Get It Together

Katrina McLarin and Cheryl Womack dive deep into the chaos, confusion, and hard truths of navigating the criminal justice system. From media spin to the pressure cooker of plea deals, they unpack how women are often forced to make life-altering decisions under extreme stress. Cheryl gets raw and real about her own journey—how she prepped for prison, handled her finances, and found strength through building a solid support system. 

Transcript

Katrina McLarin (00:36)

Hi, welcome to the podcast. I'm Katrina McLarin

Cheryl Womack (00:39)

And I'm Cheryl Womack.

Katrina McLarin (00:40)

And today, in episode two, we're going to be talking about Get It Together. Cheryl, just to pick up from our last episode, we were talking sort of a little bit too about how the press controlled the narrative and what people's thoughts were. Can you elaborate a little bit more around that?

Cheryl Womack (00:54)

I didn't realize and what I think it's critical for people to know in criminal cases especially with the prosecuting attorney, they write press releases to put out the narrative that they want you to have. Now, if you look at Martha Stewart's or my situation or so many other circumstances you might read, what they talk about that you've done wrong, they don't say you're charged, but they talk about your wrongdoings and they'll name everything under the sun.

they haven't charged you with. For example, mine was impeding the government. But we talked about a place in New York City that I owned or that I traveled to Cayman Island. Well, as we talked about Cayman Islands was a Fireman's Fund business resource, and it was owned by the Fireman's Fund, the trust that Fireman's Fund had me established for the reinsurance business, of which I did not own it. And so when you put out information saying, she had this and she had that and all these different things, they're reading one story.

believing that's what the facts are. And the other part that's hard is what I got told by the people in the back of the courtroom was that even though the Kansas City Star, which is our local paper and other papers come to present your stories, they get their press releases from the prosecuting attorney's office and they've shared with them that if they don't print what they've gotten from them for the most part.

they won't be invited to come to attend any of these things or be first to know on press releases and information that's going on. it's punitive if you don't follow along and go along with the mainstream. So who knew that press releases, the one time we wrote one to try to come up with a narrative to try to spell out theirs wasn't factual, the prosecuting attorney called and just tore my attorney up, just climbed all over her. So they definitely want to be in charge of the narrative that's out to the public.

Katrina McLarin (02:35)

it's quite amazing to think that as soon as, and you alluded to this, that as soon as you mentioned the Cayman Islands, you mentioned a wine cellar, you mentioned an apartment in New York, people are always going to jump, and they did jump to that conclusion, that there has to be something sinister. And we've proven that there really wasn't, I don't think anyway, but I'm sure people will form their own

Talk me through a little bit about what happened in the Cayman Islands and then reaching that plea deal and how that came about.

Cheryl Womack (03:01)

What was crazy was in February, the year of the plea deal, I think 2016, I got a letter from the chief justice, the head of the entire court system in Cayman Islands saying, looks like a lot of people have been snooping into a lot of your business and it looks like they've asked a whole lot of people what's going on and no one's ever come and asked you to explain anything or what your thoughts were on anything. I'm holding a hearing on this date and I...

invite you to join me. Well, I shared that letter with the judge and my attorney here in Kansas City, and they released my passport. Let me fly down there for a week. I attended the hearings. They pulled in the monetary authority. They pulled in the businesses that I was affiliated with. He went through asking them all these questions and basically said, all of you stand up. Does anyone here believe Ms. Womack has done anything wrong here on the island? No, Your Honor. No, Your Honor. He goes, I'm ordering that none of you.

can go and testify against Ms. Womack, none of you. As of this moment, I'm putting it making a court order of it. Additionally, if anyone from the United States requests any additional information on Ms. Womack, I am ordering that it comes to me first for me to see the information to present it to Ms. Womack so that we get facts from her as well as what other facts might be appropriate. And that was his order. And basically they declared I'd done nothing wrong. I'd been left out of the loop on everything.

and that he wasn't going to let any of them testify and harm me any further. Basically, it was the gist of it. I fly home. By the end of the next week, the order's out in writing now in a letter form. And by the end of the next week, I believe the prosecuting attorney must have reached out to my attorney and said, what the is going on? And this crap has to stop right now. And I believe that my attorney

Got pressured big time into saying you better figure out how to make this thing settle and stop right now We've lost our witnesses. We can't bring people in, know that we were going to bring in here Which would just been somebody from the insurance company that was represented and maybe somebody from the bank Maybe somebody from the monetary authority and Cayman in and they couldn't because they couldn't say I did anything wrong and so they said I had she basically said she brought me in on a friday the friday before easter and I said, let's just sit through and think about it through easter and think about

why I have to do it. No, you have to make a deal. You have to make a deal. I don't want to make a deal. Can we just put it off and just see how things go for a week? No, we have to make a deal. She would not let me leave her office that night until I agreed we were making a deal and that we'd figure out how to write up something where I wasn't technically admitting guilt was basically what we're agreeing to.

Katrina McLarin (05:34)

there had been that request from her as well that you needed to pay another million upfront. So that's playing on your mind right too, because that's got to be a factor.

Cheryl Womack (05:38)

Well, that was right. That was

the part that came out when I I was when I said I want to go to trial. She goes, well, I need a million dollars cash right now. At front, I'd given her five point one million dollars to date.

Katrina McLarin (05:51)

sorry, let's just point out again, the only witness the state actually had was Brandy Wheeler, who was the one that stood embezzled from you. So yeah, the criminal, the convicted criminal at this point. She's the convicted criminal.

Cheryl Womack (05:59)

The criminal, the criminal! Film one. Film two

set me up and handled all the books and all the materials and controlled all the information flow that was going to the government against me.

Katrina McLarin (06:10)

absolutely ludicrous. So that particular weekend, you feel like your back's against a wall. And so you make that decision, We're going to do a plea, we're going to, how do you get there from that Friday night where she says to you, we've got no choice.

Cheryl Womack (06:22)

I either had to make a deal with her and figure out what I was going to do that night going forward or figure out how to get another attorney and figure out how mad it would make the judge and just looked at, I going to go another five years of my life and pay legal fees and what's that going to cost me? mean, just seemed, the consequences seemed daunting and I was exhausted. And I just finally said, we need to come up with something where I'm not really admitting to anything, just like their charge against me didn't really say I did anything.

She goes, okay, we'll find a way to come up with the wording. And I walked away and she basically got on and let them know that weekend that I was gonna make a plea deal.

Katrina McLarin (06:55)

So from that

point, do they come back to you and then present the deal and how does it sort of pick up from there? Well, it's important actually, Cheryl, before we go there, it's important to note that when you got out of prison, can you elaborate to the listeners what happened with...

Cheryl Womack (07:07)

Well,

before you go there, let's back up a minute. So we made the deal and she were going back and forth with what the wording should look like. And she dumped me. She just dumped me as a client. And I had to go. Once I said I was going to make the plea deal, she was dumping me now and she sent a letter and filed to the courts that she was withdrawing from my case. And the judge, the judge was furious

Katrina McLarin (07:18)

once you've signed the plea deal.

Cheryl Womack (07:30)

when she did that, then I asked for a meeting with all her bosses because she wasn't the head of the law firm. And none of them, I put them all in the room and they brought her in the room. And I said, I'm not having this conversation with her. And I said, you know, here's what's crazy. I feel like I got screwed by the government. I got screwed by a girl who worked for me that I trusted implicitly. and now I'm being screwed by my attorney. I said, I've been screwed by my attorney. I said, how many people are going to screw me before this deal is over? I cannot believe you can't.

continue on this process and carry me forward. Absolutely not. This person decides what's going to happen. And she dumped me. So I had to go find an attorney.

Katrina McLarin (08:05)

So did she give you any reason as to why? Was there any explanation in that or not really? Wow. After you'd spent $5.1 million with that firm. That's great. How encouraging.

Cheryl Womack (08:10)

No, just withdrew

yeah, it

was a really, it was so many parts of it were just overwhelming at so many different times. And so I reached out and found a law firm that I knew did criminal, but I'd used for a civil case in the past. And I probably should have reached out to them to begin with, but when you're afraid, I was just looking for references for big names and whatever. And so I went to them and just said, we need to just wrap this up and however we can make this go away as fast as we can.

Katrina McLarin (08:40)

so then you wrap up the plea deal, and then I suppose the next point from that is sentencing. I just want you to explain what happened when you got out of prison with this particular firm.

Cheryl Womack (08:49)

So before I even got out of prison, I was fortunate enough to find an attorney who was willing to agree to sue the law firm that dropped me for this criminal case and taken the $5.1 million. And so as soon as I got out, we went through all the details, drafted up, prepared to file a lawsuit against them, sent them a copy of the lawsuit and gave them so many days to respond. They responded immediately and negotiated a a deal with me.

for a dollar amount that I can't disclose. So it never make it to the press. It would never be filed. Nobody had ever seen that they made a deal with me. And my conditions were that I couldn't disclose how much it was. I couldn't disclose the name of the law firm and I couldn't disclose the name of the attorney. Those are my conditions, but I settled outside of court with them over how they handled this entire case.

Katrina McLarin (09:33)

I think that in its own right, the fact that they settled so promptly might answer a few of those questions that people might have. So at this point, you're at sentencing. The judge hands down the sentence. So at this point in court, what do you have to do as far as the logistic side of things?

on this day.

Cheryl Womack (09:52)

they tell you what date you're going to go to jail, right then and there. They can't tell you where they're going because where they can suggest, the judge and your attorney can suggest where you go. The Bureau of Prisons is the only person who can designate where you officially go. So they can put a suggestion in for you, but you're going to get that directly from the Bureau of Prisons and you're going to get it in an email within the course of the next week. And that's going to tell you where, I guess the timing of that might be how quickly they...

have you self surrender to this is a self surrender situation where you get to go in on your own and everything I've seen shows that you have between two weeks and to 90 days. I had 30 days.

Katrina McLarin (10:30)

You had 30 days. So did you have to pay any restitution court fees? What happens at this point when you're completing that sentencing there?

Cheryl Womack (10:36)

I owed restitution, part of it was I made a deal. One of the things I made a deal for was I made a deal to pay $700,000 on the value of the New York property that I didn't own. Now, the trust bought the property. The property had never sold, so there was no tax circumstance that would tip, taxes were ever due, but they just assessed I owed 700,000 and that's part of the restitution I had to pay.

in the money that was paid. And so they went through and they earmarked several different things and said, you're going to pay this. So I paid the amount of restitution in full. I was fortunate to be able to do that. Whoever is going in needs to figure out what your restitution is and what your payment plan is as soon as you can, preferably before you self surrender and make sure no matter what, if you can pay your court fees.

make sure you get a copy of all of that in print to take with you. Because when you do self-surrender with your legal paperwork, you'll want that because the first thing they're going to do, they being the Bureau of Prisons, is they're going to come in and say, I have no proof that you've paid for any of this and we're going to start charging you a minimum of $25 every month until you can prove it. And so I was lucky, I brought the paperwork in and I just went and got out of my legal work and brought it right back over and said, I've paid mine.

and they had to take it off. But otherwise, let's say you didn't have any money and you're barely eking out, maybe you're making $25 a month, you might be losing that $25 a month toward restitution you've already paid because you can't prove it and you've got to figure out how to get it. And you may not have good contacts at home to get that paperwork anymore.

Katrina McLarin (12:09)

you've just been sentenced, you, you were fortunate that you were able to pay those fees, but when you, so you've got 30 days. So I'm assuming that your first thing you're kind of doing, cause you were the primary provider is to head home and work out your funds. What's going to happen. Talk us through a little bit about that.

Cheryl Womack (12:13)

Yes.

In a lot of instances, whether you're the primary provider or not, your income typically matters to that household. I was the primary provider in my family and had been forever and was still the person running the businesses that I had left for the most part besides my two sons and some assistants that I had. But I was the primary decision maker in handling a lot of these things. first I had to get a handle on what funds do I have, what's coming in, how are bills going to be paid?

What's gonna stay in place? How do I sign over power of attorney to my sons for various things so that they can be handled in my absence? How do I take me off of all the checking accounts and everything so those things can be managed in my absence? I now it's like I needed to go get a good physical I wanted some blood work taken so that I'd know the status of my blood work physical all the things that my doctor might require I do I went to the dentist

I checked my shots and I needed to get start shingles and took one of the older pneumonia shots that you take for older people and just started trying to prepare for that. Had I had children, I would be sitting there dealing with where are they going to live and where is it going to be with family? Do I not have family? Is the court going to appoint them somewhere? How will they be provided for? As much as how will they be provided for, what school system will they be in?

Where are their school records? Who's going to handle their shots? Who's taking care of them? What money do they have to live on? How am going to communicate, especially with younger kids? I need to talk to my kids. I'm going away. Here's what we're going to do. One of the things my older son and I agreed on for the entire family is that we had established a safe word. We always heard stories about horrific things that could happen in prison and nobody knew.

Petrified for you to go to jail. I'm petrified, but I can't imagine what their minds are thinking You know the whole time and they're petrified and so we decided we come up with a safe word like they had when they were kids where they could Where if I sent someone to the school to pick them up they could give them the safe word or know that I'd sent them to the school to pick them up and somebody wasn't just coming to accost them and so we came up with a safe word so that

shouldn't anything go wrong while I was in prison, could on the phone or in person tell them just say the safe word and they know there was a problem that they needed to look into further. It never needed to be used, but the peace of mind it gave my children and my husband is you just can't, you can't measure the, the, sense of calmness that it gave them to know that they had that as a resource. So think of using a safe word. That's important.

Katrina McLarin (14:48)

So you've, in this 30 days, you're sorting out all your finances, you're going off, you're getting a medical, you're getting all of these things wrapped up. You're sorting out things for, luckily as you said, you didn't have young children, but you still had dependents that you had to about and cater for. Plus you companies and businesses that were operating that employed other people

Cheryl Womack (15:00)

Right?

one of the rules in prison is you cannot run a business from prison, cannot run a business from prison. So you've got to get your legal paperwork set up so that somebody can run that business.

Katrina McLarin (15:14)

And that's important to know because really from the moment you go into prison, your life stops as you know it. it doesn't matter which way you tackle it, you can't do any of those things that you once did. You know, the other thing I think about when you talk about this is you're sitting there in that timeframe and you're waiting. How do you get notified? Okay, where you're going? How does this come about? So you know where you're actually going to end up and which camp you're going to.

Cheryl Womack (15:36)

Well, you get the letter and the letter tells you you're going to, you're going to report in at this date at this prison and you have to be there mindset by 2 p.m. So I made sure I was there by noon, you know, no matter what, you don't want to not be there on time. It's not like a hotel check-in. You can't run late. You have to be there because as soon as you're not there, they can put marshals out searching for you. You are considered AWOL and they they can be looking for you. So the other thing I wanted to backtrack on a little bit is

while you're dealing with your attorney and this is all wrapping up, make sure you don't have any other outstanding cases around you. Make sure that you don't have any other legal situations going on where the city or state might have something going on. And those guys can also order that the time that you're going to serve in jail is simultaneous for those things as it is to the time you're getting ready to put in in federal. Otherwise, we'll get into it more later, but you might find yourself being collected.

to go do time on another smaller crime that you had in a state prison because you didn't get them all handled. So another thing you have to do is you have to look into your history and make sure you don't have any warrants or any loose little things hanging out there.

Katrina McLarin (16:43)

you've got a letter now from the BOP and they're telling you where to go and what time. Is this the point where you get your PAC number? Is that what happens at this point?

Cheryl Womack (16:50)

Yes, the pack number comes in and you won't get the pin till after you get to prison, which that's the magic number that accesses you to the system. But your pack number is your ID. It's who you become. You are not that person anymore. You are that number. So you get it. And I didn't memorize mine till the night before. And actually it took me forever to memorize it. I literally wrote my pack and pin number on the back of a crossword puzzle book that I had and carried it with me everywhere because I knew, I mean, just mentally didn't want to remember them though you have to have them for everything.

I had them that way, but if you can, memorize your pack number as soon as you can.

Katrina McLarin (17:22)

the other thing as a part of preparing for you going to prison is I think you have to work on a contact list. So explain a little bit about that and what the importance of the hundred people on this contact list.

Cheryl Womack (17:32)

The maximum you can have so that you can access them by address, phone number, whatever you need to access them by, email is a list of 100. You want the principal's name on there, doctor's name on there, your vet's name on there, the babysitter's name on there, all your immediate people that you want to call and contact because they have to get on this list. If they're not initially on this list, you can't make phone calls to them.

The other thing is you can print that list out. It will take a printout in with you or you can go to the computer and you can pull it up. And if you have to write letters to these people, you'll want those addresses or you'll want those emails and you want them readily available to go. For example, I had a loan with the bank against my house because I was borrowing money to pay my legal bills. And right after I went into prison, they pulled the loan and

reached out to my son and said, you have to move all your business and the loan out of this place as soon as you can. soon as you can. As soon as you can. Now I get 10 minute phone calls a day, once a day with my husband, because you just don't get much time on the phone. How are you going to fix this in 10 minutes a day, you know, with your bank? And so those are the kinds of things that if I didn't have her phone number, where I could reach out to your bank, to your credit union, to all those different institutions that you might randomly call.

Katrina McLarin (18:26)

Wow.

Cheryl Womack (18:47)

I don't care if your list ends up being your credit cards or Amazon or write your bank account down. Make sure you've got that information because somebody's not going to call you and give it to you. And really for some of that, you can even sometimes make an appointment to make those calls upfront for legal calls. Like I actually was able to get a call made upfront to talk to my bank. After I talked to the counselor and said, this is going to take more than 10 minutes and I just need a few minutes more to get on talk to my bank. But

They're not going to get me the number. I had to have that information.

Katrina McLarin (19:17)

so really it's about preparedness from the sounds of it. You know you're going in, at this point you know the camp that you're going to. Did you do any research about the camp itself, about where you're gonna end up?

Cheryl Womack (19:27)

The attorney I had represented someone who'd gone to this camp previously. So they set up with that person a phone call where she could call me and I could ask her questions about the camp. I got online and tried to Google anything I could about a camp and found nothing on a camp. I actually have a girlfriend that I went to high school with that actually monitored all the prison systems and their health and wellbeing for a living for years with the prison system, but she'd retired by now.

And so i'm calling her and asking her what's the safest? What's the cleanest? Where would you go if it were you? You know all that kind of stuff.

Katrina McLarin (20:01)

any say in where you go? that a possibility for you?

Cheryl Womack (20:04)

That is a really

good question. You can put in any recommendation your attorney can. The judge can suggest strongly where he thinks he or she thinks you might go, but only the Bureau of Prisons has that final determination. And even if they put you in one prison now that it works for them for budget reasons or any other reason, they can put you in another. It doesn't mean that's where you'll stay.

Katrina McLarin (20:23)

But still important to know that at least your voice is going to be heard. It might not alter the outcome, but it's worth putting the letter into the judge to say, you know, for whatever reasons, transportation for family, ease of visitation, that it's worth doing that.

Cheryl Womack (20:37)

It can't be considered if you don't put it out there and they can't possibly know that would be more convenient for you. mean, could be most of your family lives in Chicago and you are from Los Angeles, but being in a prison in Chicago could actually get you more family visits. They can't know that. So you've got to help this entire process along with what's going to work best for you. And again, a lot of times they'll consider your feedback. They don't have to agree with it. They don't have to accept it, but they will consider it.

Katrina McLarin (21:02)

So were you able to go somewhere close to home in Kansas City?

Cheryl Womack (21:05)

No, well, no, I went to Greenville, Illinois. It's five hour drive away and there's another one peaking that's a little closer to Chicago. Leavenworth would have been close, but I think that sounded horrible and they didn't have a camp. So I was limited. There are not as many camps as there are prisons. And so I was limited with what my choices were for that. I did talk to this girl who really couldn't tell me much about it. It's like she wanted, all she wanted to do is tell me.

that she had a good group of friends in there. She'd reach out to her friends and they'd be looking out for me. They'd watch out for me when I got there. She still talked to them, was in touch with them through emails and stuff. And so I thought, okay, somebody's going to come find me the first night and tell me I know this person and we gotcha. I'd also had a male friend who had done some time in a camp for being one of the first people to sign the tax forms for a pasta company.

But they just passed a bill that said that if you signed the financial statements or the tax records You're the ones who you're the one who went to jail if there was anything incorrect in him and and he went down for that You know you pay a fortune to tax attorneys and everybody else to do these things and so I met with him and said tell me about camp and he told me that the groups they break into and how they come and they nod and they say I gotcha, know and to prepare for certain things and none of that

happened to me. None of that happened to me. A woman's camp is not like a man's camp. It's just not. I totally blah. And I mean, I just could not find good information.

Katrina McLarin (22:25)

Are you in effect went and blind?

And did that lead you to write this book to make the decision that you you needed to do something to create some more awareness? Is this where it stemmed from?

Cheryl Womack (22:37)

I don't think that did it. I think while I was there, all the different systems and processes that you had to just be familiar with, or the dynamics of the relationships, the fact that even though there are, I think what everybody thinks is you're going into a place with a lot of structure. It's a prison, you know, so there's a lot of, but it is chaos behind bars. It's chaotic structure.

The rules can be broken at any moment. The rules are as good or as bad as the mood of the guard on duty. And you don't have a clue that's going to happen that way. You don't realize you're going in with people who are mentally off, who are criminally dangerous, who are just, you know, regular people. Might have been a mule and you never did drugs a day in your life, but you're in because you got caught moving drugs. They're there and for so many hosts of a reason. And there's so many different personalities to deal with that.

There's no way to completely prepare for all of that. There's also no way to prepare for around budget time. They fill that place up like a roach hotel. You've never seen anything like it. It's just, they pack them in there as tight as you can get. And when you think you're in camp and it's crowded and it's tight and I'm over this, I really need some privacy or some quiet time. And I don't need quiet time. I'm not a very quiet person, but I needed some quiet time. So I go walk the track.

they start filling it up for budget and they have a lot more people than they're supposed to. And there's just no room for anything. And the chaos and the fights and everything becomes substantially worse. So every year during budget time, you can tell it's you're nearing their budget where they're setting it for the next year. So they're doing it by the count of how many they have on that site. And they just load them in. And I don't know if the budget moves to different places at different times or what, but it was, was, mean, I would call my husband and say,

I thought it was pretty horrible for just some people being out of control, but this is a new level of it's off the charts. And it remained that way because then they leave you loaded in there until after Christmas. And then after Christmas, they start moving people to other places

Katrina McLarin (24:35)

when you said that you were talking to someone else to get some advice about it and how they ended up going to prison for their tax forms that they had signed. Something I was reading in your documents and your bio was actually for the year when you sold your company, you actually never signed your tax returns. Is that right? That you had your attorney, your tax attorney and Brandy the embezzler.

they handled this. Can you just elaborate a fraction on that?

Cheryl Womack (25:02)

If

you'll recall, as we were discussing in the last podcast, I had so many balls in the air, my life was stupid. That's not an excuse, but it was stupid. And I never ever thought on tax day every year, October 15th or the 14th, the day before I would get a stack, honest to God, 36 inches tall of the various companies and paperwork and attachments that I would have to look at, sign them, put them in overnight packages that are certified and get them in the mail.

No time to really absorb what they're doing or giving you. Nobody's really reviewed all of these things with you. You sign them and you get them out of there. What I realized after I got out of prison and looked at everything more closely, not even before I went into prison, I never... So the year I made the most money that I sold my company, I never signed my tax returns that year. I never saw my tax returns for that year. I'm sure I was traveling around and too busy to be bothered, so shame on me. But my tax accountant...

signed my tax returns that year, Al Davison. And I mean, I don't know why we didn't have more of a conversation about he signed the returns, not me, because that was one of the big years that they were furious that I'd made this money on the cell. And then I had all these credits because I bought these charter jet planes and I got extra accelerated credits. So I wasn't paying anything in taxes and so I'm a tax cheat.

Katrina McLarin (26:15)

FBI was drawing everything back to that year where of course you had a big income from the sale of your business. And they built a lot of what they were saying upon that, but you didn't even sign the tax returns for that year.

Cheryl Womack (26:20)

Yes.

Right. Now, here's what's

crazier. Every year before, I had been a C corporation in the old companies that made all the money. I'd been a C corporation. C corporations don't have losses that drop and carry forward. You just lose your losses. So I paid so much in taxes for 20 years. It was ridiculous. And I couldn't spend enough on bonuses for the employees and assets and different improvements for the company. I couldn't spend enough. And then suddenly,

I'm out of a C corporation. I'm becoming an LLC to invest in multiple companies. I get to have tax credits drop through for the first time, and this is what happened to me.

Katrina McLarin (27:01)

Wow. It's actually quite hard to believe that this happened in the way that you're paying people to protect your interests and they certainly didn't do that. Maybe that was open the door to people to see when you saw that money coming in, they saw an opportunity and absolutely took

Cheryl Womack (27:02)

First time.

Shame on me because at the most vulnerable time for me, I always thought I'm going to watch my money, I'm going to manage my money. Nobody's going to know my money, not necessarily that it's personally in my pocket. And I was always really conservative in business and said, I'm not going into debt. I'm going to pay cash for everything along the way because I don't want to worry about, I going to pay for the desks and typewriters you're sitting at or computer that you're sitting at, or do I want to make payroll? I was extremely conservative as a business owner.

growing up with that, so I wouldn't have those problems to have to look at. And so to suddenly be sitting here looking at this, like I had just been nonchalant, eh, I'm just spending money and don't give them any money for taxes. And I didn't want to pay a dime more in taxes than I needed to. But the first year I ever really had the opportunity to even consider it is when I bought two jets, opened charter businesses, had big tax deductions that were happening at the time, and had gotten a huge investment from selling my business.

Katrina McLarin (28:11)

these are all really big things. The charter business in its own right would have been a business that should have occupied almost your full-time energy. But as you said, you you had 30 different companies and investments that were on the go. when that sort of happens and you're so fractionated, unfortunately, you don't do anything very well. So when you're going into prison, you're leading up to that time.

Cheryl Womack (28:28)

couldn't do anything very well.

Katrina McLarin (28:34)

What was the thing? Was there one thing in particular or was it many things that you were most, the most concerned about or scared about going in?

Cheryl Womack (28:41)

Well, okay, I'm going to go back to, I think, how do I say this? There's no good way to say this. I was really more worried about me than anybody. I mean, I was very afraid and I didn't want to tell anybody I was afraid. And I didn't want to add more fear to my family. I didn't want them to worry. So you just didn't talk about it. You just tried to figure out what you could figure out and go.

Katrina McLarin (29:03)

Well, I think, you know, you're the matriarch of your family. for, you know, everyone wants you to be strong, but in these type of situations, it's understandable that you're not and that you're, you know, and the great thing is, is this is a survival story. You're on the other side of it and life has gone on and it's great. So it would be only natural that you would have these really genuine fears. And I would have thought that everyone would expect you to be concerned about, I think it's the one time you're allowed to be concerned about yourself, Cheryl, to be fair. Is this, this particular

Cheryl Womack (29:30)

Well,

just looking back and from conversations we've had, I wished I'd had more time to put more focus in on the feelings of my children, feelings of my family. We'll get into that later because there are consequences to that and I am blessed that there weren't consequences that there could have been for other people. I mean, I'm truly blessed. I just needed to go and suck it up. And I will tell you that I just felt like...

not trying to get to our religiously, but it just felt like God sent me there. I went to prison for a reason and I didn't know what that reason was, but I went. When I went in there, after being in there and everybody coming to say, can you help me with this? Can you teach me this? I mean, I was helping everybody between big sisters and teaching classes and entrepreneurism and all the things that I did to keep me busy. I learned a lot about the system and I'd try to help other people or I just try to help them understand. Like one of the girls who was my bunkie,

I've never met anybody that if you said, go find me an ink pen or go find me a pair of earrings, that girl could find anything. Before I got out, I was sure she'd find me a laptop computer. She was so good. And that's what I told her. said, you have this amazing skillset. Well, she didn't know. She had no clue. Since she's been out, she does all sorts of amazing things because her skillset is being resourceful. And that's what she was. And it was just fun to find and help identify.

Katrina McLarin (30:32)

That's an entrepreneurial spirit right there.

Cheryl Womack (30:50)

That's when I realized there's a lot of things that I could do with a bad situation to make it a situation that I could in my mind say, it's okay, this happened to me because these are the things I'm going to have the outcome be.