Locked In with Ian Bick - I Was an FBI Agent — Then I Had to Survive Prison | Bob Lustyik

Episode Date: August 18, 2025

Bob Lustyik spent nearly 25 years in the FBI’s elite intelligence division tracking foreign spies and protecting national security, earning a highly decorated career in the process — until it all came crashing down. Just before retirement, he was arrested and sentenced to 15 years in federal prison for conspiracy to commit bribery. In this gripping interview, Bob shares what it was like to join and train at the FBI Academy, the high-pressure reality of working in counterespionage, the moment everything unraveled, and what prison was really like for a former federal agent. From chasing criminals to becoming one, this is a rare inside look at both sides of the law, told with raw honesty, shocking details, and powerful lessons about loyalty, mistakes, and redemption. #FBI #TrueCrime #PrisonStories #LawEnforcement #SpyStories #FederalAgent #CrimeDocumentary #PrisonLife Hosted, Executive Produced & Edited By Ian Bick: https://www.instagram.com/ian_bick/?hl=en https://ianbick.com/ Get 50% off the Magic Mind offer here: https://www.magicmind.com/IANB50. #magicmind #mentalwealth #mentalperformance Presented by Tyson 2.0 & Wooooo Energy: https://tyson20.com/ https://woooooenergy.com/ Use code LOCKEDIN for 20% OFF Wooooo Energy Buy Merch: http://www.ianbick.com/shop Timestamps: 00:00 Why I Had to Set Prison Precedent 00:33 Introducing Bob Lustyik: FBI Agent Turned Inmate 01:59 Early Life in Sleepy Hollow 03:37 Family, Upbringing, and Childhood Influences 04:35 High School Years: Sports and Reputation 05:28 Struggles in School & Setting Sights on FBI 06:38 Path to FBI: College and Early Career Steps 08:38 Getting into the FBI: Tests and Interviews 11:04 FBI Academy: Experiences and Training 16:07 Inside the FBI: Job Assignment and Early Days 18:07 Counterintelligence Work Explained 22:29 Inside the Spy Game: Missions and Techniques 26:55 FBI vs. CIA: Operations and Culture 29:20 Learning the Craft: Undercover Case Stories 33:53 Awards, Achievements, and FBI Stats System 37:59 Bonuses, Arrests, and Controversies in Federal Cases 43:00 The Unexpected Downfall: How It All Went Wrong 50:00 The Investigation and Indictment 01:00:06 Trials, Solitary, and Adapting to Incarceration 01:09:41 Life in Danbury: Entering Federal Prison 01:16:32 Navigating Prison Life: Groups, Routines, and Respect 01:24:53 What Surprised Me About Prison & Its People 01:33:02 Changing Perspective: Justice System Realities 01:42:42 Release, Home Confinement, and Moving Forward 01:53:04 Reflections & Takeaways: Lessons from Both Sides 02:01:03 Humility, Judging Others & Final Thoughts 02:01:37 Closing Words and Thanks 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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criminal agent. I'm staying here. I said, how do you want to do this? So we went into the showers. I got myself up against the wall. The white boy said, who do you want first? And I was like, let's just get it over. Everybody comes. Bob Lustick was a decorated FBI agent who spent nearly 25 years hunting foreign spies until he became the one in handcuffs. From high-stakes intelligence missions to a 15-year federal prison sentence for conspiracy to commit bribery, Bob's story is a shocking fall from grace. In this episode, he reveals what it's really like to join the FBI, chase America's enemies, and survive prison as a former federal agent. Bob, welcome to Lockton, man. Thanks so much for coming. We've been working on this for a couple years now since I was in my old studio. I came across

your story and I think I reached out to you. You have an incredible story and I'm so excited we get to do this today. Yeah, I'm really happy to be here and thanks so much for the opportunity. You really have a nice setup here and anybody who gets the opportunity should jump at it. Well, thank you, Bob. Sure. And you're our first former FBI agent on the show and a FBI agent that went to prison. Oh, yeah. We got them both at the same time.

Yeah, both sides of the fence. Both sides of the fence. Where'd you grow up, Bob? I actually grew up in Sleepy Hollow, New York, and I'm actually still there. Okay. So I traveled around for work, but I always came back home. Who'd you grow up with? like your upbringing, mom, dad, seven.

I had both parents. I have an older sister. I have a younger brother. It was like a small town. I did the whole small town thing. Little League baseball, played high school football, played lacrosse. We won a state championship in lacrosse.

Then I ended up going to a small college in Pennsylvania where I played football and got it to the FBI. What did your parents do for work? My father actually, believe it or not, started out as a corrections officer, and it's a funny story. He was at a prison that I ended up at. I'll tell you that later on, but it's kind of funny and sad. But I was born with a cleft palate,

and his medical insurance wasn't that good. So he became a landscaper so that he could raise cash to pay for my surgeries. I had 19 of them. And one day we were sitting in the living room. I was about eight years old. And the FBI story was on with Jimmy Stewart, the movie. And he just mumbled, I wish I could have been an FBI agent. And from that day on, that's all I wanted to do.

Really, that one moment put you on the trajectory. I was basically chasing a ghost. I just wanted to do whatever my father couldn't do because of me. I always felt guilty about it. And I wanted to make sure that, you know, he was proud of me. Would he tell you stories from his career as a kid, too? He would. He had an unfortunate situation when he was in,

involving an inmate who had attacked him. So something went on that he wouldn't talk about. I assume it was something bad. And so he didn't really, you know, go into it a lot. He had been a ranger. in the army of Ranger Airborne. And he was a pretty tough, he was a pretty tough guy. What was high school like for you?

For me, I was, you know, your typical small town, like high school hero. I was really good in most sports that I played. I had a lot of friends, great social life. So, you know, I didn't want for anything. We had a wonderful time. Sleepy Hollow at the time was like a factory. town, General Motors was there. We had a very mixed, diverse population. I grew up with a lot of Hispanics,

a lot of blacks, a lot of whites. You know, we were all, there was no racial issues whatsoever in our town. And I think later on, that really helped me when I was thrown into general population. How would people describe you as a kid? I guess they would say that I was loyal, funny, and sometimes scary. So I think that's how it would go. Why do you think scary? Well, growing up, I was aggressive. For example, in my junior year, I led Westchester County in penalty minutes in La Cros.

I was always known for being overly aggressive in the football field. And I wasn't afraid of anything. Was sports a big part of your life at that time? Definitely. I lived on a dead end street, and we had 15 boys all about the same age. So at any given moment, we could have a full football game. We could have a lot of street hockey games, basketball. I mean, we played everything.

What were the steps you were taking in high school to set yourself up to get into the FBI? Because I know when I was in high school, I wanted to join the FBI when I was a kid. And I found out you had to get really good grades and be a high-level performer in school to even get into that college. That would, you know, set yourself up for that. Well, ironically, I didn't have good grades. So, matter of fact, if my mother was here, she'd say I was an idiot. I was probably like an 80 student, but when I went to college, I learned that in the FBI, when you apply, they break it down.

They have diversified category. They have science and technology, and they have accounting and law. And you're judged against the other people only in that category. So I figured with my athletics, and if I looked like I was a science nerd, I would only be judged against other science nerds and they would say well we got an athletic science nerd so let's take him and and it worked so I was a science major in college with a minor in theology I was actually on the road to think I wanted to become an Episcopal minister at one point thinking that would help me but it was like save people

arrest people. So I ended up going with the FBI. Did science actually interest you, or did you just look at it as a stepping stone to help get you into the FBI? I was an environmental science major, so I was really interested in that because my grandfather was at Arondack Guide, and we were always out, you know, in the wilderness and I'm a big fisherman. And it was an interesting topic for me. Where'd you end up going to college? I went to Susquehanna University, which most people only know as the HAC Company and Avinan Castello.

But it's a small private school outside of Seals Grove, about half an hour from Harrisburg, PA. Now, did you have to complete college before you could apply to the FBI, or were there things you were able to do to set yourself up for that while you're in college? So back then, and I'm not sure how it is now, back then you had to have three. years work experience before you could apply to the FBI. So I went, got my BS, and then immediately got a job at the Westchester Department of Labs. And there I was like an environmental chemist, knowing that it would give me an opportunity to get to the FBI lab, even though I never ended up going there. What happened? So when I was at the FBI Academy, They give you all kinds of psychological exams and all kinds of intelligence exams.

And they kind of shuttled me towards the counterintelligence world. And I spent my whole career in the counterintelligence intelligence division. I didn't work with, like, cops. I worked with, like, the CIA, NSA, NRO, 9-1. second military intel. So I was like a spy catcher and I never even made an arrest in my entire 25 year career

because in the intel game if you make an arrest, you failed. You want to have a recruitment, a neutralization, and arrest is like your worst case scenario. Wow, that's interesting that you never made one arrest the whole 25 years.

Nope. And the first arrest happened to be with you. Yes, yes. My first arrest was me. Tell us about the application process to get into the FBI once you were ready to apply after college and you started that career. So back then, you took a exam and at the time it was down at 26 federal plaza. And the exam basically covered pretty much every subject, but it also had a section where it was like, a psychological evaluation, which I passed. And then they had a crazy test, and this is how old I am.

The Bureau used revolvers back then. And they would hand you a revolver, and they would time how many times you could pull the trigger in a minute. Don't ask. It was ridiculous. And then we had a physical exam, and they took us out to Governor's Island. And you had to do your push-ups, your pull-ups, your sit-ups. and then you had to run a two-mile run out in the island. I was a college athlete, so all of that was relatively easy for me.

Then I applied. The application was like 60 pages, and they interview everyone in your life, including back to like your kindergarten teacher. I mean, back then it was quite extensive. I was dealing with the agent who was in charge of recruiting and hiring, and he said, oh, you know, we're looking at probably like six months. At the time, I was working on a state project at the lab. We had a grant that we were doing involving potable water in Westchester County, like drinking water, and pesticides that were in it that weren't. being tested for.

And I'll never forget it. I was working and all of a sudden my phone rang and I picked it up. And it was the individual, the agent, his last name was Lilly. And I said, Mr. Lilly, what's going on? He said, hey, what are you doing on Sunday? And this was like Thursday. And I was like, probably nothing. And he said, all right, well, pack up because we got you

a spot early and we want me to go down. And I said, but I have to give at least a two-week notice. I mean, we're in the middle of a project and I'm like the main guy running the project. And he said, look, I can't promise you that you'll get another slot. So take it or leave it. So I went into my boss at the lab and I said, hey, I'm going home for lunch and I'm not coming back. And that was it. I was gone. I had a crap car. I had like a Ford escort that at the time I could literally pick up the bumper and move it into a parking space. And I said, yeah, this is going to work.

So I went out and I bought a Jeep. And I drove down to Quantico Sunday morning. What was your dad's reaction to you getting into the FBI? He was ecstatic. He was really happy. He had his doubts whether or not I would make it through the academy. But it happened so fast. He didn't really get to vocalize much.

And I was gone. I was on the road. Do you think it was easier to get into the FBI back then than what it would be over the course of your career? I think that I don't know how it goes now. And I see that the FBI is kind of a little, you know, going a little nutty right now with everything that's going on. I just heard this morning that 200 FBI agents are working the streets of Washington, D.C., like beat cops,

which I can't believe is going on. I don't know. I think that back then I came in right after a hiring freeze, so maybe, you know, I was a little lucky with my timing. but there were a lot of agents that I worked with through my career that were fantastic investigators and there were a lot of agents that I looked at them and said how did they get in so how old were you when you got into the academy? I went to the academy at the age of 25 I remember a long time ago. Were you one of the younger ones older?

I was the second youngest in the class. And would you say it was a mix of woman and men, mostly men, mostly women? What was the time? It was mostly men. I would say we had 10 women. There were maybe 70 in the class, of which I think 30 graduated. Own it all. Pay off your home.

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Never saw Silence of the Lambs? I actually never watched that. Really? I heard it was a great movie, though. But it's nothing like that. It was mostly academics. It was probably 75% academics and 25% physical and firearms training. There's no better law enforcement agency as far as shooting than the FBI.

there were, there wasn't a day that went by that we weren't on the range. We shot almost every day. So we, your local law enforcement, like your local cop, like in a town, will qualify once a year. We qualified, I think, once a month. Now, throughout the course of the training, are they pulling people to go into specialized teams or is everyone sticking through the same academy the entire time and then afterwards they're assigned to different areas for more extensive training?

It's a great question. The way they worked it was everybody went through the academy the same way. And then when you graduated, based on the different scores you got throughout the academy, they kind of funnels you where they wanted you to go. Have you ever heard of Hogan's Alley? I've heard of it. So Hogan's Alley down the Quanticle was like a fake town.

I mean, it's a town, but everybody that works there, a lot of them were actually former inmates. And they have different scenarios that go on. For example, you get a warrant for an individual's arrest. You have a picture of him. You have to go into a pool hall. You walk in. A guy looks at you, drops his pool stick and runs. at the time

half our class chased him but it turned out to be the wrong guy you know you just go through every scenario possible that might come up out in the street and they had intelligence related ones a couple of spy cases

you had to work and then based on how you did in each scenario they at the end the academy at your graduation they decided what office you were going to go to and then the office decided where they were going to funnel you. And who are the people teaching you?

Are they senior levels of the FBI that are just focused on recruiting? Or how does that work? I had a, my class counselor was a famous agent who survived the Miami shooting, which if you don't know what I'm talking about, you should Google it when I leave. Back in the 80s, the late 80s, there was a bank robbery in Miami. and there was a horrible shootout and three agents were killed and one of them survived and my class counselor was the agent that had survived

so needless to say he kind of was intense because he knew the severity of what could go on in the street so he was very intense and well well detailed and very strict then the instructors were people that were already down there and they were trained just to do the instruction whatever level of instruction they were working on. You had a firearms crew, the PT, the physical training aspect. We had a guy who was a famous like Marine

and he was a lunatic. I mean, he would try to bury us every day. and it was just to weed out the week, I guess. For example, on Memorial Day, even though it was a federal holiday, he took us into a gym and he made us run laps until somebody dropped. And I remember when we got all done, I was walking to the chow hall and I saw a garbage can and I just walked over and I puked for like 20 minutes. I mean, it was a nightmare workout.

And I love to work out, but it crushed us. So your instructors were specific for each topic that you were working on, and they were all assigned to the Quantico Academy. Did you have to be in good shape to get through the Academy? Yes. You had certain physical standards that they've kind of lessened, but back then, you know, you could. could look at our academy class and you could say, you know, some of the guys were, you know,

all college athletes, the women. There was a Division I All-American track star. She was in the academy class with me. So everybody was in good shape. Did you ever watch the TV show Quantico? No. They did a, I feel like they did a really good job because a lot of it was on the, the training, like they did two timelines.

They did the training and simultaneously they talked about this bombing that happened after they all got out and they were going back in time to find the FBI agent that was the mole that did all of this. Okay. But they talked heavily on the psychological tests that they did throughout the training in the FBI and the different scenarios and testing each other and splitting up into teams and whatnot. So it sounds very similar to kind of what you were describing. Yeah, I mean, I had heard that the show was very realistic to, you know, you know, how it really is. But I never really watched it. I tried not to watch cop shows.

It's kind of not my thing. But it is funny that when you get to prison, there's people in there that watch crime shows or cop shows or love after lockup while they're in prison. Oh, my friend, let me tell you, I taught a class at Danbury. Spy novels, Factor Fiction. I wrote the whole thing up

I got it approved the first class there were like eight people one of the guys in the class raised his hand and he said hey in this Vince Flynn novel they talk about codes and how you can like

communicating code and no one can break it so being someone who dealt with like foreign intelligence officers I knew a lot of their codes and I knew a lot of how they worked so I showed the guy a couple of them.

Like, look, this is a guy we caught. This is the code he used. My next class, there were like 79 guys. And all they wanted to learn was how to communicate and code and not get caught. The third class, there were like 150 guys. And then finally, the captain shut the class down. Because he was like, they're learning tradecraft. Like, what are you doing?

And that was it. Three classes. After you graduated the academy, how long did it take you to get assigned to your, what would be your role? You leave the academy already assigned. How did you feel about your assignment? Was it what you were expecting? Nope. I was going to kick indoors and knock people down.

You know, I was going to be a real cowboy. Like, I thought it was going to be, you know, making an arrest every day. when I got to New York I actually walked into my squad and I walked over to the secretary because there was no agent in the whole squad area

and I said you know special agent Lustig reporting for duty and she looked at me she was a woman from Queens and she said get the fuck out of my face and I was like excuse me

she's like listen find a fucking desk sit there for 24 five years and then die. I don't want to ever talk to you again. And I was like, whoa. And it turned out that my squad was not there because they were all working on the Robert Hansen case.

I don't know if you remember that. He was an FBI agent who ended up working for the Russians, working for the KGB. And my squad was the squad handling it. So I literally walked out of the academy and walked into like the big, spy case in FBI history. Did you know anything about your squad, like the type of work they did?

Did you know anything about that? I had absolutely no idea. And they never really go into intel work when you're at Quantico because you need a clearance. So once I got my top secret clearance, I figured, well, I don't need a top secret clearance to go work against mob guys. Like, what's going on? And then after my first day

and my encounter with my secretary, I realized where I was going. What's it feel like to have that power to be handed a badge, a gun, specifically a badge that says like FBI special agent at that age? What's going through your mind? What's that mindset for you?

It was powerful. I'm not going to lie. It really gives you, you're like an ego boost. When you open up those credentials and it has those three letters in there, just like on TV. The badge isn't that impressive.

I don't know if you've seen a real FBI. Well, it's like a tiny little thing. It's not anything that ooh and ah, but the creds themselves. When I was assigned to New York, Ian, and like New Yorkers are New Yorkers. So, like, my first time I opened them up and I thought I was all that,

the woman looked at me and said, oh what's your federal ID number? And I was like, uh, and she's like, come on. What are you, some kind of an asshole? You don't even know your federal ID number? And I kind of just said like, FBI? And she was like, no.

And she slammed the door in my face. And that was like my first, my first dealing with like how it was going to go in New York. I heard from other guys in my class that like when they opened up those credits, people would like drop to their knees and kiss their feet. What, it ain't that way in New York. No way.

I know what you were about to say there when the FBI came to see me, right? That's when I would have seen a bad. Yeah, yeah. It was postal inspectors first. Oh, really? But honestly, they flip it so quick. I should have been one of those people that are like, let me look at it. Yeah, yeah.

No, they just pop it. They, seriously, they teach you at the academy and they run through these different scenarios where they try to take it out of your hand and you're taught, like, Never let anyone take it out of your hand. In New York, they're always grabbing for it. So are you allowed to give, if someone asked for your badge, are you allowed to give it or no? The badge number or like let them see?

The actual badge. No. Oh, so it has to stay in your hand the whole entire time. Interesting. So in the TV shows and movies where they actually hand over the badge to inspect it, that's not. Ridiculous, yeah, it would never happen. What are some other myths that people have about the FBI or agents specifically?

Hmm, that's a good question too. I think that in the TV shows and the movies, most FBI agents are also like, could be like models. Now, I know your viewers right now realize that not all FBI agents are good looking because I'm sitting here and I was an FBI agent. And just an hour and a half ago, my wife said I looked like Shrek. So, you know, that's a misnomer. You know, those are actors.

The average FBI agent male is probably 5 foot 9, 5 foot 10, maybe 170 pounds. I myself was 6.1.250, so I was like a bigger agent. I was probably the biggest agent on the intelligence. side of the house. Usually they would take a guy my size and move him over to like you know criminal and I was actually

in the middle of a SWAT tryout when I got run over on Park Avenue by a crazy taxi driver and it ended up put me in the hospital

for quite some time and in bed for nine months and when I got out I just never went back to the SWAT team. Was that a suspect or was that just a random one-off incident? I can't really go into it, but that would give you your answer. Okay. And how long in your career was that?

It was probably two and a half years in. Were you upset that that derailed you from advancing onto a more of a tactical unit? I was just happy that I was alive because apparently the other agent said that the I was going like 70. So I didn't mind that I wasn't going to be on the SWAT team anymore. I went and really dove into the intel world and really got my career going that way. What was a typical day on the job for you when you first started out? When I first started out, like I said,

My squad was working on this big case, so I would come in and I would work a wire. And back then it was like the old spool wires, you know, so it was like right out of an old spy movie. And I would listen to the subject and the subject's, you know, contacts. That was how they like kind of started me out. Then I did a lot of surveillance because I didn't really know what I was doing. and the older agents were so much older than me, they didn't really want to be bothered teaching the new guys what to do.

And myself and another guy who had gotten in, and he was actually a Quantico of the class ahead of me, we didn't know what we were doing. And I don't know if you know anything about like the spy game at all, but how it works in New York is you have these missions, which are like consulates and foreign countries, live in these missions and then they have their diplomats

that work at the UN. So let's say you have 100 diplomats that are working at the UN. 96 of them are legit, four of them are spies. And it's the FBI's job to figure out what for.

And then it's up to the agent who gets assigned those subjects to figure out how to either recruit the individual or compromise them. So shouldn't there be a little bit more security behind this then? It's crazy.

It's no way for them to really stop the process. And I mean, like I said earlier, I did a lot of work with the CIA. We do the same thing in other countries. You know, we send diplomats over that are agency people. Now, are these spies looking to harm Americans? Are they just gathering Intel? It depends what country. Back in the day when the Czech Republic was Czechoslovakia, they had a fantastic service, and we worked against them.

And they were collecting information and giving it to the KGB. They were like the All-Star team of the KGB. And they were amazing. They were so good. And, yeah, they were looking to advance. ahead of us in different areas, and that would harm us. And were you always dealing with foreign matters, or was anything U.S. soil-based?

What would happen is, inevitably, you would find the U.S. person that was dealing with the foreign spy, and then you would have to open up a case on them. So it usually had ties to the U.S., but a lot of times, you know, you did have to travel. And it's also a misnomer that the FBI doesn't work overseas because we would get CIA concurrence and basically work with them hand in hand. And, you know, we would do what we had to do.

What's the biggest difference between the FBI and the CIA? The CIA has much better-looking women. No, I would say that it's just, just that the CIA is more clandestine and the FBI is, you know, more... We're almost halfway through the year, and a lot of people are running on empty without fully realizing it. Grow therapy helps you find care that's covered by insurance before burnout becomes the baseline. Whether it's your first time in therapy or your 50th, Grow makes it easier to find a therapist who fits you, not the other way around.

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How would you have considered yourself as an agent those first few years? I was enthusiastic, but I was uneducated in the ways of how to really work in Intel case. It's hit and miss. It's all about how much work you want to put in. there was i had a subject where i did surveillance on him like almost every day because i didn't know what else what the hell else to do and then i got lucky one day he came out at like two in the afternoon and started doing what they call a surveillance detection route and the individual that we know was in charge of the counter surveillance team at that mission went out to

so I knew something was going on. And lo and behold, after like eight hours of the guy dry cleaning himself, I ended up in Queens, and I watched him do a brush pass with, you know, he collected information from one of his informants, one of his sources. And it ended up being a huge deal. And it looked like I was great at my job, but the reality was, I didn't know what else to do, so it was sitting in a car. And the guy walked out.

So it looked like I was fantastic, but really I was just a knucklehead sitting in the car trying to figure out what to do. How many years did it take to be really comfortable in your role? I was really fortunate because I was on a great squad. I mean, they were, like, fantastic in the Intel game. They had made huge cases and just tacked. And tagging along with these guys was great for me. I would say it took me 22 years to really be comfortable because every intel case goes a different direction

and you've got to be able to tap dance your way. You have to be able to improvise and adapt. It's not like a criminal investigation where you have point A, you have point B, and then all the rest is kind of directly to get to point. be in a counterintelligence case, it could be like A, B, C, D, E, F, G, like, all over the place. And your job is to be able to, like, come up with ways to compromise, whether it's the American citizen dealing with the foreign intel service or the intelligence officer themselves. Were you always stationed in the New York office?

I was sent undercover. to Monterey Language School, which is the Defense Language Institute out in Monterey, California. They sent me there as an individual learning a language with the other military personnel because the teacher was a spy. Really? Yeah. How long were you undercover for? Two years.

And you guys were able to catch the person? Yeah, so basically, if you remember when you took a foreign language in high school or whatever it was, your name, people in your family, where did you grow up, what do you like to do? To a spy, that's like the ultimate recruiting material. I mean, you're getting like a dossier on every American soldier that's in the class. And they were all leaving there and going to Fort Huachuca where they would get their secret or top secret clearance. They were all like 97 bravos or echoes, which went out going into super detail, listeners, you know, people that would overhear things. And they had to learn the language fast.

And they, I mean, it was crazy. So the first year, I had to do really well in the class because I was like, you know, like a class sergeant. And then the second year, I had to do really well in the class. had to start coming in smelling like booze, failing all the tests, talk about how my wife was cheating on me so that the professor would see that I had vulnerabilities. And then he tried to recruit me. As a spy. Yeah, he tried to get me to flip. And that's when you guys got him red-handed. Yeah. And he had no idea you were an FBI agent. No. Wow. But in a situation like that, you're not the one physically making the arrest. They're pulling you out. And then a team comes

for the arrest. Yes, yeah. And all I asked for was to be able to talk to the class afterwards, because for two years they thought I was, you know, so-and-so, and all of a sudden their teacher was gone and so was I. And, I mean, word got out. So I stood in front of all these soldiers that were relatively young and I said, look, you're all leaving, you all thought, you were leaving here to get a clearance and you were going to go and work in the intelligence community, but you got to remember that, you know, not everything is as it seems like salt and sugar looked the same. And you got to be careful with what you tell people and how vulnerable you make yourself. And then I said, you know, good luck with everybody. I walked out of

the room and then the colonel came in and fired them all. Fired all of the students? Yeah. Why? In the intel world, even if you didn't do anything wrong, because all your information was passed, you're done. Wow. Yeah. Now, were you away from your wife those whole two years? At the time, I was married, and my wife, who was at the time a Wall Street broker, came with me. Okay.

and she moved out there. Was it hard to maintain that cover for two years? Like living a dual identity, she knows you as one person, and you have to live this other identity as this other person? It's a funny story. The day we arrived, I drove across country just to do it,

you know, to get out there. Have you ever been to Monterey? Oh, you got to go. It's like the prettiest place in America. And Sleepy Hollow for Halloween. Yes, please. It's the best town there is in the U.S. for Halloween.

So, I arrived in my undercover assignment where nobody could know who I was, and I had to report the following day. So that day, I drove to Pebble Beach, just to see, you know, what it looked like. And I'm walking through the lobby of Pebble Beach, and all of a sudden they hear, Bob! And, I mean, I crap my pants.

I mean, I was literally there for 15 minutes, and I'm like, my cover's blown. And I turned around, and it was someone that I had played college football with. He was the head controller for Pebble Beach. And he's like, Bob, how are you? And I was like, uh-uh. And he's like, why are you wearing camouflage pants? And I was like, can I talk to you in your office? So I said, look.

and I laid out a little of it, and he was like, all right, listen, anything you need, just let me know. And literally I was there like half an hour and my cover was blown. I mean, it could have been a nightmare. I could have got back in the car and just drove home. But it worked out okay. Would you typically work a lot of undercover cases in your career? You know, each case that you work can end up being undercover in, some extent, you know, and if you're inventive, it can really, really end up going down that road,

especially in the counterintelligence world where you're trying to, like, trick a spy. We had one guy without going into details of the country. We, I ended up getting access to his diary through a maintenance person that worked in this building, who we compromised, who we paid a shit ton of money to. And I knew that he was having trouble in his marriage, so we dangled someone in front of his wife to make sure she would cheat on him and got her a job with a company that wasn't real,

kept putting social pressure on him, through her until he broke and he went to a therapist that he was recommended and um you know i was a therapist so there's this spy telling me everything he's got going on and one day i said hey by the way guess what this is who i really am and uh that worked out well did you like catching the bad guys meaning the spies. Yeah, you know, people that your targets, people that you were after. I liked the different dynamics

to counterintelligence investigations. Because it really is like you see on TV now and in some aspects. And we could really be inventive and creative. Whereas like in the criminal world, you couldn't really be as creative. And we had unlimited resources because it was national security

and that trumps everything. So as far as like money we spent, equipment we would get, some of the things that we would use in would make your head explode. If the general public knew about it, you know, and I'm not going to go into it, but some of the techniques we had,

some of the equipment we would use, it still you don't see it out there in the public. Tell us about some of the awards you won over your career. Well, I was, like I said, I was on a great squad. We worked fantastic cases. I pretty much won every award there was in the Intel world, including like federal law enforcement officer of the year, which the captain at Danbury, you know, was very quick to remind me that I didn't have that award anymore where I was.

So that's another story. I won all kinds of awards from the CIA. I won NSA's, won NSA's bigger awards. And they're like super secret, like award ceremonies. They're kind of funny. It's like, this is Bob. He did some really neat stuff. We can't go into it, but it worked out really well.

Here you go, Bob. And, like, everybody in the audience would clap. And then, like, an Army guy would get up. It would be like, this is Sergeant Smith. He did some really crazy stuff. We're not going to go into it. Sergeant Smith. Like, it was, like, crazy award ceremonies.

But I worked with a lot of guys. We won a lot of squad awards. I won a lot of Indeat Awards. I won a lot of individual awards. And one thing that people don't realize about the FBI is it's statistic driven. So every eight months, you have an inspection. And they count your stats.

And this is like an area where criminal lawyers should get a better handle on what goes on inside the FBI, because there are things that they can use to, like, Giglio or, you know, Brady material, things like that. We're statistic driven. If you did a surveillance, you got a statistic. If you did this, you got a stat, stat, stat. So I, like, led the division in stats for, you know, a bunch of inspections, or was always in the top four. And based on those stats, you could get what they call a quality step increase. So you have your federal pay scale.

It goes up to level 15 and it goes across step 10. It's kind of like your sentencing chart. Only you're making money, not losing it. And you could skip a level based on how well you were doing statistically. So, you know, FBI agents can also get cash bonuses. So if I arrest you, I can get a cash bonus. So if you think about that, if there's an agent, you know, not that this happens, but, you know, people are human. There's somebody building a swimming pool and all of a sudden there's a rock and they, like, got to pay an extra 30 grand.

And they see Ian doing shit in the street that maybe isn't yet, you know, something they can wrap them up with. But they know that if they wrap them up quick, they'll get that bonus. Ian's going down. And that pools getting put in. And people just don't realize that, like, you know, that's something that potentially could happen. There's other areas, too. If I was a defense attorney, for example, I helped the guy Giglio an agent and get all his testimony thrown out,

and the guy ended up leaving Danbury. And what it was is FBI agents go to legal training every quarter, and they go over all the new laws that are out there and how we have to incorporate it into our job, and we sign in and we sign out. I told the lawyer. I met the guy's lawyer in the visiting room, and I said,

see if the agent went to all his legal training because we never do we're too busy and if he hasn't gone to all legal training you should say well have you gone to all firearm training and if you're not going to these trainings how do I know you know what you're actually doing out there

and the attorney ran with it and ended up Giglio and the agent what's Giglio for the audience yeah it's basically Giglio versus the U.S., and basically in law enforcement, it means everything you've done in the investigation is being thrown out because you've done something erroneous in your investigation or in your training. And the other term you used was Brady, which has to do with giving all the other evidence to the prosecution or the defense. Right. Now, you were mentioning these cash bonuses.

for arrest, isn't it the FBI a little different where you have to go to an actual prosecutor and get it like an AUSA to sign off on the arrest? Well, yeah, we work with the U.S. Attorney's Office, but that's

not going to preclude a criminal squad from making arrests. So they'll make arrests on their own without even having the AUSA involved to see if they want to prosecute the case? No, no, that it's going to inform

them, you know, hey, look, this is what we're about to do. And the AUSA will be like, hey, it sounds great. But especially in New York, it's not as tight knit as it would be in a small office. So I guess the question here is, you know, you have this great career, you're highly decorated. What goes wrong? Great question. What went wrong was, honestly, I became an egotomaniac. and I started to believe the hype about myself. What happened was I had a son, I have a son, and he was younger and I wanted to be more involved. So I took a transfer to an RA,

a small resident agency in White Plains. And I went from being the big fish to like a fish out of water. because in white plains you didn't have the UN so you didn't really have these like great spy cases to work I was basically covering leads for like new agents that were in New York they'd like cut me a lead to go check on something

so I was coming to the end of my career I was I had a shorter commute I had more family time ironically my son quit little league baseball which is why I took the transfer. One of the reasons. And I ran into an individual named Michael Taylor.

Michael Taylor worked and ran owned and operated American International Security Company, kind of like a Blackwater kind of thing. And I met him at a football game. I was introduced by a friend

and we started to chat. We knew similar people. Ironically, I had worked a case with Henry Kissinger, the former Secretary of State. I knew Kissinger's head of security, so did this guy. So we kind of vetted each other. And Taylor had some serious quality information regarding terrorism. And at the time, I was doing both counterintel and counterterrorism.

So I looked at it as one last hurrah before I was going to ride off into the sunset. I had been looking at a lot of different job offers, getting ready to go into my next career. And I was writing up the information that Taylor gave us. And it was getting, the reports were getting like the high. highest rating from the FBI and the CIA. Now, mind you, when an FBI agent writes a report, his supervisor has to approve it, then the supervisor or that guy has to approve it, the ASAC, then it goes to the SAC, the special agent in charge, and then it gets disseminated. So the idea of when you read articles about me that, like, I was able to, like, forge a report

to benefit Michael Taylor in any way is ridiculous, because they were all signed off on and they were all given like a high rating. Matter of fact, some of the information Taylor gave stopped the terrorist attack at a Middle Eastern convention and we were given like an adderoy like a pat on the back from the foreign service

that we disseminated it to. CIA loved the information. The 902nd military intel loved the information. So I figured, all right, here I go. I got this one last hurrah. we were looking at pulling up and capturing this terrorist that was in the deck of cards, you know, one of the top terrorists.

I'm not going to go into his name. And I was starting to come up with a plan. When Taylor came to me one day and said, hey, I can't work with you anymore. And I was like, Mike, what the fuck? Like, we got a good thing going here. And he said, well, my company is getting indict. 72 counts for contract fraud in Iraq. And I said, okay.

I went back to my boss, and I said, hey, Taylor's not going to work with us. I'm going to close him. He's getting indicted. My boss said, no, no, string him along. Like manipulate him, lie to him, basically. And keep getting the information. I was all about that because I wanted to,

in that last, you know, home run. And my ego was hurting me because I wasn't the guy anymore. I was kind of like just a guy. And I let my ego blind me. And I started to tell Mike that, you know, hey, don't worry, I'll get you out of this. You know, like a cop does. Like, hey, you do this for me.

I'll get you off your charges kind of thing. the DOD Office of Inspector General called me up and they were like, hey, look, we got a case on Taylor. We indicted him. Are you, like, trying to get him off his charges? And I was like, look, I work intel. I can't talk to you. Here's my boss.

Call him. And they were like, listen, are you trying to, like, help him out? Because, like, we got this big thing going. And I said, hey, they're like, what is he doing for you? And I said, yeah, I can't go into it. So they brought it to the Public Integrity Unit. Now, I'm going to give you a little backdrop, a little backstory. Two years prior to this, this is like 2011 now.

So in 2009, Senator Ted Stevens from Alaska, was investigated for conspiracy to commit bribery, except a bribe, regarding contracting work he had on his house. The public integrity unit handled the investigation. The FBI were the agents doing the investigation. Towards the end of the investigation, an FBI agent, last name Joy, wrote an affidavit that the public integrity unit was making up evidence.

And the U.S. Attorney at the time, Holder, ended up flipping the investigation onto the public integrity unit to see what was going on. Well, the AUSA, Nicholas Marsh, was his name. He was the one that was taking all the heat for, like, making the evidence up, and he ended up killing himself. So six months or so, after that happened, pretty much their whole unit was under investigation for how they had screwed up the investigation on the senator. And right after they got through that investigation and they lost one of their buddies, co-workers to suicide because an FBI agent blew the whistle. I came into their sites.

So the public integrity unit started to work against me with the OIG. And they came after me full bore. And they made it look like I was trying to get Taylor off his charges because he was going to give me a job when I retired. Now, everybody offers an FBI agent a job And I told my boss That he had offered me a job And we laughed about it

And I was ready To close him out When he told me he was indicted But my management was like, no, you can't You know, we need the information So I kept stringing him along And he also played the game with me Like he was like, hey, you got

help me you're going to help me i got something great for you and back and forth we were just you know doing the dance but never ended up in bed you know hey i'll screw you hey i'll fuck you and you know we never ended up uh you know uh pushing it past that point um and um it ended up where uh they September 20 September 19th they came and I came out of my house and you know like when you do counter intel stuff you're like

heads on a swivel all the time and I noticed the car two blocks down and I said and I drove around and I came up behind the car and I drove by it the car started to follow me and then as I'm pulling out I saw

two state police cars in the Sleepy Hall Cemetery parking lot, I said, something don't smell right because my boss called me in and I was out on sick leave. So I said, I don't like how this looks. So I ended up pulling into a gas station so that the guy surveilling me had to keep going because we went into the gas station and he was burned.

And then I acted like I was pumping gas, but then when he drove by, I pulled up and got behind him and it started surveilling him. And I ended up pulling alongside him and telling him to roll his window down. And I was like, yo, what's going on? And he was like panicked. And he was an OIG agent. And I had burned him.

And then my SAC called me and said, look, Bob, you got to come in the office right away. Stop fooling around. So I went in. And they sat me down and they said, hey, look, you're under investigation for, conspiracy to commit bribery with whatever you're doing with your informant. And I was like, what are you talking about? Like, you signed off on this stuff. Like, you know about this.

He's like, look, I don't know what's going on. They won't tell me. I just need your gun and your badge. And I was like, at that point, I was so mad. And I thought it was so ridiculous. I just slid that stuff over to him. And waited to see what would happen. I waited a couple days.

The head of the office called me in. And he said, here's your deal. You go out and administrative leave. And if you, after you win the case, you get all your back pay. or you can retire and keep your pension. And I said, drop. At Serena and Lily, every piece is designed to make your home feel beautifully lived in. Since 2003, they've created heirloom quality furniture and decor

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Was that the 24-year mark? Yeah. And you had no other issues in your career before that. No. So this is right at the tail end of your career. Yep. I mean, I was already getting my... retirement job lined up with another company.

So you weren't even having any ideas of working with this guy, Taylor? No, I was just playing the game. Now, with a bribery, they're alleging the bribe was the job for you helping him get off of his case, his issues. Right. Couldn't your ASAC just have squash this whole thing and say, hey, you told him, he told you to keep working this? Yep. But he didn't. Nope. Nope.

They, what happened was when the public integrity unit came in, they had all the agents signed like non-disclosure agreements and non-contact orders. And they scared them all. And at the time, the FBI management that dealt on my side of things just kind of left me out to dry. Now, I was reading somewhere in an article that there was another issue in a different state. What was that about? That was, all right, so let me get down to that road. Excuse me. So what happened was I was going to go to trial.

On this bribery charge. So they end up indicting you on the federal bribery? Yeah, they end up indicting me. For bribery. Right, for a conspiracy. Okay. For bribery. And honest services fraud, which is basically if you're a government employee and you're using your job to potentially make money.

which is ironic considering what's going on with the presidency. So I'm going to trial and I hire a lawyer that Michael Taylor recommended, which was probably the dumbest thing I've ever done in my life. I mean, I'm an idiot for doing that. And that's what caused my downfall. We're going through the process of, of getting the classified information released so that I could talk about it in court, which was a huge deal.

It's a confidential, confidential procedural, or confidential information procedural act, the SEPA hearing. And it's a big deal because that's my defense. I was doing my job. Like, I could show that, yeah, maybe you could have slapped me on the wrist administratively, but a criminal offense, come on, no way. And the judge, I'll never forget it, was a Thursday. The judge looked at the prosecutor and said,

it looks like I'm going to let Mr. Lustick talk about things he's done in his career. What will you do? And the prosecution said, we're going to drop all the charges. So I called my wife that night, and I'm like, I'm coming home. And she said, all right, I'm going to rule on it on Monday. They brought me in Monday, stood me up, Mr. Lustick. Everything in your head is propped in the United States government,

not allowed to come out in court. Boom. The assistant director, the intel director at the CIA and the representative NSA stood up. They looked at me, they were like, sorry, Bob. They walked out of the courtroom. I was done. My whole defense was gone. So when you got arrested, they didn't give you bail?

So they gave me bond, $2 million, which is ridiculous for, it was an offense level 13. And I had, I was out on bond for six months, and they violated me. And how they violated me was the case was out of Utah. I'd never been to Utah, never had any work in Utah. one of Mike Taylor's associates had bought a house in Utah. So that's why that was the nexus. The judge out in Utah said, I'm not allowed to have any contact with any potential witnesses

or anybody involved. I had a friend who had met Michael Taylor at a social gathering, and they had been doing talks on the side on their own. And he went away, and while he was, was away in a foreign country, I got arrested. He heard about it. And when he came home, he came to my house.

It was like, Bob, what the hell is going on? This is ridiculous. I can't believe they're saying, you know, that this happened. I can help you get out of this. And the prosecution said that he was a potential witness for me, but still a potential witness. And they violated my bond. And you were able to stay in New York, even though the case was out of Utah. They sent me to Utah. No, when you were on bail, though.

Yeah, I was in bond. I was home. Home arrest with an anchor monitor. Okay, and then they violated you, and then they shipped you out to Utah. Back to Utah, which originally I had been before. So I violated a bond. They sent me out to Utah, and they put me in a supermax for 17 months, solitary confinement. Because you were an FBI agent. Because I was an FBI agent and I said,

you know, is it to protect me? And they said, no, it's to protect the guards and the other inmates. And I was like, I don't understand. And they were kind of like, you've had training, you're big, you know, this is how we're going to do this. I just assumed it was the prosecution just wanting to break me. And so for, for 17 months. I only saw hands coming through the cup port, you know, through the door to feed me. And whenever they moved me, it was shackles, a bar between my legs, like I was Hannibal Lecter. They would clear the hallway.

They'd line up all the other inmates against the wall. They'd have two seals in front of me, two behind me, one on each side. My wreck was half an hour every other day in a... contained yard maybe three times the size of this office with a window in the ceiling that was 35 feet up and they didn't they wouldn't take my cuffs off or the shackles on my legs I had to like walk around in that it was it was interesting why do you think this happened to you you mean that part of it or everything. Everything.

I mean, this is the end of your career. This doesn't seem like this is a, you know, a major thing that would even warrant, you know, that type of treatment to begin with. Right. Well, I think, you know, I was stuck into a perfect storm. The OIG agents, and I knew this, were overhearing my phone calls with Taylor. And he'd be like, oh, this OIG agent said this. And I'd be like, ah, I don't listen to that guy. he's a goofball.

They don't know what they're doing. Because I'm trying to tell Taylor, oh, you're not going to be found guilty. You're not going to, like, these charges aren't going to stick. You got to tell me what you know, you know. And so they were mad at me. And then the public integrity unit saw an FBI agent in their sights. And then, you know, I take full responsibility for my ego.

and like not listening to my gut or my wife who sat me down once and said, yo, get rid of this guy. It don't sound right. She had worked for the FBI. She has great street smarts. She was like, this don't sound right. It smells bad. Get rid of it.

And I was like, you don't know what you're talking about. You know, at that point, I was like, you know, a big shot. I let my ego get the best of me and it ended up, you know, costing. Did you benefit financially at all? From the, no, none in all. I have no restitution. I had no fines. I never got a dollar from anyone.

They never found any money. They came up with a $200,000 enhancement at sentencing that took me from a level 14 to a level 34. And what they said was, well, that's what the salary was going to be that Michael Taylor offered me. What they did was, after I lost the SEPA hearing, Taylor's lawyer was like, oh, this isn't going to go well. Like, that was his defense, and we were going to use,

we were going to piggyback. so Taylor started to proffer and he had one proffer and he said well I offered Bob a job when he retired and I assumed he thought it might have been a bribe and that's literally what the proffer says

and from that they said well how much was the salary and he said like 200,000 and they enhanced me how much time did he end up getting 13 months and how much time did you get 15 years.

They gave you 15 years, Bob? Yeah. Yeah. He got 13. He had 70, 77 counts all total. And the irony is in the public integrity unit dropped his 72 count indictment so they could get me, which is what I was charged with, trying to help him get him get all. off with 72 count indictment, which they helped them get off.

Well, you're the bigger headline. Oh, yeah, I was the fish. And I was, I worked for the company that, you know, basically had one of their best friends, you know, commit suicide. Did they use your violation against you at sentences? Meaning, like to enhance it. Like, I know my sentences aren't violated. Oh, I got enhanced. I ended up a level 35.

which, you know, was 20 years to life or something ridiculous. Like, it was insanity. Do you feel like the FBI abandoned you? 100%. 100%. The FBI management abandoned me. And, you know, they made me sign all the...

The prosecutor made me sign all these agreements where I wouldn't say anything. And then they just trashed me. You know, like they said whatever they wanted to. And they kept changing the story. because, oh, that's not going to work. Oh, that's not going to work. And finally, you know, they came up with, oh, yeah, honest services fraud.

Which if I had committed this, if I had, if this was like, I would 100% own up to everything. Because everybody makes mistakes. I mean, you've had hundreds of people sit here that have reconciled their mistake. I made a huge mistake. My mistake was, unlike other people that commit, you know, petty offenses and then get, you know, terrible offense sentence. My mistake was I let my ego get the best of me. And, you know, to me the irony is when I was incarcerated, a lot of the guys that I met were like, you FBI agents are all egomaniacs. And the reality was, yeah.

You're right. Like, I'm here sitting next to you in the chow hall because I was an egomaniac. And I let it blind me. What's your wife's view on this? Did she stay supportive? Did she stick with you? My wife is amazing. She stuck by me the whole way, the whole way.

Because she knew the full story. She knew the real story. And, you know, we never gave up hope. that somebody would come forward and like tell the truth so i can't believe they gave you 15 years bob either can i there's pedophiles that get less time of federal credit oh i know trust me i know and i uh i mean 17 months in solitary and then you know in a supermax facility out in Utah and uh And then I was in a medium for like a week and a half. Then they sent me to Danbury Low.

Now, before we get to Danbury Low, tell us the audience just that first day in prison when your bond got violated, what that first experience was for you as someone that, you know, has this long career in the FBI. It's in the top of their game. And now they see themselves on the other side of this. So I'm going to go back to when I was originally arrested. They took me into MCC. into like what they call the dungeons. And they put me in a horrible cell. And the cell across for me,

the guy was laughing at me because it was, I forget his name, but it was one of the terrorists that had done, like not the World Trade Center, obviously, but another bombing. And he was in the cell across the hall for me,

and knew that I was an FBI agent because, I mean, you know how word spreads so fast. And he was like, ah, you blankety blank, blank, yeah, you're going to blank and rotten hell, blah, blah, blah. And I was like, I cannot believe this is happening. Like, it was, it was crazy. I was in total disbelief, total shock. I was waiting for the FBI to step in or the CIA. I had a step in, and I was like, this can't, like, this is ridiculous. And no one ever, no one ever did.

How are the guards trading you? The guards in Danbury, the guards out in Utah, some of them treated me terribly. And then others would come up and ask if I could help them get a job in the FBI. So it was like, what the hell? I mean, it was like so crazy. Out in Utah, they were terrified of me. They had heard horrible stories. None of them were true.

And when they finally shipped me to Danbury, so you remember Danbury processing? Yeah. Well, I came alone in a van at night. And then bring me in, and they got the orderlies in there. And they're like, all right, orderlies, you got to leave. SIS is coming in. I mean, you might as well, like, put a sign over my head, you know.

And SIS tells me, look, don't let anybody know where you worked. You know, if you see anything going on, you want to let us know about, you know, feel free to get word to us. And I was like, yeah, whatever. and we're not going to tell anybody anything. And then they shut down the compound. And they walked me across the yard, you know, the middle yard, to my unit. And they unlocked the door and there's a guy standing there and he goes, yo, the FBI guy's here.

I looked at the SIS guy and I'm like, wow, you're really good at this, aren't you? and you know it turned out that these guys knew I was coming before I did they're like we've been waiting for you for a month and I was like what and then it got interesting you know when you're working for a company that put 80% of the people there where they are it it's it's interesting

and this is Danbury is the first Danbury low Security Federal Prison, which is where I was at, but I was in solitary the whole time. That was the first general population yard you were on. No. They ended up sticking me in GP out in Utah. That was after the 17 months in solitary. Right. So what you touched on earlier was another indictment.

And how that came up was it was total BS. It involved a boyhood friend of mine who had a contact from Bangladesh, who actually met at the Danbury Mall. And he was a cook. And I was just like dealing with him to appease my friend, my boyhood friend who had like I'm known forever.

And New York U.S. Attorney's Office picked it up because it came right after the judge told the U.S. attorneys like, look, I'm going to let Lustick talk about his job and I'm going to drop all the charges.

And they did. The public integrity unit did not want me to get away. So they came up with this other thing. And what happened was because I was going to change my plea in Utah, they knew they had me in New York. Like you can't plead guilty here

and then go here and be like, no, that's not guilty. You know, so they even said it, it'll be run concurrent. And then the judge ran a consecutive. So that's how I got to. the extra five. Okay, but they lumped it all into these federal charges. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. Utah was a state charge before? No, Utah. Oh, so everything was federal. Everything was federal. They lumped it into 15. But you spent the majority of your time in Danbury. Yeah. And you didn't go anywhere else

after Danbury. No, I went to Ferretton camp. Okay. So tell us about your experience in Danbury. Okay, so like I said, I'm there the first day, you know, and, you know, everybody knows prison rules like say the television room no rats no chomos no cops well i knew that uh i had to set like the precedent right away so i went into the tv room and uh the uh shot caller for latin kings came in and said yo you're not loud in here i said yeah okay whatever i'm staying then they got a shot caller for the bloods and he came in with him he's like look we got rules you can't stay here i said look i wasn't a criminal agent i'm staying here and then they got the the shot call for the white boys and they were all there and they said hey look i said how do you want to do this i mean i was there two days so we went

into the showers and the blood brought one of his uh his boys with him who was like trying to earn his stripes. I got myself up against the wall and I said, the white boy said, who do you want first? And I was like, let's just get it over. Everybody come. We'll do this quick. And they all laughed, and the blood tapped his understudy on the shoulder. The guy came at me, swung like a haymaker.

I quickly dislocated his elbow, pushed him up against the wall, snapped his jaw, slid him down the wall, and said, next. And all the alarms started going off. I took my shirt off. I stepped into the shower, pulled the curtain, turned the water on. CO came running in. Guy was, you know, lying on the ground screaming. And he's like, what happened?

What happened? And I, like, opened up the curtain, like, stuck my bare chest out. I was like, I don't know, but I'm trying to take a shower. And he looked at me and he's like, Lustick. And I was like, what? He's like, never mind. And he walked away and I never got in trouble for it. And that set the precedent of your...

So the next day, I'm out in the yard. And like, 20 bloods roll up on me. And I'm like, uh-oh. Like, I might be able to handle myself, but I'm not going to be able to handle this. And it was the guy from the day before, the shot caller. And he said, hey, look, you know, we don't want any trouble, but we're wondering, can you like teach us what you did?

And I'm like, what? You want me to teach you like a self-defense class? And I was like, no, I can't. And the funny thing is I ended up, you know, working out with that guy. He was in my car, which is another funny story. So the day after the incident where I was now allowed in the TV room, I went to the rec yard. And I heard they had a weight pile, so I was excited because I was like a big weightlifter.

And I went in there and it was like all the Jamaicans, they were all working out. And this big Jamaican came up to me. And he's like, you're the Fed? I was like, yeah. And he's like, I heard you had some fun the other day. And I said, I don't want to get into it. You know, he was referring to the incident. And he said, yo, what car are you going to ride with?

And I was like, what? And he's like, now they're all like looking at me. He said, what car are you riding in? And I was like, Chevy Tahoe? And they all started laughing because I hadn't really talked to any federal inmates yet. So I didn't know the jargon. So like when he asked me what car, I had no idea what he was talking. about. So I just referenced the car that we owned it home. And they all started laughing. And I said, look, I don't know what's going on. Is there any way that I could just jump in and do a couple sets on the bench? And he's like, yeah, come on. And there was like 300 pounds on the bench. Now, I hadn't benched in a long time. Like, it was probably two years at that point. And I got on that flat bench. And in my head, I said, this has to be.

be the best set I've ever done in my life. Like, I got to make this thing work. And I just let my adrenaline build up. I've pulled that bar up the rack and I pumped out 12

reps and I put it back in the rack and the big dude looked at me. He's like, damn, motherfucker. And I was like, ah, it's been a while. By the time I got back to my unit, guys were like, you bench 300 pounds 12 times. I mean, it just spreads, you know?

and so guys left me alone and um i didn't pick a group that i hung with when i went to the cafeteria i was at the new york table and they said yeah you can't sit here but they took me over to like my own table that was like the uh not the christian table but just made up a guys that weren't in any car didn't independent yeah yeah like an independent table and um and i sat there for my my entire time in in danbury i um i had a lot of funny i had a lot of comical uh situations that came up um a lot of potential violent ones that i was able to handle easily and um i met a lot of great guys guys. I met a lot of great guys. I met better guys in than I sat next to at work. Do you think inmates were more open to you because you weren't necessarily the type of agent that was putting people like them in prison?

I mean, you were working spy cases, not drug cases or any of the ones out of the people that are in a Danbury federal prison. Everybody knew what I did. Like, it was crazy. They guys who call me like, oh, here comes Jason Boy. And it was like, how did they all know? I mean, and you know, I learned. I learned how it works. They get on the phone, there are people outside, look it up. You know, I was like one of the only guys that didn't have to get his paperwork.

Because everybody already had it. Like, they were like, so it was crazy. I had guys come up to me and say like, look, can you help me out? I got information. I want to get off my charges. Can you, like, put me in contact with, you know, an agent? And I was like, I'm, you know, I'm 919-1-2054.

Like, I'm not Special Agent Lustick anymore. And then I had, you know, COs, the captain, pulled me in. And he was like, listen. you might have been federal law enforcement officer the year or some bullshit like that all these awards you ain't nothing but 9191-12054 you're nothing but a piece of shit just like all those other pieces of shit out there and don't think you're getting any special treatment and um i don't want to hear a fucking thing from you you're nothing but garbage i was like well have a great day and he was like oh you're gonna have a fucking attitude with me and i was like no i really want to you'd have a great day. You have a tough job. I hope everything goes well. And I, like, left.

Then I had COs that were, like, super nice to me. And COs, I got one of them with a job with the FBI. I mean, what can't make... Where years were you in Danbury? Oh, gosh. I want to see if you were there when I was there. 2014 through, like, 2018? Yeah, you were there when I was there.

I got there in 2017. Yeah, we probably know. I was in the shoe, though. Yeah, like, I know all the orderlies that you had. I'm not going to mention. Hello, I'm Bruce Fabrizio, inventor of Simple Green. Are you looking for a powerful cleaner that removes tough grease and grime from nearly any surface? Simple Green gets the job done safely.

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Yeah, you know, he's from the town over. They called him Harry Potter there. Yeah. He had a similar case to mine. He was in Danbury. I knew he was at, I was at Wyatt detention facility with him, but he had got less time than me. He was there. And then there were some of the CO, CO GLON.

Yeah. Yeah, he's the one that put me in the shoe because I had dated his cousin. Oh, okay. So that's why I was in the show. And then Purcelli, the lieutenant. So that's crazy. We were there all at the same time. Yeah.

A lot of Danbury officers watched the show. I had one reach out the other day on Snapchat and today. We're COs in Danbury. We love watching your show. So they're going to find this episode. Oh, yeah. No, I mean, look, they were great. They were great with me.

They, you know, they helped me out a lot. lot. They treated me just like they treated everybody else. I tried to humble myself for my own personal growth and for like survival. I became the orderly. I was cleaning the toilets and the showers. And, you know, in Danbury, you go to your chow hall based on how you did in the inspection. And when I got to my unit, they were like coming and last every time. I mean, it was a crap hole. and I started making them showers and those toilets like shine and in the beginning

you know some inmates would come in and like throw shit on the wall just to screw with me or you know do whatever they wanted to do to get like revenge on the FBI agent but um I um

I earned a lot of respect by humbling myself and I went from that job to being an orderly in the rec building. And based on my work ethic and, you know, my, I guess, respect of fellow inmates and the CEOs, I was offered a clerk job and then eventually became the head rec clerk. Based on your experience as a federal agent in the FBI, what was the most surprising thing to you? about federal prison?

The most surprising thing was the quality of individual that I met. I worked in law enforcement my whole life, and although I didn't work criminal cases, I heard what criminal agents said and how they spoke about the subjects that they were investigating. It was not like that. not every man I met was a scumbag, a dirtbag, deserved to go to prison. I met some guys that are fantastic people. And I saw some charges that made absolutely no sense.

I saw sentencing that was just out of this world considering, you know, the offense. I learned how our justice system works and how basically corrupt it is, how you can get charged and they can double your sentence if you take your right as a citizen to go to trial and you lose. You know, they can break you off. I'm sure you've heard that term and the listeners have. I saw how guys would, how the feds win 98% of their cases, overcharging people and saying, oh, you're looking at 30 years,

but we'll give you six. And then the public defender tells the individual to jump at that, like, oh, take it. But I didn't do anything. I mean, I knew a guy who was Maryland's basketball player of the year in high school, was going to Georgetown, I believe, on a full ride, got into a car with his cousin,

got pulled over. His cousin had two handguns and a pound of weed. and the guy got nailed with it. Didn't even know it was there, but his cousin said, oh, he knew it was there. So his public defender said, oh, look, take the nine years. And because he's from the streets and he knows how it works, he took it.

And, you know, he was in federal prison. And the only offense he made was he was in a car that ran a stop sign. You know, and I knew a guy I met in transit, craziest story ever. He comes to me and he says, yeah, so I breed dogs and horses, and I had a dead horse on my property. So I called the vet, and it was out in Oklahoma in the winter. And he's like, I pulled the horse to my backyard. I didn't want the dogs chewing at it. and I needed the vet to test it to see if it was going to be a disease I needed all the other horses to get, you know, vaccinated for.

And the vet wasn't going to be able to come to the office until Monday after the snowstorm. Sunday night, he gets a knock on the door at Bureau of Indian Affairs. He was abutted up against an Indian reservation and he had put the horse on the property. and there's some federal law that you can't have a dead horse on an Indian reservation for more than 48 hours or something crazy. And they arrested him. They offered him a five-year plea deal. When he left the courtroom after he was charged, they arrested him for endangerment of animals because he wasn't home to feed the dogs. And there were like 100 dogs that hadn't been fed for a weekend.

And somehow it turned into a federal charge because it was on an Indian reservation. And all crimes there are federal. Wow. They offered him five years. And I was like, for a dead horse, like five years? And I'm sitting there sweating going, what am I going to get? Like, and he's like, yeah, should I take it? And I was like, no, hell no.

Like, this is ridiculous. Like, a judge is going to see that. And so he went to trial and he lost. And he got seven years. And two years in, he died of a heart attack. The guy literally got life for a dead horse. Did seeing all of this change your perspective of the company you worked for? My perspective changed drastically, whether it was,

sentencing disparity, whether it was the quality of the individuals that I met on the inside, whether it was how everybody was treated in the court process, whether it was me thinking about where are my FBI supervisors to save me, my perspective changed dramatically. What do you think got you through your prison sentence? Was it holding out hope that you would get saved by someone higher up or a pardon or was it just adapting what was the biggest reason to get through it i think that my childhood and the adversity that i faced growing up with a facial difference helped me a lot because i have been ridiculed and you know bullied and it made me like a so like a survivor

So as far as, like, the mental aspects of it, it wasn't as bad as, you know, I thought. Matter of fact, I would screw with the Utah COs when they would come around on the count to check. I would, like, strip down, I'd be doing jumping jacks in my solitary confinement cell naked. And they'd be like, what the hell are you doing? I'd be like, what are you looking at? You know, like, just to screw with them. and I think that, you know, growing up in the way that I did and playing sports and having the discipline and the training and having a dad who was like a drill instructor and the Rangers,

all of that helped me as I was going through. I filed like, I don't know, crazy, like 25 motions. I won one. And the one that I won was, they had given me a public safety factor, greatest severity. And the captain reminded me every time he saw me, you're never going to a camp,

you're never going to a camp. And I was like, this guy's like, he hates me. Like he wants, he just won't leave me alone. And I wrote a letter to the judge that they were giving me greatest, severity based on my training for my job.

And the judge agreed and they dropped it. And two days later, I'm in the chow hall and the captain pulls me out and he's like, roll up, you're leaving. And I was like, where am I going? And he's like, you're going to a camp. And I said, oh, I'd like to go to Otisville. And he's like, I don't give a fuck where you want to go. You're going to New Jersey.

And I was like, New Jersey. Like, I can't go to Fort Dix. we used to firearm train there and there was like an FBI office like and he's like no you're going to Ferretton and I was like is that even like a place

you know and two days later I was gone you made out better than me they shipped me from Denver to Oxford Wisconsin yeah that's ridiculous they dog the crap out of me and I heard that I was like

what did he do yeah it's so crazy I mean my parents and lawyer and there was a state senator we had calling the prison every day because I was just on an admin hold in the shoe because of the conflict of interest with the guard. I didn't do anything wrong.

They got pissed off. I don't know what you did to that girl when you were dating there, but man, did that come back to bite you in the ass? No, it just he reported it. That was the whole prison. I know. I mean, look, they, if you get a CEO who has a grudge against you, you're screwed. Yeah, they were not happy. I think they, I was just causing a ruckus over there.

Like, there was just, because I was in the shoe for three months. It didn't make sense, you know, Why they're a transfer? Why couldn't have been a quick thing? But Oxford, Wisconsin turned out to be sweet. It was even just as good as Otisville, just 500 miles away. They said I wouldn't go to Otisville because the word on the compound was that the Jews didn't want me there. And its Jew ran.

Yeah, because they were like, they had like too much going on and they didn't want like a Fed to show up. which is so ironic because I was like the last person that would have ever rated on anyone because I was so disgruntled that I didn't want to get involved in any kind of, you know, political issue on the compound. But I think the other thing that was so surprising was the social aspects of like the compound.

Being who I was, there was some stuff that I that I saw that I learned that just was mind-boggling there was a one-percenter he was the shot caller

for the outlaw motorcycle gang he was like having an affair with an Hasidic I mean they were like keeping it on the down low and I knew it was going on there was

a shockholder for another group. I'm not going to mention that it was writing love letters to another guy. And he would write him in the rec clerk office. And I mean, it's just, you know, it was crazy. I was surprised at the social aspects. How long did you have to stay in the camp until they put you on home confinement? Because I remember when I reached out to you a couple of years ago, It was right after COVID, or it was a couple years after COVID, but you were on home confined.

Yeah. So I got out on COVID in June 4th, 2020. And I was at the camp maybe a year and a half. So, and that was... Sweet. Oh, my gosh. That was ridiculous. They pulled me into the medium, and it was dark.

It was nighttime. They processed you in the medium. And then the CEO walks me out. He opens the door and he's like, see those lights over there across the parking lot? Yeah, go over there and check in. And I was like, no. And he was like, no, go, go, Bob. And I was like, no.

I said, walk me. And he's like, I'm not going to walk you over there. And I was like, I'm not going. It's like, what are you talking about? And I'm like, you're setting me up. I'm going to walk down that parking light. You're going to hit me with an escape charge. He's like, what is wrong with you?

You're at a camp. And I was like, I'm not going. It's like, Jesus Christ, excuse me. Jesus Christ, Bob. And he walks me over. I walk in. There's no CO.

There's bunk beds everywhere. And it's like music is playing. It's like 10 o'clock at night now. A guy comes up. He's like, oh, look, we got your toilet trees. You know, here. Like, here's your welcome package. And I'm like, oh, man, this is great.

Thanks so much. And I'm like, where's the CEO? And he's like, oh, he's, you know, in the weight pile. I'm like, weight pile. So I go out of the dorm and there's like a garage with an entire weight room in it. No one in there. But I hear like, pop, pop. And I'm like, what the heck?

I go through the room and I look out the back door and behind the weight pile garage. are like four inmates in the CEO popping champagne bottles because the guy's going home the next day and they're like celebrating. And I was like, okay, this is how it's going to go. I was like, this is crazy. And it was completely different from no longer monetary stamps. Now it was packs of mackerel to have. how the politics worked, quality of the food.

I mean, everything was ridiculous. We would leave, there was one fence that was four foot high and only went like halfway down. We were allowed over it into a softball field. We'd play softball all night, play football. I was in the weight room all day long. I ran on a track. We had a little wooded area.

It was just, it was ridiculous. They should do away with every single camp. Waste of money. Yeah, total, total waste of money. And it made no sense. Everything was asked backwards. At Danbury, you could take a class, like how to get your license,

how to get your social security card. At the camp, I took Viking history. Like, what the hell is, like, Like, the programming was, had nothing to do with where you were going from that facility. It was like jackass backwards. So I taught a class there, inside out dad, which was like how to be a man. And we went over everything, myself and the other instructor, who was a fantastic guy. He was from the street, but he wanted to make sure that nobody else ever ended up.

You know, he had done a long time. And we went from, you know, how to get your license to how to handle if you're pulled over by the cops. You know, I mean, we tried to touch on everything. COVID came. That was brutal in a camp because you're only 17 inches away from the guy next to you. and everybody applied for it. The first round, they brought us into the cafeteria, and they read off a list of 20 names.

When they hit 19 and it wasn't me, I was like, here it comes. And then the CEO was like walking away, and then he turned around, he was like, oh, wait, one more. And he said my name. And I said, oh, man, I'm going home. got on the phone told my wife started giving all my stuff away next day they called me in they said yeah we made a mistake you're not going i was i was devastated i mean i couldn't believe it had to call my wife back worst phone call ever then uh four days went by called me back in they said yeah you're gonna go and i was like look just tell

me, which one is it going to be? Like, don't yo-yo me. This is crazy. And I was one of the fortunate guys that got out on the CARES Act. How much time did you end up doing? I think all total, eight years, maybe. Inside and then how many years on home confinement? I did, you know, my full 12 years. So, you know, 12 on 15, so, you know, 12 on 15. So, you know, So I think I did three and a half on home confinement. Were the restrictions strict on home confinement? Yeah, mine were really strict. And they were crazy.

So many things weren't wrong. My son was playing college football at the time. And I would put in to go visit him, going to the game, and I would get approval. There were some times I was like halfway there and they'd call me and be like, you're violating. your alarms going off come back to the halfway house immediately

and I'd be like I got approval for this and they said oh well your case manager doesn't work on the weekend so you have to come home I mean there was just one time they called me and they were like

why are you in the middle of the Hudson River and I was like I'm in my living room like just all kinds of stuff they went from the ankle monitor to the phone. The phone didn't work. So they went back to the anchor monitor. It just

it was actually terrifying. It was scarier than being incarcerated because... It's that fear of going back. Yeah, you never knew how they were going to view it. And some of the things that would happen that guys would get violated for,

you'd hear about it. panic you'd be like oh my god i just did that you know like um so it was it was scary were your parents alive to see you get arrested my mother if your dad was alive what do you think he would have said you know in the beginning he would have probably give me a beating like i never got because he could um but in in the process, when he saw what happened, what the charges were, and what was going on, you know, he would have been right next to me. Are you still glad you followed kind of his dream to go into the FBI after all of this?

Yeah, I am. I don't regret my career choice, especially. because I didn't do any criminal work. It really paid off for me, you know, when I got incarcerated. But I'm glad that I was able to be humbled so that I could see the high qualities in the individuals that I was incarcerated with. If your listeners learn anything from me, it should be one. Don't buy into the hype.

Don't let your ego control your gut feeling because that's where I made my mistake. And number two is, you know, really don't judge. Don't judge anyone but yourself. You don't know somebody's situation. You don't know what forced them to do something. And you really don't know the truth of them until you get to know them as a person. so take the time to get to know them as a person. I mean, a quick story, I ran a floor hockey league in Danbury.

Have you ever heard this story? No, I didn't even realize they had floor hockey. Oh, yes. So we had a Christmas tournament, and as the rec clerk, I would set up all the equipment, full goaling equipment, everything. So one night I put it on, the guys were shooting on me, and I was making all kinds of saves because I had played goalie in the street on ponds, you know.

And the Christmas tournament's coming up. And, you know, in Danbury, the big deal was if you won a tournament, you got like a bag of goodies. It was like crap. It was like ringdings, twinkies, you know, Mike and Ikes. But on the compound, that was like gold. So these two guys walk up to me and they're like, hey, Bob, you know, we want you to be our goalie for the Christmas tournament.

And I was like, uh, aren't you the Gambino crime family? And they were like, yeah. And I'm like, I'm an FBI agent. Like, are your people going to be okay with this? And they were like, you're a good goalie. We want to win. We don't, we checks you out. We don't give a, we don't give a rat's ass where you used to work.

You didn't put any of us away. Get in the net. And I was like, can we, like, have a meeting first? So I was in the gym with all these, like, Italian guys, and they were like, yeah, we want you to be our goalie. And I was like, this is, in my head, I'm like, this is so surreal. So I became their goalie. And we're, like, winning every game, and I'm playing lights out. And I'm in my rec office, and a CEO comes over.

I won't mention who he is because he's probably listening. And he walks over, he's like, I can't believe you're playing goalie for like the Genevice crime family. And I'm like, yeah, I know it's crazy. And it's like, no, I mean, they got like 140 grand on the game. And I was like, what? And like, it was like a Bobby Brady moment. Like my voice cracked. And I was like, yeah.

And all I saw was me letting in like six goals and then my children disappearing. So I was like So I left that I left that building and I went right to medical And I'm like, I hurt my hand And they wrapped me up And That CEO like saved my life

I mean I The next day I was like I can't play sorry guys And they were like oh damn They ended up losing But I don't know I was, it was just so surreal, me making all these saves against, like, the Boston car, the, the New York car.

And here I am, I'm playing with, like, you know, guys that were, like, hit men in the mob, guys that were, like, you know, high up in the crime families, like, the FBI agent and the goal. It was just crazy. Have you been able to find a silver lining to your story, or do you still think that's yet to come? You know, the silver lining for me is meeting people like yourself, situations like this. And like I said in the very beginning, if anybody ever gets an opportunity to sit down with you, they should because not only are you like a great interviewer, but it's a great learning experience not only for the interviewee, but for the people that are out there listening. and we're not going to change our system if we don't educate the people that don't know how it works. We all know how it works because we went through it, but other people out there don't. So I think the silver lining for me is because of where I came from, the FBI,

I get more lack of a better word, credibility or more listening time because people don't judge me as a crook or like, oh, there's a, you know, there's a dirty, you know, criminal. They, like, hesitate and they listen. And when I say people, I mean, you know, white people, like middle class, upper middle class, people that can make a difference because they have the finances to make. a difference, they have the contacts to make a difference. Those are the people that don't pay us any mind, us former inmates. So for me the silver lining is that I went in and I went in from where I came from and people will listen to me and maybe I can make a difference by meeting people like yourself who give us the opportunity to say what it's really like. And hopefully, you know we can make changes

I find myself stuck in a quagmire though because the people that run like the justice groups are all former incarcerated individuals who still look at me like this you know because of where I came from the people on the other side still look at me like is he a dirty cop you know so like I'm still in the middle

So an opportunity like this for me is great Because you know you You go through everything You know you when you interview someone You would have been a great agent You would have You might have fed some of the criminals That have been on my show

I know I know that I know that but you know I wanted to be an FBI agent That always interested me I love like criminal minds I love you know I was telling you Aquanico Like I just I've always been that person You know rooting for the good guy against the bad guy until you see the other aspect of it and you kind of realize they're not necessarily all bad

and a lot of people have the same upbrings right or they're born into situations that are uncontrollable and and and on that note like you said a lot of it is where you grow up and and also you know the fbi is not squeaky clean you know they uh there's a lot of things that we do that we do that we do did on the counterintel side that, you know, I'm not going to say anything. I got it. But it's not got you a trouble. Yeah, but, you know, so again, your listeners shouldn't judge anyone. The people that you've had on your show are all open and honest, and they've all reconciled

with their momentary loss of moral compass, their mistakes that they made. And, you know, that's the thing that made it so interesting. to me is because, you know, I lived with these guys, you know, and I saw how similar we were and how different I thought we were going to be and how it turned out to be completely the opposite. And it really humbled me. It really humbled me. I was on both sides of the wall, both sides of the fence. And honestly, like I said, don't judge people. because you don't know what they went through. And I met a lot of great men who, you know,

I'm really proud of that I met and who I think are like wonderful individuals, they're great dads, their great spouses, and they're wonderful friends. And they do a lot for the community. Well, Bob, I appreciate you coming on the show today. I'm glad we got to do this. Oh, no. Listen, I had a great time. And like I said, it would have made a hell of an agent.

Well, thanks, Bob. And, you know, I wish you the best. and I appreciate you doing this with me today. Always, always. I really, you know, I want to thank you for everybody that listens because an opportunity like this, a show like this, gives people closure. And, you know, you're really selfless with what you do,

and I appreciate it. I appreciate you. Sure.