March 31, 2025 • 60 mins
Lou Valoze infiltrated bikie gangs and won over some of the highest-ranking criminal leaders. The club houses were dark, evil places filled with menace, where he risked his life every day. Working undercover, the retired ATF agent removed thousands of guns and drugs from the hands of dangerous crooks.
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 person is never
exposed to. 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.
(00:23):
The 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.
(00:46):
Welcome back to part two of my chat with Lou Velosi,
a former US federal agent with the ATF who spent
over two decades working deep undercover. Lou so much to
talk about. I'm going to throw one thing out that
I heard on the podcast. I think it was on
the real one, but you talked about going into a
bikie clubhouse. I worked gangs for a long time, so
(01:07):
I know the environment you're talking about. That you went
into a bikie clubhouse on an announced to make some connections.
Do you want to just tell us through that story,
because it blew me away, the fact that you went
in there and how you manage yourself in that environment.
Speaker 2 (01:22):
Yeah, for sure. You know, it was very early in
my undercover career. It was actually the first kind of
I guess what you would call organized crime case I
got pulled into. You know, I was only doing up
to that point, I had only done those back alley
you know, drug deals and gun deals that we talked about.
(01:43):
So and the only reason I got called into this
was I was the only agent in my field division,
the only other agent that had a motorcycle license. It
wasn't because of any skill or anything I had. I
really knew nothing about outlaw bakers, you know. I didn't
grow up in that environment, huge thing up in New York.
(02:05):
And so there was an undercover agent who was already
somewhat embedded with this gang and his partner, and in
a lot of these cases, very important they have a
partner just for a lot of reasons. His partner was
a local cop who was just on the task force,
(02:28):
and when his department saw they were supposed to go
with this gang down to a bike round at Daytona,
which is a big bike rally and all that, and
this was in Atlanta, Georgia. His department were like, listen,
we didn't really sign up for all this. We're going
to pull our guy out this. We're getting in a
(02:49):
little bit over his head, a little bit yeah, a
little bit deep. So ATF, you know, the ATF agent
in there needed a partner, so I got the all again.
The only reason was I had a motorcycle license. And
the only reason I had a motorcycle license was when
I was a kid, like I don't know, maybe seventeen
or eighteen years old, I had a Yamaha for like
(03:11):
three months.
Speaker 1 (03:12):
Uh.
Speaker 2 (03:13):
I was never any good at riding a motorcycle or
anything like that, and it never been on a Harley.
So but I never said no. So when they asked me,
I said, I'm in. Let's go. So uh you know,
when I got there, I met the informants, these two
huge biker guys, the undercover, and they gave me. They
gave me this chopper, you know, one of them old
(03:34):
kickstart shovel head Harley's. I didn't I couldn't figure out
how to start it, let alone ride it. Or so
they were like, hey, let's go follow us. And you know,
driving through the north where North Georgia, driving into Atlanta,
and it was kind of misty, a little bit of
rain coming down, and these guys drive real fast and
(03:56):
I'm trying to follow them, you know, the head like
the all I can say, our tail light's getting farther
and farther away. And I go around a curve and
I dropped the bike end up in a ditch. And
you know if you heard me tell the story before,
but that I'm in the ditch and the bike's still
the bike's still on everything, mirrors are all bent and everything.
(04:17):
And they finally realize I'm not behind him anymore. And
they come back and the big informant says to the
undercoverage and goes, you want us to bring this fucking
guy into the Outlaws clubhouse. He can't even ride a motorcycle.
And when I when I as bad as I was
hurting from the fall, when I heard him say that,
(04:38):
I was like, no, help me pick this bike up
and bend everything back as best we could. It was
still driveable, and so we went to this clubhouse. And
when I walked in, it was it was a shock
for me. You know. I again, I didn't have any experience.
I didn't know anything about these guys. It was just
(05:00):
an evil place. And I just got a really bad
feeling in there. And you know, there's these guys and
they're just some nasty fellas. I mean, you guys, you
got them over there. You know, they're some bad guys.
Speaker 1 (05:13):
Man.
Speaker 2 (05:14):
And I'm in there and I realize, you know, I
don't know how to act. I don't know anything about
these guys. So you know, I'm going to listen to
my partner, my old my old partner, my first partner.
I'm just gonna keep my mouth shut for a while.
And I did. I just I just got I was
a wallflower, man. I just stood against the wall, and uh,
(05:36):
you know, my my my new partner there is you know,
he's interacting with these guys and they're kissing and hugging
and drinking and all that, and I, you know, I
just stood there, man, and I watched. I watched how
these guys carried themselves, how they handled themselves. And I
could tell right away who the president was by the
way he was being treated and all. And uh, after
(05:59):
probably close to forty five minutes of not saying a
word and just watching, I made the decision to approach
the president. I went up to the president. You know,
like I said before, I was real big back then,
and I you know, so I figured, you know, at
least I got something to offer. I'm a big goon,
at least young. And I said to the President, sir,
(06:24):
you know, you know, this is my name, and this
is my first time here. I'm with SO and so.
You know, I don't I don't know your your rules,
I don't know your you know your culture, and I
certainly don't want to offend you or anybody else. I
just want to learn from you guys because I like
what I see and I want to become one of
(06:46):
you guys someday. And man, he just ate that up
because he's looking at he's just looking at this goon,
this big goon that that he can mold, you know,
and make you lose, because that's what they do, They
use people, and making the one of his own. And
from that point he just he took a lake into
me and took me under his wing. And I learned
(07:06):
such a valuable lesson that day for my future long
term operations. You know, shut up, read the room right,
and you know, talk very strategically to the right people. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (07:21):
Look, I wanted to unpack that and get you to
tell that story again because when you started telling the
story that you had a bike license, like, okay, that's
not going to make you look like you've been born
on the Harley Davidson be able to rock up to
a clubhouse and look, look the part and act the part.
So I was laughing with you, but also at you,
(07:43):
thinking who the hell's this bloke think he is? He's
going to pull this one off? Full cu thos to
you after you dropped the bike to get back on there.
But I understand when your pride's being insulted sometimes you
just got to suck it in. But I was really curious.
I was really because and if you want to talk
bikes with legitimate bikes are going to catch out within
(08:05):
saying halla if you don't know your way around the Harley.
But the other thing is I was really curious knowing
the atmosphere, and you described it very well. What goes
on in the clubhouse. It has a sense of menace
about it. The moment you set foot in there, how
you handle it. And it was a fascinating way that okay,
and I really got an insight into the way that
(08:26):
you would operate. Like you could have gone in there
and tried to talk as a tough guy and they
would have smelt you out straight straight away and think
how that this is not adding up? But the approach
you had seemed to just work perfectly for you.
Speaker 2 (08:38):
You know, I didn't like it. I never liked the
biker stuff. I only did two of those, which was
which was two more than I wanted to do. I
ended up after the Outlaws in Atlanta, I ended up
going to California maybe maybe three or four years later
and on a Hell's Angels, working under cover on a
Hell's Angels out of San Diego case. And I tell
(09:02):
you I never I never really got much better on
a motorcycle. And just to bring in the story full circle,
I actually, you know, I had an undercover motorcycle for
most of my career, and you know then I just
I kind of got into it a little bit, and
I probably owned maybe six or seven Harley's on personal bikes,
(09:26):
and but I never it just wasn't me. I never
was a good motorcycle rider. In about about five years ago,
we were going on a family vacation. I hadn't started
my bike in probably three or four months, so I said,
you know what, let me just let me just ride
the bike around the neighborhood just to charge the battery.
(09:48):
And so I just drove around my neighborhood and it
had rained like the day before, and I was I
couldn't have been going more in two or three miles
per hour. I mean I was early moving, just taking
a turn. I went over some leaves. I didn't realize
they were wet underneath, and the bike went out and
I fell. I dumped the bike again. And I saw
(10:10):
that bike as soon as we got back from vacation,
and I've never been on one since.
Speaker 3 (10:15):
So your bike riding days, Yeah, that was it.
Speaker 1 (10:18):
That's a pretty It's a pretty easy way to make
a fool of yourself when you think you're sitting pretty
looking cool, And yeah, you shouldn't have gone over those leaves.
Oh yeah, you pull up and just drop the bike
and can't pick it up. But all these things that
can happen dealing with the pressure. There was another interesting
thing I've heard you say in interviews that you would
(10:40):
quite often go into boxing gyms or jiu jitsu and
get lit up by some some boxer, or you get
grappled to the ground and mauled by someone that's a
little bit better. The way that you were talking about it,
you're talking about, well, the pressure that you feel when
you're getting lit up by someone in the boxing ring
that's better than you and you still got two minutes
(11:02):
ago of a three minute round. That's the type of
pressure you need to be able to deal with when
you're you're undercovering the pressure spots. Is that something that
you would just work for you? Finding pressure, dealing with
pressure that way, that was.
Speaker 2 (11:17):
About the only thing that worked for me. And it's funny,
very similar feeling to me to walk into a boxing
gym in some strange city to Spa was a very
similar feeling as walking into that outlaw biker clubhouse, right,
you know, kind of enemy territory. You know, no one
(11:40):
knows you, but you know, a big guy walking into
a boxing gym, everyone's going to be looking at you.
You know, you're getting a ring and it is amazing,
you know, when you when you are not a professional
fighter and you get into a ring with a pro,
you know, even I'm just talking about these local pros
who just fight club like, you know, the skill difference
(12:01):
is just amazing.
Speaker 3 (12:03):
And your up block at Christmas str Yeah, totally.
Speaker 2 (12:07):
And if they ninety nine percent of them are cool,
you know, but you know there's always one. Sometimes it
goes overboard, but but it to me, it was it
was a mental exercise as much as it was physical exercise,
just to keep me on my toes and keep that
uh you know, that that sense of being uncomfortable, you know,
(12:30):
getting comfortable with being in an uncomfortable situation, whether it's
you know, whether you're someone's taking your back on the
mat in jiu jitsu, you know, or some guys just
just sending body shots into you, you know, in a
in a boxing ring, you know, to be able to
breathe and still keep your head and be comfortable in
those kind of situations. So to me, that that was
(12:52):
how I did a lot of guys, you know, would
just go out and drink their asses off, but that
that worked. Not that I didn't do that as well,
but that worked better for me to keep me mentally
sound during these things.
Speaker 1 (13:08):
Yeah, I was fascinated that it came up in conversation
with you, and I just I could really relate to
it because it was a way of sort of separating.
And yeah, I also sometimes find have a drink and
forget about things, but then you wake up the next
day's it hasn't got it got any better. So, yeah, challenging,
(13:28):
challenging yourself there, And yeah, when you're walking in and
you would you would have walked in the court. I
always got nervous before I walked in the court. Didn't
matter that you weren't hiding anything. You knew you were
going to be carved up and carved up very publicly.
That you get a custom to that pressure that you're
comfortable being uncomfortable. And I could really relate to relate
(13:49):
to that, And it's just it's a good way. And
there's other ways you could find that. But let's let's
talk about the storefront sting, because it's a strategy that
you you became an expert on, like across the country.
And if I'm not wrong, it's yeah, the amount of
guns and drugs you got off the street from these
operations known there's a store storefront stink.
Speaker 2 (14:12):
Yeah, I was you know, I start out by saying,
we did not invent the storefront you know concept that
you know, the ny PD and LAPD they were doing
these things back in the sixties and seventies, but for
the most part, they were just doing and they were
trying to disrupt these fencing operations stolen goods, you know,
(14:34):
so they would do little pawn shop type places and
to take in stolen merchandise. For the most part, we
took that concept and just blew it up and made
it bigger and bigger. And you know, I fell into
(14:54):
that kind of the same way, you know, I fell
into that bike case. I just got a phone call
from an agent who in another office, who said, hey, man,
would you uh you know, we have a we're starting
up this storefront operation. It's going to be a tattoo shop.
We're doing it in conjunction with the local Sheriff's department.
(15:18):
We need an undercover. Would you do the undercover? I
said absolutely, I'll be there tomorrow. And I didn't even
I didn't really even know what a storefront was. So
I went up there and I saw the setup they
had and it was phenomenal. Man. It was in a
really bad neighborhood, very ghetto, and it was a it
was a ghetto tattoo shop like it was the kind
(15:40):
of place you wouldn't want to get a tattoo for
the most part. And the informant was the tattoo artist,
and he was trying to stay out of prison and
he had already in prison. He had tattooed everybody, so
he knew the players. He knew everybody. And his deal
with you know, with the police and with ATF was
(16:02):
he was going to work off his charges by doing
this case. So he was just going to do the
tattoos and bring the bad guys in and it was
my job in my undercover team to engage them. And
it was a gang ridden place, gangs everywhere, and you know,
we were to buy the guns, buy the drugs, stolen cars,
(16:23):
whatever they were doing, and and you know, hopefully take
some of these gangs down. So we started and I
was the manager of this place, and we had, you know,
we had the tattoo area with the chair and then
there was just like an area where we sold paraphernalia
(16:46):
and all the flash on the wall and rolling papers
and all that stuff. And I didn't really have high
expected I didn't really know what to expect. And you know,
as they started in, you know that people get tattoos,
and we started just having conversations. They had a lot
(17:07):
of good ideas. The Sheriff's department. They said, we're going
to put out a clear box of sharpiees markers and
the walls were all white, right, they didn't. They just
painted all the walls white. They said, we're gonna tell
these guys they can go ahead and they can tag
all the walls whatever they want, you know, just tell
them no hateing, keep it sill. So we told that
(17:30):
and they started tagging the walls and doing all their
gang signs and stuff. And you know, the whole no
hating thing. That lasted about ten minutes, right, and there's
their fin me veiled threats and you know, murder threats
and all that, and you know, we actually cut all
that out as evidence, all the drywall at the end
of the case. But we told these guys when they
(17:51):
would come in, listen, this is neutral territory. Everybody's welcome here.
No beefing when you're in here. It's neutral. So it
just started out real small. You know, they would come
in and they you know, everyone was smoking weed. And
there the informant was smoking weed. He wasn't supposed to.
All the everyone who was in there was smoking weed
(18:11):
except for us. But you know, there was no ventilation,
there was no I mean, so we were probably high
the whole time, I'm sure. And we just started making
conversation with these guys and inevitably, you know, these guys
sell drugs and guns, and it came up and I
let them know that. My side hustle was I had
(18:35):
a moving truck, which we really did, and I would
move people, you know, from place to place. But I
would use that truck when I got enough guns that
I would sell in New York. And I don't know
what you know about you know, I don't know how
it works in Australia. But you know, every state has
different gun laws here. So it's the whole supplied demand graph, right,
(18:57):
So in states like New York where the normal person
can't get a gun and carry it, okay, and in
places down south here Georgia, Carolinas, anyone can buy a
gun and carry it. So that that gun down here
that you can buy for three hundred bucks, is you
can sell in New York for two thousand bucks on
(19:20):
the streets. So gun trafficking is a real thing, very
very common. So I told them, listen, once I get
like two three hundred guns, I just I fill that
truck with furniture and I'll move a family from Atlanta
to New York and I just put all the guns,
hide them into furniture. Even if I get pulled over,
I say, man, I'm just moving furniture. You know, it's
(19:41):
not my stuff. And these guys love that. They were
like right on. So that was my excuse to keep
buying guns. So next thing I knew, man, we are
asking for more money. We don't even have enough buy
money we got. We're buying tens of thousands of X
SEE pills, and we're buying machine guns, sought off shotguns,
(20:06):
stolen guns, every you name it, we're buying it, grenades,
everything they're bringing in, you know, every drug known to mankind.
And this thing is just spider webbing and without you know,
once the word got out in the street, we didn't
even have to do that much. They were just coming
(20:27):
to us, and we're having to be strategic with spending
money because we only want to spend on you know,
get the most bang for the buck, we're actually turning
we're turning people away. And so the success, you know,
twelve months later, it was a twelve month operation. We
(20:50):
had purchased four hundred and thirty crime guns.
Speaker 3 (20:53):
Wow.
Speaker 2 (20:54):
And this is a small city. This is Augusta, Georgia,
not a huge city. And you know drug I mean,
I can't even tell you how much drugs. But we
had one hundred defendants, one hundred federal defense now about
I think we had sixty five federal defendants in about
thirty five state defense. And you know, these are these
are numbers that AHTF wasn't used to seeing. It was
(21:17):
a real big it was a big deal.
Speaker 1 (21:18):
As they're coming in, you're recording all the transactions and
keeping the records.
Speaker 3 (21:23):
It's and it's basically you've you've got them jammed up
big time.
Speaker 2 (21:26):
Yep.
Speaker 1 (21:27):
If if that they've come in there, they've they've come
into your trap and it's going to be very hard
for them to uh wiggle their way out of that
in the court situation.
Speaker 2 (21:37):
Yeah, I mean, it's hard to say it was entrapment
or anything else when you're on camera driving up in
your car, walking through the door, pulling a gun out
of your waist and selling it.
Speaker 1 (21:47):
Right.
Speaker 2 (21:47):
It's a tough one to defend. That's why none of
those cases ever want to trial. The hardest part in
that type operation, we found out was identifying everybody right, okay.
Speaker 3 (21:57):
Uh.
Speaker 2 (21:58):
They would never drive up in a car that registered
to them. It'd be registered to some girl and or
be a rental and they would be rented by somebody else,
some girl or whatever it was. They'd never give you
a real name, you know, a lot of times they
were just using burner phone. So we'd get real creative
to identify these guys. Sometimes we would have to have
(22:18):
cover teams follow them and you know, try and put
them to bed whatever it was, you know, we did.
We did other creative things like giveaways. We found that
these guys never wanted to give out their real name
or their real number. But if you offered them something free,
the possibility of a free television or or you know,
(22:40):
a three hundred dollars cash prize or something, they would
fill out the little form and they would put a
real phone number or real name or some way to
get a hold of them in case they won. And
I would tell these guys, listen, just fold it at
the corner and I'll make sure I pick you one
because I'm the one who picks the winning So so
we did that a lot, and we would actually give
TVs away whatever it was to keep it real. But
(23:01):
that's and even if they didn't put anything real down,
we would even have the prints lifted from the little
slip they filled out when they dropped it in. So
we got creative.
Speaker 1 (23:12):
I love the creative side of it, like law enforcement,
and I think that's a part of law enforcement people
see as black and white, but the creative thinking like that.
I'm getting excited just thinking of all the opportunities where
you've got people coming in like that and the things
that you could do. One of the things that you
talk about in the book, and you use a number
of examples, but just give a sense of it when
(23:33):
you talk street theater, when you've got to get these
blokes to the people that you're trying to bring in,
get them to accept you are the genuine bad guys.
Speaker 2 (23:44):
Street theater is my favorite aspect of my career.
Speaker 3 (23:49):
I reckon it would be a bit of fun.
Speaker 2 (23:51):
The most fun I ever had my whole career was
doing street theater. And you know, I again, I take
no cared. I didn't invent it was gays before for
me who were doing it, But basically the principal was
and we did it for several reasons, but the main
reasons we were doing it the street theater in these
(24:12):
storefronts was to show the bad guys, you know, in
this community we were in that we were moving the product, right,
because who just keeps buying drugs and keeps buying guns
like NonStop cops. Okay, you wanted to show them that,
(24:32):
you know, we had on our own hustle and ongoing operation.
You know, we were buying this stuff and we were
selling you know, whatever happened to be, the guns and
the drugs, stolen cars, whatever. So we would do what
we called street theater operations where we would hire Usually
we would hire one of the local gangs we were
(24:53):
dealing with as security for the deal, and then we
would call in other undercover agents from different cities who
wouldn't be known there to come in and we would
do a deal, a fake deal between ourselves. So I
would for instance, I in this one instance where we
(25:14):
did a store for an operation that was a military
surplus store with a shooting a three lane three lane
shooting range attached to it. It's one of my favorite ones.
So we had these gangsters coming in and they could
blast their guns, convicted felons with our guns, shooting in
our in our shooting. So this local, a local street
(25:35):
gang we were dealing with. I told these guys we
had been buying a bunch of guns off these guys,
and I said, listen, I have to deal with this
crew out of Miami. I don't know them, and they're
going to come in here and we're selling them a
(25:55):
bunch of machine guns. I need I need security. Can
you you know? Can you can? I hire you for
to day? And they were like, that's what we do, right,
And I never told I would never tell any of
them to bring your gun. I would just hire that.
I'd say this, I'll give you a couple hundred bucks,
whatever it was. And but I would always have to
(26:15):
give them very specific instructions. Don't do anything unless I
say to do something. Right, you don't have to do anything,
just stand there, because I didn't want any of these
guys getting over sell this and pulling guns. And you
know what I mean, I can say that that, yeah,
this is all fake. So so these guys would show up.
(26:39):
We would never set the deal too early because it
was always hard to get them to show up on time.
They would show up and we would have all this
scripted and worked out before with the undercovers. So in
this particular deal, we had this this incredible guy named
Richie zaias a Cuban Cuban guy out of South Florida
showed up with this big bear, this huge guy who
(27:00):
look like a pirate on steroids, hair and all that.
That was his bodyguard. And we were selling them ten
machine guns. And uh, you know, they show up and
we would do that. I would like be on the
phone and you know, the guys. I would set these
guys up around around the business. I'd have two guys
at the door, one guy post you know, next to
(27:21):
me at the counter, you know, maybe one guy at
the other side of the business. And I would tell
them again, listen, don't do shit unless I say to
do shit please, all easy money. So so so the
the fake bad guys would show up in like a
you know, a panel van and get out and you
know they always you know, be looking badass, you know, incredible,
(27:46):
And I just specifically remember this one. So much because
because Richie was wearing these these fake Nike shoes that
had Tony Montana on them, you know, the from the
movie Scarface, and uh, you know, he just heated crazy hair.
It's just a good look. And so they walk in
(28:06):
to the business and uh, you know, we kind of
interact in a non friendly way, and uh, I break
out one of the machine guns, and he calls a
big guy over and he says, hey man, I told him.
I said, listen, we got a place you can shoot
it right there. So he tells, you know, his partner there,
hey man, you know, take that gun in there and
(28:28):
make sure it's a machine gun. So I send one
of you know, one of the gang members to go
in there too, and and you know, the ATF agent
undercover goes in there and blast the machine gun off,
and you know art, you know, the gang members like
holy shit, right, and uh yes, oh yeah. So we
come back and uh, you know, the big guy goes
(28:51):
out and gets a gets a suitcase full of money,
brings it in. We do the deal, They take the
machine guns and leave. And I always when they would
give me the suit some money, I would always turn
to one of my partners and say, hey, man, go
take this to the spot, and he would leave with
the money because I never wanted that crew to know
I had a suitcase of money there because they would
rob me. You know, there's no on thieves. Even though
(29:12):
I hired them, you know, they'll still put a gun
on my face and rob me.
Speaker 1 (29:17):
That's where you're vulnerable throughout, like all the stages of
your every time you're dealing with the bad guys at
you're targeting, you're a potential victim as well. So you've
gotta have that, yeah, like whether are they going to
do a drug grip on you or if you've got
all these guns stored here on that way, we can
get that.
Speaker 2 (29:35):
And always that's why we always let these dudes know.
Would we would show our guns all the time and
let them know that we had guns because we knew
they did because there is no honor among thieves. And
no matter how friendly they were with you. You know,
we had guys coming into the storefronts that we would
do a deal with them a drug. They would come
back that night and burglarize our place. I mean we'd
(29:57):
recognize and we could see him on the security cameras.
We just dealt with them and they break in at
night and steal all our shit, so you know, and
you know, as an undercover, your fear is not it's not, oh,
they're gonna they're going to find out that I'm a cop.
That's not the figure because if they find out you're
(30:19):
a fed any of these organizations, they're just going to
put as much distance between themselves and you as they can.
They don't want to draw any heat on themselves at
the organization. That's not the fear. The fear is that
next deal is going to be a rip and they're
going to kill you. They know you're showing up to buy,
you know, a ki low and you're showing up with
fifteen thousand dollars. So this time, even though they've dealt
(30:42):
with you four times already, on the fifth time, they're
gonna shoot you and take your money. That's the fear.
Speaker 1 (30:48):
That that would be the real real risk with it
when you do take them down on those sting operations.
And yeah, that was your career, A large portion of
your your career was built on that, and you became
an expert and was going across the country advising other people.
When you do take them down, there was one and
I talk about this, and this is more talking on
(31:09):
the emotional level from being an undercover agent when you
do take them down a lot of people. I would
imagine you've built strong relationships with the long you're in there,
and you seem to be a guy that understands human nature,
and I dare say because of the person you are,
but the nature of the work. There was one particular
one that you mentioned in the book where you had
(31:32):
to go in and front the bloke, and a bloke
that in fact invited you out I think for his
fortieth birthday to celebrate because he trusted you, of all
people to trust, and couldn't trust his trust his friends,
and you were there when he got taken down and
had to front him. Do you want to tell people
about what happened there?
Speaker 2 (31:52):
Yeah, that was a tough one. It was in Chicago.
He was a member of the Outlaws motorcycle gang and
he was also a member of UH, an Italian mafia
family Lisaro in Chicago. They called the outfit, that's what
they call the mafia, the Italian mafia. So they figured
they had figured this was a joint case of that
(32:13):
atf and the FBI, that UH the the mafia was
hiring the bikers to do some of their dirty work,
and this guy had done a bombing, a big bombing.
It all revolved around these video poker machines that the
mafia was making all the bar owners and restaurant owners
put in their businesses, and if you didn't want to
(32:36):
play ball and put their machines in there, they'd blow
your place up. So so this guy was one of
those guys who and I'm sure you've run across these
kind of guys in your career. No one could no
one could get this guy. He was really smart. He
was not a convicted felon, uh and he there was
(32:58):
no crime he wasn't into. He was just really smart
about it. And the FBI had sent in three informants
to get him, two of them were dirty cops, childhood friends,
and he sniffed them all out. He was just a
sharp guy. So I went in cold on this. It
(33:21):
was just a really strange case. I went in as
my covers. I was a kind of a down and
out MMA fighter up and I was just moved to Chicago.
And it took months and months and months to get
in with this guy and get his trust when I
finally did, the case kind of picked up. I was
(33:45):
buying stolen merchandise from him. One of his many crimes.
He was fencing stolen electronics, flat screen TVs, surround sound systems.
And I don't mean just I mean they were knocking
off eighteen wheks, like in these deals where the driver
would get out and walk away and they would get
(34:06):
in and mafia type deals. So so I, you know,
I started buying that from him, and then the case
went along very well. Like like you mentioned, he called
me out one night, had me out to a strip
joint and he sits down and he looks me in
the eye and he tells me listen. He was, I
(34:27):
can't trust the people I grew up with, you know,
I can't trust the people in my neighborhood that I
that I grew up with. He said, so, I really
appreciate your friendship. And we did a toast and he goes,
it's my fortieth birthday. I didn't even know that. And
and and again I'm thinking to myself, because you know,
(34:48):
I met his wife, I met his kid, and he
was a good father. He had like a ten year
old kid, And I'm thinking, man, you know that's u.
She hadn't trusted me like that kind of you know.
And anyway, their idea, they really wanted to flip this
guy to flip on the mafia, and they took him down.
(35:10):
I knew from spending a year with this guy there
was no way he was going to flip. I just
knew I'd gotten to know him. But you know, they
didn't want to hear that, so they had me lure
him to the Hilton Hotel at the O'Hare Airport in Chicago.
He thought he was going to meet Hoyst Gracie, this
(35:31):
famous MMA fighter, and he shows up. I walk him,
We go up the elevator and we walk him into
his room, and instead of Hoyst Gracie, they've lined up
the whole room with boxes of evidence. Okay, like they're
making a big show to get him to flip. There's
(35:51):
the ATF and the FBI agents, and so you know,
I walk them in. They get him and sit him down,
and you know, he refuses to believe that I'm a cop.
He's not talking, he's not giving him anything. So they're like, hey,
you need to go in there and show him your
badge and get him to talk. And that's the last
(36:15):
thing I wanted to do. You know, in my mind,
I'm thinking, listen, I did my job and it sucked,
but I did it. And now I don't mainly do
this right. But you know that's the job, right. So
I walk in there and I show him my badge
and I tell him, listen, this this is my assignment.
It's my you know, this is my job what I do.
(36:36):
And I want you to know that this wasn't personal.
And he looked at me and he goes, it wasn't personal.
Everything you've told me up to right now has been
a lie. You've met my family, my wife, my kid,
my friends, and you haven't told me anything that's true
this entire time. You're going to tell me that that's
(36:58):
not personal. And you know, for once once in my life,
I had no witty response. I had no retort. I
just kind of looked at him, shrugged my shoulders, and
walked away. I never saw him again too. He was
sitting in the defendant's chair at the trial.
Speaker 1 (37:17):
I feel it it would be hard and you know,
as you say, you're doing your job. But I think
he sort of nailed it when he said it's not personal.
Of course it's personal to him anyway, So yeah, that's a.
Speaker 3 (37:30):
That's a hard hit.
Speaker 1 (37:32):
Another aspect that comes out, which I've always found fascinating
in police work is dealing with informants, And I just
want to mention one of your informants, Ray, at one
of the sting operations. He's referred to in the book
as Ray, and I just thought, I've a lot of
work I did in my policing career. I had informants,
(37:54):
became close to them and respect them for what they
were doing. But I've also so and I've had informants
like Ray that feel part of the term and they
in fact become part of the team and get excited
about being involved in the operation. I just had put
a smile on my face. How he wanted to be
involved in all the takedowns and was telling the technical
(38:15):
blokes what they should be doing.
Speaker 2 (38:16):
Yeah, he was definitely. You know, his father was a
big wig with the Indian Police IPS and Ray had
taken the test three times, you know, to follow on
his father's footsteps, but he failed all three times. So
he came to America and bought a convenience store gas station,
(38:40):
became very successful at that and one day he unknowingly
walked into an ATF storefront operation and bought untaxed cigarettes
and ended up getting arrested. So he was here illegally.
He had overstayed on his visa, and even though the
untaxed cigarettes really isn't much of a charge, he was
(39:01):
going to be deported, and somehow his lawyer talked me
into keeping him here and making him an informant. He
is the most unlikely informant. I mean, not a physically
imposing guy. He's just a little Indian dude who didn't
really speak English very well and had never held a gun,
(39:23):
never done it be drugs. And this guy became, I
would say, and I am comfortable saying this, the greatest
informant the United States government has ever had. Just a
total natural man. He got me into. He got me
into Mexican cartels, American street gangs, stolen car rings, just
(39:52):
the Italian mafia. He was unbelievable because he was so unassuming,
and he he loved doing it. Uh, you know, we
didn't pay him. He only did it just to stay
here was his reason. We never paid him. But he
wanted he always wanted to go to the extra mile.
He wanted to be part of the takedown. To you,
he wanted to tackle these guys himself, to the point
(40:16):
where he could be very annoying to those, you know,
to cops who didn't know him, and it was almost
in a comical way, but he really he took pride
in his job, his role, and in the results that
we had. And and I'll tell you man it you
(40:37):
know I did. I developed a relationship with this guy. Uh.
He was always kind of getting in a little bit
of trouble, but it was always bullshit tax stuff. But
you know, when it for the real work, for the
lord's work, getting you know, crime guns off the street
and getting you know, large amounts of dangerous drugs, fentannel
off the street. Man, he was unstoppable and just a
(40:58):
pleasure to work with. And my second book that I'll
be coming out with soon is called Raycon The Betrayal
of an Informant, because he was absolutely he was treated
like ship by the United States.
Speaker 1 (41:12):
Yeah, yeah, I see your anger. And I'll be interested
in seeing that book because some of them, like the informants,
really do a good job and they put themselves out
there and they're putting their lives at risk. Depending on
the circumstances and all that, but yeah, I can understand it.
I've also heard you say in different interviews that you've
(41:35):
done that some of the people that you've worked against,
as in the crooks and some of the informants, really
they had your back, and that's a that's a thing
you know that they've got your back. And I when
I got into trouble at the end of my police career,
I had people coming out that i'd locked up supporting me,
(41:55):
and I had informants coming out that were rock solid
I had. I had one. He's sadly, I'm not smiling
when I'm saying this because I miss him. You as
part of my life. He passed away. But when I
got in the in trouble and it hit the media
in the police, he said, hey, brother, don't worry about it.
If you get locked up, I'll get locked up and
(42:17):
I'll look after you in the yard.
Speaker 3 (42:19):
Holy he and just you can't.
Speaker 1 (42:26):
Beat that type of type of loyalty. And I smile
a smile about some of the aspects. You've always got
to keep your integrity with them and the dealings with them,
But it doesn't hurt to show a little bit bit
of humanity towards them, and quite often that's what's motivating him.
It's not all the ways about the money or getting
off charges. Sometimes they're trying to do the right thing,
or they've said that they would help you and they
(42:48):
stick to their words. So it's an interesting aspect of policing.
So I'd be very interested in your second book if
you're covering off on some of that, because some of
the situation as you find yourself in.
Speaker 2 (43:01):
You know, Gary, it's just another thing that my first
partner taught me, the whole treating everyone with dignity and respect.
And he taught me from the beginning. He said, listen,
when it comes to informants, he said. Obviously every case
is different, but you know everyone's going to tell you
never fully trust and inform it. You can never fully
trust form it. He goes, Really, he said, you know,
(43:24):
this guy is taking me into this house with a
bunch of people who will definitely kill me if they can.
He goes, So, my whole life depends on this guy.
He's vouching for me. I'm not supposed to trust this guy.
And you know he taught and you treat them with
respecting dignity again, just like a crook unless they give
it not to you know.
Speaker 1 (43:45):
Yeah, we one hundred percent. I'm with you totally on that.
So your your career and you're not the first officer
of police officer or law enforcement officer all the last
that's appeared on this show. But they create didn't end
the why that I thought it within? What How did
your career career end?
Speaker 2 (44:06):
My career ended with with very bad choices. Those were
made by me. I had lost my way. Uh. You know,
we started this conversation by talking about when you work
under cover, sometimes you become that person that you're portraying.
And and I had done that, you know, I was
(44:27):
I was believing my own bullshit, right. I was buying
into the ship that I was selling. I bought it myself,
and I was I was running around to the uh
you know, to the detriment of my family and my friends. Uh.
I was running around in this world, this crime world, uh,
(44:50):
and living my life starting to believe you know that
I that I was selling nunziato. Uh. And that led
to it led to excessive drinking, and it led to infidelity,
uh with my wife. And unfortunately it was with a
federal prosecutor who was working assigned to the cases these
(45:14):
operations that I was doing, and when that came out, Uh,
that was that was the end of both of our
careers and a really hard fall for me because because
of those circumstances, Uh, the government really turned on us
(45:38):
and went after us. And you know, these these inappropriate
relationships have been happening since the dawn of time between
male and female cops and prosecutors and all that. But
because of the nature of this, you know, they just
they went, they went after us, went overboard. However, it
(46:01):
sent me just spinning down into this world where I
couldn't get out of it. I didn't think there was
a way out. I was like, Wow, these people are
going after me. And these are the same people, you
know that I've been working with my whole career. I
know they can get anyone they set their sights on.
Why wouldn't they be able to get me? And I
(46:22):
mean I went, Gary, When I tell you, I went,
I probably lost fifty pounds in a matter of a
few weeks, a total mental breakdown. Everything just that I
had been holding inside it all came out and I
ended up and I don't say this for a dramatic effect.
But I ended up sitting in my bedroom paranoid, thinking
(46:45):
every car driving by was you know, a government surveillance.
And I ended up just trying to find a reason
not to end it because I didn't see any way out.
And you know, luckily, you know my faith, and you know,
just the just slight glimmer, you know, chance that my
family would you know, forgive me, and that carried me through.
(47:09):
You know, I was able to make it through, and
once I was cleared, I made the decision to retire.
I had been on for twenty six years at that point.
You know, So at that point, I I I had
a buddy who was a homicide detective and he told me,
he said, man, you got to write a book. He said,
as a as a mental exercise, he was, you got
(47:31):
to write a book. It was because I've never seen
anyone go through the crazy shit you've gone through, and
so it was it was a mental exercise. And I
wrote the book and the book just did really well.
And next thing, you know, my second career is in
the entertainment industry.
Speaker 1 (47:52):
You know, I know the path you've walked. And when
you said, like the paranoia when you feel like the
people that were after you, the people that used to
used to work with. It's confronting, isn't it. And I
don't see you as a person crying poor or whatever,
and I'm not either. You know, that's the game, that's
(48:12):
the world that we've been involved in. We're set up
to understand how it plays out. But you've gone from
being in your mind the good guy doing everything, and
that was your passion and then that was taken away
from you. So I can understand how hard the path
it was to dig your way out of it. And
I think in your book you gave cutos to your
(48:34):
wife that had a hard conversation with you when you're
at your lowest point, and the fact that you managed
to fix things up there. But yeah, public humiliation is
never good. And when an organization you've given your heart
and soul to turns on you, I can understand the pain.
Speaker 2 (48:52):
And brother, it was. I don't know how long your
situation lasts, but mine was two and a half years.
And I can tell you there don't put that much
effort into a murder investigation as they put into trying
to take down one of their own. Yeah, and so
it was. And you know, as guys like us who
(49:12):
are always used to being in control tope personalities to
have no control and the unknown is the worst thing
in the world. And that's what for the first time
in my life, I had no control over what was
going to happen to me and managrove me crazy.
Speaker 1 (49:32):
I understand exactly where you're coming from with it, and yeah,
I share that pain. And you lose your tribe. I
lost that many what I considered friends. Now I look
back and think maybe it wasn't true friends, but the
ones that were true friends have really stood up and
had the delete. Yeah, ninety percent of most numbers in
(49:52):
the phone because I never heard from anyone. I'm sure
you went through that type of stuff.
Speaker 2 (49:57):
Isn't it funny? I had three phones. I had my
government phone, my official one, my undercover phone, and my
personal phone, and between three of them, there wasn't a
minute when they weren't ringing off the hook. It was
it was either informants or bad guys, or my colleagues
or my supervisors or friends or whatever it was. And
overnight they all went silent, and it was deafining. Silence
(50:21):
was deafening.
Speaker 1 (50:22):
It's kind stop it. You're making me relive it too,
right writing the book? Did you find that cathartic?
Speaker 2 (50:32):
Man? It was because what I did was one of
my my supervisors at the end, he pulled me aside,
and you know they all had my back. Man, they
were great. He pulled me dound and he said, here's
what I want you to do. He goes that copy
over there, he goes, I want you to print out
every report you've ever written. I just started printing them out,
(50:52):
and that's what I used. You know, I read through
them to help me write the book. And it was
absolutely it was cathartic. And my case in particular, the
two false allegations against me, what they accused me of
were they were killers. Because the worst thing you can
do to a cop is to accuse him of being untruthful, right,
(51:14):
because it cures credibility. So the two accusation against me,
where one was perjury on the stand and the other
was false information in an application for the s visa
for my informant. So when you when you accuse, all
we have as police officers are a word on the stand.
(51:34):
When you get accused of being a liar, it's it's
a career end or it's it's a career killer, not
only for your law enforcement career, but for any job
you might want afterward. Right when someone googles you and
they see an accusation of perjury, you're done. And all
that made the paper and the internet and the news.
But when I was found, when I was cleared, it's
(51:57):
funny that that didn't make the paper. No One on
no one wrote an article about me getting cleared. So
so I've had to work extra hard. A guy approached
me who owns a magazine here and he wanted me
to be in the magazine. And I was like, I
was like, dude, I've had my little encounter with the
press and it hasn't been good, so I'm going to
(52:19):
have to politely decline. And he said listen. He goes,
what do you want the most? He goes, what do
you want in life right now at this point the most?
And I said, what I want the most is I
don't want my son to ever google my name and
see this bullshit that's been written about me. He said, well,
then you have to bury that with good stuff. Bury it.
(52:40):
So that's on the tenth page. So I said, okay,
and I did it. He put me on the cover
of his magazine and that kind of kickstarted this whole
second career.
Speaker 1 (52:49):
Ill, full credit to you, because these are hard ride
back and all the things that you touch on, I
know how it hits. But look, I'm glad you found something.
It sounds like you got some exciting things at foot
in the in the future. You're talking of the TV show,
You've got something coming up along those lines as well.
Speaker 2 (53:10):
So we the first season just finished. We filmed it
in twenty twenty four and it ran its course on
Discovery and on Matt HBO Max or Max. It's called
Operation Undercover. And I'm the host of the show. And
what I do is I go around this country, around
America to different cities, different police departments and sheriff departments,
(53:33):
and we embed with these departments for a week with
their undercover units. And they let us right in. And
I mean when I say in bed like we are
in the cars with them. When there's an undercover officer
walking into a hotel room to buy, you know, a
kilo of fentanyl from some cartel guy. We're right on
the outside on the perimeter, watching and you know, we
(53:57):
show it all and it all gets shown. And we
did seven episodes in different states, all over the country,
different police department, and we show the case. You know,
these are these are faster cases because we're only there
for a week, but we show from beginning to end,
from when they're talking to the informant and he's bringing
the undercover officer in and the drug buys or the
(54:19):
gun buys, whatever happens to be, and then afterward when
they kick the door in and take down the bad guy,
we show the whole thing. So it's no recreations. This
is real. It's fast paced. I mean it's no again,
I don't like recreations. There's no it's all real. And
and I'll tell you what, man, it is exciting as.
Speaker 1 (54:39):
How Yeah, no, it sounds it because like the undercover
work is a world that even cops don't get to see,
Like cops get to see up things other people don't see.
But then that's at another level when you look at
the the undercover stuff. So that that sounds sounds good.
Second book in the in the planning as well.
Speaker 2 (54:56):
Yeah. After So the first book did really good. It
was called Storefront Sting, an ATF agent's life undercover, and
I basically tell my story like I've told it to you,
and it was actually it was bought by a Hollywood company.
Right now. These things take forever, but right now it's
it's in front of Netflix and they're looking at it
(55:17):
at possibly making it into a Netflix series with each
storefront being a different season, you know, using different actors
for different my different undercover teams and all. So we'll
see if that happens. And you know, I'm right now,
I'm waiting to hear from Discovery by season two for
Operation Undercover.
Speaker 1 (55:37):
Exciting times and in my transition from policing into working
in the media, it's good working with creative people too,
isn't it. Sometimes policing can be a little bit negative.
And then you step away and yeah, credit where credits due.
If you're doing a good job, it's not it's you're
not competing. It's creative people and they've got an energy
(55:58):
that's sort of revitalizes. So that's I'm glad you found
that path.
Speaker 2 (56:03):
Yeah man, I'm you know, I'm glad you got a
second career as well, and you're in it. I don't
know if you experienced the same thing I did what
I found. Uh, what the entertainment industry. That downside is
at least when I was when I was a cop,
every two weeks my paycheck came in. And regardless I
knew it, it is so hard getting people to write
(56:24):
you a check in the entertainment industry, Like yeah, I
mean if you see in your family from it, you
really got to hustle, man.
Speaker 1 (56:32):
And I can see your experience when you're sign oh
they're doing this. But until it's done, that it's done.
Do you miss aspects of place in the adrenaline Russian
aspects of the life that you lived?
Speaker 2 (56:44):
So that's crazy. The answer was definitely a yes. But
fortunately last year I got to experience it again because
I found myself right back in the mix with these
cops through and undercover cases. I just I didn't have
a gun, right.
Speaker 1 (57:01):
Yeah, I'm actually lou now I know exactly what your man.
I'm a bit pissed off of you. Why can't we
do and embedding the homicide de technique with homicide sands
sands good, I just want to finish off with because
we're struggling to find place here in Australia in different
states and all that the UN demanded and they seems
to be a real reluctance for people to join the place.
(57:24):
What would you say to anyone that's considering a career
in law enforcement.
Speaker 2 (57:28):
You know, we've had the same thing here in America. Right,
It's been a tough five years for law enforcement in America.
We've had we've had riots, we've had craziness. Recruiting is
down to zero. You know, over here cops are not
paid well. You know, if you want to if you
want to be rich in this country, you don't go
into law enforcement. And I'm sure it's that way in
(57:49):
most countries, but here, here's what I would tell and
I do tell when when young people ask me about
going into law enforcement, I tell them this. I say, listen,
if you want a career where you will really experience
(58:09):
a true brotherhood. And when I say a brotherhood, I
mean it doesn't matter. I'm not talking a male female,
just a real brotherhood in a connection. I said, there's
nothing other than possibly the military where you're going to
experience that being part of a team and doing something
that's fulfilling and you know, and actually making a difference
(58:31):
and helping to protect the community. And you're going to
also depending on where you want to go. There's so
many avenues once you get into law enforcement. You know,
if you want to if your thing is you want
to be a dog handler, you want to work explosives, drugs, guns,
white collar crime, counterfeiting. I mean, it's unlimited. You can
(58:54):
go It's not like a regular job where you're pigeonhole.
You can go into anything and it can be it
can be fulfilling. My only word of caution or warning
is that don't go into it if you think if
you're doing it for accolades or appreciation, because you're not,
that doesn't happen. But and the other thing is if
(59:18):
if it is your choice and you do it, and
I wouldn't tell anyone not to do it, build that
resume while you're doing it, and think of the future,
think of you know, the life life after, because you know,
there's a lot of good things you can go into
if you're smart about it, opportunities you know after law enforcement,
which I did.
Speaker 1 (59:38):
Not do, but it's good advice because it can. Yeah,
you're playing at the sharp end of a world and
that can end pretty quickly in dramatic circumstances, and you
should look what you've got the outside of law enforcement.
I've really enjoyed this chat that gets me itchy feet
and wants me to be a cop again here in
the stories, and I love the book. And I get
(01:00:01):
the shits when I read too many cop books because
it makes me want to get back into doing what
I do or what I did, I should say, so
I haven't even let it go, but I want to
thank you for the service to the community. And you know,
I don't think we've mentioned this, but part of your career,
and I know when it ends not in the way
you expect that sometimes you think, well, what good have
I done? I think in the operations you were involved
(01:00:23):
in lou there was over a thousand guns taken off
the street, and not to mention all the drugs and
everything else. You've made a difference, mate, It's a big.
Speaker 2 (01:00:32):
Difference, man. I appreciate Thank you for those words. Brother.
Speaker 3 (01:00:35):
Thanks Will you take care of good luck with the future.
Speaker 2 (01:00:37):
God bless you.
Speaker 3 (01:00:38):
Sheeer is all right.
The public has had a long held fascination with detectives.
Detective sy aside of life the average person is never
exposed to. 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.
(00:23):
The 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.
(00:46):
Welcome back to part two of my chat with Lou Velosi,
a former US federal agent with the ATF who spent
over two decades working deep undercover. Lou so much to
talk about. I'm going to throw one thing out that
I heard on the podcast. I think it was on
the real one, but you talked about going into a
bikie clubhouse. I worked gangs for a long time, so
(01:07):
I know the environment you're talking about. That you went
into a bikie clubhouse on an announced to make some connections.
Do you want to just tell us through that story,
because it blew me away, the fact that you went
in there and how you manage yourself in that environment.
Speaker 2 (01:22):
Yeah, for sure. You know, it was very early in
my undercover career. It was actually the first kind of
I guess what you would call organized crime case I
got pulled into. You know, I was only doing up
to that point, I had only done those back alley
you know, drug deals and gun deals that we talked about.
(01:43):
So and the only reason I got called into this
was I was the only agent in my field division,
the only other agent that had a motorcycle license. It
wasn't because of any skill or anything I had. I
really knew nothing about outlaw bakers, you know. I didn't
grow up in that environment, huge thing up in New York.
(02:05):
And so there was an undercover agent who was already
somewhat embedded with this gang and his partner, and in
a lot of these cases, very important they have a
partner just for a lot of reasons. His partner was
a local cop who was just on the task force,
(02:28):
and when his department saw they were supposed to go
with this gang down to a bike round at Daytona,
which is a big bike rally and all that, and
this was in Atlanta, Georgia. His department were like, listen,
we didn't really sign up for all this. We're going
to pull our guy out this. We're getting in a
(02:49):
little bit over his head, a little bit yeah, a
little bit deep. So ATF, you know, the ATF agent
in there needed a partner, so I got the all again.
The only reason was I had a motorcycle license. And
the only reason I had a motorcycle license was when
I was a kid, like I don't know, maybe seventeen
or eighteen years old, I had a Yamaha for like
(03:11):
three months.
Speaker 1 (03:12):
Uh.
Speaker 2 (03:13):
I was never any good at riding a motorcycle or
anything like that, and it never been on a Harley.
So but I never said no. So when they asked me,
I said, I'm in. Let's go. So uh you know,
when I got there, I met the informants, these two
huge biker guys, the undercover, and they gave me. They
gave me this chopper, you know, one of them old
(03:34):
kickstart shovel head Harley's. I didn't I couldn't figure out
how to start it, let alone ride it. Or so
they were like, hey, let's go follow us. And you know,
driving through the north where North Georgia, driving into Atlanta,
and it was kind of misty, a little bit of
rain coming down, and these guys drive real fast and
(03:56):
I'm trying to follow them, you know, the head like
the all I can say, our tail light's getting farther
and farther away. And I go around a curve and
I dropped the bike end up in a ditch. And
you know if you heard me tell the story before,
but that I'm in the ditch and the bike's still
the bike's still on everything, mirrors are all bent and everything.
(04:17):
And they finally realize I'm not behind him anymore. And
they come back and the big informant says to the
undercoverage and goes, you want us to bring this fucking
guy into the Outlaws clubhouse. He can't even ride a motorcycle.
And when I when I as bad as I was
hurting from the fall, when I heard him say that,
(04:38):
I was like, no, help me pick this bike up
and bend everything back as best we could. It was
still driveable, and so we went to this clubhouse. And
when I walked in, it was it was a shock
for me. You know. I again, I didn't have any experience.
I didn't know anything about these guys. It was just
(05:00):
an evil place. And I just got a really bad
feeling in there. And you know, there's these guys and
they're just some nasty fellas. I mean, you guys, you
got them over there. You know, they're some bad guys.
Speaker 1 (05:13):
Man.
Speaker 2 (05:14):
And I'm in there and I realize, you know, I
don't know how to act. I don't know anything about
these guys. So you know, I'm going to listen to
my partner, my old my old partner, my first partner.
I'm just gonna keep my mouth shut for a while.
And I did. I just I just got I was
a wallflower, man. I just stood against the wall, and uh,
(05:36):
you know, my my my new partner there is you know,
he's interacting with these guys and they're kissing and hugging
and drinking and all that, and I, you know, I
just stood there, man, and I watched. I watched how
these guys carried themselves, how they handled themselves. And I
could tell right away who the president was by the
way he was being treated and all. And uh, after
(05:59):
probably close to forty five minutes of not saying a
word and just watching, I made the decision to approach
the president. I went up to the president. You know,
like I said before, I was real big back then,
and I you know, so I figured, you know, at
least I got something to offer. I'm a big goon,
at least young. And I said to the President, sir,
(06:24):
you know, you know, this is my name, and this
is my first time here. I'm with SO and so.
You know, I don't I don't know your your rules,
I don't know your you know your culture, and I
certainly don't want to offend you or anybody else. I
just want to learn from you guys because I like
what I see and I want to become one of
(06:46):
you guys someday. And man, he just ate that up
because he's looking at he's just looking at this goon,
this big goon that that he can mold, you know,
and make you lose, because that's what they do, They
use people, and making the one of his own. And
from that point he just he took a lake into
me and took me under his wing. And I learned
(07:06):
such a valuable lesson that day for my future long
term operations. You know, shut up, read the room right,
and you know, talk very strategically to the right people. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (07:21):
Look, I wanted to unpack that and get you to
tell that story again because when you started telling the
story that you had a bike license, like, okay, that's
not going to make you look like you've been born
on the Harley Davidson be able to rock up to
a clubhouse and look, look the part and act the part.
So I was laughing with you, but also at you,
(07:43):
thinking who the hell's this bloke think he is? He's
going to pull this one off? Full cu thos to
you after you dropped the bike to get back on there.
But I understand when your pride's being insulted sometimes you
just got to suck it in. But I was really curious.
I was really because and if you want to talk
bikes with legitimate bikes are going to catch out within
(08:05):
saying halla if you don't know your way around the Harley.
But the other thing is I was really curious knowing
the atmosphere, and you described it very well. What goes
on in the clubhouse. It has a sense of menace
about it. The moment you set foot in there, how
you handle it. And it was a fascinating way that okay,
and I really got an insight into the way that
(08:26):
you would operate. Like you could have gone in there
and tried to talk as a tough guy and they
would have smelt you out straight straight away and think
how that this is not adding up? But the approach
you had seemed to just work perfectly for you.
Speaker 2 (08:38):
You know, I didn't like it. I never liked the
biker stuff. I only did two of those, which was
which was two more than I wanted to do. I
ended up after the Outlaws in Atlanta, I ended up
going to California maybe maybe three or four years later
and on a Hell's Angels, working under cover on a
Hell's Angels out of San Diego case. And I tell
(09:02):
you I never I never really got much better on
a motorcycle. And just to bring in the story full circle,
I actually, you know, I had an undercover motorcycle for
most of my career, and you know then I just
I kind of got into it a little bit, and
I probably owned maybe six or seven Harley's on personal bikes,
(09:26):
and but I never it just wasn't me. I never
was a good motorcycle rider. In about about five years ago,
we were going on a family vacation. I hadn't started
my bike in probably three or four months, so I said,
you know what, let me just let me just ride
the bike around the neighborhood just to charge the battery.
(09:48):
And so I just drove around my neighborhood and it
had rained like the day before, and I was I
couldn't have been going more in two or three miles
per hour. I mean I was early moving, just taking
a turn. I went over some leaves. I didn't realize
they were wet underneath, and the bike went out and
I fell. I dumped the bike again. And I saw
(10:10):
that bike as soon as we got back from vacation,
and I've never been on one since.
Speaker 3 (10:15):
So your bike riding days, Yeah, that was it.
Speaker 1 (10:18):
That's a pretty It's a pretty easy way to make
a fool of yourself when you think you're sitting pretty
looking cool, And yeah, you shouldn't have gone over those leaves.
Oh yeah, you pull up and just drop the bike
and can't pick it up. But all these things that
can happen dealing with the pressure. There was another interesting
thing I've heard you say in interviews that you would
(10:40):
quite often go into boxing gyms or jiu jitsu and
get lit up by some some boxer, or you get
grappled to the ground and mauled by someone that's a
little bit better. The way that you were talking about it,
you're talking about, well, the pressure that you feel when
you're getting lit up by someone in the boxing ring
that's better than you and you still got two minutes
(11:02):
ago of a three minute round. That's the type of
pressure you need to be able to deal with when
you're you're undercovering the pressure spots. Is that something that
you would just work for you? Finding pressure, dealing with
pressure that way, that was.
Speaker 2 (11:17):
About the only thing that worked for me. And it's funny,
very similar feeling to me to walk into a boxing
gym in some strange city to Spa was a very
similar feeling as walking into that outlaw biker clubhouse, right,
you know, kind of enemy territory. You know, no one
(11:40):
knows you, but you know, a big guy walking into
a boxing gym, everyone's going to be looking at you.
You know, you're getting a ring and it is amazing,
you know, when you when you are not a professional
fighter and you get into a ring with a pro,
you know, even I'm just talking about these local pros
who just fight club like, you know, the skill difference
(12:01):
is just amazing.
Speaker 3 (12:03):
And your up block at Christmas str Yeah, totally.
Speaker 2 (12:07):
And if they ninety nine percent of them are cool,
you know, but you know there's always one. Sometimes it
goes overboard, but but it to me, it was it
was a mental exercise as much as it was physical exercise,
just to keep me on my toes and keep that
uh you know, that that sense of being uncomfortable, you know,
(12:30):
getting comfortable with being in an uncomfortable situation, whether it's
you know, whether you're someone's taking your back on the
mat in jiu jitsu, you know, or some guys just
just sending body shots into you, you know, in a
in a boxing ring, you know, to be able to
breathe and still keep your head and be comfortable in
those kind of situations. So to me, that that was
(12:52):
how I did a lot of guys, you know, would
just go out and drink their asses off, but that
that worked. Not that I didn't do that as well,
but that worked better for me to keep me mentally
sound during these things.
Speaker 1 (13:08):
Yeah, I was fascinated that it came up in conversation
with you, and I just I could really relate to
it because it was a way of sort of separating.
And yeah, I also sometimes find have a drink and
forget about things, but then you wake up the next
day's it hasn't got it got any better. So, yeah, challenging,
(13:28):
challenging yourself there, And yeah, when you're walking in and
you would you would have walked in the court. I
always got nervous before I walked in the court. Didn't
matter that you weren't hiding anything. You knew you were
going to be carved up and carved up very publicly.
That you get a custom to that pressure that you're
comfortable being uncomfortable. And I could really relate to relate
(13:49):
to that, And it's just it's a good way. And
there's other ways you could find that. But let's let's
talk about the storefront sting, because it's a strategy that
you you became an expert on, like across the country.
And if I'm not wrong, it's yeah, the amount of
guns and drugs you got off the street from these
operations known there's a store storefront stink.
Speaker 2 (14:12):
Yeah, I was you know, I start out by saying,
we did not invent the storefront you know concept that
you know, the ny PD and LAPD they were doing
these things back in the sixties and seventies, but for
the most part, they were just doing and they were
trying to disrupt these fencing operations stolen goods, you know,
(14:34):
so they would do little pawn shop type places and
to take in stolen merchandise. For the most part, we
took that concept and just blew it up and made
it bigger and bigger. And you know, I fell into
(14:54):
that kind of the same way, you know, I fell
into that bike case. I just got a phone call
from an agent who in another office, who said, hey, man,
would you uh you know, we have a we're starting
up this storefront operation. It's going to be a tattoo shop.
We're doing it in conjunction with the local Sheriff's department.
(15:18):
We need an undercover. Would you do the undercover? I
said absolutely, I'll be there tomorrow. And I didn't even
I didn't really even know what a storefront was. So
I went up there and I saw the setup they
had and it was phenomenal. Man. It was in a
really bad neighborhood, very ghetto, and it was a it
was a ghetto tattoo shop like it was the kind
(15:40):
of place you wouldn't want to get a tattoo for
the most part. And the informant was the tattoo artist,
and he was trying to stay out of prison and
he had already in prison. He had tattooed everybody, so
he knew the players. He knew everybody. And his deal
with you know, with the police and with ATF was
(16:02):
he was going to work off his charges by doing
this case. So he was just going to do the
tattoos and bring the bad guys in and it was
my job in my undercover team to engage them. And
it was a gang ridden place, gangs everywhere, and you know,
we were to buy the guns, buy the drugs, stolen cars,
(16:23):
whatever they were doing, and and you know, hopefully take
some of these gangs down. So we started and I
was the manager of this place, and we had, you know,
we had the tattoo area with the chair and then
there was just like an area where we sold paraphernalia
(16:46):
and all the flash on the wall and rolling papers
and all that stuff. And I didn't really have high
expected I didn't really know what to expect. And you know,
as they started in, you know that people get tattoos,
and we started just having conversations. They had a lot
(17:07):
of good ideas. The Sheriff's department. They said, we're going
to put out a clear box of sharpiees markers and
the walls were all white, right, they didn't. They just
painted all the walls white. They said, we're gonna tell
these guys they can go ahead and they can tag
all the walls whatever they want, you know, just tell
them no hateing, keep it sill. So we told that
(17:30):
and they started tagging the walls and doing all their
gang signs and stuff. And you know, the whole no
hating thing. That lasted about ten minutes, right, and there's
their fin me veiled threats and you know, murder threats
and all that, and you know, we actually cut all
that out as evidence, all the drywall at the end
of the case. But we told these guys when they
(17:51):
would come in, listen, this is neutral territory. Everybody's welcome here.
No beefing when you're in here. It's neutral. So it
just started out real small. You know, they would come
in and they you know, everyone was smoking weed. And
there the informant was smoking weed. He wasn't supposed to.
All the everyone who was in there was smoking weed
(18:11):
except for us. But you know, there was no ventilation,
there was no I mean, so we were probably high
the whole time, I'm sure. And we just started making
conversation with these guys and inevitably, you know, these guys
sell drugs and guns, and it came up and I
let them know that. My side hustle was I had
(18:35):
a moving truck, which we really did, and I would
move people, you know, from place to place. But I
would use that truck when I got enough guns that
I would sell in New York. And I don't know
what you know about you know, I don't know how
it works in Australia. But you know, every state has
different gun laws here. So it's the whole supplied demand graph, right,
(18:57):
So in states like New York where the normal person
can't get a gun and carry it, okay, and in
places down south here Georgia, Carolinas, anyone can buy a
gun and carry it. So that that gun down here
that you can buy for three hundred bucks, is you
can sell in New York for two thousand bucks on
(19:20):
the streets. So gun trafficking is a real thing, very
very common. So I told them, listen, once I get
like two three hundred guns, I just I fill that
truck with furniture and I'll move a family from Atlanta
to New York and I just put all the guns,
hide them into furniture. Even if I get pulled over,
I say, man, I'm just moving furniture. You know, it's
(19:41):
not my stuff. And these guys love that. They were
like right on. So that was my excuse to keep
buying guns. So next thing I knew, man, we are
asking for more money. We don't even have enough buy
money we got. We're buying tens of thousands of X
SEE pills, and we're buying machine guns, sought off shotguns,
(20:06):
stolen guns, every you name it, we're buying it, grenades,
everything they're bringing in, you know, every drug known to mankind.
And this thing is just spider webbing and without you know,
once the word got out in the street, we didn't
even have to do that much. They were just coming
(20:27):
to us, and we're having to be strategic with spending
money because we only want to spend on you know,
get the most bang for the buck, we're actually turning
we're turning people away. And so the success, you know,
twelve months later, it was a twelve month operation. We
(20:50):
had purchased four hundred and thirty crime guns.
Speaker 3 (20:53):
Wow.
Speaker 2 (20:54):
And this is a small city. This is Augusta, Georgia,
not a huge city. And you know drug I mean,
I can't even tell you how much drugs. But we
had one hundred defendants, one hundred federal defense now about
I think we had sixty five federal defendants in about
thirty five state defense. And you know, these are these
are numbers that AHTF wasn't used to seeing. It was
(21:17):
a real big it was a big deal.
Speaker 1 (21:18):
As they're coming in, you're recording all the transactions and
keeping the records.
Speaker 3 (21:23):
It's and it's basically you've you've got them jammed up
big time.
Speaker 2 (21:26):
Yep.
Speaker 1 (21:27):
If if that they've come in there, they've they've come
into your trap and it's going to be very hard
for them to uh wiggle their way out of that
in the court situation.
Speaker 2 (21:37):
Yeah, I mean, it's hard to say it was entrapment
or anything else when you're on camera driving up in
your car, walking through the door, pulling a gun out
of your waist and selling it.
Speaker 1 (21:47):
Right.
Speaker 2 (21:47):
It's a tough one to defend. That's why none of
those cases ever want to trial. The hardest part in
that type operation, we found out was identifying everybody right, okay.
Speaker 3 (21:57):
Uh.
Speaker 2 (21:58):
They would never drive up in a car that registered
to them. It'd be registered to some girl and or
be a rental and they would be rented by somebody else,
some girl or whatever it was. They'd never give you
a real name, you know, a lot of times they
were just using burner phone. So we'd get real creative
to identify these guys. Sometimes we would have to have
(22:18):
cover teams follow them and you know, try and put
them to bed whatever it was, you know, we did.
We did other creative things like giveaways. We found that
these guys never wanted to give out their real name
or their real number. But if you offered them something free,
the possibility of a free television or or you know,
(22:40):
a three hundred dollars cash prize or something, they would
fill out the little form and they would put a
real phone number or real name or some way to
get a hold of them in case they won. And
I would tell these guys, listen, just fold it at
the corner and I'll make sure I pick you one
because I'm the one who picks the winning So so
we did that a lot, and we would actually give
TVs away whatever it was to keep it real. But
(23:01):
that's and even if they didn't put anything real down,
we would even have the prints lifted from the little
slip they filled out when they dropped it in. So
we got creative.
Speaker 1 (23:12):
I love the creative side of it, like law enforcement,
and I think that's a part of law enforcement people
see as black and white, but the creative thinking like that.
I'm getting excited just thinking of all the opportunities where
you've got people coming in like that and the things
that you could do. One of the things that you
talk about in the book, and you use a number
of examples, but just give a sense of it when
(23:33):
you talk street theater, when you've got to get these
blokes to the people that you're trying to bring in,
get them to accept you are the genuine bad guys.
Speaker 2 (23:44):
Street theater is my favorite aspect of my career.
Speaker 3 (23:49):
I reckon it would be a bit of fun.
Speaker 2 (23:51):
The most fun I ever had my whole career was
doing street theater. And you know, I again, I take
no cared. I didn't invent it was gays before for
me who were doing it, But basically the principal was
and we did it for several reasons, but the main
reasons we were doing it the street theater in these
(24:12):
storefronts was to show the bad guys, you know, in
this community we were in that we were moving the product, right,
because who just keeps buying drugs and keeps buying guns
like NonStop cops. Okay, you wanted to show them that,
(24:32):
you know, we had on our own hustle and ongoing operation.
You know, we were buying this stuff and we were
selling you know, whatever happened to be, the guns and
the drugs, stolen cars, whatever. So we would do what
we called street theater operations where we would hire Usually
we would hire one of the local gangs we were
(24:53):
dealing with as security for the deal, and then we
would call in other undercover agents from different cities who
wouldn't be known there to come in and we would
do a deal, a fake deal between ourselves. So I
would for instance, I in this one instance where we
(25:14):
did a store for an operation that was a military
surplus store with a shooting a three lane three lane
shooting range attached to it. It's one of my favorite ones.
So we had these gangsters coming in and they could
blast their guns, convicted felons with our guns, shooting in
our in our shooting. So this local, a local street
(25:35):
gang we were dealing with. I told these guys we
had been buying a bunch of guns off these guys,
and I said, listen, I have to deal with this
crew out of Miami. I don't know them, and they're
going to come in here and we're selling them a
(25:55):
bunch of machine guns. I need I need security. Can
you you know? Can you can? I hire you for
to day? And they were like, that's what we do, right,
And I never told I would never tell any of
them to bring your gun. I would just hire that.
I'd say this, I'll give you a couple hundred bucks,
whatever it was. And but I would always have to
(26:15):
give them very specific instructions. Don't do anything unless I
say to do something. Right, you don't have to do anything,
just stand there, because I didn't want any of these
guys getting over sell this and pulling guns. And you
know what I mean, I can say that that, yeah,
this is all fake. So so these guys would show up.
(26:39):
We would never set the deal too early because it
was always hard to get them to show up on time.
They would show up and we would have all this
scripted and worked out before with the undercovers. So in
this particular deal, we had this this incredible guy named
Richie zaias a Cuban Cuban guy out of South Florida
showed up with this big bear, this huge guy who
(27:00):
look like a pirate on steroids, hair and all that.
That was his bodyguard. And we were selling them ten
machine guns. And uh, you know, they show up and
we would do that. I would like be on the
phone and you know, the guys. I would set these
guys up around around the business. I'd have two guys
at the door, one guy post you know, next to
(27:21):
me at the counter, you know, maybe one guy at
the other side of the business. And I would tell
them again, listen, don't do shit unless I say to
do shit please, all easy money. So so so the
the fake bad guys would show up in like a
you know, a panel van and get out and you
know they always you know, be looking badass, you know, incredible,
(27:46):
And I just specifically remember this one. So much because
because Richie was wearing these these fake Nike shoes that
had Tony Montana on them, you know, the from the
movie Scarface, and uh, you know, he just heated crazy hair.
It's just a good look. And so they walk in
(28:06):
to the business and uh, you know, we kind of
interact in a non friendly way, and uh, I break
out one of the machine guns, and he calls a
big guy over and he says, hey man, I told him.
I said, listen, we got a place you can shoot
it right there. So he tells, you know, his partner there,
hey man, you know, take that gun in there and
(28:28):
make sure it's a machine gun. So I send one
of you know, one of the gang members to go
in there too, and and you know, the ATF agent
undercover goes in there and blast the machine gun off,
and you know art, you know, the gang members like
holy shit, right, and uh yes, oh yeah. So we
come back and uh, you know, the big guy goes
(28:51):
out and gets a gets a suitcase full of money,
brings it in. We do the deal, They take the
machine guns and leave. And I always when they would
give me the suit some money, I would always turn
to one of my partners and say, hey, man, go
take this to the spot, and he would leave with
the money because I never wanted that crew to know
I had a suitcase of money there because they would
rob me. You know, there's no on thieves. Even though
(29:12):
I hired them, you know, they'll still put a gun
on my face and rob me.
Speaker 1 (29:17):
That's where you're vulnerable throughout, like all the stages of
your every time you're dealing with the bad guys at
you're targeting, you're a potential victim as well. So you've
gotta have that, yeah, like whether are they going to
do a drug grip on you or if you've got
all these guns stored here on that way, we can
get that.
Speaker 2 (29:35):
And always that's why we always let these dudes know.
Would we would show our guns all the time and
let them know that we had guns because we knew
they did because there is no honor among thieves. And
no matter how friendly they were with you. You know,
we had guys coming into the storefronts that we would
do a deal with them a drug. They would come
back that night and burglarize our place. I mean we'd
(29:57):
recognize and we could see him on the security cameras.
We just dealt with them and they break in at
night and steal all our shit, so you know, and
you know, as an undercover, your fear is not it's not, oh,
they're gonna they're going to find out that I'm a cop.
That's not the figure because if they find out you're
(30:19):
a fed any of these organizations, they're just going to
put as much distance between themselves and you as they can.
They don't want to draw any heat on themselves at
the organization. That's not the fear. The fear is that
next deal is going to be a rip and they're
going to kill you. They know you're showing up to buy,
you know, a ki low and you're showing up with
fifteen thousand dollars. So this time, even though they've dealt
(30:42):
with you four times already, on the fifth time, they're
gonna shoot you and take your money. That's the fear.
Speaker 1 (30:48):
That that would be the real real risk with it
when you do take them down on those sting operations.
And yeah, that was your career, A large portion of
your your career was built on that, and you became
an expert and was going across the country advising other people.
When you do take them down, there was one and
I talk about this, and this is more talking on
(31:09):
the emotional level from being an undercover agent when you
do take them down a lot of people. I would
imagine you've built strong relationships with the long you're in there,
and you seem to be a guy that understands human nature,
and I dare say because of the person you are,
but the nature of the work. There was one particular
one that you mentioned in the book where you had
(31:32):
to go in and front the bloke, and a bloke
that in fact invited you out I think for his
fortieth birthday to celebrate because he trusted you, of all
people to trust, and couldn't trust his trust his friends,
and you were there when he got taken down and
had to front him. Do you want to tell people
about what happened there?
Speaker 2 (31:52):
Yeah, that was a tough one. It was in Chicago.
He was a member of the Outlaws motorcycle gang and
he was also a member of UH, an Italian mafia
family Lisaro in Chicago. They called the outfit, that's what
they call the mafia, the Italian mafia. So they figured
they had figured this was a joint case of that
(32:13):
atf and the FBI, that UH the the mafia was
hiring the bikers to do some of their dirty work,
and this guy had done a bombing, a big bombing.
It all revolved around these video poker machines that the
mafia was making all the bar owners and restaurant owners
put in their businesses, and if you didn't want to
(32:36):
play ball and put their machines in there, they'd blow
your place up. So so this guy was one of
those guys who and I'm sure you've run across these
kind of guys in your career. No one could no
one could get this guy. He was really smart. He
was not a convicted felon, uh and he there was
(32:58):
no crime he wasn't into. He was just really smart
about it. And the FBI had sent in three informants
to get him, two of them were dirty cops, childhood friends,
and he sniffed them all out. He was just a
sharp guy. So I went in cold on this. It
(33:21):
was just a really strange case. I went in as
my covers. I was a kind of a down and
out MMA fighter up and I was just moved to Chicago.
And it took months and months and months to get
in with this guy and get his trust when I
finally did, the case kind of picked up. I was
(33:45):
buying stolen merchandise from him. One of his many crimes.
He was fencing stolen electronics, flat screen TVs, surround sound systems.
And I don't mean just I mean they were knocking
off eighteen wheks, like in these deals where the driver
would get out and walk away and they would get
(34:06):
in and mafia type deals. So so I, you know,
I started buying that from him, and then the case
went along very well. Like like you mentioned, he called
me out one night, had me out to a strip
joint and he sits down and he looks me in
the eye and he tells me listen. He was, I
(34:27):
can't trust the people I grew up with, you know,
I can't trust the people in my neighborhood that I
that I grew up with. He said, so, I really
appreciate your friendship. And we did a toast and he goes,
it's my fortieth birthday. I didn't even know that. And
and and again I'm thinking to myself, because you know,
(34:48):
I met his wife, I met his kid, and he
was a good father. He had like a ten year
old kid, And I'm thinking, man, you know that's u.
She hadn't trusted me like that kind of you know.
And anyway, their idea, they really wanted to flip this
guy to flip on the mafia, and they took him down.
(35:10):
I knew from spending a year with this guy there
was no way he was going to flip. I just
knew I'd gotten to know him. But you know, they
didn't want to hear that, so they had me lure
him to the Hilton Hotel at the O'Hare Airport in Chicago.
He thought he was going to meet Hoyst Gracie, this
(35:31):
famous MMA fighter, and he shows up. I walk him,
We go up the elevator and we walk him into
his room, and instead of Hoyst Gracie, they've lined up
the whole room with boxes of evidence. Okay, like they're
making a big show to get him to flip. There's
(35:51):
the ATF and the FBI agents, and so you know,
I walk them in. They get him and sit him down,
and you know, he refuses to believe that I'm a cop.
He's not talking, he's not giving him anything. So they're like, hey,
you need to go in there and show him your
badge and get him to talk. And that's the last
(36:15):
thing I wanted to do. You know, in my mind,
I'm thinking, listen, I did my job and it sucked,
but I did it. And now I don't mainly do
this right. But you know that's the job, right. So
I walk in there and I show him my badge
and I tell him, listen, this this is my assignment.
It's my you know, this is my job what I do.
(36:36):
And I want you to know that this wasn't personal.
And he looked at me and he goes, it wasn't personal.
Everything you've told me up to right now has been
a lie. You've met my family, my wife, my kid,
my friends, and you haven't told me anything that's true
this entire time. You're going to tell me that that's
(36:58):
not personal. And you know, for once once in my life,
I had no witty response. I had no retort. I
just kind of looked at him, shrugged my shoulders, and
walked away. I never saw him again too. He was
sitting in the defendant's chair at the trial.
Speaker 1 (37:17):
I feel it it would be hard and you know,
as you say, you're doing your job. But I think
he sort of nailed it when he said it's not personal.
Of course it's personal to him anyway, So yeah, that's a.
Speaker 3 (37:30):
That's a hard hit.
Speaker 1 (37:32):
Another aspect that comes out, which I've always found fascinating
in police work is dealing with informants, And I just
want to mention one of your informants, Ray, at one
of the sting operations. He's referred to in the book
as Ray, and I just thought, I've a lot of
work I did in my policing career. I had informants,
(37:54):
became close to them and respect them for what they
were doing. But I've also so and I've had informants
like Ray that feel part of the term and they
in fact become part of the team and get excited
about being involved in the operation. I just had put
a smile on my face. How he wanted to be
involved in all the takedowns and was telling the technical
(38:15):
blokes what they should be doing.
Speaker 2 (38:16):
Yeah, he was definitely. You know, his father was a
big wig with the Indian Police IPS and Ray had
taken the test three times, you know, to follow on
his father's footsteps, but he failed all three times. So
he came to America and bought a convenience store gas station,
(38:40):
became very successful at that and one day he unknowingly
walked into an ATF storefront operation and bought untaxed cigarettes
and ended up getting arrested. So he was here illegally.
He had overstayed on his visa, and even though the
untaxed cigarettes really isn't much of a charge, he was
(39:01):
going to be deported, and somehow his lawyer talked me
into keeping him here and making him an informant. He
is the most unlikely informant. I mean, not a physically
imposing guy. He's just a little Indian dude who didn't
really speak English very well and had never held a gun,
(39:23):
never done it be drugs. And this guy became, I
would say, and I am comfortable saying this, the greatest
informant the United States government has ever had. Just a
total natural man. He got me into. He got me
into Mexican cartels, American street gangs, stolen car rings, just
(39:52):
the Italian mafia. He was unbelievable because he was so unassuming,
and he he loved doing it. Uh, you know, we
didn't pay him. He only did it just to stay
here was his reason. We never paid him. But he
wanted he always wanted to go to the extra mile.
He wanted to be part of the takedown. To you,
he wanted to tackle these guys himself, to the point
(40:16):
where he could be very annoying to those, you know,
to cops who didn't know him, and it was almost
in a comical way, but he really he took pride
in his job, his role, and in the results that
we had. And and I'll tell you man it you
(40:37):
know I did. I developed a relationship with this guy. Uh.
He was always kind of getting in a little bit
of trouble, but it was always bullshit tax stuff. But
you know, when it for the real work, for the
lord's work, getting you know, crime guns off the street
and getting you know, large amounts of dangerous drugs, fentannel
off the street. Man, he was unstoppable and just a
(40:58):
pleasure to work with. And my second book that I'll
be coming out with soon is called Raycon The Betrayal
of an Informant, because he was absolutely he was treated
like ship by the United States.
Speaker 1 (41:12):
Yeah, yeah, I see your anger. And I'll be interested
in seeing that book because some of them, like the informants,
really do a good job and they put themselves out
there and they're putting their lives at risk. Depending on
the circumstances and all that, but yeah, I can understand it.
I've also heard you say in different interviews that you've
(41:35):
done that some of the people that you've worked against,
as in the crooks and some of the informants, really
they had your back, and that's a that's a thing
you know that they've got your back. And I when
I got into trouble at the end of my police career,
I had people coming out that i'd locked up supporting me,
(41:55):
and I had informants coming out that were rock solid
I had. I had one. He's sadly, I'm not smiling
when I'm saying this because I miss him. You as
part of my life. He passed away. But when I
got in the in trouble and it hit the media
in the police, he said, hey, brother, don't worry about it.
If you get locked up, I'll get locked up and
(42:17):
I'll look after you in the yard.
Speaker 3 (42:19):
Holy he and just you can't.
Speaker 1 (42:26):
Beat that type of type of loyalty. And I smile
a smile about some of the aspects. You've always got
to keep your integrity with them and the dealings with them,
But it doesn't hurt to show a little bit bit
of humanity towards them, and quite often that's what's motivating him.
It's not all the ways about the money or getting
off charges. Sometimes they're trying to do the right thing,
or they've said that they would help you and they
(42:48):
stick to their words. So it's an interesting aspect of policing.
So I'd be very interested in your second book if
you're covering off on some of that, because some of
the situation as you find yourself in.
Speaker 2 (43:01):
You know, Gary, it's just another thing that my first
partner taught me, the whole treating everyone with dignity and respect.
And he taught me from the beginning. He said, listen,
when it comes to informants, he said. Obviously every case
is different, but you know everyone's going to tell you
never fully trust and inform it. You can never fully
trust form it. He goes, Really, he said, you know,
(43:24):
this guy is taking me into this house with a
bunch of people who will definitely kill me if they can.
He goes, So, my whole life depends on this guy.
He's vouching for me. I'm not supposed to trust this guy.
And you know he taught and you treat them with
respecting dignity again, just like a crook unless they give
it not to you know.
Speaker 1 (43:45):
Yeah, we one hundred percent. I'm with you totally on that.
So your your career and you're not the first officer
of police officer or law enforcement officer all the last
that's appeared on this show. But they create didn't end
the why that I thought it within? What How did
your career career end?
Speaker 2 (44:06):
My career ended with with very bad choices. Those were
made by me. I had lost my way. Uh. You know,
we started this conversation by talking about when you work
under cover, sometimes you become that person that you're portraying.
And and I had done that, you know, I was
(44:27):
I was believing my own bullshit, right. I was buying
into the ship that I was selling. I bought it myself,
and I was I was running around to the uh
you know, to the detriment of my family and my friends. Uh.
I was running around in this world, this crime world, uh,
(44:50):
and living my life starting to believe you know that
I that I was selling nunziato. Uh. And that led
to it led to excessive drinking, and it led to infidelity,
uh with my wife. And unfortunately it was with a
federal prosecutor who was working assigned to the cases these
(45:14):
operations that I was doing, and when that came out, Uh,
that was that was the end of both of our
careers and a really hard fall for me because because
of those circumstances, Uh, the government really turned on us
(45:38):
and went after us. And you know, these these inappropriate
relationships have been happening since the dawn of time between
male and female cops and prosecutors and all that. But
because of the nature of this, you know, they just
they went, they went after us, went overboard. However, it
(46:01):
sent me just spinning down into this world where I
couldn't get out of it. I didn't think there was
a way out. I was like, Wow, these people are
going after me. And these are the same people, you
know that I've been working with my whole career. I
know they can get anyone they set their sights on.
Why wouldn't they be able to get me? And I
(46:22):
mean I went, Gary, When I tell you, I went,
I probably lost fifty pounds in a matter of a
few weeks, a total mental breakdown. Everything just that I
had been holding inside it all came out and I
ended up and I don't say this for a dramatic effect.
But I ended up sitting in my bedroom paranoid, thinking
(46:45):
every car driving by was you know, a government surveillance.
And I ended up just trying to find a reason
not to end it because I didn't see any way out.
And you know, luckily, you know my faith, and you know,
just the just slight glimmer, you know, chance that my
family would you know, forgive me, and that carried me through.
(47:09):
You know, I was able to make it through, and
once I was cleared, I made the decision to retire.
I had been on for twenty six years at that point.
You know, So at that point, I I I had
a buddy who was a homicide detective and he told me,
he said, man, you got to write a book. He said,
as a as a mental exercise, he was, you got
(47:31):
to write a book. It was because I've never seen
anyone go through the crazy shit you've gone through, and
so it was it was a mental exercise. And I
wrote the book and the book just did really well.
And next thing, you know, my second career is in
the entertainment industry.
Speaker 1 (47:52):
You know, I know the path you've walked. And when
you said, like the paranoia when you feel like the
people that were after you, the people that used to
used to work with. It's confronting, isn't it. And I
don't see you as a person crying poor or whatever,
and I'm not either. You know, that's the game, that's
(48:12):
the world that we've been involved in. We're set up
to understand how it plays out. But you've gone from
being in your mind the good guy doing everything, and
that was your passion and then that was taken away
from you. So I can understand how hard the path
it was to dig your way out of it. And
I think in your book you gave cutos to your
(48:34):
wife that had a hard conversation with you when you're
at your lowest point, and the fact that you managed
to fix things up there. But yeah, public humiliation is
never good. And when an organization you've given your heart
and soul to turns on you, I can understand the pain.
Speaker 2 (48:52):
And brother, it was. I don't know how long your
situation lasts, but mine was two and a half years.
And I can tell you there don't put that much
effort into a murder investigation as they put into trying
to take down one of their own. Yeah, and so
it was. And you know, as guys like us who
(49:12):
are always used to being in control tope personalities to
have no control and the unknown is the worst thing
in the world. And that's what for the first time
in my life, I had no control over what was
going to happen to me and managrove me crazy.
Speaker 1 (49:32):
I understand exactly where you're coming from with it, and yeah,
I share that pain. And you lose your tribe. I
lost that many what I considered friends. Now I look
back and think maybe it wasn't true friends, but the
ones that were true friends have really stood up and
had the delete. Yeah, ninety percent of most numbers in
(49:52):
the phone because I never heard from anyone. I'm sure
you went through that type of stuff.
Speaker 2 (49:57):
Isn't it funny? I had three phones. I had my
government phone, my official one, my undercover phone, and my
personal phone, and between three of them, there wasn't a
minute when they weren't ringing off the hook. It was
it was either informants or bad guys, or my colleagues
or my supervisors or friends or whatever it was. And
overnight they all went silent, and it was deafining. Silence
(50:21):
was deafening.
Speaker 1 (50:22):
It's kind stop it. You're making me relive it too,
right writing the book? Did you find that cathartic?
Speaker 2 (50:32):
Man? It was because what I did was one of
my my supervisors at the end, he pulled me aside,
and you know they all had my back. Man, they
were great. He pulled me dound and he said, here's
what I want you to do. He goes that copy
over there, he goes, I want you to print out
every report you've ever written. I just started printing them out,
(50:52):
and that's what I used. You know, I read through
them to help me write the book. And it was
absolutely it was cathartic. And my case in particular, the
two false allegations against me, what they accused me of
were they were killers. Because the worst thing you can
do to a cop is to accuse him of being untruthful, right,
(51:14):
because it cures credibility. So the two accusation against me,
where one was perjury on the stand and the other
was false information in an application for the s visa
for my informant. So when you when you accuse, all
we have as police officers are a word on the stand.
(51:34):
When you get accused of being a liar, it's it's
a career end or it's it's a career killer, not
only for your law enforcement career, but for any job
you might want afterward. Right when someone googles you and
they see an accusation of perjury, you're done. And all
that made the paper and the internet and the news.
But when I was found, when I was cleared, it's
(51:57):
funny that that didn't make the paper. No One on
no one wrote an article about me getting cleared. So
so I've had to work extra hard. A guy approached
me who owns a magazine here and he wanted me
to be in the magazine. And I was like, I
was like, dude, I've had my little encounter with the
press and it hasn't been good, so I'm going to
(52:19):
have to politely decline. And he said listen. He goes,
what do you want the most? He goes, what do
you want in life right now at this point the most?
And I said, what I want the most is I
don't want my son to ever google my name and
see this bullshit that's been written about me. He said, well,
then you have to bury that with good stuff. Bury it.
(52:40):
So that's on the tenth page. So I said, okay,
and I did it. He put me on the cover
of his magazine and that kind of kickstarted this whole
second career.
Speaker 1 (52:49):
Ill, full credit to you, because these are hard ride
back and all the things that you touch on, I
know how it hits. But look, I'm glad you found something.
It sounds like you got some exciting things at foot
in the in the future. You're talking of the TV show,
You've got something coming up along those lines as well.
Speaker 2 (53:10):
So we the first season just finished. We filmed it
in twenty twenty four and it ran its course on
Discovery and on Matt HBO Max or Max. It's called
Operation Undercover. And I'm the host of the show. And
what I do is I go around this country, around
America to different cities, different police departments and sheriff departments,
(53:33):
and we embed with these departments for a week with
their undercover units. And they let us right in. And
I mean when I say in bed like we are
in the cars with them. When there's an undercover officer
walking into a hotel room to buy, you know, a
kilo of fentanyl from some cartel guy. We're right on
the outside on the perimeter, watching and you know, we
(53:57):
show it all and it all gets shown. And we
did seven episodes in different states, all over the country,
different police department, and we show the case. You know,
these are these are faster cases because we're only there
for a week, but we show from beginning to end,
from when they're talking to the informant and he's bringing
the undercover officer in and the drug buys or the
(54:19):
gun buys, whatever happens to be, and then afterward when
they kick the door in and take down the bad guy,
we show the whole thing. So it's no recreations. This
is real. It's fast paced. I mean it's no again,
I don't like recreations. There's no it's all real. And
and I'll tell you what, man, it is exciting as.
Speaker 1 (54:39):
How Yeah, no, it sounds it because like the undercover
work is a world that even cops don't get to see,
Like cops get to see up things other people don't see.
But then that's at another level when you look at
the the undercover stuff. So that that sounds sounds good.
Second book in the in the planning as well.
Speaker 2 (54:56):
Yeah. After So the first book did really good. It
was called Storefront Sting, an ATF agent's life undercover, and
I basically tell my story like I've told it to you,
and it was actually it was bought by a Hollywood company.
Right now. These things take forever, but right now it's
it's in front of Netflix and they're looking at it
(55:17):
at possibly making it into a Netflix series with each
storefront being a different season, you know, using different actors
for different my different undercover teams and all. So we'll
see if that happens. And you know, I'm right now,
I'm waiting to hear from Discovery by season two for
Operation Undercover.
Speaker 1 (55:37):
Exciting times and in my transition from policing into working
in the media, it's good working with creative people too,
isn't it. Sometimes policing can be a little bit negative.
And then you step away and yeah, credit where credits due.
If you're doing a good job, it's not it's you're
not competing. It's creative people and they've got an energy
(55:58):
that's sort of revitalizes. So that's I'm glad you found
that path.
Speaker 2 (56:03):
Yeah man, I'm you know, I'm glad you got a
second career as well, and you're in it. I don't
know if you experienced the same thing I did what
I found. Uh, what the entertainment industry. That downside is
at least when I was when I was a cop,
every two weeks my paycheck came in. And regardless I
knew it, it is so hard getting people to write
(56:24):
you a check in the entertainment industry, Like yeah, I
mean if you see in your family from it, you
really got to hustle, man.
Speaker 1 (56:32):
And I can see your experience when you're sign oh
they're doing this. But until it's done, that it's done.
Do you miss aspects of place in the adrenaline Russian
aspects of the life that you lived?
Speaker 2 (56:44):
So that's crazy. The answer was definitely a yes. But
fortunately last year I got to experience it again because
I found myself right back in the mix with these
cops through and undercover cases. I just I didn't have
a gun, right.
Speaker 1 (57:01):
Yeah, I'm actually lou now I know exactly what your man.
I'm a bit pissed off of you. Why can't we
do and embedding the homicide de technique with homicide sands
sands good, I just want to finish off with because
we're struggling to find place here in Australia in different
states and all that the UN demanded and they seems
to be a real reluctance for people to join the place.
(57:24):
What would you say to anyone that's considering a career
in law enforcement.
Speaker 2 (57:28):
You know, we've had the same thing here in America. Right,
It's been a tough five years for law enforcement in America.
We've had we've had riots, we've had craziness. Recruiting is
down to zero. You know, over here cops are not
paid well. You know, if you want to if you
want to be rich in this country, you don't go
into law enforcement. And I'm sure it's that way in
(57:49):
most countries, but here, here's what I would tell and
I do tell when when young people ask me about
going into law enforcement, I tell them this. I say, listen,
if you want a career where you will really experience
(58:09):
a true brotherhood. And when I say a brotherhood, I
mean it doesn't matter. I'm not talking a male female,
just a real brotherhood in a connection. I said, there's
nothing other than possibly the military where you're going to
experience that being part of a team and doing something
that's fulfilling and you know, and actually making a difference
(58:31):
and helping to protect the community. And you're going to
also depending on where you want to go. There's so
many avenues once you get into law enforcement. You know,
if you want to if your thing is you want
to be a dog handler, you want to work explosives, drugs, guns,
white collar crime, counterfeiting. I mean, it's unlimited. You can
(58:54):
go It's not like a regular job where you're pigeonhole.
You can go into anything and it can be it
can be fulfilling. My only word of caution or warning
is that don't go into it if you think if
you're doing it for accolades or appreciation, because you're not,
that doesn't happen. But and the other thing is if
(59:18):
if it is your choice and you do it, and
I wouldn't tell anyone not to do it, build that
resume while you're doing it, and think of the future,
think of you know, the life life after, because you know,
there's a lot of good things you can go into
if you're smart about it, opportunities you know after law enforcement,
which I did.
Speaker 1 (59:38):
Not do, but it's good advice because it can. Yeah,
you're playing at the sharp end of a world and
that can end pretty quickly in dramatic circumstances, and you
should look what you've got the outside of law enforcement.
I've really enjoyed this chat that gets me itchy feet
and wants me to be a cop again here in
the stories, and I love the book. And I get
(01:00:01):
the shits when I read too many cop books because
it makes me want to get back into doing what
I do or what I did, I should say, so
I haven't even let it go, but I want to
thank you for the service to the community. And you know,
I don't think we've mentioned this, but part of your career,
and I know when it ends not in the way
you expect that sometimes you think, well, what good have
I done? I think in the operations you were involved
(01:00:23):
in lou there was over a thousand guns taken off
the street, and not to mention all the drugs and
everything else. You've made a difference, mate, It's a big.
Speaker 2 (01:00:32):
Difference, man. I appreciate Thank you for those words. Brother.
Speaker 3 (01:00:35):
Thanks Will you take care of good luck with the future.
Speaker 2 (01:00:37):
God bless you.
Speaker 3 (01:00:38):
Sheeer is all right.
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