Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast - GTA COP SHARES HIS INSANE STORIES

Episode Date: June 30, 2025

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I must have locked up probably close to 70 or 80 auto break-ins. It was like going to Las Vegas or a casino and throwing dimes in a slot machine. You're just punching plates, punching plates. This doesn't look right, that doesn't look right. And before you knew it, you'd have a hit. We would recover people's cars that were stolen years ago. We would call them up. Did you own a 1995 or a 2000 Dodge Caravan that was stolen? Yeah, we have it.

We got a car back to this little old lady and the car had like rims and like a sound system that have moved the wax in your ears. And she's like, what the hell? it's like that's not my car like that's your car that's what it is now hey vic ferrari is back he is a a retired detective with the nypd auto theft unit and he's back and we're going to be talking about grand theft auto check out the video yeah the grand the reason i thought about it this whole thing is because of grand theft auto came out they came out with their trailer i guess the the actual game's not going to be out in for about two years but

you know, you're, we had had that discussion and, you know, the name of your book is, is Grand Theft Auto. Well, I guess is it one of them or it's one of them? Yeah, I've written a series of behind the scenes, NYPD books and one of them is Grand Theft Auto, the NYPD's Auto Crime Division and that's loaded with funny stories and things that went on, the whole NYPD's Auto Crime Division, chop shops, exporting cars out of the country, things like that. Right. So I was, so well, I, you know, after watching, I watched a few trailers. and on Grand Theft Auto. And, you know, I listen, like, I've never played the game.

But all these guys I have talked to, because I was locked up, you know, when those games started coming out and, and they were popular. And I just, you know, and everybody loves those games. And honestly, talking to you about your experience and the stories that you were telling are just are right down that the game alley. And I was thinking we could go with kind of a whole, like, how close, you know, how close is that game? I mean, obviously, it's polished and, you know, but the insanity of that game and working in the auto unit, do you call it, what did you guys call it?

The auto crime division. Our crime division? How close is that game? I mean, you know. Well, I mean, the game, like we were talking about off air earlier, we grew up in a generation of Pong and space invaders and asteroids. Right. Now video games, like there's a whole narrative with it.

And there's bad guys meeting and there's dialogue and then they go out and they're stealing cars and people are getting slapped around and there's pimps and hose and, you know, it's like a whole thing. Listen, I mean, I've never played the game either. I've seen like you have trailers and video, you know, my nephews years ago had it. And I just, I couldn't get into it because it was just so, it's just too much. But yeah, I'm sure they take stories from car theft rings or things that have happened with criminal activity and kind of intrigated into their games. I mean, it definitely sounded like the stories we talked about last time. Like the whole like the whole Chinese thing. Like these guys were extremely organized.

You know, you steal the car, you bring it here, you take it. They chop it up. They send the parts here. They send the parts there. I mean, it, you know, it sounded like it was a fairly good, you know, you got to make it fun, but a fairly good simulation. Oh, yeah. And New York would, I mean, back when I was active in the 80s and 90s and 2000s, I mean, we were averaging 150,000 stolen vehicles a year. So it was like shooting fish in a barrel, and it was just so easy.

And then when they started with putting those little MDTs, the little mobile digital computers in the police cars, you didn't have to keep bothering the dispatcher and run plates every 10 seconds. and she would get pissed off. You could just sit there and it was like, it was like going to Las Vegas or a casino and throwing dimes in a slot machine. You're just punching plates, punching plates. This doesn't look right. That doesn't look right.

And before you knew it, you'd have a hit and then you'd be off to the races. And back then, it was just so easy. And like early on, like one of the first, the way I got involved with stolen cars is, I don't know if you remember this, but probably it all changed in the 90s, but rent a cars,

The first digit of a rent-a-car license plate was a Z. So you always knew if something was a renter car. And people would rent cars in New York City and never returned them. And then the renter-car company would send out a couple of notices and the guy wouldn't return the car. So they would go to the precinct to report it's stolen. And we would just go around running Z plates and come up with hits all the time. But that changed.

I think it was the early 90s. You had this German tourist came into Miami. And they rented a car from the Miami airport, and they got lost. I don't know if they got lost returning or they're trying to get out of the airport. And some thugs saw the Z plate. They figured out there were tourists. They figured out they had cash, and they carjacked them and killed them. So then they changed it.

Guys would look for, you know, there were carjackers would look for those plates. That was the problem. They knew this guy's from out of town. He doesn't know anything. He's a tourist. He'll roll his window down if I say, hey, wait, wait, wait, wait. Because he doesn't realize how bad an area he is in. you know um so that's when they changed just say yeah we can't these we're making these people

targets yeah absolutely and then there was a big lawsuit with it then they you know changed the license plates and they got plates like everything else but like i said it was just so easy and i give me an example so when i work at the precinct level there was a a section of the bronx it's um 233rd street and jerome avenue for those of you the new york city area and it's right off a highway so people would park their cars they'd get off the highway and park their cars along this. It's about a mile long stretch. And you've got a one side of this mile long stretch, a park, Adam Chandler Park, which is woods, right? Then you've got four lanes, two and go in each direction. And then the other side, you had Woodlawn Cemetery. So there's

no people around whatsoever. It's just people would park their cars on either side of this one-mile stretch. Then they would jump on the four train and go into Manhattan. What we used to do is we would just set up, park our car with binoculars, and we'd watch people get off the train and people that are walking, you know, they have a purpose. They got their head down and they're just walking straight. We quickly figured out guys that are going to break into a car or steal a car. They're always turning around. They're dusted themselves off. They bend down to tie their shoe and look behind them. Their heads on a swivel. And then we would watch them break into cars. And one, I must have locked up and been involved in probably close to 70 or 80 auto break-ins

or people stealing cars from that location. But one time, like I said, thieves progress. And one time we watched this kid and he sits on, he's sitting on the railing and he's sitting opposite these cars. And I just see him go like this. I'm watching him with binoculars. He's just kind of like, what is he doing? Waving at something, gets off the railing. And the next thing I know he's in the car. I'm like, how did he break into the car? He's in it. We roll up, the kid's in the car. I forget if he was taking the radio or breaking the ignition.

There's broken glass in the interior. He's got no tools on him. There's no rock inside the car. Like he's mad. We didn't hear anything, right? So he was a heroin addict. We bring him back to the precinct. I read him as Miranda warnings, and he's starting to go to a withdrawal.

He said, I'll tell you what. He says, you buy me a soda. And I'll tell you how I broke into that car. And I said, fair enough. So I get him a soda. And while I was searching him, I found in his pockets broken spark plug. I thought nothing of it. And he explained to me, he goes, I use Ninja Rocks.

What the fuck is a Ninja Rock? And he says, you take a spark plug and you break it with a hammer. And those little ceramic chips, if you toss it at a car window at a low rate of speed, it'll break the glass and basically not make a lot of noise and it was like the lowest tech way I had ever seen to break into a car because I lock guys up with slim gyms and coat hangers and car intent is bent a certain way

to get them fish inside and pop the door lock this guy and then we quickly figured out it was a low tech way for guys to break into cars with spark plugs yeah I was going to say I knew a guy that would he would take a piece of tile ceramic tile and he'd take a sling shot and he'd have someone drive by slowly a car and then he'd shoot it out the window and then drive off you know he'd knock the window up but drive off and wait right if anybody

noticed anybody come and then they'd come back and drop him off and he jump in the car yeah there's something to do with ceramic and and and that that glass that it just breaks it but i don't even think he needed a slingshot and this guy was doing it obviously at a high rate of speed i mean he's And these are big pieces. It's basically a rock. He was like, it might as well have been a rock. Hey, it's a low-tech way. It's a little overhead to break into a car.

But that area was just, I mean, we would sit up there. And I mean, I figured it out in the early 90s, and I was still going up to that spot up until I retired in 2007. Another time we were sitting up there. And my partner and I, we watched these two guys drive buying a car. And I didn't get the plate. and the car drives up this road about a mile and they come back and forth and I'm like all right they're doing something one guy lets the other guy out of the car and he drives off now we're

watching the guy that he dropped off and he's breaking into a car like great you know what let's follow them a lot of times we'll just jump on them but sometimes we'll follow him to see where they take in the car they're taking it to a shop shop where they're taking it well we're watching this guy break into the car the other guy drives by I run the plate on that car and it didn't come back right away so I part of it goes you know what screw this let's just lock the guy up that's breaking into the car

I said all right we drive down the guy's in the car breaking the ignition we cuff them up we take him out of the car where's your friend he's not saying a word pretending he doesn't speak a word of English right we phone in the back seat I get into the police car right

we're going to call for a tow truck and I look at the computer screen the car that's been circling around with his friend is reported stolen so like oh wow this is great and his friend drives by. So now we try to pull the friend over in the stolen car with the buddy in the back seat, right? We get them blocked in traffic.

I jump out. I jump into the passenger seat with the car. My partner is trying to pull him out of the driver's seat. The car in front of us moves. The guy takes off with me in the front seat of the car with him and I'm fighting him in the car. Finally got into an accident. My partner ran up.

We dragged him out of the car and we got two for one. We got the stolen car that they were driving around in and we got the guy breaking into the car. I have a question like it how often do you guys were you arresting people I mean personally is it like once a week or is it like almost every day well when I was in auto larceny and then the auto crime division I mean it was so easy back then uh you could have a couple of arrests a week if you really if you really put yourself out there and you were eating your lunch in the car you weren't going someplace to eat and sit down and kill an hour and a half and as soon as you

got your radios. If you put in the eight and a half hours to look for a stolen car, you could get a couple of a rest of a week. Okay. What do they get? How much time do they get? It depends. New York City, and it depends on the borough. So like Manhattan and Queens back in the day, if you had a criminal record, and you could do a year and a half to three, and then it goes up, you know, depending on your record, but places like the Bronx and Brooklyn where they tend to save, they tend to save taking things to trial for violent crimes like rape and murder they'll plea out it was nothing to arrest a guy and just look at his rap sheet and see that he's been locked up 15 16 times for breaking into cars and stealing cars and he's done 90 days on rikers island which

I wouldn't want to do 90 days on rikers island but that's better than going upstate right so he's ready to take a plea oh yeah what do they get for cars it depends yeah it depends yeah It depends. Like, you know, a lot of cars in New York were stolen back then. It was the pests. It was the teenagers stealing the cars to look cool and take their girlfriends around. Or it was junkies and drug addicts that would steal cars to get around and commit other crimes and get high. The guys that really knew what they were doing and were, you know, in with the chop shops and the salvage yards, they'd get a couple hundred of car.

I've seen guys get up to $500 to $1,000 to $1,000 a car. it depends on the car right it depended on the car and it depended on the thief and how reliable he was and if they needed something they could call this guy up and he'd have a car within hours or the following day because you've got to realize something so the auto insurance industry kind of fuels this so say for argument's sake you get into an accident

say you've got a new Honda Accord and you get into an accident and you got front end damage and you bring it to do two body shops And Body Shop A tells you, all right, you know, you've got a $1,000 deductible, and it's going to take me about two and a half to three weeks to get your car back. You go to Body Shop B, and he tells you, don't worry about the deductible, and I'll have the car back for you in three days. Well, you're going to go to Body Shop B. Right. Body Shop B is going to get on the phone and call his buddy up and say, I need, you know, a 2020 Honda record to save me time that I don't have to paint it gray in color.

Yeah, okay. And that guy is going to, but that's why that thief would get paid more money because he knows the next day or a couple hours later, that guy is going to drive in that car. Okay. I'm not sure how you fix that, though. Well, LoJack changed a lot of things and then GPS because in the old days, the thieves would bring the car right to the location. Right? It would go right into a junkyard. It would go right into a body shop.

They'd take the parts off it. then they drive it three blocks away where they call it Bones Truck, which is a guy that comes around and picks up the scrap metal. And they know damn well what's going on. And then they take the cut up car and they bring it to a scrap metal processor. When LoJack first came out, right, we were getting hits everywhere. All of a sudden, and these guys didn't know about it. So we were getting search warrants like every 15 minutes running into this place,

running places we didn't even know about like storage facilities and commercial space buildings that just looked like a regular Hey, we know you probably hit play to escape your business banking, not think about it. But what if we told you there was a way to skip over the pressures of banking? By matching with a TD small business account manager,

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A nondescript garage. We'd go in there, there'd be 15 chopped cars in there. And they were just as surprised as we were. But once Lodiac came out, the strategy changed. So then what we used to get is we'd start getting these Lodak pings and we'd find a car parked on the street somewhere. So they would park a car in the street to let it cool off to see if the car had Lodiac, you know, had Lodiac or not. Well, I mean, don't they, can't they search for the Lodiac?

I mean, they were pretty big. it that originally they were big devices they did well look i'll get that in a second yeah they they did the the bad guys came up with away had to defeat lojack the first version of it and speaking of lojack so we were very tight the lojack lojack guys had representatives that would work with the police and they were usually retired cops and detectives that after they retired will get a job with lojack so i knew one of these guys and he reaches out to us and he says listen i've got a bunch of guys from the Moscow Police Department because at the time

LoJack was branching out in Russia so he says would you mind showing him how it works and doing with questions like yeah sure bring them down right

so I'm expecting like Arnold Schwarzenegger and Red Heat to come down right Matt when I tell you it's about 10 or 11 guys and they look like thugs like

they were like middle age guys they looked like bouchers in a Manhattan club like just big big guys with rough looking guys with rough knuckles like you wouldn't fuck with these guys like they they were badasses and their handler the only guy that spoke English was probably a KGB agent and you know we're going through the question and answer thing and like they were kids in a candy store because they had seen all these NYPD movies so

they wanted to get into the police cars and play with the sirens and shit right and we get to the question and answer segment and one guy says something to the interpreter and the interpreter goes, how you say, how you get confessioned out of that guy? It was like, oh, no, no, no, no, no, no. No, no, no. We have things in the United States as Miranda warnings. We just don't go around, tuning people up, right?

And they're all just looking at each other, right? Because they watch NYPD Blue over there. And then the next question was, what kind of gun do you use to stop car? Like, oh, no, no, we don't shoot it. That's a big no-no, especially in New York. We don't shoot into cars. And they're just like, looking at us like we're a bunch of pussies, right?

So one of the guys goes out to their car, and he comes out with this, with a box, and they start handing us these little gift boxes. And there were these commemorative coins. I still have one around here somewhere. It's, it looked like a bronze medal you'd win at the Olympics. And it had, you know, it was written in Russian. So for all I know it said, kiss my Ruski ass, capitalist pig. But it's something for the Moscow political.

police department commemorating their 60th anniversary. It was really nice of them to give us, right? We had nothing for them. Absolutely. No one told us they were going to give us gifts, right? So now we look like a bunch of douchebags. So I said, all right, I run up to the locker room. And I just start grabbing night sticks and hats and just shit that's going to get thrown out and laying around the locker room like old stuff. And I put it in a garbage bag and I run downstairs. And I'm like, listen, you know, it was on short notice. I hope these guys the bag got torn open like these guys were fighting over shit right and my partner's laughing he goes yeah these guys probably fight over toilet paper I go you better keep your mouth shut if someone's going to get their ass kicked and it's going to be us I had to go upstairs and get

a second bag of stuff for them but it was actually pretty cool meeting guys from the moscow police department but you were talking about how the bad guys defeated lojack that informant that I was telling you about in the last interview we did that got us mike Tyson's motorcycle right he he told us that this thief had a lojack detector and we said there's no such thing and then we called up the lojack representative he's like doesn't exist he said that's what we thought and the guy goes it does exist we go we'll go buy one from him and it was a it was it was a converted police scanner they did the old police scanners you could change crystals i think they're called there's crystals in them so it was like a radio shack police scan that they had modified

the crystals and the lowjack representative brought a vehicle and we turned on a lowjack we put it into the system he walked around the car. It was like boo bobobobo that that device was FedExed. I think their headquarters at the time was in Massachusetts. That

device was FedExed up there and then they had as a result of that they had to change I think the box so the signal wouldn't leak out. Hmm. Okay. Yeah I was going to say now what they have those Apple chips and air tags and yeah yeah it's oh man it's insane air tags that's what i meant was air tags that

apple chips anyway the little they look like little right they look like little i like apple chips better yeah as much yeah it's way better than air tag anyway um yeah you could drop that in your in your your wife's purse and tracker so you know these guys are tracking people left and right you know um but yeah i can't i couldn't imagine stealing cars so What else? We were talking about that informant. I got a couple of stories about that I had remembered from the last time. I love the informant, by the way.

That guy. I bet you he's got 10 hours worth of hilarious stories. I think he's dead. But if he were alive and his English, he spoke and broken English. But that guy, yeah, that guy would be a show. And then some. What's that? What do you say?

He went back? like Haiti, right? Dominican Republic. Oh, Dominican Republic. Okay. He, so here's a great story from him.

He, he calls us up and he tells us these guys that he's running around with. They went to an auto auction and they purchased a Dodge, they purchased a salvage, you know, a wrecked. And they were new at the time, Dodge Intrepid. And he says,

they're looking to steal a car. They took all the VIN numbers off to salvage. They threw it away. They got the title. So we had the VIN number. We had all the info. information on this on this vint kit and he says what they're going to do is the next this weekend or the next weekend they're going to go out and steal another Dodge intrepid and change all the VIN numbers on it

great and then we'll pick off that car right so he calls us up and he says um yeah he goes out they they stole the car this weekend and we said where and he he tells us the neighborhood it's in so we said all right so I go to that precinct there's no stolen vehicle report for a Dodge Intrepid so we call back and go, are you sure? He goes, yeah, and let's just say for argument sake, he goes, I'm almost positive it was on like East 79th Street. It's all right. So I kept going back to the precinct and there's no vehicle report for it. So finally, he calls this up, he goes, that car's never going to get reported stolen. What are you talking about? He says, his friends went out. They steal the Dodge Intrepid. They bring it to a garage and they're just kind of going through the car

and they find a couple of kilos under the front seat. And they can't believe their luck. So then they drove the Dodge Intrepid up to Westchester County in Yonkers and they burned it. They says, he goes, so he goes, check with Yonkers police,

or I think it was Yonkers. He goes, check and see if there's a Dodge Intrepid that's been burned. He says, because the owner's not going to report that stolen because he probably thinks it's been towed. And you guys are waiting to lock him up. And he said, those guys spent the weekend,

they sold the kilos. But whatever they got for them He goes, and they were partying all They were buying drinks for the block And they were like heroes in that neighborhood But yeah, we would hear stories like that from him You know, another time he told us about this Dodge Caravan With the VIN number was changed

The car was stolen And they had masked it with a phony vent So he tells us where the car is And I do the research on the car And it comes back as a wreck And I see the car And we pull the guy over And the VIN number is cocked

bring the guy into the precinct we lock him up and it was um it was it was i think it was in the three old precinct which is in like just the outskirts of washington heights and we're in the precinct doing paperwork and i'm going out to the precinct parking lot i'm going back and forth to this vehicle and pulling the vint out of the window and stuff and i noticed that the guys on the block where we locked him up or across the street they look like crows on a clothes line and i'm like why are they here now watching us like usually after we lock somebody up they're gone Yeah. Why is the interest in this vehicle?

So my partner calls up the inform and he goes, listen, Vic and I here at the precinct and the whole block is across the street trying to figure out what we're doing with this car. He goes, let me go up to the block. He calls up my partner in L.A. He goes, there's a trap, a secret compartment in the Dodge Caravan.

He goes, and there's weight and a gun in there. He goes, I don't know where it is. He goes, and I don't want to ask because, you know, he goes, so we started tearing that car apart. and where the trap was is in the back seat of that Dodge Caravan there was like an armrest and I forget I think it was I think it was hydraulic

I don't remember we didn't go to try to figure out how to open it the correct way we just started pulling stuff apart and because the vehicle was stolen we found a couple ounces of coke and a handgun but we just couldn't figure out like why the interest in this car and they were waiting to either steal it back or get into the car and get the weight the gun out.

I wonder. If you grab a gun like that, do you guys do ballistics on it? Yeah, what happened? Yeah. So when you recover a firearm, I know how New York City does it. You send it to the lab of the ballistics section. And then what they do is they fire it into a drum of water. And then, you know, they look at it.

And then if it's a semi-automatic, they'll take the shell casing and see if they can also, what is striking on the shell casing. So there's a couple of ways they can see. if that gun was used in a crime you know when speaking about the um the trap did you ever hear about that guy that got i think he got like 10 years or something he was making traps or making trap doors or whatever secret compartments yeah yeah for vehicles and he he advertised it and everything and of course drug dealers were coming to him and bringing him and his whole goal his whole thing was like i didn't know they were drug deal they could have been for anybody could have been somebody

who wants to keep their gun there wants to keep you know their money their wallet like i how my supposed to know and they were like now like you should have known he went to court and he went to like trial i think he got like 10 years or something really like the guys in the bronx at least around over by jerome avenue those guys were like Swiss watchmakers like you'd never know it was in the car you kind of had to like look under the hood and see if there were like unique wires in there but then that you know sometimes it was on pistons with hydraulics where the dash would open or they would build up um they'd build up a box like you'd look at the front seat and like the leg area for the front seat and the passenger seat if it was off sometimes it was

a box welded underneath i mean these guys were ingenious with some of the stuff they they did yeah i wrote a i wrote a story about a guy who he was buying like just a little bit of marijuana here you know what not even it wasn't a little bit it was he says it was a little bit but whatever it was like 40 pounds 50 pounds from from a guy And he'd been doing it a few months. He said one day the guy was supposed to be delivering some marijuana. And he was like, you know, he was a Mexican guy. You know, of course he was actually cartel.

He just had no idea. Or maybe he just probably wanted to pretend that he didn't realize it. I mean, so the guy pulls up in an RV. And he goes, oh, yeah, come on. Come in. Come in. He goes, we climb up in the RV and walk around. Like, he's like, oh, look around.

He's like, we open up the stuff. Oh, look, look. He's like, no, you can't find it, can you? They're like, no, what's up? guy goes and plays with the radio like pulls a switch and turn something on the dashboard and they hear this and he said literally in the carpet there's like a sheet of carpet and he said in the middle of the carpet a little you know 18 inch or one foot by one foot section raises up like out of the carpet he's like you would have never known it was there it was seamless and he said it only went up

about eight inches and the guy reached his hands down and pulled a pound of marijuana out he said and with a string connected to another pound and another he goes and he literally they pulled out hundreds and hundreds of things like it was just one block after another after another said it barely fit through and he said the whole bottom of the thing was just filled with marijuana pounds of it way you wouldn't believe it and you're right that there's like a whole sequence like I've seen some where you put the car in reverse, you put the AC on, and then you hit the defogger, and that would activate something to open up. We used to recover, so like the last show I did, we were talking about tag jobs where they would change the VIN numbers on cars.

We would recover people's cars that were stolen years ago. Four or five years ago, they didn't have comprehensive insurance, so the insurance company didn't own it. We would call them up. Did you own a 1995 or a 2000 Dodge Caravan? we stolen six, seven, yeah, we have it. And it was so funny because some of these cars were like tricked out cars. Like I remember one time we got a car back for this little old lady and the car had like rims and like a sound system that have moved the wax in your ears.

And she's like, what the hell? It's like, that's not my car. Like that's your car. That's what it is now. And she's driving away with this thing with like speakers that you can hear it two miles away. But there's a story where I think it was a. in the 4-7, they recovered this woman's car was reported stolen years ago

and she gets it back and again puts the car in reverse and does something and a trap opens up and she finds a kilo or coke and like a tech nine and she comes to the precinct with this stuff in a shopping bag and she's like, you know, the desk goes like,

what can I help you with Hunt? And she's like, yeah, I found this in my car. So, what else is going on? What? What? I'll tell you the cockfight story. Okay. So it's probably, wait a second.

Did you notice that like there was like a little thumbs up thing that came up over here? Yeah. And a little heart. What is that? I'm not doing it. I thought it would. know you went like this and all of a sudden it made a heart i noticed that before because i was telling a story and i saw a thumbs up pop up that's not on my end trust me i'm not that tech

savvy to do something me neither i'm thinking this is like what what what is this like i'm wondering if it actually has incorporated that yeah it's i've i think i have might have seen it before do this do a do a heart just for a second Yeah, that, see, see it? I see it. It's not me doing it. No, I know that, but it's not me doing it. Like, I didn't, like, I, I, nothing. We've been hacked.

What's going on? Weird. Anyway, I'm sorry. Go ahead. No, no, no. It's probably about 2000. I know when this happened, because it was around the time I got my first dog. It was probably around 2005. And I had come up with a couple of arrests that weren't auto theft related. I walked into a bodega and it was a gambling den

like they had leaf tables and they were counting all the policy slips I locked a bunch of those guys up another time I locked up a guy with a gun so my lieutenant calls me into his office he goes listen he says love what you're doing he goes stick to autocrine

vice does vice just stick what I go lieutenant I just happened he goes I get it auto crime so you got it boss so about a week later my sergeant calls me into his office He goes, we're getting killed with these Vespa motor scooters.

And at the time, it was like the hottest new item, these little Italian mopeds. And all these, you know, hipsters were buying them up and then keeping them on the Upper East Side of Manhattan. And they leave them outside. And people were stealing them. So he goes, we're getting killed with these things. I said, I know. I said, but they're motor scooters. He goes, just make the prop and go away.

I said, all right. So I start pulling all these theft reports. And I'm running the bin numbers and the plates on these stuff. stolen Vespas. There's like seven or eight of them and like got stolen a month from the same neighborhood. And I see one of the Vespers gets recovered up in the South Bronx off the Grand Concourse in Hawkestone Avenue, right? So I go, okay, there was an arrest made with that. Probably a bunch of kids from that neighborhood are driving up there stealing him. If I go up by Hawkstone in the Grand Concourse, I'm going to pick off three or four kids driving these Vespers

and I'll make the problem go away. So my partner to go up there, driving around, no Vespers. Okay. Well, it's all six-story tenement buildings there. It's not private houses or anything. So all those six-story tenement buildings have basements and sub-basements underground. And usually you have a superintendent of the building. He lives down there and he takes care of the building for free. And in these subterranean things, you have like these common areas where people store their motorcycles, their bicycles, snow shovels. It's storage. Right. So I start going building to building. We're not going to the basement doors. The super comes out. And they're proud to show us their underground layers, right? And they're opening these things up and no vespas. So we went to about five or six, right? I told my partner, come on. Let's just do one more. We go into this last basement. And I can smell weed. I can smell weed burning, right? So we go up to the door and pounded in the door and I'm hearing giggling. And the door opens up and the super looked like tattoo from Fantasy Island. He had perfect jet black hair, right?

And he's looking at me, and his eyes are glassy, and he looks like he's going to have a heart attack. And I go, Poppy, I said, um, so he's, he's short, he's short, like tattoo? Yeah. Okay. And he's got jet, jet black hair. And I go, Poppy, I go, would you mind if I could look in the common area? Would you have a problem with that? He goes, no.

I said, oh, okay. Could you? It goes, okay. And he's shitting bricks. And we're walking. And it's like the closer we're getting to this common area, the slower he's walking. And he walks up, it was like a rolling wall type thing And it had a lock with an asspot

It holding it together And he dropped the keys And I'm looking at my partner like, what the fuck is going on That this guy is so nervous He unlocks the lock Takes the ass ball up And he pulls apart these doors And he turns on the light

Matt, I kid you not There must have been about 50 Roosters and hens Running around the fucking floor, right? And I'm just looking at him And he's looking at me, and then there's little cages or pods that are stacked about five feet high that's got, I guess those were the fighting cocks. He's got, he's got like a hundred fucking roosters and hens in here. Now, I know what they're doing.

This is either a gladiator school or a breeding ground or a training ground for cockfinding. It's the Bronx. You know, this is in Indiana. And he's looking at me and I'm looking at him. And I go, any Bespas? He goes, no. I said, okay. And he goes, okay?

I said, yeah, I don't give a shit. He goes, okay. And he locks it up, right? We go upstairs. I grab the cell phone. I call my sergeant. I go, listen to me. Get the fucking cavalry down here.

I just walked into like the world's largest cockfighting ring. My sergeant goes, yeah, but we don't do that. I go, listen to me. I said, all lieutenant is always looking. My lieutenant was a good guy, but he was always one of these guys on the outside looking in. Like, he always wanted to be part of a press conference. He always wanted the next best thing. And I go, he's going to love this.

He goes, well, he went home for the day. He goes, call the ASPCI. I go, fucking ASPCA. I said, are you kidding me? I says, come on. I says, do you know how much overtime we're going to make with these birds and making phone calls? He goes, he left for the day.

He says, I'm telling you. Call the ASPCA. So what am I going to do at this point, right? I already let the guy go. So do you remember in the early 2000s, there was a television show. I think it was called on Animal Planet. It was called Animal Precinct on Animal. planet. It was the AS, believe it or not, New York City has the ASPCA police. And what they do is

they're uniform peace officers and they go out and investigate cases of animal cruelty. And there's a whole television show about it on TV. So anyway, I pick up the phone and I call this number and I recognize the guy's voice from TV. And I'm breaking his balls. And he goes, what do you want? And I said, listen. I said, and I explain to him what this is. And he goes, how many birds? I He says, there was like 50 free range birds. I says, and then you had another 50 stacked in pods. And he goes, oh, this is going to be huge for us. Thank you so much.

He goes, I'll tell you what. He goes, we're going to look into this. He goes, if we get a search warrant, I'll call you. You can make some overtime. You can come along with us. I said, all right, deal. I don't think nothing. I think nothing of it.

A couple of weeks go by, and I take a couple of days off. And I'm helping my dad put up this small. fence in his backyard. And we rent an auger. You know, that little corkscrew thing that drills holes. Well, New York City isn't like Florida. It's very rocky and a lot of roots. And my father is drilling this thing. He doesn't think I know what I'm doing. So he takes the auger from me and he hits a root. And my father starts spinning around in circles. And I'm like, dad, let go with the auger. So I had to like chuck him off. So while I'm laughing at him, my phone rings. And it's the guy from the ASPC.

And he says, listen, we got a search warrant for the place. He goes, we're going to hit it first thing in the morning. You want to come along? I said, no, you know what? I said, I got to help my dad put in this fence. I said, I'm going to be off for a couple days. I said, you know, good luck with it. Thank you.

Gets off the phone, right? Day or two later, I go back into work. It's on the front page of every paper. ASPCA police smash New York City's largest cockfighting ring, right? So I think it's funny. My sergeant comes up to me, he goes, was this what you were talking about? I go, yeah, how many cockfighting wings get exposed? I go, yeah.

He goes, oh, wow. He goes, that's really cool. I said, yeah. Do you know he won't goes and tells the lieutenant? Then the lieutenant calls me into his office. He goes, why did you call me? I go, you guys told me to stick to auto crime, not getting involved in other things. But yeah, I was involved in the New York City's largest breakup of a cop fighting ring that started with Vespas.

And no, we never, we never figured out who was stealing the Bespeth. I was going to say, why? If the guy knew you were a police officer, you'd just seen all that, like, and you guys didn't show up for weeks. Like, you would think they would have immediately started moving the birds. Yeah, I would have. But he probably figured, you know, it's auto crime. They don't give his shit. And I really didn't tip my hand.

I just said, well, Vespas? And he's like, no. It's like, all right. And I just turned around and walked away. Yeah, I would have. I mean, that would have been the first thing. I would have been on the phone, like, get these, get these birds out of here. but what i've had i know of i've got you know multiple examples of like the secret service or the

well more like the secret service showing up and they're like going to search the guy's house and they're like you know the guy's like look i've i've got he's like do you have anything in here that we should know about he's like i got a gun he's like yeah we're we're not the atf we don't care about a gun he goes well he said i've got some some weed and he's like yeah we're not the DEA, bro. I mean, like, do you have, you know, whatever any, whatever they were in, they were investigating. Actually, in that one, they were actually, uh, like stolen credit cards. He was like, you know, he was like, no, that's all, you know, I've got that and I've got the equipment to make the cards. He's like, okay, cool. You know, never said anything, never charged him for the other

stuff. I've had, you know, different examples where the DEA comes in. They're like, yeah, we're not worried about this or we're not worried about that. Just minor things. So it, it just depends like my lieutenant you know he probably in hindsight because there was a press conference with it that's why he had a shit fit right but you know short of that yeah they they just like you said it's kind of compartmentalized stick to this well you know it's funny too sometimes they get a bigger crime and they could care like you know one of the things I did with these fake people that I never really talk about is the fact that all of these guys like I always stick with the mortgages because that's when you're borrowing 200,000 you know 150,000

and $300,000. But, you know, I would have credit cards, you know, because these guys have perfect credit, so I'd run up their credit. They'd have $50,000 or $60,000 in credit cards. They would have. And so, you know, you're arresting me and that you've got a bunch of fake people, but you've also got credit card fraud because I've got like six credit cards that total $60,000 or $70,000.

They don't even charge you for that. You know, that dollar amount would never even enter into the equation. It was always just the bank fraud for the mortgages. Yeah, I guess they figure they got you. Why file on and that might have something to do with the judges? Maybe they get bent out of shape where they think they're overcharging. Right. Or maybe too.

Like if it wasn't, keep in mind if it wasn't mortgages and they'd grab me for the, for the like a fake identity with the credit cards, they would have charged me for the credit cards. You know what I'm saying? Yeah. Oh, yeah. If they could have put a home thing, yeah, that they would have come at you with that. Right. Like I think the credit cards were so minor in comparison.

You know, you borrowed a million dollars in mortgages. and you've got $40,000 in credit card debt. Yeah. It's like pennies, I guess, the way they look at it. But so what else? All right. So in the probably around the early 2000s, late 90s, they started with airbags, right? And airbags started showing up everywhere.

And thieves quickly figured out they could get, I know in New York City, they were getting $500 for a set of airbags. So once those things came out, car dealerships would get. and hit it was nothing to see like just people driving around with holes in their dashboards and they'd go to salvage yards and junkyards and they'd sell them their airbags back for $1,500 a set and they were paying the thieves 500 and there was a guy in the Bronx I can't think of the name of the place he was basically one of the biggest buyers of stolen airbags and he knew they were stolen and what he was doing was he was shipping these things out all over the country and he was paying the thieves in check in check so that's how we were able to catch all the thieves

but so one of the guys in my office came up with a plan he went to the feds and uh with the fbi they set up uh they started up a bogus company in new jersey bogus post office box and everything and then they started calling this guy and having him put airbags and shipping them to new jersey once you do that it's mail fraud interstate transfer of stolen property And we, he got locked. I mean, he, he made millions over the course of like two or three years. But like the amount of thieves we round up just because the check cash in place was right down the block. So it was just like they just went to the, you know, who was cash in these checks and for all these airbags?

And a lot of the thieves went away federal for it. You know what that reminds me of the, you know, these people that can, you know, you can go into stores and basically as long as you still, what is it, less than a thousand dollars? or something in L.A. or in California, there was a guy who was giving people orders, you know, homeless people and stuff to go into this store, steal these items, come back out and I'll buy them from you. And he was putting them on eBay. He said he had like a warehouse filled. He started a store on eBay. He was making tons of money. He did it for like two years straight till they busted him. I was going to say they, yeah, we're talking about it. So obviously they caught him. Yeah, they'll do that. And, you know,

it's almost incentivizing theft because if you, you know, you keep raising the limit to a felony. You know what I mean? It's just incentivizes because nobody, everybody knows, I'm not going to go to jail. And if I get caught, it's going to be a slap in the wrist. Well, I'll pick up garbage on the side of the road for three days, community service, and that'll be the end of it. Anything else? With the airbags, we used to, one time we were in a McDonald's Park a lot in the Bronx getting coffee. And this new, newer Nissan, I think it was a maximum or an ultimate drive-by.

and it's got a temporary plate that look photocopied and it's missing the two airbags so my barren up get out of the drive-thru line and we'd pull them over in the park a lot and the guy hands me all this bogus paperwork and I go what is this? He goes

it's a 96-hour permit I go what's a 96-hour permit? He goes well I'm test driving it I said for 96 hours he goes yeah I go I go from it was north of South Carolina dude, give me a break, right?

He goes, no, he goes, that's how they do it down there. And I'm looking at the paperwork. I go, well, you're going to have to drive really fast. I says, because according to this paperwork, the car's got to be back by 6 o'clock tonight. So I said, wait here. Now, this is before cell phones. So I walk into the McDonald's. I asked the manager to use the phone.

I call the dealership in South Carolina. And I said, this car isn't coming back reported stolen. I go, he's out on a 96-hour permit. And the owner goes, what the fuck is a 96-hour permit? So I knew. So they did a car. They did a lock count. He goes, yeah, that's my car.

He goes, I don't know how it got up there. So we were able to lock them up on that. Was another kid one time, I mean, this is kind of scary, but one time, I'm in my office, and I hear another detective talking to somebody on the phone, and he gets off the phone, and he goes, I just got the weirdest phone call. And I says, what's up? He goes, it's a jilted lover. He says, this guy is calling up, and he says his boyfriend goes to clubs in Manhattan.

and what he does is he goes into the coat rooms. He sneaks into the coat room when the Czech girl leaves or something. He gets in there. And he goes through people's pockets and he grabs their car keys. Then he walks around the neighborhood of the club, hitting the key fobs. And if he can open a car, he steals it that way. I says, okay, I never heard a steal in a car that way, but it's kind of interesting. He goes, well, he's got a car parked up in the Bronx.

I said, all right. I says, well, let's go up there. So it was three of us. We ride up there. We see the car parked. And it's early in the morning. And one of the guys we're with gets hungry. And he says, I got to get something to eat.

And we're not leaving this car. He goes, come on. It was like 10 o'clock now at 10 of the morning. He goes, I'll just, I'll be back in 10 minutes. So he leaves me and the other cop standing on the corner watching this car, right? And I says, I got an idea. We get this guy to move the car. So we went into a bodega and we bought a dozen eggs.

And then we threw all hoodies on. We ran by and we egged the shit out of the car. Then we went back up to the corner. And we're laughing. Like I hadn't thrown eggs in a car in 20 years. And we're standing up there laughing. And the next thing you know, you see the lights come on, blink on the car. This guy was big.

Find out he was a personal trainer. Guy comes down. He's wearing a canary fleece. And he's pissed. And he's flicking the eggshells off the car. like all right this is him so I'm walking on the side told my partner I go you go in the middle of the street on one side I'll walk on the sidewalk on the passenger side I go when he goes when he gets into the car we'll just jump him so walking we got no car

because the other guy went to Wendy's and we're coming down the street and guy gets in the car I run up on the passenger door and I open the door you know police don't move and he looks at me and then my partner pulls open the passenger door he starts the car and now he's starting to ram the two cars you know in new york everybody it's it's parallel parking so now i'm in the car with him and he's ramming the two cars my partner's grappling with him i'm able to throw the car and park and get the key out and i throw the keys on the side now he's got nowhere to go so i run around to the driver's side and we're pulling on this guy just get out of the car get out of the car matt this guy was like

six four built like a brick shit house right you know me and my partner like five nine five 10 he's got us by 40 pounds each and he's just throwing us around like toys you know like I'm grabbing his legs and my partner's going high I'm going low finally we get him on the floor and we're rolling around my partner is like you know call for help call for help and I'm like I can't find my radio and I look and my radio popped out of my back pocket now and it's underneath the car and now like in the Bronx a crowd is forming and all you need is one or two rebel rouse and we're going to get stumped but the crowd was more, it was first thing in the morning

there was more like older crowd and they were more curious and watching the fight like they were betting on the outcome as opposed to getting involved and I told my partner I go can you hold this guy like just an extra set it's so funny

we're talking like the guy isn't even here and he's listening to everything we're saying and I go can you just hold this fucking guy like an extra second my partner goes to hurry up I reach out of the car I get on the radio I call for help now I mean New York City

I mean you got 40 50 cars coming. And you can hear him. And I told the guy, go, now it would be a good time to give up. Right. He goes, all right, all right, all right. You got me. So we get cuffs on the guy, right? Everybody shows up. And we're covered in blood. And I'm like, where the fuck did all this blood

come from, right? Like, I don't know if I got nicked. When my partner got nicked, or he got nicked. So we put him in the radio car. I'm in the back seat with him. My partner's driving. And the guy, I mean, he's like, I got to talk to you guys. And said, all right. I says, well, we get to the

precinct, I'll read you your Miranda warnings. We talk all day long. He goes, no, no, no, I got to tell you something. I got to tell you something. Like, what's up? And he goes, I'm HIV positive. He said, oh, shit. Now, we're covered in blood. Right. All over my pants, right. I said, all right. So we get to the

hospital. We get another cop to watch him. My partner, I run into the bathroom was like a closet. We kick in the door. We're like scrubbing ourselves with this hospital soap, burning hot water, and we're looking. I don't have any cuts. Do you have any cuts? I don't have an open wound. You're right. The bad guy was the one that had the open

wound, unfortunately. And, you know, I was a rough two years. Like, I remember the doctor telling us, he goes, we could start you on this experimental cocktail of antivirals and everything. And I says, well, what's the downside of that? He goes, it's like dropping a nuke on your body. He says, it can, you know, it goes, it can have adverse reaction to your liver and kidneys. He goes, he goes, I don't see any open cuts of wounds. He goes, you said it didn't get into your eyes. He goes, I think you're all right. He says, but he goes, you know, you got to get tested every, I forget what it was, every six months or something. So like for two years, my partner and I were getting tested, but, you know, turned out all right. But I mean, sometimes you just think like

a regular arrest is going to just go, you know, the guy's just going to put his hands behind his back and you're in the fight of your life and then you're covered in blood. Listen, I worked as a car salesman for a for a dealership that used to be here called Reeves. import motor cars. I only worked there a few months, but a guy came in, young kid, 19, 20 years old. He came in. He hung out with one of the salesmen, an older salesman, probably 45 years old or so in his 40s. And so the kids walking around with him, test driving car after car after car and come to find out, like through the grapevine, we found out that the kid had won the lottery. And he had gone and he told the you know told the um finance manager and the uh the the the

car salesman that he had already gotten an accountant and the accountant said look you know you might as well buy you know you basically if you buy about a million dollars worth of cars they'll depreciate but you will be able to take that depreciation and you'll it'll help with your taxes and like he had this whole thing that his accountant said he said so that's why he was driving cars because he needed to buy a million dollars worth of cars and they were so excited at the dealership they gave him like a Porsche to drive until you know whatever it was like Monday because at Monday he was going to get a cashier's check but he spent the whole day with this guy on like Friday right so come Monday the kid didn't answer his pager because this was back pagers you

know didn't answer the pager several times throughout the day then two Tuesday came, wasn't answering the pager. So he's now had this car for four or five days. So finally, and he had called and left several messages on his recorder. So finally the salesman called and some guy answered the phone. He was like, hey, you know, is Todd there? And the guy's like, no, Todd's not here. He hadn't been here in a while.

He went to Miami. And he goes, and he said, went to Miami. He's like, okay, well, listen, this is, you know, this is Bob from Reeves import motor cars. he said, we lent him a vehicle. And he was supposed to be back on Monday. I mean, we're seriously considering calling it in stolen. He goes, oh, man, did he get you with that lotto scam? He goes, what?

He said, oh, what do you tell you? He won the lottery, right? Isn't that what he tells you guys? And he's like, yeah, yeah. Look, he said, if I hear from him, I'll tell him. Like the guy showed up. Did they catch him? no he showed up a couple days later he just he like stop you could leave the car and the keys

right right right right like the next day he had dropped the car off and left the keys and he's and then he was basically he does this like every month or two he'd go get a dealership and they would give him a car for let him drive it around for really only for a couple days but he would keep it for two or three more days but they think he's he's just lottery and he had the scheme the whole buying a million dollars with the cars and depreciating them and taking them as depreciation Like didn't make sense to me, but I'm not a CPA. I'm not a tax person. I don't know.

You know, none of these guys were. But yeah. And salespeople, man, I mean, they hear that, you know, the commission on that. It's like they're not going to ask too many questions. And he spent the whole day with him. But you're, this is a 19 year old kid. He doesn't care about spending a Saturday with you.

Like he's been a Saturday driving, driving sports cars. Like this is what, this is great. And then I get, then they're going to put me in a poor. I'll convince them to put me in a Porsche for a couple days. it'll turn into five. I'm going to Miami. Yeah, and then they don't want the bad publicity with it, and as long as there's nothing really wrong with the car,

they're not going to look to make an issue with it. Right. So I thought that was funny. That is funny. I wouldn't recommend doing it. No. Because if they put an alarm on that car, because if they go to the police and put an alarm on that car

and he gets caught driving the car, then they're going to charge him with grand loss in the auto. Yeah, this was back in, when was I at that dealership 80 I want to say 89 I think I sold it it was right after I graduated high school so it was probably 89 or 90 or something it was just during that time it's a rough way to make money what car salesman I mean I think so and I think that you know my understanding is that a lot of the car salesmen you know they have drug problems they have alcohol problems they you know it's a tough business so you get a lot of these guys that you know and they work 60 hours a week because you're basically just sitting around making phone calls sending emails but you're basically hanging around most of the time so uh it's the same as when you walk in to buy a piece of furniture it's like they're just hanging around and it's like you see them coming at

you from every angle and the first one that gets to you know hi on marge um what do you if you If you need something, please use my name. Like, okay. Have you ever, speaking of furniture, have you ever been in an IKEA? Yeah. Keep in mind, when I went to prison, there was no IKEA. So I went in one, the one down here in, I want to say it's in, is it in St. Peter, Tampa? I don't know.

It's down 75. Man, that place is massive. Massive. And there's no way to even really figure out, like, once we were like, okay, I've been here for 45. five minutes like an hour i i'm just ready to go we couldn't find an exit i thought if this place burns down everybody dies like they've got it set up so you can't get out but what do you look at it that way that that's interesting i listen i look at everything as escape we we went um we went gator uh hunting the other day so i mean we didn't i didn't kill a gator but you know we get on

the airboat and it goes all through uh okechobee and what's so funny about that that's something that like my my wife loves like she she used to hunt and everything so you know we just went and she thought i should go but um and it's in the middle of the night and all i could think of was if i fall off this boat right if anything happens you're never getting out of this swamp you don't know which direction is which and as they drive through at night the guy's got us flashlight right and it's like there's a pair of eyes there's a pair of eyes there's a pair of eyes There's a pair of eyes. There's two eyes. There's two sets of eyes. There's two sets. There's a pair of eyes. Their alligators are everywhere. Everywhere. I thought not only that, even if the alligators weren't there, you'll never find your way out. You're so deep in that place. But the alligators would kill you and nobody would find your body. Yeah. Yeah. Panthers there, there, feral hogs. No, no. This was in the swamp. These are airboats. They're in the swamp. So there's no land. It's about three feet deep. maybe five feet deep and it's not and it's got these these um uh sawgrass yeah that sawgrass

but it's sawgrass that's like eight 10 feet high so if you fell in the water even if you could stand up you you can't where am i yeah you'd never get out yeah it's lake okechobe you've seen that you know where lake ok chobie is in flor yeah it's massive i don't know that i'd ever get out of there that they gators would definitely eat me oh fuck yeah yeah so it was fun for about an unfortunately we were out there about four hours did i tell you the story i became a cop for a small police department in florida after i retired and down here in florida and um i spent half a day learning how to wrestle an alligator no i'm a city kid you know what i mean born and we had crime we didn't have fucking wildlife and they didn't give me you duct tape and they're

telling you like to sneak up on them and i'm like i'm not doing this i'm like can't we just shoot them. No, we don't want you shooting alligators. I'm like, but why not? You know what I mean? They hunt him down here. Like, what if a road gate gets in a woman's kitchen or something? I'm not fucking around with duct tape. He's going. You know what I mean? Like, I'm not scrolling around with Jurassic Park. Yeah, they're, they're at least. And you know, well, and you know this. It's funny because sometimes people will get nipped and they'll still die. Just a little bit because the bacteria and stuff in their mouths is so toxic. It'll kill you. That'll kill you. You just get, you might get away. but it did nip you, it caught you and you're like, oh, and you know, it's obviously gotten hurt, but you think, oh, I survived. No, you didn't. No, you didn't. If you don't lose that arm, you may be dead in, in a week.

It's horrible. Yeah, we didn't add that stuff up in New York City. You want to hear the diplomat story? Yes. All right. So I get a phone call from Director of Security for Mercedes-Benz in Manhattan, and he says, I got, I got something here. I don't know what to do with it.

And I says, well, what's up? He goes, this Mercedes comes in for service. He says, and the VIN number's off. He says, 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 Tilly Dog. Chili Dog, not included. The Naked Gun. Tickets on sale now. August 1st. We contact Germany. And they keep, you know, Mercedes, they keep records, and he says,

This vehicle that's sitting here, you know, that's getting an oil change, was manufactured in Germany for France. This car is supposed to be in France. He goes, and then they, I don't know how he did it, but the car was taken in a home invasion in France. He goes, and somehow it's sitting here in this car dealership. He goes, and they're about to leave. I says, all right, I says, get the VIN number, get the license plate. Don't, don't hold them up. I'll look into it, right?

So run the VIN number, you know, it's made for France. So now what am I going to do with this? Well, this was after 9-11. And after 9-11, the NYPD started sending detectives and supervisors with Interpol to different cities in Europe looking for extremists and terrorism before it reached the United States. So I found out that we had an NYPD sergeant. working in France so everything is five hours ahead or five hours behind I finally get a hold of this guy and I go listen I got a mystery I says I've got this Mercedes can you look into it

he goes sure in the meantime the car is coming back a couple of days later so my partner and I like we'll pick this car off so it's it's in lower Manhattan over by the Hudson we park on the side of the dealership where cars line up to go in first thing in the morning and the license plate the guy gave me made no sense. I ran it through 50 states and it didn't come back to anything. Here comes the car and it's got diplomatic plates on it.

Like, oh shit, well, that changes things, right? You're not really supposed to mess with those people. They have diplomatic immunity. So I watched the car go in and my partner and I get out. We go into the dealership. It's a guy probably in his early 40s. He looked like the bass drummer for you too.

Adam Clayton. He had like the wire. him glasses, skinny jeans, very European, and he was with this 25-year-old knockout, beautiful girl. She looked like she was going to give birth at any minute, and she was wearing like a chinchilla pelt coat, and they dropped the car off, and then they're walking through the showroom and perusing, and they leave. Once they leave, I tell the director of security, I go, listen, I says, I'm already working

on the VIN number and stuff in France. I go, you know, it's a diplomatic vehicle. I can't seize it. I got to go through proper channels with this. I says, again, let them go. I says, now I've got all their information. He gave me all their information. I says, I'll look into it.

So a couple of days later, this NYPD sergeant in France calls me up. He goes, yeah, that's stolen. If you think it's complicated now, it gets even more complicated. So the vehicle is stolen a year or two earlier in France and a home invasion. Somehow, this car stolen in France is. shipped to the United States from Africa. So somehow from France, it went to Cotivar, which is right next to Nigeria. It was shipped to the United States in an international ship, in a diplomatic shipping container. And the country with the diplomatic immunity is Venatu, which is it's an island

in the Pacific. So you've got multiple countries involved in this. The woman is a diplomat, her husband's a Brit but he shares diplomatic immunity because he's married to a diplomat from Vanatu. I said, all right. I said, I can't arrest these people. I'm not even supposed to, like, detain them.

I'm going to go and steal the car. I'm just going to have a state... See what happens. I'll find out where they park it and we can get into that. I've stolen a couple of cars in the line of duty with search warrants put in listening devices. So I'm going through that and

And my lieutenant goes, you know what? Call the FBI. I said, all right. So the FBI tells me, call the State Department. So I call the State Department. And they look into it and they go, yeah, this is some shady stuff here. He says, but again, you know, it's very touchy, feely, please don't steal this car. You're going to start an international incident. I said, all right. He goes, I'm going to reach out to this diplomat from Vanatu. I'm going to tell her that the car, her husband brought into this country is stolen and we'd like it back. And I said, you think she's going to surrender he goes yeah he goes she goes there's like three diplomats from that country they don't want to screw up their gig over here right calls me up he says she's going to bring the car in

i said perfect so i show up and it's not the woman i saw with him the young woman that's pregnant it's a middle-aged woman very nice i don't understand um my husband does international business this is a big misunderstanding but here please take the keys like okay thank you very much right get the car back and that's about as far as I can go with this. Can't lock up diplomats, right? The FBI and the State Department knows about this I back off.

About a month later I'm in my office and the phone rings and one of the guys goes, there's some English guy on the phone and he's cursing you. He goes, you got to talk to this guy. He's pissed. So I get on the phone and it's a guy from England and he's like he goes, I was out of the country on business

and you seized our vehicle and you had no right to do it. I know what it is. he's pounding his chest in front of his wife. You know what I mean? Because she's like, what the fuck is this? And now he's going on and on and on, you know. And I said, you know, I says, are you done? I says, you know, that woman that I saw you with in the Mercedes dealership,

the pregnant one, did she have the baby? And I didn't hear a thing. It's because, you know what? I found funny. That's not the woman that I met that surrendered the car. Your wife is a little older, right? Thank you, detective. When he got off the phone, I never heard another thing about it.

He didn't know that. that I saw him with the young woman. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, he had bigger problems at that point. I don't know if she was listening on the phone, but he couldn't get me off the phone fast enough. He was cursing and jumping up and down screaming like Yosemite Sam, and then he didn't want to play no one.

Yeah, I've never even heard of that country. I didn't either. It was on Survivor. Oh, okay. You know, as you tell your stories, I think to myself, I wonder if I could make a short with that, you know, a short out of that. That's, that's, you know, because your stories are great because they're, they're perfect for shorts because even though they take five or ten minutes, it's, it's easy to, to trim a five minute story down for a one minute short. You know, it doesn't take 30 minutes.

It takes 10, five. And then it's easy to just, wow. Yeah. And that's, and that's what my book saw. They're just, you know, my books, there's no beginning, middle end. It's not like a novel. There's a chapter about something. And then there's three or four stories about things that happen to me, you know, during my

NYPD career. You want to hear about me stealing cars in the line of duty? Hey, so you know what, you know what reminded, what that reminds me of is that I was really fascinated, although I know this happens, but I was fascinated. Did you watch Getting Gotti? Yes. Where they like broke in and put the. had put the listening devices in and you know they're they're watching and some guys coming down

the street and everybody pulls out and then they go back and i thought that was i thought it was pretty interesting i'd listen i never broke into a mob social club but one of the stories is so we we had a case with these guys um they were bronx guys and um west indian jamaica guiana and they were they were going up to westchester county which was like the county right next to us very affluent and they were stealing high-end cars bringing them back to the the Bronx and they were into racing. So they'd blow motors. They were racing BMWs and stuff so they would blow motors

and get into accidents. They would go up to Westchester County and steal these cars. So we did a joint case with Janine Piro's office and at one point during the case, what these guys did was they stole a five series BMW they changed

the license plate and then they put a business card over the VIN number. And they were using this five series because it was a nice car and they're going into an affluent area and they're driving around Westchester County using that car you know to drop guys off to steal cars

and it was perfect because the car fit in the neighborhood it could outrun probably most police cars it handled well they were always wearing gloves so if they had an abandoned ship the car's not going to come back to anybody they're wearing gloves there's no fingerprint this is before DNA and stuff so we figured out

the car was stolen we got the VIN number for it We went to BMW, we got a key cut for it. So the plan was we were going to break into the car, take it, bring it someplace, and have a GPS installed and a listening device that we could hear the conversations in the car. So these guys, how long that take? I'm sorry? How long does that take to do all that? To get the key?

No, to, I mean, you're taking it. You have to know that you can be gone for, what, eight hours, two hours? No, no, no. we got we had this thing so what we did was um the NYPD has a highway unit it's in the Bronx it's where the highway cops they're kind of like the state police for the NYPD but that's where the garages are so on a midnight we had our guys from Taru which are our tech guys on standby in this garage like two o'clock in the morning so we did it like this I had a key made we had a field team right we knew these guys were they usually were done stealing by

12 1 o'clock in the morning. We waited until 2 to make sure they were asleep and they parked the car across right in front of this Jamaican's house one of the feed. So we did it like this. I get dropped off down the block. I was supposed to get into the car,

move it out of the space, and then once I left, we were going to put another car in the parking spot because we didn't want to lose the space because the guy comes out and the car's across the street, he's going to know something's up. So I get dropped. I got a hoodie on and these guys are violent like actually one of these guys when got like five or 10 years for that case was deported at Jamaica snuck back into the United States and almost killed a cop stealing a car and a car dealership in Westchester but anyway um I get dropped off I get into the five series but the key in the ignition it's not starting and I'm like shit did they disconnect the battery did they put a kill did they take the I mean these guys are pretty tech savvy did they put a um a kill switch in any

call will not start right i get out of the car i go up the block i tap my radio somebody picks me up so we meet we're meeting a parking lot somewhere and uh we're going like what do you think what you think i'll never forget one of the detectives in my office looks at me goes is it a stick and i said i didn't even think to fucking look it was so dark they dropped me off again i get in the car and i feel around it to stick i stick my foot down on the clutch boom the car starts right up. I pull out. I get on I-95, get off Pelham Parkway, go down to the highway unit. Tech guys, as soon as that car goes in, the hood goes up, the dash comes. They had that thing. We had that car back in an hour. Probably a little over an hour. Yeah. And then we were

able to track them, monitor them from the laptop, because you're following guys, there's always, there's always that risk when you're following guys, especially in the middle of the night. you know what I mean it's one thing to follow people in the daytime there's a lot going on there's a lot of cars at night the herd gets thin there's less cars on the road and then you notice things more like that's the third time I've seen that red jeep you know what I mean that that's that second time I saw that crown Vic so with a laptop we knew the neighborhoods they were getting dropped off we were listening to what they were saying and they all went to jail okay but I was scared shitless the second time going back to that car I'm like what if this guy

comes out and you know start shooting at me yeah okay so by the way i don't know if you use stream yard i have okay you don't understand that there's a resume button like a pause button but right next to it is the reset button oh you could lose everything you could lose everything and i've literally hovered over it for a second and i was waiting to hit the button for the person to kind of finish their sentence and like happened to glance up and i was like oh my god you should put like like a piece of tape over your screen. Yeah. I know you get fucked. Yeah. Oh, I've done that. I've talked to somebody one time for 20 minutes and we had a great conversation. It was a she's a cold case detective. And then all of a sudden I was thinking of myself, man, this is a great conversation,

you know, which I didn't expect it to be. And I glanced up at the, because I thought how long we've been talking. And you know, I looked up at the timer. And it's funny, it wasn't there. And I thought, that's weird and I went no I never hit record like I've done some stupid things I don't typically do stupid things twice it happens bro I've been on a couple of podcasts where not big ones either where they for whatever reason they lost the file or it didn't it didn't like you said it didn't record and then they call you back and it's like I'll do it but it's like it's almost like we live in a date again and it's the same questions of the same thing it's like you don't have that enthusiasm yeah you know what i mean it's like now i got to change things up or i'm gonna get it's

gonna come off that i'm bored right it's not it's not gonna go for a good interview how is your channel doing not bad i'm getting probably about 600 uh downloads or uploads per episode okay is that are you talking about on youtube or no no youtube is a small crawl just on um um apple iTunes and and Buzz Sprout and all that. No, no. You, the episode I did with you did well, but I'm probably on that,

I'm probably on YouTube probably just average, I'm just crawling out of that, like 40, 50 an episode. Right. I haven't really figured out YouTube yet. No, it's it, you really, you have to go on other people's programs and you have to talk about your podcast.

You have to mention the podcast to drive traffic that way. Or you have to do shorts. I'm telling you shorts. I know. Shocked. how much they will drive traffic the problem is the short drive subscriber so people will go to your channel and subscribe but they don't really watch the videos it's a different crew yeah exactly all right i'll mention the pot i'll mention my podcast at the end yeah um so what what else i

so you want to hear me stealing cars all right so i got the one of cars that i stole okay in the line of duty. Another one was driving around the Bronx and I see this Chevy Blazor parked and I run the plates parked I run the plate and the ear is off. There's just things on that blazer that shouldn't be on that blazer so I do a whole

history on it. I find out that it's salvaged the whole nine yards but the car is registered to a fictitious person. So I'm like, okay, if I pull somebody over, they're going to tell me I borrowed it from a friend.

I need somebody to report that thing stolen So what I do is My partner and I get a warrant for the car And did it in broad daylight Like 10 o'clock and I was a Friday Like this time of year It was just before Christmas 10, 11 o'clock And a nice neighborhood

We pull up with a flatbed truck I hooked the side I pull it out Hook it up and the alarm and had an alarm Like shit and it's you know the alarm's going off And we're driving away with this thing With the alarm going on But no one stopped us.

Hey, what are you doing? I mean, we're just as cops. Just was an unmarked flatbed truck and two middle-aged guys yoke in this car. No one said a thing, right? Bring it back to the precinct, take it out to the pound. Monday or Tuesday, I go into the system. Somebody files a report for it stolen. So a couple of days later, I call the guy up.

The name on the report is different than the registered owner. and I says yeah I've been trying to get in touch with the owner I says but and I forget what he told me that he had his name legally changed he gave me some bullshit story I go but it's your car right he goes oh yeah I said okay I says um the ignition's punched and the radio's missing I said I'll tell you what come up to the precinct tomorrow at 10 a.m I says but make sure you bring the title and all the paperwork and the insurance you're making the insurance payments on it right yeah yeah I go you pay him by check yeah I go bring me everything that you're paying the insurance, you paid the registration, yeah, yeah. Bring me all the evidence. Yeah, guy comes, and it was funny because he comes into the precinct and he's got like a folder of stuff and he's handed it to me. I go, yeah, it's, come on. And I walked him literally right into a jail cell and he's looking at me and he goes,

he goes, you didn't recover the car, did you? I go, well, I did, but I know it's not yours. And he goes, all right, he goes, well, I want a lawyer. He said, no problem. So lock him up. And then I start digging into his history, and I see that he sold another couple of Chevy Blazers. And I think it was a Chevy Astrovan, right? So I go, these cars are probably stolen, too.

Let's go take a look what these are and we'll put more charges on them. And I'll never forget the following week, a couple of days later, we go to this address in the Bronx. Well, we go to this address in the Bronx. It's a apartment building. And in back of the building, they have like a little parking lot. And I see the car, this Chevy Astro van. So I'm like, oh, good, it's still here. We'll go up there and talk to the owner of the car.

Who sold to this car is a problem with it, right? Sometimes people know, sometimes they don't. We park, we go in front of the building, we're going up to the building. Who's standing in front of the building? But the guy I locked up. That day, he was going there. Him and his friend were going to make that car disappear. Okay.

So we got the car back and we recovered that car, was stolen, and we wound up re-arrested him again. he was just about to like maybe if i would have gotten there or half hour later that call would have vanished oh yeah they would have burned these guys are creative oh yeah it's just you know like they're just off a little bit like if he had had the exact same vehicle you know then you wouldn't have noticed that's true you know there's little things like that they're they're like boy you're really close like your your scam's pretty good It's just a little, anything that's off, that it'll just mess you up.

And the third car, I had a steal in the line of duty was I locked up this kid with a BMW on the lower east side of Manhattan had changed all the VIN numbers on it. And going through his history, I saw that he had sold or purchased one time this Honda. Same thing, big time salvage history. I get a warrant for the car, and the car is registered as someone out in Brooklyn. Same thing, fictitious person. So I figured, all right, let's do the same thing all over again. We'll steal the car off the street, have somebody reported stolen. So this time we didn't have a flatbed truck.

We just had like a regular tow truck. Same thing. First thing in the morning, hook it up, no alarm, tow it off the street, take it through Brooklyn, through Manhattan, bring it up to our Bronx office. And, you know, I opened the hood and the firewall's been changed and everything. I get the hit on the car. It's reported stolen. So now we're taking everything that's out of the car and inventory in it.

And I get into the trunk and I'll never forget there was a gap bag, you know, the blue canvas bag, you know, with the string on. And I'm squeezing the bag. And I go, there's money in here. It just felt like money. And my partner goes, yeah, okay. I said, no, I think there's money in here. And I open it up and I just see hundreds in bundles.

Whoa. So we're looking at each other. Then we start laughing, right? I go, he's retiring and he was retiring in six months. I think I was retiring in a year, right? We start laughing. I go, you know, if we were two other guys, like the guy that you had on. Yeah.

I said, I said, let's go upstairs and give this to the lieutenant. So my lieutenant's sitting at his desk. And I think, I think it was 38,000. I think we go up there and I put it on his desk and he goes, what's this? You know, it's money. And he goes, holy shit. So the NYPD, there's a whole procedure. would seize money, you count it, you count it again, you run it through those money counters

and everything. And then it goes for what's called acid forfeiture. So what you do is there's a unit in one police plaza, and I can't think of the name of it, but they test the money for narcotics. Now, all money has touched narcotics at one time or another, be it someone had weed in their pocket, someone rolled up a bill and snorted coke with it, all money has traced trace him out to drugs on it. So what they do is

they take samples of the money. And I thought it was a joke. The guy comes out with this little shop vac and he plugs a chip into it. And I thought he was fucking around, but he was being dead serious. He goes, wave the money. What do you mean?

Wave the money. It was just wave it. And as I'm moving it around, he's vacuuming. And then they take that chip out of the shop vac and they plug it into a laptop of some kind of machine and it shows parts per whatever. It shows like this bill has been in contact with cocaine and hashish or whatever. So obviously the money tested positive for narcotics.

So it's late. We're down to one police plaza with this bag full of money. And then we have it in these bank bags and you'd make what's called a night deposit. I think it was a chemical or a city bank. The city has a contract with one of the banks that you put it in a night. deposit box, right? So we got all this money. We're going to go back up to the Bronx and drop this money off in a night deposit box. And there's three of us. And my sergeant, it was me and another detective. My sergeant goes, I'm hungry. I'm like, yeah, it's about midnight,

but yeah, I'm hungry too. He goes, there was this Chinese restaurant, was this hole in the wall. The address was 69 Bayard in Chinatown. And if you went in there, I don't know if it's still around, but if you Google it, you can see on the walls, if you went into it, it's like a little hole in the wall, but on the walls or dollar bills, like hundreds of dollar bills, people write on them and stuff. It's just, it's a weird decor. So my sergeant goes, well, leave the money in the car or the other detective goes, leave the money in the car and we'll get something neat. I go, I'm not leaving that fucking money in the car. What are you kidding? I go, what if someone steals the car, someone breaks into it? They're going to nail us on a cross. We're missing $38,000.

So it's like that scene in Pulp Fiction, when Jules and the other guy, they're in the diner with that suitcase with the gold shit in it. Yeah. We're sitting in 69 Bayard at 1230 at night with $38,000 at our feet, eating Chinese food. And then we made the money drop. And nobody reported that car stolen. I think just before I retired,

like a year or two later, as someone actually reported that car stolen. And I gave that to when I gave the case to another detective and I don't know what happened with it. Should call, find out. I'm retired 16, 17 years. Paul, who? They're all gone.

So how long did you work for that little police station in Florida? Not long. Six or eight months. Oh, how come? Why? I went from working in America's largest police department doing auto theft and organized crime. And then it was like working, then being on an episode of Reno 911. Right.

You know, here I am in my 40s. I'm new guys. So I'm working midnight, rightfully so. And I'm drinking eight cups of coffee. to stay up at night and you know the game had passed me so now I'm going on the domestics I don't want to listen to people's problems at this point in my life in my 40s the emphasis on DUIs down here in Florida I mean it just they're all about the DUIs and it's like that was there's no winning with drunks yeah the crying they want to fight you they're happy they're pissing

in the car it just the game had passed me by and it was time to do something else and now I'm talking. I'd rather be talking to you than driving around in the middle of the night, wrestling alligators or listening to domestic violence call. Okay. Well, I appreciate you, you know, doing this with me. You really, about your channel, you got to start doing shorts. You got to figure out how to do short. Oh, I definitely am. Maybe I could come up there and what do you use? What software do you use? Oh, Riverside FM. No, I've done shorts before.

I just didn't realize how, how effective they are. Yeah, they are. And you never know which one's going to suddenly get, you know, 200,000 views or a million views. You just don't know. So, you know, you post, you posted three a week and, you know, and they're fun. Once you get going, once you get doing them, they really, you know, you'll put it out. listen, I could blow, I could, I could blow all day with doing two or three shorts and the whole day is gone. Next thing, you know, you're like, oh my God, it's six o'clock at night. Like, what's

going on? I've been sitting here for 12 hours. Like, this is insane. And they get a lot of uploads on YouTube? Yeah. If you look at, if you go to my channel, look at the shorts, I mean, I've got some of them have four or five million views. You know, most of them have five thousand, 10,000, but I got tons of them that get 50,000, 100, 200, 300, 300. The one you and I did about Mike Tyson's motorcycle, I think it's up to like $1.8 million. Right, right. I couldn't believe that. And that drives, you know, I don't know how much money that made.

You know, you would think, okay, I mean, it doesn't matter because they're so short. But when it gets up there, it probably, it probably does have, did make a lot of money. Oh, wait, that's the wrong channel. I got, hold on. I got, oh, man, just no good at this. I got these fat little fingers. They're just. um here it is i hit the wrong button again there it is okay so watch i can find out i've got

that shorts and let's go by sort by most viewed and yours is definitely oh yeah Tyson's money yeah one point eight it's one point eight and i tell you right now it made how much money that make i mean for like literally it's what it's like 50 seconds or something yeah it's it's yeah one point eight and it's got it made two hundred and seventy one dollars it's two hundred seventy one dollars that's great like that they our payment listen that's a that that right there if i wish that each episode i did would make 271 that's great but that's one of those things you have no idea you don't know what what it's going to do um and it's funny that uh wade which is a guy that runs a channel called um

uh crime and entertainment yeah he you know he does them now he started off he was doing like just really shitty ones and i would call him up and i he'd go oh what do you think of that one i'd be like i i think it's horrible bro i think you you didn't zoom in you didn't do this well how do i do that and you know so we talked and he played with it and probably within a week or two he was sending me these shorts that i was like wow like he really i like way he's good dude yeah he really did good like he's like now he's doing like very professional ones and he's like yeah he's like i can see that where they'll they'll get they'll get some volume and he is that i can see they are driving subscribers so but i anything else are we good you you want to wrap you up if i may yeah so my

podcast it's the same off fuck it's nypd through the looking glass podcast where i bring on retired NYPD members and we you know to tell more stories and there's a lot of funny stories for my books hey i appreciate you guys watching do me a favor hit the subscribe button hit the bell so you get notified of videos just like this also please go to my my clips channel and subscribe it would really help me and please consider joining my patreon it's ten dollars a month all of vicks to his books or to amazon and to uh to his channel his youtube channel and podcast in the description box. Thank you very much. See ya.