Locked In with Ian Bick - Homeland Security Agent Exposes Corrupt Border Patrol Agents & Biggest IRS Scam in U.S. History

Episode Date: September 17, 2024

Former Homeland Security agent Kristofor Healey reveals the shocking truth behind corrupt Border Patrol agents and the largest IRS scam in U.S. history. From uncovering inside betrayals to taking down one of the biggest criminal operations ever, Kristopher shares exclusive stories you won’t hear anywhere else. #HomelandSecurity #BorderPatrolCorruption #IRSFraud #GovernmentCorruption #TrueCrime #GovernmentScandals #CorruptionExposed #LawEnforcementSecrets Hosted, Executive Produced & Edited By Ian Bick: https://www.instagram.com/ian_bick/?hl=en https://ianbick.com/ Connect with Kristofor Healey: https://www.instagram.com/team_healey/?hl=en https://www.kristoforhealey.com/ Thank you to our sponsors this week: BetterHelp: This episode is sponsored by BetterHelp. Give online therapy a try at https://www.betterhelp.com/get-started/?slug=lockedin&utm_source=podcast&utm_campaign=2687&utm_term=lockedin&promo_code=lockedin&landing_page_img=https%3A%2F%2Fi.imgur.com%2FrUOnt8F.jpeg&aff_channel=podcast&discount_rate=10&discount_period=P1M&date_interval=P1M&percentage_off=10&amount=1&amount_spelled_out=one&unit=month&gor=start-go and get on your way to being your best self and get 10% off your first month! Presented by Tyson 2.0 & Wooooo Energy: https://tyson20.com/ https://woooooenergy.com/ Buy Merch: https://lockedinbrand.com Use code lockedin at checkout to get 20% off your order Timestamps: 00:00:00 - Working in an Immigration Detention Center 00:06:21 - Failed Background Checks and Corruption in Government Agencies 00:13:03 - Corruption in the Job Market 00:19:58 - Financial Crimes Investigation and IRS Detection Strategies 00:26:42 - Guarding the Bridge at Night 00:33:11 - Detention Center Problems 00:40:02 - Corruption in Law Enforcement 00:46:14 - Border Security and Asylum Claims 00:52:47 - The Broken Asylum System 00:59:24 - Dealing with MS-13 members on flights 01:05:38 - Awkward Situations During Deportation Transport 01:11:29 - Transportation Officers in Immigration Detention 01:18:08 - Money Laundering with Gift Cards and Cash Apps 01:24:48 - The Impact of Financial Crime 01:31:30 - Conversations with Adversaries 01:37:49 - Fighting Financial Crimes 01:44:16 - A Fun and Amazing Conversation Powered by: Just Media House : https://www.justmediahouse.com/ Creative direction, design, assets, support by FWRD: https://www.fwrd.co Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Intro rate first three months only, then full price plan options available. Taxes and fees extra. See full terms at Mintmobile.com. When I first started out my career with ICE, like my office I was assigned to was attached to a detention center. And so that's kind of like a parallel court system almost. It's all immigration related, but people are detained. You have a classification system. We have like 3,000 detainees or inmates, but detainees just going through their immigration process.

And as those guys are, you know, going through that process, like you can get down to like pretty much like this is, I know how to ask the things I need to ask and understand the things I need to understand to get the things. this person where they need to go. And I tell a guy, like, line up, put your hands up, do X, Y, and Z. But they're picking up English along the way, too. So it's so funny how you get into those, like, conversations with people where neither of you speak each other's language, but you're, like, really able to kind of point and grunt your way through it. And you pick up so much more in that natural environment, I think, from people like that. But that's Jail House Spanish, man. It's like, I mean, it's like, it's like, they'll learn, like, the dirty words first, right?

And so it's like, like, you know, you're like, like, what are these guys teaching me? Like, what are, like, and of course the English that they're picking up, it's the dirty words first. So, I mean, that's, this just happens. Yeah, they teach you what not to say. Normally if a Spanish guy in prison is saying, hey, go say this to someone. Don't do it. Don't do that. Yeah.

They take advantage of the white guys that don't speak any other language. I didn't spend a lot of time in like, like, I know you're in like a BOP. I don't know which one you were in. I was all over. You were all over. Yeah, I was in Brooklyn. I was in a lot of detention centers too. And I was in a private.

facility in Rhode Island that also housed ice. Who ran that? Was it a... Yeah, it was just a private subcontractor. It was called the Wyatt Detention Center. Okay. And they were structured completely different, like with the chain of command. Like they had a major, they had a captain, they had a lieutenant and a sergeant.

Whereas the BOP just goes, I think, sergeant, lieutenant, captain. They don't even have a major or anything like that. You've got like assistant wardens and wardens all that stuff. The place that I was, that my office was at, it was a private facility. was run by MTC, which is management and training corporation. They had like a $4 million a month contract with Willissey County, Texas. And, you know, we would classify people that would come in. Like my job, you know, like I signed up expecting, because this is like right after 9-11,

you know, and it's like come fight terrorism. And that was like the whole appeal to me to go into law enforcement. I was going to be an archaeologist. I had my degree and all that stuff. I was working in the field. Had gotten into grad school and the 9-11 happens. And I was like, all right, maybe I want to go do that because these guys who attack Actus were all overstayed.

They, like, overstayed visas, right? So they were all people who were in the country who hadn't been rounded up. They were able to do this crime. And I was like, I want to be part of catching the next group of those people. And so I get, I get, you know, there's a lot of patriotism at the time. Everybody's like, yeah, let me come and join the military, join law enforcement, whatever. And these guys call me up and they're like, hey, like, we got a job for you after I had applied for Border Patrol, CBP, I'm in like the process for all of them.

And like it said, it's this place called Raymondville, Texas. I've never heard of it. I'm like, all right, I'm in like Portland, Maine. I'm like, all right, I know where Raymondville, Texas is. Can you tell me? And the HR rep is like, yeah, it's just a little bit south of Corpus Christi. And I hadn't been to Corpus Christi, but I knew it was a good size town. I was like, okay, Corpuschrist's on the bay. So they got beaches, they got water. It's probably warm weather. That sounds all right. That sounds all right. And I didn't, you know, this is like before, like we had like smartphones, right? This is like, you get on like map quest to like figure out how to get there. And like, I looked it up. I started doing like my research. search and I was like this is like two and a half hour south of Corpus Christi. This is like not like a suburb of Corpus Christi is what was like built to me. And so it was like an hour from the border. Like if you think of where South Padre Island is, that's like Brownsville, Texas. And like that's like right on the border with Mexico. And so I was like officed a little bit inland from that. And they rented this or they contracted this facility through Willisee County. And at the time, we just had so many people coming across, not like the drop in the bucket compared to what we've got going on now,

but we had so many people coming across that they needed to build all these like privately contracted facilities because the federal government couldn't keep up with the amount of people that they had to detain. And it was a debacle from the start. I mean, like you said you're in some private places. Like it's a completely different environment when you're not in, like they're on a contract so they have to have to have ICE detention standards maintained. Like they have to keep up with certain standards. But there's not ICE people in-house. and they're not an accredited, like, jail facility, so they don't have, like, that accreditation,

and they're not keeping up with some of the other standards that are, like, more commonplace with Bureau of Prisons. And there was a lot of stuff that was just a hot mess there. And they built the place quickly, staffed it up quickly. And the town that it was placed in, there were already, there was a Marshall's facility there. So, like, you know, pre-trial stuff, and it was also a contract facility.

There was a state facility there that was a contract facility. And then there was the county jail there. They were all on the same road. So all of the people in this small town that were looking for a job had already probably been picked up if they were like high quality staff. They'd already been picked up by these other jails that had been there for a while. And what ended up happening is a lot of the guys who came in, like it was sometimes hard to tell. Like we used to joke, you had all these level ones, which was in the immigration classification system, no criminal history. Your only crime is, you know, crossing the border, you got to go through the court process, and then you're going to get

deported, you're going to get, you know, sent back to Honduras, Guatemala, El Salvador, wherever. Those guys got blue uniforms. The next guys in line got orange uniforms. Those are level two, is typically nonviolent crimes, and then your level threes were the guys who were aggravated felons, guys who had done like higher levels. So mostly like narcotics trafficking stuff, drug crimes, sex crimes, things like that. And we were mostly, about 2,000 of our guys were like level one. They were just in and out quickly.

We arrested them, put him through immigration court process. They got deported. A lot of them, they came back. Like, we'd see the same guys again and again and again. But we used to joke that we had level three's guarding level ones at this place. Because the guys who were like just the, it was like the last draft pick, you know, getting put into this guard position. And so right from the start, I mean, there's contraband coming in. There was just like people smuggling cell phones and dope.

I mean, you name it, it was coming in. And these guys were not. getting the thorough background checks they were supposed to. They're supposed to have full like 10 year scope background checks because they're federal government contractors. They built this place and got it up off the ground so quickly that they kind of skipped all that. So they just put these guys in there. And I mean it was like legit like when they started doing the background checks about a year into it, about I'd say about 25, 30 percent of the workforce either quit or failed their background checks. So out of like 800 contractors who were guarding like 3,000 people, we had like a failure rate

of about one and four that couldn't pass the background check. And they had been guarding these people for like a year and a half, two years at that point. Did your opinion of like the government and law enforcement change after you get in and you see all of this? Like as an American, you're like, wow, what's going on? This episode is sponsored by BetterHelp. What's something you've always wanted to learn? As adults, we often get caught up in life and forget to make time for new experiences. Unlike when we were kids constantly learning and exploring.

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10% off your first month. That's BetterHelp. H-E-L-P dot com slash locked in. Thanks to BetterHelp for sponsoring today's episode. Like I joined for the purest of reasons, right? Like a lot of people like post-9-11 were like, like, I want to go and serve in some capacity. And so, you know, again, like, it was the whole idea of let's go and fight terrorism was very appealing. And that was how DHS, they had just stood up this whole new department. The whole idea was to, you know, combine all these agencies that had been disparate and across the federal government, put them all together under one single umbrella and be more effective at cross-border crime, basically, anything that was, like, threatening us by crossing a border. So they brought in, you know, custom

came from like the Treasury Department, immigration came from like Department of Justice and they all kind of ended up mashed together. And so I thought a lot of people who were going to be working that were going to have that same like attitude, that gung-ho, like, yeah, let's, you know, let's make sure we stop the next 9-11. There were a fair amount of them. Like that whole like Generation 9-12 mentality definitely existed.

But there were also a lot of guys like I wasn't expecting and just a lot of guys who were like, you know, just classic kind of what you think of when you think of like the government employee, like, you know, the person at the DMV who's like not like, you know, it takes an act of Congress to fire them, so they're not, they're not really highly motivated, and they're just kind of just, you know, getting those paychecks every two weeks and just, you know, and that's, that sort of disappointed me. And that continued to disappoint me throughout my career, because you run into those people at every level as you are advancing

in your career. But I was definitely not expecting the amount of corruption that I ran into. And that, like, in a place like the Rio Grande Valley where I was working, and you've got the Gulf Cartel, just on the other side of the region, River, they pay a lot better than we do, you know. Like, you get paid pretty well as a government employee, as a special agent, as a Border Patrol agent, as a customs officer. Like, they do well. Most of those guys make six figures, but it depends on location and all that stuff.

Most of them make six figures when they journey out. But the cartel has just deeper pockets. And like if you were somebody who was going through a divorce or you had like a bankruptcy or you're dealing with some problems, there was a lot of opportunity for people to get. corrupted to start down that slippery slope to have those issues get exploited by the people on the Mexican side of the river and I saw a ton of it and that was like it started when I started working at that detention center you started seeing that a lot of that contraband coming in was because we had these level three like guys who were picked up who were at rikers island ice agents like they have an

office on like verrick street and in downtown New York and they would go out to rikers and they would interview inmates there and you know they would find out if somebody had you know foreign was a foreign national right and they would check and they you know there's classification system to see okay this person has status but he's committed to felonies so he's going to go into immigration court to determine whether he can be deported or this guy has no status and a lot of times what would happen is and I'm using rikers as an example because these people are coming from all over a lot of times what would happen is a state wouldn't want to hold on to somebody like if they've got somebody in their custody who they've arrested for simple assault or whatever.

And he's in custody. He's got a long criminal record. They know, hey, I'm going to prosecute this guy. That's going to cost us money. I'm going to detain this guy while I'm prosecuting him. I'm going to then jail him after he's sentenced. So we're going to have all of this bill or this guy doesn't even belong in the country and ICE has placed a detainer on him.

They've interviewed him. They've determined he doesn't want to or he doesn't belong here. We're going to turn him over to ICE when he's done anyway. because we've got a court-ordered detainer. So why would we run him through this process? Why would we keep him in jail for two or three years at the cost of our taxpayers when we can turn them over to the federal government

and they're just going to kick him back to Colombia or Venezuela, Nicaragua, wherever he came from? And so we would get a lot of those guys coming in from places like New York City. And these are guys who, like, have been running the streets for a long time. They are, like, a different breed of criminal than, like, what you're seeing down in, like, small town, deep south Texas. And these guards were, like,

just getting like turned left and right because these guys were like smooth talkers and they were like hey man like you know my family back in New York wants to give me some cash wants to get me this wants to get me that can you like help me out and these guys would just be like lining up for it so yeah long story short like yeah that that corruption was shocking to me seeing all these guys who were you know making what was decent money at the time working in in that capacity just being like tempted with, you know, like, can you bring this in? And, you know, my, my girl's going to, you know, send her cousin down here. He's going to meet you in a parking lot at the Home Depot and, you know,

pay cash. And if you bring this in, whatever. And that was happening all the time. And that was like, basically the mechanism that got me into internal affairs was I recognized and understood that this was happening. I had some, some sources in that facility that brought information to me about this network of guards that were bringing stuff in. And I brought it to the local internal affairs office and worked with some of the snitches in the detention center to like identify the network and take it down. And we found, I mean, the amount of contraband coming in. I don't know what you saw in BOP. They're a much more professional organization.

There's still an insane amounts. And it comes from guards. Yeah, exactly. Because a guard could bring in a cell phone and make, you know, five grand for a bundle of cell phones. Exactly. And they're probably paid less than Border Patrol. Oh, for sure. For sure.

Yeah. I don't know what those guys are like their GS level is, but I think they probably most of them, maybe a GS-7 or 9. Border Patrol guys are like GS-13s, in some cases, 12s and 13, so they're making, you know, six figures. BOP guys probably not. I mean, management, yes, but yeah, it's exactly that. I mean, there's just a powerful incentive for them to bring stuff in, and it was very easy in a contract facility like that with looser standards, where you had lower-quality employees, and it was just, it was nuts. I mean, we had, as soon as we started bringing in level three people from around the country people from like

Chicago people from New York the guards were just like turning left and right and so it got to the point where like you couldn't trust you didn't know who you could trust right that like I'm going to go in here and you know I'm talking to this this detainee about something or I've got whatever going on like if I'm trying to get intel from this guy I don't know what you know guards are around that are watching and seeing like you know it was a very it was a very tough environment to to work in because you didn't, you didn't trust the people that you were talking to who were detainees. You didn't trust the guards. You didn't know who was working with whom. We had guards. We had female guards having sex with detainees and like broom closets. I mean, there was like

crazy amounts of nonsense. And this place, it's no longer open, which is a good thing. But it, it uh it lasted i think from about 2006 until maybe 2010 or 11 or so so it was about five years that this place had this contract with ice and at the end of this contract but things have been so bad there there was a there ended up being a riot and they burned a bunch of they had the this was like um they call them sprung structures they're like the tents like the circus tents and you got like 50 people in there and the group showers and group toilets and like all bunk beds single tiny little television up in the corner one guard watching all all of them. And then you've got like just like a little like the outdoor area. I mean,

it's deep south Texas. So in the summertime, you're like out on like just like a like blazing hot like black top. I mean, it's just there's just it's I understand why there's a riot. But at the end of it there is there ended up being a riot and they had to call in people from all the different agencies to quell the riot. And then after that they're like, we're done. They shut the place down. But I was there for about two and a half, three years working in that environment. man. I've been in jails around the world. I've been to prison in Singapore. I've been in, you know, other countries as well. I've never seen a place that was more poorly run than the immigration detention center in Deep South Texas. What was the training like to become an agent?

Is it like the counterpart parts of the feds and law enforcement in general? Yeah. So for me, I went to two different academies federally. So I went when I got initially hired by ICE, they send me down to Georgia, which is the Federal Law Enforcement Training Center, and everybody goes there except for FBI and DEA and the Postal Inspectors. They have FBI and DEA, have Quantico, Postal Inspectors have their own academy. Everybody else goes to Fletsey. And that's like everyone from like Bureau of Prisons guys go there, TSA guys go there now. So they do all the different academies there. And then for me, it was basic immigration law enforcement.

So you learn all the law, you learn Fourth Amendment, you learn Fifth Amendment, you learn all the constitutional law, then all the immigration law, you learn how to do the job, how to drive, how to arrest somebody, court process, all of that stuff. It's about for, I don't know if it's the same now. This is a while ago, but it was about three and a half month long academy. And then I went back a couple years later when I got hired as a special agent. I went back to an advanced school that's called Criminal Investigator Training Program. And that is like to become a special agent. And that's the same basic course of instruction that if you meet someone who's a special agent from any organization, they probably went through that program that I went through. So it's about the same. And then my agency had an add-on program beyond that. So it was like an additional like three or four weeks of training for agency-specific tasks. But some agencies, they might go to Fletsey. Like, you know, Secret Service has been in the news the last couple of days, right? They have a three-month academy that they go through. This is the same thing I went through. And then they go and have this advanced. school where they learn all the protective stuff and all the, you know, shooting and all the,

the other stuff that most people don't learn. So it depends on the agency. Most, I would say, like, if you don't mind me asking, like, who was, who worked your case? So it was the very first one was local and that got escalated, but then the ones that picked it up was the postal inspectors. And I had no idea who, that we had postal inspectors. And then I went to the FBI IRS and from there. So Postal Inspectors, they have their own academy. I've been to their academy and have done some training there. It's in, it's like in Potomac, Maryland or something like that.

It's actually beautiful. They've got like a great, a great academy. I would have loved to have gone there. But IRS, they go to the same place I went. And so if you're like IRS agent ever interviewed you, he had the same exact training I had. And then he would have had some sort of add on academy to learn additional stuff that's specific to their agency. So it's all pretty much the same. FBI, they do their own thing because they're kind of their own, they have their own language.

They do their own thing. They're, but it's all the same job. You know, if you're a special agent at FBI or IRS or DHS, it's all, it's the same classification, same job. Yeah, a lot of people don't realize that the IRS does have that criminal division and they are armed and they, that was in the news recently, too. They were like, because they were laying off a lot of regular ones to bring on more criminal investigator divisions that are armed. Yeah, they're, they're an interesting organization. I'll tell you this, like when I worked on a DEA task force, the, you would go into a room, and again, this is like, this isn't like dying back stuff, and we're talking like kilos coming

across because it's like right at the border. So this is wholesale. It's like the Sam's Club of Drugs, right? And when you would go and bring in a, you know, let's say you took down a stash house, you did something, you bring the guy in, you're sitting down to interview him, you would have like, you know, the DEA agent, maybe the TFO, the task force officer is working with him from the local PD and then they would always bring in like an IRS guy who was going to kind of go over the books with the guy. And that's who terrified, you know, the, the, the, the traffickers the most because that's the guy who like has all the information about every shady thing they've done. Like they, they could, they'd be like tough with like the TFO or they'd be like, you know, like, yeah, whatever, man, like the DA. Like IRS sits down and sits down. The guys start to melt because the IRS guys like going through their bank accounts, going through their statements, going through their money. And that's when things get real. And so those guys are like legitimate, like very, very smart. A lot of them have accounting degrees.

They're CPAs. They have that background. And then they get into law enforcement. So, you know, a lot of them are going to like look like a CPA. But they're like legitimate, like incredible financial crimes investigators. And it's that easy to detect just like opening up the books and looking at that information they can pick up on it that quickly or is it like months and months before they get to that? IRS, like their investigations because they have, it's not just, it's not as simple as getting a subpoena to get like someone's tax records. There's like, there's like whole process as you have to go through. Their cases tend to last longer because there's a lot of like connecting dots, a lot of digging in. So it doesn't happen like overnight.

So if you're like being looked at by the IRS, you're probably from a criminal perspective, right? Like not from a civil perspective, not like this guy like, you know, it needs to be audited. But like somebody who's like doing like a serious money. laundering or like wire fraud sort of crime like that's going to take time like if they're going to bring in bring in the IRS it's probably going to be a two to three year long investigation more than likely now I've worked them on shorter cases on other cases but if you're like getting into tax records it's always going to be like that that deep and thorough and they're good like they don't mess around so they have one of the longest academies for exactly that reason

they go to that basic and then they have like they're at flatsy for like I want to say like six or eight months. It's a long time. Do you think it's harder for the cartel to flip agents specifically like Border Patrol now than it was back then? I don't know that it's ever that hard. Like the hardest thing, and at the time, so let me put it this way, it's probably harder now because at the time when I came on, we were going through a mass hiring. Post 9-11, they basically doubled the size of Border Patrol. And so there used to be recruitment standards where if you were a Border Patrol agent, or you were from Brownsville, Texas, and you wanted to be a Border Patrol agent, you would go and apply, and if you got the job, they were not going to assign you to Brownsville,

Texas. They were going to send you to, like, San Diego. They were to send you across the country, because it removes that, just the chance that your cousin or your friend, because so many people have people on both sides of the border, and the neighborhood they grew up and is on the border. You know, when something is normal, it becomes normalized, right? So like if it's normal that like, hey, yeah, I grew up with this kid and he's a trafficker, his dad was, his uncle was, whatever, like you see that on a regular basis. It doesn't, it doesn't shock you the same way. So if you, you know, become federal law enforcement, you get on this side of the law and these

guys that you grew up with and buddies are with and, like, you know, played soccer with or whatever on that side of the law, like, it's a lot easier for you to like let your guard down. And so they would move people around the country to try to eliminate that temptation. And then 9-11 happened. And they had to really heavily increase the number of Border Patrol agents, number of CBP officers, number of special agents. Like they, number of TSA, like TSA didn't even exist before 9-11. So all that stuff had to happen.

And a lot of the standards got loosened. And also when you're pushing that many people through at the same time, you only have so many background investigators. So people are, you know, like my background, it took like, a year and a half because there were so many people in the pipeline. It took a long time to get onboarded, but that was quick for that time frame. And so, you know, there's steps that are getting missed.

There's things that, you know, there's rugs that aren't being looked under. And the cartel recognized that, and they took advantage of that mass hiring, and they moved a bunch of people into DHS ranks from, you know, like basically like, hey, you know, your son's 20 years old. He's not doing anything. He doesn't have a criminal record. You know, have them apply.

Like that was happening. So it was kind of like that movie The Departed. I mean, they had an entire network of Border Patrol of customs officers, like all of, and not just like where I was, where the Gulf cartel was, but where other cartels were as well. They were all taking advantage of this situation of, we can get some people on the inside. And that serves two purposes, because if you, you know, you've got an asset for one that, you know, if you've got a guy who's a dog handler working at the port of entry, who's pulling this dog off of, you know, your dope that's coming through, but you can tip him off to your rival's dopeloads coming through.

and dog's going to hit on those, and then that guy looks like a great agent, so it's providing him some cover. So you've got a great asset right there. But then if you ever get arrested and you're his handler, you've been paying him, you've got an incredible get out of jail free card, right?

Not necessarily get out of jail free, but reduce your sentence card because I've got this asset I can dangle in front of the feds and say, hey, you want some information, I've been paying this guy for years. In fact, I've got all the books, I've got the receipts.

In fact, if you want me to pay him right now, you know, because the guy's sitting in front of you, nobody knows he's been arrested yet you're doing that initial intake interview um that's when they would turn that asset into an asset for them on the other side and that and that was happening a lot we had when i first got hired on with our internal affairs which is known as the office of inspector general that's like government parlance for internal affairs we had a gulf cartel i don't know exactly what his his where he was in the hierarchy but he was the like nephew of the former head of the Gulf cartel. He got arrested.

In the U.S. side, he was using a fake passport. He had like a whole, like, separate life happening on the U.S. side. And, I mean, he starts singing immediately. And his, because his uncle had done the same thing. His uncle got caught in Mexico and got extradite to the U.S. He started singing. And so it would kind of be like a bumper crop of corruption, right? Like, you'd get, like, notified that, like, this date and time, we're going to run some dope through this guy's lane, and we've been paying him. And, you know, sure enough, it would come through, you'd make your case, you'd work the case, you'd arrest the guy, and then that guy tells you about two or three other guys that he roped into the conspiracy that were working at the same

port of entry. And so you'd kind of clear that out, clear that out. And then, you know, the next time a cartel guy got caught, you'd, you know, kind of go through that motion again. And were these assets also exposing who the weak links among them and their own, like the other agents were, so that cartel can identify them and then offer them money, the addresses, everything like that. Yeah, they provide, like we would have that would often happen you would have like one guy on a shift um you know let's say like you wanted let's say you're working at port of entry that closes at midnight like a lot of them are 24-7 but a lot of them like you're going to have a guy who's just babysitting a bridge and when i say port of entry i mean like literally the bridge between mexico and the united states and so you've got CBP which is customs

and border protection that work that bridge and those are the guys in the blue uniforms at the airport you fly international or you cross that international boundary you're going to show them your papers and you know they're going to make sure that you have a right to be here you're a u.s. citizen or you have a visa, whatever. They have about 40 seconds to make a decision as someone's coming through their lane, whether or not they should secondary that person, if there's anything in that card that sets off suspicions, they're going to send you for a deeper inspection, all that stuff. And those guys, like, you know, like, I look at it like baseball.

If you're batting 300, you're probably an all-star, right? But that means that you're striking out seven times. You're getting out seven out ten times. Guys of the Port Venture are kind of the same way. Like if you're, like, getting three out of ten loads that are coming. through your lane you're an all-star um but a lot of these guys like like once they get turned and let's say they've got like family in mexico they go down to visit family they're at a bar and you know somebody tips off someone from the cartel that hey this guy's here it makes an

approach whatever like hey we know about you know you're going through divorce we know you've got like a sancho over here we know whatever um and that guy agrees to move stuff through um it becomes very easy for that guy to like for them to make that guy look like an all-star and protect him while also running dope through his lane, and then they use him as an asset to recruit others and bring people in. So we'd get these like clusters of guys, like I said, a bridge that closed at midnight.

A lot of stuff would get moved through the bridge like in the half hour before it closed because you would have guys who would volunteer for a shift to babysit the bridge at night. Like they'll shut it down, they'll close it down, they'll let the last few cars through, and then they'll run their eight-hour shift basically guarding the bridge.

And it's in that like half hour before that they're moving stuff through. So if a guy is corrupt, he's looking around at the other guys who are at that bridge. He doesn't want them diamond him out so he cuts them in on the deal. You know,

like these are guys that have worked at shift. He knows them. He trusts them. He kind of gets to know him a little bit. He figures out what their motivations are. And it's like anything else. Your motivations are going to be typically money,

women. I mean, it's like it's the same motivations that we all have, right? Like you've got financial problems or you desire to have more than you have or down there. It was very common for people to have, you know,

like something going on on the side, sometimes a whole second family going on. and that would get exploited a lot. And, you know, it's just, it's, it's classic, like, you give them an inch, and they're going to take a mile. But, yeah, they would absolutely recruit others and bring them in, and we would end up getting clusters of guys on the same shift a lot of times. Is Border Patrol under Homeland Security? Is that tall, so it's not a separate agency, it's all under the one? Yeah, so Homeland Security is department.

So, like, it's got, like, 26 agencies or 27 agencies, something like that within it. And so the entire, like, Border Patrol, Customs and Border Patrol, Customs and Border. protection, ice, they're all under that same umbrella. Now, you said you were in internal affairs and you mentioned office of the inspector general. Did that also cover the BOP too? Because I remember seeing that name before. They had their own office.

So BOP is under Department of Justice. And so they had their own office of Inspector General that did exactly what you're describing, like investigations of guards and things like that, investigations of like PREA violations, like things that were happening in the jails. DOJ OIG would look at. they would also look at like DOJ has oversight of FBI, ATF, DEA. So they would look at the marshals. They would look at anything that involved fraud, waste, or abuse within that department.

And so for me, it was fraud waste or abuse within DHS. So that would be like Secret Service, Coast Guard, TSA, Border Patrol, CBP, ICE. USAA knows dynamic duos can save the day like superheroes and sidekicks or auto and home insurance. With USAA, you can bundle your auto and home and save up to 10%. Tap the banner to learn more and get a quote at usaa.com slash bundle. Restrictions apply. You're great at protecting your data, but lots of places could still expose you to identity theft. I thought it was safe.

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Now, since you're an agent for the government, do you think that those investigations of internal affairs are just when it's like the inmate side or a detainee side? Because I had an experience with that where I kind of escalated out because there was a male prison guard that pretty much touched me inappropriately and it never really got resolved and it got pushed under. So I'm curious from the back end,

what that looks like. Like when the complaints come in? Yeah, if it's fair for the inmate or the detainee. It depends because like what I'd say is like in a detention center that I worked in or that I was like attached to. You get like grievance forms every day, right? And a lot of it is like, you know, like, I don't like this or I don't like that. Or like, you know, you'd have like one English-speaking guy in a dorm with like 49 Spanish-speaking guys.

And he's like complaining about like, hey, can you like put me in a different place? I'm going to be classified in this place. So you got to like kind of separate out what's real and what isn't. There's a lot of stuff that isn't real. You know, there's a lot of stuff that's just, as I'm sure you know, there's a lot of stuff that's just like complaining because there's boredom because there's nothing, nothing better to do. But that stuff should be taking very, very seriously. Like if you're talking about like, hey, you know, like anything that approaches a pre-violation is like a no-brainer. Because that stuff like that does happen.

Obviously you're aware of that. That stuff does happen. And I saw guards taking advantage of that. We prosecuted a guard for, because there's a power dynamic there, right? And so, like, you can't have a consensual relationship between a guard and a prisoner. There's no such thing as a consensual relationship when you have a power dynamic like that. And we had female, not many, but we had female detainees on the same, you know, campus with all these male detainees. There was maybe like a fifth of the population was female.

There was like a couple of dorms. And male guards weren't allowed to be in those dorms, and female guards weren't allowed to be in the male dorms. But they would find ways where, like, female inmates would, like, come on to a guard, and then they would, you know, end up, like, having a relationship. And then they would use that, you know, as a means to get some sort of advantage, push their luck with trying to, like, get their case dismissed or whatever else. And so we arrested guys for that, guards who were forced.

full on having sexual relationships with a female detainee, like broomclosets, things like that. And you'd approach those guys to be like, do you have any idea? Like, because they're like crying. They're like, oh, it was consensual, you know? Yeah, it's not. It's like, it's never, ever, ever, ever consensual. There's the power dynamic. It can never be consensual.

Sexual abuse of a ward is a major crime. Like you can go to jail for a lot of years. You know, and so like these guys, like you're talking to these guys. You're looking at rape charges. You understand that? It was consensual. No, it wasn't. Like, it can never be consensual.

As long as you've got that, you know, the keys to the closet that you can lock behind you. How is that ever consensual? It happens all the time in the BOP. All the time. I spend a lot of time in the shoe for various different things. And every shoe I was in or every experience, there would always be someone there under investigation for an inmate staff encounter. Because what they would do is while the investigation is going on, they'd split them up. So she or he would, well, she, because I was in a male prison, would be forced to work perimeter and he would be in the shoe.

Yeah. And he would sit there for months. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And that's, and I mean, and that's awful too. Because, you know, like you're being like, I mean, you're being punished when technically you're the victim, right? I mean, like you're.

Yeah. But they blame you too. They can't charge you, but they can penalize you with, you know, like shots and taking away good time because you engaged in inappropriate. behavior or whatever, but you won't get charged for that. Right. Did you ever dive into like the psychology of these individuals that you would catch? Like what, did they all share something in common? So I worked a lot like the high level stuff that I did.

I guess I should separate it because I did, you know, the internal affairs stuff and the the investigations of dirty border patrol agents, dirty CBP officers. The psychology of that was largely, it was greed. I mean, if you had to put it down to a single thing, it's money problems. greed, right? And those two things are often married up, right? So it's like, these guys are offering me $10,000 cash. I've got to work X number of hours of overtime.

I've got to do X, Y, and Z to get that, and the government's going to take their chunk of it when I could just have $10,000 cash just for looking the other way as this dope load comes through. A lot of guys, like, I don't want to say a lot because it's a very, very minute, small percentage of people who will violate their oath of office. Very, very few.

And we probably, we only catch the dumb ones, right? Like, we only catch the ones who are like, you know like so brazen about it but but a lot of it came down to that and then a lot of it too it turned into there's a substance abuse issue that's associated with it because like we took down i say we i was part of this i didn't lead this investigation but we took down a crew of sheriff's deputies in hidalgo county texas and it ended up being like 15 guys that got taken down including the sheriff himself and his son and they were running like training day i mean they were like ripping off dope dealers selling to other dope dealers they were

you know like guarding loads as they went through like hidalgo county like these guys are doing everything and then they would have all this cash they didn't know what to do with it so they're going to Vegas they're like party and they're drinking they start doing coke they're like buying high class escorts like because just the amount of cash they have and then it becomes an addiction thing because now you're hooked on all of these other things you got to keep the party going and so the money like needed to so they got riskier they got more dangerous so it almost always comes down to taking that first step because there's a money issue because you feel like the government owes you more like you're working harder and you should have gotten that promotion or whatever else or you're going through something

real tough and you're in your personal life and you need that money to make things right and I'm just going to do it once and then ultimately like once you start getting paid once the hook is set like you can't go back because they own you at that point and then it turns into the guilt and the drugs and the alcohol and all those things and then you got to feed that monkey and so it just that that tends to be the psychology. And I've seen guys who I thought were good guys who took advantage of situations and that they never should have taken advantage of it. Almost always when you start talking to them about it comes down to at the core, some financial issue that they needed to deal with. And they just, you know, tried it one time and then they're hooked, you know. And then what about on the side

where they're actually sleeping with the inmates, that side of it? That's hard to say. I mean, the guys who, like, that was, I don't want to, like, disparage, like, an entire region of the country. but there is a like in in south texas there is a much more permissive culture in terms of like having that like girl on the side that sort of thing and i think that feeds into it a little bit there's like a there's like a psychological aspect of this isn't a big deal because everybody's got asancha everybody's got asancho everybody's got something going on on the side and so it almost kind of like that they're not looking at it like i've got like a like i'm doing something wrong in the jail it's like i've got a side piece it's kind of kind of like that they're not looking at it like i've got a side piece it's

kind of like the attitude when you would talk to these guys and it wasn't until you like explain to them like dude like this is like a serious federal crime sexual abuse of award I mean this is rape like you you are looking at serious federal time that they're looking at you like what like you know like like like like for what you know like I understand and like having and I think a lot of that for me because I was working in a facility where this was a contract facility and again the training those guys were getting and you were in some contract contract jails. They were getting like three weeks of on-the-job training, you know, so like, were they getting, was anybody like, we would go in and give them integrity briefings and tell

them, don't do this, don't do this, here's why, yada, yada, yada. But like, were they really understanding the consequences of their actions? I don't know, you know, until it's in their face and until they're like getting the cuffs put on. So I think there's some of that as well. Now from the corruption aspect, were you able to spot just by, you know, seeing how someone moved around in their behavior that they were dirty? Or did you actually have to have someone you know, whistle blow on it or an inmate snitch or whoever? It depends. Like we had, there were people that, like,

that gave off clear signals, right? Like, I mean, you know, there are guys who are showing up in vehicles they shouldn't be driving that are doing, you know, like they're living well above their means for what their government salary should be. And, I mean, that's a, like, Like, you can see that stuff from the moon. I mean, like, you know what, like, a GS-12 or a GS-13 salary is in the Rio Grande Valley. And you know that this guy is driving something that, you know, like, he absolutely cannot afford.

There was one guy, and he just, he was sentenced, I think it was just sentenced last year, like last September. But he, so my wife is from the Rio Grande Valley. And her family, they're like ranchers down there. And this guy, he was like a CBP officer. He's a dog handler. And he was getting paid at the port of entry to, like, pull his dog off of loads. And he had been on everybody's radar for a long time. But because the cartel, like, was doing him a solid and setting him up with some stuff to hit too,

it was really hard to nail him because he looked like a really good officer. But everything that we had on him was that he was moving dope through and he was using his dog to let it through. He drove up to my wife's uncle's ranch one time where he had a horse. He offered him $10,000 for the horse, cash. and like my uncle knew what he did or my wife's uncle knew what he did and he knew what I did and he like told me about he's like hey you know this guy I'm like I know that guy he's like he just offered me $10,000 cash for a horse has he got that kind of money I'm like that's a good question you know so like that sort of stuff I'm like guys were like throwing cash around the way that they shouldn't and very few people you're going to find are like when they when they're corrupt like that are like sticking in a 401k or something you know they're like they're spending what's coming in because they look at it as like found money It's not part of their budget. It's part of like, you know, here today, going tomorrow.

So why does those guys get stupid? Yeah, they say the flashy drug dealers are the ones that, or I interview so many drug dealers and they always say it's like the flashiness. Yeah. That can, you know, and living that lifestyle that gets them caught quickly. I had a partner, like, we would be out to in surveillance when I was with DEA. And we'd be like in a bad neighborhood. Like, there's like neighborhoods in deep south Texas that are like, I mean,

it's like everybody in that neighborhood is is doing something cartel related we're doing something trafficking related as you roll in there and like you know you'd set up and do a surveillance on a stash house or whatever and you'd see just see the the traffic coming and going you're just like this guy's just like advertising as a drug dealer you know it's just like he's got the rims he's got the like got the like gothic script on the back he's got you know the brand new car that like you know the brand new forward explorer when they changed the body style and he's got all you know murdered out and everything you're like you're like you're like in this neighborhood where like literally like you know like barefoot children and dogs are running around. It's like an impoverished neighborhood. And you're

rolling in here with that thing. And like, you don't think everybody knows what you do. Like, it's the middle of the day on the Tuesday. And you're like not in a suit and tie. I mean, like, it's not hard to like figure out when somebody, like, it's not like the wire, right? It's not like, you know, like there's not a lot of stringer bells out there who are like going to like night class and like learning how to invest in real estate or whatever with it. They're going to like put it out there. Like I got money. I'm showing it off. And unfortunately, a lot of the corrupt agents, you know, they act that same way. You were mentioning that he was a dog handler, that guy that tried to buy the horse.

Is it possible to corrupt a dog? Or are they already so well trained when the handler gets it? No, it's just it's, and I didn't go through dog school, but there's like a hole for like CBP and like Border Patrol. There's like a whole academy for that. And like you go with your dog and you learn to use the dog. So like the dog and the dog handler know each other and understand each other in a way that like you or I wouldn't recognize what it's a lot. alerting on or how it's alerting or why. Like, it's often very subtle when the dog alerts.

Like the things that you think a dog does when it alerts, you know, like from the movies or whatever, like the barking and all that stuff. It's not typically how it is. Like, it might just be the dog sits or it might just be the way the dog looks at the handler. It gives them the hint that they found something, that they're looking for the reward. Give me my, you know, like chew toy or whatever it is I get when I find something. So the handler knows the dog better than anyone. So it's a lot easier for the handler to, you know, recognize those subtleties or to ignore those subtleties.

And I think that's what happens a lot of the time is, you know, it's like he just, you know, the dog did its alert and he just pretended he didn't see it, right, and waves it through. So that's more often than not. I don't think you corrupt the dog so much as you ignore the dog. Okay. Yeah, because you see the TSA dogs now with the Homeland Security agents, they are so calm that the dogs and they don't make a peep. No, no. And like, I mean, it depends on the dog. Like a lot of the dogs that I saw that I dealt with were Belgian Malinois, more so.

than more so than like German Shepherds. You'd see a lot of Malinois. They're incredibly smart dogs, hardworking dogs, high drive. But I have no idea. Like I would, you know, I had to drive through the checkpoints too. Like if I, like in the Rio Grande Valley,

100 miles from the border, they have checkpoint, they have border patrol checkpoints set up. So if you ever went down for like spring break in South Padre Island, or if you went to Maine, if you went to like Holton, Maine and drove through to Canada,

coming back through within 100 miles of the border, you're going to have to go through a border patrol checkpoint where it's just a quick immigration check. You roll through. It's like going to a toll booth and they're like U.S. citizen, you say, yeah, and unless you're like sitting there,

like sweating and freaking out, like they're probably not going to secondary you. Most people are like, okay, go, go. But they have dogs working the line as well. And, you know, I've gotten sent to secondary when I was a, when I was an agent. And, you know, I'm like, all right, whatever. And what ended up happening was kind of funny is I had, I was in my government vehicle, but I was, I was playing closed because I was a special agent. And I got secondary at a border Border Patrol checkpoint, and I hadn't seen what the dog did. It just like, it didn't, like, freak out. I was kind of expecting, like, if I'm alerting, the dog's going to be jumping up and down, pawing at the car, whatever. It just, like, sat there. And I got secondary and got it out of the car,

and I'm like, hey, guys, I'm on duty, I'm armed. And they're like, oh, okay, all right. I'm like, what did the dog alert at? I'm like, you tear my car apart, whatever. And they're like, oh, the dog alerted, is it a bomb dog? Is it a gun dog? What kind of dog? And they're like, he's not cross-trained. He's a drug dog. And I realized, I was like, you know, I had like six kilos in my car, like two days ago, because we had what we call sham. So you have like typically if you're doing like an undercover, like you might have like X number of real stuff, but the rest of it's not real and you're like, you know,

using it for your operation. I had like delivered dope to like an operation in that car a few days before. And whatever it had been in the car and the dog like alerted and sat and, you know, so it was enough there was like no residue or anything, but he was sensitive enough to it that these like taped up kilos that had been in my car for a legitimate. at like work purpose were still,

he was still sensitive enough to it that he alerted. But I couldn't have told you what the alert was. I mean, it was like he just sat and looked at his guy. So if you weren't an agent

and that was a regular person, would they detain that person just for suspicion that they're, you know, moving things across? They would have, like at a Border Patrol checkpoint. Yeah, they would have

called secondary. It was sent the vehicle secondary and then they would have like scoped it. They would tore it apart. They would have done it. If the dog was alerting on it, they would tore that car apart

looking for whatever they were alerting on. And so, yeah, that's where I like, I always like, I tell people, I'm like, hey, listen, like, so CBD is, like, legal in Texas now. It's legal in most states, right, because of the farm bill. But, like, if you've got one of those vape pens that has, like, THC oil in it and you go through a checkpoint, like, a dog's going to alert on that. You know, you're going to get, like, you're going to get secondary. Like, you know, if a dog is trained for, like, to smell marijuana to smell THC, like, they're going to alert on that totally legal product. Like, you're not going to be arrested. but it's going to inconvenience your day.

You're going to be sent to secondary. You're going to sit there while they tear your car apart, where they look at everything. You might even get set in, like, a detention cell while they're doing all that. So, yeah, it happens to, like, spring breakers all the time. This is, like, kids from, like, Austin or Houston drive down to South Padre Island for spring break, and they, like, come back, and, you know, somebody's got, like, a dime bag in the car or something like that. And it's like, that's a bad day, you know, like, because the dog alerted.

And now it's like, well, all right. Can they untrain these dogs, or how old that's, just get phased out as the dogs get older and new dogs get brought in for marijuana? The work life of the dog is, it's pretty short, right? But a lot of them are like cross-trained. Like some of them are trained to do bombs or ammunition or whatever else. Others are trained for dope. Some are cross-trained.

I got some buddies that did that that were like dog handlers, dog trainers. They would know better than I would. But I do know that the work life is pretty short. So, like, they cycle through pretty quickly. Like, you know, a dog's life might be whatever it is, 10 or 12 years, but their work life might be, you know, three or four, something like that. Because the amount of time that they spend, you know, sucking gas fumes and being out in the hot and doing all of that stuff, it, you know, it wears them down.

So they retire pretty young. Now the border's such a hot topic right now. Do you think that the border's more secure now than it was before? God, no. And why do you think that is, even with technology, advancements and everything? Because we got the vacancy sign turned on. I mean, it doesn't matter what the technology is if you're not doing the fundamental thing that you need to do to dissuade people from coming across, which is have consequences for that action,

right? Like if, like, look at San Francisco, for instance, like, they have literal signs posts about like shoplifting, you know, amount of shoplifting must be under $900. Like, what do what do you think people are going to do? They're going to stop shoplifting? No, they're going to shoplift $899, right? They're going to take advantage of what's available to them. Like, if you, if you broadcast to the world that, that bank robbery was no longer going to be prosecuted. Do you think we'd have more or less bank robberies? I mean, it just kind of goes, it kind of goes with that. Like, we had a very secure border in 2020 was a different time because obviously the pandemic, but we had a relatively, a relatively secure border

compared to what it is now, where I think the top number of entries we had under the Trump administration was like 50,000 people a month. We've had a dozen months of over 200,000 under Joe Biden, of over 200,000 rather. And you're talking about just overwhelming the system, just flooding the system, because word has gone out that all you have to do is say one word and you're going to get a permiso,

you're going to get a notice to appear, you're going to get sent into the interior, never to come back for your court hearing, and that word is asylum, if you just say asylum. And asylum is a very specific thing. In immigration law, you have to, in order to get asylum, you have to meet a very specific,

it's like eight different things that can qualify you for asylum, but effectively, to put it in layman's terms, you need to be persecuted by your own government and you need to be persecuted because of your race, your religion, your sexuality, like your political affiliation, you have to be persecuted, right?

It can't just be like my, I live in a shitty country that has like a lot of, like, gang members or whatever. Like, it can't be like that. Like, that's not a asylum claim. But when we allow people to make asylum claims and we don't test them for credible fear. We don't test them to see that they truly have that fear of persecution of their own government.

They just come in and they say, I'm claiming asylum. And then we let them into the country. Everybody in their mother sees that for what it is. It's a backdoor entry to the country. And then we complain that, oh, well, the asylum system is backlog. We're not going to be able to hear these cases for eight years. We're just going to cut a bunch of them loose. And that's what's happening.

We've had over 350,000 people, enter the country, claim asylum, get released into the country, and then DHS drops their cases. And so they're just in the country illegally with no status, and it's essentially a backdoor amnesty. Whereas the way it was done before and the way it should be done according to the law is if you approach the port of entry, one, you should approach the port of entry.

You shouldn't be going between the ports of entry trying to get around Border Patrol. If you do that, that should be an automatic disqualifier. If you truly have an asylum claim, you're walking up to the first person and the first country that you arrive at that is a government official in a safe country.

A lot of these people, they're crossing through three or four countries to get to our border. And then they're trying to evade apprehension at our border. And only after they get caught at our border, do they say, oh, asylum? Now, that should be instantly, okay, fine, you want to claim asylum? According to the law, you're going to be held until that case is adjudicated. You're going to be held in an immigration detention center, like the one that I was describing, until that case is adjudicated. That might take eight months. That might take a year.

They might take two years. Do you still want to claim asylum? No, I'll go back, right? So you don't actually have a credible fear, in other words. So you call their bluff. And that's how it works because they're supposed to be detained. When you remove that incentive or when you give them an incentive by removing that disincentive, everybody and their mother is saying asylum, asylum, asylum, asylum.

And we're not testing them for credible fear and we're just letting them into the country. And, you know, if you pass through four countries to get here, you probably don't need asylum. If you try to evade capture at the border, you probably don't need asylum. If you needed asylum, you're fleeing, say, Columbia because, you know, there's a law against your political party and they're cracking down to your political party and you are going to get murdered, you're going to have your bank accounts closed, whatever the case may be, and you flee, you cross the border into Panama or whatever it is, like, that's where you claim asylum. Like, I need asylum. I'm fleeing my tyrannical government. You don't walk through the woods for, you know, four weeks, five weeks, try to evade Border Patrol and only after you get caught by Border Patrol claim. asylum. But that's what we're doing. So, yeah, that's the long way to say the system is broken,

but it's broken. It's been broken by policy decisions intentionally. The law that existed under the previous administration still exists under this administration. It's the way that the administration chooses to enforce the law or not enforce the law that makes the difference in terms of who's coming across. So it's not a question of that the border itself is like under security. Like people aren't able to sneak past it as easily because you hear about like building the wall, this and that it gives people the impression that the actual border itself, their security lapses. It depends where you are, right?

Like the border is, like our northern border is 5,500 miles long, right? And mostly unsecured. It's the world's largest undefended border, longest undefended border. Southern border is like 2,200 miles long. And if you're in San Diego, you might be in an urban environment, right? So a wall or some sort of fencing, and there is fencing, and there are walls long before Like going back to 2007, the Secure Fence Act was passed, and there were portions of the Rio Grande Valley where I worked have fencing and have walls. So that has existed, but not every section of the border needs that, it requires that or should have that.

There are parts of, like I said, San Diego that's very urban or El Paso that's very urban. It's very easy for someone if you don't have some sort of physical barricade or structure in between Mexico and the United States for somebody to just disappear into the city, right? versus a place like Arizona, parts of Arizona, it's just desert, or parts of like West Texas where it's Big Bent National Park where it's just mountainous and dry and air and there's no cities anywhere around. Most people aren't going to be crossing through there. Now they can, and if you're going to cross through there

and you have a guide and everything, it's probably because you have something really dangerous you want to bring it across or you are a really dangerous person who doesn't want to get caught. But most people, you know, are going to be dissuaded by some sort of barricade or some sort of technological barricade. And those things do exist and they help. So you're always going to have people come across the board. It's never going to be 100% secure.

You can't have, it's not like, you know, Game of Thrones where you build a giant wall or anything. You can't have like people like guarding it nonstop, 24-7 every mile of the border. We just don't have the manpower. We don't have the ability. We don't have the, there's a lot of places where there's nowhere for border patrols just to live.

Like if they're going to work a portion of the border, there's parts of the border where they're like staying in temperament, housing at the National Park Service and they go down for three days and then they're off to kind of like firemen you know you're at you're there and then you're off like how do you recruit people to do that job where there's no Walmart within four hours or you know so it's it's hard to staff up a lot of parts of the border um so it's never going to be 100% secure but you can make it a lot more secure by simply disincentivizing people from coming here by by telling them if you come here you're not going to be let into the country are you going to spend 10,000

dollars, you know, with the cartels to be smuggled into the United States. If you don't have a guarantee that you're going to be led into the United States, probably not. You might stay in your own country. And that's, I mean, that's the biggest, that's the biggest security apparatus that we have that we're not using is the laws that exist. Now, those agents that are placed in, like, those kind of areas at the border that you were just discussing. Yeah.

That's got to be pretty boring, right? How much action could they even be seeing? I mean, yeah, like places like Presidio, Texas, like way out in the middle of nowhere. I mean, you'd be surprised. Like, if you were in Arizona, you were probably dealing with more criminals than, like, deep south Texas. Deep South Texas, it's like a lot of people coming across for economic reasons because it's the closest port of entry or closest part of the U.S. border to the Northern Triangle, Nicaragua, Guatemala, El Salvador. And so a lot of people are coming here for economic reasons who want to come here to find a better life, to get a job, to do all of that stuff. They're crossing there.

have criminal records, people who don't want to be caught, are going to those more remote places. So in some ways, yeah, you're going to have a more boring job in some ways, but in other ways you're going to, you know that when you are encountering someone, you're probably encountering people who are truly do not want to be caught. So the tracking aspect of the job, the fun stuff that a lot of guys are really, really good at, that becomes really, that can be very exciting. That can be a very interesting part of the job. And that's happening more in those maybe more remote places. we're trying, people are trying to avoid being apprehended. No, they say it's such like a long treacherous journey.

A lot of people come like malnourished or, so are they really a danger when they make it across if they are able to make it across? Are you guys on edge about that or? Depends who. I mean, I can tell you my first week down there. I had two guys from Libya that ended up in front of me. I was sitting and processing. I was like kind of learning how to like intake someone.

and so the way it would work is someone would get apprehended. We bring them to like kind of like a jail, almost like you get your in process, you get fingerprinted and rolled, all that stuff. You create the paperwork for them, and then you figure out where they're going to go while they're waiting for their hearing. And so I was kind of in my first week or two on the job,

I was learning that process. And the guy sits down in front of me, and I assumed I go down there to the Rio Grande Valley. I'm assuming it's all like people from Mexico or whatever coming across to look for work. And it's like two guys with Libya, and you're from Libya and you like start talking to them and you realize like this guy was caught two miles away from this guy. They crossed independent of one another and this guy had cash on him

$10,000 and this guy had $15,000 cash. Who's giving these people cash? Why are they crossing independent of one other? Libya is a country that has strong ties to terrorism that like all that stuff starts to come through like and you realize very quickly when you go down there that the entire world is coming across that border. So yeah, there are people who don't want to be caught. There are people who are dangerous. We had a lot of like MS-13s, a lot of 18th Street, who are coming across in large groups of people from El Salvador, people from Honduras who were trying to get in and not, I mean, a lot of those guys are like, I mean, they have face tattoos. It's hard to, like, avoid. But a lot of those guys,

if they just had stuff covered up or whatever, they were, they were trying to, like, avoid being found out for what they were. Those guys are incredibly dangerous. I worked on flights. We had flight ops kind of like Conair, and we would take... I went on Conair. Did you? So, yeah. I was in Oakland. Oklahoma City and that is where you see the movie gang type Mexican, Spanish face covered. Looking to start 2026 with an unforgettable getaway. Fiji Airways sale is on now. Fly nonstop round trip to Fiji from just 748 or enjoy a sunny Fiji stopover on your way to Australia with round trip fair starting from 839. As a one world alliance member and American Airlines Advantage program partner, your miles go further

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There's some interesting people on those flights, right? So we, so the marshals would, so marshals have their own planes. Like that's, that's con air, right? And then ICE has a fleet of planes that they lease and I think they have some of their own. And there's coordination between them. But what we'd have is like sometimes the marshals would pick up guys and like say Rikers and fly them down to us. Then we put them in our facility.

and then we would coordinate flights into El Salvador or Honduras. So I was taking back like whole plane loads of MS-13s into like I would work out of our hub in San Antonio for like three weeks at a time. And I would fly every single day into Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras, Nicaragua. And it would be a plane full of MS-13s at least once a week. And so you get on that plane and it's like you and like, you know, the pilot and like the flight crew. And it's just like a whole bunch of like just the like most murdery dudes you've ever seen. And most of them have never, haven't been to El Salvador since they were little, little kids. You know, they came here because the Civil War in El Salvador, and they grew up in Los Angeles or wherever they grew up.

And they're like straight killers. And like, I landed in El Salvador one time. And I didn't speak much Spanish. And so you land in Honduras, Guatemala, El Salvador, wherever. And you had a different intake process, right? You're like repatriating these people to their country. So you've got all of there. A lot of them don't have passports.

They've got like temporary travel documents that were issued by their consulate. And so you get them off the plane. They've got their property. You're doing all that stuff. You're bringing them to where they need to go. And then you're refueling the plane and getting ready to fly back. And you're flying back pretty much slick. So it's kind of cool.

Like you had to fly back in a 737 like it's a private jet, which is kind of neat. It's like you and like the 10 people you're with, including the pilots. So you get to like sit in the jump seat and do all that fun stuff. But I was in El Salvador one time we landed. We're getting people off. And oftentimes the military would meet the plane. be like kids. I mean, you're talking like teenagers and they're like, you know, their guns or they're like flagging everybody with their rifles and you're just like, hey, man, so like I would

get off the plane. The first thing I would do is I'd grab like, we had like, you know, coolers filled of sodas or whatever on the plane. I would go hand out sodas to all the, all the military that was meeting the plane because it meant their hands were off their rifle. So it was like, here's a Coca-Cola, man, have this. You need anything? Here you go, bud. And I was doing that one time this guy who had like the, you know, the epaulettes with the stars on them and all that stuff. I'm like, I haven't seen like a generalissimo before. Like, what's this guy about? He comes up to our flight nurse and he starts talking to him in English.

And our flight nurse, like, flags me over because I was like the only representative of DHS. I was like the government representative in El Salvador that day. And he comes, he flags me over. He says, hey, he wants to talk to the, he wants to talk to the Hefe. I'm like, all right, yeah, I guess that's me. So I start talking to him. And he says, you see all these men getting off the planes, all MS-13s? I said, yes, sir.

He said, I want you to know, these men will never be a problem for you again. I said, okay, no, I appreciate that. And like the flight nurse is looking at me and like, we both heard this. And he's like, and he turns, he emphasizes it. He goes, what I'm saying is these men will never be a problem for you again. I'm like, understood, sir. Yes, got it. And I like, look at the flight nurse.

I'm like, all right, I think we're about fueled up. Let's get out of here. And he like, as we're walking back the plane, he's like, I think he's telling us he's going to have these guys murdered. I'm like, I think you're right. Let's get on the plane. He's like, why aren't we going to do something? I'm like, it's not our country, man. Like, this is El Salvador.

We're guests here. Like, he didn't tell me he was going to murder them, but he, like, told me flat out, like, these men will never be a problem for you again. And at that time, you know, El Salvador was like, they were teetering on the verge of civil war with all the gangs and all the stuff that they were dealing with. So if, like, a government official with, like, stars on his shoulders is telling you, these guys are never coming back to the U.S., I guarantee it. They're never going to be a problem for you again.

But even if he did. Read between the lines. Even if he did tell you that he was going to kill them, you couldn't do anything. What could I have done? You just need to get out of there. No, like, I got home. home like I told you know like the flight ops people back you know back back back home like what I had witnessed and seen just in case that ended up in the news you know like you know

130 like ms 13s like lined up on a wall and and shot in El Salvador like probably would have been a blip on the radar for someone so I reported it up the chain but like that sort of stuff happened you know like it was like you know you're dealing with like I don't I I deported a murderer to Mexico one time and like that guy like damn near piss his pants because he knew what he was in for when he got turned back over. Like we had like the whole SWAT team and everything walked up the bridge and like this guy he had killed the cop at Mexico. And so he gets, you know, he fled to the United States.

I know if he had a visa, how he ended up there, but he gets caught and he gets returned. Extraided. And we basically, we brought him to the point of the Gateway International Bridge where, you know, the U.S. side, Mexico side. And the Mexican, I think it's like they're called AFI or something offy. But they're like all like, you know, done up in their camo with their like, ball of clavas on all that stuff like all like totally armed out they've got like an armor personnel what it is it's like it's like a it's like a machine gun mounted on like an armored truck like sitting on

the bridge and we brought that guy up and he's like shaking in his boots and he's like he's looking to me as like he's like please no please no please no like you know speaking the limited english he has i'm like i can't do anything about this man because he knows what's going to happen you can get over there and he's probably not going to get traditional justice you know he's going to get you know like these guys from the Mexican Marines and the military, whoever it was, the state police, I don't know who it was, but they like, they meant business. And this guy, like, understood that they meant business. So, I mean, yeah, like, that sort of stuff all the time. There's nothing you can do about it. I mean, it's like, I had a guy, I had returned to Germany once. He had done his sentence in the U.S. He'd been ordered deported. We landed in Germany. And the German officials, like, they pulled my partner and I side at the airport. We're turning him over to them. Like, can you guys wait here for a second? I said, sure. They spoke English. And so we're sitting there kind of in the lobby in their like immigration processing area and The guy comes back out to us and our detainee is sitting there with us. He's like what's going on? What's going on? He's been in the US for like 20 years He had gotten in trouble. I think he had like

He had like an affair with like his 17 year old babysitter or something so he had been like charged with Like a sexual assault crime like a rape related crime like statutory rape And he was like kind of expecting we're gonna arrive there and he was gonna get with released and like he had family still in Germany and they were going to meet him at the airport and kind of set him up with a place to live because he had like lost everything because he had done time in jail in the U.S. and then been ordered deported. And so we're sitting there for like 45 minutes and finally the German official comes back to us and he's like he's like I'm sorry we had to we had to look and see if he's done enough time. And I was like no he did he did his sentence he did his sentence in

state jail he got turned over to us we're deporting me. He's like no no no he's like we have an equivalent law here and we need to make sure that he has done an appropriate amount of time for the crime that he was charged with. And so we're going to take him into custody so that he can complete his sentence. And the guy's like looking at me, he's listening to this. He's like, look to me like, what you mean? I'm like, I don't know what to tell you, man. Like, I don't have any authority here. He's like, you can't let him do this. I'm like, what am I supposed to do? I'm in Germany, you know, like, I don't have a gun. I don't have a bad. I'm like, I'm here to deliver you to them. This is, this is their game at this point. So, you know, that sort of stuff

happens. And you kind of end up in these like really awkward situations where you're like, go with God, my friend. I'll see you later. I hope that works out for you because you can't do anything else. Yeah, when I went on Con Air, I was expecting it to be like the movie Con Air with the security and it wasn't like that.

We were all just like on a plane with the marshals. It was a shitty literally like a duct tape type. There was like tape on the wing plane. Are these planes secure to transport? Because I was sitting next to a guy that killed like eight people. Good Lord. And he was just sitting there handcuffed and shackled. It's not like he was in a separate like

cage like in the movie or anything like that, you know, it just didn't feel really secure. No. Yeah. So to answer that question, yes. Like the flights where I was taking like MS-13s back, like you're talking like a 737 fits maybe 130 people. All of them are cuffed and shackled. And, you know, typically they were coming to us, either we were taking them from ICE custody or they're coming to us from Marshall custody. If they're coming from Marshall custody, they were getting off the plane.

We were basically just exchanging cuffs with them. So the marshals would be like, we need 130 sets of cuffs or whatever to replace the ones we're giving you, right? So we'd never like took those guys out of their cuffs for shackles. It was just like off one plane onto ours. And then we were taken off and bringing them back to wherever they needed to go because we had the international side of the mission. And those guys were well behaved in large part because you would get on the plane, you would explain to them kind of like the story about the general. Like, you know, like here's a deal. Like we you guys are going to be cuffed.

You're going to be shackled. It's a two and a half hour flight, whatever it is from like San Antonio to San Salvador. when we land there, as far as I'm concerned, you're not my problem. You are being repatriated to your country. You're now a citizen of El Salvador. It's, you know, what they do with you at this point, whether they put you in jail, whether they allow you to walk free, I can't do anything about. What I can tell you, though, is if you cause any problems on this flight,

I will let them know that you cause problems on that flight. And I don't think that's going to end well for you. And then they understood what that meant. Like, I wasn't like threatening them like, I'm going to, you know, make sure that I go talk to my general friend over there. But it was like, you're letting them know that like, hey, like, you're out of American airspace because that's what you worry about is like you get out of like U.S. airspace and they're like, okay, like is this a free for all, right?

Like, can we do what we want now? Because you're not, we're technically out of your custody. And it's like, no, you're going to behave yourselves if you don't. They're going to hear about it. If you behave yourselves, they're going to hear about that too. So it's up to you what they hear. I'm going to report exactly what's accurate and honest. And I never had a problem on a plane because of that.

That was a powerful incentive for them to behave themselves. I'll show that two and a half hour flight. You know, the trading of the handcuffs that you were just describing brings back a lot of memories because they would literally have those carts. Those carts, the milk parts, right? And they would exchange them because during transport, I was transported so much, the prison buses and whatnot, they would literally take it from one, put it onto the other one. It was a large process, and that ate up a lot of the time.

That is a ton of the time. That is like you're checking everybody, making sure you've got everybody's property, everybody's medication, the flight nurse has to check everything. There's a lot that goes through prison transport. And we dealt a lot with the marshals, you know, just exchanging, like they would fly into Brownsville or Harlingen or El Paso or wherever. And then we would meet them there and take their people. And a lot of times we were loading them on the buses if they were Mexican nationals that needed to be taken back across the border. And we would drive the 45 minutes south and get rid of them there.

But generally it's secure. Like I had a couple of guys where the marshals didn't give medications that they needed to give and they were like freaking out or having trouble. Or like there are times you'd like get to the port of entry and you've got a bus load of guys who are about to get Marshall's. across the border. They're about to get sent back to Mexico and they start rocking the bus or start doing something that's like causing disruption, not because, in large part, because they want to stay in the U.S., right? So they're like, if I can cause one last disruption, maybe I'll get sent back to jail. Maybe I'll get pulled off this thing and get sent back to jail in the U.S. and it prolongs me having to go back to what I have to face in Mexico.

So you would have that periodically. But by and large, like, if I were seeing people across to Mexico, like, I had guys like, they'd look at me and they'd be like, I'll see you tomorrow way. They're just like, all right, man, job security, you know, like, because you know they're coming back as soon as they can. Now, from an inmates' perspective, the marshals that are on the airplane, are these, like, retired marshals? Because these were all marshals that were completely out of weight, they're overweight. They did not look like they're not deputies. Yeah, they should not have been in law enforcement from our angle. And this is what we were all talking about on the plane.

No, they're typically not deputies. They have like a subposition that's like a transport officer position. And those guys aren't, they're not like law enforcement officers. They don't go to the same academy, like the marshals who are doing like warrant service and like, you know, arresting fugitives and all that stuff. That's not them. These guys, a lot of them, they might be, some of them might be prior law enforcement, but for the most part, they're going to be like the equivalent of like a BOP, like guard.

High turnover job, difficult job, but low pay. So you're talking like GS7, GS9. And that immigration used to have a job. equivalent to that that they called a detention enforcement officer. And that's essentially what it is. It's like a transport officer. So for me, like when I was on ice flights, most of the people that were on my flights were not federal employees at all. They were guys who were like, you know, we'd get like a contract with the local police department. And so it'd be like 10 guys who were off-duty cops for joining you for those flights in Del South or as long as they could get a

passport and like they'd get an official passport they'd go with us. And so like that was typically yet, but the marshals, yeah, you might have, like, one deputy or one, like, supervisory deputy on board, and then the rest are, like, transport staff. Gotcha. Yeah. Why did you decide to leave internal affairs for that? So I was in internal affairs for the last 12 years of my career. I actually, when I, quote, unquote, retired.

When I left the government, I was still in internal affairs. But I was on the border for about 10 years. And after we made, like, a couple of large cases, and one involved the sheriff of Hidalgo County. he ends up going to jail for five years for corruption his son goes to jail the son's still in jail for narcotics trafficking and um you know we kind of hit a point where like you know the op tempo was pretty high like you learn in dog ears on the on the border like it's just i mean it's just constant the corruption and everything else and like you know you get to a point where it's like i kind of want to do something different that's a little bit less like you know running and

gunning and so there's an opportunity to go off the border and go to our san antonio office and there was a lot more fraud work to do there, a lot more cases involving telefraud, involving FEMA fraud, involving other types of money laundering and wire fraud stuff. And so I took that opportunity, and then I finished my career off the border. So I stayed with internal affairs, but the internal affairs stuff that I was doing was more money related and, you know, it was more, as my wife calls it, nerd crime. Which I didn't even think Homeland Security would cover. Yeah. Unless it related to, like, terrorism or something like that. So when I covered, so FEMA is under Homeland Security. And anytime there's a storm, the government comes in, throws money at it, or COVID.

Yeah, the pandemic was huge. A lot of that money flowed through FEMA. And so all of that stuff, like anytime the government is throwing money out, there's limited accountability, and there's a lot of people stick their hands out if you shouldn't get it. And it's very easy to scam the government. And it's a numbers game. They recognize and understand that, like, money that gets given out today because this disaster is probably not going to get looked into for a while. And so, you know, you got an opportunity here to take advantage of something. and then you play the numbers game.

You recognize that there's only so many, only a certain percentage of the people who scam are actually going to get held accountable. And so a lot of like, just, you know, you're just your kind of like general dirtback scammers, like kind of, like the hot check sort of like stuff, like the, you know,

the people who who are doing like the little kind of crimes, they'll take advantage of FEMA as well. And they'll get their like $3,000 or their $5,000 for claiming their apartment got flooded or whatever. And so there's a lot of that stuff that falls. under fraud for DHS that we have to look at.

And we typically look at higher level stuff like $30,000, $40,000 or more is how you get in the door with the attorney's office. They don't care about the small dollar stuff that can go to the state and local. But I got into looking into tele fraud because Indian call centers, the same people who are calling and impersoning the IRS, impersoning Social Security Administration, impersonating Amazon, or impersonating DHS. And they were calling people who are in the U.S. legally on visas. threatening them with deportation if they didn't pay up money.

So they would have to go and buy gift cards at Walgreens or whatever and load $2,000 on them and scratch them off and give the numbers to the people on the phone because they're impersonating DHS. I started getting those reports. I was like, I think there might be a case to make here. You know, like, I know this is happening in India, but there's a network of runners here.

There's a network of mules who are vacating the proceeds of those scams. And if we can track those people down, maybe we can flip them, maybe we can name and shame the people in India. Wow. Now, something that I noticed from the pandemic that exploded specifically on social media and even like my roommates were trying to do this

was there was like these, and it's still popular now or like these cash app scams. Can you talk about what that, what exactly these scams are? Because people would give like their cash app and then get like $25,000 of like the COVID relief money deposited in. I never understood how that works. There's a lot of different scams out there. The COVID, like the Paycheck Protection Program stuff, the, excuse me, the idle stuff, which is the

economic injury. I forget the D&ELR, something loan, basically COVID relief funds. Paycheck protection program, you could get a $10,000 grant. You had to demonstrate that you had a business and that that business was impacted by that by COVID and that you continue to employ people throughout and you could get cash for it. A lot of people early on, the pandemic, recognize the loopholes for those things, how they could do it, and then learned how to scam it, and then turn that into a business. And so it would be like, hey, I'll take 3% off the top of whatever I get. You know, you file your application through me. I'll file it for you. I know how to make sure you get that money, and then that money's going to come into my bank account,

and I'm going to give you all but 10% of it. And so a lot of that cash up stuff, that flipping, a lot of that was that. It was like the moving and the transferring of the money. A lot of it, too, is advanced fee frauds. You know, pay me. number of dollars for rights to this amount of dollars. So there's a whole bunch of different scams without knowing exactly like what your roommates heard about or whatever. Like it's hard to say exactly which one it was, but cash app is a vehicle that they like to use. Yeah, why cash up? Fast transactions, speed of transactions. So you can move through the transactions quicker. You can create a whole bunch of different accounts and it's harder to trace because the good

guys have to follow the law, right? We have to issue subpoenas. We have to like go through it. We have to, again, the IRS guys, the accountants, they have to look at, by line, criminals can move quicker. And so that's pretty much it. It's speed of transactions. It makes it easier. And I think cash app, I could be wrong, but I think they have a crypto, I think there's crypto functionality too.

And stocks, I think. Yeah. And so all of that stuff makes it easier for people like to launder money, to flip money. It's huge in the feds now, too. When I was there, I had no idea what cash app was, but this was 2016. And everyone said, send the money on cash app. Huge. Because a lot of it's untraceable, too. Like, I was able to set up an account linked to a boost mobile pre-tebrose.

paid phone, which is untraceable. Right. Yeah, I mean, and that's essentially what it is. It's like apps like that or gift cards. Like there is a reasonable and real purpose for them, but it also has a functionality that is intended to allow people to do things off the record. And that's not necessarily bad. There's plenty of people who just don't want the government to know what they're doing. It doesn't mean they're doing something illegal. You know, you might buy a gift card and load it with $500 and send you to the college with it so they have money to, you know, if they need something. But A lot of those, the functionality is just perfect for money laundering. It's perfect for crime.

I dealt mostly with gift cards. I dealt less with apps. I dealt less with cryptocurrency. But gift cards, there were like no governors on them. I mean, it was like there were no like red flags, like green dot at the time. Like you could go and load up a card and it's changed now. Like they've, you know, typically once scammers take advantage of something like the companies respond by putting, you know, checks in their system. you know somebody gets a phone call and it's like hey like you owe $10,000 go buy a couple of gift cards and it's very quick for them to go pull cash out of the bank loaded out the gift card gift card gift card gets flipped to several other gift cards and that's essentially what's happening with cash app is it's like flipping very quickly from one person to another so it gets smurfed out into the system it's harder to trace and then that money gets you know they purchased say they go take the

gift card and they purchase a money order with it and then they purchase a money order somewhere else Then they take those money orders and pull them up and put them in different bank accounts. And it just, the volume of transactions that occurs makes it very difficult for law enforcement to trace them just because each one of those things with a different entity, different subpoena, you know, different wait time. And by the time you get all that information compiled and you figure all that stuff out, you know, they're, you know, making 50 other transactions, you know. So it's like you're always kind of playing from behind when you have to play by the rules. and anything that advances an individual's ability or individual's ability to make transactions more quickly and with less information is going to be something

that they dive right into and find ways to use. And now there's all these sites where you can cash a gift card and online convert it in the cash. Yeah, you can sell them. Yeah, and a lot of like, I mean, there's a lot of different ways that they're using eBay. They're using Craigslist. They're using all these different, like, online.

I tell people all the time. Facebook Marketplace, 80% of what's on Facebook Marketplace is a scam. You can usually tell, though. Yeah, I mean, like, you put your car up for sale, and, like, immediately you're getting, like, 30 messages from people asking for the VIN. You know, like, and don't give, if anybody is listening, don't give them the VIN. You know, because they're just going to use it to create a dummy ad and then scam somebody else, or they're going to use it to create a dummy registration

and then pretend it's their vehicle, all that stuff. I mean there's people who are like oh I I need to send can you send me your your PayPal or can send me whatever so that I can I can send you $500 to hold this item and you're like okay that sounds like a good deal but what it really is is it ends up being an advanced fee fraud or they're going to like ask oh can you send this amount back or they're going to over quote unquote over send and then ask you send it back to him and I mean there's just a new scam every minute and certain scams have certain hallmarks and so like you can tell typically like government impersonation is typically india

based like your IRS scam, your Social Security scam, your DHS impersonation scam, your FEMA scams, Amazon scams, those tend to be India call center based. Your lot of scams, your Grants in jail scams, things like that. A lot of that stuff originates in Jamaica, but a lot of it's West African now. A lot of your advanced fee frauds are West African, Cameroon, Benin, Nigeria, places like that. A big one that nobody's doing anything about is a puppy scam. basically they are creating websites for dog breeders on like an industrial scale and so something like eight or nine out of ten websites that you find online advertising a puppy

for sale like let's say you want to buy a sheep a doodle or whatever I have a sheep doodle so you want to buy a sheep a doodle you go you go Google sheepa doodle you know Connecticut and you're like 90% of the websites that you find are gonna be complete BS and they're going to show you pictures that they've stolen from another website and they're they're going to convince you that yeah, oh yeah, we're, the sheep of doodles are in Houston, right? You can, you can pay us X number of dollars to hold one and then it's an entire advance fee fraud where they're going to ship you the dog, but the dog never arrives because, oh, it got stuck at the Atlanta airport and it

needs this, you know, to get it out and it needs veterinary checks and needs X, Y, and Z, and all these things like you're paying little by little and over time you end up getting blood dry out of two or three or four thousand dollars for a dog that doesn't exist and never arrives. and all of that is West African. So they all kind of have their hallmarks and their way of doing business. And the one thing that is true throughout is that once we figure out one way of like

attacking the scam, they pivot, right? So it's just, I mean, the method changes from gift card to cash app, from cash app to money orders, from money orders back to gift cards, you know. It just, it's a game of whack-a-mole, basically. Yeah, and do you think a lot of these low-level scammers can just skate the system

because it's the dollar, amount and they're doing enough to live off of and they'll never get caught because of just how many there are. That's part of it. The other part too is, I think this is more of a government thing, a federal thing, but DEA, you seize things, right? You seize drugs, you seize money, you sees guns. There's a tangible thing that you can take and that you can have your photo op or you can like convert that to cash. You can like actually pay for your own operations by seizing vehicles and homes and all this stuff. You know, there's something that you said about that.

Like, with scammers, like, most of that money is gone into the banking system, right? I always told my victims, and I had thousands of victims I interviewed. And most of the average age of my victim was 73, so most of my victims were elderly. And I would always tell them, because the first question they have is, can I get my money back? Are you going to be able to recover my money? I'm like, that's gone. I mean, that money, the second you sent it to them was sent to 15 different bank accounts. and it's been long since gone and processed

and turned into whatever it was turned into, you're going to get a lot more justice than you are money. And for federal agents, like the dollar amount matters, like you have to have a high enough threshold to get the U.S. Attorney's Office interested, and you have to have enough compelling victims to get them interested. So if you're just like, you know, small dollar scams,

you know, a lot of those guys are going to run those things for a while unless they get a local detective or somebody who's interested in taking that down. because the feds are just going to see it as not worth their time, unfortunately. And also, we're not going to seize anything at the end of the day, right? So we're going to spend a lot of money chasing this person down, a lot of time chasing this person down at the end of the day. What are we getting out of it for the taxpayers?

Well, that's why I was always interested in my case, because compared to other, you know, Ponzi scheme type cases, my dollar amount was very small. And it's not like I was one of those people that bought cars and assets and put my kids through school or houses. Right, right. There was none of that. It was just bad and bad.

investments. It all lost money and they still went to trial. No good plea deal, nothing. You didn't even get offered a plea deal? I did. It was longer than what I got after trial. It worked out well then. Yeah, which normally doesn't. It normally doesn't work out that way. Yeah, but the dollar amount was all. It was only, it was $480,000 dollars compared to like other people that were my age and relatively small. Yeah. Like my big case was a $300 million fraud case. So you're talking about like, you know, apples and oranges there. also depends on where you're at too that might have been big for the area that you're in right and that might have been a big deal for for Connecticut for the district of Connecticut versus like

Southern District of Texas which one of the hottest districts in the country because of all the immigration stuff because of all the dope because of the you know association with Mexico so it just depends where you are as well US Attorney's Office may have more assets in one place versus another they may be more interested in certain crimes one place versus another so it might just been your bad luck that you were it turned out there'd be the best thing ever though yeah yeah worked out for you And probably, you know, if it had gotten to be a higher dollar amount, it wouldn't have worked out so well. So maybe it worked out the timing as well.

Well, yeah. And I also, like, look at these other cases, these individuals never pay back the money, at least mine's an obtainable amount. Like, I pay $1,500 a month now. And then when I have lump sums, I pay more. So I'm chipping away at it. And you see that light at the end of the tunnel. But when you see, like, a wolf of Wall Street or any of these $100 million, and you said $300 million, people are never getting their money back. No.

And that's $300 million that we know about. Like this case, like I estimate that in that case, so this was the IRS scam. If you ever get a telephone call from someone saying this is the IRS, UOS money, that scam started in about 2013. We took it, started about probably about 2012. We took it down in 2016. And we indicted 56 individuals and five entities, five call centers in India. about 25 of the people were domestically located who were actually able to reach out and touch them and grab them.

They were Indian nationals who were operating as money mules in the U.S. Those people all got, I forget how much restitution they got, but it's like shared, right? It's joint and several. I think the phrasing is jointly and severally, but it's shared restitution and yet they'll be paying that, you know, pennies on the dollar. But a lot of those people are going to end up getting deported too.

So like the victims are never going to get made whole. we did seize a certain amount of assets during the takedown. Like some people had like bolt gold or silver or whatever that they had like converted some of their gains into and were able to seize that and converted or we seized I think a couple of vehicles. But by and large, like that stuff like it was a money laundering scheme that just into the into the ether because it went into various bank accounts. It was basically a Hawala scheme where they were just moving money for people in India to people in the U.S. And so there was nothing to seize at the end of the day.

And that $300 million was probably a drop in the bucket because maybe 10% of victims actually report when they get scammed because if you're getting scammed for $10 or $15,000 and you're an elderly person, do you really want to tell your kids that you lost that? Like a lot of them were like so ashamed and embarrassed that they wouldn't talk about it. A lot of them were so convinced by the scammers

that they were doing the right thing that they still didn't believe they'd actually been scammed. They thought they were helping the government. So when I say $300 million, That's $300 million that we know about from the 15,000 or so victims we spoke to. It was probably boatloads more than that. And at the end of it, the good thing is we did get some justice out of it because two of the, probably the highest level domestic target is doing 20 years at BOP.

And then the highest level, kind of the guy who originated, the guy who started the IRS scam, who designed the whole functionality of if you ever get a call from the quote unquote IRS and paid them money over the phone, I arrested the guy who did that. that. Who created that? He, after we arrested everyone in the U.S., after we indicted, arrested, everybody pled out, all of them. They got about 200 years in jail, all total, these 24 guys. One other guy who's kind of the godfather of the scam in India, he gets named in the indictment, along with like 30 other people in India. And the Indian officials over there start going around

asking for, you know, they're not going to turn these people over to us. They're not going to actually extradite them, but they're going to bleed them dry. they're going to go and like shake him down and so this guy starts losing money he's got to pay the bribes he's got to keep the cops off of him because he's been named in our indictment and he realizes like i should probably get my money out of india so he goes over to singapore and he opens up some bank accounts and the Singapore authorities have interpol has a red notes on this guy they know um he's flown into Singapore they let us know and he turned around real quick so we didn't have a chance to go get him which was a pain in the ass we're like god we're never going to touch this guy right he came into

Singapore, he opened up some bank accounts, he left. If he never comes back to Singapore, that's it, we missed her chance. Well, six months later, he did come back. He came to open up some crypto accounts. And Singapore authorities told us when he landed, and we were able to have them grab him and hold him. And we did the first extradition under the UN Treaty Against Organized Crime on that guy. We were able to fly, we were able to get him held by the Singapore authorities. were able to argue in front of the Singapore court system that he needed to be extraded to the U.S. to face justice. And then my partners and I actually flew over into Singapore, arrested him at the jail in Singapore, and then brought him back to the U.S. and he's doing 20 years in BOP now.

Wow. Was that your last big official case? Yeah, I had about like 14 or 15 other arrests after that that were kind of like similarly situated, but that was probably the biggest thing I ever did in my career. And, you know, I left because the Department of Justice turned it into a podcast. they made a big, a big, like, 10-part podcast called Camelian Scam Likely, which is a pretty good listen. It was like a top 10 podcast in 2022 that Sony put out with through the Department of Justice and Campside Media. And I'm in it.

I'm kind of like the main character for the good guys, I guess. And after that, it was just the timing worked out where it was like, okay, I'm never going to do anything in my career that's better than what I've already done. Like this is kind of like the career case that you spent years working on. And then, you know, the timing just so happened to be that my father-in-law got sick with cancer. We knew he had 18 months or so to live. And, you know, it was an opportunity for me to go and be home with my kids so my wife could spend more time with her dad. So the timing worked out really well. But it was kind of nice to, it was like kind of, you know, walking off like, you know, after hitting a home run a little bit in some ways.

Because I had this great case. Great. I mean, he got sentenced in 2020. I left in 2022. So I ran out the clock on a few other cases that I worked. But that was pretty much the kind of the one where you like, you knock that one over the wall and you're like, I'm never going to hit one like that again.

Do you ever wish you stayed because it was such a big part of your life to do that every day, live it, breathe it, you know, blood, sweat, and tears. And now it's a change. It is a change. I mean, I enjoy being in entrepreneurship. My wife, you know, while I was doing that while I was grinding for 15 years with the federal government and doing casework and, you know, getting up early in the morning,

kicking doors in and all that stuff, you know, she was building a business and built an incredible business. And so I had the opportunity to go and work in her business and I enjoyed that very much too. But no, having case works fun. I mean, like, I loved it and I love the fraud stuff. I love the quote unquote nerd crime

because, you know, criminals are smart. Like, like, I always looked at, I always had a lot of respect for the people I was investigating. I looked at it as these are very smart people. And they're not necessarily bad people either. I think that's the other thing. A lot of, like, guys, you'd be surprised how many guys in my role have respect for, if you're not violent, if you're not, you know, like hurting people.

And granted, I didn't like that these guys were ripping off the elderly, obviously. But what I will say about that is that is not a crime in India. The money laundering that we charge them with in the United States doesn't have an equivalent crime in India. So you have to culturally understand that what they're doing they look at as a business, you know, and they treat it like a business. They're like, I mean, they go to work every day with name tags and like with khakis on and like they're running call centers. Like it's a legitimate business. And so, you know, there is a difference in terms of like, you know, what the law is.

Like they kind of look at it is like if you can't, you know, if a sucker gives up his money, it is what it is. And, you know, we see that as a crime. And so, but I look, I had respect for the work ethic because it was a, I mean, it was a ingenious scam and it took a lot of work. So I had a certain amount of respect for them as adversaries. And I looked at it as if I'm smart enough to outsmart these guys, to figure these guys out, to get to the bottom of this, to identify them, to arrest them, then, you know, there were the adversaries, right? And, you know, I think that was the, that's the thing I missed the most is it's kind of like it's a puzzle. It's a challenge. It's, you know, it's seeing what you're made of and what you're capable of.

And can I be one percent smarter than you? And can I figure this out? Can I, and I loved, the thing I loved the most is, I don't know if you ever proffered or you sat down. and did like I did a reverse one okay so like well we would run a proffer basically um you know I would come in like somebody gets arrested and you know they're not going to talk they're not going to talk whatever they get their quarter point attorney I would have like a powerpoint ready for them for their attorney we we called that a reverse proffer we'd invite their attorney to come in and be like this is I'm gonna show this is what I'm gonna show a jury I'm just giving you a sneak preview of the greatest

hits of what your guy did and I just go through the 10 or 15 slides and they'd be like okay I'll talk to him and then course I'd be like all right what's the deal what can we do here you know got to be first to the table whatever and you come and you sit down with that guy. And my favorite thing was to sit down and actually talk to the guys. Because I'd come in, the first thing I'd do is I'd take my watch off. It sits in my pockets. I wanted them to know, like, the most important person on earth right now to me is you.

Like, you were king for a day. I want to hear your story, tell me everything. And they would sit there and talk to me. And, you know, I never took a case to trial. Every single case that I had in my career, pled out in large part because I sat down in a respectful tone with these guys and talked to them about what they did. And I was clear with them that, like, look, like, I don't think you're a bad guy. I'm not sitting here, like, accusing you of being, you know, like, I know why you did what you did.

You got kids at home. You're feeding your kids. You live in an impoverished country. This is a difficult way to make a living. There's not easy ways to make a living over there. You did what you did to take care of your family. And, like, when you have those man-to-man conversations with someone and you recognize that this isn't, like, a evil person at their core, they feel bad about what they did. they understand what they did,

they're going to come to the table a lot more often. And they're going to, like, versus going in being like, I stared at a picture of you every day for two years. And you're my, you know, you're my white whale and, you know, all of that stuff. Like, you come in there and you start, like, thumping your chest and guys shut down. But if you come in there and you, like, make them feel like the most important person on earth and you have a respectful conversation with them,

you say, I've got all day to talk to you. The more that you tell me, the better it is for you. And this is your one chance to get to get it all out. So tell me. And, I mean, I had guys eat down my hand. miss that. I miss that part of it because that to me was like it's the big reveal. Like a lot of times I felt like, you know, the scene in like true detective when like, you know, Matthew McConaughey opens up the, you in it and it's like all the stuff on the walls. And it's like, oh, how this

guy's got like crazy. And it's like a beautiful mind with like the strings and everything. Like, that's what my office looked like a lot of the times. But when that pays off and you're sitting across from the guy that you've been trying to figure out, you can't help to have a certain amount of respect for how ingenious the thing was that he came up with. And then you feel pretty good about yourself for being smart enough to figure it out. And so having that conversation was, that's probably the part I missed the most is having those conversations. That's so interesting because the psychology you're describing is why individuals come on to say a show like this to talk about their experience or they do these Netflix documentaries where the subject will talk about it.

Yeah, yeah. Because it's their opportunity to share their experience uninterrupted and talk about everything and it puts them in the spotlight. You watch like American Greed or whatever and you're like like why these guys talking about like and and i to me like everyone in america got those calls everyone in america got those iris because nobody thinks that anything gets done you know like you get these annoying scam calls all the time and so we took that case down in october of 2016 a week before the presidential election and unfortunately the coverage of the presidential election drowned out you know a lot of the coverage of the takedown so people didn't realize or understand the impact that that our case had on that network of scammers that was that was that was

stealing hundreds of millions of dollars from Americans. And, you know, I mean, like these guys ran an incredible network from a longated period of time. And they've adjusted and changed and they're still doing it in different ways. And they've had to adjust to what we did. But yeah, people don't realize or recognize that. So I come on shows like this because I want people in the general public to know that this stuff does happen, but there are people out there who are going to work really, really hard. They can't guarantee you're going to get your money back, but they will work very, very hard to get you some justice.

And I think people need to know that. I was so grateful for DOJ arranging to have that podcast done, that 10 Part Zero podcast about our case, because I feel like it touched a lot of people, it educated a lot of people, how not to become victims. And I think these podcasts do that as well. But also the recognition and understanding of it's not just like, the federal government is not just they're out there,

just like harassing you or being just like, you know, like a lot of like, there's a lot of stuff in the news that gives federal agents a bad name. I think it's important to celebrate the wins when you're able to take down a network that reached out and touched just about every single American to go out there and talk about it. And fortunately for me, being separated from the government and the case being over, I can talk about it. There was a lot of great guys that I worked with. They're still working for the government. And I live vicariously through them now. I like, you know, I see the cases they make and I'm like, good job, guys. Keep it up. Yeah. It's such a different world. that now you can have these conversations

because years ago you couldn't. Right. There weren't platforms where, you know, a former agent who's seen so many things could sit down with even a felon and have these conversations. I was psyched to come on and talk to you because I was like, this is fun because you,

like you lived the other side of what I investigate. I think that's such a neat, like dynamic to have a conversation like that. So like when I reached out, I was like, this would be a fun one. This would be a great one to talk about. That's what I think makes my show unique and I'm open to all law enforcement.

I do prosecutors, lawyers, law enforcement, everything, which I think makes me different from other shows. Sure. So I have that variety and aspect to it, which is really cool. And I like to listen and, like, we could go on for hours and hours about it. And you also wrote a book, too. I want to make sure it gets plugged in here. Yeah, no, I appreciate that.

Yeah, I wrote a book. It's called In Valor 365 Stoic Meditations for First Responders. So throughout my career, throughout my life, really, I've loved Stoic philosophy. And for those who don't know, like Marcus Aurelius is probably the most famous Stoic philosopher. He was the emperor of Rome 2,000 years ago, most powerful man on earth. And he practiced a philosophy that was all about what's referred to as the dichotomy of control. It's emotional regulation by recognizing what is it within your control and what is outside of your control. And I actually think for people who have done time, for people who have been in prison, for people who are in law enforcement,

anybody who's in a fast and certain and rapidly evolving environment, this is an incredible philosophy. that is a mental mindset tool for you because it reminds you every single day that the world can really be divided up into that what you control and that what you do not and if you focus on those things that are within your control that are within your purview your attitude your actions your reactions your effort you are going to have a much better life than if you were constantly worried and dealing with all the things that are outside your purview so i wrote a book that's basically it's 365 days of meditations it's designed for law enforcement but anyone can pick it up Every single day you can pick it up.

You're going to get a stoic, a quote from one of the stoic philosophers. You're going to get some contextualization. I'm going to take it and turn it into kind of a modern context and use it to explain a situation. And then a journal prompt. So in two to three minutes a day, you can practice this philosophy and kind of get your mind right before you go out and work. And it helps me a lot. It helped me a lot throughout my career to kind of like stay focused and recognize like, you know, not to let the things that were outside of my control let me down or bother me.

And I think for anybody who's listening to this podcast, that's the sort of philosophy that probably would appeal. It's not the beard-stroking, like academic stuff. It's a very lived philosophy that gives you tools to approach your day with what the Greeks call equanimity, greater emotional control imbalance. Is this book allowed in, like, prisons? Because I can really see a lot of inmates reading something like this. Yeah, yeah. I mean, I don't see why it wouldn't be.

There's nothing in it that, I mean, there's nothing in it that's, like, top secret or anything like that. I know there's like a hit list of books that aren't allowed in prison. I mean, I imagine, you know, like Ryan Holiday is probably the most famous author right now who's talking about stoicism. I imagine his books are allowed in prison. I actually think it would be, like Marcus Aurelius, I believe it was, is it Nelson Mandela? I think was like a practicing stoic. I believe I believe Mark Surrealus was an inspiration to him when he spent 30 years from Robin Island in prison. So Epictetus, who is one of the Stoic philosophers, he was a slave.

James Stockdale, who was, who's kind of a modern stoic. He's passed away now, but he was imprisoned in the Hanoi Hilton for eight years after he was shot down over North Korea during the Vietnam War. He was the highest ranking military official in the Hanoi Hilton. He was a practicing stoic. Victor Frankel, who wrote Mansearch for Meaning. He was a practicing stoic. He, of course, lost half his family in the Holocaust. He was in, I forget, I think he was in Burkinau, but he was in several different,

detention centers during the Holocaust. I read that book. You read that book. Yeah. So that's Stoicism. So if you read that in prison, then my book should be allowed that. That's why I think this would be, because this is all these types of books they were passing around in the shoe and solitary.

Same stuff. Yeah, these are all in there. I could definitely see a lot of inmates reading this. It's all about mindset. And Marcus Aurelius wrote a book called Meditations, which if you want to get into Stoicism, that's probably the first place I would go. And Meditations is his journal. This is his personal journal during his.

his almost 20-year reign as emperor. And it's writing to himself how to be a good man, how to do things right, how to have better emotional regulation, how to control the things that you can. So I think it's a if you are listening to this because you are law enforcement or you are a, you know, prison guard, like you're going to find stuff in stoic philosophy that is going to resonate with you if you're listening to this because you've done time or you're doing time now or you're going to be doing time in the future. you're probably going to find stuff in this that's going to improve your life as well.

So I think it's for anyone, but particularly for people who operate in a stressful environment. Well, we'll make sure to put the link to that in the description in the bio. And thank you so much for coming, Christopher. This was an amazing conversation. I really enjoyed this. Super fun, man. Thanks for having me. I enjoyed it.