US federal prison, the final drug run & the price of freedom: Tim Smith Pt. 2

The $100K-a-day runs are over. In Part 2, former helicopter pilot Tim Smith sits down with Gary Jubelin for what happened after the ground crew came under investigation and led straight to him. Tim breaks down his final border run, clearing the trees by two feet at 100 miles an hour, not realising he’d been spotted from above and the moment on landing: “Mr. Smith, we’ve been waiting for you for quite a while. Welcome to the United States.” From there the fall is fast: told he was facing a minimum of 87 years and a maximum of 113 years, hit with 36 counts, and a first night in US custody he describes as sheer terror. And the real cost wasn’t the sentence. While locked up, Tim learns his mum had been dead two weeks and already buried, then gets the news about his brother David You can watch I Catch Killers on Youtube here. https://www.youtube.com/@ICatchKillers-Podcast Follow I Catch Killers: Instagram:@icatchkillers https://www.instagram.com/icatchkillers/?hl=enTiktok:@icatchkillerspodcast https://www.tiktok.com/@icatchkillerspodcastFacebook:@icatchkillers https://www.facebook.com/icatchkillers/ See omnystudio.com/listener https://omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

• 0:01Speaker 00

  The public has had a long-held fascination with detectives. Detectives see a side of life the average person is never exposed to. I spent 34 years as a cop. For 25 of those years, I was catching killers. That's what I did for a living. I was a homicide detective. I'm no longer just interviewing bad guys. Instead, I'm taking the public into the world in which I operated. The guests I talk to each week have amazing stories from all sides of the law. The interviews are raw and honest, just like the people I talk to. Some of the content and language might be confronting. That's because no one who comes into contact with crime is left unchanged. Join me now as I take you into this world.

• 0:46Speaker 00

  Welcome back to part two of my chat with former MAFS groom and international drug trafficker, Tim Smith. He tells how his drug-running business came to a crashing end and talks openly about his time inside the notorious US prison system. Tim also shares what he's doing now and his advice for anyone tempted by the easy money of running drugs. Plus, and I'm excited about this, we also get the inside gossip on what really happens behind the scenes on Married at First Sight. Tim Smith, welcome back. Part two, I Catch Killers.

• 1:21Speaker 01

  Thank you. Glad to be back.

• 1:22Speaker 00

  Okay, well, you talked up your skills flying helicopters and, yeah, making a shitload of money, but it did come unstuck.

• 1:31Speaker 01

  Wheels came off the wagon.

• 1:32Speaker 00

  You weren't quite as good as you thought you was.

• 1:36Speaker 01

  Look, ironically enough, it wasn't me that brought the organisation down. It was the ground crew that has ultimately brought the organisation down. Those guys were hot, meaning they were under investigation, and they just led them to me.

• 1:50Speaker 00

  How did it play out? How did you get caught?

• 1:53Speaker 01

  Look, the first, the first ground crew, I know that they all ran. Couple of them ran to Spain, couple of them down to Mexico. And so then my contact was going to hook me up with this new ground crew.

• 2:05Speaker 00

  And when you say ground, the ground crew, they're not the servicing helicopter. The ground crew are the ones that are bringing the drugs and coordinating that.

• 2:12Speaker 01

  Generally, the drop-off crew in the US.

• 2:14Speaker 00

  You're doing the transportation.

• 2:16Speaker 01

  Yeah. So we had a meeting up in Abbotsford from this new crew that were down in the US. And he was, he was an engineer for Boeing Aircraft. And I remember when I had lunch with him, I didn't like him. I don't know what it was about him. I just did not like him. Didn't click, didn't like his stories, his story didn't add up. And then when I went back and talked to the guy that introduced us, I said, I don't like you, mate. And he said, why? I said, it's just a feeling I got. He said some stupid things at that meeting that you wouldn't say in such a big meeting. And I don't, I don't think he's got the stones to do this. And then he told me, I said, so give me some information that I don't end up in prison with this guy's name on my paperwork, that I've got some dirt on him.

• 3:01Speaker 01

  And he goes, so then he laid it out, what they used to do in boats. And he goes, no, we did it in boats for three years. He's made millions. He just wants to get back in the game. I said, ah, fair enough. And on that first trip, everything went wrong that morning at the airport. Couldn't get fuel, went late. I told him I didn't want to go, but they said, everyone's in place, we've got to go. And I just didn't have a good feeling. Tezza didn't have a good feeling, and everything was going wrong that morning. But they wanted me to go, so off I go, pick the drugs up, head across the border, flying down the mountain. I was going too fast that morning and I started doing these big darts and then like Top Gun,

• 3:42Speaker 01

  round this, round this pit and then dropped it in, threw the bags out. And I still remember taking off, I thought, let's get the hell out of here. I just don't have a good feeling about today. I backed the helicopter up and it's almost like that Back to the Future scene where I took off and I just nosed it too hard in the beginning and I started pulling up on the collective and realised, we're doing 80 miles an hour. And the trees, I haven't actually gained any altitude yet and the trees are coming up. And at this point, I can't, I can't stop the helicopter. I just pulled everything with the collective. And I reckon I cleared the trees by about two feet. And by then, I'm doing 100 miles an hour.

• 4:24Speaker 01

  And, and I just sort of looked back and went, fucking good luck with that, boys. And yeah, that morning I was spotted going across the border, but hadn't realised there was something up there higher. A drone or something had footage of me.

• 4:37Speaker 00

  Yeah. And so they didn't, they didn't grab you when you landed that time?

• 4:42Speaker 01

  They didn't grab me. They went and grabbed, they went and stopped that convoy of trucks on the, on the side of the road.

• 4:47Speaker 00

  And there would be nothing in the paperwork that would link you to the helicopter, I would imagine, or?

• 4:52Speaker 01

  No, but, but when I landed...

• 4:53Speaker 00

  You're not signing for it.

• 4:54Speaker 01

  They had split investigations going at that point. They pulled those guys over on the side of the road and asked them, and that guy that I didn't like, he didn't even let them look in the back before he, he told, rolled everybody. He has 45 minutes, he was on the side of the road giving his witness statement before they even looked in the back of the car. You didn't even hold out to talk to your lawyer.

• 5:18Speaker 00

  Just take a chance.

• 5:19Speaker 01

  Just, just take your chance with the lawyer. Don't give them everything, but yeah, he gave them everything on the side of the road. I got pulled up in Canada. And it was ironic that that morning, because years later, we'd be charged with people smuggling because of that morning.

• 5:35Speaker 00

  Oh, what happened?

• 5:35Speaker 01

  That morning, when I dropped the drugs off, what I forgot to, to say, and sometimes hard piecing it all together, but it wasn't until I got charged years later in Canada. That morning, I got instructions to head over to another field and pick a guy up under a tree. And he was a big drug kingpin and needed to get up into Canada and have some meetings, but can't get through the border because he's, he's got a record. So I picked him up, we flew back to Canada. I had Terry and, and this guy on board. We thought he jumped out at some point because all the doors opened, but apparently he didn't close it and he thought that was funny. I thought, I've just lost this guy. How am I going to explain? He jumped out on the top of a mountain and he's no longer here. I don't know what happened to him. Wouldn't have been good. But anyway, years, I dropped him off.

• 6:19Speaker 01

  We got pulled up on the side of the road, which I thought was a little bit weird. The RCMP pulled me up and just wanted ID for me. They couldn't ID anyone else in the car, just for me. And they said, oh, you know, you're going a bit fast. But they just wanted to start linking it all up. I should have been smart enough to link it up. I had this bloke sitting next to me. I didn't know what his name was, but years later, I'd be charged for people smuggling, for smuggling him up in Canada.

• 6:42Speaker 00

  When you were inside, you were charged with it, was it?

• 6:44Speaker 01

  Eight years later, when I got deported from Canada. Then they hit me with people smuggling and serious criminality for that one, one guy one day.

• 6:53Speaker 00

  That sounds, uh, sounds heavy.

• 6:54Speaker 01

  Yeah. And, and he actually went back to the US the next day. But the fact is, I got him across the border the day before.

• 7:01Speaker 00

  Okay, so the technicality...

• 7:02Speaker 01

  The technicality is you're a people smuggler.

• 7:04Speaker 00

  Okay. You had to go back to Australia at some point in time when, when the heat was starting to be on, but that was for a family business?

• 7:12Speaker 01

  Right. So, so what actually happened is it's sort of the wheels are coming off the wagon. We're going to get another, we're going to get another landing crew. And, and that was taking time, but in the meantime, I got a phone call in the middle of the night from, from a family member, from my brother. And he said, you better get home, mum's dying. And I just went, I just spoke to her the day before. She sounded fine and I just couldn't compute it that day. Yeah, it was about three in the morning and ironically, I'd counted all my money the night before. So I had money all over this apartment, but it's what you focus on. And, and by seven o'clock in the morning, I'd bought a ticket to get back to Australia

• 7:57Speaker 01

  and by nine o'clock, I'm on that flight. And whatever was in that apartment, I didn't care. I put a key in the door and that was it, I was gone. And the first flight was through San Francisco. And I remember the US, um, the US authorities like held me up for a long time in San Francisco. And I'll always thank the US for this. The authorities or Susan Rowe, which was my district attorney or prosecuting federal attorney, she actually phoned the hospital to see whether my mum was actually dying. And they said, yes, she is. And they, she said, let him go, we'll get him on the way back.

• 8:38Speaker 00

  Oh, that was decent.

• 8:39Speaker 01

  So that, that's, that's a bit of compassion there. And I found that out later and I've got no qualms with, you know, I broke a law in a country, but they, they showed compassion when...

• 8:49Speaker 00

  That's a bit of decency because they could have played that against you.

• 8:52Speaker 01

  They could have, they could have taken me right there and then. They actually did due diligence and said, he'll be back and we'll get him. And so I went home. Yeah, mum, mum had had a, a brain aneurysm and she was looking pretty, pretty tough. She was only forty nine at the time.

• 9:07Speaker 00

  She's actually young, isn't she?

• 9:08Speaker 01

  Yeah, and, and I stayed about a week. I was talking to my brother, I was talking to dad. And I'm getting a lot of pressure from, from Canada to come back and just do a couple of days work.

• 9:18Speaker 00

  Your crew, you.

• 9:18Speaker 01

  My crew, yeah, because I'd set all this stuff up. And I said to dad, if mum goes, I'm gonna, you know, I was sort of the eldest. I've got to help the family get through this and I might move back to Australia for six months and just, you know, we'll figure it out. But she started getting better over the time I was there. So I said to my brother and, and, and dad, I'm gonna head back to Canada, but I'm gonna be back in two days.

• 9:44Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 9:45Speaker 01

  And, and the doctor said, if she gets better, we're gonna move her to Brisbane. So I just figured I had two day run, get back, one day run, flying back, two days work and then head back. But that's not how the plan was gonna take place.

• 9:58Speaker 00

  What, what happened?

• 10:00Speaker 01

  When I got into LA, I, I still remember the, the, the, the Qantas captain said, could everyone have their passports upon exiting the aircraft? And I thought, that is really weird.

• 10:10Speaker 00

  Yeah, not the norm.

• 10:11Speaker 01

  It's just not normal. So I got my passport out and then I walked to the door and then I handed it to the US Customs Officer. And then it's almost like time stops. That's when the sea of blue jackets, and I didn't understand what ICE meant. Immigrations and Customs Enforcement. And they just said, Mr. Smith, we've been waiting for you for quite a while. Welcome to the United States.

• 10:34Speaker 00

  Okay, so that's when the next adventure began.

• 10:38Speaker 01

  That's when the next adventure started. Uh, you know, I was about eight hours at the airport there, just, just waiting to get transported.

• 10:47Speaker 00

  Did you know what it was about? Had they put the allegations or?

• 10:50Speaker 01

  So I walked into a room.

• 10:51Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 10:52Speaker 01

  And I'd stayed calm up until I got into this room and they said, take your belt off and your shoelaces out.

• 10:57Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 10:58Speaker 01

  You're charged with, with thirty six counts of international drug smuggling.

• 11:02Speaker 00

  Sounds heavy.

• 11:03Speaker 01

  And I just went, oh, fuck, that's not good. Thirty six counts.

• 11:07Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 11:07Speaker 01

  Yeah, that, I'll give it to the police. They knew every frigging load that went across.

• 11:12Speaker 00

  Is that the, how many trips you, you made?

• 11:14Speaker 01

  Six trips, yeah.

• 11:15Speaker 00

  Okay.

• 11:16Speaker 01

  Yeah, they knew every trip. So they're not stupid, I'll tell you that.

• 11:20Speaker 00

  No, no.

• 11:21Speaker 01

  And so, yeah, funny thing happened, like, this is my introductory into prison.

• 11:29Speaker 00

  I couldn't think of a lot of other funny things, but go on, yeah.

• 11:32Speaker 01

  Into the federal penitentiary system in the United States and that small boy in central Queensland. I'm now gonna be transported, they, they're putting handcuffs on me and I remember this little ICE agent, I said, little ICE agent. Once he put the handcuffs on, he said, look, we're gonna walk outside this door and if you try anything, I'm gonna fuck you up. And, and I just thought, okay, well, I'm not gonna try anything, you don't need to.

• 11:56Speaker 00

  Welcome to America. You don't have to be so impolite.

• 11:58Speaker 01

  Right, he was literally gonna smash me into the ground like if I tried, innit? Where, where am I gonna run? Like down the, down the ramp? So we got into the, I, and I'll, I'll say this is funny because this is how naive I was. This is Tim, moron Tim keep going through. We got into this car, I'm in the middle, I've got an ICE agent here, one here, one detective here and one here.

• 12:21Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 12:22Speaker 01

  And off we go. And LA is a big place, so you're driving along and they're talking about Mexican food. I haven't eaten food for so long, because the flight over was shit. And I was already gonna get Mexican when I got into LA anyway. I love Mexican food. They're talking about Mexican food and I'm like, yeah, I'm gonna get the fajitas. I'm asking to get a side of beans. I could really do with a diet coke, like, I've already got my, my mental map. And then they started talking about the hotel, they'll check out in the morning. I'm like, I don't care when we check out. I just assumed they were taking me back to the hotel. We were gonna have some Mexican.

• 13:02Speaker 00

  Beautiful.

• 13:02Speaker 01

  They were just gonna lock me up in a room next to them.

• 13:04Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 13:05Speaker 01

  And then we'll head off to Seattle the next day. It wasn't until we wheeled around the corner and I just seen these massive gates and I said, where are we? I go jail. I said, what are we doing here? I thought we were going for, and I actually said, I thought we were going for Mexican.

• 13:20Speaker 00

  They were, looked at you.

• 13:22Speaker 01

  They're like, we're going for Mexican, dickhead. You're going to jail. And yeah, that was a, that was a rude awakening.

• 13:29Speaker 00

  Yeah, you're saying it with a smile on your face. Is that your first time in custody?

• 13:33Speaker 01

  First time in custody, yeah, LA County Jail. Yeah, not even in the feds, because they didn't have enough room that night. The, the, the feds flowed over into county.

• 13:43Speaker 00

  Now, I, I don't know if it's, yeah, what we see on the media, but LA County Jail doesn't seem like a, a place you'd be going in too happily.

• 13:51Speaker 01

  It's worse. It's, you can't even imagine the sheer terror of that night, yeah.

• 13:56Speaker 00

  Well, I, I've articulated the fear of you're gonna be stood over, you're gonna be bashed, you're gonna be killed. It's the whole range of things that, if you go, go in there and, and you have no idea. And as great a criminal as you and Teza, your mate Teza are, I don't think you're, yeah, you'd be looked as a newbie in that, uh, type of, uh, situation.

• 14:18Speaker 01

  Look, your first ten days, I don't care what anyone says, your first ten days, you're literally, one, you're not taking a shit.

• 14:25Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 14:25Speaker 01

  Because they take away every piece of dignity from you. When you walk into that, that first jail cell, there are thirteen toilets lined up on that wall. There are thirteen shower heads lined up on the other wall. There is no walls in between. These four are for whites, these four are blacks, these four are for Mexicans, and that last one up there is for everybody else.

• 14:48Speaker 00

  Right.

• 14:49Speaker 01

  Don't use the blacks, don't use the Mexicans, use like, you, you're in a whirlwind.

• 14:54Speaker 00

  Did, and the race divide, two in there, it's very much in, in the prison system there or it is here, here as well. But, uh, how did you navigate your way around? Did anyone, did you befriend anyone or did anyone?

• 15:07Speaker 01

  Oh, lots of, I, I made.

• 15:08Speaker 00

  In the early days, I'm, I'm talking here.

• 15:11Speaker 01

  You know, I went to a federal gladiator tank in, in San Bernardino. I got transported out to San Bernardino from LA County.

• 15:18Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 15:18Speaker 01

  And San Bernardino is quite a famous place, you know, it's home of the Hells Angels, McDonald's started in San Bernardino. And it's the home of the Bloods as well.

• 15:26Speaker 00

  Oh, right, and where they sent you.

• 15:29Speaker 01

  They sent me out.

• 15:29Speaker 00

  And the gladiator tank, now that, for a description of a prison, that, that's.

• 15:34Speaker 01

  It's actually just a tank within the, the, um, county jail.

• 15:39Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 15:39Speaker 01

  And it's for the overrun of federal inmates and the county will look after feeding, housing. But they don't wanna, they don't wanna put any staff on it. So it's just, it's literally just a cubicle, cube tank. It's got a concrete roof for walls.

• 15:52Speaker 00

  You're not gonna escape.

• 15:53Speaker 01

  No, there's not one window in the joint, there's only one door in and out, so they're not big on fire protection, safety. Like, if a fire breaks out, we're all buggered.

• 16:02Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 16:02Speaker 01

  Um, and then you, you just open that up and the guard, you've got your bedding with you and the guard just looks at you and says, good luck. And you just walk in and there's a hundred and eighty guys in that room, you know, bunks stacked three high.

• 16:15Speaker 00

  Yeah. You, you, you got through it. What skills do you, like, you're a good communicator, so you're not gonna piss people off to start with, but what skills helped you survive in that real early days?

• 16:27Speaker 01

  Negotiating.

• 16:28Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 16:28Speaker 01

  And just, you, you know, God gave you two ears and one mouth and use them in that direction.

• 16:35Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 16:35Speaker 01

  Do a lot of listening, not a lot of talking. You know, read, read a room, read an area, ask questions, don't piss anyone off. And yeah, just, just keep your head low.

• 16:49Speaker 00

  Any, uh, fuckups you did in the first, uh, early period of going in there? Because you were so naive to it, it's not a world that you, you would have really known.

• 16:58Speaker 01

  Yeah, I had some incredible moments in time. Essentially, essentially, I was sitting on a, uh, I start my talk, I was sitting on a prison bus, I was chained to a bloke next to me.

• 17:10Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 17:11Speaker 01

  Waiting to get onto Con Air, which was a seven twenty seven with the, with the motors up high and then the steps came down from the back.

• 17:18Speaker 00

  Fly it.

• 17:19Speaker 01

  I, I reckon I could have flown, but it was that, it was that movie Nick Cage, Con Air.

• 17:24Speaker 00

  Yeah, Con Air.

• 17:24Speaker 01

  I was sitting directly on that plane, I mean, on that prison bus where, where Nick Cage was, chained to this guy from Alabama and I struck up a conversation with him.

• 17:34Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 17:35Speaker 01

  He's doing six life sentences.

• 17:37Speaker 00

  What's he done?

• 17:38Speaker 01

  Well, clearly he's murdered six people and I thought, why couldn't I have got the bank robber at the front? Why do I have to?

• 17:43Speaker 00

  Isn't there a nice fraud person I could speak to or?

• 17:45Speaker 01

  Why do I get this nut job next to me? And he said, I don't give a shit, there's a lot more they haven't found out. And I'm just like, God, I've gotta, and I'm chained to his waist.

• 17:54Speaker 00

  So this is the full belt, the handcuffs, handcuff to the, his waist?

• 17:58Speaker 01

  His waist and my leg was chained to his leg as well.

• 18:01Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 18:02Speaker 01

  Yeah, there's no mucking around.

• 18:03Speaker 00

  And it, it looks like, I've seen Con Air and it's not dissimilar to what you, you, you see, see on that.

• 18:08Speaker 01

  I watched a doco the other night and, and ironically enough, they were talking about Charlie Bing's and he was head of the, the Aryan Brotherhood.

• 18:15Speaker 00

  Okay, yeah, that, that was the white, the, the.

• 18:18Speaker 01

  White supremacist group. He was, uh, he's currently at ADX in Florence, Colorado.

• 18:23Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 18:23Speaker 01

  And that day I watched a movie scene because if you listen to this doco on, on YouTube.

• 18:29Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 18:30Speaker 01

  That day, this convoy of, of US Marshals with one van came out, it was actually for Charlie Bing or for Bing's.

• 18:37Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 18:37Speaker 01

  And he'd just got convicted of thirteen murders and they were putting him onto my plane or the plane I was going on to take him back to ADX.

• 18:45Speaker 00

  Jeez.

• 18:46Speaker 01

  And once he was loaded on the plane, it was like Hannibal Lecter, about a hundred marshals all left.

• 18:51Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 18:51Speaker 01

  And then the rest of us peasants, we, we dealt with the other fifty marshals and they really liked their shotguns. They had no problems pointing it at your head.

• 19:00Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 19:01Speaker 01

  And they do not like jokes.

• 19:03Speaker 00

  There is something about the US prison system that, uh, yeah, and it's the perception that, uh, you see in the media and documentaries and, and read about and all that, but they, they play for keeps.

• 19:14Speaker 01

  They, they, they're not, they're not joking around. They ta, they take transportation, the US Marshals take their job very seriously.

• 19:21Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 19:21Speaker 01

  And it's nothing but weapons.

• 19:24Speaker 00

  So I, I, I would imagine and, uh, yeah, I, I think you'd be bullshitting if you said you weren't. You would have been concerned and, yeah, scared is not too strong of a word.

• 19:34Speaker 01

  Oh, shit scared.

• 19:35Speaker 00

  Right, the, the start we've go, going in there. When did you feel like, like I'd imagine if I just get through one day, if I can survive today without being stabbed or bashed or, or whatever. When did you start to feel like, okay, I'm gonna get through this?

• 19:50Speaker 01

  You know, your first day in court's pretty scary.

• 19:52Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 19:52Speaker 01

  And, and that's, that, that's the first real test of mental, mental strength. Because there was another helicopter pilot that got busted with the helicopter in Blaine. He was a twenty-three year old guy, actually from New Zealand. His story's on YouTube as well. He went to his, his arraignment, the same arraignment that I went to. And I got told I was gonna do a minimum of eighty seven years and a max of a hundred and thirteen years. And my legs come out from underneath.

• 20:20Speaker 00

  That's what you were told.

• 20:21Speaker 01

  That's what, that's what the judge.

• 20:22Speaker 00

  Oh, right, okay.

• 20:24Speaker 01

  The judge says you've got thirty six counts of international smuggling, you're looking at.

• 20:27Speaker 00

  Well, I suppose if they gave you a cumulative.

• 20:29Speaker 01

  If they just, and that's what they do, they just stack it up.

• 20:32Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 20:32Speaker 01

  And my lawyer said, stand up. And I said, you don't understand, my legs don't work. I just, I just calculated, I'm gonna be a hundred and seven by the, he goes, they're just trying to scare you. Mission accomplished. I'm currently scared.

• 20:44Speaker 00

  Your honor, I'm scared, I'm shitting myself.

• 20:46Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 20:46Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 20:47Speaker 01

  So your lawyers just can't stand up, we're gonna get this knocked down.

• 20:50Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 20:51Speaker 01

  And you don't know, but, but that's the whole system is to put fear into you.

• 20:55Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 20:56Speaker 01

  I, my lawyer didn't come and see me after that, he just, he, I'll see you next week. He didn't explain that this is just a scare tactic. I went back and had to control that emotion and control that fear.

• 21:07Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 21:07Speaker 01

  That I'm gonna do a hundred years, what's the point in going.

• 21:10Speaker 00

  So you're looking around, this is my life for the, this is.

• 21:13Speaker 01

  Potentially next hundred years, yeah. And that young guy got the same message.

• 21:17Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 21:17Speaker 01

  He went back and hung himself that night in the cell.

• 21:20Speaker 00

  Seriously.

• 21:21Speaker 01

  He didn't give it the time that it needed to just go, I'm in a pickle here.

• 21:25Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 21:26Speaker 01

  Like, there's a way out. Fear just overcome, and it doesn't take much.

• 21:31Speaker 00

  No, it, it's sad, you know, and, and people say, well, yeah, if you've done the crime, you deserve to be inside, but, but that type of thing, that life's not worth living. And, and that's why your, your belt's taken, your shoelaces are taken, cause it's so prevalent. People do. And the cells are set up so you can't take your own life. So if people think jail's a soft place, it's set up so people can't take their lives, that's the type of pressure.

• 21:56Speaker 01

  Yeah, and, and, and it is pressure, and you've got to work through that for the next six to nine months

• 22:01Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 22:01Speaker 01

  of, of negotiating your sentence, because you're in the federal system now, and they have a ninety nine point two percent conviction rate.

• 22:08Speaker 00

  God bless America.

• 22:10Speaker 01

  Yeah, so if you're indicted, you're convicted.

• 22:13Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 22:14Speaker 01

  There was a hundred and twenty two guys in my pod, two took it to trial.

• 22:18Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 22:18Speaker 01

  A hundred and twenty guys pled out, just meaning, yep.

• 22:21Speaker 00

  So that they just jam you up, basically, you've been charged, you, you'd be an idiot to take it to trial.

• 22:27Speaker 01

  Right, but you've always got some narcissist that goes, I'm gonna, I'm gonna beat him. Actually, there were three people that took it to trial. These two guys and Smiling Richard Fable. Richard Fable was the head of the Hells Angels for, for, for the whole of America.

• 22:41Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 22:42Speaker 01

  And he was looking at triple I for machine gun murders, but he got off it. But when you're looking at triple I, if you've got nothing else, but you'll.

• 22:48Speaker 00

  You might as well get for it.

• 22:49Speaker 01

  These other two got off for, one guy off for three years, the other guy got off for five years.

• 22:53Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 22:54Speaker 01

  So the guy with three years, took it to trial, lost, he got nineteen years. The other guy took, took fi- didn't take the five years, took it to trial and he got twenty three years.

• 23:03Speaker 00

  Oh gee, that'd be hard to live with.

• 23:05Speaker 01

  So, are you willing to gamble?

• 23:08Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 23:09Speaker 01

  And they've got a ninety nine point two percent conviction rate.

• 23:13Speaker 00

  Yeah, you've got to look at the odds.

• 23:14Speaker 01

  And it's really funny as you get more comfortable in there and guys coming in, getting busted, and, and then they're trying to explain their way out. I'm, I was just laughing at one point, cause it's like, hey, I'm not the jury, man. We're all innocent in here, you know?

• 23:29Speaker 00

  I could, I could imagine. This, that's bullshit, because this didn't, yeah.

• 23:33Speaker 01

  I didn't know.

• 23:34Speaker 00

  Your eyes would start to glaze over.

• 23:36Speaker 01

  I didn't know that there were fifty kilos of ecstasy in the gas tank, even though I was, I had to fill up every fifteen minutes.

• 23:43Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah.

• 23:43Speaker 01

  You, you knew, like, just take your licks, do your time and get out.

• 23:48Speaker 00

  So you got, finally you got the right advice, that if you, if you nodded to it and pled, you would be getting in the range of, what, what did you expect?

• 23:58Speaker 01

  Originally, I expected one to two years.

• 24:00Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 24:01Speaker 01

  That's what the prosecutor, because I was the last of the light sentences for helicopter weed pilots, like, they, he'd already sentenced one guy a couple of months earlier to, to just over a year. And I switched judges to go in front of Judge Coonhow, because he was, he didn't give a shit about.

• 24:17Speaker 00

  And they looked at you and your role in the organisation, you were the transporter.

• 24:21Speaker 01

  Yeah, I was just, I was just a pilot.

• 24:23Speaker 00

  Yeah, okay.

• 24:23Speaker 01

  And then, then Susan Rowe was happy with that, and then two days before I was about to get, get sentenced, they pulled my deal.

• 24:30Speaker 00

  Right.

• 24:31Speaker 01

  And then they wanted thirty six months to sixty months, something like that. They wanted three to five years.

• 24:35Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 24:36Speaker 01

  I was pretty pissed off at that point, because we had a deal, but the US can change that deal. But look, the judge upheld the deal.

• 24:45Speaker 00

  Hmm.

• 24:45Speaker 01

  And he said, yep, this was the deal that we, we agreed to, so he gave me a little over a year.

• 24:51Speaker 00

  How long had you been in at this stage?

• 24:53Speaker 01

  Nine months.

• 24:53Speaker 00

  Right.

• 24:54Speaker 01

  Yeah, and, but they got some extra time out of me. Susan Rowe wasn't happy, she was pissed off with that sentence. She was actually going to appeal the sentence. But how they got the extra time out of me was, once they finished the prison sentence, they sent me to immigration down in Tacoma, Washington.

• 25:11Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 25:11Speaker 01

  And they just sat me there.

• 25:13Speaker 00

  Just, okay, we can extend it out.

• 25:14Speaker 01

  They said they couldn't find my passport, and I didn't wanna call the Australian authorities and get everyone involved.

• 25:19Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 25:20Speaker 01

  I just thought I'll sit, and I was getting really good at sitting and waiting.

• 25:23Speaker 00

  With there, did you reach out and tell your family, tell your friends?

• 25:26Speaker 01

  No, well, the other half of this story, um, my, my brother called me once when I was in, uh, when I was in Colorado, and I couldn't believe he got a hold of me. I got a, I got a thing over the P A saying, come to the warden's office. And it was Dave on the phone, and I was, he goes, holy shit, big fellow, you okay? And I said, yeah, I'm all right. And he goes, look, don't let anyone mess with you.

• 25:50Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 25:50Speaker 01

  And I'll be there when you get out.

• 25:52Speaker 00

  Right.

• 25:52Speaker 01

  And I went, yep, I said, how's mum? And he said, yeah, she's, she's good, man. She's really good. Um, I said, okay, just tell her I love her.

• 26:01Speaker 00

  Okay.

• 26:02Speaker 01

  And that would have been about three weeks after I got, must be about two weeks after I got arrested. So what he didn't tell me is mum had been dead two weeks.

• 26:11Speaker 00

  Uh.

• 26:12Speaker 01

  She was already buried.

• 26:13Speaker 00

  He's protecting you.

• 26:14Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 26:15Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 26:20Speaker 01

  Yeah, um.

• 26:25Speaker 01

  So, yeah, af- after that, I got out.

• 26:31Speaker 00

  Uh, sorry a- about your mum and, uh, yeah.

• 26:34Speaker 01

  Well, after, yeah, I'll get, after I got out, dad picked me up from the airport and, uh, took me back to the house and said David killed himself.

• 26:44Speaker 00

  Your brother.

• 26:47Speaker 00

  And so that was the last conversation. Uh, sorry, sorry to hear that, Tim. Just, yeah, ta- take a moment.

• 26:56Speaker 00

  Yeah, it's, yeah, you, you talk about, I have a lot of people sit here, would talk about, uh, yeah, crime punishment and those sort of things, but one of the things that I think people don't fully appreciate when you're inside, and, you know, you're not, we're not arguing the merits, you deserve to be in or not, is that you're away from the, you're taken away from society, and these are the things that can happen when, when, when you are inside, so.

• 27:20Speaker 01

  Totally, you know, everyone does time.

• 27:22Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 27:23Speaker 01

  Every, everyone's doing the time. My brother asked to come over and see me in November.

• 27:27Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 27:27Speaker 01

  And, uh, I said no, because I didn't want him spending all that money coming over.

• 27:31Speaker 00

  Coming over and then.

• 27:32Speaker 01

  And you couldn't, you could see me for an hour a week, and I just wanted, he sent a message through my lawyer, and I didn't realise he needed to see me more than I need to see him.

• 27:41Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 27:41Speaker 01

  But, yeah, you, you never know what your sentence is gonna be. I got a light sentence. And I almost laugh at that, you, you would laugh at that sentence of what I made and what I got away with.

• 27:52Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah.

• 27:53Speaker 01

  But my sentence started the day I got out.

• 27:55Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah, uh, well, it continues, doesn't it?

• 27:58Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 27:58Speaker 00

  It continues. When you're in there, were you confronted with violence or see violence, witness violence?

• 28:04Speaker 01

  Look, everyone picks their journey. I got really good at negotiating, do you, like negotiating. Danny Hoffman was head of the Aryan Brotherhood, Nazi lowriders. Yeah, he wanted, he wanted to kill this guy for cigarettes.

• 28:19Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 28:19Speaker 01

  And I didn't understand, I'm not a criminal, I didn't understand why you want, like, you'll get a life sentence.

• 28:26Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 28:27Speaker 01

  And, and I, I said, look, if I can go get the cigarettes from the Russians.

• 28:32Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 28:32Speaker 01

  Like, I didn't want Danny getting in anymore, I don't want to, like, I couldn't figure it out, cause one day I was walking with him around the, around the pod, around the unit. I said, what are you gonna do when you get out? And he said, I'm gonna get a gun and I'm gonna rob a drug dealer. And I just, I said, don't you wanna get an apartment and get a job? And, and he just killed himself laughing, started punching me in the guts and said, you don't get it. Like, this is, this is us, this is me. You're here for a visit, this is what we live. And, and they, all those guys protected me.

• 29:05Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 29:05Speaker 01

  They, they did wanna hire me, I got a lot of job offers to do the southern border.

• 29:10Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 29:11Speaker 01

  When they find out you're a helicopter pilot and a smuggler, you, you're at the top of the food.

• 29:16Speaker 00

  Right, you're a bit of a character, a bit, bit of a novelty in there.

• 29:19Speaker 01

  Yeah, you, you're not running across in the back of a pickup doing a death run.

• 29:22Speaker 00

  I dare say, for the people that are in there indoctrinated in that lifestyle, you'd be a bit of breath of fresh air.

• 29:28Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 29:28Speaker 00

  Come, come in there, so a little bit of entertainment in terms of, or a different perspective on life, and seeing what life is out, away from their, their gangland and

• 29:37Speaker 01

  Totally.

• 29:38Speaker 00

  criminals.

• 29:38Speaker 01

  I couldn't understand them, and they couldn't.

• 29:41Speaker 00

  But that, that, that would break up the monotony, speaking to some, here comes Tim walking through, what, why are you gonna kill him for cigarettes? That's stupid. Let me go get a cigarette from him. That type of attitude.

• 29:51Speaker 01

  And I'll go down and see them. I, I'll talk, I'll walk in and talk to anyone.

• 29:55Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 29:55Speaker 01

  Hey, look, you guys are gonna have major shit if you don't give me a carton of cigarettes.

• 29:59Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 30:00Speaker 01

  And I don't wanna tell you who, but just give them to me and you'll never ever hear from anything again.

• 30:04Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah, sim- simple things like that.

• 30:07Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 30:07Speaker 00

  Well, it's an experience that, yeah, a lot of people don't get, get to have. Did it change you as a person, that, the experience inside?

• 30:15Speaker 01

  Oh, a hundred percent.

• 30:16Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 30:16Speaker 01

  I'm not the same person I was.

• 30:18Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 30:18Speaker 01

  And, yeah, you, you keep, you keep changing each day, but that was a very significant. I had, I've had two lives. I had one life up until the point I got out.

• 30:30Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 30:30Speaker 01

  And then a new life started after that.

• 30:33Speaker 00

  You've been inside, so you're carrying the badge of, uh, yeah, an ex-con. Did that play against you or?

• 30:40Speaker 01

  Um, it didn't, it didn't. I didn't, um, I, I, I said to dad, part of it, you know, I had a couple of mates dying, and I said to dad, I've gotta get back to my life in Canada, that's what, that's what I've gotta do.

• 30:52Speaker 00

  So you've come back, you've been released.

• 30:54Speaker 01

  I've been released.

• 30:55Speaker 00

  Immigration, then deported.

• 30:56Speaker 01

  Deported back to Australia, and, and dad told me Dave's dead, mum's dead, and then on my phone, a couple of other mates had died in that year as well. I just sort of stood at Yopun and said, I gotta get back to Canada. And that's what I did. I turned around about a week later and jumped on a plane and headed back to Canada. And they didn't stop me at the border, which is

• 31:14Speaker 00

  That's interesting.

• 31:14Speaker 01

  Like, nothing was said.

• 31:16Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 31:16Speaker 01

  All good to go. So I started back in construction the next day.

• 31:20Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 31:20Speaker 01

  And I just started rebuilding my life.

• 31:22Speaker 00

  Did you stay away from the, the dark side?

• 31:24Speaker 01

  Hundred percent. Yeah, I never. I was owed millions of dollars, still loads that went over that I didn't get paid for, but I made a deal with somebody that I wouldn't go after that money.

• 31:35Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 31:36Speaker 01

  And I would just wipe it. I never spoke to them again.

• 31:40Speaker 00

  When, when you say made a deal, person caught up in that, it's just, just said, I'm, I'm walking away from that.

• 31:46Speaker 01

  Yeah, I said, I know what I'm owed.

• 31:48Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 31:48Speaker 01

  You can let them know I'm not coming after them.

• 31:50Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 31:51Speaker 01

  And we'll leave it at that. All those guys that put me inside, they were more scared of me than I was of them. Cause I'd changed even in that year. I wasn't scared. That's the other thing about jail. I wasn't scared to go back a second time. It would have been so easy to grab a helicopter.

• 32:08Speaker 00

  Okay, that's interesting.

• 32:09Speaker 01

  And do it again.

• 32:10Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 32:10Speaker 01

  Because the scary part about jail was just the first six months.

• 32:14Speaker 00

  Okay. And once you start to get your rhythm in there.

• 32:17Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's the process. It's no different than the coal miner. It's no different than the helicopter pilot. Once you learn the process of jail and what you can expect, it's not scary anymore.

• 32:29Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 32:30Speaker 01

  That's why it's easy to go back a second time.

• 32:33Speaker 00

  So what stopped you? Is this, you've just, no, this is not for me. I, I, I would imagine, and yeah, we only touched on it, but the, the weight that carries would be your mum passing away, your, your brother, friends and all, all that. But what was, what was the thing that?

• 32:46Speaker 01

  I was never a criminal. I wasn't, I wasn't raised in central Queensland as a criminal. My, my, my family were coal miners.

• 32:53Speaker 00

  That's not what you and Tezah thought after you did your first run.

• 32:56Speaker 01

  Totally. We were dickheads.

• 32:57Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 32:58Speaker 01

  You know, we were just a couple of dickheads that really should have been mustering cattle up on a property in far north Queensland in a helicopter.

• 33:04Speaker 00

  Did you start to tool up and carry weapons and was that part of, part of the image when you were running the drugs?

• 33:11Speaker 01

  No, they tried to give me a gun once. They tried to give me a gun and said, I said, what, what's the gun for? And they said, well, well, somebody wants to take the stuff. And I said, I'm just gonna let you know right now. If somebody comes along and puts a gun at me and they wants to take the stuff, I'm gonna give them a hand to load it and they can take the helicopter as well. So understand something, I'm not a bodyguard for your shit.

• 33:31Speaker 00

  Yeah, okay.

• 33:32Speaker 01

  Yeah. I wasn't into the lifestyle. I was very different. I wasn't into the lifestyle of it. Yeah.

• 33:37Speaker 00

  I think that's what makes me sit here and laugh and we're, we're talking heavy stuff, but you seem the most unlikely person to be caught up in this. It's almost like a Walter Mitty type situation. Like it's, you've ended up in this world that's, uh.

• 33:52Speaker 01

  And I don't understand it and they don't understand me.

• 33:55Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 33:55Speaker 01

  And, but somehow I made it through and walked out the other side.

• 34:00Speaker 00

  And like for young blokes, life advice or young women as well, like getting dragged into this world, it seems glamorous, but there's a price to pay.

• 34:10Speaker 01

  Oh, massive price. And you don't know what that price is. You may get a long sentence, which sucks. You may get a short sentence and you get, you get what I got.

• 34:19Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 34:19Speaker 01

  A life outside. And yeah, you only get one life.

• 34:24Speaker 00

  And you, you navigated your way through prison, but it doesn't always end up as.

• 34:29Speaker 01

  I was lucky.

• 34:30Speaker 00

  You were lucky.

• 34:30Speaker 01

  I was lucky. I was lucky. I'm a, I, I was a good talker.

• 34:35Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 34:35Speaker 01

  And I carried through that and, but I was lucky.

• 34:39Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 34:40Speaker 01

  That, that, it had nothing to do with my connections or whatever.

• 34:43Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 34:44Speaker 01

  It had to do with luck.

• 34:45Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 34:45Speaker 01

  And I lucked it out for about eighteen months.

• 34:48Speaker 00

  Yeah. And I, I suppose the nature of the crime you came into would be a bit of a, uh, yeah, the pilot, helicopter pilot. And you'd be able to tell some funny stories how you couldn't fly the helicopter.

• 34:58Speaker 01

  Everyone loved those stories.

• 34:59Speaker 00

  So, yeah, you could entertain the groups as they sit, the guys.

• 35:03Speaker 01

  Totally.

• 35:04Speaker 00

  Um, okay. You're back in Canada. You're making a life for yourself.

• 35:07Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 35:08Speaker 00

  Relationship wise, you're, you're back in the relationship.

• 35:10Speaker 01

  I've got a couple of dogs. I've got a, got a girl. I got my boat. I had a big boat. I'd started a construction company. I started another one with a mate of mine. Everything was doing really well.

• 35:20Speaker 00

  Yep.

• 35:21Speaker 01

  Then I got a knock, I got a letter in the, in the mail from the Canadian authorities saying that, uh, it appears that you've done some time in the United States for international drug smuggling.

• 35:31Speaker 00

  How long after this?

• 35:32Speaker 01

  Eight years.

• 35:33Speaker 00

  Eight years.

• 35:33Speaker 01

  Came back to bite me.

• 35:35Speaker 00

  Jesus.

• 35:35Speaker 01

  That they just hit me with all these charges, serious criminality, people smuggling, and I'm just like.

• 35:41Speaker 00

  That's when you got hit with the people smuggling as well.

• 35:43Speaker 01

  People smuggling, yeah.

• 35:44Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 35:44Speaker 01

  And sure enough, I was, I, I was stripped of everything.

• 35:48Speaker 00

  Right. All, all, all your rights over in the Canada.

• 35:52Speaker 01

  Yeah. And told to get packing. They were gonna give me ten days to get out of the country.

• 35:55Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 35:56Speaker 01

  But we negotiated with the judge and they gave me eight weeks.

• 36:00Speaker 00

  Right.

• 36:00Speaker 01

  Pack up twenty-two years.

• 36:02Speaker 00

  That, that's how long you, you'd been in, in Canada.

• 36:05Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 36:05Speaker 00

  All that. So how old are you now?

• 36:07Speaker 01

  Forty-one.

• 36:08Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah. Um, could you take your assets that you built up? Look, could you sell them off and, and?

• 36:13Speaker 01

  It, it's, it's just weird. I just, I just bought a new, a new pickup.

• 36:18Speaker 00

  Yep.

• 36:18Speaker 01

  Yeah. And everyone knows, like you walk into Ford, I just got the new Ford F-150, Larry out, eighty thousand dollars or whatever. Yeah. So I went back to Ford and said, I've got a life sentence. Canada's kicking me out. You need to take your car back. And I said, no, we're not taking, like, you just bought it. It's got three thousand Ks on it. I said, and it's the first time I ever felt like I was dying.

• 36:45Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 36:45Speaker 01

  Because I've got a big boat. It's the middle of winter. Can't fucking sell the thing.

• 36:50Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 36:50Speaker 01

  Yeah. It's a shit time of the year to try and sell a boat.

• 36:53Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 36:53Speaker 01

  Me and the, me and my buddy had just refinanced our, our construction business.

• 36:58Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 36:58Speaker 01

  So we just bought all these excavators heavily leveraged.

• 37:01Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 37:01Speaker 01

  Because we were setting ourselves up for the summer. Couldn't sell that.

• 37:05Speaker 00

  Right.

• 37:06Speaker 01

  I literally walked out. I drove that. I tried to explain to Ford, I'll drop your car off. You guys are just gonna have to figure it out. They couldn't figure out what I was saying. I said, look at it like this. I've got terminal cancer.

• 37:18Speaker 00

  Hmm.

• 37:19Speaker 01

  And on the fourteenth of February, which is the day I was deported, I will die.

• 37:24Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 37:25Speaker 01

  I don't give a fuck about your car. You're gonna have to figure something out. And they said, no, it's your car. I said, righty-o, you've been warned. I drove that thing to the airport on my deportation day and I left the keys in it. Whatever happened to it, I do not know.

• 37:38Speaker 00

  Yeah, wonder.

• 37:39Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 37:39Speaker 00

  Okay.

• 37:40Speaker 01

  I gave Ford a call and said it's sitting on the third floor, right out in front of arrivals at YBR.

• 37:45Speaker 00

  Okay, that's, that's interesting.

• 37:46Speaker 01

  Thirteen years ago, yeah. I put the boat over at a mate's house. I think he used it for a time or two, blew the engines up. He called me about two years ago and said, hey, your covers came off the boat. The whole thing's rotten. I said, just bury it.

• 38:00Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 38:01Speaker 01

  You know, so I lost hundreds of thousands of dollars.

• 38:03Speaker 00

  So you, you start back here. Where, where'd you move back when you came back to Australia?

• 38:07Speaker 01

  Went back to dad's for about six days and he said, yeah, we, we weren't really seeing eye to eye at that point. So then I went down to Sydney.

• 38:15Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 38:16Speaker 01

  And I was staying up on Pitt Street at the Backpackers there in a single room, working at a concrete recycling plant.

• 38:24Speaker 00

  Okay.

• 38:24Speaker 01

  On an excavator, just chipping away concrete, catching the bus to work. Yeah. And thought, what the fuck has my life just become?

• 38:32Speaker 00

  Okay.

• 38:33Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 38:33Speaker 00

  That's, well, well, I'd say it's a low point, but yeah, I can imagine you thinking, had all this, it's all gone, blown. And then, then a little bit of resilience to try and turn it around, start again.

• 38:45Speaker 01

  Yeah, just catching that bus each morning and sitting in that little flea bid room.

• 38:50Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 38:51Speaker 01

  At the, at the Backpackers on Pitt Street and just trying to figure, figure out where to go or what, what to do. Cause it was a, it was a mental game at that point. I was, I, I had been kicked for a crime again. So be very careful about that crime. I paid for it in the U S.

• 39:07Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 39:08Speaker 01

  My family paid for it while I was in there. Eight years later, I come back to pay for it again.

• 39:14Speaker 00

  Hmm.

• 39:15Speaker 01

  I'm sent over to here and essentially I'll pay for it again.

• 39:18Speaker 00

  Yeah. Did you have a sense of worthlessness at, at that point in time? Like, did you, you start the, uh, is this karma? Is this because I did the wrong thing or what?

• 39:27Speaker 01

  Hundred percent.

• 39:28Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 39:28Speaker 01

  Hundred percent. I felt like a piece of shit. I never talked to anyone for three months. Can you imagine me not talking to anyone? For three months, I just walked to the concrete recycling plant.

• 39:39Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 39:39Speaker 01

  I walked back on a Friday. I'd take myself out for, for dinner and I wouldn't talk to anyone. I just, I didn't know what to say. I had all of what you've just heard, but I didn't know what to say.

• 39:51Speaker 00

  And people are just looking at you probably thinking, well, what, what's his loser? What, what's, what's happened there?

• 39:56Speaker 01

  You don't wanna hear my story.

• 39:57Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 39:57Speaker 01

  I don't wanna tell it either. So.

• 39:59Speaker 00

  I, I, it must have been a hard time for you.

• 40:02Speaker 01

  Oh, soul searching. Didn't have my brother with me anymore.

• 40:06Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 40:06Speaker 01

  No family around me and, and, you know, I'm in a country that, look, Australia's a great country, but wasn't, you know, I hadn't been here in twenty years. Yeah.

• 40:15Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 40:16Speaker 01

  Didn't have a driver's licence. Didn't have anything.

• 40:19Speaker 00

  You gradually started to build a life for yourself in the real estate and.

• 40:23Speaker 01

  Yeah, I, I Sydney, I didn't, I didn't find, I had a connection with Sydney, so I moved to Melbourne. Even though I'd mostly liked to come back to Sydney. And, and then I just started, yeah, I did a bit of F I F O work to get some money up. And then I got into real estate at the bottom and then worked my way up there for the next seven years.

• 40:41Speaker 00

  So starting to build a life together, you've broken up in the relationship.

• 40:44Speaker 01

  Broken up.

• 40:45Speaker 00

  The opportunity for MAFS.

• 40:46Speaker 01

  MAFS came up.

• 40:47Speaker 00

  Yep.

• 40:47Speaker 01

  And look, then I started dating somebody, so I, I cancelled it. But, you know, for about three years, they called me every year saying, hey, would you like to give it a go this year?

• 40:56Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 40:57Speaker 01

  And look, the year they, they called out, I needed some time off from real estate. And I was single, so why not?

• 41:07Speaker 00

  I could think for fucking thousand reasons.

• 41:09Speaker 01

  Right.

• 41:09Speaker 00

  Why not? Like, I, okay, I already declared in part one, I, I watched MAFS, so I'm not the. Or I could just say I researched this for the podcast. I've never watched the episode of MAFS. And I think everyone knows about it. You, you come and marry at first sight. They get all the people volunteering, the grooms, the brides walk up there and you meet the person for the first time. And for TV world, you, you're married at that point in time. I reckon you could count on one or two hands, the people that walked out with their reputation intact. Because it, it looks like a show, it's just designed to cause controversy.

• 41:46Speaker 01

  Look, I came out of it really well.

• 41:47Speaker 00

  Yeah, you were matched with, uh, Lucinda Light, who's a character in her own right.

• 41:52Speaker 01

  Everyone talks about that opening scene. And as you can see today and my story, I'm a black and white kind of guy.

• 41:59Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 41:59Speaker 01

  I told them exactly who I want.

• 42:01Speaker 00

  Yep.

• 42:01Speaker 01

  I said, I don't want no hippies.

• 42:03Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 42:04Speaker 01

  I don't want nobody from Byron Bay. I don't, no tree huggers. I don't want any crystals. If she asks what fucking sign I am, I'm gonna run for the hills. Then cut to her, she's hugging a tree.

• 42:16Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 42:17Speaker 01

  Got a crystal, trying to channel the energy and every bloke says the same thing. Oh, fucking, let's watch this. This is gonna be a shit show.

• 42:24Speaker 00

  Cause it was Earth Mother and, uh, you and Lucinda and that, that's the type of person she, she was. I'm not, not attacking her. You and her together, I thought this is hilarious.

• 42:35Speaker 01

  But, you know, again, the story, Channel Nine didn't know I had a criminal past.

• 42:39Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 42:39Speaker 01

  Yeah. Then when I was filling out that contract, it said, have you ever been in jail? Nope. Have you ever had any dealings with the lawyers? Nope. Police? Nope.

• 42:47Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 42:47Speaker 01

  Like, you're paying me a hundred fifty bucks a day. You get a hundred fifty bucks worth of information, which is my name, where I live and my birthday. All the other shit you gotta find out. So it's a game of discovery for us all.

• 43:00Speaker 00

  You got cameras on you twenty four seven or, or, or almost twenty four seven.

• 43:06Speaker 00

  They edit it, so you can be a good guy for twenty four hours. And then be a dickhead for thirty seconds and it'll be when you've been a dickhead for the thirty seconds, it'll be highlighted. Did you feel the pressure of that or did you see it as a game or play it as a game?

• 43:21Speaker 01

  It's, I'm not an idiot.

• 43:24Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 43:24Speaker 01

  And exactly what I said in prison.

• 43:26Speaker 00

  Yep.

• 43:27Speaker 01

  You got two ears and one mouth.

• 43:29Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 43:29Speaker 01

  And use them in every part of life. So I knew that Married at First Sight is a game.

• 43:35Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 43:35Speaker 01

  It's, it's got nothing to do with relationships. It's Big Brother, played in couples in a hotel.

• 43:40Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 43:40Speaker 01

  When you break the, the game down, that's what it is.

• 43:43Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 43:44Speaker 01

  So from the moment I walked on set, from the moment I walked on set for the, for the bucks party.

• 43:50Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 43:50Speaker 01

  I thought, right now, I looked around and just like in prison.

• 43:53Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 43:54Speaker 01

  He sizes everyone up and I thought, okay, Australia's gonna hate a couple of these blokes.

• 43:58Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 43:59Speaker 01

  So I'm gonna hate them first. So anyone with a hair bun.

• 44:03Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 44:03Speaker 01

  And fucking trousers that don't go down the ankles, you're on my shit list. Because every Aussie bloke is gonna hate you, so I'm gonna hate you. So I'm not gonna be the sacrificial lamb.

• 44:14Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 44:15Speaker 01

  You know, I'm not gonna be the weak one here. Everyone makes their first bad decisions in the first forty eight hours on that show.

• 44:21Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 44:22Speaker 01

  It's a forty eight hour game.

• 44:24Speaker 00

  It's interesting, like from a social experiment, the skills that you learnt in.

• 44:29Speaker 01

  In prison?

• 44:30Speaker 00

  Well, the char, the way you described that, because that's exactly how you, you read the room in a prison yard and that, that's, yeah, the, the. High stakes, reading the, reading the yard. On that show, you can see some people and some people, I think, you're probably, you're probably all right. But you have just made, you have destroyed your reputation.

• 44:50Speaker 01

  Errors.

• 44:50Speaker 00

  For the, the people are gonna look at you, you're gonna be unemployable, you're unlikable, just for, because they're not understanding the situation.

• 44:59Speaker 01

  Read the room.

• 45:01Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 45:01Speaker 01

  It's a game.

• 45:02Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 45:02Speaker 01

  And you've got a, I can, I'm not that great with the English language, but I said to these other blokes, you make one mistake with it and I'll pick up on it.

• 45:11Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah.

• 45:11Speaker 01

  And I did. And they weren't bad guys.

• 45:14Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 45:15Speaker 01

  You just, unfortunately, I had to play against somebody.

• 45:18Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 45:19Speaker 01

  And you guys were it.

• 45:22Speaker 00

  Hours of, hours of entertaining. Are you to blame for some of the controversies if you bought all that drinking on the, into the, uh?

• 45:29Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, I got busted a few times there. Yeah, yeah. It's all, it's all trimmed back. And when Endemol Shine found out and Channel Nine had done Current Affair.

• 45:38Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 45:39Speaker 01

  And Endemol Shine didn't know, they were making steady calls to me and the show still had about four days to run before the end. And I just had about fifty more missed calls from Endemol Shine. And then finally I, I'd already done the, the interview with Seb Costello.

• 45:52Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 45:53Speaker 01

  And then I picked up and they go, look, is it true? And I said, yeah, it's true. Have you done the interview? I said, yeah, I've done it. And they go, holy shit. I just remember the head of Endemol Shine going, well, clearly you've picked some holes in our vetting system. And I said, don't feel bad about it. I got past the US Border Patrol forty times, so I'm pretty sure I can get on your reality show.

• 46:14Speaker 00

  That's a good way of putting their mind, mind of those. Were you, uh, did you think it would blow up?

• 46:19Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah, I knew it was gonna be like a bomb.

• 46:22Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 46:22Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 46:22Speaker 00

  Cause it would have if it was when the show was screening, cause.

• 46:25Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 46:25Speaker 00

  And what, the other thing I, I wanna ask you about the show, because, you know, they talk everyone's five minutes of fame. And that show really delivers it for the people on there.

• 46:33Speaker 01

  Crazy.

• 46:34Speaker 00

  The, the, like, I, I would imagine walking down the street, you'd be stopped, photograph and all, all sorts of things. Was that part of the, part of the, the thing that?

• 46:43Speaker 01

  I didn't realise how big that show was.

• 46:46Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 46:46Speaker 01

  I was a little bit naive in that sense, from the first time it airs.

• 46:50Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 46:50Speaker 01

  You walk, you walk out the next day and everybody knows who you are.

• 46:54Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah.

• 46:54Speaker 01

  It's, it's nuts.

• 46:55Speaker 00

  How, how'd you handle that?

• 46:57Speaker 01

  I loved it.

• 46:58Speaker 00

  Yeah? Well, you've been very honest. Yeah.

• 47:04Speaker 01

  Yeah, got a couple of free counter meals, got a few free beers. You, you got invited to do a lot of cool stuff.

• 47:10Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 47:11Speaker 01

  You know, I had property owners saying, come up and fly helicopters, we're gonna do some mustering.

• 47:15Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 47:16Speaker 01

  You know, you get, you get asked to do some really cool things, as long as you're not a dick on the show.

• 47:21Speaker 00

  Well, that, that's true, isn't it? That, that, that's true. Well, I'm, I'm glad, so the experience, do you have any regrets from it or?

• 47:27Speaker 01

  None.

• 47:28Speaker 00

  Yeah, you're happy, happy that you went down that path?

• 47:30Speaker 01

  Yeah, totally.

• 47:31Speaker 00

  Well, you do take some risks. What's your, your next little project? Have you got any?

• 47:34Speaker 01

  Look, I ran for, I ran for Parliament last year.

• 47:36Speaker 00

  Did you?

• 47:37Speaker 01

  Yeah, I ran for the federal parliament.

• 47:38Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 47:38Speaker 01

  That was interesting.

• 47:40Speaker 00

  What, what, where was that at?

• 47:41Speaker 01

  Well, yeah, that was the, for the seat of Melbourne.

• 47:44Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah.

• 47:45Speaker 01

  My little two percent got Adam Bant kicked out, which is good.

• 47:48Speaker 00

  Really?

• 47:49Speaker 01

  My preference voting, yeah. Look, I, I wanted to get.

• 47:52Speaker 00

  Inspired that?

• 47:53Speaker 01

  I wanna get back into the criminal game and what, what better, what, what better place to play than at the elite level of the federal government? You know, if you're gonna start robbing banks, your ma's will pony up there.

• 48:05Speaker 00

  Get everyone flying helicopters to Parliament, save on those travel rules.

• 48:09Speaker 01

  Exactly. Look, it was, it was, but everything, I, I tend to.

• 48:14Speaker 00

  Did you go in that to, for the experience or you?

• 48:18Speaker 01

  I generally wanted to, to, to change Melbourne or to, I, I, I hated what it'd become. Yeah, everything is about those split second decisions. Because I, I remember standing with my campaign manager out the front.

• 48:32Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 48:33Speaker 01

  And he said, look, we need to, we need to get some media and we need some money.

• 48:37Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 48:38Speaker 01

  And he said, can you give some of your friends a call in the media thing? Right then, it's almost like a bolt of lightning. Right then, I heard some screams coming from around on Chapel Street. And these two guys come screaming by and machetes. And I just, in R M Williams boots and suit, chased after one and caught the guy with the machete.

• 48:57Speaker 00

  I saw, I was looking the other day, just stuff on, yeah, tell us that story.

• 49:01Speaker 01

  I chased this young bloke down. I, look, I was gonna give up. I was, I was getting pretty pooped. I remember the cop came along and grabbed him.

• 49:09Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 49:09Speaker 01

  And, you know, I'd already had the balaclava off him by then. And the cop looked at me and looked at him and said to the young bloke, you should be ashamed of yourself letting this bloke catch you.

• 49:20Speaker 01

  But um yeah, that was, that was, that was pretty funny. Really weird. I got a phone call that night saying this guy had watched what had done and was really impressed.

• 49:31Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 49:31Speaker 01

  And um yeah, over the next twenty four hours, he donated a hundred and fifty thousand dollars to my campaign.

• 49:37Speaker 00

  Wow, okay.

• 49:38Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 49:39Speaker 00

  Okay.

• 49:39Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 49:40Speaker 00

  Well, that's a different thing.

• 49:41Speaker 01

  And you know what? Don't know who he was.

• 49:43Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah.

• 49:43Speaker 01

  Haven't got a clue. I got a call from his handler and said he doesn't want to know who you, who it is.

• 49:48Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 49:49Speaker 01

  There's gonna be sixteen thousand four hundred dollar lots dropped in your account over the next twenty four hours. He just wants to say thanks.

• 49:55Speaker 00

  Is that something you'd ever do again, like run for parliament?

• 49:58Speaker 01

  Nah, I wouldn't, I wouldn't do it again.

• 50:00Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 50:00Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, that, that, I'd rather do drug dealing, to be honest. It's just such a dirty game and, and you wanna be honest.

• 50:10Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 50:11Speaker 01

  I got into real estate because I wanted to be an honest real estate agent. You can't be.

• 50:15Speaker 00

  Yeah, you get corrupted by it.

• 50:17Speaker 01

  You, you, if you try and tell the truth, you'll crash every deal you try and put together.

• 50:21Speaker 00

  I wouldn't buy this house because it's, the property values are dropping. You're not gonna get a sale, are you?

• 50:25Speaker 01

  Right.

• 50:26Speaker 00

  I, I see politicians, I see some people that go in for, I believe, the, the right reasons.

• 50:32Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 50:33Speaker 00

  And you see them slowly get corrupted or not be the person that they, yeah, you hope they'd be. And I think it's the system. You're doing a lot of uh public speaking now?

• 50:42Speaker 01

  Doing a lot of speaking now, yeah, yeah.

• 50:44Speaker 00

  And, and telling your life stories, lessons learnt, that type of thing?

• 50:47Speaker 01

  Yeah, lessons learnt, life story. I mean, you know, even I, I struggle even today with, with, with depression. I've had some pretty bad belts with it. And you never know what struggles somebody's got having underneath the hood. And although I look like a shiny truck up there.

• 51:06Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 51:06Speaker 01

  Yeah, I fight the same battles as everybody else.

• 51:09Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 51:09Speaker 01

  I just, I just put a boot on each day and when you need help, you gotta get help.

• 51:14Speaker 00

  That, that's, that's good advice. I think we're, we're waking up to that, like blokes mean blokes. We tend not to, you know, you, you said you went through that three months where you didn't talk to anyone.

• 51:23Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 51:24Speaker 00

  And that, that's the way a lot of blokes react. When uh, when things are, things are down, you just uh be a bit stoic, just shut up and uh get on with things and.

• 51:34Speaker 01

  Look, I've stood on the edge of darkness.

• 51:36Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 51:36Speaker 01

  In two thousand and nineteen, can't want to end it. And ironically enough, I had a reading from my brother, like Tessa bought me a reading when I got out of jail. And, and, and, and I, I don't believe in any of that stuff.

• 51:50Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 51:50Speaker 01

  Like clearly, listen to. Um but yeah, he said some things and, and, and Dave said he made a mistake. And he said, if you ever get to that point, wait ten seconds. That's what this reader that didn't know. And so that actually ran through my head and said, just wait ten seconds.

• 52:07Speaker 00

  The, the few people that have made genuine attempts to kill themselves uh that I've heard of or, you know, some contact with. Every one of them is the moment you step off the building or the moment you, you regret, regret it. And uh, yeah.

• 52:23Speaker 01

  That's what Dave said from the grave. And if you ever listen to that, that speaker that, that jumped off the Golden Gate Bridge.

• 52:29Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 52:29Speaker 01

  He, he just talks about him crying on the bus and not, you know, just people walking by him.

• 52:34Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 52:35Speaker 01

  And then he said when he put his hand on the edge and he just, he just, he walked off and he said, if the bloke coming before me said, what's wrong?

• 52:42Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 52:42Speaker 01

  He wouldn't have done it. And the bloke just walked by him and he jumped off. But the minute his hand left that, the steel.

• 52:48Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 52:48Speaker 01

  He went, fuck, I don't wanna do this.

• 52:50Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah.

• 52:51Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 52:51Speaker 00

  Well, that's good advice. So from a reader, so Lucinda did get uh, get something across there.

• 53:00Speaker 01

  Oh mate, we're gonna have to do a couple of mass parties next year, right?

• 53:03Speaker 00

  You, you could have lived up at uh Byron Bay.

• 53:06Speaker 01

  Yeah, there you go, eh?

• 53:07Speaker 00

  There, there you go. Fly, fly the helicopters in. There's plenty, plenty of uh.

• 53:11Speaker 01

  Plenty of work up there.

• 53:12Speaker 00

  Cannabis up there. You can ship it round all over the place.

• 53:14Speaker 01

  Totally.

• 53:15Speaker 00

  Tim, uh look, I've, I've enjoyed, enjoyed the chat and uh thank you for being uh, being so open uh with it. I, I really have. You've uh gave me an insight into a crazy world. And uh you still can laugh, but uh yeah, I don't know what you're gonna do in the future, but I hope it's good for you.

• 53:33Speaker 01

  To be honest, I haven't got a frigging clue.

• 53:35Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah.

• 53:36Speaker 01

  But that's, that's part of it.

• 53:37Speaker 00

  Well, keep doing what you're doing because you just seem to just, yeah, Walter Mitty, here we come. Just uh, just be careful flying those helicopters.

• 53:45Speaker 01

  Casa, give me a licence.

• 53:48Speaker 00

  Well, I, I didn't wanna ask that because I didn't wanna jinx you, but uh are you trying to get the uh licence?

• 53:54Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 53:54Speaker 00

  Okay, well hopefully that, that'll work out. Anyone that's mad enough to fly like you've done, I'd be happy to get in the cockpit with you.

• 54:01Speaker 01

  There you go.

• 54:01Speaker 00

  Yeah, okay. Good stuff. Thanks, Tim.

• 54:03Speaker 01

  Cheers, mate. Appreciate it.