this this really, you know,
• 39:27
  happened up here in this law. St.
• 39:29
  Lehman Brothers City goes on a lot, you know, but, but, but
• 39:33
  that incident, I could have not have planned any better because
• 39:37
  what that did is it created a feeding, feeding frenzy for
• 39:41
  Calco and for this deal. Everybody wanted it.
• 39:44
  And, and, and because, you know, often the human nature is you
• 39:48
  want what you can't have. And, and I think Aeon saw this
• 39:51
  happening through the Lehman Brothers wasn't going to happen
• 39:53
  through them and they wanted it. But and and and this, the same
• 39:58
  mentality started to happen all over Wall Street.
• 40:02
  And, and, and then, you know, one of the things I did early on
• 40:07
  growing up in the 80s, I grew up with the Steve Jobs with Apple
• 40:12
  and, you know, with Bill Gates, with Microsoft.
• 40:14
  And I read their blocks and they know I looked up to these guys
• 40:18
  as the pillars of entrepreneurs at the time.
• 40:21
  And one of the things Bill Gates did was he signed on competes
• 40:26
  with IBM, so he locked the hardware industry out of the
• 40:30
  software and look who won. So I thought if it works for me,
• 40:37
  it would work for me. So everywhere I went, I would
• 40:40
  slide and non compete over to whoever I was dealing with.
• 40:44
  And in two years, we had met with some 230 banks and have 80
• 40:50
  banks committed to us for funding and we raised $13
• 40:54
  billion for this product. What were you thinking?
• 40:59
  What were you thinking, Steve? I was.
• 41:02
  Because I still think you're a guy in your 30s, right?
• 41:06
  Yeah, I was. And you know, I had promised by
• 41:12
  my employees, I said, you know, help help build this thing, help
• 41:15
  help, you know, achieve the dream.
• 41:18
  And you guys were all winning. And that's, that's that's what I
• 41:22
  wanted to do. I had, you know, high
• 41:24
  aspirations, even taking the company public at some point in
• 41:26
  time, which made made a lot of sense to do that.
• 41:28
  When I had met with this, this this company that you mentioned
• 41:35
  along this way, they they had also a non compete with Calco
• 41:39
  and then they had investment bankers that were trying to
• 41:41
  raise bodies for a deal and they approached me on three different
• 41:46
  occasions to buy me out. I wouldn't even I wouldn't even
• 41:51
  listen to him. I wouldn't even hear it because,
• 41:53
  you know, I promised my employees that I was going to
• 41:55
  take this public and they were going to win.
• 41:57
  So I couldn't sell them out. And I really wasn't.
• 42:02
  I was too young at that time. And I mean you, you talk about
• 42:06
  when I'm reading your book, you talk about your this kind of
• 42:08
  just starts flashing through your mind.
• 42:10
  What am I going to do this 30 something guy selling out for
• 42:14
  three or $400 million or whatever?
• 42:17
  What what do I, what would I do now?
• 42:18
  I like doing this. This is I love, I love growing
• 42:21
  this. I want to be on Forbes and I
• 42:23
  want to, you know, have these big articles and all these other
• 42:26
  things. I thought, why would I sell it
• 42:28
  out? Plus, I think that you really
• 42:30
  felt like what I got the feeling of when I'm reading this is that
• 42:35
  I'm making an impact. I'm doing good things.
• 42:38
  I'm really affecting. You didn't care for the way that
• 42:42
  these insurance companies were paying out and this was a way
• 42:45
  that you were reshaping things more of the way they should be.
• 42:50
  And in the end, everybody was winning as they should be in a
• 42:53
  good situation or a good deal. So I could see why you thought
• 42:57
  that why? And, and I think you even said
• 43:00
  you don't have enough money to buy me out.
• 43:02
  You know you, I don't know what's this?
• 43:03
  You don't want to pay me what this company's worth in three
• 43:05
  years. You want to pay me what this
• 43:06
  company's in 10 years. So anyway, it, it pissed off
• 43:10
  Jerry and you know, Jerry basically said you didn't know
• 43:13
  better, young young guy. Just you know, you've never been
• 43:17
  up this high and you know, you could get pushed off the Cliff.
• 43:19
  Basically what happens? What's the next big thing that
• 43:25
  happens 'cause you guys are rolling?
• 43:29
  Yeah. So we were in the process of
• 43:32
  buying our largest competitor, which was owned by CNA Insurance
• 43:37
  and it was a company called the Atticus.
• 43:40
  And the Atticus owned a lot of insurance policies.
• 43:42
  And we had a contact with a French bank, Societe Generale.
• 43:49
  And they were the 4th largest bank in maybe the world at the
• 43:52
  time. I, I don't remember, but they
• 43:57
  loved Kelco, loved the products and I had a good rapport with
• 44:01
  the president of that bank in New York.
• 44:06
  And they were fully going to fund us.
• 44:09
  I mean, to, to buy this company out and, and not only that, but
• 44:13
  they extend monies to Calco and, and, and that company because I
• 44:17
  was going to keep it separate and run both companies in
• 44:20
  unison. Their company had brokers that
• 44:24
  we didn't use and they didn't want to use us and ours, our
• 44:28
  brokers didn't want to use them. So I thought, let's do it to
• 44:31
  baskin-robbins way. Let's have two different flavors
• 44:34
  and just run them both. But in doing that, I needed more
• 44:37
  capital for both companies on this acquisition.
• 44:41
  So, so cetacean around extended $800 million to me to do this
• 44:48
  transaction and that was going on.
• 44:52
  I had massive amounts of attorneys and we had Arthur
• 44:59
  Anderson at the time. I think also on that case, New
• 45:02
  York attorneys. And so that was two weeks of
• 45:07
  going through due diligence, getting that done.
• 45:10
  And you know, my, my driving force Sprint was stem back from
• 45:15
  my pole often days. I, I was a competitor and I, I
• 45:19
  wanted to be #1 it wasn't greed of money.
• 45:23
  The money was a barometer how we're doing it all so.
• 45:26
  Right, right. I never really, it never really
• 45:29
  stopped and said, wow, you know, we're doing all this or we're
• 45:32
  making this all this money or whatever.
• 45:33
  It just wasn't another day for me.
• 45:36
  Yeah, but I knew that I wanted to beat my nemesis, which was
• 45:41
  the Atticus. That was the largest out there.
• 45:43
  So if we had that, we, we would have 70 to 80% of the market.
• 45:49
  And that's where we were headed. So two weeks into that, that
• 45:57
  banker that was financing me from Societe Generale, he kept
• 46:02
  taking off on on Thursday would be the last day I would hear
• 46:07
  from you. I wouldn't hear him to him from
• 46:08
  him to Monday. So and it got to be a problem
• 46:11
  for this deal because we were under a time frame to get this
• 46:14
  thing closed. So I called him up one day and,
• 46:18
  and I said, look, I hate to be Percival with you, but you know,
• 46:24
  you're, you're like disappearing on Fridays and, and I can't see
• 46:26
  it on Monday. And I said, we got to get this
• 46:28
  deal done. You know, there's a lot of
• 46:30
  driving on this thing. And you know, what, do you mind
• 46:33
  me asking where, where are you going?
• 46:36
  And he said, well, he said he kind of laughed and he said, I,
• 46:41
  I've got to be honest with you. He goes, I've got a fiance that
• 46:44
  lost her visa here and we're meeting in Canada on the
• 46:48
  weekends. She lives in Australia now.
• 46:51
  And I said, well, that's a problem.
• 46:53
  I said, meet me in DC in two weeks and we'll we'll try to get
• 46:58
  this resolved. So he did, he met me in DC and I
• 47:05
  had contacted a woman that was the chief of staff for Tipper
• 47:09
  and Al Gore from Kentucky. And she got us in the White
• 47:14
  House. So we had we were having lunch
• 47:15
  in the White House discussing the green card for this this
• 47:18
  woman or you know, Lisa working visa.
• 47:22
  And so, yeah, we had lunch at the White House in the on on
• 47:25
  Monday. And then that coming Friday, I
• 47:30
  get a phone call 7:00 in the morning from my assistant Karen.
• 47:36
  And she says, Steve, she goes, I don't know how to tell you this,
• 47:41
  but our company is being raided, an armed raid by some 80 to 100
• 47:48
  FBI agents. And, and, and my first response
• 47:52
  was Karen, I was out till 3:00 in the morning at the time with
• 47:56
  three insurance companies and that I said, look, I, I do not
• 47:59
  need these shenanigans this time of the morning.
• 48:00
  You know this, this has got to be a joke.
• 48:03
  So Monday I'm in the White House having lunch and and Friday my
• 48:07
  office is getting raided. It's an unbelievable story.
• 48:10
  I want to take a break there because when we come back, I
• 48:12
  want to This is the beginning of your nightmare and how this all
• 48:16
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• 48:21
  nothing short of it reads like fiction, but it's a real story.
• 48:25
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• 48:28
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• 48:30
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• 48:33
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• 48:36
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• 48:48
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• 50:32
  So, Steve, this is where this gets really wild.
• 50:37
  You wake up, you get this phone call at 7:00 in the morning and
• 50:42
  it's your executive assistant and she's telling you that the
• 50:45
  place is being raided, armed raid with the FBI, and you're
• 50:51
  out of town. Walk us through this crazy
• 50:54
  nightmare. Yeah.
• 50:56
  So, you know, I didn't know what to think when I got that phone
• 51:00
  call. And, you know, the company had
• 51:01
  grown so much during this time. We we were up to 100 employees.
• 51:05
  We had 15,000 agents in this country.
• 51:07
  We had an office in France. We hired a lobbyist in state of
• 51:11
  Kentucky and got a senator to sponsor a bill that we helped
• 51:17
  draft. So we drafted the first
• 51:19
  legislation for our industry in the state.
• 51:23
  So, you know, we know this was going on.
• 51:24
  All that's running through my head about, you know, I know we
• 51:27
  didn't break the law and we wrote, we wrote it.
• 51:30
  So I, I just couldn't even imagine what was going on.
• 51:35
  And more than sitting back worrying about it, I was more
• 51:39
  concerned about getting back to Lexington and doing damage
• 51:42
  control or whatever I could do. I just felt like I needed to be
• 51:46
  there. So, and, and by the grace of
• 51:50
  God, we had our own plane at that time, but it was in the
• 51:53
  shop. So I was scurrying trying to get
• 51:56
  another flight back there as soon as I could.
• 51:59
  And there was all kinds of obstacles stopping me.
• 52:03
  There was traffic, bad traffic in the New York that there was a
• 52:08
  wreck or something that was traffic was stopped.
• 52:11
  And there was all kinds of delays I had to overcome to try
• 52:14
  to get back. And it was probably a godsend
• 52:17
  that I wasn't back sooner, to be honest with you.
• 52:20
  I don't know how it reacted to seeing all that.
• 52:23
  It was very difficult. But I did make it back on a
• 52:28
  private plane. It was some ride going back, but
• 52:32
  I was thankful that I was able to find a ride to get back.
• 52:38
  So you get back. I mean, this had to be, I mean,
• 52:44
  I'm, I'm assuming that this had to be an, just an incredible
• 52:47
  shock that you're having lunch in the White House on Monday and
• 52:52
  your place is raided on Friday. What happens next?
• 52:58
  You know it, it's a funny story. I mean, one thing I was thinking
• 53:01
  about when, when all this was going on with the White House
• 53:05
  and all these, I took a, a book of matches out of the ashtray
• 53:10
  that was laying on the table. It's stuck in my pocket as a
• 53:12
  souvenir. And I was, I was thinking this
• 53:15
  is the only thing I could think of that I did inappropriate to
• 53:18
  cause all this, you know? Kind of boxing matches, yeah,
• 53:21
  Come after my box. I'll put them back.
• 53:23
  Yeah, I'll put them back. But so, yeah, I mean, it was
• 53:27
  serious. So when I, when I hit Lexington,
• 53:30
  I met with my my assistant and she like basically threw me in
• 53:36
  the floorboard of the back seat of her car and off we went.
• 53:39
  I mean, she did not want anybody to see me.
• 53:41
  And so she smuggled me into the attorney's office.
• 53:45
  It was in a high rise across the street from Calco.
• 53:49
  And, you know, I didn't have any answers.
• 53:53
  I had as many questions as the employees did.
• 53:56
  There was nothing I can say that would have any kind of type of
• 54:01
  resolve because I hadn't a clue how this could happen or why
• 54:05
  this happened. Well, you have a couple of
• 54:09
  different things to drop into your lap.
• 54:12
  I know you, you hire a lobbyist. I think the lobbyist, it was the
• 54:18
  son of the senator and and he sets you up to go meet with the
• 54:24
  senator. What does that senator have to
• 54:27
  say to you on your visit with the senator?
• 54:31
  So, yeah, so I did have interactions with the the
• 54:37
  senator a lot. He was a very high-ranking
• 54:39
  senator. His name has been changed to for
• 54:43
  protection purposes, but he's extremely high-ranking senator.
• 54:50
  I had met with him several times after that and and I get a call
• 54:57
  one year after the raid. They they said on me for two
• 55:02
  years before they could come up with some onerous charge to
• 55:07
  charge me anything for. But one year after the raid, I
• 55:12
  was called to DC and then taken to a private room in the
• 55:15
  capital. And I was there with my CFO and
• 55:18
  one of my attorneys and the Senator's son.
• 55:21
  And it was the chief of staff for this senator's organization.
• 55:25
  And he walked in the room grinning from ear to ear like
• 55:28
  he'd won the lottery. And he said, so, Steve, have you
• 55:31
  learned your lesson yet? And I said, what lesson might
• 55:34
  that be? And he said, up here, you got to
• 55:37
  pay to play, which is the name of the book.
• 55:41
  So they wanted me to hire the senator's son.
• 55:44
  He was starting a lobbying firm at the time.
• 55:47
  And get this, there's no insurance laws federally.
• 55:50
  It's Allstate. There's there's even a McCarron
• 55:54
  Ferguson Act that states if you are the business insurance and
• 55:58
  you know, any trouble breaks out with the other, you know, with
• 56:03
  the federal government or whatever, they have to remain
• 56:05
  you back to the state court where the insurance laws are
• 56:08
  found. So there's that.
• 56:12
  But we did hire the the senator's son was paying him an
• 56:17
  exorbitant amount a month plus expenses.
• 56:21
  And you ask, you know, why are you hiring this this lobby and
• 56:25
  this federal lobbyist? You know, when your insurance
• 56:28
  laws were found in the state? And it's simply because we were
• 56:32
  trying to fight this pay to play system that we found ourselves
• 56:36
  in. So.
• 56:36
  You get a phone call and I don't know if I'm jumping ahead of you
• 56:40
  from a guy that was at this conference and he's a consultant
• 56:45
  on his, he was in the government and now is out and he says that
• 56:49
  he's got a whole lot of information that happened at
• 56:52
  this conference. It was all about trying to take
• 56:56
  down Calco. And can you shed some light on
• 57:02
  that? Yes, so I, I did get a call.
• 57:06
  Actually, I, I got tipped off from the she's like a consumer
• 57:12
  protection advocate for the industry.
• 57:15
  And she calls me up and she says, I have somebody wants to
• 57:19
  talk to you and here's his number and you're going to want
• 57:22
  to talk to me calling now. I was like, this is strange, but
• 57:26
  everything was strange at that point.
• 57:27
  So I was grasping to anything I could find, you know, answers
• 57:34
  what's happening, who's behind this?
• 57:36
  I had had no clue for like 6 months.
• 57:39
  We had no clue what was going on and so this I called this guy
• 57:45
  and he proceeds to tell me that he is a retired attorney, had
• 57:51
  worked for the Department of Texas White Collar Fraud
• 57:55
  Division, and he had since started his own practice.
• 58:00
  He'd moved from the Texas Department and he said I would
• 58:06
  have called him. It is very Texas Southern drawl,
• 58:10
  he said. So Steve Keller, he goes, you
• 58:15
  must have a lot of questions. You can say that.
• 58:19
  And he said, I have all your answers.
• 58:22
  And he said for $10,000 you can have a book tomorrow.
• 58:26
  It has all this laid out all, all the answers to to every
• 58:30
  question you have. And so I did and I said it to
• 58:36
  him and, and I got the book the next day, called him back and I
• 58:43
  said, this is incredible. This this was a manual about 3
• 58:46
  or 4 inches thick. And it looked like a hit list
• 58:50
  for our industry. It had numerous companies in
• 58:52
  there, all the brokers, each company use pictures of Calco's
• 58:57
  building, everything about our company, our owners.
• 59:01
  So I called him back and I said, no, I don't even know what to
• 59:04
  make of all this. So what, what's the deal?
• 59:06
  And I said, how, how did you come about this?
• 59:09
  How do you know about this? And he said, well, he said there
• 59:14
  was 2 meetings held. There was one meeting with 50
• 59:17
  insurance companies got together to create this scheme to
• 59:21
  eradicate your industry and particularly you.
• 59:25
  And, and then there was another meeting.
• 59:28
  He said there was another meeting and several weeks later
• 59:31
  to cover up the first meeting with some 50 Postal Service
• 59:35
  workers, one from each state. And they, they met in this
• 59:40
  insurance company's headquarters and they sold them a bill of
• 59:43
  goods that we're in this giant conspiracy with all these
• 59:46
  thousands of brokers, you know, which is just ludicrous to even
• 59:49
  think about. But anyway, these people bought
• 59:55
  it, either bought it or was told to do that or whatever, but.
• 1:00:01
  Anyway, that's, that's how this got started.
• 1:00:02
  Then the insurance companies drafted the indictments, not the
• 1:00:06
  federal government. So the the agents are being the
• 1:00:10
  the attorneys for the insurance companies drafted it, gave it to
• 1:00:12
  the Postal Service and and off they off they.
• 1:00:16
  Went so how was the company after after that raid and the
• 1:00:20
  and the time period after that? How?
• 1:00:24
  Because I had that happen to my company.
• 1:00:25
  How did your company survive those days and weeks and months
• 1:00:29
  after that? It was a it was extremely
• 1:00:33
  difficult and I still had hope in the justice system and they
• 1:00:38
  all, I was like most Americans out here that have not gone
• 1:00:41
  through this. I believed in the government and
• 1:00:44
  I believed in the Justice Department.
• 1:00:46
  I believe that justice would, would rain the day.
• 1:00:50
  And I, I kept employees on as as much as I could, which was, you
• 1:00:55
  know, very costly because I, I thought at a point in time that
• 1:00:59
  we're going to get this thing turned over.
• 1:01:00
  And they can see that we didn't break the law.
• 1:01:02
  And things were going to go back to the way the war, which did
• 1:01:06
  not play out that way. But we had amassed a huge amount
• 1:01:12
  of insurance policies that we owned.
• 1:01:15
  And thank God that we had those policies because we were able to
• 1:01:18
  sell those back in the marketplace and generate cash
• 1:01:21
  to, you know, pay the freight for, for a while.
• 1:01:25
  And that's the way we did it. So when the indictment came down
• 1:01:29
  and then I mean, it was, you know, as they always are, that
• 1:01:34
  there was, you know, huge accusations, things that
• 1:01:39
  shocking to you and all the other things.
• 1:01:41
  And you you already know how this started with this
• 1:01:45
  information that you had. Did you as as people who listen
• 1:01:49
  to this show, I sound like a broken record, but you know of
• 1:01:52
  people who get indicted 97% or more plea you didn't what right?
• 1:02:00
  What were you what were you thinking Steve at that time?
• 1:02:03
  Well. Again, I, I knew we didn't break
• 1:02:05
  the, the laws that we wrote and there wasn't any insurance laws
• 1:02:08
  broken. There was no complaints on Coco.
• 1:02:10
  There's nothing. So, and we had a ratings from
• 1:02:15
  standards and Poor's and Moody's from, you know, Wall Street.
• 1:02:18
  I mean, they, they've been through the entire company for
• 1:02:20
  months and they checked everything about the company and
• 1:02:24
  all of our practices and all and there, there's nothing there.
• 1:02:28
  Highly regulated business highly.
• 1:02:30
  Regulated and, you know, there were some Gray areas.
• 1:02:34
  I mean, we explored them and we exploited the, the, the Gray
• 1:02:39
  areas and just like the rest of the industry did and, and there
• 1:02:41
  was different things we would try on this particular case, the
• 1:02:47
  government made a point of policies we bought that were
• 1:02:50
  less than two years old. The contestable policies we'd,
• 1:02:56
  we got in that market because we wanted to be the Walmart of this
• 1:03:00
  industry. We wanted to buy everything that
• 1:03:03
  the brokers were submitting to us.
• 1:03:06
  And because you know what, what, what would happen if you didn't?
• 1:03:09
  If everybody else is buying those types of policies, you're
• 1:03:12
  not the brokers are going to go to them, you're going to lose
• 1:03:14
  business. So you, you had to be
• 1:03:18
  accommodating for all, all different types of the, the
• 1:03:21
  policies that were tender down the marketplace at that time.
• 1:03:25
  And this was a dead loser for us.
• 1:03:27
  This the contestability market. We lost a lot of money.
• 1:03:30
  We had to pay back investors because the insurance companies
• 1:03:33
  did contest those policies. But it was a, it was a, it was a
• 1:03:37
  loophole basically. And we stopped it two years
• 1:03:42
  before the government even came to us because we honestly had so
• 1:03:46
  much, we had so much volume coming from the last settlement
• 1:03:49
  industry. We strictly focused on that.
• 1:03:53
  I mean, even in viatical market, we shut down, we shut down
• 1:03:56
  everything. We just couldn't do it all and
• 1:03:59
  we decided to focus on the senior market.
• 1:04:02
  So you end up, I know you're the attorney that you'd had for a
• 1:04:07
  long time. He, he allows you guys to plead
• 1:04:11
  not guilty and then just tells you, hey, I'm out after you've
• 1:04:14
  paid their firm over $1,000,000 and you get a new attorney.
• 1:04:20
  What did you think as as you were getting ready to prepare
• 1:04:23
  for a trial against the federal government?
• 1:04:25
  Well, it was, it was stressful trying to get the team together
• 1:04:29
  because we had to have five attorneys and they indicted two
• 1:04:32
  companies and three officers. So each one had to have their
• 1:04:36
  own attorney and it was difficult to find because we
• 1:04:40
  were running out of money at that time.
• 1:04:42
  So that that's that was the disconnect from my priority.
• 1:04:47
  Yeah, it's like Chapter 4, you know in in the book of how you,
• 1:04:50
  how you take over control and and squash somebody before you
• 1:04:56
  take him to trial. Right, right.
• 1:04:58
  So, you know, and it was difficult to find somebody that
• 1:05:03
  would take it on a just a cost basis and not, you know, by the
• 1:05:08
  hour. And that was a disconnect I had
• 1:05:10
  with my prior attorney because he would not give me that.
• 1:05:13
  So, and we couldn't, we couldn't just pay him an open book
• 1:05:19
  because, you know, we were no longer making money.
• 1:05:21
  Well, as the trial, as you get into the trial, because it was a
• 1:05:24
  long trial, do you think you had a shot?
• 1:05:27
  The trial going into it was a little strange.
• 1:05:32
  And I had these very high-powered, high paid
• 1:05:36
  attorneys and I, I gave them more credit than, than I should
• 1:05:40
  have at the time. At times I was 2020.
• 1:05:42
  And you know, here's the thing on this case.
• 1:05:47
  This was an insurance case and typically doesn't go to federal
• 1:05:52
  jurisdiction. So the attorneys didn't know
• 1:05:55
  what they were looking at. The prosecutors, they had to
• 1:05:58
  hire somebody from the insurance department to even interpret
• 1:06:01
  what they were looking at. So none of this should have been
• 1:06:03
  going on in, in, in that space. But you know, my, my attorneys,
• 1:06:08
  I, I don't know, I have no explanations for them to this
• 1:06:11
  day. But you know, looking back, if I
• 1:06:15
  had to do it over again, I would have called every bank I had in
• 1:06:18
  Wall Street. I would have called definitely
• 1:06:21
  these insurance companies and spent specifically, we had all
• 1:06:25
  the information on who did this and, and why.
• 1:06:27
  I would have brought all them in.
• 1:06:28
  I would have, you know, deposed them and do whatever I could
• 1:06:32
  have. I mean it would have been
• 1:06:34
  totally different game and none of that happened and the
• 1:06:38
  attorneys only called 3 defendants 1 was credible.
• 1:06:43
  It was the ex insurance commissioner of Kentucky, deputy
• 1:06:49
  insurance commissioner of Kentucky and he was our in house
• 1:06:53
  anti fraud person and they called another lady that worked
• 1:06:57
  on his floor and and the third person they called was the
• 1:07:00
  maintenance man. So it was absolutely a joke.
• 1:07:07
  And you know, we had an outside attorney firm in Pittsburgh that
• 1:07:10
  handled all of our stuff, advised this, even handled the
• 1:07:13
  transactions. And, you know, they never called
• 1:07:15
  him. There's just so much that they
• 1:07:18
  could have done, I think. And here's the other thing, I
• 1:07:20
  think, Steve, is that you get into a complicated case because
• 1:07:27
  they can make it complicated. I think there were 12 million
• 1:07:29
  documents in our case. So the the the discovery of
• 1:07:32
  trying to read through all this stuff was just, I don't know how
• 1:07:35
  you do it. But the problem with the with
• 1:07:40
  the situation of coming in with jurors you were talking about,
• 1:07:46
  yeah, the US attorney doesn't know anything about insurance.
• 1:07:50
  I think at one point they said to Arturo, what if everybody
• 1:07:52
  dies on one day? Well, if everybody dies on one
• 1:07:54
  day, then something really bad happened and, and actuarially
• 1:07:58
  that didn't work. So that's not possible.
• 1:08:00
  But that, that they can come at it from that then you don't have
• 1:08:02
  enough reserves. So there's they can go
• 1:08:05
  irrational and it doesn't make any difference because they're
• 1:08:07
  not in that industry. They don't even talk.
• 1:08:09
  It doesn't make any difference. So you've got the you've got the
• 1:08:12
  prosecutors that don't understand it.
• 1:08:14
  I'm not sure that the attorneys totally get it, but the jurors
• 1:08:18
  definitely don't. So what they see is a person who
• 1:08:21
  makes a lot of money, flies around, lives in big houses, has
• 1:08:26
  vacation homes, neat. Is that then back that in to
• 1:08:32
  there's something that had to have been wrong because all this
• 1:08:35
  other stuff's really confusing. The easy stuff is is the person
• 1:08:38
  was successful and and they can make a villain out of somebody
• 1:08:42
  by just being successful. And that's an unfortunate part
• 1:08:46
  of you could almost, if you go to trial, go on murder because
• 1:08:53
  you only have to prove 11. Count.
• 1:08:55
  And say, OK, did he or did he? Did he not murder that person?
• 1:09:00
  And you can. Bring in reasonable doubt.
• 1:09:02
  You can bring all that. You got 48 counts.
• 1:09:05
  They can believe that. Hey, you know what?
• 1:09:07
  Steve's a good guy, but he had to do something wrong.
• 1:09:09
  They wouldn't be here. You know, this is the United
• 1:09:11
  States of America. They wouldn't bring him here
• 1:09:12
  unless he did something. We'll just get him on Tier 3
• 1:09:14
  counts. Well, two or three counts can be
• 1:09:15
  30-40 years because those count at 1020 years of time.
• 1:09:20
  So I think that's one of the things that's really gets to be
• 1:09:22
  very confusing when you enter a courtroom and daunting and
• 1:09:29
  overwhelmingness is that, yes, United States of America versus
• 1:09:33
  Your Name is very overwhelming in itself.
• 1:09:38
  But they can complicate a case in so many different ways
• 1:09:43
  without even bringing up the actual evidence and facts of the
• 1:09:45
  case. And that's where, you know, our
• 1:09:48
  system's just so broken. Because I was telling you before
• 1:09:52
  we got on, a lot of people talk about justice.
• 1:09:57
  And I've had a very successful defense attorney on here a few
• 1:10:03
  weeks ago. He's won some big cases over the
• 1:10:06
  course of his 40 years. And he said that's all bullshit,
• 1:10:10
  Brent. He said the only way justice
• 1:10:13
  happens and it's almost, you know, taking a lottery ticket is
• 1:10:17
  if you get a fair judge. He said then you got a shot at
• 1:10:21
  justice. Otherwise, it's all stacked.
• 1:10:25
  It is and and that's what you were going up against walking
• 1:10:29
  into that courtroom. Yeah, You know, I had a meeting
• 1:10:32
  with the high-ranking senator in my office.
• 1:10:36
  They actually came to the Coco after the raid, which was not
• 1:10:42
  taken well with his staff. But there he was.
• 1:10:44
  He was sitting across my desk. He's third highest ranking
• 1:10:48
  officer in the United States in the world.
• 1:10:51
  And and he he said, you know, we know where their problem.
• 1:10:55
  We don't know what to do about it.
• 1:10:56
  And I said I do. I said, did you think that our
• 1:11:01
  forefathers ever set out to have an incentivized law enforcement?
• 1:11:06
  And he said, what do you mean? I said it starts with the lowest
• 1:11:09
  run all the way up. You got local cops end of the
• 1:11:12
  month trying to hit quotas for speeding tickets.
• 1:11:15
  And I said, you get up to the federal level and I said, you
• 1:11:18
  guys give them points, you give them monies for forfeitures,
• 1:11:22
  convictions, you give them promotions.
• 1:11:25
  I said, you're, you're, you're feeding on this system.
• 1:11:27
  And they get a percent of the monies that they take from these
• 1:11:29
  companies and the Americans. And then what did, what did they
• 1:11:33
  do with that money? They, they, they hire more
• 1:11:36
  prosecutors. They hire more people to go
• 1:11:37
  after more people. It just feeds, you know, we got
• 1:11:40
  the greatest system in the world.
• 1:11:42
  It's just broken. It's corrupted and it needs to
• 1:11:45
  be. It needs to be cleansed it it
• 1:11:47
  needs. Well, I mean, there's so many
• 1:11:48
  things that could just be an easy check box to fix.
• 1:11:51
  FBI interviews? Somebody record it.
• 1:11:55
  Record it. Yeah.
• 1:11:57
  The three O 2's, they write it down.
• 1:11:59
  And so that can end up to be a charge all on its own.
• 1:12:01
  They could just say you lied to the FBI.
• 1:12:03
  Well, there's nothing to back that up because they don't
• 1:12:05
  record it. If if you just mandated that
• 1:12:07
  their interview, the three O 2 to be recorded, that could
• 1:12:10
  change a lot of things too, because both sides have to
• 1:12:12
  really pay a lot of better attention than somebody just
• 1:12:15
  writing it down. Why don't they?
• 1:12:16
  Why don't they record it? Well, you tell me.
• 1:12:19
  There's certainly ways to record conversations, that's for sure,
• 1:12:22
  because they know how to wire stuff and everything else.
• 1:12:25
  But there's just so many different thing, Steve, that you
• 1:12:27
  could, you could pick and choose and, and they would be easy
• 1:12:31
  fixes, but for whatever reason, those easy ones don't get fixed
• 1:12:36
  either. So Steve, we you get to the end,
• 1:12:41
  the jury comes back out, you stand up and what's the verdict?
• 1:12:49
  The verdict was guilty across the board.
• 1:12:51
  I mean 11 count was exactly like the other count.
• 1:12:56
  So if you got convicted of 1, you got to convict the ball.
• 1:12:58
  I stack them, yeah. So that was it.
• 1:13:02
  And then so then, you know, then the the next step is the
• 1:13:07
  arraignment. And that one was it was just
• 1:13:14
  unbelievable. But you know, even getting
• 1:13:17
  sentenced at that time, I still thought felt like we were going
• 1:13:21
  to prevail on appeal or whatever.
• 1:13:25
  But the the sentencing was horrendous.
• 1:13:28
  I mean they were giving me 14 years and my Vice President, I
• 1:13:35
  think he is getting 12 and then the CFO somewhere around 6 or 7.
• 1:13:40
  You walk out of there, you go home with your wife, You've got,
• 1:13:43
  I think, two kids. Yeah, two small kids.
• 1:13:48
  Well, I mean, that's part. Of this is part of the that you
• 1:13:51
  become somebody that all of it crosses everybody's mind when
• 1:13:56
  you get into these type of situations.
• 1:13:57
  But you decided that you were going to become a fugitive.
• 1:14:03
  But how did that arrive to you? My mindset changed during the
• 1:14:10
  middle of my trial as far as losing hope and knowing that the
• 1:14:15
  cards were stacked against this. We were in recess at my office,
• 1:14:20
  this whole entourage of people, attorneys and our family and
• 1:14:25
  whatnot. So we would go to lunch in my
• 1:14:26
  office and then walk back to the courthouse.
• 1:14:29
  And on our way back on this particular day, we were stopped
• 1:14:33
  in our tracks with this motor brigade and that we had we saw
• 1:14:38
  people on the steps of the courthouse with the the ear
• 1:14:41
  pieces in Secret Service, you know, no doubt black suits, no
• 1:14:46
  deal. And and the attorney general at
• 1:14:49
  the time goes in to speak to our judge and comes out and they
• 1:14:53
  drive away. And after that, the demeanor of
• 1:14:57
  the judge dramatically changed. There was no consideration for
• 1:15:02
  anything the attorneys would bring up.
• 1:15:04
  And I pretty much knew the fix was the end of that time.
• 1:15:09
  And, you know, knowing where this came from, I knew there was
• 1:15:12
  a lot of money behind it. And, you know, we're we're in in
• 1:15:17
  the middle of the the pay to play.
• 1:15:19
  And so I think that meeting would flashback from time to
• 1:15:27
  time with me when I was out and having been sentenced and there
• 1:15:33
  was no body at this time. And then, you know, the
• 1:15:37
  realization that everything we tried had had not going well or
• 1:15:42
  not going at all. So it was a futile effort to
• 1:15:47
  think that anything else was going to work at this point, so.
• 1:15:53
  How does how does someone figure out how to leave the country?
• 1:15:58
  You are a convicted felon. I had hired a Ghost Rider before
• 1:16:07
  the raid and he was there to write a financial book that I
• 1:16:11
  was going to put my name on and use it for marketing purposes.
• 1:16:15
  And when the raid hit, I told him I said, no longer need a
• 1:16:21
  financial book. I need you to run around and
• 1:16:24
  start interviewing all my employees, you know, and, and
• 1:16:26
  let's, let's create another book and let's document this before
• 1:16:30
  we lose sight of it. So that's what I did and I had
• 1:16:34
  him run around without me and interview everybody you know
• 1:16:37
  about the company and about what's going on and the raid and
• 1:16:40
  everything. Later I used all those notes to
• 1:16:44
  write my book pay to Play. But in doing this, I became good
• 1:16:50
  friends with this guy and we had left my family had left
• 1:16:56
  Lexington, KY. I took my, my ex-wife and two
• 1:16:59
  kids back to near her, her family because I knew if this
• 1:17:04
  did go well, she needed support and she would have it there to
• 1:17:08
  handle, take care of the kids and all.
• 1:17:11
  So we're out in this, this living in this small cabin.
• 1:17:17
  We, we went through my 12,000 square foot house in Lexington
• 1:17:20
  to like a 1400 foot square foot house in the, in Michigan, but
• 1:17:24
  it was out in the middle of a cornfield.
• 1:17:25
  There was it was totally isolation, which was a good
• 1:17:29
  thing at that time. But so I had met the ghost Rider
• 1:17:36
  there and we were sitting around a campfire one night and he
• 1:17:41
  said, look, if you ever want to leave the country or disappear,
• 1:17:46
  I've got a guy that I have Co written a book with, they can
• 1:17:51
  make make this happen. And I said, you know, I said
• 1:17:54
  that's the furthest thing from my mind.
• 1:17:56
  I said, I don't, I don't want to do that.
• 1:17:57
  I don't even want to think about it, you know?
• 1:17:59
  And I just shoved it away. Wasn't even a thought.
• 1:18:04
  So like 2 weeks later after that conversation I get a call from
• 1:18:08
  my lead attorney who sounded like he was coming off a three
• 1:18:11
  day drunk. He didn't even say hi or
• 1:18:14
  anything to me. He just, I answered the phone.
• 1:18:16
  He goes in a very gruff voice. He says my greatest nightmare is
• 1:18:24
  now a reality. They want to lock you up.
• 1:18:28
  And I said, well, how can this happen?
• 1:18:29
  And he said, I don't know. He just hung up.
• 1:18:31
  So the same feeling that I felt when I saw the attorney general
• 1:18:38
  approach our judge going walking back from Calco, you know, that
• 1:18:42
  the heart dropped just down to the feet and almost faint
• 1:18:46
  feeling came about. And I, I thought about Ron, the,
• 1:18:53
  the, the, the ghost Rider. And I thought about what he said
• 1:18:56
  and, you know, it started becoming a possibility for me.
• 1:19:01
  You know, I was facing 14 years. I was not going to be a father
• 1:19:04
  to my kids. And my, my son was five years
• 1:19:08
  old. My daughter was 2 at the time.
• 1:19:10
  And I'd really weighed that option at that time.
• 1:19:17
  And I had an out. And it was the only out that I,
• 1:19:21
  I had and not having due process or, you know, trying every
• 1:19:28
  appeal that got denied. It was my only option at that
• 1:19:34
  time. I felt.
• 1:19:35
  And so I talked to my wife about it and I said, look, you know,
• 1:19:41
  I've been exposed to this option and here it is.
• 1:19:45
  And you know, what do you think? And she goes, it's a big move.
• 1:19:52
  And she goes, but I don't know if we have any other option.
• 1:19:56
  And so after that, you know, there was not an easy answer to
• 1:20:01
  this whole deal. We met with our families at that
• 1:20:05
  cabin and we, we told them what we're going to do, you know,
• 1:20:10
  what we're thinking about doing and what, what was their
• 1:20:12
  response? And they all concurred it, it
• 1:20:16
  was probably their only option at that time.
• 1:20:19
  And they were, you know, they were with us if we wanted to do
• 1:20:24
  that. And it was a hard beating.
• 1:20:27
  I mean, it was like, you know, you're leaving your entire
• 1:20:32
  family forever maybe. And then you don't know when
• 1:20:35
  you're going to see him, if you're ever going to see him
• 1:20:36
  again. So he was so, so almost like a
• 1:20:41
  funeral, you know, with this decision that night.
• 1:20:45
  And but we, we chose to do this. And after that we started
• 1:20:50
  making, started making means to to securing this out.
• 1:20:58
  When you get, I mean, I know in the book you got you and your
• 1:21:03
  wife and the kids are taking with her parents to the to the
• 1:21:07
  private plan and there's a you think there's a hiccup because
• 1:21:11
  the guy who made the arrangements, they said, you
• 1:21:13
  know, where is he? And he said, well, he's, he said
• 1:21:15
  he's not going to make he's going to meet us down there,
• 1:21:17
  right. You thought that that was going
• 1:21:18
  to change the whole thing, that maybe this was a hurdle too big.
• 1:21:25
  And you whipped out your Mickey Mantle card and said we really
• 1:21:30
  need to take off now. And I guess the guy just saw it
• 1:21:35
  in your eyes and he took that card, put it in his pocket, and
• 1:21:42
  you guys flew away. Yeah, yeah, that's, that's
• 1:21:48
  exactly what happened. So and, you know, we showed up
• 1:21:51
  to the airport. I didn't necessarily want the
• 1:21:54
  halls to take us there, but they they insisted.
• 1:21:57
  And under the circumstances, how was I going to to deny that?
• 1:22:00
  You know, but there was a heartbreak departure and, you
• 1:22:06
  know, unusual tears for just a a trip that, you know, most people
• 1:22:13
  would come back and into pilots. I don't know if they really
• 1:22:19
  noticed that or not, but if they had, if they probably would have
• 1:22:22
  thinking or thought something that was peculiar about it.
• 1:22:26
  Yeah. But, and I know on the way down,
• 1:22:29
  Steve, you had you freaked out because they, they, they
• 1:22:33
  refueled earlier than they were supposed to.
• 1:22:36
  Yeah. You're scanning the place for
• 1:22:38
  cars that look like they're unmarked cars and it it doesn't
• 1:22:41
  end up being that. And you finally make it down to
• 1:22:43
  Panama and tell us what happens in your life now with that when
• 1:22:48
  you're in Panama. Well, I had no idea how did you
• 1:22:55
  how was go to make it. Like what?
• 1:22:57
  What is it? How does a fugitive have money
• 1:22:59
  to do whatever you need to do? We had amassed some cash along
• 1:23:06
  this way. I don't remember how, but we
• 1:23:09
  ended up with $300,000 to take with us in cash.
• 1:23:13
  I had that stuffed in diapers and kids toys and mostly there's
• 1:23:18
  stuff to to take with us. So, and we were trying to get a
• 1:23:22
  large tax refund check because we paid a lot of taxes and over
• 1:23:26
  the years in Calco and we had a large refund check coming back
• 1:23:32
  because we were losing money at the time.
• 1:23:34
  So when we filed our taxes, they were rebating us the monies we
• 1:23:37
  paid. And so we tried to get that out
• 1:23:41
  of the country and the, the, the feds had intercepted it.
• 1:23:46
  And so we were left with the $300,000 cash, which you know,
• 1:23:51
  back in that day was enough to survive on for a little while,
• 1:23:56
  but not, not not long term. I mean, I had to do something
• 1:24:00
  so, and so, you know, I, I tried, I had to try to figure
• 1:24:04
  out what I was going to do there, how I was going to
• 1:24:06
  reinvent myself. And I got to tell you without
• 1:24:11
  having a history, a personal work history, anything and going
• 1:24:15
  out and trying to get stuff done scratch, you can forget it.
• 1:24:19
  So you know, people would ask, you know, who are you?
• 1:24:21
  You know, what have you done? What's your background?
• 1:24:23
  And you can't tell them. And you're, you're using an
• 1:24:27
  alias name. And so it just wasn't working.
• 1:24:31
  And, you know, when we first went to Panama, it was kind of
• 1:24:34
  funny because we didn't have a car.
• 1:24:37
  We didn't know anything about the country.
• 1:24:40
  We had went to Cancun at first, Cancun, Mexico, and stayed there
• 1:24:46
  with this guy. That turned out to be something
• 1:24:48
  other than what he purported to help us leave.
• 1:24:52
  And so we were escaping him and we went to Panama, which was not
• 1:24:58
  my first choice. We, we had had, we got that
• 1:25:00
  large check, we were going to Brazil, but we ended up in
• 1:25:04
  Panama and there was no preparation for this thing.
• 1:25:09
  We were winging it as we went. We were, I, I, I tell people I
• 1:25:13
  was a terrible criminal. So I just, I really failed at
• 1:25:18
  that. I was a great CEO, but I, I, I
• 1:25:20
  was a terrible criminal, right? And I think I should be proud of
• 1:25:23
  that though. But yes, I would.
• 1:25:26
  So when we went to Panama, there was this little carnival is on
• 1:25:32
  top of this parking structure and they had a Ferris wheel
• 1:25:35
  there. And so we actually jumped on
• 1:25:38
  this Ferris wheel with the kids, which kids loved it.
• 1:25:41
  But I was really excited when we would stop at on top because we
• 1:25:46
  could see around the territory and see what the good part of
• 1:25:48
  tennis were and what what was bad in Panama, where to stay
• 1:25:52
  away from because some parts were very Slummish and the other
• 1:25:56
  parts were very ritzy. So we knew what parts did not
• 1:26:02
  walk to or stay away from. And we use that as a barometer
• 1:26:06
  of where to go to find a hotel. So but anyway, I was there for a
• 1:26:14
  little while. I had explored certain
• 1:26:17
  businesses there. One was in the teak industry and
• 1:26:23
  there was some stuff happened to this company that I was, I had
• 1:26:27
  befriended they, they had a helicopter wreck and they were
• 1:26:32
  being sued by Americans that were part of the helicopter
• 1:26:36
  wreck. And it was just stuff happening
• 1:26:38
  there that I couldn't be around having my background.
• 1:26:42
  So one day I went to buy ex-wife and I said, look, I, I, I can't,
• 1:26:48
  I can't do this on my own anymore.
• 1:26:50
  I got to get some help and she goes, what are you going to do?
• 1:26:54
  I said, I'm going to go to an attorney and just lay it on the
• 1:26:58
  line and see, you know, if I can get something going.
• 1:27:02
  So I ended up going to this attorney that was a referral
• 1:27:07
  from the the teak industry guy that I had befriended.
• 1:27:11
  And it just so happened this guy's dad was a federal judge
• 1:27:16
  there, I guess in that in that country.
• 1:27:18
  And so I went and then just told him the whole story and I got
• 1:27:25
  done and he's shook my hand. He said didn't get back in touch
• 1:27:29
  with me. I went back to my ex-wife and
• 1:27:32
  she said that how did it go? I said he didn't believe a damn
• 1:27:37
  thing I said. So I went back with my ex-wife
• 1:27:45
  and the two kids the next day in his office and he came in and it
• 1:27:49
  looked like he'd seen a ghost. He just backpedaled his frozen
• 1:27:52
  his tracks and he said, gringo, you are telling the truth.
• 1:27:56
  I said, Yep, it's it's all true. So luckily this guy took me in.
• 1:28:04
  He set up corporations for us to put everything in to keep
• 1:28:07
  everything out of our names and and really helped us get housing
• 1:28:10
  there. We got an apartment and he had
• 1:28:13
  two kids the same age as our kids.
• 1:28:15
  So he would even take us on family outings with him because
• 1:28:18
  we had nowhere, nowhere, no idea where to go.
• 1:28:21
  So it was a great fit for us and I ended up working for his firm.
• 1:28:27
  I was the business consultant guru guy for him.
• 1:28:32
  I would figured out deals it would brought to him, you know,
• 1:28:34
  to from local people there to to do to get into.
• 1:28:38
  And we had a lot going on and it was, you know, we're making the
• 1:28:43
  most of it still homesick for our family and, and missing our,
• 1:28:47
  our family and, and just trying to make the best of it for the
• 1:28:50
  kids at the time. How long did it last?
• 1:28:57
  It it only lasted a total of about six months before they
• 1:29:01
  they got me so. That's not very long.
• 1:29:05
  No, it's really not. Can you lead us through how it
• 1:29:08
  happened? Yeah, so I had enrolled my son,
• 1:29:15
  who was five years old at the time, into a karate class at his
• 1:29:19
  International School. And so they had a really nice
• 1:29:23
  school there. And on this particular day, my
• 1:29:28
  ex-wife got deathly ill and she had called the office where I
• 1:29:33
  was working then by attorney, friend and boss, I guess
• 1:29:39
  Rodrigo. He took me back home to see
• 1:29:42
  about her and dropped me off and and when I approached her, she
• 1:29:47
  looked definitely ill. And I said, what's wrong is she
• 1:29:50
  had the flu or something. I don't something bad.
• 1:29:52
  But she said, look, we're supposed to take coal to the
• 1:29:55
  karate class that there's no way I can do it.
• 1:29:58
  Will you taking and I made a point not to drive there because
• 1:30:02
  I didn't want a small traffic infraction to bring down the
• 1:30:05
  house. And and so I guess my better
• 1:30:11
  wishes, I agreed to do it and to take him to his to his karate
• 1:30:15
  class. So we did.
• 1:30:17
  And I tell people that the greatest invention for me is GPS
• 1:30:21
  because I wouldn't get lost in a paper sack.
• 1:30:24
  So I used to hate Rd. maps. And so this was before GPS
• 1:30:31
  though. And so off I went and I went to
• 1:30:34
  the karate class with them loading back up in the car and
• 1:30:39
  went out of this place and took a wrong turn.
• 1:30:43
  And so I will back around to the front of the building
• 1:30:48
  eventually. And I got pulled over by a local
• 1:30:52
  policeman that was on a motorcycle.
• 1:30:55
  And it's, it was typical back then.
• 1:30:57
  I don't know if they still do it or not, but they had AK47
• 1:31:01
  strapped to their back and which was intimidating for anybody, I
• 1:31:07
  guess, mostly Americans, but definitely made.
• 1:31:11
  So the guy pulled me over and I thought there was something
• 1:31:14
  wrong with the car. I thought I made the wrong turn.
• 1:31:17
  And I knew very little Spanish at that time.
• 1:31:22
  And he was of course talking in his Navy language.
• 1:31:26
  And I said no ABBA Espanol. And he motioned for me to pull
• 1:31:30
  over into this giant parking lot that looked like it at one time
• 1:31:35
  it had been a parking lot for like a Walmart or some big store
• 1:31:38
  that had been torn down. And so I pulled in there and
• 1:31:43
  these cars started coming in from nowhere just in 1/2 moon
• 1:31:47
  shaped around the car. And when they would, they would
• 1:31:50
  come to a screeching halt. They would throw their doors
• 1:31:53
  open and they would lay their guns over top of the door and
• 1:31:58
  that there must have been some 30 cars there and it would then
• 1:32:02
  have me at gunpoint at that time.
• 1:32:05
  With coal. Yeah, with my son.
• 1:32:08
  Yeah, wow. What were you?
• 1:32:12
  What? What were the thoughts going
• 1:32:13
  through your head then? You know, I, I don't know, I
• 1:32:21
  mean, looking back, I, I had this incredible amount of
• 1:32:24
  strength at that time because I think if I've been by myself, I
• 1:32:28
  don't know what I would have done.
• 1:32:29
  I would probably just checked out.
• 1:32:30
  But because I had my son there, I think I had this, this
• 1:32:36
  fatherly instinct of being strong for him and, and trying
• 1:32:40
  to get through this and, and not really showing him that I was
• 1:32:45
  nervous or scared, you know, which I was.
• 1:32:48
  And so, you know, and he, he asked me, he said daddy said,
• 1:32:54
  what's going on? And I said, well, it's not good,
• 1:32:57
  son, I said, but you'll have to. You'll talk to your mom later
• 1:33:00
  and she'll explain everything to you.
• 1:33:01
  Right now, I'll just need you to, you know, stay by my side.
• 1:33:04
  And if anybody asks you to get out of the car, tell them you're
• 1:33:06
  good where you are. And I said, do not leave me.
• 1:33:10
  And so he said, he said, OK, daddy, he said, I will.
• 1:33:15
  And so we sat there for a long time and finally these guys came
• 1:33:20
  up to the car with pictures of holding them up of me.
• 1:33:25
  And it was a former picture of me.
• 1:33:28
  I'd grown out of goatee and I, I wasn't wearing glasses at the
• 1:33:31
  time. And I looked at this guy that
• 1:33:35
  they were reflecting back at, you know, at, at me asking if it
• 1:33:38
  was me. I was, you know, I was looking
• 1:33:41
  at this guy that was, had been a former image of me.
• 1:33:45
  It was, it was not me any longer.
• 1:33:47
  You know, I didn't feel like I was this CEO at that time.
• 1:33:51
  I totally just detached, detached away from that person
• 1:33:55
  by leaving the country and who I was now.
• 1:33:58
  So I said no, it's not me. And he looked at the picture,
• 1:34:04
  looked at me, did a double take and then they showed a picture
• 1:34:07
  of my ex-wife. And I said, look, I don't know
• 1:34:11
  what's going on here, but I need my attorney.
• 1:34:15
  And so at that time, some guy reached over my lap and grabbed
• 1:34:19
  the car keys out like I was going to run with 30 some cars
• 1:34:23
  around me pulling guns on me. But they were elated about that
• 1:34:27
  and they cheered about it. And and then shortly after that
• 1:34:31
  the embassy guy came and said, look, I think you know why we're
• 1:34:34
  both here. And I said that he said, you
• 1:34:37
  need to come with us. So they took me and my five year
• 1:34:41
  old son to 1/3 whale world shell and they put they put handcuffs
• 1:34:47
  on me. And then he said in my lap, you
• 1:34:49
  know? Riding.
• 1:34:50
  Making this trip. Wow, so how how does your wife
• 1:34:58
  get notified? When I got to the the Panamanian
• 1:35:04
  holding facility, they, I guess, I think I gave them the phone
• 1:35:11
  number to call her and come down and, and get her and you know,
• 1:35:19
  as a matter. Of sick at the time as I.
• 1:35:21
  Remember now? Yeah, Yeah.
• 1:35:24
  And I think, I think the guy did let me use his cell phone at the
• 1:35:28
  time after he caught her. And I did get to talk to her
• 1:35:31
  briefly. And I said, look, something
• 1:35:33
  horrible's happened. And I said, you know, they,
• 1:35:35
  they've, they've got me and I'm down to this place and I've got
• 1:35:38
  to go with me and you need to come down here.
• 1:35:44
  So how does this how how does a transition from the Panama to
• 1:35:47
  the United States happen? And then how do you get entered
• 1:35:50
  into the prison system? So the that night, Brent, it
• 1:35:57
  was, it was bizarre. They kept me in this holding
• 1:36:00
  facility that looked like more of a storage room in their jail
• 1:36:04
  for furniture. They had like piled up chairs in
• 1:36:08
  one corner and you know, rolled up carpets and just stuff there
• 1:36:14
  and the actual jail cells were were horrible.
• 1:36:18
  They looked like something on Gunsmoke.
• 1:36:19
  They had dirt floors, bars nasty.
• 1:36:22
  They had a through outside of those where they were like
• 1:36:25
  people go and just use the bathroom and it's this through
• 1:36:28
  with water running thread and I'd never seen any like it.
• 1:36:34
  So I was thankful they left me in that room.
• 1:36:38
  But it, it had a tile floor on it and they, they had a, a
• 1:36:43
  little wooden 4 legged table in the room.
• 1:36:48
  And so they did have this old mattress.
• 1:36:51
  It was thrown in this one corner of the room and I drug it out
• 1:36:56
  and it was something that you would not even want to touch
• 1:37:00
  these days. And it was so nasty, had massive
• 1:37:02
  stains on it and just, it's disgusting.
• 1:37:05
  But I drug that out and put my coat over and I laid on that
• 1:37:10
  underneath that table that shed the light for my eyes.
• 1:37:15
  And I just tried to get some sleep to face the next day.
• 1:37:20
  And about 3:00 in the morning, some guy entered the room and he
• 1:37:25
  woke me up and he said, Mr. Keller, he says we're going to
• 1:37:29
  have to put leg irons on you. And I said, OK, and so he put a
• 1:37:36
  leg iron on me and around this 4 legged table, this little, I
• 1:37:40
  mean, I'm talking, it looks like a small coffee table that you
• 1:37:44
  can just simply lift up and off you go.
• 1:37:47
  And he, he, he secured the other leg iron around the table.
• 1:37:51
  Like they were wanting me to go or, you know, I don't know,
• 1:37:54
  encouraged me to go, never locked the door, had it wide
• 1:37:57
  open. So I, I never understood what
• 1:38:01
  that was all about, but I, I truly believe that they wanted
• 1:38:04
  me to leave, probably because they they would have an excuse
• 1:38:09
  to shoot me. At that time you get sent back
• 1:38:12
  and I guess you travel back and I'm assuming that your wife and
• 1:38:18
  kids then travel back to the United States.
• 1:38:24
  And then when, when that, when all this, I mean, obviously
• 1:38:28
  you're in custody now. So how long did it take you,
• 1:38:33
  Steve, to get to the prison you were supposed to go to?
• 1:38:36
  I think was in Lexington, right? Yeah.
• 1:38:39
  So. The, the, the next day at the
• 1:38:43
  jail cell after the leg iron incident that next morning, my
• 1:38:48
  ex-wife and the attorney I worked for had it hired another
• 1:38:52
  attorney. And they were in the front of
• 1:38:54
  the jail and these guys come busting through my door and
• 1:39:00
  there was like 5 or 6 guys who were dressed it all in black and
• 1:39:03
  they were weaponed up. They had guns and rifles and
• 1:39:06
  AK-40 sevens whatnot. And they, they said, let's go.
• 1:39:14
  And so I watched out with them, went into the back of the jail.
• 1:39:18
  They ushered me in this SUV and they were all surrounding me and
• 1:39:23
  they were looking at the articles from the the, the paper
• 1:39:26
  of the apprehension of me. I saw a picture of me in the
• 1:39:29
  front page and I couldn't read the words because they were in
• 1:39:33
  Spanish, but they were going on about this article and I can you
• 1:39:38
  know, I knew there was some concern that they had in that
• 1:39:43
  possibly maybe because they've been photographed.
• 1:39:46
  I wasn't sure and I didn't know who these people were, but I was
• 1:39:52
  still handcuffed at that time in between this that these guys and
• 1:39:57
  I kept asking them where we're going and I literally thought
• 1:40:00
  they were going to Take Me Out to execute me.
• 1:40:04
  And then that's the most terrified I was throughout the
• 1:40:08
  whole event. And I kept persistently bugging
• 1:40:13
  him and just begging him to tell me where we're going.
• 1:40:15
  And after what seemed like 20 minutes, finally one guy turned
• 1:40:19
  around and he just muttered airport and so after about. 10
• 1:40:25
  or 15 minutes I did see an airport sign and my anxiety went
• 1:40:30
  down from, you know, 2000 to back to 100 and and then loan to
• 1:40:38
  hold. We did pull up to an airport.
• 1:40:40
  So I no longer thought that they were going to kill me at that
• 1:40:43
  point. Wow, Steve.
• 1:40:47
  Unbelievable. So you finally get to fly back
• 1:40:53
  to the United States? Yeah, you are.
• 1:40:57
  No, yes, You, you, you finally get to the United States, right.
• 1:41:03
  Yes, Yes, Sir. OK, so they, they don't take you
• 1:41:05
  anywhere else. You go from Panama to the United
• 1:41:08
  States. And so I'm, I'm thinking now
• 1:41:13
  you're looking at a 14 year sentence.
• 1:41:17
  Did they add any time to that sentence because of the fugitive
• 1:41:20
  situation? They did, but they they ran it
• 1:41:23
  concurrent with the previous one, but I got another charge
• 1:41:26
  out of that. OK, You end up in Lexington, KY,
• 1:41:30
  and what do you, what's your mindset going in knowing that
• 1:41:33
  you're serving all of these years and you've just come in
• 1:41:36
  from Panama? It's got to be crazy.
• 1:41:39
  What you're thinking in your world is now this.
• 1:41:43
  Yeah. I mean, I went on a little tour
• 1:41:46
  when I got back. So I went from my, I went to
• 1:41:49
  Miami. Yeah, I went went to Atlanta.
• 1:41:53
  I went to Oklahoma. Oklahoma.
• 1:41:56
  Yeah, and back to Lexington. Therapy and con.
• 1:42:00
  Air Yeah. So that all happened and I went
• 1:42:04
  back to Lexington at a county jail at that time before I went
• 1:42:09
  to the federal. So once you got into the
• 1:42:11
  federal, what what, what was your, what was your time like?
• 1:42:15
  How did you do your time? Because you know, everybody eats
• 1:42:18
  up their prison time differently.
• 1:42:19
  How did you do yours? I got involved with a lot of
• 1:42:26
  religious organizations there, a lot of, a lot of groups and
• 1:42:29
  really honed in on studying the Bible and, you know, religious
• 1:42:35
  aspects and, and not only just Christianity, but I, I wanted to
• 1:42:38
  learn what makes people tick from all religions.
• 1:42:42
  So I studied, you know, you know, everything from Hinduism
• 1:42:46
  to like Muslims, whatever, you know, to better understand the
• 1:42:53
  people better. But I really got gravitated into
• 1:42:56
  Christianity and Bible studies and, and then I wrote, I learned
• 1:43:01
  to write when I started out, it was, it was horrible.
• 1:43:06
  So I wrote 7000 pages by pink in pen and ink and you know, I'd
• 1:43:14
  write for a while and say look, read this and say this is
• 1:43:17
  terrible. You know, I got to start over.
• 1:43:18
  So I had to scrap it and start over.
• 1:43:20
  But literally it's about 7000 pages before I perfected pay to
• 1:43:26
  play Wow. And I know, I know you stayed
• 1:43:30
  plugged in with your kids. I know a couple of years into
• 1:43:34
  this, your wife is then your ex-wife.
• 1:43:39
  You get a divorce and obviously you talk about in the book, you
• 1:43:42
  don't. It just that's how things
• 1:43:46
  happened. But I had to be man, that had to
• 1:43:49
  be a big. I feel like when anything
• 1:43:52
  happens in prison from the outside, it just feels so
• 1:43:55
  overwhelming and you feel so emasculated that you can't do
• 1:43:58
  anything. How'd you get yourself through
• 1:44:01
  that? Lot of prayer.
• 1:44:07
  Yeah. A lot of faith and, and just,
• 1:44:11
  you know, being there for the kids, my family, they were
• 1:44:17
  turned back on her. And I said, look, you know,
• 1:44:22
  she's not in my shoes. I'm not in hers.
• 1:44:24
  And I said, you can't really judge people because you don't
• 1:44:29
  know what you're going through personally.
• 1:44:30
  You know, you can see what you're going through and
• 1:44:32
  expecting to react a certain way, but that's not life.
• 1:44:36
  And I said the most important thing for me is to retain a
• 1:44:40
  relationship with my kids because I didn't know if I was
• 1:44:45
  ever going to get out, you know, if I had to do the whole
• 1:44:47
  sentence or, or what. But, and back then we didn't
• 1:44:49
  have all the programs they do now.
• 1:44:51
  Thank God they're there for people.
• 1:44:54
  We had to do 85% and that's it. You know, there's no, there's no
• 1:44:58
  loopholes, there's no good time, there's no nothing.
• 1:45:01
  So you're just there trying to make the most of it.
• 1:45:05
  And you know, I studied law, I got my paralegal certificate
• 1:45:11
  just to study or to process my case.
• 1:45:16
  And you know, there's no saying about you can tell who's actual
• 1:45:23
  innocent or not in prison by the amount of appeals that they
• 1:45:28
  file, because a guy that's a guy that's guilty of a crime usually
• 1:45:35
  eventually runs out of appeals. And in our case, we never ran
• 1:45:39
  out because we didn't break the law.
• 1:45:43
  So I I I appealed all the way up to I walked out the door.
• 1:45:48
  So when you when you started thinking about, you know,
• 1:45:51
  getting out cuz was it a was it a total of nine years?
• 1:45:54
  So what do? Yeah, I did 8 1/2 years in
• 1:45:57
  there, then eight years, the half a year in the halfway.
• 1:46:00
  House. So yeah.
• 1:46:00
  So basically, yeah, yeah. What were you thinking, Steve?
• 1:46:04
  Like what? How am I going to re enter
• 1:46:06
  society? What was going through your
• 1:46:08
  mind? What was your plan?
• 1:46:09
  What was your thought process? You know, I I didn't have, I
• 1:46:17
  didn't have a good plan when I got out of there.
• 1:46:22
  I just I was so I was so gun hold just to get out.
• 1:46:27
  I figured I'd, I'd figure it out once I got out and see, you know
• 1:46:30
  what the lay of the land because everything changed so much.
• 1:46:32
  Sure. And so, you know, technology
• 1:46:37
  just passed me by. I remember my brother and sister
• 1:46:40
  came to get me the day that I got out of prison.
• 1:46:44
  And I was sitting in the back seat and my brother and sister
• 1:46:47
  were sitting in the front seat. And my sister turned around and
• 1:46:50
  handed me an Apple phone. It was black on black and the
• 1:46:54
  screen had gone blank. And so she handed me this and
• 1:46:58
  she goes, here you go. She said, your kids are there
• 1:47:02
  are on there. And I was like, where, you know,
• 1:47:06
  and I didn't know how to operate this phone.
• 1:47:09
  So, you know, so just the search engines and everything that we
• 1:47:16
  take for granted was totally foreign to me.
• 1:47:18
  It's just a totally different world than when I left.
• 1:47:22
  But I I knew that I had to figure it out.
• 1:47:24
  Since that how many years has it been since that time that you
• 1:47:27
  got picked up by your? 2012.
• 1:47:30
  Dive 2012. Yeah.
• 1:47:32
  So tell tell us about what you're doing today.
• 1:47:36
  So, yeah, I got involved with early on, I got involved with
• 1:47:41
  the Airbnb when it first started out.
• 1:47:42
  And my current wife and I, we started a business doing that
• 1:47:48
  and started, I started rehabbing those projects, renting those
• 1:47:53
  out, managing those flipping homes and just doing what I
• 1:47:57
  could to get by, you know, there and then.
• 1:48:03
  You know, I, I basically came, I recluse for several years and
• 1:48:07
  just grounded myself into that. And I was fearful.
• 1:48:13
  Pay to play was on on my mind. I actually reached out to two
• 1:48:16
  other publishers and pulled it back because I was scared.
• 1:48:20
  I was scared to come out with this story for my own safety and
• 1:48:24
  my kids and, and then, you know, I just didn't feel like it's the
• 1:48:29
  right time politically. It wasn't the right time
• 1:48:33
  personally, it wasn't the right time.
• 1:48:36
  And then that all changed and I reached the point where I just
• 1:48:41
  felt it was more important to stand on the box of truth at all
• 1:48:45
  cost. If it helps other people out and
• 1:48:47
  then I'm going to do it. Love it.
• 1:48:49
  And the one thing about all of that, I think, Steve, you and I
• 1:48:52
  talked about this when we were on the phone, you got to own
• 1:48:57
  your own story because if you don't, somebody else does.
• 1:49:00
  And you, you deserve to own your own story.
• 1:49:03
  And, and I love, you know that you've, you know, you did
• 1:49:08
  unbelievably incredible things. You basically revolutionized an
• 1:49:13
  industry that obviously doesn't change that much.
• 1:49:16
  So it's pretty incredible that you were able to go in there and
• 1:49:20
  do what you did and, and, and then get out and be able to make
• 1:49:25
  it. You know, the, you know, we call
• 1:49:28
  this show nightmare success. It's not that you become a
• 1:49:31
  billionaire after you get through this, It's that you
• 1:49:33
  survive it and you move in a direction that you still feel
• 1:49:37
  like you're making an impact. And I think that's what you've
• 1:49:39
  done. And I think this book is going
• 1:49:40
  to be that if you take all this in, Steve, I mean, we've your
• 1:49:48
  your story is just, you know, can't make it up.
• 1:49:53
  It's it's all real. It's crazy.
• 1:49:55
  What do you think's your biggest take away through all of it that
• 1:49:58
  you've lived through? Well, I, I think, I think the
• 1:50:03
  story is a story that shows The Dirty, dirty underbelly of the
• 1:50:12
  pay to play system. And, and I hope that this can be
• 1:50:16
  used as an example of what can happen to anybody, any business
• 1:50:19
  person out here. And I really want to further
• 1:50:24
  what happened to me to try to rid the corruption out of the
• 1:50:29
  Justice Department. And I would like nothing more
• 1:50:32
  than to see a movement, possibly called Stop Pay to play that
• 1:50:37
  offers an oversight committee, you know, separate from the DOJ,
• 1:50:42
  but part of the government that would ferret out where the
• 1:50:46
  complaints come from to the DOJ. So if they're outside of a
• 1:50:50
  victim, like a competitor in my case, where a political opponent
• 1:50:53
  and and President Trump's case or, you know, whistleblowers
• 1:50:58
  just trying to pat his own pocket, then then, then those
• 1:51:02
  would be stopped before the lynch mob, you know, is, is a
• 1:51:06
  champion to take off. Yeah.
• 1:51:10
  But yeah, So you know, I've, I've, I've come back full circle
• 1:51:13
  now. I'm actually affiliated with a,
• 1:51:17
  a life settlement company now. It's been around for 30 years.
• 1:51:20
  It used to be one of my brokers and it's called the Arden Group.
• 1:51:24
  So I'm now senior director for that firm.
• 1:51:26
  And I would love to talk to anybody that wants to know how
• 1:51:31
  to sell policy or or the possibility of of of that that
• 1:51:35
  they can. Yeah, well, you definitely know
• 1:51:37
  that game. You know that world?
• 1:51:40
  Well, it's it's fascinating, Steve, and I'm I'm so glad you
• 1:51:43
  made time to come on the show. And I want to also give a shout
• 1:51:46
  out to the Homestead financial home mortgage.
• 1:51:49
  Let's me use this podcast studio with all the fancy lights and
• 1:51:53
  stuff. If you've got home mortgage
• 1:51:55
  needs out there, Greg Gaftev is your guy.
• 1:51:57
  He knows all that stuff. So check out and pre-order, pay
• 1:52:01
  to play Amazon, Barnes and Noble, wherever you get your
• 1:52:04
  books. Should be coming out in May or
• 1:52:07
  June. And I've got my book out, so go
• 1:52:10
  ahead and get mine. It's at Amazon or Barnes and
• 1:52:12
  Noble or wherever you get your books.
• 1:52:14
  Nightmare success, loyalty, betrayal, light behind bars,
• 1:52:17
  adapting, finally breaking free. And if you got time, leave me a
• 1:52:21
  review on Apple. Those are great.
• 1:52:23
  You wonder what I'm doing? brettcassidy.com.
• 1:52:25
  I spell it wrong. I spell it with Ty, Not a DY go
• 1:52:29
  to Nightmare success. That's an easy place to see all
• 1:52:31
  the interviews with a little bit more stuff about the background
• 1:52:34
  of it, of the stories, as I used to say to my people when I was
• 1:52:39
  writing my emails back and forth from Leavenworth.
• 1:52:41
  Stay strong. I'll do the same.
• 1:52:43
  Steve Keller, man, I wish you the best and the luck of
• 1:52:47
  everything that you're doing. What a story.
• 1:52:50
  What Aceo entrepreneurial story. It's crazy or good.
• 1:52:53
  Well, thanks for. Having me Brent, I appreciate
• 1:52:55
  you and and definitely I read your book and I highly recommend
• 1:52:59
  it for anybody. I really appreciate that, really
• 1:53:03
  appreciate that from two guys that wrote books.
• 1:53:05
  Nightmare success in and out.