The Connect- with Johnny Mitchell - Homeland Security Agent Reveals Inner Workings Of Mexican Cartels | The Connect

Episode Date: March 30, 2024

Myron Gaines is the well known and very controversial host of the Fresh And Fit Podcast. What a lot of people don’t know is before he became a famous podcaster and fitness coach, he was a special agent with Homeland Security. After attending Northwestern University, Myron started working with HSI in Loredo, Texas. He was involved with Mexican Cartel stings, wiretaps, undercover operations, and immigration. He joins the show today to tell all about his time as a federal agent, how that field ACTUALLY works, and ultimately that caused him to leave. Go Support Myron's Channels! Fresh And Fit Podcast: @FreshFitMiami Fed Reacts: @FedReacts This Episode Is Brought To You By The Following Sponsor: PRIZEPICKS! Head over to https://www.prizepicks.com/connect and use promo code CONNECT for a first deposit match up to $100! Support the show and visit https://www.dietsmoke.com/FREE to try Diet Smoke gummies. Join The Patreon For Bonus Content! https://www.patreon.com/theconnectshow Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

So I'm there, right? I'm on duty. They say, hey, there's this guy here. He doesn't want to talk to any of us. He wants to talk to a special agent. He says he has some information on criminal activity going on on the Mexican border. On the Zeta side, he says that he used to work for one of the Trevinoes. I sit with him and I talk with him one-on-one. You start telling me that he's a Sicario.

And his job was to make sure that the boss got away. And when the Mexican Marines started shooting at them, he'd get out and he'd start firing back with his machine gun. And for every Mexican Marine that he killed, what he would do is he would take a souvenir. Like, he would cut one of their fingers off. or whatever may be, and he'd get a bonus per body part that he brought back. My guest today is Myron Gaines, host of the popular and controversial Fresh and Fit podcast. Before he was a podcast host, Myron worked as a detective for Homeland Security, first in Laredo, Texas on the U.S.-Mexico border and then later in Miami.

He has wild stories of being involved in gigantic cartel busts in human smuggling operations. He gave a firsthand insight into the way that Mexican cartels actually work, from being on the front lines of the war on drugs. This is the first federal agent we've had on the show, and he cleared up a lot of myths about immigration, the migrant crisis, and the Mexican cartels that most so-called experts get wrong. Also, for a very special bonus episode this week,

go over to patreon.com slash The Connect show. Okay, without further ado, I give you Myron Gaines, one half of the Fresh and Fit podcast, right here on The Connect with Johnny Mitchell. I mean, obviously a lot of those images stick with me to this day. You know, it's kind of something that I kind of, and it's funny that like, I put it in a section of my brain and didn't think about it. But now that we're like talking about it, I can see those faces in my in my head.

It's horrible, man. It really is horrible. That's when I see lights behind me start to flash. And I didn't even think. I just hit it. I was driving like my life depended on. Then I parked the car, popped out, closed the door, and I started running. And he pulls out a burner, shang.

like six inches. Then he passes it to me. And he goes, here, that's yours. Don't ever leave the cell block without this. He was the reason I made it out of a place alive. You're the first law enforcement. Have we had, okay, we had a Mexican cop on, Ed Calderon, right? And then we had like a white

boy undercover from like the Dallas you know, narcotics squad. Okay. But you're the first fed. Bam, I'm honest. A mother fed that we've had on the channel. I'm stoked, so I'm just going to hand it over to you. Tell us how you became a Homeland Security officer.

Yeah, so my official title was a special agent with Homeland Security Investigations, or HSI, just so the audience kind of understands. So before 9-11, there was no Homeland Security. There was Immigration Naturalization Service and the U.S. Customs Service. After 9-11, the Homeland Security Act was created, and in 2003, the Department of Homeland Security was created. Underneath Homeland Security, so if you look at Homeland Security here, you have something called immigration and customs enforcement or ICE. People tend to think ICE is just like, oh, immigration, oh my God.

But there's two components to ICE. There's enforcement and removal operations who deals with the immigration and actually deporting of the illegal aliens that are here. And then there's what used to be called the Office of Investigation, but now known as Homeland Screen Investigations, HSI. So on the ERO side, enforcement removal operations, you've got deportation officers. And then you have, on the HSI side, you got special agents. So INS and U.S. Customs Service were merged. through the Homeland Security Act to create ICE, immigration customs enforcement.

So they have both immigration and customs authority. So you take a Homeland Security, HSI special agent. They basically think of a custom special agent and an INS special agent combined into one. So they have Title A authority was immigration, and then they also have Customs Authority, which is Title 19.

And then they also have Title 21, which is drugs, because that automatically gets into customs because drugs a lot of times, cocaine, everything. Right. A lot of times it comes from abroad. So. So they have this alongside the DEA. Yes.

What's the difference between what you did and the DEA? Okay. Fantastic question. There's not much difference. And that's why HSI and DEA fight a lot. And I know this from being an HSI agent. We would get into big arguments with the DEA a lot because there was overlap, right? So the big distinction is HSI has it when it's an international nexus.

That means the drugs are being smuggled in. DEA typically deals with it domestic, but it can get tricky. Cocaine is an international drug. So whether you're in Kansas City or at the Mexican border, it's still considered international drugs. So a lot of the times you end up getting into fights with DEA over drug trafficking cases because you can always argue that there's an international nexus, but then they can always argue, well, there's a domestic trafficker.

So, you know, this is where relationships are really important in being able to have a counterpart over a DEA that you work well with, because that way you don't deal with these problems. Fortunately for me, when I was an agent, I had a really good relationship with DEA. I started my career in Laredo, Texas. But I can't say the same for a lot of my counterparts, HSI. A lot of them had problems with DEA. Does HSI go undercover like DEA? Absolutely.

Okay. Do they have foreign overseas offices? Yes. We have more than the DEA, actually. Wow. Yeah. So you're almost putting the DEA out of business. So HSI is the second largest federal law enforcement.

agency. FBI is number one and HSI second. The thing is though with HSI is that they're, I'm just going to be honest, their branding sucks. They're not good at like marketing themselves out there, but they actually have more authority than FBI. Wow. Because I was, we have different, they investigate human trafficking, human

smuggling, drug trafficking, weapons, money laundering, financial crimes, stolen artifacts. Yeah. Child exploitation slash child. They investigate everything. The only crimes really that like we don't, we're still involved in it, but we don't

have lead is like terrorism. That's FBI. So, and then DEA is the main agency that does Title 21, but HSI has Title 21 authority and so does the FBI, surprisingly, too. The FBI doesn't do as much organized crime and as much drug trafficking as they used to prior to 9-11, because they focused a lot more on their top

programmatic areas, and I know this because I worked a very good friend of mine is FBI agent, and I worked very close with ATF, I worked very close to DEA, so I know all the different agencies work, working with them. But FBI's main mission nowadays is counterterrorism, public corruption and espionage. That's their three main programmatic

mortgage that they worry about. So how did you become a cop? What's your background? So I went to Northeastern University in Boston, Massachusetts, and I was an intern with, it was ICE at the time, first in 2010.

Then they shifted over from ICE Office of Investigations to HSI. Like in 2011, I think Director Morton was the agency director at the time, and he made a big shift to switch to HSI. So more people would know,

what ICE or HSI did at the time because people always got to confuse with the ERO side that I told you about which is strictly immigration. They don't know that they had the customs authority, the Title 21 authority, money learning, all that stuff, right? Title 18, which is the criminal code. So I was an intern from 2010 to 2013.

I became an agent in 2013. I went to the academy in 2014 and then I started my career six, seven months later in Laredo, Texas. Okay, so you're obviously like a very sharp guy. You're a very fastidious guy. I mean, you don't sleep. You text me at 3 a.m.

And you're like, hey, bud, you want to come podcast? Like, no, I'm getting myself to sleep. So you're a very hard worker. But what, did you have like an ideology or something personal that a lot of cops when they're young? They kind of have a patriotic reason for joining law enforcement. You're like, I want to stop drugs because I saw my neighbor OD or something like that. Yeah.

So interesting. thing. So after 9-11, for your audience, I might not know, my family's from Sudan, which is in North Africa, Arab, Muslim country. And after 9-11, man, I really went through it. Like, my family was getting harassed. I was getting harassed. And, you know, obviously, anyone that's Muslim knows, like, hey, you know, you don't kill innocent people. And after 9-11 happened, right? I was like, this is a bad representation. Muslims don't want to kill innocent Americans. Like, there's never an excuse for that. Obviously, you can have your gripes with. you know, foreign policy and everything else like that.

You know, and as I became an adult, I kind of figured out why Osama did what he did. I kind of grew up and figured it out because they also, you know, the U.S. government did their part to not tell you the truth about what went down with that as well. Because Osama had a very, he wrote a whole paper thesis as to why they did the attacks. Not to justify it killing innocent people, but when you know the why, then you can kind of see, okay, I see where your perspective, but you shouldn't retaliate it that way. Either way, to make a long story short, that happened and I said you know what

there's a better way to represent the Islamic community in the United States so that's kind of what prompted me to get into law enforcement and first I wanted to get into FBI because FBI was the main agency that investigates terrorism but then when I landed my internship with HSI I was like damn like they do a lot more than the Bureau does and they have more authority than the FBI does a lot of people don't know that HSI has actually more authority than the FBI does so so when I interned for them I really loved it I was like wow this is really cool

because you could do different types of crimes like literally You can investigate almost anything. So, yeah, that's kind of how I got into it. I've always been a pretty disciplined guy, really big into the gym. I've never done a drug in my life. I don't really drink. I was a divisional athlete in college. So I just took that discipline and applied it in a different way.

And so they must have loved you. Like, they must have seen right away that, like, okay, this guy's going to be a real asset. I spoke Arabic a lot more fluently back then, too. Oh, sure, sure. So did you originally want to go into counterterrorism? Yeah, so funny. So I wanted to originally go into counterterrorism, right, and do it with the FBI. Then I ended up, I did a couple of cases with the FBI, and I figured out that counterterrorism and espionage are not as sex these people think.

What ends up happening when you get put on a counterterrorism squad or whatever with the FBI? I know this because I have a buddy that did it. You don't really get involved in a lot of cases. You don't really make a lot of arrests. Your job when you're in a counterterrorism or what's called the Joint Terrorism Task Force, JTTF, your job is actually prevent that from happening. not investigating it after the fact. So what ends up happening is you end up like, you know, dismantling groups before it happens.

A lot of the stuff is classified. You can't even really go to court and talk about it. So terrorism cases are not as sexy as people think they are. They're actually extremely boring. And very rarely do you get the chance to work on one. Today's episode is sponsored by Prize Picks, our longtime sponsor of the show now. You know them.

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because, okay, so the FBI's bread and butter is something called providing material support for terrorism. That's like their bread and butter. That's what they go after. That's their main charge, right? That's what they normally go out to terrorists for. It's very difficult to prove that, though. So what ends up happening is they'll find this guy from,

let's say, Middle Eastern country A, let's say Egypt, right, or one of these other countries on the list. And the guy, they think he might be a suspected terrorist, or you might have links to al-Shabaab or, Al-Qaeda or whatever. And they'll be like, okay, let's watch them. And they'll watch them and they can't build a case. And they're like, damn, well, we know that his visa is expired.

He shouldn't be here anyway. Hey, HSI, can you guys help us out with this? Boom. You know what? Bring him in. Hey, we know you're involved with XYZ. You want to go back to Algeria? No, I don't.

I don't. Oh, you want to cooperate? Oh, okay, yeah. Boom. Now you got yourself a new source. And now, and immigration is a very powerful tool when you can use it the right way. because a lot of times these guys were, you know, maybe born in that country, but then they came here when they were five.

So that's a very strong tool, a lot of the times. A lot of times guys would rather, you know, do 20 years in president and get sent back to their home country. So you're able to develop informants like that, right, et cetera. So that is why a lot of times HSI ends up becoming a very powerful partner in the JTTF process. Or you can just send his ass back. You just deport them if you don't got a case because it's very difficult to prove material support.

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B-21. What do you think about these counterterrorism cases that are entrapment? I remember I'm from Portland. There was a case when, God damn, I think I was locked up when this happened. I think this cat was in the jail, the main downtown booking when I was there. They had literally groomed him as like a minor, a teenager, right? Just a kid from the suburbs, parents, you know, came over from whatever Middle Eastern country. he was you know he had that teenage angst was in the wrong chat room said the wrong things

they these deep deep undercover agents went so far as to plant a fake bomb on you know in a van in the middle of downtown Portland and they convinced him after months and months and months and months of grooming and brainwashing to press the button and he did it and they gave him 30 years like how about just stopping him giving him a hug You know what I mean? Like why take it that far? Do you have any kind of like reservations about the overreach of the government like that? There's a reason why the FBI stands for famous but incompetent, right?

So we used to call them the thieves. We used to make jokes. They have a hard on for getting these terrorism cases, man. You know, when you say the T word, things start to change, right? We're talking about stock markets coming up and down. It's probably the most volatile crime when it comes to switching, you know, things around. So if you're able to catch your terrorists, that's a big deal, man. So they get horny, man.

At the end of the day, it comes down to stats. It comes down to disrupting organizations. And if we're getting funding, if you're able to go and say, hey, we stop this many terrorist attacks. So, you know, obviously they should know better. The U.S. Attorney's Office should be knowing better, right? Because at the end of the day, there's the ones that got a prosecutor. But whenever you're dealing with the T word, it's like national security. National security, they're able to kind of do things differently, right?

You're able to go into FISA courts. You're able to kind of get around certain things that you might not have been able to do in a regular criminal investigation. So whenever now security is involved, I mean, you look at the Snowden situation, right? With National Security, you know, they're listening to everyone's phones. Of course. You know, so you're able to tap into way more resources once you get into that realm. Yeah. So the way the DEA lets undercovers sell drugs in huge volume for years.

And it doesn't matter because it's for the bigger bust. whatever that means. Sorry, going. I don't know. I just find it fascinating that it's all it's all a big money pot. It all at the end of the day comes down to as much budget

that they can get at the end of the year. It comes out of stats. You know, yeah, stats are huge because you're able to go to Congress and get more funding for your agency, which obviously is very important for them to, you know, staffing, budgeting, get resources, etc.

So, and the way, and the United States is unique in this because when I've worked with, like, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police are worth the, you know, other foreign law enforcement. They only have one federal, one, two, three, maybe four federal agencies at the most. Here in the United States, we got like 30 something, right, law enforcement agencies. And they're all competing with each other.

So it's very common where, you know, you'll have to do what we call like a deconfliction meeting where you'll meet, right? I've been there sitting at a table with FBI one corner, D.E.N. One corner. Us. At the time I was living in Texas, Texas, Chrome Investigation Division, right? Texas Rangers. We're all sitting there. It's like, oh, well, this is your guy. Yeah, I'm looking at this guy. And you got to come to a middle ground of how you're going to work it, right?

You're like beefing gangs. It happens, man. It happens, especially when you're in areas, you know, high-intest, high, it's called Haida, high-intit drug trafficking areas, right? You're in San Antonio. You're in Houston. You're in New York City. You're in Miami.

It gets very competitive with the agencies because a lot of the times you have big field offices and all the agents are there and, like, you know, competing for stats. So you go through your internship, you join the HSI, and then how did you end up in Laredo? Okay, so Laredo is my first duty station. So anytime with HSI, and this is especially when, I'm sure they probably still do this, but most new special agents that get hired on with HSI, you're going to go to the Southwest border. You're going to go to a Laredo, McAllen, Harlege, and, you know, Nogales, you know, San Anasidro, you're going to end up somewhere on the border, right?

You're not going to be in San Diego. You're going to be a San Yedro. Nothing sexy for you, my man. Yeah, nothing great. Yeah, you're going to be in like one of these sucky-ass areas on the Mexico. Eagle Pass or something like that, right? So, and the reason for that is because there's an enormous amount of drugs and illegal aliens coming in through the border. Weapons going south, money going south, drugs and illegal aliens coming in.

And for your audience, when I refer to aliens, that's like the Immigrate, INA, Immigration National. Act, that's how you refer to foreign nationals. So aliens is not a derogatory term. It's actually a federal official term. It's the official term. In the INA, Immigration Nationality Act, you refer to a foreign people as aliens. Yeah. So just so your audience doesn't get a funny, like, where's it going to aliens?

No, it's very, there's a real sensitive, there's a real sensitivity around the word, even immigrant now. It's migrant. It's an illegal migrant. But like, it's actually alien. Yeah. We would refer to them as UDA's undocumented aliens. is how we would write my reports, UDAs. You can refer to them as migrants and stuff too,

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hiring freezes and everything else like that. Obama was in office when I got in. So, um, we had half the manpower, right? And there was, and then, Like my academy that went through, that was the first academy that had been through for like four years. Like it had been a very long time. Why is that? Talk about that. Why is there hiring freezes for Homeland Security officers under Democrats? It just happens like with law enforcement in general, federal, almost always when there's Democrats in office, there's just not as much hiring.

Like they're not as pro law enforcement as conservative. Right. Even though Obama deported more people, I think, than any president in recent history. So like he had the cages that they were accusing Trump of. He did all that. Yeah, he was doing a bunch of stuff. But like the thing is it was like they move different with it. Right.

So like this right now what we have with like the crisis at the border, we have the same thing in 2014. When I got on, there was a crisis of the border as well. It almost always happens when there's a Democrat in where there's a crisis of the border. Yeah. And the other thing too is that with with immigration especially, it's a very politically sensitive topic. So when there's a Democrat in, you are already.

road, the immigration side of us, they almost never do, they rarely do deportations. They're only going after criminal aliens. Right. Like if you're, if you're here illegally, they're not going to care. If you were convicted of like, a lot of times, sometimes it's got to be a serious felony for them to go find you and then actually put you in removal proceedings. Right.

When there's like a Trump in or a conservative, they're actually doing their job and they're all deporting people, but their hands are tied depending on who's in office. Sure. So, HSI unfortunately, since they also enforce immigration kind of gets the, like, because ICE is one agency. So if ICE doesn't get funding,

HSI doesn't get funding as a bar product because it has that negative connotation of ice. That's why we're so big on doing the name change to HSI. I see. To kind of separate themselves from that stigmatation of ice. Why do you think Democrats don't want to fund border security? Do you think it's because they expect those aliens that come in to vote for them? I think that's a component of it.

And then in general, Democrats are always lax when it comes to immigration. They always lack when it comes to border security. Yeah. They relax when it comes to even law enforcement, right? Like, I'll give you an example, right? So when I was on a job, right? If I was like in a, so we were super, the U.S. Attorney's Office and Laredo was very aggressive.

They go after everybody. You're smuggling in drugs. You're smuggling in aliens. You're trying to move guns south. You're trying to move money south. We're prosecuting you. You go three hours north on 35 to Austin, Texas. Super liberal.

Yeah. I'll never forget this. One time, we did an operation up in Austin, Texas, right? I was with the child group, the child exploitation group. A lot of the times what will happen is they'll have an undercover talk one of these weird pedos or perverts. They don't want to meet a 13 year old or whatever.

Oh, come to Austin, meet us there, right? We go up to Austin, we meet him there. Arrest his ass, right? Because he was coming to meet a kid. Yeah. Prosecutor, and they write the criminal complaint, right? And when you get someone in custody, so you can do something called a criminal complaint. And I can explain this real quick to your audience.

Instead of going out and trying to get like an indictment and everything else like that, you got the guy in your custody, you do a criminal complaint. complaint, file it with the U.S. Attorney's office, and the judge get the guy in jail right there that night. The prosecutor declined prosecution in the fucking guy in Austin, Texas. That's wild, bro. Even after the guy said, he made a comment that he was going to like off himself or whatever. I know I'm going to keep a YouTube friendly.

And he was a threat to himself and potentially the community. U.S. attorneys off in Austin, didn't want to take it. And that was the first time. Usually when it comes to child exploitation, they almost always take those cases. They never declined prosecution on those things. They didn't want to take it. They said, they said, we'll indict it later. Right.

Which is kind of like what you have certainly say when they're like, I don't know what I'm going to do. I think they said, end quote, she looked 19. Yeah, some like that. But that just goes to show you. Three hours, dude. Three hours. And a U.S.

30's office is heavily, like, depending on the city. Yeah. Depending on how liberal they are, whatever maybe. I just don't get why that's a political thing. I don't get why. because citizens, ordinary citizens, Republicans and Democrats, would not distinguish that crime ideologically. They're like, that is a horrendous evil thing.

That person should be taken off the streets immediately. But you're actually minded individuals of some people aren't, I guess. Crazy, bro, but they didn't take it. Wow. I was shocked, but that just goes to show just three hours north, dude. Yeah. The big difference in your attorney's office. Right.

So you start basically at that time, when you first get down to Laredo, the cartel. Tell us about the cartel that is the main driver of drugs and people over the border. It was at this. Is that this? What year is this? This is 2014. Okay. So this is what when at their height. Yeah.

They've kind of disbanded now. Yeah, yeah. But this is when they're at their most ruthless. Yes. Because there was a war, right? So when I got there, right, and just so for, you could maybe put a map or whatever. So Nueva Laredo is right here. Sorry, Laredo's right here.

directly underneath there's a bridge that goes over the Rio Grande River into Nuevo Lelado, down there. It's hot down there. That stays one of the most violent, wildest places. Like, I would not. I go to T.J. all the time. I would never go to Nuevo Loretta. Hell, though.

No. And I had a couple opportunities to go over and I said no. As a matter of fact, to this day, I won't go to Mexico. To this day, I will not do it. You're so scarred. I'm scarred, dude. Because there's no law over there. People don't get it.

Oh, I'm going to go to Plado, come. I'm going to go to. Cancun bro. Like, that's all run by Mexican cartels. You're there and not getting shot at or getting robbed because the cartel is allowing it to happen. By the grace of the cartel. Yeah. They run Mexico.

Yeah. And if you've worked on law enforcement, especially at a federal level, and you dealt with anything that has to do with, you know, transnational criminal organizations in Mexico, you know what the fuck it is. Right. So I'm never going to the mic side, especially as a guy like me that's, they killed, they killed Hamer Zabata in Mexico. He was an HSI agent. He came from my field office, Laredo, Texas. He was killed in February, I think, of 2011.

You're kidding. What happened? He was working undercover? He was there on an assignment abroad, and he was, I think, they're transporting equipment, and they got robbed because they wanted their bulletproof vehicle that they were in. They got robbed, and one of them got killed. I'm his Apathe. He was an agent in Laredo.

Wow. And his best friend was one of, like, my training agents. Wow. So, and funny enough, my first supervisor that I had when I was in Laredo, Texas, he was the one I was supposed to go down for that assignment. And then Jaime said, but he couldn't because I think his son was being born. And Jaime volunteered to said, no, I'll go. They were all close. Yeah, when it got killed.

And when it got killed down there. Those tourists got killed. They were down there for plastic surgery, black people. Oh, yeah. I heard about that recently. You know what I mean? And they just, it was mistaken identity, you know, but still, it's like, it just takes one. Yeah.

And yeah, they run it down there, dude. So it's like, I would never go. But yeah, when I got there, the Zetas were there. They were controlling. The reason why they're so ruthless is because they're paramilitary, right? And they use codes for themselves like Z-41, Z-42, et cetera. I think it was the Trevinoes that were running the show when I was there. Correct me if I'm wrong.

I can double check and look it up. But I think it was the Trevinoes that were running it when I was there. And then I remember vividly, man. So I was right on the border. Like I lived, I mean, you could look it up. I lived on Faskin Boulevard in Laredo, Texas. If you look at Faskin Boulevard on a map, it's literally like yards away from the Mexican border. Like the Rio Grande River is right there, right?

Is there a fence there or the river is the fence? The river's the fence. Okay. Right? So I would remember hearing like machine guns going off sometimes when I first got there. Machine guns, because it was the Mexican Marine. fighting with the the f f f***es at this because the police can't do

nothing it's the military fighting these guys and then another story that will stick with me to the day I die so I remember I was on duty one time and when you're on duty basically you're on call right so border patrol catch a something or they catch something at the bridge because you got Border Patrol green uniform and then customs border protection blue uniform so I was

like to kind of explain to the audience so they understand if you see green uniform you shouldn't be coming into the United States through this way if you see blue uniform you can come into the United States that way what do you mean by that so if you go to the airport right? Right. U.S.

Customs of Border Protection, blue uniforms. That's a valid port of entry. Right. You're coming into the United States, maybe through Canada or through the bridge. Blue uniforms,

valid point of entry. You see green uniforms. That's Border Patrol. You f***ed up. That means stop. You should be going in this way, right? Now, our Border Patrol, it's said that they are the most corrupt organization.

I mean, I arrested a Border Patrol agent one time myself. I could tell that story later on. Okay. You know, because the thing is, is that... Are they almost underpaid and easiest to bribe.

I know they actually make a bunch of money. Really? Yeah, yeah, I can, I'll explain that here in a second. Sorry to get you off track. No, no, no, no. No worries. How were the Zetas running? Oh, yeah, who started going to tell you.

Yeah, so I'll tell you this story. So I'm there, right? I'm on duty. I'm on call. So if they catch anybody about anything at the, what is Border Patrol or Customs or whatever, they call you, hey, because think of Customs of Border Protection and Border Patrol as like the police officers and HSI as the detectives.

If Homeland Security was a police department, right? We come in and we follow up into the investigations. So they say, hey, there's this guy here. He doesn't want to talk to any of us. He wants to talk to a special agent. He says he has some information on criminal activity going on on the Mexican border. On the Zeta side, he says that he used to work for one of the Trevinoes. So I'm like, oh, okay.

So I go and I show up. I go, I bring him in. He refuses to have any border patrol agent sit in there. And he said, okay, I sit with him and I talk with him one-on-one. You start telling me that he's a Sicario. He starts telling me, I ask him some questions to make sure that he's actually the real deal. He is. and it was interesting because he said,

yeah, so my job was this, and he went in an outline like his duties, right? And he said that his job was whenever the motorcade is driving through Norville-Laredo, they typically get shot out by the Mexican Marines. And they'd have a motorcade of different escalades, all bulletproof, of course. And the boss was in one, right?

And his job was to make sure that the boss got away, and when the Mexican Marines started shooting at them, he'd get out and he'd start firing back with his machine gun. And for every Mexican Marine that he killed, what he would do is he would take a souvenir, like he would cut one of their fingers off or whatever may be to show how many of them that he killed. And he'd get a bonus per body part that he brought back

because I would identify how many individuals he killed. And you got paid extra per person. And the thing that really stuck with me when I was sitting there talking to him is just how callous he was about it. Like, yeah, you know, just kill him, whatever, no big deal. The boss got away good. He gave me a bonus for everybody, every body part that I brought.

And I was like, what the fuck? And it's just like, well, obviously, you know, you're playing poker face. Yeah. You're like, oh, it doesn't affect me. blah, blah. That's one thing that really stuck with me. But to your second question, how does you human trafficking or human smuggling?

Well, what's the difference, first of all? Ah, I'm glad that you asked that because a lot of people fuck this up. A lot of people don't know. Okay. So human smuggling is the illegal, I don't want to say importation, but it's the illegal smuggling of aliens into the United States. Human trafficking is used it. Once they're in the United States, a lot of times illegally, but they don't have to necessarily

be here illegal. they can be U.S. citizens as well, is using them for maybe some indentured servitude, making them do some shit that they don't want to do. Prostitution. Yeah, prostitution, whatever may be, right? It can be anything, making them work, you know, to pay off a debt, whatever

may be. But typically, whenever you're talking about foreign nationals, at least, the human smuggling has to happen first. They're brought into the United States. Once they're in the United States, then they might be traffic depending on if they owe money, et cetera. Now, if you want, I can explain you how human smuggling works, because this is kind of, how you even get involved with the human trafficking.

So the way human smuggling works, right, is let's say you're a foreign nationally when it comes to the United States. You typically have to pay a regional smuggler, right? And they have them all over the place. If you're in India, you got a guy. If you're in China, you got a guy. If you're in Mexico, you got a guy, Honduras, whatever may be. You reach out to your regional smuggler.

Hey, I want to come to the United States. Nine out of ten times, they're going to tell you to go through Mexico. But you can also go through the Caribbean. The Bahamas is a big one. When I was in Miami, the field office, they would always go into Bimini. wait there for a few days, then come in through boats. So maritime smuggling is another big thing. Is that still happen?

They still, even with this incredibly developed police port right in Miami, they get boats in from the Lajamas. That takes some. With smuggling, illegal aliens. Yeah. Yep, drugs too. Obviously, it's not like the 80s. No, of course.

But they still do it. I mean, I saw it when I was in the Miami field office. How much does it cost to get smuggled from the Bahamas to the port of Miami? So it depends. Really good question. So it depends, interesting enough, it depends on the nationality of the legal alien. Because they pay what they can get from. Exactly.

So if you're a Chinese person. If you're Chinese, if you're Arab, if you're Russian, interestingly enough, if you're from any country that the United States has issues with, you have to pay a lot. Chinese, I remember the going rate was about $60,000 US, Arabs, 60 to $100,000. Russians, similar, between 40 to $60,000. And you've got to ask yourself, if you got 100 bans to $1,000. spend to get smuggled over here. Why the fuck just not stay in your country? That's true. Well, this is how the human trafficking begins. So

if it does happen, right? And people are going to not like me saying this. Human trafficking is not as common as people think it is. Unfortunately. And I would say it is unfairly put on good old-of-fashioned American pimps to give them more time. You know what I mean? You know what? Colin, I was locked up with a lot

of pimps, good pimps. I'm kidding about that. But that, you know, just old school like black pimps. And they would take their hose to Vegas for Super Bowl weekend, right? This is what you do to get paid, but they crossed state lines from, you know, Cali to Vegas, and they called it trafficking.

Yeah. Well, that and then also, a lot of the times what will happen is the pimple piss off the prostit. They'll go to the police. They'll say, I've been trafficked because they're mad or something like that. He had sex with another girl, blah, blah.

And I know this because I've been on the end of dealing with these calls, and then you go and you take the statement from her, and then she'll change your mind a month later. and say, oh, no, I wasn't traffic. That was just mad at him. Happens all the time. And this is the dirty side that no one wants to admit

because no one wants to say human driving news is common. I mean, I'm saying it because I actually did these cases. A lot of times what you end up happening when you do these, like, human trafficking cases is just a prostitution roundup. Right. That's what ends up being a lot of the time. So it's not as common as people think. What people conflate it with is human smuggling.

Which is extremely common because people are coming here every single day illegally. And you can't come to the United States a lot of times without going through a smuggling organization. If you do, let's say you do try to come to the United States on your own, you go through Mexico and you cross the Rio Grande River, whatever, if they catch you and you didn't pay a smuggler or whatever, they're going to, at best, they're going to whoop your ass. And take everything you have and probably hold you for ransom. Exactly. And the reason for that is because when you cross into the United States, right, especially like Laredo, you're crossing the Rio Grande River, they would make you pay something called the Kota, which you'd have to pay at least $1 to $2,000 just to cross the river. Because Zetas looked at it like, we run the river.

the river. We own the border. So smugglers have to pay that fee to the Zetas. So a lot of people have this idea that, oh, the cartels run human smuggling routes. They actually don't. There's independent smugglers. And the cartels just typically oversee it and charge them for it. Because human smuggling is a very dirty business. It's very labor intensive. You need people that are going to, you know, travel with that. Oh, oh, I didn't explain. So let me go back to the original thing. Yes. You guys are regional smuggler. Right. Exactly. Say you're coming from India. This is a great example. How do you get from India through Mexico up to the state? So you reach out to your regional smuggler.

Hey, I want to come to the United States. Oh, I know a guy that knows a guy. Bam. Okay, you talk to that guy. All right, you need to pay me $3,000. I'm going to facilitate your transportation from here to Honduras. Cool. You get to Honduras.

He puts you in touch with another guy. You contact him. Okay, I'm going to get you through into Mexico City. He gets you to Mexico City. From Mexico City, okay, you want you there? That's the next staging area. They're going to get you to the border. Maybe it's Renoosa.

Maybe it's Norval Laredo. maybe it's Juarez, whatever may be, right? They're going to get you to the border. Now when you're there, that's where they have a bunch of the stage houses and they set you up, right? And then what I end up happening is they typically wait. They'll get enough people. Once they get enough people, they'll cross.

And then that's when you have your lancheros or they call them coyotes. But they'll get them across the river. They'll get them through. Once they get over to the United States side, typically a pickup driver is going to come pick them up immediately. Once that pickup driver gets them, the guy typically goes back to Mexico. driver takes them to a stash house of the United States.

Once they get to that stash house of the United States, that stash house operator, his job is to get them to get them to that house immediately. And the reason why is because in the United States, 30 miles from the border is considered a functional equivalent to the border. Right. So Border Patrol is all over this. Yeah.

And Border Patrol has immigration authority, et cetera, and they can kind of, you know, do an immigration stop or another craft. So they want to get those aliens out of there because they know, If they can get those aliens, typically nine out of ten times if it's on the South Coast border from Harlegin and Brownsville all the way up to like Eagle Pass,

they're trying to go to San Antonio. They'll reel. That's the number one hub to get them to. Right. Because once you get them past that Border Patrol checkpoint, checkpoints, or pass the border patrol checkpoints, excuse me, Falf Furious, checkpoint 29, etc.

Once you get them there, they're safe and they get to San Antonio because once you get there, there's no border patrol. Yeah, and there's a stop at them. And there's San Antonio PD? Hell, Austin PD, you won't even ask for their immigration status. They won't do that.

So if you can get a pass the checkpoints into one of these major cities, you're golden. But that's a lot of work, though. Like that is, it's not easy. I mean, we've went down and filmed with smugglers, and it's a real intricately involved process. So now this guy from India has had to go through five different hands just to get across the border.

Exactly. So that is precisely why, to answer your question, that is precisely why our cartels don't want to deal with it. Right. They just, oh, you want to. want to do human smuggling? You got to feed them, clothe them, move them around, all this other shit. And then here's the other thing. The aliens

are responsible for paying every leg of the trip. So if they don't have the money, the stash house operators in a weird spot, because it's like, I don't want them here. Exactly. What do I do? So they're kind of put in a weird spot. So what the cartels do is they just tax the fuck out of the human smugglers that operate in their region. Yeah, if you

try to cross our road, we control all the roads, we bribe all of the military. That's what a route is. When they say this is a drug smuggling route, or a human smuggling route, that means this cartel, what the Zeta's or Sina Loa, whoever,

has the military and the law enforcement in their pocket and the politicians. Or even if they don't, they'll tell the smugglers that and the smugglers won't dare like with them because at the end of these human smugglers, bro, a lot of the times are like old mom and pop shop that they've been doing this for 10, 20 years

on the Mexican, we call it the Mike side, the Mexican side. They don't want to piss off these guys. They just pay off their bribery money. They pay them. Hey, every alien that cross, we had $10,000, so you go, boom, because they get charged per alien that crosses the river. Right. So this is important. What you're saying is effectively, human smuggling is a network of independent operators. It's not a cartel industry that's making billions, although they've probably made billions, just taxing. Yeah. But it's really, I mean, look, the drug trade is much the same way. Yeah. You know what I mean? Maybe it's kind of a popular belief. Yeah. Yeah. So it's just.

people getting paid at every single leg of the trip. Exactly. And the thing with you're smuggling, it's even more labor intensive than drugs because you need sash house operators. You need someone to go pick up the aliens. You need someone to go get them food and run it back. Yeah, you don't have to feed and clothe the kilos.

You know, yeah, exactly. So it's extremely labor intensive. There's different legs at then. You've got different people in different wealth. Then you got money careers because when they get to the next location, family's got to send the money. Nine out of ten times the aliens don't travel with cash on them. The family is the one dealing with the money.

So you need someone going out and getting the Western Union. and the money couriers. Right. So it's a very, a human smuggling organization can easily have, you know, it's compartmentalized. A lot of people don't know

what another person does. But you can easily have 50 people in an organization easily between, if you're going to cover the international side and the U.S. side, because there's the U.S. network, and then there's the whole Mexican network. And then if you're coming from a foreign country

like India or whatever, there's a network over there. Right. Where they have their own smugglers. So I remember when I was doing my cases, I had Chinese smuggers that I had identified. They would typically go to the same two or three recruiters. you know, you got your Arab and Indian smugglers

that would facilitate that, depending on what region they are in the world when they want to come, and they want to come in through the Mexican side, or if they want to come in through the Caribbean, through the Bahamas. So it could get very, you know, a web when it comes to human smuggling.

And then you got like your regional people where like nine out of ten times, right, once aliens got to San Antonio, that's where the family members would all convene and then pick up their people and pay the final amount. Right. So I remember, like, Mexicans a lot of times,

they pay two to $5,000 to come into the United States. Hondurans, maybe six, 7,000. And then depending on, they call them exotics, depending on where they're from. Arabs and Chinese, like I mentioned in Russians, they'd have to pay a lot more. Right. So who did you see the most of when you were working? It was always Mexicans. Mexicans were the

predominant. And then South Americans as well, you'd run into Venezuela and it's Colombians as well. Especially if there was like issues going on in their home country, you'd see even more of them. Mecadourians, etc. Do you still know people that work down there? Yeah, yeah. What are they saying? A bunch of agents. What do they say now?

Who's the most common nationality? coming over. I haven't like right now at this minute, I don't know because most of my buddies, we all got off the border. Because we did our four years, I got the fuck about it. Okay, so what did you see while you were there in terms of I know that the cartels and the organizations on the

western side of Mexico, right? Coming in through San Ysidro into San Diego, even Juarez, those cartels and those organizations, typically it's a little more mom and pop. It's like two to six people at a time. But I've heard on the East Coast, it's much more like let's put 75 people you know in a minivan and send them over

it's a much more industrial. You can get you can get because Laredo especially was the biggest truck poor in the United States. A lot of people don't know that. Laredo's one of the biggest truck poor in the United States so it would be uncommon for me to catch the trailer with 50 of them in there.

Holy. You know, that's just brutal right? Yeah. Literally actually matter of fact it wasn't too long ago it was like a year ago like a hundred of them were in the back of it. I remember one case there's attractive trailer

I think there are 100 of them I think like 60 of them died because of heat of Josh and San Antonio yeah it's terrible the guy ended up getting life for that one but that's common man where aliens actually die

yeah because they'll put them in the windjammer at the top of a truck which is like the top there they'll get crushed or they'll die of heat of Justin in the back it really makes you

because like my parents are immigrants it really makes you have like a newfound appreciation of being an American citizen like when I see people here crying and complaining about oh I'm broke or I don't know blah blah blah I'm like dude you're

Pussy. Like, you should thank, you should thank God that you're even here in the United States. Because after the things I've seen, dead bodies, dead children, dead mothers with their kids holding them like this in the brush. Like, yeah, I've seen some really, and it made me really appreciate, like, being here United States, being an American citizen, like, there's no excuse to be of failure here. Yeah. You're just trials and tribulations that these people go through.

A lot of times they're just innocent people trying to come here. Of course. They're getting exploited. They're paying tens of thousands of dollars of life savings to come to the United States. And they know how great in many ways the U.S. is. So it's hard to blame. them like you can't have open borders or the whole world would come here you just can't you have to stop them but at the same time it's like a lot of them probably appreciate being americans much more

than these dorks protesting at berkeley facts you know i mean of course of course oh so you would see dead bodies man and you're a new agent yeah like is that your mind up like what what is that doing to you um does it make you angry i mean it i mean obviously the a lot of those images stick with me to this day. You know, it's kind of something that I kind of, and it's funny that, like, I put it in a section of my brain and didn't think about it, but now that we're, like, talking about it,

I can see those faces in my, in my head. I mean, it's horrible, man. It really is horrible. I mean, the only positive I could take away from it is that it gave me even greater appreciation for my parents coming here. They did it legally, being born here, being an American citizen,

and just, like, looking at people that are born here and like our losers and they complain and like dude you're sitting here bitching about your life but you got super fast internet and you're complaining me on the internet about your life like get the fuck out of here you know meanwhile someone's trying to come here they don't have any food they ever drink water in three days

they've been walking around with this coyote they're in the brush all day and a hundred degree weather plus yeah dying do you think that the people coming over now you know because this let's just look you have to look through the propaganda it comes from the left and the right of course

Both. How many people coming over, you know, in the last couple of years, are actually criminals, gang members, and how many are just people fleeing to try to find work and escape, dictatorship, poverty, whatever it may be? Only about 10% I would say are criminals. I could say that. Yeah. Because when every illegal alien that gets arrested, right, by Border Patrol, gets apprehended, they get their fingerprints run and is run through something called the National Crime Information Center, NCIC, basically. Um, anytime you're arrested United States, you're fingerprinted, rolled and everything. And then that's put into like IAFIS, et cetera, all this on their bus terms that, you know,

I don't want to bore your audience. But long story short, a criminal history check is immediately done. And most of the illegalians that come in have no criminal history. Right. You know, of course, some of them have come in and, you know, been arrested before or whatever. But most of the time, if they have been, it's like dumb. Uh, driving without a license. A DUI may be here or there.

Um, some like misdemeanor. Yeah. Um, but yeah, do you get. criminal aliens, of course. You always do. But it's rare. I would say about 10% of the time. Yeah, and this is actually perfect segue into what we were talking about before the pod.

Criminal, real criminal organizations, drug cartels, you know, from Columbia, South America, Mexico, etc. They don't want to come to the U.S. There's laws here. You get arrested, Doc. Yeah, yeah, yeah. They don't have an

interest in doing anything but getting their goods just across the border. The higher ups, yeah, the higher ups don't want to come here. Hell no. But like,

but even the, you know, MS-13 or, you know, Venezuelan gangs from, you know, the slums of Caracas, they're not like sending,

consciously, like, sending soldiers to New York City to, you know, shoot at cops. Like, they come here probably with their families

or because they, they're on the run from, you know, their targets, they're going to get killed in their home countries. And they come here and they're just gangsters

and they have no education, they're dirt poor. and, you know, they're criminals. They cause crime. But it's like, it's not an invasion. Like, I like Tucker Carlson a lot, but he calls these people invaders. And it's just, it's just not the case.

It would be to organize. It's organized. It's organized. Yeah, it's to organize. It's, the thing is, is like, poverty, a lot of the times, I hate to say, at least a crime.

So you bring these people in, they're a lot of times they're poor. Yeah. They grew up in inner city neighborhoods where they're poor. No education at all. Sometimes they even have a language barrier. So what do they do? They do what gangs have always done in the past.

They formulate together to fight off oppression. That's how black gangs started in the United States with the Bloods and Crips to fight off oppression from whites. The cops during civil rights era. Same thing with a lot of these gangs. They come to the United States, especially the MS-13, whatever it may be. And, hey, we're, oh, we're from the same country. We speak the same language. Oh, we're dealing with this.

Hey, we had a gang back over there. Let's have one over here, too. That's what ends up happening in a lot of times. But for them to, is it sophisticated mass immigration of? these gangs to come United States for the purposes of destroying New York City. No, man, they're not that organized. They don't have that ability to do so because like it is what it

is. They're coming in like for every two guys that make it through, three will get caught or whatever. So it's not like it's like a conscious effort of like let's bring these guys or whatever. It just ends up people, human beings being human beings. Oh, you align with me. We look the same. Let's align together. A lot of times that

formulates into criminal activity. And then as far as like international criminal organizations, The higher-ups never want to come to the United States because nine out of ten times they're wanted here. You know, if you are running any type of sophisticated drug traffic organization, human-smuggling organization, money laundering operation, gun-running operation, where you're bringing guns into United States into Mexico or, you know, exporting them out of the United States for whatever it may be, nine out of ten times, whether it's HSI, the DEA, FBI, ATF, U.S. Marshal Service, even Secret Service,

we're going to have an indictment out for you. You know what I mean? Like, you're going to be one of the United States. enough people have cooperated, come forward and said that this is the main guy back in Mexico. This is the main guy back in Colombia, blah, blah, blah. Those higher-ups, they want to make their money, stay the fucking out of the United States. I mean, Pablo Escobar, like, famously, like, did not want to get extra died of the United States. Better to die.

Better a tomb in Colombia and sell in the States. Exactly. So Chapo did everything in his power to not get extra-d-da- Because they know what it is when they come over this side. They know that they're going to face real-time. They know that they won't be able to escape. They know it's going to be tough. I would have told Chapo to stay off Twitter the second time. the second time he escaped.

It was actually HSI the first time that caught him. Oh, really? To him on a wire. Wow. But again, this is why Hs, it was an agent out of no gales.

Wow. I knew the guy. Holy shit. That, uh, that were, they were up on a T3 on another, another case.

Yeah. T3 is a, excuse me, with the jargon. Title III intercept. Wiretaps. So, um,

they were up on on something else and it just so happened and this guy that they were listening to happen to talk to chop to Chappo. Wow.

And you would identify him and boom, they got him caught the first time. From that wire, they were able to get his location? I think they spun up on another phone. Once they identified that it was choppo, they were spun up on that phone. What does that mean? Oh, okay, let me explain. So you want me to explain how T3 process works?

I mean, yeah, like in the most abridged way you can. Like, yeah, how does somebody in Mexico get tracked on their phone? And how are they able to penetrate into Mexico to either arrest him or have the Mexican military arrest him? Okay, so I've done a Title III in our set before. It's not easy. Contrary to popular belief, if you're going to do it like judicially in the United States, not for national security reasons, it's actually very difficult to wire to have someone's form. You want me to give you that.

Okay, I won't go on to the process of what it takes to get a Title III. In terms of a warrant, but you do need a warrant. It's not like the NSA spying. But because I've written a Title III out for David before. You need more probable calls to listen to someone's phone than to arrest them. Wow. Yeah. Okay.

That's the best way I can explain. That makes me feel good. Yeah. That makes me feel like a lot of trouble cause. Right. Because title threes have been screwing eyes so much. So, and not only that, you need a district judge to sign it. Oh, wow.

Not a magistrate. Not the judge that you're there like, oh, yeah, you've been arrested for X, Y, Z. I got a public complaint here. No, you need a district judge to sign it for you. So, and for the audience to know, like a magistrate is like the judge. If you get arrested federally, that's the judge that's going to read you your rights and tell you what you got arrested for. The district judge is the one that sentences you. That's the one that actually holds your.

case. I see. So that's who you got to go to get your Title III signed. And then it's got to go through a whole line at OEO in the U.S. attorney's office.

Anyway, long story short, all you have to do is once you're up on a wire and you're listening to a phone, if you're able to identify a subject on that line as talking about criminal activity and or some type of crime,

in this case, they know it's Chapo Guzman's voice. So it wasn't too hard. He's got a very distinct voice in accent. Yeah. So they were able to probably write up an affidavit that night for him right away.

Yeah. And then how do they trace or are they able to take the number that they were intercepted from the wiretap and trace him? So it depends. So I don't know. Because all I know is that they spun up, sorry, they heard them on a wire. Yeah. So I'm assuming off off, because I don't know how they got, how they did it, but I'm assuming

off my experience, more than likely because Mexicans are real big with BBM. That's like a Blackberry Messenger. Okay. They're stuck in it. That's what they do. A lot of them do BBM, yeah. So it probably was a BBM or maybe whatever. So it depends.

They either did a U.S. judicial Title III or they could have done it through Mexico. But I don't know if they had, if they had because the thing is whenever you deal with Mexican law enforcement, and I don't mean to get in the meat here, but we give your audience the sauce. When you're dealing with Mexican law enforcement, you have to deal with something called a vetted unit. Oh, the unit that's not corrupt. Yes. Yes, and a lot of times they have to go through background checks or whatever, and it's just a couple guys

that you deal with that you're safe with. So I don't know if they had a vetty unit that they were dealing with. That could write T3s in Mexico. So I don't know if that's what they did, or they just spun it up on the U.S. side. I'm going to go, I'm going to go air on the side of cross. I'm going to assume that they did it probably on the U.S. side. Okay. And they just wrote a warrant, wrote a title three for it,

and they're able to spend up on another phone. Right, all right. And then maybe they give it to them or... Because if you're listening to a wire that you already have, and you know that it's, you know, obviously you got this wire because they're committing drug trafficking offenses, whatever. And then you listen to someone else on the line and you know that they're a drug trafficker,

I mean, in this case, Chopper? Yeah. Probably won't be too hard for them to get a warrant. But like how, what if you just, what if they just dump their phones? Then you have to go get a new wire? Ah, good question. So this is where you get really.

When I was selling dope, yeah. Like when I, I did not use my phone. And I'm talking about this is when I was shipping, you know, units all over the country. I use my phone once, save the numbers that I needed and tossed it. Yeah.

I was like, they're not going to get me on a warrant. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But how does it work on like a super high federal level like that? So, okay. So when you write your affidavits, right? So it depends. You can write it for a target number or you can write it for a target device. Right, right, right, right.

So if they're going to be switching phone numbers but using the same device, well, that's cool. I just write it off the device. Right. But if they're going to go ahead and use different numbers or different devices and different numbers, that's where you got, that's where good inform is come in. Right. So he gives you the number. He's like, hey, switch the number here. this is it. Yeah. How long does it take it to get in? Or if you have a good undercover that's

talking with the guy or whatever it may be. And you've identified, uh, you know, this device is dirty. This device is dirty, et cetera. Then you'll be good. But sorry, you were going to ask me. Uh, how long does it take once you get the new number, say from an undercover or of informant? How long does it take to get a new wire up? To get it. Um, see, this is where you have to be. So, DEA, one thing I get to give them credit for, this is their bread and butter is wiretops. That's what they do. Then get another wire. up in a couple days. Yeah.

You know what I mean? You know, because writing a T3 affidavit, it's a pain in that. So I remember when I wrote mine, it was like 75 pages. Yeah, dude, because you need to identify not just the guy that you're talking about, but you need to identify all the people that he talks to that are involved in criminal activity, why the device that you're writing for is dirty, what conversations were had that were dirty. And then you also need to have your pen register toll records to show that they're communicating with other people.

That's why I was saying like T3 is can really get in the needs. And to be honest with you, 99% of federal agents can't explain it because they've never done a title three. Most feds have never done a title three. How do you think most drugs and drug dealers go down? It sounds like not from wiretaps. No, no. Wiretaps is the most, it's the most invasive, time-consuming way to go after drug trafficking. I mean, the DEA does a lot of wires.

But, you know, you might deal with some sophisticated guys that just don't use phones like that, right? you might get some guys that are using different apps. They're not necessarily using phone numbers as much, right? So it goes back to, you know, old school stuff. Surveillance, undercovers, good informants. Informants are the... Of course. That's what it is, bro.

I mean, that'll keep it a thousand. As a guy that you said, at one time, I was controlling, like, 10 informants. Holy-ion. That's a fiend in this. Right? It's like, Dean Lowe. It's like, yeah. It's like...

They all got their different... Kids that are criminals. Yeah, they got their quirks. They're doing dumb shit. You're, you know, oh, bro, I got pulled over. This cop gave me a hard time. Oh, I got arrested. Or the worst is when, like, one of my guys gets arrested or whatever.

And I, you know, I have a good relationship with, like, maybe the S.O.'s office or whatever. Hey, we got your guy here or whatever. I'm like, oh, my guy, bro. So, yeah, it's a pin in us. Did you have any informants that ended up getting deported and killed for being informants or found out or anything like that? Um, most See, most of my informants were U.S. citizens because I didn't like dealing with that.

Because if I had an informant that was a foreign national, not only would I have to do his CI paperwork, I would have to do his immigration paperwork too. You got to give them. You got to give them. I got to get them a parole. Maybe I got to get them a permit. No, that was a pain of that.

I tried to always have U.S. citizen informants. I try to. I mean, did I have foreign national informants? Of course. If they were worth it, yeah. But a lot of times those guys behaved. because they didn't want to get removed. Of course.

But the U.S. is a word of pain in that. The knuckle has a lot. So it sounds like you liked working drugs a lot more. Yeah, so I did a lot of, I did a lot of guns, cases, I did a lot of drug cases. I did a lot of, like, violent crime, gangs.

Yeah. A lot of human smuggling, just because I was in the border and you had to deal with that. Yeah. And then I also did a lot of child exploitation cases. But what I would always do is I was always, like, on the arresting team for those.

I wasn't really like doing the investigation. I couldn't stomach that. That's one thing. I never wanted to do. They asked me to be in a child grip, and I said, I refused. Yeah, because you have to look at that shit, bro. Bro, that's horrendous.

That's what I said, no. So I said, but when you guys want to do it, take doubts, call me. Because I was like, the young guy, I was 24 at the time. So I was like, the young guy, so I'm like, I'm like, whatever, I'll kick the door on. I'll put my knee in his death.

Yeah, but I'm not, but I'm not going to do the cases. Yeah. So, um, you did, you did drug cases though? Like, that's, yeah. Like, when it comes to drugs, dude, I did, um, So for the audience, I did something called organized crime drug enforcement task forces or OSEDF. Anytime you got a sophisticated drug trafficking organization that has a nexus to whether it's international supply source or even like a regional one that's big, you can make your case in OSEDF, which what ends up happening is it gets a bunch of funding from the U.S. Department of Justice. You have to do it with other federal agencies, right?

It has to be at least two federal agencies, if not more, working together. You have to do a whole proposal, write up like a whole thing of why. you need this funding, et cetera. You got to talk about your case. It's got to be sexy enough. Right. And then your attorney's office will take it and designate it as an OSEDF case. And you get something called the OSIF case number.

I've done several of those. Okay. So when you were working, say, in Laredo still, what was the main drug getting pushed over? Methepenamine, by far. So it was called Mexican ice, right? We had cocaine, too. But, bro, I mean, cocaine, who gives a fuck? They're like, ah, getting that way.

Like, you know. It's so passe. It's like, whatever, right? And now, like, 60 to 70% of the drugs that come to the United States come in through Mexico. So, like, you know, it's nothing for them to get cocaine. But the big thing when I was there was Mexican ice, aka methamphetamine. And the reason why I was so set after is because you can't get the purity of methamphetamine in the United States that you're getting on the mic side. You're getting that, bro.

It's literally crystals. Like you have to. White crystals, dude. I remember I did one case. It was actually my Osinoff case. The period of the meth that we were getting from this one guy was coming back 99. point eight percent pure. Wild.

99.8 percent pure. You'll never get that in the United States. You got this chicken bake biker gang stuff. But that's all been extinct because now you can't get the ephedrin over the counter. Yep.

You know, they limit it. Dude, they made Mexican groups so rich by that law. Yeah. You know what I'm saying? Yeah,

because they can't get it. Billions in their pocket. You can't get it otherwise, man. Hold on. Let me see here. Yeah, look, this is,

that was like some of the fact back then. Oh, it looks beautiful. Yeah. It's like, it's like, It looks like ice. It literally is like big-ass shards.

I don't know if I could show that to your camera right there. But yeah, man, that was it back in the day. Yeah. So it was to crack to Coke what that ice was. That was an undercover buy that we did. What were the quantities? Like what were some of the big bust you remember of ice? So what we would do is so I remember this all the time.

We're not in the business of buying dope, right? So like what we would do is we would buy, you know, a couple ounces. here and there. And the reason why you'd buy the ounces, right? So we'd, we'd do these what we'd call control buys. At this point, I had an undercover. I had an informant, and then my informant obviously got us in undercover end, and we're buying this meth. And the reason why we're buying this meth is because these guys were, some of them were Lion King, some of them were Mexican Mafia. It was kind of like a loose thing in South Texas. These guys all f***ing knew each other. One guy was a pistilero, like all these kinds, all these gangs,

right? But a lot of them were cousins, so they were cool. All these different gangs in a mix with each other, right? But they were like dealing with guns. They were dealing with the methamphetamine, the coke, and everything else like that. So we would do these controlled drug buys and we'd buy, you know, a couple ounces of meth, whatever. And our goal was to figure out who the fuck was this meth coming from because it was coming back 99% nine pure. So wherever this guy was that was getting this stuff was getting it straight from the mic side. Yep.

Like we're talking, not stepped on whatsoever. So we were able to identify the sources of why in the U.S. and on the Mexican side. and they were also moving guns too so we were doing it more to kind of figure out where it was coming from because after we would do the buy we'd follow these guys and see where they would go to at the time I actually had a wiretop up too so we would see after the drug we would do the undercover buy

after the buy we'd see who they were talking to and who they needed to pay off they'd meet with a guy San Antonio pay them off whatever so that's how we're kind of work at our way up there yeah how long would you let them keep moving before you busted them a couple months a couple months to a year This case that I'm thinking about specifically, we started in 2015.

And we didn't, we didn't take it down until 2018. Holy shit. Yeah, because. So you're letting, you're letting thousands of pounds of meth move. Yeah. Well, we were getting it. We were getting it. Oh, so you're confiscating all.

We were getting, we were seizing it. Yeah. So we would buy it or we would, yeah, we were taking it. We were seizing his evidence. But you weren't arresting. No, we let them walk every time. So that how did you, so. So it was the undercovers buying it?

Yeah. Or the informant. Or an informant. Were you ever undercover? No, hell no. I would, I would. Too good looking. You're too good.

Your jaws too square. Your teeth are too good. Look at those feteeth. There is no way. And Moreno, Texas, I would never pass. Right. They knew right away. Right.

What the fuck is this guy. So hell no, dude. I remember when we used to do operations, I used to be on the other side of the town. Right. Because we used to do our operations. So there was this little rinky dinked town that we used to do our case. I did the big drug case out of. So I did the big drug case out of.

So I was taking out like a sore thumb. So I was always like, when we're on surveillance or whatever, I'd be far away. The Latinos, they were the undercovers. Oh, 100%. Yeah, yeah. We had a bunch of Mexican agents that, like, looked like, you know, real. Were you on edge? Like, were you ready to bust your gun?

Did you feel like that could happen? Or would be these guys more like businessmen? I'll tell you why, because the reason why I was so scared is because, number one, their agents, there are guys going in there, right? So I felt a sense of responsibility because I was a case agent, bro. And that's another thing, too, that, like, um, I'm really that why I'm so happy to to be here and show this what your

audience. I was the actual case agent and when you're a case agent that means it's your case you're the one running it you're responsible for everything you're the one running reports you're the one writing the affidavits you're the one reporting to your supervisor what's going on you're the one talking to your attorney's office etc so everything was on me

so if the undercover goes in it's my operation plan it's my case it's my informant that introduced it to the organization so it's like yeah I'm there with ATF and everything else like that but the end of the day I'm the case agency so I'm responsible for everything because it's our operation because it's my undercover. Since my undercover, I run the operation.

So we were going in there. He's buying machine guns from these guys. He's buying rifles from these guys. He's buying meth from these guys. And whenever you're dealing with dope and guns at the same time, it gets finicky, man. And a lot of these guys were just like really you know, former gang members, convicted felons.

Not the best people. Sometimes they'd be high up on drugs. They'd be out of meth themselves. Of course. So I was always worried whenever we did these operations. Unfortunately, nothing bad ever happened because my undercover was so good because he looks like a doper, a Mexican doper

and drug trafficker. And these are a lot of the, you know, these Latino street gangs but also, you know, Hell's Angels, these, you know, white biker gangs. Yeah, we didn't have any there. We had banditos. Okay. Because San Antonio's right there. Right. I was just, you know, I was trying to make the Hispanics

feel better. It's, you know, it's these kind of street gangs with real ties to prison gangs that these These are kind of an example of the people that are selling dope for the Mexican cartels. Yeah. These are the guys who are buying it. Okay.

So I'm really glad that we're on this topic. So let me explain for the audience real quick how drug driving works. Once the drugs cross into the United States, cartels done guys. They're like they're done. Like their job is to get this across the border. Once it's across the border, they're good. Dump and run, we call it. Yeah.

Like all they care about, nine and ten times just getting paid. And the person that they're getting the drugs to giving the drugs to typically is a trusted source of supply regionally. That is going to either A, paid for those drugs up front or B is trusted and is getting the drugs on consignment. That person that receives those kilos. How often did you see that consignment versus cash on delivery? Good question. So most of the time, if they're able to make one or two successful runs and pay them back, they'll start giving them drugs on consignment. Okay.

Like they'll give them 10, 20 kilos on consignment, no problem. them if they've made it because they know if you're able to get it through successfully two times more than likely you know what you're doing and they're cool with it. In the beginning a lot of times you might have to either pay a front or pay half a front and then you get the other half on consignment. And are there

familial ties with these American street gangs and the other side? Almost always. There's going to be either it's going to be a close familial bond, a cousin or Primo is they would call it Kamenante, whatever of but like they'll be the person 9-10 times

that receives it on the U.S. side is linked is tied in with them to some degree. But by the time you're buying it or you're dealing with it, it's probably six or seven layers removed, right? It's probably gone to another regional. So those drugs come across to a guy in Laredo, to a guy in Eagle Pass, to a guy in Las Group, whatever may be. His job is to get them the off the border ASAP to his main city guy.

And most of the time it's San Antonio or Houston in Texas. Okay, so it's just like people. You want to get them away from the border regions because that's, it's way too hot. Way too hot because everyone in their mom investigates drug trafficking. If I was a doper on the southwest border, I'd be swatting my balls off, man, because you got SO, you got HSI, you got D-EA. Even FBI wants to play sometimes when it comes to drugs on the border. You got Border Patrol. Everyone in their mom is down there, and law enforcement is huge.

People think all the time, these border times are so dangerous. They're some of the safest cities of the United States. So many cops out there. There's so many cops down there. So they're very safe. Like people make these jokes all the time. El Paso is one of the safest cities, but Juarez has historically been one of the worst cities. Yep.

Right. So they're trying to get those drugs off the border. So their job, they typically, once it gets across the border, they have to connect with the cartels or whatever. But typically it's some kind of close bond because they're trusted because most of the time they're getting those drugs on consignment. It's very difficult to pay for 20, 100 kilos of coke. Yeah. So that person typically is tied in. That person has the connects in the major cities.

They're the ones paying him. He's... Right. So the person buying him, the person buying him lives in a big city. Where the drugs are stashed after they get off the border. So I can explain this, and I know how this goes exactly as well. So nine out of ten times, the drugs will come through the bridge, right? Yeah.

Once they come through the bridge, they'll get busted by CBP. Blue uniform, guys. Right? They'll call us. Hey, we got 50 keys of coke here at the port. What do you want to do? I'll be right there. You'll zip over there.

Yeah. Talk to that guy. Hey, asshole. Free Kios of Coke. Drugs are here. We know that you know. Where are these drugs supposed to go? San Antonio.

Then where? I don't know. I think maybe Chicago. All right. We're going. Do something called the controlled delivery. Go up Interstate 35. Nine out of ten times it's either going to go to San Antonio or it's going to go to Houston.

Right? Because those are the two major cities right there. So we're either taking I-10 or 35 all the way out. Right? So because the border, Laredo is just for the audience. Interstate 35 is what comes into Laredo, which goes through San Antonio, into Austin, Texas, into Dallas,

then all the way up into, I think, somewhere in Minnesota. And then once you get to San Antonio, Interstate 10 is there. Interstate 10 takes you from Los Angeles all the way to Jacksonville. Literally anywhere you want to go, right? And it goes through a bunch of major cities. So San Antonio is typically the first stop, and then Houston.

So you go to San Antonio. So you got 50 keys on this guy. Do you leave him in whatever vehicle? Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And then you just follow him or you got a guy in the car with him? An agent is in the car with him. Yeah. So it depends on the situation.

Sometimes you'll have him handcuffed, right, in one of the units and an agent is driving the vehicle loaded. Or they don't take the drugs out at that point. Okay. Right. Right. You might put some sham in there. Right. Right.

And this is all got to be quick. Because he's expected there. Exactly. Right. Right. So if he misses a phone call, depending on who the guy is that's supposed to receive it, they might get finicky. So, um, and so your goal is to, like, make the phone call. call, oh, sorry, my car broke down.

I'm switching a tire or something like that. And then you're up there. So it depends on, you know, the agent and how trustworthy they are. Maybe you want to be an agent in the car with him. Maybe you want to have him handcuffed in the back and him just making the phone calls and another agent drives the car. And you'd have to have a Spanish speaking guy there to make sure

he's not like warning his buddies. Of course. Of the phone, right? Of course. And the beauty, when I was on the border, everyone speaks Spanish. I was the only idiot that didn't, right? Most of the agents speak Spanish. Right. So you're going up to San Antonio, you're doing his control delivery, whatever. nine out of ten times they dropped the car off somewhere some non-discrimin yeah leave the keys in the gas tank or whatever the it may be someone comes when he shows up you arrest that right right flip him we're supposed to go all supposed to take it here and then you can just keep leapfrogging it like that right right with the control delivery and then what's your goal though your goal is to get to the buyer if you want you can take it as far as you want a lot of times people will just most agents are lazy I'll be honest they don't even want to do the control delivery because nine of the ten times when you do that control delivery you go up to san Antonio you're going to wait there for a day or two Right, right.

You're going to wait there for a bit. For sure. For sure. And then, and then this is where politics get in. You got to call the San Antonio office. Right. Right. Hey, we're doing a controlled delivery.

Are you guys okay with accepting it? Blah, blah, blah, blah. And here's the thing. Now you're going into another, another AOR, error of responsibility. Once you cross into their AOR, new case agent comes in. He starts to make the decision. Like, he can kind of say what is.

Now, there is common courtesy. The guy that originally started at nine out of ten times still calls the shots. even though technically the office AOR is supposed to be the one, but the guy that started kind of like can be like, bro, let's keep pushing it. But you're kind of at the mercy of the office you go to. I'll tell you this. As a Laredo guy, we're go-getters. San Antonio, lazy.

Oh, they're super fat there. Have you seen that people there? And that's a retirement office too, San Antonio. So Laredo, a lot of border agents that just started, San Antonio retirement. So it's almost like bureaucracy and paperwork holds them back. A lot of the time. In Mexico, you could just grab a guy who's with 50 bricks and torture him or whatever.

And then there's no law. I mean, there's law, but you don't have to follow it. So it's almost like they could be more effective. It's proof that they're so corrupt by how many people and drugs they allow to move through their country. It's because they could stop so much more of it because they don't have to follow the law. Because if I'm an agent like you, right, and I'm following, I've got 50 bricks. By the way, was there like a certain quantity that you would move on? was there like a minimum

to get you out of bed? Like like at the border? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah. Oh, five bricks. Yeah, there is. Um, uh, so if those aliens,

six or more. Uh-huh. And then it's amazing they remember the shit. Uh, marijuana. Because, because they'd call you two o'clock in the morning. Marijuana, it needed to be at least,

um, 100 kilos or more. Right. For marijuana. Right. And then for cocaine, I think five kilos or, five killers or more.

Right, because that's the minimum. That's mandatory minimum time, too. Okay, because like if you, my thinking... And a lot of that's from the AUSA guidelines. My thinking would be like, okay, I want to get to the buyer of this. Yeah. Like, if, because ultimately, these drugs are probably going to a guy in Chicago. That's a main hub, right?

Yep. He's the guy that's tied in with a lieutenant in the middle of Mexico, right? He's the guy I got to get to because then if I can full, him now I got a wire on the kingpin in Mexico that's just where I would try to take it could be The other thing too to remember is that when the a lot of the times when you get to that first major city Let's say you got a big shipment 50 hundred kilos yeah you got multiple drug Traffickers coming in and taking pieces of it that's the other thing too so like People think it's all going to one guy rarely does that happen typically that that 50 hundred kilos whatever if it's a big

man like that when it wants to get that major city 10 different you know runners are gonna come in for different drug traffic organizations By the way and move it whatever some might go to mobile some might go to Lafayette Some might go to you know Florida yeah some might go to Arizona some might go to California so it goes everywhere was there an ethnic distinction like with methamphetamine Obviously a lot of white boys are moving it. Yeah, of course Mexicans are wholesaling it Yeah, do you see any black guys moving meth? Not often rarely. It was mostly a Mexican and Caucasian thing Yeah

But then Coke. Coke. Everybody's moving coal. Everybody's moving to Coke. Right. Yeah. Right. That bust you made that you began in the case.

And heroin, too. Heroin was also another big one. Which, is there even heroin now? Is it all fentanyl? Is there actual pure heroin still? There is. Heroin was a big one as well when I was there. Fetanol, they got strict on fentanyl.

Like when I was, right before I left in 2020, if you caught anyone with any fentanyl, federal automatically. Yeah. It didn't matter for those grams. They were taking a federal. Wow. Yeah. I think that's,

I think that's becoming super common now. Yeah. So that case you started in 2015 that you didn't bust until 2018. Yeah. What was the, what were the criminal charges? And like, what was the net result?

Like, how many people did you take down? What was the quantity of drugs? So we periodically, so the reason why that case took so long is because it was so complex, because we had a gang nexus with Latin Kings. We also had a gang nexus with Texas, with Mexican mafia.

And then we had a component with human smuggling. then we had another component with an arm-shadking ring that was involved. And the thing is that the reason why I was so intertwined is because these crooks all did different things. So like one guy might smuggle aliens on Mondays, but on Wednesdays he's selling methamphetamine.

Because the town that I was looking at, it was in a rural area. So it was too small for them to be specified of the microblogity. They're like, I got to do everything because I'm out here in the middle of nowhere. These people were stealing oil. Like they had a whole scheme

they were stealing oil? Yeah, dude. On the U.S. side? They were stealing oil on the U.S. side and then bringing it to Mexico and selling it at a premium. Oh, tell me about that, please. Oh, so this is actually a case.

This is how I actually got LinkedIn with FBI. So I had an organization, so, funny-ass story. So I'm new to Texas, right? I'm there in 24. I started this case in 2015 January. I got the Texas in the summer of 2014. So I get a call from the Texas Rangers

and Border Patrol. And they're like, we got this guy he's smoker illegal aliens right so I'm like all right cool and I was a new age I'll go up there and I'll talk with you guys this was like an hour away from Laredo right

so I go I have a meeting with the Texas Rangers just like you would think in the movies the sparkly belt yeah big hat 1911 all dangled out with the diamonds on it and shit like what the fuck right their boots I'm a kid from Connecticut by the way right I'm there on my sparries and my

polo shirt yeah sitting there you know listen to these guys you're a Yankee a Yankee, that's what they call me. It's better than the other thing they might have called you. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, that's all good. I don't get mad.

So, you know, I'm there talking about the case or whatever. And then, like, a day or two later, because I put, so once I got the target's name or whatever, I put them into this database, right? And I put them into this database, I see that the FBI is looking at this guy, too. It's like, what the fuck? So I called the FBI. I was like, hey, I noticed that you're looking at this guy. And that's what you should do, right?

Whenever you put someone into a deconflation system, you should call, if you see that, another agency is looking at him. You should probably call it. You don't want to be a dickhead. Like, I'm going to throw my chest. Right, right. So I call him. He's like, yeah, yeah. It's a case that we got going here. You know, how about we have a meeting about it? Sure. I go up to the FBI office in San Antonio. Out there on University Boulevard or whatever it is in San Antonio, Texas.

Nice office, by the end. A museum in there, by the way. Wow. A lot of guns and all that. Oh, really? Yeah, they got like, yeah, like, or like souvenirs of criminals out they arrested in the passage. They've got a full museum in there. Anyway. Texas is just a wild. Wild West, bro.

And that's, it goes to the root. The roots of it. Yeah. Are Comanche Indian fighting and like blood. Yeah. The Comanche's yeah. Craziest ones. Craziest ones.

So I go there and he's like, yeah, we're looking at this guy. He steals oil. Like, what the fuck? You know, I'm like, what? And they're like, yeah, like, he's stealing oil. They got this scheme where they're, you know, stealing oil. And then they're, because it's, it's not. refined or something like that. So it's like just crude pure oil. Right, right. And they're smuggling it

into Mexico and then they're refining it there for a lower cost and making a bunch of money or some like that. Are they, is this off of public lands? Yeah, because in that area, huge oil drilling area. Right. Right. Right. So these guys are just stealing this from one of those public lands, though, are they private? No, they're private. Okay. They were, they're breaking into these private drilling areas where they're fracking and they're just stealing the crude oil. Right. Right. So I was looking at it and I ended up getting LinkedIn with them on this oil theft thing.

And I'm like, what the fuck? And I remember I'll never get people in my office were making fun of me like, oh, what? Are you the oil theft agent now? Yeah. Make a fun of me. Because the Bureau at the time was trying to pursue something called a wire fraud charge. Now for those that aren't wondering, if I'm not mistaken, 18 U.S.C. 1334. Can you check and see if I'm right on that one third?

I want to see if I'm right. It's a wire fraud charge. It's the bread and butter. Like if you do anything illegal and you do some fraud and you send money through whatever, wire fraud. Easiest charge the feds can hit you with. So they knew that these guys were stealing this oil and sending money around, you know, obviously for the proceeds. Yeah.

Wire fraud. Right. So anyway, so yeah. So now I get linked in this oil theft. And I'm like 1343. Okay. Elements of wire fraud. So I'm like, what the fuck?

And then I find out that these guys are also selling me. Then I find out these guys are some of the line gang members. And they're smuggling cocaine through Greyhound buses. Oh, this crazy shit comes out of nowhere. Right? And then it gets even crazy because this little town, everyone knows each other. They're all cousins. They're all crooks.

So it ended up to make a long story short. It ended up being like a layered, what I would call like a layered case. We'd arrest one guy on a felon of possession charge, right? Because he was, I remember he was a former Navy guy, right? Right. So he was a found, but he also was a dishonorable discharge. So hit him with a dishonorable discharge as a prohibited person because that had carried more time, right? Whatever may be.

Right. And then we would arrest him and interview him on his cousin, who we knew was a big-time methamphetamine trafficker. So we were making arrests periodically on a multitude of different charges, but we knew who players were in different crimes. It was very complex. It sounds like you didn't wait to bust everybody at once at the end. No, we didn't do a random. How, so why did you decide? There's a big reason why I didn't do that.

Why? I didn't want my sources getting burned. Right, of course. Because the CIs are used up because it comes out in the paperwork. Like, this is who it is. There you go. So what I did was, right? This is, we're really getting in the weeds now.

But hey, man, I love talking about it. No, no, no, this are criminal fan base needs to hear this. No, sure. So what I did was, so whenever you arrest people, there's something called Discovery. Yeah. Right. And I'm sure you know that.

Being on the defendant side, you got to turn over all the paperwork. You're informing, all this. Got to come out, right? Cops lie like a discovery. Of course they do. That's locals. I'm not saying the feds do. But local cops definitely omit and lie on paper.

Oh, yeah. They've, that's why their cases get thrown out. All the, sure. Very true. People did like state cases get thrown out all the time because bad paperwork, bad discovery, bad report writing.

They get thrown out all the time. But the feds, they got a 99% win rate. And the reason why is because, you know, AUSAs are militant on. AULT. Matter of fact, AUSA won't even indict. the case unless they're ready for trial. That's the difference between the stay in the feds. So why

did you decide to wrap it up in 2018? Oh, because I was leaving to Miami. Okay. I was getting ready to leave to Miami. So I had to start like wrapping it up and going after the main guy. Okay. But the reason why, sorry, so like I did it in layers. The reason why I did it in layers was because if I have a one-off case,

I don't have to like, oh, we busted you for finding possession, bro. They don't need to know that. And informant told me that this guy had been discharged from the military. We did some research. Found out that he actually was discharged from the military And just did our own independent case. Yeah.

That's what you call, um, um, um, that's called, uh, god damn it. There's a term for it. Um,

well, yeah, you're independently corroborating your informant stuff. Mm-hmm. Without having to burn them. Right. So we would independently corroborate our informant stuff and do one-off cases to protect our sources.

Now, it's more tedious to do it that way. It's more cumbersome to do it that way. And it takes longer to do it that way. But you protect your informants and you protect your sources. Because the informants that I had, were able to give information on everybody because there were,

and that's another reason too. I had to protect him. He lived in that small town and everybody knew each other. Right, of course. So I had to do my cases in a way where it wasn't obvious that that came from in informant.

I had to basically anything you told me I had to independently corroborate so I could wall him off. It's called walling off your informant. And that's like a way more advanced technique when it comes to protecting your informants and your sources. More cumbersome,

but I had to do it to keep her from getting killed. Can you tell us about the Border Patrol agent? Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. The corrupt one that you busted? Yeah. And how common is that in general? Did you see that, you know, with other field agents? Like, did you see?

Because, you know, I think on both sides, the Mexican and the U.S. side of the border, those agents are in pocket. Yeah, there's going to be some. So a lot of people don't know this. I think it was the years between 2005 to like 2010. Border Patrol was like severely under, underfunded. They had to do a mass hiring. And in that, like those classes, a lot of corrupt guys made it through. Right.

Right. And it winds up happening, five, ten years later, a lot of them start getting arrested. Right. So the thing is about border trade is they make a lot of money. A lot of them make more than special agents actually. Like 80, 80 a year? Over 100. Well, over 100,000.

Just to be at the border, just waving cars through. And I'll tell you why. The reason why they get paid so much is because they get night diff. You get weekend differential. They get holiday pay. They get all that. Special agents, HSI, FB, I, et cetera, they get something called leap,

law enforcement availability pay. So what that basically means is you're getting your base salary plus 25%. Right. You ain't getting more than that. Very difficult for you as a special agent to get overtime. The only way you're going to get overtime

is if you're doing protection detail, like Secret Service, diplomatic security service where you're protecting somebody or a wiretap. My 10 years as an agent, I only got overtime once and that was when I was doing my wiretap

because I was in a room all the time. Right. So it's very difficult to get over time as a 1811. Damn. So if you're sitting on a package in San Antonio for two days, hey, that's your time. That's your life you're burning. You're just on salary. You got to really love it. Yeah.

You know? And that's why for me, like, I could talk about this all day because I genuinely loved it, man. So I didn't mind. I was working. I did math sometimes. I was working like 20 hour days. There were days where I would leave my house on a Monday. I ought to be back until Thursday. Wow. But I loved it. I guess you just don't know

where the day is going to take you. Yes. Maybe 100 bricks of ice get popped. And now I'm not going to be back for a couple days. Yeah, I'm up in Colorado. Yeah. And that happens all the time, especially when you're on the border because it's starting there. Yeah. When it comes to like these border patrol agents, do a lot of them, I'm fascinated by how

you actually flip a border patrol agent. Oh, I didn't flip him. No, no, but I'm saying, oh, I'm talking about it on the criminal side. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Like how, how, how easy is it? Like, how does somebody, how does a cartel on the Mexico side identify, you know, a U.S. border agent. How do they locate him? How do they approach him? How much money

do they pay? Like, do you think a lot of these guys who work at the border also have familial ties to the other side? So I remember there was one there was one guy. It was actually when I was there. He killed two people. He was a border patrol agent. You can look this up on Google.

Type in border patrol agent like double homicide in South Texas. I forget what town it was in. We'll pull it up right now. But yeah, he was related to guys on the mic side that were involved with some criminal activity. Okay. So they had like a golden desert eagle.

They found in a safe and everything else like that. So that happens. Now, is corruption common in the Border Patrol nowadays? Not so much because most of those guys that came from those class that I was telling you about that are involved in criminal activity. Is this it, Burgos Evils? Former USPB agent Burgos Aviles found guilty.

No, no. That was a Border Patrol guy that Laredo. I remember that. He killed two people. I remember that. And the murder of a would-be snitch. I think that was it. So those cats are serious.

Yeah. Holy. This actually went down when I was there. Damn, that it is. Yeah, it's crazy. Grimy down there. Yeah, it is crazy. Well, they have a whole border corruption task force down there as well.

Okay. But, yeah, so, yeah, obviously you're going to always run into, you know, dirty patrol agent, dirty CBP officers that, like, let loads through, whatever may be. Because it's as simple as, you know, somebody paying a guy. who I, and this is from a personal experience, what I heard, this guy was getting paid $30,000 a month, just for one day, one day during that month, we let you know when cars are coming,

you just got to wave them through. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, it could look like that. You know what I mean? Of course, of course. And I'm sure. It's an extra half a million a year. Yeah, I believe it. No, that absolutely does happen.

You know, also drug traffickers say that a lot of times so that they can, like, oh, we got people paid off. Oh, yeah. They do that as well to say, We got a board a trade agent that weren't pocket and blah, blah, so they can use that to kind of upsell their stuff. So they do that as well. And then another tactic they use is like where they'll put like a decoy load.

Maybe they'll put five or ten kilos in one vehicle. Let that get busted because everyone in their mom is going to be over there trying to, you know, go through that car and find the load. And then, you know, more loads will make it through. Meanwhile, five cars with 500. Exactly. Make it through. So, you know, there's all kinds of these tactics that go on. But yeah, I mean, definitely you're going to run into corrupt the border of trade and CB officers.

I will say they did a good job of getting rid of most of them because they came through that batch that I told you about. They hired where the hiring standards were lower. And actually, CBP went like, what they did was they totally revamped their hiring process. Now they do polygraphs and most extra stuff that they didn't used to do before. But yeah, you're always going to deal with corruption, obviously. Well, finish telling us about this guy that you took down. And then I want to talk about how you ended up in Miami.

Sure. So we had undercover agent. She was undercover and she was posing as a mother with a young daughter. And basically she was talking to this guy and she finds out that the guy's a border patrol agent. I was like, oh, so once you find out that the guy's law enforcement, you got to pretty much do one of two things. You either A, got to contact the FBI because they do public corruption or B, you can contact the Office of Inspector General, OIG. Right. And in this case, since this guy was Homeland Security, we called the Office of Inspector General Homeland Security. right now obviously hSI was lead because it was our undercover and everything else like that

but since you were dealing with an employee you wanted to obviously get them involved in as well and oig basically for the audience if they're wondering what the office is by their general anytime you got a dirty federal agent dirty whatever may be um cbp officer whatever it is you're going to have to deal a lot of times with the office of inspector general because they're the ones that deal with that right so if it's dirty the agent is going to be department of justice oig if it's dirty dhs employee office of inspector general the Homeland Security, DHS, whatever may be, right. So anyway, we get them involved and we do this operation.

But the guy is out of a border patrol station. I forget what station it was. It was like an hour away. I think it was like, oh, Del Rio, bam. Okay, got it. So he drove like, and Del Rio's far. It's like two and a half hours from Guido. Wow. So he came, he was from Del Rio. He came all the way to this town, right?

And to meet with this undercover her age and her young daughter, right? Yeah. And she found out that he was a board of tragers, so obviously we got the OIG involved. So you found, so basically the undercover, this woman found this pedophile in a chat, like a deep, dark web chat. Exactly. Like there's like these little chats where these guys like, you know, they use code words and everything else like that to solicit for, you know, children. And in this case, she was posing as a mother that has her kid and she's willing to like, you know, hook up with this guy with her kid.

Right. Right. Yeah. And this guy. happens to be a United States Border Patrol officer. Yes. So she finds this out, notifies DHS OIG, they get involved in the investigation. HSL still runs the op, but one problem.

This is in a rinky ding town that they don't know anything about. Who's the only guy that has a case here? Myron. Oh, myron. So I'm all right, we need you to be team lead and run this operation

because we don't know anything in this area. We don't know how to settle properly. We don't know where to tell them to come, whatever, right? Right. So, I'm like, all right, cool. So I get the, involved to help me out, right? And they come out and help us out, shout out to them.

You know, they don't, they do Title 21. They don't do Charle. So they came out and helped out. Because obviously when you're doing crimes against children, you know, it's all hands on deck, right? So, and it was a Border Patrol agent. So I remember at the briefing explicitly asking the OIG agent, right? Hey, what guy, what hand does this guy shoot with? Or he's right-handed because they have all those records, right?

Because they have to be recorded the records all under the shit. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, we had to be thorough, man. Because I knew more than likely there was probably going to be armed. You're a federal agent, bro. You bring your gun everywhere with you. I remember when I was on the job, I brought my gun everywhere with me. You can fly with it, no problem.

Right. You know, when you're fed. So I was like, yeah, he's probably going to be armed when he shows up. So it is what it is, right? So he shows up, right? And nine out of ten times whenever they're going to do this stuff, you want them to go to the store first because we're going to do the take down to the store. And there's a reason why.

So he goes into the store, right, into this market. And we're set up around in the parking lot, right? Waiting. I remember, see where like that white vehicle is right there kind of on the side, like by that base truck, I will set up there with my team. I had like three or four guys wearing our truck. Then there was another truck in front of us and then there was another one on the side. Right. So he goes in, we watch him go in.

He's wearing a jacket. It was like a really cloudy, like it had just finished raining. Right? So it was kind of slippery outside. It was dark, et cetera. So he goes in and he comes back out. When he comes back out, all right, so I get the sign, hey, we're going to take him down. We're going to take him down.

And the reason why we picked this place in particular is because it's right off the highway. We knew he was going to come in from 35, get off the highway and come right in. So he goes in because he said he wanted to get a gift for a down in the cover also. So he suggested you should go to the store. Right. You should go to the store. And she told him that she was at a hotel next door. That's why he picked this location.

Right. Right. And I told her to tell him this because logistically made the most sense and we'd be able to do it take down cleanly. So he calms out, right? I'll never get this. we come and cut them off right I'm in the back right passenger seat I get out

I got my Glock 17 on my hip I pull it out and I'm like Federal Agent Federal Agent put your hands up and he's coming out and he's looking to his right right so he looks back and he sees me and obviously like he doesn't he doesn't see the vest or anything else like that he's like what the so I see him go like this

and in the academy they teach you this when you're when you have a jacket on to wipe it out the way to grab your gun. Mind you, I knew he was right-handed. So I'm like, oh. And I got my thing lined up right on his head. Because I knew maybe he might have his vestal on or something like that. So I had a lie.

I said, I said, if I was, do it, I'll shoot you. Don't do it. Don't do it. Don't do it. And your adrenaline's, you feel that? Yeah. I literally thought I was going to shoot this guy. So, um, so I got my gun out and I see him going like this. And I kind of seem like, first thing, he kind of hits him. Like, oh, shit, I'm about to get arrested. And then when I was, I was going to get arrested. And then when I was,

our partners, my supervisor, actually good friend of mine. To this day, he's still on the job. Grabs him and throws him on the floor. And I was like, okay, thank God. Yeah. Right? Because you don't want to deal with the shooting, bro. It's never fun.

Yeah. So, um, they take him down. We arrest him. He has, like, loob and candy and all this other shit. That's all evidence, though. Well, of course.

So ends up working out. Um, take down went well. Everything went, you know, when good, he immediately confesses, right? And whenever you get, catch these guys, these pedophiles, almost always confess. Yeah. They're complete, uh, self-hating.

There's, there's almost nothing criminal about them. Yeah. It's just pure like evil and because they're, yeah, they're the most like broken individuals. Yeah. In prison, they're not like, you don't get any respect for beating up a chomo. Yeah. Like they're not tough. They don't have brawick.

They're not, um, yeah, I don't know how to describe them. There's something not human about them. Yeah. Yeah. And, uh, they're just. f*** up in the head. They're really up. And that's another reason too why I didn't want to be on the child of exploitation group

is that when you're an agent in these groups, you have to really put your personal feelings aside a lot of the times. You have to empathize with them when you interview them. Oh, really? So like, yeah, I get it. Like to get confessions, you have to really get into a dark place and identify and bond with them

to get these things. And I just didn't want to do that. I just wanted to arrest them and hand them over to the agent. So as soon as we arrested him, hand them over to my buddy, you know, because the guy I did the case agent was actually a friend of mine was to play video games together.

So I was like, all right, he's your problem now. We did the op for you guys. He's under arrest. Here you go. Have fun with him. And we just split. And we just left and worked back on a drug case.

Did you ever have to go to court, like trial and testify? Plenty of times. For that particular case, no, because he pled out. Yeah. But dude, I've testified hundreds of times. I had a trial right before I left,

which, by the way, wait, federal rarely you go to, I mean, yeah, you never go to trial. Almost never. But I testified in other trials and another big thing I testified like grand jury all the time. Because I was always arresting people. So I was always like going, getting indictments and everything else like that. Can you explain to me just what the, a grand jury is? Sure.

I still don't know all these years in the belly, all these years in the system, and I still don't exactly know who they are. 99% of people don't know. Okay. Don't even feel like, don't even feel bad about it. Like, so, so when you get arrested in the United States, There's typically two ways it's going to go down. You're either going to get arrested by something you call the criminal complaint

or you're going to get arrested through an arrest warrant that was generated from a grand jury indictment, which a criminal complaint will get you an arrest warrant too. But the criminal complaint is typically like the faster way you got the criminal right in front of you, et cetera. So for example, this guy that got arrested as pedophile, criminal complaint. Right? We got him in custody. He confessed. He got him right hand.

Right this criminal complaint. Yeah. Give it to the A USA. We're bringing up to the judge tomorrow, right? indictment is you've been working a case for a bit, you got a little bit of time, you go to a grand jury, you get them indicted.

So a grand jury basically is a group of, you know, your peers, just like a jury. So you get a letter for jury duty, just for, but for grand jury. Yeah.

Just like you do for regular jury. Exactly. Okay. And the difference is with the grand jury is they'll be on the grand jury for a while. Yeah. They'll typically be there for months. They'll hear hundreds of cases.

Right. So they'll go there. It'll be like 30 of them, right? depending on every AUSA's jurisdiction is different. But when I was in Miami, it was like 30 to 40 of them. When I was in Laredo, maybe like 20 of them. But they'll be in there, and you'll talk about your case.

They'll be an AUSA in there, and you'll be in there. And you'll go over the facts and circumstances of your case to establish probable cause. AUSA asks you questions. And then if any of the grand jury have any questions, you'll answer them. You leave the room. They'll deliberate. You and AUSA leave the room. They'll deliberate.

And then if it's, you know, they say you can indict a ham sandwich. nine and ten times you're not going to a grand jury room if they don't think you're going to get a true bill because AUSAs are held AUSAs aren't going to indict unless they think they're going to win a trial They're very thorough that's why most AUSA's offices in the country Have a 99% win rate You know there's a reason why people say oh man

I could I'll just want to get arrested by the feds because they know they're going to go down Right So that's what a grand jury is so basically you're going in there You get your you present your case And then if they have enough probable cause which isn't that high of a threshold They get a true bill and then bam you get a indictment. After you get your indictment, you go to the judge, the clerk, give you an arrest warrant, boom, you go get your guy. Okay, so it's essentially the grand jury is there to vote to decide

if there's enough evidence to put a criminal complaint on someone. To indict someone to get a true bill, which will, which to get a true bill of indictment, which will then generate an arrest warrant. Right. And then the criminal complaint is something that the agent files, the criminal complaint, so you got your complaint cover sheet and then you got an affidavit. The affidavit outlines all the facts and circumstances that led to the probable cause, and then you can file that, that will get you an arrest warrant. But if you do a criminal complaint, you still have to indict them because the indictment is the formal charge. I see. So, like, let's say you don't got a lot of time.

You do the criminal complaint. Most AUSA's offices, we're really getting new weed here. 10 or 14 days, you've got to indict them. Or you can just indict them off the rip and be good. That's why most AUSAs don't like to do criminal complaints because it's almost double work. And you put yourself on a timeline. This is fascinating. Wow.

Yeah. So you're on the border and that's the most, that's the baddest of the bad. Yeah, and that's why I got so much experience. Like my four years in a border, I did more than ages that been on the job for 20 years. Yeah.

How many hundreds of arrests? I was involved in all different types of operations. Can you estimate? Just do this. I've seen thousand pounds of marijuana. Yeah. To this day, like the smell of marijuana.

Like, just I hate it. What do they do in the evidence rooms? Like where they store all the stash drugs? Like, yeah, what do you do with a thousand? and bricks of heroin. Like, how do you get rid of that? So you hold on to it, right, until the trial.

And then if the guy pleads out and then it passes the, you know, like there's no going to be no appeal or anything, you burn that. You take it to a burn house where they get rid of all the drugs and they burn it. Yeah. And it like incinerates up in the air like chimney smoke. Yeah. There's a much of heroin smoke. And then you got to end it's crazy. The planes of Texas. Like there's somebody like you got to go with like five guys like all witnesses and you got to go and like burn the. Yeah. Yeah. Right. Yeah. So. So. So. So. to make sure, like, it was really disposed of because everyone's, oh, you guys smoke a don't you? Of course. Nah, man, they get rid of that. They really do, but you need a million witnesses with you. Holy. So then, so now you're, you're just done with Texas.

Is that why you came to Miami? You're like, on an easier gig or why? I wanted to stay in Texas. So interesting story, dude. We probably wouldn't be sitting down doing this podcast if this happened. So I was in Laredo, Texas, and I had put my five top offices that I wanted to go to. Houston was number one. Dallas was number two. All of the Florida offices actually, Fort Lauderdale, Tampa, and Miami, they were all like later like in the bottom three. Miami was actually my fifth pick.

Okay. So I accepted Miami, right? Because Miami called me first like, hey, we'll take you. Awesome. Right? I was like, I just got to get off the border. Yeah. But Dallas called me like a couple weeks later and said, hey, you want to come to Dallas?

And I was like, dude, I already accepted the thing in Miami. And back then, like, it's very frowned upon to like steal agents from another office. And Miami need a guy's bad. and then like I had a very good resume so like every like the offices because a new guy like me four years four years on the job whatever it may be you're not going to get an office like Dallas

I had a good reputation so they wanted me over there because I had done OCDs I had done wiretaps like all these things bro like 99% agents don't do this you know most agents might make one criminal arrest in five years on a job I was doing five a week right you know what I mean

because I was on call my first day on duty while I was on call I made three criminal arrests that day because I remember one guy got caught with smuggling aliens. Another guy was a tractor trailer with 13 aliens. And then the third guy wanted to come to the checkpoint and not answer

questions. That's a crime. Wow. And he actually assaulted one of the border patrol agents. Seriously? So you have to answer them when they go through the checkpoint. Yeah. So he goes through, right, this guy. It was like, of what citizen are you a national? Right. That's the question I always asked. The guy didn't want to answer questions.

Well, when you do that, you basically impede the whole checkpoint. Right. That's a charge. Right. impeding a federal officer of their duties. And then also he like shoved the agent too. So I was there at the station dealing with that other case. So I get one call, right? My first day on duty was crazy.

This is it where? Laredo, Texas. Okay, got it. So my first down duty, I'm on call. They call me from the Border Patrol station. Hey, we caught this guy with seven aliens. So I go, I respond because it's over threshold of the six, right? Interview him.

He confesses, cool, blah, blah, blah. Arrest his dumb ass job, mom for the jail. Get home. Oh, yeah, dude, we got another case for you guys here. It's at Checkpoint 29, which is 29 miles north of Laredo, right? Remember I told you you got 30 miles of that border radius? So I go up there, guy with a tractor trailer, 13 aliens in there. He tried to smuggle him to San Antonio.

Arrest his ass. While I'm sitting there talking to him about it, put him in the cuffs. This guy goes in and says, I'm not answering questions. And he was a green card holder. I'll never forget, Gagum, and Vetsonanum, whatever the fuck. Right? remember his name. It's on the news. It hit the news article because he didn't want to answer questions, right?

I can't remember his name 10 years later. And I'm there at the checkpoint and like, yeah, this guy arrested assault to the border patrol agent and you want to answer questions. All right. Come his ass too. Take him and his dumb ass friend down until Laredo and put them all in jail. Was there ever when you would make like a... It's like 18 hour a day. When you would make like a 13 alien bust

out of a tractor trailer? Yeah. You know, or a huge dope bus, whatever. After you concluded the case on the U.S. side, would you ever try to get, like, let the Mexican authorities know? Like, hey, this is, these are the numbers that we have for the kingpin. You just didn't even bother? So, because unless it was a vetted unit, like I was telling you, you didn't even bother sharing information. Just impossible. Yeah, because they're probably corrupt and they're going to let them

know. So unless you had a vetted unit, you never contacted, you never dealt with Mexican law enforcement ever, unless you had a vetted unit. And even coming across those guys was even tough to find them because they have to go through a U.S. background check that takes forever. Yeah. So if you get, if you're one of these high profile kingpins in Mexico that gets arrested and extraded to the U.S., they wanted you. Like there was a high level deal between, you know, both governments where they're like, hey, you need to give us somebody. Oh, yeah. That's the only way happens. I mean, it took forever for us to get Chapo. They did everything in their power to not turn them over because they look at it like, so when they turn over their criminals to us, they kind of look

kid as like submission. Like like oh we're going to turn over one of our own to United States. The empire. Yeah. And they're going to put him in prison and he's he can't die in his homeland. He's going to die in a foreign country. So like it's an enormous, you know, political pressure a lot of times to get these guys extradited over. And the only reason Mexico turned him over is because they, he fled twice. Right. So so there's really not a lot of solidarity. There's not a lot of working together between the Mex feds and the American feds. They really don't like extradite in their guys,

man. Unless they absolutely have to, or like there's an enormous amount of pressure from the United States. Yeah. Like the guys that killed Jaime Sabata, they actually out of those guys immediately. For sure. Like they had, there's no choice. Yeah. Obviously. Obviously. But like, but yeah, in general, like, it's very tough. I mean, you look at the DEA's top 10. You look at

a lot of times, HHSI's top then, or there are a lot of times they're Mexican drug traffickers and they're never going to, you know, okay. Okay. So, Here's another thing that boggles my mind. Sure. How does the DEA working in Colombia, Mexico, the Dominican Republic, how do they arrest- How do they arrest a guy there, you know, a Columbia National,

and then extradite him out of his own country to the U.S.? Is there some kind of agreement between the two governments that allows them to work together? You do something called, we're really getting in the, it leads. You do something called the M-LAT. So an M-LAT basically is what you would do to get someone extra dited over. Takes forever, but DE has very good...

Well, we have... Well, America and Columbia in general have very good relationship. Right. They're an intel partner. Yeah. Right. Mexico, I think we're close to a Columbia than we're in Mexico.

Probably. Their intel partner, hell, DE has a sack office over there, dude. And a sack office, just to explain, a special agent-in-charge office, if you'd have a sack office, that's typically at least... 50 to 100 guys

for you have like a sacram office. So think of it as like, you know everybody's every scumbagged DEA officers that they want that Columbia job. Yeah, we know why. That and then also like it's good work.

Like we got an agency office there but we don't got as many guys. Dea runs Columbia. You know what I mean? Yeah. But yeah, they got good connections with Columbia. You know,

so that's how it is though. You can't just kidnap because it seems like kidnapping. You're like you arrested or arrested Dominican or Colombian. They got emlots and process. And when you're at that level, they got a prosecutor here in the United States, AUSA,

you're this United States attorney. Then they got the Colombian representative, hey, we want this guy, et cetera. Amlats are being filed. They're probably able to make it happen in a fraction of the time

because they got Colombian DEA agents. It's just like, it's that, it's like the diplomatic agreements. Exactly. They got like a level of diplomacy that just other agencies don't have. That's why I able to pull off.

That's why drug traffickers are love in Venezuela. Yeah. There's no DEA offices there. You know what I mean? There's no extradition. But they got a full-on sack office in Colombia. Did you not have any interest in working internationally? You know, if I stayed on the job, I probably would have went somewhere to the Middle East.

Just to brush up on my Arabic and stuff, and I think I probably would have been able to get it. I just wasn't with the agency long enough to do it. Because that's typically something you do later on in your career. Right. But, you know, I think if I'd say I definitely would have been able to get one of these Arab spots because there's not that many Arab-speaking agents. And there's a lot of drug trafficking going on. Like, it's Saudi Arabia.

these pills now that like they produce them in Syria like ISIS had like a connection with these guys but they're like amphetamine pills. Yeah. They're their version of ecstasy. But it's the thing about the Middle East with drugs is like like Dubai, for example, they got two sets of laws. Right. And they don't even hide it.

Like if you're a foreigner, you're going to jail for a long time if you get caught drug trafficking. Yeah. But if you're like a national like you'll, you know, you know, put you in a rehab program. A couple months. It'll bring you out. I like that. Yeah.

Good for them. They don't go, man. But you're a foreign national, you're going to jail for a long time for drug trafficking in the UAE. A lot of these Arab countries have very strict laws. Oh, yeah. And Saudi Arabia can't cut heads off fast enough for that shit, bro. Oh, yeah. Oh, God damn.

Yeah, they also kill you for witchcraft over there, too. Do they? Yeah. Interesting enough. Yeah, one of the few countries that still does, like, beheads you for witchcraft. So, yeah, Haiti, they encourage it. Yeah, they encourage it over there. Yeah, you're Haitian producer.

Yeah. He goes, ah. So you end up in Miami. Yeah. What did you do here? This is 2018? 2018, I got to Miami. And then did you start podcasting?

No. I just start podcasting until 2020. How the f-well. Well, first of all, tell us how it was working in Miami, what the differences were. Yeah. Here, it's all maritime smuggling versus land borders. Smuggling. Obviously, here in Miami, Mexican organized crime doesn't take precedence like Colombians do.

Okay, yeah. And Bahamians. Right. Okay. So who's running the Coke trafficking, the heroin trafficking? Who's running Miami right now? So it's all Colombian drugs. Yeah.

But the Cubans and the Bahamians are the ones selling them. So the Bahamians are the gatekeepers to the United States. Because most of the drugs comes in through the Bahamas. Bimini, to be exact. It's coming in from Bimini. What's Bimini? Bimini Bahamas. Which is only not that far.

It's only like 50, 60 miles from here. Notical miles. And then obviously, Freeport Bahamas as well, huge. That's close to West Palm Beach. But yeah, the Bahamas in general is like the transit country for the drugs from Columbia to the United States. So that's still a route. That's still a route. The Caribbean routes, and I think it might be growing again because, you know, we shut down for years.

But I feel like I'm seeing more news articles. They're still moving thousands of pounds of cocaine through submarines and these speedboats. And where do they land when they get to South Florida? They actually land in Miami or around Miami? Yeah, so a lot of the time haulover, where's another spot? They'll do a lot of C to C transfers. Right. The Bayside Marina surprisingly.

Yeah, right in downtown Miami. I mean, doggie, that's in the middle. That's like hiding and playing. Crazy. I know. Miami Beach sometimes. Think about the How Defts

The Hallover is a big one I think about a desperate You gotta be To be on a And these are like fast boats That come in Yeah Classic 80 1980s

A lot of the times Yeah Fast boats Sometimes it's the big boats And they'll have the drugs Stored in like Right In compartments

They bring aliens into On these boats Like In the compartments No they'll They'll dress them up And make them look like Regular people

Yeah They won't be like All dirty And dingy They'll be like Oh hey This is a They're just working there in uniform.

Yeah. Yep. They're more, they're a lot more, I will say they're a lot more sophisticated and creative here on this side. For sure. You kind of have to be. Because the Mexicans, there's so much land. You could just throw volume at the problem.

Yep. You know what I mean? But here it's like, oh, you get, I forgot to mention this. Like, if you don't make it through, let's say you get called by Votasol and you get sent back to Mexico, you'll get like two more shots. Yeah. The smugglers like give you, like, they'll let you like, they got like, it's like

written in the agreement. Oh yeah, you can try two more time. Yeah, it's like a good customer service. It's like a package deal. Yeah, dude. We talk to these. It's coming out on our channel in a couple of months. We interviewed these guys from Chiapas.

Okay. They were in a stash house in Juarez. They had just been brought, they had made it over the border, and they were waiting to get picked up to try to get through the checkpoint. And they were on their third attempt. Yeah. They paid nine grand. Yeah. And they were Mexicans.

They were Mexicans. That sounds right. Yeah. And they had paid nine grand for three attempts. And now they were on their final attempt. So they were Yeah, they typically, yeah, they'll give them like two to three shots

and they won't charge them more. That's how sophisticated they are. It's crazy, right? It's a punch card. You know what I mean? So, okay, so most of the drugs that are coming into Miami and people are getting shipped off

from the Bahamas. Yes, through my, yeah. The Bahamas is the main transit country, for sure. So are there Bahamanian gangs then that are organaut controlling all of that? Yeah. No, for sure. Like if it comes in all,

if a thousand keys comes in off of like a luxury boat, who owns that typically? Well, the Bahamians definitely facilitate its transit. Right. 100%. Like, yeah, they're going to,

because that volume, it's going to get staged somewhere. Right. You know what I mean? Because they can't afford to lose that. So, um, and are there Colombian nationals in Miami working with the,

the organizations down in Medellin? But the Cubans have kind of taken over too. Cubans are heavily involved as well A lot of the times what ends up happening is This Colombian Coke Transiting through the Bahamas Yeah dealing with Cuban drug traffickers

In Miami In Miami They're the they're that A lot of the times they're the telling guys receiving the dope here in Miami Right Right And do you think it's because they're just There's more of them

This is their city They run Miami They get the most connections They run Miami They like that's just the reality Like you can't get deported If they get caught Yeah

They're not going to get deported. They're not. There's a few countries that won't take them back. Cape Verdi, Cuba, China. Wow. They won't take their nationals back. At least that's when I was on HSI. Wow.

I remember those were the nationalities that wouldn't. Yeah, Boston, for example, has a huge problem with Cape Viridian gangs. Really? Huge problem. They can't take them back. So they'll bust these guys. Yeah. You know, FBI, HSI, ATF, they'll bust these KVVeringan gangs.

Yeah. And they'll do their time. and then ice will go and try to remove them and they'll be like, nah, we're not taking it back. Best of both world. Wow. So Colombians are still, so you don't see any presence of Mexican cartels in Miami? No.

Wow. All the Mexicans are on Homestead, which at that point, that's kind of productive. That's going back south. You need to get those drugs north. This might be the only market that the Mexicans don't have. They don't. Yeah, they don't have it, dude.

90% of the rest of the country is barely Mexicans even in Miami. I was actually shocked at how. There's so few of them here. They dominate everywhere else in the U.S. The Bronx. Yeah. The Bronx is full of Mexicans, but it's full of Mexicans. Now there's a lot more Mexicans.

Now there's so many Mexicans in New York. I always look at it like this. So, like, Mexicans run Texas and California. Yeah. Right? Not even close. Cubans run Miami. Yeah.

Right? You got a lot of Venezuela as at Colombians here, too. Obviously, they're still involved in the drug trade. But it's mostly Cubans. Every time we've ever busted a big doper in Miami, it was always a Cuban guy. No offense. Cubans, right? Some Tony Montana.

Right. The Northeast, it's Puerto Ricans and Dominicans. Massachusetts, Dominicans mostly. New York, Connecticut, whole tri-state area, Jersey, Puerto Ricans. Right. Run the drug trade. But still getting it mostly, I think, Overland from Mexico. I feel like...

Oh, yeah, most of drugs come from around. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But here, it seems like you've got, you know, drugs that gets shipped in directly from Puerto Rico from the Bahamas that come from Columbia. Like, they're just going around the Mexico. Mexicans. Yeah, yeah. You know what I mean?

Yeah, yeah. That's very interesting. Puerto Rico, our HSI office out of Puerto Rico's are, that's actually the busiest office in the country. Dude, yes. I read this. So much drugs come in through that.

Yeah, I heard because there, it's technically, the cargo is considered domestic. So they don't have the extra checking that they're, like, international cargo. They're safe. They know if a lot of the, especially with like the Dominican drug drafters, Colombians too. But, well, all the drugs come from Colombia. Right. But, like, you know, typically, like, it almost takes a mind of its own.

Because the Dominicans get a wholesale from the Colombians many times. But once they know if they can get through Puerto Rico safe, they're good money, do it. Because you're technically in the U.S. It's not going to go. The biggest thing is it won't go through customs again. Right. Yes, exactly. That's what they care about.

See, like, here's the thing. You know, liberals especially, and I used to think this way, I kind of still do. They're like, there's too many laws. That's why there's so much crime because you're making laws around and everything. But, like, criminals know this. they pay attention to the laws. Like they're extremely sophisticated. So I don't know.

What's your opinion? Like after being in the game and now being out of it, like do you think all drugs need to just be legalized? Like you didn't put a dent. You arrested all these people. You didn't put a dent in the drugs that are coming through. Like is there a solution? See, so my only thing is so legalize it.

Because people say, oh, just legalize it, because you're going to get rid of the, Alyssa Enterprises. My thing is they're always going to find a way to make a buck off a crime, whether it's drugs. You know it's the fast-scoring crime now? Scamming. Yes, we've heard that. They're slowly leaving drug trafficking guns, all this other.

Because they're like, bro, I do way too much time for 20 years. Yeah. They're like, I'd rather get some credit cards and scam because at the most, well, number one, because here's the thing with the drug game, and I mentioned this before earlier. When you're doing drugs, everyone in their mom investigates drugs. Yeah. You know? Yeah.

Everyone. There's OSTAF task force. This is all this, right? State, locals, feds. Everyone investigates drugs. But not many agencies investigate financial crime. There's really only two agencies that are going to come after you if you do credit card fraud. HSI, my former agency and the Secret Service.

That's it. Right. Secret Service is too busy dealing with Trump and protecting him. Yeah. And they don't have the resources to do criminal investigations like that. Most of the time, most secret service agents hate their jobs. By the way, the two most, the two agencies that people actually think are awesome but suck to work for, Secret Service and U.S. Marshals.

Worst agencies have worked for by far. They're the most miserable guys. Really? Secret service has the highest divorce rates. Absolutely. I can tell you this. From experience and knowing these guys personally. That's funny. Yeah. Contra to popular, people think it's going to be awesome. Because it seems like a good gig. You're like, I'm just like I'm kind of like a glorified security guard.

Yeah. Secret service or Secret service? Oh yeah. It sucks. It sucks. Now, they were originally created to like go after counter for money, but rarely do they do that. And then they also do our big on child exploitation and financial crime. But they just don't have the time because they always have to get pulled

into protection details. So they rarely can actually build a case up. A, you'll say, they don't like taking cases from civil service agents because they can never finish it. But yeah, so scamming. If I was a crook now, I'd be a scammer.

Make a bunch of money. Quickly, you can always argue it's a victimless crime. And then you don't do that much time. You're not going to do more than like, you've got to steal a bunch of money to do more than five years. Right, right.

I know. We've had people on our show that have told us that. Fast is growing crime. The hood is learning how to scam. Oh, yeah. Yeah, because it's way less risk. Yeah.

You know, if you talk about drug trafficking, right, you get, you get busted for drug trafficking. And then if you get caught with a gun, it's 924C. Enhance it, baby. On big time, you're going to get hit with a possession of farm law committee drug drug drug defense federal easily. That's how they got pushed icey. So you could be with just a little bit of weed and a gun, done. Right. So that's why I tell guys all the time, if you got a concealed carry permit, you got a legal gun and you're smoking weed.

You're a idiot. Oh, they can pop you even if you got a legal gun. If you got a legal gun on your smoking weed, yeah. They can make that a Fed case? Amen. I mean, is the DEA going to bust you? No, but you can get stopped by a local police officer. They bust you with a gun and some weed or maybe even a little bit of coke, whatever the fucking may be.

All it takes, that guy might sit on a DEA task force or you might know what detective that sits on a narcotics house force. If they're bored, hey, we'll just pop this guy with a little bit of cocaine and a gun. Oh, we could take that federal. then you're done at your house boom next thing you know they kick in your

door and DEA's at your house you're like what the is because you're dumb ass decide to have a gun and a little bit of coke have some fun in my legal gun for anyone watching

if you're going to have a gun legally do not even smoke weed because it's still illegal federally don't do it that's that's crazy that and when you hear

stuff like that you want to vote for Vek Ramoswami he wants to cut 75% of federal law enforcement. He wants it. He wants it on Bob's FBI. You know what's funny, though? He'll never be able to do that. Why not?

He will never be able to do that. Why not? The reason why, well, he's already out the election. And I like Vivek, by the way. I actually like him. If it wasn't for Trump, I would have actually voted for Vivek if Trump wasn't in the running. Well, I think he is setting himself up to be vice president. Well, maybe to be vice, but to ultimately run again in 24 years. Yeah. Yeah.

Or eight years or whatever. He's super young. He could definitely do it. He'd probably be on Trump's team because we don't know Trump's going to win. Yeah. But I like Vivek, so I want to start with that. The reason why he will never get rid of the FBI is because the FBI is the number one law enforcement agency of the United States. And this is coming from a guy that did HSA. It was with HSI.

We don't like the FBI. Every agency dislikes working with the FBI. They're entitled. They're pompous. They think they're the best. But the truth is, is that they're the legacy for premier law enforcement agency in the United States. They have a glorified history. They have the biggest funding.

I mean, maybe the best Vive can do is maybe cut some of their support personnel because they do have like a top heavy brass and a lot of support personnel. Like they got like something crazy like four to five support personnel for one agent, which no other agency has that, right? So they get a lot of support, a lot of funding.

But you will never be able to boss that. And another big thing why they'll never get a boss is because they have the most important mission, counterterrorism. You won't be able to get rid of that, bro. No other agency can handle that burden. What he claims is like they're going to merge a bunch of agencies. He's saying there's so much redundancy. There is so much waste.

He's like, like, why isn't? why is the DEA just combine with HSI? Why does that have to be two separate things? You can make that argument. And he's like, I want to move everybody that worked in the criminal part of the FBI into, yeah, secret service or so that's his proposal. His proposal is get rid of the secretaries and the people that don't do.

Yeah. Right? The people that, for example, colluded to, you know, put out fault. That pull political hits. Oh, yeah, yeah. People that are the high one right now with the Bureau and Trump is ridiculous. It's insane. It's ridiculous.

And then Georgia, what they did with their state case with Fannie Willis and O'RICO, which is hilarious. How funny is that? She's trying to replace Klaus. It ain't going to work. But now she's under a trial for Perkins. Yeah, yeah. So it's like crazy. And the Trump thing I broke down, I'm very familiar with all those criminal cases as well.

Whether it's the document case, that's the one that wears me the most, actually, is the document case. God, this guy's got more cases than... He has the case out of Washington, D.C. for, you know, the insurrection. And then he has... What's the document case? The classified documents that they find in Mar-a-Lago. Okay. Tell us about this one, because this is the only one that...

That's what has me worried. Has some veracity. Yes, that's, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Can you explain that? Yeah, sure, sure. So, basically, in long-story, short, they found a bunch of classified documents at Trump's house at Mar-a-Lago. And it wasn't locked up with accordance of, you know, rules of... keeping classified documents, which to be honest with you, this is why I don't like

counterterrorism, espionage or whatever, because you're always dealing with a classified when you deal a classified shit. It can't go into a courtroom because court is technically public. Right. So classified shit always has to go to FISA court, whatever. It's not a sex these people think. So this is why I always did this like classified shit because you always got to deal with this wrong way. Now, people are saying, oh, well, Trump declassified or whatever, that's cool. The problem is that it's NDI, national defense information. whenever it's NDI

doesn't matter what the classification was and he has a bunch of NDI there that's actually the only case hasn't been worried now with that said but what are they accusing him of having it with not storing in a proper accordance wow so that's kind of a technical

yeah and actually they're hitting them with they're hitting them with um that's being a jack dude 18 USC's like 793 or so but I don't think after the the ruling by against the Colorado Supreme Court, I don't think that's going to stick. Because they said

the Supreme Court... No, but that's just to get him off the ballot. He's going to stay on the ballot, but that's a whole other issue. Right. Well, look, here, we didn't come to talk about Trump. No, no, no, sure, sure. I think that... That's the only case that has me worried. I think that there's just a big danger in having a federal

bureaucracy that's just grown out of control. For a political opinion. To go after a political opponent. But that's the nature of just having this unaccountable bureaucracy. grow so big. Yeah. So I think, I don't know, I think Vex right, I don't know how he's going to do it,

but I think you have to start scaling down the size of the state. I agree, I think it's the right idea. But how he's going to go about it? Yeah. I just don't see it. Because coming from a guy that came from the federal government, they're incredibly incompetent. Stupid is a lot of them, to be honest with you.

Yeah. Right? You know, we make the drug famous, but incompetent with FBI. Like, it sounds good on paper, but to restructure that because I already know what that bad is going to fight we investigate counterterrorism and espionage those are the most important now security things

we are the domestic intelligence agency where the number one agency for counterterrorism you can't disband us and honestly everyone's going to be like you're kind of right and they're not going to be able to disband it he might be able to maybe merge HSI and E.A or whatever but whenever you have like the counter espionage

and the counterterrorism thing that you're fighting for they can't really take that from you. And look there's a lot of disgusting horrible people out there that need to be investigated and incarcerated. So I think it's fine at a balance. And then when the Trump thing real quick, I will say this, I think the way he gets out of it, right,

is he's got to become president and pardon himself. On that, on that class, because that's the only thing that I think that they can get them on because it doesn't matter to the classification level. It's military information as those are considered NDI, non-national defense info. So that's where the problem is. Right. Unfortunately. But I still think it's ridiculous

that a sitting president that poses a political candidate is even like author like it's extremely inappropriate it's ridiculous yeah the fact that you know merrick garland it's just yeah that's a lot of the conversation some g pardoning yourself yeah yeah yeah that'd be awesome i hope so man because he's the only thing we got left man uh did you enjoy working in miami more than in texas oh no one's ever asked me that question um and what about it if you did so you know what man certainly sexier. I had a great case while I was at Miami too,

but you can't compare it to the border, dude. No. The amount of like running and gunning and working and shit. Yeah. Like dude, I remember, like I said, like, just being on call, helping out other agents. And you build a good camaraderie because, like,

you kind of feel like outsiders there because everyone's Mexican, you're like the only outsiders, like white guys, Chinese guys, whatever may be. So you build a really strong camaraderie. I mean, to this day, I still talk with some of those guys that I was on the board. ordering with. So, but the Miami office was cool, though. I had a lot of fun there. I, I, but Miami, you can go there and kind of float and like, not float, sorry, you kind of hide.

Oh, everybody in the city's floating. Trust me. You've seen the customer service in Miami. Everybody's floating, bro. Lazy people, man. So Miami is one of those offices where you could come here and, like, there's a lot of work. You could make it happen, or you could come here and kind of just sit in the back and not do shit either because it's a big field office. You can hide and not do any of the outreaches. But when I came here, I was like really focused on doing like cases. Did, uh, did, did you respect any of the drug dealers that you took down where you like oh this guy's a business man like i respect your hustle i just i won yeah there were a bunch of guys that we arrested that i was

like what the f*** are you doing like you're a smart guy i would have been one of those yeah like i was like what the hell are you doing like you're a smart guy what are you doing this oh you know so yeah plenty of guys that were really really bright so i i guess logically what happened in 2020 how did you how did you leave yeah and what was the eye idea for this podcast. Like, what were some of your influences? Yeah, so interesting, because people say, oh, you got fired. No, I didn't.

I actually got the director's award right before I left, which is one of the most prestigious awards that they can give for the agency. When it up happening was, so I had a fitness business, right? While I was an agent. Yeah, I was like doing online fitness coaching. Yeah. While I was an agent, right? And I was like, all right, I want to scale the business up.

So obviously the most practical way to do that is YouTube, right? Yeah. So I got made a YouTube channel, started to grow. and I noticed that I got a lot of questions from guys like, how do I get girls? How do we get girls? And I was like in Miami. So, you know, obviously if you can figure out how to deal with women here in Miami,

you can deal with them anywhere, right? So. A lot of money. Yeah. That's a start. That's a start. That's one of them. So I started giving guys tips on this stuff and they really loved it.

And I met with my partner Fresh through another YouTuber and we did a podcast together on like how to get girls in Miami and people loved it. So we just started doing it more and more. And we're like, you know what? A lot of people want this stuff. Let's build a studio. Right. So I built a studio in my other spot.

Started the podcast off and then like, oh, my son later, dude. They bring me in and they're like, hey, what's the shit that you're doing on YouTube? You got to pick one. And why did they say that? Like, were they worried that it was going to be a time confliction? Basically, so what ended up happening was there was like, I didn't talk about it. I'll just say it. There was like an internal affairs investigation opened

because like anytime there's like any type of allegation on anything, they have to open something, right? So I don't know if the allegation, to this day I don't know what it was. But I'm assuming it was probably they thought that I was like recording videos on my free time or using my government phone to do it,

which I wasn't because it's a like iPhone. The government's like always five years behind. It was like an iPhone six or seven. Yeah. And at that time, I was actually insulted because I was using a videographer. He was recording in 4K. I was paying a bunch of money through that.

and for them to think that I was using my goddamn G-phone to record that shit, piss me up. So anyway, not getting out of a brand of tangent here. So I think that they thought that I was using my phone to record, which I wasn't. But they bring me in, and at the time I had one of the biggest cases in the agency. What was the case? It was a national security case with human smuggling concerning Sri Lankans. And I was working with the rural Canadian Mounted Police.

Oh, yeah. They got big Sri Lankan. gangs up there randomly. You look Sri Lanka dog. I do. No offense. Okay. I guess I could take it. I was going to guess Indian. No, Sudan. Sudan. God. Sudan. Sudan. Arab, unfortunately.

But no, what was I going to say? But I could see that. I get that a lot. So you had a Sri Lankan, so they were moving people into Canada? Yeah, through the United States and Turks and Kekos. Holy. They were going through my, and then through Miami. Yeah, yeah. TCI.

Well, Sri Lanka, to T. DCI to the United States, through the United States, well, Miami, through the United States, destined for Canada. Right. That is. And they had like a whole immigration fraud scheme that they were doing and there was a bunch of intermediaries. Right. There was a national security component with some like, in excesses to terrorism. That's a good case, though. That was a huge.

Fun case though for you. Awesome. It was, it was a great case. We had done like a bunch of like crazy undercover where we did like a control delivery of aliens. Like it was wild, bro. With a fake undercover. Wow. It was awesome.

But anyway, I had this case and they're like, dude, shut it down, whatever. Like, because in their mind, right, when you work for the government, everyone's long, you know, lifetime government, lifetime law enforcement. They don't know being an entrepreneur. They're not aware of, like, making money on the internet. It's all a foreign concept. So they're looking at it like, this is a hobby. Right. What are you doing?

Drop this. You know what I mean? We got a fucking case to do, whatever. because in their mind they're like, yo, this internal affairs, they knew, like, you know, they got to do their shit or whatever. It's not the first time that they've called me and whatever. Anytime you're, like, out there working, you're almost always going to end up with some kind of, you know,

internal affairs, you've got to go in. Because any allegations that's made, they have to look at it. They have to. So in this case, I wasn't worried because I wasn't using company time, business time or using my G phone. I was doing big cases. I was writing like 100 reports of here. Right.

So, so. beating everybody. It wasn't a, like, a political reason. Like, you weren't saying anything that was on the podcast that was, like, pissing them off politically. That could have been it, too. I don't know. They could have been like, they didn't like the viewpoints I was giving because I was obviously like saying like, yeah, don't be a simp. Don't be a, you know, you got to be assertive and dominant with girls when you deal with them.

Like, it could have been that too. I don't know specifically what it was. It could have been a hater that, like, that worked in the office. Oh, this guy's making a bunch of money doing his fitness business online and doing this other shit. Let me just snitch and talk some shit. Like, probably. Could have been a hater too. So I don't know what it was specifically.

But what I do know is they brought me in. They're like, hey, just quit this, you know, with the stuff. You know, this is going to blow over with IAs. No big deal. Right? Because it's, if it's, if it's, if it's, it's obviously minuscule. Right. Like I told you before, if it's criminal, it's a big deal.

OIG is going to be involved. Yeah. Not no. You know what I mean? So anyway, so they made me pick. But at that point, I had employees. I don't want to turn my back on my partner. I just got in the studio.

So I was like, guys, I'm just going to have to resign. And they were shocked when I turned in my resignation. They didn't expect that because no one needs the government, bro. You don't leave a $100K plus year job, pension, take home car, all this. You don't give that up. Was it hard for you? Very difficult, bro. I went back and forth with that for like a month.

Like, hey, it's come to a middle ground because he didn't. So the reason why I had to leave was because I had outside employment paperwork filed. So the special agent charged basically said, yo, I'm withdrawing your outside employment paperwork until this IA shit is done. So I couldn't do nothing anymore. Right. Because once you yanked that outside of planning paperwork, I couldn't do shit.

Now your hands are tied. Now my hands are tied. So I either got to resign or resign and keep my business on the side or drop YouTube completely. You can't do nothing with it. Can't do my fitness. Can't do shit. Right.

Because at that point I'd be in violation. Yeah. So, because I always did everything by the book. And so, wow. I mean, look, it was the right decision. You jumped, took a bet on yourself. Yeah.

And the universe tends to reward that, bro. So congratulations. No, I appreciate that, man. And I talk about cases now, like, on my other YouTube channel, Fabriax, where, like, I cover criminal cases stuff that's going on. Like, I broke down to Trump case and everything else like that. Like, it's kind of my way of still, like, staying in the law enforcement community without being in it. But, yeah, I'd be lying to you if I told you I didn't miss it, man. Like, even talking to you right now, like, brought back a bunch of memories, you know what I mean?

Yeah. Because I was so passionate about it. Like, I really enjoyed it. I loved it. Like, that's why, like, I could talk about things running wired. tap, what a criminal complaint is versus a grand jury because I did this. Like I, and I always proud of myself on being the best agent I could be.

Yeah. Like, I was one of those guys that was like, I had the most criminal arrest in like 2016. I led the office. And Laredo, San Antonio is the second business office after San Juan. Laredo is the busiest office in San Antonio. Wow. And I was the number one agent in Laredo, which is the busiest office in San Antonio. So I was

being out thousands of other guys. Like I was like probably top 5, 10 in the country. at that time. Amazing. But yeah, you know, there's a cap on it financially.

Of course, yeah, 120K per year, 130K per year. You can look it up. You know, GS, 1811 scale,

and you look it up. Yeah. And living on in Miami, that's, you know, one-bedroom apartment money. Yeah, nowadays.

Yeah, nowadays because it's one up. But I mean, I'm a hardcore minimumist. I wear the same clothes every day. So for me, it was great.

It was more than enough money. You got to take home car. So for me, I was great. But, but yeah, I mean, grand scheme of things 120k per year now is like nothing it's pocket change but yeah so if for people who

don't know you which i'm sure a lot of my audience does but please plug your podcast what you offer anything new that you want to plug i know you got like a million different youtube and ancillary youtube channels i can really keep track of them yeah yeah yeah i'll keep it simple man fresh fresh food podcast we're broadcast monday wednesday and they check me out on fed reacts on sundays yeah fed reacts yeah that's that's my true crime channel okay is that the one i'm gonna be on or i'm on fresh. Yeah, we're going to put you on Post on the main joint, man. Oh, that's what's a suck. I got to give

a shout out to my friend Jason, my longtime friend, he loves you guys. He's the one to turn me on to you guys. Oh, it's awesome. Awesome shout to Jason, man. Yes, you guys really, you came up quick. You were like to connect. You know, you guys were overnight success. Yeah, it was, you know, it was crazy, man, because I think it's because we just did something

different, like, you know, showing female delusion, the 1080P I guess. Yeah. People enjoy that. So I got to show the X this, this this episode. Okay, well, man, I really, it was a pleasure. I could do five hours with you. No.

We could do a part two in the future if you want. I can go into more detail. Dude, I could, what, you want to talk, drug job if you want to talk. We didn't even talk about guns. I know. I didn't even talk to you about the gun cases. Yeah.

But we could, hey man, be happy to, you know, whenever. Absolutely. And so go check me out on fresh and fit. I don't know. This is probably coming out after. But, and then switch over to the Patreon. Well, you know what?

the Patreon. We've taken up too much your time. No, all good. Thank you so much, you guys. And thank you for the million subscribers. We do appreciate that. Congratulations, my friend. Thank you. Take care, guys. Peace out.