Original subtitles

We got girls stripping.

We got girls lap dancing.

We got girls doing stuff you ain't never seen before.

I've been in the mob for years.

You ain't going to find no better in town, buddy.

It was time to get out. Let's do it.

But they didn't like it, and they came for me.

Heads up. Where are the drugs? They put me in the worst prison on the planet.

The deal that I went through, most people would never survive.

I ain't scared of you.

But you are looking at a true survivor.

I got to get out of here. And I'm here to tell you my story. Women's screwed,

man. You got to hear this to believe it.

In 2007, I was the king of Miami.

I was running the most popular strip club called Porky's.

You having a good time? Good man.

I like it.

I was the greatest host.

How you doing? Give me some sugar.

You know, I had the New York personality.

I had a swagger.

I made it happen.

Whoa, look what we got here.

Ooh, baby.

Yeah.

And it was the place to be.

Everybody wanted to be a part of it.

Celebrities, politicians, everybody wanted to be my friend.

And I made this place a monster. It was a monster Miami.

But while I was wearing porkies, I used it as an advantage to me to make money

on the side.

And put it there. That's right. You ain't going to find no better in town,

buddy. Do you like what you see?

Prostitution.

loan sharking, gambling, illegal things, so to speak.

I mean, I had Russian mob come there, Italian mafia. You like it?

You like what you see? Give me some honey, honey.

Most of my adult life, I worked in the underworld. I'm a street guy.

When I was 17 was the first time I had my introduction into the mafia.

I would do pretty much anything.

The one street crime that I never got involved in ever was drugs.

My old mafioso friends, they told me right from the beginning, this is a no

This is heavy sentencing.

Never get involved in drugs.

We don't do that trash here. Get out of my club.

And I lived that my whole life. I've never touched cocaine in my life.

So when I was running porkies, I was part pimp, part bouncer, the manager.

I did it all.

Hey, baby.

Ooh, you're looking good tonight.

The reason why I can get away with it is because I had protection.

Hey, Bill.

How are you doing, man? How are you? The guy that owned the club was an old

Jewish guy named Bill.

Hey, Mike, how you doing, man? Tony, Tony, Mike. Hey, listen, I only want the

best tonight. Of course, the best. Of course, this way, Mike.

Come on, man. Bill had...

Friends in very powerful high places.

Senators, judges.

He would say, Tony, he's a judge in Miami.

Hook him up with a nice girl, get him some lap dancing, and take good care of

him. My best buddy here, man.

We were getting away with stuff that other clubs could not get away with.

The club was making a lot of money.

I was able to live a lavish lifestyle.

Hey, Daddy's home!

Look what I bought.

And so along with all these nice things, I had a beautiful wife.

Her name is Christy.

You're going to love it, baby. What is this?

My God, look. I love the color, right? Look at it. It matches my fingernails.

have three beautiful boys, Anthony, Nicholas, and Matthew.

All in all, it was amazing.

It was amazing. I was blessed.

It was an incredible life. Oh, my God. Guys, we're all going to get a go, okay?

Then, as all good things come to an end,

it all began to go wrong at the club.

The owner of the club, the old Jewish guy, passed away.

And as he died, and as he went to his grave, so did our connections.

And soon I knew the police would be knocking at the door.

And then in May of 2009, it happened.

Don't move. Hands up.

They storm in, guns drawn, and I thought, hold, this is it.

Hands up. Hands up.

They close the club down, and I'm out of a job.

I've got to think about what I'm going to do now.

A buddy of mine, he said, Tony, you know what?

You should think about Panama.

I flew down there by myself for a few days.

I couldn't believe it. It was an extension of Miami.

Trump Towers was there. The Hard Rock was there.

I thought it was going to be a great opportunity to make money, start a new

life, and go legit.

That's all I really wanted was to provide a nice life for my wife and

I was so impressed that I went out and bought a vacant storefront.

And it transformed it into a bar restaurant called Bongo's.

Great, get some more chicken going.

Hey, you all enjoy yourself.

It became the most popular place in Panama City.

Hey, everybody, welcome to Bongo's.

All right, nice.

You enjoy the beer? Instead of boobs and asses, it was chicken wings and beer,

you know.

The success of bongos, it was making enough money to live okay, but

it wasn't enough to actually move my family to Panama, so I needed something

else.

One day in 2011, here's this guy coming across the street, and I'm thinking, is

that him?

I'm looking, is that Tarzan?

Hey, Tarzan, how you doing, buddy?

What are you doing here? I knew Tarzan from the old days back at Porky's in

Miami.

He's a big wig in the Russian mafia. A real good friend of mine. What's

happening, man?

And he came to me with a proposition. I said, listen, let's open a strip club.

Here, Panama.

You know the business better than anybody.

He said, I have some Russian connections down the block.

They get us the place.

We will make a lot of money.

I thought, okay, this is going to be great.

I can make a lot of money here.

If I do this deal, I can then bring my family over to live here.

Plus, I knew this was a legitimate business.

So I'm not going to get into trouble.

Let's do it.

So in April of 2011, we opened up the

dollhouse.

To get this place on the map, I had to bring what I knew, which was a Miami

swagger, that cockiness, that attitude.

We got girls stripping.

We got girls lap dancing.

We got girls doing stuff you ain't never seen before.

Walking around with a cordless microphone, you know, with a fur coat

fedora hat on.

These Patamanians never seen nothing like this.

It was excitement at the highest level.

Business was good. We were doing anywhere from $125 ,000 to

$150 ,000 a month.

But I went out and bought a penthouse and two other apartments.

So now it was time for Christy and the kids to come to Panama.

and help out and learn the business.

So, as a family, we're all together now.

You know, forget the king of Miami.

Now I'm like the king of Panama.

But what we didn't know was the competition from the other places was

watching.

And they weren't happy with what they were seeing.

They weren't happy because we stole all their business. We stole all their

girls.

And unfortunately, there's a lot of corruption.

And if you're not connected with the right people, you could be the one going

down. And we went down hard.

So one night, I'm at the dollhouse. It's about 11 o 'clock at night.

Tarzan had already left and went home.

And I see guys rushing through the front door with guns drawn.

And my first thought was, we're getting robbed.

I could feel my heart pounding, and I knew that this was something serious.

Hands up.

Put your hands up. Don't move.

And at that point, I knew it was the police, that we were not being robbed.

Where are the drugs?

Drugs? What are you talking about? This is a legitimate business.

We know there's drugs here, and we're going to find them.

You come with me right now.

So I stayed right with her the whole time, and she kept saying, All right,

Garliota, where are the drugs? I'm telling you, there are no drugs.

They could not find one.

They said to the girls, let me see your passports, because they want to make

sure these girls weren't human trafficked.

Every girl had her passport.

Every girl was there legitimately.

They arrested me, they arrested my son and put him in juvenile.

Hey, careful, man. He's 15 years old. Anthony, don't worry. You're going to be

okay, all right?

They took us to the police headquarters.

Mr. Galeota, we're charging you with human trafficking and drug trafficking.

What?

It was like cold water hitting me in the face. I was like, what are you talking

about? I was completely innocent.

So I said, after 100 years in one of your prisons, if you got proof, but you

ain't got no proof, because I'm innocent.

It was a setup. You know, the competition.

Wasn't happy with us because we stole all their business, and they set it up.

Tomorrow morning, you're going to La Jolla.

And I was thinking, what's La Jolla? I turned around to a couple other guys

got arrested, and I said, what's La Jolla?

Man, La Jolla is the worst prison on earth.

What?

And a chill came over my body. You know, I was like, oh, my God.

What is going on?

And I seen out of the corner of my eye, I see my wife outside.

Christy, where's Anthony?

Got him out. He's safe.

Tony, what about you, baby?

And at that moment, I realized I'm being charged with a crime, a serious crime,

and I'm going to a really bad prison.

That's when the nightmare began.

La Jolla was about an hour away.

I'm looking at this place and I'm thinking, what year is it? I mean, what?

you kidding me?

I mean, it looked like a prison from like 1920.

It was like unbelievable.

And then all of a sudden.

He just knifed the guy like that, I don't know, 12, 15 times.

The guards are calm. They're stepping over the guy. They don't even give a...

And then he just stopped breathing.

Listen, I'm a big guy. I've been in a lot of fights.

But I was scared. Who wouldn't be scared? You're not human.

You're not scared.

I'll never forget this.

As we're walking towards where the cells are, I could see guys

looking at us, screaming at us. You're dead. We're going to kill you.

They start beating them down.

I feel all the eyes on me. They're just staring at me. And I'm thinking to

myself, okay, here we go.

I knew that going in there, I had to show that I wasn't afraid, that I had no

fear.

I took my shirt off.

I'm ready to do battle.

Oh, yeah.

As I walked, I thought I was going to get jacked.

I ain't scared of you.

I ain't scared of you.

And I look, and I'm looking over my shoulder, back and forth like that, like

this, like that.

And the line's separating.

How come I'm not getting it? What's going on?

And nobody's doing nothing.

At the end of the line, there was this guy, and he's saying, Come here.

And I asked him, What's going on, man?

They all know who you are, man.

They've seen you on the news.

They know you're the mob.

Okay.

You know, mob guys, they got a reputation.

If you're connected with some people, whether it's Russian mafia or Italian

mafia, you get immediate respect.

But that didn't mean I was completely safe.

From the first day, I realized that I was in a very dangerous place.

People weren't even hiding their weapons. They're walking around with

There was guys in there that had pistols in prison.

You know, you could be killed, stabbed, robbed at any moment.

The prisoners ran the prison.

And the conditions in the prison were worse than the prisoners themselves.

It was a disgusting, filthy, dirty place.

We pissed in a bucket.

And we went to the bathroom and there was a hole in the ground.

Guys who couldn't buy toilet paper would use their hand and then wipe it on the

wall.

Couldn't believe the situation I was in and the horrendous conditions.

But I kept telling myself, you didn't do anything, you're going to get out of

here.

But it didn't turn out like that.

After a couple of weeks in La Jolla, I became very close to one Costa Rican

named Johnny.

I said to Johnny, you know, I'm going to be out of here soon.

Two or three weeks, I'm going to be out.

What?

The only person who could take you out of here in less than two years,

Jesus Christ.

When he said that, I started to think, you know what?

I have been watching. Nobody leaves here.

I see every Tuesday and Thursday two or three inmates come in, but I haven't

seen anybody go home.

He's right.

Nobody's leaving here.

Nobody's leaving.

At that moment, I was in despair, and I was thinking, I'm never going to leave

this place.

I'm in La Jolla, and I'm thinking to myself, you know, what happened to

Boy, did he get lucky.

When the police raided us, Tarzan was already home in bed.

And then I hear one of the inmates say, hey, your Russian buddy is up in intake

coming in now.

Tony!

Hey, Tarzan, how you doing, man?

Good to see you. Oh, my God.

You okay?

How'd they get you?

I went back to club to clean up, and cops were waiting for me.

This is a mess, man. It must have been the competition that set us up.

In my heart, I knew that we were innocent.

We didn't do any human trafficking.

We didn't sell any drugs.

To the United States, you're innocent until proven guilty.

Over there, you're guilty until proven innocent.

It's the opposite.

Two weeks later, I met with the best lawyer in Panama.

Look, Tony, I'm going to try to get you out of prison.

And that's all I needed to hear.

But, she said... If you're found guilty on the drug charge, you're looking at 8

to 10 years.

And on human trafficking, you're looking at 10 to 12 years.

And my heart sank right then and there because I'm thinking to myself, that's a

life sentence.

That's a death sentence for me.

I got to get out of here.

At that moment, I was in despair and I was desperate to see my wife. I was

desperate to see my kids. Christine, Anthony, Nicholas, Matthew, how you

buddy? Come up here. Oh, come to daddy.

Oh, son.

Christy, baby.

Come here, baby.

You get 45 minutes, and I can tell you right now, the whole 45 minutes was

hugging and crying and telling him that I'm sorry and,

you know, be strong, and we'll get

through this.

So sorry. You're going to get out here, baby. You're going to make it, okay?

You're the toughest man I know, okay?

I love you. I love you, too.

And she gave me hope.

And that's all I needed was a little hope, and she gave it to me.

My wife, she stayed in Panama.

She took control of bongos.

There was a comforting feeling knowing that on the other side of that wall,

There was somebody that cared about me.

I had no idea how long I was going to be there for.

So I learned how to survive in La Jolla.

And the way I did that was through my personality.

I have this gift, okay?

The gift to gab.

And I said, you know what? This is going to be my show.

So I kind of got close to the guards.

Tell them, listen, you and your wife, go to my restaurant. My wife's there.

She's going to make you dinner.

And so the guards sort of did me special favors.

And I was able to use the guards to then smuggle in things for the other

inmates.

I realized the other thing I needed to survive in there was money.

My wife made me a pan of lasagna.

And inside the lasagna, in a Ziploc bag, was a BlackBerry phone that she had

smuggled in for me.

See, you've got the black.

I like that.

And what I did was, and this is really ingenious.

I went on a dating site and I created a fake profile of a beautiful Colombian

girl.

And I would say, listen, I'm stuck in Panama at the airport. I missed my

It's cost me $50 to change flights.

And I don't have any money.

Couldn't you do me a favor and send me the money and pick me up from the

airport? And I'll make you a nice Latin dinner.

Good, right?

I got them to send me money all the time.

And I had one of my friend's wife pick it up on the outside.

I was earning more than the guards.

You like this, right?

One

day,

I get a phone call from my wife.

Christy, baby, how you doing?

And she's hysterical on the phone.

Calm down, calm down. What happened?

She says we got robbed at Bongo's at gunpoint.

A gang of Panamanians came in and put guns on her and my kids.

Stole all the money from the register.

At gunpoint, my family was held up.

I'm the protector, and this woman's here for me, and this is what happens?

And then I told her, listen, you got to go home.

Get the kids and go home.

Do this for me, Christy. Promise me.

It destroyed me.

Put my head in my hands and just cried.

It was extremely difficult for me to tell my wife to go home because she was

safety net and she was the one who gave me hope.

And I was about to lose that.

But I had to.

I knew it was the best thing for my family.

She sold bongos and took the kids back to Miami.

That was it. I mean, I was really all alone at that point.

My family's 1 ,200 miles away, and I can't touch them. I can't see them. I

tell them I love you.

And it was a tough moment. It was the lowest point for me,

probably the lowest point of my life.

I thought I would never see my wife and kids again.

I thought I would never get home.

Every night when I went to bed, I didn't dream about girls.

I didn't dream about meatball sandwiches.

I dreamt about me being in the airplane and hearing the pilots say, fasten your

seatbelts, we're now descending into Miami.

And I dreamed about that every day.

But the chances of this happening were very slim.

I was really stuck in a hole that I didn't know how to get out of.

But then we finally got our court date.

After our hearing with the judge, we had to wait for her decision.

And a couple days went by, we didn't hear nothing.

Days turned to weeks, weeks turned to more than a month, and still we didn't

hear nothing.

We don't know what's going on, and nobody's telling us anything.

You start to think, you know what, something's not right.

Then one day, Johnny, he had a paper in his hand.

You're free, man. What do you mean? You're free.

What are you talking about?

Read it. Whoa, whoa, whoa.

Let me check.

And I grabbed it and I looked at it and it said, immediate liberda, which is

freedom in Spanish.

Hey, Tarzan, we're free, man.

We're free.

Oh, my God. Thank you, God. Thank you.

And I'm holding this paper, and I'm looking up, and I'm thanking God, you

for helping me.

And it came through. The paper came through.

When we were released from La Jolla, we went to Panama City.

I went and got a cheap, cheap motel, and I went over to the shower, and I turned

it on, full blast, and I just stood under that shower, and I washed all that

Jolla off me.

I washed it away. I took bars of soap, and I just washed La Jolla off me, and I

got it out.

Then I woke up in the morning, and I get a call from my lawyer.

She said to me, listen, I got bad news.

The prosecutor appealed the decision of the judge, and they want to retry you

and Tarzan and put you back in prison for another three years.

What are you talking about? They just released this. Are they crazy?

And at that moment, I just couldn't believe it. Like, my heart was in my

you know, and I said to her, How long have I got until they come and get me?

She said, you got about a three -day window. Monday, they will pick you up.

And I said, well, what if I run?

And she says, well, after that day, you become a fugitive.

And if they catch you, they will kill you.

And I was like, you know what?

I'm going to take that chance.

I'd rather die running for my life to get to my family than to rot in that

prison.

And I convinced Tarzan that we'd go running. We'd go to the border of Costa

and we'd get some way across the border.

But it was very dangerous because there were roadblocks.

Cops would just...

sitting there outside the car, and they stop you.

They look in the car, see if you've got weapons or drugs, and they want to check

your ID.

Really, it's a one -minute, two -minute stop, but still, you know, we're

fugitives.

Gracias.

Finally, after six hours, we get to the border, and it was full of immigration

customs officials.

I mean, there was no way we were going through that.

What are we going to do now?

It's not good.

So at that point, when we realized that this is a no way out, we're screwed.

This is the end.

We needed to hide out while we figure out how to get across the border to

Rica.

We went to the coast and needed to get in contact with our friends in our cell,

the Costa Rican gangs that were going to help us get to Costa Rica.

Johnny told us, listen, sit tight at 7 o 'clock in the morning. I have a Costa

Rican guy coming with a boat.

He's going to take you guys to Costa Rica.

Hey, Johnny, if you can do that, I won't forget it, buddy.

No. You know, it's a funny thing about being in prison. I watch guys kill each

other for $10.

But when it's the prisoners against the system, we're all one.

I made a final call to my wife.

Christy. Christy, baby, it's me.

Listen, we're close to the border.

I got to get out of here.

Yeah. This is the last time I'm going to talk to you.

I was afraid that they were going to tap her phone and be able to locate me.

So I said to her, let me talk to the kid.

She said, I don't think that's a good idea.

They're worried about you.

And if they know that you're running for your life, they're going to think about

it all week, every day, every second.

So, if you make it home, you'll tell them yourself.

I love you, baby.

Yeah.

Bye.

You know, talking about it makes me emotional because I remember it like it

yesterday.

It was a goodbye to my wife, my best friend, and maybe never see them again,

never see my children again.

Maybe I'm going to be shot. Maybe I'm going to be captured and put back in

It was the hardest phone call I made in my life because it was a real goodbye.

The next morning.

A little boat pulls up.

When I mean a little boat, this boat was about 16 feet. It was like a wide

canoe.

And you had the motor with the handle on the back.

And I'm thinking, oh, man.

Oh.

We're traveling along to get to Costa Rica.

I mean, we were really on the run at that point, you know, when we were

fugitives.

What if somebody sees us?

It looks funny.

Two white guys with a dark Costa Rican guy in a boat.

We could be shot.

You know, it was all going through my mind.

Heart's beating. I'm sweating. I don't know if we're going to make it or not.

Costa Rica.

And I was like, oh, my God, we're going to make it. We're close.

I could see it. I could see it's right there.

When we get to the beach, there was a jungle in front of us. We run into the

jungle because we want to hide.

We're out of Panama.

But we're still not out of the woods.

You had to kind of weave your way through the jungle.

There were spots where it was thick brush.

But, you know, I got to tell you, honestly, I didn't care.

I'm getting out.

That's it. I'm getting out.

And Johnny told us, go to this guy.

He's going to hire you out. He's going to take care of you.

He was able to provide us a place to hide out, which was a little shack in

woods.

Hey, guys.

Welcome to your new home.

We had to really lay low because if we walk around and a cop says, hey, let me

see your passport, there's no Costa Rican stamp, and they're going to say,

and then send us back to Panama.

We needed to get our passports stamped if we were going to get home.

So again, Johnny hooked us up with another guy, and he said, look, give me

each. I'll be back tomorrow with a passport, with a stamp saying that you

Panama, and a stamp saying that you arrive here in Costa Rica.

You know, this guy was a shady -looking guy, scraggly hat, T -shirt, shorts,

sandals. This wasn't a guy that looked like he worked at the bank.

handing our passports over.

And I kind of didn't let go right away.

You know, he kind of pulled on a little bit and I kind of like held on to it.

And I realized, listen, I have to let go.

And I let go of it.

I'll be back in 24 hours.

But now we don't have our passports.

Now what happens? We have no identification.

If this guy takes the money and the passports and runs, we're not going to

this guy.

24 hours went.

He didn't come back.

He didn't come back.

You know what?

We've been screwed, man.

At that point, we realized that We could be stuck, and panic started to set in.

I couldn't believe, after everything we'd been through, that this was going

be the end.

Me and Tarzan realized we were in a dangerous situation if we don't have our

passports stamped.

We were ending up back in La Jolla.

But then... Hola, gringos.

Well?

Boom. This passport of mine.

And there it was.

There was the stamp.

And at that moment, the excitement level, the exhilaration, we were like,

God.

Well done, buddy.

Nice. Thank you, man.

It changed from being angry and mad to, you know, you're exhilarated.

And it was time for us to say our final goodbyes.

The journey we took together was an incredible journey of a brotherhood,

that started when we got arrested.

Thank you for getting me through this, man.

Thank you. And good luck, man.

I love you.

I got a little teary -eyed because I thought this was the last time I would

see him again.

I'm going to make my run for Miami.

He's going to make his run for Moscow.

Tarzan was going to wait to see if I made it before he left.

I'm going to be the guinea pig.

I made it to the airport.

I go right to the counter, and I'm very nervous at this point. My heart is

pounding because I know they're going to run my passport.

Hi, sir. How can I help you? I took you to Miami, please.

She's looking in my eyes.

I'm looking in her eyes.

She's typing something, looking up at me, typing something.

And I'm thinking at any moment she's going to say, security, security.

So my heart's racing. My heart's racing.

And then finally she says, is 36D okay for you, sir? It's an aisle seat.

That looks perfect.

And I had a little bit of relief come over my body.

Then I go and I sit down. I got to wait for a flight.

But I don't want to go to security yet because I want to check it out, see how

security's working.

And as I'm sitting in the chair, the most messed up thing happens to me.

Some guy comes up to me. I don't see him, and he says, Hey, aren't you Tony

Bongos?

No, man, no.

I was so scared.

I got up. I went to the bathroom. I went in the stall, and I hid in the stall

for like 15 minutes, and I was just breathing, breathing heavy like, oh, my

who the hell was that? How did he recognize me in Costa Rica?

What's going on? Is this guy going to report me?

I don't know.

So I pulled myself together in the bathroom, and I said, you know what?

You came a long way, Tony.

You came a long way, and you know what? You're going to finish this.

I wanted to get rid of anything that connected me to Costa Rica, Panama,

anything. So I took my phone. I threw it in the garbage.

And I went to security.

And I start walking towards the terminals.

The relief, I made it through. I'm going to get on a plane.

I'm going to live my dream.

I'm going to hear that pilot soon.

I'm going to hear that pilot say, we're now descending into Miami.

I'm in Miami airport.

I step out of the doors, and I'm in the United States of America,

and I'm safe.

I had this joy come over, like, you did it.

T, you made it.

I sat down, and there was a guy on the bench sitting next to me, and I said to

the guy, excuse me, sir, can I borrow your phone to make a call?

Yeah, sure, buddy.

Thanks, man.

And I go to dial the number. I can't dial it. I can't dial it. I can't dial

number.

I'm literally shaken with nerves.

It's excitement. It's happiness.

It's all the emotions at one time.

Hey, you all right, big boy?

You dial the number for me, sir.

Yeah, sure.

He dialed the number.

Now, my wife don't know this phone number.

She don't know it, but she answered the phone.

And I said to her, Christy, it's me. I made it.

I'm home.

Today, my life is much different.

I'm a changed person.

I grew up a lot.

I'm a better father, a better husband, a better friend.

I just want to live with my family and enjoy them and live a peaceful life.

The way I look at it is maybe I needed to go to La Jolla because it changed my

life and most likely saved my life and made me the person I am today.