Real Estate Guru gets 10yr sentence- Mike Morawski

Mike Morawski built a $285 million real estate empire from nothing. Then the 2008 crash hit, and he made one bad decision after another trying to save his investors. Ten years in federal prison later, the SEC approved him to raise capital again.

I sat down with Mike recently for the Nightmare Success podcast, and this conversation went places I didn’t expect. He opened up about things he’d never discussed publicly before. His father’s murder. His cocaine addiction. The moment he almost committed murder himself after reading what his ex-partner said to the grand jury.

The Entrepreneurial Kid from Chicago

Mike grew up in the Chicago suburbs, the oldest of three kids in what he describes as a “pretty dysfunctional household.” But nobody in his family was an entrepreneur. He doesn’t know where that drive came from.

“I remember sitting on the side of a swimming pool one day, we were on family vacation, and I had to be eight years old,” Mike told me. “I asked my dad, ‘What are all the rooms around this building?’ He said, ‘People come here, they stay here, and they pay the owner money to stay here.’ And I don’t know, that instant I was like, damn, I want to be the owner. People paying me money.”

He had paper routes, lemonade stands, sold newspapers at factories where his dad worked. His dad taught him basics like counting change without a calculator, reading directions, hustling. They were close.

Then in 1983, when Mike was 23 or 24, his father was murdered.

“It was a Syndicate hit,” Mike said. “My dad happened to be with somebody who these guys were after. The police kind of said that because the one guy got shot 10 times, my dad got shot once.”

That case sat cold for over two decades. In 2005, the feds rounded up members of The Syndicate in what became known as the Family Secret Trial here in Chicago. Twenty-three murders. Mike’s dad was one of them. Mike found out about the convictions while he was in federal prison himself.

The Rabbit Hole That Changed Everything

Mike was a solid athlete growing up. Baseball, football, wrestling. Arizona State was talking scholarship. Then senior year, fourth day of summer football practice, he stepped in a rabbit hole and blew out his knee.

His whole trajectory shifted.

“I thought life was going to be to be a cocaine dealer, you know, and run dope,” Mike admitted. He’d never talked about this on a podcast before. His addiction consumed him. He was living in an old farmhouse basement, sleeping on two mattresses on the floor, running a construction business out of milk crates.

Then one night, partying with friends, a guy named Johnny pulled out a gun and said, “Let’s play Russian Roulette.”

Mike and his girlfriend left. By the time he reached the bottom of the stairs, he heard the bang. Johnny had blown half his head off.

“That was enough to get me into treatment the next day,” Mike said. Four months after getting sober, his dad got murdered. But instead of relapsing, he dug in. “I was sober for 26 years.”

Building an Empire

Mike built a construction company that lasted 15 years before burnout forced him to sell. He took that capital and bought a two-flat, did a house hack before house hacking was cool. He heard Jim Rohn say “success leaves clues” and started modeling other successful people.

He got into real estate sales, sold 78 houses his first nine months, built a team selling 125 homes a year for 12 consecutive years. In 2005, he saw the market shifting and made his move into apartments.

“I syndicated my first deal in 2005. Over the next 30 months I raised 18 million dollars, bought 4,000 apartments in five U.S. markets, built a property management company managing 7,500 units.”

Then 2008 hit like a freight train.

The Decision That Led to Prison

Mike grew way too fast. When the market crashed, he had profitable companies and failing companies. His attorney and accountant told him he could move money between them to keep everything afloat, just leave a paper trail.

“I was of the belief this was a short recession, 10 to 12 months, 17 to 18 months like a typical recession,” Mike explained. “I was wrong. It was the Great Recession. Forty percent correction in the market. You can’t withstand that storm.”

The problem wasn’t moving the money. The problem was non-disclosure. When you raise private capital, you’re held to a higher standard. You have to tell your investors where their money goes.

“We didn’t lie on any documents about anything. But I didn’t tell my investors that I took their money or their profits from here and put it here so that they wouldn’t get hurt.”

Wire fraud. Mail fraud. Federal charges.

The Betrayal

In August 2010, Mike was on family vacation in Southern California when his ex-partner, their in-house legal counsel, and their Director of Finance testified at a grand jury. Mike didn’t find out until months later when he was reading the FBI reports in his attorney’s office.

“I’m reading these reports and I go, ‘None of this shit ever happened. They’re kidding me.’ And my ex-partner crafted this story.”

Mike got so angry he told his attorney he was going to go home and kill the guy. His attorney kept him in that office from 3 PM until 8:30 PM, missing his own dinner plans, just to make sure Mike didn’t do something that would have put him away for life.

Mike got 10 years. His ex-partner was home in 30 months.

At sentencing, 12 of Mike’s investors showed up to speak on his behalf, telling the judge he was worth more on the street than locked up. The government didn’t care.

Finding Purpose Behind Bars

Mike reported to FCI Duluth in July 2013. He cried every day for 18 months. Three weeks in, his wife told him she wanted a divorce. Two of his kids wouldn’t talk to him. Three still don’t.

“I walked around every day wondering what the hell happened in my life,” he said.

Six weeks in, a guy walked up to him in the gym. “Get over it. Don’t let these people beat you. All they want to do is take everything from you you’ve ever known or ever wanted. You can get it all back. You’re a smart guy. You built a hundred million dollar company.”

Something switched. Mike started working out, losing weight. He earned a bachelor’s degree in theology, wrote two books, taught real estate investing and property management to other inmates. He went into the community on outreach, told his story to business owners and college students.

He co-authored a paper with a professor from the University of Minnesota that got published in the Business Journal of Ethics. It’s now taught at the collegiate level in forensic accounting and sales classes.

The Comeback

Mike got out the week the world shut down for COVID in March 2020. Ten months of home confinement, two years of probation. In January 2023, he got off supervision and left the country for the first time.

The man who thought he could never raise capital again? His securities attorney got him approved by the SEC to go back into the business. He’s writing deals, coaching, speaking, building it all over again.

“I’m on a Meetup one day, probably 150 people, telling my story,” Mike recalled. “Some guy out of clear blue nowhere goes, ‘Hey, are you raising capital again?’ I said no. He goes, ‘Well let me know when you are, because I wouldn’t want to invest with anybody other than you. Because you made the mistakes.’”

Mike now runs My Core Intentions, hosts the Insider Secrets podcast, and wrote a book called Exit Plan teaching people how to avoid the mistakes he made.

“Don’t be defined by your past,” Mike told me. “Who cares if there was alcoholism, drug abuse, addiction. If there was violence. Don’t let that crap hold you back. Move forward.”

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