Читать книгу Unique Hustle - Will Castro - Страница 11

It was a Sunday afternoon, just like any other, when the doorbell rang at my house in 2008. I got up to answer it, walking away from the football game on TV. The second that I opened that door, my life changed forever, and I would experience the darkest times I ever knew. And I had no idea yet. Before that doorbell went off, I was on top of the world. I was living the American dream. I had a house, a wife, and a fabulous daughter named Paige. We were living large. At home, I had a personal chef cooking for us every night. I had a hit TV show on Speed called Unique Whips and a new one on Spike TV. I had a star-studded, celebrity client list that wanted me to customize car after car for them. My clients were guys like Busta Rhymes, Erick Sermon, P. Diddy, LeBron James, and Jeff Gordon. I even hung out with Donald Trump at Trump Tower long before he won the presidency. (Trump in my day was a New York businessman a lot of people admired.) I was at the top of my game. I was successful and smart. And now I had to answer the door. When I did, I’d figure out fast how not successful and not smart I really was.

“The second that I opened that door, my life changed forever.”

Two federal officers were on the other side, one man and one woman, dressed in dark suits. They had gold badges and guns. Seeing them was like getting hit by a Maybach on a reckless Sunday joyride. I immediately thought to myself, I got a problem.

“Do you mind if we talk in the house, Mr. Castro?”

I showed them into my spacious and comfortable home, past the huge saltwater fish tank, past the large-screen TV, through the kitchen, and out to the landscaped backyard with the patio furniture and high-end gas grill. Looking back, I probably should have just walked out the front door, shut it behind me, and talked to them on the porch. But it was too late for that. They were in my house, and they saw all the material things and creature comforts that we had.

Will’ s Long Island house which was visited by federal agents

They wanted to talk about back taxes and the fact that I had not filed a tax return with the IRS in a few years. I’ve replayed this day in my head a thousand times. They had me there. And why had I not done what every American was supposed to do when they were making the kind of money I was, giving Uncle Sam his fair share? I was naïve, stupid, and dumb. It’s that simple.

You gotta understand, I was a kid from the LaGuardia public projects on the Lower East Side of Manhattan growing up in the 1970s and ’80s. In my neighborhood, you made a buck, you kept a buck. That’s it. Nobody thought about taxes, and everyone used cash. It’s no excuse. I had a mom who worked hard every day of her life in a dental practice. I had a step-dad who had a good job with Con-Ed, the electrical company in New York. But when I struck gold with my business, I was thinking the way I learned to on the streets. My money is my money. Or, more importantly, I was not thinking. I had a big business with lots of employees, and I paid them all in cash at the end of the week. They appreciated that, and nobody ever asked me why I did it that way. I never went to business school, but I was a businessman. Nobody ever told me about social security taxes and withholdings. I was about to learn the hard way. The TV show, Unique Whips, didn’t help me. The producers made me look like some kind of Tony Montana, an OG. I wasn’t. And the show I was doing for Spike TV didn’t help either. And the fact is, I wasn’t dirty. My business was legitimate. I just wasn’t paying all the withholding taxes for my employees on the incoming money, and, instead, I was supporting a lifestyle at home beyond my means.

“I never went to business school, but I was a businessman.”

As federal agents sat in my pool house, asking me questions that I really didn’t know how to answer, it was suddenly crashing down all around me. Before I knew it, I was going to have my lawyers telling me to choose from three different federal correctional facilities: one in New Jersey, one in Alabama, and one in North Carolina. Prison? It looked very much like I was headed there. But I’m getting ahead of the story. Way ahead.