About WCA
About WCA
Dear Friend,
If you’re here, it’s likely because you’re in a situation you never expected to find yourself in, and you’re unsure how to respond. I understand firsthand how overwhelming this can be. When the FBI showed up at my home on April 28, 2005 (three years to the day later, I would go to prison), my bad decisions continued. I was vulnerable, lost, and easy to exploit.
After learning I was a target, I hired lawyers but was not ready to work openly with them. I did not think I had done anything that wrong. At the time, I was in self-preservation mode and certainly did not consider the perspectives of prosecutors and judges. My only focus was pretending this nightmare was not happening, which continued when, even after pleading guilty, I gave $16K to a reputation management company that claimed they would suppress or even remove my Department of Justice press releases.
I needed a guide.
Had White Collar Advice existed then, I would have been able to create a plan by putting myself in the shoes of government stakeholders:
- What do they know about me?
- What do they not know about me?
- What is their perception of me?
- What can I do to change that perception?
- What do they expect from someone convicted of a white-collar crime?
Instead of introspecting and planning, I lived like the proverbial ostrich with my head buried in the sand for nearly three years. Even after being sentenced to prison, I was not ready to do the work.
More Of The Same
On April 7, 2008, my mom emailed me three weeks before my surrender: “This man, Michael Santos, has been in prison a long time and shares valuable insights about what you can do at Taft. I wrote him a thank you letter. You should read his blog postings and find him when you arrive.”
At that time, I didn’t know that Michael Santos went to prison for a nonviolent drug crime in 1987. I later learned that while inside, he earned degrees, was locked in more than 19 prisons, wrote extensively about prison, got married, and mentored countless individuals like me. That experience brought a depth and breadth of knowledge that is simply incomparable.
Instead of thanking her for the message, I said, “Mom, I am not reading blogs from some dude who has been in prison for 20-plus years. Do not send again.”
Like many people, I was making matters worse for those who loved me. The truth was I still wasn’t ready to acknowledge my guilt in the crime that led to my conviction. I couldn’t architect an effective plan. I kept making bad decisions. I could not believe I, Justin Matthew Paperny, from the hills of Encino and USC Baseball, was going to federal prison. I would continually ask myself, “How the hell did I end up here?” as I took breaks from In-N-Out Burger to chew my precious Red Man Chewing Tobacco, with little concern for my health or future.
If you are reading this, you may feel similarly. Many of us believed authorities would never target us for prosecution. We didn’t set out to hurt anyone. Despite not having bad intentions, opportunities, pressures, self-rationalizations, and denial proved toxic to my moral compass.
The only good thing about the day I surrendered to federal prison was that I finally got credit for time served.
A Turning Point
Two days after I surrendered, I met Michael in the library. By then, I knew we were both in Dorm D.
“How you doing, young man?” he asked.
“Well, not great. I just got to prison. Sort of off my game.”
“For how long?” he asked.
“Eighteen months.”
“Well, I will make a deal with you. I will serve every day of that sentence with you.”
Over the next few weeks, we began to communicate more, and I studied his deliberate routine. He would start early (like 3 am), write blogs and books, send the work home to his wife, Carole, run 10-15 miles, write more, teach a class in the warehouse behind the chow hall, mentor prisoners, write more, then go to bed at 7 pm, and then do it all again the next day. You had to see it to believe it. The work ethic was truly insane.
During visits, I used to tell my best friend and retired baseball player, Brad Fullmer, how impressed I was with Michael’s work ethic.
“I saw how hard you worked to get to the big leagues. He works 10 times harder than you.”
Brad was so impressed and inspired that he invested $40K in Michael’s advocacy efforts, helping set the stage for the courses Michael creates and implements in prisons across the country—more on this later.
After visiting Brad and other friends, I told Michael how thankful I was for their support.
“My friends and family no longer ask about prison, but rather what I will do when I leave. I want to learn more about what you do exactly. Can I join you in the quiet room and learn from you?”
“Sure,” Michael said.
For hours each day, we would talk, and I would ask Michael hundreds of questions about his background—how he had managed being in prison for so long, how he did it, how he got there, how he could be so happy in prison, how he got degrees, wrote books, got married, and built such a huge network.
Michael shared that his transformation began in a county jail in 1987 after reading The Trial of Socrates. He introduced me to concepts like reverse engineering, the quadrant theory, and the importance of being an individual thinker without fearing others’ opinions. He spoke of thinkers I had never heard of and explained how each one influenced his perspective. He laid out 10-year plans and showed his progress toward each goal within that framework.
I listened as he laid out his vision for prison reform and incentivizing excellence, which he detailed in Earning Freedom, a book he wrote in 2008, a decade before The First Step Act was passed.
I could not learn enough, but there were times Michael had had enough! The funniest part of the day was when Michael would say, “J.P., enough training and enough questions. I must continue my work now. Please leave the room!”
Michael would ask me questions about my preparations for sentencing, prison, and the entire investigation. At the time, he had aspirations to write a book called White Collar, and I think he was considering adding my story. He also questioned my adjustment to prison and some of the choices I was making.
Just after the 10:30 am standing count, around ten weeks into my prison term, Michael asked me, “Do you want to know something that every guy walking around this prison camp has in common?”
I looked at him. “That every guy here wants out?”
“True,” he acknowledged. “Every guy here would’ve liked to have made better decisions at the outset of his problems. Everyone who faces legal challenges for the first time makes decisions from a position of weakness. They rely upon defense attorneys, as they should. But there is much more to a criminal indictment than the judicial process. That’s what defendants don’t understand.”
“You’ve got that right,” I said. “All I cared about was getting out of trouble. But I did not know how, so I made choices that made matters worse. I didn’t even consider prison as an option. Later, after I was sentenced to 18-months, my attorney couldn’t prepare me because he didn’t know. All he said was prison would be boring and at some point they would release me.”
“Well, your lawyer was right about the boring part. Look at how many men spend their days in endless fun with T.V., tabletop games, exercise, and waste time reliving the glory days. You are no different. You might not watch T.V. all day or play games, but exercising all day with Andrew is just another way to pass the time. Yet, you think you are different because it is exercise, not T.V. It is the same—whether watching T.V. all day or exercising, you are not preparing to go home. Let me ask you: how much will people pay you to run or do those pull-ups? You talk about wanting a better life and making your mom proud, but on a scale of 1-10, with one being the lowest, what number would you give yourself?”
“One,” I said.
“Own it and prepare for more struggle. You should also prepare to encumber your parents’ retirement.”
Finally, it hit me—my “aha” moment.
The next day, my routine changed. Rather than exercise all day, I started writing and documenting my journey in a private journal. I did not just read; I read with a purpose.
At Michael’s urging, I began writing book reports:
- Why did I read the book?
- What did I learn from the book?
- How will the book help me after prison?
Feeling inspired with my new routine, I told Michael I was ready to do more. While walking around that dusty track, he suggested I put my journey online for others to learn from and to hold me accountable.
“I am out of phone minutes. When my mom visits on Friday, I will ask her to register JustinPaperny.com (now WhiteCollarAdvice.com). I will also mail her a letter today.”
Ten days later, with help from Michael, my first blog was up with a commitment to write every day until my release.
Thirty days later, I started getting scores of letters at mail call from people thanking me for providing a glimpse into life in a minimum-security camp.
On Thanksgiving day 2008, I asked Michael to help me write Lessons From Prison.
On May 13, 2009, one week before I was released, I received the book at mail call.
There was no official launch date for WCA, though I know it started on that day in 2008 when Michael helped me understand how my actions would continue to hurt me and my parents.
What will it take to motivate you to act?
White Collar Advice: A Vision Realized
When we started White Collar Advice, our vision was to help people like Dr. Nate Schott. Nate reached out to us in 2019, wanting to get the best possible outcome. He had already read Lessons From Prison and understood the pitfalls of dishonesty.
He said, “I want to do everything right, but this is new to me. I have good lawyers, but I must do more to mitigate. Will your team help? I want to show the judge I’m different from their version of events. I want to make my wife and four children proud.”
Dr. Schott’s dedication paid off—he received 33 months instead of the expected 51-63 months and was home from prison in 10 months.
Nate was successful because he created authentic messaging for stakeholders, truly owned his mistakes, documented his contributions to the community, and obtained character letters that reflected his genuine character rather than enabling his conduct. His story illustrates the impact of understanding stakeholders, taking responsibility, and actively contributing to his community through hard work and building a verifiable record.
Dr. Schott was fortunate to have had a solid working relationship with his lawyers. That said, most struggle to work well with their lawyer—I heard hundreds of horror stories in federal prison.
“My lawyer did not listen to me, or respect me. He only called when he needed money. He did not negotiate for me. He simply took orders from the AUSA.”
Other defendants lamented how their lawyers told them mitigation was useless, or they had time and “they had it all covered,” whatever that even means. Former FBI Agent Paul Bertrand told me, “When we show up for a raid or send that target letter, we are in the bottom of the 8th inning.” In other words, you are already late in the game.
To solve the “lawyer problem,” our team has created a new asset, TopWCA.com. TopWCA was created to help people find the right lawyer or, if necessary, assist in replacing their current one.
At TopWCA, we vet and invite only a few lawyers in each district. We launched TopWCA in July 2024 to have 200 lawyers within 12 months. If you need help finding a lawyer, we are here for you.
Continuing The Mission
Since my release from prison in 2009, I’ve been leading White Collar Advice. Michael was released in 2013 and has remained a vital partner as we grow. Given the 26 consecutive years he served in prison, his passion lies with advocacy and helping people in prisons and jails develop values and skills to ease their transition upon their release. Over the last 10 years, Michael has begun creating content for prisons and jails, including every California prison and also the Federal Bureau of Prisons. His Preparing for Success After Prison course is a First Step Act-approved course within the Federal Bureau of Prisons. The course helps people prepare for employment and success upon release. As recidivism rates show, many people leave prison less likely to function in society than when they began serving their sentence.
More than 100 people in our community, including Bill McGlashan and Mossimo Giannulli, have worked with Michael to create “Mastermind Courses” that become part of our Preparing For Success After Prison course. Call me directly at 818-424-2220 if you are interested in contributing to our curriculum, which influences more than a million people a year in prisons and jails.
WCA remains a proud sponsor of PPCC, including Prison Professors Talent (PPT). PPT provides a platform for people in prison to document their growth and share it with their network and other stakeholders. Our team receives the content, posts it, and manages the website—PPT absorbs all expenses associated with PPT. This service is free of charge to people in prison.
As of this writing, PPT has more than:
- 650 profiles
- 2,700 journal entries
- 426 book reports
Follow our progress here: Published Recipients of Prison Professors Talent and call me at 818-424-2220 to learn more about how to sponsor people in prison who are in need of vital reentry resources, including books.
Finding Meaning and Moving Forward
As I make my way toward the end of this long letter, I am optimistic that as you go through the system, you can find meaning in it, as I did. It certainly took me some time, and I regret not starting sooner, but as the Chinese proverb says, “The best day to plant an oak tree was 20 years ago. The second best day is today.” I was fortunate to have that “aha” moment in prison and implement what I learned from my friend who served so long in prison. You have those same opportunities, but it requires looking inward, assessing where you are today, and creating a plan for where you’d like to go moving forward.
This experience helped me embrace the value of being fully authentic and transparent. I embraced the reality that I was in prison and couldn’t pretend otherwise. I also recognized that I served one year in a minimum-security camp, and with that came limited experience and expertise. I can’t profess to know everything about prison or crisis management. That’s why I proudly have a team with different strengths and weaknesses. It’s frustrating and sickening when people who claim to be experts hurt people going through this process. Many of those people plagiarize and steal our work. Others defame us.
We can’t change what others do; only how we respond. You can’t change how the Department of Justice profiles you, but you can change your response by focusing on what you can and cannot control.
As you go through this process, it’s healthy to identify your core values and assess whether you’re living faithfully to them. Our core values are rooted in Michael’s very lengthy journey: honesty, transparency, authenticity, and never asking you to do what we have not done and documented. Our work is easily verifiable for you or anyone to review and dissect.
I’ve been home from prison for a long time, and our team is thankful to have had so many people reach out to us, but throughout this time, we’ve learned who we can and cannot help.
If you’ve been charged with a crime or are under investigation and are willing to do the work, we can help. We can’t help you if you don’t see the value in hard work, are unfazed by the idea of sentencing or prison, think your lawyer has all the answers, or expect guaranteed outcomes.
If you have made it this far, thank you. I know we have covered a lot. Keep making progress:
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Whatever you do, do something healthy and productive that gets you closer to your desired outcome!
Respectfully,
Justin Paperny
P.S. Our new website shifts focus away from our timelines, as they can seem self-promotional. This is about you, not us. Still, to provide authenticity and show we’re not asking you to do anything we haven’t done ourselves, we’ve included them below for your review.