02-03-25 Interview - DEA Special Agent In Charge Jonathan Pullen on How He Is Keeping the Streets Clean

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Joining me now is de Special Agent in charge of
the Rocky Mountain Division, Special Agent Jonathan Pulland welcome to
the show. First of all, how does that title fit
on a business card?

Speaker 2 (00:10):
Like?

Speaker 1 (00:10):
How big are your business cards? Are they three by five?
What are we looking at of here?

Speaker 3 (00:14):
Yeah, we're talking three by five sized business cards, a
big long title.

Speaker 1 (00:19):
Well, I got to say, the DEA has been in
the news as of late because you guys have been
making some really big, high profile busts. Tell me about
some of the stuff that you guys have and really
I feel like this is all investigations coming to fruition.
Is that accurate?

Speaker 2 (00:35):
That's great? Yeah, that's right.

Speaker 3 (00:36):
I mean there was some one offs last week where
we went after some targets of opportunity, But for pretty
much what you've seen over the course of the last
seven or eight days has been cases that we've been
working for months and targets that we've been tracking for months.

Speaker 1 (00:51):
So when you guys are taking drugs off the streets,
what are we talking amounts? What are we talking about?
You know, how much are we taking out of the
supply chain?

Speaker 3 (01:00):
Well, so last Monday, we seized, we executed a search
warrant and we seized one hundred and thirty thousand fentanyl
pills in one hit. So that's an incredible amount of fedel.
So if you think that five out of ten of
those pills has a deadly dose for you and me,
that's you know, I wasn't a math major, but I
think that's sixty five thousand pills taking off the streets

(01:21):
of Denver that could have killed regular citizens.

Speaker 1 (01:25):
So I mean, I'm guessing that though that sounds like
a huge amount of pills, is that just like one
regular shipment, how many pills are actually making their way
into Colorado and into our streets now?

Speaker 3 (01:38):
Yeah, Unfortunately, seeing one hundred thousand pills at a time
has become more of the norm for us here in Colorado.
You may know that last year in twenty twenty or four,
we broke the record for Colorado for the most amount
of fennyl ever sees. We had over three million pills seized.
So that's an absolutely enormous amount of fedel coming into
our state.

Speaker 1 (01:58):
So where's this coming from? Kind of know the question,
but I'm gonna ask anyway, where is the fentanyl coming from?

Speaker 3 (02:04):
Well, it's a fentanyl is a synthetic opioid. So like
heroin is an opioid, right, but so is an OxyContin
pill that your doctor may prescribe you if you had
back pain or back surgery. But a fencanyl is purely synthetic.
It's only made from chemicals, right, And so those chemicals
are sourced in China, they're shipped to Mexican cartels, and

(02:25):
it's all made within Mexico and Mandy.

Speaker 2 (02:28):
They make it for so cheap.

Speaker 3 (02:29):
They can make one fentinyl pill for two cents in Mexico,
and by the time it hits the streets of Denver,
that same pill could sell from between two to four dollars.

Speaker 1 (02:37):
Oh my god, the profit margin.

Speaker 2 (02:39):
You know what.

Speaker 1 (02:40):
The Democrats should go after them for gouging. No, I'm
sad it was a joke for my audience. Yeah, you
guys are not working alone though. There's a lot of
coordination happening between federal authorities. Tell me about that.

Speaker 3 (02:50):
Yeah, and that's kind that's kind of unprecedented. Really, I
mean the Department of Justice, which is you know dea
at f FBI, US marshals. You know, we've really been
embedded in the last week or two weeks with the Department,
Homeland Security Agencies, which is Homeland Security Investigations and ICE
and really sort of using all of the resources from

(03:11):
all those agencies at the same time.

Speaker 2 (03:13):
We've always worked together and worked to.

Speaker 3 (03:15):
Join cases, but this is sort of on a whole
another level, really at the direction of the new administration.
And I got to be frank with you, it's making
a huge difference. Right So when my teams are out
like they're out today, we got an ATF guy on
board with us, We had ICE agents on board with us.
We're doing it sort of as a big joint federal
task force. It's pretty cool.

Speaker 1 (03:34):
I mean most of the time, though, it would seem
that I'm guessing you don't find many drug dealers without guns,
and I'm guessing right now you're probably seeing a lot
of people involved in this trade that are here illegally. So,
I mean, it makes a lot of sense to put
you all on the same thing. At the same time,
it's actually refreshing to hear you say that under this administration,
this is how things are going. Now, let me ask

(03:55):
you about it about a local law enforcement because Mayor
Mike Johnston has caught a world of self imposed crap
by talking tough about protecting illegal immigrants, and then he said,
you know, local law enforcement is very involved in all this.
How much do you work with local law enforcement on
these large operations quite a bit.

Speaker 3 (04:15):
I mean, you know, the thing we have to protect
local law enforcement from is you know, Colorado state law
prohibits them from being involved in the immigration piece. So
when we're going out working a drug case, you know,
we're not asking them to be involved in the in
the investigation or the movement of potential illegal aliens into
the hands of ice. We're handling that as the federal agents.

(04:39):
And then they still but the local, the state and
local cops who are with us, they work the drug case,
right or they work the money laundering side of the case.
So we're being careful to sort of protect, you know,
protect them in that space. But they're with us and
they're definitely been a big part of our success lately.

Speaker 1 (04:55):
So tell me about the relationship that you guys have
with federal prosecutors, because one of of the issues that
I have been really frustrated with a lot of people
have been really frustrated with at the local and district
levels is that some of our prosecutors are not necessarily
interested in prosecuting, And how are federal prosecutors different, And
will we expect people to actually pay a price for

(05:17):
breaking these laws in the United States?

Speaker 2 (05:20):
Yeah, I think so.

Speaker 3 (05:21):
I mean, listen, everybody has resource constraints, right, I mean
the United States Attorney's Office here, they need more people,
they need more money, just like all the agencies do.

Speaker 2 (05:29):
So, I mean that's one factor.

Speaker 3 (05:31):
But the thing for our cases the DEA works is
that they go out of state really quick, right, or
they go out of the country really quick. The suppliers
for a lot of the fedanel that comes in here,
we deal directly.

Speaker 2 (05:43):
With people in Mexico a lot of times.

Speaker 3 (05:45):
Right, So once we identify that guy, we can charge
him in federal court here in Denver and then reach
out and touch him in Mexico. But we really need
that we're really the support of the US Attorney's Office
to do that, and largely we've had it.

Speaker 1 (05:57):
So I don't know if you saw this, but today
the Mexican president, in response to Donald Trump's tariffs that
he levied over the weekend, has already come to the
table with Donald Trump to say, look, we're going to
send ten thousand troops to the border to help stem
the tide of both fentanel and illegal immigrants. Do you
have confidence in the Mexican government and the Mexican military

(06:22):
to follow through on those promises, because I've heard a
lot about corruption. It's hard when you're making no money
as a Mexican cop to not take the money from
the cartels. What has your experience been in those relationships.

Speaker 3 (06:37):
Yeah, so I've worked in Mexico over the years quite
a bit, and I can tell you that I think
there's a distinction between what maybe local Mexican cops that
were sitting in the state of Sinaloa and they have
to deal with the Sinaaloa cartel literally as their neighbors,
the sort of reaction that you'll get from there, or
maybe the level of corruption from local cops. There's a

(06:59):
difference between the at and what we see in the
federal police and the military.

Speaker 2 (07:03):
There.

Speaker 3 (07:03):
For many years, we've had really great partnerships in Mexico
at the higher levels, and I think that that's what's
going to come through now in this new administration, and
I'm really encouraged by it. I mean, I think I
think we have an opportunity really with focus on both
sides of the border to make a huge difference in
the amount of drugs that end up on our streets.

Speaker 1 (07:23):
Well, I hope.

Speaker 2 (07:24):
So.

Speaker 1 (07:24):
I have a friend who lives in the Sinaloa area
of Mexico and hearing his stories about like when the
cartel activity gets geared up, everybody just goes in their
houses and stays there until it's over. Like people in
Mexico are living in a terrorist state because of these cartels.
Is there any hope that you see on the horizon

(07:45):
to really bring some of these massive cartels to check
in any significant way in Mexico.

Speaker 2 (07:50):
Yeah, I mean, I.

Speaker 3 (07:51):
Think that there's got to be pressure from both sides,
and you're seeing that now. I mean, we're already sort
of hearing from sources that the Mexican cartels are pretty
nervous based off of what's happened just in the last
seven to ten days. We're hearing that they don't want
to send stuff across the border because they know that
the the US.

Speaker 2 (08:07):
Border has been hardened.

Speaker 3 (08:09):
And so to hear that coming from down south is
pretty incredible after just a week's worth of work. But
it's also going to take work on the south side, Right,
the Mexicans are going to have to do their part
to keep those guys in check. But listen, Manda, you're
talking about multi billion dollar businesses here in these cartels, right, So,
I mean they're worth fifty to sixty billion dollars per year,
So they have the money to fight a Mexican army, right.

(08:32):
I mean you're talking armored vehicles, and they got all
the weaponry you can imagine. So it's not like it's
not like it is in the United States. They're literally
dealing with an armed insurrection.

Speaker 1 (08:43):
I got one question from the text line that I
actually think is a really good one. How do you
guys dispose of all these pills?

Speaker 2 (08:50):
Well?

Speaker 3 (08:51):
We incinerate them, Okay, So that's really the way we
do it. And we have a few places around the country.
Once the cases are adjudicated, and it's not just the
all it's all of the drugs and evidence that we get,
they go and they're incinerated.

Speaker 1 (09:04):
All right. Special Agent in Charge Jonathan Mullen from the
de A, I appreciate your time today. Keep doing what
you're doing. I mean it's kind of exciting to pick
up the paper and see one thing after another after another,
and I'm I'm enjoying it. I'm not gonna lie, So
keep up the good work and we'll check in with
you when there's more to report in the near future.

Speaker 2 (09:25):
All right, thank you.

Speaker 1 (09:26):
That is Special Agent in Charge of the Rocky Mountain Division,
Jonathan Mullen of the de A.