Larry Lawton On Surviving Prison & Stealing Tens of Millions of Diamonds | Digital Social Hour #130

I robbed $15, $18 million with the mob.

I ended up doing four 12-year sentences.

I was in maximum security prisons.

I was tortured in prison.

I ended up in the hole for three years.

So what's the most expensive diamond you stole and how much planning went into that?

Good questions.

Most expensive single diamond?

Probably $150,000.

But I robbed the whole store.

You know, when I robbed the store, the guy's out of business.

I mean, he liked me.

It's a fact, you know, the store owners didn't hate me because they have insurance.

Insurance, man, they sold their whole store in one shot.

They got out of the business.

They got it.

Hey,

even if they didn't, they got a lot more than they would have had.

They had a piece of jewelry on their shelf for two years, sold, you know.

Welcome to the Digital Social Hour.

I'm your host, Sean Kelly.

I'm here with an amazing guest today for you guys, Larry Lawton.

How's it going?

Thanks for having me, Sean.

Glad to be your amazing young man.

Absolutely, man.

So, a lot of people probably know you, but for those who don't, I love you.

Give a quick summary of your story.

You know, I did a lot of time.

I'm the biggest, I'm known as the biggest jewel robber in the United States ever.

I robbed 15, 18 million dollars with the mob.

I would not tell on anybody.

I ended up doing four 12-year sentences, run concurrent.

I was in maximum security prisons.

I was tortured in prison.

I ended up getting

in the hole for three years.

I was in solitary confinement for three years.

I ended up getting a law degree.

I can't be a lawyer.

I have the credits because I'm a convicted felon.

But today, now I develop the number one program that helps young people around the world, actually.

My program is used by the federal government, court systems, police agencies, families all over the world.

And I'm also the only ex-con in the United States who's an honorary police officer, and the only ex-con in the United States who's recognized on the floor of the United States Congress

to this day.

And that it's kind of surreal sometimes, you know what I mean?

Like, you say, is that me?

Because I'm still a street guy, you know what I mean?

And that's where I'll always be because I was born and raised in the Bronx, New York.

So, you know, I come from the streets, you know.

So that's pretty much in a nutshell.

I have a book, Gangster Redemption, a best-selling book.

I have another book coming out called Prison Cookbook, Cook with Larry Law.

And I have a cookbook.

It's amazing.

All done in like prison style with stingers and

items.

People go, wow, it's wild.

So that's coming out in August.

We just put it on pre-release and it's going crazy.

And then I also have a program that parents buy for their kids that is online as well.

Nice.

How is the food in prison?

Like, what if you're a vegetarian?

Do they have different options?

There's no options.

I think everybody's a vegetarian, Sean.

Matter of fact, that's true.

It's a great question.

It wasn't asked to me.

I was in Atlanta, USP Atlanta.

We had a murder a month for 18 months.

That's a USP Atlanta.

Wow.

Very bad prison.

At the time, it was the worst prison in the United States.

I quit eating meat then

because I ate meat.

First of all, this is in 1997,

and I ate meat from 1992.

Whoa.

Yeah, five years old.

And it literally had on the box Desert Storm.

They Desert Storm and Desert Shield was back, you know, way in the 90s early.

It was the Iran war and all of that.

So

we had the boxes.

They gave the meat.

The meat was such poor quality.

They'd take it off like near the bone of the cow and there'd be bone in it.

And I'd chipped a tooth and it was the war.

I think about that and almost want to.

You know, it's terrible, man.

Yeah, that's awful, man.

And when you got to prison, like, what was that like?

Where were you at mentally, and how did you survive?

I mean, that's crazy.

You know, survival in prison is a mindset, obviously.

Yeah,

I was big, strong, a thousand push-ups in an hour, a thousand crunches in the same hour.

But it's not about that, Sean.

It's about mental.

I was prepared.

I knew I was going to go.

When I was doing my crimes, I never thought I'd either see 50.

I'm 61.

So I never thought I would see 50.

I went to prison.

I had connections, obviously, with the mob.

I was with the Gambinos.

And I went to prison.

So kind of like fell right into that crew.

But it's still survival.

I've seen stuff that will make your skin crawl.

Man get his cut from the top of his ass until his screw

by two people and boiling water with a chocolate bar and olive oil in a bowl.

boiled and thrown in a guy's face.

His face was peeling.

So I see some crazy, crazy stuff.

And your mindset, though, has to be survival.

What people don't understand about prison, Sean, is

your first year to two years, you don't even really, nothing processes in that kind of environment.

I'm in a maximum security prison.

And

even as a white guy in a maximum security prison, I'm a minority.

You know, I tell black friends of mine, you know, we'll all hang out and I go, you don't know what it's like to, man,

you're a white guy, man.

You don't know what it's like to be prejudiced.

Hold on.

on.

I was in prison with 15% white.

I'm a minority.

You're never going to be white, I tell them.

So you don't know what it's like.

So I know both sides.

And that's why I have no prejudices in me.

I don't judge anybody.

I mean, period.

I don't care what it is.

And

I think that's the best gift my parents gave me, too.

Did people try to test you in prison since you were outnumbered?

Sure.

People are going to test everybody in prison, whether you're outnumbered or not.

I was in one jail, and I walk into the jail.

This is after Hurricane Andrew, which is 1992.

I walk into Miami-Dade County Jail.

There was no electric, no nothing.

I mean, you know, there wasn't anything there.

It was a jail, and it had no electric after the hurricane.

So they had 32 guys in a 16-man pot.

This is just one place I was in.

I was the only Caucasian in the whole place.

So I've been around.

I know what time it is.

They had this TV show called Fresh Prince of Bel Air.

Yeah.

It was on TV.

Now they have what they call a houseman.

So I walk into the cell.

I know they all look at me.

I say, I know what I have to do.

I walk up to that TV and I turn the channel.

I said, the first man who opens his mouth, boom, I'm going to hit him.

And I do.

He doesn't go down and I can hit.

Boy, did we get to fighting?

I couldn't even.

Don't he busted my windpipe.

My hand was broke.

I mean, I was bloodied.

And, you know, they come in, they take us apart.

And

thank God, because he was getting better at me.

And they threw me out.

The next day, Sean, they put me back in that same pot.

He looked at me.

I looked at him.

He was a convict.

It's called being a convict or an inmate.

And he knew what I did, and he goes, you're all right.

And we were cool.

And he was what they call the house man, meaning the kind of inmate that runs that pot.

And that's even from the guard's perspective.

They'll like they'll dish out the food and stuff like that.

Wow.

And this is a county jail.

And

he threw a guy off one of the bunks.

It gave me that bunk.

I mean, there were 16 bunks.

There's 30 guys in it.

Wow.

And

so, you know, he knew it.

I knew it.

So you're going to be tested.

It's how you, whether you lose or win.

Doesn't have anything to do with it.

Really?

A lot of people think that, oh, I got to win.

Nope.

I've seen a kid get kicked two, three times in a row.

People say, man, that kid is is a warrior.

He's good with us now.

Wow.

And it took that because you showed heart.

You show your internal fortitude.

You don't quit.

You don't cower.

You fight.

And you, again, I get kids that say, man, I never lost a fight.

I said, really?

You never fought the right guy.

There's always someone better.

Absolutely.

So you're pretty much supposed to assert dominance as soon as you enter prison.

It's not about asserting dominance.

It's about standing your ground or not accepting disrespect towards you.

You know, I often tell young people, you want to go to prison, the most respect you'll ever see is in prison.

Because if you bump into somebody, you better say, excuse me.

Because if you don't,

fight.

You could get

wow.

See, you know, the difference between a penitentiary and a, let's say, a medium security prison or a low.

And I've been to a medium, that's the lowest I've ever got.

But there's like a camp, a low, a medium, and a high.

The difference between a, let's say, a medium and a high is there's less fighting and more stabbings and more

serious violence.

The high ones have stabbings?

Yeah.

Oh, there's more people.

You know what I mean?

It's, you know, I often tell people, you know, let's say you and I went to prison and you weren't around.

I'd say, oh, Sean, I'm going to teach you the ropes.

You know, how do you know how there's tension in this prison?

Look at what people are wearing on their feet.

If they have flip-flops on, I'm not worried about this place.

If everybody's walking around in sneakers and boots be careful wow keep an eye on what people are wearing you'll see them a shirt you know come up and you'll see a magazine there that's body armor

you'll also go to i'll say come on show we're going to shower not to do anything obviously but you go in the shower

you know you walk the shower you take your boots off you get in i'm outside the shower i see three guys come and i hit the wall you put your boots on and get your shank wow you're ready to go because i watched the kid not do that he was stabbed up in the shower, fell down, covered the drain, and the blood was going all down the tier.

Oh, my gosh.

And people don't get the real prisons.

You know, I often tell, I don't dramatize, I don't scare, I don't have a scared straper.

I don't believe in that.

I tell the truth.

You want to go and play around today.

You want to really cross the line, so to speak.

The United States is a very, very bad prison system.

A lot of people don't know that.

It's one of the worst in the free world.

And I'm talking about like Germany, France, Italy, Spain, Canada,

all of those countries have better prison systems than the United States.

We don't care about them.

It's a shame.

Our country does not care about its own citizens in that kind of way.

And Sean, a great thing was told to me once, and this is the truth.

A country should be judged on how it handles its elderly, It's infirmed, and it's incarcerated.

You handle them with the right respect, and everything.

You're doing the right things.

Just because they don't have a voice, they're abused.

And that's kind of sad.

Like the elderly, we don't handle elderly too well.

Even infirm, we have a pretty our medical system is, you know, if you're poor, you can be bankrupt.

Yeah.

You can't, that doesn't happen in other countries.

Yeah, it's super expensive.

You mentioned you were tortured in prison.

Was that from other inmates or from the guards?

No,

it was guards.

I was fighting the abuses.

I ended up getting my law degree.

I used to fight the system a lot.

I was in the hole a lot.

Well,

I was exposing the prison for a couple of inmates.

They really through medical care.

There's an article out there.

I compare the prison to Abu Gharab.

Abu Gharab was the prison in Iraq where the Americans were tortured in Iraqi prison.

This was a big thing back in the day.

Well, I was taken.

to the hole.

I was in there for 11 straight months.

And you go crazy.

There's no question solitary confinement is one of the worst things you can do to a human being.

We're communicators.

We're people people.

So you didn't talk to anyone for 11 months?

Nobody.

I mean, a guard that walked by.

You ended up telling them to go themselves and everything else.

And it was funny because, I mean, funny, people asked me.

I was taken out of my cell, strapped down naked.

They came in my cell.

They'd beat the shit out of me, breaking ribs.

Now you're dead.

You don't even know.

They take you out of the cell, strip you naked, and literally four-point you naked on a slab.

And I had a guard stand over my face, and man, look at me, I'm gonna get goosebumps,

piss in my face

and say, keep writing centers, Lawton, keep writing centers.

Because I was writing, I ended up learning that the pen is mightier than the sword.

I had a guard spit, you know, this is how I'm four-pointed.

And, you know, at that point,

you're pretty, your brain, I ended up,

people would say, you know, when you were fighting them, because I went crazy.

And did you, what was that the most point when you're scared?

I said, no.

The worst part you have is when they open the tear door, you know, you're in a cell and they have a tear.

Well, they even lock the tear door.

When they lock that tear door, unlock it, and you hear them, hear the chains rattle, and you know they're coming to your cell.

That 30 seconds, 40 seconds.

Because when they come down the tier, Sean, if they don't say cuff up, Lawton, cuff up.

You have to put your hands through the food slot that opens, and then they have if you ever watch the prison movie.

And if they don't say cuff up, they're going to beat you.

They're going to throw,

you know, I love guys who stick their tough.

Oh, yeah, I'm a martial artist, I'm a MMA.

I did a lot of that stuff.

Let me tell you something.

It means

when five guys rush your cell in this little compartment and they geared up.

So I've been concussion grenaded.

What's up?

That's when they drop a concussion grenade in the cell and the equilibrium out of your ear, you go boom, you fall straight down.

I've been shocked

with the shields.

I've been maced.

That man, you know, they hit you right in the face and you're on the floor, knots coming out of your nose,

in a fetal position.

And

so I've been gassed, I've been shocked, I've been concussion grenaded, and I will tell you what, there isn't a thing you can do about it.

You know, you think, oh, I wrote senators, I have letters from senators.

If I wasn't writing the people that I was writing,

I truly believe to this day I wouldn't be sitting here, I'd be dead.

Wow.

But I ended up bringing enough attention on the prison with my family and friends too,

that they couldn't just get rid of me at that point because then it would have been, they would have known.

Somebody would have.

So what were you writing to them?

Just like

I was writing, I was writing letters to, like, I was in South Carolina at the time, a prison called Edgefield, and

terrible prison, new, looked beautiful.

It was like a torture chamber.

And when they put me in the hole and they started this,

I wouldn't quit because they friends of mine, medical.

One of my friends was having chest pains, arm pains.

He goes to medical.

They say, you know, go, he's still having a week later.

The guard he works for in what they call CMS, it's like the prison maintenance, says, man, Arch, you look terrible.

Get to medical.

He walks into medical.

They give him mailocks and say, you got gas, get out of here.

And he walks back to the cell.

Myself and this other guy named Jimmy Brown are standing there watching the TV on their two TVs.

and he walks in and he's pale.

He says, I'm dying.

We put him in a chair.

He goes over and dies right there, right in front of us.

I don't know if you've ever seen a man die.

I've seen many.

When a person dies, the first thing that happens is

everything that's in them comes out.

They are, you know, they

soil themselves, if you want to call it.

Piss and whatever.

And

so he falls down, and then the guard sees it.

We're trying to help him and they go, lock down, lock down.

Everybody will run to their cells.

And they hit what they call the deuces.

People go, what's the deuces?

The deuces are the little button they have on their radio.

When they hit that button, everybody comes running.

The reason they call it the deuces, a lot of people don't know this.

The reason they call it the deuces is because in every phone in the prison, if you hit 222, it's like there's a button.

So they'll come running to that phone, all the guards in the whole facility.

So So they hit the deuces

and they lock us all in our cells and they caught them away and they were laughing, Sean.

My cell was near the door and it had this like little window like that that wide, you know, not real windows.

And I'm looking out that window

and I could see them put them on like a golf cart in the back of a golf cart.

You know, it had like a little flat spot.

And they didn't give.

They didn't try to give them CPR.

They didn't do laughing.

I mean, they were must talking about something else or whatever.

And boy, did that to this day pisses me off.

And what happened was they come to every cell and they said, well, you saw him hit his head, right?

Hit his head.

You killed that

as quick as somebody stab him.

And boy, they didn't like that.

And they put me in the hole to try to shut me up.

And

I'm pretty stubborn.

So

I wouldn't be shut up.

And that's why I actually compare the prison I was in to Abu Gharab.

And an article.

I wrote an article to a magazine.

And they publish it.

And boy, from then on, then I got people involved like senators, Senator, in fact, Senator Lindsey Graham, Senator Hillary Clinton from New York.

She was a senator at the time.

Bill Posey, not Bill Posey,

there was a guy named McCallum.

There was a couple other senators and congressmen from, oh, Debbie Wassamie Schultz.

She was from Fort Lauderdale because I lived in Fort Lauderdale.

So a lot of them, I was starting to write politicians because I found out the prison system can match your violence.

They don't care about how tough you are.

They don't care what you do.

They're going to beat you.

They're going to win.

They don't like the pen.

Right.

You know, and

so I understood that.

And I think that's a turning point my whole life, too.

Right.

What do you think the way to fix a prison system is?

Because it seems like a lot of the issues are from the guards, right?

Well, you know, I don't know.

Well, part of its guards, obviously, hiring and training the right people.

I mean, you can't, there's no qualifications to be a guard.

High school diploma.

I don't even know if you have to have that.

So they're getting people who can't get a job anywhere else, have power issues or whatever.

There's

zero psychological training to get in there.

And, you know, you get the wrong guy with keys and the power.

You know, there's an old saying, Sean, and if you ever heard of the Stanford study, it was a study they did at Stanford University in 1971 where they took the class and they split them up from prisoners to inmates.

Did you know they had to stop the study in eight days?

Because the prison, the guard

students were abusing

the inmates.

Wow.

And that's a study.

It's called the Stanford Study, if anybody wants to look it up.

So there's an old saying, power corrupts absolutely.

Absolute power corrupts absolutely.

So, but to fix the system, what you said, I'm not saying it's just the guards, it's policies, it's training, it's the people in leadership positions, when they know things are happening, they still do nothing about it.

It's like policing.

How do you fix policing?

Well,

if the police won't police themselves,

How is the public to believe they're going to police us, you know, without abusing people?

You don't think, listen, if you take a corporation and there's 200 employees, you know, I have employees, I'm sure you had employees, the whole works,

you know who the screw-up is.

And all the people who work for you know who the screw-up is.

Well, you have a police department with 300 cops.

I expect there to be bad cops.

I'm not blaming the police department for that.

I mean, you take a collective apple of any company, there's going to be bad people.

But when you know they're bad and you leave them there

and you don't do anything about it, that's what I mean by policing yourself.

You take a police department with 300 people.

They have

two, three.

Some people say it's 10%.

I'm not even saying that high.

10% would be 30 bad cops.

Let's just say it's 1%.

Okay?

So if you have three bad cops in that place,

you don't think everybody else knows who they are?

Of course they do.

So they know who the one's doing the bad shit, and they don't police themselves.

They cover it up.

So that's when you become an organization that it's an us against them.

That's why we have a policing problem.

Right.

Because they don't want to police themselves.

Same with guards or same with the prison system.

The best way we can stop prison, fix our own prison system is two main things need to happen.

We need to get rid of private prisons, for-profit prisons.

How do you give a company money and say, I want you to guard these thousand inmates?

Now you're going to cut costs because you're a business.

You want to put the exact, you're not going to give overtime if it's needed to your own guards.

You're not going to give the programs needed that someone needs to get out and get help.

You're going to cut back on the food, on medicine, and it happens all the time.

So private prisons are gone.

They should be out.

There's no way any country or government and people, we the people or the government, should pay people to incarcerate another person.

Second way they can do it is they have to have an independent, and I say independent, they have a thing called the

ACCR,

American Credit, ACA, American Creditation Association.

What a crock.

They used to come into the prison, Sean.

They knew when they were coming.

They would make the inmates paint the walls.

They'd put the best food up.

They'd come in for two days.

They would hide guys like me or people in the hole that are being abused where they couldn't see them.

And then they come and look, we're accredited.

Accredited.

Take that piece of paper and wipe with it because it's nothing.

Now, if you put an independent board together, and I often talk about this, I can actually do this for free.

You take a person like myself, former inmate, you take a former guard, a former medical personnel in a prison system, maybe a former warden.

They have to have the right, they have to have the right credentials on the team.

And now we, this team, would have autonomy, would be able to go into any, let's say it's the federal government, any federal prison they want at any time they want,

show up at 2 in the morning on a Sunday.

Now, what would happen?

They would set this up.

The first prison that says, oh, we don't let it.

Did you know a United States senator or United States congressman?

There's 435 senators in the United States, Congressman in the United States, there's 100 senators.

That's 535 people of the legislative branch of the United States, the three branches of the United States government.

Massive.

535 of the most powerful people in this country.

Did you know not one of them could just go up to a prison and go in?

Not one of them are allowed to go in that prison without a whole

clearance, this, talk to this guy, talk to this.

So if I'm a senator, I say, I want to go and visit that prison, I give you the money for it.

I want to go,

we'll have to set that up, senator.

They cannot go into that prison.

Wow.

Now, we need that change where a team

can go in.

Now, I go up to that door in that prison and they refuse to let me in.

First thing would happen,

they'd put a memo out.

Hey, there's this team that can go into any prison.

If they come with the right credentials, they have to be led into that prison at that minute.

The first prison I go to, and they don't let that happen, Sean,

whoever's the leading person on that prison gets fired on the spot, no pension, everything's done.

You lose your pension, you lose everything, and you were running that prison at that time.

You knew it was coming, not coming, you knew the memo, you didn't read it or whatever training they got.

Hey, beforehand, if there's a special team, if they ever show up here, if you don't, you will lose your job, you will lose pay.

It's going to happen.

Because some wardens say, I don't care who they are, nobody comes into my prison.

Well, really?

Fired on the spot.

You know what would happen in the next prison?

They'd be let in

immediately.

Now, once they're in that prison, Sean, I would know where to go.

See, if I put you on my team, what would you do?

You wouldn't know where to go.

I could teach you and say, well, you can go here.

Every prison's built like this.

You know what you're going to know.

You wouldn't know how to talk to the inmates to find out the problems.

I would.

They would talk to me.

They're not going to hide from me.

And people say, well, they won't because the prison ain't going to beat them.

No, no, no.

You set up a system.

I set up a system that we have a person in our office that calls every day and talks to that inmate and finds out the minute you can't call.

And if he wants to transfer, he goes to any prison he wants.

And we can monitor him so the prisoners are able to talk.

Now, the prisoner is going to b to.

I would know it's b not.

You get what I'm saying?

Yeah.

So I could talk to a person in a hole and find out why you're in the hole.

The hole, called the hole.

It's also called special housing, a shoe, S-H-U, which is special housing unit.

There's the box, the hole.

There's a bunch of names used for it.

It's proven to be one of the worst things you could do to a human being.

Wow.

I see.

Because

it was such social animals.

And people go crazy.

You know, there was a kid on a yard.

I used used to talk to him all the time.

Nice guy,

about mid-30s, you know, maybe 35.

I went in at 34.

I got out at 46.

So I was in a long time.

And this guy was a young guy, nice guy.

Well, he goes to the hole.

He was in the hole approximately, I don't know, a year maybe.

I saw him in the hole.

This man

went absolutely crazy.

He was taking

feces out of his ass and writing on the wall demonic stuff.

Whoa.

I mean,

I mean, the stuff I saw,

he would, what they call Jack the Chute, which means the food chute where they put you, you know, in.

He'd put his arm through it.

So one time they broke his arm by slamming it.

He went crazy, and he went crazy because of the hole.

He was a normal guy I talked to.

Matter of fact, I don't even know his crime because you don't know a lot of people's crimes, but he was a good dude.

He used to bet with me.

I was a bookkeeper in prison too.

I had to make money.

And

he would come and bet

football tickets and stuff would hustle, so to speak.

So

people go crazy, and it's sad.

It's a sad place.

Yeah, so you went through a lot of traumatic experiences, probably major PTSD, right?

Me?

I do, but, you know,

we can stay for hours because that's another topic the government has lied to us forever.

To this day, they're using mushrooms, they're using LSD as some of the best PTS, you know, for helping PTSD in the world.

Yeah.

But they lied to everybody for the last 40 years saying, oh, how bad all this stuff is for you.

You know, it's like pot.

Pot was supposed to be the big evil drug, you know?

Nancy Reagan.

You smoke pot, your brain's on ⁇ the f ⁇ out of here.

These people have no clue.

But

you.

Now, a lot of people, once they get out, they end up going back in.

I don't know the exact number.

I can tell you that.

The number is about 65%, depending on where you leave the hole or prison from.

Wow.

Meaning, if you leave from the hole, you're apt to go back to prison up to 75%.

That's crazy.

Yes.

That's so high.

You are so...

First of all, when I got out of prison, Sean, that's a great story.

I could not,

I couldn't even buy a cup of coffee.

I got on a bus.

They give you money.

I had money in my pocket.

I don't believe them, but I had money because money changed.

So, you know, it changed meaning pictures and it had colors.

And

I was in there.

It all changed.

So when I got out, they gave me my money at 250-something bucks, or whatever it was.

They give it to me.

I go, well, where do I cash it in?

He goes, no, that's money.

I go, don't meet there.

I don't trust him.

Anyway, I said, where's my money?

Yeah.

No, Lawton, that's real money.

And, you know, money changed that dramatically.

That's colors in it, big heads holding, you know, all these holograms, all these.

Anyway, I accept it.

I had what they call 25 25 gate money to give you i get to the bus stop sean

and i get in the bus and they make sure you get there and i sit next to a girl on the bus and i haven't seen a girl in this so long and i'm like she's looking at me i'm doing this

people think you're crazy well i was in shackles i've been on conair 16 times that plane what's conair conair is the the prison transport plane it was a movie about it con air was nicholas cage is a whole movie but i was been on that federal plane for inmates 16, over 16 times, and in shackles, your legs are shackled with the chain and the belly chain.

I've been on that and

sometimes 16 hours, you know, 15 hours.

You never left and have a black box.

So I'm free.

I wanted to take a bus to the halfway house.

I'm free.

You know, I'm a happy guy.

I look at the girl.

I say to her, she had a razor flip phone.

I say, hey, can I see that?

Think of how that sounds today.

Some guy sitting next to you is, hey, can I see that?

Well, she knows I'm look half nuts.

She gives me the phone.

I'm thinking, how can these fat fingers touch these little buttons?

I close the phone, give it back to her, hung up on whatever she was doing.

Don't realize it.

The next stop, she moved.

I had my whole own seat the whole trip.

People must have thought I was crazy.

But the bus driver says, all right, let's go.

You can get something to eat.

We're going to have 40 minutes.

We're getting gas.

Get something to eat.

I'm thinking, get gas, something to eat.

When I went to prison in 96, a gas station sold beer.

It sold candy bars, cigarettes.

No, this gas station we pulled in in 2007

had a subway.

It had a food mart.

And I go, whoa.

And I don't know this.

That fat guy, Jared, the guy's in prison.

He belongs in prison.

He's probably getting whacked there.

So I go into the subway because I want a subway sandwich, man.

Because what every inmate will ever tell you, any guy who's been in prison for over even over a year, you ask them what they miss most.

Or food.

You know what they're going to tell you?

Food.

Really?

Absolutely.

Wow.

Everybody.

Because, you know, last more.

Food is something you don't get in prison.

Right.

You know, I mean, even in prison, but it's not even the.

It's you most.

Everybody.

You ask any convict who gets out of prison.

He's been done time like me.

What do you miss?

Food or

food.

F second, but

so I get out.

I'm online.

I got money in my pocket.

I want a Subway sandwich.

I look up, Sean.

I couldn't make a decision.

I started shaking.

Now I feel people looking at me.

Wow.

I left that line.

I went on the bus.

I was crying like a baby on the back of the bus.

Whoa.

I didn't eat.

for the whole time.

It was 20-something hours.

I did not eat.

And I was so close to doing something to somebody to go back to prison.

I was what they call institutionalized.

Now, why I was institutionalized, let me give you a little hint.

The average person today, you and me, Nick, these guys in the studio,

these guys will make approximately 1,500 choices today.

We're all going to make.

You got up, what you're going to put on, what you're going to wear, how many cups of coffee.

Oh, I want to stop at the 7-Eleven on the way, you know, the studio, whatever it is.

The average inmate makes 100.

Think Think of that.

You make 100 choices a day for a decade.

Now you're thrown into the real world.

You have what they call sensory overload.

You cannot process.

I was never told.

In fact, for the first few months, three months out of prison, I ordered a McDonald's number one.

Oh, they had McDonald's in prison?

No, no, no, no.

When I got out.

Oh, when you got out?

Because I couldn't process a menu.

I'm intelligent, high IQ, all that.

Got my degree, this.

And you'd think I'm not institutionalized.

You're institutionalized.

I could not process

making that choice because you don't have to make choices.

So it was very easy for me to say, I'll take a number one.

In fact, one of my good friends broke me of that.

We would golf a lot.

I'm a golf.

He buys me golf clubs, the whole works.

So we'd go to lunch at the golf course, and I'd say,

when a waitress would come around, I'd say, I'll take what he takes.

You know, after she goes, I'll take that.

He's looking at me every day because he eats bland chicken.

It was golf.

I mean, you know, it's the way he was.

He stops one day and says, Larry, we're not leaving this table until you make, you read that menu and you make your choice.

And the first thing I get offended.

Like, what do you think?

I can't read,

you know.

And he broke me.

I love the guy for it.

And it took my time and I ended up.

I remember I had a burger with like, you know, cheese and bacon on it like

that's why I'm a fat

but uh so it took me a long time to process things

and people don't get why you know a lot of inmates don't need the help people think they need right they were all hustlers they all made money yeah

but now deal with the real world and I actually do some of that help a lot of people do that do they offer when people get out of jail like therapy or anything

yeah yeah right okay they got therapy.

Here, get the out of prison.

You know, they say, they give it what they call, I call it the to please the public, the unknowing public.

They'll give you a pre-release class.

They'll say, in your pre-release, okay, you got to go get a driver's license.

And

that's it.

I mean, you have to have a housing, you have to have a job.

They don't talk about the things that are important.

How to process things, how to talk to a person that might piss you off.

You can't stab them.

You can't.

You can't approach people the way you would in prison, especially the prisons I was at.

You know, you go to a lower camp, it's a whole different animal.

I'm not talking about those kind of guys.

I'm talking about guys who did hard time.

Guys who did time and you let them out, they're crazy.

You talk about PTSD.

Obviously, we all have PTSD, but it's just a way of processing things.

You know, they're so able and probably

going to snap.

And I often tell people, you know, why should we rehabilitate these people?

You know, they murdered people.

I said, let me explain.

Here's why you should.

95 or 96% of all people incarcerated getting out.

Do you want the guy who's getting out to be living next to you, has no hope?

And you're his next victim?

Because you're going to be.

He's going to live next to somebody.

And if that guy don't give a and what doesn't care, you know, when things don't go well, he gets f ⁇ ed.

He has food.

He does this.

He's going to you and rob you because you don't care.

Or do you want the guy that gets out, has hope, trained, he's looking at things a little bit different.

You know, you're not trying to put your foot on his neck as a government.

We put the foot on their neck so quick.

Listen, why can't they vote?

Why can't they?

So many things.

You did your time.

You know the difference between myself and most people.

Now, don't get me wrong.

I was a prisoner.

I was a convict.

And I was a criminal.

You didn't want to know me in those days.

But

people changed, number one.

But besides that, most people could go to prison for something.

Now,

you know, I tell everybody, you know, you commit a crime every day.

You don't even know it from jaywalking, just taking a pencil out of the office.

There's crimes being committed.

I'm not saying they're felonies and stuff like that.

They are felonies.

Technically, there's a lot of felonies.

My point is, did you know, Sean, I don't know how fast you drive a car.

Do you ever go 20 miles an hour over a speed limit?

I'm sure you do.

I still do.

Did you know if you someone there that's vehicular homicide, you're going to prison?

Wow.

I didn't know that.

Over 20 miles an hour.

That's reckless endangerment, a vehicular homicide, you don't go to prison.

You made a bad choice.

You're not a bad guy.

Right.

So, you know, especially if you don't have money, you don't have a lawyer, you don't have the right thing.

Well, you know,

that's another statistic.

You know, our whole system is broke.

I told you, I could be here for hours and hours.

It's all pay-to-play, right?

If you got money,

you're going to be better.

That's a great way of putting it.

Yeah.

You know, sadly, you don't see that congressman's kid going to prison like you do some poor guy down the street.

They could get away with murder, probably.

Pretty much, you know.

And listen, no system's perfect.

I love our country.

I love

the structure of the United States.

And I was a history nut, and I'm still am.

It just needs to be repaired.

It really needs to be fixed.

Things are not the way they were 250 years, 230, whatever years ago.

So a lot has to change, and it should change.

At what point are we going to change?

I don't know.

I won't see it.

I hope your generation does.

We'll see.

I want to touch upon the jewelry stuff because that's what you're known for.

So how did you get started with that?

Like, how old were you?

And walk me through that journey.

Well, you know, I was the biggest jewel robber.

I was associated with, again, being a crime family in New York.

And my first robbery was a setup.

So the guy wanted the insurance money.

I had a still robber legit.

I never talked to him.

The whole thing, I knew where everything was going to be.

I knew who was going to be in the store and everything of that nature.

And I walked away with $150,000 in my pocket.

Wow.

At what age?

Wow, 27?

Okay.

26.

That's a lot of money.

But your age now.

Yeah.

But back then, that's a lot of money.

A lot of money.

This is 90s.

You're like a millionaire back then.

Yeah, I was crazy.

So

I said, wait a minute.

This is good.

I could do this.

Sure enough.

No, this was in the 80s.

That was the 80s.

So I said, okay, i can do this i started doing my own and i got better and better at it and i become i robbed over 20 stores 15 18 million

uh

that time money yeah imagine what it is today it's like a hundred mil not

but uh

listen i i wasn't a good guy i don't i don't want people to think that i don't it was an exciting time it is what it is people say do you regret it i don't regret anything in life

things happen for reasons right I wouldn't be sitting with you, wouldn't be out.

Maybe I'd have been shot.

Maybe I'd get hit by a call.

Who knows?

Things happen for a reason.

Would I do it differently?

Absolutely.

Obviously, Bill Gates at the time was the richest man in the world.

They asked him, Do you would you do the same things?

He goes, No,

I know where my mistakes were.

Why would I do the same exact thing?

He goes, Obviously, we would change, but you can't, so you can't regret it.

You learn from them, and that's what I try to teach young people.

But I rob

stores from Florida to Connecticut, up and down the East Coast, not in New York.

I wasn't allowed.

Mafia?

Yeah, mafia.

And so from Connecticut all the way to

Florida, so many robberies, tied up 100 people.

Whoa.

You know, I wasn't a good guy.

I didn't pistol whip people.

I didn't hurt them in the robbery physically.

But you do hurt people.

I put a gun in your face.

Get down, get down.

That's trauma, man.

That's trauma.

But

people say, oh, you should never get free for that.

I said, hold on, get over it, too.

People got to get over it.

We all get faced with a lot of in life.

Well,

the strong survive.

You got to get over things, man.

You know, you try to help them.

You try to do the right thing.

Would I do it?

No.

But I can't sit and say,

oh my God, I should go to hell for it.

I'm going to hell anyway.

So I'm

leaving that.

But

everybody in life, everybody, all of us, have to just take whatever we did, move on with it, and get better for it.

Right.

So, what's the most expensive diamond you stole and how much planning went into that?

Good questions.

Most expensive single diamond, probably $150,000.

But I robbed the whole store.

You know, when I robbed the store, the guy's out of business.

I mean, he liked me.

It's a fact, you know, the store owners didn't hate me.

Because they have insurance.

Insurance, man.

They sold their whole store in one shot.

They got out of the business.

They got out of the bay.

Even if they didn't, they got a lot more than they would have had.

They had a piece of jewelry on their shelf for two years, sold, you know?

So

they're not the ones that hated me.

So individual piece of 150 stores, a million three, million four,

you know, whatever it was.

And then as far as some of them took three weeks, four weeks, a month to plan,

to case, to do.

You know, when you rob a jewelry, I was a professional.

There wasn't a thing they could do to stop me.

I could rob one today.

I tell people that all the time.

Really?

Absolutely.

Did it increase their security at all?

You know, I speak sometimes at insurance

places to show them how.

My assistant, Nick, who have a big RV as well, he thinks I'm the relapse because I look at that jewelry store and I say, you know, I could totally hit that.

They do the things, same thing, stupid.

Human beings make human mistakes.

And And

I would know when the sun rises, sun sets, how the angle of the sun hit the window so nobody could come in, where the mailman was, where the police were in the area, when the deliveries were done.

Every employee, where they lived, when they come in, when they took break, who they were, if they had, you know, I knew every piece.

Most of my robberies were in a plaza.

You know, with an anchor store, like a Publix or

a big store.

I don't know what they have for grocery stores, warm, or whatever it is.

It's in a plaza.

And the reason being, it's busy.

Well, you can sit and case that store for days.

Nobody's going to know anything.

They'd think you're just waiting for your wife

who's going shopping.

And I'd read the paper, but I knew every little thing of that plaza

that you could even imagine.

Then that's just before you even do the robbery.

Then you have to go in and make sure that where it is, the numbers, where the cameras.

I knew every piece.

That was my business.

And that's why I was a professional.

Wow.

Matter of fact, fact, the FBI caught me, you know, a guy named Matt Mullen.

He's since passed.

He says, Man, I'm retiring.

You would have been a major case guy.

He goes, You were the best I've ever seen do it.

No way.

Yeah,

I was looking for you for six years.

I said,

no hate there.

I mean, and

I just,

I was upset.

And I didn't hate him.

That was his job.

I was upset.

I am so ADD as it is.

Right.

And so what he calls OCD and all those freaking acronyms there are.

I mean, I will hyper-focus on something crazy.

Or I don't care if the, I could be talking to you in my office, and there could be a battery that's being charged in the thing, and in the middle, I'm like, got to get that battery out of there.

I don't know.

You know, everything has to,

I'm so focused on everything around me.

It's just, and that's what I would do with robberies.

And you'd have to know everything about that, Sean.

Did any of your robberies not go to plan and you had to adopt?

Well, you know, the last one where we were shot and I was shot, my brother was shot, it went through my head, into him, his bullets still in him.

But not that one.

The big one, I was going to do a $12 million robbery in the Fountain Blue Hotel on Miami Beach.

It was called an H-Stern Jewelers.

Well, an H-Stern Jewelers,

I planned this out.

We were going to put dynamite on the owner, keep his family kidnapped at home.

And if he said anything, I was going to walk him in before the guards come in.

We were going to open up.

We're going to take all the diamonds, 12 million.

I already called my guys in New York, made sure I could get rid of the 12 million because it would have been big.

I would have been leaving the country.

My end would have been about 4 million.

Wow.

Back then.

Yeah, that's crazy.

That's like the 10, 12 million, whatever it is.

It's a retirement job.

The robbery went down to

we were about to kidnap them.

Thank God I did, because everything's fake.

Kidnapping is no statue of limitations.

So if I would have ever did that,

there's no way.

It would have been over forever for life.

We were in the bushes ready to go, and a dog from another person walking went crazy and kind of spotted us.

Somebody knew something.

So we got out of there, and I the whole robbery that minute.

Whoa.

That minute.

On the way I said, just because of the dog?

Things didn't feel right.

You know, I was the boss, so I said, it's over.

We're not doing it.

Wow.

And we, and I invested probably

money and time and three weeks, four weeks of planning and casing and everything of this H2.

I used to sit in the lobby of the Fountain Blue Hotel, you know, Miami Beach.

I'd have my shorts on or a bathing suit, like I was a guest there and everything.

Sit at the bar, and I'm watching that store.

I knew every little piece when that security guard left and we were gonna went when he'd come in, who he was.

You know, they had two, and when they rotated, that would have been a good job, too.

That was my, that would have been a signature job for sure.

So, you would have been out the country?

Oh, absolutely.

You're damn right, I would have been.

I planned that.

Matter of fact, the guys I dealt with said, we'll give you two million when you bring it up, and you'll work out the other two million in a couple months.

You know, I trusted them, obviously.

So that would have been no problem to do that.

And,

you know,

looking back, fate-wise, I'm glad glad it didn't happen, of course, because a lot of things should have gone wrong.

You put dynamite on somebody, and it was fake dynamite.

Oh, yeah, we had the sticks.

It looked just like dynamite with a clock and all works.

And we're going to put it on in front of his wife and say, this guy's going to wait here with a walkie-talkie.

If he doesn't hear from me, he's going to kill your wife and kids.

And I'm taking you.

And if you even like, You wave down a cop, I'm going to get out of the car and hit this button and you're going to blow up.

I mean,

that was something crazy.

I thought of every scenario, what he could do, what he couldn't do.

Don't try to say something because if he don't hear from me in 30 seconds, he's going to hear from me every minute, or you're going to your wife and leave.

So even if I get caught, your wife and kid are dead.

I mean,

wow, that was a crazy man.

But I had every single little piece of that downed,

but it didn't happen.

And thank God.

So you even had like backup plans if this happened.

Oh, absolute the exits, exit routes.

I mean, alternate exit route in case something happened.

It was an accident on that route.

Oh, you know, I was a professional.

I wasn't a smash and grab kid going in and getting the Rolexes, you know.

Yeah.

When I went in, I took the whole store.

It was the whole store.

That's wild.

Did you ever get pulled over after a robbery?

No.

No.

Even had that covered, but no.

I didn't see it.

I never got pulled over and, you know, had changed plates, had fake plates, and then then put back to regular plates the first thing.

You thought about everything.

We really did.

What about phones?

Were you worried they'd get topped?

No, matter of fact, you couldn't use.

Phones weren't as common back then.

Obviously, this is in that, even up to when I went to prison.

Matter of fact, I was one of those guys that had the first cell phone.

I had one with a strap on it, with a box, looked like a walkie-talkie from G.I.

Joe, with a line.

Then they came out with the Motorola.

You guys wouldn't even know that.

It was a big brick phone.

I used to beat people with that phone.

And then I could make a phone call.

I should do a commercial for them.

Because it was a heavy, heavy, like big, it's called a brick, a motorola brick.

Then, of course, you know, the phones evolved to what it is today.

It's unbelievable.

You know, I have no idea.

I'm done, life.

I'm 61.

If I live to 80, I got 19, then 19, 18, 19 years left.

And that's me, not being morbid.

I always tell everybody.

You, you're 26, you got 60 years left.

Think of it.

Or 100.

If you go to 100 years old, you got 80 years left.

Going for, yeah, do you want 100?

My mom is 90.

Wow.

She's 90 and doesn't take a piece of medicine.

No.

That I would want.

I wouldn't want to be like, you know.

Yeah, she can't get around.

So I closed her mind a little bit.

But she's still great.

I take care of her.

I actually moved to Florida.

to take care of my mom.

Not Florida, actually the town I'm in.

And moved to take care of, built a whole studio in the house.

I mean, in in the garage, took it over.

Nice.

Big studio just to take care of my mom.

It's awesome.

So you care a lot about family.

Yeah.

You know, that's the hardest part.

When I went to prison, my daughter was 15 months old.

I got out and she was 13.

My son was seven.

I got out and he's 18.

Did they forgive you?

Yeah, I mean, it took a while, but they visited me.

They never really had to forgive me.

It wasn't like

my daughter said some things that were rough.

Now I have grandkids, of course, but

I would say forgive, yes.

But it's rough because you have to still be a parent.

You have to discipline.

You have to do whatever.

Even though they were older, I'm still the father.

I come from that old-time school, you know, the respect, certain things, and you understand what I mean parent-wise.

So,

yeah, I mean, it's not easy, but I have a great relationship with my kids.

That's awesome.

Larry, it's been a blast, man.

What's next for you, and what are you trying to promote?

Well, you know, promote.

I do so much with my program, a parenting program, my reality check program.

The book coming out in August is huge.

And it's already, people are finding it.

I'm just, I got internet people doing it as we speak.

And they're finding it and buying it already.

It's on pre-release.

Wow.

So it's a great book.

And you can go to my website, realitycheckprogram.com.

They can go there and just hit the store and you'll find the book.

That's the new book coming out.

And my other book, Gangster Redemption, is still going crazy.

And that's a crazy ride.

literally, people can read that book and know how to rob a Jewish film, but they also can know what's going to happen to him in prison from the tortures because it all goes in there.

The book has me from my young days, robbing cars as a kid, to being who I am today.

That's raw.

I love it.

So, man, I want to thank you for having me on the show.

Yeah, you were great, man.

Thanks for tuning in, guys.

Digital Social Hour.

I'll see you next time.