The Team House - Going Undercover in Motorcycle Clubs | Koz & Frank D | Ep. 255

Episode Date: January 29, 2024

Frank and Koz worked for the ATF for over 20 years in mostly undercover roles, infiltrating motorcycle clubs and other criminal organizations.https://www.blackrivertobacco.com/------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Today's Sponsor:Factor Meals For 50% off your order ⬇️https://www.factormeals.com/teamhouse50------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------To help support the show and for all bonus content including:-AD FREE AUDIO-AD FREE VIDEO-Access to ALL bonus segments with our guestsSubscribe to our Patreon! ⬇️https://www.patreon.com/TheTeamHouseOr make a one time donation at: ⬇️https://ko-fi.com/theteamhouseTeam House merch: ⬇️https://teespring.com/stores/my-store-10474963Social Media: ⬇️The Team House Instagram:https://instagram.com/the.team.house?utm_medium=copy_linkThe Team House Twitter:https://twitter.com/TheTeamHousePodJack’s Instagram:https://instagram.com/jackmcmurph?utm_medium=copy_linkJack’s Twitter: https://twitter.com/jackmurphyrgr?s=21Dave’s Twitter: https://twitter.com/dave_parke?s=21Team House Discord: ⬇️https://discord.gg/wHFHYM6SubReddit: ⬇️https://www.reddit.com/r/TheTeamHouse/Jack Murphy's memoir "Murphy's Law" can be found here:⬇️ https://www.amazon.com/Murphys-Law-Journey-Investigative-Journalist/dp/1501191241The Team Room Reading Room (Amazon Affiliate links):⬇️ https://jackmurphywrites.com/the-team-room-reading-room/Intro music by https://www.youtube.com/user/RemixSampleWant to sponsor the show?Email: ⬇️[e-mail]#atf #hellsangels #warlocksBecome a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-team-house--5960890/support.

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espionage, the team house, with your hopes, Jack Murphy and David Park. Hey, everyone, welcome to episode 255 of the team house. I'm Jack Murphy, here with Dave Park. And coming back, making his second appearance on the show tonight, is Frank. Frank was our second guest here, Kaz. Both of these gentlemen served as undercover ATF agents. infiltrating outlaw motorcycle gangs and also a few other individuals and groups that we'll probably talk about a bit here. You know, Frank is joining us for a second time. Caz is your first time on the show.

Thank you both of you for making the trip and coming in studio. Well, just thank you and thank to all the men and women who serve the country. It's much respect for me to thank you guys for your service. Yeah, and likewise, thank you for everything you guys did. I mean, I know we talked about it. Don't think he'll get a big hair. We talked about it earlier that, you know, that ATF has a bad reputation in certain corners of society. But, I mean, when I hear your stories infiltrating neo-Nazi motorcycle gangs, I don't have any reservations.

I think the law enforcement should be doing that type of work. Well, I mean, ATF has always been controversial. We have a lot of haters because everything we touch is political, whether it's, you know, because we're so involved with expectations. explosives, arson, firearms, obviously, the drug world, organized crime. I mean, so it's controversial. We got a lot of people that, you know, they don't like what ATF does. I mean, but that's what's mandated by law. That's not our choice.

I mean, we went to work for ATF, and, you know, it's a life of service of law enforcement. But there's haters, and we know we see all the time. We live the life of that. Because I'm sure we'll circle back around on that topic a few times. but I'd like to ask you since as your first time on the show, if you could tell us a little bit about like sort of like what your upbringing was like and like how that took you towards eventually federal law enforcement. Okay, yeah. So I grew up in the suburbs of Chicago, went through school, decided, you know, what did I want to do when I graduated high school

and law enforcement started to appeal to me and I went to junior college in Joliette. Got my two-year degree in criminal justice and then, you know, was mainly looking to focus on becoming just a local cop anywhere in the Chicago area and I started putting applications out and then I continued on my education went to Western Illinois University and got my bachelor's degree in in law enforcement criminal justice and then at that point I was looking to get hired on and I ended up actually getting hired federally first in an agency called INS immigration naturalization service which no longer exists it's merged in now with HSI but I

became an I and S agent in Chicago for about a year and I lateraled then to ATF after I kind of knew what the federal agencies were all doing and what they all stood for and what kind of crimes they worked and things like that. ATF was just more appealing to me for the mission I was looking to get into from the early onset. What was that mission that you were looking for? You know, back then, you know, ATF from the federal standpoint had a real reputation. This is, I'm talking late 80s, you know, so I'm talking this was like they were really

kicking ass, taking names type of an agency. from within the circles I was talking with, to the point, you know, they're investigating guns, drugs, violent crime, you know, different gangs, you know, stuff like that. And I was more along that mindset from what I wanted to do in law enforcement at that point. So I just kind of walked over as an agent from INS and kind of met with a recruiter from ATF. And we kind of hit it off and he gave me a shot.

I got my interview and ended up getting hired by ATF in 89. and that's what led me to, you know, where I'm at today, but I ended up, I wanted to stay in Chicago when I first got the job. And that wasn't in the cards. They, back then, they would ship you all over the country if you wanted the job. And I ended up getting sent to Sacramento, California, as my first post of duty. And back then you didn't get hired and go to the academy first and then come back, you know, and start working, which is how it is today. you actually started working first, and then you got an academy date, and you reported, and you had like two segments of the academy.

You had like a criminal justice academy, which blended a lot of federal agencies into one class, and then you had your separate second academy, which was just ATF agents only. Now it's all one big academy. Everybody goes through one big shot. But going to the academy in 89, that's where I first met Frank. Frank and I was hired the same day. A lot of our close friends we still keep in contact with even to this day, But Frank, for the most part, him and I have been side by side, you know,

in different areas of the country, our whole careers, but still maintain that friendship. And as time went on, also had each other's backs and undercover assignments. Correct, yes. It's just how it works. We're a small agency by nature. You know, we don't have very many agents like the FBI does or DEA from a standpoint of personnel and sworn like law enforcement agents. But so ATF becomes a tighter-knit group.

you can kind of get known like who's who in the zoo in the country of who's doing what, and you start to build relationships across the country. And, you know, people are going to call and check and stuff. And it isn't hard to find out about somebody if you hear a name that you don't know. You can make a phone call to anybody in ATF. Someone's going to eventually know somebody who knows that guy. So everybody has a hall file, basically. Kind of.

Yeah. Yeah, it's like where you guys got all you got to do is pick up the phone and you're just like one person removed to say, what do you know about cause? Yeah. And like our agency is the size of a medium high school. There's only 2,500 people when we're, and it's still like about 25 or 2,600 people, never really, because of the thumb, they never really let ATF grow. We were the same size as DEA when we came on, and DEA is double the size of ATF now.

So starting in Sacramento, I did a couple years there. That's where we kind of had some situations develop, and then I was always still wanting to get back to the Midwest. and I ended up having an opportunity. They were starting to stand up some violent crime groups in different cities. And Milwaukee was on the list. I ended up putting in and getting sent to Milwaukee after maybe three years on the job in Sacramento, three or four years, went to Milwaukee and did a few years there and ended up going back to where I finished my career, which was back on the West Coast in Los Angeles.

So bounced around a couple times within ATF and ended up settling in Los Angeles. and finishing up my career there. So talk to us about the early years in ATF. You're a young man, and it sounds like it was a little bit Wild West at the time. Yeah, you know, and we got to recognize too and remember back then, until 9-11, ATF was always an agency under the Department of Treasury. So we weren't under the Department of Justice like we are today. So back then, you know, under the Department of Treasury, you had Secret Service, you had IRS

and whom I miss. Customs. And Customs, U.S. Customs. pretty much the dominant agencies under Treasury. So we were, you know, it was, yeah, kind of the Wild West Cowboys style where, you know, we're really working the dope scene with because we got the jurisdiction for anybody who's an armed criminal selling dope. Dope dealers are always usually armed 99% of the time.

That was kind of the jurisdiction that gave us, that got us into the dope realm. So, of course, we were able to work a lot of narcotics investigations with the armed element to it, armed queer criminals, you know, violent criminals, street gangs. anybody who was pretty much doing violence with weapons and explosion. Did you start right off from the get-go and undercover work? No, I did not. I didn't. I started having, you know, you go to the academy and you get kind of a little bit of an indoctrination

into the undercover part of it. Every agent goes through an undercover block at the academy. And you kind of get a sense of what that entails you hear from older guys that have been on the job at that point. And it's something that either kind of, appeals to you and you gravitate towards or you want to do it or you don't. In our world, undercover work is a volunteer sport. Nobody in ATF can make you do it. So you've got to want to do it to do it.

And we were talking earlier, you know, and Frank can attest to this is you used to be able to go down to the academy and ask for, you know, who would be interested in wanting to work undercover and you'd get 80% of the class, maybe could raise their hands and, like, be excited about doing it. And I've been down there a few times as an instructor and the, same question gets asked in later years, and you may get only a few people raise their hands. So it's kind of like a diminishing art, you know, to a degree at some point, but there are still people out there. I hope there's more of them that the up-and-come young group that can keep it up and keep this art form going. What kind of jobs did they have you doing prior to going into the undercover work? You know, just being a case agent in ATF is kind of the bread and butter of what we do.

you know, you're working investigations just on what comes your way, whether you're developing an informant or you work in a criminal group, a conspiracy type of case on a criminal group, anything to do with, you know, depending on the group you're even assigned to, some offices have a jack-of-all-trades approach where they can work all the ATF kind of jurisdictions, but in the bigger cities, you might have a group just as dedicated to work at nothing but arsons, nothing but firearms and, you know, nothing but explosives. So, you know, depending on where you want to fit your niche, you got the ability to do so.

And I always kind of gravitated to like, hey, I just want to work the firearms part of it, the drugs, you know, the violent crime part of things. And that's pretty much what I did my whole career. I didn't really ever work any arsents or explosive cases. Did you have any like notable events or eye-opening experiences in those early years before undercover work came into it?

Yeah, I did. You know, there's always that excitement, you know, when you're a younger agent and you're just out there knocking doors, doing search warrants on crack houses or violent crime people or multi-convicted felons who are out there shooting people or whatnot and you're thinking you're making a difference and getting bad guys off the streets that was kind of my my drive to keep you know doing this i like taking off the worst of the worst of the bad guys in the street that are out there doing a lot of damage you know i'm not out there you know looking to bother people with their gun rights

or take guns away from normal people or anything like that. That's not what really our mission is on the criminal side of ATF. You know, we're out there, you know, that's hopefully something we can clear up with some of the viewers or listeners is we work violent crime, people that are doing bad shit. Right. You know, and hopefully that recognition that we get kind of from behind the scenes, you know, we're not really well publicized on advocating for ourselves in that arena.

We don't go in the press a lot. We don't talk about everything we do all the time. time. So we just kind of take it on the chin sometimes, but we still push forward on how we know what we're doing, you know, from behind the scenes. Where do you guys, where do you like most of your leads come from in terms of, is it local PDs? Like, how do you guys develop the intel? Some of it comes from, you know, because you've got that bond with the local police department. So like if they know somebody's selling dope, it's armed or it's trafficking in guns, I tell you when I came on, it used to be the multiple sales reports. So, like if you buy two or more guns at a given transaction or over a certain period of time,

and that's where everybody talks about this ATF database, right? They don't record all guns. It's multiple sales, right? And there are a lot of people, such as myself, will go buy multiple guns at one time, right? But what you're looking for is they used to come on paper, and they were mailed in by the FFL. Now it's all electronic. But we would start, we'd get all these reports coming in on multiple sales. So what you're looking at is, okay, where did the multiple sale happen at what gun store?

Because there's some gun stores that are an infarious for selling to criminals. And where do the people live or what address are they putting down? So when you look at that, and we have gun crime intelligence centers that spot where guns are recovered. So we would go and we'd look at them and go, oh, it's coming off this side of town in this neighborhood. Well, or this house has been used like six times for people. And what was going on is you had all these firearms traffickers, and I could speak to Ohio and the East Coast, which we're driving a lot of guns up to New York and, you know, and up into Chicago and other places. So what happens is I'm a guy who's a firearms trafficker. So what I do is I find all these people that are, you know, they just have driver's licenses and identification.

And most of the time, they're also involved in drugs. So they're even giving these people drugs or they're giving them money to buy drugs. And they go into the firearm store. they'll buy, I'll tell you what guns I want. You'll go and you'll buy those guns and then as soon as you come out of the store, you're either turning them over to the guy who actually wanted them or girl, and then you know, you go about your way. Well, when we investigate that, we'll go knock on the door of the house.

And it always came down to the same thing. Excuse me, do you have the guns that you purchased? We'd like to see them. Now, people say, well, they don't have to show them to. No, you don't have to show them to us. But if you have nothing to hide, why wouldn't you show them to us? So a lot of people would say, well, I don't have the guns. Okay, well, what happened to him?

Well, you know, my house was broken into, or I had a party at the house, and somebody stole them. It was always the same. So you're going after the straw purchases? Yeah, we're going after the person who was actually the gun trafficker, right? And then you build these conspiracies because you would see over time that there might be one person who had 20 different people buy guns, you know, and then they're shipping them into other parts of the, you know, into the country, make them big money. on him. You know, so a lot of leads would come from that. And then, of course, you know, you bus people, informants. Personally, I've never worked at a firearms trafficking case. From the onset

of me, I was always assigned to, and you mentioned local police. We have a really good reputation nationwide, I think, of being one of the federal agencies that really work well with local, our local partners and state partners. And I remember even just getting on the job in Sacramento, I was already assigned to a task force with the Sacramento County sheriffs and the Sacramento PD. It was called the Crack Rock Impact Team. And that was Crip was for, you know, the acronym. But Crack was big in the late 80s. You know, that was when it was making its big influx into all the areas.

And we were just north of L.A. So a lot of the trafficking of crack was coming into Sacramento. So we were part of a task force that was just knocking down crack houses left and right with the weapons and the gangs and the Crips and the Bloods and everybody else that was moving. it at the time. So yeah, my forte was already starting to work was the drug part of the firearms issues and the drug crimes and everything related to the street gangs at that time. So, and then, you know, we, even in the academy and even in my first assignment in Sacramento, there was another guy, you know, and we getting, you know, tall about it was the biker element. And just to dial

myself way back to the academy, you know, we had an instructor who had. done work on outlaw bikers, and we get a whole block on outlaw bikers in the academy. So you start looking at that presentation and it was like, all right, that's kind of appealing. And then when you saw a guy, I saw a guy work in the Hells Angels, you know, in Sacramento, his name is Mike Neffield and Mike Rowland. I kind of got interested in that, and I saw, you know, how they were starting to do some things. But I still was part of the other side, you know, with the regular street gangs, but I still kind

of knew that was going on and I had an interest in it at an early time. Nothing where I thought I'd ever be doing any undercover at that point, but just that it was ATF, you start to learn, was kind of like the federal agency that kind of had a grip on what the outlaw bikers scene was like at that time, even back in the 80s. And even before my time, when guys were working the Hells Angels and stuff before I even came out of the job.

So that was a little bit of, like, how I got introduced to that element, you know, from ATF's point of view. And then did you have to go through, like, some additional training, or was it like throw out your go-tee and go? Yeah, you know, when I was younger, I always had, I've always had the goatee, but not obviously long, but I was just, you know, a young kid with a goatee, and I just felt, you know, blessed to be part of the job I had as far as working what I was working, and I enjoyed that part of it, you know, and I wasn't really looking to do undercover at that point.

I was just working cases, making an impact where I could on taking cases federally where people deserve to go to jail for what they were doing with the elements we were able to, you know, get into. But as time goes on, you know, different opportunities presents itself, you know, whether you want to stay in that realm, which guys do their whole career doing that, and that's perfectly fine, and they're great at it. They become more experienced, more apt to work larger conspiracy-type cases and groups, or you can go other routes. You've got guys now that can go full-time tactical, you know, and be nothing but attack operator for the rest of their careers and just work nothing but, you know, kicking doors and whatever. And you've got guys that can go into the undercover portion. And that's kind of how I gravitated. I actually did both.

I was a tactical guy for an operator for a long time. But then I started working a little bit of undercover here and there. Just small buys, small gun buys, street buys, you know, street dope buys, little things. And then I started elevating more and more into wanting to do, you know, more longer-term stuff. And that's kind of my introduction to the undercover part of it. So I was probably, I'd tell I was probably on about to put it in, perspective, I probably had about nine years already on the job before I really did my first, nine or ten years on the job before I really did my first longer-term biker case, which was my first

one in the 90s. And walk us through that. I mean, like how you get assigned to the case, how you prepare for it, yeah. So, yeah, even before that undercover thing, you know, I had started to work other investigations in my path where I was working biker cases, but from behind the scenes, you know, just monitoring the intelligence, who's who in the zoo, running around with the different gangs in the areas I was in and what they're involved in. Because you always would get reports that they're involved in this or that. And what I started to learn was, just like anything, a criminal organization, they're very tight-knit and they're very tight-lipped.

So to really get into these guys, unless you had an informant who was right dialed in with them, it's hard to crack into that network. So you started to think outside the box a little bit, okay, how can I get myself inserted into this element? And it started out small for me. I didn't even know how to ride a motorcycle at all. As a matter of fact, the gentleman's sitting here, Frank is the one who taught me.

And I knew Frank, by keeping communication with him from the academy, he was already working biker cases. And now I started getting more intrigued because one of my buddies is working it. And I'm hearing his stories, and I'm kind of more intrigued and interested. And I actually came out and saw him while he was enrolled, on another biker group called The Brothers in Ohio.

And I was just out there on my own time. I wasn't even supposed to be working, but he took me out. We went out and went to their clubhouse, and we're meeting these dudes, and I'm seeing how he's operating. It was cool at the time. And I'm like, okay, I want to go more in that direction.

So I tried it in Milwaukee. I really couldn't get into what I wanted to do for various different reasons with management and different stuff going on then. but once I got to LA, that's kind of when the gloves were able to loosen up on me, and I was able to do more with what I was interested in doing and have the freedom to do it from the management style that was going on over there. And, yeah, so then fast-forwarding now to the first time I started, you know,

and I realized, too, in L.A., we had another agent that worked a couple biker cases, and actually one that did an undercover case prior to me getting there on another group. but nobody else in ATF was really kind of working them at the time, so I kind of went back again, and I said, all right, let me, I'm new in L.A. What can I do to kind of carve a niche into the Biker Scene for ATF in L.A. And I went and met with L.A. County Sheriff's,

detectives. Bobba Williams is one of my mentors. Old school L.A. sheriff, that was just nothing but working full-time, Bikersine in L.A. Just went in the cold, introduced myself to him, said, I'm new in town, and I want to start, you know, seeing what you do

with the biker gang structure art going on in L.A. And he got me involved with everything he knew. And before I knew it, we were meeting informants, and I was starting to cultivate informants into different groups. And I knew once again Frank had now already came out to Vegas, and he was doing his thing. So I hope I'm not jumping around too much on how this is all evolving. But, you know, once I got to L.A., you know,

that's kind of when I was able to do what I was looking to do in the biker scene. and now I kind of felt like I can do it. And the first case was occurring in 1997 where I had an informant. He was a former Hells Angels prospect out of San Fernando Valley that got kind of run down the road out of the Hells Angels. A gang called the Vagos was kind of court in him, and he was indoctrinated with some of these guys in the Hollywood area.

And I started working him as an informant, okay, here's what we can do with ATF, working in behind the scenes, whatever I could do to help them out. And then my plan was at that time, because of my interest in undercover, is, hey, let him get in, let him pave the way, get himself inserted into the gang. And by no means are we just picking these guys out of a hat because they just happened to be bikers. There was a lot of information, a lot of police incidents, a lot of, you know, assaults, murders, drug issues going on with this gang that put us on the wrong.

radar with him. It wasn't just, we're just picking on these guys. You know, they were coming up in a lot of different police, you know, incidents. So once he got, the plan was to get him in, get him fully patched in, and then he can kind of like vouch for me as I was, you know, trying to set up myself in L.A. and have enough to be able to pass any scrutiny. But unfortunately at that point, you know, I was working him for about 30 days into that case. And he, in an unrelated incident gets killed. So I really had no direction at that point on how to continue the case. So just one of the things I was able to do was I knew where one of these guys worked. He was working at a tattoo shop on Hollywood Boulevard, Sunset Boulevard, right across the street from the

Viper Room. And I rode up there trying to look the part. And my goal was is to meet this member of the Vagos and tell him about the guy that got killed. because I was using that conversation piece to say, hey, did you know this is what happened to him, knowing that he had been coming around? And that got me in the door with the conversation. So we had a long chat at that tattoo shop about everything going on. He saw me, he saw my bike.

Maybe he was feeling me out a little bit on some question and answers. But then he said, hey, I want you to come back later that night, come to my shop, and I'll go take you to the clubhouse, and I'll introduce you to the guys. And I said, all right, so I figured, all right, I got my in. And I ended up coming, but, you know, I'm kind of leery about telling ATF at this point. I figured maybe they'd say no, which I probably 100% guaranteed they probably would have. But I had some trusted guys, you know, that I already knew an ATF, that I said on the side,

hey, man, this is what I'm doing tonight just so you know where I'm at. And I showed up later that night at 7 o'clock p.m. We rode over to the clubhouse. we pull in, it's like a cinder block building, it's got a eight-foot fence with chain link razor layer on the top, and we pull our bikes in, they close the gate, it's a cinder block building, no windows, you know, they go inside, a little bit of introductions, but I'm not a member, so I can't really sit in there meeting, so I got to wait outside. So as I'm waiting outside and maybe an hour goes by, the doors open up, the one member I met at the tattoo shop comes up,

and he puts his arm around me, he says, hey, we're going to go back inside. We've got to ask you some questions. I'm like, all right, man, is everything cool? What's, you know, what's happening? And he's like, well, we just got to ask you some questions. And I'm like, all right, what's up? And then he's like, well, you know, we have reason to believe. And I won't say his name, but the informant I had that got killed, we'll just say, you know, Joe.

We have reason to believe that Joe might have been working as a snitch for the ATF, and now we need to know how the fuck you know him. And that was the last words I heard as the door shut up. behind me, to me staring at about 10 dudes armed, you know, with a mad dog look to rip my fucking head off. And I'm panicking now. I'm like, internally, I could tell I'm getting nervous. I'm shaking. I'm kind of like scared. I'm not ashamed to admit that. It's just my human nature coming in. They pat me down for a wire. I'm not wearing one. I don't even have a recorder on me. I barely even, there's only like one or two guys that even know I'm there.

from ATF. I do have a gun. It's in my boot. They see that I got a gun when they patting me down. They ask me about it. They want me to give it to them. I don't surrender my gun. But I get to the point where we come to a happy media and where I'm able to pick it out and show it to them while I hold on to it.

And then they're like fucking with me over bringing the gun to the clubhouse. And then they start asking me a bunch of questions, stuff I have no answers to. And I'm just giving them whatever I can think of off the top of my head and lie. I'm making shit up. I don't even know. I'm just so nervous and scared.

And after about maybe an hour of getting grilled and them writing shit down, I was able to, you know, bullshit my way through. And to the point where the doors opened and they said, let's go grab a beer. And all the bikes went one way and I went the other way. And I thought I'm done. That's fucking it. I'm never coming back.

I just got my fucking ass handed to me. I'm rattled to no end. I get to the spot where I meet my other crew. and I can't even get the kickstand down on the bike. I was just too fucking shaking up, and I just let the bike fall, and I'm like, fuck that. You know, that ordeal really rattled me mentally

and just from a point of like, I'm lucky I even got out of there. That's how I was thinking. But that's how Frank now comes into play because he's doing a parallel investigation in Vegas. He's a little bit further along than I am. He's got a better grip on what's going on. So by me taking a hit like that, I don't have anywhere really to go with it,

but I turn to Frank and ask him if we can kind of like have him kind of vouch for me on his end so the word gets back to Hollywood that, you know, I'm clean because I distanced myself as much as I could verbally from that informant just to say, you know, as much as I could without being tied too closely to him because I wasn't anyway. But Frank steps in and the word comes back through and then I get called back by the Hollywood guys that, hey, I can come back around.

They want me to come back around. But I know it's going to be a challenge now. Let's pick it back up, but I got to let Dave do an ad read real quick. No problem. Hey, thanks for our sponsor and I. Get started on your resolutions with Factor. So you're ready for the new year. Fact is ready to eat meals, meal delivery, takes the stress out of meal planning and sets you up for success in the new year.

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And also check out our friends at Black River Tobacco Company. We'll talk more about them, but you want to tell people where they can go to find you guys? Yeah, you can go to www.blakrivertobacco.com. You sell cigars online. Hopefully we're going to brick and mortar up pretty soon. That's the goal. Now, that would be good for my wife, though, that factor, because cooking is not her strong point. We're going to have to edit this part out of the episode.

No, no, she knows. Hey, look, anytime my kids go to the refrigerator for ketchup, I know. That's like the old joke. I used to think my mom was a good cook until I joined the Army. Oh, my God. I love my wife, though. I want her to know that. So, let me, because this is an interesting question for both of you.

So how do you in Las Vegas, and you're sort of already deep into this. How do you provide bona fides for him without it making it look like an ATF agent saying, hey, except my other, my ATF agent friend? Well, we went to the academy together. He's good. Yeah, he's a squared away guy. Um, you know, um, no, so we had, it was a different dynamic in Las Vegas. And they were recruiting heavy. And, you know, we had been in a little longer than cause had been in. and we'd got to be friends with the then international president, Terry the Tramp. And he liked me and my informant. He really liked us.

So, and our chapter liked us a lot. So, and we had been with those guys for a long time. We've been down the road with them. We'd been to different events with them. You know, we hadn't been started out prospecting yet or anything with them. But they just liked the way we were in the business because of what we gave them as a background. So when we start talking, and to those guys

and they were asking about him we just said, hey, look, he's a straight up dude and we kind of told him what we had agreed upon in the story and how we knew each other and I said, man, you know, I've known him for this long, we've done this kind of business, all this kind of stuff. And the thing is,

a lot of these, you know, they want to bring you in if they like you. Sometimes, because of greed or whatever the reason may be in, they'll look past certain things. If somebody's willing to step up and give you bone, and it all depends how well you're like. You know, if you're not considered an asshole or dumbass, then that gives a lot of credence within that world. So we were able to talk to my boss at the time, which the P was

CJ, and some of the guys in the club that had good standing, that, you know, after they talked, they were able to make a phone call back and then give him some bona fides based on what we were already doing over there and what they thought about us. Right. We figured, well, you know, So the thing is, is if you guys are straight, if you're doing what you're supposed to do, then this guy, he must be okay, but you know what? It isn't just like, hey, we accept him right back in. At that point, all we could do is give him the door back in, come back around, and then it was like, you know, he'd have to go make it on his own by how he's going to conduct himself. But now we're tied at the hip because we go down, you go down. Which happened, but we'll get to that.

Yeah. So one of the first, I mean, incidents that happened after that ordeal at the clubhouse where I got jacked up. And we kind of, you know, thought outside the box for me to get a hold of Frank to do the whole storyline to vouch for me. One of the things I did give them that I did make up was we all carried pagers back then. You know, this is the mid-90s. I did give them my true pager number. So they had a way to get a hold of me if they wanted to. even though I bowed out of there, they really had no way to really find me.

I didn't have anything that I gave them legit, because I didn't have anything. I didn't have a residence that I could give an address too. I was making shit up. But after I was out of there, you know, you feel a little bit more emboldened now. So when Frank was able to step up and they did get back a hold of me through Pager and I was able to call, you know, I can kind of reel in like what I said and how nervous I was in front of them, but now I got a little bit more, you know, stones in me. I can say, hey, by the way, you know, I just kind of jumped in front of it.

I just say, hey, by the way, all that shit I told you that you asked me about, that you wrote down, I made up all that. You guys think I'm just going to have you come show up in my door? You don't, you're all of a sudden you're accusing me of knowing some dude that you think works for a snitch for ATF? What the fuck? I don't know you guys. You know, then I'm starting to get a little bit more, you know, emboldened on how I can talk to them because I know I'm on the phone, you know,

and I don't know if I'm ever going to go back in with him. But then that conversation kind of opened some doors. We understand, hey, you know, we hear it about you. You know, you can come back around, blah, blah, blah. We're having a big party in Hollywood. We want you to come back around, be here at this time, you know, if you want to, kind of thing. So that kind of gave me the green light to go back in, like he said, on my own. And when I showed up, there was probably a good, you know, 50, 60 Vago members there at this point.

Because, you know, Southern California was a stronghold for them. They had a lot of chapters. and I got pulled in again by the same dudes in Hollywood, and they just said, hey, listen, man, they joked around, they patted, hey, you got a gun on, you know, because they told you don't ever bring a gun back to the clubhouse. You're not, you don't have the right to have that here, you know, because in their eyes, it made sense, you know, I'm not a member.

If something breaks bad and I shoot somebody, you know, it's going to come back on them. And obviously it's for their protection, but at that time, you know, I knew coming back into that party, I couldn't be armed and I couldn't be wired. So I rolled back in again, and they kind of welcomed me with a whole different demeanor, and started to tell me and start introducing myself to as many members as I can and tell them you're a Hollywood hangaround. And that's how I kind of got started into that phase. And then it all led back to him, you know, vouching for me.

Now there's a known factor that the Vegas Vagos and the Hollywood Vagos and the, you know, we've got some connection there with all of us. So, yeah, then I started going down my own path. But, you know, I still made a lot of mistakes. This is, once again, this is in the area where ATF still really didn't have a good foothold on how to work long-term undercover, where scrutiny is being put out there on how they check people. And I'll just, you know, we're cowboy in it. We're kind of just flying by the seat of our pants.

At least I was. A lot of stuff isn't backstop. If I had, can go back in time to what I know now after learning the lessons I learned in that, I would have done it a whole lot differently. Yeah. I didn't say I had a job, which then left me open to be on their beck and call 24-7. You know, so then, you know, I kept saying I was just like hustling and doing shit like that. So my name and picking, you know, the name I had and my nickname, which I used the name

cause. I mean, it's silly now to say it out loud because to me it's foolish. But back then, you know, I had. I had to think of something that I'd respond to. The undercover name that gave me did not match anywhere near my true name. A lot of guys in the undercover world will pick at least maybe their true first name and maybe a different last name. Just because of somebody else across the room, you've got to be able to turn around and respond.

I didn't think I could do that with the name they gave me at the time. So I used cause and they said, well, how are you going to explain that? And I just said, well, you know, I used to ride like a kamikaze and then, you know, finally I got called like a kamikaze and then that got short down to cause, you know, from the word kamikaze. And then, you know, I felt comfortable because that's my own nickname. But that's what comes to bite me in the ass down the road, you know, fast forwarding, you know, in the middle of the case. If you want to get into that an hour later, but. Well, let's, yeah, let's go through more or less chronologically. What was it like,

as you said you were called the hangarounds or hangabouts? They're like the prospects, right? Right. Yeah. Yeah. In the biker world, you, you know, you know, you know, you said you were, like, world, you know, their culture has a very strict kind of order to it. You just don't walk up and want to become a member of a 1% or biker gang, and they're going to just hand you the patch. You've got to go through a process. And in their world, the first process is what's called a hang-around. And it's an official term, you know, like you said, you've got to introduce yourself as a hang-around. That means to the rest of the members of the gang, you're somebody that's kind of starting to, you know, make an interest in coming around. But it's also a little. You know,

time you feel them out on what you think you can do with for them. They're feeling you out and what you can bring to the table for them. But it's a, it's a trial period. You know, you still have some control. You can kind of come and go as you want. Obviously, you don't because you're trying to impress them, but, you know, there's nothing on your back that says you have to follow what they're doing. But that's the first step. And that could last months. That could last even years in some cases, depending on who you are and how fast you progress. But at that time, you know, the Vago's, we knew when they were recruiting, their periods of vouching, you know, and finding out who you are before they ask you to become a member were shorter than they

maybe are today. So we knew the prospect period could be as little as 30 days, maybe up to six months. We didn't know, but, you know, you just kind of go through those steps. How long was it for you? I did some hanging around time, but, yeah, I prospected. just over 30 days. Okay. You know, it wasn't that long. How soon was it before you got introduced to illegal activities?

It was right off the back. I mean, there were, once we started, you know, these guys all go by nicknames, so, you know, you've got to start identifying them. So part of the undercover portion isn't just, you know, you've got to have some ability to figure out who's who, you know, and I start memorizing license plate numbers on bikes just to get these guys identified. And, you know, because I see guys with guns, we start running records, these guys are multiple convicted felons. They're possessing guns. And now I know I got violations. I see guys slinging

dope. You know, they had a clubhouse and they ran a clubhouse in Hollywood. So back then, they ran it as an after-hours gig. So twice a week from 2 a.m. to like 10 a.m., when all the bars and strip clubs would shut down in Hollywood, there was an after-hour scene, you know, like Hollywood just has in general, but they had their own function. They called it Green Hell. And you would come to that clubhouse and we would charge, you know, money per head to get in there. You had to know somebody, but you'd get in there. We had our own stage in Stryper Pole and music going and pool tables and a full bar and all that other shit going on.

People can go in there and do all the kind of dope and with no fear of any police activity because we had guys outside watching. And what's crazy about a place like L.A., same as New York, because they had that big Hells Angels, you know, I think they sold it recently, but the place, you know, downtown where they... Yeah. Is that there isn't a lure to hanging out. at a motorcycle club's clubhouse.

And so I'm sure that, like, the after hours would draw all types. It probably wasn't just, you know, dregs. Like, there were probably a lot of influential people who had come there because they got to hang out with this cool motorcycle game. Well, the whole band Matchbox 20 came in there one time. I've seen some actors come in there that were, you know, in parts and movies that you may not regularly know off the top of your head, like the Guns and Roses guys came.

You know, there were celebrity types out here of an after hours. I think it's the cool thing to do. You're right. Rob Balbo's with the outlaws and they were the outlaw types, in this case, the Fagos, and say that they were, you know, partying with these dudes and shit like that. But they ran it as a money-making business, you know, and they ran it, you know, to make money in that scene. So being in that particular spot, you know,

it was kind of a good hub for me because all the other chapters would gravitate to that spot because it was in Hollywood. Right. It's got a scene going on. So that kind of got me a little bit, I guess, escalated into, you know, the process because I was always there. I had to work it. You know, I had to be at the event every time.

I had to prep it. I had to set up. I had to clean up. I had, you know, do all kinds of bullshit there, whatever it may be. But, you know, it also comes with consequences, too. You know, you got other people coming in there causing shit. They're causing a problem. They don't realize, hey, man, you're.

They don't know what the 1% or mentality is and how that's going to affect them if you fuck up. Right. So dudes get tuned up in there and you know and you got to play the part. You got to do what you got to do. Right. So I had to get involved in the physical altercations with these guys and show what I was made of. Now, how does the ATF or federal law enforcement, law enforcement in general, I guess, handle the criminality aspect?

Is it sort of a don't ask, don't tell type of thing? thing for you guys. He could tell you, before any of these cases you can get down the road, because there's a lot of prep to them. Right. You have meetings internally with ATF, and then ultimately you're going to have meetings with prosecutors

and the U.S. Attorney's Office. And you're going to go through, okay, what's acceptable? So what are you allowed to do, and what aren't you allowed to do? I mean, they understand there's going to be fighting. Right. I mean, you know, but it's always, don't throw the first punch, don't throw the last

kick, but you know, you can't, you know, if the club's fighting, you know, or something's going on, you can't stay in there because, you know, you're out, right? Right. You know, there were no, you couldn't commit a major felony or anything like that. I mean, you couldn't, you know, so there's a, the ground rules are set. Okay. Now, are there things that come up that as soon as they're done, you're on the phone to the U.S. Attorney's Office or prosecutors' office saying, hey, look, this happened last night and this is, you know, because you know, at the end of this case, all this stuff that happens is going to come back from the defense side of the house and saying, you know, cause or Frank, they were participating in all this and all, you know,

but the one advantage we had is we were documenting everything. Right. It was video recordings, our reports and all that kind of stuff, you know. So, you know, is it a very gray area? Absolutely. I mean, it's a gray area. But, you know, you have to cover yourself up with all that so that, you know, you're running the right course. back then working those parties

there was one incident that kind of could have gone sideways really quick was there was Armenians you know that's a big there was a big area of Armenians in L.A. and especially in that part of Hollywood and they came into the after-hours party one night one guy was

just being a fool mouting off disrespectful and you know the one thing bikers don't like is disrespect and so this guy started to you know get pushed and shoved and I'm out there you know so I got I had to actually grabbed the guy so I actually got him around the neck and guys were taking some shots on him and we had to kind of run him down off the property and I ended up you know running him into the

side of a side view mirror on a car and cut his head all open and he ends up motherfucking his way down the street and whatnot and we didn't know it at the time but you know this guy's some sort of a big shot with the Armenian power you know it's a street it's a gang for the Armenians out there and they don't fuck around either so at some point, you know, maybe like a week later, I'm standing out, and the sidewalk to the street is only like a few feet, and we had that big chain-link gate, rolling gate that I talked about earlier, and we closed that gate when we had the after-hours parties on, and I, as a hang-around, I was standing there, and I was having to work that gate, and people would show up,

and I either let them in or don't let them in, depending on if they say the right things or they don't. But at one point, I'm standing there by myself, and there's people kind of milling around up front, and a car starts to slow roll, and the traffic's right there, And as soon as I see this car, it's kind of slow rolling. And nobody slowed down all the time passing by there because they see the bikes and shit. But I see the sunroops open and a hand comes out with a gun and he fires like three shots right at me. And to the point where I'm like the deer in the headlights and I'm like, holy fuck I just got shot at.

I didn't get hit or I didn't, you know, at that time, but I knew I was shot at. I could see the muzzle flashes. I obviously heard the shots. Everybody comes running outside. What the fuck happened? The guy drives off. What the fuck happened? you know, hey man, you know, blah, blah, blah, this guy rolled up, you just fired a couple shots.

And fast forward now, the Armenians are starting to get pissed. Another time, you know, another few days later, we're at the clubhouse and a bunch of them start gathering in the parking lot. And they're getting ready to, you know, they want some fucking shit to go down. And the Vagoes knew it. We've seen them. They're getting ready to go. They got axe handles and bats in there and guns and whatever else, they, weapons-wise.

And they said, hey, before this gets out of hand, let's go talk. to these two so like the hierarchy would get out there they'd meet with some shock caller for them and they went off down the street a little bit and all a sudden there's like a brokered I guess mutual peace deal out of it so it didn't lead to a full-on gang fight in the middle of the day in you know right off Hollywood Boulevard and then then you know it was golden there was there was a mutual truce or something that got talked about that allowed the Armenians and the Bagos to kind of get along yeah at that point but it could have gone

highway's pretty quick. But being shot at, you know, that's once again, I'm in the undercover role and you're out there, you know, pulling these all-nighters and stuff and very little cover team ever out there. I've had, like I said, I got trusted guys, John Carr, John Soconi, those guys always had my back and they would always be out there if I needed them out there, even if they had to sit for hours on the weekends overnight, watching my back. But it's a wake-up call, you know, when you're shot at and you realize if that was just a couple inches different direction I could have been hit or killed, you know, at least and whatnot. And what was it like when you finally got, you know, patched into the gang?

So going down the road with that story, you know, Frank's interleet twine, you know, Frank and I now have now gotten to the point where he's coming to Hollywood and L.A. And we're meeting with the hierarchy. We're going through the process. I've been out to Vegas. And then it gets to the point where, you know, we both fill out our paperwork and stuff. They got applications, you know, to get in. You can't just say, you know, whatever.

They want to know who you are. They want to know where you live. Like a 4-H club. They want a copy of your driver's license. They want a copy of your Social Security card. All the stuff that goes, and they give that to a private investigator. And they vet you through that. In that time and day, without all the technology now,

they were using private investigators to bet you. And we were going through that phase. And, you know, we've had some hiccups. You know, even in Frank's paperwork, he had some hiccups, but he had his persona to overcome. it and his ability to overcome his hurdles as well. And mine was fine. You know, I got checked out. But, you know, we were starting to slowly work our own angles, but we were also intertwined on different events here and there. And Frank and I actually both got prospected at the same

day, at the same, you know, at the same event in Vegas. And that's when they kind of brought you in front of people. You get brought in front of like a hierarchy, the national president, the national officers than some of the other presidents and they kind of sit you down by yourself in this room and they kind of ask you some shit, hey, are you willing to die for this club? Are you willing, you know, all these other questions? And are you willing to kill for this club? You know, that type of stuff. So you got, you know, you play those games. You play the role and you play, you answer your questions the way you know you've been up to this point, been able to do. And yeah, we both got our bottom rockers on that event and start a prospect and pretty much at the

same time. Now do you, so in this process as you guys, because you said the ATF wasn't super sophisticated when it came to undercover, are you guys working on your own backstops, like getting apartments, like getting things like that so that they go, let's go to your house right now. Let's see where you live right this minute. And I did get my own house and I answered like an ad to rent a house on my own. I didn't get a HUD house or something that's been controlled by the government or seized by the government or anything like that. We were trying to do all their stuff on our own. But yeah, back then our shop wasn't as equipped as it may, like it is in today's day and age, where they can really do a lot of stuff for you. But back then, yeah, we were

doing our own things. I know Frank was doing some of his own things with his people. Yeah, there was. I mean, it was minimal. So everything was self-acquire. I mean, we became master foragers. We became everything so that we could pass the test on that. I mean, and up into that point of prospecting, there were stuff like, I know a couple times when we would go out to California, okay, they would be like, all right, we're going as a group. And of course, this is a time where cover teams, they weren't, there was no real op plans. There was none of this stuff. I mean, they started to come following Waco, all that, were all plans, but you really weren't, like, when we would go to Vegas, this was my op plan. We're going over to California,

and we don't know where we're going, what we're going to be doing, but we fall under that, under their division. And it was up to them, but most of the time you'd go out there, unlike now where you have to have full-blown, you might have one or two people that just know you're out. Right. So you just check in with them. But like we went out, you're going, okay, there was a couple times you go out there, we're going to go hunting Mongols tonight. Are you guys with us?

There was an incident where we went up to Reno, and I talked about that with the Hells Angels. So when you go and you don't question, and you're just there, so like when we were going into the meeting to get our patches, because you're in front of, you're on a stage. You had it at a BFW in Las Vegas or North Vegas. They have officers meetings, right? So everybody comes who's available. You have to come.

So we're on this stage, and they bring you in there, and they're like talking to you, and it's like they go through the questions, but they'll say, is anybody in here have any objections to these guys coming in? And because you have different members who have been with you from all the different chapters, because at that point, Nevada was as far east as that club went.

It was you have guys in leadership roles that were standing up, oh, those guys are down brothers, you know, so they're talking from the crowd. So at that point, you know, you have support from your other, you know, club brothers out there, and they're vouching for you. So because if one guy would have said, no, fuck those guys, they're no good, you're out. We've been around for months at this point now. So bear in mind, we've been putting in our dues, getting to know everybody, befriending people, doing buys or whatever we were doing on the low level.

But enough to the point where, you know, yeah we weren't strangers we weren't anybody that they didn't know what we were made of at that point you know like with with whatever we were involved in to that point like they would do stuff we went to victorville remember we went to victorville the one time so there was this one member and we we we got pre-worned we our chapter in Vegas pre-warned us and they said look you're gonna go out there's this going to be this one member and he's gonna he's gonna ask you for different caliber rounds of ammunition just to bust your balls if you don't have it then he's gonna get in your ass because they would

So they say, so if you have different rounds of ammunition, just bring them all. So, of course, being from ATF, it was like, that was easy. So when I got up to Victorville, I told him, and I go, look, there's going to be his one guy, and this is what he does. So what would happen is, he would come up to you and he'd say, I want a 22 caliber or longer. And we'd like, okay, and then you would just disappear for 10 minutes. And my chap already knew. So I told him, so anytime he would ask us, we would, here, go bring us back to him. So after about the fifth time, he got pissed.

And then our chapter would step, my chapter stepped in and said, leave these fuckers alone. Will you stop with the stupidity? But then you would get the old, somebody would grab a six pack of beer, and they grabbed me, and they would ask me all kinds of questions, because he was still under scrutiny at this time. And then they would ask me, then they would ask my informant, the same thing, and they would round robbing you,

and they'd bring him with a six-pack, and they weren't drinking. But you had to drink. Right. So, but then as I got done with my guy, I'm like, I'm clear, they switch. Right. So the other guy would grab me. Yeah. So to see if your answers are similar, you know.

The same way you do an interrogation, right? Right. You separate the detainees or whomever. So I think that was, when we went to Victorville, I think that was a big for us all because of the association, they wanted to be assured of the affiliation and association. I think that was something that I feel drove us over the top. of okay we're not going to scrutinize you guys like like we were before yeah it's interesting and for people who are watching this and and haven't really thought about undercover or

covered work think about this if somebody says do you have credit cards why does you have credit cards you do have credit cards let me see your credit card bill let me see the last five credit card absolutely like the because if you're not like living if your credit cards aren't aged if you're not living that persona if they say let me go let's go to your house where'd you go to high school, you know, exactly. You know, all that stuff, all that stuff has to be backstopped. It all has to end somewhere, or you at least have to know it. Yeah, and even from a, even from a lesser, from a more of a broader point, you got to know, like, if you want to talk about like, where'd you go to high school, you know, know what high school you say, but know the mask out of that high school.

Yeah. Who was the biggest rival to that high school? Yeah. What was the corner soda shop that or convenience store that the kids went to after school? It's got to be very, you know, you got to to get into the minutia of all these little fine parts of your backstory. I honestly don't know how with like social media is so prevalent now and you know kids not thinking about anything growing up taking photos. I don't know how anybody can do undercover work now when you have things like PIMIs and things like that. They can go they can search everything on the web and do you know facial recognition of stuff. We were old enough to get to the point where you know obviously the computer age was still just kind of up and coming then but nowadays you're right.

If you're a younger dude and you don't have an Instagram account or you don't have... You're weird. Twitter and all that stuff. Yeah, it could send up a red flag. It may and may not, but I mean, I'm just saying, you know, the technology is a lot different than it was when we were coming up. Well, cause kind of tested it is. Old days in a club, like, nobody could take pictures. It was like, the only people that could take pictures, like, if you're taking a picture, you better be a club member, right?

So they just, you weren't just allowed to snap pictures, right? Obviously, there was no social media. And even as that came on, and a lot of clubs today have the, you can't have a social media account showing you in our club colors. You can't have, you can have your personal account, but you'll make no reference in affiliation. Well, now even that has changed because of how things morph, right? But they understand how investigations are done. I mean, you know, when you say, I'm not a club member, but there you are in your colors. Or, you know, I mean, and these guys know this, there are, you know, there's always people openly.

Like for me, when we were doing a Bogus case, I had Jack Roberts, great old-timer guy. You know, he was with Las Vegas Metro Intel, you know, organized crime, and they all knew him because they knew he would be out there taking pictures of everybody, right? So they never disrespected him, and he never disrespected them. It was just, that's my job, and they understood that. And they could have the conversation like, you know, with the leadership, hey, I'm going to be out here, I want any issues, and okay, and always when they're taking pictures, you get people flipping off and doing whatever.

But that was the nature of beast. Well, now, you know, everybody takes pictures because it's cool to have the pictures. Kaz, do you want to tell the story about how you did have an incident with old school media when a book was published and you had to talk? Yeah, we'll fast forward to that down the line with the conversation, but we stick chronologically. Yeah, yeah. And then, you know, back to our Tobago's case, you know, one of the things that got me over the edge a little bit that I had an incident where, you know, once I got jammed up about the gun and I started not bringing a gun around

because I was told not to. You know, once I got over the comfort level that I was, you know, making headway and I was around for months now, I started carrying my gun again, you know, just because. And one time we got called up to an incident where the Vago said, hey, we need everybody from Hollywood, Pasadena, whatever,

we got to go up to this area. There's a bar up there fucking with us. We're going to go in this bar, and we're going to, you know, they wanted to, basically they wanted to be able to get a lawsuit out of the bar not serving them because they were wearing patches. and they wanted to go up there and we all met at a parking lot and they said, all right, man, we don't want anybody armed, everybody's got to be clean to go into this.

And I was armed and I was a prospect now, so we were prospecting. But I couldn't say I was armed because I already got jammed up. Remember, so I didn't want to tell anybody I was armed even though I had my gun on. So I just went with the flow and we ran in there like 10 deep and started causing some shit in the bar and the bar called the cops and next thing you know, LAPD shows up and they're pulling us all out. by the loudspeaker at gunpoint, and they're getting us prone out in front of the bar out in the street,

and they cuff us all, and as they stood us up, you know, they do their pat-downs, and I got my gun tucked in my waistband right in the front, and he pats me down, and I'm just hoping, please, be lazy enough where he doesn't get to the gun. But this cop was sharp enough.

He got a good pat-down on me. He got the gun. He's like, all, you know, cops do they get a gun! You know, and he pulls it out of my waistband, because I'm cuffed. All the vaguelys, I just remember. I remember all the vagus looked down, they'd like, look at me. Like, you fucking motherfucker.

But nobody else was armed or anything like that. So they put me right back in the back of a squad car. I get arrested. I'm going to jail. I got nobody out there. So I get taken in jail. I'm in the foothill station of LAPD in the fucking holding cell, arrested for carrying a gun.

And just once again, you know, as Pey would have it, I had a neighbor who I knew was a... captain at that station. So I just casually asked if he was working that night and he was and he came by and he knows me and I was able to get him one on one to say, man, I can't, you know, let's, here's call this person. Right, right. And get them on the backside of this to make this thing go legit. In the meantime, as they, he's calling my ATF, you know, trusted people, John Carr at the time to work this out, like how they're going to deal with this. The vagas are calling, you know, the front desk, like, hey, what's going on with them?

We got to, what's, you're going to be able to bail them out, all this stuff. So, and it turned out, the Obago knew the person working at the front desk, and they were, you know, striking up a conversation. And luckily, ATF, you know, when they kind of got to the station, they didn't make

a big announcement like, hey, we're here. They kind of went in through the, you know, back side of things. But we basically had to say, let this thing go through as a legitimate arrest, which it did. I got bailed out by the Vagos, you know, after being in jail. I walked out the door with the Vagos,

and now I got paperwork. But then I get my ass handed to me now, and I've got to take the heat on the back end of why I had the gun. And the way they explained it to me made sense at the time, because it was like, hey, you're a prospect. We're at war with other gangs.

You know, if you get in the situation where you pull a gun and smoke some dude in another gang, you know, now you've just launched a war between two gangs and you're not even the member. You know, you're just a prospect. Now, there's different gangs that have different mentalities to that,

because there was another gang I infiltrated where I was in the Mongols where it was mandatory as a prospect to carry a gun. But in the Vagos, it was a different scene. So after I take that ass licking and chewing and whatever, licking, ass-to-in.

I mean, if you took an ass-licking, you're probably going to carry, you're going to get it. And, you know, and it was funny because we heard about that on the backside because news travels quick right and so we're worried him because this happened and he and he told me it happened while i already knew it happened because i got a call and they

go is your boy all right they go he doesn't you know and then they're you don't fucking listen blah i'm going you know you're just sitting there going i don't even know what the fuck they're telling me i don't hear from him yet and we're just no it's all right it's all right as soon as i got bail out of jail they put me on the road and we were going up to northern californ i didn't even get to go home or nothing i'm i'm on the road and getting you know know, through this ordeal of answering to this, but at the same time, now they know about, it's the chapter knows. So now how is this going to play out? So, um, I got a court date. You know, it's all documented. And it's all in your alias?

It's all in my alias. So that's good bona fides. It's good, right? And that's what I'm saying. This is what's getting me personally kind of more over the edge, taking that arrest. Right. But as it gets closer to the court date, um, you know, we didn't know what to do. Like, how are we going to make this go through? Right. And. And. we ended up overtly, you know, dialing the judge in before the court date to say, this is what's going on, and he was willing to play ball, and I showed up for court in San Fernando City Court or whatever, you know, for the state with my arrest, and he convicted me in my alias.

You know, and basically, normally that would kind of come with like some sort of county time, but because, you know, he made some thing up about the jail overcrowding, you know, hey, time served, probation, blah, blah, blah, fine. And I got my paperwork of the conviction out the door, and DeVagos knew all that, and that got me over the edge. And now you have a little bit of street cred, too. Yeah, and I had a little bit, you know, and I do's come up to me, you know, like kind of like giving me a little pat on the back for, for, hey, I wasn't sure about you,

you know, that type of thing, but now I am and that type of thing. So, yeah, it was a fuck up on my part in their eyes for the gun issue, but at the same time, I was able to let it go through as a legit beginning to end phase of the arrest to get me that credibility, at least from that incident, and stuff like that. So what was the next step as you kind of like graduate up and elevate your position in the club? Excuse me. And also, I mean, you're not infiltrating just for the sake of infiltrating. I mean, the prosecutors must have some specific tasks for you to complete while you're there. Well, it's not necessarily task.

driven by the prosecutors, but what it is, is you're still, when you're in that phase of becoming a member, you're still on the outside. So a lot of their criminal activity and discussions of what they do criminally get done on the inside of their meetings when you have to be a member to sit

it out. So until that point, you know, I'm still kind of on, you know, Frank and I were both kind of, you know, he is a little bit more advanced because he was so trusted by his guys and had his story so, you know, down pat, he was almost like, well above the level of the members that he had in his chapter were where I wasn't in that

phase. But, yeah, once you get to the membership port where you get your patch, that's when the doors can open up a lot more from the, at least from the criminal activity side of things, even though we were seeing it and we were doing stuff criminally with them in the hangaround in prospect base. So, yeah, but it's not necessarily driven by what the prosecutors tell you you got to do. It's kind of like, hey, let us work our pace. What are you looking for? Because you've seen criminality, right? And it, but you haven't, like, broke it open. You haven't prosecuted it. Like, what is the go word for you? Or what is, what is that moment when you decide, did you have that in mind? Well, you do and you don't, because what I want to tell the

listeners too is in the general public is you got to understand in the one percent or biker world this culture that they live and breathe by is a lot different than the normal citizen of walking down the street these guys have such a focus on what their gang is about and who is next on the in the rivalry phase or who they at war with what are they going to do to do this criminally or that criminally. And they kind of go by that creed. So you're around them, you got to understand the amount of days and hours and months and even to the point where you're around that conversation all the time, you know that criminal element is always there and you're remembering shit, you're documenting shit, you're listening to stuff, you're picking that up. So these guys are

just out there, hey, let's ride bikes and have a brotherhood and get toys for tots at Christmas time. which is a public image that they try to do to clean themselves up to the general public. But behind all those scenes, when you're inside, when you're walking in our shoes, you see a whole other level of what these guys are truly about, what their mentality is, what they live by. It's violence, it's killing, it's assaulting, it's dope dealing, it's criminal activity. That's why they're one-percenters. They're not the local hog chapter.

Right. They're not somebody out there just trying to have a good time with a brotherhood. Right. They are out there for the purpose of what are they doing to make money in the illegal way that they can't. You guys got to understand up until the point, like for ATF anyway, you just don't go and say, okay, we know this game, we want to go after this gang. You have to have working with our people and especially working with the local police units and departments. You've got to get all this intel up that shows, hey, historically and even up to. Now, this is the criminal activity that we know they're documented doing because we've arrested these members, and we have other members who may be informing on the club, but we can't talk to

them. So there may be multiple sources working people who are providing us until. So you have to lay out like, okay, because it can't be a shotgun approach. It's like, look, we know this club's involved in this activity. Okay, who are they? But sometimes it takes you a long time to work around to those people to get close to them so that you can identify. Because is the entire club criminal?

No. Is the knowledge that the club is involved in criminal activity by the entire membership? Yes. Because you're not getting in thinking that you're unaware of what's going on. Right. Because you are aware. Right. Because they talk.

Right. I mean, you might not be criminally activity or doing whatever, but there are members who are. And those are the ones that get arrested. Right. Are there, so in a club, you know, are there, can a member put a hard stop on activities? Can they say, look, I'll, you know, I'll, you know, rumble, I'll shoot out with other gangs, I'm not going to do trafficking, I'm not going to do drugs, like, can they, or once they're in, because you mentioned, because you said that like not every member is involved in the criminal. There was only one club that was ever really truly criminal like that, and that's when Taco was running the outlaws, where they were pulling all kinds of dope into Detroit, and then it was passing it down to the regions, and the regional bosses were passed it down to the president's to members. And most of those guys, they were told, you'd be given dope, you've got to sell this, is what I want back. Within a lot of the clubs, there are criminal elements within the club, right?

They're doing their criminal activity, and a lot of those guys don't want leadership roles. in a club because they want to be free to do what they got to do. So they're, and, you know, they talk to other members. They'll even wall themselves off from other members and they'll use what they call citizens, like people in the street to do their bidding because a lot of times they don't want the membership known because if the membership known, especially for the Vago's, if Tramp knew you were criminally active and you were doing something and you were making money, he wanted a piece of it.

It was like, so you had to pay up to your leadership if they knew. It was like, it was, again, it was just like the mob. You're paying up all the time to these guys who are criminally active because you're using the patch, because that's what would give you a lot of credibility, because people will see that patch all the patch. And so since you're using the patch as part of your credibility, you're going to pay for that. And you would have to give a percentage of whatever you were doing. It's like a franchise fee or something. Well, I don't know about franchise fee.

It was an extortion fee. And it was. And I get to ask you quite a bit too. It's like these members, once they're a patched member, there's no doubt. that you had plenty of opportunity to walk away if you were kind of getting into it for what you thought were the right reasons. Right. And you felt like, okay, I'm seeing some things.

This isn't for me. I don't want to do this. You've had that time to get out during your hangar-on phase. Right. You've had that time to get out prospecting. Right. But once you take the full patch, you know, even if you've never been convicted of a crime or been arrested, the chances are if you're around your fellow members or brothers in the gang,

and one of them steps out of line to do something illegal or assault somebody or they're going to stab somebody or they're going to shoot somebody or they're going to do something, you are now in it. You can't just say time out, I didn't sign up for this. That's not how it works in their world. You are now one of them. That patch comes before anything else, right or wrong, that member is your brother. You've got to do what they're going to do. If they ask you to help out on something, bury a body or whatever, this or that, you don't have that ability. out, like you said, to say, I'm going to do this, I'm not going to do that.

It doesn't work that way because now you've been vetted all that time. You know what you're getting into at that point. You'll see during the times of war, when these clubs are actually at war, you'll see a lot of guys drop their patch. Oh, really? They'll say, I'm ready to go to war and die and kill. But then you'll see a lot of guys that will drop their patch, and they won't do that.

But on the other side of that, too, is if you retire in good standing with some of these clubs, when it goes the time to war, it's like you get recalled. Yeah. And it's like if you want to keep your patch, you're going to come back. Right. You know, you're going to come back and you're going to help us. And then afterwards you can go down your road. So tell us about, like, how you progress this case

and kind of got deeper and deeper into the organization. Yeah, it's just the same thing. We just, you just, the time, it's time. You know, you're spending time with what I talked about too is, is there some human psychology involved? You got to know which guy, you know, every chapter has their own people of what they do and who their strengths are and their weaknesses are. So if you're kind of teamed up with the guy that nobody likes in the chapter, you're not going to get very far with what's going on and in the inner circle with the guys that are moving and shaking.

So you've got to kind of know who's who to read that room and get to the point where you want the guys that are the shot callers, the guys that can get to the criminal activity, guys that'll deal with you to that point where, you're trusted by those people and then you're you're elevating yourself through that part so in our world you know frank was like as he he's tramp loved him tramp was very intrigued by his undercover persona because he had that italian connection that he portrayed from the midwest that they didn't really know nothing about on the west coast so he portrayed himself in that role to a t so the international president took such a intriguing interest in that it it elevates elevated him to a point where they were digging it.

So I was piggybacking off of that being associated with him because I also come from the Midwest. You know, we were in that together. So when we were progressing through, you know, and we'll talk about this, is at the point where we're going to get fully patched. They never really tell you when you're going to get fully patched, but you kind of get a good hint when you're going to get fully patched. Fully patched meaning the three piece set. You're going to get a full member. You're going to get a full phone member. you're not a prospect anymore, you're going to get your full patch.

We kind of knew that was coming, but we also knew it was going to come in Mexico. Now, that's where they had chapters in Mexico, and they went down there quite a bit, so it wasn't a big deal. But they were going to make a national run to Mexico where they would use that national run to patch in any prospective possible new members, Frank and I being included. So we're in that quandary now, okay, what do we do? Because obviously getting that patch is important. We're going to put ourselves at the next level. But at what cost if we, you know, how do we wrestle with? So him and I really had to have a lot of sidebars about what are we going to do.

It was to the sidebar to the point where, yeah, we're going to fucking go and not tell anybody. Like we thought about that. You know, we thought in ATF, like, can we get down there and just not fucking say nothing to nobody? and get our full patch and get back and accomplish what we need to do. But then the realism sets in of like what is the cost if we get busted out on it? What if we something happens? What if the, you know, we're still kind of relatively young in our careers. That's a career-ending decision.

Sure. You know, if we go down there. And like Frank said, he made a phone call. And the agent down there at the time didn't realize when we said we wanted to go down there that we were coming in a covert manner. That, you know, you can go into Mexico as an ATF agent. officially, but their notifications got to get made, like Frank said. But we had to come up with a way to get out of that. We did. We came up with a situation where we

said in our backstory, we had been previously, prior to even coming around the Vagos, years back when we knew each other, we had been stopped and questioned and detained at the border for, you know, suspicion of smuggling doping. And we felt that we were in the system, and that if we went down there, we couldn't take the chance that we'd come back in and we wouldn't get flagged. And we said, hey, we don't want to draw heat to you, and we don't want to take a hit on us. And we kind of had to really work that excuse into the point of where it was almost like, hey, it was like, if you don't go, you're out, or we had to come up with like, hey, we're not going, so here's your patchback if you can't take that answer. And they backed it off. They backed

off it. And then the way I got patched was they changed the location to Fontana, California, and they had the run there, and Frank was supposed to go, and somehow his chapter held them back. Yeah, they said, you guys don't need to go for that. Because our chapter, I think only two people went, they said, you don't need to go, so we didn't go. And I ended up going, and I was the only, I think I was the only prospect down there. And I'm talking now, we're talking, you know, over 100 members at this event, and it was on private property. And the way I got patched in is, all right, I was outside. They were holding their national meeting or whatever on the property.

It was fenced in. And I was on the outside of the fence. And they yelled, you know, you don't have a name at that point. They yelled, I got to come running, you know. So they said, hey, Prospect, get your bike, get back here. So I get on my bike. I ride it through the fence and gate. It's a wooden fence now, so I can't see on the other side.

So as I get in the fence, I see the whole membership just kind of like stand in there as I'm coming into this horseshoe of members now, and the members are kind of circling and closing me in by myself on the bike. And as soon as I get the kickstand down and get off my bike, I get grabbed. And I start getting punched. I start getting shoved. And I'm kind of like in a daze of what's really going on. And then finally, you know, after a few seconds of that, you know,

it felt like an eternity, but it was probably just a matter of seconds. they had me faced off in front of my president and he said, hey man, you fucked up. You know, remember that incident with the Armenian? There was some bullshit they came up with that I fucked up on, which they were trying to rattle me. But then after maybe like a few sentences of like saying I fucked up

and they were going to kick my ass or do whatever at that point, you had the patch, you know, and then they just hand it to you and say, all right, you got like two minutes to get that sewn on and blah, blah, blah, and then everybody's all happy and celebrating. And then I got the pat sewn on. And then when we all pulled out of there, like I had my cover team, Cicconi and Bubba was out there and John Carr.

And the pack left. And usually prospects, you know, by protocol, you ride in the back of the pack. So they always knew where to find me, you know, when the pack left. But this time they couldn't see me. They didn't think I came out of there. And then they're running down the freeway when we're on the freeway, you know, 50, 60 deep in a pack. and they're riding up and down, you know, trying to see where, and I'm in the middle of the pack.

I'm patched down. They were like, ah, you know. So, you know, it was kind of a good moment. But that's kind of like where it started going downhill for me, believe it or not. After getting patched, you know, now I'm kind of in the mode. This is kind of now we're around Halloween time. And unbeknownst to me, you know, circling back to this informant that got killed, he had a girlfriend and she was still kind of in the scene

in the other part of the area where she ran into some vagus and the way we could surmise we never really know for sure but what we surmised is she kind of let it out that her old man was working as the snitch for ATII

oh man she had my business card because I had given him one when I cultivated him to get a hold of me not even knowing yet at that point I was going to infiltrate so my last

names on there, Kozlowski, so I'm going by Kaz. You know, now the pieces are starting to come together again. But I don't know any of this at this point. I'm still fat, dumb and happy riding in as a full patch, and I'm at these functions now as a full patch holder, and it's a Halloween party in the San Fernando Valley area, and I'm up there with numerous members fully patched, having a good old time. Next thing I know, I'm getting pulled out by the National Secretary at the time,

who is a juvenile probation officer, like a badge care. Oh, he's kind of like, they call him Sarge. Asshole. Yeah, and what he did is now with all this information that they're kind of getting behind the scenes that I'm unaware of, they pull me out of the party, and they got a couple houses they still own. They pulled me to a vacant house that's unoccupied at the time, and they got me in the backyard, and they're starting to grill me again about, like, hey, have you going to buy any other names? And I'm like, no.

And they're like, well, you know, just as a protocol, you know, we got to roll your fingerprint. and check you out a little bit more, even though I'm a full patch now, you know. So I'm like, I really didn't know what was going on, but I complied with it, and they rolled my prints. And, you know, back then it wasn't automated. You got to roll him. And he's the one who did it. So I'm like, okay, he's somewhat of not really a full-blown cop, but he's got access to stuff.

So I still really didn't kind of fully realize what was going on until one day I came back to my undercover house and my undercover house was in North Hollywood and what I used to do is I had an alley and it had a garage. I had an undercover truck in my bike, but when I would go home to my true residence, I never took my undercover vehicles. I had my own, my government vehicle always stashed out a block away or something like that down a regular, you know, parallel parking street like here. And I would usually park a ways away and I'd come up through the alley and I'd come into my house. Well, unbeknownst to me that day, this is after the party. They were looking for me. They get a hold of me, and I'm at the house, and they said, are you at your house? I go, yeah. Within

less than five minutes, I got a knock on the door. It's the president of my chapter. He comes inside. And then he picks up a phone. He makes a phone call to the National Sergeant Arms, who puts him on the phone with me. And now the questions start again, what were you doing today? Where were you? And I'm like, oh, I was out fucking around doing shit. And I'm like, well, were you in your truck or on your bike? And I'm like, I was in my truck. And now he's got me in a lie because unbeknownst to me, they broke in my garage. My truck was there.

My bike was there. And I wasn't. So now he's catching me in this lie. And now it's like I'm starting to go sideways. And it's like, hey, man, you know, we got to do some more checking on you. Stuff's not adding up here. And I'm by myself and he's in there. And I don't know if they got like 10 more vagos out there.

Are they going to fuck me up? Are I getting killed here? It's in the middle of the night. You know, this is like almost like pushing 11 o'clock midnight where they're in my house. And I got, I didn't see it coming. And then he leaves. And I just hit the panic button.

So I call, you know, my boys. And I said, I got to get the fuck out of here. I don't know if they're coming back. I don't know what's going on. But I got to, you know, whatever. I get out of there. And that's when the phone call started in which Frank can talk about what he, the phone call he.

got about me at that point. You know, I'm compromised, basically, out this. Did they take, they took your patch? Yeah, they took my patch. They said, we're going to hold on to this. Oh, shit. They said, we're going to hold on to this patch. And if we're wrong about you, you know, we apologize and you're going to get it back. But right now, as the president, I can't say no. You know, I said, hey, man, you know, whatever, whatever you got to do, do what you got to do. I was just like, kind of, at this point, just get the fuck out of the house and let me survive this, whatever's going on. Because I didn't say, So he leaves, and that's when I'm thinking, all right, shit's, usually you can't just, in the real world, a member who's getting kicked out or getting his patch pulled, it doesn't go well.

You just don't, it doesn't like, hey, Sionara, good luck to you. It comes with possible ass beaten. You're going to get your shit taking, your bike's going to get taken. Who knows what's going to happen? You know, members have been beaten severely and, you know, hospitalized for trying, you know, from being kicked out of a motorcycle gang. So I didn't know what was waiting for me, but that's when, you know, Frank got, I'll let him take it from there on the call he got, you know. So follow on this.

Well, he calls me. Well, again, Pager, but he calls. And so I call him back and he tells me what happened. I'm going to fuck, you know. So I said, okay, so I said, let me see if I hear something on my end, you know. So I never heard anything from my chat for president or anything like that because he had just got his patch. Now, myself and my informant T, we were told, you guys are going to get your patch the next weekend. Okay, you guys will get it here.

We'll just do it here amongst our chapter. So I'm at the house, and the phone rings, and we're scurred around. And my guy, T, answers the phone, and it's Tramp. And Tramp talks to, and he goes, hey, he goes, let me talk to Vinny, which is what I went by. And so I get on a phone. and Tramp, real serious, he's on the phone and junkie Ed. Now, he's an international sergeant-in-arms. He was my sponsor, too, by the way.

And so Tram's going, hey, he goes, we've got a problem with your boy. And I go, I thought we'd been through, you know, we're just bullshit, and he goes, well, hey, he goes, he's an ATF agent. And I'm like, so I knew, but I'm like, what the fuck are you talking about? He goes, no, he goes, he goes, he goes, why I never? Yes, and he goes, he's an ATF agent. And I go, what the fuck are you talking about? He goes, no.

He goes, and he went down the drill with how they figured what they thought, you know, why he was an HF agent, right? With the business card on us other bullshit. So we're talking, and he goes, we got to do something about this. I go, well, what do you mean we got to do something about this? He goes, well, we, not you. He goes, what we think happened is he followed you out from the Midwest because our story was that we had done some business on Midwest. He goes, we think he followed you out here as part of his investigation. to keep going after you guys.

And then once you guys were in, and he tried to get in the club to continue to work you guys in the club, he goes, we got to take care of him. And I go, what do you mean to take care of him? He goes, we got to take him out. And at that point, Junkie Ed's on the phone. He goes, I got to go. And he hangs the phone up.

So Trump's going, or Tramp's going up, not Trump. Tramp is going on and on about how, you know, we got to make sure, because, you know, we don't know what he's done, who he's done deals with with, we're checking in the club. blah, blah, blah, but we got to kill him. I'm like, oh, fuck, I go, well, I go, you know, I go, what am I supposed to say, Tramp?

He goes, he goes, don't worry about it. He goes, he goes, we'll be in contact. So we hang up the phone. Now, the backstory on Tramp was, Tramp was a degenerate gambler. I mean, he was it, remember? So one of our taskings was he had this shop that he was laundering money through. You know, he had a small bike shop that he ever sold shit through, but he would fill out paperwork like he was. Like I remember, so he tells us one time we're in town, and he goes, you guys need to come down and see me.

And we're like, where the fuck are you? And he goes, find me. In L.A. Find me. Right? So luckily we had all the intel and stuff like that. So we show up at his shop. And he gives us these stupid videotapes that he had made interviewing other club presidents and people like that.

And it was a box of them. And he goes, I need $3,000 for those. And we're like, look at each of $3,000. I go, what do we find? He goes, I don't care, sell him. He goes, but I need $3,000. So I had to go back to my boss, say, I got to pay this extortionist $3,000, or we're going to have a problem. So we paid him, which helped, because then he saw, we were a money source for him.

That's one of the things he liked about us. So, he felt, I mean, he felt confident enough that he could tell me, because they didn't think that, even though I had problems, we, my guy and I, my informant, we were still good as far as the client. was concerned. But he wasn't. So they're going to take care of the problem, meaning him, and then everything could go on as normal. Well, I get off the phone, and I call him and I say, hey, Tram, they want to kill you. So, I mean, that was a little bit longer conversation. So at that point, you know, you've got to press the eject button. So I call my bosses, and I'm like, look, this is what's going on, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. He'd already had been extracted out of his house and stuff, but we had a house with all kind of shit in it.

And they're like, you guys, you got today to get out. And, like, You know, you're in that mode going, but wait a minute, we're still good. Right. Let us go. Yeah, yeah. He's the problem. You know, like, in their eyes, he's the problem. They're like, fuck that, you guys, because we don't know.

So we had to call our sponsors because we hadn't got, you know, this was like on a Wednesday or something, or I think. It was in the middle of the week, and we were supposed to get patched that weekend, so we called up our sponsors. And I remember I called up mine, which was Ozzy. I said, hey, man, we got to meet. That was Tony's. Mine was Coop, but Coop wasn't around, so we called Ozzy up. And we said, we got to meet you. He goes, what's up?

And my chapter, we ever heard about this shit yet. So we go down and we meet Ozzie, and we take our prospect cuts off. You know, we had a bottom rocker with Nevada on it. And we hand up to him. He goes, what's going on? He goes, I go, well, apparently, you know, our guy out in California, he's a fucking cop. You know, we had to disclose that, you know, because they would. Right, right.

And it was like, and we don't know if we're jackpotted. I go, I know what we've done with him. I know what we've done with him for years. I know what I've done with him. And I go, we can't stick around for that bullshit. So we handed our shit in. That night came in, moved all our shit out. And then within, I don't know, within like two weeks or something, that was it.

That case was locked down and all the search warrants, rest warrants, and everything were being executed. So, yeah, to kind of circle back in the, and what happened to me after that night was, even though he got that phone call, they're not going to think that he called me to tell me what they said. Right. So I got junkie yet calling me back again a day. later, hey man, you need to come over and we need to talk to you. You know, after this conversation occurs about them wanting to kill me, they're trying to lure me out and putting the, hey, you know, we'll sort this out, you're good, you know,

just come to my house, come see me, we'll talk this out. But I knew what was up, so I'm on the phone, you know, you can be brave on the phone. It's a little different in person. So, you know, on the phone, I'm like, hey, fuck you. You know, I don't know what you're pulling, what shit you guys patch me, you take my pad. I don't know what games you're fucking. I'm just trying to say whatever, just to keep them on the phone and talk. Maybe I'll get something out of them.

But I wasn't going for it, and I said, hey, fuck off. I ain't coming. You guys can do whatever you want. I'll take my show somewhere else up the road, you know, and deal. You know, that was just kind of my way of being able to at least get a conversation in. But, yeah, the brakes got hit, you know, and like you said, like when you decide to pull out, when's enough enough or this or that. In this particular case, because of me,

you know, it became, instead of taking anything down on your terms when you're ready, when we got enough in to get what we needed, we have to completely like 180 that and go on a reactive now. You know, we're in a mode of crisis where the undercovers now are shut down and what do we do? Now, what we didn't talk about is we had a third investigation, a parallel investigation with ATF in San Diego, who was controlling a patched informant. And that informant also heard about me. So now his investigation wasn't ready to come down yet. And so what we did is we just kind of packaged everything up we had and Frank had,

and we let it sit on the table for at least a few more months until the San Diego Op was ready to come down. And then when they were ready, we did a triple hit on Vegas, the L.A., San Fernando Valley, and then Daigo all at the same time. How many arrests? We get about 60 patches. Yeah. Yeah, I think on my end was less than 20.

I didn't get very many on my end because of the time. What was the follow-up as far as like the prosecution? Like how did that all go? Yeah, they got prosecuted. They either pled out. None of my guys went to trial. They all took plea deals on the weapons and charges and stuff in the dope that I got off of them. And I don't know what, you know, on Frank's end.

Yeah, I mean, they all got prosecuted. I mean, the biggest thing we had, I think I talked about on last show, was the whole invasion we did. Those guys did the most time on that. those guys got a lot of time on that because most of them were there but you know beyond beyond the drugs and everything it's like you know that case ended premature obviously it was a salvage operation to get what we had right right right right we could have made a much bigger impact had we been able to go another months longer years long but still like i mean you say i didn't give very many

i got 20 and you got 60 like a roughly a lot like that feels like a lot it did it didn't to me Because I think, you know, out of the membership that's there, you know, you're talking hundreds of guys, I get less than 20. I'm only impacting a couple chapters. I'm really not, in my opinion. Yeah, I'm taking some bad guys off the street from it. But because of the way, you know, the mistakes I made, you know, to own up to it as a young undercover first infiltration, flying by the seat of our pants with the cover stories and things that we didn't have enough in our agency to really come up to backstop us properly. you know, we were out there cowboying a lot of this case,

at least on my end, with less, you know, being out there half the time with nobody knowing what I'm doing, no recorder. You know, that doesn't happen today. Right. You know, our undercover people and our shop and everything has been so much more advanced and sophisticated, and what I know now and subsequent to the other infiltrations I've done,

I learned, that case made me learn the hard way of almost like what not to do at every turn. Right. But the lucky part of it all was, aside from the arrest and the impact minimally that we made, were alive. Right. That was the main thing. That's an upside, yeah. Yeah. So outside.

Better than the alternative, right? Now, of course, we didn't really, you know, and sometimes you got to understand, too, the criminal part of it is one thing, but sometimes in these gangs, getting infiltrated is a slap on their face, too, because now to the other bikers. Right. They were like punks. You know, in their community, they've been infiltrated. You know, how did that happen? And, but then again, it goes, you know, that they share information of who you are and what what these guys did.

But amazingly, this wasn't your only infiltration, right? That was my first one. Yeah. I mean, how in the world, after, as you say, like a big compromise like that, how do you roll that into a second infiltration of another club? You know, I don't know if it's just me, you get that mindset and I don't know, in a lot of military community, whatever, you got that mindset that you can outsmart these guys. Like, you're playing chess when you think everybody's playing checkers.

And you got that mindset, like, I can do it. You know, I think enough time's gone by. Because my second infiltration now occurred on the East Coast. And I thought I was far enough removed from the element of what the Vago's influence and touch was that I can pull it off with being out a few more years, having a different look. and now that our shop is up and running in a different capacity and I felt that at least now I had in one way I had experience. So this led, this case led to the formation of our undercover shop

because of the failures. And it was like, you know, so a couple guys came out to the brief us and, you know, he stayed where he was. And because when I did my first case, you know, you're supposed to take time off before you go, do your second case. Well, I rolled into my second one six months after I did my first one was almost three and a half years. So I got called on the carpet, meaning to the sack that was up in San Francisco. And he goes, what the fuck are you doing? I go, what do you mean? He goes,

weren't you told that you weren't supposed to do another investigation? I go, no, nobody told me shit. And they're like, well, how far are you in? I go, we're about the prospect. So then they said, okay, fine. Well, at that point, they weren't going to leave me, because I got moved out of how because of threats and then I got moved out of Vegas because you know at my house you know there were some vagus once they found out who we were and we were prosecuting there were some hanging around our office building a courthouse you know doing surveillance and then a couple days later the tires on my car got slashed at my house so a fdiff was fuck it so we're going to move you so my I put in where I wanted to go and I got sent to fucking headquarters because they were starting up this

undercover shop right so we start that up so then that's where the policy came in that it was like, okay, look, if you guys are going to do cases, you can't do them in your own backyard anymore because we've got to move you. So that was, you know, so that was the catalyst where we were building our shop, you know, and, you know, we had a lot more capability to when the guys were going into the next cases that, you know, okay, if you're going to do something, you've got to come from the outside area. Plus, it gave us the ability because we learned a lot from the case Steve Martin did with the warlocks,

the case I did with the brothers, and then this was like the third one that came along. And now everything that was going to progress after that in 1988, 98, 99, we were going to prepare for a lot better. So then that's how, you know, he rolled into his next one. Yeah, it was even a little, even before I went out to the East Coast, I still had the mindset that I can get away with it, even back in L.A.

because I was actually working again on the peripheral of a smaller one-chapter group out of San Fernando Valley. whose club name was the assholes. You know, that was their name. But they were sanctioned by the San Fernando Valley Hells Angels. Different element. They didn't really cross over with the Vagos. And so I was kind of coming around them.

And actually in that case, in a bar in the valley, one of the Vagos that came in the bar that the president of the assholes knew, and he knew who I was as an ATF agent. But I had a different look, and I was, you know, and I kind of equated to, like, this you know that show America's Most Wanted right and they highlight fugitives and stuff like that well if you're watching that TV show and they show a picture of the wanted fugitive

and you watch that episode and a week later you're walking on the street and that guy walks by you would you remember that no okay not at all so really the people who would know that person are going to people that probably had contact right or some kind of intimate right contact with that person to some way shape or form the only thing that i think would have given me up in even though he introduced me to the Vago and I shook his hand, he didn't know who I was. So that gave me that internal power that I thought like, okay, if that guy can't fucking recognize me,

and he knows I'm an ATF agent, I pulled that off. Right. But what would probably give me up is conversation, if he remembered my voice. Right. Or a distinctive part of my voice or accent or something like that. So I obviously knew who he was, so I didn't, you know, make a point of standing there talking about him.

I just shook his hand. I brought my head and I moved on. But going to the East Coast, I felt a little bit more emboldened that I can get away with the crossover that enough time is going by. Actually, years have already gone by now. It's probably four years later before I stepped into the case with the Warlocks on the East Coast. And I felt my look and stuff with the shop being stood up, that the backstopping mechanisms were in place that I felt comfortable. doing it. But I wasn't by myself now either. You know, that case was started by another ATF agent and a task force out there in Virginia, West Virginia area. It was started in Virginia. And he had already done a lot of the groundwork and it was everything getting stuck. He just

wanted another guy to come in and I got the call to do it. You know, so this time instead of being in two separate areas like me and Frank were, we were together. We were like roommates. lived together, but I still had to come up with a story of how I came out there. Like, I'm from the West Coast. That's what I knew. I don't know anything about the Virginia area I was in rural Virginia at that time, West Virginia. So I had to, like, you know, make up a story, and we just, me and the other agent were

able to come up with a real good backstory on each other on how we knew one another, why I'm out there, are, you know, having a fictitious business. Whatever it took, we had that in place. out very comfortable with our role going into the warlocks case. And don't forget now, ATF had already infiltrated the warlocks in the 90s with another ATF agent out of Florida. So they had already been hit by ATF in a big way with an ATF under cover that became a full patch of the warlocks already.

We're round two on the warlocks at this point. So we're rubbing elbows with guys that got arrested in that case and no ATF infiltration. now we're coming into that world again and stuff. So that's how, you know, once the undercover shop got stood up, and based on my experience, not just with the Vago's case, but do another undercover, I became part. You know, ATF does have a separate undercover enhanced program for guys that do good undercover work, and it's usually a cadre of 20-plus agents anywhere in the country that can do it.

And I was part of that at that time. How did you guys, because, you know, you talk about the firearms, as ATF, the firearms drugs sort of connection. And I think we talked about this on our show too. But how do you guys de-conflict with, like, DEA or anybody else who might be, who might also have undercovers in the same outfits or organizations? I'll let Frank handle that question. Well, I'm going to, I mean, I'll say this. I mean, ATF, to my knowledge, is the only agency that's ever had anybody patch into a club.

Now, there are state and locals that worked with ATF, that were on our task forces that infiltrated clubs, but were working with us. But so, again, you got an obsequent, right? It's a need to know versus a right to know. Right. So you had a very specific task force that was represented, and only those people knew. You didn't tell anybody else because of potential leaks. Because, you know, unfortunately, there's a lot of law enforcement out there. You know, there's law enforcement clubs, there's this and that,

and just guys that ride, for whatever reason, they like to be affiliated or associated with these outlaw clubs or to know them. And we had two guys that when they were doing the outlaw case, just real quick, they were riding down the road. And they were in Virginia, but down in Petersburg, when they had stood up on outlaw chapter. They had their own chapter in Petersburg. And they're riding down the road,

and they get lit up and pulled over by a deputy down there. And they're like, oh, shit, you know, because they had guns and everything else on them. Because there was a lot of Hells Angels and bullshit going on there. So they get pulled over, the deputy walks up to him, and he goes, hey, you know, hey, the reason I stopped you guys didn't do anything wrong, he goes, I never really met an outlaw member.

He goes, so I just want to meet you and shake your hand. And now, these are our guys looking at their going, what the fuck is this? You know what I mean? And then he just shook their hand and they left. I mean, they should have technically been arrested for care. But you have that. And it's unfortunate.

And he could tell you stories about this as well. But we didn't de-conflict with anybody because of the offset. And I don't tell you, we had run-ins with other federal agencies who had informants that were in the same clubs, but they were reluctant to tell us who they were. Right. So we would have to figure that out on our own just by. deciphering certain things and we go back and tell them, well, this is your guy. They're like, fuck, how do you know that?

Well, we've been doing this game, you know, because every time we started infiltrations from the time, our guys started riding on the West Coast with the Hells Angels in the 70s up until, like when Steve and three other, two other agents and a local guy did the warlock, progressively it gets a little more difficult because they share information. They share information amongst themselves, whether adversarial, ally, whatever. because the optimum thing is not to get infiltrated. Well, so it becomes more difficult in the workarounds. So as things get more tight security-wise, we didn't share with anybody.

I mean, you know, a lot of times we would have local law enforcement that would run into our guys, and after they find out, they're like, fuck, you know. But to piggyback on that answer a little bit is also, you know, you got your case agent and you've got state and locals you're working with. And usually when you're in an area working those areas, you know kind of who's working who and what agencies might. Now, it's not foolproof, you know, we, but yeah, when there's undercover involved, you really can't tell too much, you know, because of that reason of leaks. But you also should know that you have faith in the intel side of it. Guys that are working bikers in the area are pretty much well known in the law enforcement side.

of things. So you're going to kind of know if there's a parallel investigation at some point. I think there's a really interesting dynamic with the outlaw motorcycle gangs compared to like the bloods and the crypts and whatnot. And I could be wrong. But, you know, because you guys mentioned the one percenters. You mentioned the probation officer and this cop who wanted me. And then the military clubs and the police clubs. Like the idea that each state or each area, I guess, maybe not state is owned by a 1% club, right? Like it's theirs. And in order to ride, you've got to be sanctioned. And you see a police club or a military club or a civilian club. And there are people in those clubs that want that 1% affiliation, right? So yeah, we'll go down this rabbit

hole a little bit and I'll give you my opinion in Frank Ant too. Dave, could you please give me the box out of the bottom of the humidor? Absolutely. But to touch upon this a little bit is you're exactly right to the point where the 1%ers have a mindset that, first of all, they have no respect or regard for the life of anybody who's in a cop club or a military club or firefighters or whatever it may be. Because you've got to understand those groups, the cop clubs and everything, they're emulating the style and look of an outlaw 1% gang, meaning a three-piece patch, prospecting. I mean, all the stuff that you wouldn't think you'd have to do

if you want to just be a brotherhood of fellow cops or fellow military, you shouldn't have to play those games. Right. But you're emulating the structure, the hierarchy, the rules, the look of what one percenters do, which kind of now bleeds over into their world. So I can tell you from being on the inside, if you're a cop in uniform or whatever,

or you're a biker intel guy or whatever, they know that, they respect, that you're doing your job. But when you pretend to be in a gang that they look like them, or not a gang or a club affiliated as a police club or military, they're gonna look at you like one of them. Right. So for example, in California, for the longest time,

the Hells Angels and the Mongols were the only two gangs that can wear that California spelled out on the bottom rocker. But when a police club stood up and put the California bottom rocker on, that's kind of a slap in their face from what they battled through with guys getting killed over that from eons and decades. And here comes a cop club showing up at events or biker rallies where they're sporting those patches, and that's a slap in their face.

So they look at it as like they're not cops. They're going to get treated like they would treat somebody wearing a California rocker. We're going to fucking take their shit, knock them in the dirt, whatever. And you can't just go time out. I'm a cop, leave me alone. They won't do that. And I can tell you that from experience, and the cops that are maybe getting into it for the right reasons may not realize that side of what's going to happen to them. But we had to actually stop cop clubs at some points when we had inside intel from undercover activity that if they showed up at that event, it was going to be game on and prevent them from even showing up because they weren't going to survive that.

I mean, when I was in Avagos and we were prospecting, we had talked about this just all. offline, but we went to an event and there was a cop club that was there and we're sitting with them because, you know, they like that bad boy. They want to be affiliated with that, right? So we're sitting there and we're just like off the one side. We're watching the crowd. And this cop club is sitting there pointing out their own narcs and vice guys to us, saying that guy is one of them.

You know, they know them? And it's like, what the hell are you guys doing? But you know what? In order to ingratiate themselves to some of these, you know, to the club so that they can be, you know, with them, which they're never with them. them. They'll use them, try to get them into a position to use them. They don't understand how the mindset of that that would work. I mean, you know, ATF, Jeremy Sheets, they put on an annual report, gangs and, you know, and first responders, you know, in the military, you know, who are,

in all these guys that are affiliated in cop clubs and military clubs, who, you know, some of which have clearances, some don't. And they publish this report, you know, that, hey, these guys have positions of trust, but they're affiliating with known felons and criminal organization. And I'll just tell you right up front, not only in my own investigation of working undercover, but other ATF agencies who worked undercover on bikers, I can't tell you, it's multiple. It's not just one or two. It's multiple investigations where as a result of the end game, cops have been arrested and or military, and they've also lost their jobs and were booted out of the military because of their affiliation with the one.

one percenters. Meaning like I was sitting in a room with one percenters and police and the dialogue was to the point where they thought they were like buddies. Yeah. It's like okay, but you got to realize the one percenters are going to take advantage of that because they're going to rub up to you, but then it's going to come down to, hey, I need a favor. Can you let us know if there's a hit come out of us? Can you let us know if there's a raid coming? You know, and then they get, maybe they get put in a compromising position where they feel like they have to say. Right. It just doesn't come out good for those guys that really want to rub elbows with the 1%ers and try to play the dual role. Right.

Can you tell us about how that second investigation progressed? It was the warlocks. It was the warlocks. So, yeah, I came in as a secondary undercover with another ATF agent. We were in a very rural part of Virginia. It was like Woodstock, Winchester area. But they had a chapter out that way. And then also in Martinsburg, West Virginia.

but the dynamics of the group at that time, the jurisdiction was we were concentrating on the Virginia chapter 1st. And the ATF agent that was out there ahead of me was already making inroads with those guys. So coming in as a secondary, partnering up, having our checks and balances in place and felt comfortable, the first day I showed up, we rode into West Virginia because the dynamics out there was there wasn't any bars,

and strip joints and stuff in that area we were in in Winchester, so we would go over the state line into West Virginia, and we were immediately at the first drip joint we went to, we ran into some warlocks. Now, we rode up on bikes. I had a California plate. Everything's backstopped, but it didn't, we weren't, we didn't have an informant to, like, introduce us or nothing.

We weren't in cold, so when we showed up at that place, it didn't take long for the warlocks to come up to us and say, you know, basically like, who the fuck are you guys? You know, are we pagans? Are we somebody a rival to them? Because they were in pagan, you know, their enemies with the pagans in that area.

And I think just having that conversation in the bar, we kind of got over the hurdle of getting, you know, okay, now they might be looking at us like, hey, these could be two cool dudes that we can, you know, bring on board with us. Let's see what they're about. So then from that initial contact with one of the members, we got invited to another member to meet.

And then from that member, he said, hey, we're having an event. Can you guys come help work it? So now we're kind of getting slowly into that. And they had a big Warlock event where Warlocks came from all over the country to go there. And it was in a campground. So rural area where it's a dirt road in, trees all around, dirt road out. One way in, one way out.

No cover team can see it in there. But we felt good because we got each other. But still, if shit at the fan, we're overpowered. But we worked that event, and they put us to work. And we got to meet a lot of guys, and then all of a sudden, you know, now the progression starts. All right, you know, have us come over to the clubhouse, you know, have us come over to other events and hang out with them. So now we start to become hangarounds again with the warlocks. But we're trying to tag team it with the Virginia chapter and the West Virginia chapter,

because there were two different chapters and two different chapters of two different personality types. And this goes too, you know, we were just making a lot more headway in West Virginia than we were in the Virginia chapter. And eventually what ended up happening is we get to the point where we both prospect for West Virginia and end up becoming, you know, patching it with them. It took longer. We prospected with them for four months. But we still had crossover. We were going up and down the East Coast to the other two.

Actually here in New York, they had a chapter at one point. We came up here several times in the Bronx or whatever, maybe even Brooke, I can't remember, but they had a clubhouse up here, and we would run over to 3rd Street and hang out with the Hells Angels. We were affiliated in an alliance with the Hells Angels back then. Now, this is the early 2000s. But at that time, you know, we were still, you know, we were making buys, doing different things. We had ourselves dialed in pretty good and just progressed. you know, naturally.

And, but we had hairy moments, no doubt about it. You know, there's two of us. And we live together. We worked together. So we always had to say what we were doing that day, you know, just any kind of questions. And like you said, you know, when you get separation, they're going to ask you the same things and different things. And there was, you know, one particular incident I can remember where, you know,

we're pretty confident in how we've progressed. And I think we're actually prospecting at this time. and we're in the clubhouse and they all go into a back room and obviously we can't go back in there. They yell prospect, get in here. You know, so the other undercover goes into the room,

shuts the door, I can't, I don't know what's going on. And as soon as he gets done, whatever he's doing in the room, the door opens, they call me in. I don't have any time to get up with him, hey, what the fuck happened in there? What they say? What do they do? What do I expect? We couldn't do that. They immediately had me come in and shut the door. When I walk in this room, just from my experience, there was a chair in the middle of room, and they had like couches all around and chairs, you know, kind of in a circle.

I get put in that chair, and now the questions start, you know. How long have you known him? How long have you, you know, and I'm sure they asked him the same stuff about me. But we had our answers kind of different. You know, I can't just, we've known each other five years. He says I known each other five years. You know, blah, blah, blah. We always rehearsed. We always would have different kind of answers. And we knew that going in. So then answering the questions, and then where you kind of find out where these guys are at mentally is one member looks at another member and he pulls out his gun and he goes, you give me the order and I'll fucking smoke this dude right now. Just tell me. And I'm like, now you're, I don't know what comes over you, adrenaline-wise or whatever, but then I get, I get angry. You know, I get to the point where I'm starting to get pissed because he said that, you know, and I'm like, all right. Then I basically said, hey, motherfucker, you better get the drop on me good because I'll tell you what, you fucking, you know, say that shit again. I'll fucking pull my gun and I'll smoke you right here.

And you may take me out, you may kill me, but I'll get two or three of you guys before I go. You know, it's all right, calm down, calm down, you know, all that kind of shit. This is stuff you got to go through. We all got to go through this, you know. One of the brothers said that you guys had said some different shit to him and he got, you know, whatever. And what it ended up being is, you know, you got some, these guys were, there were some tweakers in there that are just paranoid as fuck. And even though we knew our answers was how long we knew each other was, was four to five years, and one answer would be five years. He thought one of us said four to five years and the other one said five months.

And he thought that that was enough of a discrepancy to pull us in there and really jack us on who the fuck we are and question who we are. And they make no bones about it. Hey, man, we got a lot to lose. if we don't know who you guys are. We all do shit. We do criminal shit. None of us want to go to jail, you know, blah, blah, blah, blah.

And this is just what you, you know, got to go through. But now because, you know, you had guys in your corner that were on your side, but when you got these tweakers and they don't like you, it's going to happen. You're going to run into dudes that just don't fucking like you. Right.

And there's nothing you can do about it. And they're going to do everything in their power to fucking fuck you up. And, but we survived that, our questions were solid, our answers were solid, I mean, our answers were solid to escape that avenue, but I didn't forget that, you know, and I didn't forget that member who did that. And just, you know, there's a lot of nuances that go on with these things, these incidents where were shit happening.

There's one guy, he was convinced we were cops, convinced all through the whole process out of the Virginia chapter, but he was kind of a loose nut, and they looked at him as kind of a crazy dude. they didn't really pay attention to him. And it got to the point where even after we were fully patched, he still kept seeing shit. We were at a clubhouse in Hoboken here with another gang. I can't remember the name off the top of my head. And he kept saying, like, well, we were giving signals,

like you rubbed your nose, you pulled, like a third base coach. Like we were, that's what law enforcement does. That's what cops do. And we didn't do that. So we knew we had him in this kooky concept of what he thought we were doing. he's right for the wrong reasons but he's just not being accurate but now we're fully passed so we had a little bit more pull and he's in a different chapter and we said hey motherfucker you know enough of this shit you keep fucking telling us this stuff we're fucking brother we're

patched in you can't fucking call it you know we got pulled into another room again has full patches and we basically lit this the president of that chapter up like you know you know this fucker's out of line you know you know whatever we were saying we were just getting angry and we We felt the anger always kind of like powered people down at some point. It got so bad that we pushed back so hard on him accusing us of cops that we went back the next day. The next day they took that dude and they kicked him out of the gang and they took him to a tattoo shop and they blacked out his warloss tattoo

over accusing us of being cops and kicked him out. Well, a lot of time it's right. He was right just for the wrong reasons. Yeah. But we knew we had him because we knew his reason. reasons were wrong. I go, unless you have a picture of me in a fucking patrol car or something, you know, you're out of fucking line. You can't just be going around, you're accusing brothers of fucking being cops. You had your chance when we were coming up, and, you know, that didn't

happen. A lot of times these guys, it's the value they think you're going to bring to the chapter or the club in the other itself. And our guys that have done these infiltrations, they were always seen as somebody who can bring something to the club. And when you got these guys that are just hangar honors, they're like, we can afford to lose that guy. He might have been in the club for how many years, but these guys are going to be what we need to come into the club to help us. So a lot of times, you know, they'd go against their own membership. How difficult is it for you guys when you're undercover, you're spending, you know,

you save brothers. And, you know, like the motorcycle clubs were formed after World War II by the military, right? Like, it still follows a lot of that ideology. how difficult is it when you're undercover, you're obviously human being, you meet other people who, outside of this criminality, are you enjoy hanging out with

or you share moments with, how hard is it for you guys to prosecute a case against people that you've been spending time like that with? Well, I'll tell you from, and Frank can say the same thing, and a lot of our other undercoverers that done this can say the same thing. I'm going to tell you flat out. We are not robotic.

Okay, we are not switch on law enforcement. We're out to get it. You know, everybody's a fucking asshole, and we turn it off, and we're, you know, whatever. When you get in and spend seven days a week, months at a time, years at a time with these guys, you cannot help but develop a true emotional connection to some of these guys. Sure. And we did that, and it's only human nature to do that.

And I can't say, I can never say that never happened. And any undercover that's done long term is not going to be able to say that they always knew these guys are going to be assholes and where are the cops and they deserve all to go to jail. Now, at the same time, are they doing criminal shit? Yeah, but are they good dudes? Are they somebody?

Like, even in the Warlock's case, we went down to South Carolina, and there was another two dudes in the South Carolina chapter that we kind of gravitated to. And we were making multiple buys of dope from these dudes, but they were just like me and my other undercover partner. And we felt good about that because we thought maybe if eyes were on us about two dudes living together,

two dudes who worked together, that the red flag were not married, all this. You know, the red flags would be up. But these two guys in South Carolina were almost a mirrored image of what we were, but true warlocks. And they liked us so much, you know, they gave us, like one guy presented me a picture, almost like tearing up a framed photo, and same for my partner, of him giving me a kiss on the cheek at the clubhouse, and he has Love You, brother, in words.

on the bottom of the picture in a frame. And he gave it to me as a gift. Like, you know these guys are going to take a bullet for you. Right. If shit hit the fan. Right. And that's how they think of you.

Now, of course, you're going to have your people out there and say, we're just, you know, we're rats and everything and blah, blah, blah. But no, we, I had a friendship with this guy. Now, is he slinging dope? Yeah, did I make him sling dope?

No. If he knew who I truly was, would he feel the same way? No. So he's, he's liking the, person I'm pretending to be, but at the same time for me, I'm internally actually liking this dude because I think he's a solid dude. Right.

But it can be a blurred line, you know, at some point when you're with these guys all the time. Right. But you do like, like when it comes time and you arrest these guys, I mean, these guys can tell, you know, people think that's the last you see of them. When you do these roundups, the undercovers are usually there. Yeah. So you have specific guys because it doesn't take them long. to figure out what's going down, right?

Because you start getting the calls as a member, and then the phone dies off because it's like, well, you've got to be you guys. But there are guys that during that initial arrest, and even after when they're proffering or who want a proper, there are guys you're willing to go to bat for, and you're going to be like, look, yeah, and you try to help them.

But then there are on those other guys that are truly, you know, there's no really redeemable quality at the bottom, that you're not going to help them. And they hate you anyway. Right. You got some guys that the attitudes, some of the members will be like, hey, we understand you were doing your job. You know, that's just what you do.

And then, okay, just like we do. And then you got other guys that just bach and hate you just because, one, you infiltrated a club, two, you became a, you know, you became a member. They liked you, they trust you, and now you're a fucking Judas. Yeah. I mean, that's what it comes down to. Yeah, I mean, you know, don't forget, we're at a point where our lives are so, you know, backstop to the point where we can't, like, we don't,

spend holidays with our own families. Right. We've got to be there for Christmas. I'm giving toys to some of their kids. Right. And I'm not even at home with my own family. You know, and Thanksgiving and all this other stuff that goes on. So it's hard to explain in a conversation, but until you walk in the shoes where, you know,

it's a lot of time day in and day out spending with the same people over and over that are your brothers, basically to that point. But, yeah, you're right. There is a point where, yeah, and there's some guys you just never going to like. Yeah. Some guys are never going to like you. And you do get guys you like and guys have vouched for you and guys take a bullet for you. And who knows what would happen in certain situations.

But at the end of the day, you know, we are doing a job. They know they're working or they're operating in a 1% or gang. They know their lifestyle is criminal. We know as cops we've got to do a job. It's not personal. We're doing something that we believe is right because if we save a life, down the road that this guy may have killed somebody, or you see these events around the country

where, you know, bikers are getting into it with each other in public places. Right. And there's no regard for the innocent lives around. Yeah. There's the Loughlin shooting, the shooting in Waco, Texas at the Twin Peaks. There's no regard for human life outside of that fight.

You know, they don't care. They're gonna get it on. I ask because obviously you're not robots. And, you know, when we talk to like CIA case officers who run sources, they, There's a lot of the same sentiment. Now, they don't have to arrest them, but they are, you know, using these, you know, utilizing these people.

And, you know, even in the military, you have, you know, you have this spectrum, right? You have the guys who are like, you know, trust me with your life, but not your money or your life, right? The guy who will go to bat for you no matter what, but you would never leave them in the same room with your girlfriend. True. And then, you know, a guy who you walk down any of,

alley with because you know he's going to back you up and then guys who are like super nice or this or that who might not be there when you really need them you know well you look at like like you know in in the military here a lot about PTSD and all that kind of stuff yeah in law enforcement you don't hear anything about that and and I'm one to tell you that I know he has it I know I have it I know guys that you spend your well you live in a paranormal world for multiple years and time and everything like that every one of these cases changes you. Right. Because, I mean, now, there are a lot of guys that did one and done.

They're like, I'm not doing anymore this bullshit. I mean, they're very successful. They're like, they don't like it. Idiots like us, you know, we do three of them. And you're in there, and you know what changes you because you know, and your spouse and your children will tell you, they just see the changing you because you're eating a lot of, you know, you spend time with those people.

Every time a case goes down, he'll tell you, usually we get sick of the flu because you die as a person. For years, you know what you're doing every day. You're going, and then when you do the roundup, it's like, like I talked about this before. You get that judice effect because some of those guys that are going down, you feel bad for them. You didn't make them do what they did. Some guys, we try to steer away from doing criminal activity. But in the end, you're sitting there looking and you're going, okay, now I have to go reintegrate with ATF and be a normal agent or whatever that is, right?

we spent half our careers being criminals, not being agents doing the regular stuff. So it does affect you over time, and you eat a lot of that anger. It makes you more paranoid person, how you deal with people. It just does. But they don't see it as that. Right. And you just move on. On the flip side, too, and I'll go on another war story about the warlocks.

But there are dudes, as many as dudes that hate you for what you are and what you did, for them thinking you were a part of their family and a brother, and they despise you for what you ended up really being. I can't tell you how many guys that we arrested that gave them the way out of that gang and were thankful about it. Like, hey, man, if it wasn't for me getting arrested, you know, I would have gone down the wrong path or whatever,

and thank God it got me out, and I was able to move on with my life in a different direction. Some of those guys feel trapped that they're beyond a point of no return, and the only way they felt now that they got an escape to get out of the gang, maybe, you know, was that arrest. Right. You don't hear those stories because they're never going to tell people, but they'll tell you, like, when we go, in law enforcement, once the arrest goes down, there's no more hiding who we are. They get discovery, they get the reports, your names are out there. We can't block out our names as agents, so they know who we are. So when the arrest goes down and they're being detained or whatever, and you know that you're trying to help, you know, deal with them or interview them, and they can't believe what's really happening, and then you walk in the room, And it becomes a whole other dynamic because then they start, you know, their head sinks, they know they're locked in.

But at the same time, there's some guys that just think that you did them a favor. Yeah. But, yeah, it's a weird dynamic to go down that route. It is hard at the end of the day when you work years on a case and it becomes the end of it and guys are getting locked up. And you feel that gut, like turning in your stomach a little bit, like, you know, but you know deep down you're just doing your job. Right. How did you wind down the Warlocks case? So the Warlocks, you know, we went up and down the East Coast.

You know, we were making a lot of headway. We actually crossed over and did deals with Hells Angels out of Maryland and rope those guys into some stuff. But I'll tell you one story, like toward the end of the case, just to show how the personality does get affected sometimes. And I don't, you know, it's not right, but I'll tell you the story. you know, we're in two plus years or whatever it was right around that mark, and we had been up and down making bias different members all around the gang all up and down the East Coast,

and we know the takedown's coming. And it takes months to plan to take down and get indictments and everything out of different states for all the members you dealt with and stuff and coordinate ATF to be able to make a simultaneous operation out of this, which is what was happening behind the scenes, but we're still in role. but one of the things we knew is that West Virginia was holding the national run that particular year. Their national runs rotate around different chapters, but it was our turn to host it. So we knew we'd have the majority of the world, if not all the warlocks in West Virginia, that we can shore up maybe some conversations on guys we did buys from, you know, a year ago or whatever it was.

And now we knew where they all were. And then, you know, once they got back from the national run and got back to their residence, and houses or whether they live, within that week the takedown was going to happen. So we knew after the national run, the takedown was going to happen. Now, this is, mind you, we're already a couple years in. So we're at the end of this, almost the last week of the case, and they're at the national run, and we're up in West Virginia. And, you know, the Florida guys, there were some heavy hitters in the Florida,

because that's where they were kind of founded, and they had some heavy hitters in the Florida chapters, and we're all in a bar in West Virginia, our bar. and the bar stays, you know, when the public's, you know, done and they lock the doors, they let us stay in there and we can keep drinking. Well, some of the locals, they'll stay in there too. And there was one guy who was really drunk, and he was, you know, there's probably 40, 50 warlocks in the bar from Florida and all other states. And this one, I'm sitting on the edge of a pool table, and this drunk guy stumbles around,

and he just, I don't know if it was just karma or whatever, he comes up to me and gets in my face. and he's like, hey, you know, so who are you? What are you guys? Where are you guys from? And, you know, I've got guys in the world. I'm standing right there. I'm talking to him. And this guy points out to me that, you know, get in my face and ask me a question.

And I go, dude, man, just get the fuck out of here, you know, whatever. You know, Casey, I'm talking. He's like, like, starts to raise his voice. What the fuck? I can't ask you a fucking question? You know, like an attitude. And I'm like, oh, you fucking motherfucker. And I'm getting pissed now.

Like, I got to, you know, I'm this, you know, I got to step up. Right. The brother's looking at me like, hey man, you can let somebody talk to you like that he's a fucking citizen. You need to fucking take care of this. And I'm ready to do it. So I step up like I'm going to jack this dude. And as I stand up and I'm getting in his face, I can see a member from the Florida Warlocks coming behind him. And he's looking, making eye contact with me because he can't see him.

I can't. I can see the member behind him. And the member behind him pulls out a big knife. And he's like, I'm, he's like, he's like, like, like, I'm going to fucking stab this dude. And I knew in my, at that point with my emotion going on, I was not going to stop it. I was wanting it to happen. I actually wanted this guy to get stabbed.

And it's like that, I got lost in that moment of what I was pretending to be as, like I was really looking to see this guy get killed and I didn't care. because my anger and frustration and this case now coming to an end and everything was going on and this guy steps up in my face and I just really wanted to jack it at the point and I think he would, one of the pipe hitters that I knew was going to kill this guy because we're in a bar, no one's going to say shit, you know, there'd be no witnesses

and I wasn't stopping it. And I didn't stop it. You know who did? Another member, another member just about as he got up to this guy to stick him grabbed him and pulled him aside and said, no, no fucking way, you ain't doing it. I wasn't the one to stop him. Now, in hindsight, I felt bad because I should have known better. I should have de-escalated.

I should have did something to get this guy out of my face to where he was out of harm's way, and I didn't. And that's when I knew internally sometimes, like, I fucked up, but I also knew that my mentality was in a different spot in that one moment, and I didn't like it. I didn't feel good about it. And that's always what the benefit of heaven, even when we go under and we have multiple guys, because sometimes you do get lost in a moment with your emotions, because you do get really pissed off.

You do get locked in on that. And it's like, well, fuck, this is what I should be doing as a member. But then we have to reel ourselves back in. Right. Because it's like, look, man, remember who you are. You know, this is not what it's about. You know, so you've got to lock yourself in. Tell them the story about the gun with the girl from ATF.

This is a great story. Okay, yeah. This is now, we had our undercover house. One of the warlocks we had been hanging around with it, and this is in our hangar-round phase. And we invite him over to the house. We were out drinking. You say, hey, come on over to our house.

You know, that way gives us a chance of a member to see our house. Right. Give us more like, okay, these dudes aren't, you know, I've been to their house. He comes with his chick, and we're sitting in the living room, and I take off my jacket or whatever, and I got a five shot sticking in my waistband. Now it's an ATF 5 shot.

Okay? I don't even think at that particular point in time we had the whole undercover gun thing sorted out yet. We were still kind of carrying duty-issued weapons. So I had an ATF-issued five-shot in my waistband. And, of course, we want to get, you know, he looks at it and he goes, hey, man, can I check out your gun? So now we're, now, okay, this is a good way for us to get gun conversation. We knew this guy's a convicted felon. We knew he carries a gun.

He just wants to check it out. So, yeah, sure. And you know, you got to be careful, too, even with a gun, because if I pulled out the gun and I open the cylinder and I hand it to him like a fucking cop wood, you know, it's like, you know, I don't want that red flag. So it's loaded. I just take it out and I hand it to him, you know, it's a loaded five shot. He's looking at it. And as he's looking at it in his hands and the chick is sitting there, he's like, hey, and, you know, by the way, on a side note, ATF has a national tracing center for weapons, right? any gun that gets recovered at a homicide or a crime scene or involved in any kind of cases, whether it's a local case or a federal case, if you want that gun traced by the serial number,

it goes through the ATF National Tracing Center, which is in Martinsburg, West Virginia, which is where the chapter I'm in is at. So that's preface number one. He has the gun in his hand, and he's like, hey, you know, my old lady, she works at the ATF tracing center. You know, she can, she can chase weapons for, she traces weapons for cops all the time. And, you know, if, and I'm thinking if he gives her the serial number to that gun

or memorizes it or something and gives it to her and she traces it, it's going to come back to an ATF gun. So we're like, fuck, you know, and we play it off. We don't say nothing, oh, yeah, yeah, tell us what you do. You know, so the conversation goes. But now we know she's an employee for ATF, but in a civilian capacity at the tracing center. and we have to scramble after that meat to tell ATF what happened, and immediately their reaction is we got to fire her.

You know, we got to get rid of it. Well, no time out. You fucking fire her the day after, you know, we went. You know, no, you got to let this thing kind of figure something out. So eventually, you know, it plays out where they deal with her later down the road. But it caused us, then, hey, we got to ditch our fucking issued guns. So we actually got permission to buy weapons. you know, for carrying on duty

where we walked into a gun store in our undercover persona and purchased our own weapons because we couldn't risk any more carrying ATF-issued firearms. And that also led to a launching pad to, you know, better equip our undercovers with non-ATF guns anymore. A close call. Yeah, just little close calls like that.

It's just a little details that'll get you. Yeah. It's wild. And that's where things started to change up where, you know, the clubs got, again, through these infiltrations, they were getting smarter about how to talk. So one of the things, because I was up in Ohio, so what we were going to help bolster these guys is because, like, you know,

everybody always has friends come around. Well, they didn't really have any friends. So I would take myself and a local cop up there, and we would come down as their friends. You know what I mean? So we came down enough that, you know, they're like, oh, okay, well, these guys got some people we actually see or we talk to and all this kind of stuff.

So, you know, we started incorporating that into a lot of the investigators down the road because they would ask, you know, as much as to the pictures in the house, you know, what do you have pictures of, who's on the pictures, you know, who do you know that doesn't live here? I mean, the clubs got smarter, and they started really starting to check all that stuff. So we had to make do with that. We had to prepare for that. Then how did the whole take down go? So, yeah, with the Warlocks, we ended up, it was, you know, in our world, and in our eyes,

was successful because we didn't get burned. You know, nothing, even though we had the little sidebar stories that could have gone sideways at any given moment. Almost two years under. Yeah, two years under. And, you know, the takedown goes down. Everybody gets hit. We recover, you know, hundreds of weapons, a bunch of dope.

We got a couple pipe bombs. We got body armor. You know, just on all the hits that we knew we got machine guns, you know, different, all kinds of firepower that these guys were stashing and holding as far as weaponry for whatever. they needed it for. But, you know, convicted felons, multiple convicted felons with all this stuff. So we thought it went well, you know, we probably wrapped up, I think, somewhere around, I'd say 60-some people, patchholders, you know, from that, caper, all federal defendants. You know, we went to trial on some. Everybody got convicted. So, yeah, we thought it was a good impact, you know,

that we made on that particular case. But yeah, you know, what happens to a club after, because I assume that a lot of people rolled up our leadership, like what happens to a club after something like that? How do they recover? Well, you're just trying to make an impact. I always like to look at it. We're never going to take them out and eliminate them.

Sure. Okay. You just want to make the biggest impact. impact you can. So as much as we can get guys off the street that are prone to violence or prone to killing or prone to doing whatever in the criminal world, we look at that as a win. But yeah, are there going to be guys that are going to step up or guys that we didn't get that are going to, you know, keep it going to. Of course there is. They're just going to either regroup and recruit or be more careful. I mean, like with the Warlocks, what was kind of funny is because Steve

Martin, one of the agents that did the warlocks prior to us doing it, you know, some of those guys that he put in jail were out of jail from their federal sentences from ATF that I would run into as a warlock talking about him, you know, and saying how, you know, I could sniff out an ATF agent a mile away, and they're telling that to me. Right. You know, or in the other undercover. And it's just kind of comedy that we were back into the same group, meeting some of the same defendants that he had put away, you know, then they're still doing the same shit.

Yeah. And stuff. So it was just kind of interesting, but, but yeah, I mean, they eventually, they probably end up being decimated for a period of time where they're just kind of licking their wounds and trying to figure out how they're going to rebound. It takes time. I don't think they're back at it right away. It's a process of probably months, if not longer, for them to kind of reestablish and

figure out how to rebuild and do what they're doing. Do other clubs take advantage of that and seize territory or move in? No, because they all start looking internal because they all start. Well, one of the things is they close ranks, so they stop really recruiting. They do all that. Now what happens when you take a bunch of membership down a lot of leadership, the focus doesn't remain on like him or me. It looks, okay, you got arrested, what are you going to tell?

They start looking at their own membership because the guys that are under the gun, especially ones that are facing, how much more are they going to divulge because they're going to try to help themselves? Even though they all say, our brothers, they all talk, most of them, because they're going to try to help to reduce their sentence, right? So the focus becomes on their own club, and all the other clubs are looking at that, which forces the other clubs to say, oh, the warlocks just got hit. Holy shit, now we've got to start looking at our own membership, whether it's, you know, the Hell's Angels, the Pagans, Yallows. They all start to look internal because is there other infiltrations going on? Again, because we had ATF does these routinely in their eyes. ATF was the biggest nemesis to these clubs and still remains the biggest nemesis to them.

But it slows them down for a period of time. And then they can't help but opening back up and start the recruiting all over again and expansion. And then there was a third, right? A third infiltration? Correct. Yeah. So, yeah, the warlocks get completed. I go back to L.A.

And then, you know, we didn't stop working bikers even when we weren't doing undercover. You know, there was another agent in L.A., Billy Queen, who after the Vago's case that I had done, he ended up working on the Mongols in L.A. and infiltrated and became a patchholder of the Mongols. And John Soconi was the case agent behind that case, and it ran for a couple years as well. And we made a big impact, arresting a bunch of Mongols in L.A. at that time. And I was working kind of behind the scenes, you know, with Sikoni and, like, case agent hat on, where I wasn't doing any undercover. I was just helping him and work that case.

And also, you know, with Billy, just to be able to, you know, talk to him and stuff. But, yeah, then I go off through the Warlocks, then come back. And, you know, I'm pretty, you don't think you're going to do anymore. You know, you're done. And if you know, Billy Queen wrote that book under and alone, and at that point, you know, we were. kind of tooting our horn, like, hey, two gangs in LA have been infiltrated by ATF agents, the Vagoes and the Mongols.

So we had, like, kind of a little get-together, and he wanted, we took a picture one time, just me with my Vagos vest on, John Soconi having his ATF Ray jacket on, and Queen in his Mongols patch after his case was done. And we took, like, a candid just photo of that. But Billy ends up writing a book, and he wants to use that picture in the book, and I say, Yeah, go ahead, put it in the... I don't think I'm doing anything anymore with bikers. I can't do anything anymore.

I've done too. And that book comes out, you know, and whatever and so forth. But, yeah, fast forward now to 2005, you know, the Mongols are just ripping up L.A. again. There's shit going on with the Laughlin incident that occurred in Nevada. There was the whole rivalry again with the Hells Angels. But the Mongols are a different animal because at that time, and still, you know, they are predominantly Hispanic,

dominated gang. And a lot of their, their foundation, their stronghold is Southern California. So now it's all over. But at that time, primarily with Southern California and a few chapters sprinkled elsewhere. But coming from that mentality, they were recruiting a lot of the inner city, L.A., Hispanic street gangs

into the biker world. And in L.A., you've got a whole other criminal element in there with the Mexican mafia, the street tax going on with Mexican street gang. who are slinging dope and these guys are street gang members that are part of these like whatever street gangs in LA and now they become members of the Mongols they still have that mentality of what they were but now they're in the biker realm okay so now you're bringing that violence and that element into into a gang like the Mongols and Sakoni's you know

still keeping up with what's been going on since Billy's case and you know incident after incident stabbing shooting you know whatever's going on in in the in the streets with the Mongols, it's starting, you know, killings are happening. Mexican Mafia hits on the Mongols, you know, stuff's showing up with all kinds of violence. So he ended up again working a case where he cultivated an informant who was already a patch member, a multi-year patch member. And the goal at that time was to get the case off the ground. And we already had our experience with work in infiltration. So let's use the informant to do most, like let's him, just run as the patchholder, let us, I was undercovers, and then, like, once again, I wasn't the only one.

We had now, it was me and two other guys. We had three undercovers in LA, and we had one undercover kicking off in Vegas on the Mongols. And Soconi's running the whole show. Now, with our informant, we had the three of us kind of coming under him where let him go to the meetings, let him record shit, let him do whatever. But also, he wasn't known in the Mongols as a, as a, as hardcore criminal. But he can use us as the undercovers now to introduce us to the ones that are the hardcore criminals and make us like that, he's like that bridge gap for us to get it as just associates of his. So we come up with, you know, our experience and our know-how and everything we've done. We've created this element where how we can get in through him. And it starts

working where we're not looking to infiltrate. We're just looking to be an associate of his and let him introduce us to the members that are doing all the shit. And we just kind of roll with it and go from there. But like anything, you know, you get around these guys and you start, once again, day in, day out, time after time, events, bars, hanging out at the house, at their houses. You know, they start to like you for who you're pretending to be, and they see something in you that they want, so they want to recruit you into the game. So it almost gets to a point where if you push them off too much, then they don't,

it's like in their world, why wouldn't you want to be one of us if we're asking you. It's like, you know, it's almost an insult if you don't at some point. As much as we pushed them off to try to come in, you know, at some point, we'd probably be told, get the fuck. If you're not going to come around and do what we want you to do, then don't come around us anymore type of thing. So the recruiting push was starting to come from other members, you know, to get, hey, why aren't these guys coming in?

Why aren't you going to get them in? You know, because we were doing a good job. We were making friends. We were doing all kinds of shit with these guys. and we're hitting them from all different fronts. We ended up having a wire tap on him. Stuff was going on heavy with the Mongols at that time. But we also know, Billy Queen, again, like Steve Martin with the Warlocks,

he had already infiltrated, and they know about the book. So they've been infiltrated. They know the game. They're careful now with their, how they recruit, they're careful. You know, we knew that. So we're trying to figure out a way how we can get in with the least possible resistance of what we're going to have to get put through. And, you know, since Billy Queen, they stepped up their game.

So, I mean, it got to the point where for us to come in, at the point where we were coming in, you know, our application gets filled out. And not only in the Mongols did you fill out an application about everything about you, that's six pages long, but now it's like you've got to take a photo. It gets passed around to every chapter in the whole Southern California area, which is, you know, 30, 40 plus chapters at that time. and they all got to look at your photo not necessarily to see if you're a cop

but also you got so many Hispanic gangs that are joining their Mongol ranks are they another gang from a rival gang that somebody's got a beef with and that guy says no fucking way we can't have that dude and he's from that gang or whatever the street gang that was part of their mentality behind it too

but also you know our picture gets out there now as in the queen case I was in that book so my picture's out there we knew that But also, I had contact with Mongols from the arrest operation with Sikoni on a couple occasions. And I had thought one of those members that I had pretty much intimate contact with was no longer in the gang. Because he never was around.

And I was going around events and stuff, and I didn't see him. So we figured out he's inactive. But then, you know, fast forward to an event, he ends up being there. And I'm like, oh, no. So I'm like dipping and dodging around corners and hiding and stuff. And luckily he was able to not be seen by that. particular member, but now I knew we have a problem. So, you know, stuff gets,

he just doesn't come around that often, so we just kind of continue that, you know, hoping for the best. But at some point, yeah, it came up, the book came up, where my president, at that time, kind of figured out that that might be me. And he called me out on it.

And I already had a plan in place. It's not something like I was surprised about. I thought that this could possibly happen. Cicone and I talked about it, even with the other undercovers. And I was almost looked upon, even from the other undercovers point of view, that I could be a liability because of that reason. But Cicone wanted to push forward. So even with me and the other two undercovers,

I kind of had maybe we created enough distance in our backstory where I wasn't too connected to them. So if I did take a burn, like Frank, what wasn't able to do? those guys can continue on without me. And that's kind of how we set that up. But once I did get confronted with Joe, he was the president of the chapter.

And I guess the creative mindset I had at the time was, okay, you know what? The picture is a small black and white picture in the book. I'm wearing sunglasses. I look different. I'm heavier in this case. I was lighter in the picture. I'm just going to play it off that, you know,

I'm not going to outright deny that it's not me, but I'm just going to say, you know what, you're right. That guy kind of looks like me. You're right, it does look like me. But then what I did to Joe is I kind of used that reverse psychology. He's like, all right, Joe, let me ask you this. Do you really think that an ATF agent who knows his picture is in a book about the Mongols that you guys all have, is the same guy sitting in front of you coming around the Mongols, knowing that his pictures?

Like, do you think ATF agents are going to do that? That that's me? Really? Almost like he couldn't fathom that could be true. Like, you're right, how would they do that? Right. Why would an ATF agent do that if he's in the book and knowing we all have the book and this and that?

And I talked him out of it. You know, I basically had to talk my way out of that spot and to get him to believe me. And luckily he didn't just go around and tell everybody, hey, I think this is the dude in this book. He just kind of approached me on it on his own, and I worked my way out of it and, you know, continued on. with how we were moving along with the case.

But yeah, we kind of slow-played that one a little bit from rushing in to becoming a member, which kind of also went to our advantage because we weren't pushing. We weren't eager. We weren't like, hey, we want to get in. We waited until the last possible minute for them to keep asking and asking us to join before we did.

But then we ran into the snag about, okay, you guys aren't from L.A. You weren't in jail with these dudes. you're not in Hispanic neighborhood like these neighborhood guys are, you know, you guys are outsiders, your white boys, you know, and it wasn't just for us. These guys, the models have been doing it for other members prior to us since Billy Queen case, but they're polygraphing dudes, you know, and they said, hey, your guys got to go and have to take a polygraph. Well, you know, our president and our CI, they say, okay, you know, what the protocol is. Our CI had to take a polygraph to get in,

you know, when he became a member. So, of course, ATF now is in the physician lab. We can't have the undercovers do that. Let's pump the brakes. That's it. The case is done. You know, we can't have them subjected to getting polygarde. They're not going to pass.

Well, of course, you know, we've got to figure out, in our mindset, we're looking like, hey, we've got to figure out how to beat it. And, you know, we went through a lot of knock-down, drag-out fights with our management about doing that. And luckily, luckily for Sikoni and our supervisor at the time, Eric Harden, they went to bat for us and were able to convince us to take it to the end of the box. Let's see what we can do. And we had our polygrapers, we had LA County Sheriff's polygrapers, like routinely test us. And, yeah, sure, we weren't passing every single time, but we were trying to figure out ways to do it.

And we're just going to take our chances. You know, are we going to get the full-blown computer version polygraph? Or are we going to get the old analog kind with the needles? We don't know, but we do know they have a guy. and at some point we're going to have to make that call. And it was kind of on us. But in the meantime, because we were moving and shaken, and we were in the hang-around phase,

and we were buying a bunch of dough from different members, some members got wise to that, and they kind of like went up to the hierarchy, and they called Joe over, and they basically said, hey, those guys you got hanging around, they can't come around. We don't know who they are.

We think they're cops. Until they take the polygraph, don't want them around. So we did. We were kind of in a timeout for a couple months, just trying to work that through. And then finally, we got to the point where we felt we were ready and we convinced ATF management to let us go. Because in their eyes, you know, for risk purposes, they thought, hey, man, if you guys are on the polygraph and you fail, they're going to kill you right there. Yeah. We felt differently. We felt, hey, you know, they're giving this to other members. There's a civilian in the room. It's not a member. It's not a member.

who's polygraphing you so how they can do something you know if we fail we just figure we'll just be kicked down the road and hey don't come around we don't trust you guys whatever we'd be sent on our way we felt that that's probably what would happen based on all our knowledge but then you know the risk adverse side is like no we can't even let them do it we don't want to take that chance but we you know like i said to the credit of john sikoni and eric harden they pushed it through to where we were able to get the permission to do it and yeah we we made the call let's let's let's fucking go. Yeah.

One of the heavy hitters in San Diego called us down there. And we pulled up and he points to me first and he goes, you come with me, you two stay here. And we walked down the street into a vacant apartment.

The guy was in there with the box and the machine and hooked me up and we went through the questions and stuff in advance. And then he sat in the room with me and went through the and I did what I had to do and came out, went to the next undercover. What I didn't want to do is I felt this was a weird feeling because my first instinct

was I wanted to tell the other two undercovers, this is what the questions are, don't worry about it, it's going to be cool, whatever, I felt good about it. But I didn't want them to get in there and then say, hey, did that guy just tell you, on the box? Right, right, right. Did that guy tell you anything about what's going to happen in here? That would throw them off. So we all took our own independent test.

And we made it. We passed it. And at least to like to the ability that the polygrapher told the Mongos, we all passed. And that was almost one of those hurdles again that we got over to make it to the next level. You know what the big argument was because I was in our undercover shop at the time when we were going to do it. You know what the big argument was about these guys taking that test and passing it? and like taking it repetitive. That if they were able to pass it with an outlaw motorcycle gang,

that they would know how to fake it when ATF gave it to them for. It was exactly. They're like, well, if they get in trouble in ATF and they have to take the test, then they'll know how to beat it. And I'm like, what the fucker? Because they're battling, and I'm battling at headquarters, because our polygrapers would not work with them. So they had to go to the state local polygrapers to help.

Our guys were told to stand down. As we know, I mean, the polygraph is a pseudoscience to begin with. I have strong feelings about the polygraph. The fact that you and your buddy cleared right through it, I think, is a good case study on why that thing is bullshit. I mean, we had techniques, which obviously won't go into a public forum. There were techniques we did put in place from countermeasures and different things that we learned. But at the same time, you know, for ATF to come back and have the concern that, you know, we're going to get in trouble on a job and be... polygraphed by internal affairs, that was their concern.

Our concern was we want to fucking stay alive. Yeah. You know, we're trying to beat a criminal element here. Yeah. And you're also trying to prosecute a case. Yeah, we're trying to prosecute it. And we're just fingered if we can, you know, in Sikoni's words was like, hey, if we can get to them and beat it, and even if they fail,

we can walk away with our heads saying we took it to the limit, we took it to the box where we were, we ended on terms that we're, out of our control but if you shut us down from being able to do it in the first place we'll never know if we were able to do it right anybody who works in any kind of cover will tell you in order to be good at it you know i tell us that people is get psychopaths social path right right

you have to tend to be a tad of a bit of a sociopath you have to work in that world because you have to be able to believe your life so yeah internalize that practice believe all that stuff you have a good shot of but because that's who passes right all these that's where all these people that get in trouble, you know, they steal in secrets of them, whatever. Yeah, they're all social paths to an extent, right? So it was, we're looking at it from an investigative standpoint, like, you know,

this is what needs to happen to progress the case. Then you have on this side, you have management and people that are like, well, what's the consequences of that down the road to the agency should something happen? It's like this is a moot point. Yeah, yeah. You got to understand, too, with the polygraph, the tricky point. was when you take a polygraph, I don't know if you guys have taken any. But, you know, there are questions that are the standard questions that they know you're telling

the truth on, like, is your name Frank Delisio? That's going to, you know, but our name out of the gate is a lie. Right, right. You know, so we got to make our lies look like we're telling the truth in order to even get to the needle to the point where they're asking the control and questions about, you know, are we a cop and all this other stuff that comes up to make the needle look the right way. So it was very tricky. But that's hardcore, man.

I mean, you guys did go all the way. It was very tricky, and we didn't even know questions they were going to ask. We were just pretending we can figure out what would we ask if we were them. And that's when we were practicing those types of questions and stuff to get through that. But, you know, we weren't consistent on passing it in practice all the time. But from my personal perspective is because the polygraph is a pseudoscience, which isn't consistent at all. You may as well have a magic eight ball. Like the polygrapers are good interrogators using that.

But on a polygraph, I've popped hot for something, I popped hot for accessing classified information on a government computer or taking it home or something like that, which I never had access to. I never had access to it. And as soon as they told me I popped hot for that, I was like, oh, this is bullshit. If you talk to this is so subjective. This is not real. It's subjective.

If you talk to your polygrapers that really know what they're doing, doing in their game. If they want to fail you, they can fail you. Exactly. They can stress you out. That's why it's not admissible in court. Right. You know, but you're beating the, you're, they always say you're beating the polygrapher, you're not beating the machine. Right. Even, even the creator of the polygraph said it was never intended to be used for that purpose. Like, it is a pseudoscience. It's, like I said, you may as well have a magic eight ball. But regardless of that, think of the stress we're under as in the recovery. Absolutely. To think that we got to walk into a a room to beat this thing with a criminal organization administering it to us where our stress

levels are at. Sure. I mean, it was tricky because it's fine in practice when you're in a controlled environment, but now when it comes to be game day, you know, we had a whole tack team out there. I mean, we didn't even know where we were going to be, but ATF wanted all the bells and whistles out there. And I don't blame them because if you guys fell and they're worried about you, they have to be, have a team ready to go.

But I guarantee, when I left that car and walked down the street into this apartment nobody knew where the fuck I was right not even my partners right you know because I walked away from the car out of their site and we didn't even have guys nearby because we didn't want to risk them being seen but after you guys beat the box I mean you were in like Flynn no we thought so really that got us through the hurdle of that but also you know we had been hanging around this wasn't just months hanging around we've been hanging around over you know probably going on a couple years this case was over three years long so after a couple of years

hanging around. We have done so much with different members in different capacities who liked us enough and we had, you know, proved ourselves enough to, that we had a backing as well within the membership even before the polygraph. The polygraph was another hurdle to get us over to the members that really didn't know us that well. But then it came down to, hey, man, you know, the, it gave us the green light to keep coming back around, but then it was like, hey man, to get your guys without a doubt, they got to get through a national vote, which only happened on a few occasions in the Mongols at that time. So we had to wait until they had the next national run. We had to all go. And then the membership goes into a big room, and there's hundreds of

members in there. And the topic comes up, you know, about us. And our president has to introduce, hey, man, I want to get my guys voted in to get membership. And then you hear some guys. guys. No, fuck those guys. They're fucking cops. You know, and then the National President at the time, who was Ruben Kovassos, actually said, you know, we had some heavy hitters. The guy who administered the polygraph was one of the heaviest hitters in the gang. So he stood up and said, these guys all past the polygraph. Other heavy hitters stood up. Hey, man, I've been with these dudes. They are down dudes. They can handle their shit. So enough power figure stood up on our behalf to

shut all the fucking underlings down that were kind of doubtful. And then the vote went through, And then as soon as that national vote went through, and by no means were we, in the clear even when that vote, we were there, but we thought, man, we could get caught, come out, and they say, hey, you guys didn't get in. You know, well, we, okay, we'll try again next time. Right. We had to have our shit pack.

We were ready to go, like, on our bikes and head the fuck out of there if the vote went against us. But when the vote went for us, that instant, we were prospecting. So we had to finish out our national run as probably, prospects at that time and then we ended up prospecting from that point forward with the Mongols. My question is, for both of you guys, how did you handle being prospects multiple times? Because that's like being a private range of time, right? That's like being the T-boy.

Like you basically, you know, you're a servant. Like, how do you deal with that three times in a row? I can't tell you how many times I wanted to get in my car and just drive away and say, fuck the rest of this first. He had more bullshit than I had because, like, his, they do use your servants. They're not supposed to use you for personal and shit. He was over digging ditches, planting fucking trees and landscaping. Our guys never did that to look for your own house. Yeah, doing this for these idiots, you know, and it's hot out.

I remember one time I just sat my truck and I'm like, I'm just going to drive away and quit. But no, it was hard. And in the Mongols, the prospects were governed by a national officer who kind of controlled all the chapter prospects. Like I said, we had over 40-some chapters, so they got multiple prospects. They all reported the one leader. And, you know, there's always that thing, too. You can't be too good at what, like, I've already done two infiltrations. So I can't pretend I know exactly what you do.

I've got to kind of fuck up here and there and do different things. But, man, in the Mongols, they ran you tough because if you were, if you fucked up enough, they keep adding time to your prospecting phase. So guys were prospecting already over a year, some coming up on two years, but we were handling business. We were well-liked by the guy that was governing us. But that's also a sidebar too,

because once we prospected, like you said, the beck and call and everything we had to do, we lose control of our operations. Because we don't know where we're going. We don't know where we're going up. We don't know what's going to happen. Different things can come up, And in the Mongols case, you know, we were putting hairy situations time and time again

because we're in L.A. and we're in that vibe with the Mexican and the Hispanic street gang culture. And we crossed paths in bars as Mongols were some of the members in there. We were getting eyeballed by some street gang fucks, you know, and all of a sudden stuff starts popping off. And a couple of times, we actually had it, you know, in a bar. We were there, but the Mongol squared off. with a dude in the parking lot right as the bar was kind of you know letting out and it led to a shooting it right in the parking lot we were all there and cars are speeding and peeling out and shots are being fired and and then you know we're part of that you know and then all of a sudden we got

to regroup and but that also led us to the point where these guys now talking about how they're going to retaliate who they're going to fucking kill because of this you know and we're in those conversations we're recording these conversations so but you know some things we went through were hard. Even as a prospect in that particular case, one incident that I always talk about is this guy was a hothead that governed the prospects. He was a violent dude,

a violent street gang member that came out of L.A. streets, but he was very good at governing the prospects. And then one time there was a house party he wanted to go to with a bunch of other Mongols. And like I said, as prospects in the Mongols, we had to be armed. So we drove up to this house party, and he didn't know what they expected in this house party.

He didn't know if there'd be rival gangs in there or whatever. So he looks at me and the other undercovers. He's like, hey, you guys strapped. And we're like, yeah, we're strapped. You know, because we have to be. So he's like, hey, what are you carrying? You know, he looks at, I said I got a 45. He looks at the other undercover agent.

He's like, I'm carrying a, you know, a 9. And then he looks at me and he's like, hey, let me have your 45. Now, you know, as a cop, you know, the worst thing in the world, you, in any kind of capacity, you never give up your weapon when you're taught as a cop to do. It's just not going to happen. But in the long-term undercover world, and I'm a prospect and I got a national officer telling me that he wants to borrow my weapon,

I can't even hesitate. If I even balk at him or argue with him, I'm done. Right. You know, so I just got to go, hey, man, here you go. And I'm like, my mind is now starting to tick. Like, what the fuck am I doing? Because I know this guy's a hot head. And I know he can start shit.

And he's got the gun. he's like, hey, is there one in the pipe or whatever? And I'm like, yeah, he's like, take it out of the chamber. I don't want one in the chamber. So I take it out of the chamber. I load it back up. He gets it. He puts it in his pants, and we walk into this house party.

Now, the whole time, I'm thinking, man, what the fuck? Because if the prone to violence as he was and stuff I've already seen him do and the shootings and stuff that's been going on already, if this guy capped somebody in this party or shoots at that, somebody or whatever and I gave him the gun what am I looking at right yes perspective right you know and then I'm trying to like creatively think of how the fuck can I pawn this off like telling ATF internal affairs that my gun was stolen like two days ago right right or something like I don't know I just

thinking a crazy idea is like what if this goes sideways so without trying to look too obvious I'm just shadowing him through the party the whole time just hoping like I can read his body language if he's gonna do something stupid I would just have to tackle them or something or intervene. And I don't even know if I'm going to get the gun back at that point, you know, even if nothing goes down. So, yeah, we go through the party. It ends up being cool and we get out there and he gives me the gun back.

But, man, I was, it's going through your mind at that point for the two or plus hours we were in that house. I just had, I was just on pins and needles of what could go wrong. Yeah. You know, it's a situation I never thought I'd be put in. but you know i had no choice how did the mongles case kind of like come to a conclusion i mean how did that case kind of like wind down mongles wound down same way we were we felt very good about the the progress we made the the evidence we've gathered everything that's been

going on you know there's been we've had some murders we've had you know other things on the table we had some you know dirty cops involved i mean everything was involved in that case We had wire taps. I mean, the whole thing was culminated great. And Soconi, to his credit, you know, anybody in ATF will tell you, he's nationally recognized as one of the best case agents in the agency's ever had. So to this day, I think, you know, the takedown of that case is probably still standing today as the largest ATF enforcement operation we've ever done.

Because, you know, we had so many warrants and so many places to hit in multiple states and so many defendants, we were over 100 defendants in that case, probably 120, give or take of defendants that we arrested federally in that case to the point where it was such a massive operation and, you know, the way we coordinated it. And we stayed in role to the very end, you know, and so forth. And once again, you know, like I said in the war, it's right at the tail end of this case. Now we're in three plus years and we got a member, you know, we're kind of winding down like from our undercover portion like, hey, do we really got to

to go out and do shit. But there was one Hollywood member that said, hey, man, there's a bar in this area. The Mongols are, you know, are getting, we're getting some pushback from some gangsters in this bar, and we've got to go over there and fucking show a stronghold and da-da-da-da. So we're thinking, oh, we talked to Sikoni, so maybe there's one last push we can get to deal with this problem and get some good conversation about some potential violent act they want to commit against some dudes in this bar or whatever. So we go to the bar, and there's really nothing really vibed in there and we're there for a while and we see some gangsters in there tatted down bald dudes and stuff and whatnot nobody's really vibing on anybody so we were tired and

we knew the takedowns come in like in a week and like I said we're three plus years into this and we're like ready to go home so normally in that situation you know the mongos come in we're going to all come out together you know and we had a support club there called the 311 bikers that were there as well and The Sergeant Arms from Hollywood was kind of controlling that scene. We told him, hey, man, we're going to jam. He's like, yeah, no problem, it's cool. So we walk out, shake hands, we get on our bikes, the three of us.

And we actually brought in one of our L.A. County counterpart deputies who came as our guest. He was like, just with us, just to fuck around, you know, be with us. So four of us on bikes, and we pull out of the parking lot out of the bar. Now, our cover team, which was Sikoni and another guy, they're down the street. street and they see us pull out and they see a car pull out behind us on the bikes and it wasn't uncommon because a lot of mongols showed up in cars that night so they thought okay maybe they're they're going back to their seat pad maybe some guys they're going somewhere the guys are following them so a car came out and followed us out of the parking lot and then they get behind that car so we're getting

toward the freeway and we're an unfamiliar part of town so we missed the freeway entrance ramp it was dark on our bike so we just whipped the u-turn right in the middle of street well the car had overshot the on-ramp to the freeway. So it couldn't do a U-turn. And by the time we made the U-turn and rolled on to the on-ramp, Soconi was right behind us and he pulls on-ramp properly. Unbeknownst to us, we have no idea who's in that car. We don't even know there's a car found us. We just thought of some random car as undercovers. But that car eventually goes back to the bar. And we know this because the bar has surveillance cameras. Now fast-forward, 30 minutes later, when the Mago I just shook hands with leaves on his bike and he's with a hen. And he's with a

hangaround, and everybody else leaves, he takes the same path going to the freeway that we did, that same car follows behind those bikes. They make the on-ramp, they get on the on-ramp, it's a two-lane on-ramp, and that car unloads and fucking kills the Mongol on the freeway, shoots him off his bike. The other hanging-round got hit on the bike, but he didn't get hit on the person. They fired like, I don't know how many, 13, 14 rounds. Ten rings him in the chest. he dies on the side of freeway. Well, while they're still at the crime scene, you know, we get called about this incident as Mongols

because we were there. So we got to meet basically in this parking lot where we can still see the freeway shut down and they got the cars up there and the lights going on and the tent on the freeway and everything. And we're down in this parking lot and it's like we're getting questioned by the hierarchy with other Mongols like, hey, who the fuck was in there?

What's happened to who did this? And we're just saying what we saw, which was pretty much almost, nothing, but we didn't know there were some gangsters in there and whatnot. So something must have broke bad. We didn't know what it was. But then at that point, you know, the Mongols and their rivalry with the Hells Angels was so prevalent and still going on.

The Mongols wanted everyone to believe that the Hells Angels did it because it just keeps that hatred going. It keeps that mentality going. In reality, they knew kind of who did it. And I was part of those conversations and the other undercovers as well. that the street gang that they kind of identified as the member who did it could have been possible as the one behind it, but they wanted to secretly handle that without the rest of the gang knowing.

They wanted everyone to focus on the hell's angles. But as luck would have it, this idiot who did the shooting was bragging about it, and somehow LAPD CI or informant got told about it from the guy who did the shooting, and that got circled back to LAPD, and he was on parole. And that kind of got back to Sacconi, and they figured out a way to get that dude off the street and lock him up on a parole violation without even knowing he's been suspected of being the one behind the homicide.

So then we all know that the funeral's coming up, and then the funeral happens, and all the under, you know, us undercover's we're all there, even the guy in Vegas. And we're all at that funeral, hundreds of members from all over, The entire gang was there because that was the first mongo that's been killed like that in a while. So everybody was there.

And then even at the funeral, you know, I was so tight with that mongle in the case. The picture memorial next to his casket, I was in some of those photos with him. You were the pallbearer, right? No, not in that one. Oh, not in that one? Yeah. But after that funeral, the takedown went down probably within that week. And we routed it, you know, we had the whole rest operation go down.

as a result. Dave, do we have any questions for Frank and Kaz? You know, what was interesting about that case is while Kaz was finishing his case up on the east, on the west coast, we had a couple agents that had infiltrated the Mongols on the East Coast in Maryland. In that case, after this all went down, they got... He was my partner in the Warlocks. Yeah, they got approached by the outlaws and they actually ended up dropping their Mongols

matches and they formed the outlaw chapter. Oh. Because that gave them credibility because they were Mongols. So that led into that investigation, which it was beautiful the way that. It was just circumstances that led to them ultimately. It's wild. Setting up an outlaw chapter in Virginia. It's incredible.

We have one. Do you want to read the patron one, Dee? From Aaron Clark. It seems OMG. investigations are not really a priority for local or federal agencies anymore. Do you agree? What are your thoughts about the current recruitment pushes by groups like the Mongols on the West Coast and the recent increase in violence paired with the lack of investigators? Seems like the IOMGIA is mostly retired guys now. You know, I don't know how to really answer it. I know law enforcement

works some. I think, yeah, at times it may feel like they're not. And I think, I think they're really not on the main radar of everybody in law enforcement per se, but from the IOMGIA, which is it's a law enforcement organization that holds, you know, Intel gatherings, sharing conference every year worldwide of investigators that just work bikers. And it's a place for, you know, for law enforcement to kind of learn about what's going on around the world in the country. but IOMGIA, no, they're not just retired. There's hundreds of cops that attend that, so there's always younger people there. But it's just a matter of the independent agencies that work these guys

if they choose to work them or not, depending on the problems that they're creating. Well, one of the things is, too, is with the lack of resources, and, you know, there's a significant drop in the number of law enforcement out there. guys guys and gals this thing going into that profession so with as everybody sees with a lot of these bigger cities with the inner city violence and all that's going on in the uptick in that although these these outlawed gangs are still there's still a priority they're not as high as a priority because the communities are directly getting impacted by the violence on the street this is but these these investigations cost a lot of money they take a lot of manpower resources

I mean, there's still investigations going on. Sure. Don't think that they're not. They are. But are there infiltrations going on? Not to the level of the years that we were in in ATF. And if there are, we wouldn't know about it now. Yeah.

Right. But no, I mean, it's, it's, it's, I'm hoping that as retired, you know, as we are now, guys that have done these cases, most of us are retired, at least in our heyday of the ATF agents that have done, you know, like I said, I'm not the only one, Frank's not the only one. We've got a good dozen agents out there that have infiltrated all these gangs. You know, an ATF got infiltrated the pagans. The guys infiltrated the Hells Angels. Got infiltrated the Banditos.

The Vago's got infiltrated again. You know, so, I mean, it's, we're hoping that that art continues and the undercover, you know, long-term infiltrations can continue with the support of the agencies that do it. It's just hard to tell if they are or not. out of curiosity, like, why was there a focus on what was about the outlaw motorcycle clubs that was the focus as opposed to, like, the Crips, the Bloods, the, uh, the, uh, the, uh, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the different, like, uh, Hispanic gangs or the Vietnamese gangs or, like, why was it, is it because of the, the, the mobility of the motorcycles? Well, I think what you've got to realize, too, is a lot of those other gangs, Crips Bloods, Latin Kings, you know, whatever else you may think of, more of those are neighborhood styles where you're coming up through a specific neighborhood, you're coming up into that realm. Biker gangs, to survive, they've got to recruit. And they can't just take from neighborhoods where they live.

They've got to recruit from the way it's always been is guys that like to. like to ride guys that seem like down dudes, you hope you get the best out of them in the membership that they recruit. But at the same time, they got to recruit to survive. Right. And it may not be an inner city neighborhood because they're a national gang. They've got to have more of a wide net to recruit, which allows that type of infantry. One of the interesting things that you guys told me yesterday was that all the other source of organized crime groups that we have in America, the Italian mob, the Russian mob, etc., that they were imported, or they came from overseas and they came in the United States,

but motorcycle gangs are the American-born organized crime that has been exported. Yeah, that's from where we can tell. Japanese yaku is a Chinese triad, Russian mob, Italian mob. All those came from out of the country into the United States where the worldwide impact of motorcycle gangs now is something that the United States exported to those countries. Right. You know, so, yeah, from the criminal organization's standpoint,

motorcycle gangs started in the United States, and they've become a worldwide, you know, mechanism now for many of these gangs, where, yeah, all the other criminal elements and structured organized crime came from outside into the country. I mean, it's good enough that we still have some sort of exports. Right. And the other thing that's taken into consideration, too, when you talk about the street gangs, I mean, you look at them,

and their makeup can be juveniles, up to generally 23, 24. Those guys have a lifespan, right? Right. And, you know, and once they get past that, those guys become the hierarchy, and they're the OGs, right? Those are the guys that are kind of controlling, but they're not in the street.

Versus you look up with the makeup of most of these out-law motorcycle clubs, right? With average age coming in is like 35. We've seen guys that are, like, in their 60s, prospecting and probating, we're like, what the hell happened in your life that you thought at this fucking point in your life, You needed to be a member of an Alamoire gang, right? So you look at the, you know, the street gang culture, and that culture is younger, right?

So we don't have 15- and 16-year-olds that are going to go run with these guys to grow up in those neighborhoods like constant. So they cast their net wide, but you have a whole taking of people, you know, that, you know, whether they're coming out of the military, whether they're, you know, whatever they're doing, that they want to have that bond, that camaraderie. So when they hit their mid-30s or whatever, whether they ride motorcycles and then they're around and then they get recruited in or they start to hang around that. But the average, like Iloan motorcycle gang, I mean, you get some younger guys come in, but I would say it's probably 40 years old these guys. They're not kids. They're adult, and they know what's up. You know, they're not kids. From your guys' perspective, what percentage of these gangs were like veterans or former military?

Because I can see the appeal of that type of camaraderie and brotherhood and bond being a draw to veterans. You know, you're right. And even as much as the military and police, you know, have their own clubs that they run with in starter form. We also had military guys that became members of the Mongols. Yeah. And at least there's a couple that I know of that were in Southern California. They were out of the San Diego chapter. and they were connected to the Navy.

Yeah. And they were very careful about what events they would be seen at in public with that patch on. And a lot of times they weren't patched. They were just wearing a black shirt or something. But you knew who they were. And you knew they were members and stuff, but they were cognizant of their military active status on what would happen to them if they were seen at a certain event

or involved in a certain incident. But still, we got enough, you know, where those guys were doing some, shit and they ended up, you know, getting nailed on it and got booted out, you know, of the military. I think the percentage, I don't, you know, who knows? I mean, that would be a question for, like, Jeremy Sheets and those guys who know, but probably most of the guys are a lot of the guys that are in these clubs have served, whether it was four years or whatever, and they got out and got in the other things. I mean, you know, you're probably, I mean, I'm just speculating here,

but I bet it's probably a 30 or 40 percent that have been, you know, in the military, it's, some point in their life and then have moved on to whatever, you know. I'll tell you this, you know, during the Mongols, you know, we didn't go to trial. We ended up superseding indicting the Mongols after our case on the undercover phase, but, you know, there were still many acts of violence that happened as a result of after our undercover case where the gang got indicted as an entity, not as the defendants. So the Mongols itself as an entity was indicted. Oh, wow.

We went to federal trial on that. And during testimony, you know, one of the things that got. brought up was the military aspect of these guys are you know serving the country and they're trying to get that jury appeal but they actually brought in it believe it or not you know jesse ventura the actor the governor of minnesota former governor he in the early 70s was when he was stationed in san diego he became a member of the mongols for a short period of time yeah but he testified for the defense like that they weren't doing criminal activity and all this stuff but then it was like he actually did an interview with joe rogan where he

he admitted that during the times of criminal discussions, he was not in the room. So they were still talking about criminal shit. They just respected his position. They didn't allow him to be part of those conversations. Right. But he did take the stand in defense of the Mongols for that jury appeal to get somebody, like with his star power, to say that these guys aren't doing anything criminal. And it backfired on it.

What happened with federal case against the Mongols and the Germans? together. We got the conviction of that case and so forth. And part of the goal of that, you know, not the goal, but part of the, because there was no jail to be handed out for defendants because it was an organizational indictment. You know, one of the things we were trying to seek was that, you know, the Mongols themselves are such a criminal element that by having that membership, you are a criminal. Right. And therefore, and I know that because I've lived it, walked in those shoes I know what they think I know how they were you get indoctrinated into the models but the judge kind of went more with the First

Amendment issue and kind of you know even though the jury convicted them we were not awarded the verdict of basically being able to seize the trademark of their patch and their namesake it went through a bunch of the appellate system it went all the way through the courts to the point where I think the I don't even know I don't want to speak to the final disposition of it but I think it's to the point where they're going to be allowed to keep it based on that ruling. Yeah. I mean, there was a point where DOJ was looking at, like, Hells Angels, Pagan, Outlaws,

like these bigger clubs, to actually, you know, label them as criminal organizations, like traditional organized crime. Now, I think in Canada, they've actually have done that, like, the Hells Angels, like, where they're labeled, like the organization, is a criminal entity. Well, here in the United States, you know, you have that, they were trying to do that, and this was the first case, the Mongol case where this came up,

it's like, we're not just going to prosecute the members. We're going to prosecute the club as a criminal entity. It's the first time in the United States that a criminal gang like that has been convicted of being a criminal gang, you know, in federal court. So we got the conviction, you know, on that realm. It's just the sentencing part got convoluted with the whole, patch part of it.

Right. And look, I mean, I can, you can't, you can't get arrested in America for wearing an al-Qaeda shirt, right? Like, I, I, I can understand in respect sort of the First Amendment

aspect of that. Well, the whole, the whole purpose behind that is because, you know, all the time, if you're still in that game, you know, the clubs will come back. We're not criminals. We're not criminal. Well, if you designate them as a criminal organization,

And you're a member of that, therefore you're a member of a criminal organization. But in the biker world, don't forget, the patch doesn't belong to you. So in the Mongols world, it belongs to the gang. Right. So if you leave or get kicked out, any insignific, belt buckles, rings, t-shirts, patches, that all gets taken back. Right.

So by showing the Mongols control that portion of what they do as a gang, with your point of the T-shirt, It's not theirs. It's not theirs. Say, I want to wear that. I see. And I'm not a criminal. No, you're, the Mongols control who wears that patch.

Right, the organization itself. Right. Yeah, so the organization itself controls who has it and who doesn't, and if you're out, you have to surrender that back. Right. So that's what we were coming from that kind of an angle, too. Like the clubs control. Like, you have to pay for your patch.

You have to pay for your prospect record. You have to pay for all that. They track exactly who has what. Right. You know, as far as patches, how many patches. how many patches you have. So when it comes time for you to retire, after five years of most clubs, you can retire,

within good standing. And some clubs will leave you with one set of colors that you can wear to, you know, events and things. You don't have any voting power, you don't have anything, but you retire in good standing, and they allow you to keep that, right? But if you get put out bad, that all comes back to it. I mean, that means everything comes back. You got a tattoo, it got to be blacked out.

All of that comes back, because you don't own it. It belongs to the club, the organization. Do we have any more questions? One more question on YouTube. Thank you very much, Paul Dillingham. This is just you, Jack. Hey, Jack, got into Columbia, former 11 Bravo 2 Papa, Airborne. Yay or nay on the Ivy League as a vet.

Go for it, man. I mean, veterans should go to Ivy League colleges and set themselves up to go into good jobs. I mean, why would you not do it? I mean, it sounds like he's there already, so it's... Yeah, and that's it. Thanks, guys. Well, I mean, yeah, I mean, hopefully we, you know,

we shared some experience with the undercover part of things, but, you know, we just want to say, you know, we get it. We know what we are about. We know what ATF can do as far as, you know, the violent crime aspect, and the bikers are just a sliver of that. You know, there's a lot of hardworking ATF agents out there work in all different kinds of criminal elements and violent crime. And just like anything, you know, you can't let, just like any profession, there's always going to be some bad

eggs and some bad perspectives or experiences from the public's point of view, but that doesn't paint the picture for the whole agency on what we're about, what we do. Tell us about Black River Tobacco Company. So I start, well, my daughter and one of my best friends, we started this company just as a kind of a thing because we like to smoke cigars. So we just, you know, formed a company and we started dual mobile events selling cigars. And, you know, and based on some of the people you introduced me to, Mario from Casa Carbio, 828 cigars, retired SF guy, if you want excellent cigars, go to his website and purchase them. But he was able to introduce me some other guys, you know, from Espinall Pureo and OM cigars and on and on.

and on. And, you know, within that community, I mean, it's like much like any community. I mean, it's a tight-knit community. They're good people. And, you know, and we started rolling getting some of the more boutique cigars because they're, in our experience that we find, they're almost better than some of the legacy brands out there. And, you know, the passion for that, following something else different than this world, right? I mean, this isn't our life. People think that you live this life. We understand that, you know, it's a role we play, But we have real lives. So, you know, we got into this and, you know, we sell cigars online.

I mean, you can go on to our website and buy them. You know, we're rolling around doing our thing, and we're hoping up a brick and mortar. Awesome. You know, and that's what we're doing right now. That's fantastic. I mean, the world needs more cigar vendors, for sure. And once again, thank you to all the men and women who are serving, you know, listening to this. Absolutely.

And much respect to the military community. I can't thank you guys enough for what you do for the country. And thank you for that. Right. Absolutely. Thank you to both of you guys for making the journey up here and joining us in studio. I hope you've had a fun time. Any chance to smoke cigars and meet good people? They came all the way from their residents of Turks and KACOs, so we appreciate it.

Braveness, cold, cold weather. And next week we're going to have a retired SAS operator on the show. We're going to be a little bit earlier. We're going to be at 5 p.m., I believe, because of the time zone difference. So, look forward to talking to him. Thank you everyone for joining us. Thank you, Kaj. Thank you, Frank.

You're welcome. It's been awesome. We've had a great time. You're welcome. Welcome back anytime, guys. And everyone else, we'll see you next Friday. So take care out there. Beep.