Where this was said
Life on the Run: Nicaragua, Drugs, and COVID Lockdowns
At 1:51:00 · chapter starts 1:36:20
Wall chooses Nicaragua as his base because it lacks a formal US extradition treaty, living near San Juan del Sur in a coastal surf community. But his Guatemalan shell corporation means he must repeatedly return to deposit checks in Guatemala — and when COVID hits in March 2020, he's trapped in Sacatepéquez state, unable to cross to Guatemala City through military blockades. Nicaragua is fully open and fine; Wall is stuck in lockdown in Guatemala alone. His girlfriend never came to join him. His substance use, particularly ketamine available legally from veterinary pharmacies in industrial quantities, spirals badly. He describes walking out of a farmacia with a 24-pack of ketamine bottles like a case of Natural Ice. He reads Richard Stratton's fugitive memoir and contacts the author on LinkedIn. Stratton convinces him to come back.
When Wall's flight from Guatemala landed at LAX, Homeland Security agents in body armor with AR-15s boarded the plane and pulled him from his seat in front of all passengers. The federal marshal who later transported him couldn't hide his disbelief: 'Weed? You did all this for a weed case?'
After his LAX arrest, Wall was transferred across the country on the federal prisoner transport system — stopping at Orange County jail, Con Air, a cockroach-infested Oklahoma jail called 'Shady Grady,' and finally a Baltimore supermax — all before he was ever convicted of anything.
Wall lived primarily in Nicaragua and Antigua as a fugitive for about a year, but when COVID lockdowns hit Guatemala, he was trapped and spiraling — doing mass quantities of ketamine bought legally from veterinary pharmacies, isolated from his family, and running out of money and hope.
