was millions into debt with the cartel and got a text message on an encrypted phone from a man he referred to as “El Jefe,” the boss. It read simply: Tick tock.
That was life for Hanson, the latest guest on with and . The former walk on at on Leinart’s National Champion Trojans football team was waist deep in a life of crime and needed to climb his way out of it soon. Real soon.
But before that he was making $1 million a day.
“He told me on the encrypted phone ‘How would you like to make a million dollars a day?” Hanson recalled. “You got to remember, I’m 25. This is where my career as a cocaine quarterback became better than Matt’s career as a quarterback.”
Hanson’s story is now the subject of a -produced three-part documentary on titled . He started small, smuggling party drugs into the US from Mexico and serving as a bookie for athletes looking to gamble. But when one of his “whales” turned out to be a member of the cartel, Hanson’s business grew exponentially, and so did the crimes he committed.
But with that growth came risk, and when partner ran off with $3 million, he was left with the bill to the cartel. Instead of hurting him, the cartel gave Hanson the option to pay them back and he took them up on it. “Now you’re in panic mode,” Hanson remembered about the time. “I don’t care if I die at this point. You’re so stressed.”
In time he paid his debts off and decided he was now free to make his own money. “Now it’s my turn to shine,” Hanson thought back. “I was determined, like ‘now let me get back on top.’ Fifty million was the number (where I said) get to that number and I’m out.”
A life of crime only has a few familiar ends through, something Hanson was all too aware of, and that $50 million never came. “There’s only two ways out,” Hanson said. “Dead or in prison, and I took the latter. And God bless that it happened that way. Let’s be honest I shouldn’t be here.”
For Hanson, he was aware the FBI was on him, and the climactic moment when they finally caught him was actually a relief. “I was like ‘finally, my life is over,’” he told Matt and Jerry. “No, it’s not over. I’m finally alive.”
Hanson’s life was far from over and on the second episode of his sit down with Throwbacks next week he details how ice cream he made in mop buckets in prison turned into the business he runs today as a free man.
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