What Is Real: The Life and Crimes of Darnell Riley

by Riley Perez

Overview

On January 22, 2004, Darnell Riley broke into the home of Girls Gone Wild founder, Joe Francis. Throughout the night he filmed a blackmail video, and arrange for payment so that the video didn't go viral.

What Is Real: The Life and Crimes of Darnell Riley explores the nine years he spent in the custody of California’s Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation. On his journey from facility to facility, we see how Riley had to adjust to the reality that the rules inside the walls are not perfect, but if followed, they would allow you to survive. From county lock up to the historically violent Corcoran State Prison, where he shared facilities with Charles Manson and the gang leaders whose influence extend beyond the confines of the walls, the author confronts the question of which version of himself is real—the young, mild-mannered kid from Los Angeles, known to his friends and family as Riley Perez, or the man who pleaded guilty to robbery and attempted extortion, known to the State of California as Darnell Riley.

With neither self-pity nor self-aggrandizement, this memoir takes a cold hard look at a life of crime, the toll it takes, the reality of life inside California’s prisons, and the price paid by an inmate's friends, family, and loved ones.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781947856264
Publisher:	Rare Bird Books
Publication date:	08/14/2018
Pages:	256
Product dimensions:	5.50(w) x 8.50(h) x (d)

About the Author

Raised in L.A by his grandfather who instilled in him his Jewish faith, Riley was a multi sport athlete who gravitated to boxing. His passion for the sport took him from the comfort of his Hancock Park neighborhood to train at gyms around L.A, eventually settling at Broadway Gym in South Central where he trained under Bill Slayton. The combination of being a straight A student and the first rate education on the L.A streets caught the attention of Robert "Puggy" Zeichick, one half of a Jewish-Italian bookmaking team. Riley started doing pick-ups and quickly graduated to felonious capers. After a stint in juvenile reform school, Riley resumed his gambling association, which had grown to working for Matthew "Matty the Horse" Ianniello. He balanced his bookmaking business with his travels as an employee for TWA. Briefly, Riley settled on Universitystudies in Germany, but returned to LA full time after capitalizing on the tech boom of the 90s in part by day trading stocks and then creating software that he licensed to Washington Mutual Bank, a company he worked for, which allowed him a solid foundational understanding of banking regulations, that he took with him into his online gaming ventures.

Table of Contents

Prologue 9

Confinement 13

Neighbors 24

Play Time 37

Civil Order 47

Rock and Roll 63

Zip Codes 76

We Will be Loved 82

Valez, The Unicorn 97

Tookie 108

The Locksmith 111

Ace 114

New Year's 2006 120

Yes, Sir 127

The Girl Who Never Went Wild 129

CDC 133

Corcoran 142

Redemption Songs 149

Level 4 162

Yard Dawgs 168

AVISO! 179

Mad People 185

From the Desert to the Sea, and all of Southern California… 192

The Kite Runner 197

Acknowledgments 205

Editorial Reviews

"There's no longer a need to commit crime in order to feel what it's like to be inside the California prison system. Just read this book. Dude tells it like it is. Almost too well."
—Scott Caan, actor and author of The Performance of Heartbreak

"...[What Is Real] takes readers on a journey to the dark side of both prison life and human nature. A disturbingly honest memoir."
—Kirkus Reviews

"I followed his case in 2005 like most -less informed about who the man was, than the crimes he was accused of committing. Riley pulls back the curtains and reveals the last piece of that puzzle - himself. In What Is Real? Riley writes about his journey as a convicted man, which ultimately serves as an examination of himself and we are witnesses to which version of himself emerges. Who would’ve thought the real story begins after the hammer falls."
—Rob Weiss, Writer/Executive Producer of Entourage, How to Make It in America, and Ballers.

"Eloquent, brutal, honest, and remarkably warm for such a coldblooded story. Don’t start reading this book on a weeknight. You won’t put it down!"
—Michael Corrente, writer and director of Federal Hill and American Buffalo

"Riveting, bleak, morbidly funny and enraging, What Is Real takes us through the slow burn hell of prison and along the way elevates and shatters the prison narrative."
—Peter Conti, author of Gringo, Murderers Anonymous, and House Arrest

"This beautifully written tale of an ugly, psychologically, and spiritually torturous experience, is a shining example of a poetic mind operating in the most nightmarish of circumstances. To paraphrase Camus: In the midst of winter, Riley Perez found there was, within him, an invincible summer."
—James Acheson, Producer of Godfather of Harlem, Mad Money, and Journey To The End of The Night

From the Publisher

2018-06-12
An ex-con tells the story of life inside the California state prison system.In 2005, Perez (full name Darnell Riley Perez) was "a year removed from my last criminal act": breaking into Girls Gone Wild founder Joe Francis' Bel Air home, videotaping Francis in compromising positions, and using the resulting footage to extort money. Then, without warning, two armed U.S. Marshalls captured Perez at his home. In this gritty memoir, the author details the decade he spent behind bars. His first experiences at the LA County jail lockup showed him just how difficult incarceration could be. The cramped cells had no windows and no clocks, and the prison moved inmates around often, creating a sense of instability. Corrections officers carried out everything from full body searches to meal service "with the same level of hate for the process as the inmates." A majority of convicts were involved in notorious gangs like the Crips, Bloods, and the Asian Boyz, divided along racial lines. Perez identified himself as a more-or-less neutral "Other" and managed to stay out of most intergang confrontations. But loneliness and separation from family and friends took its toll. With an almost frightening sangfroid, he writes about collecting a secret stash of sleeping pills to use in case his trial "was a failure." In early 2006, Perez was formally charged and sentenced to 10 years and moved to the Corcoran State Prison, which housed convicted murderer Charles Manson. A female corrections officer briefly made a sexually frustrated Perez one of her "personal sex performers" and watched him masturbate when he was along in his cell. Later, he became a "soldier" in a private war between convicts and assaulted an inmate who had not paid a debt to another. Grim, unrelenting, and at times difficult to read, the book takes readers on a journey to the dark side of both prison life and human nature.A disturbingly honest memoir.

Kirkus Reviews