WHEN FRIENDS BECOME ENEMIES AND SECRETS ARE REVEALED

Getting implicated in a crime comes with many challenges. There are financial challenges, social challenges, and of course familial challenges. Luckily, most of those who face these challenges are fortunate enough to have family and friends to support them and to lift them up while the horizon is bleak. These relationships are critical to the mental survival of someone going through any one of life's challenges and especially one where his freedom is on the line.

At the same time there are few things more aggravating than finding out that someone who was thought to be a friend was merely an opportunistic parasite trying to capitalize on another's success. There are few things as demoralizing than realizing that someone who was supposed to be part of a support system is suddenly absent. There is nothing worse than the feeling of having been used. There is no greater snake than a former friend or partner who is willing to "cooperate" with prosecutors by falsely implicating a former friend and partner in order to cleanse their own conscience from their own improper actions. Even after the case is over, the person implicated and possibly convicted of the crime will try and convince himself that this person or these people are still his friends. Eventually, however, it will become clear to him that this former friend was never anything of the kind. It may take one, two or even three years but eventually there will be some triggering event that brings the truth to the forefront. And that is when it is time to get even. 

The first way to get even is by not getting screwed again. Most people who were successful will find a way to re-establish themselves. Once again, this former friend will try and use him to get ahead. It could be something as simple as a client referral from a new employer or for a client referral. The idea is not to fall victim to their deceptions once again. Not only should the person implicated avoid doing business with his former partner(s), but he should make sure no one he works with does so either. This former partner is a bad character, is a snake, and there is no way a former felon should allow his new life and his new associates to be victimized by this person or persons.

And then there are the secrets. The good news for anyone who has been used by one of these types of "friends" is that during this so-called friendship, plenty of information was shared that this former friend would never want revealed. Ample texts would likely have been exchanged. More than a few secrets would have been told. In other words, if someone is going to run for the hills when a friend and partner is implicated, he and/or she better be sure that there is nothing that can come out later that would embarrass them in front of former and current clients as well as their friends. When the person implicated is extricated from the situation either by serving a prison sentence or by getting the charges dropped, he will likely be very eager to do whatever necessary to remind this former friend, partner and colleague that he and/or she should have been a little more careful when running for the hills. In other words, payback's a bitch.

Now let’s say for example I had partner(s) like this. One would be surprised the type of secrets someone reveals when they are trying to pretend to be a friend. Marital indiscretions are one thing that can often come up. Now this may not be an actual admission of cheating, but it could very well be an episode that happened long ago that this person may not want revealed to his or her significant other, much less their social circle or the public at large. It may be something that happened recently that spouses do not want their life-partners to know about. This is the type of information that that the person who is embroiled in a criminal probe will be all too happy to reveal when everything concludes.

Of course, there is also the conduct of that person or persons while they were in a business with the person who finds himself involved on the criminal probe. The irony is that the person under indictment may have had pure intentions or may have had no idea what he   was doing was actually illegal. Alternatively, what he did was not actually illegal even if he pleaded guilty to it in order to spare his family the agony of a trial and the risk of a long sentence with an adverse verdict. The "friend"/ partner, on the other hand was motivated purely by greed. He and/or she wanted in only to take advantage of a friend's new-found luck. As such the actions he/she took may have been deliberately conceived to get rich at the expense of their own contacts and clients using a web of deception. In other words, the "friend(s)" may have committed actual crimes while the person under investigation was innocent all along. 

Of course, if anything was actually sent over an email, one would assume that all of this would have been handled over to the prosecutors so that this friend's misdeeds would have come to attention to those investigating any alleged crimes. That is both true and untrue. Firstly, a prosecutor needs to decide who to prosecute. Perception might be that these other ancillary members are just not important enough. Secondly, prosecutors may not fully understand the context of the emails and since the person under investigation is not about to throw his friend(s) under the bus, there is simply not a witness to corroborate the information contained in the emails. Third, the prosecutors may feel that these other people are more useful to provide information than they are being indicted and they simply decide to use them to try and get who they view as the big fish.

Then, of course there is the ultimate wild card, and that relates to information never seen by prosecutors. Prosecutors have the right to subpoena all records that they feel are related to a crime. At the same time, defendants have a fifth amendment right not to self-incriminate. That line gets murky when it comes to email and even more murky when it comes to text messages, Blackberry messages, i-messages and even WhatsApp messages from a personal phone. Lawyers will generally agree that a corporate email account has to be turned over to the prosecutors, but that's it. Imagine if you will that text messages and Blackberry messages were never turned over to federal prosecutors. Imagine if you will that those messages contained statements from a former partner/friend that said something like "there is no way Henry will find out about these fees, right?" Or, " I don't even like this person, but he has enough money to invest". A text may say "I don't even want him as a client, but I need to be nice to him so that he keeps investing," or "Can we charge him double fees for being a pain in the ass?" While these are all troubling and may even be incriminating to the person who sent them none is worse than "I don't want them to know that I am making money off this".  Of course, many secrets that a spouse would not his or her significant other to know about would also likely be contained in these text messages. 

As it turns out, none of these texts, messages would have been seen by federal prosecutors since a defendant will generally assert the fifth amendment privilege whenever possible, even if there is information contained in those texts that is exculpatory since there may be other text messages that, when taken out of context, will not help a defendant. Of course, once the case is over either via acquittal or completion of a prison term, all bets are off. The person implicated now has no incentive to keep this information private. They can be used in a book (hint, hint), simply placed on the internet or even emailed in their entirety to the clients this former friend and partner deceived. I imagine that these clients or even partners would not be too happy. Nor would the employers or even state regulatory agencies that oversee the employment of such individual(s), especially if it violated state regulatory laws such as finance, real estate, insurance, law, mortgages, lobbying, agriculture, accounting, etc. It is possible that this former friend and partner would be prohibited by state law from continuing to work in his and/or her chose profession. It is possible that the information, once revealed, would destroy a marriage. 

There are some who would assert that the person who was implicated in the crime feel bad for releasing this information; for possibly ruining someone's life. Well, that argument rings hollow to someone who has gone through the criminal justice system. He may have been separated from his family by going to prison, had his career destroyed, had a strain put on his family life or at the very least had to spend a fortune on legal fees. There is not going to be any sympathy on his part for any suffering endured by those who took advantage of and then abandoned him. No, this is exactly what he and/or she deserves. None of the suffering that they may or may not endure will even come close to that endured by the defendant himself. 

The message for the former felon is to remember that there will be a time for the truth to come out. Those who turn on you will ultimately come face to face with their misdeeds. They will know, their clients will know, their friends will know, and the entire community will know. If they are upstanding members of their communities on boards of schools, charities, and religious organizations they will be knocked down. And for the former friends and partners I say this: Nothing stays secret forever.

SECRETS OF THE PRISON CAMP ECONOMY

Prisons in general are not unlike miniature civilizations. Just as ordinary citizens are grouped by race, ideology, religion and background, so too are prisoners. It is not as though the prison actually separates inmates by race-not in a camp anyway-but just as people choose their social circles outside of prison based on a whole array of criteria, so to do prisoners. And just as any functioning civilization has an economy, so does the prison system.

It is important to note that it is against prison rules for anyone to provide goods and services to another inmate for any sort of compensation, be it monetary or even sexual (hey some guys are down for a long time). Those are the official rules and actually being caught breaking such rules can result in all sorts of penalties. The reality, however, is radically different. Thea prison system has a functioning economy where many inmates provide different types of goods or services to other inmates for compensation. Some inmates decide to do this because they need money to get food from their commissary and some do it simply to pass the time. The dirty little secret of prison is, at least when it comes to a camp, that you can get almost anything you want and for a minimal amount of money have all the services of home.

Before I go into what types of good and services are sold, it is important to understand the currency system in prison. Unlike the real world, prisoners cannot carry around money with them. Being caught with cash will earn an inmate an express pass to solitary confinement. The way inmates purchase food from the commissary is by using funds sent into their account. It is sort of like a bank account that a prisoner draws on to go shopping without ever being able to touch the money. Two of the most commonly purchased items are tuna and mackerel in a pouch. These items are not purchased for consumption; rather they are purchased to act as a means of exchange. When a prisoner buys something he pays in tuna or its dollar equivalent. When I was in prison the price of a tuna pouch was $1.50 so if someone wanted to charge me $15 for something, I would have to give him 10 tunas, or 15 mackerels which cost $1 each. On the other hand, there were some items for which there was no monetary value ascribed. The cost of something would simply be a defined number of tunas or its equivalent value in commissary. For example, the cost of a cigarette was one tuna. If a prisoner did not have tuna, he would have to give the seller $1.50 in commissary money when he went shopping.

Speaking of cigarettes, anyone who has watched even one prison movie knows that cigarettes are sold in prison. The cost of one cigarette is directly tied to the degree of difficulty of obtaining it. In the higher security prisons, cigarettes need to be smuggled in either through the visiting room or through the guards who actually bring in most of the contraband for a fee. As a result, a cigarette in those prisons will cost close to $10. In a camp however, cartons of cigarettes are simply tossed over the fence by friends of the inmates and then the inmate just walks over to the fence when no one is looking and picks it up. In other words, whereas in a more secure prison, the risk surrounds obtaining it, in a camp the risk involves holding on to and hiding it. As a result, the price in camp cigarette is a fraction of a secure prison cigarette. For many inmates who are allowed to finish lengthy sentences in a camp setting, this means a serious reduction in their monthly income.

My first exposure to the prison economy came the day I arrived at the camp. Not one hour passed when a nice kid, who spoke very little English came over and after five minutes was able to tell me he was offering to do my laundry! The cost? $35 per month which included my laundry being washed, dried and folded two times a week. On one of those days he would also wash my linens and make my bed when the wash was done. All fees were to be paid in tuna. While I did not commit to avail myself of the services of this young entrepreneur, I was impressed by his assertiveness. I soon learned that the laundry business was very competitive and that if I shopped around, I would be able to lower the price!

I am not the neatest person. Don't get me wrong, dirt completely disgusts me, and I need everything around me to be clean. But when it comes to organizing my shoes, making my bed neatly, and getting rid of clutter, well let’s just say I have other strengths. Unfortunately for me, in prison your bed has to be made tightly, the area around the bed must be clear of anything and the shoes must be organized under the bed. This presented a problem. I was not going to risk being written up for my bed being made poorly. I also did not want to spend my mornings stressing over sweeping and cleaning and attempting in vain to make my bed properly. However no sooner than 12 hours after arrival was this problem solved. Another entrepreneurial fellow from Puerto Rico named Castro offered to handle all of that for me. If I wanted him to make my bed every day, the cost was eight tunas a month. If I wanted him to sweep the area, empty the trash and clean under my bed every day, that was also eight tunas a month. I could however go with the package deal and pay him 10 tunas a month and he would make my bed and clean my area every day. He would also mop once a week. 10 tunas equated to $15. So, for $15 per month I had all of this taken care of. Sold. I decided to do my own laundry for now.

Once a week we got to go shopping. The way it worked was the one quarter of the camp went each day Monday-Thursday. With 400 inmates that meant there could potentially be 100 people shopping per day. Shopping in prison is not like going to Walmart. It is more like the canteen system in summer camp. Every inmate is given a form, he fills it out, brings it to the commissary, hands it to the officer, who in turn gives it to the inmates who work in the commissary who fill the order. If an inmate is not there as soon as the commissary opens, he may be waiting well over an hour for his stuff. I did not have such patience, so I made sure to try to get there first. One time, I got there late and had to wait a very long time. Luckily, I found out there was a commissary VIP service. One of the inmates who worked there would take your list with him when he went to work in the morning. When he saw you walk in, he would fill your order before anyone else who was waiting. The cost of this service was one tuna. I figured my time, even in prison was worth more than $1.50 per hour and signed up for the VIP service. Many months later I started bunking with this fellow and was able to barter stock market lessons for free VIP service.

Before entering prison, I decided that I was going to use my time productively. I wanted to get into shape. I was always an avid runner, so it was easy to expand on that when there was not much else to do. Bulking up was another matter. I needed help in that department. Lucky for me, prison has no shortage of personal trainers. I chose one named Pete mainly because he was a nice Italian guy who got along with the Jews. For roughly 20 tunas a month, Pete would train me four days a week. He was smarter than most of the other inmates, so he preferred to be paid in cash via my commissary. As a result, I was probably the only person who would order both the kosher meals and pork every week. This was money well spent and I would say a necessity for anyone who can afford it. By the time I left prison I was in the best shape of my life. I was bench pressing close to 200 pounds and had slimmed to 155 pounds. There was not an ounce of fat on me. The only downside being that now when I go to the gym, I still think I can pay the trainer in tuna.

The food in prison is not very good or healthy. It is even worse for an inmate such as me who keeps kosher. If an inmate, particularly a kosher inmate wants to eat well, he needs to turn to other sources of food. The interesting about prison is while services such as cleaning are cheap, goods are very expensive even in a camp. It took a while, but I was eventually able to tap into alternative markets for food. The inmates who worked in various kitchens used to smuggle out and then sell all sorts of items that oddly enough never appeared on the menu. I was suddenly able to buy eggs (one tuna for three eggs), peppers cucumbers, lettuce and tomatoes. Ordinary inmates were even able to buy raw chicken and meat! This was all critical as I was getting in shape. Not only was I in the best shape of my life by the time I left, I was also eating healthier and was on an all protein diet of tuna and eggs! 

For many inmates getting food solved only half of the problem. They still needed to cook it. Have no fear, prison has an abundance of chefs who will cook any and every meal. Some of the chefs would even handle the food acquisition portion while others simply worked with what was supplied. I still remember a fellow named Mario who must have been generating $2000 a month in revenue. He had his own kitchen in the back of the dorms and would cook everything from chicken parm sandwiches to burgers to pizza. He even had a kitchen staff working on the presentation! There were others who use to make yogurt. Some people made cakes and would sell slices for a tuna. There was even and old hillbilly name Chuck who had a special gnash recipe. At one point we even got it certified kosher!  If someone wanted to and had the means he could have a personal chef and actually eat quite well in prison as long as he avoided the prison food.

Eventually I decided that waiting for the washing machine and drier was not for me. Laundry started becoming a two-hour event mainly because the people with the laundry business kept on hogging the machines. Well, if you can't beat 'em, join 'em. I decided to hire McCoy as by laundry man. McCoy was a 50 something African American who had been down a long time. Aside from his being very good at his job, race played a factor. I needed to make sure that I had protection from the various cliques and gangs. I already had the Puerto Ricans covered since Castro was on the Payroll, I had the white people through Pete, and now the African Americans through McCoy. For 15 tunas a month he would do my laundry twice a week which included folding and linens. He did a much better job folding than I could which was critical because of how little space inmates had. I also had a lot of laundry since I changed three times a day. McCoy offered an ironing service if you wanted to look extra crisp for visitors. This is where I drew the line. I was not paying for ironing in prison. Some people would have their uniforms altered. Luckily there was a tailor who could perform this service. 

Anyone who had a skill set was able to generate income. There was a manicurist, a masseuse and even someone who was willing to shave your back for a tuna. There were inmates who fancied themselves prison lawyers who would type up legal briefs and even dole out legal advice. These were not lawyers by any stretch. They were simply inmates who claimed they knew how to type legal briefs. Why anyone would trust another inmate to help him get out of prison is beyond me. If he was that good, he probably would himself be out. There are plenty of prisoners who want to write a book. Unfortunately, they cannot type. There are typists who will charge a tuna per page to put handwritten notes onto a typewriter. There are inmates who are artists. For a negotiated fee, they will make something for your wife.

Of course, there is plenty of contraband. Aside for the cigarettes, there is plenty of booze ($50-$100 per bottle) and synthetic pot like k2 if an inmate wants. The real trophy is cell phones. There are a lot of cell phones and a few inmates managed to smuggle them in and would sell them. The easiest way was to get a guard on the payroll. However, like anything else plenty of phones came in simply by being thrown over the fence. I still remember one night when I walked in an saw someone facetiming his girlfriend!

So, what was my hustle? I actually did not have one. I was only going to be there for 10 months and it did not make much sense to go into business! I did however back into two businesses. The first came after I injured my elbow during one of my workout sessions with Pete. Prison healthcare is not exactly the best, so I was simply given me 800 mg Ibuprofen two times a day. After a couple of days, I was given a 30-day supply or a total of 60 pills! I had no use for so much pain medication. I quickly learned that there were plenty of inmates who wanted these pills. I decided to sell them for $5 per pill paid in tuna or any other way. I manage to sell around 20 of them which meant that for the rest of my time there my cleaning and laundry service did not actually cost me anything. I had to go to prison to become a drug dealer. Go figure.

I also managed to use my financial background to my benefit in prison. Tuna while an effective medium of exchange was useless if it was not somehow monetized. Anyone with a hustle found themselves with too much tuna and they needed to convert it into commissary money. My bunky was one such person. In addition to his VIP commissary service he also ran a small convenience store out of his locker. He always had 200-300 tunas at any time. He needed to convert it to cash so that he can go to the commissary and buy more inventory. I agreed to buy his tuna for $1.15 in commissary. I would normally buy 20 at a time so when I went shopping, I would allow him to spend $23 or so. The tuna I bought from him was able to be used to pay my vendors. What ended up happening was the following. I would buy tuna from my bunky. I would then use that tuna to pay Castro to make my bed. Castro would then go back to my bunky and buy a soda with that tuna and then my bunky would then sell me back that very tuna for $1.15! And the process would just repeat itself. I managed to figure out an arbitrage system within prison. I did have thoughts of opening a bank and arranging to hold tuna deposits and advance tuna loans, but I decided that it involved too much work for the amount of time I had remaining.

Prison, particularly prison camp, is really just a microcosm of real life. There really is a functioning economy. This is beneficial for everyone. For those with the means, it definitely improves a very unfortunate experience. For those who are willing to work, it gives them a method to earn some extra money that can be used for clothing, food or anything else. And there you have it: Prison Economics 101.

MICHAEL "RAT" COHEN GETS THREE YEARS IN PRISON (OR DOES HE????)

NEWS ALERT!

Like everyone else in the country, I have been waiting to see how long of a prison sentence Michael Cohen would receive today. If anyone read the filing submitted by the prosecutors last week, he would see that the guidelines called for Cohen to receive a 42-month sentence. Essentially, the judge gave him a break for being willing to throw the President under the bus, irrespective of whether his assertions are true.

Now it is time for a reality check. Michael Cohen is not going to spend three years in prison. In-fact, his total time in Federal Prison, if he plays his cards right, will be closer to one year, not the three that was advertised. Ironically, as I will point out, he would be facing less time in prison had he been sentenced to 37 months instead of 36 months.

So how does it really work? Firstly, everyone who behaves gets a 15% reduction in his sentence. For Cohen that means that his total prison term in closer to 30 months. Next, since Michael Cohen presumably had a good lawyer, he has disclosed an alcohol or drug dependency, as did I. For Cohen that means that he is eligible to enroll in RDAP (Residential Drug Abuse Program). The RDAP program lasts a little over nine months and focuses on the issues that lead to addiction and criminal behavior. A lot of time is spent on behavior modification. It is intense and takes up a good part of the day. RDAP inmates have their own dorm within the prison. RDAP inmates are held to a higher standard of behavior and if an RDAP prisoner messes up or if the RDAP staff feels a prisoner is not responding to the program, his graduation is delayed.

While prison life as an RDAP inmate is slightly more unpleasant than for everyone else, the reward for completing RDAP is time off from the sentence. The total time off is based on the total length of the sentence.  An inmate with a 36-month sentence, before the good time reduction, is going to have his sentence reduced by nine months for completing the program. In Cohen's case that means his 30-month sentence will be lowered to 21 months. Beyond that, virtually everyone is assured that the last 10% of their sentence be served under home confinement where he is permitted to go to work every day. That takes Cohen down to 18 months in actual prison. Beyond that, everyone gets at least some time in a halfway house setting where they go to work every day and go home for the weekends. RDAP graduates need to spend part of their time in the halfway house going through additional counseling. As a result, and because there is a belief that addicts need more time to reintegrate into society, RDAP inmates generally get more time in the halfway house than non RDAP inmates. 

Based on what I have seen, there is a better than good chance that Cohen will receive a least six months of time in the halfway house in addition to his three months of home confinement. Cohen will therefore likely serve about one year in actual prison and a total of nine months in the halfway house or home confinement. To put it another way, of the 36-month sentence handed down, only 33% of it will be served in actual prison.

There is a weird quirk in the calculation of time that a prisoner gets off for completing RDAP. On a 36-month sentence, a prisoner is eligible for nine months off his sentence. However, on a 37 month sentence he is eligible for a full year off his sentence. Had Cohen been sentenced to one additional month, he would have been at 31 months factoring in good time. He would have then had a full year taken off his sentence for completing RDAP for a total sentence of 19 months instead of 21. From there is would have taken the same 3 months off for home confinement which would have taken him down to 16 months. If he would have received the same six months of halfway house, he would have only done 10 months in actual prison. Of course, that would have been contingent on his being admitted to RDAP as soon as he arrives in prison since it does take over nine months to complete RDAP. It also assumes he doesn't do anything to delay his completion of the program.

So, Michael Cohen got a pretty good deal. He did what was best for himself and more importantly for his family as do over 80% of all defendants. However, as I mentioned six months ago,  http://www.whitecollarguru.com/2018/07/michael-cohen-is-going-to-jail-and-it.html, when I predicted Cohen would go to prison, life in prison is not going to exactly pleasant for him. Being known as a snitch, even in a camp that could be exclusively white collar, is not a label that any prisoner wants placed on him. Yet Michael Cohen is going to enter prison as a snitch who tried to bring down a President. So, while 36 is going to really be 12 it is going to be the worst year of his life. Good Luck!

Republicans Must Support Amendment 4, The Voter Rights Restoration for Felons Initiative

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I am writing to you today to support and issue that is very important to me as well as  hundreds of thousands of citizens in the state of Florida who like myself, are not eligible to vote. This November, Floridians will be voting on Amendment 4 that if passed will restore voting rights to former felons who have completed their sentences and all probationary periods. As it stands right now it is next to impossible for former felons, such as myself, to regain their right to vote in the State of Florida.

There are currently over 1.4 million citizens in the State of Florida, representing 10.5% of the total population who are not eligible to vote. This represents both the highest number as well as the highest percentage of any state in the country. While virtually every other state has enacted legislation to enable former felons to vote, Florida has been noted for its inaction and for its continued policy of disenfranchising 10% of the electorate. This November the voters have a chance to change that.

There are a few arguments that have been advanced against Amendment 4. The first argument objects on moral grounds. Those who advance it state that when someone commits a crime particularly a violent crime, they forfeit the right to vote. To those I say fear not, this amendment specifically excludes those who have committed violent crimes or sexual offenses.

There are those on the right of the spectrum who feel that this will only help the Democrats since felons by-and-large vote Democrat. I have no idea where this theory comes from but in my experience, it is untrue. I know this because I, Michael Szafranski, am a former felon. I have voted for the Republican party in every election since I was 18. I am an avid Donald Trump, Ron DeSantis and Rick Scott supporter. By those on the right who would deny a former felon’s right to vote they are preventing me, a lifelong republican, from voting when every vote counts.

There are those who may counter that I represent a small minority of former felons and they would gladly deprive me of the right to vote if it means preventing hundreds of thousands of others from voting for the other party. This too, is incorrect. I spent my time in a prison camp. Prison camps are filled with white-collar offenders. Many, if not most, come from the finance industry and their crimes are non-violent in nature. When they are released from prison, they get jobs, pay taxes or start businesses. Most are, like myself, Republicans. I was in prison during the 2016 presidential campaign and it is safe to say that the camp was evenly split between those who would have voted for Hillary Clinton and for those who would have voted for Donald Trump. If I was to have taken a poll among those who had actually voted in prior presidential elections, 80% would have supported Donald Trump. To say that allowing former felons to vote would benefit Democrats is just plain wrong.

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I therefore implore all of you, Republican and Democrat alike, to come out on election day and vote Yes on Amendment 4.