Justin Smith: 10 Years in Prison for Selling Bath Salts — Now Building a Tech Empire

From Tech Prodigy to Federal Prison

Justin Smith built his first computer for profit at 12 years old. By 13, he was running a dial-up internet service provider called Verda.net with paying customers calling him at 3 AM for tech support. “Three o’clock in the morning and I was getting calls. Help. It’s not working. Something’s wrong. It’s moving too slow. I need help setting up my phone all day,” Justin told me. The business taught him early lessons about margins and customer service, even if DSL eventually killed his first venture.

After earning a master’s degree in entertainment business in under three years, Justin landed at a Florida real estate company where he transformed operations. The owner gave him equity and trusted him to fire an entire team to streamline their side business. “He’s like Justin, I’m going to give you permission to fire these people and take it over. But if you mess this up, it’s your ass,” Justin recalled. Within months, he was running everything while his boss lived in Miami penthouses.

But something shifted when his mentor started showing signs of drug use. After years of building the company from a dozen rental properties to over 800 under management, Justin found himself fired without severance. “I didn’t get a severance. So we just flat out done. Got fired,” he said simply.

The Gray Area That Wasn’t So Gray

Out of work and scrambling for freelance clients, Justin learned about a lucrative opportunity from a friend who owned smoke shops. The top-selling product across all locations was synthetic marijuana, sold legally as “incense” or “potpourri.” The business model was straightforward but profitable beyond imagination.

Justin figured out the chemistry. Manufacturers would take one gram of a chemical called JWH18 and spray it onto 10 grams of legal herbs like damiana and marshmallow leaf. Each gram sold retail for $20-25. “One kilogram turns into 10,000 retail-ready products,” Justin explained. “And they’re selling it on the shelves at 20, at least $20 a pack.”

The margins were staggering. A kilogram of the base chemical cost $1,500. After processing, it generated $200,000 in retail sales. Justin started with three kilograms, terrified when the first shipment required a signature at his door. Within weeks, he was ordering 10 kilograms at a time.

The substances weren’t scheduled as controlled. The DEA couldn’t prosecute based on current drug laws. But there was something Justin didn’t know about called the Federal Analog Act, which allows prosecutors to charge someone with trafficking the “nearest related substance” if a chemical produces similar mind-altering effects.

When Legal Became Catastrophically Illegal

The real money came from synthetic MDMA, sold in smoke shops as “plant fertilizer” in little foil bags with smiley faces. Two red pills per bag, $25 each, containing methylone or BKMDMA. Justin could wholesale a kilogram for $10,000 to manufacturers who would buy 100 at a time.

To manage the volume and risk, he set up operations in Spanish bodegas that would take six months’ rent in cash upfront, no questions asked. He developed elaborate protocols for accepting international shipments, including knowing his regular mail carrier and having lookouts posted.

Even with an attorney warning him off, Justin convinced himself he was building toward legitimacy. “I convinced myself that I would save up three million dollars and once I had the three million liquid, I would fund all the businesses that I, my marketing agency, the recording studio,” he said. Instead of saving, he poured money into a recording studio with over a million dollars in equipment, including an $80,000 SSL console.

The problem wasn’t just the money laundering implications. China scheduled controlled substances once per year on January 1st, unlike America’s emergency scheduling system. When substances got scheduled in the US but remained legal in China, Justin found himself holding inventory that had become federally illegal overnight.

Twelve Years for a Gray Area Business

The federal system doesn’t negotiate much on drug trafficking charges, especially when the quantities involved generate sentences based on marijuana equivalency tables. Justin’s operation, which he’d convinced himself was a legal gray area, resulted in a 12-year federal prison sentence.

Looking back, he sees the deeper issue that led him down this path. “I wasn’t thinking like, well, I’m going to have to answer where all this stuff came from,” he admitted. But beyond the practical oversights was something more fundamental. “I didn’t believe in myself. And I was afraid of hearing no, I was afraid of rejection.”

That fear of rejection, rooted in childhood experiences of being made fun of, drove him toward easy money instead of building on his legitimate technical skills. The same intelligence that let him master computer systems and turn around businesses could have built sustainable wealth without the catastrophic legal risks.

Building an Empire After Prison

Today, Justin runs Contractor Plus, an app designed to help contractors manage their businesses more efficiently. The platform addresses real problems in an industry where many skilled tradespeople struggle with the business side of their work. It’s the kind of systematic thinking that made him successful in real estate, applied to a legitimate market with genuine value.

The transition from federal prison to tech entrepreneur required rebuilding everything from scratch, but Justin’s core skills in systems thinking and problem-solving remained intact. His mother, a contractor herself, provided inspiration throughout his incarceration and continues to influence his business approach.

Reflecting on human nature and the divisions that lead people toward destructive choices, Justin has developed a broader perspective. “I think we’re at this point in human evolution where we’ve evolved to a point where as human beings, all of our differences aside, religion, economic status, socioeconomic status, geography, location, I think these things we’re starting to realize as like a species that we’re all co-inhabitants of the earth,” he told me.

The fear of rejection that once drove him toward shortcuts has been replaced by acceptance of what he can and cannot control. It’s a hard-won wisdom that shapes both his business decisions and his view of human potential beyond the artificial barriers we create for ourselves.