Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast - ATF AGENT ON TAKING DOWN THE DC SNIPER, TRUMPS ARREST, & FBI ATF WARS
Episode Date: October 30, 2023ATF AGENT ON TAKING DOWN THE DC SNIPER, TRUMPS ARREST, & FBI ATF WARS ...
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Tensions were high, and we were in the areas after shooting happened, trying to figure out what's going on here.
So we're kind of harm's way because sometimes they will stay at a certain era, something that they would move on.
The whole area was in a panic.
I think that's better than killing that.
You're terrifying the country, and plus he wants to get back of the system.
I think he kind of liked that.
It wasn't uncommon 95 if he'd be shut down after shooting, because they're thinking, these guys went one way or the other in complete gridlock in this area.
It was insane, insane.
And nothing I've ever seen like it before.
And in his mind, he starts believing he can make this kid an assassin.
desensitize them and that 13 14 just killing randomly no connection no ties nothing he said
did you kill her he said I killed it said all right that's a good start how you feel feel nothing
that's real good no feel nothing I like that she kept calling me sweetie she's like listen sweetie
she's you're going to get caught eventually she's you understand we will catch you all I go
well what's taking you so long and she said listen we're you don't seem to understand we're
about 90% sure of where you are sweetie I go well only a hundred percent counts you'll come
back to Tampa. Somebody will turn you in. You're going to get pulled over. Let me clear this up for you.
I said, I've had two dozen driver's licenses in other people's names. I said, there's nobody in Tampa.
I want to see. Unless you want to have this conversation in person.
Hey, this is Matt Cox, and I am here with Ignacio Esteban, and we are going to be talking about
active shooters, the DC sniper, and several other relationships.
cases that he has in-depth knowledge of.
It's going to be a great podcast, so check it out.
And also the rivalry between the FBI and the ATF within DOJ.
And that has never ended.
But I know we talked a little bit about Vivek Ramoswamy, right?
And the stuff he's saying, he wants to abolish the FBI.
Right.
That's one of the first things he wants to do.
I mean, I've never heard anybody ever say they want to abolish the FBI.
And because of political reasons, he sees him going after Trump, politicizing the whole
political weaponization of the Department of Justice is what he's seen.
But at the same time, he is young, but he is a self-made billionaire in his 30s, right?
Right.
He's, I think, 38, going to be 39.
He's done very well, Harvard grad, Yale grad, right?
And he's moved up really well, really fast.
He's been a successful writer.
I mean, if you ever read some of his books, New York Times bestseller,
woke ink
woke ink
I mean if you haven't seen that right
have you read the book
no no
excerpts and then I've heard him talk about it
and then just watching
which makes sense I mean sometimes
we're getting to a point where
he says you want to check off the boxes
if you're a company or the agency
that's for the government
you know it's all about having competent people
right but you're not getting that sometimes
and they're just checking off boxes
I want a certain category of people here
check check check check check check
I want certain religious people here
check check check check and it's about
checking out the boxes and not having people who are competent to fill these positions.
That's part of the essence of Woke Inc.
So I found it pretty, I read excerpts from it.
I found it good and I heard him talking about it.
So he's also bestselling author.
He's written a lot of books out there now too.
And he has a good podcast show too.
So if you haven't seen his podcast show, I kind of recommend it if you're kind of want no
ways about.
He had Bill Barr out there from former attorney general with Donald Trump.
And he had really good opinions because he wants to seal the border.
He thinks what's going on now
It's disgraceful right now
It is which is how much of open border
We have in the United States
We didn't have that with the Trump administration
They're harder shutting things down
But it seems like he said
Can I use the military
Which asks some good questions
You know can I use the military
To A seal the border
And B go after the cartels in Mexico
Remember we talked about that
The only way to go after the cartels
Is to militarize and pretty much go to war with them
Right
He's bringing those topics up
how can we can we do i said well they're a threat we have laws the mexican government is soft
a cartel leadership with lopez over to lower right who's a mexian president he's pretty much
wants a peace pack with them as long you don't kill our people i don't care what you do to the
americans right yeah i was just say you don't have to even declare war let's face it the last
war that was declared was world war two he he could just say it's a it's a military action
and police action call it police action right exactly not more police
election, right? That's what they have to do. But that's how to be serious about it. So those
are interesting thing. He doesn't like the war in Ukraine. I don't agree with everybody 100%
anything, obviously. The things you agree with him to something, don't we? I do believe
there's sovereign nation. What Putin's done is wrong. He is an indicted war criminal from
the Hague for kidnapping all those children. Now those children are believed to be dead.
So not only they take them from these regents, these poor children that are believed to have been
massacre. It's really horrible what's going on out there. I understand that we don't want
endless wars. Yeah, I don't want another Afghanistan either. I don't think we want to spend
another 20 years, spend a trillion dollars, and look at the disaster what happened, how we left
with Biden. So, yeah, they already have most of their country. Then there's a dispute of regents,
you know, Premier, and you have Dumbos, right? So that's more on the eastern side. Most likely
they probably won't be able to join NATO. There's kind of things. Maybe you have peacekeepers out
They're U.N. peacekeepers to come up for the truce, but for us to raise spend $120 billion.
Right.
120 and counting.
We're going to go to a trillion dollars in this, right?
What's NATO doing?
How much are they putting it?
This is their backyard, right?
These are things that, you know, I think good valid points.
He brings up.
So I thought when you said we talked about the FBI and ATF rivalry, I said they might not be an FBI.
And who knows?
Who else he's going to buy?
Oh, the Department of Education.
He believes in school choice.
He doesn't like the public school system.
Right.
Yeah, he was saying Ebola.
the Department of Education.
The Department of Education.
Yeah, he is like the EPA either.
I mean, he doesn't, obviously anybody that bucks up, he believes, he doesn't say it's a hoax, climate change, but he's close to him, right?
Yeah, well, I'm along those same lines.
Like, look, I obviously, obviously that the planet is warming, but the planet has warmed and cooled throughout its history.
I mean, that's just the way it is.
Yes.
You know, there are sunken cities that they find all the time right now.
And it's like, okay, well, that was 4,000 years ago.
We weren't putting anything into the atmosphere 4,000 years ago.
You know, it, you know, it, you know, it, it, ebbs and flows, right?
Ebs and flows in anything in planet.
Yeah, we were in an ice age almost like 3,000 years ago.
So, and now things would cool off again.
So it just is cyclical.
And that's one thing I knew of the planet.
It's very much cyclical.
But that has people have an agenda where they want to cripple.
That's one thing I know is with the left.
They use regulation.
now. They can't nationalize like they used to, but they can cripple companies with massive
regulation. And environment is right there how they can cripple companies making things do
more and more and more. So I found him interesting. I've been watching him a lot. I know you did this
show with Patrick Bet David. Right. Years ago, I kind of saw a little bit of it. Yeah. You got
like a lot of views out of that one. Yeah, it was a couple million. It's over a couple million.
A couple million, right? I think that was better than concrete. I think it's over two million now.
they're both about the same right or maybe better yeah yeah he did a great town hall with vevec
an amazing talent unbelievable numbers standing ovation and everything it's i think it's good to
listen to him he also been on hanity he's been all the big names you know you check him out
and see what what he has to say he's young i know trump calls him young veck the veck because he
gives everybody a nickname right right but trump's lead is so enormous i just don't see anybody
catch it. Right. 60%, 62%. I mean, it's unheard of for five, six people in a primary.
He's even better than he was in 2016. Oh, listen, it'll be his landslide if he just gets
himself indicted a couple more times. That shirt, have you seen that with a shirt with his mug photo?
Yeah. Everywhere. Oh, yeah. We're talking about that. He purposely worked on that in that smile or
not a smile, that look. Yeah. I'm sure. I'm sure you practiced in the mirror a few times.
I think you did.
Very popular shirt.
He's in coffee mugs.
It's an over.
You name it.
Put that over.
It's making them a lot of money, fundraising, fundraising, fundraising, fundraising, fundraising.
And to fight the system, fight the power.
They're coming after me and they're all Democrats and everything else.
So it's feeding into his one.
The thing is, I think we've talked before, I think he might pick Ramoswamy for his VP
because he's the only one that said, I would pardon him on day one.
Oh, yeah.
right listen this guy he's he's very calculating right they'd be they'd be a great listen
I thought he and DeSantis would have been good but you know DeSantis is like I'm not really a
second chair guy it was like you know Desantis really honestly never should have run he should
you know I would I would be terrified to run against Trump oh yeah Trump will eat you alive right
he's gonna he's gonna gut whoever whoever whatever whatever opponents are against him he's
going to gut him. So it's like, you know, even if you beat him in the primary, he will have done
so much damage to your reputation by that point. He can't win. Yeah. Listen, Jeff Bush, he gave
everybody, Meatball Ron, right? Remember Jeb Bush? He was like low energy, Jeb Bush. Yeah. I can't
even look at Jeb Bush now without immediately thinking low energy. I just, but yeah, but he is,
you know, lying Ted, little Marco, crazy Nancy. I mean, he was the king of the names and they stuck and
People said, yeah, that fits them.
That's about right.
So I think in case, this is a good scenario.
Trump needs a backup plan.
Let's say he does win, right?
And he does have Vivek as his running mate, right?
Right.
He said he was parting him, right, if he's president.
And let's say the Republicans lose the house.
The right now the Senate's tied.
Let's say that they'd lose one.
And now the minority.
And he's convicted.
He's a chance he might get impeached and maybe this time removed.
It'd be the third time.
And then last time, second time, there was a lot of votes.
Republicans and the Senate. He just wasn't removed because of about 10 votes. So maybe this
one he does, but guess what? The Vecl be president, he'll part him right away. Well, that's,
those are for federal charges, state charges, you know, the president. He's trying to get that
all taken federally. That's the whole plan. Because he's the president of the United States,
the state can't hold water to him. It's going to have to go federal. Everything has to go federal.
Anybody in Georgia, that case in Georgia, by the way, that's, I think that's one of the weaker
cases. You're putting all 19 up there for freedom of speech, especially attorneys, for having
their opinion. I mean, there's a lot of president there that has never happened before.
So I don't know about that case. I think you push the envelope with the president of the United
States, former president who's running for office against a political point in which you're
registered party in. I don't like any. That's banana republic stuff. I hate to say it.
Yeah, what's shocking is every president in the last, you know, 50 years, you could do this.
As soon as they leave office, you could turn around all of them have done.
Something. I agree. You're lying. You know, George Bush lying to the American public to start get us involved in a war in, you know, Iraq and, you know, Afghanistan and, you know, all of these different things. It's like, what are you doing? Yeah. Like, you know, like you're blatantly lying. There are those, those Tony Blair, the memo or the notes from his, from his, I forget, whether it was his secretary or something, had all those notes with where Tony Blair and Bush had been
discussing, like shooting down a YouTube spy plane.
Like, let's fly it.
We could fly it over Baghdad and get it shot down, and that'll give us a reason to, like,
he had all these ways he was trying to get into a war.
And justification.
Yeah.
And at the end, that's a war we shouldn't have been in.
Iraq was a war.
We shouldn't have been.
Afghanistan we get because of the Taliban.
And still, at the end, at 20 years, all the money invested in the security forces, did he
want to fight?
Yeah.
And let the Taliban take over.
Right.
Really?
After 20 years, we trained you guys.
We provide you everything and you're not going to fight, defend your country.
Because there really are so many different ethnic groups in there.
They don't want to be a country.
So, you know, I remember I dated this chick.
This was 20-something years ago.
This was when we were, we had just like, this is during, was it a rocky freedom or desert storm?
I'm going to say it was, I don't know.
Anyway, I think it was a rocky freedom.
Anyway, I remember dating this.
chick and she had dated had dated for a couple of years an attorney that worked for the CIA and I remember
him saying that democracy would never work in those countries in the Middle East and and I was like and I was
like well I said that's why would you say that she goes I don't know he said that just based on he said
she said that he had told her based on multiple studies that had been done that will never be released
He said it is just a proven fact that those types of people have been ruled for centuries
and that's simply that they're simply okay with having a ruler.
They don't, they're not interested in democracy.
They don't know, like the moment they come into power, they tend to become corrupt.
They tend to try and take advantage of the situation.
And he was, he had this whole theory or I don't even know this theory.
he was saying that the CIA had done all the studies on it.
And she was like, and he's saying it'll never work.
It's just never going to work.
Yeah, I agree because it's also a lot of it.
It's different ethnic groups and they don't like each other.
Right.
You know, you have all these different, these are all Muslims groups and they're always fighting amongst themselves.
So they don't like each other.
They don't want to be ruled.
Democracy.
Imagine sitting down.
I mean, it took us.
I mean, you look at Americans.
We're a melting pot.
But it's always not easy to transition, right?
It takes time to mold and to get adjusted to living with other.
Oh, man, Catholics and Protestants was a big thing.
They didn't like each other, right?
They brought all the tension from Europe to the United States, the Irish, Italian, Spanish,
you know, I guess the Protestant, the white Anglo-Saxons, you know, they had that issue.
We had tensions here.
Of course, blacks, Native Americans, I mean, Chinese, it takes a while in generations.
But if you don't work on that, having people mold together, live together, tolerate each other,
that they're not only to.
They're going to kill each other and they hate each other.
I mean, and you see it.
And even you go to Africa, you know, you see the Hutsu, remember, and the Tutsis
and the Tutsis in Uganda, in Rwanda, Rwanda.
Rwanda, it was a million, or between 800,000 and a million Tutsis were massacred.
Massacre.
And they lived, have you ever seen Hotel, have you ever seen the movie Hotel Rwanda?
Of course.
That's a good movie.
It's a great, it's a great telling of that story.
Yes.
It's a great way they did tell it.
it also showed how inept the UN was at being able to do anything to even to stop any any of that it was a it was a yeah it was just such a blood bath and they did it with weapons they did it with machetes machetes they're cheap cheap and it's gruesome it's brutal wait wait what was the the call sign was or the the the sign was a chop down the tall tree yeah time to chop down the tall tree or something that as soon as that went out they all just started butchering
them.
Butchering people and killing each other and going back and forth and genocide.
And they've been together.
And my point with that was they've been together for generations, right, these people.
And they hate each other.
And they hate each other.
So it's hard.
When people live in the same space, but don't accept each other, it's hard for democracy because
they don't trust each other.
So that's the biggest problem in Iraq.
Even though Iraq's got a little bit better because Iran was funding the wars and tried to
have the instability, the Shiites, right, the Sunnis, trying to make that really.
ugly attention and the Kurds up in northern Iraq, different, it was a really ugly situation,
really three different people in one country by Saddam Hussein. And at the end, I'm glad, I mean,
he was a piece of ship. There's not no route around that, right? He also, you know, was a brutal
dictator. I'm glad he got hung at the end because what all the stuff he did, but it's just a
complete civil war disaster. And it's cost us, you know, we're still there. People don't know,
Americans, we're still there in Iraq, by the way. So you know what, what kills me. Here's,
I have so many unpopular opinion.
There's no unpopular opinions.
So here, here's the thing.
Like to me, if you want, let's take someplace like Haiti right now, which is a disaster, right?
Like, okay, Haiti, they're pouring out, you know, help us, help us.
I have no problem.
Listen, we can, we'll land the Marines.
We will swarm that whole island.
We've done it.
we will we will take that whole island back but guess what you're now a state so you just make
it a state there's no Puerto Rico no no Puerto Rico's now a state we're not giving you aid
you're paying income tax you're going to get the vote you become a state that's or we don't
help you if if you know it's a state no you wouldn't so you just you just don't do anything
but to dump a bunch of why dump a bunch of resources into something or what's the
UN good for all the money we pay for the UN that's for the UN that's a good project for them
hey you know what get the peacekeepers out there they're not they get in there they can barely do
anything they can't I'm saying is if you want to go into Ukraine and you want to help Ukraine
if you're going to dump that much money in then just say look we'll just we'll just take invade
that country and make it a state so now it's the state of Ukraine and now Russia if you want to
trying to, oh, you, okay, well, then why give them any money at all? To what, stabilize them?
They're never going to pay us back. No, they can't pay us back. They're going to be,
they're going to say they're going to be a great ally until 20 years. I mean, as long as Zelensky's
there, he goes, he passed away 20 years from now, 30 years or now, what have you, they forget.
You know, a lot of countries forget all the good things we did in World War II, right?
You know, the French are the most famous for kind of bad-mouthing America.
Travel out to Paris or France, if you have.
Oh, bro, they're all like that.
They kind of, the Germans, they kind of forget, because it's ancient history.
history and they see all the Americans are uneducated, they're so crassum, they just put down
the Americans like they're trash, but you forget Americans, we're just country.
And there's a problem.
Like if Putin was to invade Paris, you know, go, who's going to be there?
We are.
Because you're a NATO ally.
So quickly they forget.
So I was in the Netherlands, right?
I went to Amsterdam to shoot this episode of Inside the Mind of a Con artist, right?
So I go there and I'm there.
I don't know what I was there.
Five days, six days.
Anyway, I was there.
And listen, like the directors and stuff, like,
pretty much after I'd shot most of my scenes.
The one of the director, no, it wasn't the director.
Yeah, yeah, it was one of the directors or the film guy, you know, and several of them were sitting around and they, they would ask me different questions.
Little here, little there, no big deal.
But then they started getting into politics.
They were like, they were asking me these little questions and they were like, why are Americans like this and why are Americans this and why?
And it was real snide.
And I remember saying, you know, it's funny, you seem to have a negative.
they do a negative opinion of America I said but every time there's a war or there's a problem I said I don't see the Netherlands coming to anybody's aid they don't I said so you ask us to come to people's aid and then you complain about how we did it when in fact you don't give any money you don't send your troops I said or you send your troops sending in the Netherlands you might as well have the South Carolina National Guard go in exactly I mean it's not much you know it's nothing like it's it's a
minor, minor military force.
So it's like, so, you know, you're bitching and moaning.
And he was like, well, he said, it's not like there's any wars going on.
And America's still doing this.
And listen, six months later, no, a year later, Russia invades Ukraine.
Ukraine.
Yeah.
And it's like, I wish to God I've been, you know, if at that time, you'd like, oh, well, I see you, now you, well, they need help.
They need the, the Netherlands is tiny.
you can't do anything.
Okay.
You want to spend money.
Yeah.
The moment the moment the Germans invade, you're begging for help.
Sure.
And I just don't, you're right, it's the short memory.
And then it's, please help me, please help me, please help me.
But I need you to do it like this.
And I need you to be careful about this.
And I need, what are you doing?
Yeah.
Like to me, I'd be like sink or swim.
You want to be a state?
We'll make you a state.
Exactly.
Yeah.
Yeah, that's a frustrating going to Europe.
if your audience has traveled
out there sometime. I've been in Europe a lot
and it's changed. The younger generation
forgets more and more because
if you don't study history, you know,
those who don't know history, do them to repeat it, you forget
about the Nazis, you forget about
the communists, the Soviets, you know,
Eastern Block and all this that
we're helping, you know, the Marshall Plan.
You know, that's the U.S. We help rebuild
Europe after, not only did we liberate
them, we rebuilt them.
Oh, yeah, yeah.
Can't forget that either. Goodness.
And by yet, they don't like the way.
But I thought people, America is very different.
You go to the northeast.
It's a different kind of culture.
The Midwest goes to south, right?
You go to the west.
So don't just say, oh, America's all the same.
Very different.
And people in the cities are very different, people in the suburbs.
People in the country are very different.
So you really can't just say all America's all the same.
Because they kind of think we're a bunch of ignorance or some ignoramus and walk out.
No, but that's not the way it is.
There's a lot of people very different.
So, look, the difference in Florida.
and the people in California.
You go to California and say you love Trump or put it to it.
You're going to get clubbed to death practically.
I mean, it's insane.
But I do hear a lot of Californians who are fed up with Gavin Newsom.
Where are they doing?
Coming to Florida.
Yeah, but then they'll come here and they'll try and change Florida.
You should be doing this and you should be, no, it's fine here.
I love Florida.
Yeah.
That's what I've been telling people is that, you know, they want to escape from New York.
They want to escape from California from the old.
ultra-blue liberal policies, escape from Chicago.
That's great, but don't bring those policies with you.
Right.
You're going to destroy the state.
They're doing that, Texas, too.
East Texas.
I'm sorry, West Texas, New El Paso, and you had, what's his name,
Bennett, O'Brien, mispronouncing his name right now.
He's gone there.
It's getting very blue, that area.
New El Paso is growing and growing and growing.
That's a big problem, Austin also, the capital.
So you're seeing big waves of blue, which will give Ted Cruz maybe a hard time
when he goes back for the Senate.
So that's a problem that they're spreading around and they're going to ruin the policies of different red states.
But Virginia, where I'm at, it's different.
They turn around because a lot of people from different areas have come to Virginia.
And the governor here, Glenn Yonkin, he had a big upset two years ago as a Republican governor.
And a lot of big wins in the midterm came up that way.
And Virginia is looking bright red right now.
So that's a good thing.
So you pick and choose some states, I guess.
But Virginia is different.
So politics interesting
So going back around again
We'll see if the FBI gets abolished
If the VEC wins
I've never heard anybody ever say that by the way
For the record
FBI's been around for over 100 years
Right
They said a reform
Work on get these bad apples out
But abolish the FBI
You know they do a lot
People don't realize
They do a lot with terrorism
And they do a lot with espionage
And a lot with the white collar crimes
ATF obviously with my agency I was part of
Did a lot with
violent criminals, you know, gang members, repeat violent offenders, you know, international
fire traffickers. So for him to want to abolish, he said, I like the agents, but I want
to get rid of the bureaucrats. So, okay, so where are you going to do with all the agents?
You shift them to the Secret Service at then take over those responsibilities.
Yeah. I mean, the Marshals, the Marshal service. Yeah. Are they going to be a part of them?
I don't know, but that's, I like his ideas, but he hasn't really thought him out. That's,
that's what my, my thing is, you know, it's good to say things, but you've got to be able to back
it up. So Vivek's an interesting cat. I think I might do. I just finished a book,
infamous LA murders, which is pretty good. I'm going to work on maybe Vivek Ramoswamy.
Vivek Ramoswamy, parents from India. And it's funny to it, but immigration, he's kind of funny
that way. They said Sorrell's Foundation paid for his going to Yale Law School. So I'm going to
look into that and people
have very cotton don't like sorrels and everything else
right right I think he was
growing up a Democrat
I think he became a libertarian
and then when became a billionaire of course
he's a Republican because you
can't be a billionaire with remember
Bernie Sanders says
billionaire should not exist in America
remember that
little more billionaires should not exist in America
wow
what are you going to do you keep on tax
that's a problem with the left
they don't want billionaires
They see, that's too much power.
You shouldn't be a billionaire.
So they want to take your money.
But that's...
Listen, I love Elon Musk.
I mean, it takes a billionaire to say, hey, you know what I'm going to do?
Pretty much got this whole life thing worked out.
I mean, granted, I can't keep a wife and my kids are a mess and my parent, my father won't talk to me.
And, you know, obviously I've got some, you know, becoming when you're partially, when you're partially, what do they call that?
Now, he's the richest man in the world.
when you have a little touch of Asperger syndrome like he does.
That's right.
We did say that.
Then, you know, you're not going to be perfect in every avenue.
But the fact that he became a billionaire and then he said, you know, I'm going to take this money and I think I'm going to go to Mars.
Like what?
You know, even the idea, I'm going to, I'm going to electric cars.
Electric cars and that.
Yeah, but there's no power grid.
Well, I'll make that.
Like, what are you talking about?
You'll make that.
How are you going to do that?
Like, it's just the idea and then to try and make that happen.
And no, hey, I'm willing to fail.
Like his big thing, what I was thought was hilarious was he was like, yeah, probably.
I don't really think it'll work.
But I'm going to be okay.
Even if it fails, I'll be okay.
And if it works, well, great, I'll make even more money.
And then I'll be able to do something else.
But I think it's important to further humanity.
Like, that's, that I think is amazing.
Now, if you're just a billionaire to be a billionaire and be an asshole, okay, well, I get it.
Like, you know, but I also think if you're that guy that has that, it's like athletes.
make that make $50 million a year.
Look, if you blew through your whole teens and you busted your ass the way these guys
bust their ass, and you went up and you competed against all these other guys, and
ultimately you ended up at the top, like you deserve to make some money, a churn of money.
Yeah, of course.
And sponsorship and everything.
Not only did he become billionaire, he became the richest man in the world.
The history, no man in the world has ever made this kind of money.
I think it's close to what, 100, 100, Billy?
I mean, the numbers are insane.
I don't know what numbers are.
I just want to see us go to Mars.
I wanted to say that in our lifetime.
That'll be cool.
Would you want to go on the first shuttle out there?
Bro, I'll go even if I think it might blow up.
I'm ready to go.
Like, that's if I'm okay with going out like that.
I mean, I've had a pretty good life.
Yeah, that's a hell of way to go.
I mean, it's going to be that you wouldn't even know.
How about if you get stranded out there, man?
I mean, you know, I could lose some.
I saw the Martian.
That's right.
I saw him to be the Martian.
Yeah.
I mean, I don't think I could grow anything.
Right.
I think enough stuff they're eating.
Yeah, half the science he know, I don't know.
Like, unless there's enough food, I'm definitely not making the next rendezvous.
Yeah.
Hopefully there's a lot.
Hopefully there's water.
They say this underground water in Mars and the caverns and all that.
So hopefully there's a drink.
Yeah, there's, there's, listen, I watch stuff on Mars all the time.
Yeah.
I love that.
I love that.
I love that.
I love that.
idea of going there and colonizing. I just really also think it needs to be somehow or
another they need to be able to generate some kind of, you know, they need to be able to generate.
There needs to be a reason, I mean, going there and saying, okay, we're there. But I think to
have a colony, you have to be able to generate some kind of income to sustain the colony at
some point. They have to work toward that, not just, hey, we're here and we're hanging out
on Mars. Okay, well, that's a vacation. Right. You have to be able to,
Generator.
I think eventually people are going to there, and maybe they will have a resort out there.
You go hang out and then you go to a hotel and they'll make your money and they'll do it.
It'll be a little, you know, obviously the environment is harsh.
Right.
You have to change it and make our own special environment with these little globes and all that they have out there and indoor.
And pretty much indoor living, you have your mask and everything else out there.
But you do have some nasty storms, harsh environment out there.
Those are things that we have to work through if we're going to be colonized and living there.
it guarantees our species, it will exist if something happens in Earth.
Survivability.
Survival our species.
I think, so there's a, on Apple, there is a series called, I think, I want to say it's called
for all mankind.
And it starts in the 1960s with us going to the moon, only we don't go to the moon.
Right.
We go to the moon, but the Soviet land first.
Okay.
So it's what if the arms race never ended?
Like, listen, by 2000, or by like, really, by the mid-1990s, we're already on Mars.
1990s?
Like, they've got all these technological leaps.
Wow.
Because they never stopped funding the Apollo program.
Sure.
It just keeps going and going and going.
Listen, it's honestly, it's a great, it's a great series.
You like, what's it called again?
I want to say for all of man, for all mankind.
An Apple?
Show me an Apple?
It's amazing.
Apple has these series that are just epic.
Pretty good?
They're all, all of them are like epic.
Like they're just over the top.
They took the book.
So this is good for you and me.
There was a book called Silo.
Silo, no, no, it wasn't called Silo.
The book was called Wool.
It was the first commercially successful self-published
book and it was blowing the doors off of everything. Now this is bad, this is in, was in the
early 2000s, like let's say 2008, 9, 10, 11, like, and wool was amazing. And it literally took
five or six, seven years before Apple ended up turning it into a series. And now they call it
silo. It was originally called wool. But they ended up calling it silo. But they ended up calling it
silo and it's listen i watched that series that that series was pretty good like it epic well maybe
they'll look at our books apple they'll know they'll turn to a series also i'm working that too
i got my scripts done so if there anybody's out there from apple looking ATF undercover and of course
your book also you've done quite a few books too yeah i've got i don't have as many as yours but
mine are minor more lengthy mine are like 250 to 330 pages well i got i got like seven books like that
now because I merged some of them.
So I got some milk one. And and shout
out to Sean Milo also in Audible.
You'll give shot out there because
ATF on the current good and audible.
And I have one coming out shortly
the most dangerous crime cynics of our time.
It's going to be a seven hour listen. We're almost done.
Almost there. Almost there.
I have not heard from
him recently. Okay.
I need that. Sean.
So we're going back
to you were
involved in the
We have a quick comment on Vivek before we go to D.C. Snipers here.
Okay.
This is funny stuff.
If you haven't seen Vivek rap, you know, he also does rapping for fun.
In college, he used to do that and have a good time with it.
He does Eminem, that song he has Back to Reality.
What's it called?
Oh, yeah.
It's not called Back to Reality.
It's a lyric in the song.
Right.
Goodness gracious.
I can't remember right now.
Anyways, Eminem got pissed because he used to do it at his.
his rallies right in Iowa if you look at this right his attorney sent him a cease and desist
yeah yeah I saw that and he was like I'm he's like I feel and Levec was like I feel bad that
that's how he feels like I'm sorry that he feels that way I think he's talking so because people
were looking you know because this younger generation it's been 20 years eight men out I mean eight
miles out right it's not right and a lot of people forgot about him I remember because I was in my
20s and I went to the theater and I saw and I was like that's cool and
everything else, even won an Oscar for the song. Remember that and an Emmy in the whole nine
yards, but it's been a long time. So a long generation, they don't like this. Hey, man, this might
help you're around, but he didn't take it that way. So he said he wasn't a Democrat, but I don't
believe that anymore. Remember before he said he didn't take sides? Right. I don't know
if I buy that anymore. But Trump has been blacklisted also. Look at the amount of singers
who blacklisted from using their music in his rallies. The list is enormous.
Unbelievable. I think if you're not charging and people are just coming in, I think it's freedom of speech. I think you should be allowed. If you want to sing along like karaoke, why can't you do a karaoke at your campaign rally? If you're not charged, they put a cease and desist. Yeah. But that doesn't mean, like that says he doesn't have to, like they can try and sue him, but, you know, that's what? That'll be the next step. If he continued, they would take him to court. But you know what? Why? He's not charging. He's just, and actually, he helps you so much.
more records. Right. Okay. Look, so it's satire, right? The problem is they can write a cease and desist,
and that's really probably, probably M&M's lawyer probably told him, hey, listen, you can't stop him
from using your song for satire. Like the Supreme Court has already determined satire is free game.
So he can do that. But if you want, I'll write a cease and desist letter. Now, what happens then is
then Eminem can say, well, we wrote a cease and desist letter. I told him I don't want to do it,
and I'm going to file a lawsuit. He can do that, but you're going to lose.
It will literally just be dismissed because the lawyers will come back and say,
look, the Supreme Court has already said satire is fair game.
What about a weird Al Yankovic?
Yeah.
He does it.
I don't need your permission, bro.
Yeah.
So go ahead.
I think that's more egregious, to be honest with you, that what he's doing because he made money off it, right?
This guy's not making any money off.
He's a billionaire.
He's just having fun.
He's just showing his other side.
He has an ultra ego.
He calls like DJ Debec.
Right.
Vivek, that's his name.
He's DJ DeVec.
And so he has the hat backwards.
He has an ultra ego that he performs.
Right.
I think it's pretty cool.
You know,
you don't see a lot of these other guys doing that.
Are you think Chris Christie's going to do that?
No.
No.
No.
Listen,
I think that's the nice thing about even Trump is that he just doesn't take
himself that seriously.
Yeah.
These guys that take themselves so seriously.
Oh my gosh.
It's unbelievable.
Unbelievable.
Yeah, if you haven't seen the debate, folks, go check out the debate.
It's entertaining.
DeVec goes back and forth.
I like the great line that Chris Christie gave him where he says, you know, said,
yeah, I think pretty much call him a plagiarizing Obama's line about being a skinny guy
with a strange last name, might just become the President of the United States type thing.
And he pretty much, kind of mind insulting him a little bit.
And he said, well, bro, come on, give me a hug.
Because when Obama up here in New Jersey of his governor, man, he's all chummy with him.
He said, he's going to be another Barack Obama, one of the worst, you know,
and I said, come on over here, give me a hug.
Well, D.C. sniper.
D.C. sniper. Okay, we'll go from the head to D.C.
That's a, the Beltway Killers.
I wrote a book after the 20-year anniversary.
I was out there.
And I just started reflecting because I started seeing a lot of things after 20 years of
Mohamed Mammavo.
And I'm going to give a little impression.
And then I'm going to go for those who don't know,
I'm going to give a whole spiel.
who are these guys?
Well, hey, can I ask a question real quick?
Yeah.
You said, so I said D.C. sniper and you said
Beltway killers.
Is that what they were originally named?
There are so many names for these guys.
It's unbelievable.
But I call the book the Bellway, the D.C.
Belway killers.
Name the book.
Oh, okay.
The D.C. snipers, bellweight killers, the assassins.
I mean, there's so many different names for Muhammad and Mavu.
It's unbelievable.
And we've never seen anything like it before or after, to be honest with you.
And the profilers, I weren't out there, had it completely wrong.
They had us looking for like Timothy McVeigh type or Thurik Kaczynski says,
oh, this has to be a lone wolf, white male, prior military, right?
That's the profilers.
I'm going to.
I'm going to start with this.
I was going to, but let me start with this.
Sorry.
I'm going to start with the profilers, what they're telling us,
because nobody had any idea what was going on.
Who's doing these killings?
We were even chasing down a phantom white box truck for weeks thinking the killers
were in this white box truck.
So we're doing surveillance, we're doing everything else, and it wasn't anything at all like that.
There'd be two black males.
One did have prime military training, and he had converted to Islam, and the other one, they were
driving a 1990 Blue Chevy Caprice, which they have turned into a sniper's nest.
Right.
You couldn't write this, and people believe this.
If you made this a fictional story, people say, no way.
This is impossible.
They did what?
And they did what?
So how do they get there to be these psychopaths?
Right? From, you know, Malvo, and I'll tell you, it's a sad story for Lee Boy, Leiboy in Marlowe, right?
It's a very sad story for him because he's a young kid.
His parents are Jamaican, his mother.
They go to Antigua illegally.
Her mother, he's like 15, 16, abandons him, and she goes to the United States.
She has someone else here, I think, in the Fort Myers, South Florida area.
It's in my book, the exact place she goes.
He's by himself out in this isla alone.
And Williams, he's not Mohammed this time, John Williams is his name.
He later converted to Islam, but everything really starts eating him up, and he goes over that path over there.
That's going to be a few years later.
So he takes his kid on it because he knows he's by himself in Antigua.
He pretty much takes him on his wing, but in my opinion, now in Norway's know now,
he already has a bad divorce.
He lost his children.
He's an angry male, very angry.
He was in the National Guard in Louisiana.
He has all these issues.
And in his mind, he starts believing he can make this kid an assassin.
So what did he have like, I, like, why, why do he focus on the kid and not just do this himself?
That's a good question.
He was executed.
I don't think he ever answered those questions why he did that.
He was, he would be actually pretty quickly after his conviction, by the way, in 2009 in Virginia, when fast and furious.
And he actually, a model would not, because he was a minor.
and the Supreme Court thought that he shouldn't be executed
because they thought he was coerced or, you know,
manipulated to become an assassin.
He was too impressionable and he turned.
Because everything, documentaries, the books I read,
obviously I wasn't there during the indoctrination.
Because he pretty much makes him a kill.
Similar, I would say, to what the cartels do with young kids
to make him securials, right?
Desensitize him.
And at 13, 14, just killing randomly.
So it feels like nothing.
It's like eating.
It's like breathing.
You took a life, it means nothing, right?
That's what he does with this kid.
He pretty much is because he has a military background.
He's a marshalman.
He was in Louisiana National Guard.
I think he was a mechanic or driver.
It's in my book.
But he was a good marshalman, good shooter.
So he knows how to shoot well.
So he teaches him.
So he adopts him kind of off paper, right?
He eventually has him go to Tacoma, Washington.
And this is where it all starts.
and it's just not in D.C.
It would be later, we will find out
us as investigators.
This is a shooting spree that started in Washington
in February of 2003
and went all the way to October.
So these guys are a nationwide shooting killing spree
and doesn't come to an head
until what happens in three weeks in October,
which is pretty chilling.
If you haven't seen all this stuff,
and I experienced this, and I saw firsthand,
the panic in the region.
You know, I live here now again
because I was there visiting.
from Florida. And I remember some of the sites, the gas stations and shopping centers
I passed by. I remember somebody was killed here. Remember somebody else was killed here.
I remember this and that. There was over 10 and 17 wounded, you know, just in that DC total
of 17 total. That's a lot. These are psychopaths. Right.
Absolute social psychopaths that doing this. Almost because randomly, you can almost say
there's almost like serial killers, but he does have a motive. He does have somewhat of a motive
because of how anger he is, what's going on.
So we start Tacoma, and we're looking at late 2001, about to go early 2002,
and he's doing a lot of training with him.
He knows he's looking for a father figure.
Mabel is desperate for a father figure.
He looks at him as a father figure.
He wants to be loved, right?
He prays on that, that he knows that.
He says, you want me to love you and appreciate you and everything else.
You got to do this for me.
You want to make me to accept you, you got to do this for me.
You got to become this killer, right?
The first house, they started after training, after months of training, they're doing a lot of them physical fitness that he's preparing him for this journey.
And it's a lot.
You can see all documentation of what they do to get there.
And then you see him in, he's angry at one of his neighbors for allegedly convincing his ex-wife to divorce him and take his children.
This is where it all starts right here.
He wants him to kill him, to kill her.
She's an older woman.
He says, knock on the door.
When she opens a door, here's the weapon.
And he's 16, right, blast her, just kill her and get out.
So, unfortunately, she wasn't there.
It was in 18, or I think the ages in my book, I think maybe 20-year-old, her nephew, her niece was there.
She opens the door.
He's just talking with her for a little bit and then blast her and kills her.
Listen to norily girl just kills her in cold blood.
Boom, boom, bum, boom, and bolts.
No connection, no ties, nothing.
Off they go.
He said, did you kill her?
He said, I killed her.
He said, all right.
That's a good start.
How you feel?
Feel nothing.
That's real good.
You don't feel nothing?
I like that.
Boom.
So they start their cross-country journey.
They go to Arizona.
They steal, before you got there, they steal a Bushmaster rifle, which is going to be the sniper's weapon, a 223 rifle, and they put optics on it, right?
From an FFL, a federal farms licensee, right, in the Tacoma area.
Later, Bushmaster and this FFL will settle a major lawsuit with the victims of the families.
I think over $25 million.
So just think about that, how all this progresses here.
Me personally, my opinion is, it's not Bushmaster's fault that the psychopath picked away.
Why are they settling?
Now, I'm not sure about the FFL if he was negligent.
I didn't get to read that part.
If he was, okay, that's something different.
If he didn't store the way he should have or he let him have it,
That's what's still controversial about it.
That's the part right there that could have led up with that stuff.
But for Bushmaster, it'd be punished.
And I know sometimes it's easier to settle and get behind a lawsuit than keep on dealing with it.
Yeah.
And it's so, and it's such a high profile case.
Like, their fear is, of course, what if we lose?
Like, then there's going to be a land.
I think pretty much because I think that the amount will be like $200 million or more.
Probably the end of your company.
So those are legit things that factor into it also.
But I think it's unfair.
This is my opinion, retired ATF agent,
Gnarsu Asimón's opinion,
that you cannot blame the manufacturer
for what these people did or anybody else.
Any other murder or mass murder,
it's the problem between the years, right?
It's not the weapon.
And I think I've said in your show and other shows,
don't demonize the firearm
when you have to check the person who pulls a trigger.
Right.
It's just an object.
It doesn't do anything in the wrong hands.
I always say you want,
you always want a good guy with a gun
to go after a bad guy with a gun.
I was going to say I saw a TikTok where the guy said the guy goes well you know somebody was talking about outlawing whatever outlawing you know assault rifles assault rifles and guns and this and that he's like right because if you outlaw them then people won't people will stop shooting each other just like when you outlawed drugs right you outlawed drugs drugs aren't legal the whole 50 60 years that they weren't legal guess what people were still using drugs
So the idea of outlawing, you know, outlong firearms, people, you can make them what you
can make them with the fucking, with the 3D printers, 3D printers, or before, or you make
yourself, you're a gun smit, you just make yourself the parts and everything else, not that hard
to make it, right, the weapons and all that.
So it's bad people, like for example, you know, a lot of people kill with knives in this
country.
You should look at how many people a year are killed with knives, people stabbing each other.
Oh, yeah.
Yeah, there's more people kill with knives than there are guns.
Are we allowing knives?
No.
And they're using common kitchen knives to kill each other.
I mean, so it's the whole premise is so ridiculous.
We'll get an off point here a little bit, Matt.
Okay, sorry, go ahead.
But I just wanted people to know that I didn't like, but they had to settle.
I guess, like you said, it would be too costly.
You never know.
You get a bad jury.
That's a problem with our system, too.
You get a bad jury, jury nullification.
L.J. Simpson, perfect example.
And I wrote down my book, and that was my conclusion in that chapter.
they had a bad jury.
They should have filed in San Monica.
They should never file a case in downtown L.A.
Anyways, different thing right there.
Maybe the same principle should apply it here.
Maybe you should file out of Tacoma.
But if they could, because maybe the little bias would happen there.
So they start traveling.
You know, they have this vehicle.
It's a caprice.
Like I said, Chevy Caprice that they end up making into a sniper's nest.
They drill hole in the back, right?
So he can poke the muzzle outside.
pull the trigger, right, and he just hides there, and the seats up there, because he pulled the seats back, he goes inside, which is Volvo, seats up back, and like nothing. You don't think nothing's going on there. He could even hide back there if he had to. Right. Just the vehicle right there. So very ingenious. I mean, we've never seen that before. I'd never seen anything like that before. And no one would expect the profilers, no one would think these two will commit something like this. So they start killing randomly. They start in Arizona. There's a poor guy playing golf.
they set it up, kill the guy playing golf, down he goes, keep on driving.
Maybe they don't stick around.
So it's hard.
You have no connection with like serial killers, like serial killers, like serial killers.
Yeah, well, that's why they get away with it for so long.
Yeah.
There's just no connection.
No connection.
You pulled over to truck stop and kill somebody two streets or grab somebody two streets over.
How do you connect them to that?
You can't.
You can't.
And there's no casing to recover because it's in the sniper's nest, right?
The spent casings are there.
It's a bullet fragment.
Good luck piecing that together with anything.
That's very difficult.
It's easier to do with the casing than the bullet fragment.
I know again, the weeds are a little bit, but it's hard to really match up bullet fragments, you know, with other ones.
It's easier with the spank casing with the markings on the case.
That's a lot easier to do.
But they're keeping all that.
Okay, so that evidence got, and they're not even from that area.
Keep on trucking.
Louisiana.
The same thing.
They get involved in shooting and killing a lot of victims in Louisiana.
His home state, right?
where he was a National Guard.
He doesn't care.
He served in Louisiana, killing people.
Unfortunately, and I know there's guys unfortunate that serve that turn out of the country.
This guy before, oh, and before he goes on this horrible trip, he conversed to Islam.
He ends up becoming Muhammad.
He's not Williams anymore.
Right.
He's John Muhammad from then on.
So they didn't call it a terrorist act at the time.
Remember, it's only a year after 9-11 this is happening, a year in a month, after 9-11.
but you have to look back now
it is a terrorist act
domestic terrorism
they're terrorizing people
randomly killing people
you know
later when they need money
they start robbing people
but at first
and at the end you start killing people again
because of the enjoyment
or the pain they want
hey you know
unfortunately he says you know
he suffered as a black male
discrimination in this country
that's what he says right
he's angry at his ex-wife
for taking his kids
he's just all angry
and full of all this stuff
and then he converts his poor kid
who's craving a father figure, right?
It's been abandoned, and he's manipulating him to use him as a killer.
It's a very sad situation on all ends.
I mean, like, his ex-wife made the right call.
I think he would have killed him.
No, no, of course.
Yeah, no, I know, of course she made the right call.
You know, I mean, like, clearly, if she doesn't, she divorced you and took your kids,
I mean, look who you are.
Yeah.
No, they, no, of course.
And he was trying to trick them with a probation officer,
not probation, to try fair out where they were, where they were.
they were hiding or where they were at.
And he was trying, I think he wanted to kill them and also do a family annihilation too.
So, I mean, the guy had snapped.
Couldn't do that.
So this is the second thing he wants to do.
I want to punish other people.
I'm hurting inside.
I want you to hurt also.
And that's the kind of guy he is.
So they went, they rob people.
Some people, they'll be stranded on the side of the road, changing a tire.
They'll come up to them, rob them, shoot them.
I mean, they were attacking anybody and everybody.
They go to Alabama.
They need more money because they're hurting for money.
So then they start robbing people more and more.
So they go, hey, this is a liquor store.
This one will cost them because their thumbprints will be left at the scene.
They will help match them later to this whole national crime spleen in Alabama.
So they rob this liquor store.
They shoot the guy.
He lives.
They keep on going until we get three weeks in October, right?
Until October, 2002, and the shooting start.
They start in D.C.
You have in Maryland, Virginia.
You got a task force developing.
It's not, it becomes over a week.
And then all of a sudden they say, hey, we need a major resource.
bonds. We have no idea who's doing this. We have an elusive white box truck and no clue what
the hell is going on here. This was a panic in the region. I was an agent. Where did they had me?
I'm sorry. Where did they come up with a white box truck? Someone saw a white box truck in one of the
shootings. That was it. That was locked onto it. They locked onto it. Holy smokes, we locked on to that
lead because that's all we had. People swore a white box truck was involved in that. It does make sense.
I mean, it'd be a pretty good, you know, like you can move around.
You could easily have a trap door, but they just did it with the car.
But it's not like it's out of the realm of possibility.
It wouldn't be a bad sniper.
No, but that's the lead we had.
It wasn't much out there.
And people were panicked.
We didn't know anything that happened before.
We won't find all this later.
These guys have been killing for months already since February.
They've been killing for months.
Right.
Now it's October.
And it's all going to come to a head right now.
I think they've had it.
He knows this is going to end one way or the other now,
and the shootings just get every other day,
sometimes even twice a day.
I mean, it was putting, I mean, 95 was shut down.
And the media coverage was insane.
I don't know if you remember how insane the media coverage was.
It was out of control.
So they have a massive, it's all hands on board.
I mean, ATF is sending most of their agents throughout the country.
I was in Tampa, and I'm going up there,
we're saying, hey, we're seeing people out there.
I went out there
and when I go out there
I notice how people
are panicking
the shopping set
people are gassing up
panicking their cars
put because he's
killed a lot of people
at gas stations
you know
yeah I remember that
people with gas station
gas station are putting
like tarps
try to make it harder
for the assassins
the snipers to see what's going on
people are just putting
their pump
their holes in
and then hiding inside the car
while they're gassing up
and people won't even shot
in the car
where they're waiting
so people were absolutely
panicking and rightfully so because no one knew what was going on here this was and after
one year after 9-11 tensions were high and we were in the areas after shooting happened we were in
the area trying to figure out what's going on here so we're kind of harm's way because sometimes
they will stay at certain areas something they will move on so were we ever in their in their realm
there and their snipers possibly so what are you doing there are you questioning people or
no we're doing surveillance because we know they're also using payfalls right we don't know who they
are yet because then they start you know playing this cat and mouse game they get sadistic about
they start saying call me the terror cards they start leaving even terror cards sometimes behind
the scenes and they're saying call me god they start writing the letters they start saying the
phone it gets to their heads that they are now godlike figures they can take life they can do
things they really get out of control that stuff and they even want to extort money from the
government say if you want to stop you got to start paying us x amount of money for this to stop
Now, one of the phone calls, Chief Moose, I don't even remember Chief Moose from Montgomery County.
He's a big male.
He actually just passed away about a year and a half ago.
And he was very controversial.
Some people thought he made some bad decisions.
He did write a book afterwards after the arrests.
And a lot of people thought that was going to hurt the trial.
So he had to resign.
Unfortunately, I think he went to Hawaii.
That's just a side note right there.
So we're doing surveillance.
We're checking up the pay phones they use in case they come back because we know which ones are using.
So we're trying to see if we find them, we see them, what have you.
But we really don't know what we're looking for because we don't have a clear idea yet.
Not yet, but we will.
But I remember one of the phone calls, FBI was an FBI-Ritchman office.
And they said, hey, you're from Miami, right?
Because we're talking different agents and everything else.
And said, yeah, I'm from, you know, Miami, I'm in Tampa now.
And so you're familiar with a lot of different, you know, accents.
I said, yeah, I know some, you know, Spanish and maybe Caribbean.
So I started to listen to the recordings.
I know that they had those that they were making.
and I'll listen to Mabo
because Mabo making some of the threats
and I say, I pick up a Jamaican accent.
I pick up a Jamaican accent.
And they were like, yeah, I said, okay, that's interesting
because his family were Jamaicans.
He was abandoned Antigua.
That was like giving an idea.
And one in the scenes later,
the thumbprint, fingerprints, was recovered
at a school shooting because they also involved in school shootings
and they had left a terror card in a letter also.
Well, they matched it up to one of his mottles or
in Washington State.
They said, okay, we know who he is now.
And then they knew that Mohammed was also very close with him.
So they started piecing it together.
And then from different crime scenes, it all starts picking up because they left their prints behind in Montgomery.
So I don't understand.
So they linked it to Mohavid?
No, a mavel.
They linked his thumbprint?
Finger print, yeah, because they had sometimes, they've been the bushes too.
They don't get out of the, they'll get out of.
the vehicle. And one of them was at school shooting in Maryland. The exact places in my book.
I think Silver Springs. I'm not, don't quote me in that. It's in my book. And there'll be the
bushes. They'll be shooting at the school, right? But they'll leave like a terror card with a letter
with their demands. Right. So he had been arrested before? Mabel was, yes. In Washington State.
I thought he was just a kid. He minor. Yeah, he was. But, but, okay, but his prints were available.
Yes. Yes. Okay. That's a huge. That's a huge break. Huge break. Because the case will
come wrapping up really quick within a week. Within a week, it is, or after two weeks of
complete, not knowing who these guys were to all of a sudden, I remember CNN and everybody
else, hey, we got the leads, we even got the plate number, New Jersey, this is who they are,
and boom, it comes crashing extremely fast and furious, very fast, and when they're arrested
in late October at a rest stop in Maryland. And the reason why? Because you couldn't sleep
overnight. And the trooper comes up to them and kind of recognizes the vehicle from all the
information that's out there. Right. But they don't fight. Because I guess Marble is sleeping,
Muhammad's in the car, and the rifle's in the back trunk. So they're done. And they go in there
and he says, hey, I know some things in here. I know there's in New Jersey plates. More if troopers
come, boom, they arrested without incident. Without incident. It was really, you know,
You know, it felt good that I was able to help somewhat.
But I didn't like, and I know we talked about the ATF and FBI and some of the battles.
It seems like FBI kind of kept some information away from other task force that were working with them.
They had their briefings, and then they want to share what they want to share.
And I think if you're in this kind of critical incident, I think you have to share all the information.
I put that critique in my book.
You have to share everything because we're all risking our lives out there.
We all can be shot.
We're all in the hot zones right there.
We're not hiding from them.
We're trying to find out what's going.
We're looking at the phones.
And later, I'll do more interviews.
In fact, one of the, we did, before we figured out, Mahan and Malvo, after I was shooting,
there was a white box truck at one of the scenes at a gas station.
Those guys were picked up.
They were Mexicans working in the area, and they knew I spoke Spanish.
They asked me to come in and help do the interview because all these guys in Virginia
didn't speak Spanish, and I'm from, you know, South Florida.
So I interviewed the guys, and I really knew these people were just workers, right?
They had nothing to do with it.
So, that was a white box straw.
Right.
So that, that, they didn't fit in.
So those are things that I remember I was part of that helped piece together this
major case.
And I would stay weeks after that to help with interviews and, and then logistics and all
that working with other agencies on this case.
But in 2009, I think I said before, Muhammad was executed in Virginia pretty quickly.
And Malba wasn't.
Well, so when they grabbed him.
what Muhammad didn't talk?
You said, I don't have anything to say?
Eventually, he does, I mean, they do, I mean, Mabel cooperates
because he knows that this will do good.
And Mavu will be convicted of state life sentences,
not just in Virginia, but also in Alabama
and also, I think, Louisiana.
So if anything happens to Virginia,
they just transfer him to another state.
And he will never get out.
Right.
He will never, ever see the light of day.
How old was you when he was?
eventually arrested he was 17 his whole life is going to be incarcerated you know just like
the mansum family remember all these people over 50 years incarceration so i you know i always
remember that like i thought the theory was that eventually mohammed was going to kill his ex-wife
like part of his plan was create this or one of the theories was
create this carnage. And so if his ex-wife ends up getting killed, he's not going to be,
he's not going to be a suspect because there have been 25 other people that have been
randomly killed. Like just wait for his ex-fight his ex-wife, wait for her to go gas up her car,
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DC sniper victim. I think I heard that too, one of the theories. But what I see what I've read in
research is, because I didn't personally interview, you know, but what I see is that I think
they liked the news coverage.
They liked that catamount.
They really, at least he did.
And I may model did it too.
I mean, the whole area was in a panic.
I think that's better than killing that.
You're terrifying the country.
And plus, he wants to get back of the system.
I think he kind of liked that.
And he did.
I mean, that's something I still remember personally.
You know, people were panicking 95.
It wasn't a common 95 to be shut down after shooting because they're thinking these guys
were one way or the other in complete gridlock in this area.
it was insane
insane
and nothing I ever seen like it before
nothing ever
hopefully never see like it again
but I personally thought
it was even I was living it
I thought this was domestic attack
and after all work and everything else
we did out there
the director of ATF at time
Brad Buckles
gave us a coin
for work
and have this on my cover
of the Delaware killers
right
you see that
yeah yeah
Yeah, it's good.
Stiper investigation.
Yeah.
You don't have that framed?
You just walking around with it in your pocket?
No.
You don't have that on the wall?
I have it somewhere else, but it is nice that I still kept it.
Some people lost theirs, which is sad.
I try to keep everything I can and, you know, I have a little place in my house where
it keeps on these stuff.
And I decided to take the picture of it.
I thought it would be a cool book cover for Bellway Killers.
And people have really commented about it because very few people,
have this. Right.
Very few.
So it worked out.
But I just didn't like, and now we'll, you know, transition a little bit to the rivalry with FBI.
That's my first hand experience.
Obviously, that's going on.
ATF and FBI have been going at it for years and years and years.
You know, you can look at Oklahoma bombing.
We both had our own investigation.
We all had our own lab.
We were trying to send evidence to different labs.
It was ugly situation in Oklahoma, right?
what happened there.
A lot of people had bad blood in Waco.
ATIP did not like that the FBI took over because it was their search warrant, right, with crash.
Why are they taking over our search?
I mean, I mean, they can, I get an incident after incident after incident.
People don't know.
There's a big rivalry.
It's like the little brother, but the little brother can fight.
You know, a lot of people think, you know, FBI won, but a little brother hits back hard.
Right.
I'm going to have another personal story here.
So we're talking about shooters.
This is a mass shooter.
This is Parkland.
So now we're looking in February 14th, 2018.
This is the second Valentine Day massacre.
The first one, Al Capone, Chicago, 1929, right?
But he has an alibi, right?
And I wrote that my book, you know, Miami's history with a mafia.
Very interesting.
And I go a little bit deeper dive on this.
This is the second one.
Even deadlier than the first one.
Because this is 17 killed, 17.
And these are kids, by the way, New Cruz.
So, you know, Nicola Cruz, you know, you have Peter State who.
who doesn't go in, they're a BSO detective, the shooting is going on.
He almost gets convicted, by the way.
I don't know if you saw the trial.
Yeah.
He starts crying.
Yeah.
With it, right?
The family says nodding his head.
You know, these teachers had nothing.
These students had nothing.
He has a weapon.
He stays outside.
I mean, there's BSO arriving.
Why did you not go two or three?
That's active shoot training.
I've taken active shoe training.
You've got to go in.
Right.
These kids have nothing.
I know you don't know where it's at.
So you got to take cover, but there's plenty of cover inside.
But you have to hear the threat, like, the right way it was done in Nashville with a transgender shooter.
Remember that?
Right.
Killing her fellow students in her school that she had or he had, whatever, she was converting to a male, right?
And they tracked it down and they shot her because she was shooting back and killed her, right?
Why not go in?
I just, I felt it was neglect of derogative duty, but he was acquitted because he said he was on the radio.
He was calling, come on.
And same thing can say with pulse night.
You know, I don't need to be told to go in.
They're kids.
They're 17 to kill.
17.
That's atrocious.
It's horrible.
Horrible.
So we respond the next day to help out because it's a huge scene doing interviews.
A lot of interviews, a lot of things going out at the high school.
So we're there.
That's at the Parkland High School there.
It's a Marjorie Stolman Douglas High School.
And that's there in Parkland, which is west side of Broward County, just north of Miami-Dade County,
if you don't know where it is right there.
Nice, affluent area, by the way.
So this is a nice.
nice area. This is something unheard of, unconscionable to be happening. But this kid had
mental health issues. And the FBI later will pay a lot of money because they had a lot of tips
that they didn't respond where he said that he's going to kill kids in the school, right?
A lot of things. And they sat on it, did nothing with it. It would cost them dearly. I heard the
settlement was enormous. The exact number is in my book. I think it's over with the victims
families, over 100 million, maybe more. So it is enormous. All these factors playing. If you see
something, you got to do something, you got to do your job. ATF, we're there. I'm in a task
force with FDLE, Florida Department of Law Enforcement. We do firearms trafficking. They
asked us big directs expertise to come in. This is the locals, right? We're coming in,
and the FBI's like that. Remember I tell you, there's a rivalry there. So they make
false allegations that were contaminating the scene at the high school, that were contaminating
the scene. Right. I hear you help investigate. He said, I want them out of here.
so there's a the two ASACs and sacks are pretty much having a battle and they don't want ATFNC because it takes away from them and I hate to say it and it's out there but FBI loves to be when they're there they want everyone to look around them hey look at us of course look at us look at what we're doing here unfortunately I haven't seen my book and the Sachs eventually have to have meetings and everything else so we went with with FDLA and we did other interviews outside the school we were in processing because there's how many people have still interview but it's a team effort that's what goes back to my experience
with the Bellway killers.
It has to be a team effort, but the culture exists,
and a lot of people see that FBI 1, right?
It's streets named after them, one way, right?
Right.
And that's unfortunately, I mean, there's some good guys in there I've dealt with,
but the culture pushes that that we are going to want to drive this investigation way.
It doesn't lead that way.
The form, at the time a cruise was 18, he bought his rifle,
his sole rifle that he used, right, at a dealer,
at an FFL, Federal Farm's licensee.
right later florida we change is 21 again i don't believe in that i think it's unfair for
you know kids are 18 who are already adults right they're in the military they got training
why are you punishing them now right so now you can't buy a weapon at an ffile i have to be 21 right
you might be able by you somewhere else or someone else but now you're punishing people for one bad
apple again overreach overreact this is what you see in society unfortunately someone does something bad
Well, that's that bad person that you failed to investigate, that you should have stopped, and the other public stayed outside.
So these, and then I'll say, you want to blame the laws.
No.
No, that's not, that's my opinion.
That's disaster.
So we have the original 4473 that Nicholas Cruz has.
It's an ATF form.
It's an ATF transaction form.
It's an ATF.
So what part of the investigation?
FBI is livid.
They're absolutely livid that we have that form.
they demand it they get it back from us so this is the nonsense you're doing your job I always
do my job and I always take it on minutia but it is that's why I call the book ATF versus
the FBI the rivalry within the Department of Justice within DOJ so it's funny you
mentioned that the whole rivalry thing so when I was on the run I called the FBI agent in my
case yeah a couple of times because oh wow because
when I was I was on my way back, I basically had almost, I just, I'd almost gotten caught like two, two, three, well, about like three days, two, three days in a row. Like, I'd almost gotten caught by the U.S. Marshals. How did you almost get caught? Well, at one point, I went to a bank and I got handcuffed because the, so the head of Wachovia's fraud department knew that I was committing a committing fraud. So he handcuffs me, or I'm sorry, not
handcuffs that they put a notice out. And so when I go in to get cash one day, that two deputies
show up and they walk up behind me and handcuffed me. They put me in the manager's office. I'm sitting
there and they said, we're waiting for the investigator to come. All we know is we're supposed
to detain you. I'm like, okay. So, but they kept calling me Gary Sullivan. So, you know,
which is who I was. I had a driver's license or an ID as Gary Sullivan. I borrowed a bunch of
Did they imprint you?
Did he send your prints?
I'm still sitting in the drive.
I'm still sitting in the bank.
I was it when the FBI show up, they didn't imprint you?
No, it wasn't the FBI.
So this is the deputies.
Oh.
So this investigator comes.
He talks to me.
I convince him that the bank may have made a mistake, but I certainly didn't.
And while we're sitting there arguing, I'm sitting there arguing with the detective or the
investigator and the head of law.
Kobe's fraud department who absolutely was correct by the way he had it he knew exactly what
was going on but i'm sitting there going that doesn't make sense and this isn't right and that's not
true what are you doing it's complicated so but the the short version is this i had borrowed about
five or six mortgages on one house okay and i was pulling money out of the house out of out of different
banks where i deposited these mortgages the money so i'm just going in and asking for five thousand nine
thousand, seven thousand. I've got like a dozen banks. Well, what happened is Wachovia. Well, another bank found
out that I had borrowed multiple mortgages. They contacted all the banks, one of them being Wachovia.
And Wachovia contacts the authorities. They put a red notice on the account. So the next time I come in,
they call the detectives. They handcuff me and sit me down. The detective comes in. He starts to tell,
asked me, hey, what's going on?
This is what Wachovia is saying.
They're saying you're committing a fraud.
And I was like, what are you talking about?
They're like, you borrowed multiple mortgages on the same piece of property.
And I go, is that illegal?
And he's like, I mean, I don't know.
He said, I don't know.
Let's get Wachovia on the phone.
We get Wachovia, the head of the fraud department.
He's like, listen, he's got three first mortgages on this house.
I said, that's not true.
I have a first mortgage, second mortgage, and a he lock.
And a what?
Home equity line of credit.
And he's like,
that's not true. So he's yelling. And I'm saying, I read those mortgages. One of them said it was a
first mortgage, which was Wachovia. The next one said it was a second. And the next one was a
helok. I said, and Wachovia's loan officer is the one that set all this up. She's the one that told me to
go get a second mortgage from her friend. She gave me the first mortgage. A friend of hers
at another bank gave me a second. And they had a mutual friend that gave me a helock.
How would I know how to do any of this? I work at a labor company. And I had a
business card for a labor company. And I give him my driver's, my ID, the guy looks up the
ID. Well, what Kobe is saying, it's a fake ID. He's running a fraud, but it wasn't a fake
ID. I'd gone into the DMV and gotten a real ID in the name Gary Sullivan. So he starts to
look like he's crazy because he's saying all of these things that I easily can prove. And he's
saying it's a fake ID and the detective knows it's not. So he's like, no, I think you guys have a
problem with the bank. So he takes me downtown. I fell out a police report. He calls the, the local
district attorney. District attorney says, well, let's look into this. I don't even know what to
charge him with yet. I don't even know if there is a crime. Like, sounds to me like he just went in and
got some mortgages. Sounds like this might be a problem with these banks. Maybe they, the loan
officer did some wrong. But how would I know? Now, obviously, I'd actually borrowed six mortgages on
the houses. They only found three. Wow. So how much did you borrow? Like almost a million dollars.
on a house worth about $230,000.
So, listen, what are going to think?
And it was just a fluke that they even figured that somebody stumbled across it.
But the point is, is that I went from there, I relocated.
When I went back to get my car, the U.S.
By this time, the FBI had gotten involved, and they put it together.
So the U.S. marshals go to where my old apartment was.
And when I go there, I'm getting coffee at a Starbucks.
I get my car.
I needed to go back to get my car.
Well, I'm in the Starbucks, and a couple of people from the apartment complex are in the Starbucks, and they see me.
And so one of them rushes out the back of the store, because they'd just been interviewed by the U.S. Marshals.
Oh, well.
Marshalls were across the street.
So I end up getting in my car.
The guy follows me out.
And as I'm about to pull out of the parking, the little, you know, it was curbside parking out of my parking space.
he starts screaming you know he's right here he's right here and the marshals are running at the
back of my car and i take off right like i mean just it sounds bad it sounds very dramatic but you know
i was pulling out anyway so they missed me there so i was really in a spot where i was terrified
like i was like this is twice i've been arrested i've been chased so i call i end up calling
the fbi i called i called home talk to some friends you know i got a i got a drop phone a track phone
Sure. And, you know, so I, I call home, this couple, one of my friends said, look, they're talking to everybody, bro. Like, you need to talk to this person. You need to call the FBI agency. See if you can turn yourself in. So I call the FBI agency if I can turn myself in. She and I have, we have words. She was not a nice person. I mean, really honestly, like, like, she would have gotten so much further with me if she'd been polite. But she was just, I mean, honestly, I don't. What was she telling?
you just you better turn yourself in or we're going to make it was you know she was she was listen
i was super arrogant back then more so than now and she and and keep in mind i just ditched two
attempts to grab me so i'm feeling although i'm feeling semi insecure i'm also feeling you know this is a
combination of cocky in there and i remember one of the things she was saying she's like look you you need to
turn yourself in and she's like i remember she said she said she is you understand she is we're about 90
percent. She goes, she kept calling me sweetie. She's like, listen, sweetie. She's, you're going to get caught
eventually. She's, you understand, we will catch you. I go, well, what's taking you so long?
I mean, if you're going to catch me, like, what's taking you so long? And she said, listen,
you don't seem to understand. We're about 90% sure of where you are, sweetie. I go, well,
only 100% counts. And she went, and she's like, you're going to fuck up. You're going to,
somebody's going to recognize you. You'll come back to Tampa. Somebody will turn you in. You're
to get pulled over. And I said, listen, let me, let me clear this up for you. I said, I've had
two dozen driver's licenses in other people's names. I just came. I've been, I've got multiple
passports. I said, I just went to traffic school as somebody else. I said, I've had multiple
plastic surgeries. I said, there's nobody in Tampa. I want to see. I said, nobody's going to
recognize me. Yeah, you need your, you need your prints taken. That's what you need. Right. So I was like,
So you're not, unless you want to have this conversation in person, you know, we need to
figure out what I'm looking at.
So, yeah, she should have, I think she should approach you a little differently.
I think as a negotiation, let's say this is like a negotiator situation.
Right.
This is what you negotiate.
Yeah, no, she was very just, just, just, you know, it's obnoxious.
Listen, you know, I do a lot like that too, Matt.
At one point, let me put it this way, I, I've spoken with multiple FBI agents that work with
her, and every one of them said she's an issue.
Like, every one of them was like, oh.
Oh, you dealt with Candice?
Oh, wow.
Like, all of them were like that.
Wow, really?
How'd that go?
And they started laughing.
You're like, I'm not saying she's a problem.
They're telling me immediately.
Like, wow, that must have been harsh.
And they told you after they arrested you?
Oh, yeah.
This was years later when they would come see me at the prison.
So what's funny about that is this, is that I remember when we were talking.
And I was at the point where she had to be convinced I was going to get seven years.
And I was still trying, I figured I could get.
get it down to four or five years because I figure if you're staying seven years out of the
gate, I can probably negotiate that down. As we're going back and forth, she was like,
well, you got to come back to Florida and I can, I'll let you spend a couple hours with your
parents. You can see your son. I'll arrange it with your ex-wife to let you, you know,
we'll let you spend some time with them. And she's doing this whole thing. And I said to her,
I said, well, listen, my fear is right now I'm driving car that I know the FBI is looking for.
you know they know that they have the tag number i've got i'm driving on a driver's license if i get
pulled over like you guys are looking for this driver's license right now it was gary solomon so i said
listen i said my problem is i'm closer to atlanta why don't i just turn myself in it in atlanta
and she goes no no no don't you have to come to tampa florida
wait a wait a you want to turn yourself in what that what's going on here he was what i found
out later was the Secret Service was in charge of my case in Atlanta and South Carolina.
She wanted me to come to the FBI building in Tampa. The other thing was, after they caught me and they were
investigating me, right? All my cases were consolidated in Atlanta. Well, the FBI, it took them
six months before they would send anything to the to Atlanta they requested it three different
times and they ignored the request finally the US attorney had to call the other US attorney
who then had to call the agents and say you have to send the discovery it's unbelievable
they never compiled my discovery because once they said oh well the Secret Service grabbed them
it's not our responsibility to compile the discovery that's their problem so you they need to
send people down here or they need to it was a whole and what happened was my attorney told me
well you have to understand there's kind of a rivalry between the FBI and other agencies and so yeah
yeah so your your whole there's a rivalry like I said at Parkland it's sad doing DC sniper
it's sad doing Oklahoma bombing it's sad doing Waco it's just case after case after case I mean
individually I know guys outside of work which is good right in that culture the super
supervisors, ASACs, the SACs, demand control, and they want to run things.
And this doesn't sit well when this is your case.
I say, you want to take over a secret service case?
You want to take an ATF over?
No.
We're separate, you know, age and a lot of times, any angle with the T, terrorism, oh, now we have
jurisdiction over this case.
We have to take it over.
So they always try to find an angle with a big T in there, right?
Not they always want the high profile cases.
They always want the publicity.
They always want to be able to say, we're the ones that broke the case, where the premier
law enforcement agency.
That's what I mind.
But, you know, like I said, the VEC is going, end all that.
Bama Swami.
Amal Swami is going to end the FBI.
It's the first thing he's going to do.
And think about it.
If it goes wrong and they took it over from the ATF or Secret Service, they can always
blame the slip up on the other.
Well, we got, keep in mind, we took it over from another agency that wasn't quite doing
the correct thing.
Waco.
Is it Waco perfect example?
What about Ruby Ridge?
Yeah, well, that's also, that was with the Marshall getting killed out. The ATF warrant, the Marshall gets shot out there. I mean, it's, it's a whole thing. Everybody wants to blame everybody else. Everybody points a finger that way, right? Right.
No, no, that's not what they, they're also a nickname for them, famous but incompetent.
You know, a lot of people who are in that too.
So that's out there.
Unfortunately, that's the rivalry within.
And that's, I think, anywhere, but sometimes worse in law enforcement, especially
the Fed level.
And sometimes you get the rivalry with the feds and the locals, too.
You know, you have that going on, too.
So it's a lot of things going on right there.
I think we talked about that one situation to standoff between the ATF agent being tased out there
and arrested by Columbus Police Department.
They haven't seen that video
I've seen it
I love that video
I here's what kills me
the moment he gets the cuffs put on him
he says everything that
every single defendant in cuffs has ever said
oh wait I have a heart
I have a heart problem I can't breathe
I can't breathe I have a heart problem
you don't understand you know it's like
what are you doing bro
like honestly
you could have simply
cuffed up right away and said
yo bro okay hey hey hey boom
now you know here's my badge
Oh, well, I don't know.
I'm going to cuff you.
No problem.
I get it.
I told you I went through something like that before, remember?
A lot of the other shows.
You explained, right.
And I just kept it.
I said, okay.
And then after they verified who I was, I just kept my hands up.
They put the hands in their pocket.
They saw my identification.
I didn't have to be thrown down.
And then they said, okay, because I was just plain clothes.
And I was talking about FF.
But I did present myself to the dealer and said, we went back.
And they said, no, he is ATF agent.
You know, you don't say he's impersonating anything.
you know, it's one of the things you have to do things a certain way.
But the thing I don't like about what happens, once they see his ID after it's been tased,
why they drag him to the mark unit, right?
Why is his head getting banged?
Why?
All that stuff is not necessary because, remember, he's there unofficial capacity.
Aren't you now interfering in a federal investigation?
Right.
Why else?
I didn't see.
I just saw the part where they got him on the ground and he's complaining and bitching and moaning.
It's like, you should see what happens after that.
I think that's what he sued him.
He has a major lawsuit against Columbus Police Department.
pardon, by the way. Because remember, he's also there for a federal. He's not like he's on his
own time there. Right. He's there to achieve a weapon. So this person has an illegal weapon in the
house. So that's kind of like, hey, once you see his identification, why did everything else?
Why did you do that? Why do you escalate more towards this agent here? Why did you do this, this and
this? Why are you throwing him in the back of the marked view? Why are you cranking the heater on
him? Why are you banging his head? Why? I mean, he did they a lot. Usually the whole thing.
The part after that. Yeah, I don't like it. I don't like it. I don't like it.
Well, I just thought the part where he would complain.
Because to me, listen, the moment he's like, look, I feel like right away I would have turned around and been like, absolutely I'll cuff up.
Absolutely.
No, of course.
That's what I've done that.
I know I'm outgunned, right?
And it's not going to, I can't win this battle.
So you have to be smart about it.
You can't be a hothead.
You can't be a say, oh, I'm not doing that.
Remember that?
I'm not doing that.
I don't care.
I'm not doing that.
Yeah.
I don't think I'm yelling at me.
You're not.
Remember he says, don't go for your pocket.
They went together.
Don't tease me, bro.
It's like, stop struggling.
You're resisting.
Yeah.
You know, like, you're not going to win in that scenario.
No.
I'm not having an argument with you.
And then let's face it, there's, their human being, right or wrong, they're human
beings.
Now they're, now they're stressed.
Now they're pissed off.
Now there's tons of adrenaline.
So now what happens?
Well, now we start banging you around.
Now there's no.
Now we're going to start really giving it to you, you know, which is wrong.
but let's face it, you could, you could have de-escalated the situation by saying,
absolutely, come me, no problem.
I get it.
I've learned that helps a lot when you're dealing with, you have to de-escalate.
If you escalate, things can get out of control.
So that's an interesting video.
If you haven't seen it, folks, take a look at it.
It's been out for almost two years now.
It's in litigation now.
I'm not sure if the officers have been suspended or not.
But, you know, I mean, that's a bad situation there.
And then, of course, you know, you've seen the one that happened.
in Memphis you saw that video right where that poor guy Terry what's this last thing I did a video on
his name right now can remember his last name where he's getting pretty much he's killed pretty much
at the scene and my Memphis the whole department is under investigation Terry Nichols no not Terry Nichols
Terry I'll give you the name and you'll take a look at that one it's awful awful video I'll send
it to you you can take a look at that so Karen Nichols was Oklahoma City no Oklahoma he's Terry something
I forget his last name right now and it's awful it happened a few months ago and the whole department
and they found more stuff going on.
He's pretty much just getting, you know,
he's just pulled over and the escalates saying he has nothing going on.
He gets away from them.
And all of a sudden, dude, they get him such a beat down that he dies in the hospital a few hours later.
It's ugly, ugly, ugly, ugly.
Unfortunately, it's a tough job, but you have to have people who are measured
and people know not to take it personal.
I think I did.
You have to be professional.
Don't ever take it personal.
Your job is to put them away.
it's not personal and I remember that oh listen I you know many times I'll see these got cops
pulling somebody over you know they're so aggressive it's like wow you shouldn't be a police
officer like I'm sorry you pulled this guy over and he didn't pull over fast enough because he
waited waited about you know a mile till he could pull onto a side road because he didn't want to
pull off the main highway so he pulled off and I get it he should have pulled over quicker but
he didn't try and outrun you okay
You know, he just went down and pulled off the exit or he whatever.
Well, I didn't want to, you know, he's being very polite and you're, give me your license.
Give me, bro, you shouldn't be a drop.
You shouldn't be a cop.
That's out of control, yeah.
It's, you have to be prepared to escalate on appropriate.
You also have to deescalate.
And some guys can't deescalate.
And it takes a sort of a right kind of person who also has a passion and vocation.
I had a passion to put away, make good cases on the work.
or the worst of society, right?
And that gave me the best graphication at the end when I did the cases, when I bought the
dope and the guns and in their area, I did it in Spanish, English, whatever, gang members,
non-gang members, traffickers, and I gave them 15, 20, 30 years, I felt real good about that.
And it's hard to match that.
And you have to come in with a passion that you're going to come with obstacles.
Yeah, management.
You've heard my book in Audible.
You saw some of the stuff how to deal with, right?
You have to be able to overcome obstacles
Like anything in life
I hope that's what they learn from my book
Is life's lesson
You have to be able to overcome
You have to deal with things
You can't use throw your hands in
Oh, that's it, I quit
No
Life is difficult
You gotta work hard and overcome
And adapt and do things
Because if not
That's what they want
Somebody want to break you
You got to understand that
And you can't let them break you
You never always stand up to a bully
Never let the bully win ever
That's my message
Yeah well you know
People have issues
that's for sure there's a lot of people with lots of issues that's it's human nature unfortunately
that's human nature i had a guy who was a first amendment auditor on the other day i interviewed him
it was good and they've got a guy called the armed fisherman have you seen this guy no so he takes
his ar-15 fishing in florida oh you see that i want to see that and videos and keep mind you're
allowed to. So he's what he's traps up and he he parks his car and he walks down and the police show
up. Like he's like every time the police show up. So I'm supposed to interview him. And of course,
they show up. And sometimes they just pull up. They're like, hey, what's going on? We got a call.
You're freaking people out. He's like, well, I mean, sorry, man. I'm allowed to do this. They're like,
I know. We just wanted to let you know. We got some calls. And they leave. Sometimes they pull up,
they pull their guns out. Get on the ground. Get on the ground. Why for a constitutionally protected
you know, act? Like, why am I getting on the ground? I mean, I, it's sitting on the side or it's
strapped over me. I'm fishing. You can see I'm fishing. I got a pole. You know, so he goes through
all of these things. And I was talking with the guy that I interviewed. And he talks about all
these times he gets, you know, they get arrested. They get arrested. They video it. Even though the whole
time, they're like, why are you questioning me? I'm not, I'm allowed to be here. I'm allowed to
video this i'm allowed to and and he's the nice thing i liked about the guy i interviewed was he was
super polite like i don't i like it when they're polite even though everybody else is being a jerk
but they're just overly polite like you're talking to the police officer no no the guy
the constitutional the first amendment i've seen those guys now i don't like when their assholes
to the police sure i like that you're being an asshole like i i'm with you before
I'm with you. I'm in a post office or I'm downtown in the courthouse. I'm allowed.
And they're recording. Right. Yeah, they're recording. I'm allowed to record. I'm allowed to be here. Well, I need a driver's license. I'm not going to give you my driver's license. You know, like, I'm just following what the Constitution says. So, and they're polite. Like, those guys are, I'm okay with. The guys I'm not okay with the guys who are like, they start calling on the cops names, their asshole. I'll say you end up getting a good beat down. That's for sure.
And, well, here's the thing, too.
Like, there was two cops that literally on camera, they say, well, let me tell you something, 10 years ago,
ought to beating that dude.
Like, they start talking about that.
It's like, that's not good.
What happens is, you understand these guys, they do this.
And a lot of people are like, why are they doing that?
Look, not everybody, I'm sure, is this is the reason.
But the guy I was talking to, he was saying, look, there's a lot of guys.
They want to get arrested.
They want the cops to violate their rights because they file a lot.
lawsuit. They file a lawsuit for whatever, 100,000, 200,000. They settle for $5,000, $10,000.
These guys, some of these guys have sued 30, 40, 50 times. They're making a couple hundred
thousand dollars a year getting $5,000 a lawsuit. Yeah. Yeah, I've seen those videos.
They do get a little nasty sometimes, and sometimes it doesn't turn out well for them. I don't know
what's a conclusion at the end, but, you know, that's a tough way to want to make extra money
because, you know, it's like
some of these guys who want to antagonize
the gangsters. Have you seen the guys to go
out there in these videos and say,
hey, boy, you know what to get
capped, bro? You're looking to get
whatever zipped or whatever, you know, because it's
a gag. It shows them something else. But these are hard, they go
in the hardcore. Have you seen these guys?
No. You haven't seen them?
Oh, my God. You've got to send me one. Yeah, I'll say
these guys are, they're killing it with
subscribers. They have millions of
subscribers. One of the guys showed how big a house
they live in now. I mean, they have a video
of how well they've done. But, bro,
it's just a video, bro. I mean, these guys pull
all these guns and everything. And
they're recorded from different locations. And these are hardcore
gangsters. You go in the hood just to fuck
with them. Right. And but it's,
they have no intention. But these guys snap
and bro, they're something, they pull their guns on them.
They chase them. They want to beat their hands.
Bro, it's a video, bro. And you guys running. It's a video.
And I think I did. I saw
one where they video a guy and the
guy comes up and he starts yelling at
him and you better, give me your phone and
give me that camera you can't have my image and he starts screaming at him he's like
touch me don't touch me no touch me pulls out mace and mace is the guy i've seen that one
yeah yeah yeah he's like ah yeah he's running around scream yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah
yeah yeah yeah now now these guys don't they're quick now and i think when the guy's talk
some of the guys do get caught and the other guy in in and the group has to help him
is it bro it's just a video man let him go let him go man it's i want you guys yeah i don't care
it's a video it's a prank bro it's a prank man
And, dude, the video, because these are hardcore gang.
They go in the real, and they tat him up.
And sometimes he throw fake signs at him.
He comes up to him like this and starts doing that to them.
Dude, these guys blow up.
They blow up.
What are you doing?
What do you think you're doing?
You know, I throw shimmy, it gets out of control.
You do understand that the guys that are doing this are not like road scholars, right?
Like, you don't decide to do something like this because you've been successful in every other facet of life.
These are typically guys that have, they've been in trouble.
They can't put anything together.
They're just not able to work a regular job.
And they think, you know what?
Let me grab my iPhone and see if I can try.
I wonder if this will go viral.
They start doing stuff.
They get a little bit of traction.
And they say, hey, I'm making this my career.
That's it.
Well, one day they're going to get killed.
Because a lot of these YouTubers have you noticed that they are getting killed a lot.
How about that guy?
He was a YouTuber, but he also did the investments in Argentina.
I can't remember his name right now.
But he had a Ferrari.
He did the videos and everything else.
They said he was involved in shady things
and his body was discovered
dismembering in a suitcase.
No, I didn't know that.
I'll send you that one too.
We'll talk.
It's unbelievable.
Some of these guys get cut up.
It's really messed up things.
And all these guys,
they pull out a lot of guns on them.
So, you know, an ATF agent.
I'm looking at a different perspective, of course,
as this.
I'm not looking, oh, whatever kind of said,
you know, I can identify what kind of weapon this is.
If you can identify what this guy is,
then, hey, that's a case because he's a convicted felon
and he's pulling up that weapon.
Hey, you can put them away for jail.
And I've done that before based on videos and pictures, especially on Facebook and other social media platform, these guys like to pose with guns and stuff.
I've done gangsters like that, too, where you look at and you identify the weapon and you get them.
So I'm looking at that angle, but I'm retired now, so not anymore.
You know what I was thinking about was these guys that they start these, you know, they start these channels and they have to keep getting the views and getting the views.
And so they just keep getting more and more reckless.
And then they end up, and, you know, sometimes it's like, remember the guy, there was a guy that he used to video himself.
He's one of these skydiver guys.
Oh, yes, he died.
And then one day, boom.
He died.
Yeah.
Or there was a guy that used to video himself hanging on to buildings.
One day he couldn't do it.
He slipped and fell and fell to his death.
Yeah.
Like they keep trying to get more and more extreme, right?
The skydiving suits, right?
You're talking like the Batman?
Yeah, yeah, like a flying squirrel or something, those squirrels.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, I've seen that guy.
One of them died, yeah, that happened a few years ago.
Those are dangerous things to be doing.
I mean, people love to see the videos and you watch them and all that, but it does come
with a price.
And some guys are just goofy, too.
I mean, you have one guy who has a bag of chips.
He has a water gun inside and has a hole in the bottom, right?
And he starts squirting people in the area.
And he just plays like in his chips.
It's like, is it raining?
And people, you see all these views.
and people just start looking around
and it keeps on doing it over and over
people can't figure out
it's a dude next to you
who has a water gun
and it looks like an empty bag of chips
and he has a hole in the bottom
and he's squirting you the whole time
and you don't know it.
What about the guy who dresses up
like the plant?
He acts like he's a plant.
Oh yeah.
He's like a big, like a bush
and then people walk by and he goes
and they
like before I get involved in all this
I never watch this stuff by the way.
I'm retired.
I can watch this stuff.
I write about it
and I enjoy because I'm on
like you on all these shows.
So I find an interesting stuff.
And I'm doing also a weekly show now with our buddy William Steele.
I know he's going to come back on your show soon.
He says, maybe in person he's going to try.
I want to know.
Yeah, if he's in the area.
He actually did pretty well.
You know, he's funny.
I get these guys now before they come on.
You know, my booking agent, he tells people nothing.
He's like, hey, this guy's got $150,000.
I represent Matt Cox, Inside True Crime.
He's got $150,000 subscribers.
He gets more than 2 million down, you know, 2 million.
I think he says downloads, but it's views.
It's like 2.
You know, over two.
I refer a bill to you though, because I did the show with you.
Right.
So, but I'm saying, so here's the problem is that that's all my booking agent says.
So then it's up to me.
And then he says, oh, we can promote your book.
We can, like, he's trying to get them on.
And then they're like, yeah.
And then they come on.
And so I had multiple people who,
Essentially, it's like you were scamming banks, let's say, or let's say you were a bank robber.
And then you got out, you went to jail for 10 years, and you got out.
And now you're, you know, whatever, you're trying to change the law or whatever.
And they get on and that's all they want to talk about is like, well, now what I do and you're like, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa.
I run a true crime channel.
I want to hear about crimes.
Yeah.
So now I have to give everybody a talk where it's, listen.
I need you to tell me why you went to jail not well yeah I robbed 10 banks and then I got to prison and you rightfully so I got 10 years but now what I do no no that's not that's not tell the story how you that's interesting right people want to hear that so we're going to talk about that for about an hour and then if you want to talk for an hour about what you're doing now that's great but you don't get to get everything you want and I get five minutes of
this is that all. See, that's one thing with me. I've done, I think, four shows with you now, right?
Right. And we do that. I love telling these true crime stories. Right. Once I'm
their research, once I live. I mean, I'm about telling the stories. I really enjoy that.
And I think my book's about that, too. I mean, I don't think anybody really wants to go
a true crime challenge to listen to the guy who's reformed, allegedly reformed, because a lot of guys
are not. Yeah. It's not. They're doing something. Hey, I'm going to have this racket going on.
That sounds like a racket. I want to hear how, how come you shot so-and-so? Why did you go
to the door. How come you were to get? No, no, I want to hear all that. Right. Were you scared? Had you
shot a gun before? Yeah. He gave you the gun. Or you, you know, like when William Steele, I had to, I, I think he and I had
that talk before. Oh no. I know that. Yeah, yeah. But listen, he was great. He was, he was, he went
slowly through every piece of how it, it built up. And, you know, he went through every single piece of
it. I like the story he tells about how he didn't know with Nick Navarro's house, the sheriff
of Broward County. Yeah, the police, bad voice sheriff, right? And he didn't know his house,
and he cleaned him out. And allegedly, he said he found some inside the house too. Oh, I didn't
know that. That's it. I remember we done a lot of shows together. That's it. That's what he talked about,
but that's all out there. So he had the thing with, was it Jimmy Carter or Ronald Reagan had he
He found black or something?
Yes, he did for having the task force and everything else going on.
But the interesting part I thought was he found some blow in there.
Okay.
That's interesting, too.
It was just evidence.
He was just holding it.
He forgot.
I don't know, but that's what he says.
That's his stories.
Yeah.
And I find this, I'll tell some of his stories, too.
I don't care because we do so many shows together.
And we're doing, steal the spotlight every Saturday night at 8 p.m.
Right.
If you like listen to me, you like listen to him, you know, they invite you one day and do that.
You can join us live one day.
Yeah, I'll do it, no problem
Well, we love to tell the story
How is his channel doing?
I mean, like I said, it's 2,000 subscribers
Yeah, it's, it's
You know, you have to go on other people's channels
Yes
Really kind of, I always say I would say I would call it conscripting
You know, you have to conscript their subscribers
He might in the last show, you should guys see it
We were talking politics also like we were at the beginning
And Bill says he's contemplating
running for the Oval Office in 2028.
Do you imagine?
Like that alone, he'd get 100,000 subscribers.
That's good, Bill, because I'm considering to run in 2024 for Congress.
I think I mentioned before, I guess, Aliegoll Spanberger, who's in District 7 here.
And so I'm still debating it, liberal Democrat, you know, I was gerrymandered,
I was a conservative Republican district, and they put me in her district.
And I'm not very happy with her at all.
I mean, you know, she was a former, allegedly CIA officer, and also she was a postal inspector.
And, unfortunately, my background law for her 26 years.
But her policy, she wants assault weapons ban.
They haven't secured the border.
It's higher taxes.
They have protection for illegals.
I mean, everything that I'm against, I'm pro-life.
She's pro-choice.
I mean, it's everything that I think is a very conservative area.
And I think there needs to be a change.
And she's been there already three terms.
I think it may be a time for a different one.
So I'm really considering it hard.
And, you know, we'll see, Matt, if I decided to run against her.
Let me know.
Yeah, I'll let you know, man.
We'll do a show on it.
Did that book come out that I helped you a little bit, consulting about task force?
And has that come out?
I hate to tell you this.
What's that?
I, so I, I know, nobody's going to, nobody that, it's not a big deal.
I had to, so I pitched that story to Rolling Stone magazine.
Oh, you did.
Yeah.
And the guy I'm working with, the editor I'm working with, you know, I told them, look, I interviewed, you know, an ATF agent.
And he goes, was he on the task force?
And I went, no, but he explains how it works.
And he goes, he said, yeah, you're going to have to interview somebody that was on the task force.
And I was like, oh, man.
So I ended up interviewing the sheriff and the head of the task force in Okachobi.
Okay.
But as a result, I also ended up interviewing the U.S. attorney or the assistant U.S. attorney on the case. And then I, you know, that kind of sparked a whole thing. I ended up interviewing a couple of the of her, of her co-defendants. So, you know, I put together kind of an article, will it make, will it end up in Rolling Stone? They said it would in an agreement. Awesome. So your version probably will not end up being the version, um,
Although she's saying she wants to write like a memoir.
And if that's the case, then then you probably will end up.
Then I'll probably, she'll probably have to come back to you and actually interview you.
Well, sure, whatever.
That'll be great, though.
Yeah, it's good.
It's a good story.
We'll see, we'll see if it makes Rolling Stone.
That'd be great.
I would love to do that.
I love to be able to say I'm a writer for Rolling Stone magazine.
Like, I think that would open up some doors.
Yeah, let me know.
They want to talk about my experiences with ATF undercover and all the harrowing stories.
Also, I would love to do a little thing with them.
Baby steps.
Let me get in front.
I know.
I like I should just like with a script that have done with based on ATF on it, take down the Kings, take down the King, actually.
I will love to be able to get that TV series.
I think it would be a good TV series.
The script is good.
The pilot's good.
I like to see where else I'm looking for different companies looking at it.
But, you know, the writer's strike has put a damper on things.
Right.
I don't know this.
Listen, I.
Somebody sent me a video the other day.
about that AI had written a 10-minute video
about aliens arriving
on the planet
and AI had written the whole script
so it was about aliens arriving
on the planet
so it AI had written an entire script
it had directed the entire script
it had pulled B-roll for the whole thing
it had all the quote
from the
multiple presidents
and Putin and Biden
and all of these
political party officials
it did the voices
in their voice
for the for the quotes
of them talking
and it's 10 minutes
and it's amazing
you look at you're like
and the guy explains
what the description
like this is all I told it to do
and this is what it came up with
it is amazing
and you saw it on YouTube
yeah I well I I I don't know if it was YouTube or see it may have been TikTok I know you don't like TikTok I don't like TikTok I could if it's if it's not if it's on TikTok I won't send it to you but if it's but if it's if it's YouTube I'll send it to you it was listen it was another platform too a lot of time that they put up multiple platforms well I'll send it to you you can try and find it I'm sure it's on it's probably on on on YouTube somewhere or Rumble or something of people like it I know you don't use Rumble
but I've been getting very popular with Bill on Rumble too.
Sometimes our shows do a lot better on Rumble than they do on YouTube.
Well, I mean, I think Rumble's probably a more conservative platform.
Yeah, yeah.
I mean, like what we're saying.
And listen, if they were paying, if Rumble paid better,
if Rumble was identical to YouTube in the ability to upload,
to write descriptions, to the whole thing,
I would be pumping a ton of stuff on Rumble.
I heard you have to do like one live show a week or something to get some more, at least one live a week.
I don't know.
It's some strange rules in there, you're right.
That's what some people are telling me about it.
But you know what?
It's all about also getting the books and exposure.
I think it'll still help you.
So I think because, you know, you've seen some of your books pretty interesting.
True Crime is Rumble likes that stuff.
I think it would help you sell a lot of books too.
I'm not sure how they're doing, but, you know, can't hurt.
I should probably try it, just try and start uploading stuff and see what happens.
Put our shows in there.
You see how it happens.
I'm getting popular in Rumble, so it just feeds on that.
I hate to have to figure out another platform.
Dude, they never stop.
Bro, there's never stopping.
Odyssey's and other ones out there.
I mean, it's just never stopping.
They just keep on growing, growing, growing.
I don't like Instagram, by the way, either.
Yeah, I like writing.
I have stuff on, yeah, but I have stuff on.
My Instagram account has like over 80,000 followers.
TikTok.
I'm actually going to have to start another TikTok account
because the guy that started my TikTok account was
in Canada. So I have a Canadian Tick-Tock account that cannot get monetized.
Oh, well. So we have to start a whole new TikTok. We just started a Facebook.
You know, you didn't have Facebook? No, I mean, I had a personal Facebook. But you didn't have a one for, I've had one for this for you for a while now.
No, I just, we just started. It's already got like 13,000 followers. Wow. We worked with a company called a jelly smack and they're, they're handling the Facebook and they're probably going to,
open one up for us for for TikTok also and they they're big on money getting it monetized and
paying for advertising you got to pay for all that right well they they pay for everything just a
partner with me they're putting up the money oh they're paying to go with you yeah well now we split
everything but they invest something like 20 something 20 25 000 dollars in advertisement over the
first couple of years so and listen they got 13 000 subscribers within about two months that's good and we don't
have to do anything. They're pulling our stuff off of YouTube and just repurposing it. So I don't have to
do not. We don't have to do anything. Cool. No, what works on good? I need to get this. I feed up you
got. I try to get more ideas since I'm near all this myself, just like Bill is. And, you know,
we're growing. We're doing the shows where I'm doing a lot of books. I did learn pretty quickly how
I use Kindle. If you're a writer out there like Matt and I are and like Bill, if you want to,
you're tired of the publishing company holding you back. You want to do the work around.
Go sell publishing Kindle, man. Put your stuff out there and let people read.
it and then go Kindle Limited and it and it advertised it for you in Amazon and it really
grows you get a lesser percentage but it's I mean I get thousands of pages read yeah
the time so it's pretty cool that way so then I get more popular more popular and it's it's
done well so I've really enjoyed that part now I just got to keep on now I'm doing scripts
and everything else and let's see if it gets picked up a TV service or what have you
and looks like rolling stall is pretty cool we'll see what happens I'm hoping hoping it you
know, I sent my first draft. I haven't heard anything back yet. I'm just hoping to get,
if it gets in there, I think it's got a great, because it's a phenomenal story. I thought
it was a great story. It's a great story. Yeah. So, I mean, and some of my books are, how many
words is it? What do you mean? Your draft you just did now. How many words? Oh, 8,000. It was
like 8,000 words. A lot of my stories about that. So I could always send one of my, I think the one
I did, I don't know if I'd talk about this one. If you want to keep on going, I can take a quick
little story here on Alaska.
I said, Alaska, the land of the midnight sun.
I wrote this one.
This is the prequel to me becoming an agent, right?
This is a true story, by the way.
This is a true story.
I did a prequel housing just graduated from college, St.
Leo University in Pascoe, right, Catholic University, up there in St.
Leo, near San Antonio, all right.
In the summer of 93, a buddy and I are going to go do our Alaskan adventure.
You know, a lot of people love to go to Alaska and go in a big adventure.
So I'm looking, and this is before the Internet.
It's the summertime.
So after old school, you know, this is old school where you have a magazine, right?
You got information.
You got to call people.
You know, you got a call and find out, hey, listen, I know you have a position to say,
we're going to work at a canary.
We're going to work at a fishing canary.
The goal is to work, and this is before the show became popular with a dangerous catch.
Remember that?
You go on the crab vessels.
You get a percentage of the catch where you could,
make, I mean, for that time, easily on one trip, like about 10,000, maybe more, depending
how much you guys catch and all that.
So that was our plan.
They said, just great from college, we're going to go out to Alaska, we're going to camp
out, and we're going to have a blast making a ton of money spending nothing.
I disagree, but go ahead.
What happens?
That's funny.
So we get all the camping gear.
We go to, I know you're made familiar with Tampa a little bit.
There used to be downtown Tamma, an old.
US Army Navy store surplus store and famous been there for 50 years just recently closed
I saw the video and the guy was so nice to us he helped us to get all the gear we needed
oh in Tampa there was one you said downtown okay okay I know I've been there you've been there
right it's famous not there anymore no anymore no there's one on bears avenue now there's
still one around but there was one in there was one in Tampa yeah downtown Tampa the one
they had even a big special if you want to Google that and take a look on YouTube you can see
the video and the guy was a little emotional
Everybody said, you know what, it's been time, it's been a lot of time, and what have you.
But the same guy, I remember 93 helped us to get, we got an Army pop-up tent.
We ended up getting really good fleecing sleeping bags because even in Alaska, it gets hot.
And during the day, it gets cool at night.
It's still in the 50s.
And I want to be no warmer.
I don't want to be suffering.
So we fly out there.
My mom works for the airline industry.
And I'm able to get standby.
If you fly standby, right, you don't pay anything for the tickets.
Right? You go on there. So I flew from Tampa to Seattle, Seattle to Anchorage. So we all right gear, camping and all that. I already made the plans. And I knew exactly where we're going to go into Kiski. Have you been to Alaska?
No. Oh, what a beautiful state, man. I have to go back. Everything I ever see is freezing.
No, not in wintertime. I'm talking about in the summer where it's gorgeous. The weather is not freezing in the summer. It is warm. It was warm. The day is up in the 80s. And I think we're at the 50s a night.
which is gorgeous weather, by the way, on amazing weather.
So we go out there, we stay at a youth hostel the first time in Anchorage,
and it's pretty much like $10, pay nothing, open beds, you had a bathroom, shower,
we can do all that stuff.
So we go to Anchorage, and we start talking to people in the area, they say,
what do you think of this canary?
We want to work in here.
You're in all the stories.
What do you think of working this vessel?
Oh, I want to work here.
So we're going to Kiski.
I goes, oh, that's good.
I said, yeah, it's half by Japanese and half by Americans because the Japanese love their salmon.
And that's huge.
We have the red salmon and you have the pink salmon, right?
So, and I didn't know much about the sand, but I will learn a lot about fish when I get out to remember.
I graduated from St. Leo.
I have a degree of political science and history, right?
But this is going to be the hardest work of my life.
It is intense, freezing conditions in these canaries, it is cold.
And what I'm doing is, so we camped out there, we got all gear, and most three kinds of people that are camping out there in the Kenai Peninsula in that area.
You had college students, migrant workers, and a lot of people who didn't want to be found.
A lot of fugitives, outlaws, a lot of outlaws in Alaska.
We'll bump into a lot of outlaws.
I'm going to tell you some stories.
My prequel before it was law enforcement.
So we're camping.
It's open.
You know, you can't watch your stuff all the time.
So Eric and I, my buddy in college, we end up splitting shifts.
So we can at least protect our stuff.
I say the nice shift.
He did the day shift.
And that's why it was like, it was like midnight and I'm working.
It's like 4 o'clock in the afternoon.
I mean, it doesn't get, it gets dark briefly just for a little bit, around 2 in the morning, 3 o'clock, and it's daylight again.
So you ever seen the movie with Al Pacino and Amnesia?
Insomnia.
Insomnia.
He can't sleep because bad.
I have the same thing that.
It's hard, but because it works so tiring or when I get to that little tent, I'm exhausted.
But a sleep bag, I'm done because it's 12 hours.
ships, freezing conditions, you're spooning the guts out of the fish. It's assembly line.
Non-stop. You know, I'm finished college, but I mean so many people that some are stacking it.
It's freezing conditions there. They give us gloves and gear and everything else, but I can almost
still feel in my fingers how cold it was in these canteries and work in there. You have a little
breaks here and there, but by time you're done, you're exhausted. So you go back in there, and we meet
a lot of people. Lots of college kids will start talking. We meet other people from Washington State,
Chicago, but we were the farthest from Florida.
Man, we don't see a lot of guys in Florida.
A lot of them are coming in the summer as the college kids
and make this extra money because they're paying us
at the time, $93, like
$13, $15 an hour.
That's not bad. That's a good money back then.
And we're banking it because it even
kind of fed us a little bit in the cafeteria there,
had some food out there. We bought our old food,
right? And we don't pay for anything. We're camping.
And the money goes directly
account. They set up in a bank account. They had
even an ATM card from the local
bank there in Alaska, which is pretty cool.
So like I said, remember about the outlaws and guys who are wondering and all that.
So we have a lot of downtime sometimes because it all depends.
Sometimes is a big load of fish that came in, we work hard.
Down time, okay, go back to the camp, everybody, you know, having some beers, a lot of pot.
People smoked a lot of wheat.
It wasn't my thing, but man, people love to smoke weed out there in Alaska.
There's a lot of that.
So we're talking.
And you meet some guys.
We were, like I said, 20, 21, right?
21, 22.
And there's some guys in the late 30s, 40s.
And they're kind of a little strange it out there.
And, you know, one of the guys we're talking was was saying, hey, I'm trying to restart my life.
I'm working at camera.
But his story doesn't make sense, right?
It's kind of weird.
And once he starts drinking more and he gets a little bit stranger, a little bit louder, right?
Starts talking about the bodies that he buried.
Yeah, yeah.
He has a revolver.
He has a stainless revolver.
And he starts showing us, some of the college guys, they said, hey, I want to shoot it.
Let's go in the woods here and they start shooting it.
I'm saying, you got to be careful.
You know, it's over there.
But he pops rounds.
Like nothing and say, man, you've got to be careful, but not be doing that.
You don't know who's out there.
We already know this guy's a problem.
So one day we're, and, you know, a lot of us like to talk and we're around a campground area talking.
It's like four or five of us.
And there's one particular attractive female, you know, we're talking to, whatever.
He comes up and he looks like he's high.
He's drunk.
Something else.
I know he has the gun on, right?
And he comes up up to her and he pokes her with it in her ribs.
Or he puts around her ribs.
I said, and she starts crying.
And she started freaking out, as you can imagine.
I said, bro, don't be doing that.
Man, what are you doing?
Then he points out of me.
And I said, hey, man, what, everybody else starts getting on top.
Hey, man, put the gun away.
He gets all upset.
He starts yelling and he goes away.
Well, everybody's just reporting him to, this word part of the camp.
They report him to the supervisor over there.
He said, oh, this guy's out of control.
What was going on?
I never saw the guy again.
So I assume they found him in the gun.
And he either had a warrant or he's a felon.
Right.
firearm and off he went because after that whole incident, the debacle, never saw him again.
I said, oh, man, that's, that's a thing in the camp.
I put a strike in my head.
It's like, I don't like this situation.
This is kind of, I'm here to work.
And now, now we have this guy pointing guns, shooting, almost he freaked her out, poking her.
That's kind of messed up.
I'm like, what the hell is you doing?
I mean, she was like, very attractive young female and it was like traumatized her.
I mean, no one has used to, I mean, a gun pointing your ribs, right?
That's not a good feeling.
I wasn't, I didn't like having a point in my face or pointed right at me.
I was like, whoa, what are you doing, buddy?
So, and there was other, some places you have families out there working in the camp, right?
And they had a, I would say she was about 16, 17.
She was attractive, right?
And there was some migrant workers.
Now, I don't know if he was, it wasn't raped.
Allegedly she said she was raped by the migrant worker at this camp, right?
Investigators came out.
And as he said, she said that she had been drinking.
She was consenting.
So all of a sudden, you've seen a lot of drama.
You see an alleged rape going on, guys shooting fire, poking at people pointing out of your guns.
I'm like, man, this is getting out of control here.
So my buddy Eric says, hey, man, they say it's got some downtime here.
You want to go up to Talkeetna.
And that's between Mount McKinley.
If you haven't seen Mount McKinley's largest mountain range in the North America, it's called the Nali
now.
And they're having a bluegrass festival.
They said, no, I'm going to stay.
I'm going to go to some other guys.
I'm going to stay.
We'll go up there.
And we're going to camp out there.
But we're going to camp.
And they held playing bluegrass music.
Again, everybody smoked a lot of weed.
Not my thing, but I drank and have a good time.
and what I had everything else.
Amy and my other guys noticed that,
I said, man, who's this biker group here?
And it's like the Hells Angels.
And I was like, I didn't know much about the Hells Angels.
But I knew that they were guys that I'd like to ride around Harleys
and sometimes they're brawlers, right, again, meleys and everything else.
And, of course, I learned a lot more later with investigations and everything else,
but they were doing security for the event.
And I'll find out later, Hell's Angels, make a lot of them I do security of these
combat events.
So we came up to one of the guys and we were talking, and I said, man,
I see, I was only they were doing toys for tots.
I said, man, that's pretty cool.
The fundraising toys for tots, that's a good charity.
They're helping kids who don't have, you know, money to get that.
You know, that's what I'm thinking.
I don't know any better.
So the guy, and then we said, hey, you want to get some beer at the local bar right here?
So we start drinking with a few of these hell's angels, guys, right?
Of course, I don't know much about these guys.
So I'm asking, I said, hey, that's great that you guys do toys for tots and everything else.
And you knew our background.
I'm going to college degree.
We're going back.
I'm maybe going to law school.
Maybe doing this, what have you?
And he goes, man, you want nothing.
This will be in the face.
El's Angel.
It's all being like this.
You want nothing to do with these guys.
This is all a facade.
It's all a bunch of bullshit, right?
And all these guys are involved in a lot of bad shit.
Right.
I can believe the choice for Tots image at all.
Yeah, this is just PR for them.
Exactly.
And he was in there, and he's telling us at the bar.
I said, okay, good to know.
We finish our drinks.
Do you out of a drink?
I said, all right, Bill, we're out of here.
And we went back and we went back to Alaska.
Kept on working out there and Kenai.
and then mom say, listen, we're going to
Glasgow or Edinburgh, Scotland.
I've been there for a month, month, and somewhere.
I said, do you want to join us?
I mean, it's out there.
I said, well, man, I'm almost done making my money here.
I said, that's not a bad way in my summer before I start working.
I go from Anchorage to Edinburgh or Glasgow
and finish another week and we can have in Scotland.
I said, what do you want to come?
You're staying a little longer?
I said, yeah, I'm going to stay another week or so.
So they dropped me off at the airport,
and that ended that adventure ahead,
I had the land in the midnight sun.
I wonder what ever happened in that guy
The guy, yeah, he probably did some time
Man, the guy was crazy
I mean, you don't start pointing cuns
Especially, you know, these are people who are here
Most of them came from good families, good money
Right
No, he, you know, like, listen
Did you ever see that movie into the wild
Was similar, right?
The guy was a little crazy
He got the bus, he dies in the bus
Yeah, yeah, the book
There was a book, I read the book when I was in prison
The book's tiny, tiny, tiny
but the the you're like mine then the land the midnight sun Alaska
yeah but he ends up dead he he died he made a bad decision there
yeah yeah you ate wrong berries
he drawn berries and he didn't realize that the river would be so high
when he wanted to go back remember right right he got trapped
what I was gonna say was you know that bus is not there anymore
they finally get rid of it they too many people were hiking getting hurt
trying to get there so they had to go in there pick it up
and get rid of it.
Yeah, I think Alaska, that's one of those places where people go that have problems.
And they want to, like you said, they want a new start.
They're trying to escape.
I watched a TikTok, or a short the other day, I think, where the guy said that the internet ruined.
Ruined it for men.
And then the other guy is like, what do you mean?
He said, used to be that if a guy didn't want to be with a woman anymore or his whole family,
He'd say, I'm going out for cigarettes, and he'd get up, and he could go 10 miles away and start a whole new life and be 10 miles away.
Oh, wow.
And he said, but then the internet came along, and they can find you anywhere you go.
That's right.
So I was, I thought that the way he said it was funny, because I was like, yeah, you're right.
You could be, you could quit your job, change your name, start over again in Italy, and a couple hours of research, they're probably going to track you down.
Yeah.
One thing I never saw before when I was there at that festival was in Northern Lights.
Man, that is impressive to see the Northern Lights at night.
Right.
Man, that's, things I still remember clearly, and it was over 30 years ago.
I really had a good time.
It's an adventure.
It started my life of adventures, and it's pretty, if you haven't been to Alaska,
now I want to take my family, I've been 30 years about this time I want to do a cruise,
and I want to go out there and check it out.
And I want to see the humpback whales, and I love nature, so I love to do all that.
Keep a distance from the Bears, though.
Do you remember the movie or the series Northern?
was it northern lights or no it was called northern exposure northern exposure yeah the doctor or
yeah yeah and it was a former the guy was a former senator trying to create this whole little town
and anyway i remember they were running uh he was running some kind of a whatever it was a hotel or
something and there were all these japanese that came and he had like 40 or 50 japanese that were
there and they were like wow and the northern lights came out and all they were all couples they all
jumped up and they ran into their room to have sex because if you conceived during under the
northern lights, they believed that their children would be extremely successful.
Wow.
So that's an excuse.
Yeah, I don't know about that, but it sounds like fun time.
Yeah, no, I'm sure they're, but they're amazing, right?
Yeah.
And what is that?
It's actually something, what is it?
They're like solar flares coming off of the sun that are striking the atmosphere.
Yeah, it's beautiful.
Yeah, it's scientific.
If you type it up, they'll tell you the whole thing.
It is amazing to look at.
And I'd never seen it before.
It starts tomorrow and it goes,
lights it up.
And you're like,
what the heck?
You know,
you see,
it's not the same
when you see something on a video.
Yeah.
When you see in person,
you got to go see that.
I mean,
it's unbelievable stuff out there.
And I like the people,
it's the motto of Alaska
is the last frontier.
Right.
It was then.
I imagine somebody still like that now,
but it's a different world out there.
It's massive.
It's the largest state in the country,
the largest state.
And go check out the denial.
Mount McKinley.
They changed the name.
It used to be called Mount McKinley.
They changed it Denali back to the original name, the big one.
The locals, natives call it, you know, it's their language, Denali.
So I would definitely recommend Alaska.
Probably not going to do that.
You're not going to sleep, though.
I will give you that in the summertime.
And the winter is dark most of the day and the summer is light most of the day.
Very different.
That's insane.
Yeah.
All right.
Midnight sun.
all right listen
I appreciate you
coming on the program
yeah man over two hours
it's a record for us
that's all I'm listen oh I
I keep going I got another one of these though
wow an hour I think what time is it
and I think it's a two o'clock at two o'clock I have one
okay yeah get a little lunch and you're good to go
yeah I try and do I'm trying to do
at least one in person a week
And we've been pretty strong on that.
And then three or four stream yards, you know, remote.
So really I've been doing pretty good.
Been doing about four.
A week?
Yeah.
Well, no, I think we've been doing three.
So it's a total.
It's three, three remotes, one in person.
And sometimes you tell me you're 50-50, something you get cancellations too, right?
Listen, I have to, I have to book like,
seven a week to get three or four oh wow people i just don't i don't understand you know i'm solid
you know i never yeah but but i mean a lot of people just it's like how did you you know like
how are you how do you function when you contact somebody who a week earlier said okay i got you on my
schedule i'll be there and then you go to you know you send send them the link nothing happens
then eventually i call my booking agent or i start texting them or i call them and they're like
Oh, is that today?
You said you put it on your schedule.
But don't you send them like you do with me?
I do.
Oh, that's great.
But then like sometimes it'll be the day before, hey, man, I got a change, I got to change.
Or, okay, you know, every once in a while I get it.
But when you've got three or four that aren't showing up a week, like, how do people function?
Well, that's like you said, these people have a history of making bad decisions.
This is true.
What do you expect?
But it's a little different when you guys who's retired and law enforcement, you have to be punctual.
You've got to be in your game because you don't.
you can't stick around, but people don't tolerate that.
You might get to lean your boss down for meeting like that.
They don't, they're put up with this.
So you have to, not only am I punctual, I'm early.
Yeah.
You know, I don't want to be late.
My dad used to say being on time is being 15 minutes early.
Really?
Yeah.
Yeah, I'm typically, that's why I'm really typically,
that's why I send the link about 15 minutes beforehand.
Okay.
Because that's usually when I get there.
You don't mean, I'm ready.
easily 15 minutes ahead of time.
I'm already prepped up.
I'm ready to go and rock and roll because sometimes when you start earlier,
I've done like 100 of these shows too.
So, folks, you like this stuff.
Go check my name out, Matt's name and YouTube or in Google.
And, man, I've done.
And we have the weekly show.
We'll bring Matt on to do it with a Steel Spotlight.
And every Saturday night at 8 p.m.
Check it out also.
But this is good stuff, man.
And you do that live?
We pre-recorded and it's live.
And now we're taking questions, people making comments,
and we're commenting with them.
So that's pretty cool.
People have an interesting question, especially with the ATF background and Bill with his background.
It's like both sides of the fence, like you and me, both sides of the fence, right?
You talk about your side.
I talk about my side.
Your experience with the FBI was a different side than my experience with the FBI, right?
Mine and yours is like, hey, listen, rather than saying, hey, Matt, you're doing the right thing.
This is what I would say.
If you called me, I appreciate the phone call Matt.
We don't want anything bad to happen to you.
You know, they show rest and get ugly.
let's work this out
turn yourself in
I will definitely let the prosecutor
know you decide
turn yourself in
and it'll be taken into consideration
that it's the best thing
you can be doing calling
and we appreciate you calling this man
this is so important that you do it
so I would walk you down
different paths
then say hey hey motherfucker
we're going to come and get you
and we're going to stop on you
and we're going to be
in a way she did that
but in a much more aggressive
she's like
you don't want to get
you don't want some
some cop pulling up on you
you could
up getting shot.
You could,
I said,
yeah,
I noticed that
you put on the,
on the wanted posters
armed and dangerous.
Oh,
because I had,
I had a concealed weapon
permit in Florida,
but I didn't have a weapon on me.
Like,
I didn't have one.
They were like,
that would definitely get to bullet in.
Yeah,
they're saying,
like,
he's known to carry a weapon.
Like,
I don't have a weapon.
And you were willing
to train yourself in Atlanta.
No,
no, no,
I need you in Tampa.
No,
you need to drive all the,
my fear was,
if I get pulled over,
like,
that's not a little drive.
I was two, three hours away from Atlanta.
I was like nine hours away from Tampa.
So it's like me driving the next eight or nine hours,
like there's a good chance I get.
I was trying to ditch the vehicle I was in as quick as possible.
So I don't want to, you know,
I don't want to be driving around or get pulled over with this ID that I know they're looking for.
No.
Bad spot.
That's the only reason I called.
I was in such a bad spot.
Especially armed and dangerous.
Not too.
That was just like, what are you doing?
You're trying to get, you're trying to get me a shot.
Yeah, that's, that's all the idea.
I say, you better turn yourself off home.
But there's a nice way doing it, and there's not a nice way doing it.
If he was nicer, I bet you probably would have turned yourself in, right?
If it would have been like, hey, Matt, and talk you down, it's going to be okay.
We're going to work out with the prosecutor.
We're going to talk to the judge.
You turn yourself.
You save the taxpayers, because we have marshals, all that stuff plays into it.
You might have got less time.
But did you turn, you know, you didn't turn it.
You got arrested at the end.
I got arrested.
Hey, I appreciate you.
guys checking out the video and if you liked it do me a favor and share the video subscribe to the channel
hit the bell so you get notified please consider joining my patreon we're going to put all of
retired d agent estabon's links in the description for his books my patreon is going to be in the
description you know i got instagram i got facebook i have ticot we'll leave all of those the links are
in the description also really appreciate you guys watching the video and please consider
are buying one of my books. Thank you very much. I appreciate it. See you. Where were you
born? Yeah, yeah. I was born in Los Angeles, in California, but raised in South Florida
in Miami. And, you know, I've always had some interests in law enforcement, obviously.
You know, you grew up in the same times. I was born in the 70s, and I grew up when I was younger
in the 80s with Miami Vice, right? And I'm in South Florida, right? How cool you're seeing
Don Johnson, you know, you're watching the cool cars, the Ferraris,
right. You're thinking, man, that is pretty cool. So that always was, you know,
always in the back of your head and you're looking at that, but never thought I would
ever do that kind of work, really. I kind of, you know, that was cool and I like the guns.
I like the training. I like putting out these bad guys and the cocaine cabboys were huge back
in the 80s. Well, years later, you know, I go to college. I went actually up not far from where you're
at, up to St. Leave University. It's a Catholic University. And I got my degree in political
science and in history. Then I come back to FIU in Miami. So now we're looking about the mid-90s,
and I get, I'm working my degree in international relations. And I was going to go to law school.
I accepted to a law school in Lansing, Michigan, Thomas Cooley. And, you know, the farthest thing in my
head, but, and I'm seeing the prices, how expensive law school is. And this is mid-90s. It's a lot more now,
obviously, but even in the mid-90s. And I didn't have a, I had a scholarship in college.
I played tennis, a number one from my school. But it was going to comment.
cost me about like about 30,000 a year, right?
30,000 a year, three years at least, you have housing, you got to get your loans for all that
stuff.
And I'm thinking, and I know how competitive is law school.
And some people are saying, man, that's a lot of money.
But I already have my degree, very athletic.
I was shooting.
My dad taught me how to shoot early in life.
We'll go to the range.
My dad was a gun.
So I'm competent with a firearm, right?
I'm athletic.
And I'm thinking, wow.
And I noticed Internet just started, right?
This is 1995, Windows came out, and I didn't use it in college, but I said, man, this is the future, right?
So I got myself a computer and I taught myself because this is people who said, what are you doing?
What's emailing?
What do you do?
I got myself a Yahoo account, people are prodigy, right?
People had no idea what the stuff, what dial up?
What are you doing?
And it's like, well, this is the future.
And people are like, no, I don't think this is going to last.
I think, no, I think this is going to be.
Listen, I was one of those guys.
I was like, this is going to catch on.
this is people are not going to spend their time online what what are you talking about and I was like
oh no I think it well especially when I saw everybody pumping especially get government jobs
that's why I went so when USA that's one of the reason I went on there because USA jobs was available
to look at what's opening and I was interested in going with customs so I applied for customs right
they were looking for Spanish speakers which I grew up Miami my parents are Spanish Cuban they came
grandparents from Spain went to Cuba and after the Castro Revolution they came to the United
States and they lost everything and they have my family that started over again and I'm fortunate
enough to be in this great country and quite quite well within one generation. The wealth they lost
in Cuba I've done quite well in this country and it's a very fortunate great nation that we
live in. And I talk about them and my books also. So I work on that and I put in there and so
they need people because in Miami, in Miami International Airport, most of the flights, 85% of them
come from Latin America, right? So they want the customs officials to be able to engage a speak
Spanish because it's easier to cast people who are mules or smuggling drugs. You have to know
what you're dealing with. And I grew up Miami. So I grew up with all the different cultures
from South America, from Latin America, from Mexico, a lot of my friends. So I knew all that.
And I spoke Spanish. So I put in for the jobs, right? And I got it pretty quickly with customs.
So that was something where I was going to law school. And I said, this is better because now
I'm making quite a good money. I'm going to have a good pension, right? I'm in law enforcement.
And I really enjoy, it is satisfying what the kind of work I'll start doing.
So you start there at the airport, you get your cut your teeth into, like, password processing,
and then I make one of their elite teams with customs called a contraband enforcement team.
And at the time of the 90s, in Miami, South Florida is making some of the biggest seizures in the country, right?
You know, you still have the Cali cartel, you still have the Medellin cartel,
and they're still pumping a lot of drugs.
And I don't like what the Mexicans are going to do when they take over.
They're doing it, the schoolway with cargo, they're doing with ships, they're doing with
the Florida and the Caribbean, and that's how they're getting it through to, especially in Florida.
So it wasn't uncommon, you know, after you on the job, you know, I was saying, or you're saying
back then that's how they're doing it, or you're saying that's how they're doing it now.
No, no, back then, back then.
The Medellian, Cali, all those guys have collapsed, and now the Mexicans, and I've written books
about how strong they've got.
And they're almost more powerful than the Columbus ever wore.
You know, you talk about El Chapo, El Manchels,
and I'll go into that also how strong they've become
and how they've changed the game completely
and how we have to change, you know,
and I've written about that, too, of my experiences.
So I get in there, and so, you know,
I'm now in the middle of the drug war.
You know, I'm the front line with customs.
So what do you do, I mean, what does that detail consist of?
Yeah.
So Miami has a ton of.
of cargo that comes in through Latin America, right? And also passengers, a lot of it coming in.
And my job and the border, you know, border authority is everything that comes to international
is subject to search, right? I don't need probable cause like I would later when I became an
agent, which is a complete different game. So it was a lot easier to make seizures and make arrests
because when you come in, you have your questions, people come to search and you figure out
what's going on right there. And with cargo side, it's everything comes in, and especially
from Latin America, transitive country.
It wasn't uncommon for me to see,
we're going to seize 850 pounds of cocaine
that was coming in a group of fish
that was coming from Guayaquil,
Colombian drugs, going to Colombia,
going to Ecuador,
and then be shipped because within five, six hours,
it's in Miami.
And the corruption was really bad in South Florida, right?
At the airport, you had the rap workers were dirty,
you had the longshoremen were dirty,
you had a ton of corruption,
the money's overwhelming.
And that stuff was never going to go
where it's supposed to go.
It gets ripped off.
off, right? It has the bill lading, right? Where it's supposed to go, but those stuff never go.
When you got that kind of fish, when you look inside this major grouper, you get a kilo
Coke next to a block of ice. That stuff was going to get taken out. And that was not uncommon
to see 600, 800 pounds coming in and get ripped up. And that's what we got. So what does
I tell you the stuff that got in? Yeah, what's not getting caught? A lot, a lot. And they knew
that was the quickest way to get it in because the demand back in the night.
80s and 90s and still today, unfortunately, is enormous for cocaine. I always said the way
to stop the cartels, if people stop using the stuff, right? If people got the treatment,
the cartels are the drug gig, right? It's over. That's it. Yeah. We win the war on drugs. The way
we win the war on drugs, and what you already to know, is from within, from within. But a lot of
these bad countries are weaponizing cocaine, especially the Nicholas Madurals from Venezuela,
right? You've got the country who are really enemies, they're communist, enemies, and they're
selling cocaine because they know that does damage to our country, the workforce, the people,
their future, and everything else.
Cuba, was it?
Castro said it was the, he said the pink menace or he said that was the best way to undermine
the United States was through the importation of drugs?
Yeah, Hugo Chavez, for Venezuela.
He used to do that.
Oh, he died.
Yeah, from Venezuela.
Cuba saw, but Castro did not want to be called a trafficker, right?
because he saw what happened to Noriega, right?
Back in the late 80s,
Mount Noriega, when he got involved,
the U.S. end up invading and bring him over.
The former president of Honduras, Hernandez,
he was a big-time drug trafficker.
He just got extradited to the United States.
Maduro has been indicted.
So I thought I had read something about Cuba.
Like Castro wasn't like involved in it,
but he was allowing for short, for a period of time,
he allowed planes to land or fly through.
Fly through.
airspace and then
caught up with him and then he was like
okay we're done with that. Yeah. Yeah. He didn't
want to get caught up with that but he would tolerate some
things but not on the island I said because he
didn't want give the United States a chance
to break him in because it happens
to world leaders all over. They get involved in the
drug game. It's a conspiracy against us
in the United States and we've
had the Kaysal and we extraded these guys
and bring him over. And El Chapo
is a perfect example of what happened to him
when he finally got extradited and now
he is in the Supermax and
in Florence, Colorado. And he was a very, very powerful guy and not so much. So I'm kind of
that fascinating view, front line, right? I'm meeting a lot of people because we make a lot of
seizures. So I'm networking with the FBI. I'm networking with ATF, especially DEA, customs. At a time
we're a department of treasury, and after 9-11, everything changes, right? You know, everybody changes.
ATF will end up going to justice. Customs will go to Department of Homeland Security. It would leave
Treasury. So a lot of things change. We're making a lot of good seizures. Once that were kind of
strange were like people who would swallow, like the pellets. Yeah. The swallowers. We would get a ton of
that. I mean, it is really, I mean, we got a lot, while a lot also got through. And it's really
sad because some of these people were peasants, right? They would get used or they say, if you don't
do it, and these are the cartels, they go on these villages, right? And they pretty much
forced these guys to do it or they're going to hurt your family, kill the family.
Some got paid.
I mean, I found it, the guys who went, let's say, if you were from, you know, Miami or you were from Puerto Rico and you end up flying to, you know, Kali or something like that, you said for three or four days, like, like, why are you there?
What was your purpose of your trip, right?
And the purpose of the trip was to swallow these pellets.
And I got really good at it.
I mean, you could easily have two or three pounds of cocaine in you or heroin.
Heroin really started picking up in the 90s with the Colombians, right?
And that's a lot of money, a lot of dope in there.
But the problem with that
is something if it leaks
It's a big plane
It's so pure
You're not going to survive
So we get calls a lot of people are dead on arrival
They're on the planes
We got to clear them up
It's not easy to pass either
So if you can't pass this stuff
Fast enough
Even when we catch them
We would have to take them to the hospital
MIA and give them these laxatives
And it still takes a while to pass it
These cartel members
If you make it
And you're in one of these hotels
Which happens all the time
You can't pass the stuff fast enough
that put a bull in your head
they'll gut you
and they'll take the stuff out
so a lot of times
they were lucky that we caught them
because it was not
not good stuff for them
and even then sometimes
they still need surgery
stuff wouldn't come out
I mean it's it's really
it's risky
it's sad
it's horrible
see these people
and this is something
I'm seeing firsthand
you know
a guy who almost I say
man this is the war on drugs
this is how it looks like
this is what's going on
it becomes normal and natural
you feel bad
because people are being used
right
It's much sexier from Don Johnson's point of view.
For the Don Johnson point of view, it's much sexier.
He's got the Ferrari.
He got the Ferrari, which is cool.
He folds up, remember he would fold up the suit.
Do you remember the jacket?
Oh, yeah.
Yeah.
He had the cool colors, right?
Yeah.
So far, your version of it sucks.
The version is work.
Right.
That, yeah.
A lot of work.
That's true.
It's that glamorous, but you're satisfied, at least you're stopping that from going to
somebody else that's going to maybe hurt their life, that part there.
So you see a lot of that.
Miami, it's just a ton of that.
They'll put it in the stems of flowers.
I mean, talk about the detail of work, right?
They'll howl them out and fill them all up.
That's impossible.
I mean, it's really hard unless we had intelligence or a great dog to really hit that
because the x-rays are hard to reach.
So they would do crazy ways you could imagine to smuggle stuff in.
they were hollow out tiles
you know for roofing
I put a kilo in each one
I wrote a I wrote a story about a guy
that's what they did
they had the concrete
pallets and concrete tiles that they were
open them in and came in with pallets
yes
that's a level of corruption
because that's not really going to
we're supposed to go
that's going to get ripped off
and let's go to other places
so that's how corrupt it was
80s and 90s and beyond
and things have changed now
and I'll talk to a little about that
what happens
The collapse, you know, Escobar was killed, the collapse of the Midian Cali cartels,
and then the Mexican cartels stepping up and working with the FARC,
which is now changed, even they change now, and now they have a different name.
And they're working with them.
They bring the Coke to them, and Mexico takes care of all distribution.
They handle it from there on.
They take it all.
They don't have to worry about that.
You just make it, we take care of it.
We go into Colombia, so the Mexicans pretty much are running Colombia in Central America.
They're not just in Mexico.
They're all over the region.
And then, of course, in top of that,
you have a collapse with the communism and socialism that's taken over the region,
which really paralyzes the whole country.
That's why we really have to keep an eye at what's going on in there.
So I made a lot of contacts, and I said, you know what, this is cool.
I don't mind doing this kind of work, but I wouldn't mind.
I dealt with a lot of agents, investigators, to take it to a next level, which is what you do as an agent.
I mean, you're not stuck, I'm not stuck to the airport now.
As an agent, I get to go all over the country, all over the world, right?
Make my cases, but there are probable cause and stuff like that.
I networked a lot with FBI, ATF, D-EA, and Customs.
You know, it makes sense since I was ready with Customs.
I would just go over as an agent, right, since I worked a lot with these guys.
But they didn't want to give up a lot of their inspectors because they know it's hard to fill those positions.
So they didn't want to hire.
So I had to go with other agencies and put in for them because it's not fair to me.
I wanted to be an agent.
I wanted to be an investigator.
I want to do other things.
So eventually ATF was the fastest one to pick me up.
You know, within that time within Department of Treasury, I get picked up within.
And then a year later, at 2000, I get picked up as an ATF agent and more in Tampa, Florida.
Nice.
For clarity purposes, so here's what, you know, because just this is what I understand.
So, and I only understand this because I've written several stories.
I wrote a story called American Narco.
And so it, so you're saying like, right, as a custom agent, like you find this, you find the drugs.
And you're like, okay, then you're notifying somebody else because.
and then they're setting that
trying to either follow that
that you know the that that drug
shipment and bust the guys
is that it because
let me give you an example
I had a what the story I wrote
they had shipped in marijuana
in these tiles
and they allowed the shipment like they
picked they delivered the shipment
and these guys loaded it into their
warehouse sat it there for like a week
and there was a tracking device
sure
inside the thing. And so they start
unpacking the whole thing and suddenly
there's this black box with
a little light on it and these
wires and they're like, oh shit, they throw
it, they run, you know, but of course by that
point they're pulling up and they
the gig is up. Yeah, they bust them like
two days later. They come and raid their house or something,
their houses and stuff. But so
at this point with customs, you're just saying
hey, here's what we found and they're doing
the rest of that. You wanted to actually be the guy
to go to next level.
Right. Okay. Yeah.
Well, I just don't find what the next level is.
Yeah, because they're customs inspectors, right?
That's the term.
I think it's changed now, but the term used to be customs inspectors,
but you had arrest authority and you did everything else.
And then there's the agents, the criminal investigators that go and you give them,
hey, I just had this huge seizure right now with this fish, right?
850 pounds.
All right.
We can sometimes help set up surveillance within the airport, right?
Close to the airport, the warehouse.
But if it's going, let's say, to New York City, right?
well they're taking it from there yeah they're there when i go on new york city
i i got to stay and do my job and do the next shift and get some more dope this coming in
because you know what it doesn't stop they they they knew if they they they factor those losses in
because that's part doing business right with the columbian cartels it just they just keep on bringing
it in okay hey they got this one guess what we just got out 4,000 in and and that doesn't that
it's it's good so i wish so
I picked up with ATA.
But you don't know, right?
You take a chance.
Sometimes they may say to the southwest border.
Sometimes you might have to go to New York City or a big city where it's really expensive.
I got fortunate enough I stayed in Florida.
I went school like I said, San Luis University up just north of Tampa and where you are,
Pascold County.
And I started working from there.
And I was fortunate that group I started, a lot of guys worked undercover.
Because you can't just go into undercover work cold like that, right?
If you do that, you're going to get hurt on it.
I mean, you can watch all the Miami Vice you want and watch all the TV shows and Donnie Brasco.
And that was also very popular back in the 90s.
Remember Donny Brasco with Al Pacino and Johnny Depp?
Yeah, you know, you watch all this stuff, but it's one thing on television, right?
Like you said, one thing, the real world.
And the real world is you've got to know how they can be.
Like I said, I grew up in Catholic schools, right?
And now I have to learn this world.
I learned a little bit for the drug world, which is fascinating.
but now I've got to work face to face
under cover where I pretend to be like these guys
and how to fool some of these guys
who are hardened professional criminals
that's all they do and make them think I'm one of them
because I'm nothing like it.
I was going to say which is
you know like you said
you watch it on TV and people think
oh I could do that no you can't
they spot you in a second
I used to joke around
you know with the guys in prison
like you know they just be walking
and they see me and they say
Hey, Cox, what's up?
And I go, I can't call it.
And they just start laughing.
They go, stop.
I go, what do you talk?
I did that good.
They go, no, it's even worse when you do it.
They're like, you're like, you're not even close.
You can't come close to pulling out.
And you can't.
You just can't fake that.
You know, it's hard.
It's a real, you really have to become an actor to be able to fake.
That's true.
To be able to fake that.
You have to be good at it.
It takes time.
It takes time.
You've got to practice it.
And it takes years.
So I had good mentors, right?
I watch a lot and you develop your own technique, right?
You watch these guys.
I spoke Spanish, so that was an advantage.
I make sure my English were broken.
I didn't sound like that.
I just came back a coup of the as a year, right?
Right.
So you have to come up and let my hair really long.
I think I seen some pictures.
I don't know if you saw them yet.
I haven't seen him yet.
Yeah, I'll see them.
I'll check him out.
All right.
I say some pictures.
My hair was long, at a big beard.
I didn't want to get all in the tats.
some guys said because when I got out of it I knew I'll be done with it right I want to go back to
who I was I because I don't want to be saying oh great I got this now people who are what the
heck's wrong all this said that was never me I never really cared for it that wasn't my thing
so I wanted to think enough the beard's okay the hair was long enough you do the accents
you get to know the culture getting all these guys it was easier to deal with people that they
were not Spanish speakers you tell your story what you're working with you say hey these
families are looking the cartels are looking for guns
Right? Because they are. And my job here is to be so ATF. It's to buy a lot of guns. And these guys, I don't want to fill any paperwork, right? Because I don't want to show up in no shop. Put my information in there, right? So these guys will sell me guns off the street, untraceables. And you pay a premium for that because that's what you want. And a lot of these guys have horrific.
Stop. Do you know how fast you were going? I'm going to have to write you a ticket to my new movie, The Naked Gun.
Liam Nissan. Buy your tickets now. I get a free chili dog. Tilly dog, not included.
naked gun tickets on sale now August 1st criminal histories so I deal a lot with repeat vinyl offenders
I dealt a lot with gang members are armed drug traffickers international firearms traffickers
domestic firearms traffickers I dealt with armed home invaders cases for murder for hires
so that was ATF's niche what does ATF do alcohol tobacco firearms well it's a small A for alcohol
a small tea for tobacco a huge F and immediate E for explosives so
we do a lot of gun cases.
You know, say a lot of guns.
And that's what ATF is.
And so I found that fascinating.
And I knew something about guns, but, man, I became an expert on pretty much a gun control
act, NFA National Firearms Act, and all the different weapons from machine guns, silencers,
pipe bombs.
You know, ATF, sometimes called the old training, ATF stands for all the fun because we
would do a lot of shooting.
I mean, I trained in handguns from pistols revolvers, my M4, which is a short, short barrel
rifle, right? I had shotguns. Yeah, something short bro. Shotguns also we were shooting. So we train
a lot of different weapons. And then we also went familiarized in case to come across different machine
guns. We know what we're doing, right? Got to make sure and check all that stuff out. So that's what
we did, AT up. And if something's early enough, you have to cut your teeth. You know, one of the guys
I worked with, he was Puerto Rican. And he was involved back in the 80s in a shootout where he had
a sick 9 millimeter. The bad guy has 6 9mm. He fired the round.
and his round went into his gun
and plucked the barrel.
So he's like this and the run goes like this.
It's like one in a million.
Damn, and Hyaliyah back in the 80s.
So it can get ugly and wild.
So we had a good time.
We had some good stories and I learned a lot from him
and he'd been Puerto Rican and I saw
how he tackled things and all that.
So I developed my own style.
We worked a lot together and then I grew up
and then you know what also helps
having good informants.
You have a good informant.
have a good informants, which way I developed a lot of these guys, they can pretty much,
you walk on water, it's that goal. You say, hey, he vouchers for you. There's no more questions.
Let's do business. He said, you're the guy. Okay, man, this is what you want. No question is
asked. And boom, boom, boom, boom, this is what these guys do. But if you have a bad informant
who's playing both sides, it'll destroy your investigation. You have to have accountable.
So you really, and once I like to, once I have the introduction, I cut them out.
Yeah.
And I want to do with a drama, with an informant, they can ruin your case.
I put too much hard work because ATF is a very smaller outfit than the FBI or DEA, right?
We have less than 3,000 agents, I think 2,800, right?
FBI has four times that, enormous size.
So we just can't delegate, hey, I need you to do surveillance.
I need you to do undercover.
I have to do everything.
I'm the undercover.
I'm the case agent, right?
I deal with property
I deal with my own intelligence workup
I wear all the different hats
because you have to because we're a smaller outfit
if you want to do the bigger cases
now if you want small you don't do that
right I was going to say the informant thing
I'm researching a story right now
and it's like it's funny you know
you do all the incident reports
you read through the incident reports
and the first thing they do like literally
obviously this guy got busted
you know he got he got busted
I think he got no he got busted for
I think it was for a gun, actually.
And then he goes and he makes them,
they have him make a couple of meth buys,
you know, and just, he's just wired.
Like, he's just wired.
They're just controlled buys.
Then they have him eventually introduce, you know, his boss,
which is the undercover.
Then the undercover goes with him on a couple of buys.
Sure.
And just the undercover buys.
And then they cut the informant.
out and you know and to me like having been in prison I realize that the problem is like if you're a whole
you can't let him keep buying you can't let the the informant keep buying because first of all
he's unreliable he's got a record and then what happens if he gets busted for something else
you know you can't put him on the stand like it was since then you've been busted for this and this
like and he has a huge incentive to lie and the agent doesn't so you know you want to look at the stand
you want it to be the agent.
That's right.
The clean jacket.
He introduced me.
Here's what I did.
I bought a kilo over the course of the next month.
Yeah.
That's the best way to do it.
You have to because, and unfortunately, some of these guys have drug addictions, right?
Yeah.
And they keep on doing stuff.
They get messed up and they're not right where they're high, right?
And they do stupid things.
So those are the factors you've got to get into.
That's why I was fortunate.
Some people don't want to do undercover work.
That's for everybody.
I just, I liked it.
I really decided I, I kind of like playing the role.
I like, and I dealt with all kinds of people.
I just told you about the variety, but I also the variety of people from different Hispanic groups, different blacks, different other European groups, right?
A variety, a variety of people.
And because it worked and what I was doing and makes sense.
It's based on what's really going on.
The cartels have people.
They need guns, right?
And by the way, not only buying the guns, but I also, like, they're selling some drugs on the side.
what else do you have for personal or for other use so i buy doping guns sometimes you come across
some other stuff hey i have also some body armory looking for the body yeah i'll think some ballistic
armway it's amazing what people start telling you and what they do and what else it leads to
hey i'm also doing this too hey this guy is also into uh explosives or into this oh hey this guy's
selling lots cigarettes without tax stamps you know we do those cases too a lot less but yeah
we do all that stuff so it really opens up and people talk and they feel confident with you you get a lot of
for me. And I had everything, like I said, for trial purposes, I want to make it like a movie, right?
I wanted the jury to feel comfortable. First of all, I had to make the prosecutor for a comfortable.
And once he feels comfortable, they're the jury.
Do you hear that?
Yes.
Can you hold on a second?
Here.
I'm sorry.
No way.
I don't know. Let's just shirk.
I don't even know what that is, but here's the funny thing about it.
This is since I'm speaking with you is.
my wife's
ex-boyfriend
was arrested
for
he had a dispute with a guy
over I'm pretty sure
I think it was drugs or something
and he made a bomb
and left it for the guy
it didn't go off
oh my gosh that's crazy
but he ended up going to jail for it
and like he's on like the no fly list
And so every time I get a package and I walk out, my first thought, when I see the package is,
Yeah, I would too.
Please let this guy.
Please let this really be from Amazon.
And I keep, you know, it's so funny.
Gosh.
Sometimes I get deliveries.
It's like it's just there.
And I always, I don't unwrap it.
My girlfriend comes and I'm like, you're unlocking it.
You're opening that.
It's not a comp.
A lot of people get into making these pipe bombs, right?
and they tighten them up in there but it's also very dangerous if you don't know how you do it right
they count some with the flit too early and explode so they have damage it's it's very volatile
i actually had a i actually had a friend that was making a pipe bomb when he was like 15 16 years old
and it exploded blew his hands off the shrapnel that like he bled out within a minute oh no but
but he he died and you know just a kid just being stupid you know thought it was cool had made a couple
small ones and just playing never once thinking to himself like hey this could be it
you understand what you're playing with right like this isn't a joke no it isn't like playing
with like firecrackers and stuff like that it's even you might lose your finger or something
you're not careful with it but a pipe bomb that's no joke and then these guys get really
nasty with it some of them put like shrapnel inside to really do some serious serious damage
so yeah so that's the kind of case i wanted to do i wanted to make sure for the jury and for the
prosecutor that we had good video, right? I wanted to make sure it is clear. It's like watching a
movie. I wanted the jury to see, okay, this is the evidence, watch the movie. And that's a big
difference you see between the federal side and state and local, right? Especially with the
local sometimes, it gets a little bit different. Federal, we have a little more time to take our time
with the case, make it the strongest case we can against as many people as possible. That's why we
have a little more time. And it's different. That's why I like the federal system.
We have a chance to really make the cases bigger and stronger.
And we have good prosecutors.
A lot of them are career prosecutors, and they really know how to make good cases.
So that's what I did.
I wanted to make sure undercover-wise, I had.
And sometimes with informants, there's always issues with the equipment sometimes.
They could be messed up and everything else.
They're not professionals, right?
They didn't go to school for this.
They don't understand case law.
They don't understand entrapment, right?
You want to make sure people understand, you know, this is what they do.
This is what they're involved in.
You don't want to bring someone who is not involved.
in this kind of work. They're actively doing this. They're predisposed. This is what they do. And they have
the history of doing this. Right. So these are all the factors you got to come. As a professional,
you bring that to a table. And informants are, I'd say it, necessary evil, right? Because they are
the eyes and ears in the street. I can't live in the street, right? The reality is, I pretend to.
Right. And then I go back to the office. I get a lot of paperwork. I got to go to the prosecutor. I got to do with evidence. I got to
talking, give a briefing. So it's a whole different world and you just show up. But the good thing
about them, even though I would cut them out, remember their eyes and ears, they can still tell you,
hey, I heard so-and-so has some doubts about you. I need to tighten this up a little bit. When you
come back with me and let's have another conversation with them, make sure you vouch for me and make
sure, hey, this is the guy, man. There's nothing to worry about. So those are the things. You keep
them a distance, but you still have, make sure that they're listening what's going on. That's
important because the last thing you want to do is get the cut off guard and I was fortunate
enough I mean there's always some hairy close moments right but you know you're gonna have and
I'll give an example and I put it in my book ATF undercover which I talk about and this happens
and I did a lot of work in Pascolle County and I had an undercover apartment and Westie
Chapel I had I live I know I know I did I used to live there Westchapel then move down
south when I first I'll start working out there a lot cheaper than
Tampa when I've in 2000 I know what 54 is complete different than it was 20 some years
ago well I live all I live off 56 you know 54 turns into 56 so but yeah it's even further like
it's a 15 minute drive to 75 from where I live it's like living in the Truman show though
I mean it's the houses are everything's brand new every everything's underground you know all
the houses look seven I mean it's it's it's a great it's a great it's a
great area like everybody it's funny on on my street there's two sheriff's deputies there's
like an insurance salesman there's a couple of bankers like the only i'm the riffraffed on the
street so you're not 56 you're not too far from land of lakes either then no no very very
close yeah michael i don't i guess yeah i got to i got to know pascal
really well from making the cases
so I got to know
I don't know how much you know Pascoe
but I got to know all the way to New Port Richie
Port Richie the Hudson area
even across New York Tarpen Springs
and going to Zephyr Hills
So this takes place
I'll say this story here
This happens in Zephyr Hills
People who don't know
Zephyr Hills are Dade City
At the time I was working
I would say it was back in 2000 to 2012
And this story takes place
about 2009, 2010
So this is the Dade City
Pasco I'm talking about. And the Mexicans were picking it up, right? They're moving a lot of
meth. There's no more meth labs. There's still some, but now they're bringing a lot of the
meth from Mexico. They're just piping it in. And that whole era became a big pipeline,
which I was saying. I think a lot of drugs and a lot of Mexicans still out there, which
this is where everything's changed a lot. And this is a trailer. I meet with this guy. He's a career
criminal, drug trafficker, right? Hand him forward to make an introduction. First time me and him
or sit in the car together.
I meet him off 301
and we're going to drive
to these trailers, shady trailers,
predominantly Hispanic, right?
And he's talking to me,
he's telling me his history,
he said, man, yeah, I'll get through these guns
and I'll get through these guns and I'll do.
But I used to move a lot of Coke, a lot of product.
I was moving two or three
easy kilos a week.
I was like, okay, so I said,
if you tell me, I mean, he just got out,
he wants to get back into the game.
This is what he does.
I said, okay.
So he took me there.
He's a non-Spanish speaker.
and he takes me to the trailers and he said hey this is my guy here he has the guns some guys give
heads up a little nervous about this they say sometimes guys who buy guns a lot are feds i said no
i'm no fed of course you gotta deny that you got me got me in there it's over let me take you back
home no that's that's that's and he goes in there and i talked to his guy who's there his
spanish ball head right and we're talking a little bit in spanish is testing me out which is fine
and he goes, he goes in a trailer, so him and I are sitting outside in my truck,
and I see more people, we get out of the car, and he's on one side, I'm on the other side,
and I can see there are a lot more people going the other side of the trailer.
A lot more people going inside.
He can't see that, I can see that.
So I can see that.
So you're going to have instincts and say, listen, I just met you guys, the deal we're supposed to be doing is for an AK-47,
with 75-round drum, two-glock pistols, almost an ounce of meth, for a little over $3,000, right?
And I don't feel comfortable.
He goes, hey, listen, the stuff's inside, but these guys don't want to bring it out.
So I don't know what you do, he should wrap it up.
You bring in the car real quick and we're done.
I get the hell out of here, right?
And he said, but he wants to come inside.
And I was like, and I know there's more people coming in.
And he doesn't know that I know that already.
So I'm almost like, no, dude, I don't want to meet anybody.
I said, no, it's fine.
And I said, okay, what do you give me the money?
And I'll get, I'll get it for you.
I said, no, I'm not doing.
What's going to happen is you're going to walk with $3,000.
and I'm going to have a bigger headache to deal with to chase you and everybody else who just stole
my money, which that was going to be a rip.
So I said, I'll give you five minutes.
I'm going to sit in the car, either you bring it or I'm out of here.
Because that's the beauty of being the case agent and the undercover is that I don't feel the pressure.
Let's say I was just the undercover and I'm working for somebody else working on their case, right?
Something you feel the pressure you want to make it happen.
For me, I'm both.
And if it happens, great.
If not, I got a lot of work.
I got other people I'm dealing with.
I got you today.
I got someone else tomorrow, right?
So I don't ever felt that kind of pressure
or I had to make it happen
because I want to go home at the end.
That's the most important thing.
No deal is there.
Five minutes later, a Honda Odyssey pulls up.
Guy pops up with an AK-47.
Same for a round drum.
So him and I talk.
He sells me the gun.
I take a look at it.
I gave him the money for that.
And then he has a backpack,
another friend had brought him.
And he sells me the Glockes with the crystal map.
I saw, hey, dude, next time, just keep it between us.
And I don't want to deal with this circus next time.
And you understand.
And you understood that.
So what, what, I think it's testing me.
Right.
So why would you go, why, if, if the AK wasn't in there, they showed up later, like, why am I going in the trail?
Like, why, what do you think they were trying to get you in the trailer for?
I think they want to rip me off.
Oh, okay.
I think they want to rip me off.
So, okay.
I think they want to rip me off.
I think they want to take my $3,000, $3,000, $4,000, and hit me.
He said, hey, this could be easy hit right here, and we don't have to sell anything.
Because you don't know.
Some of these gang members, by the way.
These aren't average.
So these are a trailer, shitty trailer, and Zephyr Hills.
There's a lot of gangs in that area.
I want you to understand, a lot of Hispanic gangs, a lot of gang members, sent a lot of meth, a lot of heroin, armed to teeth.
I don't think of Defer Hills and like that at all.
I mean, it's very, you know, rule.
Like, you know what I'm saying?
It seems like it's...
Read my book, and I'll give example after example of that area.
Go in there and stuff like that.
It is hot.
And that's when I was there.
I think it's kind of worse, what I've seen, because the cartels have just gone stronger.
When I was there, they were coming up.
You know, Chapo was good.
Senloa is strong.
But now you have the rise of C.J.N.G.
Yeah.
Alisco New Generation cartel.
Yeah.
Major rival for Sinaloa, right?
El Menchel.
He's now the big player,
Servantes, right?
And they're going to war.
And all these guys,
you know, El Chapo, El Chappo,
give your audience a little background.
Well, these guys came on absolute poverty.
I mean, they were selling avocados
and oranges in the street
and now have risen to me big drug lords
where their assets are over $50 billion.
That's according to the Mexican government and the U.S. government.
So you tell me they're not making drug lords in Mexico
when these guys got, and then most of these guys
are illiterate. They dropped out of school when they're in the fourth or fifth grade, right?
But what are they good at? They're good at killing. Yeah. And they're not afraid of kill.
Yeah, they're brutal. They're brutal.
Say, uh, is in El Mio, which was the Chapo's, who basically started the Sinaloa, right?
With, and then El Chapo kind of came in right after, but I was going to say, El Mio, like,
I heard that he still drives like an old, he's, he's worth, you know, billions and billions or,
you know, whatever, and he still drives an old pickup truck. That's smart.
around town like you know like he's not you know he lives in a you know different places and you're
same thing with el chavo he's always all he's really he's really good at survive he was up until
the united states got him you know but he was really good at at surviving you know through brutality
and just forth thinking like always really that escape route always be thinking don't all keep
staying in the same place change change locations you know that's what el el chavis
was nicknamed also as Rapido, the quick one.
He was the master of the tunnels.
Right.
I remember that great tunnel he had the second time he was captured underneath that that prison?
Unbelievable.
Now, you know what's funny about that?
I had read that, like, the area that was where the prison is, it was actually the new generation
that was in charge of digging, even though they're rivals of digging the tunnel.
But at that time, I think at that time they were still, 2015, yeah, they began to go a little bit sideways.
Not as bad as now, but it would get a lot worse.
But what a corruption.
That's one of the things I talk about is that we don't have a equal partner in the war on drugs.
The corruption in Mexico is so unbelievable.
And that's the reason I bring that up because during the trial for El Chapo in New York,
it was brought to this government witnesses, testified that El Chapo offered
this is before Lopez Obrador,
the president before that with
Peña Nietzsche, he
offered him of a bribe.
Nieta won allegedly, according to court documents,
he wanted a $250
million payout, so we won't
look for El Chapo. They said, you don't worry about it.
You can be a fugitive for another 15 years, right?
He said, no, I'll pay $100 million.
And allegedly, witnesses said
testified, he took it.
He took it. So if the
top of Mexican government is on the take,
then we have no chance.
And this is what the battles were fighting.
You know, you see case after case after general, attorney general.
I mean, just keep on getting arrested for being involved in money laundering and involved in all this stuff here.
And this guy Helmensch out of CJNG, he was former law enforcement.
He was out of Halisco, right?
He was involved.
A lot of these guys know the game.
They know it.
And he's the same way we just talk about at Mayo when I was reading Guadalajara, because now it's the battle for Guadalajara, which is where a lot of stuff is going on.
But he's looked like he's won because they were trying to do a split.
You know how everything is.
Everybody wants to be king, right?
Yeah.
One day you're the king, they want to take you out, right?
Almencho had guys, he brought in that was former Millennium Cartel guys at split, right?
And they want to take over.
And this guy's name is escaped right now.
But if you look at the videos, he has him tortured, right, wrapped up, kill him, and then left the park bench is this is what happens when people betray.
Trey El Mentional, right, and stuff like that.
So right now it seems like he still has the lockdown in Guadalajara, which is very important
for him.
And he's the same guy that you're talking about, Amayo.
He likes to live modestly.
Not like Escobar, right?
I lived in that big palace, right?
Everybody knew where he lived and where he was out, but he brought everybody.
These guys have to look key.
El Chapo's bounty was five million, right, at his peak when he escaped the second time.
after Sean Penn and Kate Del Castillo interviewed him.
If you ever seen that interview and video, man, you guys need to check that out.
Roadstow magazine.
That's great.
Unbelievable stuff he said.
I can't believe Sean Penn did that because you don't know.
Yeah, that, you know, listen, they don't care.
El Chapo didn't even know who he was.
Like he's probably thinking, well, my celebrity will probably help help me a little bit or keep me safe a little bit.
No, it won't.
He didn't even know what you are.
I would not have done that
I could have got really ugly
and he almost caught him after the interview
because they were tracking
the mixed-ed actress Castillo's phone
US authorities were tracking
and just missed him barely
just barely
it will take a few more years
to if I catch him again
and they will not escape the third time
not escape a third time
they obviously realized like
look we're just not going to be able to keep this guy here
we have to send him to the United States
and that's so sad because you know what
now we have the costs right
now the US tax dollar has to pay
for keeping this guy for life, feeding him, the expenses, illegal, everything we pay because
the Mexican government is so corrupt, they couldn't do it themselves. And it's case after case
like this. Very sad. I think, you know, it's funny. Like I, first of all, people are always, you know,
oh, the, you know, like the U.S. government's corrupt. Like, look, there's some corruption here
and there. You have no idea what it's like in other countries. That's true. In other countries,
And not just that, it's like, look, you're paying, you're a police officer in Mexico making
$6 or $700 a month.
Nothing.
That's nothing.
Like, I get it.
You shouldn't, you know, you shouldn't be involved in corruption.
You should be, but it's hard not to be, not only for the money, but it's dangerous.
Like, if you end up being a cop, like it's, it's kind of like the, the, the, what was it,
shoot, I was going to say what, there was the movie about it.
El Cholo was his name.
El Cholo was a guy who, his rival,
they got wrapped up and executed.
Look up his name.
El Cholo, look at the video.
You see the guy from CJ&G behind him in masks,
and next see you know,
he ends up in a park van.
She's the pictures, wrapped up,
he was tortured and said,
this is what happened to El Cholo, the traitor.
He don't play.
He don't play.
It's just a horrible situation in general.
So, you know,
when you were talking about like the higher up
upper echelon of the government,
I have a buddy named Juan Sanchez, who was in Venezuela, right?
He was a Venezuelan citizen, came to the United States, started doing real estate, doing very well.
2008 financial crisis hits.
His subdivisions, the development start going under, he needs money.
So he goes to Venezuela, and he starts pitching to Venezuelans like, hey, you should invest.
And so people in the government invest.
basically the equivalent of the U.S., the head, like the U.S. Attorney here, right?
The U.S. Attorney General in Venezuela ends up investing with him.
Multiple people in the government investing, but he finds out later when Juan gets caught.
The money they're investing is money they're laundering for Mexico.
For the cartels.
For the cartels through Venezuela.
They give it to Juan.
Juan loses the money.
Oh, no.
And now they're threatening to kill him.
He actually goes back to Venezuela.
They kidnap him for four or five days.
He eventually escapes, gets on a plane, flies back to the United States.
But when he gets caught, he eventually, obviously, he cooperates.
He cooperates.
And the FBI comes in and the CIA comes in.
He said they never said CIA, but they never showed badges, anything.
My lawyer told me, I think they were CIA.
They come in and they say, listen, we looked at your phone.
we see phone numbers and names in here
of people that we've had indicted
from Venezuela that are in the government
so they start asking him
you know this guy, you know this guy
he goes yeah I know that guy
and they said we've had him
indicted on a sealed indictment
we can't get him but you know
so they asked him what happened
he tells him and he says
do you want me to get him to come to the United States
and they go
yeah but he's he would never do that
he's not that stupid
and they go and Juan goes
no no he's that stupid
stupid. He goes, you don't get to become, you don't get that high in the government without being, you don't get it through brains, you get through brutality.
It's true.
So he contacts him because the guy had asked him to try and get him a travel permit in the United States so he could bring his family into the United States to visit Disney World.
So he contacts him, sends him an email.
No, no, not side it.
But his his visa had been denied by the state department.
He said, all you have to do is have the U.S.
U.S. Embassy write him a letter saying that it was a mistake and it's been approved and he can come.
They wrote him a letter.
He said literally, we're talking about three days later.
He's on a plane, flies into Miami, and they arrest him in the airport in Miami.
With his family thinking they're going to Disney.
Disney will.
No.
No.
He's going to the slimmer now.
You know, what happened is he rolled over on a bunch of people.
He ended up getting like four years or something and got back out.
Oh, did it?
Massive, massive indictment.
These guys do.
Like, at that level, you got to cooperate.
You got flip.
You got a turn.
And one thing I've noticed, all these guys, too, because if you don't, you get the hammer.
You get slammed.
Yeah, the most time.
So, you know, there's a.
Yeah.
Now, talking about Venezuela, man.
Venezuela, it was Nicolas Maduro now.
It's a narco state.
It has become a, now.
He's not a communist anymore.
remember him Hugo Travis
this guy's no communist
this guy it's all about making money
but the people suffer
he keeps them suffering
this guy's a dictator
he's a narco dictator
he's been indicted by our government
and to bring it over
but you know what upset means a little politics here
but we'll talk a little bit of everything
my book's all about this
but Joe Biden threw him a lifeline
administration to see if Chevron
go back there and get oil pumped up
because we don't want to deal with the Russians
Right? We're tired of the Saudis.
With the stuff he's done,
Maham-Benzabin, so
it's like we want to work with the Venezuelans
was all the stuff, this guy's done?
He said, that's atrocities to his people.
If you're not about him,
you're done. And that's why
Miami, you know, has been transformed
with the Venezuela's coming over.
Like the Cubans did, you know, from the 60s
on, the Venezuelans have brought a lot
of money, Dural. The only from the middle of South
Florida has changed immensely
with the Venezuelans.
But a lot of the money has come over, transformed it.
So that's what you're seeing.
And people say, well, man, America is, yeah, in the United States has issues.
I live in Virginia now, and I was fortunate enough to, I like to travel like history.
My background, you know, I told you political science and history.
I went to Mount Vernon, and I've gone to Monticello, Mount Vernon's Washington's home.
And then Monticello, Jefferson's home.
And I visited there.
And even it's true, 1797, you know, Washington had just finished his second term, will not run for
third term, does not want to be seen like King George or a dictator. He says, even then it applies
today. We had issues, you know, there's no perfect democracy. It's not a perfect system, but
it's the best that's out there. And I think it applies today the same thing. It's not perfect
people. We're not having a perfect system, but it's the best that's out there. Trust me, I've
studied politics internationally, the corruption. Yeah, we're going to have corrupt officials.
We're going to have problems, but it's the best that's out there. So that's where we're at with
with the corruption in Mexico, but the Mexico government, it's probably worse. I think it's stronger
than the Colombians were because their reach is all over Central America, it's all over South
America, and they have a lot of people in the United States. And they're reaching not just in
customs officials, not just with politicians, but you see it deeper and deeper in our country
because the money is so big and so out there. And the corruption is big. It's corrupt here,
but they're corrupting here.
So what are our solutions?
We need to deal with the problem with that treatment.
We need people to get off it.
We need people to work on their addictions because it's just going to get worse.
And they want to, like Maduro said,
like I said, they're weaponizing cocaine to help destroy this country.
They think it's going to fall like a rotten apple from within.
People are going to fall and break.
And that's what they're trying to do.
So it's funny.
So I wish, why can't I remember?
remember the name of this this book i used to know it too and let trust me somebody in the comment
section will will tell me the name of the book it was actually came out probably 50 probably 10 years
ago maybe 15 years ago and it's about there's a like a an evangelist right like a like a like a
preacher super rich preacher his son gets caught he has a security detail right like he's got
several of these mega churches he has a security detail and one of the the leads
security agent or security person in charge of his security detail is a former DEA agent that
had to retire because of brutality like he had been caught multiple times like in you know he was
been written up he finally retires well the the the I'll call him the preacher the preacher's son
ends up getting caught like smoking I don't know smoking doing drugs or something one of his friend
ODs on coke or something I forget what it was but he he's upset and he ends up vent
to this former DEA agent.
So his security,
you know,
a head of security,
so his head of security,
he's like,
he says,
how much money do I give,
you know,
every month,
every year.
He's like,
oh,
like a million dollars
to these programs.
And he goes,
he goes,
is it even helping?
He's like,
no,
it's not going,
this is going to do nothing.
And he says,
well,
what can end this?
And he said,
well,
you know,
it's so out of control
that the government can't,
they just can't,
it's everything they do
to try and keep it stemmed.
If you could get it,
pulled back a little bit, then they could probably get a better handle on it. And he said,
there's an idea we used to kick around at the DEA. And he said, well, what was that? He said,
if you poisoned the drug supply, then the, the, the, the hardcore, he said, the casual users aren't
the problem. He says, casual users would just stop. He said, but the drug addicts, he said,
they would have to seek some kind of rehabs. Any rehab, yeah. Right. And so they end
up, he ends up going to somewhere and who knows where Brazil, I forget where it was, but some place, and he ends up finding this chemist and he ends up getting these mushrooms that allows them to poison the drug supply, right, like Coke. And he, of course, he gets a bunch of retired DEA agents, you know, friends of his to help him. There's a group of like six of them. And he ends up poisoning a whole bunch of drugs. And what happens is the hardcore users, they inhale it. And
And then if they do enough of it, it ends up breaking down and shutting down their livers and they die.
So they end up doing this on a massive scale.
Oh, my gosh.
And listen, it was, and of course, what happens is it works.
But the problem is what he tells a preacher is like, you know, there will be some people will get sick.
There may be a few deaths.
And he knows the reality is there's going to be thousands.
And there ends up being tens of thousands of death because they do it on such a massive scale.
scale. And this is fiction. It's fiction. Yeah, it's fiction, but it's a great book. I mean, keep on it how much I read when I was locked up. It was this. It was just really well written, researched, you know, how much was possible. I don't know. But it was, it really, you know, and the guys got the statistics and the whole thing. And you, you really realize reading the book, like, what a massive issue it is. Oh, it is. It is. It is.
And another way to attack it was when you're seeing here,
you see in Virginia all over the country and it started with marijuana,
it's getting legalized all over the country, right?
Right.
Reational use?
You take the, because the Mexican cartels make a lot of money cultivating marijuana.
So you take that away from them.
That's going to hurt their profits a lot too.
So I think marijuana, you're seeing it,
I mean, I know Florida is just medical,
but I know Virginia got it approved for a recreational.
So it is going all over in the North Carolina.
Northeast, the Midwest, of course, the West Coast, up and down is proof of recreational.
So that's where you're seeing it. It's going that way. I think marijuana, you know,
Thomas Jefferson didn't even go marijuana in Monticello, right? Founding Fathers. I mean,
marijuana's been around for hundreds of thousands of years. People have been smoking it, right?
You know, it's not my thing. I don't like getting high. I like, you know, smoking my lungs.
But if some people, that's what they want, like cigarette smoking. I'd rather not be around it, right?
I like to eat away from that.
I don't like to be around any of that stuff here.
But some people like it.
I think the edibles now, I think are legal in every state.
It gets you high, those edibles.
Right.
Have you seen that?
That's everywhere now.
Yeah.
I mean, you know, drugs were just never my thing.
But I, but this is the thing.
I'm, I definitely agree that, you know, to me, look, if you took the money they spent
on the prison population and you made going to rehabs affordable, and you made going to rehabs affordable,
and you did more education and you legalize a lot of those substances, I think would alleviate
the problem considerably. And it would be detrimental to the cartels. Absolutely. Because then you're
taxing it here. We're making the money, right? The states and the federal system. So you have to
eliminate marijuana from being a Schedule I banned substance, right? That's the first thing. Because
you can do all the things at the state level. But if you're still a, you use marijuana, you want to buy a
firearm and an FFL, federal firearms licensee, you show prohibited.
You can't do that because you're still a drug user, right?
So if you're a drug user, you can't do that.
Marijuana is still on the list there.
So a lot of things, I know that's passed in the House of Representatives that needs to be
approved in the Senate to start making this nationwide because I've seen it firsthand.
I think we're wasting time in the judicial system, clogging judicial system,
when you have these petty cases.
ATF went after the worst of the worst, right?
The most violent.
That's what you have to focus on.
the most violent repeat offenders, armed traffickers, armed home invaders,
guys who want to commit murder for hire, you know, international traffickers,
that's gun traffickers, that's what we have to focus,
that now guys who have some weed, they want smoke, and they're doing this on the side.
I mean, all the places want to have a ZT policy, zero tolerance, that's a waste of time.
You're clogging the system on these people should be treated for health issues,
not criminal.
They shouldn't criminalize these people, in my opinion.
This is coming for guys who's been 26 years in law enforcement.
who have seen it, right?
I just think it is a waste of our tax dollars.
It's a waste of time.
And we're building more prisons.
We need to focus on,
and the court system gets overwhelmed it also.
And you don't want any of that.
So we have to be smarter.
It's marijuana.
Yes.
Hey, we learned the lesson from prohibition.
I wrote a book about it, right?
The rise of the outfit here,
the Chicago crime bosses.
And that's what made Al Capone.
That's what made these guys of violence
because it was illegal, right?
And then once we legalize it,
Well, it goes to that, and all of a sudden, the government's making the money, right?
They're getting taxed, and everybody can enjoy themselves.
You're not being criminalized for having a beer or drinking whiskey, which is, was ridiculous, right?
The same thing, in my opinion, should apply to marijuana.
The other drugs, a little bit tougher deal with, but we have to come up with solutions.
But marijuana is the first gateway, I think, with that, because, I mean, everybody in college,
you see how many people in college have to go sometimes with really bad areas to get some weed, right?
Right.
Right. End up getting hurt, robbed.
You just go to the store, right?
It's illegal.
We have to be smarter about it.
Obviously, I don't want to be around it.
I don't want to smell it because I went to Kingston for do some work for training,
and everywhere in Kingston, you could smell it.
The ganja, as they say, Gajaman, right?
It's everywhere.
I really don't, I didn't care for that smell.
That's wrong.
Kingston, in Jamaica, right?
Right, Kingston, Jamaica.
They have a lot, they grow a lot of, a lot of,
A lot of wheat.
I call it Ganja over there.
Oh, listen.
And you know, there's places in Jamaica.
You can't even go.
Oh, that's true.
I mean, the government doesn't go.
Yeah.
Like, we were, when I went to Jamaica, it's funny, I was on the run and I went to Jamaica.
And we were to have the taxi driver, he's like driving us around.
And we were like, hey, let's go here.
Let's go here.
And he was like, yeah, you can't go there.
And he was like, listen, he's like, the police don't go there.
Like, you definitely aren't going there.
We're like, we're not going there in my cab.
And it was like, wow, it's like that bad.
Like, what do you mean the police don't go? He's like, no, it's that section, that area is completely
owned and operated by, you know, this one gang to make them possible. Whoever.
Yeah. Yeah, they just had a huge arrest of, I think about five, seven years ago.
Guy's name was Coke, like from cocaine. Right. Yeah. And now, and the people in Kingston were
writing because he obviously, you know, they provide a lot of work. And, you know, it's like an
Escobar type, right? They also give a lot to the community, just like, just like Chapel did,
Guzman, they give a lot, they help a lot.
They know the little people, they want to take care of little people.
So they kind of help the little people a lot because they work for their organization
and do stuff like that.
That's the same mentality you saw out there in Kingston.
Yeah, a lot of people just want to go.
If I tell me, go to Jamaica, I was going to maybe work there as an attach.
But once I saw first half to two weeks there, how the conditions were, no way.
I wouldn't bring my family, that's for sure.
And I definitely wouldn't go to my family in Mexico because also because at the end of my career
I promoted and I went to ATF headquarters.
orders. And I worked at two years and I was helping briefing the director case with one in
command for the central region, who now is number two command for ATF right now. So that's a good
contact that I have and working and talking and briefing some of the most sensitive cases
that ATF was working. So, and then I was going to maybe transfer to Mexico, but then with
the issue with Lopez Obrador was going on, who was the president of Mexico, they renounced
are it did my community status as agents.
So you think I'm going to go to Mexico
and they don't want to carry farms.
So they don't want you armed.
They don't want you to have to be kidnapped with my family.
And I'm going to be kidnapped with my family.
I said, no way.
I said, I'm eligible to retire.
I did my time up here.
I enjoy my career.
Thank you so much.
And then I got into writing.
Right.
I did a nice trip in writing.
Well, I've been, you know,
writing like this by a year and a half now
since I've been retired.
But I used to write a lot of reports, right?
You get good and really detailed in writing a lot and a lot and a lot.
So I said, and I always have a thing for it.
I like reading.
I'm always fascinated with history and political science and current events.
I'm always reading information.
So that's what a lot of my books are.
You know, I got fiction, nonfiction, but I do a lot of politics.
I do about organized crime.
And I realized, you know, when I started writing, and I'm here to promote anybody.
But, you know, I had a family member.
She was in the publishing industry for over 20 years, right?
She had, she got laid off, and I was talking to her.
And she said, you know, it's hard at the time, you know, COVID was still around, right?
And it was such a huge backlog.
And I said, you know, you might want to look at Kindle with Amazon because you can self-publish.
Yeah.
And you don't have to wait for anybody, right?
And you get like 80-20, those should digital books, like 7525, right?
So, you know, screen on both ends.
It's screen for my pocketbook and the screen for the environment.
We do the digital books, right?
And then I'm now doing audio, too.
And shout out to Sean Milo for that.
We'll both know him.
It's a great guy.
That should be coming out my book.
If you're not,
it's a big reader.
And I've been told a lot of people
rather listen to it.
Yeah.
And it's a great, great story.
I encourage people to listen to these books and go audible.
It should be out hopefully in about a month or less.
It'll be out there.
So I looked into it and it worked for me because I go at my pace.
I do whatever such matters.
You know how it is.
A publisher, you get rid of the middleman who's only cares about making money.
I'm always,
it's not about always making money.
It's about putting something out there
which I wanted to talk about,
read about.
Right.
I was going to say also,
you know,
as a writer,
you make like,
you'll make $6, $6.50, $7 on a,
on a book that you sell on,
on Amazon.
And if the publisher sells it,
you're making $1.15,
a $1.35,
like,
you know,
and look,
I got a,
I got a book deal.
They were in Barnes and Nobles.
You know,
that's great.
Like,
how exciting is that? That's super cool. But in the end, like six months ago, this is
five years later. Six months ago is the first time I actually got a small check from them
because it took that long to pay back the advance they gave me. They gave me like a $3,500
advance. And listen, in prison, $3,500 is a lot of money. But, you know, it just took that
long to even pay it back. That's ridiculous. Now, you would have made a lot more money
with Kindle, for sure.
Yeah.
I like doing all.
I mean, and I enjoy it.
Just like I did my cases, I wore many hats.
I played that with my books.
I do my own book covers.
I do my own editing.
I write the material.
I choose what I'm going to write about.
I just did a book that just came out.
I think I forward to you on Facebook, a messenger on Jim Jones, right?
In Jonestown on the massacre, because it's now 45 years.
And I want to do a little bit deeper dive in that.
And I found some pretty interesting things in there and mistakes that were made.
And I thought things, and I also give my opinion, right, based on my expertise.
Right.
There's a worst U.S. cult mass murder in U.S. history, almost 9, oh, 950 dead, right?
I was going to say almost 1,000 people, something like 150 kids or 200 kids or something.
How many kids are that?
More of that.
That's horrible.
You could hear, if you haven't heard the Jim Jones tape, because he recorded the whole thing.
Yeah.
Yeah.
You should hear that.
Horrible.
Horrible.
My kids are crying and everything else.
And the mother, his wife, Marcellina, her name was, she's telling him because these are his kids too.
He's poisoning.
He said, let the kids live.
And he goes, and just like this, he goes, mother, mother, mother, please.
You know, he's already crazy.
Mother, please.
Like, very sarcastic and nasty.
Like he says, you know, children hurry, because he already killed the congressman, right?
He had his go out already killed the congressman, Leo Ryan, and his entourage, NBC, and everybody else at Washington Post.
They gunned them down because they knew they had 20.
defectors. He knew it was over. It was over in Guyana. And then he said, when they came
back, said, hey, some escaped. He knew it was over. He knew they're going to come down, put him in
jail, shut it all down. And he was so selfish. He'd rather everybody killed themselves to make
that statement. He called it the suicidal revolution, which is insanity. All these people's lives
that came in in for a better life, lost their lives. Drinking the Kool-Aid. That's what it's called.
Drinking the Kool-Aid.
It wasn't even Kool-Aid.
Flavorade.
Flavorade.
But poor Kool-Aid.
Yeah.
Poor Kool-Aid got hit with Kool-Aid, drinking the Kool-Aid this whole time.
I was drinking the Kool-Aid.
What's that?
Kool-Aid.
Flavor-A.
But I was going to say, take the, the problem is everybody always faces,
face, everybody always focuses on the murder, right, right?
The mass suicide.
Even if you remove, if you remove that, though, his rise is amazing.
Oh, my God.
ability to manipulate is amazing
and the fact that he starts
Jonestown and then the senator
shows up and they
realize the senator
they realize what's happening
I'm sorry Congressman's going to go back to the United
States he's going to he's going to
tell everybody they're going to obviously
send over the troops and grab these guys
it's coming down but then he
actually sends his guys
to kill him
and they do like
that story that that's the great thing
what I love about
I love about nonfiction
you couldn't come up with that
no like that is so
bizarre it's you know
the term you know you know truth is stranger
than fiction sure I agree
if you told someone
that and it hadn't happened they'd be like
yeah bro that's just like it's it's too
out there to believe sure I agree
everybody would like that's just too
and it but it happened it's an amazing
story
he's another guy they grew up but I know his
background until I research. This is
the reason why I do stuff like this. I love researching
nonfiction. I love them. I've done a lot of
these. So if you like what we're talking about, check out
the book, please. It's on Amazon. It just
came out. But with him,
he came out of absolute poverty.
Yeah. Object poverty.
I mean, at Indiana, right?
In Lynn, Indiana, his father
was a war one veteran who suffered
serious, serious chemical tax. You know
how the war was at the trenches, right?
Yeah. He couldn't breathe. He couldn't work.
couldn't do anything.
Guy was disabled pretty much.
And the pension was horrible back then.
And then they had the Great Depression.
They lost her home.
The government, the company, the mortgage company ceased it.
And the family had the buy them a shack.
And they lived in a shack with no plumbing, no, and no electricity, an absolute horrible
situation.
So that's why he, I think he needs to find something.
And I think that's what he found, you know, religion and ministry, his, his goal,
because he would obviously perverse it completely.
And he would end up.
you know, the people's temple
what ends up being a cult
pretty much because to join
you have to turn all your finances to
right? All your money
goes to him. He'll take
care of you. He'll find your housing.
He took advantage and I hate to say it, it took advantage
of a lot of minorities and a lot disadvantaged
people, right? And a politician
because he came up with integration,
right? He was one of the first
guys integrating the churches
with blacks and whites and everything else
was unpopular in Indiana, right?
He ended up going to San Francisco.
Of course, very liberal out there, right?
Became very popular.
He would help get votes for the mayor.
At 76, Walter Mondell and Jimmy Carter,
was there any help California go blue, right?
So he can beat Ford.
So that's why they were embarrassed, humiliated, right?
Angry, they didn't want a full investigation on Jonesdale.
But this guy, Ryan, he was a Democrat,
but he knew there was something wrong.
But this is where I criticize him in the book a little bit.
When you know this guy is so unstable, right?
They had already information, affidavits and defectors,
that they were already doing mock drills like this, drinking the Kool-Aid.
They already trained them that if this happens, this is what we're going to do.
They have people what they call White Knight drills,
where they have gunfire over their heads.
So they would just stay down and they would drink the Kool-Aid.
He had all the cyanide prepared for this.
so you don't think
but I don't you
look but I hear what you're saying but
if you were telling me that
I would be thinking
that's crazy it's too crazy
like that's not going to happen like that's never
happened like I mean in the
in history it's happened
but it's so unbelievable
that an American citizen
and that a group of American citizens
would have done this
or that anybody would follow
or anybody would follow through like
okay he's doing it I get it
he's out there, but that's probably not.
It's not going to happen.
And, you know, who's going to kill a senator?
That's not going to happen.
With a senator or congressman?
Congressman.
Yeah, not just a congressman, but the entourage that's with him.
The staff, yeah.
The staff, and there's one lady who was his staff member,
she survived by playing dead for 24 hours on the strip there
until the army came in to rescue her.
She played dead for, she had five bullet wounds aside her.
She just wrote a book and a great interview.
I haven't seen her talk about it.
She gets very emotional.
Now she took over his old position like 10 years ago.
So now she's a congressperson from that district.
Okay.
Yeah.
Wow.
Unbelievable stories.
But you know what?
A lot of people didn't commit suicide.
What the investigation shows, they wanted to leave.
They were, the guards, his what he called the red, but he's a communist.
Those who don't know, he's a hardcore, very much Marxist-Leninist communist.
He hated this country because obviously the racial issues,
he called it pretty much a racist, fascist nation, right?
And he wanted to set up this Marxist utopia out there in Jonestown.
He was a big fan of Fidel Castro.
He was a big fan of the Soviet Union.
He even had Soviet officials come in and say,
this is the perfect Marxist utopia that have set up here.
And they congratulated him.
They went out there and said, man, you've done here.
But at the same thing, these people were pressed.
They had him work 12-hour days.
He fed him rice and beans.
while he ate like a king
and at the end
those who didn't want to commit suicide
the gun squad
what I call them the Red Brigade
came up with injections
and injected everybody in the shoulder
with a cyanide
and you see that
and so a lot of people
were murdered
and to me when you're brainwashed like that
you're being murdered
because didn't
some of the people
even try and run off into the woods
and stuff and they were shooting at them
or no they didn't
you can't you can't
no escape you have to die
When he said it's time to die, it is time to die.
There was no, like, hey, this was a man, now, these people were murdered.
I mean, a lot of people say, you know, especially children, and they have no say in it.
They were forced to drink that, small children.
They were killed, and they were a lot.
I think there were 200-something children that were murdered, and they're including his own children.
And his own wife even protested and said, this has to be a different way.
And then it goes, mother, mother, mother, mother, please.
You know, he goes like, he gets, he's already in that crazy psycho world.
and he tells children we have to hurry children we have to hurry we have to send a message to the world the suicidal revolution i mean he was just off his i mean who was the right mind was see because he wanted to send a message and he didn't take the kool-aid himself cyanide he shot himself in the head did you well so i've got i'm going to butcher this guy's name the the guy who wrote fight club chuck paulnach yeah i i know i bushered his name anyway
he wrote a book called Survivor
and it talks about a mass suicide
and he talked about several mass suicides in the book
but it's very much written in the same vein as Fight Club
he has that real choppy writing style
which is great because that book really moved along
he also talks about like that's a great book
with about multiple different types of suicide
talks about Heaven Gate Heaven's Gate
Hemis Gate yeah that mass suicide
but nothing like like nothing
compares to it's nothing we remember having it was the worst mass murder until 9-11 right with
americans right i see that so you know and and and with that so going back to my point
i thought the congressman made a mistake i know he had a history of being very proactive
he's a democrat and remember this guy jones helped the democrats win the 76 election the
national election he helped it went a lot because he was key getting the votes out without
African-Americans because he had an integrated church.
He was a socialist. Remember, and there's a very socialist area.
So the State Department did not give him a lot of information while I was reading.
According to the staff member who survived, what really was going on?
Because remember, they have people already saying about all these defectors saying,
hey, dude, they're doing mock exercises.
They're torturing people in there.
If you stand up anything, they'll put you in this hot box.
They'll put you underground.
They put you in a well.
They really torture people.
You better get on the program.
There's no escaping.
There's no leaving.
This is what they're doing to you.
So I think it was a big mistake.
Him knowing what's going on there, knowing these guys are armed, he knew they were armed.
I personally, as being in common sense, is I need the guy in government to help me get me security, protection.
He went unarmed.
He thinking that the media guys, oh, you know, I have NBC with me, have the Washington Post.
He's not going to shoot us with the media here.
Yeah, kill everybody.
This guy's not following the Geneva Convention.
like, I can't show reporters or medics.
Don't you know I'm a congressman?
Yeah.
I don't think he can't.
Yeah.
There, man.
And he's,
care.
So that's the thing you can never underestimate your opponent.
Never underestimate.
Be prepared.
I think he would have, if he would have had the army or at least some representatives and they
saw the evidence, I think they could have arrested and taken him there and he would save
those lives.
I think he was just approached the wrong.
way that and at the end knowing that kind of person how volatile it is how could
they not think that would not trigger that after he didn't practicing that right he
pretty much said that's what it's going to do arrogance so that's my criticism in the
book if you read it I blame a lot of the card administration at a time for obviously
he went out there as a congressman he could do his own investigation right different
buys of government you have the executive and legislator legislator but they should
give him some support and protection because he was set up to fail. He was set up to fail
and they failed badly. And look what we have, the consequences. So something you got to really
think about this guy. And he really, there's a reason why he created Jonestown, because he was
this close, again, picked up in the U.S. for obviously tax evasion. He really didn't have a
church. He had all this protection as a church, but he was a cult and he was stealing and he was
abusing. He would rape the members. He would even rape males. So he was involved in a lot of bad
things. So he knew his time was coming. That's where he set up Guyana. I think originally he wanted
to go in Brazil, but it was easier for him because he, Guyana was a British colony, former
British colony, English speaking. And it just worked out easier for him to go to Guyana, which at the
time had become a socialist nation also, very communist. So that's another issue they had to deal with.
So interesting read, if you like what we talked about, I think you'll like the story of Jim Jones.
If you don't know much about it, a lot of the younger generation, I've noticed, doesn't know anything
what happened in Jones Town. So read about it. You'll be shocked. And the video, his video is
tape, the death tape. You got to listen to that. Of the brink of a madman with a thousand people
jumping off a cliff. Well, shoot, I was going to say something too when you were talking.
I was thinking, oh, I know what it was. It was the one of the things you were talking about
finances is it reminded me of David Koresh. Oh, Waco. Yeah. He would have everybody. He would have all
the women and everybody go and get on food stamps and get on you know like that that's a big thing
with the cults one of the things they do is they they immediately have everybody sign up for you know
they call it what they call it bleeding the bleeding the beast they call it like bleeding the beast
where you sign up for all the subsidies and all that you get as much as you can of course they all
live there and he of course you know he's got air conditioning he's eating well they're all he's
like a king yeah yeah that's typical with this communist you know social assistance
You look at Nicholas Maduro.
You looked at Fidel Castro.
You look at Xi Jinping in China.
You look at Kim Jong-un in North Korea.
They abused the people, the little people.
They think this is better for them.
No, this is the best system out here, folks.
Don't get conned into that.
This is the best system out there.
Nothing is perfect, but it is the best system.
At least, you know, you can work your way up.
You want to get your education.
You want to do things.
You can make something in your life here.
And it happens.
One thing that you can never take away from you.
I tell people this all the time is your education.
education. They can never, no matter what happens, they can never take your education from you.
They can't take your drive from you. They can't take your determination from you. That's built
within you. No matter what government happens in here. So educate it and be free. And there's a lot
of brainwashing. And be a person, ask questions, get different sources. Don't just accept one source.
And unfortunately these people did that, right? And you see the communists do that. And he was
very good at propaganda and brainwashing where you weren't allowed to get other information
for other sources. It was his source
information, healthy diet
every day. That way, as Castro
did the same thing, CCP
does the same thing in China and are written about
those books in China. They like
their one-party system as our way
or the highway. So it'll end up one or three ways for you.
Either their death, imprisonment, or they're
going to kick out of the country.
That's a reality. That's the reality we live in
the 21st century.
All right.
That's depressing.
So, all right, so, but true though, right?
You really brought the, you really brought the dinner of the show down.
No, but, but, but, but we're it, though.
We're the shining light here.
So, hey, good thing is, we're living the good country.
Be happy you're born in communist China or Venezuela or North Korea.
That is just, I've ever seen the videos out there, man.
That is depressing.
See that?
So those are the books, also all the kind of books I've written about.
So I have such a, such a huge, for almost.
No, no, I just did 60th.
Jim Jones is my 60th book.
I just did my 60th book in a little over a year.
So it's pretty cool.
You can find it.
Now I'm doing the audible books should be coming out.
That should be coming out within a month on ATF undercover.
And then I'm doing more with Sean.
We're just doing one of mass shootings.
We just started that one.
So some of the worst mass shootings in U.S. history.
And based on my background, solutions to that.
I mean, that could be a show within itself.
What's going on in our country with mass shootings?
That's depressing for me.
and how we can stop
and how what we can do
I don't know if you've seen the video or not
and I talked a lot of people about this
and done shows about this
Ovalde, Texas
what happened Rob Elementary?
No, I haven't.
Yeah, you have to look at the video.
77 minutes while the shooter's in the classroom
killing the students and teachers
while the police outside.
Oh, okay.
Yeah, I've seen bits and pieces.
You've got to see the whole thing.
It is really, all of it's out there now.
And what's really upsetting, and you've got to watch this in the audience to look at this,
one of the officers, female officers, you know, they forget they have the body cams on, right?
Right.
And another guy was recording her because everybody has it off.
And I guess she had her off, but he has his on.
And they're outside.
They are already finally, it was the feds.
It was the Border Patrol.
The attack unit came in there.
And it wasn't the locals.
The other ones went in there, and there were, I think they were like 15, 20 miles away.
And they responded.
and they're the ones that came in the classroom
and they're the ones that killed them
who killed the Rommels inside there.
It wasn't the locals to stay outside?
She said, he said, it wasn't your daughter in there?
And one of the guys are saying, no, no, my daughter was a VPK,
but if my daughter was in there, I would definitely have gone in.
Whoa.
Come on.
My daughter was in there.
The other people's daughters, children weren't good enough to go in there?
I mean, that's what you serve and protect.
This is what the call is about.
When you got that kind of situation and kids are dying,
one of the girls were calling 911
saw her teacher get her head blown off, right?
And the other students are dying, bleeding in there
and says, please come and help using the teacher's phone, right,
to call 911, you stay outside the classroom
because, oh, he's got a rifle, we have handguns.
Well, they have nothing, right?
Go in there and get a shotgun.
You got shotguns, you got everything else.
Those are the kind of things I talk about where you need people
who are teachers who are willing to protect people.
Teachers are willing to die for the students.
Some of them were showing the students
at the end, taking the bullets for their kids, they want to fight.
And those, just like after 9-11, we had the, after the pilots, right, taking over the airplanes,
they had the option to be armed, right?
Where it's the point where we would probably have to do the same thing with administrators,
teachers, the same thing, because some police officers happen to Miami and Parkland,
they stayed outside, right?
And Cruz ends up, Nicholas Cruz, ends up killing a lot of the students and teachers inside
because he has a rifle, right?
I understand it's not a fair fight.
you're a handgun, he has better range, it's faster,
and he's going through your body hour,
but these kids have nothing, and the teachers have nothing.
And staying outside, that's being a coward.
After shoot training, so you've got two people in,
you can do it, and you address the guy,
because that's what you're supposed to do.
So I address a lot of that.
I've been coming on Audible,
so it's already on that,
and I talk a lot of scenarios,
what we've learned, what we haven't learned,
and the problems we have,
and we may have to become more like Israel
to protect ourselves
because the response time is too long,
And if a lot of these places don't want you armed, well, then you have to do something
about it because this doesn't end.
We just had another one in Michigan State, right?
It just seems like every week there's a new active shooter.
As we speak right now, Matt, there's somebody else who got triggered.
It's going to do the same thing because we have a mental health crisis in this country
that's unimaginable.
And on top of that, easy access to weapons.
That's the problem.
That's a depressing thing about 21st century America right now.
And I put that in my book here.
it's no solution because the only other solution is a good guy with a bat
taking on bad guys with guns right letting everybody be armed and because in
Indiana a few months ago in a foot court in a mall a guy had armed himself in the
bathroom he started shooting but somebody was was armed to see a weapons permit and
addressed them and killed them yeah you never see that you never see that video though
that's not the push no no no no they're going to push other stuff so those are things
I want your audience to think about
good conversations, serious topics
we've taken on, but that's what I write about.
Things are happening and solution my back,
especially with ATF, my back room with guns and stuff
like this. It's really things that
shouldn't be politicized by the
right or the left.
This is about us, right? Our family
because nobody wants their kids kill them.
Everybody wants to have their peace of mind. I have two daughters
safe at school.
That's the worst case scenario. You get that call.
School got shut down. A madman's
it's in the loose there.
and they do nothing.
Pulse nightclub.
I mean, it's just case after case
that police don't go in sometimes.
Post nightclub,
they spend like for 12 hours
while he's in a member
in the gay nightclub,
the guy is shooting everybody
in the gay nightclub.
I mean, they wait for the SWAT team
while the people are in the bathroom
and he's lining up
in the stalls and shooting everybody.
Why aren't they going in?
So it is just one after another
and I pick apart each one.
So it's an interesting really,
but we have to.
learn what we have to do and it's about people being armed these gun-free zones bad
yes the bad guys are going to victimize you because they they're the thing that doesn't change
a thing no they're going to be armed they know that's easy easy pickings because i've done a lot of
shows with guys and you know just my own history who have a history and that's what they look for
you know they look for the bank doesn't have the armed security guy right they look for the
place in the mall which is nobody armed no policing or the theater
These are things we have to be prepared for.
If you outlaw guns, like, you know, outlaws, like, you know, look, let's face it, criminals are not going to abide by that.
No.
They're not going to abide by that rule.
Oh, we're not allowed to have the gun.
Oh, well, then I won't.
What are you talking about?
If you're willing to commit a mass shooting, you're willing to break the law, the gun laws.
You know, and you're going to, there's just too many guns.
There's two, you'll never get rid of all the guns.
No, we can't get rid of all the guns.
You know, I say it's the biggest manufacturer of weapons in the world.
Yeah.
I mean, the Europeans have come here.
I mean, you have Glock.
used to be made in Austria, it's made in Georgia.
Sixth Hour, which is made in Germany,
it's made in the Northeast.
H&K, also in Germany,
they've come here because we're buying it all.
I mean, I have my collection too,
but you have to protect your family
because if you expect Cole 911
and the police who come to save you
from a home evader in your house,
don't hold your breath.
Yeah, no.
You better get your concealed weapons permit.
You better practice.
If you haven't shot your gun
and that's the first time you're going to shoot it,
that's not the time to learn.
You better be competent with it
because you're going to be pumped,
you're going to be drilling, you got some crazy coming at you,
you have to be ready how to use it and defend your staff.
Because the worst thing is you see somebody do something bad to your family
and you wish you could have stopped it.
Those are just lessons.
I just listen for a guy who retired law enforcement of what I've seen
and hopefully people can learn and just pass it some wisdom on what we can do.
All right.
That's awesome, man.
Are you ready?
Yeah, we're good.
We're good.
Yeah, I just, you mean, do a little promo on some.
Yeah, I mean, yeah, absolutely.
usually say that, you know, obviously I'm going to put Colby, which is,
everybody watches this, knows who Colby is. Colby will put, you know, the book links.
Like if you send me the book links, he'll put your book links in the description of the video.
So people can just go to the description box. You know, they just hit the button and boom.
It'll have a whole list where they can just click on it and bring you straight to your Amazon account
or your Amazon book. And I just have an Amazon author page of all my books.
I'll just send you the Amazon author page that I have.
It's a great one.
So I let the audience now also.
I do also have a Amazon author page too.
You can Google it.
I'll go obviously go on Amazon, which is my name.
I think it's there, Ignacio Estabon.
And you can see all my books, 60 books, from fiction to nonfiction.
I also do fiction books also, which is fun.
Reads.
I also do pictorial books.
And I think you'll really like, if you like organized crime, I have a lot to do.
This is a true crime channel.
I have a lot in organized crime.
personal experiences dealing with biker group but i haven't even talked about that yet so that could be
another show down the road if you want doing the one percenters doing the outlaws the hell's angels
the mongles i've done books on yakuza i've done books on la gangs i was in la for eight months
between the bloods the crypts of mexican mafia i've done books of ms 13 manasal at trucha so
there's a lot of stuff here if you like this stuff obviously done books on the mafia
castro the mafia and the history of the mafia in havana the bryson
for all the mafia and Havana led to a rise in Las Vegas.
And I talked to all the political side because of my family, they were there,
they experienced it, and you see it firsthand what's going on there.
So a lot of cool things.
Please look it up and have the audio stuff coming out on Audible ATF undercover,
and hopefully they get the other books out there through Sean.
All right.
Yeah, we'll definitely have to do some of those.
Like actually just do a show just on that one category.
You know, like one category of like the Akusa,
do one on just like the biker gangs, like that sort of thing.
that would be, because we were kind of all over the place.
But yeah, we could definitely do that.
It was fun.