Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast
Stock Broker Turned Kingpin | Shaun Attwood vs. Sammy The Bull
13 Dec 2025
Chapter 1: What led Shaun Attwood from stockbroker to drug dealer?
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I've structured it as a corporation where I'm at the top under Sammy the Bull. His son's running at a street level. I'm not handling anything anymore. I'm living in a million-dollar house on the side of a mountain. And the boss called me into his office the next day and said, look, Sean, you're at a crossroads in your life right now. And I didn't listen to him.
So I was born in a chemical manufacturing town in between Liverpool and Manchester. And I was a studious person, but my best friend was a maniac. He's dead now. His name's Wildman, RIP Wildman. So we were in separate schools. In his school, he grew really big.
he started picking school teachers up and putting them in rubbish bins and they were so scared of him they had him outside raking leaves with the caretaker he had red dots in his head telling him to hurt people and as a teenager he'd go and fight the doorman at the bars in my hometown and he'd show up at my house just black and blue like a train had hit him but he loved it so we were complete opposites
this is important because when he comes to america after his prison sentence he opens the door into the world of gangsters for me because i'm not a gangster i'm a nerdy guy who had gangsteritis watched too many movies like scarface etc and got excited by being around those types of people so at the top of my town we were just kids there's a quarry
It's called Pexil Quarry, and there's a tree overlooking the quarry. So me, Wildman, and Wildman's cousin Hammy would sit on this tree. We called it the Thinking Tree. And we'd be like, what are you gonna do when you grow up kind of thing? So Jaime would say to Wildman, what are you gonna do? And Wildman would say, I'm gonna go to prison. I've got red dots in my head telling me to hurt people.
And then he'd say to me, what are you gonna do? And I say, I'm gonna go to America, make a million in the stock market and fly you guys over. And Wildman, Peter his name is, when you come over, I'm going to get you a job as a wrestler. You're going to fight Andre the Giant and Hulk Hogan and the British Bulldog. This is how idealistic I was.
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Chapter 2: How did Shaun's childhood friendships influence his later life choices?
So that's what happened. I arrived in Arizona just with my student credit cards. I didn't have any money. I didn't have any money growing up. And Wildman goes off to prison. But five years later, I'm the top guy in the office. Wildman is finishing his prison sentence. And I fly him over. And that's when the mayhem begins.
what year was this so from 91 i arrived and 96 97 around then was when i flew wellman over okay so what what happened then i mean first of all it's just because you were just good friends is that it you were had been friends growing up yeah we were tight from childhood there was a gang i think we watched too many movies like the warriors and the wonders and we called ourselves the sweats
This little gang in our neighborhood in England. And Wildman's brother was the boss of the sweats. And Wildman was three years younger than his older brother. So the older brother would say, look, if you want to join the gang, eat that dog shit. And Wildman would eat it. And then he'd beat him up and say, F off home. You ain't joining our gang. So he's really cruel.
I splintered off from the sweats to hang out with Wildman. I was two years older than him, which is a lot when you're a school kid. So I took him under my wing. That was before he just grew. I mean, when he died, he was 29 and a half stone and six foot two, which is like 29 and a half stone. Stone is like 14 pounds.
So I get him a house show in central Phoenix near the George and Dragon British pub, thinking he'll chill out with the expats and have a Guinness.
i'm still working as a stockbroker me and my girlfriend go over there a month or so after he's arrived and a bunch of mexicans answer the door let's say where's peter and they're like peter there's no peter here i said yeah peter he lives here where's peter and they start to get a bit sketchy with us and display guns so me and my girlfriend start backtracking across the road well man just strides over the road all smiles
Like, what's going on with your place? We could have got shot there, Peter. And he's like, oh, don't worry about it. They're the local crack dealers. They like to move around a lot. So I'm letting them stay in my place. And they're giving me as much free crack as I can do. I can do $100 crack rock in one breath. And it goes sizzle, sizzle, sizzle. And it calms down my red dots.
And the guy at the back, he's a Colombian. He's running them. And he wants to invest in the stock market. And I'm like...
So you start working with him to invest in the stock market?
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Chapter 3: What were the turning points in Shaun's journey into crime?
We don't have guns. Can you show me how guns work? And he goes, yeah, the safety's on it. And he pulled the trigger and shot himself in the head in front of me and fell on the step.
so he wanted to move out of that place he was having nightmares he said he was uncomfortable there so from the drug community he knew a female they were behind on the rent on the west side so there was two females and a big male this chippendale style guy he was a doorman he was claiming to be gangster disciple Anyway, I put the rent down, get a call from the landlady the next day.
She says, Peter's been evicted. I said, why has he been evicted? He beat his roommate up. How do you know he beat his roommate up? She said the roommate was seen running for his life through the apartment complex in the middle of the night with plasterboard powder all over his head and face. And there's multiple human head-sized holes in all the walls.
Fortunately, he did that so fast, I was able to stop the check. And then one of the females, her boyfriend is behind on the rent at the Quadrangles in Tempe. Now this is where the criminal enterprise starts.
Because Wildman, wherever he moves in, he invites in all the homeless people, all the street people, Native American, transgender, sex walkers, gangbangers, Russian mafia, Italian mafia, New Mexican mafia, you name it. They're all there partying 24-7. And it's through this apartment complex now, Rancho Marietta. I meet the New Mexico Mafia.
I meet people who are local XC suppliers who become my smugglers internationally at the peak of things. And everything just builds from there.
So, okay, but you're a stockbroker. So why? And I'm assuming you're doing well. right? At the very least, you're doing okay. If you're not doing well, you're still a stockbroker. You're doing good enough to be paying other people's rent. So why get involved with this guy? Why not tell this guy, look, you're on your own. You're way too much trouble. I can't be involved in this.
Because I had gangsteritis.
I was on drugs as well, meth and primarily, and the drugs was telling me, you're in a movie now, this is like Pulp Fiction style, you're Mr. Cool Guy, and I just didn't want the party to end. The alternative was, in the office with a six o'clock in the morning sales meeting, on the phones all day,
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Chapter 4: How did Shaun's involvement with 'Wildman' escalate his criminal activities?
And that's what happened with him. And there was one more little story from this junction where I had to decide what I was going to do. I was in the car park outside the stock brokerage counting out cash on my lap. And the boss's secretary pulled in right next to me and looked over and saw all the cash.
And the boss called me into his office the next day and said, look, Sean, you're at a crossroads in your life right now.
where you can keep putting in this hard work and going higher and higher in your sales commissions you know get that house in paradise valley that you've dreamed of or you can go down here his eyes widened like i was going to end up burning in the pits of hell and i didn't listen to him i ended up going down there now wild man
he became completely unhousable on that first trip he met a chick who was into getting her female parts tased so basically wild man's party trick was he had a taser and he would say to the whole room
who wants to tase me or wants to hit me in the face as hard as they can and he'd sit there and people would line up to hit him and tase him and he'd just be giggling like his toes are getting tickled this chick walks up to him and goes that ain't i taser my and she had a boyfriend with her and she sent the boyfriend off to demonstrate this and um She did it.
She hiked the stuff up and she was doing it. And you can see all the blue bolts of electricity going up and down her lips. And it was love at first sight for her and Wildman. When the boyfriend came back, he said, she's with me now. I'm going to send, we're going to come over and collect all the shit later on. But she's moving in with me. But they ended up like Bonnie and Clyde. They couldn't.
No work would house them. No hotels would house them. They were robbing places, robbing restaurants. They got arrested. And he was living under a tree in Tempe Beach Park with a Rambo knife and a baseball bat. Some people were coming at the night and bullying the homeless people. And he took his baseball bat to them. So he became king of the homeless people.
But when they finally got arrested, the judge said he was a menace to society and banned him from America for life. And he doesn't come back into the story now for another two years because I started to smuggling him back in with like Mission Impossible style teams of people through Canada and Mexico multiple times. He keeps getting deported.
he keeps getting caught and deported but he did come back in yeah i keep smuggling him back in but he keeps um he just he just goes on the rampage doesn't he and then he gets he keeps getting deported so anyway he he leaves back to the uk and i've got this guy now called acid joey so i met him at a rave in downtown phoenix called chupa
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Chapter 5: What challenges did Shaun face while operating his drug empire?
there was a moment while man never ever threatened me or scared me because we were just really tight but there was one moment where he was on the edge i had a bouncer called rosetti one of the rosetti brothers and he was a big guy and i always would tell him wild man stories and he would always look at me like incredulous And then Wildman came over, and Rossetti was like, God damn.
When I met Wildman, he gave me a bear hug, and then he picked me up and threw me around like I was a rag doll. You're right. This guy is nuts. So me and Rossetti are in the front of the car, and Wildman's in the back. He's been up for weeks.
And I look in the mirror, and I'm looking at Wildman's eyes, and he's just like that, just staring at me. I'm like, what's the matter, Peter? Is this bothering you? He's just looking at me. I'm like, what is it, Peter? What is it? I'm thinking if he snaps, we're in trouble here. And he's like, I know what you're up to. I'm like, what do you mean what we're up to, Peter?
I know where you're taking me. Peter, man, I love you. I'm your best mate. I love you.
What's going on?
You guys are taking me out to the dentist.
Me and Rosetti just look at each other like, oh, shit. So I'm talking to Bob and I'm like, come on, man. And Rosetti's like, come on, man. You know, we're your best mates. We managed to calm him down. But what we had to do, that happened multiple times when he was paranoid about other things and people. And we'd have to dose him with Xanax to knock him out from these multi-weeks.
He got paranoid. He thought you were taking him to the desert to kill him.
Yeah. And he thought he was going to have to take action to avoid that against us. So we diffused it anyway with love. And we got him on Xanax as soon as possible to calm him down.
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Chapter 6: How did law enforcement's actions impact Shaun's operations?
And it's so obvious. It's not each other we need to worry about. It's the feds. So there was an uneasy truce with those guys. Coming out of that room, my wife was unconscious on the sofa and she drank so much GHB. We had to carry her out. Once we got outside, I'm like to reset, you know, the same there with Sammy the Bull.
And we knew from the news that Sammy the Bull was this formidable character, underboss of the Gambino crime family had murdered almost two dozen people. But we still didn't know whether they were just bragging about that or whether it was true or not.
so later on i learned that under sammy the bull his son's running at a street level now there's a guy called mike papa he's got a ring in competition with mine and mike papa brings in gerard gravano and karen gravano
so they're the ones who are doing everything at street level the old man sammy he gives his son some advice and he invests in the ring and the cops catch him the son asking his dad for money he says i want i need money for gas yeah i'll give you money for gas and they use that against sammy later on but sammy had no idea what was going on at the street level
so what happens next is there's various factions of the gravano enterprise and one of the factions We don't know who they are at this point in time. Contact Skinner pretending to want to buy a large quantity of pills. They get Skinner to go to a nightclub in Scottsdale. They take him into the men's room to do the deal.
They smash his teeth out and take all of his pills and all of his money and his gun. So he comes to me then saying, look, I've been jacked. Now I've always thought to myself, I've got a shield against the cops and against jackers because I buy the peak of it. I've structured it as a corporation where I'm at the top. I'm not handling anything anymore.
I'm living in a million dollars house on the side of a mountain in Sin Vacas, Tucson, where Paul McCartney is a few miles down the mountain range from me at this point in a gated guarded community because things have got so heavy.
so skinner you know he's had his teeth knocked out after that that was when i moved i've got a guy called cody bates also dead right now my right hand guy back then because he was sensible he didn't take anything he kept sober he's rented an apartment just for the cash in the product he does the rounds for the heads of each faction
then the heads of each faction hand over the bills he re-ups them puts the money in the stash house if there's any problems g-dog and wild man can get involved at that point but generally you know things ran pretty smooth so i've got all these heads of the factions as my shield i'm thinking if my shield ever gets pierced
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Chapter 7: What was the significance of the 'Horseshoe' in Shaun's jail experience?
The feds have moved in. And it's only going to end in one way. I'm losing people. I'm losing smugglers. So I informed all of my smugglers. Never ever to smoke weed or carry weed or go around weed smoke if you're going on a mission. So Cody Bates takes his best mate to Holland. I'm going through Holland now because I've lost a couple of people domestically.
And I went to someone who's an expert in smuggling routes, a lawyer. And the lawyer says, look, you need to start bringing in from Europe to Mexico. So I invested in property in Puerto Penasco, Rocky Point. And we've got people going from Hermosillo Airport. And then they're going over to Mexico City. And then they're taking Air France over to Paris.
And then they get in the train over to Holland. And then they're coming back. And when they get to Hermosillo, we're bringing them down to Rocky Point. changing the loads into SUVs with ASU stickers on them and diving tanks and tourist and student kind of bric-a-brac. This was before 9-11, so don't try any of this now, folks.
Back then, you could put thousands of pills in pillowcases and just put them in your luggage and get on the plane. Oh, if you wanted to be more secure, you could put them in computer towers. The most we ever had was 40,000 pills brought in in computer towers. And bear in mind, they're going for $25 to $30 a pill.
But because I am fronting them to my heads of factions, say at 10, 5,000 at 10, my cost is about $3, the cost of the mission, getting them in Holland, all that kind of stuff, legal costs.
three dollars so on a 40 000 pill mission i'm making seven still what about quarter mil um but i'm not making the 25 to 30. that's all broken down you know from there so listening to you makes me makes me want to watch the movie layer cake yeah you ever see that lovely okay i've watched it twice
oh that's great sorry go ahead so cody bates takes one of his best mates a total straight edge guy never done a crime in his life a lovely guy really just gentle spirited fellow he takes this guy to holland it's the guy's birthday so cody bates buys him some hydro Guy is so naive. He thinks to himself, I'm in Holland for the first time. I've got hydro from here.
I'm going to take this back to America to show all my mates. They've got 10,000, 20,000 pills. They get to a checkpoint in Paris. Now, every sniffer dog in the world can smell the green. It takes specially trained beagles to smell it. So the sniffer dog doesn't smell the E. It just walks right up to him, puts its paw on him, and he's a bust. Cody Bates is behind in the queue.
They've at least had the smarts to go separate. He sees this, goes to the toilet and flushes all of his stuff, and he gets through. Now, everybody who worked for me had legal benefits. And by that, I mean, we assigned them a lawyer right away. We primarily had people who had no criminal history. And we'd say, look, you've got no criminal history. You've got a lawyer. You've got bail money.
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Chapter 8: How did Shaun's life change after his arrest and incarceration?
So that property was burnt up. I get them a beachfront condo next, which they end up destroying. And they end up living on the beach by the end of it. So we've got... It was the mission of the 40,000 pills actually coming in the computer towers. And one of my smugglers, I'll call him Grady. He was a good guy. He was one of my bouncers. He was into his guns. He actually was testing his gun.
He shot the tip of one of his fingers off. So Grady, we're waiting for him to arrive with the 40,000 pills. And I'm driving around with Wildman. You get some crack, like five pounds, ten pounds of crack, I don't know what it is, off somebody. And we go back to the beachfront condo. Beautiful place, swimming pool outside. You can look out on the Sea of Cortez and see the whales and whatever.
And Wellman opens his wrap of crack.
And his eyes just, like he wants to kill someone. This isn't real crack. This guy's ripped me off.
I'm like, Peter, we're waiting for 40,000 pills. Chill out, man. No, take me back.
Take me back to this guy.
I'm going to set this straight. If he doesn't set it straight, I'm going to kill him. I'm like, Peter, we need to lay low right now. We've got 40,000 pills coming.
I don't care if it's $10 or 100,000. Nobody rips me off. Take me there now.
Anyway, we get in the SUV. The dealer is on the high street. There's cops on both sides of the street. There's some cops right by the dealer. I'm like, Peter, don't do anything crazy, man. We don't want to get in trouble with these cops. And he's like, no, I won't hit him.
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