October 19, 2022 • 50 mins
Three months into their drug trafficking career, the twins have a million dollars stashed under their bed. They are just seventeen years old. Pete and Jay are enjoying a meteoric rise to the top: building a complex logistical chain in Chicago from scratch, shipping their ‘product’ all over America. And as it turns out, they learn how to build a successful empire in the same place many kids get their first job: McDonald’s.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
If money comes power, and sometimes people could get lucky,
you know, not the smartest people that get lucky and
they have that money that shouldn't have power, and they
say power corrupts. What you see us today, asked, is
what you're seeing us before? It didn't change us. A
(00:21):
lot of the structures, specifically in Chicago during the time
period where minorities would be suppressed. So it's they just
didn't have the money the way those cool leather jackets
the Panthers had. What they was trying to run their
neighborhoods at that point, the threat is just a white
person saying you're coming home. You get attacked and sucked over.
(00:46):
Just forbid this. In those early points, the guy that
is willing to stand in front because he got a
good debt all you can really throw a punt. It
doesn't necessarily have any leadership skills or abilities. It's funny
because people call those nerves and stuff gil. That's a
compliment to me. It's pretty tough to me. I feel
(01:07):
like that ain't cool now, And the beginning THERD wasn't cool.
That was like rcle. Yeah, but you're doing things like
because you watched a lot of movies and a lot
of videos. You know what, sail, If I did everything
that they did, I'd be dead, like I tell them,
I'd be dead and broke. So I'm hoping that, like
(01:29):
when we're telling our story, and you know, I talked
to my wife about this all the time that people
I think that we're trying to glamb my life. What
we want you to know is that there's a lot
of stuff right now. I've got to st Jackson and
(01:56):
I'm Charlie Webster and this is surviving old Chappo. The
twins who brought down the drug wall. Can you imagine
being taken on drug runs by the age of seven
(02:18):
years old, taught the family business, and by the time
you're seventeen, you've got one million dollars in cash under
your bed. And that was just from three months work
for the Flores twins. That was just the starting point.
They were out on their own. The dad futuritive in Mexico,
the brother in prison. I remember having a note left
(02:44):
in our door and my brother's house forward staying at
there was a notice call me come twin coming in.
When I did car it was it was Tommy. He
was my brother's I'm connect the stores of for getting drugs.
(03:04):
He tells me, Look, I just pulled into the McDonald's
right here. I'm getting twenty six and I remember just
put it into to meet him. No, and he's stands,
increase me. How you've been? How's your brother? He tells
me right away, like litten, I'm gonna post it. I
(03:25):
wanted to offer you work to see if you wanted
to up work with me. I got kettos of cocaine
and I wanted to know you needed something. I was
like I needed something, like but look, I want to
give you something. I'm pretty sure that you your brother
(03:46):
could move it. I just wanted to discuss if you're interested.
And I was like, well, I'm interested, but I'm not sure.
You know I could help you really know, Like I
was like, well, let me calls someone I know that
it might be interested. I call him, you know, like
(04:06):
you know, this trustice friend in our family ends up
becoming our very first customer and we need to go
to eat something. You know. He doesn't take me too serious.
I'm still nervous, like you know, I don't have no
money to buy him, Like, no, don't worry, I'm gonna
lend them to you. Just be careful, you know. He's like, look,
(04:31):
just go home, man, I'm gonna be sending my brother,
you know, to go see you. So I remember going
home him showing up. I remember, you know, tell him
(04:55):
go around the back. I've opened the card board. He
pulls in. I still remember he has a gold camera.
It's sunny out, you know. I'm like, okay, I'm waiting
for him, tuning to give me a bag. He says,
hold on. He gets off the front seat, jumps in
the back seat. I know what he's doing, like from
my express with my brothers, like there's a station department. No,
(05:15):
they call it a trap. So I can see him
in the back seat pulling it out. When I go
get the bag, I'm gonna pull it with my shoulder.
I'm like, what you know, it's heavy. I don't know
what's in it, but I'm thinking, okay, going to the house.
He pulls out and I opened the bag and I
(05:37):
see that there's like bricks and bricks, and I'm like,
what are you saying? And now start calling him and
there's dirty kilos right wait a minute, So I call him.
I'm like, man, I think you brother made a mistake.
He sent me thirty kilos. He laughed. He said, and
don't worry, man, You're gonna do good. Don't worry about it.
(05:59):
Just do what you gotta do. Com Me when you
when you have some money. That was like a big moment.
I remember me and my brother talked to me. He
have the keys, like wherever we're gonna do, We're gonna
tell him. Now, we're gonna tell him. I was excited
(06:19):
and I'm like, oh, we got this, Like I'm spending
the money in my head. First thing you do is
we could a window open on the keilos, which is
common for some reason. I always see the keylos like this,
and you could a little triangle. Now you pull back
(06:42):
to those people who don't know a kilo. Actually, depending
on where it comes from. At that time, it was
more common to actually have ky locokine looks like a
flat brick, like more of a a brick shape. If
it comes to different shapes, it's not they come with
(07:03):
inner tubes, because if they're throwing in the ocean, in
the water, you know, yeah, that's the kind of condom.
It feels like. It's not that from you know, the
source where it was made. Because they're going to take
the precaution to make sure that it's protected, it doesn't
get wet, and it has later it comes laters, plastic,
(07:28):
clear layers. It might be a tape, it might be
a duct tape, aluminum foil, you know where in Chicago.
A lot of times by the time it gets there,
someone already has opened it, put a cutting agent into it,
reshaped it, and send it so it doesn't need the rubber,
(07:49):
you know, kind of the balloon. So it's a fast
way to tell. And it also has a stamp inside,
which will come from like the fact three it was made,
or the or what they call the laboratory when we
buy kilos, the what stamp do you want? And you
could say rolex a frog, a bear. I'm looking at
(08:13):
the brick. It has a stick on it. It has
a dollar bill, a hundred dollar bill with a picture
of a woman. And I'm painting back the layers and
we look and we see that it looks good, like
it looks smell. It smells good. Did you know what
it should smell? Just think smell. You're going back to
(08:36):
my brother's days. Just you know, he always made sure
he got the best quality and the reason why it
has to come package like that's because you can't buy coke,
like no one will buy code from me at that time,
coming from my bag, because that means that you could
easily put cut into it. And these are made for
us to actually they're sold in the street for them
(08:56):
to be able to either cut it or you can
make it the crack. They need the purity. And my
older brother they used to call him the re rock key.
What they'll do is take a good kilo, put some
cutting it, make it back look like a regular kilo
(09:18):
because they want, I guess people who snort, why not
like break it or whatever the cases. So we would
help in the process. So you need what the smells like,
and just to qualify when you mean it means it
makes it with something and you need some kind of
vitamin or yeah, you know something like you know that's ingestible.
(09:40):
We looked at the cocaine and it has like a
nice little glass. He kind of like a probly kind
of looked to it. Gossie. You know, we're like, okay,
it's good, so uncil we you know, like we're excited.
My older brother that had these stash compartments made in
the in our home, and one of one was in
(10:00):
my bedroom and there was there was a mirror, a
mirror on the wall and it would have two remote controls,
one for the power and one for the to pop
it like a trunk. The reason for the power is
just in case they come. And the FED had like
equipment that were the surgeries and power surchers, power schurgers
(10:22):
that would make things open. So we've cut the power off.
I remember couldn't power on. I could hear the more
to run and then popping it and it was still
working good and throw all the ketles in that then
calling that customer. Come on. Our customer comes and he's
(10:48):
like I showed him. It was like he feels back
the layers and the Southern and he's like, man, you
got some kilos and you really got one. Yeah, he's like,
holy shingle. Look, man, don't tell nobody you have them.
You know, let me make some cause we've seen his
(11:14):
eyes lit up. We knew when he did that. He
was like, I'm going to take advantage of this situation.
And I think instantly we started kind of like saying
we're not gonna depend on one person. You don't have
us literally by the balls if he was our only customer,
so he takes them by the end of the night,
(11:37):
like he came back with the money. I think it
took its longer account the money that they didn't actually
sell the kilos, because remember you're coming and you have
a pile of you know, ones and fives and tens
and twenties, and you're like, we don't have no money.
Would sound that say it's account The probly took of
(12:02):
like four hours. I think the excitement was it was like,
I can't believe we just made you know whatever, how
much is it? It was like maybe twentieth thousands, but
it was still a lot of money for us. We're
seventeen years old. Just to recap, we went from not
having much one day to having a minuteous worth of
(12:23):
drugs in her hands seventeen years old, to being able
to sell them make money. And now you know what
the money we made were seventeen that day. You know,
I said before we were hugged, we were addicted to
that life. Junry Cars closed going down. You know, we
(12:44):
hadn't paid to every going into every club. We're seventeen.
We want to be where all the dolts are he
took money for that. You're easily spending thousand lots of
day and anything food and food restaurants. We were used
to eating good. We're wasting a lot of money and
we're like walking work. So my brother and I started
(13:08):
saving money. We say we hustled hard and we just
saved saying we took the money we just needed to
live on. And I remember things like once we had
that millond, with this, we could buy Vintikilo's cash right,
make a hundred grand four times a month, like we
can't live even We did it once a where we
(13:29):
can't live off, that's something wrong with us. It wasn't
allowuntil we started having pronounce with the Fens that we're
doing a lot of dumb things. Their older brother, Armando
was the only person they could rely on, and he
was now in prison, so with no one else to
(13:49):
turn to, they decided to take a quick trip down
to Mexico to cool off with the Feds and get
so much needed fatherly advice. I still remember going to
being in Mexico and my father sending us down and
he pointed out our our mistakes. You're ready on the run,
(14:10):
he said, listen, you guys gotta figure out what you
guys want. You're here, like where you're gonna live, where's
your cart? If you didn't think about none of that,
you just here you spend your money on and what
he would call them things and and bullshit. We talked
(14:30):
about the future, like our business, you know, our our
plans about the wood is you know how we can
make it better? Like what we could actually do, And
he would tell I wanted to know something. Prisons hard,
Prison is hard, and you guys don't want to go
to prison. But he's right, I don't want to go
(14:53):
to prison and don't. And I think it was a
wake up call like Okay, we're only going to start
focusing and what we're going to do and what we're
doing wrong. And me and my brother just started like saying, okay,
let's focus on it, concent trade on being successful. And
they helped that. When we got back, the feeder are
still on us. Let's be And it wasn't about let's
(15:17):
be successful, let's not get caught. The main goal was like,
don't get a cut. The twins returned from their three
months Mexican sabbatical armed with their father's expert advice and
set about building their business in Chicago. It was funny.
We never said let's just start by that, and degree
(15:37):
was sold. Set in that You're like, there's too much
money to be made. Our customers d drugs and began
to inverse, like out of the profits that we're making
and back into the business. It's like me, You're wondering
where to seventeen year old learned the entrepreneurial skills to
start their own business. Well, it turns out I learned
(16:00):
it from the same place many kids do. Yeah, right,
welcome to mcdwals. Might I take you order? Yeah, that's right,
amongst the happy meals and the chicken nuggets. That's where
Pete and Jay refined their trade. I go to mcdonals,
(16:20):
apply for the job. They give me the job. I
love the job and the sense of responsibility. A little bit.
I've seen that there's nothing but fifteen and sixteen year
old kids working at McDonald's and I'm thinking, like, and
they're making McDonalds millions and millions of dollars. The learned
managers come again, so someone the workers at that time,
(16:42):
I didn't know English, probably did read it. How write
with guests like they made that restaurant, one of those
successful restaurants in the city. Why could it be created
the system where you can't mess it up, Like you
can't mess it up, man, you can learn how to
run McDonald's on a day, like you know. And I
took advantage of opportunity. And that's what I was seeing,
(17:04):
Like I was learning the business part at McDonald's. Like
it wasn't just like I'm learning to do fries. I'm
learning the girl. I watched the dishes, I did the
drive through, I did the front. We were working there.
We were like, man, lunchtime on was packed. There's a
(17:25):
black like they're making money, Like we're learning that valley.
And I think that helps as well because later in
my career, like I had to do the same thing.
You know, I'm I'm I'm pushing hundreds of kilos at
the time, you knowing, addicting what we're gonna need the
(17:47):
first of the month come around, I'm gonna need a
lot in the middle of moment. I'm gonna have another way.
So I'm making these these arrangements for my trucks to
beat ready to go. Within a couple of days of
the personal month, I'm picking up millions and minutes of why.
Let me explain why, because for some months it was
(18:08):
government checks coming or people get paid, just like first
of it, like we're those are are money making times.
Those are the times that you want to have the
drugs available on the streets, need them. I'm thinking to
myself like, wow, one of McDonald's one day, not just
thinking that they're making a lot of money for you know,
(18:29):
people own it, but just for the structure of it,
like business concept. The way they did things was so
like even that before I read any books on business,
it was real simple to me, like this is perfect.
I think it was also the team environment that working
something collectively. I think that people always say that they
want to be a part of something and like that's
(18:49):
where they joined gangs and stuff. I think that commitment
when you bring people together and you're doing something something good.
It doesn't have to be positive, but like working with
the out a group of people, like I could see
myself being a team leader and working like that's what
I look for, like just to be involved. I think
(19:11):
remember it took that concept and how to treat our workers,
you know, and what we could do for them to
make them feel more comfortable, more safe. You know, we're
gonna take that and continue to grow it and and
and learn from that. For me, though, those tedious little
details like that, McDonald's win the extra mile to make
(19:32):
you know, the catchup pump and the mustard pump to
release exact amount of mustard, the exact amount of catchup
needed for everybody to taste the same every time, Like
you know what you're gonna get. That's why people go
to accounts that because it's great burgers, because you know
what you're gonna get. I remember they said, well, wash
(19:55):
your hands, you know, every fifteen minutes. Yeah, And I
went to wash my hands and they had a system
for that, and they actually have to tell people how
to wash their hands. Here's the remainders are signs everywhere,
just in case, and look, this is what I wanted
(20:22):
to do. Later on, I remember to look, this is
gonna be our system because the last thing you want
to just have key little missing work at McDonald's thinking
like he didn't at the beginning stage, like and you
dropped something, throw that ship out. I didn't cost you
another thing. Man, get the customer what they want. They
(20:43):
ain't cost me you nothing. At one time they were
both working and Um one of the older Mexican and
guys I was working there. He was from Mexico, didn't
know English. We won't got a black of cheese and
(21:04):
he was walking back with it and the cheese fell
on the floor. The floors are greasy, they're dirty. Now
he picked on the block of cheese. Now it looks
like a pepper jack cheese and he was about to
put it back on. The cheese continued with me and
(21:24):
my brother like what are you doing? And then we
look at each other, We're like, it's not your fucking cheese.
There's a thousand blocks of cheese and the freezer. Trust me, Mike,
that was not gonna care. They don't care more that
you're give somebody some cheese with hair on that. But
(21:48):
it's Joe's the mentality that you would think it's common sense.
We had that problem. Were some of our people who
they were like, no, no, I'm not going to leave that.
There would be like it's not your don't worry about
what's gonna be loss. Worry about yourself. And we learned.
You know, industry even here, a lot of people say
(22:09):
they got shopped because they would get up there their
chain and leave it. But we looked at the give
you get me that position. You're one, it's yours tomorrow
go by another one learned to take a loss when
we worked it like I think in probably jay and
(22:29):
not a lot of insight. And I got a good
feeling to like being moved around and do all. My
brother got a little signs of power to that he
wanted to abuse right away. I'm in charge of sending
people to do things, and he's not happy that he
has to go clean up department. And it's Friday night
(22:50):
and this bumper a bumper traffic and told me say,
if one's closing it around, and he's like yes. My
brother could have chose any one or the other twelve
workers there, and he would decide to choose to me
every Friday or Saturday night I worked, or Sunday, which
(23:12):
was happened to be the biggest busiest time for a
little village, and he would choose me no matter what.
For some reason he thought he was teaching me a lesson.
To me, I was just like, you just wanted to
rub it in. Why would you send back that I'm saying,
(23:33):
like he doesn't understand, like like every boy, every other man,
every other person would be like, you know, today's your turn,
Charlie tomorrow. I did have other piloy. I didn't want
to be like, I know, if you're just sending me
because your brother, you're just sending me because your brother.
At the same time, I wanted my brothers to feel
okay that he worked in my dolls were you're good brother?
Like so what he wanted to make sure that I
(23:58):
felt comfortable working with that do me a favorite? I
didend let's go back right now we're saying like that
as a square protrucer. So everyone out there who's working
at McDonald's just that's great for sure. But you know
what you could want more? You can on where you
will have to be like, oh my god, I love
cleaning up the whole parking lot with a broom. You
could to yourself, this isn't gonna be like the template.
(24:23):
What are what's the big deal? What? What was the
big when they sent me every day and went every day.
So it's funny how we would go through these motions. Anyways,
it was a great experience for both of us. I
think the neighborhood McDonald's and little village, Chicago was an
old haunt for the Forest family. It was the very
(24:46):
spot where their father made the deal that got him
arrested and where the twins made their first ever deal
that got their business started. We started implementing little things
(25:09):
that we could do it. First of all, we can't
have drugs where we're living, so we need somewhere though
put them away. We would call stats somewhere, so we needed, like, uh,
a stash, a place to stats from. So we started
off with garages, empty garages in regular neighborhoods. And we
started like just we would get a bunch of them,
(25:30):
those three or four of them. We started like saying, okay,
we're gonna invest in in vehicles with static compartments. Instead
of buying one or two, we said, okay, let's buy
three or four. After you started making the money, it
wasn't about the money anymore. It was about this is
what we do for me and my brother. I mean,
there's times where we didn't know how much money we had.
We just know we had a lot of money. Our
(25:53):
friend Gus, he takes us to the to the shop
and says, look, buy these money machines. And I'm like,
do I really need it. He's like, do you want
to do with things right? And do you want to
keep doing things the way you're doing. I remember when
I was like okay, and he pulled two money machines
(26:14):
out and it was like like six thousand dollars. I
was like, six thousand dollars for these two money machines,
like I can cull him by hand. Later on, I
was like, that was one of the best decisions I've
ever made. A part our business to a different level
when you could package your money and send it like
(26:36):
the way they do it, whether it was a minute
dollars or fifty minute and the safe time in your
manage station. And I remember the machines. I tell you
it was my favorite machine and I looked for everywhere.
It was like toyo, come and see fifty. If you
didn't have that machine, like, let me go somewhere else.
With the business we were doing, we burned through a
(26:57):
lot of machines. It was a concept we added as
a as a cause that every month we were going
to buy poor machines. Every month we're spending and it's
so sad when they were like, oh, we don't make
them them. We only refurbished, and I like, what when
that kind of money starts rolling in the streets, start talking,
(27:18):
especially in a place like Little Village in the nineties
where gang violence was so dominant that mothers were too
afraid to let their kids have parties, ride their bikes
in front of their homes, or even take the bus.
It wasn't long before Pete had a gun put to
his head in a home invasion, and the extra attention
(27:39):
certainly didn't help them With the Feds. We started noticing
that there would be there from early morning too minut afternoon,
and then we felt like bring gonna have more patience
than them. We started making that our schedule get up
five six in the afternoon. It's a streets called make
sure we were not be followed, Will park our regular
(28:02):
cars with our phone, take the battery off our phones,
parked the cars and go jumping our other cry and
go to work. When we count it. We could be
out delivering drugs, collecting money, counting money all to the night,
early morning hours. Once we knew it was like BI
(28:24):
six and when it was time to us to go
back home and go to sleep and let them sit
there all day and what she all that and it
helped us save money because we were not out spending money.
It helps us in a lot of ways, like we
could do this and we do things right, we could
beat them. We also started to find out that we
(28:47):
were the people that were they were interested, so we
could get other people to do our business for us.
Then we could be selling drugs when we were sitting
at home. So not long after that, we acquired our
first worker who was really close friends of us growing up,
(29:08):
and in the way, we started training them to a
business that almost came match to us. They are like
and then like we were we ever did this before,
Like I'm just trying to come and down do what either.
We started noticing that he would make dumb decisions like
your what are you doing you like? And that kind
(29:30):
of was taught us that what we knew we couldn't
expect someone else to understand or no, if it was
that he parked the car in the garage the wrong way,
because you know, we couldn't get to the status. Whatever
the cases, I'm like, now you gotta take the car back.
Got like those little things details, I think naturally, without
(29:53):
even noticing, we were kind of we started becoming leaders right,
he when he questioned us, we're gonna start kind of
implemencing a system that we didn't know at that time,
was from what we learned, you know, working on the downs.
(30:14):
I think the biggest thing to get someone's respect like
that was that they've seen us, like I'd get in
the car and put fifty in the back seat and
delivering myself like I didn't have a problem doing that,
and go pick up the money and do the stuff
that I was asking someone else to do for me,
you know, And if there was a situation where I
(30:36):
didn't feel comfortable doing it, I wouldn't have someone else
doing that, That's plain simple. Nor I would never do that.
And at the end of the day, I never went
to bed or went to party or did anything until
I knew that everybody was home safe. I think people
(30:57):
can even understand how how involved we were in our
day to day business, Like you weren't talking to no
one but me, and I'm gonna, you know, negotiate the price.
We're gonna negotiate the quantity, and then they could call
them like all right, listen, send me fifty kilos and
make sure that the business parts taking care of. Then
(31:18):
we could car our workers and be like, listen, you know,
go to the slashouse and um, get fifty kelos. Call
me when you're at the house before you leave, confirmed
the count. Before you get to the house, drive around,
make sure they're no funny cards in neighborhood as soon
as you walk in the house, before you even go
to the kilos. Check the front door, check the mailbox,
(31:38):
like the last thing you wanted to builds panting up
in front. We found out that it wasn't good that
we were using our phone like a right there phone
and if people will get ahold of you there and
you're calling your one, and we started realizing that the
pledge will just listening and wait. They are saying, well, okay,
(32:02):
we're gonna buy these phones and this is just for
me to talk to you know, they're not registered, they're prepaid.
If no one wants that. We had these phones and
we just called this phone to that phone number and
we could talk about whatever we want. So we kind
of call it like a clone the phone. Like. So
(32:23):
we had our house phone, which was a phone that
was registered to our our name that we use, you know,
for our family, and then everybody else got one of
these clone phones were like I'm going to talk to you.
Don't call away from this phone, and that that's sort
of heart. The poondes are hard to get. It was like,
don't mess up this phone, man, don't call no one.
(32:44):
And I still remember like if someone jumps in the
car and uses your phone or something, let me know,
let's throw them away, like don't risk so much or
laziness and trust me. Like at the end, we're spending
ten thousand dollars a minute a week. And then because earlier,
you know, when cellphones were still expensive, right, Pete and
(33:04):
Jay soon worked out that to be successful they had
to make sure they were ahead of the demand and
always have a supply of drugs available. This became instrumental
to their success. In fact, when the tragedy of nine
eleven happened and America's borders were immediately tightened, the brothers
were the only ones with a local drug supply. Actually
(33:26):
in the US, their business dominated, so it was a
scaling parted just killed them. We actually found out that
having one source of Appla wasn't cause we're depending on
one person, so we had to start ranch now looking
around then the same way we're looking for customers, and
we're always looking for a social apply before they I
(33:48):
think the insentuals laid down the foundation of our operation
was to have the stash houses because if you can't
keep the work, save the cocaine, the drug, saving the money. Said,
you're kind of like you're starting out wrong. How many
So we started off like with our first one, it
was a sticker shock. We're like, you know, we started
off with garaging. You know, it's easy if you can,
(34:09):
we'll go up for people who we need. You know,
I need your garage down dollars one. And we didn't
like the in and out in these like regular neighborhoods.
They creates traffic that people getting dozzy. And then and
those neighbors that the costs pull you over because you're suspicious.
They pull you off the car, they search your car,
(34:31):
they don't ask you can see your license if they
get the funk out of the car right now, I
need and you're like, here's my license and they'll step you.
So we never took no drugs to little villas. You know,
(34:52):
we buy brand new cars and we clip them. We
could go to the car out and we were actually
we were shopping for the clothes. I'd be like, give
me that car, that one, and that one and that one.
As soon as our vehicles started getting a little old,
there's something funny. We give those sorry customers, and we
take the new ones, and we try to have a
consistent car, Like a consistent car, consistent color in that
(35:13):
wouldn't look suspicious going. You know, you have a stash
house and you don't want tanging different cars coming in there,
or shiny car word like, okay, that's so many cars
going into that. We wanted to be consistent. Does he
want the most common cars? Keeping the business off the
police radar also meant operating where the police weren't, like
the fancier parts of town. So along with the cars
(35:35):
came nice houses, houses that, for all intents and purposes,
look like someone lived there, furniture and all, but the
only thing actually living there piles and piles of drugs.
We're fortunate too to have a woman introduced us by
one of our sources. Her name was Actually she was
(35:59):
deep into like this fraud life. So she would go
to these renters and high end you know, neighborhoods and
be like, um, you know, human resources for I'll say,
we're bringing a bunch of employees many housing. Not only
would she do that, she would go furnish the house
(36:20):
like perfectly and showly passed in pants in the house,
like if you just walked out a winebat on the table,
dish where clothes and the thing, you know, laundry. I'm like,
I hope that's not heard their laundry. But you know,
in the way we can what we helped to train
your to what we need. And we just paid her
very well, and it was perfect to feel like that.
She was so trustworthy. She becomes like intimately we become
(36:44):
really good friends and she's dependable reb be like I
could lead drugs it and SLEEPO and I and not
worry about it. So we liked our thing was better
make sure and it was good. We'd be like, we
want to tach garage to garage, you know in the
(37:05):
nice area. And and I'm saying that because the rent
would be like five dollars dollars one month. You know
they do they expect the two year leads or whatever
somewhere a d and plus her expenses in the furniture.
So me, we really would actually talk about the property.
For instance, if we had it for a while with it.
(37:27):
That house probably made us five million dollars worth it.
It kept the safe give the average were too read
the house, we drop it, we just walk away. That
never happened and they could never trace anything back. I
(37:48):
asked she she just became part of the team. She
was a character because she was a bipolar. We know,
we had to worry about people's mental health, like we
had to take Carol and doctors. And that's just who
gets to the house. And we have the people who
get us the cards and the people who do the
compartment of people who work for us. I mean, you
can down the list the people who get us the phones.
(38:08):
It was the whole chain of being like logistical and
being a manager, right, so I would say like I
would have been a beast at Amazon well, because people
don't understand in order for me to sell those two
thousand keys, we had to have at least four thousand
keys in the process, meaning the pipeline and the pipeline.
(38:31):
I have to actually check the quality of the work myself.
We don't trust no one. I'm checking the work. I'm
making the deals. We have to retuate the price between
when I'm I going to receive these keys wherever we're
they're going, and what's the price right now? How we're
looking because you make a deal the price and the
prices go down. What's you take your hand? Let's check
(38:53):
the hand you Oh, it's a whole Yeah, you got you,
you got you know Ko sitting back too. You were
a thousand kilos in California in the border, you know,
across the border, you got you know, in transportation, there's
a prostle. You gotta bring the money back. Little truck
(39:15):
weighs a certain way. You have to think. Okay, So
we had three and fifty kilos in there, and we
calculate that every build ways around the ground. So you're like, okay,
I keep fit the same amount of money money, So
I would wait, I would package the money on a
thousand bills, which is okay. You literally have them blad.
(39:41):
The money is weighing two tons, Just send back, Just
send back. So if you get on the scale and
the truck gets on the scale and supposed to wait
something and it's over, you have a problem. You don't
think about that, then you're not doing right. So we
have to calculate with the way. You know, what's the
way they're gonna give you, because money weighs a lot
(40:01):
when it's involved when they're doing those movies like the
heist movies and they're running out the back. So I
mean only people that know would know, right. So we're
(40:26):
sending back like nine hundred pounds of money. Sometimes that's
not my truck. Be like this is good, Like they
have a good route, it's a good routine, good driver,
good everything. How are we're packing it in? We're gonna
send whatever money we could, eighty million dollars, whatever we could.
That was the money we had to pay back to
(40:47):
the car top was our money. So the same smuggling
rules that you take the keys and get to the
backwards that it's backwards, and it's another rus getting back,
getting in back and make sure gis so. In the
foreign countries. The only thing that you could buy Joe
(41:09):
into the cats. I tell them, I said, you can't
go there with a credit card. You know, that's a
whole process on its own, and it's one of the
harder parts of the business. Believe or not, Like transporting box.
I do believe that's something. With everything that we know,
we'd make great consultants for the government for the right percentage.
(41:33):
Everything that they're doing is not working. Like any good
delivery business, the more demands, the more stock you need,
But of course you need somewhere to keep all that stock.
For j and Pete, they eventually had more stash houses
than they could keep track of, so they began naming
(41:54):
them after the local points of interest they were near,
as far as anyone else knew. Eats and Jay's workers
just really enjoyed stopping by seven eleven, the dry cleaners, well,
the salmon shop, quizners. But there was one other place
they loved to visit. We love that West Loop area,
a little bit in downtown in Chicago and right by
(42:15):
Oprah's Winfrey studio, and we would meet people there sometimes
and we'd be like, meet me by the rich pitch.
All right, I'm meeting by the Richard And that was
like our common theme, like I'm making an OPA for sure.
And what's funny is that when from have you one no,
not less, I'm saying like, I don't mean her studios
(42:40):
right there. And we would actually play ball across the
street at Hoops, the gym that was right in front
of Washington Street. We would hang out there downtown that
was like safe at the time and quiet, and we
could eat their shop there and live there and it
felt like home, Like I mean, that was our playground.
Just you know, like me implement these little things experences.
(43:03):
All workers always had cottage shirts, this blue one, you know,
downtown workers, right, put on your shirt when you're driving
Seaport on easy. Just follow the rules. Things that we're
not gonna stick up. We could still just how we're wanting.
We have our shirt just in case we had to
do something, don't were just those little bit implements will
(43:26):
be able to like maneuver in the streets like comfortably.
And how old we at this point? Plenty? Move over,
(43:55):
Jeff Basos. The Flora's Twins had a complex shipping supply chain,
moving drugs across America. By this time, they were just
twenty years old, not to mention a small workforce and
even a strictly enforced dress code. I remember when I
(44:15):
met Jay, he actually shook my hand, and then I'm like,
that's weird. You know, everybody is that that polite? And
he was just well mannered. There's a couple more important
characters I'd like to introduce you to who are pivotal
to the Twins story. Meet Val Val had a reputation
in the local scene back then, I think say nineties
(44:40):
Kim Kardashian. She was the o g known for her
extensive use of plastic surgery and her stylish fashion choices,
but pink was her go to color, so she became
known as Barbie because she looked so much like the doll.
Val and Jay got together and eventually married. He reminded
(45:03):
me of my dad. My dad is a Chicago police officer,
and he raised me and my sibling to the best
that he could. While if I may have been the
child of a police officer, her background is not all
that different to Jay's. I felt like at the time,
(45:28):
I was around the wrong crowd, and I felt like
I kind of got addicted too being with a bad
boy because they were mysterious. I felt like I was
very shy, you know, being a kid when I was
growing up. I just was in a situation where there
(45:51):
was people around me, and you know, they were bringing
drugs from California to Chicago. And I started off by
being a mule. And a mule is somebody that would
take a trip, whether it's to l a or whether
it's to Mexico and bring drugs back to Chicago. And
(46:11):
I started that at a very young age, eighteen years old.
My mom raised me to be very strong, and I
felt like there's nothing that a man can do that
I couldn't do better. I felt like I don't need
(46:35):
to depend on anyone. I could do it myself. I
just started getting addicted to this lifestyle and I just
continue to take these trips and I continue to risk
my life. I would drive from Mexico to Chicago without stopping.
I wasn't going to stop. I was fearless. I come
(46:58):
from a family of law enforce meant every time that
I would get stopped, I was like just name dropping
and everybody knew who my family was. I felt like invincible,
and I felt like I was never gonna get caught.
I was only going to allow my parents, you know,
(47:19):
to see what I wanted them to see. I would
tell them what they wanted to hear because I didn't
want them to worry about me. So as I was
taking all these trips to Mexico, I always had a
reason for not being here, and it's like I never
wanted them to worry. So it's like I almost lived
this double life without them knowing. They got caught in Mexico.
(47:43):
The car was in my name. Another worker was supposed
to bring it up. They kind of got scared and
didn't want to drive it. So I immediately jumped in,
like I'll just take it myself. I jumped in the car.
I drove it up to the border and there's these
(48:03):
border stops. They'll pull you over and they have these checkpoints.
They'll lift your car up on lift and they'll start checking,
you know, the gas tank. They dropped the gas tank
and they found the drugs. The guy that I was with,
(48:25):
he was scared, and I was like, listen, the car
is already in my name. It's okay. They're gonna go home,
like I'm just gonna take the weight because there's no
point of all of us going to prison. They put
me in front of a judge in less than seventy
two hours and they sentenced me to ten years. Up next,
(49:01):
I'll surviving El Chapel, the twins who brought down a
drug lawd They would give me one phone call a
month to call my family, and I think that was
the hardest thing, just telling my family that I was
in prison in Mexico. I think that was my biggest fear,
more than being there. I know that they cried so much.
(49:26):
My sister told me she slept on the tile floor
because she wanted to know what it felt like to
be where I was at Surviving El Chapo. The Twins
Who Brought Down a Drug lawd is hosted by Curtis
(49:46):
fifty s Jackson and me Charlie Webster. Our producers all
myself alongside Jackson mcclennan. Research and editorial support is from
Casey Hurts. Edit and sound designed by Ni Cooper Ella,
original score by Ryan Sorenson and additional music by Nico Palella.
Executive produced by Curtis fifty cent Jackson and myself Charlie Webster.
(50:10):
If you'd like to know more about this story, head
over to lions Gate Sound dot com. Curtis fifty cent
Jackson presents a lions Gate Sound and G Unit audio
production exclusively for iHeart Podcasts.
If money comes power, and sometimes people could get lucky,
you know, not the smartest people that get lucky and
they have that money that shouldn't have power, and they
say power corrupts. What you see us today, asked, is
what you're seeing us before? It didn't change us. A
(00:21):
lot of the structures, specifically in Chicago during the time
period where minorities would be suppressed. So it's they just
didn't have the money the way those cool leather jackets
the Panthers had. What they was trying to run their
neighborhoods at that point, the threat is just a white
person saying you're coming home. You get attacked and sucked over.
(00:46):
Just forbid this. In those early points, the guy that
is willing to stand in front because he got a
good debt all you can really throw a punt. It
doesn't necessarily have any leadership skills or abilities. It's funny
because people call those nerves and stuff gil. That's a
compliment to me. It's pretty tough to me. I feel
(01:07):
like that ain't cool now, And the beginning THERD wasn't cool.
That was like rcle. Yeah, but you're doing things like
because you watched a lot of movies and a lot
of videos. You know what, sail, If I did everything
that they did, I'd be dead, like I tell them,
I'd be dead and broke. So I'm hoping that, like
(01:29):
when we're telling our story, and you know, I talked
to my wife about this all the time that people
I think that we're trying to glamb my life. What
we want you to know is that there's a lot
of stuff right now. I've got to st Jackson and
(01:56):
I'm Charlie Webster and this is surviving old Chappo. The
twins who brought down the drug wall. Can you imagine
being taken on drug runs by the age of seven
(02:18):
years old, taught the family business, and by the time
you're seventeen, you've got one million dollars in cash under
your bed. And that was just from three months work
for the Flores twins. That was just the starting point.
They were out on their own. The dad futuritive in Mexico,
the brother in prison. I remember having a note left
(02:44):
in our door and my brother's house forward staying at
there was a notice call me come twin coming in.
When I did car it was it was Tommy. He
was my brother's I'm connect the stores of for getting drugs.
(03:04):
He tells me, Look, I just pulled into the McDonald's
right here. I'm getting twenty six and I remember just
put it into to meet him. No, and he's stands,
increase me. How you've been? How's your brother? He tells
me right away, like litten, I'm gonna post it. I
(03:25):
wanted to offer you work to see if you wanted
to up work with me. I got kettos of cocaine
and I wanted to know you needed something. I was
like I needed something, like but look, I want to
give you something. I'm pretty sure that you your brother
(03:46):
could move it. I just wanted to discuss if you're interested.
And I was like, well, I'm interested, but I'm not sure.
You know I could help you really know, Like I
was like, well, let me calls someone I know that
it might be interested. I call him, you know, like
(04:06):
you know, this trustice friend in our family ends up
becoming our very first customer and we need to go
to eat something. You know. He doesn't take me too serious.
I'm still nervous, like you know, I don't have no
money to buy him, Like, no, don't worry, I'm gonna
lend them to you. Just be careful, you know. He's like, look,
(04:31):
just go home, man, I'm gonna be sending my brother,
you know, to go see you. So I remember going
home him showing up. I remember, you know, tell him
(04:55):
go around the back. I've opened the card board. He
pulls in. I still remember he has a gold camera.
It's sunny out, you know. I'm like, okay, I'm waiting
for him, tuning to give me a bag. He says,
hold on. He gets off the front seat, jumps in
the back seat. I know what he's doing, like from
my express with my brothers, like there's a station department. No,
(05:15):
they call it a trap. So I can see him
in the back seat pulling it out. When I go
get the bag, I'm gonna pull it with my shoulder.
I'm like, what you know, it's heavy. I don't know
what's in it, but I'm thinking, okay, going to the house.
He pulls out and I opened the bag and I
(05:37):
see that there's like bricks and bricks, and I'm like,
what are you saying? And now start calling him and
there's dirty kilos right wait a minute, So I call him.
I'm like, man, I think you brother made a mistake.
He sent me thirty kilos. He laughed. He said, and
don't worry, man, You're gonna do good. Don't worry about it.
(05:59):
Just do what you gotta do. Com Me when you
when you have some money. That was like a big moment.
I remember me and my brother talked to me. He
have the keys, like wherever we're gonna do, We're gonna
tell him. Now, we're gonna tell him. I was excited
(06:19):
and I'm like, oh, we got this, Like I'm spending
the money in my head. First thing you do is
we could a window open on the keilos, which is
common for some reason. I always see the keylos like this,
and you could a little triangle. Now you pull back
(06:42):
to those people who don't know a kilo. Actually, depending
on where it comes from. At that time, it was
more common to actually have ky locokine looks like a
flat brick, like more of a a brick shape. If
it comes to different shapes, it's not they come with
(07:03):
inner tubes, because if they're throwing in the ocean, in
the water, you know, yeah, that's the kind of condom.
It feels like. It's not that from you know, the
source where it was made. Because they're going to take
the precaution to make sure that it's protected, it doesn't
get wet, and it has later it comes laters, plastic,
(07:28):
clear layers. It might be a tape, it might be
a duct tape, aluminum foil, you know where in Chicago.
A lot of times by the time it gets there,
someone already has opened it, put a cutting agent into it,
reshaped it, and send it so it doesn't need the rubber,
(07:49):
you know, kind of the balloon. So it's a fast
way to tell. And it also has a stamp inside,
which will come from like the fact three it was made,
or the or what they call the laboratory when we
buy kilos, the what stamp do you want? And you
could say rolex a frog, a bear. I'm looking at
(08:13):
the brick. It has a stick on it. It has
a dollar bill, a hundred dollar bill with a picture
of a woman. And I'm painting back the layers and
we look and we see that it looks good, like
it looks smell. It smells good. Did you know what
it should smell? Just think smell. You're going back to
(08:36):
my brother's days. Just you know, he always made sure
he got the best quality and the reason why it
has to come package like that's because you can't buy coke,
like no one will buy code from me at that time,
coming from my bag, because that means that you could
easily put cut into it. And these are made for
us to actually they're sold in the street for them
(08:56):
to be able to either cut it or you can
make it the crack. They need the purity. And my
older brother they used to call him the re rock key.
What they'll do is take a good kilo, put some
cutting it, make it back look like a regular kilo
(09:18):
because they want, I guess people who snort, why not
like break it or whatever the cases. So we would
help in the process. So you need what the smells like,
and just to qualify when you mean it means it
makes it with something and you need some kind of
vitamin or yeah, you know something like you know that's ingestible.
(09:40):
We looked at the cocaine and it has like a
nice little glass. He kind of like a probly kind
of looked to it. Gossie. You know, we're like, okay,
it's good, so uncil we you know, like we're excited.
My older brother that had these stash compartments made in
the in our home, and one of one was in
(10:00):
my bedroom and there was there was a mirror, a
mirror on the wall and it would have two remote controls,
one for the power and one for the to pop
it like a trunk. The reason for the power is
just in case they come. And the FED had like
equipment that were the surgeries and power surchers, power schurgers
(10:22):
that would make things open. So we've cut the power off.
I remember couldn't power on. I could hear the more
to run and then popping it and it was still
working good and throw all the ketles in that then
calling that customer. Come on. Our customer comes and he's
(10:48):
like I showed him. It was like he feels back
the layers and the Southern and he's like, man, you
got some kilos and you really got one. Yeah, he's like,
holy shingle. Look, man, don't tell nobody you have them.
You know, let me make some cause we've seen his
(11:14):
eyes lit up. We knew when he did that. He
was like, I'm going to take advantage of this situation.
And I think instantly we started kind of like saying
we're not gonna depend on one person. You don't have
us literally by the balls if he was our only customer,
so he takes them by the end of the night,
(11:37):
like he came back with the money. I think it
took its longer account the money that they didn't actually
sell the kilos, because remember you're coming and you have
a pile of you know, ones and fives and tens
and twenties, and you're like, we don't have no money.
Would sound that say it's account The probly took of
(12:02):
like four hours. I think the excitement was it was like,
I can't believe we just made you know whatever, how
much is it? It was like maybe twentieth thousands, but
it was still a lot of money for us. We're
seventeen years old. Just to recap, we went from not
having much one day to having a minuteous worth of
(12:23):
drugs in her hands seventeen years old, to being able
to sell them make money. And now you know what
the money we made were seventeen that day. You know,
I said before we were hugged, we were addicted to
that life. Junry Cars closed going down. You know, we
(12:44):
hadn't paid to every going into every club. We're seventeen.
We want to be where all the dolts are he
took money for that. You're easily spending thousand lots of
day and anything food and food restaurants. We were used
to eating good. We're wasting a lot of money and
we're like walking work. So my brother and I started
(13:08):
saving money. We say we hustled hard and we just
saved saying we took the money we just needed to
live on. And I remember things like once we had
that millond, with this, we could buy Vintikilo's cash right,
make a hundred grand four times a month, like we
can't live even We did it once a where we
(13:29):
can't live off, that's something wrong with us. It wasn't
allowuntil we started having pronounce with the Fens that we're
doing a lot of dumb things. Their older brother, Armando
was the only person they could rely on, and he
was now in prison, so with no one else to
(13:49):
turn to, they decided to take a quick trip down
to Mexico to cool off with the Feds and get
so much needed fatherly advice. I still remember going to
being in Mexico and my father sending us down and
he pointed out our our mistakes. You're ready on the run,
(14:10):
he said, listen, you guys gotta figure out what you
guys want. You're here, like where you're gonna live, where's
your cart? If you didn't think about none of that,
you just here you spend your money on and what
he would call them things and and bullshit. We talked
(14:30):
about the future, like our business, you know, our our
plans about the wood is you know how we can
make it better? Like what we could actually do, And
he would tell I wanted to know something. Prisons hard,
Prison is hard, and you guys don't want to go
to prison. But he's right, I don't want to go
(14:53):
to prison and don't. And I think it was a
wake up call like Okay, we're only going to start
focusing and what we're going to do and what we're
doing wrong. And me and my brother just started like saying, okay,
let's focus on it, concent trade on being successful. And
they helped that. When we got back, the feeder are
still on us. Let's be And it wasn't about let's
(15:17):
be successful, let's not get caught. The main goal was like,
don't get a cut. The twins returned from their three
months Mexican sabbatical armed with their father's expert advice and
set about building their business in Chicago. It was funny.
We never said let's just start by that, and degree
(15:37):
was sold. Set in that You're like, there's too much
money to be made. Our customers d drugs and began
to inverse, like out of the profits that we're making
and back into the business. It's like me, You're wondering
where to seventeen year old learned the entrepreneurial skills to
start their own business. Well, it turns out I learned
(16:00):
it from the same place many kids do. Yeah, right,
welcome to mcdwals. Might I take you order? Yeah, that's right,
amongst the happy meals and the chicken nuggets. That's where
Pete and Jay refined their trade. I go to mcdonals,
(16:20):
apply for the job. They give me the job. I
love the job and the sense of responsibility. A little bit.
I've seen that there's nothing but fifteen and sixteen year
old kids working at McDonald's and I'm thinking, like, and
they're making McDonalds millions and millions of dollars. The learned
managers come again, so someone the workers at that time,
(16:42):
I didn't know English, probably did read it. How write
with guests like they made that restaurant, one of those
successful restaurants in the city. Why could it be created
the system where you can't mess it up, Like you
can't mess it up, man, you can learn how to
run McDonald's on a day, like you know. And I
took advantage of opportunity. And that's what I was seeing,
(17:04):
Like I was learning the business part at McDonald's. Like
it wasn't just like I'm learning to do fries. I'm
learning the girl. I watched the dishes, I did the
drive through, I did the front. We were working there.
We were like, man, lunchtime on was packed. There's a
(17:25):
black like they're making money, Like we're learning that valley.
And I think that helps as well because later in
my career, like I had to do the same thing.
You know, I'm I'm I'm pushing hundreds of kilos at
the time, you knowing, addicting what we're gonna need the
(17:47):
first of the month come around, I'm gonna need a
lot in the middle of moment. I'm gonna have another way.
So I'm making these these arrangements for my trucks to
beat ready to go. Within a couple of days of
the personal month, I'm picking up millions and minutes of why.
Let me explain why, because for some months it was
(18:08):
government checks coming or people get paid, just like first
of it, like we're those are are money making times.
Those are the times that you want to have the
drugs available on the streets, need them. I'm thinking to
myself like, wow, one of McDonald's one day, not just
thinking that they're making a lot of money for you know,
(18:29):
people own it, but just for the structure of it,
like business concept. The way they did things was so
like even that before I read any books on business,
it was real simple to me, like this is perfect.
I think it was also the team environment that working
something collectively. I think that people always say that they
want to be a part of something and like that's
(18:49):
where they joined gangs and stuff. I think that commitment
when you bring people together and you're doing something something good.
It doesn't have to be positive, but like working with
the out a group of people, like I could see
myself being a team leader and working like that's what
I look for, like just to be involved. I think
(19:11):
remember it took that concept and how to treat our workers,
you know, and what we could do for them to
make them feel more comfortable, more safe. You know, we're
gonna take that and continue to grow it and and
and learn from that. For me, though, those tedious little
details like that, McDonald's win the extra mile to make
(19:32):
you know, the catchup pump and the mustard pump to
release exact amount of mustard, the exact amount of catchup
needed for everybody to taste the same every time, Like
you know what you're gonna get. That's why people go
to accounts that because it's great burgers, because you know
what you're gonna get. I remember they said, well, wash
(19:55):
your hands, you know, every fifteen minutes. Yeah, And I
went to wash my hands and they had a system
for that, and they actually have to tell people how
to wash their hands. Here's the remainders are signs everywhere,
just in case, and look, this is what I wanted
(20:22):
to do. Later on, I remember to look, this is
gonna be our system because the last thing you want
to just have key little missing work at McDonald's thinking
like he didn't at the beginning stage, like and you
dropped something, throw that ship out. I didn't cost you
another thing. Man, get the customer what they want. They
(20:43):
ain't cost me you nothing. At one time they were
both working and Um one of the older Mexican and
guys I was working there. He was from Mexico, didn't
know English. We won't got a black of cheese and
(21:04):
he was walking back with it and the cheese fell
on the floor. The floors are greasy, they're dirty. Now
he picked on the block of cheese. Now it looks
like a pepper jack cheese and he was about to
put it back on. The cheese continued with me and
(21:24):
my brother like what are you doing? And then we
look at each other, We're like, it's not your fucking cheese.
There's a thousand blocks of cheese and the freezer. Trust me, Mike,
that was not gonna care. They don't care more that
you're give somebody some cheese with hair on that. But
(21:48):
it's Joe's the mentality that you would think it's common sense.
We had that problem. Were some of our people who
they were like, no, no, I'm not going to leave that.
There would be like it's not your don't worry about
what's gonna be loss. Worry about yourself. And we learned.
You know, industry even here, a lot of people say
(22:09):
they got shopped because they would get up there their
chain and leave it. But we looked at the give
you get me that position. You're one, it's yours tomorrow
go by another one learned to take a loss when
we worked it like I think in probably jay and
(22:29):
not a lot of insight. And I got a good
feeling to like being moved around and do all. My
brother got a little signs of power to that he
wanted to abuse right away. I'm in charge of sending
people to do things, and he's not happy that he
has to go clean up department. And it's Friday night
(22:50):
and this bumper a bumper traffic and told me say,
if one's closing it around, and he's like yes. My
brother could have chose any one or the other twelve
workers there, and he would decide to choose to me
every Friday or Saturday night I worked, or Sunday, which
(23:12):
was happened to be the biggest busiest time for a
little village, and he would choose me no matter what.
For some reason he thought he was teaching me a lesson.
To me, I was just like, you just wanted to
rub it in. Why would you send back that I'm saying,
(23:33):
like he doesn't understand, like like every boy, every other man,
every other person would be like, you know, today's your turn,
Charlie tomorrow. I did have other piloy. I didn't want
to be like, I know, if you're just sending me
because your brother, you're just sending me because your brother.
At the same time, I wanted my brothers to feel
okay that he worked in my dolls were you're good brother?
Like so what he wanted to make sure that I
(23:58):
felt comfortable working with that do me a favorite? I
didend let's go back right now we're saying like that
as a square protrucer. So everyone out there who's working
at McDonald's just that's great for sure. But you know
what you could want more? You can on where you
will have to be like, oh my god, I love
cleaning up the whole parking lot with a broom. You
could to yourself, this isn't gonna be like the template.
(24:23):
What are what's the big deal? What? What was the
big when they sent me every day and went every day.
So it's funny how we would go through these motions. Anyways,
it was a great experience for both of us. I
think the neighborhood McDonald's and little village, Chicago was an
old haunt for the Forest family. It was the very
(24:46):
spot where their father made the deal that got him
arrested and where the twins made their first ever deal
that got their business started. We started implementing little things
(25:09):
that we could do it. First of all, we can't
have drugs where we're living, so we need somewhere though
put them away. We would call stats somewhere, so we needed, like, uh,
a stash, a place to stats from. So we started
off with garages, empty garages in regular neighborhoods. And we
started like just we would get a bunch of them,
(25:30):
those three or four of them. We started like saying, okay,
we're gonna invest in in vehicles with static compartments. Instead
of buying one or two, we said, okay, let's buy
three or four. After you started making the money, it
wasn't about the money anymore. It was about this is
what we do for me and my brother. I mean,
there's times where we didn't know how much money we had.
We just know we had a lot of money. Our
(25:53):
friend Gus, he takes us to the to the shop
and says, look, buy these money machines. And I'm like,
do I really need it. He's like, do you want
to do with things right? And do you want to
keep doing things the way you're doing. I remember when
I was like okay, and he pulled two money machines
(26:14):
out and it was like like six thousand dollars. I
was like, six thousand dollars for these two money machines,
like I can cull him by hand. Later on, I
was like, that was one of the best decisions I've
ever made. A part our business to a different level
when you could package your money and send it like
(26:36):
the way they do it, whether it was a minute
dollars or fifty minute and the safe time in your
manage station. And I remember the machines. I tell you
it was my favorite machine and I looked for everywhere.
It was like toyo, come and see fifty. If you
didn't have that machine, like, let me go somewhere else.
With the business we were doing, we burned through a
(26:57):
lot of machines. It was a concept we added as
a as a cause that every month we were going
to buy poor machines. Every month we're spending and it's
so sad when they were like, oh, we don't make
them them. We only refurbished, and I like, what when
that kind of money starts rolling in the streets, start talking,
(27:18):
especially in a place like Little Village in the nineties
where gang violence was so dominant that mothers were too
afraid to let their kids have parties, ride their bikes
in front of their homes, or even take the bus.
It wasn't long before Pete had a gun put to
his head in a home invasion, and the extra attention
(27:39):
certainly didn't help them With the Feds. We started noticing
that there would be there from early morning too minut afternoon,
and then we felt like bring gonna have more patience
than them. We started making that our schedule get up
five six in the afternoon. It's a streets called make
sure we were not be followed, Will park our regular
(28:02):
cars with our phone, take the battery off our phones,
parked the cars and go jumping our other cry and
go to work. When we count it. We could be
out delivering drugs, collecting money, counting money all to the night,
early morning hours. Once we knew it was like BI
(28:24):
six and when it was time to us to go
back home and go to sleep and let them sit
there all day and what she all that and it
helped us save money because we were not out spending money.
It helps us in a lot of ways, like we
could do this and we do things right, we could
beat them. We also started to find out that we
(28:47):
were the people that were they were interested, so we
could get other people to do our business for us.
Then we could be selling drugs when we were sitting
at home. So not long after that, we acquired our
first worker who was really close friends of us growing up,
(29:08):
and in the way, we started training them to a
business that almost came match to us. They are like
and then like we were we ever did this before,
Like I'm just trying to come and down do what either.
We started noticing that he would make dumb decisions like
your what are you doing you like? And that kind
(29:30):
of was taught us that what we knew we couldn't
expect someone else to understand or no, if it was
that he parked the car in the garage the wrong way,
because you know, we couldn't get to the status. Whatever
the cases, I'm like, now you gotta take the car back.
Got like those little things details, I think naturally, without
(29:53):
even noticing, we were kind of we started becoming leaders right,
he when he questioned us, we're gonna start kind of
implemencing a system that we didn't know at that time,
was from what we learned, you know, working on the downs.
(30:14):
I think the biggest thing to get someone's respect like
that was that they've seen us, like I'd get in
the car and put fifty in the back seat and
delivering myself like I didn't have a problem doing that,
and go pick up the money and do the stuff
that I was asking someone else to do for me,
you know, And if there was a situation where I
(30:36):
didn't feel comfortable doing it, I wouldn't have someone else
doing that, That's plain simple. Nor I would never do that.
And at the end of the day, I never went
to bed or went to party or did anything until
I knew that everybody was home safe. I think people
(30:57):
can even understand how how involved we were in our
day to day business, Like you weren't talking to no
one but me, and I'm gonna, you know, negotiate the price.
We're gonna negotiate the quantity, and then they could call
them like all right, listen, send me fifty kilos and
make sure that the business parts taking care of. Then
(31:18):
we could car our workers and be like, listen, you know,
go to the slashouse and um, get fifty kelos. Call
me when you're at the house before you leave, confirmed
the count. Before you get to the house, drive around,
make sure they're no funny cards in neighborhood as soon
as you walk in the house, before you even go
to the kilos. Check the front door, check the mailbox,
(31:38):
like the last thing you wanted to builds panting up
in front. We found out that it wasn't good that
we were using our phone like a right there phone
and if people will get ahold of you there and
you're calling your one, and we started realizing that the
pledge will just listening and wait. They are saying, well, okay,
(32:02):
we're gonna buy these phones and this is just for
me to talk to you know, they're not registered, they're prepaid.
If no one wants that. We had these phones and
we just called this phone to that phone number and
we could talk about whatever we want. So we kind
of call it like a clone the phone. Like. So
(32:23):
we had our house phone, which was a phone that
was registered to our our name that we use, you know,
for our family, and then everybody else got one of
these clone phones were like I'm going to talk to you.
Don't call away from this phone, and that that's sort
of heart. The poondes are hard to get. It was like,
don't mess up this phone, man, don't call no one.
(32:44):
And I still remember like if someone jumps in the
car and uses your phone or something, let me know,
let's throw them away, like don't risk so much or
laziness and trust me. Like at the end, we're spending
ten thousand dollars a minute a week. And then because earlier,
you know, when cellphones were still expensive, right, Pete and
(33:04):
Jay soon worked out that to be successful they had
to make sure they were ahead of the demand and
always have a supply of drugs available. This became instrumental
to their success. In fact, when the tragedy of nine
eleven happened and America's borders were immediately tightened, the brothers
were the only ones with a local drug supply. Actually
(33:26):
in the US, their business dominated, so it was a
scaling parted just killed them. We actually found out that
having one source of Appla wasn't cause we're depending on
one person, so we had to start ranch now looking
around then the same way we're looking for customers, and
we're always looking for a social apply before they I
(33:48):
think the insentuals laid down the foundation of our operation
was to have the stash houses because if you can't
keep the work, save the cocaine, the drug, saving the money. Said,
you're kind of like you're starting out wrong. How many
So we started off like with our first one, it
was a sticker shock. We're like, you know, we started
off with garaging. You know, it's easy if you can,
(34:09):
we'll go up for people who we need. You know,
I need your garage down dollars one. And we didn't
like the in and out in these like regular neighborhoods.
They creates traffic that people getting dozzy. And then and
those neighbors that the costs pull you over because you're suspicious.
They pull you off the car, they search your car,
(34:31):
they don't ask you can see your license if they
get the funk out of the car right now, I
need and you're like, here's my license and they'll step you.
So we never took no drugs to little villas. You know,
(34:52):
we buy brand new cars and we clip them. We
could go to the car out and we were actually
we were shopping for the clothes. I'd be like, give
me that car, that one, and that one and that one.
As soon as our vehicles started getting a little old,
there's something funny. We give those sorry customers, and we
take the new ones, and we try to have a
consistent car, Like a consistent car, consistent color in that
(35:13):
wouldn't look suspicious going. You know, you have a stash
house and you don't want tanging different cars coming in there,
or shiny car word like, okay, that's so many cars
going into that. We wanted to be consistent. Does he
want the most common cars? Keeping the business off the
police radar also meant operating where the police weren't, like
the fancier parts of town. So along with the cars
(35:35):
came nice houses, houses that, for all intents and purposes,
look like someone lived there, furniture and all, but the
only thing actually living there piles and piles of drugs.
We're fortunate too to have a woman introduced us by
one of our sources. Her name was Actually she was
(35:59):
deep into like this fraud life. So she would go
to these renters and high end you know, neighborhoods and
be like, um, you know, human resources for I'll say,
we're bringing a bunch of employees many housing. Not only
would she do that, she would go furnish the house
(36:20):
like perfectly and showly passed in pants in the house,
like if you just walked out a winebat on the table,
dish where clothes and the thing, you know, laundry. I'm like,
I hope that's not heard their laundry. But you know,
in the way we can what we helped to train
your to what we need. And we just paid her
very well, and it was perfect to feel like that.
She was so trustworthy. She becomes like intimately we become
(36:44):
really good friends and she's dependable reb be like I
could lead drugs it and SLEEPO and I and not
worry about it. So we liked our thing was better
make sure and it was good. We'd be like, we
want to tach garage to garage, you know in the
(37:05):
nice area. And and I'm saying that because the rent
would be like five dollars dollars one month. You know
they do they expect the two year leads or whatever
somewhere a d and plus her expenses in the furniture.
So me, we really would actually talk about the property.
For instance, if we had it for a while with it.
(37:27):
That house probably made us five million dollars worth it.
It kept the safe give the average were too read
the house, we drop it, we just walk away. That
never happened and they could never trace anything back. I
(37:48):
asked she she just became part of the team. She
was a character because she was a bipolar. We know,
we had to worry about people's mental health, like we
had to take Carol and doctors. And that's just who
gets to the house. And we have the people who
get us the cards and the people who do the
compartment of people who work for us. I mean, you
can down the list the people who get us the phones.
(38:08):
It was the whole chain of being like logistical and
being a manager, right, so I would say like I
would have been a beast at Amazon well, because people
don't understand in order for me to sell those two
thousand keys, we had to have at least four thousand
keys in the process, meaning the pipeline and the pipeline.
(38:31):
I have to actually check the quality of the work myself.
We don't trust no one. I'm checking the work. I'm
making the deals. We have to retuate the price between
when I'm I going to receive these keys wherever we're
they're going, and what's the price right now? How we're
looking because you make a deal the price and the
prices go down. What's you take your hand? Let's check
(38:53):
the hand you Oh, it's a whole Yeah, you got you,
you got you know Ko sitting back too. You were
a thousand kilos in California in the border, you know,
across the border, you got you know, in transportation, there's
a prostle. You gotta bring the money back. Little truck
(39:15):
weighs a certain way. You have to think. Okay, So
we had three and fifty kilos in there, and we
calculate that every build ways around the ground. So you're like, okay,
I keep fit the same amount of money money, So
I would wait, I would package the money on a
thousand bills, which is okay. You literally have them blad.
(39:41):
The money is weighing two tons, Just send back, Just
send back. So if you get on the scale and
the truck gets on the scale and supposed to wait
something and it's over, you have a problem. You don't
think about that, then you're not doing right. So we
have to calculate with the way. You know, what's the
way they're gonna give you, because money weighs a lot
(40:01):
when it's involved when they're doing those movies like the
heist movies and they're running out the back. So I
mean only people that know would know, right. So we're
(40:26):
sending back like nine hundred pounds of money. Sometimes that's
not my truck. Be like this is good, Like they
have a good route, it's a good routine, good driver,
good everything. How are we're packing it in? We're gonna
send whatever money we could, eighty million dollars, whatever we could.
That was the money we had to pay back to
(40:47):
the car top was our money. So the same smuggling
rules that you take the keys and get to the
backwards that it's backwards, and it's another rus getting back,
getting in back and make sure gis so. In the
foreign countries. The only thing that you could buy Joe
(41:09):
into the cats. I tell them, I said, you can't
go there with a credit card. You know, that's a
whole process on its own, and it's one of the
harder parts of the business. Believe or not, Like transporting box.
I do believe that's something. With everything that we know,
we'd make great consultants for the government for the right percentage.
(41:33):
Everything that they're doing is not working. Like any good
delivery business, the more demands, the more stock you need,
But of course you need somewhere to keep all that stock.
For j and Pete, they eventually had more stash houses
than they could keep track of, so they began naming
(41:54):
them after the local points of interest they were near,
as far as anyone else knew. Eats and Jay's workers
just really enjoyed stopping by seven eleven, the dry cleaners, well,
the salmon shop, quizners. But there was one other place
they loved to visit. We love that West Loop area,
a little bit in downtown in Chicago and right by
(42:15):
Oprah's Winfrey studio, and we would meet people there sometimes
and we'd be like, meet me by the rich pitch.
All right, I'm meeting by the Richard And that was
like our common theme, like I'm making an OPA for sure.
And what's funny is that when from have you one no,
not less, I'm saying like, I don't mean her studios
(42:40):
right there. And we would actually play ball across the
street at Hoops, the gym that was right in front
of Washington Street. We would hang out there downtown that
was like safe at the time and quiet, and we
could eat their shop there and live there and it
felt like home, Like I mean, that was our playground.
Just you know, like me implement these little things experences.
(43:03):
All workers always had cottage shirts, this blue one, you know,
downtown workers, right, put on your shirt when you're driving
Seaport on easy. Just follow the rules. Things that we're
not gonna stick up. We could still just how we're wanting.
We have our shirt just in case we had to
do something, don't were just those little bit implements will
(43:26):
be able to like maneuver in the streets like comfortably.
And how old we at this point? Plenty? Move over,
(43:55):
Jeff Basos. The Flora's Twins had a complex shipping supply chain,
moving drugs across America. By this time, they were just
twenty years old, not to mention a small workforce and
even a strictly enforced dress code. I remember when I
(44:15):
met Jay, he actually shook my hand, and then I'm like,
that's weird. You know, everybody is that that polite? And
he was just well mannered. There's a couple more important
characters I'd like to introduce you to who are pivotal
to the Twins story. Meet Val Val had a reputation
in the local scene back then, I think say nineties
(44:40):
Kim Kardashian. She was the o g known for her
extensive use of plastic surgery and her stylish fashion choices,
but pink was her go to color, so she became
known as Barbie because she looked so much like the doll.
Val and Jay got together and eventually married. He reminded
(45:03):
me of my dad. My dad is a Chicago police officer,
and he raised me and my sibling to the best
that he could. While if I may have been the
child of a police officer, her background is not all
that different to Jay's. I felt like at the time,
(45:28):
I was around the wrong crowd, and I felt like
I kind of got addicted too being with a bad
boy because they were mysterious. I felt like I was
very shy, you know, being a kid when I was
growing up. I just was in a situation where there
(45:51):
was people around me, and you know, they were bringing
drugs from California to Chicago. And I started off by
being a mule. And a mule is somebody that would
take a trip, whether it's to l a or whether
it's to Mexico and bring drugs back to Chicago. And
(46:11):
I started that at a very young age, eighteen years old.
My mom raised me to be very strong, and I
felt like there's nothing that a man can do that
I couldn't do better. I felt like I don't need
(46:35):
to depend on anyone. I could do it myself. I
just started getting addicted to this lifestyle and I just
continue to take these trips and I continue to risk
my life. I would drive from Mexico to Chicago without stopping.
I wasn't going to stop. I was fearless. I come
(46:58):
from a family of law enforce meant every time that
I would get stopped, I was like just name dropping
and everybody knew who my family was. I felt like invincible,
and I felt like I was never gonna get caught.
I was only going to allow my parents, you know,
(47:19):
to see what I wanted them to see. I would
tell them what they wanted to hear because I didn't
want them to worry about me. So as I was
taking all these trips to Mexico, I always had a
reason for not being here, and it's like I never
wanted them to worry. So it's like I almost lived
this double life without them knowing. They got caught in Mexico.
(47:43):
The car was in my name. Another worker was supposed
to bring it up. They kind of got scared and
didn't want to drive it. So I immediately jumped in,
like I'll just take it myself. I jumped in the car.
I drove it up to the border and there's these
(48:03):
border stops. They'll pull you over and they have these checkpoints.
They'll lift your car up on lift and they'll start checking,
you know, the gas tank. They dropped the gas tank
and they found the drugs. The guy that I was with,
(48:25):
he was scared, and I was like, listen, the car
is already in my name. It's okay. They're gonna go home,
like I'm just gonna take the weight because there's no
point of all of us going to prison. They put
me in front of a judge in less than seventy
two hours and they sentenced me to ten years. Up next,
(49:01):
I'll surviving El Chapel, the twins who brought down a
drug lawd They would give me one phone call a
month to call my family, and I think that was
the hardest thing, just telling my family that I was
in prison in Mexico. I think that was my biggest fear,
more than being there. I know that they cried so much.
(49:26):
My sister told me she slept on the tile floor
because she wanted to know what it felt like to
be where I was at Surviving El Chapo. The Twins
Who Brought Down a Drug lawd is hosted by Curtis
(49:46):
fifty s Jackson and me Charlie Webster. Our producers all
myself alongside Jackson mcclennan. Research and editorial support is from
Casey Hurts. Edit and sound designed by Ni Cooper Ella,
original score by Ryan Sorenson and additional music by Nico Palella.
Executive produced by Curtis fifty cent Jackson and myself Charlie Webster.
(50:10):
If you'd like to know more about this story, head
over to lions Gate Sound dot com. Curtis fifty cent
Jackson presents a lions Gate Sound and G Unit audio
production exclusively for iHeart Podcasts.
Hosts And Creators
Curtis ‘50 Cent’ Jackson
Charlie Webster
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