Speaker 1: It's the Opperman Report.
Speaker 2: Joined digital forensic investigator in PI Ed Opperman for an
Speaker 2: in depth discussion of conspiracy theories, strategy of New World
Speaker 2: Order resistance, hi profile court cases in the news, and
Speaker 2: interviews with expert guests and authors on these topics and more.
Speaker 1: It's the Opperman Report. And now here is Investigator Ed Opperman.
Speaker 3: Okay, welcome to the Opperman Report. I am your host,
Speaker 3: Private Investigator Ed Opperman, and the show is brought to
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Speaker 3: guest today is Eric Auday and this is the most
Speaker 3: incredible story you're going to hear in a long time.
Speaker 3: He's just done a documentary film called Three Years in Pakistan,
Speaker 3: The Eric Auday Story aude and basically, the guy got
Speaker 3: caught over there with some opium, smuggling some opium and
Speaker 3: had spent three years on a Pakistani prison where they
Speaker 3: were beating his feet on a daily basis really really
Speaker 3: intense stuff. Eric Auday, are you there, I'm here, How
Speaker 3: you doing? Thank you so much, man, I really appreciate this. Uh,
Speaker 3: tell us about yourself? Who is Eric Day?
Speaker 4: Oh? Well, I'm I'm a poker player. I'm a stuntman,
Speaker 4: a stunt coordinator. Sometimes. I'm an actor of en acting
Speaker 4: for twenty seven years.
Speaker 5: And I know, I just I try to be a
Speaker 5: happy guy and I go through life.
Speaker 4: As easily as possible. That's about it.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's how you come off in this film, and
Speaker 3: like a really likable guy and very extensive to IMDb page,
Speaker 3: a lot of film mark You've done a lot of stuff.
Speaker 3: One thing I was interested in, though, is you got
Speaker 3: hit by a bus when you were eight years old?
Speaker 4: Not hit, but run over. I got run over by
Speaker 4: a bus when I was eight.
Speaker 5: I spent a couple almost two years in a wheelchair.
Speaker 5: I had over fifty surgeries, and I had my urethras
Speaker 5: severed and reconnected. I'm the first person on earth to
Speaker 5: have that happen. But yeah, I was in the hospital
Speaker 5: for a long time, and you know, from an early age,
Speaker 5: I had to deal with pain and a lot of suffering,
Speaker 5: and that was that was my life.
Speaker 4: That was the life, I know.
Speaker 3: Yeah, but then you went on to be like a
Speaker 3: high school foot post star and stuff like that.
Speaker 5: I was told I'd never walk again, and not only
Speaker 5: did that, I do that, But yeah, I played for
Speaker 5: a small high school called Bethel Christian up in Lancaster,
Speaker 5: and it was a small school.
Speaker 4: We had a small division, but I probably proke.
Speaker 5: State records with with tackles for a defensive end, and
Speaker 5: those records hold to this day. So it turned out that,
Speaker 5: you know, it was a lot luckier than most would
Speaker 5: have been in my position. I was told I never
Speaker 5: walk again and end up doing pretty good in the
Speaker 5: inn the high school football world.
Speaker 3: And that's in Bethel, Pennsylvania.
Speaker 5: No, no, no, that's this is this is Lancaster, California.
Speaker 3: Lancaster, California. Okay, okay, And did you go to college
Speaker 3: on a scholarship?
Speaker 4: I was offered. I was offered like partial scholarships the
Speaker 4: smaller colleges, but I didn't want to go.
Speaker 5: I wanted to be an actor and a stunt man,
Speaker 5: and I moved down to La as soon as I could.
Speaker 3: So no, okay, and what about like any residual pain
Speaker 3: from this bus incident.
Speaker 5: Yeah, for the rest of my life, I'll be I'll
Speaker 5: be in pain. But you get used to it, you know,
Speaker 5: if you get an ache in your and your hip
Speaker 5: and your shoulders and your and.
Speaker 4: Your legs, you just get used to it.
Speaker 5: So I'm I've gotten used to kidney pains, I've gotten
Speaker 5: used to hit pains, And it's sort of why I've
Speaker 5: become a stunt man, because I've been just used to
Speaker 5: pain my entire life.
Speaker 3: Okay, so no pain management, no pain meds.
Speaker 4: No. I became when I was a kid.
Speaker 5: I became addicted to him, and I'm talking like when
Speaker 5: I was eight years old, so they had to weed
Speaker 5: me off of it because eventually it wasn't working anyways.
Speaker 3: Fascinating life, man, I got to tell you, fascinating When
Speaker 3: are we going to get into this whole thing? So
Speaker 3: why don't you tell us what happened here with the
Speaker 3: whole how you got involved with the smuggling operation.
Speaker 5: Well, well see, you're you're discribing it really kind of badly. Actually, Okay, yeah,
Speaker 5: I had no idea it was a smuggling I mean,
Speaker 5: did you watch the documentary?
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, yeah, okay, what did you take away from
Speaker 4: the duck?
Speaker 3: Well, yeah, that you would they tricked you into into
Speaker 3: getting jackets or something, leather goods and stuff like that.
Speaker 3: You were traveling for this guy horning the gym, right.
Speaker 5: Yeah, all right, Well you know it's I was hired
Speaker 5: to unknowingly smuggle opium, and that's what happened.
Speaker 4: I was I was.
Speaker 5: Working for a good friend of mine, and I thought
Speaker 5: I was importing expensive leather goods from different countries and
Speaker 5: getting a free trip and getting a little spending money
Speaker 5: for it. The trips originally were to Turkey, and I'd
Speaker 5: get a free trip. I'd go and explore Turkey, come
Speaker 5: back through Sweden, I'd have a great time, and by
Speaker 5: being hired to import expensive leather goods to beat the
Speaker 5: fifty five percent import text back into the US, I
Speaker 5: begin a free trip and my friend would be saving
Speaker 5: a lot of money on the import tax.
Speaker 4: So was a win win. And it turned out that
Speaker 4: me and several other.
Speaker 5: People were being used to unknowingly smuggle opium, and I
Speaker 5: would be the one.
Speaker 4: To find out the hard way, right after nine to eleven.
Speaker 5: That we were actually being used as dupes, not mules.
Speaker 5: Mules are people who knowingly are smuggling illegal contraband. Dupes
Speaker 5: have no idea they're being used to smuggle illegal contraband.
Speaker 5: I thought it was bad enough to be beating the
Speaker 5: import text by bringing in expensive other goods. And we
Speaker 5: were told they were bringing in anywhere from twenty five
Speaker 5: to thirty thousand dollars worth of leather goods, and we
Speaker 5: were saving him fifteen to sixteen thousand dollars on the
Speaker 5: import text. And it turned out the leather goods was
Speaker 5: just a smoke screen to keep us ignorant of what
Speaker 5: it was that we were really being used to bring in,
Speaker 5: and that was narcotics.
Speaker 4: And I was the one who found out the hard way.
Speaker 3: How much were you getting paid for trip?
Speaker 4: Eight hundred bucks?
Speaker 3: Eight hundred bucks? Okay?
Speaker 5: And I'd go through that, you know, in my first
Speaker 5: few days on food alone, food and.
Speaker 4: Expensive food and exciting you know, adventures and movies and
Speaker 4: dinners and all that. So the trip for mean the
Speaker 4: I would have.
Speaker 5: Done these trips for free, because the triple, the trip
Speaker 5: in itself to a to a nineteen year old kid
Speaker 5: was the payment.
Speaker 3: Gotcha, okay? I was gonna ask you next. You were
Speaker 3: nineteen years old. When you were doing this, Okay, Now,
Speaker 3: when you were taking these trips back and forth, you
Speaker 3: were passing through customs and through were they examining their
Speaker 3: dogs and stuff like that?
Speaker 4: Yeah, well the customs were there.
Speaker 5: I went through customs in Turkey, went through customs in Sweden.
Speaker 4: I went through customs at JFK Report.
Speaker 5: And you know, the first few trips I made, no
Speaker 5: one found anything.
Speaker 4: No one was ever the wiser.
Speaker 3: Okay said, then what happened at that that trip where
Speaker 3: you got caught?
Speaker 4: Uh?
Speaker 5: And I was in Islamabad. I was in Pakistan. The
Speaker 5: trips weren't originally to Pakistan. This was the trip was
Speaker 5: a mess up, messed up for the for the very
Speaker 5: get go. Wasn't even supposed to be my trip. It
Speaker 5: was supposed to be my old brother's trip. But when
Speaker 5: he found out it was to the Middle East, he
Speaker 5: backed out. He wasn't adventurous enough to go. And me
Speaker 5: had been a loyal friend. Didn't want to let my
Speaker 5: friend down because I had encouraged this job to my
Speaker 5: brother and.
Speaker 4: I and.
Speaker 5: In Islamabad I found out the hard way. That yeah,
Speaker 5: I found out the hard way. In as long as
Speaker 5: bad there was either someone either blew a whistle or
Speaker 5: the cop was just a really good cop and and
Speaker 5: did his uh, did his job. And it looked weird
Speaker 5: that a white guy was in Islama bad it was
Speaker 5: the only white you know, well, I was the only American,
Speaker 5: the only white person in the airport, so I stood
Speaker 5: out pretty good.
Speaker 3: Now, how about when you were on the previous trips,
Speaker 3: like when you were handling these leather goods, you couldn't
Speaker 3: find anything like hidden compartments and stuff.
Speaker 5: You didn't notice that if you opened up those suitcase,
Speaker 5: it looked like an empty suitcase you could fill around
Speaker 5: and everything it was.
Speaker 4: It was an empty, empty, very light suitcase.
Speaker 5: But drug drug smugglers are shame still get their products
Speaker 5: across any way they can, and they're they're great at
Speaker 5: what they do at hiding jobs, and they you know,
Speaker 5: they're they're going to continue to do this until the
Speaker 5: end of time.
Speaker 3: So the drugs were hidden in the suitcase, not in
Speaker 3: the actual leather goods.
Speaker 4: Had nothing to do with the leather.
Speaker 5: If I taken those leather jackets and put them in
Speaker 5: another suitcase.
Speaker 3: You would have been in trouble man.
Speaker 4: I would have I would have.
Speaker 5: Known that something was obviously up by their reaction when
Speaker 5: they were pissed off that I gave them.
Speaker 4: Oh yeah, the other suitcase got jacked up. Here's the
Speaker 4: suitcase here, You're welcome.
Speaker 3: It got wet. You know the other suitcase count wet?
Speaker 3: I butt you knew it?
Speaker 5: Well, yeah, obviously if i'd known then what I know now,
Speaker 5: I wouldn't have done the trip, but I would have
Speaker 5: been able to pick up that. They're why are you
Speaker 5: so mad about a suitcase? I don't understand, because the
Speaker 5: jackets was the job.
Speaker 3: Now what about how much were how much drugs were
Speaker 3: they concealing in these suitcases? You know?
Speaker 5: Well, I only know from the one time I got caught,
Speaker 5: and that was three point six kg.
Speaker 3: So three kilograms I guess, right. And how much is
Speaker 3: that worth.
Speaker 4: Worth? Like in money?
Speaker 5: I don't know, Okay, not a drug smuggler, I don't know.
Speaker 3: You never found out for all these years, you never
Speaker 3: found out what the street value was and how would
Speaker 3: you cost over there in Pakistan or Turkey? What this
Speaker 3: was going for over there?
Speaker 4: Uh? No, I was in jail. I was in jail
Speaker 4: trying to fight for my insence.
Speaker 5: I wasn't out there trying to find out how much
Speaker 5: exactly that I was being used to smuggle, because that
Speaker 5: wasn't my priority.
Speaker 4: My priority was getting out of prison. No.
Speaker 3: So really so even while you were there in prison
Speaker 3: talking to the other prisoners, and you must have chatted
Speaker 3: about you know, what you're in for, that kind of stuff.
Speaker 4: Okay, have you been have you been to jail in Pakistan?
Speaker 3: Not in Pakistan? Though?
Speaker 4: How many people do you think speak English and pacts? Oh?
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's another thing too, right okay, prime? Right?
Speaker 1: Right?
Speaker 4: Can that make see you? Because not very many?
Speaker 5: Okay, So the conversations in Pakistan weren't Hey, by the way,
Speaker 5: you're carrying this much amount and opium and this is
Speaker 5: how you cut it, and this is how you sell
Speaker 5: it and this is how you move it. No, this
Speaker 5: is the questions were why are you American? The Americans evil?
Speaker 5: Do you like George Bush? What do you think about Israel?
Speaker 5: Those are the questions that people ask you if they
Speaker 5: can even speak English.
Speaker 3: Okay, let's go to the first Let's start when when
Speaker 3: you got caught. Okay, when you got busted and they
Speaker 3: picked up described to us at first he didn't think
Speaker 3: anything was wrong, right, So, so what happened at there?
Speaker 3: At the airport.
Speaker 5: It was I guess right, yeah, when they first got caught, well,
Speaker 5: that was the second they found the drugs.
Speaker 4: I was panicking.
Speaker 5: I tried to They said they were going to hang
Speaker 5: me after five o'clock prayer.
Speaker 4: I mean it went from they went from.
Speaker 5: Zero to ninety nine miles an.
Speaker 4: Hour so fast.
Speaker 5: When they said they were going to hang me, I panicked.
Speaker 5: I rushed to another room to try to find a phone.
Speaker 5: I found a phone, and I started calling my manager.
Speaker 5: I wanted to call my manager, and my goal was
Speaker 5: simply for to tell him because he knew exactly what
Speaker 5: I was doing.
Speaker 4: He knew I was.
Speaker 5: I was working for this man to travel in the
Speaker 5: world and important expensive other goods.
Speaker 4: I wanted him to warn the others that this was
Speaker 4: that we were being used a smuggle opium.
Speaker 5: I figured, if I'm going to die, I want to
Speaker 5: at least make my life worth something. Turn Out, the
Speaker 5: guy who told me they were going to hang me
Speaker 5: was just kidding. But by then I look like a
Speaker 5: looked like an asshole.
Speaker 4: They said. I tried to escape.
Speaker 5: The DEA came to the airport to talk to me,
Speaker 5: but they didn't believe a word out of my mouth,
Speaker 5: because in their eyes, possession is ten tenths of the law.
Speaker 5: People think, well, you're either in on it or you're
Speaker 5: so stupid that you deserve to be in jail. Anyways,
Speaker 5: Well it makes sense to me because if a drug
Speaker 5: smuggler can pay you to do the job for them
Speaker 5: and not tell you about it, that they're going to
Speaker 5: save a lot of money by keeping you in the dark.
Speaker 4: They also figure you won't draw suspicion.
Speaker 5: To yourself because you don't know you're being used to travel.
Speaker 4: With anything illegal.
Speaker 5: Before I went to jail, I thought, oh, yeah, if
Speaker 5: you're arrested, you're guilty right away. Now, I believe the
Speaker 5: majority of people, especially for narcotics related.
Speaker 4: Cases, or innocent. I think a lot of people in
Speaker 4: jail in.
Speaker 5: General are innestent, especially in Pakistan, because in Pakistan.
Speaker 4: They will beat They will beat you until you admit.
Speaker 5: To the crimes that you're part of, or until you
Speaker 5: give up names of people, and they'll start naming off
Speaker 5: anyone that they can't think of who has nothing to
Speaker 5: do with the crime they're being accused of, simply to
Speaker 5: get the beatens to stop so and then when they
Speaker 5: grab those new people, those people will start naming off
Speaker 5: names to get the beatens to stop. So there are
Speaker 5: so many layers of people who are in jail, especially
Speaker 5: in Pakistan, for crimes they had nothing or no knowledge about,
Speaker 5: but they either admitted to.
Speaker 4: It simply to stop getting beat.
Speaker 3: Oh you know, explain it though. This isn't some rogue
Speaker 3: cops bending the rules. This is their law. There there
Speaker 3: are a lots of torture, a confession out of you.
Speaker 5: Yeah, it's called physical or man, they're legally allowed to
Speaker 5: beat you. I mean people here see oh I got slapped,
Speaker 5: No it ell was slapping?
Speaker 4: Is I wish it was a slap?
Speaker 5: Beating you there is is hitting the bottom of your
Speaker 5: feet with a cane, electric cuting you, hanging you up
Speaker 5: like a punching bag, punching you like one drowning you,
Speaker 5: and then repeating. And the judge it's up to the
Speaker 5: judge in the lower the lower courts to decide how
Speaker 5: many days of physical remand you get. The prosecutor in
Speaker 5: my case wanted ten days, but she only got three.
Speaker 5: In those three days, I was torture. But there's people
Speaker 5: who last, you know, sometimes they get they get weeks
Speaker 5: uh and people die all the time in Pakistan because
Speaker 5: of physical Remand.
Speaker 3: Okay, so when they start doing this to you, did
Speaker 3: you I saw from the movie you did right away
Speaker 3: start naming names of this guy who sent you over.
Speaker 4: There, right I named one name, Ray Gazarian?
Speaker 3: Right now, what about did you know the names that
Speaker 3: are people you were meeting with in Pakistan? That kind
Speaker 3: of snuff.
Speaker 4: At the time.
Speaker 5: I knew like first names Joseph and I forget the
Speaker 5: other guy's name.
Speaker 4: I knew those guys, but my contact was Ray. He
Speaker 4: made it, you know, it was all about Ray.
Speaker 5: They came to the I was picked up from the
Speaker 5: airport and then driven to the hotel. They left me
Speaker 5: at I was supposed to hang with these guys for
Speaker 5: the week, but they said that Ray messed up and
Speaker 5: I was supposed to me to Karachi, which is nowhere
Speaker 5: near Islamabad.
Speaker 4: Karachi's way way way south.
Speaker 5: And so instead of hanging out with me for a week,
Speaker 5: you know, and showing me around and keeping me safe,
Speaker 5: which is what one of the one of the enticing
Speaker 5: factors that Ray says, Hey, you're because when you hear
Speaker 5: the word Pakistan, no one wants to go to Pakistan.
Speaker 5: I sure as hell didn't want to go to Pakistan.
Speaker 5: He's like, don't worry, my friends are going to show
Speaker 5: you around. But when I landed, they said, Ray messed up.
Speaker 4: You're supposed to go to Karachi.
Speaker 5: Uh, we'll be back when you leave on Friday, and
Speaker 5: they so I was instead of hanging out with these
Speaker 5: guys getting to know these guys I saw when I
Speaker 5: got there, and I saw one of them when I left,
Speaker 5: So I didn't know too too much about these guys
Speaker 5: at all, and that was not how it was supposed
Speaker 5: to be.
Speaker 4: So Ray Gazarian was the.
Speaker 5: Only person, and turned out his name wasn't even Reygazari,
Speaker 5: and his real name ended up being Rasnik Manassing, which
Speaker 5: I would find out about six months later when the
Speaker 5: DEA comes to the to the prisons to show me
Speaker 5: the because by this time I'm in jail one throw
Speaker 5: and the DEA comes back with papers or the pictures,
Speaker 5: asking who if I never recognized any of the people,
Speaker 5: and I automatically recognize Regazarian. They say no, his name
Speaker 5: is Rasmik Manassian and they tell me that after I
Speaker 5: was arrested, he went on just under a different alias,
Speaker 5: doing the same thing. And a Swedish woman working for
Speaker 5: this man in this company. Lost her luggage at JFK Airport,
Speaker 5: but continued on our itinerary to lax when they they
Speaker 5: when they found they found her luggage, they found opium
Speaker 5: sewn into the walls of her suitcase, just like mine.
Speaker 4: So they set up a sting and they.
Speaker 5: Arrested both her and Regazarian at a hotel in Glendale,
Speaker 5: except he posted bail under the name Erasmik Manassian, which
Speaker 5: would end up being his real name. My mom at
Speaker 5: the time had a private investigator looking for this guy.
Speaker 4: Because the police don't give a shit about you.
Speaker 5: Once you're in jail. You're in jail and they oh
Speaker 5: drug related, they don't care. They just their jobs to
Speaker 5: arrest people. Their jobs actually not to actually prove people
Speaker 5: are innocent. Their job is to people. You know, when's
Speaker 5: the last time you ever heard of a cop gole?
Speaker 5: And this guy is actually interestent, Let's help him get
Speaker 5: out of jail. You never is the answer. So it
Speaker 5: was my mom's private investigator that was able to put
Speaker 5: two and two together for the DA and say, hey,
Speaker 5: this is the same guy that's set up Eric. And
Speaker 5: when they realized this is the guy that set me up,
Speaker 5: and that my story and several others matched the Swedish
Speaker 5: girl's story. They released the Swedish girl back to her
Speaker 5: country in less than two weeks without being charged. So
Speaker 5: at least by my being in jail, that girl wasn't.
Speaker 4: She was approved.
Speaker 5: She was declared innocent and a dupe, just like I was.
Speaker 4: And so they re arrested.
Speaker 5: Rasmcmannasky and denied him bell and it was because they
Speaker 5: knew what he had done to me. Unfortunately, they couldn't
Speaker 5: do anything for me because I was in Pakistan. So
Speaker 5: here I was, six months after I had been arrested
Speaker 5: on death row, being shown these photos by a guy,
Speaker 5: a DA agent. And this DA agent when I asked him,
Speaker 5: I go, okay, what's happening now? How am I getting
Speaker 5: out of here? And I could tell by his expression
Speaker 5: that something was wrong, and the expression was he says,
Speaker 5: I've never seen this before, and I what is that?
Speaker 5: And he goes, I've never actually met someone innocent before,
Speaker 5: and he says, if this had happened in America, you'd
Speaker 5: be going home tonight. Unfortunately, because it's here in Pakistan,
Speaker 5: you still have to go through their legal system. And
Speaker 5: they knew I was on death row. It's facing a
Speaker 5: serious possible death row, a death sentence, and there was
Speaker 5: nothing that they could do. So the American governments tell me,
Speaker 5: we know you're innocent and we can't do anything about it.
Speaker 3: But back to when you first hit this prison, because
Speaker 3: you said yourself that no one speaks English over there,
Speaker 3: right and the ones more some.
Speaker 5: Some do, but it's broken, or they understand. They can
Speaker 5: say words, but they don't really understand my accent.
Speaker 3: Did they ever look accuse you of being cia?
Speaker 5: Uh?
Speaker 3: No, no one ever brought that up, even though even
Speaker 3: the cops over there and stuff like that. No, okay, never, okay,
Speaker 3: all right now even then, Now, how did you get
Speaker 3: along with these people if you could? How did you
Speaker 3: communicate them? If you couldn't communicate? Just the little things
Speaker 3: like you know, being told where to go and what
Speaker 3: to do and stuff.
Speaker 5: Hand gestures, I guess, or I was being led by
Speaker 5: someone grabbing my shoulder and leading me, or I would
Speaker 5: just follow a guard to where I needed to go.
Speaker 5: I mean, those things are easy if you you know,
Speaker 5: we're if you just pay attention to people, you don't
Speaker 5: have to speak the same language to understand. Like head
Speaker 5: nods are pretty universal. Hand pointings pretty universal.
Speaker 3: Okay, can you describe the conditions of the prison.
Speaker 4: The prison's called Central jel Audiyala. At the time it
Speaker 4: was the old it was.
Speaker 5: It was considered a new prison, but it was the
Speaker 5: biggest prison in Pakistan, the Pakistan.
Speaker 4: The prison had been built in nineteen eighty six.
Speaker 5: It was a prison meant to house only eighteen hundred prisoners,
Speaker 5: but at the time I got there, there were over
Speaker 5: six thousand prisoners there. And the way I know this
Speaker 5: is because when you walk into the prison, there's a
Speaker 5: board on the right and it's got the number of
Speaker 5: inmates under trials and this is in English, well English
Speaker 5: and or do. But it tells you how many women prisoners,
Speaker 5: how many children prisoners, how many under trials, how many convicted,
Speaker 5: how many death row prisoners? And the number was always
Speaker 5: around sixty or it was always.
Speaker 4: Over six thousand.
Speaker 5: I've never seen under six thousand, but it was between
Speaker 5: sixty one and sixty three one hundred. And he had
Speaker 5: hundreds of prisoners coming and going every day.
Speaker 3: Children, children, What are children being served? What's going on
Speaker 3: with the children?
Speaker 5: Children commit crimes too? Or a kids of crimes at
Speaker 5: a juvenile prison? Inside the inside the joe.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and now did you come into contact with children
Speaker 3: when you were in there?
Speaker 5: I did you know through the children when they were
Speaker 5: I saw kids from time to time. The kids would
Speaker 5: usually get like a lot of the arran jobs I guess,
Speaker 5: like running messages or uh like the worker jobs cleaning
Speaker 5: the different parts of the prison.
Speaker 4: But they but they but they.
Speaker 5: Are also mostly inside their juvenile There was a fourteen
Speaker 5: year old kid that was in charge of the canteen.
Speaker 4: But he wasn't even a prisoner.
Speaker 5: He was just kid that was in charge of the
Speaker 5: canteen that was bringing in all the groceries from out
Speaker 5: of the prison.
Speaker 3: Okay, And you were able to make purchases. Your family
Speaker 3: was able to send you money. They had like a
Speaker 3: commissary type situation.
Speaker 4: You can make purchases.
Speaker 5: And yeah, I got money in and I would buy
Speaker 5: my own groceries.
Speaker 3: Okay. So were you able to compare to the other prisons.
Speaker 3: Did you have a pretty good funnel of money coming in?
Speaker 5: Not at first, but once I understood how things worked,
Speaker 5: I would get money in, and you'd have to smuggle
Speaker 5: money in because if the guards knew you had money,
Speaker 5: they were coming after it.
Speaker 4: They wanted the money.
Speaker 5: The guards were the most corrupt, sinister assholes there that
Speaker 5: you could ever think of.
Speaker 4: And the reason is because the.
Speaker 5: Guards would only make six thousand rupees a month from
Speaker 5: the government.
Speaker 4: At the time, one.
Speaker 5: Dollar was sixty rupees, so six thousand rupees is one
Speaker 5: hundred bucks and that's their salary for the month for
Speaker 5: the governments. But if they wanted to work inside that
Speaker 5: and they were spending fifteen thousand rupees a month, which
Speaker 5: is two hundred and fifty dollars, so they're they're spending
Speaker 5: one hundred and fifty more than they're even making just
Speaker 5: for the opportunity to work inside that prison. Now, once
Speaker 5: they're in that prison, though, it's fair game. They're beating
Speaker 5: it out of you. They're extorting it out of you,
Speaker 5: or they're working for you. So the guards are your
Speaker 5: worst enemy there. So if they heard I had money,
Speaker 5: they would come in droves at night try to get
Speaker 5: me in when I was off guard, when I was asleep, Like,
Speaker 5: you have to fight to keep your money otherwise you're
Speaker 5: going to starve to death. And it was just that
Speaker 5: was fair game the guards. It was you against the
Speaker 5: fucking guards.
Speaker 3: Wait, I know you've been through a really serious trauma here, man,
Speaker 3: And I know you've been through hell im back. But
Speaker 3: you got to keep the language PG because this is
Speaker 3: going to air on AM radio, Okay, so you got
Speaker 3: to keep that.
Speaker 4: See, that's something you got to start with. I know
Speaker 4: I usually do usually do in the beginning a story.
Speaker 4: This story is not a PG story.
Speaker 3: I know. Well, usually at the beginning before I give
Speaker 3: you the contown, I have a little checklist of things
Speaker 3: I read off to you. But you know, we had
Speaker 3: that problem with the audio. Let's take a little commercial break.
Speaker 3: We are here with one of the most intense stories
Speaker 3: I've seen it in a long time. And we had
Speaker 3: that guy Midnight Express on. We had him on the
Speaker 3: show too.
Speaker 5: Ah.
Speaker 4: I was just hanging with him last night. Billy Hayes
Speaker 4: came to the comedy show in Vegas last night.
Speaker 3: Yeah, Billy Hayes is a local Vegas guy too as well.
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, we're good friends. We were just hanging last night.
Speaker 3: I can imagine the stories you guys had. Eric Auday
Speaker 3: and the film is called Three Years in Pakistan, The
Speaker 3: Eric Auday Story, and it goes into a lot more
Speaker 3: detail than he's sharing with us here right now. And
Speaker 3: it's a lot more and it really expands on his
Speaker 3: whole life and his personality and stuff like that. I
Speaker 3: highly recommend this film. We'll be right back with the
Speaker 3: after these messages with more of Eric Auday and now
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Speaker 1: It's the Opferman Report and now here is investigator at Opperman.
Speaker 3: Okay, welcome back to the Opperaman Report. I'm your host,
Speaker 3: private investigator at Opperman we're here with Ericauday. Fascinating, incredible story.
Speaker 3: Three years in Pakistan, the Ericauday story. Now, we were
Speaker 3: talking about the conditions inside the pres One thing, I mean,
Speaker 3: what were saying. We had Billy Hayes on the show
Speaker 3: too as well. And one thing I always think of
Speaker 3: when I have one of you guys on here is
Speaker 3: that right now is we're talking here and we're joking,
Speaker 3: we're going back and forth off the year, talking about
Speaker 3: your comedy thing you're producing. There's guys in that prison
Speaker 3: right now going through that same torture right now, this afternoon,
Speaker 3: that you were going through while you were in there.
Speaker 5: Oh, for sure, I'm sure there's people having it way
Speaker 5: worse than I had it. Probably there's people who you know,
Speaker 5: can't adjust to the situation, or who aren't used to pain,
Speaker 5: or who aren't big enough to defend themselves, or who
Speaker 5: aren't smart enough to learn the language.
Speaker 4: You know, there's you know, there's there's there's there's all
Speaker 4: kinds of bad things happening on this planet everywhere.
Speaker 5: I mean, even people think, oh, Pakistan's terrible, I'm like, well,
Speaker 5: would you rather be in a Pakistani prisoner? Would you
Speaker 5: rather have been one of those three women that were
Speaker 5: stuck in that bus driver's house in Cleveland for ten years,
Speaker 5: you know.
Speaker 3: Eryl Cashro, Yeah, we've done shows about that too as well. Yeah,
Speaker 3: you're right. There's so much hard going on in the world.
Speaker 3: Do you how do you cope with this man? Any PTSD,
Speaker 3: any kind of therapy when you got when you get
Speaker 3: out of this.
Speaker 4: Oh man, I'm messed up. Pick a top.
Speaker 5: I got all kinds of issues. I mean, people think
Speaker 5: it's funny, you know. And I did the show Locked
Speaker 5: Up Abroad, and I didn't want to do that show.
Speaker 5: For every season, that kept contacting me to be on
Speaker 5: the show. And the reason I want to be on
Speaker 5: the show is because the few episodes I had watched
Speaker 5: were always people that were guilty, people that.
Speaker 4: Had knowingly done it. And I didn't want to be
Speaker 4: looped in with guilty people. And then I kept acting.
Speaker 4: You know, I was an actor since I was a kid.
Speaker 5: And people think, oh, well, you're just trying to get
Speaker 5: fifteen minutes of fame.
Speaker 4: Like I wanted to be famous.
Speaker 5: I wanted to be a successful actor. I wanted to
Speaker 5: be a successful stump man. But you know, this is
Speaker 5: what I did before I went to jail, and when
Speaker 5: I got out, that's you know, my dreams didn't change.
Speaker 5: I still wanted to be in the entertainment industry and
Speaker 5: then finally locked up abroad.
Speaker 4: Like we saw some shows you did, you were good?
Speaker 4: What if we let you play yourself?
Speaker 5: And so that's how they enticed me to do an episode.
Speaker 5: And the problem with that episode was they only took
Speaker 5: the exciting stuff out of it. They only I mean,
Speaker 5: they did a rushed thirteen hour interview of what happened
Speaker 5: to me in the three years there, and all they
Speaker 5: did was tell the first one year two months of
Speaker 5: the story, and by doing that, they left out a
Speaker 5: lot of unanswered questions. And when people watch that episode,
Speaker 5: and apparently from what I've been told from one of
Speaker 5: the producers and the director of that episode, it's been
Speaker 5: viewed over eight hundred million times in the world because
Speaker 5: National Geographic is a popular channel and it's worldwide, so
Speaker 5: my one episode is their most popular episode, and it's
Speaker 5: been viewed in all over the world in every language.
Speaker 5: And the problem with all the unanswered questions is people
Speaker 5: start to fill in their own answers, and usually they're wrong.
Speaker 5: So I have people contacting me from all over the
Speaker 5: world telling me to kill myself. Then I'm a liar
Speaker 5: that I got raped in jail, and it's like, wow,
Speaker 5: you know, I went through such a bad situation and
Speaker 5: here you guys think it's funny to, you know, go
Speaker 5: out of your way to harass me about it, to
Speaker 5: make fun of me about it. So my friend Jamie
Speaker 5: Lynn Lippman, another shoes An actress I've known since the nineties.
Speaker 5: We've been really good friends. We had the same agent.
Speaker 5: She knew all the crap I was getting in all
Speaker 5: these horrible emails.
Speaker 4: That I was getting, and.
Speaker 5: She's like, we need to tell your story. And she'd
Speaker 5: just done a documentary called When the Bow Breaks.
Speaker 4: And it was good.
Speaker 5: And so it was because of all the headache that
Speaker 5: I was getting from locked up abroad and how bad
Speaker 5: of a job locked up abroad did and telling my
Speaker 5: story that I had to go out of my way
Speaker 5: to produce and tell my story in my own words.
Speaker 5: And so three years in Pakistan answers all those questions.
Speaker 5: Three years in Pakistan doesn't leave out everything. It shows
Speaker 5: how I was able to cope with prison, how I
Speaker 5: was able to deal with prison, because you know, locked
Speaker 5: up abroad just has me going into prison and fighting
Speaker 5: everyone and then all of a sudden I can take
Speaker 5: all the pain, whereas three years in Pakistan shows, hey,
Speaker 5: I was run over by a bus. I know what
Speaker 5: pain's like. I've had no choice but to endure pain
Speaker 5: my entire life. I was also not only able to
Speaker 5: defy the odds by walking again, but I've a tough,
Speaker 5: tough sob. I have a record in California for the
Speaker 5: most tackles. Was on the football field that you look
Speaker 5: to to answer a problem. I never I was the
Speaker 5: strength on the team. I was a gym rat. And
Speaker 5: then when I got to prison, how I was able
Speaker 5: to adjust to this situation and it tells my full
Speaker 5: three year story there and how is it able to
Speaker 5: get out? And so people who actually watched locked up
Speaker 5: abroad would contact me and say, hey, look I was
Speaker 5: wrong about you. I thought you were a douchebag, and
Speaker 5: then I watched your three years in Pakistan and it
Speaker 5: made a lot more sense.
Speaker 4: So I just want to say I'm sorry. That was
Speaker 4: nice to know.
Speaker 5: People who've watched three years in Pakistan have been a
Speaker 5: lot more compassionate, considerate, whereas I've been getting a lot
Speaker 5: of bull from locked Up Abroad. So that's why the
Speaker 5: second documentary was absolutely necessary, simply to kind of get
Speaker 5: the haters to back off.
Speaker 3: So if there's one misconception, like the biggest one you
Speaker 3: want to clarify from the locked Up Abroad thing, what
Speaker 3: would you want to clarify in it?
Speaker 5: Locked Up Abroad thinks like all of a sudden, everyone
Speaker 5: likes me, Like, oh likes them all of a sudden.
Speaker 5: You know, well there's another you know, twenty months that's
Speaker 5: not spoken of. You know, how I started to make
Speaker 5: friends in prison, how I started to have a job
Speaker 5: in prison, how people started to see me as a
Speaker 5: human being in prison.
Speaker 4: You know, the Locked of Abroad didn't show that.
Speaker 5: Locked of Abroad didn't show the pain and suffering that
Speaker 5: I went through before I.
Speaker 4: Even went to Joe. They didn't.
Speaker 5: They didn't describe me as a person. They just said, Okay,
Speaker 5: there's a story, and then here you have it, and
Speaker 5: now figure it out.
Speaker 3: Hey, you know, you want to see the sensational stuff,
Speaker 3: you know, the rats and the bugs and you know
Speaker 3: all that kind of stuff. That's what you want to
Speaker 3: you know, that's the business we're in. Okay, But now
Speaker 3: in the movie, though, it describes about how you met
Speaker 3: some terrorists in there, some got some hijackers.
Speaker 5: Yeah, I was friends with the PANDAM hijackers of eighty six.
Speaker 4: Those guys were. Those guys were some of my best
Speaker 4: friends in jail.
Speaker 3: And they're still in there.
Speaker 4: No, they're not.
Speaker 5: Actually they're They're out in the world and they're worth
Speaker 5: five million dollars each on the FBI's Most wanted list.
Speaker 5: I know that one of them is dead for sure,
Speaker 5: but I don't know where they're at.
Speaker 4: I don't know what they're up to. I guarantee though.
Speaker 5: They're probably watching SpongeBob SquarePants and making smoothies and just
Speaker 5: trying to live life as simply as possible.
Speaker 3: Really, now, how did you become friends with these guys?
Speaker 3: What was it about that?
Speaker 5: Well, they were foreigners too, and foreigners in prison have
Speaker 5: to stand together because they're outnumbered by Pakistanis. And doesn't
Speaker 5: you know, if you got a friend in jail, it
Speaker 5: doesn't matter what they did before.
Speaker 4: You're lucky to have them.
Speaker 5: If you have someone you can rely on in prison,
Speaker 5: someone that has your back, you should be fortunate because
Speaker 5: that is something that is very rare in prison, you know.
Speaker 3: And these hijackers. What country were they from?
Speaker 5: Well, they're a Palestinian, but there is no Palestine, so
Speaker 5: I guess Lebanon.
Speaker 3: Yeah right, okay, so you and they were even trying
Speaker 3: to help you get out. They were referring you to
Speaker 3: their lawyer.
Speaker 4: It was their lawyer that helped work on my case.
Speaker 5: Yeah, the hijackers, you know, we're you know, these guys
Speaker 5: are my friends, my brothers. Now, the reason why they
Speaker 5: were so loyal to me was because I was the
Speaker 5: reason they were able to speak to their family for
Speaker 5: the first time in seventeen years. I was the first
Speaker 5: person to get his phone smuggled into prison.
Speaker 4: And because it was you know, it was a huge gamble.
Speaker 5: If there was no there was no guarantee that the
Speaker 5: phones would even work. We were so far out there
Speaker 5: in rawal Pindi, which is about an hour southeast of Islamabad,
Speaker 5: and I took a huge gamble. I saved up money.
Speaker 5: I paid a guard to two hundred dollars or just
Speaker 5: twelve thousand rupees to get a phone in for me,
Speaker 5: and I was able to find a signal and by
Speaker 5: doing that, the hijackers, you know, I would give books
Speaker 5: to one of the hijackers all the time.
Speaker 4: A guy named Ali, and I gave him.
Speaker 5: A Harry Potter book, The Goblet of Fire, because inside
Speaker 5: it I had carved out a page big enough to
Speaker 5: it was the It was the biggest Harry Potter book
Speaker 5: at the time, and I carved out a page big
Speaker 5: for a cell phone. And when I gave it to
Speaker 5: him that night, he spoke to his family and he
Speaker 5: asked if the other guys could speak.
Speaker 4: I was like, sure.
Speaker 5: And the reason I did this is because the hijackers
Speaker 5: in jail were considered like legends. Pakistani's thought it was
Speaker 5: hilarious that they killed a bunch of people in an
Speaker 5: American airline and treated And they'd known these guys since
Speaker 5: they'd been in that prison. They were there since the
Speaker 5: prison first opened up. They were the first actually, they
Speaker 5: were the first prisoners that prison had had in nineteen
Speaker 5: eighty six. So the guards grew up with these guys.
Speaker 5: They'd have breakfast with them, they'd have lunch and dinner
Speaker 5: with them. So the guards left them alone. And that
Speaker 5: was one thing I needed from the hijackers was I
Speaker 5: needed their connections with the guards. So by winning their
Speaker 5: loyalty over I was able to use their connections for
Speaker 5: the guards to get things in, things being like VCD players,
Speaker 5: CD players, food, cell phones, movies, books, anything you want.
Speaker 5: You can get anything you need into that prison, and
Speaker 5: as long as you have money. But if you get
Speaker 5: it in by yourself, a guard will bring it in
Speaker 5: for you and then ratchet out and do a double
Speaker 5: whammy on you, basically getting the money from you and
Speaker 5: then getting praise and a reward for writing you out.
Speaker 5: But no one would ride out the hijackers. So by
Speaker 5: me letting the hijackers use my phone, I won their loyalty,
Speaker 5: their respect, and I was able to get things in
Speaker 5: through them.
Speaker 3: Man, did you stay Have you stayed in contact with
Speaker 3: anybody still in there?
Speaker 4: No? No one?
Speaker 3: Uh?
Speaker 5: And I was brought in by the FBI after I
Speaker 5: got out that to ask me if I knew where
Speaker 5: the hijackers were. So the hijackers aren't hiding, Okay, I
Speaker 5: mean I would. I would love to talk to him,
Speaker 5: But if they talked to me, they're, you know, probably
Speaker 5: gonna get a missile at their house.
Speaker 3: My god. No, wait, and there was a guy, the
Speaker 3: story about a guy who did a bunch of revenge
Speaker 3: murders was in there. You were telling that story that year.
Speaker 3: He was a friend of yours or an enemy of yours.
Speaker 4: We'll start that he was. He was my best friend.
Speaker 4: He's a good guy.
Speaker 5: It's you know, they watched the documentary Menory, they'll understand.
Speaker 4: But with my friend Maraud, who taught me how to
Speaker 4: play poker, oh h he uh.
Speaker 5: You know, he had a bad situation. It was like
Speaker 5: Romeo and Julia. His his family was not friends with
Speaker 5: his what with his uh, his wives family, and in
Speaker 5: order for them to be together, they had to go
Speaker 5: into hiding because they weren't they weren't given consent by
Speaker 5: their families to get married. But in Pakistan they have
Speaker 5: arranged marriages and unfortunately for Maraud, him and his wife
Speaker 5: wanted to or him and his girl wanted to get married,
Speaker 5: and their families weren't weren't weren't, weren't okaying, and so
Speaker 5: they had to go into hiding. And while they were
Speaker 5: in hiding, their families were refuting, they were killing each other.
Speaker 5: And what brought him out of hiding was his uh
Speaker 5: mother and sister were gang raped and murdered by his
Speaker 5: wives family members. So he killed the loven of his
Speaker 5: wise family members was on death row for that, and
Speaker 5: we uh, you know, we we he was he spoke
Speaker 5: a little bit of English and he was the first
Speaker 5: person to show me kindness in prison.
Speaker 3: So and he ambushed them like what an automatic way
Speaker 3: and something like that.
Speaker 5: There was more to it, but I mean I wasn't there,
Speaker 5: and we didn't we didn't. I never asked them for details.
Speaker 3: Oh my god. All right, all right, man, So how'd
Speaker 3: you get out of this situation?
Speaker 5: Well, a little bit of luck and a lot of
Speaker 5: a lot of reading. I became a lawyer in Pakistan.
Speaker 5: I did correspondence courses through the Alamaic Ball Open University,
Speaker 5: and while I was working on my case, I was
Speaker 5: working on several other foreigners cases. And I was able
Speaker 5: to prove to the judges that the I was able
Speaker 5: to prove to the judges that I was innocent by
Speaker 5: destroying the lower courts points of you know, the lower
Speaker 5: court's evidence against me. Like, for instance, the lower court
Speaker 5: took my portable DVD player at the time, which is
Speaker 5: very rare. I was like one of the only people
Speaker 5: to have one. They took my portable DVD player. They
Speaker 5: put it in the suitcase that I was hired. There
Speaker 5: to bring back. They took all my stuff out of
Speaker 5: my bags and other stuff to put in that suitcase
Speaker 5: to ensure that we'll see he has all his stuff
Speaker 5: in the suitcase. But they also took my cell phone
Speaker 5: and my wallet and put it in that suitcase. And
Speaker 5: that's where they've messed up, because I was able to say,
Speaker 5: why would I put my cell phone in there? What
Speaker 5: if somebody calls me? Why would I put my wallet
Speaker 5: in that suitcase? How am I supposed to show ID
Speaker 5: if my IDs and a suitcase suitcases get lost?
Speaker 4: That's stupid.
Speaker 5: Obviously they were trying to frame me, set me up,
Speaker 5: and I'd never lied. I said that suitcase isn't mine.
Speaker 5: It's not my suitcase. And and so they they said,
Speaker 5: we believe that you're innocent, but we can't say we
Speaker 5: kept an American in jail for three years.
Speaker 4: It makes us look bad. So they gave me time served.
Speaker 3: And how was Bill Richardson involved in all this?
Speaker 5: Bill Richardson the governor of New Mexico. He at the time,
Speaker 5: you know, he's he was part of the UN and
Speaker 5: he would he would, you know, when prisoners were in
Speaker 5: other countries, even if they were guilty. He was trying
Speaker 5: to trying to get him out because the conditions were
Speaker 5: suer terrible. Well, Bill Richardson talked to some people he
Speaker 5: was friends with. Bill Richardson somehow was friends with the
Speaker 5: President General M. Sheriff's brother, and by by the I'm
Speaker 5: trying to think about this is some long ago. But
Speaker 5: they didn't like go out and say, okay, let them out.
Speaker 5: All they said was was to the judges in charge
Speaker 5: of my case, hey don't bribe this kid.
Speaker 4: Just do your job. That's it.
Speaker 5: And by letting them just simply do their job, it
Speaker 5: gave me a fighting chance to actually get out of jail,
Speaker 5: whereas the lower court judge wanted one hundred and twenty
Speaker 5: five thousand dollars to let me out because it's all about.
Speaker 4: Bribes, it's all about corruption.
Speaker 5: So I simply using his influence to talk to President
Speaker 5: General Miccherriff's brother, who was a surgeon in Chicago, so
Speaker 5: that he was able to talk to Miss Sheriff and
Speaker 5: through the political grapevine, it's I mean, I don't know
Speaker 5: who they spoke to, but they basically let the judges
Speaker 5: know that they're watching, and the judges knew that other
Speaker 5: people with political influence were watching, so instead of trying
Speaker 5: to get paid, they just did their job.
Speaker 3: I think I'd say it. I listened to the story.
Speaker 3: I'm telling you not to curse. I want to curse.
Speaker 3: I want to like ramble up a bunch of sending
Speaker 3: his here myself. This is just fascinating, man. How did
Speaker 3: you get a hold of richardson there? What kind of
Speaker 3: connection did you have to get to him?
Speaker 5: One of the casting directors from a show that I
Speaker 5: did called On the Ropes and also That's a Raven,
Speaker 5: her name.
Speaker 4: Was Joey Paul. Joey Paul because.
Speaker 5: In Hollywood I was making waves. I was working on
Speaker 5: different TV shows. All the casting directors knew me. My
Speaker 5: friend who I'm out here in Vegas with right now,
Speaker 5: Sean McNamara, the director of Soulcerer for He would have
Speaker 5: Joey Paul cast all his shows. And it was on
Speaker 5: his show that I was a lead on, called on
Speaker 5: the Ropes, where.
Speaker 4: I played a high school wrestler named the Mighty Thrasher.
Speaker 5: They they knew my situation and so they were trying
Speaker 5: to help my mom out anyway they could.
Speaker 4: Joey Paul knew some I'd have to ask her again.
Speaker 5: Either it's some guy who was either he was in
Speaker 5: the CIA or he was he was involved in the government,
Speaker 5: like as in a way that they're not allowed to describe,
Speaker 5: so not too much details. He somehow had connections.
Speaker 4: To Bill Richardson.
Speaker 5: So it was through Joey Paul's friend that she happened
Speaker 5: to know who I guess wanted to be an actor
Speaker 5: at one point, because that's how that's how she knew
Speaker 5: and was a guy auditioned for something. They became friends,
Speaker 5: and then he used his connections to get a hold
Speaker 5: of Bill Richardson. So it was a lot of people
Speaker 5: who just happened to know the right people.
Speaker 3: But basically it was a friendship deal. But people liked
Speaker 3: you and they wanted to help you. Yes, fascinating, man, fascinating. Okay,
Speaker 3: one more question to now, did you when you were
Speaker 3: in there going through this kind of hell? I guess
Speaker 3: everybody in there's Muslim, right, but did you any faith,
Speaker 3: any kind of religious rebirth in your life, any kind
Speaker 3: of faith in your life?
Speaker 4: Well?
Speaker 5: I converted, oh well, in order to get people to
Speaker 5: stop trying to kill me with rakes and knives and everything,
Speaker 5: I converted to Muslim when I was in prison, and also.
Speaker 4: Because you can get time off.
Speaker 5: I did it for a smoke screen, and people who
Speaker 5: were trying to kill me one day were calling me
Speaker 5: brother the next. So I went through the There was
Speaker 5: these things called remissions, like if you can read in
Speaker 5: the Koran passages, every three months you got like fifteen
Speaker 5: days off your sentence. And I was always looking for
Speaker 5: ways to get days off my sentence in case I
Speaker 5: had to stay there for the long haul. So becoming
Speaker 5: Muslim and getting another two months every year off your sentence,
Speaker 5: Oh yeah, sounds good to me.
Speaker 3: Are you Muslim?
Speaker 4: Now?
Speaker 3: No, I don't want to.
Speaker 4: It was I I did it.
Speaker 5: I did it to get these guys off my back
Speaker 5: and get days off my sentence. Now it was now
Speaker 5: I'm not Muslim now I and and but I did
Speaker 5: get to pick my own Muslim name, and it was
Speaker 5: Muhammad Ali.
Speaker 3: Oh there you go. Okay, great, the greatest, the greatest?
Speaker 3: Why not Eric good?
Speaker 4: Hey?
Speaker 3: Now what happened to a ray Gazarian? This guy? What
Speaker 3: happened to him?
Speaker 4: He was never punished for what he did to me?
Speaker 5: He he he made a deal with the with the
Speaker 5: he made a deal with the DA out here for
Speaker 5: his information. His information led to one of the bigger
Speaker 5: drug busts in Glendell, and a lot of guys got
Speaker 5: taken down. So he was only put in jail for
Speaker 5: four and a half years, which is lenient, way lenient,
Speaker 5: and in exchange, he doesn't get punished for anything else
Speaker 5: he had done. I won a civil suit judgment against
Speaker 5: him for twenty point four million, but I've never collected
Speaker 5: a penny and he gets to go on and live
Speaker 5: his happy little life screwing other people over.
Speaker 3: Have you tried to look for his assets?
Speaker 4: Of course I have.
Speaker 5: If I knew where he was right now, I drive
Speaker 5: to his house and kick his door in. Really, no,
Speaker 5: that guy got away with what he did to me.
Speaker 4: He was never punished.
Speaker 5: And yeah, that's one of the things that sucks the
Speaker 5: most is that this guy gets away with it, which
Speaker 5: makes no sense to me.
Speaker 3: But you went to all the trouble of a civil suit.
Speaker 3: I mean, even though he didn't have an insurance company
Speaker 3: or anything like that behind him.
Speaker 5: The ass the government got all his assets, and then
Speaker 5: since then he's put.
Speaker 4: Everything into everyone else's name.
Speaker 5: Sure, and I keep renewing the I keep renewing the judgment,
Speaker 5: though I just renewed it in twenty seventeen, after I
Speaker 5: knew it every ten years.
Speaker 3: Sure, but then you paid for a lawyer even though
Speaker 3: there was no insurance company to go after. You paid
Speaker 3: out of pocket for an attorney soon Yep, really how
Speaker 3: much your de costs you?
Speaker 4: Uh, it wasn't cheap. I don't remember exactly that.
Speaker 6: The attorney I I, well, no, the attorney I had,
Speaker 6: they were taking it. They were taking it on uh
Speaker 6: actually know they were taking it on contingency. And then
Speaker 6: and the and my attorney died right before our judgment happened.
Speaker 6: She died from a heart attack, but someone in her
Speaker 6: office took over with all the work she had done
Speaker 6: and was still able to get us our judgment. And
Speaker 6: then but I have to pay every I had to
Speaker 6: pay for an MRI, which costs seven thousand dollars at
Speaker 6: the time. I had to pay for the renewals of
Speaker 6: the of the judgment, which is a little bit over
Speaker 6: three hundred.
Speaker 3: Dollars an MRI for your attorney's MRI.
Speaker 5: Or yeah, because the attorneys were after she died, the
Speaker 5: law for disbanded, and so when the collections came, they
Speaker 5: were you know, it was in my name, and I
Speaker 5: had to take care.
Speaker 4: Okay, so originally I wasn't supposed to pay for it.
Speaker 5: It was an MRI for me that the attorneys made
Speaker 5: me get for my hands and my feet.
Speaker 3: For the injuries. Okay, yeah, all right, man, listen, what
Speaker 3: do you got planned next? What do you know? Wait?
Speaker 3: How long ago was this? Did you get out of there?
Speaker 4: I got out in December twenty third, two thousand and four.
Speaker 3: Two thousand and four. Okay, So and if you have
Speaker 3: had a great, successful life since then, I see where
Speaker 3: I am dB page. You got all this work going on.
Speaker 3: You were telling me off the air, you're producing this
Speaker 3: comedy show. You're trying to sell that and stuff. Great
Speaker 3: stuff going on, you see. And when you look at
Speaker 3: the documentary to three years in Pakistan, very happy, go
Speaker 3: lucky guy. Okay, Now, what do you got planned for
Speaker 3: the future.
Speaker 5: I'm just going that's my goal, you said, I'm just
Speaker 5: trying to be happy. I don't really I don't really
Speaker 5: have goals.
Speaker 4: I mean, I just trying to move along. You know.
Speaker 4: I played poker, I hang out with my girl, I travel.
Speaker 5: I do a lot of travel, and I rescue animal
Speaker 5: I help out with charities, and I just try to
Speaker 5: be as happy as I can.
Speaker 3: And did you get treatment for PTSD?
Speaker 4: Uh, you know, with the therapy and that kind of stuff.
Speaker 4: But that's that's pretty much it. Man. What about everyone?
Speaker 4: Everyone deals with things the wrong way, And.
Speaker 5: If you think about all the bad things that happened
Speaker 5: to you, it just, you know, it just makes you angry.
Speaker 5: So I try to create new happy memories and hopefully
Speaker 5: they will overcloud the bad memories.
Speaker 3: And what about a day like today when you have
Speaker 3: to tell the story again? They don't have to, but
Speaker 3: you did, you wanted to. You told the story again.
Speaker 3: When you walk away from this and just go on
Speaker 3: to the next thing, you won't think about me at all?
Speaker 3: Or will this stick with you for the rest of
Speaker 3: the day.
Speaker 4: We'll see. I don't know. Definitely, not, hopefully not. I mean,
Speaker 4: but I mean, but the only reason.
Speaker 5: I tell the story is because I've had people who
Speaker 5: had you know, PTSD. I've had people who've been suicidal, cops, veterans,
Speaker 5: people in law enforcement who have seen what I've gone through,
Speaker 5: and they contact me and they say, you know what,
Speaker 5: it helped them. It helped them know that they can
Speaker 5: through their situation. If I can get through my situation,
Speaker 5: and that in turn helps me because it lets me
Speaker 5: know that everything I did wasn't for nothing. If it
Speaker 5: was just people calling and making fun of me and
Speaker 5: that kind of stuff, I would never tell anyone what
Speaker 5: happened to me. But people seem to find strengthen that
Speaker 5: who need it, and that's what lets me know that
Speaker 5: it wasn't for nothing.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and people really got to check out this film
Speaker 3: three years in Pakistan because we're just touching the surface. Man,
Speaker 3: We just really really just touching on the surface here.
Speaker 5: They can watch it on Amazon Prime for free, but
Speaker 5: it's on thirty different streaming platforms. You can rent it
Speaker 5: on iTunes, on on demand, on Vimeo, but if they
Speaker 5: got Amazon Prime, they can watch it for free. And
Speaker 5: if they have any questions, they can contact me on
Speaker 5: Eric Iday on Instagram or Twitter, and I'll try to
Speaker 5: answer them as long as they're cool. Like people are
Speaker 5: asking stupid questions like how many men raped me and
Speaker 5: that kind of stuff.
Speaker 4: I probably won't answer those questions, you know, because because
Speaker 4: it's it's just people being jerks.
Speaker 5: But if people have serious, you know, you know, authentic question,
Speaker 5: I'll try to answer them as best as I can.
Speaker 3: Yeah, people. If you don't realize when you have a
Speaker 3: lot of exposure to the general public, you run into
Speaker 3: a lot of folks you'd rather not Eric, what day?
Speaker 3: What do you want to leave us with?
Speaker 4: Men?
Speaker 3: We got like two minutes left? Wait, what do you
Speaker 3: want to leave us with? Very inspire story.
Speaker 5: And I just want people to know that, hey, you know,
Speaker 5: whatever you're going through, it could absolutely be worse, all right,
Speaker 5: And if you're feeling you know, you know, like you're
Speaker 5: at your last end and you're hanging on by a string,
Speaker 5: just know that this moment will pass. Every day I
Speaker 5: was in jail, that I was in pain, and I
Speaker 5: was sad, and I wanted to kill myself.
Speaker 4: I just I told myself, this will pass.
Speaker 5: Just get through the next five minutes, and five minutes
Speaker 5: would come and go, and then I'd set another goal,
Speaker 5: get through the next five minutes, and before I knew
Speaker 5: that an hour had come, and then the day had come,
Speaker 5: and I'd feel.
Speaker 4: I just feel a little bit better.
Speaker 5: And eventually I would tell myself, you know what, I
Speaker 5: would remember the good moments in my life because I
Speaker 5: knew that those were just around the corner. So just
Speaker 5: no matter how bad it gets, it could always be
Speaker 5: worse and just get through the day.
Speaker 4: That's all you have to do.
Speaker 3: Did you always know you were going to get out?
Speaker 3: Did you always in the back of your mind say,
Speaker 3: I know I'm getting out.
Speaker 5: Yeah, because I was innocent and I knew there was
Speaker 5: And it wasn't just me who knew. My whole family knew,
Speaker 5: all my friends knew. So absolutely I was.
Speaker 4: Getting out innocent.
Speaker 5: People who do this doesn't happen if if it was
Speaker 5: just me, Okay, I'm screwed. How am I going to
Speaker 5: prove my innocence? But so many people knew I was innocent.
Speaker 5: Six months in the DEA knew I was innocent, and
Speaker 5: you know, the South American government knew I was innocent.
Speaker 5: They just kind of do anything for me.
Speaker 4: So yeah, I was getting out.
Speaker 5: It was just going to be a little bit of
Speaker 5: time and it was gonna suck doing it, but I
Speaker 5: was going to get out.
Speaker 3: Eric, Man, I can't thank you enough, okay, and I
Speaker 3: hate to put you through the story again, but thank
Speaker 3: you so much. Really inspiring story. The movie is great.
Speaker 3: Three years in Pakistan, the Eric or it's Eric is
Speaker 3: a E R I K And Oday is au D.
Speaker 3: So you can find it really easily, Eric, Thank you so.
Speaker 4: Much, man, Hey, thank you for taking the time.
Speaker 3: No, thank you man, good night. Whoosh. Okay, So then
Speaker 3: we had a Eric Oorday incredible story. The movie is
Speaker 3: called once again Watch three Years in Pakistan. A fascinating story.
Speaker 3: Fascinating guy and he's done a lot of great work
Speaker 3: to other film work besides this as well. But you
Speaker 3: really get an idea of his personality. It's amazing how
Speaker 3: he talks about just get through the day, endurance, you know, perseverance.
Speaker 4: Man.
Speaker 3: I totally agree. It's all those struggles I've been through
Speaker 3: in my life too, my custody battles, my divorce and
Speaker 3: stuff like that. Just get endurance, keep perceiving one foot
Speaker 3: in front of the next man, and don't give up.
Speaker 3: So true man, really inspiring story. And I can tell
Speaker 3: he's got a real serious tip on his shoulder to
Speaker 3: about a few things here. From the minute I contacted him.
Speaker 3: Right away he says, hey, to just see three Years
Speaker 3: in Pakistan and not this other thing. They hates this
Speaker 3: other one. There's so many misconceptions about his story. But anyway, okay,
Speaker 3: there you go. Hey, if you like this show and
Speaker 3: the other shows, wed, Hey, look for the shows we
Speaker 3: did too, by the way, with Billy Hayes man another
Speaker 3: guy that from the movie Midnight Express is the real guy.
Speaker 3: We had him on the show as well. He knew
Speaker 3: he was smuggling, Okay, he tells those stories. Really nice
Speaker 3: guy too as well. We did like three or four
Speaker 3: hours with Billy Hayes different shows, Midnight Express story where
Speaker 3: same kind of thing man, he got caught over there
Speaker 3: in Turkey, thrown at a Turkish prison, you know, and
Speaker 3: the same thing man. You know, there's guys over there
Speaker 3: right now, we know, same prisons man going through all
Speaker 3: that crap right now as we talk. You know, there's
Speaker 3: people there suffering and he's locking locked up in these
Speaker 3: hell holes. So if you like today's show, check out
Speaker 3: our member section and there archives for similar shows or
Speaker 3: archives on Speaker dot com is where we're trying to
Speaker 3: push everybody to these days, but also to our member
Speaker 3: section at Oppermanreports dot com and that's where we have
Speaker 3: our exclusive content that you won't find anywhere for free.
Speaker 3: Where we need you have to become a member six
Speaker 3: bucks a month. But if you go to Opperamanreports dot
Speaker 3: com or if you email me at Operaman Report at
Speaker 3: gmail dot com. I'll give you a discount. I'll give
Speaker 3: you thirteen months or sixty five dollars. I'll tell you, man,
Speaker 3: what a draining show that was for me, Good old
Speaker 3: Eric Orday. Also to keep an eye on too, for
Speaker 3: my gofund me. We're working on this deal, trying to
Speaker 3: get Victoria, my daughter, Victoria Maria Opperman, into college, and
Speaker 3: we have a shortfall on that, so we're trying to
Speaker 3: raise money, and I'm turning to the listeners, my loyal
Speaker 3: listeners who've been with me for the past six years
Speaker 3: and supported the show and supported us in our life
Speaker 3: and been throw our ups and downs, and we're asking
Speaker 3: for your help to help us out there because we
Speaker 3: do have a shortfall inness. And you know, Victoria's is
Speaker 3: a talented kid. She's had her own show for a
Speaker 3: while there, She's been a guest on this show several times,
Speaker 3: and she's, you know, the spark of my life, you know,
Speaker 3: the light of my life, and never loved someone as
Speaker 3: much in my whole life. Never will. And we just
Speaker 3: got the shortfall trying to get into college because of
Speaker 3: the college ones were stolen. So we had it all
Speaker 3: planned in the you know, allotted for but the you know,
Speaker 3: got taken from us, so we need to help on that.
Speaker 3: So and there's a link you can find it on
Speaker 3: my Facebook page or on my Twitter account. You'll go
Speaker 3: to operaman Report on Facebook or operaant Report on Twitter
Speaker 3: and there's a link there to be gofund me for
Speaker 3: get Victoria Operamanto College. She's gonna accept it to an
Speaker 3: excellent college over there in Washington, d C. American University.
Speaker 3: And also too, this is also good for the show
Speaker 3: too because once she's there, you know, she'll be interning
Speaker 3: for different politicians and stuff. She'll be guest speakers and
Speaker 3: authors and professors coming to the college there, she'll be
Speaker 3: helping us book guests and stuff like that. And hopefully
Speaker 3: when we get the fund then going here, I'll be
Speaker 3: traveling here myself, and I'll be living in DC area
Speaker 3: myself as well and making more contact with these kind
Speaker 3: of people and guests we can bring to the show
Speaker 3: as well. So thank you so much. One more time,
Speaker 3: Eric a day. That's E R I K A U
Speaker 3: D three years in Pakistan. You can find it everywhere
Speaker 3: for free, like you said, it's all over the place.
Speaker 3: A great movie man. Okay, thank you so much, Eric
Speaker 3: Oday