March 31, 2025 • 59 mins
Lou Valoze was hired as a hitman to kill a doctor’s wife, infiltrated gangs and took down bikies. It was a time where the cartels cut peoples’ heads off as a warning to other hardened crooks. As an undercover cop, the consequences were deadly. The retired agent shares the reality of working undercover.
Read more about Lou Valoze in his book, Storefront Sting, here.
Discover more about Operation Undercover here.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:01):
The public has had a long held fascination with detectives.
Detective sy aside of life, the average persons never exposed her.
I spent thirty four years as a cop. For twenty
five of those years, I was catching killers. That's what
I did for a living. I was a homicide detective.
I'm no longer just interviewing bad guys. Instead, I'm taking
the public into the world in which I operated. The
(00:23):
guests I talk to each week have amazing stories from
all sides of the law. The interviews are raw and honest,
just like the people I talk to. Some of the
content and language might be confronting. That's because no one
who comes into contact with crime is left unchanged. Join
me now as I take you into this world. Today,
(00:46):
I had a conversation with lou Verlouzi, a former us
ATF undercover agent. He's a tatooed monster of a man
who's spent over twenty years at the sharp end of
law enforcement. He operated in the world where the stakes
are high. Living a life like that comes at a cost,
and his career did not end the way he thought
it would. Today, he took us into the world even
(01:08):
most cops don't get to see or experience. It was
a heavy life that he lived infiltrating cartels, biking gangs,
taking over a thousand guns off the street. He was
even highed as a hitman to murder a doctor's wife.
Lou is also the author of a book storefront sting
atf agent's life undercover. Here is the chat I had
(01:30):
with him. Lou, you worked undercover for a long time,
and I know when you're passionate about your job, which
you clearly clearly were, that you can immerse yourself in there.
And the question I ask you working undercover as long
as you did your Lou, but your undercover name was
(01:51):
Seal from New York? Was your cover story? At any point?
Did you become more Salve than you were? Lou?
Speaker 2 (01:58):
I would say for almost a decade I was. I
was more soal than I was Little. It was it
was a lot easier to be sal Man. Everybody loves
sal you know he was. He was a dangerous, fun
guy who was living a hell of a life. You know,
Little had to come home to, you know, an unhappy
(02:19):
wife and uh kids and unhappy because I was an asshole.
But it was just easier for me to stay and
row and be sal because he didn't have any problems
man Liu lou Vellowsi had a ton of problems. Sal
Nundiata was was care free.
Speaker 1 (02:38):
So absolutely that makes sense. And I do understand that.
And I think the nature of the work that you do,
and I experienced it as in law enforcement as well
as a homicide cop, that you could run away from
your your private world and in immerse yourself in your
professional world. And it was easier because you just concentrated
on what you had to do because.
Speaker 2 (02:59):
You didn't really have to answer to anybody in that world,
you know, other than your supervisors, which as you were
doing your job, wasn't a big deal, uh, you know,
but in the home life you got to answer to
people and the responsibilities and all that. So the more
you didn't deal with those responsibilities, you know, the worse
(03:20):
that situation got. So the easier it was to just
be the other guy. For sure.
Speaker 1 (03:26):
I would imagine, like undercover the type of work you did,
that it would be easy to or thing that you'd
have to look out for is not losing yourself in
the into that world.
Speaker 2 (03:38):
Yeah, it's uh, it's a part of you because you know,
I have so many people who come up to me
and say, oh, you you know, you know you were
an actor for twenty years undercovering. But it's not it's
not really acting. It's just you. You take a part
of yourself and you and and you just bring it
to a different place. Right, it's you, but you know,
(03:58):
you just you just kind of unleash that part of
you and you go do these crazy things. So it
you know, it's it's just you kind of create this
other version of you, and you know it leads to
it can lead to great results professionally and you know,
(04:20):
guns off the street, drugs off the street, bad guys
in prison, but it can lead to disastrous results on
the personal side, and it did with me.
Speaker 1 (04:29):
Yeah, it takes a toll, and we'll talk about that.
There's there's consequences of the life that you live, and
that catches up every now and then. We actually had
Joe Pistoni on the podcast The Real Donnie Brascat, and
he had an interesting take on things, and full respect
to him, I thought it was amazing the job that
(04:49):
he did infiltrating the mafia. But he made the point
that because I asked him that, because he was very
long term in that role. That how did you uh,
let's say the moral compass, like did you? He said?
The man? I think the advice he gave was you
always had to remember that you're the good guy and
not get lost in that world. Is that another trap?
(05:11):
Four people that go in deep undercover understand what you're wrong?
Speaker 2 (05:16):
It absolutely is. And you know, Joe, Joe did a
great job. I've I know Joe, I've done speaking engagements
with him. But uh, you know, I think Joe that
case was Joe's big case, and he got out after
that basically, so you know, I want to say he
was undercover three or four years and the smart thing
to do, the smart thing to do is to get
(05:37):
out like a dummy. I never I didn't get out.
I did it for almost twenty years straight. Yeah, and
uh yeah, it's uh, you know, there's two ways to
look at it, right, you know, if you do it
for five or six years and get out, those are
the smart ones. But uh, but but the other side
(05:58):
of that is after five or six years, man, you're
just hitting your stride. Right, five or six years now
you know what to do and what not to do.
And that's how I felt I was like, man, I
just got good at this. I want to keep going,
and so I just never stopped.
Speaker 1 (06:13):
You know, I understand that because in law enforcement, you've
got to evolve and you become comfortable in what you're doing.
And I would imagine each time you did a job
or did a sting, that you're learning something you might
have made a mistake, and you think, Okay, I'm going
to fix this one up, or I know the path
and you get you would get very comfortable in that
chaos that the world that you're operating in.
Speaker 2 (06:35):
Yeah, Gary, you know, like anything else, you know, like
like all the homicide detectives I knew, you know, and
all the narc guys men and women that I knew.
You know, five or six years goes by, and you've
made You've made your mistakes, right, You've been corrected, You've
made your mistakes, and then you know what to do,
(06:57):
you know what not to do, how to carry yourself,
and you just you get better and better. You never
stop learning. And that's how I felt about undercover work,
and so I just never I didn't want to start, man,
you know, I I came to a place where I
was more comfortable in my undercover role than I was
(07:20):
at a bar with my friends.
Speaker 1 (07:21):
Man, you know, I look, I'm sitting here looking at you,
and I understand that role Like you dropped me into
a homicide, saying that was easy for me socialize and
be the family man and all that. That can be
a little bit a little bit harder. So and I
say this, and what, Yeah, I'm fascinated by the work
that you guys do. It really is a mercive. You've
(07:44):
got to get in there and you can't make a mistake.
And you likened it to acting. I think someone made
a comment because we've had some CIA dudes on and
some even the French spy and basically talking about when
you're playing a role in acting, if you stuff up,
well yeah, okay, let's do that take again. But you
can't afford to do that working in law enforcement undercover.
Speaker 2 (08:06):
No if. And again I always say I never really
considered it acting because Salmon'siata was just kind of who
I was, part of my personality that I just took
to another level. But as far as making mistakes and
you know, saying the wrong thing or doing the wrong thing,
(08:28):
the consequences could be dire, you know, and oftentimes they are,
and you know, unfortunately that's how we you know, we
losch some great people because of mistakes.
Speaker 1 (08:40):
And it's not just you making the mistake. The more
people that know about who you're what role you're doing,
you've got people that you're not even controlling that potentially
can make a mistake that can bring you undone. So
I would imagine the twenty years that you almost became
addicted to the adrenaline of it, the excitement of it.
Speaker 2 (09:00):
Yeah, without a doubt, I did an undercover deal my
first day on the job. You know, I was with
two federal agencies over here before I got on with ATF,
and you know, I I wanted to work undercover. The
other agencies I was with I didn't have that opportunity.
(09:22):
So as soon as I got over to ATF, they
put me with this crazy guy who was my partner,
and my first day, I hadn't even been to the
ATF academy yet, and I told him I want to
work undercover, and he goes, you want to work undercover, Okay,
you're going to do a deal today. So I ended
up that day. He had an informant who introduced me
(09:46):
to a gang banger, big huge guy who wanted to
sell a gun for two hundred and fifty bucks. He
was a convicted felon. He was a member of a gang.
So you know, I got wired up and all that
and got in a brain undercover car and went and
did the deal at a fast food restaurant at lunchtime.
And uh, I walk in. What's the informant? And we
(10:10):
meet the bad guy? And I'm looking up at this guy,
and uh the informant makes the introduction. He runs out
the door, and I'm like, it's supposed to happen, right,
So this guy tells me to hey. He goes, hey,
follow me into the bathroom. And you know, it's a
bathroom at lunchtime of a burger joint, right, there's a
(10:31):
there's a sink, and there's a urinal, and there's a commode.
So he walks into the comode with the toilet and
opens the you know, the door, and says, come on in.
So I said, I guess this is how it works.
I follow him in and I go in and I'm
like straddling the toilet and he comes behind me and
(10:51):
he shuts the door and latches it. So we're we're
face to face right here, pretty vulnerable and yeah, and
so I'm looking at him and I'm thinking, and wow,
you know, this is my dream, this is what I
want to do. It's my first day, and it seems
like I've already made some bad decisions because my options
are really limited right now. So, you know, he was
(11:14):
there to sell the gun. You know, I knew a
gun was going to come out. It was a gun deal.
And he reached in his waistband, and you know, all
I'm thinking is how am I going to get this
guy's head in this toilet if it goes bad? You know,
before he could get me. And but he wanted to
sell the gun. My partner had given me three hundred bucks.
He wanted two fifty for it. I just gave him
three three hundred a game a fifty dollars tip. I
(11:36):
just wanted to get the gun and get out of there.
And so he gives me the gun. I give him
the I give him the money, and we're walking out
of the bathroom and I'm like, you know, going through
my mind, I'm like, you know, are we supposed to
sit down and break bread together, have a meal?
Speaker 1 (11:51):
You know?
Speaker 2 (11:51):
How does this work? And I was like, you know what,
I just I ran out the door, just like the
informant did with the gun. And when I got in
the car, in the undercover car and let the team know,
everything was good and I'll meet him back at the
you know, at the meeting location. I remember it like
it was yesterday. I had that little stolen gun. It
(12:14):
was a little twenty five caliber pistol, and I remember
looking at it. I had put it right in the
console and that was my hide right there, that feeling,
greatest feeling I had ever had. I just took that
gun off the streets, right that gun that you know,
maybe that gun had killed a whole bunch of people,
(12:34):
maybe it was gonna kill a whole bunch of people
in the future. But I got it out of his hands.
I took it off the streets, and that began my
addiction right there, and I never looked back for the
next twenty years.
Speaker 1 (12:47):
I can understand how that, and one of my frustrations
is a homicide detected EVE unless you're chasing serial killers
or gangland killings, when you can put a stop to it,
the crimes happened and we're not preventing them. So it's reactive.
This type of stuff you do, getting the guns off
off the street. I can understand why you get a
high with that because a gun. Yeah, you're being in
(13:08):
law enforcement long enough and you've been ran long enough
to know the damage one gun can do. So to
get that off the straight from a bad guy, it
has to give you a bit of a lift and
make you feel like you're doing some good work.
Speaker 2 (13:19):
Yeah, for sure. You know, I half my career was
buying drugs, and you know there was For me, there
was zero satisfaction in buying drugs. You know, if I
did a deal with some cartel guys and you know
I bought twenty kilos, you're not even You're not even
sticking your finger in a hole in the dam right,
You're not putting a damn in anything. For me, it
(13:40):
was very very small satisfaction. You know, you're gonna get
some low level cartel guys and lock them up, that's
about it. But just buying one gun, you know, from
one convicted felon, you're actually making a difference in whatever
community you're working in. Man, you're taking that gun off
the street. You know, my agency that gun would after
(14:02):
the case is adjudicated, that gun gets destroyed, melted, it'll
never be back on the street. And that gives you
some fulfillment, a feeling that, man, you know, I just
made a little bit of a difference. Maybe I saved
the kid's life, maybe I saved the cops life.
Speaker 1 (14:18):
Now I understand that, certainly understand that. But life could
have been a lot different for you. You could have
been a quiet, little reserved banker because in your your
working career, start out working in the bank. Yeah, and
I'm looking at I'm looking at you now, and I'm
not saying the classic image of a banker, but that's
where your path was heading.
Speaker 2 (14:38):
Yeah. You know, I went to college over here and
got a useless degree in economics and business, and you know,
I barely made it through college. And I was not
I wasn't a hot commodity. No one was breaking down
my doors to hire me on Wall Street, and so
you know, I was able to get a job just
(14:59):
out of the new newspaper at a bank making eight dollars,
eight American dollars an hour. And I was just sitting
in a room with no windows, taking computer print print
outs and putting them in, filing them in file cabinets,
and I just thought to myself, you know, I can't
(15:19):
go through life with the job like this. There's no way,
you know. So I knew there was something else for
me out there.
Speaker 1 (15:26):
Yeah, I understand. It would be a slighter death if
you if you're not happier, it's not something rewarding. And
that's what you're doing, just to get the pipe check
each each week. What what drew you? The law enforcement
you don't carry?
Speaker 2 (15:38):
It was never on my radar. I I had a
friend who I had played played ball with in college,
and he just happened to call me one day and
I said, I was miserable. You know, my life was.
I was young and I had no direction. I was miserable.
He said, man, he goes once you come over, come
over after work and and let's have a beer, hang out.
(16:02):
He said, you know, I'm staying at my brother's place
in the Bronx. So after work, I drove down to
the Bronx and he was sitting out on the stoop
out on the front steps. So I sat on a
stoopid him and we're having a beer and a Corvette
pulls up right, which is pretty rare in the Bronx
to see a Corvette and this guy gets out of
(16:25):
the car and he's got you know, this is a
this is way back when in the like Miami Vice
days and all. And you know, he's got the long
hair flowing flowing back, and his shirt's open and I
can see he's got a he's got a Baretta ninety
two f in his waistband. And I'm looking at this guy,
going wow, No, that's that's a cool guy right there,
(16:46):
you know. And that was his brother. I had never
met him before. He just happened to be undercover Drug
Enforcement Administration agent. He was an undercovered DEE agent and
he had recently gotten back from South America and he
was working undercover. And we went inside and we had
a few beers at the table, and for about thirty minutes,
(17:10):
I asked him questions about his job, and you know,
he told me what he could tell me. And it
was right then in that conversation that the skies opened
up and I knew I wanted to be an undercover agent.
Speaker 1 (17:25):
I can understand that that time. And you reference Miami Vice.
I think we had a lot of cops over here
that we're watching that show, and there was a lot
of undercovered dudes getting around looking very cool, and they
had had the swagger about them, so I can understand
the attraction. That was a cool scene that they seemed
to inhabit. So law enforcement in the US is different
(17:47):
in Australia. Here we've got state police and we've got
federal police. So we've got four or five or six
law enforcement agencies roughly covering the country. But in the
marriag like you ended up and you're undercover work was
in the ATF and that's a federal agency. You that
wasn't your direct path into law enforcement. You joined other
(18:10):
agencies before you got to the a TF. Do you
want to just talk us through that and explain what
the roles are in those agencies.
Speaker 2 (18:15):
Yeah, so I wanted to work undercover. But as you know,
like like if if you want to be a homicide detective,
you don't just become a homicide detective, right, you have
to pay your dues, right, And it's years and years,
you know, after that conversation I told you about, it
was eight years until I actually did an undercovery Okay,
So what I did was, you know, I didn't want
(18:38):
to be a uniform police officer. I didn't want to
be writing traffic tickets, pulling people over. I wanted to
be an undercover agent. So I didn't put in with
the city police or the state police. I put in
with every federal every week on them, the three letter
the alphabet agencies, all the three letter agencies. I put
in with every single one we had ice, you know,
(19:02):
at f d E, A FBI, all of them over here, right.
I really wasn't very qualified, to be honest with you.
I had no experience, no law enforcement experience. I didn't
have very good grades in school. So I put in
and I actually, when you put in over here for
(19:23):
the FEDS, you take a test, an examination, and the
only advantage I have. Usually most of the guys taking
this examination are our police officers who want to become FEDS.
They want to move up to be a FED, so
they've been removed from the school system, usually for you know,
seven or eight years. They were gritty cops. By this time.
(19:46):
I was fresh out of school, so I was still
in test taking mode. And I just happened to score
really high on the test, which is the only reason
I got a phone call. And I got a phone
call from Immigration which is it's no one over here
as ICE now immigration and Customs Enforcement, that's not what
it was called back then. But so it was for
(20:09):
a job to be a special agent with the United
States Immigration and Naturalization Service. So I was in New York,
the job was in LA. They flew me out to
LA for the interview. And again, you know, I think
I did really good in the interview, only because I
didn't know what the hell I was doing. So sometimes
(20:31):
that's when you do your best, right.
Speaker 1 (20:32):
When you're ignorance helped I help.
Speaker 2 (20:36):
Yeah, you know, I went in there and I was
just myself, and I was and I was real honest,
and I wasn't expecting to get hired or expecting much.
And when I got back from LA, I didn't even
have a suit. My uh my dad had to help
me buy a buy a suit for the interview, and
I tucked my long hair into the back of my
jacket and went in and uh, within a week of interview,
(21:00):
I got a call say, hey, man, listen. You know,
pending your successful background investigation, we're going to offer you
a job as a special agent in Los Angeles. So,
you know, I passed the background and I went in
I went down to the academy. I had never never
seen a gun, never held a gun. You know, again,
(21:21):
I was as green as you could be. I was unqualified.
I was green, but I was hungry man. You know,
I was hungry man. I was going to realize my dream.
So I worked super hard. It was a long heart academy.
I made it through, and the next thing I knew,
I was on the streets of Los Angeles and it
was the greatest time in America to be a cop,
(21:46):
to be in law enforcement, was in the early nineties.
I was in LA from nineteen ninety one to nineteen
ninety six, and you know it was when LA. This
was during the La Ryan I don't know if you guys.
Speaker 1 (22:02):
There definitely heard the bad and watch it from over
he with a bank kyok.
Speaker 2 (22:06):
It was really had that invasion. It was the being
of the invasion of all the Central American gangs coming
into America, and LA was like the epicenter. So you know,
you had the MS thirteen, you know, coming in from
Al Salvador on, all of the Mexican gangs and the cartels, Guatemalan,
(22:27):
Honduran gangs coming up, and you know the gangs that
were already, you know, our homegrown gangs in Los Angeles
in America. They didn't know what to do with this, right,
you know, they they had never seen this kind of violence.
You know, they were doing drive buys in some shootings,
these Central American gangs, they were cutting people's heads off,
(22:50):
they were cutting body parts off, private parts and shoving
them in people's mouth to send a message. I mean,
it was next level gang warfare. And I would I
was lucky enough to be on the streets during that
and to battle that, and I really that's where I
learned how to be a cop. From the Los Angeles
(23:12):
Police Department detectives that I got to work with, they
taught me how to be a cop. So it was incredible, man,
it was a great learning experience for me. It's where
I learned kind of how to carry myself. And I'll
just tell you what I did. I think that made
a difference. So the way they did it back then
(23:35):
was your first six months on the job, they put
you in La County Jail. So every day I went
to La County Jail to interview on the release line
everyone coming, every foreign born inmate that was coming out
of La County jail to determine their alienage and their deportability,
(23:55):
all right, and if you determined they were deportable, you
were you know, right up detainers and fill everything out
and hand the paperwork in and they would not get released.
They would go, you know, into federal custody. But what
I would do was, you know, I was fascinated by
these guys. You know, here I am talking to this
(24:17):
guy who has been cutting people's heads off, right, some
guy from El Salvador, who grew up in some dirt
hut in San Salvador, who ended up somehow on the
streets of La as an enforcer, you know, for MS
thirteen and he's out there killing, you know, selling drugs,
(24:43):
chopping people's heads off. And I would talk to these
guys would I was genuinely interested in their story, you know, like,
how did how did you go from being a little kid,
you know, in these very simple beginnings to where you
are and what you're doing. And it's funny, even hardened
criminals they'll tell their story, and you know, I would
(25:06):
pass that information on to our gain units, right, and
our gain units were like, hey man, you know this rookie,
he's going the extra mile. Man. You know, he's passing
information and he gets it. And I think that kind
of helped me in my career, you know, start getting
out as you know, I got known this guy's a
worker's go get.
Speaker 1 (25:25):
Well what you've said there, Lou, I understand because if
you have that inquiry in mind, and dare I say,
And it's not used all the time, but empathy, that
understanding the path that brought people to when they're sitting
behind the gates in prison, it can give you a
deeper understanding. It helps you if you can communicate with
(25:45):
them on their level. It helps you all the way
through your career in law enforcement, being able to have
a conversation with people, not sit there and judge and
not just go, well, you're a bad guy. You've got
nothing to say that I'm interested in. If you sit
down and spend time, it does make a difference, doesn't it.
Speaker 2 (26:00):
And that's human nature, right Gary, that's human nature.
Speaker 1 (26:03):
Right.
Speaker 2 (26:03):
Everyone everybody had a mom at some point, right that
that held them as a baby when they came out.
And you know, I wanted to know from these guys,
you know, how man, how did you get here? How
did it? How did it happen? Tell me, you know.
And it turned out that a lot of these guys,
you know, the real story, which a lot of people
didn't get into. You know, their families back in Ol
(26:27):
Salvador were being closely watched and if they didn't do
if they didn't carry out their mission and do what
they're supposed to do, their families would get killed, right
the gangs would kill their families. So again, you know,
you can't make excuses for criminality and you know, for
these kind of bad things, but it gives you a
(26:48):
pretty good understanding. And you know, I would talk to
them about that. Hey man, tell me. And plus i'd
be doing these interviews in Spanish, you know, which is
which was the second language for me, which made it
even harder. And I just I just really found that
you get so much more information when you when you
(27:10):
treat everyone with respect and with dignity, you know, unless,
of course they give you a reason not too. But
you know, right off the bat, I always treated everyone
with respect, they treated them with dignity, and I found
that got me a lot farther in law enforcement than
being a tough guy.
Speaker 1 (27:26):
I think sometimes law enforcement types make the mistake of
being the hard ass the whole time, and that's not
often the way you get through what you've what you
need done. Well, you talk about El Salvador and the
Central American crime groups that come from places like that.
We had Rick Prado on the podcast CIAD that worked
(27:49):
over there, and you said that your local gangs in
La these new gangs took it to another level. So
I could imagine from being a cop on the street
that would have been interesting time. So you went from there?
Then you ended up in Uh, where where did you
go from there?
Speaker 2 (28:05):
So again you know there was there was not going
to be a place for me, uh to work under car?
Speaker 1 (28:10):
You still wanted to be the Miami Voss? Did you
still you still had that that drive?
Speaker 2 (28:16):
And you know it's interesting, Uh with the Miami Vice thing?
When when? How how you know reality versus television? You know?
In my mind of course, Uh, I'm thinking under cover work.
I'm gonna be on yachts, I'm going to be driving Lamborghine.
(28:36):
I'm going to be surrounded by supermodels and champagne. And
it could not be any farther from I would. I
was in trailer parks and the projects, and I was
driving old shitty, beat up cars, and you know there
was never any supermodels. But uh, but anyway from from
(29:00):
you know, we had guys working undercover, but they for
the most part, they were the Hispanic guys you know
going in you know who were do buying fake green
cards and fake documents and all that. So I wanted
to get back to the East coast of America, you know,
the West coast never really yeah, I never felt that
(29:20):
home there.
Speaker 1 (29:21):
So I went.
Speaker 2 (29:23):
I jumped over to the US Marshals on the fugue
on their fugitive squad, and I was only there for
two years. I was in New York and I was
in Puerto Rico chasing fugitives, which was a blast, right
as well. You know this as a cop, the more
(29:43):
action and the less paperwork you have to do, the
more fun the job is, right because what they don't
show on TV, right, whether you're a homicide detective or
an undercover officer, is that of the time you're banging
out reports, they don't show that the fugitive investigations and
(30:04):
chasing fugitives was eighty percent action and twenty percent report.
Speaker 1 (30:08):
Well, I would imagine the brief is done, you've got
the evidence, you're just gonna find this this dude.
Speaker 2 (30:14):
You're kicking doors man. So so it was great and uh,
I was having I was having a good time doing it.
But again I wanted to work undercover. So uh, an
HF was a small agency over here, and you know,
only maybe twenty twenty four to twenty five hundred agents,
(30:34):
and they weren't hiring very much in the back in
the nineteen nineties, and finally an opening came up. They
were hiring one class and they were only hiring people
who were already agents from other agencies, so you could
jump over. You didn't have to go through the first
part of the academy. There was I think there was
there was only like twenty four positions open. I put
(30:55):
in and I got it. So after the future kind
of chasing for about two years, I finally got on
with ATF. I really wanted to go to you know,
they give you three choices where you can go, so
I put in I wanted the action. I put in
for New York, Miami or Los Angeles because I just
(31:15):
wanted to be in one of our you know, the
biggest cities with the most action. And uh they sent
me to Savannah, Georgia and that's the logic of the
US government. And uh, but it worked out because I
just happened to get in an office and get partnered
up with this crazy guy who was a brilliant undercover agent,
(31:38):
and it just set me off on my career and
I started working undercover right from the bat.
Speaker 1 (31:43):
Get that right mental in law enforcement, that sets you up,
doesn't it. If you've got someone that you can learn from,
someone that's got the smarts, someone's got the yeah, the
values that you've got, and follow their lead, that makes
a big difference, can set you up for your whole
whole career getting the right person.
Speaker 2 (32:00):
Yeah, there's no doubt, you know, Like I know, you
know because I worked with a new a lot of
homicide detectives over here, and you know, every every young
patrolman on the street dreams of being a homicide detective,
right they want to. That's again, you got to pay
your dues, You got to prove yourself, move up slowly,
and pay your dues. So it was the same to
(32:22):
be an undercover agent. You didn't just come on and
become an undercover agent, you know you And my goal
was I wanted to do these long term, deeply embedded
undercover cases where I was traveling all over the country
and getting in with these organized crime groups. But you know,
(32:45):
my partner showed me. He's like, listen, you start small
and you work your way up. So for years and years,
I started out, you know, buying one little bag of
crack off some you know, eighteen year old gang banger
in the parking lot of the shopping mall. You know,
(33:06):
buying a stolen gun off a convicted felon, you know,
behind the bowling alley, you know those. That's what I
did for my first couple of years, you know, And
you slowly build up and work your way into conspiracies
and maybe some small street gangs and doing that kind
of stuff, you know, And if you prove yourself and
(33:28):
if your name gets out there, you will get the call,
you know, to start doing these long term, deeply embedded
undercover operations.
Speaker 1 (33:37):
It makes saints, the saints learning the try lou What
do you reckon the qualities of a good Then it's
hard to generalize because everyone comes in with different skill set,
But what do you think of the attributes of a
good undercover officer?
Speaker 2 (33:52):
What I see in common when i'm you know, we
had an ATF. We had the EUP call the Enhanced
Undercover Program, and it was just a collection of agents
from all over the country who specialized and undercoverable. The
most amazing crew you'll ever see, right, I mean you
(34:12):
see them all in a room. It looked like it
looked like prison just got out, right, But the characteristics, like,
you spend some time with these people, and here's what
you notice first and foremost when you get beyond what
we looked like, these are some of the smartest people
you'll ever meet.
Speaker 1 (34:33):
Right.
Speaker 2 (34:33):
You cannot be a dummy. These are really smart, educated people.
And the probably the main characteristic is the ability to
think on your feet, the ability to always know what
to say. They're all pistols man with the responses like
they're also quick to respond, and they can sell you anything.
(34:57):
You got to be a salesman. You have to be
a natural salesman. You know, if you're you look at
that real slimy car salesman who's very successful, who's probably
selling a car that he knows isn't the right car
for that person, but he'll say whatever he has to
say to make that deal. You can make. You can
make that person into an undercover. Those are the kind
(35:21):
of characteristics it's not. It's not you know, bravery. To me,
it wasn't it. You know, you know who's fearless. That
wasn't it at all. Who's got the ability to make
that sale? Because that's what you're really doing. You're selling
your load of bullshit, you know, to get people to
want to follow you, to want to be part of
your hustle, or to let you into their hustle. It's
(35:44):
a sales.
Speaker 1 (35:45):
Pitch that makes sense because you're even selling yourself that
people want to speak to you selling the product or
purchasing your guns, your drugs or whatever. There's one side
of it. Well we'll touch on it because both of
us don't lock at very much the paperwork associated with it.
So just to clarify the reality of I know, obviously
(36:06):
in homicide we've worked with undercovered guys and girls and
the amount of paperwork that goes with it. There's an
accountability because when you're as an undercover officer, invariably, if
you're giving evidence at court, the defense barrister solicitors again
to attack you. Well you're a professional liar, aren't you.
So it's all about recording and documenting. That's another side
(36:28):
of it that you've got to be very keep accountable
documents and spend a lot of time recording everything that
you do.
Speaker 2 (36:35):
Yeah, you know, it's funny how they don't show that
part in the movies around the television show, right. So yeah,
and when you think about it, everything you do out there,
for every minute of action, you know that all has
to be accounted for somewhere in a report. So very
(36:55):
similar you know, to a homicide investigation. You know, you
know that every single per you interview, right, you know,
every single piece of evidence you collect, no matter what
it is, you have to go back to the office,
get on your computer and you know, well when I
started it was typewriters, but anyway, you get on there
and that all has to be logged in, that all
has to be accounted for, and you have to regurgitate everything.
(37:18):
You know, even if you recorded it, you know, you
still have to regurgitate. You know, what was said, what
you what you took from that interviewmrize it. So if
you and that's another thing you asked about the characteristics
of a good undercover. All the best undercovers were really
(37:38):
tight with their paperwork because you had to be. And
for the exact reason you said, if you were not
good with your you could be the greatest undercover in
the world. If you couldn't translate that onto paper and
your reports weren't tight, you would get torn up in
court by by a good defense attorney. So the ability
(37:59):
to translate what you did, what you heard, what you
saw onto paper was so important that that was a
huge aspect of the job because if you couldn't do that,
you're going to lose in court, and then everything you
did was all for nothing. Anyway.
Speaker 1 (38:19):
Yeah, I've saying that I've seen undercovers in court in
murder trials and that it's ruthless. The cross examination they
get to discredit everything that's come on, Taking away from
the paperwork, the courts and all that. How do you
gain the trust of the people you're targeting.
Speaker 2 (38:38):
I think all of us who did it, we all
we would draw on our own personal experiences on life.
So and I use this analogy, and I know it's
very corny, but it's very similar to if you see
a girl you're very attracted to and you know you
(39:01):
want to cold, You're going to do a cold approach, right,
you see she's bellied up to the bar. You know,
how are you going to do that? Right? You don't
want to come on too strong, right, you don't want
to be real standard offish and cool, right because you
know so, So you've got to figure out you know,
you have to first you have to assess her personality, right,
(39:24):
you know, and then you have to figure out what's
the best way to keep her engaged with me, to
keep her talking to me so that I can get
a phone number, all right. And it's very that's very
similar to undercover work, right, So first thing you got
to do is you assess your target, whether it's outlaw bikers,
(39:45):
you know, the mafia, the cartels, you know, whoever it
may be, you know, the gangster disciples, street gangs, you know.
You assess who you're going after, and then come up
with a technique or a plan. And if you don't
think that your personality is going to work, maybe you're
(40:06):
not the right undercover. Right, maybe you need to say, hey, listen,
I think someone that's important, right, you know, know your limitations.
So my approach was always listen, I'm not trying to
become a member of the Sinaloa cartel, all right, I'm
a big note totalian. They're not gonna let me hit.
(40:27):
So my goal I'd never tried to necessarily become a member,
but I wanted them to want to become a part
of my hustle. So I would let them see me
and know that I had my own hustle going on,
and make them want to be around me. Right, You
always want to be the most popular guy in the room,
(40:47):
so people are kind of drawn to you. So you
want to do that with the bad guys, with your tarts,
make them want to be a part of your hustle, Like,
hey man, what's that guy going on? And how can
I make money off him? You know that that was
always my approach, you know, not to say, listen, I
want I want to be a Hell's Angel, you know
I want to My approach was, listen, here's you know,
(41:09):
I see what you got going on. Man, I see
your hustle. You know, here's what I got going on.
Maybe we can work together and make some money. Right,
Maybe you can help me and I can help you.
Do you know that? That is how I went into it,
and never a hard sale, never a hard push. I
would just put it out there what I could, how
I could help them what I had to offer, and
you know, let them see how eye roll.
Speaker 1 (41:30):
The people you're dealing with too, they get the the Yeah,
they got the straight smarts. They'll they'll smell you out.
They'll smell a copper mill away. And if you come
on come on too hot, Uh, you're going to be
fobbed off. But you've gotta make it. I understand what
you're saying. You've got to dangle it out there, get
them curious and and uh want to reach out to you.
So I dare say they think they're in control of
(41:51):
the pace of what's developing heat as well.
Speaker 2 (41:54):
Yeah, for sure, you know you don't. You don't want to.
That's why we talked about earlier. That tough guy approach
rarely ever works. If you come on too strong and
come out as a tough guy and you know I
did time in this person and that person. First of all,
those things are easily checked on. Right you talk shit,
(42:16):
you say you know you were in this prison, or
that you better know you know what cell block were
you in, and you better know all that information, right,
because they do, I guarantee. If they don't, their friends do.
So it's always super important to keep everything as real
as you can keep it and as close to home
as you can keep it so so that they don't
(42:39):
feel like you're trying to necessarily run a hustle on them.
They feel like, wow, hey, this guy, obviously he wants
to make some money off us. Can we make some
money off him? And maybe we can work together and
be in business to get it. Because you know, what
I found was no matter who I was working, whether
(43:00):
they were you know, supposedly these you know, white supremast groups,
or whether there were Mexican cartels, Italian mafia, black street gangs,
none of that. Man, None of them had any real
ideology or any of that. It was always about money.
They would deal with anyone who could make them money
(43:23):
if they trusted them. That's what it was always about.
Speaker 1 (43:26):
That's interesting. So you found what they're what they're they're
looking for, and get them curious about it. I want
to take into one one case that's mentioned in your book,
and being a homicide detective as long as I am
seeing someone preventing the homicide is great. I'm talking about
the doctor where your role was as a hired hit
(43:49):
man to knock off his wife. Do you want to
tell us through that that story, because I think that
gives an interesting insight into the type of good that
undercover operatives can can do.
Speaker 2 (43:59):
Yeah, that was a very bizarre case and it was
you know, for me, it was it was a big
deal in my career because it actually went to the
Supreme Court, the United States Supreme Court, and it made
case law. Uh. And it's the reason why an undercover
cell phone is now considered a device a communication device
(44:20):
in interstate commerce. So if you use one of these
it in the commission of a murder for hire, they
take it federally right away.
Speaker 1 (44:31):
I can take you.
Speaker 2 (44:33):
So this very well known, very respected doctor, and he
was actually a doctor for the LPGA, the Ladies Professional
Golf Association. He he was married to a much younger
attractive woman and the marriage was going south and there
(44:56):
were financial issues there his property. He had a second
house that was that he rented out.
Speaker 1 (45:04):
Uh.
Speaker 2 (45:04):
He happened to live very close to the Federal Law
Enforcement Training Center. Uh, you know where our academy is
and many other academies are. And it was not uncommon
for a lot of the instructors, you know, to rent
local houses, you know, local apartments and He had a
guy who was living in this house who was a
(45:27):
he was a former military one of those secret squirrel
guys who was a firearms instructor at the academy. And
the doctor was really into guns and all that, and
they had kind of you know, the guy was renting
a house from him, and they had become friends and
he would work on the doctor's guns and all that.
And one day the doctor approached him and said, hey, man,
(45:47):
I know you were you were in that that world,
that whole secret spy world and all that. He said,
would you know anyone who could help me out? I
got to get rid of my wife? And you know,
I mean there was there was trust there. You know,
they had known each other, and this guy was like
he kind of blew him off. But I guess like
(46:10):
the third time the doctor asked him, he was like, man,
this guy is serious.
Speaker 1 (46:14):
Yeah, there's another law and I want to kill my wife.
It's uh, he's starving the thinking playing.
Speaker 2 (46:20):
So you know atf we we had over here in America,
you know that that was murder for hires had become
one of our things, one of our specialties, you know
that we did as undercovers. And this guy. He went
to supervisor, who directed him to go up to our
our office, and he sat down with my supervisor and
(46:43):
told him the story. So my supervisor called me in
and uh, he told me the story. And so I
gave him my undercover cell phone number, and I said, listen,
don't don't approach him about it. Don't say anything else
to him. If he comes to you again, tell him, yeah,
say listen, I have something you can talk to. Give
(47:03):
him my number. And he said okay, and he left.
And honestly, you know, with murder for hires, I'd never
really thought about it again, because we would get that
more often than you think, because a lot of guys,
a lot of people talk crazy, you know, They're like,
I want to kill this guy. I want to have
him killed, you know. But as you know, some people
(47:25):
do carry through with it. They will. And a couple
of weeks later, I'm in the grocery store with my
wife and my undercover cell phone rings. It was a
number I didn't recognize, and I answer it and he says, hey,
this is the doc, and you talk and I had
to think real quick, and I was like, oh boy,
that's the doctor down there. So I told him. I said, yeah,
let me get somewhere I can talk. I'll call you
(47:46):
back in fifteen minutes or whatever. And I, you know,
back then, you couldn't just this is cell phones had
just come out, and you know, so I had to
go home and get my recording equipment, turn the recorder
and put it in my ear and put the phone
up and so talk to him, and we set up
a meeting and I ended up meeting him at a
public place, at a restaurant, and I let him do
(48:09):
all the talking. I guarantee you when that first meeting,
I probably didn't say twenty five words, and he just
he really started going into in the first meeting, telling
me all about his relationship and how it had gone south.
And I'm thinking this is kind of weird, you know,
(48:31):
at because now I'm in hitman. We're a hitman uniform,
and I'm thinking, you know, as a hit man, I
don't want to hear this shit. I want to know
what are you paying me? You know, who is she?
Where is she?
Speaker 1 (48:42):
Right?
Speaker 2 (48:42):
That's all I want to know. But as an undercover
I'm like, oh, keep talking, dude, right, keep talking, because
this is this is all good. Because that first partner
I told you about. He had taught me from the beginning.
When you're working undercover, shut your mouth. Nobody's going to
prison based on what you say. They're going to prison
based on what they say, So shut your mouth and
(49:03):
let them talk. You know, he went into the whole
story about you know her and you know how terrible
she was and all that, and so I think at
that first meeting I might have gotten her name, and
he wrote down on a piece of paper for me
where she works and what her address is, and when
(49:24):
you're doing the murder for howre That stuff is great
because when you go to trial, and they almost always do,
you want to put as much on the table as
you can because they're always going to say it was entrapman.
So so the more evidence you have besides just the conversation.
If all you have is a conversation, it's not nearly
(49:45):
as strong. But if if you can put some evidence
on the table makes it so much stronger. So at
least now I got a piece of paper in his handwriting,
he wrote out her name, her her address, and her
place of employment. You know, why else would you do
that unless you know you want to.
Speaker 1 (50:03):
You'll definitely add some white to the caist, doesn't it
in that? Getting the evidence in that manner.
Speaker 2 (50:08):
But you know what happened next. I couldn't even believe
it happened. So we had several meetings and I ended
up telling him and this was just a shot in
the dark, a total shot in the dark.
Speaker 1 (50:22):
You know.
Speaker 2 (50:22):
I had told him that the way I was going
to do it was I was going to make it
look like a robbery. I was just just an everyday robbery.
I stick a gun in her face, give me all
your jewelry, all your money, all that. And you know
over here robberies go bad all the time and the
victim gets shot anyway. So that's how that was going
to happen. So again, I don't know why I did this,
(50:45):
but I did it. I said, listen, this would be
a lot better if you can get me a gun,
a good clean gun to do it. And he said, yeah,
ill get your gun. And in our next meeting he
brought a thirty eight caliber Smith and Wesson revolver for
me to kill his wife. So now you're talking about evidence.
(51:06):
I mean, it doesn't get any better than that. Now
I could put the writings he made, you know, her name,
her place of employment, her address, the conversation, and the
gun he gave me to kill her. So again it's
incredible evidence. So we had several meetings, we had several
(51:30):
phone calls, and again usually at this point, most of
these cases here in America, that would be a state charge,
a murder for her, but there is a federal charge.
But for a federal charge here in the States, you
have to show there's an interstate in nexus. For any
federal charge, any charge, if there's a gun involved, all
(51:51):
you have to do is you have to show that
that gun at some point crossed the state line. So
if the gun was made in Florida and you arrested
the guy with the gun in South Carolina, obviously that
gun at some point across the state line. It's as
simple as that. So we ended up after all that happened,
and we had to actually bring her and her daughter
(52:13):
in before during the case because the government got worried
that maybe I wasn't the only person he was talking to,
maybe he had a backup plan. That's the case.
Speaker 1 (52:23):
You've bought up an aspect. These are the other things,
like when you're talking it through, Okay, that's logical, that's logical.
But I was curious about that because once you know
someone's going to plan to have someone knocked, you've got
a risk that you've got to address. And I was
wondering how you did that.
Speaker 2 (52:40):
That was one of the toughest, toughest talks of my life.
You know, they brought her in. She had no idea,
she had no idea why. They went to her job
and said, we really need to talk to you, but
we can't do it here. She's like, what do you
want And they were like, listen, we really can't do
(53:02):
it here, so will you please come with us? And
she was like, well, I need my daughter. So they
had to go get the daughter out of school and
brought her to a hotel and you know, we had
to tell her to listen, your husband is hiring someone
to kill you. That is a tough thing to hear
that your spouse is hiring a person to kill you.
(53:25):
And then I had to talk to her and you know,
obviously there were tears and I mean the emotions were
crazy as you can imagine. And she was a strong woman.
Let me tell you, we actually got her. I don't
want to say it like that. She agreed to make
(53:46):
a recorded phone call for us, which was another great
piece of evidence. You know, we told her, listen, it's
not about him, it's about you and your daughter and
your safety. And she was able to pull herself together
and make a very damning, damning phone call to him
where he he went crazy and yelled and said bad things.
(54:08):
So it was good evidence again, and so we took
them into protective custody. And I had met with him
in person on a couple occasions, we had talked on
the phone on several occasions. She told him during that
recorded phone call she was going up to their lake
(54:29):
house with her sister to see her sister. You know,
we're getting ready to take him down. And he called
me immediately after, and this was crazy. He said, well,
maybe you could drown her. Maybe you could get in
the water when she swims and pull her under and
dround her. And I said, listen, man, we agreed on
(54:49):
how I'm going to do this. You know, I can't
even swim. So I always gave him an out. I said, listen,
if you're not serious, tell me now, and he was
like no, no, no, he goes, you could just maybe
could just like get her on the side of the roads.
After that, when he hung up, he called me from
a payphone. There was payphones back then called me from
a payphone, and he was being surveiled. When he hung up,
(55:12):
agents zoomed in and arrested him. And uh, how we
turned that case federal was that when he called me
from that from his cell phone when we had conversations,
he was in South Georgia, which is right on the
border of North Florida. The signal bounced off a tower
(55:34):
in Jacksonville, Florida, back up to my phone in Georgia.
And this sounds real chicken shit, and it is.
Speaker 1 (55:40):
That was our that was our name, the rules, that's.
Speaker 2 (55:44):
Right, hey whatever, hey, however you can do. So that
was our interstate nexus day he used. He used his
cell phone, and it affected interstate commerce because the signal
bounced to Florida back up to Georgia. So he went
to trial and he lost. The jury found him guilty,
but they appealed it and it went all the way.
(56:04):
They didn't appeal it and say he's not guilty. They
appealed it and said they fabricated federal jurisdiction by this
whole hokey cell phone tower thing, and it went all
the way up to the Supreme Court, and the Supreme
Court made the decision and said, no, this device is
interstate commerce.
Speaker 1 (56:23):
Okay, So well that with a change change the landscape
for quite a few things. Doing a job like that,
there's a lot of satisfaction. But there's a little anecdote
to that one that occurred years later, if I read
it correctly in the book, that you were in a
restaurant with your wife and family years and years down
the track, and the waiter was looking at you. Is
(56:46):
that the case that it relates? So you want to
tell that story because I think it's something that would
have given you a real uh yeah kick, along as
the work that you've done.
Speaker 2 (56:56):
So that girl when they pulled her in and was
she was a kid man. She was maybe thirteen or
fourteen years old, the daughter of the doctor's wife. And
you know he was not her biological father. He had
adopted her. So yeah, maybe maybe seven years later, I'm
(57:20):
at a restaurant with my wife and kids and the waitress,
young attractive lady, kept staring at me, and I'm like,
you know, I had no idea who she was. I
couldn't place her or anything like that. Finally she came
up to me and she started crying and said, you
(57:40):
don't remember me? Did And I said I do not,
And she said, you saved my mother's life and told
me who she was and all that, and we you know,
we hugged it out, and you know, it was it
was a very special moment for me because you know,
as an undercover agent, you know, I would go to
(58:00):
a town or a city and do my job and
leave right you know, I usually wouldn't even be there
for the rest, you know, I would leave and I'd
be on to the next one. And so you very
rarely do you ever see the fruits of your labor
or do you even interact with victims or anything like that.
And this was really the first time in my undercovered
(58:22):
career that I ever felt a sense of wow, you know,
here's here's a life that I was able to affect
in a positive way through my work, you know, and
it meant a lot to me.
Speaker 1 (58:34):
Yeah, I can imagine that would and that's something tangible
for the sacrifices and the effort and the chaos that
goes on with your life doing the doing the type
of work. Lou we might we might take a break here.
There's so much to cover. When we come back, I
want to talk about the storefront strategies, a little bit
of straight street theater. I like that that give always
(58:55):
gives me a giggle when you create, create that, but
also about the impact that's had the life that you've lived,
and the type of situations you've faced throughout your career
as a law enforcement officer. But it's like law enforcement
on steroids, I reckon, when you go undercover, it's really
at the sharp bend. So when we get back, we'll
(59:16):
have a chat about that. Looking forward to it, all right, brother,
cheers
The public has had a long held fascination with detectives.
Detective sy aside of life, the average persons never exposed her.
I spent thirty four years as a cop. For twenty
five of those years, I was catching killers. That's what
I did for a living. I was a homicide detective.
I'm no longer just interviewing bad guys. Instead, I'm taking
the public into the world in which I operated. The
(00:23):
guests I talk to each week have amazing stories from
all sides of the law. The interviews are raw and honest,
just like the people I talk to. Some of the
content and language might be confronting. That's because no one
who comes into contact with crime is left unchanged. Join
me now as I take you into this world. Today,
(00:46):
I had a conversation with lou Verlouzi, a former us
ATF undercover agent. He's a tatooed monster of a man
who's spent over twenty years at the sharp end of
law enforcement. He operated in the world where the stakes
are high. Living a life like that comes at a cost,
and his career did not end the way he thought
it would. Today, he took us into the world even
(01:08):
most cops don't get to see or experience. It was
a heavy life that he lived infiltrating cartels, biking gangs,
taking over a thousand guns off the street. He was
even highed as a hitman to murder a doctor's wife.
Lou is also the author of a book storefront sting
atf agent's life undercover. Here is the chat I had
(01:30):
with him. Lou, you worked undercover for a long time,
and I know when you're passionate about your job, which
you clearly clearly were, that you can immerse yourself in there.
And the question I ask you working undercover as long
as you did your Lou, but your undercover name was
(01:51):
Seal from New York? Was your cover story? At any point?
Did you become more Salve than you were? Lou?
Speaker 2 (01:58):
I would say for almost a decade I was. I
was more soal than I was Little. It was it
was a lot easier to be sal Man. Everybody loves
sal you know he was. He was a dangerous, fun
guy who was living a hell of a life. You know,
Little had to come home to, you know, an unhappy
(02:19):
wife and uh kids and unhappy because I was an asshole.
But it was just easier for me to stay and
row and be sal because he didn't have any problems
man Liu lou Vellowsi had a ton of problems. Sal
Nundiata was was care free.
Speaker 1 (02:38):
So absolutely that makes sense. And I do understand that.
And I think the nature of the work that you do,
and I experienced it as in law enforcement as well
as a homicide cop, that you could run away from
your your private world and in immerse yourself in your
professional world. And it was easier because you just concentrated
on what you had to do because.
Speaker 2 (02:59):
You didn't really have to answer to anybody in that world,
you know, other than your supervisors, which as you were
doing your job, wasn't a big deal, uh, you know,
but in the home life you got to answer to
people and the responsibilities and all that. So the more
you didn't deal with those responsibilities, you know, the worse
(03:20):
that situation got. So the easier it was to just
be the other guy. For sure.
Speaker 1 (03:26):
I would imagine, like undercover the type of work you did,
that it would be easy to or thing that you'd
have to look out for is not losing yourself in
the into that world.
Speaker 2 (03:38):
Yeah, it's uh, it's a part of you because you know,
I have so many people who come up to me
and say, oh, you you know, you know you were
an actor for twenty years undercovering. But it's not it's
not really acting. It's just you. You take a part
of yourself and you and and you just bring it
to a different place. Right, it's you, but you know,
(03:58):
you just you just kind of unleash that part of
you and you go do these crazy things. So it
you know, it's it's just you kind of create this
other version of you, and you know it leads to
it can lead to great results professionally and you know,
(04:20):
guns off the street, drugs off the street, bad guys
in prison, but it can lead to disastrous results on
the personal side, and it did with me.
Speaker 1 (04:29):
Yeah, it takes a toll, and we'll talk about that.
There's there's consequences of the life that you live, and
that catches up every now and then. We actually had
Joe Pistoni on the podcast The Real Donnie Brascat, and
he had an interesting take on things, and full respect
to him, I thought it was amazing the job that
(04:49):
he did infiltrating the mafia. But he made the point
that because I asked him that, because he was very
long term in that role. That how did you uh,
let's say the moral compass, like did you? He said?
The man? I think the advice he gave was you
always had to remember that you're the good guy and
not get lost in that world. Is that another trap?
(05:11):
Four people that go in deep undercover understand what you're wrong?
Speaker 2 (05:16):
It absolutely is. And you know, Joe, Joe did a
great job. I've I know Joe, I've done speaking engagements
with him. But uh, you know, I think Joe that
case was Joe's big case, and he got out after
that basically, so you know, I want to say he
was undercover three or four years and the smart thing
to do, the smart thing to do is to get
(05:37):
out like a dummy. I never I didn't get out.
I did it for almost twenty years straight. Yeah, and
uh yeah, it's uh, you know, there's two ways to
look at it, right, you know, if you do it
for five or six years and get out, those are
the smart ones. But uh, but but the other side
(05:58):
of that is after five or six years, man, you're
just hitting your stride. Right, five or six years now
you know what to do and what not to do.
And that's how I felt I was like, man, I
just got good at this. I want to keep going,
and so I just never stopped.
Speaker 1 (06:13):
You know, I understand that because in law enforcement, you've
got to evolve and you become comfortable in what you're doing.
And I would imagine each time you did a job
or did a sting, that you're learning something you might
have made a mistake, and you think, Okay, I'm going
to fix this one up, or I know the path
and you get you would get very comfortable in that
chaos that the world that you're operating in.
Speaker 2 (06:35):
Yeah, Gary, you know, like anything else, you know, like
like all the homicide detectives I knew, you know, and
all the narc guys men and women that I knew.
You know, five or six years goes by, and you've
made You've made your mistakes, right, You've been corrected, You've
made your mistakes, and then you know what to do,
(06:57):
you know what not to do, how to carry yourself,
and you just you get better and better. You never
stop learning. And that's how I felt about undercover work,
and so I just never I didn't want to start, man,
you know, I I came to a place where I
was more comfortable in my undercover role than I was
(07:20):
at a bar with my friends.
Speaker 1 (07:21):
Man, you know, I look, I'm sitting here looking at you,
and I understand that role Like you dropped me into
a homicide, saying that was easy for me socialize and
be the family man and all that. That can be
a little bit a little bit harder. So and I
say this, and what, Yeah, I'm fascinated by the work
that you guys do. It really is a mercive. You've
(07:44):
got to get in there and you can't make a mistake.
And you likened it to acting. I think someone made
a comment because we've had some CIA dudes on and
some even the French spy and basically talking about when
you're playing a role in acting, if you stuff up,
well yeah, okay, let's do that take again. But you
can't afford to do that working in law enforcement undercover.
Speaker 2 (08:06):
No if. And again I always say I never really
considered it acting because Salmon'siata was just kind of who
I was, part of my personality that I just took
to another level. But as far as making mistakes and
you know, saying the wrong thing or doing the wrong thing,
(08:28):
the consequences could be dire, you know, and oftentimes they are,
and you know, unfortunately that's how we you know, we
losch some great people because of mistakes.
Speaker 1 (08:40):
And it's not just you making the mistake. The more
people that know about who you're what role you're doing,
you've got people that you're not even controlling that potentially
can make a mistake that can bring you undone. So
I would imagine the twenty years that you almost became
addicted to the adrenaline of it, the excitement of it.
Speaker 2 (09:00):
Yeah, without a doubt, I did an undercover deal my
first day on the job. You know, I was with
two federal agencies over here before I got on with ATF,
and you know, I I wanted to work undercover. The
other agencies I was with I didn't have that opportunity.
(09:22):
So as soon as I got over to ATF, they
put me with this crazy guy who was my partner,
and my first day, I hadn't even been to the
ATF academy yet, and I told him I want to
work undercover, and he goes, you want to work undercover, Okay,
you're going to do a deal today. So I ended
up that day. He had an informant who introduced me
(09:46):
to a gang banger, big huge guy who wanted to
sell a gun for two hundred and fifty bucks. He
was a convicted felon. He was a member of a gang.
So you know, I got wired up and all that
and got in a brain undercover car and went and
did the deal at a fast food restaurant at lunchtime.
And uh, I walk in. What's the informant? And we
(10:10):
meet the bad guy? And I'm looking up at this guy,
and uh the informant makes the introduction. He runs out
the door, and I'm like, it's supposed to happen, right,
So this guy tells me to hey. He goes, hey,
follow me into the bathroom. And you know, it's a
bathroom at lunchtime of a burger joint, right, there's a
(10:31):
there's a sink, and there's a urinal, and there's a commode.
So he walks into the comode with the toilet and
opens the you know, the door, and says, come on in.
So I said, I guess this is how it works.
I follow him in and I go in and I'm
like straddling the toilet and he comes behind me and
(10:51):
he shuts the door and latches it. So we're we're
face to face right here, pretty vulnerable and yeah, and
so I'm looking at him and I'm thinking, and wow,
you know, this is my dream, this is what I
want to do. It's my first day, and it seems
like I've already made some bad decisions because my options
are really limited right now. So, you know, he was
(11:14):
there to sell the gun. You know, I knew a
gun was going to come out. It was a gun deal.
And he reached in his waistband, and you know, all
I'm thinking is how am I going to get this
guy's head in this toilet if it goes bad? You know,
before he could get me. And but he wanted to
sell the gun. My partner had given me three hundred bucks.
He wanted two fifty for it. I just gave him
three three hundred a game a fifty dollars tip. I
(11:36):
just wanted to get the gun and get out of there.
And so he gives me the gun. I give him
the I give him the money, and we're walking out
of the bathroom and I'm like, you know, going through
my mind, I'm like, you know, are we supposed to
sit down and break bread together, have a meal?
Speaker 1 (11:51):
You know?
Speaker 2 (11:51):
How does this work? And I was like, you know what,
I just I ran out the door, just like the
informant did with the gun. And when I got in
the car, in the undercover car and let the team know,
everything was good and I'll meet him back at the
you know, at the meeting location. I remember it like
it was yesterday. I had that little stolen gun. It
(12:14):
was a little twenty five caliber pistol, and I remember
looking at it. I had put it right in the
console and that was my hide right there, that feeling,
greatest feeling I had ever had. I just took that
gun off the streets, right that gun that you know,
maybe that gun had killed a whole bunch of people,
(12:34):
maybe it was gonna kill a whole bunch of people
in the future. But I got it out of his hands.
I took it off the streets, and that began my
addiction right there, and I never looked back for the
next twenty years.
Speaker 1 (12:47):
I can understand how that, and one of my frustrations
is a homicide detected EVE unless you're chasing serial killers
or gangland killings, when you can put a stop to it,
the crimes happened and we're not preventing them. So it's reactive.
This type of stuff you do, getting the guns off
off the street. I can understand why you get a
high with that because a gun. Yeah, you're being in
(13:08):
law enforcement long enough and you've been ran long enough
to know the damage one gun can do. So to
get that off the straight from a bad guy, it
has to give you a bit of a lift and
make you feel like you're doing some good work.
Speaker 2 (13:19):
Yeah, for sure. You know, I half my career was
buying drugs, and you know there was For me, there
was zero satisfaction in buying drugs. You know, if I
did a deal with some cartel guys and you know
I bought twenty kilos, you're not even You're not even
sticking your finger in a hole in the dam right,
You're not putting a damn in anything. For me, it
(13:40):
was very very small satisfaction. You know, you're gonna get
some low level cartel guys and lock them up, that's
about it. But just buying one gun, you know, from
one convicted felon, you're actually making a difference in whatever
community you're working in. Man, you're taking that gun off
the street. You know, my agency that gun would after
(14:02):
the case is adjudicated, that gun gets destroyed, melted, it'll
never be back on the street. And that gives you
some fulfillment, a feeling that, man, you know, I just
made a little bit of a difference. Maybe I saved
the kid's life, maybe I saved the cops life.
Speaker 1 (14:18):
Now I understand that, certainly understand that. But life could
have been a lot different for you. You could have
been a quiet, little reserved banker because in your your
working career, start out working in the bank. Yeah, and
I'm looking at I'm looking at you now, and I'm
not saying the classic image of a banker, but that's
where your path was heading.
Speaker 2 (14:38):
Yeah. You know, I went to college over here and
got a useless degree in economics and business, and you know,
I barely made it through college. And I was not
I wasn't a hot commodity. No one was breaking down
my doors to hire me on Wall Street, and so
you know, I was able to get a job just
(14:59):
out of the new newspaper at a bank making eight dollars,
eight American dollars an hour. And I was just sitting
in a room with no windows, taking computer print print
outs and putting them in, filing them in file cabinets,
and I just thought to myself, you know, I can't
(15:19):
go through life with the job like this. There's no way,
you know. So I knew there was something else for
me out there.
Speaker 1 (15:26):
Yeah, I understand. It would be a slighter death if
you if you're not happier, it's not something rewarding. And
that's what you're doing, just to get the pipe check
each each week. What what drew you? The law enforcement
you don't carry?
Speaker 2 (15:38):
It was never on my radar. I I had a
friend who I had played played ball with in college,
and he just happened to call me one day and
I said, I was miserable. You know, my life was.
I was young and I had no direction. I was miserable.
He said, man, he goes once you come over, come
over after work and and let's have a beer, hang out.
(16:02):
He said, you know, I'm staying at my brother's place
in the Bronx. So after work, I drove down to
the Bronx and he was sitting out on the stoop
out on the front steps. So I sat on a
stoopid him and we're having a beer and a Corvette
pulls up right, which is pretty rare in the Bronx
to see a Corvette and this guy gets out of
(16:25):
the car and he's got you know, this is a
this is way back when in the like Miami Vice
days and all. And you know, he's got the long
hair flowing flowing back, and his shirt's open and I
can see he's got a he's got a Baretta ninety
two f in his waistband. And I'm looking at this guy,
going wow, No, that's that's a cool guy right there,
(16:46):
you know. And that was his brother. I had never
met him before. He just happened to be undercover Drug
Enforcement Administration agent. He was an undercovered DEE agent and
he had recently gotten back from South America and he
was working undercover. And we went inside and we had
a few beers at the table, and for about thirty minutes,
(17:10):
I asked him questions about his job, and you know,
he told me what he could tell me. And it
was right then in that conversation that the skies opened
up and I knew I wanted to be an undercover agent.
Speaker 1 (17:25):
I can understand that that time. And you reference Miami Vice.
I think we had a lot of cops over here
that we're watching that show, and there was a lot
of undercovered dudes getting around looking very cool, and they
had had the swagger about them, so I can understand
the attraction. That was a cool scene that they seemed
to inhabit. So law enforcement in the US is different
(17:47):
in Australia. Here we've got state police and we've got
federal police. So we've got four or five or six
law enforcement agencies roughly covering the country. But in the
marriag like you ended up and you're undercover work was
in the ATF and that's a federal agency. You that
wasn't your direct path into law enforcement. You joined other
(18:10):
agencies before you got to the a TF. Do you
want to just talk us through that and explain what
the roles are in those agencies.
Speaker 2 (18:15):
Yeah, so I wanted to work undercover. But as you know,
like like if if you want to be a homicide detective,
you don't just become a homicide detective, right, you have
to pay your dues, right, And it's years and years,
you know, after that conversation I told you about, it
was eight years until I actually did an undercovery Okay,
So what I did was, you know, I didn't want
(18:38):
to be a uniform police officer. I didn't want to
be writing traffic tickets, pulling people over. I wanted to
be an undercover agent. So I didn't put in with
the city police or the state police. I put in
with every federal every week on them, the three letter
the alphabet agencies, all the three letter agencies. I put
in with every single one we had ice, you know,
(19:02):
at f d E, A FBI, all of them over here, right.
I really wasn't very qualified, to be honest with you.
I had no experience, no law enforcement experience. I didn't
have very good grades in school. So I put in
and I actually, when you put in over here for
(19:23):
the FEDS, you take a test, an examination, and the
only advantage I have. Usually most of the guys taking
this examination are our police officers who want to become FEDS.
They want to move up to be a FED, so
they've been removed from the school system, usually for you know,
seven or eight years. They were gritty cops. By this time.
(19:46):
I was fresh out of school, so I was still
in test taking mode. And I just happened to score
really high on the test, which is the only reason
I got a phone call. And I got a phone
call from Immigration which is it's no one over here
as ICE now immigration and Customs Enforcement, that's not what
it was called back then. But so it was for
(20:09):
a job to be a special agent with the United
States Immigration and Naturalization Service. So I was in New York,
the job was in LA. They flew me out to
LA for the interview. And again, you know, I think
I did really good in the interview, only because I
didn't know what the hell I was doing. So sometimes
(20:31):
that's when you do your best, right.
Speaker 1 (20:32):
When you're ignorance helped I help.
Speaker 2 (20:36):
Yeah, you know, I went in there and I was
just myself, and I was and I was real honest,
and I wasn't expecting to get hired or expecting much.
And when I got back from LA, I didn't even
have a suit. My uh my dad had to help
me buy a buy a suit for the interview, and
I tucked my long hair into the back of my
jacket and went in and uh, within a week of interview,
(21:00):
I got a call say, hey, man, listen. You know,
pending your successful background investigation, we're going to offer you
a job as a special agent in Los Angeles. So,
you know, I passed the background and I went in
I went down to the academy. I had never never
seen a gun, never held a gun. You know, again,
(21:21):
I was as green as you could be. I was unqualified.
I was green, but I was hungry man. You know,
I was hungry man. I was going to realize my dream.
So I worked super hard. It was a long heart academy.
I made it through, and the next thing I knew,
I was on the streets of Los Angeles and it
was the greatest time in America to be a cop,
(21:46):
to be in law enforcement, was in the early nineties.
I was in LA from nineteen ninety one to nineteen
ninety six, and you know it was when LA. This
was during the La Ryan I don't know if you guys.
Speaker 1 (22:02):
There definitely heard the bad and watch it from over
he with a bank kyok.
Speaker 2 (22:06):
It was really had that invasion. It was the being
of the invasion of all the Central American gangs coming
into America, and LA was like the epicenter. So you know,
you had the MS thirteen, you know, coming in from
Al Salvador on, all of the Mexican gangs and the cartels, Guatemalan,
(22:27):
Honduran gangs coming up, and you know the gangs that
were already, you know, our homegrown gangs in Los Angeles
in America. They didn't know what to do with this, right,
you know, they they had never seen this kind of violence.
You know, they were doing drive buys in some shootings,
these Central American gangs, they were cutting people's heads off,
(22:50):
they were cutting body parts off, private parts and shoving
them in people's mouth to send a message. I mean,
it was next level gang warfare. And I would I
was lucky enough to be on the streets during that
and to battle that, and I really that's where I
learned how to be a cop. From the Los Angeles
(23:12):
Police Department detectives that I got to work with, they
taught me how to be a cop. So it was incredible, man,
it was a great learning experience for me. It's where
I learned kind of how to carry myself. And I'll
just tell you what I did. I think that made
a difference. So the way they did it back then
(23:35):
was your first six months on the job, they put
you in La County Jail. So every day I went
to La County Jail to interview on the release line
everyone coming, every foreign born inmate that was coming out
of La County jail to determine their alienage and their deportability,
(23:55):
all right, and if you determined they were deportable, you
were you know, right up detainers and fill everything out
and hand the paperwork in and they would not get released.
They would go, you know, into federal custody. But what
I would do was, you know, I was fascinated by
these guys. You know, here I am talking to this
(24:17):
guy who has been cutting people's heads off, right, some
guy from El Salvador, who grew up in some dirt
hut in San Salvador, who ended up somehow on the
streets of La as an enforcer, you know, for MS
thirteen and he's out there killing, you know, selling drugs,
(24:43):
chopping people's heads off. And I would talk to these
guys would I was genuinely interested in their story, you know, like,
how did how did you go from being a little kid,
you know, in these very simple beginnings to where you
are and what you're doing. And it's funny, even hardened
criminals they'll tell their story, and you know, I would
(25:06):
pass that information on to our gain units, right, and
our gain units were like, hey man, you know this rookie,
he's going the extra mile. Man. You know, he's passing
information and he gets it. And I think that kind
of helped me in my career, you know, start getting
out as you know, I got known this guy's a
worker's go get.
Speaker 1 (25:25):
Well what you've said there, Lou, I understand because if
you have that inquiry in mind, and dare I say,
And it's not used all the time, but empathy, that
understanding the path that brought people to when they're sitting
behind the gates in prison, it can give you a
deeper understanding. It helps you if you can communicate with
(25:45):
them on their level. It helps you all the way
through your career in law enforcement, being able to have
a conversation with people, not sit there and judge and
not just go, well, you're a bad guy. You've got
nothing to say that I'm interested in. If you sit
down and spend time, it does make a difference, doesn't it.
Speaker 2 (26:00):
And that's human nature, right Gary, that's human nature.
Speaker 1 (26:03):
Right.
Speaker 2 (26:03):
Everyone everybody had a mom at some point, right that
that held them as a baby when they came out.
And you know, I wanted to know from these guys,
you know, how man, how did you get here? How
did it? How did it happen? Tell me, you know.
And it turned out that a lot of these guys,
you know, the real story, which a lot of people
didn't get into. You know, their families back in Ol
(26:27):
Salvador were being closely watched and if they didn't do
if they didn't carry out their mission and do what
they're supposed to do, their families would get killed, right
the gangs would kill their families. So again, you know,
you can't make excuses for criminality and you know, for
these kind of bad things, but it gives you a
(26:48):
pretty good understanding. And you know, I would talk to
them about that. Hey man, tell me. And plus i'd
be doing these interviews in Spanish, you know, which is
which was the second language for me, which made it
even harder. And I just I just really found that
you get so much more information when you when you
(27:10):
treat everyone with respect and with dignity, you know, unless,
of course they give you a reason not too. But
you know, right off the bat, I always treated everyone
with respect, they treated them with dignity, and I found
that got me a lot farther in law enforcement than
being a tough guy.
Speaker 1 (27:26):
I think sometimes law enforcement types make the mistake of
being the hard ass the whole time, and that's not
often the way you get through what you've what you
need done. Well, you talk about El Salvador and the
Central American crime groups that come from places like that.
We had Rick Prado on the podcast CIAD that worked
(27:49):
over there, and you said that your local gangs in
La these new gangs took it to another level. So
I could imagine from being a cop on the street
that would have been interesting time. So you went from there?
Then you ended up in Uh, where where did you
go from there?
Speaker 2 (28:05):
So again you know there was there was not going
to be a place for me, uh to work under car?
Speaker 1 (28:10):
You still wanted to be the Miami Voss? Did you
still you still had that that drive?
Speaker 2 (28:16):
And you know it's interesting, Uh with the Miami Vice thing?
When when? How how you know reality versus television? You know?
In my mind of course, Uh, I'm thinking under cover work.
I'm gonna be on yachts, I'm going to be driving Lamborghine.
(28:36):
I'm going to be surrounded by supermodels and champagne. And
it could not be any farther from I would. I
was in trailer parks and the projects, and I was
driving old shitty, beat up cars, and you know there
was never any supermodels. But uh, but anyway from from
(29:00):
you know, we had guys working undercover, but they for
the most part, they were the Hispanic guys you know
going in you know who were do buying fake green
cards and fake documents and all that. So I wanted
to get back to the East coast of America, you know,
the West coast never really yeah, I never felt that
(29:20):
home there.
Speaker 1 (29:21):
So I went.
Speaker 2 (29:23):
I jumped over to the US Marshals on the fugue
on their fugitive squad, and I was only there for
two years. I was in New York and I was
in Puerto Rico chasing fugitives, which was a blast, right
as well. You know this as a cop, the more
(29:43):
action and the less paperwork you have to do, the
more fun the job is, right because what they don't
show on TV, right, whether you're a homicide detective or
an undercover officer, is that of the time you're banging
out reports, they don't show that the fugitive investigations and
(30:04):
chasing fugitives was eighty percent action and twenty percent report.
Speaker 1 (30:08):
Well, I would imagine the brief is done, you've got
the evidence, you're just gonna find this this dude.
Speaker 2 (30:14):
You're kicking doors man. So so it was great and uh,
I was having I was having a good time doing it.
But again I wanted to work undercover. So uh, an
HF was a small agency over here, and you know,
only maybe twenty twenty four to twenty five hundred agents,
(30:34):
and they weren't hiring very much in the back in
the nineteen nineties, and finally an opening came up. They
were hiring one class and they were only hiring people
who were already agents from other agencies, so you could
jump over. You didn't have to go through the first
part of the academy. There was I think there was
there was only like twenty four positions open. I put
(30:55):
in and I got it. So after the future kind
of chasing for about two years, I finally got on
with ATF. I really wanted to go to you know,
they give you three choices where you can go, so
I put in I wanted the action. I put in
for New York, Miami or Los Angeles because I just
(31:15):
wanted to be in one of our you know, the
biggest cities with the most action. And uh they sent
me to Savannah, Georgia and that's the logic of the
US government. And uh, but it worked out because I
just happened to get in an office and get partnered
up with this crazy guy who was a brilliant undercover agent,
(31:38):
and it just set me off on my career and
I started working undercover right from the bat.
Speaker 1 (31:43):
Get that right mental in law enforcement, that sets you up,
doesn't it. If you've got someone that you can learn from,
someone that's got the smarts, someone's got the yeah, the
values that you've got, and follow their lead, that makes
a big difference, can set you up for your whole
whole career getting the right person.
Speaker 2 (32:00):
Yeah, there's no doubt, you know, Like I know, you
know because I worked with a new a lot of
homicide detectives over here, and you know, every every young
patrolman on the street dreams of being a homicide detective,
right they want to. That's again, you got to pay
your dues, You got to prove yourself, move up slowly,
and pay your dues. So it was the same to
(32:22):
be an undercover agent. You didn't just come on and
become an undercover agent, you know you And my goal
was I wanted to do these long term, deeply embedded
undercover cases where I was traveling all over the country
and getting in with these organized crime groups. But you know,
(32:45):
my partner showed me. He's like, listen, you start small
and you work your way up. So for years and years,
I started out, you know, buying one little bag of
crack off some you know, eighteen year old gang banger
in the parking lot of the shopping mall. You know,
(33:06):
buying a stolen gun off a convicted felon, you know,
behind the bowling alley, you know those. That's what I
did for my first couple of years, you know, And
you slowly build up and work your way into conspiracies
and maybe some small street gangs and doing that kind
of stuff, you know, And if you prove yourself and
(33:28):
if your name gets out there, you will get the call,
you know, to start doing these long term, deeply embedded
undercover operations.
Speaker 1 (33:37):
It makes saints, the saints learning the try lou What
do you reckon the qualities of a good Then it's
hard to generalize because everyone comes in with different skill set,
But what do you think of the attributes of a
good undercover officer?
Speaker 2 (33:52):
What I see in common when i'm you know, we
had an ATF. We had the EUP call the Enhanced
Undercover Program, and it was just a collection of agents
from all over the country who specialized and undercoverable. The
most amazing crew you'll ever see, right, I mean you
(34:12):
see them all in a room. It looked like it
looked like prison just got out, right, But the characteristics, like,
you spend some time with these people, and here's what
you notice first and foremost when you get beyond what
we looked like, these are some of the smartest people
you'll ever meet.
Speaker 1 (34:33):
Right.
Speaker 2 (34:33):
You cannot be a dummy. These are really smart, educated people.
And the probably the main characteristic is the ability to
think on your feet, the ability to always know what
to say. They're all pistols man with the responses like
they're also quick to respond, and they can sell you anything.
(34:57):
You got to be a salesman. You have to be
a natural salesman. You know, if you're you look at
that real slimy car salesman who's very successful, who's probably
selling a car that he knows isn't the right car
for that person, but he'll say whatever he has to
say to make that deal. You can make. You can
make that person into an undercover. Those are the kind
(35:21):
of characteristics it's not. It's not you know, bravery. To me,
it wasn't it. You know, you know who's fearless. That
wasn't it at all. Who's got the ability to make
that sale? Because that's what you're really doing. You're selling
your load of bullshit, you know, to get people to
want to follow you, to want to be part of
your hustle, or to let you into their hustle. It's
(35:44):
a sales.
Speaker 1 (35:45):
Pitch that makes sense because you're even selling yourself that
people want to speak to you selling the product or
purchasing your guns, your drugs or whatever. There's one side
of it. Well we'll touch on it because both of
us don't lock at very much the paperwork associated with it.
So just to clarify the reality of I know, obviously
(36:06):
in homicide we've worked with undercovered guys and girls and
the amount of paperwork that goes with it. There's an
accountability because when you're as an undercover officer, invariably, if
you're giving evidence at court, the defense barrister solicitors again
to attack you. Well you're a professional liar, aren't you.
So it's all about recording and documenting. That's another side
(36:28):
of it that you've got to be very keep accountable
documents and spend a lot of time recording everything that
you do.
Speaker 2 (36:35):
Yeah, you know, it's funny how they don't show that
part in the movies around the television show, right. So yeah,
and when you think about it, everything you do out there,
for every minute of action, you know that all has
to be accounted for somewhere in a report. So very
(36:55):
similar you know, to a homicide investigation. You know, you
know that every single per you interview, right, you know,
every single piece of evidence you collect, no matter what
it is, you have to go back to the office,
get on your computer and you know, well when I
started it was typewriters, but anyway, you get on there
and that all has to be logged in, that all
has to be accounted for, and you have to regurgitate everything.
(37:18):
You know, even if you recorded it, you know, you
still have to regurgitate. You know, what was said, what
you what you took from that interviewmrize it. So if
you and that's another thing you asked about the characteristics
of a good undercover. All the best undercovers were really
(37:38):
tight with their paperwork because you had to be. And
for the exact reason you said, if you were not
good with your you could be the greatest undercover in
the world. If you couldn't translate that onto paper and
your reports weren't tight, you would get torn up in
court by by a good defense attorney. So the ability
(37:59):
to translate what you did, what you heard, what you
saw onto paper was so important that that was a
huge aspect of the job because if you couldn't do that,
you're going to lose in court, and then everything you
did was all for nothing. Anyway.
Speaker 1 (38:19):
Yeah, I've saying that I've seen undercovers in court in
murder trials and that it's ruthless. The cross examination they
get to discredit everything that's come on, Taking away from
the paperwork, the courts and all that. How do you
gain the trust of the people you're targeting.
Speaker 2 (38:38):
I think all of us who did it, we all
we would draw on our own personal experiences on life.
So and I use this analogy, and I know it's
very corny, but it's very similar to if you see
a girl you're very attracted to and you know you
(39:01):
want to cold, You're going to do a cold approach, right,
you see she's bellied up to the bar. You know,
how are you going to do that? Right? You don't
want to come on too strong, right, you don't want
to be real standard offish and cool, right because you
know so, So you've got to figure out you know,
you have to first you have to assess her personality, right,
(39:24):
you know, and then you have to figure out what's
the best way to keep her engaged with me, to
keep her talking to me so that I can get
a phone number, all right. And it's very that's very
similar to undercover work, right, So first thing you got
to do is you assess your target, whether it's outlaw bikers,
(39:45):
you know, the mafia, the cartels, you know, whoever it
may be, you know, the gangster disciples, street gangs, you know.
You assess who you're going after, and then come up
with a technique or a plan. And if you don't
think that your personality is going to work, maybe you're
(40:06):
not the right undercover. Right, maybe you need to say, hey, listen,
I think someone that's important, right, you know, know your limitations.
So my approach was always listen, I'm not trying to
become a member of the Sinaloa cartel, all right, I'm
a big note totalian. They're not gonna let me hit.
(40:27):
So my goal I'd never tried to necessarily become a member,
but I wanted them to want to become a part
of my hustle. So I would let them see me
and know that I had my own hustle going on,
and make them want to be around me. Right, You
always want to be the most popular guy in the room,
(40:47):
so people are kind of drawn to you. So you
want to do that with the bad guys, with your tarts,
make them want to be a part of your hustle, Like,
hey man, what's that guy going on? And how can
I make money off him? You know that that was
always my approach, you know, not to say, listen, I
want I want to be a Hell's Angel, you know
I want to My approach was, listen, here's you know,
(41:09):
I see what you got going on. Man, I see
your hustle. You know, here's what I got going on.
Maybe we can work together and make some money. Right,
Maybe you can help me and I can help you.
Do you know that? That is how I went into it,
and never a hard sale, never a hard push. I
would just put it out there what I could, how
I could help them what I had to offer, and
you know, let them see how eye roll.
Speaker 1 (41:30):
The people you're dealing with too, they get the the Yeah,
they got the straight smarts. They'll they'll smell you out.
They'll smell a copper mill away. And if you come
on come on too hot, Uh, you're going to be
fobbed off. But you've gotta make it. I understand what
you're saying. You've got to dangle it out there, get
them curious and and uh want to reach out to you.
So I dare say they think they're in control of
(41:51):
the pace of what's developing heat as well.
Speaker 2 (41:54):
Yeah, for sure, you know you don't. You don't want to.
That's why we talked about earlier. That tough guy approach
rarely ever works. If you come on too strong and
come out as a tough guy and you know I
did time in this person and that person. First of all,
those things are easily checked on. Right you talk shit,
(42:16):
you say you know you were in this prison, or
that you better know you know what cell block were
you in, and you better know all that information, right,
because they do, I guarantee. If they don't, their friends do.
So it's always super important to keep everything as real
as you can keep it and as close to home
as you can keep it so so that they don't
(42:39):
feel like you're trying to necessarily run a hustle on them.
They feel like, wow, hey, this guy, obviously he wants
to make some money off us. Can we make some
money off him? And maybe we can work together and
be in business to get it. Because you know, what
I found was no matter who I was working, whether
(43:00):
they were you know, supposedly these you know, white supremast groups,
or whether there were Mexican cartels, Italian mafia, black street gangs,
none of that. Man, None of them had any real
ideology or any of that. It was always about money.
They would deal with anyone who could make them money
(43:23):
if they trusted them. That's what it was always about.
Speaker 1 (43:26):
That's interesting. So you found what they're what they're they're
looking for, and get them curious about it. I want
to take into one one case that's mentioned in your book,
and being a homicide detective as long as I am
seeing someone preventing the homicide is great. I'm talking about
the doctor where your role was as a hired hit
(43:49):
man to knock off his wife. Do you want to
tell us through that that story, because I think that
gives an interesting insight into the type of good that
undercover operatives can can do.
Speaker 2 (43:59):
Yeah, that was a very bizarre case and it was
you know, for me, it was it was a big
deal in my career because it actually went to the
Supreme Court, the United States Supreme Court, and it made
case law. Uh. And it's the reason why an undercover
cell phone is now considered a device a communication device
(44:20):
in interstate commerce. So if you use one of these
it in the commission of a murder for hire, they
take it federally right away.
Speaker 1 (44:31):
I can take you.
Speaker 2 (44:33):
So this very well known, very respected doctor, and he
was actually a doctor for the LPGA, the Ladies Professional
Golf Association. He he was married to a much younger
attractive woman and the marriage was going south and there
(44:56):
were financial issues there his property. He had a second
house that was that he rented out.
Speaker 1 (45:04):
Uh.
Speaker 2 (45:04):
He happened to live very close to the Federal Law
Enforcement Training Center. Uh, you know where our academy is
and many other academies are. And it was not uncommon
for a lot of the instructors, you know, to rent
local houses, you know, local apartments and He had a
guy who was living in this house who was a
(45:27):
he was a former military one of those secret squirrel
guys who was a firearms instructor at the academy. And
the doctor was really into guns and all that, and
they had kind of you know, the guy was renting
a house from him, and they had become friends and
he would work on the doctor's guns and all that.
And one day the doctor approached him and said, hey, man,
(45:47):
I know you were you were in that that world,
that whole secret spy world and all that. He said,
would you know anyone who could help me out? I
got to get rid of my wife? And you know,
I mean there was there was trust there. You know,
they had known each other, and this guy was like
he kind of blew him off. But I guess like
(46:10):
the third time the doctor asked him, he was like, man,
this guy is serious.
Speaker 1 (46:14):
Yeah, there's another law and I want to kill my wife.
It's uh, he's starving the thinking playing.
Speaker 2 (46:20):
So you know atf we we had over here in America,
you know that that was murder for hires had become
one of our things, one of our specialties, you know
that we did as undercovers. And this guy. He went
to supervisor, who directed him to go up to our
our office, and he sat down with my supervisor and
(46:43):
told him the story. So my supervisor called me in
and uh, he told me the story. And so I
gave him my undercover cell phone number, and I said, listen,
don't don't approach him about it. Don't say anything else
to him. If he comes to you again, tell him, yeah,
say listen, I have something you can talk to. Give
(47:03):
him my number. And he said okay, and he left.
And honestly, you know, with murder for hires, I'd never
really thought about it again, because we would get that
more often than you think, because a lot of guys,
a lot of people talk crazy, you know, They're like,
I want to kill this guy. I want to have
him killed, you know. But as you know, some people
(47:25):
do carry through with it. They will. And a couple
of weeks later, I'm in the grocery store with my
wife and my undercover cell phone rings. It was a
number I didn't recognize, and I answer it and he says, hey,
this is the doc, and you talk and I had
to think real quick, and I was like, oh boy,
that's the doctor down there. So I told him. I said, yeah,
let me get somewhere I can talk. I'll call you
(47:46):
back in fifteen minutes or whatever. And I, you know,
back then, you couldn't just this is cell phones had
just come out, and you know, so I had to
go home and get my recording equipment, turn the recorder
and put it in my ear and put the phone
up and so talk to him, and we set up
a meeting and I ended up meeting him at a
public place, at a restaurant, and I let him do
(48:09):
all the talking. I guarantee you when that first meeting,
I probably didn't say twenty five words, and he just
he really started going into in the first meeting, telling
me all about his relationship and how it had gone south.
And I'm thinking this is kind of weird, you know,
(48:31):
at because now I'm in hitman. We're a hitman uniform,
and I'm thinking, you know, as a hit man, I
don't want to hear this shit. I want to know
what are you paying me? You know, who is she?
Where is she?
Speaker 1 (48:42):
Right?
Speaker 2 (48:42):
That's all I want to know. But as an undercover
I'm like, oh, keep talking, dude, right, keep talking, because
this is this is all good. Because that first partner
I told you about. He had taught me from the beginning.
When you're working undercover, shut your mouth. Nobody's going to
prison based on what you say. They're going to prison
based on what they say, So shut your mouth and
(49:03):
let them talk. You know, he went into the whole
story about you know her and you know how terrible
she was and all that, and so I think at
that first meeting I might have gotten her name, and
he wrote down on a piece of paper for me
where she works and what her address is, and when
(49:24):
you're doing the murder for howre That stuff is great
because when you go to trial, and they almost always do,
you want to put as much on the table as
you can because they're always going to say it was entrapman.
So so the more evidence you have besides just the conversation.
If all you have is a conversation, it's not nearly
(49:45):
as strong. But if if you can put some evidence
on the table makes it so much stronger. So at
least now I got a piece of paper in his handwriting,
he wrote out her name, her her address, and her
place of employment. You know, why else would you do
that unless you know you want to.
Speaker 1 (50:03):
You'll definitely add some white to the caist, doesn't it
in that? Getting the evidence in that manner.
Speaker 2 (50:08):
But you know what happened next. I couldn't even believe
it happened. So we had several meetings and I ended
up telling him and this was just a shot in
the dark, a total shot in the dark.
Speaker 1 (50:22):
You know.
Speaker 2 (50:22):
I had told him that the way I was going
to do it was I was going to make it
look like a robbery. I was just just an everyday robbery.
I stick a gun in her face, give me all
your jewelry, all your money, all that. And you know
over here robberies go bad all the time and the
victim gets shot anyway. So that's how that was going
to happen. So again, I don't know why I did this,
(50:45):
but I did it. I said, listen, this would be
a lot better if you can get me a gun,
a good clean gun to do it. And he said, yeah,
ill get your gun. And in our next meeting he
brought a thirty eight caliber Smith and Wesson revolver for
me to kill his wife. So now you're talking about evidence.
(51:06):
I mean, it doesn't get any better than that. Now
I could put the writings he made, you know, her name,
her place of employment, her address, the conversation, and the
gun he gave me to kill her. So again it's
incredible evidence. So we had several meetings, we had several
(51:30):
phone calls, and again usually at this point, most of
these cases here in America, that would be a state charge,
a murder for her, but there is a federal charge.
But for a federal charge here in the States, you
have to show there's an interstate in nexus. For any
federal charge, any charge, if there's a gun involved, all
(51:51):
you have to do is you have to show that
that gun at some point crossed the state line. So
if the gun was made in Florida and you arrested
the guy with the gun in South Carolina, obviously that
gun at some point across the state line. It's as
simple as that. So we ended up after all that happened,
and we had to actually bring her and her daughter
(52:13):
in before during the case because the government got worried
that maybe I wasn't the only person he was talking to,
maybe he had a backup plan. That's the case.
Speaker 1 (52:23):
You've bought up an aspect. These are the other things,
like when you're talking it through, Okay, that's logical, that's logical.
But I was curious about that because once you know
someone's going to plan to have someone knocked, you've got
a risk that you've got to address. And I was
wondering how you did that.
Speaker 2 (52:40):
That was one of the toughest, toughest talks of my life.
You know, they brought her in. She had no idea,
she had no idea why. They went to her job
and said, we really need to talk to you, but
we can't do it here. She's like, what do you
want And they were like, listen, we really can't do
(53:02):
it here, so will you please come with us? And
she was like, well, I need my daughter. So they
had to go get the daughter out of school and
brought her to a hotel and you know, we had
to tell her to listen, your husband is hiring someone
to kill you. That is a tough thing to hear
that your spouse is hiring a person to kill you.
(53:25):
And then I had to talk to her and you know,
obviously there were tears and I mean the emotions were
crazy as you can imagine. And she was a strong woman.
Let me tell you, we actually got her. I don't
want to say it like that. She agreed to make
(53:46):
a recorded phone call for us, which was another great
piece of evidence. You know, we told her, listen, it's
not about him, it's about you and your daughter and
your safety. And she was able to pull herself together
and make a very damning, damning phone call to him
where he he went crazy and yelled and said bad things.
(54:08):
So it was good evidence again, and so we took
them into protective custody. And I had met with him
in person on a couple occasions, we had talked on
the phone on several occasions. She told him during that
recorded phone call she was going up to their lake
(54:29):
house with her sister to see her sister. You know,
we're getting ready to take him down. And he called
me immediately after, and this was crazy. He said, well,
maybe you could drown her. Maybe you could get in
the water when she swims and pull her under and
dround her. And I said, listen, man, we agreed on
(54:49):
how I'm going to do this. You know, I can't
even swim. So I always gave him an out. I said, listen,
if you're not serious, tell me now, and he was
like no, no, no, he goes, you could just maybe
could just like get her on the side of the roads.
After that, when he hung up, he called me from
a payphone. There was payphones back then called me from
a payphone, and he was being surveiled. When he hung up,
(55:12):
agents zoomed in and arrested him. And uh, how we
turned that case federal was that when he called me
from that from his cell phone when we had conversations,
he was in South Georgia, which is right on the
border of North Florida. The signal bounced off a tower
(55:34):
in Jacksonville, Florida, back up to my phone in Georgia.
And this sounds real chicken shit, and it is.
Speaker 1 (55:40):
That was our that was our name, the rules, that's.
Speaker 2 (55:44):
Right, hey whatever, hey, however you can do. So that
was our interstate nexus day he used. He used his
cell phone, and it affected interstate commerce because the signal
bounced to Florida back up to Georgia. So he went
to trial and he lost. The jury found him guilty,
but they appealed it and it went all the way.
(56:04):
They didn't appeal it and say he's not guilty. They
appealed it and said they fabricated federal jurisdiction by this
whole hokey cell phone tower thing, and it went all
the way up to the Supreme Court, and the Supreme
Court made the decision and said, no, this device is
interstate commerce.
Speaker 1 (56:23):
Okay, So well that with a change change the landscape
for quite a few things. Doing a job like that,
there's a lot of satisfaction. But there's a little anecdote
to that one that occurred years later, if I read
it correctly in the book, that you were in a
restaurant with your wife and family years and years down
the track, and the waiter was looking at you. Is
(56:46):
that the case that it relates? So you want to
tell that story because I think it's something that would
have given you a real uh yeah kick, along as
the work that you've done.
Speaker 2 (56:56):
So that girl when they pulled her in and was
she was a kid man. She was maybe thirteen or
fourteen years old, the daughter of the doctor's wife. And
you know he was not her biological father. He had
adopted her. So yeah, maybe maybe seven years later, I'm
(57:20):
at a restaurant with my wife and kids and the waitress,
young attractive lady, kept staring at me, and I'm like,
you know, I had no idea who she was. I
couldn't place her or anything like that. Finally she came
up to me and she started crying and said, you
(57:40):
don't remember me? Did And I said I do not,
And she said, you saved my mother's life and told
me who she was and all that, and we you know,
we hugged it out, and you know, it was it
was a very special moment for me because you know,
as an undercover agent, you know, I would go to
(58:00):
a town or a city and do my job and
leave right you know, I usually wouldn't even be there
for the rest, you know, I would leave and I'd
be on to the next one. And so you very
rarely do you ever see the fruits of your labor
or do you even interact with victims or anything like that.
And this was really the first time in my undercovered
(58:22):
career that I ever felt a sense of wow, you know,
here's here's a life that I was able to affect
in a positive way through my work, you know, and
it meant a lot to me.
Speaker 1 (58:34):
Yeah, I can imagine that would and that's something tangible
for the sacrifices and the effort and the chaos that
goes on with your life doing the doing the type
of work. Lou we might we might take a break here.
There's so much to cover. When we come back, I
want to talk about the storefront strategies, a little bit
of straight street theater. I like that that give always
(58:55):
gives me a giggle when you create, create that, but
also about the impact that's had the life that you've lived,
and the type of situations you've faced throughout your career
as a law enforcement officer. But it's like law enforcement
on steroids, I reckon, when you go undercover, it's really
at the sharp bend. So when we get back, we'll
(59:16):
have a chat about that. Looking forward to it, all right, brother,
cheers
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