The Binge Cases: Denise Didn't Come Home - Betrayal on the Bayou | 1. The White Devil

Episode Date: August 1, 2023

Chad Scott made an incredible number of cases by getting drug dealers to work for him as informants. His phone number was written on jailhouse walls because Chad was the guy who could get you out of a tough situation – if you give him what he wants. That if is what this whole story is about. We hear from Virgil Ard, a former drug dealer who navigated streets riddled with Chad’s snitches. Virgil would face a choice: a long prison sentence, or work for Chad. Subscribe to The Binge to get all episodes of Smoke Screen ad-free right now. Click ‘Subscribe’ at the top of the Smoke Screen: Betrayal On The Bayou show page on Apple Podcasts or visit GetTheBinge.com to get access wherever you get your podcasts. A Neon Hum & Sony Music Entertainment production. Find more great podcasts from Sony Music Entertainment at sonymusic.com/podcasts and follow us @sonypodcasts Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

As a kid growing up in Chicago, there was one horror movie I was too scared to watch. It was called Candyman. It was about this supernatural killer who would attack his victims if they said his name five times into a bathroom mirror. But did you know that the movie Candyman was partly inspired by an actual murder? I was struck by both how spooky it was, but also how outrageous it was. Listen to Candyman, the true story behind the bathroom mirror murder, wherever you get your podcasts. The Bench.

Good morning. I'm calling this morning to get on a train to D.C. Chad Scott is heading to an appointment at the DEA's Office of Professional Responsibility, OPR. It's the DEA's version of Internal Affairs. Chad has pissed off a lot of people in his career. Some have waited years for Chad to get in trouble for something. It'd kill to hear Chad face the music. The Drug Enforcement Administration is notoriously

secretive. They wouldn't tell us anything related to Chad's case. But we've got the tapes from that room at the DEA's day in D.C. Chad's an intense guy. He's blonde, blue-eyed, built like a boxer. Chad's the kind of guy you can tell immediately he's a cop. He's got a high and tight haircut. His eyes are always roving. He often looks pissed. Whatever the cop look is, he has it. Chad's not just any cop.

He's the star in the New Orleans office of the DEA. He's an award winner, and he has years of outstanding performance reviews. In an agency obsessed with stats, he's the guy bringing home the bacon. He's well connected too. Chad's friendly with politicians, even a few country music stars. But getting summoned to D.C. like this means only one thing.

You're in deep shit. They tell Chad they're going to put him on leave for 10 days. To preserve the integrity of the DEA and actually help him in protection. To preserve the integrity of the DEA and for his own protection. Because as of yesterday, two guys on Chad's team had been arrested. They were both handpicked by Chad himself to work with the DEA. And they were caught selling drugs and stealing money.

Now Chad's being told he's under investigation. The feds want to find out if Chad was in on their scheme and what else he might have been up to in nearly two decades of service. But Chad's not going down without a fight. He dares the feds, the Office of Professional Responsibility, to come after him. Listen, investigate it. Investigate away.

I want somebody independent to investigate this. This is all about shutting me down. That's all it's ever been about. Because I work fucking circles around it. This is a professional attack. Chad thinks he's being called in because jealous co-workers ratted him out. Because when you get all the awards and you don't mind rubbing it in, you might win some friends,

but you're going to make enemies too. They tell Chad not to contact informants. They take his badge and they tell him to book a flight back home to Louisiana. It's the worst trouble he's ever been in. But when he leaves the building, he's a free man.

For now. Federal investigators are going to be digging deep into his record. And that was no small task. Chad was a prolific agent who specialized in walking a thin line. But now, investigators would be deciding what was okay and what was flat-out illegal. Chad's cases made headlines. The DEA ignored red flags.

They ignored warnings from within for 17 years. See, Chad is a Rorschach test. His actions invite interpretation and opinion. You look at his career and you might see the greatest DEA agent in the South. Or you might see a criminal. Some people say the ends justify the means. Getting drugs off the street means you have to be willing to get your hands dirty. Sometimes you've got to bend the rules to get around bureaucracy.

Chad was the epitome of that mentality. He bent rules and he twisted arms. It's an old DEA adage. You don't find informants sitting in church. And for some, that's okay. Because all's fair in this war on drugs.

I'm Feynman Roberts. And I'm Jim Mustian. From Neon Hum Media and Sony Music Entertainment, this is Smokescreen, Betrayal on the Bayou. Episode 1, The White Devil. Feynman and I started following this story as it unfolded in 2016. We were working together for a newspaper called the New Orleans Advocate. My beat was local government.

One morning, I got a call from a source who told me there was a shakeup at the New Orleans office of the DEA. Everyone was talking about it. I immediately called Jim. He covered federal law enforcement. That call set us on this journey, chasing sources and working obsessively. 2016 was, it was insane. Absolutely insane days. We'd work late into the night or we'd come back from a source meeting

and, you know, just not wanting to drive across the lake. I would crash in Feynman's guest room. Always welcome. Still welcome, by the way. It didn't take long before we started noticing some patterns. One name in particular kept coming up. Chad Scott.

Wherever we went, people kept saying his name. We talked with anybody who might have come in contact with Chad. Colleagues of his at the DEA, people he'd intimidated or put behind bars. We talked to agents, attorneys, drug dealers, anybody we could get a hold of. People were telling us that the FBI had been there asking about Chad just days before we got there. One agent met me at a hotel bar around D and brought me a duffle bag full of documents.

Meanwhile, the DEA wouldn't even confirm that Chad had ever worked for the agency. The DEA's mission is to enforce our country's drug laws. Their agenda is broad, and as I found out covering them, there's not a lot of public information about what their agents are actually doing. The agency, though funded by taxpayers, operates under a veil of secrecy called the Privacy Act. That's a law that keeps agents'

personnel records behind lock and key, inaccessible even to FOIA requests. But the DEA goes beyond that. No press is good press for the DEA. They comment on next to nothing, especially when one of their own agents has stepped in it. Chad Scott was known from the streets of Houston to Atlanta. Drug dealers feared him. Federal prosecutors loved him. But other agents told us he broke the rules, told us he had a huge web of snitches,

not all of them on the books, that the DEA often had no clue what Chad and his team were doing. He was everywhere and nowhere. This was the South's most notorious drug agent we'd never heard of. Chad's problem in life is the same problem he has everywhere. He's just better than everybody else at it, so he follows his own rules. I heard Chad's dirty. He sets people up and robs them

and does dirty things and stuff. His only other passion besides putting people in jail is water skiing. You know, being arrogant and having a little bit of hubris has never been a federal crime. Should it be, we'd all be in trouble. I said, Chad Scott's a dirty motherfucker. He says, what do you mean? I said,

I'm telling you, Chad Scott's a dirty motherfucker. As a reporter, every now and then you dig up a story that feels dangerous to keep in your notebook. You feel paranoid. That kind of eyes-in-the-dark feeling. Like maybe word has gotten around you're working on an explosive piece

and not everyone likes it. There's an old saying that news is what somebody, somewhere, wants to suppress. This was one of those stories. If half the things we heard about Chad Scott were true, it would spell nothing short of a scandal for the DEA. It could wreak havoc on drug cases in New Orleans and free dozens of drug traffickers Chad had helped put behind bars. It was around this time when we were knocking on doors, catching the ghost of the FBI investigation, that strange things began happening. And even today, I'm not saying it can't be explained away by my own paranoia.

I'd get these calls where I'd hear deep breathing on the other end of the line, or they'd say my name and hang up. I could swear I was followed one night going home from the gym. One of our sources told us to check the undercarriage of our cars for trackers. Then there was a time when I came back to New Orleans from D.C. when the front door to my apartment was wide open and I found papers everywhere. You know, this isn't something we reported to the police. I'm not even sure we told our editors about it. The last thing you ever want is somebody saying you've got to take some kind of precaution that'll prevent you from reporting. There were some papers that we had related to this story that we were worried about.

And Jim called me and goes, listen, it looks like people went through some of my stuff. And I was like, you know, okay. And he goes, but it looks like all the stuff for whatever story we're working on is still here. And I was like, oh, well, oh, and are you okay? You know, that was kind of, that's kind of where we were. Chad was a guy who had so much lore behind him. Everybody had strong opinions. Either he was the most effective drug cop ever, or he was a betrayer of the badge. When we wrote a profile of Chad for the paper, we called him the tan blonde boss of the single ski. That's Feyman's line for the record.

Those words are going to be on Feyman's tombstone. Jim has given me shit about it ever since. Back then, Chad liked to boast to suspects that he was the baddest motherfucker along the I-12 corridor. It wasn't just talk. One dealer offered $15,000 to have him executed. The Houston rapper Scarface name-checked him in a song. Chad liked to play it during busts. People said he's like Denzel Washington from that movie, Training Day. Comfortable on the streets with drug dealers.

Somebody who colored outside the lines. You got today and today only to show me who and what you're made of. You don't like narcotics? Get the fuck out of my car. Go back to the office, get a nice pussy desk job, you know? Chasing bad checks or something, you hear me? But some people he worked with for decades said above all, Chad is tireless. He has a near photographic memory.

He can talk to anybody and get them to work for him. In the New Orleans DEA, Chad Scott was a legend. He had power, influence, and he didn't mind letting you know it. Because whatever you think about his tactics, Chad was really fucking good at his job. Nobody knows Chad better than Skip Sewell. What's happening?

Hi. How are you, man? How are you? Yeah, good to see you. Skip knows the DEA inside and out. He was there as Chad rose to become the agency's overachiever. But he was also there for Chad's fall from grace. He's Chad's longtime friend, colleague, and occasional supervisor.

Late 50s, blonde, tall. Has kind of a Robert Redford vibe. Used to be a baseball player. Now he's more of a golfer. I met him in his home with Feynman and our producer Odelia. Skip's house is in a quiet cul-de-sac in Beauchesne. It's a gated neighborhood just across Lake Pontchartrain from New Orleans. Beauchesne is a golf course wrapped around a golf course, full of 80s houses and a mishmash

of architectural styles. It's a neighborhood of professionals, attorneys, doctors, and federal law enforcement agents. This friggin' neighborhood is so insane. Come on. Do you realize what it's like trying to, I mean, I had the Google, but Skip, I had to make 25 turns. It's a huge neighborhood. It's got two golf courses and I mean, the houses go all the way to the river. Skip worked at the DEA for 27 years. When we wanted to tap a recurring expert, we knew who to call.

For two decades, Skip worked alongside Chad. I used to be the legend until Chad Scott came into town. I remember one time this guy called me from jail. I got arrested and he said, Skip, man, I hate to even tell you this, but you ain't shit anymore. I'm like, what does that mean? He goes, man, all these guys in here, all they talk about is Chad. They say talk about Chad, Chad, Chad, whether he arrested him or not. They sit around here and talk about him all day.

I'm like, are you serious? He goes, yeah. His phone number's written on the wall. They met in the mid-'90s when Skip worked at the DEA and Chad was a deputy at a local sheriff's office. Skip found out right away that Chad is the kind of guy you want with you when you're in a tight spot. Skip's setting up a deal with his team

to catch a mid-level drug dealer. This is a guy with a long criminal catch a mid-level drug dealer. This is a guy with a long criminal record that includes burglary and gun charges. Getting violent guys like him off the street was one of Skip's missions at the DEA. The old 924C charge, which is carrying a firearm during a drug trafficking offense or a crime of violence, is probably one of the most often used charges in the federal system. To me, satisfaction was getting a guy off the street that was involved in a number of

violent crimes and you locked him up and sent him away. I think that's the greater good, more so than the guy that's just dealing drugs. But Skip and his team's plan has one problem. They don't have enough manpower to carry off the deal. So a colleague recommends some help. A young guy who works at the sheriff's department. It's Deputy Chad Scott. The deal was set up at a Ryan's Steakhouse. Ryan's is a buffet style chain. Nothing fancy. Lit like an operating room. It's the kind of place where no one will notice if you walk in or out.

Skip, Chad, and the team are hiding in cars nearby. The agent and the informant go in to wait for the dealer. When the dealer showed up, the undercover agent all of a sudden realized, I know the dealer, and the dealer knows I'm a cop. The undercover agent scurries out the back door while the dealer comes in the front. But they still want to do the bust. Another agent on the team volunteers, but he isn't prepared. He's wearing typical work clothes for a narcotics agent, like a polo shirt.

Not exactly the right get-up for going undercover. And when he went in and sat down with the drug dealer and the informant, the drug dealer was, who is this guy? What is he doing here? Is he a cop? The drug dealer did not want to do the deal. He was upset. He was furious. And pretty much anything that could go wrong had at that point. But somehow the informant talks the dealer into going through with it. They head to the parking lot. When the dealer opens up his car to show the informant the cocaine, that's when they move in to arrest the guy. He saw us coming like they always do. And he did what they typically do, and he took off running. Skip takes off after him. And I was running through the parking lot,

chasing the dealer into this wooded area, and I turned to my side, and I looked over, and Chad was running side by side with me. The dealer knows he's about to get collared, so he's got nothing to lose. The other guys, these are DEA or task force agents. They're nowhere near the action. And here's Chad, who at this point isn't even DEA, chasing down this guy like it's his job. They follow the dealer through the woods until everyone, the drug dealer and Skip and Chad give out. They can't run any further. And he turned around, and when he faced us, he had a gun in his hand. And I'm fumbling to try to grab my gun, because when I started running, I put it up, and I had my hand on it, but I didn't have it out.

Well, fortunately for Chad and I, he turned and threw the gun into the woods. We grabbed the guy, and although he surrendered, he didn't surrender, and a fight ensued, and it got pretty ugly out there. And I still remember looking at Chad out there, and we didn't have to say a word. We both knew we could have very likely been shot. That night, after they book him, Skip and Chad go and have a couple of drinks and get to know each other. Skip likes what he sees, so he recruits Chad to work on a DEA task force, which is a kind of partnership between local law enforcement and the DEA. After his promotion, Chad doesn't let up, and he doesn't let Skip down. He was competitive as a task force officer, which you don't often see. And what I mean by that is, usually a task force guy comes over and he's cutting his teeth. He's

trying to figure out the federal system. How do we do complaints and affidavits and search warrants and so forth? Well, Chad hit the ground running. Skip and Chad are making a ton of busts on a case they're working together. And it got to the point where it was almost like a competition. I would have a deal one day, and after we arrested him, I'd go down to court for the initial appearance of the defendant. I'd come back and Chad would have a deal the next day. And we arrested probably 45 drug dealers. And it got to the point where our supervisor would tell us, hey, we're not doing anything today. You're slowing down. You're going to take care of the paperwork before we go out on anything else. Get the bad guy no matter what. That's what Chad's motto.

Skip and Chad became good friends. Skip was best man at Chad's wedding. Chad is, or was, tenacious. I've never seen anyone that had that fire, that wanted to work all the time. I mean, he couldn't even eat lunch without informants calling him. And you see a lot of guys, they look at their phones and they just set it down. Chad answered almost every call.

He'd work weekends, nights, holidays. It didn't matter to him. This was his life. It consumed him. Chad is the guy who always picks up the phone. That's why Chad's cell phone number was written on jailhouse walls. Chad can get you out of a tough situation if you give him what he wants. That if is what this whole story is about. With all this initiative, talent, and drive, a colleague gave Chad a new nickname. It was just a joke. The guy worked in our group with us on the task force. We were all good friends, went to lunch together, hung out together. At the time, Chad mainly worked crack cocaine cases, and most of the dealers were black dealers. So

obviously he was arresting black people. It was given to him in jest. It was a joke. We laughed about it. It wasn't anything that was serious. It was a black NLPD officer who started off calling him the devil, the white devil. To Skip and Chad and their buddies in law enforcement, it may have been a joke, but it wasn't for those on the other side of the law, especially people of color. If you wound up on Chad's radar and he had something on you, you might find yourself under his thumb for years. Never convicted, but not exactly free either.

Having to bargain for your own freedom at any price. Not everybody who was dealing drugs would deal with Chad. Virgil Ard knew some of Chad's informants. He'd seen how Chad operated, and he was wary. Chad was on another level, more or less. It seemed like he was coming here straight talking to all the Black drug dealers. He came to destroy the Black community. Now, I'm not saying he didn't arrest any white males or white females, but you didn't hear about Chad arresting any white people. Why do you think that is?

Because he's that devil that he calls himself, the white devil. Very arrogant, very arrogant. Virgil drives trucks for a living, and he's working on a criminal justice degree. He's stocky with an open face, has a neatly trimmed beard that's more salt than pepper. He looks like a sitcom dad. But back in the 90s, Virgil was a drug dealer. He knows what it's like to be hunted

by Chad. Virgil first met Chad in the mid-90s. At that time, he was riding in a green Camaro, and he was the new officer on the scene. I guess he must have heard that I was one of the new guys that was on the scene selling drugs or whatever. So I guess he was wanting to meet me, and I was wanting to meet him. More or less to be like, okay, you the cowboy, and I'm the Indian, or vice versa. But the first encounter was right here in front of my mom's house. And he didn't really say anything to me, but he just let me know that he was on my trail at the time. We talked to Virgil in the home he grew up in. If Louisiana's a boot, Chad's turf in this story takes place in the tow box.

Virgil's childhood home is in a working-class neighborhood of Hammond, about half an hour west and a world away from where Skip lives. It's a small house with red shutters right next to a railroad track. Growing up, Virgil was good friends with the kid across the street. On the weekends, they'd cut each other's lawns, play Atari, practice karate. That friend's dad was a detective with the sheriff's office. Mr. Carey can get into the business and find out whatever is stolen, whatever somebody did or whatever, and he could bring it to the forefront. He took care of the neighborhood. Even growing up, I didn't have issues with the police, you know.

From the minute I got a driver's license and all, I was okay. Virgil did have one problem. He never had enough money. In college at Grambling, he sold a little pot here and there, but Virgil ended up dropping out because he didn't make enough to get by. I mean, I look at other kids from other states, and I always wonder, like, who was backing them? You know, like, how did they have money? How did they afford it? Virgil worked a couple of dead-end jobs, but he wanted to find a way to make a living on his own terms.

Growing up, trying to be a young man and looking at life and what life has to offer, you know, and to earn a living without going through all the hassle that you have to go through, like, quote unquote, they would say, on a white man's job, or whereas you're going to be paid the bottom of the barrel, the minimum wage. You won't have the amount of money that I would say the normal family would have. It just wasn't working out, you know. In the early 90s, Chad busted a bunch of crack and cocaine dealers from Virgil's neighborhood. They went to prison. So there's a void in the market for a dealer.

And Virgil knows a guy in New Orleans who needs to move product. The money, it came so fast selling crack. With people, I guess, smoking weed, it was more or less like for joy times, just getting high and it wasn't nothing that gave them the urge to hurry up and go get some more, but the crack had a craving to it, whereas they was getting money from everywhere.

And being able to be that supplier, once I really learned how to cook the crack myself and not put no additives to it to make it what they call blow up or anything like that, I always cooked it pure enough to make my customers enjoy it. So they was looking for me. In a way, it's like any other small business. He has product, clientele, and he's finding ways to reinvest. And soon enough, Virgil's clients aren't the only ones looking for him. That's how Virgil comes to know Chad intimately.

So back in, I want to say, 1997, Chad pulled me over, got me out the car and, you know, with his pistol drawn. And Chad Chad was like where the drugs at you know I'm like man I don't have no drugs on me which I didn't and uh he ended up pulling my pants down all the way on my ankles on the streets while people passing by and everything because he was so adamant so sure that I had some drugs on me he got all underneath my car all under the fender wells and I'll pull out all my cd trunk, hood. He went to my car from front to back as if he knew for sure that I had drugs and I didn't have a crumb or nothing with me. Is that a pretty busy road?

Yeah, it's right near Hammond Junior High. It seemed like people was coming, passing a funeral procession or something, and different people saying, you all right, you all right? I'm like, yeah. right, you all right? I'm like, yeah, you know. And were you all right? I mean, what did it feel like to be standing there with your pants down? Well, actually, that part, that was embarrassing for the simple fact that you got my pants down on my ankles, you know what I'm saying,

and actually, you know, searched my crouch and put your hands all on my penis. It was crazy, you know what I'm saying? Because he was so sure that he had me at the time based on the cat and mouse game, you know, and it was, I didn't have anything. So after that, he just pulled my pants up and let me go. And it's worth mentioning here, Chad categorically denies that this event happened.

And that kind of discrepancy is something we deal with a lot in this story. When you have multiple sides of the law, people disagree on facts. Still, even if it did happen exactly the way Virgil laid it out, it wasn't illegal. In fact, strip searching a suspected drug dealer, that's routine for drug cops. It's not misconduct. But for Virgil, it was humiliating. After Chad lets him go, Virgil contacts his lawyer, who sets up a meeting with Chad's supervisor at the sheriff's office, a deputy named Chicken Gorman. Not an important character here, but great name, right? Anyhow, Chicken makes a promise to Virgil. He said, you won't have no issues out of Chad anymore. And for a long time, I didn't.

Not to give Deputy Chicken too much credit, Chad was headed for bigger things. He became a full-time DEA agent. Chad was sent to the Houston office, so he's off everybody's necks on the North Shore. I'd say it was a better time for guys at the time while he was off the scene, you know, being able to sell drugs and not help nobody. And I'm sure other detectives worked, you know, the area, you don't

get me wrong, but I guess they wasn't as cocky and arrogant or didn't have as many informants as he had. So I guess other guys got a chance to sell drugs without having the issues or the problems. Chad was pretty good at what he did. He was, based on him breaking the rules and regulations. Anybody can be good breaking the rules and regulations. He didn't give a damn about criminal procedure and code. It was about, hey, let me just go get me some Negroes and lock them up by any means necessary.

The money Virgil made dealing drugs enabled him to live the kind of life he wanted to live. Vehicles and trips all around the world and land. And then, like they say, had the shoebox of money at the time and actually got into 18 Woolers, you know, driving. So, like they say, got it out the mud. And the shoebox refers to where you kept your cash? Yeah, at one time, yep. Till I learned better. Under your bet? Till I learned better. In 2006, Chad and his informants finally get Virgil.

Virgil says that the charges were trumped up. More drugs than he'd had at the time. And a charge for brandishing a firearm, a subsection of the old 924C charge. Virgil says he didn't brandish it. The gun was a couple of feet away in a clothes basket. And I'm saying, well, I know I was a drug dealer at the end of the day, but I wasn't guilty of the amount of drugs that he had, and I wasn't guilty of brandishing a firearm. His case goes federal down in New Orleans. One day, Virgil's sitting in jail when he's pulled out for a meeting with the arresting officer.

The prosecutor, Maurice Landrieu, will be there too. Virgil's lawyer tells him that this is going to be about helping himself. That's code for becoming a snitch. Snitch, and you get less time. Maurice Landrieu offered me a Coke. I said, man, I don't want a Coke from you. And when Chad and him came in, I said, hey, man, y'all brought me here for nothing. Take me back to Orleans Parish Prison.

Virgil's lawyer tells him that he might want to say something to help himself. Maybe Virgil has something to say about his brother. I'm like, what about my brother? Man, let me get the hell out of here, man. Get me away from here. How do you feel about people who served as Chad's informants? They need to be sent to Ukraine right now today. Send them all to Ukraine with no gun and let them deal with Putin.

That's how I feel about them. I hate to say it. I pray for Ukraine and what they're going through, but they need to be in the front line of Putin and what he's after. And just unpack that a little bit for us. I mean, why do you feel that way? Because, I mean, if nobody forced you to sell drugs, and you get out there and you do it, and no matter what happens, when it comes down on you, you're supposed to be man enough to accept what happened to you at that time and move forward.

And it's more than just that. Being an informant is a blank check. When you get caught, there are sentencing guidelines. But it's nothing like that that tells you anything about being an informant. It don't have a guideline to tell you you get zero months to 12 months if you tell on one person. So therefore, it's based on them to give you a day off or send you home. Virgil didn't cooperate with Chad, never became a snitch, informant, rat. He says he pled guilty to the trumped-up charges because Chad threatened to get his wife on conspiracy and put his kids in foster care.

Virgil ended up serving 12 years. He was released in 2018. Virgil dealt drugs, so he felt it was only fair to do the time. But becoming Chad's informant, that was something darker. So he come to seek and destroy. You know, just like the Bible said, the devil seeks and destroy. And he was just letting us know that he's the white man that come to seek and destroy a black community. Chad worked like this for decades, winning awards and skating between the gray and black of legality.

If you think you know what corruption looks like, this story will turn everything on its head. Some things we found problematic turned out to be completely kosher at the DEA, and some misconduct wasn't enough to land a cop behind bars. This season on Betrayal on the Bayou, Chad leads a team that racks up success after success. This group had a lot of seizures. I'm not talking about like 100 kilos here and there.

A lot of money, a lot of quick money, a lot of quick hits, a lot of snitches coming in and out, a lot of black ball snitches. So how I would compare him was just actually cutting corners. But eventually Chad's team would go completely off the rails. We talked with his right-hand man, Carl Newman. So I want to ask you about this. I got, I got to ask you this.

You're a drug cop who Yep. Who occasionally uses drugs. Right. Mentally, how do you work that out in your mind? Do you ever think, what are you telling yourself? It'll enter your mind a couple times. It didn't really with the X or the molly. Now meth, it would enter my mind. It would.

The FBI will get involved and they're looking to lock somebody up. Chad's own men will turn on him and talk to the feds. They had some charges they wanted to put on me. So we got in there and they started reading off charges and they read and they read and they read more charges. And I'm like, holy jack. And when they got through reading, they also announced that these charges carry 20 years minimum. And it hit me like a maul upside the head. I'm not going to do it. And Chad will turn from a golden boy to a disgrace. The case of a former DEA agent accused of falsifying records and taking kickbacks. This person is former DEA Special Agent Chad Scott.

Now, he was once nationally known for his track record as an officer. He was a very prolific agent. He made a lot of cases, and he had a member of the U.S. Attorney's Office testify for the defense in his behalf. Overall, corruption was the case prosecutors gave him. That indictment alleged he falsified records

in order to take possession of a seized vehicle. He was also accused of obstruction of justice perjury and taking a gratuity in excess of $10,000. Chad Scott's legal problems are far from over. But Chad isn't the kind of guy to take this lying down. When the feds called Chad in, his first reaction was rage. This is bullshit.

His second was to challenge them to conduct an independent investigation. Listen straight down. Investigate it. Investigate away. I want somebody independent to investigate this. But eventually, after his name was splashed across our newspaper a few too many times, Chad decided the only way to get his story out was to tell it himself for the first time. My name is Chad Scott.

I'm a former special agent with the Drug Enforcement Administration. Chad Scott sat down with us. This isn't an eight-to-five job. There's no hands on the dope clock. It works 24-7. He spoke with us for hours. Oh, I understand. I've been found guilty.

And he told us how he ended up in the last place he ever thought he'd be, behind bars. There's already guys in there beating on the window, screaming my name. Put that motherfucker in here. So I found, and the guy was walking to that damn pod and grabbed the key, I said, you ain't putting me in there. And he's like, what do you mean?

I said, did they not tell you who I am? He's like, no. I said, I'm a fucking federal agent. You cannot put me in there. Smokescreen, A Trail on the Bayou is an original production by Neon Home Media and Sony Music Entertainment. It was written and produced by Odelia Rubin. It was reported by me,

Feynman Roberts, and my co-host, Jim Muschin. Our editor is Catherine St. Louis. She is also Neon Hung Media's executive editor. Our executive producer is Jonathan Hirsch. Sound design and mixing by Scott Somerville. Theme and original music composed by Hansdale Shee. We also use music by Blue Dot Sessions and Epidemic Sound. Our associate producers are Ann Lim and Joshua Moore. Our intern is Zoe Culkin. Fendall Fulton is our fact checker. Our production manager is Samantha Allison. Alexis Martinez is our podcast coordinator. Special thanks to Stephanie Serrano, Mia Warren, Kate Mishkin,

and Shara Morris. And to our DEA consultant, Skip Sewell. We couldn't have made this show without the support of our legal team, including Lauren Pagoni, Rachel Goldberg, and to our DEA consultant, Skip Sewell. We couldn't have made this show without the support of our legal team, including Lauren Pagoni, Rachel Goldberg, and Allison Sherry. I'm Feynman Roberts. And I'm Jim Mustian. If you're enjoying the show, be sure to rate and review. It helps more people find it and hear our reporting. Thanks for listening.