Prime Video’s hit documentary Cocaine Quarterback tells the unlikely story of how Owen Hanson, a player on USC’s national championship-winning football team, went on to become a convicted drug trafficker and money launderer for the infamous Sinaloa cartel. But in the most unlikely of plot twists, rather than sit in his cell and blame the world for his predicament, Hanson instead completed an MBA and became known as the ice cream kingpin when an accidental discovery led him to invent a deliciously healthy dessert.
Now a free man, the former elite athlete is disrupting an entirely new market—the health food industry—and fortunately, M&F has the “scoop” on Hansen’s game-changing entrepreneurial endeavor.
At 6’3”, Owen Hanson’s hopes of studying at the University of Southern California seemed like an impossible dream for a kid living with a single father trying to make ends meet. But that dream became a reality when Hanson landed a volleyball scholarship. Still, the competition at USC was tough and with threats of being cut from the team, the young upstart desperately searched for an advantage that wound up leading him to Tijuana for his first steroid run.
As his body got bigger, Hanson caught the attention of coaches and was selected for USC Trojans despite a complete lack of football experience. Remarkably, he became a walk-on tight end and part of the 2004 national championship team that featured Heisman trophy winners Matt Leinart and Reggie Bush. But when his time in college football ended, those teammates went on to be drafted by the NFL, while Hanson found himself struggling to make his real estate business work in the era of the credit crunch. Instead, the man they called the “O-Dog” would use his experience as a small-time buyer and seller of drugs to ascend the criminal ranks.
Owen Hanson’s Escapades as ‘The Cocaine Quarterback’ Resulted in Significant Time Behind Bars
Mark Whalberg’s Unrealistic Ideas production company tells the surreal story of the “Cocaine Quarterback,” detailing how the former football player wound up in Australia, riding high with millions of dollars earned via the Sinaloa cartel before his operation imploded following a soured relationship with a murky man known as “Robin Hood 702.” In 2017, Hanson was sentenced to just over 21 years for his crimes but served around nine years, having his sentenced reduced after cooperating with the authorities concerning a case against Australian attorney Michael Croke.
While the documentary does show Hanson’s release in 2024 and his desire to live a positive lifestyle, investing his own time into talking to young people about making the right choices in life, the film doesn’t focus on Hanson’s remorse for his actions, or go into great detail about the incredible plot twist that sees him running an ice cream business from his prison cell. M&F wanted to pick up, where “Cocaine Quarterback” left of.
Owen Hanson Has Sent Many Apologies Since His Incarceration
“Yeah, no doubt I have remorse,” Hanson tells M&F. “I’m remorseful for getting all these people involved in this catastrophe, right? I ended up getting 20 of my friends indicted, from my best friend in college to my accountant. It’s all because I lied, and I obviously fabricated a story, and gave them something that they believed was (that) they were getting involved in gambling (but instead I was) utilizing them to help launder money for the cartel. I think about it every day, and I remember sitting in that 6-by-8 prison cell, and just writing every one of my co-defendants, apologizing for the mess I’ve gotten them into. And, obviously, I can’t take back the mistakes I made, but I can hopefully give them an apology, and I’ve apologized to every one of them, and 95% of them have accepted my apology and understand where I was coming from, because they know the type of person I am. I never intended to get them in trouble. They just know that I’m this kid that has this ambition.”
In the closing segments of Cocaine Quarterback, Hanson is shown making ice cream in a mop bucket from his prison cell, finally using his lofty ambition to be successful in a legitimate way, and turning a huge profit by selling a legal product to his inmates. What the film does not uncover is how this incredible plot twist came to be.
How California Ice Protein Originated from Hanson’s Prison Cell
Every morning while in jail, Hanson would get up at 5 a.m. and prepare his meals including a protein shake that he’d place in a mop bucket full of ice. “You’re saying, why the mop bucket?” says the entrepreneur, predicting the obvious question. “Well, in prison, we don’t have refrigeration. So, what do we do? We throw a bunch of ice in a mop bucket.”
One day, however, Hanson’s routine was disrupted when the prison ice machine was broken. Instead, he put salt on the remaining ice, only to come back and find the whole bucket frozen. “I start to eat it with a spoon, I’m like, holy s**t,” recalls Hanson. “This is a protein ice cream! I said, I think we’re onto something!”
With ice cream previously unavailable to the inmates of the Federal Correctional Institution of Englewood, Colorado, Hanson tested his new product on his workout buddies, and before long he was selling the healthy treat in peanut butter jars for $15 each. “Keep in mind, it cost me $1.50 to make,” says Hanson. “I said, if they buy it for $15, I’m making the same rate of return as I was making on my product in Australia.”
The smart salesman soon went from selling 7 units per day to 14, and then 21. “By Super Bowl Sunday, I had pre-orders for 50 ice creams,” recalls Hanson, explaining that as his operation expanded, he began employing his inmates to help keep the production line moving. It wasn’t all smooth sailing however, while some prison staff were encouraging of his wholesome product and acute business acumen, others were less impressed. “Some guards want to be assholes,” shared Hanson. “And they’ll come in there, like, ‘Oh, you’re not supposed to sell ice cream.’ So, you know what they do? They take my mop bucket, and they flip it upside down, and they take my ice cream, and they throw it on the floor. But most of the time, the people already know my story. They know I’m not somebody that’s disrespectful. I treat the guards just like I treat anybody in life, like a human being. It doesn’t matter that they have a badge, it doesn’t bother me. And if you show that kind of respect in prison, they’re usually going to give it back to you.”
Owen Hanson: Cocaine Quarterback Became an Ice Protein Kingpin
Lauded by his prison peers as the ice cream kingpin, Hanson’s first brand behind bars was tentatively titled the “Kingpin Creamery,” but when he was happy to get his early release, life outside of jail meant that Hanson no longer had a product or a purpose to motivate him. Fortunately, he observed that even the outside world didn’t have a high leading protein ice cream. Hanson noticed that most of the similar products out there only offered around 5g of protein. “So, I was like, okay… I’m gonna figure out a way to continue this story.” That’s how the California Ice Protein brand was officially born.
As a budding legitimate businessman, Hanson discovered that natural monk fruit was a sweet replacement for sugar. He added 80% whey protein concentrate, too. “It gives you that ice cream texture,” he explains, noting that he also added probiotics for gut health.
With financial backing, the former footballer was able to scale up his team to almost 30 members of staff and has relished this new challenge. “(It’s) definitely hard to scale up, because you gotta remember, I’m so used to having my own money and doing things myself,” he tells M&F. “Obviously, when the government arrested me, they seized, I think it was close to $20 million in assets with homes and cars and money, and left me with nothing, right? I was like, holy sh*t, I gotta start over.” Hanson tells M&F that he would like to see more young people given a chance to succeed in business via internships so that they can gain practical experience. As for his own product, Hanson says that it is best described as “Ice Protein” since it is much healthier than traditional ice cream. His California Ice Protein bars typically contain around 15g of protein with no added sugar and are “hand made with care.”
Having earned his MBA while in prison, Owen Hanson is finally proving what his friends and family knew all along—that he can be successful with anything that he puts his full energy into. And, with flavors like “Coliseum Cookies & Cream,” named after his old football stomping ground and “Strawberry Swole Cake,” named after a former teammate good friend who visited him in prison every month, Hanson is eager to share the love. “Our next move is to get into a Gelson’s or a Whole Foods,” he says
Don’t bet against Owen Hanson this time.
For more information visit California Ice Protein’s website.