October 8, 2024 • 62 mins
Join us for a captivating conversation with Leon Ives, who brings an extraordinary wealth of experience from his days as a U.S. Army military policeman to his intricate work with U.S. Customs. Leon’s journey through the world of counterintelligence and international drug trafficking investigations offers a rare glimpse into the life of a law enforcement professional navigating the complex, often dangerous terrains of Miami and beyond. We promise that by listening, you’ll gain valuable insights into the realities of undercover operations, the challenges posed by international smuggling, and the relentless fight against financial crimes.
Our discussion ventures into Leon’s compelling narrative about tackling major drug cartels, including a riveting case involving the Hell's Angels. Leon recounts the trials and triumphs of working with major agencies like the DEA and FBI in the high-stakes environment of Miami. He also shares eye-opening stories about corruption within law enforcement circles and the innovative strategies used to combat financial crimes. This episode doesn’t just highlight high-profile cases but also delves into the personal aspects of Leon’s career, including moves influenced by post-9/11 security expansions and the pursuit of retirement benefits.
In the latter part of our session, Leon opens up about the pressing issue of missing children—a topic he passionately addresses in his book, "Vanished and Missing." He shares practical advice for parents on how to protect their families, emphasizing the importance of preparedness and regular training. The conversation extends to Leon’s personal experiences of international travel and his reflections on current border issues, providing listeners with a genuine and informed perspective. This episode promises to leave you with a deeper understanding of law enforcement challenges and practical strategies to ensure family safety.
Produced by: Citrustream, LLC
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Today's session for Justice Then.
Justice Now is going to featureLeon Ives.
I've known Leon for over 30years and I had the pleasure of
working with him at the USCustoms Service.
He's had an exemplaryprofessional career and he will
(00:23):
talk about that and some of thethings that he did and I think
you'll find it amazing.
And he also served as anadvisor to the military and he's
going to discuss that to theextent that he can.
And, more important, I think andit's not surprising he's
written a very thick book andyou look at this and when I
(00:49):
first read it I was like, oh mygosh, this is heavier than the
old phone books, but the contentof it is how to protect your
children yourself and I thinkthat is the most important.
The title says it all Vanishedand Missing.
Okay, and it's called Vanishedand he's updated this.
(01:12):
So I think that's the mostimportant thing we get out here
is the word on this, becauseeverybody has loved ones.
Everybody has children orgrandchildren and families, and
(01:36):
what better person to write itthan someone who's been in the
criminal justice system andknows that and has dedicated
themselves to writing this?
Leon, it's great to see you.
It's been a while.
You too.
My hair wasn't as white lasttime we saw each other, but that
comes with the territory, butyou know what can I say?
Speaker 2 (01:48):
Well, mine wasn't as thin.
What Mine wasn't as thin?
Speaker 1 (01:53):
Happens Happens to the best of us.
What I'd like you to do, so theviewers get to know you and you
can describe where you grew up,what got you interested in the
military and law enforcement andall that, and then we'll talk
(02:16):
about US Customs experiences andgo into the meat of it.
But I think it's very importantthat you talk about your
background.
So go ahead, my friend.
Speaker 2 (02:30):
Okay, thank you both for having me on today.
I appreciate it.
Yeah, when I was 18, I decidedto leave home and find a little
more structure.
So that was the US Army and Ihad wanted to be a policeman all
my life.
So I went into the militarypolice and my first assignment
was the 82nd Airborne in FortBragg and I'll stick with Fort
(02:54):
Bragg and I was there forseveral years and then went to
several different duty stationsin Fort Benning, georgia.
I went overseas and while I wasworking over in Holland I met a
gentleman in the Armycounterintelligence and he
recruited me into thecounterintelligence.
(03:14):
So I swapped from the militarypolice to become a
counterintelligence agent and myfirst assignment was at the
Pentagon and it was a very nicetime there wearing civilian
clothes and being in themilitary and having a lot of
freedom.
And I would join the Fridaynight keg meetings over at Fort
(03:37):
Myers, virginia, with all thefederal agents and Army CID,
federal agents and Army CID.
And after I got talking to afew of the CID agents and the
federal agents, I discovered Icould triple my salary in about
three years.
So that's when I decided tobecome a customs agent.
So back then, as you well know,the US Customs Service Office of
(04:01):
Investigations was the premierinvestigative agency in the
world.
It wasn't the FBI, it wasn'tDEA, it wasn't any of the others
, it was us.
And my first assignment was theSAC DC office where I started
working international drugtrafficking.
And then I got involved infinancial investigations and I
(04:25):
kind of felt that was going tobe my niche.
So I came down to Miami,florida for one of our TDYs,
fell in love with it, put in fora transfer and then I was
assigned to the SAC Miami andyou remember the old Florida
Joint Task Group.
So we were comprised of halfDEA agents and half US Customs
(04:50):
agents from OI.
So I worked in the airportgroup for several years and then
I transferred over toconspiracy group and eventually
went over to the main SAC officewhere I started working
financial investigations.
And I'm sure you rememberOperation Greenback.
So our job was to find out allthe smurfs that were laundering
(05:15):
the billions of drug dollarsaround the Miami area on a
constant basis.
So I worked in the undercovergroup for several years and then
I just continued in the SACMiami and somebody convinced me
to take a GS-14 role as aresident agent in charge.
(05:39):
So I went up to Northern Maineand that was a tough three years
being a supervisor.
I never realized how much Imissed being a street agent but
fortunately I made it throughand I retired.
And then I decided to go work asa law enforcement professional
(05:59):
with the US Army over in Iraqand Afghanistan.
So I did about four tours withthem and our job was to do
criminal investigations ofattacks upon our soldiers,
whereas normally the soldierswould get hit and everybody
would roll out and it was kindof forgot about.
(06:21):
So our job was to do aninvestigation of the attack, be
it a FIBIB or any other type ofattack, and work with the
commander advising them of howto catch the groups that were
operating in their AO.
So I did that for several years.
(06:41):
Then I realized I was gettingolder, so I started teaching
overseas for the StateDepartment in their
anti-terrorist program and didthat for several years and it
was during all that time Idecided to write this book.
I learned a lot living in Iraqand Afghanistan about children
(07:04):
that were kidnapped for reasonsI don't even want to discuss and
it was pretty horrible.
And I think when I came home Irealized we had the same
situation right here in ourcountry.
I guess it's just one of thosethings you don't really see or
think about.
So I decided to write that book.
So it addresses missing persons, primarily children, and I
(07:30):
learned that when you try to getthe police involved that can be
somewhat difficult.
So I wanted to give parents away to recognize when their
(07:55):
children are missing and whatthey can do to find that child
far faster than law enforcementcan do it.
So that book would do that.
It also gets into kidnapping.
It gets into pedophilia.
It gets into everything you canimagine that women and children
are the victims of, to includevery violent behavior, sexual
(08:20):
behavior.
I discuss rape, date rape.
I discuss the issues that aregoing on right in our high
schools where children are beinginvolved in sex against their
will.
Then when they go off tocollege, as we can probably
(08:41):
remember a little bit, there's alot of issues with women being
taken advantage of and over timethat's starting to include boys
and men.
They're the victims almost asmuch as women, but not to that
level.
So this book just teaches youhow to prevent all these crimes
(09:03):
from being committed and, ifthey should happen, it tells you
how to deal with it.
So I also get into professionalcounseling and things like that
in the book, so it will requiresome thorough reading.
It will require some effort forpeople, but I think finding
(09:24):
your child is something that wewould all want.
Speaker 1 (09:28):
We'll get into that in detail, because I think
that's important.
Let me just ask you when youjoined the Army where are you
from, what area of the country?
And you know when did you knowyou wanted to be in the military
and law enforcement?
How old were you?
Speaker 2 (09:46):
Well, my dad was in the Marine Corps so we traveled
around a lot but we ended up inAlbany, georgia.
So that's where I primarilywent to school for junior and
high school.
And my father was a cop at onetime and I think that's when the
seed was planted and I realizedthat's something I wanted to do
.
So I kind of left home a littlebit earlier I think I had two
(10:13):
months before graduating fromhigh school and I was anxious to
get out of home and get intothe Army and get to work and I
always thought parachuting wouldbe very interesting and I knew
a lot about the 82nd Airbornefrom World War II.
So it was just something thatwas in my blood.
And you know, I could say Iwent through 10 years active
(10:36):
duty and 13 years in thereserves and never had a day of
regret not one.
Speaker 1 (10:43):
That's, that's commendable.
The you know and I you know howI feel about it.
Any veteran or anything likethat, how old are you?
I mean, what year did you go inwhat year?
Speaker 2 (10:58):
I went in in March of 1973.
Speaker 1 (11:01):
Okay, so that was, was that was post Vietnam, right
, or was it?
Speaker 2 (11:08):
no, vietnam didn't until 74 okay so the 82nd had
just returned from there, so ofcourse we weren't deploying it
again.
Speaker 1 (11:19):
So I did get the Vietnam veteran status, although
I never went over there, okaythat's what I was asking and
that's to be proud of and thankyou for your service.
With that time there was a lotof people.
I came in, or I was about to goin in 1974 with that, but I got
(11:44):
a baseball scholarship and Itook that instead and it didn't
work out too well because Icouldn't hit, but that's another
story for another day.
Let me ask you this so when youwent to work at the Pentagon,
that was probably a change fromthe military police and you
(12:09):
explained why you went into theintelligence field.
What attracted you to Customsversus the other agencies?
Was there a reason or did youknow somebody that was an agent
in Washington?
Speaker 2 (12:22):
Yes, I did.
Did you know somebody that wasan agent in Washington?
Yes, I did so.
I knew many of the agents thatwe would meet with at Fort Myers
, virginia, and I did knowsomeone in customs, so it worked
to my benefit.
As you remember, we had thetreasury exam, which was a
monster of a test, butfortunately for veterans, you
(12:43):
didn't have to take that test,and later on the federal
government came up with a systemto hire veterans off the
regular best qualified list, soit was all just pure luck with
timing.
I'm glad I did go with Customs.
I worked extensively with DEAand FBI, more so in Miami than I
(13:11):
did in the Washington DC area,and there's just no finer group
of investigators than you willfind in Customs, and you well
know.
Speaker 1 (13:23):
Yeah, I came in off the—I transferred from the
Marshal Service in DC to Miamiand I often joke that my ex-wife
was hired and I was sittingoutside for my interview and
they just said you're likebaseball, you're a player to be
named later.
so you know, you're going to bein, but yeah, it was.
(13:47):
It was a great experience inthat.
So when you came here, you werehere on a TDY originally and
then you went over to the VicePresidential Florida Joint Task
Group, which I was part of toopresidential Florida joint task
(14:08):
group, which I was part of too.
Most of the people don'trealize that it started out with
Operation Florida.
Two of the ATF agents werekilled in the early 80s with
that and it was a really really,really good group to work in.
There was a lot of camaraderieand I came in in the 90s for
that.
Can you describe yourexperience in the task force,
(14:31):
what it was like and the amountof control deliveries that
occurred?
And I mean it was like triage,you know, deciding what cases
you're going to work.
Speaker 2 (14:41):
Yeah, I started off in an airport group so our job
was to respond to the MiamiInternational Airport when the
customs inspectors made aseizure and after going through
one of those you said it waslike a triage and it was we had
to process the evidence.
All the witnesses puteverything together, get it
(15:03):
ready for a trial evidence.
All the witnesses puteverything together, get it
ready for a trial.
But I had heard someone talkabout a controlled delivery and
I started looking into that andI found out that, talking a
person sitting in handcuffs with20 keys of coke on his lap, it
was pretty easy to convince himto cooperate instead of going to
(15:25):
jail for 20 years or longer,yeah, or longer, or much longer.
So I started doing controlleddeliveries and got pretty good
at them.
I can say 50% of the airportseizures I responded to turned
into a controlled delivery.
Airport seizures I responded toturned into a controlled
(15:48):
delivery.
The best one I had and enjoyedimmensely, was three people that
had smuggled in coke and theyadmitted it to doing it on
numerous occasions.
I can't remember the exactamount.
We were up to 40, 50, 60 pounds, but they were smuggling
cocaine in for the Hell's Angelsin Montreal, canada.
So, of course, having theluxury of working with DEA at
(16:13):
the Florida Joint Task Group, wegot country clearance a lot
faster than normal with the DEAup in Montreal.
So we flew up there with one ofthe defendants and along with
all the coke so it's kind ofnice to fly in first class with
about 20 keys of coke in youroverhead and met with the RCMP
(16:38):
and the Montreal police, and theorganization they were looking
at had a group in Montreal oh,my gosh, toronto.
So the Toronto cops were calledso they kind of got involved in
it.
So, short story, the dope wasdelivered by the defendant.
(16:59):
The RCMP and the Montreal copsdid the raid on the Hells Angels
clubhouse and arrested a wholegroup of them and most all of
them pled out, except for twoindividuals.
So that case lasted well over ayear.
So the defendant was locked upin Pennsylvania.
(17:21):
So every time I would go up toMontreal for a trial or anything
, I would have to stop inPennsylvania and pull him out of
prison and go up there, andthen I handed him off to the
police.
So I had the opportunity totestify in a Canadian court,
which was kind of interestingcalling a judge his majesty, but
(17:47):
the case was very, verysuccessful.
Not only did they end upindicting probably a dozen or
two, yeah, I'd say almost twodozen people, but they also
ended up getting some of theMontreal police who had been
working with the Hells Angels.
Wow yeah, so that was a bit ofa shocker.
(18:09):
So then they kind of moved meover to Toronto to work that in.
So we started an undercovercase up in Toronto and again for
about a year or two I wouldconstantly travel up to Toronto
to work with their undercovergroup investigating the
(18:29):
Columbians, and I think I didsome drinking a few times that
night.
Speaker 1 (18:36):
Really With the RCMP.
I'm shocked, can you imagine?
Speaker 2 (18:44):
So it was a great.
Two years I've been workingwith Montreal and working with
the Canadians in Toronto.
It was just a fabulous case,highly successful.
It was a classic example ofwhat customs agents could do,
because we weren't too satisfiedwith just taking the seizure at
(19:05):
the airport and writing downthat stat.
We wanted to take it further,and that's what we usually did.
Speaker 1 (19:14):
That's amazing and, as we found, things start small
but they mushroom out, you know,and they develop into bigger
conspiracy cases and that.
So you were there and thenwhere did you go?
Where did you go at group afterthat did you go to?
Speaker 2 (19:35):
That's when I went to the Sac Miami to work with
Greenback, the money launderinggroup.
Speaker 1 (19:39):
Okay, and that was Dave Warren's group right at the
time.
Speaker 2 (19:44):
Yes, it was Dave Warren.
There were two groups, yeah.
Speaker 1 (19:47):
Okay, and why don't you explain to the viewers what
Greenback did?
Because you know the origins goway back, even before the money
laundering statutes in 86.
It goes back to IRS andTreasury agents working together
, separate from the USAttorney's Office, which was
(20:08):
located downtown, and explainwhat that was and what your role
was as an agent in Greenback.
Speaker 2 (20:17):
Okay, well, we were actually co-located with the US
Attorney's Office and IRS had agroup working right around the
corner from us.
But, based on the Bank SecrecyAct, we have all these currency
reporting laws and I'm surepeople are hearing a little bit
(20:37):
about them today with theSuspicious Activities Report.
But anytime you make a cashdeposit or withdrawal of over
$10,000, the banks had to fillout a form.
So the drug cartels were stuckwith people that had duffel bags
full of drug money and I meanliterally millions of dollars of
(20:59):
drug money and they would haveto try to get it into the bank.
So we had undercover accountswhere we could deposit that
money and send it down to thebad guys in Columbia.
So they thought we wereprofessional money launderers
and we were of a sort.
(21:20):
But they would turn the moneyover to us and we would, in turn
, watch the person that washandling the money and he would
typically lead us to the personwho was the owner of that money.
So there again, as opposed tojust making seizures of currency
(21:40):
for millions and millions ofdollars what some people refer
to as a rip and run we wanted tostart building cases against
the Colombians in South America,to start building cases against
the Colombians in South America.
So we found a way to deal withthe money handlers and get them
to cooperate with us on the samepremise as I was telling you
(22:02):
about the drug couriers, ratherthan to go to jail again for 20,
40 years.
They were willing to take therisk.
So we would build up cases.
Some of them were successful,without saying too much.
As you know, we had certainundercover agents in the SAC
Miami who met with probably someof the biggest drug cartel
(22:27):
members that have ever existedin South Florida and you got to
give kudos to those people.
We had situations where the badguys would call us up and want
us to meet them in the Bahamasor Aruba or anywhere else.
That's where customs shinedwhen they asked to meet with us
(22:49):
in an undercover role, excuse me, we could get country clearance
in a matter of hours, whereas,as you recall, dea and FBI would
need two or three days to dothat.
We never had that issue and itkind of upset some of the other
(23:12):
agents because we wouldn'tpostpone them, because that's
why the bad guys wanted to meetus and set short notice is they
knew federal agents couldn't dothat.
So we had a very highreputation for traveling all
over the world in undercoverroles, meeting with these people
, and we were just very quickabout it.
(23:33):
I remember one case I had a copfrom London come to me and they
wanted to meet some people fromthe NRA and I asked them why
they weren't going to the FBIand they said well, we were told
(23:54):
to come to customs because youguys could do it quickly.
And I said how quickly?
And he says we need to meetthem tomorrow.
And I says so what do you needfrom us?
And he says well, we need amillion dollar flash roll.
So of course I went down toBill Rosenblatt, told him what
was going on and we called thefeds and we went first thing in
(24:19):
the morning, picked up a milliondollars in a briefcase and gave
it to the cops from LondonScotland Yard and they went and
met with the IRA guy and showedthem the money that they had and
everything worked out.
I don't know of any otheragency that could get their
hands on that kind of money todo a flash roll in 24 hours.
(24:41):
I met maybe you met him, Ididn't.
Speaker 1 (24:46):
Let me ask you this for the viewers you mentioned
the term Smurf.
Could you explain what a Smurfis, because you know they'll
think it?
This for the viewers youmentioned the term smurf Could
you explain what a smurf is,because you know they'll think
it's a cartoon character, somepeople.
But what was a smurf tosomebody involved with money
laundering investigations?
Speaker 2 (25:04):
So the person in Miami who was a financier, he
was the man who collected thedrug money from wherever it was
being sold.
It could be right there inMiami.
A lot of times it was up in NewYork and other states.
All that money would eventuallycome back to the financier in
Miami and his job was to getthat money back to the
(25:27):
Colombians in South America.
So you've heard of bulk moneysmuggling.
So sometimes they would justpack it in containers of a
billion dollars and ship it toColombia.
But those were prone to beintercepted so they prefer to
use bank accounts.
But it was kind of impossibleto open hundreds of bank
(25:48):
accounts.
So they would hire a smurf.
So that would typically be ofany age it could be from 18 to
80, a man or a woman and theywould give them a percentage of
the drug proceeds.
And those people would have togo open up multiple bank
(26:08):
accounts all over the city andif they deposited over $10,000,
then the currency report wouldbe made.
So they would structure thatmoney.
So they would go to the 10 bankaccounts they own and make
$9,000 deposits and they wouldhave to do that all day and
(26:29):
eventually the money was so hugethat that even became a problem
to move.
So that's where OperationGreenback came in.
We were able to move that moneyto the Colombians and it not
only helped us identify thefinanciers in Miami but it
helped the Colombians identifythe people in their area Pablo
(26:53):
Escobar, rodriguez brothers, allof them.
So we had vetted Colombiansthat worked with us, that worked
with our agents at theembassies in Colombia, and it
was a very good operation.
I guess it lasted 10, 15 years.
(27:14):
But for us the Smurfs were thekey to everything, because that
was just like the drug courier.
Even though they were justoperating with money, it was
drug money, so they faced thesame penalties as any drug
dealer did.
So rather than go to jail theywould work with us and
oftentimes we would stage atakedown where we would take
(27:40):
that Smurf down and seize themoney from him and then just the
Smurf would just have to reportback to his financier what
happened.
And it was fine.
They didn't get punished for itif the cops made a seizure.
But I do remember once, down byour office, we were following a
(28:03):
money courier, a Smurf, and wefollowed him back to an
apartment near what was thefamous golf course in Miami.
Durrell Durrell, yeah, durrellDurrell, yeah, yeah, durrell
Country Club.
And when we knocked on his door, you know he consented to let
us come in and search the house.
And we walked upstairs andevery bedroom was full of
(28:25):
cardboard boxes and by the timewe finished counting, it was
over $25 million in that onehouse.
And by the time we finishedcounting, it was over $25
million in that one house andthat was the responsibility of
just that one person to try toget rid of that money.
Speaker 1 (28:47):
So those were the SMURs, and they were the ones
that helped us make our cases.
Speaker 2 (29:00):
And in this undercover operation, what kind
of fees did you charge theColombians to do this?
How was that worked out?
The undercover operation wasself-sufficient.
It was an undercover casecertified as an OSADEP, an
Organized Crime Drug EnforcementTask Force.
So the proceeds that we weremaking and the money that we
(29:21):
were seizing came back to thegroup.
So that enabled us to rent ourcars and enabled us to have the
latest technology that you know.
Law enforcement was always waybehind trying to get the funds.
So it was a considerable amountof money.
And even the SMURs you had tolook at them.
(29:46):
They may get anywhere from oneto two 2%, but when you're
talking about handling a milliondollars a week or a million
dollars a month, 1% is prettyhigh.
Speaker 1 (30:01):
So when you were there, you went.
From what group did you goafter that?
Did you stay in there beforeyou went to Maine, or what?
Speaker 2 (30:10):
Yeah, I stayed in the financial group until I got
that promotion to Maine.
Okay.
Speaker 1 (30:17):
Let me just ask an obvious question.
You're in South Florida, youknow, and you're going back.
You're going to the coldweather.
Did that bother you a littlebit?
And I realize it was verycompetitive in South Florida and
we have mutual friends thatthat did the same thing to get
(30:37):
the promotion and it was anearlier in my career with the
marshal service.
I did that, I moved around andthen finally, after what 15
years, 12?
I wore them down and you knowthat I was the poster child of
management, but I'll leave thatalone.
(30:59):
But you know that's a bigchange.
Did you think that out or whatwhen they offered it to you?
How did it come about?
Speaker 2 (31:12):
Yeah, so I lived on each end of i-95.
I was in miami at one end and Iended up in i-95 on the other.
Speaker 1 (31:20):
I thought about that.
Speaker 2 (31:21):
So I got a phone call from, uh, some people you
remember.
Uh, I don't know we're supposedto say names on this podcast.
Speaker 1 (31:29):
Well, there's certain names that I'd like to say, but
I'm not going to.
Speaker 2 (31:34):
So, matt, adrie and Robin Avers, you remember both
of them.
And they said well, you know,as a result of 9-1-1, and I'm
sorry, I did leave out one pointin between when I went to work
at the Federal Law EnforcementTraining Center as an instructor
and as an instructor at FLETCin Glencoe, georgia, my
(31:55):
expertise was money laundering.
So I rewrote all the coursesthat involved money laundering
and financial investigations toinclude the two-week advanced
course we had AFI AssetForfeiture Investigations.
So I did do that, I forgot.
And so, anyhow, matt called meup and he said listen, we had
(32:21):
911.
We're opening new offices allalong the northern border and
the southern border.
And he says I know you talkabout retiring in a couple of
years.
And I said, yes, I'm definitelygoing to retire.
And he said well, wouldn't youlike to retire as a GS-14 as
opposed to a GS-13?
And I think when I said, giveme a couple of days to think
(32:46):
about it, I think it's because Ihad to go find a calculator and
when I did the calculations, Idid want to retire as a GS-14.
How do I?
Speaker 1 (32:56):
get to 14, step eight .
That was the calculation.
Speaker 2 (32:59):
And it was that easy.
It was that easy.
You remember how competitive itwas in South Florida getting a
14th and at the SAC office.
So I went up there and openedup a brand new office.
I mean, we didn't even have abuilding, we just had to do all
that.
And that worked out real well.
And at that time, as you mayremember, a lot of the customs
(33:23):
agents along the border werewhat I call dog catchers
catchers their job was to catchthe illegal aliens and get them
before an immigration judge andget them out of the country.
Yeah, that's right, that can'tbe done, can it?
And you know we would have themout of the country in what?
48 hours.
They would be shipped backsomewhere.
(33:46):
But you know, my heart was indrug trafficking and money
laundering.
So, lo and behold, we had avery young agent and he was
actually my student at FLETCwhen I was an instructor there
and thank God he was assigned tome.
So he arrested someone and wewere able to flip this marijuana
(34:11):
dealer that operated betweenthe New England states and
Canada, because they had muchbetter product than we did.
And he flipped and we ended upworking that case and by the end
of two years we brought insomething like 20, 30 defendants
.
Years we brought in somethinglike 20, 30 defendants.
(34:37):
So, needless to say, matt andRobin were very happy about that
, but that's all we did the lastthree years I was there.
We worked the drug cases andmoney laundering cases.
Of course we also worked theterrorist cases, but we didn't
have the FBI Joint Task Force upin that area.
More or less it was down insouthern Maine.
So if we got any type ofindication about terrorists
(35:02):
through our counterparts over inCanada, we would typically call
the FBI and they would come upand snatch the person away from
us.
And they would come up andsnatch the person away from us.
But it was all good.
Speaker 1 (35:13):
It was all good Again , just like I said about the
Army there's not one day Iregret about my 23 years in the
Customs Service.
So when you did you retired outof there and then how did you
(35:34):
get involved over in the MiddleEast?
On what you did over there andif it's the extent you can
describe what you did, yeah.
Speaker 2 (35:39):
So one of the other retired, I think he was a
customs inspector and went overthere as a law enforcement,
professional enforcementprofessional.
So the Army CID came up withthe concept when these guys keep
hitting us with explosives orsnipers or mortars, whatever
they do, cid just did not havethe number of investigators to
(36:04):
go back and try to find out whothese terrorists were, who they
were working for.
The basic thing we would dowith any criminal element.
Speaker 1 (36:13):
Can you tell the viewers what CID stands for?
Speaker 2 (36:17):
Yes, that's Army CID.
They were the criminalinvestigators for the Army Very
incredible group of soldiers asfar as investigations.
So we kind of supplemented them.
So we would have the left, thelaw enforcement personnel,
(36:41):
assigned to different battalionsand brigades and divisions.
I was always the left ones.
I was usually assigned to abattalion so anytime there was
an attack against our soldiersthen we would respond to those
attacks along with the Army andof course they provided all the
protection that we needed whenwe went out behind the wire.
(37:05):
And there have been a number ofbooks written by the LEPs, I'll
be quite honest with you,written by the LEPs.
I'll be quite honest with you.
When I looked into the incomepart of being a LEP for the
Department of Defense and theDepartment of the Army and the
Marines, it was incredible.
So I figured I could take therisk of spending 12 to 14 months
(37:29):
somewhere in Iraq with thattype of salary.
But more so than the salary, itwas the commitment that you had
, the camaraderie you developed.
I had an advantage being aretired NCO from the Army.
I felt I was treated a littlebit better than a lot of the
(37:52):
other LEPs were.
We were totally embedded, wewore the uniform just like they
did.
We carried a rifle, pistol.
We had all the same gear sevenduffel bags full of equipment
that we never used.
Just put them under our beds.
So I did the contracting, likeI said, about four tours, and I
(38:17):
really loved every minute of it.
It was hard, it was a hard wayof life, but it was very
fulfilling and we had fantasticresults.
Speaker 1 (38:28):
How old were you when you went over there?
Speaker 2 (38:33):
I was probably in my early 50s.
So I was probably in my late50s by the time I decided I
couldn't do it anymore.
Speaker 1 (38:49):
That's still amazing.
So when you were over there,you mentioned that you came up
with the idea for the book and II want to explore that with
everybody because you know it'sit's really good and this is
(39:09):
something that I think familiesshould have.
I mean, I, you know, I don'twant to get religious because I
don't have politics and religionon the show, but I think that
this could be placed nearby withthe Bible in your house.
So if something bad happens, orto prevent it, like with
children or with spouses orother elderly family members,
(39:35):
can you come up with the conceptand just give us what you
covered in the book Not theentire book, because I know you
want people to buy this book,but just to give an idea of what
areas you explored in it.
Leon.
Speaker 2 (39:52):
Well, you know I went on.
The principle that I learned inthe Army at a very early age is
planning.
People are reactive and whenyou're reactive to everything
that happens in your life, theodds are you're going to react
in the wrong way initially.
And heaven help us.
When a child goes missing, youdon't have 24 or 48 hours to
(40:17):
figure out what you did wrong.
So planning is key in that book.
I mean, I could tell youeverything in that book and you
would still need the book,because the book's got all the
tools that I developed for theparents to put together.
And it doesn't have to be aparent, it can be a man or a
(40:38):
woman who's going off to collegeand they don't want to be that
missing person.
So the book has unique tools Ideveloped to help the police
find a missing loved one.
So I talk about knowledge.
So when I talk about all thedifferent criminals that are out
(41:01):
there and what they do and howthey do it, I don't try to scare
the reader, but I just want tomake them aware, because if I
can make them aware of what ishappening, they'll start
watching TV, they'll startreading newspapers and I'll
start putting two and twotogether.
I do have some unique stories inthere.
(41:22):
One is a was a kidnapper thatlived up in Cleveland Ohio, I
believe it was, and over aperiod of years he had kidnapped
four young women and had heldhim in their basement.
In his basement for two, threeyears.
Two of them, I believe, gotpregnant.
(41:44):
He even had family members thatwould come over to his house
and eat in the kitchen upstairswhile his captives were
downstairs in the basementchained to beds.
So I tell these kinds ofstories just to make the person
aware that there is no limit forthese psychopaths.
There's absolutely no limit.
(42:08):
Your podcast is about justicethen and justice now.
So one of the hardest things Ihad to write about in that book
and it really, really pained mewas when you called the police
and you were dependent upon them.
The results were not always asyou expected, and that's a
(42:31):
horrible thing to say.
So I addressed the criminaljustice system.
I addressed the family courts,which are also not your friend
at all times.
I addressed the social servicesworkers that will come to your
house one day and they may notbe your friend either.
(42:53):
So when a child has gone missing, depending on the police that
handle that case, they caneither help you find that child
or help you destroy your entirefamily, and I can't imagine a
parent who is a true victimhaving to go through that second
assault by the people they'retrusting.
(43:13):
So what I want to train you todo in that book is have every
tool you need.
So when that officer shows upon your doorstep, you'll hand
them part of what I call an IPPan Individual Protection Packet
and in that biographical form itanswers 60 questions that the
(43:35):
police should be asking youabout your child.
And you've already got thissheet filled out and it's ready
to go, so you can just hand itto them.
Who do your children hang outwith?
What vehicles do they drive?
Who are their enemies?
Who have they had problems with?
Where do they go?
(43:56):
What parks do they visit?
That sheet will have all theanswers.
So, as a parent, you'll have tosit with your child and fill it
out.
It's not going to be an easything.
We know children are 100%obedient, but you have that as
one of your tools.
That is one of your tools.
The other thing I'll have is acomplete packet on each child to
(44:18):
include DNA sample,fingerprints, teeth impressions,
various photographs, fromfacials to side views, to full
length views, front and back, ashort videotape that you can
(44:40):
give to the media.
If I'm looking at a picture onthe screen of a missing person,
if the media can show a10-second video of that child,
it'll have a bigger impressionon the people watching the news,
because not only do they get tosee them, they get to hear them
and they get to see some oftheir mannerisms.
So this tells you how to befully prepared for one of those
(45:05):
incidents.
I also talk about how to protectyourself from sexual assaults,
physical assaults.
Are you familiar with Krav Maga?
Having been in the mixedmartial arts business, I'm sure
you are.
Krav Maga is the Israeliself-defense fighting technique.
Any child, any woman, any man,even if he's 60, can go to a
(45:33):
half dozen of those classes andbecome proficient enough to
destroy somebody in the firstthree or four seconds and then
run.
And that's what I always tell.
I tell people that's my biggestadvice when you're in a bad
situation, scream, yell and run.
I mean that's the firsttechnique.
The problem of God teaches thattoo.
(45:53):
But, as you know, there'scertain strikes that you can do,
and unlike a karate class wherea kid has to go for five years
to get his black belt.
In Krav Maga, you can learnself-defense techniques in a
matter of weeks, if not months,depending on your pace.
So there are ways to hurtsomebody very, very quickly and
(46:18):
get away from them.
I also give them links to gowatch some videotapes of
children that are actually beingabducted and walking along the
streets and grocery stores.
I, where the film caught theman, just walk up and pick the
(46:39):
child up and run with him.
Well, the vast majority of yourkids won't fight back.
I mean, they don't know tofight back.
They have no clue what'shappening to them.
It's totally alien.
So I want parents to learn howto teach their kids to
immediately defend themselvesand the various ways you can do
it.
(47:00):
I talk about the differentsecurity devices that we have
available to us.
For me, it's floodlights outsideyour house, having an alarm
system in your house that'sbeing monitored with an
emergency phone.
So there's so much advice inthat 500 pages that you will
(47:23):
need to keep a journal and youneed to write down what you're
interested in and how you wantto accomplish that.
And I also encourage parents tosit down with their young
children and talk to them aboutthese things and there's a
missing persons group called theNational Center for Missing and
Exploited Children inWashington DC and it's
(47:44):
semi-funded by the government,and we've had legacy customs
agents work with them and theyhave all types of material and
tools that you can share thatare age appropriate.
So what you share with yourfive-year-old and what you share
with your 15-year-old are goingto be separate things, so they
(48:06):
have all those products thereyou need as well.
So it's a matter of the parentssitting down and coming up with
this plan and these individualprotection packets and all the
other tools and just beingprepared so when it happens you
can find them.
I've heard cops even today sayyou know, the most critical time
(48:26):
to find a missing person is thefirst 48 hours.
Well, that's not true.
Speaker 1 (48:32):
It's immediately.
Speaker 2 (48:34):
You must find them in the next hour because you know
the way things are here in thestates.
I meant they'll.
They'll take a child and drivethem across state lines and
you'll never see that childagain.
And smuggling a child out ofthe country is very, very simple
.
It's just a reverse operationof the uh southwest border.
(48:55):
So parents need to be able tofind those kids within the first
few hours.
I mean, that's the mostcritical time and the police
will spend the first two hoursjust interviewing you.
So I have it all put together.
You just hand a thumb drive tothe cop and he's got everything
(49:16):
he could ever possibly dream ofto start his investigation or
her.
Speaker 1 (49:21):
I think this is so valuable to everybody here.
As you know, either children orgrandchildren and you know I
don't think a lot of people,even the cops, have thought of
this plan and what to do, justin case but yeah, I mean anybody
(49:41):
that's ever filed a policereport you're, you're in your
house for, like on a break-in,simple break-in, for at least an
hour and a half, you know, andjust getting the basic
information as sitting therewith a notepadad and writing it
down and transcribing andgetting things out on the radio.
(50:02):
You know, be on lookout orwhatever for this or an ambler
alert or something like that.
You can get this outimmediately with your philosophy
and your practice on what to dowith this, leon, but I think
it's great.
And how do they get go ahead?
(50:23):
I'm sorry.
Speaker 2 (50:25):
No, you're good.
I'm sorry.
Yeah, and that's one of thethings I would address
individually.
I would talk about physicalsecurity.
I would talk about the conceptof personal security, cyber
security.
Children love to play withpeople on these electronic
devices and they have no ideawho's sitting on the other end.
(50:47):
I teach people as being aprivate investigator for several
years on my own, once I retired.
I teach people how to becometheir own private investigator.
They don't need me.
It's not hard to find out whois in your orbit and find
certain information about them.
(51:09):
I talk about blind dating,dating apps but you brought up
the breaking in your house.
So I do address, you know, thehome invasions and someone
breaks into the house and you'rein there.
That's.
That's one situation.
Hopefully, people can beprepared to deal with that.
(51:29):
If not, I teach them out.
But what do you do when it's ahome invasion that has multiple
violent people breaking intoyour home and coming in from
different doors?
So I cover all of that as well.
There's one section when I talkabout firearms.
So the first thing I write inthat chapter I says if you are
(51:52):
opposed to firearms, just skipthis chapter, don't even read it
, because of course, you've gotto keep certain people at bay,
but there's a lot in there thatyou.
I don't know if you read thatpart about the firearm, but it
teaches you about firearm safety.
It teaches you how to use afirearm, how to become
(52:14):
proficient with a firearm, howto protect the kids from that
firearm.
So I don't think there'sanything in that book I didn't
cover.
Speaker 1 (52:24):
No, no.
And just on a separate topic,with firearms, they recently
changed the qualifications fromour old agency from quarterly
with pretty strict.
I mean it was pretty strict, Imean it was very good to once a
year.
Now it's what I call savingbullets and getting cops killed.
(52:46):
That's what it is.
Okay, it's saving some beancounter at headquarters figuring
out, oh, we can save money, butwe're going to get agents
killed.
You know, because the more yougo to the range, the better it
is, whether you know protectingyour family or afterwards.
(53:09):
And you know I won't get intothe Second Amendment, which is
pretty clear, but the fact isyou want to protect your family
as long as you have, as youpointed out, the safety of the
firearm, that it stays in yourhands as the adult in that house
.
Okay, I'm done with my sermonso I'll go back to you.
Speaker 2 (53:34):
But it is very, very important.
You know, I think of it likethis, and I talk about this in
the book Imagine if you playedgolf or you played tennis and
that's your sport of choice.
Well, are you going to go outand play golf and tennis once a
year and expect to be proficient?
Are you going to go out thereand really, really train the
(53:58):
first year that you're learningthat sport?
So firearms are no different.
You know, I teach people how toshoot without using their iron
sights or using any sights, soit's very easy to shoot somebody
within 10, 20 feet and youdon't even have to aim the gun.
So that's something people needto learn.
Speaker 1 (54:21):
Yeah, and you hold the gun straight ahead.
You don't do the gangstersideways.
Speaker 2 (54:28):
Yeah, I always see that in the movies and you get
the bad guy like that, whichreally doesn't happen.
Speaker 1 (54:38):
What are you looking for in the future?
You know as far as what you'repersonally going to do and I
know you love this job.
You stayed with it a long timeand you still do, and I'm the
same way, you know, with this.
You know there's people we knowthat went off the job and never
(55:02):
heard from again, for tworeasons One, they were
incompetent and two, they werejust assholes.
As I write in my book, or PeteThrone's book, the butt
snorkelers, which is a term forSouth Florida and I, you know I
(55:24):
love that term.
When I came down I think Ihelped invent it with a few
other guys.
But what do you see in lawenforcement and that in the
future?
Speaker 2 (55:41):
You know I told you I was revising the book and you
paid me a nice compliment.
You said I don't know how youcan make it any better, but I'm
going to try to make it better.
I'm going to try to update someof the modern technology that
parents have access to now thatdidn't even exist when I wrote
that book.
So that's the second revision.
(56:02):
This will be the third revision.
After that I'll quit with thebook.
A huge mistake I made and I didnot market the book like I
should have, and there's plentyof marketing plans out there
that you can just Google andpull up and it tells you exactly
what to do.
I never did that.
(56:24):
I just let the book run by wordof mouth and it does good.
If you go to Amazon, you canjust Google my name, leon Ives.
You don't have to Google thatextremely long title and it'll
take you right to the book.
And it's got about 20 reviewsthat are all five stars.
It's got people who wrotereviews for it inside the book.
(56:48):
So anybody who goes in and justopens the book up and looks at
it is going to know that's whatthey need.
That's what they're going towant in their house, like you
said, and I recommend gettingthe hard copy, not the Kindle
copy, because the hard copy Igive you spaces to write down
notes that you need to knowthat's unique to your children
(57:11):
and yourself, and keep that booksomewhere in the house where
there's easy access to it.
So I will market the book thistime, but pretty much that's it.
I love to travel.
You know.
I spent a month in Italy andthen I went and spent three
weeks in Greece and I'm gettingready to go to Ireland and I'll
(57:36):
probably stop in Scotland andWales and UK.
I'm going to Liverpool to findout if the Beatles are still
there or not.
So I want to spend a lot moretime traveling the world.
I've been to 43 countries in mylife and it's just amazing.
And I think the most beautifulthing I found about being in all
(58:00):
these countries was when theysay everybody hates America.
It's just the opposite.
They love you Everywhere I go.
Sometimes I'll reach out andhold my hand and after about 10
minutes I'll have to kind ofpull it away from them.
People love Americans.
They respect Americans.
When I was in Iraq I washelping to train some of their
(58:26):
soldiers, especially the onesthat gave personal security
details, and whenever I wouldwalk through the it was their
compound I lived on.
It wasn't an American compound,it was theirs.
When I'd walk through there,some of the young soldiers would
come up and hold my hand andjust sit there and talk about
their family and talk abouttheir lives and what they wish
(58:47):
for the future.
But I could say 90% ofeverybody I met over there just
loved Americans.
So it's not true.
We're not despised as peoplewant to paint that picture for
their own agenda.
Speaker 1 (59:06):
I got one last question have you been to
Ireland before?
Speaker 2 (59:10):
No, never.
So I'm going to both theRepublic and Northern Ireland.
Speaker 1 (59:14):
You need to call me going to both the Republic and
Northern Ireland.
You need to call me.
I've done a few pub crawls inBelfast and down in Dublin and
all that.
So that's the mother countryfor me, but you'll like it.
I actually I'll fill you in.
But Belfast is very, veryinteresting, very the history
(59:36):
behind it and, um, you know therest of ireland I I've been a
couple times, um, quitefrequently the people are nice
but, like I said, don't get in abeer challenge with anybody
over there because they'reprofessionals.
They're professionals, theyreally are.
(59:57):
The natives used to be firsttime I went first time I went.
I got in a cab and this guy goes.
He hears me talking and, uh, hegoes.
I was with the guard and I gothat's the police over there and
and I hired him as a driver andhe was a good driver and, like
(01:00:20):
I said, he knew all the placesto go.
So we'll chit-chat on that, butI wanted to thank you very much
for coming on.
I think this is great.
We have all the extremes ofeverybody on here.
We have former inmates, we haveagents, we have police officers
(01:00:44):
that are shot and killed people, we have inmates that tried to
escape and drug dealers that gotlife, and it's just a real good
blend.
I said, as I said in thebeginning, jeff has been
wonderful with this and that andwe want to make this basically
(01:01:07):
real life with real peopleinvolved.
This isn't the major newsnetworks with talking heads or
head of agencies for six months,or people that have never been
to the months, or people thathave never been to the border,
or people that have never doneanything offering their opinions
, because in my opinion which Itake lightly sometimes it
(01:01:28):
doesn't mean shit.
You can't comment on somethingthat you don't know about or
experienced.
Okay, it's like me cop talkingabout a medical operation or
something like that that I Iknow absolutely nothing about.
So that's that's what we'redoing, and uh, conveying it to
the viewer, and uh oh, that'sgreat, it's uh, it's real life
(01:01:53):
from people that have lived it.
Yes, exactly.
So take care of my friend,we'll be talking, and thanks for
coming on today, leon.
Speaker 2 (01:02:03):
Thank you.
All right, buddy, thank you,and thank you too, jeff.
Speaker 1 (01:02:07):
I'll go wake him up.
Speaker 2 (01:02:09):
It's happy hour, see you later Bye Leon.
All right, buddy, bye-bye.
Today's session for Justice Then.
Justice Now is going to featureLeon Ives.
I've known Leon for over 30years and I had the pleasure of
working with him at the USCustoms Service.
He's had an exemplaryprofessional career and he will
(00:23):
talk about that and some of thethings that he did and I think
you'll find it amazing.
And he also served as anadvisor to the military and he's
going to discuss that to theextent that he can.
And, more important, I think andit's not surprising he's
written a very thick book andyou look at this and when I
(00:49):
first read it I was like, oh mygosh, this is heavier than the
old phone books, but the contentof it is how to protect your
children yourself and I thinkthat is the most important.
The title says it all Vanishedand Missing.
Okay, and it's called Vanishedand he's updated this.
(01:12):
So I think that's the mostimportant thing we get out here
is the word on this, becauseeverybody has loved ones.
Everybody has children orgrandchildren and families, and
(01:36):
what better person to write itthan someone who's been in the
criminal justice system andknows that and has dedicated
themselves to writing this?
Leon, it's great to see you.
It's been a while.
You too.
My hair wasn't as white lasttime we saw each other, but that
comes with the territory, butyou know what can I say?
Speaker 2 (01:48):
Well, mine wasn't as thin.
What Mine wasn't as thin?
Speaker 1 (01:53):
Happens Happens to the best of us.
What I'd like you to do, so theviewers get to know you and you
can describe where you grew up,what got you interested in the
military and law enforcement andall that, and then we'll talk
(02:16):
about US Customs experiences andgo into the meat of it.
But I think it's very importantthat you talk about your
background.
So go ahead, my friend.
Speaker 2 (02:30):
Okay, thank you both for having me on today.
I appreciate it.
Yeah, when I was 18, I decidedto leave home and find a little
more structure.
So that was the US Army and Ihad wanted to be a policeman all
my life.
So I went into the militarypolice and my first assignment
was the 82nd Airborne in FortBragg and I'll stick with Fort
(02:54):
Bragg and I was there forseveral years and then went to
several different duty stationsin Fort Benning, georgia.
I went overseas and while I wasworking over in Holland I met a
gentleman in the Armycounterintelligence and he
recruited me into thecounterintelligence.
(03:14):
So I swapped from the militarypolice to become a
counterintelligence agent and myfirst assignment was at the
Pentagon and it was a very nicetime there wearing civilian
clothes and being in themilitary and having a lot of
freedom.
And I would join the Fridaynight keg meetings over at Fort
(03:37):
Myers, virginia, with all thefederal agents and Army CID,
federal agents and Army CID.
And after I got talking to afew of the CID agents and the
federal agents, I discovered Icould triple my salary in about
three years.
So that's when I decided tobecome a customs agent.
So back then, as you well know,the US Customs Service Office of
(04:01):
Investigations was the premierinvestigative agency in the
world.
It wasn't the FBI, it wasn'tDEA, it wasn't any of the others
, it was us.
And my first assignment was theSAC DC office where I started
working international drugtrafficking.
And then I got involved infinancial investigations and I
(04:25):
kind of felt that was going tobe my niche.
So I came down to Miami,florida for one of our TDYs,
fell in love with it, put in fora transfer and then I was
assigned to the SAC Miami andyou remember the old Florida
Joint Task Group.
So we were comprised of halfDEA agents and half US Customs
(04:50):
agents from OI.
So I worked in the airportgroup for several years and then
I transferred over toconspiracy group and eventually
went over to the main SAC officewhere I started working
financial investigations.
And I'm sure you rememberOperation Greenback.
So our job was to find out allthe smurfs that were laundering
(05:15):
the billions of drug dollarsaround the Miami area on a
constant basis.
So I worked in the undercovergroup for several years and then
I just continued in the SACMiami and somebody convinced me
to take a GS-14 role as aresident agent in charge.
(05:39):
So I went up to Northern Maineand that was a tough three years
being a supervisor.
I never realized how much Imissed being a street agent but
fortunately I made it throughand I retired.
And then I decided to go work asa law enforcement professional
(05:59):
with the US Army over in Iraqand Afghanistan.
So I did about four tours withthem and our job was to do
criminal investigations ofattacks upon our soldiers,
whereas normally the soldierswould get hit and everybody
would roll out and it was kindof forgot about.
(06:21):
So our job was to do aninvestigation of the attack, be
it a FIBIB or any other type ofattack, and work with the
commander advising them of howto catch the groups that were
operating in their AO.
So I did that for several years.
(06:41):
Then I realized I was gettingolder, so I started teaching
overseas for the StateDepartment in their
anti-terrorist program and didthat for several years and it
was during all that time Idecided to write this book.
I learned a lot living in Iraqand Afghanistan about children
(07:04):
that were kidnapped for reasonsI don't even want to discuss and
it was pretty horrible.
And I think when I came home Irealized we had the same
situation right here in ourcountry.
I guess it's just one of thosethings you don't really see or
think about.
So I decided to write that book.
So it addresses missing persons, primarily children, and I
(07:30):
learned that when you try to getthe police involved that can be
somewhat difficult.
So I wanted to give parents away to recognize when their
(07:55):
children are missing and whatthey can do to find that child
far faster than law enforcementcan do it.
So that book would do that.
It also gets into kidnapping.
It gets into pedophilia.
It gets into everything you canimagine that women and children
are the victims of, to includevery violent behavior, sexual
(08:20):
behavior.
I discuss rape, date rape.
I discuss the issues that aregoing on right in our high
schools where children are beinginvolved in sex against their
will.
Then when they go off tocollege, as we can probably
(08:41):
remember a little bit, there's alot of issues with women being
taken advantage of and over timethat's starting to include boys
and men.
They're the victims almost asmuch as women, but not to that
level.
So this book just teaches youhow to prevent all these crimes
(09:03):
from being committed and, ifthey should happen, it tells you
how to deal with it.
So I also get into professionalcounseling and things like that
in the book, so it will requiresome thorough reading.
It will require some effort forpeople, but I think finding
(09:24):
your child is something that wewould all want.
Speaker 1 (09:28):
We'll get into that in detail, because I think
that's important.
Let me just ask you when youjoined the Army where are you
from, what area of the country?
And you know when did you knowyou wanted to be in the military
and law enforcement?
How old were you?
Speaker 2 (09:46):
Well, my dad was in the Marine Corps so we traveled
around a lot but we ended up inAlbany, georgia.
So that's where I primarilywent to school for junior and
high school.
And my father was a cop at onetime and I think that's when the
seed was planted and I realizedthat's something I wanted to do
.
So I kind of left home a littlebit earlier I think I had two
(10:13):
months before graduating fromhigh school and I was anxious to
get out of home and get intothe Army and get to work and I
always thought parachuting wouldbe very interesting and I knew
a lot about the 82nd Airbornefrom World War II.
So it was just something thatwas in my blood.
And you know, I could say Iwent through 10 years active
(10:36):
duty and 13 years in thereserves and never had a day of
regret not one.
Speaker 1 (10:43):
That's, that's commendable.
The you know and I you know howI feel about it.
Any veteran or anything likethat, how old are you?
I mean, what year did you go inwhat year?
Speaker 2 (10:58):
I went in in March of 1973.
Speaker 1 (11:01):
Okay, so that was, was that was post Vietnam, right
, or was it?
Speaker 2 (11:08):
no, vietnam didn't until 74 okay so the 82nd had
just returned from there, so ofcourse we weren't deploying it
again.
Speaker 1 (11:19):
So I did get the Vietnam veteran status, although
I never went over there, okaythat's what I was asking and
that's to be proud of and thankyou for your service.
With that time there was a lotof people.
I came in, or I was about to goin in 1974 with that, but I got
(11:44):
a baseball scholarship and Itook that instead and it didn't
work out too well because Icouldn't hit, but that's another
story for another day.
Let me ask you this so when youwent to work at the Pentagon,
that was probably a change fromthe military police and you
(12:09):
explained why you went into theintelligence field.
What attracted you to Customsversus the other agencies?
Was there a reason or did youknow somebody that was an agent
in Washington?
Speaker 2 (12:22):
Yes, I did.
Did you know somebody that wasan agent in Washington?
Yes, I did so.
I knew many of the agents thatwe would meet with at Fort Myers
, virginia, and I did knowsomeone in customs, so it worked
to my benefit.
As you remember, we had thetreasury exam, which was a
monster of a test, butfortunately for veterans, you
(12:43):
didn't have to take that test,and later on the federal
government came up with a systemto hire veterans off the
regular best qualified list, soit was all just pure luck with
timing.
I'm glad I did go with Customs.
I worked extensively with DEAand FBI, more so in Miami than I
(13:11):
did in the Washington DC area,and there's just no finer group
of investigators than you willfind in Customs, and you well
know.
Speaker 1 (13:23):
Yeah, I came in off the—I transferred from the
Marshal Service in DC to Miamiand I often joke that my ex-wife
was hired and I was sittingoutside for my interview and
they just said you're likebaseball, you're a player to be
named later.
so you know, you're going to bein, but yeah, it was.
(13:47):
It was a great experience inthat.
So when you came here, you werehere on a TDY originally and
then you went over to the VicePresidential Florida Joint Task
Group, which I was part of toopresidential Florida joint task
(14:08):
group, which I was part of too.
Most of the people don'trealize that it started out with
Operation Florida.
Two of the ATF agents werekilled in the early 80s with
that and it was a really really,really good group to work in.
There was a lot of camaraderieand I came in in the 90s for
that.
Can you describe yourexperience in the task force,
(14:31):
what it was like and the amountof control deliveries that
occurred?
And I mean it was like triage,you know, deciding what cases
you're going to work.
Speaker 2 (14:41):
Yeah, I started off in an airport group so our job
was to respond to the MiamiInternational Airport when the
customs inspectors made aseizure and after going through
one of those you said it waslike a triage and it was we had
to process the evidence.
All the witnesses puteverything together, get it
(15:03):
ready for a trial evidence.
All the witnesses puteverything together, get it
ready for a trial.
But I had heard someone talkabout a controlled delivery and
I started looking into that andI found out that, talking a
person sitting in handcuffs with20 keys of coke on his lap, it
was pretty easy to convince himto cooperate instead of going to
(15:25):
jail for 20 years or longer,yeah, or longer, or much longer.
So I started doing controlleddeliveries and got pretty good
at them.
I can say 50% of the airportseizures I responded to turned
into a controlled delivery.
Airport seizures I responded toturned into a controlled
(15:48):
delivery.
The best one I had and enjoyedimmensely, was three people that
had smuggled in coke and theyadmitted it to doing it on
numerous occasions.
I can't remember the exactamount.
We were up to 40, 50, 60 pounds, but they were smuggling
cocaine in for the Hell's Angelsin Montreal, canada.
So, of course, having theluxury of working with DEA at
(16:13):
the Florida Joint Task Group, wegot country clearance a lot
faster than normal with the DEAup in Montreal.
So we flew up there with one ofthe defendants and along with
all the coke so it's kind ofnice to fly in first class with
about 20 keys of coke in youroverhead and met with the RCMP
(16:38):
and the Montreal police, and theorganization they were looking
at had a group in Montreal oh,my gosh, toronto.
So the Toronto cops were calledso they kind of got involved in
it.
So, short story, the dope wasdelivered by the defendant.
(16:59):
The RCMP and the Montreal copsdid the raid on the Hells Angels
clubhouse and arrested a wholegroup of them and most all of
them pled out, except for twoindividuals.
So that case lasted well over ayear.
So the defendant was locked upin Pennsylvania.
(17:21):
So every time I would go up toMontreal for a trial or anything
, I would have to stop inPennsylvania and pull him out of
prison and go up there, andthen I handed him off to the
police.
So I had the opportunity totestify in a Canadian court,
which was kind of interestingcalling a judge his majesty, but
(17:47):
the case was very, verysuccessful.
Not only did they end upindicting probably a dozen or
two, yeah, I'd say almost twodozen people, but they also
ended up getting some of theMontreal police who had been
working with the Hells Angels.
Wow yeah, so that was a bit ofa shocker.
(18:09):
So then they kind of moved meover to Toronto to work that in.
So we started an undercovercase up in Toronto and again for
about a year or two I wouldconstantly travel up to Toronto
to work with their undercovergroup investigating the
(18:29):
Columbians, and I think I didsome drinking a few times that
night.
Speaker 1 (18:36):
Really With the RCMP.
I'm shocked, can you imagine?
Speaker 2 (18:44):
So it was a great.
Two years I've been workingwith Montreal and working with
the Canadians in Toronto.
It was just a fabulous case,highly successful.
It was a classic example ofwhat customs agents could do,
because we weren't too satisfiedwith just taking the seizure at
(19:05):
the airport and writing downthat stat.
We wanted to take it further,and that's what we usually did.
Speaker 1 (19:14):
That's amazing and, as we found, things start small
but they mushroom out, you know,and they develop into bigger
conspiracy cases and that.
So you were there and thenwhere did you go?
Where did you go at group afterthat did you go to?
Speaker 2 (19:35):
That's when I went to the Sac Miami to work with
Greenback, the money launderinggroup.
Speaker 1 (19:39):
Okay, and that was Dave Warren's group right at the
time.
Speaker 2 (19:44):
Yes, it was Dave Warren.
There were two groups, yeah.
Speaker 1 (19:47):
Okay, and why don't you explain to the viewers what
Greenback did?
Because you know the origins goway back, even before the money
laundering statutes in 86.
It goes back to IRS andTreasury agents working together
, separate from the USAttorney's Office, which was
(20:08):
located downtown, and explainwhat that was and what your role
was as an agent in Greenback.
Speaker 2 (20:17):
Okay, well, we were actually co-located with the US
Attorney's Office and IRS had agroup working right around the
corner from us.
But, based on the Bank SecrecyAct, we have all these currency
reporting laws and I'm surepeople are hearing a little bit
(20:37):
about them today with theSuspicious Activities Report.
But anytime you make a cashdeposit or withdrawal of over
$10,000, the banks had to fillout a form.
So the drug cartels were stuckwith people that had duffel bags
full of drug money and I meanliterally millions of dollars of
(20:59):
drug money and they would haveto try to get it into the bank.
So we had undercover accountswhere we could deposit that
money and send it down to thebad guys in Columbia.
So they thought we wereprofessional money launderers
and we were of a sort.
(21:20):
But they would turn the moneyover to us and we would, in turn
, watch the person that washandling the money and he would
typically lead us to the personwho was the owner of that money.
So there again, as opposed tojust making seizures of currency
(21:40):
for millions and millions ofdollars what some people refer
to as a rip and run we wanted tostart building cases against
the Colombians in South America,to start building cases against
the Colombians in South America.
So we found a way to deal withthe money handlers and get them
to cooperate with us on the samepremise as I was telling you
(22:02):
about the drug couriers, ratherthan to go to jail again for 20,
40 years.
They were willing to take therisk.
So we would build up cases.
Some of them were successful,without saying too much.
As you know, we had certainundercover agents in the SAC
Miami who met with probably someof the biggest drug cartel
(22:27):
members that have ever existedin South Florida and you got to
give kudos to those people.
We had situations where the badguys would call us up and want
us to meet them in the Bahamasor Aruba or anywhere else.
That's where customs shinedwhen they asked to meet with us
(22:49):
in an undercover role, excuse me, we could get country clearance
in a matter of hours, whereas,as you recall, dea and FBI would
need two or three days to dothat.
We never had that issue and itkind of upset some of the other
(23:12):
agents because we wouldn'tpostpone them, because that's
why the bad guys wanted to meetus and set short notice is they
knew federal agents couldn't dothat.
So we had a very highreputation for traveling all
over the world in undercoverroles, meeting with these people
, and we were just very quickabout it.
(23:33):
I remember one case I had a copfrom London come to me and they
wanted to meet some people fromthe NRA and I asked them why
they weren't going to the FBIand they said well, we were told
(23:54):
to come to customs because youguys could do it quickly.
And I said how quickly?
And he says we need to meetthem tomorrow.
And I says so what do you needfrom us?
And he says well, we need amillion dollar flash roll.
So of course I went down toBill Rosenblatt, told him what
was going on and we called thefeds and we went first thing in
(24:19):
the morning, picked up a milliondollars in a briefcase and gave
it to the cops from LondonScotland Yard and they went and
met with the IRA guy and showedthem the money that they had and
everything worked out.
I don't know of any otheragency that could get their
hands on that kind of money todo a flash roll in 24 hours.
(24:41):
I met maybe you met him, Ididn't.
Speaker 1 (24:46):
Let me ask you this for the viewers you mentioned
the term Smurf.
Could you explain what a Smurfis, because you know they'll
think it?
This for the viewers youmentioned the term smurf Could
you explain what a smurf is,because you know they'll think
it's a cartoon character, somepeople.
But what was a smurf tosomebody involved with money
laundering investigations?
Speaker 2 (25:04):
So the person in Miami who was a financier, he
was the man who collected thedrug money from wherever it was
being sold.
It could be right there inMiami.
A lot of times it was up in NewYork and other states.
All that money would eventuallycome back to the financier in
Miami and his job was to getthat money back to the
(25:27):
Colombians in South America.
So you've heard of bulk moneysmuggling.
So sometimes they would justpack it in containers of a
billion dollars and ship it toColombia.
But those were prone to beintercepted so they prefer to
use bank accounts.
But it was kind of impossibleto open hundreds of bank
(25:48):
accounts.
So they would hire a smurf.
So that would typically be ofany age it could be from 18 to
80, a man or a woman and theywould give them a percentage of
the drug proceeds.
And those people would have togo open up multiple bank
(26:08):
accounts all over the city andif they deposited over $10,000,
then the currency report wouldbe made.
So they would structure thatmoney.
So they would go to the 10 bankaccounts they own and make
$9,000 deposits and they wouldhave to do that all day and
(26:29):
eventually the money was so hugethat that even became a problem
to move.
So that's where OperationGreenback came in.
We were able to move that moneyto the Colombians and it not
only helped us identify thefinanciers in Miami but it
helped the Colombians identifythe people in their area Pablo
(26:53):
Escobar, rodriguez brothers, allof them.
So we had vetted Colombiansthat worked with us, that worked
with our agents at theembassies in Colombia, and it
was a very good operation.
I guess it lasted 10, 15 years.
(27:14):
But for us the Smurfs were thekey to everything, because that
was just like the drug courier.
Even though they were justoperating with money, it was
drug money, so they faced thesame penalties as any drug
dealer did.
So rather than go to jail theywould work with us and
oftentimes we would stage atakedown where we would take
(27:40):
that Smurf down and seize themoney from him and then just the
Smurf would just have to reportback to his financier what
happened.
And it was fine.
They didn't get punished for itif the cops made a seizure.
But I do remember once, down byour office, we were following a
(28:03):
money courier, a Smurf, and wefollowed him back to an
apartment near what was thefamous golf course in Miami.
Durrell Durrell, yeah, durrellDurrell, yeah, yeah, durrell
Country Club.
And when we knocked on his door, you know he consented to let
us come in and search the house.
And we walked upstairs andevery bedroom was full of
(28:25):
cardboard boxes and by the timewe finished counting, it was
over $25 million in that onehouse.
And by the time we finishedcounting, it was over $25
million in that one house andthat was the responsibility of
just that one person to try toget rid of that money.
Speaker 1 (28:47):
So those were the SMURs, and they were the ones
that helped us make our cases.
Speaker 2 (29:00):
And in this undercover operation, what kind
of fees did you charge theColombians to do this?
How was that worked out?
The undercover operation wasself-sufficient.
It was an undercover casecertified as an OSADEP, an
Organized Crime Drug EnforcementTask Force.
So the proceeds that we weremaking and the money that we
(29:21):
were seizing came back to thegroup.
So that enabled us to rent ourcars and enabled us to have the
latest technology that you know.
Law enforcement was always waybehind trying to get the funds.
So it was a considerable amountof money.
And even the SMURs you had tolook at them.
(29:46):
They may get anywhere from oneto two 2%, but when you're
talking about handling a milliondollars a week or a million
dollars a month, 1% is prettyhigh.
Speaker 1 (30:01):
So when you were there, you went.
From what group did you goafter that?
Did you stay in there beforeyou went to Maine, or what?
Speaker 2 (30:10):
Yeah, I stayed in the financial group until I got
that promotion to Maine.
Okay.
Speaker 1 (30:17):
Let me just ask an obvious question.
You're in South Florida, youknow, and you're going back.
You're going to the coldweather.
Did that bother you a littlebit?
And I realize it was verycompetitive in South Florida and
we have mutual friends thatthat did the same thing to get
(30:37):
the promotion and it was anearlier in my career with the
marshal service.
I did that, I moved around andthen finally, after what 15
years, 12?
I wore them down and you knowthat I was the poster child of
management, but I'll leave thatalone.
(30:59):
But you know that's a bigchange.
Did you think that out or whatwhen they offered it to you?
How did it come about?
Speaker 2 (31:12):
Yeah, so I lived on each end of i-95.
I was in miami at one end and Iended up in i-95 on the other.
Speaker 1 (31:20):
I thought about that.
Speaker 2 (31:21):
So I got a phone call from, uh, some people you
remember.
Uh, I don't know we're supposedto say names on this podcast.
Speaker 1 (31:29):
Well, there's certain names that I'd like to say, but
I'm not going to.
Speaker 2 (31:34):
So, matt, adrie and Robin Avers, you remember both
of them.
And they said well, you know,as a result of 9-1-1, and I'm
sorry, I did leave out one pointin between when I went to work
at the Federal Law EnforcementTraining Center as an instructor
and as an instructor at FLETCin Glencoe, georgia, my
(31:55):
expertise was money laundering.
So I rewrote all the coursesthat involved money laundering
and financial investigations toinclude the two-week advanced
course we had AFI AssetForfeiture Investigations.
So I did do that, I forgot.
And so, anyhow, matt called meup and he said listen, we had
(32:21):
911.
We're opening new offices allalong the northern border and
the southern border.
And he says I know you talkabout retiring in a couple of
years.
And I said, yes, I'm definitelygoing to retire.
And he said well, wouldn't youlike to retire as a GS-14 as
opposed to a GS-13?
And I think when I said, giveme a couple of days to think
(32:46):
about it, I think it's because Ihad to go find a calculator and
when I did the calculations, Idid want to retire as a GS-14.
How do I?
Speaker 1 (32:56):
get to 14, step eight .
That was the calculation.
Speaker 2 (32:59):
And it was that easy.
It was that easy.
You remember how competitive itwas in South Florida getting a
14th and at the SAC office.
So I went up there and openedup a brand new office.
I mean, we didn't even have abuilding, we just had to do all
that.
And that worked out real well.
And at that time, as you mayremember, a lot of the customs
(33:23):
agents along the border werewhat I call dog catchers
catchers their job was to catchthe illegal aliens and get them
before an immigration judge andget them out of the country.
Yeah, that's right, that can'tbe done, can it?
And you know we would have themout of the country in what?
48 hours.
They would be shipped backsomewhere.
(33:46):
But you know, my heart was indrug trafficking and money
laundering.
So, lo and behold, we had avery young agent and he was
actually my student at FLETCwhen I was an instructor there
and thank God he was assigned tome.
So he arrested someone and wewere able to flip this marijuana
(34:11):
dealer that operated betweenthe New England states and
Canada, because they had muchbetter product than we did.
And he flipped and we ended upworking that case and by the end
of two years we brought insomething like 20, 30 defendants
.
Years we brought in somethinglike 20, 30 defendants.
(34:37):
So, needless to say, matt andRobin were very happy about that
, but that's all we did the lastthree years I was there.
We worked the drug cases andmoney laundering cases.
Of course we also worked theterrorist cases, but we didn't
have the FBI Joint Task Force upin that area.
More or less it was down insouthern Maine.
So if we got any type ofindication about terrorists
(35:02):
through our counterparts over inCanada, we would typically call
the FBI and they would come upand snatch the person away from
us.
And they would come up andsnatch the person away from us.
But it was all good.
Speaker 1 (35:13):
It was all good Again , just like I said about the
Army there's not one day Iregret about my 23 years in the
Customs Service.
So when you did you retired outof there and then how did you
(35:34):
get involved over in the MiddleEast?
On what you did over there andif it's the extent you can
describe what you did, yeah.
Speaker 2 (35:39):
So one of the other retired, I think he was a
customs inspector and went overthere as a law enforcement,
professional enforcementprofessional.
So the Army CID came up withthe concept when these guys keep
hitting us with explosives orsnipers or mortars, whatever
they do, cid just did not havethe number of investigators to
(36:04):
go back and try to find out whothese terrorists were, who they
were working for.
The basic thing we would dowith any criminal element.
Speaker 1 (36:13):
Can you tell the viewers what CID stands for?
Speaker 2 (36:17):
Yes, that's Army CID.
They were the criminalinvestigators for the Army Very
incredible group of soldiers asfar as investigations.
So we kind of supplemented them.
So we would have the left, thelaw enforcement personnel,
(36:41):
assigned to different battalionsand brigades and divisions.
I was always the left ones.
I was usually assigned to abattalion so anytime there was
an attack against our soldiersthen we would respond to those
attacks along with the Army andof course they provided all the
protection that we needed whenwe went out behind the wire.
(37:05):
And there have been a number ofbooks written by the LEPs, I'll
be quite honest with you,written by the LEPs.
I'll be quite honest with you.
When I looked into the incomepart of being a LEP for the
Department of Defense and theDepartment of the Army and the
Marines, it was incredible.
So I figured I could take therisk of spending 12 to 14 months
(37:29):
somewhere in Iraq with thattype of salary.
But more so than the salary, itwas the commitment that you had
, the camaraderie you developed.
I had an advantage being aretired NCO from the Army.
I felt I was treated a littlebit better than a lot of the
(37:52):
other LEPs were.
We were totally embedded, wewore the uniform just like they
did.
We carried a rifle, pistol.
We had all the same gear sevenduffel bags full of equipment
that we never used.
Just put them under our beds.
So I did the contracting, likeI said, about four tours, and I
(38:17):
really loved every minute of it.
It was hard, it was a hard wayof life, but it was very
fulfilling and we had fantasticresults.
Speaker 1 (38:28):
How old were you when you went over there?
Speaker 2 (38:33):
I was probably in my early 50s.
So I was probably in my late50s by the time I decided I
couldn't do it anymore.
Speaker 1 (38:49):
That's still amazing.
So when you were over there,you mentioned that you came up
with the idea for the book and II want to explore that with
everybody because you know it'sit's really good and this is
(39:09):
something that I think familiesshould have.
I mean, I, you know, I don'twant to get religious because I
don't have politics and religionon the show, but I think that
this could be placed nearby withthe Bible in your house.
So if something bad happens, orto prevent it, like with
children or with spouses orother elderly family members,
(39:35):
can you come up with the conceptand just give us what you
covered in the book Not theentire book, because I know you
want people to buy this book,but just to give an idea of what
areas you explored in it.
Leon.
Speaker 2 (39:52):
Well, you know I went on.
The principle that I learned inthe Army at a very early age is
planning.
People are reactive and whenyou're reactive to everything
that happens in your life, theodds are you're going to react
in the wrong way initially.
And heaven help us.
When a child goes missing, youdon't have 24 or 48 hours to
(40:17):
figure out what you did wrong.
So planning is key in that book.
I mean, I could tell youeverything in that book and you
would still need the book,because the book's got all the
tools that I developed for theparents to put together.
And it doesn't have to be aparent, it can be a man or a
(40:38):
woman who's going off to collegeand they don't want to be that
missing person.
So the book has unique tools Ideveloped to help the police
find a missing loved one.
So I talk about knowledge.
So when I talk about all thedifferent criminals that are out
(41:01):
there and what they do and howthey do it, I don't try to scare
the reader, but I just want tomake them aware, because if I
can make them aware of what ishappening, they'll start
watching TV, they'll startreading newspapers and I'll
start putting two and twotogether.
I do have some unique stories inthere.
(41:22):
One is a was a kidnapper thatlived up in Cleveland Ohio, I
believe it was, and over aperiod of years he had kidnapped
four young women and had heldhim in their basement.
In his basement for two, threeyears.
Two of them, I believe, gotpregnant.
(41:44):
He even had family members thatwould come over to his house
and eat in the kitchen upstairswhile his captives were
downstairs in the basementchained to beds.
So I tell these kinds ofstories just to make the person
aware that there is no limit forthese psychopaths.
There's absolutely no limit.
(42:08):
Your podcast is about justicethen and justice now.
So one of the hardest things Ihad to write about in that book
and it really, really pained mewas when you called the police
and you were dependent upon them.
The results were not always asyou expected, and that's a
(42:31):
horrible thing to say.
So I addressed the criminaljustice system.
I addressed the family courts,which are also not your friend
at all times.
I addressed the social servicesworkers that will come to your
house one day and they may notbe your friend either.
(42:53):
So when a child has gone missing, depending on the police that
handle that case, they caneither help you find that child
or help you destroy your entirefamily, and I can't imagine a
parent who is a true victimhaving to go through that second
assault by the people they'retrusting.
(43:13):
So what I want to train you todo in that book is have every
tool you need.
So when that officer shows upon your doorstep, you'll hand
them part of what I call an IPPan Individual Protection Packet
and in that biographical form itanswers 60 questions that the
(43:35):
police should be asking youabout your child.
And you've already got thissheet filled out and it's ready
to go, so you can just hand itto them.
Who do your children hang outwith?
What vehicles do they drive?
Who are their enemies?
Who have they had problems with?
Where do they go?
(43:56):
What parks do they visit?
That sheet will have all theanswers.
So, as a parent, you'll have tosit with your child and fill it
out.
It's not going to be an easything.
We know children are 100%obedient, but you have that as
one of your tools.
That is one of your tools.
The other thing I'll have is acomplete packet on each child to
(44:18):
include DNA sample,fingerprints, teeth impressions,
various photographs, fromfacials to side views, to full
length views, front and back, ashort videotape that you can
(44:40):
give to the media.
If I'm looking at a picture onthe screen of a missing person,
if the media can show a10-second video of that child,
it'll have a bigger impressionon the people watching the news,
because not only do they get tosee them, they get to hear them
and they get to see some oftheir mannerisms.
So this tells you how to befully prepared for one of those
(45:05):
incidents.
I also talk about how to protectyourself from sexual assaults,
physical assaults.
Are you familiar with Krav Maga?
Having been in the mixedmartial arts business, I'm sure
you are.
Krav Maga is the Israeliself-defense fighting technique.
Any child, any woman, any man,even if he's 60, can go to a
(45:33):
half dozen of those classes andbecome proficient enough to
destroy somebody in the firstthree or four seconds and then
run.
And that's what I always tell.
I tell people that's my biggestadvice when you're in a bad
situation, scream, yell and run.
I mean that's the firsttechnique.
The problem of God teaches thattoo.
(45:53):
But, as you know, there'scertain strikes that you can do,
and unlike a karate class wherea kid has to go for five years
to get his black belt.
In Krav Maga, you can learnself-defense techniques in a
matter of weeks, if not months,depending on your pace.
So there are ways to hurtsomebody very, very quickly and
(46:18):
get away from them.
I also give them links to gowatch some videotapes of
children that are actually beingabducted and walking along the
streets and grocery stores.
I, where the film caught theman, just walk up and pick the
(46:39):
child up and run with him.
Well, the vast majority of yourkids won't fight back.
I mean, they don't know tofight back.
They have no clue what'shappening to them.
It's totally alien.
So I want parents to learn howto teach their kids to
immediately defend themselvesand the various ways you can do
it.
(47:00):
I talk about the differentsecurity devices that we have
available to us.
For me, it's floodlights outsideyour house, having an alarm
system in your house that'sbeing monitored with an
emergency phone.
So there's so much advice inthat 500 pages that you will
(47:23):
need to keep a journal and youneed to write down what you're
interested in and how you wantto accomplish that.
And I also encourage parents tosit down with their young
children and talk to them aboutthese things and there's a
missing persons group called theNational Center for Missing and
Exploited Children inWashington DC and it's
(47:44):
semi-funded by the government,and we've had legacy customs
agents work with them and theyhave all types of material and
tools that you can share thatare age appropriate.
So what you share with yourfive-year-old and what you share
with your 15-year-old are goingto be separate things, so they
(48:06):
have all those products thereyou need as well.
So it's a matter of the parentssitting down and coming up with
this plan and these individualprotection packets and all the
other tools and just beingprepared so when it happens you
can find them.
I've heard cops even today sayyou know, the most critical time
(48:26):
to find a missing person is thefirst 48 hours.
Well, that's not true.
Speaker 1 (48:32):
It's immediately.
Speaker 2 (48:34):
You must find them in the next hour because you know
the way things are here in thestates.
I meant they'll.
They'll take a child and drivethem across state lines and
you'll never see that childagain.
And smuggling a child out ofthe country is very, very simple
.
It's just a reverse operationof the uh southwest border.
(48:55):
So parents need to be able tofind those kids within the first
few hours.
I mean, that's the mostcritical time and the police
will spend the first two hoursjust interviewing you.
So I have it all put together.
You just hand a thumb drive tothe cop and he's got everything
(49:16):
he could ever possibly dream ofto start his investigation or
her.
Speaker 1 (49:21):
I think this is so valuable to everybody here.
As you know, either children orgrandchildren and you know I
don't think a lot of people,even the cops, have thought of
this plan and what to do, justin case but yeah, I mean anybody
(49:41):
that's ever filed a policereport you're, you're in your
house for, like on a break-in,simple break-in, for at least an
hour and a half, you know, andjust getting the basic
information as sitting therewith a notepadad and writing it
down and transcribing andgetting things out on the radio.
(50:02):
You know, be on lookout orwhatever for this or an ambler
alert or something like that.
You can get this outimmediately with your philosophy
and your practice on what to dowith this, leon, but I think
it's great.
And how do they get go ahead?
(50:23):
I'm sorry.
Speaker 2 (50:25):
No, you're good.
I'm sorry.
Yeah, and that's one of thethings I would address
individually.
I would talk about physicalsecurity.
I would talk about the conceptof personal security, cyber
security.
Children love to play withpeople on these electronic
devices and they have no ideawho's sitting on the other end.
(50:47):
I teach people as being aprivate investigator for several
years on my own, once I retired.
I teach people how to becometheir own private investigator.
They don't need me.
It's not hard to find out whois in your orbit and find
certain information about them.
(51:09):
I talk about blind dating,dating apps but you brought up
the breaking in your house.
So I do address, you know, thehome invasions and someone
breaks into the house and you'rein there.
That's.
That's one situation.
Hopefully, people can beprepared to deal with that.
(51:29):
If not, I teach them out.
But what do you do when it's ahome invasion that has multiple
violent people breaking intoyour home and coming in from
different doors?
So I cover all of that as well.
There's one section when I talkabout firearms.
So the first thing I write inthat chapter I says if you are
(51:52):
opposed to firearms, just skipthis chapter, don't even read it
, because of course, you've gotto keep certain people at bay,
but there's a lot in there thatyou.
I don't know if you read thatpart about the firearm, but it
teaches you about firearm safety.
It teaches you how to use afirearm, how to become
(52:14):
proficient with a firearm, howto protect the kids from that
firearm.
So I don't think there'sanything in that book I didn't
cover.
Speaker 1 (52:24):
No, no.
And just on a separate topic,with firearms, they recently
changed the qualifications fromour old agency from quarterly
with pretty strict.
I mean it was pretty strict, Imean it was very good to once a
year.
Now it's what I call savingbullets and getting cops killed.
(52:46):
That's what it is.
Okay, it's saving some beancounter at headquarters figuring
out, oh, we can save money, butwe're going to get agents
killed.
You know, because the more yougo to the range, the better it
is, whether you know protectingyour family or afterwards.
(53:09):
And you know I won't get intothe Second Amendment, which is
pretty clear, but the fact isyou want to protect your family
as long as you have, as youpointed out, the safety of the
firearm, that it stays in yourhands as the adult in that house
.
Okay, I'm done with my sermonso I'll go back to you.
Speaker 2 (53:34):
But it is very, very important.
You know, I think of it likethis, and I talk about this in
the book Imagine if you playedgolf or you played tennis and
that's your sport of choice.
Well, are you going to go outand play golf and tennis once a
year and expect to be proficient?
Are you going to go out thereand really, really train the
(53:58):
first year that you're learningthat sport?
So firearms are no different.
You know, I teach people how toshoot without using their iron
sights or using any sights, soit's very easy to shoot somebody
within 10, 20 feet and youdon't even have to aim the gun.
So that's something people needto learn.
Speaker 1 (54:21):
Yeah, and you hold the gun straight ahead.
You don't do the gangstersideways.
Speaker 2 (54:28):
Yeah, I always see that in the movies and you get
the bad guy like that, whichreally doesn't happen.
Speaker 1 (54:38):
What are you looking for in the future?
You know as far as what you'repersonally going to do and I
know you love this job.
You stayed with it a long timeand you still do, and I'm the
same way, you know, with this.
You know there's people we knowthat went off the job and never
(55:02):
heard from again, for tworeasons One, they were
incompetent and two, they werejust assholes.
As I write in my book, or PeteThrone's book, the butt
snorkelers, which is a term forSouth Florida and I, you know I
(55:24):
love that term.
When I came down I think Ihelped invent it with a few
other guys.
But what do you see in lawenforcement and that in the
future?
Speaker 2 (55:41):
You know I told you I was revising the book and you
paid me a nice compliment.
You said I don't know how youcan make it any better, but I'm
going to try to make it better.
I'm going to try to update someof the modern technology that
parents have access to now thatdidn't even exist when I wrote
that book.
So that's the second revision.
(56:02):
This will be the third revision.
After that I'll quit with thebook.
A huge mistake I made and I didnot market the book like I
should have, and there's plentyof marketing plans out there
that you can just Google andpull up and it tells you exactly
what to do.
I never did that.
(56:24):
I just let the book run by wordof mouth and it does good.
If you go to Amazon, you canjust Google my name, leon Ives.
You don't have to Google thatextremely long title and it'll
take you right to the book.
And it's got about 20 reviewsthat are all five stars.
It's got people who wrotereviews for it inside the book.
(56:48):
So anybody who goes in and justopens the book up and looks at
it is going to know that's whatthey need.
That's what they're going towant in their house, like you
said, and I recommend gettingthe hard copy, not the Kindle
copy, because the hard copy Igive you spaces to write down
notes that you need to knowthat's unique to your children
(57:11):
and yourself, and keep that booksomewhere in the house where
there's easy access to it.
So I will market the book thistime, but pretty much that's it.
I love to travel.
You know.
I spent a month in Italy andthen I went and spent three
weeks in Greece and I'm gettingready to go to Ireland and I'll
(57:36):
probably stop in Scotland andWales and UK.
I'm going to Liverpool to findout if the Beatles are still
there or not.
So I want to spend a lot moretime traveling the world.
I've been to 43 countries in mylife and it's just amazing.
And I think the most beautifulthing I found about being in all
(58:00):
these countries was when theysay everybody hates America.
It's just the opposite.
They love you Everywhere I go.
Sometimes I'll reach out andhold my hand and after about 10
minutes I'll have to kind ofpull it away from them.
People love Americans.
They respect Americans.
When I was in Iraq I washelping to train some of their
(58:26):
soldiers, especially the onesthat gave personal security
details, and whenever I wouldwalk through the it was their
compound I lived on.
It wasn't an American compound,it was theirs.
When I'd walk through there,some of the young soldiers would
come up and hold my hand andjust sit there and talk about
their family and talk abouttheir lives and what they wish
(58:47):
for the future.
But I could say 90% ofeverybody I met over there just
loved Americans.
So it's not true.
We're not despised as peoplewant to paint that picture for
their own agenda.
Speaker 1 (59:06):
I got one last question have you been to
Ireland before?
Speaker 2 (59:10):
No, never.
So I'm going to both theRepublic and Northern Ireland.
Speaker 1 (59:14):
You need to call me going to both the Republic and
Northern Ireland.
You need to call me.
I've done a few pub crawls inBelfast and down in Dublin and
all that.
So that's the mother countryfor me, but you'll like it.
I actually I'll fill you in.
But Belfast is very, veryinteresting, very the history
(59:36):
behind it and, um, you know therest of ireland I I've been a
couple times, um, quitefrequently the people are nice
but, like I said, don't get in abeer challenge with anybody
over there because they'reprofessionals.
They're professionals, theyreally are.
(59:57):
The natives used to be firsttime I went first time I went.
I got in a cab and this guy goes.
He hears me talking and, uh, hegoes.
I was with the guard and I gothat's the police over there and
and I hired him as a driver andhe was a good driver and, like
(01:00:20):
I said, he knew all the placesto go.
So we'll chit-chat on that, butI wanted to thank you very much
for coming on.
I think this is great.
We have all the extremes ofeverybody on here.
We have former inmates, we haveagents, we have police officers
(01:00:44):
that are shot and killed people, we have inmates that tried to
escape and drug dealers that gotlife, and it's just a real good
blend.
I said, as I said in thebeginning, jeff has been
wonderful with this and that andwe want to make this basically
(01:01:07):
real life with real peopleinvolved.
This isn't the major newsnetworks with talking heads or
head of agencies for six months,or people that have never been
to the months, or people thathave never been to the border,
or people that have never doneanything offering their opinions
, because in my opinion which Itake lightly sometimes it
(01:01:28):
doesn't mean shit.
You can't comment on somethingthat you don't know about or
experienced.
Okay, it's like me cop talkingabout a medical operation or
something like that that I Iknow absolutely nothing about.
So that's that's what we'redoing, and uh, conveying it to
the viewer, and uh oh, that'sgreat, it's uh, it's real life
(01:01:53):
from people that have lived it.
Yes, exactly.
So take care of my friend,we'll be talking, and thanks for
coming on today, leon.
Speaker 2 (01:02:03):
Thank you.
All right, buddy, thank you,and thank you too, jeff.
Speaker 1 (01:02:07):
I'll go wake him up.
Speaker 2 (01:02:09):
It's happy hour, see you later Bye Leon.
All right, buddy, bye-bye.
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