1047: Shaun Attwood | From Raves to Riches to Ruin Part One

1047: Shaun Attwood | From Raves to Riches to Ruin Part One

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[00:00:00] Jordan Harbinger: Special thanks to Kleenex for sponsoring this episode of the Jordan Harbinger Show. Before we start this show, I wanna let you know it has some adult themes in it, so no kids in the car for this one. And if you leave the kids in the car and you still play the episode, don't blame me when they have nightmares.

Coming up next on the Jordan Harbinger show:

[00:00:16] Shaun Attwood: they waited until the guard did the security walk so they could torture him until the next security walk, which is about 30 minutes. And I'm sat in that cell next door and I've never heard noises like it coming from a human being. It sounded like a cat was on fire.

Or something.

[00:00:38] Jordan Harbinger: 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 war correspondent, neuroscientist, astronaut or tech luminary.

And if you're new to the show or you wanna tell your friends about the show, I suggest our epi. Episode starter packs. These are collections of our favorite episodes on persuasion and negotiation, psychology and geopolitics, disinformation China, North Korea, crime, and cults and more. That'll help new listeners get a taste of everything we do here on the show.

Just visit Jordan harbinger.com/start or search for us in your Spotify app to get started today. Wow, this story, man. Sean Atwood is a well-known crime YouTuber, but his story absolutely bananas, it's like nothing I've ever heard in my life, and I mean that he's a fascinating character. Came from the UK to the us, started one of the largest drug gangs in the country, crossed paths with biker gangs, mobsters cartel members.

Ends up in one of. The worst prisons in the United States slash the whole world. I mean, it's like a third world prison here in the United States. I don't wanna ruin it, but this episode is just, well, it's gonna ruin your lunch, but it's a fun ride goes without saying probably no kids in the car for this one, for sure.

This one will entertain you. It'll teach you a thing or two, and maybe mostly just remind you that whatever mistakes you've made in life, well. You're doing great. Sean was very candid and uncensored in this one and is just a banger of a conversation. And again, don't listen, especially to part two. While you're eating.

Here we go with Sean Atwood.

Thanks for coming all this way. To do this. Thank you. Show for rescheduling and seeing me. It's great. Yeah, man, I was, uh, I'm glad we weren't able to make it work. It's been a long time in the making, and I, I know that you're not going to come to the US anytime soon. Uh, we'll get into the reasons why at some point, so I'm glad we got to do it in person.

Banned for life. Yeah. Banned for life. Tell me what you grew up in. You were kind of a punk growing up. You're in a fake gang.

[00:02:48] Shaun Attwood: So the punk rock was like the Sex Pistols, holidays in the sun. God saved the Queen. Mm-Hmm. All that kind of stuff. That was the first music that excited me and then it all went dull and then the rave scene started and that hooked me right back in the

[00:03:04] Jordan Harbinger: EDM man.

So with the raves and I like, I love the rave scene. I wasn't as hardcore as you, but tell me about getting into that. 'cause that was kind of your entree into like, Hey, this music's more fun if you're outta your mind on drugs.

[00:03:18] Shaun Attwood: So I was at a time of my life, I was going through social anxiety. I was too self-conscious to dance.

Mm one caught and talk to women. I actually almost got beat to death by some drunks, and they left me unconscious smash pieces of my teeth out. So I got these nice veneers on my front teeth. Oh,

[00:03:36] Jordan Harbinger: they are nice and

[00:03:36] Shaun Attwood: white, and that compounded my social anxiety. Mm. So I was going through a bit of a stressful period of time as a teenager.

And then this scene began. Prior to the scene, people had to line up at nightclubs and wear nice clothes, and the bouncers came out and looked at everyone and decided who could get in. Interesting. The young people just started smashing the doors in of warehouses, airplane hangers, wearing all this crazy colored clothing.

Taking ecstasy and dancing to this new style of music. So I'm seeing this on the TV every weekend. It was on the news, all these wide-eyed ravers. Mm-Hmm. Cops like trying to get it under control but didn't know, quite know how to deal with it. Yeah. I'm thinking I want some of this. I'm a mate. Yeah. I was that, uh, Liverpool University studying business.

I'm a mate out of my economics class, said You need to come and check this out. So I went to Manchester. It was a club on Oldham Road called the Thunderdome. Tried ecstasy, tried speed. About 30 minutes in his face just lights up and he is got this smile and he like tried to get me to dance and I'm like, no way.

'cause I'm still that self-conscious person and I let him go and dance. 45 minutes in, I'm just mooching around this. There's people like, you know, lines of people around these walls looking at this dance floor. Nothing's really happening. As if expecting an elephant to materialize. I'm thinking, what's all this About 45 minutes in my knee just buckle.

And I'm like, whoa, what's happening? I can feel all my clothes melting into my skin. I can't stand up anymore. I sit down and like I just sat down like this. And then I just feel all my tension and stress and everything just melting away. I'm just sat there on the floor smiling at people. I'll never forget it.

I could just see people's jeans walking around me and I'm just looking at 'em smiling. And they're all high actually too. And they've got the same smile and you don't have to say anything. You just recognize each other's smile. And then my mate Kane grabbed me up and that was it. And I just, I danced all night long.

I didn't even wanna stop to take a piss. Mm-Hmm. I even ended up getting on the front stage. After that raving became my religion. Yeah.

[00:05:35] Jordan Harbinger: Well, I feel like we're selling it a little too hard, so stay tuned. If you were thinking that's for me, stay tuned for a little while because there is a slight downfall that we should probably explain.

So let's even zoom out from the rave scene a little bit. You start getting interested in investing, which is not, I know that's a non-sequitur, but it's important here. What gets you into this? I mean, you're in B School, so maybe you're just like, I need to make some money. Stocks are where you make money,

[00:06:00] Shaun Attwood: so again, as a teenager.

About six of us elected to do economics. Mm-Hmm. And I had an aptitude, and the teacher could see this, Mr. Dillon St. Joe's Witness Cheshire, and he started to gimme classes of my own. So he is reopening the financial times. There's all these columns of numbers, year, high year, low price day, high day, low P ratio, dividend, and I'm like looking at all this fascinating and he is explaining what it all means.

Around that time it was Maggie Thatcher was the Prime Minister and there was these ads come on the tv. She was privatizing British Telecom. The shows were gonna be 50 pence. Opening on the first day of dealings, that was the

[00:06:34] Jordan Harbinger: price you could buy to Matt. I see. So this is a state owned enterprise. Yep. And you're thinking, hey, they're gonna make 50 cent shares.

50 pence shares. That seems low for the company that runs all the phones in the whole country. I.

[00:06:47] Shaun Attwood: Exactly. I see.

[00:06:48] Jordan Harbinger: Okay. And she

[00:06:49] Shaun Attwood: was handing the state silver over to her bodies in the city at a very discounted rate. Yeah. So I was allowed to buy a couple hundred, no, a hundred pounds of it was it? At that time my parents wouldn't gimme money 'cause they hated Mag Thatcher.

They were hardcore labor. And then my dad's like, we're not lending you money. That bloody Maggie Thatcher. We're not bloody Tories like your Nan and a light bulb went off over my head. Grandma. Grandma. So went down to my Nan's house, had a nice Sunday dinner, and hit her up for some money for b t-shirts.

And I think we put a hundred quid in or something and it doubled the first day.

[00:07:24] Jordan Harbinger: Yeah.

[00:07:25] Shaun Attwood: So I was hooked. Yeah. Oh man.

[00:07:27] Jordan Harbinger: If only you'd put in a little bit more. I do eventually. Yeah. Oh yeah. No, I, I, looking back now, was it the high of the gamble and the win that maybe got you as opposed to the fundamentals of the stock market?

[00:07:39] Shaun Attwood: It was like a new and fascinating world I was going into. Yeah. I became obsessed with reading about the giants. Like the great short sellers of the stock market crash of the 1920s. People like George Soros. Yeah. I was finding everything I could possibly find out about George Soros. Yeah. And here, here, I worshiping him at that point of my life as a kid.

Yeah. Michael Milken was another one. I was like, these are the biggest incomes ever filed in the history of the world.

[00:08:08] Jordan Harbinger: Yeah.

[00:08:08] Shaun Attwood: I could do this. I gotta like get into this somehow. I've gotta get into this. So I kinda like plan like the Chinese like 10 year plan. I'm thinking I gotta put all this effort in and I, I'll be able to get to where these guys are.

Eventually I wanna buy my own island and go to America, make these millions, fly all my makes over from the uk. Yeah, they were my initial goals.

[00:08:30] Jordan Harbinger: Buying your own island now is a little bit. Maybe, maybe doesn't have the same allure, or I should say is slightly frowned upon because the question is then what kind of island?

What do you need it for? Epstein, I did write Epstein a called

[00:08:42] Shaun Attwood: who killed Epstein. So yeah, he's uh, soured the island image. Yeah,

[00:08:46] Jordan Harbinger: it ruined private islands for the rest of us. Unfortunately, your audience among other YouTube audiences does still talk about George Soros, however. There's a slightly different angle to the uh, YouTube chats and comments about him these days.

So did you want to be sort of a legit stockbroker or were you Yeah. Okay.

[00:09:06] Shaun Attwood: I wanted to be a legit investment analyst. Yeah. But my family members were in Arizona, so I flew to Arizona and I quickly realized in the Wall Street world, it's predominantly stockbrokers. 'cause there's some very wealthy people, sun City, paradise Valley.

So that's how I started out. I sent my resume off to all the local stock brokerages and I wasn't aware at the time I was sending it off, but it landed on the desk of a penny stock brokerage, proper Wolf of Wall Street style. Yeah. And that's how I started out baptism of fire.

[00:09:40] Jordan Harbinger: Really? So you, you're like, oh, I'll just join this perfectly respectable firm known as, uh, I don't know, whatever Linklater and Sons.

What was that like? Do you show up to an office? You show up or like a warehouse with folding chairs in it? No,

[00:09:52] Shaun Attwood: it was proper. Okay. Top of a skyscraper office. Wow. Full length windows. Had to been there six o'clock in the morning sales meeting. All the Rockies have stood there. The boss was like a mafia, Don.

He's got these two powerhouse heavy hitters like drill sergeants. You are only as big as these numbers on the board for the month. Smiling brokers make the most money. We have to have mirrors on our desks to smile into pacing. Brokers make the most money. We have to have like 24 foot curly cards. All the brokers like pacing all up and down the,

[00:10:25] Jordan Harbinger: oh God.

Oh, right. No cordless phones, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[00:10:28] Shaun Attwood: If you are calling your wives, if you are calling your girlfriends, other brokers are calling your clients. Lunches of a, brokers are calling your clients. It was insane. That is like boiler room. There was biker gangs dropping off crystal meth and coke to the office.

Yeah. Oh, for you guys? No, for the office. So you could stay awake and you do your thing. Well, we'll get to how meth increased my production

[00:10:53] Jordan Harbinger: quite through meth productivity. Yeah. Uh, it does do that. I've, I would imagine. Yeah. Oh my God. How long did you last at a place like this? Because this sounds horrible.

So my first year or so, oh my gosh. That's longer than I would,

[00:11:05] Shaun Attwood: what we did, I partnered up with another rookie broker. We decided to jump ship to a more respectable firm, but we knew they would try and cannibalize our clients. I see. As soon as you leave, they hammer your clients as they stay with us. Yeah.

So we came in every night and photocopied the entire office's clients.

[00:11:21] Jordan Harbinger: Oh. So we could hit back when they hit us. Oh, I see. So they're thinking we're gonna cannibalize our clients and you're thinking You can try. But I got the phone book. I got the Rolodex. Exactly. Ooh, wow. I am shocked that they did not.

See that, know that, expect that they did. 'cause

[00:11:37] Shaun Attwood: there was meetings and they were asking about the, uh, photocopy of the counter, why it had gone up so much. Oh, I see. Me and my mate had to stay Stu and when we did move there was kind of an escalation of, well, for example, I. We had clients that someone else had clients of, and the people who else had the clients of were threatening to car bomb.

The guy who was my partnership in, in the brokerage and we had to go and buy guns. They were

[00:12:01] Jordan Harbinger: threatening to kill him. Yeah. This is in, we had to go and buy guns. That's somehow a very American way to handle the situation. We're gonna blow you up. Well, that's fine. We have arm we're we have arms. We're armed now too.

So they didn't kill you? Did they try?

[00:12:15] Shaun Attwood: We were armed. And we were told to back down from calling their clients and we did. Okay. The head guy came and spoke to the head guy at our brokerage. Oh. And we were told to back down. Gotcha.

[00:12:25] Jordan Harbinger: Yeah. That, so it was like a two mafia duns. Keeping the peace, you don't call their clients.

Mm-Hmm. We won't call you clients. Yeah, exactly. And then you have to like, I don't know, go in a basement and light a, a, an effigy on fire or something and everybody's Okay. What a weird, this is probably a dumb question. Were you licensed to sell any of this or was it just like, whatever?

[00:12:46] Shaun Attwood: Yeah, over time I had all the licenses.

I had series seven. The stock market options traders license, and I had the branch manager license. Oh wow. So

[00:12:54] Jordan Harbinger: you actually studied for these exams and took '

[00:12:57] Shaun Attwood: em? Well, that's another story. So get to the office when I'm first applying and he says to make money, you've got every series seven license and serve you series seven license.

You've gotta take the test. I said, I, you know, I need to start making money right away. 'cause it was a commission only job. There was no salary, but you gotta take the test. I said, well, can I just skip the test? He says, you can't skip the test. I'll go and get the test button. You can see how how difficult it is comes out with this big old test book, slaps it down.

I'm looking through it. Now, bear in mind, I've just done a economics degree, Liverpool University business study. It's nearly all calculus and really long essays of complicated financial equations, okay? He puts this multiple choice test book down in front of me, answers that A, B, C, D. I said, look, this is easy.

I don't need to test. He says, well, there's a section on Trading Options. Let me show you that shows me that, say, look, I've been trading options back in England. Val Reefs, goldmine Options, South Africa, Gulf War, all these options. And he looks at me and he's got this intense look on his face. He's like, Sean, I like the confidence you've got, and I've never in my life, you know, I've skipped a test for anyone, and this time I'm gonna take a chance on you.

I've got a good feeling about you. I don't like it when people let me down. He just gave this big frown. Oh, wow. Just gave this big frown like, okay. But I was so cocky and confident back then I knew I could acce it and I did.

[00:14:18] Jordan Harbinger: Wow. So he let you work without taking the test? Yeah.

[00:14:21] Shaun Attwood: Get on the phones right away.

Wow. And he didn't seat me with the Rockies. He put me at the back on what was known as the criminal quad.

[00:14:28] Jordan Harbinger: Well, little did he know that you would live, live up to your expecta, his expectations of you. Wow. That is such a crazy, I mean, it really does remind me of Boiler Room, except then when the guy comes in with a series seven, Ben Affleck kicks him outta the room.

Right. We, we don't, we don't hire brokers. We train brokers or something like that. Yeah,

[00:14:48] Shaun Attwood: it was similar strippers all the time. Any anytime from celebration had a limo full of strippers downstairs. Bikers dropping off Coke and meth. It was bonkers. So

[00:14:56] Jordan Harbinger: you're staying awake all day and late into the evening selling this stuff.

Or do you take message in the morning? Six o'clock

[00:15:03] Shaun Attwood: in the morning sales meeting. Okay. And going home at nine or 10 at night from cold, calling 500 numbers a day, 500 get 10 people agree to receive your brochure and business card in the mail. And then out of 10 or 21 will buy and invest in the stock market.

[00:15:18] Jordan Harbinger: Holy cow.

[00:15:19] Shaun Attwood: Yeah.

[00:15:20] Jordan Harbinger: What do you screening for? Like people who don't know any better? Is it a sucker that you're looking for? I, I'm confused. So in

[00:15:25] Shaun Attwood: the beginning they just slammed the phone book down and I started calling. The Chinese names 'cause I knew the Chinese people worked very hard and have a higher average income.

Their education is really strong and like to gamble. So I had a lot of Chinese clients in the beginning. Then I got hold of a list of America, west Airlines, bondholders. Okay. They had crashed. They'd gone from a hundred par down to five. 5 cents on the dollar. So I started to call them and get them to buy more, and also to call my existing clients and get them to buy the bonds while they were down.

If the company defaulted, they would lose everything, right? But if there was some kind of restructuring, they would go back to Par, which they eventually did. Oh, so that was actually

[00:16:13] Jordan Harbinger: a good investment.

[00:16:14] Shaun Attwood: That was

one

[00:16:15] Jordan Harbinger: of my first early hits. Wow. Interesting. Smart. Do you think your British accent helped people think, this guy's smart, he comes from England.

'cause that's kind of a stereotype we have in the United States.

[00:16:26] Shaun Attwood: Not only that, when I came to America as a teenager, you know, just a normal lad from this chemical manufacturing town. Yeah. My aunt changed my date of birth and my passport. So I was 21, took me out, nightclub in and was introducing me to all these beautiful American women as Paul McCartney's nephew.

[00:16:43] Jordan Harbinger: Oh man. So can

[00:16:44] Shaun Attwood: you imagine when these women heard my English accent? I. And they're like his uncle's a Beatle.

[00:16:50] Jordan Harbinger: That's ridiculous. What a, what a wingwoman right there. Not only am I gonna commit a felony by altering your passport and taking you out for alcohol, which is super, super illegal, on top of illegal, I'm gonna lie to the people we meet and tell them that your dad is a billionaire musician, a-list celebrity.

Ironically though, holy Mac,

[00:17:09] Shaun Attwood: towards the peak of everything. Paul McCartney does end up living down the mountain range from me in Tucson?

[00:17:14] Jordan Harbinger: Yeah.

[00:17:14] Shaun Attwood: And Uncle Paul.

[00:17:19] Jordan Harbinger: Uh, wow. But your friend kind of got too heavy into the drug scene, right? The at work in office drug scene proved to be a little bit too much for the guy he burns out.

Yeah. Yeah. How does that kind of happen? He just chooses the drugs over the work and just,

[00:17:33] Shaun Attwood: yeah. He ended up owing people money. He got in a car chase with the cops. Oh. He ends up in jail. He was limping around and then he left to state in a hurry.

[00:17:43] Jordan Harbinger: Oh geez. Yeah. And this is like your, your homie at the office.

We were

[00:17:48] Shaun Attwood: like that. Yeah. And I should have thought to myself, right, this is where that leads to. Yeah, that's a good point. And my boss as well. When I was at a crossroads, I already started to get into the rave scene and I was experiment with ecstasy sales. I was in my car, in the car park outside the brokerage, counting cash on my lap, and the boss's secretary was in the car next door and she looked over and saw all the cash I got called into the boss's office the next day and he said, Sean, you are at a crossroads in your life right now.

You can keep putting in the hard work that you're doing. I'm building on your success and going up to here. Or you can abandon that. Go down this road of excitement. Mm-hmm. And end up in hell and his eyes widened. Whoa. And I didn't listen.

[00:18:32] Jordan Harbinger: Yeah. This episode is sponsored part by methamphetamine, actually.

Uh, nope. I'm being told that is incorrect. It is instead sponsored by the fine products and services that support this show. That's circular logic. Don't think too hard about it. We'll be right back. This episode is sponsored in part by Kleenex Ultra Soft Tissues. Parents. This one's for you because we all know back to school isn't just about new backpacks and fresh notebooks.

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[00:21:01] Jordan Harbinger: if you're wondering how I manage to book all these great authors, thinkers, creators every single week, it is because of my network, the circle of people I know, like and trust.

I know you're not booking for your podcast probably, but I'm teaching you how to build your network for business, for social reasons, whatever it might be. We know that relationships help you live longer, live happier. This is a free course. I'm not charging for it. There's not like a weird upsell or anything at the end.

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That's why it's six minute networking, and many of the guests on our show subscribe and contribute to the course. Come on and join us. You'll be in Smart Company where you belong once again, free@sixminutenetworking.com. Now back to Sean Atwood. I am surprised that a guy who's running. A questionable operation that is supplying you with meth is like, Hey, I'm a little concerned about where you're headed, so I will give you meth in the office in strippers and booze, but I'm a little bit, I'm questioning your judgment.

Alright, so by then,

[00:22:03] Shaun Attwood: this was, this was five years. It's bad. This was five years later. Okay. So my boss by then was a different boss. Okay.

[00:22:09] Jordan Harbinger: Okay. Okay. We changed brokerages

[00:22:10] Shaun Attwood: about five times. Yeah. Yeah,

[00:22:12] Jordan Harbinger: because I'm thinking when the guy who's feeding you meth at breakfast is telling you you're making bad choices, that's you gotta, that's a red flag.

No, he, he never knew about the meth. My final boss. Okay. That makes more sense. So instead of thinking that's where this leads, you're thinking, well, that can never happen to me. Luckily, knock on wood,

[00:22:33] Shaun Attwood: and I was having far too much excitement. Sure. Because I, I flew my childhood mate over. From England. Wild man.

Yeah, and that's when my whole world just changed. So why do they call him that? I, he's an earned reputation. Wild man had red dots in his head telling him to hurt people from when he was a teenager. So he was schizophrenic, I guess, I don't know how to classify it. Psychopathic maniac. He grew massive in his high school and the teachers were so scared of him.

They had him outside raking leaves with the caretaker. He was picking teachers up and putting 'em into rubbish bins. Wow. He was fighting the bouncers on nightclubs when he was a teenager. He'd come home black and blue like a bus had hit him. That's how he got his rocks off. That's strange.

[00:23:15] Jordan Harbinger: What was that guy's childhood like?

I.

[00:23:17] Shaun Attwood: Well, he comes from a good family and all his brothers are completely normal. Oh, that, so he really is just wired poorly, wired, differently, oof. Poor guy. And whenever he was gonna commit some violence, his face would look completely calm. One eyebrow would stay flat, and the other eyebrow would just go straight up.

That's gonna come into the story later on. That's really scary. How,

[00:23:36] Jordan Harbinger: and you were friends with this guy and he didn't ever try to kill you.

[00:23:39] Shaun Attwood: What happened was, I was part of a little gang on the streets. Yeah. Not like the gangs now. Same gang. Yeah. We'd watched too many American movies like The Warriors and The Wanderers, and we called ourselves The Sweats, and the head of the Gang was Wild Man's brother, and he would not let Wildman join the gang.

He'd beat him up and say, look, eat dog shit, and we'll let you join. Wildman would eat dog shit and he still won't let him join. He'd give him a kick and tell him to F off home. So I felt sorry for a wild man. Yeah. 'cause he was two years younger than me and that's a lot when you're in your teens. So I splinted off from the group with him and his cousin Hammi, and we formed our own clique.

It was at the top of my town. There's a quarry called Pex Hill and overlooking the quarry, there's a tree we used to climb on and we called it the thinking tree. And in the thinking tree, we'd plan our lives. Mm-Hmm. And Hammi would say to us, Sean, what are you gonna do when you grow up? And I'm like, I'm gonna go to America, make a million, fly you guys over.

And when I fly Wellman over, I'm gonna get him a job as a wrestler. So we can fight Hulk Hogan and Andrea, the giant Wellman's. 'cause I would ask Wellman, what's, what are you gonna do? And while man would say, I'm going to prison and spend the rest of life in prison, I've got red dots in my head telling me to hurt people.

Oh, that's just horrible. And both of those things happened. I went off to America, made the money in the stock market, and while man went off to prison, but when he got outta prison, I then flew him over. And this was five years into my stockbroking career, got in a house by the George and Dragon British Pub in Central Phoenix, thinking he'd just kick back and have drinks with the expats within a few weeks or months.

We go over to the house, me and my girlfriend, one night, a bunch of Mexicans answer the door and I say, where's Peter? There's no Peter here. So yeah. Where's Peter? Where's Peter Lives here. There's no Peter here. They kinda like brandish guns. And we start backtracking me and my girlfriend. Wow, man, just merily bounces over the road.

I'm like, what the hell's going on, Peter? We just got nearly shot. It's like, oh, don't worry about them. They're the local crack dealers that like to move around a lot. I'm staying in their place over here, bearing in mind, and I'm buzzing. And they're buzzing 'cause, 'cause I can do a hundred dollars crack rock in one breath and they're giving it me for free.

It goes dingle, dingle, dingle, sizzle, sizzle, sizzle, and it calms down my red dots, calms down his

[00:25:55] Jordan Harbinger: red dots. That's really horrifying.

[00:25:57] Shaun Attwood: Then he said the guy at the back is from Columbia. He's running them and he wants to invest in the stock market.

[00:26:03] Jordan Harbinger: Get outta here. This is my stockbroker guys. Here's my crack dealer clients.

[00:26:10] Shaun Attwood: The next book, what the

[00:26:10] Jordan Harbinger: hell?

[00:26:11] Shaun Attwood: My aunt calls me at the office and says the how's his headline news? This yellow tape around it. Someone's being shot dead. You need to get your ass up there. You might be dead. I sped up there, got paranoid 'cause they had drugs and stuff in the car. There was cops, there was a news crew.

I went back to work, waited, come back again. When it all calmed down. There's blood on the doorstep. Go in the living room while man sat there with a homicide detective with a very somber face. Talked to the homicide detective. He asked me some questions when he is gone, I said to, well man, what's happened?

A couple came over to buy crack from the Mexicans, a female and a male. 'cause the Mexicans had gone back over the street. The female went back over the street to get the crack. The man stayed in the house with wild man. The man had a gun. Wild man had never seen guns before. He said to the man, I'm from England.

I don't know how guns work. Can you show me how to work? The man goes, yes. The safety's on it. Pulls the trigger and shot himself in the head. Right in front of Wild Man. Oh, and died on the step. Safety was not on. Wow.

[00:27:12] Jordan Harbinger: That's horrible.

[00:27:14] Shaun Attwood: Yeah, my God. So then Wellman said he was having nightmares, wanted to go outta that place.

Yeah. I moved into a place on the south side where some females, he knew from the drug community they were living with this big steroid head doorman guy looked like a Chippendale with this blonde hose, claiming he was gangster disciples. I put the rental situation, I fixed it. They said they were behind, so I fixed it, gave the landlady a check.

Next day the landlady gives me a call. While a man's been evicted, I say, why has he been evicted? He beat his roommate up. Well, how do you know? He beat his roommate up? Said the roommate was seen running for his life through the apartment complex in the middle of the night with plasterboard powder all over his head and face, and this human head size holes in all of the walls.

Fortunately, while a man had done that so fast, I was able to stop the check. The females, one of their boyfriends in Tempe was behind on his rent. I fixed that. Move while man over to Rancho Marietta. This huge apartment complex. All day long while man invited in, the homeless people, the gang bangers, the street walkers, native American trans sex workers, stripes dancers, Russian Mafia, Mexican Mafia, new Mexican Mafia, and it was through him opening the door into that world.

I made the initial. Criminal connections that established the Ecstasy Empire.

[00:28:37] Jordan Harbinger: It's interesting you roped the Native Americans in with all of those other folks. What? What is that all about?

[00:28:42] Shaun Attwood: Half my clique ended up Native Americans as the criminal enterprise grew. Most of the people in my inner circle, I trusted about half of them were Native Americans acid.

Joey was one of my closest. RIP acid. Joey, he, uh, was into LSD and Ketamine, and he was found dead in his swim pool of his clothes on. Oh my gosh. Well, man died two years ago. Ah, 29 and a half stone, six foot two. Absolute massive man from multiple organ, fairly from all the drugs he'd done and all the, how he'd hammered it over his lifetime.

Mm-Hmm. He died in prison, died at his house.

[00:29:14] Jordan Harbinger: Oh, so he was outta prison?

[00:29:16] Shaun Attwood: Yeah. Outta prison by then? Yeah.

[00:29:17] Jordan Harbinger: Okay. Wow. Wow, wow, wow. Okay. I, I have to say in the books, I've read all three books. The paranoia you get from the drugs sounds miserable, man. That would feel like that would be enough for many people to quit.

It's just gotta feel the worse. Can you speak to that a little bit? 'cause it sounds so awful. Some of the things, you sort of have these monologues where you're like, I thought this and then I thought this, and then I thought this, and I'm thinking, that's no way to live, man. Good Lord. No matter how good that stuff makes you feel that that feeling would be awful.

That anxiety,

[00:29:46] Shaun Attwood: when you've been up for days, you start to hallucinate. Yeah. And have paranoid thoughts. Now, there was an occasion when Wildman came over. One time, one of the, my bouncers was a guy called Rosetti from the Rosetti brothers. And when I was telling Rosetti about all these Wildman stories before he came, Wildman Rosetti thought I was full of it.

And he said, when Wildman arrived, he just picked me up and threw me around like a rag doll. That's how strong he is. So me and Rosetti was in the front and Wildman was in the back, and wild Man's been up for days and I'm looking at his eyes in the mirror and his eyes are just blood red. He's been smoking cracks, smoking meth days.

His eyes are blood ready. Look, he's looking like the devil, but he's got this wicked stir on me like a paranoid evil stir. And I'm looking back at him. I said, what's wrong, Peter? I know what you're up to. What's wrong, Peter? I know where you guys are taking me. Where are we taking your, Peter? You guys are taking me to the desert and I'm thinking if he thinks we're taking him to the desert.

Oh man. He's about to snap our next Oh yeah. So I did manage to talk him down. What we would do usually is we'd dose him with Xanax as fast as we could. Mm-Hmm. Put it in something, knock him out, and he'd wake up. And he'd be mentally adjusted. But the paranoia does create intense situations and it was paranoia between wow, ma and my top sales guy Skinner, who was also smoking crack and embalming fluid, SHRM and doing all kinds of other, what is sm It's like PCP embalming fluid.

You get it on a stick.

[00:31:19] Jordan Harbinger: Okay.

[00:31:19] Shaun Attwood: And, uh, just

[00:31:20] Jordan Harbinger: embalming fluid, like the stuff they used to embalm dead bodies. He was smoking that.

[00:31:24] Shaun Attwood: Yeah. It's called a sharm stick. Oh my god. Yeah. So. Those two guys. Ugh. Skinner was like little brother and when Wildman came over, he was big brother Skinner saw us spending more time with Wildman and he, he started to, the paranoid between the two of Skinner started to scheme against us.

And what happened was when Wildman was in the deportation camp, 'cause he was deported multiple times for being a minister society. Well, yeah. When he was in a deportation camp, Skinner planned to Firebomb Wild Woman's apartment, so his, his girlfriend, wife, wild Man's, tough Liver, PODD and girlfriend. Some of the people in our community were most scared to her than him.

She was a tiny blonde. She. The cops have got surveillance of her running down the street with a giant fan trying to smash wild Man's head in With a giant fan. With a fan. Like a big old fan on a stick. Like, like those big fans? Yeah. Literally a fan. Yeah. One of those. Yeah. Yeah. Oh my

[00:32:22] Jordan Harbinger: gosh. So Sid

[00:32:24] Shaun Attwood: and Nancy over here?

They were, yeah. Yeah. The fire bomb came through the window. Just missed her face set fighter or some stuff, and she's got something on her face. This

[00:32:32] Jordan Harbinger: is in the UK that someone's trying to kill her?

[00:32:34] Shaun Attwood: No, no. This is all in Arizona. Oh my God. Okay. Everything I'm talking about is in Arizona. Oh my goodness. Okay.

I'm

[00:32:39] Jordan Harbinger: just making sure. 'cause I, so she was over here too. She was peddling ecstasy for me

[00:32:43] Shaun Attwood: and he was the enforcer, the chief enforcer. Right. Okay.

[00:32:46] Jordan Harbinger: Yeah. So you've already gotten into selling ecstasy at graves. Once Wallman

[00:32:50] Shaun Attwood: came on his first trip. Which ended with him completely homeless, living under a tree in Tempe Beach Park with a Rambo knife, a baseball bat, and a stripper who liked to have a private parts tased.

Those two were like Bonnie and Clyde just rubbing clothes, eating meals, and going, not paying. The cops got him and he got deported from being in Minister Society, but through the connections he'd established in Tempe acid, Joey, these mafia people. I went on to build the ecstasy business from then.

Wildman didn't come back then until another two years. So you're building

[00:33:24] Jordan Harbinger: up your drug dealing business. Are you still a stockbroker at this point in time?

[00:33:28] Shaun Attwood: No. I've quit my job, quit my house, quit my girlfriend, all at the same time, moved into a secure high-rise building in downtown Phoenix. I went full-time into the party scene.

[00:33:43] Jordan Harbinger: What is full-time in the party scene? What does that mean? Like you're going out every night and staying out all night and selling, or,

[00:33:48] Shaun Attwood: well, in the beginning I was getting ecstasy From la I cultivated two to three suppliers. I'm pretty much exactly what you just said. I'm getting up, you know, very late in the day and I'm going out.

I'm doing the

[00:34:02] Jordan Harbinger: rounds. Mm-Hmm. That sounds like it would be fun at first and then quickly become not fun at all. Well, it was fun for quite a while actually. Well, maybe, but then it

[00:34:11] Shaun Attwood: became intense paranoia and hell yeah. You can't get up off that slippery slope no matter how hard you try.

[00:34:16] Jordan Harbinger: Really. So you can't just sort of like get clean for a while and it's fine if you watch any movie

[00:34:22] Shaun Attwood: like blow.

There is a story arc, yes. Where there's the glitz and the glamor and the fun and the females and the partying and everything else. Then there's the middle section where you're at your peak now, but the competition come in and the feds come in. Mm-Hmm. And then there's the end section where everyone is so drug addicted and paranoid.

And the cops have got all this case against you now, right. And the competition's trying to take you out or stamp you out or kidnap you. As in Sammy, the bolson tried to kidnap me.

[00:34:56] Jordan Harbinger: Yeah, I wanna hear about that in a second. All these

[00:34:57] Shaun Attwood: things going on and then it ends in prison. Death, nuthouse, you can't go back to the first chapters, right?

Right. That's true. You can. Is it irreversible?

[00:35:08] Jordan Harbinger: So tell me about your competition then. Was Sammy the Bull's son? I

[00:35:12] Shaun Attwood: had it locked down in Arizona. Of all the local people. Because when I would pull up on the south side outside some warehouse in my twin bow spaceship RX seven with bow surround sound commander, Tom just boom, boom, boom, boom, boom.

The RAs would come to me and talk to me and they knew I had money. They'd asked me to invest in their projects, and they nicknamed me the Bank of England. Now these little cliques were competing against each other, Uhhuh, and when they had differences, we would have sit downs and me and Wildman would adjudicate.

But through all this process, we incorporated all these people into the criminal enterprise. We had about 200 local people working for us. Oh wow. That's pretty big. So out the locals locked down, all of a sudden this new kind of dealer appeared on the scene like a steroid head jock type guy with the leopard print polyester shirt.

And I'm thinking, who the hell are these guys? Yeah, where getting the pulls from

[00:36:10] Jordan Harbinger: East,

[00:36:10] Shaun Attwood: east

[00:36:10] Jordan Harbinger: coast, Dbags. Yeah. Yeah. And

[00:36:13] Shaun Attwood: they clicked that, sorry, Sammy, they had this other group called the Devil Dogs. These jocks who would beat people up and how like dogs as they beat people up. I think they were like a bit nationalistic.

Sounds a little bit Nazi. Yeah. Sounding exactly. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I'm like, who the hell are these guys? So at the time I was onto my third wife, she was doing lesbian internet porn when I met her. She joined a strip club 'cause she fancied one of the strippers and she seduced that woman and they were doing lesbian internet porn.

And I'm thinking this is, you know, the ideal life from a testosterone charge. This story

[00:36:43] Jordan Harbinger: goes from zero to 60 over and over and over and over again, just in case anybody out there has not noticed that.

[00:36:49] Shaun Attwood: And this testosterone charge chap in his twenties, and I'm thinking this is the ideal life anyway, through one of my wife's bisexual wife's, lesbian girlfriends, bisexual girlfriend, sorry.

They were. Let me rephrase this. We're gonna have to mark

[00:37:03] Jordan Harbinger: this episode as explicit. I think that goes to that saying uh, some stuff. Yeah. Anyway,

[00:37:07] Shaun Attwood: my bisexual life was having a real lesbian relationship with a bisexual woman, and the bisexual woman was having a hetero relationship with one of these new types of ecstasy dealers.

I see. So through of women, they arranged a sit down at a bar called Heart five in Tucson for me to find out who these guys are. So I get the Rosetti brother. I. As my bodyguard, right? I say, look, go in after me and my wife, if they try and kidnap me, I'll take me outta the back. Just open up on the mofos.

Mm-hmm. He's strapped to get a bit of bravery for this. I do some meth, chug some GHB. My wife chugged away too much GHB and had to be carried out at the end. But anyway, we go into the bar, there's this guy, stocky guy, and he's like, yeah, English song, you know, come through to the VIP room, go through to the VIP room.

There's lots of people in there. There's this massive six and a half foot musclebound blonde guy and he screams everyone's got the room and get up off the sofa. Mm-Hmm. So I'm thinking I've gotta do something crazy here to try and make these guys think I'm a bit loco, what can I do? And I remembered my grandfather Frederick, who was rescued in the Battle of Tunisia by Americans.

Otherwise, I wouldn't exist. Wow. He was left dead. Wow. Wow. When my grandfather, Frederick would walk past me in his house, he would always grab me above the knee. Like that would make me jump. Yeah. Yeah. So as I'm sitting down with these two, I do that to my kid too. As I, as I'm sitting down with these two meatheads.

I grabbed our knees above the legs and tried to make him jump.

[00:38:38] Jordan Harbinger: You just did that to these like strapped gangsters. Like, I'm just gonna make your knee do that thing you do to like a five-year-old kid where they start laughing. That's, yeah. So that's effective.

[00:38:48] Shaun Attwood: So, so, so the guy who was nice to me, who would introduced himself already, he's like English Sean, we know you're a big name from the race.

English

[00:38:57] Jordan Harbinger: Sean. That's your nickname on the scene. It was back

[00:38:59] Shaun Attwood: then. Yeah. We know you've got a lot going with the locals, but why don't you start working with us and I say, I'm getting beige presses from Holland a hundred, 125 milligrams of MDMA and Clay. This is like high grade ecstasy. Yeah. We send testing kits out there from a website called Dance Safe to make sure we're not getting any bunk stuff because that's how people die when there's bunk stuff in it.

And so I'm saying to these guys, then your colored pills. You know, I've got a reputation to uphold. I'm kind of dissing the bills.

[00:39:28] Jordan Harbinger: Yeah, yeah. Like you guys sell trash. I sell the good stuff. That's why I don't work with you. We have quality standards over here. We got quality standards.

[00:39:37] Shaun Attwood: Big guy jumps up off the sofa.

Who the F Do you think you are disrespecting our pills?

[00:39:44] Jordan Harbinger: Mm-Hmm.

[00:39:45] Shaun Attwood: Don't you know who we work for? Won't call to Sammy the Bull and we can have you taken out to the desert. Right. Right. So I dunno if he's just blow hard. Of course. Oh, this is real. Sammy's retired by this point. Correct? Just outta prison. Sammy is in the mix.

What they were saying was correct Uhhuh at that point. Interesting. Yeah. I'll get to that bit in a second. Yeah, sure. So I say to them, look, it's not each other. We need to be afraid of. It's the feds. Since you guys have lit the scene up, going around bragging that you the biggest drug Barrs in the world.

There's undercover cars going through the car parks, filming everybody's license plates. There's undercovers coming into the raves pretending to be people from outta state who want to buy pills. It's not each, oh, we need to worry about, it's the feds and we left it at that. And on the way out, you know, we carry my wife out, me and me, and

[00:40:34] Jordan Harbinger: Rosetti.

So she had done g HB is a drug for those of you who don't, who are not familiar, it's like alcohol, but you need a couple of capsules in your, it's like you've had 20 drinks, right? I. Is that accurate?

[00:40:46] Shaun Attwood: Alright, so GHB, it used to be legal 'cause it promoted Muscle Grove 'cause you go into such a deep sleep now.

We were getting it from the Muscle Boys at the gay bar. It's hugely popular in the gay bar 'cause it also relaxes the sphincter.

[00:40:58] Jordan Harbinger: Oh

[00:40:58] Shaun Attwood: God. So you know a lot about this stuff,

so,

[00:41:05] Jordan Harbinger: so I was gonna say I could use it for sleep, but now, now I find that it might have multiple benefits. Talking to the right guy,

[00:41:13] Shaun Attwood: you take a cat full. You're high for an hour or two. It's not a big commitment like meth or ecstasy or anything like that. At the end of that hour or two, if you're coming down of it, you can have another capsule and you can just coast for the night.

It relaxes you and it's good for other activities like, you know, you just sleeping. Sleeping, he means sleeping, sleeping, sleeping, sleeping. But we would club drug, cocktail it with other substances and experiment and varying. Back then I was usually on ecstasy, meth, GHB, and sometimes ketamine. And then I come down after Xanax at the same.

So you did all the, oh my

[00:41:50] Jordan Harbinger: gosh. Your poor brain frazzled, your poor brain, whatever was left of it. Yeah. So, wow. Now for a word from our sponsors whose products you don't have to smuggle in your, we'll be right back. This episode is sponsored in part by Shopify. When you think about businesses that are absolutely crushing it, like Mr.

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[00:43:58] Jordan Harbinger: If you like this episode of the show, I invite you to do what other smart and considerate listeners do, take a moment and support our amazing sponsors. All the deals, discount codes, and ways to support the show are searchable and clickable over at Jordan harbinger.com/deals. A little behind the scenes info that y'all might not know using our promo code.

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It's usually Jordan, but not always. So make sure you go to the deals page over at Jordan harbinger.com/deals. It's a double win because you get a great deal and you help keep the show thriving. Thank you so much for supporting those who support the show. Now, back to Sean Atwood. Okay, so you're, you're in with these heavy hitters now.

They, you're on their radar, surely you're on law enforcement radar maybe, but probably right at some point.

[00:44:49] Shaun Attwood: Well, the heavy hitters I was in with was the new Mexican Mafia.

[00:44:52] Jordan Harbinger: Mm-Hmm. So went

[00:44:52] Shaun Attwood: Wellman was on his first visit. He introduced me to some guys. By now in Rancho Marietta, this apartment complex, we've got one building, an apartment is dealing another.

We're storing cash. Another, we're after partying in, we've got this structure to it. Mm-Hmm. That's building up what was, we're partying in one of 'em. And a cop walks in, he goes, I could smell weed from outside. Nobody move. I'm talking to this ruggedly handsome Mexican American guy called G Dog who is dealing the white and the green.

And he just pulls out a cop to the gun and says, the only one who's not leaving is you. Mofo. Everybody run. I've never seen anything this heavy before in my life. We all just run off into the night. I go into another apartment where we've got pills and sus stashed, and we're like, what should we do? Should we flush our stuff?

Should we flush our stuff? Next thing, there's a knocking on the French window, bang, bang, bang, bang, and it's G dog. He's like, let me, any school dust. He says, look, they can't get a warrant just like that. Turn the lights off, turn the TV off. Nobody answered the door. Everybody shut the F up. They did knock and then they went next door and we harbored him.

We hadn't flushed our stuff. We still had our stuff. There was one cop car by the end of the night. It all calmed down. They had helicopter out and everything. Yeah. 'cause the guy put a gun to a cop head. Holy smokes. In the end I said to him, look, 'cause you're so hot in this area, I've got a house in Phoenix.

Let's go there and shoot pool and do lines. And that's what we did. And at the end of the night he said, look, Sean. Because you and your friends had my back. Me and my brothers have got your back. I had no idea what he meant. Mm. Couple months later, he invites me over to his brother house, one of his brothers.

He answers the door. Short guy know her. Looking at me with this mean face. He hears my English accent and he lightened up a bit. He's like, get damn. You talk funny. Come in and meet my homies. I go into the living room and it's like the biggest Mexican American guys I've ever seen. They got the little wife beat of vests on, shorts down below the knees, tattooed out the chains, looking at me like they want to eat me.

I'm, you know, crapping myself. I'm looking around the room. That's the biggest TV I've ever seen in my life. They've got a TV watching the street. I did a double take. I'm like, oh, on a minute. That's not Aon. On top of the tv, they had a rocket Propel Grenade launcher. Oh, a Rambo movie.

[00:47:01] Jordan Harbinger: What? Yeah. Yeah. So these guys are like real mafia, like Mexican mafia.

I didn't know, I know it until they got

[00:47:08] Shaun Attwood: arrested a couple years later and they were headline news and they was the heads of the new Mexican mafia, the most powerful, violent criminal organization in Arizona at that time. They tried to assassinate the head of the Department of Corrections, that assassinated witnesses, trying to assassinate cops, all this stuff.

There was another situation while I was still a stockbroker. Relating to them. So I get a call from one of my guys. This is the apartment we hid at, that G dog knocked on the French window. Two guys in there. One's called Seth, one's called Fish. Seth dead as well. Now he was one of my right hand guys, big guy.

Anyway, Phish calls me, he's like, look, I need you to get Wild Man and Seth, and come over here fast. We've got a situation, so watch the situation. I'd rather not say on the phone. So I go looking for Wild Man and Seth, and they're collecting debts. For the Colombian guy in Phoenix, I can't find him. It's like 30 minutes to an hour later.

By the time I get to Tempe, knock on the door, Phish answers the door, his girlfriend girlfriend's crying, I think, oh no, someone's assaulted her or something and they want wild man and stuff to beat this guy up. So what's the matter? They can't talk too frightened to talk. I hear this noise.

Coming from the other room, like, what's that your best go see, walk into the living room. There's a guy that's previously been introduced me through Wild Man and and the G dog and them. It's this older Mexican American guy with this silver stately swept back, huh? He stood with his back to the wall overseeing a bunch of Mexicans with cattle prods, and on the floor is a man naked hogtied man with a rockabilly qui who's gagged.

And when the guy with the silver her gives the instruction, they electrocute this guy. He rocks like a rocking horse. His eyes are almost popping out of his head, and P shoots out of his penis. I should not laugh, but that's a ridiculous

[00:49:02] Jordan Harbinger: visual. What did that guy do?

[00:49:04] Shaun Attwood: Right? I'm thinking I've never seen this, anything that I've been before.

Again, this is, I'm not expecting you to say any of this. I'm terrified, right? Yeah. I look at. The silver, her guy, and he's smiling at me with this. Welcome to the family grin. So I'm thinking I gotta put a brave, a tough guy act on here.

[00:49:23] Jordan Harbinger: Yeah.

[00:49:23] Shaun Attwood: And I gotta not show any fear. Are they gonna think I'm a liability?

Right. Right. Oh man. So I say to him, wow, looks like you guys have got this situation under control. Yeah. Whatever situation there might have been. I will tell wild man that he's not needed, but I gotta get back to the office 'cause I've come over in a hurry. And the Mexican guys just smile at me like, welcome to the family.

Oh my God. So I walk outta that room towards the other room, into the near where the door where Fish and his girlfriend were. I'm like, what has happened here? What they said was, as you know, I'm dealing ecstasy for you, but I'm also moving product for them. That guy is one of my customers. He watched the place he thought I had gone, but I come back and I caught him in here.

I called you. I call them, they got here first. So he was trying to rob the place since he was trying to rob my stuff and their stuff.

[00:50:21] Jordan Harbinger: Oh, they he's going for the stash. The stash, yeah. But they got there first. Oh man.

[00:50:27] Shaun Attwood: Now I was worried on the way back to Tais about the fate of that guy. What eventually happened was they called his roommate and said to pay 10,000 or he was gonna get taken out to the desert and the 10,000 was paid.

[00:50:42] Jordan Harbinger: Wow. Yeah. Don't rob drug dealers. I mean, I guess that's, uh, some people do it and get away with it, other people don't. Geez. No. Not have to relate it to the Mexican mafias.

[00:50:50] Shaun Attwood: No.

[00:50:51] Jordan Harbinger: It seems like you always have to be. So vigilant because you, you gotta make sure people don't think they can steal from you. So like, you're like this friendly dude.

By nature, I assume, I mean all my interaction, you're not the same guy you were, but my interactions with you are like, you're like a funny dude. I mean, people listening right now are laughing or horrified and have turned it off. Um, but you've gotta be like, if you mess with me, I'm gonna have you killed, which is not maybe your default kind of personality.

So. How present is that concern in your mind that you've gotta put on a front or you will be victimized?

[00:51:23] Shaun Attwood: So when Wild Man left, the two closest people he left me with were acid, Joey and g Doug. Okay. And people knew g Doug was with heavy hitters. Right. And acid. Joey was quite, he was quite a big guy as well, because when I did set up my own security team, he became one of them.

He was a very stocky. Navajo guy and he was brilliant at dancing. Considering his weight, he danced like in this fluid way. In fact, the first time I met him, I think it was at a rave called Chupa, and I noticed a circle of people watching someone dance so incredibly and I thought, I want whatever he's on to be able to dance like that with his body size and structure.

And I waited till he went outside and started talking to him. I said to him, you're on the good stuff, obviously. Where can I get that? And uh, and he started to hook me up locally.

[00:52:18] Jordan Harbinger: Oh, interesting. Yeah. Is it not exhausting to be paranoid for good reason? Like someone's trying to rob my stash, this person might try to take my money.

Can I trust these people? These people are dangerous and kill people, but I gotta deal with them. And then you're doing drugs, but then you get paranoid and you're like. No, but it's really, my paranoia is real. But then I also have drug-induced paranoia, and then you do some more drugs to get away from the paranoia.

It seems like a self-reinforcing cycle, right? You're more paranoid, but the paranoia, you're also not delusional like you are in danger. They are trying to come out and

[00:52:47] Shaun Attwood: you surround yourself with equally paranoid people, right, who are all reinforcing each other's paranoid delusions. Yeah.

[00:52:53] Jordan Harbinger: Yeah.

[00:52:54] Shaun Attwood: That's so people reporting things to you, you tiring.

A guy reported to me that someone walked past Wellman's, well, woman's apartment, who looked suspicious. And I ignored it, thinking he was being paranoid and she said it and I thought she was being paranoid and the next day she got swat team raided. So to be able to discern what's real and what's not real Yeah.

Is really tricky. But during that two year gap, while mom was gone, I've got GD dog with me, my, my main bodyguard. I built up a team of bouncers now who are armed and stuff. And when Sammy De Ball's people come into the scene while man comes back over, around that time. And people are terrified of him. Yeah, he, he didn't have to go and beat him up.

He would just move in with, with them. If you owed me enough money, I would have him move in with you. And if he moved in with you, all your furniture was getting taken out in front of your eyes and getting liquidated by the Mexican mafia. You got a crack dealer and a pimp in your kitchen cooking up crack.

You've got all the homeless people coming in, all the gang bangers, all the stripes girls, and it's just 24 hour insanity everywhere

[00:53:58] Jordan Harbinger: he went. That's so interesting. So instead of being like, I'm gonna break your legs, you're like, I'm gonna give you the roommate from Hell

[00:54:04] Shaun Attwood: yes.

[00:54:05] Jordan Harbinger: And it's like, here's your money.

Get 'em outta here. Several

[00:54:07] Shaun Attwood: houses were blown up. Set fire to, not even on

[00:54:09] Jordan Harbinger: purpose. No. Just the sheer negligence. Yeah. Sheer.

[00:54:12] Shaun Attwood: Sheer mayhem.

[00:54:13] Jordan Harbinger: Oh my God. Like get this guy out at three days later. Here's the, here's your money. I sold a kidney. Get this guy the hell away from me.

[00:54:21] Shaun Attwood: Everybody moved out of their own house.

Yeah, I sure. After he was in, yeah. There was only one girl who stayed and she was a very tough girl who worked with me. I. She had him walking her dogs and was bossing him around. She was, uh, yeah, she was unique.

[00:54:34] Jordan Harbinger: Yeah. Tough New Yorker. Towards the end of, of your first book, you have this sort of, is it a reckon?

You talk about how messed up your life is at this point. This is party time. The f you told me to read them in a specific order Party time, hard time for the time. Yeah. Yeah. So this is, yeah. I don't know if this is your first book, but it's the first one you told me to read first. Okay. So there's an ex a time when you're, I think in Mexico or you've just gotten back from smuggling drugs from Mexico to the us Yeah.

All your friends are super strung out, super paranoid, and you sort of reflect on your life about how this was supposed to be, like a temporary phase and how lost you are. Can you tell me about that period of your life? I.

[00:55:09] Shaun Attwood: Yes. So there was all this mayhem with Sammy the ball's crew, and then they got arrested, the new Mexican mafia guys got arrested.

I think I'm gonna get arrested next.

[00:55:22] Jordan Harbinger: Mm-Hmm.

[00:55:22] Shaun Attwood: I meet this woman, she sees who I'm, you know, associated with and she's like, these people are scary, Sean. Yeah. If you love me, you'll get out of that. And I stop the importation. I was in college doing Spanish classes.

[00:55:36] Jordan Harbinger: Okay.

[00:55:37] Shaun Attwood: I was going to gym, I was doing kickboxing classes, trying to get into shape, and I was back trading the stock market.

So you kind of made a pretty decent recovery and we were planning to move to LA to get away from where we were so hot.

[00:55:50] Jordan Harbinger: Moving to LA to get away from drugs and partying is a questionable decision. Here's a sample of my interview with Amanda Knox, who is coerced into wrongfully confessing that she was at the scene of her roommate's grizzly murder without being made aware of her rights or being given access to a lawyer.

I. Here's a quick look inside.

[00:56:11] Clip: I was 20 years old. I was studying abroad in Italy. The day after Halloween, I came home to find a murder scene. The cops arrive, they break down my roommate's door and find her body there. And for the next five days I was at the disposal and. Mercy of the police officers who unbeknownst to me had targeted me as a person of interest.

My thought was to just take direction. I did what I was told and what I was told was by the police to come in every day for questioning, and I sat for hours and hours and hours and hours. I often worried that maybe the reason that they were upset or short with me was because I just wasn't speaking.

Italian well enough. I thought that was the reason why they kept asking me questions over and over and over again. No matter how many ways I answered the same question. They never seemed happy with it. I just sort of submitted myself to what was ultimately a very coercive interrogation technique that culminated with an overnight interrogation and broke me.

I was. Made to believe that the reason they were upset with me was because I didn't remember correctly. I realized that the truth didn't matter and that I couldn't count on the truth to save me. People believed it. I was convicted. I spent four years in prison.

[00:57:59] Jordan Harbinger: Amanda Knox joins us to discuss how she put her life back together and how she lives with the residue of tabloid infamy even after being acquitted of this terrible crime.

For more, including why it's not uncommon for an innocent person to give a false confession to a skilled interrogator. Check out episode 3, 8 6 on the Jordan Harbinger Show. That's it for part one, part two, up in a couple days, all things Sean Atwood will be in the show notes@jordanharbinger.com.

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