Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast
Too High for Crime: Real Stories of Hilarious Hustle Fails
Sat, 26 Apr 2025
Ex dealer Rob shares his funniest moments as a dealer and life afterwards.Robbs Channels https://www.youtube.com/@BostonRobb https://www.youtube.com/@AnothaOn3 Follow me on all socials!Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/insidetruecrime/TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@mattcoxtruecrimeDo you want to be a guest? Fill out the form https://forms.gle/5H7FnhvMHKtUnq7k7Send me an email here: [email protected] you want a custom "con man" painting to shown up at your doorstep every month? Subscribe to my Patreon: https: //www.patreon.com/insidetruecrimeDo you want a custom painting done by me? Check out my Etsy Store: https://www.etsy.com/shop/coxpopartListen to my True Crime Podcasts anywhere: https://anchor.fm/mattcox Check out my true crime books! Shark in the Housing Pool: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0851KBYCFBent: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0BV4GC7TMIt's Insanity: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B08KFYXKK8Devil Exposed: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B08TH1WT5GDevil Exposed (The Abridgment): https://www.amazon.com/dp/1070682438The Program: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0858W4G3KBailout: https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/bailout-matthew-cox/1142275402Dude, Where's My Hand-Grenade?: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0BXNFHBDF/ref=tmm_pap_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=1678623676&sr=1-1Checkout my disturbingly twisted satiric novel!Stranger Danger: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0BSWQP3WXIf you would like to support me directly, I accept donations here:Paypal: https://www.paypal.me/MattCox69Cashapp: $coxcon69
Chapter 1: What happened during the police encounter?
They pull us over. I'm thinking, whatever, you know, can we search the car? Absolutely not. Why do you want to? We're not doing anything. We're just driving somewhere. Well, I smell the odor of marijuana heavily. I'm thinking, I got nothing. I'm good. All right. F it. We get out. They search the car. And the guy comes back with a tinfoil pipe this big. Where did you find that?
And he's like, well, you tell me. I get it out of the glove box. I'm like, it's not mine.
Did you act offended the whole time they were searching? Like, I can't believe... I would never. Oh, my God. You guys have the wrong room.
Listen, I would love to pretend like I did. We had this little closet and I had this huge flag that had a cannabis leaf on it. But you're still selling it. When you're an addict, like money doesn't mean you stop. You know what I mean? Like having security of money or a house, like you don't realize like, oh shoot, I spent so much of my life as an addict.
And especially when you see people that are successful or maybe, you know, go to high school and then go to college and they get this good job and they do all these things. And you're like, oh wow, I chased a high for 20 something years. Yeah.
Hey, this is Matt Cox, and I am here with Rob Stevens, and he is a former drug addict and current YouTuber, and we're going to hear his story. So check it out.
Well, listen, in the immortal words of Christopher Wallace, when he said, never get high on your own supply.
me and my friends just had no regard for that that was really what started all the trouble for me and listen i had a great growing up you know well up until my parents divorced but growing up was fine our house was almost like a hostel you know whoever needed any kind of help where were you where were you born where i mean where i was born in framingham i lived outside boston forever um
We moved around a lot. So we lived in Hawaii when I was really, my dad got into real estate and listen, a few years ago, I don't talk to my family anymore, but, and it's unfortunate, but one of the last times I seen my uncle, He said, you know, your dad, you know, sold cannabis.
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Chapter 2: How did addiction affect Rob's upbringing?
You know, some of these five fucking loans. It's so crazy. Like what goes on? So essentially, that's what I bring that up all the time. And I worked in radio for 20 years. And that was what I was trying to push, because the government can't have it both ways. They can't say like this is the hardest drug there is, which is just ridiculous. But also in 2001, put a patent on it.
for recognizing its medical qualities. So it's frustrating because if I had grown up today, none of this, you know what I mean? I just would have been a doctor's assistant. I would have been a physician. Maybe it was alternative medicine. I would have been looked at way differently.
In fact, when I was on the radio, people would go, well, what we were trying to legalize it here in 2017 in Massachusetts. And we would talk to the governor and he would compare it to the opioid epidemic. And I went to you. Listen, I know people who have died from that. And I know people who smoke every day. And if you're trying to draw a parallel between those two, you're crazy.
But, you know, it's more important that people really see. kind of the truth behind it. Like the government knows it's healthy or healthy for some people. They know that it's a, it's a solution to certain chronic pain. So the fact that I even had some kind of criminal record for this is just obscene. So getting that out of the way, my first arrest, right? We would, we would move.
I mean, how old were you? Young. I just got my license. That was the biggest thing. When you didn't have a license, it was so hard. You had to have people come to your place, which was not ideal. You know, we did not want that to happen. And when I got my license, I got this old truck. It was like a 1980 Chevy custom short bed deluxe. One of these just beaters put a nice paint job on it.
But, and this truck got me in trouble so many times, the muffler would fall off. And if you've ever heard one of those loud trucks with the muffler, I would rig it up. I always kept a, they don't have them anymore. You know, the wire coat hangers, which they just don't sell. What happened to the, like, why did they stop making coat hangers out of wire? Why are they all plastic?
Well, it, If you go to, if you get your clothes laundered, they give them, give you the wired ones.
That's the only place though.
Yeah.
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Chapter 3: What were the challenges of growing up in a family with addiction?
This guy, I'm telling you, he was the 1990s version of Better Call Saul because he hung out with us. When I look back, I'm like, it's a little weird, you know, a little weird, but great guy because he was definitely in his late 30s. Maybe he was a lawyer. He had to go through law school. He was much older, but he would hang out with us.
He knew everything we were doing, you know, and he was our defendant. And I'm talking about every single one of my friends. We kept this guy well employed, always going into court. So he comes out. I don't know what it was. One of the court hearings, you know, parents. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. First appearance. Thank you. Thank you. It's been a long time. I'm definitely not close to 16.
And he shows me the police report and he goes, just go home. He's like, I got this. Don't don't worry about any more appearances. Nothing. He goes, get out of here. Shows me the police report. I read it. And this cop writes, you know, strong smell or strong odor of marijuana. I don't call it that cannabis. It's it's a medicine.
But he writes strong odor of marijuana, found a tin tinfoil pipe hot to the touch. And I, but I'm young. So I was like, I don't, what do you, he goes, think about it. He goes, does tinfoil hold heat? There's no way they pulled you out of the car, searched the car in this amount of time to say that, you know, it was hot to the touch. And that's how he got, well, he didn't get it dismissed.
So I go on probation for six months. I don't, you know, there's no time, nothing like that. It's just an innocent probation. The unfortunate part was they gave you like a 7 o'clock curfew. You had to do the drug test. So they weren't messing around. Thankfully, I had some cool parents that if I wasn't in by 7, they would essentially cover for me.
But this cop at this point just had, you know, we had me and my buddy who were doing this had a target on our back. I get through the probation. Now, mind you, so I'm not even 17 at this point or I'm getting close to 17 and we're hanging out at the triple decker, but the front stoop had a little side driveway and then there's a fence along it and there was a supermarket.
There was something else on the other side. And then in the back, there was a parking lot that you could come in, but there was a tree line. So you couldn't necessarily see. So we're hanging out there. And if we were hanging out, we would never have, you know what I mean? We just, we would only carry enough to smoke or whatever. We weren't carrying a bunch of, you know, weight on us.
We just wouldn't be holding it, especially in the, on the side little porch where the driveway was at his house. But there was a group, maybe six of us. Most had some kind of record. Again, I'm very innocent at this point. And after about maybe 20 minutes of hanging out, cops bust through the back with flashlight guns drawn. A cruiser pulls up in the front. Again, jumps out, frees. Nobody move.
And we're wondering, what the hell is going on? We were literally just hanging out outside. The kid that had whatever on him, I think a pipe and a small, small bag just chucks it. So go ahead, search us. We're fine. You know, that's what we're thinking. Again, nighttime, we didn't realize like, oh, they got flashlights. They're going to search the whole area and pray that they find something.
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Chapter 4: What led to Rob's first arrest?
It doesn't matter if it's private property, just the scent of it down the street and seeing people they were willing to do, you know, compromise, whatever. There's no protect and serve at this point. It was like, we're going to get these, um, alternative medicine heads. So we do that court case and he wins. They took my testimony and he gets nothing.
I'm talking about like whoever was the judge on this. And that was the other important thing. It's weird, you know, that you learn like when you want to get a judge, what court you want to go to, what judges, you know, what their past convictions are, who you really want to see. That's where this lawyer was impeccable. He knew the court system like no other.
And he would say, listen, we want to push it to this date because we can get this judge. So, you know, whatever was the odds were stacked in our favor. He gets off.
and it's you know incredible because you would think they had us dead to rights they had us with um i forget what you'd call it holden i don't know if that's what you just got you know holden paraphernalia uh whatever else it was or that was probably it but still at this age you know they're putting people away for that they're locking kids up i forget it's a
Class D misdemeanor, depending on how much you have or how many prior convictions you have. So, you know, carries different weight where you're at in the court system or if you have previous charges, which that's what a lot of my friends, you know what I mean? You get busted three times and all of a sudden you're looking at a year or whatever it was. He gets off and this lawyer.
Our childhood would have been so different without this guy. Remarkable. He goes, we're going to celebrate. I'm taking you guys to Montreal. Now, this is like an eight-hour drive. We're going to do a weekend away just to celebrate the victory. And this is our lawyer taking us. Okay. This guy is incredible. And you guys paid him.
This is not a, okay. This isn't like a public defender.
No, no, no, no. This was a private. That's what I'm saying. Like, I don't know what kind of deals he was cutting with parents, but yo, this dude took on a lot of cases for us. Every, every say, I mean, he must've been in another court. We would see him. He would be in with somebody else and we would be coming into court and be like, Hey, you got us next. Right. But he loved us.
And he I again, I think it's the mindset. I think he could see the future and be like, this is not a crime what these kids are doing again. Right. These are imaginary borders that some state made up. They might have the power and the guns. We got the numbers. They're saying it's a crime because you have this magical plant.
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Chapter 5: How did Rob cope with the loss of his father?
party places to go I don't know if they've cleaned it up but it was just beautiful too so yeah that was devastating but at this point the trouble that kept finding us can I put it like that I don't know if it was finding us or maybe just you know none of this is your fault it couldn't have been right I didn't contribute to this at all but again I was in a shitty area of town asking people to buy drugs and I
And this bad stuff happened. I'm telling you, it's these cops. If they would stop trying to do their job so much, I would have been okay. But at this point, I'm thinking again, naively thinking like trouble's chasing me. I didn't think I was going to graduate high school. In fact, I had dropped out for a year.
I just did construction and working with all these guys who are, I would say, a little more heavy into the addiction. And that's kind of what opened it up for me. When you're, you know, hanging out with these construction workers after work, I felt like, you know, My time was limited on the outside.
If I saw so many friends continually, well, one of my friends who just jumped off a bridge two years ago, he had been locked up from before even getting a license.
This kid just committed suicide a couple of years ago.
Yeah. He had just had his second child who at the funeral I held him, three months old, absolutely devastated. And just so you know, this kid, we grew up next to each other. People used to think we were brothers. So forever, I mean, when he was on the run, one of the times the cops busted in my house is because I was...
letting him stay with me you know what i mean he was on the run so we had such a tight relationship that it didn't matter what was going on i was always there for this kid but the unfortunate part was getting out of jail for him he never felt like there was hope you know being an addict having a record he was never like oh well i'm gonna go on the straight in an hour narrow i'm gonna go get a job now for him it was like i'll just deal more drugs
hope that addiction doesn't get, well, I don't even know if he was hoping that addiction didn't kill him. I think at this point, you know, because he was Jesus 30 something, he was just young, too, too young. Um, But at that point it, well, and this is the reason I'm bringing that up is because I saw what was happening to really close friends of mine.
It just became this loop, this vicious cycle of you get out of jail, you think there's no hope. So you just kind of go back to what you're doing. You're not trying to, you know, do any, and again, back then people weren't considering rehab as like a real, you know what I mean? That wasn't like a real option. There was no real knowledge about PTSD or addiction as much as we have today.
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Chapter 6: What was Rob's experience with treatment and recovery?
Listen, if you drive on some of those roads like the... I forget one of these roads that goes deep into the jungle. There will be people on the side of the road holding huge sticks of cannabis. And I mean, you could just pull over and buy it. It was remarkable. I'm telling you, that's a different land. It's magical.
I wish the people... If I ever hit the lottery, I'm buying Oprah's farm and I'm giving it back to the people. So... I, at this point, I'm starting to figure like wherever I go, there might be a little bit of trouble following me. And I came back to Boston from Hawaii. But when I came back, this is just early 2000s. And Oxy's starting to explode on the scene.
Now, within a year or so of me coming back, one of my close friends overdosed and died. And again, it's horrifying for me because I watched, you know, leaving. There wasn't much hard. Well, I shouldn't say much hard drug use. We would deal in ecstasy, too. I don't know what you can say on YouTube and what you can't.
So I think you've already said you've already gotten this probably demonetized, but or at least limited monetization, 18 years plus. But that's fine. Keep going.
All right. So before I look out for me now, we were dealing with I'm trying to help you, man. I know how tricky YouTube is. YouTube, figure it out. Again, all these powers that be, they can't figure it out. Write a list. Tell us words we can't say.
You got to talk about your Mr. Beast rant.
You got to do your Mr. Beast rant again. I'll go off on him. That guy's got it coming. Your time is ticking. I got 962 subscribers. I'm coming for you, buddy. So, well, so, so we had always dealt in ecstasy too. I think that's also why the cops, you know, maybe kept a closer eye on us. But again, we never did this for money. It was just so when we showed up to party.
I don't know why you think that means something. because we've been dealing cash.
That has never been a defense that has worked. Nobody's ever gone to trial and be like, yeah, yeah, your honor. Admittedly, admittedly, we were importing 4,000 pounds a month. but we weren't making a profit.
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Chapter 7: How did Rob's addiction evolve over time?
I do this stuff on the side, like not me, you know, and who's going to challenge that? Any addict has to come to that realization on their own. So when he took his life, you know, I think it was. many things that played a part of it, but I'll never be able to tell you which one it was.
But that's really when, for me, because I was so deep into my addiction at this point, you know, and being able to fund it and having connections where, you know, people want to hook you up or help you move or just whatever it was, you know, it was never an issue. And that's very scary when you got that addictive personality. And so after he passed, it was basically...
I didn't think, you know, like I was like, well, I know what my fate is. You know, like my fate is sealed. You just feel. And I forget at some point I looked up the stats. But if you have that happen in your family or with your parents, like the statistics for men jump dramatically for that to be kind of your route. So at this point. I'm kind of pulling out all the stops.
This is where I got real heavy into oxys and California. It was I don't want to say it was as bad as Florida, but it was really easy to get a hold of. And because there was no infrastructure, you could basically have anybody go and kind of pill shop for you. And it was dangerous. I'll never forget that. What started me? to realize I was an addict because that's what you have.
You have to have this realization this whole time. I'm like, nah, you know, like it's not, I'm, I'm fine. You know, I go to work, I come home, I might party a little bit. I might do whatever in the,
in the background but look at me i'm holding down a job i'm success we were number one on the radio you know what i mean like had success you're like there's no way that i'm the addict right when i had the realization my buddy would come over and basically he would spot me whatever i could move it and i could pay for everything with what i was pushing it for, you know?
So again, just, you don't have to pay for stuff. If you can sell it to other people for a little bit more, it's always covering your costs.
So you're on the radio, you're making decent money, but you're still selling it.
Of course. When you're in, when you're an addict, there's no like, Hey, I have the money. Like money doesn't mean you stop, you know what I mean? Like having security of money or a house. Cause at one point after my dad passed, we had gotten kicked out of our apartment. I was living in a car while I was on the radio. So, I mean, there are things happening where, again, you're never like, well,
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Chapter 8: What insights does Rob have on the stigma surrounding addiction?
i don't know if anything would get done but just to be able to bring something like you're talking about these clarification things it's not big it's not like youtube doesn't have the resource you know like this is very doable and it's infuriating that he's just like i'm gonna edit quicker you know like we're gonna smash the ferrari everything's perfect and you're like bro you're not paying attention you know
Yeah, it's perfect for you. Like, well, you know, look here. This is probably the wrong thing to say, but, you know, I've definitely noticed that there are two kinds of, you know, in my my with my vast experience and being a con man and being in out of prison and having a keen understanding of human nature. I have come to the conclusion that there are two kinds of people in the world.
There are those that climb the ladder of success and invite everybody else to follow them. And those that climb the ladder of success and kick it out from underneath them. So no one can follow them. And the problem is, is that amongst those people, the thought is this, like if there is, if you're getting a piece of the pie and, you're taking from my potential pieces of the pie.
That's what those people that kick the ladder out think. They think, well, I don't want you to have any pie because I may need that pie. That's my pie. There's less pie for me. But the truth is,
As massive as YouTube is, as massive of an audience as they have, and as huge of a population, and as quickly growing as the internet and the collectiveness of just humanity on this planet is, there is enough pie for everyone. 100%.
Well, to speak to that point, if you just look at YouTube 20 years ago, right, in its infancy, I'm sure there were people that had that vision where you're like, yo, we can all make it. And I'm sure there were people like, no, only a few of us. And if you look at it today, there are so many people making careers. You know what I mean? YouTube never thought they'd be this big. No, absolutely.
20 years ago, they were like... When they were like that weird looking website and it was like a couple of people's home videos, they were like, oh, this is fun. They were like, we're competing with America's home videos. This is great. And now... I can just make enough money to pay my bills. That's it. We're going to keep this thing alive. Yeah. I think you should tell your story for real.
Like you're not... Well, previous to getting on YouTube is so fascinating, but your growth through YouTube, people die to hear that because you might, you know, well, one, like I said, I mean, it's growing, but it's very much, although it's paying all my bills, it's still very much a grind.
And it is a job and, you know, and I get like, when I first started, I thought, you know, I still think everybody should be doing this, but I'm coming to the conclusion that not everybody can do it. They just, people are super self-conscious and they're worried about what people think, you know, they're, they're. It's kind of difficult.
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