Shawn Ryan Show - #304 Chris Bayless - 30 Years Undercover Inside America's Most Violent Gangs

Episode Date: May 14, 2026

Chris Bayless is a former Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) Special Agent who spent more than three decades working some of the most dangerous undercover investigations in the United States. An original member of ATF’s Enhanced Undercover Program beginning in 2000, Bayless spent years infiltrating violent outlaw motorcycle gangs including the Outlaws, Grim Reapers, and organizations connected to the Hell’s Angels, helping build major federal RICO prosecutions against organized criminal enterprises. Raised in a suburb of Chicago by two school teachers, Bayless was influenced early by mentors in law enforcement who shaped his path toward public service. After attending Manchester University in Indiana, where he studied Environmental Studies and Criminal Justice, he joined the ATF in 1987 in the Chicago Field Division. Throughout his career, Bayless worked major federal operations targeting violent crime in cities such as St. Louis, Oakland, Phoenix, Cleveland, and Albuquerque. His undercover work placed him deep inside biker gangs and other criminal networks, requiring years of operating under assumed identities in high-risk environments. Beyond investigations, Bayless served in the ATF Peer Support Program, helping fellow agents process trauma following critical incidents, including the aftermath of Waco. After decades of operating in violent environments and living in constant hypervigilance, he was eventually diagnosed with PTSD near the end of his career. Today, Bayless teaches at the ATF Academy, helping train the next generation of agents while reflecting on lessons from his career about trauma, resilience, faith, and redemption. Outside of law enforcement, he spends time restoring WWII Army Willys Jeeps and navigating life after decades of undercover work. Shawn Ryan Show Sponsors: Go to ⁠https://calderalab.com/SRS ⁠and use code SRS for 20% off your first order. Get 50% off your first order of Sundays for Dogs at ⁠https://sundaysfordogs.com/SRS50⁠ or use code SRS50 at checkout. Get 20% off Rho Nutrition’s longevity stack with code SRS at ⁠https://rhonutrition.com⁠ Live better longer with BUBS Naturals. Get 20% OFF on collagen, MCT creamers, and more with code SHAWN at ⁠https://bubsnaturals.com/srs⁠ If you’re serious about selling to the Department of War, go to ⁠https://SBIRAdvisors.com⁠ and mention Shawn Ryan for your first month free. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

So I just spent about, I don't know, 12 hours digging through the internet about you and you are a bad motherfucker. Holy shit. Whoa, dude. I don't think so, but okay. Are you sure you had Chris Bayliss? It wasn't some other guy with a different name? I'm pretty sure. Are you sure?

Okay. And the first ATF agent I've ever had on the show. I hope you don't screw it up for the rest of the fucking agency. Oh, man. I'm sure you'll get some bad reviews on talking to an ATF guy. Oh, I'm sure I will too. But I get bad reviews all the time. There you go, right on.

But I want to start up with an introduction, so to prove my point here. Chris Bayless, 30-year ATF special agent spent the majority of your career undercover, infiltrated the Hells Hinchman Motorcycle Club, and was inside when they patched over to become the Hells Angels, planning the club's first plague in the Midwest. Your undercover intelligence helped build the federal RICO case that took down Melchancey and the Chicago Hells Angels leadership. Partners with Jay Dobbins, the agent who later infiltrated the Hells Angels in Arizona,

personally involved in more than 100 stash house sting operations across the country, had partners shot and killed, continued to work for three decades. Suspects planned to kill you. On roughly half of your operations, one crew planned to poke holes in your stomach and to sink your body in a river. Got locked in a bar with a 6-foot-9, 300-pound biker outlaw enforcer while you were wearing a wire. You fought your way out. Your stash house operations cut shootings in half in Oakland, made 70 arrests in Phoenix, became a public face of ATF's defense against entrapment and racial bias allegations from federal judge.

judges, and today you're retired, outspoken, and ready to tell the story you couldn't tell for 30 years. Wow. And I had to dub that down. Yeah. That's very nice. Sounds like a nice guy. Yeah, I don't know who that guy is, but you should have him on your show.

But, well, I got something I want to give you. Okay. So. Let me grab it here real quick. Holy sh-sh-knit. So I've always, well, let me brief, never in a million years would I think I would be willingly, willingly giving an ATF agent a short bill rifle and a suppressor. I love it. So I got some buddies over at Sig.

One really good buddy. His name's Jason. He's the VP of Marketing over there. Oh, that is a fantastic platform. found out you were coming on and surprised to me once to give an ATF agent a short barrel rifle and a suppressor. Are you kidding me?

Have you, you familiar with that? This particular shooter, no. No, but the platform, absolutely. I can see right now the optics, this is like, this is it. We're going to break it in today. You're going to love it. You're going to fucking love that thing. My brother, this is absolutely good.

I got a quick SIG story. I'll tell you that, and this is, I love SIG, first of all. So we transitioned from wheel guns and our first semi-autos was the SIG hour and I had a 226 and I said, you used the 226? Oh, I love it. Oh, I used the 226. So I was in it right after we did the transition, you know, it's a semi from the wheel gun. We are unfortunately in a shooting in Juliet, Illinois.

And so everything was fine on the shooting, get back shooting review team comes out, they didn't care about anything other than, did you decock before you put it back in the holster? And I was like, well, what about the guys that were shooting ass? They're like, yeah, yeah, whatever. Did you decock before you put it in a holsterer? And I was like, you know what? I did. They just wanted to make sure that during that transitional period, we got that muscle memory for the decock. And it was hilarious. And that was the only question. That's the only question. They're really correct. They said everything else. I go, well, this happened, this happened. And they're like, yeah, fine.

However, did you decock before you holstered a gun up? And I was like, yes, I did. That sounds like a conversation that would have been had in the seal teams as well. Yeah, I was kind of funny. But no, I shot six my whole life. It's a great, it's a great pistol one. Right on. I love it too.

I'd love that one more, though. No, brother, this is like if Christmas, this is Christmas right now for me, because this is we have a few air platforms at our house maybe maybe not but this is what this is definitely what you know if i had the like christmas list of every checkoff so please thank your your friends at sagman i greatly appreciate it that's that's that's that's it's it's exciting right on right on you i got another person for you till gun there is exciting this is where it's at though and i thank you for that i thank you for that you're welcome if you don't mind i don't have a uh A long gun to give you.

That's all right. However, I do have a couple of things. This is my wife's, all right. No guy gives another guy anything that's in a freaking envelope. Right. So I told her, I go, I can't do that. And she's like, no, no, you can't. All right, this is, we have an advanced undercover program.

This is our coin. If you collect coins or not, but it's, it's a small group of individuals, very small group of guys. They do stuff all over the country and other people. places. It's just a, it's a small group, but they're highly motivated individuals and to this day still do some incredible stuff undercover. So, thank you. You're welcome. And then this is, this is a compass that I got you because, especially with your stuff when it comes to exploitation of children that you've been doing and stuff like that, it's hard not to, you know, mentally

when you see that and you do that kind of work and I know people that are in that investigative arm. it takes a toll and when you see that you get so freaking mad that you just want to tear people's throats out that participate in that type of activity so um so this is a compass and the inscription is first seek the council of the lord and so that's a bible verse that um king jesaphat was asked to participate in a war with the uh the king of uh israel and he said okay but first the counsel of the Lord. Well, the King of Israel didn't. They got their ass handed to them. So going back to it, everybody we look at, when you're fighting those demons and you're going out and fighting those people, man, you've got to stay in that zone and seek the council of the

Lord, man. I can tell you from my own experiences, that really is something else, man. It really gives you a sense of peace and you know what direction you're going to. So good luck with all that, man. Thank you. I'm glad you're in a fight. Seriously. That's heartfelt. Thank you. That means a hell a lot. Thank you, sir. I appreciate that. Thank you. One more thing. Sure. Before we get going, I got a Patreon account. Okay. It's a subscription account. They're the reason that we get to sit down here today, so they get the opportunity to ask every single guest to question. This is from James Cutberth. What key lessons from your career would you impart to current law enforcement professionals, And how was your perspective on redemption and second chances evolved when reflecting on individuals who, like Mel Chancy, have left that lifestyle behind?

Well, I would say for law enforcement today, I think just, and I started in 1987, I think the level of professionalism that's out there today around the country of the guys that are first responders in law enforcement is, it's awesome. These guys, I've been involved in helping with training at different points in time, and these guys are all dedicated to duty. I think finding that balance of home life and your family and still going out and doing this stuff every day. I mean, that's paramount. I think that the redemption of Mel Chancy is, that's the reason I'm here. It's not about doing all this undercover or infiltrating whatever. You know, that story's been told like a million times. But a guy that would actually go from living that life of violence and then making a change,

finding a Lord and changing his life and doing it for all the right reasons and what this guy's become now, it's amazing. And I'm proud to be his friend. It's a hell of a guy. Learn that yesterday. He's a piece of work. Wow. Wow.

Yeah. But, well, thank you. So I got it, this is a little off topic before we get into your story. but I was reading something or talking to somebody. I can't remember a couple of weeks ago. And it was about undercover agents, federal agents, whatever, local police, ATF, CIA, D-EA. And it was talking about AI and facial recognition. And actually it was a conversation with somebody that an old friend from my

previous life and they were talking about, I think what they were saying was that agency will not be traveling with pseudonyms anymore. And I was, I was, I was like, what? What the fuck do you mean? They're not traveling with pseudo names. And then it went into facial recognition and AI and how easy it is to dig shit up on people and basically said that they weren't, nobody will be traveling under, everybody will be traveling under True Name and there may not be undercover agents much longer. Yeah. Have you heard of this?

Yes and no. I think the people that, the AI stuff is just exponentially exploded across the board. And from a security standpoint, we're always working, law enforcement is always like a step behind because they're trying to generally catch up to whatever the current things are that are going to be a threat to us is what we do. And I know that I know there's guys now in our program, the undercover program, advanced undercover program, they're working on how we're going to deal with that and the steps we're taking so far to kind of, what can we put out?

But it, it, like we're saying, exponentially so fast has grown so quickly. It's very, very, very difficult and it will be harder to do. If you're in a short, like you're just in like a town and you're just buying a couple guns off a gangbanger or, you know, you're buying dope. on a smaller scale, you're probably not going to run into it, but you will run into it when you start to do groups, organized groups. Because, you know, at the end of the day, they're doing our homework on us every day.

They learn how we do, you know, if you talk to Meli yesterday, he was like, I know about Rico. I was trying to avoid Rico. Well, we still got you anyway because, you know, you didn't think it quite all the way through. And so we were able to get you. However, you know, there's always a learning curve on both ends. And, you know, we've got some incredible adversaries in the criminal community that are looking to really put it on us.

Yeah. And we're like, we've got adversaries around the world. They're looking to destroy us. You know, and they can't get us, can't invade us. You know, we've got two oceans and some land above and below. But the only way they can do us is to get us from inside. So you're seeing a rise of these other, these violent groups, not only just street gangs and how low motorcycle gang stuff, but everything else that's out there that's trying to put us down. Man, it's pretty crazy how fast the technology is developing and what it's affecting.

And that's just something I never thought I'd hear. Exactly. I mean, our backstopping used to be, you got a criminal history and an undercover driver's license, and you were good to go. If somebody had the ability to run like a credit history, you know, we were backstopped up all through that. You could do a pretty decent deep dive into somebody from where it was before. when I first started working and up until probably up until the point where I retired. It's really, I think it's kicked off in the last four or five years.

Wow. Just immensely. But the people we had worked a lot of with some people in bragging stuff and helped craft those backstopping measures for different groups and including ours. Gotcha. Yeah. Man, I mean, with the facial recognition, I mean, if you had any social profile as a kid by the time, you know, you graduate the academy for.

ATF, I mean, you're- Correct. You're fucked. You are. You're totally screwed. Yeah, you really are, and it's like, I have nothing. So if you want to, like, somebody wants to say, I have no social media. I mean, I creep on my wife's every now and then to see what, like, everybody in high school was doing.

But beyond that, I don't do any of that stuff, man. Yeah. I just, I hunker down. Good for you. Got my own little safe. You, however, I think, you know, really, you can't even have an opinion anymore without out, somebody wanting to tear your throat out or kill you. Oh, yeah, tell me about it.

Yeah. It's fucking crazy. Yeah. If you don't think like me, fuck you. Yeah, I'm going to kill you. Like, okay, well, bring a friend. Oh, my God. Well, and that's it.

I mean, that's what, you know, in my opinion, it's just like the way, again, you can't invade us. Our adversaries around the world that want to see us fail. They can't invade us. They cannot take us. They cannot beat our freaking military. Yeah. They cannot, but they can put fentanyl into our country. Yeah.

And they can let, but Deryl can let every criminal out of the Venezuela prison and move them into the United States. That's that slow erosion of our country that has happening, you know, and people are just oblivious to it. And the, in the propaganda, too, the Baud armies, the narratives. It's, it's, warfare is definitely changed. That's for damn shit. Oh, no doubt. But you look at, like, I have a nephew that's over there now doing stuff and, you know, proud of us all of him.

And he's proud of hell to be there. Yeah. Yeah. I didn't really think much about skin care before. But after enough long days travel and stress, you start to see it in your face whether you want to or not. That's what got me into Caldera Lab. It's a straightforward routine built for guys.

Nothing complicated. Just a few steps. that actually work. I use the good and the base layer. Takes less than a minute, absorbs fast, and has no greasy feel. But the difference is noticeable. My skin looks healthier, more even, and just more dialed in overall. And it's not loaded with junk either. It's made with clean, clinically backed ingredients and does exactly what it says it will. It's one of those small habits that adds up over time and changes how you show up day to day. Give it a shot. Go to caldera lab.com, slash SRS and use code SRS for 20% off your first order. That's caldera lab.com slash SRS.

Well, let's get into your story. All right. Where'd you grow up? I grew up in the suburbs of Chicago, not too far from where Mel grew up. So we, in the same neighborhood, some of Mel's friends are actually their parents live right behind my mom and dad, where my mom and dad lived, Pailas Heights. So I grew up regular blue collar. Everybody knows your neighbors. Nobody had any money where we were at. So we had just a nice little sense of community in the neighborhood that I grew up in. It was very good. We had the neighbors, the beos. I remember my dad, those guys had no money. And they would get together smoke cigarettes and drink coffee and figure out how, all right, you're working three jobs here. I'm working two jobs here. We only have two cars. Your wife wants to go to nursing school.

let's buy a car together and then we'll rotate that'll be the car that your wife takes to nursing school and these guys would come up with this just trying how to get ahead and and live their life and they were just I remember I was probably six or seven listening to their conference Mr. Beow and my dad just sitting down drinking a cup of coffee trying to figure out how they're going to navigate life right on right now and even that I look back now and like you know how everybody gets it with their dad at some point My dad was the biggest ass that I'd ever met my life from the time I was 17 to like 22. And then all of a sudden after I was 22, I was like, you know what, this guy's just, maybe he knows a couple things. Maybe he's lived a little bit of life. So, yeah, but that's kind of how I grew up.

Those were, that's where I was at. What were you into? Played baseball. You're athletic? Yeah, yeah. Played baseball. And just, I was on a couple traveling baseball teams, you know, all through high school. But I had jobs. I worked at a lumberyard. So I started working there and I would do side jobs out of the lumberyard. My dad was a science teacher, but he made his money doing side jobs in construction. He was that guy. Could fix anything, do anything. So great skill set as far as that goes now. I can pretty much put additions on my house if I wanted to. I don't do that anymore, but when I had to, I could. So that's kind of how I just kind of started.

I was a night watchman at the local Payless Pool, which meant when the manager left at 10 o'clock at night, all my friends came over with beer and tunes, and we swam and drank all night while I was watching to make sure nothing happened at the pool. So, yeah, that was kind of where I grew up at. It was, like Mel talks about, too, when we grew up, that whole area, kids were always fighting. Everybody was quick to go to hands, you know. I mean, but it was, you know, it was just the south side of Chicago, man. That's just how it was.

South suburbs. Did you guys know each other at all? I knew of him. You did know of them? You did know of them? By being virtual of the Hells Angel president. Um, but I, I had never met him, but I knew it was funny. Um, the local attorney, uh, local prosecutor for Palis Heights used to train at the same gym that Mel did. And Mel was friends, you know, they talked together. They weren't like going out for coffee friends, but they knew each other and Mel let him right. He wrote a Harley, so Mel let him right next to him one time going from point A to point B or something. like that. Well, that guy was best friends with my mom and dad. So when we were doing the Hells Angel case, he was talking to my mom about something. And my mom goes, well, I think he's doing some motorcycle.

And so he kind of, and I'm like, so right away, mom's offset was freaking completely cut off at that point. You know, and we had to put her on probation for a while on what she said. But that was, in that community, everybody kind of knew each other, you know, and you knew who the asshole kids were, and you knew who the good kids were. And, you know, you tried to stay away from the asshole kids, but, you know, you tend to run around with them a little bit from time to time. So, yeah, so that was kind of where both of us grew up at.

It was kind of the south suburbs of the 70s and 80s, 60s and 70s, yeah. Where do we go from here? I don't know. What would you like to get into? I went to college and didn't like it, but I got through it. I have a degree in environmental studies, biochem, but I knew there was no way. I wanted anything to do with that.

So I quickly got a doubled up and got an associate's degree in criminal justice. And I think the first thought about doing law enforcement came from, we had taken, I went to a school, Manchester College in Indiana. And Indianapolis, Indiana has a boy school down there for, you know, juvenile delinquents, as I used to call them. Kids that had done some serious crime and they were down there locked up. We'd done like an outside tour and we were able to interview one. one kid. And on the way back, I was telling the professor, I go, you know what, why don't, I'm, I'm young enough. I go, how about you just put me in there as an inmate for three weeks? And I'll tell you what's really going on, you know, because it just seemed like the kid was too

polished that was talking about the institution and how things were. And of course, you talk to the, you know, the supervisors and the social workers and things like that. But I was like, man, you really want to know what's going on. I go, put me in there. And he's like, would you go? And I go, in a minute, no problem. So we get back to college, and he goes, I'm going to run it up to chain and see what will happen. I'm like, all right. So I'm getting kind of excited.

I'm like, man, I'm going to go down there and be locked up and see what happens and see what I can learn. And I meet him like the next day, and he goes, there's no fucking way. They're going to let you go down there and be locked up in this place. I go, come on, man, I'll sign our thing and get out.

And so that was my first, like, if you really want to know what's going on, you know, go out and meet these guys face-to-face, and figured out. How old were you then? 19, 20. Shit. So you wanted to do undercover work?

Yeah, I didn't really know that, but what that was, but I thought, what better way, you know, I can listen to a million guys telling me what time of date is about something over here. Well, you've never been there. So, you know, what if we go there and let's take a look and figure it out? So it seems like a better option. Did you have any ambition to be a law enforcement officer as a kid? I took a vice and drug abuse class, and the guy that did it was a Cook County Sheriff's deputy that was doing undercover, and he was telling a couple stories, and I was like, oh, yeah, that's. And then my baseball coach was a Chicago Police Department, Violent Crimes Detective, and he was like, just, he was just this good-looking, he just, Rico Suave kind of guy.

He just was such a, and a good man, a great coach. and I told him, after listening to a couple stories, you know, I was like, you know, Pete, I think I want to be a cop. He goes, you want to go to the feds? He goes, don't. He goes, Chicago's done. And this is like 1976. He goes, he goes, don't go to the city.

He goes, try for the federal government. And I was like, all right. So I had no idea I would end up doing that. But just how that guy's persona was, who he was as a person and how he carried himself, I was like, you know, that's, I would want to be that guy. You know, he was no nonsense, but very fair. And then our youth group at church, we had a female police officer, Suggott, who was, she ended up retiring as a lieutenant on a suburban department.

Another just, I just liked the way they had that calm around them, you know, things didn't, they weren't flying off the handle and getting all spun up on stuff. They just had an easygoing problem solving type mentality. And I thought, yeah, that's, I think I want to be like that. And so that was kind of like, for me, that's kind of got me into it. Right on. Right on.

Why did you pick the ATF? I had, uh, my ex-brother-in-law was with DEA and Miami back in the Coquin Cowboy days. Holy shit. Yeah. And, uh, all about he's got some fucking stories. Yeah, he's got a couple. Um, he transferred DE up to Detroit and then he wanted to get back to Chicago. And Chicago was, ATF was hiring at the time.

And so they took him as a lot. So he got to ATF. He really didn't know about a lot about AT. He worked with them in Florida, in Miami back in the day, but said didn't know a lot of the guys are stuff. And he got in. He goes, man, this is awesome. He goes, this is like, freaking, we're small. He called it the Marine Corps of Federal Law Enforcement. He goes, you got no money, no support. But, hey, can you go out here and kick ass and get with these freaking most violent guys and put them in jail? And he dug it. And I thought, all right. And then I had to do it. And then I had to do it. And then I had another friend that was a Cook County State's attorney. His brother was an ATF agent up in Rockford, Illinois.

So I talked to him about it, and he says, man, best job ever. And I'm like, wow. So I just right place at the right time, got an application in, took the test, and it took me about two years to get finally get on, get hired. Really? What took so long? Just the background checks. Yeah, it was background check stuff. And then there was a hiring freeze, I think, in 85 or 86. they weren't putting people on. So had to wait for that to end. And then ATF hired, mass hired, between 86 and probably 90, they put on a lot of people. They finally got the okay to do it, and they put a lot of people on. And we were doing, we're doing pretty good agent-wise at that point.

I think we had maybe 2,300 agents around the country at that point at the most. And we still don't have pretty much any more than 2,300 agents around the country. We've never, we've always been that political football, you know. Gotcha. The three largest lobbying groups, alcohol, tobacco, and firearms in D.C. So it was always in their best interest to keep us functioning, but let's not give them a lot of money. I think Reagan actually was going to disband us at one point. And we had two agents were working the South Florida Final Crimes Task Force during the Colombian Merilito Cuban War, the Cocaine Cowboys Days.

And we had two agents get killed down there undercover while they were doing the job. And they'd gotten Rift notices that basically they're going to disband ATF at some point here. And these guys went out and did the job anyway. And I was like, you know, this, I like how these guys are thinking. And I was like, I'd be an honor to be a part of that. People that are like, you may not have a job in the next six months, year, year and a half, but go down there doing anyway. And it was part of the vice presidential task force.

that Reagan had. I think Bush was the one that ran it. Yeah, we had Eddie Benitez and aerial reels were shot two separate undercover deals and killed. So it was that kind of started, people are like, well, what are these guys doing? You know, they'd taken some farmer's shotgun from up in Northern Michigan and they're like, no, these guys are down there going face-to-face and told it to go with some bad people. Yeah, so it kind of changed the mentality a little bit. At that point, they didn't disband us and then we were kind of off to the races after that. Wow. So ATF's always been hated.

Oh, yeah. Yeah, we kind of, yeah, we're okay. So what is, what is, could you just describe, what, what is the job of the ATF? Because all we, all we hear is they're taking, they're taking our short barrel rifles, they're taking, they're taking suppressors. Carbine pistols are illegal today. Tomorrow they're legal. Right.

next week they're illegal again. So what is the... All right. So ATF has two functions. There's a regulatory function. It's a regulatory side of the house. So the explosives, firearms licensing, FFL, explosive storage, and sales of explosive, it's all kind of run through ATF. So they keep a lid on, not a lid on, but they can track explosives, you know, the FFLs that have a license.

You know, they do inspections to make sure they're current, you know, following the protocol and stuff like that. And then you've got the enforcement side, and that's the side I worked on. And so that was, from the minute I started, it was always about violent crime. And so what you would have is, the legislature won't do its job completely

and say, this is legal or this is illegal. So they'll say, okay, short-barreled rifle. Well, what constitute a short-barrel rifle? So ATF then has to make a decision using regional council and firearms technology branch guys to get together, and they're like, okay, does this fit what the intent of the legislature was? And sometimes they're like, yes, so you can't have this.

And sometimes it's no, so you can't have this. So it's that constant rather than be specific about what's legal and is illegal. These guys have led it up to, and we're not the only agency that they've told that out to. DEA does that for some of the drug stuff. Environmental Protection Agency, you know, they come up with their own policies and procedures, what people can do and can't do based on, you know, what they've been, powers they've been given from Congress. So, in my opinion, ATF, it should be cut and dry.

This is it. This isn't it. Everybody knows. Let's go here. But I think you could, the silencer stuff and the machine guns and stuff like that, I think, if I'm not mistaken, it was 1936 where they enacted the first statute against that. And it wasn't that they made silencers and machine guns illegal. What they said was, okay, you know, the government at that point still believed in the

Soventry of the states, so states' rights to regulate itself. So what they did was say, oh, we're going to put a tax on it. You can have a machine gun, but you've got to call us up, pay $250, whatever the tax was the transfer tax, and let us know you have it. It's just like a bomb. Like, you can build your own bomb, if you like, but you've got to put a serial number on it and you've got to pay the tax. Well, no bad guy is going to do that, pay the tax, or put a serial number on a destructive

device. And so that's where you come in. Now you have an unregistered, an NFA or unregistered, unregistered machine gun or shotgun. So now ATF can take action against you. Gotcha. So how was it? How was the academy?

When I went through, it was eight weeks of basic criminal investigation school, and it was eight weeks of just stuff specific to ATF. So it was 16 weeks all together. Now I still teach down there. I teach field apps, and now it's 26 weeks. Holy sure. So it's a pretty, Dave really, I was telling you, a great friend of my Sergeant Lesnar from the Ranger Battalion

now, he runs our training down there and has for the last few years. And just a completely squared away kid. And, well, I'm not kidding anymore. He's close to retirement, but I'm old. So everybody that's still quasi on a job as a kid, but just a squirt away guy. And we have, over the years, we've, we have a couple seals that are ATF agents. We have a lot of Ranger battalion guys, a lot of Marines. And it's a good group of, and then we have, you know, right out of college kids too, that kind of thing. So it's a good mix. The last class I taught at most recently, they were really good, really squared away. It was fun to watch them, like kind of progress. And then I teach field ops, which is the last two weeks where we have like a whole city

set up role players. And so they work a case from beginning to end over that two work period of time. undercover we deal with informants we do search warrants we have a robbery situation where you've got to go in and extract the undercover or the CI we've got hostage barricaded situation so they run through all this stuff and hopefully they've learned everything they've learned in all the blocks building up to that point then now's their time to execute it so it's it's it's fun it's uh it's the most enjoyable part of of the academy no doubt that final ft x yeah it's awesome What did you want to do? Did you want to go undercover right off the bat?

Yeah, I was lucky I got, I had some great mentors. When I started, I started in 87, got through the academy, I was doing stuff working undercover by mid-88. You were undercover within a year? Oh, yeah. That was back in the day where here's your gun and badge, go catch somebody. Like, okay. You know, it was like I said, it was kind of a whole different program. And my boss, the first day on the job, goes, I don't know what you know about undercover work.

or ATF work or federal law enforcement. He goes, my group works undercover. That's what we do. He goes, there's a Corvette over there. There's money in this box. You want to use a different gun, get a different gun, but go out there and start buying doping guns and make some arrests. And I was like, right fucking on, man.

Holy shit. I'm like, I'm good to go. That's awesome. And then there was a guy, John Retuno, which was probably, we have some great undercover agents in ATF. I don't know what he hears about him or anything, but I look at that. those guys and they're just unbelievable what they've done. This guy John Ratuno.

The Vice Lord Street Gang was remanufacturing hand grenades. And so what they were doing, they're going to an Army surplus shop and they'd get the Mark Deuce, you know, the frag from World War II. They'd buy a bunch of those. And then they would also buy the old smoker-garde fuses, which are completely different than an actual hand-grenade fuse. This has a timer. This one doesn't.

So when they repacked all the black powder that they did in the hang grenade and they screwed in this fuse, three guys showed up to the hospital with half their face blowing off, their arm gone, because they pulled the thing and thought, watch this. You know, this will be funny, hold my beer. And then the thing goes off immediately because there's no delay. So they were like, so they had a couple of guys. So John Rituno interviews one of these guys because obviously it's a destructive device and that would fall into, it's basically a bomb.

So John interviews his kid, and he was so pissed off because the gang hadn't come, put any money, you know, helped his family out or anything. He's got no arm. So he goes, I'll tell you what's going on. And so John gets his kid to introduce him to the, was the Undertakers. It was a faction of the Vice Lord Street Gang.

And we were getting, showing up, Chicago PD was picking up these devices that had exploded. Obviously, they found some way to get it away from them before it blew them up. So what they started doing was they put everything in a ball mason jar and screw the top on. They pulled a pin, and then they would throw the mason jar. It would break, and then the Poon would expel, and it would set off the bomb. So that's how they were reconfiguring their hand grenades. So John gets introduced to these Undertaker Vice Lords, and he starts buying these remanufactured.

They'd had like, I don't know, 60 of them. So John bought immediately, you got to get that. We got to get that off the street. You know, so John buys like all of them. Well, he kind of even gracious aids himself to the club. So he ends up, or to the gang, he ends up doing, in a two-year period of time, undercover every day with these assholes. He did 120 defendants, all gun and dope buys.

I don't, at least a dozen murders they ended up, I think, charging that he'd got conversation about their criminal activity and what they were doing. and they end up arresting them on what's called a CCE continuing criminal enterprise where you have a leader and then you're five or more people underneath you that pay up to or take orders from the leadership. So it's a way to get everybody wrapped up. And so they charge him with the CCE. So he did 120 defendants. And I would watch him every day go to the west side of Chicago, the worst neighborhood in the city.

He's just this yoked up Italian dude. And he was just whipping a game on these guys. Wow. I was like, I was like, I want to be that guy. And so that I started like, okay, let's figure this out. You know, what can I do? And those are guys. I worked in an organized crime group and we had two guys,

John Mazzol and Jimmy DeLordo. And they were like old school Italian paisons from the south side. But they had a great ability to read people and are just great true investigators. So they had, they were, they solved murders. And it's usually a firearm was involved. The one case they did on a guy, Warner Hartman was a real rich man that had those stereo company, a stereo car installation. So you put your stereo in your car and got huge speakers and stuff like that.

And he was a multimillionaire, falls in love with the stripper, of course, and then tales old of his time. He's got two kids that he's with. The strippers actually got a boyfriend. Surprise. And so he takes a Mac 10 that someone had converted to full automatic and kills him one night. So because it was, clearly it was a machine gun by how the pattern was. John Mazzola, one of the agents, was work in another case and was able to show that the guy that made and sold the machine gun to this guy was also a guy that John had bought a machine gun off of also.

And they started to get conversation. So they were kind of putting two to two together. They go up and they figured, obviously, she was involved. They kind of IDed who the shooter was. It was the boyfriend of the stripper. And I remember Jimmy Delordo, they had changed the will. So his little girls got nothing out of his $2 million life insurance policy, but the stripper girlfriend got everything.

So someone had to change not only the will, but also the life insurance policy. And the only person that could do that would be the guy that sold him the policy. So they get all the bank records from this company. And Jimmy tells me, and I'm brand new. And he would always stick his right of tongue. And when he was thinking about somebody, he goes, that lazy bitch wrote that guy a check. He goes, a lazy bitch wrote a check. I'm sure of it.

So he gets the bank records. So I'm siffing through all these checks. He goes, look for one about 10 to 20 grand that went to this guy. I'm digging through like four or five days bank records. going through, going through. Sure enough, there's a check, $15,000 that she had written to the insurance guy to change the beneficiaries of the insurance. And so he ends up going to jail with her and the shooter and stuff. But that was, like, those were the cases I was exposed to when I first started. And I was like, man, this is, this is what I want to do. So it's kind of different than what the general

perspective of ATF is and how we do what we do. But I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, you know, I worked, that's all I ever did was cases like that. I mean, what do you do when they say, you had an eight-week academy, you show up and they say, there's cash, there's guns, there's fucking cars, go get bad guys. Where do you start? You have no network. Well, that's the first thing you do is that network. And a couple guys in the group said, here's a couple Illinois State Troopers that we work

for. I ended up going down to Illinois State Police District 5. Post and Juliett, and I met some guys in the Cooperative Police Assistant team, they called it, CPAT. And I just introduced myself, and I said, hey, man, this is kind of my area. I go, if you guys can plug me in on anything, you know, I'll do whatever it takes. They were working some stolen cars from some organized crime guys. So the first couple of things I did was just buy stolen autos for these guys out of the task force. And so that's kind of how I got started.

And then I would always ask, you guys got any pistols, got guns. And it was always gangbangers or, you know, some organized groups. that was into nefarious activity. And so, you know, I just embed myself with those guys and we do the best we can to put a case on them. And that's how would you embed? I mean, especially as a new guy. There's, you could do cold call, which is one way

you just show up. I mean, let me, do you guys train for this shit in the academy back then? Yeah, at the end, the last two weeks, that field operations was the same thing. We've been teaching that since, you know, Jesus lost his sandals. And that's enough?

I mean, I guess that's enough. No, no. No. Actually, no, it's not enough. We have advanced schools that we put on too, but back in the day at the time, it was like throwing the water to learn how to swim. And so that's how you cut your teeth.

We just put your head in the game and start rolling. And that's what we did. So what did you do specifically? On the network, who do you start with? I started with the Illinois State Police, and I was doing, I did some gang groups down there, and I kind of rolled into, by 1990, had done, The Ellis motorcycle gang had a clubhouse in Juliet and had developed an informant that I knew about motorcycle gangs and we talk about them and were, you know, we're instructed on them along with traditional organized crime and street gangs, you know, in the academy.

And we had developed an informant that was associated with them. And I knew about them, but I didn't know what the lifestyle was. I didn't know. You know, I could ride a Harley with no problem, but I didn't know about gangs. So the informant kind of brought me up to speed, how things work, and introduced me to a couple of the people in the Joliette group of the outlaws. And so I bought, we bought dope out of the clubhouse, bought dope off a few of the guys. They all had guns. So after we did some dope buys, I found that I got introduced to the Colombian that was a,

actually providing the cocaine to not only the outlaws, but everybody else, you know, in that area. So I kind of moved over into his group, and I bought dope and some pistols off of his underlings, and then we rolled up to a guy that was his number two, bought some dope off that guy and a pistol. We do a search warrant. He cooperates. We had the Colombian deliver five keys to us, and then we took them off. So it's one of those things where you start building. I started getting, once you get in the criminal community and you start,

you know, you show yourself as a criminal or a guy that's hungry looking to come up. You know, I'm just trying to come up. You know, trying to make money. Just one of you. And you got a little bit of gift of gab. You know, at that time, I just, for whatever reason, had the ability to do that. And so we rolled through the outlaws. We ended up seasoned their clubhouse in Joliet on Oak Street.

I think 90 or 90. And it might have been later, 92 maybe. So we did, I think, four or five of those guys. We did the Columbian and then we did the Columbians group. So it was like my first, like, getting into an actual group or organization and kind of seeing how it, how the criminal community really runs. But there's a lot more to it than that. I mean, I've not done undercover work near as extensive as you have, but I've done it on multiple occasions for multiple outfits. I mean, there's just, there's a lot to deal with.

How do you do when you're conducting surveillance as an undercover guy, I mean, everybody. that fucking passes by you, the paranoia that you deal with is everybody's watching me. I'm fucking compromised at every corner I go to. Oh, why did that guy fucking drive by so slow? That hypervigil. Yeah, it goes through the roof. Yeah. You know what I mean?

Like, what, how are you? That's why after 30 years of doing it, I was in my basement in the middle of night, pacing back and forth before hours because I was like, I had lost my mind. Indian Indian media, so you go with a bike, the outlaws, then you're in the Colombian cartel. I mean, it's just, you know, so you're just, you continue to weave through these things and you're just building more and more and more. Correct. Undercover is like sales at the end of the day. It's your salesman.

So I go in, I meet a guy, sometimes it's a cold call sales. Like, hey, how you doing? I think you do Windows. All right. I'm going to sell you some windows. Or you might get an introduction from somebody since they is. this is my friend or this is my cousin or this is a guy that, you know, he's trying to eat, he's a good guy vouch for him.

You might have that type of introduction. And then you just start to play off that. And it's about selling yourself. But you're right. It's this one guy at the academy, he said it so succinctly, he goes, if you ever see a swan going across a smooth pond and it looks beautiful, so swan's just floating. But underneath, he's freaking, he's just paddling like a mother farm. to get across, but it looks fucking smooth on the top.

That's what undercover is. In your head, you're thinking, how am I going to move this from point A to point B? Does this guy like me? Is he going to kill me? Is he going to rob me? You get robbed occasionally on a few times. Is he going to jerk his pistol and go to work? Is he set me up to get somebody else to do me?

You know, it's all that you're constantly thinking that and working in that in your head, what am I going to do if? You know, you're constantly reassessing a something. situation. Like when we do the bike gang stuff, after being with the club, like Mel's guys, when they were henchmen up in Rockford, you know, going to a clubhouse, not everybody likes you. You know, I think I'm a pretty personal guy that everybody should love me. But you get in that mix with these people and some people are like, there's something about you. I don't fucking like. And you're like, okay. So now how am I going to win over this guy? Am I going to,

I'm not going to fucking be patting him on the head? No, come on, man, like me. So you got to figure way to get this guy to like you. And a lot of, sometimes we'll do street theater where we'll do some other criminal act with another agent and this guy will watch. And like, okay, well, maybe this guy's about it. And so we do that. And it, uh, undercover is like, how do you stage that? We just figure out we do, um, I don't want to give away too much stuff because guys are out there still doing it, but we'll do a crime. We might hire these guys to act as a lookout. Here's all you need to do. Like I, one time, me or may not have gone up to a guy and say, Hey, look, man. $500. All I need to do is have a walkie-talkie and be at the end of this road.

If you see anything, a car that, even a car, even if it's not a cop, you get on right away and you say, hey, it does look good. I go and then you drive away. It's all I need you to do. But while I'm doing that, I got a bag of guns. And he's like, what are you up to? And like, just watch for the car. You're like, okay. Now, I haven't told him anything, but he's starting to think it has said, what the fucking dude up to? You know, what's he got going on? Then he want to know all criminal groups, everybody's looking to move up, make more money, be more violent. So like if you're a guy that looks like you're a plug

to get somebody into that, it's like, man, we'll see what those guys are about. We'll see if we can't move the ball forward with those cats. And that's kind of how it works. So street theater is a good way to, time builds credibility and for undercover stuff. And you don't generally have a lot of time to build that credibility.

A lot of these guys in the criminal community, they've known each other for years. They've been criminals for years. And so now I'm the new guy. And so now you've got to kind of build that credibility in a short period of time. And sometimes it's hard to do. Sometimes it works and sometimes they're like, once you just go away. And when it comes to, I mean, so do you remember your first, your very first approach is an undercover guy?

What was it? It was a sought off shotgun from a guy named Pig. What was, why were you after him? I, I, it was a favor to a local law enforcement. A lot of times, like your local police department has resources, but they don't have undercover resources. Gotcha. So you might have the Al Capone in that, that community.

This guy's name was Pig. He was Al Capone. He wasn't a cartel guy, but he was a guy that made the quality of everybody's life in that community shit because he was a bully. He was an asshole. He just, nobody liked him. His name was pig. So the sheriff called the CPAC guys and said,

you guys got a guy, we might be able to get a guy to introduce a guy to, he's just, you know, he's got a sought off shotgun he wants to sell. You know, that's like not a case we would normally do. But they needed Al Capone, who was Pig, just removed from their community because it just made the quality of life of everybody else in that community. He was just that guy that was just a problem. And so I met Pig. And it was my first

It was the first undercover dealer Other than the cars for a gun And I was like I was nervous It's pig You know this guy's fucking Probably a cartel fucking level Like I'm thinking

If he's the Al Capone of You know Wilmington or forget the small town It was Wilmington Wilmington Illinois You know population You know 120 people I said I'll go get pig

So I get down there And the guy was just He was just an asshole You know So I bought the the gun off them, and then they took them off the next day and charged them in the state. So, but that's what my boss's attitude at that point in time was the federal government, ATF, you know, local law enforcement is going to have so much that they can do.

And sometimes they can't maybe take it to the next step, maybe do a RICO, which is, we're hard to do. Jurisdictionally, they might have a bad guy that's coming out of another jurisdiction into their jurisdiction doing crime and then leaving. You know, and if they don't catch them here, it might be problematic for them to go to another jurisdiction to get them like another state. So because of that, because we have stuff like RICO and things, we can, that jurisdiction, we don't have those problems anymore. So we can charge that crime, excuse me, whether the guy was over here or over here,

the crime was here and he's over here doing crime, we can charge them all together federally. And how, I mean, you're living in these communities. Sometimes just, yeah. So, and you were married during a lot of this? I was married the first time for about, I have two wonderful kids. I think I got married young and my first wife did not enjoy the job. I'll bet she did. I enjoyed it on any level.

And I think that, and I was not, I was not a good person either. Really? I was not good. I like to think of myself that I was, but I was like, I dove so much into doing the job that whatever she had going on, I was like, and then we, and it wasn't, I'm not saying it was just me. You know, she had her issues too, and we got to the point where I go, this is,

this is not good. And she hated the job. Every day was a problem. Every day it was when you do this. Why do you look like that? There's a lot of that. Like I go to kids events, you know, and I'd look like, you know, some chooch, you know,

they'd be like, why Zach's dad look like that? And I would tell the kids were really good at not saying anything. I said, look, guys, we can't talk about what dad does. That's just the way it is. We had codes. Like, we had one problem one time we ran into a guy. Gave him to like, hey, we got to go. No questions asked.

In a car, we leave. Unfortunately, they knew way too much about violent crime and bad people at a very early age that I look back now. I'm like, probably was a good thing. But so I was divorced. I separated and then eventually divorced. around 92 or so. And it just, I got to delve into the job after that.

But then the problem with my ex, not problem with my ex-wife, it's that every other weekend you have the kids and Wednesdays. So I was broke. I had no money. So I was on the SRT team also at the same time. And so I had my kit, was always in the apartment. I lived in. So the kids would dig through it and, you know, put on the helmet,

put the vest on and carrier. And so I said, hey, let's do quick peek. They're like, what's that? I go, all right, let's say all the bad guys are in this room. And I'd put the stuffed animals on the bed. All right, you get one chance. You get a split second, one eye, quick beat. You come back, tell me how many.

So we made it into a game. So we started out doing just quick peeks. And then my daughter, who was always always smarter than my son. I love them both, but she's an engineer and he's in law enforcement. He couldn't do math. So that's what he was always. She picked up on everything. She was actually by six.

or seven, the most tactical girl. I mean, the stuff that would come out of her mouth when we were doing stuff. I did one set up in where I was in the apartment. There were two doors on either side, down the hallway, two doors. You got two problems. And then a third door, so you got three problems you got to solve as we move through to sweep this area. So, I mean, they're little. And I got them, got a vest on and stuff. And so took terms to be in team leader. So my daughter would get in front right away, you know, and she loved to, you know, so she would get up and she'd give this and we'd wait and she'd go she'd give the nod so i tap Zach Zach taps her she's like go go go so she would do a button hook and she wanted Zach to do across the room um and we'd have one

of the one of the stuffed animals that'd have a pistol you know is that a shooter don't shoot you know that kind of thing and then it got even more involved to the point where i was like okay they'd like okay what are we doing today i'm like all right got a warrant for moose moose is a bad guy might might be two people in the place. I go, what kind of entry we're going to do? We're going to do surround and call out. What are we going to do? So, Zach, my son is like, dynamic entry. We're going in there. I'm like, Andy's like, well, there's two people in there also. Are they separate? She starts. She's like seven at the time. Wow. So we would get up to clear the door. And she'd say shit like Zach when it was his team leader time. He'd go up. He's calling his shots. What's going to

happen? He gets up there and he's kind of hesitating because there's three problems he's got to solve. Doesn't know which room moose is in. So what are we clear first? What's the most dangerous? So he gets up there and she goes, I hear from my daughter, seven-year-old little girl. She goes, come on, Zach, work the problem. Oh, man. I was like, I love you, man.

Wow. So that's how we kind of, that's what we did. We did that, you know, a bunch of times. And the unfortunate aspect of that was when I would go back to the, I had him on Wednesday, so I would go, I brought him to the office, sometimes they do their homework in the conference room, and then we'd go out and do buys and then come back. So you had everybody in my group there, and there'd be, you know, guns on the table, and we're putting everything into evidence and stuff, and my kids are doing their homework. I remember one time it was the D.C. sniper. Remember when that guy was going

around killing people? Oh, yeah. All right, so we were taking turns. People would be detailed out to D.C. And so Joy Rusevich was in my group. And I got test I was going to go out to D.C. But also, the time I would have been out there was the first daddy daughter dance that I would have been able to go to. So Joey's in the room with me. My daughter's in there. He goes, you know what?

He goes, I'll switch it up. I'll go. You know, and you can go to the dance. And I'm like, thanks, Joe. I appreciate that. So Joey catches a sniper. Well, he doesn't catch the sniper. But on the per block when they come out, my kids are watching TV.

And there's Joey. He's caught the sniper. So my daughter's like calling me on the phone, Dad, not even going to believe it. Watching TV, Joey caught the sniper. So here's my kids that they know what a sniper is. They know that he's killing people and taking their lives. So where their little heads were going at the time,

I have no idea. But I'm sure they are two exceptional adults. And it worked out okay. That's awesome. I can't imagine what. They must have been thinking at that time. and, you know, it just, it was weird. I talked to my daughter later at one point.

She actually talked to another agent's daughter that was having some issues. And I remember she said, she goes, being little and being with your group of guys and I saw how they acted with you and when Joey said, you know, if your dad ever's a problem, I'm going to go in and get them.

She goes, I was like, well, shit, you know, it's all cool in the zoo, man. Joey's going to be there if there's a problem. It'll be okay. And it was like, I was like, okay, I'm glad that you had that, you know, for yourself, because I, there's a lot of people, kids in law enforcement, they do not end up very well.

And it's not just specific law enforcement. It's anytime you have a father that's a little bit, not there all the time, that's a tough thing, man. Fathers are very, very important. Yeah. Yeah. I'm realizing that. I got a four-year-old boy and it's, it needs dad.

They all do, man. And, you know, the breakdowns, the family is one of the major problems in the country. You know, it's just that it. The nuclear family has, you know, just been shot. So having that and having the kids be able to have those experiences, it was hard, I think, a little bit. I was hard on them at different times, but they turned out, okay, they're good.

My daughter's an engineer. She's a biosystems, a mechanical engineer. She makes like biodiesel, and now she's working, she was in Shyam. He was in Cheyenne, Wyoming trying to be a, my dad was a kind of a horseman. He raised horses on a farm when he was a kid. He always wanted her to be a barrel racer. He goes, he called her Bug. He goes, bug, you got the perfect legs.

You're strong, you're an athlete. She gripped that horse. You're super light. Man, that palmy, he was whipping you around that arena on those barrels. She never ended up doing it, but that was, that was like my dad's goal for. Right on. Got it funny. Where I was going is, I mean, you're undercover in the same town.

or in the same area that you're living in. That's just something I've never ever had to do. Yeah. Nor did I have a family when I was anyways. But so how are you mitigating your own paranoia? How are you keeping your family from being compromised, killed, being trailed, tipping off where your kids live, who your wife is? I mean, it's a lot of shit to think about that I've never had to think about.

When we first started doing it, the ability to find us, who you were and where you were at was harder than it is now. Now there's, it's so easy to do. So there is difference. We always got trained up when we were getting trained, but we still train it now. You always wipe yourself off when you leave. If you got to go back and do another run, go someplace else,

we always have, we don't always have, but a lot of times we have an undercover apartment, get done doing a deal, go back to the undercover apartment, you got eyes on the undercover apartment, you'll be in there you'll sit down let's relax for a while maybe go out go to a bar get a sandwich come back to the undercover apartment and have everybody that's your crew that's watching you observe to see make sure everything is okay and then go home from there i used to do that for the grunt or the hell's angel or henchman case had an undercover apartment about 30 miles outside of rockford

in a small town apartment i would go there after i would meet i'd sit there i'd wait for a little while, like three or four hours, make sure everything was everything. And I do a couple runs on my way out, clean myself off, and then go home. An SDR? Probably? Yeah. Yeah. Did you just say that you had, there was an element that was overwatching you for a... At times there weren't, times it weren't. It's a lot of manpower to have that go on. I would think so. When you do a long-term infiltration type thing, you're tying up an Overwatch crew or just guys in your group for, you're, or, you know, now no one's doing anything except for this specific thing. And we were such a small agency.

A lot of times you only ended up with like one or two guys on your cover team, which ended up saving our life at one point. I talked about it later, but we didn't have a whole fucking group. So you were kind of on your own to make sure that you were safe when you got out of there. And I would always do my due diligence to make sure I was, I was wiped off and cleaned up before I went on. home. I was looking at what's actually in most dog food the other day, and it's kind of crazy when you think about it. It's all heavily processed, cooked at high heat, and then they have to add back synthetic vitamins and minerals just to make it complete. That's not really what I want

to be feeding my dog. Sundays for dogs does it differently. They use 80% plus all natural meats, add in kale, ginger, and blueberries, and gently air dry it instead of blasting it with heat. It ends up looking like real food, more like jerky than anything else. No fillers, no weird blends, no chemicals, just simple, complete nutrition. And it's easy. No fridge, no freezer, no prep, no mess. You get all the quality of a home-cooked meal with the convenience of kibble. We switched Stanley over to Sundays a few months ago, and I can tell a big difference in his energy levels and his coat. I love that Sundays was founded by Dr. Torrey Waxman, a veterinarian. And with over 100,000 dogs already on it, I feel pretty confident I'm giving Stanley the best nutrition I can.

Make the switch to Sundays. Go right now to Sundaysfordogs.com slash SRS 50 and get 50% off your first order. Or you can use code SRS 50 at checkout. That's 50% off your first order. It's Sundays for dogs. dot com slash SRS 50, Sundays for Dogs.com slash SRS50, or use code SRS50 at checkout. Want more from the Sean Ryan Show? Join our Patreon today for more clips in exclusive content. You'll get an exclusive look behind the scenes where you can watch the guests interact with the team and explore the studio before every episode. Plus unlock bonus content, like our extra intel segments where we ask our guests

additional questions. Our new SRS on-site specials and access to an entire tactical training library you will not find anywhere else. In the best part, Patreon members can ask our guests questions directly. Your insights can help shape the show. Join us on Patreon now, support the mission, and become part of the Sean Ryan Show's story. Had you ever, have you ever had an incident where you were with your family and a bad actor that you were after? Yeah, it was actually one of the guys on one of Mel's friends. I ended up, I would take my kids to Odyssey Fun World early in the morning at 9 o'clock

before all the assholes came like 3 o'clock, 4 o'clock in the afternoon. Then it was crowded. You know, it is you try to keep an eye on everybody and, you know, you're looking at everyone. So I would go in the morning when no one was there. And I remember one of Mel's guys was upstairs. I don't know if he was, I don't know if he had kids. or is with, like, a girlfriend's kids or something, but they were doing something, and he had his cut on.

And unfortunately, my kids knew what henchmen, angels, allows, they knew all that stuff. So my son's bounding upstairs to go to this one game. He always liked to video gaming. He'd like to play. And he's running up the stairs. I look up and I see this guy on the left side, and I'm like, ah, shit.

And I would never let my daughter, we held hands, and we played all the games together. She was never by herself. So she sees it at the same time I see it and she goes, hey, dad, I go and I gave her the no sign. And I'm like, Zach, and he's like, you know, boys, Zach, he's running up. He's not listening. Probably gets to the top of the stairs and then he kind of sees it and he like turns around. His eyes are super big.

So he leans up against like a pillar and he looks down ass and I give him the like, let's go. and he can't let it go. So he like leans back against the wall and he goes. Oh, shit. And I'm like, yeah. And then he's like, he comes out against the wall like he's joked. Like it's all good. Yeah, he walks down the steps, get his hand.

I go, we gotta go. He goes, yeah. So we go out. I go, hey, dude, when I give you this, you just go. I don't need your sit rip whatever the situation is at that point. I go, we're just, we're going to. on a frickin' exfell right now, getting a freaking camera out. And he's like, yeah, I know.

He goes, are we afraid of that guy? I go, no, but you know what? He was up there with his kids. And we wouldn't want anything to, we wouldn't want to argument or have a problem with his kids up there. And they were like, okay, okay, right. Like, okay. So that was the only time that.

That's it. That was it. Holy shit. That's very. Wow. But I tell you what, I look back at stuff and I am, it's like even coming to know the Lord and finding, getting back. into faith, I am extremely thankful for where I'm at now compared to where I was by the time I retired.

It's, I am very fortunate, very fortunate. I worked with some great guys that I know would save me in a minute. And yeah, I was very, very fortunate. Did you have a plan for if that happened? I mean, how different was your cover story than your actual story? I mean, obviously. Pretty close. I was, I mean, I can wrench on cars and stuff.

I knew construction inside and out. I poured concrete to framed houses, worked with my dad all the time. My dad was just jack of all trades. So it actually came in handy because it looked like you really were who you're purporting to be. I always had a set of tools in the trucks. Yeah. So like when the brother's hot water tank went out, you know, I'm like, oh shit, bro, I got you, man, I'll swap that out for you. You know, so having the ability to do that non-criminal stuff just in bull, it helps your backstop story because now you become more real to

to these guys. Shit, he swapped over my hot water heater. You know, cops gonna do that, you know. And then any preconceived myth about undercovers, you know, that would always come in. And like what? Like, well, if you're undercover and I'm a bad guy and I ask you, are you now or are you ever been a police officer? You gotta tell me otherwise it's entrapment.

So that was like the big one. So a lot of those guys would say, are you now or have you ever been affiliated with law enforcement? You know, you'd be like, no. all right because if you were you'd have to tell me otherwise it's entrapment so we help perpetuate that mistake but i think everybody figured it out by now but back in the day that was one of the thanks so um so they would ask you you know questions and stuff like that it's just like yeah i'm lying but it's okay i'm lying but it's okay wow so how did the who did you go after first was at the

I started with the outlaws. Yeah, I started the outlaws case, and it wasn't an infiltration. I didn't. Those guys didn't know me more in a handshake, you know, and I wrote on the credibility of the informant. And so it was just the Juliette guys, and it was like just enough to get probable cause for a search warrant and get the guns and the dope that we had purchased, we used. And then we bought enough dope out of the clubhouse that we were able to seize it,

federally seize it, forfeit it. So we took the clubhouse. But it was that time that I met some of the, the guys, they didn't get wrapped up in that first case, but I met some of those guys that ended up getting it on with Mel and his crew from, at the time they were in Antioch, Illinois, and then they moved up to a small town right at the border of Illinois, Wisconsin, and the state line chapter, they were called of the outlaws. And they had moved up there. And so I had met some of those guys. I knew the, I met the president. And again, just riding on the...

the credibility. I didn't buy anything. I didn't talk to him about criminal activity. It was just kind of a meet and greet, you know, spent a little time at the clubhouse in Antioch, but not very much. You know, and that was about it. Just getting seen. You know, you just can't run up on somebody and go, hey, got a machine gun, you know. Yeah. Give me about, you know, it doesn't work. So you've got to build that, get that foundation set before you move forward. What is it that, what's go criteria for the ask? I mean, how much time are you spending, building their trust, hanging out with them, you know, what is in your head, what is go criteria for, all right, I'm good enough, I can make the ask.

Sometimes, though, if they ask you a question, like, do what, are you trying to come up? Are you trying to eat? What are you, like, what are you looking to do? And it'd be like, oh, fuck, you know, I got a plug over here for dope. I got this guy, but this guy's short. I don't know. If you got a guy, you know, yes, not you. I don't want to come to you for dope or guns. But if you got a guy that could hook me up, that'd be great. So a lot of times they're like, well, fuck, why give your money to that guy? You can deal with me directly. Oh, okay, great.

Okay, I'll deal with you. So that's kind of the, you know, kind of the MO, but it's a vibe. You know, you got to kind of feel it. You can tell how people act toward you. You know when people don't like you. And I'm sure you know that feeling. And so you get a, you get a good vibe for that, have an understanding of how much to push and how much not to push. You know, how much to like kiss their ass for like, God, you guys are the best and not be some suckass that's, you know, you know, got these guys up on some pedestal you're trying to be like. How much time are you spending studying bike or gang culture?

Yeah, got to do your homework. I did, when I first started, we went through the academy and I, you saw the sizzle I was like, no one will ever infiltrate. I'm like, fuck, come on, man, there's got to be a way. You know, we got to be a way to get in on these guys. And I knew that my predecessors, the guys that I admired in my organized crime group, they did some mob guys. So I'm like, I think if you find the right angle to come at them,

everybody can get done. And every criminal can be had at some point if you work it the right way. Why did they say that? I forgot. So, can you just elaborate on that for the audience? It's just hard. Like the Academy guy that said...

There was a mystique for the motorcycle gang stuff. It was when I did it in... When I did the Mel's case, I think started in probably late... No. Yeah, late 92. Just doing the homework on the guys, like trying to figure out who's in the zoo and what was going on. And then it wasn't until probably mid-93 that I really started at full-time and then it extended

to almost 95 until I just got too violent. and ATF said no more. But the workup on it was, you know, doing your homework where these guys about, but we didn't know what it was gonna take to become a member of any of that. You know, they have, you know, there was always these rituals, you know, I remember one girl told me, she goes, agent, female agent, she goes, you know, it's kind of gross,

but she goes, you know you're gonna have to blow a dog. I go, what? She goes, yeah, to get in on these guys, you're gonna have to blow a dog. I go, are you fucking kidding me? She goes, that's what I heard. Like, what you heard or what you know? And she's like, well, that's what, that's the rumor of how to get in

this club, you're going to have to do that. So I remember asking one of the hedgemen up in Rockford, Monty Matias, so I go, I got to blow a dog or some shit to get in here. He goes, dude, he goes, where'd you hear that? And I'm like, I didn't want to say, a law enforcement professional telling me that's what you got to get in. I was just like, nah, I just kind of, somebody told me that one time. He goes, dude, he goes, if I told you to blow a dog and you did it,

I would send you on down the highway. He goes, no, we want men, not dog blowers. I'm like, okay, good. All right, I think I can handle that. I'll be okay. So, yeah, so that was kind of, but yeah, we didn't know. A friend of mine that's West Pointe grad, that was also an agent, he was helicopter pilot, flew Cobra's great guy.

He had actually done a bike club called the Warlocks down in Florida. And he had met the president at the gym. This guy's West Point guy just played football for a point. I mean, he's just solid, jacked up cat. The president liked him right away because he was a big dude. And he basically said, come on in, I'm going to give you your own chapter. So he got himself and then like four or five other ATF agents, they developed their own chapter of the Warlocks down there,

got patches. And did it have to prospect or start out or earn their way. They kind of just got, by virtue of the fact that this guy really liked the West Point guy, Steve Martin, was a great undercover. He said, no, we, we, we, you're okay. You're with us. They're like, we're going to get you guys going. So they started their own chapter and they did a bunch of those guys down there.

But that was, that was the only guy had to talk to, a great friend of mine. And I would compare notes like, how did, like, what are they asking you to do? Do you got to commit a murder? Do you got to do all this violence shit? He's like, I don't, for these guys down here, we got patched around. I don't know what it's like to start from scratch and move up. I'm like, all right. So you do you always, do you always start from scratch?

Because I mean, I guess starting from scratch, I don't want to come across like I'm trying to diminish anything. So please don't take it away. But, you know, I mean, so I did some undercover work, most of it in the Middle East. And, you know, we would get these briefings on culture and all this shit. And of course, the briefings were always fucking off. So we'd get firm immediately. Yeah, I'd be like, I remember. time I walked this guy through an entire city and to clean him up and I had him walking through metal

detectors and all this shit. Yeah. And we finally do the pickup after a couple hours and he gets in the car and he's like, that woman at the hotel, that was, that was you guys, wasn't it? And that guy at the fucking mall, that was also you guys. And I'm like, how do you know all this shit? He's like, well, the guy had the knife on the wrong side. The woman was wearing her fucking burka the wrong way, that sash was on. And I was just like, man, we are a fucking clown show.

We got to go back. So why they call the CIA, the clowns in action? Oh, that's funny. But so, but, so, but, so where I'm going with this is if you were starting from the beginning, if you're starting as a guy coming up who's just interested in the biker gangs, I guess maybe you don't have to know the culture because you'll learn it along the journey. Right. And so what you kind of want to do is like, I see how you, like, I, like, what I told, like, this guy, Paul Jensen, that was one of the henchmen up in Rockford, I said, man, I see how you guys

roll and how you guys act. Man, I'd love to be a part of this, bro. I said, but, you know, I always, John Mazzot said, never play a badass, never play a tough guy. He goes, just play the chuch. Because you're a guy looking for answers trying to figure it out. So I was like, okay. So I would tell Paul Jensen, I said, man, I love Ryan Harleys. I love club life. I think that's for me. And he's like, oh, man, he goes, if you're interested, he goes, if you're interested, he goes, goes, you know, just start coming around. And I'm like, okay. And so he would give me to, like, the protocol of meeting somebody. Like, you shake your hand, you know, I'm Chris, Rockford, hang around, hang around Rockford.

You know, there's a way to meet these guys, never touch the patch. Don't fight with the brothers. You're going to get a beat down. You know, that kind of thing. So there was like that protocol, the nuances of being in a club. And so he was, you know, he was very good about just, you know, kind of teaching me the ropes. The other ones, like for the outlaws before,

I was just a friend of a guy that knew him. So, again, they didn't know me farther than a handshake. So it was not that hard, but it wasn't an infiltration. And, you know, it's kind of funny we always talk about, like, is it worth taking the time to infiltrate or can you figure out a different way to get these guys? And a lot of times, figuring out the other way is a lot safer and a lot expedient.

You might not get the same bag for the buck, but you're taking off the head of the snake. So let's just do it this way. It's a little bit easier. So infiltration always isn't there. Or getting a patch is that's not the goal. The goals that make the case. You know, at the end of the day, you don't say you got a patch,

but nobody went to jail. You're wasting your time. So if you're working toward, you know, collecting evidence and buying dope and buying guns and showing their criminal activity, that's one thing. But if you're just doing it for the sake of doing it, it's not worth it. A lot of guys have done cases on Vikings

where they never became a member. They just were able to befriend these guys. And some guys say, why don't you put your toe in water, man? Why don't you stay? I got my own thing going on. I'm okay. And they were able to go through and do quite a few people. So it's not always the infiltration that really gets it and wins the game at the end.

Sometimes it's just being smart about the number of people you have, how much money ATF's got to have, the time that's going to be expended to do this, is it worth it? And so a lot of times, I did a better case that, if you want to talk about, we can talk about two is a different bike gang. But they did a historical case for as the Grim Reapers. They were a Midwest club. I did right after the henchmen. Midwest club about maybe 500 members, 400 members. They were in Iowa, Illinois, Indiana, Kentucky, and Tennessee. Kind of white supremacist kind of orientation. They had those ties with the Klan guys, that kind of thing. But they did a historical case on them where they went back and identified all the violent acts. these guys had done, bar beatings, a rape, home invasions, stealing motorcycles. They had really put together this historical case that was awesome. So when I got to the point where I was doing the undercover part and got introduced, all I had to do was get conversation about a lot of these acts that they had already proven up.

And now I have bought a small amount of dope from a guy. Well, that makes all the historical dope they could put on them good. So it made it a lot easier. It's a way better way to do those kinds of organizations. So he got the historical case with all the components. And then I would go back now as a fresh face. I see, man, I heard you guys. That guy you dropped in the bar that night went out, flipped him off and stole his hearty.

I go, man, that was, he go, yeah, we beat his ass. Fuck, he was unconscious. We went out. And then we stripped it down. You know, the triple tree and the rest of the parts went in the river. And then we sold everything to the outlaws and Joliet. They were aligned with the outlaws and Joliet. So you get that conversation now, and it makes all that historical case that they've done

that you may have shitty witnesses about. It makes it really good. now you got that actual confession and evidence about that crime. You've stroked a lot of egos. I've told a lot of guys, man, you're the shit. Yeah, so that's what it's about. But you don't want to be a punk either because then they don't want you around.

So there's that balance of like, man, I respect how you take care of business. You have to do it in a, like a mach, you know, not a macho, but kind of a manly kind of, man. I respect what you guys do, man. I respect how you guys handled that. Man. Embedding is a hell of a lot more complicated than just being undercover for a couple of fucking days. It's weird.

You know, it's weird, but it's also, it's like being on a wrestling or the boxing team. You know, you're on a team, but it's up to you individually to go out and fricking whip a game and put these guys in jail. And so it's like, you got a whole team around you, but it's up to you. You're kind of a solo act. It wasn't until like probably 2000, where we started working together in groups. We'd have three UCs go and doing a deal. And, man, that was like, I was like, this is awesome now. You like that better?

Oh, and being on your own. I liked being on my own because then I had only myself to be responsible for. But when you got guys that are of such a high caliber and I watched them how they work and the stuff that would come out of their mouth and how they knew where I was thinking and we would play off each other all that. It's just, it's like an orchestra, man. I mean, I'd be saying one thing. This guy would help bolster it by saying something.

You know, it just was that ebb and flow of these guys and their ability to really talk to people and get information out of them. And it was fun. And now that your security is a lot better too. Now you got a guy, you don't have to turn around, you know. You can, you know, I know there's a guy who's got my back. Right on. How often would you be having to report back or check in or be a full? affiliated with ATF when you're embedded in an operation every day every day every day

what I would do for the henchman case I'd get up man I was up out of the house by like 4 a.m. I would go to the office get the report stuff handled I would sit down with the secretary I'd give her this is what happened last night these are recordings I have she would take care of putting that stuff or I would put it in evidence but she would document the evidence sheet, put it in. We'd write a quick brief. We'd do a report. And then by 9 o'clock, I was back in the mix. I would be back with those guys doing stuff. I always played it where I lived a distance away that gave me time if there was something that I needed to either get more people, something bad had happened, or just bad guys are lazy by nature. They're not going to want

to make a trip all the way 40 minutes to, you know, come check me or stop by for a beer or something. something like that. So the times even being embedded, I was able to remove myself to the point where you could live a little bit of life. Yeah. Wow. Yeah. With the henchman, I didn't know enough by the time I had joined the Grim Reapers, which was kind of an interesting. We faked to get in, back up a little bit, to get an informant to get into the Grim Reapers, they arrested a guy, a three-time convicted fellow and a guy named Crazy. So they arrest Crazy for having a pistol on his pants. Well, the club brothers did not put any money on his books, and he sat in the federal lockup for three months with nothing.

So at that three-month point, he called up ATF. He said, I want to cooperate. I'm looking at a lot of years. He goes, I want to do the right thing. So they went out and interviewed him. So the bikers know that if you're in jail and you're looking at 15 years and there's no bond, there's no way. If you all of a sudden, oh, this miraculous thing happened, and now I'm out.

and I'm back, you know, bring me back to the club. They're not going to buy it, and they're going to kind of kick you to the curb. So we had to do something that they thought, this goes to the street theater part. They thought something that they were watching was really happening, in reality it wasn't. So they made a deal with Crazy and Crazy's attorney. We got approval from DOJ to do it. And he said, look, we'll dismiss the charges on you for now with prejudice, But you're going to have to do and introduce a guy.

You're going to have to give us all the historical stuff on the grim reapers that you know, all the drug dealing, all the stuff you've done. You know, you've got to be completely honest about it. And if it works out and we're able to secure convictions at the end of this and you do your part of it, then we will re-indict you maybe for a lesser charge, you know, and that's kind of the ebb and flow of the criminal justice system. If you cooperate, then you get some kind of benefit for it. So we didn't want to go into court.

We were going to have to go into court and dismiss the charges. So he had a court date, and all the brothers came in to see what was going on. So the judge and the attorney knew, and it was already, yeah, we were just basically going to drop the case. So the case agent and the U.S. attorney started getting in an argument, fake argument. And the U.S. attorney looks at the case agent. He goes, well, I'm going to have to dismiss all the fucking charges. He goes, you motherfuckers. So he goes, a judge.

because government, you know, right now we're going to withdraw with prejudice, charges against Mr. I forget, whatever his name was. And then judges like, defense counsel got anything, they're like, nope, we're all good. And he's there, bangs the gavel and he goes, case dismissed. So the U.S. train watch around, and now he's tearing into the agent fake, of course. So all the guys in the gallery see this go on. Oh, shit. So when crazy comes out, they're like, fuck, great.

This is awesome. So about a month later he introduces me as his nephew and now I'm off to the races. Wow, that's, so the fucking attorneys, everybody could be in on it. Yeah, it was like illegal, there was nothing wrong with it. It was just that they got in this fake argument in the middle of courtroom. You know, the judge was like, the judge was like, okay with it. He was like, fine. And again, this isn't shit like this with the government does not happen in a vacuum.

You got to run that shit up the chain. You know, and everybody's like, yeah, there's no problem. You're just dismissing it. in a case with prejudice, no big deal. You were gonna do that anyway for his cooperation, so you're good. So that's what we did. And then I got introduced and then for the next 15 months

after I got done with the Mel stuff, when they said no more of that, I rolled into that and then became a hang-around and a prospect. And then we didn't plan on that to begin with. They were like, do you think you could get on these guys? I go, I think I'm okay. I went out and I bought like a stolen Harley off the president of the Iowa chapter, like first night out, loaded,

the back of my pickup truck and I go, I think I'm okay. And they were like, all right, man, let's go. So I was like, back in it again. So, I mean, the reason I was asking how often you have to check in is, I mean, how many guys have you seen or maybe, maybe none? But how many, how many guys lose themselves when they're embedded in the Italian mob and the biker gangs and the, you know, inner city gangs? Yeah, it's a little bit, I think. Because it's an attractive lifestyle. It's fucking exciting.

There's women. There's drugs. There's booze. There's fights. Like, anybody that's, I don't know. Got a little testosterone. Real fucking man. That shit's attractive. There's a lot of power, a lot of ego, a lot of women. Like, it's just a... It's true. You're doing gangster shit. Yeah. And some of the guys, you actually, you're like, I like that guy. Like, if that guy wasn't a criminal right now, we'd probably be friends. Because he's actually a personal guy. His choices in life, though, he's gone to the left here. He's doing what he's doing. So, yeah, so you had that. And I think that's just the nature of, you try to look for the best in people. I mean, sometimes.

I mean, the way I was brought up, you know, everybody gets, you know, you just kind of look for the best in people. You know, when you try some way to communicate with them or get on their level. And it's just that interpersonal communication stuff that lends itself to having feelings for or losing yourself. We've had guys. We had one guy that it's his story to tell him.

And I won't tell it. But, yeah, he had a problem. as he's doing. He goes, hey, I like these guys more than I like my agents in my office. And, well, that's a problem. I remember talking to him. And I'm like, bro, what do he? You wear a white hat. That's a black hat. I go, there's a lot of gray area in between. But at the end of the day, you're the police. And he was having a, he was struggled.

He goes, yeah, but these guys are about brotherhood and this stuff. I go, if these guys know who you are, they will kill you. I said, if they have the opportunity to slit your fucking throat right now, they would fucking kill you. Where's a brotherhood in that? He's like, wow. So a lot of guys do. They have an issue or they run into problems with it. Have you ever had that issue?

I was pretty much new where I was at. There were guys I liked. I felt bad like my money Mattias got murdered by the outlaws up there when we were at his funeral. I was actually, I had a guard to clubhouse at the time, but I felt bad. I was angry. I was mad. You know, I'll put money in jail for the stuff he was doing. But, man, you know, he, you know,

He believed my story, you know, and he was always looking out. He always looked out, you know, he goes, man, you guys aren't paying enough attention. They're trying to get us. Yeah, he would tell the informant myself, man, are you checking your shit for bombs? Are you strapped every fucking day you come out of the house? You need to move closer because we were, like I said, we were away, you know, 35, 40 minutes away. He goes, you probably move closer in town. We have a problem.

We need everybody together. You know, I'm like, I will think about it. But yeah. So it's like a guy like that. He's looking out for me. But he's looking out for me because he believes I'm a freaking. criminal. He's not looking out for me because he loves Chris Bayliss. You know what I mean? So there's that you got to kind of figure that that component of it out and it's hard. A lot of people struggle

with that. I would imagine. I mean, I would imagine that depending on how much time you're spending with these guys and you get attached to them and I mean, I've seen lots of say case officers get attached to fucking assets and it's a fucking wreck when they get killed. But anyway, But you're in a, you are at a brotherhood. You're in a, you're in a, a full blown criminal operation. Mm-hmm. And I would imagine you like a lot of these, or maybe like some of these people, I would imagine the lifestyle is at least interesting to you.

There's no doubt. It's crazy. I mean, it's, yeah. And so with that comes maybe a shift in values. I mean, anywhere you, I join the SEAL teams have got all kinds of fucking bad habits from the SEAL teams, bar fighting, womanizing, boozing, all that shit. You know what I mean? And it became a part of who I, it became a part of who I am for a long time.

Sure. Until I was able to kick that shit. You know what? I think a guy told me one time I was looking at when I retired, I thought maybe I had talked to a guy that was in defense intelligence and he was like, we were just talking about undercover work, being in different places, doing stuff. And I was like, man, you guys, that'd be a fun gig. you know, where you guys are at and the stuff you guys are doing.

And he's like, yeah, he goes, if you have a sliding scale of morality sometimes. And I was like, I get it. I was like, you're right. You know, we had that, those morals, those things were brought up with. But now I got to be with guys and act like this is something. I love the fact that you're beating the snout out of your girlfriend. I love the fact. Fuck her.

You know, what does she know? She disrespected you. Fuck you got to give her a knot in the head. You know, it's that kind of like, I don't believe that. that. But yet, I'm telling my brother right on, we had a guy, Paul Jensen had, he had like a little pal. I used to like to whip his girlfriends. And so he had this little whip. So my now wife at the time was an agent also. And she was my under, she was my girlfriend, played my girlfriend. And like we're talking outside, she's a terrible undercover agent. She's like, the worst. I was like, you are like, she's like, I know, I know, just shut up. And I'm like, okay.

So we had gotten this script. And I told her, this is, I go, they are going to get you into the old lady are going to get you in room. They're going to ask you some questions. It's not like, oh, hey, welcome. You know, the butt cakes over here and get a cup of coffee and everything. I go, they're going to go in and they're going to ask you some shit. She's like, all right, so we come up with this script. We practiced it for like six weeks or a month. Yeah, just every day. I'm asking her questions. So I get to the clubhouse and they're like, because they're kind of like, why are you not with some chick?

There's a million hookers and a million strippers that everybody here is banging. Why are you not participating? I was like, well, I got this chick. She's a good earner, you know, takes care of my shit, you know. And they're like, well, you know, we never see her. I'm like, all right. So I talked to her into like, okay, I just need cameo appearances on some runs and some shit. She's like, all right, I'll do it.

So we get the script down. First time we're at the clubhouse. There's like three, maybe four of the guys, old ladies, girlfriends that are there. So I walk in, make the introductions and everything. And the girls are like, Tina, good. Come with us. They go upstairs in a clubhouse. She's up there like an hour and a half, you know, close to two hours.

And I'm like outside and I'm like, fuck, you know, sitting in that. We had a fenced area where all the bikes are parked. We're out there just having a beer. And I see her come back out around a car. corner and I can see she's got like a little bit of a tear in her eye and so the brothers were kind of walking around a different way so I had a one-on-one section with her like I'd looked at her like are we cool and she goes I don't think they believe me and I'm like okay I said all right I go go stand over by the bike so I'm kind of trying to catch the vibe because

these guys can be telling you hey everything's great and then you know And I was like, check the vibe. So she was kind of standing outside. I used to get some of the shit out of saddlebag or make like you're fucking around over there. So she's at the bike doing something. So I go back inside and two of the old ladies there. And I was like, I go, hey, we're getting ready to run. You know, see you guys later on or something.

And they were like, we really like her. I'm like, are you sure? Because I'm thinking about dumping her. And they're like, no, we? I go, guys, seriously? I go, this is like a freaking today thing. I go, I don't, they're like, no, she's, we like her. I go, are you sure?

Because if you don't, just tell me, because I'm thinking about dumping her anyway. And they're like, no, well, we kind of like her. I'm like, okay. So I go back outside, we get another bike, go back to the end of car, but I go, I guess you did okay. And she's like, they were asking me about this. They were asking me about this. They were asking me about you didn't give me that shit to tell them. She goes, I had to make it up.

I said, well, hopefully you did a good job. What lies did you tell them so that we can. Mark down, so you and I are together around her lives. And she's like, all right, fine. So we're at the undercover part. We had to go back and redo, like, not redo, but just, okay, exactly, what did you say? Exactly. You know, it was about her background. Where are you from? You know, where do you work now? What's your phone number? How long have you known Chris? How long have you guys been dating? You know, your boots look really fucking new. You know, like all of a sudden, she's a biker chick, you know, where you've got these worn

girls that have got some stuff that's got some road miles on it. Tina shows up. and all new shit with the price tag still on it. You know, I was like, that's not gonna fly. So, but she did fine on that part was great. The other problem was a couple months later, Paul's got that paddle that he liked to whip his girls with. He had this little paddle, and Tina was standing in front of me. And Paul goes, give Tina a little whack on the ass.

And I'm like, ah, yeah. So she's talking to another old lady, so I kind of go forward. I gave her like a shot on the butt with this little, leather whip thing with a paddle on it. Well, she spins around, man, and bam. And she blasts me right in the chest. And then she realizes I shouldn't have done that. And I look at her, and I hear Paul Jensen go, you should get your cunton line. And I'm like, right on, bro. So I grab her by the air, and I walk over the side of the clubhouse. I go, sweetie, you can't punch me in front of these guys. I go, it's not good. It makes me look bad. I am so, so sorry. I go,

okay I go I gotta put you on timeout man I go go back and sit on the bike with your arms folded pouting and just sit there and she's like okay so she goes back sits on the bike so we go in with the rest of guys I'm having a beer at the thing so I'm looking around and they don't nobody says anything you know they're just like you had to take care of your shit the way you had to take care of your shit so after a while I looked at my way I go you know what fellas I go I think timeouts over man I'm gonna go I go catch you guys later tonight they're like right on brother so I left I went out I was like, baby, you cannot, if we can do that shit, she goes, I know, I know, but she cannot play that subservient female biker role, you know.

I wanted to tell her, I go, start washing a bike or start wiping the gas tank off, but I didn't want to. I said, figure timeout, just sitting in timeout on the back of the scoot would be enough to, that was her penance for the day. But yeah, but she did, we were practicing, getting, because we knew the outlaws were trying to get us. So I had a 45 that I carried in my back, back of my pants and went around the bike. She would practice coming out of my pants if we had to engage while we were riding, which we almost had to at one point.

So I thought we were all prepared. I thought I was like, I got this shit. I'm in the middle of a biker war. I know what some of these guys look like. I'm fucking gunned up. I got guns over here. I got guns with my pants. I go, I'm on it, man.

Somebody steps to me, I'm going to fucking crush them. I had no idea how much Dallas knew about where we were at, what we were doing. Times they had surveilled us. Times they tried to kill us where I was oblivious to it until later when I talked to the case agent, Sandy DeVolcanier who did the Rico on him out of Wisconsin. I was up interviewing these guys and they were like, yeah, remember you. And I was like, fuck. So I thought I was, man, I thought I was king fucking shit, man.

Look at me. Wow. Wow. That. The realization of that, freaking, it's one of those two-year-needs experience where you're like, you know what? I need to fucking reassess. Who else knows?

Thought the fuck I'm doing. Like how I think of myself. And I gotta be better. And so, yeah, you try to be better. Damn. Why'd you almost call somebody on your bike? Well, actually, the outlaws almost killed us. We had one cover team guy, and we were doing a run.

You know, you go out, go to bar to bar. you know so that the henchmen and we had some out-of-town angels were there so we're all lined up getting ready to go and the outlaws and we found this out later because the outlaw that killed mona matthias i interviewed him he cooperated and gave everything up um when i interviewed him he talked about um i asked him about were you guys in a van one night driving by our pack and he goes yeah he goes we had a couple ars shotguns and pistols and we were gonna slide the slider over of the van. And he goes, and as your bikes were going this way,

we were coming south. You guys headed out of the clubhouse? I was like, all right. He goes, yeah. He goes, we were just going to, too, chook, choo, chum, and just open up on everybody down the line. And I was like, okay, okay. And the reason I knew that was our cover team guy spotted and knew who the president was, that guy's bike, that was driving the van.

And so we knew they were, we thought they were just following us. I had no idea they were gunned up ready to freaking unload and kill all of us and so I'm thinking to myself at that point like it wouldn't have mattered if Tina got that 45 out of the back of my pants we were going to eat it. There was no way we were going to be able to survive that. And it's one of those where they saw our surveillance guy, our surveillance guy saw them, they didn't know if the surveillance guy was one of our guys following a pack that was gunned up ready to go or if it was law enforcement that was following the pack so they called it off

and they left. So it was one of those many times where I looked back back now and I'm like, so fortunate to not be, not be injured or hurt. Damn. How long were you guys undercover together? 15 months, I think. Shit. About a year and a half. And these guys were all sharing women?

They would, but you had the right to, you had the choice for, I mean, if you're a lady wants to go sleep with so and so, no problem. The angels were more, they're a little bit different in that regard. The Grim Reapers, I would never bring a girl to. the Grim Reapers. They told me flat out. First chick you bring here, we're fucking her. Like, all right on. Good to know. So I had no girlfriend during the year and a half on the Grim Reapers. But at that point, I knew how to play it. Like I said, they had done a historical case, so I didn't have to push to get a lot of guns or everything. I just had to get a lot of conversation for the RICO.

And that's what made that case. And we ended up with 50 defendants in five states. I think we seized three clubhouses under that. We were able to show historically they had purchased 250 keys from the cocaine from the Joliet outlaws that went to them. So we had that drug conspiracy locked down. We could show that they had stolen over a million dollars in Harley Davidson motorcycles over the course of just 12 months. So these guys were, I mean, they were out there doing doing bad things. And so we were able to do that through the RICO. I think we charged 17 guys on the RICO and the other 38 defendants went on single like I bought dope or single gun buys or something along those that and whatever they got caught with during the

during the search warrants that we did on their houses. So did you ever have anybody that tried to fuck your partner? My partner that I'm married to? Yeah, well, there were guys that were like very married. very interested and like, hey, man, do you guys, how do you guys get down? We don't get down like that. I go, I'm a sole proprietor, bro. I like, I like my stuff. And they're good with that. Yeah, they were fine. Yeah. Right on. Yeah. Well, Chris, let's take a break. Let's do it. And when we come back, we'll talk about infiltrating the Hells Angels. Certainly.

This episode is brought to you by Roe Nutrition. I've been running Roe's long longevity stack, and it's changed how I think about staying in the game long term, not just performing now, but staying capable for the next decade. Most people don't think about cellular health until something goes wrong. But the guys who are still operating at a high level into their 40s, 50s, and beyond, they're thinking about it right now. My Rowe stack is NAD plus for cellular energy and recovery, liposomal glutathion for antioxidant defense, and curcule. plus resferotrol to support your body's inflammatory response. Three products built around how your cells actually function.

What makes Roe different is the delivery. It's liposomal and liquid. Most supplements pass through without being absorbed, but Roe's format is designed to actually get into your system. If you're serious about the long game, this is where I'd start. Get 20% off with code SRS at roonutrition.com. That's code

S-R-S at R-H-O-Nutrition.com. So I think we're getting ready to talk about infiltrating the Hells Angels. Okay. Where do we start? Actually, how did you, so was this a tasking, or did you decide to do this? Because at the beginning, you kind of said it was, there's a gun, there's the money, go rest of people. Right, right. It was kind of independent up, but we always knew, there was a case where two Hells Henschman at the time,

It was Hens Hedgeman when we started. They didn't get their role in their patch to Hils Angel was later on. Two Hilsenchmen had actually, we knew they were into a lot of different things. Melod got locked up by the FBI for a minute on a car give up, mail fraud. We had information they were, you know, dealing drugs and all about guns. We also had information in a separate case where two of Mel's guys had done a murder. or attempted to kill one of their attorneys that represented him. He hated his wife and didn't want to get divorced,

so he thought it would be a better idea to put a bomb on her car and blow her up. So two of Melza guys went out and actually put a bomb on her vehicle. It went off. She got injured, but she wasn't killed. But these guys was interesting, criminal masterminds that they were. You got two biker guys. They're in a northwest suburb. she was taking the train into the city

and so she was in like a parking area where you get the train there's coffee shops there. Well, these guys sat around looking suspicious when they put the bomb on and every suburbanites looking at these two biker guys like they were very recognizable. Obviously they didn't read that book, left a bang where you look for anomalies.

You know, they missed that part. So they put the bomb on. She puts it in reverse, backs up, it detonates. she's not killed. And so we knew that from a pretextual or from a standpoint of why would be look at these guys, there were no lot of different stuff. And so that was the pretext for starting the investigation. I knew from an undercover standpoint, there's no way I could do these guys in Chicago

because, again, I knew who Mel was and I knew we knew, we just grew up in the same area. It was not going to take very long to get found out. So fortunately, a local police officer and a DeKalb County sergeant had developed a CI, a guy nicknamed Grubb, and they said, this guy wants to cooperate, thinks he could, you know, do a case on the Rockford Angels or Hell's Hedgeman. I'm like, all right, so I met him. And he's like, we got our story kind of down straight. And we knew right away that, you know, I didn't.

know exactly what we'd have to do to get in. And the intent really wasn't to get in and become a member. It was more just to see if we could perfect a case on the information we could gather just by being around those guys. But it looked like it was moving toward like an infiltration kind of thing as we started to go. So it became like, okay, well, if we can keep going on this, then let's see how far we could go and get into the internal workings of the club that we wouldn't get if we were just, you know, on the outside superficially. So as we started hanging around, we backstopped ourselves with the CI was actually a counselor for drug addiction. And so they knew he didn't use or drank.

And so it helped me with the drug component because I said I was with this guy, part of his, I was in his program and that's how we became friends. He knew my dad, blah, blah, blah. So we had a pretty solid story. He was a contractor and was a builder. So I would go to construction jobs with him during the day, in and around where we knew some of these guys would be. they'd drive by, they would see us, or as we started to hang around or go to the clubhouse

or meet them in bars. They're like, what do you guys doing? Well, we're building a house over here. So, you know, they would drive by and they'd see us. And so it added to the credibility of who we were. So that's kind of how we, from a foundational standpoint, we started it off and started going forward from there. So your whole plan was just be seen first.

Just be seen and see where we can go. You know, it's one of those things you're not going to know unless you try it. What we were able to do very early on was the henchmen had a, one of the members from Chicago had a storage unit. And we had gotten, we'd heard peripherally stuff just talking about guns and vows like, yeah, we got a, you know, we got guns. We're ready to go if we have a problem anywhere. We got them stash. We got them stored. And some of the guys I worked with in the Auto Thief Task Force said, hey, man, we got, we think we got enough probable cause to get in the

the storage unit, it's owned by a Hells Henschman. They said he's got like an arsenal in there. And I go, well, do you guys got enough PC to get in without anything we're doing? And they're like, all right, let's talk to the state's attorney and say, so they talked to the state's attorney. They didn't need any of our stuff, any information we had. So they were able to get, it was called a John Doe Warrant, which is basically you're not going to know who is the affiant and gave the probable cause for the warrant until

you actually go to court then it's revealed. So it kind of kept their informant. safe for a little while while they did this search warrant. So when they got in, I went up and I was clavid all up and it was sitting in the back of squad just to see what they would get out of it. And I think we got, got 150 firearms, 15 machine guns, 10 silencers, hand grenades, 32,000 rounds of ammunition, all assortment, 556, 9, 45, a lot of black powder. What else did we get?

It was just, it was like their arsenal, nice little arsenal. So we were able to take that. So we were able to get that like very early, like maybe the first six weeks, seven weeks that we were doing it. It came really quick. So for ATF, that was a, all right, that's kind of a win. That's a good stash. They were all Mac 10 machine pistols that they had, they were converted. Great job.

The guns were oiled up and they were wrapped in cellophane. They had 200 rounds. they were all in like a little pelican case. So you had the silencer, the Mac 10, 200 rounds of ammo. So you could just grab it, go if you were going to go do something, take care of it, and then either get rid of it or bring it back, whatever you wanted to do. But it was all, it was pretty much, it was ready to go. You know, you come by, you grab it, you go take care of business.

So for us, that was like, wow, we kind of hit it pretty good right off the bat. And then it was like, well, let's see what more we can get, more information, we can get, more stuff that they're doing it. We started getting into it, you know, the guys that were dealing dope out of there. We pretty much identified those guys pretty quick. And then we got word that they were going to roll their patch to help you become prospects for the Hells Angels. And the dynamic completely changed. You had guys that you had 26 members, I think, maybe up in Rockford.

A lot of those guys knew this was not going to end well. that when we make this step and get this Hell's Angel patch, you know, we're going to have a problem with the outlaws. They knew it. So a lot of the guys quit. Are you a part of all these conversations? Are you in the club now? I'm not in the, I'm in the club, but I'm learning the ways of the force, if you will,

through one of the members that kind of Paul Jensen, that, Paul Jensen eventually stabbed a guy to death and died in the penitentiary. But Paul was my guy that, like, he was helped me along. So even though I wasn't supposed to be party to meetings and stuff, you know, I'd ask him, I said, brother, what's going on, man? I got to know, you know. I mean, I got a business. You know, I'm still trying to eat, want to be with you guys.

Should I gun up all the time? He goes, you better gun up every freaking day, man. I'm like, okay, all right, enough said. And then he would just give me tips and clues as to like, hey, they're coming in. A bunch of guys are going to quit. They rolled their shit up. They left it on the pool table, and they're not going to be part of the club anymore. And so I think they were down like maybe eight guys.

Actually, were the remaining crew of Rockford from about 26. So a lot of those guys said, yeah, you know, we're about knuckling and, you know, being crazy bikers, but we're not down for what's going to happen. And they knew. They knew that it was going to be bad. And so that's when I think it helped us a bit. I think I mentioned before that because they were so focused on doing the right thing by the Hells and Angels,

And the angels would come in and give them called on-the-job training, you know, coming in this is what we expect from you guys, this is what we want to see from you guys. Here's how you handle it. It was more like platitudes of when you met somebody. You know, this is how we want to be respected. This is how we want to be seen in the community. The henchmen were like into themselves, didn't talk to anybody outside the bike club.

The angels are like, no way, man. He goes, you got it. It's a public relations thing. He goes, you want people in the community to say, yeah, that guy's not a bad guy. They take care of their neighborhood, the clubhouse, they help us out. They're good guys. Because, you know, at the end of the day, we might be in court. We might be, you know, they might have these guys sitting on a jury.

And we want those jury pool from that area to say, you know what, those guys aren't really that bad. So it was kind of a PR kind of thing. So we started having what was called Tuesday night runs. And it was where they just invite people in that were just riders, just regular citizens, they called them. They'd make a little money by selling drinks at the bar. And then we'd have a poker run. You know, you go out, go bar to bar. It was a way to kind of get people interested.

Maybe they got, you know, there's a couple guys we want that look like they'd be hardcore guys that could come with us. And maybe kind of groom those guys and see if they'd be around. So it was kind of like kind of an open house kind of thing for the biker world. So a lot of people would show up. One of the people that showed up initially was a club called Arm Association of a recovered motorcyclist. It was supposed to be a sober club. no drugs, no alcohol, just living the biker lifestyle, you know, live free or die kind of thought process. So those guys come in, what we did know was those guys were aligned with the outlaws.

And so when they came in, all they were doing was taking notes and gathering intel then to give to the outlaws up in Janesville, Wisconsin, that ended up, the bombings, they picked out the targets and that kind of thing. So I remember the president coming up to me, you know, he put his arm around me and he's like, saw you're throwing your hat in here, huh? I said, yeah, right on, you know. He goes, yeah, this is a good, this is a good group, man. You're going to be just fine hanging out with these guys.

And now this motherfucker went, told the outlaw is where everybody lived. You know, and they came back and they used his information against everybody in the club. Shit. Yeah. What did you think of the lifestyle? You know, those guys... You enjoying it? It was pretty...

I'm not going to lie. there's an adrenaline rush you get doing shit. Like I said, like on that sizzle reel, man, when you're in a pack of, you know, 20 or 30 guys, you're rolling down the highway, you see that angel patch and the henchman patch, you're like, nobody's going to fuck with us. And if they do, it's going to be odd.

It's like that level of that thought of invincibility, if you will, that I'm riding with some guys that are going to get after it. And so there was, there's an allure to that. Like he's talked about, And if you got a little bit of testosterone and some gumption, it's like, man, this is kind of we're badass. And it was kind of that mentality that those guys had. And some of them were very badass, extremely badass. And some of them weren't.

What do you mean by that? Well, there's guys that would get down, get down. Like, they called it on the street. Like, there's guys that get down, but you want a guy that gets down and get down. Like a guy that will take it, a guy that's going to murder somebody. Like Paul Jensen stabbing a guy outside the bar. Paul was a guy that would get down and get down. which you had other guys.

Maybe they sell dope, but they're still in a club. But they weren't, you know, they're down for the cause because at the end of the day, if we all decide we're against the outlaws, then everybody's in. There's no like, well, you know what, I'm going to take this day off? No. We're at war with the outlaws. You're going to go out.

You see an outlaw. You're going to kill them. It was a son way for the allies. And if you didn't do that, you're going to get your ass beat or worse, and you're going to get tossed out of the club. So you're in for a penny, in for a pound. And that helps us with the RICO, because there's a part of the RICO, Because there's a part of the RICO when we identify the enterprise.

It's a Pinkerton Rule. It's Pinkerton Rule basically says actions and statements of one co-conspirator are the actions and statements of all. So if you and your crew and I, we decide we're going to deal dope and we're at war with this other drug faction. And one of our guys out of the crew, we had the agreement. That's what you did, is the agreement to do something. So, and that's the conspiracy component. As soon as we agree to do that, then if you went out and got popped off with 50 bricks, it could come back and we could all get charged with that same drug amount.

If you decide, I need to kill a rival drug dealer, and we've all agreed at some point, we're going to have to kill a rival drug dealer and you do it. We all get hung with that. So it's kind of a – and that's a very simplistic way to do it. It's a little more nuanced when you get into court. But ultimately, that's basically it in a nutshell. And that's why RICO is such a valuable tool. it's because you get a lot of guys at the top that'll order something and the underling will go do it.

We all have the agreement that we need to go kill this guy. We send a guy out to go kill him. Generally, that guy, if he gets caught, will just get charged independently of that murder. But what Rico allows us to do go is to go back then and take the entire enterprise down because those are the actions and furtherance of the enterprise these guys are doing. And so it's like a, it's like a mosaic of criminal activity. You know, you've got a lot of little incidents, but they paint a large picture of the totality of the criminal actions of a particular group. And so that's what RICO does.

And that's what we use it. But it's not something that's in a bubble. Regals just don't, like, hey, I want to put a RICO and we're going to charge it tomorrow. There's levels of review that because it's such a great tool. They don't want it to ever be, you know, we don't want there any bad case law or anything bad said about it. it. So to do a RICO, you've got a, it's called a process memo, prosecutional memo, and it starts at the first level prosecutor goes up to his boss, crim chief, U.S. attorney. And then for RICO, that goes off to OEO, Office of Enforcement Operate, I forget bad. Enforcement operations. That's

what it is. They have a RICO team up there of attorneys. They review it to make sure you've got everything right. And then it goes back and you got the okay to do it. So it's, it's kind of voluminous. It takes some time to put, it takes a lot of time to put together, but it's well worth it because you get to just bring in a ton of criminal activity that you wouldn't necessarily be able to do in a normal case. Roger that. What are you partaking in? Are you selling drugs?

Are you selling guns? Are you sleeping around? Are you using drugs? We did, uh, heavy drinking. We did some street theater with Paul Jensen. And once I did it with Paul, um, hired him to watch something and gave him some money and then left it alone and didn't say anything about it. He goes, so you got a, he goes,

you got a bad self and a not so bad self, huh? And I go, well, you know how it is. You got to eat. I wouldn't say anything about what it was about. But he knew that obviously it was something. So he would vouch for me then, for the most part, you know, for the rest of the time. Like I said, there was other guys in there.

There were like something about dude, you know, something ain't right with him. And you're never going to win those guys over. You just got to figure out a way around him. So I would do that. And then, like I said, I did enough in front of Paul. And at that time, again, they were so focused on being, getting that patch, that hell's angel patch and rolling it over and not fucking that up and having the angels say, no, we don't want you guys. They were so focused on that.

They pretty much weren't paying attention to what we were doing or not doing. The fact that we were there in and of itself was enough to those guys, all right, you know, let you guys come along. Wow. Yeah. So we were. Are you partying? Are you, I mean? Oh, yeah.

We're at the clubhouse, tent and bar. I do security during the meetings. You know, I got a two-way radio. Drugs? I didn't do any. I didn't have to do any. No shit. Yeah, I told him in the beginning.

There was one guy that one guy that would constantly push me, Al. He said, brother, I just can't trust you to unless he, I go, bro. I go, I already told you, man. I've been down this road, bro. I go, if you want me to be like Dennis, which was another guy that was just drunk all the time, he'd come in the clubhouse and say, I'm, um, financially embarrassed because he was just freaking broke. I said, if you want Dennis, I go, then put that shit in my nose.

And you know what, I'll be Dennis. But right now I got $1,000 in my fucking pocket. So do you want to earner? You want a guy that's going to make money and make us look good as a club? Or do you want to drunk at the other bar? I go, choice is yours, bro. And he was like, oh, no, man, I'm just saying. I go, bro, I can't.

So that's where I'm at. I go, I got to do that to be with you guys. I can't be with you guys. And they were like, okay. They bought that. They did. That's surprising. That is.

I think they'd like the fact that we had a business, and I think some of the guys looked at is if you have a legit business, like Mel had, you know, Mel worked for companies, you know, where he was no show, you know, but he got a paycheck and he got insurance. And it was just companies that I think in, you know, his ability to use those proceeds, you know, drug proceeds, and then pay that company for his health care and stuff like that. So they looked at our having a business, what they thought was a,

legitimate business and the CI did have, the informant had a legitimate business. They kind of looked at that as probably a plus. A sub level, we'll be able to leverage that, you know, at the end of this when we get our full patch. So they kind of looked at us like that where, yeah, okay. And then we, you know, there were times in bars where somebody had mouth off or something, you know, and then they're like, hey man, step to that guy and tell him what time of day it is, you know, I'd be right on, bro. So I go step to the guy and I would tell him basically, brother, I said, man, you don't want how this is going to go. I go, it's not me.

I go, it's them. And you know it. And he'd be like, most of the time, those guys would just say, okay, you know, and they walk away. But I think they wanted me to go up and slug them in the face. And I come back and they're like, why didn't you knock that guy out? And I was like, well, first of all, I'm a little fucking dude. And that was a pretty big cat.

So I just told him what time of day it was. I told him I'd get him sometime when he wasn't looking. And they were like, all right. Right on. Hang around. I go, do you want me just get locked up for doing something? stupid. I thought we were smarter than that. So when they tried to do things to test, I'd be like, I'll do it. I'll find a way to do it, but I'm not telling you when I do it, and I'll do it on my own.

Because they had a motto, three, can keep a secret if two are dead. And I'm like, that's the motto, man. So I'll hang it. You won't see that guy anymore, but I'll take care of it. But I'm not going to tell you guys. It'll just be what it is. And they were like, so having that air of mystery a little bit on how you handle your business, it went a long way. And like I said, they were so concerned with being Hells Angels at that point in time. They kind of, that's the normal stuff they probably would have did to really check our shit. They weren't, they weren't really done. So we were fortunate. So, I mean, you're just talking about, you know, do you want to earn or do you want to drunk? And, you know, I'm interviewing Mel yesterday. I interviewed George

Christie. I haven't released yet a couple months ago, you know, and I'm asking these guys, How is the club making any fucking money? I don't understand. I don't know if they're just not telling me because, you know what I mean? They still feel some allegiance to it. But I don't understand what the point of the club is. If everybody's doing, you know, yesterday Mel kind of described it. Everybody does their own shit.

They deal their own drugs. They do their own run women, whatever guns, whatever it is. But it's not affiliated with the club. And so if the only way the club is making money is, paying fucking dues and it's the underground aspect of what they're doing with the drug dealing. So you've got interconnected

drug dealers like SoCal or Southern California guys will be dealing with and selling meth to Midwest guys. And they, the fact that you're both Hells Angels, there's a certain level of one safety that you're not going to get robbed on the deal.

Although I think it did happen at one point. I think somebody didn't pay for dope or something and it was quite a rift within the hells angels about it. But everything they do is like it's it's involved but it's not involved. So they know how RICO works. Like there's other clubs and one club that was like if you sell an ounce of cocaine you pay $100 to the club. So they were you know it's almost like you checked every RICO you know the money laundering component of it and said okay you know the organization itself is putting a price on the amount of drugs that you're selling. And so it, it,

That is easier to prove. The way they get around doing is we're all independent operators. We're all doing shit on our own, but they pay dues to the club. They go on runs. They buy their Harleys. All that stuff is the proceeds of their illegal activity to be in the club. And the club's as much about persona and badass. And we're the number one guys than it is about anything else.

No shit. Yeah. There's guys making tons of money. We stopped one of the Chicago Hells Angels with a million dollars cash in Las Vegas. That he was getting ready to go. I think he was going to try to launder it through gambling, small amounts of gambling and then get the receipts. But we got one of those guys.

And it was later. It wasn't when I was involved. And in fact, it was when Mel was out of the club. But that was one of their guys. And another guy got stopped with a trapped car with a bunch of money in a truck going to Mexico to pick up. So those guys were, they're in the game, and they're in the game, you know, in a large way. Not all of them are at that level, but there's a lot of them that are. And they use that Hell's Angel that mystique about who they are because if it's like Charles Schwab.

All right. So if you're going to invest with Charles Schwab or Joe Blow the Ragman, you know, at the end of the day, it's like, I'm going to go to Charles Schwab because he's got the name and their reputation and he's badass and he's going to get it done. And that's kind of how the Hells Angel is. looked at it. You know, it's the same way. We're kind of the Charles show. We're the number one guys. And they use that, they use that that persona, that sticker to basically say, you know, when we do

business, the Hells Angels logo comes with it. So whatever we do, there's some Hells Angel affiliation with it. It's like when Mel beat the guy up in for disrespecting his girlfriend. You know, he invokes the Hells Angels. You know, he tells him inside. Do you know who the fuck I am? And that guy's like, yeah, he goes, I'm the fucking Hell's Angel president. He goes, my crew will crush your crew. So now he's using, again,

the Hells Angel logo, the Hells Angel, their mystique, you know, in this particular situation. So it is an enterprise that they use to influence their personal operations. Correct. And they all get to use that enterprise. Correct. When you come in and someone says, this guy, is a weapons specialist in the Navy. That's his MOS. He's a, or I forget what was called. Weapons specialist. And this guy's a Navy SEAL.

There's going to be a certain amount of what you think about this guy based on the fact that he's a, you know, weapons officer. There's a certain thing you're going to think about this guy because he's a Navy SEAL. And that Navy SEAL stuff may write on the coattails of, you know, you or Jason Redmond or one of these other guys. that they know about.

So they know what they get. So they expect the same thing out of you guys or out of this other guy that you've just met that's a Navy SEAL. So right away, there's a certain persona that you are certain of, this is who this guy is and what he's about. It's the same way with the Hell's Angel Patch.

You know, there's certain things I expect. One, he's probably a killer. Maybe he's a killer. He's not. But they have a reputation of being a killer. So right away with that reputation comes the ability for me to facilitate my criminal activity and make it better by riding on the fact that I am actually a hell's angel.

Gotcha. I mean, is that, is that explaining that right? Yeah, it makes sense. Is this how all gangs work or is this just motorcy? I think so. I think gangs... Italian mob. Yeah, it's a...

You know, and there's... Crips, bloods. There's people that are drawn to that dark side that, you know, man, there's an edge to that. There's girls that are attacked, you know, that like that, guys that are in that mix, they're, you know, they're dangerous. You're living a day. I'm on the edge.

I'm a criminal. I'm out there freaking, you know, doing shit you don't know about because I'm a mystery. So there's a lot of that that goes on in the criminal. I think for street gangs, a lot of times, street gangs are the result of I need to live in this community. And if I don't join this gang, I'm either with them or I'm against them. So it might be easier to me to be with them. So not that there's not, you know, guys that actively, I mean, we've done some great street gang cases,

but those guys are just homicidal. I mean, just absolutely have no thought of killing somebody. And those are the guys we want to put in jail. So when you have that, I think it goes to that any collection of bad people, I think it's kind of the same MO. Like the Latin Kings think they're it, you know. The gangster disciples are going to disagree. You know, you've got territorial disputes,

not only for whether or not it's a drug dealing area or drug tip, like the Kings are, they're going to be over third and third and troop, and these guys want to be over there selling their dope. There's enough dope tips around city of Chicago. You know how to do that. But this guy might disrespect this guy on Facebook now or Instagram. He might rap about this guy as being a jagoff. Well, now this guy loads a car, you know, full of thugs, and they go over,

and they shoot the guy off his doorstep. So you have a lot of that level of violence. It's not done for any particular reason other than he disrespected me, and now we're going to get them. Makes sense. How was the patch over? You got patched then, correct? No, I got to, I became a hang-around, an official hang-around, and then they had done,

they killed Monty Matias at that point, murdered him in his shop, they had detonated the car bomb on Grand Avenue, they had blown up the president of the club that I was with. Who else did they kill? They killed another guy. Were you there for, were you there? I was there when Monty got killed. I was there when the bombs went off, yeah. And you described that?

I think the realization of, well, there was two things. One, when I interviewed those guys later, but I had the realization of, man, I better make sure I'm checking my six and that my shit is together and my shit's tight. I remember that. I remember Monty was killed so violently. Did you see it? I didn't see him actually kill him, but I saw the scene later and I saw the pictures. And I interviewed the guy that killed him. So how he, and I don't say this because I try to think of how to put this,

I appreciated his fight for survival on what he did. The guy that came in, shot him three times with a 45, didn't go down, came around a counter and engaged him, got the gun turned around, squeezed rounds off. The guy that killed him said, he took me to the ground, we're wrestling on the ground, the gun's empty, hitting him with the gun. When I got to the back, Moni had a 9mm hidden in the back, and I think he was trying to get to that. The guy, the Allah follows him back, grabs a chunk of metal that was on a bar or on a workbench and starts crushing his skull with it. I think at that point, as I recall, he said he went to the back. And Monty had some locks on the top.

He couldn't get out. So he sped around and had to go pass Monty. Monty ties him up again. And fucking, it's like just saying, fuck you, motherfucker, fuck you. And that's when he took the screwdriver and finished them through the neck with a screwdriver. And it was kind of interesting.

The whole thing, a little surreal. A little when I was talking to the investigators And they pretty much do how the crime scene they could figure out what happened. You know, I was I was pissed off, man. I was like, you know, fuck. You know, it was weird because here I am going to try to arrest money at some point or if he's involved in things. But on the other hand, I think the level of brutality at his murder, I was like, I was

pissed. I was fucking pissed. And it was, it was a strange time. And I was like, I talked to ATF management came down and they were like, where are we at on this? What do we have right now that we can do? And so, well, we got the gun storage stuff. We've got other information, but we weren't able to get a lot more going because of,

in that transitional period with the angels. We got some small buys off people in the area. Like I'd bought like dope off some other guys, bought saw it off shotguns off some guys, bought guns. So I'm like, so this is where we have right now. We got a lot of great conversations. about the club in general, what we could use in our RICO as far as outlining of the enterprise. So we got good stuff on that. And they're like, look, Chris, with all due respect, man, we can't, we don't think you can, we can cover this, can't cover you enough that we could

preclude you from getting smoked. There's a certain amount of risk you take. But now you're, you're in the middle of fucking war between the outlaws and the hells angels. In addition to that, you did a bunch of the outlaws already. So they kind of know, maybe, me who you are. They might recognize, hey, isn't this the same guy that ended up sees on a clubhouse in Joliet? You'll see you got that problem to worry about. Then you got the problem of what if these guys find out or they think you're actually, you know, all these murders going on, somebody inside is telling them, little did they know it was arm, that other bike club. They're like, they might think it's you. You know, you're the new guy. Who's the new

face? You know, all of a sudden, we're all going to jail after somebody sold him dope. That's interesting. So there was a lot of stuff that I didn't want to see at the time. I'm like, No, fuck that. I go, I can stay in there. I still, you know, I had a 45 in the back of my pants. I'm super fucking cool. And I wasn't, man, not by any stretch. So it was good for them to say no, say we're all done.

And so shortly after Monty got killed, I think it was by the fall, we basically told those guys the informant, hey, we're out. We're done with right now. You know, it's just our business is ruined. Everybody's trying to kill us, blah, blah, blah. eyes, you know, so we laid it down. So, like, you know, you made prospect. You would have been the first Hells Angel prospects in Rockford. And we're like, you know what, bro, it's not about fucking getting a patch. It's about, you know, we left it with it's about the fucking brotherhood and, you know,

that kind of thing. They were like, all right, you can't come back. Fair enough. So fast forward, that's when I did the Grim Reaper case for the next 15 months out in the Quad Cities, rolled right from that into that next case. And then the informant started to get back in with these guys. We chronicled the violence that they were doing. The informant got kind of back in. And in that time, we were able to stop those violent acts or retaliatory acts. You know, when they went out, we're going hunting tonight for outlaws.

I call up state police. I go, we're coming out tonight looking for guys. So they would have two unmarked and a marked, and they would dole around. And then as soon as it looked like we might be on something, they would knock us all down at traffic style. What are you guys doing tonight? nothing okay have a good evening and then they'd let us go so we did that i think in the riko we actually charged six of those events where they'd gone out to do something and we were able to stop it by

just interdiction just having the cops there like they were watching you guys and they knew they were on them so they were like you know they go back they swept the clubhouse for bugs they thought we're getting bugged somebody's you know somebody's in on us you know i mean they were they were scrambling to figure out how this information was getting out and they also thought too and we're in the middle of war with the outlaws. So of course cops are going to be watching us. You know, we do have to lay low and be smart about what we do. And so that's when it just seemed like it was a good opportunity to get out. And so we stopped. The undercover part for me stopped right there. I went and did the Crim Reaper's after that for about 15 months. But at that same time, I was helping Sandy DeVolkine

to Volkaneer put the RICO case together against the outlaws that were coming down and had done the murders and the bombings and things like that. So in talking to Sandy, who did, I can't say enough about what an outstanding case you put together. I mean, it was two separate RICO's. They charged every violent act that these guys had done. But at that time, when they were doing surveillance on the Hells Henschman, I was there being surveilled. So it helped Sandy in her case to have me there interviewing these guys because it was like, okay, Chris, were you at Club 251?

on Thursday, October 2nd, like, yes, we were. Okay, so that cooperated, you know, the outlaws that had come forward and flipped to corroborated their statements. It made it more, you know, it made more, yeah, yeah, definitely that occurred. So we're able to kind of put that together. But that's where I learned, you know,

I was not fucking Barretta and super cool Batman. I was fucking very foolish and lucky. Tell we didn't get killed. So, very good. very thankful. So anyway, so we did the, I did the Grim Reapers next. Did you have any, when is the, did you meet Mel yet? Yeah, I had flown with Mel out to, was a president's meeting in San Francisco.

And I went out on a plane with them there when I was just official hangar-round. We flew out for that. Why would they bring you to that high-level meeting? I didn't, I didn't get to go to the meeting part. I was just, I kind of inserted myself a little bit. I go, hey, you know, I got a brother. If you guys are going, you know, I got it on mine. And they were like, I don't give a shit.

It was Ricky and the informant were going to go out. So I just tagged along with those guys. They were like, yeah, come on. So it was just a way to kind of be seen but not seen. Did you interact with Mel at all? No. I saw him at the airport, shook his hand. That was it.

Yeah, no, it just knowing, Mel's like, he's going to want to talk to you a little bit, get to know you. And I just, we couldn't take a chance on that. because that would have burned out the CI completely. So what he did was, I quit. After that, we quit for a minute. Did the Grim Reaper case,

at last night, I said about 15 months, got that indicted, help Sandy with the RICO. So in 97, that's when the first RICO and the outlaws came down. And that kind of slowed, all the violent acts stopped right then in there. Nothing was going on because these guys just got whacked. Angels weren't doing anything then

because they thought, well, these guys just caught a RICO. We're going to catch your Rico too. Let me tell you about my morning routine. I wake up, I have decisions I need to make. Am I going to train? Am I going to go to work? Am I going to be stressed out all day? And what kind of tea am I going to use?

Usually I use a chai. Now, what I do every morning is I put bubbs collagen peptides into my tea, along with some MCT oil. You've heard me talk about their collagen peptides forever. But this stuff, the MCT oil, goes in my tea every single morning. It's real brain and body fuel backed by science, not vibes. It's made with grass-fed butter and fast-acting MCT oil from coconuts, which sounds kind of weird until you try it.

And suddenly, you're awake and not pissed off at everybody. And if butter isn't your thing, relax. They've got a vegan version too. MCT oil gives your brain quick fuel, supports digestion, and gut health helps curb cravings and keeps your energy steady all day. I dump it in my tea with my collagen. Stir it around and I'm set. I trust Bubbs because they don't cut corners. Their products meet serious quality standards. In the MCT Creamer is NSF certified for sport, which means it's clean tested and not sketchy. And here's the part that I love the most. Bubbs was founded in honor of

Navy SEAL Glenn Bub Doherty. 10% of all profits go to support veterans as they transition back to civilian life. The stuff we talk about all the time on the show, so when you buy Bubbs, you're also supporting the guests that have been on this show. If you want to upgrade your morning routine and you need to go to bubsnaturels.com slash SR and use code Sean for 20% off your order. Again, that's bubs naturals.com slash SR. and use code Sean for 20% off your order.

So everybody was kind of waiting. Nobody was doing anything. So Sandy does the first round of RICO's in 97. A bunch of guys pled and then cooperated and gave them for more information about what they were doing. Got to interviews a bunch of those guys. And then she did a subsequent RICO like a year later that went back and indicted even more people under the RICO that they hadn't got wrapped up in the first RICO.

We ended up doing a Title III. three, or she, I shouldn't say we. Sandy did a title three on the Outlaw Club or the Outlaw President and the guy that killed Monty Matias, she was up on his phone. So we were getting a lot of, you know, bad talk on the phone calls. And again, every time those guys would go out and try to do something because we heard stuff on the phone, team would go out and knock them down. What kind of close calls did you have?

It looked like you. That I knew about. Yeah, that you know. That I knew about. I thought I had. maybe three that I did know about. Is this with the angels? With the angels. What were that? Well, the Reapers was a different one with the, with the, I forgot that we talked about this on the other. With the angels, it was probably three that I knew of, but about 20 altogether that I had wanting.

I had no idea. And that's why I said, man, you got to humbly walk through life. because I thought I was that. Fuck. No way did I know. Sandy would say, did you know they were out at your apartment? I'm like, oh, man. She's like, yeah.

And then I talked to the guy that cooperated. He goes, yeah, we were, did you have apartment? It was a two-story second floor in the corner and I go, yeah. Sandy's looking at me. Did you know that? I go, no. I'd like to say, oh, yeah, I knew about us. I saw you guys.

It's all cool. I had no idea. Why were they at your apartment to kill us? Because we were part of the, part of the angels. Holy shit, yeah. So there was probably, I think, 20 altogether. Three that I knew, so 17, I didn't know. I kept checking them off.

There were times when I was riding with the president that got blown up, you know, and you guys, because I'm a no guy, I'm in the back, you know, he's right in front, we're riding together, but I still, because he's a president and I got to give him his leave. Well, they were on an overpass waiting for us to come over the overpass.

And for whatever reason, they didn't shoot. And Sandy's like, did you know about that one? I go, I remember the time? She was, you remember a car on the side of the road? I go, I don't. That's how I was not paying attention. I go, I did not. She was, they were going to get you then.

And I'm like, fuck. Again, you just think you're in. I go to God, man. It's the hand of God. There's no doubt about it. You know, truly believe that. Truly believe that. Chris wasn't watching Chris.

God was watching Chris. That's where we were at at that point. There's no doubt in my mind. Did you ever think you've been compromised by the angels? By them, no. By the Green Reapers, I thought, well, actually, the case agent that was an Illinois State Trooper, one of the case agents. Don York was the ATF case agent, and a guy we called Mongo, Jeff Patterson, was with the Illinois State Police. He was their guy.

And Danny Roach was another guy. But he came in one day and he goes, hey man, he goes, they ran your shit. I go, yeah, we're getting ready. I'm ready to go to club. house. I'd been in for about six months. He goes, they ran your shit. He goes, doesn't come back. And I'm like, really? He goes, yeah. He goes, dude, they got some questions for you today. He goes, what are you going to do? I go, well, I'm going to go to the fucking clubhouse. I'm going to whip a game. And he starts laughing. He goes, I'm just fucking with you, bro. He goes, they ran

your shit. It all came back. It's all good. And I'm like, you motherfucker, man. It's hard enough to do in this shit. And then you got to fucking do that. So I'm good friends with the guy, but I was like, I wanted to dot his eye. I'm like, God dang, bro. I said, I'm under enough shit. I haven't had a break since this Hells Angel shit. I go, I'm like, I don't need this, man. So, yeah, so he was just being a dick. But there was a time after we did Indisha Warrants, they call it,

if you're familiar with that. So it's basically a club Indisha. So because we're looking at the Enterprise of the Groom Reapers, we got search warrants based on Indisha Warrants, and we're looking for membership in this organization. And so Indisha's like, you know, it could be anything from your, the drug pair, you know, Grim Reaper patches, Grim Reaper paraphernalia, anything with Grim Reaper Broad that was in your house we were able to take. But if we accidentally ran into pistols, guns, and dope, then we'd get a second search warrant for the pistols, guns, and the dope, and then we'd do that. So what they wanted to do was do these Indicia warrants first on, I think we did 25 altogether, 25 warrants in five states.

We hit them all simultaneously at the same time. A bunch of SWAT teams, state, local, federal, U.S. Marshal Service helped us out. Great guys. So we do these 25 search warrants. And I was telling the case agent and the SAC in Chicago in Special Agent in charge in Chicago, I go, if you let me stay in after the search warrants, just let me stay in, I'll be okay. I said, yeah, they got hit with warrants, but we sealed the indictment. So they're not going to get what the probable cause of the warrants.

Yeah, some of it was me, but a lot of this stuff in other states, I hadn't been there yet. So there's no way they could put that on me. So I'm like, let's just, I go, I think I could stay in there. So like, no, too dangerous, you're done, the undercover parts out. I'm like, bad mistake. So the U.S. attorney, Tate Chambers, who's probably one of the best attorneys I've ever worked with. He goes, he's like a southern kind of southern Illinois. He goes, nah, Chris, you think he could stay in there with these boys for just a little bit

longer, maybe get some conversation about what they're all doing. I said, fuck yeah, Tate. I said, put me in, coach. He's like, all right, let me make a call. So he calls the sack and he goes, your agent seems to think that he could stay in there and it'd be okay. And they're like, all right, but there was a two-week gap between that. So once they got hit, you know, went over the cell phones, or pagers, everybody out.

Don't come back to the clubhouse. It's fucking hot. Stay away. And so the informant we had that we did the fake thing in front of to, in front of the judge, we had the informant say, I told Chris just to stay away, you know, stay back, you know, don't come around. So now two weeks have gone by and things have kind of slowed down. Nobody went to jail. So I was like, you motherfuckers are making it harder now because now I'm going to have to explain where I was for two weeks.

And why the fuck I wasn't a good enough brother to be down here when it all went to shit, start figuring this stuff out. They're like, well, you said you could get back. And I'm like, yeah, if you let me go back the next day. I go, but two weeks is too much, too much time, man. It's going to be hard. And they're like, well, we thought you were like just undercover guy. I'm like, so now it's the fucking question in your fucking cohones. I'm like, all right, dude, I'll go.

So I went back and there was a lot of side-eye look for a while. I remember we ended up in, we were doing a national run. We're down in Louisville, Kentucky. And one of the, they got together in the meeting was to talk about all these search warrants, the guns they had lost, the dope they lost, all this stuff. And one of the guys smoking a joint, he's sitting there, and they're like, why didn't anybody get arrested? And he takes a big head off the joint.

He goes, because we've been infiltrated, motherfuckers. And I'm looking at the dude, and I'm behind the bar. And I'm like, all right, what's you going to say next? He goes, somebody's doing us, and the reason we need to get arrested is that dude's still doing us now. And I'm like, it's not me, bad. maybe it's this dude over here. It's not me.

And they were like, yeah, you're right. How are they doing us? And they're like, I can't be an undercover. And I was like, thank God he said that. I was like, felt a lot better about things. He goes, it's got to be surveillance. And you know how those feds can beam down and turn our pagers into wires. And I was like, man, thank God that guy said that.

Because then they're going to start looking around. Okay, who's the new guy? What's the common connection between all these ones? warrants and a guy that could put all that together. So it was a rough couple of days. Man, how the fuck are you carrying all that way? I mean, you're, you're geo-fenced into a small area. Absolutely.

You've been, what, three organizations now? Yeah, within. So you're, you're paranoid about the current op and all the fucking previous ones probably, too. Then the other problem was these guys were aligned with the outlets from Joliet that I had done in the very first place. And this is only seven years later. This is 97. Some of those guys that I didn't do knew about me and knew about the seizure of the club and the guys that got arrested. So there's one guy in particular, Ronnie Talmadge that was the president that I knew who he was and he knew about me because they'd gotten all the records of how they got done

and how the search warrant was done on the clubhouse, why it got seized, because they don't want to make that same mistake twice. So there's no more drug dealing in the clubhouse, no more dope in the clubhouse kind of a thing. So he had all that information and knew basically who I was. So Rodney Tompidge sometimes would call up. They were aligned, politically aligned with the Grim Reapers against the Angels. He would call up. I'd answer the phone with the clubhouse in Rock Island.

And he'd go, yeah, it's Roddy. I'm on my way out. I go, okay. And then I'd have to make an excuse to leave in about two hours because that's when Ronnie would be there. So I was ducking those guys at the same time with the Grim Reaper's. and so now I think about it, yeah, I was pretty fucked up. Holy shit, man. Yeah.

But again, grace of God, bro. Why did you, why did you bring your wife in? First time. First time. Because they're starting to question why. There was like, I'm not an exceptionally handsome lad, but kind of in the biker world, I could be a, I could be a solid eight. Pretty hard eight.

And so there was a lot of strippers that were like, brother, what up, man? Yeah. Oh, this doesn't look good to you? You're not? I'm like, baby, you know what? I go, mom never, my mom always told me never did a stripper, no offense.

My mom told me that. And I go, I got this girl, man. I go, she's good. And they're like, whatever, dude. So they were questioning like, you know, like the Grim Reaper's had a girl they go take this bitch for a ride on your scoot. I'm like, all right.

So I get out and our recording devices were like from the Stone Age. So we had these Niagara recorders that were like a 1970s reel-to-reel tape deck. You know, like a porno, like, down to gong, golly. So you would wear that down here in your crotch. And it had two microphones that came up to the side. And the quality of it was great. But it's like carrying a brick in the front of your pants. And if you lift up your shirt or have an issue like that,

and a lot of times you'd get in a little. little scuffle with the brothers, you know, they call it a mud check, especially the reapers, you know, they punch you in the chest. Like, what do you do prospect? I'm going to wait until I get a full patch and I'm going to put my $100 on the bar. I'm not always going to be a prospect. And then it's, we're going to go. And they'd be like, ah. So a lot of times they just mud check, see what you're about. Are you going to step up? You're going to, you know, you're going to protect yourself kind of a thing. They want to see what you're about. So there's a lot of little skirmish in the ship. So I'd always have to keep, like,

I'd cover that. And so you're trying to kind of wrestle with people, punch some and you're trying not to keep this shit out. The stuff we have now is like, it's unbelievable. And guys bitch about wearing it. It's like this big. Like, somebody can find that. I go, dude, I was wearing a real, real tape deck back in the day. Like in my phone.

So I'm like, yeah. I don't want to hear like, oh, this little tiny thing is too hard to fucking secrete. Like, no, it isn't. So the Reaper's head, they had this two strippers, of course. I get in the clubhouse. One of the president says, Brasback. And I'd been, got, made prospect at my prospect patch.

He goes, oh, prospect, take that bitch for a ride. She needs some air. Like, all right. So I go out, I get on a scoot. She gets on the back and she starts with the, rubs the shoulders, goes in the back of my hair, down the sleep. Basically just searching me for fucking wire. She goes down by arms. At this point, I've got a, didn't have the recorder, thank God at the time, but I had a one watt transmitter.

which was a lot smaller, and it was over on the right side. And I also had a big hole in my pants on this side. So she goes down through my legs, my back, my waist, you know, nothing. Well, then she starts fishing around and playing with my junk through the hole in my pants. You know, so I'm driving, and my cover team was, you know, the guys are watching, and they're seeing this go on. And I'm like, oh, fuck. So she's digging around on my pants.

I go, babe, I go nothing from nothing. But I'm going to hit the note here in a second. I'm going to make a mess. and then we're going to crash. She starts labs. She goes, oh, it's okay. It's all good. So we drive back to the clubhouse.

I get off the bike. She gets off. She goes in. I can see the president look at her. And she goes, it's like, it's all right. Like, all right. There was times they went out.

They would toss my truck, you know, because the club house had cameras outside. Both the Groom Reapers, they did it, and the Hells Henschman. I'd be inside watching the surveillance camera outside, and I see one of the brothers look around, open the passenger door on my truck, dig through the box, look in the back of the truck, you know, pop the hood real quick,

look underneath, shut everything, and then come back in. But they would, you know, they would check you like that. So you gotta be prepared. Did you see him doing that to anybody else or just you? Yeah, I had to do it to other. I did it when I was a prospect for the Reapers, they would be like, they just, you know, it was a look. It was like, they're like, dude, you know,

I'd go outside, look around, you know, pretend like I look around, check his car, come back in. Dude seems clean. It's all right. They're like, okay, all right. So they do it. He did it all the time. Have you ever run into another undercover?

Not knowing it. I mean, agencies don't do the best job. No, we don't. We don't. That's a fact, too, man. That's a big fact. I'm trying to think. I know people have, but I never experienced that.

I never ran into another guy. Right on. It's almost like night vision. Like, if you look at it, you know, if he's got night vision, you get that red so you can tell. So yeah. No, I never had that. Right on.

Yeah, but what was your, you know, Mel talked about some of the violent shit that he's done yesterday, but he, I think he left a lot out. You get any. You know, I think what I'll say about Mel and his violent, Mel was a violent guy. There's no doubt about it. He had those Charles Manson lamps. When I saw him the first time, the way he looked and stuff in his eyes, I was like, Matt, the dude's a very bad man.

He's a very bad man. And that was my first thoughts when I saw him. I think smells like, you know, Sodom and Gomorrah in the Bible? So the angel comes down, they're running away, right? Lot, his wife, and Lot's wife turns around to look back as God's decimating. And she turns to assault because she looked back at the past. And I think Jesus actually says in another later on, and Jesus says, Remember Lot's wife.

Or remember Lot's wife. Don't look back. So once you're forgiven, you don't look back. Once you come to God and you know in your heart asking forgiveness, God forgives you, it's done. It's forgiven. You do not look back. So I think a lot of what Mel's is with what he had done, I feel like he's gone out of his way to make amends to everybody pretty much ever beat up in his life. He's gone out.

He goes, I'm sorry that I did that, you know? And he goes, but he's asked the Lord for forgiveness too. And I think it's very hard for him. I know when we were doing the sizzle reel for the movie stuff, I actually told him at one point. I said, brother, let's go home, man. I go, I can see it in your eyes now. I go, the guys, I didn't want the crew guys that were doing the lighting and all this.

I don't want them to know that guy because that's not the guy I know now. That's not the guy I'm friends with. So it's like, I go, let's just go home, man. You know, we live a, we got a good life, man. We got a roof over our head. We got a great family, you know, that loves us. We don't need to, there's, we don't need to make a movie. I said, plus, none of that, what you do now for people that you just talk to you that are in a bad spot,

he doesn't turn anybody away that comes to him and says, man, I did this and there's no way I could be forgiven. You know, Mel is like, right, no, that's not right, you know. So I think for him to look back on that violence, it's almost like Lott's wife turning around. And I think he's afraid that he doesn't want to re-experience it. But I go, brother, your story of redemption, it has to start with that violence where you were, you know. That's what makes it real. Exactly. You know, I told him one time when he was doing a sizzle reel, he was minimizing the shit.

Well, you know, I was an altar boy. You know, I go, brother, I go, I don't arrest altar boys that all of a sudden start breaking windows, you know, on a RICO. I go, you did a little bit more. It's like, he would hang his head and he's like, oh. And I go, brother, I go, you're going to have to touch that dragon, man. You're going to have to go back and get in touch with that a little bit and tell that story because your story of redemption, the people that come to him, they knew him back in the day when he was rode.

So they see that, and they know he's changed and they know it's for real. I mean, we've been friends for 20-some years now, and he has not gotten off to God Squad ever. You know, he's been, once he committed to it and he saw what had done. did in his life, the amount of peace that he got, he's like, this is where I need to be. And he goes, the ability to help people and shit, you know, he goes, I would pray on stuff, Chris. He goes, you know, I prayed God that he would bring those keys and let me out of jail. I would say that prayer every night.

He goes, God just, God's got another plan. He goes, but the people he's rotated in through my life that I've been able to witness to or help come to know the Lord or just get out of the lifestyle. Because that guy was, he was like the Al Capone of Chicago in that he does. Well, he knew and was friends with traditional organized crime, the mob guys in Chicago. All of them knew him. He knew them.

They used to break bread together at a place on Rush Street in Chicago. They'd be in there eating, and he'd be in there eating. He was locked up with them when he did his stint and his federal stint. You know, they were buds. They knew him. And then he had all the street gangs, you know, the Mexican mafia guys, the Latin kings, the gangster disciples, the vice lords. He knew all the leaders and they all liked them.

So he, his, and they all knew him by reputation. They knew what he had done in the past. And he garnered great respect from those guys in the criminal community. So now that he's changed, I go, I go, those guys knew you when you were mental, all those bad stories. So now where you're at with the Lord and your walk and the redemption component, I go, now these guys can see like somebody that was as bad as them and as violent as them, man, you can change your life.

You're not stuck in this rudder of this hole, man. You could actually make a difference. difference in change. And I go, and you're the beacon for that. And I go, but we don't need to put it on the TV screen, man. Or you don't need to make a movie about it. You got enough people coming to you now that you've helped. I go, that's a life well lived.

I said, so this other stuff, if it comes and more, and it's benefit to God's grace, great. And if it doesn't come, we're okay with that too, man. It's, we've, my humility at this point, I'm like, man, I've got nothing. I don't want to prove anything to anybody. I don't need a movie. I don't need any of that. I just need, I just want to live.

a happy life, man, where I got some peace. So his reputation spread far and wide. He was the poster trials for the Hells Angels across the country and across the world. Wow. Yeah. Everybody knew who he was. Everybody knew his reputation.

I mean, he's seen some of the earlier pictures. Yeah, that was road. You know, he was a monster. No doubt about it. Damn. It's funny. I think it might be a self-preservation thing with Milt too a little bit in that he goes, yeah, but I always had, I always thought of myself,

I'm a good guy. And I go, Mel, in your heart of hearts, you are a good guy. I go, you're a good man. I said, but Road decided to lead you down a different road, man, and you weren't a very good man. At that point, it doesn't change who you are in your heart, but your actions dictate something completely different, man. But again, that's your tool, man. That's what you get these other guys to come up and go, I don't want to live the life anymore. And if this guy can make it okay. He was doing prison. When we locked him up, we housed him in Henry County Jail, which is a jail, maybe 400 inmates, you know, in a county jail in Western Illinois.

And there was a guy, Rodney, and I have to give you the clip of Rodney. Rodney was a guy that he did prison ministry. His wife died in 1970. So every day after his wife passed away, he was a farmer. Get done working, farm. cattle, corn and beans, come into the local county jail and he had Bible study. And he was the one that bought of his own pocket TVs for the inmates, and he would have Bible study every, I think three days, four days a week. He would come in every day after work.

So this guy's working his ass off every day. His wife died, his devotion to her and to, like, for his wife, he would come in. She's a devout Christian. He goes, I'm going to, I'm going to witness to these guys how Lord's changed my life. So he would do it every day. So when Mel, out there this is 1970 mills now 20 years later mel's in locked up with this guys Mel and him clicked so tight together right off the bat because Mel was already telling these guys in there you got to you got to come to know the Lord and let's take a look at what you got caught with and he'd have the sentencing guidelines federal and you go what's your criminal history and the guy would say well i've been down three times okay

criminal history is this here's what the what they're going to give you for your what you did, the federal system is like they assign a number and the greater the crime, the higher the number. And it's like a chart, you go like this, that's how much time you get. So he goes, you're looking at 360 to life. He goes, my suggestion to you, we're going to pray on it, but I think you should cooperate. And, you know, come in on yourself and look for a reduction because you're going to get hammered.

And that's the only way out of it. Like, well, what if I could beat the case? He goes, you could try. Because you can try to beat the case. He goes, if you want to, we'll pray on that too. Let's pray, see what God has. has in store for you. So he would do that. So he hooks up with the prison ministry guy. And at one point, the sheriff called and said, or the lieutenant that ran it called me up. And he said, he goes,

hey, can Mel do his entire time in here? And I go, why? He goes, because he basically came in, and these guys would be playing dominoes to be loud in the day room, slapping, and everybody's yelling. And this poor guy is trying to do Bible study. And so Mel came in one day and he said, hey check it out fellas he goes we're going to do bible study in the day room for 40 minutes he goes so you got two choices you can join us for bible study or you can go sit quietly in your cell and reflect on life he goes those are your two choices your third choice is to slam dominoes and be loud because you're gonna not gonna like what i'm gonna do to you after that so this entire pod got a bunch of guys coming to bible study everybody else would just go into their pod and sit there because he had

Hells Angel forever tattooed on his friggin' stomach. And they were like, okay. And again, it goes back to that. When you wear that tag, you got that respect. And they knew who he was, not only by reputation, but that he was a Hells Angel. And they knew he would get after it if he had to. He loved the Lord, but he'd also punch you in the mouth if you didn't listen to the Bible study that this Rodney guy had come in and took his time out of his own life to get you guys

on a better track. He goes, you've got to respect that. And then actually he went back years later. Roddy had Alzheimer's and was in a home. And there's a great videotape. His friend, he didn't know it, but his friend was videotaping it. And he's talking to Rodney, thanking Rodney for, thank you for, wow. It's a great video, man.

Real good video. Do you have that? He mailed us. I'd love to put that up. Yeah, should. Because it just, he goes, Rodney, I can't thank you enough, tell you enough. And you see Rodney finally realize. like who Mel is even through the dementia and he just breaks down just crying he's like

thanks because I'm glad you can't I live in Florida now I live in Florida I live in Florida I flew in just to come and see you I wanted to see you here wow wow yeah so there's that that ying and yang Evan flow good and bad It's a constant. It's a battle. When did you link up with Jay Dobbins? Jay was, let's see, Jay got, I don't want, Jay's got a great story.

I don't want to be a guy that tells Jay's story, but he had gotten, taking a house, he was shot in Tucson, Arizona through the back, basically died on the way of the hospital. They paddled him back. So he comes to, he was an outstanding football player, wide receiver for the Wildcats, very known well. And the shooting ended up being, you know,

it was all over the newspaper. Tucson's not a super large community. And so Jay came up to Chicago, then got transferred up to Chicago, and he was my partner for quite a few years before he went back to Tucson. So when he came up, we were in that SIG shooting where I told you the guy, all he wanted to know is if I decocked.

That was with the guy I was with was Jay. He got, not like to tell that story again? Sure. You didn't tell it in here. He told it out there. Oh, okay. We did a gun reverse on two gangbangers from Juliet, Gangstor Disciples. We went to do the takedown.

We did the undercover part, and then we just got in our car. And we just figured, oh, shit, we had our stuff. We had done it off-site. The bad guys weren't by our car, so they didn't see anything. So we did off-site. We get in our car and I had our vest and stuff in there. So we put our vest on and shit. And the takedown team was getting right behind them

and knock him down on a felony stop. So Zay vectoring behind them, Jay and I pulled in front because a lot of these guys squirt, you know, and they're going to run, you know, if you don't have them all blocked in. So we ended up being a lead car. Well, we're getting ready to make the stop there on a radio. We're getting ready to affect the stop.

And there was a kid on a bicycle that just out of nowhere showed up. And I'm like, hey, hey, hey, we got to move it down the road there's a kid on a bike right here by that pine they had already hit the lights and siren let these guys know they're getting stopped so the guy in a car with the two bad guys slows down and um i speed up to get away from the kid hopefully draw these guys up farther up into the zone where we can knock him down safe and uh make the arrest well i get kind of blocking the road jay gets out the passenger side i get out the driver's side and And the guy just floors it.

And at the same time, the passenger gets out. And he's like, boom, boom, boom. He starts putting rounds down range. They hit Jay with the car before he hits him. I'm shooting back. They hit Jay with the car and it hits him so hard. He does that, you know, that football, you know, you're like this, left, right, uptown. He was doing that before he got hit.

But before he gets hit, he ups, boom, puts one in the guy's shoulder. they gets hit by the car, flips up over the top of the car. Actually, shoots again before he lands on the ground. I was kind of like, anybody else see that? That was kind of amazing. Oh, yeah, get back.

But, um, so, Jay's down. I run over, I go, you're right? He's like, go fucking get him. I'm like, right out. So I jump in a car and it's a chase. We had Illinois State Police band Radio's in her, so it's a call the pursuit.

You know, now the cavalry, everybody's coming out of the woodwork. end up pitting a guy into a, like into a field. They get out, they run. They're in like an open field area with a lot of wooded new construction. So I didn't see exactly where they went when they left the car trying to see if the guy still had a gun. I get up on top of the hill and I'm just peeping just very slow, you know, just as small as I could be, still had high ground. But I want to be able to see, you know, larger areas I could, looking for movement, looking for trying to see where these guys squirted to.

And then I hear like huffing and puffing behind me. And motherfucker, motherfucker. And it's Jay walking up the hill. And he's got his gun on his badge in his hand. No shoes on, because the shoes got knocked off his fucking feet. Knees are completely blown out. He goes, hey, I quit. I go, what?

He goes, yeah. He goes this fucking twice. He goes, hasn't even been like, not even two years. He goes, I'm all done. And I'm like, all right, bro. I go, check it out. I go, how about we find these? these guys, make sure everything's cool in a gang.

I go, then you can quit after that. But until then, you're standing up. We know there's a guy with a pistol. Hey, let's get down. And so he did. And so, wow. So that was my- Fuck the shit, I'm done.

That was my first- We're in the middle of a gun fight. Don't mind. How about you quit? But no, just a great undercover agent and a good investigator. No doubt about it. Yeah, that's the first time. That's the first incident we had.

But we worked together. I did a lot of UC stuff. and we did some undercover together, but we bought some pipe bombs off a guy. Oh, we go upstairs now that you brought him, J. Dobbins. This guy was making pipe bombs. It's where like, oh, shit. Well, so we're like, how many do you have left?

We don't want to tell them. Go make us one because you don't want to do that. You're just like, do you have any left? I've got two. Don't sell them to anybody. We're going to come get him. So this was right after the shooting. So Jake, we're going up to steps to this guy's apartment.

and the door is slightly open a little bit. And it's those apartments where you walk in, there's a little dinette, and there's like a kitchen wraparound thing, and it's got like a hole through it so you can see it into the other room. So we opened the door up, and we're standing there,

and the guy's got, it's an AR-15 looking, but it's a 9-millimeter. I forget, SMG, or the 9-millimeter, it looks like an AR platform. He's just sitting there, and he's like this, and we're in the doorway. And we were just like, it was like, fuck, I can't even jerk my shit at this point and get with this guy. We were both in the doorway and we just started.

And he goes, hey, just fucking with you, motherfuckers. Check it out. It looks like an AR, but it's a 9mm. We're like, that's fucking great. And I'm like, I looked at it and Jay's like, he goes, I got to stop hanging around you because no good's coming for this. So we go in and the guy's got the pipe bombs. And I go, man, trying to get information about the pipe bomb, what's in it. So we're talking.

And I go, man, you got a lot of balls building those things, man. I'm afraid that shit will go off. And he goes, oh, they're perfectly safe. And he starts banging them together. Yeah, I had kind of the fuse. It's safe. I'm like, that's good, bro. I trust you.

It's safe. So, you know, we take them downstairs and we arrest them, pick them up and take them out. But, yeah, I just came to mind. That was another deal. But we've done just a lot of small deals, small recovery deals like that together. you know, buying guns and dope. We had another guy in our group, Mike Lipman. We did another really good undercover agent.

We did one where he did some undercover for the FBI out of the South RA in Chicago. They had organized crime case. And they had a guy that was making, this guy was crazy. He was an old school guy. He was making silencers. He was dealing cocaine, stealing cars. I mean, he was just like a one-stop shopping for criminal activity. So Mike Lipman had gotten into it.

to him really good and he really likes Mike. So Mike said, hey, this guy's got a stolen Jaguar there. You know, you want to come with me and drive the Jaguar back and we'll figure out how we're going to do that. He goes, I'm going to buy some dope and he's got some new silencer thing he wants to show me. So I'm like, all right. So he gets there and a guy is fucking nuts, but he's like a tool and die guy, so he's really good. So he was making prototype revolvers that you put a sign on a cannon that actually worked. He was turning the barrel down. He fixed the size. silencer, but he had the headspace, the gap, like, so close that it, you still heard a noise and there was gas escaping, but it wasn't, it wasn't like, you know, there's a large

enough space that it's silent. I mean, you could silence it to a degree, but not really effectively. This guy actually had figured out a way to do that with a revolver because that headspace was so tight, tolerance, you've got to keep it lubed. So we get there, this guy's half nuts, and he goes, hey, he goes, you're going to buy that Jaguar and he, Mike introduces me to him. He goes, yeah, my boy Chris is going to take it apart when he gets it back to his shop.

He's like, all right, great. He goes, great car. It was an insurance job for another mob guy from the East Coast. So I'm looking at the Jaguar and he goes, hey, you guys need a bomb? Any bombs? And I'm looking like, is this some type of ATF undercover scenario at the Academy where you go in

and the guy's got a smorgasbord of shit? And I go bombs. I go, yeah, I suppose we could, oh. He goes, dynamite. He goes, you guys can use dynamite. Your line of work, you need dynamite, right? I'm like, yeah, sure. He's like, you know, when in Rome, okay.

So he gets in his garage, and he's got this box, and he pulls it out. And I didn't pay a lot of attention during the explosive instruction at the academy. But I knew enough that it was very sweaty, and I knew that if it was crystallized, it was a lot more shock-sensitive. Because, I mean, it's pretty stable. I mean, you could throw it around, burn it. You know, it's not going to go off unless you've got to. you've got an actual cap that's going to do it.

So he goes, or high explosive. So he goes, I go, what am I going to do with this? I go, I go, I can throw it at somebody. He goes, oh yeah, he goes, you need some caps? He goes, you need a bomb? I go, I don't necessarily need one, but I could probably use one at some point. He goes, okay, he goes, here's a dynamite. So he's got it on the table.

He goes, let me find the caps. So he digs around his garage, he pulls out a box. He's got three blasting caps in a box, and they've got the, you know, blasting caps. Oh, yeah. The shunt, you know, to make sure there's no static electricity that's all of a sudden connect the circuit. So it's got that little shunt thing. I think it's a shunt.

My wife's going to kill me for not knowing what the correct terminology is. But it had the shunts of him. So I knew enough to, okay, that's okay. So I get the caps and I go, well, what do I, how do I, goes, oh, what do I got to do the whole fucking thing for you? He goes, you need a timer? You want a time going? I go, sure. He's digging around his garage.

He's got a mechanical egg timer that's already set up. for a double a battery pack. It's got like six plastic where you clip them in. It's already wired up, soldered. No batteries in it or anything. And he goes, yeah, and he goes to the egg timer. He goes, these things are fucking beautiful. They never fail.

And he'd already wired two wires, one to the actual timing thing that you turn. And the other one was the collect when the timer comes back up. And it hits, now connects the circuit, and the bomb goes off. So he's like, he goes, remember you got to go past five minutes, though, and come back. He goes, because if you just do one or two, it might just go all the way front. He goes, you can't do that. You got to go to five and then come back if you want, like, anywhere from one to four minutes. He goes, you got to go to five and then bring the dial back.

I'm like, okay, good to know. So he gives us all that shit. And so now we got this fucking bomb. So Mike's over looking at the silencer on the, he goes, does this thing actually work? And I guy goes, watch. So he loads it in his garage and he fires a roundoff into a mattress and some other shit that he had up against the wall. We're like, oh, fuck.

So he does that. And it actually worked pretty well. And I'm like, this is kind of amazing. So Mike buys the silent gun off him. He buys a quarter key of cocaine off him, and we get the Jaguar. And we think we're fucking Miami Vice at this point. We're like, who is cooler that we got a fucking stolen

Jaguar, we got this dynamite? So the FBI guy's super happy, obviously. They listen to the wire, happy with what we got. So we get out, we're still on Pagers at this time. We didn't have cell phones then. So we didn't want them following us out. So we were kind of make sure we were clean. We got to a pay phone.

I call our explosive guy. I go, hey man, I got three sticks of I don't know what. He goes, what's it look like? And he's like, oh, it's this kind of dynamite. Okay, he goes, what's the condition of it? I go, it's sweat and all overplace leak and it's wet. He goes, all right, Eddie Crystals. I go, no, no crystals.

So I'm actually touching it and fucking with it, which is dumb. So I'm moving it around, Gooner, Mike Lipman. We called him Goon. Goon Zey, let me see that dynamite. So he's like looking at it, we're touching it. So he goes, well, don't touch it. And I'm like, oh, okay, you know, I didn't know why. He goes, just don't touch it.

He goes, make sure the caps and the explosive are separate. I go, yeah, it's with the cocaine and the trunk of the car. We're going to drive it back to the FBI office. He goes, I'll meet you at the FBI office. And I'm like, okay, cool. So we start driving along and I start getting this fucking headache. Like my eyes are popping out of my head, and I'm just like, man, like dizzy. I'm like, what the fuck?

And Gooner's like, shit. He goes, it's the nectar grissorin that's leaking out of that. He goes, it's absorbed in a. our fingers in our hands now because we were stupid enough to fucking touch it. And so we got these massive pounding fucking headaches. So we get back to the FBI office, get out of the car, and I'm a little fucked up. Our bomb guy shows up on the set. He takes the dynamite.

He used gloves. He didn't touch it because he didn't want a headache. So I go upstairs and tell the rack, hey, I go, and with ATF is Ivan here? Ivan was the FBI we were working with. They're like, he's on his way back. I go, well, let him know, we got the bomb. it's downstairs in the parking lot. And the guy's like, you have a bomb in the parking lot?

I go, it's a little one. It's only three sticks of dynamite and the caps. And the guy's like, are you fucking kidding me? Why did you bring a bomb in the parking lot? Because this was our meat spot. It's your case. Gonna be your evidence. Thought I come back to the gun there.

We're like, the guy had a lot. It was we're gonna have to infectuate the billy. I go, I don't think it's that necessary that we go that far, but, you know, so it was like Maricopa, sorry. Good point, our bad. Shouldn't bring a bomb in the FBI office. That's probably not a good thing to do.

So that was like Jay was with us, I think out on that one as a cover team. And Mike Littman, like I said, another really good undercover agents. So, yeah, we thought we were so fucking cool. You know, little did we know, just the stupidity of every aspect of where we were at, what we were doing. But, yeah. When did you move on to the Sons of Silence? I didn't do them. It was a, I didn't do them.

Blake Boutler and Daryl Edwards were two friends of mine, ATF agents, another great undercovers. I stand on the shoulders of some guys that had done some fucking amazing shit around the country. These guys had gotten in and they were actually full patched with the Sons of Silence motorcycle gang. And we, they were looking for a club that was going to get threatened by these guys. They had pretty much locked down Colorado Springs. And the case agent said, you know what? Blake Buller said, maybe we can get, if you guys ride around as a bike club, The normal protocol would be, hey, get a meeting together.

You guys, we came up with Unforgiven, was our motorcycle gang. So we had Unforgiven, top rocker, Colorado, bottom rocker, which is a no-no. We start driving around their bars in their area. So they were having meetings about who the fuck are these Unforgiven guys. And Blake Boulers in there recording the conversation. They go, we see these guys. Got to have them come in, yank their shit. Normal protocol.

I'm like, all right. See the bar right. So we're driving around. So Blake Butler says, hey, you guys been to bars, they saw you. We kind of got to threat. If you could get a little bit more, maybe be seen one more time, go to their bar, Jenny's bar. You caught Ross Springs.

We're like, okay. So we, you know, we're fucking, right in our Harley's in. We get off to scoots, we go in. Well, the time that Blake had left the bar and told us there were no sons of their signs of there. They're the actual guy that Doug Luckett was like people getting to fights and they're like, yeah, that guy was six, eight, fucking four hundred pounds. Doug Look, he was six, eight, four hundred pounds.

Doug Lookit had gone there. So when we walk in, he's there and the entire bar's there. And so it didn't end well for us at that time. He came out, he said, you guys are it, you think you're that, you're not, and they fucking got us. They got us good. So the whole bar basically beat the fuck out of us in this bar. That's where I got kicked and got the ear ringing from. There was one funny point.

In the middle of the fight, this is a funny, kind of a funny story. So I'm on the ground. I just get kicked. A bunch of people are piling the top of me, putting lumps on me. I get pulled off by a guy named Babyface. John Carr was another great, great guy, big, jacked up, yoked up guy. He pulls everybody off, gets me up. Well, they grab a baby face.

They got him a full Nelson. And they are working them like a heavy bag. I mean, they're fucking just, bam, bam, bam. Beating him pretty good. So the one guy that's beating him looks over at his old lady, and he goes, go get a pole cue. or no, pool ball and come back and crush his skull. So she like runs over the pool table. Now I'm trying to get, I'm like, this is, I'm trying to get to this chick.

So she runs back before I can get there and she's got this pool ball in her hand. And he goes, crush his skull. So rather than crush his skull, she just goes, and she threw it at him. And it goes, boop, when it fell off his chest. And like everybody at the bar kind of caught that and started kind of laughing. like, okay, that was pretty funny. And then he went back to beating our fucking ass. But Jay was in there.

Jay was part of that crew too that day. But yeah. So that's the sons of silence case. And then we got out to the door, ran outside, nursed our wounds, and rode off into the sunset. So, yeah, that's it. That was my only son sauce. But those guys, at the end of that case, I forget how much methamphetamine they bought. They got explosives.

They got bombs. They got machine guns. It was, they did a, Blake and Daryl did an outstanding job, really good case. Wow. Where were you when I read that you got threatened to, they're going to kill you, poke holes in your chest? Yeah, that was a guy. So we started after probably 10 years of the, the bike case. I had the same U.S. attorney in the Central District of Illinois.

He did the outlaws case. He did the Hell's Hedgeman Angel part. And then we went back. And because we could show historically that the Grim Reapers had bought about 250 kilos from the Joliet Angels, we did a dry conspiracy on those guys and arrested like, I think, three or four members out of Joliet outlaws and got them on the drug conspiracy. So this is like up to 2000, right around in there, I think, yeah, 99, 2000. Right. We're still working on J's, or not Jays, but Mel. indictment when we got him on 2004. Then after that, I started doing, we were doing these

Gideon operations around the country. And so we would go to like the worst city in the country and we would deploy into there. We would spend about two months doing a workup talking to the local police department, who are your worst guys, who's the shot callers, who are the hitters, who are the trigger pullers? And we would focus on just those guys specifically to try to wrap them up in anything we could get. You know, El Capone eventually went to jail for income tax. evasion. So never went to jail for how many people he killed or shot or booze, but income tax. So we found, like, ways to go in and try to take that violence out of that community. One of the ways we did it was stash house robberies. So I pretend like I'm a stash house robber.

I'm a courier. And I know where probably 20 kilos of Coke is. And it's kind of a whole scenario. I want to bore you with it completely. It's not boring. And a lot of people are still out there kind of, um, doing something similar. We changed it up a little bit, but we still do these type of proactive cases. So I act like a drug courier, and I go to the worst guys you got in the neighborhood. I go, you got some killers, man. And I met one guy one time in Vegas. He sat there, and he pretty much succinctly put it in play. He goes, because I don't need robbers to rob this place. He goes, I need killers that are going to rob because the way it's set up is I know where the dope is

and I can drive us there eventually. However, there's forearmed guards and their VATOs. their cartel guys, they're not going to give that dope up just because we asked for it. And they're like, no, we understand. And we run it just the exact way of stash house runs for the cartels. So everything looks exactly above board in the criminal community because that's how they operate. And that's how our scenario is set up. So there's always a plan. The only guy that is a connection between the stash house robbers and the cartel,

is me. I'm the guy that is going to be introducing everyone, or actually not introducing, but bringing them to the stash house to kill everybody and steal the Coke. So they know at the end of the day, cartels, they don't like 20 bricks gone. They're gonna wanna know where their dope went and they're gonna try to find who fucking robbed them. So I'm the only lynchpin.

So these guys generally always have another conversation without me that involves killing me. And this guy in this instance, they were talking about what we gonna do with, his body, what we can do with Chris's body when we get done killing him. He's like, poke about 10 holes in that motherfucker, man. So we got to get deep in there. Poke 10 holes.

He goes, because what happens is when we throw him in the water and a river, gas blows him up and he floats to the surface. Poke about 10 holes in that motherfucker. He'll stay down with the fishies. So that's what, that was the we're going to kill Chris. But generally in those cases, they're always going to kill you at the end. But we've got things in place that they're not going to kill you until they get the location of the stash house and we take them off before that.

Holy shit. Yeah. It works great. Some of the most violent guys I've ever met my life around those cases. Because they're about we're killing everybody in the house. I'm like right on, bro. Shit. And then so many crimes have been solved after the fact when these guys cooperate because

you're looking at a chunk of time on that case. Well, these guys already have a history, violent history. They've already got convictions that bodes against them on the on the federal case. They got a gun, the amount of dope we charged that they were going to rob. So they look at a substantial more. And the only way to get out from under that is to cooperate. So you end up with guys that say, well, I could tell you about three murders or four murders, give those up.

So. I mean, I'm just, you know, going through some of the stuff on this staff house operate, staff house operates, staff. Stash house operations. I mean, Phoenix, Arizona, 2009, 70, arrest during a wave of home invasion. at drug locations, Oakland, California, 2012, police chief requested ATIP help after violent crimes rose 20%. Four months later, shootings were cut in half. California, 2012. Crew member provided information to let FBI to solve nearly $1 million in armed car heist. Chicago 2013, arrested gangster disciples and Forrester from Englewood, one later charged with murder

on bail. Did you put a real fucking dent and... They're bad people. What was going on over there? Yeah. But it wasn't just me, man. I mean, the ones you're talking about I did, but we've done those around a country and guys have done some really heinous guys.

I think we were talking earlier about the MS-13 guys that cut the fetus out of the girl's stomach. Richie Zias, my partner from Tampa, a Cuban guy. He did those guys. I'm sorry, what did you just say? The MS-13. It was the guys that FBI had a case and they had an informant, female informant, that was given from information.

They'd relocated her and she came back to her red zone, unfortunately. They found her, they lured her to a bridge under a bridge. She was pregnant. So by virtue of the fact that she gave information about MS-13, they went ahead and held her up and they cut the fetus out of her stomach and then slid her throat. Richie Zias, my partner from Tampa, had done that sec, a cruise guy's bought guns and dope off those guys. And then he testified at the sentencing about all the other criminal activity they had done and were doing it at that time in addition to the murder that they killed that witness and cut the fetus out of her stomach. Shit. What's it like looking these fuckers in the eyes?

It's fun because you know they're going to go to jail in a minute on a take down and stuff. But I tell you, that's where people say there's not evil out there. Everybody has self-worth. That's not true. I believe people can change. I believe generally that people are good, but there is evil. And there is evil in these people's eyes, man.

They've got that look. And you just know. can just feel it. This guy will kill me in a minute. This guy has killed people before. But those are the guys we need to, we want to remove them from the community. You know, it's like crabgrass in your lawn. You know, the bad guys, the uber violent guys are the crabgrass. You want to remove that so the rest of the grass can grow, healthy grass can grow. And so you got to, you got to have proactive law enforcement and you got to do that. But you know, with the anti-law enforcement stuff and everything's racially biased, it's like it's harder to do those without.

having to fight that defense a lot of times. Yeah. You know, it's almost like on the stash house stuff, after I retired, you know, I did a thing for the Chicago Sun-Times because I was tired of getting this, you're getting the defense side of it, but you're not getting the proactive side and why it's important to do those kinds of cases.

And, you know, they're like, well, you're just doing it in this one community. You're doing the black community, either Hispanic community or this community. I was like, no. We're doing in any community. we find violent guys that are willing to step up and kill somebody for fucking cocaine because they're not doing good in the community.

I said, we need to remove them because they're not just doing this. They're doing another criminal activity. And so when we meet them and we talk to them and they're like, hey, we're it. Like the guy, I did a couple for the FBI in Chicago and they were the, it's the one you're it. They were the enforcers. Get that off the internet? Is that where you got?

Those guys were, okay. Those guys were the enforcers for the gangster disciples on the subject. south side. And the guy told me the guy that led the crew, the guy I stepped to first to say, hey, you got anybody that would do this or interested. He says, I'm interested and I've got a crew. And I said, well, I got to meet him because you want to get that conversation from everybody. And he, I meet his crew and he comes over to me afterwards. He goes, what do you think of my little go-getters, man? I said, fuck dude, they're about it, man. They'll jerk a pistol and go to work, won't it? He goes, fuck yeah. He goes, you know all that violence in Englewood, all these murders

that have happened? The last five murders on the south side? My guys. My guys took care of that. I'm like, right on, brother. So that's the people that you're taking out of the community, those uber violent guys, you're taking out of the community, and that's important to do, man. But they're like, they were, you know, black gang's disciples, so they're a black gang. So the question is, from the judge and stuff, why are you picking on, you know, you're just doing black guys? I'm like, look, look at the violence in these two communities on the west side and the south side of Chicago. Look at the level of violence there. I go, it's almost like losing your keys in the garage, but you're looking for them in the car.

kitchen. It's like because the light's better and it's warmer. I said, bro, I'm not going to catch, I'm not going to find the keys in my kitchen because I lost them in the garage. I'm not, if I'm tasked with preventing and stopping violent crime, especially using with a firearm, I got to go to places where it's very violent and they're using firearms. And unfortunately, it's disproportionately in these communities. But there's good people in those communities that if the priors are taken out, gives them a chance to breathe. And you know what happens if you don't fucking pay attention to those communities? and you let all those criminals keep going,

you're a racist then too. Correct. Dude, there's no, it's common sense of good judgment has left the arena at this point. It's just a fucking losing battle. Absolutely. You try to do good, you're a racist. You try to do bad, you're a racist.

Like, it's just, it's, it's fucking ridiculous. Yeah. We had 30 shootings last weekend in Chicago. 30 shootings. And that's not even a, it's not even what we call a good weekend for shootings. I it crime has violent crime murders they've gone down to a degree and it's kind of on a slope and it happened when the attitude toward law enforcement changed unfortunately you know it's got to be political and I think finally after the George Floyd shit was done and the defund the police attitude was done proactive law enforcement's coming back and you're starting to see those the benefits of that which is taking these violent guys off the street I said that wrong I did to correct myself I said good or bad, you pay attention and you give the community attention and you arrest the bad guys.

Right. And a black community and you're a racist. Right. If you neglected because you're labeled a racist and you let crime rum rampant, you're a racist. Right. So what the fuck are you supposed to do? You keep your nose down, you do your job. I know what I do?

I know when I go to heaven and God says, what about these guys? I can account for everybody I put in jail. You know, I didn't. I'm not going to lie on anybody. I'm not going to do any of that shit. You know, these guys went to jail because they jerked a pistol and went to work, or they were talking about doing it, or they've already killed people. So these are the guys that we want to do, man.

It's like Mel, and God bless him for changes his life. And I'm glad I did. But at that time, Mel needed to be taken off the set. He was the head of the snake. And I think that's why once he changed and he went to jail, that's why the U.S. attorney that had all these cases, He goes, man, we've had a good run. We've done a lot of clubs.

He's done a lot of violent guys. There's no more, the RICO's that Sandy, the Volcano did up in Wisconsin, that stopped the violence, man. Because guys got, we're looking at life, and some guys got life. It's like, you know, and for what? You know, it's almost like the, uh, the freaking rotary club got after it with the, uh, some other philanthropic group in the community and said, your fish fries not that good, so we're going to kill you guys.

I mean, there's no, no actual reason to do that. other than be just for the sake of violence being violence man. So yeah. Well, Chris, let's take a break. We'll talk about what got you out of the ATF. Why did you leave? Right on. We've all seen it.

The Department of War is operating in a world that's changing faster than ever. That's why so many guests on my show talk about the importance of continued innovation and technology in the military. But here's the problem. Working with the Department of War can be complex. For many companies, the process isn't always transparent. It's hard to know who the right stakeholders are, where the decisions are made, or how funding actually moves. Even when you get the right conversation started, you often hear the same responses. We like the technology, but funding is already allocated. Or check back next fiscal year. That leaves a lot of capable teams with strong products, but no clear path forward.

That's where my friends at SBIR advisors come in. They've built a team of over 60 former acquisition officers who spent their careers inside that black box. They help you find the right buyers in the Department of War, find the money, and write winning proposals so you can get on the right contract and fast. Since 2020, they've helped small businesses like yours win over $600 million in government contracts, and they're a 100% veteran team dedicated to

one thing, getting the best technology into the hands of the people who need it the most, the warfighters. If you're serious about selling to the Department of War, go to sbiradvisors.com. That's sbiridvisors.com. And if you mention my name, you'll get the first month free. I'm Sarah Adams, the host of vigilance elites, The Watch Floor, where we highlight what matters. It became a permissive state. Explain to you why it matters, and then aim to leave you feeling better informed

than you were before you hit play. Terrace, hostile intelligence agencies, organized crime, not everything is urgent, but this show will focus on what is need to know, not just what is nice to know. When you run a business, you track every dollar, and your bank shouldn't make that harder or hold you back. Chime is changing the way people banked by offering the most rewarding fee-free banking. It's built for you, not like these old banks, no overdraft fees, no monthly fees, and access to thousands of fee-free ATMs.

With Chime, you can get up to $1,150 in annual rewards fee-free. You get 5% cash back on your Chime card in a category of your choice like gas or groceries. Your savings grow faster with a 3.75% APY. That's nine times higher than the national average. You also get premium travel perks like airport lounge access and a 24-7 concierge and access up to $500 of your pay early with my pay. Chime is rated five stars by USA Today. for customer service, real humans, 24-7, and you're not just switching banks. You're upgrading

to America's number one choice for banking with a Chime checking account. Chime is not just smarter banking. It is the most rewarding way to bank. Join the millions who are already banking fee-free today. Head to chime.com slash SRS. That's chime.com slash SRS. It only takes a few minutes to sign up. Chime is a fintech, not a bank. Banking services for my pay and Chime card provided by Chimes Bank partners. Optional products and services may have fees or charges. Stated annual percentage yield and cashback for Chime Prime only. No minimum balance required.

Checking account ranking based on a J.D. Power Survey published October 20th, 2025. For more information on APY rates, my pay, spot me, and travel perks, go to chime. com slash disclosures. We're back from the break. We're getting ready to get into kind of your last assignment, if that's what you call it, and why you left ATF. Sure. After 30 years, which may be enough at itself.

That's probably good enough reason. Yeah. The last, so I started working full-time for SOD, Special Operations Division, undercover branch, so I didn't work out of any one particular area. I worked all over the country. So we were doing these Gideon operations. And we would, again, like I was talking about, we would focus on the communities that were really over-violent and we were running at those.

So we were out in Cleveland, Ohio, excuse me. And at that point, I was 55 maybe. I think I'm 55. I was 55 at the time. Or 54, 54. And we were running, we would do, I know, Skidians, we would run maybe 14 different operations a day undercover deals. We'd have a big board, whiteboard at the offsite.

We'd like, okay, inform and so-and-so's got this guy, this guy, this guy. two undercover buys just to meet for conversation. So we kind of mapped out our entire day to kind of maximize because we're only there. We would run about four months straight, you know, every day for four months. We take Sundays off for something, go to a ballgame. But for the most part, excuse me, you never got away with it or away with it, away from it. It was just always, you know, because we were trying to maximize the amount of time we had or maximize the number, not defendants, but maximize enough encounters.

in that period of times we could in four months. So we were working pretty fast. The ones out, and I think the most we ever did was 14, and that was out where you talked about that one in Oakland, California. We were ripping and running every day, just into the evening, come back, cut reports, get ready for the next day. The informant says this.

I met this guy undercover. He wants to beat the next day. So it was boom, boom, boom, boom. So we were doing one in Cleveland, Ohio. and we'd done a bunch of deals. It was near the end of the case. And we got information, a guy that a violent dude, a couple-time convicted felon, gangbanger,

two of his buddies had like a bag full of stolen guns. And it was just a simple deal that you've done. I've done, you know, I don't know, a couple hundred times, easy, no problem. We get to the, we get to his house. I back up my undercover truck, and I get out of the truck. He's down. He's got this bag of guns. It looked like guns, sitting on the ground, and unzips it.

I look in. I see this whole shillowl, just pistols and a couple of shotguns and some other things. I'm like, all right, that looks good. So I turned to the undercover truck door, four-door escalate, and I open the back door, and I hear that click. I hear the hammer going back and locking back. And I was like, I turn around and he's got it up and it's right in my face. And he goes, because I think I need to see some money. But he's got that look like, I just want to see where it is so I don't have to pull it off you later kind of look.

And I was like, we train and we teach like tying. up with a guy with a pistol because I know my cover team's about 20 seconds out, maybe 25 seconds, which is a long time when you're fighting for your life. But I know they're going to come up and be there. But I was too far away from him to go hands on. And where we were situated, I knew where the cover team was going to come up and deploy out of their vehicles and move up, not that they wouldn't have had any trouble navigating that and doing the thing, but I felt, I thought maybe I could just close the distance with this guy

somehow and then I could go hands-on. So he starts to go like this, like get down on your knees. And I couldn't give him that. Couldn't give him that. So fuck. Sorry. So I tried to close the distance and I got the money out of my pocket that I had. And I was just going to throw it in the air.

And so as soon as I took the money out, the entire expression in his eyes and his face changed. And he starts smiling. And I was like, motherfucker. And he drops the gun, or he leaves a gun down and hangs on to it. And he pulls the trigger and he lets the hammer go forward. And I ended up buying the gun. And the bag of gun he had on me. And then the bag of guns, I bought them all, got him in the truck.

And then I left. And I was like, for whatever reason, can't even tell you that it's not the first time somebody had put a gun in my head on the home invasion crew guys that we were doing stash house guy grabbed me in frank farella grabbed me into a stall in the bathroom we were having the meeting in a restaurant with his crew to do the store the stash house robbery and he goes let me talk to you for a minute i'm like all right get in the bathroom and he gets me in the handicapped stall and he gets a 45 out and puts it up under my chin he goes we're for real bro if this thing isn't for real i'm gonna fucking get you and i'm like i don't doubt that for a minute

bro it's for real he's like all right did not have a that did not have a that did not affect me in any way. And there were other times guys would, you know, we're in the gun business. So there's always going to be a pistol, but I cannot even, couldn't even tell you why that was just, I remember thoughts in my head were like Cleveland, Ohio. I'm going to die in Cleveland, fucking Ohio. All this shit I've done. And it's Cleveland. And I was talking to, I ended up getting some help on it. I was talking to the psychiatrist lady that helped me with it. And I go, I could tell you where the sun was in the sky, the birds were chirping.

I didn't know why that I had that memory of that at that particular moment in time. And then I felt like I let my kids down because I fucked up. So it really took, for whatever reason, again, I don't know if it was. Why do you feel like you let your kids down? Because I always told them, I'm fine, I'm gonna be okay. And they're like, you, I could just see.

like my daughter saying, well, you always said you were going to be okay and you're not. And so for me, it just felt like that. I just felt like that, had that feeling. I was just, I felt stupid. I felt like, again, I'm smarter than this. How did this guy get the fucking ups on me? How did this happen like this? And I think that the other thing, it was so personal, man.

I mean, we were right there. He smelled like shit. He smelled like bad B.O., bad cologne and weed with bad. with bad breath, you know, and you're that close and you just, it's all that things, you know, you become hypersensitive and acute to that. And I was just, I couldn't get on the ground. And like I said, I stepped forward and then got the money out and it all went. But it just took its toll.

So it was when I think Tina was down. My wife was down getting her bomb tab. She was going through the, at Redstone Arsenal, it's where all of the train is. I know she was down doing that and I remember when she got back it was I was just incredibly weird I'd be middle of the night it'd be 12 o'clock and I'd have this freaking something's wrong I'm either gonna have a heart attack or there's something wrong around here and I go down I'd look outside going down in the basement and I would just pace for like three or four hours I would walk you know trying to rant myself down like there's nothing wrong with you you're not

going to die not having a heart attack you're okay you know it's I've been in peer support since 1988. You know, I've talked to guys that had been in way worse situations than that. And I felt like, um, I felt part of it was I felt like such a, a pussy. I felt like how did I not, how did I didn't get shot. I have friends that got shot first 14 days on the freaking job. I buried my friends, um, that have been killed. I've got friends that are, um, you know, they're in a wheelchair right now.

because it been shot. I just, it was hard to equate that I was feeling this shitty about that incident that I could not, I was like, this is a nothing Burger Man. This is absolutely nothing. And so I'm in the talking this. I went to a friend of mine that's from the Illinois State Police who runs a center for families, for first responders that have been in a shooting. They run the whole family out there, Cornerstone.

It's a great program. So I called him up. I said, man, I got some, I'm dealing with something. I can't figure out. So we get together and he goes, I got the perfect lady for you to talk to. And I knew his story and all the shit he had been through. And I, so I assumed he was talking to her to get through his stuff. He goes, oh, no, I'm good.

I don't have a problem. He goes, but you're fucked up. He goes, you need to go talk to her. I go, I know your background. I go, you got to be fucked up. I go, I'm not the only fucked up one here. I go, you're fucked up too. He's like, no, you're more fucked up right now.

He goes, here's the name. Here's the number, call her. All right, set up an appointment. I go in, she listens to the whole story, and she goes, I want you read a book. I'm like, okay, what's that? Sorry. It's all good.

She goes, she goes called Touching the Dragon. She goes, written by a Navy SEAL. I'm like, okay. So I started reading this book. And I'm like, great book. What a great career this guy's had. He gets shot and he struggles with getting shot. Now he's off the teams.

He's not anymore. He got shot one time in the knee. Alcoholic blew up his family with all nine yards. Shot one time. So I get to page 207 at the bottom. And the guy that came to talk to him to help him had been shot 25 times and lived. And so he goes, I'm sitting here

and I'm talking to this guy that had been shot 25 times. And he's helping me try to get better. I've been shot one time in late. He talks about shame. Now I get it. Shame is that thing. It's a gift you give yourself, but you don't want it. But you wear that.

Like I said, man, I could not figure out why I was in the basement walking for four hours. I had not been shot. Do you know now? Absolutely. Why? It's the straw. When you when you operate at that hyper-vigilance level, at some point, your mind goes, oh, we're all done now.

Your body's like, your body's done. My mind's telling you, we're all done. And it ends it. And that's where I was at. I was at the end of point. Fuck, Chris, you did 30 fucking years. You were undercover within a year. Right.

That's a lot of shit, man. It is. I realize that it is yeah a lot of shit but again I know

as most of it as a one man band yes it's true it's true but you don't want to be that weak link

in that crew and you know that as well as anybody you don't want to be that guy that's got a pro you don't want to be that guy that can't take it you want to be that guy

that you want to be we're fucking Superman I don't know if you know if you know that but we got capes in our trucks you know you want to be that guy

or at least you you have that for yourself and maybe that helps you get through 30 years of shit. But at some point, man, the body keeps score. And I was just at that point where, so I did the EMDR and prolonged exposure. And it was, I got myself back to quasi-normal. How long did that take? You know, I was surprised at how quickly the anxiety point left. The prolonged exposure, I don't know if you're familiar with it, but I go through it with

the therapist. she's got a little recorder and i thought it was dumb at first she goes i want you to tell the same story i told you want you tell it in the recorder and do it five times record it and i want you to listen to it for five times it takes about 35 minutes the whole time she goes you need to do it every day so i'm like on my way home and i'm like you're fucking kidding me i'm gonna speak into this record i'm pacing in the basement for four hours at night i'm thinking about just driving off a cliff i go This little recorder in this shit is not going to work, but I did it anyway. And I noticed the anxiety level at about day five started to lesson.

And then I noticed that I would get, I could not tell it, I'm surprised it. I got to the point where I could tell it story into the recorder and I wasn't, it didn't have that visceral, freaking effect anymore. It seemed like it was almost, it was there, but it wasn't there, you know. It was more abstract. It was kind of stepped away from where I was at mentally. And I was like, wow, okay. I started sleeping better.

Felt better. And then she did the EMDR. And that by the time I did the EMDR, I was like, I felt that you don't have that right here. Where your anxiety levels through the roof. I'm looking at everybody. It's just that kind of like, it finally, it was this kind of, I got some relief. And it, so that book and that lady definitely saved my life. No doubt.

Wow. Yeah. But again, I'm not the, when I look at what other people have done, like the John Ratunos, you know, the Richie Ziasis, these guys that have, man, it was funny. I talked to Ricky Zias later, but he goes, do you have nightmares? And I'm like, yeah. He goes, man, he goes, I wake up screaming. And he had gotten a divorce.

He was with his new girlfriend. And she's like, yeah, he screams like every night. And I go, hey, dude, remember all those times I was telling you? Like, I'm struggling with this shit. And you said, hey, man, just suck it up. Drink a beer, do a shot off to the next adventure. I go, it would have been really nice if you said, hey, I have nightmares. So I'm like, I tell everybody now, if you're having an issue or a problem,

do not freaking swallow it. And especially don't start doing shots and drinking beer because you're just exasperating in that situation. I said, come talk to me or so. I go, I've got no. I've done what I've done and I'm good. I said, but walking, you've done 30 years or guys who've done 20 years or 10 years on the teams, I go, there's no sense being that miserable and having that constant vigilance and that anxiety

in your gut in your head. It just takes the fun out of life and everything. So, you know, if anybody gets anything about me talking today, get some help, and there's plenty of things out there. We've come so far in our ability to treat that and move that forward. You got to do it, man. You can't not do it. And you owe it to your family.

You know it to yourself. We talk about this all the time on here. You were going to kill yourself? It got to the point where I knew that in the basement, I couldn't go on. I can't. The amount of anxiety and heightened sense of just like skin crawling off, I just, I was like, I can't live like this, man. I can't do it.

But then... Did you know how you were going to do it? I never got that. I would probably just shoot myself, but I never, I never sat down and planned it out or I'm gonna get in the truck, I'm gonna drive away. Because my thing, my was like, my kids had put up with so much shit of me being gone and things like that. That was the thing that I was like, there is no fucking way.

I was just like, dude, you gotta quit being a fucking, I was saying to myself, you gotta quit being a pussy. You gotta stand up and fucking fix this shit and do it right. And I just, I could not do that. that to my kids, man. There's just no way. So yeah, so that lady, that book, if I could meet that seal sometime, I'd freaking love to tell them thanks because that definitely, um, I got a feeling something's going to happen after this releases. Um, it always does. Yeah. What about drinking drugs, anything like that? No, no shit. You never fell under that. I used to drink, I drunk, you know, in that culture i was a 14 beers and three shots guy you know and i'm not a i'm not a big

dude but i could do that still got on harleine right away but um i i don't do that anymore that's been i do if i do one or two beers it's a big night and i'm in bed at 830 um i enjoy my grass in the backyard um yeah it's it's a different i uh i actually got a job i do uh frame of frustration on old like willies jeeps my father kind of got me into it and um so i do that kind of an honor of him he's passed um and i work with a guy that actually melnos him but i arrested him a while back for hobzac robbery and i ran into him after he did about four and a half five years ran into him he was in the halfway house and he had to get a job um to be in the halfway house and it's part of his parole so we run into him he was um managing a rest of

restaurant bar. Tina and I, my wife, gone in to just get a sandwich with some friends. And there he was standing there. And I was like, Ricky, you're out. He goes, Chris, I am. I'm like, so I go, well, how are you doing, brother? And he goes, I'm doing good. And I go, you look good. You look great. You're working out. He was a big kid. He was, yeah, yeah, I'm back to working out. I go, he at the halfway house. He goes, yeah. I go, what are you doing now? He goes, well, he goes, he was an idiot, savabot mechanic, like never formerly trained, but could wrench on any car, any Harley. He was unbelievable mechanic as well he goes a friend of mine's doing me a solid order guy he's giving me a shop area i'm good so i'm setting up a shop i'm just going to work on cars i go that's freaking great man i go good for you he goes yeah he goes um i go we good i go because

we're in a restaurant now and you know he goes no we're more than good dude he goes i changed my life because i'm going to do things differently and he goes for all the this shit I did before I went to jail on your thing. He said, if I just do this five years and get out, I'm good. And I'm like, very cool. So fast forward a couple of years. My dad blew up the motor on his Jeep. So I called up Mel and I said, remember Ricky?

He's like, yeah, I talked to Ricky every other than that. I'm like, he was a guy from the neighborhood kind of guy. I said, think there's any hard feelings? I go, I got this Jeep that I looking at working on. I don't have enough room in my garage to pull the motor out and take the tub off. I'm going to redo the whole thing. He's like, call him. So I call it Bricky, and he's like, fuck, calm, bring it.

So I trailer it out there. We put it in his garage. He takes the engine out within like 15 minutes, figures out what's wrong with it. It's got to be rebuilt. Pulls all the pistons and the crank off. And he goes, you're pretty good with a wrench. He goes, I go, well, I'm retired. I'm looking for your shit to do.

He goes, brother, he goes, I'll clean a part off my over here in the corner. He goes, you just want to bring cars in and wrench on him. He goes, you come any time. So I just started, you know, a couple days. And then pretty soon, I was like, oh, I like coming here and wrenching on cars. And, you know, there's a solace of just building something, you know. And we talk about, he, it's funny because he talks about, you never would have got me for this. I go, I knew you were doing that.

He's like, no fucking way. Because if I had done this, would you got it? I'm going to know. But he's one of those guys. He's a lot like, it's a lot like Mel. he's worked seven days a week, 365 days a year since he got out. And I'm impressed by not only his commitment to staying out of trouble, but also just how he's living his life.

He's a good, he's a good man. He takes care of people. He's just, there's people that come in there. He's got a shop that, excuse me, no big marquee, but people that are maybe struggling with the amount of money they have to get something fixed and they've got a newer car that's going to be $1,500 or $2,000. He goes, let me take you. I'll take care of it.

And he does it on the cheap. And he's just, he's a good guy. It's a good guy. So I go, that's my little place of Salas. I get my wrench out, take a few motors apart. Yeah, it's awesome. It's good. Good for you, man, yeah.

So I was a, at 56 is when I, I could go to 57, but at 56 I was like after the Cleveland thing, just I'm like, you know what, I'm good. I've 30 years, I'm all done now. I'm good. good. Was it a hell of a ride. It was. I don't think I'd change the thing. Well, maybe a couple things, but I like very much where I'm at now. I think, you know, it was funny. I went, Mel had a, he was on social media at the time when I retired. You know, he's big social media,

devotionals, you know, second chance, always stay in the fight, you know, not physical fight, but stay in a fight to do better. And it was a little kid. his father had reached out, his kid had leukemia. And he was on his last chemotherapy coming up. And so his dad reaches out to Melia. He says, my son follows you on Instagram or whatever. I'm not on anything. So I couldn't even tell you what platform it was that he was on.

But he goes, my son loves your devotionals and he loves like your second chance and don't give up. He goes, he's been fighting leukemia. He goes, his last chemo's coming up like this Friday or next Friday or something. And he goes, any way you could call him or, he goes, well, typical Mel. He goes, I'll be in Chicago that weekend. I goes, I'll come up a day early. He goes, you might have, my buddy Chris will pick us up, the guy that arrest me,

pick us up to airport, we'll come. Absolutely, we're at. He's like, well, he gets his last treatment at like 2 o'clock. And I'm like, and Mel's like, great, calls me. And I'm like, he goes, you want to meet this kid? Absolutely. So we go over and we sit down with this little guy. And when he came in, it was his last chemo treatment.

So I don't know if you ever been with anybody that's in cancer, but the last treatment, I mean, you ring the bell and you're pretty beat up after all that poison going through your system. So this little kid comes in, looked sad, and then he sees Mel, and he's like smiling. And he's like, oh, Mel. He started, Mel was like, hey, I've heard all about you. You played baseball. And Mel had the whole kid's whole Bible. He's talking to him and telling him stuff.

And Hulk Hogan had sent him some autographed pictures, and he had a little thing from Hogan. like stay in a fight, you know, so you've done all this stuff for this little kid. So we were only supposed to stay about 45 minutes or an hour. We end up being there like four and a half, five hours. By the end of it, I'm crying, Mel's crying, and his parents are crying. You know, it's just a great moment for this little guy. So at this time, it was right when I was retiring and I was having the problems in the basement. And I never told Mel that I'd been diagnosed with anything or that I had some issues.

But he knew that he goes, what's going on with you? And so I told him after we met with this little guy, I was driving him to the airport. And I said, well, I said, brother, I said, man, I don't even know if it was all worthwhile, bro. I said, I did so much battle damage to my kids, my family, myself. I'm like, I don't think it was worth it. So typical Mel, as you met him, he's popping a stick of gum in his mouth. He's got his bag and we're pulling up to the terminal. He goes, let me tell you something, dude.

He goes, if God's only plan was for you to be an ATF agent, do all your shit, arrest me, put me in jail. I changed my life. I come out. I do all this other stuff. I meet this young man who's suffering from cancer. And we gave him five hours where he's happy because he got an autographed picture of Hulk Hogan. He goes, it's all fucking worthwhile.

It's God's plan. He goes, and who the, are you to decide what God's plans about? And I was like, and he gets out of the truck. He goes, I'll see his next week. I'm like, okay. And he left. And I was like, that was that. kind of universe switch where it's like maybe I'm looking at this the wrong way you know all

this stuff is a gift it's a good way to look at it yeah so that's when miller introduced me to his pastor his old pastor that's just a salt to the earth guy pastor steve this guy was turned 50 and he wanted to bench 500 pounds on his 50th birthday so he did holy what so he's that guy he's his he's just a monstrous guy, but I love him, man. He's helped me come a long way in my walk with the Lord, as with Mel. He's just one of those guys. He's a guy never gave up on Mel from 50. He would pray for him all the time. Mel he said, the pastor told me, he goes, I'd page that big lug at like 2 o'clock in the morning. I knew he was out doing fucking shit. I'd page him. I love you. I'm praying for you. It was like, wow, like right on. So he never quit and he never gave up. So man, just being in

that universe of people that are that, knowing that, you know, they show the glory to God and the peace that you get from having that in your life. I really, I'm just very happy that I have it. I'm happy for you. Thank you, brother. You're there, bro. I've listened to you talk.

I know you're, you seem to be maybe on the front end. Like you're coming into it, coming into your faith. It's easy to lose sometimes, understood. But you're getting there, brother. Thank you. You are. You're a good man. You know it.

When is the first time you met Mel? Not at the airport after he got out of prison or before. First time I met him was right after his attorney told us in the courtroom. Because he's been out of the club for four years. He'll just plead to do his shit and he wants to be done. And the U.S. attorney is like, that's great. but he's got to come in for a proffer. He's got to sit down and spell it all out.

So that's when we first talked. That's when I took him to the bathroom when he was all chained up. And he's like, fuck, dude. And I go, brother, I go, this is just a speed bump in the road of life. Just a speed bump, man. You'll get through it. He goes, I'm looking at 24 years, dude. I said, well, I go, what you're doing the right thing?

You're minimizing your exposure by cooperating and coming in on yourself and pleading guilty. so you're going to get credit for that. I go, that's for you, that's the best you can do. He goes, you got me? I go, we got you. He's like, okay. How about after prison? Yeah, you know, it's so funny.

I think I got him at the airport when he got released. He goes, hey, can you pick me up? The marshals are going to drop me at the airport. And he goes, I got nothing. And he goes, I want to kind of surprise my mom. And I don't want to call anybody from Chicago that I know that I'm coming home. He goes, one, I don't want any of the degenerates coming.

I don't want to, I go, yeah, I'll pick you up. So I scooped him and drove him to his mom's house and sat down. So we had his mom, of course. Wait, this is right after prison? Yeah, right when he got out after his four. You're his first call? Yeah, he called me. Yeah.

Holy shit. Yep. Yep. So it's kind of funny. Yeah, so I picked him up and his mom, of course, we had to eat right away. Her mom's like this tall, little Italian lady. Yeah, funny. So she cooked us up a great lunch.

We ate. Not even awkward, huh? No, you know what? I kind of knew Mel before I knew Mel. When he was locked up, I would listen to his prison calls because you get a lot of information. Like guys will be, they all know it's recorded, but you'll have, they make statements and say shit that you can use against them all the time. So back in the day when he was locked up on the state and the federal stuff, I would listen to all his jail calls. And it was always interesting that I would hear how he talked to the criminal community.

And I heard how he talked to his friends and his family. And you could see that he wasn't road 24-7. He was rode with this crew and he was somebody else with this crew. And I was like, I didn't really expect that. I mean, everybody's got a mom. Every mobster's got a mom, ma, you know. But it was different because he wouldn't allow his friends to get anywhere near the club. Like he had some pipe hitting friends that personal friends, but he would not let those guys.

He goes, nope, not for you. So he wouldn't let him anywhere near it. So I was like, okay. So there was, I could tell there was a difference. And then, like I said, he'd been out for four years and was living his life when we got him. So. Do you guys seem like you've changed it a lot? Oh, yeah.

Yeah. Because if he was on bullshit, we would have smelled that out than the first. he would have got right back into it if he and there's no reason he did he couldn't have he could have given him the patch right back he could have gone right back into the mix or you know he knew like I said enough criminals in the community he could have gone back to whatever life he wanted to go back to with any one of them you know being a major player but he didn't I'm like right on but he yeah he's he's a good friend well we got one last section here okay so we got this new thing we're doing called the hot question okay

so claude same same AI program okay where you got all that other information yeah okay we asked claude to give us an incredible question for mel the other day and today we had it scrape the entire internet for everything that's out there on you and here's what it came up with so here's the question what's something people don't understand about infiltrating biker gangs that could get you killed instantly if you mess it up and what's the closest you've ever come to getting exposed and killed? The thing not to do is show disrespect to anybody membership-wise. If you're new and you show up on the set and you disrespect or you act like you're all that in a bag of chips, you'll get your ass beat in very short order. So knowing the protocol and

knowing how to act. As far as coming close on a killing part from a biker standpoint, probably coming close to being killed happened. I found out about it after the fact more so than at the time. I knew there were times where the outlaws were looking to get us in it, that it would be a problem. So there were very, there were close times then, but it was well beyond anything I knew at the time. And the realization of that later was very hard. What is the, how do you ride in the formation? Well, it's usually president, vice president, road captain, you know, enforcer. There's like a little, depends on the club, have different.

So they lead the pack. You're going to have blockers that ride next to the plaque. So if you're running a whole line of bikes through a town, blockers ride up on either side the pack and they blocked that intersection or corner so cars can't interrupt the the club thing they they were coming out of the pack after mahony's funeral from the funeral home when i was the i was doing security at the gate at the hell's henterman clubhouse in rockford and some guy cut them into the pack and they ended up shooting the guy and dumping like five rounds um and then i've got the gate and i can hear these guys flying up and i see these guys like this I open the gate up and they run a car in and jump out.

Guns go flying in different directions and everybody hunkers down and just sits there watching TV like they didn't do anything. Police cars flying all over the place. I just shut the gate and nothing happened. So cutting bikers off will definitely get you killed in a heartbeat. So yeah. And then last thing. Break down some gang terminology for us. What are some common terms and slang that were being used on the streets?

I think the street vernacular, we always call it, like straps, bangers, thumpers, murk them. I'm going to kill them. So guns are straps, bangers, thumpers, hammers. You're going to bang hammers. You're going to shoot somebody. Going to murk them. You're going to murk them. You're going to put them down.

Going to put them down. Going to get them to bow down. That means basically you got the gun on them. It's like the guy wanted me to do in Cleveland. You got to bow down. So that would be stuff I mean like you know they've got bikers have different terms for old ladies property of you know you might have an old lady that's property of the club or property of a certain member you know they do a lot of that so it's kind of the street vernacular but it's almost

it transcends just you know bikers or street gangs you know same terminology licks if you're going to hit a lick shit I'm going to get down on a lick you're going to do a robbery you know I'm to hit that lick. I'm going to rip that shit off. I'm going to tear it off them. She'll like that means I'm going to rob them. So that's kind of the street vernacular, I guess, if you will. Do you mess it? Sometimes, you know, it's funny. I get to, and ATS has been very nice into having me back to help teach at the Academy and teach field operations and undercover. So I get to dip my toe and look at some, maybe some hard chargers, some guy. We got some guys now, man. It's like being a,

father and your son just freaking hit the home run and or freaking you know won the Super Bowl or some shit or through the touchdown pass when you see a lot of what these guys have accomplished and what they've done and how they've protected themselves how they've saved their fellow agents and shootings and stuff and robberies and man it's just you get you proud that you know man these guys are still jerking their shit and go to work you know you get excited for him you know but then I get to go home and like I said my grass is nice in the backyard and I get to wrench on my Jeep So I get that momentary like, yeah, even though I'm not in it at all on any level. So, oh, man, yeah.

You want to end in a prayer? Absolutely. You want to lead it? Okay. All right. Let's do it. Father, Lord, we thank you for this opportunity to fellowship with Sean to talk about you, Lord, to talk about your grace, your forgiveness, how you interact in our lives and make it better, those that come to you and know you and know you and mean into you just it just makes life so much better thank you for this time and opportunity

lord we all the all the glory goes to you lord jesus name is man amen well chris all right brother i know we're missing a lot but that is a hell of a fucking story man well it was an honor dude my honor man i sit in this chair i feel like a poser man you've had Cody, you've had some amazing people to have sadness. Your brother, I'm very humbled to have the opportunity to talk to. So thank you. I appreciate you. Well, you're one of them.

Well, thank you, brother. Appreciate that. God bless you, bro. No matter where you're watching the Sean Ryan show from, if you get anything out of this at all, anything, please like, comment, and subscribe. And most importantly, share this every. everywhere you possibly can. And if you're feeling extra generous, head to Apple Podcasts and Spotify and leave us a review.