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CBR900RR OK.
- Shall I just walk up there, man? - Yep.
Make sure I look good, bro. Shit.
Alright.
- Oh I haven't put my sunglasses on. - sunglasses.
This is to hide my identity.
How much longer you guys think this is gonna be?
Alright, let's do this.
If you knew where $2 million was buried in the ground,
would you dig the shit up?
Fuck, yeah I would. And I did it one time.
Everybody's got a...
different story to tell, you know.
You know, some of them are funny.
Some of them are, you know, basically tragic, but...
everybody's got stories, you know.
It's kinda hard to describe where I live.
It's not the end of the world, but we can see it from here.
That's... about the best way I can describe it.
There's been people come and go over the years,
but Julian's been out here a long time.
He's our local hippie.
He walks barefooted everywhere he goes.
He didn't have much...
as far as materialistic stuff goes,
but... he had a good story.
You know the difference between a...
northern fairy-tale and a southern fairy-tale?
Well, a northern fairy-tale starts off, "Once upon a time..."
A southern fairy-tale starts off,
"Y'all ain't gon' believe this shit."
Hell, I heard his story so many times I can almost repeat it verbatim.
You gotta understand the way it happened.
See, his wife ran a turtle research center in Culebra.
Julian would walk the beach looking for...
turtle nests,
and that's where the story started.
One time, he saw this...
big thing washed up on the beach and...
he didn't know what it was, but...
the way it was wrapped up, you know, it was in...
watertight wrapping,
so he knew it wasn't garbage.
You know, he pulled it out of the water and...
he was hoping it was money.
Well, when he opened it up...
it turned out to be...
cocaine.
And he went, "Shit!"
I believe he weighed it and it was over 70lb of coke.
That's about $1 million, you know.
So somebody was out a lot of money.
You know, he never had an intention of trying to sell it or anything.
He was just trying to figure out...
where he could basically get rid of it.
He was afraid to turn it in.
Puerto Rican cops were...
you know, about as corrupt as you could find.
He didn't know what to do with it.
It was probably a comedy
'cause he said he'd carry it to one spot and hide it...
go back the next night and get it and move it to another.
It's kinda like a dog with a bone.
He finally just said, "To hell with it." He buried it.
And that's where it stayed
for over 10, 15 years.
And he moved back here.
And that $1 million were just waiting for someone to dig it up.
♪ Address unknown ♪
♪ Not even a trace of you ♪
♪ Address unknown ♪
♪ Oh, how could I be so blind ♪
♪ To think that you ♪
♪ Would never be hard to find? ♪
♪ From the place of your birth To the ends of the Earth ♪
♪ I've searched only to find ♪
♪ Only to find ♪
♪ Address unknown ♪
My name is Rodney Hyden. I'm president of BH Builders.
We started the company in 1998.
We are general contractors and we do commercial concrete work.
I'm a dreamer.
You know, I always dreamed of being the guy
that builds big four- and five- and six-story buildings
and it came true.
I mean, one of my first jobs was a four-story motel
that I never would have thought I'd be doing in my second year in business.
Yes, I am an optimist. I'm not pessimistic at all.
When I grew up, we were poor.
I can remember times that my mother and father would take a loan out
to get our Christmas.
During summers growing up, I would work with my dad.
I started working for him for a dollar a day
so I could save up and buy my first shotgun.
My father's done every trade in the business
and became a project superintendent.
But he wasn't a businessman and...
people took advantage of him.
Just watching him bust his ass all those years
taught me don't ever depend on somebody else to do what you can do
and, if you can't do it, learn how to do it.
Golly, we have done some huge projects.
Back in 2000, 2001,
we did the $20 million honors dormitory at the University of Florida.
That job going on, at the same time, we were doing the skybox.
And we were just everywhere.
I had over 80 people working for us.
Things were clicking.
I've had all the toys.
Had a Harley, three-car garage.
I had a Corvette in one bay. I traded one boat in for another.
Emily was born all when this happened
and my wife didn't work, she stayed home and took care of Emily,
something she always wanted to do.
I never thought I'd be able to go get her a new car
and park it in the garage,
so when she got home and opened the garage, it would be there.
But it's the first time I ever got to do that and it was wonderful.
I mean, times were great. They were just unbelievable.
But then the recession hit.
I'm Emily Hyden and I'm Rodney Hyden's daughter.
I think that I have a pretty normal family,
but only because I've lived there my whole life, so I see it as normal,
but, from the outside looking in, my family is probably pretty strange.
Good food, good meat, good God, let's eat.
My parents are really chill in the sense that I can tell my mom everything
and she just kinda goes along with it.
My mom and my dad have, like, a pretty open rapport.
Like, they don't really... There's no filter in my family.
I feel like it's normal, but it's probably not compared to other families, so...
fairly strange, I would say.
I never wanted to be single.
Y'know, I wanted to be somebody's wife.
But I wanted the picture.
I wanted the husband, the house, the child, the dog.
Each of us had been married...
Y'know we'd each been married before. He came with a child, I came with a child.
And so, we got married in a little bed-and-breakfast.
We just had, like, six or eight friends, my parents, you know.
It was just a sweet...
perfect moment.
Our marriage sticks.
It's never bored.
I've never been bored.
When we got married, he was working for somebody
and making good money, but making them better money.
We're doing alright, but they're doing great.
And they're doing great because you're helping them...
live this great life.
And I wanted a piece of it.
You know, my mama raised me to want those things in life.
The Hammock, at the time,
was one of the prestigious neighborhoods
and the homes were big and fabulous and...
Then we found the land in The Hammock and
started to build this phenomenal, beautiful home and...
we were movin' up.
We were movin' up.
We appreciated the things that Rodney worked hard to get for us.
But it's not enough.
And then we decided we needed a swimming pool.
And then we decided we needed a river house.
And then we needed the boat, and then we needed the jet skis.
And then he needed a motorcycle.
It was, you know, endless.
We loved our life.
I loved it.
The construction industry, it was boom, boom, boom, boom, boom.
So much work that you just couldn't get to all of it.
And then, all of a sudden,
it was like... gone.
Let's talk about the speed at which this market is deteriorating.
Everything has been completely wiped out.
The Dow traders are standing there watching in amazement
and I don't blame 'em.
We haven't seen anything like this since the Great Depression.
Will somebody come on TV and tell the truth about how bad it is?
We're in the midst of a serious financial crisis.
We are in the last days of this country's survival.
I have talked to the heads of almost all of these firms
in the last 72 hours
and he has no idea what it's like out there.
None! They're nuts! They know nothing!
I really want to know. Is the American dream dead for me?
♪ I love the USA ♪
♪ Fuck, yeah, this place is great ♪
♪ I love... ♪
The foreclosure problem has a ripple effect
and touches almost everyone here in Central Florida.
The government's going to step in
with nearly a trillion dollars for the banks market.
It's time for a conversation
as to what they're going to do to prevent massive foreclosures.
This could be the most serious recession in decades
and that means life as most Americans know it is about to change,
in some cases dramatically.
♪ I love the USA ♪
♪ Fuck, yeah, this place is great ♪
♪ I love the USA ♪
♪ I love the USA... ♪
I do believe in the American dream.
But today, for far too many Americans, this dream is slipping away.
♪ I love the USA... ♪
I was over $1 million in debt to the bank.
And I felt like a disappointment when I had to tell her.
It was the life that I loved and I did not want to walk away from.
So I thought I'd compromise.
We found the property out in Watermelon Pond and...
I'd always said I wanted a sunset
and Rodney bought me the prettiest sunset in Alachua County.
But it came with a price.
And we put a double-wide out on the property
and the double-wide became our permanent residence.
And that was okay for a while.
But then...
our two-year plan...
erm...
crept into a three-year plan.
A four-year plan, five-year plan, six-year plan, seven... -year plan.
Eight years later, we were still in the double-wide...
parking in the sand.
When I had been in a 3,600 square-foot home
with a three-car garage,
and now I was living in...
a home the size of my three-car garage.
And I said those things to my husband.
We're in Piney Woods, Florida.
It's Archer. This is my 40-acre farm that...
I've had for ten years now.
This is where I was when I heard the story.
Every piece of property out here has had that story told on it.
The legend told the story.
I'd tell people, "Who the hell's walking along the road in bare feet?"
And I said, "Is there a couple of drag marks between the footprints?"
"That's Julian...
draggin' his nuts."
The social life in...
Piney Woods, Florida is... like no other.
Everybody stays to themselves, but...
Fridays, Saturdays, phones started ringing, "Where we gonna meet tonight?"
You know, it was just a get-together for the happy hours.
We called it "Piney Wood Happy Hour."
I felt a lot like Wendy in Peter Pan.
Like, I would cook and the Lost Boys would come eat dinner.
Well, when Rodney first moved in,
it was mainly having these parties
where he was introduced
to all the other neighbors.
It's a very unique cast of characters out there.
It's just one story after the next story.
Course, Julian started his story about Puerto Rico.
It seemed like, every party, he would tell this story.
I have to say, the first time I heard it,
it was a little far-fetched.
Julian's story was probably the most fascinating story
I've ever heard in my life.
Oh, come on!
Some people, y'know, would laugh and, "Oh, let's go get a submarine."
I told them, "Y'all crazy.
Then what the hell would you do with it if you got it over here?"
We don't know anybody to sell it to.
Julian was sitting on a goldmine.
We're talking about 32 kilograms of cocaine.
"X" marks the spot. Treasure, treasure, treasure.
Goddamn, man, he knows right where he buried it.
I liked picturing it in my mind.
You know, visualizing where he buried it.
Sneaking back in there and getting it. But it was a fantasy.
It was just a story.
Just a story.
My dad picks up strays.
He has this, like, complex to pick up people
and just try to, like, help them out when he thinks they're struggling, but...
Yeah, we compared it to going to the Humane Society
where you, like, pick the old one and you hope things go okay,
'cause you just want it to have a good life.
That's my dad, but with people that do drugs and stuff, so...
I'd rather be in here right now than out there working.
Yeah.
As he, like, gets older, he wants to feel younger.
And I think that, by hanging out with these people,
it kind of allows him to, not only relive when he was that time, but also...
I've thought about it a lot,
and I think it's his way of self-correcting his
- old mistakes. - Bye.
Just to fix them in other people, or at least try.
Sometimes he just gets caught up in it all.
One of the strays that my dad picked up was Andy.
Come on. Get up here. Come on.
We'll be trying the case for the jury. A seven-year case...
I had a fella that was a friend of my son's...
and...
he...
When I first met him, man...
he was so fucked up on something, I don't know what.
I assumed it was pot, 'cause he always had good pot. Always.
And...
But later found out that he had an opium problem.
No, I don't have a drug problem.
I do drugs, if that's what you're asking.
Absolutely. Yes, I've done 'em.
More than most. But...
nowadays, it's not a problem.
I took a liking to this kid, man.
He had a personality that you just cannot...
You can't hate him. I don't hold it against him.
But I wouldn't let him on the jobs. He'd hurt himself or hurt somebody else.
But what I had him do, I'd let him come to the office,
he'd clean the office or he'd wash my truck.
He did all the things that I didn't want to do.
Plus I paid him ten dollars an hour and...
I was just helping the kid out and it's 'cause I liked him.
One of the boys.
Like my homie.
Straight up. He used to take me around all the time to his job sites and shit.
Like... show off his new friend and shit.
No, he was my boy, dude. He was...
He was a cool-ass dude, loyal as fuck.
Andy and I discussed Julian's story.
He'd heard it from my son... or somewhere,
and I told him the story again and...
old Andy would scratch his head and go, "Man, what I could do with that."
I could tell the day he told me the story that he wasn't bullshitting.
I mean, it was a, "holy shit!" for sure, right?
I mean who wouldn't say, "holy shit!" to that?
$2 million on the street.
But, wholesale, probably like...
erm...
shit, maybe...
I don't know, like... shit...
Damn, it might be worth more than $2 million, now I think about it.
This money could change your life.
Without a doubt.
Period.
Fresh!
Now if Andy knows the story, there's no telling how many people know the story
or have heard the story or how twisted the story got or...
Yeah, no telling.
The last time Andy was working for me, he lived with a guy named Dee.
Dee goes by Danny, Dee, Cuban.
This is his name.
I know him as Dee.
When you're not around him and you talk about him, it's "The Cuban."
So I went to pick Andy up at the address he told me he was at.
I didn't even cut the truck off. He was in the driveway with this guy, Dee.
And he got in and Dee walks up to my...
window and introduces himself.
And the first words out of his mouth were,
"Hey, man, I can help you with that story."
I've done everything in my life. Drug deals, stole, robbed, been in gangs.
And to do it for so long, it just comes natural.
More you do something, better you are at it.
My mom didn't really have a lot of money, poor, you know,
so I grew up in the streets, projects, stuff like that.
Getting into gangs. Went to prison at a young age.
But prison is basically a college for criminals.
If you don't have nothing, you start from the bottom.
Like I did selling coke.
I started with an 8-ball.
The ones that make it and survive are the ones that organize themselves
and treat it like a business.
Firstly, you gotta have good product.
The second thing is you gotta beat prices.
And everybody used to laugh 'cause
the half gram I'm selling for 15 bucks, everybody is selling for 20.
"No, he ain't gonna make no money."
But people would come to me,
they could spend 15, have a gram and go get cigarettes, so they're happy.
Yes, off an ounce, somebody might make more than me,
but by the time they get rid of that ounce, I got rid of 3 or 4.
So in a week I make more money than them.
Yes, I feel it is easy, drug dealing.
You know, it's just about following the rules.
It don't matter who you are or what you do,
if you strive to do something and work at it hard,
eventually you will succeed always.
There's no failure.
If you fail in life, it's because you quit or give up what you're doing.
It wasn't long after that...
in a matter of a week,
Dee walks in my office
and... he proceeded to
wanna know more about the story.
Let's face it, Dee and I don't know each other that well.
Never done anything with him, never bought any pot from him.
I don't know if this guy is trustworthy or not.
A little conversation won't hurt.
Our first meeting about it was in his office.
I sat right across from him and he's telling me the story, you know.
Biggest thing was, he just wanted to be sure
that somebody can move it when it got back here.
That was his thing, 'cos he didn't know nobody.
I told him, "It's not a problem. You get it here, I'll move it for you."
So, you know, it's starting to...
sound like...
this could be interesting.
Y'know, when he realized my background,
that I had moved a lot of cocaine, I was able to move it,
it just made him hungry to want to go get it.
When Dee would come over, it was usually after-hours and it was like...
It was almost like having a beer after work.
He's gonna come by and we're gonna talk smack about money, man.
We're talking about a way to make some money here.
Well, as with any proposition, you know, Dee's...
presenting his proposal to me
in such a way as,
we're literally pulling out a calculator and he's telling me...
Millions.
Literally, millions.
I didn't use no calculator. I did all the numbers in my head.
Rodney would use a calculator though.
He'd get his little calculator out and try to add stuff up.
"How much is this, that?"
Type it in and he'd be amazed at how much it is.
Twenty-eight kilograms at $25,000 on the street,
doubled because he's going to double the weight,
but it would double the money.
And the numbers were...
easily calculated and it's starting to make sense.
So, you know, he didn't realize what he had there.
So you know, I was looking at it as, huh, "It's a gold mine."
It was an equitable...
proposal from Dee where he just wanted half of it. He just wanted...
He wanted half to get rid of it
and I'm going to be sitting here with half to just...
locate it and turn it over to him to take care of from there.
The biggest problem was though...
how are you gonna get it here?
Not being from the streets, and all, he didn't understand,
to bring in 32 keys of cocaine into the United States from another country
is very hard to do without
an organization backing you that's, you know, organized,
and knows what they're doing, that's connected,
you know, to make it happen.
As we talked,
it became clear to me that he knew a guy. His name was Carlos.
Carlos knew everything about everything.
These were people that were already trafficking drugs,
bringing it into the States.
And, you know, they knew the ins and outs and everything to it.
They could actually bring it in.
His guy in Tampa was the guy.
This was nothing for him to be able to do.
His friend was Puerto Rican.
His friend had...
connections to bring stuff into the country and...
he ran a big operation.
Kingpin. That's the word.
Kingpin.
I'd never been face to face with a real,
I mean, a real big-time smuggler who owns his own plane.
I said, " What the heck! I'll go meet him. What's it gonna hurt?"
I walked into the bar and and looked over to my left and saw Carlos.
He looked exactly like something you'd see on TV.
He was dead image, if not better.
He was a...
pretty well-dressed fellow with...
pressed slacks, you know, and alligator shoes and a belt to match.
He had on...
some kind of silky print shirt that...
Man, he just...
You didn't want to rub up against him,
because it looked like... his clothes were perfect.
Carlos kind of reminded me a little of Tony Montana with his...
With his body language... and his accent and the way he...
you know, put a little extra in behind some of his words.
Scarface.
I just liked that guy.
First time I watched Scarface was probably when it first came out.
I've watched it several times. I went to the theater to watch it,
then I watched it on HBO I don't know how many times.
"Say hello to my little friend."
Say hello to my little friend!
He had a shot of tequila in his hand when I walked in,
the best they had, it was in a silver bottle.
And he asked me if I wanted anything,
so I told him, "Well, I'll have a margarita, no salt."
And... so I sipped on a margarita.
And while I was sipping on that margarita, he must have downed four or five shots.
It was like one right after the other.
They ran out of whatever he was drinking,
so they popped a new bottle and he asked them to bring it to the table.
So he's a big shot, you know, big time.
I mean, how often do you see a guy get a bottle at the table
for him to pour at his own leisure?
It was pretty cool.
Carlos Private Air.
He gave me a card at the meeting...
and explained to me that he had a twin-engine Queen Air airplane.
And...
I told him, look, if we were going down there,
there's no sense in me taking a separate flight, I'd just fly with him
and he says...
"No, you will not see my tail wing number, ever."
And that was kind of a way of saying...
"I don't know you. I don't trust my eyes off of you with that kind of payload."
I told him that,
"I'm not a drug dealer.
I'm not here to get in the drug business.
But I wanted to take care of my family.
And I'm not a greedy person."
Well, I...
I was giving Carlos all the information I had,
you know, except exactly where I thought it was.
I wanted to see for myself where... you know, confirm it
before I passed that information on.
So... you know, I told him the story.
I was talking that smack, that drug talk, you know,
talking about "keys" instead of "kilograms."
Carlos called them "turtle eggs."
That was his code word,
because there's an island they lay eggs and they were buried, so
he came up with the name "turtle eggs."
And then he started talking about what his fee was,
you know, how much he wanted and...
And what the plan was for the upcoming week,
what we were gonna do.
The deal was I would go down there, try to locate it.
Once I verified where it was,
he would fly down, get it and bring it out of the country.
And the fee for that, four bricks of cocaine to do that.
Good deal.
We've got a plane, we've got a pilot...
and we've got a plan.
It's time to go to Puerto Rico.
Dude, I was...
ready to get to the...
to the island.
We got on the plane in Orlando, flew out.
And shortly thereafter, we landed in San Juan.
And then, from San Juan, you could either take the ferry...
or pay 40 bucks for a puddle jumper.
So I said, "Man, let's take the airplane. That'd be neat, flying in."
We flew from San Juan to...
Oh, hold on.
Hold on.
Fuck. Theo, you know I know it, dude. Just give me a second.
It's not Vieques, was it?
Hold on, hold on... woah woah woah... huh!
I got it. Give me five seconds.
I got it. I just had it, Theo. Don't say it.
It's such... Oh, my God, it's right there.
I'm going to do this myself, Theo, so please don't...
I have to. It's going to bother me if I don't.
Even with that hint you just tried to give me, I still...
But I know it.
If I don't get it in 30 seconds, we'll move on. It's...
Oh, wait, there it is, there it is.
Fuck.
Oh, my God, it's gonna... Culebra.
Fuck you, Theo.
So we're coming into Culebra and there's two mountains on either side.
And as this pilot got closer, we had a crosswind.
I didn't know shit about that.
Rodney says, "Oh, by the way,
this is one of the top-ten worst airports in the world to fly into."
I was like, "You're ready to die for this shit, huh, Rodney?"
Oh, he was scared, dude.
He was, like, holding onto me so tight.
Dude, our plane turned sideways and it is
fucking crazy.
Oh, my God. I'm glad that's the last time I'll ever do that.
That bitch was scary as a motherfucker.
It's just beautiful, man. The water...
The number one beach in the world, might I add.
Flamenco Beach. I think it's like...
It's not very big. It's...
It took me, to go all the way round the island in a jeep,
half hour, 45 minutes.
So the first night we were there...
we had an early dinner.
It was an early dinner and I ordered a lobster for dinner.
It was a nice place and Rodney was like,
like I said, man, he was in that mood, dude,
and he was just trying to play the part while we were there,
like he was some big-timer.
The lobsters...
They come up to you and they're like,
"Y'all want lobster?"
You say "yeah," and they go down to the bay and get this shit for you.
Straight up. He went and grabbed the motherfucker and came back.
Dude, this guy ordered a five-pound lobster and you see this thing, dude...
I swear to God, Theo, it was that big around.
That big around and it was, like, that tall.
I swear to God.
Rodney's, like, real particular about food.
Like, he gets mad if you don't eat it, you know what I'm saying?
So, I had this big-ass lobster in my face
and I don't even like lobster, might I add.
I was shoving it down my throat, because I knew Rodney was going to yell at me,
'cause it was like a hundred dollars for the lobster, right?
Luckily...
Rodney tapped out, like, halfway into his,
so I knew I was straight and I could put mine down.
I was praying. I was, like, so happy, dude,
'cause I was not looking forward to eating that whole fuckin' lobster.
That night, I got sick as a motherfucker.
On the way down, Andy tells me he forgot his medicine.
I knew he was on pain medication,
but I also knew it wasn't medicinal, it was recreational.
And he was addicted
and he was supposed to have brought his Suboxone or Methadone
and he didn't have it.
So, basically, by Saturday morning...
he was sick as a dog,
and he was totally worthless.
Rodney thought I was withdrawing from drugs,
but I believe it was the lobster.
You know, Andy's getting sick at this point, man. I mean, it's like...
"God, you're ruining this trip, dude. You're gonna ruin it."
You see, in this world, there's two kinds of people, my friend.
Those with loaded guns...
and those who dig.
You dig.
I left the room we were staying in
and I went on a little expedition.
Before we left, I went to see Julian and I took my laptop down there.
We googled it up. He showed me where his trailer was.
He showed me where he had buried it.
If I could find his trailer, then I felt like I could find where it was at
and do some investigating.
Mobile home sits here,
it's between the cistern and the mobile home.
Well, my God, that was only a matter of six or eight-feet distance
that I had to probe or search around
to see if I could find something.
So I took the jeep and went to where Julian's trailer was supposed to be.
All I wanted to do was locate where the trailer was.
But when I got there... man, there's no fuckin' mobile home there.
It's gone.
I couldn't see Julian's trailer. I didn't find it. I couldn't find it.
I did see a pile of debris. So I called Julian.
"Julian, man, are you sure I'm in the right place?" He goes...
"Was the desalination plant in front of you?" "Yeah."
"Was the fish and wildlife office to your right?"
"Yeah."
"Well, it's right there to the left, man.
You see the cistern?"
"Yeah, I saw it."
He goes, "It's right between the road and the cistern is where my trailer's at."
I said, "Julian, it ain't there."
He's like, "Come on, man.
They had to have torn it down then."
But... I had another big problem.
I had nothing to dig with. No shovel, no nothing.
I mean, I thought they were readily available anywhere.
Well, not in Culebra. There's no Walmart in Culebra.
Julian's trailer was gone.
Andy was sick as a dog, and I didn't have a shovel.
End of deal, man. I mean, I'm... we're going home.
So we left, the next morning. First flight I could get out, we left.
Rodney and Andy went over to Puerto Rico.
They get there and they realize they need shovels and stuff to dig.
They couldn't find shovels. I mean, what the hell are they doing here?
Look, motherfucker, if you wanted to know what's down here,
you should have brought your ass down here.
Like, don't fucking bother me. I'll call you.
You probably never seen him get mad, huh?
Dude, that is a scary fuckin' sight, like,
I wanna run.
Andy ended up being sick, in the hotel, couldn't help Rodney at all.
So Rodney's out there, trying to dig this shit by himself.
You've seen Rodney. He's a fat dude. So... he ain't out there doing manual labor.
So to do manual labor like this, he just...
He's calling me, talking to me while he's doing this,
out of breath and everything, pissed off.
"Fuckin' Andy. He's sick in there, probably withdrawing, da da da da."
Andy apologized about being sick. He said "It'll never happen again,
but I promise you, we gotta go back down there."
Yeah, I believe it's more about just incompetence, y'know.
Which I kinda felt he wouldn't be able to anyway,
but this much money, what was going on, you gotta let them try to do it again.
Alright, so... Rodney was like, "We're gonna go in two weeks."
I'm not gonna waste a second trip down there.
The first was wasted. I'm not wasting a second trip.
So... I got with Julian and confirmed the location.
Julian tells me exactly, you know, on the map,
"Here's a cistern where they held water,"
and I even drew a section of it and kind of said, "X" marks the spot.
Skull and crossbones, bro.
Are you kidding me?
I didn't sleep the night before we left
and I didn't sleep the night before we left the second trip.
Let's go get it!
I told my wife I was going on a fishing trip.
I didn't lie to her. I just didn't tell her where.
We went back after dark and...
sat there for a minute, you know, making sure
no lights came on heading my way. I'm thinking, "Golly...
maybe a turn of one or two stones
and I feel the top of a...
of a duffel bag or something," and...
"Am I gonna know something ten minutes from now or am I not?"
It was an adrenaline rush altogether and, this time,
I found a shovel.
Who do you think was digging first?
Yeah, Andy was the digger. He was the man.
It was funny 'cause he doesn't have any ass, man.
I mean, he just like...
He tried and he's out of breath after about three strokes.
- C'mon, man. - Take it.
I was, like, "Man, fuck this shit."
Then I got the shovel and tried.
Rodney, I've never seen him work so hard.
Straight up, I've never seen him do nothing but
pointing motherfuckers out, tell 'em where to go, 'cause he's the boss.
This motherfucker was down there digging with his bare hands.
We got burned out trying to dig, in no time, because we were so excited.
We were trying to make it happen quick, but it was like...
hitting your head against a wall.
And... I was sitting there,
in my head, I was like, "What the fuck are you doing right now, dude?
Like, you're in another country. You're out here digging up cocaine.
What the fuck are you doing?"
I was praying that we did not find the coke.
We tried to dig in this dirt, man,
and he and I both were sweaty.
I mean soaking wet with sweat within about 20 minutes.
The ground was too hard. It was rock hard.
We fucking...
tried to start digging and it was just impossible and...
that's when I was, like, "No, fuck this shit."
Rodney stayed trying for fucking, like, two hours
and then, finally, he went, like, "Man, this can't be done."
You have to have a backhoe to dig in this dirt.
It was so hard you weren't gonna dig.
I'm in construction, man. I know how to di...
I know when you can dig and when you can't.
We'd made no progress and I was pissed.
He's like, "Andy, if you get some weed,
that will make this whole trip worthwhile."
And so I went down the street
and I found some little skater dudes and got a bag of weed.
And it was some fucking trash.
But it got me high.
I almost brought some back with me just 'cause I knew we'd be straight.
Luckily I didn't 'cause the second we got off that plane,
Customs hit that plane... hard.
We land in San Juan.
All of a sudden...
What the hell was going on? What's going on here?
And they pulled everyone off the plane,
lined up our luggage and hit the dogs all over this shit.
I knew what they were there for.
They were gonna check this plane...
for drugs.
Fuck, yeah, made me nervous, dude.
But we didn't do it.
And, 'cause we, me and Rodney, were never going to bring the cocaine back.
But, I'm telling you, man...
I'll never forget, that 30 minutes seemed like four hours.
Well, after they searched, I said to myself, "It's over.
I mean, that's the icing on the cake right there.
I am not coming back, taking a chance, even if we'd have found it.
No and hell no.
I'm done. It's over."
It was a wrap, bro.
We're done.
Till... Carlos called Rodney.
When I got back I was done. It was over.
It was a totally...
failed mission.
I had had it up to here with this whole story.
I stopped answering my phone for a long time.
At that point, I wanted to be done with Carlos.
I wanted to be done with Danny.
But... he was being a nag.
He was bugging the living shit out of me.
So, finally, I picked up the phone.
What?
He called me with a whole new attitude.
He's like, "I need to meet with you.
I've got a new proposal for you and you're going to like it."
And I said, "Carlos, it can't happen, man.
We got searched. There's people all over that place.
You're not gonna just go there and dig it up.
It's crawling with federal employees. How are you gonna do this?"
- He said... - I can do certain things
that you can't because I'm Puerto Rican. You...
are a gringo.
He said...
"Let's meet again. And, when we meet, make sure you bring the map."
I wanted to hear his plan, you know, "What do you propose here, Carlos?"
He was going to... go there...
take a crew on a yacht...
and...
dig the cocaine up.
'Cause he was gonna go dig it up,
it was four kilograms, now he wanted eight.
And I said, "Look, man...
good deal."
I don't have to do anything.
They're gonna do everything. He's gonna go get it.
Dee's gonna take it, Dee's gonna get rid of it
and they're gonna bring me the cash.
It went from easy money to... easier money.
All I gotta do is give him the map.
I did believe him.
Was that a mistake?
Amateur hour, dog. That's what it was.
That's what it was, bro.
From the get-go, I knew it was about a one in a million.
You know, or ten in a million,
whatever you want to say.
Like, he mighta got lucky and fuckin' got it, but...
dude, it just seems too good to be true but...
being the naive person he was that day,
I mean, that was set up for a robbery.
You know, like...
Like, who are we?
Two white dudes in the middle of Florida with all this coke?
What is to keep these big-time motherfuckers who got a plane
from just taking the coke?
I wanted to hear from him. I was hoping to hear from him.
And he had me fired up at that meeting. He had me fired up.
I thought, "This guy... I've asked him if he's, you know, how..."
In a nice way, I said,
"How do I know you're not gonna just get it and tell me you didn't find it?"
He said, "I wouldn't be in business if I worked that way."
I trusted that he was gonna do what he said he was gonna do,
but it was a mistake for me to even talk to him after I got back.
I should have just not even talked to him.
I should have told him and Dee to take a walk and leave me alone,
but I didn't.
He did just what I said. He ripped me off.
And... it's over.
It's over.
I trusted him...
And it's over. It's over.
He found it.
Fuckin' Julian ain't lying!
It's there! I'd have kissed him.
I'd have hugged his neck and said, "Man, I'm sorry I called you a son of a bitch."
Because he sent me the picture.
Now it's real.
"What am I going to do with the money?"
"How is Julian gonna look when I'm handing him...
stacks of hundred-dollar bills?"
You know, "What's Julian gonna think?"
I didn't sleep, man. I didn't sleep all night.
I would lay down and close my eyes and just picture
big packages of cocaine.
Now... when is he coming back?
It was a long, hard wait.
It was like being a kid on Christmas Eve, man.
Y'know, it's like, "How am I gonna get through tomorrow and the next day?"
'Cause Carlos said that I'd see him Friday.
Well... when Carlos finally made contact with me,
and I answered the phone...
he said, "Let's meet at the golf resort,"
and then he called me back and changed it to a new location.
And then he says that I had 30 minutes to meet him
or he wasn't going to be there
when I got there, it was over.
First I'm going here, now I'm going here? Fuck, y'all.
If I didn't hurry, he was leaving the country
and I wouldn't see him ever again.
I was driving like a bat out of hell and hauling ass.
I couldn't get a hold of Andy and Danny had a flat and couldn't make it,
which was pissing me off.
Like, "Where the fuck are you guys?"
"Goddamn, I'm not gonna make it. You know, he's gonna be gone."
Oh, it's a fucking nightmare.
I made it, dude. It was cutting it close, but I made it.
He told me he would be inside.
He was buying a rod and reel, was what it was.
So I walked in, went past the cash register and he's coming down the hallway
with a little short fishing pole in his hand.
Carlos looks at me and I look at him and I said, "Man, I'm so glad I made it."
I felt bad about...
some of the thoughts I had about him, wondering if he was a rip-off,
wondering if he was gonna... live up to what he said.
I was kinda feeling like I owed him an apology.
I take it all back, what I thought about Carlos.
He wasn't an asshole.
He's a businessman and he did what he said he was gonna do.
He just does business a little different than I do.
And I remember saying to him,
"Hey, man, I wish there was more business to be done," because he'd been successful.
It's Christmas morning and I've got the biggest present under the tree
and I'm getting ready to open it.
He gave me his key, pointed out to his car. It was at the end of the parking lot.
He goes, "There's my car. Go ahead and pull around there.
Open the trunk and I'll be right there."
So... that's what I did.
When he pointed to his car, he was at the far end of the parking lot.
So I went all the way around,
because I'm fixing to pick up a pretty substantial
package here, and I was starting to get a little paranoid here.
But there wasn't anybody around.
I go to his trunk...
I opened it up...
and couldn't believe it.
Well...
my whole outlook on it was how many times do you...
meet somebody that...
buried a treasure, literally?
And, at the same time, how many times do you meet somebody
that can go get it and bring it back and get rid of it?
It is a once-in-a-lifetime deal. I mean...
You're never gonna have all that come together ever again in your life.
And... it was like...
do it or die.
Hey, man! I can help you with that story.
That story, that story, that story...
They pulled me over
because I was driving too close to the car in front of me,
which is bullshit. It was just a reason for them to pull me.
They patted me down and searched me and didn't find nothing, you know,
and I had to use the bathroom at the time, I really legitly did.
What I shoulda done is went ahead and pissed myself.
The other cop said, "Did you pat him down?" He said, "Yeah."
He said "Did ya 'whoop'?" He did like that.
Like, check me, y'know. And he said, "No."
So he actually checked me
and he reached down there and grabbed my, y'know, nut sack area.
So they sit me down and,
I dunno, my hands,
I've got small wrists and my thumbs are, like, double-jointed.
Always been able to slide outta handcuffs.
Just always been able to do it.
So I'm sitting there. There's three of us.
So when I seen both the male officers go to the back of the other car,
just the female there,
I stood up and took off.
Hey!
I took off around the corner
by the time I got round the back of the store, he was on me.
It's always aggressive.
There's no such thing as not aggressive.
Once I knew they had it
and they put me in a car, I knew there was no getting away from it.
I'm sitting there, everything's running through my mind, y'know.
I've been to prison three times.
They didn't have to tell me the time I was facing. I knew what I was facing.
And I'm facing life.
No ifs and buts. I'm never getting out, is what I'm looking at.
So the officer came to talk to me
and asked me would I be willing to work?
I said, "Well, you know, if I am, what's the procedures?"
And he straight up told me,
if I was willing to work, I'd go home, right then.
"Depending on what you can give us depends on what happens to you."
So once they told me that, I knew I had to give them something bigger.
For me to get off, I had to give 'em something bigger than what I had.
So I told them, "How about $2 million of cocaine coming into this country?
Would that be enough?"
"Y'all ready to go on a treasure hunt
for 32 keys of fucking cocaine coming into this country?"
♪ Picture this, I'm a bag of dicks Put me to your lips ♪
♪ I am sick I will punch a baby bear in his shit ♪
♪ Give me lip I'mma send you to the yard ♪
♪ Get a stick, make a switch I can end the conversation real quick ♪
♪ I am crack, I ain't lying Kick a lion in his crack ♪
♪ I'm the shit, I will fall off In your crib, take a shit ♪
♪ Screaming yes, I am guilty Motherfuckers, I am death ♪
♪ You wanna hear a good joke? ♪
♪ Nobody speak, nobody get choked ♪
♪ Fuck out of here... yeah ♪
♪ Nobody speak, Nobody get choked, hey ♪
♪ Live to shoot another day ♪
Live from CBS 47,
this is Action News At 5:30,
Your Questions. Answered.
Tonight, we begin with a federal sting involving a local man,
a treasure map, and a remote Puerto Rican island.
Investigators followed the map.
Now, they didn't find any treasure, but what they did find is worth a lot of money
and it's also illegal.
It sounds like something out of a movie.
A treasure map that leads to buried treasure on a remote island.
I've been in law enforcement for 25 years
and I've yet to have seen a situation exactly like this.
But instead of treasure, 54-year-old Rodney Hyden ended up with drug charges.
It all started back in June.
A detective from the Alachua County Sheriff's Office received a tip
about the Archer man.
He had flown over to Puerto Rico to find it himself.
He locates the pile near a turtle sanctuary on the island of Culebra
but doesn't have the tools to dig it up.
That's when the undercover agents,
posing as drug-trafficking pilots, step in.
Never in my experiences the... criminals provided us
with a map leading us to the illicit drugs.
Hmm. Interesting story.
Yeah, Lauren Hallacher reporting, federal agents arrested Hyden on Friday
for possession of five kilograms or more of cocaine, with the intent to distribute.
Federal agents have the cocaine saved as evidence now for Hyden's trial.
The ride to jail didn't bother me.
Spending the night in jail didn't bother me.
Being stupid didn't bother me.
Now it was a matter of my family's livelihood.
What are they gonna do without me? Because I'm going to prison.
My cell phone rang.
And... it wasn't a number that I recognized
and it asked me...
if I was Jamie Hyden and I said, "Yes, who's this?"
And they proceeded to tell me that...
That my husband had been incarcerated by Homeland Security.
"What do you mean? Jacksonville? Homeland Security? Cocaine?"
I fucked up. Yeah.
It was the stupidest thing I've ever done in my life,
and I'm guilty for my part in it, but...
all that had to be done at any point was...
"We know what you're doing, just give us the map and we'll go get it and take..."
You know, slap me on the hand. But no.
They had to make a big drug dealer and a big drug king out of me.
I mean, it's not much different than the damn piece of fruit in the Garden of Eden.
"Just take a bite. Just take a bite."
"Just give me a map."
"Just give me a map. You don't have to do anything."
Fuck you.
My name is Ryan McEnany.
I'm a special agent with Homeland Security Investigations.
My name is Joe Rawley.
I'm a former detective with the Alachua County Sheriff's Office.
Rodney?
I went to Tampa this weekend and talked to my boy.
Is he interested?
He is. He said that he trusts me.
He's real skeptical.
Nobody ever really finds shit like that. You know what I mean?
That shit sounds too good to be true.
- That's exactly what he told me he said - Tell him I said the same thing.
- Let me tell you, if it wasn't for you, Dee. - I wouldn't know where to get rid of it.
If it wasn't for you, I wouldn't know anyone who had shit like that. -Well, I got it.
It goes both ways, you know what I mean?
It's just a one time in a life chance-opportunity.
And if it's done right, you can walk away from it
Essentially, in the...
With narcotics traffickers, you're looking to
generally catch a smaller fish...
when you're going out.
And then you essentially use that smaller fish
to go after larger fish, who are above them.
You always want to be working up to the bigger fish.
Rodney was like...
The fish that had never been caught before.
Because... he wasn't really a fish.
Rodney was a unicorn.
Just some... thing
that was out there that no one's ever gonna see again.
And if it weren't for our involvement...
he would have just been sitting with...
Well... probably robbed.
If it didn't happen like it did I was gonna take it from Rodney,
so odds were stacked against him. He woulda never got it.
Never. Truthfully, I'd have buried him to get that.
Anybody from the street would have.
That much money? You have people kill people for $10,000.
You're talkin' about millions.
That Cuban snitch.
That boy needs to go on a one-way grouper trip.
Err... Rodney never told me what he was up to.
I had no... 'Cause I woulda...
climbed his ass about it.
Most people would roll over and snitch on everybody and...
He...
He manned up and...
took the load on himself, yeah.
And I respect him for that.
"They're obviously coming for me next," is what kept going through my mind.
They came for me but it wasn't for that.
It was to fuckin' be put fuckin'... witness stand.
My name is Mark Rosenblum
and I was hired to represent Rodney Hyden.
Rodney's a very bright guy. He is. But, in this situation, he was naive.
He's a dreamer
and this was a dream that was presented to him
that he never would have come up with on his own.
First of all, Rodney did not even know how much a kilo of cocaine sold for.
And the important thing to remember is
that Rodney couldn't have sold the cocaine,
because he didn't know anybody to sell it to.
Rodney didn't have any of those contacts.
He was just a... player in a game.
And... Rodney...
couldn't move up or down, because he couldn't move anything.
He couldn't move...
a dime bag.
I firmly believe, had a profiter not been present...
he would have attempted to try to seek out somebody to the best of his ability.
I don't think he would have been successful in that, however.
He partnered with the wrong person.
Well, he...
unbeknownst to him, partnered with the United States Government.
Entrapment is being induced or persuaded to commit a crime
that you did not have the predisposition to commit,
by a law enforcement official,
like a police officer, a government agent
or a confidential informant who's acting on behalf of a law enforcement officer.
He needs to quit his whining about this entrapment bullshit,
because he was gonna get that cocaine.
How is that not entrapment?
Anybody?
It's every sense of the word, right?
"We will go get the shit for you and give us some...
and we go about our business."
Rodney didn't commit a crime, dude.
Here you have, Mr. Hyden, wanting a pilot, okay?
You know, wanting the connections to distribute it on the street.
And willing to pay people for it.
That's a crime.
Oh, we didn't do it.
We couldn't. It was impossible.
It's not our fault he couldn't find it.
It was there, 'cause we went out there and dug it up.
Right?
It's bullshit.
And we're a casualty... of bullshit.
Did we hold a gun to his head
and say, "You need to go there and find the cocaine?"
You're playing with real human lives.
Put the goddamn real drug addict in jail.
Don't let them set up people.
It's fuckin' bullshit, man.
Well, the thing you need to understand about trial work is
that you cannot predict what a jury is going to do.
You never really want to go to trial,
because you don't know what
a group of people will decide.
But they weren't offering us a choice.
If the amount of cocaine involved in the case is five kilograms or more,
there is a mandatory minimum sentence that's required, of ten years in prison.
You hope that they see it your way, but there's 12 individual people.
I didn't know if he would ever be coming home.
I didn't know what was going to happen.
The courtroom atmosphere was like in any other trial when a verdict is read,
which is that everything was very quiet.
And it was a very dramatic moment.
They read the verdict and the verdict was guilty.
There's a reason we have tissues in the courtroom.
There's a lot of crying that goes on.
Regardless of the entrapment defense...
not being successful with the jury,
It turned out that, likely, if the government...
hadn't helped dig it up and bring it over to the United States,
it is very uncertain that Mr. Hyden would have been able to pull that off.
This case reminded me of a combination of Walter Mitty meeting Breaking Bad.
Normally, it would have been 120-month minimum mandatory.
I would have not had any choice but to sentence Mr. Hyden to at least ten years.
Normally.
But... there's something called "the safety valve."
And the safety valve says, if you're a first-time offender, which he was,
and you have no previous criminal history, which he didn't,
and you meet a number of other sentencing factors,
the minimum mandatory is waived.
Thank God for that judge, dude, that he saw this for what it was.
Bullshit.
Judge Corrigan is a fantastic judge.
And that was my glimmer of hope.
A long period of incarceration just didn't make any sense in this case.
And so, once I had made that decision,
then... why not use the advantages that Mr. Hyden does have
for the good of the community?
He sentenced me to 60 days in jail and five years' probation.
There's always the one or two nosy Nellies.
And, of course, their question is, "Were you gonna leave him?"
But I promised him I'd stand by him.
Because I love him.
My wife picked me up
and being married for...
twenty-three years, one of the things that kind of fades away is kissing...
and I couldn't wait to kiss her, man.
I gave her a big one right on the mouth.
I also sentenced him to community service.
And in this case, the community service was
that he work 20 hours a week for Habitat for Humanity, every week.
And he will continue to do that 20 hours a week for five years.
Look, it's the stupidest thing I've ever done in my life.
I'm not proud of it.
How I didn't see it, how I didn't...
realize what was going on...
I watch movies. I've heard of people getting busted.
But out of all the bad and the ignorance and the stupidity on my part,
there has been some good from this story.
I've helped lots of families. I tell you,
it's such a good feeling to...
build their home for them and then...
hand them the keys at the end and...
you start cr...
You both hug each other and start crying. It's emotional.
I love it.
It made a better person out of me.
As far as the story he told you,
he's trying to get his business back on the ground. That's understandable.
But the truth be told, you know,
it ain't like he... tricked into it or nothing.
He knew full well what the hell he was doing.
And he wants to blame society for taking a dump on him
and all this for the reason he did it.
No. Be accountable for your own actions.
The economy took a dump on everybody.
Ain't everybody go try to get 32 keys of cocaine.
Rodney tried to go get 32 keys of cocaine.
You know, what did everybody else do?
They buckled down, worked harder, strived and got it back.
That's what he shoulda done.
You gotta have some ethical code about yourself.
What makes a person American in their heart?
If you love this country and y'know what you got,
you're American at heart.
It pisses me off when I see people complaining about being here.
It's like, "Go live where some of these other people live."
We're set up to where it's damn near impossible to fail.
If a lot of drug dealers put their effort into being legit, they'd make it, too.
That's just the way it is, you know, in America.
That's the way we're set up. Anybody can come here and make money.
Y'know, people do it all the time. That's the dream.
He'll have to answer for what he's done,
and I think he'll always look over his shoulder
for some of the other people he's done things to.
But he turned out being the smartest guy in the group,
'cause he walked away without even being arrested.
Considering how things worked out,
it made it even a better story.
You know what I mean?
I mean, you know...
it cost Rodney a bunch of money
and I'm sure Julian got a few more gray hairs, you know, worrying about it,
but it made it even a better story.
I have pear trees and blueberries and plum trees and...
stuff like that, so I'm just trying to feed myself as much as possible.
Are you ever gonna move from here?
No.
I'm pretty good here.
As long as you all don't come back too often.
Where would I go?
Even with the money, I wouldn't know where to go.
What do you want to know?
I wanna hear the story.
Not my story.
Whose story is it?
It's not mine.
Not anymore.
I'll always wonder, man, if they dug it up.
Strangely enough, they never presented any evidence showing a dig site...
crime tape...
backhoe diggin', 'cause I know that's what it would have taken.
The cocaine was extracted at night.
And... we don't have professional photographers.
We don't have... high-tech cameras.
We just did...
The photographs that were taken of the cocaine
were taken while the cocaine was in the ground, with a phone.
You saw what you think is a picture of it.
You don't really know, 'cause there was 33.
In the picture there was, what, seven?
Where did the other 27 keys go?
Straight up, can someone tell me?
They just disappeared?
When you take what those pictures were in the document file,
compared to the actual evidence that was in court, they don't match.
They don't match up.
For those people who believe that we never actually went to Culebra
and never dug up the cocaine...
they're 100% wrong.
We went to Culebra,
we dug up the cocaine...
and we admitted that cocaine into trial.
What would you say to someone who believed it was still in the ground...
and was maybe planning to go dig it up?
Don't do it.
Obviously, it's a...
Strongly advise against it.
You're saying don't go check to make sure it's still there?
Correct, I would not go down to Culebra or...
any location for that matter, absolutely not.
A,
Julian was lying.
B, the cops stole it. Or, C...
the cocaine is still in the ground.
Honestly, they never dug anything up.
I'll always wonder, man.
How could you not think like that?
If you knew where $2 million was buried in the ground,
would you go get it?
Straight up.
Anybody in here.
If you knew where $2 million was in the ground, would you go get the shit?
Who wouldn't?
It's the American dream, bro.