SPEAKER_03 0:00

As an actor, there is nothing worse than showing up to work on set when you got to play some sort of action here and you've had no sleep. Since I've got a ghost bed, I can go to work and look like a badass. A serious badass because I got my sleep. I'm telling you right now, you want to sleep through the night, show up to work and absolutely dominate. Dominate. Get yourself a ghost bed. You're going to sleep like a baby and show up like a champ at work and crush all your goals. Go get it. Go to ghostbed.com forward slash buckley. Code word buckley at checkout. Start feeling like a champ.

SPEAKER_05 0:34

You know, it's funny, since I've I've kind of entered into this entertainment world here in my post-retirement, this whole world of Hollywood, I I've discovered that I didn't think it could get dirtier or worse than the government, but I think Hollywood might be.

SPEAKER_03 0:48

I always think I've seen it all, and then it's something else happens. I'm like, what in the what is going on? And it just it's its own beast. My next guest lived alive for 26 years and he saved lives doing it. He's an author, he's a former undercover ATF federal agent that went deep undercover with the mafia, the cartel, outlaw biker gangs, you name it, he's been there. I cannot believe this guy's story. It is unbelievable. He's taken thousands of guns off the street, he's put hundreds of bad guys away. During that journey of being deep undercover and being surrounded by this darkness, he lost a bit of himself. And his story is so compelling because it truly is a story of redemption and the journey that he went on and how deep undercover he went and how much that actually affected him, his lives, his personal lives, and his journey throughout that. He has a book that has just come out. I'm in the middle of it right now, Ray Khan, The Betrayal of an Informant. Please, welcome to the show, Mr. Lou Belou.

SPEAKER_08 1:56

Welcome to the ATM of the show.

SPEAKER_03 2:20

Appreciate you having me. This is crazy. We're just we're just talking with Sean. Sean was trying to figure out he was like, where do I know you from? And when I saw your name, it was the operation uh uh uh Undercover. Undercover. It was awesome. So I like getting out of service, it was that post-service that that absolutely the show, yeah. And how what was it your first experience of being on a set as opposed to like real world? Where you're like, this is fucking Hollywood.

SPEAKER_05 2:46

It's like well, you know, it was it was uh a different kind of show. It was a show based in in reality because I would I traveled the country uh and went to different police departments.

SPEAKER_03 2:58

You were doing you were doing like the real in the real thing.

SPEAKER_05 3:01

You were there watching it happen. So we would in bed with an undercover unit, and so none of that was set up? No, none of it was set up. Oh wow. And they we would, you know, we would film with them long enough to take a case from its inception to the conclusion. So from when they received the information, you know, about you know what whatever it was, guns on the street, uh dangerous drugs, and how they would initiate the case, how they would conduct surveillance, you know, how they would set everything up, talk to the informants, to then how they would actually get an undercover inserted, you know, in the case.

SPEAKER_03 3:32

So that was all real time, real it was all real, yep. Wow, because I've reality television nowadays and friends that do reality television, it's like this is set up or this is so I thought for some reason that that was like they manipulated some of the stuff, but you guys were as you were finding out things real time, it was real cases.

SPEAKER_05 3:47

Now, I'm not I'm not gonna tell you that they hadn't kind of stacked the deck somewhat, yeah, you know, and made things happen at it on a certain time. But it was guns, they could have uh and these people went to jail at the end.

SPEAKER_03 3:57

Wow, that makes it so much better. Yeah, that's crazy. Was was there was it from filming that show and having cameras there on you to when you were and you were observing these cases, was there did you miss being on the job back there or were you Man, it was unbelievable.

SPEAKER_05 4:17

It took me right back into it. Uh and yeah, it was uh it was actually somewhat difficult because you know I wanted to be the one to jump in there, yeah, you know, and actually do the undercover myself. Uh so it did, it brought me right back.

SPEAKER_03 4:29

Now, I I feel like like getting to the FBI, you know, there's there's so much like movies, there's so many movies made about it, and there's so it glorifies, you know, like it's it's it's the you know, the Miami Vice, you know, like you know, the flashy cars and those sorts of things. What was your experience like? How like what like what made you decide to go that route and and that sort of the wake-up call that it's not like the movies?

SPEAKER_05 4:57

Well, it is uh you know, the way it's portrayed on TV, there's you know, there's yachts and there's supermodels and mansions and Ferraris, and that's that's just not the real world. Uh you know, I I I was able to get into that world, and uh, you know, there wasn't any supermodels. There were crack horse and uh hoopties, yeah, right? Broken down cars, um projects, trailer parks. You know, that that was the reality of undercover work. It's a dark, dingy world. Um there was no glamour uh to it at all. There was there was personal satisfaction, you know, getting guns and dangerous drugs off the streets, but uh the lifestyle wasn't uh very much like Don Johnson's.

SPEAKER_03 5:41

And did you where did you grow up from in in New York area? In New York. So that's a it's a pre there's a lot of people that go that are cops and and the you know the service is a very revered sort of thing. So was that your background? Not at all.

SPEAKER_05 5:55

Uh law enforcement was never on my radar. Uh I grew up um, you know, very Italian family. Uh, you know, you don't look Italian at all. Right. I I get that a lot. Yeah. You know, my dad as an Italian American, not a especially back that at that time in New York, not a huge fan of the federal government. Yeah, yeah. Um and uh, you know, all those innocent Italian businessmen were getting railroaded on those Rico charges back then. And uh so you know, I didn't come from a police family, any of that. Uh I just I had a very like happenstance meeting uh in the Bronx with a guy I played college football with. He invited me to come over one day. I had recently got barely made my way through college, no direction in life, and he invited me to come down and hang out uh at his brother's house. We were sitting on the stoop when his brother pulled up. You know, I've told this story before. Uh, this guy pulls up in a Corvette, which you don't see often in the Bronx, yeah, and he gets out, and this is Miami Vice Days. He's got the hair flowing, uh he's got the he's got the uh T on, his shirt's open over it, like the Cuban shirt. Yeah, and he's got a Beretta 92F in his waistband. And it turns out he was a DE agent. Uh he worked undercover, he had just gotten back from Peru doing some undercover work. And he sat down with us on the stoop and I started asking him questions about his job, and he talked for about 30 minutes, told me, you know, what he could tell me. And for me, that was it. The skies opened up and I found my direction right there.

SPEAKER_03 7:26

Really? Yep. Where did you go and live? Like, how do you what's the process for civilian to NP like FBI?

SPEAKER_05 7:32

Is there like it's you know so you know, here I am. I was 21 years old. Yeah, uh, barely graduated from school. And 9-11 happened? No, no, this is way before. Okay, 12 years before 9-11.

SPEAKER_03 7:45

Okay, so it's still still in a sense America's like the like we there wasn't that catapult of like the terrorism and all that sort of stuff.

SPEAKER_05 7:52

Nope. Uh but it it was the cocaine cowboy days and all that, Pablo Escobar and all that, right? So uh, you know, there I was totally unqualified, and I didn't want to start out as a uniform cop. I didn't want to work patrol, I none of that interest interested me. I wanted to be an undercover agent. But you don't from the get. From the get.

SPEAKER_06 8:11

Dude.

SPEAKER_05 8:12

But you don't just become an undercover agent, right? You have to pay, like everything in life, you pay your dues. So I started taking the test for all the alphabet agencies out there. And uh my only advantage was that I was fresh out of college and I was in test taking mode. You know, most of the men and women taking the test uh who are actually qualified, you know, they they have college degrees and now they've been cops for eight to ten years or whatever, but they're kind of out of that test taking mode. So I I just managed to score really high on one of the tests, and the agency that hired me just happened to need people real bad. So I got an exemption because I didn't certainly didn't have the background. And uh, but because of my test store, yeah, they flew me out to LA. Um, you know, I I I went into this interview with this panel, you know, out in Los Angeles, totally unprepared, like no idea what I was doing. But sometimes when you're that unprepared, you're relaxed and it works out. I had nothing to lose. Uh, and I did really well in the interview, and the next week I get a call saying, hey, pending your, you know, the successful completion of your background investigation, yeah, uh, you know, we're gonna hire you. Uh you'll be down at the Academy in Georgia and you're coming out to LA as a special agent.

SPEAKER_03 9:30

Hey, if you are listening to the show and you own a company or something, and you're interested in potentially partnering with us at the AJ Buckley Show or me, AJ Buckley, please reach out to our producer, Sean, S-E-A-N-M at AJ Buckley Show.com. We'd love to discuss, we love to build the relationships. This is a long play for us. I'm not going anywhere. The show's only getting bigger, and we'd love to form some great relationships with some solid brands that align with my values and your values, and we can all win together. Three pillars of discipline: spirit, mind, body, in that order. That right there is the foundation of a company I started called Born of Discipline. It's incredibly important to me, this company incorporates my faith, the lessons I learned from my father on discipline, pain from regret, or pain from discipline is something my dad always said to me. And I've incorporated that into my life, and I want to share it with you. Go check it out at bornofdiscipline.com. Get your merch. It's it's great stuff. Go get it now. Get it while it's good. Now, did you have were you married at all? No, I was single. Single. Okay, so it was an easy decision to go, and you're like, all right, I'm chasing my this is now my new passion. I'm gonna head out this way. Absolutely.

SPEAKER_05 10:41

I, you know, I had this weird thing growing up in New York that I wanted to, I wanted to live in Hollywood. I wanted to, you know, never, I never traveled, been to the West Coast. So I was like, man, this is awesome. I'll get out there and I'll I'll live in Hollywood. So I ended up going to the Academy, Federal Law Enforcement Training Center, uh, you know, difficult academy, you know, four months of training, you know, test taking, constitutional law, all that stuff, you know, followed by Spanish immersion for a couple months. Yeah. You know, eight hours a day, every day. Can't speak English. And uh, next thing I know, I'm on the streets of Los Angeles. Um, I found out early on that Hollywood was definitely not the place to live when I got out there and drove around. Um, but yeah, and that that's how it started. And next thing I knew, you know, at that time, Southern California, Los Angeles in particular, was the greatest place on earth to be a law enforcement agent because the gangs uh were just pouring in from Central America at that time. Um we, you know, no one had heard of MS-13 yet, and we were working MS-13. Uh, you know, the the Central American gangs brought a level of violence to America that even the American gangs were not familiar with. They were chopping heads off. Whoa. They were chopping body parts off. You know, it was all about territory, like crime always is.

SPEAKER_03 11:57

And, you know, we're so you guys were part of that that first wave of understanding who these are looking at the pictures, going, well, these are not.

SPEAKER_05 12:04

We were learning, yeah. They're you know, they had just come in, and uh, even the bloods in the cribs, they didn't know how to react or how to handle these gangs.

SPEAKER_03 12:12

Was it did a like I some research I was doing for this one project? Uh, and what I was blown away reading just how well organized that that cartel was, like how sophisticated. It wasn't just like some gangsters, you know, working a street corner, like these guys had like real, real weapons, real tactical, like just so what was your guys' learning curve of what you guys were up against? Well, unlike most American gangs at the time, these gangs had structure, structural.

SPEAKER_05 12:43

Almost awareness, the paramilitary structure. You know, they're coming from El Salvador, and they're coming from Panama. You know, a lot of these Central American countries and and a lot of them had military backgrounds, yeah. And guerrilla fighters. Yeah. And, you know, they're well trained. You know, let's be honest. I'm not saying America doesn't have some tough gangs, but they're not well trained. Yeah, they lacked the structure. Absolutely. Yeah, yeah. These guys had structure, they had training, and and they knew what to do to take a territory over. So if it was East LA, you know, and it was controlled by just say the Bloods at that point, they knew exactly what to do to you know to get that territory from them. Because when you're talking about running drugs, you know, running guns, extortion, it's all about controlling that territory. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 13:29

And this time, at this time, you wouldn't have had like social media page, like it was just what pagers, or because cell phones like for you. No cell phones, you couldn't triangulate where they're pinging from or anything like that. So you're like in you the paper files, like you had to go. There was no, I mean, so this is this is the grassroots of actually tracking it down. There's no way to this is where it started.

SPEAKER_05 13:51

This was us with our Thomas guides in Los Angeles. I remember the Thomas guides. Yeah, there was no GPS, none of that. And yeah, with our pagers on, trying to find a payphone, you know, when you got that page. And uh, yeah, we're you know, we're working these these gangs that we don't know much about yet. So uh, you know, the government did a strange thing at the time uh when we first got on. My first duty was at the LA County Jail. And here I am, a federal agent, and they stationed us at the release line of the LA County jail to interview every foreign-born inmate that was coming through the release line. Back then in LA, 75 to 80 percent of the inmates were foreign-born.

SPEAKER_04 14:32

Wow.

SPEAKER_05 14:33

Um, and we would interview them to determine their alienage and their deportability. So you might be talking to a Mexican dude with a DUI, all right, on in your first interview. And the next interview is an MS-13 member from El Salvador who chopped someone's head off. Uh, and you know, I I found out early on I didn't have an interest in that Mexican guy with the DUI, but I was fascinated by that guy with the, you know, from El Salvador. And so my my interview with the Mexican guy might be 10 minutes, but I would spend an hour and a half with that El Salvadorian. And I would, you know, I would talk to him genuinely interested. And when you're genuinely interested in someone, they tend to open up.

SPEAKER_03 15:11

Do you find what did you find that you could have empathy on their story and their journey as what they were trying to accomplish in their life? Because they're probably born into something that they became a part of, and then because there's always like our projective, like, oh that's a bad, that's a bad guy. But sometimes the bad guy doesn't know that he's like really a bad guy. He's doing what he's the situ, you know, I'm like, he's doing part of something that he's been sort of born into. Did you ever have that like see see the good in them? Like if put this person in a different you know, set of circumstances, and he would be succeeding in a different sort of way, like the level of intelligence and how they're seeing it, but they've just been surrounded by gangsters the whole life. Well, you know, absolutely.

SPEAKER_05 15:53

I don't uh I can tell you where the empathy came from. Yeah. You know, I I don't excuse criminality, but we're all a product of our environment. Okay, so with these guys in particular, a lot of these Central American gang members, um, you know, I would ask this guy, how how did how did it come about that you were you were born in some grass hut outside of San Salvador, and you know, at some point a mama held you in her arms and loved you, and now you're in East LA and you just chop this guy's head off. Uh and you know, and I would, you know, now I'm doing all these interviews in my second language in Spanish, which makes it even more difficult. But eventually they would open up and tell me their story, and the majority of times what what you would find out is that at the root of all this, you know, his actions, his family members were being controlled by the MS-13 back in El Salvador. So if he failed on his missions, they would absolutely kill his family. So that gives you that gives you a little more you could use empathy, but certainly understanding. But under yeah, you know, as to why they're doing what they're doing.

SPEAKER_03 16:58

Yeah. So they would be part of a situation where they're like, you're gonna do this, or we will I'll never forget the first El Salvadorian I interviewed.

SPEAKER_05 17:08

Um his job when he was a kid back in El Salvador, uh, you know, his his family were they were cattle ranchers, and you know, when the cattles would come into slaughter, he was the knife guy. They taught him, and he would he would slit their throats to bleed them out, you know, but for and then they would be processed for meat, and that's all he did all day. So if you do that all day, you kind of get a little numbed to death after a while. So he was specifically sought out and chosen by MS-13. Um, and and he was doing some real bad things when he got here, obviously. But again, his they had his family back there.

SPEAKER_03 17:43

So take me then to because as an actor and you get into character, you you you learn your lines, you you have for me, I have like a journal or sorry, I write a history that I memorize and stuff that I can create this other personality. That's when I'm wearing makeup and there's they call cut, and I can forget a line or I can you know miss a beat, but for you, it's pretty much the same thing, except it's real life, and you can never miss a beat or you're dead. Yeah. So what was that learning, what was that learning curve like?

SPEAKER_05 18:15

You know, I learned I learned undercover uh from the way you're supposed to learn it, from doing the very basics, the very small stuff, building blocks, you know, up to what we would call the big time, long-term embedded undercover operations. So from the day I had that conversation with that DEA agent in the Bronx uh to the day that I actually did my first undercover deal was eight years. So I spent about seven years on the streets um just as a regular, as a federal agent, doing in regular investigations, human trafficking, um drug investigations, some gun investigations, fugitive investigations, kicking doors in, uh doing, you know, the regular stuff. Until I finally uh, you know, and I learned early on when I got in that ATF was the agency I needed to get to to work undercover. They were the Cowboys, greatest undercover program in the world, and that's where I needed to be. But it took me that long.

SPEAKER_03 19:17

Was this post the Koresh thing, David Koresh? When that incident happened, uh that yeah, Waco. Waco, yeah.

SPEAKER_05 19:24

Yes, yeah. Um that happened while I was with another agent. Oh wow, wow. So when they finally opened up, I was in Puerto Rico on the fugitive task force, and uh 1997 ATF finally opened up, and they were just hiring one class of people who were already special agents so that we didn't have to go through the first half of the academy. And uh, you know, I put in, I was hired. You know, I wanted to go to the big city, and you know, because I had worked in LA and New York and Puerto Rico, I wanted to go to a big city to really jump in with the undercover work, and they they sent me to Savannah, Georgia. And uh, you know, I was uh I was disappointed with the location, but I was gonna take the I don't care if they said Fairbanks, I was you know, I just want to be an ATF agent because I wanted to work undercover. Yeah, and uh I I just I lucked out my first partner in Savannah, uh Julio Delgado, incredible undercover. And he had me do back then when you signed on with ATF, you got a gun and a badge. Your your academy date might have been six months in the future, but they put you on the street right away and you started working. So my first partner said, You want to work undercover? I said, Yes, I do. He goes, All right, you're gonna do a deal today. My first day on the job. And uh I go do the drug deal. I was buying a gun.

SPEAKER_04 20:41

Wow.

SPEAKER_05 20:41

Now have you ever done that in your life? Never. Wow. Now I had seven years of law enforcement behind me, but never any undercover work.

SPEAKER_03 20:47

Yeah, and are you wired and all that sort of stuff?

SPEAKER_05 20:49

Yeah. So he said, Listen, you're gonna meet an informant uh at a crystal, it's a like a White Castle version, the South has crystal burger down here.

SPEAKER_04 20:56

Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 20:57

And uh you're gonna buy a gun from this guy. He's a gang member, he's a convicted felon, and he's stolen a gun we think is stolen. So I said, All right, yeah, point me in a direction, tell me what to do. He gave me 300 bucks. He said, This guy, he wants, he's asking 250 bucks. The informant's gonna introduce you, and then you just buy the gun. Simple. Was your heart pounding?

SPEAKER_03 21:16

Oh, yeah. Oh, God. Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 21:17

My heart's pounding is thinking about it. So I uh, you know, they wired me up, you know, had a cover team. The cover team was set outside like real-life tropic thunder.

SPEAKER_03 21:25

Like it's like, you know. Right, right, right. It's like you're on the Alexearch. Are you talking yourself like okay, running through the game plan of what because it's life and death, this guy could pull a gun on you and I'll tell you what, I was more nervous that all these other people were listening to me, my peers, these agents.

SPEAKER_05 21:42

Oh, wow. And I didn't want to say something stupid or let them down. Yeah. I was more nervous about that than I was the actual deal, right? So when I walked into the uh to the Crystal Burger, um, the inform I had seen pictures of the informant, so I knew who he was. He walks right up to me and he said, Listen. Listen, this is so-and-so introduces me to this huge guy. Guy was 6'5, maybe, big, huge gang banger guy. Uh and he t you know, he tells the guy my name, and the informant runs out the door. So now it's just me and me and the dude. And you know, I don't know how what's supposed to happen with this. And the guy tells me, hey man, go in the bathroom. So I walk into the bathroom. He comes in behind me. It's it's noon. Tons of people in the restaurant. You know, it's a it's a bathroom in a fast food restaurant. So there's a sink, uh, there's a urinal, and there's a commode. He opens the door to the commode to the toilet and says, Go on in. So I walk in, and uh he walks in behind me and shuts the door and latches it. So I turn around. Now I'm straddling the toilet, and he's he's right here. The two of us staring at each other. And now I'm thinking to myself, all right, this is what I wanted to do. It's my first day. I, you know, I finally got this opportunity, and I've already made some bad decisions.

SPEAKER_03 22:57

Because my options right now are the good news, if you're gonna shit yourself, you have a toilet. Right there. Absolutely.

SPEAKER_05 23:04

Right there. Um, so you know, and I'm just thinking to myself, how am I gonna get this big fucker's head into that toilet?

SPEAKER_03 23:11

If it's like things slow down for you a little bit, like you're starting to have like rely on your training, be like, okay, here because it's like, how do you prepare, how do you train somebody for a situation like this where you're like Well, the problem is I I I had had no undercover training at all at this point.

SPEAKER_05 23:26

Yeah, so I'm saying, like, you're just you're you're trial by fire. So that's it. You know, I'm just thinking, how I'm gonna what am I gonna do with this guy when it breaks?

SPEAKER_03 23:34

And this is not in the playbook where they're like, he might bring you into a toilet, into a stall, like so, and they're listening, going, okay.

SPEAKER_05 23:41

So, but fortunately he was there to do the deal, man. He I knew a gun was coming out because it was a gun deal. You know, he pulls a gun out of his waistband and uh he says, All right, this is what I got. I said, Okay, man. I pull the money out, I just give him the 300, right? He wanted 250. I gave him a $50 tip because I just want to get out of here. And uh he gives me the gun, we walk out, and now um, you know, we we walk out of the bathroom, and I'm now I'm thinking to myself, what's the protocol here? Are we supposed to break bread? Do I sit down with him? Yeah, do we talk? Do I try to get more information? And then I said, you know what? Fuck this. I ran out the door, just like the informant had run out the door. Yeah, jumped in my car and took off. Yeah. And I remember, you know, we had a set place that I, you know, I let the cover team know everything went well, it's all good. You know, we're gonna meet back at the spot. And when I was driving away from that deal, I I had put the gun in the console, and I remember looking at this gun, and it was the greatest feeling I'd ever had in my life. I'm looking at this gun thinking, you know what? Like, I don't know this gun's story, but it's probably been through a lot of hands. Yeah, maybe it's killed a lot of people, yeah. Maybe it's you know been involved in robberies and assaults, who knows? I just took it off the street. Like, no one's gonna get hurt again with this gun because it's going into evidence it'll be destroyed. And that was the hook. That was my that was my crack, that was my high. Yeah. And from that day on, for the next two decades, I never stopped.

SPEAKER_03 25:03

Now, by taking on characters like this and and being surrounded by such darkness and and stuff, how much of that bled into your into your personal life? Like how how do you how do you take playing a character and convincing yourself that you're this person and to to be there and and the darkness of that, like how did that because you you got married? Okay. Um, and and was was there a learning curve for your wife to understand what you did and and and how you would have to go and do some things and like how did you manage that? That's such a fascinating. So I I I didn't manage it well.

SPEAKER_05 25:43

I was I was a failure. Uh it it it is impossible to be a really successful undercover agent and be a really successful parent and spouse. It's impossible. So to answer your question, yeah, I totally immersed myself in that world. Uh I you know, it was and I didn't realize that until it was too late, and I'm now looking back, I realized it. Uh so I I jumped into that world, and uh it gets very difficult to separate yourself, to turn it off, to go home and just turn it off. Uh, you know, you look like you look really bad, yeah, you you have an attitude, you can see it, it's on your face. Um you can't.

SPEAKER_03 26:28

You're becoming who they who they work with, so that's not like they're the light of the world. They're you know, there's it, there's this darkness and heaviness that you've got to sort of bring into so they buy that what you're doing is I mean, there were times where I was living with these people, you know, day and night.

SPEAKER_05 26:43

So yeah, to just go home for a weekend and you know be dad and and and be husband is is difficult. And uh I you know I didn't manage it well. Yeah. Um how could you though? Yeah, it's yeah, it's it's a difficult thing. Uh again, my and people ask me what advice I would have for you know young men and women who want to work undercover. My best advice is stay single.

SPEAKER_03 27:06

Wow.

SPEAKER_05 27:06

You know, stay single while you're doing it. Yeah. Wait, wait till you're done with it, too.

SPEAKER_03 27:11

Is there a a movie that you've seen that got it close to being right?

SPEAKER_05 27:15

The departed. Leonardo DiCaprio in the departed.

unknown 27:18

Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 27:19

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 27:20

Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 27:20

I thought he nailed it. Other than that, no.

SPEAKER_03 27:23

But well, because I feel like going out what you just said there, that makes sense because that like that first time when he goes into that um where they asked him about cranberry juice or whatever, you thought that's the guy. But it's just like I feel like Scarciese you really captured like the adrenaline of the guy going in, the tension of like sitting down. And so when you're in those situations and you know you've got to get to a certain guy, is it all about the time that you spend there? And and because you've got to you've got to clock everybody, remember everything you said, remember every conversation that you've in there. And this is not something you read in textbooks or no. But you just as you're doing like I'm I'm good at this. Um and the and the agency is like, Yeah, we're gonna push you deeper and deeper into this.

SPEAKER_05 28:06

You know, it uh the weeding out process for undercovers, because a lot of people want to work undercover.

SPEAKER_03 28:11

Yeah, but you know, less than TV. It looks cool on TV.

SPEAKER_05 28:15

Less than less than one percent of law enforcement ever works undercover.

SPEAKER_03 28:18

Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 28:19

Um, and and you get weeded out real quick. If you weren't meant for it, you find out right away that it's not your thing. And I I've you know, I know a lot of great agents who will tell you, hey man, I tried it. It just wasn't my thing. I wasn't built for it, I wasn't meant to do it. You know, it was the one thing in my life that I was really good at, and I knew I was I was meant to do it. Um but you don't just you know, so I had one uh when I was in LA, I had met a bunch of ATF guys. I'd worked with them on the LAPD Rampart Task Force, and you know, these guys were cowboys, man. They had the look, the swagger, uh, the stories, you know, the shootouts. So I already knew of these guys. And and at that point, these guys had gotten in, they were in the undercover program, they were traveling all over the country doing these long-term, deep embedded undercover operations, and that's where where I wanted to be. That's what I wanted to do.

SPEAKER_03 29:13

But again, because right now you were just doing like drug stuff and things in Georgia and everything.

SPEAKER_05 29:18

Yeah, I was doing it the way you're supposed to do it. My partner had me doing it the way you're, you know, you you it's building blocks. So I was doing gun deals in alleyways, I was buying drugs in the you know, shopping mall, parking lots, right? You know, car washes and all that, and just kind of building a resume. But while you're doing that, you're learning. Yeah, you know, it's non stop. And and looking back on it, those are the most dangerous things I did in my career, right? It's once you've been in with the mafia for a year or or a biker gang, it it's really not as dangerous as you think it would be.

SPEAKER_04 29:51

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_05 29:52

The most dangerous thing you can do is get into someone else's car who you don't really know much about, who's gonna sell you some drugs and or some guns, and they know you have money on you. You know, that's when I had guns stuck in my face, and you know, that's when the shootouts happened. That's when things would go south. Uh, you know, the long-term stuff compared to that was relatively, relatively uh peaceful. Yeah. Probably not peaceful is probably not the right word, but but uh I would say, yeah, yeah, less dangerous, yeah. So go ahead.

SPEAKER_00 30:24

Yeah, just to go off of that, I just kind of wanted to know what was like the closest near death, you know, situation you kind of were put in in those scenarios.

SPEAKER_05 30:35

You know, countless times, um, you know, it it wasn't because you know they they thought you were a cop. It was always because they were gonna rob you. It was a rip right from the beginning. They knew you were showing up, you know, and especially as the drug amounts started going up. And you know, now I wasn't buying an ounce of cocaine. Now I I was buying half a kilo, a kilo. So when they know you're showing up with $10,000, with $15,000, sometimes they're like, hey man, even though we've already done four deals with this guy, we're gonna rip him on this fifth one. Yeah, there's no honor among thieves. So there were multiple times when I would show up, and wherever the, if you were in going into whether it was the hood, whether it was a trailer park, whether it was a vehicle, and they just take a gun out, stick it in your face, and say, give us some money. Give me the money. And uh probably the the worst one, it was in a vehicle, gun stuck in my face. Uh, and I just really felt like this guy was gonna kill me no matter what, even if he got the money.

SPEAKER_02 31:35

Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 31:35

And and it, you know, my the only option I had, because he was foolishly like a lot of bad guys don't realize that it's it's actually safer when you're jacking someone to keep a little distance.

SPEAKER_04 31:48

Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 31:48

He had it right up to my head.

SPEAKER_04 31:49

Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 31:50

And I was able to pin it up against the hood of the car.

SPEAKER_04 31:53

Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 31:54

And we ended up in a wrestling match inside the front seat of this vehicle, which to me felt like about 20 minutes when it was probably maybe 45 seconds in reality until the cover team was able to get in and stop it. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 32:12

Wow.

SPEAKER_05 32:13

And they stopped him.

SPEAKER_03 32:15

For we did did you need a beat after that, or were you did were you like, I want to go deeper in it? I never took a beat.

SPEAKER_04 32:22

Really?

SPEAKER_05 32:23

None of none of the guys I work with ever took a beat. Wow. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 32:30

Jason, you better answer. We're calling Jason, who's the owner of Purex. You better answer.

SPEAKER_01 32:35

So Pure X is really unique because uh, you know, we're we're taking the white love customer, uh, the the actors, the elite athletes that have always had access to some of the best medications in the world, best treatment programs, implementation, coaching. Uh we've made it available to the masses.

SPEAKER_03 32:52

All right, Jason, thank you so much. Thanks for being a sponsor of the show. Um, make sure you go to www.purerx.co. Go do it now. I promise you. By summertime, you're gonna be so shredded, you're gonna be wearing your spado, and that package of yours is gonna be looking glorious. If you get a truck, or you do off-roading, do any sort of add-ons to some sort of pavement princess that you might have. I highly recommend going to Total Off-Road. I go to the one here in Charleston and I go see Dan and TJ and the rest of the crew there. They are the best people in the world to do anything, any modifications, any build on your four-wheeler that you have. We all work really hard for our money, and what we want at the end of the day is quality service. It's a huge honor to have them, one of the sponsors of the show. I'm forever grateful for all the work that they do. Go check out Total Off-Road. They are all across the country. Anything to do with off-roading, those are your guys. It was always the next one's gonna be bigger and better. When you when you go into these situations, like you have to like, but it's it's portrayed in like the movies and stuff, like Carlita's away and stuff like that. Like you build a relationship with these guys, you become them, you become their friends, their confidants, their their thing. What is does that cross your mind while you're as you're being brought through these, you know, intimate moments with with these people of like the journey that I'm going on with this person? He's doing bad shit. He's got it everything, but but that that relationship unknowingly that this guy has, because how's portrayed like with Johnny Depp and uh um Pacino? Yep, it's like this heartbreaking thing, but it isn't, it isn't because it's a bad guy. So you're doing something, but uh you're a human being at the end of the day. That's right. You know, was there a case like that for you where you had to really become close with someone and multiple times, yeah.

SPEAKER_05 34:42

And you know, it is uh the betrayal wears you down over and over again.

SPEAKER_03 34:48

But it's not it's because it's it's it's like betrayal, but it's it's you're you're doing something that is but it I understand, yeah. It's a betrayal for a cause.

SPEAKER_05 34:58

It's still betrayal. Yeah. Uh and and you know, one thing that we talk about a lot, like me and a lot of the undercover guys, is that none of these guys were all bad, right? Yeah. So doing some bad things, putting guns on the street, putting drugs on the street, whatever, whatever they were into, uh, home invasions. But a lot of them were, you know, they good fathers, yeah, right? Family guys, yeah, um, good friends, but they had a dark side. Yeah. So so you know, you know, what's your goal as an undercover, right? Your goal as an undercover agent is to gather enough evidence against your target to stop them from doing what they're doing. And and that means to put them in prison for the rest of their life, which is the worst thing you can do to someone, right? Yeah. You're take to take someone's freedom away is the worst thing. I would rather be dead than be in a prison cell for the rest of my life. So that's about the worst thing you can do. And that's your goal when you go in. So once you get in and you start building a relationship and you start building trust and you get to know these people, and they they get to know you, not the real version of you, but partially, yeah. Um you can't help it. I mean, we're all human. You know, you there's feelings. Oh, right? There's feelings. Some of these guys you start to like. You know, some of these guys you know they would probably jump in front of a bullet for you before some of the people in your office would. Yeah. So having to betray them at the end, because that's always the end of it, right? Betrayal is always the end. That's how it, that's how it ends, that's how it finishes up every time. So to have to look at them in court, you know, after that, maybe years of of building trust and building a relationship, and then to have to look at them and face them in court or at the time of their arrest, it it became a real tough thing for me. And uh there was one case, uh, it was uh out of Chicago, and it was a uh mafia case that also involved outlaw bikers, and I had one particular target in that case, and it it was the hardest case I I ever was a part of. Um there was no informant involved, so I had to go in cold and just build a relationship from scratch with this really smart guy. He he was not a convicted felon, he was into every crime that they they've ever written on the books. Yeah, he had never been caught. He was a smart guy. The FBI had sent three informants at him, two of them and they were childhood friends, two of them were dirty cops, and he sniffed them all out. I mean, he was sharp. And uh, you know, I spent a year with this guy, uh met his family, his son, he was a good father, his wife. Um he brought me into his mafia family, his Italian family. And uh and and and it was really hard to to to gain his trust. It was the hardest I ever had to work. And uh the the way they closed the case out, what they asked me to do at the end, uh that that's when the betrayal hit me like like a brick wall, man.

SPEAKER_03 38:08

Whoa. Do they like with military and you know, their their therapy you go, like the trauma, the the things that you go to, like was that something along the way that was offered to you, or do you or did you sort of like push it down and and you know, push it down inside yourself, or was it when you go through that, like that scene in the departed where DiCaprio is going to talk to the psychiatrist? Was that did you ever were those rules implemented yet?

SPEAKER_05 38:36

Or yeah, we had a psychiatrist and uh I believe at the time the the rule was if you were undercover for more than a year, uh you know, you it was mandatory to see the psychiatrist after. And uh, but i I'll just be honest with you, none of us took it seriously. Fair enough. We we gave them the answers they wanted to hear so we could jump right into the next case, man. Yeah. Because if you gave the wrong answers, then you're they're gonna report that and you you're you're done working undercover.

SPEAKER_03 39:01

And and and because it was so you were in a sense, we're so immersed into the world, you'd rather keep on keeping on than have to tell than than not read the play that you know.

SPEAKER_05 39:11

Man, the only thing I cared about was my next case. I was gonna buy more guns, buy more drugs, and lock up more people.

SPEAKER_03 39:17

Well, now the this book here, the store, you've written two books, but so the storefront thing. Now, now can you explain just what the storefront storefront uh um what that means exactly?

SPEAKER_05 39:30

Yeah, so a storefront is a it's a business, a fictitious business that is set up by law enforcement in in a place where there's an identified problem with either guns, drugs, stolen merchandise, you know, whatever the problem is. Uh for us it was always about guns. And and this business is controlled, it is staffed by undercover law enforcement officers, okay, with with the intent of kind of um, you know, spinning a web and getting the bad guys, you know, your targets to come to you. All right, and and you're gonna gather evidence, you know, through undercover transactions to secure indictments and convictions against, you know, the offenders so that you stop whatever's going on. In our case, you know, it was always, you know, these are areas with gangs or whoever it might be that are putting guns on the street, and we would get all the statistics to show look what's going on in this city. We would set this up, we would run them for minimum one year, and we would just embed ourselves in the community.

SPEAKER_03 40:34

Now, with so you would go to like the actual neighborhood, start like a pizza shop or some type of thing, and then slow burn, try and gather the information, information, information, build that web out. You know, we would be strategic about the type of business.

SPEAKER_05 40:48

Yeah. Uh, and and we would always try to, you know, the more the general public was coming in, the more dangerous it is, and the more problems you would have. So, so we we would set up these businesses uh where it would really be tailored to uh you know what we knew these guys were into. Um, you know, my first one was a tattoo shop. Uh it was incredibly successful. Um, you know, our the tattoo artist was an informant. I was the uh manager, and uh, you know, we had a couple other undercovers working there, and we didn't really know what we were doing. You know, this was the first one. Um, you know, so it was all pretty much based on the informant. Now he had just gotten out of prison, and he he had agreed to do this because he had messed up and he didn't want to go back to prison. He knew all the guys, he knew all the gangs, he had inked all of them in prison. They all trusted him. So when we opened our doors, we had instant business. Yeah. We had the right people coming in. And uh, you know, at that point, you know, his only job was to get them in the door. At that point, our job, you know, we took over and it was our job to actually start to talk with them, get them to trust us, and get them to, instead of putting those guns they were selling on the street, get them to sell those guns to us.

SPEAKER_03 42:03

Was there uh like a North Star for you or a mentor in the undercover world that like because of this in one individual like sort of showed you the ropes, or was that one voice that you could lean on while you were like immersed? Oh, yeah.

SPEAKER_05 42:16

The guy who, in my eyes, the guy who pretty much wrote the book on undercover work, his name's Chris Bayless. Um he's also a friend of Sid's. And he uh, you know, he's probably maybe uh eight or nine years older than me. He's one of those guys I was telling you about who you know I knew about, and you know that that's I wanted to be where he was. And uh he he definitely mentored me uh from the start. And he was the guy you would call when you weren't sure what to do next.

SPEAKER_04 42:45

Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 42:45

Because he had the answers. You know, he had been there, he had done that, he had infiltrated biker gangs, he had infiltrated uh, you know, violent street gangs. Um he he was a wizard with these home invasion crews. And uh he he ended up eventually like coming in helping me out on a lot of these storefront operations. And you know, I was so lucky to be able to work with him for years and years. And you know, when I was at my darkest time at the end of my career, he was standing right there beside me. Can you talk about your your darkest time? Sure, sure. Um, you know, my career did not end well.

SPEAKER_02 43:17

Okay.

SPEAKER_05 43:17

Um, you know, I was under investigation, uh, I had really messed up what we were talking about before. You know, I'd gotten so immersed into that world, I had uh, you know, kind of let the all my my family, my friends, all that go. That had all gone by the wayside, and I was saving the world. Uh I didn't need them. And uh when you're living in that world, bad behavior is naturally happens, right? Because everyone around you is is is engaging in bad behavior. And uh, you know, it leads to things like excessive drinking, violent behavior, uh, infidelity, and and you know, that that had happened with me. Um And I got jammed up over it. Um and you know, it it ended up, you know, I was under investigation in the OIG office of inspector general. Uh that was the end of my undercover career. And, you know, like I told you before, I didn't really want to be in law enforcement if I wasn't working undercover. Yeah. You know, but at this point, I had worked for a quarter of a century.

SPEAKER_03 44:25

And, you know, luckily for a quarter of a century, too, perspective with my opinion to you, working in that high stress of a job with your your your your stress levels, like your hormones are just flying off the charge always. Oh man. That is like like 3x on anybody's life. Like that is constant, you know, pedal to the metal, you know, running, you know, on overdrive the entire time. So that that's one person was like, oh, that's not that long, but that's for that amount of stress and that sort of what you were doing to your body just internally on those stress levels, that's an insane amount of time.

SPEAKER_05 44:56

So my mentor, Chris Bayless, uh, you know, during those days, he he he pretty much said what you just said in a different way. He said, Listen, you've been living in the red for too long. He said, Your RPMs are about 9,000. Yeah. He said, and the engine can't take it for that long. He said, You're you're gonna break down. You know, you gotta get out of the red, you gotta get back down to 1,500 RPMs.

SPEAKER_03 45:20

Did that did you feel when he said that to you, was he the first person to like point that out to you? Yes. And answered something like, Did you internally know you're you're running in the red? No. No, until so he was like, he was that father figure that was like he'd been there. So how do you then take your foot off the and and and and make that adjustment, take care of yourself when you're when you're still within it?

SPEAKER_05 45:44

Well, at that point, it was easy for me because I they had taken me out. I was never gonna be able to work undercover again. Like I said, you know, under I was under investigation. They ATF did the right thing. They they moved me to uh the National Center for Explosives and Research Training in Huntsville, Alabama, um, you know, just as a nice soft place to land while the dust settled, yeah, uh, for the most part. And, you know, by this time I was eligible to retire. Uh, and I wasn't even close to being ready to retire, but I was eligible. And uh, you know, so now I'd been moved away from my family and all that. Um things weren't looking good. You know, I was worried because the government was coming after me. And, you know, I I was not only worried, you know, obviously about my marriage, you know, my relationship with my kids, my son seeing terrible things written about me, you know, on the internet. Well and uh my freedom, because you know, I know when the government, when they set their sights on someone, they they they get them. Oh yeah. Um, my pension, my health care, all that, right? So so you know, especially after after uh Chris, you know, talked to me and and kind of brought me back down to earth and and told me, listen, you have to rebuild everything that you kind of destroyed.

SPEAKER_04 47:07

Whoa.

SPEAKER_05 47:08

He was in, you know, you you can't do that with words, you do that with actions, and that takes time. That's heavy. Yeah. So so you know, I wanted to at least wait until I was cleared uh to retire. I didn't want to go out under that cloud, you know, and and you know, OIG finished their two-year investigation and they had no findings against me. So as soon as that came out two years of paranoia because I had always been in control, right? You know, I had always been in control. What cases take two years that they put, you know, well, what the government does when they don't have anything good on you, any but they want you nothing concrete, they go after false statements. So they just keep they just so so they went back ten years into my history of all my court testimony, every form I had ever filled out and signed to. Just looking for something. Just looking for something. Wow. And uh, you know, I was getting calls from people all over the place. Yeah, hey man, I just got interviewed by OIG about you, you know, that kind of thing. And and again, that made my paranoia go insane, you know, and and it got to a point, you know, at the beginning of the investigation when everything came out where I was sitting in my room, looking out the window, peeking out the curtains, thinking every car was doing surveillance on me. And I had my my Glock, my service weapon in my mouth, just trying to come up with a reason not to do it. Jeez. And uh, you know, my my wife dragged me to a psychiatrist who basically, you know, ended up telling me, listen, you know, after all the betrayal that you've been a part of, if you didn't have some issues, I'd think you were a psychopath. Yeah, you mean that. Yeah. So, you know, there was long, man, it was a lot of uh lot of therapy, you know, and a lot of uh soul searching.

SPEAKER_04 48:56

Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 48:57

And uh, you know, I had to climb out of a deep, deep hole at the end of my career.

SPEAKER_03 49:01

And a hole too that you in a sense thought that you were doing good, like in a sense, in a in a sense, like I I your intention wasn't to like, hey, I'm gonna go down this hole, but the world that you had became a part of in order to do good got the best of you, in a sense. That's that's uh I mean if you talk about empathy, it's like you feel you feel for any person in that world that you know, but you've probably I I I I heard one story where um uh about you where you there was a gentleman that was paying you to go after his wife. Yes, kill his wife. And for you to be later down the road, some girl is looking at you as a waitress is looking at you. And you've just you can tell that that part of the story. So you've there's this guy was paying you to kill his wife. Yes.

SPEAKER_05 49:56

Yeah, and then yeah, I you know, I had done a bunch of these murder for higher cases, posing as a as a hitman, and uh this one was really different. Was a very prominent doctor in uh St. Simon's Island, Georgia, uh, who had a murky past, but part of the good old boy network down there. His first wife had died under real mysterious circumstances. She drowned in a bathtub at their house in like eight inches of water. And uh yeah, but the coroner was a buddy of his, right? We found out, you know, there was a lot of like the Murdoch things that were longer. Exactly, very similar. And um, so you know, he had marital problems, he had married a nurse, um uh, you know, he was one of those doctors who was using a little bit too much of his own medication, um, had run into financial problems with the wife and all that. Uh but it it was a really weird situation. On one of his properties, he had a guy who was a firearms instructor at the Federal Law Enforcement Training Center, which is right down there. Yeah. And uh they had become good friends. And this guy had a this guy's past, he had like one of these little bit of a secret squirrel special ops past. So he was in that, in that world, the doctor knew he was in that world. And this guy used to work on the doctor's guns and all that. So they had a relationship, and one day he just came up to this guy and said, Listen, I gotta get rid of my wife, man. I know you're in that world. You know, do you you know someone who could help me out? And this guy was like, hey man, you know, that's not me. But the doctor asked him several more times, and and this guy did the right thing. He was vilified uh at the trial, of course, but he did the right thing. He went to his the closest ATF office, which happened to be Savannah, Georgia, and uh asked to speak to the supervisor and said, Listen, here's the situation. I really think this guy's serious. So my supervisor called me in, had me talk to this guy, and I gave him my number, my undercover number, and I said, Listen, don't do anything, but I said, if the doctor asks you again, if he approaches you again, tell him you might have a guy and then give him my number eventually. And he he said, Okay, and he left. And you know, this stuff kind of stuff happens more than you really think it does. Uh, but I usually it turns into nothing, right? Because guys just talk. You're venting. A lot of guests. And uh, yeah, I've kind of forgotten about it. And weeks later, uh, I'm at the supermarket with my wife, and my undercover phone rings, and a number I didn't recognize, I answer it, and he's like, Hey man, it's the doc. Can you talk? And I said, Oh boy, yeah. I said, Hey man, let me get somewhere where I can talk. And uh I said, call me back in 20 minutes. And uh, this was still back in the days where I had to run home real quick and get my little recording device, put it in my ear, put the phone on. And man, he called me back and he was serious. Um so we had uh we had several meetings in person.

SPEAKER_03 52:47

Uh we had multiple phone calls. What's that like when you're sitting across from somebody and they're stuck they're telling you to go kill their wife? And they're not, there's no like there's you there's no soul there.

SPEAKER_05 53:00

Like just it's yeah, so like what is that like? This guy was stone cold, man. Just kill emotionless stone cold. Um you know, and and uh a murder for hire is very usually the uh you know it's gonna go to trial. They all go to trial, they're gonna raise the entrapment issue, and usually your only evidence is the words that come out of their mouth. It's the only evidence you have. So, so from having done prior ones, I knew I have to get some evidence that I can put on the table, something tangible, yeah. So get him to write down her name, her number, where she works, get a get him to give you a picture of her, because at least that's tangible evidence that you can show a jury. Yeah, yeah, right? That that it's more than just his words, right? We met, why else would he write down where she works? Why else would he give me her picture, right? So I was able through these meetings to talk him into uh giving me, he wrote down on a on a patent paper, you know, all her info, her name, you know, her her the address where she works, all that. And uh then I kind of a Hail Mary, I told him, I said, I told him about how I was gonna do it. I was gonna make it look like just a robbery and I was gonna shoot her, robbery going bad, and I was just gonna shoot her in the head. And then I said, hey, listen, man, if you have a clean gun that I can use just to throw away, I said, give it to me, man. And after I do it, I said, I'll either throw it down or I'll throw it in the intercoastal, right? Yeah. Our next meeting, he shows up with a 38-caliber Smith Wesson.

SPEAKER_03 54:26

That's your entrapment there.

unknown 54:28

Wow.

SPEAKER_03 54:29

Well, that's that's not entrapment. No entrapment.

SPEAKER_05 54:31

That's uh because if he hands you a gun, is that well, so I mean, obviously, it's a great piece of evidence because he just showed up, he's talking about me killing his wife, and I asked him to give me the gun to do, and he just showed up with a gun for me to kill his wife. Yeah. So um it the case went, it went really well. Um, you know, we had to pull her in before that because now we're a little bit worried. Maybe I'm not the only guy he's yeah, he's asking, right, for her own safety. And she had a young daughter, maybe 11 years old at the time, and you can imagine she had no clue. Yeah, all of a sudden she gets pulled out of work by a bunch of agents who tell her, We gotta talk, we need to go to a hotel room, and then they tell her, Listen, you know, your husband has hired an undercover hitman to kill you. Can you imagine hearing that those words? No, but she she refused to talk without her daughter there. So this little girl, talk about trauma, right? Childhood trauma, she's there. And uh she hears this, and this goes on for hours. Uh, but to her credit, she was able to pull herself together enough to make a recorded phone call to him, which was even more damning and I mean more great evidence that we had to put on the table. Uh, you know, because he went off on her on the phone call and said everything we wanted him to say. And uh so eventually, um shortly after that, uh, you know, she was put in protective custody, her and the daughter, and uh he was taken down, and he did go to trial. Um, here's the interesting thing about that case. When he called me, he was in St. Simon's Island, which is South Georgia, maybe 35 miles north of the Florida border. Okay. I was in Savannah, Georgia, which is probably what, 70 miles north of him. But when he called me, uh his cell phone signal bounced off a tower in Jacksonville back to my phone in Savannah. Oh, said that Interstate Nexus for federal jurisdiction.

SPEAKER_02 56:28

Oh, snap.

SPEAKER_05 56:29

Because usually we take these cases on a state level prior to that. Um, so the the U.S. attorney's office said, hey, we're gonna charge him federally with murder for hire because of that interstate nexus. No way. Okay, so he went to trial, had a great lawyer, yeah, got a lawyer out of Atlanta named Eddie Garland. He's a guy who got the football player Ray Lewis off after that stabbing in the Super Bowl. And the guy did a great job, but the jury still found the doctor guilty. Yeah. And uh so they appealed it. They didn't appeal it because they said he was innocent. They appealed it because they said that we fabricated federal jurisdiction because of this cell phone bouncing off a tower crossing a state line. And uh that case went all the way up to the grand uh to the Supreme Court and it actually made case law, which is a big deal.

SPEAKER_04 57:16

Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 57:16

So and and the uh Supreme Court made the decision that yes, just that phone in and of itself is a device in interstate commerce. So now, you know, because that now it's case law. So when you're working a case, then just using that phone in a murder for hire gives you federal jurisdiction.

SPEAKER_03 57:33

Which Yeah, uh now the part that I loved about the story was that was this as dark as that story was was years later at this restaurant.

SPEAKER_05 57:42

Years later, probably seven, eight years later, um I'm out on the boat with the family, and we pull up to a uh on Tybee Island, like a boat uh restaurant that's on the water, and uh tie up and go in, and there's this uh maybe 18, 19-year-old waitress um who's just absolutely staring at me. You know, I'm with the wife and kids. And uh I'm like, man, that's weird. My wife's like, yeah, I think she's staring at you. And uh eventually she comes over to the table and she's like, Um, you don't recognize me, Dee. I said, No, I don't. Um you know, and that's really scary. And then she says, Listen, you uh you saved my mother's life. You know, I'm I'm I'm not gonna say the woman's name, I'm so-and-so's daughter. And uh man, she just broke out crying. Oh man, yeah. And uh, you know, I stood up, hugged her, and uh, you know, it was really the only time in my career where I had ever really gotten to interface with a victim. Because, you know, as an undercover, you go in and you do your job and you blow out of town, and that's it. You know, that's it. You know, and it was time I I actually had to interface, you know, with an actual victim, and it was powerful.

SPEAKER_03 58:49

If you could go back and redo one case or relive one, what would that be?

SPEAKER_05 59:00

Uh it would be the uh second storefront undercover storefront operation I did where I made the very bad decision to hire one of our future defendants to work in the store with us. Um this was at the beginning of the case. Um he was a guy who had sold me some drugs and guns, and he was he was a three-striker at that point, and so he was 20-year minimum. Um but his girlfriend had approached us because he was on parole, and she said, Listen, he really needs a job as a condition of his parole. Could he work at the store? And this was our second operation. It started out a little bit slow, and I'm thinking, man, what a great way to endear ourselves to the criminal community. They all know this guy. Yeah, and if they walk in the door and see him, gives us instant credibility. We're good. This is really gonna make our business our business the business of crime of buying guns and drugs pick up. You know, he's instant, yeah, instantly we're we you know, we have credibility. But of course, there's other problems, right? You you've brought in a future defendant to an undercover operation where you know we got a cover team on the other side of the wall, there's hidden equipment. We can never come out of roll now in between deals because he's around. Um, but I was so greedy at the time, I you know, uh I decided to do it, and we hired him. And uh he worked at that store for almost eight months with us and actually became part of the team. You know, he knew what we were up to. Yeah, he just thought we were gangsters, and he ended up not only helping us, not only bringing in business, and when I say business, I mean our dirty business, but negotiating deals with us, like negotiating price. He thwarted two robberies because every every storefront operation I did, we were burglarized and robbed, and it was always by the same guys that we were dealing with. Yeah, they would come in at night with ski mess on. We would know who they were because they had the same clothes on, we had just dealt with them, yeah, but they knew we had a lot of cash. And again, no honor among thieves, right? Yeah, two times this happened on that operation, two times he jumped up and stood in between them and us and talked them down. You don't want to do this. And and eventually, I mean, we all got to know this guy really well and really like him. I mean, we really liked this guy. Again, he was a product of his environment. You know, he he was what he where he came from. Yeah. But man, what a what a great disposition this guy had. And uh, you know, the whole undercover team, it wasn't just me. Yeah, even the cover team who was listening had gotten to like this guy. And uh, you know, so when the operation started, you know, we knew there was about a month left and we were gonna shut it down. Again, now at this point, he's part of the team. Yeah. And now we're all looking at each other, going, man, you know, when this thing's over, we're all gonna move on to the next operation. Petey's going to prison for the rest of his life. And uh we had some real tough conversations about that.

SPEAKER_04 1:02:06

Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 1:02:07

And we we even tried to talk to the U.S. Attorney's Office of maybe to see about not charging this guy, and they were like, No, with that kind of criminal history, we have to.

SPEAKER_04 1:02:14

Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 1:02:15

And uh, you know, that betrayal and that that was I actually, for the first time in my career, went up on the stand and tried to talk the federal judge into doing a downward departure and giving him less time.

SPEAKER_04 1:02:28

Oh man.

SPEAKER_05 1:02:29

And uh, you know, the judge was was a real asshole. And uh he basically looked at me and said, This boy wasn't helping you because you're a federal agent. He was helping you because he thought you were a gangster just like he is, and he threw the book at him. And uh I could not look him in the eye in that courtroom. And you know, that it was one of the again, we keep going back to betrayal.

SPEAKER_04 1:02:52

Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 1:02:53

That betrayal really hurt me. One of the biggest regrets of my career.

SPEAKER_03 1:02:57

You know, with in sort of looking back at everything and and now with the state of the world that we're in, and you sort of got to see behind the curtains of what's what's going on. Like raising a family, America, just the the state of the the country in in sort of what's the everybody talks about like the doom and gloom. What's the what's the thing that you would say gives you hope?

SPEAKER_05 1:03:26

There are still good men and women who put the badge on every day and go out there to try and make our communities safer. Um unfortunately, they are not getting the support that they deserve because of politics. So unfortunately, law enforcement has been intermingled with politics. And that should never happen. Law enforcement should be separate. You know, Lady Justice has to be blind. Um and you know, we have good laws on our books. We don't need more laws. The ones we have plenty of laws.

SPEAKER_04 1:04:02

Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 1:04:02

They just need to be enforced impartially, you know, by good men and women. Uh and and the good men and women, they're still out there and they're still trying. But uh, you know, politics has has really got weaved its way into law enforcement, and uh it's it's made our streets a lot more dangerous.

SPEAKER_03 1:04:19

Yeah, and you would think with technology and all the stuff that we would be on on the other side of that. But there's always a mode of. And anytime there's politics involved in something, someone is getting paid off or whatever it is, it's it's it's like who's dirtier, the streets or you know, you know, it's like what is the system or the streets. Yeah, exactly. Which I'm sure was uh stuff that you had to deal with on a daily basis, and be like, you know, what these guys are doing, at least they're honest about it, you know, with their the criminals are honest. Like I'm a bad guy with the other people that are the higher ups that set the the bar.

SPEAKER_05 1:04:52

It's like you always question Yeah, you know, it's funny since I've I've kind of entered into this entertainment world here in my post-retirement, this whole world of Hollywood. I I I've discovered that um I didn't think it could get dirtier or worse than the government, but I think Hollywood might be.

SPEAKER_03 1:05:09

Oh, yeah.

SPEAKER_05 1:05:10

Uh yeah, even worse to do.

SPEAKER_03 1:05:11

It's it's a crazy, it is, it is a Hollywood is a is a different beast. I always say to people, it's like it's uh it's it's never, it's it never, I always think I've seen it all, and then it's something else happens. I'm like, what in that what what is going on? And it just it's its own beast. But what's great about the way the world is working now, like there's so many different ways to make your own platform, to have a voice, to have be able to make content.

SPEAKER_05 1:05:41

And I know we can't get into the details of this, but this book right now is being turned into a show in the process of yeah, it is being turned into a a uh multi season, hopefully, uh series on a major streaming network where they're gonna feature each. Each season will be a different storefront operation.

SPEAKER_03 1:06:03

That's amazing.

SPEAKER_05 1:06:04

And you know, with it obviously, when when I did these operations, I would bring in uh a different cast of undercover agents, depending on the area I was in and all. And you know, so it's really for Hollywood, it's a great uh opportunity. You can maybe keep some of the main characters and bring in new characters every season. And there's so many. If you read the book, you'll see there was a lot going on behind the scenes, turmoil in not only just in between the agents and the bad guys, but in between the age, the undercover agents themselves, fist fights, just you know, between the undercover agents and the supervision, and uh just a lot going on, way more than met, you know, than what meets the eye.

SPEAKER_03 1:06:47

Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 1:06:47

Now, where can people get the the book and where can they uh you can get the book storefronts thing on Amazon's a plus best place to go? Okay, we'll put it too in the show notes.

SPEAKER_03 1:06:56

Yeah, are you?

unknown 1:06:57

Hey, hey, talk about this thing more about the ETF and why the show is very helpful.

SPEAKER_05 1:07:01

Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah, perfect. You know, I'm I'm really looking forward and hopeful that the show is made and you know, and it's done well, and they've locked in a great writer. Uh, because ATF has a very negative image out there. Um, you know, we're known for our failures. Um you know, even one, even things that really weren't our failures, we've been blamed for. Yeah. You know, you brought up Waco. Yeah. Okay.

SPEAKER_03 1:07:28

That was the first time when I when I when I went and did uh Narcos, did for a season of Narcos, and I didn't really understand that whole world and bus. And so I would just do my research. So I just started going down from the Pablo to thing, and it was like all these highlights on the your clickbait on of like what it is. But that was the one, and then there was just a documentary or uh uh that uh Taylor uh Klish Kitch did uh yeah the one a bit, which is pretty intense. So and I don't remember I kind of remember it growing up as a kid, but there's like certain things where because you don't hear about the ATF all the time. Right. So and then when you do, it's you know it's bad.

SPEAKER_05 1:08:02

Yeah, you know, Waco again, it it was an ATF investigation, okay? And and think about it, you got this guy, this lunatic, David Kresh, who is stockpiling illegal weapons and who is also uh doing bad things, yeah, raping kids. Yeah, but that's me, right? A ATF did the investigation. Uh some mistakes were made, but it was actually the FBI who came in and you know, that's where the fire and everyone burned. I'm not trying to shift blame or say but we're known for that, right? Ruby Ridge, right? Uh I don't know if you're familiar with that. Randy Weaver up in uh it's actually, I think it's the anniversary yesterday, up in Idaho. Um, you know, his wife, his dog, his son, you know, were shot and killed. But once again, I'm not trying to shift blame. ATF did the investigation. An undercover ATF agent bought two sold-off shotguns from Randy Weaver, and and that was pretty much the end of ATF's involvement. It was the U.S. Marshals, you know, who were executing that warrant, you know, when the shootout happened and all that. But all you hear is ATF, right? You know, Fast and Furious. Um, you know, that now that was ATF's fault.

SPEAKER_07 1:09:07

Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 1:09:08

Um, you know, the gun running scandal where guns were going from America to Mexico, where unfortunately uh the Border Patrol agent was killed with one of those guns. But I'm not saying ATF doesn't have its issues, all federal agencies do, but man, the the work we the good work that we have done and that we continue to do so far outshines any failures, but you don't hear about it. People don't know about it.

SPEAKER_04 1:09:32

Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 1:09:33

ATF is terrible marketing uh uh people. Like they don't know how to market themselves and and sell themselves, which you shouldn't have to do as a law enforcement agency, but you do. Because that's you have to go to Congress and you have to get money for funding.

SPEAKER_02 1:09:47

Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 1:09:47

Um, you know, when the FBI makes a mistake and does something stupid, they go to Congress and say, Well, that wouldn't have happened if we had more money, and Congress gives them more money.

SPEAKER_03 1:09:55

Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 1:09:55

Um, ATF hasn't learned to do that. Yeah. So I'm hoping.

SPEAKER_03 1:09:58

Because even like SLED here in South Carolina, they're federally funded. They're federally funded by the Justice Department. Yeah, which is crazy. You would think ATF would be, you know, would have because I've gone up to the SLED unit, like that is they've got money. Like they've got some real money. But it's also too, it's like when you have these div the the divisions that are underfunded or under, it's like you're not preparing them to what they need when they go into these high stake situations. So it's like, and you and then you're upset that something happened. Yeah. You know, I mean, if you're gonna go up against the cartels, they have a lot of money.

SPEAKER_05 1:10:31

Yeah, right? You got to fight fire with a fire. You need to be well funded, yeah, you know, to conduct these investigations and these battles. So I'm really hoping this show is is gonna highlight the good, you know, what ATF really does. We take crime guns off the streets. We don't take guns from law-abiding citizens, we don't do that. We take crime guns from violent trigger pullers, and that's exactly what we did in these operations.

SPEAKER_03 1:10:55

That's great. And with the the writing of the script and getting to tell your story and and humanizing, I think anytime you can humanize someone's job and put to get to see it through their point of view is always interesting. Of like, oh wow, I get okay, I understand what this guy's going through. I can you can so with your voice with this, with the writer, is that's that's sort of been like a staple of like, I want to make sure that the boys are represented properly this time.

SPEAKER_05 1:11:23

Yes. You know, uh, you know, are they gonna make it Hollywood? You know, it's interesting. I talked to uh Steve Murphy and Javier Payne about narcos. They've they've been helping me along the way with this. And and you know, Steve Murphy will be the first to tell you, so will Javier. If you watch Narcos, 33% of it is exactly how it happened. Yeah, 33% is highly embellished. Yeah, 33% never happened. Yeah, I'm sure it's gonna be the same. But as long as, you know, I my my thing, you know, being involved in this is let's let's get the general picture out there that we were taking, you know, violent people off the street, uh, crime guns and dangerous drugs. That was our mission to make the community safer. Let's get that point across.

SPEAKER_03 1:12:06

You know, so we have the sec the second book here. Um I mean, obviously, first time writer on this one. Going into the second book, uh, why don't you tell me a little bit about that and and uh and what was your journey now that you've already got one in the can and and how did you approach this book?

SPEAKER_05 1:12:23

You know, I wanted to tell the story about uh the most successful confidential informant that I ever had during my career because it's such an amazing story. You know, the the public doesn't really know much about confidential informants and exactly the role they play in law enforcement. But you know, as an undercover agent, I can tell you that 95% of the time that I went into an investigation, into a case, I was introduced by an uh confidential informant. I was introduced into the the target group, you know, be it bikers, be it street gangs, you know, whoever it was. Uh a confidential informant is is just essential, you know, in in undercover investigations because they can go places where we can't go. You know, they they you know, we have a saying you don't find an informant in church. They're not angels. Sometimes they play both sides of the fence, but but they're a necessity. Uh they have different motivations. Sometimes, you know, it might be to stay out of prison. Sometimes it's financial, sometimes they're just getting paid. Uh my informant in this case, Ray Khan, his his motivation was to stay stay in the country. You know, he was he was here illegally. Uh you know, we got him on a real minor infraction. And his lawyer had come to me saying, Hey man, if you can do something to get his charges deferred and keep him in the country, he'll be the greatest informant you ever had. And I'm like, man, how is this Indian guy who he's never held a gun in his life, he he's never done any drugs, he doesn't know anything about the kind of crime that I'm going after. How is he gonna be my greatest informant? And this lawyer said, just trust me on this. So I, you know, I took a leap of faith, I took a gamble, and I did what and it was not easy, but we we got him uh paroled into the country, and I just brought him into my next storefront operation, and he hit the ground running and knocked it out of the park. Really? So the success of my last few storefront operations were all because of Raycon.

SPEAKER_03 1:14:25

And this is the book right here.

SPEAKER_05 1:14:26

Yep. And his story, just to tell you briefly, uh the incredible success that he had, it was like nothing I had ever seen, ATF had ever seen, the numbers, uh, the quality of defendants, he's bringing us cartel members, outlaw bikers, uh, street gang leaders. Well uh he even got us into the Italian mafia at one point. And the whole time, unbeknownst to us, one of the state agencies we're working with is investigating him for tax reasons. And you know, I as a as an undercover, you know informants are always doing something wrong. They shouldn't be, but you weigh it out. If a guy is bringing me people who are putting dangerous drugs and guns on the street, but he's committing some tax violation, I don't really care. Yeah. Right? I'm looking at what's better for the community.

SPEAKER_04 1:15:18

Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 1:15:19

This agency, particular, one guy in particular, had gotten obsessed with him, and it's always one guy. Always one guy. Yeah. Arrested him several times during these investigations. I had to keep getting him back out of jail. He had to start from scratch all over again. It snowballed eventually, and and when I went down at the end of my career, he was unprotected. He was indicted on State Rico charges, and he became a fugitive. He had to run. Um Luckily, he had a lot of money. It's a lot easier to be a fugitive when you're rich. Yeah. Uh, he hid out in New York City, and while his lawyers put it, kind of put a case together against the guy who had gone after him and found out he had taken bribes to go after him. Uh, you know, like $10,000 watches, plane tickets to Europe. And, you know, totally in a very ironic situation, the officer who had gone after him ends up getting indicted himself on Rico charges because of the bribery. And and Ray's able to kind of come back triumphantly uh back to Georgia, and still to this day, though, can't get legal status in the country. That that battle's still being fought.

SPEAKER_03 1:16:30

I mean, this is a movie or show in itself, too. I mean it really is. I think you got two shows on your hands right now.

SPEAKER_05 1:16:35

So yeah, it's a natural spin-off uh, you know, and uh that that's amazing.

SPEAKER_03 1:16:40

I I'm really looking forward to reading this. And I always remember like the team guys when they were deployed, they always had somebody, an informant interpreters that became part of the team, part of the unit that you know, a lot of our guys lived and and and were saved because of and bonded with them. And you know, when Operation, I think it was Operation Pineapple when when they had the issue with uh when they uh they're pulling everybody out of Afghanistan, and they had guys that went back there because they were like, I gave this guy my word. And I'm going to get him. And they went back. Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 1:17:10

His story is very similar to the to that right there. And uh the federal government still can't do the right thing by this guy.

SPEAKER_03 1:17:17

Wow, I'm really excited to read this book, man. Well, dude I I really appreciate it, man. And and like I said, I I I you're welcome here anytime. I can only uh this is I could see this as two major shows, major movie for sure. This is awesome, man. Well, congratulations, man. And and I appreciate you being so open and honest about your struggles, and well, I think that will really resonate with uh people at home. Man, thank AJ. Thank you for having me. It's been great, man. Awesome, brother. All right, perfect. Well, there you go. Another episode of the AJ Buckley Show. Thank you so much. Thank you, Lou. Thank you, Sydney. Uh, thank you guys for watching. This has been such a fun afternoon. These episodes will be up over the next month or so, and uh appreciate y'all. Don't forget to like, subscribe, and share. Tell a friend, tell your mama. AJ Buckley Show's here.