#1166 Laura Spaulding On Making $18 Million For Cleaning Up Crime Scenes

Laura Spaulding is the founder of Spaulding Decon Industries, which is a full service restoration company for crime scene cleaning. In this conversation, we talk about the economics of cleaning a crime scene, prostitution, drug busts, and many more topics. This is one of the most wild episodes yet. We also break down all the finances and businesses Laura has been involved with. ======================= Announcing LYCEUM | Miami, a day-long event on March 4th in Miami Beach hosted by Pomp. We’re gathering an explosive group of experts to engage in a series of bold discussions, covering topics from investing, emerging tech, longevity, space exploration, entertainment and more. The speaker lineup includes names such as investing legend Cathie Wood, NYT bestselling author Vivek Ramaswamy, billionaire Christian Angermayer, master of Contrarian Thinking Codie Sanchez, Modern Wisdom host Chris Williamson plus many more. Listeners will receive an exclusive 40% discount on VIP and Insider Pass tickets with code POMP40. General Admission tickets are free of charge. Spots are limited so head to lyceummiami.com to buy your ticket today. ======================= Pomp writes a daily letter to over 200,000+ investors about business, technology, and finance. He breaks down complex topics into easy-to-understand language while sharing opinions on various aspects of each industry. You can subscribe at https://pomp.substack.com/ =======================

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:02Anthony Pompliano?

  What's up everyone? This is Anthony Pompliano. Many of you know me as Pomp. You're listening to the Pomp Podcast, which is my effort to find the most interesting people in the world and sit with them for hours while I ask questions in an effort to learn. We have no advertisers on this podcast, so it would mean the world to me if you would subscribe to the show on your favorite audio platform, watch episodes on YouTube, and tell your friends and family about the podcast. My goal is to help millions learn from the world's most interesting people. So let's get into today's episode. Laura Spaulding from Crime Scene Cleaning. In this conversation, we talk about the economics of cleaning a crime scene, prostitution, drug bust, and many, many more topics. This is one of the wildest conversations we've had on the podcast,

• 0:46Anthony Pompliano?

  but we also break down all the money and business behind the various aspects of Laura's life. I hope that you guys enjoy this conversation. And once you get done, jump on Twitter and let us know what you liked, what you didn't like, what you agree with, and what you don't agree with. The feedback is always helpful as we continue to improve the podcast for each of you. Here is my conversation with Laura Spaulding.

• 1:06Speaker 01

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• 2:30Speaker 04

  Anthony Pompliano runs Pomp Investments. All views of him and the guests on his podcast are solely their opinions and do not reflect the opinions of Pomp Investments. You should not treat any opinion expressed by Pomp or his guests as a specific inducement to make a particular investment or follow a particular strategy, but only as an expression of his personal opinion. This podcast is for informational purposes only.

• 2:53Anthony Pompliano?

  All right, guys. Bang, bang. I thought a great place to start this conversation would be the economics of a crime scene, which sounds absolutely absurd, but literally your business. You guys go in after a crime has occurred, after the police have done all their work, you gotta clean it up. Someone's gotta do this, but it's a business. You're an entrepreneur. How should we think about what the actual economics of the crime scene are? Like, when you guys get the phone call and you're like, there's a murder or a crime at X address, what happens?

• 3:20Speaker 05

  Yeah, I mean, the, uh, the easy ones are somebody died in the bed, decomposed. That's pretty easy, cut and dry. The harder ones are, you know, granny died on the third floor and melted through the second floor and is dripping into somebody else's bathroom on the second floor.

• 3:36Anthony Pompliano?

  How does that happen? That's because she was just left there for a while?

• 3:38Speaker 05

  Unattended, yeah. Left there for a while, nobody checked on her, so she just decomposed and we've literally had them melt through floors before. So that's, you know, a big, big crime scene.

• 3:49Anthony Pompliano?

  And we're using the term crime scene, but is it always a crime? Or could it actually just be natural death or, uh, is it a murder?

• 3:57Speaker 05

  Yeah, I kinda use that term as an umbrella, really. Um, it, we, most of the cleanups that we do, I would say are unattended deaths.

• 4:04Anthony Pompliano?

  Okay. And you get called to come do one of these cleanups.

• 4:07Speaker 05

  Uh huh.

• 4:07Anthony Pompliano?

  Do you go with a clipboard and you check out the scene and then you call back and you're like, okay, here's what we need? Do you guys show up with like a cleaning truck? Like, how do you arrive on scene?

• 4:15Speaker 05

  So every truck is outfitted to clean up any type of biohazard scene.

• 4:21Anthony Pompliano?

  Okay.

• 4:21Speaker 05

  At any time. So you're ready to go. We have a two hour response time. We're there, we're ready no matter what. So, um,

• 4:30Speaker 05

  That is advantageous, obviously, because it's a sense of urgency for people.

• 4:34Anthony Pompliano?

  Mm hmm. And how do you think about pricing, right? Like, it's not exactly, I'm going to the grocery store and I got like a price tag on the product. It's not Amazon. I don't think people are going on clicking some buttons. When they call, do they try to describe to you what the scene is and you just quote them a price? Is it a monopoly where like they pretty much call you and you just send them a bill for whatever you think it's worth later? How does that work?

• 4:55Speaker 05

  It's a little bit of all of the above.

• 4:57Anthony Pompliano?

  Okay.

• 4:57Speaker 05

  So there's no, like you said, kind of market for this type of thing. So what we do is we try to be, we're not the most expensive, but we're also nowhere near the cheapest. So what we do is we utilize software to kind of tell us based on the different markets that we're in, what the average going rate is for a particular labor or replacing subfloor, you know, personal protective equipment. There's a line item for literally everything. So I really never quote over the phone. I always kind of go to the scene because there's so many things that you can't see,

• 5:35Speaker 05

  especially someone that's calling on the phone. You know, they're like, I looked at it for two seconds. I don't want to be in there. It's on the floor. And I'll even say, what kind of floor is it? And they'll go, I don't remember. Like they're so kind of traumatized by it that I'll say, oh, listen, I'll just come by and take a look at it. And it takes me kind of two seconds to say, yep, it went through the drywall or, you know, it's once you've been doing it.

• 5:56Anthony Pompliano?

  How many times are you getting called by like a family or a relative, a friend, something like that versus like you're getting called by the government, whether it's law enforcement or somebody like that?

• 6:05Speaker 05

  I would say 99% by the family.

• 6:07Anthony Pompliano?

  By the family?

• 6:08Speaker 05

  Yeah, maybe 1%.

• 6:09Anthony Pompliano?

  Okay, so most of the clients are actually like private clients. They're not actually the government.

• 6:13Speaker 05

  Right, correct.

• 6:14Anthony Pompliano?

  And when you get on scene, what are you doing? Is this like somebody comes to clean your apartment or your house and like they kind of show up, they got some supplies, they, you know, work their way around? Or is there something that has to take into account the actual, you know, there's a dead body?

• 6:29Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 6:30Anthony Pompliano?

  So what do you do?

• 6:30Speaker 05

  So the body is typically always removed. There's been maybe less than 10 cases where I got there quick enough to where the body was still there. And those are just kind of wow, you know, kind of takes you back, especially when it's like a shotgun suicide or something. There's just parts everywhere. So you're just essentially, you're doing the opposite of what like a molly made would do. A molly made, you know, if they were in this room, they'd probably start vacuuming from there and vacuum their way out. We're cleaning from the door in. So we're not cross contaminating. Exactly. Exactly. So, you know, you're, you're literally just going item by item and the attention to detail is so precise on it. So it's not like, oh my God, I forgot to, you know, dust the lamp. It, it doesn't work that way. It's like,

• 7:15Speaker 05

  hey, you left a tooth behind. You know, so it's kind of catastrophic to make a mistake like that. You want to be extremely thorough.

• 7:22Anthony Pompliano?

  What do you do with the materials after you get done cleaning up? Like, for example, uh, there's a tooth or there is, you know, other things that have been left behind. What do you do?

• 7:31Speaker 05

  They get bagged, red bagged, and then they get autoclaved.

• 7:34Anthony Pompliano?

  What does that mean?

• 7:35Speaker 05

  It kind of looks like a submarine, but it's essentially a giant microwave. It heats it up to about 330 degrees, somewhere around there. Uh, some of them will have a shredder attached to them. Some don't. So it just gets essentially heated. So the, where the point of any disease would be dead, non viruses. And then it just goes into a normal landfill, believe it or not.

• 7:59Anthony Pompliano?

  Wow.

• 8:00Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 8:00Anthony Pompliano?

  All right. How much do you charge for this?

• 8:03Speaker 05

  So it varies per job, but it, in general, it's probably about seven to $800 an hour.

• 8:10Anthony Pompliano?

  Okay. And what do you make from like a profit margin on something like that?

• 8:14Speaker 05

  It's about 85% profit margin.

• 8:16Anthony Pompliano?

  So even though you have physical labor, you have cleaning supplies, you have, uh, you know, vehicles, you have all these different things that most people would associate with a kind of a small business in the real world, kind of the atoms not bits world. You still can operate with an 85% profit margin.

• 8:31Speaker 05

  Correct.

• 8:31Anthony Pompliano?

  Because there's just not a big market for it.

• 8:33Speaker 05

  Well, there's, there's not. It's, it's definitely a niche service, but you got to think too, it's, it's also something that a lot of people don't want to do, which means that you can charge a premium for it.

• 8:42Anthony Pompliano?

  Mm hmm. And why didn't a lot of people not want to do it? Is it just because?

• 8:46Speaker 05

  It's disgusting.

• 8:47Anthony Pompliano?

  Disgusting and nasty?

• 8:48Speaker 05

  Yeah. I mean, it's disgusting. Disgusting. I think the physical fitness required for it is really the primary thing why we lose employees. Maybe they they just can't physically handle it. Most people think, oh, they must be just emotionally wrecked by it. And actually, that's never been an issue. It's always been the physical. You're wearing personal protective equipment, a full respirator. It feels like you're breathing out of a straw. Sometimes you're in attics, cleaning up people's brains. You're working with power tools. It's just a very uncomfortable, sweaty, hot, nasty environment.

• 9:24Anthony Pompliano?

  Why are you working with power tools?

• 9:26Speaker 05

  Uh, we're cutting up subfloors. We're cutting drywall. Uh, sometimes we're cutting beds and, you know, just a bunch of different things apart. Anything that's been contaminated has to go.

• 9:34Anthony Pompliano?

  So really, not only are you guys cleaning, you actually are deconstructing things.

• 9:39Speaker 05

  Oh, absolutely.

• 9:39Anthony Pompliano?

  If if they've been contaminated.

• 9:41Speaker 05

  Right.

• 9:41Anthony Pompliano?

  Do you also participate in like what I would consider more like general contracting work of like rebuilding?

• 9:46Speaker 05

  We subcontract that out.

• 9:47Anthony Pompliano?

  Okay, to somebody else?

• 9:48Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 9:49Anthony Pompliano?

  All right. How big is your business?

• 9:51Speaker 05

  Uh, we did about 12 million last year. We'll do about between 16 and 18 million this year.

• 9:56Anthony Pompliano?

  And where do you get customers from? Are they just Googling?

• 10:00Speaker 05

  Yeah, essentially. You get you get a lot from online presence. Um, we've got a lot of national contracts. Um, you gotta think that, you know, property management, thousand, 2,000 people under one roof, essentially. A lot of stuff happens in apartments. A lot of stuff happens in hotels. So, you know, we kind of try to target our marketing to the bigger vendors, the B to B.

• 10:21Anthony Pompliano?

  And when you do, let's call it 16 to 18 million dollars, how much of that is in one single market versus is actually, you know, nationally across evenly split these different cities?

• 10:30Speaker 05

  That's spread out over 33 markets.

• 10:33Anthony Pompliano?

  Okay.

• 10:34Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 10:34Anthony Pompliano?

  And you have full-time employees in each one of those markets or you're contracting out and?

• 10:38Speaker 05

  We have franchises in each location.

• 10:41Anthony Pompliano?

  Okay.

• 10:41Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 10:41Anthony Pompliano?

  And how do you pick those franchisees?

• 10:43Speaker 05

  Not very well.

• 10:45Anthony Pompliano?

  Interesting, okay.

• 10:46Speaker 05

  That's a, yeah, that's a science that I would definitely say I've not mastered. It's it's a difficult thing to pick the right franchisee for a particular brand.

• 10:59Anthony Pompliano?

  What is the, uh, worst case scenario that you've had with a franchisee?

• 11:05Speaker 05

  We would need another podcast to go over all that.

• 11:07Anthony Pompliano?

  We have all the time in the world. I would love to hear this.

• 11:11Speaker 05

  We've had, I mean, we've had them lie, cheat, steal, pretty much across the board. We've had one that just kind of, a lot of, a lot of them have this notion that they, they, they buy into a franchise and they're just going to sit on the couch and wait for the phone to ring. And that's not the case at all. Like, the, the, the point is, it's, it's business in a box, but you still have to work. Like, we, we don't go down there for you. So, you know, we've had evasion of royalties where they'll try to take cash on the side. They'll, God, it's, it's just endless. We've, we had one that failed out and became a prostitute.

• 11:51Anthony Pompliano?

  That's an interesting strategy.

• 11:53Speaker 05

  Yeah, very interesting, you know.

• 11:55Anthony Pompliano?

  How did you figure that out?

• 11:56Speaker 05

  She told somebody.

• 11:58Anthony Pompliano?

  She told somebody the business isn't working, I'm now a prostitute?

• 12:00Speaker 05

  Well, she can't, she can't run a business, so she's just gonna sell her ass, essentially.

• 12:06Anthony Pompliano?

  Interesting.

• 12:07Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 12:07Anthony Pompliano?

  Was she successful at that?

• 12:08Speaker 05

  I don't know.

• 12:09Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah.

• 12:09Speaker 05

  I, I don't get royalties from that part.

• 12:11Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah.

• 12:13Anthony Pompliano?

  Also, I guess you kind of only have to manage yourself at that point?

• 12:15Speaker 05

  Yeah, exactly. Yeah, I mean.

• 12:17Anthony Pompliano?

  Maybe it's an easier business?

• 12:19Speaker 05

  That's a higher profit margin, I would assume.

• 12:20Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah, that is interesting. How does the franchise work? What do they have to pay to buy a franchise? And then how do you structure the royalties?

• 12:28Speaker 05

  So, it's, it's a pretty inexpensive, considering, you know, franchise as a whole. It's about, it's less than a hundred and sixty thousand. They pay eight percent royalties and a three percent national brand fund.

• 12:38Anthony Pompliano?

  It's not that bad.

• 12:39Speaker 05

  No, not at all.

• 12:40Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah, I mean, what, what do you think the national average for franchises is? Probably like three hundred to five hundred?

• 12:46Speaker 05

  Well, I mean, you've got the high end, like McDonald's, three, four million just to get in, and you don't even own the land.

• 12:54Speaker 05

  And then you've got home-based type businesses that are less than fifty grand. So, you know, it's really, I don't, I wouldn't know what the, kind of the average is.

• 13:02Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah, so you guys will do one sixty, and how much of that is via owned and operated, you know, locations, I guess, or like cities versus the franchises?

• 13:11Speaker 05

  They're all franchise operated.

• 13:14Anthony Pompliano?

  They're all franchise operated, okay.

• 13:15Speaker 05

  Correct.

• 13:16Anthony Pompliano?

  Uh, what has been good about the franchise strategy?

• 13:19Speaker 05

  It gave us the ability to, so one of, let me back up a little bit. So one of the biggest issues when I first started the business all the way back in 2005 was everyone said the same thing. We didn't know anybody did this. We thought the police did it. So

• 13:33Anthony Pompliano?

  I thought the police did it until you sat down in that chair.

• 13:36Speaker 05

  Exactly. Well, I was a police officer prior to that and I didn't even know who did it. So what does that tell you? So I knew I had a huge hurdle to overcome. So by us franchising and kind of spreading our geographic, you know, abilities there, we're able to reach more people so that they don't have to do this themselves.

• 13:53Anthony Pompliano?

  And that's what people were doing previously.

• 13:54Speaker 05

  Yeah, either that or, you know, hiring unqualified people to do it and maybe just not getting it all and then wondering what that smell is, you know, two months later.

• 14:05Anthony Pompliano?

  That's crazy.

• 14:05Speaker 05

  Yeah, that's sad.

• 14:07Anthony Pompliano?

  So how did, how did you start?

• 14:09Speaker 05

  So I was in law enforcement for seven years and

• 14:13Anthony Pompliano?

  Like a beat cop or something else?

• 14:14Speaker 05

  Yeah, I did beat. I did undercover narcotics, undercover prostitution and

• 14:19Anthony Pompliano?

  What's that like?

• 14:20Speaker 05

  Which part?

• 14:21Anthony Pompliano?

  Both the narcotics and the prostitution.

• 14:23Speaker 05

  The prostitution was fun, narcotics not so much.

• 14:25Anthony Pompliano?

  Why was it fun? You just get to screw with guys and try to lure them into a situation?

• 14:31Speaker 05

  Well, you, I mean, that's the part that was, it was like shooting fish in a barrel. You didn't have to lure anything. I mean, it was like, are you kidding me?

• 14:38Anthony Pompliano?

  How does it work? Like you're just go stand on the street corner?

• 14:40Speaker 05

  Yeah, so there's a couple of different types of stings. The particular one that I did was street. Where you're literally, we would go into an area that was known for heavy prostitution. We would kick out the real prostitutes, make them go to a different area and then we would take their place essentially.

• 14:58Anthony Pompliano?

  And if you guys know that it's known for prostitution, people in the area know it's for prostitution.

• 15:04Speaker 05

  And I swear to God, I mean, within 30 minutes, it looked like a Chick-fil-A line. They were just lined up. There was probably two of us on one corner, two of us on the other corner. And they could hardly keep up with arresting all of them. Like it was that. It was insane.

• 15:20Anthony Pompliano?

  And so what, the guys pull up, what's the conversation?

• 15:23Speaker 05

  They would say, how much for a blowjob?

• 15:27Anthony Pompliano?

  Oh, they would just straight up ask? Like there's no code language?

• 15:30Speaker 05

  They're getting right to the, right to the point. Yeah, right to the point. And

• 15:34Anthony Pompliano?

  And then you

• 15:35Speaker 05

  Back then it was cheap.

• 15:36Anthony Pompliano?

  Oh, like how much?

• 15:37Speaker 05

  20 bucks for a blowjob.

• 15:39Anthony Pompliano?

  I don't know who we should be judging more on that side of the market.

• 15:43Speaker 05

  Yeah, exactly.

• 15:44Anthony Pompliano?

  Okay, so twenty dollars for a blowjob.

• 15:47Speaker 05

  Yep.

• 15:47Anthony Pompliano?

  Then does the officer get in the car?

• 15:49Speaker 05

  No.

• 15:49Anthony Pompliano?

  No.

• 15:50Speaker 05

  That's the key, you never get in the car.

• 15:51Anthony Pompliano?

  Okay, why?

• 15:52Speaker 05

  Well, I mean, you're a sitting duck if you get in the car.

• 15:55Anthony Pompliano?

  Because there's security concerns.

• 15:56Speaker 05

  Right, so I say, hey, I'll meet you around the corner. I don't want anybody to see me getting in your car. And then they would go around the corner and a three hundred pound burly man would meet him.

• 16:07Anthony Pompliano?

  And all of a sudden, twenty dollars doesn't matter anymore.

• 16:09Speaker 05

  Exactly.

• 16:09Anthony Pompliano?

  Got it. And what are the types of people that are doing this?

• 16:13Speaker 05

  You know, this was shocking to me, okay, because I was twenty-three at the time.

• 16:17Anthony Pompliano?

  I, I watched a lot of cops.

• 16:18Speaker 05

  Okay, so I was twenty-three, I was very naive.

• 16:21Anthony Pompliano?

  Okay.

• 16:22Speaker 05

  And I thought.

• 16:24Anthony Pompliano?

  You thought it was like drug addicts and stuff?

• 16:25Speaker 05

  That's what I thought. I thought this is just gonna be, oh my god, was I wrong?

• 16:28Anthony Pompliano?

  White collar?

• 16:29Speaker 05

  Total white collar.

• 16:30Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah.

• 16:31Speaker 05

  Every once in a while, you'll get the roofer or something on their way home. Um, we got an FBI agent on duty in his FBI vehicle.

• 16:40Anthony Pompliano?

  Come on.

• 16:40Speaker 05

  Swear to god.

• 16:41Anthony Pompliano?

  Hold on a second.

• 16:42Speaker 05

  On his lunch break, on his lunch break.

• 16:43Anthony Pompliano?

  Rewind, rewind. This during the day. During the day, you were doing a prostitution sting as a beat police officer undercover and an FBI agent on duty in his car on his lunch break pulled up and tried to get a blowjob?

• 16:56Speaker 05

  Oh no, he wanted around the world, so he knew, he'd done it before. And he was in his sixties. Yeah.

• 17:03Anthony Pompliano?

  What is that conversation like once he gets arrested?

• 17:06Speaker 05

  He looked like someone had shot his mother. Like, he, he literally got out of the car, pulled out his badge, and he just like put his head down and he knew his life was over.

• 17:18Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah.

• 17:18Speaker 05

  That was it. And his life was over.

• 17:21Anthony Pompliano?

  Because?

• 17:22Speaker 05

  He loses his full retirement, he, he gets fired, he's probably divorced. I mean, you name it, his whole life is over. Over a forty dollar bang.

• 17:33Anthony Pompliano?

  Literally on his lunch break.

• 17:34Speaker 05

  That's just what I call good judgment.

• 17:36Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah, something like that. Alright, what about the narcotics stings?

• 17:41Speaker 05

  Narcotics.

• 17:41Anthony Pompliano?

  By the way, just so you know, I break down the economics of a lot of stuff on this show. I've never broken down the economics of prostitution things.

• 17:46Speaker 05

  Well, you know, we can talk about the profit margins because they're excellent.

• 17:49Anthony Pompliano?

  Okay, explain.

• 17:50Speaker 05

  Um, well, I mean, you know, $20 for a blowjob, it takes five minutes, so do the math.

• 17:56Speaker 05

  Five minutes if, if, if he's any good, anyway. So, the narcotics is a bit different because I worked in Kansas City's worst neighborhoods. So, being Caucasian was actually a big disadvantage for me. So, we were buying a majority of crack, cocaine, a little bit of weed and meth. So, but crack by far was, was the drug of choice at that point.

• 18:21Anthony Pompliano?

  And you're in your, uh, young twenties, you said, doing this?

• 18:23Speaker 05

  Yeah, I was 25 at that time.

• 18:26Anthony Pompliano?

  Okay, and is it strategic that they're using you because you're a woman, because you're young, a combination, because you're white, like?

• 18:32Speaker 05

  Well, the prostitution was very strategic. It's because I'm a woman. So, they would essentially go to all female officers and say, "Who's interested?" And over time, and I'm like, "Hey, I'm a glutton for punishment, I'll fucking try it." So, um, but I, I didn't realize how much work it would be. Like, you, you would think, you know, "Hey, I'm standing on the corner, this is easy," you know? But it was like a fucking Chick-fil-A line, like, it was insane.

• 18:57Anthony Pompliano?

  When you say it's a lot of work, is that because you then have to go back and do all the police reports?

• 19:01Speaker 05

  No, I didn't have to do any of that. It was a lot of work because of the volume. So, literally, you're trying to make a deal with a guy and have him go around the corner, and you're seeing the next guy that's coming up and trying not to fuck yourself because he's going around the corner and you're supposed to be following, you know what I'm saying? So, it's, it's very strategic on how you're making this deal, but you're also undercover. You're, you're not letting them know, because I didn't ever did the busting. There was guys waiting for them when they went around the corner.

• 19:31Anthony Pompliano?

  Yep, and then around the corner, basically, you...

• 19:34Speaker 05

  Was a SWAT team.

• 19:34Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah, and you don't want the people in line to see you around the corner.

• 19:38Speaker 05

  Exactly, you got it, you got it.

• 19:39Anthony Pompliano?

  So, you almost have to, like, slow your roll a little bit.

• 19:41Speaker 05

  A little bit, so, we, I was with another female officer and we would kind of play off of each other. Like, I would lean into one car, she would lean into the other, and then we would, you know, send them to a different corner.

• 19:52Anthony Pompliano?

  And do you have a gun with you when you're doing this?

• 19:53Speaker 05

  No, no gun, no wire.

• 19:54Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah, so basically, you're kind of out on your own.

• 19:56Speaker 05

  Oh, yeah.

• 19:57Anthony Pompliano?

  And basically, there's another officer there, but neither one of you have a gun.

• 20:00Speaker 05

  Oh, they're around the corner.

• 20:01Anthony Pompliano?

  You, you have other officers, but I'm saying, yeah.

• 20:03Speaker 05

  She didn't have anything either. It's just you two there versus... I mean, yeah, you're, you're wearing... You know, and that's another kind of misnomer that, oh, you're supposed to dress all sexy and stuff. We dressed like we were fucking homeless.

• 20:13Anthony Pompliano?

  Really?

• 20:13Speaker 05

  Oh, yeah, like oversized clothes. Um, I put blackout on my teeth. It's a, um, it looks like nail polish, but it's black.

• 20:21Anthony Pompliano?

  Okay.

• 20:21Speaker 05

  When you put it on your teeth, it looks like you have no tooth in that particular area. Cause it's, yeah, so the more gross you look, the more that they believe that you weren't a cop.

• 20:33Anthony Pompliano?

  Uh.

• 20:34Speaker 05

  That was, that was, yeah.

• 20:35Anthony Pompliano?

  Are they worried about cops being out there or not?

• 20:36Speaker 05

  Yeah, cause they would, they would always say, this is another big misnomer. So for everybody that's looking for prostitutes out there, I'm helping you out.

• 20:42Anthony Pompliano?

  Hey, hey, hey, boys, listen up, alright?

• 20:45Speaker 05

  Listen up, I'm helping you out. So they would always go, if I ask you if you're a cop, you have to tell me, right? And I'm like, yeah, I'm not a cop. That's the biggest misnomer ever. You can say whatever the fuck you want.

• 20:57Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah.

• 20:57Speaker 05

  I don't know where they're getting that from.

• 20:59Anthony Pompliano?

  Well, probably because they watched, uh, TV or stayed at a Hampton.

• 21:02Speaker 05

  Magnum P I or some shit. I don't know, but that's not true.

• 21:05Anthony Pompliano?

  And so you could just say whatever you wanted?

• 21:06Speaker 05

  Yeah, I could say I'm a fucking rocket scientist.

• 21:08Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah, how do you think about, um, what do they call it? Uh, entrapment? Like I, I used to watch like, uh, I remember, uh, I would watch cops and they would always have this one thing. It was like in Boston. I don't know why, if they thought idiots were in Boston or what was going on, you know, hey, Boston, whatever. But, uh, they would put, uh, a bicycle out on the sidewalk and they wouldn't chain it up. And they would be up like in a, you know, a office building or a hotel or whatever. They had little binoculars on. Within 20 seconds, someone goes by, grabs a bicycle, jumps on, hops off, and then they would go and they, and they'd get them.

• 21:40Speaker 05

  Right.

• 21:41Anthony Pompliano?

  Uh, and it was like, again, Chick-fil-A line, like literally just do it all day long.

• 21:44Speaker 05

  Oh, yeah, all day long.

• 21:45Anthony Pompliano?

  Uh, and people would always be like, that's entrapment.

• 21:48Speaker 05

  It's not.

• 21:48Anthony Pompliano?

  Okay, what, like, where is the, uh, like, what is entrapment and what isn't entrapment?

• 21:53Speaker 05

  So what I had to do was I just had to get them to agree to a sexual act for a monetary value, and it didn't have to be cash. One guy offered me a Whopper. I'm like, you broke, fuck. Okay, whatever. It's a whopper. He still gets arrested.

• 22:10Anthony Pompliano?

  Yep.

• 22:10Speaker 05

  So it's any type of negotiation that's sex for monetary value.

• 22:16Anthony Pompliano?

  Yep.

• 22:16Speaker 05

  So when they come up and they say, hey, you want a party? Well, that could be taken in any way. And I'll say, sure, what do you want? They'll go, well, what do you do? Like, they're trying to dance around it. And I'll say blowjob's 20, fucks 40.

• 22:30Anthony Pompliano?

  Yep.

• 22:31Speaker 05

  And then they'll go, alright, I'll take the blowjob. Bam, there you go.

• 22:35Anthony Pompliano?

  Got it. So you can even offer?

• 22:37Speaker 05

  Oh, I can say whatever, but they have to agree.

• 22:39Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. And it's like this weird thing, right? Where, uh, there is the monetary value. And I guess, like, they didn't actually commit the act, but they committed the negotiation.

• 22:52Speaker 05

  That's it. It's just gonna go, yeah, because I'm not getting in the car.

• 22:54Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah, yeah. But, but like, that's the whole thing, right? It's like, I guess also, there's probably people, I'm thinking of like, the hardcore libertarian audience would argue like, they didn't actually do it.

• 23:04Speaker 05

  Yeah, I can see your point.

• 23:06Anthony Pompliano?

  Right, and so like-

• 23:07Speaker 05

  The way the law's written is it's the agreement of the negotiation.

• 23:09Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah.

• 23:10Speaker 05

  But, you know, after doing this for several years, I'm like, why the fuck are we doing this? This is just such a waste of taxpayer money.

• 23:16Anthony Pompliano?

  Really?

• 23:17Speaker 05

  Like, legalize the shit out of it. Pay your taxes, go buy it, have your diseases tested, and have a nice day. Like, why the fuck am I on the corner here, trying to catch, you know, the white collar guy on his lunch break?

• 23:29Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah.

• 23:30Speaker 05

  It just seems mute.

• 23:31Anthony Pompliano?

  How, how much of it is, uh, where there's prostitution, there's other things going on?

• 23:37Speaker 05

  That was, that's the-

• 23:38Anthony Pompliano?

  Or no?

• 23:38Speaker 05

  The law. That's what they would say.

• 23:40Anthony Pompliano?

  That's what they would say.

• 23:41Speaker 05

  That's what they would say. Is it, it's a precursor. I don't know if I buy that. I would say-

• 23:47Anthony Pompliano?

  That's, that's hard for me to wrap my head around.

• 23:48Speaker 05

  It really is. You know, I, I got a 60, 70-year-old man with his wife in the car.

• 23:54Anthony Pompliano?

  Nooo.

• 23:54Speaker 05

  Will you fuck us both? I'm like, yeah, sure.

• 23:57Anthony Pompliano?

  No way.

• 23:58Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 23:58Anthony Pompliano?

  A sixty or seventy year old man.

• 24:00Speaker 05

  And he's hooked up to fucking oxygen at the time.

• 24:01Anthony Pompliano?

  No way.

• 24:02Speaker 05

  Yeah, I'm like, dude, I'll kill you.

• 24:04Anthony Pompliano?

  Is that?

• 24:08Anthony Pompliano?

  Is that like a, uh, I guess like a bucket list?

• 24:11Speaker 05

  Oh, yeah, that was a total bucket. That, the FBI guy, that's a bucket list. The Whopper, that's definitely a bucket list, yeah.

• 24:17Anthony Pompliano?

  Like, the sixty, seventy year old guy, you almost kind of, kind of feel like, hey, man, like, what's up with this? He's like, hey, I'm dying.

• 24:22Speaker 05

  Yeah, he's probably like, but his wife was with him.

• 24:25Anthony Pompliano?

  And what was she saying? Does she get in trouble for that?

• 24:28Speaker 05

  Uh, they both got arrested, yeah.

• 24:29Anthony Pompliano?

  Cause she solicited as well.

• 24:30Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 24:31Anthony Pompliano?

  Damn.

• 24:32Speaker 05

  I know.

• 24:32Anthony Pompliano?

  Imagine not even.

• 24:33Speaker 05

  But at her age, she's probably like, ah, fuck it.

• 24:35Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah, but still, that's kind of crazy. Alright, and so what's going on with the narcotics though?

• 24:38Speaker 05

  So the narcotics is a, a lot more dangerous.

• 24:43Anthony Pompliano?

  You have a gun now?

• 24:44Speaker 05

  Still no gun, no wire.

• 24:45Anthony Pompliano?

  Okay.

• 24:46Speaker 05

  So when I first started in narcotics, you have a choice. If you carry a gun and it gets discovered, you're likely going to get killed.

• 24:55Anthony Pompliano?

  Hundred percent.

• 24:56Speaker 05

  If you wear a wire and you get discovered, you're likely going to get killed. So what's your choice? It was like, okay, fuck it, I won't take either. So I never, I never carried either.

• 25:08Anthony Pompliano?

  And you're by yourself or you have other people with you?

• 25:10Speaker 05

  Um, both. So we would run in partners, but I would go into crack houses by myself. He would go into crack houses by himself. When we did street buys, we would just drive around and street buy together. So it's a little bit of combination.

• 25:25Anthony Pompliano?

  So a street buy, let's just go in reverse here. So a street buy, you're basically driving around in a car, it's you and another person in the car. You're both police officers and you just pull up, there's somebody standing on the side of the street or whatever.

• 25:36Speaker 05

  You can tell who's dealing.

• 25:36Anthony Pompliano?

  And, yeah, because they're basically walking but not going anywhere. And as you pull up, you're just, hey, you know, I want a baggie of whatever, and they tell you a price, you hand them money. And then you guys are arresting or you pull off?

• 25:49Speaker 05

  We pull, we never break our cover.

• 25:51Anthony Pompliano?

  Yep.

• 25:51Speaker 05

  We pull off. Um, if we're doing street bust, then we'll, they'll bust them right there. But many times we'll just continue to buy from them, make a case.

• 26:00Anthony Pompliano?

  Mm-hmm. And when you guys are doing this, is it like you pull off and they immediately arrest them? Cause doesn't that kind of tip them off that like you were the cops or no?

• 26:10Speaker 05

  Uh, yeah, but they're selling like Chick-fil-A.

• 26:14Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah.

• 26:15Speaker 05

  So it's, it's, there's no shortage of buyers, put it that way. So sometimes they get it, sometimes they don't, but you know, it's a decent sized city and I'm buying all over the place.

• 26:25Anthony Pompliano?

  Mm-hmm. Now are you targeting the drug dealers or the drug buyers or both?

• 26:29Speaker 05

  Uh, dealers.

• 26:30Anthony Pompliano?

  The dealers usually.

• 26:30Speaker 05

  Dealers, yeah. Which again, you know, I had this come to Jesus, it's futile. It really is. This is, I, I just don't believe you're ever going to make a dent in the drug trade. Uh, it's a waste of taxpayer money. If these people, you know, if, if you have people in those economic conditions, they're going to do whatever it takes to survive.

• 26:51Anthony Pompliano?

  Mm-hmm.

• 26:52Speaker 05

  I would probably do the same if I grew up in that, in that environment. So if that's what it is, then that's what it is. I mean, you have a supply and demand issue. You're never going to change that. I just, I think it's a waste of taxpayer dollars.

• 27:05Anthony Pompliano?

  And so what should the government do?

• 27:07Speaker 05

  Let legalize it all.

• 27:08Anthony Pompliano?

  Just legalize all the drugs?

• 27:10Speaker 05

  Tax the fuck out of it.

• 27:10Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah. And like 50% tax?

• 27:13Speaker 05

  Yeah, 50% tax.

• 27:14Anthony Pompliano?

  Like just the bigger number, the better?

• 27:16Speaker 05

  Then you're not going to have the fentanyl issue.

• 27:17Anthony Pompliano?

  Explain why?

• 27:18Speaker 05

  Because fentanyl is being cut into different things, you know, um.

• 27:23Anthony Pompliano?

  And by cut, you mean basically diluted down using.

• 27:26Speaker 05

  Yeah, I'm sorry. Yeah. So for people that, you know, if you're buying coke, you, you're.

• 27:30Anthony Pompliano?

  For all of you drug addicts, you're good, you understand, but for everybody else, here's what cut means.

• 27:34Speaker 05

  Exactly. Here's what cut means. When you're buying coke, it might not be 100% coke. It's probably got some fentanyl in it. So when you have these rocket scientists, you know, cutting it with fentanyl, they don't know how much fentanyl is too much, how much, you know, and that, there's a lot of people dying and they don't even realize they're taking fentanyl.

• 27:52Anthony Pompliano?

  Mm-hmm. And that's probably one of the bigger problems right now across the country.

• 27:55Speaker 05

  Yeah, I would agree.

• 27:56Anthony Pompliano?

  The, um, uh, there's a corridor in the Northeast where, uh, for probably.

• 28:03Anthony Pompliano?

  2000s, 2010s, there was tons and tons of Percocets and kind of all the, the pain pills and everything that was all running through there. And now, uh, there's still some of it, but fentanyl has become the drug of choice.

• 28:14Speaker 05

  It is.

• 28:15Anthony Pompliano?

  And it, it's interesting to watch the trends change. Uh, but the problem is, you know, yes, you can overdose on some of that other stuff, but not nearly as easily as you could accidentally take some fentanyl.

• 28:26Speaker 05

  Oh yeah, just a granule will kill you.

• 28:28Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah, pretty crazy. Do you think China is, uh, pumping that into the United States intentionally? And it's a way to kinda eat away at us from internal? It's pretty smart.

• 28:37Speaker 05

  I mean, yeah.

• 28:38Anthony Pompliano?

  Unfortunately.

• 28:38Speaker 05

  If, it is smart because if you give Americans a surplus of anything, they will overconsume.

• 28:46Anthony Pompliano?

  I love talking to my European friends because they're always like, yo, big gulp.

• 28:50Speaker 05

  Yeah, exactly.

• 28:51Anthony Pompliano?

  Right? Yo, we ain't got that in Europe.

• 28:53Speaker 05

  Everything's 10 times the size, right?

• 28:55Anthony Pompliano?

  Like, you guys are savages over here.

• 28:57Speaker 05

  Our cars, our houses, our drinks, our food plates, everything is like 10 times the size.

• 29:02Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah.

• 29:02Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 29:03Anthony Pompliano?

  But the human body can still only handle so much drugs.

• 29:05Speaker 05

  Agreed.

• 29:06Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah.

• 29:06Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 29:07Anthony Pompliano?

  Um, all right. So when you're doing, uh, all those drug busts and everything, how much is the government spending on this stuff?

• 29:11Speaker 05

  A shit ton.

• 29:12Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah.

• 29:12Speaker 05

  So we have confidential informants and that was-

• 29:15Anthony Pompliano?

  How much do they get paid?

• 29:16Speaker 05

  Yeah, you know, at that, this was back in

• 29:20Speaker 05

  2000. So, um, my informant was getting, uh, we called it a hand to hand. She was getting $40 per hand to hand, which means she's literally from the dealer's hand to her hand is 40 bucks.

• 29:35Anthony Pompliano?

  Every time that's a dealer hands her drugs, she's getting $40 in her pocket.

• 29:39Speaker 05

  Yep. She was at the end of the day making more than me.

• 29:42Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah, she could probably do that a couple of times every 20 minutes.

• 29:46Speaker 05

  Oh God, yeah. She just did it. She would go run with us two days a week, eight hour shifts, and she was making double what I was making salary. And I'm like, what the fuck?

• 29:58Anthony Pompliano?

  That's crazy.

• 29:58Speaker 05

  Yeah, and then-

• 29:59Anthony Pompliano?

  Who sets that price at the time?

• 30:01Speaker 05

  Uh, the department, I guess.

• 30:02Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah.

• 30:02Speaker 05

  I have no idea.

• 30:03Anthony Pompliano?

  They just tell you guys.

• 30:04Speaker 05

  In, uh- Unregistered cash, yeah.

• 30:07Anthony Pompliano?

  Unregistered cash.

• 30:08Speaker 05

  Yeah, so the cash that we use to buy deals is always photocopied. The serial numbers are always traced because then when we bust you and we pull it out of your pocket.

• 30:16Anthony Pompliano?

  We know what it is.

• 30:17Speaker 05

  You can't say, "I didn't do it."

• 30:18Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 30:19Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 30:20Anthony Pompliano?

  But the unregistered cash, you guys would go to the informant.

• 30:22Speaker 05

  Goes to her, yeah.

• 30:23Anthony Pompliano?

  And in cash, is she paying income tax on that?

• 30:26Speaker 05

  Shit, come on now. Come on now.

• 30:29Anthony Pompliano?

  So, the government is paying confidential informants cash and then they're not paying taxes on it.

• 30:35Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 30:35Anthony Pompliano?

  Maybe if we tax the confidential informants, we could get the national debt down.

• 30:39Speaker 05

  Or maybe if we don't have to have them at all. We can get the national debt down.

• 30:44Anthony Pompliano?

  I'm just throwing ideas out.

• 30:46Speaker 05

  Maybe we tax the dope, we can get, we can get the debt down.

• 30:48Anthony Pompliano?

  I mean, that probably actually would put a dent into some issue.

• 30:52Speaker 05

  Well, dead. California's no longer in debt. I mean, not California, Colorado, I'm sorry, is no longer in debt.

• 30:57Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah, it's interesting.

• 30:58Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 30:59Anthony Pompliano?

  All right, and so when you're doing this, at what point are you like, "All right, I'm done with the prostitution and the drug dealing"? Not that you were doing it, but...

• 31:06Speaker 05

  Yeah, yeah, yeah, so...

• 31:07Anthony Pompliano?

  Hey, guys, what's going on? I hope that you're enjoying this conversation. I wanted to interrupt for a second to tell you about an event that we're hosting on March 4th at the Miami Beach Convention Center. It's called Lyceum Miami, and I've gone and asked some of the most popular guests from this show over the years to come in person at the event. It's gonna be awesome. We have everyone from Kathy Wood to Vivek Ramaswamy, Chris Williamson, Cody Sanchez, and many, many others. I also even have a couple of surprises for each one of you if you show up. The best part about this event is it is completely free to attend. That's right, all general admission tickets are free. You simply need to go to lyceummiami.com.

• 31:49Anthony Pompliano?

  Lyceummiami.com will get you free tickets on March 4th at the Miami Beach Convention Center. And if you're a big baller and don't just want to get a free ticket, you can also get a VIP or an insider pass. If you use the code POMP40, you'll get 40% off. They get you all kinds of cool things, like the night before, a cocktail with the actual speakers, and a couple other perks. Go check it all out at lyceummiami.com and use code POMP40 if you want to be a baller. I can't wait to see all of you there. Go ahead and click on the link in the description, and let's get back into this conversation.

• 32:22Speaker 05

  The drug dealing was...

• 32:25Speaker 05

  It was one of those come to Jesus moments where, you know, I had some pretty close calls.

• 32:31Anthony Pompliano?

  What was the closest one?

• 32:33Speaker 05

  You know, I got robbed once.

• 32:36Anthony Pompliano?

  I mean, that's a gangster right there, robbing the police?

• 32:39Speaker 05

  Well, they didn't know I was the police, but yeah.

• 32:42Speaker 05

  I was swapping out cars almost on every two or three days, just to not, trying to change my parents, you know, just constantly trying, you know, once you work the same area over and over again, you don't want people to get it, but you know, I had a gun pulled on me in a crack house. You know, when you're walking into a crack house, these people are desperate. And they're all in line waiting for their rock.

• 33:02Anthony Pompliano?

  What goes on in the crack house?

• 33:04Speaker 05

  Uh, they're typically, it's interesting. It's like going to the fucking DMV. Everybody's just sitting there looking at each other, waiting for their turn. And that's, that's the way it was. And the dealer would always go in the back, because they, they never want you to know where they're hiding the dope. But my job was to

• 33:24Speaker 05

  act like I'm a dope addict, but I'm literally counting every step that I'm making. If there's stairs, I have to count that amount of stairs. I have to remember if I see a dog, if I see children, if I see any fortification whatsoever. Like, there's like a lot of, you know, visual memory that I have to do, and then I have to debrief that. I'm, I'm writing it down as soon as I get back, because once they do go bust this, you know, if I say, you know, the door is purple, and it was a fucking duplex and the door was actually red, that's a big deal. You know, we just busted the wrong house and that, that is a big, big deal. It's a lawsuit. I could lose my job. You know, there's just a lot involved in it.

• 34:07Anthony Pompliano?

  Basically, what you're doing is you're gathering intelligence.

• 34:08Speaker 05

  Yeah, but it's so precise. How many stairs did I walk up? Did the guy have braids? Did, you know, how tall was he? How much did you think he weighed? You didn't see where he got the dope? Did you see which direction in the house he went to? You know, I've had him pull it out of their gum line before. I've had him pull it out of their ass, literally, in their butt cheeks. I've had him pull it out of the freezer in the ice cube trays. I mean, you name it, but I have to really remember that while I'm also paying attention The 12 crackheads next to me trying not to fucking stab me or rob me.

• 34:37Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah. And when you're doing this, uh, and you go back and you debrief, I'm assuming it's the SWAT team or, or the DEA or whoever, are they then practicing and kind of running dry runs?

• 34:49Speaker 05

  They do it one dry run. So they'll go by and I have to count how many houses from the curb. It, or how many houses from the, uh, corner street it was. They'll literally count it, verify it. Um, if they're confused in any way, they'll put me in an unmarked van with tinted windows and they'll say, are you sure that was the house? And I'll be like, yeah, you know, thank God I never made any errors.

• 35:13Anthony Pompliano?

  Mm hmm. And then, uh, you're not with them when they go do the bust?

• 35:16Speaker 05

  No.

• 35:17Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah.

• 35:18Speaker 05

  Far away.

• 35:19Anthony Pompliano?

  Were you ever in a crack house when a bust went down?

• 35:22Speaker 05

  No.

• 35:23Anthony Pompliano?

  No. So basically you go in, you're getting the, uh, intelligence, you're getting the drugs, you're, you know, um, kind of completing a buy, you leave.

• 35:31Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 35:32Anthony Pompliano?

  And then from there they're going to hit it.

• 35:33Speaker 05

  Had dogs chase me, the pit bulls, you know, from, oh man, I mean, it's.

• 35:36Anthony Pompliano?

  I think a lot of people don't realize that the generalizations around crack houses, drug dealers, you know, the dogs, uh, where they hide the drugs, watch any movie. Like it all comes from.

• 35:46Speaker 05

  Fucking realistic. Yeah. It comes from reality. I mean, the, these TV producers are doing their due diligence. No question.

• 35:51Anthony Pompliano?

  There was a show on A and E years ago, uh, where they followed the DEA.

• 35:55Speaker 05

  Oh, yeah.

• 35:56Anthony Pompliano?

  It was fascinating because, you know, they'd be five, six o'clock in the morning, right? And they go in there kicking in somebody's door and you would watch. And actually one of the, uh, craziest parts is, uh, you can go find the house. You can usually even find the person. Finding the drugs in many cases is very difficult to do, even if you have dogs or whatever. And it reminded me, uh, I was in the military and, and, uh, before we went to Iraq, they gave us, uh, an entire training kind of module on how to search these homes. And so you go into essentially like a replica home.

• 36:26Speaker 05

  Oh, yeah.

• 36:26Anthony Pompliano?

  And you're practicing, you're practicing and you're like, man, I'm a genius. I found this gun. I found this knife. I found this, I found this, whatever. You get done, you got like five or six things and they're like, okay, come back in with us. Next thing they pull out like 47 weapons, right? They're like, the floorboard was a false floor, this and you know, you gotta move this. And hey, you idiots didn't check underneath the table.

• 36:47Speaker 05

  Right.

• 36:47Anthony Pompliano?

  All of a sudden, you just start to realize like, there was levels to this. And then if you're literally your freedom and your economic earning ability is predicated on your ability to hide drugs.

• 36:58Speaker 05

  One hundred percent.

• 36:58Anthony Pompliano?

  Hide the money.

• 36:59Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 36:59Anthony Pompliano?

  You're going to get creative.

• 37:00Speaker 05

  Yeah. And the thing is, is if you could, you know, these people are not dumb. If you could put them to use for something legal and good, they're pretty fucking smart. They really are. Like, they, they have come up with amazing ways to hide dope, to try to skew the dogs so they can't smell it.

• 37:21Anthony Pompliano?

  What do they do there?

• 37:22Speaker 05

  Coffee grounds.

• 37:23Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah.

• 37:24Speaker 05

  Motor oil, um, you know, just wrapping it in. It's, it's pretty fucking genius. And, you know, the mules that they use. Just, it, it's ingenious, some of the stuff that they're doing. But, you know, you always have to stay kind of one step ahead of them. And the only way to do that is with CIs or undercovers.

• 37:42Anthony Pompliano?

  Cause basically you have to have the inside information.

• 37:44Speaker 05

  You have to. You have to.

• 37:46Anthony Pompliano?

  And you said that people had them in ice cube trays.

• 37:49Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 37:49Anthony Pompliano?

  And their butt cracks and the inside of their mouths.

• 37:54Anthony Pompliano?

  Where else would they have the drugs usually? Where's the most common area? Is it just like in a drawer somewhere?

• 37:59Speaker 05

  No. So this was actually pretty, pretty good because, you know, they always say possession is nine tenths of the law. So they had to be in possession of the narcotics in order to bust them. So what they would do is they would have trash on the side of the road. Looks just like trash. They would hide their dope in bags underneath the trash. So when you came up to buy, they don't have anything on them. Once they felt confident with you, they would pull it out of the trash and then give it to you. So if you went to bust them. They just ran and if you caught them, they have nothing on their possession. It's all on the street and you can say, I wouldn't mind.

• 38:44Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah, it was somebody else did that out.

• 38:45Speaker 05

  Yeah, exactly.

• 38:46Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah, it, it, um, uh, it's crazy because I think a lot of people see the videos that go viral online.

• 38:53Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 38:53Anthony Pompliano?

  Of the dirty cops planting drugs as well. And, uh, obviously it happens, right?

• 38:58Speaker 05

  Yes.

• 38:58Anthony Pompliano?

  Videos of it, et cetera. Uh, but it's always these weird things where you can't let the few bad apples, or even if there's a lot of bad apples, ruin the people who are doing good work. But at the same time, to your point, the problem may be so crazy that the entire approach to trying to solve the problem is wrong. And we have to step back and kind of think about, hey, there may be a different way to address this. And it isn't necessarily kind of this abrasive, we're going to arrest you, we're going to put you in a cell, all that. It may just be, look, we're going to let you guys do this, but we are going to make it economically painful.

• 39:30Speaker 05

  I agree. You know, we've been doing the same thing for a hundred years and it's not working. Like, at what point do we realize this is insanity? We need, we need to switch of what we do, but also, you know, there is a set of rules that we play by. You know, law enforcement has a more stringent set of rules than drug dealers do, but drug dealers even have a set of rules, like it's very taboo for them to shoot a cop. Cause they know the wrath of the world is on them at that point. So, you know, we have a set of rules, they have a set of rules, and sometimes those rules get crossed. And, uh, I think on both ends, it's the frustration, you know, in the law enforcement, it's, what, what are we fucking doing here?

• 40:11Speaker 05

  We're, we're just every day I'm clocking in, clocking out, and it's the same people, the same amount of drugs every fucking day. And then from the drug dealer's side, it's, I have no opportunity, I have no education, I have no ability to make enough money to support my family. And they're preventing me from doing that. So I, I get both sides.

• 40:27Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah, it's pretty crazy. Um, at what point do you say, hey, I'm done being a cop?

• 40:32Speaker 05

  Yeah, two, well, uh, 2005.

• 40:36Anthony Pompliano?

  Was there a specific incident or it was just kind of you'd been doing it for a while and you want to do something else?

• 40:40Speaker 05

  Yeah, it was just kind of that light bulb moment with narcotics, um, and then. I'm like, what the fuck? Like, this is, you know, a glass ceiling. It's, you're, I'm never, I'm just tired of being poor, essentially. You know, at that point, I was 31 years old. I have a fucking roommate. I'm like, what is this? You know?

• 40:57Anthony Pompliano?

  And this is actually an interesting point. A lot of people don't realize, uh, most cops in America do not make that much money.

• 41:03Speaker 05

  Oh, God. I made $42,000 after seven years.

• 41:06Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah.

• 41:06Speaker 05

  Now I make that in a day.

• 41:08Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah.

• 41:08Speaker 05

  It's like, what the fuck?

• 41:09Anthony Pompliano?

  Well, what's crazy about it is, I mean, that's basically teachers, right?

• 41:13Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 41:13Anthony Pompliano?

  Very similar.

• 41:13Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 41:14Anthony Pompliano?

  Uh, firefighters, right? I mean, there's a number of these roles that I think most people would point out and say like, hey, that's important for society. You're not getting paid a lot.

• 41:21Speaker 05

  No, I agree. And teachers, uh, it's a problem, especially in Florida.

• 41:27Anthony Pompliano?

  Mm hmm. When you look at what you're getting paid, was that the main driver? Or things like getting a gun pulled on you?

• 41:34Speaker 05

  No, it was the main driver.

• 41:35Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah.

• 41:35Speaker 05

  It was just, I'm like, I can't do this. It was that and it was, why, why am I going to continue to do something that's not making a difference? And put my life on the line for it? And then have to work for idiots in the same thing? It's like, man, this is just a trifecta of shit, you know?

• 41:51Anthony Pompliano?

  Did, did police chiefs and those folks, did they understand what's happening in the street or they were too removed?

• 41:56Speaker 05

  Oh, fuck no.

• 41:57Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah.

• 41:57Speaker 05

  No, they're sitting in their office, you know?

• 41:59Anthony Pompliano?

  Chilling.

• 42:00Speaker 05

  Chilling and their bodyguards and their media and, yeah, they don't give a shit.

• 42:04Anthony Pompliano?

  There's a story, I hope I don't get the details wrong, but, uh, this guy, Brian Grazer, um, he's a big Hollywood producer. Uh, he wrote a book, um, about, uh, what he calls curiosity conversations. So for like 40 years.

• 42:16Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 42:16Anthony Pompliano?

  He would basically call up or write or whatever, just interesting people that he saw in the news or he heard about or whatever. And he'd be like, hey, I'm going to be in your city or you're coming to LA or you tell me where to meet you anywhere in the world. But like, I would just like to sit down with you and learn from you.

• 42:31Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 42:32Anthony Pompliano?

  And, uh, I can't really offer you that much, but like, let's have a conversation because I'm curious about like your, your life.

• 42:38Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 42:39Anthony Pompliano?

  And the way he tells the story is, I think it was the day the Rodney King riots started in LA. He had a meeting set that morning with the LA police chief. And he was like, for sure, they're canceling this. Nope. He went to the police station, went up and he spent like 30 minutes or an hour, whatever it was with the police chief.

• 42:59Speaker 05

  Whoa.

• 42:59Anthony Pompliano?

  And he was like, it was one thing to talk to the police chief, right? It was another thing to talk to him about situation happening outside. But he was like, but the most curious part was seeing what was happening inside that room while there was chaos outside. He was like, it was cool, common, collected.

• 43:17Speaker 05

  Wow.

• 43:18Anthony Pompliano?

  And so like you hear it and again, you know, he's writing this years later.

• 43:21Speaker 05

  Yeah, yeah.

• 43:21Anthony Pompliano?

  There's kind of the memory or whatever, but like it's interesting because you, you see this like very different.

• 43:28Speaker 05

  They're very insulated.

• 43:29Anthony Pompliano?

  Remembering of the situation.

• 43:31Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 43:31Anthony Pompliano?

  And like if you, I'm guessing if you were to talk to a street cop in LA during those riots. They're not cool, common, collected, right?

• 43:38Speaker 05

  Oh, no.

• 43:39Anthony Pompliano?

  They're dealing with a whole different situation.

• 43:40Speaker 05

  Oh, yeah.

• 43:41Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah, pretty crazy.

• 43:41Speaker 05

  I think that, you know, it's, it's all over the media now because everybody and their mother has a camera.

• 43:48Speaker 05

  It still happened 20, 30 years ago, just nobody had cameras back then. You know, I remember we were supposed to take pictures of domestic violence incidents of injuries. And I'll never forget, the department couldn't even afford a fucking camera. We got grants from domestic violence organizations that gave us Polaroids.

• 44:12Speaker 05

  Shitty Polaroids that we took pictures with and that's what we did for our. We had to hold on to the physical picture and turn those in as evidence. Now my five year old has a fucking cellphone. You know what I mean? Like, I didn't even have that when I was 23.

• 44:26Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah.

• 44:27Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 44:27Anthony Pompliano?

  That's crazy.

• 44:28Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 44:29Anthony Pompliano?

  And so when you go to leave, you knew that you wanted to start servicing and cleaning and.

• 44:34Speaker 05

  I started it before I left.

• 44:36Anthony Pompliano?

  Okay, explain.

• 44:37Speaker 05

  So I asked the department, I said, this, I've had switched departments at the time. I went to this kind of fucking small Mayberry bullshit department. And they prevented us from working off duty. I'm like, God, talk about insult to injury here. You're paying us shit and then you're preventing us from making any more money.

• 44:54Anthony Pompliano?

  And why did they not want you to do that?

• 44:55Speaker 05

  Control. It was just systematically control. So I said, hey, I'm not working off duty in law enforcement, but I want to clean up crime scenes. And they, they were like, okay, well, as long as you don't do it in our city, then it's no conflict. You can do it. Perfect. No problem. Two months went by and they were like, uh, hey, we changed our mind. Um, it's either the job or the business. And I was like, fuck off. And I quit.

• 45:19Anthony Pompliano?

  Really?

• 45:19Speaker 05

  Yep.

• 45:20Anthony Pompliano?

  Why do you think they changed their mind?

• 45:21Speaker 05

  Control. Probably making a lot of money.

• 45:24Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah. And so it's one of these things of,

• 45:26Speaker 05

  It's all control.

• 45:27Anthony Pompliano?

  She, she, uh, she seems to be successful. We didn't care when she wasn't being successful.

• 45:31Speaker 05

  We didn't care when she wanted to, you know, sell fucking blow pops on the street, but now that she's making real money. Yeah, we want, we want to curb that.

• 45:38Anthony Pompliano?

  Got it. And so how did you get started?

• 45:41Speaker 05

  Uh, you know, I lied to the bank.

• 45:44Anthony Pompliano?

  Okay.

• 45:44Speaker 05

  And I, uh, cause they wouldn't give me a loan. And I said that I wanted, uh, new windows for my house. So I took a home equity loan of 15 grand. That's all they would give me. So I started out door to door. Just going to apartments and hotels and funeral homes. And that's how I got my first jobs.

• 46:02Anthony Pompliano?

  And do you remember the first one?

• 46:04Speaker 05

  Yeah. Uh, the first one was a, um, double homicide on Christmas day.

• 46:12Anthony Pompliano?

  Wow.

• 46:13Speaker 05

  Yeah. Relatives.

• 46:16Anthony Pompliano?

  So they killed each other?

• 46:17Speaker 05

  Fucking had it out. Yeah.

• 46:18Anthony Pompliano?

  Like a OK Corral shootout in the house?

• 46:21Speaker 05

  Whatever happened to, let's go in the backyard and fucking fight it out. Oh no, let's pull guns and fucking shoot each other.

• 46:27Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah.

• 46:27Speaker 05

  So, uh, the mom of one of them hired me and she's sitting at her kitchen table and I'm fucking cleaning up the blood from,

• 46:34Anthony Pompliano?

  And you're doing it?

• 46:35Speaker 05

  Yeah, by myself. And, uh, there was so much blood that it leaked into the, um,

• 46:42Speaker 05

  Pantry, went through the baseboards, the drywall into the seal plate. I'm like, motherfucker. My first job couldn't be simple.

• 46:49Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah.

• 46:50Speaker 05

  No, it's gotta be horrendous.

• 46:52Anthony Pompliano?

  And when you showed up that first time, you have like hazmat suit on and everything?

• 46:55Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 46:55Anthony Pompliano?

  Or, yeah.

• 46:56Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 46:56Anthony Pompliano?

  So you pretty mu- you know what the game is?

• 46:57Speaker 05

  Yeah, I was trained at that point and I was ready to go. I had all, I had the basic equipment that I could afford with the 15 grand. My blood va- I call it a blood vacuum. It's a hepa vacuum. Personal protective equipment, respirators, you know, gloves, disinfectant, all that shit.

• 47:11Anthony Pompliano?

  When you say trained, like you went to like a school or the police?

• 47:14Speaker 05

  Yeah, no, they don't do that. I went to a private school. It was, it's no longer there, but it was a company in Dallas, Texas.

• 47:20Anthony Pompliano?

  Got it. So you go and they basically teach you how to do this?

• 47:22Speaker 05

  Yeah, they taught me how to do the actual physical operational part of it. They didn't teach me any business. How do you price this? Who's your clients? You know, that kind of shit.

• 47:31Anthony Pompliano?

  And when you get there, how long does it take you to clean the double homicide?

• 47:35Speaker 05

  Fuck. Well, it, it took me about two and a half days. Now I could probably do it in about six hours.

• 47:45Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah, that's crazy.

• 47:46Speaker 05

  Yeah, it was a lot. It was, I mean, two bodies. That's a lot of blood.

• 47:50Anthony Pompliano?

  Mm-hmm. And as you're doing it, like?

• 47:53Speaker 05

  Mom's just sitting there at the fucking kitchen table watching me. I was like, okay, this is fucking weird. Talk about feeling like you're under a microscope. But you know, after all these years, I've gone through to where some people, I think they find it therapeutic. And they wanna watch me clean it up. Other people are like, I'm fucking leaving. Call me when you're done. And that's the majority, but you know, I've, I had one where dad was, um, he had cancer. He didn't wanna be a burden to anybody. He was probably in his seventies, so he put a pillow over his head and shot himself. And the adult daughter hired us, so we're in there. You know, it's pretty cut and dry. It's on the pillow. It's on the, the mattress.

• 48:36Speaker 05

  And we're cleaning it up and I find a piece of his jaw in the, uh, on top of the mattress, underneath the pillow. And she sees me, she insisted on watching. She sees me pick it up and before I could throw it in the red bag, she says, oh, no, no, no, don't do that. And I'm like, okay. She's like, I want it. I'm like, I didn't know what to do. I was like, what the fuck? What do I do? So I was like, okay. And I give it to her. I come back the next day to finish the job and she's wearing it around her fucking neck.

• 49:07Anthony Pompliano?

  What?

• 49:08Speaker 05

  It's jewelry.

• 49:10Anthony Pompliano?

  Her father's jaw?

• 49:12Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 49:15Anthony Pompliano?

  I mean.

• 49:16Speaker 05

  Dude.

• 49:16Anthony Pompliano?

  I've never been in that situation, so like, I feel like I can't judge.

• 49:19Speaker 05

  I was like, what the fuck?

• 49:21Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah.

• 49:22Speaker 05

  Uh huh.

• 49:22Anthony Pompliano?

  Is that the craziest thing that you've seen a family member do?

• 49:25Speaker 05

  Uh, it's fucking up there, let me tell you.

• 49:27Anthony Pompliano?

  What are some other ones?

• 49:29Speaker 05

  Uh.

• 49:32Speaker 05

  You know, I had a guy once that called me from Michigan and he said, hey, my mom died and he was just fucking real like playing about it. No sadness, no nothing. My mom died, um, can you go clean it up? Yeah, what happened? I don't know, she decomposed. I'm like, god damn, okay. So I go over there and I look at it and she had been there for a fucking long while. She smelled the high heaven down the street. And I was like, okay, you know, it's gonna be whatever amount it was. And he's like, oh, by the way, can you throw everything away inside the house? I'm like, everything? He's like, yeah. And I go, whoa, do you want me to save the pictures and stuff for you? Like, are you coming down for the funeral?

• 50:16Speaker 05

  Oh no, we're gonna have her cremated, just throw it all away. I was like, what the fuck? Like, some people are just bam.

• 50:23Anthony Pompliano?

  That's crazy.

• 50:24Speaker 05

  Yeah, that, I felt horrible, cuz I'm like, no wonder the lady fucking decomposed. Nobody gave two shits about her.

• 50:30Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah. And when that happens, like.

• 50:33Speaker 05

  Sad.

• 50:34Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah, but also, um,

• 50:37Anthony Pompliano?

  they're there for so long, like.

• 50:39Speaker 05

  They just break down.

• 50:40Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah, the body just breaks.

• 50:41Speaker 05

  It does, the body does an amazing job of breaking down quickly. You know, you start decomposing 15 minutes after your heart stops. So, you know, the blood and liquids and everything is gonna go out of whatever orifice that, that it has, you know, and the skin just becomes flaccid and if they're laying on the floor and the temperature is just not really cold in the room, their skin's gonna stick to the floor. We've had to pick up their scalps before, cuz when they remove the body, the whole back of the scalp stayed attached to the floor.

• 51:11Anthony Pompliano?

  Hmm.

• 51:12Speaker 05

  So, you know, these are.

• 51:14Anthony Pompliano?

  Not fun.

• 51:15Speaker 05

  Not fun, yeah.

• 51:16Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah.

• 51:16Speaker 05

  Not fun.

• 51:17Anthony Pompliano?

  And when you guys go into, uh, do this now, how many people go in? Is it like one person?

• 51:21Speaker 05

  No, it's never just one. Yeah, two to three.

• 51:24Anthony Pompliano?

  Two to three.

• 51:24Speaker 05

  Two to three for a bio. Any more than that and you're like stepping on each other.

• 51:28Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah.

• 51:28Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 51:29Anthony Pompliano?

  Is it kinda like Ghostbusters? Like, you show up, you got all your equipment, you got your, uh, gear on?

• 51:33Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 51:34Anthony Pompliano?

  And when you're in there, like. Okay, I get the cleaning part. I get the removal of all the stuff, but what are some of the other components that go into the job that people may not understand?

• 51:45Speaker 05

  Tons of maggots.

• 51:46Anthony Pompliano?

  What does that mean?

• 51:47Speaker 05

  There's just the maggots, you know, everybody is surprised, like, wait, well, wait a minute. How did the maggots get in? Well, all you have to have is one fly in there to lay their eggs. And then that creates thousands and thousands of maggots. And I like to say that these maggots are my best employees, you know, they're eating up the scene. I don't even have to pay them and they never call in sick.

• 52:12Anthony Pompliano?

  And so how do you think about the business now? Like when you meet somebody at a coffee shop or something like, oh, what do you do?

• 52:20Speaker 05

  Oh, they shit themselves.

• 52:21Anthony Pompliano?

  What do you say?

• 52:22Speaker 05

  They're, you know, it depends.

• 52:24Anthony Pompliano?

  Like I have a cleaning company?

• 52:26Speaker 05

  Well, if I'm in the mood to chat, I'll say, you know, I'm a crime scene cleaner. And they'll be like, what the fuck? What's the craziest thing you ever saw? Everybody always asks that. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. If I'm not in the mood to chat, I'm just like, oh, I own a cleaning company. And they're like, oh, she's a janitor. Whatever. Yeah, whatever you want to think, man.

• 52:44Anthony Pompliano?

  That's fine. I'm a janitor that does eighteen million dollars, eighty-five percent profit margin. Shut the fuck up.

• 52:49Speaker 05

  Yeah, exactly.

• 52:50Anthony Pompliano?

  When you think about this business, is there an opportunity to go and get the government contracts? Or it wouldn't be that lucrative?

• 52:59Speaker 05

  So there is, but it's very strategic. So certain cities have the ability to have contracts. Miami happens to be one of them. Miami is the only city in Florida that has the availability for a contract. So you have pretty much the entire state of California, surprise, surprise, has the ability to have that. And then it's

• 53:20Anthony Pompliano?

  That sounds like there's zero corruption or other things going on.

• 53:25Speaker 05

  Well, as if with everything, right? Yeah. So there is, it really depends on geography.

• 53:32Anthony Pompliano?

  And you all have built a huge name for yourself through social media.

• 53:37Speaker 05

  Yes.

• 53:37Anthony Pompliano?

  Which when people think of social media, I think they think of influencers, consumer brands, maybe technology companies. You guys are cleaning up crime scenes.

• 53:46Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 53:47Anthony Pompliano?

  But you've got a million subscribers on YouTube.

• 53:49Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 53:49Anthony Pompliano?

  You have tens of thousands on Facebook. I don't know how many you have on Instagram or other platforms.

• 53:54Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 53:54Anthony Pompliano?

  But it's a lot.

• 53:55Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 53:56Anthony Pompliano?

  Why did you think to go onto the internet from a social media and marketing perspective?

• 54:01Speaker 05

  So for two reasons. The first one was, remember when I first started, I, everybody thought the police cleaned it up. So I knew I had that hurdle to overcome. And I thought, what is the way to reach the masses? And this was easy. It was free. And it gave us the ability to essentially tell people, police don't do this. If you don't hire it out, you're doing it. You know, it's, it's you as the property owner does it. And number two, we got a shit ton of inquiries of, this is fascinating. Like, how do you do this? Or how do you do that? Or true crime? Like, you know, that's kind of the big thing now. So I knew that we would hit two needs, uh, just by posting the videos. So we took an educational approach.

• 54:44Speaker 05

  We're, we don't hide anything. Like, you know, nothing's proprietary. It's not fucking rocket scientists, right? So we're saying, hey, this is what we're doing. This is why we're doing it. And this is how we're doing it. And it took off.

• 54:57Anthony Pompliano?

  And like, are you like, hey, here's how you clean a scalpel off a wooden floor?

• 55:01Speaker 05

  Totally.

• 55:01Anthony Pompliano?

  And you explain like,

• 55:02Speaker 05

  Absolutely.

• 55:03Anthony Pompliano?

  The materials you use or whatever.

• 55:05Speaker 05

  Absolutely.

• 55:06Anthony Pompliano?

  And are people just like masochists? Uh, are they just like weirdos?

• 55:10Speaker 05

  No, I think people,

• 55:10Anthony Pompliano?

  Why do they want to watch?

• 55:11Speaker 05

  People are enamored with curiosity, right? You're always curious about something that you don't see every day or something. Wow, that's interesting. I had no idea. Right? And I think people kind of have a morbid curiosity with what happens to you when you die. Do we really even know the answer to that? Other than we decompose and nobody knows what happens after that. So, I think there's a, a huge interest in it. Look at the true crime podcast. Look at the most popular shows on TV. They're all either law enforcement or hospital related, right? So people are curious about it.

• 55:42Anthony Pompliano?

  And have you ever had content taken down off any of the platforms?

• 55:45Speaker 05

  I think so. I think, uh, TikTok is a, one that their, their rules change, um, with the wind. So, uh, every once in a while, we will get, um, Community violation or something like that, we'll just remove it.

• 56:03Anthony Pompliano?

  What type of content?

• 56:05Speaker 05

  They don't allow any gore. Whereas the other platforms love gore. So you really just have to know who your, who your platform is.

• 56:12Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah. What, what is the definition of gore?

• 56:15Speaker 05

  Yeah. Well, no blood, no body parts.

• 56:17Anthony Pompliano?

  I mean, I see the inflation numbers and that looks gory to me.

• 56:20Speaker 05

  That's exactly correct. Yes. That should be a crime to post that.

• 56:26Anthony Pompliano?

  Have an open opaque definition of gore, then like let's start there.

• 56:30Speaker 05

  I, I would agree with you there. Yeah.

• 56:31Anthony Pompliano?

  All right. And, uh, as you, as you have been posting, is there a specific type of content that really takes off with the audience?

• 56:38Speaker 05

  Yes, it's typically death related or hoarding.

• 56:41Anthony Pompliano?

  Hoarding?

• 56:42Speaker 05

  Those two are what we, we used to post everything. Now we're only posting those two service verticals.

• 56:48Anthony Pompliano?

  Okay. And what do you do with around hoarding?

• 56:51Speaker 05

  They love to see what people hoard, what becomes, becomes of their homes, what becomes of them.

• 56:58Anthony Pompliano?

  What are they hoarding?

• 57:00Speaker 05

  Some animals, hoard animals, some hoard trash.

• 57:04Anthony Pompliano?

  Just like, they just don't take the trash out?

• 57:06Speaker 05

  Ever. Not only do they not take their trash out, they're going to go through your trash and bring that shit into their house.

• 57:13Anthony Pompliano?

  For what purpose?

• 57:13Speaker 05

  Cause they like it.

• 57:15Anthony Pompliano?

  They're trash people.

• 57:16Speaker 05

  Yeah. Yeah. Or they, you know, they have seven vacuums, six don't work, but I'm going to keep the six because it has parts for the one that does work.

• 57:26Anthony Pompliano?

  Oh.

• 57:27Speaker 05

  Makes sense?

• 57:27Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah, well, of course.

• 57:29Speaker 05

  Of course.

• 57:29Anthony Pompliano?

  Cause the first five don't have parts either.

• 57:31Speaker 05

  Right.

• 57:32Anthony Pompliano?

  Man, there's some weird people out there.

• 57:35Speaker 05

  Yeah, everybody's got their own tick.

• 57:36Anthony Pompliano?

  There should be a show, uh, in New York City where they just show up at people's apartment like surprise style.

• 57:41Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 57:42Anthony Pompliano?

  And they're like MTV cribs.

• 57:44Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 57:44Anthony Pompliano?

  But like, you haven't cleaned, you don't know they're coming and just like, people would be enamored by like how weird fucking people are.

• 57:51Speaker 05

  Oh yeah, totally.

• 57:52Anthony Pompliano?

  Right? And just like, hey, knock, knock.

• 57:54Speaker 05

  You know, that would, people would not let them in because the first time that somebody, some camera crew walked in and was like, oh shit, there's four dildos over there. You know, they'd be like, oh fuck.

• 58:04Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah. But, but I think that there's some people who are super weird, who are proud. They want people to know.

• 58:11Speaker 05

  Perhaps, yeah.

• 58:12Anthony Pompliano?

  Like, I always just think of, uh, like, the guy who probably has, like, sixteen parrots.

• 58:16Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 58:17Anthony Pompliano?

  He's like, "Come on in. Look, there's Larry and Rob and Dan, right?"

• 58:21Speaker 05

  We eat together, we bathe together.

• 58:23Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah, look, I taught him this trick.

• 58:24Speaker 05

  Yeah, we shit together, yeah.

• 58:26Anthony Pompliano?

  And so you look at it, you're like, okay, like, those types of people would definitely love it.

• 58:29Speaker 05

  Oh, yeah.

• 58:29Anthony Pompliano?

  And then there's the people who are doing real weird stuff.

• 58:31Speaker 05

  Yeah, yeah.

• 58:31Anthony Pompliano?

  I'm good.

• 58:32Speaker 05

  Exactly.

• 58:33Anthony Pompliano?

  And then you're like, "Well, can we pay you?"

• 58:34Speaker 05

  Yeah, exactly. There you go.

• 58:36Anthony Pompliano?

  We definitely want to come to your place.

• 58:36Speaker 05

  I, I found that people have, um, you know, they're adamant, "Oh, no, don't film me, don't film me." But what if we pay you? "Oh, okay, yeah, come in."

• 58:45Speaker 05

  So, uh, you know, their threshold changes when you offer them money.

• 58:48Anthony Pompliano?

  Do you have to get approval?

• 58:50Speaker 05

  We do, we do. We get approval with everyone.

• 58:53Anthony Pompliano?

  And is it just like, "Hey, if you, if you, uh, work with us, we're gonna film?"

• 58:57Speaker 05

  Yeah. It's, you know, we're, we could use this for marketing and educational purposes. And you can say yes or no.

• 59:04Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah. Will you still do the job if they say no?

• 59:06Speaker 05

  Of course, absolutely.

• 59:07Anthony Pompliano?

  So, basically, it's, you ask everyone, but some people say no?

• 59:10Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 59:11Anthony Pompliano?

  And do the people who say no ever have, like, weird shit going on? Or it's like, "Nah, I just, I don't want to..."

• 59:18Speaker 05

  Usually if they say no, it's, it's due to a suicide.

• 59:22Anthony Pompliano?

  Interesting.

• 59:23Speaker 05

  Yeah, they're, they're, uh... Which, you know, has always perplexed me.

• 59:28Anthony Pompliano?

  Okay.

• 59:28Speaker 05

  That you would feel more, um, private about a suicide than you would about an unattended death. Me personally, I would be...

• 59:42Speaker 05

  And this is no shame on anybody else, but I would feel embarrassed if a family member died unattended, because that would mean that nobody ever checked on them. Whereas a suicide is, I view it as a very personal choice. That was the individual's choice, and it's their life, and they can do whatever the fuck they want with it.

• 1:00:00Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah.

• 1:00:03Speaker 05

  But most people that decline, it's always a suicide.

• 1:00:07Anthony Pompliano?

  Suicide.

• 1:00:07Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:00:08Anthony Pompliano?

  Because there's intimacy to it or whatever.

• 1:00:10Speaker 05

  Yes.

• 1:00:10Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah. Absolutely crazy.

• 1:00:12Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:00:13Anthony Pompliano?

  Um, what else about the business that people may not realize that like would be interesting?

• 1:00:18Speaker 05

  Labor is difficult.

• 1:00:20Anthony Pompliano?

  Other than the physical demands of the labor?

• 1:00:23Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:00:24Anthony Pompliano?

  What else?

• 1:00:24Speaker 05

  Well, you know, I think labor in general in America is, is going to shit in a handbasket.

• 1:00:31Speaker 05

  Blue collar wise and I'm, I'm not, I'm not only seeing that with our type of business, but you know, I'm hearing it from plumbers. They see people, contractors, you name it. It's just, it's a change in our work ethic and everybody wants a shit ton of money to do as little as possible. And, um,

• 1:00:51Anthony Pompliano?

  Me too.

• 1:00:52Speaker 05

  Yeah, don't we all, right? But if you don't have the skill set for that, you're not going to get that. Yeah.

• 1:00:58Anthony Pompliano?

  I'm joking for those who are listening or watching. Um, and do you think that that is just a like cultural?

• 1:01:05Speaker 05

  I think it's cultural. Yeah, I do. I've seen the change since I first started 18 years ago. And you know, we've actually tested some different things. We've, we've tested paying brand new, off the street guy doesn't even have a, a high school diploma. 15 bucks an hour. We've tried paying them 25 an hour, all the way up to 35, and we got the same quality of employee with three very different pay rates.

• 1:01:32Anthony Pompliano?

  Mm hmm. What would you say the average employee you have now? College educated, high school educated, no high school education? How old are they?

• 1:01:41Speaker 05

  High school only in their twenties.

• 1:01:43Anthony Pompliano?

  High school only in their twenties. And so this is something where, hey, I don't have tons of options.

• 1:01:48Speaker 05

  They don't.

• 1:01:48Anthony Pompliano?

  And so this is a good option because it probably pays decently well compared to my other options.

• 1:01:54Speaker 05

  Right.

• 1:01:54Anthony Pompliano?

  Uh, and I don't have to have a degree or all this other stuff.

• 1:01:57Speaker 05

  But here's the deal, they get in, they start working for about 90 days and they're like, okay, I know I'm making $20 an hour, but this shit's fucking hard. I'm just going to go to Mickey D's and make 15. And work just fucking flipping burgers. So I think that's the mentality that's kind of happened now. So we're really kind of in a conundrum here of, of finding good talent.

• 1:02:21Speaker 05

  That's gonna stay.

• 1:02:22Anthony Pompliano?

  How do you do that?

• 1:02:24Speaker 05

  I don't know. I don't have the secret yet.

• 1:02:26Anthony Pompliano?

  How often do the employees turn over?

• 1:02:28Speaker 05

  About every six months.

• 1:02:29Anthony Pompliano?

  Every six months?

• 1:02:30Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:02:31Anthony Pompliano?

  That's real short.

• 1:02:32Speaker 05

  Yeah, it is. It's not near as short as a McDonald's employee. I feel their pain. But with ours, it's more expensive because we're giving, yeah, the training is expensive, the inoculations, uniforms, you know, the fit testing and all that kind of stuff. It's expensive.

• 1:02:50Anthony Pompliano?

  You guys have to do physical fitness testing?

• 1:02:52Speaker 05

  Respirator fit test and the physical of like an actual physical, like you went to play football or whatever.

• 1:02:57Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah, that's what I mean. It's basically you're testing the physical fitness or whatever of the.

• 1:03:02Speaker 05

  Can you breathe with a respirator on? Just different, like a lot of people can't do that.

• 1:03:06Anthony Pompliano?

  People don't know what that is.

• 1:03:07Speaker 05

  They don't know what that is. Yeah, you go through the gas chamber, right?

• 1:03:12Anthony Pompliano?

  The, I was talking to a friend that was on the show and he's a Navy SEAL. There's all this controversy now about how the SEALs are getting treated during their training. And as you can imagine, most of the SEALs are like, okay.

• 1:03:25Speaker 05

  Yeah, exactly.

• 1:03:25Anthony Pompliano?

  Wait, wait till you hear what happens after the training.

• 1:03:28Speaker 05

  Yeah, no shit.

• 1:03:29Anthony Pompliano?

  But one of the things that anyone in the Army or in the Navy usually goes through is these gas chambers. And so we were joking after the show that people think you go into the gas chamber with the gas mask on.

• 1:03:42Speaker 05

  No.

• 1:03:42Anthony Pompliano?

  And then you walk out and like, it's just like the test.

• 1:03:45Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:03:46Anthony Pompliano?

  And we were like, if only the public somehow figured out that, no, they make you take the gas mask off, talk, open your eyes.

• 1:03:52Speaker 05

  Say your social, your phone number, all that shit. Yeah.

• 1:03:55Anthony Pompliano?

  Oh, yeah. And then they make you put the gas mask back on and people come out and they got snot coming out of them.

• 1:03:59Speaker 05

  Snot ringing up. Oh, yeah.

• 1:04:00Anthony Pompliano?

  And he was like, so, yeah, a gas chamber is fine, right? Like, like almost if people actually knew the details, they'd be even more pissed.

• 1:04:08Speaker 05

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:04:08Anthony Pompliano?

  But a respirator, you're not necessarily doing that type of stuff, but it's very hard to breathe to your point.

• 1:04:13Speaker 05

  It is. It's, it's very taxing. And, you know, my biggest issue with it is, well, there's two. The cartridges tend to carry a little bit of weight to them.

• 1:04:23Anthony Pompliano?

  Yes.

• 1:04:23Speaker 05

  So my neck at the end of the day is fucking on fire. And secondly, my peripheral vision is fucking shot. So. And somebody's like, you know, swinging a hammer back there. I can't see it. I can't see it.

• 1:04:36Anthony Pompliano?

  And you have to wear the respirator and all the protective equipment because you kind of don't know what you're.

• 1:04:41Speaker 05

  You have no idea what's in there. And I don't want, you know, hepatitis, you know, touching my skin, you know, C. diff, MRSA. There's just a ton of shit that you, you have to protect yourself against.

• 1:04:54Anthony Pompliano?

  What's the most fun part of doing this? Now you've been doing it for 18 years.

• 1:04:58Speaker 05

  That it's different every day.

• 1:05:00Anthony Pompliano?

  What's the worst part?

• 1:05:03Anthony Pompliano?

  Just whatever you just thought you should say.

• 1:05:05Speaker 05

  Well, I, I'm, I'm thinking, I would say, working in confined spaces. Like, uh.

• 1:05:10Anthony Pompliano?

  Claustrophobic?

• 1:05:11Speaker 05

  Yeah, I had a guy that shot himself in the attic with a shotgun and, uh, fucking attic. Like, an unfinished attic.

• 1:05:20Anthony Pompliano?

  Super small.

• 1:05:21Speaker 05

  And I'm walking up the stairs because the, the cops were still there and they're like, oh, he's up in the attic, you know, you can go take a look or whatever. And I get up to the second floor and his blood is dripping down the wall on the second floor from the attic. So it looked like The Shining. Going in and I'm like, oh, wow. It's fresh, like real fresh and it's clearly a lot of fucking blood up there. So I go up there and he's still up there. And all I could see was about this much of his scruff. And his face is just blown off. His eyeball is shot into the air vent. And his jaw, like just fucking everything, right? It's just everywhere. And the blood is just dripping down.

• 1:06:04Speaker 05

  So not only are you cleaning the attic now, you're cleaning the fucking second floor, which is a finished living space.

• 1:06:10Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah.

• 1:06:11Speaker 05

  So it's, it's challenging.

• 1:06:12Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah. Um, when you think back to the start of the business, what do you wish you knew that you know now?

• 1:06:20Speaker 05

  So much. Like, I probably lost a shit ton of money. Oh, I know I did. I lost a shit ton of money the first. Three years in business because no one taught me, how do you quote this? How do you bill this? How do you, how do you charge for this? Like, it was literally just kind of cowboys and Indians, like, uh, yeah, that sounds good. You know, and I way, way undercharged. I was lucky enough to have an insurance adjuster pull me aside like three years later and go, "Hey, I'm not supposed to tell you this, but you way undercharged." I'm like, "Fucking A, are you serious?" Yeah, he's like, "You should be charging double."

• 1:06:55Anthony Pompliano?

  Wow.

• 1:06:55Speaker 05

  Oh, fuck.

• 1:06:56Anthony Pompliano?

  For the same amount of work?

• 1:06:57Speaker 05

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:06:59Anthony Pompliano?

  That's pretty crazy.

• 1:07:00Speaker 05

  Yeah, because there's just nothing to go off of. It's not like, you know, plumbing, I know what a, a typical like truck, travel charge is or whatever. With this, it's totally out of the blue.

• 1:07:10Anthony Pompliano?

  Totally different.

• 1:07:11Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:07:11Anthony Pompliano?

  I know that you get a lot of inspiration from other industries or other businesses. How do you go about finding those inspirations or those ideas that you then can bring into an industry that frankly, there's just not that many people do or know about?

• 1:07:23Speaker 05

  Yeah, so I, I always look outside industries and particularly real estate investment kind of, uh, for my ideas, especially with marketing. So we have to be kind of strategic about how we market and, um, about five years ago, I came up with bandit signs. I'm like, "Man, they, they do that everywhere for real estate and it works, so let's try that, let's try that." So we kind of deployed that in all of our markets and we tested kind of different type of things. Well, not only did we get service calls for it, we got employees out of it. "Oh, my God, crime scene cleaning, I want to do that, are you hired?" Like, you know, people were kind of enamored with that. So I kind of got that idea from there. Um, software ideas I get from there to, um, you know, like CRMs, automation, just things

• 1:08:08Speaker 05

  like that. They're, that industry is very good at that.

• 1:08:14Speaker 05

  And we can't do a traditional billboard, you know, uh, buy one, get one free, you know, any newspaper ad, you can't do, do anything like that, but...

• 1:08:24Anthony Pompliano?

  Radio ad, "Hey, if a family member has passed away."

• 1:08:27Speaker 05

  Yeah, if you see something dripping through your second floor, call us. Yeah, you can't really do that. So it, it's been a test, you know, and when I first started out, I did that billboard thing, lost a... shit ton of money because it never worked. But I, it was almost like throwing darts at a dartboard and seeing what stuck. But as I grew, I was able to kind of say, okay, let's take different industries and see what's working for them and see if that there's a possibility that that could work with us. And social media was one of those.

• 1:08:55Anthony Pompliano?

  Outside of the bank loan, did you have to take any money to grow the business?

• 1:08:58Speaker 05

  No. Well, I tried. No one ever gave me any money. Ain't that a bitch? Yeah, I tried to get a lot of um bank loans, uh, you know, things like that. The only thing that I've ever gotten was a mortgage for our building.

• 1:09:12Anthony Pompliano?

  And when you look at that, is that actually a blessing in disguise now?

• 1:09:17Speaker 05

  Not really, because I feel like I could have grown twice as fast in a shorter period of time. And uh you know, perhaps exited, gone into a different type of industry and, you know, just kind of rinse and repeat. But I've been doing this for eighteen years. That's, that's a bit long.

• 1:09:35Anthony Pompliano?

  My, uh, my last question for you.

• 1:09:37Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:09:37Anthony Pompliano?

  Are you still having fun?

• 1:09:38Speaker 05

  Yes, I am having fun with uh various aspects of it. You know, I, I have a lot of fun with the social media side of it. Cause I think it's just it's so ripe for, for anything, you know, and it, it cracks me up when most business owners are like, oh my God, you have to be so PC. You have to watch what you say, watch what you do. I'm like, fuck, no, you don't. We do whatever we want. We don't censor shit. If you don't like it, don't fucking watch the channel. You know, that's just really what it is. And uh, businesses are too focused on being sterile and we're not.

• 1:10:13Anthony Pompliano?

  I think that is a great piece of advice for a lot of people.

• 1:10:16Speaker 05

  I do.

• 1:10:16Anthony Pompliano?

  Cutting through the noise. If you act, talk and uh kind of conduct yourself the way everyone else does, it's real hard to stand out.

• 1:10:24Speaker 05

  Absolutely.

• 1:10:25Anthony Pompliano?

  Where can we send people to find you on the internet or find out more about the business?

• 1:10:28Speaker 05

  Well, if you like watching gore, you can go to YouTube at Crime Scene Cleaning. Uh, we just passed a million subs on that, so we're super excited about that. Um, we're on TikTok as well, Crime Scene Cleaning. We got about five million there, Instagram, Facebook. You know, we're kind of all over the place. And if, we're, we're actually starting a subscription site on our Crime Scene Cleaning website, crime scene cleaning.com. For um, kind of behind the scenes, super gory videos that we wouldn't make it on, on social.

• 1:10:55Anthony Pompliano?

  I can't wait to hear how many people sign up for that.

• 1:10:59Speaker 05

  Your own personal gross room, right?

• 1:11:01Anthony Pompliano?

  Absolutely. And then do you have anything personally that people should follow?

• 1:11:05Speaker 05

  Yeah, I've got a, I've got a book getting ready to come out here, probably in a few months. We just got signed with an agent on that. So I'm working on that.

• 1:11:13Speaker 05

  We're kind of in talks with maybe a reality show going on here and I'm on Facebook as well and, you know, LinkedIn and all that other kind of stuff. Laura Spaulding.

• 1:11:24Anthony Pompliano?

  Awesome. Well, I appreciate it very much. I really enjoyed this conversation. I learned a lot. Didn't know the economics of a street bust or crime scene cleaning, but we'll definitely do this again in the future.

• 1:11:35Speaker 05

  Yeah, thanks for having me.