12 screws and 3 plates [part 1]

I have 12 screws and 3 plates in my left leg.  I walk with a bit of a limp when it gets cold and I can’t really jog anymore.  I can run, but it’s more of an awkward lopsided gallop.  I will have those scars and hardware in my leg for the rest of my life.  When they cremate me, there’s going to be some metal pieces clanking around in my urn.  I didn’t break it in a motorcycle accident.  I didn’t fall off a ladder.  I didn’t step on a land mine in Iraq serving valiantly for our country.  My dumbass was high on meth and jumped of a fucking bridge fleeing a burglary scene.  My rock bottoming out as an addict was literally hitting rock bottom of the Buffalo Bayou.  Not many people have photos of them of the hour they rock bottomed out unless it’s a mugshot.  I happen to have pictures of me at what I hope will be the absolute lowest point of my life and will share them at the end of this post.

Many of you have messaged me seeking advice on family members and loved ones lost in addiction.  I have also heard a lot from fellow addicts.  I will always give you my honest opinion, but will also preface it with a disclaimer that I am not a rehab counselor nor do I have any formal training.  I say this because this is some honest to God life and death type shit and I don’t want to say the wrong thing. Having now communicated with people from the “other” side of the addiction fence, I see now how painful it can be to witness a loved one lose themselves this way.  The shit that I put my wife, daughter, and family through was so fucked up and I think about it multiple times a day.  In a family rehab session, my dad made a comment about how he used to visit me in Houston and I would be wearing a suit and tie.  He then talked about how it pained him to have to come visit me in jail and see me in a different kind of suit.  The orange suit of Harris County jail inmates. 

Talking to my ex-wife and daughter on the phone from jail was just the worst gut-wrenching feeling ever.  I would catch them in the car on the way home from school and my daughter would say “Hi! Daddy!”  “How come I can’t see you?”  She was 5 at the time and we had told her that I was in a hospital and was sick, but getting better.  My daughter wasn’t old enough to understand why I wasn’t there.  She is 6 now and starting to ask harder questions.  What a shitty fucking thing for me to do to her.  I still haven’t formally apologized to my ex-wife and daughter.  I told her that I was going to and I just haven’t done it yet.  I will though.  Neither of them did anything to deserve what I did to them.

Meth slowly and insidiously consumed more and more of my life, resources, and entire thought process.  The fucked up part is that I was somewhat cognizant of what I was doing and I still couldn’t stop.  It was like watching a slow motion trainwreck of myself and not being able to do anything to stop it.  I didn’t want it to happen, but it’s like it was too late and I was just going to play this whole thing out.  Like well it’s too late now, I guess I’ll just go all the way at this point.  I didn’t want to wreck my shit up, but I was powerless in a sense.  To the active meth addict reading these words right now, you know exactly what the fuck I am talking about.  If you are trainwrecking your life right now, I feel bad for you.  I really do.  You may not even realize you are doing this yet.  You probably think you have your addiction under control and are rationalizing your behavior with conviction.  You think you haven’t lost total control, but you have.  I wish I knew the words that could make a positive difference in your life, but there are no words that I could have read when I was fucked off that would have changed anything I was doing.  I’m not going to tell you to take in a meeting or talk to a counselor (but seriously, take in a meeting or talk to a counselor) but I will tell you that if you don’t decide to make a change, that change is ultimately going to be made for you by someone who isn’t you.  Addicts will not make significant changes in their behavior until they hit their own personal version of rock bottom.  Having been to multiple rehab programs it’s interesting to me how everyone has a story of a specific event, day, or action, that ultimately drove them into rehab.  A specific moment of clarity brought on by others or mostly by the addict fucking something up. My run in the streets and foray into the criminal life came to an abrupt end. I achieved my moment of “clarity” as the result of a scam we had never attempted before.

This all went down on February 11th of 2017. Myself, Phil, and my tweaker girl at the time, Marie, were fucking around on our laptops in the early morning.  I was poking around the deep web on Slilpp.xyz.   I see that site is still up and running with the same Breaking Bad landing page.  How appropriate.

We used to use this site all the time for fraud shit.  They accept bitcoin payments and sell logins for hundreds of different websites.  If you want to check it out, be forewarned that I’m not sure how legal it is to access that site. For the most part, these logins are fairly inexpensive.  For a few bucks in bitcoins, you can purchase logins for Amazon, PayPal, Bank of America, Wells Fargo, Best Buy, Macy’s, Uber, Dominoes Pizza etc..  You select a site, and if needed, further narrow your search results to fit specific parameters.  For example, you could run a query for an Uber account over 2 years old, with a Houston zip code, that has more than 2 online credit cards associated with it and was last used over 4 months ago.  It’s pretty ridiculous.  Each company’s site has a different level of security measures in place and some are more restrictive than others.  Our scams evolved as a result of hundreds of hours of us all getting stuck on this site and sharing what worked and didn’t work through basic trial and error.

For example, we learned it worked best to purchase Groupon accounts in the same zip code that we were in at the time.  If we tried to access a Groupon account with an out of state address, the security algorithm would automatically reject our local purchase attempts.  Average cost for a Groupon login was maybe $2.00-$5.00.  Whenever we accessed the deep web, we only used devices that were purchased fraudulently along with devices that couldn’t be traced back to us.  We covered all of the web cameras with tape, and never logged in from an IP address associated with anyone’s real name.  We found this easier than trying to mask our IP or VPN with the TOR networks.  We would only use free public wifi’s.  Mostly hotel lobby’s or Starbucks type places.   Our bitcoin wallets were also not connected with us whenever possible and we often took advantage of the physical deposit function of the Athena bitcoin ATM’s located around Houston. 

When you buy someone’s login information from Slilpp.xyz, they send you the username, email, and password immediately.  It’s as easy as buying anything else online with bitcoin. When we received the e-mail, username, and password, we not only used it on the site we bought it for, but we also tested it out on other sites.  Most people use the same password and email login for multiple sites.  If we bought a Best Buy login and the email was gaylesimmons843@yahoo.com, we would make sure to test out the Best Buy password on their yahoo mail.  20% of the time we were able to access at least one other website using the same login.  If they had 2-step security authentication set up, we were screwed and moved on to the next account.

My advice to anyone reading this is to not only change up your passwords frequently, but also add 2- step verification on anything you want to keep secure. For our example, if you happen to use the same password for your e-mail as you did for your Best Buy login, we would now have access to your email messages.  Once I was in, I would perform a search in both ingoing and outgoing messages for “credit card,” and “payment.”  Oh Gayle, I see you were helping your sister with her wedding and emailed a payment deposit form for a room reservation as an attachment. Now I have your full credit card number, CVV code, billing address, and phone number.  We would jot that down on our shared One Drive account and save that for future use.  Oh, you also have a Sears account?  Add that to the One Drive for later hijacking.  I also see you used this email for work stuff and have several expense reports submitted.  That’s helpful, we would have saved that too.  If you had a lot of sensitive data and information revealed, you became a prime candidate for us to make a fake ID with your information on it and dig even deeper into your life.


A major security flaw for Groupon was that they did not consistently ask the purchaser to confirm the three digit CVV code on the back of the card.  Sometimes they did, most times they didn’t.  Since they didn’t ask for that information, I could simply use the credit card payment information stored online to make additional purchases.  Simple point and click type shit.  Groupon wasn’t a huge score, but when you are hungry and don’t have any money, it’s a fucking lifesaver.  We would often send 3 or 4 of us to go out to the stores to use fake IDs on big ticket items and one guy would stay back and work on nothing but Groupons all day.  At the end of the day we would all come back with whatever we had managed to finagle and split it with the group. We would tally up a grand total and then go use the Groupons to eat somewhere nice.  We were in pretty good spirits if the days activities were fruitful and we would often tip $60-$100 just cause. I never came across other people that were as organized as we were or honest about what it was that we brought in.  I am sure there are much smarter people out there getting away with a lot more than we did, but you don’t hear about those ones.  You only hear about the dumbasses that got caught (us.)

So back to the morning of February 11th 2017.  I was poking around on Slilpp.xyz and decided to test out AirBnB.  We had never bought an AirBnB login before. The only previous experience we had with AirBnB was when I was able to purchase a $1,000 gift card on someone’s Lowe’s account and we were able to book a place for a few days.  Beyond that, this was our first experience with this company.  I purchased this lady’s login for $2.50.  I put in the username and password and it worked immediately.  No new location notification measure so that’s good.  I am now in her account, fully logged in under her profile.  Now what can I do with this?  Ok, I see her Amex was stored on there as a payment. I decided to test it out and see if I could book a luxury spot at the Mosaic Apartments and Condos at 5925 Almeda Dr., near the med center.  I private messaged the renter under her profile and he responded immediately.  I created a story and told him that I was a wife trying to book something for my husband that was about to land in Houston.  I said his plans for lodging fell through and that he now needed a place to stay. I asked the renter if my husband could check in early as soon as he landed.  The owner said sure! No problem.  He would leave the keys under the husband’s name I gave him at the front desk.  We used a name for someone that we had a fake ID already made with my photo on it.  I chatted up the owner a bit and asked if he would be able to meet him and he said no, he was about to hop on a flight out of town.  Perfect! I clicked the purchase link on AirBnB and was surprised when it didn’t ask for any CVV code and accepted the purchase.  The booking was fully paid for.  We were all set.

I told Phil and Marie what I had done and that there was a key waiting for us at the security desk.  Before we left to go check the place out, I set up a fake backstory for us to have in case we got busted. A sort of digital online alibi.  I posted an ad on Craigslist titled “AirBnB won’t refund us our payment, take our rental for cash!”  In this posting I said that we had reserved an apartment through AirBnB and now couldn’t use it.  I said AirBnB was being ridiculous and not giving us a refund so I said that we were willing to give it to anyone for straight up cash. I put a phone number on the Craigslist ad for a random burner cell phone we had on us.  Then, from my own cell phone I texted the burner and generated a fake two-way conversation between myself and the “Craigslist poster.”  It went something like this.

I then placed a call between my phone and the “Craigslist guy” burner phone and let it run for a couple of minutes.  I told Phil and Marie that if we get caught, we tell whoever catches us that we found an ad on Craigslist for someone that was renting this place for straight up cash.  I would be able to show that person the Craigslist ad, the text discussion on my phone, and the call to them in my call history.  We would tell them we had no idea it was booked fraudulently; we were just three innocent people that responded to a Craigslist ad.  The people that sold us this room for cash, they were the real scammers.  They looked like they were from India!  They were probably hackers!  After I shared this plan with Phil and Marie, I will never fucking forget this, Phil goes “Nah man, we won’t need that. Nobody goes to jail on my watch.”

We did not walk into that building with any intentions of robbing the place or ripping the guy off.  I mostly just wanted to see that this would work and that would have been enough for this experiment into AirBnB’s security process.  At the very most I figured I would hang onto the key fob so that I could come back and access the on-site pool and gym at my convenience.  We entered the Mosaic building and walked up to the security desk.  I confidently told the guard. “Hello! Yes, someone was supposed to leave a key up here for me” Without hesitation or even asking for my name, he nods and grabs an envelope off the desk and hands it to me.  We didn’t even need a fake ID.  That part went about as smooth as it could have.  We took the elevator up to the 10th floor and entered into the apartment. It was pretty nice. Some airplane memorabilia on the walls. Pilot of some sort.  Pretty nice kitchen.  I walk over to the bathroom and see he has a smart lock on the closet door.  I try it and it’s unlocked.  I swing open the door to reveal a closet jampacked with shit.  We start looking through it and there were cameras, speakers, a laptop, golf clubs, a Dyson vacuum cleaner and dozens of other Amazon boxes with lots of good shit.  Regretfully, we jumped all over this and didn’t think twice about it.  We started filling up our backpacks and rummaging through the closet.



As I type this out and now look back at what we did with a sober frame of mind, I am unbelievably ashamed of our actions that day.  Three twacked out meth heads rummaging through someone’s private belongings and thinking they could help themselves to whatever they wanted without recourse.  I can only imagine how ashamed my parents must have felt when they heard this story.  This was such a dickhead thing to do to someone and I am very sorry for having done this.  At the time, all three of us were ecstatic.  This was going to be a good lick and it was all my idea.  We quickly packed up what we could and I said “alright lets the fuck out of here.”  FUCKING PHIL says “Well, hang on Alphatweaker, I saw some things in the kitchen that I think I wanna check out too.”  I was like “bro, what is there? Maybe a hundred bucks worth of shit? Let’s get the fuck out of here.”  “It will just take a minute man, hang on we are good.  You said he got on a plane anyways” I looked at Marie and we kind of shrugged and said fuck it and stayed there.  Not more than 5 minutes after saying that…

“KNOCK! KNOCK! KNOCK! KNOCK! KNOCK!”  5 very hard and very deliberate bangs on the door.  We all froze.  Completely stunned.  “Remember the story, we got it from Craigslist” I whispered.  As I walked towards the door it flung open and this gentleman about 10 years my senior had his cellphone out in front of him pointing it at us wide-eyed like it was a gun and telling us to “Get back!! Back up!  Get on your knees! The police are on the way!”  I put my hands up and started to lower to my knees. “Whoahhhh, whoahhh whoahhh man we found this place on Craigslist! There was an ad we responded to!”  I thought I saw this register in his mind for a brief second.  I have a feeling that for a split second he had an inkling of doubt to our exact role in how we gained access to his place.  Granted we had all his shit packed up and ready to go, but we hadn’t physically and technically left his property yet.  We might have been able to talk our way out of this.  As I glance over at Phil, I see he has lowered his chin down to his chest and a snarl came across his lips.  He is pumping his arms and preparing to charge through this guy like a fucking bull.  Without saying a word, he takes off running straight at the guy and charges him.  He barrels into the dude and knocks him out of the way and races down the hallway. Fuck, I guess we are running.

Without hesitation I follow Phil out into the hallway passed the apartment owner. Phil and I are now both sprinting down the hallway at full speed.  Phil’s dumbass stops at the elevator and pushes the button praying the elevator happened to be right there.  As he waits, I think “yeah right good luck with that” and sprint pass him to the end of the hallway emergency exit door.  I fly down ten flights of stairs.  I was able to put a good amount of distance between me and the other two.  As I barge out the bottom floor emergency exit I see that I am on the ground level parking garage.  I quickly glance to the left and to the right and can run either way.  For some reason, I look straight ahead and see a railing like a bridge above the bayou.  From my angle, it looked like maybe it was going to be an 8-foot drop.  “They won’t think to look for me there” I thought.  I didn’t think twice.  I sprinted for the railing and without looking before leaping…I hopped over the edge. These pictures from left to right show the garage that I ran out. The emergency exit door was tucked back where you see the U-haul truck. I ran out of this garage, over the parking lot and straight up and over the concrete barrier.

What I thought was an 8-foot drop ended up being closer to 20 feet.  Straight down.  I have a distinct memory of falling and my hand brushing against the side of the wall as I fell.  As soon as I realized that I my hand was brushing passed more concrete than it should have…BAM!  IMPACT.  Everything went black for a second.  I opened my eyes and saw that I had landed on a concrete sidewalk running along the side of the bayou.  I tried to stand up and remember trying to step on my left leg.  A searing shot of electric shocking-type pain registered in my head and I noticed that the bottom of my left leg was broken and dangling off to the side. Completely shattered.  Multiple pilon fracture.  Adrenalin took over and the pain went away.  “Get up fucker! Get the fuck out of here!”

I rolled into the Bayou water and decided my best course of action was to hide for now and figure out the rest later.  I floated in the water and attempted to cover myself up as much as I could with floating debris of brush and twigs.  It was February, so the water was a bit chilly.  I remember floating face up in the water with the branches covering up my entire body and face.  The only noise I heard was my heavy breathing bouncing off of the twigs and sticks covering my face.  I didn’t hear anyone or anything for a while.  I think I must have floated there for about 10 minutes before I started shivering.  15 minutes in I really started shaking and figured that I needed to get out of the water or I was going to get hypothermia.  I pulled myself out of the water and sat on the ledge I had just landed on.  As I am looking at my leg I think “Ok, Ill crawl out the other end of the bayou and tell someone that I got mugged and needed help.  But then not to call the cops…whatever they did, lol.”  As soon as I had that thought I heard someone yell, “there he is!”  I look up to the railing I had just flung myself over and see one of Houston’s finest looking down at me.  It’s over.  It’s all over.  I lifted my leg up to show the officer that I had broken it and needed help.  He said the fire department was now on the way.

As I was sitting there it hit me that I had at least 20 fraudulent fake IDs and bogus credit cards in my pocket.  I pretended that my leg hurt so much that I grabbed it and started rolling around and rolled back into the bayou.  I was screaming this entire time and frantically trying to empty my pockets under the water.  The cop saw what I was doing and was yelling at me to stop.  I didn’t.  My lawyer told me that HPD sent out a team to go recover what they could the next day and fucking found all of the IDs.  Totally busted.

A couple of months ago I was feeling particularly shitty about myself in general and decided to reach out to the gentleman who owned the place.  He was the same individual that barged in on us with the cell phone.  I emailed him and apologized profusely and admitted that we were very wrong in our actions that day.  I told him I was an addict that was trying to put his life back together now and was sorry.  His response was much more than I could have asked for.  He said that he forgave me and wanted nothing but the best for me from here on out.  I sincerely appreciate that more than he realizes.  When I was writing this post, I messaged him and updated him as to what I was up to.  I then told him about this blog and how I was trying to keep other addicts from taking their addictions as far as I had taken mine.  I asked if he happened to have any pictures from that day and he sent me the following shots.  This first one is me reaching to take myself out of the water.  This must have been after I rolled back in the water to try and get rid of the cards because the ladder was present and they ended up pulling that back up when Houston Fire Department rolled up.

This last picture is hard for me to swallow.  I was wearing designer shit and Polo shoes that I had bought on fraud.  The backpack was full of stolen shit and floating in the bayou.  I was holding my mangled leg up in the air.  If I recall around this time, it was sinking in that my entire life was going to be forever changed because of this.  I was going to jail.  I was going to have a cast.  I was going to remember that stupid fucking jump over that rail for the rest of my life.  Looking at that picture evokes a lot of emotions inside me and its hard to explain how it makes me feel.  Being sober now it’s hard to believe just how gone my mind was and how much I was oblivious to the fact that my brain had been hijacked by the meth.  Ill continue this story in another later posting.  That’s enough of reliving this shit for now.