Trying to escape one’s past is difficult, and even faking your own death won’t work. Aubrey Lee Price made it look like he had kicked the bucket in June 2012 after embezzling millions in his local town, but was found and arrested in December 2013.

After evading the police for over a year, Price was ironically arrested after being pulled over for having windows that were tinted too dark.

Price has opened up about his “disappearance” where he was suspected to have committed suicide when he vanished after a ferry ride. Price now says he was involved in a South American cocaine ring and even dabbled in cage fighting.

Here are some of the best bits:

I had no idea what I was doing. No template. I was improvising by the minute.

I flew to Venezuela, like, two weeks before my ”departure,” we’ll call it. I had to go there to sign power of attorney to two other people. I have three farms that are still worth a lot of money there. I had another individual I was doing business with down there; I’d done business with him for seven years. And my understanding was that he had a legitimate, honest business. And he does have a lot of legitimate, honest businesses. But after I spent some time talking to this guy after my departure, I found out that there was a whole lot more to it than just widgets and gadgets.

Soon after I got off that ferry, I was down in South America working for him. He was like a king in his compound. Everyone moved out of the way for him. He liked me because I spoke good English, and I was a criminal, too.

One day, he and I walked through another door and into basically a warehouse. And it’s just stuffed full of coke. I didn’t know he had a club like this. And I didn’t know he had the operation. When we walk back in this room, it’s obvious. There’s thirty to forty workers, they’re stuffing little bags full of white powder, and the cocoa leaves are in another spot over here. He took me to every little station. I spent a couple of hours just listening. It was very interesting. And then we walked outside and stood on the back of the loading dock, looking over a lake and over this incredible city. And he stood there and he said to me: Do you want to be on the receiving end of a stream of piss? Or do you want to be on the giving end of the stream of piss?

Back in the states, I downloaded software on how to make fake IDs, at a Starbucks or a McDonald’s. I had six false identities. I had foreign identities, local identities. I used a number of different aliases. I was known to some people as “Diesel.” Others as “Gator.” I was “Javier.” I was “Jason”—that’s the only one people talk about. Hopefully nobody else comes forward.

I got knocked out in this cage fight in New York. That’s when I got introduced to a strain of Indica Kush. I couldn’t believe how much better I felt after that. The pain in my body was leaving. I couldn’t take Vicodin or Percocet. Now I understood what these cancer patients were asking for!

Check out the rest of the interview on Esquire.