The Team House - Infiltrating Motorcycle Gangs as an Undercover ATF Agent | Frank D'Alesio (throwback episode)

Episode Date: June 18, 2026

original airdate - 7/21/23Frank retired from ATF in 2014 after 25 years of service, most of it as a Supervisory Special Agent focused on complex investigations and undercover operations. He personally infiltrated three outlaw motorcycle gangs and supported undercover operations targeting the Outlaws MC, Hells Angels MC, Pagans MC, Warlocks MC, and others while also serving in leadership roles across ATF, OCDETF, HIDTA, and the Undercover Branch in Washington, D.C. He later advised USSOCOM, DoD, DIA, and Special Operations Forces on signature reduction, cover, and law enforcement support for domestic training operations.Support the show here:https://www.patreon.com/c/TheTeamHouse00:00 Start01:37 Frank’s Youngstown roots and path to law enforcement06:18 Mobbed-up Youngstown and getting hired by ATF11:49 Learning undercover work in violent 1990s Columbus18:49 What happens when undercover agents get arrested24:42 Backstopping, aged cover, and smarter gang vetting33:31 Frank’s first biker-gang infiltration46:25 Outlaw motorcycle club culture explained52:28 Inside the Brothers MC investigation and takedown1:05:07 Moving to Las Vegas for the Vagos case1:18:49 The home invasion order and undercover boundaries1:33:41 ATF’s undercover branch and the Aryan Brotherhood case1:43:47 Creating the Order of Blood cover club2:13:18 Aryan Brotherhood, prison gangs, and outlaw biker politics2:35:59 Listener questions, ATF politics, Waco, Sons of Anarchy, and final reflectionsBecome a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-team-house--5960890/support.

Hey, everyone. Welcome to episode 22 of the Team House. I'm Jack Murphy here with Dave Park, D back there producing in the shadows. And our guest on today's show is Frank Dalesio. He spent 26 years in the alcohol, tobacco, and firearms, mostly doing a lot of undercover work, doing infiltrations of motorcycle gangs. We're really excited to have Frank here today. So, Frank, again, thank you for joining us tonight on a Friday evening. Really appreciate it, man. I want to start off by just asking you the question we pretty much start all of our interviews with is about your origin story. I'd like to ask you a little bit about your upbringing, how you grew up and sort of how that took you towards the path to law enforcement. Well, I was born and raised in Youngstown, Ohio, born in 1965, and that was at the height of when Youngstown was really rolling with the steel mills and everything.

My dad was a police officer. My uncle was a police officer. We had firemen. So, you know, very ethnic town, melting pot. You named the ethnicity, and it was there. My family, Italian Catholic, a lot of guilt, loud at holidays. So, you know, so I went to Catholic schools most of my life. So that was challenging, too, because that was quite an experience.

Had a great time, but just a different experience than the public school kids had. play football. That was my primary sport. I went to Ursula in high school, graduated from there, and I went down in West Virginia. I won't say I played on the team. I was on the team, but I made it one year. And it wasn't going for me. So I went back and I told my dad, I'm done. Of course, the disappointment. But I moved to Florida. My brother was living down there. So my buddy and I moved down to Florida. And after a couple years, I made $3.25, sense. It wasn't working out. So I said, I got to go back to school. Now, when I was at West Virginia, I was a forestry major, believe it or not. So I had no, no desire to go into law enforcement whatsoever.

But when I went back, I started having conversations with my dad about law enforcement. So I ended up getting a criminal justice degree. I got out in three and a half years because I just wanted to get out of school. So when it's come time to start applying for jobs, I applied to everybody but ATF. I had no idea what ATF even was. Okay. So my dad, if you don't know anything about Youngstown, it's a, it's a, it's the, it's the old Italian, I know a guy and I got a guy, because that's how it is, right? So being Italian in Youngstown, you're, you had as many friends that might have relatives that were involved in some things, right? I remember my grandmother had passed away, and we were at the funeral. And I'd only been.

hired like a week. And my dad says, hey, somebody wants to talk to you. And I'm like, who? And it was Joey Naples. Now, Joey Naples was a head of a crime family in Youngstown. And I went over there. He goes, hey, I heard you got hired by ETAF. And I'm going, okay, how hell you know that, right? But it was very small community. So like in Youngstown, you know, you have people that went into firefighter, you know, they were policemen, public service, you know, working in the mills. The auto industry, U.S. Steel, Republic, still, sheet and tube. They were huge then, right? So that was your path.

But everybody, everybody had a bookie, right? And so you were raised street smart. You learned, I mean, you hung out of places, and everybody got along. Nobody said anything. I could tell you a story after story about that. I thought you weren't funny one after I got hired on the job. But so my dad goes, hey, go down and see Freddie Kailets and Wayne Lovin. Now, Wayne was the rack, there was an agent.

in charge of Youngstown and Freddie was a friend of theirs and these guys all hung out at the same bars. And they were all revenue guys, right? This was back in the late 80s. So I go down there and they tell me about ATF and I'm like, wow, because ATF, which again, I didn't know anything with about, very diverse, you know, we got alcohol, tobacco, firearms and explosives. Now, when it comes to the tobacco and alcohol, unless you're doing like moonshine, like thousand gallons and in cigarettes, transporting a thousand, you know, tractor trailer, ATF really don't get involved in that. But it was at the height of, you know,

they talked about all the undercover they did when they were doing a revenue. That intrigued me, right? And this was at the height of when crack was just coming on the scene in the United States bad and about the guns and the violence. And that kind of intrigued me. So I took the TEA exam and like most of my compadres who took it, passing was 70. I failed at the first time by half a point.

And I passed it by two points the next time. And come to find out when I was at the academy, everybody's asking about what they scored, what they scored. I think we only had one guy out of 24 that scored above an 80. So I didn't feel too bad then. I didn't feel like a big dumb ass. And then it started. I got assigned to Columbus.

And that was my first post and off it went. So what was the funny story that you wanted to tell about getting the job? So I'd been on a job about six months. And so I go back to this bar called Syrax. It was on east side of Youngstown. And the one thing about the guys back then, Mike Syracuse, those guys never messed with drugs. It was all numbers, right? And it was all everybody hung out there.

Cops hung out there. Crofts hung out there. But it was like a Switzerland neutral ground, right? But he ran numbers out of there. Well, he's dead now so I can talk about that. And so one time I go in there, my dad was down there on a Saturday afternoon, and I go in there to, you know, just to have a drink with my dad. So we had pagers back then, right? So I get a page.

And you could never just go into the back kitchen. You had to ask, Mike, can I go back in there and use the phone? And he said, sure, go ahead. Well, first you walked back there to make sure nobody was back there. So I walked back in here and I dial up the phone. And I'm on the phone talking to my boss. Well, income, and I can never remember the name of this guy, income is his. guy he's about 80 years old old Italian guy shuffling in with two grocery bags and now

they had a big butcher block table in the center right so I'm watching him and I'm watching him and as I'm watching him he starts dumping out all this cash and and as that's happening on the phone and Mike walks in I tell my boss hey I got to go I hang up and Mike goes now if you got to do something you can do it he goes but before you do that I got to talk to this dumb ass over here. He goes, hey, do you know who that is? He goes, yeah, he goes, that's a little Frankie Deliccio. He goes, oh, hey, he goes, you know what he's doing right now? He goes, isn't he in college? Mike goes, no, he fucking graduated. He goes, well, what is he doing? He goes, he works for fucking ATF, you idiot. The guy I thought was going to have a

stroke. I walk out of there, and my dad goes, where are you going? I go, I got to go, I'll talk to you later. And then that, I mean, that stuff happened all the time. I mean, just because of the chunks down. I mean, when I was growing up, when the car bombing wars were going on in Youngstown. So I hung around with this kid, Bobby Pogan, right? Now, his dad was a connected guy. And so we would go watch Boom Mancini fight. Great, your gold gloves down in Struthers at the fieldhouse, right?

Now, I never knew anything about this, but it seemed kind of cool that they had like automatic car starters, you know? And anytime we would go, they would say, hey, we got to stop here to warm the car up. Well, that's when everybody was getting bombed, right? So his dad ended up going to go in jail. He got a shootout with the FBI. He went away for some time. But, you know, you just grew up,

but it was just a matter of people having guns. You know, it was just culturally, you know, you knew you were safe, but that's how we grew up in Youngstown. People, if you're from there, you understand. Right, right. And so when you graduated from the ATF training, they put you kind of back into your home turf. Well, you know, yeah, before that,

were, well, we had guys that were in New York, they shipped them to L.A. We had guys who were in L.A., they shipped them to New York for whatever, you know, because that old adage, well, you can't work in your own hometown because, you know, that whole FBI thing, corruption, right? Well, you know, so I ended up down at Columbus, Ohio, which was another shit show, because ATF used to have these things called punishment posts. So if you were an agent that wasn't performing or got in trouble, they would ship you to these different posts around the country. Well, Columbus was one of them before I got there. They had hired five new people in Columbus,

and they still had these three hangar honors. And they eventually got rid of him. Tony Denardi was Iraq, and he was brought in there for nothing else but to get rid of these guys. I showed up the first day on the job. And the guy who was my training officer, John Licky, German guy from Chicago, that we were in a Bay Area,

so our desks were butted up to one another. I'm all full of piss and vinegar. I sit out at the desk. And the other guys were watching because I don't know, John, but they know him. And he leans over his desk into my face. And he goes, ATF is a vindictive outfit. They're going to be out to get you.

That was like five minutes on the job. A little bit I know. There was a lot of truth to that. But anyway, that was my opening day TF. And it was like, holy crap. Well, so, you know, we had all new guys. And the relationship with ATF with the Columbus Police Department wasn't really that good because, you know, they really, they really.

didn't interact with them, especially in narcotics. Well, like I said, we had a lot of young guys. You know, we went to the academy. The old academies used to be because ATF was very thick in bringing a lot of state and local guys on. Because ATF is still one of the only federal agencies that doesn't require a college degree to come on. They'll exchange, you know, work, investigative work for your degree. So we had a lot of state and local guys that were coming on. You know, I didn't have any police experience.

I was 24, but it was a good. mix. And back then there was, if you were like 28 or 29, you were old. So they were bringing all these guys on. And so we'd go through all our training where that's where I met my one of my dearest friends, Darren Kozlowski, who we kind of passed went down the same way. And so we're going, you know, we're going through this training and, you know, and you're learning everything. Well, then it comes to field ops, right? So field ops is the portion. where, okay, you're going to take all the stuff you learn and you're going to take it out into the practical exercises.

Well, when I was there, the question about, okay, how many you guys want to work undercover guys and girls? Like if there were 24 people, 22 raised their hand and said, hey, I want to do it. Well, when I got was getting out of the academy or when I was getting out of ATF in 2014, when I go down to instruct, you were lucky to get two or three people to raise their hand because they're hiring different types of people, not worse people, but more. more professional people, you know. So different mindset, right? So, you know, I went through the academy. I ended up in Columbus. So as soon as I got there, there was four other guys in it. We had a,

our, basically our training officer was one guy, Don Mapley, who ended up becoming our boss. He took us all under his wing. And man, we just get informants and we would just start making buys. We used informants initially. Then we would start rolling in to make crack buys. And then we were just smashing doors, smashing doors, smashing doors, right? So eventually we started stepping on the Columbus Police Department's toes because we weren't deconflicting. So they were smashing our doors and we were smashing their doors. But the one thing to come out of that is they knew we wanted to work. So the relationship really grew. I mean, you know, it was a violent time in Columbus. There was a lot of, you know, street gangs, not like crips and bloods per se, but more like, you know, ad hoc street gangs

that were controlling different areas. And then we had the general. Jamaicans and then you had the Japhacans. You had the, you know, the guys that were pretending to be Jamaicans that weren't, and everybody believed because they had an accent, right? But those guys were shooting it up. It was pretty good, you know. And so it was a pretty wild time, but I'll tell you what is great training because you learn how to do everything.

I mean, you were in the middle of everything. That's where we started getting our taste of undercover. And we were running ops all the time. I mean, there are days we're doing three, four search warrants a day, just banging them down. We go make the buys it and we go out and do that kind of stuff. So it was a great place to learn. And Don was a good guy because, you know, he took the time to train us, train us properly. And he shielded us from a lot.

You know, you had guys back then who were stand-up dudes that would fight with management. Now, our sack, Bill Wood, was an old reverendure guy, good guy. If you worked, he loved you. He didn't hire anybody. didn't play athletics at any level. And we come to find that out after we all got hired. We were talking, he goes, oh, if you didn't play any kind of athletics, he wouldn't hire you because he believed that you need no teamwork, sacrifice,

you know, because it was like, you know, Frank, when you come on, you're going to miss anniversaries, you might miss holidays, you might do. And I took that to heart, you know, and everybody that I know that came on that that's had a successful career in ATF, you did miss a lot of that. A lot of personal time you lost with your family. But, you know, that's the conversation. you have with your wife when you get married and they accept it or they don't. Could you tell us a bit about, I mean, was that the extent of your undercover training at that time?

It was sort of OJT. Okay, so ATF, unlike other agencies, because I worked a lot with FBI, HSI, DEA, they all have to go to an undercover school before they can work undercover. ATF, you go through the two-week block at the academy. I mean, when you get out, you just have to raise your hand and say, I want to work undercover. If the Rack or group supervisor feels you have the ability to do it, down the road you go. Now, they're going to try to stick you with somebody who has been doing it or has experience, and it's all OJT work. Now, we did have advanced undercover schools, but it wasn't a requirement for you to go.

So I never went to one. I've instructed at him because I was always involved in something. I got invited to go down and teach, but it was just, I would say, for the, the guys in ATF, 99% of what they, they learned. They learned OJT and on the streets and sometimes the hard way. Frank, you mentioned your relationship with the local PD, but, you know, ATF, alcohol, tobacco, fire on. So you're doing, you're doing these drug warrants.

How did, how did you guys fit in with the DEA throughout your career? Did you, was there a lot of cooperation? Did you step on each other's toes a lot? You know, to be brutally honest, because I'm going to. Um, you know, I, we had, you know, it's personality driven. Let's put it that way. You know, sometimes if the boss is good, your, your agencies will click together because the guys will work good.

If the bosses aren't good or you got some agents that don't want to cooperate, hey, ATF had to share assholes like everybody else, you know what I mean? But you try to work with people. You find those few guys that you, to get the job done because that's what it's about. So, you know, I had friends with FBI. I had friends with DEA. But most of the time, you know, they had their task forces and they were recruiting off of the, you know, off of the local police departments. Well, us, we went and made our own ad hoc task forces with the NARC guys that we like to.

I mean, one of my dearest best friends in the world, he was 50 years old, as old as my dad when I came on. I did my first long term when he was getting out, Tom Strasbaugh. I mean, you know, the stories. But, you know, so, but we were running and gunning. And we, you know, it wasn't, they didn't give us the respect until we earned it. And we did earn their respect. And that's what we wanted to do to where we can get on equal par. And we did with DEA and we did with FBI.

And some people you can work with and some people you can't. So, you know, there wasn't such thing as deconflicting back then, like the Haida's are now. And where you de-conflict some of your work so that there's not any blue on blue. You know, but that was always contentious because it was in. need to know versus a right to know. And sometimes we never de-conflicted just because of the sensitivity of a case. Then, law enforcement, what do they call

that daxing? You've got a dax or dex? I've heard guys use the term to de-conflict. Well, there's tax. The treasure, well, basically, Heider runs the deconfliction. Okay, okay. So what you do is, so

what you do is they have a, they have a deconfliction center and other agencies represented. So if you have a target or an address or you're going out to do a warrant or you have an investigation, you're supposed to send that in to them so that they can make sure that nobody else is either going to hit the same house or location and that there's no blue-on-blue situation. And if you're working the same target, this is where it gets tricky. If you identify the same target, then it becomes who has control of the target. And that usually comes down to the U.S. Attorney's Office and who's in

best graces with them. Because sometimes agencies will get walled out of their own cases. because somebody has a better, a better asset now. You'd like to think people can work together and do it and it does happen. So if you guys, and I don't know if this has ever happened to you, but when you guys have guys on like a deep cover and they're in with some serious hardcore players, right, some shitheads. And if, and if you get rolled up by local PD or whatever because you're in this group of people and

they're doing something nefarious, how do you, how do you handle that when you go to booking and stuff like that? you go to jail. I mean, a lot of times, so the game has changed significantly on the long-term infiltrations. Like, guys like the OG of Alaw motorcycle gang infiltrations would have been Steve Martin with Langley and Timmy Buns. And there was one other guy in his names escaping me. They did the first, which you would say modern infiltration of the warlocks in Florida. And it was like I need to know.

there was no ATF didn't even have op plans back then so it was like hey we're going out to do something and we're going to do it and we'll let you know how it goes and if something bad happens we'll call you we won't because there wasn't all this oversight which towards the end it was a ton of oversight so and that's where the case is you know if you got rolled out we get stopped all the time right so we have our identification but you got to understand for ATF for the back stopping back in late 80s early 90s, it was a collateral duty for one dude in headquarters. Right. And all he could do is maybe give you a social security number and a credit card.

And they fucked that up. Right. None of it was aged. It was like, yeah. No, no, you could. Oh, you could. You could. Yeah.

And, but the problem was, you know, because now, mind you, there weren't even computers at this point in time. You know, in the cell phones were the brick phones and you had the old motor roller gray flip phone, right? So there wasn't a whole lot of technology. But the cops, right, they'd stop you. They'd run your license plate or they'd run your tag. All that stuff was covered, right? So you were good. You know, now if you got caught with a gun.

Now, hopefully if you did have a cover team out there, you were working for me, they would flag those guys off. So they didn't bother you. But we had our share guys that got arrested and went to jail. And then you got to deal with it after because then, you know, the organization clubs are looking at you. The gangs looking at you going, okay. what's happening now because they have to maintain their cover yeah right so you might have to spend a night or two in jail we've had guys have to spend a night or two in jail because you know they want to do all the bonding out and everything you have to get your own attorneys and you have to work with the judges on that to try to get that right so you're not spending time in jail right yeah so but yeah there was a lot of times that things would happen that um our guys would stop and pull over especially on runs you get checked out but our backstopping got better I mean, it did over time. Like my stuff during that time, like in my first case in Columbus, that went three and a half years.

And it was all self-acquire other than those two things, right? So I had to call people that I know trying to explain to them what I'm trying to do. And they're like looking at you with three eyes. And, you know, but it was all your own backstopping to cover your ass because, you know, but they hired private investigators to check you out. So it was a lot different than it is now. You know, the guys are smart. you know federal penn state penn they're the best college educational world because they know how we do

things so they start thinking outside the box now you know how to try to catch us um i don't know if you want to pick up that straight of thought or we actually except i love to talk about uh before we even get into your personal story i'd love to talk about the challenges of undercover work and for people who might not be familiar with like a cover we talk about backstop that means uh that you have a history of You have an address and somebody goes that address, like that there are backstops to your cover. When we talk about aged cover site, nobody has a credit. You know, if you get a brand new alias that hasn't been aged, you have a credit rating of zero because you have a card that's never been used.

You know, you don't have any kind of, you know, places where bills have ever been sent. And maybe back then it was harder to check that kind of stuff. Now, though, I'm sure the gangs are much savvier when it comes to. checking somebody out. How did how was that undercover process for you when you infiltrated when you started and then how did it change through the years? Well, I'm not going to get into the TTPs sure you know, you know, and all that. But what I can tell you is so when I got went into my first club, there was no check. You're right. It was based on my informant vouching for me, you know, them doing their own

checks, seeing where I live, you know, just talking to me. how it worked what I did, right? They did their own personal thing. But then when I went out to Las Vegas and was working at Vagos, before you can get in, you had to fill out, it was a one-sheet application, right? They asked you for a copy of your driver's license, copy of your Social Security card, where you live, and all that. And then you had to pay, and then they had a private investigator that was going to obtain some of your backstop, like your birth certificate. You had to tell them where you were born and all that. Remember when I talked to, about self-acquire? Well, the guy who gave me my, because we had a way to do, you know,

for credit and stuff like that. The thing is, it's no secret. The bad guys know today, because we've passed so many tests with them that we could take something digitally and make it appear as good as anybody else on paper, right? It's the other things that are the challenges today. But however, so we had, we had that all those mechanisms, well, not at that time in place. So one issue I had was, so I filled out my application and something just didn't feel right to me. So I called a buddy of mine who had to use car a lot. I said, hey, run my social security number and tell me what you come back with. So he calls me 10 minutes later and he's laughing, which is not good. And he says, Hey, he goes, you got three people with that same social security number.

I go, how to fuck can I have three people? I go, it's supposed to be issued to me only. So I make my call to headquarters, our special operations division, and I talked to the young man who was in charge of the program. And I said, hey, man, I got a problem with my social. He goes, you can't. He goes, we, he goes, what number did I give you? And I gave him the number and there's silence on the phone.

Then I hear him go, oh, shit. I go, well, that's not good, dude. I already gave these guys my info. He goes, well, that was the number we used to test the system. I had a black male, a Hispanic male, and me, all with different credit histories floating around now. So that was one strike because then they start questioning me about that. Then the next strike was I had to acquire my own birth certificate.

I had that all lined up, right? The day that the, that the proud. Investigator makes contact with the county, guess what? The guy had on board out sick. He gets, he gets, he gets called back to the, to the private investigator. He goes, well, you know, it's a very good forgery, but it doesn't come back to that guy. So I'm under the hammer, getting hammered on all this because, you know, but the thing is, greed is a beautiful thing because they really wanted us in the club. So they were overlooking a lot of stuff because I had some shelf alaces because we always had multiple. And, got into this why we're using this alien or why we're using that name and not this one i said because i don't know you motherfuckers you know you know and i'm not giving you my real shit i know this is what i'm into well anyway they believe that we went down the road and uh you know and then that case ended because the other agent who was working derren kislowski cause who was working the the case out and uh in hollywood got blown out of the water they found out who he was

uh they still thought we were good and i got a phone call talking about how they wanted to kill him. I wanted to kill him too. But anyway, so that case sitting in real well. However, what it did prompt was the initiation of our undercover branch back in 1998, where they're like, we got to fix this, right? I had no desire to go into that undercover branch. I was pissed.

I just wanted to go to another post. But I got yanked in and three other guys were there. And we actually started our branch and we got a good sponsor. And then we start doing our own backstopping the proper way. And it morphed. But every time we do an infiltration, like I said, over the course of 40 years, I think we've probably done 20. Not all of them were long, but there were some that went long and were damaging, right?

So they all talk, you know, they have meetings. Even the adversarial clubs will talk about how they were infiltrated. And I'll tell you, it came down to the applications changed. when the guys were going into the black rain case out in California, the Mongols case, three of them had to get polygraphed. Okay, they had to pass that. That was another shit show because I was running a branch at that time. And you know what ATF's concern was?

This is how fucked up this was. We're talking about three guys who were getting in. They got a path to polygraph. If they're in, they're in, right? Their concern was if these guys learn how to beat the polygraph, Well, if they ever come under internal affairs investigation and they have to take polygraph, how we know they won't be. That's the pettings bullshit. Yeah.

Yeah. So they ended up all taking the polygraph and pass them. And then they all got it. And in that case, it's sister. They did a whole, man, they took down that whole play. That's probably the single best investigation in ATF from start to finish. The outlaw case in Virginia was very similar. And the pagan case up in Long Island where they actually went and he took out the, the,

leadership, like the no-shit national presidents, international presidents. And, you know, but go ahead. I'm sorry. Well, I mean, finish your thought, but I'd like to backtrack a little bit to your personal experience, your introduction into that world. But, but please continue. Well, I mean, it's just changed so much that these guys now, you know, they look at you and it's like, okay, they understand over the course of 40 years that we could look at you

all day long on paper. we know you're going to have a house we know you're going to have cars you're going to have motorcycles we had guys that came to work with us just to verify we were working to take a look at how we worked you know security guys you know just to see what's going on they come and look at your house looking for cameras

they do all that mess right well you know then they start thinking outside the box on what can they get you to do that cops wouldn't do you know feds wouldn't do you know they don't worry about informants because although they can be damaging

they're looking for the, you know, they're looking for the infiltrators, right? Cops, law enforcement. So, you know, so the game did change quite a bit towards the end, guys. We're going through some pretty high hurdles to get in these clubs. And everybody thinks that we got in these clubs because we wanted to patch. It was never about the patch. You know, you could only go so far an investigation, right, as a hang-around or an outsider. And sometimes that's good enough.

You can do enough damage doing it that way, and it's better. because getting a patch and deciding that I'm going to go in and probate a prospect, which could be from three months to a year, right, you're at their beck and call. And it's hard to do business because everybody's watching you. So there has to be a real reason to get the patch. And that's so you can get on the inner sanctum and go further, right? But that was never the goal. Everybody always said, oh, you guys just want to get the pat.

No, we don't, no. That's the byproduct of the investigation because then you really are owned by the club. You know, they watch you, they look at you, they see what you're doing. A lot of scrutiny. You know, a lot of those guys were right for the wrong reasons. But choosing, you know, all the guys over the years of being cops. They just couldn't nail it down except for the one time. But other than that, you know.

So walk us back a little bit to, you know, you're a semi-seasoned ATF agent. I take it at this point when you start doing the long-term undercover work. No. No. Well, tell us about. Tell us about your entryway into that line of work and how that came about. So when I was young, you know, I liked ride motorcycles and mini bikes and all that stuff, right? So one of the agents in the office, Rodney Russell, he had an informant who he did a big drug RICO case on a bunch of black gang members.

But this dude was white. But he also had ties to a lot of the biker clubs, right? So I'm talking to Rod. Brad goes, hey, he's got some hooks into some of these clubs. He goes, would you be interested? And I'm like, well, shit, I like the ride motorcycles. But, you know, I've never been around like club life. I didn't know really what that was about.

So that's when I start calling Steve Martin and saying, Steve, now he's in the middle of his investigation with the warlocks. And I'm trying to get educated on how should I act? What should I? What should I ask? You know, how do I not piss these people off? So he's educating me, right? So I've been going through a couple bars in the area, just kind of get, and I need to have motorcycle.

So my good friend Tom Straussbaum, who was on the bicycle at the time, he had a motorcycle. So I had to go borrow his motorcycle to go start riding with these guys. And he was very gracious with that. So I'm riding a motorcycle. So I get invited to a part, well, the CI gets invited to a party at this club called the Road Saints on the south side of Columbus. And he goes, come on. He goes, this would be a great place for you to meet. He goes, The Avengers will be there.

He goes, there might be some outlaws. He goes, there'll be some road saints. He goes, this is a good place to get FaceTime. I go, I'm in. Now I'm old, was I? I've been on a job like three years, three and a half years. So this is like trial by fire. So the CI shows up himself because he don't have a bike.

He's there in a car. So I roll up on my motorcycle. There's a lot of people there. and, you know, hey, how you doing? How you doing? An hour into the party, Columbus Police Department and Liquor Control come and raid the house. And I'm shit in my opinion. So I take my gun because I don't want to go to jail, right? So I throw my gun under the house.

I'm getting rid of anything that can be construed as a weapon because we normally carried more than, you know, one gun. And so the police are patting down, their ID and everybody, you know. And luckily, because I had been running. out on the streets of, you know, of Columbus stole stuff, that there weren't, there wasn't anybody there that recognized me. Okay. So, party breaks up. I go back to the bar the next day to see what's going on.

I sit out at the bar. I'm having a sandwich and a beer. Two Avengers walk in, two Red Saints walk in. They pull me out. Now, I'm not a small guy by any stretch of the imagination. In fact, I was bigger back then, you know. And they pulled me out and they put me up on a wall. gunpoint and go who the fuck are you and i'm like what do you mean who am i i go i'm tony tony franco

that was my name and they go no who are you i go i don't know so this went back and forth for a half hour on hey i was the new face that showed up the house got raided who are you are you with ohio bcii where they i don't know where they came out of that and it was like so for like i was getting hammered for like you know half hour guns well eventually i think because i was young and I was able to talk, you know, just talk. I had a good gift of gab. They're like, all right, but it was like, you know, we're going to be watching you kind of deal.

So that was kind of discouraging. So, yeah, a little scary. So, you know, so things kept on and I kept going around. And then stroke of luck for me. Now, at this time, I started pulling my buddy Tom Strasbaw, start coming around. And he was an arc. Now, we had to be real careful because that guy had been at homicide and our vice.

So we had to kind of limit his exposure, but one of the best mentors I could have ever had in my life. So he taught me a ton. And so we're sitting there and I start pulling him in. Well, about a year into this, right, we've been buying LSD, we've been buying all kind of stuff off the peripheral, the edges, and a few club members from the Avengers. Well, my, I call it my friend now, my informant. I've known the guy for 30 plus years, right? Didn't have any criminal history. He had done a case down in New Orleans, okay?

So Easy Rider, if you're familiar with like Easy Rider magazine, well, they used to do like rallies around the country. And Columbus was a big one. And they actually opened up a motorcycle shop in Columbus. And my informant and his best friend, they ended up going to work there. Well, I got a call from an agent down in New Orleans and said, hey, I need you to do me a favor. We got to pay Tony some reward money for the case he did. He goes, do you mind going and seeing him?

I don't know. I'll send it up. I go, you know, we'll blend. So we stopped at the Easy Rider Shop, Tom and I, and it had just opened. And we walk in. Now, his best friend who is now to see Stump, who we didn't know. We go, hey, we're looking for Tony. And he's looking at us.

Now, you know, I had at that time, had real long hair. you know and tom looked like a bucket of shit too we rolled in on motorcycles and he's like he goes well hold on and i see him take off up these stairs so tom and i follow him and we get up there and there's tony's standing there and stump and they're like grabbing shit to start beating hell out of us like whoa whoa whoa we're like what are you doing they go who are you guys i said david sent me which was his control agent down and it was like everything you know kind of kind of softened out And then within talking to Tony, you know, he knew that whole crowd because he used to be in a club called the Outwriters. It was there a long time ago that had become the brothers.

And we just started talking. He goes, man, he goes, I can get right back in with those guys if you want. He goes, I'll work for you. And then it was like, boom, we were off to the races. And for like the next two years, man, we were running between Ohio, Michigan, Indiana. We were running everywhere, you know, make buys. We dealt with just about everybody. you know, we had, we had our share issues, but it was a different time because, you know,

I would tell my boss, hey, I'm leaving Columbus. I'm going to Akron. Then I'm going to go up to Muskegon and a couple other places along the way. I'd be gone for a week. Okay, just make sure you have contact with an agent and let them know if you buy anything. Just make sure you're passing off. That was our coverage. Yeah. So that was it.

If you guys, if you guys, I'm assuming you weren't necessarily patched at this time with any particular club. How did you guys give bona fides with these clubs not belonging to anybody in particular? You're just kind of like independent. You were one of the hangarounds, as they say, right? Well, not for those clubs. We were more like independence.

Yeah. So we, you know, we were around. We were doing business. Tony, like for the brothers, Tony was friends with those guys. So that was the way in. The issues we had, now, they had a couple other chapters,

but they had, the only other chapter of brothers they had was up in Akron, and then it was the guys up in Michigan. Now, the guys in Akron, they were old school, hard ass,

some of the bitches, man. And they really didn't have an affiliation with any major club because most smaller clubs will. Right. You know, because they have to.

Right. They didn't. The Hells Angels got along with them. They didn't get, now the brothers didn't get along with the breed at all. There were plenty of times when we went up there, we'd go hunting for them guys, you know.

But the Hells Angels left them alone because they did their own thing. You know, they were a violent crew, but nobody really messed with them. They did, you know, for a long time. You know, they did their own dope guns, grenades, whatever you wanted you can get from those guys. So we eventually, Tony, you know,

we talked about getting back into the club. And then Tony got back in. Now, the guy who was the president of the club, his name was Wop, he was, you know. So let me explain. When we go into clubs, if they're in disarray, we generally go in and make the club better. We organize the crime better for them, if that makes sense. Yes. You know, they're all over the board.

So we go in there and organize the crime so they're more profitable and more streamlined to make money. And they always liked that about it. Most of our guys that ever went into a club within either going from a probate or a prospect, you usually went to an officer position right away, whether it was sergeant-in-arms or treasurer or vice-president or even president. Because we were smart, but we had to be careful. We didn't want to be seen too smart like we knew too much because we never wanted to say we were coming for another club because then they could check that. Right. So we just had to be good criminals.

We had to offer, bring something to the table. And, you know, when you go in as a young guy, what do you got to offer? I mean, you're a new guy coming in, right? So you're expected to be a little bit more rowdy, you know, maybe fight a little more, maybe drink a little harder. The drugs were a whole different issue, you know, with that, if you guys want to, the whole simulation, you know, deception with an ATF became a big to do because, you know, guys learned how to appear to be doing drugs, but not.

drug tested and nobody ever popped positive you know and uh but we had to make it appear now the older you've gotten those clubs it was easier to fade that off right because it's like hey i had a problem a long time ago i don't fuck around you know you if you're still dealing at the level you were when you were 25 and you're not 40 something's wrong with you you're bad crook right so you should have something about you in your game you should be able to throw some money around and and and look like you know it's all smoking mirrors you know make them believe what you want them to believe about your business. Yeah.

How do you guys, like, avoid, if you go in and you organize a club so they do crime better, how do you avoid, like, the sort of the entrapment angle that a defense attorney is going to bring? Okay. So we don't tell them how to do a crime. We don't direct the crime. Right. They're talking about how they're moving their drugs. And they're talking to us about how they're doing it.

And, you know, so we have this thing, you know, it's out there, street theater where we do blue on blue deals that make the bad guys look like we're doing actual deals, but it's actually with cops, right, or other law enforcement. And they see, oh, you're legit. And we'll bring them along as bodyguards will pay them and all that kind of stuff, you know. But we don't direct the crime. All we'll do is we'll go in here and we'll say, well, how do you guys do it? It's like, well, you know, and we'll get into, you know, how much they're selling, where they're selling, who they're selling to. You know, there were a lot of times in these clubs. So you, you know, it's like anything else.

You spend a couple years with people. You're going to get relationships. You're going to find people we actually like, you know, there are only, as a good, as Tom once told me, he goes, there's only a few people in this world don't have any redeeming qualities. And we came across a few of them. But most of these guys are likable or so to girls. I mean, you know, they're crooks. They can be assholes, but most of them are likable. Then you got the others that are just in these gangs, in these clubs,

because they want to be a part of something, feel special, right? I can't tell you probably every guy that's done an infiltration and tell you they had somebody or a couple people in a club. I had at least three that would come up and say, hey, we want to get in the game. No, you don't. Why do you want to get in the game? I need to make money for my family.

This isn't the way, dude. You know, if you get caught, you're going to prison. Yeah. And some of those guys, you would make see the light and you could steer them. And then somewhere so helped bent on it. It was like, all right, dude, you won in the game. This is what we need. Go find it and say.

And then, you know, you're saying, you know, you try to give them some consideration on the back side to help them out, but they go to prison. Right. Because they don't want to listen. You know, you can't just say, hey, I'm a cop. Don't do this. Right. But you kind of steer them away that it's not the right. thing for you to do. Yeah, Frank, for for people the uninitiated people, most people are not going to be

nearly as initiated as you were. Could you explain a little bit about what an outlaw motorcycle club is and like what that culture is like the old ladies, the three piece patch, all that kind of stuff? Yeah. So, you know, so an outlaw motorcycle club is is generally distinguished by a three piece patch, which means you have the top rocker, you have the bottom rocker, and you have the center patch. And a center patch is usually going to be the mascot, right? So let's just take the outlaws, we'll say, right? So at the top of it, we'll say outlaws. The center patch is the skull and cross-pissons, which they refer to as the Charlie.

Okay. And then the bottom used to be city designators. Now, some of the old chapters in most clubs, they'll still have a city designator, but now they've all gone to states for the most part, you know, that they own the state. And then there'll be the MC, the motorcycle club, right? Right. So, you know, and then on the front, they'll usually have various other patches and memory patches and their stages. So you start as to hang around. And that could be for as long as they want to get to know you, right? And it's changed dramatically. And then you go through a prospect phase. Prospect probate or interchangeable depending on the club you're in, right? And that period could be from three months. It could be up to a year. Okay, Hell's Angels have half the longest that you generally use. year everybody else folds in there somewhere right and then while you're prospecting and probate you pretty much are owned by the club so you got a sponsor somebody sponsors you you have to get you have to

get voted to even be allowed prospect probate okay so then once they say okay then you're responsible to the club people call you you got to do all the bullshit you got to watch the bikes you got to clean the house you know we had guys that were digging trenches for their bosses their yard I mean, whatever, they're not supposed to do that kind of stuff, but pretty much you're their bitch until you get voted in. And the vote has to be unanimous. If one guy says, no, you're out. So, and when it was originally used to be to the charter, to the chapter, right?

Charter is pretty much what the hell's angels call it. Everybody else is a chapter, right? Some people say charter, but mostly it sells angels that use that. And so you come up for vote, right? They vote you in. and then you get your full patch, which means in their phases, like a lot of clubs will have like,

if when you're a probate or probationary, you'll have a patch that says probate or probationary member of the club. Sometimes they'll give you the bottom rocker, just the bottom rocker or the MC. Sometimes they give you the bottom rocker and the top rocker sometimes, and then you progressively earn your patch

until you get the center patch. Then they have probationary members, guys that they bring in as full patches, you get a full patch right out of the gate, but then you'll have like a P or something that says you're a probation remember which means you're a full patch you have all the rights but you're still on probation for a year so they do that in special cases when they want to bring guys in they think bring something to the table so it used to be like there was a tree on how this went now's a shrub everybody kind of does their own thing on how they bring guys in you know and it used to be where the chapter charter would vote for you like if you had eight guys in there those eight guys would vote now a lot of time it goes to a national vote. Like, you know, because now they send pictures. Does anybody know this guy?

They sent pictures into the prisons. They do their real due diligence on you to make sure that nobody knows you as a copper and informant before they bring me in. Because they've been stung so many times. I mean, some of these clubs have been stung two or three times by ETF. And the drug, I mean, correct me if I'm wrong, the drugs, explosives, prostitution. I mean, they tend to be involved. involved in a lot of that.

Yeah, I mean, you're going to have, obviously, you got the felons with the guns. There's a lot of extortion. There's, you know, a lot of home invasion, you know, a lot of drug dealing, you know, gun running, a lot of explosives you can purchase. I mean, it's pretty much everything. They got their hand in prostitution. You know, the thing about motorcycle clubs, it's like, you know, if you're not involved in that game, they're ghosts to you.

People, they might notice a motorcycle going down the road, right? But they don't notice the club because they stay to their own element unless there's a reason to come out of that element because that's where their power and fear is. So, you know, like take my mom, oh, I thought hell's angels rolling down, going down the road the other day. No, mom, no you didn't. I go, what did the thing on the back with like? She goes, it was like a big pig. I go, well, that's not a hell's angel, mom, you know. But that's what everybody knows.

You know, so everybody's a hell's angel. everybody's an outlaw motorcycle gang member. They want as little do with the public as they want the public to do with them for the most part, other than trying to show a good posture like the toys for tots and all that stuff that they try to do. But no, I mean, so people are oblivious to them unless you live in that world. I mean, still today I ride down the road, pack a bicycle by, I'm looking over my shoulder to see who they are. Just because that doesn't leave you, right? Yeah.

So, but people, if you don't live in that world, but it's a violent world. It's a very violent world. I mean, women, you know, there's property of women. Now, either you belong to the club or you belong to a member. If you belong to a member, she's hands off. If she belongs to the club, it's game on, right? You know, and they serve at the beck and call. Women have, you know, it's, you know, the club, the bike, and the woman.

Now, a lot of guys won't tell their women that because they're afraid of them, but that's really how it goes. You know, I mean, women are the, that's the least concern on what's going on with those guys, most of those guys. You know, it's the club first because in the end, it's all about loyalty. Loyalty to the club. That's what it all comes down to in that patch. And that first infiltration out of Columbus where you guys were running around doing cross-state buys and everything. I mean, how deep did you end up going on that one? Well, I have my patch for about a year and a half.

half in that one. I became the sergeant-in-arms by informant, became the president. And I mean, we, that was, you know, the brothers, it wasn't a big club. However, it offered a lot. So we seized the, the outlaw clubhouse. There was another, a black one-percenter club, true one-percenter club called the Phantoms. They were based out of Chicago. They had a clubhouse in Columbus. We had another informant who was the only white member of that club. He was married to Black Girl and he brought us in. And we had stars and bars on our stuff and they didn't care because it was about business. I'll tell you a funny story about those guys. So they loved us. They just loved us. So we met them before we even got in the club because he was running while our other informant was running.

So you had the Avengers, you had the Road Saints. Like I said, the outlaws. I mean, we ended up season like six or seven clubhouse we put like 130 people in jail it was a lot of dope a lot of guns it was crazy um but it's one of those things where it wasn't we weren't focused on one club i mean we were in the brothers and we were focused on those guys but we used it as a catapult to get in because the outlaws were recruiting us hard to jump over there and we're like no because we didn't want to go we we got a good thing going in that club because we could write our own ticket we went tony and i went wherever we wanted to go at any point in time, and the club didn't ask us any questions, where if we were in a big club like the outlaws, people be watching you.

They have mandatory runs. They have all this sudden, baloney, you've got to do to be in the club. So we were in a good spot there. But we were able to get into a good position with a lot of those clubs. They arrest a lot of those people. And when did that, or what was that decision point when I assumed the U.S. attorney is like, okay, this investigation's over. Now we're moving in and making arrests.

it's never the U.S. Attorney's decision to end it. It's always ATF's decision. Okay. And ATF's decision is, well, you guys have been running a long time. Now, at this point, we had just made another move into another club up in Michigan, which was going to be really good for us. But it was like, okay, you guys been in a long time, three and a half years doing this. It's time to take it down.

We weren't ready to come out, but you're going to do what you got to do. Because we also got involved in his big cocaine, distribution ring where they were bringing coke in off the coast of Florida in marathon and they were running it up to Severeville in Tennessee and they were bringing it up through Columbus and up into the north but we ended up tied into this young kid who we were buying off of and he laid out the whole operation which enabled the Columbus police department DEA to go up on a on a wire a title three and and they're like hey we got to take this down so that was another catalyst that kind of drove our case

because they were going to take it down and we would have been outed. You know, so. Wow. Yeah, it's fascinating. Like when you're, because motorcycle gangs, like, so much of crime, right? We think of the mafia. We think of motorcycle with the gangs. We think of street gangs.

But they are all peripherally tied together when it comes to drug distribution. Aren't they in terms of like spreading drugs? Like a certain element might own a piece of it, but they're all somehow a lot of times interwoven. Well, traditionally, Hells Angels and especially the outlaws and pagans have all done work for traditional LCN. You know, they were their muscle, you know. You know, it just historically it's there. You know, they've always played a role in that, you know, in the traditional, you know, type of deal, whether they were moving product or whatever.

That's always been around. I don't know so much now that it is in the United States because there's really not that much, you know, from what you see, it's more Armenian-Russian and everything else that's controlling the underground more so than the Italians. But, you know, I could be 100% wrong on that. I don't know. But the clubs are still involved. And what you're seeing more now is the traditional white clubs, right, the motorcycle gangs. because there are, you know, the traditional Atla motorcycle gangs, you know, are white and Hispanic, right? They don't allow the blacks in.

Or if they do, it's an anomaly, right? Like a lot of clubs, like the bigger clubs, can't have them. Just can't. They're not accepted. But then you have 1% of black clubs like Thundergard, you know, outcasts, clubs like violent. Oh, are they violent? And they kind of pair up with some of the traditional OMGs. they're doing a lot of business together now because, you know, they're all, it's all about

controlling turf and whatnot in the old ways of where, you know, you had, it was very delineated on what clubs were where. Now it's not, they've all crossed over. And that's why you're seeing more shootings, more violence happening because it's just, there's no more lines of delineation. Everybody's starting still fighting for their turf. Interesting. So that one winds down. And then as an undercover officer, I mean, presumably you have to appear in court, right, as an ATF agent and testify. Yes. And I mean, does that, I'm just curious, like, doesn't that totally blow your cover as an undercover officer, like indefinitely? I mean, in your case, it didn't.

But, I mean, I'm curious how that works. Well, so I'll tell you. So most guys that I know that have done these cases, and in ATF, there's like 10 or 12 guys that have done these cases. and some have done multiple, right? So when you're in those clubs for that long and you're Rano's guys, you form allegiances, and I'm telling you, the night before the takedowns go down, and I've had conversations with all my buddies,

it's like, man, I want to call this one dude and just tell them to run. Right. Because then the Judas effect comes in, right? Because it's two-fold. The Judas effect comes in because it's there, right? These guys were guys that if on a street, something happened, they had your back.

They'd kill. They'd fight for you without question. Right. So you had that. Then the other side of it is, is, okay, I've been this dude for like two years, three years. I knew what I was doing all the time. Now, this is going to be over, and I have to reintegrate back into the normal agent, right? Right.

So you're thinking about that kind of stuff. So, you know, when you look at how these things end, and then I could tell you this much. in every case that I've worked or I've helped work and some you know a lot of times they'll bring guys in who've done these cases when they have take down to come interview certain people to try to move them along to cooperate when our cases were done there we had hardheads that didn't want to cooperate the day they were taken down we'd walk in the room and they would look at you and go son of a bitch yeah yeah yeah and some of them would be hey we understand it was a job and they get it and there were others didn't give a shit You know one of the biggest things they get wrapped around on? You know, because when you're talking to these guys, you're bringing in about 90% of your true life, just changing names. And, you know, and if things happen and you tell them stories, you know, where they're might evoke an emotion out of them. They want to know, could you lie about that? Yeah.

Yeah. Because if you lied about that, then you're real asshole. But, okay, because they just want to see how far you would go. Yeah. Sometimes you'd straight out lie about some things. But, you know. But it was a very unique dynamic. I mean, every case that I did, you meet those guys.

And it's like, man, you know, in another world, we might have been able to be friends. Right. Right. But then again, if they knew who I really was, would they really be friendly with me and treat me the way they treat me? Right. Right. But if you weren't ATF and they weren't, you know, in an outlawed bike gang, had you met at a completely different, two different people like that this was somebody. And, you know, it's interesting.

because when we talk to like CIA case officers, a lot of times they'll say sort of similar things that, you know, that the people they work with, you know, the, their agents or, you know, the people, like they develop a rapport with them. And this person might be a shithead doing shithead things, but it's like when you get to know somebody as a human being, they're not just all shithead. Like there's, there are elements. There's, yeah, we had, we had this one guy when I was doing a brother. case, his name was Doc. And Doc, he was a drug dealer. But, you know, he went a violent guy. I mean, he was a likable, real likable guy, you know.

And there were certain members who would get together because it's fair. Clubs are very clickish. You know, they just are. And he called up one day. His son was a drug dealer too. And somebody went up to his, to his son's house and shot him 47 times with an AK, right? And of course, you know, his dad, who could be violent. I mean, he wanted to go start kidnapping people because his son was involved with some black gangsters.

And he was just ready to start smoking everybody, you know. I mean, we felt really bad for him and we're trying to talk him off the ledge, which we did because, you know, we did have genuine concern. We could have said, yeah, well, go screw yourself and go do whatever you want, Doc. We're not getting involved with that. He'd probably got himself killed, you know. Yeah. In fact, he liked me so much after he had, he had a lot of medical problems. we helped him out because he had bad cancer.

After we arrested him within a year he was dead. But Tom Straussbaum, I went over to visit him after he got, we went to his house. He actually got a dog and he named it after my undercover name. So I guess I got that going on. Yeah. But no, you do form those bonds. Yeah. After that initial case was prosecuted, I mean, then what kind of, I mean, now you have a ton of experience in this world.

I mean, how did the segue into the next infiltration happen? So a part of the case that we were doing in Columbus took us out to Las Vegas. And we were dealing with some guys out there, some Mexicans out there. And we were buying meth. We were buying pounce of meth and bringing it back. So there were some threats made. And, you know, ATF, they're just terrible. You know, somebody makes a threat.

And the first thing is they want to move you, right? I'm like, why don't you go? So let me back up. I'll tell you a quick story. Sure. You guys will appreciate this, how times have changed. We had an agent in Cincinnati. He was investigating the iron horseman, okay?

And they tried to run him down with a car while he was on the street. Now, the second time was Bill Wood, an ornery man. And, you know, he's a quarterback at South Carolina. He is a revenue. He calls up my boss in Columbus. And he says, I want Frank and I want. want Dan he goes you send him to Columbus and he's going to meet some boys there he goes and you're going to go have a talk with the president of that club and you're going to tell

him what's what and we did he sent us down there where four of us went with one of the one of the ages from Cincinnati knocked on the door to chat the president come out he was going to help you goes and he laid it out he goes you guys fucked up he goes we're going to find out who did it and then we're going to fuck with your club every step of the way until you guys turn in who did it within 24 hours they turn a guy over. That's how you handle business. It's not like you sit there and chew your nails. They knew, again, crooks don't respect, excuse me, sir, how are you doing today?

Power, fear, might. That's what they respect. If they don't fear you, they're not going to do anything you say. They're not going to come around. They're not going to talk to you because they're going to look at you like you're a big puss, you know? So that ended that. I mean, they turned a guy in. Well, ATF didn't do that in my case.

It was like, Frank, there's four offices that are open. And three of them were shit. And Las Vegas was the only one. And my wife, awesome. She was always willing to work. And I, you know, I had a conversation with her before we, you know, we got married. And it was like, look, because we got married during my case. And I did that case.

Yeah, I was. And I told her. said, you know, this is what I do. This is what I like to do. And she liked to move. So when I asked her, I said, how about Las Vegas? She goes, let's go because I knew the boss out there and I'd already been out there. And I knew the work was good.

Plus, they had just started an investigation because they called me and knew I was getting transferred. They were starting a case into the Vagos who were recruiting real heavily out there at the time. So we packed up and we moved. And as soon as we got there, it was like, okay, Vago's a real thing. recruiting. So I brought my informant Tony out to Las Vegas with us. And, well, not with me and my wife. He lived in here. We got a house and he was living in here. And that's where I was living. And with stump. And so they said, just go to this tattoo shop. And this guy, Sharkey, who is Avago. He goes, he'll recruit you guys right in. You guys are big dudes. He'll ask you right in. So I didn't know

how good the tattoo shop was. So the informant was going to get the tattoo because we needed a couple hours just to fill these guys out. So I said, Tony, I'll pay for it, get whatever you want. It was a terrible tattoo. However, it was so bad. It was so bad. But about halfway through the tattoo, Sharkney comes out with his colors. And of course, we're playing stupid because we can't act like we know anything about club life. He goes, do you guys know what these are? And he held up a set color of the vagus and we're like no what's that he goes the ball goes you never heard of us go no dude we're from back we're back east we know who you guys are so he goes into this whole spiel he goes why because we rode there on motorcycles and he goes uh he goes want you guys come around it was this is

how easy it goes why don't you guys come around we're having a meeting like uh three days from now an hour to do shit and that's how easy that was getting invited in over there then that case again you know with the whole backstopping issues you know started to we you know at first it was good because we were there and i think that case went a total like 18 months but um you know we were getting good we were buying off of people you know who we bought off of which you guys will find funny you know you know what's in it that that show uh the pawn shop oh pawn shop yeah yeah we bought off of the we bought off of joe henderson I used to go in that shop all the time

because all the time I buy dope. The last guy is fine shop? Yeah. So we said, because it was only like a two blocks down from the ATF office, believe it or not. I mean, the shop, they make it look huge. It was this little box, but we used to go in there and buy dope all the time.

We put him in prison for a few years. But anyway, long story short. So we're going around, you know, now, Tramp. Terry, who was the national president at the time, he took a lichen to the informant and I. He took a real liking to us. And at the same time, we were trying to get into Vegas. Darren Kuzlowski was trying to get into the Hollywood chapter.

So we were making our end roads. Now, the thing is, is that we would know him because we were getting a little bit more credibility on our end. So we were going to help him move along. so I think I can't I don't know how long into his investigation he was in but he had an informant got T-bone on a motorcycle and got killed but Darren had given him his card from when he was back in Milwaukee or it was long it was a long yeah I think it was a Milwaukee car but anyway so that kind of dies off and Darren's working through his thing over there and we're working through our thing in Las Vegas, and we're through Foreman and I are constantly traversing back and forth between Las Vegas

and more so than even the club is, right? And we're getting to know all these guys. Well, we come up and we're going to, you know, now they're going to allow us to prospect, right? So there were some stuff that happened. So they had this run up in Reno and the Vagos were trying to make a statement up there, right? So they were going to go at it with the Hells Angels. So again, we go up there. They have us towed all their guns up there, the informant and I,

so we bring all the guns up. So they have this master plan that they're going to go to this Hells Angels bar, and I can't remember the name of it to save my life. And what they're going to do is they're going to wait for the Hells Angels to come up, the Reno chapter. And when they come in there, what they're going to do is they're going to push them out the back and they're going to beat the little bit of hell out of it. That's the plan.

Well, we're having this meeting as a club. And there's me and Tony who are, we're not even prospects at this point in time. They hand him a bat and me a hammer and two other guys. And they say, get behind the bar. And they go, well, we flush these dudes out. It's your job to beat the hell out of them. Holy shit. And of course, I'm looking at Tony.

And we're just, you know, you can do nothing but laugh, right? We're chuckling. And so we go stand back there and we're just praying at God that something happens that we don't have to do this because it's going to turn it we we don't know yeah so we're in it we're out there for about a half hour and then i'll come a couple of vagus come out and they say hey okay everything's good they've had some negotiations in there we're good to go we're like okay so that broke that which was awesome right that you know but the stress was was was tremendous and uh so we go back and now they're going to have a they're going to have a national meeting and it was happening in

Las Vegas. So this is where we're going to start prospecting me, my informant, and cause. So we all start prospecting on the same day. But you get brought up. So there was probably 100 members there, 100, 200 members you come into, I think we're at the VFW hall. You go in there and they bring you up on a stage and they start and they're like, you know, are you willing to die for the club? Are you willing to fight for you? You're willing to do all this stuff, right? You're like, yeah, you know, yeah, I'll do whatever I've got to do. Then they asked, Is there anybody in here who's got anything negative to say about these brothers or why they shouldn't get into the club? And because we did what we did up in Reno, which wasn't anything, but just stand there in terror, they were all, these brothers are down.

They stood up for the club and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, you know, all this mess. And so we ended up getting our prospect rockers, right? So we were prospecting for about three months. Now, there were times like stupid stuff. you know one thing to bother guys like us are some of these cop clubs out there that want to affiliate with clubs and then and then and in a lot of the military clubs because we recruit out of the military hard right yeah we were at a thing and we were at a we were an event in uh when we were with vago's where uh uh i i can't remember if it was the choir boys or what cop club it was but we were sitting there with some of these with with some of them in a couple other clubs

and these guys were pointing out their own undercover guys that were in a crowd. Yeah. Like that's that guy over there, that guy. We're like going, you guys are pieces of shit.

Yeah. Yeah. And that's like, and then we were at, we were at some function in Las Vegas. And this guy, Jack Roberts,

he was an old school Las Vegas cop, big Irishman, hands the size of my head. And he would talk about getting fights with the mafia dudes all the time. They would go to the bars just to get fights.

He's just a great guy, right? And so he was the only guy that was like covering me. Him. He and Randy Probst was another agent in the office. They're really the only guys that knew what was going on. So these guys contact Jack Roberts from the Henderson Police Department. And they say, hey, we're going to go out there and cover this event. Jack goes, well, hey, dude, if you're going, go overt.

Because if you go overt, they won't mess with you. You know what I mean? You're taking pictures. They expect that. These two dudes show up, man. taking pictures, they're trying to dress like they're, they're blended. And of course, Tony and I are the prospects, right? And CJ, who was our president, comes over, he goes, hey, go find out who those guys are.

And I'm looking, and I know, because I know they're cops because they couldn't be anything else. Yeah. And Jack said there might be two guys out there floating around. And I'm looking at Tony. So we walk over there and, okay, we got to do, we got to do. I'm like, you know, we had guns. I had guns. I had guns.

And I walked over there. And I'm like, hey, man, who are you? And I'm like, oh, no, I'm right. I said, give me your driver's license. I'm like, fuck you guy. I go, give me a driver's license. So they're looking. I go, you better give me a driver's license.

This is going to be a problem. So they hand us over their driver's license, right? Now, they weren't, they weren't their true name licenses, right? And then I was told we had to take their cameras. So we took their cameras and we smashed them, right? And at this point now, the club has come in and search. him. And it's like, well, it's out of our hands.

I go, if they're going to beat them, they're going to beat them right now. So at this point, CJ is the voice. And he's telling him, get the fuck out of here, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. So they start walking back to their car. And of course, CJ tells Tony and I again, follow them back to their car and get their license plate. Now, Jack is off on the side watching this. And I'm assuming these guys got guns. They have no idea who we are.

Yeah. So we're kind of like follow them, half stepping, waiting for them. And Jack is watching because he doesn't know what they're going to do either. They've got to pull their guns and start shooting, right? So this is a slow walk of about 25 yards to this car. Well, we end up getting to the car and they get in. We get the license plate stuff. You notice dumb sons of bitches drove their personal car.

You know, I mean, it doesn't sound like, you know, they're not heroic. Some people are like, oh, you know, like the movies. It's things like that, though. when it's happening and you're sitting there. And you don't know if you're going to get shot by, you know, other police officers because of who they believe you are. And you're getting ordered to do things. There's a lot of times in these, in these investigations,

your chapter P or whoever, president or whoever, they tell you to do things. You don't say, well, why? Right. Do it, you know? It's so there was a lot of that. I mean, when we were with the Vagos, again, so this was our final mud check before we were going to get patched in. it was about 2.30 the morning we were all out.

We go over to this one guy's house dog. And we're all, it's like three, they're all fucked up, you know, and they go, hey, we got to go collect. They go, you guys want to go? Well, that's not like, that's, you're going to go. Right. Say no. So we're like, they go, yeah, we're going. They go, don't you worry where we're going.

They go, we're going to take your car, we're going to take two trucks, take off anything. that says, you know, that relates to the club, whatever, go outside, mask, you know, put something over your license plate. And I'm looking at Tony. I go, this is, I go, either they're playing with us or this is going to be bad. So we go do what we got to do. And then this one dude tree, who is an absolute asshole. He's a guy that rode around with a bike.

He had a bungee thing over to hold his tanks on. Bad. Anyway, so we get in our car. I'm driving. Tony's in the front. He gets in the back. He goes, hey, you guys got any guns on you? I'm like, no, which I did.

I go, no, we don't have any guns. He goes, well, all I got is this is 38. He goes, you don't got anything bigger? I go, nope, this is that. No, I didn't bring anything out tonight. So we drive in North Las Vegas and we go into this trailer park. There's probably 20 trailers in here, right? Now, mine is about 3 o'clock in a morning.

We pull in there, three, my car, and two trucks, and they go up to the door. They don't knock. They just kick it in. Now, it's a single wide trailer. And there's like, I think, eight or nine of us. And as soon as we get, Tony and I, we're trying to get in the door. Once we get in the door, before we could even get in the door, they got this dude.

And they are platt, just beating the living shit out. Well, apparently, he didn't pay him for some meth and some other things, and he owed him. So they're beating and living hell out of them. And they're like, and they tell us, they go pull the phones out of the wall. So we pull the cords out of the wall. And they go, go check the rest of the house. So, of course, what do we find? You find a four and a five-year-old and a 15-year-old or so girl.

And we pull them out. And all I told Tony is I said, look, I don't give a shit what happens in here. I go, they don't get near the kids. I go fuck it at that point, right? And they never made any of it. But we sat and watched. The wife got up, her girlfriend, I don't know what she was. She got up and got out of the couch to try to intervene because they were beating us.

They knocked her over the couch. Now, this went on because they started hauling. calling out all his motorcycle parts, they loaded his bike into the truck. This went on for about an hour. Do you think anybody called the police? Not one peep. Not one peep. That was one of the best charges we had because we got him for kidnapping, home invasion.

I mean, so you know how I was talking about cover teams? I had one guy that was my cover guy, Randy. And, you know, we were out just social. If you're doing operation, you know, actually doing it by you got to get the right people out there. Well, we were just out socially. So after this is over, I'm looking at Tony. I'm going, how the hell am I going to explain this one? Because we basically did a home invasion.

Right. Of course, the one thing I want to tell you guys is, one of the things is, before you go into these cases, you have meetings with the U.S. attorney's office, you know, the prosecutor's office, and you talk about what you can and cannot do, okay? you know, fighting, don't throw the first punch, don't throw the last kick. Drugs can't do drugs. We've had guys that were able to carry user amount of drugs because that's the roll they played so they could actually, you know, give little bumps if they needed to, you know.

But it was, you know, it wasn't anything, you know, really crazy that you could do, right? Right. So, but you had those talks, you know, when we talked about, you know, language, whether it be swearing or, you know, racial. comments. You know, you don't want to sound worse than the criminals, right? That's a problem because, you know, you've got to go testify. So that was all tempered and that was all approved. Well, we hadn't talked about doing a home evasion yet. Now, mind you, up to this point, Steve Martin had done the Warlock's case. I did the brother's case and then I rolled right into this one. I didn't even take a break, which became an issue because after six months into the case,

I got called on the carpet, meaning up to San Francisco, where our division was, and they were railing me going, you were supposed to take a year off. I go, I never got notified. I was supposed to take a year off. They go, you didn't get notified? I go, tell me where that memo is. Right, right. I go, I never got told I was taking a year off.

And Gonzalez, who was Rodriguez, who was the, who was the deputy assistant over that thing, he called. He goes, how far are you in? I go, I'm six, seven months in. He goes, all right, he goes, fuck it. He goes, just keep going there. You know what I mean? So I didn't really have them any break between those two cases. Wow.

Boom, boom. So, you know, so before I called my boss, who was a putts, I called the U.S. attorney's office and laid it out to them. Because generally speaking, if the U.S. attorney's office is okay with it, ATF ain't going to balk. Right. So I called them and explained what they go, well, other than somebody getting beat up and whatnot, anything else happened?

They go, just send somebody out there to take a report that something was done to go get the statement that they ended up using against it. Anyway, so when I went back and I told my boss, I go, hey, I already talked to the U.S. attorneys. They're good with it. He was like, okay, keep going then. No issues, you know, because it was a different whole different reporting mechanism then.

But, you know, and then that case was going on and we were going good. And that's after the Reno, where we had gotten into that, and we got voted in his prospect. And we'd been running back and forth for, you know, two, three months. And prospect period for them back then was about three months. And they come up with, they're going to have an officer's run down to Mexico. And it's like, so I call our ad of Shay up of Mexico.

And I go, hey, we got to come to, which I didn't know shit. I go, we're going to come to Mexico. I go, is it okay to bring our guns? He goes, yeah, you can bring your guns. He goes, you know, you just got to check them in at the embassy. I go, embassy. I go, no, no, no. I go, we're coming across with the club.

He goes, you can't come into Mexico with any guns? He goes, and we're like, what's the big deal? He goes, because the reporting requirements here are, if you come into Mexico as a law enforcement officer, he goes, we have to tell the federalities, the prosecutor, everybody that you're going to come in college, because you might as well come across the border and shoot yourself in the head.

Right. They're like, okay, well, how the hell do we get around this? So we had to start working our magic. So we put records in text that said that we had been caught smuggling and doing some other stuff that we told the club, if we go down to the border and we're going to have trouble getting back. We'll get back, but we're probably going to get arrested. So we had worked that out. And then it was, so right at the last minute, they changed it. And they did the officers meeting in California.

They told informant and I, they go. they're like, you guys don't have to go because they change the last minute. They go, they have enough prospects out there. They go. And they said next week, you guys will probably get, you guys will get your patches. We'll just give them to you here. So right on. Well, they go down to this officer's meeting and Darren Kozlowski goes there and he gets his patch.

So he's a patch member, okay? I think he held the patch the shortest of anybody in the history of ATF because what happened was his informant old lady who got killed she got pissed because ATF wasn't doing anything first she thought she should get some money or something

so she went to the club with his card now the fatal error of course we're young again we're not thinking you know cause his nickname that he used for the club was cause okay I you know we

we still laugh about this till till this day. But anyway, that's what he did. Well, they got, she gave him the business card. They start calling around. If I get this wrong, he'll correct me when I see him. They start call around and they found him at the Long Beach office. So they found Darren Kislauski, ATF agent at the Long Beach office. So, you know, Darren, like all of us, you try to scoot out, you go home and he had a house with a garage and whatnot. So he comes back to his house. He goes in his house and he gets knock on the door. Junkie Ed, who was an international enforcer for the club, Sergeant Arms,

he and some other members go in his house and say, where you've been? He goes, what do you mean where I've been? I've been right here. They go, no, you have it. Because they had set up surveillance on him. And they go, what are you driving? He goes, I drove. I can't remember what he said he was driving.

They go, no, you weren't. Because they'd broke in his garage and saw what he was, what he had in there. So, because he used to park a car down around the corner, you know, different cars so he can come and go. Those tactics have all changed. So they took his patch, right? They didn't, they didn't do anything to him because they're not that stupid. If they're suspect that he's an ATF agent, they're not going to do anything to him. So he calls me and he tells you what's going on. And I'm like, holy shit. You know, the concern is, are you okay? And the second is, how the hell are we going to circumvent ATF on this one? You know what I mean? Because he's got to report back. And,

It wasn't like an hour later. I get this call. I'm at the R undercover house in Las Vegas. And it's junkie Ed and Tramp, who's the international president. And they're on the phone. And of course, they obviously don't think I know anything about this. So I'm on the phone. And I go, hey, because Cherry liked us.

So he'd call us. And I go, what's going on? He said, we got a problem with your buddy. I go, which one? He goes, cause. I go, what's the problem? Now, we had built a relationship with Cause saying that we were doing business back in the Midwest prior to coming out here. So here's what he said.

He goes, I think cause followed you out here to continue his case on. And when he saw you got in a club, he started getting around a club too. And figured he'd come and get after us. He goes, that's a big problem. And I'm like, you know, I'm like pretend I'm going, oh, fuck. I go. So I go, well, what do you guys? How do you propose?

What are you going to do? He goes. And then at this point. Point, Tramp goes, we're going to kill him. Junkie Ed goes, I'm going to get off the phone now. So he gets off the phone. So it's just me and Terry on the phone now. And I had this whole recording.

And he's telling me, he goes, he goes, we got to do something. He goes, I don't expect that you'll do it because you'll be the first one they look at. He goes, but we got to do something. So they were just talking about how they were, you know, because of course, Cause took all his stuff up and outed. But they had a starting place to look for him at his office, right? So at this point, we're like, oh, man, I don't know we're hit. We're going to have to take a break.

So, of course, I get off the phone with him. I got to make a call to my office and tell him what's going on. And I ended up calling my sack. I didn't even talk to my boss really because he was a goof. And they're like, well, you guys got to shut it down. I go, I think we're good. Of course, you know, being optimistic, I go, I think we could survive it. We should be able to stay.

We can get rid of cause. Yeah. But we should be able to stay. They're like, you ain't fucking staying in that investigation. So we had to go meet a couple guys that were our sponsors. And we ended up meeting them. And they hadn't even know my own chapter didn't even know what was going on at the time. And Tony and I ended up turning our cuts into them and said, hey, we got a we got to bolt out of here for a couple of months until we see what's going on.

Right. You know what I mean? And then when it happened because in these investigations, you always have running affidavits from day one. We learned the hard way. So everything is going. As everything happens, the affidavit bill, the affidavit build, the charges build. So if something like this happens, we can go right to the prosecutor with what we got before a grand jury or even just get a warrants issued and go ahead and take everybody down.

So that's what we did. We broke out of there. And then it was like the following week, we ended up hitting Las Vegas, a bunch of places in California. And there was another investigation that was going on down in San Diego. I think we ended up getting like 60 members out of that or something like that. But you guys are clean because they track it all back to cause. And you were just two guys associated with him who they thought was being investigated by cause.

Fellow travelers. And you just went to the wind. So you didn't. Yeah. They weren't looking at us like you were anything bad. Right. But, you know, we're stupid and naive to think that, oh, we could stay in this investigation. We'll be clean.

They just think it's caused. Right. You know, it comes to a point where you're so invested invested in these investigations. that sometimes you get tunnel vision and you lose sight. But that's why we always had guys. There was a peer support program in ATIF, but it was guys that did these types of investigations. Yeah.

Because Steve Martin happened to be a supervisor up in San Francisco at the time who had done those other things. So obviously he came down and talked to me and smacked me around a little bit and gave me my common sense back and said, Frank, you can't. Yeah, yeah. You can't stay in. You got to go. And then I didn't even think I had to.

move. But then my house, my tires got slashed on my G-car. And then there were a couple of bogos who were hanging around a building. And then of course, ATF lost its mind on there. So that's where it was, so what's going to happen to me now? So I'm talking to my wife. Of course, okay, so if you guys don't know me, I'm a big Beagle fan. We've had Beagles for 30 plus years. I got three of them now. We had two then. And they're going, you guys, you got to go out of your house and stay in a hotel for until we can move you. that lasted one night and we went back to the house i'd come away i'd rather take my chance with the dogs being at the house i got guns yeah the thing is odds are i'm not going to say they

wouldn't do anything because there are some looney tunes and whatnot but they know that if they really did something like that they don't like that federal it would come back the blowback would be tremendous right i mean that doesn't help me or my wife at the time we didn't have any kids but um so anyway so So, you know, I get, so ATF being ATF, I had no desire. Headquarters was the least place I wanted to be. Now, at the time, John Cooper, who's a very dear friend of mine, when our case was having problems, he, he gets sent out from our Special Operations Division with another guy, Pete

McCarthy, to talk us about the issues, and we rail into him. And it's like, God damn, you guys, you just suck. And it wasn't even his fault because he just got there. So when the case busted up, they said, okay, pick places you want to go. I said, okay, well, I like to go to the Midwest or to the South or whatever, and I pick my four locations. They said, okay, and write up a justification letter. So I did. They said, okay, you'll go to one of those four places.

The next morning I go to the office about 6 o'clock, and there's a teletype that I've been transferred to headquarters to go work in our new undercover shop. I was not a happy camper, not a happy camper at all. However, it's one of the best things I ever did because Coupe had worked undercover. There was me, another guy, Craig Carrady, great, another undercover agent, Al Phoenix. So they were bringing guys into the branch who actually worked undercover and understood what was needed to get this thing off the ground.

So I spent, you know, two years up there learning about that whole process and getting any of the ground. integrated with everybody else who was doing it, whether it was, you know, the government, you know, every part of the government, really. Right. And then, and then I was ready to go. Now, in the meantime, my wife and I, I was fine with the Beagles. My wife wanted kids.

So we ended up going to rush and adopted a couple kids, too, at the same time. So I'm getting ready to push out. And I had a good relationship with a couple of deputy assistant directors who had been my sacks. And I go, well, this is where I want to go. and the one Malcolm Brady really great guy he goes he goes no he goes you're going to be he goes you're going to be the supervisor in Youngstown in your hometown I go I really don't want to do that Malcolm he goes well I'm going to tell you what what's going to happen you're going to do it or I'm going to fuck you he goes I'm going to put you somewhere you don't want to be and I go well that's

that nice Malcolm so I didn't even put him for the job you have to put in for the job I didn't get to put in for the job I went for an interview I had my interview and then after the Tate was he was the sack of New Orleans I had my interview two minutes ago you goes Frank

congratulations you're going to Youngstown I go God almighty so which was good I went to Youngstown and you know that got me to Youngstown and I was there for five years and then that's how we rolled into the Aryan Brotherhood case

yeah yeah man I mean that sounds like a pretty crazy one how did that start to come about for on your end. So there were Tom Doyle and a couple guys up at the East Lake Police Department in Lake County. The Hells Angels have been operating in Cleveland and they had opened up a new chapter up in Lake East, they called it.

And they'd always been involved in something, right? Well, they and there were some Aaron brothers. members that they had been dealing with up there who were manufacturing machine guns. You know what I talk about people having no redeeming quality? This guy had no redeeming quality. A.J. Blumquist, just total whack job. So they say, hey, are you, so they call me. They said, hey, we got like four or five informants.

Would you be willing to come up here and interview them? And then we'll go from there, you know, if there's something that you guys think you want to do, being ATF, right? So we scheduled, we go up an interview. And we find two guys. Now, they didn't know each other. One was going to be, he was going to work on the Cleveland chapter of the H.A. And we had a captain in the Aryan Brotherhood who they had gotten out.

He almost beat a guy to death in a bar. But he wanted to cooperate, right? He was a captain in the state of Ohio. So we went up and we taught, now I was a supervisor, right? Now, at that point, when you're a 14 or a group supervisor, Iraq, whatever, you're not supposed to work on a cover. You're supposed to oversee the crap, right? Well, I had a really good sack that I know, Chris Sadowski. You know, he let me do a lot of things and a lot of bosses were never allowed to do because he let me go help out on Jay Dobbs's case.

He let me go help on a couple of the Warlocks, all these cases that I was able to go play with, which was nice. And so we're going to start this investigation. And we're going to buy a machine. Well, we're going to go meet AJ because he can make machine guns stents. He was manufacturing them. So we get it all together and we're going to go meet at this bar in Cleveland. And so we show up and I bring in another undercover from Virginia, Jeff Grahamman. And he's going to be the guy that gets.

introduced. Well, you know, I didn't dress like anything. So we're talking. And so I'm introducing him to Jeff and I go, he's going to go with you. And he goes, that won't work. I go, what do you mean? It won't work. And this is where informants. This is, you know, some people call them confidential human sources. We just call them informants, you know. He goes, he won't do. I go, why? He goes, because I described you. I told him about you. And of course, I'm looking at him. And I go, his name was Fred. I go, Fred, would you tell him? He goes, well, I told him your name was Junkyard.

I got saddled with that for a most year and a half. I go, what the fuck? Junkyard. He goes, yeah. I go, what else did you tell him? Well, that you did time with my dad in county. Okay, so that's how we know each other. I go, okay.

And I go, and what else did you tell him? He goes that you and my dad would go into bars and you would wrestle bears for fun. I'm like, you're an idiot. Right? So we're sitting there. And so I'm looking at Jeff. I go, well, you're going. So I have to call my boss.

I called, I didn't call my boss. And I go, hey, I go, here's a situation. I go, I got to go to this meeting. Because if I don't go, it's not going to go anywhere. He goes, all right, well, just go to the first meeting and back out. Well, 18 months later, there was no backing out. Because AJ, although he liked that, he loved me. He just took a real liking.

me, I got a phone call from that guy, 7 o'clock. Every morning I had to be up and ready to record him because it was like clockwork. He had a construction. It was called AB construction. Very ingenious. And he would employ on the books, all of the A.Bs that were getting out on parole. Now, Tim Miracle, who was the adult parole officer for Ohio, he had all these guys on probation and parole. So he knew all of them and what they were about. Yeah. So anyway, so we get into this negotiation with, with AJ about machine guns. So he won't get the kits. I had to get the kits.

I give him the three machine gun kits at first. He makes him in three days. Come back. Beautiful powder coated function. Perfect. So I said, well, let's see what he can do. So I said, I'm going to order 10. Of course, the U.S. Attorney's Office of out.

Well, how do you know he's going to give him to you? And he won't say, I go, because these guys don't operate like that. I go, it's a bond. If they tell you they're going to do something, they're going to do it. Right. So we go, and I get him 10. 10 kits and about a week later he brings him to me right and he brings me nine and then he says and then he goes well let's let's go back to my office he goes I got to I want to talk you guys

about something anyway so I go where's the 10th but he goes I'll show you so we go back and he goes in a back room and he pulls out this stand that he had powder coated pink and he put these little powder puff girls all over it is a joke he goes he goes man he goes I was just joking around if you want I'll powder coat black I go oh no no I go I'll take that one That's kind of cool because that's great jury appeal. I mean, you know what I mean? Look at his idiot. He don't even care.

He's making guns that look. They're pink with Piderpuff girls on him. That's what his disregard. Boy, J had ties into cops who were, you know, who were running information for him that were selling him body armor. I mean, this dude, he was a captain and erring brother, too, criminal, pure criminal, a lot of identity theft, robbery, you name it, he was into it, you know. He was married to a nurse, trapped.

He had a kid who, you know, as we got a right. on him, the kid ate Cheetos and Coke. That's all he ate. And he named him Dietrich Adolf Blumquist. Real treat, right? Yeah. So, this starts to go. Well, while we're in there, you know, we go up and we're buying some dope off him.

So he pulls in. He goes, hey, man, you guys ride motorcycles? And at this point, I'm like, oh, shit. I go, you know, the ears go, and I go, yeah, we ride motorcycles. Why, what do you think? And he goes, well, listen, therein brotherhood has been trying to develop a club nationally for years. He goes, and he goes, and we got enough guys out right now that we're poised to do this. I go, no shit.

He goes, we're going to start it here in Ohio. I go, so what do you need for me? He goes, you got five guys? He goes, I got five guys. I can give five guys. I go, I got five guys, I know. And I'm committing before I can even do anything, but we're going to ride motorcycles. So, hey, and I said, well, what's the objective here, AJ?

You know, what are we doing? He goes, well, the objective is for us. to kill the hell's angels and take over. Holy shit. I go, that's a great plan. So, you know, we break. I mean, it's good. I mean, it's perfect because, you know,

see, the thing is people don't know about ATF or really don't understand about ATF is, a lot of law enforcement agencies, when you talk about there's going to be guns there and these guys have a real potential for violence, a lot of agencies back off of that. ATF, the more guns, the more violent criminal you are, that's our wheelhouse.

We want you to have guns there. We want you to be violent because that gives us our whole crux to be in it because we used to get in these arguments what ATF about, well, you're buying all kind of dope. We don't see a lot of guns. dudes, they're carrying them. Most crooks won't get off the gun that they're using to defend themselves. You know, they got smart.

They learned. Yeah. So anyway, so I go back and I talk to my sack, Chris, and I say, here's what's going on. I go, and I'm going to have to be in it. because he's expecting me because they're going to run this like an AB council, you know, we're going to have members and whatnot.

So it was like, man, I got five guys. And my, my very, very dear friend, Freddie Raines was the only state local guy who I just said, Fred,

you want to work some under cover with us? And he was like, he had no idea what he was getting into. None. So, but that guy could buy dope off a rock. And, you know,

and so we started down his road, right? getting to know each other. So we had like a, on St. Patrick's Day, we're going to bring our five guys and they're going to bring their five guys to a bar. So we bring our five guys in and we're talking to their five guys. And we have no idea who these guys are. They introduce us to themselves.

And we spend a good amount of time there. And we leave. So we go get the brief by Tim Miracle and the task force guys because we had formed a task force up there. And Tim goes, do you guys know who you met with? I go, you know, one guy named David, another guy, J.B. They go, he goes, dude, David is the head of the AB for the state of Ohio. He brought it back from Phoenix.

He goes, he just got out like six months ago for six counts of attempted murder. And he killed a guy in jail and stabbed the guy and shot a guy. But they always kept running this stuff concurrent. He's dead now. He got his head about sought off out in Victorville in federal penitentiary by the A.Bs because they thought he was stealing. But anyway, so we meet these guys, and it's like, these got a J.B. 25 years for murder. Polly, he got hit for Hullin, dope between Oklahoma. And he got motor, who was, he was robbery, whatever.

You know, all these guys had bought, which was way right. I mean, it was right where we wanted to be. It was like, this couldn't get any better, right? Now, our thought was, how do we control the beast, you know, without getting in too much shit with these guys, right? well so on Hitler's birthday on April 20th that's when we had our coming out party and the club was called the order of blood and it's like okay we which I didn't know anything about this we're getting this whole historical well you know when Hitler went to prison and all his generals and our officers that came out he gave him this this you know this metal the order of blood so that's where our patch came from that's where the name of our club come from so if what they're designed in the patch this this This always makes me laugh. So it was an eagle, right? And it had two thunderbolts on the back of it, an eagle, like the AB Falcon Eagle.

And then I'm like, well, why aren't we using, why don't we just use a swastika? They're like, well, that would just draw too much attention. But on the front of our cuts, we had a big swastika, support you. Could break it up, right? So these guys, so anyway, so we just start rolling with. these guys we came out and you know people don't understand the underground so our first coming out party with these guys we were up in ohio and it was a hell's angels event and this is where we're going to bring out we're going to sell all our nazi gear you know our swastikas our club support stuff right

our thunderbolts and uh so we're there the hells angels have their tent and in fact i think sunny barger was coming in the signed book so there was a bunch of them there and uh and and and and and and and and And in the caveat, so in Ohio, up in Northeast Ohio, there weren't supposed to be any new clubs that started, right? They're like, that's it, no new clubs. Well, a couple of the AB were friends with the Hells Angels. They knew them. They didn't trust them. Nobody trusted each other.

So I get invited to this meeting with the informant in AJ, and then there's two Hells Angels there. and we go to this Denny's and we're sitting there. And, you know, most clubs will kiss their ass just because they fear them. Right. But we're sitting there. And they tell them, hey, we're starting a club. They go, what club? They go, an AB club.

And they go, well, you know, we're not supposed to study. They go, we don't give a shit what you say. We're starting to class. This is the first time. This is why it was so great to be in this. You didn't care what the club said because your gang was a prison gang. Right. And they knew it.

They knew it. And I'll tell you a story that drove that point home to the Hells Angels real quick. So they're like, okay, you know, just all right, they didn't balk. So we started the club at them. We showed up at that event. You know, they knew we were coming. But anyway, that ain't even, the best part is we're there about a half hour to an hour. Next thing, you know, we got the Grand Wizard.

We got a couple of Nighthawks. We got the Grand Dragon from the clan. They're coming up. Welcome, brothers. We're, you know, good to see you. You know, it's so good to see other people like us out here. And we're like, I'm telling you right now, they'd have let us go about another six months in that investigation.

We'd have had our sheets inside that. No doubt in my mind. No doubt. Because, you know, because people who, you know, a lot of the old school, the clubs, you know, a lot of it is about white supremacy. Right. I mean, they've gotten away from.

that like the hell's angels you know they used to wear a lot of the lot of things were swasca thunderbolts and then once germany came in they couldn't wear that anymore they get fined however they were buying our stuff and not getting caught war in it that's like a lot of clubs you know they'll wear the symbol you know because it stands for supremacy whatever it was odd to see Hispanics wearing it but okay but anyway so you know as time went on we had a really good relationship with uh both Cleveland chapters. But as we grew as a club, we became, we started to get more powerful because people started to recognize we weren't subservient.

We didn't answer. And that we truly were, you know, you guys, because all our records showed that we're, you know, that we were criminals for the most part. Now, we kept a couple guys that were clean just for throwdowns. And if you want to hear a funny story, I'll tell you this one. So, you know how you think you're smarter than the average bear? Yeah. So we had been preparing to do.

this case for like three, four months getting. Because at the pinnacle at this case, we had 20 undercovers running, male and female. Okay. So we started out with five. So we had to, how we know it, we had to get all that down, right? So we had seized this Fleetwood Cadillac. And it was an older one, but it was nice. So that was my car because I'm supposed to be the, you know, the guy, right?

So we're getting ready to go up to our house. And we had a big. safe up there and everything where we would store stuff because we had guys flying in from all over but i just picked a bunch of guys up but i picked three of them up in pittsburg so we're going to our house we dropped a couple bikes off that we had purchased to get some work done okay so it's like october it's going into november and so it was getting late today and we're going up to cleveland now it's like if we go to the house drop off all our stuff because some guys had crads and their computers because we had to do our work.

We were going to stash them to say it. If we went to the house and then had to go to the west side of Cleveland, it's like an extra two hours to get the bikes. So it was getting late and we're like, okay, who's in favor of going to the house? Everybody's like, no, let's just go get the bikes and be done with it. And I had like $5,000 I had to pay to pick them up with the work that was done. So we break from our route and we're going down Route 90. Now there's me.

I had long hair and a big beard. Everybody else shaved like this, shaved head, beard. And we're in a fleet with Cadillac. And we're driving. And we're going traffic. It's, you know, it's traffic. I think the speed limit was seven. We were going like 75, 76.

And we pet. There's an interdiction team sitting off on the left that nobody told us that they hang out over there. That's just poor intelligence on our part. We passed this interdiction team. And we all look at them. and they look at us like, we are hit better than shit. I mean, as soon as we pass them, boom, boom, boom, they come out.

There's three of them. They pull up behind us. They pull me over. And of course, now we're in roll. So now I've got to be the asshole. So the one officer walks up to the side and he hits on a window. He said, roll your window down. So I roll it down like an inch.

I go, can I help you? He goes, he goes, well, do you know why I stopped you? He wasn't speeding. He goes, yeah, you were speeding. I go, I was keeping with the flow of traffic, dude. I go, that wasn't speeding. He goes, roll the window down. So I roll the window down.

And as I'm rolling the window down, and I go, and no, you cannot have consent to search the car. So he looks right at me, like, okay, we're going to play this game. Now, remember how I said we had a throwdown guy? Yeah, yeah. So Wayne Lester, who was a newer agent, who we had to bring guys in who because we just had a shortage of guys, right, who had kids.

who had capability, but never been in this kind of situation. So Wayne didn't have criminal history. Now, prior to getting into the car, I said, okay, does everybody have their guns in the trunk and in their bag? So if we get stopped, we're not going to have a problem. Yes. So as soon as we get pulled over, Jeff Graham goes, fuck, I got my gun. I go, all right, I go take the magazine, throw it in the front, throw it in a glove box, throw a gun under his seat. Because in Ohio, that's just a simple improper handling of a firearm, right?

So the guy's going, I go, and you can't have consent to search. So they come over and they pull us out of the car. And so they put me and Wayne in a car and they put Jeff and Dan Osboldt in the other car. And Wayne's looking at me goes, what's going on? I go, well, if somebody's going to jail for that gun, it's you because you don't have a criminal history. So the rest of us are, you know, two, three-time felons. I go, so you're going to have to take the hit. And Wayne's like, what?

I go, yeah, if they don't give you a simple, you're going to have to own the gun. If they ask who's gun that is, it's yours. So they bring out the drug dog, right? Now, we had cleaned this car. There's nothing good to hit on this car. So they walked the dog around the car once. Nothing. I go, good, dude, we're out of here.

Nothing. They walked a dog around the car the second time. That officer put his hand on the window ledge. Dog sat. Because I have an alert. I go, son of a bitch. Passive alert. you got to lurk my ass, right?

So now they're going to get in the car. They get in the front seat within, you know, a minute. I got a gun. So now, now, mind you this is the first day out on this investigation. We spent quite a good bit of money getting. I'm going, you can't believe it, right? So we're supposed to be better in this because Dan's worked a case. I worked a case.

Jeff worked multiple cases. We should know better, right? So I sit there and I say, Wayne, I'm going to have to out myself. He goes, what do you mean out of yourself? I go, I'm going to have to out myself. myself to protect the case. He goes, what are you going to do? I go, don't worry about it.

So I start banging my head on the window of this, of this cruiser, right? So sergeants like yelling me, shut up, shut up, stop it. So I'm about beating myself unconscious. Finally observed it, what the fuck do you want? I go, I need to talk to you. So he pulls me out. I go, can we go to the back of the car? So he pulls you, he goes, what's going on?

I go, all right, well, I'm going to explain something to you. I go, it might be a little bit sketchy for you to believe. I go, but I'm going to lay something down to you. I go, I'm an ATF agent. I go, and these guys are my targets. I go, and right now you're fucking up my deal. And he's looking at me. And I go, okay, if you want to verify who I am, I go, I got a bag in the back of that car.

I go, this is the bag. And inside it, there's a compartment that you got to, you know, pull some shit apart and get into. I go, my creds are in there. He goes, he's looking at me. I go, but you're the only one that could search that. because if these other guys, it's going to be a problem. So he goes in there, and I can see him messing right. He pulls my president.

He looks. He shuts him. Now, mind you, while we're on the side of the road, about three or four more cruisers show up, I'm watching our seats get launched out of our car because they're tearing it apart, right? So he goes, well, how do you want to handle this? Now, at this point, the lieutenants that were on our task force, they both show up. And he goes, what do you want to do about the gun? I go, that little dude back there that's in the car with me, I go,

just giving an improper handling. He don't have a criminal history. I go to the other guys, just let him go for right now. And he's like real cool about it. He goes, okay, all right. So anyway, long story short, after three hours on the side of the road, our cars are like, they're like, okay, they're wrapping up. And then like, okay, we got to put our seats back in.

We got to do it. Okay, so we get back in the car. And after something traumatic like that, the speed limit was 70. I think I was going 40. because we're all looking at each other like we're we're supposed to be so much better than this yeah just this is day one so i'm driving down the road car comes flying up behind me lights me up i'm going you gotta be shit i mean i'm like i might as well just let's just quit right now pulls me over it's the sergeant and to his they never said a word about me in the case what

on i mean i give them that credit they never said a word to anybody about me but he comes comes up he goes you forgot this and he hands me my $5,000 that I forgot that he even took off me when he searched me I got I became so tunnel vision holy shit yeah I'm like god almighty so we go we pick up the bikes now it's dark and it and it's cold so the other guys take off in a car and we put all our gear on and our cuts on now we've got our you know and we start rolling down the same road right we're on two bikes now our face are all messed up we got helmets on dude we passed the same interdiction unit they're out right behind us the sergeant because he must not he rolls up and he's looking at us and i'm on there i'm on the on the on the inside just on it

i pulled my mask down and i'm like as if to say we're real come on yeah and then all of a sudden they backed out they went i mean you want to talk about a night of just self-reflection you know just like dudes everything that could have went wrong went wrong you know it did which woke us up because that case was different than any other case I went because those guys scrutinized they had security guys they wanted to know everything about you they were constantly looking at guys getting out of prison if they made deals you're allowed to talk to this one don't talk to that one you know so as we we started off in in in actually our house was in Geneva on the lake and then it was beautiful overlooked the lake it was a big house we

you know, we all kind of lived there, came and went, and we kind of expanded into a couple cities, but the chapters, the chapters started to grow. You know, we started to get more members. As guys got out of prison, guys were bringing in people from prison. So it was, you know,

a lot of dope, like, and you know, the one good thing about it is, we, um, so we had this house, right? And it had a big flagpole. So it's like, there was no secret who we were, right? A bunch of Nazis. So we flew a Nazi flag. my boss rode by there one time just to check the house hot i get a call he goes you got to take that flag down i go why he goes i take the flag down he goes it's it's a nazi flag i go we're nazi

we are he goes no he goes it's too he goes it's too much so we ended up flying a pirate flag instead however all those people up in that area we had people i'm not shitting you people would just knock on our door because we'd be outside. Everybody's tattooed, you know, washing pipe. People would just knock on a door asking if we want to buy dope and guns. We had these two idiots that work for the city, you know, those big steel manhole covers. It was like Jeremiah Johnson, they would drop stuff off at our house with the big swastikas or thunderbolts on them. And then they would drop off these manhole cover, right? So one of the guys ends up asking goes, hey man, where are you getting these? They go, we're just pulling them off the street.

He's like, so you're leaving big holes on the street? We ride our motorcycles, you idiot, you know? But they would, I mean, we had, there were councilmen that would stop up and talk to us. You would think, you know, in today's age, you know, you talk about racism. People just don't know how much racism exists still today. It were people, you know, we used to sell our gear. People would buy our gear ten-four. We had guys that were buying off of some black guys.

So we had a tent that these guys would give us on the main street of Geneva on Lake. I roll up with one of the other guys, and I see two of our guys standing there who were buying dope off a black guy. He's wearing our AV support shirt. I walked up. They're laughing. I go, dude, you better get that off. I said, because if David Snow shows up over here, he'll kill that motherfucker.

I go, you guys, this is a – I go, serious business. Serious business. They're not going to laugh at that. Right. So anyway, but we had people that were buying and wearing our stuff all over the place. I mean, we had clubs when they got in trouble. They would call us to help defend them or work things out for them. And this is over time. We got to be pretty good friends with a guy named he's not, he's out of the club now because of our, I think our friendship, Willie Beard, who was in who was in Hells Angels. And he took to us. And he said, hey, you guys run your operations good. You do stuff the right way because you guys aren't any. bullshit you handle your business and and we did there were times where things would come up

where we would have to handle our business you know where guys would would try you know test us and then it was on you know and and and it was over quickly because we we did we had a lot of big dudes in our club and it was uh you know it would get contentious because you know we had the pagans we would go to pagan territory they're like well you guys are up at northeast Ohio how can you have no affiliation with the Hells Angels. We don't. In fact, one of the original council members for the Aryan Brotherhood was a pagan. So we ended up getting real good with the pagans. We had some affiliation with the outlaws. And we also had affiliations with all the other clubs that were up and around in that area. So we were running. We ended up having guys in Akron, up in Geneva on the

lake, and then over in Sharon, Pennsylvania. So we had three chapters by the time. And this thing was ballooning up. You know, we had guys calling from, uh, from the penitentiary that were calling asking us to join, you know, when we get out, you know. So, I mean, it was, it was, and they were in, and the beauty of it was, they were all great violent targets. We had this one guy. There's some twist of this story that, so if you got, if you got the time for this.

Yeah, yeah. Jay, J.B., who was a member of there in Brotherhood, right? he went down for murder, okay? He was actually, and we knew this, but he didn't know we knew this, he was actually an informant for Tim Miracle, who was the adult parole officer, right? So while this case is going on, he's informing, but guess who he's informing on? Only us, none of the other ABs, not David, because he was deathly afraid of David, right? Everybody was.

We were deathly afraid of David. You know, look at David. He didn't look like much, but... Anyway, so John Beeson's starting to get too powerful. He's starting to want to do too many things. It's going to get us down a road we don't want to go. So it's like, so how do we get rid of him? Because we had to get rid of AJ too.

And I'll tell you how we got rid of him. This was before J.B., but so we, J.B. had showed some of the guys in a club that he had a gun, right? So based on that, they executed a search warrant and they sealed the warrant and they arrested him. Okay. So J.B. had a bad heart. So he goes, he goes, because he's going for parole revocation now because he's out on parole. And now he's facing federal charges. Well, he gets charged in federal court.

And his attorney in open court says that he's an active informant because ATF signed him up too. He's an active informant for ATF and adult parole authority informing on the Hells Angels and Aryan Brotherhood. Now, I get this information that's like, woo-hoo, we can get rid of them. So I called the U.S. Attorney's Office. I go, are we allowed to put that out? They go, no. Because if you guys put it out, something happens then we're liable. Right.

I go, well, what if I direct some people to go get a copy of the transcript and they read it? They go, you can do that because it's public information. So I did. So I had Polly and David Snow go get the transcript. So they called me on the way back from the courthouse of Cleveland. And David's straight out. He goes, that motherfucker's dead. He goes, he's a snitch.

He's a rat. Now, Pauley and him were real good friends, meaning J.B. Pauli said, we don't know the whole story. He goes, fuck him. He goes, he's dead. Holy shit. And I'm like, yeah. Well, anyway, so needless to say, so.

J.B. gets locked up, right? In about two weeks later, he's dead. Not from anything we did, but because his heart gave out. Oh, wow. However, though. So in the meantime,

once it was public, I was able to call Willie Beard and said, hey, Willie, there's a problem with J.B, blah, blah, blah. He goes, well, let me know what you find out. So J.B. J.B. dies in prison. Well, to our advantage, I call. up Willie and I go Willie J I said we don't have to worry about J.B.

anymore he goes huh? I go he's gone. He goes oh got to go. So now these sons of bitches think that we had him off. Which gives us so much credibility. Right, right? I mean, it's awesome. Right. We had a lot of things to go our way that way. We just kept mounting because the first when we were in this club, it was like, well, everybody had to be like a criminal that did five years.

Then it was a violent crime. Then it was murk. This was self-perpetuating within the other clubs. Not us. We weren't putting this stuff. out. So in the way we got rid of AJ was AJ again. So in his infinite wisdom, the guy that was actually the informant for the Hells Angels, they decided to go down to Hells Angels bar in East Cleveland and AJ does a burnout in their bar, which angers down, right? Yeah. So the next, as it should, and the next day, there's these drag races, right? Now, it's a heavy Hells Angels presence. We're

going. So we had a bunch of guys. We probably had 10 or 12 guys at that point go with us. I mean, everybody went. So, and AJ drove his truck because at this point, we got to do something because the hell's angels are going to kill him. They literally want to kill because they know AJ. So we pull into this event and there's Hells Angels posted all over the place, right?

And so we roll in. And so it's me, J.B, and David Snow. David Snow never took an officer position at all. It was, it was me, J.B, and AJ at the time. So AJ was kind of out at this point. So David goes, he goes, hey, everywhere you see Hall's Angel, you guys, go post up. Does everybody got a gun?

Yeah, go post up. So our guys were angled out and we're posted up next to their guys. So Johnny Merchant, who is just this big animal. and face, they're standing over there. So I go over with J.B. And we're talking and JV. And merch is like, where's AJ? We're going to kick his ass.

We're going to kick his ass. And now all these guys, nobody's young. You know, everybody's over 40 years old, approach of 50, you know, and this stuff. So it's like children. Anyway, so J.B. goes, you're not touching anybody in our club. I go, if there's anybody going to be disciplined in them, it'll be us. What's the problem? So he told him what's gone.

And he goes, all right. He goes, we want AJ. He goes, and J.B. goes, just stand by. He goes, he goes, junkyard, come with me. So we go back and David's standing over there. Now, David, okay, so just a little background on David, David got convicted of six counts of attempted murder

because he held his girlfriend and was playing Russian roulette before somebody escaped at an house called police, right? You got 15 years. He came up for parole in eight. When he went before the parole board, He told him, fuck you. I'm not telling you I'm sorry or anything. So they sent him to the Youngstown Mac Security Prison,

where he orchestrated the Lucasville riots from there. While he was in prison, we got from the guys that we talked to, the security guys that work in the prisons, he stabbed the guy. He actually shot a guy in the head, but he didn't die. But they ran everything concurred. When he got out of prison,

now this is Jay B. him saying he was living under his mother's trailer because he was in solitary 23 hours a day like you couldn't go through a drive-through because he goes I'm not talking to the box I mean and when he first came around this dude he spent most of his you know teenage years dry cleaning so he would wear dockers and polos and the worst tattoos you ever see in your life he was balding then but just violent is hell and But you never know that if you just talked to him and met it. It seemed like half-ass normal guy.

So we go back over and we're talking to David. And David goes, he goes, all right, here's how it's going to go. He goes, you go back and tell them motherfuckers. He goes, if they touch one of us, he goes, we will green light every hell's angel across the country. at that point, I've been in other clubs that I've been around other clubs. I've never felt that much power in my life. Yeah. That we're going to go over there and tell them this.

And it was, okay, I go, J.B., that's your call. So we walk over there and they're, chit, chit, chit, chit, and they know who David is. And J.B. said, I just got one message to pass to you. He goes, David said, if you touch. one of our members, we're going to greenlight all your people across the country. They looked at us. You saw their faces. Everything changed immediately because they knew he had that power.

Right. You know, or he could get to those people who had that power. Right. You know. And so things kind of changed, you know, the format changed. And then, you know, they were having an officer's meaning this is where we were kind of going to be seen by all the other clubs. So we had these things called. Marches because we never knew how they were going to turn out. It's just you had to go do it because

that's what was required. So usually it's only a couple, three members that are allowed to go. Usually the officers that go to these things and then the Hells Angels lecture you and tell you how they're going to extort you for all their events that you have to prepay for and everything, right? So I'm sitting there and face goes, hey, we're going to have this thing down here. I go, hey, man, none of our guys have ever been any of this. I go, you mind if we come, like I bring more? He goes, yeah, bring whoever you want. which saved our ass. So we go down this long road.

And of course, our cover team is watching the drag races. They're not watching us. So we go down this long path and there's this tent, right? So all the other clubs are sitting there. And here's probably like six or seven of us. And they're saying, hey, this is a new club. Order of blood. And a couple of the clubs tripped up and say,

hey, we thought you said there wasn't going to be any new clubs. They said, shut the fuck up. They're here. And then they kind of started to figure out what we were about, right? So this meeting breaks up. Now, Roy Bootser was the longest prospect in the history of the Hells Angels. I think he prospected for three years. That's a long time.

So they asked us to stay back. There were two or three other Hells Angels and this prospect, Roy Bootser. So they asked us to hang back and we're talking. So I'm looking out of the corner of my eye. And Roy's putting on his sap gloves. He's turning his sought-off shotgun towards us. And I'm like, so I bump up a couple of guys. He goes, are you guys seeing any bullshit?

So it was like, we close ranks into the Hells Angels because it's like, if he's going to shoot one of us, he's got to shoot them. Right. And J.B. didn't see it. He goes, what's going on? I go, I got time to explain. I can close it up. So they start talking about what needs to happen and how we have to send some guys down to the H.A. bar so that they, can apologize, which David was vehemently against, but we're like, David, we got to exist here.

We'll take care of that business. Let them, you know, we're kind of bait because the plan was, again, to kill all of them. So it's like, hey, let's just think they're in control. You know, we're kind of guiding, David. Let them think we're in control. So, and then let them go apologize. So two guys went down there apologize. So they couldn't do anything because we had closed ranks around our guys. So they just broke it up. So as we're walking back up the hill, J.B. looks at me, goes, what the hell was that? all about. I go, dude, they were getting ready to shoot us with that shotgun.

He goes, what? I go, yeah. So I told my guys, I go, we're going to kill everybody here that's not wearing our patch and we're dropping our shit and getting out of here. And he looked at me, he goes, junkyard, he goes, I only got one problem with that. And I go, what is? He goes, you need to fucking tell me that when you're going to do shit like

that. I'm like, okay, cool. Well, I'm telling you now. He goes, he goes, because they didn't care. It was like if, you know, the patch was something that was just a novelty for them. to be able to ride around and be a club. But the brand, the AB brand is what kept them together. It's what kept all of us together.

Because we're the only guys who were part of an AB thing that never really went through the whole process of becoming an AB inside the joint, which was unique in and of itself. I mean, they took pictures of us and sent them inside the joint to see if anybody knew us or anything like that. But, you know, we were pretty much on equal standing with those guys. So how, you know, go ahead. No, I'm just curious because, you know, you're talking about a very interesting dynamic here, right?

You're talking about the Hells Angels and the pagans and these motorcycle gangs who their guys sometimes get sent to prison. And when they do get to send to prison, I imagine generally have to rely on the area in Brotherhood, which isn't a motorcycle gang. It's a prison gang that, you know, it's a major protective and a violent force inside a prison. And so now all of a sudden, the Aryan Brotherhood is, they're sort of outside the law when it comes to these motorcycle gangs, right? Like they have a way more reach than a lot of these motorcycle gangs do. Well, so, you know, every time you go in a club, you learn their, you know, their background, their history, right?

So, so of course, the Aryan brother is going to tell you, at least, like, the Aaron Brother in Ohio was brought from Arizona. That's where David brought it back from, right? So in Arizona started from California. So you're going to learn the lore of that. And so we were talking to David about that because he did not like the Hells Angels. He hated him. And I'm like, David, what's the rub?

He goes, well, he goes, it goes back to the riots in the 60s. He goes, when we were, we goes, you know, he goes, we were riding with the blacks. He used another term, right? He goes, he goes, we went to the Hell's Angels, you know, to see if they were with us. And they said, no, we're not, we're not white. We're Hell's Angels. And to this day, that carries. Like, they remember that.

So, like, in state, in federal prison, they're okay. State prison, they keep away. Now, most clubs don't allow you to become an Aryan Brotherhood member and being a club, right? Aaron Brother don't care if you're in a club or not. You know what I mean? But the clubs don't want you because what happens is this divided loyalty then. And who has the bigger stick? Now, you know, we got taught a lot about Aaron Brotherhood.

You know, I mean, we were buying off of guys. We bought off a black. We bought off of the Mexican mafia. We bought anybody because the color was green, right? If it was green and we could make money. So, you know, when you look at the hierarchy of white supremacists, right, you have the true believers. But the, Daryan brother is more, it's a prison game. You know, when they're out, they're clickish.

They do stuff, but it's all about pushing money back into the prison to help those guys. It's not like, you know, NSNM and, you know, war, all these other, you know, whites of nationalists. It's not about that. It's they're all based on an ideology based on religion. The Aryan Brotherhood is not based on like Christian religion. It's not based on that at all. So it's based on white is right. It's our group of guys.

We do, we do. We hold the power, right? So when David made that statement to them, it kind of changed everything from, the lake east guys are like hey these guys are good you know and then and in the the Cleveland chapter we started to get rubs with because they saw power shift and dynamic where a lot of the other puppet clubs the smaller support clubs were looking to us and we were real good about that we'd go to their events we we pony up a bunch of money we're buying loyalty right I'll tell you quick story so they used to have these officer meetings right and um so

there had been some friction with us in a couple clubs, especially with the Hells Angels. And it was coming to a head. So we're riding to this Earth Dogs, was the name of this clubhouse. They got a real small clubhouse. But we're going to go over to the Bourne Free. Now, they were a single chapter club,

but they had a lot of members, like 40 members. And we had become pretty tight with this guy. So we were going to go over to their clubhouse first in and ride over together. Well, while we're riding over there, there was four of us. Yeah, there was four of us. Well, there's a pack coming towards us. And we're like, well, who the fuck is that? Well, it was the hell's angels.

They had like eight members and like two or three prospects. They're like, something's fucked up. That ain't right. They never bring that many people to these days. So we get over to the, to the Boren Free Clubhouse and we walk in and Too Tall is the president. A nice guy. And we have become friends with some of their real good friends with some of their guys.

And Tuttle goes, someone he's fixing to get fucked up. And we're like, us? He goes, that's the way he looks. He goes, dude. He goes, I don't know. The Hell's Angels got to rub with you guys. And I go over what? He goes, well, the swordsmen were saying you guys were in their territory selling dope.

I go, we don't even go over there. What the fuck are they talking about? That is a puppet club for them, you know, for the angels. So we're getting ready to leave. But this is how much loyal to these guys had for us. They go, look, if you want, they go, we'll invite the Hells Angels back to our clubhouse. And he goes, we'll hide in the closets with shotguns and shit. And when they come in, we'll kill.

them all. We're like, all right, fucking sounds like a good plan. Because at this point, it's self-preservation. If that's what it comes back to, that's what it comes down to. I'll give a shit. You know what I mean? I want to go home and see my family. Right. So we go over to this Earth Dog Club house and, you know, we go in and they're, you know, reading the riot act and they're telling they want everybody's social security numbers and this and that so they can start checking everybody. But they really wanted to check us. And myself and grandma are in there. And we're saying out loud because we're just a fight. You go, we're not giving you our shit. We're not giving you anything. And like the other clubs are like, it's like being in third grade where you bark at the

teacher and the other clubs are like looking around going, holy shit. And then they're like, and there's not to be any, you know, shit go down while we're here. So if you got a problem on another club, you handle it. So of course, we did the exact opposite. So when the meeting broke up, the president of the swordsman walked out towards the was walking towards the bonfire. So we scooped him up. And we're like, and we're getting in his ass about what he's saying.

And of course, Goose, who's no longer in a club, he's a big dude and a couple other guys, they're watching us. We're blatant defiance of them. And he comes walking over. He will not talk to us.

And he starts, didn't I tell you to the other guy in the swordsman? Didn't I tell you you guys aren't supposed to handle any business? And he's looking at him going like, but they scoop me up, right? Now, in the meantime, We didn't know how shit was going to go. So Freddie and I think it was Oz,

those guys had gotten into a position of a crossfire because if it broke, again, it was four against whoever wanted to draw their guns, right? So anyway, they bitch at them. We get on our motorcycles and we leave. Now, Oswald and Grabman were going to meet some of the pagans in Youngstown because they had a deal. So Freddie and I go to this truck stop and we're going to grab something to eat.

And, you know, you try not to take stuff personal. But now I took this personal. So I called up Willie Beard. And I said, Willie, I go, what the fuck is Goose's problem? He goes, what do you mean? I go, we're just at this meeting. He goes, what did he do? I go, he's telling us he wants this.

He wants that. He goes, well, you know, goose can kind of get like a, to stop. I go, stop right there. I go, do you know who the original Gestapo was? Because the fucking Nazis, us, we're the Gestapo. We don't get told what to do. I go, and so Freddy's eaten, and I'm watching him because he's like, where are you going with this?

I said, I'm going to tell you something, Willie. I said, you motherfuckers want to go. We'll go with you any time you want. I go, you just tell us where and when. And he's like, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. He goes, we're not looking to fight a two front war because this is when they were battling. And they basically got pushed out of Philadelphia. when the Pagans busted him out of Philadelphia.

He goes, we're not looking to fight at two, you know, a two front war with you guys. I go, I go, there's not going to be a fight. I go, you guys just won't see it coming, Willie. And he's like, God damn it. You know, and after that, after that, I'm telling you, we tried to poke that bear every chance we could get what the hell's angels. And they would, they would get so livid,

but they would never jump. They would never jump at us, ever. And it's just because not that we were a bunch of tough guys, but what would ensue if it happened. Right. What they knew would happen. Right. Or what they believed what would happen. So, you know, so that was, that was, I mean, you talk about, it was one of those times in a club where it was like, man, this is where, you know, you got big dogs.

But all the other guys are looking at you going, this could be a problem because this isn't these guys are in a club. They don't have a criminal record or they're afraid to go back to prison because that's their home. Right. You know, so it was kind of unique in that way. So it was kind of what what was the tripping point for this, this investigation that led to, you know, you guys closing the net on it? I had a thumb sucker as an ASAC. I mean, he was scared. Like denied even having meetings at the USA's office with the sack.

I don't remember being there. It was a fucking Saturday morning. Who comes in on a Saturday morning to have a meeting about what we're going to do? He wanted to shut that case down from the minute because he had no idea. You know, thank God for guys like Steve Martin, who were deputy assistant directors at the time, that were fighting our battles at the headquarters level, keeping our cases alive. Now, Chris Siddowski, who was my sack, he was there, but the ASAC wasn't passed any information up and down. So, you know, so what did it up happen?

The biggest thing that happened that shut it down was because, like I said, we were getting into. some scenarios with, you know, with the, I could tell you countless stories about shit that happened with the pagans. It almost became a big problem. But the, the big tipping point was, I get a call from Willie Beard at like 10 in the morning. This guy never was up at that time. He was a nocturnal animal. You know what I mean? He goes, I got to meet you. I go, okay. I go when? He goes, as soon as you can. I go, I go, he goes, when could you meet me? I go, give me an hour. And he goes, and I have my car swept. I go, okay.

So I know there's a problem. So I go, where we're going to meet? He goes, meet me up at the McDonald's. I go, okay. I go, we going anywhere? He goes, no. I'm like, so I had two guys that were at the house with me. I said, look, I got to go meet Willie.

I have no idea what this is about. I go, but I need you to go up there and just cover me because I don't know what's going on. Willie and I had a pretty damn good relationship. So I pulled into McDonald's. he's in there. He goes, come on, let's get my car. So I go sit in his car. And I'm waiting for him to put it in drive because I ain't going anymore. I'm going to stop that. And he pulls out this envelope. And he hands it to me. And I'm looking at it. And it's addressed to the hell's Angels, you know, like he's chapter. He goes, open it up and tell me what you think. So I open up, I pull out this letter. And I'm looking at it. And what it is is a picture of. Jeff Grabman when he was a warlock and Derek Kozlowski when he was a warlock, they identified

Jeff correctly and they identified Derek Kozlowski as another agent who we called Bailey right. But Jeff had slimmed down. He really didn't look as much like that and he's I'm looking at it. Of course my ass is puckered

and I'm kind of just looking at he goes, do you know those guys? I go, no. He goes, because they identify. I go, these guys ain't in my club. He goes, they're not I go no I don't know who the fuck these guys are Willie I go what's going on here he goes well we got mailed this and a Cleveland got mailed this letter identifying you guys he goes we've been having meetings he goes we don't believe those are your guys either he goes however somebody might be trying to get in your club and infiltrate you guys you need to be

careful I'm like holy shit okay so I'm like okay so I grabbed the letter I go back to the house and that's another one one of these son of a bitch so i call well we were going to try to get around it but the two state police guys that we had that were working with us from pennsylvania man they went right to their captain and it was like we because we know they're going to talk to our people and there's no coming back for that we thought we could salvage it really because they weren't actually accusing us of anything right right and we weren't really doing business with them because at this point we had got really tight with the pagans.

And we went to a wedding. So all this was happening at the same time. So we went to a pagan wedding for one of the pagan members. And we didn't wear our colors or anything like that. And they had been talking to us because they were talking about us flipping patches and becoming pagans. The Hells Angels wanted us to become a prospect club for them up in Erie. We're like, no, no, no, no, because we like our own thing. So we go to this wedding.

in about an hour into the wedding Lucky who was the guy to get married he goes hey There's some guys in a back Want to see you guys Like okay But only your officers can come So it was me, Dan and Jeff

We go back there There's 10 Pagan sitting back there Three of which are mother club members Which are there That's their pinnacle There's 13 of them That run the entire club And then there's the rest of them

That are there And we're sitting there going All right And they're like okay Who are you guys They go, we know you're an brotherhood, but what do you want? What do you want with us? And I'm like, we want to do business with you guys.

And then Poki, who's dead now, who was a pagan, this guy, he was a Puerto Rican who had a swastika on his arm, right? And so we were doing drug deals with him. And one of the guys said, Poki, why do you have a swastika on your arm? You're a Puerto Rican. He goes, that's so my daughters don't date any of those black guys. I go, that's a fucked up philosophy, dude. I mean, you know, anyway, but he's in there and he starts chirping. He goes, those guys got Ohio and Pennsylvania tabs.

And mother club members said, shut up, just shut up. We don't care about that because they thought of us as a cash cow how we can get, you know, how we can start making some money. So we talked to them guys for about 30, 40 minutes. And at the end, this is what said. He said, we're going to take your pictures. We're going to pass around, see if anybody knows you. and then we want to know who's in your club.

Well, we had so many informants that were A-B guys that were either in the prison or out. We could have given them a list of 50 guys because they didn't know how many we had. Right. They really didn't. And truly violent guys that would have been like, holy shit. But because the outing with that picture, that was, my ASAC was driving it downhill, driving it downhill. We this is the point in the investigation we wanted to get because now we'd have free reign and roll through pagan territory and deal with whoever we wanted with their blessing, you know, with their blessing. And then my ASAC comes out of nowhere.

It says you guys got to end it. You got two weeks to get out. It's like, fuck a two weeks. Wow. So we had to contrive this big plan that I had a brain aneurysm and died while I was down in Florida to see my baby's mama. And of course, those guys are all a lot of guys who want to go to Florida for Fuggo's now. cremated them already. Well, then, of course, we had a running affidavit and everything. So what we ended up doing is, you know, we ended up, you know, taking everybody down. I think we got like maybe 60, 80 people.

We had, we had fFLs that were selling guns to us off. Like, we'd have, we bring females in there, and they would put their information and we pay them and they buy the guns for us. We had a bunch of unique things in there. But, but the thing is is we did. We had, we had 20 undercovers running at one time. We had four females in. You know, we either our girlfriends or run. running mules. We had guys that were living in three different areas. I mean, it was expansive. I mean, it could have went way much for, ATF was getting fearful that it was growing too big beyond their control. Yeah. Which it wasn't a problem. I mean, you know, all they had to do was bring in some more people to facilitate it because we were reaching out and touching everybody. You know,

you know, David Snow, this guy, for all his quirkiness, he got it that his own people were messed up. So David, he wanted to sleep over the house one night. And he would, you know, guys would stay over our house every now and again. So I go, David, we don't got a bed. I go up at the couch. He goes, I don't need a bed. He goes, you got a sheet?

We go, yeah, you got a sheet. So he makes this prison bed on the floor and we give him a pillow. I got to get up in the middle of the lake and go to bathroom. I'm taking a piss. It's like four o'clock in the morning. And I opened the door. and it was because we always used to joke that he's going to kill us all

in the middle of our sleep and I open the door and he is right there I bought shit my pants I go David can I help you he goes I got to take a shower I get David before he goes I just need to take shower he goes you have a towel the only thing it was hanging

on the towel bar was a washcloth I said David this is all I got he goes that'll do brother that'll do I didn't sleep the rest of the night yeah but then And David and I got a good understanding. We, you know, he eventually wanted to come to our chapter.

Like David, he had sense. We had an issue with one of the guys could come up with this concocted story that didn't sit well with them, right? So we had a meeting in the house. So they brought up their five guys and it was like six or seven of us sitting in the house. Now it's fall, but it's hot. They all show up. They're all wearing jackets, hands and pockets. And our guys all got guns on, right?

It comes in. It's contentious. And Polly, who's the security officer, starts going off. Like, like, well, J.B. comes in. Anybody who's got guns, we've got to put them on the table over there. We've got to put them on a table. And so we're like, we don't have any guns, which everybody knew we had guns, right? So, Polly, now, I didn't tell you this, but when I was doing a brother's case up in Akron,

Paulie hung around the brothers in Akron. I knew him. I knew me. He never, he never recognized me. So he, he was the security. This is a guy. He was constantly on the internet scouring for stuff. So he comes in and he starts, listen, I was in Akron.

He goes, there was these two ATF guys. They come in and they took down all these clubs. And I'm sitting there. And everybody knew, and you could see everybody kind of edging up, kind of moving their hands towards their guns. Our guys, because they're sitting there. And he goes, and he goes, he turns around to where he goes, and that's, and he points at me. And I'm like, here we fucking go. We're going to have a slaughter right in this house.

And he goes, and that's why. And at that point, I lost my mind. I jumped up. I said, Polly, sit the fuck down. I go, you are fucking conspiracy theorist, you asshole, blah, blah, blah. And I start railing on it, right? And we ended that. And then so I'm legitimately pissed.

I go, we could all just fucking, you know. So I go and I grab this old chair and I'm sitting out on the on the driveway, looking out over the lake. And David comes out. He goes, junker, you mind if I sit down with you. I go, no, come on, David. So he pulls the chair up, he goes, Jack, Jared.

He goes, I like how you guys do your business. He goes, I want to. Now, at this point, we'd already bought a gun and threw off, David. He goes, I think I'm going to transfer to your chapter. He goes, I like how you got. He goes, I'm dealing with a bunch of idiots over here. And I'm just sitting there. I go, David, I go, I'm so pissed right now.

I go, you guys come up here with guns. Like, what are you going to kill us over something stupid? He goes, no, that was all JV trying to be. I go, dude, that ain't flying. I'm in and all this right now. He goes, I'm done with this bullshit. He goes, we are going to be the power in this chapter. See, all this was kind of going along.

And I mean, we had reached, you know, we had another guy. His name was Wild Bill Millsaps, right? Well, this was after J.B. got outed and we were going to bring some other guys in. This guy had been in jail for armed robbery a couple times, right? So he gets out and they're going to bring him in. So we're at the strip club. And we're just talking about experience.

and I just threw it out there. I said, well, Bill, you wouldn't happen to have any guns for sale, would you? He goes, fuck yeah, I got guns. I go, well, can we get him? He goes, when you want to get him? I go, tonight. So I had to send one of the guys back to the office, which was about 40 minutes away to raid the vault to get every penny we had. So we go, so I'm riding his truck, and he's drunk, and he's searching all over for his revolver that he can't find while we're driving. and the other guys are following us. So we pull up to this pretty nice house. And I'm like, there is no way this dude lives here. So we get out, we go into this house,

and his dad, older guy sitting in a chair watching TV. He goes, hey, Bill. He goes, hey, dad. He goes, your mom's going to be home in about a half bar. He goes, you need to get the hell out of here. Because he knows. So we go upstairs into this bedroom. And he's got guns everywhere, right?

He goes, well, how many do you want? I'll take them all. I go, give me a good deal. I go, do you got something I can carry him out in? So he gives me this green like Army duffel bag. And I got rifles and pistols and shotguns and whatever revolvers in there. Probably about 10, 15 guns. We hear the door open to the house.

It's his mom. June Cleaver. She comes in. She goes, hi, honey. He goes, hi, honey. She goes, Bill's here. She yells up the steps. Hey, Bill.

He goes, I'll be down in a minute, Mom. Now, again, we're pretty, we're not young, but we're old enough. I felt like I was five. Because here we are. We got our knots and cuts on our boots. I got this big bag of guns. We're walking down the steps. And his mom goes, hi boys.

And we don't even, hi, Mrs. Wild Bill. That's all we could call. Yeah, yeah. And he goes, would you guys like something to eat? I have some cookies. And we're going, what the hell? Yeah. None of us, it was, it was just the funniest shit I'd ever seen in my life, you know, as far as there were a lot of stupid things that happened in these cases.

But, you know, some of those things you could just, you know, these guys are just out there. And he was one of those guys. We're going to open a chapter in Akron. He goes, we're going to kill everyone in these. I mean, there was always kill, kill, kill. You know, we had to temper that kind of stuff. Yeah. Because obviously, that'd be a problem.

Do we have any questions for Frank? Yeah. I'll get it. I want to ask you. when we get to these questions, I want to ask you a question because you mentioned earlier, like the cop motorcycle clubs and the military motorcycle clubs. And generally, those clubs are made up of veterans or cops who like to ride. And generally, like the one percenters don't tend to fuck with them because they're just doing their thing.

They're not going to, they're not impeding on their territory in terms of like drugs and stuff. But right, but you do have those people in those clubs who for whatever reason, idealized. the one percenters and want to get closer. Like how would you manage or did you have to manage that when members of these cop clubs or military clubs would want to get closer to the one percenters? Well, a lot of times, especially with the cop clubs, the one percent of clubs that want anything to do with them. Yeah.

You know, they would try to force themselves in. And then every time there was an altercation or something would happen, these cop clubs would pull out, I'm a cop. Now I'm a cop. Right. I want to be and then they would fall back on the badge right right right um you know so so that was so that was all and they're not all bad but the ones to choose the one to affiliate and go to the one percent or houses yeah and do all that there's no reason for you to do that we still don't understand

why is cops you even have to have a patch you should have to put it you know but that's what they choose to do but you know this is happening court where you know cop clubs you know they get in and And they emulate the 1% of clubs, three-piece patch, they have meetings, mandatory runs. And, you know, this has happened where they put these people on to testify in court, but what's the difference between what you do and what the 1% of clubs do. And there really is no difference. And the same thing when you get to the military clubs, again, they're not all bad. But you know what?

The Special Forces is a big recruiting ground or people who have special. Now, I will tell you, like Jeremy Sheets in ATF headquarters, Mike Will, those two guys were probably the two biggest supporters of the motorcycle cases throughout, you know, the time we've been doing them. But now they publish law enforcement, military first responders in, in outlaw motorcycle gangs. Those guys are constantly going out and briefing commands, special mission units as well. Yeah. And they're pulling people's clearances because of their affiliation. Yeah. So, you know, these guys, a lot of these guys got high level access. A lot of these guys are doing a lot of training, and they're recruiting these dudes into these clubs, you know,

and then they're committing violence that are getting jacked up after a great year or a great service to the United States, you know, being in a military, they're getting hooked up with these guys and they're screwed themselves up. Yeah, yeah, it's fascinating. McIntyre, thank you very much for the very generous donation. Can you please explain why ATF isn't allowed by law

to have a database to track guns and has to resort to a paper database? Okay, so everybody thinks that ATF has this national database on guns. What ATF has is, so if it's an NFA weapon, you know, like a Title II type of weapon, machine gun, silencer, short-fail, shotgun, short-fail rifle, those obviously you have to pay a tax stamp and those are registered, right? Specialty weapon. ATF, the only database ATF keeps and maintains is a multiple sales database.

Okay, so what that means is if you buy two guns, two or more guns at one time, not long guns, but handguns. Okay? That gets reported. Now, they changed it on the southwest border to include long guns because all the stuff that was going across, Fast and Purists and all that BS, right? But the database is basically multiple sales. So what that is is for straw purchases.

So you got people who are going out and are buying guns for somebody else, right? They get reported. We go back and we say, okay. And people say, well, you don't have. tell them if you have the guns no you don't have to tell them but most lawful people if i come knock on your door and go why did you buy you know uh four garbage guns name one taskles pick up some garbage gun it's like a 9900 dollar gun why did you buy five of them can you explain to me why and then normally they'll come up with the well they were they're stolen something happened to

them i don't know what happened to them and they're turning up on other parts of the state or their gun crimes so and what else they're used for is like it best investigative leads. If you buy, you have people go out and buy multiple guns at multiple stores over the course of a day, a week, a month, right? And then the traffic outward, you know, to other places. So, and what else it's for, we use it for is like if we're doing search warrants and or if you're going to a house, if I go into the database and I see, well, this house has, you know, if it's a search warrant, well, they, you know, this house has been on the, on the, on the, on the, on the, you. like five times there have been multiple sales reported to your house what's going on there right so there's no central database like that tracks every gun you own the eight the ffls only have one obligation when it comes to multiple sales and that's to report that when you buy two or more handguns at one time okay so that that's what that's about so it's you know that that's a big misnomer that that everybody yeah i'll tell you something else about these f f fls i i because i used to go out to our

our firearms technology branch of Martinford all the time. You know, everybody thinks it's ATF that's jacking them, that's jacking them. Well, let me tell you something. They were selling those shotguns on those AR and AK platforms, you know, with the magazines. I saw it for like $200 one time. And then like two weeks later, I was at a gun show in Virginia over Norfolk carry. They were up to like 500. And I just, yeah, I didn't tell the guy who I was.

I'm just asking, why did he's gotten so expensive now? He goes, oh, ATF's getting ready to ban them. ATF's getting ready to ban them. I go, and here, and so I call John Spencer, who's in charge of our firearms technology branch, the guys who make these decisions. And I go, John, are these guys guns getting, he goes, no, he goes, all the FFLs are putting that out

because they're driving a cost up. So everybody thinks that it's ATF screwing with them. It's not. A lot of these FFLs, they self, you know, propose these high, and all this and these shortages so they can and not all again there's a lot of good quality ffls out there but if there's money to be made at the behest of the people thinking something's going to go offline then they'll do it yeah yeah yeah yeah we were talking you were talking about

uh the whole bumps i think it was the bump stocks right like because we were talking about bump stock those braces yeah the braces the braces not bump stocks but braces but well let me let me let me take something about ATF ATF you know hey I love that agency it you know it gave me a career, it afforded me a lot of opportunity. However, ATF is a political football because between that, and it's not really the alcohol and the tobacco, but with the firearms, the arson, the explosives, abortion clinic, investigate, all that stuff falls under the peer review of ATF, right? So for years, the NRA was battling and it still battles with ATF. When I came on in 1989, ATF had 2,500 agents, DEA had 2,500 agents. D.E.A. had 2,500 agents.

Today, DEA has over 5,000 agents. ATS still has 2,500 agents. They don't want ATF to get any bigger. And when you talk about gun violence, like ATF's going to go in and solve these problems in Chicago, Memphis, they can't. They don't have enough people. All they can go in and tell you, hey, look, here's how we can help you. But those are state and local problems where they have to have the manpower to address it. ATF can't go in there.

They don't have, ATF should have 5,000 agents. if they want to be effective. They just, Congress will not, NRA's big money, Congress will just not get off the money to expand ATF. And then the other thing about ATF is, you know,

when we were under Treasury, it was rock and roll because we could, we could do what we wanted under the purview of Treasury and they backed us. Once we went under DOJ, we became the red-headed stepchild

to FBI and DEA, right? We were third in line. So, and we've been run by U.S. attorneys, which that doesn't mean, it doesn't mean anything bad, but they're attorneys. Attorneys are at risk averse.

They look at liability. They're not run by a law enforcement official, okay? Dettelbach, I know him from Clayton. He's a great guy. But the thing is, is ATF is caught in this web of not being allowed to expand and do what actually needs to be done. They do what Congress tells them because they don't have enough to push back. If you told the FBI, hey, we're going to electric cars and you guys got to get on board.

The FBI would tell them kiss their ass. ATF, we would park all our gas cars and we'd be riding electric cars because they don't want to get sideways with Congress because they're always fearful that the budget's going to get cut or something's going to get happened. There's a lot of good leadership, but there's also a lot of people that just don't want to stand up and take the fight. That's how it was throughout a lot of these undercover operations throughout. You had a few guys. They came up through the ranks like Steve Martin, Carlos Canino, Charlie Smith, you know, those guys made it up there. Those guys knew what it was like to be on the ground and go up. Then you got a bunch of guys that just promoted up through that not on my watch.

I don't want any black marks by my name because I got to get to the next level. And when you lose the confidence that you right now, you talk to all the guys that are out in the field, there's no safety net. There's no safety net. And that's how they're operating. It used to be a very proactive agency. Now it's becoming more reactive agency, but so has most of law enforcement. Yeah. Maggator, thank you again for another very generous donation.

How much of Hunter Thompson's book do you feel is accurate? The Hells Angels book. Whose book? Hunter S. Thompson. I don't know if I read that book. Okay. Conantor journalist. Yeah.

McIntyre, thank you very much. Oh, what do you know about the booze fighters outlaw club? They seem to draw a lot of active military and vets in their group. They used to have a clubhouse in Okinawa, Japan. You know, the booze fighters are, you know, I think they're the oldest club. But they go by their alpha debt. And, you know, you never really saw those guys get too criminal. I mean, most of them are.

You know, they got a lot of cops. They got a lot of veterans. You know, it's more of a social riding club, I would say. It's not, I wouldn't, you know, to classify them as an outlaw motorcycle gang only maybe because they wear a three-piece patch and they subscribe to the thing, but they're not, they're not in it like the rest of them are. I mean, they will associate and affiliate, but not to the degree that some of the other clubs do. Yeah. Louis Fasquez, thank you very much for a, it's just a sticker. Thank you.

And then a couple questions on Patreon. Oh, did your knowledge of tobacco from the ATF assist you in starting your cigar company and how? Well, no. My cigar company, it kind of started because I like to smoke cigars. So, you know, in working in the government and still working in it, you know, contracting out, it was like sometimes you just want to get away from all that and do something different. I started smoking cigars years ago. No, my not, ATF has nothing to do with my business, thank Lord. And, you know, it's all state regulated and I don't have to deal with them people in any way, shape, or form. Because, you know, if I was doing cigarettes, it might be a little something different, but not with cigars. Yeah. What is your cigar company? Let people know where they can find it. It's Black River Tobacco Company.

You could find us online at www.w Black River Tobacco.com. We don't sell cigars online yet. We have a bunch of, you know, gear that we sell. If you're interested in buying cigars, you can call us and we'll ship them to you. I just have to send you what our inventory is because I'm telling you, our country, man, they don't want the banks, don't want to take tobacco money. They don't want to have anything to do with cigars and cigarettes anymore. It's tough to find a bank that will take the money.

Sounds like Marxism to me. Yes, it's terrible. It is. I'm telling you can't even have a vice anymore. That's ridiculous. How does an undercover agent deal with initiation challenges for, gangs when it comes to a legal activity? You know, a lot.

The most illegal activity that they're going to have you do, like I said, the one where we did the Home Invasion was an anomaly. Most of it has to do with fighting, you know, or mud check. You know, it's a, you know, like I said, the drugs, you know, we've learned how to subvert that and get around that. But most of it, I mean, they're not going to say, here's a gun going there and rob somebody, you know, go in there and rob a store. A lot of it is basically.

based on, you know, who your sponsor is, what they feel of you. Because you'll see some prospects of you treated like dirt. And then on the other side, you'll see some prospects that they feel might bring something to the club. Like the old school peeing on the colors and pooping on the colors and porn. No, clubs respect their colors now. You know, they don't do that. The only club that's like that really, the only 1% of club that's truly like that is still the pagans. They still run like they're in the 70s.

I'll give them that. But everybody else, man, you know, they have one. two sets of colors. They have their dress colors. They have their daily colors. It's a whole different world. You know, a whole different world. What effect, if any, did sons of anarchy have on outlaw motorcycle gangs and law enforcement efforts to investigate them? Did they give away any trade secrets of note? You know, I, you know, what was funny about that series is ATF was always portrayed as assholes in that series,

which we all got a good laugh at because, you know, at first, I think the first couple seasons, The Vagos were the ones that were giving them their, what you call it, their expertise or whatever. And then after that, then the Hells Angels took it over. That's where every time anything related to ATF was brought in, it was always brought in in a bad light. But Suns Air Anarchy, for the first couple of years, it was pretty spot on with a lot of the stuff that they talked about, you know, who were giving them their advice, who were directing them. Then it kind of got way out of control. And, you know, because, you know, it's TV. You know, nothing in real life is ever as sexy as it is TV.

There are some things that happen and some craziness, but it's nothing like Sins Arnick, sons of anarchy at all. Yeah. I don't think it impacted any investigations as it was on while other investigations were going on, you know. And then what is your opinion of how the investigation of prosecution and the Waco Twin Peak shootout was conducted at both the state and federal level? Do we have the whole story or is there still more to trickle out someday? You know, that case, you know, I had a good bite.

Darren Kozlowski went and testified down on that. I mean, the fact that, you know, I mean, I think there were some, according to the guys that I talked to that were involved in that investigation and it testified, there were some balls that were dropped. There were people that should have been charged. I mean, if you watch the video, I mean, you know, it could only be so much self-defense. But no, the story's out there. There wasn't anything that was being hidden.

it was just in the way that they prosecuted the case. It wasn't, it didn't bring, you know, a good, a good end result. Yeah. I just, you know, you know, you've talked about these really big cases with these, you know, with these bad actors, very bad actors. And, you know, there are going to be people who comment later on about ATF and, you know, the issues. whether it's DEA ATF, you know, feds. What is your response to people who, who talk about, like, the federal,

like if we were to talk about Ruby Ridge or whatever, you know, like when people, because people are obviously going to comment on this about the ATF going after the every man, not that, you know, not that Ruby Ridge was the every man, but like what would you say to people who are critical of organizations?

So here's the deal. I can only speak for the guys that I know and that I respect in law enforcement. You go after people who are doing truly evil, bad things, right? If they're not, you let them go. I can tell you, I never took it personal when you look at, you know, who you're targeting. Because they've either presented themselves in such a manner that they're doing something wrong. You know, everybody talks about ATF, you know, the gun law. We don't write the gun laws.

Congress writes the gun law. If you don't like the laws, go to your congressman, go to your senator, and get them changed. We only enforce them. So if you're supposed to have a gun, have all you can. If you're not supposed to have a gun, don't get caught. Because if you get caught, you're going to prison. So, I mean, it's like anything with the drugs. I mean, whatever they do.

So, you know, you can disparage law enforcement. You can disparage, you know. You know, there's always allegations of entrapment. There's always, you know, this and that. And we're like, go to court. Show where we're entrapped. Because that's why I could tell you the guys that do, especially the infiltrations, Jay Dobbins, Mark Deimos, Derek Kozlowski, you know, myself, you got Blake.

I mean, Blake Bolter, Darrell. I mean, there's countless guys, right? Billy Queen. Those guys, you know, people think because. you're an undercover, you're a jackass, right? They think, oh, it's all fun in games and you're out there drinking. Cowboys. No, no. Yeah. And even in our

own agency, it's like, oh, the skeleton needs to come out of the closet, dust it off, let it go through the thing, and get back in the closet. I had my sack told me one time, he goes, Frank, all those tattoos, he goes, you know, what will people think? I said, well, let me ask you something, Chris, and this was Chris Sadowski. I said, Chris, I said,

do you pay me for what I look like? he goes no i go i can wear long sleeves like you do because you're a suit i go i don't aspire to be you and be a suit i go let me ask you another question i go would you rather me be administratively sound or operationally sound and he goes operationally i go into my point i go all that other bullshit is administrative you can't die from that i go so all the guys that that that i know that did these type of cases you know and there's counten I'm missing people. I mean, Steve Martin, you have to be, you have to know how to process everything.

It wasn't until the mid-2000s where you were processing your own evidence, writing all your own reports, doing all your electronic surveillance tapes, downloading them, transcribing them. I mean, you have to know something about the game. And like I said before, we never put anybody in jail who didn't deserve to be there. In fact, like I said, sometimes we would try to steer them away from, the activity that they wanted to do, but because of the sexiness of being involved in a criminal organization, the roadsters, all that goes along with that entire lifestyle. I mean, you know, that, that they get involved for that. And we try to tell people, you know, even today,

you see guys, why are you involved in that? Yeah. You know, there's no point. Yeah. Frank, this has been one of the most like roller coaster ride over the top interviews we've ever done. It's been fantastic. Yeah. And 222 episodes. And, uh, thank you so much. I can talk for hours more. And if you guys want to bring some of the other guys in, there is just so much more to

talk about. Frank, I would love, I would love to bring you and some of your buddies up here to, to Brooklyn, uh, to do another interview. Yeah. Uh, this has been awesome. Thank, thank you so much for sharing your experiences with us. And, and real quick, where can people find you again, uh, both to Scar like, uh, wherever you. you're at out in public where can people find you well they could find us through the cigar but i also

have another company called hard knock schoolhouse it's hk schoolhouse dot com you can reach me there or you can reach me through the website uh the black river tobacco dot com there you know we got social media and whatnot and you know i hope people are going to call some hey you're an asshole you're an ATF agent. I go, you know, hey, I get a lot of people don't like, you know, the cops and they don't like a lot of that. And we're used to it. So I'm thick skin by now. You're not going to. I get it. You know, I, you know, so it is what it is, you know. Well, fellas out there, we will be back on Tuesday, right, Dee? Tuesday with Andy Stumpf, cleared hot podcast, former SEAL Team 6 officer. I think NCO and then officer. Yeah, so we're really excited to have him on the show on Tuesday. Frank, again, man, thank you so much for coming on.

I know we ran way over our time, but it was worth it. It was worth it for us. And we definitely want to have you back on. We want to have you in the studio, smoke some stogies. Yeah. Well, then okay, I'll come. All right, man. I'll bring some guys and some stuggies and some guys.

And we'll have a good time. You just let me know where. We are down for it. We'll do it, man. Hey, thanks, guys. I really appreciate you having it on it. I know I'm a different, I'm a different animal from what you guys are used to having on. And, you know, I, it's just my family's like, are you really going to go on in your time?

I go, I don't care. It's, you know, it's fascinating. It's what it is. Different animals, same zoos, I'm trying. I mean, it's all great, you know, like, we love it. Look, final, final comment I've said in the past, maybe privately, I interview a lot of, like, people from the intelligence community, special operations, community and I always run up against especially doing a public interview like this like

I can't really talk about that but with guys like you where your cases have been prosecuted it's just like game on and you tell the whole story from front to back and it's just amazing it is well I'll tell you just one last comment so sure you know just in dealing with some of the guys that we you know on the military side that would come to our training and we go to their training and you know we you got to make a lot of good friends then it was always funny because, you know, we would sit there in awe and listen to their stories, right? And they're like, well, it's no big deal. This is what we do every day.

And then we would tell our stories and they would sit there and all going, holy shit. And, you know, just the mutual respect, although the operations are different, the sacrifices and the hardships are no less. Yeah. And that's, and I think that's where the camaraderie comes with all of that. You know, people just, you know, and not everybody has the same road, but there are a lot of different things to go along with travel on the road that a lot of us have traveled. Yeah.

You know. Yeah. Absolutely. Absolutely. Well, we'll stay in touch, man. We'll love to do it again. And, yeah, man, again, thank you for coming on the show. And I spend some of your Friday evening with us.

Yeah, we deeply appreciate it. You're going to need to get bigger cops because none of us are small enough to fill your house. We got several other chairs we can push up here. Okay. Bean bags are good. I was just thinking about that. Some beanbags would be awesome. It could be done.

Of course, we'd have to, like, cut before anybody got up because nobody wants to see a bunch of 50 old guys. We'd be rolling out of us. We'd be rolling off. Exactly. It could be done. All right, guys. We'll see you. We'll see everyone on Tuesday.

Thank you. Thank you, Frank. All right. Thanks, everybody. Take care.