"From Homelessness to Fraud: A Risky Escape from Desperation"

[How I narrowly dodged a White Collar Federal Prison Sentence]

Addiction is a mental health disease. Physiologically when someone is addicted to drugs and or alcohol their brain's pleasure reward center becomes hijacked effectively changing it's structure, or the more accepted term, neural pathways. Imagine a car driving down a street that leads to one single house at the end of the block. This street is the pathway, the house is our brain and the car which we are driving down said street in order to reach our house is the neural signal which will instruct our brain to release dopamine, the pleasure chemical. Our brain is wired to incentivize this connection in order to guarantee our further survival in life. This is why we feel good when having sex, eating, etc. When one starts using drugs, new "streets" are created in order to keep up with the amount of neural signal which is bombarding our brain, due to the massive overload of dopamine we are experiencing.

[Methamphetamine] causes permanent damage to dopamine receptors, neural pathways, and re-wires the brain's ability to experience pleasure.

By the time someone is fully addicted there are now 100x the amount of "streets", neural pathways, which have been artificially created, essentially rewiring how our brain experiences pleasure and where it derives this connection from. What makes addiction so devastating is we at this point have trained our brain, through primal design, that said drug is now necessary for our survival. Our brain doesn't know the difference between artificial dopamine(Meth, Heroin) and natural dopamine (sex, food), it just knows it feels good and to keep incentivizing that reaction. The problem is that, now we have created so much "demand" in our brain there is no possible way to keep up the "supply" so, this is the part where you see people doing anything and everything for their fix- ie robbing, stealing, killing, etc. Little do they know they are fighting a losing battle. This is where the disease model comes into play. If left untreated, addiction is chronic, progressive and fatal. Many addicts die, never leave the streets and or end up in prison. I've faced all three many times over.

[Methamphetamine] severely destroys brain tissue, completely shutting down parts of the brain that control emotion, impulse control, and critical thinking skills.

For all my non-addicted normies out there, just so we're clear, I have yet to meet someone who's a fresh addict who ends up on the streets permanently. Yes maybe they got kicked out of their sober house or their boyfriend was mad at them for a night so they slept in the park, but that ain't what I'm talking about. By the time someone has taken up permanent residence on the street as a result of their drug addiction it's safe to say they crossed the finish line a long time ago. At this point it becomes a waiting game. By waiting I mean it's only a matter of time before they die, go to prison or seek help. Although it does happen, out of all the people I personally met who were Big-Book certified Mad Dog junkies who took permanent residence as a skid-row homeless person, I can name a handful who are clean today. The rest are dead, still homeless or now living in one of the states and or federal governments fine criminal justice institutions. I say this to give perspective because most people don't make it out.

At this point on my homeless vacation I got involved in something I like to call, "Walking neighborhoods, scouting apartment buildings and businesses and stealing their mail in hopes of acquiring tax returns in order to commit identity theft." I was a great guy back then.

My plan was simple, I would literally stalk unguarded mailboxes and steal mail in hopes of hitting a "jackpot". I would then take desired items such as bank statements, W2's, DMV records, etc and piece together a person's identity until I had enough to fraudulently open credit cards or take out loans. Usually, for every 10 I attempted, 1 would yield a favorable outcome. At this point I would use that identity for a few days until it was flagged for fraud, then I would discard and move on. I quickly realized that although it was highly profitable, the amount of "heat" it brought was unattractive to someone trying to maintain a low profile. So, I broadened my horizons and became a broker. I would simply acquire the info, then sell it to drugs dealers since that's where I was ultimately ending up anyway.

If you stood on Wall Street everyday for a month and asked each passer by what they thought homeless people were doing for money every day, I guarantee you the majority of people would have no idea how prevalent identity theft is in homelessness communities. People think of a homeless guy and picture the dude on the corner begging for change. They never even consider the possibility there's an organized homeless crime syndicate meticulously religiously dedicated to white collar crime. If people were aware, they would quit discarding their personal information in public dumpsters. Homeless people, despite their outward appearance are some of the most resourceful, clever people I have ever met. You would be blown away by how deep it runs.

[Neighborhood] where we would frequently "mailbox shop" for personal information to be used for identity theft.

As the saying goes, every story comes to an end. At some point during my business transactions some choir boy got jammed up by the feds and start singing like Dolly Parton at the American Country Music Awards(whack). If you ever meet someone who pulls the whole "I don't snitch" line, they are lying. Everyone tells when they're in a tough situation, because nobody's trying to go to state and or federal prison if they don't absolutely have to.

When you have been on the streets for a while and have been indoctrinated in that lifestyle, you become very sensitive to change. Out of necessity, you become hyper aware of your surroundings and the people in such surroundings. That being said it's never hard to spot when someone starts acting differently, which usually means they have "flipped"(become an informant). So like clockwork that day inevitably came, which I knew it eventually would.

To make a long story short, I decided to disappear due to ripping off a drug dealer in order to preserve my health. I did this often, usually resurfacing after a couple weeks. During those weeks the police set up a sting to catch the mail thieves in the area, subsequently uncovering the identity theft conspiracy. They didn't have names, or even know the main players in the beginning but once a few guys got busted stealing mail, the rest was history. I have no doubt that I would have also been caught as well if I were in the area, it was inevitable. Once again, I dodged the penitentiary like I had so many times before. When it was all said a done, two of our "bosses" plead guilty to federal conspiracy charges and were sentenced to 12 and 18 months, respectively, in federal prison. I doubt I would have even been sentenced to much time at all due to me being a relatively small player in the big picture, but I would have been in a position to "talk" and I'm glad I didn't have to make that choice one way or another.

[Bastrop FCI] where my 2 accomplices were sentenced to Federal Prison time.

To this day I don't know why I was able to escape those situations relatively unscathed. Call it streets smarts, luck or divine intervention, who knows. Whatever it was, I'm eternally grateful. So far, I have made amends to the parties I harmed and have been met with such unwarranted grace it's borderline unbelievable. Most people have simply said, "All is forgiven, thank you," while a few others have been more harsh, understandably. To this day, none of them have been motivated to press charges on me, something I made very clear I was willing to face. This has given me the strength and courage to continue the amends process and not take any of that for granted. More importantly it has prepared my heart to extended the same amount of grace to others who might possibly harm me in the future. It's funny how that works.