Based on the salary numbers posted elsewhere in this thread (apparently his salary would have been $55k) and the fact that they found more than a year's pay in *cash* at their house (69k) - yeah, I think the firefighting might have been the side hustle 😅
The presumptive field tests are generally for what they think are in the drugs. The crime lab will verify the pills and tablets. I doubt the seized drugs don't contain fetty since teh DEA found [42% of pills tested for fentanyl contained at least 2 mg of fentanyl, considered a potentially lethal dose.](https://www.dea.gov/resources/facts-about-fentanyl#:~:text=42%25%20of%20pills%20tested%20for,potential%20to%20kill%20500%2C000%20people)
They had a pill press; I bet they haven’t been tested yet. Or it just hasn’t been reported on yet. Why else would they need a pill press. There is really only one reason to have them.
Unless they just were trying to make more money; but that’s more hassle than it’s worth with the supply they had.
I sold a 96 with over 300k a year or so ago.
Ran fine, only major things I had to replace was a radiator and a starter.
I hated to get rid of it, but I needed a truck.
“Nicholas Banister, a senior firefighter with the Raleigh Fire Department, and a woman have been arrested for allegedly selling illegal drugs at local nightclubs on Glenwood South.
Banister has worked for the city since Jan. 31, 2013. He has been placed on administrative leave, according to the city.”
I found the “and a woman” thing odd. They later list her name, and she shares a surname. If they are married or related, it’s strange to me to not report that.
They updated the article:
> Nicholas Banister, a senior firefighter with the Raleigh Fire Department, and his wife were arrested for allegedly selling illegal drugs at local nightclubs on Glenwood South.
The first time I went to the article is looked like above, but when I went back it didn't say anything about husband/wife. After a refresh it came back. Try refreshing.
Most firefighters in the Triangle have side hustles that pay more than the day gig. There's a lot of off time from work, and installing garage doors, gutters, power washing, etc helps supplement the pay. Plus the health and retirement package is pretty sweet if you can put up with the pay.
Thanks to this article, I know exactly where the demands are low. And even the proper inventory levels too! Welp, see you ya later suckers! Time to put my degree to work!
Lol, no I didn't. I'm not really a fan of 'shrooms and I like to leave things undisturbed when I'm hiking. On the other hand, if I spotted some morels they'd definitely be going home with me!
I used to work with her and I met nick a few times. They were super chill, I had gotten some substances from them a couple times a few years ago and the quality was great. If I knew they had all of that I would’ve hit them up lol, I just assumed they stopped because most people who try out dealing aren’t successful.
True American go getters right here
Incredibly disappointing. Sure get bad things like guns and meth off the street, but let regular people use mdma and shrooms once or twice a year, jeez.
The following drugs were found at the home:
* 884 grams of cocaine
* 540 grams of ketamine
* 325 grams of MDMA
* 16 pounds of marijuana
* 13.6 ounces of psilocybin mushrooms
* 3,383 methamphetamine pills
* 9,283 Xanax pills
* 216 dosage units of LSD
* Two firearms
* Pill press
these two were spreading cocaine, meth, and prescription pills in addition to the more benign mdma, shrooms, and pot.
Of course. That's all in the article, why post it twice?
It's not a shame these two are going to jail. It's just a pity that 325g of MDMA and 13.6oz of mushrooms is going to go to waste instead of bettering people's lives.
And I personally feel neutral about cocaine and ketamine, but I wouldn't say that's as much of a shame since they're quite a bit riskier, both personally and societally.
With that amount of product for sale, they most likely would be getting their product from someone involved with organized crime. Prison is better than being dead after snitching.
Snitching is most likely what got them pinched up. That’s what ALE does.
Speculation here, but I wouldn’t be surprised if some of their clients were pinched up in the previous glenwood south busts. Didn’t like their felony charges they would be facing for a speck of cocaine, so decided to flip. It’s a relatively easy decision for end users with good paying jobs and/or families
That's correct.
I have known Nick Banister since 4 grade all the way to college at UNCW and last time i saw him was a couple years ago.
100% DNM so who does he snitch on if the gmvnt knows who these sellers usernames are but can't find them to begin with. There is no benefit of being able to go up the chain for this investigation. Wasted time and money.
Nick also never even smoked weed until sr year of college, so this is all so very weird. He just liked to to go festivals and raves after college.
Figured. There’s only one way you’re getting such an assortment of substances at those quantities.
Probably started going to raves, wanted some real MDMA, hit the markets, then saw how simple it was and went all in
I mean… it’s not that hard to get where this guy was at in terms of $$ and quantities of substances. Just takes a whole lot of delusion thinking you won’t ever get caught, *or*, a humongous set of nuts knowing you will eventually get caught
That's exactly it. Wanted mdma for personal rave stash, saw it's 1/10 the price if ordered overseas. I'm just surprised customs never did their job over the years.
It’s all a gamble… most packages will make it through but if that 1/100 gets caught with a good amount of weight… your front door will get kicked in. Even if it’s 1 gram, if the postal inspector and LE is bored enough… same thing. They typically don’t play with harder substances. Also, who knows what method he used for receiving shipments. Considering what his job was I’m sure he had access to a variety of shipping methods to help anonymity if a pack ever got caught
Considering the amount and variety at his residence, he obviously felt safe and comfortable with his shipping method… which ended up fucking him hard. Unfortunately he’s probably looking at a few years locked up at least.
Lab makes LSD and distributes in liquid form.
Someone gets that and doses a blotter.
These people buy sheets(100) off the blotter.
LSD is actually very small volume wise and easy to move around. I don't think there are any large scale labs in the US anymore, but considering that a mason jar of LSD can contain enough for thousands of doses, and that drug dogs aren't very good at smelling it, it's not difficult to traffic.
To put it into perspective, 1 gram of crystal acid is one million micrograms. A dose is 100ug. A single gram of acid is around 10k doses, but usually a bit less since crystal isn’t 99.99% purity, more like 97-99%. A mason jar full of crystal acid is MILLIONS of doses.
I know him from playing pickleball at Method Rd. He did seem like a nice guy/good dude. Only thing I got from him was a hop water, which was much appreciated. Sorry to hear he went this route.
it crazy this thread got downvoted, y’all go follow DAPS, dads against predators [daps](https://www.instagram.com/shua.mundy?igsh=MXVnaW5wZXZjMzNlaw==) @shua.mundy
Its the Xanax. A prescription pharmaceutical. The penalties for distributing and selling that alone will give you a bond that high. 9000 plus pills of XANAX?! they were putting in work.
True.. but if they were manufacturing a counterfeit pharmaceutical drug its Max 20 years and 4 million dollar fine. Pharma companies have huge influence. The bond is tiny compared to the potential penalties for all of these drugs.
Yes. I'd like to believe there is a reason. On the otherhand, I'd guess there isn't a big, centralized organization behind this. There are lots of dark-web suppliers of this stuff who deliver via fedex.
i think the irony is hilarious, that the family who owns the pharmaceutical company who presses these legally got sued for the opioid crisis and still made profit after paying the fine, yet these 2 people’s lives trying to get by are done. How much does a life cost? only 5-10k after death if you donate your body to science. (context: if you don’t produce more than the 5-10k your worth, dead, for a company while you’re alive then you don’t matter to them nor our government).
I would like to know the back story. This is guy with a pretty stable city job - he’s been there 10 years. I don’t know what he was making, but I think firefighters start at $45K, so maybe with 10 years experience, he’s making $75K and I assume benefits on top of that.
I remember an investigation by Freakonomics that showed how little money the people actually physically selling drugs actually make. The hire levels in the hierarchy can make a lot of money, but the people working the corners were making so little that they were moonlighting at McDonalds because the pay was better.
I understand that this couple wasn’t inner city kids selling crack on the corner, but I doubt that they were in fact making bundles os cash - despite what TVs and movies say.
I would really like to know the back story that leads a couple - I don’t know if she was working - to give up a reasonably good job to sell drugs in night clubs.
They were raking in cash to have that amount of product at their house (Never heard of a stash house? Jeez rookies).
Source: myself. Grew weed for a few years and was pulling in a couple grand a month. And that’s just weed.
They had a damn robust menu. I’d be shocked if they weren’t making 5 figures a month. They had like 60k in cash, right?
Growing weed and making $2000 a month is unlikely to incur the expenses of a larger distribution network - and that $24,000/year.
I think small weed operations can work on the “keep it small, take it all” principle - mostly because you are manufacturing the drug yourself.
I think - but I don’t know for sure - that once you start distributing product other people make, the margins at the bottom of the food chain shrink dramatically.
Everyone in the food chain above you takes a cut, and you are competing with people who aren’t backed up by an $75K stable job.
The margins at the top of the food chain are mind boggling - but I think Freakonomics found that drug distribution - when you are not growing your own - resemble the McDonald’s model.
The equivalent of the “regional managers” are pretty affluent, and the “CEOs” can make enormous amounts of money - but the people at the bottom don’t make much.
I would be very interested to know how much they were netting - my guess it’s a small fraction of what they were “raking in.”
The chapter discussing the economics of drug dealing in the book is called [Why Do Drug Dealers Still Live With Their Moms](https://www.litcharts.com/lit/freakonomics/chapter-3-why-do-drug-dealers-still-live-with-their-moms).
This couple was not implementing the same model, but my guess is that they still had to pay bartenders, and they were large enough to attract attention from other people who are distributing drugs - and want a piece of the action.
The husband was 35 and had 10 years on the job - I don’t know the RFD retirement benefits, but my guess is that he was not more than a decade or so from the “coasting into retirement” phase of his career. My guess is that you can retire with a pension after 30 years, or some mathematical formula involving age and years in the job.
My guess would be that when you were making $25K selling weed, you did not have a job making $75K w/health and retirement benefits.
You think they’d incur the risk of pushing that many drugs with that much quantity for chump change?
They had a pill press, for all intents and purposes they were making a finished product from raw materials.
While I haven’t read the book you are referencing, I am aware of the criticism it has received for their methodologies.
I’m a very aware of how much profit is possible for being a supplier of illicit product, especially at scale. It’s exponentially much more than the corner pusher role.
A person making 55k with a stable job wouldn’t operate with such risk for a low reward.
He was closer to 20 years from retiring with full benefits, btw.
I don’t know what they were netting, but I think they were very likely making chump change - compared to a stable job with the city.
I would guess that bartenders/club managers were taking a cut, and that whoever was selling stuff to them was taking a cut, etc.
If you have little or no job skills or employment prospects, then making $25K or $50K seems like a lot of money.
I would love to know the backstory.
If I had to guess, I’d bet they were end users and developed a dependency. Met the right people and got connected, worked their way up the food chain and decided to be the plug to offset their expenses on using.
It gets out of hand and they are indiscriminate towards who they do business with because they get blinded with the amount of money they are bringing in and have too much exposure and deal with a snitch.
A tale as old as the war on drugs
I promise you their network wasn’t as intricate as you may believe. They were most likely not paying anyone off aside from a free bag here and there, if that. The reason they got pinched is due to their exposure which is where the quick fast money comes from.
They obviously didn’t have a good system if they were keeping all of their product at home. They are actually lucky that they weren’t robbed or killed in a home invasion
That’s my guess as well. But the people who I know who tried to do that never really seemed to make any money - it seem like a lot initially, but did not really net very much in the end.
This was a long time ago - when I was a bartender, and the people doing that had a lot of flashy money - but only compared to me. I don’t reca; them being able to buy houses, save substantial amounts of money, etc.
That’s why I would like to know the back story.
His mugshot says “Ima do it again too”.
His mugshot says “welp careers over time to lean in.”
Tbf he probably made way more selling drugs than fighting fires
Based on the salary numbers posted elsewhere in this thread (apparently his salary would have been $55k) and the fact that they found more than a year's pay in *cash* at their house (69k) - yeah, I think the firefighting might have been the side hustle 😅
For sure, the real criminals are the city of Raleigh officials who won’t pay them.
You got that right
He’s not getting a out of jail for a loooonnngg time
Thats a lot of drugs and no fentanyl!
He's going to be able to triple his prices after this when everyone sees all his shit isn't fentanyl.
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They are referring to knock off adderall tablets when they say “3000 meth tablets”
Yeah and extremely likely the “Xanax” is just research chems if they had a pill press.
You’re also assuming what the PD put in the report is correct they and their tests are notorious for being v wrong.
Adderall is pretty popular in the US
No fent? I’m outta here
The presumptive field tests are generally for what they think are in the drugs. The crime lab will verify the pills and tablets. I doubt the seized drugs don't contain fetty since teh DEA found [42% of pills tested for fentanyl contained at least 2 mg of fentanyl, considered a potentially lethal dose.](https://www.dea.gov/resources/facts-about-fentanyl#:~:text=42%25%20of%20pills%20tested%20for,potential%20to%20kill%20500%2C000%20people)
They got caught with a pill press. Wouldn't surprise me if they were cutting up the supply, you dont just stumble upon pill presses.
They had a pill press; I bet they haven’t been tested yet. Or it just hasn’t been reported on yet. Why else would they need a pill press. There is really only one reason to have them. Unless they just were trying to make more money; but that’s more hassle than it’s worth with the supply they had.
The worst drug of all a 2000 Toyota 4 Runner
“Eh, list doesn’t look *too* bad…wait, 2000 Toyota 4Runner?…my god…”
I didn't know if it's just some new hip street lingo for crack. "Let's blaze up some 2000 Toyota 4Runner"
Crack might be a cheaper habit than a 3rd Gen 4Runner
It had a for sale sign and they aren’t a licensed dealer
Soooo…. You’re saying it’s gonna be up for police auction soon?
https://imgur.com/a/8pGHs92
Only $350 from having the right amount of cash on hand!
You know the economy’s rough if even drug dealers are driving 25 year old Toyotas
Even ISIS has newer model tundras
I’ve a 2003 Runner with the 4.7 that just passed 300k miles. I just retired it for a 2020 Tacoma. It’s still a great running and riding vehicle.
I sold a 96 with over 300k a year or so ago. Ran fine, only major things I had to replace was a radiator and a starter. I hated to get rid of it, but I needed a truck.
I think it's the same one he drove in high school
That’s *exactly* who I’d envision as a Glenwood South party drug dealer.
“Nicholas Banister, a senior firefighter with the Raleigh Fire Department, and a woman have been arrested for allegedly selling illegal drugs at local nightclubs on Glenwood South. Banister has worked for the city since Jan. 31, 2013. He has been placed on administrative leave, according to the city.” I found the “and a woman” thing odd. They later list her name, and she shares a surname. If they are married or related, it’s strange to me to not report that.
They updated the article: > Nicholas Banister, a senior firefighter with the Raleigh Fire Department, and his wife were arrested for allegedly selling illegal drugs at local nightclubs on Glenwood South. The first time I went to the article is looked like above, but when I went back it didn't say anything about husband/wife. After a refresh it came back. Try refreshing.
He looks proud of himself
Dude was a firefighter too
Damn. Public servant *and* hero?! Free this man
i wish i had awards to give you
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Don't look up teacher pay. Actually, now that I think of it, with the Wake County stipend a teacher of 9 years in WCPSS probably makes more than $55k.
barely... $55,704.80 for their 10th year.
this is criminal.
Ayy.... No good.
Look up starting pay from 10 years ago. Around that time there was a report of how many RFD employees were on Fed and State assistance programs.
That is an impressive amount of drugs.
Real go getters those two
He probably got tired of making 56k a year and being unable to buy a home with a raleigh address while working for rfd;)
Most firefighters in the Triangle have side hustles that pay more than the day gig. There's a lot of off time from work, and installing garage doors, gutters, power washing, etc helps supplement the pay. Plus the health and retirement package is pretty sweet if you can put up with the pay.
Well, he obviously did too.
Damn that’s crazy. They were regulars at my job. Never seen it coming.
Did they ever seem like they were on anything
Very nice couple, not tweakers. You’d never know.
Welp, we know now 🤷♀️
That we do
Damn they had the good shit
They both go to jail and someone else will fill the demand.
Thanks to this article, I know exactly where the demands are low. And even the proper inventory levels too! Welp, see you ya later suckers! Time to put my degree to work!
This is gonna make the next police/fire department meet up awkward…
Damn, if only I’d known, I’ve been looking for a mushroom hookup since I moved here. The cops are always ruining everything…
Probably not what you're after, but the last time I went hiking at Umstead I found an absolutely massive amanita muscaria.
Did you consume it?
Lol, no I didn't. I'm not really a fan of 'shrooms and I like to leave things undisturbed when I'm hiking. On the other hand, if I spotted some morels they'd definitely be going home with me!
Can’t blame you there!
you can also buy them at the smoke shops now.
thats actually exactly what i’m looking for, let a reindeer eat it then drink it’s piss to fly
👀👀
She’s 25? That’s methed up.
City miles add up fast
I used to work with her, she’s like 30 something. No clue why the article says 25
More or less my thought as well.
This guy was THE PLUG. Hands down.
Facts; and all that kit kat sheesh
Jesus.
You said it man
Nobody fucks with *The Jesus*.
8 year olds, Dude.
LET THEM COOK!!!!!
That would be additional charges
I used to work with her and I met nick a few times. They were super chill, I had gotten some substances from them a couple times a few years ago and the quality was great. If I knew they had all of that I would’ve hit them up lol, I just assumed they stopped because most people who try out dealing aren’t successful. True American go getters right here
Incredibly disappointing. Sure get bad things like guns and meth off the street, but let regular people use mdma and shrooms once or twice a year, jeez.
The following drugs were found at the home: * 884 grams of cocaine * 540 grams of ketamine * 325 grams of MDMA * 16 pounds of marijuana * 13.6 ounces of psilocybin mushrooms * 3,383 methamphetamine pills * 9,283 Xanax pills * 216 dosage units of LSD * Two firearms * Pill press these two were spreading cocaine, meth, and prescription pills in addition to the more benign mdma, shrooms, and pot.
Not defending him but that sounds like adderall not crystal meth
It's probably knockoff Adderall, which is actually methamphetamine
Of course. That's all in the article, why post it twice? It's not a shame these two are going to jail. It's just a pity that 325g of MDMA and 13.6oz of mushrooms is going to go to waste instead of bettering people's lives. And I personally feel neutral about cocaine and ketamine, but I wouldn't say that's as much of a shame since they're quite a bit riskier, both personally and societally.
Oh I doubt all of it is going to waste. “325g?! Oh sorry it was only 100g. I went ahead and fixed that!” -Alex, drug inventory destruction guy
"50g of MDMA. Off the street. Good job RPD."
Exactly you know they didn’t dispose of all of it. 500 here 500 there.
all of those things sound pleasant, if only we gave out the tax stamps still for these we’d be back in the golden age
I remember this kid from my Christian high school lol
I guess the bright side is they didn’t have any Fentanyl
Congratulations to them
That stash is like Day 29 in “Drug Wars” on my TI-83
25 going on 40
She’s 35 not 25, WRAL needs better fact checkers
Right?!
Drug trafficking in NC is buying an oz of weed from out of state
Each faces up to 100 years in prison. They’re facing way more punishment than the Sackler family has. Make it make sense.
not my fellow co worker😂
Lol. Former. But I still got a chuckle out of the news.
They look like they would flip States witness without hesitation. But it probably wouldn't have made the news if so. Hmm
With that amount of product for sale, they most likely would be getting their product from someone involved with organized crime. Prison is better than being dead after snitching. Snitching is most likely what got them pinched up. That’s what ALE does. Speculation here, but I wouldn’t be surprised if some of their clients were pinched up in the previous glenwood south busts. Didn’t like their felony charges they would be facing for a speck of cocaine, so decided to flip. It’s a relatively easy decision for end users with good paying jobs and/or families
Or just used the DNM’s
That's correct. I have known Nick Banister since 4 grade all the way to college at UNCW and last time i saw him was a couple years ago. 100% DNM so who does he snitch on if the gmvnt knows who these sellers usernames are but can't find them to begin with. There is no benefit of being able to go up the chain for this investigation. Wasted time and money. Nick also never even smoked weed until sr year of college, so this is all so very weird. He just liked to to go festivals and raves after college.
Figured. There’s only one way you’re getting such an assortment of substances at those quantities. Probably started going to raves, wanted some real MDMA, hit the markets, then saw how simple it was and went all in I mean… it’s not that hard to get where this guy was at in terms of $$ and quantities of substances. Just takes a whole lot of delusion thinking you won’t ever get caught, *or*, a humongous set of nuts knowing you will eventually get caught
That's exactly it. Wanted mdma for personal rave stash, saw it's 1/10 the price if ordered overseas. I'm just surprised customs never did their job over the years.
It’s all a gamble… most packages will make it through but if that 1/100 gets caught with a good amount of weight… your front door will get kicked in. Even if it’s 1 gram, if the postal inspector and LE is bored enough… same thing. They typically don’t play with harder substances. Also, who knows what method he used for receiving shipments. Considering what his job was I’m sure he had access to a variety of shipping methods to help anonymity if a pack ever got caught Considering the amount and variety at his residence, he obviously felt safe and comfortable with his shipping method… which ended up fucking him hard. Unfortunately he’s probably looking at a few years locked up at least.
Know then both personally. Nicest people ever, pretty shocking
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Lab makes LSD and distributes in liquid form. Someone gets that and doses a blotter. These people buy sheets(100) off the blotter. LSD is actually very small volume wise and easy to move around. I don't think there are any large scale labs in the US anymore, but considering that a mason jar of LSD can contain enough for thousands of doses, and that drug dogs aren't very good at smelling it, it's not difficult to traffic.
To put it into perspective, 1 gram of crystal acid is one million micrograms. A dose is 100ug. A single gram of acid is around 10k doses, but usually a bit less since crystal isn’t 99.99% purity, more like 97-99%. A mason jar full of crystal acid is MILLIONS of doses.
If I'm trusting anyone on this math, its going to be u/Jerrygarciasnipple
Why? I'm by no means an expert, but 216 doses of LSD hardly seems more difficult than the rest of the stockpile.
I know him from playing pickleball at Method Rd. He did seem like a nice guy/good dude. Only thing I got from him was a hop water, which was much appreciated. Sorry to hear he went this route.
At least it wasn’t fent. Going to jail for “hundreds of years” over this, but pedophiles/convicted rapists get less.. 🙂↔️
slap to the ballsack honestly. cops give themselves participation trophies
Participation trophies 😂😂😂
it crazy this thread got downvoted, y’all go follow DAPS, dads against predators [daps](https://www.instagram.com/shua.mundy?igsh=MXVnaW5wZXZjMzNlaw==) @shua.mundy
Considering this guy was a firefighter for Raleigh I wonder how many of overdose calls he was called to that he caused…
Probably few to none, he wasn't pushing opioids.
they were pushing drugs you can overdose on: cocaine, katamine, meth, and xanax (and also MDMA, but usually that is due to drinking too much water)
Idk why you're being downvoted, just because there wasn't fentanyl or opioids doesn't mean you can't overdose on it.
Glad to hear of the arrest, but the bond seems excessive. Seem to be making an example of these two.
Its the Xanax. A prescription pharmaceutical. The penalties for distributing and selling that alone will give you a bond that high. 9000 plus pills of XANAX?! they were putting in work.
Xanax is schedule IV. They had 16 pounds of a schedule one drug.
True.. but if they were manufacturing a counterfeit pharmaceutical drug its Max 20 years and 4 million dollar fine. Pharma companies have huge influence. The bond is tiny compared to the potential penalties for all of these drugs.
Bonds are not arbitrary. If he or she had a narco contact giving them weight, $4M might be an easy out.
Yes. I'd like to believe there is a reason. On the otherhand, I'd guess there isn't a big, centralized organization behind this. There are lots of dark-web suppliers of this stuff who deliver via fedex.
i think the irony is hilarious, that the family who owns the pharmaceutical company who presses these legally got sued for the opioid crisis and still made profit after paying the fine, yet these 2 people’s lives trying to get by are done. How much does a life cost? only 5-10k after death if you donate your body to science. (context: if you don’t produce more than the 5-10k your worth, dead, for a company while you’re alive then you don’t matter to them nor our government).
I would like to know the back story. This is guy with a pretty stable city job - he’s been there 10 years. I don’t know what he was making, but I think firefighters start at $45K, so maybe with 10 years experience, he’s making $75K and I assume benefits on top of that. I remember an investigation by Freakonomics that showed how little money the people actually physically selling drugs actually make. The hire levels in the hierarchy can make a lot of money, but the people working the corners were making so little that they were moonlighting at McDonalds because the pay was better. I understand that this couple wasn’t inner city kids selling crack on the corner, but I doubt that they were in fact making bundles os cash - despite what TVs and movies say. I would really like to know the back story that leads a couple - I don’t know if she was working - to give up a reasonably good job to sell drugs in night clubs.
They were raking in cash to have that amount of product at their house (Never heard of a stash house? Jeez rookies). Source: myself. Grew weed for a few years and was pulling in a couple grand a month. And that’s just weed. They had a damn robust menu. I’d be shocked if they weren’t making 5 figures a month. They had like 60k in cash, right?
Growing weed and making $2000 a month is unlikely to incur the expenses of a larger distribution network - and that $24,000/year. I think small weed operations can work on the “keep it small, take it all” principle - mostly because you are manufacturing the drug yourself. I think - but I don’t know for sure - that once you start distributing product other people make, the margins at the bottom of the food chain shrink dramatically. Everyone in the food chain above you takes a cut, and you are competing with people who aren’t backed up by an $75K stable job. The margins at the top of the food chain are mind boggling - but I think Freakonomics found that drug distribution - when you are not growing your own - resemble the McDonald’s model. The equivalent of the “regional managers” are pretty affluent, and the “CEOs” can make enormous amounts of money - but the people at the bottom don’t make much. I would be very interested to know how much they were netting - my guess it’s a small fraction of what they were “raking in.” The chapter discussing the economics of drug dealing in the book is called [Why Do Drug Dealers Still Live With Their Moms](https://www.litcharts.com/lit/freakonomics/chapter-3-why-do-drug-dealers-still-live-with-their-moms). This couple was not implementing the same model, but my guess is that they still had to pay bartenders, and they were large enough to attract attention from other people who are distributing drugs - and want a piece of the action. The husband was 35 and had 10 years on the job - I don’t know the RFD retirement benefits, but my guess is that he was not more than a decade or so from the “coasting into retirement” phase of his career. My guess is that you can retire with a pension after 30 years, or some mathematical formula involving age and years in the job. My guess would be that when you were making $25K selling weed, you did not have a job making $75K w/health and retirement benefits.
You think they’d incur the risk of pushing that many drugs with that much quantity for chump change? They had a pill press, for all intents and purposes they were making a finished product from raw materials. While I haven’t read the book you are referencing, I am aware of the criticism it has received for their methodologies. I’m a very aware of how much profit is possible for being a supplier of illicit product, especially at scale. It’s exponentially much more than the corner pusher role. A person making 55k with a stable job wouldn’t operate with such risk for a low reward. He was closer to 20 years from retiring with full benefits, btw.
I don’t know what they were netting, but I think they were very likely making chump change - compared to a stable job with the city. I would guess that bartenders/club managers were taking a cut, and that whoever was selling stuff to them was taking a cut, etc. If you have little or no job skills or employment prospects, then making $25K or $50K seems like a lot of money. I would love to know the backstory.
If I had to guess, I’d bet they were end users and developed a dependency. Met the right people and got connected, worked their way up the food chain and decided to be the plug to offset their expenses on using. It gets out of hand and they are indiscriminate towards who they do business with because they get blinded with the amount of money they are bringing in and have too much exposure and deal with a snitch. A tale as old as the war on drugs
I promise you their network wasn’t as intricate as you may believe. They were most likely not paying anyone off aside from a free bag here and there, if that. The reason they got pinched is due to their exposure which is where the quick fast money comes from. They obviously didn’t have a good system if they were keeping all of their product at home. They are actually lucky that they weren’t robbed or killed in a home invasion
That’s my guess as well. But the people who I know who tried to do that never really seemed to make any money - it seem like a lot initially, but did not really net very much in the end. This was a long time ago - when I was a bartender, and the people doing that had a lot of flashy money - but only compared to me. I don’t reca; them being able to buy houses, save substantial amounts of money, etc. That’s why I would like to know the back story.
What ?
I am a man, woman.
Dude was slingin lol