Convicted child molester and former Team USA Gymnastics Doctor Larry Nassar arranged for protection in prison by paying gangsters with cash and “sexual favors,” according to an inmate.

In an interview with the New York Post, Grace Pinson, an inmate who did time with Nassar at a federal penitentiary in Florida, says that around June of 2021, he witnessed Nassar entering a prison cell with Mexican gang members. According to Pinson, the cell had its door shut and windows covered, a sign that the inmates were either doing drugs, having sex, or both.

“It was definitely not for drugs,” Pinson asserted.

Larry Nassar wipes a tear as he listens to Carrie Hogan deliver a victim impact statement at his sentencing hearing on January 17, 2018, in Lansing, Michigan. (Scott Olson/Getty Images)

“Larry Nassar has decided . . . sucking d*ckk is a better way . . . of staying alive,” said Pinson, a transgender inmate sentenced to 20 years for sending a threatening letter to then-President George W. Bush in 2005.

Pinson described Nassar as a “scared little church mouse” who never left his housing unit except to visit the chapel.

In the chapel, Pinson conversed with Nassar.

“He wished he didn’t need those guys,” Pinson said of his conversation with Nassar. “In some ways, what they expected of him was worse than the idea of being stabbed and killed.”

Pinson says that he had firsthand knowledge of Nassar’s arrangement with the gangs via conversations with the gang members and messages detailing the arrangement that he saw on a cell phone.

While the money seemed to be at least mostly for protection, the sexual favors, Pinson believed, were for punishment.

“Making Larry Nassar suck your d*ck in prison — it’s a twisted way of paying him back for what he did to those women,” Pinson explained.

US Olympic gymnast Simone Biles testifies during a Senate Judiciary hearing about the Inspector General’s report on the FBI handling of the Larry Nassar investigation of sexual abuse of Olympic gymnasts on Capitol Hill, September 15, 2021, in Washington, DC. (SAUL LOEB/POOL/AFP via Getty Images)

The protection arrangement definitely malfunctioned in July of 2023 after Nassar was nearly stabbed to death by another inmate for talking about how he enjoyed ogling female tennis players.

Nassar has been transferred from his original federal penitentiary in Florida to a new federal prison in Pennsylvania.

During his multiple decades as Team USA Gymnastics’ doctor, Nassar sexually abused over 250 girls. After a lengthy trial following a bungled FBI investigation, Nassar was sentenced to multiple hundreds of years in prison.