February 18, 2025 • 13 mins
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Angelica Robles is a former FBI agent who investigated the cartel. She shares her story of being undercover, having friends murdered and unknowingly being married to a Cartel member.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:05):
Appochet production. So I mean they would be in class
and there would be shootings and we would just go
under the table. But the problem was that there were
so much gang activity in Cicero. There was so much
gang activity. You know. Obviously Chicago is infamous for gangs
(00:26):
like other big cities, but the Mexican or Hispanic gangs
were huge in Cicero. They still are. And yeah, and
you know, they would be fighting back and forth with
each other, and that's usually what the cause of the
violence was, is gang activity, gang violence.
Speaker 2 (00:44):
What would have happened if your friend was a relative
of a rival gang and they didn't know and they've killed,
what would have happened?
Speaker 1 (00:53):
Then, Oh god, there would be a lot of other
heads rolling around for sure, because you know how it is.
It's gang violence, just like cartel violence. They don't there's
no mercy. You know. I've worked at the border and
seen firsthand the cartel violence, and it's some of the
stuff I would never wish anybody to see. The things
(01:15):
that I've seen, you know, and I'm talking about bodies
that have been fully skinned and are tied to trees,
or you know, dismembered bodies or bodies hanging off of
bridges like lynchings. It's crazy.
Speaker 2 (01:32):
So while you're in school and you're leaving school, you'd
already picked what kind of a job you wanted to
do after this.
Speaker 1 (01:39):
Yes, yes, I picked my job based on my pain.
And I share this internationally every time I get on
a stage. I share this with people. Is most people
that join the government or join FBID you know CIA,
they do it because of some type of trauma. We
didn't just watch a movie one day and say, hey,
we want to go save the world. We do it
(02:00):
because we have a deeper connection to the job, because
this is a type of job that some of us
don't survive. And it's not luxurious, and it's not it's
it's exciting, but it's very dangerous. And I don't think people,
you know, the media and the movies make it seem
like it's very logist.
Speaker 2 (02:19):
It's no, we are not.
Speaker 1 (02:23):
Let me tell you. We are not riding around in
lambos and going to lavish parties like Double the Seven.
Speaker 2 (02:29):
Not at all.
Speaker 1 (02:30):
We are literally in the slums in the ship trying
to fit in to our surroundings. By no means that
I ever drive no lambo and have beautiful hair and
I was just flying out the side. No, it was
never like that. I had guns to my head, I
had hands on my throat, you know, punches to my
(02:52):
face like this.
Speaker 2 (02:53):
No, so what what did you actually join the department?
Speaker 1 (03:00):
So I graduated college in four, I went in in
O six, So I started doing undercover work in six.
I did undercover work from six to eight, and then
in eight I was transferred to Houston to start doing
more of the interrogations. So I have to say this
because I feel like me getting transferred to Houston to
do interrogations on criminals, drug dealers, murders, traffickers. You know,
(03:25):
all of that saved my life literally, because I don't
think I would have survived much longer doing undercover work
with the technology that we started seeing. Because keep in mind,
when I was doing undercover work, the first iPhone had
just came out, and so we were doing old school
(03:47):
undercover work where we're in the bushes hiding. Nowadays, I
can sit here and track you all the way in
Australia and you know, hack into your phone and I
know exactly where you're at, what time you're sleeping, what
time your alarm was off, what time you're leaving your house,
what time you turn on your car, because now everything
is digital and we can hack into everything. So it
(04:11):
really is a gift for me to be able to
speak on how it is to do old school when
you're in the van holding the camera and driving the
car at the same time, Like, we don't have to
do that anymore.
Speaker 2 (04:25):
While you were doing that, did you ever get like,
did you ever get SOT out or on the cod Yeah?
Speaker 1 (04:33):
Yeah, So my cover was blown. I was in upstate
New York by myself, okay, and this was probably more
undercover than not, because I did was undercover, and I
went into a cartel member's wife's business and I was
getting my hair done by the wife. And you know,
(04:54):
back then, the tech, like I said, the technology wasn't
as good as now. So I had a purse that
we had cut a hole in the purse, and we
had a camera inside the purse, so I see situated
the purse so that whenever she was doing my hair,
you could see the activity that was happening in the back.
So at the same time that I went to go
(05:15):
get my hair dyed by the wife, they were bringing
in cocaine from the back and they were putting it
in bottles of you know, shampoo, and so the camera
was catching this activity. Well she was like, oh, yeah,
the weather in New York, you know, blah blah blah,
and you could see the activity. She had no idea,
but that's how we found out that there was this
(05:37):
activity happening. So I had to go in there and
act as a client and say, oh, yeah, I'm here
from out of town. I have to you dye my
hair black. So yeah, wow, what was I was? I
was caught, you know. I and I say this in
the book For those that don't know, I have a
book out. It's called Through These Brown Eyes. I speak.
(05:59):
I speak very lightly on this stuff because we're gonna
let the movie speak more of it. But I was
caught and they so I was in upstate New York
and you know, it's very mountainous and it was in
the middle of winter. They tried to crash my van
(06:21):
so that it would go over the side of the mountain.
So that in the movies is true. They do do that.
Oh wow. Well instead of doing that, I was like, look,
you kind of start thinking about what your chances are
of survival. So I was like, I don't want to
plumb it to my death. That's that's not my first choice.
So I stopped and I surrendered. Now at the time,
(06:42):
I'm forty one now, but at the time I was
twenty three, so I look very young. So my twenty
three was probably looking like sixteen. And I think that
that actually saved me, because they could have killed me.
They could have killed me, but they didn't. They also
did not take any of my limbs, and they didn't
disfigure me. Usually when you are caught, they cut your
(07:03):
limbs off or they disfigure you, because it's almost like
this is your parting gift. Thank you. Now you're disfigured
or you're missing some limbs. And I think they felt
bad for me. I mean, they still beat me, but
it wasn't to the point where I'm disfigured. And obviously
I went through the trauma. But I always say this story,
(07:24):
and I said this on another stage that I got
on and I hit up Verizon. But when I was taken,
I had two phones. I had my personal phone and
my government phone. My personal phone was t Mobile. That shit.
They grabbed it and they threw it, but I grabbed
my Verizon phone, and I stuck it in my bra
so because I knew that as soon as the van
(07:45):
would start moving, they would know my location because of
the tower. Back then, your phones would ping off of
towers to get your location. That's old school technology. So
that's the only way that I was found because of Verizon.
So I always tell Verizon, and I still to this
day have Verizon because of that, and I will not
(08:06):
get any other phone service because Verizon saved my life.
It's crazy.
Speaker 2 (08:12):
How was your How was your cover blown?
Speaker 1 (08:15):
So my cover was blown because I was following them
and they saw me following them. Here's the thing about
doing surveillance is that when you're in upstate New York
and you're the only two cars out there, it's it's
gonna be very difficult. Now if if I would have
done that same that same undercover work, now things would
(08:36):
have been different. I could have been sitting in a
cabin in the top of the mountain. They would have
never known because of the technology. But back then, if
you're following somebody and you're in a rural area upstate
New York, it's literally them in the car, so they're like,
who the fuck is following them. Yeah, so to my defense,
I was it almost was like it was inevitable, it
(08:58):
was going to happen.
Speaker 2 (08:59):
So do you think do you think also what said
because you were you buy yourself, you said.
Speaker 1 (09:05):
By myself a lot of a lot of these smaller
missions we did on our own.
Speaker 2 (09:10):
Yeah, do you think that saved your life too? Because
if you the being of a for sure?
Speaker 1 (09:15):
Oh yeah, they would have killed us both and threw
us over the mountain for sure. Oh yeah. The power
of a woman to a man is, you know, it's
effortless because we and I think I always talk about
this as well, is when I go into an interrogation room,
I don't look like an interrogator. They think I'm a psychologist,
(09:39):
but I am the interrogator. But my tactics and the
way that I finesse them is totally different. I get
them so comfortable that they think I am the therapist
that they start talking about their childhood, and then I
literally ignite the child in them and they start crying,
and then they just start divulging information. A man can't
(10:00):
do that, and so I think that's why I became
very successful as an interrogat because I was able to
tap into the child of the perpetrator. So men can't
do that. You know. Men come in and they're like,
tell me this motherfucker and then they just they shut down.
But a woman's power is totally different.
Speaker 2 (10:20):
So, wow, what was it? So we'll just go back.
I just want to know about your first assignments and
what it felt like to get your first assignments.
Speaker 1 (10:30):
Oh my goodness, My first assignments were very The first
ones were easy. The first ones were just surveillance. So surveillance,
you know, you just follow people and for those that
don't know. Whenever you're working on these huge cartel or
even corporate fraud cases, a lot of evidence is needed
and we're talking years of evidence, and so a lot
(10:50):
of it is digital evidence, phone conversations. We need to
have incriminating information that is videotaped and audio recorded. So
a lot of my first stuff was just me following
you around. I would follow you around for days, like
four or five days, and you never knew. I was
like in the bushes in your yard with the camera
(11:11):
through your windows, like listening to all your calls, conversations,
following you around to see your patterns, what time you
get up what time you leave, what time, what time
you're meeting up, what time the runs are happening, stuff
like that, and it was it was awesome because you're
literally just part of the darkness. And then when they
finally get indicted, and we'll get into this, you know,
(11:34):
I don't know if you watched Chapels Cork hearing, they
literally were like they were watching us and hearing us
the whole time for years, for years, because a lot
of these cases we collect evidence for years to be
able to indict. So those are the first ones where
you're just kind of you know, following around and really
(11:56):
learning how to stay in the shadows and not get caught,
how to stay three cars behind without losing them, stuff
like that.
Speaker 2 (12:04):
So when you buy yourself at the style, at the.
Speaker 1 (12:08):
Start level, at the start, I was being trained, so
there was like one or two other agents, yeah, training me,
but most of the investigations are usually done by themselves
back then. Now when we do surveillance, you know, you
have the van and then of course you have the
vantage point, but everything is done digitally, so you don't
really need a van. Like you could be in an
(12:29):
office with all your gadgets connected, so that that's just
for the movies. The Little Van, Yeah, that's for the movies.
Speaker 2 (12:36):
Were you nervous at the starts?
Speaker 1 (12:39):
Yeah, I was very nervous. But I also knew that
I had to pay my dues because to get to
the level of interrogations that I got to, you had
to pay your dues. Because everybody wants to be a profiler,
everybody wants to be the mind reader type positions, but
you have to pay your dues. And the way that
you get to apply to those positions is by making
(13:02):
your resume look nicer. So I'm a woman, I'm Latina,
I'm doing undercover work that looks amazing on my resume.
So everybody usually has to do undercover work before they
can start doing the higher level positions. And that's how
they make it so competitive because not everybody gets those positions.
Speaker 2 (13:19):
So when was it? When was the first time you
actually got like, was there every a time when you
thought this is not for me?
Speaker 1 (13:30):
No?
Speaker 2 (13:31):
Never, you didn't have any second You never had second thoughts.
Speaker 1 (13:34):
No, But I think I think because my pain was
so great and I felt like, you know how people
join the military after, you know, Americans, a lot of
Americans joined the military after nine to eleven. It's that
feeling like I'm giving back and I'm giving back to
my my murdered friend,
Appochet production. So I mean they would be in class
and there would be shootings and we would just go
under the table. But the problem was that there were
so much gang activity in Cicero. There was so much
gang activity. You know. Obviously Chicago is infamous for gangs
(00:26):
like other big cities, but the Mexican or Hispanic gangs
were huge in Cicero. They still are. And yeah, and
you know, they would be fighting back and forth with
each other, and that's usually what the cause of the
violence was, is gang activity, gang violence.
Speaker 2 (00:44):
What would have happened if your friend was a relative
of a rival gang and they didn't know and they've killed,
what would have happened?
Speaker 1 (00:53):
Then, Oh god, there would be a lot of other
heads rolling around for sure, because you know how it is.
It's gang violence, just like cartel violence. They don't there's
no mercy. You know. I've worked at the border and
seen firsthand the cartel violence, and it's some of the
stuff I would never wish anybody to see. The things
(01:15):
that I've seen, you know, and I'm talking about bodies
that have been fully skinned and are tied to trees,
or you know, dismembered bodies or bodies hanging off of
bridges like lynchings. It's crazy.
Speaker 2 (01:32):
So while you're in school and you're leaving school, you'd
already picked what kind of a job you wanted to
do after this.
Speaker 1 (01:39):
Yes, yes, I picked my job based on my pain.
And I share this internationally every time I get on
a stage. I share this with people. Is most people
that join the government or join FBID you know CIA,
they do it because of some type of trauma. We
didn't just watch a movie one day and say, hey,
we want to go save the world. We do it
(02:00):
because we have a deeper connection to the job, because
this is a type of job that some of us
don't survive. And it's not luxurious, and it's not it's
it's exciting, but it's very dangerous. And I don't think people,
you know, the media and the movies make it seem
like it's very logist.
Speaker 2 (02:19):
It's no, we are not.
Speaker 1 (02:23):
Let me tell you. We are not riding around in
lambos and going to lavish parties like Double the Seven.
Speaker 2 (02:29):
Not at all.
Speaker 1 (02:30):
We are literally in the slums in the ship trying
to fit in to our surroundings. By no means that
I ever drive no lambo and have beautiful hair and
I was just flying out the side. No, it was
never like that. I had guns to my head, I
had hands on my throat, you know, punches to my
(02:52):
face like this.
Speaker 2 (02:53):
No, so what what did you actually join the department?
Speaker 1 (03:00):
So I graduated college in four, I went in in
O six, So I started doing undercover work in six.
I did undercover work from six to eight, and then
in eight I was transferred to Houston to start doing
more of the interrogations. So I have to say this
because I feel like me getting transferred to Houston to
do interrogations on criminals, drug dealers, murders, traffickers. You know,
(03:25):
all of that saved my life literally, because I don't
think I would have survived much longer doing undercover work
with the technology that we started seeing. Because keep in mind,
when I was doing undercover work, the first iPhone had
just came out, and so we were doing old school
(03:47):
undercover work where we're in the bushes hiding. Nowadays, I
can sit here and track you all the way in
Australia and you know, hack into your phone and I
know exactly where you're at, what time you're sleeping, what
time your alarm was off, what time you're leaving your house,
what time you turn on your car, because now everything
is digital and we can hack into everything. So it
(04:11):
really is a gift for me to be able to
speak on how it is to do old school when
you're in the van holding the camera and driving the
car at the same time, Like, we don't have to
do that anymore.
Speaker 2 (04:25):
While you were doing that, did you ever get like,
did you ever get SOT out or on the cod Yeah?
Speaker 1 (04:33):
Yeah, So my cover was blown. I was in upstate
New York by myself, okay, and this was probably more
undercover than not, because I did was undercover, and I
went into a cartel member's wife's business and I was
getting my hair done by the wife. And you know,
(04:54):
back then, the tech, like I said, the technology wasn't
as good as now. So I had a purse that
we had cut a hole in the purse, and we
had a camera inside the purse, so I see situated
the purse so that whenever she was doing my hair,
you could see the activity that was happening in the back.
So at the same time that I went to go
(05:15):
get my hair dyed by the wife, they were bringing
in cocaine from the back and they were putting it
in bottles of you know, shampoo, and so the camera
was catching this activity. Well she was like, oh, yeah,
the weather in New York, you know, blah blah blah,
and you could see the activity. She had no idea,
but that's how we found out that there was this
(05:37):
activity happening. So I had to go in there and
act as a client and say, oh, yeah, I'm here
from out of town. I have to you dye my
hair black. So yeah, wow, what was I was? I
was caught, you know. I and I say this in
the book For those that don't know, I have a
book out. It's called Through These Brown Eyes. I speak.
(05:59):
I speak very lightly on this stuff because we're gonna
let the movie speak more of it. But I was
caught and they so I was in upstate New York
and you know, it's very mountainous and it was in
the middle of winter. They tried to crash my van
(06:21):
so that it would go over the side of the mountain.
So that in the movies is true. They do do that.
Oh wow. Well instead of doing that, I was like, look,
you kind of start thinking about what your chances are
of survival. So I was like, I don't want to
plumb it to my death. That's that's not my first choice.
So I stopped and I surrendered. Now at the time,
(06:42):
I'm forty one now, but at the time I was
twenty three, so I look very young. So my twenty
three was probably looking like sixteen. And I think that
that actually saved me, because they could have killed me.
They could have killed me, but they didn't. They also
did not take any of my limbs, and they didn't
disfigure me. Usually when you are caught, they cut your
(07:03):
limbs off or they disfigure you, because it's almost like
this is your parting gift. Thank you. Now you're disfigured
or you're missing some limbs. And I think they felt
bad for me. I mean, they still beat me, but
it wasn't to the point where I'm disfigured. And obviously
I went through the trauma. But I always say this story,
(07:24):
and I said this on another stage that I got
on and I hit up Verizon. But when I was taken,
I had two phones. I had my personal phone and
my government phone. My personal phone was t Mobile. That shit.
They grabbed it and they threw it, but I grabbed
my Verizon phone, and I stuck it in my bra
so because I knew that as soon as the van
(07:45):
would start moving, they would know my location because of
the tower. Back then, your phones would ping off of
towers to get your location. That's old school technology. So
that's the only way that I was found because of Verizon.
So I always tell Verizon, and I still to this
day have Verizon because of that, and I will not
(08:06):
get any other phone service because Verizon saved my life.
It's crazy.
Speaker 2 (08:12):
How was your How was your cover blown?
Speaker 1 (08:15):
So my cover was blown because I was following them
and they saw me following them. Here's the thing about
doing surveillance is that when you're in upstate New York
and you're the only two cars out there, it's it's
gonna be very difficult. Now if if I would have
done that same that same undercover work, now things would
(08:36):
have been different. I could have been sitting in a
cabin in the top of the mountain. They would have
never known because of the technology. But back then, if
you're following somebody and you're in a rural area upstate
New York, it's literally them in the car, so they're like,
who the fuck is following them. Yeah, so to my defense,
I was it almost was like it was inevitable, it
(08:58):
was going to happen.
Speaker 2 (08:59):
So do you think do you think also what said
because you were you buy yourself, you said.
Speaker 1 (09:05):
By myself a lot of a lot of these smaller
missions we did on our own.
Speaker 2 (09:10):
Yeah, do you think that saved your life too? Because
if you the being of a for sure?
Speaker 1 (09:15):
Oh yeah, they would have killed us both and threw
us over the mountain for sure. Oh yeah. The power
of a woman to a man is, you know, it's
effortless because we and I think I always talk about
this as well, is when I go into an interrogation room,
I don't look like an interrogator. They think I'm a psychologist,
(09:39):
but I am the interrogator. But my tactics and the
way that I finesse them is totally different. I get
them so comfortable that they think I am the therapist
that they start talking about their childhood, and then I
literally ignite the child in them and they start crying,
and then they just start divulging information. A man can't
(10:00):
do that, and so I think that's why I became
very successful as an interrogat because I was able to
tap into the child of the perpetrator. So men can't
do that. You know. Men come in and they're like,
tell me this motherfucker and then they just they shut down.
But a woman's power is totally different.
Speaker 2 (10:20):
So, wow, what was it? So we'll just go back.
I just want to know about your first assignments and
what it felt like to get your first assignments.
Speaker 1 (10:30):
Oh my goodness, My first assignments were very The first
ones were easy. The first ones were just surveillance. So surveillance,
you know, you just follow people and for those that
don't know. Whenever you're working on these huge cartel or
even corporate fraud cases, a lot of evidence is needed
and we're talking years of evidence, and so a lot
(10:50):
of it is digital evidence, phone conversations. We need to
have incriminating information that is videotaped and audio recorded. So
a lot of my first stuff was just me following
you around. I would follow you around for days, like
four or five days, and you never knew. I was
like in the bushes in your yard with the camera
(11:11):
through your windows, like listening to all your calls, conversations,
following you around to see your patterns, what time you
get up what time you leave, what time, what time
you're meeting up, what time the runs are happening, stuff
like that, and it was it was awesome because you're
literally just part of the darkness. And then when they
finally get indicted, and we'll get into this, you know,
(11:34):
I don't know if you watched Chapels Cork hearing, they
literally were like they were watching us and hearing us
the whole time for years, for years, because a lot
of these cases we collect evidence for years to be
able to indict. So those are the first ones where
you're just kind of you know, following around and really
(11:56):
learning how to stay in the shadows and not get caught,
how to stay three cars behind without losing them, stuff
like that.
Speaker 2 (12:04):
So when you buy yourself at the style, at the.
Speaker 1 (12:08):
Start level, at the start, I was being trained, so
there was like one or two other agents, yeah, training me,
but most of the investigations are usually done by themselves
back then. Now when we do surveillance, you know, you
have the van and then of course you have the
vantage point, but everything is done digitally, so you don't
really need a van. Like you could be in an
(12:29):
office with all your gadgets connected, so that that's just
for the movies. The Little Van, Yeah, that's for the movies.
Speaker 2 (12:36):
Were you nervous at the starts?
Speaker 1 (12:39):
Yeah, I was very nervous. But I also knew that
I had to pay my dues because to get to
the level of interrogations that I got to, you had
to pay your dues. Because everybody wants to be a profiler,
everybody wants to be the mind reader type positions, but
you have to pay your dues. And the way that
you get to apply to those positions is by making
(13:02):
your resume look nicer. So I'm a woman, I'm Latina,
I'm doing undercover work that looks amazing on my resume.
So everybody usually has to do undercover work before they
can start doing the higher level positions. And that's how
they make it so competitive because not everybody gets those positions.
Speaker 2 (13:19):
So when was it? When was the first time you
actually got like, was there every a time when you
thought this is not for me?
Speaker 1 (13:30):
No?
Speaker 2 (13:31):
Never, you didn't have any second You never had second thoughts.
Speaker 1 (13:34):
No, But I think I think because my pain was
so great and I felt like, you know how people
join the military after, you know, Americans, a lot of
Americans joined the military after nine to eleven. It's that
feeling like I'm giving back and I'm giving back to
my my murdered friend,
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