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The California Kid

This book is Owen's self-reflection...

THE CALIFORNIA KID

First 1,000 purchases of hardcover get a personal message + signature from The California Kid.  

First 100 get 50 percent off merchandise plus signature with personal message.

The California Kid

The California Kid:
From USC Golden Boy to
International Drug Kingpin

Hardcover $29.99

You’ve read the shocking one-sided tale of international drug kingpin Owen Hanson in Rolling Stone, VICE, and the LA Times—but now he’s ready to tell his side of the story. Love and acceptance of his absent mother and the respect of his father. The story that follows is almost too wild to believe—but Owen bears the 21-year sentence to prove it.

A surfer kid from Redondo Beach, California, Owen Hanson was still in his 20s when he found himself the leader of a multimillion-dollar criminal empire. What began as an attempt to fit in with the rich kids at the University of Southern California soon grew into gambling and loan sharking, which then opened the door to drug trafficking and money laundering. Hanson wasn’t just involved in this stuff—he excelled at it. Living the fast-paced lifestyle of the rich and famous, Hanson felt he was finally making his father proud, never mind the questionable ethics and obvious danger of it all. But with the cartel, a serious drug-abuse problem, and the pursuit of the FBI all threatening to overtake him, it wouldn't be long before his glamorous lifestyle caught up with him.

The California Kid follows Owen from his roots as a USC star athlete from a broken home, where his idolization of the rich and famous began, to his descent down a dangerous path where he would stop at nothing to earn the love and acceptance of his absent mother and the respect of his father. The story that follows is almost too wild to believe—but Owen bears the 21-year sentence to prove it.

The California Kid

This book is my self-reflection...

THE CALIFORNIA KID

1,000 purchases of hardcover get a personal message + signature from The California Kid.  

First 100 get 50 percent off merchandise plus signature with personal message.

The California Kid

The California Kid:
From USC Golden Boy to
International Drug Kingpin

Hardcover $29.99

The California Kid Foreword:

The FBI came in here the other day asking about the contents of your boxes. Obviously, I didn’t tell them anything. But whatever you got in there, get that shit and get out of Dodge. That’s my advice.”


This was not what I wanted to hear at six in the morning on a Saturday.

I knew Frank from the local country club, which we both frequented. He was the owner of a private vault where you could store your valuables; in my case, I stored a bunch of cash and my gold and silver bullion. You could be anonymous there—just present a fake ID when you sign up. They had a biometric scanner for your eyes and your palm, like a Fort Knox for criminals wanting to hide their shit.


“You tell them anything?” I asked, pacing around like a goddamn lunatic. I had snorted cocaine out of a little gadget called a “bullet.” Then I popped a couple Vicodin and downed a travel-size Purell bottle full of GHB. Anything to settle my nerves. I was scared, frantic. Freaking the fuck out. I kept picturing concrete walls and steel bars, impossibly thick and cold and inhuman. If a plant can’t grow in such a room, how could a man survive in it? For weeks, I’d been suspicious the Feds were following me, but that’s all it was: suspicion. Now, Frank was confirming my worst fears.

"Of course not, dude,” he said. “I don’t even know your real name.” But he could have found out, surely. Like I said, we were in the same country club. All he’d need to do is point me out to his colleagues in the cocktail bar and say “Hey, what’s that guy’s name again?” “Oh, him? That’s Owen Hanson, the real estate developer.”

“They say if they had a warrant?” I asked, chewing my finger. Frank shook his head. “No.”
I took a deep breath. Two breaths. Three. “All right. I’ll go get my stuff.”
“And get out of town?” “Not sure I can do that right now.” Frank had a strange look in his eyes. I did not like that look. “What?” He shook his head again, this time slowly. “If they’ve gotten this far . . . they probably know a whole lot more than you think they do. If it were me, I’d not want to wait around for the axe to fall. I’d be halfway to Mexico right now.”


I went to my vault and stuffed as much as I could into a duffle bag, then climbed into my Porsche and drove to my friend Levi’s house, whose brother was my accountant. “Think the feds are after me,” I said, handing him the duffel bag. When he gripped it, he about fell over from the weight.
“Jesus,” he said.
“I know.”
“No, I mean Jesus, what the hell do you have in here, barbells?”
“Gold and silver.” I glanced out his windows. That black SUV, was it the same one I saw twenty minutes ago pulling out of the Wendy’s parking lot right behind me? “Give it to your brother and have him hold it for me. Have him put it in a safe or whatever, I don’t care.”


Before Levi could answer, I was out the door and back in my Porsche. I kept going over something in my head. It was a day on the golf course six months before, when I’d met a man named Al Wilson, who I was introduced to via a business contact. My Australian contact had told me “Mate, I met this bloke who can move some serious money for us. He’s the real deal, and he loves to golf. What say you boys play a round of eighteen holes and chat about it?”
A few weeks later, there I was with this Al Wilson character and his two colleagues, both in the Swiss banking business. Al was getting me liquored up, feeding me tequila shots and margaritas; and by the time we got to the eighteenth hole I drunkenly realized: These guys are fucking terrible at golf. That should have set alarm bells ringing in my mind; but back in the clubhouse, Al showed me an encrypted Phantom Secure phone he was using that only a select handful of criminals had access to. I had one, my boss in the cartel had one, all the cartel bosses had one. You didn’t have a phone like that unless you were legit. Whatever reservations I had, that phone meant he was the real deal. He also offered me an incredible percentage.


“What numbers are you pulling in Australia?” he asked in between greedy bites of Oysters Rockefeller. The butter dribbled down his perfectly smooth chin. He didn’t even notice. Didn’t even wipe it away, like a child would. “We’re moving several million a month over there,” I said carefully, mildly disgusted at his eating habits. Was the guy fucking starving or what? Who eats like that?
“And what’s the commission your guys are charging to wash it?” 


A gulp of scotch. At that, he finally wiped his mouth with a napkin.
“Twenty-five percent.”


“Twenty-five percent! Christ, man. We’d cut that number in half!”
That was all well and good, but I needed to see it in practice. So at first, he washed ten grand for me. Then he washed fifty. Then we were doing a quarter million every week. Where before it would take a minimum of several weeks just to get my couriers to process the transfers, Al was processing them in a day. Maybe that’s why I trusted the guy, even though the plates of his Mercedes took me to an anonymous P.O. box on a background check, and even though he ate like an impoverished desk jockey who’d been afforded a seat at a nice restaurant for the first time in his life.


Al flew me out to Miami, where he showed me a huge warehouse full of cars they used to transport cash and cocaine. He showed me a hydraulic compressor that could store several million dollars at a time. Back then, I had shitty minivans I’d retrofitted for twenty grand a pop, while these guys had brand-new Chevy trucks whose fenders would pop out to reveal a hidden compartment where you could store twenty bricks on each side of the fender. It was James Bond shit, and that’s just what I told my partners over in Mexico, who seemed all too eager to partner with this guy who was seemingly a money-laundering magician. But then there was the fish market. That was two weeks ago, when my paranoia started getting out of hand. I had a funny feeling—I don’t know how else to explain it. I was having cocktails with Al at the bar, and this guy at the far end kept looking at us. He was huge, all tatted up. He didn’t look like he belonged in a nice upscale establishment such as that; he looked like he belonged on the back of a Harley or snorting blow off a stripper’s ass.


I told Al “You know, if you’re with the feds, my people in Mexico are not just going to kill me, they’re going to kill you too.” Al’s face lit up. I’d figured this would scare him, but it only seemed to shock him. Not the bad kind of shock, either, as I was hoping for. His expression told me Holy shit, we got him.
“I’m not with the feds,” he said.


I pointed down the bar. “Who is that guy? He’s been staring at us this whole fucking time, and he’s not with me.”


Al shrugged. “No idea, man. Look, you okay? Maybe you ought to lay off all that coke. It’s making you, like, paranoid.”

But after we left the bar, Al pulled me aside. “Look, man, sorry I couldn’t say this earlier, but that guy is with me. He’s my security for meetings.”


“Why the hell would you need security at a five-star restaurant when you’re just talking to me?”
“It’s a precaution. That’s all.”
“Why didn’t you mention it at the bar, then? Why are you telling me now?”
“I don’t know who’s listening at that bar. I don’t know who those guys are, sitting around me; they could be anyone.” He scoffed. “I can’t mention that sort of thing in public.”


But it didn’t add up. I studied him a moment. “Hey, let me get a picture of your ID. I just want to run your information.”
Al paused, confused. “Uh, no, I don’t think so.”
“Come on, just let me get your ID.”
Al said nothing.


“Listen, everyone I do business with, I get a picture of their ID. It’s common procedure, and I just haven’t done it yet. It’s really not 
a big deal.”
But Al wouldn’t give it up. Why wouldn’t he? Furthermore, why the fuck did I not push him up against a wall right then, rip out his wallet, and look at his ID myself?


Lastly, there was the dinner I’d attended with him in Hollywood the week before. We’d both brought our wives along; and when the bill came, Al dutifully snatched it. Not only did he pay the $800 tab, he also tipped the same amount. Who does that? I thought. Was it to impress me? On the car ride home, my wife said that every time I’d gone to the bathroom, Al would ply her with questions about her involvement in the business. My wife, being smart, played dumb. “I don’t play any part,” she’d told him, “I just spend the money.” These were my thoughts as I drove to the country club at 7 a.m., where I was to meet Al to discuss our next transfer. I kept thinking: 


Turn around. What the fuck are you thinking, you idiot? You have a bad feeling, so ditch the car, destroy the encrypted phone, and go all the way to fucking Mexico. The cartel will take care of you. Yes, they’re the same people who threatened to murder you a year ago, but they’ve seen your work; they know what you can do. You have earned their respect. All the same, it wasn’t the most comfortable notion, that the only safe haven I had in the world was arguably under the roof of the world’s most dangerous people.


At the country club, the entire parking lot was empty, aside from a truck with tinted windows. I didn’t like the vibe, so I drove out and headed to the nearest McDonald’s, where I got an egg McMuffin and waited, my eyes studying every vehicle entering the lot. I could ditch right here, right now. Put my phone under the wheel and drive right over it. Deposit the pieces in the trash can, park the 
car in an abandoned lot, and catch an Uber out of town. From there, public transport to a safe house. I can get shuttled over the border to Mexico and lie low until the heat dies down. But what if I’m just being paranoid?


I didn’t want to admit it, but my daily intake of drugs and booze could have paralyzed a small elephant. It was nothing short of obscene. And the more I took, the more paranoid I became; the more paranoid I became, the more I took. Glancing around, I took a vial of coke from my jacket and had a bump. Just enough to settle my nerves. That’s all this was, anyway. I was out of hand; I needed to check into rehab again. That’s what I’ll do, I decided in a flash of understanding. I’ll go meet Al, initiate the transfer, then head on over to Villa Oasis and check myself in.


Content with this new plan, I drove back to the clubhouse and was relieved to see Al’s car there. The golf caddy approached as I climbed out of my Porsche. “H-hello, Mr. Hanson. How are you, uh . . . doing today?”


I frowned. “Uh . . . good. How are you doing today? You good?” I opened my trunk, and the kid took out my clubs. “Fine, sir. Fine.”


But I didn’t like it. I stood there watching him walk away with my clubs, expecting me to follow, but I didn’t. There was a rustling in the bushes, and I slowly turned my head. Two dozen uniformed agents sprang from the bushes with AR-15s drawn. “FREEZE! PUT YOUR HANDS BEHIND YOUR HEAD!”


Life suddenly went technicolor and slow motion all at once. The agents ran toward me, but they moved slowly, as if trudging through mud. Even the drone of the police helicopters overhead was muted and distant and dulled like an underwater scream.
Whooosh . . . whooosh . . . whooosh.
All light was suddenly bright and blinding, as if I’d been admitted to some perverse waiting room where the fluorescents were turned up to an ungodly opacity. I looked around as guns slowly rose into the air, their barrels pointed directly at me, the men holding them screaming words I didn’t hear. I could see the muscles rippling in the arms of the agents running toward me, their cheeks jiggling, their dark sunglasses shielding their eyes from the sun that was now 
extraordinarily bright.


Closing my eyes, I raised my hands in the air and immediately felt them tugged behind my back and clamped in cold metal cuffs. Someone read me my rights. That’s when I heard the accent—an Australian accent. It was then that I knew it was all over for me. Al was rushed out of the clubhouse in handcuffs. He kept saying, “Don’t tell ’em a fucking thing, Owen! They got nothing on us!” But I knew he had done this. His arrest was all a ruse, and he had played the perfect part. I suddenly knew why he was all too eager to tip $800 on an $800 check—what did it matter, when Uncle Sam was footing the bill? I knew why he had plied my wife with questions, and I understood the vehicles in the Miami warehouse were just high-end drug-smuggling cars that had been confiscated by the feds. It all made sense. And in the midst of this, I realized I was going to 
prison for a very, very long time.


You might think I was afraid—afraid of prison, or of the cartel when they found out I’d been arrested. But that’s the strangest thing: I wasn’t afraid.
For the first time in so many years, I felt relieved.

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