Cleared Hot - Powered By BRCC - Behind the Badge: Federal Crime-Fighting in the IRS - with Scott Daniels

Episode Date: November 6, 2023

Dive into the clandestine world of financial investigations with Scott Daniels, a seasoned Supervisory Special Agent from the Internal Revenue Service's Criminal Investigation division. With a rich career spanning over two decades, Scott has been at the forefront of unmasking sophisticated financial schemes and playing a pivotal role in the Organized Crime Drug Enforcement Task Forces. From his early days in the Warren County Sheriff's Department to leading critical task forces at the IRS, Scott's journey unveils a relentless pursuit of justice. In this episode, we unravel the intricacies of financial crimes, the nexus between narcotics trafficking and national security, and the evolving landscape of cyber-crimes. Scott shares eye-opening insights from his vast experiences, shedding light on the meticulous efforts required to ensure a safer society amidst a complex web of financial deceit. Whether it's mastering the art of leadership in law enforcement or spearheading the development of a robust use-of-force training program, Scott's tales are a testament to the unwavering dedication of our law enforcement community. Explore and sign up for Starlink Service here: ⁠https://www.starlink.com/residential?referral=RC-14303-34690-52&utm_source=Starlink2MoAndy⁠ **The 2-month free offer will only show in your account after you fully complete your account and activate the service** This offer expires 12/1/23. Offer available for the United States and Canada only The Speed of War Comic Series: ⁠https://www.thespeedofwar.com/⁠ Sign up for the new G14 newsletter here: ⁠https://www.clearedhotpodcast.com/exclusive⁠ Check out the newest Cleared Hot Gear here: ⁠https://shop.clearedhotpodcast.com/⁠

Ladies and gentlemen, welcome back. Let's get it right into this. Let's go to Black RifleCoffee.com and see what they have to offer on their website. I'm looking at it right now. Rotating banner across the top is where I'm going to start. That's where I always start. What I'm seeing is the opportunity to join their coffee subscription club. And you get 20% off if you use the term code, whatever it might be, coffee 20.

What's the other one? Yes, pumpkin spice. Is it still the season for pumpkin spice? When does it start and when does it end? Why does it even have a season? I mean, I think that's a deeper question. But they have a cold brew concentrate, which you can get at Walmart. They have an RTD or ready to drink.

They have the horseman's roast in what I'm looking at. Probably is ground coffee would be my bet and then K cups if you hate yourself and don't like good coffee. But I digress. Sliding down on the old website is the roast selector. You can pull the black circle. to the left and that gives you the lighter roast you can pull it all the way to the right that's going to give you the extra dark roast and of course everything between those two brackets is going to be exactly that surf on down and i'll just stay i'll just say this holidays around the

corner the apparel the gear the coffee bundles the coffee sampler and then of course the best sellers down below i actually have that BRCC handmade perfect mug a little bit expensive an amazing coffee mug take care of that thing it's it's largely bomb-proof but just take care of it And start thinking about what you're going to get for people for the holidays. I don't even know how far away Christmas is, but it's under 10 weeks. I'm pretty sure. Black Riflecoffee.com for all of your coffee needs. My guest today is from everyone's favorite government organization, the IRS, the Internal Revenue Service, specifically a special agent from their criminal division.

His name is Scott Daniels. And I actually was unaware that there was a criminal division of the IRS, which is why when Scott reached out to me and explained to me what he did, I was fascinated. I was under the impression that the IRS was largely, if not solely comprised of people whose job it was to audit tax returns. And damn, was I wrong? I'm not even going to get into what Scott does in his career or did in his career because he's now retired.

He does a great job in discussing that in and of its sense. self, but safe to say a lot more and a lot more involved than most people would think, at least myself. So how about I stop rambling? And we get into episode number 311 with Scott Daniels. Enjoy. West of the smoke, I'm looking at danger close now. I was going to ask you to unpack your career, but I have to address the elephant in the

room first because people are probably going to ask what happened to me. And I'll just say this. Jiu-jitsu is the gentle art until it's not. Sometimes you get elbowed in the face by your good friends and you put them on your list of deep, deep, dark-seated revenge that'll come in years when they've likely forgotten about the black eye that they gave you, but I'll never forget. Revenge, best served cold?

It is. And speaking of revenge, you used to work for the IRS. So it's the perfect... I did. It is. Yeah, as of September 30th is when I retired. So you have been out... Less than two weeks?

Well, 24 days. Not that anyone's counting. No. Yeah. How many years of federal service? 22 and a half. 22 and a half. Were you guys on a GS pay scale?

Yes. 15? I was a 14. Okay. What step, though? 10. Okay. Yeah.

So bag carrying agents go up to journey level's grade 13. Okay. And I was at a supervisory role. So they're 14s. And then the 15 is like your sack level. your ASAC level, that sort of thing that runs the field office. Okay. When you were growing up, did you just have dreams of working for the IRS?

Well, you know, it's funny you mention that. My entire career, none of it was planned. I know you as a zygote decided you want to be a Navy SEAL. I had no such aspirations. Well, first you're going to have to tell me what the word zygote means. Little bitty guy. Okay. Michael, write that down so I can use that word in the future.

I'm not hearing anything through my Dr. Dre headphones here. You're not hearing anything? I'm not hearing squat. Hold on. Let's have Michael turn it up. How's that? How's that? Anything at all?

A little more. How about there? I guess a little. It just sounds like I got hearing protection on. Crank it, Michael. I'm not deaf, I swear. All right, how's that? Kind of.

Okay. Keep going. That's all the way. No way. There must be something. Well, hold on. Let's check it out. Stand by one.

How's the audio now? It's good. Much better. Much better. Perfect. I could, I was like, I had shooting hearing protection. I was like, good God. We shouldn't have let him switch.

That would have been amazing. The whole episode, huh? What? What are you saying? What are you saying? No, I mean, it's kind of funny. Now I was like kind of pan back now that I've retired on my career. My entire career was kind of a conflagration of luck and me just falling into stuff.

It didn't really, it was never the plan. It just kind of happened. Luck in the IRS are two words not commonly seen in the same sentence. I agree. Well, I didn't find them. They kind of found me. You don't want the IRS finding it. So many questions.

Yeah. Well, that's where we're here. That's over here. Let's start with this. Yes. What is the function? Let's, God, we should probably go big to small. So in the puzzle that is the U.S. government,

uh-huh. Paint a picture for me from, from broad to where the IRS actually sits in what they do. Well, the IRS, I mean, its biggest function is to collect tax, basically. They don't set the tax code. If you think the tax code is broken and complicated officials. Exactly. So I mean, the IRS gets the hit for that, but that's really, they get the hand that's dealt to them, right? So the IRS, in the simplest terms, is just supposed to do nothing but collect revenue in the most perfect sense.

Now, since then, you know, things got more complicated many years ago where they kind of got forced into, I don't want to say social welfare programs, but a lot of the refunds and credits and whatnot go towards that. And that kind of complicates the issue. But does the IRS have anything to say with that? Or is, again, that's the policymakers directing where the money is it goes. That's the policy makers. So the IRS on the biggest scheme, around 90,000 to 100,000 employees, it's a lot of them. Yeah.

Most of them, the largest bulk of them are on the civil side. I mean, the ones that are doing audits, compliance, collections, that sort of thing. Yeah, the people that you ignore the phone calls and letters you get. Exactly. And a lot of times, quite frankly, those letters come from a computer. You know what I mean? It's true. I mean, their correspondence audits. It's not really somebody with the green visor looking at Andy's tax turn and goes, oh, my God, we get on this usually. I mean, sometimes the... Until after this episode.

Michael, prepare to be audited. What I'm in, what I retired from was the criminal investigation division of that, which is the smallest portion. probably 3% of the IRS. We have like 2,200 to 2,300. Somebody's got to say I'm wrong because we just hired a few. Bag carrying agents, that's it. So as federal agents... What do you mean by bag carrying agent?

That's slang for an agent who's actually working in the field doing their job. Okay. And I shouldn't even say 22 or 2300. That's like overall... Are you familiar with the job series codes, 1811's? 1811's a special agent? I mean, at the broadest level, I'm familiar with that. Okay.

So the 1811 job... series code is the same for every federal agency, be it FBI, ATF, DEA, whoever. 1811 just means your special agent slash criminal investigator. Okay. So we have about 22, 2,300 of those, probably another thousand or more of people behind the scenes helping analysts work and basically the people, I just say support staff because that upsets them. They play a bigger role than that.

I mean, they, you know, it's like in your job, how much were the, what was the percentage of people that supported you on your old job? probably 97%. It places like J-Slock, you're talking a 10-1 or 15-to-one ratio of support staff. Yeah, so our ratios weren't anywhere that good, and we couldn't do our jobs without them, but they get upset when you call them support staff because they feel like there's something more and they really are. So maybe, I'm guessing, 4,000 employees total. And we basically enforce the criminal tax code, not the civil tax code, but the criminal tax code.

That's what we do. I was not aware until you sent me the email email. that you did. And I appreciate you reaching out because I have had a variety of federal agencies or agents from federal agencies on. And all of them kind of reached out in the same way. Yeah. My litmus test for whether or not to have somebody on is, does this seem like it would be interesting? Yeah. I've heard of the IRS. Yeah. My interface with the IRS is yearly. Yeah. We're the one paperwork to them. Right. And hope to God, I don't get a follow-up email. Right. With my check. Right. And we're the one federal agency that most Americans interface with.

All the time. You can go with your entire career of that meeting with somebody from the FBI, but you're right, you know, you're dealing with us every year. Well, I've never met anybody from the IRS until about 20 minutes ago. There you go. But I wasn't aware that there was a split between the civil and criminal coat. I was not aware that there were, as you called it, the bag carrying agents. So, and that is to me, when you send me that email, that's what I found to be the most

interesting. I think most people know what the IRS is, which falls under Department of Treasury. Right. Correct. That's correct. I think many people have complaints about the tax code, which you mentioned. Talk to your elected official. I could join in with that. Yeah. Here's a question. How often do IRS agents get audited? You know, I don't know. It better not be a lower goddamn percentage that your average American. I have no way of knowing, probably no more or less than anybody else, because those audits, for the most part, are selected by machine. And it's closely held. And by the way, once again, that's the civil side that does all that. So I had. My knowledge of that is like this big. But they have these scores.

They plug into a computer and they kind of change them each year on what they're looking at or what the area of emphasis is. And those are so highly held. They didn't even tell us what they are. They're very, I don't want to say classified because they're not classified in the truth sense of the word. But it's kind of a dark secret on what they're doing each year. The algorithm, if you will. Yeah, it is.

It really is. And they don't tell us. And quite frankly... Probably it's a good thing. They don't tell you. There's a lot of things they didn't tell us in the military, too, for very good reason. Yeah. You probably shouldn't tell me that because I'll probably tell somebody else and then it's going to mess up your algorithm.

I do know, I'm not sure what the penalties are on the civil side, but on the criminal side, if you do get an audit and you get jammed up, it's a career ender. Really? Absolutely. I guess I shouldn't say that. I guess it would depend on the extent of it and what happened. If I guess it was a simple mistake, it would be one thing. But you're engaging in criminal investigations that are life-changing events for people. and your stuff has to be totally squared away

if you're going to be dealing with people like that. I don't say you can't even be above reproach when it comes to your financial activities. That would make sense given the occupation that you're in. Yeah, so they do flag our returns, they do look at them. So I don't know what the audit rate is because I think we're all pretty scared of it.

Yeah. You know, I was always scared working for, you know, before working for the IRS. I was always scared that they held these machinations in place that maybe they do or they don't. But, and one of the things you have, to do as an employee is go through a pre-employee audit. You know, they want to make sure you're squared away before you can start the job.

Stands the reason. Yeah. So civil versus criminal, break down that separation inside of the IRS for me. Well, there's different rules. And there's kind of a wall between them for good reason. We are part of the IRS. You know, we're part of the overall, but we're kind of like its own separate little pocket. Reason being is the rules are different.

for instance, the burden of proof in court. In a civil court, the burden of proof is preponderance of evidence. Criminal court, beyond a reasonable doubt. So we have a much higher level burden of proof. We were one of the very few federal agencies that if I were, if you were the subject of the investigation and I was coming to talk with you the first time, I would read you your rights, your Miranda rights. Right out of the get-go. Right out of the get-go.

Because, and that's on an administrative tax. tax case. If it's a case where you're working with U.S. Attorney's Office and other federal agencies, it's up to the U.S. Attorney's Office and whether or not they want to do that. But if it's a straight-up administrative tax case that we're doing by ourselves, we're going to read you those rights because we want you to be very clear, hey, man, this isn't an audit. You could go to prison. Yeah. You know, I mean, I've never been a position where I'm trying to trip or track anybody. It's math. Our job is math. There was a tax doing knowing you didn't pay it, and you did so willfully.

Now, that's one of the big differences on the criminal side. On the civil side, you can make a mistake. You know, you could fill out the wrong form or check the wrong box or not understand something like that. Nobody's going to jail for that. The criminal tax code is one of the first things you have to prove is willfulness.

You have to willfully do it. And it has to be pretty egregious. And then there has to be, you know, the other elements of the crime. So most people, even though they'll spew a lot of hate about us, you'll probably get to your entire life without seeing somebody like us, you know? Yeah.

And unless you were a victim or a witness, us coming to talk to you is not good. It's not a good thing. So we make it real clear at the onset, hey, this is what's going on. Okay. So, and then the difference is in criminal cases, the end result can very well be prison and often is.

The civil side, that's not the case. So a lot of times we're the opposable thumb of other federal agencies, they can't quite, you know, do something maybe by themselves, but when we bring in the financial end, that locks up the picture. And the tax code is really only half of what we do. We're big picture on the criminal investigator side. We're basically financial investigators. So one of our, one of our biggest things that we're good at is money laundering. So the biggest cases you hear that we're involved in, and a lot of times you don't ever hear that we were involved at some other

federal agency with us doing the work kind of behind the curtain is the money laundering cases. And about half my career was spent doing those sorts of cases with narcotics trafficking. How prevalent is money laundering? Depends on, pretty much so. It depends on, I obviously have a jaded opinion in the tax code. In tax cases, the vast majority of Americans are doing the right thing. That's why there's only so many of us doing what we do, right? And money laundering, we do illegal source money laundering, meaning it's some sort of illegal scam, fraud, and they're laundering the funds.

What I was involved in was strictly from narcotics. So I kind of have a jaded view. I kind of see it everywhere because that's what I did for so long. So is it prevalent? Yeah, I mean, all these drug traffickers have cash, and cash is a horrible thing to have. Horrible because it leaves a record, or you can't make the deposit without having it trip something up? You can only do three things with cash. Spend it, deposit it, or hoard it.

If you hoard it... That first one sounds awesome. Spend it, but you think we're going to find out about that? I mean, I'd have to do some open research on what level of spending cash triggers an IRS report. Yeah. Well, it's not just an IRS report. Any transaction over $10,000 is going to hit Finsent, the Financial and Crimes Enforcement Network. I would have a robust portfolio of $9,000 transactions.

There you go. There you go. And just to be clear, spending cash is perfectly legal. Yeah. And if you have a cash intensive business, like you do, you may see those CTRs on a regular basis. I mean, you could be going to the bank every day and deposit.

We go that once a week from the coffee shop. I'm a shot actually in 2023, how many people are still using cash. Yeah, yeah. But it takes also somebody with common sense to look at those records and go, oh, this guy's running a coffee shop. Well, we also deposit them into a business account at a bank branch. And we also pay taxes on it. You know, we're reporting the income that we make, so I think we're probably going to be okay.

You know, it's something in ironic. The IRS holds tax records so, I don't want to say once again secret because they're not classified, but they're sensitive in nature. And one of the quickest ways to get in trouble as an IRS agent is sharing somebody's tax information. It's reasonable. Because it's a handshake agreement we have the taxpayer. You'd be honest with us, you know, we'll deal with you. But we're not going to share that. Likewise, just looking at someone's return, you have to pretty good reason to pull it up.

I mean, everybody thinks when I come to talk to them, I'm pulled up their return. I have no idea. I have no idea what your turn looks like. I would have no reason to pull it up, and I would get in trouble if they caught me doing that. And if you pull it up, obviously, there's fingerprints on that. So we're all pretty careful on that. When you go to money laundering investigation, you're working with another federal agency. They're not allowed to see those tax records, and I'm not allowed to see those tax records,

unless we have a judge or the IRS to give up those records. records. Really? Even though you work for the IRS. If you're working what they call a Title 18 case, which is money laundering, yeah, you have to fill out an export or have a judge or the AUSA fills out an ex parteator. The judge grants it goes to the whole whole chain of the criminal process and then the IRS pukes out the return. Wow. What is, not that I want you to give people a blueprint on how to money laundering because we'll obviously do that after the episode for Michaelized personal benefit. What's broadly, what's the most common mechanism that you saw for organizations or individuals doing that? Well, you know, it's ironic in that the simplest one is the one that's

hardest for us to catch. And that's what a lot of people are, and once again, I'm talking about large scale, my laundering for like cartel operatives and stuff like that, is bulk cash. You know, a duffel bag full of cash goes across the board in New Mexico. How would we know? Unless a trooper or road kills that or an informant tells you about it and you can't triangulate, you never know what happened, right? So that's the most simple and most inelegant way, and it's probably the hardest to catch, but they're worried about the border. They're worried about, you know, getting stopped and pinched at the border.

Well, they also want to do stuff with the money that they made, right? So they have to take the cash and put it into something more usable or transferable. Right. And once again, the investigations I was dealing in most part. You're trying to get the proceeds. They're trying to get them back to Mexico where, or are. south of the border to some extent where the source of the narcotics are. And oddly enough, what has what has changed in my career, which is kind of odd, is money laundering organizations

have become apart and separate from the narcotics organizations. You'll have organizations that do nothing but money laundering. And if you're the drug trafficker, you engage with a contract for these people to launder your money. And that's been fairly recent, well, I guess it's been going on for while, but it seems recent, you know, as far as the history of the, history of the world. One of the oddest things, and I don't want to start World War III or besmirch the Chinese government, but the Chinese people in general are laundering mind like crazy in the U.S. Really? Really.

They become one of the most effective money launders out there. How are they doing so? And feel free to speak as broadly as you want to not give anybody ideas. Well, they know because they're doing it. Do you mean Chinese citizens here in the United States are laundering for their own purposes or for the Chinese party? For the cartel? No, no. Well, for the cartel. Are you trying to tell me these nail salons are not legit?

I would have no way of saying. No, how it works in the broadest of terms. And there's been open source articles about this. So I'm not spelling the beans here. But you are Pablo Escobar and you have a bunch of dollars in America and you need to give them south to your country. And you don't want them getting stopped at the border. if it gets engaged in a bank, you're going to, you know, blah, blah, blah. We should talk about what you mean by having a bunch of dollars,

because I've read news reports of houses that were searched via warrants, and entire rooms were full, floor to ceiling with actual paper money. Just to give people an idea of the scale we're talking about. Once again, cash is a horrible thing to have, right? I mean, it also rots. I wasn't aware that that was an issue. Pablo Escobar used to lose millions a year to rats eating it. I look forward to having that problem.

Yeah, I would take that. So much money. I would take that problem. Yeah. I'll share a little bit with Michael so he keeps his trap shut and doesn't get one of these shiners. But then we'll lose a few million a year, Michael, to mold. Mold and rats. As long as I get like 100,000.

A hundred thousand? God. Go big, man. He just thought he did go big. He doesn't even get the sarcasm that you just use. A day, maybe. I'm going to put it out there. But basically you engage as Pablo Escobar, and I picked that name because God bless him.

He's no longer with us. huge sums of money a Chinese operative that you engage with will come by and pick up your money from one of your your compadres, one of your traffickers. They photograph the money

and send it via WeChat to whoever it is south of the border because it goes through WeChat. You're talking about photographing individual bills? No, no, just the bag of money is basically saying, hey, I got it. And quite frankly, the amounts we're seeing are not as big as they used to be

because we used to intercept a million dollars at the time. Now it's like $100, $150. They're getting smarter and breaking it up. Okay, so they're going with the approach of putting even more out there in hopes that you guys catch less. Right. Right. I mean, I have been involved in deals where they'll do a traffic stop and get over a million dollars in cash.

Which I wish it was like the movies and it filled up this entire table. Having seen a million dollars in cash overseas, like, oh, I guess I just need a fanny pack. Yeah, if it's $100, if it's $100, it weighs around 22 pounds. It's not as much. I wish it was movie-wise. It's truly not. And you rarely see hundreds. They're usually 20s.

But so they photograph and send a we chat message, which is encrypted into an encryption to whoever says, yeah, we got the money. And boom, the money goes, they're actually fronting it. They're sending the pesos to somebody in Mexico that fast. I mean, that fast. Because it's a business that they're involved, and they know they're going to get their money. So they, they, it's kind of interesting. China has capital flight laws. You're not allowed as a Chinese citizen to send more than $50,000 out of the country.

Any one time or ever? You know, I believe it's annually, but I'm not, I'm not positive on that. So all these, if you have a, you've your Chinese national, you have a kid going to college, and it's a high-end college, and there's plenty of Chinese kids going high in cash. How do you pay for that? Well, you buy U.S. currency. You buy U.S. currency from a broker here in the United States, and you pay a 10% fee. Is that laundering? Well, they don't necessarily know.

In order for it to be laundered money, it has to. to be proceeds from a specified unlawful act, which there's about a hundred of them listed. It's basically the same illegal things that come from the RICO statute. And you have to have knowledge it's from an unlawful act. So the person in China really has no knowledge that that's cocaine money. But they could unwittingly be involved in a laundering operation. Unwittingly, yes. That's what I'm saying.

They didn't meet the criminal statute because they didn't know. Right. And we're not an interesting system. Yeah. So, and then the Chinese person gets paid, you know, the Chinese guy, he just sends a, he needs $100,000 in cash. He sends a wire from his Chinese bank to another Chinese bank for $110,000. So that's one way. The other way is they just smurf it in and wired over.

They smurf it in in amounts that either aren't going to get caught or, you know, they're, get some sort of wire emitter who's on board and sending it over in amounts and false names, people playing along and just wired across overseas. And then another one is trade-based money laundering. Luxury goods that they can't get in China. One of the most exciting ones, oddly enough, is the iPhone. The iPhones come from China. They love iPhones in China, and I guess the ones they get here have more features and they're not blocked. Okay. Interesting. Yeah, I was shocked.

You tell me they're laundering money by sending iPhones to China. Well, think about it. You pick up money from Pablo. You go and buy a whole bunch of iPhones with it, a pallet up, and ship it over to China. And then they sell it in China. That's how they get their money back. Oh, interesting. And then how they turn over to pesos below south of the border,

a lot of Latin American countries have a relationship where they're buying Chinese goods, just like we are, with pesos. Boom, you got pesos. Pablo gets his pesos. Usually they're charging, you know, one to three percent to the cartels. So it's dead safe. I mean, these people are reliable. They're not going to rip you off.

They're in a business. They're making money off your money. You know, what's the harm? This seems like it would be from somebody on the business. back and looking at this, an absolute nightmare to keep track of. Yeah, it is. It is. It's a pretty well-designed hamster wheel, if you think about it, especially from things

like the goods. Yes. Yes. Yeah, and it could be any luxury goods that they can't, they don't regularly get in China. Or they want in China, it could be, I don't know, I'm making this up, could be Harley-Davidson motorcycle, whatever. Whatever you can sell at a profit, you could use that, you ship that over, boom, you know. Yeah.

So there you go. How did cryptocurrency impact your job? You know, I'm going to sound like a big, dumb idiot here, but that kind of came in, you know, in the last quarter of my job or so. Yeah. And we have people that are really good at that, that are unraveling, you know, the blockchain and all that. Which isn't it blockchain designed to be not unravelable?

Wasn't that one of the big things behind it? Yeah. Yeah. And anonymity and the ability to avoid using a bank? So is it affecting us, yes. I can't speak on personal. I've never worked a case with crypto involved. I've worked cases as they've talked about it and they're laundering money through crypto and they're sending crypto stuff.

I've never laid my hands. I've had friends who have. It's obviously a problem and we have people that that's what they do. That's their specialty. It seems like it would be a way to accelerate that hamster wheel. No product. Physical product is actually required to go to China or be sold. Right.

For other reason, China was not embracing cryptocurrency. They're starting too recently, though. As of late, they're like, eh. I wonder how that'll play itself out. Well, and once again, I want to be real clear. I'm not talking about the Chinese government here. talking about Chinese citizens. Now, does the government know about it? Don't know. It benefits their people and enriches their country. It doesn't hurt them in any much way. So they're using

WeChat, which is, you could argue they monitor. You know, you see a bag of currency being, a picture being sent to something. You know, I mean, you could argue maybe they know, but I'm not, I can't take that leap here. Like I said, I don't want missiles coming our way. That's not my goal here. I don't think our podcast will cause that. You don't think. I don't know what our listenership is in China. I don't know if China. I don't know if China's allowed to listen? I would doubt we're allowed. Yeah.

Look at shit up. Are they allowed to listen to podcast in China? Probably only state sponsor ones. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. No, I just, I'm real careful, you know, for the entire career, being very careful about parsing what you say and you don't want to jam anybody up or are.

Well, there's your opinions. It's the same thing that I am with my military career. I can speak through my own lens and my own experience, but I never speak for the military. I don't speak for the SEAL community. I'm very upfront with that. These are my opinions and only my opinions. Right. People start getting into trouble when they conflate one or the other.

They start speaking for an organization that they have no ability to speak for. Yeah, and that's when you ask about cryptocurrency. Is the problem? Yeah, you could get somebody here that could talk to you about it for hours. I can't. I just don't have the knowledge, the basis. I'm less curious about the mechanism of cryptocurrency and how the efficacy of laundering through that currency. Yeah, there's no doubt it happens.

Or NFTs is another one. Right. Which I have now exceeded my knowledge of what it is by saying NFT because that's about as, it seems to be defined as a useless digital image. Pretty much where I'm at with it. Yeah. But again, what an excellent way to, through cyberspace, instantly transfer through what I understand can be an anonymous account. Right. And when I talk about mind laundering, you know, my experience was limited to narcotics, but, you know, we people working counterterrorism and counterintelligence and whatnot. Well, how do you get that money over? You know, I mean, that's what they're involved in all the time.

And that's pretty deep water they're swimming in. And that has, so you're asking what the difference from the civil. in the criminal side, the difference between a tax case and a minor laundering case, there's different rules on things, different tools and things you can do on a mile laundering case, especially when you're doing with counterterrorism, you can never do on tax investigation. You know, so people think that the IRS is spying on them and whatnot. That's not really the case. No, it's a different wing of the government. Yeah.

And we do have people, you know, situated with different intelligence agencies, but it is for the purpose of counterterrorism. That's it. Well, people forget that, you know, 9-11. Yeah. It goes without saying the impact that it had on our country, both very locally and the loss of life there. But the 20 plus years that followed the flight training, the traveling to the U.S., somebody paid for it. Somebody paid all the flights that they did when they were doing reconnaissance. It was funny.

I got my private pilots license at the same airfield that some of the people were taking. I didn't know this at the time. Hey, Muhammad Otto. How you doing, buddy? Yeah, I did not know it at the time. but I look back and son of a bitch, flight training is not cheap. No.

And then they're buying simulator time in aircraft which I really think somebody should have raised their hand and said, hey, these guys are only interested in flying, not landing. Maybe that's a red flag. Maybe it's not. I don't know. Yeah. I would have hate to have been the one with Muhammad Adda's file on my desk on September 10th

and nothing happened, you know. I think every intelligence organization probably felt bad. Yeah. I'm not an expert in the intelligence world, but from what I have read open source and then what I have talked to, people kind of behind the scenes. It's not that they didn't know anything. They didn't put all the pieces together.

Well, I don't know how the government operated really at a deep level pre-9-11. Post-9-11, there was a lot more sharing. If I look at the pre-9-11 seal community, the odd number teams around the West Coast. So at the time when I first got there, it was five was the farthest north, then three, Or no, actually, was it one and then three? I can't remember. Probably three was at the southern end. You could have hit, if you were sucked at golf, you still could have hit the building

associated. And so they didn't talk to each other at all. So there's a fence and not like that, but some jocularity between the groups, no? Absent an enemy. Yes. We have to fight each other. Yeah. Yeah.

And some of that is all withhold a little bit of information. And looking back, fast forward post 9-11, where it didn't matter what team you were on. Our country got surged overseas. And now you have people from, let's say you're working for. an army general. And maybe there's an element from SEAL Team 5 and SEAL Team 1. He just sees SEAL. He doesn't realize that maybe they haven't spoken to each other very well, or shared or why do they have different uniforms or different way of patches or talking to each other? And the reason was we had really isolated ourselves. And I was just about to say, I don't think it was intentional.

It was 100% intentional because we were arguing and fighting for relevance. But what that really means is our budget. Right. And how, I mean, the other intelligence. agencies to take it to a much more macro scale. I don't think it was that different. So I think that they knew, I think every intelligence organization had some level of red flag coming up, but the inability to share and actually figure out was going on. So I think a lot of people felt like they had egg on their face. Yeah, no, no doubt.

And I wasn't, I started March 27th of 2001. So I wasn't in the, in fact, I was 10 days before graduation at Fletsey when those towers came down, which was kind of an interesting. Yeah. That's going to be a full gas pedal down career for sure. Well, yes and no. I mean, once again, like you and the Towersfeld, you're probably gearing up saying, you know, my pager's going off at any minute. Oh, I didn't have a pager.

No, no, it's not like the movies. I was hit a West Coast team at the time, and absolutely nothing happened. I think most people probably drove into work thinking that, you know, we're going to be on the next airplane cooking. And, I mean, what was it, October? I think the first Army elements went in there. and then I landed in Afghanistan for the first time in 2002, late 2002. It took a long time. Yeah, well, it was kind of funny because so I graduated on the 21st of September.

So I'm 10 days out. In fact, that night, it's kind of funny apropos of nothing, but we're sitting in class going through indirect methods, which is the most horrible thing you'll ever learn as an IRS agent and skill you're never going to use. What is it? Now I have to know. Well, most of our cases are proved. They're called them spec item cases, meaning it's a specific item of income. I can prove this check.

I can prove this payment is your income. Indirect methods are a lot more ethereal there. Your net value increased. You made all these deposits. You spent all this money. Trying to prove, wire that back to being a taxable source of income can sometimes be troubling. Because you can come up with all sorts of sources of income that aren't taxable if you think about it. Yeah.

And we can't really even open up an investigation. If you started living large all the time, that's really not enough for us to open up an investigation. We have to have some idea where that money's coming from. And then somebody walks in and says, well, Andy's actually dealing fentanyl. Really? Who told you that? God damn it, Michael. It's kind of funny.

People think that we can, you know, we can probe in it. Getting one of these cases open actually takes a little bit of work. But anyway, there I am doing these indirect methods, which we never, I've never saw one done because it's too complicated and too hard to get a jury to understand. Keep in mind what you said coming over. We kind of understand. I hate to say this, but I will say it. It's an agency everybody hates. So when we take, of course, a case to court, it has to be so egregious and so over the top and so dead bang that the jury of 12 people who hate writing the check every two go, damn it, that's ridiculous.

I put them in prison, right? So, you know, we're looking at jury appeal. We're looking at egregiousness of the tax loss. I mean, the tax loss has to be pretty egregious to get us involved. Give me an example of some. Of course, again, speak as broadly as you need to, but a large case that you worked on that met that criteria. What you're talking about. Going to the jury and you had all those things just lock, stock and smoking barrel, an egregious taxable offense.

So this is now where I can say after 22 and a half years of service, I never took a tax case to trial. Would you get them to settle? They play. I feel like that would be the move because in the world, And again, I've never worked a second in the world that you're working in. But from a banking perspective, everything leaves a footprint of some kind or a fingerprint of some kind. You're transferring money. There's a record of that.

Caching or writing a check. There's a record of that. Deposit. I mean, if you came to me and laid out the case and discovery, it's like, yeah, you have my balls in a news. I don't think I need to go in front of a jury. And that's what happens. Because who knows what the jury is going to come back with? Maximum sentence or minimum sentence.

Right. Right. Right. And the cases that we work have to be agreed just for a variety of reasons. First of all, jury appeal. It's got to be something that has to be so over the top that turns most people's stomach. Oh my God, I can't believe that I'm out. And going back to the simplicity, that's why we don't do indirect as much. We do direct because it's quite direct. I walk into the courtroom with a blow up all these checks that went to you and went to your account and here's what you did with it. Pretty tough to talk your way out of that. Now there are responses and things that people can do. And on an administrative tax case, we're most of the time, you're our first stop. We stop, but you can go, hey, like, this is what we got.

This is your chance to say, oh, gosh, no, let me explain it. It almost never happens. I've never seen it happen. Well, I know of one case that a guy in my group worked where the guy explained it. We went, oh, yeah, that makes sense. And that was the end of it. So, but like you said, we, I never really thought about it because this is the only federal agency I've worked for. but since I've started working with other federal agencies,

and I'm not trying to be smarts them or belittler investigative technique, but I've come to term in the last few years of my career, nobody works financial investigation like we do. Nobody, nobody. And we're the only federal agency. Well, first of all, let me back up, we're the only federal agency that can recommend tax charges. So if you see the FBI indicted somebody in tax charges, it wasn't the FBI.

Everybody thinks this is the FBI because they're the big, they're the big grill in the room with the biggest. Well, they're probably up in front of the microphone talking about it. Yeah, yeah. So that's the case. But if you see tax charges, it's us. It's us in some way, shape, or form. So, where I got derailed. Oh, we're the only ones that they can do Title 26 charges. By Title 26, I mean tax. That's the tax code, U.S. Code, Title 26. We submit a report, a prosecution report that goes through seven layers of review before it goes to the U.S. Attorney's Office. So it's kind of hard to say, I hate Andy, I'm going to try to do him in. The math has to work out in the end, and you have all these layers of review. They're going, yeah, yeah, yeah, okay. Our report, the special agents report, is a work of art.

I'm not allowed to say anything in there that I don't have an exhibit to prove it, and a witness that can introduce that document. So the report would say Andy Stump was born on such and such a day. How do you know that? There's a little footnote. Birth certificate. It's a little footnote that you click on, and the birth certificate pops up, And somebody from the Bureau of Vital Statistics from wherever you're born is going to testify to that.

That's a valid document. Man, that's a high barrier. Well, if you go to trial, you can't just bring a document in. Somebody has to introduce any piece of evidence. This is why things don't go to trial. When you present this, I'm going to assume hundreds of pages of documents to somebody. And each one of those things has a hyperlink and a witness. Yep.

I wouldn't want to throw that up in front of the jury of my peers. Right. And the report usually doesn't get turned over to defense, but some. some of the USAs will turn it over. And I've always said, I don't care, turn it over. I'm not hiding anything. This is what they did. Yeah, you've already got the round and the gun and it's not like it's going anywhere.

Now, if it's a money laundering case with narcotics, you may have people or witnesses that may be jeopardized or whatnot. That's a different story. But in a tax case, man, it's math. It's math. The thing we have to prove is willfulness. This was not a mistake. Nobody's going to jail for a mistake. Not only that, it has to be a pattern of activity.

If you do something one-one time by a mistake, it's, hey, sorry if you get caught. In an audit, you have to write the check and the penalties of the interest. but you're not going in jail for that. Yeah. Is the easiest way to prove that willingness, just the repetitive behavior over time? Yes. And a lot of times the egregiousness of the tax loss,

and a lot of times they will say things or do things that will give indication. You know, they'll make a comment to somebody. They'll do things that it's not direct evidence, but it's, you know, they'll dump money into their mom's account, you know, or something like that to, or their aunt's account. and you're like, wait a minute, why would somebody do that?

Well, juror is going to say, well, doing it because they're trying to hide the income. So it may not be direct evidence, but it can be circumstantial in the sum of all these little parts that add up. And these are investigations that take a while. Your average tax investigation, believe it or not, probably about 18 months. Probably about 18 months. Well, you described the bar that you have to achieve. And you're getting records. As I'm saying, that actually, I was going to guess it would be longer than that.

It can be. I mean, 18 months is what they're looking for. you know, faster than that, your superstar. But you're dealing with records, and records take time, and you've got to subpoena the bank of whatever. And when you're going through those records, you find out, when it's a transfer to the bank of whatever, and I'm not going to get these records,

subpoena that. And each one of these subpoenas begets another subpoena. And money laundering is kind of the same way. You know, people that are doing it out there, laying it through all these different entities and whatnot. So you're, I hate to say, because it's a tired term, you're following the money, and that's what we do. And nobody does it like we do, nobody.

And I didn't realize that until I started working, And my last job in the last year half, I worked as an OSEDF coordinator for our agency. And I worked OSEDF as an agent, which, you know, it's kind of a, it's a small portion of our agency that does OSCEF work, which is the organized crime, drug enforcement task force. I got thrown on that kind of early based on my prior employment. And I thought, I was always, I thought trying to prove my relevancy to the other agencies that I worked with. Hey, look at what I found. And now when I found out at a higher level when we're going to, you know, can we please get. IRS on this case. You know, we're really struggling. Can we, can we get somebody from IRS? And once again,

it's not, I'm not trying to belittle the other agencies. I've had good friends that are DE agents and say, man, I don't know how to read those bank records. I'm not smart enough. Oh, really? You look at a pen register that's this thick. They'll throw them and go, that's the phone right there. I mean, they can, they're better exploiting communications than anybody. That's not what I do, you know. Yeah. Well, that's why you're going to have joint task force. Exactly. And that's the magic of OSEDF. And I, like I said, I, what's the term OSEDF? Osadef is what's called. Yeah, so it started in 1982 under Ronald Reagan. So we just had our October of 82.

They had a big 40th anniversary blowout here a while back. Were you guys authorized to have a party? No, absolutely not. No, somebody came up with a challenge coin that they had to pay for out of their own pocket. Really, I'm serious. I mean, when you see a challenge coin from a... I'd like to see an audit of the party that you guys did. I'd like to see my taxpayer dollars.

You better not have paid more than $100 for a cake. We can't get coffee. If we're having a meeting, like a management meeting or something, You can't get coffee. If there's coffee and donuts there, somebody dipped in their pocket to do it. I was shocked when I started working for the federal government. I'm like, we're having to buy our own coffee? But it's responsibility to the taxpayer.

And as silly as it sounds. Maybe at the individual level for you guys, I worry about responsibility to the taxpayer for the government at large. Oh. You're not going to get me to disagree. You're not going to get me to disagree. I felt like it was a small cog in the machine trying to do the very best I could to try to minimum. waste, fraud, and abuse and give the most I could. But that said, it's the 80-20 rule.

You know, 20% of the people are doing 80% of the work. I mean, that's going to be the case. Yeah. I actually think that's the case for almost every organization. Yeah. But Osed up is they started in 1982, organized crime, drug enforcement task force. And what it was is all these federal agencies did get them to hold hands and work with one other, 9-11 style.

Yeah. So you all need to play along and share. So it's, you have 10 partner agencies. on the Justice Department, and I'm going to forget one of them and get hate mail for this, but Justice Department, you have FBI, DEA, ATF, and U.S. Marshal Service. Not to mention the U.S. Attorney's Office, of course, is the one prosecuting. So there, obviously nothing happens without the U.S. Attorney's Office involved. So if those four Justice Department plus the U.S. Attorney's Office, which is the Justice Department.

In Treasury, you have IRS criminal investigation. In Homeland Security, you have the Secret Service. HSI Homeland Security investigations, and not only enough to Coast Guard. big player. Not for us in the center of the country, but... Oh, interdiction along the coastal regions, for sure. They tear it up. Postal inspection service, which that's an agency that you need to get somebody from.

Postal inspection service. Those guys do magic. Magic. Actual magic, like David Blaine, or what are we talking about? Well, they can track packages like you wouldn't believe. I don't know if they would want to openly talk about that. They probably wouldn't to a certain extent, but keep in mind, one of the reasons we're doing this job is deterrence. And if you think you're going to get caught because we have all these magic tricks,

maybe you won't do it. right? Or you'll just create a better hamster wheel. Well, that's always the case. You know, it's back when you've got a radar detector and they get a better radar gun and a better radar detector and it would just, you know, it's the cold war thing. Postal inspector service. Somebody hit me up.

And by that, I mean, hit up Michael. Yeah. I can reach out to somebody and see if I can make that happen. All right. When I first started narcotics, I'm like, who are these clowns here? Nobody's going to mail drugs and money? Except almost everybody does. Oh, my God.

Yeah. And I'm not a criminal by any stretch. I have heard and read so many times one of the easiest ways to sell and send drugs is FedEx overnight. Yep. Because they don't have time to check the packages because it's like you're paying the premium for it.

Yeah. That is not a business idea for anybody out there listening. I'm not providing criminal advice. And I'm not saying they don't get checked because they have people that do that to a certain extent. But you're right, it's hard. Michael, you used to work at UPS. I mean, when you get an overnight package,

isn't the goal to get that sucker out there to the person as fast as possible? Yes. Did you ever have anybody come and check for packages? And obviously you're only speaking about locally. Yeah. Well, we didn't have anybody from the government come, but we had packages that had been marked as drugs. Really?

Yeah. And they put them in the, it's hard to explain, but these bags, and they zip tie it so you know it's a drug. So you take it into the office and then they do whatever. Sometimes it's just a prescription. Yeah. What part of that was hard to explain? The item going into a bag and being zip-tile? No.

Oh, the bag is a very unique bag that we use for packages. That sounds super hard to explain. Yeah, it's really difficult. I wouldn't expect you to get it. Okay, so I wonder where it was flagged. Was there a machine that it gets scanned through? I'm assuming there's some sort of X-ray or dog, yeah, or something. But the volume of packages, that even the U.S., just alone that are passing through on an overnight, I mean, you would need a fleet of dogs.

Right. Which maybe they have, but there's no way. you can handle that volume of packages. Well, it's true. I mean, it is a needle in a haystack, but they, I'm shocked at how much they catch. So, I mean, they're good. They're really good. And then once you do get them involved in investigation.

I'd be more shocked at how much gets by. I'd be impressed about what they catch, but if that, that's got to be a micropercentage of the total. Well, how much fentanyl's coming across the border, how much money's being laundered, how much tax is being evaded. Only a lot? Yeah. I mean, the number they're throwing around for the tax gap, which is the difference the tax gap is defined as what the government is basically owed and what they actually receive. they say is as high as $600 billion for 2021.

That's a big chunk of change. Now, so what portion of that would you credit to people legitimately making a mistake versus people really trying hard just to not pay their taxes? I think it's probably a little bit of everything. You know, it's just that huge mishmosh. And I don't know how they come up with that number. You know, how can you say how much cocaine is coming across the border? The only thing you know is what you intercept.

You don't know what you're not intercepting. Yeah. You know. And the cartels are very open talking about they're flooding it, knowing that they're going to lose X amount percentage. that they don't care. Right. It's a business model for them.

So I don't know how they come up with those numbers, but that was kind of one of the things that I said, well, you know, gosh, going to work for the IRS. I hate paying taxes, but I think it's a responsibility as an American taxpayer, obviously, to pay taxes. I mean, somebody's got to write the check to national security and whatnot. And my thought was, well, gosh, if everybody paid their fair share, I'd pay a little bit less. It's probably not the case. They probably, if that $600 billion came in, trust me, they'd find something to spend it

on without lowering our taxes. For sure. For sure. Yeah. But that was kind of what I thought, okay, well, you know, you. You know, I, that was kind of one of the things, okay, I don't really enjoy paying taxes myself, so I want to make sure everybody's doing the right thing. And the vast majority of U.S. citizens are, or to a point that they're not going to draw

the hire of a criminal investigation. And that's why, you know, we only have so many resources to apply to these different things, you know, so that's a thing. Now, getting an audit, that's a different story. Yeah. So. I don't mind paying my taxes. It bothers me that.

I don't know where my tax money goes. I don't disagree with that. Yeah. And I think a big chunk of it probably goes to, I think the biggest part of the budget is entitlement programs. Trying to keep that afloat. Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid. You know, one of the biggest line items on the Department of Defense budget is actually retirement pay. Sure.

You know, and it's not a matter of, I don't mind paying my taxes. I don't like the amount of taxes I have to pay. But I also play, you know, it's another thing you, uh, people bitch about individuals or organizations, not paying a lot of tax. I don't besmirch an individual or organization for navigating the tax rules to the best of their ability. That is called tax avoidance, and that is legal. That is perfectly legal and do it. You can do it.

That's not a problem. We expect you to work within the confines of the law as it's written. And if people have a problem with that, you're going to have to talk with your elected officials to change the rules. Exactly. of reasons why people get upset about that. One, they see people who are exorbitantly wealthy, not paying a lot of tax. I can understand that argument, but I also understand they're playing in the rule set that is put in front of them. And I would do the same thing. Yeah. If I was in their position, too. If you want to change that, you're going to have to change the tax code.

If you change the tax code and they do that shit, that's a different conversation. Not knowing or not having any control. Like, I would love it if I got from the IRS a lot of the law. A lot of letter every year that says this is where you tax money put. We do for our subdivision, Homeowners Association. They tell us how much they spend on the pool and how much they spend on the grass cutting. First off, I'm going to say this and this is my personal opinion. Fuck homeowners associations. Because some fucking housewife who now thinks she's empowered to tell me what kind of plant I can put in my house can go fuck right off into the sunset.

Once again, we share a common bond. Yeah, yeah, we live in one of those neighborhoods. It's not real power, Karen. Yeah. Shut the fuck up. Yeah, we live in a neighborhood that we've been lucky, but man, some of the stuff goes full tilt pretty quick. You're like, good God, man, it's a trash can. That's how people get the shit kicked out of them in the middle of the night.

Why does my garbage can keep falling over? It's so weird. Yeah. I don't know, asshole. You keep telling people that the painted number on their sidewalk isn't the right font. Yeah, yeah, yeah. We've been lucky, but still, yeah, I get it. I feel your ire.

I feel your ire. But how sweet would it be? Not that it would change anything. Personally, my personal opinion is that the government does not function well. Allocating resources and being transparent about where they go is one of their, one of many failures. But I think as a taxpayer, if you could at least see where your tax money went, I don't think you would solve any problems, but maybe it would reduce a little bit of the anger and anguish for the tax. taxpayer. I'm not so sure. Well, here's the thing. But here's the thing. If they knew where it went and they didn't like it,

they'd get pissed. Yeah. And then hopefully they could do something about it. Because again, you can be pissed about your tax bracket, but don't bitch to the IRS agent because you're, you as an IRS agent, you have to play the hand that you're dealt to. These are our roles and responsibilities. And I can only play inside of my brackets. But I can't move the brackets, which is the way it should be. As an IRS agent, I don't think you. You don't think you. You're dealt to. You're you should be able to move the brackets. So if you get this report and you're like, what the fuck? All of my money went to this program.

Maybe that would light a fire under your ass to go do something about that. To be more responsible with the people you're voting into office. Exactly. Would that actually be the case? I don't know. Probably would just people would be upset on social media. But to me, I mean, conceptually, educating people and informing them and at that level of transparency, See, I would think that it would potentially light of fire for them to take an action of some kind.

Well, I think you could probably find that information if you look, but you'd have to do some really deep digging. Not your individual tax. You know, like, let's say you're paying just a throw number. They say you pay $50,000 a year in tax. Good luck, trying to figure out what percentage of that went to Ukraine versus infrastructure in your local government fixing roads or a new school bus for your kid. Like, good luck. You're never going to be able to figure that out. Right.

Yeah, but you just, if you saw one. one of those pie graphs like they do for the for our for our property tax this much went to schools and the plus you went to police you might feel about you know we don't have kids so it's like geez uh you know paying a lot to the schools you know but but somebody's got to but then you could have that conversation with your wife and you go you know we don't have any kids but kids are going I want these kids to be educated so I'm like okay I'll pay the bill I get it I get it you know because you know where it's going yeah you may never call the fire department but you want those guys taken care of correct so

This is the price of living in the society that we live in. Some people don't want to play along, you know. That's always going to be the case. Yeah, it is. It is. And like I said, it's, you know, I never, you're starting out of this, I never dream in a million years I'd be working for the IRS. I just, it was never on my radar.

It was never in my lexicon. I didn't even know they existed. Well, how'd you find your way there? Well, backing up, I'd like to start with, I always want to start with the top. The Dr. Evil quote, the details of my life were inconsequential, but I didn't want to memorize that. I think he nailed it, though. Yeah, something along those lines.

Yeah. Meade Hellman, Summers in Rangoon. So I started out, law enforcement was never the plan. My dad was a cop, my entire life. He was a cop before I was born, so I was around that all the time. And my dad... Where'd you grew up? I grew up in St. Louis.

So I was in the St. Louis County area. And my dad was a cop in the municipalities of one of the municipalities of St. Louis. In fact, you may have heard of it. He was, I worked for Ferguson. How much film you got in this thing? It's, uh, HD cards. We're good. No film anymore.

Yeah, it was a joke. I thought it was hilarious, but apparently it fell flat. So my dad was a cop, started in 64, before I was born, and worked 33 years there. He never really inspired me. To take that job, it was a job he did. And to be quite clear, he was real careful on that was not his identity. It was a job he did. You know, a lot of these guys, he told me early on, it's a job that can consume you.

You're hanging around other cops. All your friends are cops. You're talking, you know, it's just like the crew used to roll with. Same deal. You get very insular. It's something you have to. Guard against. You have to be cognizant.

And I recommend to people, military or first responder world, you know, having a social circle outside of those communities is very important. Yes. But he got me, like I said, law enforcement was never the deal, and I don't think he was overly thrilled when I went into it at first. But he got me in the shooting real early. I don't know where he thought that was going to go, but he told my mom when I was in the crib,

the boy was going to be a shooter. And my childhood I thought was fairly normal, you know, growing up the suburbs. But I never played team sports because all the time the other kids were playing catch with their dad. I was on the range with my dad. Doing like long range shooting? It was a mix. It was truly a mix.

I didn't realize how strange it was until I started talking to people. It was when I was like off for summers, my dad would call me if he was working like day shift. He called me and said, kid, load up the truck. Today is handguns. It's going to be long range rifles, it could be shotgun. Whatever it was, the discipline du jour. The bulk of it, probably handgun. But he started me when I was about five.

And when I was five, I got my first Winchester, 190, 22 rifle and off to the races. So I don't know where he thought that was going Because competitive shooting wasn't a big deal then But he brought me up through that kind of shooting culture He worked at a gun shop part-time As most cops are They have a variety of jobs Same as firefighter

Well their shift allows for it Oddly enough The job that he got at the gun shop I kind of put him in touch with that gun shop When I was eight years old I went in with a buddy and we got kicked out You know kids get out of here Another guy was coming in

was a cop. And I asked him, I said, do you know my dad? No. He said, well, I work here. Because where do you live? I live down the street? Tell your old man, stop by. We need some help here.

So I went and said, hey, dad, they're hiring at the gun shop down the street. Fortuitous? Yeah. So a good part of my childhood, you know, during summer break, I'm, when I was, well, we had, 10, 11, 12, was sitting on a stool in the gun shop, just eyes and ears open, mouth shut, taking it in. And then during school, you know, after school, I'd head there. And it's kind of funny.

My sister, I have a sister that's five and a half years older than me. He was always way smarter than me. He still is. And so I was always a C student going through school. You know, that was just the middle of the road. And my mom kind of accepted, well, he's just, he's that kid, you know. And one time my dad was off working at the PD and my mom and I were eating dinner by ourselves and the phone rings. And she says, it's so-and-so at the gun shop.

I take the phone. And these guys are having an argument about Smith & Wessel model numbers. I'm like, well, wait, is it a K-frame? What, what, was? Stainless steel or blue? It's a K-frame, right? It's a stainless steel. 38?

with taper it's a 67, man, it's a 67. No, no, no, no, no. You know, we went through all the different model numbers and the variations that I had up the phone and I sat down and she said, what was with that? I said, well, I memorized all the model numbers. She was, can't they look those up? She goes, it's easier to ask me. It's just, you know.

So that was the end of the sea. At that point, she expected, I had to kind of, that was a night mom blew up and I had that was expected the B's and the A's. So that was kind of, and I don't know where that was going, but I enjoyed shooting. And when I was 18, my dad packaged me up and sent me off to. At that time, there weren't many shooting schools. Now, they're everywhere. They're every 12 feet.

You know, the 20 years of the global war on terror is giving us, you know, everybody's got a shingle now. But the time, Ray Chapman, who was our first, when Ipsic started in 1975, he was the first world champion in South Africa. And he wanted to start a shooting academy. And he put it right in the middle of the United States was Columbia, Missouri, hour and a half from where I grew up. Fortuitous. Fortuitous. So he says, guess what? you know, you're going off to see Ray Chapman for a week.

And so I get sent off with two nicely tuned 1811s and a couple cases of ammunition and see you in a week kid. That's what I did when I was 18. And I enjoyed it so much and I did pretty well at the class. He sent me back to the advanced class the next year, which was kind of funny, something as a side note that you may find humorous. The advanced class was a lot smaller. There was me.

I was 19 at the time. A cop from Boulder, Colorado, a cop from Indianapolis. And six guys, they had beards and long hair. And they all looked like they spent a lot of time on the weights. I'm like, man, a lot of tattoos and stuff. I'm like, man, you have to have a criminal background check to get in. These guys look like thugs. We do the safety briefing in the classroom.

We had after the cars, we're getting all jocked up to the range. And these guys are all putting on, they had the SAS leg rigs. And they had Brett M-9s, which in 86, I mean, was adopted by 86, but these M-9s were, like, worn out. I'm watching these M-9s, no parkerization. I'm like, who you guys work for? I mean, we work for the Navy. Navy? What the hell do you do for the Navy?

They said, we just, we do stuff. We test equipment. We go to training. We see what works for the bigger Navy. And we just, you know, go around these different schools. Like, you know, we're working on these. One guy had a new weapon they're trying out called the SIGP-226. Perhaps you've heard of it.

It was a lot better than the M-9. Oh, a whole lot better. Well, in the 80s, the M-9 was a steaming pile of shit. And they would concur with that. And in 2023, it's exactly the same. Yeah. Fucking Barrettas. Yeah.

But I'm shooting the 1911. In fact, I was shooting a Wilson Acucop, which is a long story, a single-stack gun with a compensator on. And they were shooting like, oh, man, this is great. So I'm like, who are these guys? And I put two and two together. My wife and girlfriend showed up in the range of last day, and she was taking pictures of the range because it's a very well-known range. Bianchi cups held her once a year. And I'd seen it on TV.

I'm excited. And she's taking pictures of the range. And when the guy comes over and puts his arm around me, he says, what's the girl in camera. I said, oh, she's taking pictures. I said, are we in any of those photos? Maybe. He goes, I need the film. You know, something. I'm like, okay. I was there when the guys got the phone call that alternate grooming standards were out. They just had a change in command. And they were all, before we go back to Virginia Beach, gentlemen, everything's got to be shaved. And they were pissed. Yeah. Yeah, I went about three and a

half years without getting a haircut or shaving. And when you get the news that you have to shave when you get a haircut, it's kind of, it's kind of irritating. Yeah. But it was funny. You know, I learned a lot from those guys, just working with them for a week, just watching how they worked and what they did and more mindset, you know, kind of mental toughness, you know, the final. For some of them. Some of them inside are a little bitch. Yeah. I'm just saying, it's just people. Yeah.

Every community has a bell curve and some of them are awesome and inside of that bell curve is the weakest link also. Well, I learned a phrase from Mandy Stomp called, there's weeds in every garden. There is. I think I say every lawn. I don't garden. Oh, really? I miss, I misappropriate your quote. Well, so for gardening, you have to wear gloves, and gloves are gay.

So, swedes in every yard. There you go. I know that because Michael wears gloves. There you go. There you go. For more dexterity. So anyway, I go through the advanced class. It was fun, yeah, it was great.

And I started shooting competitive. I was shooting competitively, you know, for a while prior to that. So then, long about the time, 1980, 89, I'm 22, 23 years old. My dad was teaching firearms. He was his, his, he was one of the fire instructors for his PD. And he had a buddy who was a director of a local police academy and they needed firearms help. So my dad was teaching for the academy. And he goes, you know, my kid knows how to shoot something, a mystical thing called the auto pistol.

Because in 1988, it was pretty much wheel guns in the law enforcement. Right. God, that was a wild era. Yeah. I mean, really, the shift was April 11, 1986. that Miami shootout that the FBI had, that was kind of the wake-up call that, hey, we need to do something different.

They were out-gunned. They were out-gunned, yeah, they were out-gunned. And we could spend, you know, six hours talking about that gun fight, but they were out-gunned. And I'm not going to pick on those guys because they dealt the hand that they were... They were playing the cards they had.

They played the cards they had, and you can... Look, I've blamed the FBI and all kinds of stuff in my career, but those guys did what they could that day, you know. But anyway, so my dad's teaching, and I was brought up on the auto pistol. and they're talking about transitioning.

And nobody... Did they just mean by that a semi-automatic pistol? Yep. A mag-fed semi-automatic pistol versus a wheelgun. Okay. There's a wheel gun.

I mean, if you've come up cutting your teeth on a wheel gun, they're different. They're just different. They behave differently. I mean, they're not auto. I like the idea. It looks good in the Matrix.

Right. Shitty in an actual gun fight. Right, right. So I had this mystical skill that I could run in 1911. Seems odd, but that... So he goes to the academy director. He says, hey, can I bring the kid on as an assistant

to kind of help me? And the guy goes, well, what's he done? He was going to these two training classes. He says, read up a resume on what you've done. We'll go to the state. And at that time in the state of Missouri, you could become a specialist instructor at an academy. There were certain things you could get certified for that you didn't have to have law enforcement background farm, like PT, the guys that came in and ran, you know, a lot of them were cops, but sometimes you get somebody from a gem or something come in and PT them, you know, med stuff. You'd be some nurse or EMT. Shooting was one of the things

at that time that you did not have to be a cop because at that time they hadn't, well, ended in tactics and legal aspects. It's just basically marksmanship. The legal aspects is a different story. The tactics is another story. Where'd you going to teach you how to shoot? Well, let's be honest, even in the modern day, the allocation for training rounds for most organizations, you would be better off bringing in a high-level Ipsic shooter. Not that they should teach them how to shoot Ipsic. Right. Because that stuff will get you killed in the streets. Well, it's not applicable. Right. I mean, I'm not an Ipsic shooter at all. I've been around them enough. Their guns are so modified. Right. And it's like quickest out of the holster. We're not talking like a level three

retention or any of that stuff. But basic weapons handling how to align the sites trigger, like all of that stuff. Marksmanship skills. That's it. They should absolutely go to people who make their living clearing leather, even though it's probably Kidex at this point, and getting rounds on target. Yeah. That, to me, makes sense. You just have to know where you have to bracket that information. I was having this conversation with somebody very recently about bringing in subject matter experts from the civilian world because, you know, we had, especially when I was on the East Coast, we had the great fortune of nearly an unlimited budget. And if you were, they would carve out department heads because you need to have some level of responsibility.

So you could be the climbing department head. Anything requiring rope work to include heavy lift outside of ships, you need to be competent of that, lead climbing all of that stuff. And you're going to go outside the military community for those specialties. You have to. Because there are people, professional rescue organizations that will whip your ass with rope skills. whether it and people well I know how to repel it's not even that how do you guys who do this every day how do you pack your backpack right where do you put the rope in the bag what else do you have on the bag what do you have on your first-lane gear your second-lane gear how do you lay this stuff out how

do you and so every department there's diving jumping or I mean it's just you can keep going and your job as that department head is to find the world-class people if you're smart you do Well, you do. And then you go and you can do individual training and then you can expose it to the group. But you have to be careful to bracket the information that is delivered. And make sure it's applicable to what you're going to be doing. We would have the best shooters in the world come shoot with us. Not everything that they did was applicable to what you're doing.

It would work. It's like, hey, man, I can't carry my pistol where you have it. Right. So your drawstroke, which is the best in the world for your setup and what you do is amazing. Let's skip that. How are you holding your pistol and driving it out and getting your sites on target? You're not going to reload on the move. You're going to reload before you move, right?

All of those things. You just have to, you have to be careful with this subject matter expert. Take the information that you need to apply it for what you're doing. And you have to shit can the rest of it. It doesn't mean you don't respect that person. But if you have a very specialized job, seek that knowledge. But make sure you're parsing out exactly what it is that you can get from that. and I guess another way I'm saying this is

because it can happen is you get this like idol worship of an individual who's the best in the world and try to adopt all of their stuff. Some of it's crazy. Correct. Some of it's crazy. You have to be careful. Yeah.

So for some fluke of nature, I got certified as a specialist instructor in firearms, provided they said, if I went to, the FBI used to put on a firearms instructor school for state and locals, regional. Had to go to that, and then I had to go to the FBI instructor development school,

which is teaches you how to instruct the platform skills, how to move around the classroom and use overheads. That's right, I said overheads. Yep, no, I remember. Yeah, so there I was. You know, and I worked with my dad for a while under his wing, and after a while I branched out, and I'm teaching people how to shoot.

And I was doing it on a part-time basis, and it was tough to explain to people. Now, I was training recruits that are, these are basic training recruits, which is a totally different flavor from continued education, which is another thing, you know, the haggard midnight guys that you've got to give them their four hours or whatever training, you know, that's a different crew.

So I'm training guys that are 21, 22 years old, so it wasn't that big of a deal. And I could shoot so they believe me. And all I, you know, it worked fine. After a while, a position came up where I was able to do that full time. Did that for two years. And they had a change in management at the academy. They fired the director. And the buddy I was working for where the assistant director got hired at another academy across the state who we kind of helped set up.

And I'm like, man, I think my career dissipation light was flashing. I'm like, I could have hung on, but I wasn't going to, the fun factor was much lower than it was going to be. And knowing that, I was just, I was literally working all over the state. The first year I was married, I spent 180 nights in motel rooms, just following the front side all over the state. That's rough. So if I do it over again, I do it over again, because the knowledge I got compacted into teaching, problem shooters, diagnosing issues, oh, you can't do this, let's try that, right? making the right shoe fit on the right foot to make sure everything, you know, it was a compression of time that really helped me later on in my career that I don't know how else I would have,

I don't know how else I would have done that. Yeah. So at that, so backing up during that two-year period, my good buddy, who I've still, one of my best friends still in touch with all the time, he was a driving instructor. And they sent him to all these driving schools. It was a civilian, though. He wasn't a cop. And we're sitting around late one night with our feet up on the desk.

He goes, man, nobody believes me because. I've never been in a pursuit. I don't know if it really matters. I said, I've never been in a shooting. I think cops can go through an entire career without a shooting, you know. So somebody, I don't remember if you're here, I says, well, when we get commissioned, when we go to a police academy and get commissioned, we'll get reserved commissions, and then, like, that's going to matter.

Then they'll have to listen. Yeah, it turns out, no, they, nobody, nobody gave a shit. I get it. By the time, it seemed like a good plan. We couldn't go to our academy because we knew the, the test answers. So we went to the High Patrol Academy for the little section for the state and locals. They had the troopers that are 10 foot tall and bulletproof and coated in Teflon. And then there's the, you know, the idiots, state and locals are the local guys that they put us in this, you know.

So we got the B squad. Went there, got, had a friend who ran a friend of a friend who was the sheriff in the next county over. I'll give you guys commissions. Next thing you know, you're wearing a brown uniform couple times a month and blah, blah, blah, blah. Part of the deal is why I would start doing their firearms training and helping them. They had a guy, but I was going to help out. So when my career disposition light at the academy started flashing, I said, hmm, this could be an escape route.

I called the sheriff's department. I said, excuse me, you guys got any open road slots? They said, come on in. The water's fine. Took the job. To a highway patrol job. No, no, no, no, sheriff's department. Went to the highway patrol academy.

I was going to say you almost went from like the second most hated job to face the earth to the IRS, the first most standard job. No, no, no, no. Went to the highway patrol academy because there was an academy we could go to. It was just the local portion of their. I don't want. How long was that Academy? You're not going to believe this.

I might. You're not going to believe this. So that was about the time they had a change in law in the state of Missouri. Now the minimum, there's two different, three different classifications of training in the state of Missouri. First Class County is, and I've been out of it for over 20 years now, 25, good God. At the time, they changed the law where people outside first class county, so your rural areas, they went up to 300 hours and then it graded up to 420. When I got in it was standby.

Stand by. 120 hours of training. Three harsh weeks in Jefferson City sleeping in there. It was criminal. It was criminal. And I remember going through and saying, man, if I didn't have a dad who was a cop and literally grew up in a police station and hung out at, taught at a police academy and talked to cops all the time, I would be like listless.

I wouldn't have a clue. Three weeks to certify you. your gun, have a fun time. How do you, could you even have a baseline understanding of your job? You don't? And that's why they change the law. Rightfully so, they change the law. I feel like, unfortunately, they changed it due to catastrophic incidents that occurred.

Most of the time, those changes are written in blood, and it's not awesome. I don't, I don't know, I can't point to any specific incidents, but there was probably a conflagration of incidents that added up over the years to saying, hey, we got to do something about this. That's a complex job to try to figure out and get somebody into the entry level at three weeks. Three weeks. Yeah. And they changed that law in 93.

Okay. So that's when I went through the cabin was 93. So that got you your local law enforcement credentials? Well, in a third class county. I couldn't be in a first class county. In a first class county, which in the state of Missouri, it's complex and convoluted. But that would be St. Louis County, St. Charles County, and Jackson County, which is where Kansas City is. There might be other counties to you now.

but the time. So I'm in a rural county right at the edge of the St. Louis Metroplex, if that makes sense. So it was just the job my dad had, two counties east and the job I had were just really different. He came in road with me one night. He's like, oh my God, crazies. You know, I'm like, well, what do you mean? I thought this was the job. He's like, no, this is not normal, you know.

But I took that job. I haven't been married that long, just trying to put food on the table. And I'm like, there's no way in hell I'm going to do this. But it's a soft landing at the time they had. a residence requirement, 18 months, within 18 months, you had to be in the county.

I'm like, there's no way in hell I'm moving. I'm not doing it. So I got 18 months now to find another job. And then like a month after I took the job,

they dropped that requirement. And I'm doing the job, and I'm wearing the costume, and I'm driving around on a cool car. After I get out of field training, you know, you have to be,

you know, they don't just throw you to the wolves. It's a while before you're on your own. It should have been a whole lot longer than it was. I mean, it was, I got thrown out a lot faster. Oh, we know your dad. You're okay.

I'm like, well, huh? Yeah, that's how that works. Yeah, so I got put into situations like, you know, they used to always say one riot, one ranger. And I wasn't, so I was in a county sheriff's permit, 429 square miles and usually had three deputies on duty. Sounds about right, actually. Well, Montana, I know it's a lot. I know guys in Montana, I'd be like, man, that's great. That's great coverage.

I don't know if they'd say it's great, but they would definitely nod their head and know what that feels like. But you, you learn real quick to learn, you know, the most important weapons, your mouth and your brain. you know, you could talk your way at all kinds of stuff. You're not going to be picking fights with people because your backup's 20 to 40 minutes away if they're running hot. Yeah. So I did that and I liked it. And my, I don't think, like, backing up was never the plan.

But here I am, you know. And my dad never said anything, but I got the impression he wasn't overly thrilled. But then again, he's my hero. I'm doing the same thing he did. What could he say, you know? Yeah. But I think he wanted something better. And only that, I was making, like, no money.

like, you know, like $12 a year. It was ridiculous money. You know, it was just terrible. My wife was a secretary making more money at the time. We had deputies that were eligible for food stamps. That's wild. But I'm like, well, okay, but this is kind of fun. And at the same time, the county commission controlled the pay,

but the county sheriff controlled the budget for, like, training and equipment. And about that time, about the time I started through, we laugh about it now. It was actually a mistake. we found out from a local FBI contact, they were trying to put together a drug task force on a couple counties west of the Metroplex. And they needed a tactical unit to serve the high-risk warrants. And so that they came to our sheriff and said,

if we give you a federal grant, can you put something like that together? Sure. So all my experience was in shooting. That was it. So I'm like, I'm in for some reason. I get the magic envelope in my mailbox one day. I said, hey, you want in. This is a new club.

And I helped write the grant. And we wrote this grant and asked for the moon and the stars in this grant. It was just a joke. I mean, me and my buddy, Kevin, we just sat in his office and cranked this thing out, and there's no way this is going to get approved. We send it off and we're waiting as you do for federal grants. And we got a call from our FBI agent contact. We said, hey, by the way, I was wrong.

It turns out they're not approving grants for that at all anymore. You guys wasted your time. We're like, okay, copy that. No, waste of time. It's kind of a government thing, no problem. A couple weeks later, we get a call. call, Kevin called me into the office. He's like, come in, I've got to call somebody in D.C.

It's about our grant. Like, well, it's going to be a no-go. He's like, oh, let's put the guy in speakerphone. The guy says, yeah, he says, well, you didn't put in for any weapons. You couldn't put weapons or ammunition, but like any other equipment, tactical related you could. He says, you guys, put in for a bear cat. It's like, yep.

He goes, guys, you didn't read the fine print. No vehicles. No weapons, no ammunition, no vehicles. So we're going to clip the bear cat, and then the rest, you got it. Damn. So now you got a bunch of guys with. this much tactical training other than basic police academy stuff

but now it's time to learn and so we had a galls catalog in a charge car and we just bought a bunch of shit that most of it didn't work or you know was ill advised that look cool with Charlie Sheen sliding down the rope You need like MP5s and gilly suits

Well funny you should mention that We couldn't do MP5s Well of course weapons were not allowed Well no no but we didn't have enough money for that in the sheriff's department And so we're sitting around One day gaming this and this is 19

95, probably. And once again, late night after shift, sitting around your feet up on the desk, I said, you know, everybody's got some kind of cult air platform. Everybody owns one of those. And we just use those. Well, you can't. Overpenetriates. I'm like, yeah, that makes sense.

So we started doing some research. And somebody came up with some kind of compressed copper cartridge that, you know, breaks up an impact. But it turns out they fed in HKs, but not in, you know, they fed in the 93 or 33, but not an AR. I'm like, well, that's no good. Since somebody came up with a plastic bullet that had some sort of subpo over that, you know, it was good for like 10 feet. None of that sounds like a good idea.

No, no, it was terrible. And then one day, one of the guys comes and goes, hey, how about this? A Hornadye Varmint Express ammo. Like, what's this? For shooting groundhogs. And it had penetration in gelatin of seven inches, which turns out isn't enough. At the time, it sounded really cool and had way less penetration than the 40s we were carrying in our handguns. So it's kind of a funny sideline.

And my boss, I was in the office when he called Hornet. He goes, hey, we've tested this stuff out. It works. We're going to start running it. We're going to training. We're going to deploy these things. They're like, Hornity was like, you're doing what? She's like, yeah.

As like a service rifle? Yeah. You guys are out of your minds. No, no. The Hornity, they came out with the tap. Right after it, they came out with the tap round. I mean, keep in mind, this is when the M4 was just coming into its own being run inside. Yeah.

Nobody was running him inside. It was an outside cover weapon, but I'm like, if we can get them, so they're penetrating loss, let's see if we can do it. So we found this VMAX round that was working. And the picture had a gopher on the box. And we're like, that's probably going to be less than perfect if we go into court. At least change the outside wrapping. Right.

So we called Hornady. And they said, can you send us some just generic boxes? And they're like, you're doing what with our ammunition? And we told them, like, you got to be kidding me. After that, they invented the Hornity Tap round, tactical application police. And it turns out seven inches wasn't enough penetration. So they came up with the rounds of penetrated more. but it's actually a pretty decent round.

Now, since then, you know, the Spears 62 and 64 grain with the thinner jacket is doing that. But that was the genesis of, hey, you can run an M4 inside, and it'll work. Way better than MP5, way cheaper. It's easy to run an M4 inside when the walls of most of the houses you're going into about a foot thick of mud.

Well, where you were at. Didn't have to worry about the penetration issues as much. Our most common customer was a trailer, mobile homes. Yeah, I don't know a lot about the ballistic property. of a mobile hood. It's not good. I'm going to say it's probably about an eight and a half by 11 piece of paper. If that, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So we for a long time, we were like, so in this grant it paid for training. So we're off, we're off to the races and we're going all for, for a year. So we're going to different shooting schools and SWAT schools being ostracized for running in fours. And

it was kind of funny. It's, the world kind of caught up to us. I think, I think it was kind of funny. I, we went to, I wrote an article that got published. I thought, man, if other people can benefit from this, because it's cheaper. Everybody knows how to run the M4 platformer to some extent. You got a lot of military people out there. It's way more user-friendly than the AP5, blah, blah, blah. And I actually wrote an article on it. And we went to what we thought was going to be an FBI, HRT class. And it turns out those guys, for some reason, couldn't make it. So it's just some field agents from Kansas City showed up, and it was down in Branson, Missouri. And we showed up, and they were just, all the people in the class were making fun of our guns.

And all of a sudden, the FBI guys came out and said, they got the right idea. And one of the guys says, there's a fact, there's an article out, and he holds up the article. There's a picture of me, you know, a squad car with a colt. So once again, backing up to the beginning of this, none of this was planned. I just kind of fell into the whole thing. You know, I mean, I never said, hey, you know, my entire career has been summed up as kind of like a forest stump thing, where I fell. to one thing through no effort or hard work on my own. It's just kind of luck, you know, being at the right place at the right time. Well, how'd you go from the local law enforcement

to a federal agency? What was the impetus for that? So I had a four-year degree and I thought, okay, I'm wearing the uniform and driving around the car. That's kind of cool. I'm digging this, but I'm making no money. The retirement was nothing. I was getting a little, you know, haggard in the job. I was 34 when I left that job and I thought I was getting too old for it. I mean, you're fighting with throngs all the time. You're waking. I was like, this is, I'm not digging this. So I thought, I'll go federal. I have a 40 degree. That's my ticket.

But at the time, it was very hard to get a federal job. The bar was high. The screen was tight, and I didn't know if I could. So at the time, no way he was hiring. So I actually put in for the Marshal Service. And while I was trying to go with the Marshal Service, I was doing regular pistol matches with two buddies from ATF. And I'd work with them over time.

And they said, hey, ATF's getting right to hire. And they were at Treasury at the time. This is prior 9-11. They used to be, ATF and Secret Service used to be, under the Treasury in Murala. What are they under now? Secret Service is Homeland Security and ATF is justice. Gotcha. So, yeah, after 9-11, they kind of split up and moved around. So like, hey, they're hiring. You got a degree you need to put in. I did. I took at the time the Treasury enforcement agent exam, written test, and I got a good score. And at that time, while I was in the

ATF process, I got an interest card from IRS. I said, hey, did you know the IRS at 1811? I'm staying there, you know, reading this in the mailbox. I said, no, I didn't know that. They had me found an interest card, and I didn't have the accounting at the time. The requirements are 15 hours of accounting. I only had nine. Long story short, I went back, going through the process a couple different times, went back, got the accounting, and I just compressed like two years of horror and paperwork

and whatnot, the hiring process. But I had no idea that even existed. They found me based on the ATF test score I took. And it was kind of funny because ATF, came around and kind of gave me an offer, but I already had a Fletzi date, and I'm like, yeah, I'm going to, I'm going to dance with the one who brought me. Yeah. So the IRS just acted faster than ATF? Believe it or not, yeah.

Hard to believe. It's hard to believe any government agency acts quickly, but. Yeah, they usually don't. But that's how I found it. And I had the bare minimum to get in, which was 15 hours of accounting and nine hours of banking and finance. That's what our requirement is. And off to the races, off to Fletzy. Because of the track you took going to Fletsey, you knew you were going to go the 1811 route, correct?

Right. For the civil side of the IRS, is there any Fletsey requirement for that? Or are they bringing those people in for largely their educational background with the expectation that they won't do anything in the field like you guys were doing? Yes. So there is training, in-house training, obviously. But it's not a Fletsey. Right, because Fletsey's law enforcement. So it's a different bird, you know.

Their training is more in-house. It's more what to look for in an audit, how to the policies, procedures, and there's a lot of it. of policies and procedures, you know. As there should be. As there should be. So, no, and I don't know what their training is, but they do get a bit of, obviously a bit of training. It's a separate track. Separate track.

Okay. Separate track. Now that said, some of those people do slide across the hall to become 1811s, but if they do that, they got to go to Fletsey and start the process. So there I was at Fletsey, March of 2001, looking around going, what the hell have I done? You know, much like today. But 22 and a half years later, man, I had. I had

I wanted to get out before something silly happened that soured me on something because I saw so many old guys I had a blessed career I got everything I wanted got to do everything I wanted to do well walk me through it after Fletsey you show up at the

at the old IRS walk me through you well so Fletsey is where every federal agency trains except for FBI and DEA they go to Quantico so they have a separate academy everybody else

You go through the gates of Fletzie. I'm making this up. It used to be 74, 75 different agencies trained down there on a federal level, and then they'll also do state and local training. So if you've ever been there, it's like a city. It's huge. So for the first 10 weeks for me, and I think it's gone to 11, don't quote me on that. They put you in what they call CITP, which is the criminal investigator training program, which is generic law enforcement at the federal level. You're going to learn criminal code, like Fourth Amendment, how to write a search warrant, how to do a search warrant,

firearms DT driving, all the cop stuff they can compress into 10 or 11 weeks and then once you graduate from CITP you literally the next day you graduate like on a Tuesday on Wednesday you change shirts from the blue Fletsey Smurf shirt to the maroon shirt with the CI badge on it and you're off to the races

at Sate which is special agent investigative techniques which is where you're going to learn your specialty training and that's almost every federal agency does that they send you to the generic cookie cutter which also separates the wheat from the chaff if you can't do whatever whatever, they're going to get you out at that level.

But then every other agency is going to slide off to their advanced training. Like ATF has a big, you know, to do after that. Ours is a little bit longer. Ours is you're there for 16 weeks in the IRS portion. So you're there for 26 weeks total. And some of the best training I've got and some of the worst training I've got, depending on who's giving it, you know. Yeah, that's the way it goes.

Yeah, yeah. I mean, you know, I mean, it's just a lot of things have changed over the years and a lot of this stuff's gotten better and some of it's gotten worse. So 26 weeks of that, boom, September 21st, I'm graduated out in the field, literally graduated on a Friday. I think it was a Friday and Monday I'm in the office working. Then you get an on-the-job instructor that looks over you, kind of rides hurt on you from usually a year to a three. I got a little bit more leeway on that than I probably should have because I was a little older. I was 35 when I graduated and had prior law enforcement.

So they weren't as worried about me doing stupid stuff as. some guys. He had a bit more life experience at that point. Yeah, yeah. And I had an on-job instructor. We couldn't have been any different. God bless him. I mean, he's kind of a legend in the cases he worked,

but we had just a totally different thought process. And there's times where I'd go home the first six months and scream into the pillow and go, oh, my God, what did I do? What did I do? But he's still one of the smartest individuals ever met, but we always had a different viewpoint. But it was different to see the overlapping of the old versus new. And now when I got older, I saw that with the younger guys.

He goes, well, research this guy. He talked real deadpan. And everybody does their impersonation. It was very slow and deadpan. See what you can find out. But this gentleman, somebody came in and said he's blah, blah, blah. I went, okay. So I spend the day and I do this and I do that.

And I sit down with him. He's like, what did you find? I said, I found this. I found that. I'm like a kid, you know, telling him all. He goes, wow, how'd you find this? This database. I didn't know what existed.

Yeah, this, you know, Google, you know. It was really great. He was, well, did you realize the corporation is also related to such and such? And I said, how'd you find that? He goes, yellow pages. Right? So I'm like, okay, you got me. You know, so I mean, it was old versus new.

And then so the kids they're hiring now, I'd sit down and brief them on a case. And they're just running circles around you because it's just. They know how to access information in ways that are beyond both you and I. Right. And God bless them. You know, they think different, they act different. That's okay. That's fine, you know.

The world will probably go on, maybe, at least for a little bit. Yeah, yeah. It's easy to, you know, it's easy to resist that evolution, or you can accept the fact that it's going to happen and that we all have a shelf life. Yep. And at some point, you have to hand the reins over. Yeah. And we have mandatory retirement age 57 for a reason. It's like, okay, you've had your fun.

We should have that for politicians. Probably. Yeah. So anyway, I do a couple decent tax cases and boom, get shoved into the OSEDF program, which is organized. I was driving. Normally you had to be like, in St. Louis, they wanted you to be an agent for like 10 years before you started dealing with these people, you know. But we were in a situation where the IRS agent we had a sign of the DEA kind of disengratiated himself. He was kind of PNGed and they needed to put somebody over there. And the ASAC called me in the office. He said, you're going to start there Monday. You're going to make friends with these people. You will hang out with them. You're going to live with them. You're going to breathe their air and you need to heal this relationship. And since you quote, speak cop, you're going to heal this relationship. and I fell in with a group of guys. I opened up the first case I saw that I would have never opened, knowing what I know now.

They told me, the first case through just open it up and play along with these guys so you can get to know them. And it was the best case ever worked. Really? Yeah, best dope case I ever worked. From not so much size or scale, but the way it worked with the team you're talking about, every player, I mean, this guy could breathe underwater,

and this guy spoke to fish, and this guy could fly. And there's just a group of guys in the room that everybody has special skill, everybody talk to each other, listen to each other, because often they try to work those cases in silos. It's not going to work. No, and a lot of times that's one of the things I've tried to fight with agents of my agency is an IRS agent.

You don't drive over the DEA and you get the bank records and drive back over to your house. No, no, no, you need to be sitting with that crew because you're going to find stuff in that case that you have no idea what it is, but it advances their case. Likewise, they're finding stuff all the time. They don't know what it is because that's not what they're not looking for it. But it's going to advance your case. So when you're shaking hands and everybody's trading information,

and that's the hardest thing in a task force has to get everybody to trade. But once you have a trust and you know it's the most synergistic, beautiful thing you can see when you get a group of guys and gals, I don't want to be sexist, that are all as a finally tuned machine, it's great. You know, and even like in any DEA working group, if it's a good group, people have specialties within the group. Even within the DEA, just this guy writes, this guy's good at search warrants. This guy handles informants. This guy's good at surveillance. And when a task comes in, it jumps off and everybody goes to work on their task.

And you find out the load of dope is coming in. This is what we're going to do. And it's just, you turn on it on. So it gives you a lot of flexibility as far as what you can get done. And the resources, you can throw out a problem very quickly. So I did that for a few years. And then that got a little, there were some changes in what now. You were only supposed to do that for a few years.

And I jumped back out, did some more tax cases. And then rotated back through. to work OSEDF the final part of my career. Concurrent to that, concurrent to that, they're firearms instructors, what they call use of force instructors in the IRS are all in-house.

And the guys that were doing it, I showed up and I was like, oh, God. Well, the government does a horrible job of hiring, planning their hiring, if you can believe this or not. So when I showed up, when I got hired, it was, we jokingly called the AIS 2000 initiative. If we jammed it as a joke, the asses in C's 2000, I don't know if I would ever got hired at another time because I slipped to the... Sometimes there's a vacancy after Phil.

They were starting a class every month for a while, which I want to wrap back to that and where we're at now. But we showed up, a bunch of new guys show up at the same time, and everybody there was all the Vietnam Air guys. So there was a huge block of time where they hired nobody, and those guys were gone pretty quick. So we only had a couple years to kind of suck the knowledge we could out of these guys before they moved on down the road. There was just a huge block of people. That's really dangerous to have it that way for that knowledge transfer to occur. Yes. Yes. Yes. And they've since smoothed it out, but it's usually not the IRS's choice. It's when you get the funding and when you get the job announcement.

You know, so. So we had firearms instructors there, and I showed up at a couple of range days. I'm like, hmm, interesting. I don't know if I would have done it that way. But I'm a new guy keeping my mouth shut. And but they knew how to a couple guys knew how to fireman's background. They knew I'd been doing that. And they told me one day I'm going to fire instructor school. I'm like, okay. I think I only been on two years and they sent me to what they call FITP.

Send you off to fireman instructor school. After that, they sent me to building entry school and then defensive tactics instructor training. And after that, due to retirements, they made me what they called the use of force coordinator for our field office, which at the time covered four states, Missouri, Nebraska, Iowa, and Kansas. For the IRS. For the IRS. Just teaching our people in-house. How often are IRS agents using force? Very little. Very little if you're doing it right, right? So, yeah, as far as actual use of force incidents, it's minuscule.

Yeah. But obviously they're preparing for the worst. I mean, the biggest question you have to answer, and one of the reasons I wanted to be here, one of the main reasons, I've worked for the most misunderstood and maligned federal agency out there. Hated? Yeah, right. And why do you guys have guns? Well, we're investigating people for criminal violations that could put them in prison. And it may not be happy.

Most people, though, not to interrupt you, sorry. Most people, though, don't realize that there are two different tracks. Yes. They see the IRS as the IRS. Right. To include myself. Yes. Because I've seen the news as well where they're trying to hire 85,000 IRS agents

and they're talking about gun-carrying agents. And people are literally saying, what the actual fuck. Okay. So it's like, knock, knock. Here's your tax return. and motherfucker, give me your time. It's like, write me a check. Okay.

So that's another reason I want to be here. So here's what happens. The Joe Biden inflation reduction act, which, you know, is probably inaptly named, it had X amount of billion dollars set aside to the IRS. So somebody asked, somebody. I don't want you guys to get any of that. Fuck you guys. I'm out.

I don't care. So what happens is they, somebody goes to somebody at the IRS and says, what could you do if we give you X amount of money? And they're like, oh, we could do this, we could do that. Could you hire more people? Yeah. How many people could you hire? We could hire 87,000 employees. And wait for it.

This is where everything becomes lies by omission in the media and politicians. 87,000 employees, not even agents, not even revenue agents are the ones who do the audits. Revenue officers are the ones that go and collect. And then special agents are the ones that are criminal investigations. A lot of them are going to be like clerical people and people filing stuff. It's 100% not the narrative. 87,000 people over, wait for it, 10 years. Yep, that's not how that's being reported at all.

It's 10 years. Yeah. That doesn't even keep up with the tradition. Interesting. So it comes out that they're hiring 87,000 gun carriers. I've told you the process of going to Fletsey. I mean, if we can get, it's tough to get classes at Fletsey. They always come in groups of 24.

That's the magic number. And we're at Fletzies back in call as far as that CITP program. That's the first funnel. If we're doing a monster hiring, which we have done the last year, maybe get, when I went through, it was like 13 classes in a year, times 24. It's nowhere near 87,000. Now that the attrition rate is huge. And that's just the Fletzie portion, because they could be hiring for the other track.

Yes. Yeah. So for them to say you're going to hire 87,000 criminal vestiges, it's just, it's not possible. Yeah, you're talking about 12 classes. You're 24 people. That's less than 300 people. And that's on a big. That's a landmark year.

Yeah. So fast forwarding to the later part of my career, one of the things I was involved for about a year was involved in recruiting. And I don't mean going out and flying the flag, but at the HQ level, making the flyers and making sure the talking points were on point and smoothing out the process and trying to speed up the process. And I actually found out at that time I garnered a lot more respect for senior management and criminal investigation because our chief at the time, if he said it was going to get done,

He was like, if he snapped his fingers, it was getting done. You're talking about the speed of light that you wouldn't think you could happen. They're like, make it so. Once it left our shop and went to the big IRS or the human capital office, sometimes things got, wait a minute, you slow down. You know, you're going too fast. But I was involved in the recruiting. And I always, my entire career, I said, they're not, they're doing a terrible job of recruiting. They are doing a terrible job of recruiting.

And then I realize, who is they? It's all of us. We don't, it's not like you have a military recruiter that sits in a mall. We don't have those people. The recruiter is you as a bad carrying agent. You talking to kids or colleges or cops, hey man, you've been working white color fraud here at the PD? Are you enjoying it? Have you thought about jumping?

You know, everybody should be there. Everybody should be recruiting all the time. So it was almost like a tertiary duty. Yeah. I mean, they would have a field office recruiter, but they're still working cases. Yeah. Wow. Man, that's a rough strategy for long-term addition of new hires.

Now, you say that. But when I got the job, if I tripped and fell, there'd be 10 people at trampled over me to get the job. The recruiting wasn't an issue. They just came to us. All you to do is open up a job announcement and wait for it. So we get approval to hire like 300 over a two-year period or whatnot. I'm like, well, this is going to be easy. This is going to be easy.

No, it's not easy. First of all, the people that hit apply now online, our acceptance rate is between 2 and 3%. They get actual final job offers. What is disqualifying most people? The first one, and once again, the human capital office does this, so it's kind of out of our hands, and we don't know. It's very secretive, but they just said they didn't meet the qualifications. So one of the big ones is age. You have to, you have to be in 1811. You have to get your 1811 assignment prior to your 37th birthday. Because we have a mandatory age of 57, and you have to have 20 years to retire. So that's math. Now, since there's a lawsuit for people with military, that prior military could come in at a later age and can actually go past. The 57, nobody, it'd be interested

to see how that happens. So we... Yeah, they could probably can figure out dual retirements and stuff like that. Yeah, and there's wheels

turning behind the scenes I don't know about. That's a whole different thing, but basically, prior to your 37th birthday. Next cut, you have to have 15 hours of accounting,

nine hours of banking, finance, or the like, or been involved in criminal enforcement of white collar, fraud, blah, blah, so you could be a detective at a local PD

work in these cases and supplant that. We hired a Secret Service agent. She had no knowledge of accounting, no knowledge of tax, and she was great. We'll train you. The tax code you didn't know to do the job that we did, because once I said, we're doing big things, big mistakes, not little minutia. You get that in training, and you get that when you got in the field. So it's much easier to take a cop and teach them accounting skills than to take an accountant. And teach them cop skills.

Yeah. Yeah. So that's the, so 15 hours of accounting. And then, then after that, they do a written assessment. A lot of people apparently fall out during the written assessment. Then there's a, then there's some sort of other assessment where they go to and take a computer race test, which is once again, like a big secret. They won't share any of that with us. They're afraid we're going to pump the system and get our friends and, you know, kids and, you know, so it's all closely held, human capital office. And then after that, there's the interview process. And then the fund starts, because then you have the,

the audit, the drug screen, the medical, which kicks a lot of people out, the medical. I'm shocked at some of the things that people get kicked out for. And they don't tell us because of HIPAA, but the people come back, oh my God, they kick me out for whatever. You're kidding me. That's disqualifying. So we're on the background check, background check. What clearance is required to be an IRS 1811? It depends on what you're doing.

The basic, what is it? most of them have the public trust, I guess it's the first level. I don't know. I think ours were, it was like confidential secret, TS and the TS-S-S-CI type stuff. Yeah, so the only ones that get top secrets are ones that are, if you're like supervising a group, you're working in OSed-Def, you're working counterterrorism. They're so expensive. You need to be, it's odd.

You need to be able to obtain a top secret and it should be pretty easy for you to get it if you've gone through all those, that's their theory, but the cost of the top secret clearance is pretty high. Yeah. So not everybody has them after 9-11, a bunch of people got them. And it turns out, I have a top-secure clearance, and I've seen this much top-secret information. Me too. Yeah, I mean, that's just the...

The programs I have been read in on. I heard you said you could find them in Google. I can. Yeah. I mean, I wouldn't give people the search terms. Maybe I have. Maybe I haven't looked on Google peripherally for a few terms. It's all right there.

I love it. It's more that it's just not publicly talked about or no, but the information is out there. Yeah. And I wish it was Jason Bourne shit that I was read into. It is not. God damn it's not. I used to love going to JTCF meetings at the Bureau. And before you could go, you had to have your clearance passed over.

So there are people have to talk to your people at D.C. And yes, he's cleared for the meeting. And literally you sit down like, okay, guys, all we're talking about today is open source. Literally Google. And you're like, why did I go through the? But anyway, so those are the thresholds we have. And so those are the people that get through it, 2 to 3 percent, they get a job offer.

And then some people, they find out it's a city they don't want to go to, rightfully so. Or some of them just say, yeah, I don't, they back out. Yeah, they back out.

I had a guy that I thought was going to be a superstar. I was his pre-employment mentor. I actually, he called me one night, the night before he was supposed to take the job, and he talked to me,

I basically said, dude, you need to drop out. This is not for you. He was asking all the wrong questions. What was he asking? Do you really have to carry the gun? Do you have to carry the gun all the time? You know,

And the answer is when you're working, yes, you have to carry the gun. If you're off duty, no, you don't have to, but, you know, your call. Do you have to drive the government car? Why would you want to drive your personal car? You know, I mean... Those are interesting questions. Yes, yes. And here's another caveat that some people don't figure out.

So when you look at the GS pay scale, we are paid 25% above that. It's called either AUO, administratively unavoidable overtime, or leap pay, law enforcement, ability pay. So you get a 25% kicker on top of the GS scale. Because of that, you have to work 25% more hours. So you have to average 50 hours a week, which let me tell you, brother, if you're doing the job, it's not hard. But they track it. I mean, every month, they're looking at it. My average for my entire career was like 53 hours. Do you actually clock in? No, you fell out a digital diary on what you do? Because you're tracking what time you're applying to whatever case or investigation. So, yeah. So he's like, do you really have to work the 50 hours? Yeah, but it's not hard. How was this guy? Probably like 35. And he'd been an investigator for the state. You know, so he had some knowledge. We'd work with him.

So we, you know. But I just said, you know, he was a good guy. Great guy. You know, nothing bad to say about him. It's just this isn't the job for you, brother. This just isn't the job for you. You know, how often you have to work weekends? Hardly ever when you do.

Boss comes out of the office at 5 o'clock in Friday. This is bad news guys. You know, you know, Osama bin Laden is coming in in a Ford Pinto coach. stuff with cash and we've got to try to pinch them. You've got to go. I mean, that happens like almost never, but when it does, you've got to roll. There's no, there's no choice. And if you're working those stuff cases, which that's your choice, you're going to get called out in the middle of the night. You're going to work weekends. You're going to work evenings. You're going to work

on the schedule. It's the same thing as us overseas. You're going to work on the schedule of the person that you're targeting, not the one that you would prefer. If you're working a white collar fraud case, you get to pick. You know, I mean, but when you find out the load of dope's coming in and somebody picks it up that it's coming at two in the morning and you got to intercept it. And your phone rings, you got to go. I mean, I guess you could sleep in, but your reputation's going to be compromised. So he was asking these questions. So some people, I've had people ask me, is there any way I get the special agent job and just not leave the office? Because I really don't want to talk to anybody and I really don't want to do anything dangerous. And I said, well, we have a job for

you. God bless. We do have, we do, if you don't want to carry a gun and do that, we have, we have support roles. Go over to the other side of the IRS if that's what they're. Or you can work for us as an intel analyst. I mean, we have we have shovels to fit hands if you don't want to be a gun-totter. I get that, you know. But and quite frankly, the IRS is an IRS special agent. It's the closest thing you can have to create your own adventure book. There is. Once you get released from training, you're going to find a specialty that you like and that's probably what you're going to do. You know, this guy does health care fraud. This guy does mortgage fraud. Everybody's got their specialties. And some of them, some of them are chairborne rangers. I mean, they're,

they're going to be in the office pounding at the keyboard. Other guys are out in the middle of the night. It's literally a wide range, though. Yes. You have to have both. Yes. Yes, absolutely. So, you know, one thing is the kind of exciting. You know, if you go into the FBI, you know, the FBI puts you in a cubby hole and you're going to be working, you know, this crime for most of your career. With us, you get tired of your health care fraud. You can go over to your bunny. Tell me about this mortgage fraud. I think I'd like to get in on that. And it's up to you. If you can find a good case and work it, you're going to get to work it. I feel like there's not a lack of cases for you guys.

I also feel like you have a very uphill battle when it comes to recruiting. Yes. Just based off what's on the side of the building. Well, law enforcement in general. I'm talking to my buddies at DEA. They can't get people. Yeah. You know, and one of the questions you get was, oddly enough, like colleges and whatnot,

and I didn't hear this, but people reporting back to me, guys will come to the account and say, hey, a weed is legal in our state, so we can smoke weeds. It's like, no, it's still illegal at the federal level. But I can smoke weed, right? No, so just on the weekends? No, not at all. Do you guys drug test? Yeah.

Oh, then I'm out. If I can't smoke weed, I don't want to do the job. That's actually become a barrier to entry. Weed. I mean, I don't care how adults choose to live your life. All choices, if you're a consenting adult, make the choices that you want. You have to just understand that all choices have consequences. Some are good, some are bad.

And they're going to shoehorn you away from things you may want. to do. Right. But if you want to get into federal law enforcement, I thought, man, you kind of get to work whatever crime you want because that's the joy of financial crimes. There's only two reasons to commit a crime. Passion or profit. Right? And most of it's profit. Yeah. And passion and not allowed of that terrorism, maybe. It's passion. Even if it's passion, they still, if you want to commit an active terrorism, you still have to financially fund said active passion, if that's how you want to define it. So any

cool crime you can think of, there's money involved. And that money is either getting laundered or it's not being taxed. So you literally get to write your own adventure. Now, is it easy to find the cases? Sometimes not because

the people would like to think that you know, we're jackbooted thugs. We take a very conservative it's a tough bar to climb to even get the case open. But once it's open, we work the case to the best of our ability. I guess that was one of the most frustrating things when I started.

I'm like, well, this guy appears to be doing this. Can we go talk to him? No, you can't talk to him unless you have an open investigation. I can't even talk to him. No, you can't talk to him. Can't talk to anybody. We can talk to local law enforcement, but you can't talk to him. Why not?

You know, so I mean, there are rules. Yeah. And I think it's funny that people in general seem to think that there's this hive mind think the government is going to be doing this. The government's going to be doing that when the government is made up as individuals, you know and the guys I work with were all very cognizant on the responsibility they had it's a heavy responsibility putting a federal case on somebody is a life-changing event yeah you know we're going to think long and hard before we come and talk to you and show you our credits and you're probably

probably in a bad way before that happens if that makes sense yeah so the fact that the IRS is going to do this or the IRS is going to do that um it's the same way with your group you know if you were in damn neck your non-existent pager went off and they said, hey. I did have the pager there. There you go. I didn't have one at 9-11. So, words come out that Trump thinks he didn't lose the election

and he wants Deb Gru to come cover the White House because he's not giving it up. What would your guys in your group say? I mean, there'd be a couple guys that went, yeah. But most of the guys would be like, we're not doing that. Yeah, but that's an intelligence test. And I'd be like, ooh, we needed to keep track of who those people were. But I'm serious.

But think about it. Well, it doesn't matter. Well, it doesn't matter what Trump says because it's still going to have to come down through the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Right. There's going to have to be a tasking. But let's say that happened. It wouldn't happen because it's not a, it's a, it's a, the group of individuals. If it was a lawful order.

But it wouldn't be lawful in that case. That's what I'm saying. If it was a lawful order and you are, if you are asked to do something that you personally disagree with and it's still a lawful order, that's where it can become a conundrum. Right. If it's an unlawful order, right. You are under no obligation to follow it to begin with. But for people to think, well, the military would surround the White House. No, they wouldn't because it's a bunch of dudes.

said, we're not doing that. They'll be going to a couple odd jobs. They'll say, yeah, we'll do that. So think of that. Same me with ATF or FBI or any other alphabet suit. They're made up of people, you know. You'll get some weeds in every lawn. Yep.

But for the most part, they're people. So, yeah, I'm not playing along. I think the struggle for most people is that you're the first IRS agent that I'm aware of that I've met. And for most people, it is the government in general. Yeah. is a very gray, faceless, nebulous organization. And I think a lot of people, and it would be tough to argue against this, have now, one, largely think of it in terms of incompetence.

Two, they see people who want to go into the government or who have been in the government for a really long time serving themselves as opposed to the people that voted them into office. And that it's probably way too big. and they probably feel it's too big based off of what they have to pay into it. I mean, I've never met an IRS person. So it's easy to say, well, the government is fucked because you don't see the people who view what your job was and had that level of understanding of the gravitas of what it means to put a fed. I mean if you were found not guilty in a federal case. Which is rare. Probably going to be in the newspaper.

Yeah. You probably have to explain that at your next cocktail party. Right. way, they don't see that. Right. They just see a government that, I mean, fuck, right now, for the last two plus weeks, what's going on in Israel, we can't even fucking figure out who's going to be the Speaker of the House. Yes. It's like, we can't even handle our own shit, let alone try to figure out what our role should be, if any, in what's going on in that particular conflict in that portion of the world right now. I can't, what are you going to say to

No, it's super capable and functional. Yeah. Meanwhile, we look like an idiot stepping all over their own dick. I mean. Yeah. Yeah, and that's what I saw when I got to the higher levels is we're small enough. We're still pretty nimble in getting things done for the most part. If we need to get something done pretty quickly, we can usually put rubber on the road and get it done.

But you get above that? It's like, oh, my God. And we're still answering to the taxpayers in Congress. and every, every, the joke I've made through my entire career, but it's, it's every decision I've made, I think, can I go before Congress and defend this? Can I explain to Congress as a whole sitting there in front of the microphone with a little paper thing with my name on it with a pitcher of water?

Could I explain to Congress? Well, this is why I made the decision I made. And if I can do that, I feel comfortable with that decision. If I can't, in clear conscience, you know, when the demons come out at 3 a.m., if I can't answer, I need to go a different way. Yeah. And I think that's most people in general.

Now, like you said, some people will call her outside the lines. We're such a conservative agency that it's really to get jammed up. So the stuff that, you know, the care that we put into making sure everything is just right, it's a burden and it's not something we deal with lightly. What do you wish people knew about the IRS that you don't think the average person knows? I guess a lot of what I'm saying here today is, and my experience is rather myopic, it's in the criminal investigative realm. It's like, hey, guys, we're out there doing dangerous cases with dangerous people who we may be removing their freedom. That's not something I've ever taken a grade of my joy in.

The sentence handed down is handed out by a judge, a third branch of government. I have nothing to do over, but that's what we're doing. That's the deterrent effect of what we do is people going to prison, like it or not. So when it comes to, are you really real law enforcement agencies? Yeah, we are. The very last search warrant I went on as a supervisory special agent was maybe two and a half years ago. And it was with Bureau and DEA. And I got there early in the morning.

We got all jocced up. I pulled my rifle out of the car and they went, whoa, you guys got guns? You know? Yeah. And which is kind of interesting because I was on the program that got us carbines, got enforced. So I was actually headed up that task force to get that. So that was an uphill battle. The optics of that are tough, you know.

So your entire career, you feel kind of like the Coast Guard guy going, no, no, we got helicopters. No, no, we got ships. No, no, no. You know, I mean, there's probably a guy, a rescue swimmer with the Coast Guard that can go to toe to toe with a seal, right? They're out there, probably. That's just the way it is. Yeah.

That's just human nature. So the guys we got at the top of the food chain are as good as anybody. I put them up against anybody as far as investigators. years ago. You know, the wheat and the chaff, everybody's got that too. But we're out there trying to do a trying to do a thankless job, trying to, you know, but it's not something we deal with lightly. It's not something, it's a grave responsibility that we don't take lightly. Unless I never did, nor did the guys I work with. I would imagine that's the common sentiment. I think so. Yeah, because, like I said, I said before, when you submit a tax case, seven layers of approval. It's not going to make it,

You're not going to get through your first case. Your supervisor special agents are you going to go, what are you trying to do here? No, no, close that, close that. Not interested. You know, so it's everybody thinks that we're out for dollar amounts or prosecutions. There's something that I'm going to tell you, you're not going to believe it. You can look it up. They had the Revenue Reform Act of 1998 where the IRS got pulled before Congress and got slapped around pretty good.

and a lot of it was quite frankly deserved. What were they doing leading up to that that caused that? It was the civil side. I guess they were just, it was before I started, but they said at the time they're like, eh, the criminal side came out okay. The criminal side came out okay. But they thought there were some abuses real and perceived.

And we've all heard of different stories. Oh my God, this happened to be on an audit, blah, blah, blah, blah. I keep in mind you're only getting half the story. And when you hear the other half, you're like, uh, maybe. Truth is usually between story A and story C is usually, Usually closer to B. And I learned that we're in a brown uniform. But anyway, in the Revenue Reform Act, they actually, in 1998, they passed something,

which is before I started, that you're not allowed to, by law, grade an IRS employee by rotors, ROTERS, which is records of tax enforcement. Yeah, records of tax enforcement. I'm trying to remember the acronym. Michael. Yeah, Google Rotors. results tax enforcement results so it was an attempt to not grade them on arrests the metrics indictments yeah no metrics so you can't i can't believe i couldn't remember the second ron rotors we just

call it rotors it's an acronym that's been buried in our head but yeah records of tax enforcement results so i can't come and say well and you only you only put three guys in jail last year we need we need more from you man yeah it's the same thing as telling the highway patrol you have to write 50 tickets on it right last friday of every night so we have no which i think I think they do. I think they might. I think they might. But so then, you know, as IRS management, you're like, well, how do we judge people's

productivity? And it's tough. So that's when you get the 80-20 rule and you get chairborn rangers. Some guys who aren't doing their effective as they could be. Yeah. Welcome to dealing with human beings. Yeah. Yeah.

I don't know if I want that IRS agent graded on how much tax revenue they bring in. Right. And I can co with that. But I don't want that desire to, what I don't want, and what nobody I think wants is that maybe they're close to that. And it's like, I got to do something a little bit in the gray to get over my metric for this week. Right. Which leads to they're always operating in the gray, which leads to being pulled up in front of Congress. Yeah.

So I don't disagree with the rotors in big picture. You know, you shouldn't say, well, gosh, my seizures are down this month. I need to do some. Yeah. You know, I get that. I got to put more people in horrible. That's not the way you want to be thinking. Not only that, every case is different.

And the caseload of agents is different. I told you they all have different specialties. You may have three or four different criminal investigations going at one time that you're working as an agent. This guy has been, has won and he's been working for five years. But then you find out the case. You're like, oh, that case. Yeah. Oh, that makes sense.

You know. So that's where management comes in and says, okay, well, what are you doing with your time? You know, and they can kind of track each case. What have you done? And they ask questions, what are you planning on doing? Where are we going with this? In some cases, they have no end. They're the never-ending journey. And if you can't prove it, you get out.

out of it, cut your losses. But the rotors are something that people think we're judged on that. We're not. We're not. I couldn't even tell you how many cases I had. I couldn't tell you what I couldn't. I didn't keep track. I think that's a good thing, to a degree. No, it is. It is. Any system is going to be, you can game it over time, but I certainly would rather have people doing the best they can, not with a guillotine over their head, demanding a result that they might have to take an action that would be unjustifiable to achieve. So every decision you make, not only does it, it gets through the seven layers of view, but if it does go to trial, you're going to have to take the witness stand and explain this to 12 jurors. So it better be a pretty good story. It better

hold up. You better be able to document it with the math. You have the documents. You have the proof. And that's why the cases we take to trial are, the percentage is low and our prosecution range very high. Well, you guys have some pretty black and white data that you're looking at, that you're working with. Right. You know, if you go into a murder trial and somebody's DNA is all over the murder weapon in their footprints and fingerprints. No, by the way, you were caught on CCTV. Yeah. I'd probably plead that out too. Yeah. But one of the reasons I emailed you is I spent 22 and a half years, basically, I mean,

my management team went, basically lying about your job. You know, what do you do for a living? You never tell them the truth. You don't want to explain that. I mean, you do sometimes, but whenever you do, look, if you're a cop at a party and I was a cop at a party and they find out you're a cop, it kind of puts a, oh my God, well, I haven't drank too much. And I'm like, stop, we're just having fun here. If they find it you're an IRS agent at the party, oh my God, you know. I'd let the air out of your tires. Yeah, exactly.

So it's like, geez, you know, guys. So once again, we're just. Just glue dildos in a windshield. Well, like I said, we're one of the most maligned and misunderstood agencies out there. But yet what we do, when it comes to, if you want to, if you want to trace terrorist financing, we're your people. That's what we do. You know, if you want to, the most successful large sale drug investigations, there's almost always something. from the IRS tagging along, or at least in the shadows, because that's what we do.

I think it's the most concrete way you can kind of connect the dots. Like you said, there's fingerprints, and you can start working your way back towards the root of the tree, if you will. Well, the goal of an OSEDF investigation, you get tired of hearing this, but is to disrupt and dismantle the organization. And obviously, anytime you take off a load of 40 birds of cocaine or a couple hundred thousand dollars on a traffic stop, you've disrupted them, but you haven't dismantled them. You've maybe upset them, but you haven't dismantled them. So that means going after the combined priority organizational targets they have south of the border. It means pulling out all those resources you have on the international level to just basically, you know, to cut the head off the snake. Now, mind you, some other snake's going to rise up.

True. But, you know, in the world I came from was called 3F EA, find fix, finish, exploit, and analyze. Yeah. We're better at the second and third F than the other ones. But you're not doing any of that, you know, if people want to have. If you want to have the people on earth who are purely evil with a bomb dropped on where they're at, you have to have a way to figure out where they are. Right. And I was never involved with the intelligence gathering, disseminate, filtering process.

If I could get a 10-dig grid coordinate or a SIM card or a picture, like, cool. I probably need somebody else to find it. Then we can fix you in place, finish, take Intel off, exploit, analyze, and probably continue on in that process. for the truly evil people to be taken off the face of the planet, you have to figure out a way to backwards track where they are and how they operate. I have no idea, actually, when I was in or even currently, I wonder if there is any level of financial, I'm sure for a larger terrorist organization there is,

but I wonder if that gets down to the targeting level. I would think it would have to to a certain extent. I would think you would have to, too. I'm curious what the interface would be. So in the Navy, was the N2 Department Intelligence or in the joint world J2. I wonder where they communicate that information and where they have that.

But again, we're also externally facing, right, because we're kind of the armed foreign policy. Passi Comitaz prevents the military from doing policing activities inside of the U.S., but I'm assuming in your job, you were looking at international money. I wonder where that interface occurs between your agency and the intel network.

So there are some, there's the IOC2, which let's see if I can remember this acronym, International Operations Center for Intelligence Operations. It's two. It's the second. Two, there's two. It's IOC, IOC, but it's an international operation center, intelligence officer, anyway. Don't ask me. I don't know what the fuck you're talking about it.

Yeah, you know, I've done so many presentations in the last year now talking to you, all the gas lets out of me, and I can't remember the acronym. I usually have a PowerPoint slide that I refer to. Those are the worst. Don't do that anymore. Yeah, well, the ship is sailed. But anyway, that's a team of people of data tanks. And you have... There's got to be a cross-pollination somewhere here.

And like Northcom, Southcom, we have people in Socom. That's where it's happening then. Yeah, so we actually have people assigned to Socom. Man, I wish I would have asked an intelligence, any of the people that I worked with on the Intel side. We were mostly looking at electronic communication at that time period. And the way that they were communicating. God, now it's kicked myself for not asking about the financial aspect. Yeah, because somebody's paying for this.

Yeah. Right? And what after? And I don't think we ever had anybody in Afghanistan, but there used to be a post-a-duty in Baghdad. You know, you go to your 18 months there. And I remember at the time thinking, good God, man, where would you begin? They say about the time you figure out what's going on. Yeah.

You know, but they were at the time tracing Saddam's money, you know, when Saddam was still with us. Have fun with that. Yeah, good, really. So, I mean, the people went over those. Like, good God, you know, what do you do? After 20-plus years of working for the federal government, how effectively would you say it is operating? I mean, granted, you're using it through your lens of experience and the Arctic of your organization. The federal government as a whole, not overly effective.

The federal law enforcement, I think, is doing for the most part. Pretty good job. It could be better, but we are still bound by funding issues and whatnot, which, There's just a lot going on out there and just trying to pick the right targets to go after, especially when it comes to large level drug trafficking and terrorism. I mean, you only have so many resources and you want to make sure you're driving those resources so as the right target. But how effective is it? It could always be more effective. We could always be better.

But I think it's a lot better than it was. You know, coming in in the shadows, you know, there was still a smoking hole in New York when I took this job. Yeah. And the agencies working together is 100% better. I grew up, my dad telling me stories about the FBI and oh my God, they came in and took all her data and took all our information. They didn't share anything. You know, they'll do that from time to time, but they've gotten a lot better. And now they, I think they've realized there's enough work for everybody.

Let's all get in the water and swim together in the same direction. And I think that's a lot better. It's just a volume thing. I think federal law enforcement is doing the best they can with what they've been given. The government as a whole, that's a different story. I can't really speak to that. I mean, all I know is what I hear on the news. that you hear and you think, oh my God, how'd that happen?

Why is Trump having such a hard time releasing his tax returns? Well, they did get released, though, right? Did they, though? Michael, can you look that up? Didn't he say he was in the middle of an audit, which he seemed to have been for the last four years? Yeah, he did. And I remember, man, a lot of people at the IRS run pins and needles because all it would

take is one wacky-do employee to release them. You know what I mean? To like leak them, you mean? Yeah. Yeah. I feel like if you would have looked up his file, a light would have gone off in somebody's office. You get hotspotted.

You get hotspotted. Yeah. But there's some social justice warriors out there saying, I'm going to do it. I mean, you're going to be able to write a book when you're done. I just think that's an interesting one. And it's actually not even on the IRS. Yeah.

It's just the things that are elected officials or those who want to run for office. The things that they say and then the things that they do. Yeah. The delta between the two. Yeah. Yeah. I think when they did come out, I think it showed that, you know, he wasn't making as much as he thought.

And what pissed people off is he wasn't paying a lot of tax. Which goes back to what we already talked about. The man, let's take a step back from that. I'm pretty sure he's not filling out a 1040 EZ or whatever it is. He's got a fucking fleet of people who know there are tax professionals out there. I have one in San Diego. I fly to see her because she's awesome. Here's the chessboard.

If you make these moves, you're going to be okay. If you make these moves, you might be in the gray area. Don't make these moves. I'm like, listen, you're the specialist in this. I want to pay taxes. but I don't want to pay a lot of taxes. Right. And keep in mind, I shouldn't lay out the blueprint for defense, but one of the biggest defenses we have to close very early in tax investigations

is what they call the reliance defense. I interview you. You're the first one I'm going to talk to because it's an administrative tax case. I read you your rights and you're like, whoa, my CPA told me this was squared away. Guess who our next stop is? CPA. In fact, in fact, there's probably somebody sitting there talking to CPA within minutes of right. Oh, I bet.

You know, how many CPAs go, I didn't tell Andy that? I never told him that. Well, they have so many people that they're probably working with. How could they even remember anyway? Well, I mean, but I mean, as far as a large concept. Yeah. And I never told him he could do that. I never told him he could deduct his dog as a dependent.

I can't do that. I mean, I'm joking. So that kind of closes the reliance defense. Every once in a while, every once in a while, you get a CPA, who's insane? And they're like, yeah, no, that's good. Yeah. You told me, yeah, it's good practice. Yeah, Frenchies are deductible.

then we close the case. Because the person, where's the biggest thing we have to prove is willfulness? If you went to a CPA or an attorney. If you had a professional, they gave you professional advice. That's called a reliance defense.

And we're going to close that case, Pronto. It's usually not the case, though. We're going to talk to the CPA, and I never had one tell me anything. Usually they're like, what, yeah. They go to what's known as the CWA mode, cover your ass.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Well, now that, I mean, you could, yeah, I mean, just, we're talking about just absurd business. practices are like, I didn't tell them he could do that. Yeah.

So that's what my CPA says. Right. And if you're doing that, you have, I mean, you're, you're on board. You're going to be fine. Yeah. So far so good. So if you go sideways, it'd be a civil function. Like I said, Andy, you told you wrong.

You owe tax. You owe X amount plus penalties and interest. Oh, shit. Oh, my God. So apparently on December 30th of 22, they were released publicly. I think it was a contractor that released them, wasn't it? Somebody got jammed up for it, I thought. So we get safe to say he did not choose to release them.

No, he doesn't think so. Yeah, and here's what it's going to show. I haven't even read that. It's going to show that he's not worth as much as he says he's worth. No shit. Well, yeah, you're right. And the thing is, I mean, your network doesn't show up on a tax return. No, your creativity does, though.

And I tell you what, though, there's plenty of businesses, real estate being one of them, where there's enough legal write-offs. There's enough moving money around that a lot of those guys have zero tax. That's the tax code, though. And that's what infuriates people. And that's actually not the IRS's fault. That has to be changed at a policy level if people want to change that. The problem is the people writing that shit are exorbitantly wealthy by the time they get out of politics.

So it benefits them to not change it. Yeah. Yeah. I'm well aware of what everybody in Congress makes because it's the pay cap for us. I don't care what Congress makes. I get very fascinated. On how they develop the wealth afterwards? Well, during.

Yeah, sometimes. So what is it? About a quarter of a million rough ballpark for... Oh, no, not even. It's under 200 for a congressman. So let's call it under 200. But yet net worth increases by millions, if not tens of millions during your tenure? Interesting.

Stock picking. Because you're better picking stocks than the best people of picking stock ever. Interesting. What do we got here? But that also brings up something else that I know a lot of people aren't going to believe. I worked under four different presidents. I never saw the battle rhythm change or what we did change. I can say the same thing about the DoD.

Yeah. Maybe a, well, it's also like steering an aircraft carrier, not that they're actually steered with a wheel. I think they're probably electronically at this point. If it still is done by a wheel, maybe look at changing that. Or as a backup only, you could spin, I mean, it's such a huge thing. You could spin it and spin it and spin it and spin it and spin it. And maybe a little bit later, it'll move a degree on the horizon.

Yeah. There was some budgetary changes, but usually the next two years worth of budget into the presidency for DOD was cooked anyway. Yeah. So it's not like you would see an immediate change. People with, oh, the Democrats would be less likely to use kinetic actions than Republicans. Obama was a fucking savage. Holy fuck. That dude took the drone program to level.

I mean, he was. You got the notebook every morning and say, this guy. He was putting bombs on heads. And I'm here for it. trust me. But people would normally say, oh, well, you know, Democrats will be, you know, less likely to do that type of stuff. Well, it wasn't my experience. Yeah. So. Yeah, I never saw, starting from George Bush, right the beginning of it, and ending with Joe Biden, never saw a damn bit of change on anything we did or how we did it. Um, so. I wonder if that's

a good thing or a bad thing. Well, I mean, I guess, I guess what I'm trying to say is we're completely apolitical, you know, and if we are doing a, well, the agents being a political is good. Most people think when they go to the ballot box, what they're going to get is a change in direction. And the fact that regardless of who's in office, it doesn't necessarily change. I'm not saying it's a good thing or a bad thing. But I think a lot of people, when they find something that lights that fire that they want to take action. And in that arena, it's casting your vote. They're like, fuck.

And I could say the same thing, like I said, about the DOD. They're like, well, son of a bitch. I was voting because I wanted it to change. And now I'm hearing that it's not really. that's why I wonder about the efficacy of our current government given the size and how long it actually takes to get a course correction. Yeah, I no disagreement. I mean, it's a machine. It's a big machine.

Yeah. But I can only speak on my small, narrow window of what I did. And like I said, I always tried to do the best I could to be the most responsible I could. You know, when I was used to force instructor as far as, you know, anything we'd buy, anything we'd acquire, I'd always try to do the, the best, the right thing for their taxpayers. And, oh, my God, the procurement process of going through stuff. Oh, my God, that's a whole other thing. Oh, I'm familiar with it.

Yeah. So I always try to remember who I was working for. And I wanted to get out clean, meaning when the demons come out at 3 a.m., it's nothing. I did a decent 22 years for the 22 years pay. You know, I had a lot of fun doing it. But I wasn't hiding out. There's plenty of people that are. That goes back to just...

That's everybody. That's just in general. But I always felt better when I was getting something done, you know? And we always say, you know, we investigate to find the truth. And sometimes the truth is that guy's innocent, right? And God bless, we don't care. Guy's innocent, close the case. You're done.

On to the next one. What's the uphill battle for you guys there in any law enforcement entity is that that doesn't make the newspaper. No. You know, either the crimes or misdicts. in the attempted execution of that investigation will. It's good to hear that when it needs to be shut down because you determine, hey, that this person is innocent or that the bar is so incredibly high to actually action a criminal case

that it gets shut down when it needs to be. Well, and part of that, I'm speaking from our standard in that the burden of prosecution is so high and also going back to that jury that hates us that we have to have good jury appeal. excuse me um one of the hardest cases to work to put on somebody is a tax case of all the federal cases mail fraud you uh you you use them you know it's pretty easy to commit mail fraud it's pretty easy to get wire fraud it's tax fraud there's a you've you've done a lot of things wrong to get

to that point you know like i said it wasn't the mistake oh my god i check the wrong box and now they're putting me in prison you'll probably hear stories about that in the internet but i read those and you that's just not that's just the case i feel like if you Check the box incorrectly. You're probably going to pay a penalty. If that, yeah, if you get caught, yeah. And you're not going to go to jail. Yeah, here's a deal.

So a good buddy of mine retired about a year before me. He came from the civil side. And he went into management pretty quickly. But he was an auditor. I'm like, man, how did you do that? He goes, man, a lot of times I come in an audit somebody, we don't a refund. That's what I'm talking about. Yeah.

But again, that doesn't make the newspaper. No. But keep in mind, it's a computer that's whatever the project is your is that they've selected. They told you about those secret numbers. They key in and kick those returns out. They come in audio, you know, and I was just, we were just talking to somebody last week that owns a local business. I said, yeah, we are electrical company got audited. And they said, we owed $300 one year. And the other year we got $300 refunds. It was a wash. Now, mind you, nobody wants to go through an audit. You know, it's a, you know, CPAs and attorneys and, you know,

nobody wants that. But once again, you don't hear about that. All you hear is, all you hear about is the missteps. And the same thing local law enforcement goes through. especially when you go into like use of force issues and oh my god they should not an on man well all men have two arms most yeah most so what's uh what's life for you post government service gonna look like what do you want to do this is the most asked question i've been asked in the last six months is what are you going to do in my response is i don't know what do you want to do you know i'm not sure um i'm gonna try nothing for a while see how that works um people with my skill set there's a whole bunch of contract positions that avail themselves with different agencies and banks and

whatnot where you can go in with your skill set. I don't want to do any of that. I mean, that's all the worst parts of being an IRS agent without any of the fun of being an IRS agent. You're sitting behind a computer banging in data. It sounds almost like a joke, but I have always enjoyed writing, and I'd like to get a novel published. I think that's probably a, it's a narrow chance of that happening, knowing the people that get picked up and the people actually get published. I just assume you're going to put me in touch

with Jack Carr and I'll be talking to him next week. I can put you in touch with Jack. I don't think he knows shit about the tax code. No, it's kind of funny. I've listened to his podcast a lot of times on how he got published and discovered. You know, he had somebody give him a huge leg up, you know. And then given his background.

The reality is he was going into publishing offices and giving people hand drops. Well, He doesn't publicly state that, but that's my suspicion. I'm, you know, if that's what has to be done. That's what he said, too. Maybe you will be a published author. Maybe if I grew the beard that, maybe if I grew the beard like he is.

The pavement has been laid on that road, if you know what I'm saying. Yeah, but it's funny, I wrote a book when I worked at the Sheriff's Department, and I went back about six, eight months ago and kind of rewrote it with 25 years of life experience, law enforcement experience and all that technology is like, oh, my God. I don't know that seems weak I'm going to try to do the right thing at first and now I have time to do that pitch it to a publisher

but in this day and age if you write something compelling fucking do it yourself I might you could be a published author overnight if you want to be I'm not saying people should go put shit out and just do that to do that

but I mean there's there's something to be said I think for going down that traditional pathway yeah and I think it will get you in front of more eyeballs but in the world that we live in you could do it yourself

yeah You're probably right. I just, I don't know. I just, it's something I really enjoyed. Like I said, I kind of redid it. And I came up with this cast of characters. It's a law enforcement-based thing. It has nothing to the IRS because, you know, that's a different, nobody cares about that.

You could write a pretty banger book about the IRS, I think. I mean, just, you could take snippets from all the different cases that you worked in the crazy shit that nobody would believe. Well, here's a deal. Throw a fiction title on top of that, and you're good to go. In the IRS, we're really, we're bound by two really important things, disclosure. can't talk about the tax returns I looked at unless they were released into the public domain. No, that's what I'm saying. You could. Yeah, you could. Yeah, you could. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I'm not saying write a nonfiction. Right, right. Well, I mean, and if I wrote a nonfiction book, no one would believe it. I mean, they wouldn't believe. That's how it might be awesome.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. But I, dude, I've had a fair tale of career. I mean, the people I got to talk to, the things I got to do, like I said to, like I said the novel right there. Just do it through the nonfiction lens and you'll be fine. Yeah. Yeah. Like, here's the thing about Jack Carr's book. I think I said this before. His books... It's two degrees off reality. They're pretty damn accurate. Yeah. And he does a very good job of being broad when he needs to be to protect like a tactic, a technique, or a procedure. But a lot of the stuff he writes about, even though it's in the fiction genre, is very close to being accurate. You could do exactly the same thing.

Well, the book I wrote is very, very much along those lines. And I just, like I did that 25 years ago, and I've sitting with my wife on the back patio drinking wine one night. I said, I need to come up with a, if you give me a plot, I can write something pretty quick, and she gave me a one-sentence plot line, and I sat down, and within three weeks, I had another book written. Just that. It just, it flows. Now, tuning it up and doing the polish, and every word means something, the different story. You can pay people for that.

A lot. It's an expensive thing. But what I'm saying is, it's one of the most enjoyable thing. I feel like I'm, I feel like I'm cheating. I mean, if you had that as a job, I can't imagine this job. Firing up the word processor in writing every day. To me, that'd be... I feel like we found your next career.

Well, maybe. All I know is I don't want to do anything, you know, financial related. Maybe, maybe eventually. Wouldn't mind consulting from time to time. Hey, can you help us with this? Maybe. But, man, being at the office at 7 o'clock anymore, eh, I just don't, I can't, no, I've done it. Yeah.

And then people for a long time said, hey, you could get a job at a local range teaching civilian CCW. There's nothing more I don't want to do right now. I would rather unhulster my gun and test fired in my mouth to do that. I worked with for the last 22 and a half years the most careful shooters you can have on the line. And we lost one about three months ago. I don't know if you heard about it. On a shooting range? Yes.

What happened? Still don't know. Investigations ongoing. You know, I know what I heard, but it was obviously somebody violated two or three of the four Cardinal Rules of Firearms Safety. Did they shoot somebody else? Yeah. Oh, fuck. Usually when there's a shooting on the range, it's self, you know, somebody catches one on the leg or something like that.

There's also, I didn't realize this. there's a large amount of people who commit suicide at gun ranges. Yes. They go and they rent guns. Yeah, and smoke themselves on the range. No, this was... That's fucked up on so many levels.

Yeah, and I don't know all the details and the use of force mafia has very tight lips. And I've heard... I probably know what happened, but I can't speak to it because it's still ongoing. But basically one agent accidentally smoked another agent. Once again, there's only four cardinal rules and if you follow them, you're going to be okay.

Yeah. So, and that, sadly to say, I don't think I knew the guy that got shot. It happened in Phoenix. Some people told me, yeah, you taught him in two advanced classes at Flatsy. I'm like, I don't remember him, which I felt horrible about it. You teach a lot of people. No, I mean, to me it was next, next, you know, tune them, next, next.

I mean, people that I put through buds and they'll say, hey, you were my instructor. Yeah. And I always say the same thing. Listen, I'm sorry, I don't, but that is not a reflection of me not caring about you as a student. Yeah. I saw hundreds of students per year. Yeah. Yeah, and I did I did maybe 200, 250, you know.

There's zero chance to remember all of them. Yeah, but somebody said, hey, man, you need to read the comments on these news stories. I was like, oh, these sons of bitches, you know, that's what they deserve. Those guys shouldn't have guns anybody. Rod in hell. And there was nothing. Oh, my God, his family may arrest. There was none of that.

It was all. People see the IRS as a blanket, amalgus gray organization that is designed to take as much out of their paycheck as humanly possible. And that said, there's not a single tax case that I wasn't involved in or somebody in my group wasn't involved in that I could show you and you go, oh my God. I mean, like I said, people either play it out, they don't want a jury seeing these numbers. So every one of them, even the most non-tax ardent adventure, you know, adventurous that doesn't agree with the taxes. And I go, oh, my God, that's pretty egregious.

Yeah. And that's the way it is. And people, I mean, hopefully people listening to this will have some understanding that the IRS is more than just some shadowy organization. Yeah. That tries to extract as much as Humulay Pot. There's the other side of that, too. People want to have roads that aren't full of potholes,

but they don't want to pay their taxes. They want to have good public schools, but they don't want to pay their taxes. They want to have electricity, and they want to have infrastructure, and they don't want to pay their taxes. Listen, you don't get one without the other. Right about the time I started,

There was a whole passable of cases. We were not, the judge actually ordered, we couldn't use the term, but I'm not implanted. They called them tax protesters. They would, and the internet was full of them. But, hey, you don't have to file income. Here's why. And they would be selling these programs and usually profiting from it.

This is very sovereign citizen issue. Yes. That's what I'm talking about. I dealt with a lot of those when I was wearing a brown uniform. Did you really? Oh, yeah. Fuck, yes. How much time do we have left on the SD card, Michael?

Well, I don't want to hear anything else about the IRS. I want to fucking talk about sovereign citizens. Well, the kryptonite on that is when we get involved, it would be the state highway patrol would stop somebody. And I was in a small county. Well, yeah, because they were traveling. They weren't driving. Right. And we would rely on the highway patrol and they rely on us for backup.

So the highway patrol would call us for backup. And you roll up and they're like, it's a sovereign citizen who does not recognize the authority of state law enforcement. Yeah. But for whatever reason. The Black's Law Dictionary says that they are traveling, not driving. But for whatever reason, the office of the sheriff was constitutionally recognized, so they recognized us. So I'd show up and go, okay, now what are we going to do? And it usually ended right there. Fuck.

Yeah. So, I mean, it was like the sheriff's badge was pretty much the garlic to a vampire. So then they hand over their driver's license? Yeah, usually, yeah, I would take over the stop from them. It would go not as eloquent as when I'm explaining it to you, but I would tell them in on certain terms, you know, what I thought of their position. position and how I thought it was wrong. And because you were a sheriff, they would listen to you? Yeah. I'm fascinated by that group of people.

Yeah. In fact... If there's a sovereign citizen out there, hit me up, because we can do it. I'll bring you in here. I tell you what, I don't get it, but so there was also... I get it. Some people are fucking stupid. Yeah, yeah.

But there was all these programs that had some sort of imaginary loophole that said, well, you don't have to pay tax because the way you interpret this law, well... Yeah, the maritime law that they're basing their argument on. Oh, my God, the flag of admiralty. Yeah. There's fringe on the flag. There's fringe on the flag. Well, those cases went away pretty quick because I guess they put enough of them in jail or I don't mean to cast dispersions.

A lot of those people aren't making enough money for us to care. All I'll say is this. Fine for me an example of a sovereign citizen argument standing up in court and perhaps I'll take another look at it. But since you can't, motherfuckers. Yeah. Well, a buddy of mine worked one of the cases one time. And the guy actually, when he came to the court, when he asked the judge for permission to come aboard, sir. and it went downhill from there.

I mean, that's a solid opening. I hope he was in Admiral Rogalia with, like, the tassels and like an old school, like French pirate hat. But going back to your potholes and people want good schools and whatnot, I was helping somebody with a case and I was trying to serve a subpoena or something on somebody. And it wasn't the main guy.

I was one of the witnesses. And he called me. He goes, well, I just want you know, I don't recognize your authority. I don't think you exist. And I'm like, okay, that's cool. Because I don't believe in paying tax. I'm like, that's your thing, you know, whatever.

he's like, you know, I don't engage in the tax system. I said, how do you not engage in the tax system? He goes, well, I don't receive any benefit from. I'm like, and I start going down the list. After about a 15-minute phone conversation, the guy goes, you know what, you make sense. I think I'm going to start filing. Yeah, I thought, what an idiot.

Well, I would agree with you on that. It's not that they're idiots. It's that they're dumb. And I don't know the difference between the two. Well, some of them are scary smart. Well, I'm not trying to be offensive to them. Yeah. trying to be offensive to them because it's baffling to me.

But yeah, does water come out of your faucet? Does electricity come out of your outlets? Yeah. Do the roads, the mail? All of these things that you rely upon, you don't receive any benefit. Really? You never leave your house? Well, what I think is funny is the thing that the amendment that authorized federal

income tax is the 16th amendment that was ratified in 1913. It's fairly new. Before that, it was apportioned through the states and they would pay based on population. So in 1913 is when they say, okay, we got internal revenue that you're going to collect. Our agency was informed on July 1st in 1919. So it took them six years to figure out, hey, not everybody's on board with this. Yeah. Right?

I get it. I mean, it's tough to look at your gross pay versus your net. Well, the thing is, if you look – It can be a very frustrating moment. When you go online and look at the old tax returns, it was hilarious, how simple they were. Yeah. And in fact, I found one on eBay that I bought, and I was going to put it in my queue and my on-the-job instructor said, that's disclosure of a tax return and you can't do that. I'm like, this person has been dead for years.

He's like, I'm sorry, but you're still bombed by the same rules of disclosure. Okay. So he was definitely in the IRS. Yeah. The rules of disclosure are very, that's one of the quickest ways to get in trouble is disclosing anyone's tax information. I can appreciate that, though. Yeah. Private information should be kept exactly.

Well, yes, and I concur with that. However, sometimes it's taken to the extremes. For instance, one of the contacts you can make at the first level is you can reach out to other law enforcement agencies to see if they're on board with anything. So let's say I'm looking at Andy and I call my buddy at the FBI. I'm like, hey, have you ever looked at Andy for an end? I know he's good with us. Okay, yeah, okay. So as part of the investigation, I go into whitepages.com and I find your phone number.

And I'm jotting this down. Turns out you're totally innocent. I close the case. I walk away. Year later, the FBI calls up and says, hey, we're trying to find Andy's number. Do you have it in your records? No. Even though it's whitepages.com, I obtained that information via a tax investigation.

So I can't have to disclose that information because it was part of it. So it's a really tight. So when I was talking about writing books, man, I'm bound by that in grand jury secrecy. So, you know, everything I've told you today is just broad, broad, broad, broad, broad. Yeah, you know. As it should be. Yeah. I know and no one believed the stories I told them anyway, you know, some of the numbers and, you know.

That's what I'm saying? You could go right. You have already an limitless amount of narrative. Yeah, I guess. Yeah, I guess. But yeah, it would be fun. If I did anything Irish-related, though, I'd have to go through the IRS and have them clear it. I think Jack stopped doing that. Really? Because the process, it just can hang. I think he cleared his first few novels. And I might be speaking out of school here. Maybe he's doing it. I think he stopped doing that. But again, they're fiction. So, so, I did top secret clearance and we had a thing, I forget an email you'd send.

I said, hey, before I retired, I said, hey, guys, not for nothing, but I wrote a novel and I want to try to get published. What do we need to do? And they wrote back pretty Machnell. I was surprised. And the guy says, is it fiction or nonfiction? I said, it's fiction. He goes, does it have anything to do with your careers in IRS? And I said, is it not?

And he goes, then we don't care. Drive on. Now, I saved that email, of course. But he's like, yeah, drive on. We don't care. So they're worried about you disclosing sensitive taxes. information's, you know. Of course.

That's reasonable. Given. And but like I said, I couldn't really disclose top secret information because I never saw many. I was never exposed to it. There's sensitive things that I wouldn't talk about just because, you know, different programs and whatnot, but it's nothing illegal or moral, but it's just not something that you want to shine a light on, you know.

That makes total sense. So, yeah. We'll see. I'm going to go around that route and I got some time. I'm going to start sending out some query letters and you're right. Maybe I should just self-publish it, but I'm going to try to do it right if I can. You're just because of the footprint and the support. I'm just saying if you don't get the response you want from the traditional publishing avenues.

Yeah. We live in a time where not that it would be the most advantageous way to do it, but you have options. Yeah. And even if all of them tell you, oh, no, you shouldn't do this. Fuck them. Do what you want to do. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. So, but that's, you know, as far as that, I'm just kind of kind of wait and try to see what nothing does for a while. and then the phone rings or somebody, you know, they used to work with calls me up with the, you know, something. I'll look at it. But, and I may change my mind. But, man, I just, I feel like I've had my phone. You know, it was 28 years total law enforcement.

And I feel like, you know, my dad always told me when I was little. He said, when I was little, I always wanted to be a cop or join the circus. And he said, and I got my wish. And then he paused and looked pensively off to this and said, man, how I loved life under the big top. Yeah. For sure. It's the circus. What do you want to close out with?

I'll give you the final words. just, like I said, it's kind of a love letter to the agency that I was the, I was the dog at the pound that they adopted and gave a loving home to. Took care of me. I feel like I took care of them, but I was blessed. I never thought I'd be a federal agent. I never thought I'd be a federal agent to work the level of cases I got to work. It was truly the dream job, and they paid me well to do it. And I'm just thankful.

And that's one of the reasons I wanted to come on this, you know, just kind of to get that out there. There's a lot of disgruntled people out there, you know, they're working for the agency. They retire. Sons of bitches, they wrong me. I got no beef. Yeah. You know, so right now the agency's in good hands with the leadership, the criminal investigation side. We have the best chief right now that we've ever had in my entire career.

It's probably unborrowed time because they only stay for so long, but he's the smartest best chief we've ever had. And if we can keep going down that path and doing the right thing for the right reasons, hopefully things will. start to perk up. Well, I appreciate you taking the time to share your experiences. Well, I thank you for having me. I was, like I said, I sent the email and then immediately said, oh, my God, what did I do? I see one that painful. What time is it?

We talked shit, almost two and a half hours. There you go. And I don't think I say anything's going to get me indicted. I mean, if you get indicted, let me know. He was disclosing Trump's tax returns, not me. I didn't do that. That's public information. I was going to say, is it disclosing if you pull up a website?

You know, it didn't have a social. Social, right? It was playing down? It's funny. Probably. When there have been data leaks of top secret information, we will get directions that we cannot look at that, even if it's in the media, because it's still classified. And they're worried about us seeing stuff that we shouldn't, if they want to isolate us if we're involved in an investigation on the leak thereof.

So they will say, hey, good luck with that. Say, even though it's been leaked, it's still top secret. You are here by order not to look at it. And part of that's just to wall us off from anything that's going on if we do get involved. Yeah. But top secret, still top secret. Just because it got put in the public doesn't mean it's not top secret. I guess.

I don't think his tax return is top secret. No, no, no, but it's sensitive. To him. And on that note, thank you. Thank you, sir.