The Man Who Armed Philadelphia's Most Dangerous Criminals

I started working with the ATF. I just came to the belief that regardless of what you do, good, bad, and difference, you couldn't trust them. Told me, man, if I'd know about any of Hammers that are, anybody had let them know. I had already shaved the cereal numbers down with a grinding stone. He gave me 300 for that. I said, oh, man, I paid 50 dollars for that. And then bam, I started running around the gun shops. I got to the point with one gun shop. They would call me up on the phone. I just got an X amount of Mac 90s. Most of the guys I dealt with, they were the bosses of all the guys on the corner. These guys might try to shoot you in the face when you go to sell a gun. You don't know what they gonna do. So I said, fuck it. It's just a matter of time before they arrest me. And I said to my man in the South, he's my focus in, I sold 150 guns. The United States attorney says she believed was more like 500. It is scariest shit when you walk in the child block and the whole fucking cell block is your customers. Simon White is a former gun runner from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, who the feds accuse of selling over 500 illegal firearms to drug dealers in Philly. Simon is a self-taught weapons expert who sourced his guns from legal gun shops and then resold them for huge profits to some of the biggest drug traffickers in the city in neighborhoods like Kensington and the Badlands. This is a fascinating look into the black market firearms trade and the scourge of violence and homicide that it perpetuates in cities like Philadelphia. These days, Simon is an anti-gun violence advocate and is available for speaking engagements. Check out his website. A link to that will be in the description of the episode. And of course, if you're not already, please make sure you're subscribed to the channel so that you never miss an episode. Ladies and gentlemen, it's the Stratman himself, Simon White, right here on the connect with Johnny Mitchell. (upbeat music) It's interesting because you never sold drugs, I don't believe. Marijuana, Marijuana, I sold Marijuana. And the thing was, when I moved to Redden, people kept back to me to, could I get some weed? When they said, "You can be going to Philly, "you can get me some weed." And I told a friend of mine that he gave me like, he said, "This is $1,000 worth of weed." You sell, you could sell these little bags for 20 to 25 a piece. I sold it. I bought them the $1,000 back. He gave me $200, so what the fuck is this? He said, "Oh, that's your cut." I said, "My cut." I said, "Oh hell, no, I'm not gonna take no penitentiary chances. "If you don't fuck your ass, $200." So I sold his, sold a thousand again. I went and bought a pound of weed. Gave him his money back, and then I started dealing for myself. And one day when I was looking for weed, my nephew took me to the Sky House. And he sold pounds. So one day, I couldn't find my nephew. I went there, I bought a pound. I went back a couple days later, bought a pound. Went back to the third day. He said, "You're selling that shit that fast?" I said, "Yeah." He said, "How much you think you can sell a week, $5,000?" He took me in a basement here. All his fucking weed stacked up. Like dozens and dozens of pounds of weed. So he said, "Yo, what you want?" I said, "Maybe I could sell three." So he said, "Hey, I said, "No, I said what I asked him was." I said, "No, I just need one." He said, "How many of you think you can sell?" Just take what you think you can sell. I said, "No, you have that kind of money right now." He said, "No, just take it and bring me the money back next Saturday." I said, "You want my number?" He said, "No." He said, "If you don't come back, I just know you ain't shit." And he gave me three pounds of weed. I took it, chopped it all up, bagged it up, $2,200 for each pound and nickel bags, sold it, sold it, sold it. Went back to got another three pounds. Sometimes I would get four pounds, sometimes I'll get five pounds depending on the time of year it was. You sold more or less weed. So I didn't have to sell guns no more because the weed was real lucrative. Did you prefer the gun business or the drug business? What was easier? No matter why I like dealing with it because you don't know a lot of times you don't know what's going to happen. You don't know what they want to do. So you really take in a serious chance. I was never of a misunderstanding of the danger that was involved with dealing with firearms because you dealing with some ruthless dudes. You know, even though you may have never seen nothing but you heard things about particular individuals and you noted their dangerous. So you kind of fell into the life of crime almost by accident because you're from Harlem grew up on the west side, 161st. 151st. 151st when crack exploded and you got out of there and you never got involved in that. No, I got, I mean I smoke weed, I was fucking around with cocaine, drinking, you know, a lot of dumb stuff. I mean, young kids commit petty crimes, young kids are. But the thing that, with me, I never got into all that drug dealing, shit in New York and it was going on all over the place. Everybody was becoming drug dealers. These two brothers I knew, both of them got murdered. One was murdered in Queens. It was a big article on him in the paper because he was only 19. He got murdered in Queens and then the other brother got murdered out of 100. I think of 50 street, 150 for a 140 nice street in Broadway. So both of the brothers were murdered very young and they were drug dealers. So I knew that, you know, dealing drugs was dangerous. Especially back then, the danger was real. And what do you think was more violent because you were moving guns in Philadelphia? Do you think Philly or New York was more treacherous? Man, New York, I got a can't do one of them guys in Philly. I'm doing some Philly. We'll smoke your ass in a minute. I think it's still like that in some places. But then you got to realize Pennsylvania is a gun state. New York is not a gun state like NPA. If you don't have a record, anybody can go into the store and buy a gun. And one man doesn't matter inside Philly and outside of Philly. New York City. Those people have no access to firearms. So you could actually make more money. Well, a lot of people don't know that they have access to firearm. A lot of black people in America, outside of the South, the people in the South know their gun rights. But people in the North really don't have a good understanding of gun rights. What a Houston didn't have a good understanding. Now more people, this younger generation or more where there are ability to own and keep firearms. So even though you can buy firearms legally in Pennsylvania, the cats you were selling to in Philly, all of them had sheets. Well, it was kind of the funny thing is some do's bought illegal guns and maybe they could didn't even have to buy illegal guns, but we didn't, we didn't discuss that like like the less talked about it the better because if you talk about too much, then they'd be like, you know, what's my fucking talking so much man about this and then they become suspicious of you. And you don't want them to become suspicious of you and say, yo man, I think this do might be working with the police and decide to smoke your ass because that's the risk that you ran every time you went to do a deal. You ran a risk of being murdered. Also a lot of those drug dealers, they don't want their names attached to any paper. Nothing. Well, they, you know, they, if you're buying a gun, it's a possibility. You may use it for illicit activity. So you don't want your name killed nobody with a gun you bought in the store or shoot somebody with a gun you bought in the store. How many of your guns that you sold, you think ended up in homicides in Philly? I have no number, just the one I know about and I know that from law enforcement. They told me like most of the stuff I know, I know this from law enforcement because I ended into the profit with them and Asian West go, you know, he told me a lot about what was going on because you know, like I said, he and I, we were okay. He passed away a couple years back. So certainly lots of the guns ended up being used in homicides. That's obvious. What? I'm not sure. We can safely assume. I'm going to go out on a limb, you know, so what kind of guns generally were you dropping off to people? Originally, I would get stuff like terraces, um, Davises, Lawsons, and then I always say Smith and Wesson, what they did at one point, they dropped the firearm and that was a copy of the block. But what Smith and Wesson did and honestly, this is why I believe the gun companies know that their guns are going to go into the illegal market. They put a serial number on the bottom of the gun, but it wasn't stabbed. It was like laser etched. So when you could take a grind in stone or some type of grinding tool and take it off in like two minutes, not even two minutes. So you're telling me that a major gun company, release a firearm, copy it a block pistol. It looked just like a block 19, block 23 and you take the serial number off in two minutes who else, it, it may no sense to me. Did you shave them down before you sold them? Yeah, most of the time I took the serial numbers off myself because I'm, I didn't wonder, well, like it's like I said to you earlier, um, the Fed said they couldn't trace anything back to me because of the way that I removed the serial numbers, but I had one situation where I sold a gun to two brothers and one of the brothers, um, he and I, we, we were pretty cool but I told him one time when he bought his girlfriend and buy a gun for For me, I said man, I don't be dealing with these girls. And his girlfriend actually cooperated against me. His brother actually cooperated against me too. So what happened was the two of them came to buy gunnets off of me. I had two rougas. They were rougas. I can't remember what they wore. But I took the serial numbers off of one. I drilled it out. The other one I swiped it out. So when these guys got busted, they had a nine millimeter rouga. They got caught with a Mac 10. And they got caught with about 100 grams of cracked. So now they looking at serious time. I told them when they got picked up, the one brother got out on bail. I told them if I was you, I bounced, man. The feds gonna take your case. He was like, no, I gotta get my brother, I'll fuck that. Go get on that bus and roll. They're gonna get you when he went to court. The feds picked him up. But later on, when I got arrested, and they questioned me about these guys, and they had questioned me about them before I even got arrested. So I knew somebody was cooperating. 'Cause they said, when I got arrested on my marijuana charge, I gave a address to get out on bail. The ATF showed up to the address. So when the ATF showed up, my sister-in-law called me and said, "ATF is here." I said, "All right, I'm coming over." And I talked to him and he said, "Oh, do you ever saw these people guns that I'm gonna talk about that?" But I knew immediately that they were cooperating against me. But long story short, when all went down and I got arrested, the fed said, "You saw these guys guns." I said, "Yeah." Said, "What did you sell them?" I said, "I said, "The Mac 10 came from New York." They brought that in New York. I told a guy when he brought it back to Reddit, get rid of it. You shouldn't even have it here. It's gonna bring too much federal heat if you get caught with it. - Would you actually traffic automatic weapons, like Mac 10s? - I would never mess with them because I knew that the amount of time involved was like astronomical because for a machine gun, you get 35. I think it is. A silence is something like 25. A sort of shot gun is something like 18 and a half years in jail. And everything have to run consecutive to that gun charge. So if you get caught with X amount of this and then you got that gun, it runs consecutive. But long story short, the guy with the Mac 10, he originally got life without parole. - Just for the Mac 10. - For the Mac 10 in the crack. That's with with former, he had two or three priors. They were juvenile priors. He's out now because all that stuff that happened with happened after Obama became president. - Yeah, they started whacking people since. - They started whacking people since. - And all of that shit, well, he wild of getting out. And you know, I testified against my, I won't even lie. But what had happened was like I said, his girlfriend and his brother, they helped bring me in. But when they bought me in and they asked me about the gun, I said, well, was the serial number swiped or drilled? They said, well, what that difference is that make? I said, because I know who gun it is. And often if I sold two guys a gun, I did that because I said, the only leverage you have once you get arrested is your information. See, I knew this from dealing with the ATF prior to ever getting arrested. So you kind of knew, you had your backup plan that if you ever got caught, you were gonna cooperate. - I said, I said, at least if, I know that from Sammy's case, and I extensively read about Sammy when he originally got arrested. - Sammy the bull. - Yes. And I knew that from Sammy's case, from Nikki Barnes' case, from all the other guys that do. Only leverage you have is the information you have against other people. - So the reason that you would drill serial numbers out or swiped them out is so you could, I know who the gun it was. So with these two guys, the gun belonged to the guy that was cooperating against me, but he was saying it belonged to the other guy. But I told the ATF, no, that's not his gun. And I told the ATF, I said, that gun never fired fully automatic. They said, well, oh, it have, and this is what a guy have to understand. You could get caught with a gun. And it doesn't fire fully auto, but if it has fully auto parts in it, they can charge you with a machine gun. And you do 35 on that one gun. - Okay, so you were mainly just selling small arms, hang guns. - Hang guns originally. - Okay. - So people understand, the gun dealers is the ones that put me onto the long guns. They said, hey, you know, ATF, we had to inform them that you bought those three guns the other day. They was calling and asking about you. I said, damn. They said, but let me explain something. If you buy those long guns, I said, what you mean? He said, like, you see this Mac 90? And he gave me the hand of me to Mac 90. It looks a copy of AK47. It looks real sinister. It's semi-automatic. It looks really sinister. So I said, damn, how much is this? He said, I could probably do like 240 on it. He said, damn. He said, all right, so if I buy those three right there, or those four, or those five, you don't got to call the feds. No, give me those three. - So they don't have to let the feds know when you buy a long gun? - No. - But they do when you buy a handgun. - So they have to fill out the yellow sheet, but they don't have to call up, say, yeah, Johnny just bought 10 Mac 90s. They don't have to call them. And so you know how slick the gun companies are. A guy and I, we went one time to a gun show. It was a guy that he knew me. I had been dealing with him. He said, hey, come here. I got something to show you. He opened the boxes up. It's a Mac 11. But it got this long barrel on it. And it got this long metal piece on the back. I said, what's this? He said, that looked like a Mac 11. He said, these are classified as a rifle. So wow, those are classified as a rifle. He said, yeah, you know, he looks up to the sky. He said, man, I bought three and four. My homie bought like three and four. He said, not on the front door, go out the back. We thought the fence was going to grab us. Just didn't want us to go out the door with all that shit in front of all those people. - That's why the gun laws are so absurd. It's like tiny little technicalities make it super illegal. Or you got gun rights. - You're good. - It could be extremely illegal. Or the difference between a rifle and a handgun. - Right. So if you bought a Mac 90 in Florida from a dealer for, you said like $2.90, $300, how much could you sell that to a drug dealer in Philly for? - I know a guy was selling him for like 2,000. Some guys were getting 1,500. Like it was a guy I used to deal with. He would buy him for me. Be like, oh man, I get all three of them. Give it to me for like eight, nine of peace. And then he would take him and resell him from what a guy was telling me. He would take him and resell him at an inflated rate. Like, you know, oh man, give me $2,000, give me $18,000, give me $1,900. He would get more money. This is what my man Bubu was telling me that he was doing. He said, no, I don't sell him shit. What he do is he buy him from us. And then he go take him in some place and sell him at an inflated price. But it depends on what section of the city you deal him with. Because, you know, he might have went out west or south west or south Philly. But I wasn't dealing with them guys. I knew how dangerous they was. What neighborhoods in Philly were you dealing in? I was dealing with North Philly. And I'll be honest with you. I was dealing with North Philly, King's attend, Fair Hell area. Sometimes we went up to what they call uptown. The uptown, that's the Wessel Lane area. And once or twice we went to Germantown, Bubu knew somebody up there who was looking for something. But these were people who he was cool with that, you know, he knew he could trust. But primarily when I was running around solo, I was running through North Philly. I was running through Fair Hell, the bad lands here, what they call the bad lands in Philly. And I was running around in King's attend mostly. King's attend, I did a lot of my business. And I would say all of my cooperators came out of King's attend and the bad lands. Was Kensington back then like it is now? I mean, they were getting hired, but that shit isn't sane. I drove through there like a few weeks ago. And I mean, I was just, I mean, I was riding with my mouth open. I was so shocked. Right. It wasn't like that when I was around there. We had, we had a neighborhood piece of shops. We had dollies. You know, we, it was, I'm not saying a family, let me back up. Yes, it was a family neighborhood. Because when I first moved to King's attend, it was police officer firemen, sanitation workers, contractors, all, I hate to say this, all white guys. Because when I first moved around near the block, my wife and I, and maybe one or two other families were the only nine Caucasians on that whole block. The whole entire block was Caucasian. But what happened was, next thing you know, all the white guys started selling their houses off to these people coming from New York and whatnot. And the properties went from ownership to rental. And lo and behold, you got what you got now, which is just a disaster. It's like the nightmare. I mean, you might have saw Joker lighter running the alley and right at the lightest crack pipe up, but you ain't seen nobody just flat out shooting up, sitting out in the daytime. Don't seem just laid out everywhere, nothing like that. And the, these drug dealers who you were selling guns to, your man, Boo Boo is the one who kind of, of introduced you to all of them. - In North Philly, yes, but Kings of 10, no. Boo Boo didn't deal. Boo Boo, he was from North Philly. He had me dealing with guys down North. But one day, I had some stuff I couldn't get in touch with Boo Boo, and I saw this dude, I knew. I said, "Yo, man, I got a couple joints for sale, "meaning guns." He said, "Yeah, what you got, man?" He said, "Oh, man, let me get that for you." I said, "I need to get this, this, and this for you." I think I sold it for six or seven, something like that. And then I went back, sold him something else, and then he said, "Yo, man, this is my boss right here. "Let me call him over, man." So he introduced me to this guy, Tito. So Tito was the guy that ran that block. He was a heart-villain, cliff-hill street. So that was Tito's block. And he said, "Yo, what's up, my man, Jay told me, "you be coming through with some good toast, man." Meaning fire on him. We got it. I said, "You be coming in with some really good toast." I said, "Yeah, you know, I got so-and-so now." He said, "Yo, when you get something, "he said, "I'm gonna give you my number. "You just hit me, don't come up here, just hit me." And then one day Tito said, "My man be looking for toast, too." And he introduced me to another guy named Rico. And Rico took me to some other Hispanic guys in the area who were getting serious money. And I started dealing with them. Like most of the guys I dealt with, they were the bosses of all the guys on the corner. - For sure. - So those were the guys who I dealt with. And how would they distribute their guns? I don't know. They handled their business the way they handled their business. - And would you, and you said the guns would sell right away as soon as you brought them up? - 10 minutes, you done. 15 minutes, it's different than you. And it wasn't even like, you know, the guys when they selling drugs, you know, you got to wait for this, wait for that, wait for the other. I could just say, "Yo, Tito, I'm coming," or "Page him." He said, "Yo, what's up?" I said, "Yo, I'm coming through." He said, "All right, I'm selling so straight." We don't discuss shit on the phone. He just said, "I'm here." Boom, boom, boom, what you got? "All right, could you do this on this?" You know, I bought a lot of shit from you. And only messed up thing about guns as opposed to drugs. You notice cost is every, when you selling guns, it's almost now they're trying to bring you down on the price for 'cause they don't want so much stuff. And then, you know how I go, what? - Right. - They were trying to bring the price down. I'll be like, "No, I can't do it at that fucking. I'll keep it." Oh, man. Give it to me. - Right. - Because they, they, they want as much shit as they can have. - Today's episode is proudly brought to you by Quince, my new favorite clothing company. I'm wearing Quince top to bottom now. I got, I love these stretchy, breathable pants. Like, they almost look like dress pants, but are also casual, unbelievable. The most comfortable pants I've ever worn, I've been wearing them for the podcast interviews now, non-stop, Quince people. I also love the 100% Mongolian cashmere sweater. It's ridiculously soft, and somehow it matches with everything. They've got organic cotton tees, the one I'm wearing. The quality is just next level, but without the crazy markup. These are prices from like big box stores, like, really, really great, great value. This is clothing that's gonna last. Quince focuses on those timeless wardrobe staples made with premium materials like Mongolian cashmere, organic cotton, and merino wool. Their cashmere sweaters started just 60 bucks, and when it cools down, they've got solid down jackets and wool outerwear that layer perfectly. Everything is priced 50 to 80% less. How are they even making a profit? Then similar brands, because they work directly with ethical factories and cut out the middleman. Well, there you go. We're us here on the connect. We're all about cutting out the middleman and going straight to the source, straight to the plug. You're paying for quality, not the brand name. Find your fall favorites at Quince. Download the Quince app for app exclusive features or go to quince.com. Get free shipping on your order and 365-day returns. There is no risk. There's no risk. And I'm telling you, these, my wardrobe, my closet is just filled with black, white, and tan t-shirts, and just pairs of these unbelievably comfortable pants. Quince is also now available in Canada and the UK. And when Quince asks where you heard about them, let us know that the connect sent you. Once again, that's quince.com. And you've got nothing to lose. It's a 365-day return policy. You will not regret it. Go get yourself fly looking good for way less. Quince. Yeah, it's crazy. They all, big drug dealers always want as many guns. The same is in Mexico, a lot of now, a lot of Americans, regular people are buying guns and shipping them illegally to Mexico, and they can't get enough of them. It's like, we'll buy as many as you can get down here. But I think it's that same American firearm infatuation. It's like the beautiful woman that everyone is in awe of. And that's what firearms are in America. It's that beautiful woman that you know she's no good. But you still want her. You still want her. For sure. You just got to have her. 'Cause how often are you going to be using a Mac 90 if you're running a heroin strip in Philly? How often do you need to use a Mac 90 against your enemies? Very rarely. It's really firearms are the kind of thing like a God just want to say, yeah, I got three Mac 90s. I got four blocks. I got two Smith and Wessons or whatever. I will say though, I see a lot of videos in my TikTok feed now or Instagram of young brothers in Chicago and South Philly getting aired out with high powered guns. So people do get murdered with those. But I think a lot of it is handguns. People getting killed up close with small arms. Firearms, firearms in America, I don't know. Maybe it goes back to our history. We love guns. I mean, I don't give a damn, you black, white, Hispanic. And now you see the girls, they having the girls with the booty shorts on with the bikini top and she's firing off an AR-15. It's like we have this love in God. When I see a pretty girl with a shooting gun off it's a whole 'nother thing. Yeah, we're fucking retarded in this country. And then when the government actually comes to take our rights away, like during COVID or when ICE is shooting our citizens, when we actually need people with guns to defend us from the government, everybody's a fucking pussy stay home. But what's funny, what's crazy about it? And guys hated me and Jill. Some loved me, some hated me. I told a guy one day, I said, you know, you said you beat four murders. You got caught with a gun. You didn't try to shoot the police. He said, oh, that's stupid. You used a nut, man. I said, no, you didn't try to shoot the cops. You said you committed three and four homicides. I didn't kill nobody, I was acquitted. But those guys wasn't white. They was all black. Oh, how do you know that? I know they was black. And we have a tendency in America to say black on black crime, white on white crime. White guys turn guns on white guys. Black guys turn guns on black guys. Hispanic guys turn guns on Hispanic guys. This guy kills his wife. This guy kills his girlfriend. We don't, most of the time in America, we don't do harm to outsiders. We do harm to people we know. That's right. Like I remember, I had an incident one day. And this is what's messed up about when you know him for selling guns. I'm looking at these two guys. God, punch this guy. He falls down to the ground. He takes in several minutes to get recuperate. He's flopping around like a guppy find. He's sitting on the side of the car. He's shaking and to do some walk down the street with the guy who to knock them out. Couple days later, I see this guy. The one that got knocked out. He said, "Yo, you sign, man, right?" I said, "Why, what's up?" I don't know, you what's up. He said, "Yo, man, my cousin's son told me, "I shall highlight you." He said, "Hell at me for what?" He said, "I need some talks, man." I said, "No, man, you got me fucked up." I ain't, I don't be doing that. I wasn't selling that dude no gun, and I knew he just got knocked out. He want to smoke this dude. - Right. - So, if I knew you had beef right then, I ain't selling that dude, no. - So you tried to only deal with like professionals? - Yeah, dudes that wasn't looking to have no problems right now, but I saw that dude get knocked out, and he asked me to sell him somehow. No, I ain't selling you shit. - For sure. - You ready to go do something right now? But one dude said in my, in my, man, you know when you get your PSI and all that, and they tell you all the stuff been said about you, good, bad, nugly, this individual said, I told him that the drug dealers at G and Hilton, that's down Kingsittan, was making business bad because he was killing too many people. I never told that guy no shit like that. If them dudes were doing whatever, whatever, I sold him shit. But if they were doing whatever, whatever, they're not gonna come and tell me, yeah, man, you know, I just smoked, so on, so on, so on, so. But the only time I will say to you that I begin to have major amount of remorse, major amount of heartache about what I did, I was at Camp Hill, that's a jail in PA. And I saw this baby face, light skin, black guy, a really nice-looking young man. And I said, "Yo, I said, "Then you used to run with this dude." So and so, he said, "No, that's my name." I said, "Damn, I said, "Damn, what the hell you're doing here?" He said, "I got a homicide." I said, "Shit, man." He said, "And I got to go back for another homicide." They gonna try me for another homicide. I was like, "Damn." See, like I said before, see, Dylan don't see his clients in prison. But now I'm seeing the dudes, and I'm really understanding now what I did, because I'm seeing these dudes for really who they are. And I'm using the same analogy, the same logic as the gun dealer uses on the street. Well, what they do ain't got none to do with me. And that's the logic of everybody. The major gun companies, the gun dealer in the store, everybody uses this logic. But I see this young kid who shitted his life down a toilet bowl. He's never on walk the street again. And the second incident I had that was mind-blowing to me, I was in a prison called Dallas. That's an upstate PA, up near Scrant. It's not too far from Scrant, and I think it is. Young guy, I see him, he looks like he's crying, and I'm like, damn, and he said to me, he said, I kid, I'm never going home, I'm never going to get out of prison. And I said, damn, I had never sold nothing to him, but I knew he was there for murder, and I knew that this was the result of somebody gave him a firearm, and he did something really stupid. And if he wouldn't have had that firearm, his life might have not been in the situation that it was. But then my third incident I had that let me understand about prison and really the necessity of prison. And I thought people, I was talking to this guy. He said, oh man, they don't want to give me parole. And I said to the brother, but you know, you don't ask the guy what he done. I said, what you did, brother? He said, I killed this bitch. I said, what? And he said it again. I said, oh man, I said you killed a woman, man. I said, these people are not going to let you go, man. If you don't show no real remorse, and then that's the day I understood about remorse and about accountability and about the totality of your crime. And now I was fully aware in a brisk of what I did. That day was like the, nailing the coffin for me, that really made me understand what I had did in the tragedy that it caused. - So why did you get into the game? You know, you're in Florida working at a 7/11. - Yeah. - A long way from selling fucking Mac 90s in North Philadelphia, right? How did you get to where, what you became? - I'll tell you like this. I was probably not a bad guy. And my sister said something to me one time. She wanted to date a friend of mine, so I said, no, I don't want you dating him. She said, oh, he's a good, he's a, he's a, he's a, yeah, yeah. I said, no, he's not okay. She said, you a good person. I said, no, he hangs with me. I said, I'm doing this, not another. That was when I was doing petty shit in New York. But I didn't consider myself a good guy. But then people would always say, you know, you're a good person, you're a good person. Then when I came to Philly, and after I got into firearms, you know, and I bought that, that, um, what it was, that, uh, tech nine. And then the ATF ran down on me. And then I was mad because I said, I, I called agent, agent, Westco, I said, look, I'm a fucking good guy. I'm not no criminal. He said, well, you had that warrant from New York. You know, blah, blah, blah. I went and took care of my warrant in New York. And I called the agent again. I said, you got guys selling drugs in the street. They went all kind of mad as shit day and night. And you're coming at me to the hard work and good guy. And he said, well, Simon, you know, we always need people to let us know what's going on. This is how we get the stuff off the street. And I started working with the ATF. - Really? - Yeah. - Before you even became a legal gun dealer. - Before I became a illegal gun dealer. - All right. - Wow, this is interesting. - I met agent, I met agent, met agent Westco. And it's amazing that we, that wake was right up the road. Agent Westco, one of his friends was killed at Westco that first day of the shootout. - And it wake up, it's excellent. - And I was on the phone with him. He called me, he said, I'm going to wake up. And he told me he was going to wake up. I talked to him. I was on the phone with him the morning in the Oklahoma City bombing. And he said, you know, it's all hands on deck for the Simon. I got to go to Oklahoma. So we were really cool. His partner didn't like me enough. And I still say he can eat a dick. He, he not a federal agent that deserves a way to badge. Federal agents are different kind of cop. You are, you are a federal agent. And I told him, you need to act like one. You're supposed to call yourself different. You, you are, you are agent. You're not a beat cop. Call yourself like that. He didn't like me. I didn't like him. - So what were you doing for the ATF? - So, so I told him. I said, all of the shit is going on. So we made several buys of crack. But see, I didn't know about all these laws at the time. He, we made several buys of crack. We made several buys of, we made a buy from mom. Some guys was bringing guns out of Texas. They were bringing guns out of Texas to fill it. I forgot if they were in Dallas or Houston or where he was. But they were bringing guns up to fill it from Texas. These guys sold us the guns, fully loaded, fully loaded. - Is that an extra charge? - I thought that was rather dumb because we were criminals. We could have just took it from the child. - A second? Yeah. - But the guy, the agent, the, the officer pulled a clip out of him like that mean like, what the fuck? I'm sitting in the back seat and the two agencies in the front, you know, the police officers, they were there. But what, what, what used to happen was there's not a lot of black ATF agents. So what the ATF would do, they would use fill it out for your police officers or fill it out for your housing authority cops most of the time. - As undercover. - Yes, undercover. So we in the car, we made, we made several buys for firearms. We made several buys for drugs. But there was one thing that happened that pissed me off. Westco told me to set the, they set the buyer up with the guy. So I said, I said to my brother-in-law, I said, well, he said, I said, well, he a friend of my brother-in-law said, you think your brother-in-law could get in touch with him. I said, you know, I could ask him, you know. He said, see if your brother-in-law give him a number. Do your number form. But I didn't know that my brother-in-law was breaking the law when he gave me that number. Westco knew, I didn't know. So my brother-in-law gives me the number for this guy. The buyer goes down, he's, I was there for the first couple buys. Then after that, the guy is buying from the guy. The agent is buying from the guy on his own. I'm not in it no more. All I did was an introduction. Then I stepped back. The introduction is, this guy's good. I can vouch for him. And then I'm pushed to the back. And the agent stepped into all the work they sells. So when the day to go to court for our grand jury, Westco says to me, he says, Simon, I got something to tell you, man, I'm sorry. I didn't have nothing to do with this. I said, what's going on? He said, they want to lock your brother-in-law. I said, my brother-in-law said he didn't do nothing. He said, well, when he gave the form number out, you know, that shows that I can't think of that word he used. That shows that he's a part of it. I said, man, what's going on? He ain't dead, man, I do work every day, man. Come on, man. He said, I don't really. He said, I don't have no control of that. The prosecutor wants to arrest him. I was like, shit, man. - So you helped to get your brother-in-law docked? He wasn't a drug dealer. He was friends with the drug dealer. So when he gave me the number, that shows a part of the organization. - Part of the conspiracy. - So did he end up going to prison? - Yes. - How did that go over with your sister? - With my wife. - Oh, was your wife's brother? Oh, of course your brother-in-law, I'm stupid. - Shit. - Oh, man. - Oh, man. - I was fucking devastated, man. You know, when they arrested them and my wife said, oh, shit. I had to let it know, like, yo, boom, boom, boom. You know, I was doing this with the feds. And she said, Simon, oh, it's a fuck. - Your wife had, you had no idea, you were. - No. - Today's episode is sponsored by Cash App. Of course, Cash App is the way that I've been sending and receiving money for years. But if you're not up to speed, Cash App is more than just a money transfer app now. They actually have full on banking services. With the Cash App card, you unlock a ton of perks without all of the hidden fees. Add your card to your digital wallet to make your money move easier. Plus get a ton. ton of points for things that we buy every day, ton of perks. Cash app also adds security to your money by declining suspicious card transactions and sending you a notification to make sure the payment is really you. If your card is ever lost or stolen, you can lock it with just one tap right in the app. Download Cash app today and make your money work for you. Visit our link in the bio. So, let me get this straight. You as a civilian, were recruited by the ATF to work as an independent contractor. Yes. And this is essentially what they do. This phenomena of independent, call them snitches or cooperators has grown exponentially over the years. To why now they have tens of thousands of things. That's a lot of them for rule 35s, mostly. Right, professional. They're for rule 35s for family members. What is rule 35? Well, the rule 35 is basically a person is in prison. They've already been convicted. They've already been tapped out. So they said, okay, if the government could get substantial information to bring in criminal criminals, we can go back to court and give you a reduction in time. That's what Nikki Barnes got. Right, but in your situation, I make it, you did have a Mac 90, were they threatening you with prison time? No, I had a tech nine. No, what happened was, when I went back to court, it was not an avoid. When the day the grand jury, the prosecutor, she said something to me, and I think this is what kind of broke me. She said, I was going to lock you up. You think you fucking slick. I said, what? And I'm kind of mad now. This is right before I go testify before the grand jury. She says this to me and I'm kind of heated. I said, this mother of, I help you just help bring and people I know, these are people who are from the neighborhood I live in. I help you bring in all of these cases. And you got to say, and then I just came to the belief that regardless of what you do, good, better, and difference, you couldn't trust them. And so at that moment, when you were betrayed by the feds, it's kind of when you said, fuck it. Yeah. I'll be honest with you. I was mad at Westco. And to be honest with you, I didn't realize how mad I was at them until he called me one day after I started selling guns. And he said, Simon, you bought a lot of guns, buddy. He said, please tell me you're not selling guns. And I snapped. I just went for men as I cursed them out. I called them every white boy empathetic I could think of. Hold on. Cracker ass, motherfucker, honky. All the other stuff. Not good ass white motherfucker. You knew God damn well. When my brother-in-law gave me that number that he was going to jail. You dirty motherfucker. And I just went, I just went eight shit, eight, eight shit on him. And he says, Simon, he said, look, man. I said, fuck you, you white motherfucker. You told me, I remember that day when we went to go to get the cocaine from the dudes and your motherfuckers said, no, we don't want cocaine. We want crack. We want to sell it to you up in the projects because the project is federal property. So this is a whole another, I'm not, I'm not a brisk and none of this shit. I learned this thing as I went along. I said, what the fuck, what's going on, man? Like damn. Yeah, it's real dirty. Because we were real cool. I mean, like I told you, I talked to him when he was, when West, when Waco happened. I talked to him when Oklahoma happened. You know, I was, I felt sad for his loss of his friend. I felt sad for the loss of his, his, his all peers that died in Oklahoma. You know what I'm saying? I knew I felt what he was going through, but I told people don't get me wrong. I was mad at him, but I never stopped liking him. How much times did your brother-in-law do? He did about a year. They charged him with using an electronic device to precipitate a drug deal. Some shit like that. Like people don't understand. You get the phone number out and they make a deal. Guns, drugs, whatever. You ask on a prison, it could be money laundering, it could be some type of fraud. You can't, you can't give a phone number to nobody. Somebody breaking a law, you say, yo, you got to get in touch with that dude yourself. Has your brother-in-law since forgiven you? It's something we never talked about, but we all went on a cruise together. He told my wife, he was worried about this interview for my sake. So let me get this straight just before we move on. You got caught with a tech nine. You weren't a criminal. You were working a job. You were in Philly. They threatened you with prison time? No. So why did you go work for them in the first place? We had a conversation with Wes Gwanai and I said, you're fucking with me. And you got guys out here selling drugs, shitting on a neighborhood day and night. And he said, well, Simon, you know, we always need people to let us know what's going on, blah, blah, blah. But the thing was, was I had a, being a person who lived in New York, I had a little experience with drugs. I did some, I did some all crack with some people one day and I ended up in emergency when I almost died. And so I really had a real disdain for drugs, because I, and I saw so many beautiful men and women who were the most beautiful people who would ever see drugs to destroy them. And I had a disdain and hatred for drugs and anybody that was selling them. So it's kind of like you wanted to do this like vigilante. You wanted to help the community. It's almost like, you know, like the, yeah, I helped the community type thing, but I, because I, I had a disdain for people that sold drugs. I felt like they, it was the worst thing in the world you could do to your own community. You remember, you remember that whole scenario in New York City? That's how I felt when I used to talk about, you know, you're selling this to your people. And that's how I felt. One time I was in five percent. I was a whole hardcore five percent. They called me Supreme Knowledge Born God. And I believed that you know, if you sold drugs, man, you, you, you, you wasn't, you didn't want to, you, you were, you were the worst. Yeah. I prefer the, I prefer the New Jack City line eight. No, who's he's made in Harlem? Well, that's it. We don't have no poppy fields. None of that. Okay. So you're betrayed. You try to do the right thing and, and help the feds out. They betray you, get your brother-in-law, who's a civilian locked up. And so how do you end up in Florida? I was, this was after I came back from Florida. Okay. This was after I came back. Okay. So you would already had some knowledge of guns that you'd already started learning about guns. You kind of fell in love with guns. Did you already had, you already had contact with the Florida gun shops? The Florida, Florida. I bought a couple handguns at flea markets and couple of gun shops. But when I came to Philly, so, so you have a clear understanding about what happened. I came to Philly. And I was a legit guy. Everything had went, went happening with the feds. You know, what's going on ahead? We had our words about what had happened with my brother-in-law. So when I lose my job, I said, man, shit, man. I said, boo, it already told me, man, if I know about any hammers that are anybody had let them know. I called them up. I said, yo, boo, what's up, man? I got something, man, if you want to go down north, you know, if you know somebody wanted. So he said, come, come scoop me up, man, I'm down on Swain Street. So I went to Swain Street, got him, and we went over there for fair amount. We had already shaved the cereal numbers down with a grind and stone. I gave the gun the boo-boo. Boo-boo came out. He said, yo, here you go, man, he gave me 300 for that. I said, oh, man, I paid $50 for that. What was that? It was one of them low-cheap, Larson or Davis or something like that. Then I remember, I said, shit, that dude got them nine millimetres of Larson's up there. I think he won't send any dollars for them. When up there got two of them nine millimetres, Larson's shaved it down. We got three or five of a piece for those, and then bam. So those and they had a little money, then think about it no more. And boo-boo and I started running around the gun shops, and I bought something else. So that-- What was that? It was cheap tar, or something like that. So that. But then, you know, I was on a move, selling different stuff, and then they put me on, to the long guns, to the Mac '90s, to the SKSs. It said, okay, dudes, be buying it. And the wild part was that you could take a Mac '90 or SKS, change the stock over to a black stock. And now it looked more military, and guys be like, oh, man, damn, come on. And you could get a nice piece of chain, but these was all brand new. They still all had the packing grease in the barrel and everything. They was covered with packing grease, because what happened was after the iron curtain fell, or the wall came down, they had thousands and thousands of AK-47s. And so what they did was they converted them to semi-automatic and send it with us. Right. Right. Yeah. We sent them us. Right. So would you actually deal with semi-auto AK-47s? They were all semi-auto. What they did was, in order to ship them into the U.S., they just converted them to semi-automatic form and they shipped them over here and they sold them us. And I'm sure there's guys on the street that know how to take a semi-auto and convert it into an auto. I've heard of that kind of stuff, but I've never, I will be honest with you, when I ran the street, I never saw fully automatic gun. Never. Nobody, nobody was really, all they was worried about is they had a nice gun to put up the post up and say, "Yeah, I got this, yeah, I got that, yeah, I got the other." But I never saw anybody with a fully automatic gun. Never, never doing the time I was on the street. What you did deal with semi-auto AKs? Those, those mag '90s are a copy of the AK-47. The receiver, the receiver part is what they had when the iron curtain fell. And so what they did was they changed the stock. Like the back of the stock, they had another piece on it with a hole in the bottom. Like the wood, the wood attached to it, it was a hole in it. And so it didn't look totally, the butt wasn't like the AK-47, but it looked it like the AK-47. I see. Yeah, 'cause those are really nice sleek guns. Yes. They look cool. And also, they got a company, Naranko, they had a 45 ACP that was very cheap, hundred and something dollars for a 45, 45 ACP. Looks like they're caught in 1911. Don't really jam up as long as you use them ball ammo. You could sell them for like a nice piece of change, and you only kicked out a fucking change for it. So, and that gun, 'cause I'm not a gun guy. Is that a revolver? No, that's a semi-automatic pistol. That's like the Army 45, but it was made in China. And so you know China did ship a lot of shit over him. They shipped a lot of all Mach 9. Actually, the Mach 90 is the designation for the Chinese AK copy. That's the Chinese name. They shipped them from Bulgaria, they shipped them from China, they shipped them from Yugoslavia. All of those companies sent thousands and thousands of guns to America. Wow. For our streets, for our people to kill each other. And when you look at the price of them, everybody knows where he's gonna end up at. Where are you gonna end up? And they knew, the Chinese knew Yugoslavia knew, Bulgaria knew, they're not stupid that these are gonna end up on the streets for America. You selling a gun that shoots the one of the most high-power ammo in the world for 200 and change. That's chicken feet. So, you could go, you didn't even have to leave town. You could go to a gun shop and filly buy one of those Chinese long guns for 200 bucks and then go flip it for a thousand. A thousand, yeah. My home, that is a guy I met. It's too easy. He was, he said, they were selling them for two grand in Jersey, 2,500 in Jersey. Because Jersey have strict gun laws. So you taking a hell of a chance once you travel over to Jersey. It was another guy told me he used to sell firearms in New York. He said he'd get a shitload of money for those firearms in New York. Because any place that people don't have access, the price doubles if not triples. Why did you not go up there? You didn't want to take a chance? I just felt like that was a bad entity going into another jurisdiction. Because you know, not only you're dealing with the feds, you're dealing with other police departments and I was like, nah, I ain't trying to deal with that shit. Today's episode is also brought to you by super power. I used super power recently. I'm on this keto diet where I basically just eat meat and I wanted to check my biomarkers. I wanted to make sure that it wasn't affecting my organs, my blood, my cholesterol. So I used super power. Super power is unbelievable. It's like going to the doctor before a 20th of the price. Check it out. With super power, they give you 150 biomarkers tested every year across two tests. In full baseline and one progress check up, so you actually see what's going on in your body. It's a full diagnostic of what's going on internally. That's way deeper than a typical annual physical at a doctor's office. Super power looks across key systems gives you your biological age, builds a personalized protocol with supplement and care recommendations and even factors in your past history like if you were a smoker. They send you a licensed pro to your home for the lab test or you can go to a nearby location. They send somebody to your home. It's unbelievable. It's proactive health made simple for members who want real control and real results. Take control of your health with super power. For a limited time, our listeners get $50 off their super power membership. Head over to super power dot com and use code connect for $50 off. And after you sign up, they'll ask you how you heard about super power. Of course, do us a favor and tell them that the connect sent you there to support our show. Thank you super power. Okay. So, but how do you keep yourself under the radar? You're buying hundreds of guns under your own name. That's the question. How did I get? How was I able to do it? How was I able to do it and it when I got my indictment? I walked into the courtroom and I talk about this in my book like I told you I'm writing my book. I'm almost finished. The guy with the funny is, I use that name because that was what they told the police. Oh, the guy with the funny is he sold me this guy with the funny is so me this, the black guy he got a boy had with funny is he sold me this, but they knew from I had a blue car. I had had a white car. I had had a black car. So the information all matched up. They could prove this from the, say yes, he had a blue car. The guy, he had a white car, he had a black car. But the funny thing was when I walked into that courtroom and I heard what was going on, but you know, when you get arrested, you fucked up in the head, you like, oh man, now look at the paper. No, that can't be right. I see the one in front of the five and zero. I'm thinking it was 50, but then I look at the one, so I was shit, and I said to my man in the cell, I said, oh shit, he's my fucking son, I saw a lot of 50 guns. He said, God damn, Simon, you saw that many. He said, you fucked, man. So they got you on 150 guns. No, this is, this is the, now they take me to Fahrenheit. Hang on, hang on. Is that accurate? Or do you think that was undercounted? The United States attorney said she believed was more like 500. She said she believed it could have been closer to 500. Right. And the reason, you know, they, they said, they knew I went to lots of gun shows and because the way, when you buy them long guns, this is when they, they lose track of it. Right. Because they have to report to the ATF when you buy handguns, but not the long gun. So once I started dealing with the long guns, that's when the Taliban went, went through the roof because now I'm, so, so you know, Johnny, and sometimes I sit around, sit back and I think about this. And I say, what kind of fucking people are running these gun shops? I got to the point where one gun shop, they said, oh man, they would call me up on the phone. The gun shop would call me up and say, hey, I just got three of them smith and whessons that you like. I just got an X amount of Mac 90s and they would call me on the phone. People who were supposed to be protecting the community, it's calling the gun a phone because the ATF, ATF is telling them we don't want you to sell this guy no guns. What was so crazy even one day, I went in the gun shop, Mike and Kate's, there's two white guys in there. I said, shit, they look like the facts, but I can't turn around and walk back out. So I walk over, Mike speaks to me. He said, hey, how you doing, sir, or give me just a moment, I'll be with you in a minute. So I walks over to the counter and I see a folder with my name on it. I said, yeah, buddy, look like you busy. I come back and I leave, they, and they're questioning this guy about me. He doesn't say to me, hey, he doesn't use my name. He gives me a kind of look, how you doing, sir, I'll be with you in just a moment. He never said my name when I saw that folder on the counter, I said, what the fuck, man, and I leave. He said, yeah, Simon, he was in there questioning, I said, about you, but I know you're not doing anything. Okay. So these gun dealers eventually sold guns out the back door to you. They weren't selling them out the back door, but what they were doing was illegal. They, they, you're supposed to fill the paperwork out in front of them, but what they were doing was filling the paperwork out, getting, and all I would have to do was come in and sign the paperwork and grab and pay and leave, but I'm supposed to be in the store while all the paperwork is being made. process. All I would do was sign on the bottom of the sheet, sign on the bottom of the sheet and leave. And one guy, he had the guns. Now kid you not. He handed, was handing me the bag, then I would grab the bag. He said, ah Simon, I know you make it a shit load of money down of Philly. And he winked at me. I went like this. He said, don't worry about it buddy, I checked. He said, I'll let you know if I get anything else good. And that's what the guy told me. Well, he wasn't wrong. He wasn't wrong, but he would, but he, but he had knowledge that I was breaking the law. This has always been my thing. People talk about the feds, they talk about the feds, they talk about the feds. They should have had the right to shut me down at the point that they wanted to. That people would not have not, it should, it should have been where if I, they try to call in and say no to Scott, I can't buy any firearms. They should have had the right to restrict that, but they bitten. Yeah, it's like with alcohol sales. Like you have the right to turn away a drunk. Yeah. Actually, you're legally obligated to turn away. You mean they're obligated. Right. So here's the, here's the kicker. When I, when I, when I read the article on Tanners, the liars, Mike and Kate's, and it was another one I can't think of their name, but I dealt with everybody. The liars, they call me Lou Gossett, because they said I, I, I look like Lou Gossett, junior, the guys up there. You know, I mean, Lou Gossett, Mike and Kate's, me and Mike was real cool. I used to go up there and he taught me a lot of our firearms, like what guns were good, what guns were shitty. It was one incident that happened. And I was like, this shit just sound shady. He said, I said to Mike one day, I went in there. I said, yo, Mike, what happened to that 45 block you had? He said, oh, I think I sold it. He, no, he said, he said, oh, I said, he said, I sold it. Then one day, he calls me up Simon. You remember the other day, like a couple of weeks back, he was asking me about the block 45. He said, the police just came, said it turned up in a crime and come to find out those guys that stole the gun out the store and I didn't know that they had stole the gun. I'm like, and then when I got busted, the fed said, we want you to look at this paperwork. And I went, they said, yeah, you see just what we see, don't you? Said, said, did you have a bottle's guns? I said, nah, but there was evidently guns in my name that I never bought. How do I don't get it? How is that? You ready? So people, because you are, I guess you were known as the gun guy though. So somebody used your name. In fact, that he was using my name because I was already fucking up. He was using my name to sell stuff out the back door. This is what, this was what's going to believe. I see. They believed he, but what's that of a shop? It was a, that shop up in red and I believe they closed them down immediately after I got arrested. I was going to ask you about that. Did any of the gun dealers face criminal consequences? And this is crazy. None of them faced any criminal consequences and that I know of. But the feds had asked them more than one of them. Please listen, don't sell the sky to more guns. We'd notice guys doing something. Oh man, we know you ain't up to nothing Simon. These feds, they just want to ride a, ride a legitimate gun on his back. We know you not up to nothing. But just think about it Johnny. Your mortgage is doing. You haven't really sold shit. Who are you going to call? Simon. Say, hey, let me call Simon, man, maybe I could sell him five or six guns. I'll be able to make the mortgage in the car treatment. Oh, Simon, I got this. Right. So I was getting calls from gun shops. Calling me, telling me, I got this in. I got that in. I got the other in. That's crazy. And so they just walked away. It's like how the pharmaceutical companies got away with selling all the oxy cottons in the perk of sense. But the pharmacists who sold it went to prison. But the manufacturers didn't. What the, what the, the agents, the agents really don't have no real rights. And people don't understand even with the laws. The worst thing ever happened. Well, two things happened in America. That was, that was catastrophic when it came to guns. And still check in ghost guns. Those were the two worst things ever happened in America with guns. Now you look at a guy like me. At one point they had to come to a guy like me. Because they were waiting periods. Some places at three days, some places at five, some places at 15 day waiting period. Now it's like you go to the phone, contact the state police. And I said, and this is the process. They, they punch in either your social security number, your driver's license number. And they said, it's this for this, this it is. Okay. It's for guns, press one. They said, please hold. Then the recording comes back, said, you have been approved. You know, your approval number is destiny, write that down on the paperwork. And then at that point, you can buy one or you can buy 10. It doesn't matter. Ghost guns. No, I'm talking about legit guns. But this is the legit process now. I see. But instant check. Well, we were first thing I want to talk about instant check. Now the next thing was ghost guns. You, you were 15, 16 year old kid. You never watched the news. But your grandmother is sitting in there watching the news. And you see them. They said, today we're going to be, be showing about the ghost guns. And so the lady on the news is building a ghost gun with some guy. And you're sitting there eating your cereal. And you said, damn, what? I just put this gun together like 20 minutes. So now you call your, call your partner, say, yo, I just saw this shit on the news. So now you're looking up online. And you see, you can buy the whole ghost gun for X amount of money. So you and your men's put a couple dollars together. You buy it. You wait a few days in the mail. Y'all boom, boom, boom, boom. And y'all got a gun. That's dangerous. That's even. I mean, yeah, it's crazy. But what I did was bad. But that is crazy. So nowadays, they don't even need that like me, right? They don't, okay, explain for people that don't know what a ghost gun is and how people procure the parts. A ghost gun is, they call them ghost guns because they didn't have no serial numbers. So the police can't tell the police cannot trace them. They are non-traceable because there's no serial number. If the gun is done at using a shooting and they catch you with it, they could trace it because of the depending on what barrel they use, what slide they use, and what not because it's a twofold thing. The bullet gets, um, um, indentation from the rifling of the gun. That's a grooves that's inside the barrel. The, um, shell casing will get an indentation on the back from the slide. So if they recover the bullet and they recover the all casing so that they can trace it to that gun, but they don't know where the origins of this gun was. So what happens is the person, they go online, they receive a receiver in the mail, that's not finished. So because the receiver cannot, um, accept all the, all the magazine in the slide and all of that. So now they have to do certain things mechanically to make this be able to accept the magazine, the slide in the barrel and stuff. But most of the stuff that a person has to do can be done with a drill and a file and stuff like that. There's dozens and dozens of videos on YouTube about it. Oh, 100%. You could learn how to do it in an afternoon. And where are they ordering the parts from? They order from different companies online. Okay, so gun manufacturers make those. These are independent manufacturers who are making the receivers. And I guess they must have went in business with the people who make the slides and stuff because they have whole kits available online. And legally, legally. Okay. Now, now what happened was, um, I believe it was Biden changed. Oh, wait, it was done. But for my understanding, they changed it back, you know, the laws keep jumping back and forth. But I remember, you know, doing the on Biden administration, they were talking a lot about, um, ghost guns and what we need to restrict and blah, blah, blah. They were going crazy about that stuff. But mine, my recommendation to anybody, I don't give a damn if you legal or illegal, stay away from that shit. The reason being is you're manufacturing a gun at your kitchen table. It might blow up in your face. You know, you don't know, you don't know what might happen. It, anything could happen. You know, the, when you, like I tell people, and I said to someone else, when you buy a smith and washing a glock, a coat, a redder, these guns are sick, a waffle. These guns have had thousands and thousands and thousands of hours of research and development. Right. So, you know, uh, and then also, if you have a record, you don't want to get caught with no, no, no gun. Of course not. Because if you have, if you have drugs on you, that changed the whole dynamics of it. Now back up, remember, I'll tell you about the guy from, from Redden, his brother, and his, he received a life sentence. And this is what caused him to get the life sentence. The firearm with the drugs would, Thanks so much. and you may not think that you were in big trouble but say you got caught one drug sale, they gave you probation. You got caught with another drug sale, you got six to 23 months in the county. You got caught for another drug sale, you did a year and a half upstate. Now you get caught with a bag of crack in a gun and you go to court and they tell you, "Oh, you're looking at life." And you never killed nobody. It blows the hair off your head, man. You're like, "What the fuck?" At a minimum, if you plead out there, say, "Well, you take a plea, we'll give 30." Or you take a plea, we'll give you 25. I never understood it. When I was in the game, I was like, I mean, it's different selling heroin to really dangerous guys in Philadelphia, right? Like, your life probably is in danger when you're dealing with narcotics at that level, but I don't know. Your odds of getting busted with that gun are greater than you being murdered and defending yourself with a gun, in my opinion. It is. And the reason being is, like, I used to tell my daughter, I'm enough used to be running around, right around at night. I said, "Y'all motherfuckers are prelude to a police stop." They said, "Well, what you mean?" I said, "Any time a girl is driving a car, she's black." The guy in the passenger seat is black. They're going to stop you. And they have a thousand reasons they could use while they stopped you. They could say that you're swerved. They could say that the light was out. They could say that headlights were too dim. They could say, "Well, we thought the tag was expired." You know, all kinds of reasons they could stop. You wasn't wearing a seat belt. The police have a thousand reasons to stop you. All right. So don't be strapped. Now, so you're going to buy guns when you're transport, and these are out of town. You would go up to Reading, Pennsylvania. I would go, most of the people I dealt with, it was right in Philly. The gun shops. I was dealing with frank gun shop at one point. Mike and Kate's, the liars, locks, who's a different business now. They closed down. You know me and the guy, John, we were really cool. But when you're riding with the guns, you've got paperwork. You're fully legit at this point. Yeah. Okay. Now don't get me wrong. You get stopped. Like, one night I was down to Badlands. Friend of my wife, let me use her car. And I realized, I said, "Shit, man. She ain't giving me the registration." So I got four. I think you see the three or four Mac 90s in the trunk of the car. The guy told me to all wait here. He's going to get the money. But I knew the guy wasn't really worried about it. But while I'm waiting for him, the police come up. He said, "Yo, what are you doing there, buddy?" I said, "I'm waiting for somebody." He said, "No, you ain't waiting for nobody. You buying drugs." He said, "I want you buying drugs." I said, "Yeah." He said, "Get that fight of your hand. Let me catch you around in no more." And I got in the car and I went around the block. And as I come around the block to do coming out, I said, "Yo, man, the police just rolled up on me." I said to him, "Damn, man, the cops rolled up on me." I thought they had me. But I didn't, you know, that's it. But I mean, if you-- No way I was going to explain to him. I'm in a bad land with three Mac 90s in the trunk of the car. He's taking me in either way. Right. Regardless if I got paperwork or not. He's taking me in. But technically, you would beat it. Yeah, I would. I would probably beat it. Right. But they're going to still confiscate your shit. Right. Because they're going to say something was shady. Right. Okay. The guns-- You're distributing these guns brand new. Brand spanking new. Brand spanking new. Brand spanking new. With the price tag on it, basically. You wouldn't go and shoot them beforehand and make sure they worked. They would load it with packing grease. Right. It would take-- Like, it was times that I just-- Like, I did just go ahead and say, let me get all this packing grease out. But it was just too difficult. I just pretty much just opened up this what I got. And I tell them, man, you got to clean all that fucking grease out of there, man. It's a gang of grease in there. What was like an average gun deal? And what was the biggest deal you ever did for how many guns? I think the biggest one I ever did. Like I said, I was-- I had three Mac 90s and I believe I had three or four hand guns. I'm looking for booboo. I'm all over North Philly. Everywhere I went, he's not there. I went to Swain Street. I called his mom house. I can't find him. And I'm riding around in this guy. I don't mind to say it. He passed away also. He died from COVID. The name was Randy. So Randy sees me. He said, yo, what's up? I said, yo, you see boo. He's like, yo, what you got? I said, no, I was looking for booboo. Yo, what you got, man? I know you got something. I said, I ain't, man. He said, come on, man. He said, bring him what you got. So I bring the three Mac 90s. I bring the three or four hand guns I got. So he says, man, he said, yo, you do eight on this? I said, man, eight hundred. That's kind of low. I'm thinking he talked about all three. I said, low, man. He said, no, that'll be eight, nine, sixteen. I'm like, what the hell? And I'm thinking, oh, this mother. I've been clippin' me. But my man, my man. Explain that. Explain that. So I would give it to booboo. Booboo go in and he'd say, yo, they gave me this. I don't question that. That's my man's. And you know from being in the streets a lot of times when you cool with somebody, you know, you don't question it. And some people don't know that whole phenomenon with the guys out in New York, the one drug dealer, killed the other drug dealer because he said he was clippin' him. He was getting it for this price and selling it for this. So that's kind of how the street says. You trust your man's. So you said, oh, man, that's my man's. He ain't going to do me no wrong. So once the guy tells me he's going to give me this for this, this for this, this for this. And they go get the money and they counting it out. And I'm getting heated. I'm talking about, I'm hot, man. I'm calling him as many names as I call Wesco. Because your man was puttin' points on, he was tackin' on points to the gun. He was taxing me. Yeah. He was say, y'all man, they gave me five, but he put three in his pocket. So after that you started getting better prices. Yeah, but now I knew what the real deal was. I didn't know what the deal was. So if you bought a Mac 90 for, what did you say it was? 300? Anywhere between 229 and 299. And then what was one of those going for? They were growing from anywhere from 1,000 to 1,500. If you got the right mark, that really, if you hold out, you could get more. Yeah. If you was lucky, you got 12 or 13. If you was unlucky, you get between 8,000. But it's such a good markup and it's so easy. And you don't have to arm, but then the downside about it, like I said, you selling, you selling bricks or whatnot. You ain't never gonna see these dudes more than likely again in prison. It is scarier shit when you walk in the cell block and the whole fucking cell block is your customer. You saw all these dudes in the fuzzy, so guns to walk in the unit. I'm like, oh shit. I said, yeah, every, all these dudes. Who is what drug dealer is going to get a day of his arrest? One of his customers is going to walk into the cell with him. One of my, one of my biggest customers walking to the fucking cell with me, my first day of arrest. I'm like, oh shit, what you doing here? They got everybody else. He said, now, man, he said, I got locked up with, I shot so and so, and they booked me for the gun. The dude didn't die. He said he paid him off to have to come to court. But then he still got the gun charge. I'm like, damn, but nobody else comes in. I get to the federal jail. I'm like, one dude says, yo, what's up, man? He was from all chains of 10. I had been dealing with him for the wreaking guy. He said, yo, Simon, he said, let me talk to you, man. He said, I want you to know, man, I'm cooperating, man. He said, I told him I got the gun from you. I said, thanks, man. What a gentleman. I said, I took the serial numbers off. You didn't take the serial numbers off. I said, good looking, man. But with me, I wasn't mad at nobody about you. Even today, I'm not mad. I'm not mad at nobody. I wasn't mad at nobody then. Were you actually strapped when you went to sell guns? Every time. OK. OK. OK. The Glock 21, which is a 45. OK. The Glock 20, which is a 10 millimeter. And the power ordinance P 45. And I always have me a 38. Or either 357 revolving the cut just in case I had to shoot through my pocket. So you kept it. I kept it in my pocket a lot of times. If it was like fall or something like that. That way, if they tried any funny stuff, I could just shoot through my pocket. That's why I always kept revolving my pocket. Those are the small ones, right? Yeah. That was a 6-shot 38. And then I got hit, man, Ruger had a 357 Magnum that was a 6-shot. So I started shooting. I had one of those at one time. Were you a good shot? Probably one of the best. And police officer taught me how to shoot. Really? He saw me doing the same old street shit. He said, man, he said, you got a nice gun. I can't remember what I had. I had a really high end gun. He said, but he said, pick up this revolver. And he told me, this is how you get accurate shots. And he said, now get your gun. And he said, do this right here. And he taught me how to shoot a police officer. I threw it off of your police officer. And. D, I don't know, I'm such a bad shot. - Let me tell you something. I was shooting one day at the range. A guy says, "Me, say, excuse me, could I talk to you?" Second, I said, "What's up?" He said, "You a police officer, a federal agent?" I said, "No, why don't you ask that?" He said, "Damn, you can shoot, man." But boo-boo, I wasn't nowhere as good as boo-boo. Boo-boo actually took me side A.U.s course. You know, that's the guy to write for the gut magazines, me side A.U. If you look 'em up, boo-boo actually went and took his training course. He told boo-boo, he could have got 'em on the LAPD. Instead of going right to California, boo-boo went fucking 'em round down the way and he got arrested on a drug charge. And he took his firearm rights. - Do you think a lot of street guys, drug dealers, people from Philly, do they go teach themselves how to shoot at the range? - A small amount. - A small amount. You got guys, you got guys, who are, they have records, or they consider to be criminals, but they smart. You got some guys knuckleheads day in the way. Like, this guy, this guy can't, I know. Extremely smart guy. Extremely smart guy. One of the smartest guys you would ever meet. He would be a guy you would see at the range. He wide, that's another guy from North Philly. Extremely smart guy. That's the guy who was in the cell the day I got arrested. Extremely smart guy knows how to make money. I mean, if you wanted to get up under somebody and learn how to make money, he the person you want to be under. He was an extremely smart guy. Oh, I miss another guy, I won't say his name, because he's never been on book by anybody. Federal estate. So I won't say his name. Shall I? All of us smart do. Really smart guy. Smart guy. And they would actually go to gun ranges. Those are the guys you see at the range, like those guys. But you see, it's like you got dudes in the street running around on autopilot, then you got dudes who are actually calculating in their extremely smart guys. I really looked like what's crazy though? It's like, booboo was younger than me, but I looked up to him. Ken is probably a little younger than me. I looked up to him, even like Ty. I mean, I looked at him as being probably the guy would want to be if I was in the streets. He was the, he was a street smart, motherfucker. He knows how to make money, man. And I really admired him. And the other dude I said, I can't mention his name, because he's never been in custody. I would say I put him at the top level of guys and I think are really smart. Because you know, you invade the police for over three decades. You know what I'm saying, you're a smart guy. So these big kingpins that you're dealing with, selling guns to, any part of you say, I want to get down with these guys to start moving drugs. One dude offered me a block one time. He said, yo, he said, I got this block over there. He said, I don't really want to fuck with it no more. He said, you know, they're giving out too much time for this dissonance. I said, man, I ain't trying to fuck with that drug shit, man. I said, you got to cops to worry about. You got more fucking workers going to be trying to rob you. Because every time you turn around, this guy running off with a pack. This guy running off with a pack. It ain't like when you selling bricks. You know, you just make one move and you done. When you got a block now, you got five to 20 guys working for you and eight of them trying to rob you. - It's like running a small business. - Yeah, well really, really, I'll be honest with you. And I had a disdain for drug dealers until I started selling weed. And then I met the guys from New York. Like, I took, when you talk about admiration, I really had an admiration for this guy, Marky. That's the one I'll tell you I want to testify on against. He was street smart. He was a guy, another guy. If you wanted to be under somebody, you know, you want to learn the streets 101. He was a guy that you would be under. Street guys respected him, did boy could fight. You know, he had, he had a lot of swag. I mean, always dress real nice. I mean, he was a whole different kind of dude. He would be a dude that you would want to be under if he was in the streets man and learn it. So you don't get yourself killed right away. - So this whole time, now things are rolling. You're making a lot of money. And your whole advantage is that you just don't have a criminal record. And you can go buy guns over the counter and sell them under the counter. Your wife doesn't know anything about this. - No, she, I just, she'd be like, where you going? I said, I'll be back. - Did she wonder? Did she see that you were making money and not working? - She said, she said, I didn't share the money with her. Because I was, I was, at one point I had a bad gambling problem. Because see, see the thing is with people and I talked about this with somebody about addiction. See addiction, say you're an alcoholic or you're drug addict and you get sober, addiction didn't leave. You just stopped drinking and you stopped smoking crack or shooting dope or whatever. Now you may get addicted to women or you may get addicted to gambling or you may get addicted to cars or it may be jewelry because the addictive mind is what you have. Not the substance use. And at one point I was, I was doing a lot of gambling. I was fucking up. - So that was your vice? - Yeah, boo boo, man. My man, boo boo, he was in in them fucking horrors man in the strip clubs. I hate to say it that way. You know, ladies in the strip club. I didn't do strip clubs. I went there with him one time and then I told the chick, I'm with him. We had just made a move. I think I had about three, four grand in my pocket. I told him, man, I ain't thinking about this shit. But you know, that's how it is. You know, everybody on all levels of life they addicted to something. So that's what you were doing with the money. You were gambling it. - Yeah, but you know, like, I mean, I did, I did. I don't think I did as much as I should have did. But I had a lot of vices I'll say and I was screwing up bad. - Did you feel like you were the man now? Like, did you feel like the shit? You feel like you had gotten some get back from the feds betraying you? - When you walk into a neighborhood and some of the most known guys in that neighborhood know you on a first name basis. They dappin' you up and they giving you a hug. It's a whole 'nother kind of feeling. But then I understood how these guys are some drugs, how they feel and maybe this is why it's hard for some of them to step away. You know, even young ladies start approaching you who more than likely would have never approached you. I remember the one guy, I mean, he got killed dumb. And this, this, I was kind of scared when he got killed. He had a basketball game in this place called a polyester and fully, leafles on a Sunday, Saturday a Sunday. He got killed at this game, he got shot. He had a six hour peak, two, two, six on him. I was terrified, I said, oh man. I said, I wonder if he, the gun he had, he had got from me. 'Cause he had bought several guns from me. They called him, actually, they called him two pox. That's what they called him. He was from around the 17th in Jefferson area. But he had bought several firearms from me. And I said, oh man, they said, yeah, man, you heard man. Two pox got killed. I said, yeah, heard this shit on the news, man. I was like, damn, man. Who said, man, you know, you know, they said he got caught. Well, he had a gun on him. Said, man, I hope that shit ain't no joint. You sold him, man. I said, man, you, man, I'm, I'm shitting in my pants. But he had a gun on him that actually belonged to a FBI agent that was stolen, scratching your head like a FBI agent. What did I only get this from? But that's how Philly is. You might have a gun from Texas. You might have a gun from Oklahoma. You might have a gun from Florida. You know, guns are coming in from any and everywhere. Firearms is a weird thing. You have a city and you got guns that can, that's there from 50 different states. And where most of those guns manufactured, you think in Eastern Europe, the old Soviet block, or were they mostly from here? No, a lot of guns. A lot of the high-powered weapons, the so-called AKs, they're not real AKs. They're semi-automatic rifles to, like, let me back up. I'm not saying before, when the iron curtain fell, and then they had those, they had those are receivers, they just made them in the semi-automatic and sent them here. And you see a lot of those on the street, but I don't know about Chicago and LA, if they got real AKs. But now you see more AR-15s since this ghost gun phenomenon, 'cause they're making them in their house. But the parts are coming from China? Not a part. A lot of the gun parts, depending on where the gun comes from. That's what it all comes down to. Well, that's my question. Where do you think they're manufactured most? I'm not even, you know, I'm not even a brisk, because I try to not think firearms, because I don't have the right to own them anymore. So I try to keep my mind fire, I'm free. Do you think you were addicted to firearms, too? Oh, man, I was addicted to what I could do with smoking crack, or dope. I love them, man. Now, here's another question. you're selling these guns fresh out of the box. What about the ammo? 'Cause I'ma do with the felon. No, I never I would I would have most of them. I would say 99.4% of the time man. You got to go get your own bullets So where does up where does a guy a thug with a felony a drug dealer? Where does he buy bullets? Walmart? You can just you don't need an ID, you know at one point Walmart You walk in there if you look a certain age they didn't even card you So you just have to be over 18 to buy bullets and some of the gun shops if you look over 18 They might say you got ID buddy say yeah, okay, you old enough. They sell it to you. They don't take a copy of your ID They don't Keep a copy ID on file and nothing like that. They just verify that you over 21 Okay, so you don't have to they don't have to alert the feds. No, they don't have to learn nobody. Okay. I don't know about now But back then you could go on Walmart. They they see you look a certain age. They don't even card you I mean, hey, you see them in the case in Walmart 45 ACP 38 special 9 millimeter, you know, the most most guns that guys have when 9 millimeter So you know you go in Walmart you go in the neighborhood a gun shop in the area You didn't need no idea most of those places they can even card you For sure, it's easy Did you take orders like would guys that you knew Thoreau guys would they say hey, I'm looking for this. I'm looking for a long gun. I'm looking for a Mac 90 or I need a pistol would you actually take orders and then go for fill them or would you just sell whatever the gun shop had for you? the only time I remember the one guy we went to sell together in a couple a few other guys when Desperado came up Everybody wanted the two twin Ruger 45s Everybody wanted the Ruger 45 so now running around trying to find these Ruger 45s, but the price will be up Because you have to find them and the price was a little more Heavy duty after Desperado came out and Desperado dropped the price when the price of those guns went up because everybody wanted it Because they wanted to be like the lady one lady wrote an article. Everybody wanted to be Antonio bandarras for sure That was a cultural phenomena Yeah, like oh die hard Everybody wanted that for red and 92f Point break everybody wanted that six hour P226 Movies and television shows like Bill Bellamy remember we had to show where he carried the twin desert Eagles No, he had a show where he carried two desert Eagles on it. Bill fucking Bellamy. Yes, how do you play her pretty boy? My fuck up Bill Bellamy had Bill Bellamy Yeah, this is ironic me and my wife went to a Comedy show and my wife took a picture with him. She said he came off stage and he was like She said could I take a picture? He said okay, so my husband gonna take it. He said he don't look like he got a shit together She said now you're gonna get a shit together Because I didn't know how to work a phone. She had Little cheap phone So I took a picture hard Bill Bellamy, but he had a show where he carried twin desert Eagles Wow, and so then the streets the streets are screaming. I want a desert eagle Desert Eagle is a huge It's big it's big The lack what what that was with Arnold Schwarzenegger the last action hero Everybody wanted to fit the action express once that movie came out. They wanted the big desert eagle So that's got to be more expensive, right? Oh those those motherfuckers cost too much you you're not gonna make no money on them Now something like that if somebody somebody says yeah, man I'm trying to get this 50 cow say said you come across a 50 cow with that of course So you say back then a desert eagle was like maybe if you got lucky You could get one for 675 650 say man, you know, you have to give me like 1314 for that You know that somebody like boob might actually for like 2000 for that joint 50 cowable boy dude But that would be the 50 cow would be more like damn near stack So you won't be have to to get get some serious money for right because you go on you go on Because if something happened with that and ain't no way ain't no way to say oh, I don't know. Yeah Not that many people have a lot of heat gonna come and that's the thing about Specialty guns like guns like you something that on has an odd caliber That's why people didn't really fuck with 40s in the beginning of this whole shit when the 40 cow was new because if something go wrong That many 40s ain't out there, right because I remember the 40 cow was first dropped What do you think the most you Bickwood is Common gun in the streets of Philly is and was Black 19, block 17, block 22, block 23 Those are those are the number one guns Well, you know what Maryland did, right? Did you hear what Maryland did they outlawed the block? They said they're not gonna be able to own blocks in Maryland Not gonna be with some of them there. So there they just opened up on them. They saying that that's a market for gun runners then so that That's what they said they they're not gonna allow you to sell blocks there no more Well, I mean so now we got an underground markets so from gun owners and I think all the governor He he actually doesn't understand that doing something like that. He opens the door for more trauma in the city These guys they they make laws, but they don't understand that you bring more shit to your city when you do that and What what makes me angry the most though is that everybody is hollering about their first amendment rights They hollering about all these other rights that they have But the second amendment is the only right in the Constitution that is a privilege. That's afforded to only select people Yeah, I do think that's strange. It's a privilege. It's no longer right like I said to a guy One of my most hated terms law-bought and citizen only reason your law-bought and citizen They didn't catch you doing something right now, but at this point right because you and I have a fight with a guy Inble and lose your rights on firearms because it was a bad night at the bar You know your wife could say whatever whatever and you can lose your right to own firearms People don't understand that on that's so smart. It's second. Yeah, it's not really a right. It's a privilege Yeah, it's a privilege in yeah, and when you lose your second amendment rights, it's not For a little while it's permanent and the Constitution is supposed to all protect us from cruel and unused punishment But a lifetime sentence and that's an essence what you get you get a life sentence right you're not supposed to do that and The other tip side of this is do you know really what I did? Do you really understand what the law says I did? The law says and this is what I was convicted of I was convicted of 922 a big a one 922 USA team 922 Little a big a one. You know what that says selling firearms without a license You know it only crime. I really committed. I didn't get a license from the government to sell the guns Fascinating. Okay, so let's talk about how you went down Did you discover how the feds got on to you? Was it the big drug dealers that you were moving product to? Well, my man Bobby Westgo called me. I knew I I knew I was fucking up already Bobby Westgo called me. I knew I knew I knew it was over then Westgo called me then so I said fuck it. It's just a matter of time before they arrest me So all the your customers in the streets told on you Yes, what happened was operation sunrise like I said biggest biggest But stay ever probably didn't filly compared to the last one that last one they did Wasn't even as big as operation sunrise. Okay, so tell us a little bit about that. It was a big drug indictment, right? And I I can't remember the actual date. It was back in the 90s and ended the 90s The United States government along with the Philadelphia police department and other law enforcement agencies they made One of the biggest drug bus in the Kingserton and Fair Hill area of Philadelphia They said many of the drug dealers had just was selling drugs like they had a license So the locality they went one morning five six a.m. And they picked up all the drug dealers from Kingserton and Fair Hill section, which is considered the badlands in the hunting park section So I dealt with people in that section to hunting park so the guys from hunting park Kingserton in the badlands they locked them all up crack cocaine Mostly most of these guys probably were crack. I mean heroin - heroin's big But I think um back at that point crack was probably the big the big seller But I would assume marijuana PCP all of that were involved in the bus But the day that they did the raid They found several people with firearms He said, "Yo, who did you get your guns from?" I told my book the black guy the guy with the funny ears He the one that sounds guns And they said these guys told, these guys told the United States Attorney told my lawyer that seven different groups of drug dealers stated that I was the source of firearms. The first day of Operation Sunrise. It didn't take them one night for them to be like, "Yeah, first morning," it was them. The first morning, as soon as they were taken in the custody, before they even had a proper offer or offering or anything, you know what the prophet is. Before they said, "We can give you a 5K one," they already was saying it was me. Did they have your real name? Everybody knew my real name. I never said my name is Joe Johnson, my name Simon. I never told nobody gave nobody a fake name because the way I was operating is I believe the street bullsh*t. I meant nobody ain't gonna tell the cops nothing. These dudes, these dudes, the boss, there's a whole level of snitching that they do. See dudes in jail know about this. Some people on the street don't know. What happens is the boss would do one form of talent, which is, he would tell on his connect, or he would tell on somebody like me or other people like me that he did other crimes with. Right. Now, the lookouts would tell on the next guy in the level, the next guy in this level would tell on this guy, and they will corroborate. I saw this guy with this guy. But the whole crew will corroborate and everybody gets a 5K one from the boss to the lookouts. And a lot of times they all know they're gonna do it. Yeah, they probably know before they get caught. Let's all give each other up and get a time cut. But see, people, when people talk about telling most of the time, I think that guys know that they're gonna tell before they get caught. They know they're gonna tell before they get caught because they know that everybody saw Sammy case, but they don't realize you're not Sammy, you're not gonna get no fucking five years. You don't, you're not serving up, John Gotti, you're serving up Simon. He's no fucking body, just a dude from around the way. You don't even have no multi-million dollar mobster. That's the ironic thing. And one of the most unjust parts about how that whole system works with cooperating. The more you know, the bigger the boss you are, the more information you have on people, the bigger the time cut. At least with the Italian Mafia and I challenged a mob guy I had on here. I'm like, you Ginny's got the most sweetheart cooperation deal. All these murders and all you had to do was give up one guy that was going down anyways and you walked six years, you walked out of prison. Yeah. They didn't give the black drug crews that. They didn't give the fucking Latin king pins that. I'll say this with what people don't understand about the federal system. And I will say American general, see if you're white and I know an incident that happened in Philly, a guy murdered a guy is a parent he killed inside of hospital. They were roommates, he murdered this guy, it's evident he murdered him. This guy was given six to 23 months in probation after killing this guy. But the thing is, when you're white in America, the way that the justice system worked for you is different, like my wife, ex-husband, this guy robbed all of these banks in Philly back in the, oh, I had just got out of jail, FBI came to my house. He robbed about a dozen banks. He had been upstate prior to that. He went to the feds, he came out committed another crime, he went to the state. He was recently back on the street, but he violated his parole, but he's a white guy. And these guys don't understand, even like with the Italian guys, you get a guy like Joey's crew, they go to trial. The jury looks at him, they are, they are an artist, handsome Italian man that the police says because he dresses so nice. He looks so good, his hands immaculate, he's a handsome man and the jury says, I don't want to believe he did this, but it's a whole other kind of thing. The black guy walks in, he has on a dicky outfit, he has his hair and braids or he has dreads and he said, oh, he looks like he did it. I got a son, he got arrested for murder back in '04, he's been in jail like 20 years now. The jury took less than an hour to convict them and the funny thing about it was some of the testimony was kind of conflicting of the other testimony, but when I looked at the jury, I knew he was going to get convicted. There was an older white guy on the jury and I knew he was going to dominate everybody on there. The jury consisted of him, three black females, one black male and the rest were all white females, but I knew that older white guy was going to dominate him and I believe because he had prior law enforcement arm. Oh no, how did he end up on the jury? I don't know. I believe he had some kind of law enforcement in his background, but I looked at him and I said, man, this fucking guy is going to get convicted because the people don't identify what I'm like. If they see you, you go and trial, let me see, I don't want to bleed his God, didn't this? Well, it's not about what you believe, it's about what you can prove. And I get that the jury has biases, but it's about what you can prove. Trust me, I met a lot of white guys in Oregon that are doing all day and forever for a murder. Right. I understand. I'm not saying there's obviously, there's bias still and especially back then, I'm sorry about your son. Is he ever coming? Well, what is his? We trying to, you know, my wife, you know, she's trying to do what she can do legally. She got some kind of hearing coming up, but the sad thing is, if he would have been born a week earlier, he would be entitled to a number. But because he was born in January instead of December, he was 19 when the crime, when they say the crime was committed, he says he's innocent, you know, and in America, it don't matter, you know, you know, you got to, you got to really, really have a lot to make people a lot of times say they want to let you, let you leave here, but he's been in there 20 years. He's got a life sentence. Life without parole and in PA have probably the most juvenile lifers on the planet earth than anywhere else. They have more juvenile lifers than almost any state in the, in the United States. Well, I believe the US, the Supreme Court recently in the last couple of years banned life without parole for juvenile's. Well, they got to be 18 or below what he's 19, right? My hopes is, you know, one day, I told him to plead out, but he said he was innocent. He didn't do it. He believed that he would be exonerated, but I don't think that the jury actually was listening because when you start talking about what was done to the victim, you know, you know, how it goes. The victim was shot to death? Yeah. He was shot several times. Does that weigh, does it must weigh on you? Do you used to be this gun dealer and now your son is accused of shooting someone to death? It, it hurts. And also I had enough of you that was murdered. He turned 21 on a Thursday. He was murdered on a Saturday. He was shot to death by a guy that he saw every day and we talked about that earlier. He's on people who, you don't know that skill in you, you see him and he was, he was 21. I saw a guy get shot one morning, well, I didn't see the actual crime. I saw the aftermath and I never really thought about it. But when I leaned over to look at this guy, he had to look at tearing his face. It wasn't like the movies. He falls asleep. His eyes were open and he looked like somebody scared him. He used to look at him while he was dying. No, he was dead already and he had a look of terror on his face. I mean, I would never forget that. And the lady, the older Hispanic woman, she was shaking and crying. She didn't even notice God. He was a young black guy and she said, is he okay? I said, nope. I said, I don't think he okay, fireman pulled up at that point. The front of his shirt was white like yours, the back was totally red. This was broad daylight. Eight o'clock in the morning. Oh my God. But then, they say God has a way of showing you things. I was at work one day and this little girl who was on one of the units that I was deciding to work on because I worked in a psychiatric hospital. And she said to me, she was feeling sad about her dad. I said, what's going on with your dad? So my dad is in jail, he ain't never getting out. I said, "What did he kill somebody?" She said, "Yeah." I said, "Why, that must be hard." And she said, "Yeah, one day he was taking me to school and he shot this dude coming to find out. Her dad is the one that killed that guy." And you know, people told, "Wow." Her dad was the one that killed that guy. And I'm sitting there with this little girl talking to her, the father's never coming home and probably some asshole like me, probably sold him the gun. I don't know if that's the case, but you know. - It's the, when you break it down like that, yeah, young, especially anybody lose their life, but young black men lose in their lives, kids. It's just horrendous, it's unacceptable. So there's this huge sweep goes on from all these drug dealers, operations sunrise. How long did it take for them to pick you up? - What's the crazy part is, I don't think I got arrested to maybe two years later, maybe three. - And you were out of the gun game, right? - I was, when I got to redden, I sold maybe a handful of firearms. One day the guy, Mark, he came up to me. He said, "Yeah, you know, I heard you be having the toast." I said, "I'll be, I'm trying to stay away from that." He said, "If you ever get something, let me go, let me know." I came across a 380, I sold it to him. I sold him a 45 and then I sold him in his brother to nine millimeters. And then next thing you know, they got arrested. And it wasn't long after that that I got arrested, because now see what these indictments, what people don't understand. See, back then, they didn't have me, anything that could trace back to me. But they had several people that were cooperating and saying, "He did this, this and this." But now you can go to the grand jury and you can say, "Here's some people that live over an hour away from Philly." And they says that this is the guy. And you can get two witnesses that are gonna testify. One who says he bought a firearm off of the dude, one who says they witnessed guy selling firearms several times. And so now you got all of these people. So now it's consistent. So basically the feds felt like, and when they first did Operation Sunrise, there weren't enough people. Wasn't it, wasn't it? Well, these were all criminals who were saying this and this, but they didn't have anything to cooperate their stories. But the red, in fact, says, "Whoa, we got somebody that lives in a city over an hour away." And they said, "This is the guy." Oh, okay. So you were selling weed. You stopped selling guns in Philly because all your customers got locked up. Not all of them, but a vest with Johnny. But you felt the heat. I assume that's why you kind of got out of town. My wife had, my wife had got a new job and we were relocated to another city. I'll be honest, I had been unemployed for about maybe 17, 18 months. And once I got involved in crime, I wasn't looking for a job. Gotcha. But you were a person of interest on the indictment. Yeah. And once these people got busted in redding Pennsylvania, and they pointed at you for selling them the guns, that's when the AUSA, the assistant U.S. attorney, went to the grand jury and said, "Now we got this guy." But the crazy part was about it all. When I was, I said, "Okay." They said, "If I didn't cooperate, the way that lawyers said, they said they were going to do a superseded indictment and add my wife to indictment." So I said, "Okay, I'll cooperate. What am I? I ain't worried about. I don't get fuck about none of these guys." I had to say it that way. Them dudes had no consequence to me. None of them. Who are you cooperating against? They said, "You know, there was information that they wanted." Well, they said the guy, Reddrick, had bought these guns off of me, Marcus. So, the guy, Marcus, they said, "Markey, I bought a gun." But they were trying to get the life sentence for Marcus. But they wanted to make sure they had enough to make sure that the jury say, "Okay, this guy, we have his gun dealer right now." He says, he said, "It's not his gun." But we have the guy that sold him this gun. So you took the stand? Yes. Against these former customers of yours? No, just one guy. Just that one case. Okay. But the other case was, "What's going on told me?" Said, "I'm this guy." He had, he had, there's something on one of the guns. They had him, but they wanted, I guess they wanted him to plead out. Well, I don't know if they wanted to cooperate. But once they got the information from me about the gun, then now he says, "Oh, you said you didn't do it." We got your ass now. We, we, we know, you said we got the bullet, which came from a star, not a star, nine millimeter. And the person who sold you the gun said, they sold you a star, nine millimeter. And the other dude who was there, who witnessed the sale, he says, he remember it was a silver gun, a nickel-plated gun, he said he'd think it had a star on it. So now they got you. So I don't know if that was used to get them to cooperate, or if that was used to make him plead of what it was going on. I wasn't privy to all that information. So what did he end up getting? What were some of the sentences of liberation sun rise? I don't even know. Like, because most of them had been to jail before I even got there. - Right, I don't know if you guys were jailed. Like, dude told me one day, he said, yo, well, when I got to quarantine that first night, the guy said to me, say, yeah, I don't know why you're here. And then he told me, he showed me the paperwork on this guy, Tito, and then he said, yeah, you know, the other guy was here too, Rico. That's probably why they moved him because you came in. He said, he probably cooperated against you too, which he was. - Right. So everybody was telling on each other. - Yeah, so, so these guys, but Boo Boo had advised me, he said, yo, I heard you running around doing a lot of stuff. He said, yo, man, leave 'em dudes up for long down, Kings of 10. He said, because you know they're gonna tell on you. I said, man, come on, that shit Boo Boo. I said, man, dudes ain't doing them boys stand up. He said, yo, I'm telling you now, all of them Spanish boys you're dealing with they're gonna tell on you, ask when they get caught. And that's what he told me. So you were sentenced to, you took a plea. Obviously you did a proffer, you took the stand, helped them out. - I was received no other charges. They were pursuing other indictments. - What were they threatening you with at first? - They said he was gonna supersede my indictment. My lawyer told me, he said that he said it's just too much shit that went on. I didn't like him, man, I didn't really like him, but I talked to Bobby, Bobby Westco, and Bobby Westco, he was the one that I really trusted in the room. I didn't trust nobody else. I didn't trust the prosecute. In spite of what happened between me and my brother-in-law, I just felt like Westco was the only one in the room. I could trust. - But my question is, what kind of time if you refused to cooperate, if you refused a proffer, what kind of time are you looking at for 150 guns? - They said that what they had initially charged me with, that was a five-year sentence, but the lawyer said, if they supersede the indictment, he don't know what's gonna happen. And he just wanna head off any possibility of superseding indictment, because he said, we don't know if it's gonna be 10, 15 life. We don't know what it's gonna be. We don't know what they're gonna try to. And he said, the way that these federal courts are, he said, he said, listen, you know, you're a black dude. You know, they go in there, and they have prep raid all these witnesses in front of the jury, they're gonna bang your ass. I mean, I don't know if they could have a nut, but this is what the lawyers tell of me. And from what Bobby Westco told me, - Simon, fuck. - Up, man. Did a lot of shit, man. Westco was cool to shit, man. Simon did a lot of shit, man. That's what he told me. - He said, man, I was like, what the fuck is Simon doing, man. He said, you had a, you said, I said this. He lose his mind and something. I told him, yeah, man, Westco, I did. I went crazy, man. - Yeah. - But I, you know, I don't, you know, I don't know what, the only thing was with me, when they mentioned my wife, and I've seen a lot of women in prison, wasn't doing that to my wife. - No, it's not a good thing. - One day, I don't care if they were talking about, we could only get four or five a year. No, my wife wasn't going to spend one day in jail, because, you know, I couldn't do that to the mother of my children. - Yeah, because some of the dealers, some of your ex-customers had told the feds that they had seen a woman who they said was your wife with you during these gun deals, which was pure bullshit. - No, he has to kick her. You know who they saw? That was in the house when they came there. They saw my wife sister, they looked alike. And I said, no, I don't want her as coming in here, man. (laughs) I know who they were talking about. but you didn't show up with a woman at gun deals. - No, they came to my house and, oh man, this is another one I said to another guy. This is in my paperwork. He had a modified ironing board that he used to make machine guns with. This is what they told the feds. I mean, this is in the paperwork. I mean, you can't make this shit up. - And that's a lie. - It's a lie. - They did make it. - I had a ironing board that I set the gun on, that I set a mag 90 on, I took the wood stock off, I put the plastic stock on and then I gave it to him but I just set it on top of the ironing board. It wasn't like you had this modified ironing board where you were able to do all this great stuff with this modified ironing board. This is what they told the police. I had a modified ironing board. - Yeah, but they liked the drama. They go for drama, they go for hyping it up. - Yeah, but-- - Anything to keep you in there. But the wild part is, see what guys don't understand, when you, there's a difference between a semi-automatic gun and a machine gun, you come into a whole another ballgame when you start talking about fully automatic weapons. - A time. - Oh, the time triples. - Yeah. - But these guys are running around. They put in switches in these guns. You are an idiot if you do that. - Mm-hmm. - That's all I would tell you is an asshole if you put one of them switches and one of them guns. If you see one and you found it on the street, you better leave it with hell as that. - So you signed for about five and a half years? - Five. Well, they said, it was like, you know the waities, please go. They say, okay, you plead out and we'll talk to the judge. I really did, I got six months off. And then the prosecutor called the red and court and tried to get them to run both of my senses consecutive and consecutive to my federal settings. So I tell anybody, you know they're real tricky and no matter what you do, they may still try to bang you. - So you signed for about five and a half or six? You did about four? - I did four. - Did you have any problems in the feds for having bad paperwork? - I know most people in there do. - If you go to penitentiary, catch my step to you, you go to medium, they might step to you, even in some of the detention centers they might step to you. But the one thing about it is, I ain't the best fight in the world, but I don't fight fair. And I was thinking to myself, if anybody ever try to do something to me, they're gonna have a worst day of their fucking life. You know, yeah, I'm telling what? I'm telling. They say, "Rock, there's one dude at the jail." They say, "Rock man, don't be lying to body, telling." He said, "You was red, right, rock man?" Yeah, I'm telling. You know, dudes, no, I was telling. One dude at FTC Philly, he came up to my cell, he said, "Yo, Simon, you think you could give me life?" I said, "How to the year?" It's a lawyer in Philly, he gave me $160,000 in cash. I said, "Shit, you could have gave me $10,000. I'll tell you what's gonna happen. You wanna go over there and talk to them people, but ain't gonna lock your ass out for the rest of your life. You got 10 witnesses, my homie went to court with him. You got 10 cooperators. They gonna tap your ass out. He got three life plus 90, but he wanted to go on back and then the judge reduced it to 30 or something like that. But he got a life sentence. Yeah, we got to know he would. You got to play the game, man. Yeah, and these lawyers just break you over the coals. But you know, there are dudes, when I was at the jail, they said, "Yeah, the one guy at FTC Philly said he want to kill me." He said, "Yeah, I heard he's a rat. He be talking to them other snitches. And if you talk to snitches, you deserve to die, just like the other rats." And I wasn't worried about him, but the crazy part was, he thought I did something to him. The guys have him move off the block. When they try to get him and the other brother move off the block, I told him like, "No, man, you can't do that." They said, "No, we get him moved off the block, man. Fuck them dudes." Or they all were Muslim. And I told him, "He's Muslim, man. You can't do that to him." They said, "Man, rock, man, we get him moved off." I said, "Man, that's fucked up." But he thought that I did that. But the one dude that stuck up from, he was mad at me. Thinking that them dudes was in his corner and that I got him moved off. See, prison a lot of times guys ain't working with all information. The dude that they think is the bad guy, not the bad guy. The dudes that smile in your faces, the dudes, that's the ones that just crossed you. You know that. I don't got to tell you, you know how I go. So you really handled yourself in there? I had one fight the whole time, right before I went home. And I'll be honest with you, I wasn't-- I learned prison because, like I told you, I was okay, God, I mean, I went to Rikers Island when I was a young boy. And I ain't had no problems up there, really. But for some reason, I was lucky enough there were to have no problems. Because some of the craziest dudes I've ever made in jail, they liked me for some reason. But there was one incident down in our Orange County, Virginia, where the guy choked the guy out, threw him across the room. And he said, "I said something about it." And he told me that day, he said, "Filly, mind your mother, effing business." That's how people get killed in here. And he put his finger in my face like that. And he said, "Mind your effing business, Filly." I said, "I don't want no problems with you, man." But I noticed right here that dude was like 300 something, about 300 something pounds. What I'm going to do? You have to stab him. But my thing was, I always had a loatham for all of that penitentiary shit. Yeah. I had a loatham for me, too. You know, these aren't the animated dudes sleeping next to you. Why you ain't show out in the courtroom and try to do something to the prosecutor or the judge or the police? You want to do something to the brothers in here? You so fucking tough. Well, you ain't do shit to the people that put you in jail. Well, put yourself in jail. That is so, amen to that. Amen to that. None of them agents did nothing to me. None of them dudes that read it did nothing to me. If there's no crime, there's nothing for nobody to tell. And that's the thing, I want people to understand the most. As nobody does nothing to you when you break into law. You shitting on a community. And now you got caught. So you don't want nobody to say nothing. When they say something, they're rat, they're snitch. They tell him and you mad at him and now the dudes in the jail want to kill him. If there's no crime, there's nothing to tell. You had the opportunity, you could have went to school. You could have got a job. You chose the wrong life. And now your ass is paying for it. Responsibility. And that's where I'm at. Accountability, my man. Hey, that was fascinating. Thank you so much. What an honor to sit down with you. Thank you. I'm just like I said, I just want people to be aware that this whole firearm stuff right here, it's like a cancer to the country and it's gotten worse instead of better. And I'm not proud of what I did. I kind of hate what I did and I'm hoping like you know that some young person listening to me say like, you know what, I'm taking my ass to school, fuck off that shit. Yeah, stay away from guns, stay away from drugs, stay away from strippers. Those are all the fun things. But you know, thank you. I appreciate the opportunity, you know, like I said, I'm trying to change my circumstances. That's why I wrote my book because I want people to say your book out. Yeah. We trying to get it and get it and get a publisher for it and whatnot. Like I said, it's a guy with the funny ears. Also, I got my website up and running, so assignment whitespeaks.com. If anybody want to go in there and take a look. Oh good. So yeah, we're going to put a link to that in the description and in the comment, the pinned comment. I do want people to contact you and reach out and check you out. Yeah. I thank you for this opportunity because I just feel that I went to prison, but my code defendants, they still walk the street to the gun dealers that they would, they just walked away. And I don't, I don't think that that was right. They should have held some have been held to some accountability for the crimes that they committed because they were calling me at times. They were writing up paperwork. You know, before I got to the store, they were breaking federal laws up down around a corner, sideways. Are you talking about the gun shops? Yeah. I agree. I agree with that wholeheartedly. I'm going to show one day the guy says, oh, no, I think you have some other gun shop dealer. He vouches for me. It's sad. Yeah. Totally. All right. Well, Simon, thank you so much, brother. Appreciate you guys. All right. Go check them out. Go contact him. Reach out. We'll see you next week. Take care. [MUSIC PLAYING]