1231: Owen Hanson | From USC Golden Boy to International Drug Kingpin

1231: Owen Hanson | From USC Golden Boy to International Drug Kingpin

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Jordan Harbinger: [00:00:00] Welcome to the show. I'm Jordan Harbinger. On The Jordan Harbinger Show. We decode the stories, secrets, and skills of the world's most fascinating people and turn their wisdom into practical advice that you can use to impact your own life and those around you. Our mission is to help you become a better informed, more critical thinker through long form conversations with a variety of amazing folks, from spies to CEOs, athletes, authors, thinkers, performers, even the occasional Fortune 500, CEO, Fourstar, general investigative journalist, music mogul, or tech luminary.

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Just visit Jordan harbinger.com/start or search for us in your Spotify app to get started. Today on the show, you ever read a book and think, oh, that is a party I missed and also a prison sentence that [00:01:00] I didn't. This episode is for anybody who's ever had FOMO and bad decision making impulses in equal measure.

Today's guest grew up chasing dad's approval, joined a frat, turned a $4,200 bag of cocaine into instant celebrity status, then parlayed black market hustle into a white collar bookie empire. Complete with call centers in Costa Rica, cartel phone calls and the kind of high roller parties that make the Oscars look like PTA bake sales.

He smuggled cash and Uggs laundered money for drug cartels, lost a bunch of it and somehow stayed alive to tell the tale. This is the story of the cocaine quarterback, a story about status networks hustle, and the exact moment that being honest becomes a survival skill. It's wild cinematic, absolutely true, and it ends with somebody making ice cream behind bars.

So buckle up and dive in with me here with Owen Hansen. I gotta tell you the book, man. It makes me feel like I really missed out on some amazing parties.

Owen Hanson: We definitely had a good run, man.

Jordan Harbinger: I also maybe missed out on some prison time, so there's that. Yeah.

Owen Hanson: You didn't miss out on that.

Jordan Harbinger: Yeah. Maybe less fomo.

Owen Hanson: Yeah. [00:02:00] No. Yeah. That's the fomo you don't want to be.

Jordan Harbinger: We're not supposed to glorify criminal activity, but partying is not criminal activity. It sounds just like you had a really good time in college.

Owen Hanson: Yeah. Even after that, it was like the Wolf of Wall Street.

Jordan Harbinger: Yeah. And it's just a lot of fun times with minimal consequences.

Until then, they weren't so minimal anymore. Yes. The book starts with your mom just basically packing up and leaving with your sister, so. What happened there because that's kind of an early primal wound that you don't just get over.

Owen Hanson: Yeah, I think you gotta understand that two couples, you know, didn't get along and my father and mother divorced, and as a child you don't know what's going on 'cause you're young and you're seeing 'em fight like cats and dogs and you're like, man, what's going on?

But at that age, my sister's four, I'm eight and I'm like, man, I don't know what's going on, but something bad's gonna happen. You feel it. And I remember my mom packed up and put everything in the station wagon that day and my sister's crying and like, I'm starting to cry and shit, man, what's happening?

Then I remember she drove off, saw me crying and my dad's like, nah, nah, we don't cry in this household. Come [00:03:00] on, go get your volleyballs, go get your surfboard. We're gonna the beach. And I remember I didn't see my mom for like another nine months until Thanksgiving. Like, oh, we're gonna get to see your mom.

My dad told me and I was like, devastated. I'm talking to her on the phone and back then you don't have cell phones. There's no such thing as. FaceTime or Skype, none of that's around. And I'm just bummed out. What did I do? I tell my dad, dad, did I not shower? Why is mom leaving? So you're

Jordan Harbinger: like thinking, did I not clean my room enough or whatever.

Something me I did wrong. I mean, look, people handle things in different ways, but it sounds like they just handle this so poorly. How do you not explain to your kids what's gonna happen? You separate siblings, you don't allow them to have emotions in one house. What were they thinking?

Owen Hanson: They weren't, right?

Yeah. And at the end of the day, we obviously make some mistakes in life. And my dad talks about that in the documentary cocaine quarterback. He says, you know what? I regret what I did and I fucked up. And my dad admits it. And he, at least he takes responsibility now. Right?

Jordan Harbinger: He wasn't in good shape though, like mentally, right?

Owen Hanson: Yeah. Drinking a lot of alcohol and [00:04:00] just, he's a partier. And now I see where I got it because eventually I fell down that path. You were eight and your sister was four. Four. Yeah. She are. You close with her now? We talk. Yeah. Listen, like obviously I went to federal prison and you lose everybody.

Jordan Harbinger: What does that mean though?

You lose everybody. Why? Because they can still call you or you can call 'em. Yeah, you could call them. But a lot of people get

Owen Hanson: scared I think. And you really, I tell people I can count my true friends on one hand because that's the only people that stayed in contact and two of those are my parents. Right.

A lot of people get scared. A lot of people are really just enjoying that ride. When I had money scared. Why are they scared of you at this point? People get scared 'cause you're in prison. A lot of people are worried, oh, am I gonna get in trouble for associating with him?

Jordan Harbinger: Oh, I see. As a lawyer, that doesn't make a ton of sense to me.

'cause

Owen Hanson: you're not

Jordan Harbinger: guilty 'cause someone called you from prison.

Owen Hanson: I lost who I thought was my best friend gone. All my college buddies gone. No one would reach out. No one would put money on my books, no one would accept my letters, my collect phone calls. It was a dark moment of my life. I'm not gonna lie. But the guys that did stay [00:05:00] are the guys that were there for me from day one, fullback from USC, Brandon Hancock.

I'll never forget this. He would come visit me every month in prison. He'd buy me microwave burritos, black coffees outta the vending machine, like stuff that you don't have while you're inside a prison cell. And for me, that was like, wow, that's a good friend. And that day I got released on March 4th, 2024 from federal prison.

My dad and my fullback were there to greet me, and that was an amazing feeling.

Jordan Harbinger: Wow. I've done some volunteer work in prison and so I've been inside a prison with people who are there for crimes that are more heinous than money laundering generally, like serious violence gang stuff. Usually it's murder of some variety.

And you're one of the only people who can probably relate to this. It's a weird dichotomy, right? Because they're like really vulnerable showing you their resume. They're trying to speak English. If they don't speak English as their first language, and they're really friendly and they're hugging you and stuff, and you're like.

Huh? Wonder what that guy's in here for? And the coordinator's like, oh, he killed like seven members of a rival gang. [00:06:00] And you're like, man, that doesn't jive with who I expect those people to be based on watching movies of gang members. Yeah. And then she's like, we have to understand he's 45 years old. He did this when he was 17.

Yeah. And you're like, how long has this guy been in prison? Yeah. Holy shit. He grew up in here. This is awful. And you met probably a lot of people like that, a lot of

Owen Hanson: lifers, a lot of guys that were never getting out. These guys, they give 'em like. Three life sentences. Why do you gotta give 'em two extra life sentences?

Wasn't the one life sentence enough. Like, what's that gonna

Jordan Harbinger: do? Yeah. Some of that's, you can be paroled for one thing, but not another thing. I mean it's, yeah, it's gotta be on the books, but yeah, it functionally, it doesn't make sense when somebody gets a thousand years in prison,

Owen Hanson: you're like, okay, how's that gonna work?

The first prison I went to, United States Penitentiary of Lomboke. I remember in my unit there must have been 80% of lifers. 'cause I got sentenced to so much time, 21 and a half years. And I'm young, right? I'm 32 years old at the time, and now I'm at this high security level and I'm around like murderers and Hell's Angels and Mafia [00:07:00] Associates and Black Hand, Mexican Mafia associates, cartel bosses.

I'm like, holy smokes. I'm this USC kid from Redondo Beach. What am I doing here? Like, how did I get to this level?

Jordan Harbinger: That's gotta be pretty scary. Were you charged with mostly white collar crime? Then,

Owen Hanson: yeah, Rico, which was racketeering, obviously illegal bookmaking, money laundering and distribution of cocaine.

That's where I got the time. Okay. Because

Crosstalk: I'm thinking, yeah, when somebody's fucking with spreadsheets, it's like, why are you putting him in

Jordan Harbinger: the prison with

Owen Hanson: the MAs damn drugs? That got me. Yeah,

Jordan Harbinger: that'll do it. Yeah, that'll do it. Okay. That makes a little bit more sense. 'cause I was confused at first. I'm like, this guy's guilty of manipulating an Excel spreadsheet essentially.

No. Alright, so you grow up, you live for sports, you live for your dad's approval. From the sound of it, at least initially, but he's, I guess now they would call it emotionally unavailable. Yeah. I like that line back then. Normal dad stuff probably.

Owen Hanson: Yeah. That's not one of those dads that can tell you he loves you, you know, like he just wants you to go play sports and excel at it.

Jordan Harbinger: Yeah. But one thing you mentioned that was interesting was when you did well, he would say like, that's my son, look. Isn't he good? [00:08:00] It makes you kind of sad though, because like that's the only way he was capable of expressing any of this. And you can just, I get a picture of a guy that's, I can only imagine what your grandfather was like on his side.

Just emotionally stunted guy who can only be like, look, he man, put ball a net. You're like, God dad, you need to go sing Kumbaya in the therapist's office for a decade or something. Man. Get a kick your head around. No doubt.

Owen Hanson: Yeah. Like it was never, uh, you did good on your schoolwork. Yeah. I love you son. Pat, you on the back.

That never happened like that happened once I went to prison. How is that? Yeah. Like now we're saying I love you now it's that work like took me this long.

Jordan Harbinger: Yeah. But I had to go to federal prison to get a fricking Christmas card.

Owen Hanson: Yeah.

Jordan Harbinger: Come on man. So you join a frat in college, you realize how much everybody's overpaying for Coke was your big takeaway.

Yeah.

Owen Hanson: I grew up literally as this blue collar kid, and my dad was a construction worker. Yeah. And I get to USC and my eyes are like, whoa, where am I? I do not belong here. American Express Black Cards, never seen a black card. [00:09:00] BMW's Mercedes. Frat brothers. Frat brothers, like, and I'm driving my grandfather's 1989 Toyota Camry that was given to me when he passed.

What year was it? We're in 2002.

Jordan Harbinger: We're in like, how is this thing still run territory? Exactly.

Owen Hanson: And I'm embarrassed. I don't even wanna bring it to school. And I'm watching these kids and move and they got nice Prada and Gucci. I don't know anything about that. I'm just a surf kid with Quicksilver and Billabong stuff.

Jordan Harbinger: I feel like that still flies in college. Yeah, yeah. Oh, I love the flies. Love the deliberately laid back blue collar look. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's my aesthetic.

Owen Hanson: Like, okay, how am I gonna survive? Like they're asking me to go out to dinner with them and I'm like, I don't have two nickels to rub together. So I'm just like embarrassed.

Right. I'm like, I gotta study for my test. I had an excuse for everything. Then enough was enough. I was like, man, I'm watching these guys party and I haven't partied yet. My dad was, like I said, very strict. Don't drink. It's gonna cost you in the long run. Because he, because he was an alcoholic. Right. Okay.

So I was scared. I knew alcohol was bad because my dad had ruined his life. I'm not gonna drink. And then come sophomore year, I'm [00:10:00] in this fraternity and they're like, dude, you have to drink. It's like part of being in a fraternity. Yeah.

Jordan Harbinger: That I was gonna ask. You can't be like, I'm sober. Yeah, if you join, what is it?

It's an option. They're known

Owen Hanson: for partying. Yeah. They're known for doing blow. I'm like, fuck it. What's my dad gonna do? Come up here and spank me. I was just like, fuck it. I had a couple beers. It's like, man, no. I see why my dad told me not to drink. I felt like Superman. I was like, this is awesome. Yeah. And then in beta, I see all these guys doing the coke and I'm like, wow, I've seen this, but I've never done it.

I would never even cross that line. I did some and I was like, oh, God made me wanna shit right away. Yeah,

Jordan Harbinger: of course. That's funny because it's like people go, really? And then it's, remember when you had that cup of coffee? Yeah. Times 11.

Owen Hanson: Exactly. So I was like, wait a minute here. And I'm asking these guys like, what do you guys pay for this?

I'm just curious. They're like, a hundred dollars a bag

Jordan Harbinger: in the bag for people who don't know is the size of two thumbnails size. Yeah,

Owen Hanson: two thumbnails. I'm like, wow, a hundred dollars for that. And then my mind, my hustle mindset starts [00:11:00] thinking, and I'm like, wait a minute. I grew up in Redondo Beach. I had friends that were part of a Mexican gang.

There's

Jordan Harbinger: no way they were

Owen Hanson: paying a hundred dollars for, there's no way these guys were. And they were doing it all the time and they were selling it. I was like, man, if I remember correctly, these guys were selling it for, they're buying for a hundred, they're selling it for 40 bucks. So I made a call, I called one of my friends that was from a gang in Redondo, a Mexican gang, and I said, Hey scraps, what are you getting?

Like those grams. They're buying 'em up here for a hundred dollars a gram. He goes, what? He goes. Dude, I can make you rich. I said, scraps, are you serious? He goes, yeah, I'm gonna front you an ounce for $700. Break down how many, so there's 28 grams in an ounce. Okay, so 28 bags. If I sold 'em for a hundred dollars like this other guy's doing, that'd be $2,800.

But I'm like, no, I want to undercut the guy that's selling it for a hundred dollars. My business mind's like, I could still sell it for $65 or $60, and I'm still making 300% markup. I'm doing the math of, I'm like, [00:12:00] okay, 28. I'm like, okay, dude, I'm only getting it for like 25 bucks a gram. So I'm like, dude, I could sell it for 50 and still double my money.

So I'm like, I set the price at 60 and I'll never forget this. He came to USC and he gave me this styrofoam container, like I thought it was a burger and fries, right? And he goes, here you go. Oh, and I open it up and there's eight ounces of coke. And he says, eight ounces. Yeah, eight ounces. I thought I was only getting one.

He goes, let's see how you do. I didn't have money, so he is fronting it to me at $5,600. I was like, okay, I don't even know. How do I weigh out a gram? Like I didn't know anything. He said, okay, here's your gram bags, here's your scale. And he's showing me, okay, put the spoon in here, scoop it in. And he is showing me how to do it in his minivan, doing it in the parking lot of beta.

He says, Owen just undercut the market. I'm like, that's easy. He goes, this stuff's a lot better than they have. Trust me. That

Jordan Harbinger: was my other question, is the stuff the guys are getting is like half decongested. They're hitting it at

Owen Hanson: the Arco gas station. There's a Mexican guy that just got off of work painting houses and you're selling Ingram bags to these fraternity kids for a hundred bucks [00:13:00] and it's stepped on with baby lactose.

So no wonder had a shit. Right, right.

Jordan Harbinger: That's a baby laxative. Yeah, it's a baby laxative. It's that plus the normal effect of stuff. Yeah, but so you're just like, I'll just give these guys the pure of whatever cocaine. Yeah. 'cause why bother cutting it and make it 300% already?

Owen Hanson: I remember that summer moving into the fraternity house and school's about to start, and I have double days for USC football.

And I'm like, man, how am I gonna be able to juggle this? I told my roommate and I said, Hey, I got a offer for you. He says, what? I said, I got this coke. I weighed out these gram bags, a lot of the betas, and all the sorority girls love this stuff. I said, why don't we do a deal? Every time you sell one ounce, you get one gram on me.

'cause I already knew he liked to party. And he is like, oh, I love that idea. And I'll never forget this, Jordan. I got back from practice literally maybe six hours later, and I get there and my roommates just yanked out of his mind and he's like, forgot bad news. Somebody go, what happened? He's high. Is it kind?

I'm thinking like he spilled it or dropped it down the [00:14:00] toilet. I said, what's the bad news? He goes, we're out of cocaine. I'm like, oh, he, I said, did you put it all up your nose? He goes, look in the sock drawer. And I opened the sock drawer and there's just twenties and hundreds just full. Oh. He sold it all.

He sold everything in a

Jordan Harbinger: few hours. Wow. And I was like, holy shit.

Owen Hanson: I think I'm onto something. Jordan.

Jordan Harbinger: It's almost like this stuff sells itself. I was like, yeah. I was like,

Owen Hanson: I didn't even have to do this. Yeah. I said, I was at practice. Imagine if I could do this every practice. And literally that's what it turned into.

It snowballed, no pun intended, literally to where I was going to practice making money while I was practicing, coming back, getting money from my roommate. He's high as a guy, he's happy. All his girlfriends are happy. Everyone's happy because now we got this coke that's half the price. And everyone's just looking at me like, God, what genius, what else can you get?

Jordan Harbinger: And the answer is, more cocaine. I would say.

Owen Hanson: Yeah, cocaine. Oh, you're having problems sleeping. Let me get you Xanax. And then, oh, you wanna do a little ecstasy? No problem. Hey, scraps, can we bring in ecstasy? You bring me a thousand pills. A thousand.

Jordan Harbinger: Wow. But then if you're selling to every sorority and every frat at USC, it goes fast.

Yeah. And he's

Owen Hanson: giving 'em to me for [00:15:00] $3 and I'm doing the markups. I'm like, wow, this is insane. How much money were you making week to week? I was making like average 2000 a week as a 19-year-old kid in college that had the only job I ever had was working at a surf shop.

Jordan Harbinger: My spending money was probably like $2,000 a year.

Yeah. In college. Exactly. And my dad was like, what are you doing?

Speaker 4: Yeah.

Jordan Harbinger: Like, all right, I'll stop eating lunch. Yeah,

Speaker 5: exactly

Jordan Harbinger: right. Times have changed, right? Everything's so expensive. Yeah. So we went to college about the same time. Yeah. I went to Michigan, California. It's probably similar school, but California is way more expensive than Michigan and Michigan.

I remember being like, I can't afford to go drinking. It's 50 bucks at the end of the night. I can't afford. But all the California kids and all the New York kids, they didn't care. 'cause their parents were like, everything's a third of the price in Michigan. Yeah. So if we were gonna give you, I don't know, a thousand dollars in spending money per month, those people could live like kings on that.

Yeah. In Michigan. You grew up poor. But this is like, not only are you rich as shit now in college you're a man of status. 'cause everybody wants to invite you to every party because you're the guy with the [00:16:00] stuff. They're never gonna exclude you from anything and people are gonna buy you drinks because if you're running low on stuff and that guy bought you a drink and that guy didn't, this is the one who's getting the bag.

Even though he still has to pay for it. Yeah. So like now you're the man. Yeah. And you have a ton of money.

Owen Hanson: I'm making money and I'm hustling. And now the guys on the football team are seeing me take some performance enhancing drugs and I'm starting to get big and I'm on this juice now and people are like, man, how are you getting so big?

Like I got that too. They don't test football player. They do. They test you, but during the summer you don't get tested. So right when season starts in like September, you start. So I knew how to get there and get 'em off the stuff in time for season. So I'd get guys that are injured and they're like, dude, you got a torn ACL.

Okay, let's get you some deca, some sustin on some growth hormone. Let's put you on that.

Jordan Harbinger: So they recover and they recover fast. How much muscle you think these guys were gaining in an off season?

Owen Hanson: Oh man. Like 20 pounds. Wow. Yeah. It just depends what you're on. Holy smokes. Yeah, guys, were getting big. I was 180 5 when I came to USC and I got to two 40 when I was playing tight.

Okay. I was gonna say, yeah, [00:17:00] so I was a volleyball player. I came there for volleyball, then I ended up walking onto the football team and,

Jordan Harbinger: but to go to two 40, how long did that take? Three months. Oh my. Yeah. It

Owen Hanson: was, it

Jordan Harbinger: was, that's crazy. You must had stretch marks that Oh yeah. All

Owen Hanson: through my arms.

Jordan Harbinger: Oh my God.

And you're selling to guys that you know and you live with. So I won't say it's risk free, but like I've been living in a bubble. Yeah. People aren't getting pulled over with it unless they're flopping outta college or having a medical event. Nobody notices it. Oh, look at that beta guy drunk and onca.

That's not gonna make the news. Never. And unless something bad happens, which you're probably lucky it didn't, you're just gonna get away with it.

Owen Hanson: Yeah. And people aren't overdosing on cocaine. Not really. It's like they're just staying up.

Jordan Harbinger: Yeah. Not really. I mean, you can obviously, and now of course fentanyl is also dangerous as hell now.

So you're buying pills, you're selling the stuff. In a couple days you're buying the Coke and get rid of it. How did you make the football team? Because that's a real football team. You can't just be like, Hey, I think I'd like to try this football thing.

Owen Hanson: It was an accident, right? My volleyball coach put me on the bench and says, I'm gonna red shirt [00:18:00] you all.

You don't know a red shirt means you're not gonna lose eligibility, but you're not gonna play this year. Because the reason I wasn't gonna play was because I, I got cut from the volleyball team and I'm like, okay. My coach calls me in the office and he says, Hey, you need to work on your arm strength. You need to become stronger when you hit the ball and you need to work on your vertical jump.

And he says, that's the only way you're gonna be able to play on this team. So I was so bummed out that day. I lost that family that I had with the volleyball team, and it felt like that time I was with my mom when she left, it was like, I just lost my family. Like my volleyball team was my boys. I

Jordan Harbinger: that plucked that guitar string.

Owen Hanson: Yeah. Now what am I gonna do? And I'm scrambling, right? I'm like, you know what? I'm gonna come back to that team. I'm gonna be part of that family again. I'm gonna do whatever it takes. And that's when I went to Gold's Gym in Redondo Beach and I found the biggest bodybuilder. And I said, Hey, I just got cut.

What do I need to do to work on my arm strength and my vertical jump? And he says, you got a set of balls on you. I said, what do I need to do? He says, you are willing to do it illegally. I said, absolutely. He says, [00:19:00] go down to Tijuana and get some performance enhancing drugs, some anabolic steroids. And he says, I'll give you the veterinarian to go to.

Jordan Harbinger: Oh, he's a veterinarian. Yeah. I thought he was just like, go ask around now. Like, are you find? He gave me a

Owen Hanson: veterinarian to go to. Wow. And I remember taking my friend from Redondo and we literally drive down to Tijuana. I give them this list and they looking at it and they're like, yeah, we have all this.

And they're giving me all these horse pills, animal pills. And I'm just like, I'm literally taping 'em up. My buddy's like, where are you gonna put 'em? I'm like, I'm gonna kester 'em. So I put it around my keister and I pull out my compressor shorts. Oh, so you just taped the pills to your body? Tap taped 'em right under my balls.

I tell people, dude, that was it. That rush of smuggling these things across the border when the US Customs agent says, are you bringing anything back? And for the first time I lied to him, I said, no sir, I'm not. I wasn't gonna tell him. Yeah, I got a bunch of steroids strapped on my balls. Right? He goes like this.

And he goes, welcome back to America. And I was like, that was the rush. I tell people, that was the rush that I had, that I'd been chasing the whole time. That I broke the law. I just beat the customs out of this and [00:20:00] I smuggled my first drug into America. And that's where this thing literally took off from that run.

Jordan Harbinger: Wow. I'm a terrible liar. That'd be bad at this. But I remember bringing porn back on a trip once. Yeah. Because I was like, where do you get this? This is pre porn on the internet. And I remember I had it in a bag and they pulled me aside and they're like, we need to do some additional screening. And I was with my friend and his mom and the guy's like, what's in here?

And I was like, don't open that. Which you can't say that to a cop, right? And he goes, what's in here, kid? And I was like, porn. But my friend's mom is like right there. And he goes, does any of it involve animals or underage kids? And I was like, God, no. All right, I got you. You're good. And he just shoved it aside.

And I was like, now as an adult, I'm like, wait a minute. He just believed me. Exactly. But I guess I was credibly scared as hell that my friend's mom was gonna see these VHS tapes with porn on it. Yeah. And so he cut me a break on that one, which is funny. Looking back at it, I would never be able to bring it back anything.

And I'd be like, I gotta be so readable. You're a better [00:21:00] liar than me, I think. But you get this rush from bringing this back and then do you just think, I need to do that again?

Owen Hanson: Yeah, I just keep going back. I'm like realizing,

Jordan Harbinger: okay,

Owen Hanson: now I'm taking it. Everyone's seeing me take it and they all want it. I'm like, okay, I'm that concierge, that black market concierge.

I tell people like, I can get you anything. They start calling me Dr. Oog, you know my nickname's, my name's oog, and then people are calling me Doctor that can get anything they want. And they're asking me for just everything and anything. Somas, Xanax, Adderall. I'm like, yeah, I got you If I don't Got you. I got a guy, I was like the man around town in USC, that's 30,000 people at the school.

So it's a small town. It's.

Jordan Harbinger: Man, the stuff in the book, I was just like, oh man, this man has lived a nice life. The spring break stories and stuff, and I never joined a frat because I was like, I don't wanna get distracted from school. Nerd alert. But I got FOMO at that part of the book. I was like, I've had a lot of fun, but I worked way too hard.

I took college too seriously. And I know that people are gonna get upset with me for saying that, but it's true. I realized afterwards that the kids who said, seize get degrees. I was like, [00:22:00] what a loser. And now I'm like. Damnit, that guy went to the same law school as me. Why did that

Owen Hanson: happen? Yeah. During that era, you gotta remember Matt Liner was dating Paris Hilton.

Yeah. Reggie Bush was dating Kim Kardashian. Yeah, we are like the NFL team of California. There was no team in LA that was a professional team because you guys won

Jordan Harbinger: that. Was it? Did you guys won the national Yeah, both national championships back to back years when I was there. So you guys are like college students and celebrities?

That's, yeah. Everywhere we go. Red carpet

Owen Hanson: everywhere we eat free. It was amazing. Anywhere we would go in Vegas, paparazzi's it. It was just really, yeah, it was that era. Remember that era when Paparazzis started to follow guys to the clubs and the restaurants? Yeah. It's like right when that started. That TMC dude.

Jordan Harbinger: How old are you? 22. Yeah, you're 22. That's not good for you. Yeah, not good for the head. The treatment's nice, but I would also imagine that you, you have the celebrity of that, but also. The other guys are treating you as special 'cause you've got the drugs and stuff and you can get out at, I don't know, a ticket, maybe here and there.

Yeah. You're,

Owen Hanson: you're the man, right? Yeah.

Jordan Harbinger: Geez. What's the markup on the steroids? I know the drugs is like 300%. What are you [00:23:00] selling the steroids for at that point?

Owen Hanson: Steroids. I was literally buying a bottle of testosterone for $30 and selling it for 300. So a thousand percent market.

Jordan Harbinger: Wow. So how did this end?

Did you just decide to stop selling drugs and if so, why?

Owen Hanson: I told myself this is just to get by for USC. My goal was to graduate from USC and get a job with an alumni. That's what people go to USC for networking. And that's what I did. I got a job in real estate working for a big commercial real estate developer out of Brentwood, California.

And I was making, you know, my first year out six figures and I was like, this is great. This is the life.

Jordan Harbinger: Most people can't do that. They're like, why should I work when I can just arbitrage and not actually do anything and just party all the time. But you were like, this is not gonna last forever.

Owen Hanson: Yeah, I just knew like eventually my dad's gonna wonder, how am I making money now I gotta show him that I have a legit job.

'cause I still fear my own man. And uh, I'll never forget it, the recession hit in 2007 and I lost that job. And that's when I was like, okay, now I'm scrambling again, just like I scrambled before, [00:24:00] but what am I gonna do? And I'm like, okay, I don't wanna get involved in the drugs. Let's do bookmaking. I'm gonna be a bookie.

I love sports. I'm friends with a lot of athletes. I got these A-list celebrities that are partying with us. I got all these fraternity kids with a lot of money. Why don't I just start being the bookie to these guys that I'm basically grown up with?

Jordan Harbinger: I'm gonna also guess that the penalties for being an illegal bookie are way lower than a guy holding a kilo of cocaine in his dorm room or whatever.

Yeah, for sure.

Owen Hanson: It's a slap on the wrist.

Jordan Harbinger: Okay, that's not a bad idea. And now are you meshing the black market concierge stuff? Expertise, I should say, with gambling?

Owen Hanson: So what I would do is I would have these VIP customers that are quote unquote whales. I would provide the VIP service to them where like instead of them going to Vegas, I'd bring Vegas to them.

Okay. So what do you want? Okay, so you want to gamble? No problem. Here's my website. You can gamble on all the sports you need to. What else do you need? Oh, you want an eight ball and some patron? No problem. Let me have that dropped off. So that concierge service still came out, but [00:25:00] only for my like VIP customers.

Oh, you're going to a Tiesto concert. Let me get you some ecstasy pills. Let me get you some Molly. Or you want some girls? Lemme call a couple of my girlfriends. I know. And just pay for their room and board and they'll come and hang out with you. Like in, now it's started to be like Vegas, right? But I brought Vegas.

All you had to do is pick, the girls didn't need to make any money off this. No, the girls make money when the guys are winning. So the way the girls make money is if the guys are winning on the tables or, 'cause I have a live dealer on my website, so you can play blackjack or you can bet on sports. So when the guys win, the girls get tipped.

They get tipped out.

Jordan Harbinger: Is this like explicit?

Owen Hanson: How

Jordan Harbinger: do they

Owen Hanson: know to do that? I tell my VIP customers, listen, take care of the girls if you win, because this is part of the service. That's what they do in Vegas too. Because are they I I have no idea.

Jordan Harbinger: I rarely pay women to hang

Owen Hanson: out with me. Yeah. No. I wouldn't even know how to do that.

You wouldn't believe how many guys. That's all they do. You're paying them to leave at the end of the day. That's all it is. These guys have wives, right? Yeah. They have families, so they obviously don't want their wives to know. So these girls, they flirt with you and have drinks with you and whatever else they do [00:26:00] that's on you guys.

But I tell 'em, make sure you take care of the girls. Yeah.

Jordan Harbinger: You said you have a live dealer on the website. Am

Owen Hanson: I

Jordan Harbinger: watching?

Owen Hanson: A

Jordan Harbinger: real person in a

Owen Hanson: room somewhere. Correct. I have someone in Costa Rica that's stealing the cards. Oh wow. And you're on a camera and I'm able to say, hit or stay. And I was one of the first ones that

Jordan Harbinger: that.

I was gonna say, you must have been one of the first ones to do that, because I assume now people do that. 'cause we have Zoom and everything. It's everywhere now. But I've never seen it. 'cause I don't gamble. That must have been, what year was this? 2008. This

Owen Hanson: is

Jordan Harbinger: 2009. So video conferencing stuff to have a live dealer.

Again, I don't gamble and I don't advertise gambling stuff on the show, but that's such a, it's a novel idea, especially at that point and people are like, okay, I'm at home and I can't get to Vegas, but I'm with all my friends or something.

Owen Hanson: I can see the appeal. Yeah, it was appealing because now you're not going against the computer.

Like when people play these, these, yeah. Like, oh, this thing's rigged now. You can't tell me it's rigged because you're actually playing with the dealer with a full deck of cards.

Jordan Harbinger: Yes. No, that makes a lot of sense. Okay, and you're treating this like a business? Yes. It's gambling, but [00:27:00] it sounds, in the book, it sounds like you're paying people when they win, you're not dicking them around.

The game isn't rigged any more than gambling already is for the dealer. It's a real business. Good luck collecting from me pal kind of situation.

Owen Hanson: Like people say in the documentary, Owen ran it like a Fortune 500 company. You got paid on Monday and when you lose, I expected to be paid the same time and I treated it like that and the more I treated it like that kind of business, the more clients I would get because people spread the word like wow, this guy, he pays you on Mondays, he gives you 10% off your losses, he gives you free play when you lose.

He invites you to dinners and he takes you to

Jordan Harbinger: wherever so you don't feel like a schmo when you like an idiot when you lose.

Owen Hanson: I'm not just treating you like some piece of junk.

Jordan Harbinger: Yeah, no, that's interesting. Who are the clients? Like what kind of people?

Owen Hanson: Listen, literally I talk about in the book, one of my clients I took about from was Paris Hilton.

Right. My buddy was dating her for many years and obviously a lot of professional athletes that liked to bet and a lot of that LA life back in the two thousands, the nightlife scene, mostly the, those A-list celebrities that are in the [00:28:00] movies. Right.

Jordan Harbinger: Do you yourself enjoy gambling or is it just a business?

Owen Hanson: No, it's a business. I know you can't beat the house. That place Las Vegas is built for a reason.

Jordan Harbinger: I don't have the wiring for it. I don't feel any elation. When I win, I'm just kinda like, oh, that that worked out. But when I lose, I feel like you feel it. Oh, that was stupid. Yeah. So I have all the downside feeling, but the dopamine doesn't kick in as hard as it does for somebody who really enjoys it.

Owen Hanson: Yeah. If I have an edge, right, like being a bookmaker, you have an edge because you're charging 10% vig. For you to bet $110 to win a hundred, that means I have a 10% edge. Anytime I have an edge, I'll take that. That's why I'm the house. But as far as gambling, I tell people like, I'm already the house. What do I need to gamble for?

I'm already taking action.

Jordan Harbinger: Yeah. I think when I do episodes on organized crime or whatever, and somebody's got like a rigged game, like they pay a soccer player to take a dive or something, that sounds interesting to me. Like, look, it's illegal so I won't do it, but. If you guaranteed to win, I'm interested in that.

I'll bet on that. In theory, again, I don't want to engage in illegal activity because I don't need to. That's interesting to me. But just actually betting on [00:29:00] something where the outcome is uncertain, far less fun for me. I don't have the appetite for risk. What if someone doesn't pay though? Surely there were people who were like, oh, I lost a hundred grand.

Fuck you, Owen. I'm not giving you that.

Owen Hanson: That's where I excelled. Right? Everyone's like, well, how does Owen collect? I'm not scared to, you know, start small, right? If the guy stiffs me and I just paid him like a week before I, let's say I paid a guy a thousand dollars a week before and then the next week he loses 500 but doesn't wanna pay me.

That's like stealing to me. 'cause I just paid you, so what's your excuse? And that's when I turned to my collection department. Usually it's six foot, six Samoans from the Booya tribe, a blood gang in Compton or Carson and tattoos on their face. And that's my last resort. First we'll start small, we'll call 'em and let you know like, Hey, we know your wife works and we know your kids.

Go to school here. Just little scare tactics. Never. Obviously violence is not allowed in or business 'cause that's gonna put you in prison for a long time. Always a little scare tactics. And if that doesn't work, then we send flowers to the wife's work and saying, Hey, let you know. Your husband know we're trying to collect the money.

He [00:30:00] goes,

Jordan Harbinger: why flowers? Just because it shows you know where she is and the message shows you the message gets

Owen Hanson: delivered. And if that doesn't work, then we will do like a pizza delivery where the pizza man will come to the house now and will say, Hey, this is from so and so. It's time to pay your debt.

Except the pizza guy, a Samoan gangster with tax. Yeah, sorry, the pizza called samone is the last outcome. Yeah. Yeah. And then that's where it costs money because now this guy's actually. Putting his life outta danger because the cops gonna get called. He's never asked to do anything as far as hurt, touch, he's just intimidation.

Jordan Harbinger: Those guys are still taking a risk though, because if I'm a degenerate gambler and armed or something and some big guy comes to my house, I don't know that he's not gonna hurt me or my family, so I might shoot 'em. Yeah, yeah,

Owen Hanson: yeah.

Jordan Harbinger: They're definitely

Owen Hanson: taking the most risk, but they get paid the most.

Jordan Harbinger: Oh, they do?

What do they take?

Owen Hanson: 50%.

Jordan Harbinger: 50%. Okay. So now you're losing money on Yeah.

Owen Hanson: At this point it's principle now,

Jordan Harbinger: right?

Owen Hanson: Yeah.

Jordan Harbinger: And also setting an example, and

Owen Hanson: you're making a name for yourself, and that's why I was so big in the industry. I had like a 90% collection ratio. And people are like, dude own was the best in the business.

It was just a [00:31:00] look for me, it was a mind fuck. I was gonna figure out a way to scare you enough where you're gonna pay me.

Jordan Harbinger: Yeah. I would imagine you call someone's mom or whatever. A private investigator would give me the mom and the dad's phone number. Oh, always. Yeah. That's gotta have a high, that's the code too.

Like not only are we disappointed in you, but this dude showed up to your mother's place of employment, or your mother's knitting club had an interesting guest this this evening. Do you wanna explain why you're gambling and then not paying your debt pal? Now for some criminally good deals on the fine products and services that support this show, we'll be right back.

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You'll be in smart company where you belong. You can find the course again all free@sixminutenetworking.com. Now back to Owen Hansen. There was a guy in law school. And for some reason he owed another guy money, but it was like a legitimate thing and he just wouldn't pay him. And we were all friends, so we're like, what the hell?

You're not gonna pay him. And we couldn't really figure out why. So what my [00:35:00] friend did was his mother or whatever, knew some guy who was like Mike from Breaking Bad. And this guy called him was the kid's mom, and was like, do you know your son didn't pay rent? Are you giving him rent money? And she's like, who is this?

And he is, don't hang up. Your son owes 5,000 or whatever dollars to another kid. You should ask him about it. And so this kid like ran to my friend to give him the cash pay. Pay. Yeah. Yeah. That's usually what happens. Yeah. Imagine your mom calls humiliating, right? It is. It scared her. 'cause I don't think the guy was like, I'm gonna beat your ass or I'm gonna beat up your kid.

I think he was just like, you should talk to your son about the virtues of paying money that you owe. And most parents don't even need to know what that's for. They're just like. How are you in this much trouble where this guy's calling me and knows who I am? Yeah. Disappointment, fear. It's a potent combination, man.

It's a potent cocktail. So you hired a private investigator to find these guys? Wow. On my payroll. What was that guy like? I can only imagine a guy who's a PI for gambling operations. He, he

Owen Hanson: actually worked for the [00:36:00] DEA and FBI and Oh wow. And he was retired. Did he have any thoughts about what you were using his services for?

He knew, I told him I'm a bookmaker. I said, listen. I do this illegally. I'm not legit. This is illegal business and sometimes guys wanna stiff. He's like, well, how are they stiffing you? I said, because in my business we give people lines of credit. We don't get money up front. And so now he understands. He goes, okay, I can help you out.

Jordan Harbinger: Did he wanna make sure that you aren't using his services to go kill someone? Exactly. Yeah. Yeah, because I'm thinking if I'm a PI and I'm a retired federal agent, I'm not going to prison. Because you found someone and then turned him into a paraplegic. Yeah, with my help. Yeah. He is on the hook

Owen Hanson: for that.

He was actually part of the indictment. He ended up doing two years. Oh, shoot. Yeah. Yeah. You'll see that in the movie.

Jordan Harbinger: Oh, yikes. You had an another interesting business idea, which you were working with some other guys. You kind of ended up licensing their business or their software. Tell me about

Owen Hanson: that.

Yeah, so now I'm providing, obviously the software. I'm a bookie, right? I'm having this live dealer. [00:37:00] Now people are able to gamble and play blackjack live. And I'm like, okay, I have my company called Beog. Why don't I use my same software and my same gambling platform and just offer it to anybody that wants to be a bookie and just pay me for the software service.

So it's not costing me any more overhead. I'm just giving a domain. So bet jordan.com, I'm giving you an 800 number, you're using my software and I'm charging you rent based off your customer list. So if you have a hundred customers, I'm saying, okay, it's $25 a week times a hundred, that's 25, a hundred dollars a week that you pay me.

So now all of a sudden I'm making $10,000 a month from you and it's not costing me any overhead. I've already got people answering the phone. I got my servers in Costa Rica. Yeah,

Jordan Harbinger: you've got your fixed costs. Yeah. Yeah. Wow. Oh, that's great. Why Costa Rica? Is it legal there? It's legal there. Oh, I see. Okay.

Tell me about this money pickup, the story of your first money pickup. First of all, why were you picking up this money in the first place? So I started to, the business started to go

Owen Hanson: international. I told one of my sub bookies, which is a guy that works [00:38:00] underneath me, I said, Hey, I'm going international. I want to go to Mexico, Canada.

If you have customers or family there, let me know. And so I started taking bets from someone in Mexico through one of my sub bookies. And the guy kept losing like duffle bags every Monday, dropped off couple hundred grand here. I'm like, dude, this guy's like a whale. Keep him happy. Whatever he needs, he keeps losing.

And the guy's bringing me $200,000 every week. I'm like, dude, this guy's awesome. In a duffle bag. Duffle bag. My my, my agent. First red flag. First red flag. My agent's happy though because he's making 50%. I'm making 50%. So we're all like, dude, this guy is a perfect customer. Yeah. We're not asking questions.

And it's not my business because he represents his customers. So

Jordan Harbinger: it's in another country. Yeah. What are you gonna do? A pi go down to Mexico and figure out who this guy is?

Owen Hanson: It's not happening. Then finally, I see that on Sunday night, the NFL football game's going. And I am like, dude, this guy's finally gonna win.

And as a bookie, you always want your customer to win because if they lose, they're never gonna keep playing. They're gonna eventually learn their lesson. Yeah. They [00:39:00] can't beat the house. So I'm like, yes, this is what I wanted. I called my sub bookie and I said, Hey, your customer's about to hit. I said, do me a favor.

Come over here tonight and I'm gonna give you his payment. I want you to pay him exactly when he wakes up on Monday morning. I want him to show that we do good business. And he comes over and I give him a duffle bag. I think it was like $220,000 he hit for, and I said, 8:00 AM sharp. Wherever this guy lives, I want you at his front door.

And I'm telling this bookie, I said, you've made almost half a million dollars off this guy. Let's take this bag and make him show that we do the same. And he paid him, Jordan, when he paid him on that Monday, I'll never forget this. He comes back like four hours later and he goes, Hey, my uncle really liked the way you did business.

I said, what do you mean your uncle? He goes, yeah, that's who's gambling. I'm like, okay, I'm glad he liked that we paid him. What else? He wanted me to give you this encrypted phone, and I look at this phone and it's a blackberry. There's three passwords to get in. There's no GPS service in it. There's no camera and there's no microphone.

I'm like, so it's like text only. [00:40:00] Text only. I'm like, okay. So I go and open up this phone with three passwords. It's literally a blackberry stripped of everything. And this says, I like the way you do business. Just that. And I was like, okay, I appreciate it. Anything you need, let me know. You're our VIP customer.

Mm-hmm. Making him feel good.

Jordan Harbinger: So he what's direct contact with you, not via his nephew or the agent? Yes,

Owen Hanson: his nephew. He goes, I know you're a bookie and you do good business. Would you be willing to help me out? And I'm like, like how? Like what's this guy getting at? He's like, sometimes I need money dropped off in the US and I can't use my cash 'cause I'm in Mexico.

Would you be willing to do that for me? Because as a book, you have money all over the United States. So for me it's easy because I have people holding money everywhere and pretty much every state that worked for me. So I'm like, okay, what are you thinking? He's like, I need a hundred grand dropped off in San Diego.

I'm like, no problem. So I have one of my sub bookies drop off a hundred grand. He goes, okay, every time you drop off money for me, I'm gonna give you 10% on the money. I'm like, perfect. This is easy.

Jordan Harbinger: You've already got cash in the place and they're getting [00:41:00] 10% immediate pay on this via

Owen Hanson: wire. And for me, I need wires.

'cause I need to pay my office in Costa Rica. So I'm like, okay, send it to Costa Rica bank. And now all of a sudden these guys are asking me, just moving money for, I'm like, this is the easiest 10% I've ever made per day. And then finally he goes, can you pick up money? I'm like, yeah, I can pick up. What do you need?

He goes, I got a million dollars in Brownsville, Texas. And I'm like, okay, a million dollars. I'm doing the math. Okay. 10% is a hundred thousand dollars in one day. I'm like, okay. That's a no brainer. I'm the son of a construction worker, but remember I'm that ambitious kid. How old are you at this point? I'm 25 at this point.

Jordan Harbinger: Oh my God. Yeah. Irresistible.

Owen Hanson: Yeah. You can't turn down a hundred grand at that age. No. In one day. So I'm figuring out, I'm coordinating a private plane security and figuring out how to make this happen. Yeah. Brownsville, Texas. He's like, it's our rival. We can't go there. Once he said rival, I was like, okay, this guy's obviously involved in some organized crime.

Oh, oh, he said rival. He's, yeah,

Jordan Harbinger: he doesn't mean football rival. Yeah, yeah, right. Okay. I was,

Owen Hanson: so he was obviously from the cartel, [00:42:00] and then that's when I picked up that million and I literally dropped it off within six hours to where he had it delivered in Torrance Airport. He's like, wow, you're one of the best workers I've ever seen.

You're so prompt. And he goes, I've never seen anyone work so professionally. You didn't

Jordan Harbinger: try to run

Owen Hanson: away with his money or any crap like that. I didn't know that this guy, I could have easily took it if I was a thief. Right. Sure. After that, he is like, okay, week goes by. He goes, how would you like to make a million dollars a day doing the same thing you're doing now?

But in Australia, I was like, A million dollars a day, I would love to make a million dollars a day. Yeah, sounds like a good fun year. Where do I sign up? And then he broke it down. He says, I have product in Australia. And that's what I knew. I said, product like, what is it? He says, I have cocaine in Australia and I need someone to move it and take the money and bring it back.

And I'm like, sign me up.

Jordan Harbinger: I'm gonna figure out a way. Right. The problem is Australia is notoriously difficult to get things into, I don't know about out of, but into For sure. For

Owen Hanson: sure. And that's what happened. He's like, it's already there. And I'm like, okay, the hard part's done. So now I gotta figure out, I'm not an international drug King P [00:43:00] yet.

Right. So I'm like, okay, what am I gonna do? And so I, I put together that Rolodex and I just start going through it. Okay, who can do this? Yeah. I remember I have a guy that played baseball at USC and his brother was a weed dealer. Maybe I'll go ask him. And that's what I did. I remember. I asked my buddy at USC and he introduced me to his brother who's a weed dealer.

And his brother's like, oh, I got a guy that's an Italian guy and this Italian guy, he's an international dude. He knows everyone. I'm like, I need to talk to him. And I literally had to fly to Naples to meet this guy in Italy. Italy, yeah. Off, yeah. Naples, Italy. And I meet this guy and he's like, there's no way you have product in Australia.

He says, that's the number one hardest place in the world to get product into. I'm like, dude, I have it. He's like, don't waste my time. I said, I'm telling you I have it there. He goes, well, you do this. He says, you get over there and when you see it with your own eyes, you message me. I was gonna say the same thing.

Somebody's gotta lay eyes on this. Yeah. He goes, I don't believe it. And I don't blame him. I did so much research. I see why it's so hard. You're the farthest point in the middle of the ocean. Right? [00:44:00]

Jordan Harbinger: Yeah. And also their customs is crazy for environmental reasons too. Very. Like I've flown there a couple times and I remember they were like.

Searching everything with the dog. And I was like, you can open my luggage. They're like, we do this with everyone. And I was like, what are you looking for? She's like, literally Apples, bananas, kiwis, whatever it is, and maybe some drugs. And I was like, okay, fine. Yeah. And they went through everything. And I used to know another guy who smuggled steroids as well, and I was like, well, how does it work?

And he explained how they mail it and I said, wow. So you can just order this anywhere in the world. He goes, I won't send anything to Australia because it gets seized like nine times outta 10. Oh yeah. So they open every package of mail, everything. And this is like 10 or 15 years ago now. They probably have way better tech.

They probably can scan everything. They got cameras everywhere. Everywhere. And like, so getting a bunch of cocaine to Australia. How do you think he got it there? I didn't ask questions. I just, oh yeah.

Owen Hanson: Like it's not my business. Right. I was, you have, have a customs agent for sure. It's a crooked customs agent.

No doubt. So I literally fly to Australia. This El Hefe is like, okay, [00:45:00] you ready to work? I'm like, yeah, what do you mean? He goes, I'm having product dropped off next week. I'm like, oh shoot. I'm scrambling. So I'm telling this Italian guy, I'm like, Hey, it's here. I've seen it come hurry. I didn't see it, but I'm just taking this guy's word for it at this point.

I don't wanna mess around. You also don't really, why would he lie to you about this? Yeah, he's paid me all this money already, so I'm like, Hey, it's here. Get over here. So he flies over and that's where it started. Literally first 10 kilos sample run, boom, A million dollars brought back to me.

Jordan Harbinger: The street price in Australia has gotta be a multiple

Owen Hanson: wholesale wholesale's, a hundred grand, a kilo.

He was buying it for a hundred grand. This Italian, he's selling it to his people for one 50, 150,000 for one kilo. Just so people don't know, the price in the US right now is probably like 15,000.

Jordan Harbinger: Wow. So this is. A 10 x markup retail because it's hard to get stuff into Australia. And that's US pricing. And it's probably coming from Mexico where it's $500 to produce that kilo or whatever.

Yep, for sure. Crazy or less. Less. Wow. Wow. So this dude, his name's [00:46:00] Uncle Louie, right? Yeah. We call him Uncle Louie. Somehow. Very typical. So what was the first sort of deal you did? You said it was a million dollars just right there.

Owen Hanson: Yeah, it was just a million right off the rip. Geez. And then the next day was 2 million.

The next day another 2 million. So he's bringing that much in every day. Yeah, every day. He's just, it really

Jordan Harbinger: was a million bucks. Holy smokes. Yeah. What was a better high than doing cocaine or doing a deal like this for cocaine?

Owen Hanson: I think doing a deal like this, right? I would rather be a millionaire than a drug addict.

Jordan Harbinger: Yeah. Okay. When? When you put it that way.

Yeah, that's true, man. I am having some kind of reaction right now. I could very well see myself getting into this type of business in my twenties and thirties and being like. I'm just gonna quit after a short period of time, but I'm gonna have $50 million. I'm not getting caught.

There's no heat on me. I'm working with the best guys in the business who would wrap me out. I'm not hurting anyone. Like I'm already rationalizing it and I'm 45 and no better. And you're sitting here, you are spent time in prison. Spoiler alert, but it sounds so easy. It sounds like you just you right place, right [00:47:00] time, great market.

What could go wrong? Yeah. Famous last words,

Owen Hanson: and I think that's where things went wrong, right? Yeah. You're now sitting on close to $10 million of the cartel's money and you're like, okay, now how do I get it out? You're thinking El Hefe is gonna come and have somebody pick it up, right? And he is, no, that's why I hired you.

That's why you're making a million dollars a day. This story took a turn, different methods to get it out, and one of my best methods in my mind was to use someone to basically launder it through the casinos. So let's talk about the first round. I give 'em a suitcase full of a million and half dollars.

It's probably about 50 pounds.

Jordan Harbinger: Okay. That's not that bad cash. So you could fit that in like a Tomi roller.

Owen Hanson: It's in a Tomi. It's funny you say that. That's what he requested.

Jordan Harbinger: I will say they do hold up really well. I abused mine and it looks awesome. It's still in like really good shape so I can see. Yeah, you put 50 pounds of cash in there, although there's not a lot of room for underwear when you fit 50 pounds of cash into a Tomi roller.

So the guy who requested that, I guess he knew what he was doing.

Owen Hanson: Yeah, he definitely, he shook my hand. He says for 25% I'll do it. Wow. That's heavy. It's heavy, but hey it's, you gotta get it [00:48:00] done. I gotta get it outta there. Yeah. And I agreed. He flew over and he did it. He went to the casino, literally he put his cash up.

They already knew he was a high roller, 'cause Vegas called him. They gave him chips and he just started playing little hands. Just like 20 grand here, 20 grand here playing. And about after two hours he's, you know what? I'm not feeling. It cash me out. So he already knows that he's got close to a million half.

So they cash him out. And he takes those chips and he goes to the cage and he says, Hey, I'm not feeling it today. Can you cash me out? So they give him a check. The check is made out to the sister company and their big sister company in Vegas is Venetian. Now he has a check for the Venetian and he is able to fly back to Vegas where he is a high roller.

And he goes and he gives them the check for a million and a half bucks and they can give him chips, cash, whatever he wants. And he just laundered $1.5 million in 48 hours.

Jordan Harbinger: How is this not an obvious way that people launder money that is under high levels of scrutiny?

Owen Hanson: At this time it wasn't even looked at because he's a high roll.

Unbelievable. But now obviously it's gotten [00:49:00] stricter and there's busts happen all the time now. Sure. If the resort world just got busted with guys doing the system.

Jordan Harbinger: Yeah. 'cause otherwise everyone is doing this. Everyone

Owen Hanson: was doing it for a long

Jordan Harbinger: time. At some point, the feds are going, how did you launder $150 million?

Oh, look, it all went through the Bellagio. Maybe we should do something about that with a simple regulation that says, look, you can waste $10 million gambling. That's legal. We just need to know that it's actually your $10 million. Yeah. Show us any document at all that shows. Yep. KYC, your customer. Yeah.

It's like with crypto, back in the day, you could just be like, yeah, I want a hundred thousand dollars in Bitcoin. My name is John 1, 2, 3, four@aol.com. And they're like, fine. All right. No problem. Go drop it off in this ATM or this random gold place. Yeah, and here's your Bitcoin. Now it's like, no, no, no. Scan your I idea if you're gonna withdraw this from our system.

So yeah, KYC. So I don't know. I've done episodes on Chinese money laundering and laundromats and stuff, so there's. People are trying to figure this out constantly because it's the way that you launder drug money. Every day you're [00:50:00] thinking of something new, so you're laundering money successfully. And then what happens?

Owen Hanson: He does another round two and a half million. The next three weeks later, two and a half million comes same suitcase, same luggage. This time I get a call in three hours. I'm like, wow, that was fast. And he says, I lost all your money. And I said, wait a minute. You didn't have money to lose. You had a 25% window that you were making.

Everything else was mine. What are you talking about? I said, you need to come meet me. And that's when I found out he lost the cartel's money.

Jordan Harbinger: When he lost it, did he steal it or was he

Owen Hanson: just like, well, I'm gonna gamble? Obviously we were thinking he stole it. Yeah, like he made a deal with the pit boss and after investigations on my side, and a couple people I knew at the casino that we found out, he really did lose it gambled away.

So

Jordan Harbinger: he had a gambling problem. Obviously he was an

Owen Hanson: addict for sure.

Jordan Harbinger: I guess you, you need somebody like me who can just like. Gamble and be like, this sucks. I want my money back. Yeah, you gotta treat it like a business. Yeah. Yeah. I, because again, gambling for me is generally so boring. I'd be like, I'm not feeling it.

That's a believable thing that I could say that people would buy. 'cause [00:51:00] they're gonna see me completely emotionless, waste 20 grand and be like, I, I just want to go to Cirque. To sole. Yeah. And a buffet. Wow. Tell me though about, you were shipping cash back in Uggs. This is one of your sort of like more amateurish attempts, I suppose, at buying Lau.

Owen Hanson: Yeah, before I obviously was working with this gambler, I took it under my own hands and I started to buy gold bullion with cash. I said, okay, I'm gonna buy bullion 'cause that's untraceable. So I'd go to all these bullon stores in Australia and I'd take $10,000 every store I went to. And I'd buy one ounce round coins, which is at the time was $1,600 a coin.

So I'd take those coins and I'd take four of 'em, four one ounce rounds. And what I would do is I'd buy all the UGG boots I could, and I'd take the soles out of the UGG boots and I'd put four gold coins inside. So basically you're getting 1600, 1600, 1600, 1600. That's like close to $7,000 per boot. So 14,000, let's just call it 15,000.

Every Ugg boot I would send home, but

Jordan Harbinger: dude, for a [00:52:00] million bucks a day, that's a lot of Uggs, man. Yes. You can't

Owen Hanson: do it. I would literally ship out like 20 Ugg boots a day and I was like, this is taking way

Jordan Harbinger: too long. At some point, the suspicion of why you're buying that many Uggs is weird than the suspicion of like, but

Owen Hanson: there's ugly food stores on every corner,

Jordan Harbinger: but you're going to the UPS store or whatever.

That's where it looked weird. They're like, this is your business. How are you doing this? Like at a retail level, like you almost need to buy a footwear company to export that amount of shoes. Just to put the coin like it's not gonna work. Yeah, it just

Owen Hanson: takes too long. Right. It was a cool idea, like the girlfriends and the wives and everyone was excited for the first to have every pair, every color, right?

Yeah. But that gets older. They're like, Hey, no more rugs. Stop sending me these.

Jordan Harbinger: Also, why do you keep ripping them apart when you come home?

Owen Hanson: Yeah, I, I tell 'em don't open 'em. I said, I wanna open that gif with you. And I would open 'em and I'd take literally the coins out before they see 'em. It's so stressful.

I'll

Jordan Harbinger: be right back. I need to go to the bathroom with all the packages I sent you. Yeah. Gimme 20 minutes. It's like silly when you picture. It's silly how it's gonna also, surely people thought you were either mentally ill or up to something. They definitely thought I was. Probably both. Yeah. Okay. So this [00:53:00] moron loses all your money.

How much did he lose? On two and

Owen Hanson: a half. But the same day I had 700,000 picked off from law enforcement because he called the police and said, I think this guy's after me and I think he has a gun. And my personal trainer was literally wheeling a suitcase with 700 grand of mine and the law enforcement stopped him.

Randomly 'cause all the cameras. Then they got this call from this guy. They said, we've got a report that you have a gun. We need to open your luggage. And it wasn't a gun, it was 700 grand. So in one day I lost 3.2 million of the cartels.

Jordan Harbinger: Oh no. Yeah. So what's going through your head at this point? Like, I'm gonna get killed.

I'm

Owen Hanson: dead. I'm like, this is over. I'm done. Do I just stay in Australia or do I go face the music? And I was like, you know what, I'm just gonna go face the music.

Jordan Harbinger: Yeah. Anybody who can get kilos of cocaine to Australia can figure out a way to kill you in Australia, right? Yeah. It's a cartel. Yeah. Yeah.

Owen Hanson: So I just took it.

I took it on the chin. I went over, walked over, and I literally met this cartel boss with 10 of his sicarios. Like the guys that carry the guns, these like bulletproof jackets, their [00:54:00] cars are bulletproof. And I literally have a sit down with this cartel boss in this private restaurant in a town called Puerto Novo.

I'll never forget it. And he knew about the whole story already. There's already articles coming out in Australia, so he knew. I told him the truth, obviously he knew I was telling the truth and I showed up. So he was like, you know what, you don't owe me 3.2 million. You owe me 4 million and now you work for the cartel.

Oh man, I'm

Jordan Harbinger: alive. Right? Yeah. I was like, hallelujah. Oh man. So what's the plan then? Because you're obviously, if the law enforcement guys just took 700 grand from you, the worst thing you can do is be put in charge of a bunch more money To me, rollers, and then just try to pretend like you're

Owen Hanson: He knew that, right?

Yeah. Yeah. He knew. He goes, you're hot. Yeah. He goes, this guy's obviously cooperating. He says, you're gonna take two years off and you're gonna run your bookie business. He goes, you're good at that. Nothing with cocaine, nothing with money laundering. Handle the bookie business like it's your business for two years.

Once that's two years is up, things will be settled down by then and you're gonna work for [00:55:00] me. And I said, no problem. And I was ecstatic. I was alive.

Jordan Harbinger: Yeah,

Owen Hanson: man. So you're laying low. Doing your gambling business. So he says, you know what, you're not gonna use my routes 'cause you're hot still. You sell my cocaine, but you can't go over there 'cause you're not allowed in Australia right now.

Right. 'cause I was a wanted man. He says, but I'm gonna give you the product in the US and you have to figure out a way to get it into Australia. Geez. And that's what I was like, oh man, what am I gonna do?

Jordan Harbinger: That's a tall order. Hey, this is one of the hardest things to do, or business figure it out.

Owen Hanson: Hardest thing in the world to do.

Yeah, no doubt. Like on the drug trade. Yeah, for sure.

Jordan Harbinger: Wow. So what was the big idea then?

Owen Hanson: So now I had to find a buyer that I already knew someone in Australia, and obviously I couldn't go to Australia and I couldn't talk about this on the phone. So we met at a private island in Fiji. This guy from Australia flew in.

I flew into Fiji and we were literally just going over a game plan. I'm like, how are we gonna figure this thing out? I said, I have to get this product into you and I don't know what to do. And we're, Hey, how do you get to Fiji without going through Australia? You can, there's a direct flight there. Oh, yeah.

[00:56:00] Actually, I take that back. You leave from Hawaii. Oh, okay. So you go to Hawaii. Oh, that makes sense. Yeah. So I, I get there and I, and we're literally drinking wine. We're drinking this white wine on the island. And I'm like, dude, that's it. Wine. He's like, what are you thinking? I said, I'm gonna break down the cocaine and I'm gonna put it in wine bottles.

He's like, are you gonna do that? I said we're gonna get that 150 proof ever clear alcohol. It's like straight alcohol. And we'll break it down. The cocaine will turn into liquid and then once we put it in the bottles, we'll wipe down the bottles, we'll cork it, we'll put it back in the box. I'll ship it like their wine coming from Napa Valley.

'cause Napa Valley's famous in the US or in California where I'm from. And I said, do you have a chemist that can bring it back and basically take out all those liquid and turn it back to the powder? He goes, yeah, I got a guy that works. It works. Yeah. So you just

Jordan Harbinger: evaporate

Owen Hanson: the alcohol that creates alcohol.

You end up with boozy cocaine. No, it's not even boozy. Literally. It's all gone. Yeah, it's all gone. Just literally clear alcohol. And the alcohol is basically taken out of evaporate. Surely this is now common that they're doing this. Listen, [00:57:00] they probably don't do it anymore, just due to the fact that the government knows.

I don't think people knew. But the guy that was doing this with me got in trouble and he basically told them the whole operation. Yeah. So the government found out about it. So that's why I talk freely on it. 'cause obviously I wouldn't want to give up anybody's secrets. 'cause I'd get in trouble for that.

But now I speak openly because this guy's already given it to the DA and the F fbi. I, and I'm like, okay, well

Jordan Harbinger: now I

Owen Hanson: can talk about

Jordan Harbinger: it. But man, if you just did one bottle here and there. That's the problem though. Nobody does that. Yeah. They go, oh, I now I need a whole case. Alright, I'll do a case but not a whole pallet.

Yeah, fine. I'll do a whole pallet, but I'm not gonna And then it becomes you're buying your own cargo ship to Yeah. Ship over 500 kilos of blow. 'cause you're selling it all every day. Yeah. Oh my God. So you just dump out all the wine. Huh? Somebody's crying over that. You're doing this manually, right? Yeah.

You're like ripping the courts to dump it out. Yeah. So you're dumping like hundreds of bottles of wine. Like down. You're breaking bad.

Owen Hanson: Yeah. Oh my God. My construction worker that was helping me, he was like, dude, I'm gonna drink some of that wine. I said, listen, you better drink it fast.

Jordan Harbinger: Yeah. To take it in a jug and [00:58:00] take it home.

But don't, yeah,

Owen Hanson: don't drink it on the ju, he used to put in one of those big water jugs, those big five gallon ones, you know? Oh yeah. This big five gallon ones.

Jordan Harbinger: Yeah. Yeah.

Crosstalk: It's funny like where you getting this wine? It comes in an ugly ass jug. But it's pretty good. Yeah, this

Jordan Harbinger: is actually pretty good wine.

This is Napa Valley. Some guy making mediocre ass white wine in Napa is like, that's why I was sold out all the time.

Crosstalk: I didn't think anybody would like this. Yeah. You dumping down the back. Yeah, the cheap. This white wine I

Jordan Harbinger: found. You're floating a couple wineries entirely from this business and the guy's patting himself on the back for making this amazing product.

You also use chocolates, eh? Yeah. That

Owen Hanson: was kind of unique. Tell me about that. The wine guy started to charge me too much to take it back, to put it powder cocaine. He wanted to charge me an arm and a leg. I said, you know what, you're gonna be out of a job if you wanna charge me that. And I put my foot down.

I said, I'm not paying that. And I said, you know what? I'm gonna come out with a new route. And I figured it out. I said, chocolate, chocolate, chocolate, chocolate. That's gonna be my way. And I went to my Rolodex and I'm like, okay. I had a fraternity brother at USC. His parents were in the import export business of [00:59:00] chocolate from the uk.

They would ship chocolate and sweets, all kinds of candies from the UK into the us and they had a warehouse in Compton where they would distribute the European chocolate throughout the United States. It was a big business. Yeah, that sounds like a good business. Good business. That's why the

Jordan Harbinger: kid had a black card.

Owen Hanson: Yeah, exactly. And I told the kid, I said, I'll give you 50,000 a month if you give me your expired chocolate. And I said, I'll give it to you in cash. And like, how are you gonna say no to that? It's not like it's costing me anything. Meanwhile, it's going

Jordan Harbinger: in a dumpster in, in the back of the warehouse.

Exactly. And all he has to do is be like, Hey dad, my fra Rose will eat it. Yeah.

Owen Hanson: They, they want it, right? Like, oh, okay, sure. All right, I'll help you load the trunk. So I remember he's like, dude, I wanna be there. If I'm making $50,000 a month, can I help you? I'm like, dude, I don't want you to be there. I said, I need you to leave at 6:00 PM when all your employees leave.

To be honest. And let me do my thing. And he insisted. I'm like, dude, okay. I'm telling you you're gonna be upset. And I knew he did coke, so I was like, here's a bag. And he started doing it. I said, that's what I'm bringing into this chocolate. He's like, I wanna help. So we're literally like cocaine, [01:00:00] chocolate.

Yeah. We're stuffing this, these kilos inside. We're taking all the bars out, we're putting the cocaine in the bottom, we're putting the bars on top, and we're saran wrapping this pallet. And there's 50 kilos of coke in there. And we're literally like. Hiding it. If customs goes through it, they're gonna literally have to go through every piece of chocolate to find all these different areas.

Jordan Harbinger: This sounds like a huge pain in the ass. It is a

Owen Hanson: pain in the ass. But I

Jordan Harbinger: guess if you're making a million dollars, you're just like,

Owen Hanson: well, yeah, well, you gotta remember, we gotta pay back the cartel.

Jordan Harbinger: Oh yeah. Right. You're also gonna die. I don't care. Right now, you're also gonna get brutally murdered and probably tortured beforehand if you don't do it.

That's motivating. Yeah, that's

Owen Hanson: true. I forgot about that part. Wow. So it started working.

Jordan Harbinger: They like the guys in Australia were blown away. Only in college do you realize the market inefficiency of overpaying for cocaine. That's like the first lesson in frat house capitalism. Find the margin, find your audience, then find your moral compass.

Preferably in that order. Owen never stopped hustling though. He just changed the product. Cocaine gambling. Now. Ice cream all built on the same skillset. Logistics, persuasion, and ignoring [01:01:00] the voice in your head saying, huh, maybe this is a bad idea. Speaking of bad ideas, now a word from our sponsors. We'll be right back.

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Now for the rest of my conversation with Owen Hansen, you used a lot of interesting principles to get al hee to trust you. Not even novel or unique, but just stuff most people don't do, like answer his calls on the first ring any day. Make sure that he is happy with the service you provided when he was doing the gambling thing.

A lot of people. They feel like business is some kind of, or client service is like some kind of big mystery and you really have to do all this amazing news. No, you just have to be a human being. Right? You're responsible, responsive, and that's it. Yeah. It's not that hard. It's just hard to do consistently, and that's why most businesses, that's what end up dropping the ball.

What

Owen Hanson: co consist is key.

Jordan Harbinger: So who is this boss? Obviously he's a cartel boss, but like he's ruthless, but also he's not dumb.

Owen Hanson: He's a businessman. Obviously. I haven't given up names. I'm not [01:06:00] gonna say who he is, but let's put it this way. He's a businessman and he makes a lot of money.

Jordan Harbinger: So he's still operating?

Owen Hanson: Yeah, he's definitely not in prison. Okay.

Jordan Harbinger: Now you're doing drugs and drinking a lot during this time to manage the stress. Yeah.

Owen Hanson: Yeah. I'm so literally so nervous that I know the FBI's after me, 'cause PI is running license plates and saying it's coming back to authorities. And I'm like, okay, well I gotta get the cartel paid back.

I don't care about the FBI.

Jordan Harbinger: Wow. So they're watching you and your smuggling cocaine to pay back the cartel. Who's gonna kill you if you don't?

Owen Hanson: Exactly.

Jordan Harbinger: And did you tell Al Hefe like, Hey, the FBI is watching me,

Owen Hanson: he doesn't care. I told him, I said, dude, I'm running license plates on these cars around my houses.

You gotta pay me back TikTok. I remember you texting me TikTok. Oh, that's scary. Yeah, yeah. Like, okay. I just literally, every time I would see them, I was just like, okay, I gotta keep going. I gotta hurry up. I knew it was crashing down eventually. You just feel it. That's

Jordan Harbinger: a stressful way

Owen Hanson: to live. Yeah, so that's why I was doing a lot of drugs and alcohol.

I just wanted to be numb,

Jordan Harbinger: man. So how's that affecting you at this time? Because your stress levels through the roof and [01:07:00] you're self-medicating. Are you thinking

Owen Hanson: clearly? I mean, I was just a machine like literally would golf at six in the morning, still doing blow, still working out. It just was like literally like a, a robot.

Nothing would phase me. I was taking so much blow and so many Xanax and alcohol and gh, hb and I'm like, it's sad to say, but like I just wanted to be put out. I was so stressed.

Jordan Harbinger: This is the part where. People need to pay more attention because the good times sounded really awesome. But this part does not sound like it was worth it at all.

Owen Hanson: No way.

Jordan Harbinger: And even then, you're lucky that you weren't dead.

Owen Hanson: No, I should have been dead. I tell people like I should have definitely overdosed on drugs. Yeah.

Jordan Harbinger: Or been murdered by the cartel. Yeah. That was next.

Owen Hanson: Yeah, it was one of those two. And then luckily the spoiler alert, I did go to prison.

Jordan Harbinger: We'll get to that in a minute.

Tell me about this Ani Cypriani guy. Like he keeps trying to get you in trouble. Who is this guy first? Because I don't think we introduced him. So Robert

Owen Hanson: Ani is the guy that laundered the money. Oh, he's the guy who lost your money? He's lost my money. Gotcha. So he keeps trying. And I already know at this point he's working for the feds because.[01:08:00]

We see that there's little checkpoints that like you're looking at, okay, this guy's definitely working with him and then he'd make these phone calls and he call me on my cell phone like, Hey buddy, I gotta pay you back your 2.5 million that I laundered. Yeah. I'm so concerned, like, why are you calling me and why are you saying that?

I laundered on the phone, like, no one speaks like that.

Jordan Harbinger: I need to do more of this illegal thing with you. Yeah. I was like, you don't want the authorities to ever find out about Yeah.

Owen Hanson: And he's like, can we meet up? And I'm like, dude, I'm not meeting up with this guy. I feel something's wrong. And then that's when we started foot pressure on him and like, dude, you gotta pay us back.

Oh, so you did want him to pay back? We tried. Yeah. Of course any dollar I can make would

Jordan Harbinger: go towards

Owen Hanson: my debt without, that's a good point.

Jordan Harbinger: If he gives you a million and tells you this is all I can do, you're that much closer to not dying.

Owen Hanson: Exactly. And he's literally like trying to keep me happy and like he'll put like $2,000 in my bank account.

I'm like, dude, keep doing that. Like every day. Do that make me feel it. Geez.

Jordan Harbinger: I'm surprised Al Hefe wasn't like, why don't I just send some guys to him and cut off a couple of his toes and maybe he'll pay you back?

Owen Hanson: Because I was the one that was responsible. Remember I went into business with Al [01:09:00] Hefe. It was my job to figure it out.

Jordan Harbinger: It just still seems like you could be like, Hey, if you have people that are willing to kill, can I borrow one of those guys for like an hour? I don't need to kill anyone. I just need to make sure that this guy really knows that I can.

Owen Hanson: Yeah,

Jordan Harbinger: that would've maybe helped. No, he

Owen Hanson: did put a fear of God. Oh yeah.

He sent videos of guys getting their heads chopped off and said, Hey, we know where you live. This is gonna happen to you. Like stuff that scared the living shit out of him. And we used a bunch of scare tactics that basically caused him to go to the FBI and said, look at what they're doing.

Jordan Harbinger: I see. So that actually hurt us.

Blew up in your face a little bit. Yeah. Okay. Once again, I obviously would not have operated any better in this business than you. 'cause that seems like, oh yeah. Just have these guys threaten them. Oh, oops. He went to the FBI. So how does it all end up unraveling? Tell me about them finally catching up to you.

Owen Hanson: Just eventually them infiltrating my network in Australia. My contacts in Australia's were realizing that the money was so hard to get back from Australia to the US, that it was every time I would have to wait months and months to send new [01:10:00] product. 'cause we had to wait till our money got back, otherwise we weren't gonna send new product.

So the FBI infiltrated them and went on this yacht in Australia. My contacts were on the yacht drinking and unbeknownst to them the FBI were drinking next to 'em and they were shooting the shit and they're talking and the FBI says, oh yeah, yeah, we're in the money laundering business. This is what we do.

They didn't know they were FBI agents. Obviously they. He is like, dude, perfect timing. What a coincidence. Like what do you charge? That's where the red flag should have stood up. He charged half of what we were paying, like 12 points. Oh, right. I'm like, dude, are you sure these guys are legit? And I'm telling him on these encrypted phones, they're like, dude, these guys are great.

Let's just do a test run.

Jordan Harbinger: Because they hung out with them for 30 minutes and they definitely wouldn't lie or anything. Yeah.

Owen Hanson: They literally send these guys back to San Diego where they set up a round of golf and they're like, my buddy in Australia just gives 'em 10,000 bucks and sees if they bring it to me, and sure enough they bring it to me minus their fee.

I'm like, yeah, they, they paid me the cash, but that wasn't very much like. These guys are like, well, let's do the next one. Quarter million, right? So we do it to quarter [01:11:00] million and then the next one's a million, right? And the

Jordan Harbinger: DA's like ramping it up. They're gonna keep doing it. Yeah. Keep

Owen Hanson: doing it, keep doing it.

And this whole time, now we're being wire tapped. Next thing you know, I'm golfing with them, um, weekly. And finally we, we schedule another half a million dollar drop and we're supposed to discuss our next way of payment. And we set up a tee time in San Diego where I'm supposed to golf with them. Like I've already been golfing with them.

I've already been gambling on the golf course, drinking cocktails with them like they're the bros. And that's when, that September 9th, 2015, I, I show up to the country club and my caddies literally taking my clubs outta my trunk of my Porsche Panama. And as soon as I turn around, there's 15 FBI agents coming outta the bushes, helicopter in the sky, and in New South.

Oh, because

Jordan Harbinger: you might run a bag of clothes running down the fairway. They put

Owen Hanson: handcuffs on me. And I'll tell you what, Jordan, that was the best day of my life. Just the relief knowing that I'm done. I'm outta this business. I didn't end up dead. I paid the cartel back. Oh, you'd managed to pay him back? I paid him back every penny.

Wow. And I was like, this is the biggest blessing. [01:12:00] I'm going to prison. People are thinking this is the worst thing ever. But I'm like, dude, you don't know how much stress I had living worried my whole life. The last two years I lived knowing that I had this debt and that I was working for the cartel. And I'm in so deep, like how am I gonna get out?

Like I'm either gonna die or get killed. And I got arrested, which was even better. Yeah. And people are like, oh, that's crazy. Wow. And I was blessed and I tell people that's the best thing that could ever happen to me. I'm here. You and I are speaking right now. Like

Jordan Harbinger: I assume at the time the agents, you weren't like, oh, thank God you guys are here.

Take me to jail. Yeah,

Owen Hanson: definitely not.

Jordan Harbinger: Wow. Did the caddy know the FBI was there for sure. Okay. He was so nervous. He was shaking like, leave. This guy was like, Hey Owen, uh, Mr. Hansen, let me get your clubs outta your trunk. Like looking over his shoulder. He

Owen Hanson: probably was an FBI agent now that I think about it.

Really? Oh, you think so? Yeah, for sure. He was just like the caddy. Yeah. Literally the whole golf course was shut down that day for this sting. Oh, wow. Wow. You're, wow. It's so easy to park there. There was nobody in the parking lot. And I told the caddy that. I'm like, dude, why is no one here, Mr. Hanson? I don't know.

And he like [01:13:00] literally shaking when he is bringing my clubs out of the trunk.

Jordan Harbinger: That guy, they're like, you are first undercover gig. You're playing the caddy. Yeah. And the agents are like, wow, that guy needs a little more work. Before we put him in a higher stake situation, he was like, you can't even take the bag of clubs outta the truck now that guy's infiltrating the Hell's Angels or something.

Yeah, exactly.

Owen Hanson: He's chief of operations.

Jordan Harbinger: Yeah. I'm better off at a desk. Man. How long were you under surveillance, do you think?

Owen Hanson: Fuck, 2010, 11? I think so. Total. 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 5 years. So somebody made their early career? Oh, for sure. The prosecutor made his career off of my case.

Jordan Harbinger: Wow. Yeah, like my kid is six and I'm thinking, wow, if I started an investigation when he was born and I made the arrest five years later, and then still the prosecutions after that, that's like longer than my kid has been alive.

That's a big project to think about.

Owen Hanson: Wow.

Jordan Harbinger: And I would imagine you're looking at discovery. Are they showing you photos of places you forgot? Oh yeah. Like you forgot,

Owen Hanson: like when was that? Like, oh, you were with that girl there? What was I doing there?

Jordan Harbinger: Oh, Fiji. Oh yeah, that's right. I forgot about that. This was my layover In Hawaii.

[01:14:00] Yeah. Or sitting at the Starbucks. That's crazy. So this is where the book ends, right? You go to prison. What was the sentence then? 21 years. God in three months. What are you thinking when you hear that

Owen Hanson: at

Jordan Harbinger: the time? 'cause you're,

Owen Hanson: how old are you? It's a life sentence, right? 30. Let's see. I got sentenced when I was think 35 when I finally got sentenced.

So I'm doing the math. I'm like, okay, I'm gonna be out close to 60. They want to gimme a life sentence in Australia. I'm like, dude, my dad, I'm never gonna get to see my dad. That's all I'm thinking about is my pops the guy that's been there since day one. I'm like devastated. And you look back and you just see that disappointed face and you're like, man, what do I do?

And you're scrambling and you're like, that's it. My life's over.

Jordan Harbinger: Wow. What? So what about in prison? Are you depressed the whole time? Or are you like, look, I gotta get my shit. Look

Owen Hanson: for sure the first couple of months you're depressed. But like, okay, am I gonna just take this and just be this guy that's gonna be moping around his whole life and eating soups and getting fat, or am I gonna rehabilitate like that Judge told me?

Getting that kind of time. It's [01:15:00] obviously a time to rehabilitate. And, and Jordan, I'm, I'm accepting full responsibility that yes, I deserve to go to prison. Now, did I deserve 21 and a half years? I don't think so, but I did break the law and therefore the judge makes that decision. The drug penalties

Jordan Harbinger: are way too high.

Yeah. But yeah,

Owen Hanson: so I do belong there. I'm not gonna lie. But obviously I was just gonna say, you know what, let's make the best out of this situation. And I went to school again. I went back and got my master's degree

Jordan Harbinger: in prison, PhD in prison.

Owen Hanson: I would've stayed the whole 21 years. I would've for sure.

Jordan Harbinger: Yeah.

'cause I feel like why not? There's not a whole lot else going on in there. Nothing working out and go to school. Yep.

Owen Hanson: That's all I did. Worked out. Go to school. And then once I got my master's, I started a business inside prison. That you've actually got to experience. That's

Jordan Harbinger: right. Is that allowed, by the way to do that?

Can you? No, of course

Owen Hanson: not. But what are they gonna do? Take my currency. 'cause in prison, your currency is stamps, right? The United States postage stamps. So like, okay, take my money. You guys go spend that. The ice cream business. Yeah. It just was a hustler my whole life. I'm like, man, I'm tired of asking my dad to put money on my books.

What am I gonna do? He's got a life to live himself. I've already put him through hell. So I was like, I gotta figure out a way to make [01:16:00] money in here. And I'm not gonna be selling the old ice cream. I'm gonna start selling this new ice cream, prison ice cream. But it's no good. No, it's, they don't have prison ice cream unless you know how to make it.

I would literally take a peanut butter jar, put the milk from the kitchen inside the jar, take the protein powder they sell on the commissary. Dump that in there. I take slices of bananas, put 'em in there. Little swirl peanut butter, and I literally shake it up like a protein shake. Usually I would just put it on ice, get it cold.

By the time I got back from my workout, I would drink it. It actually sounds really good. It's good. It's just not with a blender. We don't have blenders. We don't have fridges. We're getting ice. From the ice room, there's a room where you can get ice and we put it in mop buckets so you can put your ice in a mop bucket or in a trash can.

People put their sodas in there, the protein shakes or whatever. That needs to be cold. There's no refrigeration. That's what I would do. I would literally make my protein shake every morning, put it in the mop bucket on ice, and I would go work out and I'd come back and drink my shake. I told people my mind is not in prison.

My mind's out there in the real world. I just finished my workout at Equinox and I'm just having my [01:17:00] protein shake at Earth Bar. That's how my mind Oh,

Jordan Harbinger: you really? Oh, that's funny. Yeah.

Owen Hanson: That's how I made it work for me.

Jordan Harbinger: Is that keeping you sane or is it just reminding you that you're in prison all the time?

That's keeping me sane. It's keeping you sane. Yeah.

Owen Hanson: That's the only way I can mentally do it. Yeah, it's a good

Jordan Harbinger: idea.

Owen Hanson: Yeah. I played it right because every day it was like, okay, we're gonna have this nice fish, which is a mackerel, tastes like crap, obviously, but we're now eating this fish at El style in Beverly Hills, right?

Yeah. Like you're just making the best of a shitty situation. Yeah, sure.

Jordan Harbinger: I gotta ask, so when you get out and you go to real equinox, are you like, nah, this is definitely better? Oh yeah, yeah. It's surreal. Like I, I

Owen Hanson: literally go to that executive locker room and Magic Johnson's like right next to me. I'm like, you definitely weren't there in prison.

Yeah, yeah. You don't

Jordan Harbinger: have to worry about getting like beat up or anything. Yeah, at the Equinox in Beverly Hills. Yeah. Yeah, man. So this ice cream, you're making this in prison and you're selling it in prison, and then you decide, hey, I'm gonna just bring this to the civilian world. So

Owen Hanson: listen, I was making these protein shakes and one day they ran outta ice and my cell, he's like, Hey, just throw some salt on there.

When you get back, it will still [01:18:00] be cold because if you have salt in ice together, it makes it like freezing cool. I get back from my workout and it's frozen. I'm like, dude, you told me it'd be cold, it's frozen. He goes, dude, just try it. Who knows? Maybe it's good. Oh, so you accidentally made ice cream? Yeah.

Oh, I see. I'm like, dude, it's protein ice cream. He goes, dude, I told you it'd be good and I'm eating it. I'm like, dude, wait a minute. Then I started making it for my workout partners and they're like, dude, why don't you sell this? This is amazing. We don't have ice cream in prison. Like it's hard to get ice cream unless you know how to make it.

And I'm making a protein ice cream, and everyone in prison works out.

Jordan Harbinger: Well. Yeah, I would assume so.

Owen Hanson: Yeah. That's all you do. Two hours day, you're in the morning, you're working out two hours at night, you're working out. There's nothing else to do. So the

problem actually is nutrition. Nutrition too, because you gotta recover.

And if you're eating shitty mackerel, the only, there's mackerel. I'm tired of

macel. Yeah. And there's soups and there's like garbage, right? There's soups and Doritos and Zoom, zooms and Twix and bad stuff. And like there's nothing that's like a healthy, innocent treat.

Jordan Harbinger: So you guys are eating like pounds of whey protein.

Owen Hanson: We only can buy like seven packs of protein a week. So one per day. Oh, you're limited. Yeah, you're limited. You can only spend [01:19:00] $320 a month on food.

Jordan Harbinger: I didn't realize they limited you.

Owen Hanson: Yeah, because what happens is people start gambling in prison and they use that money to pay for their gambling debts. Ah,

Jordan Harbinger: okay.

So it's to protect you from, from being extorted basically. Extortion, yeah. Okay. I guess they have to think about things like that. Oh yeah.

Owen Hanson: Wow. No, I got out of prison, right? And I go to the halfway house and I'm literally sitting on my bunk bed with 20 inmates around me and I'm like, dude, what am I gonna do?

I'm a felon now I know I wrote this book, but you can't make much money off book sales. I know the documentary's been already filmed and it's coming out, but I don't know when. And I'm like, okay. So I was like, man, what am I gonna do? And I called one of my old gambling customers. I told him, I said, I don't know what to do for work.

How long were you in in the clinic? I was in the clinic for nine years, and I did another year in the halfway house. So 10 years under the Bureau of Prisons.

Jordan Harbinger: So you didn't have to fulfill a 20 year sentence?

Owen Hanson: No. I had a corrupt lawyer in Australia that was trying to get some of the money that I lost, and the corrupt lawyer was in on it.

The United States government called me six years into my prison [01:20:00] sentence, and they said that corrupt lawyer is taking it to trial and there's only one person that knows he's corrupt. Mr. Hansen, are you willing to fly over to Australia and testify against him for illegal stuff you guys were doing? And I raised my hand.

I said, absolutely. And then the judge in Australia basically found him guilty for corruption and wrote. My judge in America and asked for a sentence reduction under a rule 35, which is what Rule 35 is a significant amount of assistance for helping another case, which is this case. Wow. It wasn't obviously, wasn't the cartel, thank God.

Yeah. But it was this corrupt lawyer.

Jordan Harbinger: That's one of the luckiest things that's ever happened to. I won a lot on

Owen Hanson: life. I tell people that was the Lord looking after me for sure.

Jordan Harbinger: Yeah. Wow. So they were like, we really wanna put this guy away. 'cause he worked for the state, I assume, correct. Or something like Yeah.

He was a public defender. Yeah. Geez. And he was on the take and just, yeah. Trying to steal your money. Tr trying to, yeah. Get that money back. And he

Owen Hanson: had done this to a lot of other people. They knew he was crooked, but crooked for years. The guy was like 70 years old and they're like, dude, we finally got 'em.

Like they had their evidence. [01:21:00]

Jordan Harbinger: Wow. Okay. So you get out. Why didn't you get back into gambling? You already knew how to run a gambling back. It was

Owen Hanson: not illegal at the time when I got out. It's legal in 38 states. Yeah. Why not just move to everyone's owning. You'd be a CEO of these companies. You're great at it.

Sure. And I agree. I would love to do that, Jordan. But the problem is that when they found me guilty, the judge put on my restraints. That said, the restrictions are I can no longer ever work in the gambling world. Nothing to do with gambling.

Jordan Harbinger: Uh, because Yeah, that makes sense. 'cause the money laundering, you're money laundering.

It's like when the Theranos, Elizabeth Holmes or Sam Bankman free, they can never work in finance or crypto. Run a business or anything like that because they've proven that they're not trustworthy to do that. Exactly. But you can run a business. I mean, you're running this business, dude, I

Owen Hanson: started this business from prison, right?

And I'm like, dude, it's called protein ice cream. Yeah, no, it was California Ice Protein, California Ice Cream. So I tell people I'm a California kid, like my book, I'm like, I need to have something that ties to my story. I'm like, dude, in prison we call it ice protein because it's not ice cream, it's protein.

Jordan Harbinger: And by the way, this is super good. And I'm not just saying that 'cause you're sitting in front of me. [01:22:00] I didn't even get to have the majority of this 'cause I'd take one or two bites and then I'd be like, Hey you guys try this. And I'd turn around and it's gone. 'cause my kids and wife were like, this is amazing.

Yeah. So it's gone. Where can people buy it, your direct to consumer?

Owen Hanson: Our website, California ice protein.com.

Jordan Harbinger: I usually don't shill products so hard. But it's actually really,

Owen Hanson: really good. And it's a comeback. I tell people, listen, this is a, a second chance in every bite. Mm-hmm. Nice.

Jordan Harbinger: It's like Dave's killer bread type of thing.

Yes, exactly. So how much protein is in one of these? Because I, you know, 20 grams. Each bar. Each bar and four ounces.

Owen Hanson: How much, how much calories is in each one? 2 66. We've redone the calories. We did a test last week on 'em. Okay. And we got the calories down to all these bars are at 200 calories and this, the cookies and cream has about 20 more 'cause of the cookie.

Okay. So that's two 20.

Jordan Harbinger: So that's a pretty damn good ratio of, it's good macros of protein to calories. Better than a chocolate bar with protein. Yeah. It's like similar to having like a protein shake on a stick. Yeah. And that's really good. And my kids liked it. I know you're coming out with a kid version that's a little bit more 'cause kids eating stuff off a stick is already a nightmare.

Make [01:23:00] it

Owen Hanson: small like a Johnny Pop.

Jordan Harbinger: Yeah. This is, you're full when you finish this. Yeah. If you think you're gonna have it for dessert, you're not gonna finish it. 'cause it's, it's actually too filling. Yeah.

Owen Hanson: Let's say it's a meal replacement. Yeah.

Jordan Harbinger: Well questionable nutritional choices, but Sure. Fair it. It is actually more or less that.

Do you ever miss the drug game and stuff? Do you ever think like, oh man, that was cool, not that you would go back.

Owen Hanson: Listen, everyone's been asking me that. What do you find that makes that feeling right? For me, it was that rush, like for me. Okay. I was sending a pallet full of chocolate into Australia and watching it land in clear customs.

But last month, when I first shipped my first three pallets to New York and my frozen ice cream, which is harder to ship than cocaine because we remember frozen ice cream has to be frozen, 24 hours pallets of cocaine. You don't have to freeze. So when that landed in New York and they got my three pallets and they told me that it's not melted, I had that same rush.

Really the same eye, because I felt like. Wow. It's just the same business principle, but with a different product.

Jordan Harbinger: If only you'd [01:24:00] gotten to consumer packaged goods before instead of cocaine, but then you wouldn't have thought of the recipe. That's right. So here we are. Everything happens for a

Owen Hanson: reason, right?

That's

Jordan Harbinger: right, man, what an incredible story. We'll link to the Amazon documentary called Cocaine Quarterback. Correct. And that's on Amazon Prime video. So that's like top of court everyone six

Owen Hanson: in the US right now.

Jordan Harbinger: Wow. And the book will also link in the show notes as well, the California Kid, and people can order the ice cream ice

Owen Hanson: cream in the book.

I let people order it on my website and I personalize H message and sign it

Jordan Harbinger: now. Ice cream though again. Really good. We'll link to that in the show notes as well. Thanks for coming in, man. Yeah, thanks for having me.

Owen Hanson: Yeah, I

Jordan Harbinger: appreciate it. What if the next mass shooting wasn't random, but entirely preventable, hidden behind obvious warning signs that we've been trained to ignore?

Speaker 7: With school shootings, most mass shooters are using legally purchased firearms. It's an overwhelming majority. We are also a country that has a huge number of firearms and they're very easy to get in most places. So therefore, it makes sense on a very fundamental level that we have more mass shootings.

You wanna get a [01:25:00] gun, you can get a gun. Everyone goes to their corners. I'm either totally for guns everywhere or I'm against all guns. And this is all about mental health or it's about something else entirely. Politics, ideology, it's all these things together. It's a complex problem. For decades, people have tried to figure out, can you predict an act of violence like this?

And the answer is definitively no. There is no way to predict someone doing this, but you can prevent it if you can identify the process leading up to it. So that's what the profiling is. It's studying the process of behavior and circumstances leading up to the attack. Each case is unique. There's studying patterns of behavior.

There's a body of knowledge about how to go about evaluating and intervening to stop people from committing violence like this. But every case is different too. I think it's really important to have good, solid dispassionate reporting on what's happening. Follow the evidence, tell the story. That's what I do.

The people who are gonna do this work are already in place. Teachers and administrators, and counselors in a school system. They're already tasked with the safety and [01:26:00] wellbeing of students. It's really more about training and expertise and institutional knowledge of how to handle the situation when it arises.

My focus on violence prevention in this space is really ultimately a hopeful story.

Jordan Harbinger: For more on the overlooked clues and urgent choices that could mean the difference between tragedy and prevention. Check out episode 1140 on The Jordan Harbinger Show with Mark Fullman. Fascinating story, really nice guy, and really good ice cream.

I'm, I'm telling you, cocaine quarterback streaming now on Amazon Prime video. Owens book, the California kid will be linked in the show notes. I shared this ice cream, by the way, Jen and I, the kids love it. It's linked in the show notes. Of course, I'm really into this stuff. I shared it at PodcastOne where we recorded this episode 'cause he brought a backpack full of it.

Everyone loved it. It didn't last. Five minutes worth a try, not a sponsor. Lot of protein in there. Kids and adults. Love it. Linked in the show notes as well. Advertisers deals, discount codes, ways to support this show, all at Jordan harbinger.com/deals. Please consider supporting those who support the show.[01:27:00]

Also, our newsletter wee bit wiser. The idea is to give you something specific and practical that'll have an immediate impact on your decisions, your psychology, and your relationships. It's a two minute read. Comes up pretty much every Wednesday. If you haven't signed up yet, I invite you to come check it out.

It really is a great companion to this show. Jordan harbinger.com/news is where you can find it. Six minute networking@sixminutenetworking.com. Doesn't matter how you spell it, I bought those domains. I'm at Jordan Harbinger on Twitter and Instagram. You can also connect with me on LinkedIn in the show, it's created an association with PodcastOne.

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If you know somebody who's interested in ice cream cocaine, money laundering, or maybe just a great story, definitely share this episode with them. In the meantime, I hope you apply what you hear on the show so you can live what you learn, and we'll see you next [01:28:00] time.