Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast - The Unfair Psychology Behind Police Interrogations

Episode Date: March 10, 2026

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As a former Secret Service agent, there's things that we can and cannot talk about. So I grab a blank CD and I'm like, and we got you on cameras. My partner's like, so he breaks right there. He just spills it. And of course, this is evidence not right. Like how I got the confession. My first year is in the jail. I would recommend working in the jail to anybody that wants to go into law.

For a certain amount of time. Like even if it was just six months, it would be a requirement. Why? Because it teaches you how to really talk to people. How to diffuse situations with just words instead of like calling out the cell extraction team or something. and, you know, because somebody's riled up, getting people to calm down, you know. And you're talking to people from all walks of life. Right.

Because, like, as you know, like, not everybody in jail is a bad person. Some people have just made mistakes. But they come from, like, the very, you know, desolate of the poverty level to, you know, million some dollar a year people that, you know, have committed some sort of fraud or something worse. And you're dealing with all the blocks. You're dealing with a block. which is, you know, like some misdemeanors and stuff like that. A B block is all the felonies, like B6 or B5 was, you know, like murderers.

And then you had this block called J block, which is the Keep Separates, which are like transvestites, pedophiles, and you had to talk to these people, even if you don't agree with who they are as a person, you had to talk to them and be able to relate to them, right? you know, because you need them to not act a fool with there. Yeah. Right. So I would put that on anything.

And I think that's helped me throughout my career of knowing how to talk to people, meet somebody where they're at and talk with them. I feel like a lot of the sheriffs that I've, or the deputy I've talked to, they tend to start them in the jail. Like they, you know, first of all, most of them, I think it's because like it's not like a position they want. So it's kind of like, hey, you got to pay your dues.

You've got to be in the jail for a year or two. And so a lot of them, they end up going in the jail. Some of them like it. I mean, we interviewed this one guy who was like, I didn't want to leave it. It's like five years.

They kept saying, do you want to go on the street? He's like, no, I'm good here. I'm, I like it here. Right. But yeah,

I think most of the sheriffs in Florida, they start you in the jail. Yeah. That's pretty common with most sheriff's departments. Typically, it's like a feeder program or a farm system. Right. Because they can control the environment in there.

They can control your environment and what you do and what you're involved. Out on the street, people that don't have that integrity or don't have the good common sense like you and I've talked about or, you know, just aren't good decision makers, you know, overall. Like, they have loose reins, right, out there and it's harder to control that. In the jail, they're going to mess up. They mess up in the jail.

You can watch the whole thing. You've got cameras. You've got them under control. And better they screw up with an inmate than they screw up with some school teacher who they pulled over in a car. and she's being belligerent. Well, not necessarily better they screw up with the inmate, right? Because, like, these are people, too.

I hear what you're saying, but they can monitor, what you're saying about monitor, they can monitor it closer and then properly mentor them. And you really learn when deputies in the jail, if they have what it takes to be out on the street or if they're a jail deputy, right? And some people choose, like you said, but some people want to get out and they're like,

they're not getting out. Right. Keep them inside, you know. But, you know, like I said, was making no money. Did not work like working in the jail. I did a year in the jail. And then I went out to a hybrid patrol court system or assisted. Hybrid patrol and court position where I would do patrol so many days.

And then sometimes I would be inside and I would work the dockets in the courtrooms. Also a great learning tool because you hear everyone, especially like when you went over to probate and you're dealing with child cases. and you're standing there in a courtroom over like a divorce case and you hear some of the pettiness, right? It really kind of gives you an overall feel for thing. But like not making money and not loving jail life, I ended up, I started applying other places. And I went at 25, I got hired by the Southfield Police Department.

Now the Southfield Police Department is on the north border of Detroit. A great department, like 160 officer department, fast-paced. We had a great chief at the time who has since passed away. Like, we went there. I went from the Sheriff's Department where they didn't give you much anything. We went there and they were like issuing us four different guns, you know, a rifle, a shotgun, a pistol and an off-duty pistol, right?

Off the bat. They're giving, like, departments don't really issue off-duty guns, right? Well, they did. And then they had a very loose, not loose, but well-articulated. pit policy. And pit is precision immobilization technique or tactic. So it's when

you see the cars coming up and the police car pops in over that corner. Oh yeah, pit maneuver. Yes. So the pit maneuver, like as long as you could articulate and show that they're showing willful and want and disregard for public safety, you could pit them.

But you better make sure that you can articulate like what they were doing throughout. That's why a good report writing is so important because all right so he ran an intersection and there's cars stopping and honking like he could have hit three different cars it's rush hour right we needed to stop the pursuit we need this and we were we had concerns that if we just stopped that person like they often do keeps going fast right and then ends up getting an accident down the way i've had that where like we stopped in car T-bones another car and people have like dislocated shoulders and blown out knees and flipped over and well we stopped

to pursue. So at Southfield Police Department, 13 years there. And I had a great career there. I had eight years as a detective. And my last two years was as FBI Biant Crimes Task Force Officer. What kind of detective? So I was, I started out, it's just like working in the jail, just like any position, like they train you up. Right. So I started out work doing warrants. I started chasing warrants. So anybody that got arrested the night before, when I came in the morning, I'd have a stack of cases that I'd have to work, may have to go re-interview them to get more information because the patrol officer, you know, was lacking something in the report.

And then I would go and I would seek the warrant with the prosecutor's office or the city attorney and get them arraigned. That's what I would do every day. That trained you up. Then I went to, I got moved from that after a year to property crime, or no, I'm sorry, to computer fraud. So I did not love computer fraud at all. Why?

It's just, that seems like fun. Well, from a former financial guy, that would be fun. From a guy that liked to run the streets, it wasn't so fun. And it's just, it's a lot of work, right? And little that I know is foreshadling that when I became a Fed, that's what I'd be doing a lot of. Right. So did okay there. Another detective that came back from the DEA Task Force and was working property crimes,

so breaking and entering commercial B&Es and stuff like that. took me under his wing, he took it upon himself to start mentoring. Well, we had like this big string of commercial be and eats. Like nobody was solving this stuff, right? And so he took it on when he came over and he grabbed me to work it with him because there were so many of them. And I were trying to figure out who did it. And we went out, we did all kinds of surveillance, all kinds of stuff like that,

and ended up catching the guy. And as a result, our lieutenant who had me, I was still in financial and a computer moved me to property crimes. How'd you catch the guy? Just surveillance and building it up. You know, it was a lot of surveillance, a lot of watching movements like, you know, movement of life type stuff.

And it ended up being a pill addict. He had popping pills, and he was breaking into money. But he was good for like 18 commercial bes, like a six-month period, to get money for pills, for bars and stuff. So, yeah, we ended up catching them just by, well, first some was evidence, right? Like process and then it comes back. And then we have to try to figure out where he is and then surveillance.

Then we get him on his movement and stuff like that. So it's just movement of life. And then so they moved me to be. And that's where I really started to flourish because now I was more in my element. I was more of a street detective and not a behind the desk detective. So I was out there talking to people. I was looking for stuff. Moving into this spot and property crimes being eased

is what really launched the trajectory of my career. At the time, I was kind of just spinning my wheels. As America turns 250 this year, it has me thinking about the people that really help build this country. Not the ones in history books. I'm talking about American ranchers. The men and women who wake up before the sun, work long days and keep food on our tables year after year.

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That's $40 off your first order and $30 off you are next to. Just use my code inside. That's good ranchers.com American meat delivered. And so I get this case. I'm at a training session in this city called Troy, which is near Detroit also. And there is, I get in the car and I hear on the radio, there's this commercial robbery. at a jewelry store in Southfield. And so I report,

I let dispatch know that I'm coming from Troy. I report right to the scene, get the video and all these things. And at the time, because the reason why I reported right there right away and didn't waste any time, is there is this string of jewelry stores getting hit with robberies throughout Detroit.

Now this is... What kind of robber? Are they like takover? Smash and grabs. So they were coming in with sledge homers and they were breaking the golds, the breaking the glass on like Rolex dealers, Jared jewelry, stuff like that.

Is this like a mob or like six guys work or four guys working together? Well, this one was four guys. Okay. All right. But it ends up being a whole gang faction from Detroit, what it becomes. Okay. So we have one in Southfield. So I go right there.

And now this is a time in law enforcement in the United States still where the social media was not really a big. thing and that's gonna show itself in the investigation shortly too and that social media was not really a thing and communicating with other departments was the thing they're like yeah we know you have a similar incident but this is our case we're not sharing right so I'm trying to figure this stuff out I like a day later guys with the same description it's a Jared Jewelers on the north end of the county okay so I ended up talking to my sergeant and I get approval and I hold a

fusion meeting at our police department something that doesn't happen. Now, a fusion meeting is where you invite all the, all the agencies that have had an incident or want to learn about them to come share information. And they're like, you know, this is a time where this stuff doesn't happen. And my boss was like, wow, man, this guy's innovative. And I was like, no, I'm just trying to solve a damn case. Right. Right. So I have all these, all these different agencies come in and I get up and I give to break the ice. I give like a 10, 15 minute spiel of our case. And I, because at that point, I had gotten reports from all these other departments, and that's when I saw there was, there was a legitimate crime trend. Like, these are the same handful to a dozen guys that are doing this every time, same descriptions, everything like that. So I invite people to get up and talk about their case and share it, and I just opened for them. And I had a sign-in sheet, and we send it out to everybody so everybody can communicate. and what happened was I end up catching one of the guys. Well, I didn't catch him.

The Auburn Hills Police Department caught one of the guys fleeing the scene. And I got a hold of them. And I brought them to Southfield Police Department to arraign them on ours. And when I did, I interviewed. And this guy, you know, if we were out on the street or if we were watching the game together, we'd be chopping it up. Like, you would not know that he was about that life. Right.

But he was. Like, he had several gun charges, you know, some violent crime on his record and stuff like that. But when we had talked, it would just be like you and I talking, right? And so we're talking, and he proceeds to tell me in the interview everything about their M.O., about what they do and how they're doing them out of state, too, and how they're renting cars. We're about the code. I'm going to get to that too at a second. I'm going to get to that about the code, all right?

So he's telling us about the cars that they'll rent a car and they'll steal a car when they get there. So they'll rent a car, like the boss will drive in their own car. They rent a car to take there and out of state. And when they get there, they steal a car. And the stolen car is the one they use in the robbery. The rental is the getaway. So they'll drive to the location in the stolen, go in, spend. smash all the glasses.

Jared Jewelers at the time was, they had the same floor plan nationwide. So it was super easy for these guys. These guys knew. Yeah. Like they would send somebody a week or two ahead of time to scout it. And then, and typically,

like guy, girl, so it looks like a couple, and then they would come back a couple weeks later to a month later and they would rob the place. Yeah, it's pretty sophisticated for,

you know what I'm saying? Yeah. A street gang? Yeah, for a street gang? Like, that's, well, that's because the OGs were running. Okay.

So the guys that were in their 30s were running. and the guys going in were either like a 16, 17, 18 year old or someone in their late 20s that are down on their luck. Okay. So. The guys that are dumb enough to do it. Like if you're 40 years old, you're like, what are you nuts?

I'm not doing. It's crazy. Right. I've got to jail for 20 years on that now. Yeah. And so you get, you know, you get the guys that go in making a thousand to $2,000 for their rip with their faces on camera and stuff like that.

The guy sitting three blocks away in the car calling the shots. making like 60 to 100,000, right? So he would tell me how this worked and then how they would come back to Detroit and that they did the same MO every time. And he even talked about some places he had gone to like in Ohio, Indiana, and then he starts giving me some information

on these guys. And here's the code part, right? So I ask him at the end. I'm like, you're facing serious time, right? Because of your rap sheet, why are you telling me of this? he's like, well, detective, he goes, this is how I see it. And he goes, out on the street, everybody's going to talk about how they don't talk.

All right. But when you're getting ready to go in, everybody's going to talk. Nobody wants to go. Yeah. You're best talking first. Yeah. The first one to the table is the first one to eat, right? Yeah.

Right. That's a longstanding saying. First to the table is the first to eat. Right. And now every one of these guys that gets knocked off, he's, he was facing 20 years and 25 guys or 15 guys get knocked off. It's like if I should just get a year for each one of these guys,

I could be out of here in two or three years. Right. It was a good time or, you know, maybe not have to go at all. Right, right. So I'm working this case. He starts to identify people for me right around that time because of that case

in another quote unquote unsolvable case that I had with the police department that was a gun shop slash range that was knocked off. And they stole like 22 rental guns. That's a problem. Yeah, in my case, we recovered nine of them, which doesn't sound like a lot, but that's actually really good odds.

Yeah. You know, when they disappear and stuff like that and caught the two guys responsible all off of informant information. And that kind of projected me into this position where they started a position with the FBI of their violent crimes task force. And I interviewed you for it. And of course, I had all these big cases. And they're like, yep, number one on the list out of 10 or whatever, right?

So I go to the FBI Task Force and I take this case with me, this interstate robbery case. Now it's called the Hobbs Act robbery. Hobbs Act robbery is interstate robbery. So when you go out of state and you rob the place, whether it was sledgehammers, whatever, and you bring it back to Michigan or any other state, that's interstate. Yeah, you're changing jurisdictions to evade detection. In a federal system, that's an enhancement. Yeah, that's an enhancement.

Now you're a big boy. Now you're dealing with the feds instead of the locals. Right. right so i bring that case and i'm still working on it working on it and i mean we're from there i learned but the guy you have all the information from the guy yeah that one guy that's not enough to go out just kind of scoop everybody out up or you need to do surveillance to build the case you got to do surveillance but what i learned was he was just part of one they had several the ringleaders had several crews oh so he just knows his crew yeah yeah and he knows

there's other guys out there, but he knows his crew and that's who he's talking on. Right. So there's several crews. And when I got to the Fed Task Force, I realized that this wasn't just the Detroit thing with, like, maybe a little in Ohio, maybe a little in Indiana. This was nationwide. This covered 21 states. And it was, and we were averaging, when I got there and we started tracking it,

we were averaging with the same amount, two to three robberies a week throughout the country. Like, let's say they would. And these guys are just getting away with. but none of them are getting arrested except for this one guy? No. I mean, occasionally, like in a local department,

let's say like Cincinnati or Chicago or something like that, they would grab one of the guys that, you know, in a foot chase. Right. But they didn't know what to do with it. Yeah, they would,

and they got them for one robbery. Right, and they got him for one. Right. Maybe. And, first of the, they caught him walking out of the place.

They don't have them. They caught him three blocks down. He might have a chance of beating it, you know, I mean, especially his state. And the thing with like interview and interrogation is you got to know something. Right.

Like you can't, they don't know anything. They have nothing to try to work this guy on. Right. Or girl, depending on the robbery. And you got to know something. So that's where we came and we started tracking this stuff. And in the process, I'm still working on this guy's crew while we're starting to track the whole country. And what broke his crew open because we couldn't find a bunch of the guys, right?

They were, you know, they were off-grid, basically. They were still doing what they're going to do, but their burner phones. Social media was not huge yet, right? So, I mean, this is like 2012, 2012, 2013. I go on the task force in 14. So this is the time when this has happened. You know, you think about in 2000, I think it was like 2012 or 2009. For Facebook, you still had to have a college email to be on the, to get it

Facebook account. So, you know, this is a different time, right? Like, it wasn't what it is now where people would just live off of social media. So what I did was I found one of the guys. His street name was Bullet. So, which- Creative. Yeah, very creative, right? So I find him on Instagram and this is how we got them because this was still very new. And obviously, AI is not a thing yet. So I create a profile, a undercover profile, digital profile of this girl that lives in the Southfield area that is homeschooled so she doesn't have to know anybody. And her parents, she's Thai, so this is very stereotypical, but her parents owned a dry cleaner. Right. In Southfield, right? And she wouldn't talk much about it, but she befriends him. And so the guy, the bullet at

the time. He was a little bit of an entrepreneur, but didn't have any sense behind it. And he was doing these t-shirts, right? And he was doing these t-shirts that says, I'm so Detroit. You still have a t-shirt? Yeah, yeah. Yeah. And so, yeah, because I bought one. Right. And while we were doing the investigation, right? And so he's selling these t-shirts, and they're just hot fire in Like everybody's wearing them on their socials, especially in the hood, right? And so I used this tie girl that all I did was I went on Google at the time and I googled attractive Asian women on social media. And I piece together like a handful that looked like each other.

Yeah. Right. Or like, you know, had half the face, but all like very voluptuous. Not that they all look alike. Here we go back to these stereotypes, right? Right, yeah. But no, no, but like all very voluptuous, all like huge, nice size racks, big asses, you know. Exactly what bullets looking for.

Exactly what bullets looking for. An Asian chick. And I start hollering at them a little bit. Like I just friend them like, now as the UCD digital, like you, there's only so much you can communicate before you're crossing the line. So it was, I was very, very vague in everything, even in like my, my interest in him as a, you know, 17-year-old female. Right.

Okay. So, and that's what I said. I was 17, right? And, and so, you know, he's like 26. He's all about it, right? Because he's, in his mind, he's going, he's going to, he's going to, he's going to, he's going to go to town on this chick. You're saying 17?

You're trying to get him a statutory rape charge to throw it in? I don't think that would stick. Right. Oh, yeah. He tried to, he tried to, he tried to bang out. a digital miner. Right. Like, I mean, that may work when, for, like, the pedophiles and stuff like that for when

they get him to meet. But so, and that wasn't the angle. We wanted to find him. Right. Because he had a significant history, too. And his name's bullet, so he typically cares a gun. Right. And he was kind of like OG status, but he was not the smart OGs.

He was the, he was the go out there and do the work, OG. This whole thing is to get what, to get him to show up somewhere? To get, to find him. because he's off radar all the time. Like he, burner phones, everything like that. Right.

So at some point, you want to arrange a meeting for him to show up at McDonald's. We want to arrest him. Yeah. Yeah. The whole thing. And so what,

what I did was I ended up giving him my number, which was just a Google voice number, right? And of course he messages me right away. You know, with subgirl, all this stuff, right? And so, you know, I'm a little he-h-h-h-h-ha-ha.

Like the shirts, can I get one from you? And stuff like that. And he's like, you know, he's like, bet, let's do it. He's like, this is where I, he's like, this is. The lingo. Yeah, he's like, he's like, this is where I live. And side note, a funny thing was so my supervisor on the task force would make fun of me because, and this is super stereotypical, because when I would do the voices of my suspects,

whether it was Chaldean, black, Asian. For some reason, I'd go to this mindset where I'm actually dumb. Right. And I would do this like, like, you know, accent. Nassan. Oh, I would do this like, like, like, like, um. Do you're playing all the parts? Oh, yeah, like the Middle Eastern.

Like all of a sudden I started talking like this Middle Eastern accent. He was like, when did you become Iraqi? Right. And I'm like, I didn't even realize I was doing that. What are you talking about? So. Do you feel, feel strange when it's, uh, he's, 10.30 at night and you're laying in bed texting this guy as an Asian girl. Oh, you crazy.

You don't feel like, I'm sorry, this is not feeling super heterosexual right now. Like, oh, I love your gold teeth or no. What do you, what do you say? That's funny because like my, my ex-wife, wife at the time used to get so annoyed because I'd be in bed 11 o'clock on Instagram. Like, messaging these dudes, right? It's just like, when do you stop? I'm like, when they stop. Right. When they stop is when I stop. Because we're trying to. to solve the case. My parents are coming in. I got to be quiet.

I got to go up sleep now. They're telling me to get off Instagram. Yeah. So this guy, idiot that he is thinking with his dick instead of his brain that he really didn't have anyway, he tells me where to come find him so he can sell it to me. And it's his house. Right. Because he thinks he's going to line this chick up.

Yeah. Right. You've got him thoroughly convinced. Yeah. So we go sit on his house. He comes out. We end up grabbing him. We already have a search warrant for us.

house to go in there, get all kinds of, like, proceeds and stuff like that. And he, of course, because he was selling these, so this is, like, the information for a court of how we developed the case, there's stacks of them in there. So, you know, we're taking pictures of that stuff. And did he, did he tell you, can you please go on Instagram and tell May Ling that I won't be emailing anymore? He was smart enough to figure that out. He was smart enough to figure out that the girl was not real.

We had, you know, Tom Simon had a guy who'd been hiding out in Mexico. He convinces him. And he's like 60-something years old to fly in to, I forget where it was. But to fly in to take part in a documentary because he was a salsa king at like 20 years earlier or something. And he says, can you fly in and be a part of this documentary? And he was like, absolutely. So he flies in from Mexico. and when they arrest him, as they're, he's taking him back to the FBI headquarters, the guy says,

listen, is there any way you can swing by this area and tell these people, I'm not going to be able to be interviewed? Well, he was Tom Simon the whole day. He was like, you know what? I'm going to let him know. He's still even then. He had no idea that. It's just not bright. No. Yeah, just not bright. Speaking of Tom, so I was, I know Tom too. Like, you know, Tom introduced us.

and I was talking about how in your episode, like how he talks about giving a kidney. Oh, yeah. His response to me, he was like, he knew that I was coming on in like three weeks. He's like, well, you got three weeks to figure out how to harvest an organ to match my energy. I was dying.

I was laughing. I was like crazy. Listen, he, you know, the first time I met Tom, and then we did a podcast, and he left. Like, I thought, I know exactly who this guy is. You know what I'm saying? Like, he's FBI through and through. He's straight, narrow.

And then every episode we've done since, he'll say something. He'll do something that I'll be like, I didn't expect that. I didn't expect that. Either on camera or off camera. He'll, you know, he'll just say things that you're like, oh, wow, he's got a dark sense. Much darker sense of humor than I thought. Right. Or he'll say something funny or he'll something.

And then, listen, the kidney thing came so out of the blue. You know, he was tearing up. I'm tearing, because I can't imagine doing it. But I also am very, very aware that I'm an extremely selfish prick. So I'm really concerned about me. But the idea that he did, like he did it. And I didn't expect it from him either. So I'm not saying that, you know, I had this rosy, you know, that he's this hugely

giving person. So the fact that it came out of nowhere, I was just not expecting it. And then when he's telling me about it, he tears up. And then I tear up. And it was just like, I was so, I was so just really kind of irritated at him. Because I'm like, this guy, every time we get together, he's doing these things are happening. He's a much, much more complex, deeper, more interesting person than the person I originally met. I mean, I just can't imagine.

Like, he just reads an article and decides to do some research and just convinces himself, this is the thing to do. and I just thought, wow, like that's amazing. That's, that's, yeah, it was, it was really, and he was all torn up about it, too. He was torn up because she eventually passed away, you know, and he was, but he gave her, what, like nine more, nine additional years of life? That was only nine years ago, too. It's huge, though. Yeah. It's not like he did this when he was 20 and you're kind of stupid, you know, you're 25 years old and you're just kind of an idiot.

This is nine years ago. Yeah, he's like, you're a girl man, you know, this is, he acts like, you know, oh, it's really not a big deal. know. I feel like any surgery is kind of a big deal. I'm not volunteering to... As America turns 250 this year, it has me thinking about the people that really help build this country. Not the ones in history books. I'm talking about American ranchers. The men and women who wake up before the sun work long days and keep food on our tables year after year. That's exactly why I like good ranchers. Good ranchers honors that legacy by only sourcing their meat from local American farmers and ranchers. Everything from the pasture to the final seal on the box.

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Especially if you're giving away one of your organs. Yeah, that seems like a big deal. Right. But I'm sorry, you were saying, anyway. So the guy, he's, so he's telling you to please, please message me Ling and tell her that I won't be able to. He never said that, but he knew right away that he was had. And he figured out he was just one of those like, like, things, like didn't say anything.

And he was not a talk. Like he was street through and through. He'd been through so many times, which brings me back to the initial part of the case with the guy that gave the, that guy got screwed by the prosecutors. Oh, the original guy? Yeah. Now, we talked about how you and your situation, how, you know, you helped with information. And they kept saying, they kept saying, not enough, not enough. And then they said, like, I don't know what you're talking about.

Oh, yeah, yeah. Well, when you were telling me that, I was like, I got one. for you too. Okay. So this guy, and we're just, we're not even going to go with the name because I'll forget it because I'm not going to use his real name, right? So the prosecutor on that case, no, not bullet, the initial guy, all right, bullet is just, I don't know. Yeah, there's like a hundred bullets out there. So I could say, the OG. Yeah, so the initial guy that got caught and gives me the MO of for the case. All right. Now he's got a history. All right. And so now we're in the court segment we're in the judicial segment and the prosecutor a huge ego huge ego man and i told them like

you know this guy's cooperative now you know as well as i do from what you've been through that as agents or officers we cannot make you a promise right right but we can say like hey we'll let them know that you've been cooperative you know and what you provided and that could come into play when they relay that to the judge but i can't tell you what i can get for that's that's totally illegal uh so i'm telling the prosecutor i'm like help this guy out. Like he's basically blown this case wide open, not only locally, but nationally for us. And prosecutor's like, all right, well, the defense attorney was, she was a bitch. She was like, you know, she was very, you know, and I don't know if she's playing a role or if she actually

felt this way, but that like all black people are oppressed and the man's trying to hold them down. And any conversation she's brandishing the sword, even outside of course, You know, it's always, it's always fight or fight, and she always wanted to fight, even if you're just having a conversation about their clients in the case in the hallway or in chambers. Prosecutor hated, didn't they hated each other. So this is not the person you want, this guy wants representing him. No. And he actually even told, like, so he's in our lockup in Southfield for the court for his next hearing. and I go and talk to him. Like I said, we had a really nice rapport where, like,

if circumstances are different in life, we could watch the game together. He was just a nice dude, even though he has, he's done bad things. Right. And he's like, he's like, snary man. He's like, do I need to get a new attorney? Like, you know, I can't tell you.

Right. I can't tell you that you should or should not, but I can tell you that things don't seem to be going. the way that you want to go. Right. Things don't seem to be going the way that I would hope they would go. And you need to make decisions for yourself

how you want to move forward. But I can't tell you that you need one or not. So he already knew his gut was telling him. Yeah, yeah. Right? That this attorney's screwing him because her ego is, I want to fight this prosecutor.

So long story short, the kid ends up getting 18 years on a smash and grab because he had a prior possession of a firearm and he had a prior robbery. but with the amount of information he gave us, there's no way this kid should have gotten 18 years. Right, right?

He was, I think he was 19 at the time. He's going away for a big chunk of his adult life, right? All the fun years of the 20s and 30s, he's not going to see. And I was pissed. I was pissed because the, and I can't lie on the stand. Yeah. So the prosecutor to drive at home gets me on the stand. And I told him, I'm like, I don't want,

want to do this. This guy cooperated. He's like, well, we need to do it for the case. And he has me get on the stand and proceeds to have me tell the court about the kid's gang affiliation, which is an enhancement, right? Right. His gang affiliation, the documentation that he's in a gang, gang markings on him and all that stuff. And yeah, he got 18 years because of it. And we walked out of there and, you know, he's making small talk with me. I was pissed. I told him off. The prosecutor. I'm like, he helped us and you fucked him. Right. Because, you. You you don't like that defense attorney. He's like, oh, I know you see it that way and stuff like that, but, you know, I'm like, there's no maybe ifs or what. It's like, I've done this enough time.

I've been in enough courtroom to know that you fucked them because you hear. Right. Right. So back to the big one, right? So now we have a U.S. attorney, assistant U.S. attorney, assigned to the case because it is just running gun like two to three a week. And what happens is I have a partner from the FBI. We're working the case hand in hand, and the task forces contributing considerable hours to the case at this point. Like I said, this case spanned 21 states,

and it was so big that the U.S. Attorney's Office in the Eastern District of Michigan and Detroit had never worked a case in recent history that had this amount of indictments in such a short period. So typically, you know, as you know, like a federal investigation, including the judicial segment, would take years, right? And it usually does take years. We were knocking out affidavits and, you know, and we had a grand jury and affidavits and

affidavits and subsequent affidavits weekly and getting warrants on guys weekly. And the assistant U.S. attorney even said he's like, he's like, I have never worked. to this fast on a case in my life. I've never had one this fast pace. He's like, it's insane that at the federal level, this is moving this quick. And we were like, we're putting trackers on cars. We were doing surveillance.

We were going out of state. And the FBI, in their infinite wisdom in this situation, I'm just a Lili Task Force officer. Somebody get arrested in North Carolina or Denver or something like that or California. And instead of having a local guy, local agent, go and do the interview, they would send me.

Because who knows the case like me? Nobody. So I'm basically somebody else. I'm just giving them a script of what's going on. And they're going to go an interview. And if it veers off in the left field, you know, with information, that agent or task force officers not really got to know what to do with it. Right.

But myself and my partner, we knew exactly what to do it. So we're flying all over the country, like week in and week out. And that's where things really got heated. because I was able to develop an informant on the case. Now, most of my career, I would say in law enforcement in 25 years, or however long your career, is most police officers, whether a patrol officer or detective, will be fortunate enough, even in big cities, will have one or two major cases. And I'm talking about complex crime, organized crime, more than one or two defendants.

right like several large scale maybe one maybe two right I've been fortunate enough in my career from local to the feds even with the Secret Service where half the time I'm doing protection I've been fortunate enough that I've had five and I'm on my sixth right so and most and almost all of it like four of the cases have involved informants so I don't know if it's good police or just dumb luck right where I think 95% of like cases get solved because of informants or people cooperating you know like confidential defendants yeah confidential informants yeah of course because you know how do you know what was what's happening who was involved like you can't reverse time you can't go back

and sit in a room you know two months ago people have to explain like these are the five people that are involved here's what he did and how much time does that save you okay you know what pull all the bankrupt or all that like you know there's only so much law enforcement can do as opposed to having an inside guy that can say he was here he was here he was here you can go then you can go that camera pull the footage from that camera pull that guy's PayPal account you know otherwise it's like the amount of information you would have to sift through is outrageous outrageous you know you'd have to quadruple law enforcement and like 95 98% of the time it's somebody within the organization that they've been done wrong they feel like they're

getting slighted, you know, they're not getting the responsibility they want. Somebody took their girl, you know, and they're just like, all right, they go scorched, they're like, fuck you. Right. And so they want to get it done. Or confidential defendants, they've been arrested and they start informing or they've been hemmed up and they want and not necessarily like arraigned yet or anything like that. And you have them out on the street working. Yeah. Basically working off their case with a, with a, you know, not a promise, but a problem. promise that you will help them usher them through the system. I always love the guys who get arrested and they're in the back of the police car.

Nobody knows they've been arrested yet. And they're like, listen, nobody knows you've been. Nobody knows we grabbed you. Now's the time if you want to like, we'll let you right back out. You know, you know what I'm saying? Like nobody knows you've been arrested. We can get you back on the street and you can help us. Oh, fuck you.

I ain't help. And then of course, four months later when they've hemmed everybody else up and they're all cooperating. Then they want to cooperate. It's like, wow, your opportunity to cooperate. operate was when you were probably sitting in the back of that police guard. You were in the perfect position. And now everybody's already telling on you. Now you want to tell. It's, you're the low man on the totem pole now. Yeah. That's why like one of the ringleaders in that case, one of the OGs wanted to proffer or do a interview with their attorney giving up all the information.

We're like, no thanks. Like who are you going to give up? You're at the top. Yeah. We're good. We've got to figure out. We've got the fences. We got everybody. Right. So, You got a guy? Yeah, so we got, we got a guy. How do you get this guy? Did you rest him on something else, or did he just walk in or just call you guys and say, hey? He reached out. Nice.

He reached out. So he was a gang member, and he starts telling me about, initially we thought it was this gang called Red Wings. So they were Red Wing gang, and they all had like the Detroit Red Wings tattoo on their wrist or their hand. Okay. Is that like a, what's the Red Wing? Detroit Red Wings, the hockey team. Oh, okay. I'm not a sports person.

Yeah. I thought we were. I know you look at me and you think, athlete. Well, well, your body's a temple. So clearly, I thought we were going to be buddies, but now that you're not a sports person, it's over, man. Okay. So they would have this tattoo somewhere from here to here, right?

And initially we thought it was just them. Well, that was one of the factions. That was one of the groups, right? They were run by the big boys. And what we found was there, There was three different gangs in Detroit that were all working together, which in itself is crazy, right? You think about low-level street gangs, and low-level street gangs in Detroit are blocks. And just like any time.

Chicago's like that, too. And I'm sure Miami and Tampa are like that also. It's like you rep your block, and you're the 117th rolling 20s or something. You know what I mean? And that's your block. And you live and die for the guys on your block. And typically you die. But that's what you do.

So it was these other two gangs, which is, that's crazy in that time. And I was still now because they all beef, but what brought them all together? Because people asked me this during interviews afterwards, it was like, how did they all cooperate money? They all wanted to get rich. They all wanted that rapper lifestyle. Right. And they were getting it this way. So as long as the money was coming, they were good.

So this informant is with one of these groups, right? And he starts giving me information. And same old try and true. Like I asked him, like, why is he doing this? He's like, oh, well, I don't agree with what they're doing. I'm like, get the fuck out of here. You want fucking money. Right.

Right? You want some money. Your money's a little tight. And you don't want to get it illegitimately, even though I know you've gotten it illegitimate before. Because we have to vet everybody. Do you think he also thinks that it's probably coming down? Like it's better to be a witness than a defendant.

So he, from everything I could tell in the investigation, all the work I did, he was never involved. So he was literally just in the room as they're talking, planning, bringing them back proceeds and stuff like that. Sounds like a great witness now. Yeah. Like for the government, that's an amazing witness. So he has no play in it, but he's in the room and he knows all this stuff. So he starts providing me all this information. And then he moved.

So I have to travel out of state to go. and stuff like that to get more information, which was great because it was like, you know, you're there three days and you're interviewing one afternoon. Right. But so he starts providing information real time and given phone numbers,

and it blows the case wide open because now we were paying in phone numbers, right, off of burner phones that are his, and we're finding them on towers at robberies. Like we're pulling, we're dumping all the information from a tower. and it's super easy if you have if you have a robbery in uh Denver Colorado and there's a bunch of Detroit area code phone numbers on there well those are your suspects yeah that would be

called a clue all right right so then you you grab those numbers and you see like well they're they're within an hour of the time frame oh and two weeks ago three of those numbers were there also but they weren't there any time in between are you able to then go get like wires on the phone? Well, we never got to the point of a wire because a T3 or a wire, you have to show that all investigative measures have been exhausted. And like you're coming up, you're coming up empty. Right. But you guys aren't coming up. We aren't. We're guys are getting grabbed left and right now. Now that we have a CI, right, confidential informant, because he'd provide numbers. So we're getting them off the towers. And he talks about it too, because he's in the

room with them so he tells us their MO a little farther and where the actual ringleaders are oh geez chill while the robbery is happening like how they did they do love this strip club yeah there's a strip club that they loved though that they all went I can't think of the name of it but I actually we actually had to do a lot we couldn't didn't go in mind you because it was not it was not our it was not our um scene okay okay okay all right you Are you four, six foot, two white guys and walking into this strip club would have seemed suspicious? The demographic was a little different, right? So.

You could have warned. Did you ever see, did you ever see the other guys with Will Ferro where he was Gator? Gator? You could have worn the big chain. Fish better have my money. Yeah. You could have done that, walked in, and you couldn't have pulled it off. Rubbing the knife against his face.

Yeah, that's a hilarious movie. First time I ever saw that movie, I was like, man, this is kind of lame. Then I watched it again. I'm like, this is hilarious. The outtakes are hilarious, where Walberg can't hold it together. During some of these scenes, he just can't do it. I mean. Right.

Like, I mean, the desk pop was one of the best. Like, when they get to do the desk pop. It was the wood gun. And then eventually they take away the wooden gun. Do you know what I'm talking about? Yeah. can't have a weapon anymore. We're going to give you this wooden gun.

And then he fucks up again and they take away the wooden gun. Yeah. So side note. So we had a, and we used that stuff. So when, because they give him the whistle, right?

Right. So I, you know, the mentor detective leaves. Yeah. And so this other, this other officer makes detective. He comes up.

He becomes my, my partner. His name was Brian. Great investigator. Okay. Did really, well. But just like anything, you got a mentor, you got to train him up. So like his first, like, week or two there, I give him this whistle on, on like little rubber band, you know, the ones

that go on your wrist. He's like, what's that for? I'm like, well, you got to earn the gun. Like, until then you get this rape whistle. And we were all dying. Trouble. Blow the whistle. He was, thank God he had a good sense of humor because he was rolling on the ground. man and and him and I had some of the funniest interviews with suspects that we ever had because it became a game for us of like could I make him laugh and we know we know we got this guy in the ropes we're going to get it but can I make him laugh too right so it became a game and I'll share some of that stuff like hilarious stuff and and then this other guy was put on admin duty and sent to the detective bureau because he in like a year a year and a half he'd been into shootings

And with felons, they were legit shootings, but they're like, oh, man, this guy's kind of, kind of, you know, loose on the trigger. We're going to sit him on the bench for a little bit. So he came upstairs. And I gave him a rubber band gun, a wooden rubber band gun. And I'm like, I'm like, welcome to the detective bureau. Here's your gun. I need your service revolver. Yeah.

And he didn't know what to think of it at first, right? And then, like, he sees like, even my sergeant is there and everybody's, like, cracking up. And so he's like, ha, ha, ha, ha, you know. And like, so we got him to take a picture of it with his rubber band gun in his holster. And like, we, like, we didn't, he's like, please don't send that out. We're like, now we won't. But we kept it up, like, on people's desk in the detective bureau. And we had him with his rubber band gun.

And we're like, dude, when you clear the IA investigation, we'll give you a real gun back, okay? Here's your rubber band gun. You know, make sure you stay, you keep it loaded with rubber bands. And so anyway. back to the investigation. So we're going across the country, grabbing people up, and we ended up indicting 48 guys in 18 months.

Okay. Like absurd, right? Right. Right. And charging six people stateside for anything from possession of stolen goods to, you know, aiding and abetting, stuff like that. Anybody that the assistant U.S. attorney is like,

yeah, I can't. We're not going to grab them. Yeah. I would turn right around and I had, I had a prosecutor at that point on tap because she had written the initial warrants on the first group before I was a TFO,

a task force officer. So she knew the case and any time like I needed a hook of warrant, I would go to her and we'd write it together and then I'd go to the same judge because not because I was like judge or prosecutor shopping, but because they already knew. it. Yeah, yeah. So I don't have to, I don't have to spend an hour telling them about all the capers and the M.O. and all that stuff. Like, they knew what's going on. They sit down. They start reading it.

They're good. When you get the warrants, do you have to write out like a master affidavit every time? Like, you have to write out a whole, okay. Whole affidavit. So like, you know, and you would, you know, like the original saved. So you would like cut out sections that don't apply to this person and then put in their information. But like the base crime stuff is the same, change the dates and stuff like that. So it was a template, but yeah, you have to write out the whole thing. I was going to ask you something. So with two questions. One, when you're grabbing somebody and you're arresting two guys in Colorado and there's, you know, the eight guys that have that are kind of a party to this? Are they realizing these guys, or are they so compartmentalized?

Are they even realizing that these two guys got grabbed? And yet these eight guys that are a member, of this crew, do they have just no idea? Or do they know? And they go nuts. They just grabbed T-Dog and they grabbed, you know, blood money and he, oh, my God, they're coming. What's going on? Or they have no clue.

What are you trying to say? Why are these guys named T-Dog and blood? I just, I don't know. You know, I feel like, but, uh, street games. So, okay, well, you know, maybe it's, uh, maybe it's Tony and Tom and, uh, Anthony. Maybe it's Pierre. Yeah. Right.

And Franz. Right. Okay. So it wasn't, but okay. It was. But it could have been. Yeah, let's not assume. All right.

So yeah, sometimes yes and sometimes no. Because they're all working together to some degree. And then they would literally, they would turn on each other and not turn on each other. And not turn on each other with just us. But like one guy got shot going through an Arby's drive through and killed because he kept a Rolex for himself that another guy wanted. The guy wanted the Rolex on his wrist. He killed him.

I mean, okay, are they doing this because you think as a result of the arrests? Or just in general, they're just turning. In general, they're just turning on each other. Zero integrity, right? Yeah. You know, the whole no honor about thieves. I know you would think, you know,

and you can't believe that these guys don't have any integrity? I know that's shocking. Right. The whole no honor behind thieves is, that's legit. That's legit. So,

um, we're working up this stuff with the CI you know people are going down left and right and what happens like literally the day that I'm leaving the agency so in this whole process I'm in the I'm in the hiring process with the secret service okay so you applied yeah I had applied and then the sequestration happened with the Obama administration where all hiring federal hiring stopped okay so it was like a three year process and everybody else and just been like all right you're getting too close to the age limit of 37, like FBI, D, EATF, they're like, see, dude.

Oh, if you're over 37, you can't, oh. You can't become a federal agent because the mandatory retirement is 57. Okay. So you have to have, and you have to have 20 years in their system to drop pension. Why? You have to retire by 50s. Why? They want you to be able to, you know, they're not taking an account like guys that get fat and lazy. They want you to be able to, you know, do your job competently from a, not only from a brain level, but from a fitness level, right? you need to be able to arrest somebody and not be bent over wheezing.

Yeah. So I'm in this process. And literally, up until the day I leave the police department, we're out doing surveillance and arresting guys. I remember my lieutenant came to me at the time. He's like, we're really sad to lose you because this is your, you know, nobody else on their last day would be out trying to arrest somebody. Well, I had to get this done.

If I don't get this done, it's not going to, you know, It's going to go to the wayside going to somebody else because not only do they not know the complexity and the nuances of it, but they don't, you know, they got other stuff going on. It's not their case. So we're doing that to the last day. But one of the interesting things of when I was, so here's a funny story for you. So you talk about my partner, Brian, right? So we would work to actually make each other laugh at these interviews.

And this is right before I go to the Secret Service. So we had a good couple years together, and then I went to the task force, and we still worked together all the time because he was working that and then went to major case. So he's working on homicide and stuff. So we would work with each other still all the time, and we'd get interview rooms. And my goal, always in the interview, was not only one, to get a confession, and two, to make Brian laugh. Right. Right. And like, just hilarious stuff, like, and small-time stuff, too, when we're in, probably.

property crimes together. Like for instance, this kid comes up like the city had just installed a miracle field. And a miracle field is a baseball diamond that is all like the rubberized turf that you see in like kids parks now. Okay. All right. So people could go out there and play baseball in like wheelchairs and stuff. It's called a miracle field. Right. So they could go out and play and like kids groups that are in wheelchairs would come out there and play ball and be able to do it. And this kid in a neighboring neighborhood came there and had spray painted the whole thing with, you know, like gang groups and stuff. And we figured it out because on his block, he'd also spray painted the sign, the stop sign, stuff like that. And then we like worked our way back to his address.

And in the interview room, he's not talking about shit. So we take a break. And I go out and I grab a blank. this is when DVDs and CDs were still a thing, right? So I grab a blank CD that had not been burned with anything. Like if you literally had turned it over, you'd see that they're, you know,

because when it burned, it has the lines, right? There's nothing. And I wrote on it cameras, one, two, three,

five, like, so camera four didn't work. Yeah. And I go back in there and when we're talking about, he's like, I don't know what you're talking about. Like,

really? Because what I didn't tell you was that there's, there's cameras all over the city complex or the city. is. And I take us out. I'm like, and we got you on cameras. On cameras one, two, three, and five, we see you spray painting, right? Camera four, there was nothing. That's why it's not on it. Right. Is he break? Did your partner know you were going to do that? This is my, if I had a note, like, let's say this is a notepad. My partner's like, and so, so, so he breaks right then. He just spills it.

And of course, this is evidence not right, like how I got the confession. Send it up, the prosecutor's office like, are you fucking serious? This guy fell for that? I'm like, we don't catch the smart ones. No. And another one we add, this is funny. So there is this high-rise apartment complex, condo complex, big apartments and stuff like that. Right down on the eight-mile border.

You seen the movie eight-mile? Yeah. Okay. So eight-mile runs through Southfield. right so the north end of southfield very nice and residential the south end a little bit rougher okay um and so but there is a um a historically nice uh tower or the towers of southfield and you know real original name right and and um there's this breaking and entering there and we end up catching the suspect and i don't remember how we caught him but how we got him to confess was classic

So the person had that said he had gone into the place and he had stolen their jewelry and from the bedroom and stuff like that, right? And so when we're talking to him and he got called with some goods. And so when we're talking, oh, I remember now he went pawned it. Huge mistake every time. Don't pawn that shit. Right. And don't get your sister to pawn that or your buddy.

If you're watching or listening right now, don't pawn the goods. That's not a smart move. All right. There's systems that track that. Right. Okay. So he, he, uh, we ended up catching him. And his whole thing was like, oh, yeah, you know, well, I'm walking through the hallway and see, you catch it right there. Like, I start to do the voice, right? Right. I start to sway over and I got to catch myself. Uh, so he's like, yeah, I'm walking

through the hallway. And, you know, and I did, I did see some stuff and, you know, but it was outside the door, you know, like they were moving. And so, so I like looked at it and I was like, oh, this is nice, you know. So I picked it up. And, you know, so I picked it up. And, you know, and I picked it. And, up because I told him his fingerprints were on, right? And he's like, oh, this is nice. So I picked it up and then I said it on one on my way. I'm like, no, me, he took it. All right.

You pawned it stuff. We got the receipt. Oh, well, yeah, yeah, I mean, but I thought, you know, like it was vacant and they left it. So I picked it up and I took it. I'm like, that's not what happened. Dude, two Rolexes in an engagement ring? They just left?

Yeah, they just see that there. I'm like, you know, bigger fish to fry. They're not worried about that stuff, right? And one of them was a ring. and a watch, but not a Roics, not of that caliber. You know, not of that caliber. And so I go, that's not what happened at all, man. I'm like, you saw that the door was unlocked. You went in and you went to the back bedroom and took stuff.

No, no, no, no, didn't do that, didn't do that. I'm like, yeah, you did. You did. We've got your prints on the box in the back. I don't have any prints on the box in the back. Right. But I'm like, on the jewelry box, because I knew a jewelry box had been hit. Yeah.

Like, you got the print. We got your prints on that box. No, not me, not me. He's like, I admit that I was walking by and there's stuff outside the door and I picked it up and I took some stuff. I never went in. I never went in. He didn't want to get hit with burglary. Is that what he was concerned about?

Yeah. Okay. Right. He didn't want that enhancement, right? Like, just, you know, possession of stolen possession of property is vastly different than. vastly different than breaking and entering. Yeah. Right.

And so he, he, uh, he, keeps going on this route and I'm like you know how we know we got your prints and this is this is something that we do it's legal I take his actual I take a print card it's not his print card right but I use it as a prop and it's got prints on it and I slide it for you I'm like Prince match right he's like no I didn't I didn't I didn't and this is where I get Brian here so I go and I say I'm like Like, well, there's one or two scenarios here. And you need to decide, decide which ones.

He's like, he's like, and he's, he's, he's leaning and he's like, yeah. But like what, like, what options? My out. You're going to give me my out? Yeah. What options are you going to give me? And I'm, and I go, I'm like, one of two things happened here. Either you went in there, you saw the doors open, nobody's home.

And, you know, I'm still minimizing them. Like, nobody's there. You checked, nobody was there. So you went in and you grabbed the stuff out of the jewelry box, touched everything. That's how we got your prints. Or somebody stole your hands. And he's like, huh?

I'm like, yeah. I'm like, you were sleeping and you woke up in the morning and you didn't have any hands. And somebody who came and stole your hands and went in there and used your hands to steal it. And if that's the case, and I'm like, there's a phone. I'm like, I'm going to call dispatch right now because we need to report a larceny of hands. And he's like, here's, here's Brian at the back.

He's like, what the fuck, man? You know, he's taking notes and he stops and he's like, oh, my God. I'm like, and the guy's like, I'm like, because there's only two options here. Your prints are on the box. So either you went in there, he took it or somebody stole your hands and went in there and did it. That's the only two options because science isn't going to lie on this, right? Your prints or your prints. So if that's the case, let's file a report right now,

call dispatch. I'll get a case number. We're going to file a report for larceny and hands. So he's like, yeah, that was me. It was me, I did it. But, you know, and he's like, I'm like, yeah, I get it. I get it. So then I write up the report.

And I write all of that in the report for the prosecution. And I send it up to prosecutor's office. And this prosecutor, he's a defense attorney now, he calls me the next morning and he's like i'm like it's like saturday morning like nine am he calls me and he's like drew are you fucking kidding me arsony of hands and he's died he's on the phone he's dying like to this day when we like we'll send each other a message even on social media we'll reference larceny of hands right but yeah we uh brian and i would do that all the time like we he would try to make me laugh i try to make him laugh stuff like that and there was at that point where

I was getting ready to leave to go to the feds. You know, I didn't want to leave the task force. I loved it, but there was a sunset on. And I knew from working these interstate cases and national cases that, not that the job I was doing wasn't important, but there was bigger fish to fry. Right. So, and so what I did was I started applying, you know, this sequestration happened during the Obama administration.

It got pushed way back. and I get hired by the Secret Service in 2016. And right at like the gun, by the time I was in the academy, I was 38 years old. I was like the oldest guy in our academy groups. And go to the Secret Service. Secret Service moves me to Chicago, right?

They offered me New York, L.A., San Francisco, Chicago. Chicago is closest to family in Michigan. And even though the cost of living's high, it was the lowest of all that it was like. In San Francisco, I would have been living in a broom closet. Right. So go to the academy, go through all that stuff, get out, get sent to Chicago.

Now in the Secret Service, it's a dual mission agency. So dual mission, so you'd work protection and then you work investigation, especially in the field. If you're in D.C., you just want protection. When you are in the field, like Chicago, Baltimore, Miami, whatever, your primary job is investigations and you supplement the protection detail. So if Hillary Clinton comes to town for a fundraiser or something like that, you do the security blueprint. Or every so many months, you're on travel and you go and you supplement protection details for the president,

vice president, wherever they want you. But in the city, when you're working in the city on your normal gig, your investigations, you're doing normal investigations. So the Secret Service is next, is mostly financial crimes. They started with counterfeiting. You know, fun fact was the Secret Service didn't start by doing protection. They were. Counterfeiting. Yeah.

And they were put in place by Abraham Lincoln. And it was signed in the law right before Abraham Lincoln was murdered. Yeah. Yeah. And because... Well, they still weren't going to be protective detail. Yeah, they weren't going to be protective. That's what another.

That wasn't until Garfield. That was until 1901. Yeah. they realized that somebody he did was he assassinated or she just get shot and that's when they realized like he had that full-time protection garfield yeah he was assassinated was he okay well i mean i don't know if it was a successful or not yeah i forget who it was that got shot and it is he got shot either in his speech i think his actual the bullet hit and like he had a thick speech or something and that slowed the bullet down or something i forget and then he

continued the speech right it was one of these presidents anyway but uh yeah so then they then they They started, they were put in a place by Abraham Lincoln because counterfeiting was so rampant in the south with the Confederates that, you know, it was just killing the value of currency in the states. And that's what they started doing. So we do invest, we would do investigations. And I'm no longer with Secret Service, by the way. You know, I have since, you know, with situations with my family and stuff like that, I've gone to a position that's not as much travel. So I work for the U.S. Postal Service Office Inspector General. And I investigate narcotics primary and then also mailed it.

So narcotics going through the mail street. But so in the Secret Service, you start working counterfeit. And we had a case that typically protection for the Secret Service comes first, right? Because you can pick up an investigation next month, but you can't, if you get shot as the president. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. So that's primer, right? Understandably so.

So we had a case that was, that was a big counterfeiting ring. They were taking $1 bills and they were washing them, so you bleach them. And then they were printing them as a hundred. And what was happening was they, it was a huge organization. So I get the case in 2018. I hired on 2016, Go Through Academy. I'm in the office by 2017. I get the case at the beginning of 2018.

I do the research and the agents, not their fault because their protective pace was like so, so intense that it was hard for them to work it. But I can contribute from 2012 to 2018 when I got it, the guys involved in this case, I can contribute $275,000 in counterfeit to them. in the one year that I worked the case with my partner, we were able to hang over a million dollars on these guys. So imagine what they were doing that was other year. Yeah. That wasn't getting tracked.

And that was a lot of surveillance. That was also a confidential defendant. So what they were doing was they were using the money to, they're using the money to fund human trafficking, gun trafficking, and narcotics trafficking. Chicago. So gun trafficking from Atlanta. They were going down to Atlanta. They'd pick up the guns. They'd come to

Chicago. Because Chicago's gun laws are so stringent. They definitely work, right? It's one of the worst murder rates in the nation. But they made them illegal so it should clear everything out. Oh, yeah, because criminals are like, oh, well, I can't have that gun. Yeah.

It's illegal. It's the same thing with making drugs illegal. That totally solved the problem. Oh, totally. Like, yeah, never mind. Like, there should be penalties, but never mind, forget like programs that assist people with getting off drugs and breaking the habit. Just knock them. So who's the human trafficking? Is this, is this like, are these Mexicans or Asians? Like when I think of human trafficking, I'm thinking bringing them in from another country as opposed to, you know,

grabbing girls at bus stops or whatever. I mean, is this like, are they bringing them in? Are they smuggling people across the border or? No. So none of that. They're Chicago girls. Oh, okay. I thought, I thought, that's just what I thought.

I mean, yeah, when I think of that, that's where your head goes. I was think of 80 people in a, in a shipping container coming over from China. Like, that's my first thought, because it also makes me think of the counterfeiting, too, because counterfeiting is typically, not always, but typically. it's fairly sophisticated, right? Like it's like the average doofus, you know, uh,

street gang typically can't pull that off. I mean, maybe they do, but not, you know, a million dollars a year that you're grabbed. If you're grabbing a million, there's another million that's probably,

maybe not going through the system being grabbed. Well, you say like this, so like a lot of things fall under the, the human trafficking purview. Like pimpernate, pimperating, right? No, it's human trafficking.

It's human trafficking, right? So, um, you know, like, why do you think Diddy got hit with, like, he didn't get hung on him, but initially he was charged with human trafficking. Right. And, you know, crossing state lines to, you know, promote prostitution or however the word is, right?

Same thing. So they would, these guys were all like 30, 30-ish, right? So been around the block a bunch of times, living in the hood. They would prey on girls that had really bad whole lives, you know. And we're talking like 14, 15, 16, and they would make them their girlfriend. So that itself is messed up. Like these guys are like 30, 31 years old, 32 years old. And they have like two to three, 14 to 15 year old girls living with them that were their girlfriends.

But they would take them out of state and host hotel parties and pimple them out. Right. I mean, we're talking Vegas, all the surrounding states of Illinois, Atlanta. And the girls would tell us this in interview like, yeah, like, yeah. I would, they would tell me to go in the bathroom and I'd have to suck some guy's dick. Right. You know, and that was it. And I'm like, why'd you do that?

Well, I didn't really feel like I had a choice. Yeah. And a lot of times there's stuff like, I didn't really mind it. Right. But, you know, it is what it is. You know, he takes care of me. Right. Yeah, you're three states away.

I got no identification. This guy's paying all my bills. It becomes, what is that? Gosh, is it not, is it Stockholm syndrome? Yeah. Yeah, where you fall in love with your captor. Yeah, yeah. And that's exactly what it was.

That's exactly what it was like, because these guys would treat them, even though they treat them like shit. Right. They would treat them better than their family had ever treated. Right. Right. And they're providing everything for them.

And they're providing, yeah, they're paid. They're eating like shit. They're eating like McDonald's all the time and stuff like that. Like you'd see literally, and it's sad, but side note, like all they're eating is fast food, right? So you'd see these girls literally blow up from the beginning the case to the end like they would just be getting bigger or bigger because they're just eating junk all right right uh but and then as they got older they weren't they were no longer they were the main

bitch right now they're they get moved out of the bedroom and now they're a side girl and what somebody younger comes in i believe i believe we interviewed pimping kin i believe kimp and kin says that's their their bottom bitch turned into the bottom bitch that's what pimping kin said pipp and ken definitely as his lingo in porn. One of the girls got arrested. They all got arrested at some point. We talked to all of them. Most of them would not talk

because they were in love, right? Yeah. And so one of the girls got arrested and she was clearly a prostitute. You know, just from my experience, like there was no doubt. And she, we talked to her and they were facing felonies

with the local PD for this counterfeiting and for parents. and counterfeit notes. And she got hooked, which means she got arrested. And she's in Cussie and I'm interviewing. And I start doing the spiel of, we can help you, right? And she's like, I'll think about it, you know. And what I ended up doing, which could have totally backfired for me.

But I told her this, and I was like, you know, in an act of good faith, I want you to call me when you got out here. I'm going to go talk to the PD. I'm going to have you released on your own personal recognizance. So no bond. You got to show up back to court and you need to call me. Yeah. And she's like, oh, yes, of course, yes, right?

That's a big risk. Like, she's got no ties to anybody anywhere, right? Like she could just not show up. That's a huge risk, but it is calculated. Yeah, but it's a gesture of good faith. And it makes her think this guy's looking out for me. This guy really is looking out for me. for me it's not just talk so i i did it and it was like one incident right she'd been on she was in

you know like do you recognize this person pictures and stuff like that that were posted so she'd done a bunch but this was one chart so because remember pds don't communicate right so they're not going to try to hang a bunch on her they they got theirs and so um i get her i get her out on personal bond. All right. And like the risk is not paying off for someone. Shit. And my boss is cool about it.

He was like, shit happens, right? Like don't worry about it. You took a risk. Took a calculator. The risk, it didn't work.

Well, two weeks later, on a Saturday morning at like 6.30 in the morning, I'm at home. And she calls my work phone. And she's like, I want to talk.

So, like basically, you know, the dude had ran her through the ringer. And so she was fed up and she wanted to get out. And so she's like, I want to talk. Like, all right. So we meet. We talk.

And then she goes, and she disappears on me. And then a month and a half later, she gets arrested by a local PD doing this again, right? And she had told me that, like, I was like, how did you get hooked up with so and so? She's like, well, I was just walking down the street.

and he pulled up and he started hollered at me. Tell me how beautiful I was. And if I wanted to, you know, go for a ride and get something to eat. She's like, I was hungry. So I'm like, so you just, you don't know this guy. You just jump in this car. And that's that street life. She's like, yeah, I was hungry.

He offered me to give me something to eat. And then we went back to his place. I'm like, oh, man, I know from your medical, what type of stuff you have? Right. But, you know, it's whatever. So anyway, so she's talking and she starts providing information. And so she was not at a level where we could put her in WITSEC. So we couldn't put her on witness protection, witness security, right?

It just wasn't at that level. But so I had to get, I had to get creative. So I reached out to some local detectives. I called a couple of them until I could get an answer. I was like, here's what I have. This person, she's a confidential defendant. because now she's i've taken her and i put her before a grand jury to testify so now eventually her name will be out there right and she testifies to it and i'm like we got we got to put her someplace

like she cannot be in the city right no city of three million people he'll find her she's in the city she'll screw up and he'll call her she'll call him you know because they'll fall back in so i was talking So we got her way up north near Wisconsin. And I put her in, I ended up having to call like a local person that helps people that ran a home for battered women and children, right, like a domestic violence. Yeah. And she didn't fit the bill at all for this place, but she's like, you know what? Until you can find something better, I'll take her.

Right. And so she was there for like two weeks. And at two weeks, she had worn out her welcome. because she was getting fights with girls. You know, she was feisty. Yeah. And the same as the guy that broke the interstate robbery case, like very, you know, nice person, you know, in a conversation,

if it was different, if she had chose a different path in life, like you could have a normal conversation with this person, but she chose the life of work in the streets. And you talk to her and you're like, man, different life, you could have been someone completely different, right? Just by your personality and your articulate and stuff like that. And so she goes there, and then she ends up going to, I end up getting her down in Bloomington,

which is about two hours away from Chicago, South. So nice distance, right? And I get her in a house that is geared towards women that are in her situation, like human trafficking house, people that have been are victims of human trafficking. Right. Because even though they may think

like I love him and I'll do whatever he's taking care of me, they're victims. Yeah. Right? It's like you said, Stockholm City.

Yeah. The longer you can keep them away from them, the more they get their hedge on straight and they start realizing. Yeah. But you have, that's a significant period of time before they're able to kind of look back

and go, wait a minute. Yeah. Look at, what was it, Elizabeth Smart initially when she got grabbed, she's telling him, no, this is my father. No, what are you talking about?

Like, even when they separated her, it still took hours before she finally was like, okay, it's me. And she'd barely been with that guy, like a year? Something like that. Brainwash. Yeah. You know, it's psychological. He's taking care of her.

He's feeding her. She's terrified of him. And she was in the middle of, she's in the middle of restaurants. She's in the middle of places where she could reach to go to anybody. A cop even went up and talked to her and said, she was in what a library we watched that she's in like a library

and the cop comes up and says hey I just need to make sure that this isn't the girl we're looking for and she says that that's it's this is her father no this is my father this is a police officer it's the perfect time saying this guy just he's kidnapped she's scared she's terrified

and it is it's kind of Stockholm you know it's at least a portion of that is she's terrified what's he going to do this guy came and took me in the middle of night in my house asleep makes you wonder how many girls that Pimp and Ken had had in love with them.

Yeah. But, but, but, and I've got, I've got a girl like that in this case too, but she, I ended up getting her about two hours away, getting her in, a home for girls that have been trafficked.

Right. So a home for ex-prostitutes. And they end up getting her a job, like a dollar general and put getting her in college. And, you know, she lasted there a while.

And then I lost track of her because she got kicked out of the house for sneaking a guy in. Like a bunch of they stopped her, you know, gave her like 15 chances. Right. And, you know, finally, I was like, all right, you got to go. Yeah. And because I called down there to check on her all the time. And I remember I was doing all this work outside of the case. And my supervisor at the time at the Secret Service, he's like, he's like, Drew, why are you doing all this?

He goes, he goes, I can't think of an agent in this. entire office of 67 agents in Chicago that would put in that extra effort and do that. I said, well, his name is Alex. I said, Alex, I said, this is the job we signed up to do. It's protect and serve, not not go out in arrest. And I got into this job to help people that are less fortunate, to help people that can't help themselves for whatever reason in their life, you know, like they don't have the bootstraps to pull up on, you know, to pull up on their boots, like they just don't have it to help them escape true victimization.

And he's like, well, man, I give you credit because I can't think of another agent here that would be doing it. And so we get her out and then you talk about like the stockhold syndrome and Elizabeth Smart. We had another girl like that, that she was 14. And she was with one of the main guys that was 30. And her mom came to the, how we figured out who she was was her mom came to us and interviewed. And the mom was like, she's a good kid.

She gets good grades. You know, we have, we're a divorced home. And she's telling out the whole stale, she's like, I just want my daughter. Right. Like, she's been gone for six weeks now. And she, you know, Chicago PD isn't doing anything about it. But yet she's willfully gone. Right.

Like, they're not going to. track, they don't have time to track that down. And, like, you know, sometimes she'll message me and, like, she'll be with some guy and, and, like, and we figured out was her, and she wouldn't, we never got her back on track. Like, we would try to introduce her back to the mom, talk to her, you know, like, she was, she was buckled down. She was, she was about that life now because she was with him, because she would get out and she'd go right back.

Right. And he'd be all baby, baby, baby, baby, let's go get some McDonald's baby. And she'd eat and she'd be happy. So we end up getting through that. And you talk about standards in different U.S. Attorney's Office, the Eastern District of Michigan, another case, fast and furious, right? Million miles an hour, 48 indictments in 18 months. The Northern District of Illinois or Chicago,

they took the case, but then we're almost a year and a half into it. and they couldn't wrap their heads around a conspiracy. Now, we have, we don't have two people. That's what a conspiracy is too, right? Right. We have multiple actors. We have a girl that we interview, and she lays out that we had her on camera passing counterfeit.

We had her driver on camera, who we had identified too. And so we had her on camera, driver on camera, we ended up interviewing her. She had been for a whole bunch of them. I'm like we had her out of places. She proceeds to break down how they would come back from passing this counterfeit.

Her driver would get out of the car in her presence. The ringleader, the OG, would come down from his apartment. The driver would hand the ringleader a stack of money. This is wash money. This is the real money that they exchanged. Yeah, this is the money that, yeah, they give them 100 bucks to buy a stick of gum, uh, bubble gum. $98 back.

Here's the $98. Right. So a lot of money. Guy goes through counts it, breaks him off. Tells him, you know, whatever, whatever. Guy gets back in the car,

counts it again, breaks her off. This is a conspiracy. Yeah. Right? This is the definition of conspiracy at this point. And the U.S. Attorney,

the Assistant U.S. is like, I don't know. I just don't, I just don't see it. And I remember telling her at the time, she left federal service to go be a professor, which is probably where she belonged. And I remember telling her at the time, like, my supervisor had come to the meeting because they were so frustrated. They wanted to hear what's going. I said, they are not going to go. And I go, we could put her on a wire.

It doesn't matter. And we did those two. But, like, they're not going to go. She's not going to go. And he's not going to say, hey, I would like to commit a conspiracy. with you. Right. Let's commit a crime together.

We are going to watch. Well, it's not going to happen. He's like, hey, you go in there, move this, yada,

yada, yada. I'll break you off. Right. They're not going to articulate conspiracy and the parameters of what makes a conspiracy.

She's like, oh, I know, but we just, we need more for them to say. And I'm like, what the fuck do you need more? Right.

She literally just came in here with her attorney to provide information. and you're saying it's not enough, and she gave you the definition of conspiracy. Right. And she's willing to testify to it. Right.

Come on, let's go. So we finally... Can you get another U.S. attorney? No. Can we swap her out for somebody who's understanding what's happening here? Yeah, so we asked for a declination letter. So we could take a declination letter

is when the U.S. Attorney's office says, sorry, we're not going to take your case. Or we took it, and we're no longer going to pursue it. they will send you an official letter saying that they're done. Right. They're closing it. We asked for that. And then we took it to Cook County, where Chicago is.

They have a group called CC Rock, which is like criminal conspiracy, da, da, da, da, da, like about fraud. Right. I can't remember what the actual acronym is at this moment. But it's called CC Rock. So we get with an assistant state's attorney there. He grabs it. He ends up, he's like, oh, this is great. He's like, you guys basically put a ball on this and handed to me.

And it's the same stuff we had given the U.S. attorney. Right. Right. And he's like, yeah, we're going to, we're going to knock this out of the park. This is going to be a great case. He goes, and on the ring later, he hangs 81 counts. I had never in my career and never again seen 81 counts on one person. All right.

And he goes, four counts of conspiracy that the U.S. Attorney's Office never saw that they couldn't wrap their heads around. Four counts of conspiracy and continuing criminal enterprise. So not only conspiracy, but CCE continuing criminal enterprise, the guy got like 20-some years. Was he also making the money? Yes. Okay. So they would take a piece of shit, $100 printer on Target or something like that.

and they would, they would line it up just right, like they tape it all down, they wash it with, this is really interesting. And I know you had a counterfearro. Yeah, I've had a few. Yeah.

So these guys would use milk to wash it. Milk. And they said, they said, we're giving away like trade secrets here. They said that it maintained the Christmas, the crispness. of the bill that it felt real because a lot of times when you'd wash and bleach it,

it would make it softer. Right. Because dollar bills are linen. Yeah. Right. It's a blend of linen. It's not paper. Right.

That's why they don't burn well. And, um, and, uh, they're like, so we use milk. And it, for some reason, we don't know why. We just tried it, but it would maintain the Christmas of the bill. It wouldn't be soft and floppy. And so they used milk to wash it. And then they would lie to just right, tape. it down, tape it down on a piece of paper and they'd run it through and print the hundred.

And like, we were doing trash pulls left and right and like pull in all kinds of messed up hundreds out of their trash and stuff. Just hilarious stuff. Like, you know. But, yeah, the ringleader ended up getting 20 years and had 81 counts, including four counts of conspiracy. And we're like, that's what you get with the Northern District of Illinois with the U.S. Turner's office.

They couldn't figure it out. And a year and a half later, we said, all right, we want our case back. So that was another good one. Another one is when we go back to the detective one that I said I was going to touch on earlier, was the gun case. So the gun case also was a make or break and, again, informant, right? So at this point with the police department, nobody's really doing informants. It's like it's old school, too, right, at that.

point it's in the early 2010s and so we had a book that we had to write the informant stuff it wasn't computerized like it is now and like I go and I have this case and I end up developing a format later in the story and they're like yeah go in the you know such and such office and pull out the informant law again the last one was like five years earlier the last informant for the whole city and I was like okay so I fill out the paperwork and everything like that and off to the races you got to print them you got to run a background on them you know set up you know they got to fill out paperwork that they're going to claim this on their taxes and stuff like that whatever right not which will never happen always claiming it on their taxes but um so we had this case and this was

another one of those you can't solve it type of cases right so I'm working and a gut gun shop and shooting range on the west side of south uh somebody overnight runs a u-hull truck into the back of it through the wall and then goes in and at this time they were displaying their their rental guns on the wall which is typical but they weren't taking them down at night right so they're a loose on the wall so they drive through the back drive the u-hall through the back go in and and steal 22 guns. And then get up, get back in the U-Haul, takeoff. Right, two guys.

Everything is covered. There's no, like, hey, I, I, there's a pair of black and white Air Force ones. It's all very nondescript. Like, these guys had it pretty well figured out how they were going to do this, which typically fails in the end. But at the time, it was a true who done it. Right. So even my boss is like, hey, I'm going to send you this case that you initially went out on.

I had like 40 cases. He's like, you know, just leave it open for a while, see what, you know, see if anything comes of it and then if you close it down, you close it down. Right. Nobody expected to be solved. So I start looking around and stuff like that. And then the U-Haul gets recovered in Detroit. So there's this, there's this abandoned U-Haul on a side street.

Now, Detroit, if you don't know Detroit, like the downtown has been revitalized by, you know, major business owners, like the Roger Penske's of the world, like revitalized downtown. Dan Gilbert, the owner of the Cleveland Cavaliers and Quicken Loans, like he bought up like 80% of downtown that was vacant and rebuilt the whole thing, that now it's like this nice zone. But it's, there's a triangle of freeways around downtown Detroit, and that's it. you go outside of that triangle, you're back in the shit. Right. Right.

So the neighborhoods are pretty bad throughout. And you'll have entire blocks that are vacant. And except for like the house you're surveilling. So how do you surveil a house on a block? There's only one occupied house and everything else is burnt out of the vacant. Right. And so it's on a vacant street, you know. And it's, it, they set it on fire, you know, so it's sitting there.

And it gets called in. So we go down and process it. Can't get anything off it. You know, it's burnt to a crisp. But again, lucky situation. I get a phone call. I don't get the phone call. Like our receptionist, the Detective Bureau gets a phone call.

And she's like, hey, uh, Snary, you're going to want to take this call. I think, I think it has something to do with your gun case. I'm like, all right, cool. take it. And guys like, yeah, I know the guys who did it. All right. Great. Come on in.

Let's talk about this. Like, let's have a chat, you know. So he sits down, you know, young dad, got a, got a living girlfriend and stuff like that. Just broke and can't rub two nickels together. Live it off of all kinds of assistance. And his motive was he needed more. Right.

Right. Like he just badly. And he knew the guys. He wasn't part of the game, but he hung with them. And so he starts, and at this point we could say he, like this was like 15 years ago, and we're not talking about names here, like just he, right?

So, and it's a male street gang, so he, right? So he gives us, like, social media of the actors and stuff like that. And so we start, like, piecing it together. And then what also broke the case was so on I-75 runs up from Detroit, into the suburbs. So there is a shoot out on the freeway, a moving shooting going on between two rival gangs, right? So the state police gets called because it's on a freeway.

And they end up exiting. I can't remember what street they exit to, but they go to a gas station and pull in there after the shooting is done. Well, they all go into the gas station, right? So now there's decent cameras. Yeah. right not just a freeway camera of somebody going by they all go in there and one guy's like has his hand

under his shirt you know like he's holding the gun right and kind of standing the doorway looking back and forth like is anybody coming or the police coming and he goes out and he goes behind the dumpster and he's there for a second then he walks out and he's no longer holding his shirt and so the uh the clerk goes out there and there's a gun yeah right so he called the police Calls the police. State police show up. It's one of the guns from are breaking and entering. Right.

Right. So off of that, I end up showing that guy's pictures to the guy. He identifies him social media, all that stuff like. We figure out who he is. And then we end up figuring out who the main guys are in this. And that's through a process. And this comes into like managing personalities. Like you and I talked about like dealing, learning how to talk to people.

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They have, you know, semi-marked cars, and they're stopping cars on probable cause pre-tech stops that they think are, you know, bad dudes, right, that they believe could be bad guys. Or if there's, like, a robbery, like, they go into a bloodhound mode, you know what I mean? and they get called and they're like, hey, we need you guys to find this guy and they start working it. So this is the group that always heats up the neighborhood. Like they're not sitting there quiet doing surveillance.

They are, they're stopping anybody that comes through there. And that's how they work. Well, during the investigation, because it was a gun case, the ATF task force officer out of Detroit reaches out to me. It's like, hey, man, we heard that that gun got recovered. And we're talking. He doesn't offer it, but I ask you guys want to work it together.

So he's like, absolutely, we do. Let me talk to my boss. We'll go from there. So I go down to their office that their task force works out of. And, you know, we basically, I briefed them. We talk it out. Great group of guys, especially the Detroit police officers. Like, man, just salt to the earth type of dudes.

And typically, side note, you'll see that, like, an investigation, and then involve the police and the feds. Like the police officers are just nice salt of the earth guys, you know, blue collar, and then the feds are kind of like aloof and standoff. You can always tell a fed who was previously a cop and a fed who like has a biology degree. Right. Right. Because they're very stiff.

And the cops, the ex-cop ones are like loose and easy to get along with and we'll talk to anybody. Right. Right. So we go down there. we briefly start working. Now this is a federal task force, just like the FBI one of them. Like surveillance is the name of the game.

You know, pattern of life is the name of the game. You know, watching you fuck up is the name of the game. Whereas the tactical crime suppression unit or the directed patrol unit, no, we're going to force you to fuck up.

We're going to find you by stopping everybody that comes out of the neighborhood. This group is like, no, we're just going to watch you move. We're from the shadows. And figure out what you're doing. and if we need to make a traffic stop,

we will to identify you, but that's like our last answer. Right. That's the last thing we're going to do. We're going to make sure we have all our ducks in row. That's why Fed cases a lot of times are so tight because U.S. attorneys won't take them until it's basically solved in their office. Right.

Because they want that clearance rate. Right. That's what I was say is that, you know, the locals will arrest you, and then try and put the case together. But when the fed's coming and by the time they've arrested you, it's over. Like, we already have the whole case put together. It's done.

You know, the locals will have like a hunch or a little bit of a case and then they grab you and then they threaten to put you in jail for 20 years and they hope you plea out to, you know, let's get them down to, you please out to five because we don't really want to go to trial because we don't have, we have to put together a case now and then we have to delay, delay, delay. You know, that's just been my experience with the locals. They don't have the budget and the manpower and the,

you know, the capabilities and, you know. You grab them and then you develop this case. Yeah. So at the local level, at the interview is way more crucial than at the federal level, getting that confession, right? Where at the, like you said, like interviews at the federal level,

I'm like, listen, I already know I got it. So it's on you. Like you said, first to the tables, first eat. It's on you if you won't talk.

I don't need you to talk. Yeah. You can go to trial and we'll just crush you. Yeah. I mean, like, you have the opportunity. opportunity to talk it might help you right but I could care less if you talk let's just talk about it and if you want to you want to give up the information cool if not all right man I'm

gonna go home after so you so you got you're watching these guys so we're watching these guys and I had to manage two personality styles for teams because the the ATF task force is like dude we're in this neighborhood driving surveillance and your tech unit is in there heating it up They're stopping everybody. Right. So I had to, I learned really quickly because I had already had a directive for my bosses to involve the tack unit. Right. That's what they do.

So make sure they're playing a role. You want to play with the feds? That's all good. It's going to help sell the kids. But make sure these guys are eaten too. Make sure they have a role of them. Right. Because that's what we pay them to do.

Right. Okay. So I'm literally making sure that they both have jobs and I'm having them do jobs in different neighborhoods. separate of each other. Right? Like, these guys are over here. You know, this person's is in charge, and I want you to go work this and heat this up

and stop people coming out of the neighborhood, identify people. Over here, I'm going to be with the ATF running that op, and we're going to watch these people that we have already identified, watch what they're doing, right? So like, I think that when these guys are getting stopped and hassled and everything, then there's a series of phone calls

to these guys, and you get to watch what these guys do as a result of, you know, they get nervous, they start texting people, they start calling people, they start, you know, relocating, throwing things away, burning cars, you know, trying to get rid of that, like, you at least get to watch. And then they get to know all the pieces of everybody that's involved. If I didn't know better, I would think that you've heard of one of these two, or two of these stories before. You know, it's funny, like, I've done so much when I was locked up and I wrote all these true crime stories, I would order these guys the Freedom of Information Act, and they would come in.

And it's like when I said the master affidavit, right? Like, I can't tell you how many master affidavits I've read in order to get the wiretap. And then they have to keep going back. Like, every 30 days, they keep going back to the judge. Yeah, they have to keep going back to the judge. And then these guys would get on the, and so I'm just reading page after page. And the guys, it always killed me. the guys would, they get a wire tap for a telephone.

And then the guys would say, hey, I'm getting rid of my phone. Here's my new phone number. And they text them from the phone that is being, and they're specifically dropping the phone because they think switching phones is a way to keep from under the radar. Basically, you're saying, hey, I think our phones might be tap or there might be a wire on it, right? They might be listing our phone calls.

So I'm going to dump this phone, and then he texts everybody the new phone number from the old phone. And the guy just picks up and walks to the judge. Hey, he just got a new phone number. We need that. Okay. And it's like the same. You can see the date that it happened. And it's like in the next morning, they're in front of the judge.

But this isn't even 24 hours later. It's happening at 6 o'clock at night. And the next morning at, you know, 10 o'clock in the morning or whatever, they're getting a new wire for the new call. And it's not like, hey, we have to wire. We have to send stuff to T-Mobile, and that takes 10-day. No, it's instant. And they are listening to it within an hour or two of that. They literally flick a switch.

Right. They're listening to it all over again. You call it T-Mobile's a law enforcement number, and you present the document, and literally right then they turn it up. You know, another thing that was funny is I can't tell you how many times I'm also. I probably could. Probably four or five times. But where I've been sitting there writing some guy's story, taking notes,

And I'm like, okay, well, you know, you got arrested. Okay. And what happened? Oh, this happened and this happened. And I'd go, okay. And I'd say, okay, well, you were selling, you know, rocked, or rocks to this person. Right. And they pulled up and the cops pulled up.

And then you punched it and you took off and they were the chase there. But how did, like, obviously they were waiting for you. And they're like, yeah, no. But how were they waiting for you? I don't know. I don't know. They were there. You know, but obviously, you.

were set up by somebody. And they're like, yeah, but I mean, I don't know who, but somebody, okay, well, somebody set you up. Like, did you get your discovery? No, man, I just pled guilty. Like, they got me with the stuff. They had they recovered the gun. They recovered this.

They had us, you know, they had us on tape. And I'm like, okay, well, okay, I'll, and I was like, I'll, I'll figure it out. They're like, what do you mean you'll figure it out? I'm like, well, I mean, I want to know how you got hemmed up, who somebody, you know, set you up. I need and they're like, how are you going to figure that out? Like, I don't know. I was like, oh, I'm going to order the Freedom of Information Act,

and I'm going to order Freedom of Public Records Act for this, this, the task force and for the local county and for the city, because you don't, you're no help to me. You can't even tell me which one of these guys arrested you. You're like, I don't know, it was a DEA or something. That was not the DEA. It was ultimately picked up by the DEA. Like, it was a white guy with a mustache. Okay. Yeah.

Yeah, these guys don't even look into it. And so I would order it. And I mean, the nice thing is, is that usually the counties are super fast responding. Yeah. Right. As opposed to the FBI, which could be six months later. It could be, who knows how long. It could be 18 months.

Yeah, I was just going to say it could be 18. I got out of prison and actually got a phone call, which had, of course, I'd been in prison, but I got out of prison. I got a phone call after I've been out like 18 months from the Freedom of Information Act with the FBI. And I was just like, of course, I'd been in the incarcerated when I'd always done this before. Yeah. So I didn't even know that was a thing. I remember thinking, this is weird.

Something's wrong. Something's wrong. Like, they were going to call you before. Like, maybe this is normal. You're just not in a position to get a phone call before. Anyway, and it was something 18 months earlier in prison, I'd sent this out. So anyway, the point is, is I had sent it off to some county that was involved. I got lucky.

I just hammered everybody, right? I hit everybody with them. Whoever shows up, shows up. and they came back and the local police gave me the police records and all of the notes attached to it. So I actually come back to the couple of days, whatever, after I got that, like the next day, I went back to these guys in the library where we all kind of met. And I said, hey, by the way, I said, do you know a guy named, you know, whatever, John, you know, Robertson? And they're like, and I go, I said, is his, you know, street name is, you know, whatever, black.

and they're like these were two brothers I was writing a story about they're like yeah yeah how do you know that and I said okay I said so

he robbed a convenience store with this guy and they're like like they know the other guy too and I'm like they robbed a convenience store the other guy

or then your guy black got caught he spends a night in jail the next day he talks to the detectives I mean literally they talk about how they walked

He didn't want to talk in the room. They walk out to like where there's a bench outside and they sit down at the bench. It was a whole thing. This was, you know, extremely detailed. Talks about how this guy doesn't want to go to jail. He says he can give him somebody. He knows the guy's name. It's like Snoop.

He can have his aunt call Snoop to get him to sell him, her some rock. And then he was like, I, that's the aunt. That's who I. I did. She called me. I'm like, right. I lay out the whole thing. I'm like, oh, and they had their phone numbers going back and forth. They pulled everything. It was like, they didn't even try and protect the guys who the guy was. And so I show him the whole thing. And I mean, and I remember, so it was like, they stopped and they went. I remember Snoop went. I mean, you like the police, bro. Like, you got everything. Like, I can't. How? And I was like, I wrote a letter. Like, they have to. They just gave it to? Yeah, they just gave it to me. It's freedom of public. of course. Right. I'm like, typically they would redact this guy's name. They'd at least try and protect him.

They'd even try and protect this guy. Now, the feds, everything about it will be blacked out. You can usually figure it out. They'll say something that will make you think, oh, that's Eric. Oh, yeah, we'll redact the shit out of it. Yeah, but sometimes there's some, not always. Sometimes you're like, I don't know who this person is, but they said a lot because there's 12 pages of just blacked out lines.

And then they'll, every once in a while, they'll have like four words that mean nothing. but sometimes it'll say something. And you'll be like, oh, that's Amy. I know who that is. That's, you know. But yeah, so that's, I forget how we got there. But it was, we were back to the, I think, the informants. The phones are calling.

Yeah. Call each other. Yeah, the phone call. And I would see that with the phone calls where they would do the master affidavit and they would change phones because I wrote a book on these kids that they were doctor shopping. And they would change phones, but they would shoot each other their phone numbers. They'd get another master affidavit. And then they'd,

had all these excerpts you know when you write the master affidavit it's it's great because some of of these guys are really good like the detectives that write them yeah it's it's like it's like wow this is like they're pulling excerpts out of some of the phone calls oh yeah we do that yeah it's great so it's like you're like it's a skill if i was a judge i'd sign off on it he definitely didn't something oh yeah we do that too i would do that like you reference actual text messages yeah of talking about criminal activity or here's my phone number you know you put that in there as proof. And a lot of times you would,

you would print out like the screenshot and have it as, you know, an attachment. Right. Like now you really have the proof. Like, I'm not made, that's not getting made up.

Here's the actual phone text, right? But yeah, what you said about heating up the neighborhood and call it exactly what I wanted, right? And we thought about that too. Like, all right,

we're going to have them heat up this neighborhood where so and so and so and so is. And we're not going to use your terms of like guy named stomachache and a guy named little pistol starter. or something. Right. Like, let's just say that it's John and Mark. Yeah.

And, you know, John and Mark are over here, and, you know, as soon as we stop them, we know they're going to call Luke. Yeah.

And, and like, sure enough, sure is shit. Like, they get stopped over there. Like, yeah,

we just stopped and we identified, Alson, out to the car, gone, we're following him, you know, like rolling surveillance to see where they go.

And, like, it's like, man, it's, we don't catch the smart ones. No. You don't catch the smart ones.

But so in that situation, what happened was we kept developing it more and more. And we kept recovering guns, like all over the place in different incidents. And it kept coming back to the same group of guys. So I was able to develop enough for a warrant on their house where these two guys were living. And, you know, this is kind of like, I hope this works type of situation, right? Like, like, I hoped when we hit that door early that morning with the ATF, that there was guns in it. Because I'm like, that will seal the deal. There's no guns.

There's people might still question it's a little bit because it's, he said, he said type stuff. You know, like these guys are never, the guys, yeah, these guys still never been on camera. So we hit the door. And man, sure enough, like, it was like a, type of moment. One of the guns was in one of the guys' closets from the robbery. And I was like, oh, man, we got it now. We got it now. And of course, they had typical, they had a station set up with a computer and all the white cards.

You know, they were making fake identities, people's IDs and stuff like that. So they were running cards too. Yeah, that's pretty sophisticated. So get them in. They both ended up rolling over on each other, which isn't going to do any good at that point. But they confessed and they're like, yeah, him, him, him, him. him, him. And they both ended up going for a while, like, one got like eight years and one got seven.

No, seven and six. But because they were specifically, I mean, did they just end up with the guns or they were involved in the risk? They were the breaking and entering. Okay. But because of their different, one guy had no real record and one guy had like some minors. So they got six and seven. And no, it was when I said eight is the right time. So it was six and eight.

Is this federal? State time. It was all state case. We ran it all through the state. Okay. And the feds were just helping. So we ended up getting them and and paying the informant and stuff like that. And literally most of my cases have been made with the CI. It's not because I'm some amazing investigating because I find people that have some involvement and I ended up talking through them and being approachable, you know, being able to talk to them. And so leaving the police department was tough for me. And then going to the feds because I loved police work.

I loved being a detective. I mean, like I had, our chief police was trying to get me to test for sergeant. I'm like, no interest. Like, because I'll be off the street. Right. I won't be doing this stuff. I won't be working. And by the end of my career, I was working.

working gangs, like solely. And I was, because we're assigned to the task force, now we have task force resources. So there's a big caper, like, you call it boys, and they come from the task force. Right. And so now you're investigative force has tripled, right? Right.

And so, like, I was getting called in on every homicide, every carjacking, shooting, all that stuff, right? So I was... Plus the feds have a bigger budget, and they have... they have more sophisticated equipment. More sophisticated investigative techniques, you know, that they can use electronically. Like, you're talking about wires, right? Like, you use the police department that's going to do it.

Right. Right. Well, I interviewed the sheriff of Okojobe County on, actually, Jess's, I wrote an article on Jess, on her case. Yeah. And I interviewed him and his whole thing was talking about because so Okachovia is extremely flat and the main guy that was, well, the main guys that were moving the drugs were they were like, it's almost impossible to follow. And they're like, I mean, you can see for like miles. So if you're following these guys, like they could just, these are straight roads for miles.

There's no hills, nothing. They're like, it's almost impossible to follow these guys. They said, so at some point they reached out to the feds. They came in. he's like and they have the ability to track these guys they can put you know they can put trackers on the cars they can track them ever they can get wire taps they could he's like they have the manpower he's like so what we weren't able to do when the feds come in he's like now suddenly you know they're like we can knock full of our car search it knock you off for a little here a little there but these guys

can put together the entire conspiracy and shut the thing down and he said they have the budget we don't have the budget to do it right and at any given time i was carrying anywhere from 20 to 40 cases. As a federal agent, you know, it's a busy time if I have five that I'm actually working because they're all complex investigations. They all have more than one actor.

They're all, you know, numerous cell phone records, you know, bank records, da, da, da, da, da, subpoenas, like it's intensive, labor intensive. Whereas as a detective, you know, I would have good cases that I couldn't work because there wasn't enough hours in the day, right? And my focus had to be here. I had to prioritize what to work.

You had to be really, to be a good detective, you had to be really structured about your prioritization on cases. And of course, violent crime goes first, down the line, you know. And you'd get the small stuff too. And if it was like, if it was handed to you with a bow, like some small little property, some small property crime, which is significant to you, the person that's the victim, but to us, like, we don't have time with it, unless it's got a bow on it.

And then like, all right, well, it's all here. Let's just go arrest this guy real quick. Right. You know, and then, you know, stat it and move on. We'll have this done this week. Right. So, again, leave the police department, hated leaving the police department, but recognize that there is bigger things on the horizon.

So I go to the Secret Service, working in Chicago. I have this significant case, and I'm working protection. And protection was very interesting. You know, there's as a, even as a former Secret Service agent, there's things that we can and cannot talk about, right? Because not only is it, you know, you still technically work for the commander in chief, even as a, you know, an office of inspector general agent, but there's also safety issues that we are not going to discuss because it could put

future presidents at risk. You just can't. But I'll tell you what, the personalities are next level. What on the, oh, yeah, the, the presidents? Oh, yeah. Presidents and lives. Yeah, I would say, what about, aren't you also, is Secret Service taking care of, like, like if Hillary Clinton is Secretary of State,

is that the Secret Service that's watching her? No, that'll be the State Department. State Department. Because State Department does protection. Like, you remember, you know, like 13 hours, the movie on Benghazi. Yeah. Those were all state department. The contractors, the guys that were on the rooftop, those were all ex-special forces, X-seals, stuff like that.

They've been contracted by the CIA for protection. The dignitary, the ambassador that was killed on the September 11th incident, he had a two-agent detail. So those two agents were state-depart agents with, you know, typically with like minimal military experience, you know, maybe did like four years, then went to, you know, OIG Office of Inspector General or FBI, they got tired of it, wanted to travel the world, so they're doing this. And you see it in that movie, like the nonchalantness of the agents compared to the, you know, the readiness preparedness of the contract.

who are war fighters, you know, and the difference, right? And like the freak out factor of the one guy's compared to like the level head is of the others. Right. Right. So, no, so each agency has their own protection details. Like even Congress has capital police. Okay. And then they have protection details within the capital police.

So the Secret Service is only for the president and wives and children? and children? Yes, president, wives, and children, and then dignitaries that were assigned to. So, like, the prime minister of Australia came to the United States. I'm on a detail to protect. Okay. What about, like, vice president? Vice president also. So there's presidential protection detail and vice president protection detail. And when you leave a field office, you kind of split. There's other details out there, but those are the two big boys, right? And, you know, the prestigious one is PPD, that presidential protection detail. And then you have the United Nations where we'd go there and because it's a large scale event,

like we would protect presidents and prime ministers from other countries. We'd be there, they'd have their own detail. Right. We'd lead it. So we would actually have to, we gotta vet their detail. Okay. Like so we get a list of everybody, like,

down to like what gun they're carrying, right, in country and everything like that. And we have to bet them all. We gotta run backgrounds on them because not only is it, you know, the agency in the United States, but it's our ass too. But the personalities, like you talk about,

um, I'm not going to name names. Right. But you'll, you'll understand what I'm talking about when I say it. Um, there'll be like mainstream media will just crucify one president and love another one.

Right. And when you're behind the, behind the curtain with them and they're talking like you're just a, a chair in the room because you're there all the time, you realize very quickly they're the same person. Right. Right. Like one is labeled a misogynist and an egotist and da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da

and ruining the world. And the other one is the savior because he's very charismatic and he's a good speaker and he's a great politician and he's doing so much. And you get them together and you're like, man, from my experience being around these guys, this guy is actually worse than this. guy right they call this guy a racist this guy's the racist right right and so you see that and it really it's skews your viewpoint of government right and not skewing like like badly because you are literally witnessing what these people are really like and what their real motives are

because they're talking to whoever and you're just there protecting them and they're they're spilling it You know, and they're talking about stuff that you're just like, this is an awful. Right. But this, and you got to think about it for, I think the president makes $146,000 a year. Yeah, but something like that. These guys aren't. But yeah, first off, they don't need the money. Yeah.

But secondly, they've raised $55 million. Yeah. For a position that pays $460. It ain't about the money. Yeah. It's about the power and the stuff that comes away. with it afterwards. You know, like I remember protecting a post-president in Chicago, who was there for a fundraiser.

This president showed up for a meet-and-grit. He came in, and it was all high-end donors. So people that are going to give a lot of money to whatever he's got going on, post-presidency. And he comes in, and so it's like a wine and cheese party, right? He comes in, talks to him for 20 minutes, walks right back out, gets in the detailed cars and leaps. Right. $1.7 million later. Right?

Something like that, right? And it's literally people getting rich off of a, you know, public servant seller. Like you have, you have congresspeople that are making the cap $196,000, I think it is right now, year Congress but they're making 15 million a year trading stocks like right or or their their wealth and their you know personal wealth have have has grown from being broke when they came in to being worth 30 million yeah how'd that happen yeah no I mean it's yeah it's yeah it's there's obviously there's there's a real issue I just don't know I would think it'd be an easy fix but by the time you get up there you owe so many favors and then you they have to they have to

basically pass these laws against to govern themselves and they don't want to be governed neither party wants to be governed right it's like it's like government shutdowns government shutdown i don't get paid right i'm still i'm still a federal agent right but the people in congress that are using it as leverage they still get paid right so what's their what's their incentive to get it back up They're still getting their paycheck. And most of them don't need this paycheck. You know, they have mystery wineries in California, right? Stuff like that, you know, that wineries that don't exist, you know,

that in one year go from $15,000 profit to $5 million, you know, stuff like that. Yeah. Yeah, why aren't they on Medicare and Medicaid? How come they don't have the same program and the same retirement? Right, right. How is, how come your medical insurance is so amazing, but you're pushing universal health care through the Obamacare.

Yeah. Right? To everybody else. But you have it written in your congressional contract that that doesn't apply to you. Yeah. So it's a hot mess, but you learn real quick that most of these people

are the same person. Mm-hmm. And you see stuff that you're just like, and after you're gone and you see stuff, you're like, that doesn't surprise. Right. Right? Like, we knew who this person was.

Like, there is a, there is a, there was a president that was struggling with, with mental capacity. Right. And, well, shoot, man, we all knew that a couple years before he ran. Yeah. No, but, and nobody's asking us. Right. Right. So, you know, that's, do you wonder, like, so how does that, how does that guy get into that position if he forgets where he is half the time?

Right. Well, money. And then if the media loves him, then they give him a pass. And how does the media end up loving? Yeah. Well, I mean, I'm assuming they're being funded through, you know, all these things that Doge is shutting down left and right now or making an attempt to. Right. So, you know, I would love USID. Like, I'm just asking it for it to be fair. Let's just be fair. Can we just be fair? You know what I mean? Like, let's just have an idea that you have to provide your drivers. in every single state. A valid driver's license that says you're a citizen or a citizen card or something just to vote.

You know, something with your photo on it, something that's been vetted, not I showed up with a birth certificate or I showed up with a driver's license when I think it's 13 or 14 states, anybody can get a driver's license, you don't have to be a citizen, anybody get a one. Or you can just show it with a utility bill and vote. Like come, that's, you know, come on. Everybody should, you should be a citizen and be able to prove your citizen to be able to vote. It seems perfectly reasonable to me.

I mean, you think about all the things that you need an ID to drive, to buy alcohol, to buy a gun, to buy bullets, to dot, dot, get a loan, all this stuff. But no voter ID. Have you ever seen, which to me is like the most important thing. But did you ever see there's a bunch of TikToks where they go in and they go to these, you know, these college campuses and they ask people if it's racist to ask for, IDs and all of these, they're always like white girls who are always like, yeah, because like in black communities, like, it's very hard for them to get ID and it's not normal for them to have

ID. And they'll interview six of them. Then they go into a black community and they stop people, you know, blacks in the community and say, excuse me, do you think it's racist to have a voter that require a voter ID? And they're like, no, why? What do you mean? They're like, well, do you have a driver's license? Yeah.

Well, you understand that most people believe it's difficult for a black person to get an ID. And they're like, well, why would they think that? And they're like, well, I don't know. They think that you have a hard time tracking down your birth certificate or they start and they're like, that doesn't seem right. They're like, I don't know anybody that doesn't have an ID. And they start having these conversations with all these people and you realize right away like, what, who told you, who told these white women in the university that that was a thing when it's not a thing?

So why are, it's just a way to use it to say that this is a racist, this is a racist policy to ask people to have ID. Everybody's got ID. Everybody has ID. Right. Nobody doesn't have ID. Nobody can't not get ID. Trust me, I've had 27 IDs in seven different states. I've had 22 passports issued by the, by the, by the U.S. State Department.

It ain't hard to get ID. Right. So. Right. Well, you typically talk about like that. you know, the college white women, white girls that are saying that stuff, you'll find, and I know you've seen this too, like the people that are screaming, you're racist and check your privilege are typically the most racist.

Oh, of course, of course. And they're projecting to you. Like you have congresspeople saying, we can't, we can't deport illegal aliens because who's going to clean our bathrooms? Yeah. I hate that argument. I hate the argument that it. you wouldn't be able to, like, so you're okay to import slavery. You're basically saying,

hey, we're importing slavery. But that's, because that's what it is. We can pay these people almost nothing because they're non-Americans. It's like, you're, you're making an argument for that these are, these are people that you don't have to pay as much, you could take advantage of. And even if, who'd I have on the other day that was saying, like, oh, it was Johnny Mitchell. Johnny Mitchell was saying, we argued, I don't think it made it. It certainly didn't make it into our video. But we were arguing, and he was, was talking about your, you know, well, who's going to pick the, you know, work in these fields. And I said, Americans will.

He goes, no, not for those prices. I said, you're right. We'll pay more. We'll pay double. I said, if you're going to add an extra 20% on my grapes, I'll pay it because they're Americans. That's why. I said, I don't have a problem paying that.

I'll pay the extra if we can get these American jobs. They can go back to their country. He's like, oh, you don't think that they should be citizens. I said, no, I do. I want them to be citizens. want them to go back to their country, and I want them to apply for citizenship, just like the people that applied, that became citizens that sat in a concentration, or not concentration yet, but whatever these camps are, that sat in some camp somewhere and waited eight years to go through the system,

to come to the United States, to go to New York, and get their green card and become a citizen and eventually get their citizenship. They had to wait 10 years to do that because the system's so clogged up from these people that walked across the border. Like, it's not fair. You're like, oh, well, they're here now. Really? So these people should just rush the place?

Like, come on, man. Just, you're going to say you can't be a citizen. Go back. Do it the right way. I don't even know why we should let anybody into this country that isn't a benefit to the country. You should be a benefit to the country. You should just let somebody in because I love it. The other one is that, oh, they're fleeing oppression.

Really? Because they fleed oppression. And then after they become a citizen, they went back to their country four times in the last two years on vacation. And it took money. And took money. How oppressed were they? It was the lie to begin with. Like, you know, let's stop. Like, we don't have to let everybody in. It's over the Statue of Liberty. The whole give me your, you know, give me your poor. Give me your, you know, disempoversed or whatever the saying is. Like, you know, okay, it's great. It's catchy. Yeah. But it's too much. Well, you know who hates illegal immigration the most? Legal immigrants. Legal immigrants. That came over and waited six or eight years. Sometimes 10 to 20. Yeah, it's outrageous. And went the right way and did naturalization, stuff like that. You talked to them in investigations or just in general. Those are the people that are frustrated the most by the whole illegal immigration thing.

You show up in New York City and here's a phone and a debit card and a hotel to stay in. Right. But you've got a veteran who's trying to live off 11-9 dollars. Exactly. Meanwhile, there's veterans that have served our country, been in war, even if they were like, the cook, right, or logistics. He still put himself on harm, but he was ready to do it. Right.

They go through with the mindset that this might be what they do, right? And now they're living on the street, but you're giving up, you're renting out entire hotels for whatever it is, like $80,000 a month, whatever, right? Let's just use that $100,000. Let's use the easy number to house illegal immigrants and then give them a phone and a debit card that's got $1,200 on at a week. And these people that came in here the right way are working in a bodega or whatever, you know, wherever they're at, they're just scratching and calling to get by and get

naturalization and citizenship the correct way. And meanwhile, these people are ushered into the country and it's just handed to them. That's very frustrating for these people. And I don't blame them, right? Because, yes, things change and stuff like that. but like when did the rules change? Because I know a guy that I work out with sometimes that his work visa lapsed.

He couldn't work. He couldn't make a living because it was taking the State Department a long time. Everything was on time on his end. Right. Taking a long time to get his paperwork done. So he couldn't work for like three months. He had no income.

What are you going to do when you have? have a job where you're living paycheck to paycheck. Yeah. Meanwhile, oh, you're coming on. Oh, here's debit card. Right. So yeah, you see, you see in that position, you see like who's good and who is not as good.

Who's worse, right? And who's even worse. During the detail. During the details, yeah. And what it does is it really drives home how skewed media is, how messed up these people are, how similar they are. And really, it drives home the point of what politics is supposed to be

or the average citizen watching a debate is you not identifying with the person because they're left or they're right or the media's told you to hate him and the media's told you to love her or whatever. But you identifying with them because of the policies they present to you that they are going to to implement when they're in office. And, you know, not all of them get it on. That's obvious, right? Like, there's only so many, so many hours in a day.

And a lot of times they get special interests, talks them to go a different way and stuff like that. But where it's broken the most is way broken at the top, right? But the media pushing voters to vote for them just because, of this or just because they're this person and we hate them. Instead of listening to them, listening to their policy, what they're going to do when they get office and what their track record is. Like, you know, Trump, not a politician before. Right.

First president, I remember, and I'm not super old. I'm 48, but first president, I remember that really is bucked the system and just been like, and he makes mistakes. There's stuff he's screwing up on to, no doubt. right like there's stuff like hey that's a bad move dude right but he's just doing it yeah right where and he's like screw you i'm just doing it right whereas the other ones are part of a political machine and so when you look at like somebody like trump and i'm not saying that i'm a trump supporter or not a trump supporter i'm looking at the totality of right you look at somebody like

Trump and you have to look back at his business acumen, right? Like what he did because he wasn't a politician. Right. Then you look at somebody like Obama and you have to look back at his or Biden and look and see like how many times like he flipped on, you know, law enforcement or gun control, right, like back and forth. Right. Like, all right, which one is it, dude?

Are you for gun control or are you against it? Right. right so i think that's it's from top to the bottom but a lot of it is driven by the media and when you're behind the scenes like you you see who people are and you see that this person is painted as absolute monster this person is painted as a savior and when you listen to him behind the scene same guy right right so it's interesting but um you know the time came to an end uh where i need to leave the Secret Service. I became a single father. And I'm not going to get into that as much because I don't want to bash somebody else on the bad, you know, what their pros and cons are because we all make

mistakes in life. But it was just the kids and I for a good period. And so you can't jump on a plane and fly to California for two weeks. Right. I can't jump on a plane and fly somewhere. I can't be in the south of France. I leave my kids with like a nanny or an all pair. Right. Because if they're in the hospital, well, I'm on a different continent. Right. So I had to start looking and I had played a role when I was with the Secret Service. I was doing some intelligence with cell phones when I was there. And we'll just leave it at that.

But I was on an organized crime task for the Secret Service assigned out to a PD and they had a gangster disciple crew that was, um, that was hiring mail carriers to grab personal information identifiers. So driver's license, credit cards, anything coming through the mail, grab them. And then bring them to them. And they were, this was actually a very interesting case because it was the first case that I know of that the wire that you were asking about was for Snapchat.

Okay. So these guys were not using, phone they were using Snapchat so we had to we had a landmark case we had to we had to apply for a T3 or a wire for Snapchat and then figure out how to monitor it right because it wasn't normal cell phone communication with text messages and stuff like that so um I end up working that with with them and I ended up doing a bunch of cell phone cell phone intelligence type stuff to help them out and I was in a point with the Secret Service where I was on a travel restriction and my number was up to go get moved to DC to go to protection and so I and I'm like what am I

do right and my the special agent in charge Chicago great guy uh his name was Chris he pushes through a hardship for right and right at the same time of the hardship I had been involved in an act shooter situation in Chicago lane in a town called Aurora. Not Aurora, Colorado, there's actually Aurora, Illinois. There was one, too. And he pushes through a hardship, and so that gives me a year. So, but I know the clock is a ticket. So I'm in this shooting at this active shooter.

We're at the police department, and we go through it. Like, it's Friday afternoon. we're getting ready to take off. And then this, you all come, call comes over the radio. Like it's basically, and we call it, you all come. Like, if you're a police officer and somebody gets on the radio and you can hear them fighting and they're asking for assistance like 100 miles per hour. Right.

Everybody drop everything and come. Go right now. If you're not in the middle of something, like you would be on a traffic stop doing a rest, you'd let them go. Yeah. Right. Because you don't know if that person's going to live and be alive in five minutes. Right.

and you may be the closest person to him. Correct, correct. So it was a y'all come. There was a shooter, a guy. It was called the Henry Pratt Point. It's in Aurora, Illinois. And the employee, he had stated that he was going to, he had told his, like, benchmate,

I believe it was a tool and die shop that if he got fired today, he was going to kill everyone. well apparently when they interviewed this guy later on he's like he said that he's like but i didn't take him seriously he said that like once a week he was going to kill everybody like somebody if somebody pissed him off he was going to kill him right and he would talk about how he was gun at that i just basically blew it off so he came he knew he's going to get fired he came to work that day with a Glock pistol and three extra magazine and so it loaded with one three more in his like pouch his bib paper and he gets called up to the boss's office

and the boss who has an intern there is his first week. He calls him and fires him, and he kills both of them. Jesus. And then he goes out on the floor and he kills three more people and injures one more. And then he laid in wait to ambush the police. And as the first five officers showed up, he shot them all. One critically. It lived, but it was critical.

So he got shot right here. the hip and they basically in police work if if it's one of our own that gets shot we're not waiting on the ambulance we're loading you up right now and we're taking you to the hospital we're not wasting any time we're going to triage you right there and get you in well they didn't put his turnicet up on high enough and tight enough and he was bleeding out in the car and he almost died on the way to the hospital another one got shot because he had his rifle up and the optic got the rifle got hit and the optic went into his eye. So they're saying, you know, everybody come, please.

So we're the first ones there. And this kind of leads into a mental health aspect for law enforcement that I think is super important for law enforcement because it's a, it's a network of toughness. You know, like I'm tougher than that stuff thing. So they go in, we get there. And, I mean, like, you want to talk about, like, mental, like, a mental situation where I'm about to go into the fire, but I have to multitask because I have two little kids that are in school. And I'm parent only at this point. Right.

Right. They're not going to go anywhere. And I was getting ready to go off to work to go grocery shop. Right. You know, afterwards. And what happens is, so we go, and on the way there, I am literally calling a mom from my church group, my Bible study, because her daughter is in my daughter's class. I'm like, hey, I can't talk.

I just need you to listen. I'm on there. There's an active shooter in Aurora right now. I'm on my way, and we're making entry. I need you to pick the kids up from school. I'm getting off. When they get released, they're going to know they're getting released. to you. I'm going to get off the phone now. I'll touch base with you later on. I'm going to,

I got to call the school. That was it. Like 30 seconds. I'm on with school. Hey, can't talk right now. I'm such and such dad. You know, they knew I was in law enforcement. I'm like, I'm on the way to this shooting right now, this active shooter. You're going to release my kids to so and so. All right? They have my permission to pick up the kids. And their mom, who lived in a different state, I had to call her too because what happens if I don't make it out? Right. And just let her know. I'm like, hey, such and such, on the way. Right. All right, click. Call my boss. Let him know.

And always we're getting, and at this point, these calls are continuing. We've already gotten our orders in a briefing with a map. Like, like the command there had a map of the plant by that point saying like, this is what's going on, this is where the shots were, this is where you're going to make entry.

And I'm doing all this at the same time. And then we're at the door. And we go in and do what needs, do what's done, right? And the threat is eliminated, not by me, but, you know, flashbangs and shooting going on the whole time and stuff like that. And get out. And I started dealing with PTSD. And I get out that day and I leave there and I realize that I still got to go grocery shopping. Right.

And I like, I still got to go get milk and cereal for the kids of the morning because they don't have any. thing to eat them. Right. Right. So I one one extreme of adrenaline and and from here to here. Right. Right. To dropping all the way down to just the mundane got to pick up some milk on my way home. Yeah. Yeah. And so like literally I know I'd mentioned this to you earlier when I was giving you a heads up. I walk into a CBS because it's quick and easy, right? I still have to go over to this lady's house and pick up my kids. And you know, I, um, I walk in there to get. And, And it was literally like the teacher in Charlie Brown and Peanats. And want, want, want, want, want, everything around me.

Like, it was like I was in a cloud. You know, there's people shopping by me. I remember, like, some guy and his girlfriend or wife or whatever were kind of having, like, a little, like, disagreement, like, right by me about something. I'm just like, it's almost like I'm watching myself. Right. And then I leave and I go there. And within two weeks, I remember going to my boss. And great guy.

You know, this is not reflective on him of like a failure to act. This is reflective on training of what to expect, like, you know, and how to help other people. Because there's stuff in place. He just didn't know. So I go to him and I tell him like, I'm not sleeping. I'm getting like one to two hours a night, struggling. If you sleep hot at night, you know how disruptive that can be. When you're not resting well, everything else.

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I'm not there yet, but I don't want to get there. I would really appreciate if I could find somebody to talk to. work through this because I don't want to get to a point where I can't perform my job and heaven forbid be a good dad and um he's like and drew I really don't I don't know I don't know what we can do for you have you talked to anybody I'm like well I mean I have a therapist because I'm going through a divorce right now so I'm dealing with that he's like well I mean I could get you a chaplain Do you want a chaplain? Do I want a chaplain?

Like, no, I have faith in God. I'm good. I go to church, right? I'm in a church group. Like, I don't need a chaplain to talk to me about faith and, you know, what entails in this situation of faith and how to work through it with God. I need a professional to figure out of me how to get these out of these situations when I'm living them.

Right. Like when I'm going back through it. Yeah, what is the technique that I need to use is going to help me get through this? Right. I don't know, man. I guess maybe you should talk to your therapist. Right. I was like, whoa.

Yeah. Thanks. You know, I'm always here. I heard that, you know, there's, there are all these, all these things that they'll do for you and they'll get you a therapist and they'll get you a, whatever, psychiatrist. And they have all these systems in place for people that are going through PTSD. I mean well it's there it's just knowing how to direct somebody to it right and they didn't and I didn't I'd only been with the agency like two years at the point I don't know the inner workings right right right so I did end up dealing with it through my therapist and he's not training this but he got me

there like he got me to a place where it doesn't it wouldn't affect me anymore it doesn't affect me now I could pull myself right out of it and you know like we talked about it's like sensory things like like things that you do with your fingers and stuff like that because what I didn't want to happen was I didn't want to get to the point where like I'm starting to snap at my kids or I start drinking right or you know heaven forbid like drug use right like like even worse like now you're going from legal and excess to illegal excess yeah like so got it figured out well you're going on the suffering podcast with Kevin Donaldson yes Donaldson yes Donaldson yes Donaldson Okay, I'm so glad I remember that.

I was just thinking of Kevin. But yeah, I had he and Mike on the podcast like three years ago. When they started, maybe even more. I think maybe we, Jess and I went to dinner with them. Them and Mike Dowd. Do you know who Mike Dowd is? Yeah. Dinner with them.

Mike Dowd and John Aylite. John Aylite's like a friend. former like mob associate who's killed several people and like a I don't know if he's a hit man or what you what you would call him but we all went to dinner and uh but I've talked to Kevin many many times actually he's been he's been back on my no he I think it was just the one time but uh yeah he's it's it's we talked about this but it's it always kills me the that he and Mike you know Kevin and Mike came on and they, the whole time, you know, I, that their podcast is like, it's super serious, right? Like it's about, um, suicide and, uh, you know, all, um, PTSD and,

you know, all these things that, that they've gone through and that, uh, former, or the law enforcement goes through and, and, and getting help and, and, uh, you know, and they were so funny. And the guy, Mike was, they were just busted each other's balls just the whole. whole time. And so you just really kind of feel like these are just two good guys and they're just having fun and they're good and they're trying to do a right thing. But they've got, you know, this, you know, great, great sense of humor and everything. And then like a year or so later, yeah, Mike one day goes home and just kills himself. Trague. Just, I mean, and when I talk to Kevin, Kevin's like, nobody saw it coming. Like, we were supposed to meet like two days after that. Like,

They had a scheduled podcast. He was excited about it. He's talking about doing this. He's talking about this. He's like, we're talking, we're texting. Like, everything's, like, nobody. No, like, the next day he's supposed to do something with, like, his kids or his wife or whatever it was. It was like, literally he's making plans up until he just decides that, no, it's over.

I'm done. Yeah, I've listened to a couple of Kevin's podcast. And it's tragic because, like, he's literally like, we had plans. Yeah. Like, we made plans together. All right. And just that that's so that just to me and you just the guy just did not. That's the whole thing.

It's like, you know, you see these things where you see these people of guys taking pictures with their kids or doing a barbecue and they're like, this is the night before, you know, he took his own life. You're like, he's laughing. He's on video playing wrestling with his kids, playing with his dog, doing whatever. It looks like the picture of health, of mental health, got a family, everything. And then, you know, what happened? And what, you know, and Kevin, too, it's not like Kevin doesn't know, like, the signs. He's like, I saw no signs. Like, there are no signs.

You know, that's the problems. You think, well, I didn't, I seem so fine. Like, it seemed like, well, were you looking out for the signs? Like, what signs? There's some guys laughing and joking. He's calling me. We're making plans. We're wearing the signs.

That's because we suppress it. Right. We suppress it because of the machismo of the position, you know? Yeah. So we're like, I can't let anybody know that I'm weak. Right. Right. Right. Whereas in reality, being vulnerable makes you more of a man, right? In like dealing with it and confronting it and having the strength to actually confront it makes you more of a man than the person that is hiding it because they're afraid to handle it. And what happened to Mike and, and I mean, I'm not going to Monday morning quarterback anything. That is not, especially something like this. It is absolutely tragic, right? Like, Here's a person that did good for the community, struggled,

was not helped out by his BD from what I've heard. And just internalizing it, internalizing, starting to drink, internalize, internalizing it, to the point where he couldn't live with it. Right. That is, that in itself is an absolute tragedy because there's so many spots along the way that he could have got help, you could have got him help,

Anybody could have got him help that could have assisted him work through, right? Right. Like you hear Kevin talk about that. Like there's times where he was ready to take his own life, like in his office and stuff like that because he was struggling so much. And not, and he'll even say this, not thinking about how badly that would screw up his kids when they come in and see daddy with his head blow in the office, right? Because they're going to hear it. They're in the house. Yeah.

And come and see that, like how much that's going to mess them up. because you're so caught up in yourself that you're rationalizing that of, I don't want to be this burden to them. Right. What kind of burden are you going to give them when they see their dad with half a head? Right. Right. So, yeah, it's tragic.

And that's why I'm glad Kevin's giving me the opportunity to come on a show because, you know, he's been through this. I've been through a lot of guys have been through it and women. and they just there needs to be a discussion because agencies are getting better, but there's still a lot of people that are unaliving themselves. Right. Because they're not getting the treatment they deserve. And a lot of times, unlike me or unlike Kevin, they didn't have the strength to go seek it on their own.

Like they, when your department or your agency doesn't do it for you. And then, you know, you got to go do it on your own. And a lot of people don't because they don't have that strength. I'm sorry. I'm just thinking. Go. What you got? I was thinking, I was thinking that's funny because, you know, you need somebody that you can confide in.

When I feel sad or depressed, I just say to Jess, I say, I feel sad and depressed. And she's rough some fucking dirt on it, you know. So she's not the one. She's not the person to confide. But yeah, there's somebody out there, I'm sure. That's this funny. But I'm sure, like, if it was like the real deal, she would sit there and talk to you. You know, if you're just being a wimp and not wanting to go on a hike, like you're talking about.

Like, right? Like, you don't want to go up this mile, this five-hour hike up the mountain and a mile in. It was, four miles. Was it four or two? Poor baby. No. Poor baby. Poor baby.

rough some dirt on it. She's mean. Well, now you've got to rock so you can build up that stamina with the extra weight on you. And now next time she takes you on a hike like that, you'll be able to complete it. I know. And you only complain half the time. I know. Listen, that was, listen.

And so let's get, let's talk about that for a second. Okay. So this is Ian Bick, Ian Bick's fault. Ian, you told me on the phone, you said, because now you work for, Is it frontline athletic? Frontline athletic. Is that what it is? I'm still a federal agent, but the business I started is called frontline athletic.

Okay. Yeah. And so you had gone on Ian Beck, and you went, you took him for, is it a hike or what do you call it? A ruck. You call it a ruck? Yeah, you're going for a hike, but you're wearing a weighted backwood with weight in it. Which I started noticing, I started noticing people with a ruck. But not like, I don't know if it's been years that people have been doing this, but I only started noticing people wearing these things in our neighborhood, like, maybe six months or a year ago, where I literally started noticing like, these people were wearing like weights or something.

Or first I thought they were backpacks. And then I was like, no, these are weights. Like these are women with like, they're not, they seem small, right? So they're not like a big backpack. And I'm like, why would you go for, why are these people, you know, jogging or walking doing a fast walk? why is this soccer mom doing a fast walk with a backpack on? Like, that's got to be weights, right? So I'm, I'm started noticing that a while ago, but you know, paid no attention to it at all.

And then, and then when you told me that you had taken Ian on a ruck and you said, yeah, I forget how you said it, but it made it sound, you were like, yeah, Ian said I was the first person to ever go there with him and have him go do a workout before, or was it before they? It was right after the show. Oh, right after the show. Yeah. And the way it made it, you made it sound was like, and I should do it too. And you said, so I'm asking you if you would like to go on a ruck.

And I was like, okay, what? And what is this? And you came back, you know, it's this. It's, I have a company. Here's what we do. And you said the whole thing and whatever. So I was like, fuck, now I got to do this. Ian did it.

And Ian's in way better shape. but I think I've mentioned this is that, you know, he's got the glasses and he's got kind of the computer geek kind of thing going right. Like, and he's, I'm not saying anything he doesn't said about himself. And he's got the whole thing. But then when you meet him, like, he's, he's over six foot tall. He's actually jacked. He's like, you know, he works out all the time.

He's tatted up. So, you know, the, what you see on camera and what you see in person's two totally different things. Like, I wouldn't mess with that. Oh, yeah. camera he looks like a nerd. Yeah. And his videos, he does,

like when he does quick reels or TikToks stuff like that, you just see this and he's kind of nerdy looking. Yeah, but then you see it in person. He's like, man, that might be a tussle if we get into it.

Yeah, it would be a major issue. He could hold his own. I feel like Jess and I together could maybe, we've maybe taken together, but not me alone. Anyway, so yeah,

so then you showed up yesterday at my house and brought. I feel like Jess would be doing all the work. I know. She would. I'd be, but I'd be there for support. It's important to have support. I don't know. I heard you complaining about the first mile of a hike, so I can imagine. It was, first of all, that was in Utah at a, at a lodge, and we were going uphill. She always forgets that it wasn't like a straight walk, like you and I did a straight walk. I did two miles with you. This was straight up a mountain. This was going back and forth, back and forth, up a mountain. uphill. It was hard. That's real hiking. It was, yeah, it was hard. In Florida hiking is you're going

for a walk in the woods or on a boardwalk, right? That's, that's hiking. It's really just a walk. There's like a gradual hill sometimes. Yeah. But, and I took them by the, I took them by both, we didn't see any alligators. Typically, we see at least two or three alligators. I thought I saw an alligator. It was a log. He's like, oh, what? And I say this is a log, bro. But also, when we see then we go in the morning early, early in the morning, and it's cool out. They're out there, their son of themselves. Yeah, I don't know what's happening yesterday. I don't think it was too warm or something.

But anyway, so, yeah, we went on a ruck yesterday. Yeah. And by the time I got back, like my lower back hurt, my thighs felt a little sore. And I, stop, don't judge me. Don't give me that look. Like, that's pathetic. No, you're fine. I'm an old man.

That's okay. I'm 57. So am I 57? I'm 56. I'm 56. I'll be 57 in July So we walked I came back

I took some ibuprofen I'm fine Anyway but yeah So we did that yesterday 15 pounds You gave me It was what? Yeah we gave you a 15

I would put 15 pounds in your pack He tried to give me like a 25 How much did you say I was going to do 30 30 I could not Because 30 is the standard for men And 20 is the standard for women

Don't Don't tell her that But we start to do that. You start someplace, right? And, yeah, but, and we were talking. So on the way back, like I was at the point where I was like stopping everyone. So I were talking and I would stop for a minute and be like, this is. And it's awkward.

It felt awkward because the weight was on the back. So I felt like I was leaning because I'm not used to it. So that's the difference. And so with our rocks at Frontline, they are built. what it does different, like you'll see a lot of women wear like weighted vests, right? And there'll be some ill-fitting vests off Amazon they got off of $40. One, you can't change the weight. It's a 12-pound or an 18-pound whatever. It's never going up, never going down. So your body gets used to it. You're not mixing it up. But a vest displaces the weight evenly or distributes it evenly across your body,

right, across your torso, where a rock, like what you're experiencing is high and tight on your back. so without you even trying the entire time your core is engaged Right. You know, and you're not, and it's not like Oh my gosh, I just did 100 sit-ups. No, it's like it's the small like, you know, like a thousand like death by a thousand paper cuts.

Yeah. Same type of thing. Like it's just the little small stabilizer movements that strengthens your core because it's sitting up high and tight. And you can change the weight. Like you did 15. It's going to be no time until you're up to 30

because it has a pocket that you put it in. Well, plus the vest or the, the rucks sack and the area it's all heavy like it was that when there was no when you handed it to me and there was no weights in it that's probably things got to be five pounds by itself right two point six well yours is three actually because you have the 21 later three pounds three pounds she's like she's like just like oh good lord well my god myself right right so um yeah i mean the company has been way more successful than I expected at this point.

It's three years old. Well, yeah, now it is. Almost April will be three years because I started April of 2023. And I started it because of what we're talking about right now towards the end. And that just was, you know, coincidental transition there. But literally helping people get outside and get healthy. Because post-COVID pandemic and stuff like that, I've noticed it. I'm sure you've noticed it. More people are just staying inside and Netflix and chilling, right?

They're just they're just on the couch, eating junk, getting heavier, wearing sweats all the time. Like that's the new uniform as a hoodie and sweatpants. Oh, listen, if you go to the movies, like there's like 20% of the people that the movies are wearing pajamas and walking in with their, with a pillow. And slippers. And it's insanity. I'm like, this is nuts. The same is when you fly. Yeah. I remember there was a.

and not that long ago, where you got dressed up to go on a flight. Yeah. You know? And I'm not talking about like, there was a time when it was suits and stuff, but even in our lifetime, it wasn't suits, but it's like still, you wore your Sunday church clothes. Yeah. To go on a flight because you wanted to look presentable. Now, like, I don't know if you've ever had the joy or the tragedy of flying spirit.

Yes, I have. Have you witnessed the blanket monsters? No. I mean, maybe there's people with blankets. So one time during COVID, I could not get a flight to Florida cheap. And so I had to go the spirit route. Like I couldn't get it even reasonable. But of course, Spirit was like $80. Right.

So I get on there. And this lady next to me goes, hey, just so you might not. Just so you know, I'm going to go to sleep right away. I hope I don't fall in a shoulder. I'm like, all right, cool, whatever. Right, like that happens. And before they even finished the briefing of, like, you know, the safety measures, she'd taken this blanket and she'd thrown it up over her head.

And she was underneath this blanket. And then I look over and in the corner, I actually took a picture of this. Like, this lady comes on with fake ugs that are bedazzled. And I'm not talking about like a couple of rhinestones. I'm talking like the whole thing is, is, Saturday night fever glowing, right? And she gets on there

and she's got a queen-sized blanket and she throws it over her head. And this blanket is, it's queen-size. So it's like out in the aisle, it's like down the aisle. I'm like, what in the hell is going on around here? Like, what is this?

What alternate universe am I in right now? And that's flying now. But yeah, so the company, was started basically to help people get outside and get healthy at a reasonable price point, right? Like because some of the equipment out there for rucking is absurdly expensive, whether they're selling it off the name recognition or just jacking to price because they're the only show in town. So what I did was I saw, I basically saw a hole in it. No pun intended. And he's like, he's like, this guy.

This guy. So, so I literally, I was like, this is, there was a pandemic, but this is epidemic. But this is epidemic levels now. Like, we got to get people outside, start getting them healthy and active. We need to start building the community of all different walks of life, of people that can get, that we can help them get outside and get active and have. some level of fitness and health so they live past 50 years old right right and so uh ended up building out these rucks designing them uh finding a manufacturer to partner with and stuff like that that you know

and giving them you know working through my designs with them so we can start building it because i don't i don't have a i don't have a you know a manufacturing shop so you have to work through a manufacturing and contract it. So my goal was to make it at a price that is affordable and but also offer a lifetime long. So you can rely and have, you can feel comfortable and rely on it and know that no matter what, we have your back.

And so we started producing them in 2023 and 2024. We didn't produce them yet. We were testing them and doing samples. and I did a test run of 200. And bro, like, I knew I was on to something at this point because no marketing, all just word of mouth, grassroots, you know, bootstrapping it, going around to different workouts showing people a little bit of social media. And in two months, I sold 200.

Right. I'm like, okay, I'm on to something. But that was the ultimate testing and evaluation because when I was doing the prototypes, you got like three. Right. But now I have 200 out there and people are buying it. And we didn't have a warranty on the end. I just told everybody's like, listen, no warranty, but I'll stand behind them.

So basically there's a warranty without slapping a warranty. Right. Right. And so took the, took the, so that created visibility, raised capital because this is bootstrapping. It's all out of pocket. There's no investors. And, um, and started production. And it took the information that could improve.

it to a production. May launched our actual production line and end of May, last week in May, two and a half months sold out 500 years now. And I knew that I knew that I could not afford, because it's all out of pocket, I couldn't afford at that point to start production before I was out of stock because I didn't have the money. Right. Right. It was money in, money right back out. you know, typically more than what was coming in, right? So I did that, and that actually created a demand for the supply, right? Because people are asking when are you're going to be in stock? My buddy's got one of these.

So, but then I still, instead of maximizing profit and waiting a year to make changes, like a lot of manufacturers and sellers do, people talked about issues they had. And so I changed them right there. I was like, all right, this is, there's 1.0, which was the prototype version, the 200, there's 2.0 and now 3.0 that we are, the 3.0 is just internal. Nothing's labeled that way, right? That now we've got the answers. And what I did, when you talk about all these women walk around, I'm like, oh, sorry, just bumped that. And what I did was in.

seeing all these women walk around like you're talking about like with ill-fitting vests on and stuff like that but it's becoming very trendy and they're out walking their dog and whatnot um is i looked around the industry and i saw that nobody has designed a vest or a ruck for women specifically right now i don't know if you've noticed this but their anatomy is a lot different right yeah it took a little bit but i was like yeah i mean like jess may say that you don't really notice that you're unaware. But news flash, I don't care what side of the fence you're on for politicians and what news channel is to. They're all going to agree to some degree that women have different anatomies than men. Yeah. Okay. So I started getting with a couple, I was very fortunate

through an agreement that I have with a with an obstacle course racing company and that I have that I have, built relationships with some world-class athletes and that I work with them exclusively as a result. And so I went to these women and I said, here's my ideas, but I can't speak for what fits a woman comfortably. Let's go through this stuff and pick what you think is comfortable. And so they went and they, and we literally, I put together samples, designed them, you know, we got them all stitched together and things like that. and try different versions.

And then we're like, I like this. They were like, I like this. I like this. We need to change this. I'm one woman is like, I'm the world record holder in this rucking event. And she's not talking like that. I'm talking like that.

She's very humble. But she's like, I don't want my ruck to weigh more than 20 pounds because that's the standard for women. I don't want it to be 22 or 23 pounds. I need to be able to put this type of weight in there. All right. So we built a special pocket in there. just for what she was asking for.

Like the world record holder asks you to do. Right. Beautiful. Right. Right. Right. Right. Like they didn't get there by chance.

Like they're the best for a reason, right? And so we built this out and the reviews are next level because nobody's done it. Nobody's done this for women with the cut, the size, the specifications, the dimensions that puts it, takes it off of their shoulders and puts it on their upper back. Like, I know people that, well, there's one woman, for example, and like, yes, we had world-class athletes test this stuff, but I'm not a world-class athlete. Jess, I don't know you that well, but I'm guessing you're not a world-class athlete. You may have played some sports, but you're not a world-class athlete, clearly.

You just complained about hiking a mile. Two miles. Two miles. I'm sorry. I didn't give you enough credit. Two miles. But what we did was I put it on regular people too that just go out for a walk. And I had one person that had tried everything, tried like the weighted vests, but she had a neck injury.

I tried the weighted vest, tried another brand's rock, everything within 15 minutes. It's off and whoever she is walking with is carrying it for. Right. Right. So I gave her our ruck to test it. And the first time she tried it, she rucked for two hours and was gushing about how comfortable it was because of the slip disc in her neck and how that affects her shoulders and the load on her shoulders as a result. And that's the winner. Like the pro athlete or a semi-pro athlete or whatever they're considered, right?

It works for you when you're running an event for an hour. But the mom walking her dog or taking her kids in the stroller and wants to put the weight on and can do it now for an hour, that's our letter. Right. What's the benefit to that as opposed to just walking? So that's a great question. And what Rucking does, like when you and I did it, I was watching my watch yesterday. like I ran it because I told you like we were getting done as a cake we'd go two more minutes I want to have 45 flat right um so it will increase your heart rate so a lot of times when people

are training for different races or for a good cardiovascular compared to like uh weight loss and stuff like that uh they'll run hard fast and then they'll do what's called the zone tour which is basically they're just for lack of term better terms they're mosey like they're just you know they may run like an eight men and mile for six miles and then that day they're running a 10 minute mile you know just to get their heart rate up enough to to burn that right right because the high impact cardio you're not burning fat right you're losing fluids and it's all cardiovascular it's heart strength whereas this what it does the ruck with the weight on your back it automatically launches you into that zone too so going for a walk

is great. Like I still do it time. I'll take the dog out. But I throw on a rock and now my resting heart rate, which is low, it's like 59 to 61, right, is my resting heart rate. I'm up over 100. I'm like 100 to 110. And I'm in that sweet spot of the zone too. And all I am is walking briskly. Like you saw you, like yesterday, like we just had a nice clip going. But we weren't, we weren't running. We weren't even jogging. We're just walking quickly. Talking. We talked. Nobody was out of breath. Right? Well, you might have been. Towards the end, I was a little bit. It wasn't like breathing hard, but I was, my whole body was exhausted, not like a normal walk.

I was, like my body was tired. Like, you know, normally we get, normally if we go for a walk, we get back, I can jump in the shower. You know what I'm saying? Like, I'm fine. But by the time I got back that time, like in my whole body, I was like a little tired. Yeah. But it gets you up into that zone too, where you're actually actively burning fat. And you'll see that like your legs and your core will get stronger because of the

non-distribution it's on your back and then the walking with extra you got extra 20, 30 pounds on you or 15 pounds even, but you can mix it up, whereas these vests are like 12 and 18 pounds. And the goal of doing all this is the mission statement of our company. And when I say us, I'm really talking about me because it's small business, right? But the mission statement of our company is to help people get outside, get active, and get help and build a community as a result of it. Like all different walks of life, our ambassadors and content creators, all different walks of life, but they're all in a channel and they're all cheering each other on. And that's what we're trying to build is a community of you're a completely different guy than me, but we can go out for a walk and we're on the same page. Right.

because we're just chatting. Same with like Jess. Like if we were out for a walk, you know, like, or if you guys were out for a walk, like it's building community thing, right? And that's the thing. So the mission is building community of healthy people that are getting off the couch.

The vehicle is the equipment. And obviously, yes, equipment gets monetized. But that's how you have, that's the vehicle that you have to drive to build this community to get people outside and healthy. Hey, you guys. I appreciate you watching. like the video, please hit the subscribe button, hit the bell so get notified of videos just like this.

Also, if you want to go to Drew's company, Frontline Athletic, go in the description box, and we're going to leave the website. You can go there and you can order rocks and gear. Also, you can go to his social media, which is predominantly, it's going to be Instagram. You can go there and you can also check out the Instagram and message him. Once again, I appreciate you guys watching. Do me favor, hit the subscribe button, and thank you very much. See you.