WHAT TO EXPECT WHEN YOU'RE CONVICTED

From Sam Bankman-Fried's fraud-ridden crypto empire to Elizabeth Holmes' sham biotech company to deepfakers on the internet bilking grandmas of their retirement savings, white-collar crime seems to touch every last corner of tech.

- ELANA KLEIN

For the business titan who may one day end up in custody and can't count on a presidential pardon, it never hurts to know a guy.

WIRED spoke with a self-described former “troubleshooter for the mafia” who was incarcerated in US penitentiaries for a decade and found a new role for himself on the outside: He became a prison consultant. Now he works with an array of white-collar offenders. He berates and curses the ears off his clients—but it's all part of the no-bullshit approach he says he uses to help them reduce and optimize their time inside.

ONCE WHEN I was in prison and we were walking out of the dining hall, I stopped and I looked out the window. I said, “Do you see it?” And the other inmates are like, “What?” I go, “It’s right there.” And they’re stopping and gazing into the sky. Then more people come out of the dining hall and start looking too, and before you know it, so do the correctional officers. Finally, I said: “Gee, see how easy it is to take control of stupid people?”

I had a prison psychiatrist say that I treated the prison system like it was my own personal amusement park. I was just having too good of a time in there. I would get on the telephone, calling home or whoever, and I’d go, “Well, if the staff hates me right now, they’re going to despise me by this weekend. I have something special planned. I really can’t say. The staff’s listening in on the phone calls.” So the weekend rolls around, they put extra staff members on duty, wondering, “All right, what’s the dude going to do?” I’m lying in my fucking bunk reading a book. I ain’t going to do shit. But I fucking manipulated these people.