Lesson: The most bizarre, unbelievable things can happen to you, especially if you happen to be a successful business leader and, unfortunately, automatically a target of the government. Pay attention!
The below Interlude is an excerpt from my recently released Amazon #1 Best Seller, When Not If: A CEO's Guide to Overcoming Adversity, Forbes Books, 2024. Some stories were not directly related to CEO lessons but just too bizarre to keep out of the book! Educate yourself on what could happen to you because you are successful!
It started with one of those accountability calls. In the late evening of May 31, 2021, the halfway house dialed my house. I was in my bed asleep. But because the cable telephone system in the house went down at some point in the evening, the phone didn’t ring. Okay, it was concerning, but there were multiple steps to determine if I was where I was supposed to be.
Unfortunately for me, every one of those steps failed. The best way to resolve the problem of unanswered phone calls is to send someone to the house for a wellness check so someone in authority can lay eyes on me. The halfway house requested that officers from the Norfolk Police Department come to the house and confirm that I was physically where I was supposed to be. At 11:22p.m. two officers arrived at our door in Norfolk. So far, so good.
But according to bodycam video and news reports, the officers “mistakenly believed they were coming to the halfway house itself.” The officers chose not to ring the doorbell out of concern for waking up the residents. Instead, according to their own report, they lightly knocked. The house was dark. “Dude who runs [the halfway house] is probably asleep,” said one of the officers, according to the report. Astounding! Neither Ashleigh nor I, nor the three Yorkshire Terriers, heard anyone at the door. The officers relayed to the halfway house that no one answered the door.
Even now the halfway house had a tool to confirm I was where I was supposed to be. The ankle monitor I was wearing is GPS-enabled so it can send an alarm when I go outside the perimeter of the house. On their screen, they could see the dot indicating the ankle monitor associated with me was stationery inside the house.
According to the report the Bureau of Prisons would eventually produce when forced, personnel at the halfway house confirmed this point. Errors compounded. Another function of the ankle monitor is a vibration mechanism that can be activated remotely. With the push of a button, the halfway house can start the ankle bracelet vibrating to alert its wearer that his or her attention is required. The halfway house pushed the button three separate times. Alas, as the Bureau of Prisons in its written report later acknowledged when forced, the vibration feature of my ankle monitor was inoperative.
At some point in the night, I awoke and discovered the halfway house had been trying to call me. I ran downstairs in a panic, called the halfway house, emailed everyone, and attempted to calm the mounting hysteria. I reported to the center, was advised this would be a one-time warning, and if I missed a phone call again, I would spend thirty days back at the halfway house. For a minute, I heaved a sigh of relief.
The Bureau of Prisons (BOP) had a different idea and ignored the recommendations of my halfway house. The BOP charged me with ESCAPE 100, which for someone on home confinement was the most serious violation possible. The hedge fund shareholders, my victims, were all notified by email that I had escaped.
On June 1, 2021, the US Marshalls arrived, cuffed me, shackled my legs, and took me back to prison, promising I would now, as an escapee, serve the remainder of my term (about seven years) at a high-security facility with other escapees and high-risk prisoners. The BOP had been aggressively clawing inmates accused of administrative violations back into prison. Critics of this policy had a name for this: “Getting back on budget.”
I understood what was happening. The first goal of bureaucracies is self-perpetuation and increasing power. The Department of Justice and Bureau of Prisons are classic examples of bureaucracies that, naturally, work in their own self-interests. These organizations, just as with all others, perpetuate their interests to increase budgets, influence, and control. It was to be expected.
Ashleigh, for her part, six months pregnant and hysterical, was dazed that I, having never left her side, was now branded an escapee and taken away in chains by US Marshalls. She called Brian, Paul, and Kevin, and these Academy alumni brothers-in-arms, bless them, came to her side. My lifelong friends went immediately into battle mode, set up a virtual war room, and worked tirelessly for my release. They hired law firms, alerted the media, and gathered evidence and affidavits, to include police bodycam footage and officer reports documenting the myriads of misunderstandings.
As for me, I got a new bird’s-eye tour of several Bureau of Prisons facilities. I was shuttled between five different jails, starting in Virginia, through Oklahoma, and ending up in Mississippi, doing as many push-ups as possible to control my rage. The administrative remedy paperwork could never keep up with my body, and the BOP administrators refused to return me home even though its own report confirmed the GPS data that I had never left my house and could not possibly have escaped.
The Cato Institute’s Reason Magazine recounted my story in an October 2021 national article titled “He Didn’t Answer the Phone One Night While on House Arrest. He’s Been Sent Back to Prison for Four Years.”
Author Billy Binion wrote, “Government officials confirmed that the monitoring showed Martinovich was where he was supposed to be— his house. The device was not altered or messed with, per evidence from the FBP [Federal Bureau of Prisons]. But the agency proceeded with its conclusion regardless: He [Martinovich] had ‘escape[d],’ and thus deserves to spend years more behind bars after the government has already concluded he is not a threat to society. Such punitive measures do not make society any safer.”
Emergency court motions were filed by Trey Kelleter, a Norfolk criminal defense attorney, who exhibited incredible compassion and commitment to uncover the truth and defend us. It was overwhelming to experience the team’s efforts because for so long I had been the guilty-without-question prisoner who didn’t deserve a voice. Just listening to someone else defend me brought my emotions to the breaking point behind bars.
I didn’t know it at the time, but the tide changed in my favor. Maybe the heat of national publicity aroused by this manifest injustice got too hot for the BOP. Things started to happen and of course no one explained any of it to me. Suddenly, I found myself in a Mississippi holding center. Then I heard that I was to be shuttled even further south to a high-security penitentiary. Unaware that the efforts on my behalf were gaining traction, I was afraid that I’d be locked away where no one would ever find me. I told the van driver through the cage that this was all a huge mistake! He didn’t care.
As we drove up to the facility, the large gates opened, swirls of razor wire covered the high walls. Guards with automatic weapons surrounded my van. They led me into a holding cell, handed me an outfit consisting of Wrangler jeans and a white tee shirt. They put a plane ticket in my hand. A new shuttle driver, now a lot friendlier, dropped me off at the Jackson Mississippi International Airport and wished me luck.
I was to find my way home, or somewhere, when sixty days ago I was a great danger to society. Thoroughly rattled by my experience, I arrived in Norfolk. A very pregnant Ashleigh was waiting for me. Little baby Carleigh was due in two months. This time I didn’t turn around for coffee mugs or anything else. Ashleigh and I hugged and cried and couldn’t believe our current fortune, misfortune, or unbelievable life.
Sixty days had gone by since the Marshalls shackled me, again. How, I wondered, could my world change so quickly in two months. Adversity is the pain you never see coming.
Have a great week!
Order Amazon #1 Best Seller When Not If (Hardback, Kindle, Audio): https://www.amazon.com/When-Not-If-Overcoming-Adversity/dp/B0CKWTYSFF/r and on Audible https://www.audible.com/pd/B0D2LQ6QNC and Chirp When Not If by John Kador & Jeff Martinovich - Audiobook (chirpbooks.com).
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