The Binge Cases: Denise Didn't Come Home - Betrayal on the Bayou | 3. Kid Gloves

Episode Date: August 14, 2023

Ron Woods is a Black DEA supervisor who landed in New Orleans and found himself in the perils of the swamp. He’s the agent who could have stopped Chad Scott before things got out of hand. Chad has always courted controversy. In fact, for his first big assignment for the DEA, Chad was toe-to-toe with none other than hip-hop legend James Prince. 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. DEA Group Supervisor Ron Woods is flying to his new assignment in New Orleans.

It's summer 2003. Ron's in his early 40s. He's been warned about working in the city. His mentors call it the Swamp Mafia. These were senior black agents that were warning me. So I know that what the meaning was, was me as a black guy going down to New Orleans was going to be tricky because New Orleans was notoriously racist.

Ron is no stranger to difficult situations. Actually, he's kind of a badass. His last assignment was overseas, busting drug labs in Bolivia. That's a competitive gig to get at the DEA. Ron's athletically built, played college football and looks like it. Grew up in D.C. D.C. at the time was in the mix. I grew up in the streets. Kind of know how this whole drug game is played. So that helped me out a lot.

Ron chooses New Orleans as his next assignment because it's either that or a small city in Tennessee. And besides, Ron liked New Orleans football team. But as he heads to the Crescent City, Ron isn't thinking about the Saints. He's thinking about the Swamp. Flying on the plane going down to New Orleans, that's the first thing that was in my mind. Swamp mafia, it's like the mafia, they don't like blacks, et cetera, et cetera.

The Swamp is dangerous because of its murkiness. You can't always tell if you're seeing a sunk log or a 12-foot gator. New Orleans is a city notorious for out-of-control crime and rampant corruption. Once he's on the ground, Ron will have to decide if he should keep his head down or holler for help. And guess who Ron will find himself on a collision course with? Everyone's saying this guy Chad Scott, he's a golden boy. You know, he's been law enforcement man of the year a couple of times. I mean, I didn't give a damn about that.

I mean, I had a little ego of my own. Quite frankly, I didn't think anybody could carry my drawers if I asked them to because, you know, I was the man in my own right. Ron and Chad come face-to-face not long after he gets to New Orleans. Chad's in his mid-30s and putting together the A-team. I didn't really track him. You know, I was already rubbed wrong by the fact that everybody praised him. So I didn't give a damn about Chad Scott. Both agents will come out of this showdown with marks on their record, but only one will keep ruling the streets of New Orleans. Ron is the guy who could have stopped Chad. Ron warned higher-ups more than a decade before they'd relieve Chad of his badge and gun. But the reason why the brass didn't listen to Ron is not your

average whistleblower story. Chad likes to claim his critics are just jealous, but when we asked him about Ron, he said they got caught up in unhealthy competition. The story we're about to tell you in this episode is complicated, weird, and conspiratorial. It's a Coen Brothers farce

as much as a hero's journey. By the end of this chapter, Ron's team will dig for treasure at midnight and arrest one of Chad's super informants, while Chad will go head-to-head with hip-hop legend James Prince and get slammed by Congresswoman Maxine Waters. I'm Jim Mustian. And I'm Feynman Roberts.

From Neon Hum Media and Sony Music Entertainment, this is Smokescreen, Betrayal on the Bayou. Episode 3, Kid Gloves. Ron Woods is like Chad in a lot of ways. They're both competitive and ambitious. Ron's not afraid to admit he has an ego. But Ron, unlike Chad, is officially a group supervisor. Once he lands in New Orleans in the mid-2000s,

Ron Woods quickly earns himself a nickname. Ron. Why did you call him that? His initials. Just Ron. This is Mark Nicholson, an agent on Ron's team. I remember the first buy bus we did over on the West Bank. But, Ron was in a black two-door Monte Carlo. We were doing a quick rip, a little quick buy bus, and Ron was on the radio. He was like, hey, bust his ass. And Ron was out there running. He remembers that? It was like his first day as a group supervisor in the orange.

Mark is a longtime source of mine. We met with his chocolate lab and my producer, Odelia, at CeCe's Coffeehouse on the iconic, tree-lined Esplanade Avenue in New Orleans. Just taking ambient noise. Oh, that shit's all above my head, man. I'm still in the 80s. Look at Hershel. You got a hairball in this thing. That's your ambient noise right there.

Ron and Chad might both be ambitious, but that's where the comparison ends. Ron and his team insist there are rules, they're set up for a reason, and you've got to follow them. If Chad's team leans vigilante, Ron's is concerned about doing things the right way. How did Chad compare to other folks you worked with?

Well, I mean, a place like New Orleans, we're not like Miami or Atlanta. We're not doing huge seizures, you know, unless you have a wiretap or a Title III investigation. This group had a lot of seizures, 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. Ron's team kept hearing rumors that Chad, the golden boy, doesn't follow the rules. This was almost from the time that I got there. I started hearing things about the way he would do his cases. Kind of walking that fine line of right and wrong.

I heard it. I didn't give a damn. As long as it didn't violate anything that I was trying to do with my guys in my group. But all that changes when an agent named Sal Scalia is reassigned to Ron's group. Sal used to work with Chad. And he told me, he said, Chad Scott was a dirty dude, and he started kind of explaining some of the things that Chad Scott was doing.

We have the official statement Sal made to the DEA about what happened between them. When we talk about Chad's enemies at the DEA, Sal's one of them. We have a ton of information here because when you've been talking to people about this story for over six years, sometimes, if you're lucky, you get documents. And they don't always come through the front door. By the way, the DEA refused to comment for this podcast, but we still have the file from their internal investigation and the findings from the Department of Justice. Chad's story and

Ron's teams don't always match up. Anyhow, reporting caveats aside, all this stuff is not public knowledge. It's hard to learn even the big picture stuff about the DEA. And this stuff, while important, is also petty as hell. You don't get to eavesdrop on this kind of office drama every day of the week. Sal says they met in college. Ever since, he's been keeping tabs on Chad. But Chad? He can't even remember meeting Sal until they were working together at the DEA.

Sal says that Chad had a habit of blaming his team when things went wrong, and their supervisor always sided with Chad. But Sal thinks that he's a corner cutter. And a jerk. So when Sal joins Ron's team, he's talking about all this stuff. Instead of being one specific thing, it's like this general animosity. Sometimes you just don't fucking like somebody. So when Sal and his new teammate Mark hear rumors about Chad, they don't ignore it. They dig deeper. So long story short, they ended up opening up a can of worms that I wish I had never opened up. They talk to all kinds of people, informants and law enforcement officers.

We started looking into the fact that Chad's group never did wiretaps, but yet they seized huge amounts of narcotics and money. And I always had cases coming from Houston. They heard that Chad's super informant is dealing on the side, and Chad allows it. They take it to Ron, but at this point, it's all just rumors they're hearing secondhand. Ron is a good team captain.

Maybe he could sense that Sal had a grudge. So he used his best judgment. And I didn't take it to management right away. Again, I hear these stories. Some I pay attention to, some I don't. But what happened was we had a walk-in. A walk-in is a person who just walks in off the street and just wants to, you know, help out with God's work.

This guy walks into the DEA and tells the agents on duty, Ron's team, that something funny's going on. But it turned out to be a minor infraction. Chad was testing a potential informant rather than signing him up. That's against DEA policy, but it's one of those things that's so nitpicky that you'd have to look it up in the rulebook. But Sal,

and now Ron's team, they've been waiting for something like this. A complaint brought directly to them. Now they have a reason to get in Chad's way. Okay, this shit is getting, you know, now I'm seeing it. I'm not just hearing the stories now, I'm seeing it. It started to bleed over to where it was affecting us, us meaning my group. Ron's team has reached boiling point. And Ron, he wants to be a good manager. He doesn't want to let his team down. So he files a complaint. It was really difficult for me to tell the SAC this because, again, growing up in D.C., my nature nature I'm not a snitch I'm not I

don't like to try to get people in trouble this and that but then I was conflicted with what I knew that I had heard and all that was bad and was wrong stuff so I go in there to the sacks office and I said to the sack I got something to tell you he's like put it out it out, Woods, put it out. I said, I don't know if I can say it. He said, damn it, Woods, put it out. 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. And then I went to tell him what I had been told and what this walk-in had told us. And this sack said to me famously, or infamously, he says to me,

Ron, I bet my pension that Chad Scott is not dirty. He says, don't you realize and understand how many times people have said that about Chad Scott? And he's been investigating and has been cleared on all of them. He said, people get jealous and they want to tell on him, and they've been doing it long before you got here. I said, okay, all right. The bosses did look into it. We even have the letter of reprimand they wrote to Chad Scott. They tell Chad's supervisor to keep an eye on him and his informants,

but also to give Chad whatever assistance necessary to help him manage his prolific caseload. Chad is even called one of the very best agents in the division. This is in Chad's official letter of reprimand. I mean, it was clear to me that they didn't give a damn. I went back to my group, and they were looking to see what was said and what was done as well. And I went to them and gathered them up and said, look, don't look like anything's going to happen, man. I just went in there with Jimmy Craig and told him how dirty Chad Scott is. And he told me he would bet me his pension that Chad Scott was clean. And there you have it.

We reached out to Jimmy Craig for comment many times, and he has not responded. Ron's team's fight was just beginning. Convincing the higher-ups that Chad was letting his informants sell drugs wasn't going to be easy. DEA management had looked the other way before when stories about Chad's corruption came to light. And not all the stories were nothing burgers. Chad's first big case with the DEA was a very public scandal. In 1997, Chad joins the DEA. He's about 30, he's married, he has a son from a prior relationship. Chad's first assignment out of training in Quantico is to the Houston field office. His wife moves along with him, but he's visiting his son back in Louisiana on the weekends. Chad's excited.

Drugs flow from Houston to all over the country. He told us about it when we interviewed him. Man, Houston is a sore city. Like, this is going to be like hunting over a baited field, right? Like, way more dope in Houston than there is in New Orleans and Hammond. I'm going to be getting kilos and, you know, big cases, right? But that isn't what happens. Instead, Chad is assigned to an existing investigation of Rap-A-Lot Records,

the hip-hop label that put Houston on the map. Scarface, maybe one of the best rappers of all time, is on that label, and he's a member of the Ghetto Boys. You probably know this track of theirs, Damn It Feels Good To Be A Gangsta. Damn It Feels Good To Be A Gangsta. Rapalot's artists make music that's unforgettably catchy. It's peak gangster rap. It's also political. Remember, this is the 90s, the decade after the LAPD brutally beat Rodney King and were caught on video. It sparked riots and a reckoning with police brutality around the country.

Because you want to harass me, yeah. And if I talk back, you want to bust my black ass, G. Just like Rodney King. Crooked Officer from the Ghetto Boys. Mr. Officer, crooked officer. I want to put your ass in the car, officer. This music video was banned from MTV, and it became a political talking point.

Here's Bob Dole on the presidential campaign trail in 96. A line has been crossed, not just of taste, but of human dignity and decency. You know what I mean. I'm talking about groups like Cannibal Corpse, Ghetto Boys, and 2 Live Crew. Songs about killing policemen and rejecting law. The mainstreaming of deviancy must come to an end. It's in this climate that Rap-A-Lot Records is being investigated by the DEA. The main target is Rap-A-Lot's founder, James Prince.

Jay Prince is a mogul, a legend. Standing somewhere under 5'9", Prince's nickname was Little J. Vice calls him the most feared figure in the history of Southern hip-hop. J Prince started the label when he was a used car salesman as a way to keep his brother off the streets. The DEA investigation into Rap-A-Lot Records started in the late 80s, after 76 kilos of cocaine were seized outside El Paso. Supposedly the coke was en route to Jay Prince. The DEA suspected that Rapalot was a cover for laundering drug trafficking money. Jay Prince has thoroughly and repeatedly denied that they were trafficking drugs.

He says he was working hard to make Rapalot a success. He details his account in his memoir, The Art and Science of Respect. It was studio all night, sleep in the morning, promotion for the rest of the day, and repeat. What I wasn't doing was moving 76 kilos of cocaine. J Prince knows that he and his employees are being harassed, but he doesn't necessarily know it's the DEA. No one sends you a letter informing you that you're being investigated by the DEA. There's no formal announcement in the press or even a courtesy call to let you know that representatives of the local, state, and federal government are combing through your life,

looking for any minute thing that could possibly be interpreted as a tie to wrongdoing. You just start getting the razz. In the intro to the 1993 Ghetto Boys album, Till Death Do Us Part, Jay Prince calls out the feds. He says a lot of people are mad about Rap-A-Lot's success. Chad enters the scene in 1998. This investigation has been going on for a decade without results. So, like, the first six months, we did surveillance all day every day like following people from wrap a lot around like what I didn't even understand what

we were doing I was like are you gonna see them hauling suitcases out and like come on we should be working informants and developing information. This kind of slow pace is not his style. Chad felt like they were going about the investigation the wrong way. I mean, I came from a place where you basically kick over an ant bed and start trying to work up the ladder, right? Like, you got to start at the bottom and try to work your way to the top. And at that point in time, the focus was just meaningless surveillance. Everything changed when the DEA brought in a new lead agent, Jack Schumacher. Jack was revered, reviled, and known.

I mean, he is a living legend in law enforcement in the state of Texas. Been in multiple job-related shooting incidents and one of the best lawmen I know. Is it true that he's been involved as many as a dozen shootings? You know, he's never given me the number. We've never talked about it, but I will say what I've heard is absolutely. How many of them were fatal? What do you mean? Fatal shootings. I think most of them. According to a DEA file from the time, it was nine shootings, four fatalities. A lot of these were from his time at the Houston Police Department.

But in the same file, Jack says it was a dozen, half of which were fatal. No matter who you believe, this is an incredible body count. That's how Jack earned himself the nickname Shotgun Schumacher. But Jack's a tough guy who's kind of eccentric. Like, he's not above wearing overalls. The first time I see Jack, he comes walking in, and he's got on a Lone Star feed hat, and he's wearing overalls. And I'm like, this is him? And they're like, yeah, that's Jack.

Jack and Chad find they run an investigation the same way. So when Jack got there, he said, hey, I only know how to do one thing. And it was the way I knew how to work a case. It was just start getting informants and making undercover buys and finding out who's who. They're looking for a connection between Rapalot and drug trafficking, and they're starting to make inroads. And remember, at this time, Jay Prince doesn't even know he's under investigation. He just knows his employees are being stopped by cops all the time.

Jack and Chad are looking into a group called Fifth Ward Circle. The Fifth Ward, it's a neighborhood in Houston. Fifth Ward Circle is also the name of a group on the Rap-A-Lot label. But Jack and Chad believe it's a gang. It was kind of an unofficial badge of honor to be a member of the Fifth Ward circle. So we started in the Fifth Ward making crack buys, making, you know, kilo deals and just working the associates and working our way up. They might be making inroads, but kicking over an anthill? Well, it's disruptive.

There are many allegations tossed back and forth about the DEA, Rap-A-Lot, Chad, and Jack. This was Chad's first major investigation with the DEA. But it was also a scandal. When it comes to paper, this case is an avalanche. It's covered in a 2,000-page file that showed up under our podcast Christmas tree. One account in particular stuck out. This is from the DEA's own file. It's violent and it might be tough to listen to, but it matters because three Rap-A-Lot employees end up brutally assaulted and because Chad takes a medallion as a trophy. Late one night in January 1999, a record promoter named Christopher Simon and two other Rap-A-Lot employees are leaving a club called Jamaica Jamaica. They're in their

company van with all their work stuff in it. TVs, speakers, CDs, posters. They'd been giving out promotional materials inside the club. This is all according to Christopher, the promoter. About half past two in the morning, they get pulled over. Chad and Jack order them out of the van and they're brought to a chain-link fence. Christopher says that Jack starts talking to them about gang affiliation. Then it gets violent. Christopher says that Jack hits him in the back of the head and he kicks in his leg. Christopher falls to his knees and Jack punches him in the ribs. Chad grabs a gold medallion Christopher's wearing. It has the Fifth Ward Circle sign on it. That's the group Chad believes is a gang. Then Christopher says Chad takes the medallion and hits him with it, cutting his lip. Chad denies that happened. He

says the medallion was too small to hit somebody with. The three Rap-A-Lot employees are handcuffed and jailed. When they're finally released, they go to the hospital. Christopher is treated for the injuries to his face, legs, and ribs. We've seen the emergency room records. Also, Christopher doesn't get his medallion back. The DEA investigation doesn't stay secret for much longer. Two months later, Jay Prince says he was pulled over by a cop at 2 or 3 in the morning. He's told to pull into a closed McDonald's parking lot.

It's weird. Jay Prince is a black man who's been dogged by the police for a decade. And here he is being asked to pull over at a place where nobody can see what happens to him. So J Prince pulls over to a gas station instead. Here's J Prince from his memoir again. He came up to the car yelling, didn't I tell you to pull into the McDonald's? Why didn't you do as you were told? Sir, I didn't want you to think I was trying to harm you in that dark parking lot. I responded, and I didn't want to think that you were trying to harm me. It turns out Chad is parked in that McDonald's lot.

He drives over to harm me. It turns out Chad is parked in that McDonald's lot. He drives over to Jay Prince. Jay Prince has no idea who Chad is. Doesn't even know he's law enforcement. Chad's wearing tactical clothing, a bulletproof vest and black under his eyes. Chad takes a good look at him and leaves. Jay Prince is afraid for his life. That's what he says in his memoir. So after the parking lot, J. Prince hires a private investigator who finds out about the DEA investigation,

Jack Schumacher, and his deadly record. And that's when J. Prince makes a decision. That in order to protect my own life and the lives of my family and employees, I would have to get political. Jay Prince visits Congresswoman Maxine Waters. You know Maxine Waters. Reclaiming my time. Several times. Reclaiming my time. We were doing our... Reclaiming my time.

Maxine Waters served as chair for the Congressional Black Caucus and even then was known for her national efforts to address racial profiling. The congresswoman wrote to then-Attorney General Janet Reno. She told her that Prince and his associates feared for their lives because of racist police tactics and the threat of excessive force by the DEA. Word gets back to DEA headquarters and the investigation into Rapalot is halted. In December of 2000, there's a congressional hearing. But it's not about Jack and Chad's conduct. It's about whether the DEA investigation was influenced by politics. In the hearing, a DEA administrator reveals that other agents corroborated that Chad had taken the medallion and kept it in his desk drawer.

And that Jack had, quote, slapped defendants around. Internal Affairs looked into the whole situation and found the evidence was insufficient for misconduct. Not for Jack. Not for Chad. In the end, there was only one thing that stuck. The gold medallion. Chad received a letter of reprimand

for mishandling evidence. And Chad admits wrongdoing here. The medallion should have been processed, should have been put in evidence. I forgot it was in there. I failed to do it. And, you know, when they did come looking for it, I turned it over. His explanation for it is so easy. He forgot.

Chad is a walking Occam's razor. He always seems to have a simple explanation for his behavior. When we asked Chad directly, he said that nobody hit Christopher Simon at all, much less with a medallion. One of Rap-A-Lot's artists, Scarface, wrote some songs about the investigation on his album Last of a Dying Breed. They're songs about being hunted by the police. Jack and Chad are called out by name and gangsta shit. Schumacher is also name-checked in Look Me in My Eyes. When Chad told us about the songs, he told us about the number of times his name was in them,

that he liked to play the album during busts. What he might have missed was that the songs are about being pursued when you're not guilty. Here's Scarface. Maybe for another agent, this would have been a learning opportunity. That coloring outside the lines, abusing your power, mishandling evidence would discredit your work. But not for Chad. So, in 2004, four years later, Ron and his team see the same kind of conduct happening back down in Louisiana, but it's happening to people without clout. There's nobody like Jay Prince to expose it. Ron Woods reports Chad's behavior to DEA management, and Chad gets such a light slap on

the wrist that it might as well be a handshake. Then, a few months later, Ron's team arrests Chad's super informant for drug dealing. If Chad is involved in more dirty shit, this is their chance to find out. There are a lot of rules for informants. One is they're not allowed to break the law to gather information, and that includes dealing drugs. Mark Nicholson was the case agent. He was living in the trailer.

He was on federal probation. He had over 100 grams of crack at AK-47 in his trailer. This super informant was a guy who Chad was really tight with. They'd been working together for about a decade since Chad was a sheriff's deputy. Chad says he's the kind of informant who could get reliable information about anything law enforcement was curious about.

So this informant wasn't just another drug dealer Chad was working. He was a valuable team member. Agents and informants are supposed to have a working relationship. They are not supposed to be buddies. But after Chad's super informant was arrested, he calls Chad from jail several times. Chad seems sympathetic, disappointed, almost affectionate. I bet you it wasn't yours, man, because I know you know about it. Disappointed. Almost affectionate. Chad calls the informant a dumbass.

Says he told him a million times not to fuck up. Chad asks about the agents he's been dealing with. The informant describes Sal as a nerdy little short guy. The informant seems worried because he heard Ron Woods is from D.C., which makes it seem like Ron's high up at the DEA. Chad calms him down and says, Fuck him. I ain't worried about it. Chad explains what's going to happen now that the informant's in federal custody. Because he has a couple prior convictions,

the informant's sentence is starting at 20 years. We've got to knock that down, Chad says. Yeah, you know, if we got a call in favor from some people who do something for you, then that's what we got to do. Okay? Chad sets him up with two of his friends, a defense lawyer and a prosecutor. Before hanging up, Chad says to call if he needs anything. And if he needs something, I'll have him in. I'll try to run Gary down, but you need to get to people.

You have one minute left. Okay. Take care of him. Get him to court, you know. Okay. All right. All right. This is part of what makes being a snitch for Chad such a good deal.

Chad has connections, and if you work hard for him, he'll fight for you. If you cooperated with me, I would go to the wall for you. You know, primarily for me, a lot of Black defendants, and they're taught their whole lives, don't trust the police, and certainly don't trust the white police. So at the end of the day, all I really have, credibility-wise, is my word. So because of going to bat for people, taking care of the guys that did their thing, it was like, if you're in trouble, you want to help yourself, call Chad. Having a long list of CIs, or confidential informants, made Chad a hot shot at the DEA. But this is not necessarily the way informant relationships are supposed to work. Here's Ron Woods. You operate at the direction of me. I'm your handler. Now, obviously, you got to work with

each other. So you got to get to know each other, et cetera, et cetera. But you don't ever cross the line. I know when I worked up here in D.C. and I had a C.I. and the police called me and said, hey, we just locked up your C.I. and he's down here at the jail cell right now. I was like, oh, well, leave his ass in there then. He know he wasn't supposed to do that, so leave him in there. He'll learn his lesson, and that's how you're supposed to handle those CIs. Ron Woods and his team were monitoring the informant's jail calls, so they heard everything. Heard Chad bad-mouthing their team to an informant they've just caught making crack. They suspect that Chad was letting the informant get away with dealing so that Chad could make

big cases and look like a star. Ron reports this to the higher-ups. Chad gets a talking to for staying in touch with his ex-informant and for insulting his colleagues. But the brass just addresses those details. They don't look at the big picture. They don't ask, how long has Chad been letting this informant deal drugs on the side? How many times has he gotten this informant out of prison? But Ron does ask, how long has this bullshit been going on? But you got to figure, the CI was from Houston or at least worked in Houston a lot. And Chad Scott had worked in Houston, obviously. And they had been doing these cases for years together.

So you got to imagine, that wasn't his first rodeo on that. It really starts looking to Ron's team like the fix is in. And this is when Ron and his team take a little turn off the straight and narrow. They get their own informant in jail, someone supposedly from the Hells Angels. This guy says he overheard Chad's informant giving his girlfriend instructions on digging up and relocating $150,000 in cash. Ron's team thinks they've got a smoking gun. If the team can find this money, not only is it a good cash seizure, but it'd be bad news for Chad. It's like DEA Treasure Island, and they found their map. Balut is apparently buried

at the informant's mother's property. Ron's team doesn't waste time. They get a warrant signed around 10 p.m., show up, and start digging. The informant's mom is naturally pissed. But Ron's team keeps digging for cash until four o'clock the next afternoon and they never find anything. We can't say if there was ever buried treasure, gold doubloons, or cracked cocaine.

But we know a few things. For one, Ron's team barely checked their information. After they return from their midnight dig empty-handed, Ron's boss does a background check on the Hell's Angels informant. And he learns that their guy on the inside with the hot tip? He's a con man. This is the kind of guy who would tell you anything

if he thinks it might get him somewhere. And things only get worse from there. Even though Ron's team has to know that they fucked up, badly, they don't take a moment to lick their wounds. Instead, that day after the big dig, members of Ron's team file an anonymous complaint to bring the feds down to New Orleans. Someone in my group, who I will never say, wrote a letter to OIG and filed a complaint.

Said, hey, this office is dirty, Chad Scott's dirty, everybody's dirty up here, and y'all need to come check it out. The tricky thing about Ron's team is that part of this is about blowing the whistle on misconduct. But another part is like, Chad is using performance enhancers that make the rest of us look bad. Can we stop letting him win already? They're pissed off on a personal level. And yet, Chad's the golden boy, gets away with everything, and he's white. So you might be wondering, how does race factor into this chapter? Here's Ron Woods. I mean, even the white guys didn't like him.

So, I mean, in fact, it was the white guys that had the majority of the complaints against him. You know, the brothers and the sisters, we didn't give a damn about them. Like I said, the guy couldn't carry my draws. He wasn't a better agent than me. I was never intimidated by him or anything, but we did question how he'd just get away with everything. As it relates back to the question about race, we would say things like that.

If that was somebody black, we'd have been locked up and made an example of. The DEA has had issues with racism in its ranks almost since it was founded in the 70s. We've got a, we being black agents within DEA, we have a suit against DEA that has been going on for almost 40 years about being promoted, being given certain jobs, etc et cetera. It's been 40 years. What happened between Chad and Ron's team is complicated. But the big picture of what's going on at the DEA with regard to race is more than just this one scene.

I wrote a story in 2020 about a string of complaints from the DEA's training academy. Minorities were singled out, insulted, and consistently held to a higher standard than their white counterparts. It's a systemic problem. It has been for decades. When Ron's team meets with the prosecutor to interview Chad's informant, Mark tells the prosecutor that he doesn't trust DEA management, that New Orleans is corrupt,

and that they want this to be handled by the FBI. This is when Ron and his team unequivocally crossed the line. The prosecutor sees this conversation as a sign there's a quote significant morale problem with Ron's group. He tells their bosses about it and it bites Ron in the ass. You know, they moved me to another group, and I still was in charge of another group. I just wasn't in charge of those particular individuals. They wanted to break us up.

Management disbands Ron's team, and none of them get to pursue the case of Chad and his informant. The feds do look into the claims that Ron and his team made. Eventually, they investigate the claims I made, but they had to send the folks down OIG to interview me. And I remember feeling like I was the bad guy, like I was the one that did something wrong. I get in this interview, and the first thing they ask me is,

why am I telling on a fellow agent? The Fed's investigation takes over a year and comes out in 2005. They find no criminal wrongdoing, but that both sides violated DEA policy. In the end, I was relieved of my duty, if you want to call it that. I was sent to D.C. to headquarters. You know, you put the word out, then it damages you. Ron's career never fully recovered. I was a staff coordinator.

I was in charge of our CS section, ironically, dealing with cooperating sources. I kind of ran that shop a little bit. But it's a paper-pushing job, you know, and I like being on the streets. So that's what I wanted to do. So, I mean, they knew how they were going to get to me. And Chad? He was just fine. You know, when I got transferred, the rumors and the accusations, they didn't stop. Chad Scott was a dirty motherfucker, and he was always going to be a dirty motherfucker. Ron and his team might have gotten carried away, but they were on to something. Chad showed a pattern of violating DEA policy, and nobody stuck him in a broom closet.

If and when Chad was reprimanded, he was always treated with kid gloves. I mean, it's like the kid who's the star football player all his life, and he goes to college, and then he expects he can get anything he wants. I mean, he was going to skirt the law, walk that line, and he was going to do what he needed to do to make himself be a hero. And he did that. In the end, the rank looking the other way wouldn't be such a great deal for Chad. There's this idea that comes up a lot in our reporting, especially when you start talking to Chad's allies.

It's an idea that Chad's behavior should have been handled administratively. Chad didn't need to get treated like a criminal. Well, this was their chance. The DEA had warnings, and they did nothing. Chad would get himself a posse of informants that he handled any way he wanted. Part of Chad's downfall was he had too many informants. What about Booby?

Booby was a bad deal from the beginning. That's next time on Smokescreen, Betrayal on the Bayou. Thank you. Our editor is Catherine St. Louis. She is also Neon Hum 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.

Fendell Fulton is our fact checker. Our production manager is Samantha Allison. Alexis Martinez is our podcast coordinator. Special thanks to Stephanie Serrano, Mia Warren, and Rodney Carmichael. 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. you