Locked In with Ian Bick - Retired FBI Agent on Mob, International Crime & Fraud Cases | Kurt Siuzdak

Episode Date: September 29, 2025

Kurt Siuzdak has spent his life serving — first in the U.S. military, then as an attorney, and ultimately as an FBI Special Agent for over two decades. From organized crime and major fraud cases to violent crimes, civil rights investigations, and overseas operations, Kurt has seen it all. #FBIAgent #FBIStories #TrueCrimePodcast #MobStories #FraudCases #LawEnforcementLife #CrimeDocumentary #lockedinpodcast Thank you to PRIZEPICKS for sponsoring this episode: Visit https://prizepicks.onelink.me/LME0/IANBICK and use code IANBICK and get $50 in lineups when you play your first $5 lineup! Hosted, Executive Produced & Edited By Ian Bick: https://www.instagram.com/ian_bick/?hl=en https://ianbick.com/ 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 FBI Secrets: Meet Kurt Siuzdak00:22 Military, Law & The Road to the FBI01:46 Going Viral: MrBeast Video & Unexpected Fame03:08 Personal Life, COVID & Mental Resilience05:55 Growing Up & Lessons from Small-Town Life11:59 Family Values & First Jobs that Shaped Him15:27 Military Service & Why He Chose Law School27:55 From Lawyer to FBI Agent: Career-Changing Moment31:44 Inside FBI Training & First High-Stakes Cases44:27 New York City Organized Crime & Fraud Investigations47:28 How the FBI Seizes Assets from the Mob53:39 Life in the FBI: Dangerous Moments & Close Calls01:00:46 Deployed to Iraq: Military & FBI Operations Overseas01:13:43 War Crimes Investigations & The Toughest Cases01:16:42 Moving to Connecticut: Casino & Tribal Crime Cases01:25:12 The Strangest Crimes He Ever Investigated01:36:57 Child Exploitation, Human Trafficking & Civil Rights Work01:43:10 Organized Crime Beyond the Mob: What You Didn’t Know01:49:25 FBI’s Final Years: Fighting Human Trafficking & Cybercrime01:55:27 Whistleblower Advocate: Standing Up for Agents02:01:19 Hard Lessons, Regrets & What He’d Do Differently02:06:16 Human Side of the Badge: Most Powerful Encounters02:14:00 Final Thoughts & Advice from 20+ Years in the FBI Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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He goes, you'd be a better FBI agent. Did you ever feel in fear of your life? They're a war crimes case where they were in a rocky girl and then they executed her family while they were. What do you think was the most interesting fraud case you were? Kurt Sousdak spent over 20 years in the FBI taking down organized crime, investigating fraud, and working high-stakes cases around the world. Before that, he served in the U.S. military and worked as an attorney. Now he's sharing the untold stories of organized crime investigations, overseas operations, and what it really takes to be an FBI agent.

Kurt, welcome to Lockton. Thanks so much for coming today. Oh, thank you very much for being here asking me to come. Yeah, what are the chances that two people from the same state were in a Mr. Beast video? Right now? I don't know. I mean, with what he's doing about 100%, right? Oh, I guess with the bigger ones.

No, it's crazy that, you know, both, I wouldn't say I was a star, but the main victim for that and calling you up and finding out that you were part of the same, the same, um, adventure. But you were one of the original ones and you were in a solo episode too. I was four years ago. The, it was, uh, uh, I escaped or watch an FBI agent catch me or something. I was hunted by the FBI. Yeah.

It's crazy. It was, it was crazy because for a while, my, um, my kids almost, my, one of my, my sons almost got beat up because he said, oh yeah, my dad was going to be, is going to be a Mr. Beechner. Like, you're a liar. No, it could be. And then they found out. They're like, oh my God, what do you know?

I'm like, nothing. They called me up. I was just a victim of their escapades. And we didn't even know when we were talking to you, and then you casually brought it up, and then we casually brought it up that I was just saying. I knew that. Yeah, no, I actually had known that.

I watched them. I watched Mr. Beast when I, I hate what I say it. And I don't watch Mr. Beast when I'm driving a vehicle. I possibly listen to Mr. Beast with the video off to the side. But, yeah, I had, I remembered that from, because a gentleman, one of my clients, Zach Schofstahl had actually mentioned that. And then I put two and two together.

But yeah, it's crazy, right? Yeah, that is such a small world. But he gives, I'll bet he's responsible. I don't know as an incubator, but as an incubator, I'll bet he's been responsible for a lot, as many shows and people being in social media as anyone. Yeah, it would have been funny if you were the law enforcement officer cast it in the 100 days. No, I love you.

No, it would have been funny. Oh, I want to do that. Imagine. No, I want, they call me up and they're like, can you come down and can we do it today? And we, I mean, I was, I was within a matter of hours I was on an airplane. And you were retired by that point? I had just retired. Okay.

And I was, I had just retired and I had, was getting over COVID. I mean, I got my, I got my butt kicked from COVID. I literally like, did COVID hit you hard or no? Yeah, three times. Okay. I was sitting outside my house and I couldn't breathe. And I was talking to my doctor and I was like, you need to go to the hospital. I'm like, but if they give me, if they put that, what was it incubation or they, if they do that, everyone's dying in Yale from that.

Not everyone, but yes, it's a risk. I'm like, but you can't, how far can you walk? I'm like, I don't know, five feet. Like, you need to go to hospital. So I said, I don't want to do that. I'd rather just die in my backyard. It's just a better way of going than being stuck in a hospital. So I walk up to my hot tub and I open up my hot tub.

I figure, what better way to go, right? Just sit there, relax and let the thing. But all of a sudden, the air, the steam starts cleaning up my breathing. I mean, I saw it. I'm like, wow, I can breathe better now that I'm sitting in a hot tub waiting for my final moments. And so I was able to like breathe because of the, the hot tub and going in and out of it for like two days, except I had something called COVID fog. So I decided I need to put gas in my car.

Why when I'm in the middle of COVID, do I need to have gas in my car? I don't know. And then I ended up in Pennsylvania, in Lancaster, Pennsylvania. Don't know how I got there, $400 of easy pass violations. I just drove. And then I woke up at a gas station with no money, no wallet, no, It was winter, no winter clothes, shorts. I had the shorts on from the hot tub.

And I had driven my Jeep all over the place and then until I ran out of gas. Just how you showed up today. No money, no money, no money. No money, no card. Yeah, don't play kids. If your kid is nasty, yeah. I showed up from my, I had played chess with my son yesterday.

And I think he was not upset or was upset with me. So I think as a practical joke, took the credit cards out of my wallet as I left. So I'm, yes, showed up here with no credit card. Fortunately, I do have a full tank of gas to get home. And at least he left you with your driver's license. You didn't wipe you clear.

Yeah, I'm not sure. I'm not sure. I saw. I was still. Was there, okay. Yeah. But everything else was wiped out of your wallet. There's nothing.

Like, we're all my cards. They're all wiped out. Yeah. So that was, like, yeah. So I beat my son in chess. I tell him I never, I never hold back on chess. Chess is a full-time sport. and I was teaching him about sportsmanship.

And I guess I taught him well because he put his hand out. He said, congratulations. I shook it. And then he stole everything from my wallet. Where do you grow up, Kurt? A distant land called Nogatuck. It's a place called Nogatuck Valley

about 40 miles from, in Connecticut. And it's, Nagatuck is filled with a lot of wonderful people but originally not some of the brightest people because they had decided to build a land dump, a landfill on top of a hill in Nagatuck which became a super fun site. They wanted more toxic places

and they took all the chemicals from all of the arms manufacturers during World War II and they dumped it on top of a hill because one of the chances that rain is going to hit the hill and then get into the groundwater. So they polluted Nagatuck when they, you know, a while back at least part of it. And so I was there. I went to the military, lived around in numerous places. Now I'm currently in a place called Madison.

And if anyone doesn't know, in the East Coast, there are, there's a place that's like the Shire where you have hobbits. And that's, this is between Branford and Old Saybrook. there is a place where there's no crime, very little crime. And it's Banford, Guilford, Madison, Clinton, Westbrook, and Old Saybrook, and it is just a wonderful place to live. But there are no jobs there. It's just people from New York live there. And it's, so I'm living over there.

A lot of seafood. They have, yes, they have a bunch of great seafood. And they have some nice beaches. Madison was sued because they were just, they were evidently accused of just, discriminating against people of color for because you couldn't park a car to go to the beach. Madison has a great beach. And Madison just discriminates against everyone, including Guilford, Clinton. So it wasn't personal.

They made it very difficult for anyone to park and go to the beach in their little town. But I think Greenwich and Madison were sued. And I think they both lost. Yeah, one of our good friends lives in Clinton. And so we go and visit them and use a house on the beach in that area. Oh, yeah, that's wonderful. Yeah, it's beautiful. That's actually from, now, in this whole area, a lot of the houses are really at sea level.

But there's like a hill. You know, right, there's a hill up there where a lot of the houses are on a hill looking out. And that's just wonderful. Yeah. There will be no erosion there. Yeah, and they have steps. It's like a platform that goes down to the water. They have that.

Yeah, that's, Clinton's really. nice little town. They have a, I ride, I wake up three in the morning, four to the morning, and I ride a bicycle. I actually go through the Clinton and back around at a very slow speed. And that's probably one of the nicest areas you could go in Connecticut and very good, very nice people. Remember when they're doing, when they're having those flash mobs in like the east, west coast where they would come in and they'd just rip off stores? And they would have a mob, they'd go in and they would just break. into a store and then steal and then run away with it.

And Clinton has a whole Clinton corners. It's a big huge outlets area and they were having that. But they had cops. One day I drove in, there's like 500 cops. They're parked everywhere. Like, what the heck's going on here? Like, oh, they're expecting a flash mob. I'm like, it's not going to happen here because there's only like one way out.

They're police. I mean, if you're going to commit crime, Clinton is not the place to do a flash mob because you're stuck. There's nowhere to run. and they would have got, they ever would have been cornered and dragged off to the state police. See, my version of a flash mob

was in high school. It was the trend where a mob would break out and start singing or dancing. But that's because you're old. No, I'm young. No, you're not. See, that's relative. You're old.

That's not how what the flash mobs are you bust into the stores. You grab everything that's loaded. Yeah, that's a new flash mob for teenagers. And yeah, that's in New York. And, yes, you're, if you want, try singing.

I'm happy to watch. Yeah, they would used to do it at the malls and everything. They would just break out singing. But now you have up in Hartford or north of Hartford, they're doing that with cars. They're racing. They're like taking over roads and then having the same, you know, goofy stuff with cars, you know, drag racing rather than, you know, you and your friends singing what kind of songs? Yeah. High school musical.

High school musical songs. Yeah. So here it's now with cars, you know, one of the. one of the craziest things with, do you have, do you have an e-bike? No, it's an e-bike. Like an electric bike? Yes. Oh, no, I don't have an electric bike.

Okay, it's an e-bike. Okay, so, see, this is age. You thought I was old, but you may be older. So, okay, so e-bikes right now are the, um. The lazy way to use a bicycle. No. Yeah, you need the electric. No, they're fake.

No, they're fake. What do you mean they're fake? No, there's two types of, there's four types of e-bikes. There's class one, two, three. Class 1 is like you pedal. Class 2 is you can pet. It goes 20 miles an hour. Class 2 is you pedal and you have a throttle.

It goes 20. Class 3 is like a 28 miles an hour. But the other ones are the ones that are fake. The seats are about that far off to pedal so you can't pedal. It's got like 4,000 watts of power in the batteries and it goes 60 miles an hour. And you go on YouTube. My son wanted to buy one. I'm like, oh, let me look.

I'm on YouTube. And I'm like, oh, yeah, it goes 28 miles hour. But if you unscrew this screw and you pull it out, it can do something. 60. Like, and they've had casual. I think even in this town, there have been kids that have gotten hurt with these e-bikes because you can pull things off of them and they're unregulated. And they go, they're like the cheap version of a motorcycle.

They go zero-60 in like four seconds and they'll hold 60 miles an hour for 20 minutes. They're crazy. And you see these, that's where a lot. I mean, that's why they're trying to regulate them everywhere because they're out of hand. And I didn't think that electric bikes were that, where, um, Electric stuff was fast, but damn, it's fast. I mean, it's faster than the motor vehicles. What was your upbringing like in Nogatuck?

Oh, I went to public school. I can't remember anything about it, thankfully. You know, I, it was a blue-collar town. Now, do you ever hear of something called Mounds and Amin Joy? At the candy bar? Yeah, okay. And Mounds and Amin Joy were actually made in Nogne. Agatuck.

Okay. So every year, and probably from the time I was kindergarten until eighth grade, we would go to the Mounds and Aminjoy factory. And it was like the

Willie Wonka factory, except in place of Umpalumpas, there were women that were about four foot tall Polish smoking cigars and cigarettes making Mounds and Amin Joy, wearing these white outfits. And you walk around

and they literally had like, it was just a bunch of older women, like they probably may have been 30 years old, but they were, looked like there were 70 that were wearing these, what they call babushkas, like those clothes that just hanged down. And they were all sitting there with a cigarette making all my choice back. Like, I would want to touch that stuff.

That's disgusting. Because they're like, literally with the cigarette. So they finally got shipped off to, they got sold to Hershey. But that was a big deal for us for our, that was our field trip every year. And they also had a field trip where you could go and they had this pipe where it had spring. water, except it was about a half a mile from, um, thousand feet below, but a half a mile from Superfund site. So it was probably shooting out radioactive material and, and people were drinking it because they thought it was fresh. So it's, um, it's a tough place. What did your parents do

for work? Father was, um, a lawyer and a judge. And he thought, he, he, he thought the people, we're very lucky because he had, um, he had been the long, I think the longest serving probate judge in Connecticut, and he would say he would dislike the job, but he loved the people of Nagatuck. Of Beacon Falls and Nagatik, he just loved being around them. And that was his, I mean, he just thought that was the best. I've never seen a guy who was more happier with the job than him because of the fact that he got to deal with all the people from, you know, Beacon Falls, Nogatuck in the surrounding areas.

What kind of an attorney? Just a solo practitioner. I'm not even sure if they really exist just just, just. general solo practice or spent half his time doing that and the other half with probate court. Is that how you became passionate about the law? Who said I was passionate about the law? You must have been at some point. You know, I got into the career you did.

No, you know, I was either that or prison. I don't know. I mean, what do you do when you got a bachelor's of art degree in your, I got, I, I joined the Army and realized that I loved the idea of being in the Army. but didn't like actually being in the Army itself. I didn't like sitting around camping or pretending to have walking around with a rifle with no bullets. And that's what most of the time when I was out of college,

it was like before Desert Storm. So then I had an opportunity. I was a lieutenant. I was an M1 tank commander, I'm a platoon leader. And I had the opportunity because they were doing a downsizing to get out right after, to get out and become a reservist. So I did. Then I went to law school.

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Desert Storm. So that was my third year. So I missed my third year of law school. In law school, law school is great, for anyone who wants to go to law school. Don't go. No, no, no, no, no, no. Law school, most people, half the people, and this may be, at least when I was coming out, that graduated law school didn't become lawyers. They may become in-house counsel or other things, but they weren't necessarily practicing law afterwards. It's a great education. So for that respect, it does provide you with something, with a way of looking at the world, even if you're not interested in practicing law.

Now, one of my sons, I have a son in Pace University, and he was thinking about law school. I told him that law school is fine, but you have to make the economic choice to figure out how you want to do law school and be able to survive afterwards because if you put yourself $500,000 in debt and then you have, you're not sure if you can actually get a job,

then you're dead because your student loans aren't dischargeable and you'll be haunted for the rest of your life with it and then you'll die miserable and poor. So you have to have a plan. It has to be economically feasible. And for a lot of people it is. If, but I have,

well, okay, confession. Okay. So after I got back from Desert Storm, or when we got back from Iraq, I had, for me and my contemporaries, we were in the FBI in Iraq, it was a difficult time. I mean, it was, we were getting bombed all the time. But I had the worst case of 80, I felt like a bad case of PTSD. And my wife who's a therapist, is like, you need to be checked for ADHD. I'm like, oh, I have ADHD. Now, everyone who worked with me knew I had ADHD. Like, everyone. I just keep talking, can't shut up. I talk a mile a minute. But no one would say anything. And when I was in the FBI, I actually had three or four desks because I have, because I would just monitor, I do all my different stuff on each different desk and they're all filled and they're all looked like hell, but I organized myself by desks. And everyone allowed me to do it because I was actually, I was actually fairly successful at what I was doing. So I took a test for the ADHD. I'm like, I thought I did well and come out. I was out the top 1% of the worst.

cases of ADHD ever. So don't feel bad. You can, you know, when my doctor says, well, you know, it's surprising. You can actually get a job. I'm like, well, only in the federal government can I work with a case of ADHD. But it was, that's why I realized that practicing law was painful because sitting at a computer typing is painful, whereas thinking is not. Gaming and thinking is actually very, is, it feels very good.

And just typing is, I find very oppressive and difficult. What kind of law did you want to get into when you went to law school if you asked a lot? I liked, I did criminal defense work when I got out and I like that. I mean, if the government wants to get you, they can get you. I mean, it's hard. Every time you wake up and someone wakes up and goes out, they're probably violating some law. And I always had, I had a friend of mine who I very, very, very, very, you know, very deeply respect.

And he was telling, he was telling me there's one guy who's, you know, a real problem. I'm like, dude, that guy is like, went to, like, Tibet and was, like, lived with Tibetan monks for, like, 15 years and then brought a Tibetan monk over here because he was dying and he's been raising him for the last five years. So you tell me he's a problem because of marijuana. I tell you, he grew up. And it's important to know that people who, in criminal law, I was, I loved, I loved my clients. Criminal offense, I like my clients. Even as FBI agent, the people that was going, that was

targeting, I, I can think of maybe one, I'm sure there's one person I thought was really, like, evil. But even the people that were like in al-Qaeda, in Iraq, that, what AQI, they were doing, I mean, they all believed in what they were doing. It wasn't like, I mean, that was, they're fighting the Americans because the Americans had taken over their country. Most of the people have, I can't think of anyone I would say was really, really, really bad. I mean, bin Laden gets, you know, hits it for killing innocence. But I like dealing with those people. And I like criminal law.

Was your mom in the picture? Yes. Yeah, she was a nurse. And she was, I had, my family was together. And again, that's the core of having a, it's hard to succeed. in life if you have just a mother or father, you know, and don't have, if you don't have both. And I was lucky to have both my parents live until they were in their 70s. What were some values they instilled in you as a kid?

I don't know. Stay the hell of problems. Stay a hell of trouble. Yeah. Work was, I mean, I started working when I was eight years old. I was working at a barbershop when I was eight years old. and I worked, I basically had a job that paper boy for my entire life. And you want to know I learned about that?

Enjoy your life. You only get one of them. Working, if, you know, working is how you are able to enjoy your life. But time is your only commodity. So just make sure you know that. Your health is a huge deal. Time. And if you work your whole life and that's it, then you're missing something.

So you go to Desert Storm and then you come back. How old are you? Well, 28, 29. And you finish law school right as soon as you get back? I actually, they tried to throw me out because there's a cap on how, my law school was not happy with me being deployed. And so there was some issues with us, with the people that deployed of actually graduating because they want us to start our whole third year over.

And we were not interested in paying for another third year of law school. and people had to intervene in order for us to graduate. I actually never, I went back for one course and then took courses at Tulane University, and they allowed me to graduate. Tulane was very, very decent for taking, making sure that I was able to graduate. I went to Loyola for my degree, but Tulane was a place that made sure I graduated. How long was the deployment for? I never got, my first deployment, and probably set,

the stage of my life for my life. We got activated in November, went to Fort Polk, went to Fort Hood, and then we're getting ready to deploy and the war was over. It was like a four-day war. Like you miss, it was like a bad weekend. I mean, like a few people died, a few tanks, but the whole Iraqi army got crushed and I'm sitting in Fort Hood going, what hell, why am I here? The war's over. And then I was, I had made friends, in the military that I still keep today, which were wonderful people. We went back to New Orleans where my reserve unit, where my National Guard unit was, and then got ordered to go back on the active duty right away.

So then I spent the next year and a half back on active duty because my whole unit got demobilized. And for me, they forced me to go to active duty. Now, my theory on this, so that 760 people got demobilized and I got sent to Fort Sill. My theory on this is that when I came back from, I paid for my apartment in advance. So when I got demobilized, I went back to my apartment and my landlord had thrown all of my stuff away and had moved someone else in. And so I had nothing left at all. So I was literally homeless So I'm like sitting there like

Oh here I am and come back to my apartment And like I thought had someone Taking care of it, the landlord said And meanwhile had no place to go And then I went to the bank And back then I realized the bank Because I didn't have an address They weren't taking that address

The bank wouldn't release money for me So I had no money No apartment Nothing I mean literally I had a motorcycle Which is stored separately but I had literally nothing except for a bunch of camouflage clothes. And I'm like, I'm totally screwed.

Like, I've never been homeless in my life, and here I am. So I went back, the next day I had to go back to the military, and I told out, like, this is going to be a real interesting summer. I'm in New Orleans. I'm basically got to figure out where I'm going to go. I don't, the Army didn't even issue me a tent. And I got to figure this out. And then what I think happened was, I think the word got up to my commanders and they're like,

oh, we can fix this because he needs to have a permanent place. to live in order to have a bank account, to get that back. And he needs to have a place to stay. So we're just going to send him to training. And then he can become a company commander, a commander here when he's done. And so all of a sudden I got orders. When everyone deactivated, I got orders to go to Fort Sill. And then I was able to restore my life by having a permit address and having all this stuff.

So I used to think that I was unhappy. I was upset that they took me there. They made me do that. In retrospect, I think they're doing me a favor. And they just wanted to be abusive to me as they set me off the way because they knew I was not happy about it. So for them who ordered me off, thank you very much, it only took me 25 years to figure out you were doing me a favor. Was that hard to readjust to law school after taking that, you know, almost two years off? I had graduated while I was in law school, while I was in the act of Army.

When you went back to act. Yeah, in fact, I actually typed up one of my final papers on this paper that was classified because it was like an advanced computer for the day, which could barely do anything. It was Word processor. I typed up my final paper, but the paper itself was classified. So I had to bring it in, present it to the teacher, have them read it, and then I had take that paper and then light it on fire because it was actually a flammable paper. out. That's the whole purpose. So everything would go. Take it out, walk into a trash thing, and burn it right there. Copiers were a thing, but not the best. These printers you have now were just coming into, inkjet printers were just coming into becoming a thing. But literally it was like, they called a flash paper. So I burned all of my finals after they were submitted.

So you get out or you graduate at law school and you take the bar and you pass? Yes. And you go right into law right away? I got the highest. I got the, I was in the, I was in the, top one-third of one-per, I was high, like one-third of one-percent for my passing Connecticut Bar Association for taking the bar here. Yeah, and then I went, then I started practicing and hated it. Hated it. And then one day I woke up and said, I want to join the FBI. Actually, it was because a judge, Squatito told me when I was doing a trial, he said, you know, you're a good lawyer. He goes, you'd be a better FBI agent. He goes, You won't sit around as much.

You want to, and during a trial, he told me this. And I took his advice on it and then joined the FBI. During a criminal trial? It was. It's interesting. You got both sides of the spectrum early in your career. Well, I was, it was a, the guy, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, ATF had arrested a guy for, like, having 10 guns, and he was a felon.

I think it was a bank robber, a heroin addict, former. And then he had served his time, he was doing everything, he was doing everything right. And then someone asked, and he was a woodworker too. So someone asked him, hey, can you build a stock for this thing? He built it. And then he started playing, you know, people would come over and build, you know, he would build like woodworking for these people as a spare job. But when you're a felon, you're not allowed to have a firearm. So he got caught with, like, firearms, like all over his house.

and he got convicted on a trial. And we argued, I mean, it was obviously he was going to get convicted, but we argued to the judge, the Squatrito, that this guy did everything right, and here he is being looking at 100 years. And I don't think the prosecutors understood the argument that we were trying to make to the judge, because they offered them like a hundred years.

Like, so maybe it was it. First offer may have been less, much less 10 years. And, but we go to the sentencing. And during the trial, my own step back, during the trial, the prosecutors presented pictures, photographs of the guns, which I had never seen, and they were supposed to disclose that. And during that, I said, look, I objected these photos. I've never seen them before.

And I said, Your Honor, if I just brought stuff in the day of the trial, you wouldn't let me just bring it in. you, they had to disclose it. We asked for that. And they're like, the judge's like, how do you know? I won't let you, you know, I won't let you present it. I'm like, but I don't know. I don't think you would.

He goes, well, I would. I said, okay, so during sentencing, we bring in it, we say, Your Honor, here we are, and we have all these medical records and we want to present them to the, you know, the court, here's the medical records, the prosecutor, and the prosecutor, like, Your Honor, he'd present you in the day, now, he should have brought this, A month ago and told us all about this. I'm like, but Your Honor, you told me if I bring in the day of, it's okay. And the judge is looking at going, did I actually say that?

I'm like, yeah, it goes, I think I did. And so the prosecutor is upset. He goes, no, I'm going to give you a, to prosecutors, I'm going to give you a day to read the medical records. And then I'm going to do the sentencing. And so come back the next day. It was the next day or two for the sentencing. And then my client gets one day time served for all the terrible medical conditions that we told him he had and all of that.

And I laid him out all the different conditions he had. So we walked. The judge said, okay, come on up here. And so we got one day time served. In fact, I looked at my client and said, you should at least three or four months for the grief that you've caused me. Like, it was stressful, you know, get ready for you to go for 100 years. in jail, but he's like, you should do at least three or four months. And he's like,

what he's looking at me and go, what you mean? And he goes, so he had to get, you know how you get booked? If you get booked, the first day counts. So if you, if you get fingerprinted, that counts as day one, day one for any type of, for if you look at time. So he already had that happen to him. So he had the one day. And so he's ready to walk out. He had to get processed. And then the judge called me up and called me and the prosecutor up to the, to the podium and we were talking and he told the prosecutor he the prosecutor did a great job. I mean, it was just unfair. It was just an unfair case. I mean, I understood why they did it, but putting a guy like who did everything right for 20 years into this situation was unfair,

unfair and having them on probation was a good fair thing. So if he did it again, he was going to go for a long, long time. And that was a very just ruling. The prosecutors weren't happy, but I think it was just ruling. So then I walk away from, from where the judge is. And then the judge looks at me, say, oh, by the way, Attorney Seussack. He goes, I would like to thank you for providing me with 15 copies

of all the medical records. And the prosecutor looked over, I'm like, what? He's like, I'm like, Your Honor, but I want to make sure that we had enough in case there was an appeal. It was a big huge box. And again, I thought,

I was upset about the photographs. I thought, and he goes, he goes, he said, I want to thank you for that. Your Honor, if we had appeal, you have plenty copies. He's like, no, I appreciate why you did that. That was it. That was it. Crack a Cayman Jack Margarita with real lime, blue agave nectar, and real margarita taste. Taste your escape. Camin Jack, America's number one margarita. Camin Jack is a premium malt beverage with flavors. Please drink responsibly.

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I've dealt with a lot of people that have had firearms in the states, out of them. And I've never had a problem with anyone. I mean, I've had people like threaten them, but I'm like, do you really want to go throw down on with FBI agents? There's no better gunfighters in the world than some of the FBI agents. I mean, they put us through like 17 or 18,000 rounds of ammunition during training. Fighting an FBI agent is a wrong thing to do. It's different than that was, that's a while back.

Now, maybe they only do five rounds. I don't know. But back then, they were, FBI agents were good at what they did with that. And I never had problems with people having firearms, holding them. I think it's a constitutional right. It's also, I mean, people, oh, it's not for the government, for militia. It keeps everybody honest. I don't have a problem with, I also think that time matters.

if you, I mean, even for voting, okay, you serve your time. Okay, thank you very much. You did it. Most people, most people who commit crimes, do crimes, either occurs because of some type of weakness. It's not usually because people are evil.

I mean, it's usually it's a weakness or a misunderstanding or something happens. There's a lot of mitigating issues. Even though they committed a crime, I mean, what they did was a violation, a criminal violation. A lot of times it's not a job. judgment on a person.

And it never, it never has been for me where I have to judge, where I had to judge, I judge someone just because they had a crime. One of my clients, it was my father's client, I was assisting him. He worked for a club called a motorcycle club,

and I'll see which one. And he was driving along the road. There was a bad fight between two clubs and he, they opened up the door and then they shot the wheel out from underneath the president's club, the motorcycle, the president's club, which is a bad thing because if you lose your front tire while you're driving on a highway, nothing good comes from that. And if it happens by a shotgun, it's all bad. So he did three years in jail for that. And we argued it was a public service homicide. And the guy ran. He was like, I'm out of here, Kurt. We're done. First thing he did was he got home, grabbed his motorcycle,

went and bought a case of champagne, dropped it off our office and said, thank you. I am done. I'm done with this. I learn my lessons, and you'll never see me in this state again. And it's just a learning. A lot of times it's a learning experience for people. It's painful, too. But, again, just because somebody is convicted, I don't think their life is over.

In fact, if you look, the trend now is that you should be able to get a, you know, people have their, their records expunged. You know, and you have, you know, 18-year-olds get into fights and they have permanent records. Well, he was, he, he, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, let me turn us off. I apologize. I wouldn't think of it. Um, I, let me, I apologize. if um the FBI agents breaking the rules yeah yeah but but but it's good

America is about second chances talk up talk to Trump he's had plenty of plenty of um bankruptcies he failed he failed once at um presidential campaign he succeeded twice and he's had second chances that's what America that's the best part about America you can have all kinds of problem and then wake up one day and say, I'm going to do this and move on. And nobody asks, nobody asks, have you ever been convicted or something and socially? I think in the FBI, a lot of, I did internal investigations. In internal investigations, you have a lot of FBI

agents doing bad, wrong things. There's like 5,000 pages of rules and guaranteed when they wake up and go to work, they're violating one of them. And so, but I did internal investigations. I told people, it's not a judgment. You just have to be honest about this. There's no, you know, you have a fifth of a minute right with an administrative hearing and just be honest and own it. And whenever I'm going to ask, just own it.

Oh, yeah, I have one of these. Because, because one guy who got in trouble in New York, he got, he was had a problem with alcohol and he had, he had divorce and he was really struggling and they ordered him to go to AA. But unbeknownst to him at the time that inside the federal building of twice six federal, alcohol, alcohol is anonymous, actually had a weekly meeting. And they're like, they forced him to go to that one so they can monitor whether he was going. So the first time he goes down there, he comes up after an hour.

He goes, oh, my God, Kurt, I can't believe it. It was like a, what we called it, an SAC convention, a special agent charge, was like an SAC convention because all the bosses were down at the AA meeting with me. He couldn't believe it. There were like three of them down there. These are the guys who just got me, who just punished me. I'm like, yes, they punished you, but that didn't mean they never said they had, that they had never done anything wrong.

They have the same struggle as you have. And he was like, I just couldn't believe we had so many people that were bosses. I'm like, people make mistakes. In the FBI, if you make a mistake, you own it. You have to admit it, and then you accept the punishment and you move on. So tell us about joining the FBI. Once you figured out in your mind, you wanted to join. 1996, I didn't like practicing.

I joined at that time, before I joined the FBI, I was, I had an injured knee from the military, and I couldn't walk. When I decided I couldn't walk, I was actually on a cane. And I've struggled with, for good and bad, I've struggled with my leg for most of my career. But I decided I was going to run. I had to do a physical training, so I just said, I'm going to learn how to run again. And I went from not be a walk to running every day like miles so I could join. It was excruciating to do because it was just,

But finally I could run fast enough to pass. And then I got in the FBI. But I ran with a limp. So I was at the World Trade Center. And after the towers collapsed, all the news. And people in the bureau saw me jogging when I would jog, and they all knew my limp. So they said we were horrified until we saw in the dust.

We could see the figure running down, running from the collapsing building. We was like, oh, that's Kurt. Look at him a limp. And so I got, I had people call me up. fun of me. I'm like, look, I'm trying to save my life from this building and you're called me up to what, bust my ass over my jogging. He goes, Kurt, we were just happy to see you were safe. But we could see you through all the dust and haze. We knew that's Kurt. He sucks at running. I like to think I'm a good runner, which I'm not. And he, but, but that was,

again, I was always amazed in the bureau that people knew what my flaws were. And they were, I thought I could hide that fairly successfully. I failed to hiding the fact that I ran with a limp and I was having a problem. I failed with everyone knowing that I was ADHD. And they still let me do everything I wanted. You know, up until New Haven. I mean, I went to Iraq twice. I went to the aftermath of Katrina down into New Orleans to help the police department.

It was a wonderful job. What was a process like to join? It was two stage. You had to take a written test, and then you had, then you had oral interview. And the written test was a bunch of math questions, and the oral interview was trying to figure out if you could talk. The trick with the FBI, and this is going, not today's FBI because I'm going back, but the FBI agents have to talk with people. They have to be able to interview people. That's the job.

It's not, it's really not gunned. fighting or arresting, interviewing and finding out what's going on and then having people talk to you afterwards. Because everyone you talk to, you should be able to call them back up and ask them additional questions and you should be able to relate to them and be able to have a relationship with them. We had people that couldn't do that. They had to go into different like technical fields or other field because FBI agents usually are extraordinarily good at conducting interviews and having relationships with people. even if people are the subjects of the investigation.

What was your first assignment once you're in? We did applicants for the first six months. And one of the applicants, one of the people that I interviewed was a model. I remember she was a she was a heavy set, but she was a model. She was very attractive. And she committed suicide, like a few weeks after I interviewed her because it was, because of the difficulty there was being a model at that point that wasn't, you know, a very thin thing. I thought she had a, you know, a very good life going on there. She was making money.

And then she killed herself. It was really sad and painful to have someone's body weight being. be their, you know, what determines them taking their life or not. So you were screening new recruits as your job to the FBI? Yes. And, right? Interviews. So I was doing interviews for, you know, if you, you have to, for backgrounds, you have to give like four or five people to, that would, that you would vouch for your patriotism and your abilities.

And your division was internal affair type? I went from, I went from, in New York, I was doing organized. I was doing forfeiture, but I was doing organized crime, terrorism. Funny, I was doing forfeiture. One of my friends told me, oh, you've got to go there. And then I'm like, why? I go, you get to do everything. There's nothing you can't do, drugs for it.

You just pick you what you want. So about two years into it, my boss, a gentleman named Dan Gill, has to do a performance evaluation. He calls me, I have to do your performance evaluation. He goes, Kurt, I just want to tell you, you know, I look at this great drug case. I'm looking at this. He goes, you're in the forfeiture unit. why don't you do any forfeiture? I'm like, you're not doing all forfeiture,

doing everything else but forfeiture. I'm like, Dan, I learned this from you. He's like, I know, I know. He goes, make sure you're getting some money judgments where you get ordered to make payments and seizing property. At the end, make sure you're seizing enough property. I think I got like a billion,

by year eight, I had a billion dollars of money judgments. I had one case, which was, which I left, I was in the middle of, it was like $2.8 billion, $2.4 billion. dollars. I took money from the Gambino crime family. I seized, I think, 58 million, somewhere

around there. In one setting, you seized 58 million from the Gambino's? They gave it to us. We had a judgment, and part of it they were turning over property to us. So we knew the property. We seized, we put liens on it, and they agreed to turn it over. So when you take money... But they made a lot more.

Trust me, I did not make... I did not impoverished the Gamino Crime family. They were doing just fine on, on, though it was, it was an internet porn case. Now, this is back in the early 2000s. Yeah, tell us this whole story. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. It's a lot of work to be a criminal. Now, you may not think that, but it is because if you're, if you have two types of criminals. You have like your full-time criminal, then you have your accidental ones, ones that just screw things up and can get arrested because they're not doing things right. But the full-time ones, and like the Gambino crime family, they had been working these, um,

an internet porn case. So what they did was they went, they would, um, go like pornography magazines that, okay. And I, let me,

let me step back in this. Well, so one day I was talk to my son and he asked me about the case. I said, yeah, there was, I did this internet porn case and there was, um, it was about,

they had advertisements in the back of magazines where it was said, if you want to have sex talk, you call 1,800 for free, but they had like 30, one, 900 numbers where if you called, you had to pay. And then instant, inside that little classified, you would have 800 numbers, which it looked like they were all

separate. In fact, the whole advertisement was one advertisement. And if you, and the whole purpose was to direct the people to call the 800 numbers because when they did that, they captured your kick code, which is your phone's code. And then they would charge your phone for a voicemail service of like 40 bucks a month. And so everyone who called the 1-800 numbers, not the 1-900, not the 1-900, numbers. They were getting hit and they would get these voicemails that were never used and they were charging them until they found out in their phone bill because at that point, cell phones were expensive. They found out that this is being charged. Then they would call and complain. And then the Gambino's had a data center where they would just, they get to

complain and they would just send all kinds of photos like, oh, we have all the stuff that you looked at, which had nothing to do with what the people. people actually looked at, but photographs of having sex with dogs, I mean, animals, all this weird stuff. They would just send it to the house. This is what you looked at. And then people would just like cut the, they would cut the, um, voicemail, but they wouldn't ask for money back.

They just wanted nothing to do with it because their wife had just received pictures of bizarre stuff. And they made, I think, $1.3 or $1.4 billion. This is a, this was a good money. So I told, I told my son about this. He's like, that's a lie. I'm like, what do you mean? He goes, that doesn't make.

any sense. Like, what are you talking about? I thought he was talking about the crime itself. He's like, he's like, there's no such thing as a porno magazine. I'm like, yes, there is. He goes, no, there's not. I'm like, yes. And I'm like,

why would it be a porno magazine? I said, I don't even understand this. He's like, yeah, but he goes, look all the kids in high school that are just giving away free shots of themselves. Why would anybody pay for a magazine when everybody's just putting themselves online anyway? I'm like, oh my God. Like, yeah, you don't take

You make sure no one passes around pictures of themselves online because that's all. That may be other problems. And he's like, but everyone does that. I'm like, no, not everyone does that. And he goes, oh, by the way, yes, there are pornography magazines that are being sold. And it was a whole different, I'm talking to about this case. He just couldn't even understand that there was like Playboy magazine, high society. He didn't even believe they existed, which blew me away.

how this is a jet what 10 years 15 years there's no such i don't even know if they're sold anymore um but the gamino was made about 1.5 billion we we indicted 700 plus million dollars for fraud and then they paid 50 million dollars back was it a civil uh case no we put um it was it was out it was a criminal out of the eastern district we put um one guy got nine 10 years one guy one they all got like enjoy every day like it's the weekend at Treasure Island with special rates of only $79 midweek could it get any better

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They handed it over. Right away, like next day, a bank wire or a check? They gave us property. They wanted to, because they actually owned infrastructure. They owned something called Cass Bell, which was a telephone company out west. So we were able to monetize, they owned the bank. we were able to disassociate them with the bank and with the telephone companies.

In fact, when we arrested them, the biggest problem was they owned the 911 serve or the 9-1, was it emergency? Was it 911 when you call for emergencies? They owned that. The call centers? Yeah, they actually owned the phone. No, they own the phone company. So if I shut down the phone company, there would be no, no, you could call for fire, you could call for police. we were trying to keep the phone companies up and running because we didn't want them to collapse.

We had to make a deal with the people to make sure that those phone companies kept running. And to the credit of the people that we arrested, they took that seriously and they were able to keep all the telephone companies up. And then we had them switch ownership and we took $50 something million from them. Do you think the government wants them shut down to stop producing money? or do you think a part of it is they want that income coming in? Because $58 million is a lot of money. No, it's not. You don't think so?

Not in the government. So that's just pennies to them? During the Iraq War, they would have pallets of $20, $100 bill being flown in. The military would have pallets filled with them. The money is, that case that was $2.4 billion, that actually affected the national debt or national budget. It was so it was so large. So we had to have a there had to be like a bullet put in the budget saying this is from this money is from this source. But most of the money isn't even cash. It's it's electronic. It's ledgered. So no, I don't think it's, I think

the Gambino's thought it was a lot of money, but they made up, you know, they got a lot more and it was part of the cost of doing business. Did you ever feel in fear of your life when take that much money from an organized crime family? No. No. No, I think, I think, I mean, in the FBI, the only place where we would get bombed all the time over in Iraq, that was dangerous. But no, I didn't really feel that they, I mean, they're there to make money. There was a DEA that was killed, and the FBI shut down everything the mob was doing for a while until they found out who did it. They told them, you're just not going to function.

We're going to shut down every organized crime thing in New York. And they're not, they're not interested. They handle their own business internally, but they're not interested in hurting agents. It would just, it's bad for business. What were some other forfeiture cases you worked that were notable or memorable? There was a terrorism case where, where New Yorker was pretending to be a shake, and he was trying, I think he was either sending or trying to send night vision goggles to the Taliban and to Al Qaeda. And we seized all the assets because he had, he had a, he made his money because he had a scam with involving conservative Christians.

In fact, it was so he created something called, I think it was called ebullion. as a company. And the e-bullion had no, although they said it was electronic bullion, there was no gold behind it. Or if there was gold, the gold wasn't being transferred fast enough. So that's actually a commodities issue. And there's a commodities exchange that regulates how commodities are purchased and sold and shipped and booked.

and he was violating issues in that respect, and that's how we got him, was on part of the fraud. During that, I think one of the subjects killed his wife, executed his wife, because she may have cooperated, would cooperate. And then this, I think he got like 10 years for fraud or material support.

But that, again, that was, the forfeiture works because, most people expect to do time, they just hate when you take the money from them. It's just that really sucks, right? I mean, I had one guy who, he, he was, we started negotiating his time and he did negotiate like five years, four years. And then he would say about the money. So we started to negotiate money for time.

And we didn't make any, we were sitting there not making any sense. He wanted to keep $200,000 if he did two additional years, what it came down to. So he did, he did two years extra in jail. to make $200,000. But if you cut it down to hours, it's like working at Burger King or some other low-end place, you know, I spend that kind of time

to make $200,000, just go stay out of the jail and earn it yourself. But he did, then he literally negotiated himself for $200 grand for two extra years in jail. We're like, okay. And then the day he went to sentencing, he came up to me. He's like, you know, Kurt, that was the worst deal

I ever made. I'm like, I cannot believe I'm going to be working. He knew exactly like $4 or $5 an hour. He knew exactly what the time was, how much he was going to earn per hour. I'm like, you wanted that. He's like, I don't know why I wanted that.

I'm like, okay. He goes, I apologize. We weren't going to talk you out of it. You were asking for more time in jail. So the money does weird things to people. The Gambinos were very, the Gambinos at that point were very efficient. They understood.

They knew how. how they made their money, they knew how much they took, and they knew how much $50 million was. A lot of people do, again, but money, if you have a problem and you can pay your way out of it, you don't have a problem, you have an expense. And it's important to recognize it, because everyone, whether you're a banker,

everyone runs into some type of issues at some point, and you just look at it and say, okay, I'm gonna eat this, and this is what's gonna cost, then I'll move on, and don't wreck your life over it. Did you enjoy working forfeiture or did it get boring? I never, I mean, forfeiture was like, I actually had a forfeiture team that did all the, I did everything else. And they, I had a team of contractors that did all the forfeiture work that were, they were ex-agent, they were phenomenal. And they did all kinds of, we, we, there was a company called WorldCom that was part of a fraud.

They did the entire company's financials in like six weeks. They went through everything that possibly was, was, was, was, was, was, was, was, was, involved in that company in six weeks. I couldn't sit at a desk and do that for an hour. It would drive me nuts, but they worked so hard to go through that and make sure we had an understanding of how the money was being distributed.

When did you leave the forfeiture division? I went from there right to Iraq, 2008, end of 2007, beginning of 2008. And you were in New York that whole time? I was in New York from 97 to 2008, yeah. were you there when the Wolf of Wall Street's case was going on for his forfeiture? You know, there's so many. The funny thing about the FBI's, well, again, I'm talking about the FBI pre-2020.

There's three FBI's. There's FBI headquarters. There's FBI in New York, and there's everywhere else in the FBI. It's just, that's how, New York is its own, its own world. They have, they can do whatever they want, and they, they set their own rule. they set their own violations. They have it. Because when you go to New York,

I would have to do a two-hour commute into New York plus, like most people. And then I've had commutes that have been 10 hours long. I had one commute when I was driving out. It started to snow and I caught in the Merritt Parkway and my car ran out of gas because everyone was, I'm like, oh my God, this is awful. I have to go, I have to walk and get gas because everyone on the road,

the highway just stopped. New York agents have to suffer things that are just unlike anything else, anyone else in the FBI has to suffer. In fact, I used to have joke and wasn't true.

I went to Iraq because there was no commute. I got to knock off four hours of my commuting every day by just getting bombed. And I'm like, that's a deal for me. I'm tired again of the commute. What was an Iraq for you? Why did they send you there? First time I was in the counterterrorism and I was, I was,

and I was a liaison to special operations command, central command, which are all the, all the special operations groups and me. Okay, we're talking two totally different type of people here. I'm not one of them. They're well, way beyond me and I'll tell you what. The U.S. is the best there is with special operations. I actually went to a meet. I had one operation with a group, and I walked in, and there was only two other agents,

and we're sitting there, and they're like have dinner, and we're eating, and there's steak and lobster in the middle of nowhere, middle of nowhere, the best meal I've had ever in the middle of nowhere. or steak. The best meal I've had ever in the military and the FBI, I'm eating it. And I'm like, wow, this is really interesting. Why is this? And one of the guys looked over and goes, it's a last meal.

And he was being serious. He was, they're eating well because we're about to go into some nightmare. And I was like, wow, that's really what? That's really dark. I'm like, okay. This is a guy. I mean, you know, I'm sitting, I was sitting there with the guys and we had a printer in our Humvee. and there was a riot going on.

These guys were running around with, like, explosives, and they're printing out photos of video of a gunship overhead that was monitoring where we were. I mean, it was the crazy, these guys were the craziest best people. And ultimately, the professionalism. I mean, and one of the things I learned from them was, how conservative they were as far as they knew when to shoot and when not to shoot. It was, they were, they were, a lot of people walked away who probably would have walked away for lesser trained people because those guys were just top of the game.

Amazing to watch. And then it was me. Okay. Walking around. I mean, it was like, it was, it was, it was, it was, it was, it was, it was, it was, it was, some of the most amazing, um, people. And all of them were good guys. There was very little ego. Maybe that's because in the FBI we have our own ego.

But there there was very little ego that we were dealing with. And it was super impressive. And the soldiers were just as good. I mean, the soldiers in Iraq were we got along great with. So I enjoyed my time. 2003 and 4 I was there for a little while. I forgot how many months I was there. In 2008, I was there for a year and I was extended, I think, four times.

Was that by choice to go there or they ordered you there? Yes, by choice. You were looking for a change of scenery? The commute was horrible in New York. It was really all because of the commute. Everything in New York, you're talking to everything in New York. You could have gone anywhere in the country and you want to go to Iraq. Well, my wife, we had family here.

My wife had family and it was a choice. And for New York, it's always a choice. And also, it was pointed out to me by people in the FBI that every time I was having a child went overseas to Iraq, had another child, went back overseas to Iraq for a little while, had twins, and then went to headquarters in Washington, a little better than Iraq for 18 months. And I'm not really a big fan of, like, chaining diapers. so I could have been fleeing from from from the horrors of of babies they're um but yeah I volunteered and all of them did and to it's there's no I got I actually got shrap I got caught I got I got I got caught with shrap I got a shrapnel hit my um on my uh wrist one day and um I would tell you the guy who I was run some rocket started coming in and one I

I hate the fact I can't remember his name because he'll come to me. He held the door open in the embassy and there were people screaming at him and hitting him not to close the door because the alarm went off and the rockets were coming in. I was carrying. I had some people that were in in a really bad situation. I told him to go, I was going to carry their luggage or all the equipment in. And then rockets started coming in. And then three of them, I think, hit. And this guy held the door open for me while everyone was trying to push.

them aside and get the door closed so I can get into a bunker into a protected area. And I got, I got clipped with shrapnel and it burned. I mean, I never, if you think of shrapnel, shrapnel's freaking hot. It burned my wrist. So the medics come over. I'm like doing what every hero does.

Oh my God, asshole hurts. It hurts. Like, oh, it hurts. And the medics come over. They're like, congratulations. You got the purple heart. I'm like, dude, I'm in the FBI. I get no purple heart.

I have to do a workers' comp form. They're going to force me to do. I'm like Purple Heart. They're not giving shit to any of us. That was the case. That was the standard. If people there were just expected to have it. And it wasn't just, I mean, some of the people,

we were getting bombed for like 30 days for one point. And during that, one guy says, Kurt, I need some Doritos. I'm like, what? He's like, I need some Doritos. I'm like, we have to go to the PX over in the green zone to get some Doritos. Like, you realize it's, like, raining rockets out there. He's like, I tell you, I need Doritos.

I'm like, okay, let's, I'm going to go with you because you know, you can't go alone. He was allowed to go. I was allowed to go alone in certain places. He was not, he was, he was not. Probably the reason they let me go alone was because of ADHD, I would guess. You just like, don't bother. And so I went with him. So I run over.

There's literally like rockets coming in, get to the PX and with the military, buy the Doritos. and come running back. And literally the thing, I mean, there's rockets. They're intermittently coming down, some small, some big.

And run in, and my boss, Alex Hill looks at him and goes, why don't you go over to PX? And like, because you want Doritos. You're like, are you a moron?

Like, it's like, why don't you wait to prayer? Like another hour, once you start prayer, it'll be no rock. I said, ah,

I didn't think of that. I'm sorry, you just wanted Doritos. And, so it was, it was, we did a lot of, It was a very interesting set of people there, and they worked together.

And you never heard of any FBI agents getting killed because they were the bosses and people had a pretty good understanding how to operate in the environment. Surprisingly good understanding. And it was because the bosses weren't going to do anything that would intentionally jeopardize the safety of people when they didn't have to. where sometimes you'd have to and we have our helicopter be shot all the time

but there were sometimes where they were like no we're not going to do that we could do it tomorrow except for the Doritos they let me do the Doritos so what was a typical mission for you on Iraq

I was the head of counterintelligence in Iraq sorry that's Doritos it was I did a war crimes I did unclassified I did a war crimes case

where a U.S. soldier named Stephen Green. He raped a 12-year-old Iraqi girl and then him and four other people sold 101, 101, 101 first airborne soldiers. They raped an Iraqi girl and then they executed her family while they were raping her.

Now, Stephen Green had gotten in on a, I think he got in on a moral waiver from into the military and the problem with him was he was a natural leader. He was also a guy who was nothing but problems. It was unfair to put him there are any soldiers because the 101 is what's banned the brought.

This is the best, one of the best units in most storied units in the entire U.S. military is the 101 airborne. And so this case was so bad. I had, it was 2006. The execution occurred. The same unit rotated back. One of the sergeants in that was on his hands and knees holding onto my leg, begging me to forgive him.

I'm like, it's not your fault. He's like, but we were there. We have staying the honor of the 101st Airborne over this. It was painful. And I'm like, you know, like I get it, that's why we're doing this case in federal court is because it's not a unit issue.

This is, just because what's the story was what happens in Iraq, used to stay in Iraq. That was the motto. That wasn't the case. If you hurt somebody like that, some 12-year-old girl and you're going to brutalize or the FBI will bring you back the DOJ will prosecute you. That was and and the soldiers the bosses were horrified by this. I went out there and I had to meet with some people.

It was not a good situation and I had choice between making my airplane. I had a Christmas flight back to be with my family. So I had decided because I couldn't get another flight, I decided I was not going to, I wasn't going to stay there. I was going to go back. I would do the interviews and I'd miss my Christmas. And so went out and did the interviews and I was sitting there and at the end of them like, okay, now I got one of the black helicopters to fly me back to Baghdad.

I'll be sitting there for Christmas. And the people from the 101 were like, oh, no, we're not doing that to you. So they put together a convoy to drive me to the airport. and say it was not a pleasant drive. It wasn't a pleasant drive at all. But they took, I mean, they risked, I didn't want to do it. I'm like, no, that's just too much risk involved in this. You're like, no, we're getting you, we're getting you back to,

you're going to make your flight no matter what. We're not, we're not going to have you lose that. And a lot of them didn't like me because I was doing the case. I was bringing undue attention to them. But they literally forced a convoy together to, to drive me to a she-130 so I could fly back to the States because they want me miss my I mean I This podcast is sponsored by IQ Bar. Not to be a stereotype or anything, but I am one of those go-go-go-go girls.

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He's got life. I think it was by terms. And then I think at 2011 or 12, he committed suicide. He, they wanted the death penalty in the case. It was held in Kentucky. They wanted the death penalty, but the jury wasn't going to give, and this was an issue, the jury wasn't going to give a death penalty because the Army issued the guy a moral waiver. So they, you know, because we have shortened troops, we're going to get a guy who has, lax morals, that's what you get. I mean, that would seem to be the place you don't, you want to have people to have some morality sitting in a combat zone.

It may sound odd, but you want to make sure people have their ethics squared away because bad things will happen and he was the perfect example. And then the other four people, he was a good, he was a leader. And people would freely admit that. He was one of the best leaders in that unit. And he took over that group and he told him, this is what we're going to do for the night and they did it. Four of them served time.

They were convicted under, the other three were convicted under the UCMJ. And they did a few years. I'm sure they're all out by now. but Steve Green was the one who caused, who was behind what happened there. I mean, he had some really, he had a set of characteristics that was not conducive to having him anywhere near a war zone.

Do those cases ever leave your mind, like when you see things like that? When you see people do those things? I, um, I've been lucky. I did, I did, in Connecticut, the child exploitation unit. I apologize. I forget what's called now.

But Connecticut's human trafficking, child exploitation unit. And I never looked at any child porn. I did that for several years. And I would never look at it because I wanted to make decisions that were not hampered by that. all of my subordinates, they had to look, they had to deal. When you think of child porn, you think, oh, if I'm 13-year-old, you're not, that's not what's going on with child porn. A lot of times, like a three-year-old or a two-year-old in Africa being raped. I mean, these things, this child pornography is awful. But I wouldn't look at it

because I want to make decisions that were detached from the experience itself. And to be empathetic, but also not to get, that, go down that, that rabbit hole. But all of the people that were working for me, they had to go through psychologicals. And it seemed that the time, people could do it roughly for about three years before it was taking a toll. And you'd have to get out of the pure child porn. There's other thing, human trafficking, but the child porn stuff was three years and you were basically spent. Coincidentally, I was doing that for about three years and I was spent by the time I was done with But we would also never take people that wanted to do the work.

Oh, I want to do this work. We would be like, we don't want anybody who's too, you know, we want to kick their ass. No, no, we don't want that. We don't want people who are going to be emotionally affected. Because everyone who we arrested for child porn, one is they always confessed. They always, they, they, they, they, they, they, they, they, they, they, they, they, they, they, they, they, they, they need to justify themselves. and if you had people that were emotional about it and really were not being dignified

to the people they were arresting, you wouldn't have confessions. They would shut up. But it was the people that we had that would do the interviews, anyone who was getting arrested and you wouldn't get arrested for having one thing. You'd be arrested for having 50,000 pieces of this stuff

and having a history. We weren't looking at close calls because we were people that were, you know, There's people that send others child porn to get other people in trouble. In fact, I know some podcasters that have received child porn because someone else was trying to get them in trouble by sending, they didn't like the politics.

But they're, by treating the people with dignity, I don't know of a single time there was not a confession. I mean, I would tell you if I, even one, because for some reason they wanted to justify themselves and the agents were treated them with incredible amounts of deference and respect, even though they were arresting them. Where did you go when you got back from Iraq? I went to New Haven.

I started in New Haven. And that was in the child? No, I was doing, I was doing casinos, frauds and casinos with the casinos out west. Frauds in casinos? Well, we arrested the tribal chief of the casino. for fraud. In Connecticut? In Connecticut, yeah.

Well, I was the embarrassment of Indian reservations. Okay, see, okay, let me, let's talk about Indian reservations. Can I talk about Indian reservations? Yeah, of course, yeah. One of my son says, you can't call them Indian reservations. Actually, that's what the federal, they call this, the federal terminology, the FBI terminology was crimes on Indian reservations. Okay, and when you go out west, you got Asians out there like,

these huge reservations where all the, where anyone who lives on them, they don't use guns. They all use knives. Generally, you're going to have a, the killings will happen with a knife. They're very bloody. And meanwhile, so I got all these guys who are hardcore, you know, going out there would have to have an M-A-R-15 because they were, you know, they're going to be one guy against the whole tribe to arrest one of the bosses who got drunk

and then, you know, slit somebody, stabbed them in the abdomen. They're going to do, they're going to do this arrest alone. And because Indian reservations are federal and their FBI jurisdiction for felonies. So they have that. Then I have two postage stamps. Like the Indian reservations are about that big in Connecticut that both have casinos on them and don't have crime. And so they were like, it's not really an Indian reservation, Kurt. I'm like, no, that's my little Indian reservation.

I have to take it. So I went out to one, and I was driving out. there and I'm like I couldn't find the agent I'm like where are you I'm like he goes did you drive down the road I'm like yeah he goes how far I said I don't know about 20 25 miles like look to your right do you see anything I'm like yeah I see like a bunch of mounds he's like those are huts those are where that's the town we're looking at that's what we're going I'm like that's a town he's like yeah that's where I work dude I'm like holy are you kidding me he goes no you got a reservation you can go get like Starbucks. There's no Starbucks where I'm working out here. So he drive into this and it was a

killing and I'm like, and that's why he goes, I'm like, what are you doing? He's like, oh, he goes, let me show you what this is. So he kicked open his trunk and he had bad, he had body bags in his trunk for all killings that they were doing. That's where he kept body bags. I mean, that's how bad, somebody's reservations are extremely dangerous. I'm like, oh my God. He goes, yeah, I'll go, I'll go back to my, the mashing tuckets and the mohigans that are just, just, just, just, nice, good casinos, enjoy them. Do they have to invite you in? No, we have...

Jurisdiction. Over that, we have federal... The FBI has jurisdiction over all federal crimes on Indian reservations. There was an issue with... There was an issue in Oklahoma where there was a Supreme Court decision that made, like, a good portion of Oklahoma Native American. So the state police can't arrest. the Native Americans in that section of the state,

only the FBI can. So if the state police are like, what are we going to do? They're like, well, we have to have the FBI come in and monitor until they change what the law is. And so we had agents rotating in, like lots of them rotating in to be the federal, the presence of law enforcement in Oklahoma

where this group of Native Americans would not be policed if it wasn't for the FBI. It was really a strange. And a lot of it comes from the treaties they have with the treaties and how the interpretation of the treaties in Connecticut, that's not such a big deal because out west, the Native Americans are always saying we have to follow the treaties. But with the Mashantucketukkah Pequots, nobody, no Mashantucket wants to follow those treaties because it like took the treaty was, we're taking, you no longer can speak to language, all the guys got to go to Bermuda, we get to, all the white people get to keep to women. I mean, it was like this brutal set of agreements that came after a war, the, the, a mashtunkett war, maybe, I don't think it was King Phillips' war. King Philip was actually an Indian.

But it was after the tribe, they had a brutal set of requirements for the Mashan Tuckets that destroyed the tribe and also dispersed them. I think there were some in even maybe now in Bermuda, where they sent slaves. And in Old Saybrook, and it was been taken down, they have a fort in Old Saybrook at the end. It shows where the foundation. It has all these things about where, of how the fort worked and what happened.

And one of them was at the end was a picture of then we had the massacre over and with the Masham Tuckets because the, the Puritans, pilgrims came first, Puritans after. The Puritans basically ambushed and destroyed a village. But on Old Sabo's picture, it's showing like the colon, or the Puritans like aiming down at children shooting. I mean, right on their thing. And they eventually pulled it down, but it was like, wow, okay, so we're going to be that blatant about how bad this was. but the Puritan destroyed that. The Mohicans and the Bashant targets were at war

and did have good relations for a while because I think some of the Mohicans helped, acted as guides. So, you know, this is old traditions, but, you know, fortunately they were able to reestablish themselves in Connecticut, and they have their own, they're federal reservations. Those aren't like inside Connecticut.

There's laws. We have, if the state has agreements, But ultimately, those are dependent, those are dependent nations inside Connecticut. They're small. But they're definitely, agreements aside, they are dependent sovereign nations of the United States. So tell us about this fraud case. I think there was so much money going around around the tribe. I got apologize.

I may be wrong on this. There was money that was diverted to pay for Michael Thomas's mother who was receiving cancer treatment, but they were like using a limousine to rather than the vehicle, a normal town vehicle. I mean, it was sad. It was actually sad because Michael Thomas was well respected. And this is the point where you get into problems, sometimes inadvertently by, well, I'm helping out my mother,

but that's government money, not your money. It's hard to sometimes distinguish when you're a politician, and that happens quite frequently when, if you're a politician, you know, what's best for you as the mayor isn't necessarily best for the town. And so he got, he was convicted. And that wasn't the best case out there. There was, there were people, if you, once you go across the Connecticut River, Eastern Connecticut is a different place.

You know that, right? Okay, because eastern Connecticut, unlike western Connecticut, where you have police departments, there's a lot over there where you have three state troopers and that's covering the entire, except for like New London and the towns on the shore, you've got three state troopers covering everything. There is no backup. Those guys getting a fist fight. They're going to fight on the road. They got to wait 20 minutes for another trooper to come along.

they have you have um you have in grotton there was a trailer park or right around grotton it was several but one trailer park where everybody who was on the lamb would go to this trailer park literally i find yeah they fled to connecticut oh my god i got so they called me up hey you got to go over and ask the person who um asked um the head of the trailer park whether this person has been around literally they go to one trailer park and um in in in in in in in that area there's also another time i can't remember if plain field or plainville where like within 10 miles of that

like if someone flees in the east coast they go there and they can live the rest of their life happily ever after and never be caught there was one guy who was he was a bank robbery in either north or south carolina with his brother they're robbing a bank the brother they're trapped the brother shoots himself because he's not getting out of it it's not it's like turning out that movie heat this guy once he's brother shoots himself this other guy's like i'm not doing it in that. He runs off. He gets shot. He runs off. He has a injury to his back. And he disappears. And they call up, they're like, hey, we got this guy who's a felon, you know, he disappeared. I'm like, is he at the, are you can tell me he's at the, um, at the trailer park? I'm like, no, no, no. So, wait, let me guess. He's around, I think it's playing field. He's, he's over by playing field. Like, yeah, how'd you know? I'm like, how would I, how would I ever know that that? So I go up,

there and this guy is like 90 years old he's quadriplegic and he it was like we just want to get your fingerprints he's like he's like Kurt yeah I'm like I'm not I'm gonna die soon here but I want to tell you I did it like I know what you do you know I know it is so he took his fingerprints and he had hit successfully there for decades with no one ever no one ever finding because there's just not a lot of police out there what do you think was the most interesting broad case you worked while you're in Connecticut? Most of my fraud cases were in, because it was part of violent crime in Connecticut. Most of those were in New York.

The fraud case was an art theft case out of Madison, not because it was a high end, because when I got back from Iraq, when I got back from Iraq, I was probably a complete mess. And so I went to a place called Willoughby's for coffee. and I'm looking, I'm sitting there in Willoughby's drinking my coffee, and I'm looking across this tree, and there is a, there is an art dealership there that is selling Picasso's. I'm looking at these going, that's all junk. Now, I'm no art, I've done a few art cases, but I'm no art expert.

My theory on art is if I can draw it, it's not art. I could draw those Picasso's. I'm looking at painting. I'm going to like, wow, it looks like a three-year-old did that. And so I went over to, I looked at it, and I asked the police, and the detective there, a guy named Trent Fox, who was probably one of the best detectives in the state, was trying to do that case.

In the U.S., it's, unless you're in New York City or maybe L.A., it's impossible to do an art fraud case because the galleries won't cooperate with you. They will cooperate. They helped out the FBI, but they won't cooperate. They won't cooperate with locals because it's problematic for them. So I knew the people from Sotheby's and from Christie's, so I told him, hey, look, we can do, we worked the case.

He got arrested. He got, the gentleman got arrested, and then he went to, we were expecting he was getting no time at all. And he eventually got, I think, five years. He served hard time. because he wasn't going to cooperate and he accused, I think he accused me of beating him up

during the interview or some crazy thing like that and the judge was going to have none of it because she was aware that there were a lot of other people in the room and she was aware of how the, we actually tape recorded, I think we tape recorded the interrogation. How do you know it was a fake Picasso?

If I can do it, it's not real. I mean, I mean, I think during the, during the, during the, the, the, the, the defense had a guy who was like an expert and he went missing. The guy, right before the hearing, he went missing. And the attorney on the other side called me up. So our experts missing. So I have spent like two days looking for, the expert had, like, had a seizure in his car and was like in the middle of winter and was literally like just unconscious. in his car for a day and a half. And I'm running around looking for the defense's expert.

And Richard Marquette was a lawyer on the other side. And we were worried about him. And Richard was asking, why are you spending time? I'm like, because it matters. I mean, if we're wrong, we're wrong. I mean, they should have an expert testifying about what they are, if they have one. It makes sense to, you know, you give people of a day, you know, day in court. and if, you know, they hired an expert,

and so the expert came in and looked at it and was like, okay. Because, I mean, Picasso's, Picasso is a genius. I'm not. If I can paint, if I can paint something, it's not. It's not. And the guy admitted to me that it was, he bought on eBay. And he, what, and we did the, we, we did a combination. We, we, we, we, we, we, we, we, we, we, we, we, we, we, we, we, we, we, we, we, we, we, we, we, we, we, we, we,

We charged them with Picasso's, dollies, and shagulls. And when we did the search, we found they had stationary that was for Christmas. He had stationary like invitations for Christmas. And on the back of the invitation, there were like Shagall signatures, like practice signatures. And the evidence guys actually went in and like, oh, here's a bag of trash. That could be evidence. We should take it. Which I would never do.

And, I mean, I would leave the trash. And they went through the trash and found signatures where he was, practicing Shagall signatures. And one of the real shames, one of the pieces that he got, and they were prints. This guy had, this guy would take Picasso Prince,

and then he would sign him, or he has someone sign him. But we brought an expert in, and the expert was looking at that one, going, oh my God, look at this. And I'm like, why, he's all wrong. He goes, no, Kurt, this is actually real. I've never actually seen.

This guy had, this guy was the largest, he was in charge the largest collection of Chagal or of Picasso's in the world, private collection. He's like, this thing is beautiful. I've never seen this. I'm like, well, what's it worth? He's like, it's not worth. I'm not saying that it's worth a lot financially because it's a print.

He goes, but they don't exist. This is something that's real. And then some jackass put a fake signature on this and wrecked it. He's like, so here's what I need you to do. He said, I need you to go to the guy who owns that my guy sold us to. I need to tell him you need to go to a museum level person and have them remove that signature. He goes, it's going to cost you more and more than probably the signature's worth. He goes, but that is such a beautiful piece that just for historical sake, they should remove the signature, have it as Picasso wanted because these things just don't exist anymore.

more. And so he took, I mean, he had some, he had at least one or two things that were, that were real. The other thing he had was, um, for Salvador Adali, he had a ton of, he actually did the printer for Salvador Adali's art before he went to Madison. So, I don't know how it worked, but would like, Salvador, Dali would come in and he'd get like 300 prints and then he would sign him and number them. And then he'd leave. And then this guy or somebody else would like run off like 50,000 more.

and then give him to cruise ships. And, but he had, I mean, he had tons of these things. So, but he had the original, he had the original, not mold. He had the original prints that were used to actually make the original, these, these, the prints, the replicas. He had, he had what was, these, so they were original. I mean, this was made with the same ink, the same, you know, the same casting. And they're like, you can't prove the case.

And then Trent Fox, the detective, was sitting with the Salvador Dali expert. And they're looking, the experts looking, oh, that's real, that's real, that's real. And then the detective Fox looks over and says, Sir, I just want to show you something. He goes, can you turn that piece around? And he turned one of the piece around, goes, that's an infinity marking on this piece. And the guy's like, yeah. He goes, the paper wasn't made when Dali was signing things. And the experts looking at it.

And he's looking at it. And he's looking at it. And he walks away, he walks back in. And we had then measured because he had the guy actually shaved this, whoever did this shaved off the infinity marking. So you could see, you couldn't see on the side. He goes, it's fake. He goes, they're right. that paper wasn't made, was made a year.

They changed, the company that made that paper added the infinity marking a year, at least a year after Dali was done signing. He goes, so I have to deem all of these to be fakes. I was looking at my detective going, whoa, you know you're, you know what the hell you're doing. And so, I mean, that was, how do you beat that? The paper wasn't, didn't exist. So it's, it's going to, it's not, someone, someone sat there at night and, and printed them off. Not that they're not perfect.

The thing of this, even the expert we would agree, it's a great print. It's just that the signature, it's not an original sign dali with the numbering. Bonjour, compadre. It's the Priceline negotiator. How do I negotiate so many great travel deals? My greatest gadget. The Price Line app. It's got hotel deals, flight deals, rental car deals, all of those deals in a bundle, deals,

game day deals, concert trip deals. No one deals more deals than Price Line. Hold your horses. There's more. The app lets you filter hotels by neighborhood, vibe, star level, and amenities like pools and spas and beach fronts. Wait, I'm not done. Stop cutting me up. It's everything else about it's almost exact. So in a case like that, do victims come forward to get their money back and is their restitution?

Or it doesn't go that far? It just he goes to prison for fraud and that's it. I used to say, at the time I did this, I used to say I like my, I like my, I like my, subjects more than I like my victims. Because, no, because most people who get, who, who are paying for this don't want to admit out loud they were abused that they got ripped off. A few of them did, but now a lot of them were like, I have no idea what you're talking about. How about this check? Don't know where that came from.

And then when it had the, going back to the Gambino case with the, with internet pornography, nobody would admit that out loud. I mean, I had people tell me they would, they would sooner kill themselves than ever testify a day in court about. them looking at child porn because they're from a Baptist town in the middle of, in the middle of Oklahoma, and they'll be publicly humiliated. And so what we did there was we got people from New York City who could care less. Oh, yeah, I was looking at all that. He was no problem.

I'd be happy to testify. So that resolved the issue. But the victims were actually hard to get. We had to locate victims. We had to locate victims. internet pornography and he was paying to, the sheriff's department was paying money, he wouldn't admit to it. It goes, but the people in New York that were, that were from New York and from Miami and

from L.A., I think we're really where we were able to get our witnesses. So you moved from fraud to the child exploitation cases? Yeah, I did fraud until I went to Iraq and then when I went back, I did, and from when I got to, I got the New Haven. I was doing Indian country, violent crimes, went back to Washington, and then came back again, and that's when I was, I started doing civil rights, which has child exploitation as one of subcategories, whether civil rights case. For some reason, at that point, the child exploitation unit was part of civil rights

the unit in FBI headquarters. Were there a lot of civil rights cases in this area? We have probably, Connecticut has some super well-trained police. I mean, you have police officers that are, have master's degrees, have, you know, have bachelor's degrees. That's not the case in a lot of different places in the country and certainly not in the world, but these are highly educated. There are a lot of highly educated, highly educated police officers in Connecticut where you don't have, who understand, you're not going to get, you're not going to harass a person just because you arrest them.

And that makes the difference. It takes a lot of self-restraint to be a police officer. You can't take out whatever's going on in your family on the job. You got to leave it separately. And the departments, I mean, I've been impressed with the departments and the state police. The state police are, you know, just really good. And I know they've had some issues recently with, you know, one or two people. But, I mean, generally, you find the state police are as professional as you can find.

And you know, see them pulling people over. I think one of the good things in Connecticut was, you remember a few years ago you could do, you could do stops for drugs. And that has been, you know, there have been some laws that have really clamped down on having police just doing pre-tech stops for drugs. Now, everyone knows that when you go from New York to Bridgeport, that's a drug highway. and then if Hartford, Hartford's generally Bridgeport is out in the, being filled by New York. Danbury is being filled by New York.

Hartford, London, generally come out of the Boston area for narcotics, different levels of different levels of qualities of drugs. It's, you know, so it's, but the police, they're not doing a lot of pre-tech stops, which I think is good, because then you're not getting kids just getting pulled over for no reason. Just one of the, I know where I'm, is your, is your location of your studio public, or not the exact location, but the city?

Yeah, Richfield, yeah. Okay. So in Ridgefield, just we had about 2017, there was an influx of people that were crossing the border in Mexico. and they were coming to this area, living across the border, because we're right on the New York border, coming into Ridgefield, and then they were, they were four,

the group would consist of at least three or four women who would have a baby, have a few guys, but they were going in front of, there's a stop and shop in Ridgefield, right? Yeah, that's the only like supermarket. Yeah, they're only supermarket. So they would have one baby, one live baby,

and they would have four, quote-unquote mothers. And the mothers would rotate, but they would leave the baby out in the cold alone, and they would get they would bank for money and then people in ridfield would be like throwing them $20 bills so and then they're on youtube or your facebook and youtube with like literally stacks of $20 bills like look what we got here from Ridfield and then all of a sudden uh the same because these are they were actually Romanians or the romans and so we um all of a sudden then the the right at the same time the pocketbooks of the teachers at the Ridgefield High High

They were getting stolen. They're stealing all the stuff in the cars. And then all of a sudden, readers started appearing on gas credit cards around here. Like the whole invasion of crime started in Ridgefield. So I got called down. This is the civil rights child exploitation. But called down by the prosecutor in Charmese. Her name is Charmese Walcott.

She's state's attorney in Hartford. And like, what are we going to do? I'm like, well, we can open a case. You go, Kurt, I won't allow you to open a case. We have, you have a baby out there who's sitting out there for eight hours in the cold while these people are all able to sit in the car. I want them done. They're gone. And I'm like, Charmite, you're the, Charmise tells me what to do.

I do it. I mean, that was, she is phenomenal prosecutor. So we said, I'll find out where they are. So they were, they were working in Ridgefield. I think one of the cops that's kind of scared them away. So then they appeared up in Danbury. And I was like, I could have such a great organized crime case against the Romanian, literally coming across the Mexican border coming up here.

And I can't do it because Charmese is absolutely 100% correct that we have to get the baby off the street. So first thing we do, we find them. They're up in a stop and shop on Route 7. Or there's one of those, maybe they're not a stop and shopper, but there's an area right there with a bunch of stores, and they're out to doing the same thing. Four mothers, you got, I'm sure, the gas card things. And so we roll in there, tell the Danbury cops, they come in. It wasn't Danbury.

It was town north. The cops come in. Brookfield? They arrest them. They arrest them. They arrest them. They arrest them. You arrest me and my poor baby.

So then they arrest all the other. They arrest them and they arrest just the mother. And they're like, and the mother, the quote, that quote, that quote, mother, like, is it your baby? Yes. Okay, good. Okay. So we're going to, we're going to arrest you, but we have to put the baby into child protective.

because you're getting arrested for abuse of this child for leaving her out for eight hours. And it's like, whoa, no, no, we had four of us mothers now. It wasn't just me. Whoa, is the baby yours or is the baby? Well, okay, so we're going to bring DCF now in and they're going to take the baby until we do DNA tests to figure out who the baby belongs to, who's a real mother, hasn't stepped forward yet. And this is all like at four hours.

I'm sitting there and the Brookfield police are just running these people crazy because they have all of the. their all of their little scams, their statements they have that to get out of stuff like this. And they're all sitting and giving the Brookfield cops the same statement. And Charmese Hodgett already told the Brookfield cops, no, no, no, no. We're not playing this. That baby, we're going to have DCF in it no matter what. Just listen to them.

And it goes, when they're ready, just let, hand them off to Kurt. So the Brookfield police terrorize, I mean, just torture them with, because they're given statement after statement. Oh, so you're not the mother? Who's the mother? you're all lying to me now and the people are all trying to figure out what to do. And finally the Brookfield

cop tells one of the guys, go for talk to the FBI agent over there. And the guy comes over, I'm like, I want to talk to your boss. He's like, what boss? I have a boss. You have a boss. I want to talk to your boss tonight. He goes, everybody's getting arrested here. He goes, you need to talk to the boss

because I can't, I'm limited on what I can do, but I'm going to do something. So he walks away and then about 30 minutes later he comes back with a phone and he um he says i um some guy wants to talk to you i'm like okay is he speaking english he goes yeah he speaks english i'm like okay here so i tell the guy listen this is how this goes richfield gangbury connecticut's off limits for this BS you bring your kids in here we take your kids would promise you we take we're taking this one we're gonna take them all

you bring any children in here we're gonna take them there no cases they're all go a DCF and then we're charging the parents. That's how this is going to work. He goes, you want, we go, we can't, we can't, we've already seen your videos over in New York, so we know they're very aware of you, but you do this in Connecticut and Ridfield. He goes, I promise you that this whole thing was going to turn out very bad, very fast, and go pull all your, your readers off the gas stations, go take all your mothers and get them out of here right now because this is over. And it goes, and by the way, I'll tell you, the prosecutor is Charmese Had. So if you want to call her up and ask her, she'll explain to you how this does.

You'll have a nice conversation with you. And then they just disappeared. And they may do that back. Do you see any romans around you? It's so funny the scam started in Richfield, Connecticut, because they picked the worst spot to start. I know. They probably never would have been caught if they...

Oh, the money! I mean, it's great money here, but there's just no crime happens here. So people are going to take notice of that very quickly. The police weren't... Yeah, but no one wants... For them, they were all dressed the same. No one knew what the hell. What the cop did, but he was like, I have to, I mean, it goes, the police were, they didn't see it before.

So they were like trying to figure out this. And I mean, I've seen, I've seen, you know, we have, we have waves of gypsy organized crime that roll through whoever occasionally. And I had seen it before, but they, like, how do you shut this down? But like I said, we normally open up an investigation, we do wires, this and that. And the process, like, we can't. we're not doing any, we're not having a child stay out in the street. We're going to slam this everywhere it goes right away. I'm like, that's perfect.

Why were the feds involved right from the beginning? Because they're trafficking children across state lines. But they didn't know from the beginning, did they? No, they were, the problem was they weren't sure how to handle it. So they were literally looking for me to come in and provide some expertise. Some expertise on the field. And, again, I had the same. That's why I went and talked with Charmese, and I had the same reaction.

Like, this is really, how can you leave a baby out there for eight hours? I mean, you should, that's a felony. I mean, if we can charge it. And she's like, no, we're going to charge. We're going to stop it. We have to stop. We can't have this individual. We're going to have to stop the organization.

I've been seeing in Danbury, some of the women are selling fruit. Like, you know, the fruit on the side of the road where they go up to the cars, but they'll have, like, a baby attached to them. And they're working now all day. Yeah, that, again, this is the, well, Charmys Hodge went to, went up to Hartford. So now they've realized that you can get in here. This is, again, if you're not, if you're not handling that type of organized, low-end organized crime, if you're not addressing it, it will, it will flare up and become a problem. I think the biggest problem that really caused them that was when they just went around and, like, started stealing the pocketbook from the teachers.

Because when, in Ridgefield, how much does that? I mean, then you know, that's like, there's more to him. to this then that meets the eye. That was what guaranteed. And they started pulling out all the crime. And then like 80% of it was like, that's part of the scam. That's part of the scam. And they were then Redfield like, let's just stop this.

Let's do what we can. So when people think organized crime, they just think like the mob. It's more than that, right? Yes, because the organized crime here, they're able to pay for tourist transport into Mexico, get transported up. They paid that. They got to the U.S. and then they got up to this area. No, there's a lot of different organized crimes.

I mean, I look at it in the general, generally as it's an enterprise. It's its own business that's doing it. And that's there for the purposes of committing the crime. That's really, I mean, the mob is just good at it. You have the Jamaicans and used to have those groups that were good at with drugs, but they're enterprises. It's not just looking at it. And here's one deal or one, you know, some small packet of heroin.

It's looking at it on how do we stop the enterprise from doing this. What division did you finish your career in? I finished it in the – by the end of it, for the last three years, I ran the human trafficking task force. I ran the child exploitation units. I ran the computer forensics unit. Then I also ran the covert technical operations unit, which was those guys were just off the charts good. There's no better, there's no better group of people.

Actually, for all of them. They're just, they're just so good. And during the COVID, during COVID, the New York police, their computer forensic unit basically stopped working. the FBI stopped working as people were sick. And they called us up to go into a motel on Staten Island because people were now robbing banks using the blue masks, the medical men, they were robbing banks like,

oh no, we got to stop there. This is not going to work. We're going to have to look for the guy with the blue mask when everyone's wearing them. And so they called up, they're like, is your computer forensic unit deployable? And I'm like to where? And I'm like to New York.

We want you to do what New York City right now is unable to do. I'm like, call them up. Are you deploy them? They're like, well, yeah. So I'm like, oh, I want to go on this one. I normally I won't go to sit there or see them on load computers, but I got to see that. I know New York City. So we go down, we drive down.

It's a hotel in Staten Island, which is like a drug infested, like a drug infested, like a drug infested motel. Probably each of the rooms are going probably for 20 bucks a night. It was just the worst, worst of the worst places. I'm sitting there and my computer forensics guys come out and they start putting on moon, they know those white moon suits they have. They got the white moon suits, the mat. I'm like, this is your computer,

you got this crap for computer forensics? My human trafficking people, everybody there is stuck with COVID. They're sick and you guys got all this. He's like, this is what we do, Kurt, we're prepared. And they go into this hotel. So they're getting ready going to the hotel. And I'm sitting there on the trunk of my car going, And this is a complete, I don't even know what to say with the biggest geeks ever who can know how to do forensics on computers actually have all the gear to go to the moon and to survive in space.

And then I'm looking right down the street. There's another, a drug deal going on. And one guy's in a house. There's another guy. They're trying to exchange narcotics. And because of COVID, they don't want to get too close to each other. So one guy's like walking out or yelling to each other. They're trying you drop the cash on that side of the street.

I'll drop the drugs on this side. And then we'll walk over and we'll, should we walk back? I'm sitting there. This is absolutely the craziest thing. And then my guys are going to this hotel and start pulling out all the, all the electronics, all the tape. They're actually substituting tapes because this hotel was so poor. It had old stuff. and they would never be able to get their machines working.

So they had to go in and put in new tapes and do all this stuff to get the hotel working in, take-to-take, duplicate them on site. Just a huge process of... And so I hopped in one of... They brought a moon suit for me. So I hopped in the moon suit and walked in there. I mean, everybody in this place was sick.

Everybody was sick. I mean, it was awful. I mean, everyone was sick in this building. was just completely cut. I don't even know what to make up. They're all drug addicts, all the worst shape possible, and all had COVID.

Meanwhile, I got my computer guys doing, doing the computers because these guys decided to go to Connecticut to rob the bank with the mask and someone in this building. So we, so I come out

and I'm like, I need to be decontaminated. I mean, I need to be decontaminated because this is like, I'm going to get COVID from this. So I'm like, take off my white suit. This white, you know, you're talking to those white suits they have with the face. And I take the white suit off the best I can and I'm trying to discard it.

And I'm putting it, I don't even know what you do with it. And then some guy walks up to me who's like half naked. He's like, can I have your suit? And I'm like, yeah, I'm going to throw it away. Why do you want it? He goes, oh, I just want to wear it. It looks pretty cool. I'm like, oh, feel free.

Knock yourself out, dude. You go, so he puts the suit on. He starts walking around. He looks like like something from 28 days later walking around Staten Island. All of a sudden, the cops see him. They're all like, nobody wants to go near him because they think he's infected. So it's like he's walking around with the moon suit and all the police are running. I'm like, I'm out of here.

This has gotten too weird for me. And then I drove up, we drove up and we went to by the Javitt Center. And they had, and people tell me about COVID about what, you know how bad. They had trucked, those trailers filled with them. bodies. I mean, they had 16 or 17 trailers that were being the, I just sat there. I mean, I was probably a few hundred yards away looking at, and no one was around looking at this going, oh my God, this is what a, how do you even handle? There are so many bodies being dragged out of there and there were trailers everywhere and they're moving them out. And I was, I'm like,

I was thinking they're going to have some type of open, you know, those mass graves, which is exactly what they had because there's just too many of them. But again, my cart guys, being the technical wizards they are, have the moon suits and all the computer gear and they're able to go in, even when New York and FBI, New York, and then NYPD can't do it.

They're there doing it. They were just phenomenal. I mean, there's nothing like some of the experts in the FBI. Why did you decide to leave the FBI? It was a combination. When I was sick, I have a bad habit. that I help out people, FBI agents that are in trouble.

And that's kind of what I'm known for in the FBI is I give advice to people that are in trouble in the FBI because they're my coworkers. And I handle a lot of people that are whistleblowers. And that's where I got into my, I became known as a whistleblower lawyer. And I spent, I've helped out a lot of people. In fact, the person who was supposed to be here,

I'm actually the lousy substitute for coming here, but the person that was supposed to be here was actually one of those and he got rehired by the FBI. We won't use his name. Great guy. And usually with whistleblowers, this is the same thing with a lot of people that get involved in crime. It happens kind of accidentally.

It really does. It's hard to sometimes a picture, but it does. Likewise, FBI whistleblowers are accidental whistleblowers. So they'll, hey, well, I want to report something was wrong, thinking that like everyone's going to do the right thing. And then they're like, oh, you need to be fired for telling us that. And so they're like, what? I'm just, and so they tell something that's wrong thinking that the FBI are required to report misconduct.

And when they report it, they target them for reporting it. And this has been going on for decades. And the first people that were really known for it was Fred Whitehurst was a person from the lab who reported misconduct in the FBI lab. And then Jane Turner, who was reported that people were. stealing stuff or taking stuff from the World Trade Center as trinkets. And they both got in big, big trouble for reporting that. And it wrecked their careers and set them off on to be like some of the most known FBI whistleblowers. But they're accidental whistleblowers. They just wanted people to address a problem. And usually your whistleblowers in the FBI are

some of your best and hardest working people. So did the FBI give you a hard time for representing them? Oh, yeah. Well, I actually became notable because there's generations of whistleblowers. Before, I actually sued the FBI and went to whistle. They have an FBI whistleblower court, which is actually in DOJ, which is called ORA, an office of attorney recruitment and management. It's kind of a joke. So the people you have to go to report about misconduct and how bad your job is, are the people who are recruiting employees for DOJ. So the recruiter, hey, they're doing things wrong. We don't want to hear about that because we're recruiting.

So this ORAM is the one, by law, they're the only handle FBI whistleblower. So they're like the court. When I say court, it means place of adjudication, not there's like a judge. It's just a bunch of recruiters that go around to college campuses. And then in their spare time, they like adjudicate whistleblower cases. And so that was a joke. Before me, the first eight or ten cases that happened, it took 10 years to adjudicate, like eight to ten years to adjudicate the whistleblower cases, which is like anywhere else you can go to the Supreme Court. You know, death penalty cases don't take eight years, but FBI whistleblower cases do.

So I filed one and I decided that I was going to do it a lot quicker than anyone else. So I did mine in 24 months. for a combination of reasons, one is DOJ change their attitude towards these whistleblowers, and they sped, and I wouldn't take a continuance. So my, whereas everyone else took eight to ten years, I was able to get two determinations against my bosses from New Haven in 24 months. And then, then I decided to sue them in federal court. And then one, you know, settled that after they had enough of me.

actually Comey, the guy who just got indicted, he actually came to Connecticut, apologized for the leadership, for the leadership deficiencies, which was fine for him. He should have done that, not personally to me, but to the employees.

But after me, while I was doing that, people started calling me up saying, how did you do a combination? Like, hey, I'm doing the same thing. How'd you win and no one else does? So I would tell them what to do. And then I had some other people

that called up and they were like, we want detailed information on how you did this because we want to do exactly the same thing. And so I explained that to them. They were actually designated

to Taliban because they were so good at torturing their bosses that they were called literally for terrorists. The group was called the Taliban because they were so effective

at winning at the stuff. And then, so a bunch of people started winning the cases and getting settlements and then I retired and a guy and there were a bunch of people right at that point who were being let go because of COVID because of not wanting to take the COVID vaccine and some religious issues and they're all conservatives and those people had called me up and asked for help and I was

it doesn't matter who does if it's an employee I'm going to help them out and tell them how this works and those people have a number of my people that I would call clients who have assisted have just got recently, gotten their job back after like three or four years. And it's not, it's not about politics. It's just about if you report something wrong in the FBI, the boss should say, thank you very much, appreciate it, don't let the door hit you in the ass. That's all they have to do. They have to do anything proactive, in fact, that all they have to do is say thank you and move on and just document it. That's it. But for some reason, they feel, you've told us something wrong. You've violated the integrity of the Bureau and you've embarrassed the Bureau.

and therefore we have to punish you. And that happens, I mean, unfortunately, that happens quite a bit. And so I've helped people out with that. There was one group that was of women back in 2000. There was a group of five, I think four women, one guy plus another guy, who had decided they were going to fight right before me. And so I sat there when I was doing, before, as I was doing my case, I watched them, everything they did wrong, I was able to learn.

But they had a deposition with one of the, bosses in the FBI and they're like, and this group was called the Serg 5. And so during the deposition, the lawyer, brilliant, a brilliant deposition, the lawyer said, and what are these people, these women called from Quantico? And he goes, oh, we call them the Sturg 5. He goes, so why have you designated your EEO cases as terror, the same way you designate your terrorist organizations with the same type of name? You know, like, what? Like, yeah, Surg 5. That's what you call, you know, everything else. That's a terrorist moniker for the FBI. But they won, and they lost a bunch of stuff, finally won.

Another guy couldn't help. He couldn't win anything, but he gave me all of what he did and explained to me how he did it. And I just modified that and then was able to win and help people out by learning. And I explain this to clients is you have a lot of employees who have climbed over barbed wire to get part of the way up. who never succeed, but they teach you how to do things. So take good notes and then do something different. And you may be stopped. You may be embarrassed.

They're going to try to fire you, but get over the next set of wires and then let other people come. And there has to be, if the FBI can't be just to its own employees, how the hell are they going to be fair to anyone else? You have to have that idea. The FBI has to be able to be critical of itself. Look, I screwed up my bike this morning. I was riding my bicycle.

Your e-bike. My e-bike. No, it was my bicycle. Yeah, my e-bike at like four in a morning, okay? And I forgot to put my sweatshirt on myself and left on the back, and my sweatshirt got caught in the rear tires and almost threw me off the bike, okay? Very embarrassing at like four in a morning. I screwed up my bike. But again, I fully admit that.

Look, I'm not the best at riding a bike, but we have to, in order to get a, get better at things, we have to admit what we're doing is wrong or just problems. And that's, that's, um, that's, um, that's the, the first step on, on succeeding at life. You don't succeed in life from your wins. You succeed from learning from your mistakes. And then you retire and start starring in Mr. Beast videos. Yeah. Yeah. Well, I mean, Mr. Beast, that was the best, again, and people, there's non-disclosures that go with Mr. Beast. That group is probably the best, set of people I've ever worked with. They are so hardcore chart.

They work hard. They work long hours. They're wonderful. They have their own ethics, ethical standards on how they do stuff. People said, well, that was, what you did was fake. I could tell you right now it wasn't fake. I could tell you that I had to actively work on getting around certain problems that were almost insurmountable to me because I can barely run.

But that wasn't, they, the rule, there were some. very strict rules, but that was a competition. Yeah, I tell people that all the time. Yeah, they'll believe it. And then not, when I made a video about it, they were like, how much did he pay you to say that? Nothing. I just think he's a good dude.

It was good business. And it was a fun experience. And it wasn't fake. It was real. It was real. Yeah. But you have to have, they have to have rules because a lot of times it's being done in the open, in an open area where third parties are.

So they have very few rules, but they, they were very, um, They were very adamant about making sure that here are the rules, here how this works, and if you, and you're going to do this until, you know, please do it. I told my kids love Mr. Beast. I said, look, I don't care if you humiliate me. Feel free. I am happy to, I'm happy to be embarrassed.

I'm happy to lose because my kids will think that's great too. It doesn't matter to me. I want to play it. And they, and that attitude helped me with other people that were working there when they realized I was dead set that I was going to do whatever it was going to go on I'm going to help that helped me because then if I if they had it if I had any issues they they they resolved them fast but they were very that's one of the best companies I've ever seen how many years were you in the FBI for total 24 do you have any regrets looking back on your career

or anything you wish you did differently um that way that's hard um I've been I've been very very, I mean, I've been very fortunate. I have made, I've, I've been, been able to make lots of mistakes and recover from them and learn and have work with tremendous people. I mean, just phenomenal people. I mean, I've sat and, I mean, it, it was an honor for me to go to the World Trade Center to help out. It didn't work out well for anyone. But it was an honor to, to to help. It was it was an honor to be asked to go to Katrina to raise my hands. Hey, I'm happy to go down there. My law school, my first law, my law school was in the world, so I knew the place. And to see some of the things, like I said, there's a whole

area of my work that's not for public consumption, but to see how you, how the people in the U.S. and how the military acts in some of the most horrendous environments that you could ever imagine. You know, again, I said when you sit down at a table and you're like, ooh, lobster and steak, what's this all about? Like, it's a last meal. When you have people that are sitting there, professionals and you're like, shit like that doesn't, you wouldn't even think that happens in real life and come to find out it does.

And you have people that are, I once watched, I was sitting watching some, I call them young women, but they're girls, but they were like 18, 19 years old. and they were sitting on top of Humvees or transportation. They were painting their fingernails brown or green. They're waiting to go out for a convoy. And they're sitting there painting their nails. And I'm sitting there and I'm like, wow, that's, you know, that looks like hell.

I don't want to paint my nails on top of that. But we walked around, I was with my boss, Jim Davis, and all of a sudden we were, our compound was on the other side of the wall. All of a sudden we start hearing gunshots going off. and lo and behold, the FBI had a popcorn made. I don't know why it would have a popcorn make, but every Friday it had a saloon called John O'Neill Saloon. And every Friday night, it would have a party, but it was Friday,

and they had popcorn. This convoy was leaving. I had a bag of popcorn. I run up to the roof, and I'm watching these girls, girls. I mean, they can't be more than 22 years old with wet fingernail polish, and they got ambushed right outside the gate, and they are fighting like no tomorrow with a bunch of insurgents. And those insurts have AKs, and these women are running 50-calibers.

And the insurgents have no chance. 50-calibers are machine guns, the M-2s are a sight to behold. When you watch three or four women going to work on people that are wrecking their fingernail polish, because they went to work on those guys and those guys. guys never had a chance. And we're sitting there, Jim Davis and I, I mean, I would have, I would have actually grabbed my rifle and participated, but I was too busy admiring the women working, you know, having this gun battle with these, with these guys. I mean, they literally never, they shot at them and then these people went right to work. They went from being just

relaxed to a fault on combat like any better as good as any troops that have existed. And they're just transportation. They're just protecting a. convoy. I mean, if I was, if I was done, I would have actually ambushed the middle of the convoy where the real troops are not the women with all the 50 calibers who are going to mow your butt down and who are just going to overwhelm you with with firepower. And that's what they did. Again, I sit there going, and I was sitting with Jim Davis and Jim Davis. I mean, I'm like, I don't want to even shoot at the, I mean, it's like, there's nothing to do here. He's like, no. So we just sat there and watched this, this battle happened. And it was, I mean, it was

remarkable to watch the women. I had a, in the VA, I was walking down the VA one day and a guy came, it was horrible for me. Horrible for him, he came up to me, or he rolled in wheels and he goes, hey, Kurt, remember me? And I'm looking at him and I'm like, no. And the guy had lost his arms and legs.

He goes, I was at the sub, I did the subway sandwiches when you would come in and, when you would come in. and have, you know, or I ordered every day I would go eat Subway sandwiches when I practice law. And I would, he, he was behind the counter, we cook and we talk. And he had lost his arm, I think both of his arm and both his legs. And I was, I didn't know what to say.

I was horrified to see, you know, the damage that he had suffered for the country. And I've been upset with myself because I didn't even know how to react. Normally, I'm pretty good with any type of stuff. That was a one time. I was speechless and horrified to watch what happened. And it was just amazing to see people like that that have suffered and have really done stuff for America at the requests of the president and Congress and that are just remarkable.

And they're young. Have you seen the movie Restrepo? No. Okay. The two best war, you never saw Restrepo. There's a lot of movies. Oh, no, no, okay, okay, okay. So the movie Restrepo, did you ever see the movie Hurt Locker?

Yeah, great movie. Okay. Hurt Locker, everything is factually wrong in that movie, except it's perfect because when it gives you the feeling of what it's like to come back from Iraq. My father died when I was overseas, and I actually flew back for like two days ago to his funeral and then fly back. And I went to stop and shop to get some food. and I went to some cereal and I stood in the aisle like, like, oh my God, I can't, I couldn't choose a series. I never had, in a year I have had a choice to choose a cereal.

And I sit there with, with hundreds of types of cereals, I was just like dead, like, it was overwhelmed. And I was, so like everything about her locker is wrong except for the feeling of how it is perfect on how that does. That gives me sweats to watch some of that. And it said, it's a lot of people would say, you know, their feeling of that of a year in Iraq, you know, in two hours. The movie Restrepo is about a bunch of kids that were, I think,

soldiers that were in charge of a little base in the Cornagall Valley. And it's a picture of the video about them being there, which is probably the best war film ever because you see the quality of kids that the U.S. has and what they are plus how bad they are afterwards, how much they've grown up. And Restrepo is, I mean, your heart goes out for the kids for that. But there are mirror images of kids from that whole generation that had gone over. And some of them, you know, tried to feel that he did something good for their country and who suffered a lot. It's amazing.

But if you ever a chance, that really, that shows, because it's not just them, you have the Marines and soldiers, the women, the men, who have done very similar things, not in the same amount of conflict. but sometimes a lot more who are just remarkable. So, yeah, I love, that's why I love the job because I was able to see that firsthand. How was that for a long? What, do I have any regrets? No. That was a good answer.

Yeah. Kurt, I appreciate you coming on the show. Thank you very much. Yeah, no, this is, we could go all day, man. You're great. I mean, the audience doesn't know, but me and you were chatting for a half hour before we even started off camera.

As soon as you got it, we were chatting. But those are the best guests, you know, The audience loves these types of conversations and where the guest just runs with it. I sat down with a former police chief for the Virgin Islands who worked on the DEA task force. That came out last night. And three hours interview, I think I said three sentences, that whole interview. And he could have went for another 24 hours. That's a tough, Virgin Islands is a tough place to be as far as law enforcement.

Yeah, it was rough. Yeah. But incredible stories, incredible storyteller. Who knew? I mean, people don't know. Virgin Islands is a tough law enforcement. I knew a guy who's in the Virgin Islands. I asked him how it is. He goes, oh, it's good for me.

He goes, but my partner has to carry a gun in the shower because he does public corruption. So he literally has to carry a gun in the shower. They said half of the police force is corrupt. Yeah. Yeah, the agent, like he said he brings a gun in his shower because he does public corruption there. That's how scary. A long time ago, how scary the guy was. Anyway, thank you very much.

It was an honor. Yeah, thanks for taking the time out of your day to come over and be with us today. Appreciate it. Thank you.