Shaun Attwood

"Shaun's trilogy is the Manchester rave scene meets The Wolf of Wall Street and ends in The Shawshank Redemption" - Jon Ronson author of The Psychopath Test "If you like Breaking Bad, you will love Shaun's trilogy. Shaun Attwood was the Walter White of the Ecstasy market in Arizona" - DJ Keoki Shaun Attwood is a former stock-market millionaire and Ecstasy trafficker turned YouTuber, public speaker, author and activist, who is banned from America for life. His story was featured worldwide on National Geographic Channel as an episode of Locked Up/Banged Up Abroad called Raving Arizona. Shaun’s writing – smuggled out of the jail with the highest death rate in America run by Sheriff Joe Arpaio – attracted international media attention to the human rights violations: murders by guards and gang members, dead rats in the food, cockroach infestations… Shaun arrived in Phoenix, Arizona, a penniless business graduate from a small industrial town in England. Within a decade, he became a stock-market millionaire. But he was leading a double life. After taking his first Ecstasy pill at a rave in Manchester as a shy student, Shaun became intoxicated by the party lifestyle that would change his fortune. Years later in the Arizona desert, Shaun became submerged in a criminal underworld, throwing parties for thousands of ravers and running an Ecstasy ring in competition with the Mafia mass murderer Sammy 'The Bull' Gravano. On May 16th 2002, a SWAT team knocked his door down. He ended up in the jail with the highest rate of death in America, where not only gang members but even guards were murdering prisoners. Shaun documented the conditions using a golf pencil sharpened on the door: dead rats in the food, the techniques he used to sleep with cockroaches crawling on him, gang mayhem and violence... His aunt smuggled his writing out of the jail, and his blog, Jon's Jail Journal, turned the international media spotlight on the conditions. Facing a life sentence, Shaun entered a lengthy legal battle. After two years of being held on remand, Shaun was convicted of drug offences. He was sentenced to 9½ years, and served almost 6. Shaun had only read finance books prior to his arrest. While incarcerated, he submerged himself in literature - reading over 1000 books, including many classics. By studying original texts in psychology and philosophy, he sought to better understand himself and his past behaviour. He credits books for being the lifeblood of his rehabilitation. Shaun was released in December 2007, and continues to campaign against Sheriff Joe Arpaio. He keeps Jon's Jail Journal going by posting stories mailed to him by his prison friends. In July 2008, he won a Koestler award for a short story, which he read to an audience at the Royal Festival Hall. Shaun presently lives near London, and talks to audiences of young people across the UK and Europe about his experiences and the consequences of getting involved in drugs and crime. Shaun's life story is the English Shaun Trilogy: Party Time, Hard Time and Prison Time. In 2014, Hard Time was rewritten, greatly expanded and published as a second edition. Shaun's fourth book is a self-help called Lessons. As a best-selling true-crime author, Shaun is writing a series of action-packed books exposing the War on Drugs, including Pablo Escobar and the Cali Cartel, who are featured on the Netflix series Narcos.