{"id":2672,"date":"2010-09-17T10:00:23","date_gmt":"2010-09-17T17:00:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.todayifoundout.com\/?p=2672"},"modified":"2012-11-27T21:32:21","modified_gmt":"2012-11-28T05:32:21","slug":"tim-allen-was-a-convicted-drug-dealer-before-becoming-famous","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.todayifoundout.com\/index.php\/2010\/09\/tim-allen-was-a-convicted-drug-dealer-before-becoming-famous\/","title":{"rendered":"Tim Allen Was a Convicted Drug Dealer Before Becoming Famous"},"content":{"rendered":"<div class=\"pf-content\"><p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.todayifoundout.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/09\/tim-allen-mugshot.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignright size-full wp-image-2684\" title=\"tim allen mugshot\" src=\"http:\/\/www.todayifoundout.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/09\/tim-allen-mugshot.jpg\" alt=\"tim allen mugshot\" width=\"250\" height=\"286\" \/><\/a><a href='http:\/\/www.todayifoundout.com' title='Interesting Facts'>Today I found out<\/a> Tim Allen was a convicted drug dealer before becoming famous.<\/p>\n<p>On October 2, 1978, shortly after beginning his stand up comedian career while working at an advertising firm, Allen was caught by drug sniffing dogs at Kalamazoo\/Battle Creek International Airport transporting about 650 grams (1.4 pounds) of cocaine. \u00a0In exchange for not having to go to prison for life, as was the maximum penalty that could have been leveled against him, Allen plead guilty and subsequently ratted out the other drug dealers he knew. \u00a0This got his potential sentence reduced from life\u00a0imprisonment\u00a0to 3-7 years. \u00a0\u00a0He ended up only serving 28 months in a Federal Correctional Institution, specifically at Sandstone, in Sandstone Minnesota.<\/p>\n<p>When he was released, he was 29 years old and, being an ex-con, found it hard to find other work, so decided to go back into stand-up comedy, as he had been doing on the side while working in advertising, before being convicted.<\/p>\n<p>Fast forward about 15-20 years and Allen\u00a0briefly\u00a0turned himself into an A-list star known for doing family and kid-friendly entertainment, including winning the &#8220;Hall of Fame&#8221; award at the Kids Choice Awards in 1996 and making $1.25 million per episode in the final season of <em>Home Improvement<\/em>. \u00a0Talk about turning around your life.<\/p>\n<p><span id=\"bonusfacts\">Bonus<\/span> Facts:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Tim Allen&#8217;s father was killed in a car accident after being hit by a drunk driver when Tim was just 11 years old. \u00a0Two years later, Tim and his four brothers moved in with his mother&#8217;s new husband, her former high school sweetheart and a very\u00a0successful\u00a0business man, who in turn had three kids of his own. \u00a0This had Brady\u00a0bunch\u00a0written\u00a0all over it.<\/li>\n<li>Tim Allen started his career as a comedian at a comedy club in Detroit on a dare from one of his friends.<\/li>\n<li>Allen once set an impressive &#8220;triple crown&#8221; entertainment record by accomplishing the following in a one week span: starred in the\u00a0highest\u00a0grossing film of the week (<em>Santa Clause<\/em>); appeared in the top rated television series (<em>Home Improvement<\/em>) on TV; and was atop the New York Times best-seller list with his book <em>Don&#8217;t Stand Too Close to the Naked Man.<\/em><\/li>\n<li>Tim Allen&#8217;s birth name was Timothy Allen Dick, which he later had legally shortened to Tim Allen when his career began to take off.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<span class=\"collapseomatic \" id=\"id69f1a3e6cb17f\"  tabindex=\"0\" title=\"Expand for References:\"    >Expand for References:<\/span><div id=\"target-id69f1a3e6cb17f\" class=\"collapseomatic_content \">\n<ul>\n<li><a title=\"Tim Allen\" href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Tim_Allen\" target=\"_blank\">Tim Allen<\/a><\/li>\n<li><a title=\"Tim Allen\" href=\"http:\/\/investigation.discovery.com\/investigation\/where-now\/allen\/tim-allen.html\" target=\"_blank\">Tim Allen From Convicted Drug Dealer to Hollywood Star<\/a><\/li>\n<li><a title=\"7 Beloved Celebrities and the Aweful Stuff You Forgot They Did\" href=\"http:\/\/www.cracked.com\/article\/96_7-beloved-celebrities-awful-shit-you-forgot-they-did\/\" target=\"_blank\">7 Beloved Celebrities and the Awful Stuff You Forgot They Did<\/a><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p><a href='http:\/\/www.todayifoundout.com' title='Interesting Facts'>Today I found out<\/a> Tim Allen was a convicted drug dealer before becoming famous. On October 2, 1978, shortly after beginning his stand up comedian career while working at an advertising firm, Allen was caught by drug sniffing dogs at Kalamazoo\/Battle Creek International Airport transporting about 650 grams (1.4 pounds) of cocaine. \u00a0In exchange for not having to go to [&#8230;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2684,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,12,9],"tags":[68,69,582,533,96,581],"class_list":["post-2672","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-today-i-found-out","category-entertainment","category-people","tag-actor","tag-celebrity","tag-drug-dealer","tag-drugs","tag-entertainment-2","tag-tim-allen"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.todayifoundout.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2672","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.todayifoundout.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.todayifoundout.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.todayifoundout.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.todayifoundout.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2672"}],"version-history":[{"count":12,"href":"http:\/\/www.todayifoundout.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2672\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2694,"href":"http:\/\/www.todayifoundout.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2672\/revisions\/2694"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.todayifoundout.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2684"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.todayifoundout.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2672"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.todayifoundout.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2672"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.todayifoundout.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2672"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}