“So anyway, they ate. I didn’t eat. I wasn’t hungry at all. My stomach was all tied up in knots but honestly the food smelled great. In hindsight I wish I had ordered something since I was paying for all their food anyway. Mind you the buyer was with us the whole time. As we sat there we made small talk. Apparently he is related in some way to an uncle of a second cousin to some distant Sheikh and has business interests around Iran so he needs BTC.”
“Conversation moved on to how exactly I was going to get out of the country after the final confirmation for the BTC I sent went through. I was going to use the service of some guy who came highly recommended. Unfortunately it turned out that that person was already in jail. See, these security guys are generally nice guys and will help each other out but they also get involved in legally sticky situations as one of the occupational hazards they agree to when signing up for the position.”
“Luckily he knew someone he could recommend to get me out of Iran with my bags of money. Now before I could agree to anything I had to call Sergei and ask him how the hell he set me up with someone who is now in jail. I was told to head to a hotel he had already set up for me and just wait. Even the next morning I was just supposed to wait.”
“Let me tell you: sightseeing with a security detail is amazing. Anywhere you go you get the whole place to yourself with no questions asked. It’s the same kind of routine at the tent restaurant where one of my guys whispers something at the staff of wherever we are and moments later everyone clears out. So when people talk about ‘VIP service’ at whichever place you think you’re having a good time, it’s really not. For the price I was paying though, I would expect it to be as such. Wherever I went, the place was mine.”
“The sightseeing started to get old fast though. What was supposed to be a fairly quick in and out from Iran turned into 3 days of waiting for some way to get myself and my bags of cash out of Iran and into the relative safety of Russia.”
“At around 5am I got a call that things wereready. Someone came to my hotel room door and my security guy literally jumped up and basically slid across a chair to get to the door with his gun around his back like in a video game then pointed the gun at the door. He started shouting something in Turkish that everything needed to be right. It could have just been for theatrics because moments later he calmed down like nothing had happened at all. Some guy came in to tell me that he knew I was in a pinch and needed an easy way to get out of Iran by bypassing official checkpoints. That day was my lucky day apparently since this welcome stranger just happened to have a boat, but I needed to leave at that very moment to make it in time.”
You have to leave right now.
“We got in his SUV and they needed to drive all the way to the coast of the Caspian Sea from Tehran which is about 200 miles. At least I thought we would be driving because within 10 minutes of getting into this guy’s SUV and again swerving and speeding through traffic like an ambulance on fire we ended up at a small empty lot surrounded by armed guards. And by the way, I should mention again that we were going minimum 80 MPH the entire time. The only time we were going slower was in the 5 seconds after we started and three seconds before we came to a complete stop.”
“There was a huge electric fence surrounding the place and I’m pretty sure I saw a guard tower too although it could have been just the height of a next-door building. Come said my guy so I got out of the SUV empty-handed and followed. The other three were handling my bags. Now, this lot was obviously not made for helicopters because there were lines for cars painted on it and there were offices beside the lot. At this point, though, I wasn’t about to ask any questions after everything I had seen.”
“They loaded my sacks of cash and brought my one luggage over to the chopper. As soon as I got in, the pilot, who was already in the front, started up the engines. My security detail came onboard with their guns too.”
“This thing was about the size of an overgrown fly but had every little gadget you could think to have. Before I knew it, I had headphones over my ears and I was able to toggle between radio channels and hear the chatter of the pilot with someone he was talking to. Of course, I had no idea who it was. There’s no way around how loud those things are though. It’s like five voices are screaming in your ear all at once at different horrible pitches. The headphones help a little but not much. Oh, and another thing, the doors didn’t close, so I had to make sure I was strapped in although I’m sure the strength of my grip on the handles would have been fine to keep me fixed through death.”
“We zoomed by over tiny villages that probably had a few roofs blown off and larger towns that definitely were not expecting what they saw and heard from us. I guess what would have been at least a 1.5 hour trip would become 20 minutes or so in a chopper. Well that was the plan at first until about halfway to the coast when a massive cross-wind struck us and we went nearly vertical. I guess it was a bad idea to have the doors open because two of my bags flew right out there like they were trying to escape. It was horrible. Everyone started shouting over the intercom and pointing and sirens and whistles were blaring but all I could see was my duffle bag shrinking with a tail of money behind it. I was weightless. Screaming ensued which I mostly couldn’t hear on account of helicopters being quite loud with the doors open.”
“For what it’s worth, we were in a relatively uninhabited area so we set down. The security guys dashed out but told me to stay inside. The entire time they were out there collecting money they were shouting at each other. I thought it was best to be inside because I didn’t want to get caught in the crossfire in case they lost their temper too.”
“Coming to Iran to sell Bitcoin? Alright kind of crazy.-
Getting trapped in Tehran waiting for a safe way to slip past authorities? Maybe a bit crazy too.-
Taking a chopper to a secret boat to accomplish those goals, but getting temporarily downed and losing what I came there for? Maybe I should be rethinking my life.”
“I sat there wondering what I was really doing. You know, a near-death experience has that effect. Why was I even there? I must have been mad! I went all that way just to make money that I could make at home, albeit less conveniently. I enjoy my lifestyle not having to be tied down to a job but this must be a psychotic level of greed driving me to such lengths. On the other hand, I wondered, I was getting ahead of the curve this way. Whatever the case was, they cleaned up the debris and I’m guessing told me that only a little sand got in the bags. It was more than a little but that doesn’t really matter. It was also then I realized that I like living.”
—
“The skies were perfectly clear that day. For some reason I’m remembering that now. The sky was so blue and clear of clouds, like the color of water and ground was all beige from sand. It was probably the nicest thing I had seen the whole time I was there, but that could be because I might have just died.”
“We took off again just like before except this time we kicked up 2 tons of sand and had to cover our faces at lift off. I was about as tense as I ever had been before. My knuckles were white and my fingers fatigued from clamping down on the handles. The bullet-proof vest I was wearing provided no comfort to me at all. We arrived at another nondescript makeshift landing pad in a parking lot about 15 minutes later just outside a city on the coast. The guy on my right who was kind of the #2 guard the whole time kissed the ground when he got off that time.”
“There was another SUV waiting there as our escort to the boat. This guy blasted a siren to warn all the cars on the street to get out of the way while we basically were flying through traffic again. When we got to the port, there was a guy standing at the entrance who was absolutely livid. He was dancing or something and going crazy. I don’t know what language it was, but he was screaming at the bodyguards. All the guard did was utter three or four words as calm as could be and it was like flipping a switch. The guy completely toned down his antics and he just said ok, this way.”
“At some point it all just seemed unreal. It was as if my mind were in auto-pilot and these guys were the system driving me. It’s not real. It’s just not real.”
“Anyway, this guy took us to the boat which was complete shit. It was a completely shitty boat. It was really like in Star Wars whenever people look at the Falcon and just comment on how shitty it looks and wonder if it will kill them in transit. It was like from the Vietnam War or something. I don’t know why the security came with me on the boat because I thought they needed to stay in Iraq and I was destined for Baku, which is about 500 kilometers away. I need to really illustrate how shitty this boat was. It was like a dinghy running on a lawnmower engine. It sputtered a bit and sounded like silly comedy boat sounds from 1950’s cartoons or something… Mind you I had already been through quite a bit. I’d like to think that whatever poker face I have was being used to its full strength at this point but I was exhausted and poured out. I just wanted to get the hell out of Iran and do whatever it was I thought I was going to do with these bags of money.”
“I thought ‘maybe I should never play Dota again’ after sputtering through the Caspian Sea for thirty minutes. I thought about how soon I’d be done with this all and hopefully never have to do it again. That was until this fucking giant ship came over to us. This was not what you were probably expecting – it was not like a ‘Show us your ID or else!’ type of ship, it was like the one from the Wolf of Wall Street. It was the huge yacht that the guy was riding around on. They stopped and anchored next to us then dropped a ladder which we climbed up and boarded with my bags. After a quick 30-second whisper chat, my security guy came to me and told me that we had to pay them”
“Sure. How much?”
“This much.” *As he pulled out a seemingly random amount of money from one of my bags.
To be continued…
Telegram Channel- https://t.me/TheNewsAsia
Telegram Chat (partner) – https://t.me/cryptodakurobinhooders
Twitter – @TheNewsDotAsia
Facebook – https://www.facebook.com/groups/chains.asia/
email – hello@thenews.asia
Bitcoin donations appreciated- 1EH7PHMt8rDD8eM8sarTpP7BaqVN8DVi7P
